Download Time

In sending the last post, it took about the same long time to upload as it did to download????

-- Hal Keeney (dba) Eugene's Studio Stained Glass Artistry

Its you Hal, maybe alot of people there got connected during the holidays? You can go to CNET to test your bandwidth speed.

Have you updated your virus checker and your spyware? ~Kimberlee

Thanks for the reply, Kimberlee. Yes - I'm as up to date as I can get. The point is that this news group (which I enjoy a lot) is the only internet connection that has a 2 minute 10 second download or upload time. That is unusual for any site, but this has been continous for the last 3 or 4 weeks. Without looking into it, I only got one answer from anyone other than you.

I'd suggest that you un-subscribe, purge all the old messages, and then re-subscribe. You may be having some disk=space problems?

If you are using Outlook Express, you can find all the old messages in a folder that has ".dbx" files. Find them by being in OE, choosing Tools, Options, Maintenance, Store Folder. Copy and paste that folder's link into your Windows Explorer search window. It will bring up all your OE mail and newsgroup files. Delete all your old messages from groups you don't use and empty your rec.crafts.glass folder.

I did this procedure this week and freed up almost 2 gigs (yes, 2 GIGs!!!). Things run a LOT faster now.

HTH>

Thanks to Moon & Kimberlee, my download time is now just shy of 1 minute. That I can live with. I didn't expect to get technical internet help from the glass News Group. But if I expect to lurk, question or help answer questions, it is useful to be able to correspond. Have a great weekend - the wife and I are going to a craft show in Richmond tomorrow. Supposed to be a lot of glass.

Hal

message

you also may want to try defragmenting your disc?? Under scheduled tasks in my computer in windows.Did mine recently and upped my download time considerably. m

Thanks Michele - I defrag on a regular basis about once a month just on general principles. I would do it more often, but it IS hard on the hard disk.

Another option is of course not to use Windows, but one of the free Unices such as FreeBSD or Linux. What they lack in user friendliness they make up in robustness, and 'virus' is an unknown word here.

Especially if you use your PC for surfing and email only, I'd say go for it!

Paai

Unfortunately, 'virus' is *NOT* an unknown word in the Linux universe. In comparison to the risk of virus infection when using Windows, it's rare, but most definitely not unknown. There are many cross-platform viruses such as "Simile" or "Etap" that are known to infect both Windows and Linux machines, as well as multiple viruses such as "Linux.Lion.Worm" or "Linux.Slapper.Worm" that only infect machines running Linux.

Please, don't assume that you are risk free just because you aren't running Windows. In the past six months, I've even seen warnings of a worm that infects Sun Solaris! Install virus detection software and *USE* it, no matter what platform you choose to run.

I have Norton anti-virus for my Windows XP. Would it also work for Linux or are there different versions for different OS's?

There is a difference between 'worms' and 'viruses'. I do not want to pursue the topic on rec.crafts.glass, because it would be uninteresting for the glass people here, but I defy you to send me a virus, /any/ virus, that can infect my Linux machine if I am not running as root, and I will loyally report the outcome here.

Paai

Viruses are much too small to put on a fish hook.

CACKLE!!!

Good one!

Though there *is* a defrag utility for ext2fs, I've never heard of anyone who needed, or wanted, to use it. I certainly never have. My /dev/hda is a 40GB that I've been using 24/7/365 for about 3½ years I guess, and /dev/hdc is a 10GB drive that has been running about a year longer than that. (Max uptime between power outages and hardware upgrades was only 168 days though.) No defrag necessary.

Why limit yourself? I'd say the more things you use a computer for, the more reasons there are to use a 'nix.

I've personally never owned Windows, and never will. Last MS product I had was MS-DOS 5.0.

OB: You can even use xfig to create scalable (vector) stained glass patterns.

...

:-)))

Depends on the size of the fish.

...

Time for a change of the subject header :-)

Much as I like the Unices, I would not suggest xfig or the Gimp (more or less a Adobe Photoshop) for artists who have no affinity with the Unix philosophy.

Essentially the Unix philosophy can be paraphrased with "Less is More". Mind you, I can see a clear parallel with art and crafts, where the real crafts(wo)man or artist after a time of trial and error settles down on a very narrow range of favorite tools, and will find in the process that these favorite tools are perhaps the simplest of the shop.

In the mean time most people have not progressed to that level of experience and they of a necessity need to use tools that are suitable for the beginner or intermediate level user.

So it is no use to observe a really good carpenter working with a mallet and one or two chisels, and say "OK, as a beginner I will just limit myself to those same tools" as it will very probably lead to frustration.

Same goes for applications that support artists in creating designs. The learning curve of an Unix environment and tools is just too steep if you are not interested in the art of working with computers.

The learning curve on the 'dozes is every bit as steep as the learning curve on say, Knoppix. Every application at one time or other is "new" and it's no more difficult to learn GIMP initially than it is to learn Photoshop.

(Sorry for not snipping... couldn't see anything that was really superfluous to my reply ;-)

With the 'nix DeskTop Environments (DTE's) of today, the OS is just as transparent to the newbie 'nix user as it is to the newbie 'doze user. Of course there's a lot more power, flexibility, and security with 'nix, and in order to make the most of it, yes, the learning curve is steep. Then again, to go mucking around in registries, etc., the learning curve is also steep.

I agree that a computer is a tool, but instead of the mallet and chisel analogy, I see the unices as many drawers full of well organized, precision dedicated-use tools; a fillet knife, a paring knife, a bread knife, a fine set of wood chisels, a quality set of cold chisels, stronge wooden handled torx drivers... you get the point. The DTE's create an easy to use menu to bring each of those tools to the fingertips when required.

The 'dozes, otoh, are equivalent to a Swiss Army Knife. Sure, there's lots of utility integrated into a single unit, but no one function can ever be optimized with all those other bits of "excess" metal hanging off it.

With all the fake bounces I've been getting today, not to mention all the virus e-mails themselves, I

*really* wish M$ could be held liable for all the havoc they've unleashed by marketing such an insecure piece of script-kiddie playground heaven.

Who would sell a house without locks on the doors? Who would sell a car with a simple switch in place of an ignition key? Yet that's what M$ has done! Heh... executing something simply by previewing it in OE is akin to having your engine automatically start when your car senses a human being nearby!

To everyone still using the virus vector, Windows... please consider just trying one of the distributions on a live CD. (Knoppix comes to mind.) Initially, you don't have to know anything about partitions, be familiar with file systems, or even touch your hard drive. Just pop the CD in, set your machine to boot from it, and take a trial run. Yes, it'll run slow because it takes a lot longer to access a CD than a hard drive, but it'll at least demonstrate that a much more secure point'n'click solution is out there. Knoppix comes with OpenOffice, so you'll be able to read all your Office file formats. It comes with GIMP, so you'll get to see how similar (and how different) that is from PhotoShop. It comes with xfig, so you can draw vector graphics. It comes with so much stuff already included that you'll simply be blown away. And it comes with the price tag of just the download time,

or for those of us on dialup, there are many vendors selling it for ~$5. for instance. Most of all, it comes WITHOUT the ability to runall these Windows viruses that keep appearing oneafter the other.

Sorry for the off topic rant which should probably go in comp.os.linux.advocacy, but on this day of mega virus mailbox syndrome, how can I stay off my soapbox? Even though 'nix can't "catch" the virus, our mailboxes still feel the bloat... until we filter anyway.

(Now... if only it could do something about the -29°F (-34°C) temperatures out there tonight...)

Check out the ads for Lexus - which does exactly that, if you (or they) have the key in a pocket.