I was in SLC in 1986. A few of us were downtown, near the pagan temple dedicated to the angel Moroni, and came across a bunch of street kids from out-of-state hanging out and trying to appear menancing. I couldn't help but laugh as the leather-clad leader popped open a cold one on the street and brashly threw back a swig of the stuff in a defiant, testosterone-driven act of rebellion. His poison? Classic Coke.
How effective is angry advertising -- advertisement that force the viewer to watch them using aggressively annoying tactics?
I have never personally followed anything other than an occasional banner/skyscraper ad, or, more frequently, a text ad, but then I'm not an average internet user.
I can't imagine these being effective. I just don't get it.
It is sad to hear of the death of a company. And that is what your question exposes: the directors of your company are not in the loop as to the problems you know you have and your department being open and honest is, apparently, optional (otherwise, how could you ask the question?). Your company's management is divorced from its operation and its departments exist as entities unto themselves. Very sad.
In truth, the problems your department is facing may be due to the personnel in the department. Actually, you know this; ergo, your question. You also know that the lack of accountability in your department cannot continue yet are afraid of the changes that will occur as a result of returning your department to a heathly status.
This is like a diabetic's toe becoming injured, infected and gangrenous before the head realizes there is a problem: amputation is required to deliver the body of the putrid, deadly member.
Sorry, but I have little, well, honestly, no sympathy for your position. You *must* connect with these company leaders and you *must* make them aware of the real situation. How you handle yourself may determine your status once the situation is exposed, but don't expect to be rewarded for your honesty. You may lose co-workers, you may lose your job. The work environment may become strained and less enjoyable, but I doubt it is very much enjoyable now.
If you are referring to problems your department sees from others parties in the company, tread lightly but be honest. IT has a unique position to be exposed to the operation of a company as a whole. Since the problems you see are not in your domain, you may be speaking out of school to directly criticize others; phrasing your observations with disclaimers may be appropriate here.
I gave two answers to your question because it's not clear what your situation is from your question. I suspect the first answer is more appropriate.
Google's Toolbar v2 stopped the pop-up/unders for me on IE6 while Mozilla/Firebird and Konqueror have stopped them for me without add-ons.
But I have not found a solution for Flash-overs, that is, flash monstrosities that overwhelm the content of a page.
It's so incredibily annoying I'm beginning to understand why we need to repeal the ban on automatic weapons in the workplace.
Anyway, how about a "disable Flash" button? Or just a STOP THE MOVEMENT button to make a freakin' page readible without needing Dramamine. If newspaper ads twirled, flipped, burped and gyrated I'd meet the paperboy with a full metal jacket each morning until it stopped.
.
.
.
.
Medication? Yes I took it this morning, why do you ask?
Sorry, this is about me and is not particularly on topic.
One night, when I was about 7 years old, I was arguing with my Mom about not wanting to go to sleep. I told her I wanted to watch a cartoon first. She then told me that I could watch a cartoon "for free" in my dreams if I wanted to; all I had to do was think really hard about a cartoon before I fell asleep and I would enjoy a cartoon in my dreams. Wow, I thought, this is great! I can decide what to dream in advance! I remember thinking "Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny" until I fell asleep.
In my dreams that night I was sitting in the second row of a Suburban-like vehicle with my arms hanging over the front seat where my mom was driving with my brother in the middle seat and my aunt in the passenger seat. We were driving down a dark wooded two-lane road late at night. No other vehicles -- or people -- seemed to be around for miles. That is, until we began to pass a hitchhiker standing on the right side of the road. He was dressed like a pirate with a patch over his eye and a wooden leg. Everyone just looked silently straight ahead without acknowledging the hitchhiking pirate; except me.
As we drove by I waived at the sad looking man out of a mixture of Texas-bred politeness, pity, curiosity and fear. Suddenly he jumped and grabbed a large knife from his belt. As we passed he cocked his arm and threw the knife at us breaking the back window of our vehicle. The knife landed harmlessly in the back and I thought *whew* as we continued to drive on. But then, the man began to run with amazing speed (especially for having a wooden leg) and easily caught up with us, climbed on the back, reached through the broken window, grabbed the knife and looked at me with hatred and murder as he crawled toward me, surely to kill me.
