I think the implication was that what's wrong is "you were manually futzing with" it - zap it back in conformity with the rest, and if it still misbehaves, you have 999 reasons to believe it's a hardware issue.
The only problem with paying the bearded guy to build the decent system from the start is that bearded guy will not have incentive to actually build it properly from the beginning...even though you are paying him...because he doesn't have to actually maintain the thing. Just a thought...I've seen this many times in IT (and had to clean it up).
And it probably doesn't help that you're breathing down his neck to get it done NOW NOW NOW because your boss' boss' boss picked a deadline based on his golf schedule.
very true - and please remember that the computers/network/I.T. department is there to help the company do whatever it does. I.T. is not an end to itself.
Knowing what happened/broke is essential so that we can prevent it from happening again, but "real server admin skills" include the ability to minimize downtime (*cough* re-image *cough*)...
Or, to phrase another way, think ROI - how many "reimages" will you have to prevent to break even on the amount of time spent solving the problem?
I agree a post-mortem is never a bad idea, but it's not always an effective use of time.
Re-imaging is completely rational from a business perspective.
Particularly when you consider what the costs of downtime are. Around here, when the server goes down that leaves a hundred or so people in the warehouse completely idle. 100 people x $CRAZY dollars per hour (+ $OVERTIME at the end of the shift to catch up) means that it is almost *always* more cost-effective to the company to punt, reboot, get the system (and people) working again, and then troubleshoot later.
I suppose the question becomes, is "I'm still using it" a good enough excuse to never give up copyright?
Disney's still using Mickey because he works, but even if he was completely unpopular and a dud, it's still far more cost-effective for them to draw a cartoon once a year to "prove" the character is in use.
At some point things need to fall into public domain, if only to make room for new creativity.
The other side of this, of course, is that this is about, essentially, stealing copyrighted material and selling counterfeit goods. This goes to tens of billions of dollars in theft. Some of the supporters of this were after the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild I happen to belong to all three of those unions.
So yeah, there's some vested interest going on there.
On the plus side, not only is he very honest about his vested interest (I snipped the quote to just the relevant part - he's a member of the three unions), but at least they're *his* interests, and not interests paid for by outsiders.
I still think they should have gone with the NASCAR idea, where instead of the byline being (Joe Politician, D-Arizona) it was (Joe Politician, Exxon, IBM, Mattel). These days knowing who their major donors are is more informative than what party they belong to...
It's the same shit that happens with video sites. It could be legit, but they'd rather be big pussies and cave.
You're right, but I wouldn't blame Zazzle - they're a business, they're trying to make money. Getting mired in a billion lawsuits will do nothing but stop them from being a business OR making money. I can't argue their position - it's not the hill they want to die on.
Well, Sarah Palin's in the process of trademarking her name, and as a controversial (yet wealthy) politician, it's a hell of a tool to have at hand.
And yes, yes, free speech, political freedom, etc, etc - the only hope I have is that when she starts dropping C&Ds around, someone else is wealthy enough to fund the defense suit. Otherwise you can be completely in the right and yet too poor to win.
Ah, but could you change you name to Jeremy Reginald Robert Tolkien, and put your new name on your book? Granted, you'd be pretty fucking pathetic to do so, but I can't see the legal issue.
I ain't no lawyer, but I suspect that you'd get busted on that - it's fairly obvious that you're intending to horn in on the trademark.
The question I'm more curious about is that if your momma and poppa, Bob and Louise Toklien, decide to name their little bundle o'joy Jimmy Rob Rae Tolkien, and the kid tries to use his name, what happens? I seem to recall some sort of allowance or exception for cases where you are using your real name.
... can employees get excited about being told that not only can you work on your own time (as long as you only work on Approved Projects), but your Benevolent Corporate Master will *only* take 30% of the profits!
Seems like a great incentive for MS programmers to ditch trying out new computer skills in lieu of more woodshop or home improvement classes - at least then you make 100% of what you earn...
Movie companies sit on scripts and completed movies alike, all the time, for various strategic reasons. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them doing the same if copyright term became, say, 5 years. ("Thanks, Mr. Tolkien, for your awesome books! We'll be sure to start printing them and making movies in 2016!")
