True, and good point. I love Pac Man. Like almost everyone of my generation, I probably put enough quarters in Pac Man to have purchased a full stand up version of the game.
However, I don't want it jumping up in my face when I least expect it...most of all while I'm trying to concentrate at work.
They should have put the artsy logo on there, then taken you to the game when you click on the logo...not had it just start playing the music and such when you go to their main page.
Some work environment are sensitive to potential time wasting (I'm sure mine isn't the only one) and I really don't like having been put in a position to explain that I wasn't playing the game...it just popped up.
I also DO have javascript disabled on most sites, but I add sites I trust to my "trusted sites" internet zone. Google was there, but will probably be removed now.
Disagree if you will, but it was bad jugement on Google's part (they are guilty of a lot of that lately).
Not only is it a noisey page...it's a noisey page that a lot of office people try to use.
I think google showed (yet again) very poor judgement in doing this on the MAIN FRIGGIN PAGE. I was trying to deal with a serious computer issue and do a quick search and the next thing I know I've got the FRIGGIN PAC MAN song playing on my computer...
They seem to have totally forgotten (or aren't even trying to be) that they are used by a lot of professionals around that world that use their search engine precisely because it's clean, quiet, and neat (or at least was). I had to swear off Bing, Yahoo, MSN, etc... because they were all so distracting.
Why do people insist in acting surprised when they find that Google can't be trusted. Google's object is to know as much as possible about YOU. They will find that out, then attempt to find ways to exploit that information without actually doing anything illegal. They got caught in this instance and realized that they should tell someone they did it rather than a whistleblower...which would have been even worse.
You do notice, though, that they've only ever gone after what they call "downloaders"? Those who download music they haven't purchased in any form?
I believe that they may be leerie of going after someone who has legitimately purchased the music they have on their player to avoid having a legal precedent set in court that would make it that much more difficult for them to persecute...er...*prosecute*.
Kind of like in the VCR era...the courts set the precedent and it became legal after that. If they only go after the most blatant of offenders, then they attempt to use a huge brush to paint all of the users of MP3 players.
Note that I don't want to be the one that winds up setting said precedent.
I still argue that although I am against piracy, if media companies could offer sponsorships of free downloaded versions of music (e.g. "This download brought to you by BiffCo!"), then folks wouldn't need to illegally share the music...they would download (or purchase for a minimal fee) the music legally. They should try it and see what happens.
However...not liking it doesn't make it legal. Piracy is still wrong.
"they can't make money off of the success outside their playground"
My point exactly. The media corporations are still trying to business as they did in the 80's and 90's and are winding up looking like snobs for it. They need to change the rules to fit the market...the can't expect the public to ignore a technology just because they don't like it.
Again...I'm not for piracy in any form. I've purchased multiple copies of games that I like (ones from before the militant DRM like "Mechwarrior 3" or "StarCraft") just so I can play it over our LAN with my kids. I voted with my wallet. I liked it, I wanted them to continue making more of them, so I bought more than one when I wanted to use more than one.
The game company Blizzard, for example, made much less expensive "Battle Chest" versions of Warcraft and Starcraft once it had been out for a while. They bundled them with extras like strategy guides, marked the price down, and people bought them. Blizzard knew what people wanted and made it easy for them to purchase legitimate copies of their games and people did. If more companies would follow their example, there would be less companies complaining about piracy. As far as I know, Blizzard hasn't used any DRM fancier than unique CD keys (since Battle.net only allows one user per key and Battle.net is a key part of their software's online play). (note: I could be wrong there...I haven't purchased anything new from them since Starcraft and I'm not a WOW player...but I will be purchasing SC2 and Diablo 3).
For the music companies, they could cut the prices of new CD albums. The folks that pirate CDs based solely on cost would then be willing to puchase them to have the actual case and such for their collection, overall sales would go up, gross profits would increase for them, etc... Granted, some folks will still pirate anything if they can...you're never going to make money off of those folks, so just ignore them. Make the original media something special and people will want it.
The author of the article makes a few good points...particularly about the creators of South Park (a show I loathe) not particularly minding torrents of their stuff on the 'net...especially since there's not really anything they can do about it.
