Still. Doesn't. Work.

  In the last two weeks, I've had one Windows 7 machine, two Vista machines, five MCE machines, and 10+ (see below*) XP Pro machines with the MS MSR installed which were hosed to the point where I had to struggle to get them to boot into the GUI so I could run conventional tools against them.

  * The windows bootloader would run, but no splash screen, blank or with a blinking cursor. Safe Mode only sometimes worked. For the XP/MCE machines, doing a repair from disk would at least get one a GUI long enough to run tools like combofix and fix it.

  Inspection of the copies of the registry hives of the above installs showed that all but two of the above machines had the MSR tool installed, and updated. That did not stop those systems from being invaded, and in at least one of the Vista instances, rootkitted.

  I have to conclude that the people here who think that Microsoft's MSR tool works are either astroturfers, or naive.

  I'm tired of this shit.

  Some people would say "Hey, it bring you $income"

  I would rather be doing hardware replacement and teaching people how to use computers.

  At least there, I can say that I did the work.

  Virus removal, when they get infected again, despite how I secure their system, despite how much they follow safe surfing, makes me look like a charlatan.

  I've been moving the most badly affected customers over to Ubuntu for about a year, and THEY don't call me so often. It just works.

  I've been doing this for more than two decades, and I'm tired of the consumer approach to software.

  FIx your shit, Microsoft. (Oh, and you can damned well support the XP variants better, since that is what a large majority of your customer base is still using.)

  Posted Angry as I've spent too much damned time this week doing the same damned thing I was last year... and the year before that... etc... ...

  This post may contain potentially incoherent ranting and/or opinions. Read it at your own risk. No lawyers were harmed during the production of this post; although it's my sincere wish that some of them would have been thru circumstances outside of my control.

    SB

Need a way to do 8mm movie camera film to digital, anyone know of a simple gadget that can be run from Linux?

  Know I haven't been here much, life is VERY FULL *grin*

so discombobulated most of the time I can't even coherently write...

Cheers, friends
  0.174 x SB

Slashdot sucks.

  I hear that a lot.

  I used to agree with it.

  Now I'm realizing that it's not that slashdot sucks, it's that we have, and must, move on.

  Slashdot is simply changing. Like everything else it evolves - in this case, at the speed of the web (measured in LOC/sec I believe :)

  As it does, so do we. So, as often happens in life, we drift apart.

  My point is that "slashdot sucks" posts/journals are a waste of time. Try to change the collective will of tens of thousands of people (and some odd thousands of slashbots, and etc, but you get my point)?

Not gonna happen. In the old days, there weren't so many other options. Now there are.

  It's funny how perceptions change.

  Can I save this as a draft? :) It doesn't feel complete. ;)

  You know where I think the future of blogging and forums is going to coalesce? Wikis.

  Yeah, those things.

  I'm serious. The concept of the wiki, as I see it, is still in it's infancy as a web phenomenon. But as a knowledge database with a very, very easy to use and very easy to contribute to interface - even the easiest to use html online tools don't have quite the same friendliness as "Edit Text of This Page" and type text, and "save".

  Sure, the signal to noise ratio of the internet will go down because of it. But it's going to go down anyway due to new technologies, and perhaps if easier ways for people to discourse were found they could express their thoughts more clearly, and perhaps learn.

Ok, I'm being an optimist :)

  But seriously;

  I do think that wiki style "blogging" or whatever you want to call it (it is rather a broad spectrum idea, is it not?) is going to be extremely valuable for collaborating ideas and projects over the internet. Like an uber whiteboard in a sense, maybe - ?

  I'm running an experiment with a few friends right now in a "wiki whiteboard". It's in it's infancy, too. Here the goal is to find something easier to share thoughts with than email and portable (access from anywhere with a web browser)

  In a lot of ways I'm very much a wiki moron, so any ideas and experiences would be appreciated :)

  Just the spewing off the top of my brain tonite...

SB

This is more really a random sampling of my notes, with embellishments, rather than a article of any kind. Forgive me lol :)

  I have an AMD64 machine I just can't get long term stable. The kernel seems stable, but xorg just isn't. I get random video corruption and (more frequent as of late) xorg 98.6% cpu (in 'top') lockups.

  The system is using the kernel agp module and not nvidia's, but I'm not sure how to force that in Fedora short of compiling a kernel (and I haven't had time to screw around with figuring out how to do that in Fedora, dangit in gentoo it's much easier :)

  Any ideas how to disable the kernel agpgart in FC3/4 and force the nvidia's? I'm not sure that's what is causing the problem - from some experiences in gentoo it's a possibility - but I haven't found an easy way to do that in Fedora. I feel like I'm missing something there!

^^

  I can ssh into the machine and kill X and restart it when it pukes, but of course I lose what I am doing.

