I could imagine that these things could be put to killer use by the Mossad.
And it would save them having to handle all those nasty explosives and things. And if the Palestinians get upset, they can say "hey, don't blame us, we just gave you all free phones. Sue Nokia!" and they wouldn't do it because nobody hates Finland! Except for Sweden, maybe, and I don't know many Swedish Palestinians.
There are a lot of variations floating around on the signing theme, including some fairly decent ones that don't use idiot concepts such as internet postage or complete lack of privacy (maybe a checksumming mechanism involving an automated verification of the sending server, whatever. At least that would let you track open relays a bit better).
However, the 'delay' idea won't work--consider any large legitimate mailng ilst.
"Colin, Donald, Karl, Paul, Condoleeza, I think the CIA's finally figured out who keeps signing up president@whitehouse.gov for all them thar porner-graphic websites."
5 minutes later, somewhere in central Poland air defense command
"Comrade Igor, I am spottink multiple very fast movink radar signatures going at mach 10, comink right at us!"
Funny enough, when I was at Cal Berkeley, we had a massive final for some bogus filler class (Anthro 10 or something like that.) We shared the old Harmon gym with the final exam for the horrible grueling freshman physics weeder course.
These guys were so hardcore that, when someone set off the inevitable fire alarm, while we just sort of ambled out for a smoke and a chat, the physics TAs ran around screaming at their herds like a bunch of USMC drill sergeants. "BOTH HANDS WITH BLUEBOOKS AND TEST MATERIALS OVER YOUR HEADS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM SINGLE FILE LINE OUTSIDE NOW GROUP AROUND YOUR TA MOVE MOVE MOVE!"
During that exam, the physics proctors nailed about 3-4 guys fairly loudly and publicly, including at least two ringers. Not a pretty sight.
I think that was mainly to look at naked pics of Halle Berry while she was "under the table", so he could see what was "under the table" while trying to guess passwords.
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, although I can't see how it would increase productivity.:-)
That sucks, and I am sorry. I don't agree with you on the first, but on the second instance, you really did do the right thing. You shouldn't let that sort of crap discourage you.
Of course, life isn't fair, and sometimes you just need to make a judgment call, and maybe keep your head down. However, if that's the case, there's little you can do about it unless you're willing to put up a fight (bad management sucks, yes.) Ejecting the cheater from the test is the correct thing to do.
I recently completed a project installing a major local private school's network and infrastructure, a large portion of which aimed to re-use their existing truckload of IBooks.
Frankly, I was impressed. The Macs were mainly used by the lower levels (grades 1-6) and the little monsters were only able to completely wreck about 10 of them (of about 50) over about 3 years of fairly constant use. But my, what a job they did on them.
Whoever decided to buy them PCs and laptops in the first place wasn't really thinking, because their teachers would spend hours trying to teach them how to draw something in MacPaint or whatever it's called--I encountered several lessons of this while trying to fix stuff, and it made me pretty resigned; they should rather have invested the time teaching them to dot their is and cross their ts, but the parents were paying a lot of money for the school and expected to see their precious little treasures "learn computers".
Given that, buying IBooks and IMacs was probably the smartest thing they could do, as they didn't have any floppy drives to shove dead rats and PBJs into in the first place.
However, you should have seen these things. They were filthy. God knows, I love children, although I couldn't eat a whole one, but they're dirt magnets. And most of it rubbed off on their laptops, coating them in sometimes near-impenetrable layers of grime and crap and dead-rat-parts. I'll grant that these were mainly the children of high-level managers, so they started with a bit of a genetic mental disadvantage, but nonetheless, for us IT guys trying to get things working, the most important technical tools were a bottle of windex and a sponge.
That said, I agree with most posters that this is just a plain bad fucking idea. If you want to give them IT schooling, get a bunch of robust desktop machines, lock them in reasonably shockproof cabinets, and run steel cable channels down the legs of the desks so they can't cut them. It'll come cheaper per unit than a laptop, including cost of acquisition and constant repairs, and they won't get stolen as much.
Add to that the fact that even in a private school, with
The problem is that VoIP companies don't meet a lot of the service criteria that a POTS company does. Consider the example of making a VoIP call via your cable modem over your local provider's fiber backbone, over a microwave link, connecting to a satellite, to two tin cans tied together with a string somewhere in central Angola. Nowhere in there have you used anything that could be traditionally construed to be a "phone call". Welcome to the information age.
