The Spam Thread!

[RAMChYLD]

David, have you installed Yosemite on your Mac Mini? If so, how is performance there?

Well, yes, I have. And as mentioned before, I didn't like how the previous "NTFS-3G" solutions were made invalid because of driver signing, which totally killed my Rockfire PX-205 PSX Gamepad adapter, touch screen and free NTFS-3G solution (I have several USB hard drives formatted as NTFS, mainly because FAT32 has a 4GB file limit that I have a problem with. ExFAT? Doesn't work properly in Linux yet). I ended up paying for Paragon NTFS, which I assume will try to extort money from me next year when I upgrade to a newer Mac OS X version and that this version won't work on the new version of Mac OS X. Anyways tho, shortly after that i discovered the EFI Developer Mode hack, which I then epic facepalmed, then executed the hack anyway so I can at least get my touchscreen and PSX gamepad adapter working again.

But aside from that, performance improved somewhat. I still detest the flat UI, but then the flat UI is what's contributing to the performance boost.

[huckleberrypie]

I didn't exactly like how Apple pulled off the mandatory kext signing either, but it's nothing a little nvram tweak, or in the case of Hackintosh users, a bootloader flag, can't fix.

[cpd2009]

David, have you installed Yosemite on your Mac Mini? If so, how is performance there?

Well, yes, I have. And as mentioned before, I didn't like how the previous "NTFS-3G" solutions were made invalid because of driver signing, which totally killed my Rockfire PX-205 PSX Gamepad adapter, touch screen and free NTFS-3G solution (I have several USB hard drives formatted as NTFS, mainly because FAT32 has a 4GB file limit that I have a problem with. ExFAT? Doesn't work properly in Linux yet). I ended up paying for Paragon NTFS, which I assume will try to extort money from me next year when I upgrade to a newer Mac OS X version and that this version won't work on the new version of Mac OS X. Anyways tho, shortly after that i discovered the EFI Developer Mode hack, which I then epic facepalmed, then executed the hack anyway so I can at least get my touchscreen and PSX gamepad adapter working again.

But aside from that, performance improved somewhat. I still detest the flat UI, but then the flat UI is what's contributing to the performance boost.

I have run into that type of extortion with Parallels Desktop. I should have followed your advice and just went with the free VirtualBox, but instead Parallel's eye candy led me to purchase the $80 USD package on impulse. The version I got was Parallels 7 and it worked with Lion and Mountain Lion. It was with Mavericks that Parallels began to demand users to purchase v8 since v7 wouldn't run on Mavericks. As for the flat UI, I guess they are trying to imitate the flatness of Windows 8 without actually cloning Windows 8. From screenshots, I do like how they finally adopted Helvetica as a UI font. Some of the transparency effects even seem to be like the old Aero from Windows 7, but since I have yet to try Yosemite, I can't compare and contrast yet. In fact....

I might be willing to give Lilly one last try if I could ever find her keyboard and mouse. I would also need a separate computer desk as well as my next post will clearly demonstrate why.

I didn't exactly like how Apple pulled off the mandatory kext signing either, but it's nothing a little nvram tweak, or in the case of Hackintosh users, a bootloader flag, can't fix.

Perhaps I was a bit too inflammatory on that, since Windows has always used driver signing since Windows XP AFAIK. And kext files are similar to Windows driver files I think.

[cpd2009]

I rarely make one post after another, as I like to keep one discussion going before switching topics, but I present my current desk configuration...

As you can see, Audrey and Connie share the same desk, and on top that is a Sharp CD-BA150 shelf system which I named Doris (after Doris the Duck in "64 Zoo Lane"). This is mainly for Audrey as she has all my music files, so it has to sound good. It also serves as my main FM/AM radio and my main avenue for playback of music cassettes. Connie's music and sounds come from her display's built in speakers, but if I could locate a spare USB AC adapter, I could use a cheap pair of $10 speakers to vastly improve her sound.

One reason why I am flip flopping on selling Lilly is space. Since I don't yet have an apartment, space is limited, along with available electrical outlets. Putting Lilly back in service would mean that Connie would likely have her own desk so I can have Audrey and Lilly side by side, but as of right now, that is unfeasible.

Where is Greta? She's here...

...right in front of my entertainment/gaming center. This is a prototype of my apartment setup. Greta will be my main PC and she will reside in the living room, while Connie and Audrey would be in a separate area for productivity purposes.

For completeness, here is Audrey and Connie's Color StyleWriter 2500..

And next to Audrey is my Lenoxx Sound SL-318 all-in-one stereo receiver, which is how I convert audio cassettes and LP records to digital format via Audrey's Line-In jack. Adobe Audition does the rest.

