The time: Five years ago.
The place: An unknown cave in Afghanastan.
OSAMA BIN LADEN is sitting in a chair, reading a book. In comes MULLAH MOHAMMED OMAR.
OMAR: Osama, are you still reading that Tom Clancy book?
BIN LADEN: Yes, I'm almost done. Ryan's about to be confirmed as vice president! But wait, what's this Japanese pilot doing?
OMAR: Well, what's happening? You look so excited!
BIN LADEN: Get the boys together. We've got some planning to do!
Folks, anybody who thinks video games should be banned because of Columbine should be asked if books should be banned because of the Debt of Honor/September 11 tie in.
Rogers is great, but the wait times do suck. I remember one time, I stayed on hold for two and a half hours. Hung up, went and did something, and decided, on a whim, to call back; it was about 15 minutes later.
A real live person picked up on the second ring, and fixed my problem in 12 seconds.
8) Customers have unreasonable expectations about what tech support can and cannot do for them. Quite a few people call tech support when they should be paying Professional Services or the company consulting department a VERY large amount of money.
9) Many 'higher ups' assume that tech support don't know how to do their jobs; at a lot of companies, one email to a VP or so can get you thousands of dollars of consulting and product customization, after the poor tech support grunt explains that no, they can't write code for the customer. Examples of certain things, maybe, but no, not entire modules.
10) Most tech support departments aren't run as teams; Mary might know that anybody using OS A with software version B is going to get problem X, which is resolved by doing action Y, but if Mary cannot communicate this to the other techs, what's the point?
11) The customer is NOT always right. Managers need to back their techs up. I've personally spent DAYS repeating 'you're missing a semi-colon in your config file' to a given customer, only to have them escalated all the way up to the president, who sends a LEAD DEVELOPER to the site, who calls three minutes after going on-site, and says 'They had a semi-colon missing in their config file.'
12) Rein in your sales people. I've suggested time and time again that every call a tech support grunt takes, where the customer is irate because a product doesn't do X, but were LIED TO by the sales person involved, should result in the sales commission being taken away from the sales person, and given back to the client.
13) QA should be run side by side with tech support. QA often has REAMS of data on known issues, that tech support people wind up hearing about from customers, and spending weeks tracking down.
14) QA should be held accountable for BASIC FLAWS that are let through testing. And yes, developers should be held accountable for BASIC FLAWS that are in code that has been marked 'complete' and issued to QA, unless QA routinely handles non-complete code. Nothing sucks more than the deluge of calls that you get for the first month after a new release, as people call up and start explaining that half of the New Features! bullet points are simply wrong.
I've not read the Xbox book, but if you liked Game Over, two others to try are Revolutionaries at Sony, which is about the Playstation, and Renegades Against The Empire, which is the story of DirectX.
This isn't streaming sound and music for Internet broadcasting. It's an audio codec, that HAPPENS to include provisions for streaming over a packet network.
In regards to the standards bodies, there are really two well known ones, the IETF and the W3C.
Why, pray tell, would you try to submit an audio codec to the Internet Engineering Task Force, or the World Wide Web Consortium? Why not submit it to one of the 'really well known' and yet APPROPRIATE standards bodies?
Ok. So to extend your nicely detailed analogy, as new technologies are designed, they become options, then, the 'standard' bit, then 'required' bits, by convention if not by law.
For example, turn signals. Gosh, they seem bloody obvious now, but originally, a car was required, in some areas, to stop at an intersection, fire a pistol into the air, and announce loudly where they were going. Or automatic transmission. Or mufflers. And so on.
So, where to draw the line? Is a TCP/IP stack 'essential' in this day and age, or do you want to spend an extra 200 bucks on Trumpet Winsock? Ok, if TCP/IP is required, what about protocol tools? FTP, telnet, ping, traceroute, nslookup. Well, in this day and age, if a computer cannot plug in and surf the web, then as far as I'm concerned, it's not 'functional.'
And at that point, but what process can something else be declared as having moved from 'nice to have' to 'essential.' And how much functionality can a built-in version have?
What if somebody suddenly writes a competitor to NTFS, and claims that Microsoft is illegally tying the NT OS to NTFS?