While you're absolutely corect, some regulation is good (especially when guaranteeing the service that you agreed to pay for, etc.) the problem with most regulation attempts of VoIP is that it's approached by PUCs or their equivalents around the world as an "all-or-nothing" issue.
There are loads of taxes and bills and whatnot, most only vaguely related to actual 'phone service', which many politicians would love to attach to your telco bill every month. Agreed, there's a more fundamental issue at stake here (i.e. why should you finance something completely unrelated through an everyday activity such as communication), but on the whole, I would rather not see any form of tax creep hit new technology development. I've had enough bad experiences with traditional telcos in Europe to be very wary of anything which might even vaguely artificially even the playing field for established service providers, even as a side effect of something like making the state's tax bottom line look better.
What I would really like to see is a middle ground, where communications companies can help fund something (a) vitally important, and (b) extremely relevant, such as 911 services. However, I guess I suppose it's naive to believe that this is possible without all kinds of rider charges being levied by your local PUC or board or council or whatever. It's well worth the effort, though, if it helps maintain the services that we all want and need, without weighing on the introduction of new technology.
Sorry to hear this. You will learn to differentiate between 'loyalty' and 'professionalism'. Loyalty is dead, professionalism is not.
Never be afraid to stick you heard up as high as you can; as long as we're on the metaphors, it makes you more visible for all the other people out there who might want to hire you.
I see where you're coming from, but your conclusions are not entirely accurate.
There are too many financial institutions (to name just one aspect) whose apps require either different kinds of connection security from what you get from standard HTTP, and who won't be willing to take the "tunnel everything over the web port" approach.
This is a nifty thing to see, because (a) if the hurricane had been any worse, we probably wouldn't be seeing many amateur pictures, and (b) because the thing didn't cause any really serious damage compared to other storms.
Still, probably not particularly bright to go out sightseeing in the middle of a hurricane that's supposedly about to wash Florida towards Japan (this probably also explains submitting a link with large images to/. -- just asking for a licking.) But then again, as we all know, everything east of the Rockies will fall into the Atlantic ocean one of these days anyway:)
I'm not so sure I like the idea of the Chinese going haywire blocking spam sites, even if spammers are evil, and even if our mail servers have most netblocks registered in China blocked to start out with. As several other posters hint at, free and unfettered access to information is a good thing, and something that can only help Chinese (and every other society)--if the government is encouraged to start blocking sites, I can see the potential for abuse. Not like they do that sort of thing already.
What I wonder, though, is whether the spam site operators will fall into the category of repressed individuals, and start using some variant of a distributed proxy (just the other way around) to get around this sort of restriction?
In any case, I think the Chinese government should be encouraged to use more traditional means to deal with spammers and their ilk--after all, let's face it, it's what we've all been dreaming of doing to Sanford Wallace and the rest of the DMA.
"Now you too can choose from the best quality peoples' labor camps, right on the internet!" Bang.
Sorry to the folks at privacyactivism.org; I support your cause, and think it's a great idea to try to give people an understanding of privacy issues.
However, that cutesy flash thing is not the way you're going to get it done. It drags on forever, and despite making the occasional point, doesn't go anywhere. I have a very high impatience threshhold, and it held my attention for only a minute or so.
High-profile, easy to read and understand lists of simple, straightforward explanations are how you're much more likely to hold a fresh college undergrad's attention.
I worked at GE as a tester for a short while, and you need tech writing skills for that.
That's sort of my point. Most tech jobs (when done well) and most IT management jobs (when done well) require that skill.
Just look at any job board, especially in the contracting area, it's a valid career path, if you really know both your tech and writing.
While this is entirely correct, and I do not doubt your own qualifications, it's unfortunate that most dedicated tech writers I personally have come across don't know either very well.
Get a real job. Go into hands-on technology or management, and learn to understand both reasonably well. Technical writing is not something you will make a career out of. Not to mention that it's about as exciting in the long run as watching grass grow.
There no substitute is for good know of solid, grammatic correct, concise english language write skill from college. Both tech and management jobs will give you plenty of opportunity for technical writing--something that a lot of individuals tend to disregard.