[RAMChYLD]

I didn't exactly like how Apple pulled off the mandatory kext signing either, but it's nothing a little nvram tweak, or in the case of Hackintosh users, a bootloader flag, can't fix.

Yeah. But the fact that Apple did not clearly mention this, as well as mention how to work around it in case of older drivers, is a major fail.

I have run into that type of extortion with Parallels Desktop. I should have followed your advice and just went with the free VirtualBox, but instead Parallel's eye candy led me to purchase the $80 USD package on impulse. The version I got was Parallels 7 and it worked with Lion and Mountain Lion. It was with Mavericks that Parallels began to demand users to purchase v8 since v7 wouldn't run on Mavericks.

Yeah, I totally saw that coming from miles away, hence my advice back then. But well, what's done has been done. I can't get a refund for my Paragon NTFS purchase, so I have to live with it until it dies, after which I will go back to the free NTFS-3G solution once more. As for Dave, I'm still considering it since Apple's SMB/CIFS implementation is still crap, but the US$150 price tag is a deterrent.

I might be willing to give Lilly one last try if I could ever find her keyboard and mouse. I would also need a separate computer desk as well as my next post will clearly demonstrate why.
Perhaps I was a bit too inflammatory on that, since Windows has always used driver signing since Windows XP AFAIK. And kext files are similar to Windows driver files I think.

Well, Windows driver signing can also be disabled if you know how. The big difference is that Microsoft lets you know that it can be disabled and tells you how to disable it in case of legacy devices. No such luck with Apple. Need the function? Buy a new device- your old device is obsolete if the vendor says so. The ability to disable it is for developer use only and not revealed to the general public.

One reason why I am flip flopping on selling Lilly is space. Since I don't yet have an apartment, space is limited, along with available electrical outlets. Putting Lilly back in service would mean that Connie would likely have her own desk so I can have Audrey and Lilly side by side, but as of right now, that is unfeasible.

Well, as i said millions of times before, KVM is the answer. If it wasn't for KVM, I wouldn't have the ability to have 9 (soon to be 10) computers running side by side and my room would be a mess of screens, keyboards and mice. KVM is a real space saver for me. A simple 2-way USB+HDMI KVM would be enough to serve both Audrey and Lily.

And well, two-port ones don't cost too much. One of these would probably be enough for your needs: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://amzn.to/1tDgytO">http://amzn.to/1tDgytO</a><!-- m -->

Sure, you may need to change the monitor to a widescreen one, but 17" 1366x768 displays are a dime a dozen nowadays.

Although in a twist of irony, the only computer that isn't KVMed in my room is Kiki, my Mac Mini. Edison, Sally, Dongwa and Clementine ("les enfants terribles") are on one KVM, while Cleo, Maxwell and Bingo Beaver are on another (this one has one free spot which I'm planning to attach to a second Retro box, one that's slightly newer and running Windows 98 SE, just because). Helen can be considered KVMed somewhat, her video is connected to Quetzal III, which has three HDMI ports. The other HDMI port is connected to the Philips Fidelio 5.1 soundbar, which itself has two HDMI ports, where Jess and Berlioz are connected to.

[cpd2009]

One reason why I am flip flopping on selling Lilly is space. Since I don't yet have an apartment, space is limited, along with available electrical outlets. Putting Lilly back in service would mean that Connie would likely have her own desk so I can have Audrey and Lilly side by side, but as of right now, that is unfeasible.

Well, as i said millions of times before, KVM is the answer. If it wasn't for KVM, I wouldn't have the ability to have 9 (soon to be 10) computers running side and my room would be a mess of screens, keyboards and mice. KVM is a real space saver for me. A simple 2-way USB+HDMI KVM would be enough to serve both Audrey and Lily. Sure, you may need to change the monitor to a widescreen one, but 17" 1366x768 displays are a dime a dozen nowadays.

Audrey's current monitor is a Gateway FPD1730 I found at a garage sale in very good shape. It's from 2003, and the monitor has a 1280x1024 native resolution. I can get a KVM via eBay, but I would also have to source a DVI to VGA adapter since the FPD1730 only has VGA input. Audrey was on DVI via an HDMI converter using the previous HP display, but she kept ignoring the Display Settings in regard to sleep mode, and that went away with VGA. Picture quality is also good for VGA and at least for Audrey, the 1280x1024 resolution works well. Widescreen videos are letterboxed though.

I still do have Lilly's widescreen HD monitor, which is widescreen, has VGA and also DVI. I also even have Max, my old Sansui 19'' HDTV. I was considering giving him a try but I would lose the increased vertical resolution of the FPD1730. It's worth a try.