Windows itself should NOT be touched by ANYTHING that's going on. Illegally forcing OEMs to install windows, and nothing but windows? Fine, write laws against that. But don't touch Windows itself.
This is so that when some sales drone brings his virus-laden laptop in, and plugs it into the network, it can't hose the desktops securely nuzzled in behind your corporate firewalls.
No. You use the 'central policy server' to set up the firewall firmware. The CPS then shoots that config out to the various NICs.
Or do you want to wander from desktop to desktop with a floppy or a printout every freaking time your policies change?
Both things you mention aren't consumer-grade, however. Much like Embedded XP isn't designed for average use.
When you buy a car, you expect that the engine that's pre-installed is going to operate to a certain degree. If you install your own, you better be a damn good mechanic.
If Microsoft is forced to put out a modularized OS, then what I fully expect the gov't to do is to define exactly WHAT an OS is allowed to do by itself, and that everything else should be modularized. Then, I expect those laws to apply to ANY operating system. Period.
Oh, look, we're back to DOS. Great. So much for buying any old periphrial and dropping it in. So much for a consistant UI. So much for having basic utilities there, like the guy in a differnet slashdot story who wondered aloud why Windows didn't have a built-in postscript viewer.
But the car itself IS sold to you with all the bits. It comes with engine, tires, radio, A/C, transmission, seats, gauges, and so on. You're welcome to strip them out yourself, but the car company certainly won't support that, unless you decide to upgrade with other company parts.
Probably because he's reiterating what he's been saying all along; of *course* it's possible, but it's neither feasable nor commercially viable. Just like it's *possible* to sell a 'modular car' it would be insane.
Re:Best Buy = Best Fraud
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2
Electronics Boutique used to have such a policy; 'refund or exchange on any game, so long as all the bits are there, 10 days after purchase, no questions asked.'
It was great; you could buy a game, and if it sucked, or you beat it in three days, or whatever, you could return it and get a new one.
This was, of course, horribly abused, and is no longer their policy.
Yup. If you didn't sign anything to gain admission to the store, they have no legal ability to search you, unless they press theft charges.
And feel free to laugh at any signs that say things like 'we reserve the right to search all bags, purses, blah blah blah' becuase, well, it's REALLY REALLY hard to reserve a right that one never had in the first place.
And if they try to stop you, threaten to call the cops, just pull your cell phone and calmly announce that you're calling 911, in an attempt to stop a threatened assault. If they want to search your clothes, even a jacket, tack the word 'sexual' on there.
why not just bundle a damn interpreter with the OS and have a minimal frontend on it for screen viewing?
Gee, wouldn't that be illegally using their monopoly to muscle out third party developers? Why, if the OS had a PS viewer built in, nobody would every buy one! Businesses would go bankrupt!
Yeah, you'd be correct, if it wasn't for the fact that the patch was available for OVER A MONTH before code red EVER hit the scene.
The blame lies squarely on people NOT MAINTINAING THEIR OWN MACHINES. Much like, say, GM would never be blamed for a family who died in a horrible accident after recieveing a recall notice, and ignoring it.
Microsoft THEN took steps by turning Windows Update on, by default, in XP Home, and, predictably, everybody started crying because it's an invasion of privacy, and it takes choice away from the user.
And yes, I know it's not for real. But the frightening part is, it's not that far from.
There were, after all, Christian sects trying to get most Disney movies banned. Beauty and the Beast, for example. For similar reasons; black magic, beastiality, tools of the devil, blah blah blah.
But for a lot of people, it is.
The other problem is that George is a revisionist. A heavy revisionist, who buys his own hype.
Case in point? Lightsabres. "Lets make Luke's lightsabre in RotJ green, so it stands out against the desert."
"Hey! Luke has a green lightsabre! So does Qui Gon! Does that mean that blue lightsabres are for good, red for evil, and green for those who are in between?"
"Umm..I'm not telling! *nod wink*"
The UNIX model is to log in remotely, and run everything locally.
The Windows 2000 model is to log in locally, and point the admin tools on the local machine to the remote one, and play with it through RPC.
Actually, if blizzard doesn't find that agreement to their liking, it's because they're fully aware of the fact that the code's been GPLed, and although they can issue any new code under a new license, the code that's already out there is, well, already out there.
