If there's anything that is a better indicator of declining profits than investment in product activation and/or DRM, I haven't met it yet. They're also a good indicator that:
The current management don't have a clue about the business, and
There are no innovative people left in the company.
Obviously a really large business is not a coheasive blob and some sections may still be doing a good job, but it does tend to indicate that the person with the reigns doesn't have a clue where they're going.
Ehrk. My group's IT staff *just* railroaded me into using MSN Messenger. I wish some of them would be less... normal... but they have a point when they talk about installed user base, etc.
Swatch have two ranges of watches like this. The "Automatic" is mechainical and the "Autoquarz" is electrical. I own quite a number of Autoquarz Swatches and while the will discharge when stored, a couple of shakes and they're up and running again. In fact, if you pull the crown out so the hands stop, the watch remains charged. Seiko's latest have a neat trick. Leave it still for long enough and the hands stop moving. The batteries then last a lot longer and when you move it again it simply sets the hands to the right time. Funky tech.
I dont care what the tin-foil-beanie crowd here thinks - product activation is a reasonable anti-piracy strategy.
So, what am I supposed to do after Ghost 7.0's product activation system is discontinued and I need to rebuild the server? I own the product, I paid for it legally, but I can no longer use it. Should I get a refund? That won't happen, in fact the oposite, I'll have to buy a new product even though the only barrier to me using an existing product is product activation, not any legal issue or compatibility problem.
That aside, since NAV needs an ongoing service to be useful anyway, why do they need to bother with product activation? Just use the subscription system. We're renewing our NAV subscription right now. Heck, they could give the program away for free and just charge for the service. Nothing wrong with that.
Eww. A detailed record is so insulting. Either they know what you're doing an appreciate you or you should probably start looking for a new job now as it won't matter what you do.
Personally, I'm a morning person so I come in early a lot and don't mind. Weekends I get overtime for, though I typically avoid these. In the case of serious overload, put together a todo list -- if anyone complains about a job not yet done, show them the list. If they think they're a high priority, direct them to your boss. Finally, make sure you start asking for an assistant before people start complaining that work's piling up.
The flash in routers doesn't see a huge number of writes (our Cisco ADSL modem/router got its first OS upgrade ever last weekend, and has had its configurations options changed maybe four times) and probably is written in a proprietory format designed to prolong its life.
I think the Alienware laptops are mostly built by Clevo (story here, brochure or press release here). I had someone come in with a Clevo quote recently. They look like capable machines.
I recall reading a story of one person who was getting failures...
who was getting failures during the first job because they were writing something like half the number of files to the device as a single area could cope with in writes and the FAT got updated twice for each file.
Flash RAM has quite a limited number of writes. This can cause problems if you're writing large numbers of small files to flash RAM as it can cause a huge number of writes to the FAT area of the device. This may have been solved with different file systems, but I recall reading a story of one person who was getting failures. CD-RW discs avoid this problem by preparing the files and writing them in a single batch.
Is the "generally less than 128MB" before or after compression? A nice compression package like 7-zip might get the files down to a size that can be emailed off-site each night.
We're just saying you're an arsehole if you adopt a scheme that deliberately makes it difficult for blind people (or other similar groups), especially when there are legitimate alternatives.
What legitimate alternatives? Do you have the solution to spam that none of us have thought of?
Fine, a challenge-response system that has the choice of either a machine unreadble image or a machine un-whateverable audio clip (eg; numbers recorded in noisy environments).
But what about all the blind deaf people that use email..?
Regarding the comments from the two mailing list operators. If a user has requested that they be added to your mailing list they should automatically whitelist you themselves. Forcing someone you've just explicitly requested email from to jump through such hoops is not a failure of the technology, it's a fault between keyboard and chair.
Challenge-response using a machine-unreadable image.
Personally, I don't use whitelists as my primary spam defense, I use an aliasing service (spamgourmet) that allows me to automatically create any number of email addresses with a limited life span. Once someone appears trustworthy they get my main email address (spamcop). Since no one is supposed to know my real email address, it can be changed at a moment's notice -- like the night before last when it was filling up with viruses.
