Due to this I have been completely ignoring Best Buy and Target when buying things, DVD's a recent Tivo purchase etc. It's not much but every little bit helps. My wife is also under strict orders to spend nothing at these stores doing her Christmas shopping (I do my Xmas shopping on Ebay or Amazon).
I much prefer KDE to Gnome so this bothers me, however, having one package for (most) everyone to agree on and devote time on and to point to and say "ok this is the mainstream top dog interface" is almost worth the bother, the linux desktop userbase is too David to the Windows Goliath to also suffer from severe fragmentation.
I use http://spamprobe.sourceforge.net/ and it works great, not sure if it's less memory/cpu intense as spampassassin but it sure is easy to setup.procmailrc rules for and the only necessary file to run it is the actual executable which makes updating 50 or so servers a breeze.
They probably don't have the LEGAL right to do much of anything else with the archive of songs, I suspect the licensing agreement with the 250K(?) artists doesn't include "selling" or giving the content to someone else to do with what they want. Vivendi doesn't need "a bunch" of artists suing them for improper use of their property and this is probably about the only legal thing they can do other than perhaps keeping it themselves which they apparently do not want to do.
Unless the license the artists agreed to was so broad and open that it WOULD allow this Vivendi is probably (gasp) doing the RIGHT thing as wrong as it may seem to be.
Spamcop is a list, not a blocklist, a blacklist, whether you block or tag using this list is your choice, not Spamcops. I personally have Spamcop set in my procmail filter to tag messages from Spamcop listed IPs I'm not crazy about blocking emails using anyone's list.
Yes there are live people behind Spamcop, I've interacted with a deputy on a few occasions after either erroneous reporting or joe jobs against customers.
Spamcop is a very handy service and very low key when it comes to getting listed and removed from the list.
What exactly are you worried about? I'd be much more worried about spyware/viruses and compromises of my home network than say, porn. Here's a small clue, kids (well boys anyway) will find porn, they will look at it, often. The more you try and stop it, the MORE effort they'll expend to find it.
My kid is 3 and has a computer with internet access so I can load up sites with games for him and let him play, www.shrek.com is one of his favorites.
As he gets older and begins surfing for himself, I'll probably supply him with 2 PC's one with Windows and no NIC for gaming and one with linux and a NIC for surfing/email/chatting. This solves the main problem I'd be worried with, viruses/spam/spyware/etc (well not solves but greatly reduces it).
When he gets old enough to start succumbing to his hormones I'm not quite sure what my approach might be, on one hand I'd almost rather just give him access to a library of porn so that at least I know he's not getting his hands on really nasty crap, but then I figure even if I handed him a case of DVD's and a drive full of mpegs he's still gonna find "other stuff" I don't know about. I guess my approach would be to monitor what he's surfing and if I find something particularly troublesome just talk to him about it and try and put it in perspective.
But I'd never be naive enough to think just because I told him "don't do that" that he wouldn't do that.
I could have gotten a bit more or less than 5% on a variable rate but who wants that... It'd suck to wake up to a couple hundred a month increase in your payments due to interest rate fluctuations.
Another common thing is the "first couple years interest only payments" deal so the first few years you pay basically nothing but the interest on the loan, I was like "WTF no way".
I agree to a point, OO has a load of features I won't ever use either, but in defense of OO, I didn't pay "a bunch of money" for that bloat. So if I have to choose between $400 of bloat and $0 of bloat, I'll take the $0. (I don't know what Office costs, I don't care, last time I bought Office was Office95 and it was around $350 then).
Frankly I load editors other than vi about once a month or less. Though vi I use daily, hourly even.
I haven't had a need for MS Office in a long time, ok so I need to type a document, 9 times outta 10 I can get by with a basid editor like notepad or wordpad, need to make something a little heavier? An invoice or bid? OpenOffice does a decent enough job, hell I don't even use a handful of all the features OO has either even when I'm making something "professional" (aka business related) and when I save I usually use the lowest common denominator so I can be assured the recipient can read it (however I typically fax the document anyway).
Maybe I'm a minority but even if I were given a copy of MS Office I wouldn't even bother installing it.
Yes this is a great solution if the only people you want to email you are a little towards the smart side. But speaking as someone who has to deal with "joe sixpack" daily I've seen people who are confused by user@NOSPAMdomain.com and when I tell them to go to http://webmail.domain.com/ to get their webmail they put www. on the front!
These same people if I were verbally giving them the url to slashdot would end up at http://www.slash..org/ (god I wish I were trying to make a joke but seriously I've had this happen).
