even on a saturday night they've been slashdotted.
Seriously though, unless the long promised merger of your pc with your entertainment center finally happens what use is there for a 42 inch monitor of any sort?
don't ya just love ebay....
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Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Someone points out that they have a fraud problem and they go whole hog after something completely different. Often their investigations are totally off base and only interfere with those honestly trying to do some legitmate business.
You're not allowed to sell your own music on CD-R just because it being on CD-R makes it automatically too likely to be inviolation of a copyright somewhere? This from the well-known auction site known for sellers who never really ship anything but cash your check or accept your cc payment anyway? The site where you can easily by "native american" artifacts or jewelry made in locations like mexico or china? The site where you can buy used dvds, videos or tapes at almost any time? Where you can buy stolen goods almost as easily as you can at the local flea market? Ebay needs to buy a life.
Journalists try to print articles and get sued for liabel (for printing what they researched) or get sued for revealing corporate secrets (since when is uncovering fraud or embezzelment revealing corporate secrets?) or they end up in jail for treading to close to what the government decides is "sensitive materials".
Even when they do successfully run a story, notice how the story is presented by the same slant from almost all media sources. What good does that do us?
My Russian Professor in college used to regularly speak about how here we pretended to have freedom but had none while in the Soviet Union they had very little freedom but what there was was all REAL freedom. I've heard very similar comments from immigrants from countries noted for their "human rights violations". Clearly there's a need to closely examine things here in the U.S.
I always found it quite interesting that the most vocal anti-napster groups were the soon to be totally washed-up has-beens from the early 90's. Come on, let's face it, even the stupidest 17 year old spending mommy's money on cd's knows that after a while all metallica sounds the same. When will the RIAA and their pet artists realize part of why alternative music sources succeed largely because THE LISTENER decides what songs to get and the RIAA can't force their decisions on us anymore?
A very vocal group speaking out in favor of swapping services (whether you're talking "weeds", napster, kazaa or just a recording/swapping party) is CSN. True, they've had periods where they've been much more successful and other periods when they've pretty much fallen totally off the radar, but they most certainly can't be called a one hit wonder or producer of "crap" that no one wants.
Janis did make a very smart comment "I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing: If a record executive says he will make me more money, I'd immediately protect my wallet." The RIAA doesn't want to protect anything other than its own wallet. It doesn't take much searching to find a smaller artist (not a major commercial success) or older (no longer "successful") artist who can easily show the record companies owe them what amounts to a LOT of money or that the record companies (or their reps) have successfully stolen all rights to their songs. The RIAA no intention of protecting the artists, they're just smart enough to know that they can fool a lot of schmucks by pretending to care about more than their own money and the more schmucks they fool the better their chances to win this war by BS.
Re:GNOME Hijacked to Make Way for Real Users^TM
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The Captains of Nautilus
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Someday programmers will succeed in finding the pot of gold and create a solidly stable yet totally flexible OS and apps that don't contain the bloat long associated with software like Star Office and windows. In the meantime, we "enthusiasts" need to admit that if we really do want to see linux in any of its many versions win the desktop wars, it's going to be because we've won the hearts and minds of the regular "user".
Not everyone wants to do real "admin" type work and many "users" just aren't capable of full fledged "admin" jobs. But the fact that not everyone will ever be an "admin" shouldn't mean those of us who are (or like to think we are) should give up freedom of manipulating the OS/file system/apps to our pleasure. One of the advantages in early linux was that if you survived the challenges of install you had a nice, stable OS that would behave as you wanted - if we could manage to match that flexibility with ease of install and a full compliment of standard apps we'd be well on our way.
Dan made some very good points. File extensions where possible, that shows you're at least aware that you still have issues but have plans in the works to fix them. Start with the larger problems (and the ones you CAN fix) and get those holes patched. Plan on doing a lot of user training, the less technically savvy are often convinced proper security makes computer use insanely difficult. Inform the users that if they dont' follow security procedures you'll fire them because you can't afford to have the company shut down. Finally, keep copies to document EVERY single step you take in trying to reach compliance. If you can document that, in most govt. audit situations you'll get a warning and a date for a re-audit. If, for some reason, you DO get fined it'll certainly lessen the fine - from the insane level of you're stupid so you must have lots of money down to you've tried so here's a light slap on the wrist. Good luck.
