It's not simply *what* they play with, but *how* they play with them. If you put a girl in a room with a bunch of G.I. Joe action figures, the way she plays with them will likely involve some sort of social connection (i.e. doll A and doll B want to go and visit dolls C, D, and E at their imaginary house, so A and B jump into the Humvee and drive over to visit). Put a boy in a room with a bunch of Barbie dolls, and he will either decapitate them, or Barbie will fight with her friends using some sort of karate moves. Some parts might be social constructs (i.e. the girl might not specifically have dolls A and B married if she isn't exposed to the concept of marriage yet), but there are underlying concepts of how boys and girls interact with the world around them that *aren't* taught by society.
I'd also like to add #3: Parents taking little to no interest in their child's education, and expecting the schools to assume that role in its entirety, and intervening only to tell of the teacher who took away their little angel's cell phone because they were texting during class. I dunno about you, but my parents were very proactively involved in my education. They taught me reading, writing, and 'rithmetic before I set foot in kindergarten, and they never stopped assisting and requiring accountability. They encouraged me to think critically and ask questions. If I didn't know, they encouraged me to look it up - and then asked me what I learned after I did. They bought me stuff at yard sales to take apart and I had to identify the basic components inside. If I got in trouble with a teacher and my parents found out about it (and since my parents worked in the school I went to, that was inevitable), the other half would come when I got home, and it wouldn't be pretty. I survived the wooden spoon, I survived learning to eat a balanced diet, I survived homework, and I survived not watching TV until I was 5 or 6.
Much of this has already been said, but I'll reiterate and add my own extensions to it:
1.) If you're working for free, even for family, IT MUST BE ON YOUR TERMS. "I will continue to fix your machine for free if and only if you use it under these conditions...and yes, I WILL know if you're deviating. If you do, you'll get a bill at the end, the same as anyone else". Make sure you have those terms in hand, printed out, and posted near the machine for them to reference.
2.) If they need to be kept on Windows for some reason...
a.) I recommend Microsoft SteadyState or Faronics DeepFreeze (the former being free), and either a secondary document partition or a secondary hard disk (for the $40-$80 it costs for a second HDD, I tend to go with that) to which their profile is stored. If they're using Win7, redirect all the libraries there as well.
b.) Grab a copy of Acronis True Image and make a disk image the next time you format. This will reduce the amount of time you spend rebuilding, especially in conjunction with having their user profile on the second drive. While Acronis is still my favorite disk imaging product, Win7 also has made huge strides in their backup utility, which can create a disk image that can be restored using the install CD.
c.) Check out ESET's NOD32 Antivirus program. It's very effective, doesn't bog the system down, and can be password protected to ensure that it doesn't get disabled. If possible, bill it to YOUR credit card and have the key sent to YOUR e-mail address. This way, you can ensure that it is always up to date, and you can say with confidence that if anything tells her that she's got a virus and to pay to remove it that it is a scam, since you are absolutely certain that she is covered.
d.) As has been said, no Admin for them, period.
3.) If you're going to go the Linux route...
a.) I've had the most success with Linux Mint with regards to user acceptance.
b.) It might take an entire Saturday, but check to make sure that EVERYTHING works properly! See how the system is set up BEFORE you wipe it. Do your best to mimic this setup as best you can before you sit them down on it the first time.
c.) Are they running at a lower resolution so they can read the print? Does it appear that they rely on some Windows-only apps that will require WINE or some kind of VM? Do all of their peripherals work properly? Is their hardware properly detected? Does their wireless card's Linux drivers support the encryption type that the router does? Do they make extensive use of Publisher or a greeting card program (that was the dealbreaker for my mom that brought her back to Windows)? Ask all these questions and then some, first. Us technically inclined people are better at "finding concepts" rather than "finding commands". "Screen Show" and "Slide Show" are close enough for us, but my mom near killed me when I had her try OpenOffice...and she reached for the knife when there was no "My Documents" folder for her to save it in.
You've heard from all the I-got-my-whole-family-to-switch-to-a-Mac people here, so I think that ground has been pretty well covered.
T-Mobile has never given me grief for anything I've done in the six years I've been a customer, and I've done it all. I've tethered. I've HardSPL'd my WinMo phones. I even had an unlocked iPhone on it, and THEY HELPED ME CONFIGURE MMS! I don't know what all this crap is about from Verizon and AT&T, but T-Mobile seems to have the as-long-as-you-don't-run-a-warez-server-on-your-phone-or-expect-a-whole-lot-of-tech-support-we-really-don't-care-what-you-do mentality.
Maybe it's just because it's a very small minority of T-Mobile users that hack their handsets, but they have been absolutely wonderful to work with in that regard. And no, I don't get a dime from them to say this, I'm just an extremely satisfied customer. I also happen to live in a metro area where they have some pretty solid coverage.
You: "So what you're basically saying is that, if I buy this phone, and I get an overage charge for the use of the data plan within $COUNTRY, I can come back here and see you, and you will personally pay the overages, right?"
Salesperson: "Well, uhm..." *squirms*
You: "Well if there's no possible way I can use too much data, then that should be an easy promise to make."
Salesperson: "Well you see sir, there are a few minor conditions..." *avoids eye contact*
You: "So what you're saying is that it is, in fact, limited?"
*kisses karma goodbye* The difference is more like Toyota not honoring a warranty of a Camry that's been reported stolen, or conversely saying that Toyota should process the recall of an unregistered Camry with a scraped off serial number. Yes, a Camry could potentially endanger other drivers if not properly serviced, but ultimately I find it difficult to fault Toyota for not fixing a car that the driver has no business driving to begin with.