I awoke in sweat and fear; I didn't dare move or turn my head in case he was in the bedroom. I have never forgotten this most-vivid dream nor have I ever tried to manipulate them again.
Oh, and mom, if you're reading this, Thanks A Lot! And, while on the subject, thanks for giving me Stephen King's Nightshift anthology when I was in seventh grade. I still get the creeps at closet doors that don't quite shut. Sheesh....
Thanks for the answer. Along with the AC, I recommend a legible "spoof" link to clearly mark your page as satire. Just in the small print at the very bottom, perhaps. Anyway, nice job.
I checked it with Firebird, first. Very cool. Tell me, please, how long did you spend (1) thinking about doing this and (2) doing this? How many people have hit your page?
That is fantastic. Too bad your entire existing assest base and future earings will go to satsify the judgement MS will win agaist you. Thanks for a surreal experience, though.
I use Cygwin+KDE3 on Windows XP Pro. This allows me to stay sane on my Dell Inspiron 5150. Windows makes a nice client interface. Most of my time is spent using PuTTY to reach a RedHat Enterprise Server cluster at Rackspace or using Vim/Textpad for JBoss development locally. While I am glad there is ActiveState ASPN, I prefer perl under cygwin (since my local scripts will ultimately be deployed on Linux, why confuse things?).
One day I tried the Cygwin/KDE3 project at SourceForge. It works fairly well. Using the "minimal" login script works best for me. Why bother? I like to use Konqueror for testing HTML output in addition to Firebird and the required IE6 browser.
Cygwin gives me a familiar command line and KDE gives me more applications (though not all work well -- for example, KMail doesn't work for me).
It helps to have a P4 3.06 GHz laptop with 1GB RAM...but then I'm running (simultaneously): MySQL 4 with 1.5 GB database for development testing, JBoss 3.2.3 with Tomcat, Apache 2, Apache JAMES, WinCVS, 3 multi-tab sessions of Firebird, 3 IE6 windows, cygwin with xinetd services deployed (mainly to run hotwayd to automatically download Hotmail email), TextPad with 80-90 commonly referenced files in my workspace, 3 session of VIM (one holding HOSTS for switching between local and internet access on demand), a few memory-grabbing sessions of Acrobat for different documentation I commonly refer to, Outlook 2000 with SpamBayes plugin to filter the junk from Hotmail and my slashdot@rjamestaylor.com address, Gaim for my various IM accounts and IRC locations, pagent to allow easy forwarding to various systems, VNC, OpenOffice.org launcher, ACT Sidekick, and, when needed, KDE with Konqueror. I've cut down; until recently I also ran IIS, SQL Server 2000, GreatPlains 7.1 and.NET Studio 2003 Enterprise.
Yesterday I started looking to max out the RAM at 2GB....Dell is selling the 1GB PC2700 333MHz DDR 200-pin SODIMMs (128x64) for about $670 a piece...anyone know of a better deal?
And a MySQL query just failed with "MySQL Client out of memory" ("select * from blobs"). *Sigh*
The purpose of drawing attention to the number of lines on the page wasn't to set a maximum number of lines code that SCO was claiming as infringing. It was to point out that in 60 pages you basically have 3600 lines. That's not even enough to tell a good story, much less explain $3 Billion worth of infringement claims. The preface to such a document would be 60 pages. In this case SCO claims millions of lines of code infringe. To be taken seriously, they would have to not only give the range of lines and files that infringe (which they already did) but explain (1) what is infringed upon, (2) how they conclude that there is infringement and (3) how it relates to IBM -- at a minimum! Remember, they already did the All these files, your Honor trick. Didn't work -- the Judge said 'with specificity'.
So, don't be like the other idiots who responded to this post and argue "ya but I could claim every atom infringes in just one line!" Sheesh.
I highly doubt that such would be (1) offered seriously or (2) accepted willingly as evidence. There would need to be an explanation of what in those lines infringes along with how the conclusion of infringement was ascertained. No respecting lawyer would allow such a terse presentation of their claims be submitted. There's not even a "wherefore the party of the first part" clause!
