I think it is the reverse/. effect since Drudge linked back to/. on the article about Doom III being linked.
That explains my productivity loss today. . . in the process of switching back and forth between Drudge and Slashdot I got stuck in the Drudge-to-Slashdot link and couldn't break out of the loop. Damn.
Similar experience here. ..I sat in a broken chair (honest!) and when I finally realized I was on the floor with my laptop I worried that the Orinoco Silver sticking out from the left side caught something. It did: the motherboard was toast. Went to a certified Toshiba repair center, told them my story and the next day I picked up my system with a new motherboard. No cost. I even told them about the fall. And, no, I didn't buy the extended warranty.
Then, 9 months later, something else (I forget) went wrong and I needed another motherboard replacement. Different shop this time, but same experience: no hassle. Best service I've ever experienced with computer products (well, besides IBM, to be honest. ..).
I'm still enjoying (and currently using) my Toshiba Satellite 2805-201s I bought Feb 2001. I've replaced the motherboard twice under warranty (exact trade, unforunately; still running the 650 MHz SpeedStep). I've maxed the memory and changed the HD. ..oh and replaced WinME with Windows 2000/Linux 2.4.x, both of which run much better than WinME on this baby.
I switched to a TiBook G4 for a while (see my journal) but switched back to the Toshiba -- I saw the TiBook today with the designer I sold it too; it's running 10.2 now and has 1 GB RAM and runs so much faster than when I had it (768 MB and 10.1.5), but I still prefer the Toshiba.
SpeedStep was a clearly-explained technology when I bought my 2805. It's hard to believe that a reasonable person would have missed it before purchasing it. That said, unless I'm in the single-seat library or similarly indisposed I'm plugged in. Especially for initial boot of the OS and GUI. . .
My network is also a Linux-controlled domain running qmail (the E-Smith-Server distribution). We were hit by the "EULA-worm" last week and I decided that it was time to institute server-side controls. Doing a quick search for qmail compatible products I settled on RAV Anti Virus. There's a free 30-day trial for 2 domains. I like it. Very customizable configuration, though proprietary and closed source. It handles spam (to and from us, which is nice), content control (through regexp and/or keywords; for example, "sales projections" to outside domains. ..), and anti-virus protection.
A couple of us around here have been assigned to create direct mail programs and some of these programs, while initially billed as using strictly Opt-In, degraded into Opt-Out and even eventually into a simple spamfest. I admit I sent out two groups of "spam" (though clearly marked according to California regulations, blah, blah) on behalf of a failing employer. I have to admit: it was fun to do (one was for a legitimate product the other was for a MLM, the Amway web effort) and we had fun optimizing the script to pump out more spam. But the list we were given was complete junk! Over 2 million addresses (took a while to load into MySQL from the CSV file)--including my own father's email address! It also included harvested email from die.net. Ever tried to send mail to die.net? It's a great honeypot/tarbaby for spammers. But 2 campaigns were enough for my conscience (we sent less than 500,000 total messages).
When asked to make a Flash/Windows multimedia program that could automatically extract email addresses from a users machine and send them to a central server--on behalf of serious players in the music industry no less--a couple of us around here drew the line and said "no". [The couple of us I keep refering to no longer work for the slimebucket that wanted to move spyware to a new level in exchange for listening to HipHop tracks.]
Anyway, when complaining about spam realize that someone with technical know-how enabled the peabrain spammer to do his evil.
A website is not covered by the ADA because the ADA covers only physical places; but the next argument may be that the covered entity is the computer manufacturer who provides the physical location for commerce without enabling the disabled properly: it may be that the Computer manufacturer is responsible for not accomodating their customers by working around your *#^@ site design!
Or, not. . . maybe it's October and my seasonal depression is kicking in. . .
As I click "Read more..." on this story about Apple pulling out of Boston MacWorld, I see a largish flash add in Fall tones (yellow and orange) proclaiming:
Your future is at COMDEX.
"Like ra-aain on your raindance ceremony. .."