Also in that he made a video promoting a UK band, then EMI went out of their way to limit the audience of the promotional video to only UK viewers...why limit who can see a band's promotional video? Shouldn't EMI want a much larger audience?
Everyone would a lot happier if they just stopped fighting it and tried to find a way to work with it. A good example is that back "in the day" (and I'm giving away my generation here, so get off my lawn) the television stations had even tried to make off the air taping of their shows illegal (it was for a while)...then they realized how ridiculous it was to fight it when everyone did it for convenience (plus the supreme court of the US made it legal to do so). Next thing you know, the stations were finding ways to *want* you to record their shows, knowing that they were getting more viewers if they did so. That led to TIVO-type set boxes (that they've now tried to limit electronically).
If "they" would just realize that if they tried to work *with* new tech instead of against it, they could find a much much larger paying audience.
For the record, though, I'm against piracy in all its forms. People being so blatant about pirating music and games is what's led to corporations fighting it. If I have an MP3 in my collection, then I have either purchased it electronically or have a physical media of it that I've purchased.
I purchased a netbook last week and have absolutely no regrets. It was perfect for what I wanted. Small, compact, ability to install run whatever app I want (I wanted to run a number of freeware utilities such as inSSIDer and AngryIP).
While the iPad is nice (yes...I've tried it), it just wasn't good for what I wanted to do.
Also...the more I use Win7, the better I like it. From a network admin standpoint, it gave me a few initial headaches, but after I got those ironed out, it's been good and stable.
I have to also agree with the employer. There's a lot of private and personal data on hospital networks, and they have every right to be draconian. In fact, I, as a potential patient at any hospital, expect hospitals to defer to data security rather than ease of use for employees. They, however, can not force you to allow them to install anything on your personal equipment. They can, however, require installation of secure software on your personal equipment before they allow you to use said equipment to access their network.
You can: 1) not check email from home. 2) allow them to install the software. 3) get a small dedicated device such as a Blackberry or a small netbook and use that to access your work email.
Personally, I agree, but it's more up to the jury to decide that.
He refused to hand over passwords when ordered to do so by his superior and his superior's superiors.
He was, at best, a total jerkwad about the thing. He let his admin position go to his head. Even if his boss was a total buttwipe, he (or she) was still his boss. He simply should have completely documented his protest and handed over the passwords.
He was the one that tried to turn it into a "federal case" and he got his wish. Good luck with that. If he's found guilty, that was the chance he took trying to take on The Man in this way.
If you're wanting Windows OS, Microsoft's Small Business Server will do most of that out of box. The local OSes would need to be the "Pro" flavors of Windows, though.
The anti-virus would need to be added, but Avast has it for SBS for under $200, which offers the remote scanning, management, etc...
You can also use group policies to lock things down, and you can manage Windows updates (it includes WSUS on the server).
It requires a semi-beefy system to act as the main server (depending on if you want RAID drives, etc...), but it should run okay on a system with 4 GB of RAM and a large hard drive. It also has the added advantage is that you can purchase your own domain for under $20, add an MX record pointing to your external IP address (if it's static), and have your own locally hosted email server, which you can also manage/monitor with the admin account. You can strip all email attachments into a quarantine where they will need to contact you to release it from quarantine.
You can limit logon hours, deny access to proxy servers, prevent local accounts from installing new programs, etc...
Like everything else, there's definite ways around the securities if they try hard enough, but you can use the domain admin account to check every system out periodically and see if there's any shenanigans going on.
You list many of the reasons he decided to try this at Best Buy. He never expected them to compare numbers (and yes, they did look at the sticker on the bottom of the unit and compare that to the sticker on the box).
The story has reached legendary status in our circle of friends as he actually had his *wife* attempt returning it just in case it went bad. He wanted to make sure he wouldn't get banned from the store himself.
**"put the bricked one inside the box, then return it as defective"**
A friend of mine was banned for life from Best Buy for trying this.
They had an issue with a Linksys router they purchased from the (IMHO) worst online retailer...buy.com. They couldn't get buy.com to agree to replace it, so they went to Best Buy, purchased an identical piece of hardware, put the bad one back in the box and attempted to return it. The folks at Best Buy compared the MAC address of the one in the box to the sticker on the outside of the box and they didn't match.