Guess a 'funny' mod isn't in the cards. I was attempting to be humorous by implying that since the machine is no longer running Vista, by definition it has received an upgrade.
The HP driver discs never cease to amaze me either. In addition to bundling their own, utterly craptacular software with them (perhaps to avoid paying Arcsoft or something?), there's just WAY too much of it. I mean, is there any reason why a driver install download should be over 300MB? And yes, there are some multifunction drivers that are that size. I mean, the BASIC, "DRIVER-ONLY" installers are like 45 at best. And then when they actually do install, there's like 9 or 10 devices that get added to the device manager. I mean seriously, does HP have a company policy against writing drivers that *DON'T* suck?
By contrast, my Canon MP970 is about the best machine I have ever owned. The driver download package is 14MB (and works for 2000, XP, Vista, and 7; the 64-bit version is 20MB). It installs exactly three pieces of hardware into my device manager: a printer, a scanner, and a card reader. The bundled software on the disc is actually halfway decent as far as bundled apps go (A full versions of Arcsoft PhotoImpression and a basic-but-quite-functional version of Omnipage, plus color spaces for Photoshop and an app to manage on the network), are all 100% optional to install, and NONE of them start with your machine? I know I sound like a Canon rep or a troll or something and I'm sorry, but Canon has got the installation procedure correct.
I don't need 100+ services all running in the background monitoring hardware and sucking up memory and processor slices so I get a popup "logo / splash screen / helper" saying "it looks like you inserted a piece of A4, do you want to print something" ?
Agreed. You'd think they'd have learned from Clippy.
Anyway, the foundational difference here between the experience you reference and mine is that we have two entirely different user bases. You're correct in that we don't have any graphic designers on staff. My users use Microsoft Office, a few web-based apps, and an AS/400 emulator (yes, we still have an AS/400, though it's being phased out in less than a year). Obviously these aren't terribly processor intensive applications, and the machines that we have are all equipped with dual-core processors (albeit some older than others), at least a gig of RAM, and run XP. As such, our network is tailored to the needs of the users I have. If I had people who rendered lots of video, our network and policies would reflect that. On to the rest of the bullet points...
The people who work at my company have a job to do. Installing a beta copy of an operating system on their work machine isn't one of them. Most people in my office, whether they love their job or not, have one. The accountants crunch the numbers. The underwriters review policies. Customer Service answers the phone. Legal preps court cases, etc. While us slashdotters like messing with technology, as you alluded to in your response, most people just want the stuff to work, and don't have time to make their own. They all have their own supervisors to answer to, and if they're not keeping up with their work because they were installing Windows 7 Beta 1 on their work machine, they'd be in plenty of hot water of their own. There is no reason I could possibly think of that anyone would need to boot from a CD or USB drive in order to get their job done. That policy is anything but draconian.
Your example of Web Guy Bob and Graphic Guy Jim mixes office politics with technology, and fails to take into account that GPO's are rules that are there for the 99% of the time, not the 1% for which an exception can easily be generated. Generally if Bob and Jim are working together on the same project, I doubt that Jim would fly off the handle if Bob asked for a simple resize. But let's say that for some reason that wasn't possible. I'd also doubt that if Bob is an in-house web designer that he'd get too far with just a copy of Dreamweaver independent of Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks. The company would be foolish to buy the single app instead of suite licenses for both of them. Even if they did, it's unlikely that Bob and Jim wouldn't have had something like this happen before and therefore a precedent set (either Bob goes back to Jim and asks for fixes or Bob already has GIMP/Inkscape installed). The best example to substantiate your argument that I could come up with is something like Jim doing the graphics the day before he goes away on vacation and Bob can't contact him until he gets back, like he normally would. The manager would be a dolt to have either scheduled the deadline of the project the day AFTER Jim goes away or let Jim schedule his vacation to start the day the project is due. But despite the stretch of the example you made, if it really came down to it, yes, Bob could call me and I'd either resize the graphics on my own copy of Photoshop (yes, I paid for it...pics of the discs available on request) or install GIMP/Paint.Net for him on his machine so that he could do it, which would take me 10 minutes, tops. If a manager is going to both insist on a deadline that cannot be met due to his own incompetence AND prohibit Bob from having the tools to do so means that it's time for me to have a chat with Bob's boss's boss.
Again, you're correct in that I don't have any graphic designers here. I've never had a case of the 10MB attachment limit being a problem. Even if a user did need to send a file bigger than that, the odds are that the recipient's mailbox would spit it out anyway. Given the infrequency of this occurance, I have no problem FTPing the file and giving the user a link to e-mail to the person. If it were frequent enough that I'd have to give every Moe, Larry, and Curly FTP a
IMO, you pretty much summed up the difference. I didn't look at the clip, and from what I've read, it's likely taken out of context. Like other comments have said, some terrorists are pathetic enough to hide behind civillians, and I understand the concept of putting this into a game simulating "Modern Warfare".
The issue on which the point hinges though is the fact that a good infantry squad would recognize that they are in an impossible situation (i.e. not take a chance harming civillians, but letting the terrorists go just to harm other civillians). They train very hard to do their best to MINIMIZE the civillian casualties as much as possible. Is THAT also simulated in the game? Do they spend some time earlier in the game helping the player determine means to isolate the terrorists from the hostages? Is there some sort of reward for having a low civillian death toll and/or a penalty for that being too high? Does the game give some sort of means of opting out of the mission?