Or, even better, you can happily use a licensed cable descrambler to watch all the cable you want. And although building your own cable descrambler probably isn't illegal, using it to descramble shows is.
Slashdot Mirror
The time: Five years ago. The place: An unknown cave in Afghanastan. OSAMA BIN LADEN is sitting in a chair, reading a book. In comes MULLAH MOHAMMED OMAR. OMAR: Osama, are you still reading that Tom Clancy book?
BIN LADEN: Yes, I'm almost done. Ryan's about to be confirmed as vice president! But wait, what's this Japanese pilot doing?
OMAR: Well, what's happening? You look so excited!
BIN LADEN: Get the boys together. We've got some planning to do! Folks, anybody who thinks video games should be banned because of Columbine should be asked if books should be banned because of the Debt of Honor/September 11 tie in.
Rogers is great, but the wait times do suck. I remember one time, I stayed on hold for two and a half hours. Hung up, went and did something, and decided, on a whim, to call back; it was about 15 minutes later. A real live person picked up on the second ring, and fixed my problem in 12 seconds.
8) Customers have unreasonable expectations about what tech support can and cannot do for them. Quite a few people call tech support when they should be paying Professional Services or the company consulting department a VERY large amount of money. 9) Many 'higher ups' assume that tech support don't know how to do their jobs; at a lot of companies, one email to a VP or so can get you thousands of dollars of consulting and product customization, after the poor tech support grunt explains that no, they can't write code for the customer. Examples of certain things, maybe, but no, not entire modules. 10) Most tech support departments aren't run as teams; Mary might know that anybody using OS A with software version B is going to get problem X, which is resolved by doing action Y, but if Mary cannot communicate this to the other techs, what's the point? 11) The customer is NOT always right. Managers need to back their techs up. I've personally spent DAYS repeating 'you're missing a semi-colon in your config file' to a given customer, only to have them escalated all the way up to the president, who sends a LEAD DEVELOPER to the site, who calls three minutes after going on-site, and says 'They had a semi-colon missing in their config file.' 12) Rein in your sales people. I've suggested time and time again that every call a tech support grunt takes, where the customer is irate because a product doesn't do X, but were LIED TO by the sales person involved, should result in the sales commission being taken away from the sales person, and given back to the client. 13) QA should be run side by side with tech support. QA often has REAMS of data on known issues, that tech support people wind up hearing about from customers, and spending weeks tracking down. 14) QA should be held accountable for BASIC FLAWS that are let through testing. And yes, developers should be held accountable for BASIC FLAWS that are in code that has been marked 'complete' and issued to QA, unless QA routinely handles non-complete code. Nothing sucks more than the deluge of calls that you get for the first month after a new release, as people call up and start explaining that half of the New Features! bullet points are simply wrong.
The Xbox is 'mid way' between a computer and a console.
I've not read the Xbox book, but if you liked Game Over, two others to try are Revolutionaries at Sony, which is about the Playstation, and Renegades Against The Empire, which is the story of DirectX.
1: Why don't you actually have any plans listed?
2: Why so much flash on the index site?
3: Why a clock?
This isn't streaming sound and music for Internet broadcasting. It's an audio codec, that HAPPENS to include provisions for streaming over a packet network.
Ok. So to extend your nicely detailed analogy, as new technologies are designed, they become options, then, the 'standard' bit, then 'required' bits, by convention if not by law. For example, turn signals. Gosh, they seem bloody obvious now, but originally, a car was required, in some areas, to stop at an intersection, fire a pistol into the air, and announce loudly where they were going. Or automatic transmission. Or mufflers. And so on. So, where to draw the line? Is a TCP/IP stack 'essential' in this day and age, or do you want to spend an extra 200 bucks on Trumpet Winsock? Ok, if TCP/IP is required, what about protocol tools? FTP, telnet, ping, traceroute, nslookup. Well, in this day and age, if a computer cannot plug in and surf the web, then as far as I'm concerned, it's not 'functional.' And at that point, but what process can something else be declared as having moved from 'nice to have' to 'essential.' And how much functionality can a built-in version have? What if somebody suddenly writes a competitor to NTFS, and claims that Microsoft is illegally tying the NT OS to NTFS? Windows itself should NOT be touched by ANYTHING that's going on. Illegally forcing OEMs to install windows, and nothing but windows? Fine, write laws against that. But don't touch Windows itself.