They were then forced to do the "walk of shame" out of the store escorted by store security and were notified that they would be escorted out again if they ever entered the store again.
They were lucky they weren't prosecuted for fraud.
Moral of the story: don't try to make one company pay for another's mistakes.
The problem here lies with Sony and Sony alone. Wait for a class-action lawsuit and sign on if they won't fix their devices. Sony's gotten a buttload of bad press lately and I'm hoping they will fix this pretty quickly.
I stopped shopping at Best Buy about six years ago. Not so much an active boycott as it is just a personal refusal to work with a corporation that's as arrogant as it is clueless.
Their "geek squad" overcharge for simple services and put everything out as a line item that they charge for...even things that happen in the normal process of working on a computer.
Even the company's commercials reinforce that they want their people to pretend to be "experts" on everything. I would get way too frustrated when I was in there and I would overhear a conversation between a customer who had a good question and a BB employee who would make crap up on the spot to pretend they knew what they were talking about.
It's completely legitimate to state "I don't know" if you actually don't know something and then try to find out.
BB is an arrogant company that actively shucks their customers and acts shocked and dismayed when they are called on it.
My intent of noting similarity was in the wording. Someone somewhere (newegg, supplier, etc..) didn't actually read the box. I think everyone can agree that even a cursory examination of the box would have mistakes that catch the eye. (same with the Xbox thing on ebay...if you read it, you see the scam). The same with "Alphine Stereos" or "Polex" watches.
Whoever perpetrated this was intending to scam the suppliers...not the individual consumers. They were counting on whoever was checking these items to be checking a lot of them at once and not doing individual checks (other than maybe checking a box's weight).
I'm betting that the fake box weighs almost exactly what the real thing weighs...to allow any "bulk check" to be passed.
Discussion of how to pronounce it reminds me of the little-known trivia about how the inventor of SCSI wanted it to be pronounced as the "Sexy Interface" rather than the "Scuzzy Interface".
I have javascript disabled at each user login on our network (through the logon script), just in case someone has re-enabled it when their system was last logged on. I haven't found a way to totally lock it out yet.
The huge problem is that Adobe offers to enable javascript for users when they open a PDF with Javasript in it. It displays a message along the lines of "you're not seeing everything here unless you enable javascript...click here to enable it" with a big friendly "YES" button. Kind of defeats the purpose when it's made so easy for users to re-enable.
I warn users not to enable it, but most either don't care or don't pay attention...and at least 80% of them will always click "YES" or "OK" just to get a message box to go away without reading it. (Invariably followed by a tech call stating "I clicked OK on something...what's wrong with it and why don't you know off the top of your head what I did wrong?")
Nice of Adobe to make it so helpful and user-friendly to re-enable the most dangerous part of their software.
You make valid points, but "don't blame them, they were done wrong" isn't a very good logic stream.
Just because they feel they were treated badly doesn't make it okay to make unethical choices. The way to fix it is for the younger generation to be *MORE* ethical than the generation that sired them. They will be the generation that takes over from the one before and will make things better, not worse.
True, companies treated folks badly, and the folks are understandably frustrated, but stooping even lower doesn't solve any problems.
My main concern (and the point of my original comment) is, as you mentioned, that they "have to problem acting unethically in return". That attitude will just perpetuate a very bad downward cycle.
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True, and good point. I love Pac Man. Like almost everyone of my generation, I probably put enough quarters in Pac Man to have purchased a full stand up version of the game.
However, I don't want it jumping up in my face when I least expect it...most of all while I'm trying to concentrate at work.
They should have put the artsy logo on there, then taken you to the game when you click on the logo...not had it just start playing the music and such when you go to their main page.
Some work environment are sensitive to potential time wasting (I'm sure mine isn't the only one) and I really don't like having been put in a position to explain that I wasn't playing the game...it just popped up.
I also DO have javascript disabled on most sites, but I add sites I trust to my "trusted sites" internet zone. Google was there, but will probably be removed now.
Disagree if you will, but it was bad jugement on Google's part (they are guilty of a lot of that lately).