Actually, if you had 20K residents who you knew would consistently vote according to party lines and would ALWAYS go vote, it would be pretty easy. Last time I checked, you were doing pretty good if your area topped 20% of its registered voters bothering to show up and vote in a presidential election and the % voting in an "off election" is often in single digits. 20% of 1.5M is only 300K. 20K guaranteed to vote your way + a good campaign would = a pretty good chance of winning an election...
considering that oe of the biggest reasons google got started in the first place was to honestly rank pages - i.e. in a way that wasn't influence by tricks like paid page rank or misleading meta-tage - it shouldn't surprise anyone (including searchking) that a parasite who's trying to trick the ranking system would intentionally get a lowered ranking...
The second link on the google search for searchking says it all "PageRank For Sale -- Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad...... PANDIA. PANDIA GUEST WRITER. PageRank For Sale. Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad Network's Robert Massa.... SearchKing and the PR Ad Network.... Description: SearchKing has started selling text ads on its network of independent portals, with prices based on..."
Geez. If I really wanted to just go to the site that paid the most in advertising I'd stick with watching TV so I could just get my info from commercials. We all know how honest and accurate THAT system is.
Wait a second I think I can answer that... OOOOO it's "better" AND more expensive - can you double my credit limit so I can buy one at 21% interest?
Really though, their improvements aren't going to be noticeable as far as audio quality. Already CD's are amazingly clean - and usually fill only a small portion of a disc capable of holding 650 or so MB of info. What they really want is an excuse to waste more disc space, jack the prices up (since they're finally getting caught for fixing CD prices), and make us buy multiple copies just because we want a copy in both our house AND car. But the typical consumer will fall for it - though a few might figure it out when they have to buy 3 copies of Brittney's latest just to have one in the living room, one in their car and one at work after suddenly realizing they can't make a functional copy any more.
how the "convert" keeps speaking using microsoft marketing jargon.... like the average user automatically thinks in terms of "oooo visit this handy tool at microsoft.com"
who said anything about being an entry level lackey? I'm the Network Manager and responsible for supervising the 2 MIS Techs that make up the rest of the Technology Department.
I managed a consulting company for 10 years prior to deciding working for idiots that would give regular pay and benefits beat trying to do consulting where people prefer to hire inexperienced incompetents who've read the "idiot's guide to..." as consultant instead of hiring those with certs and experience.
We were supposed to get one more MIS tech, but some nitwit in bean counting decided that it was "more effective" to replace the Tech with a non-technical trainer using our salary budget. Yet, we still have an official, on paper goal of "totally completing all backlogged requests by 12/1".
In the 3 years (and 2 cities) that I've worked for others since canning my consulting company, I've worked for a series of managers making a minimum of TWICE my admin pay who never lifted a finger to help no matter how busy we were and often had absolutely no clue what was involved in the business of the department beyond making sure they got paid on full and in time. I've spent 3 years working diligently while watching my supervisors make personal calls (honey, we have to hire carpet cleaners because the cat keeps peeing in our bedroom - is NOT work related), play solitaire and often just kick back and eat.
I have no problem with the fact that managers tend to make more than their subordinates, but they shouldn't be expecting us to each do the work of 2 or more people while they let us watch them pick their noses while often making enough pay to hire the people the deparment is short yet still have a fat paycheck for themselves.
I'm a CCNA, and Solaris 7 Admin certified. I'm working on an MCSE (only because I'm stuck in a "microsoftville"). I have a college degree. I know what it takes to manage both departments and companies. Most company executives and top level management are very overpaid when compared even to the pay of middle management. Look how many CEO's got large BONUSES for running a company into bankruptcy after putting lower level workers through pay cuts and layoffs.
moer truth to be ignored
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Slack
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Yeah, hiring 3 people to cover a department that should have 10 people is monetarily cheaper since you only have to cover salary and benefits for 3, the overtime and burnout will bite you in the butt in the longrun.
Where I now work we have exactly THREE people to cover a backlog of tickets (some going back almost SIX MONTHS) along with the current issues of a 10 building, 250+ computer WAN. They wonder why we get stuck working a bit of OT (average of 1hr/week - and that's usually divided between the 3 of us), but they also expect us to get the department totally caught up (hey - there's 3 of you now instead of the just 2 of last year).