This is so that when some sales drone brings his virus-laden laptop in, and plugs it into the network, it can't hose the desktops securely nuzzled in behind your corporate firewalls.
No. You use the 'central policy server' to set up the firewall firmware. The CPS then shoots that config out to the various NICs. Or do you want to wander from desktop to desktop with a floppy or a printout every freaking time your policies change?
Both things you mention aren't consumer-grade, however. Much like Embedded XP isn't designed for average use. When you buy a car, you expect that the engine that's pre-installed is going to operate to a certain degree. If you install your own, you better be a damn good mechanic. If Microsoft is forced to put out a modularized OS, then what I fully expect the gov't to do is to define exactly WHAT an OS is allowed to do by itself, and that everything else should be modularized. Then, I expect those laws to apply to ANY operating system. Period. Oh, look, we're back to DOS. Great. So much for buying any old periphrial and dropping it in. So much for a consistant UI. So much for having basic utilities there, like the guy in a differnet slashdot story who wondered aloud why Windows didn't have a built-in postscript viewer.
But the car itself IS sold to you with all the bits. It comes with engine, tires, radio, A/C, transmission, seats, gauges, and so on. You're welcome to strip them out yourself, but the car company certainly won't support that, unless you decide to upgrade with other company parts.
Probably because he's reiterating what he's been saying all along; of *course* it's possible, but it's neither feasable nor commercially viable. Just like it's *possible* to sell a 'modular car' it would be insane.
Electronics Boutique used to have such a policy; 'refund or exchange on any game, so long as all the bits are there, 10 days after purchase, no questions asked.' It was great; you could buy a game, and if it sucked, or you beat it in three days, or whatever, you could return it and get a new one. This was, of course, horribly abused, and is no longer their policy.
Yup. If you didn't sign anything to gain admission to the store, they have no legal ability to search you, unless they press theft charges. And feel free to laugh at any signs that say things like 'we reserve the right to search all bags, purses, blah blah blah' becuase, well, it's REALLY REALLY hard to reserve a right that one never had in the first place. And if they try to stop you, threaten to call the cops, just pull your cell phone and calmly announce that you're calling 911, in an attempt to stop a threatened assault. If they want to search your clothes, even a jacket, tack the word 'sexual' on there.
Yeah, you'd be correct, if it wasn't for the fact that the patch was available for OVER A MONTH before code red EVER hit the scene. The blame lies squarely on people NOT MAINTINAING THEIR OWN MACHINES. Much like, say, GM would never be blamed for a family who died in a horrible accident after recieveing a recall notice, and ignoring it. Microsoft THEN took steps by turning Windows Update on, by default, in XP Home, and, predictably, everybody started crying because it's an invasion of privacy, and it takes choice away from the user.
And yes, I know it's not for real. But the frightening part is, it's not that far from. There were, after all, Christian sects trying to get most Disney movies banned. Beauty and the Beast, for example. For similar reasons; black magic, beastiality, tools of the devil, blah blah blah.
But for a lot of people, it is. The other problem is that George is a revisionist. A heavy revisionist, who buys his own hype. Case in point? Lightsabres. "Lets make Luke's lightsabre in RotJ green, so it stands out against the desert." "Hey! Luke has a green lightsabre! So does Qui Gon! Does that mean that blue lightsabres are for good, red for evil, and green for those who are in between?" "Umm..I'm not telling! *nod wink*"
And people worry about the Church of Scientology....
The UNIX model is to log in remotely, and run everything locally. The Windows 2000 model is to log in locally, and point the admin tools on the local machine to the remote one, and play with it through RPC.
Actually, if blizzard doesn't find that agreement to their liking, it's because they're fully aware of the fact that the code's been GPLed, and although they can issue any new code under a new license, the code that's already out there is, well, already out there.
Or, even better, you can happily use a licensed cable descrambler to watch all the cable you want. And although building your own cable descrambler probably isn't illegal, using it to descramble shows is.