Does this mean that every time you have to make an "illegal" manouver in order not to be killed by some other idiot that you'll have to defend your actions in court?
It was back from when I was eBay-ing. Spamcop kept blocking Telstra Bigpond (major.au ISP) addresses so I had to give out an unfiltered address. 25 (100k) virus emails arrived last night. Five have arrived in just the last two hours. And this is for an address that *was* seriously filtered. I've already redirected all my legitimate email to a new alias.
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- The current management don't have a clue about the business, and
- There are no innovative people left in the company.
Obviously a really large business is not a coheasive blob and some sections may still be doing a good job, but it does tend to indicate that the person with the reigns doesn't have a clue where they're going.Ehrk. My group's IT staff *just* railroaded me into using MSN Messenger. I wish some of them would be less... normal... but they have a point when they talk about installed user base, etc.
Swatch have two ranges of watches like this. The "Automatic" is mechainical and the "Autoquarz" is electrical. I own quite a number of Autoquarz Swatches and while the will discharge when stored, a couple of shakes and they're up and running again. In fact, if you pull the crown out so the hands stop, the watch remains charged. Seiko's latest have a neat trick. Leave it still for long enough and the hands stop moving. The batteries then last a lot longer and when you move it again it simply sets the hands to the right time. Funky tech.
That aside, since NAV needs an ongoing service to be useful anyway, why do they need to bother with product activation? Just use the subscription system. We're renewing our NAV subscription right now. Heck, they could give the program away for free and just charge for the service. Nothing wrong with that.
I would have thought one of those new industrial flywheels would have been a better solution...
You're seriously trying to tell me that production routers would use slow flash rather than battery backed-up SDRAM?
Personally, I'm a morning person so I come in early a lot and don't mind. Weekends I get overtime for, though I typically avoid these. In the case of serious overload, put together a todo list -- if anyone complains about a job not yet done, show them the list. If they think they're a high priority, direct them to your boss. Finally, make sure you start asking for an assistant before people start complaining that work's piling up.
The flash in routers doesn't see a huge number of writes (our Cisco ADSL modem/router got its first OS upgrade ever last weekend, and has had its configurations options changed maybe four times) and probably is written in a proprietory format designed to prolong its life.
Sorry, last link here. It's a PDF on Clevo's site specifically referencing Alienware.
I think the Alienware laptops are mostly built by Clevo (story here, brochure or press release here). I had someone come in with a Clevo quote recently. They look like capable machines.
Every computer I've ever owned cost more to purchase than my current car. What's your point?
Is the "generally less than 128MB" before or after compression? A nice compression package like 7-zip might get the files down to a size that can be emailed off-site each night.
Governments should tax things in proportion to their social cost. That, if done properly, this results in social engineering is a by-product.
I'd have bought a Pac Man Error Screen T-shirt by now if shipping to Australia wasn't as much as the shirt itself...
Fine, a challenge-response system that has the choice of either a machine unreadble image or a machine un-whateverable audio clip (eg; numbers recorded in noisy environments).
But what about all the blind deaf people that use email..?
Regarding the comments from the two mailing list operators. If a user has requested that they be added to your mailing list they should automatically whitelist you themselves. Forcing someone you've just explicitly requested email from to jump through such hoops is not a failure of the technology, it's a fault between keyboard and chair.
Personally, I don't use whitelists as my primary spam defense, I use an aliasing service (spamgourmet) that allows me to automatically create any number of email addresses with a limited life span. Once someone appears trustworthy they get my main email address (spamcop). Since no one is supposed to know my real email address, it can be changed at a moment's notice -- like the night before last when it was filling up with viruses.
Does this mean that every time you have to make an "illegal" manouver in order not to be killed by some other idiot that you'll have to defend your actions in court?
Doi!
http://jpbrown.i8.com/cubesolver.html
It was back from when I was eBay-ing. Spamcop kept blocking Telstra Bigpond (major .au ISP) addresses so I had to give out an unfiltered address. 25 (100k) virus emails arrived last night. Five have arrived in just the last two hours. And this is for an address that *was* seriously filtered. I've already redirected all my legitimate email to a new alias.