Most of the comments in this thread are entirely accurate. Do not say no, but rather, document exactly what tasks you're doing, ask your manager to prioritize, and have customers go through him/her to get to you.
If your manager is unreasonable, you will have to do the prioritization yourself. Most important, though, is that you very clearly document the time estimated and actual hours spent on fulfilling a task.
What I have also found to be extremely useful (consultant, yeah yeah...) is, before starting a task, outline the actual task deliverables. When finished, do a quick writeup on what you did, who it was for, how long it took, etc. Doesn't have to be long, just look reasonably nice
This takes a bit of getting used to and initially may seem like a waste of half an hour per task, but I have yet to speak to anyone in any level of management who didn't appreciate that sort of thing. It gives them concrete proof of what you're doing, it gives you a paper trail to fall back on when people claim you don't have enough to do, and it makes your boss look good, because they have something tangible in their hands to present to their management.
Also, though I know it's not entirely relevant, it helps me to occasionally look at Stokely's Golden Rules of Consulting. It's more geared towards independent contractors, but contains some very wise principles.
Whatever happens, don't get frustrated. I guarantee you, eventually your customers will begin to understand that everyone and their mom wants you to do things for them, and will learn to stand in line. And my experience has been that when something is truly truly earthshatteringly urgent, they become even more appreciative if you can bend the rules a bit. That's how we kept a fairly extensive bar stocked during my last operations role:)
Erm...while I grant you that in a civil case the rules of evidence will be much more lenient than in a criminal one, there are statutes related to industrial espionage which you could cover yourself with.
IANAL etc etc, but I am under the impression that, unless you explicitly agree to a function which is not arguably part of the 'core' raison d'etre of the software, things like collecting information without someone's consent on legitimately licensed PCs could be construed as breaking and entering, or the digital equivalent.
If the software only does this for unlicensed copies, I wonder whether you couldn't use a similar strain of argument (license was not active for arcane technical reasons, whatever.)
Admittedly, without starting an argument about it, I don't have strong moral qualms about piracy, and I do believe there are certain limits as to what's allowed in terms of evidence collection/snooping even if you are doing something legally "wrong".
Frankly, I think companies should try to use free/open software anyway if they can, so this never even becomes an issue (ask SCO!:-)
The people playing online, with lots of exceptions, don't generally act like a bunch of intellectual notables. So the bit about 'community' is stretching things a bit.
Grandiose. Note please the use of the phrase 'telecommunications service', not 'internet'.
This implies that the media used to organize protests to help topple Joseph Estrada, to kill Hong Kong's internal security law, to bring out mass demonstrations against Cesar Chavez, and multitudinous other demonstrations against heavy-handed government actions, such as SMS, phone, or email, can all be punishable by the government.
In effect, this law nullifies the democratic advantage given to a population to organize against anything objectionable its government does. Equally important the bit about 'menacing' and 'harassment'--essentially, any political protests could be construed as such. This brings to mind the Riot Act, which stated that as soon as 12 or more people gather 'unlawfully', an officer of the law could read the act and anyone remaining at the gathering would be considered a felon.
Equally scary, but I suppose in a fashion typical for Australian and UK governments is the use of the kiddy-porn specter (in the US the catchword is 'terrorism'):
Communications Minister Richard Alston and Justice Minister Chris Ellison said the new offence was part of a package to also crack down on internet child pornography.
Clever, clever way to pass a law over potential objections--think of the children! As an outsider, I'm not qualified to criticize Australian politics on the whole, but boy, that seems like one scary senator you've got there.
I worked as a consultant for a big big big bank. I was nominally in a team of 4 people--one was busy being a manager, one didn't do f***-all, one was usually too busy with wife & kids (ok I accept that one) and one preferred to spend his time playing with new tech. So, being the only contractor, it fell to me to get shit done.
Even though we had an on-call rota system, where our landline hotline number was forwarded to the company cell of whoever was on call that week, I inevitably ended up being called in, often very drunk, to fix problems that weren't my problem. Firewall issue? Call the firewall guys. Database issue? Call the firewall guys. Company web server dead? Call the firewall guys. Aunt Edna's refrigerator won't defrost? Call the firewall guys.
