The Dell Precision laptop is a very ‘business’ machine with practically no ‘offers of software’ included to clutter up the disc. And I decided a nice slow as I feel like it shift of files from my older laptop would be fairly easy. Add a few things, transfer files with Carbonite—this would be a piece of cake if I wanted the whole cluttered mess of the last disk spat out onto this one. I want to do a selective transfer.
So last night I got to wrestling with the Precision. Turns out Norton didn’t like the version of what we’d found in archive, so after I’ve got all my firewall settings where I want them, it decides, at an innocuous, unwarned button push, to remove the old version, put on a new one.
Well, naturally I want to have a window into this process, so I punch ‘full scan,’ which on an ’empty’ computer shouldn’t take forever, right?
Only half of forever. But I now have it clean, uncookied, and generally happy.
And the Family Tree software that had glitched repeatedly on setup and update — finally loaded with no protest and registered itself, which seems to indicate we are better than we were.
Now my genealogy software, which I have installed, and which the new Norton has finally approved and allowed to update, tells me that the file I want can’t be downloaded because of some other setting, this time on Ancestry, in handshaking with the one on my computer. So now I have to call Ancestry and ask why it’s refusing—I’m pretty sure the refusal is on their end.
Sometimes I just think I should push the button and have Carbonite do the whole thing, but then I’m quite sure I’d STILL have some kinks in the function from things that butt heads, AND I’d have tons of duplicate files. So if I can solve this one, I can have just ONE Ancestry file instead of 20—and they’re monsters.
I can’t wait to tackle my text files, which are a true nest of snakes. I do have a good program for finding duplicate files. But…those archives go back and back and back, and they’re fragmentary: version 3 of take 12 sort of things, two paragraphs long. Many, many, many of them, which are not that organized, and which are duplicated many times. I’d really like to start this new machine clean and organized. Pipe dream, eh?
Y’know what I want? A computer OS that’ll just take a list of what I want to run, suck down the software, hand it my access info, and let the darned thing talk to other cranky computers and negotiate the stuff into useable form. But that would be indistinguishable from magic.
I had the same problem with family tree software on a friends computer, their instructions were to disabled norton and then it worked. which is not easy as norton hide the button to do the disable
I use Kaspersky. No problems – I don’t have to disable it to install software.
So far, your desire been my experience using Ubuntu Linux. Granted, I have been fortunate enough not to have had to do a big restore from backups. The downside is that you have to live in the very eccentric world of Linux. I like it, but it’s not for everybody. And, we’ll see just what happens when I have to transition to a new machine in the next year or two. I’ll be dusting off my mad rsync skillz.
I was going to say, “I have an idea!”
We know what your idea is!
Well, yes, it’s kinda obvious in every posting of mine. 😉
So will it run her WP or FTM?
Yes and no. I suppose “Wine” might, but I’ve never run Wine. I don’t do much with Windows, and that on dedicated machines, e.g. one with /XP for TurboTax. 🙁 I’ve got dozens. 😉
More to crash and burn!
The better idea is with Linux one can run KVM “bare-metal” virtual machines. Then one can install Windows in one of those–it thinks it got a machine of its own. Every virtual machine is in its own isolated “rubber room”, can’t touch any other virtual machine nor the actual hardware. At any point, best carefully chosen, one can “checkpoint” any of the virtual machines and save everything about it to a reinstateable file. It’s sorta like a hibernation and restart. The difference is it doesn’t have to be reinstated and run on the same box!
Doesn’t it scream bloody murder and being on a different box?
Nope, it always sees the same virtual hardware, not the real stuff. “Thou preparest a fable before me.”
That sounds complicated.
Yes, it is complicated. But it does have certain advantages. You can have a saved Windows VM, get online, get hacked or otherwise corrupted, and kiss it goodbye, go back to your saved VM just as it was.
I’ll bet Microsoft thinks it’s “piracy”.
M$ has virtualization on its Enterprize, read “Expensive”, read “license restricted” products, and of course Linux’s are free.
VirtualBox is professional quality (made by Oracle) and also free and open source. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. Highly recommended, and widely used.
Virtual machines are very, very useful and easy to set up these days.
I’ve created virtual Linux and Android machines on Windows which run with no problem, as well as Win XP.
As you say, virtual machines are great for backup and for instant transfer to another physical machine.
I’ve done that too, and cannot say that they are problem free. So much so, an OS on bare metal is the way to go.
Even Dumbledore couldn’t manage that.
It won’t help with the big one-off applications like WordPerfect or Family Tree Maker, but check out ninite.com for all the “helper” bits and pieces.
From various reports on the Family Tree Maker lists and message boards Norton and FTM have an uneasy relationship.
