It was even cheaper to just buy some Captain Crunch cereal, get the little whistle out of the package, stick a lil' bit o' wood in the middle of it and blow a nice 2600hz tone.
Dealing with their bureaucracy is a nightmare - especially if you are trying to get a clarification on whether their commercial TOS allows paid WiFI hotspot access. Inconsistent policies, customer service from hell, a pricing structure more suited to the "we're the phone company - we don't care - we don't have to" days...I can only hope that Comcast is indeed due for a long permament swim in a nice tar pit.
In case you are unaware, with the BSA, it doesn't matter if you are legit or not.
What matters is that you have original receipts.
You can have the COA, stickers galore, original media, you name it.
If you don't have the original receipt, they will consider you in violation. You MIGHT prevail at court - but the BSA will tell you straight out that even if you win the legal fees will dwarf their "SETTLEMENT FEE".
As for you, my friend with no sympathy, transfer of licensed software purchased at the MS store almost certainly has some clause in it prohibiting transfers from employees to a commercial authority. Do you have a receipt from that employee who sold or gave you the software? If yes, then they could possibly lose their job and you're still in violation. If no, you are well and truly fucked.
Software licensing is a nightmare for any medium to large company. Period.
Anyone want to download the kit at universitytoolkit.com and make sure all the source is being distributed as well? If they are not making the source available for their little Linux distribution someone should get the GNU to sic their lawyers on them.
The Powers That Be have announced that the coming 4th season is the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Maybe...they have something to hide. Something they don't want people to think about.
Now we know why. The Cylons DO have a plan. It's to build a theme park.
A robotic themepark? Do people really want to go to a park to hang out with robots or are they all just hoping for a ride on the Number Six?
They see the United States slowing turning to a Nazi-like state and they're determined to defend their intellectual property by returning to Nazism first.
Why is it so hard for some otherwise reasonable people to understand that in a society where everything and everyone is tracable, sooner or later those in power can spank down a few annoying people and everyone will get the idea that if they speak out, they could be next?
It's most likely better to call their offices in their home states, but here are their numbers in Washington:
Leahy: (202) 224-4242, DC - (802)863-2525, Burlington, (802)229-0569, Montpellier
Cornyn: (202) 224-2934, DC - SE Texas: 713-572-3337, Central Texas: 512-469-6034
Be polite and respectful, but bring up the points:
* Introducing legislation to reduce the legal expenses of multi-billion dollar entities is one of the reason that people are losing faith in the democratic process.
* There are grave flaws in some of the civil suits the RIAA have brought and innocent people are often being caught in the net; bringing the full power of the US Government against people in a civil suit is tremendously unfair.
* Why is the DOJ focusing on this instead of terrorism?
* Civil suits have a much lower burden of proof than criminal cases and there is no constitutional requirement for the government to provide lawyers; this will ruin lives.
* The RIAA has a documented history of trying to bribe congressman and sneak inherently unfair legislation into bills; this also explains why people have lost faith in Congress.
* Our copyright system is fundamentally broken, copyright terms are ridiculously long. We should not be spending government funds to reinforce a deeply flawed system.
* The RIAA is getting more resistance from judges who can see the unfair nature of their cases and this is an effort to get free legal help for a corrupt industry at taxpayer expense.
* The recording industry has been exploiting artists and consumers for decades and now they're trying to use legal force to preserve a dying business model; if the manufacturers of buggy whips had the legislative clout back in the early 1900's that the RIAA a buggy whip would be required equipment in each automobile.
* Finally, you will occasionally get a staffer who will attempt to defend the bill. If they are wired in to the lobbying machine, you can scare the hell out of them with this phrase: "Well, since the recording industry believes that copyright should last forever, like land and real estate, would the Senator support a yearly tax on the possession of copyrights, much like land is subject to annual property taxes?" This is an extremely dangerous idea for the recording industry.
Call 'em. Be polite but firm. If you are a member of their party, mention that, too and let them know if you think are representing their party poorly.
They do track how many calls they get on an issue. It does make a difference.
I can't source it, but I remember at the time there were several statements from RedHat employees referring to the fact that Redhat Linux operated at a profit. It's most likely also buried somewhere in an annual report or something. I don't remember, but at the time they end-of-lifed RH 9 there was a lot of talk about it.
Redhat can't get away from the fact that the EOL'd RH 9 faster than Microsoft ever thought of EOL-ing an operating system. That's why I use CentOS.
I ran RedHat Linux (not enterprise) for years on a few servers, and cheerfully paid the subscription fees for RedHat network (something like $30 a year or something) just because it was easy.
