Well, if they have code to keep someone from making an ass of themselves, then not only will I buy one of their computers, I'll license the code for my brain.
Think: How many times does your task involve untangling something someone else messed up? And they think a program will solve that. Interesting...
Every time a vendor comes out with gas like this, I remember the old NT ads. "Servers so intelligent, they run themselves." Yeah. Right.
Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare
And if they did, they would be guilty of what we accuse MS of doing all the time, denigrating a technology without understanding it. Besides, Isn't Unix is older than Novell?
Novell has lots of things done right in it. Self tuning as it runs, stabillity, scale-ability, ease (well, maybe not as easy as Unix) of management, flexabillity.
While improvments could be made to Novell (and Linux), Novell hasn't seemed to completely fallen into the trap of features over stabillity/performance. Although I have to say that GroupWise needs work. Try moving a mail box sometime. Or fixing a broken message database. And it is a major pain that the Admin is dealing with what is basically a black box when it comes to GroupWise.
If all it takes to make Linux look like a POS is 3,500 infected servers, then IIS must look like a POS from a POS POS.
When the major trade press gets ad dollars to compare to MS ad dollars, then expect to see more even-handed reporting.
Face it. Servers don't run themselves. Linux does a better job than MS of not annoying the shit out of the admin. That's why in this case it's going to be a bigger pain in the ass. Any bets on how many more "I lost my root password, how do I get it back" posts on the Linux lists?
My favorite question from a customer:"How to I get to root from the # sign?" Answer:"Fastest way is to tell me what you need to do."
OK, don't take this criticism personally. Here it is: Quit spouting off solving the problems of the world without first taking a small look at the problems and the consequences of the solution.
Merchants won't like this system. You keep forgetting that if your great aunt Tilly would be confused, no merchant will touch it.
Second, the merchants will see this as "taking control away" from them. Never mind that it isn't, that's how they will see it.
Third, Visa/Master Card won't like this system. It will cut down fraud, which is one of the items they roll out when accused of usury. "All that fraud going on, we have to make more money!". Also, Visa, and Master Card won't like it because it will take some control away from them. You are talking a second level of control here, and controlling the card is what the issuer does.
Fourth, Visa/Master Card will really hate it because it puts the authorizing company in line for some of the commission, and none of the charge backs.
Over all, it's not a bad idea, just one that will never be put in place. I've been involved (indirectly, getting asked "can we do..." kind of things) with a few round table discussions on this. Bottom line, they don't want to change anything because there is no or negitive incentive to do so.
Amex used to generate a kind of sub-credit-card number for their customers, but I haven't seen it lately. They used to generate a one-time number with a specific credit limit you selected. The first time the number is used is the last time it's good. That worked well because people didn't have too much to do to make it work. On the other hand, you had to dial a number or visit a web site to set up a sub-number before you could purchase anything.
No one is talking about the bread and butter of computing, business use.
What happens if your mission critical apps stop working when you restore after a disk failure or a CPU melt down and you can't get the license center on the phone? What happens to your data if someone steals your computer and all you have left are the backups? What do you do when you are rolling out 1,000 desk tops, and you need to image them? Do you license each seperately? Kind of defeats imaging, doesn't it?
DRM is pseudo intellectual mental masturbation until and unless it's loose enoungh not to cause problems in the data center. And if it's that loose, it's loose enough to wiggle quite a bit through. Anyone remember when all the apps needed a dongle on the printer port? Some of those are still around, but it's a red flag to the BOFH's that this is an app that's a real dog.
DRM as outlined here is a flash in the pan. Soon as it flops in the business world, it's dead meat for everything but entertainment. And if that's all that uses it, Joe six pack will slam dunk it just as DIViX and DAT audio was slam dunked. I say let 'em waste their stock holders money... Hey, that's an idea. Buy stock in these companies and then sue them for wasting profits chasing a non-started like this. Whack 'em hard enough, they've got to stop doing nutso stuff like this.
