I've walked more than once, when called on to do unethical things. Ordinary law covers more than you think as well. Will walk again too. It's just not worth it.
Basically, profits are higher if we consumers get screwed. Given they were granted monopolies, they should deal with this problem instead of figuring out ways to not deal with it and meet "growth expectations".
Free market indeed.
Oh, and why does the post say, "corporate and consumer use" Isn't that just use?
You get one on the phone and as soon as you are able, ask them:
"Is this a sales call?"
If they say, "yes", then reply with "no money", or "would you be interested in donating to my church", etc... essentially your list! One particularly vile one is, "I only buy from bitches, are you in fact a bitch?" hehe...
If they say, "no", then the fun begins!
Let them know that if they are not on a sales call, then they cannot use any of the sales words. Sales words are "introduce", "tell you about", etc...
Bottom line is when they then attempt to start their pitch, just pick the key word, declare it to be a sales word, remind them about not using sales words and take control of the conversation back.
Sometimes they will just blurt out, "but it's free!"
This one is great because you then talk about free. Is breathing free? Talking on the phone free? Really free? Doesn't it take food to exist to have the conversation? Have fun with that, it will chap their ass and they will eventually hang up, or accept it's not really free.
This puts you back to the sales call bit.
Most of them get pissed and after being asked, "are you sure this isn't a sales call?" a few times, will step up and admit it's a sales call.
Congratulate them! Thanks man. I just knew this was a sales call!
Then nail them. "If you had been honest about the sales call, I might have considered the offer. Now it's really tough because nobody wants to buy anything from a liar! Would you buy from a liar?"
Let them down easy, but be condecending. In the future, you might consider just admitting you are on a sales call. You will sleep better, trust me, have a nice day, etc...
When I can, I'll do this on speaker phone. I've also played some really great sessions for use with some of our staff that does have to make sales calls. It's instructive.
All it takes is an environment where the student is challenged. This is gonna piss said student off, but it's ok. Once they get through it, they will come back and be rational about it, realizing the gift they have been given.
(had a HS teacher do exactly that --a mentor at that time, do the same. I will never forget it.)
The problem we've got with building more critical thinkers comes down to preserving the status quo. If we pump out a bunch of free thinkers, they are gonna go off and do what free thinkers do; namely, change stuff!
This is good, but the current powers that be, don't want too many people to realize that.
Also, putting false choices in front of students, while at the same time limiting their understanding of their real choices, does a lot toward making semi-critical thinkers. They solve problems, largely within the current framework, and as such thinkers, are highly desired.
I can't tell you how many times I've been to the local school (and I like my local school), to deal with these false choices head on. They look at somebody, that actually asks ugly questions, like a complete freak. They employ control and co-opt 101, 102... 400, then finally grok the idea that they are dealing with somebody wanting to keep it real. From there, it's all good.
Largely this problem is one of inhibition. Manage that properly, and that means lots of work on boundaries, and you will get a nice critical thinker, nearly every time. Fail to manage that properly, as in too many artificial inhibitions, and you get a problem solver. They are two different things, often confused.
I went through this a while back with a 3D STL file viewer. I originally wrote it in the classic, "Scratch an itch" fashion for my own use. It was also to explore OpenGL a bit. At the time, I had an SGI, some docs and some time. Enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot. It was a C project and C was something I really had no serious experience in.
I'm totally not a professional developer, but I can say it ran good and did what it was supposed to. I could feed the thing ugly, huge files that had nothing to do with CAD, big files that did, etc... and it all just worked nicely. What more does one need? If it were written in total bad ass style, it would still do those things, so who cares?
When I put the thing on SourceForge, I was nervous. Turned out to be a complete non-issue. (viewstl, BTW)
Got a lot of downloads and people were totally cool. I got patches sent in for a coupla stupid bugs. No brainer to just add those and bump the project rev.
One guy, teaching comp-sci, sent me an e-mail about the code. He used it for some class project. Some of it was actual viewing of files. The other use was to give his students an example of some code and pose a, "what would you do?" kind of thing.
At first, this pissed me off huge. However, he did send me the class notes and my program annotated with great comments! I refer to that document to this day as it's essentially a really solid comp-sci course study, tuned for my specific needs!
He and I bantered around about this. At the end of the day, it's better to post it as people can use it. They will use it and that's good. Some of the OSS stuff you may be running now is highly likely to be no better than what you contributed and do you care?
I sure don't.
That hunk of code improved some as I took some of the comments, learned some stuff, then revised the program. I learned enough to realize maybe some of them were more academic than I cared to deal with, so I ignored those. Nice to get to that spot in the first place! Took that time to rebuild it on Linux, having set a machine up, it was a perfect get my toes wet kind of activity.
Later, it ended up as part of some product being commercially produced in Germany. They wrote me, wanting license terms that made sense for commercial distribution. The trade was their patches for some new functionality, so the project improved, and my name somewhere on the box, and a donation to the FSF. No worries there. They got their license, the project saw some more code.
Guess what? Theirs really was not a whole lot better than mine!! Pretty funny actually.
Bottom line, through all of that, nobody ever contacted me with any kind of "you fricking lamer..." kind of stuff. The code got used and those users would not have had the chance had I been worried about how much of a bad ass I might or might not be.