Just my $0.02
-JJS
Not only is it a noisey page...it's a noisey page that a lot of office people try to use.
I think google showed (yet again) very poor judgement in doing this on the MAIN FRIGGIN PAGE. I was trying to deal with a serious computer issue and do a quick search and the next thing I know I've got the FRIGGIN PAC MAN song playing on my computer...
They seem to have totally forgotten (or aren't even trying to be) that they are used by a lot of professionals around that world that use their search engine precisely because it's clean, quiet, and neat (or at least was). I had to swear off Bing, Yahoo, MSN, etc... because they were all so distracting.
Geez...come on Google!
Back to AltaVista.
Just my $0.02
-JJS
Google is evil. Period.
Why do people insist in acting surprised when they find that Google can't be trusted. Google's object is to know as much as possible about YOU. They will find that out, then attempt to find ways to exploit that information without actually doing anything illegal. They got caught in this instance and realized that they should tell someone they did it rather than a whistleblower...which would have been even worse.
Greed = Google.
Just my $0.02.
-JJS
Agreed. Good times.
*Jeff bows his head in reverence*
-JJS
You do notice, though, that they've only ever gone after what they call "downloaders"? Those who download music they haven't purchased in any form?
I believe that they may be leerie of going after someone who has legitimately purchased the music they have on their player to avoid having a legal precedent set in court that would make it that much more difficult for them to persecute...er...*prosecute*.
Kind of like in the VCR era...the courts set the precedent and it became legal after that. If they only go after the most blatant of offenders, then they attempt to use a huge brush to paint all of the users of MP3 players.
Note that I don't want to be the one that winds up setting said precedent.
I still argue that although I am against piracy, if media companies could offer sponsorships of free downloaded versions of music (e.g. "This download brought to you by BiffCo!"), then folks wouldn't need to illegally share the music...they would download (or purchase for a minimal fee) the music legally. They should try it and see what happens.
However...not liking it doesn't make it legal. Piracy is still wrong.
-JJS
"they can't make money off of the success outside their playground"
My point exactly. The media corporations are still trying to business as they did in the 80's and 90's and are winding up looking like snobs for it. They need to change the rules to fit the market...the can't expect the public to ignore a technology just because they don't like it.
Again...I'm not for piracy in any form. I've purchased multiple copies of games that I like (ones from before the militant DRM like "Mechwarrior 3" or "StarCraft") just so I can play it over our LAN with my kids. I voted with my wallet. I liked it, I wanted them to continue making more of them, so I bought more than one when I wanted to use more than one.
The game company Blizzard, for example, made much less expensive "Battle Chest" versions of Warcraft and Starcraft once it had been out for a while. They bundled them with extras like strategy guides, marked the price down, and people bought them. Blizzard knew what people wanted and made it easy for them to purchase legitimate copies of their games and people did. If more companies would follow their example, there would be less companies complaining about piracy. As far as I know, Blizzard hasn't used any DRM fancier than unique CD keys (since Battle.net only allows one user per key and Battle.net is a key part of their software's online play). (note: I could be wrong there...I haven't purchased anything new from them since Starcraft and I'm not a WOW player...but I will be purchasing SC2 and Diablo 3).
For the music companies, they could cut the prices of new CD albums. The folks that pirate CDs based solely on cost would then be willing to puchase them to have the actual case and such for their collection, overall sales would go up, gross profits would increase for them, etc... Granted, some folks will still pirate anything if they can...you're never going to make money off of those folks, so just ignore them. Make the original media something special and people will want it.
As usual...just my $0.02
-JJS
The author of the article makes a few good points...particularly about the creators of South Park (a show I loathe) not particularly minding torrents of their stuff on the 'net...especially since there's not really anything they can do about it.
Also in that he made a video promoting a UK band, then EMI went out of their way to limit the audience of the promotional video to only UK viewers...why limit who can see a band's promotional video? Shouldn't EMI want a much larger audience?