IMO this whole debate hinges on the context. Realism in having to make very difficult decisions leading up to a point where choices the player makes directly impacts who lives and who dies and seeing the consequences is one thing. Putting players in a leave-no-civillian-alive-'cuz-it's-fun-to-kill-innocent-people scenario is quite another.
Users *can* be a pain. Where I work though, there's an extremely small chance that a situation like this would happen.
Hey I tried to install windows 7 alpha but now my computer doesn't work?
Our company machines require a password to boot from anything but the hard drive. This user would be more likely to call me about getting it installed rather than asking for support after the fact. Even if he somehow managed to guess the password, the fact that he had to do so likely indicates that he's not going to be calling my helpdesk to get support for it, and the fact that he can't log into the domain to access his documents or e-mail means that his machine would be re-imaged by lunchtime.
I have a problem with my computer since I installed mega-zob-toolbar; please fix it.
We have a corporate antivirus to help reduce attacks like that, but if they fail, then this is part of my job. Most users, realizing that it takes significant amounts of time away from their productivity, tend to ask what they can do to avoid it in the future. The majority of virus attacks I get are based on ignorance, not malice.
My kid gave me Adobe CS12 Mega Ultra Designer Pack-DOMINO-REPACK-XXXX to edit that PDF can I have admin right to install it?
First, a quick google search shows that DOMiNO releases DVD rips of movies and isn't a software release group. That said, the majority of the users at work will call me if they need help editing the PDF file in the first place, not asking for help installing 5 DVDs and running a keygen. They know their coworkers can do it, and if they need Acrobat installed on their machines and don't have it, they know that all it takes is a phone call to my desk and I'm going to work on solving their problem.
Hey, I've been trying to send that DVD by email for the last three days but it doesn't work and by the way the email server is very slow.
This one I could technically see happening, but AFAIK the only person here who uses ISO files is me. On a more generic note (i.e. sending stupidly large files via e-mail), our Exchange server has a 10MB limit; users who try to e-mail something larger than that will instantly get a failure message. If they do genuinely need to send that large file, I can arrange for that file to sit on an FTP server so that all the recipient has to do is click the download link. If they don't really need to send the file, then, well, they're not going to call.
Oh that? That's my home wifi router so I can work from the rec room.
Our building has encrypted wi-fi already. The people who need it access it, and if someone starts needing it, you guessed it, they know to call. Even if my building didn't have wireless, if they can see it so can I. We don't have live ethernet jacks anywhere they shouldn't be, so if it's underneath their desk, it's a trivial matter to track down a linksys router. From there, I'd present my case to my boss as to why we shouldn't have wireless access here (or why we should, but at least done properly), and let her decide what she wants me to do about it.
Really?? This Azureus software prevents other people from working? I can't see why.
I haven't had to deal with this one yet, either. About the worst issue I've had so far with regards to bandwidth is that half my office uses Pandora or something similar. Still, our internet speeds are acceptable, I take a peek at our gateway's traffic log to see if there's any high-volume traffic going through abnormal ports, and so far so good. Should this become an issue, I have a supervisor that makes the decision as to what should be done about it.
Hey IT guy why do you pretend it's my statistical report that i made myself in access that slows the database? I'm not even using the database; only access.
A clear, simple explanation usually curbs this one. The majori
Agreed, but *if a fetus is considered a life*, then performing an abortion would essentially amount to the fetus getting the death penalty for the crime of its father.
I can't speak for everyone, so I'll just speak for myself. I'm a Christian. I'm pro-life. My religious beliefs give me guidance as to how I am supposed to live my own life. Because of my religious beliefs, I take my vacation days and volunteer to help feed homeless people in poorer areas where I live. I personally have walked around public areas and helped pick up trash. I lend my listening ear to my friends who are going through difficult times. I encourage my female friends to respect themselves and not buy into our culture of skin deep beauty. I donate money to charities like Love146 who work to end child sex trafficking in other areas of the world. I'm not trying to brag about all the wonderful things I've done in my life (indeed, I've got a laundry list of things that I'm not proud of, either), but you asked what good religious beliefs are. Mine emplore me to provide assistance toward others to who require it.
Do I tell people about my beliefs? yes, I do. I do tell them about sin and heaven and hell and salvation and the sacrifice that Christ made. But it's not conditional. I don't make people say "the sinner's prayer" in order to get a cup of soup or bottle of water. I do my very best to not be condescending or confrontational to someone I am speaking with. My purpose isn't to force my beliefs on others, but I would be remiss to not inform. If, after me speaking with someone, they choose to reject it, then that's their choice and I will not force them otherwise. To do so would be inconsistent with the principles Jesus taught.
Many people inevitably bring up things like the manipulative practices of the church during the middle ages, they hypocrisy of churchgoers, money-grabbing televangelists, the nagging people on the sidewalk with the bullhorns, and yes, the people who kill abortion doctors. I cannot answer for any of them. All I can say is that Jesus never separated loving God from loving other people. To force one's beliefs on another person is unloving to that person, and therefore does not express love toward God, and that if I have ever come across as unloving or uncaring toward another person, that I am truly sorry.
You'll get no argument from me that if there's anything that Christians are good at, that it's shooting ourselves in the foot. Mahatma Gandhi once stated, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.", and he was embarrassingly correct. Here's to hoping that somehow I manage to provide an exception.