Because of this my email is plainly visible on our web site, and in my forums, and on a few other forums and on an occasional usenet message. With a combination of RBL's, bayesian filtering, procmail soup and other goodies my spam count per day is kept to a low roar (double figures in spam number rather than four figures, again I wish this were joking).
I'd hate to work for you! I'm the biggest abuser ever of the internet at work, though now that I own my own business I understand where you're coming from 100%, god I'm glad as hell I don't work for me, I'd fire my ass so fast my head would spin.
Haha that's great. At least you aren't left wondering what is and isn't being filtered.
I sent that "hey I'm looking at gay porno over here" link to a guy I used to work with and man it got him hook line and sinker while his (shared with another guy) office was full of engineers discussing an ECR. God he was sooo mad at me.
So except for a very few jobs I can think of most jobs just don't require unrestricted access to the internet, hell be happy you get access at all.
If it were my call, and the day to day business of the company didn't rely on the internet, outgoing internet would be blocked 100% except for designated breaks and lunches. And incoming email would be unavailable except for those employees who's jobs require incoming email to function.
Call me an overlord or bastard but when you look at the alternatives (outsourcing to India, downsizing, etc) not being able to surf slashdot during your workday pales in comparison.
Have you pulled your credit report, all THREE of them? (experian.com transunion.com equifax.com) I do, regularly (every couple months) and they are WILDLY different. There are accounts on some that don't belong to me from years ago (but the account shows as paid on time so I haven't disputed it haha). There are things reported as delinquent I never even knew existed! (medical companies are BAD about just reporting you delinquent and never even sending you a bill!).
Pull your credit report, all 3 of them, analyze the report, scrutinize it. Dispute ANYTHING that's bad (yes even the stuff that is valid and you did dispute those too!). Wait 60 days, RINSE REPEAT. Redispute everything that's LEFT on there that's bad, again, and again.
I just went thru this, buying a house, after 3 months I went from a credit score that I couldn't even buy a car with (and car companies will finance anyone they're sharks) to a credit score that allowed me to buy a decent house with 0% down and 6.125% interest rate (aka a damn nice loan).
I'm still the same person I was 6 months ago, my income is still the same, nothing has changed except a lot of disputes (over 100 disputes were filed in total, several were filed 3 times to get 'em off).
Yes the system is flawed and broken, horribly, but take the time and learn to manipulate it in your favor.
I still have a few things on my report negative, time to play dirty (not that it matters but now it's just the FUN of it, after 12 years as an adult with shitty credit thanks to credit cards and being DUMB and 18 it's a game to pit the system against them).
I hate it for the girl but man throwing this kinda thing into the trash in plain view of these scum is just asking for it.
You're right she's DAMN lucky this is the worst of it.
Yes she probably can file a complaint and maybe even sue the card company for using this app without a proper signature, but end outcome is probably no better than the card being canceled and her information will still be getting sold.
Oh yeah that's smart, then they can not only ruin your inbox and your mailbox with telemarketing crap, they can then go on to ruin your credit rating too so when you really want something (a house, a car or other big item most people can't pay cash for) your credit rating is in the shitter.
And this got modded UP? This is -1 Dumbass at best.
Speaking as someone who just got their credit rating halfway decent again I can tell you unequivocably do NOT fuck with the credit card companies they will bend you over and tear your asshole wide open.
Also (from watching too many episodes of CSI) there's one thing I've seen mentioned quite a few times "anything in the trashcans out in public is fair game" so the wife did the WRONG thing throwing away the application. Shoulda tore it up then burned it.
Ok let me start by saying I am as pro linux, open source, etc as most anyone can be, my whole business relies on open source and Linux based servers, all told I have over 50 linux based servers in operation hosting over 10,000 web sites with all the usual open source goodies, Perl, PHP, Mysql, etc, and I don't use Microsoft products except for playing an occasional game.
But let's get serious those laptops are gonna be Windows, or Apple, no ifs ands or buts about it, and my vote for which I think they'll use is Windows at this point because I figure Gates is gonna make damn sure it happens.
Sure I'd love to see all these students learning on some flavor of *nix, Linux, BSD whatever, anything but Windows but I know it's not gonna happen, and frankly expending effort in pointless "I'd put on there" musings is just well, pointless really.
Sometimes the adding of anti Microsoft barbs in what would be an otherwise fine report such as this just gets almost tiresome. I support Linux and use it religiously but I even get tired of something anti microsoft being injected into any article. Was this even necessary in an article about 130K laptops being purchased for school kids?