I knew that RedHat's main focus was on Enterprise, which was total overkill for what I needed. Still, I also knew that they were making a profit on RedHat Linux - not a huge profit, but a profit nonetheless. I figured I could continue running RH Linux on my small servers for a long time, paying my subscription fees and everyone would be happy.
Well, some beancounters at RedHat made a lot of noise about "brand dilution" or some such crap, rightfully pointing out that one nice big enterprise customer is worth about 10000 little customers like me (true). The same beancounters then made a decision that since I could get RH Linux cheap that it somehow made RHEL less attractive as a "brand" or some such marketing doublespeak - rather doubtful, but hey, it sounds impressive in a board meeting I guess.
What happened? They end-of-lifed RedHat Linux extremely abruptly, I think within MONTHS, not years of the release of RedHat 9. They left me in a position where I had to go from telling clients, "oh, yeah, Linux is great, we set up the server, monitor it and update it every now and then, but mostly we just leave it alone" to telling clients, "uh, yeah, this is going to go away real soon so I need to upgrade all those servers that I told you we wouldn't have to make changes to for years."
Well, damn. They betrayed me. They sold a decent product at a fair price, and I assumed that practice would continue. Silly me. They could have at least given me a decent lifecycle on the last release - hell, even Microsoft supports an operating system for a minimum of five years - but no....
I talked to customers about Redhat being an affordable, decent product, and they made me look like an ass. I don't forget that.
Now, many hardware manufacturers out there only support RedHat. And while RHEL is boring as hell, it's also stable as hell. It's a good product, but they are clearly not interested in catering to small customers. And CentOS is big enough that I can call Dell and say, "I have a Linux server" and they'll say "We only support Redhat" and I'll say, "Well, I'm running CentOS, the clone of RHEL."
And Dell says, "Sounds good to us. How can we help you?"
I think Redhat made a giant mistake back in 2003 when they dumped all us little guys.
Sure, they have several nice big giant customers shoveling cash at them. But they could have kept the little guys too, a multitude of them, and STILL made a profit on the low-cost subscriptions they were selling us. Big corporations throwing cash at you is all well and good, but when you're going up against Microsoft, which is as much a political battle as a financial battle there's something to be said for strength in numbers. And there's something to be said for goodwill, which RedHat squandered.
Don't even get me started on Fedora. Nice to play with, but I can't install an OS with a six-month or year lifecycle in a production environment.
Redhat pissed on me and thousands of other small customers, when it would have cost them NOTHING to keep us. We don't forget. It's sad, really. I still try to keep up with RedHat sometimes. I registered for a RedHat seminar and someone from RedHat called me up to ask about my perception of RedHat and I started trying to explain why I could no longer trust RedHat. They didn't seem to know what I was talking about. They were most likely wondering, "if this guy dislikes us so much why is he attending a RedHat seminar?"
I didn't feel like explaining it's because I use CentOS. Occasionally I'll sell a server to a customer and include a "donation amount" on the invoice, which I subsequently pass on to the CentOS project. It would be easier, slightly, I suppose to use the old RedHat Network basic subscription model - I wouldn't have to explain to customers why there's a "donation" field on their invoice instead of a "support contract" field - but hey, that's life.
Wow. That gives me an idea...maybe I should trademark, "Proof that an infinite number of monkeys typing on the Internet can't be wrong" and sell it to Slashdot as their new motto.
Yeah, you're right about the one in a hundred-thousand thing. I goofed.
But I did mean electrons...if you read his book, you'll learn that his father, an engineer on the Polaris missile project, taught him about electronics by first teaching him what an electron was and truly grounding him in the nature of how electrons move before going on to higher level concepts. I think Woz had a firmer foundation because of that.
Typical anonymous coward senseless hatred. Yup, it's excusable for people to forgive each other, speaking as someone who has both occasionally screwed over and been screwed over my own friends. If Jobs decided that all current macs out there right now were obsolete, he'd be an asshole. Just like Jobs is being a bit of a hypocrite calling for DRM-free music on one hand while trying to keep a stranglelock on the iPhone with the other. However, I think overall Jobs' contribution has been quite positive.
I'm hardly a "mac fan boy", and I think that you are most likely the one with your head firmly inserted up your ass, but hey, if it makes you feel good to jump to ridiculous conclusions it's most likely best that you do it as an anonymous coward.
Yeah, usually when Woz it asked about Jobs he says straight out that Jobs occasionally screwed him over a little bit, but then waves it off with a "but that's just Steve" remark and adds that he still considers Steve a friend and he enjoys talking to him on rare occasions. He also says he is grateful to Steve because Jobs always makes sure that Woz always has a current Apple Employee badge and he likes knowing that he still has that thread connecting him to Apple.