One more thing... the keyboard. I haven't really mastered using a PC keyboard on Mac OSX yet, so I still have issues memorizing the equivalents of Option and Command keys. Seeing as how I memorized OSX key shortcuts in the past, I should be able to memorize the keys without issue and just use Audrey's current keyboard and mouse. Doris would also share audio duties.

In the meantime, I will get out my wireless keyboard and mouse and try out Mavericks via Anna-Lena. The resolution will be insane for me (1920x1080), but it will do for Mavericks testing. On the bright side, I will finally be able to play "Pinball HD" in HD.

[RAMChYLD]

Audrey's current monitor is a Gateway FPD1730 I found at a garage sale in very good shape. It's from 2003, and the monitor has a 1280x1024 native resolution. I can get a KVM via eBay, but I would also have to source a DVI to VGA adapter since the FPD1730 only has VGA input. Audrey was on DVI via an HDMI converter using the previous HP display, but she kept ignoring the Display Settings in regard to sleep mode, and that went away with VGA. Picture quality is also good for VGA and at least for Audrey, the 1280x1024 resolution works well. Widescreen videos are letterboxed though.

I still do have Lilly's widescreen HD monitor, which is widescreen, has VGA and also DVI. I also even have Max, my old Sansui 19'' HDTV. I was considering giving him a try but I would lose the increased vertical resolution of the FPD1730. It's worth a try.

One more thing... the keyboard. I haven't really mastered using a PC keyboard on Mac OSX yet, so I still have issues memorizing the equivalents of Option and Command keys. Seeing as how I memorized OSX key shortcuts in the past, I should be able to memorize the keys without issue and just use Audrey's current keyboard and mouse. Doris would also share audio duties.

In the meantime, I will get out my wireless keyboard and mouse and try out Mavericks via Anna-Lena. The resolution will be insane for me (1920x1080), but it will do for Mavericks testing. On the bright side, I will finally be able to play "Pinball HD" in HD.

Well, for me, I have my keyboard configured to the "old Unix" or "ADB" way- the Windows key is Option, the Alt key is Command, and Control is itself. With this layout I can take my eyes off the keyboard and everything works as intended for me. And since this setup was also used by Gnome 1.10 in Red Hat Linux 6 which I used for quite a while a long time ago, it feels natural to me.

As for screens, well, yeah, you could get away with the HD display on the KVM. Sure, you lose the extended height, but you'll get used to it- especially since 1366x768 is the resolution of most laptops. So most programs nowadays do take into account this resolution.

Btw, 720p already qualifies for HD according to some standards. This is how laptop manufacturers manage to get away with claiming that their display is HD when it's only 1366x768.

In the meantime, I found another use for Kiki. Since my recent need to upgrade three Ubuntu machines from Trusty to [strike]Unchanging[/strike] Utopic, I decided to create a minimal Ubuntu server VM with an Apt proxy. And I found that this is something Kiki does really well- virtualization. So now I have an Ubuntu Utopic server virtual machine named Monkey inside Kiki which serves Helen, Clementine and Dongwa. And having a Apt proxy makes a world of difference, since Squid isn't good with caching apt-get packages and tend to "forget" larger packages or multiple packages once the cache fills up. An apt proxy never forgets, so my upgrades was only slow on the first time, and as I move on to the second computer, things speed up exponentially.

Why am I not using Maxwell for this? The apt-proxy server isn't ported to OpenBSD.

[cpd2009]

Well, for me, I have my keyboard configured to the "old Unix" or "ADB" way- the Windows key is Option, the Alt key is Command, and Control is itself. With this layout I can take my eyes off the keyboard and everything works as intended for me. And since this setup was also used by Gnome 1.10 in Red Hat Linux 6 which I used for quite a while a long time ago, it feels natural to me.

As for screens, well, yeah, you could get away with the HD display on the KVM. Sure, you lose the extended height, but you'll get used to it- especially since 1366x768 is the resolution of most laptops. So most programs nowadays do take into account this resolution.

Btw, 720p already qualifies for HD according to some standards. This is how laptop manufacturers manage to get away with claiming that their display is HD when it's only 1366x768.

It's settled then. I will go ahead and invest in a KVM switch, but it's going to be a little while before that happens. As it stands, funds are short at present and I need to find a KVM that is good quality and is also affordable. I also need to get that DVI to VGA adapter for Lilly. If I need additional audio or VGA cables, I have those on hand stored away in a box somewhere. So, that is all I really need to get started.

Later on, I will also retrieve Max and test him out as a suitable widescreen display. I like the Gateway FPD1730, but it does have occasional screen retention issues if Opera or IrfanView is left on screen for a short length of time. Another issue is that previously I was unable to set Max to an exact 1366x768 resolution, but it's still worth a try I think.

