Well, I must be doing something wrong, then. Start, run, taskmgr, right-click, run as administrator, right-click {AVG/Trend Micro/McAfee/Symantec} whatever their core process is called, "end process". "access denied". Check again, the account for said process is SYSTEM. Click start, run, services.msc, right-click, run as administrator, locate service/s, right-click. properties, can't stop 'cause greyed out, select "logon" tab, service uses SYSTEM account.

Start, run, regedit, right-click, run as administrator, HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\{whatever}, lo and behold, the only permissions are for CREATOR OWNER and SYSTEM.

The software installs so that Administrator does not have permission to terminate the service (without tickling permissions in the registry beforehand). AVG, McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec DO NOT inform the user that they or Administrator will not be able to start and stop the services.

There are some situations where 2 monitors are necessary. I do a little video editing - 1 screen for the controls, and a second screen for the actual video. I can't afford a reference monitor, so I just use a good quality LED/LCD screen calibrated as best I can.

You can't edit video efficiently on a single screen, even a big one. There's just too much else on the screen to allow a decent sized window for the actual footage.

'taint my code. I'm trying to set up a simple, open source digital cinema package generator - http://dcinemaforum.com/forum/...

I want to make it possible for local independent producers to put together a DCP so it can be projected on our community digital cinema system. The server ONLY accepts DCP, so if you've made a short film and want it shown, I have to do a dance with a DVD player and the projector, instead of being able to use all the nice automation provided by the d-cinema server - things like sponsors' slides, "please turn off your mobile phone", automatic aspect ratio selection, and so on.

Anyway, I've tried the open source workflow on 7 linux distros running as virtualbox guests - Elementary OS (recommended), debian, mint, ubuntu studio, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Mageia. NONE of them has provided a smooth run - some of the open source packages come as binaries, some need compiling - I have no problem with that, but each linux distro has thrown some obstacle in the way, and it's mostly been compile failures because something somewhere expects to write to some directory for which it doesn't have permission - even when using "sudo make". I "su" then "make" and it works.

"And it kinda irritates me everytime Windows pretends to be something it's not. It's not a very good multi-user operating system. It's a FANTASTIC single user operating system."

In a nutshell, you have it.

Well, if "sudo make" won't execute, but "su", then "make" does execute, and I'm the only user, member of root and other needed groups, what else do you suggest? I want to compile and execute a program, not re-write the configuration scripts.

And why is third-party software allowed to install and run in the SYSTEM context? Even Administrator isn't allowed to terminate them.

If McAfee et al were nearly as good as they like to claim, I wouldn't have to uninstall them to run a decent malware scanner (after they've let ukash in), instead of just stopping them.

Yes, I know they usually have a "suspend protection" option, but I need it out of memory completely, and some of them still start in safe mode.

Unlike linux of course, where you only need to sudo anything worthwhile.

Which is why I immediately su every terminal session.

Well, there you go - it's 19:55 here, and Legend of Korra Book 3 just went on - the TV went on, the sound system went on, there's more lights on, and the battery voltage dropped to 24.2. Don't want to let it get lower, so the generator is going to run for an hour or so, just to keep the battery voltage up.

As I start to compose this, it's 16:52 on Saturday here. 2 adults and 2 teenagers in the house. Moving into Autumn, outside air temp is about 21 C, no need for air-con atm (don't have it, anyway). Current loads: 2 laptops, 1 desktop, some household lighting (mix of halogen and CFL), I just heard the refrigerator switch on, maybe the freezer is also going. The charge controller remote display in the kitchen says the load is 19.1 amps - that's a combination of 4.1 amps @ 24VDC, and 15 amps of 240VAC - the household lighting circuit is 24VDC and runs directly off the batteries. 240 VAC comes from a sine-wave inverter. That 15a of 240v represents the 24 volt DC load, not 15*240=3600w as you might assume, so it's about 1.5 amps of AC (lets leave out conversion efficiencies for the sake of this discussion).

So the total load on the batteries right now of 19.1 amps at (currently) 24.8 volts DC gives a result of ~473 watts.

That's pretty close to your calculation. Load will go up as more lights go on, but otherwise will stay pretty stable until we all go to bed. I *might* have to run the generator for a bit later on if we decide to turn on the big-screen TV to watch something during/after dinner.

There's a couple of things that help to keep the load down. The inverter has a limit of 1500 watts continuous, any higher and there's a time limit ranging from ~1 hour @ 1600 w, to 30 seconds @ 3000 w. So we can't just have everything on at the same time. When it's time to do the vacuuming, all the computers have to go to sleep, and so on. There's no electric heating elements - no electric hot water, no electric jug, no electric toaster, no electric stove/oven, no electric clothes dryer (that one has to run directly off the generator when it's needed)

We have generally fine weather here, so the clothes dryer doesn't get used very often - we hang the wet clothes on the line outdoors.

We cook on a wood-fired stove (with a gas backup), which also heats our hot water, and about 40% of the firewood comes from own plot - grown, harvested and dried on the property.

Come and visit - I'll talk you into boredom about off-grid living :-)

Check out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

Finally, someone on here who gets it. The independence of being off-grid is just, well, incomparable to anything else - especially when the grid here was out for 3 days in 2011 after a cyclone. All my grid-connected neighbours had to throw out the contents of their freezers and refrigerators, and they didn't have flushing toilets (no electricity=no water pumps. They had to put buckets out in the rain to catch water).

Have you considered a dual battery system instead of a single large system? Plasmatronics controllers can switch the current to a second battery bank when the first one hits float, so perhaps a ~1300ah bank plus a 1000ah bank might work. I'd do it if I had the $$$. I have a 1320ah bank, and it's just barely adequate. I think about 2000ah would do the job. They'll be due for replacement in a few more years, perhaps the options and pricing will be suitable at that time for a little experimentation - or perhaps Li-ion technology will have matured sufficiently by then.

P.S. can you point me to anything regarding conversion of petrol generators to propane?

Yup. My jaw dropped upthread when I saw someone quote usage of 100 kWh/day.

It gets to 35 and even 40 deg C and >90% humidity here in summer, but you can manage that sort of heat without refrigerated air conditioning, if you really want to.

Holy Dooley! Was that mis-keyed? How the hell do you manage 100 (one hundred) kWh per day? I've got a household of 2 adults and 2 teenagers all with their own computers, TV, etc, and we rarely get above 10 (ten) kWh/day.

Smart controllers can switch supply to a different load when they detect the batteries are "full". You can switch to a water pump, for example. My controller will even charge a second battery bank, if I had one.

I'm not a kook - it's just going to cost me more to connect to the grid than it costs to make and store solar power.

Last time I upgraded the system, in order to qualify for a subsidy, I had to get a quote to connect to the grid - which ends about 600 metres up the road. It was going to cost ~AUD$30K, plus tree-clearing costs, to get a standard domestic service, i.e. single-phase 230VAC, not including air-conditioning (air-con requires higher amperage supply). The solar upgrade (new 1320ah batteries, additional 960W of PV, installation and controllers, etc) was just over $20K.