Frankly, although Jobs has screwed Woz over a few times, I think Jobs has been far more screwed over by some of the people he worked with. Jobs has trusted many people who later turned against him - some with reason, true - but some of the betrayals of Jobs have been on a far greater scale than any of the petty stuff between Jobs and Woz.
One hit wonder, my ass. He did what he did because he understood electrons and logic at a level that one in a hundred-thousand people could not match. He did not just "co-invent the Apple" - he is a shining example of what a true HP engineer could do. He basically invented modern input/output routines. The degree of raw brainpower required to design the graphics card and RF modulation on the original Apple is astounding. He did not just assemble off-the-shelf parts in a new way; he invented totally new ways of doing anything, and he created things that both worked and were cost effective.
There are engineers, mechanics, designers, inventors and scientists. And then there are those who have such a deep understanding of how the world around us works, who combine multiple disciplines in such a way that they can see things that normal people can't. Richard Feynmann was one of these people. So is Steve Wozniak.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak changed the world. The computer revolution would have taken much, much longer without those two. Steve Jobs, in addition to his marketing skills, was truly a technician and scientist in his own right. Not nearly in the same league as Woz, but he knew enough to help do what had to be done from a physical design and assembly standpoint. Woz couldn't sell ideas very well, back then. The teamup of Wozniak and Jobs created something unique, a whole that was far greater than the sum of its parts, but that shouldn't take away from the brilliance of both of these men.
Wozniak has also been a teacher, a concert promoter (!) and Lord knows what else since leaving Apple. He prefers to work a lot with children now, trying to teach them how to solve logical problems. There's no way to know now, but I would not be surprised a bit if in the distant future some great inventor / engineer / scientist or even politician is going to say that once upon a time they started to learn how to truly think logically because they had the gift of listening to Woz lecture at his school.
Saying that Woz is a "one-hit wonder" does nothing but display total ignorance of what the man has truly accomplished. Creating Apple the way he did was great, and would not have happened nearly as soon if he hadn't existed, but perhaps the this brillian yet simple man's ultimate legacy has yet to be written, for we may never know the true benefits of the work he has done with children.
Welcome to the world of emergency response, where seconds matter and people get killed every day.
Sure, there's a lot of fascist crap going on in the US today. Is the government out of control? You betcha.
But in this situation?
A call comes in, saying that one person is dead and another is ABOUT TO BE MURDERED, and the cops respond appropriately - they burst in with guns drawn and in overwhelming force. And, the cops even have the presence of mind to take down the armed homeowner (who, from his perspective, is conducting a lawful self-defence of his home with a knife) with non-lethal force.
I say yay to the cops. They did everything right. For, 99.99% of the time, when the call comes in saying someone is getting murdered, SOMEONE IS GETTING MURDERED. What would you have the cops do? "Hey, there's a report that there's a drug-addled maniac in there who is about to kill a kid. Let's knock at the door and have a chat."
Cops, generally speaking, are trained to not usually knock at doors. They are instructed in many jurisdictions to stand to the SIDE of the door, so that a shotgun blast through the middle of the door won't take them out. That is how they are trained to knock on a door in a NON-CONFRONTATIONAL SITUATION, because cops have been blown away simply for knocking on a door to let someone know their car lights are on or some stupid shit.
We have a court and legislative system to fix fascist abuses AFTER THE FACT, because such abuses can be discussed in a calm, reasonable matter. This allows the cops to use overwhelming force to secure a situation IN AN EMERGENCY, securing the site and figuring out what happened afterwards. And yet, cops are STILL killed in the US every single week, despite all their precautions.
It's not the cops' fault that the court and legislative system is currently broken. Police investigations usually are designed to preserve evidence for trial; SWAT team responses are designed to preserve HUMAN LIFE first and foremost. Why? Because we can ultimately, in theory fix any abuse of procedure through the court system, but we cannot restore human life once taken.
If the cops think a kid is about to die, they're going to come in with guns drawn and ready. They're going to come in hard. And that's just the way it should be. The cops should be able to trust the tools they are given. Blame here rests with the worthless piece of subhuman flesh who committed the crime (compromise of the system) and whoever in IT screwed up the system security. Don't blame the cops.
Japanese abuse of anyone non-Japanese was all but government policy. Japanese troops tied women to trees in Nanking and drove sharpened bamboo poles up their vaginas. American prisoners of war prayed to be bombed by their own forces to end their suffering.
The most conservative estimates at the time by the US Military estimated that an invasion of the home islands would have cost at least 500,000 civilian Japanese lives. That's conservative, mind you.