It got to the point where my colleagues would forward calls from the company's _customers_ to me. Once, on top of a very very high mountain, once on another continent, once while getting busy (no I didn't pick it up, but as a helpful tip, always turn off the mobile when you're with your girlfriend. Few things are more of a mood-killer than 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' as a Nokia ringtone when things get hot and heavy.)
So, finally, one day, I managed to get reservations at the most difficult-to-get-into restaurant in town, and just as we'd ordered our drinks, the fucking phone rings. Support issue from one of the unix idiots, and I'm not even on call. All the other guys are several hundred miles away and can't dial in (including the EOC.) So, I take a few deep breaths, tell the maitre d' we'd be back, and THROW THE FUCKING PHONE AS HARD AS I CAN AND STEP ON IT AND JUMP AND SCREAM INSULTS AT IT argh argh argh! You know the feeling, when things like that just sort of come to a head? That's the one.
Official version, "a cab ran over it." Despite the footprints on what was left of the display. Nobody ever asked about it, since that would have cost them a lot of goodwill from the only guy willing to drive crosstown at 3 a.m. after several pints to fix their trading system, while not on the call rota.
Most companies nowadays maintain some sort of in-house phone system. Meridian, whatnot.
Most of these allow you to forward a given number on a pre-scheduled basis to another number.
Anyone who must be reachable at any given time should have their own cell phone, period.
And if the scheduled call forwarding fails, do what we did--redirect the hotline number (you have one, don't you?) to the mobile of whoever's on call. That way nobody has your direct number, and you have a single point of contact. If you're really a support organization, I should add, you would have a fixed hotline in place already, covered by some system of who picks it up during office hours.
This fails, of course, if you have a private phone and pay for minutes on incoming calls. If that's the case, move to a country where providers don't do that sort of shit.
Slashdot Mirror
I could imagine that these things could be put to killer use by the Mossad.
And it would save them having to handle all those nasty explosives and things. And if the Palestinians get upset, they can say "hey, don't blame us, we just gave you all free phones. Sue Nokia!" and they wouldn't do it because nobody hates Finland! Except for Sweden, maybe, and I don't know many Swedish Palestinians.
There are a lot of variations floating around on the signing theme, including some fairly decent ones that don't use idiot concepts such as internet postage or complete lack of privacy (maybe a checksumming mechanism involving an automated verification of the sending server, whatever. At least that would let you track open relays a bit better).
However, the 'delay' idea won't work--consider any large legitimate mailng ilst.
"Colin, Donald, Karl, Paul, Condoleeza, I think the CIA's finally figured out who keeps signing up president@whitehouse.gov for all them thar porner-graphic websites."
5 minutes later, somewhere in central Poland air defense command
"Comrade Igor, I am spottink multiple very fast movink radar signatures going at mach 10, comink right at us!"
Blam-ski
Funny enough, when I was at Cal Berkeley, we had a massive final for some bogus filler class (Anthro 10 or something like that.) We shared the old Harmon gym with the final exam for the horrible grueling freshman physics weeder course.
These guys were so hardcore that, when someone set off the inevitable fire alarm, while we just sort of ambled out for a smoke and a chat, the physics TAs ran around screaming at their herds like a bunch of USMC drill sergeants. "BOTH HANDS WITH BLUEBOOKS AND TEST MATERIALS OVER YOUR HEADS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM SINGLE FILE LINE OUTSIDE NOW GROUP AROUND YOUR TA MOVE MOVE MOVE!"
During that exam, the physics proctors nailed about 3-4 guys fairly loudly and publicly, including at least two ringers. Not a pretty sight.
I think that was mainly to look at naked pics of Halle Berry while she was "under the table", so he could see what was "under the table" while trying to guess passwords.
:-)
Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, although I can't see how it would increase productivity.
That sucks, and I am sorry. I don't agree with you on the first, but on the second instance, you really did do the right thing. You shouldn't let that sort of crap discourage you.
Of course, life isn't fair, and sometimes you just need to make a judgment call, and maybe keep your head down. However, if that's the case, there's little you can do about it unless you're willing to put up a fight (bad management sucks, yes.) Ejecting the cheater from the test is the correct thing to do.
Luk, teecher, Im variable tu kik jimmy's butt!
No I din mean i am ur friend. I menu are a ashole.