So, just post it up. My experience is that most all people are pretty cool. You never know where it might lead to, and it's a great way to give back to the nice body of code you might be running right now. That is how it improves every day. Why not?
Today, it's just there being used, from time to time. Once in a while I get an e-mail about it. No recent patches these days, and that's likely due to the thing doing what it is supposed to do. Most are some question, or answering my request for occasional feedback. I wanted to know what people did with it, out of pure curiosity.
If it's useful, people will use it, period. I wouldn't post crap, knowingly anyway. But I would post up something that is useful, because it's gonna matter to somebody somewhere.
The slightly smarter Netizen will encrypt those things that might be bad. Ideally, they will keep them of the net period.
As for the rest, who really cares?
It comes down to how much of a target you are and what kinds enemies one has to deal with. Most ordinary people have few worries, so the service is viable on that basis.
If you've got any worries:
(and here is a starter list)
-sexual wierdness -crime -pissed powerful people -sedition -activism
you would be wise to just deal with these things, person to person, or maybe run your own stuff, but that comes with risks too. Likely the same, or even more risk than just blending into the online crowd does.
The one other thing that can be done is to just get smart about the net, generally speaking. The more you know, the safer you are. Safe computing is a matter of what you know and what your habits are like. Has nothing to do with software and services, for the most part.
Anybody registered to vote, gets checked, then mailed their ballot to their address on file. Signature checks, collected at the DMV, are used to validate votes. Votes are mailed in a double secret envelope that allows verification but does not tie votes to voters.
The counting system is optical scan, is done in one location with security in place there. Audits are performed, and most importantly:
-the voter can verify their own vote
-said vote is human and machine readable
-casting of votes is distributed over time and space.
Anyone else notice how AT&T ended up back in the phone business, after helping with the wiretapping. AT&T, formerly Singular, wiretapping, now AT&T again?
The reality is the people of Florida were denied their democratic process. Both parties asked for incomplete and biased remedies. The Florida Supreme Court, sorted that out and ruled for all the votes to be counted, according to the current law.
That meant each county was to establish it's standard, then perform the count.
We really don't know who won Florida, which is exactly why a lot of people call Bush "Selected, not Elected".
SCOTUS jumped in and made a bizzare ruling, essentially stopping the process. One reason, among many, was the idea that Bush might be harmed by completing the democratic process. FOX news had called the election, and SCOTUS considered that in their judicial process. (Yeah, he might be harmed! He might not have been the winner, but that's for the people, not SCOTUS to decide.) Other matters were about votes being treated equally, which is not a bad legal precedent to set, but also not a complete justification for ruling how they did. It was specifically noted that their decision was not to be considered for future decisions in kind of a "good for the country" kind of thing.
The whole affair is complicated enough to make myths easy!
Reality is our process failed. We don't know who won, only who was selected, the rest is history.
Grew up poor ass. Poor enough to value ordinary milk, glue my shoes instead of buying new ones, wondering what new clothes are like.
As an adult, I've quit more than one job over matters of ethics and principle. Once, it really cost me. Might cost me again.
I am suggesting people step up and act on what they believe. If that means moving, living with family, eating lean, etc... don't take it off the table.
In other words, don't fear your job situation, unless it's warranted.
In the case of the kids having to live less, I'm not sure I would weigh that above some principles. Too easy to be extorted.
If it's REALLY a case of STARVING, or perhaps a medical insurance lock-in issue, maybe it's better to get the damn thing and work hard to change things up ASAP.
You are right. Almost nobody gets to change without consequence. However, what consequences are show stoppers and or mandatory is a point of serious discussion. That was the intent behind my post.
I've absolutely no fear of this. If some draconian employer tried this crap, I would simply not do it, period.
Life style expectations can be reset.
Been there before anyway. It's not such a big deal. Actually, it is only as big of a deal as one thinks it is. So, you drive used cars, rent, don't have as many toys. Compensate with other activities and work really hard on allowing those things you possess define who you are and what your value is.
I've still got a Mandrake 8 box running, emulators, OGLE (IMHO, the best DVD playback), some net utilities, and other old things. I really like it. That's about the last time I really liked it.
For some reason the Mandrake/iva stuff just didn't quite gell. After some futzing around, I generally got the system running well, but that's the problem! Nobody, besides the geeks, wants, or needs to do this!
Hell, I don't want or need to do this, and I know my stuff! I also know where my time is best spent and it's not doing that crap.
I put the kids on a Ubuntu box and it's just fine. I really don't have to do much sysadmin at all, and they like it. (they are teens, having seen some OSes in their time) After a few months, I saw their cameras, portable media players, e-mail, pictures, games running nicely. This just has not happened with other environments, without hassles.
Their perspective:
win32 = virii, spyware, driver / DLL conflicts over time This translates to windows rot, getting slow, iffy, etc... they are very careful on one of these machines, largely because they know stuff happens (interesting huh?)
most Linuxes = runs great, but only does some things, without intervention (They do what they want, and it's safe, but it requires help and does not just work)
mac = pretty, but you have to buy stuff, or run "old" software. (that's OSS stuff on Mac)
Ubuntu = fun, has all sorts of stuff that can be loaded, pretty, fast. (I set up their package manager so that it just worked, let them find it and use it. They came back and said, "this gimp thing is awesome" found a ton of bizzare picture edits --go figure)
Of course, I can change that perception with work on my end. The take away here is that Ubuntu has required very little of that work, by comparison to most other environments.