Used to be that a town would get fed up with someone like this joker and run them out of town on a rail.
Perhaps it wasn't just, but it worked.
It seems to me that in a gut busting effort to enhance and preserve corporate profits, lawmakers have screwed up the system to the point where it's now biting those selfsame corporate interests in the butt. Be funny if they can't pump millions in to re-elections to buy their way out of the hole their first contributions put them in...
I've seen this in consulting too. I gave a bid for about twenty hours work, and was refused because the price was seen as too low.
I've stopped (mostly) thinking about how much it will cost me to do something, and instead think of what it's worth to the company, and charge THAT rate. I don't do it to companies that I've done a lot of business with, because they already know they will get good work for a fair price.
If I feel really guilty about what I charge, I give them back enough so that I don't feel too guilty, and tell them it's a discount because of unexpected savings doing the work.
It's a fine balance to chage enough so that they know the work will be there, vs. estimating so much that I lose out. Sometimes I want to send two estimates: One for how much I think I need to make, another for how much I think it will take to be considered a player.
Imagine if Sony, RCA, AOL/TW, etc.. had all of their internet traffic blocked by ISPs?
On the one hand, if you have an AOL account, do I want your traffic in any case? On the other hand, would any AOL user ever know they had been blocked? I mean, really, most AOL users never leave AOL, right?
Honestly, I think XP is a stinking POS. I've had nothing but problems with a major rollout of XP. (Over 3K machines). It really stinks, it doesn't work and play well with anything other than MS products, and it is a bandwidth hog on the networking side, it has more wierd nutso shit in it than you can shake a stick at.
Since the.com bust, the arguments I hear everywhere is 'IT has now been proven to be a waste of money'
If this were true, please explain:
why we are using word processors instead of typewriters or movable type presses.
Why spread sheets are needed? We could use register paper instead of an expensive computer.
Index cards are cheaper than databases. Lets go pull the plug on that expensive DB server.
Customers and vendors don't really need to do stuff with our web site, they can call in to our customer service lines. Oh, we'll need more bodies in customer service...
Who needs e-mail. Snail mail is fine for what we do...
Why should we search the web for the best prices, just order catalogs once a year and go to the public library more often to do research.
Now that we've deflated the hype around computers, lets talk about telephones, fax machines, pagers, and cell phones, and why we don't need them anymore.
After that, if they back off, then ask a simple easy question: Do you think any of that stuff runs itself?
Seriously, if anyone said that IT has been proven to be a waste of money, I'd look for an ulterior motive. Fast.
Now, if they mean that a lot of people went overboard, well, I don't think I could argue against them there. One only needs to look at Darwin Awards to see that a lot of people do go overboard... and kill themselves doing it. The trick of it is not to be a lemming.
And if everyone involved has the guts to go ahead and let a jury decide, we might ALL be better off.
It is one thing for a MegaCorp to slam down a few million on litigation, it's another for me to pay to fight it. Am I really willing to go to the poor house over this issue? Am I really willing to throw away a fair job, an OK home, and my car?
The problem in the US is that justice is bought and paid for. If you don't have the cash, you are part of the trash. Trash gets swept up. No, the only real effective course of action is to start bitching to office seekers and to stop paying for Intellectual Property. Swap CD's, swap DVD's, for God's sake read a book from the library. But don't shell out bucks for IP anymore. The profit they make is part of the club they are using against us.
If no one purchased what Sony is selling, how long do you think Sony would stay in business? If we boycott RIAA members, how long would it be until Ms. Rosen had to go earn an honest living?
Look, it's not a problem if you fall off the wagon. Just take the amount of money you spent on that CD, movie or DVD and send a like amount to the EFF.
Didn't seem to work for MP3.COM, and I thought that MP3.com had a better chance than Napster. After all, MP3.COM wanted to confirm you actually had the CD you were trying to play, and Napster didn't.