Re:I dont understand how they could have missed th
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Precisely. As one who was born in 1967 (making me a Gen X'er, to my honest surprise) that our generation is wrecked is Bullcrap. Life is a series of choices. That some ditched classes and formal education for dot-bom (or even just DeVry) was a choice.
I almost made the mistake of missing a broad education until my employer told me in 1992, after working for him for 2 years on hiatus from Univerity of North Texas, "If you had a degree I'd have to pay you twice what I pay you now." I enrolled that month in University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in 1994 with a BS-InfoSys. Now I'm married, two kids and am the CTO of a small pharmaceutical. I run on Linux where possible and Windows when it makes business sense. My salary has also gone up, steadily, every year since college--but I avoided the easy money and harsh lifestyle of dot-com startups. A series of choices.
You wanna know about a real, bonifide wrecked generation that was born between 1966 and 1976? Try Cambodia. My wife was born in 1967 in Cambodia and her entire culture, livelyhood, and many of her family were lost to the Khmer Rouge communists and genicidal elitists. Awwww. ..our portfolios are wrecked. ..damn. What about the Killing Fields? Yet, instead of whinning like spoilt brats, my wife's family (a mother and 4 children; her father was killed) immigrated to the US out of a refugee camp in Thailand. Now all the children are successful professionals (the youngest is finishing college) and productive members of society.
What a stupid generation I belong to. Thinking that the baby boomers wrecked it for us and we're worse off than all that have gone before us. Yet, I think not everyone in my generation whines and complains. It's just that we're too busy making good, or at least, careful choices to be noticed.
Our offices are in Santa Ana. We're a mixed shop--using Linux where appropriate (like file serving, email, DNS, webmail) and using Windows where best fits (mid-level MRP application server).
What's really scary are places in Irvine that are hard-a$$ MS shops. Frieghtening.
Perhaps. Drop me a line with your CV and what you wanna do (put something appropriate in the subject line 'cause I send all unknown email to the Bulk Mail folder by default on this Hotmail account -- way too much junk mail for heuristic spam killers to make much of an impact; I scan the bulk folder quickly before emptying it, so make it obvious).
see Art Bell. If it's weird and implies alien life, it's there.
(if you recall the Heaven's Gate mass exodus to join the "companion" of Hale-Bopp, it was Art Bell's program that reported the possibility of the companion to the comet)
Thanks for the links. I was thinking that TheBrain reminds me a lot of early AltaVista search technology. I used to use the visual tool quiet often. . . until I found Google which beat the graphical interface by its simplicity and accuracy.
This is a hard-to-believe-it's-serious "question." But, assuming it is a legitimate request for input, I'd say this: the dying web start-ups are the least likely to realize they are dying. The reason they're dying is lost on the managers/owners who are true believers in the business model, regardless how much it's tied to a sock puppet, and believe that this last round of funding will be a success as Warren Buffet finally "gets it" and sinks his wad in the idea. You see, the start up is failing because those directing it lack the foresight and objectivity to realize that it is a failed proposition.
I've seen this up close and personal. A partner company was in a "final round" of financing and could not believe it fell short of funding by the price of a nice car. What it did not realize is that the technology, while excellently engineered, was dated and similar applications developed today could be deployed, maintained, customized, etc., at a fraction of the time and engineering cost of their product. It was painful to watch. But one thing became clear: those in the companies that end up on the frontpage of FC are the only ones surprised.
Good point. You know, the article title really should be "Insecurity as a Profit Center?". because Microsoft charging to fix the massive holes created by years of "not targeting a secure system" never need be addressed.
Develop insecure software
Piss off script kiddies
Take heat from customers
. ..
Profit!
Microsoft: turning elipses into profitable business models.
I concur. I love Linux and am using it now to write this post, but saying that MS' serious OS offerings are crap is untrue. I'm the CTO of a small pharmaceutical mfg and recently discovered that previous techies put critical processes on Windows 98 desktop computers. Naturally there were problems with mystery failures and downtime--but then Windows 98 isn't a serious operating system. These machines were new circa 1998 (Dell and Gateway desktops) and are slow running Win98. I took two of these machines and upgraded them to Windows 2000 Pro. It was simple, painless and all the hardware, printers, NICs, etc., work as expected. Also, these machines sit by themselves and perform their critical tasks without any downtime as yet. What was unexpected is that the machines are faster with Win2kPro than Win98.