Somebody, somewhere, needs to make a cheap, all in the box, Ubuntu system. Just include sound, 3D graphics, video in, video out, USB, game controller port, portable media reader, DVD playback, Rip Mix Burn for video and audio.
This is possible for a few hundred dollars, minus display. It's a winner. Does not need to be the fastest, or the latest, just needs to be loaded up and ready to run. Think of it as the Mac Mini for the rest of us.
The average CEO makes 400 times what their "innovators" do. So, take a cut, apply those dollars toward a return, then grow their salary by percentage of new revenue from innovation, rather than cutting costs.
Their productivity metric is really about the real gains they achieve for others, not how much they are doing to realize said gains.
I would turn the tables on this --and quick. Essentially, they have no idea what "work" for a sysadmin is. They know they need it, but they don't know how much of it they need, or if the people they have doing it are actually delivering as well as they could be.
Where bottlenecks are identified, along with inconsistent behavior, admins apply information technology to the problem, with the goal of eliminating them. Why are they not all eliminated? Cost and time are the two biggest contributors. Nearly anything can be done, but it will either cost a ton, or take a long time, thus reducing the potential for other gains to be realized and that's the balance right there.
If they understand that dynamic, real conversations can be had about what makes sense and what does not. Having established that, IT is then in a position where they contribute to the management of the enterprise as a whole.
Either one understands these things, or one does not. It is not possible to control a dynamic that is not understood.
So, this bozo is down to either not managing or he needs to develop a trust relationship that enables the kinds of conversations necessary for the dynamic to work.
Essentially, he's asking you to package this up and present it in some neutral way, so he can avoid trust. Of course, he's a complete fool! Lack of understanding means he cannot verify what he is given and therefore cannot make reasoned, rational judgments about it.
He could being up accountability. That's a simple one. IT is accountable to those it serves. It also is accountable to those providing the approved technology. There is no free lunch.
Buy the wrong tech, end up with hard working admins who are not empowered to realize the gains promised. Not their fault, unless they were involved with selection and the trust relationship, mentioned above, is leveraged toward that goal.
Short story: You guys are happy to work with him, but there are boundaries and needs.
You all have the shared goal of a healthy enterprise that pays your way. Start from there and get this guys trust. This will avoid all the silly reporting that just ends up being a drain on innovation and process improvement / troubleshooting. It will also open the door for more business information your crew can use to make solid decisions about what gets done, how much it costs, and the ramifications. That's what they really need, not some silly metric that says you were surfing too much, by percentage, last week.
There is one other thing this guy needs to know. Sysadmin is a self correcting affair, for the most part. If too much time is not spent applying brains and tech to process and people problems, then the admins get buried under a growing pile of crap that makes their lives hell. All admins want to have time to be proactive, not reactive. (all the smart ones do anyway) Being reactive leads to a hostile user environment and that's just not cool! Cuts into the UTube time!
What he suggests is reactive, and the start of a bad cycle that will seriously impact the company over time. Your job is to prevent that crap from happening, which justifies the conversation in the first place!
Shake the geek image for a bit and win this guy over. It will be one of the very best working relationships he has ever had. Do not let him pretend he can manage a dynamic he does not understand. Do let him know rational goals, discussed and agreed to, can and will regularly be met. And there is his productivity dynamic. If your crew says what they can do and for how much time and cost, then does what they said, he's got zero worries.
Seeing that is not a spreadsheet, but an ongoing conversation that communicates the state of those things on a level both parties find trustworthy.
Having said that, I've seen plenty of these broken metrics. If he cannot be
Heck, when I was in 6th grade, we just made up a few and used those. "Aw, ship, shig, frack, etc..." The sentiment was the same, so was the trouble back then. (and rightfully so too)
I don't have a problem with cussing in my home because we allow profanity, given it's used in a solid and defensible way. There are emotions and things in this world that are less than beautiful. That's what we have profanity for.
Early on, we grappled with this. Decided the best way to solve it was to just have at it, explore it and understand it. Enter cussing night! Yes, you too can cuss all you want for one night! (and they have asked for it from time to time --it's a hilarious evening watching them try to actually find ways to use profanity, hosing it up and looking like total boobs.)
We arrived at a point where everyone knows what lazy speech is. Nobody likes it --it's just bad form. If you can get teens to understand what bad form is, you've done a lot. Think of it like encouraging reading with pr0n. That works too, trust me.
I actually don't have a big problem with working for decency on the public airwaves. But a balance is necessary if the programming is to be real at all. This whole affair is just not balance, but pandering to those of us, who choose to self-lie instead of dealing in reality.
Today I see my teens call each other out on bad form and it's just priceless. Friends come over and think our home is just liberal in that lazy way and cut loose. When they are corrected by my kids, not us, the looks on their faces shows an impact. Often that leads to some discussion on their part. This kind of advocacy really punches home. I know it when I hear kids, who are not part of my family, apologize for poor form.
I'll just put it here right now.
IGNORANCE IS NEVER A SOLUTION.