Teecher, i peed on my puter and now its networking!
Maybe I'm a bit cynical about the intellectual capacity of tomorrow's voting public. I'm actually enjoying getting old and grumpy
I recently completed a project installing a major local private school's network and infrastructure, a large portion of which aimed to re-use their existing truckload of IBooks.
Frankly, I was impressed. The Macs were mainly used by the lower levels (grades 1-6) and the little monsters were only able to completely wreck about 10 of them (of about 50) over about 3 years of fairly constant use. But my, what a job they did on them.
Whoever decided to buy them PCs and laptops in the first place wasn't really thinking, because their teachers would spend hours trying to teach them how to draw something in MacPaint or whatever it's called--I encountered several lessons of this while trying to fix stuff, and it made me pretty resigned; they should rather have invested the time teaching them to dot their is and cross their ts, but the parents were paying a lot of money for the school and expected to see their precious little treasures "learn computers".
Given that, buying IBooks and IMacs was probably the smartest thing they could do, as they didn't have any floppy drives to shove dead rats and PBJs into in the first place.
However, you should have seen these things. They were filthy. God knows, I love children, although I couldn't eat a whole one, but they're dirt magnets. And most of it rubbed off on their laptops, coating them in sometimes near-impenetrable layers of grime and crap and dead-rat-parts. I'll grant that these were mainly the children of high-level managers, so they started with a bit of a genetic mental disadvantage, but nonetheless, for us IT guys trying to get things working, the most important technical tools were a bottle of windex and a sponge.
That said, I agree with most posters that this is just a plain bad fucking idea. If you want to give them IT schooling, get a bunch of robust desktop machines, lock them in reasonably shockproof cabinets, and run steel cable channels down the legs of the desks so they can't cut them. It'll come cheaper per unit than a laptop, including cost of acquisition and constant repairs, and they won't get stolen as much.
Add to that the fact that even in a private school, with
Mod parent up, excellent point.
The problem is that VoIP companies don't meet a lot of the service criteria that a POTS company does. Consider the example of making a VoIP call via your cable modem over your local provider's fiber backbone, over a microwave link, connecting to a satellite, to two tin cans tied together with a string somewhere in central Angola. Nowhere in there have you used anything that could be traditionally construed to be a "phone call". Welcome to the information age.
While you're absolutely corect, some regulation is good (especially when guaranteeing the service that you agreed to pay for, etc.) the problem with most regulation attempts of VoIP is that it's approached by PUCs or their equivalents around the world as an "all-or-nothing" issue.
There are loads of taxes and bills and whatnot, most only vaguely related to actual 'phone service', which many politicians would love to attach to your telco bill every month. Agreed, there's a more fundamental issue at stake here (i.e. why should you finance something completely unrelated through an everyday activity such as communication), but on the whole, I would rather not see any form of tax creep hit new technology development. I've had enough bad experiences with traditional telcos in Europe to be very wary of anything which might even vaguely artificially even the playing field for established service providers, even as a side effect of something like making the state's tax bottom line look better.
What I would really like to see is a middle ground, where communications companies can help fund something (a) vitally important, and (b) extremely relevant, such as 911 services. However, I guess I suppose it's naive to believe that this is possible without all kinds of rider charges being levied by your local PUC or board or council or whatever. It's well worth the effort, though, if it helps maintain the services that we all want and need, without weighing on the introduction of new technology.
Driver: Radio on!
Radio: Radio on.
Ozzy (slurred): rrddnadio ongh..
Radio:
Ozzy (slurred): rad..om!
Radio: Please repeat your command
Ozzy: Fawk Awf
Radio: Please repeat your command
Ozzy (slurred): fffuwkk ofwf!
yeah, great prospects.
Sorry to hear this. You will learn to differentiate between 'loyalty' and 'professionalism'. Loyalty is dead, professionalism is not.
Never be afraid to stick you heard up as high as you can; as long as we're on the metaphors, it makes you more visible for all the other people out there who might want to hire you.
I see where you're coming from, but your conclusions are not entirely accurate.
There are too many financial institutions (to name just one aspect) whose apps require either different kinds of connection security from what you get from standard HTTP, and who won't be willing to take the "tunnel everything over the web port" approach.