Don't be an ass. Of course you are not free to do such things. The quote is of George Bush talking about a web site that was commenting on the fact that his daughters were not charged with a class B felony (with mandatory jail time) in Texas for under age drinking. A law that George himself pushed for and signed into law.
...but it is NOT illegal to refuse service to someone who wont give it.
Uhm, I tink that airlines are public carriers. That means that they DO have to serve you, unless doing so is unsafe for others. I'm not sure and I couldn't turn up references on that point. IANAL
Advertising doesn't work above a certain level of exposure.
Its called saturation.
Well, one less pair of eyeballs will be glued to the screen. When are these yahoos gonna get it? Too much is too much, it just gets tuned out. Like the surf at the beach, after a few minutes, you just don't hear it anymore.
Some friends of mine asked when I was gonna but a HDTV. Told 'em, when my current set stops working, I won't worry about buying a new one, 'cause I only watch about 30 minutes a week as it is. I can't see shelling out tons of bucks for watching ads.
Did any one read merchanters(sp) war? It was about a future world, where products like Coke and Pepsi hooked you, and you could go to jail for not watching enough ads. Spooky.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's just say my experience doesn't bear out your statement.
Think: How many times does your task involve untangling something someone else messed up? And they think a program will solve that. Interesting...
Every time a vendor comes out with gas like this, I remember the old NT ads. "Servers so intelligent, they run themselves." Yeah. Right.
Lots of money. You are competing with Clear Channel
License from the FCC, frequency assignment. NOTE: There are unlicensed stations, but they are low power.
Transmitter - rated in watts, more is good.
Tower for antenna to be mounted on - rated in feet, more is good
Antenna - rated in Db Gain, more is good
Transmission line/wave guide
Nitrogen gas for transmission line/wave guide/antenna bay
Clearance from the FAA if the tower is in a flight area.
Land to plant tower
Building to plant Transmitter
Power to run Transmitter (around $5,000 to $30,000 per month, depending on AM/FM and power output.)
Audio equipment
License agreement with ASCAP, RIAA, others
permits from your state and city
An accountant
A sales farce
Engineers & Technicians
listeners
And if they did, they would be guilty of what we accuse MS of doing all the time, denigrating a technology without understanding it. Besides, Isn't Unix is older than Novell?
Novell has lots of things done right in it. Self tuning as it runs, stabillity, scale-ability, ease (well, maybe not as easy as Unix) of management, flexabillity.
While improvments could be made to Novell (and Linux), Novell hasn't seemed to completely fallen into the trap of features over stabillity/performance. Although I have to say that GroupWise needs work. Try moving a mail box sometime. Or fixing a broken message database. And it is a major pain that the Admin is dealing with what is basically a black box when it comes to GroupWise.
IANAL:
Yes, that's an actionable cause. It's called Barratry in the past, now I think they use Harrisment by Process, or maybe "Corporate Attack Dog".
Here's a thawp from a clue stick then.
RIAA wants to control how we use the content we purchased
RIAA wants to make it impossible to exercise fair use
RIAA controls the price of most music
RIAA members control which band "makes it" by turning on the payola tap
RIAA members expect to cheat artists out of roylity payments, has done it in the past, and independent reports confirm it's still happening.
RIAA members use contracts that are the next best thing to slavery.
RIAA paid a congressional aide to add language to a bill, bypassing congress and debate.
"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave." -- Byron
So which are you?
For every superstar that makes the record company a million dollars there's five failures that lose the record company a couple hundred thousand.
That's if you trust their figures. It's already been said that RIAA makes Enron look like amature hour.
When the major trade press gets ad dollars to compare to MS ad dollars, then expect to see more even-handed reporting.
Face it. Servers don't run themselves. Linux does a better job than MS of not annoying the shit out of the admin. That's why in this case it's going to be a bigger pain in the ass. Any bets on how many more "I lost my root password, how do I get it back" posts on the Linux lists?