That's what this bill aimes to preserve. There is a case for innocence, and I think said case is fairly solid. But it's not the governments job to preserve that. Bringing tools to the table for parents to use is all good. A balance is all good. But this reeks of the kind of ignorant and foolish no tolerance policies that always end up being marginalized due to their futility.
BTW: Using almost profane words can have more of an impact than full on profanity! My daughter recently was being leered at by some bozo. After a brief exchange, she said, "grow up and quit acting like an ass." Very mature for her young age. The guy looked guilty as hell. Had she just launched into a profane tirade, he would have gotten the reaction he was looking for.
then, we've got an interesting interface here. Sprinkle a few of these into the motor cortex, then have the person work with feedback systems to learn to differentiate those controls from the natural ones. From there, all sorts of potential exists for communication.
Instead of the computer being an active part of the brain, it becomes more like a PDA that you don't have to carry. Motor feedback signals, generated from the neurons would then become something like morse code.
Would be damn nice to be in a job interview, using Google in real time, while answering the questions with ordinary speech!
Frankly, Final Fantasy XII was worth the $60. (Yeah, I know the non-collectors one was $50, but it was out of stock at the time.)
Many of the franchise games, with recurring themes, are no longer worth the $60. Many of these simply look better, or have some nifty feature and that's it. Hmmm... reminds me of Microsoft software actually. --no thanks! This title was big (really fricking big), expanded on the story line and overall theme nicely and had fantastic art direction. Beautiful and engaging game, with a lot of depth. Casual players could blow through it and enjoy the title. Those wanting to really explore the game are rewarded with lots of things to do. Playtime on this title ranges from 20-30 hours, to nearly 200! That's worth the $60.
If the game is actually something new, and provides that escape factor, the $60 is no biggie, particularly if it's got some playtime to it. If it's a rehash, I'm more inclined to snag it used, or just skip it period.
All of the licensing that goes on, makes sure the existing games remain expensive for new versions. I've no problem with that, but I think as time goes on, more people will start doing what I am; namely, skipping or buying used or trading. That pie will shrink somewhat. New gamers will counter that somewhat. Don't know where those curves intersect!
A new Madden game, for example, is generally not worth the $60, IMHO. The core elements that make that kind of game fun are present in the titles I already own. Getting new players and such is cool, but not $60 worth of cool.
Retro gaming is getting pretty fun these days. Being able to self-publish creative and fun games for older consoles is a kick and more people are doing it now than ever. I like this scene. The games are fun, you can get to know the developers and even participate in the process too boot! Interestingly, some of these titles hit $40.00 each! Many sell into the hundreds and a few into the thousands. $40.00 for a game written for the Atari 2600, suggests there could be a very strong market for smaller scale development efforts, given the right expectations are set. It also suggests that smaller houses could make plenty to make the whole affair worth it.
The current crop of consoles is powerful enough to allow for some level of abstraction to make developing new games easier. The price will be perhaps somewhat smaller games, or maybe less potent graphics, but the creativity is likely worth it in the longer run. We need new genres, or perhaps we just need to really explore some of the ones forgotten.
For now, I'm not getting a new console. The trusty PS2, retro machines and my computer all provide a lot of gaming fun. I'll spring for a new title, and I'll pay the higher price too, but I just don't do it as often. For so many games, it's the same overall ideas with different skins, essentially. No thanks!
Rather than get into a price discussion, I would prefer that be off the table and instead see more efforts to encourage smaller scale game development. Heck, if the console makers are worried about managing expectations (graphics, for example), brand the effort with a logo so those titles are differentiated from the blockbuster ones filling the shelves now.
More diversity and creativity in gaming will expand both the pool of potential gamers as well as generate a new set of core platforms from which second and third gen games can be built. This is where the value is. Always has been, always will be.
I fear the established players have a solid interest in not seeing this go any farther than the current retro scene. If people got into games as art, and played them for playability and all the other classic things that make games fun, suddenly the need for totally new console hardware drops doesn't it? Efforts, like the ones I described above, could span several consoles and even generations of them, given some engines to work with. This would be a much better scene than the one we have now.
BTW, of the
Yes, but the toys have to do stuff...
on
The Return of Toys
·
· Score: 1
...cool and interesting stuff.
With all the tech we have today, we should be able to integrate that into some really great toys. IMHO, some solid research on how kids develop and what they are looking to explore, should yield some new toys that use tech to enable that.
Slashdot Mirror
doesn't it?
I've walked more than once, when called on to do unethical things. Ordinary law covers more than you think as well. Will walk again too. It's just not worth it.
non - neutral net.
Basically, profits are higher if we consumers get screwed. Given they were granted monopolies, they should deal with this problem instead of figuring out ways to not deal with it and meet "growth expectations".
Free market indeed.
Oh, and why does the post say, "corporate and consumer use" Isn't that just use?
in the mood.
You get one on the phone and as soon as you are able, ask them:
"Is this a sales call?"
If they say, "yes", then reply with "no money", or "would you be interested in donating to my church", etc... essentially your list! One particularly vile one is, "I only buy from bitches, are you in fact a bitch?" hehe...
If they say, "no", then the fun begins!
Let them know that if they are not on a sales call, then they cannot use any of the sales words. Sales words are "introduce", "tell you about", etc...