In the meantime, I found another use for Kiki. Since my recent need to upgrade three Ubuntu machines from Trusty to [strike]Unchanging[/strike] Utopic, I decided to create a minimal Ubuntu server VM with an Apt proxy. And I found that this is something Kiki does really well- virtualization. So now I have an Ubuntu Utopic server virtual machine named Monkey inside Kiki which serves Helen, Clementine and Dongwa. And having a Apt proxy makes a world of difference, since Squid isn't good with caching apt-get packages and tend to "forget" larger packages or multiple packages once the cache fills up. An apt proxy never forgets, so my upgrades was only slow on the first time, and as I move on to the second computer, things speed up exponentially.

Why am I not using Maxwell for this? The apt-proxy server isn't ported to OpenBSD.

I wish I understood all this server stuff. I know what APT is thanks to my basic Linux knowledge, but what is Unchanging anyway? (I see it was striked out)

[Blackberry Bun]

Last sunday I went to watch Penguins of Madagascar movie.

I'm a type of person who watches movies to the very end, credits included. Because such trait is very uncommon here, I almost always end up sitting alone in the theater room while the cleaning crews do their duties.

Just at this one occassion, they decided to shut down the machine about halfway through the credits. I got upset and scolded the crew there, saying that I paid for the ticket and I have the right to watch to the very end.

In the end, I got to watch the entire credits, but seeing them having to fire up the machine again just for me, I feel like I'm a bad person.

Am I in the wrong for what I have done?

[RAMChYLD]

It's settled then. I will go ahead and invest in a KVM switch, but it's going to be a little while before that happens. As it stands, funds are short at present and I need to find a KVM that is good quality and is also affordable. I also need to get that DVI to VGA adapter for Lilly. If I need additional audio or VGA cables, I have those on hand stored away in a box somewhere. So, that is all I really need to get started.

Well, if you get the cheaper KVMs, the cable are built right in, so no extra cable needed. Though you need to be careful, since if you break one of the cables, it's done for.

Later on, I will also retrieve Max and test him out as a suitable widescreen display. I like the Gateway FPD1730, but it does have occasional screen retention issues if Opera or IrfanView is left on screen for a short length of time. Another issue is that previously I was unable to set Max to an exact 1366x768 resolution, but it's still worth a try I think.

Re: Max not being able to set 1366x768: Yeah, that's annoying. If you use a DisplayPort-to-DVI converter or a HDMI-to-DVI converter, and use the DVI port of a monitor, then you can choose 1366x768, but if you use pure HDMI, then you're stuck with only the standard HDMI resolutions (1280x720 and 1920x1080). This is happening on Kiki as well. Although since I have a 1080p display hooked up via HDMI to Kiki, it doesn't bother me as much, but yes, I can see where you're coming from. Better to get a KVM that handles DVI video and use that with a pair of HDMI-to-DVI adapters instead (yes, you can do that).

You don't want HDMI-to-VGA adapters. Really. Because, stupid HDCP DRM may block certain media from playing.

I wish I understood all this server stuff. I know what APT is thanks to my basic Linux knowledge, but what is Unchanging anyway? (I see it was striked out)

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26/ubuntu_final_beta_review/">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/26 ... ta_review/</a><!-- m -->

They jokingly called it Unchanging Unicorn instead of Utopic Unicorn, and that name stuck with me for some reason >.>

Although, calling it "unchanging" is an understatement. The big hoopla about this one is that Ubuntu finally dumps it's homegrown "Upstart" init system for SystemD. Although SystemD has been nothing but a PITA to me on OpenSuSE. And it's no different here- something got botched during the update and SystemD spews a bunch of cryptic warnings when I log in as root, but aside from that the systems all still work fine.

Last sunday I went to watch Penguins of Madagascar movie.

I'm a type of person who watches movies to the very end, credits included. Because such trait is very uncommon here, I almost always end up sitting alone in the theater room while the cleaning crews do their duties.

Just at this one occassion, they decided to shut down the machine about halfway through the credits. I got upset and scolded the crew there, saying that I paid for the ticket and I have the right to watch to the very end.

In the end, I got to watch the entire credits, but seeing them having to fire up the machine again just for me, I feel like I'm such a bad person.

Am I in the wrong for what I have done?

Well, no, it shows that you have respect for Dreamworks. And DreamWorks is known to instead stingers to the middle and end of their credits. Although, if that had happened to me, I would've just bought the DVD after that and finish the credits from that. This is because, well, getting into an argument at the cinema here in Malaysia is dangerous.