My favorite question from a customer:"How to I get to root from the # sign?"
Answer:"Fastest way is to tell me what you need to do."
OK, don't take this criticism personally. Here it is:
Quit spouting off solving the problems of the world without first taking a small look at the problems and the consequences of the solution.
Merchants won't like this system. You keep forgetting that if your great aunt Tilly would be confused, no merchant will touch it.
Second, the merchants will see this as "taking control away" from them. Never mind that it isn't, that's how they will see it.
Third, Visa/Master Card won't like this system. It will cut down fraud, which is one of the items they roll out when accused of usury. "All that fraud going on, we have to make more money!". Also, Visa, and Master Card won't like it because it will take some control away from them. You are talking a second level of control here, and controlling the card is what the issuer does.
Fourth, Visa/Master Card will really hate it because it puts the authorizing company in line for some of the commission, and none of the charge backs.
Over all, it's not a bad idea, just one that will never be put in place. I've been involved (indirectly, getting asked "can we do..." kind of things) with a few round table discussions on this. Bottom line, they don't want to change anything because there is no or negitive incentive to do so.
Amex used to generate a kind of sub-credit-card number for their customers, but I haven't seen it lately. They used to generate a one-time number with a specific credit limit you selected. The first time the number is used is the last time it's good. That worked well because people didn't have too much to do to make it work. On the other hand, you had to dial a number or visit a web site to set up a sub-number before you could purchase anything.
What happens if your mission critical apps stop working when you restore after a disk failure or a CPU melt down and you can't get the license center on the phone? What happens to your data if someone steals your computer and all you have left are the backups? What do you do when you are rolling out 1,000 desk tops, and you need to image them? Do you license each seperately? Kind of defeats imaging, doesn't it?
DRM is pseudo intellectual mental masturbation until and unless it's loose enoungh not to cause problems in the data center. And if it's that loose, it's loose enough to wiggle quite a bit through. Anyone remember when all the apps needed a dongle on the printer port? Some of those are still around, but it's a red flag to the BOFH's that this is an app that's a real dog.
DRM as outlined here is a flash in the pan. Soon as it flops in the business world, it's dead meat for everything but entertainment. And if that's all that uses it, Joe six pack will slam dunk it just as DIViX and DAT audio was slam dunked. I say let 'em waste their stock holders money... Hey, that's an idea. Buy stock in these companies and then sue them for wasting profits chasing a non-started like this. Whack 'em hard enough, they've got to stop doing nutso stuff like this.
Now the question is if RICO statutes could be applied. Then every one involved with the damn thing could lose big bucks. Really big bucks.
Perhaps it wasn't just, but it worked.
It seems to me that in a gut busting effort to enhance and preserve corporate profits, lawmakers have screwed up the system to the point where it's now biting those selfsame corporate interests in the butt. Be funny if they can't pump millions in to re-elections to buy their way out of the hole their first contributions put them in...
I've stopped (mostly) thinking about how much it will cost me to do something, and instead think of what it's worth to the company, and charge THAT rate. I don't do it to companies that I've done a lot of business with, because they already know they will get good work for a fair price.
If I feel really guilty about what I charge, I give them back enough so that I don't feel too guilty, and tell them it's a discount because of unexpected savings doing the work.
It's a fine balance to chage enough so that they know the work will be there, vs. estimating so much that I lose out. Sometimes I want to send two estimates: One for how much I think I need to make, another for how much I think it will take to be considered a player.
I wonder if it was Windows 2000 they contributed....
On the one hand, if you have an AOL account, do I want your traffic in any case? On the other hand, would any AOL user ever know they had been blocked? I mean, really, most AOL users never leave AOL, right?
You got mail....stupid! (An early AOL voice over)
First, fund research into networking and interoperability between computers.
Second, since it's done with public funds, refuse to let anyone copyright or patent the research.