The world really needs to kick a few of those highly paid corporate officers out of their palaces and make them work a week or 2. I bet that would let us start seeing a change in working conditions (or at least pay).
I don't mind WORKING but this whole "we're going to cut your department, and your pay but you sill have to get everything done on time without overtime" idea is nuts.
To be honest, it was really a cluster**** trying to get qwest dsl up and running. I live in what (at least at the time) is the smallest town in the US with DSL - and was among the first few customers to get it. I had DSL from a local ISP (AOL and earthlink are the only national ISP's and they arrived in the last 3-4 months) staffed entirely by people who'd never had DSL before.
I'd call Qworst and they told me to call my ISP. My ISP told me to call Qworst (to be honest if I'd really tracked my time this loop probably was the cause for 2 of the 3 days of work).
Finally, at Qworst's insistance the local ISP gave me a static IP. Nope, still no luck. Finally I reach the sole person at Qwort's "tech support" line that had their head where the sun DOES shine - conversation was "oh. you run LINUX. We're sorry. The salesperson mislead you and sent you a winmodem. I can give you the external Cisco at the sale price of $95 and it will work as long as you don't mind doing the router maintenance by command line". Fine. Didn't WANT to spend the $95, but if that's my only choice... Got the Cisco and had DSL FINALLY up and running about 5 minutes after plugging it in...
On the bright side, I ended up getting the ISP side of things free in return with helping them out with DSL tech support till they could figure out which way was up. (Qworst bills just for the actual DSL you pay ISP fees direct to the ISP)
To be honest, many of the recent "improved" install tools require the user to think exactly like the programmers did in order to use the installer properly. Otherwise, most of them require a bit of unnecessary trial and effort to get your install right.
Knowing that the new install tool is tricky, I'll still stick with SuSE. It's stable and intuitive without the use my way and like it that redhat tends towards or the I work great if I decide to work of mandrake.
If linux ever intends to become a mainstream (read: NON GEEK) OS, it needs to become dependable, easy to use and easy to install. For example, why did it take me almost 3 days to hack my way to using my qwest dsl connection without having to boot into windows? DSL is a standard technology now, you should be able to use it easily.
now if only people will read it...
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Hacker Culture
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Living in a small town and being able to work command lines has people in total fear of me. People assume that because I can really use a computer I'm some sort of nefarious hacker just waiting for the chance to steal all their financial info.
When are non-geek types going to realize that being a serious computer user, system admin or even a programmer doesn't mean you're ALSO a hacker? When will they start taking a bit of responsibility for securing their systems? Most hackers I've met here are script kiddies who couldn't hack a wet paper bag if the people in the area bothered installing security patches...
They're actively trying to twist the statistics to support their whiny anti-download position. I'm part of several polling groups and in the last few weeks I've done at least THREE polls (all from different polling groups) that tried to force you to answer "I don't buy cd's because I download everything I want for free".
Fact of the matter is I, like many people I know, download music off services like kazaa because who wants to pay $20 for a cd to get one song just to find out the entire rest of the CD sucks... And most of us will never sign up for pay download services because if you actually use the service much it easily approaches the cost of buying cd's.
Thought we had a right to be considered innocent till proven guilty and a right to not be subjected to unreasonable search and seizures? Guess the DMCA somehow retracted important parts of the Constitution.
They read sites to check for possible coded messages. They scan computers for useful info and turn it over to corporations for suits and to law enforcement for arrest. Would have thought for sure to get those kinds of searches you'd need a warrant.
Oddly enough, on a related note, many of the tickets from the cameras at intersections have been thrown out because the systems were overseen/administered by private companies. Wouldn't this same tactic work against most legal actions based on info from BayTSP?
Hate to disappoint, but my biggest problem with MS problems is the MS business practices and I've had those for a LONG time. I do use linux, the username was picked when I was doing a lot of linux admin, but I've never been the strictly linux type. Whether or not I like MS' business practices, I'm forced to admit that in many areas they have the best and/or easiest to use products.
Microsoft for YEARS now has made a habit of misleading business practices and ignoring the concerns of consumers (and even industry groups). They're forced competitors out of the market, they try to make everyone adapt to their standards, and we're supposed to be SURPRISED that they're already violating the proposed settlement???