  I've replaced the ram and the video card. The video corruption looks like vid memory corruption, but it's not hardware*. With the usual library link tweaks required in a lot of distros for x86_64, I've managed to get openGL gaming working almost flawlessly. The desktop is another matter, I've had to ssh in and restart X 8 times in the last couple days, and I've had it with this. Most of the other problems I've run across have been 64bit/32bit library problems, and I'd almost bet this is related, but I can't find it here.

  EDIT: Problems have been fairly consistent across linux distributions with installed nvidia drivers, which made me think it was nvidia's drivers. But I updated xorg and things just broke, badly - in gentoo first, then in FC3. Different problems here in FC4. Lib/Lib64 symlinks aren't the only problem.

  HW details
8KDA series Epox with raid
all IDE HDs at this point
Jaton 5700fx *(also a tested true gf mx 400, same problem, jaton tested in my duron machine didn't exhibit problems)
crucial ram(thought that might be the prob, upgraded, but no)

  SW details
  Fedora Core 4 Test 1 (note, system also exhibited similar behavior with FC3; and I was never able to make gentoo stable)
nvidia 7174 drivers seemed to make a small improvement over the last version when I installed them today...?
xorg 6.8 vers 7 and 27

  Note: with this install if I run gdm it jumps to 99%+ cpu usage as soon as I'm past the login screen, I wonder if this is related?

  The fact that I can ssh in and restart things suggests the kernel isn't the problem.

  Also I'm wondering, does anyone know how to resolve the dependancy hell inherent with the FC4 test releases?

  I hate to say it, but as much fun as this new system has been, I need to make it totally stable all the way around, and soon, as I'm trying to make an end of summer going into business deadline, and I need this online and working as well as my older gentoo system (which is enjoying it's 18xth day of ~0maint uptime :)

  I'd love to hear from other FC3/4 users on similar h/w, please... :)

  EDIT: I suspect the problem is in between nvidia's drivers and xorg & x86_64 somewhere, but I don't know enough to track it down. Anyone? I might be relying on google too much nowadays, as I'm time-pressed.

Cheers all
SB

This thread.

'ware thee who would tread the future ;-D

SB

My Chaintech AIV5 motherboard died explosively Friday night - two caps on the back of the mobo vomited all over the board. We were sitting around listening to music when there was a loud POP and the machine went down completely. :(((

  An hour later, after swapping parts around - and pulling the board and looking at the mess :), I had determined that the mobo was indeed dead, and swapped it out for a FIC board I'd had around for a while. A few tweaks to the kernel modules and back up again. (I love linux, wholly different mobo, just menuconfig, recompile and all is Love again :)

  That mobo - the chaintech - cost me $85 in '01; and it gave me nearly three years of 24/7 service, with no problems whatsoever (I'm not going to talk about the two times I dealt with Chaintech's phone tech support, I nearly went postal :). But that little mobo gave me some really, really good service. I hope the FIC lasts at least as long - it's a third-hand mobo that's been sitting in a box in my parts tote for at least a couple years; mainly because at the time I obtained it, the onboard sound drivers for windows would randomly lock up the system. Seems like a long time ago, I actually ran Windows at the time :D I was pleasantly surprised after I installed the FIC; I hadn't had it in a antistatic bag, had other parts and pieces in the same box and it got dinged a bit, but it booted right up and has run flawlessly for nearly 48 hours now.

  Now I have no backup motherboards for this system left - I sold the others I had when I moved here 15 months ago. So I'm wondering where to go from here. I'd like to upgrade to an Athlon64 system, but that involves replacing a lot more than the motherboard. :(

  I do need to have a "moments-notice" backup board here, one that I could swap out easily with this one if necessary. It has to be linux friendly, and it has to be cheap - money is tight right now, and if I'm going to upgrade to a '64 system this fall, I have to get by as cheap as possible in buying a backup mobo. Does anyone have any suggestions? It's a Duron system with 133mhz ram, and I do like the Via chipset, it's a no problem sort for me, regardless of what others say.

  While I'm on the topic, I'd love to hear some opinions on what the best route would be for '64 upgrades. I run Gentoo and the latest linux kernels; my only real requirements for a 64 board would be linux/stability, at least 5 PCI slots and upgradability. And cheap, um, inexpensive. A hundred - hundred fifty bucks, tops. :)

(I can live with 3 PCI slots if cmi or ac97 sound and something as nice as the 8139 nic chipset is onboard). Raid would be nice, but it's not really needed; I know that SATA is becoming common on many of the boards, but I don't have any experience with it and likely won't need it for a while, tho it'd be nice to have for upgrade purposes when I feel like it. Seems like the SATA hardrives are becoming cheaper than the old UDMA IDE ones. Go figure :D

  I've been perusing reviews and such of the latest boards, but they tell me little about what user experiences - particularly under linux - are like. Any links would be appreciated, I just don't have time to do the kind of exhaustive research that I used to :(

  I don't know if anyone even watches my journal anymore... lol.