Yes it is, here's what really boils my blood, as a "self employed" person I pay extra taxes (self employment tax) because I'm self employed and running a small business. Also if we didn't qualify for the state run group healthcare, we couldn't get health insurance if we drove truckloads of money to Blue Cross/Blue Shields because my wife has asthma, as it is we pay just shy of $800 per month JUST in premiums (and another $200 in copays on medicine).
If people with "real jobs" had to pay their taxes themself rather than just getting a paycheck each payday they'd get mad too, paying a couple hundred per paycheck is a whole different animal than writing a 4 figure check every 3 months to the IRS and knowing you're paying even more BECAUSE you have the audacity to try and live the american dream and start your own small company!
With healthcare and taxes as they are it's a wonder anyone even bothers trying to start a small business, they stack the deck against you so bad it oughta be a crime. Not that I mind paying taxes but it seems to me in order to incubate small business you should see a few tax incentives, not EXTRA taxes.
As with anything there's a certain amount of luck involved, a single forum post on anandtech.com drove in several hundred signups in just a few weeks when I was just getting started, and that thread managed to stay active for several months driving in I'm not even sure how many sales, a large competitor went belly up last july taking a large sum of prepaid hosting time with it, that drove at least 450 signups my way in a week's time. A lot of dumb luck, and a little planning.
Oh she's looking and sending out resumes but the chances of finding a job that is near the pay she had before is slim and none, tho if one comes along she'll be happy to jump on it, so far, nothing's come up. So she'll keep sending out those resumes any time a job similar to her old one opens up, or something that is really attractive, but she's not exactly holding her breath. She's also quite aware that she has to look for a job, so she is, but they can't make you look for a job that's significantly below the job you had, or in another field.
Slashdot Mirror
Due to this I have been completely ignoring Best Buy and Target when buying things, DVD's a recent Tivo purchase etc. It's not much but every little bit helps. My wife is also under strict orders to spend nothing at these stores doing her Christmas shopping (I do my Xmas shopping on Ebay or Amazon).
I much prefer KDE to Gnome so this bothers me, however, having one package for (most) everyone to agree on and devote time on and to point to and say "ok this is the mainstream top dog interface" is almost worth the bother, the linux desktop userbase is too David to the Windows Goliath to also suffer from severe fragmentation.
I use http://spamprobe.sourceforge.net/ and it works great, not sure if it's less memory/cpu intense as spampassassin but it sure is easy to setup .procmailrc rules for and the only necessary file to run it is the actual executable which makes updating 50 or so servers a breeze.
They probably don't have the LEGAL right to do much of anything else with the archive of songs, I suspect the licensing agreement with the 250K(?) artists doesn't include "selling" or giving the content to someone else to do with what they want. Vivendi doesn't need "a bunch" of artists suing them for improper use of their property and this is probably about the only legal thing they can do other than perhaps keeping it themselves which they apparently do not want to do.
Unless the license the artists agreed to was so broad and open that it WOULD allow this Vivendi is probably (gasp) doing the RIGHT thing as wrong as it may seem to be.
Spamcop is a list, not a blocklist, a blacklist, whether you block or tag using this list is your choice, not Spamcops. I personally have Spamcop set in my procmail filter to tag messages from Spamcop listed IPs I'm not crazy about blocking emails using anyone's list.
Yes there are live people behind Spamcop, I've interacted with a deputy on a few occasions after either erroneous reporting or joe jobs against customers.
Spamcop is a very handy service and very low key when it comes to getting listed and removed from the list.
What exactly are you worried about? I'd be much more worried about spyware/viruses and compromises of my home network than say, porn. Here's a small clue, kids (well boys anyway) will find porn, they will look at it, often. The more you try and stop it, the MORE effort they'll expend to find it.
My kid is 3 and has a computer with internet access so I can load up sites with games for him and let him play, www.shrek.com is one of his favorites.
As he gets older and begins surfing for himself, I'll probably supply him with 2 PC's one with Windows and no NIC for gaming and one with linux and a NIC for surfing/email/chatting. This solves the main problem I'd be worried with, viruses/spam/spyware/etc (well not solves but greatly reduces it).
When he gets old enough to start succumbing to his hormones I'm not quite sure what my approach might be, on one hand I'd almost rather just give him access to a library of porn so that at least I know he's not getting his hands on really nasty crap, but then I figure even if I handed him a case of DVD's and a drive full of mpegs he's still gonna find "other stuff" I don't know about. I guess my approach would be to monitor what he's surfing and if I find something particularly troublesome just talk to him about it and try and put it in perspective.