Reality time folks: either it's going to take a forcible settlement that makes MS a non-issue or we're going to just have to learn to live with them as they already are. They have way too many people who do nothing but sit around to find loopholes. Then they have a large number of marketing/PR types that make using those loopholes look like desireable features (or at least like they weren't INTENTIONAL slights of law or agreements...).
Cell phones are still expensive to use if you want to use it during normal "business" hours. And even if you don't care about the cost, they're still not particularly secure (though their security IS improving). Add to that the number of completely tech-clueless cell users and the lack of antivirus/security software for cellphones and you've got a nightmare waiting in the wings.
Besides the obvious - who in the current economy has tons of available cash to buy lots of CD's - there's the incredible rate at which the price of CD's continues to go up. Um, I'm not a marketing major, but seems to me that if your product isn't selling at $20 and testing says the people like your product they're just not BUYING it, odds are really good that your price is higher than they're willing to pay.
Add to that problem the fact that most music the recording companies are releasing (esp. the stuff they really push) all sounds the same. Either you get copy cats, really is there that much difference between the many "look at my navel" bimbos out there??? Or you get stuck with a group that had a hit album once so all their later albums try to sound just like their one good album. Even if you find a group you can enjoy and listen to, usually you're stuck paying $20 for their CD which has maybe 2 good songs and the rest is crap...
Of course, given alternatives, people are going to find other ways to get their music of choice.
Blacklists are a lot like a security blanket, they make you feel comfortable but they don't do anything about the real problems. A recent employer (a university) was placed on earthlink's blacklist simply because a customer had pressed a wrong button and reported an email to earthlink as spam. (Admittedly, the manager who insisted on handling the mailserver himself was technically clueless...but there wasn't any ACTUAL spam we could find traced to our server)
First off, why is earthlink who is the domain of quite a bit of spam itself running a blacklist? Secondly, why couldn't they have at least bothered to send a courtesy automail to let us know? We finally found out when the sender of the original "spam" tried to send another email to her friend at earthlink. At that time it took a series of calls to earthlink to even find the department we needed to talk to! And then I found out that we'd been on their blacklist for MONTHS!
Blacklists should be carefully administered and you should develop your own as it's really not that difficult to set up blocks for individual domains. Too many domains are blocked by error or because one company put another on a blocklist that got circulated but never bothered to circulate that spamming domain had been fixed and removed from teh list.
Of course, a contributing problem is that many mailserver admins don't bother to keep proper security (or even keep their security patches up to day) for their server. It's way too easy to find a mail server that is VERY open to people outside the actual domain. But any truly working solution to the problem will have to involve responsible actions on the part of the "blacklisters" and the mail admins.
Non-geeks started getting on the internet and BBS's because there THEY and not the media controlled the content - what they viewed, when they viewed it, even how it got presented.
Big media when they realized the web would be a lasting media realized that they'd better hurry up and get involved, but they did so incorrectly and too late. They came in expecting they could force us to stick with their basic "this is your entertainment whether you like it or not" just like they do with TV, newspapers, radio, etc.
For example, I recently moved to a small, isolated town and I'm about to fork out the money for sattelite radio for my car. I have 3 choices for music - country, heavy metal or 2 top 40 stations that I refer to as "all Britney all the time". What happened to choice? It's not like the people here are listening to that because they want to - I know a huge number of people that would kill for an alternative station - but someone somewhere decided that's all the music we need. Most offices I've been in listen to internet radio because that way they have a choice in what they hear.
RIAA is mad mostly because they've figured out we pick music they're not trying to push down our throats. Corporations are mad because suddenly we're posting our opinions where they can be seen. People are exercising their freedoms and all of a sudden media types are realizing they don't have the control they thought they had. Too bad.
Rough edges are to a large extent kind of a catch-22. Not too many office/business types USE linux so there's not much call for quickly polishing the rough edges. My experience has been us techie types don't mind needing to know how to make something work.
At the same time, office/business types probably won't use linux till they can see at least most of the edges are starting to be polished - they might not require perfection but they will require serious improvement over needing to know linux command line to do basic tasks, whether those tasks are opening an office app, creating files/directories or just system maintenance.
Sounds to me like they're more embarassed that he did it so easily and from such a public location. After all, he was invited by an NBC employee to attempt to hack their system.