Cheers to all my friends; and if you were wondering where I've been the last few weeks, well, an old lady friend has re-entered my life, and we've been catching up. It's not love, but comfortable and very deep friendship going back 15 years. I have to say, this place doesn't look like the typical bachelor pad anymore :D It looks... almost like a home. Damned scary, :D.

  Oh, and I converted from fluxbox to Enlightenment this weekend. I played with E some years ago, wasn't impressed. Now I am very impressed. VERY impressed, enough so that I spent most of the day today customizing E to my preferences. Sure has matured, and kudos to the dev teams at Enlightenment.org!! I'm seriously considering joining the team as a documentation grammar nazi - editing is something I'm very good at - they are unusually good at writing docs, but I still cringe every few paragraphs.

  I could go on and on and on, but I'm going to cut this short.

  Oh, and Hi everyone. Sorry it's been so long...

SB

Hmm.

  Haven't meta-moderated in almost two months.

  Have posted very little in the last few weeks (been busy), although I've been reading a 1/2 hour or so every night. Haven't been modded up all that much, mostly posted to old articles where the mods have moved on.

  Have had moderator points FOUR TIMES this month, the most since last year and more than I had in the three months previous when I was posting a lot more and meta-moderating almost religiously.

  Coincidence? I think not.

:D

SB

Um, ok...

Went to friend someone this evening who seriously made me spit beer all over ( this comment ) and saw this:

You have over 200 friends and foes at the moment. This puts you over our limit of 200 relationships that we allow. At this point you may only remove relationships with users.

  Um, wtf? Is there a real reason for this? I can't think of one, just that someone imposed some arbitrary number (think about it, "200" doesn't make sense, even if they were trying to save database space - which REALLY doesn't make sense - holy shit, a couple bytes for the userID and one for the relationship value?)

  Anyone know of any real reason for this, or was it just a monkey that flew out of someone's butt?

  Right below that was this:

So do you want to remove your relationship with SEWilco?

  Umm... how can I remove the relationship when I haven't made one yet? What is this, legacy code?

  Gah. /me slaps slashcode around with a Large Frozen Walleye

SB

I have my own reasons for this.

  Been thinking about this for a while.

  Thanks to those who made me their friends; thanks for the conversations; thanks for the funnies.

  I'm moving on. There's too much else to do.

  Feels like I'm trying to quit an addiction :)

  Those of you who know me, know how to get a hold of me. You who are friends and don't, respond to this journal post if you want to stay in contact; I'll watch it for a while, and I'll give contact details if I feel so inclined.

  But I am not going to post to, nor read slashdot anymore.

  For some weird reason, I find writing this difficult; yet, in another way, it's a release and a relief. Well...

  Thanks everyone. I'll miss all of you, even the trolls.

  Shadowbearer

Right now it's AtariAmarok; I don't think I've ever seen a posting history with that many funny mods (and they are all hilarious, thanks AtariAmarok!)

  One vote here for AA as leading slashdot comedian!

Heee!
SB

This post is easily the most profoundly insightful post I've seen on slashdot in a long, long time.

  I've been involved with computers since about the time the Apple II was introduced, and iwbcman hits right on target about how fucked up the IT industry is and why.

  Thank you, iwbcman.

SB

Heh. I loved this one.

yep, M$ is always behind me, everytime I bend over.

  *smirk*

SB

this one

SB

I think I've figured out what was really bugging me about the new posting history listing for users.

  If you look at it, it appears that posts are organized by date of the post being replied to, not by date in which the replies are actually made. For example, if I reply to a post from a couple days ago, the reply is actually sorted into the same line (down the page) as the date the original post was made. I think... moderations also sometimes appear to kick the post "up" the ladder.

  Is this intentional, or a bug? I'd much prefer to have posts displayed in order made by date. Or better yet, to have the options to sort by datestamp, subject, replies, or even (bog forbid) by karma :)

  What do y'all think? So far the order of display is pretty confusing...

SB

Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 10:09 PM February 26th, 2004 1, Troll
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 09:39 PM February 26th, 2004 1 1, Flamebait
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 09:22 PM February 26th, 2004 1 1, Offtopic
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 09:00 PM February 26th, 2004 1 1, Offtopic
Someone 05:50 PM February 26th, 2004 4, Funny
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 08:55 PM February 26th, 2004 1 3, Funny
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 07:22 PM February 26th, 2004 1 1, Funny
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 07:19 PM February 26th, 2004 1 3, Funny
Re:Setting themselves up... 07:03 PM February 26th, 2004 1 2
Re:and in other news 06:33 PM February 26th, 2004 2
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 06:15 PM February 26th, 2004 2 -1, Funny
Re:Setting themselves up... 06:07 PM February 26th, 2004 1 5, Funny
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 06:04 PM February 26th, 2004 1 5, Funny
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 05:57 PM February 26th, 2004 1 -1, Offtopic
Re:OMFG ROTFLMAO ROR! 05:54 PM February 26th, 2004 4 5, Funny

  Upta yada. Anipulatam, atno, mer? -1 unnyf?

  to eb os.

SB