Bottom line is when they then attempt to start their pitch, just pick the key word, declare it to be a sales word, remind them about not using sales words and take control of the conversation back.
Sometimes they will just blurt out, "but it's free!"
This one is great because you then talk about free. Is breathing free? Talking on the phone free? Really free? Doesn't it take food to exist to have the conversation? Have fun with that, it will chap their ass and they will eventually hang up, or accept it's not really free.
This puts you back to the sales call bit.
Most of them get pissed and after being asked, "are you sure this isn't a sales call?" a few times, will step up and admit it's a sales call.
Congratulate them! Thanks man. I just knew this was a sales call!
Then nail them. "If you had been honest about the sales call, I might have considered the offer. Now it's really tough because nobody wants to buy anything from a liar! Would you buy from a liar?"
Let them down easy, but be condecending. In the future, you might consider just admitting you are on a sales call. You will sleep better, trust me, have a nice day, etc...
When I can, I'll do this on speaker phone. I've also played some really great sessions for use with some of our staff that does have to make sales calls. It's instructive.
If so, congrats! Your brain is not rigid yet.
Will you play?
That is essentially how you know if the state of your brain matters or not.
All it takes is an environment where the student is challenged. This is gonna piss said student off, but it's ok. Once they get through it, they will come back and be rational about it, realizing the gift they have been given.
... 400, then finally grok the idea that they are dealing with somebody wanting to keep it real. From there, it's all good.
(had a HS teacher do exactly that --a mentor at that time, do the same. I will never forget it.)
The problem we've got with building more critical thinkers comes down to preserving the status quo. If we pump out a bunch of free thinkers, they are gonna go off and do what free thinkers do; namely, change stuff!
This is good, but the current powers that be, don't want too many people to realize that.
Also, putting false choices in front of students, while at the same time limiting their understanding of their real choices, does a lot toward making semi-critical thinkers. They solve problems, largely within the current framework, and as such thinkers, are highly desired.
I can't tell you how many times I've been to the local school (and I like my local school), to deal with these false choices head on. They look at somebody, that actually asks ugly questions, like a complete freak. They employ control and co-opt 101, 102
Largely this problem is one of inhibition. Manage that properly, and that means lots of work on boundaries, and you will get a nice critical thinker, nearly every time. Fail to manage that properly, as in too many artificial inhibitions, and you get a problem solver. They are two different things, often confused.
...a plane ticket, before he kills himself.
Nice talent and even better, motivation.
If Nigeria doesn't appreciate him, somebody else will.
I went through this a while back with a 3D STL file viewer. I originally wrote it in the classic, "Scratch an itch" fashion for my own use. It was also to explore OpenGL a bit. At the time, I had an SGI, some docs and some time. Enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot. It was a C project and C was something I really had no serious experience in.
I'm totally not a professional developer, but I can say it ran good and did what it was supposed to. I could feed the thing ugly, huge files that had nothing to do with CAD, big files that did, etc... and it all just worked nicely. What more does one need? If it were written in total bad ass style, it would still do those things, so who cares?
When I put the thing on SourceForge, I was nervous. Turned out to be a complete non-issue. (viewstl, BTW)
Got a lot of downloads and people were totally cool. I got patches sent in for a coupla stupid bugs. No brainer to just add those and bump the project rev.
One guy, teaching comp-sci, sent me an e-mail about the code. He used it for some class project. Some of it was actual viewing of files. The other use was to give his students an example of some code and pose a, "what would you do?" kind of thing.
At first, this pissed me off huge. However, he did send me the class notes and my program annotated with great comments! I refer to that document to this day as it's essentially a really solid comp-sci course study, tuned for my specific needs!
He and I bantered around about this. At the end of the day, it's better to post it as people can use it. They will use it and that's good. Some of the OSS stuff you may be running now is highly likely to be no better than what you contributed and do you care?
I sure don't.
That hunk of code improved some as I took some of the comments, learned some stuff, then revised the program. I learned enough to realize maybe some of them were more academic than I cared to deal with, so I ignored those. Nice to get to that spot in the first place! Took that time to rebuild it on Linux, having set a machine up, it was a perfect get my toes wet kind of activity.
Later, it ended up as part of some product being commercially produced in Germany. They wrote me, wanting license terms that made sense for commercial distribution. The trade was their patches for some new functionality, so the project improved, and my name somewhere on the box, and a donation to the FSF. No worries there. They got their license, the project saw some more code.
Guess what? Theirs really was not a whole lot better than mine!! Pretty funny actually.
Bottom line, through all of that, nobody ever contacted me with any kind of "you fricking lamer..." kind of stuff. The code got used and those users would not have had the chance had I been worried about how much of a bad ass I might or might not be.
So, just post it up. My experience is that most all people are pretty cool. You never know where it might lead to, and it's a great way to give back to the nice body of code you might be running right now. That is how it improves every day. Why not?
Today, it's just there being used, from time to time. Once in a while I get an e-mail about it. No recent patches these days, and that's likely due to the thing doing what it is supposed to do. Most are some question, or answering my request for occasional feedback. I wanted to know what people did with it, out of pure curiosity.
If it's useful, people will use it, period. I wouldn't post crap, knowingly anyway. But I would post up something that is useful, because it's gonna matter to somebody somewhere.