Slashdot Mirror
even on a saturday night they've been slashdotted.
Seriously though, unless the long promised merger of your pc with your entertainment center finally happens what use is there for a 42 inch monitor of any sort?
Someone points out that they have a fraud problem and they go whole hog after something completely different. Often their investigations are totally off base and only interfere with those honestly trying to do some legitmate business.
You're not allowed to sell your own music on CD-R just because it being on CD-R makes it automatically too likely to be inviolation of a copyright somewhere? This from the well-known auction site known for sellers who never really ship anything but cash your check or accept your cc payment anyway? The site where you can easily by "native american" artifacts or jewelry made in locations like mexico or china? The site where you can buy used dvds, videos or tapes at almost any time? Where you can buy stolen goods almost as easily as you can at the local flea market? Ebay needs to buy a life.
Journalists try to print articles and get sued for liabel (for printing what they researched) or get sued for revealing corporate secrets (since when is uncovering fraud or embezzelment revealing corporate secrets?) or they end up in jail for treading to close to what the government decides is "sensitive materials".
Even when they do successfully run a story, notice how the story is presented by the same slant from almost all media sources. What good does that do us?
My Russian Professor in college used to regularly speak about how here we pretended to have freedom but had none while in the Soviet Union they had very little freedom but what there was was all REAL freedom. I've heard very similar comments from immigrants from countries noted for their "human rights violations". Clearly there's a need to closely examine things here in the U.S.
I always found it quite interesting that the most vocal anti-napster groups were the soon to be totally washed-up has-beens from the early 90's. Come on, let's face it, even the stupidest 17 year old spending mommy's money on cd's knows that after a while all metallica sounds the same. When will the RIAA and their pet artists realize part of why alternative music sources succeed largely because THE LISTENER decides what songs to get and the RIAA can't force their decisions on us anymore?
A very vocal group speaking out in favor of swapping services (whether you're talking "weeds", napster, kazaa or just a recording/swapping party) is CSN. True, they've had periods where they've been much more successful and other periods when they've pretty much fallen totally off the radar, but they most certainly can't be called a one hit wonder or producer of "crap" that no one wants.
Janis did make a very smart comment "I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing: If a record executive says he will make me more money, I'd immediately protect my wallet." The RIAA doesn't want to protect anything other than its own wallet. It doesn't take much searching to find a smaller artist (not a major commercial success) or older (no longer "successful") artist who can easily show the record companies owe them what amounts to a LOT of money or that the record companies (or their reps) have successfully stolen all rights to their songs. The RIAA no intention of protecting the artists, they're just smart enough to know that they can fool a lot of schmucks by pretending to care about more than their own money and the more schmucks they fool the better their chances to win this war by BS.
Someday programmers will succeed in finding the pot of gold and create a solidly stable yet totally flexible OS and apps that don't contain the bloat long associated with software like Star Office and windows. In the meantime, we "enthusiasts" need to admit that if we really do want to see linux in any of its many versions win the desktop wars, it's going to be because we've won the hearts and minds of the regular "user".
Not everyone wants to do real "admin" type work and many "users" just aren't capable of full fledged "admin" jobs. But the fact that not everyone will ever be an "admin" shouldn't mean those of us who are (or like to think we are) should give up freedom of manipulating the OS/file system/apps to our pleasure. One of the advantages in early linux was that if you survived the challenges of install you had a nice, stable OS that would behave as you wanted - if we could manage to match that flexibility with ease of install and a full compliment of standard apps we'd be well on our way.
Dan made some very good points. File extensions where possible, that shows you're at least aware that you still have issues but have plans in the works to fix them. Start with the larger problems (and the ones you CAN fix) and get those holes patched. Plan on doing a lot of user training, the less technically savvy are often convinced proper security makes computer use insanely difficult. Inform the users that if they dont' follow security procedures you'll fire them because you can't afford to have the company shut down. Finally, keep copies to document EVERY single step you take in trying to reach compliance. If you can document that, in most govt. audit situations you'll get a warning and a date for a re-audit. If, for some reason, you DO get fined it'll certainly lessen the fine - from the insane level of you're stupid so you must have lots of money down to you've tried so here's a light slap on the wrist. Good luck.