I also upgraded (though MS says it's not possible) my Toshiba 2805-201s from WinME (Aaaaaiiiiieeeee! Help!) to Win2kPro.It, too, runs faster and much, much, oh my goodness, much more stable than WinME (Windows Masochist Edition).
However, right now I'm using my Toshiba with RH 8.0. ..fantastic. PCMCIA Orinoco Silver recognized and configured on the fly, sound working nicely, one apparent problem with APMD (when I pulled the plug the power shut off even though the battery was full; thank goodness for EXT3; no problem starting the machine in battery mode and I have had the guts to pull the plug yet today (but I will after this post). Oh, one note: I can't find the KAPMD application on the menus. No power management at all on the default Bluecurve menus. ..that's disconcerting but I'll look into it. But overall, RH 8 is fast, faster than Win2kPro and WinME on the same hardware. The fonts are generally beautiful, but suck badly with Mozilla and OpenOffice. Konq's fonts are beautiful as usual. Overall, I'm a happy camper. I'd be even happier with the ability to "Map Network Drives" like Windows -- not for me! -- so that my corporate users could possibly make the switch to Linux, too.
This 92688 resident not only uses Linux (as well as Windows 2000 and XP) but runs his companies web application on a RedHat server over at Rackspace.com. There aren't a lot of Linux/Perl people in OC, but there should be.
You forgot the main reason IE is great: it has an overwhelming adoption rate among business users. Sure, IE has problems with W3C Recommendations such as DOM and CSS, et al. However, for years now (since late 4.x and by early 5.0x IE versions) businesses have settled on IE. Intranet, B2B, Extranet applications have been written specifying MS IE (and usually on Windows). It's not the "Committee" Standard--it's the de facto standard. I may desire to create web applications cross browser and may spend the time and sweat necessary to make sure that all pages and features work or degrade gracefully for all browsers on all platforms, but I only get paid to make it work on MSIE running on Windows.
I'm writing this using Konqueror 3.03-13 on RedHat 8.0. I prefer Linux. (I switched to OS X and switched back to Windows/Linux). I have no bias toward MS or IE, nor any against Moz or Konq or Opera or the W3C.
The adoption rate among business users is the key reason IE is the target browser for web designers today. AOL probably had a lot to do with that, too. We'll see if AOL can switch the target back to the standards. I think, rather, AOL using Gecko in its service software will push for MSIE compliance in Mozilla development. Perhaps as an obscure option. I guarantee if that happened--if Mozilla developers added a "MSIE" compatibility mode to Mozilla, the adoption rate of Mozilla would increase dramatically. Something to consider. . .
I hope you realized that I was being sarcastic; then again, you probably are being so, too, for not even META tags are meant for search engine spiking in the recommendations, though they're used for such.
Yes-though you're not the first to ask. I was asked once before but the asker decided against it for fear of legal reprecussions. Satire is protected, IMHO.
Just credit RJamesTaylor on Slashdot. Good enough.
This reminds me of a little doodle I did with MS Photo* (forgot the name) back in 1999..."We Bend Rules. Do you? Need some rules bent? Click here--Law.com".
I wasn't trying to make a spoof banner ad that nailed the ethics of the legal profession, but there ya go.
Signs of someone working in a company about to hit the front page of FC:
1) Utter lack of self-esteem 2) Being in debt to the hilt 3) Stock options in leiu of cash 4) Being the last man standing in your department 5) Trolling/. 6) Being penniless 7) Working for cliche'-spouting managers 8) Belief in conspiracy theories 9) Fatalism 10) Writing a 10-point humor post at 9:19 AM!
Slashdot Mirror
Just like the difference between toe jam and toejamb! OUCH!
- I think it is the reverse
/. effect since Drudge linked back to /. on the article about Doom III being linked.