...one either deals with that, or one does not.
The slightly smarter Netizen will encrypt those things that might be bad. Ideally, they will keep them of the net period.
As for the rest, who really cares?
It comes down to how much of a target you are and what kinds enemies one has to deal with. Most ordinary people have few worries, so the service is viable on that basis.
If you've got any worries:
(and here is a starter list)
-sexual wierdness
-crime
-pissed powerful people
-sedition
-activism
you would be wise to just deal with these things, person to person, or maybe run your own stuff, but that comes with risks too. Likely the same, or even more risk than just blending into the online crowd does.
The one other thing that can be done is to just get smart about the net, generally speaking. The more you know, the safer you are. Safe computing is a matter of what you know and what your habits are like. Has nothing to do with software and services, for the most part.
and it was all about tossing a bone to the religious right.
Now that political move is coming back to bite them. Lots of solutions were on the table to mitigate the problem.
It's all about the cost of legislating morality.
I am constantly amazed at this issue.
When somebody buys software media, it's their media! Reselling it is their deal, not the producer of the media.
Software vendors can validate online, so there are no worries about media right?
Where all these stupid ass agreements are concerned, the law is clear there too. Did the buyer sign to enter into the contract?
If yes, then all the terms apply.
This is what the software company I work with does. You actually sign a license agreement and all is good.
If no, then fuck off.
In the "no" scenario, vendors are saving a lot of money by not having to deal with the contracts.
This is not hard stuff. The only way it's getting hard is the software vendors are trying to assert rights they just don't have.
We use it here in Oregon, and it works well.
Anybody registered to vote, gets checked, then mailed their ballot to their address on file. Signature checks, collected at the DMV, are used to validate votes. Votes are mailed in a double secret envelope that allows verification but does not tie votes to voters.
The counting system is optical scan, is done in one location with security in place there. Audits are performed, and most importantly:
-the voter can verify their own vote
-said vote is human and machine readable
-casting of votes is distributed over time and space.
Send the pieces to AT&T along with that bill.
No way I would ever pay that.
Anyone else notice how AT&T ended up back in the phone business, after helping with the wiretapping. AT&T, formerly Singular, wiretapping, now AT&T again?
Might be a nice catch.
Still, selecting was not the right thing to do.
If, the law was clear, it should have been the first decision. Minor issue really. Either one court hosed up, or both of them did.
Either way, we still don't know who won, only who was selected, not elected.
The reality is the people of Florida were denied their democratic process. Both parties asked for incomplete and biased remedies. The Florida Supreme Court, sorted that out and ruled for all the votes to be counted, according to the current law.
That meant each county was to establish it's standard, then perform the count.
We really don't know who won Florida, which is exactly why a lot of people call Bush "Selected, not Elected".
SCOTUS jumped in and made a bizzare ruling, essentially stopping the process. One reason, among many, was the idea that Bush might be harmed by completing the democratic process. FOX news had called the election, and SCOTUS considered that in their judicial process. (Yeah, he might be harmed! He might not have been the winner, but that's for the people, not SCOTUS to decide.) Other matters were about votes being treated equally, which is not a bad legal precedent to set, but also not a complete justification for ruling how they did. It was specifically noted that their decision was not to be considered for future decisions in kind of a "good for the country" kind of thing.
The whole affair is complicated enough to make myths easy!
Reality is our process failed. We don't know who won, only who was selected, the rest is history.
Sorry, but I do.
Grew up poor ass. Poor enough to value ordinary milk, glue my shoes instead of buying new ones, wondering what new clothes are like.
As an adult, I've quit more than one job over matters of ethics and principle. Once, it really cost me. Might cost me again.
I am suggesting people step up and act on what they believe. If that means moving, living with family, eating lean, etc... don't take it off the table.
In other words, don't fear your job situation, unless it's warranted.
In the case of the kids having to live less, I'm not sure I would weigh that above some principles. Too easy to be extorted.
If it's REALLY a case of STARVING, or perhaps a medical insurance lock-in issue, maybe it's better to get the damn thing and work hard to change things up ASAP.
You are right. Almost nobody gets to change without consequence. However, what consequences are show stoppers and or mandatory is a point of serious discussion. That was the intent behind my post.
don't they?
I've absolutely no fear of this. If some draconian employer tried this crap, I would simply not do it, period.
Life style expectations can be reset.
Been there before anyway. It's not such a big deal. Actually, it is only as big of a deal as one thinks it is. So, you drive used cars, rent, don't have as many toys. Compensate with other activities and work really hard on allowing those things you possess define who you are and what your value is.
Ubuntu just kills Mandriva these days.
I've still got a Mandrake 8 box running, emulators, OGLE (IMHO, the best DVD playback), some net utilities, and other old things. I really like it. That's about the last time I really liked it.
For some reason the Mandrake/iva stuff just didn't quite gell. After some futzing around, I generally got the system running well, but that's the problem! Nobody, besides the geeks, wants, or needs to do this!
Hell, I don't want or need to do this, and I know my stuff! I also know where my time is best spent and it's not doing that crap.
I put the kids on a Ubuntu box and it's just fine. I really don't have to do much sysadmin at all, and they like it. (they are teens, having seen some OSes in their time) After a few months, I saw their cameras, portable media players, e-mail, pictures, games running nicely. This just has not happened with other environments, without hassles.