Actually, if you had 20K residents who you knew would consistently vote according to party lines and would ALWAYS go vote, it would be pretty easy. Last time I checked, you were doing pretty good if your area topped 20% of its registered voters bothering to show up and vote in a presidential election and the % voting in an "off election" is often in single digits. 20% of 1.5M is only 300K. 20K guaranteed to vote your way + a good campaign would = a pretty good chance of winning an election...
considering that oe of the biggest reasons google got started in the first place was to honestly rank pages - i.e. in a way that wasn't influence by tricks like paid page rank or misleading meta-tage - it shouldn't surprise anyone (including searchking) that a parasite who's trying to trick the ranking system would intentionally get a lowered ranking...
... ... PANDIA. PANDIA GUEST WRITER. PageRank For Sale. Exclusive interview with SearchKing ... SearchKing and the PR Ad Network. ...
The second link on the google search for searchking says it all "PageRank For Sale -- Exclusive interview with SearchKing / PR Ad
/ PR Ad Network's Robert Massa.
Description: SearchKing has started selling text ads on its network of independent portals, with prices based on..."
Geez. If I really wanted to just go to the site that paid the most in advertising I'd stick with watching TV so I could just get my info from commercials. We all know how honest and accurate THAT system is.
Wait a second I think I can answer that... OOOOO it's "better" AND more expensive - can you double my credit limit so I can buy one at 21% interest?
Really though, their improvements aren't going to be noticeable as far as audio quality. Already CD's are amazingly clean - and usually fill only a small portion of a disc capable of holding 650 or so MB of info. What they really want is an excuse to waste more disc space, jack the prices up (since they're finally getting caught for fixing CD prices), and make us buy multiple copies just because we want a copy in both our house AND car. But the typical consumer will fall for it - though a few might figure it out when they have to buy 3 copies of Brittney's latest just to have one in the living room, one in their car and one at work after suddenly realizing they can't make a functional copy any more.
how the "convert" keeps speaking using microsoft marketing jargon.... like the average user automatically thinks in terms of "oooo visit this handy tool at microsoft.com"
who said anything about being an entry level lackey? I'm the Network Manager and responsible for supervising the 2 MIS Techs that make up the rest of the Technology Department.
I managed a consulting company for 10 years prior to deciding working for idiots that would give regular pay and benefits beat trying to do consulting where people prefer to hire inexperienced incompetents who've read the "idiot's guide to..." as consultant instead of hiring those with certs and experience.
We were supposed to get one more MIS tech, but some nitwit in bean counting decided that it was "more effective" to replace the Tech with a non-technical trainer using our salary budget. Yet, we still have an official, on paper goal of "totally completing all backlogged requests by 12/1".
In the 3 years (and 2 cities) that I've worked for others since canning my consulting company, I've worked for a series of managers making a minimum of TWICE my admin pay who never lifted a finger to help no matter how busy we were and often had absolutely no clue what was involved in the business of the department beyond making sure they got paid on full and in time. I've spent 3 years working diligently while watching my supervisors make personal calls (honey, we have to hire carpet cleaners because the cat keeps peeing in our bedroom - is NOT work related), play solitaire and often just kick back and eat.
I have no problem with the fact that managers tend to make more than their subordinates, but they shouldn't be expecting us to each do the work of 2 or more people while they let us watch them pick their noses while often making enough pay to hire the people the deparment is short yet still have a fat paycheck for themselves.
I'm a CCNA, and Solaris 7 Admin certified. I'm working on an MCSE (only because I'm stuck in a "microsoftville"). I have a college degree. I know what it takes to manage both departments and companies. Most company executives and top level management are very overpaid when compared even to the pay of middle management. Look how many CEO's got large BONUSES for running a company into bankruptcy after putting lower level workers through pay cuts and layoffs.
Yeah, hiring 3 people to cover a department that should have 10 people is monetarily cheaper since you only have to cover salary and benefits for 3, the overtime and burnout will bite you in the butt in the longrun.
Where I now work we have exactly THREE people to cover a backlog of tickets (some going back almost SIX MONTHS) along with the current issues of a 10 building, 250+ computer WAN. They wonder why we get stuck working a bit of OT (average of 1hr/week - and that's usually divided between the 3 of us), but they also expect us to get the department totally caught up (hey - there's 3 of you now instead of the just 2 of last year).