For end-user private use, to a degree, maybe.
This is a nifty thing to see, because (a) if the hurricane had been any worse, we probably wouldn't be seeing many amateur pictures, and (b) because the thing didn't cause any really serious damage compared to other storms.
Still, probably not particularly bright to go out sightseeing in the middle of a hurricane that's supposedly about to wash Florida towards Japan (this probably also explains submitting a link with large images to
I'm not so sure I like the idea of the Chinese going haywire blocking spam sites, even if spammers are evil, and even if our mail servers have most netblocks registered in China blocked to start out with. As several other posters hint at, free and unfettered access to information is a good thing, and something that can only help Chinese (and every other society)--if the government is encouraged to start blocking sites, I can see the potential for abuse. Not like they do that sort of thing already.
What I wonder, though, is whether the spam site operators will fall into the category of repressed individuals, and start using some variant of a distributed proxy (just the other way around) to get around this sort of restriction?
In any case, I think the Chinese government should be encouraged to use more traditional means to deal with spammers and their ilk--after all, let's face it, it's what we've all been dreaming of doing to Sanford Wallace and the rest of the DMA.
"Now you too can choose from the best quality peoples' labor camps, right on the internet!" Bang.
Sorry to the folks at privacyactivism.org; I support your cause, and think it's a great idea to try to give people an understanding of privacy issues.
However, that cutesy flash thing is not the way you're going to get it done. It drags on forever, and despite making the occasional point, doesn't go anywhere. I have a very high impatience threshhold, and it held my attention for only a minute or so.
High-profile, easy to read and understand lists of simple, straightforward explanations are how you're much more likely to hold a fresh college undergrad's attention.
Mod parent up, please. He makes excellent points.
That's sort of my point. Most tech jobs (when done well) and most IT management jobs (when done well) require that skill.
While this is entirely correct, and I do not doubt your own qualifications, it's unfortunate that most dedicated tech writers I personally have come across don't know either very well.
Get a real job. Go into hands-on technology or management, and learn to understand both reasonably well. Technical writing is not something you will make a career out of. Not to mention that it's about as exciting in the long run as watching grass grow.
There no substitute is for good know of solid, grammatic correct, concise english language write skill from college. Both tech and management jobs will give you plenty of opportunity for technical writing--something that a lot of individuals tend to disregard.
Most of the comments in this thread are entirely accurate. Do not say no, but rather, document exactly what tasks you're doing, ask your manager to prioritize, and have customers go through him/her to get to you.
If your manager is unreasonable, you will have to do the prioritization yourself. Most important, though, is that you very clearly document the time estimated and actual hours spent on fulfilling a task.
What I have also found to be extremely useful (consultant, yeah yeah...) is, before starting a task, outline the actual task deliverables. When finished, do a quick writeup on what you did, who it was for, how long it took, etc. Doesn't have to be long, just look reasonably nice
This takes a bit of getting used to and initially may seem like a waste of half an hour per task, but I have yet to speak to anyone in any level of management who didn't appreciate that sort of thing. It gives them concrete proof of what you're doing, it gives you a paper trail to fall back on when people claim you don't have enough to do, and it makes your boss look good, because they have something tangible in their hands to present to their management.
Also, though I know it's not entirely relevant, it helps me to occasionally look at Stokely's Golden Rules of Consulting. It's more geared towards independent contractors, but contains some very wise principles.
Whatever happens, don't get frustrated. I guarantee you, eventually your customers will begin to understand that everyone and their mom wants you to do things for them, and will learn to stand in line. And my experience has been that when something is truly truly earthshatteringly urgent, they become even more appreciative if you can bend the rules a bit. That's how we kept a fairly extensive bar stocked during my last operations role
Erm...while I grant you that in a civil case the rules of evidence will be much more lenient than in a criminal one, there are statutes related to industrial espionage which you could cover yourself with.
IANAL etc etc, but I am under the impression that, unless you explicitly agree to a function which is not arguably part of the 'core' raison d'etre of the software, things like collecting information without someone's consent on legitimately licensed PCs could be construed as breaking and entering, or the digital equivalent.
If the software only does this for unlicensed copies, I wonder whether you couldn't use a similar strain of argument (license was not active for arcane technical reasons, whatever.)