Of course, I'm referring to actual court case with actual plaintiffs who think they actually have an actual case of actual infringement of actual property by an actual defendant, not a sham case used as a springboard for a publicity campaign with the goal of stock market manipulation.
April Fools and "beginning of 2nd Qtr 2004" -- both are cruel jokes. When programmers give delivery dates beyond 6 weeks it means they don't really know when they'll be finished. And companies making promises with "Qtr of" references are hoping and/or stalling.
A friend of many years who is an expert Windows developer (large-scale deployments) is taking an interest in Linux and has compiled he own kernel, after adjusting for RedHat path changes, asked me a question just yesterday:
What's your favorite Linux distribution? BSD, RedHat or SuSE?
Anyway, the perception that Free UNIX == Linux is fairly common.
Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.
Whew! What with PhotoSTOP and all I wasn't sure how I could keep the boss happy with his funny money needs. Things sure work out in mysterious ways. Whew!
Here's what's next - all pretense of freedom will be thrown off by the middle of this decade (gee, did I just make a 2004 prediction?) and your old favorites will be upgraded to the new versions:
PhotoShop -> PhotoStop
Word -> WorDRM
Excel -> Exclude
Quark Xpress -> Court Xpress
Microsoft Windows -> Microsoft Blinds
Access -> NoAccess
SQL Server w/ SQLAgent -> Process Server w/ Summons Agent
Silly, silly. IBM dictates what its vendors will use to interchange data and documents with it. Do you think Walmart cares one bit that it requires any vendore working with it to use EDI? Since, oh, 1990 as I recall. IBM requisition manager: "I'm sorry but you sent your proposal in MS WorDRM 2005, which we can't open. We went with your competitor who used Vim 6.2 to prepare their proposal, per our RFP. LoveYaGottaGoBuhBye."
Probably something to counter Sun's Java Desktop that will be completely portable between OSX, Windows xx, UNIX, Linux, TiVo, OpenToaster, etc., that will not only allow IBM to scale high and low, but obviate, at once, Microsoft, Intel, and Sun.
Speaking of Intel, has anyone heard Intel pipe up and chide SCO over iBCS 1/2 in relation to the "header files" infringement claimss? Hmm. Didn't think so. MS, Sun and Intel are screwed.
Off topic, I laugh everytime I think how close Sun came to joining the Eclipse project. In my mind the scenario goes like this:
The technical people at Sun notice Eclipse and are duly impressed -- a quality Open Source project producing a tool with admirable Java support; they see an opportunity to leverage the community's help in providing a truly useful IDE (and more). Talks begin, things start moving and word gets out in the public about Sun's interest in the project.
So, one day the matter rises to McNeely's office where he blows his top and says, "What the hell are you thinking!? Don't you know what an 'Eclipse' is? Do you think they named it that by ACCIDENT? Out! GET OUT of my &*%^(*# OFFICE!"
Slashdot Mirror
No shiitake, 'Shroom.
I was in SLC in 1986. A few of us were downtown, near the pagan temple dedicated to the angel Moroni, and came across a bunch of street kids from out-of-state hanging out and trying to appear menancing. I couldn't help but laugh as the leather-clad leader popped open a cold one on the street and brashly threw back a swig of the stuff in a defiant, testosterone-driven act of rebellion. His poison? Classic Coke.
Surreal.
Damn funny And I'll burn my own Karma here to salute you!
How effective is angry advertising -- advertisement that force the viewer to watch them using aggressively annoying tactics?
I have never personally followed anything other than an occasional banner/skyscraper ad, or, more frequently, a text ad, but then I'm not an average internet user.
I can't imagine these being effective. I just don't get it.
-
In truth, the problems your department is facing may be due to the personnel in the department. Actually, you know this; ergo, your question. You also know that the lack of accountability in your department cannot continue yet are afraid of the changes that will occur as a result of returning your department to a heathly status.