The world really needs to kick a few of those highly paid corporate officers out of their palaces and make them work a week or 2. I bet that would let us start seeing a change in working conditions (or at least pay).
I don't mind WORKING but this whole "we're going to cut your department, and your pay but you sill have to get everything done on time without overtime" idea is nuts.
To be honest, it was really a cluster**** trying to get qwest dsl up and running. I live in what (at least at the time) is the smallest town in the US with DSL - and was among the first few customers to get it. I had DSL from a local ISP (AOL and earthlink are the only national ISP's and they arrived in the last 3-4 months) staffed entirely by people who'd never had DSL before.
I'd call Qworst and they told me to call my ISP. My ISP told me to call Qworst (to be honest if I'd really tracked my time this loop probably was the cause for 2 of the 3 days of work).
Finally, at Qworst's insistance the local ISP gave me a static IP. Nope, still no luck. Finally I reach the sole person at Qwort's "tech support" line that had their head where the sun DOES shine - conversation was "oh. you run LINUX. We're sorry. The salesperson mislead you and sent you a winmodem. I can give you the external Cisco at the sale price of $95 and it will work as long as you don't mind doing the router maintenance by command line". Fine. Didn't WANT to spend the $95, but if that's my only choice... Got the Cisco and had DSL FINALLY up and running about 5 minutes after plugging it in...
On the bright side, I ended up getting the ISP side of things free in return with helping them out with DSL tech support till they could figure out which way was up. (Qworst bills just for the actual DSL you pay ISP fees direct to the ISP)
To be honest, many of the recent "improved" install tools require the user to think exactly like the programmers did in order to use the installer properly. Otherwise, most of them require a bit of unnecessary trial and effort to get your install right.
Knowing that the new install tool is tricky, I'll still stick with SuSE. It's stable and intuitive without the use my way and like it that redhat tends towards or the I work great if I decide to work of mandrake.
If linux ever intends to become a mainstream (read: NON GEEK) OS, it needs to become dependable, easy to use and easy to install. For example, why did it take me almost 3 days to hack my way to using my qwest dsl connection without having to boot into windows? DSL is a standard technology now, you should be able to use it easily.
Living in a small town and being able to work command lines has people in total fear of me. People assume that because I can really use a computer I'm some sort of nefarious hacker just waiting for the chance to steal all their financial info.
When are non-geek types going to realize that being a serious computer user, system admin or even a programmer doesn't mean you're ALSO a hacker? When will they start taking a bit of responsibility for securing their systems? Most hackers I've met here are script kiddies who couldn't hack a wet paper bag if the people in the area bothered installing security patches...
They're actively trying to twist the statistics to support their whiny anti-download position. I'm part of several polling groups and in the last few weeks I've done at least THREE polls (all from different polling groups) that tried to force you to answer "I don't buy cd's because I download everything I want for free".
Fact of the matter is I, like many people I know, download music off services like kazaa because who wants to pay $20 for a cd to get one song just to find out the entire rest of the CD sucks... And most of us will never sign up for pay download services because if you actually use the service much it easily approaches the cost of buying cd's.
Thought we had a right to be considered innocent till proven guilty and a right to not be subjected to unreasonable search and seizures? Guess the DMCA somehow retracted important parts of the Constitution.
They read sites to check for possible coded messages. They scan computers for useful info and turn it over to corporations for suits and to law enforcement for arrest. Would have thought for sure to get those kinds of searches you'd need a warrant.
Oddly enough, on a related note, many of the tickets from the cameras at intersections have been thrown out because the systems were overseen/administered by private companies. Wouldn't this same tactic work against most legal actions based on info from BayTSP?
Hate to disappoint, but my biggest problem with MS problems is the MS business practices and I've had those for a LONG time. I do use linux, the username was picked when I was doing a lot of linux admin, but I've never been the strictly linux type. Whether or not I like MS' business practices, I'm forced to admit that in many areas they have the best and/or easiest to use products.
Microsoft for YEARS now has made a habit of misleading business practices and ignoring the concerns of consumers (and even industry groups). They're forced competitors out of the market, they try to make everyone adapt to their standards, and we're supposed to be SURPRISED that they're already violating the proposed settlement???