Third, allow anyone in the world to use the work.
Fourth, pass laws to prevent it's use unless you pay for it.
Typical corporatist thinking.
Honestly, I think XP is a stinking POS. I've had nothing but problems with a major rollout of XP. (Over 3K machines). It really stinks, it doesn't work and play well with anything other than MS products, and it is a bandwidth hog on the networking side, it has more wierd nutso shit in it than you can shake a stick at.
And those are what I consider it's good points.
If this were true, please explain:
why we are using word processors instead of typewriters or movable type presses.
Why spread sheets are needed? We could use register paper instead of an expensive computer.
Index cards are cheaper than databases. Lets go pull the plug on that expensive DB server.
Customers and vendors don't really need to do stuff with our web site, they can call in to our customer service lines. Oh, we'll need more bodies in customer service...
Who needs e-mail. Snail mail is fine for what we do...
Why should we search the web for the best prices, just order catalogs once a year and go to the public library more often to do research.
Now that we've deflated the hype around computers, lets talk about telephones, fax machines, pagers, and cell phones, and why we don't need them anymore.
After that, if they back off, then ask a simple easy question: Do you think any of that stuff runs itself?
Seriously, if anyone said that IT has been proven to be a waste of money, I'd look for an ulterior motive. Fast.
Now, if they mean that a lot of people went overboard, well, I don't think I could argue against them there. One only needs to look at Darwin Awards to see that a lot of people do go overboard... and kill themselves doing it. The trick of it is not to be a lemming.
I block all RIPE and APNIC netblocks on all the mail servers I run. 3 /16's a slews of /24's. Don't miss 'em.
Lousy idea. Most of the junk faxers use computers, not real fax machines. Nice try though.
Or consumers are too smart to buy digital when no one knows what control I.P. moguls will insist on.
Naw... too simple.
It is one thing for a MegaCorp to slam down a few million on litigation, it's another for me to pay to fight it. Am I really willing to go to the poor house over this issue? Am I really willing to throw away a fair job, an OK home, and my car?
The problem in the US is that justice is bought and paid for. If you don't have the cash, you are part of the trash. Trash gets swept up. No, the only real effective course of action is to start bitching to office seekers and to stop paying for Intellectual Property. Swap CD's, swap DVD's, for God's sake read a book from the library. But don't shell out bucks for IP anymore. The profit they make is part of the club they are using against us.
If no one purchased what Sony is selling, how long do you think Sony would stay in business? If we boycott RIAA members, how long would it be until Ms. Rosen had to go earn an honest living?
Look, it's not a problem if you fall off the wagon. Just take the amount of money you spent on that CD, movie or DVD and send a like amount to the EFF.
OK, so I'm a broken record.
Didn't seem to work for MP3.COM, and I thought that MP3.com had a better chance than Napster. After all, MP3.COM wanted to confirm you actually had the CD you were trying to play, and Napster didn't.
Don't be an ass. Of course you are not free to do such things. The quote is of George Bush talking about a web site that was commenting on the fact that his daughters were not charged with a class B felony (with mandatory jail time) in Texas for under age drinking. A law that George himself pushed for and signed into law.
Uhm, I tink that airlines are public carriers. That means that they DO have to serve you, unless doing so is unsafe for others. I'm not sure and I couldn't turn up references on that point. IANAL
Its called saturation.
Well, one less pair of eyeballs will be glued to the screen. When are these yahoos gonna get it? Too much is too much, it just gets tuned out. Like the surf at the beach, after a few minutes, you just don't hear it anymore.
Some friends of mine asked when I was gonna but a HDTV. Told 'em, when my current set stops working, I won't worry about buying a new one, 'cause I only watch about 30 minutes a week as it is. I can't see shelling out tons of bucks for watching ads.
Did any one read merchanters(sp) war? It was about a future world, where products like Coke and Pepsi hooked you, and you could go to jail for not watching enough ads. Spooky.