But I'd never be naive enough to think just because I told him "don't do that" that he wouldn't do that.
Hell yeah 6.125% fixed 100% financing :)
I could have gotten a bit more or less than 5% on a variable rate but who wants that... It'd suck to wake up to a couple hundred a month increase in your payments due to interest rate fluctuations.
Another common thing is the "first couple years interest only payments" deal so the first few years you pay basically nothing but the interest on the loan, I was like "WTF no way".
Thanks for grading my work, my English teacher would have been so proud of you.
Unlike slashdot posts I actually proofread things that matter. Though the preview button would be handy to use once in a while but hell life goes on.
Well not spellcheck but the preview button is vastly underutilized in my case.
Who composes slashdot posts in Office anyway?
I agree to a point, OO has a load of features I won't ever use either, but in defense of OO, I didn't pay "a bunch of money" for that bloat. So if I have to choose between $400 of bloat and $0 of bloat, I'll take the $0. (I don't know what Office costs, I don't care, last time I bought Office was Office95 and it was around $350 then).
Frankly I load editors other than vi about once a month or less. Though vi I use daily, hourly even.
I haven't had a need for MS Office in a long time, ok so I need to type a document, 9 times outta 10 I can get by with a basid editor like notepad or wordpad, need to make something a little heavier? An invoice or bid? OpenOffice does a decent enough job, hell I don't even use a handful of all the features OO has either even when I'm making something "professional" (aka business related) and when I save I usually use the lowest common denominator so I can be assured the recipient can read it (however I typically fax the document anyway).
Maybe I'm a minority but even if I were given a copy of MS Office I wouldn't even bother installing it.
Yes this is a great solution if the only people you want to email you are a little towards the smart side. But speaking as someone who has to deal with "joe sixpack" daily I've seen people who are confused by user@NOSPAMdomain.com and when I tell them to go to http://webmail.domain.com/ to get their webmail they put www. on the front!
These same people if I were verbally giving them the url to slashdot would end up at http://www.slash..org/ (god I wish I were trying to make a joke but seriously I've had this happen).
Because of this my email is plainly visible on our web site, and in my forums, and on a few other forums and on an occasional usenet message. With a combination of RBL's, bayesian filtering, procmail soup and other goodies my spam count per day is kept to a low roar (double figures in spam number rather than four figures, again I wish this were joking).
I'd hate to work for you! I'm the biggest abuser ever of the internet at work, though now that I own my own business I understand where you're coming from 100%, god I'm glad as hell I don't work for me, I'd fire my ass so fast my head would spin.
Haha that's great. At least you aren't left wondering what is and isn't being filtered.
I sent that "hey I'm looking at gay porno over here" link to a guy I used to work with and man it got him hook line and sinker while his (shared with another guy) office was full of engineers discussing an ECR. God he was sooo mad at me.
So except for a very few jobs I can think of most jobs just don't require unrestricted access to the internet, hell be happy you get access at all.
If it were my call, and the day to day business of the company didn't rely on the internet, outgoing internet would be blocked 100% except for designated breaks and lunches. And incoming email would be unavailable except for those employees who's jobs require incoming email to function.
Call me an overlord or bastard but when you look at the alternatives (outsourcing to India, downsizing, etc) not being able to surf slashdot during your workday pales in comparison.
Ah karma-bonus +1 wasn't aware of that just saw Score 2 guess you learn something new every so often.
Oh I usually have a sense of humor but when it comes to credit reports and ratings I've lost my ability to find any of it humorous long ago.
It is horribly broken.
Have you pulled your credit report, all THREE of them? (experian.com transunion.com equifax.com) I do, regularly (every couple months) and they are WILDLY different. There are accounts on some that don't belong to me from years ago (but the account shows as paid on time so I haven't disputed it haha). There are things reported as delinquent I never even knew existed! (medical companies are BAD about just reporting you delinquent and never even sending you a bill!).
Pull your credit report, all 3 of them, analyze the report, scrutinize it. Dispute ANYTHING that's bad (yes even the stuff that is valid and you did dispute those too!). Wait 60 days, RINSE REPEAT. Redispute everything that's LEFT on there that's bad, again, and again.
I just went thru this, buying a house, after 3 months I went from a credit score that I couldn't even buy a car with (and car companies will finance anyone they're sharks) to a credit score that allowed me to buy a decent house with 0% down and 6.125% interest rate (aka a damn nice loan).