Reality time folks: either it's going to take a forcible settlement that makes MS a non-issue or we're going to just have to learn to live with them as they already are. They have way too many people who do nothing but sit around to find loopholes. Then they have a large number of marketing/PR types that make using those loopholes look like desireable features (or at least like they weren't INTENTIONAL slights of law or agreements...).
Cell phones are still expensive to use if you want to use it during normal "business" hours. And even if you don't care about the cost, they're still not particularly secure (though their security IS improving). Add to that the number of completely tech-clueless cell users and the lack of antivirus/security software for cellphones and you've got a nightmare waiting in the wings.
Definitely a BAD idea...
Besides the obvious - who in the current economy has tons of available cash to buy lots of CD's - there's the incredible rate at which the price of CD's continues to go up. Um, I'm not a marketing major, but seems to me that if your product isn't selling at $20 and testing says the people like your product they're just not BUYING it, odds are really good that your price is higher than they're willing to pay.
Add to that problem the fact that most music the recording companies are releasing (esp. the stuff they really push) all sounds the same. Either you get copy cats, really is there that much difference between the many "look at my navel" bimbos out there??? Or you get stuck with a group that had a hit album once so all their later albums try to sound just like their one good album. Even if you find a group you can enjoy and listen to, usually you're stuck paying $20 for their CD which has maybe 2 good songs and the rest is crap...
Of course, given alternatives, people are going to find other ways to get their music of choice.
Blacklists are a lot like a security blanket, they make you feel comfortable but they don't do anything about the real problems. A recent employer (a university) was placed on earthlink's blacklist simply because a customer had pressed a wrong button and reported an email to earthlink as spam. (Admittedly, the manager who insisted on handling the mailserver himself was technically clueless...but there wasn't any ACTUAL spam we could find traced to our server)
First off, why is earthlink who is the domain of quite a bit of spam itself running a blacklist? Secondly, why couldn't they have at least bothered to send a courtesy automail to let us know? We finally found out when the sender of the original "spam" tried to send another email to her friend at earthlink. At that time it took a series of calls to earthlink to even find the department we needed to talk to! And then I found out that we'd been on their blacklist for MONTHS!
Blacklists should be carefully administered and you should develop your own as it's really not that difficult to set up blocks for individual domains. Too many domains are blocked by error or because one company put another on a blocklist that got circulated but never bothered to circulate that spamming domain had been fixed and removed from teh list.
Of course, a contributing problem is that many mailserver admins don't bother to keep proper security (or even keep their security patches up to day) for their server. It's way too easy to find a mail server that is VERY open to people outside the actual domain. But any truly working solution to the problem will have to involve responsible actions on the part of the "blacklisters" and the mail admins.
Non-geeks started getting on the internet and BBS's because there THEY and not the media controlled the content - what they viewed, when they viewed it, even how it got presented.
Big media when they realized the web would be a lasting media realized that they'd better hurry up and get involved, but they did so incorrectly and too late. They came in expecting they could force us to stick with their basic "this is your entertainment whether you like it or not" just like they do with TV, newspapers, radio, etc.
For example, I recently moved to a small, isolated town and I'm about to fork out the money for sattelite radio for my car. I have 3 choices for music - country, heavy metal or 2 top 40 stations that I refer to as "all Britney all the time". What happened to choice? It's not like the people here are listening to that because they want to - I know a huge number of people that would kill for an alternative station - but someone somewhere decided that's all the music we need. Most offices I've been in listen to internet radio because that way they have a choice in what they hear.
RIAA is mad mostly because they've figured out we pick music they're not trying to push down our throats. Corporations are mad because suddenly we're posting our opinions where they can be seen. People are exercising their freedoms and all of a sudden media types are realizing they don't have the control they thought they had. Too bad.
Rough edges are to a large extent kind of a catch-22. Not too many office/business types USE linux so there's not much call for quickly polishing the rough edges. My experience has been us techie types don't mind needing to know how to make something work.
At the same time, office/business types probably won't use linux till they can see at least most of the edges are starting to be polished - they might not require perfection but they will require serious improvement over needing to know linux command line to do basic tasks, whether those tasks are opening an office app, creating files/directories or just system maintenance.
Sounds to me like they're more embarassed that he did it so easily and from such a public location. After all, he was invited by an NBC employee to attempt to hack their system.