We dropped a couple bombs, killed 80,000, and they surrendered - but even then there was a plot by Japanese extremists in the Imperial Army to steal the tapes of the Emperor's surrender radio broadcast before they could be aired, as they wanted to keep fighting.
A "demonstration" of the atomic blast for the Japanese would merely have been suppressed by the Japanese military.
The Japanese got off easy. When a nation chooses to embark on wars of aggression and piracy, its citizens must bear the consequences. It's a lesson we in the US should learn, as we meekly accept a government that appears more corrupt with each coming day, but to argue that the use of nuclear weapons during WW2 is to ignore the historical realities of the time. The world was a big old slaughterhouse back then, and with a couple of big booms we ended it.
The lesson we should take from that time is how General MacArthur turned Japan into a thriving democracy within five years. If the Bush administration had been less concerned about how to maximize profit for civilian contractors and more interested in studying what MacArthur did for Japan and what the Marshall Plan did for Europe we wouldn't have such a mess in Iraq right now.
No, after 27 years of professional experience, starting with Commodore Basic in 1980, 6502 Assember, MS-DOS 3.3-6.22, DEC-Vax,OS/2 v.2 and v.3 Warp, more varients of Linux than I can count starting in 1993 and continuing to the present day, & v3, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 & 98SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP and now Vista, it is my considered, professional opinion that Microsoft Vista is a giant pile of steaming shit.
Vista, like Windows ME, is the ultimate triumph of marketing bullshit over technical advancement. I can find something nice to say about every Microsoft OS except for ME and Vista. I will even admit to enjoying Windows 2000 & XP, at least since XP service pack 2.
Vista is shit. The more I learn about it, the more I work with it, the shittier it feels.
It just feels like a big step backwards. And when I put a Mac next to a Vista machine, the difference is even more apparent. In 2007, that's unforgivable.
Yeah, I agree, I was being half-joking when I said "does anyone know how I can get trained as a Apple Tech?", but the more I thought about it, I think it might be a good idea to pop the $300 for online-Applecare Tech training so I can get a certification - both to just familiarize myself with the differences between Apple / PC terminology and also so I can join the Apple Service Provider program or whatever it is.
I've been fixing PC's for twenty years, although I try to bounce hardware issues to the manufacturer I still find myself popping cases more than I like. I've found that when I sign up for formal training, I usually already know 9/10 of what they're saying but there's always a useful nugget in there somewhere.
The constant improvement in Macs just keeps getting better. I have a 6-year old 700mhz iBook running OS 10.3 Panther, and it blows away most PC's for day-to-day tasks. The only thing I like better are newer Macs.
Even Linux is losing its allure - I still run it on servers, and enjoy it more than Windows - but I'm sorry, I have work to do, and too many Linux apps require me to read documentation - usually poorly written - for hours to get stuff to work. I have no experience using OS X server and frankly have been avoiding it because I'm afraid I'll like it too much.
I love the concept of Linux, I love the licensing freedom, but I can't understand why it's so difficult to install stuff. I don't have time to troubleshoot utterly obscure conflicts that occur more often than not when I try to install stuff.
Vista is a nightmare. Period. End of story. I know you can still get XP on new systems, but I know that MS will pull the plug on XP sooner rather than later.
Here's my problem. I am a networking consultant, and PC repair is a big part of my business - and I can no longer recommend to people that they buy PC's. They just suck too hard. I am in the position of having to tell people to buy Macs, even though I am not a Mac tech and although I can work a Mac as an end-user, I don't really know how to fix them. I can't recommend Linux to end-users, although I will recommend it to business that have locked-down machines that only need to do A, B and C - simply because an average person just can't be expected to install stuff on a Linux box. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking it's just too difficult.
So here I am, cutting myself off from future business because I'm telling people to replace their old PC's with new Macs. Anyone know the best way to get trained as a Mac technician without actually working for Apple?
Yes, it is due to DRM, because DRM makes Vista a resource hog.
Part of Vista's mandatory DRM means that if you run anything resembling a media application, it polls the screen TEN TIME A SECOND to make sure you're not running a screen capture utility - regardless of the media license.
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Anyone familiar with the Patrick O'Brian novels featuring Jack Aubrey or the C.S. Forester novels featuring Horatio Hornblower will recognize these...
I, for one, welcome our new stem cell overlords.
It was even cheaper to just buy some Captain Crunch cereal, get the little whistle out of the package, stick a lil' bit o' wood in the middle of it and blow a nice 2600hz tone.