The flip side is that the movie studios pay for those "options", so the author is making money while it sits and spins. (IIRC, some authors can actually make a decent living just on options.) According to wikipedia, an option usually runs 12-18 months, at which point the author can turn around and resell the option.
What I would expect to see under shorter copyright laws is a higher price on those options (since it's not really feasible to shorten the option time), to account for the shorter "shelf life".
I'm happy for copyright to be a single fixed term. Most of us would be thrilled to get paid for 25 years for one piece of work.
I am sure, Tolkien's estate is not going to issue books "by Tolkien" that aren't actually written by him, so they have no legitimate reason for having a trademark.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Couple "close enough" examples I can think of off the cuff are:
Tom Clancy's Op-Center: actually written by Steve Pieczenik and Jeff Rovin. If Tom kicked off tomorrow, Steve and Jeff can happily keep writing "Tom Clancy" novels.
Babysitter's Club: Ann Martin wrote the first 35 books (and then the remaining billion and twelve were ghostwritten).
That's the danger of name-as-brand, in my mind - it lets the corporation farm our your reputation years after you're gone.
You fool! By posting those links you've slashdotted history! Who knows what alterations to the time line this will cause? Quick, somebody call a Voyager.
Surely you jest - If we're going to screw with time itself, let's do it properly. Where's a TARDIS when you really need one?
What I find funny about the so-called "kill switch" is this - if there was an Actual Emergency (omg, the hackerz are coming), and the freakin' President calls you up and says "we need to turn off the connections right now"... who *isn't* going to do it?
The job still commands some respect during emergencies.
(If you're feeling less charitable, substitute "Presidential phone call" with "Secret Service/FBI agents", and you'll get the Egypt-equivalent. Folks forget that even if you take your principled stand, they can just move you out of the way and do it themselves. Or arrest/detain/shoot you and ask your co-worker to do it.)
Since you need internet access to download any fixes your computer needs, how does one do that if you're blocked from the internet for having an infected computer?
What I'd absolutely love to see is one teacher who is both close to retirement and has a sense of humor to take this law to it's logical conclusion.
We're going to talk about controversial scientific topics/religion? Let's bring everything in. Flying Spagetti Monster. Illuminati. Flat Earth Society. Every crazy and wacky concept that you can find. And just point smugly to the "oh, I'm protected" clause when the school wants to know why they've learned everything *but* real science this month. (And then teach real science next month).
Put another way, if my kid has to sit and be told that the Zombie Wizard is a valid possibility for how the world works, I want equal time for everyone *else*'s crackpot theory as to how the world works.
I'll never understand why people thought giving companies the ability to fire for "no" reason was a good thing
No one ever gave them that right. They already had it. Laws take away rights. So the question is not "Why did we grant employers the ability to fire people without reason" the question is "Why would we want to take away employers rights to fire people without reason."
The only limitations I see would be on race, creed, or religion. This particular situation falls into "creed."
Well, where I am the logic is a bit reversed - for either party to terminate the employment contract requires notice (the classic "two weeks notice", although the exact amount varies depending on length of employment). It can be terminated without notice, but that requires cause (simply put, they have to prove they have a good reason to fire me, rather than I proving they don't). Seems to work well enough.
pretty sure the RCMP covers anywhere in Canada that there isn't a local (provincial or muni) force.
You would be correct. Although I suppose if you called about a stolen bike several days deep into the woods in Northern Ontario, it might take them a little while to get there.....
It's probably sad that I'd bet you'd get an answer out there faster than I would in metro Edmonton...
.. they'll never actually fire someone for badmouthing the city - they'll just terminate your employment.
I'll never understand why people thought giving companies the ability to fire for "no" reason was a good thing - all it does is let them fire you for *any* reason (legal or not)
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Run a I series, they're like a tank. Slow and cumbersome but they just don't stop.
Oh, they'll stop if you don't take care of them properly. We have them here, and when they fall, they fall *hard*.
On the plus side, it's nice to know it's the same hardware that IBM uses to play Jeopardy!
I think the implication was that what's wrong is "you were manually futzing with" it - zap it back in conformity with the rest, and if it still misbehaves, you have 999 reasons to believe it's a hardware issue.
Oh, and re-installing the machine means 24h of downtime".