Everyone would a lot happier if they just stopped fighting it and tried to find a way to work with it. A good example is that back "in the day" (and I'm giving away my generation here, so get off my lawn) the television stations had even tried to make off the air taping of their shows illegal (it was for a while)...then they realized how ridiculous it was to fight it when everyone did it for convenience (plus the supreme court of the US made it legal to do so). Next thing you know, the stations were finding ways to *want* you to record their shows, knowing that they were getting more viewers if they did so. That led to TIVO-type set boxes (that they've now tried to limit electronically).
If "they" would just realize that if they tried to work *with* new tech instead of against it, they could find a much much larger paying audience.
For the record, though, I'm against piracy in all its forms. People being so blatant about pirating music and games is what's led to corporations fighting it. If I have an MP3 in my collection, then I have either purchased it electronically or have a physical media of it that I've purchased.
Just my $0.02
-JJS
I purchased a netbook last week and have absolutely no regrets. It was perfect for what I wanted. Small, compact, ability to install run whatever app I want (I wanted to run a number of freeware utilities such as inSSIDer and AngryIP).
While the iPad is nice (yes...I've tried it), it just wasn't good for what I wanted to do.
Also...the more I use Win7, the better I like it. From a network admin standpoint, it gave me a few initial headaches, but after I got those ironed out, it's been good and stable.
Just my $0.02
-JJS
I have to also agree with the employer. There's a lot of private and personal data on hospital networks, and they have every right to be draconian. In fact, I, as a potential patient at any hospital, expect hospitals to defer to data security rather than ease of use for employees. They, however, can not force you to allow them to install anything on your personal equipment. They can, however, require installation of secure software on your personal equipment before they allow you to use said equipment to access their network.
You can:
1) not check email from home.
2) allow them to install the software.
3) get a small dedicated device such as a Blackberry or a small netbook and use that to access your work email.
Just my $0.02.
-JJS
You're...mocking us...aren't you?
-JJS
Oh...they fired him first, did they?
I missed that part.
Point of Order:
-Get what you want from your employees while they are still your employees.
I still think he was being a jerkwad about the thing. I wonder how his resume will look now?
-JJS
They'll probably kill Kenny over this...
-JJS
Personally, I agree, but it's more up to the jury to decide that.
He refused to hand over passwords when ordered to do so by his superior and his superior's superiors.
He was, at best, a total jerkwad about the thing. He let his admin position go to his head. Even if his boss was a total buttwipe, he (or she) was still his boss. He simply should have completely documented his protest and handed over the passwords.
He was the one that tried to turn it into a "federal case" and he got his wish. Good luck with that. If he's found guilty, that was the chance he took trying to take on The Man in this way.
-JJS
If you're wanting Windows OS, Microsoft's Small Business Server will do most of that out of box. The local OSes would need to be the "Pro" flavors of Windows, though.
The anti-virus would need to be added, but Avast has it for SBS for under $200, which offers the remote scanning, management, etc...
You can also use group policies to lock things down, and you can manage Windows updates (it includes WSUS on the server).
It requires a semi-beefy system to act as the main server (depending on if you want RAID drives, etc...), but it should run okay on a system with 4 GB of RAM and a large hard drive. It also has the added advantage is that you can purchase your own domain for under $20, add an MX record pointing to your external IP address (if it's static), and have your own locally hosted email server, which you can also manage/monitor with the admin account. You can strip all email attachments into a quarantine where they will need to contact you to release it from quarantine.
You can limit logon hours, deny access to proxy servers, prevent local accounts from installing new programs, etc...
Like everything else, there's definite ways around the securities if they try hard enough, but you can use the domain admin account to check every system out periodically and see if there's any shenanigans going on.
Good luck.
-JJS
You list many of the reasons he decided to try this at Best Buy. He never expected them to compare numbers (and yes, they did look at the sticker on the bottom of the unit and compare that to the sticker on the box).
The story has reached legendary status in our circle of friends as he actually had his *wife* attempt returning it just in case it went bad. He wanted to make sure he wouldn't get banned from the store himself.
He's a character, that one...
-JJS
**"put the bricked one inside the box, then return it as defective"**
A friend of mine was banned for life from Best Buy for trying this.