I hear that a lot. But given that my coverage has gotten consistently better over the past five years I've been a T-Mobile subscriber, I wonder how many other areas of the country this is true for. It seems to me that T-Mobile has been doing a pretty good job of trying to correct their image of people never getting service. If you're happy with AT&T, then more power to you. But take a second look if your last experience with them was a decade ago. You might be surprised. And no, I don't work for them. Just a happy customer.
I buy the disc for the shelf and the physical security, as I too am old school like that. I rip an ISO of it to my storage server and install from there. The holy grail though is something like Unreal Tournament 3 or Counterstrike: I have the game on my shelf in physical form and rip ISOs on my server, but the key goes directly into Steam and I can add it to my account there.
The problem with bitlocker is that it's only part of the ultimatextremeultra most expensive version of Windows. Most people would be too cheap to get that version, even if they knew what the benefit was. So your home computer probably doesn't have it.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Which do you think is a more likely scenario:
1.) Home user has valuable data on their machine that cannot fall into the "wrong hands" (personally identifiable information in the browser cache notwithstanding).
2.) User has lots of data that is valuable TO THEM, but not worth stealing for anyone else (i.e. photos, school projects, music library), doesn't back up their data, and doesn't surf safely.
In every case of every home PC I have ever worked on, there has been exactly one person who has fit into category number one, and that's because he owned his own company and had his Quickbooks data on it. Everyone else has fit into the second category.
I've had dozens of machines over the years that I've had to rescue from a defective hard drive or malware attack. Recovering their data usually involves either booting from a BartPE/Acronis/Knoppix disc and transferring it to an external hard drive or LAN location, or popping out the drive and sticking an IDE/SATA-to-USB tether device on it and migrating it that way. If home users were given the option to encrypt their data in the event of an Evil Maid, the majority wouldn't use it anyway, but a few would. The few who would are no more likely to keep a data backup (or encrypt that backup, defeating the purpose of encrypting the drive in the first place), and if one of THEM ends up with a corrupted boot sector or malware attack, their family photos, school projects, and Limewire music are completely hosed with no chance of recovery...because that is the entire point of the encryption.
The way I figure it, if the data is important enough to encrypt, it's too important to be on your home computer. If it must be worked on at home, and it's important enough to encrypt, then it's important enough to get a company issued laptop to do it.
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Selling leather handbags on Slashdot? Seems like this AC is a perfect example. If he had a publisher, he'd have known that Slashdot isn't the place for him.
I never played Duke Nukem and as such have heard the line you're referencing, but based on your description, I'm sure that William Shatner could have nailed that line perfectly.
Thanks for clearing that up. I'll keep it in mind. Also, props to whoever modded me funny earlier. That said, there are certainly other examples of the same principle. The fact that HCl exists in our digestive system fits this category. I'm no med student, but from what I read on the back of "Anatomy for Dummies", there is a mucus membrane in the stomach that prevents the HCl from wreaking havoc in the rest of the body. A stomach with neither HCl nor mucus wouldn't be terribly useful, HCL with no mucus wouldn't last long, mucus with no HCL also would serve little purpose, until you have all three in the proper combination. Even at that it's not a once-and-out job, both parts require contant replenishing in order for them to provide an evolutionary advantage. As such, they require other pieces to support them, etc. Sure, you could correctly argue that the systems could have evolved in order such that everything would have remained dormant until everything functioned properly, but while that's a stretch at best with the digestive system, a dormant-until-fully-functional reproductive system is at odds with the concept of gradual evolution.
Additionally, I apologize for the lack of specificity earlier. I tend to lump "gradual-change-over-time" and "from-big-bang-to-2009AD" and refer to them intergangeably as evolution, which is indeed inaccurate. My comments regarding abiogenesis were in reference to the latter, not the former.
Correct, though not how you worded it. Obviously I don't expect anyone to find a fossil of the first organism to populate this planet. I would, however, appreciate a plausible explanation as to how abiogenesis could have occured. While you make a point in that it's not directly related to the observed effects in E. Coli reported in TFA, in the broader scheme of how life began on earth, the two answers I've ever heard boil down to "God did it" and "!God did it". The "God did it" crowd typically answers the "how" question with something to the extent of "God is all powerful and I'll never understand how He did it". The "!God did it" crowd has more or less told me "I'm not really sure, but we're working on it". So I'll grant that both sides kinda cop out in the "how" department.
More related to what you're talking about, I really don't disagree with the basic concept of evolution to some limited capacity. Yes, giraffes with longer necks will be able to reach more leaves and are more apt to survive after the lower leaves have been eaten, thus passing that trait onto their offspring. But there's a difference between that sort of gradual evolution, a dormant evolution like seen in these E. Coli which manifests itself once the other pieces are put together as the GGP points out, and "evolutionary chasms" that aren't easily explained by gradual evolution. Did gender (and the requisite reproductive systems) evolve gradually? Live birth from hatching (or vice cersa)? Digestion (complete with the HCl in our stomachs)? Elsewhere in the discussion, it talks about animals being able to mate vs. not mating. Tigers and lions can reproduce together, while tigers and horses cannot. At what point do the reproductive systems become incompatible, and how is it that it's sufficiently consistent to allow the deviants to reproduce? A long-necked giraffe is still a giraffe, and can mate with a short-necked giraffe. A squirrel is not a dog and cannot mate with one.