Did I mention the application is considered mission-critical and runs 24x7? And that downtime can cost more than 6 figures to said (nameless) company?
And those are two very good reasons to not nuke/pave (although I would trust you realize that this is a bit of a non-standard situation).
In this situation, I'd expect to see a backup on hot standby - something that you fail-over to while you troubleshoot the main.
The only problem with paying the bearded guy to build the decent system from the start is that bearded guy will not have incentive to actually build it properly from the beginning...even though you are paying him...because he doesn't have to actually maintain the thing. Just a thought...I've seen this many times in IT (and had to clean it up).
And it probably doesn't help that you're breathing down his neck to get it done NOW NOW NOW because your boss' boss' boss picked a deadline based on his golf schedule.
very true - and please remember that the computers/network/I.T. department is there to help the company do whatever it does. I.T. is not an end to itself.
Knowing what happened/broke is essential so that we can prevent it from happening again, but "real server admin skills" include the ability to minimize downtime (*cough* re-image *cough*) ...
Or, to phrase another way, think ROI - how many "reimages" will you have to prevent to break even on the amount of time spent solving the problem?
I agree a post-mortem is never a bad idea, but it's not always an effective use of time.
Re-imaging is completely rational from a business perspective.
Particularly when you consider what the costs of downtime are. Around here, when the server goes down that leaves a hundred or so people in the warehouse completely idle. 100 people x $CRAZY dollars per hour (+ $OVERTIME at the end of the shift to catch up) means that it is almost *always* more cost-effective to the company to punt, reboot, get the system (and people) working again, and then troubleshoot later.
Uptime is like a winning streak - nice while you have it, mourned when broken, but not worth getting too worked up about.
(Although I do miss my old 486/25 running Linux - I think I broke a year of uptime, simply because it just never stopped working.)
+1. Heck, what I find funny is that Disney, King of Infinite Copyright, has no problems using public domain themselves.
I suppose the question becomes, is "I'm still using it" a good enough excuse to never give up copyright?
Disney's still using Mickey because he works, but even if he was completely unpopular and a dud, it's still far more cost-effective for them to draw a cartoon once a year to "prove" the character is in use.
At some point things need to fall into public domain, if only to make room for new creativity.
The other side of this, of course, is that this is about, essentially, stealing copyrighted material and selling counterfeit goods. This goes to tens of billions of dollars in theft. Some of the supporters of this were after the American Federation of TV and Radio Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild I happen to belong to all three of those unions.
So yeah, there's some vested interest going on there.
On the plus side, not only is he very honest about his vested interest (I snipped the quote to just the relevant part - he's a member of the three unions), but at least they're *his* interests, and not interests paid for by outsiders.
I still think they should have gone with the NASCAR idea, where instead of the byline being (Joe Politician, D-Arizona) it was (Joe Politician, Exxon, IBM, Mattel). These days knowing who their major donors are is more informative than what party they belong to...
It's the same shit that happens with video sites. It could be legit, but they'd rather be big pussies and cave.
You're right, but I wouldn't blame Zazzle - they're a business, they're trying to make money. Getting mired in a billion lawsuits will do nothing but stop them from being a business OR making money. I can't argue their position - it's not the hill they want to die on.
Well, Sarah Palin's in the process of trademarking her name, and as a controversial (yet wealthy) politician, it's a hell of a tool to have at hand.
And yes, yes, free speech, political freedom, etc, etc - the only hope I have is that when she starts dropping C&Ds around, someone else is wealthy enough to fund the defense suit. Otherwise you can be completely in the right and yet too poor to win.
Ah, but could you change you name to Jeremy Reginald Robert Tolkien, and put your new name on your book? Granted, you'd be pretty fucking pathetic to do so, but I can't see the legal issue.
I ain't no lawyer, but I suspect that you'd get busted on that - it's fairly obvious that you're intending to horn in on the trademark.
The question I'm more curious about is that if your momma and poppa, Bob and Louise Toklien, decide to name their little bundle o'joy Jimmy Rob Rae Tolkien, and the kid tries to use his name, what happens? I seem to recall some sort of allowance or exception for cases where you are using your real name.
... can employees get excited about being told that not only can you work on your own time (as long as you only work on Approved Projects), but your Benevolent Corporate Master will *only* take 30% of the profits!