They had an issue with a Linksys router they purchased from the (IMHO) worst online retailer...buy.com. They couldn't get buy.com to agree to replace it, so they went to Best Buy, purchased an identical piece of hardware, put the bad one back in the box and attempted to return it. The folks at Best Buy compared the MAC address of the one in the box to the sticker on the outside of the box and they didn't match.
They were then forced to do the "walk of shame" out of the store escorted by store security and were notified that they would be escorted out again if they ever entered the store again.
They were lucky they weren't prosecuted for fraud.
Moral of the story: don't try to make one company pay for another's mistakes.
The problem here lies with Sony and Sony alone. Wait for a class-action lawsuit and sign on if they won't fix their devices. Sony's gotten a buttload of bad press lately and I'm hoping they will fix this pretty quickly.
-JJS
I stopped shopping at Best Buy about six years ago. Not so much an active boycott as it is just a personal refusal to work with a corporation that's as arrogant as it is clueless.
Their "geek squad" overcharge for simple services and put everything out as a line item that they charge for...even things that happen in the normal process of working on a computer.
Even the company's commercials reinforce that they want their people to pretend to be "experts" on everything. I would get way too frustrated when I was in there and I would overhear a conversation between a customer who had a good question and a BB employee who would make crap up on the spot to pretend they knew what they were talking about.
It's completely legitimate to state "I don't know" if you actually don't know something and then try to find out.
BB is an arrogant company that actively shucks their customers and acts shocked and dismayed when they are called on it.
Just my $0.02.
-JJS
True...he never got the box.
My intent of noting similarity was in the wording. Someone somewhere (newegg, supplier, etc..) didn't actually read the box. I think everyone can agree that even a cursory examination of the box would have mistakes that catch the eye. (same with the Xbox thing on ebay...if you read it, you see the scam). The same with "Alphine Stereos" or "Polex" watches.
Whoever perpetrated this was intending to scam the suppliers...not the individual consumers. They were counting on whoever was checking these items to be checking a lot of them at once and not doing individual checks (other than maybe checking a box's weight).
I'm betting that the fake box weighs almost exactly what the real thing weighs...to allow any "bulk check" to be passed.
-JJS
This reminds me of the dude that paid almost $800 for an Xbox Box on eBay.
http://www.igniq.com/2005/12/man-pays-800-for-empty-xbox-360-box-on.html
Caveat Emptor.
-JJS
If 24 starred Chuck Norris, it would have been called "1".
And most of that time would have been Chuck just taking his time to get there...
-JJS
The FBI violated our privacy and civil rights? Surely not, I tell you!
-JJS
Discussion of how to pronounce it reminds me of the little-known trivia about how the inventor of SCSI wanted it to be pronounced as the "Sexy Interface" rather than the "Scuzzy Interface".
-JJS
Free wifi won't make me eat a fried burger.
Flame Broiled, or nothing.
-JJS
I have javascript disabled at each user login on our network (through the logon script), just in case someone has re-enabled it when their system was last logged on. I haven't found a way to totally lock it out yet.
The huge problem is that Adobe offers to enable javascript for users when they open a PDF with Javasript in it. It displays a message along the lines of "you're not seeing everything here unless you enable javascript...click here to enable it" with a big friendly "YES" button. Kind of defeats the purpose when it's made so easy for users to re-enable.
I warn users not to enable it, but most either don't care or don't pay attention...and at least 80% of them will always click "YES" or "OK" just to get a message box to go away without reading it. (Invariably followed by a tech call stating "I clicked OK on something...what's wrong with it and why don't you know off the top of your head what I did wrong?")
Nice of Adobe to make it so helpful and user-friendly to re-enable the most dangerous part of their software.
-JJS
DavidTC,
You make valid points, but "don't blame them, they were done wrong" isn't a very good logic stream.
Just because they feel they were treated badly doesn't make it okay to make unethical choices. The way to fix it is for the younger generation to be *MORE* ethical than the generation that sired them. They will be the generation that takes over from the one before and will make things better, not worse.
True, companies treated folks badly, and the folks are understandably frustrated, but stooping even lower doesn't solve any problems.
My main concern (and the point of my original comment) is, as you mentioned, that they "have to problem acting unethically in return". That attitude will just perpetuate a very bad downward cycle.
-JJS