Admittedly, without starting an argument about it, I don't have strong moral qualms about piracy, and I do believe there are certain limits as to what's allowed in terms of evidence collection/snooping even if you are doing something legally "wrong".
Frankly, I think companies should try to use free/open software anyway if they can, so this never even becomes an issue (ask SCO!
Excess plutonium shouldn't be a problem. My associate, Mr. Moon Kim Sang will buy as much as you can produce.
D00D F U!
BS CHEATER
etc.
The people playing online, with lots of exceptions, don't generally act like a bunch of intellectual notables. So the bit about 'community' is stretching things a bit.
But let's not forget the deep bonds which are inevitable when
"Mr. Sticky" throws a grenade at "The Crimson Warlord"
Grandiose. Note please the use of the phrase 'telecommunications service', not 'internet'.
This implies that the media used to organize protests to help topple Joseph Estrada, to kill Hong Kong's internal security law, to bring out mass demonstrations against Cesar Chavez, and multitudinous other demonstrations against heavy-handed government actions, such as SMS, phone, or email, can all be punishable by the government.
In effect, this law nullifies the democratic advantage given to a population to organize against anything objectionable its government does. Equally important the bit about 'menacing'
and 'harassment'--essentially, any political protests could be construed as such. This brings to mind the Riot Act, which stated that as soon as 12 or more people gather 'unlawfully', an officer of the law could read the act and anyone remaining at the gathering would be considered a felon.
Equally scary, but I suppose in a fashion typical for Australian and UK governments is the use of the kiddy-porn specter (in the US the catchword is 'terrorism'):
Clever, clever way to pass a law over potential objections--think of the children! As an outsider, I'm not qualified to criticize Australian politics on the whole, but boy, that seems like one scary senator you've got there.
I worked as a consultant for a big big big bank. I was nominally in a team of 4 people--one was busy being a manager, one didn't do f***-all, one was usually too busy with wife & kids (ok I accept that one) and one preferred to spend his time playing with new tech. So, being the only contractor, it fell to me to get shit done.
Even though we had an on-call rota system, where our landline hotline number was forwarded to the company cell of whoever was on call that week, I inevitably ended up being called in, often very drunk, to fix problems that weren't my problem. Firewall issue? Call the firewall guys. Database issue? Call the firewall guys. Company web server dead? Call the firewall guys. Aunt Edna's refrigerator won't defrost? Call the firewall guys.
It got to the point where my colleagues would forward calls from the company's _customers_ to me. Once, on top of a very very high mountain, once on another continent, once while getting busy (no I didn't pick it up, but as a helpful tip, always turn off the mobile when you're with your girlfriend. Few things are more of a mood-killer than 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' as a Nokia ringtone when things get hot and heavy.)
So, finally, one day, I managed to get reservations at the most difficult-to-get-into restaurant in town, and just as we'd ordered our drinks, the fucking phone rings. Support issue from one of the unix idiots, and I'm not even on call. All the other guys are several hundred miles away and can't dial in (including the EOC.) So, I take a few deep breaths, tell the maitre d' we'd be back, and THROW THE FUCKING PHONE AS HARD AS I CAN AND STEP ON IT AND JUMP AND SCREAM INSULTS AT IT argh argh argh! You know the feeling, when things like that just sort of come to a head? That's the one.
Official version, "a cab ran over it." Despite the footprints on what was left of the display. Nobody ever asked about it, since that would have cost them a lot of goodwill from the only guy willing to drive crosstown at 3 a.m. after several pints to fix their trading system, while not on the call rota.
Most companies nowadays maintain some sort of in-house phone system. Meridian, whatnot.
Most of these allow you to forward a given number on a pre-scheduled basis to another number.
Anyone who must be reachable at any given time should have their own cell phone, period.
And if the scheduled call forwarding fails, do what we did--redirect the hotline number (you have one, don't you?) to the mobile of whoever's on call. That way nobody has your direct number, and you have a single point of contact. If you're really a support organization, I should add, you would have a fixed hotline in place already, covered by some system of who picks it up during office hours.
This fails, of course, if you have a private phone and pay for minutes on incoming calls. If that's the case, move to a country where providers don't do that sort of shit.
Of course. What do you think caused that damn power outage?
I already am. How do you think we fixed the blackout?