Seems like a great incentive for MS programmers to ditch trying out new computer skills in lieu of more woodshop or home improvement classes - at least then you make 100% of what you earn...
Movie companies sit on scripts and completed movies alike, all the time, for various strategic reasons. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to see them doing the same if copyright term became, say, 5 years. ("Thanks, Mr. Tolkien, for your awesome books! We'll be sure to start printing them and making movies in 2016!")
The flip side is that the movie studios pay for those "options", so the author is making money while it sits and spins. (IIRC, some authors can actually make a decent living just on options.) According to wikipedia, an option usually runs 12-18 months, at which point the author can turn around and resell the option.
What I would expect to see under shorter copyright laws is a higher price on those options (since it's not really feasible to shorten the option time), to account for the shorter "shelf life".
I'm happy for copyright to be a single fixed term. Most of us would be thrilled to get paid for 25 years for one piece of work.
I am sure, Tolkien's estate is not going to issue books "by Tolkien" that aren't actually written by him, so they have no legitimate reason for having a trademark.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Couple "close enough" examples I can think of off the cuff are:
Tom Clancy's Op-Center: actually written by Steve Pieczenik and Jeff Rovin. If Tom kicked off tomorrow, Steve and Jeff can happily keep writing "Tom Clancy" novels.
Babysitter's Club: Ann Martin wrote the first 35 books (and then the remaining billion and twelve were ghostwritten).
That's the danger of name-as-brand, in my mind - it lets the corporation farm our your reputation years after you're gone.
You fool! By posting those links you've slashdotted history! Who knows what alterations to the time line this will cause? Quick, somebody call a Voyager.
Surely you jest - If we're going to screw with time itself, let's do it properly. Where's a TARDIS when you really need one?
Well, he might of, but all it did was page his resident tech guy.
What I find funny about the so-called "kill switch" is this - if there was an Actual Emergency (omg, the hackerz are coming), and the freakin' President calls you up and says "we need to turn off the connections right now"... who *isn't* going to do it?
The job still commands some respect during emergencies.
(If you're feeling less charitable, substitute "Presidential phone call" with "Secret Service/FBI agents", and you'll get the Egypt-equivalent. Folks forget that even if you take your principled stand, they can just move you out of the way and do it themselves. Or arrest/detain/shoot you and ask your co-worker to do it.)
Someone give this poster some +1s.
Since you need internet access to download any fixes your computer needs, how does one do that if you're blocked from the internet for having an infected computer?
What I'd absolutely love to see is one teacher who is both close to retirement and has a sense of humor to take this law to it's logical conclusion.
We're going to talk about controversial scientific topics/religion? Let's bring everything in. Flying Spagetti Monster. Illuminati. Flat Earth Society. Every crazy and wacky concept that you can find. And just point smugly to the "oh, I'm protected" clause when the school wants to know why they've learned everything *but* real science this month. (And then teach real science next month).
Put another way, if my kid has to sit and be told that the Zombie Wizard is a valid possibility for how the world works, I want equal time for everyone *else*'s crackpot theory as to how the world works.
I'll never understand why people thought giving companies the ability to fire for "no" reason was a good thing
No one ever gave them that right. They already had it. Laws take away rights. So the question is not "Why did we grant employers the ability to fire people without reason" the question is "Why would we want to take away employers rights to fire people without reason."
The only limitations I see would be on race, creed, or religion. This particular situation falls into "creed."
Well, where I am the logic is a bit reversed - for either party to terminate the employment contract requires notice (the classic "two weeks notice", although the exact amount varies depending on length of employment). It can be terminated without notice, but that requires cause (simply put, they have to prove they have a good reason to fire me, rather than I proving they don't). Seems to work well enough.
pretty sure the RCMP covers anywhere in Canada that there isn't a local (provincial or muni) force.
You would be correct. Although I suppose if you called about a stolen bike several days deep into the woods in Northern Ontario, it might take them a little while to get there.....
It's probably sad that I'd bet you'd get an answer out there faster than I would in metro Edmonton...
.. they'll never actually fire someone for badmouthing the city - they'll just terminate your employment.
I'll never understand why people thought giving companies the ability to fire for "no" reason was a good thing - all it does is let them fire you for *any* reason (legal or not)