That explains my productivity loss today. . . in the process of switching back and forth between Drudge and Slashdot I got stuck in the Drudge-to-Slashdot link and couldn't break out of the loop. Damn.Then, 9 months later, something else (I forget) went wrong and I needed another motherboard replacement. Different shop this time, but same experience: no hassle. Best service I've ever experienced with computer products (well, besides IBM, to be honest. . .).
I switched to a TiBook G4 for a while (see my journal) but switched back to the Toshiba -- I saw the TiBook today with the designer I sold it too; it's running 10.2 now and has 1 GB RAM and runs so much faster than when I had it (768 MB and 10.1.5), but I still prefer the Toshiba.
SpeedStep was a clearly-explained technology when I bought my 2805. It's hard to believe that a reasonable person would have missed it before purchasing it. That said, unless I'm in the single-seat library or similarly indisposed I'm plugged in. Especially for initial boot of the OS and GUI. . .
Give it a whirl.
- Direct Marketers Association
- Asks To Be Regulated
At least they can opt-in. .A couple of us around here have been assigned to create direct mail programs and some of these programs, while initially billed as using strictly Opt-In, degraded into Opt-Out and even eventually into a simple spamfest. I admit I sent out two groups of "spam" (though clearly marked according to California regulations, blah, blah) on behalf of a failing employer. I have to admit: it was fun to do (one was for a legitimate product the other was for a MLM, the Amway web effort) and we had fun optimizing the script to pump out more spam. But the list we were given was complete junk! Over 2 million addresses (took a while to load into MySQL from the CSV file)--including my own father's email address! It also included harvested email from die.net. Ever tried to send mail to die.net? It's a great honeypot/tarbaby for spammers. But 2 campaigns were enough for my conscience (we sent less than 500,000 total messages).
When asked to make a Flash/Windows multimedia program that could automatically extract email addresses from a users machine and send them to a central server--on behalf of serious players in the music industry no less--a couple of us around here drew the line and said "no". [The couple of us I keep refering to no longer work for the slimebucket that wanted to move spyware to a new level in exchange for listening to HipHop tracks.]
Anyway, when complaining about spam realize that someone with technical know-how enabled the peabrain spammer to do his evil.
Or, not. . . maybe it's October and my seasonal depression is kicking in. . .
"Like ra-aain on your raindance ceremony. . ."
I almost made the mistake of missing a broad education until my employer told me in 1992, after working for him for 2 years on hiatus from Univerity of North Texas, "If you had a degree I'd have to pay you twice what I pay you now." I enrolled that month in University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in 1994 with a BS-InfoSys. Now I'm married, two kids and am the CTO of a small pharmaceutical. I run on Linux where possible and Windows when it makes business sense. My salary has also gone up, steadily, every year since college--but I avoided the easy money and harsh lifestyle of dot-com startups. A series of choices.
You wanna know about a real, bonifide wrecked generation that was born between 1966 and 1976? Try Cambodia. My wife was born in 1967 in Cambodia and her entire culture, livelyhood, and many of her family were lost to the Khmer Rouge communists and genicidal elitists. Awwww. . .our portfolios are wrecked. . .damn. What about the Killing Fields? Yet, instead of whinning like spoilt brats, my wife's family (a mother and 4 children; her father was killed) immigrated to the US out of a refugee camp in Thailand. Now all the children are successful professionals (the youngest is finishing college) and productive members of society.
What a stupid generation I belong to. Thinking that the baby boomers wrecked it for us and we're worse off than all that have gone before us. Yet, I think not everyone in my generation whines and complains. It's just that we're too busy making good, or at least, careful choices to be noticed.
What's really scary are places in Irvine that are hard-a$$ MS shops. Frieghtening.
Perhaps. Drop me a line with your CV and what you wanna do (put something appropriate in the subject line 'cause I send all unknown email to the Bulk Mail folder by default on this Hotmail account -- way too much junk mail for heuristic spam killers to make much of an impact; I scan the bulk folder quickly before emptying it, so make it obvious).
(if you recall the Heaven's Gate mass exodus to join the "companion" of Hale-Bopp, it was Art Bell's program that reported the possibility of the companion to the comet)
Thanks for the links. I was thinking that TheBrain reminds me a lot of early AltaVista search technology. I used to use the visual tool quiet often. . . until I found Google which beat the graphical interface by its simplicity and accuracy.
