“George that new Windows 7 product is full of NSA backdoors…”
“George, when are you going to make the switch over to Open Source?”
“George [this]…” and “George [that]…”
Although lots of people have opinions (and everyone has a what?) about Windows 7, like the stock market, I figure ‘most folks’ are often wrong, so I backed up my system entirely and at 11:53 AM Tuesday started my conversion of my main computer to Windows 7.
At a cost of $119 (Amazon) and almost four hours is the upgrade worth it? So far – - yes.
7 seems to run a bit faster, has some nifty new features which seem useful (preview of open documents and click-to-bring-forward windows, to name two) and so forth.
In a previous incarnation I worked for a software company (a Microsoft Gold Partner in the higher education space) and one of the concepts I championed was the whole notion of ‘evergreen software’. No, that doesn’t mean it was written somewhere on Bainbridge Island or by the sasquatches of C# programming near Ohanapecosh. It means something which strikes a nice balance between ongoing revenue for the company on the one hand while offering the best & latest feature sets via ongoing upgrades and support.
Windows 7 hits the mark (*so far).
Don’t get me wrong: I like the the idea of open source. However, I am extremely reluctant to get into Linux since my whole personal business model is based on high reliability computing. What that means to me is what?
Computing is not an end, in and of itself, for most people. Computers are tools – and ought to be categorized like saws or air tools out in the shop. Out in the shop if I need to scribe or mark something my choices are metal working scribes (or first spray layout fluid on and then scribe) or a carpenters pencil. In the home office it’s Corel Draw or AutoCad’s SketchBook Pro 2010, depending on project.
Computer’s being ‘mind amplifiers’, the more transparent they are – and the better job of ‘mind amplifying they do, so much the better. So, do I think it’s worth $120 to upgrade? Hell yes.
My Vista experience was, how do I say this? A little less than perfect. But for the last 6-months, or so, even Vista has been very well-behaved…although it took a little doing to get there. 7 seems more like it’s on the XP path in terms of reliability. While I’m sure there are some programs that it won’t run with, I don’t have any on my machine.
Maybe this means that Microsoft has figured out the two obvious points: 1) People don’t mind paying good money for good value. 2) The best way to battle Open Source is to embrace ‘evergreen computing’ and product superiority.
Cookie Wars
Speaking of which, I’ve been using the new upgraded version of Max Cookie Manager which has removed (as of this morning) 49,236 cookies and 122 web bugs (sneaked in code that report back to whoever) from my my computer.
The latest upgrade includes scanning for (and removing if desired) new cookies every x-minutes. The ones on the white-list are retained while the ones no there go “Poof!” without me having to think about them.
The core concept is that cookies in general – especially the browser-independent web bugs based on Flash – have the potential for abuse at the same level as conventional viruses, so I think of it as one more moat around my computer.
You can download the free demo here: www.urbansurvival.com/setupMCMstdGU.exe Upgrading to full functionality will set you back about $35.
Hi Hondutel
Not to name names here, but I’ve got a pretty serious computing set-up here with up to seven screens on at once and multiple terabytes, yah? When my system started acting up last week I called the local genius team and found out that my high-level pipe to the internet was under attack. The trace route went as far as Hondutel in Honduras (but likely beyond that). Fortunately, whoever was trying to get between me and the backbone doesn’t have an appreciation for the gear here and now there’s what a call an “F/U” script running on equipment ahead of our routers that gives 2-log-on chances and then blocks the IP block for a day.
Not that this kind of thing will keep determined hackers out, but a good ISP is worth its weight in gold; F/U scripting at three places between our router and fiber is a good start and should slow down whoever thinks an SSH attack’s gonna work. At this rate, I will need to worry in 27,521 years.
Playing the MSM
A new movie called “Starsuckers” is in the works and it takes aim at ‘celebrity journalism‘.
Apparently this goes to common themes around here: The pointlessness of the ‘cult of personality’ (why anyone would spend a minute of their time worrying about celebrity BS boggles the mind…).
Nice to see someone else ‘gets it’.
Not For Breakfast, But…
A reader sends this:
“On a positive note, finally got to try El Don. Tequila usually gives me a raging headache, not this stuff though. Now I understand why you’re always pouring the stuff in your coffee….”
LOL, I really hope readers understand that I don’t really pour shots of el Don for breakfast. Never before 5 PM.
Say, what time is it in Istanbul right now?
Around The Ranch: Weathering
Elaine returned from a trip to the local feed store last night and announced “I just heard on the radio it’s going to be awefully windy and stormy on Thursday. We better make sure everything it battened down…”
We got ready for the rain and what have you, but this morning’s forecast looks like an 80% chance of rain and 15 MPH winds. In Seattle, this would be mid-summer weather. And the low of 47 coming Friday night? Mid-June for Puget Sounders.
If you haven’t lived in a lot of different places, the weather difference seems to be that in East Texas, winter lasts about a month. In the Northwest, summer lasts about a month.
Got me to thinking, though, about one of my big goals in life that I haven’t made much progress in achieving: I keep trying to spot a place where owning and driving a convertible would make sense for more than a month or two of the year. Darned if I’ve been able to find it yet. If you’ve figured that one out, please let us know where it is.
I hear 6,000 feet in the tropics is good, but looking at places like the slopes of Volcan Barú in Panama there’s a distinct lack of roads and shopping.
The question of the morning is this: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would that be? And, if you’re not there, why not? A number of readers in Ecuador say it’s close to perfect – ditto the reports from parts of Chile’s hinterlands (yet still close enough to have access to the net….
Peoplenomics Subscriber Note
We’re up on the new enterprise class server now – the short outage this morning was due to setting of permissions in the new directory structure.. should be back to shookum now.
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The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week
“Economic Island Theory”
While we wait patiently to see which big commercial real estate outfit will be the first to hit banko, what the public reaction to the Obama declaration of national medical state of emergency and so forth will be, we’re at a fine point to consider one of my pet economic theories. I call it “Economic Island Theory” and it works with countries, states, cities, neighborhoods, and people right here on your block. If you want to understand who has power, Economic Island Theory is the ticket…no fancy formulas needed. Job, home, and Life counseling – all in one byte-sized theory.
“Live on $10,000″ Updated
With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
No, when you tell your browser to ‘empty your cookies’ of web sites you’ve visited, it probably won’t get them all. Why? Because there is a whole class of ‘browser-independent’ cookies that will gobble up space on your hard drive, but more important is they will sneak out information about you without you being aware of it. Ever week I get emails like this one:
“Thanks again for the Maxa Tools recommendation, I never knew how much additional garbage gets attached every time I browse. “
Test drive it free by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will be $35 bucks. Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster. I’ve taken 1,000 37,970 41,837 cookies off my machine now. It’s just amazing. (I might ask their CTO to add one more digit to the “Total deleted till now” window…)
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
Feeling Thorny?
Want to be a thorn in the side of the Old World Order? Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)