Every so often, Windows (7) decides to yank my chain and not allow me to overwrite a file I’ve edited or added to, declaring that such and such a file is “read only” and I don’t have permission to make changes. This is mystifying, not to mention infuriating. I’m the only one with thumbs in the house and nobody uses this computer but me, so how is it I’m allowed to create the file in the first place, but I’m not allowed to edit it?
The only thing I can think of is if you have 2 copies open at the same time. One of them would be read only.
I think you’ve got.
Off topic (way way waaaay off topic), but I wanted to thank whoever it was on this site who recommended Grrl Power, oh, maybe a year ago. I’m now thoroughly addicted to web comics, following probably 20, and am seriously considering doing one of my own. So thank you web comic reader who intro’d me to a whole new world of comics!
Apropos of nothing (aside from computer file setups), this got me thinking about Ari Emory I setting up not just Base One, but the program that guided/molded Ari II. Which brought to mind this recent webcomic. By design it is a single massive graphic that you scroll down to read (and in some episodes, explore horizontally as well). Message 652, “no one will ever hear this, right?” Don’t be panicked by the site name, it is aboveboard and clean. http://www.viruscomix.com/page588.html
I have always found that because NAV is such a total system hog, it had to be uninstalled. I have the impression that the computer is rendered safe, because it is unusable. Sophos AV is very good and has a very light system footprint. If the Precision runs Windows 8.x, it already comes with protection built in via Windows Defender. For the most part, I run Debian Linux, so don’t have to worry 🙂
This may be of interest: Latin Language Spoken Example 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_IPqniaZR0
The Latin is not bad. At least it’s fluent, rather than stilted like most examples you hear. But the pronunciation sounds very Italian to me – more like the Latin spoken at the Vatican today than classical Latin.
For example, no hard letter c’s, ‘Caesar’ pronounced see-sar rather than kai-sar, ‘civitas’ pronounced sivitas rather than kivitas. There’s also an Italian intonation overall.
When I was in high school taking Latin I and II, we were given a choice of our pronunciations. Our teacher told us that there was the Classical pronunciation such as GreenWyvern mentioned with hard Cs, and then there was the ecclesiastical pronunciation, such as done in the Catholic High Mass, with the Cs pronounced as S, or if followed by an E, there was a “CH” sound.
Yes, there is that debate, which is complicated by the unfortunate lack of Roman recordings 🙂 With regard to the Atevi language, would you know what the nearest human language(s) would be.
There’s actually a good consensus about the reconstructed pronunciation of classical Latin, despite the lack of recordings.
The reconstruction comes from a) comparison of Latin names and words in the Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets in ancient texts, b) large amounts of Latin verse written in a metre depending on ‘quantity’ of vowels c) writings of ancient Roman grammarians and literati about Latin pronunciation and the examples they give d) morphology of the Romance languages over time.
Ecclesiastical pronunciation more or less treats Latin as though it were modern Italian, and there is also the traditional German and Northern European pronunciation, and the older British pronunciation.
I think these days the classical pronunciation is most widely taught in the English-speaking world, except for the Catholic church.
I’d hazard a guess that it would be Japanese…..but then, I’ve never asked her, either.
There seemed to be an occasional hint of a flavour of Japanese. My thinking was, since the bulk of the dialogue is in Atevi, would a screenplay version of Foreigner need to be accomplished in the same way as Apocalypto in which the characters speak a foreign language which is then subtitled. Thus, aside from the occasional snippets that are in the books, is there a complete Atevi language to utilise in the form of ADR overdubs, or is there a human language that would be a suitable proxy, to utilise in the form of ADR overdubs.
In eggshell cease day-o. Come, Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana…
Oh, see, Villi? See ‘er go! Forty buses in a row! Oh, no, Billy, dey is trucks. What is in ‘im? Cows and ducks!
O Civili, ci ergo / Fortibus es in erro / O Nobili, deus trux / Vadis enim? Causan dux.
(hope I got the Latin right, typing from memory)
Hi, Xheralt!
You have no idea how many times I read that ‘Latin’ phrasing before I caught on. Still wincing while I laugh. Have you tweeted that? If so, let me know so I can re-tweet (with your permission).
Hi, All –
I’m a total newbie here, but any mention of a Dell Precision perks my ears up. Realizing already that I’m about 2 centuries behind you guys tech-wise, I do have another solution for getting all the kinks in anything Dell worked out: Dell Pro Support. Not free, but sure is nice to be able to sit back and watch somebody who actually knows what s/he is doing take over and work the problem out. It’d drive a true techie mad, I suspect, but I can guarantee you Dell’s taken a loss on me.
So – you’ll tell us when you find that magic button computer, right? Please? Pretty please?