Their perspective:
win32 = virii, spyware, driver / DLL conflicts over time This translates to windows rot, getting slow, iffy, etc... they are very careful on one of these machines, largely because they know stuff happens (interesting huh?)
most Linuxes = runs great, but only does some things, without intervention (They do what they want, and it's safe, but it requires help and does not just work)
mac = pretty, but you have to buy stuff, or run "old" software. (that's OSS stuff on Mac)
Ubuntu = fun, has all sorts of stuff that can be loaded, pretty, fast. (I set up their package manager so that it just worked, let them find it and use it. They came back and said, "this gimp thing is awesome" found a ton of bizzare picture edits --go figure)
Of course, I can change that perception with work on my end. The take away here is that Ubuntu has required very little of that work, by comparison to most other environments.
Somebody, somewhere, needs to make a cheap, all in the box, Ubuntu system. Just include sound, 3D graphics, video in, video out, USB, game controller port, portable media reader, DVD playback, Rip Mix Burn for video and audio.
This is possible for a few hundred dollars, minus display. It's a winner. Does not need to be the fastest, or the latest, just needs to be loaded up and ready to run. Think of it as the Mac Mini for the rest of us.
others to do?
The average CEO makes 400 times what their "innovators" do. So, take a cut, apply those dollars toward a return, then grow their salary by percentage of new revenue from innovation, rather than cutting costs.
Their productivity metric is really about the real gains they achieve for others, not how much they are doing to realize said gains.
I would turn the tables on this --and quick. Essentially, they have no idea what "work" for a sysadmin is. They know they need it, but they don't know how much of it they need, or if the people they have doing it are actually delivering as well as they could be.
Where bottlenecks are identified, along with inconsistent behavior, admins apply information technology to the problem, with the goal of eliminating them. Why are they not all eliminated? Cost and time are the two biggest contributors. Nearly anything can be done, but it will either cost a ton, or take a long time, thus reducing the potential for other gains to be realized and that's the balance right there.
If they understand that dynamic, real conversations can be had about what makes sense and what does not. Having established that, IT is then in a position where they contribute to the management of the enterprise as a whole.
Either one understands these things, or one does not. It is not possible to control a dynamic that is not understood.
So, this bozo is down to either not managing or he needs to develop a trust relationship that enables the kinds of conversations necessary for the dynamic to work.
Essentially, he's asking you to package this up and present it in some neutral way, so he can avoid trust. Of course, he's a complete fool! Lack of understanding means he cannot verify what he is given and therefore cannot make reasoned, rational judgments about it.
He could being up accountability. That's a simple one. IT is accountable to those it serves. It also is accountable to those providing the approved technology. There is no free lunch.
Buy the wrong tech, end up with hard working admins who are not empowered to realize the gains promised. Not their fault, unless they were involved with selection and the trust relationship, mentioned above, is leveraged toward that goal.
Short story: You guys are happy to work with him, but there are boundaries and needs.
You all have the shared goal of a healthy enterprise that pays your way. Start from there and get this guys trust. This will avoid all the silly reporting that just ends up being a drain on innovation and process improvement / troubleshooting. It will also open the door for more business information your crew can use to make solid decisions about what gets done, how much it costs, and the ramifications. That's what they really need, not some silly metric that says you were surfing too much, by percentage, last week.
There is one other thing this guy needs to know. Sysadmin is a self correcting affair, for the most part. If too much time is not spent applying brains and tech to process and people problems, then the admins get buried under a growing pile of crap that makes their lives hell. All admins want to have time to be proactive, not reactive. (all the smart ones do anyway) Being reactive leads to a hostile user environment and that's just not cool! Cuts into the UTube time!
What he suggests is reactive, and the start of a bad cycle that will seriously impact the company over time. Your job is to prevent that crap from happening, which justifies the conversation in the first place!
Shake the geek image for a bit and win this guy over. It will be one of the very best working relationships he has ever had. Do not let him pretend he can manage a dynamic he does not understand. Do let him know rational goals, discussed and agreed to, can and will regularly be met. And there is his productivity dynamic. If your crew says what they can do and for how much time and cost, then does what they said, he's got zero worries.
Seeing that is not a spreadsheet, but an ongoing conversation that communicates the state of those things on a level both parties find trustworthy.
Having said that, I've seen plenty of these broken metrics. If he cannot be
Nice folks. Friendly, not pushy, just easy to work with. ...and if you talk fast, you might get stuff!
I live in Portland. Wonderful city. It's not as baked as people think it is.
Then again...
It's Oregon, who cares?
Heck, when I was in 6th grade, we just made up a few and used those. "Aw, ship, shig, frack, etc..." The sentiment was the same, so was the trouble back then. (and rightfully so too)
I don't have a problem with cussing in my home because we allow profanity, given it's used in a solid and defensible way. There are emotions and things in this world that are less than beautiful. That's what we have profanity for.
Early on, we grappled with this. Decided the best way to solve it was to just have at it, explore it and understand it. Enter cussing night! Yes, you too can cuss all you want for one night! (and they have asked for it from time to time --it's a hilarious evening watching them try to actually find ways to use profanity, hosing it up and looking like total boobs.)
