1. My school tended to use Apple II, IIe’s, or (during the really cutting-edge phase) IIgs. Taught myself the rudiments of basic programming on one of those. Oddly enough, I was also helping the office-staff and some of the teachers do stuff like data entry and figure out how to use “print shop” and suchlike.

2. I bought an “Apple Lisa” one time at a swapmeet/computer-show thingy one time. Never actually found software, documentation, or anything else such that I could actually use the thing, so I eventually ended up trading to my half-brother for half of his album collection.

3. My favorite computer when I was a kid was a “Laser 128″ — basically an apple II clone with, arguably, some better aspects to it.

But I haven’t used anything by Apple in years, so I’m not exactly up to speed on what they’ve been doing.

stw

maybe it’s more akin to buying advertising.

The good part about “our” side is that (unlike the corporate/Government megaliths) the vast, spontaneously-organizing “whole” that is Internet culture probably contains somebody who shares your particular peeve AND is tech-savvy enough to do something about it.

As to whether you feel like trusting stuff, that’s something everybody has to ask for themselves.

Anyway, thanks for the info — just installed “Objection” myself, and most definitely plan on periodically purging the stuff it finds. (Not because I care about “them” so much, but primarily just because now I know.)

Anyway, ciao, Y’all

Just an idea I figured I’d throw your way.
As to “privacy”, simply not doing stuff involving cookies isn’t really sufficient. If you’re on file with any government anywhere, or have ever shopped anywhere (even using cash), then there’s a hell of a lot of “data” out there to be “mined”.
Personally, I give two liquidy shits WHAT corporations “know” (or rather BELIEVE) they know about me, simply because turning into a reclusive paranoiac is every bit as useful to “them” (whichever “them” you’re talking about), as overtly collaborating.

Really, to my way of thinking, the corporate cartels, security agencies etc. would love nothing better than for everybody concerned about issues like privacy/copyright reform/digital freedom etc., to turn into luddites, log off, and passively allow them to turn everybody else into stupid sheep.

Not my deal. That’s why when it’s something in which I strongly believe I post under my real name. (Nicknames and handles DO have their uses, but ultimately making the world better is going to take a multi-pronged approach.

As far as their only being a “few” distros ported to Windows, I don’t follow. Are you referring to Cygwin (the program that creates a “unix-like” environment under windows?) Or did I misunderstand you? Oh sorry — it’s the graphics progs you’re talking about, my bad.

Anyway, just an idea, and we all have to make our own choices, Y’know?

Don’t wanna sound like I’m “sermonizing” here — I tend to ramble on and on and on sometimes, which is kinda bad, but hey….

Now I have cut down a lot of problems by the use of two computers. One does the main parts of graphics such as rendering which is processor, memory, and time consuming. The other computer does mainly web surfing but there are additional on line duties that take both time and computing power to run. Being down is a major headache when my time needs to be spent doing on line tasks rather than reinstalling for the upteenth time or sifting through what is needed to complete a task. At such times, graphics comes to a halt while I get the on line computer back in working order.

The cookie issue is not the browser but rather the flash. As I am sure you have noticed, near all sites now want you to have flash to “see” the goods, whatever it is. There’s a reason for that. Flash holds cookies too. Only they are not as limited in size as those in the browser. There is no easy and ready way to either see them or delete them without running special programs.

Since everyone and their bother now know of browser cookies and the majority delete them with some sort of regularity, they have become useless to the dataminer for history. Not so with the flash cookies. They are the replacement for the browser cookies and not as many know of them. (dang I sound like a conspiracy kook with all this)

But I value my privacy. If you won’t deal with your own security, all the commercials houses will be very glad to take advantage of you. What you think of as being a given for what privacy means and what the corporation thinks are two entirely different things. Just because they have a privacy statement, in no way take it to mean that their thoughts of what privacy means is the same as yours.

Possum Gulch eh? I pass that there hole in the wall ever now and then headed to Yonder Pond. In case you are not familiar with Yonder Pond, it’s that great fishing place no fisherman really wants to tell where is. It’s just yonder a ways till you get to the pond.

Just curious:

1. How big of an HD do you have? Depending on what you’re doing with that particular computer, you could maybe repartition, and do some kind of dual-boot setup:

Just as an example:
You could put XP on for whatever functionality you need specifically windows programs for, install Mepis (or another Linux distro) which pretty much come bundled wtih Firefox (iceweasel???) and Thunderbird etc. nowadays, and have a third partition for all your data files. This is especially handy since if/when something destroys your XP installation (and yeah, I’m very familiar with reinstalls, trust me!), not only is your critical data and files and suchlike preserved, but you can also keep at least a minimal level of functionality via whatever Linux distro you’re using.

That way you could install Flash and suchlike only on the Linux version of firefox, and periodically purge the cookies and suchlike?

Just a thought, and keep in mind, I’m not extremely techie, myself — (we only just got that thar newfangled Electric light two years back, here in Possum Gulch!) — inside joke, nevermind

Ignore the “possum Gulch” reference — it is, as I said, an inside joke

I take it as a PNA when I have to log out and log in to install something I need to add to the capabilities when I do something like say graphics. For that matter, just about all programs written for XP requires admin mode to get it installed. More bells and whistles don’t provide more than just another click through as the dud of protection, Vista has shown.

I’ve found that I can surf and extend the time I have between having to reformat simply by not having those items active. It’s a huge time saver to me, that’s what makes my computing life easier.

I took no offense in your viewpoint Henry.

I mean — don’t take this the wrong way, but that “reader’s write” comment smacks of the same logic that damns p2p because it can be used to transfer kiddie porn. (MAFIAA boiilerplate, but still unfortunately somewhat accurate.)

It may make your “computing life easier” — but, importantly, it also seriously hampers your ability to participate. Do what you want, I just don’t see the wisdom in becoming a mirror-image of the Luddite crap THE OTHER side is foisting on us.

No offense meant.

Cheers!

Javascript is excellent for getting those little add-ons no one wants. I turn it off for a reason and it remains off always.

Running without these two problem children makes my computing life easier. I’m not about to install nor activate them for any reason.

Cheers!

While I agree that there IS a great deal wrong when popularity can be “bought”, the fact is, most of the popularity that has been achieved over the years HAS been paid for, in one way or another.