Dealing with their bureaucracy is a nightmare - especially if you are trying to get a clarification on whether their commercial TOS allows paid WiFI hotspot access. Inconsistent policies, customer service from hell, a pricing structure more suited to the "we're the phone company - we don't care - we don't have to" days...I can only hope that Comcast is indeed due for a long permament swim in a nice tar pit.
Chopping off Darl's head is clearly a logistical nightmare, as how do you chop off his head when it's firmly inserted up his own ass?
"A walking penis capable of intelligent speech! You know, a dickhead!" - Eve, Blast From the Past
No sympathy for Ball?
I have no sympathy for YOU.
In case you are unaware, with the BSA, it doesn't matter if you are legit or not.
What matters is that you have original receipts.
You can have the COA, stickers galore, original media, you name it.
If you don't have the original receipt, they will consider you in violation. You MIGHT prevail at court - but the BSA will tell you straight out that even if you win the legal fees will dwarf their "SETTLEMENT FEE".
As for you, my friend with no sympathy, transfer of licensed software purchased at the MS store almost certainly has some clause in it prohibiting transfers from employees to a commercial authority. Do you have a receipt from that employee who sold or gave you the software? If yes, then they could possibly lose their job and you're still in violation. If no, you are well and truly fucked.
Software licensing is a nightmare for any medium to large company. Period.
Anyone want to download the kit at universitytoolkit.com and make sure all the source is being distributed as well? If they are not making the source available for their little Linux distribution someone should get the GNU to sic their lawyers on them.
The Powers That Be have announced that the coming 4th season is the last season of Battlestar Galactica. Maybe...they have something to hide. Something they don't want people to think about.
Now we know why. The Cylons DO have a plan. It's to build a theme park.
A robotic themepark? Do people really want to go to a park to hang out with robots or are they all just hoping for a ride on the Number Six?
They see the United States slowing turning to a Nazi-like state and they're determined to defend their intellectual property by returning to Nazism first.
Why is it so hard for some otherwise reasonable people to understand that in a society where everything and everyone is tracable, sooner or later those in power can spank down a few annoying people and everyone will get the idea that if they speak out, they could be next?
It's most likely better to call their offices in their home states, but here are their numbers in Washington:
Leahy: (202) 224-4242, DC - (802)863-2525, Burlington, (802)229-0569, Montpellier
Cornyn: (202) 224-2934, DC - SE Texas: 713-572-3337, Central Texas: 512-469-6034
Be polite and respectful, but bring up the points:
* Introducing legislation to reduce the legal expenses of multi-billion dollar entities is one of the reason that people are losing faith in the democratic process.
* There are grave flaws in some of the civil suits the RIAA have brought and innocent people are often being caught in the net; bringing the full power of the US Government against people in a civil suit is tremendously unfair.
* Why is the DOJ focusing on this instead of terrorism?
* Civil suits have a much lower burden of proof than criminal cases and there is no constitutional requirement for the government to provide lawyers; this will ruin lives.
* The RIAA has a documented history of trying to bribe congressman and sneak inherently unfair legislation into bills; this also explains why people have lost faith in Congress.
* Our copyright system is fundamentally broken, copyright terms are ridiculously long. We should not be spending government funds to reinforce a deeply flawed system.
* The RIAA is getting more resistance from judges who can see the unfair nature of their cases and this is an effort to get free legal help for a corrupt industry at taxpayer expense.
* The recording industry has been exploiting artists and consumers for decades and now they're trying to use legal force to preserve a dying business model; if the manufacturers of buggy whips had the legislative clout back in the early 1900's that the RIAA a buggy whip would be required equipment in each automobile.
* Finally, you will occasionally get a staffer who will attempt to defend the bill. If they are wired in to the lobbying machine, you can scare the hell out of them with this phrase: "Well, since the recording industry believes that copyright should last forever, like land and real estate, would the Senator support a yearly tax on the possession of copyrights, much like land is subject to annual property taxes?" This is an extremely dangerous idea for the recording industry.
Call 'em. Be polite but firm. If you are a member of their party, mention that, too and let them know if you think are representing their party poorly.
They do track how many calls they get on an issue. It does make a difference.
I can't source it, but I remember at the time there were several statements from RedHat employees referring to the fact that Redhat Linux operated at a profit. It's most likely also buried somewhere in an annual report or something. I don't remember, but at the time they end-of-lifed RH 9 there was a lot of talk about it.
Redhat can't get away from the fact that the EOL'd RH 9 faster than Microsoft ever thought of EOL-ing an operating system. That's why I use CentOS.
I ran RedHat Linux (not enterprise) for years on a few servers, and cheerfully paid the subscription fees for RedHat network (something like $30 a year or something) just because it was easy.