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It's not simply *what* they play with, but *how* they play with them. If you put a girl in a room with a bunch of G.I. Joe action figures, the way she plays with them will likely involve some sort of social connection (i.e. doll A and doll B want to go and visit dolls C, D, and E at their imaginary house, so A and B jump into the Humvee and drive over to visit). Put a boy in a room with a bunch of Barbie dolls, and he will either decapitate them, or Barbie will fight with her friends using some sort of karate moves. Some parts might be social constructs (i.e. the girl might not specifically have dolls A and B married if she isn't exposed to the concept of marriage yet), but there are underlying concepts of how boys and girls interact with the world around them that *aren't* taught by society.
I'd also like to add #3: Parents taking little to no interest in their child's education, and expecting the schools to assume that role in its entirety, and intervening only to tell of the teacher who took away their little angel's cell phone because they were texting during class. I dunno about you, but my parents were very proactively involved in my education. They taught me reading, writing, and 'rithmetic before I set foot in kindergarten, and they never stopped assisting and requiring accountability. They encouraged me to think critically and ask questions. If I didn't know, they encouraged me to look it up - and then asked me what I learned after I did. They bought me stuff at yard sales to take apart and I had to identify the basic components inside. If I got in trouble with a teacher and my parents found out about it (and since my parents worked in the school I went to, that was inevitable), the other half would come when I got home, and it wouldn't be pretty. I survived the wooden spoon, I survived learning to eat a balanced diet, I survived homework, and I survived not watching TV until I was 5 or 6.
Much of this has already been said, but I'll reiterate and add my own extensions to it:
1.) If you're working for free, even for family, IT MUST BE ON YOUR TERMS. "I will continue to fix your machine for free if and only if you use it under these conditions...and yes, I WILL know if you're deviating. If you do, you'll get a bill at the end, the same as anyone else". Make sure you have those terms in hand, printed out, and posted near the machine for them to reference.
2.) If they need to be kept on Windows for some reason...
a.) I recommend Microsoft SteadyState or Faronics DeepFreeze (the former being free), and either a secondary document partition or a secondary hard disk (for the $40-$80 it costs for a second HDD, I tend to go with that) to which their profile is stored. If they're using Win7, redirect all the libraries there as well.
b.) Grab a copy of Acronis True Image and make a disk image the next time you format. This will reduce the amount of time you spend rebuilding, especially in conjunction with having their user profile on the second drive. While Acronis is still my favorite disk imaging product, Win7 also has made huge strides in their backup utility, which can create a disk image that can be restored using the install CD.
c.) Check out ESET's NOD32 Antivirus program. It's very effective, doesn't bog the system down, and can be password protected to ensure that it doesn't get disabled. If possible, bill it to YOUR credit card and have the key sent to YOUR e-mail address. This way, you can ensure that it is always up to date, and you can say with confidence that if anything tells her that she's got a virus and to pay to remove it that it is a scam, since you are absolutely certain that she is covered.
d.) As has been said, no Admin for them, period.
3.) If you're going to go the Linux route...
a.) I've had the most success with Linux Mint with regards to user acceptance.
b.) It might take an entire Saturday, but check to make sure that EVERYTHING works properly! See how the system is set up BEFORE you wipe it. Do your best to mimic this setup as best you can before you sit them down on it the first time.
c.) Are they running at a lower resolution so they can read the print? Does it appear that they rely on some Windows-only apps that will require WINE or some kind of VM? Do all of their peripherals work properly? Is their hardware properly detected? Does their wireless card's Linux drivers support the encryption type that the router does? Do they make extensive use of Publisher or a greeting card program (that was the dealbreaker for my mom that brought her back to Windows)? Ask all these questions and then some, first. Us technically inclined people are better at "finding concepts" rather than "finding commands". "Screen Show" and "Slide Show" are close enough for us, but my mom near killed me when I had her try OpenOffice...and she reached for the knife when there was no "My Documents" folder for her to save it in.
You've heard from all the I-got-my-whole-family-to-switch-to-a-Mac people here, so I think that ground has been pretty well covered.
T-Mobile has never given me grief for anything I've done in the six years I've been a customer, and I've done it all. I've tethered. I've HardSPL'd my WinMo phones. I even had an unlocked iPhone on it, and THEY HELPED ME CONFIGURE MMS! I don't know what all this crap is about from Verizon and AT&T, but T-Mobile seems to have the as-long-as-you-don't-run-a-warez-server-on-your-phone-or-expect-a-whole-lot-of-tech-support-we-really-don't-care-what-you-do mentality.
Maybe it's just because it's a very small minority of T-Mobile users that hack their handsets, but they have been absolutely wonderful to work with in that regard. And no, I don't get a dime from them to say this, I'm just an extremely satisfied customer. I also happen to live in a metro area where they have some pretty solid coverage.
You forgot the best part of the discussion:
You: "So what you're basically saying is that, if I buy this phone, and I get an overage charge for the use of the data plan within $COUNTRY, I can come back here and see you, and you will personally pay the overages, right?"
Salesperson: "Well, uhm..." *squirms*
You: "Well if there's no possible way I can use too much data, then that should be an easy promise to make."
Salesperson: "Well you see sir, there are a few minor conditions..." *avoids eye contact*
You: "So what you're saying is that it is, in fact, limited?"
Salesperson: "..."
Manual Mod +1 Funny. Seriously, I think this is the funniest comment I've read all week!
*kisses karma goodbye* The difference is more like Toyota not honoring a warranty of a Camry that's been reported stolen, or conversely saying that Toyota should process the recall of an unregistered Camry with a scraped off serial number. Yes, a Camry could potentially endanger other drivers if not properly serviced, but ultimately I find it difficult to fault Toyota for not fixing a car that the driver has no business driving to begin with.