I'm still the same person I was 6 months ago, my income is still the same, nothing has changed except a lot of disputes (over 100 disputes were filed in total, several were filed 3 times to get 'em off).
Yes the system is flawed and broken, horribly, but take the time and learn to manipulate it in your favor.
I still have a few things on my report negative, time to play dirty (not that it matters but now it's just the FUN of it, after 12 years as an adult with shitty credit thanks to credit cards and being DUMB and 18 it's a game to pit the system against them).
What if her name is Nia?
Ok back in my hole
Oh where are my mod points when I could use them.
I hate it for the girl but man throwing this kinda thing into the trash in plain view of these scum is just asking for it.
You're right she's DAMN lucky this is the worst of it.
Yes she probably can file a complaint and maybe even sue the card company for using this app without a proper signature, but end outcome is probably no better than the card being canceled and her information will still be getting sold.
Oh yeah that's smart, then they can not only ruin your inbox and your mailbox with telemarketing crap, they can then go on to ruin your credit rating too so when you really want something (a house, a car or other big item most people can't pay cash for) your credit rating is in the shitter.
And this got modded UP? This is -1 Dumbass at best.
Speaking as someone who just got their credit rating halfway decent again I can tell you unequivocably do NOT fuck with the credit card companies they will bend you over and tear your asshole wide open.
Also (from watching too many episodes of CSI) there's one thing I've seen mentioned quite a few times "anything in the trashcans out in public is fair game" so the wife did the WRONG thing throwing away the application. Shoulda tore it up then burned it.
Ok let me start by saying I am as pro linux, open source, etc as most anyone can be, my whole business relies on open source and Linux based servers, all told I have over 50 linux based servers in operation hosting over 10,000 web sites with all the usual open source goodies, Perl, PHP, Mysql, etc, and I don't use Microsoft products except for playing an occasional game.
But let's get serious those laptops are gonna be Windows, or Apple, no ifs ands or buts about it, and my vote for which I think they'll use is Windows at this point because I figure Gates is gonna make damn sure it happens.
Sure I'd love to see all these students learning on some flavor of *nix, Linux, BSD whatever, anything but Windows but I know it's not gonna happen, and frankly expending effort in pointless "I'd put on there" musings is just well, pointless really.
Sometimes the adding of anti Microsoft barbs in what would be an otherwise fine report such as this just gets almost tiresome. I support Linux and use it religiously but I even get tired of something anti microsoft being injected into any article. Was this even necessary in an article about 130K laptops being purchased for school kids?
Yes it is, here's what really boils my blood, as a "self employed" person I pay extra taxes (self employment tax) because I'm self employed and running a small business. Also if we didn't qualify for the state run group healthcare, we couldn't get health insurance if we drove truckloads of money to Blue Cross/Blue Shields because my wife has asthma, as it is we pay just shy of $800 per month JUST in premiums (and another $200 in copays on medicine).
If people with "real jobs" had to pay their taxes themself rather than just getting a paycheck each payday they'd get mad too, paying a couple hundred per paycheck is a whole different animal than writing a 4 figure check every 3 months to the IRS and knowing you're paying even more BECAUSE you have the audacity to try and live the american dream and start your own small company!
With healthcare and taxes as they are it's a wonder anyone even bothers trying to start a small business, they stack the deck against you so bad it oughta be a crime. Not that I mind paying taxes but it seems to me in order to incubate small business you should see a few tax incentives, not EXTRA taxes.
As with anything there's a certain amount of luck involved, a single forum post on anandtech.com drove in several hundred signups in just a few weeks when I was just getting started, and that thread managed to stay active for several months driving in I'm not even sure how many sales, a large competitor went belly up last july taking a large sum of prepaid hosting time with it, that drove at least 450 signups my way in a week's time. A lot of dumb luck, and a little planning.
Oh she's looking and sending out resumes but the chances of finding a job that is near the pay she had before is slim and none, tho if one comes along she'll be happy to jump on it, so far, nothing's come up. So she'll keep sending out those resumes any time a job similar to her old one opens up, or something that is really attractive, but she's not exactly holding her breath. She's also quite aware that she has to look for a job, so she is, but they can't make you look for a job that's significantly below the job you had, or in another field.
Yep this was true for me too, until my wife lost her job in July so now she's first to get to see booboo's again.
There's less important things in this world than knowing which muppet is your 2 year old's favorite..