I knew that RedHat's main focus was on Enterprise, which was total overkill for what I needed. Still, I also knew that they were making a profit on RedHat Linux - not a huge profit, but a profit nonetheless. I figured I could continue running RH Linux on my small servers for a long time, paying my subscription fees and everyone would be happy.
Well, some beancounters at RedHat made a lot of noise about "brand dilution" or some such crap, rightfully pointing out that one nice big enterprise customer is worth about 10000 little customers like me (true). The same beancounters then made a decision that since I could get RH Linux cheap that it somehow made RHEL less attractive as a "brand" or some such marketing doublespeak - rather doubtful, but hey, it sounds impressive in a board meeting I guess.
What happened? They end-of-lifed RedHat Linux extremely abruptly, I think within MONTHS, not years of the release of RedHat 9. They left me in a position where I had to go from telling clients, "oh, yeah, Linux is great, we set up the server, monitor it and update it every now and then, but mostly we just leave it alone" to telling clients, "uh, yeah, this is going to go away real soon so I need to upgrade all those servers that I told you we wouldn't have to make changes to for years."
Well, damn. They betrayed me. They sold a decent product at a fair price, and I assumed that practice would continue. Silly me. They could have at least given me a decent lifecycle on the last release - hell, even Microsoft supports an operating system for a minimum of five years - but no....
I talked to customers about Redhat being an affordable, decent product, and they made me look like an ass. I don't forget that.
Now, many hardware manufacturers out there only support RedHat. And while RHEL is boring as hell, it's also stable as hell. It's a good product, but they are clearly not interested in catering to small customers. And CentOS is big enough that I can call Dell and say, "I have a Linux server" and they'll say "We only support Redhat" and I'll say, "Well, I'm running CentOS, the clone of RHEL."
And Dell says, "Sounds good to us. How can we help you?"
I think Redhat made a giant mistake back in 2003 when they dumped all us little guys.
Sure, they have several nice big giant customers shoveling cash at them. But they could have kept the little guys too, a multitude of them, and STILL made a profit on the low-cost subscriptions they were selling us. Big corporations throwing cash at you is all well and good, but when you're going up against Microsoft, which is as much a political battle as a financial battle there's something to be said for strength in numbers. And there's something to be said for goodwill, which RedHat squandered.
Don't even get me started on Fedora. Nice to play with, but I can't install an OS with a six-month or year lifecycle in a production environment.
Redhat pissed on me and thousands of other small customers, when it would have cost them NOTHING to keep us. We don't forget. It's sad, really. I still try to keep up with RedHat sometimes. I registered for a RedHat seminar and someone from RedHat called me up to ask about my perception of RedHat and I started trying to explain why I could no longer trust RedHat. They didn't seem to know what I was talking about. They were most likely wondering, "if this guy dislikes us so much why is he attending a RedHat seminar?"
I didn't feel like explaining it's because I use CentOS. Occasionally I'll sell a server to a customer and include a "donation amount" on the invoice, which I subsequently pass on to the CentOS project. It would be easier, slightly, I suppose to use the old RedHat Network basic subscription model - I wouldn't have to explain to customers why there's a "donation" field on their invoice instead of a "support contract" field - but hey, that's life.
Wow. That gives me an idea...maybe I should trademark, "Proof that an infinite number of monkeys typing on the Internet can't be wrong" and sell it to Slashdot as their new motto.
Yeah, you're right about the one in a hundred-thousand thing. I goofed.
But I did mean electrons...if you read his book, you'll learn that his father, an engineer on the Polaris missile project, taught him about electronics by first teaching him what an electron was and truly grounding him in the nature of how electrons move before going on to higher level concepts. I think Woz had a firmer foundation because of that.
Typical anonymous coward senseless hatred. Yup, it's excusable for people to forgive each other, speaking as someone who has both occasionally screwed over and been screwed over my own friends. If Jobs decided that all current macs out there right now were obsolete, he'd be an asshole. Just like Jobs is being a bit of a hypocrite calling for DRM-free music on one hand while trying to keep a stranglelock on the iPhone with the other. However, I think overall Jobs' contribution has been quite positive.
I'm hardly a "mac fan boy", and I think that you are most likely the one with your head firmly inserted up your ass, but hey, if it makes you feel good to jump to ridiculous conclusions it's most likely best that you do it as an anonymous coward.
Yeah, usually when Woz it asked about Jobs he says straight out that Jobs occasionally screwed him over a little bit, but then waves it off with a "but that's just Steve" remark and adds that he still considers Steve a friend and he enjoys talking to him on rare occasions. He also says he is grateful to Steve because Jobs always makes sure that Woz always has a current Apple Employee badge and he likes knowing that he still has that thread connecting him to Apple.