We arrived at a point where everyone knows what lazy speech is. Nobody likes it --it's just bad form. If you can get teens to understand what bad form is, you've done a lot. Think of it like encouraging reading with pr0n. That works too, trust me.
I actually don't have a big problem with working for decency on the public airwaves. But a balance is necessary if the programming is to be real at all. This whole affair is just not balance, but pandering to those of us, who choose to self-lie instead of dealing in reality.
Today I see my teens call each other out on bad form and it's just priceless. Friends come over and think our home is just liberal in that lazy way and cut loose. When they are corrected by my kids, not us, the looks on their faces shows an impact. Often that leads to some discussion on their part. This kind of advocacy really punches home. I know it when I hear kids, who are not part of my family, apologize for poor form.
I'll just put it here right now.
IGNORANCE IS NEVER A SOLUTION.
That's what this bill aimes to preserve. There is a case for innocence, and I think said case is fairly solid. But it's not the governments job to preserve that. Bringing tools to the table for parents to use is all good. A balance is all good. But this reeks of the kind of ignorant and foolish no tolerance policies that always end up being marginalized due to their futility.
BTW: Using almost profane words can have more of an impact than full on profanity! My daughter recently was being leered at by some bozo. After a brief exchange, she said, "grow up and quit acting like an ass." Very mature for her young age. The guy looked guilty as hell. Had she just launched into a profane tirade, he would have gotten the reaction he was looking for.
then, we've got an interesting interface here. Sprinkle a few of these into the motor cortex, then have the person work with feedback systems to learn to differentiate those controls from the natural ones. From there, all sorts of potential exists for communication.
Instead of the computer being an active part of the brain, it becomes more like a PDA that you don't have to carry. Motor feedback signals, generated from the neurons would then become something like morse code.
Would be damn nice to be in a job interview, using Google in real time, while answering the questions with ordinary speech!
Frankly, Final Fantasy XII was worth the $60. (Yeah, I know the non-collectors one was $50, but it was out of stock at the time.)
Many of the franchise games, with recurring themes, are no longer worth the $60. Many of these simply look better, or have some nifty feature and that's it. Hmmm... reminds me of Microsoft software actually. --no thanks! This title was big (really fricking big), expanded on the story line and overall theme nicely and had fantastic art direction. Beautiful and engaging game, with a lot of depth. Casual players could blow through it and enjoy the title. Those wanting to really explore the game are rewarded with lots of things to do. Playtime on this title ranges from 20-30 hours, to nearly 200! That's worth the $60.
If the game is actually something new, and provides that escape factor, the $60 is no biggie, particularly if it's got some playtime to it. If it's a rehash, I'm more inclined to snag it used, or just skip it period.
All of the licensing that goes on, makes sure the existing games remain expensive for new versions. I've no problem with that, but I think as time goes on, more people will start doing what I am; namely, skipping or buying used or trading. That pie will shrink somewhat. New gamers will counter that somewhat. Don't know where those curves intersect!
A new Madden game, for example, is generally not worth the $60, IMHO. The core elements that make that kind of game fun are present in the titles I already own. Getting new players and such is cool, but not $60 worth of cool.
Retro gaming is getting pretty fun these days. Being able to self-publish creative and fun games for older consoles is a kick and more people are doing it now than ever. I like this scene. The games are fun, you can get to know the developers and even participate in the process too boot! Interestingly, some of these titles hit $40.00 each! Many sell into the hundreds and a few into the thousands. $40.00 for a game written for the Atari 2600, suggests there could be a very strong market for smaller scale development efforts, given the right expectations are set. It also suggests that smaller houses could make plenty to make the whole affair worth it.
The current crop of consoles is powerful enough to allow for some level of abstraction to make developing new games easier. The price will be perhaps somewhat smaller games, or maybe less potent graphics, but the creativity is likely worth it in the longer run. We need new genres, or perhaps we just need to really explore some of the ones forgotten.
For now, I'm not getting a new console. The trusty PS2, retro machines and my computer all provide a lot of gaming fun. I'll spring for a new title, and I'll pay the higher price too, but I just don't do it as often. For so many games, it's the same overall ideas with different skins, essentially. No thanks!
Rather than get into a price discussion, I would prefer that be off the table and instead see more efforts to encourage smaller scale game development. Heck, if the console makers are worried about managing expectations (graphics, for example), brand the effort with a logo so those titles are differentiated from the blockbuster ones filling the shelves now.
More diversity and creativity in gaming will expand both the pool of potential gamers as well as generate a new set of core platforms from which second and third gen games can be built. This is where the value is. Always has been, always will be.
I fear the established players have a solid interest in not seeing this go any farther than the current retro scene. If people got into games as art, and played them for playability and all the other classic things that make games fun, suddenly the need for totally new console hardware drops doesn't it? Efforts, like the ones I described above, could span several consoles and even generations of them, given some engines to work with. This would be a much better scene than the one we have now.
BTW, of the
...cool and interesting stuff.
With all the tech we have today, we should be able to integrate that into some really great toys. IMHO, some solid research on how kids develop and what they are looking to explore, should yield some new toys that use tech to enable that.
Glad we are getting that out of the way quick! Acceptance is the first step on the path to healing.