Guess a 'funny' mod isn't in the cards. I was attempting to be humorous by implying that since the machine is no longer running Vista, by definition it has received an upgrade.
on the twelfth screen of install, my distro gave to me:
Twelve GPL's
Eleven code compilers
Ten packet sniffers
Nine reptile wallpapers
Eight source code tarballs
Seven sudo commands
Six bootup options
Compiz Fusion
Four different web browsers
Three word procs
Gnome and KDE
and a partition in a shares tree!
Who said he upgraded?
Didn't you even READ his post before hitting reply? He said that he removed Vista!
The HP driver discs never cease to amaze me either. In addition to bundling their own, utterly craptacular software with them (perhaps to avoid paying Arcsoft or something?), there's just WAY too much of it. I mean, is there any reason why a driver install download should be over 300MB? And yes, there are some multifunction drivers that are that size. I mean, the BASIC, "DRIVER-ONLY" installers are like 45 at best. And then when they actually do install, there's like 9 or 10 devices that get added to the device manager. I mean seriously, does HP have a company policy against writing drivers that *DON'T* suck?
By contrast, my Canon MP970 is about the best machine I have ever owned. The driver download package is 14MB (and works for 2000, XP, Vista, and 7; the 64-bit version is 20MB). It installs exactly three pieces of hardware into my device manager: a printer, a scanner, and a card reader. The bundled software on the disc is actually halfway decent as far as bundled apps go (A full versions of Arcsoft PhotoImpression and a basic-but-quite-functional version of Omnipage, plus color spaces for Photoshop and an app to manage on the network), are all 100% optional to install, and NONE of them start with your machine? I know I sound like a Canon rep or a troll or something and I'm sorry, but Canon has got the installation procedure correct.
I don't need 100+ services all running in the background monitoring hardware and sucking up memory and processor slices so I get a popup "logo / splash screen / helper" saying "it looks like you inserted a piece of A4, do you want to print something" ?
Agreed. You'd think they'd have learned from Clippy.
Forgot a < /quote> in there somewhere.
Anyway, the foundational difference here between the experience you reference and mine is that we have two entirely different user bases. You're correct in that we don't have any graphic designers on staff. My users use Microsoft Office, a few web-based apps, and an AS/400 emulator (yes, we still have an AS/400, though it's being phased out in less than a year). Obviously these aren't terribly processor intensive applications, and the machines that we have are all equipped with dual-core processors (albeit some older than others), at least a gig of RAM, and run XP. As such, our network is tailored to the needs of the users I have. If I had people who rendered lots of video, our network and policies would reflect that. On to the rest of the bullet points...
The people who work at my company have a job to do. Installing a beta copy of an operating system on their work machine isn't one of them. Most people in my office, whether they love their job or not, have one. The accountants crunch the numbers. The underwriters review policies. Customer Service answers the phone. Legal preps court cases, etc. While us slashdotters like messing with technology, as you alluded to in your response, most people just want the stuff to work, and don't have time to make their own. They all have their own supervisors to answer to, and if they're not keeping up with their work because they were installing Windows 7 Beta 1 on their work machine, they'd be in plenty of hot water of their own. There is no reason I could possibly think of that anyone would need to boot from a CD or USB drive in order to get their job done. That policy is anything but draconian.
Your example of Web Guy Bob and Graphic Guy Jim mixes office politics with technology, and fails to take into account that GPO's are rules that are there for the 99% of the time, not the 1% for which an exception can easily be generated. Generally if Bob and Jim are working together on the same project, I doubt that Jim would fly off the handle if Bob asked for a simple resize. But let's say that for some reason that wasn't possible. I'd also doubt that if Bob is an in-house web designer that he'd get too far with just a copy of Dreamweaver independent of Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks. The company would be foolish to buy the single app instead of suite licenses for both of them. Even if they did, it's unlikely that Bob and Jim wouldn't have had something like this happen before and therefore a precedent set (either Bob goes back to Jim and asks for fixes or Bob already has GIMP/Inkscape installed). The best example to substantiate your argument that I could come up with is something like Jim doing the graphics the day before he goes away on vacation and Bob can't contact him until he gets back, like he normally would. The manager would be a dolt to have either scheduled the deadline of the project the day AFTER Jim goes away or let Jim schedule his vacation to start the day the project is due. But despite the stretch of the example you made, if it really came down to it, yes, Bob could call me and I'd either resize the graphics on my own copy of Photoshop (yes, I paid for it...pics of the discs available on request) or install GIMP/Paint.Net for him on his machine so that he could do it, which would take me 10 minutes, tops. If a manager is going to both insist on a deadline that cannot be met due to his own incompetence AND prohibit Bob from having the tools to do so means that it's time for me to have a chat with Bob's boss's boss.
Again, you're correct in that I don't have any graphic designers here. I've never had a case of the 10MB attachment limit being a problem. Even if a user did need to send a file bigger than that, the odds are that the recipient's mailbox would spit it out anyway. Given the infrequency of this occurance, I have no problem FTPing the file and giving the user a link to e-mail to the person. If it were frequent enough that I'd have to give every Moe, Larry, and Curly FTP a
IMO, you pretty much summed up the difference. I didn't look at the clip, and from what I've read, it's likely taken out of context. Like other comments have said, some terrorists are pathetic enough to hide behind civillians, and I understand the concept of putting this into a game simulating "Modern Warfare".
