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Posts Tagged ‘Boots’

BitLocker vs. FileVault

March 19th, 2007 Greg Smith Comments off

Lifehacker compares Vista’s BitLocker vs. FileVault. They like BitLocker better.

OS Encryption Showdown: Vista’s BitLocker vs. Mac’s FileVault – Lifehacker

FileVault encrypts the users’s home directory and all the files in it. As you read and write files to your home directory, in the background, FileVault encrypts and decrypts those files on the fly. Only the user’s login password can decrypt and mount this drive image, so at login the home directory becomes available as usual – its icon, however, looks like a lock. To other users on the same Mac, however, all files in the user’s home directory cannot be accessed.

BitLocker doesn’t just encrypt the user’s files, it encryptes the entire operating system partition, including Windows files, all your software applications as well as all the users’ data stored on the drive. You create a USB key with the password on it and plug it into your PC in order to start it (like a key for your car.) BitLocker uses a small boot partition to check for the right password, and only boots up if it’s present. If not, the hard drive is completely inaccessible.

mini: The Stupidest Review Yet

February 2nd, 2005 Greg Smith 8 comments

This Mac mini review, I can’t figure out if it’s a serious review or a joke.

…its sleek look comes at the expense of the parallel port, serial ports, the PS/2 ports and the drive bays… did I forget to mention that the Mini has no PCI slots either? And no floppy disk drive? Well, no wonder they got the unit to be so small… or I could grab an equally stylish, full-featured eMachine at the gas station with a bag of chips for less than half the Mini’s price, with the added benefit of being able to run Windows XP. Decisions, decisions… The Mini boots up into a stripped-down operating system which Apple calls OS X, similar to the stripped-down WindowsCE OS found on many handhelds

I admit to being an Apple Fan Boy, so my opinion might be a little biased. But it’s so close to completely missing the point, it must be a joke.

It Hurts

January 10th, 2004 Greg Smith Comments off
I’m tired and I’m in pain. My butt and my arms hurt. Despite my pain I had a good time because today I made a feeble attempt at snow boarding. I already know how to ski, more of a advanced beginner – no where near a professional, I thought I could use that experience to snowboard. It turns out that the experience of each foot having a board strapped to it is far different then having a bigger board strapped to both feet at the same time.

When I first learned to ski I fell down a lot. Having to pick yourself up a couple of hundred dozen times in less then 8 hours with muscles that don’t get used a couple of hundred dozen times in less then 8 hours is where the pain comes from. I suppose if I exercised more (or fell less) that wouldn’t be a problem.

Speed equals control, more or less. The faster you go the more you can control your skis. But if you do loose control your going really fast into a tree or something. When your first learning to ski it’s scary to go fast because you (or at least me) are afraid of loosing control, so you want to try to take is slow. Then there’s that whole balance thing, however I believe that you only get good at that with practice. So your slow and you have no balance. You fall a lot. It’s the same deal with snow-boarding. But balancing on a snowboard is different from balancing on skis (as I learned the hard way). I had no balance and was afraid to go fast. And I fell a lot.

I went out with a good friend from work who is also learning to snowboard. He’s a bit farther along then me as in he doesn’t fall nearly as much. He has been going out with his 7 year old son who also went with us today. Since we spent our time on the bunny hill we didn’t need to buy a lift ticket because you can hike up the hill in snow board boots with relative ease (relative being the key word). His son did get a lift ticket and as he passed me up while I was lying on my back he said if I need help just holler. Uh that’s ok, I’m nice and comfortable here.

Ski Santa Fe was the location of this trip and it costs $32 to rent the snow board and boots.