-
If you are referring to problems your department sees from others parties in the company, tread lightly but be honest. IT has a unique position to be exposed to the operation of a company as a whole. Since the problems you see are not in your domain, you may be speaking out of school to directly criticize others; phrasing your observations with disclaimers may be appropriate here.
I gave two answers to your question because it's not clear what your situation is from your question. I suspect the first answer is more appropriate.This is like a diabetic's toe becoming injured, infected and gangrenous before the head realizes there is a problem: amputation is required to deliver the body of the putrid, deadly member.
Sorry, but I have little, well, honestly, no sympathy for your position. You *must* connect with these company leaders and you *must* make them aware of the real situation. How you handle yourself may determine your status once the situation is exposed, but don't expect to be rewarded for your honesty. You may lose co-workers, you may lose your job. The work environment may become strained and less enjoyable, but I doubt it is very much enjoyable now.
Google's Toolbar v2 stopped the pop-up/unders for me on IE6 while Mozilla/Firebird and Konqueror have stopped them for me without add-ons.
But I have not found a solution for Flash-overs, that is, flash monstrosities that overwhelm the content of a page.
It's so incredibily annoying I'm beginning to understand why we need to repeal the ban on automatic weapons in the workplace.
Anyway, how about a "disable Flash" button? Or just a STOP THE MOVEMENT button to make a freakin' page readible without needing Dramamine. If newspaper ads twirled, flipped, burped and gyrated I'd meet the paperboy with a full metal jacket each morning until it stopped.
.
.
.
.
Medication? Yes I took it this morning, why do you ask?
One night, when I was about 7 years old, I was arguing with my Mom about not wanting to go to sleep. I told her I wanted to watch a cartoon first. She then told me that I could watch a cartoon "for free" in my dreams if I wanted to; all I had to do was think really hard about a cartoon before I fell asleep and I would enjoy a cartoon in my dreams. Wow, I thought, this is great! I can decide what to dream in advance! I remember thinking "Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny" until I fell asleep.
In my dreams that night I was sitting in the second row of a Suburban-like vehicle with my arms hanging over the front seat where my mom was driving with my brother in the middle seat and my aunt in the passenger seat. We were driving down a dark wooded two-lane road late at night. No other vehicles -- or people -- seemed to be around for miles. That is, until we began to pass a hitchhiker standing on the right side of the road. He was dressed like a pirate with a patch over his eye and a wooden leg. Everyone just looked silently straight ahead without acknowledging the hitchhiking pirate; except me.
As we drove by I waived at the sad looking man out of a mixture of Texas-bred politeness, pity, curiosity and fear. Suddenly he jumped and grabbed a large knife from his belt. As we passed he cocked his arm and threw the knife at us breaking the back window of our vehicle. The knife landed harmlessly in the back and I thought *whew* as we continued to drive on. But then, the man began to run with amazing speed (especially for having a wooden leg) and easily caught up with us, climbed on the back, reached through the broken window, grabbed the knife and looked at me with hatred and murder as he crawled toward me, surely to kill me.
I awoke in sweat and fear; I didn't dare move or turn my head in case he was in the bedroom. I have never forgotten this most-vivid dream nor have I ever tried to manipulate them again.
Oh, and mom, if you're reading this, Thanks A Lot! And, while on the subject, thanks for giving me Stephen King's Nightshift anthology when I was in seventh grade. I still get the creeps at closet doors that don't quite shut. Sheesh....
Thanks for the answer. Along with the AC, I recommend a legible "spoof" link to clearly mark your page as satire. Just in the small print at the very bottom, perhaps. Anyway, nice job.
I checked it with Firebird, first. Very cool. Tell me, please, how long did you spend (1) thinking about doing this and (2) doing this? How many people have hit your page?
That is fantastic. Too bad your entire existing assest base and future earings will go to satsify the judgement MS will win agaist you. Thanks for a surreal experience, though.
good point, actually.
One day I tried the Cygwin/KDE3 project at SourceForge. It works fairly well. Using the "minimal" login script works best for me. Why bother? I like to use Konqueror for testing HTML output in addition to Firebird and the required IE6 browser.
Cygwin gives me a familiar command line and KDE gives me more applications (though not all work well -- for example, KMail doesn't work for me).