This is a hard-to-believe-it's-serious "question." But, assuming it is a legitimate request for input, I'd say this: the dying web start-ups are the least likely to realize they are dying. The reason they're dying is lost on the managers/owners who are true believers in the business model, regardless how much it's tied to a sock puppet, and believe that this last round of funding will be a success as Warren Buffet finally "gets it" and sinks his wad in the idea. You see, the start up is failing because those directing it lack the foresight and objectivity to realize that it is a failed proposition.
I've seen this up close and personal. A partner company was in a "final round" of financing and could not believe it fell short of funding by the price of a nice car. What it did not realize is that the technology, while excellently engineered, was dated and similar applications developed today could be deployed, maintained, customized, etc., at a fraction of the time and engineering cost of their product. It was painful to watch. But one thing became clear: those in the companies that end up on the frontpage of FC are the only ones surprised.
- It was stored in a jar filled with some sort of oil (so it wouldn't react).
Kerosene- At the last place I worked
You don't even consider Future-media.com/ATNSolutions.com a place you once worked, do you? I don't refer to it, either.- Develop insecure software
- Piss off script kiddies
- Take heat from customers
- . .
. - Profit!
Microsoft: turning elipses into profitable business models.I also upgraded (though MS says it's not possible) my Toshiba 2805-201s from WinME (Aaaaaiiiiieeeee! Help!) to Win2kPro.It, too, runs faster and much, much, oh my goodness, much more stable than WinME (Windows Masochist Edition).
However, right now I'm using my Toshiba with RH 8.0. . .fantastic. PCMCIA Orinoco Silver recognized and configured on the fly, sound working nicely, one apparent problem with APMD (when I pulled the plug the power shut off even though the battery was full; thank goodness for EXT3; no problem starting the machine in battery mode and I have had the guts to pull the plug yet today (but I will after this post). Oh, one note: I can't find the KAPMD application on the menus. No power management at all on the default Bluecurve menus. . .that's disconcerting but I'll look into it. But overall, RH 8 is fast, faster than Win2kPro and WinME on the same hardware. The fonts are generally beautiful, but suck badly with Mozilla and OpenOffice. Konq's fonts are beautiful as usual. Overall, I'm a happy camper. I'd be even happier with the ability to "Map Network Drives" like Windows -- not for me! -- so that my corporate users could possibly make the switch to Linux, too.
This 92688 resident not only uses Linux (as well as Windows 2000 and XP) but runs his companies web application on a RedHat server over at Rackspace.com. There aren't a lot of Linux/Perl people in OC, but there should be.
I'm writing this using Konqueror 3.03-13 on RedHat 8.0. I prefer Linux. (I switched to OS X and switched back to Windows/Linux). I have no bias toward MS or IE, nor any against Moz or Konq or Opera or the W3C.
The adoption rate among business users is the key reason IE is the target browser for web designers today. AOL probably had a lot to do with that, too. We'll see if AOL can switch the target back to the standards. I think, rather, AOL using Gecko in its service software will push for MSIE compliance in Mozilla development. Perhaps as an obscure option. I guarantee if that happened--if Mozilla developers added a "MSIE" compatibility mode to Mozilla, the adoption rate of Mozilla would increase dramatically. Something to consider. . .
I hope you realized that I was being sarcastic; then again, you probably are being so, too, for not even META tags are meant for search engine spiking in the recommendations, though they're used for such.
Funny, I thought the tags were for scamming rankings on search engines. . .
Just credit RJamesTaylor on Slashdot. Good enough.
I wasn't trying to make a spoof banner ad that nailed the ethics of the legal profession, but there ya go.
Signs of someone working in a company about to hit the front page of FC:
/.
1) Utter lack of self-esteem
2) Being in debt to the hilt
3) Stock options in leiu of cash
4) Being the last man standing in your department
5) Trolling
6) Being penniless
7) Working for cliche'-spouting managers
8) Belief in conspiracy theories
9) Fatalism
10) Writing a 10-point humor post at 9:19 AM!