Frankly, although Jobs has screwed Woz over a few times, I think Jobs has been far more screwed over by some of the people he worked with. Jobs has trusted many people who later turned against him - some with reason, true - but some of the betrayals of Jobs have been on a far greater scale than any of the petty stuff between Jobs and Woz.
One hit wonder, my ass. He did what he did because he understood electrons and logic at a level that one in a hundred-thousand people could not match. He did not just "co-invent the Apple" - he is a shining example of what a true HP engineer could do. He basically invented modern input/output routines. The degree of raw brainpower required to design the graphics card and RF modulation on the original Apple is astounding. He did not just assemble off-the-shelf parts in a new way; he invented totally new ways of doing anything, and he created things that both worked and were cost effective.
There are engineers, mechanics, designers, inventors and scientists. And then there are those who have such a deep understanding of how the world around us works, who combine multiple disciplines in such a way that they can see things that normal people can't. Richard Feynmann was one of these people. So is Steve Wozniak.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak changed the world. The computer revolution would have taken much, much longer without those two. Steve Jobs, in addition to his marketing skills, was truly a technician and scientist in his own right. Not nearly in the same league as Woz, but he knew enough to help do what had to be done from a physical design and assembly standpoint. Woz couldn't sell ideas very well, back then. The teamup of Wozniak and Jobs created something unique, a whole that was far greater than the sum of its parts, but that shouldn't take away from the brilliance of both of these men.
Wozniak has also been a teacher, a concert promoter (!) and Lord knows what else since leaving Apple. He prefers to work a lot with children now, trying to teach them how to solve logical problems. There's no way to know now, but I would not be surprised a bit if in the distant future some great inventor / engineer / scientist or even politician is going to say that once upon a time they started to learn how to truly think logically because they had the gift of listening to Woz lecture at his school.
Saying that Woz is a "one-hit wonder" does nothing but display total ignorance of what the man has truly accomplished. Creating Apple the way he did was great, and would not have happened nearly as soon if he hadn't existed, but perhaps the this brillian yet simple man's ultimate legacy has yet to be written, for we may never know the true benefits of the work he has done with children.
You must be new here.
Oh, bullshit.
Welcome to the world of emergency response, where seconds matter and people get killed every day.
Sure, there's a lot of fascist crap going on in the US today. Is the government out of control? You betcha.
But in this situation?
A call comes in, saying that one person is dead and another is ABOUT TO BE MURDERED, and the cops respond appropriately - they burst in with guns drawn and in overwhelming force. And, the cops even have the presence of mind to take down the armed homeowner (who, from his perspective, is conducting a lawful self-defence of his home with a knife) with non-lethal force.
I say yay to the cops. They did everything right. For, 99.99% of the time, when the call comes in saying someone is getting murdered, SOMEONE IS GETTING MURDERED. What would you have the cops do? "Hey, there's a report that there's a drug-addled maniac in there who is about to kill a kid. Let's knock at the door and have a chat."
Cops, generally speaking, are trained to not usually knock at doors. They are instructed in many jurisdictions to stand to the SIDE of the door, so that a shotgun blast through the middle of the door won't take them out. That is how they are trained to knock on a door in a NON-CONFRONTATIONAL SITUATION, because cops have been blown away simply for knocking on a door to let someone know their car lights are on or some stupid shit.
We have a court and legislative system to fix fascist abuses AFTER THE FACT, because such abuses can be discussed in a calm, reasonable matter. This allows the cops to use overwhelming force to secure a situation IN AN EMERGENCY, securing the site and figuring out what happened afterwards. And yet, cops are STILL killed in the US every single week, despite all their precautions.
It's not the cops' fault that the court and legislative system is currently broken. Police investigations usually are designed to preserve evidence for trial; SWAT team responses are designed to preserve HUMAN LIFE first and foremost. Why? Because we can ultimately, in theory fix any abuse of procedure through the court system, but we cannot restore human life once taken.
If the cops think a kid is about to die, they're going to come in with guns drawn and ready. They're going to come in hard. And that's just the way it should be. The cops should be able to trust the tools they are given. Blame here rests with the worthless piece of subhuman flesh who committed the crime (compromise of the system) and whoever in IT screwed up the system security. Don't blame the cops.
in Soviet Russia, Video Professor sues YOU! - er, wait. That's what they're doing here. Oops. I guess the US *IS* Soviet Russia now.
Why put people in gulags when you can just bankrupt them if they foolishly insult respectable corporations?
Oh please.