It helps to have a P4 3.06 GHz laptop with 1GB RAM...but then I'm running (simultaneously): MySQL 4 with 1.5 GB database for development testing, JBoss 3.2.3 with Tomcat, Apache 2, Apache JAMES, WinCVS, 3 multi-tab sessions of Firebird, 3 IE6 windows, cygwin with xinetd services deployed (mainly to run hotwayd to automatically download Hotmail email), TextPad with 80-90 commonly referenced files in my workspace, 3 session of VIM (one holding HOSTS for switching between local and internet access on demand), a few memory-grabbing sessions of Acrobat for different documentation I commonly refer to, Outlook 2000 with SpamBayes plugin to filter the junk from Hotmail and my slashdot@rjamestaylor.com address, Gaim for my various IM accounts and IRC locations, pagent to allow easy forwarding to various systems, VNC, OpenOffice.org launcher, ACT Sidekick, and, when needed, KDE with Konqueror. I've cut down; until recently I also ran IIS, SQL Server 2000, GreatPlains 7.1 and .NET Studio 2003 Enterprise.
Yesterday I started looking to max out the RAM at 2GB....Dell is selling the 1GB PC2700 333MHz DDR 200-pin SODIMMs (128x64) for about $670 a piece...anyone know of a better deal?
And a MySQL query just failed with "MySQL Client out of memory" ("select * from blobs"). *Sigh*
I doubt it. More like it would be: what is it, does it infringe, if it does, what's the remedy -- removal -- here's the deadline for removal, removed.
So, don't be like the other idiots who responded to this post and argue "ya but I could claim every atom infringes in just one line!" Sheesh.
Of course, I'm referring to actual court case with actual plaintiffs who think they actually have an actual case of actual infringement of actual property by an actual defendant, not a sham case used as a springboard for a publicity campaign with the goal of stock market manipulation.
Please, oh please, oh please, may this be a leak of the actual documents! Please! :)
Your asinine reply supposes that such would qualify as "evidence."
60x60 = 3600 lines. Single space.
A far cry from millions (*raised pinky*).
April Fools and "beginning of 2nd Qtr 2004" -- both are cruel jokes. When programmers give delivery dates beyond 6 weeks it means they don't really know when they'll be finished. And companies making promises with "Qtr of" references are hoping and/or stalling.
- What's your favorite Linux distribution? BSD, RedHat or SuSE?
Anyway, the perception that Free UNIX == Linux is fairly common.Oh, of course I told him that BSD is dying... :)
Did I mention I haven't slept all week?
- Apparently the GIMP is finally adding CYMK support, for those of you working in the print world.
Whew! What with PhotoSTOP and all I wasn't sure how I could keep the boss happy with his funny money needs. Things sure work out in mysterious ways. Whew!Did I mention I haven't slept this week?
Silly, silly. IBM dictates what its vendors will use to interchange data and documents with it. Do you think Walmart cares one bit that it requires any vendore working with it to use EDI? Since, oh, 1990 as I recall. IBM requisition manager: "I'm sorry but you sent your proposal in MS WorDRM 2005, which we can't open. We went with your competitor who used Vim 6.2 to prepare their proposal, per our RFP. LoveYaGottaGoBuhBye."
Speaking of Intel, has anyone heard Intel pipe up and chide SCO over iBCS 1/2 in relation to the "header files" infringement claimss? Hmm. Didn't think so. MS, Sun and Intel are screwed.
Off topic, I laugh everytime I think how close Sun came to joining the Eclipse project. In my mind the scenario goes like this:
and are duly impressed -- a quality
Open Source project producing a tool with
admirable Java support; they see an
opportunity to leverage the community's help
in providing a truly useful IDE (and more).
Talks begin, things start moving and word gets
out in the public about Sun's interest
in the project.
So, one day the matter rises
to McNeely's office where he blows his
top and says, "What the hell are you
thinking!? Don't you know what an 'Eclipse'
is? Do you think they named it that by
ACCIDENT? Out! GET OUT of my &*%^(*# OFFICE!"
Did I mention I haven't slept this week?