I love MANY of the films other peeps have already listed, but i reckon these deserve some attention too:

The Abyss
Delicatessen (I'd categorise it as Sci-Fi, YMMV)
Armageddon
Pitch Black
Prometheus
Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Super 8

I studied Cybernetics @ Reading Uni 30 years ago - not many robots around then! :-)

Control Theory is really, really useful to understand - go take look at that.

you are spot on, 100% correct.

Me? I've switched off updates on Win7 and run it in a VM with no network connection and only for Adobe CS6. End Of Story.

It's a very sad state of affairs.

yeah, i get what you're saying, killing the net connection sounds pretty severe.

but now, it can't phone home even if i missed uninstalling / not installing some kb's (and i probably did). Any other existing backdoors / telemetry / bit-torrented windows downloads / unauthorisd activity / snooping etc etc etc are all dead in the water too.

and i can still download the security essentials signatures myself on the linux host when i feel like it.

in retrospect, i can't really see any downsides and i wish i'd done it earlier.

things have come to a bit of a sorry conclusion when you have to effectively abandon an OS because it is actively working AGAINST YOU, and you -really- can't trust it AT ALL.

stuff it.

i've just given up and pulled the network connection from my win7 vm: it won't be phoning home any more.

i'm not going to sit here wading through loads of kbs trying to work out what to switch off all the time....

this.

I just need Indesign (CS6 ideally) and PDF preflighting, plus decent cmyk support in The Gimp. As it is, i only run windows in a vm anyway, for those two things.

everything else in linux works great for me. :-)

"My suggestion to people would be to install a Hypervisor if you haven't already. Have your host OS be something other than Windows".

this gets my vote.

I run a Linux host (Mageia) for almost all my day-to-day work, and I use VirtualBox to run a Windows7 guest when I use something that's Windows-specific, namely Adobe InDesign/CS, where I can't find a Linux alternative I feel I can use in a production environment. All my other work is done safely within Linux.

So, yes, it's a compromise, but running InDesign on a Windows7 guest is a good, safe alternative that works well for me - I'd recommend it.

And when Windows7 goes EOS in 2020, I suspect I will probably just kill the networking to the Windows7 guest and carry on using it.

 

I used Mandrake/Mandriva from 2000 to around 2013. As far as I know, there are at least three "forks":

Mageia (which I use now: I personally think it's great, and a big improvement on Mandriva): http://www.mageia.org/en/

PCLinuxOS: never used it, so can't comment on what it's like: don't know if this is classed as a true "fork": http://www.pclinuxos.com/

OpenMandriva: again, never used it, so can't comment, and again, not sure if this is a "fork" as such: https://www.openmandriva.org/e...

Try Mageia: you may well find you like it!

I've got a friend in his 90's who is gradually losing motor control in his hands. it's a rubbish situation.

Anyway, about 5 years ago, I upgraded him from a standard MS optical mouse to a Logitech Trackman Wheel, which was a great help. Over the last couple of months, his motor control has deteriorated to the ponit where positioning the cursor is still ok. but pressing the right buttons is getting tricksy. So he's just upgraded to an Infogrip BigTrack trackball, where the buttons are out of the way of using the trackball. And it's been a great help. Not perfect, but a massive improvement. Each person's needs are going to be different. I'd suggest borrowing a trackball if you can, else buy one, and if it doesn;t work, ebay it, and try the next thing - the only way to find a solution is to try these things out in real life i think.

I get the impression we're in a nascent market - this stuff will likely become huge in the next 5-10 years, as a big chunk of the early comptuer users start hitting age-related motor loss.

I use VitualBox every day to run Adobe CS6 (and occasionally MS Office) on a Win7 guest on a Linux host.

I've also helped a friend set up a similar config to run stuff like iTunes, again on a Win7 guest / Linux host combo.

VirtualBox does exactly what it says on the tin, for us at least: the current situation with VirtualBox suits us very well. And I'm seriously grateful for that!

you mean colour screens are expensive? guess so. but greyscale lcd's are dirt cheap. there are a number of pda's (palm lookalikes) that sell for around 30 or less / $50 in the UK. e.g. Sharp ZQ's, Franklin's etc. they're not great. but i would guess in a couple of years time tungsten lookalikes will be the same price. (nice keyboard, wireless etc). i would guess the cost is the memory as well as the screen. and probably the battery charger.... (plus the OS of course if you're paying someone like palm or m$). i was a long time psion user ( best part of 20 years i think!). their consumer products fizzled out. and now they've sold out to m$. shame. they used to have a very good reputation for hw and sw as far as i was concerned (revo's aside). ah well. like someone else said, if they do well, someone will drop linux onto it. maybe some of the peeps at psion will get a conscience and help out. spiff