The issue on which the point hinges though is the fact that a good infantry squad would recognize that they are in an impossible situation (i.e. not take a chance harming civillians, but letting the terrorists go just to harm other civillians). They train very hard to do their best to MINIMIZE the civillian casualties as much as possible. Is THAT also simulated in the game? Do they spend some time earlier in the game helping the player determine means to isolate the terrorists from the hostages? Is there some sort of reward for having a low civillian death toll and/or a penalty for that being too high? Does the game give some sort of means of opting out of the mission?
IMO this whole debate hinges on the context. Realism in having to make very difficult decisions leading up to a point where choices the player makes directly impacts who lives and who dies and seeing the consequences is one thing. Putting players in a leave-no-civillian-alive-'cuz-it's-fun-to-kill-innocent-people scenario is quite another.
Users *can* be a pain. Where I work though, there's an extremely small chance that a situation like this would happen.
Hey I tried to install windows 7 alpha but now my computer doesn't work?
Our company machines require a password to boot from anything but the hard drive. This user would be more likely to call me about getting it installed rather than asking for support after the fact. Even if he somehow managed to guess the password, the fact that he had to do so likely indicates that he's not going to be calling my helpdesk to get support for it, and the fact that he can't log into the domain to access his documents or e-mail means that his machine would be re-imaged by lunchtime.
I have a problem with my computer since I installed mega-zob-toolbar; please fix it.
We have a corporate antivirus to help reduce attacks like that, but if they fail, then this is part of my job. Most users, realizing that it takes significant amounts of time away from their productivity, tend to ask what they can do to avoid it in the future. The majority of virus attacks I get are based on ignorance, not malice.
My kid gave me Adobe CS12 Mega Ultra Designer Pack-DOMINO-REPACK-XXXX to edit that PDF can I have admin right to install it?
First, a quick google search shows that DOMiNO releases DVD rips of movies and isn't a software release group. That said, the majority of the users at work will call me if they need help editing the PDF file in the first place, not asking for help installing 5 DVDs and running a keygen. They know their coworkers can do it, and if they need Acrobat installed on their machines and don't have it, they know that all it takes is a phone call to my desk and I'm going to work on solving their problem.
Hey, I've been trying to send that DVD by email for the last three days but it doesn't work and by the way the email server is very slow.
This one I could technically see happening, but AFAIK the only person here who uses ISO files is me. On a more generic note (i.e. sending stupidly large files via e-mail), our Exchange server has a 10MB limit; users who try to e-mail something larger than that will instantly get a failure message. If they do genuinely need to send that large file, I can arrange for that file to sit on an FTP server so that all the recipient has to do is click the download link. If they don't really need to send the file, then, well, they're not going to call.
Oh that? That's my home wifi router so I can work from the rec room.
Our building has encrypted wi-fi already. The people who need it access it, and if someone starts needing it, you guessed it, they know to call. Even if my building didn't have wireless, if they can see it so can I. We don't have live ethernet jacks anywhere they shouldn't be, so if it's underneath their desk, it's a trivial matter to track down a linksys router. From there, I'd present my case to my boss as to why we shouldn't have wireless access here (or why we should, but at least done properly), and let her decide what she wants me to do about it.
Really?? This Azureus software prevents other people from working? I can't see why.
I haven't had to deal with this one yet, either. About the worst issue I've had so far with regards to bandwidth is that half my office uses Pandora or something similar. Still, our internet speeds are acceptable, I take a peek at our gateway's traffic log to see if there's any high-volume traffic going through abnormal ports, and so far so good. Should this become an issue, I have a supervisor that makes the decision as to what should be done about it.
Hey IT guy why do you pretend it's my statistical report that i made myself in access that slows the database? I'm not even using the database; only access.
A clear, simple explanation usually curbs this one. The majori
Agreed, but *if a fetus is considered a life*, then performing an abortion would essentially amount to the fetus getting the death penalty for the crime of its father.
I can't speak for everyone, so I'll just speak for myself. I'm a Christian. I'm pro-life. My religious beliefs give me guidance as to how I am supposed to live my own life. Because of my religious beliefs, I take my vacation days and volunteer to help feed homeless people in poorer areas where I live. I personally have walked around public areas and helped pick up trash. I lend my listening ear to my friends who are going through difficult times. I encourage my female friends to respect themselves and not buy into our culture of skin deep beauty. I donate money to charities like Love146 who work to end child sex trafficking in other areas of the world. I'm not trying to brag about all the wonderful things I've done in my life (indeed, I've got a laundry list of things that I'm not proud of, either), but you asked what good religious beliefs are. Mine emplore me to provide assistance toward others to who require it.
Do I tell people about my beliefs? yes, I do. I do tell them about sin and heaven and hell and salvation and the sacrifice that Christ made. But it's not conditional. I don't make people say "the sinner's prayer" in order to get a cup of soup or bottle of water. I do my very best to not be condescending or confrontational to someone I am speaking with. My purpose isn't to force my beliefs on others, but I would be remiss to not inform. If, after me speaking with someone, they choose to reject it, then that's their choice and I will not force them otherwise. To do so would be inconsistent with the principles Jesus taught.
Many people inevitably bring up things like the manipulative practices of the church during the middle ages, they hypocrisy of churchgoers, money-grabbing televangelists, the nagging people on the sidewalk with the bullhorns, and yes, the people who kill abortion doctors. I cannot answer for any of them. All I can say is that Jesus never separated loving God from loving other people. To force one's beliefs on another person is unloving to that person, and therefore does not express love toward God, and that if I have ever come across as unloving or uncaring toward another person, that I am truly sorry.