The Japanese had it coming.
Period.
Japanese abuse of anyone non-Japanese was all but government policy. Japanese troops tied women to trees in Nanking and drove sharpened bamboo poles up their vaginas. American prisoners of war prayed to be bombed by their own forces to end their suffering.
The most conservative estimates at the time by the US Military estimated that an invasion of the home islands would have cost at least 500,000 civilian Japanese lives. That's conservative, mind you.
We dropped a couple bombs, killed 80,000, and they surrendered - but even then there was a plot by Japanese extremists in the Imperial Army to steal the tapes of the Emperor's surrender radio broadcast before they could be aired, as they wanted to keep fighting.
A "demonstration" of the atomic blast for the Japanese would merely have been suppressed by the Japanese military.
The Japanese got off easy. When a nation chooses to embark on wars of aggression and piracy, its citizens must bear the consequences. It's a lesson we in the US should learn, as we meekly accept a government that appears more corrupt with each coming day, but to argue that the use of nuclear weapons during WW2 is to ignore the historical realities of the time. The world was a big old slaughterhouse back then, and with a couple of big booms we ended it.
The lesson we should take from that time is how General MacArthur turned Japan into a thriving democracy within five years. If the Bush administration had been less concerned about how to maximize profit for civilian contractors and more interested in studying what MacArthur did for Japan and what the Marshall Plan did for Europe we wouldn't have such a mess in Iraq right now.
No, after 27 years of professional experience, starting with Commodore Basic in 1980, 6502 Assember, MS-DOS 3.3-6.22, DEC-Vax,OS/2 v.2 and v.3 Warp, more varients of Linux than I can count starting in 1993 and continuing to the present day, & v3, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 & 98SE, Windows 2000, Windows XP and now Vista, it is my considered, professional opinion that Microsoft Vista is a giant pile of steaming shit.
Vista, like Windows ME, is the ultimate triumph of marketing bullshit over technical advancement. I can find something nice to say about every Microsoft OS except for ME and Vista. I will even admit to enjoying Windows 2000 & XP, at least since XP service pack 2.
Vista is shit. The more I learn about it, the more I work with it, the shittier it feels.
It just feels like a big step backwards. And when I put a Mac next to a Vista machine, the difference is even more apparent. In 2007, that's unforgivable.
Yeah, I agree, I was being half-joking when I said "does anyone know how I can get trained as a Apple Tech?", but the more I thought about it, I think it might be a good idea to pop the $300 for online-Applecare Tech training so I can get a certification - both to just familiarize myself with the differences between Apple / PC terminology and also so I can join the Apple Service Provider program or whatever it is.
I've been fixing PC's for twenty years, although I try to bounce hardware issues to the manufacturer I still find myself popping cases more than I like. I've found that when I sign up for formal training, I usually already know 9/10 of what they're saying but there's always a useful nugget in there somewhere.
The constant improvement in Macs just keeps getting better. I have a 6-year old 700mhz iBook running OS 10.3 Panther, and it blows away most PC's for day-to-day tasks. The only thing I like better are newer Macs.
Even Linux is losing its allure - I still run it on servers, and enjoy it more than Windows - but I'm sorry, I have work to do, and too many Linux apps require me to read documentation - usually poorly written - for hours to get stuff to work. I have no experience using OS X server and frankly have been avoiding it because I'm afraid I'll like it too much.
I love the concept of Linux, I love the licensing freedom, but I can't understand why it's so difficult to install stuff. I don't have time to troubleshoot utterly obscure conflicts that occur more often than not when I try to install stuff.
Vista is a nightmare. Period. End of story. I know you can still get XP on new systems, but I know that MS will pull the plug on XP sooner rather than later.
Here's my problem. I am a networking consultant, and PC repair is a big part of my business - and I can no longer recommend to people that they buy PC's. They just suck too hard. I am in the position of having to tell people to buy Macs, even though I am not a Mac tech and although I can work a Mac as an end-user, I don't really know how to fix them. I can't recommend Linux to end-users, although I will recommend it to business that have locked-down machines that only need to do A, B and C - simply because an average person just can't be expected to install stuff on a Linux box. There are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking it's just too difficult.
So here I am, cutting myself off from future business because I'm telling people to replace their old PC's with new Macs. Anyone know the best way to get trained as a Mac technician without actually working for Apple?
Yes, it is due to DRM, because DRM makes Vista a resource hog.
Part of Vista's mandatory DRM means that if you run anything resembling a media application, it polls the screen TEN TIME A SECOND to make sure you're not running a screen capture utility - regardless of the media license.
10 Times a Second.
That's DRM. That's resource hogging.