You'll get no argument from me that if there's anything that Christians are good at, that it's shooting ourselves in the foot. Mahatma Gandhi once stated, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.", and he was embarrassingly correct. Here's to hoping that somehow I manage to provide an exception.
I hear that a lot. But given that my coverage has gotten consistently better over the past five years I've been a T-Mobile subscriber, I wonder how many other areas of the country this is true for. It seems to me that T-Mobile has been doing a pretty good job of trying to correct their image of people never getting service. If you're happy with AT&T, then more power to you. But take a second look if your last experience with them was a decade ago. You might be surprised. And no, I don't work for them. Just a happy customer.
I buy the disc for the shelf and the physical security, as I too am old school like that. I rip an ISO of it to my storage server and install from there. The holy grail though is something like Unreal Tournament 3 or Counterstrike: I have the game on my shelf in physical form and rip ISOs on my server, but the key goes directly into Steam and I can add it to my account there.
The problem with bitlocker is that it's only part of the ultimatextremeultra most expensive version of Windows. Most people would be too cheap to get that version, even if they knew what the benefit was. So your home computer probably doesn't have it.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Which do you think is a more likely scenario:
1.) Home user has valuable data on their machine that cannot fall into the "wrong hands" (personally identifiable information in the browser cache notwithstanding).
2.) User has lots of data that is valuable TO THEM, but not worth stealing for anyone else (i.e. photos, school projects, music library), doesn't back up their data, and doesn't surf safely.
In every case of every home PC I have ever worked on, there has been exactly one person who has fit into category number one, and that's because he owned his own company and had his Quickbooks data on it. Everyone else has fit into the second category.
I've had dozens of machines over the years that I've had to rescue from a defective hard drive or malware attack. Recovering their data usually involves either booting from a BartPE/Acronis/Knoppix disc and transferring it to an external hard drive or LAN location, or popping out the drive and sticking an IDE/SATA-to-USB tether device on it and migrating it that way. If home users were given the option to encrypt their data in the event of an Evil Maid, the majority wouldn't use it anyway, but a few would. The few who would are no more likely to keep a data backup (or encrypt that backup, defeating the purpose of encrypting the drive in the first place), and if one of THEM ends up with a corrupted boot sector or malware attack, their family photos, school projects, and Limewire music are completely hosed with no chance of recovery...because that is the entire point of the encryption.
The way I figure it, if the data is important enough to encrypt, it's too important to be on your home computer. If it must be worked on at home, and it's important enough to encrypt, then it's important enough to get a company issued laptop to do it.
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Selling leather handbags on Slashdot? Seems like this AC is a perfect example. If he had a publisher, he'd have known that Slashdot isn't the place for him.
I never played Duke Nukem and as such have heard the line you're referencing, but based on your description, I'm sure that William Shatner could have nailed that line perfectly.
Thanks for clearing that up. I'll keep it in mind. Also, props to whoever modded me funny earlier. That said, there are certainly other examples of the same principle. The fact that HCl exists in our digestive system fits this category. I'm no med student, but from what I read on the back of "Anatomy for Dummies", there is a mucus membrane in the stomach that prevents the HCl from wreaking havoc in the rest of the body. A stomach with neither HCl nor mucus wouldn't be terribly useful, HCL with no mucus wouldn't last long, mucus with no HCL also would serve little purpose, until you have all three in the proper combination. Even at that it's not a once-and-out job, both parts require contant replenishing in order for them to provide an evolutionary advantage. As such, they require other pieces to support them, etc. Sure, you could correctly argue that the systems could have evolved in order such that everything would have remained dormant until everything functioned properly, but while that's a stretch at best with the digestive system, a dormant-until-fully-functional reproductive system is at odds with the concept of gradual evolution.
Additionally, I apologize for the lack of specificity earlier. I tend to lump "gradual-change-over-time" and "from-big-bang-to-2009AD" and refer to them intergangeably as evolution, which is indeed inaccurate. My comments regarding abiogenesis were in reference to the latter, not the former.
Correct, though not how you worded it. Obviously I don't expect anyone to find a fossil of the first organism to populate this planet. I would, however, appreciate a plausible explanation as to how abiogenesis could have occured. While you make a point in that it's not directly related to the observed effects in E. Coli reported in TFA, in the broader scheme of how life began on earth, the two answers I've ever heard boil down to "God did it" and "!God did it". The "God did it" crowd typically answers the "how" question with something to the extent of "God is all powerful and I'll never understand how He did it". The "!God did it" crowd has more or less told me "I'm not really sure, but we're working on it". So I'll grant that both sides kinda cop out in the "how" department.
More related to what you're talking about, I really don't disagree with the basic concept of evolution to some limited capacity. Yes, giraffes with longer necks will be able to reach more leaves and are more apt to survive after the lower leaves have been eaten, thus passing that trait onto their offspring. But there's a difference between that sort of gradual evolution, a dormant evolution like seen in these E. Coli which manifests itself once the other pieces are put together as the GGP points out, and "evolutionary chasms" that aren't easily explained by gradual evolution. Did gender (and the requisite reproductive systems) evolve gradually? Live birth from hatching (or vice cersa)? Digestion (complete with the HCl in our stomachs)? Elsewhere in the discussion, it talks about animals being able to mate vs. not mating. Tigers and lions can reproduce together, while tigers and horses cannot. At what point do the reproductive systems become incompatible, and how is it that it's sufficiently consistent to allow the deviants to reproduce? A long-necked giraffe is still a giraffe, and can mate with a short-necked giraffe. A squirrel is not a dog and cannot mate with one.