A head-hunter company which I have used for 3 jobs and have been quite happy with is QuantumResources. They are part of Aramark, which was listed in the top 100 favorite companies in the US by Forbes.
Nice people, and since they specialize in just tech/sci/engineering jobs, you don't get them trying to sell you on crap. Only problem is they only operate in a small number of states right now, mostly on the east coast and south eastern part of the country.
Still, I have had good experiences with them in the past and would recommend them.
80% of high school students couldn't find Europe on a map.
To combat this, we reduce their learning curriculum even more so they learn about the evils of file sharing.
And people wonder why every other country has higher levels of learning than ours.
Priorities people.
Remember also thats your tax dollars at work. Who do you think lobbied to have this put into our public schools?
Think it's an issue? Take it up with your local congressman. You can email them right from their websites and 90% of them will respond within a day or so.
I have an almost identical situation here at work. I found a way to deal with the issue though. Hire a prviate investigator and get pictures of one of the higher-ups cheating on his wife.
Then whenever you need to say no, do so, and tell the user if they have an issue they can take it up with that guy. He will defend you and your decision like a champ;)
Cavalier (CavTel) kicks much arse. For anyone on the East Coast who can get it, do so. They are about half the price of Verizon, offer more services, and are extremely helpful when you call them.
And plus you don't have to deal with Verizon.
The only problem is Verizon doesn't like it's customers switching, so as others have pointed out getting switched is an issue. Verizon screws up the orders on purpose usually meaning you will go a day or two without service. Verizon is losing you as a customer, so they really don't care if you complain or not. I know of a dozen or more people who have had them kill their service a few days early when switching.
And Verizon also tells techs your loop distance from the CO is too long when you order CavTel DSL. However a few persistant phone calls will force them to actually send out a tech who will report this is not the case.
In fact, two friends who had Verizon report to COVAD their loops were two small got sales calls from Verizon trying to sell them DSL just a week or so after they were told it wasn't possible.
My suggestiong is any solution other than Verizon is good. They are evil bastards.
So Dr. Dre is, for the second time, hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit, and has lost.
And after all the complaining about Napster. Hell, he was one of 2 artists who made a PSA against Napster, and yelled the loudest.
Anyone else find this extremely funny?
The only more ironic thing is the lawyers who are defending him are more than likely the same ones he had that attacked Napster. In fact, I am willing to bet they are part of, if not paid for by, the RIAA.
I would throw out the old "it's time for the doctor to take his own medicine" but it looks like someone beat me to it.
All Bush needs to do to get funding is figure some way to work this disaster into the 'War On Terrorism' like he has done with CD copying, 'The War On Drugs', and a dozen environmental issues.
I mean, if he can get a bill that allows logging in a national park past , has a dozen national parks which protect endangered wildlife turned into army training grounds, and opens up artic wildlife reserves for oil drilling all in an 'effort to fight terrorism' I don't see why getting funding for building a better space shuttle should be that difficult.
Remember, if your using a regionless DVD player the terrorists have already won...
They mention how 'successful' springsteen has been because of his tactics, but in reality, he is catering to a whole different audience and has been for a while. People in the generation that primarily listen to springsteen are not the ones using p2p networks.
Even if he did send out a ton of pre-release albums, you can bet there wouldn't be that many passing around on p2p networks like there would be if a new Limp Bizkit album was out.
Saying that tactic is an effective anti-piracy strategy would be like saying the new Charlie Pride encoded CD they just released was effective because you don't see it on the p2p networks either.
By that logic, I could say a computer monitor will keep tigers away as a natural repellant, I mean has anyone ever been attacked by a tiger while reading something on your screen?
The fallacy in the logic of this article is astounding, especially since it came from the NYT.
I think most people are being sucked into the whole child porn argument and missing the bigger picture - the government has passed a law censoring the internet and holding ISP's liable. They chose a topic they knew no one, not even the ACLU would side with. By doing this, they start the country on the proverbial slippery slope down. After this settles, they can go after other 'illegal' ventures, like MP3 sites. Why? There is now a legal precendent which is not being challenged. It's a small jump in a legal standpoint from one illegal activity to another, and one you can bet the RIAA will be pushing for as soon as the dust settles on this one.
What this law really says:
1. ISP's can be held liable for content, even if it is in other countries on someone elses server.
2. Content can be legislated by the government, and anything deemed unappropriate by their terms can and will be censored from our society.
I can't believe people here actually think the policies stated in that article are BAD. I mean, anyone with a few weeks experience in a decent sized corporate IT environment can tell you these kinds of rules are needed to keep order on the network.
Yes, we have virus scanning software that scans all email, desktops, and user shares, but that still does not mean viruses do not get in. Users like to check their 'free' email on Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and other places and bring many in around our normal system.
People complain filtering content in the workplace seems draconian, but I see no reason users need to be viewing 'hot, young, fill-in-the-blank' websites anyway. In fact, in some states, like in Virginia, it is illegal to view adult content on state owned computers. As a former employee of the state, I saw 14 people fired in a one year period for surfing adult sites. You first get a warning and they start monitoring all http traffic from your box. Next your gone. People still thought they could get away with it.
As far as the other so called harsh draconian measures, think about this - most users are not techno-savvy. It's not a Microsoft issue, it's a person issue. Some people hate computers, they hate to use them, and they break them often. All software crashes as some point or another. Reviewing our helpdesk tracking software I can point out many Mac's and UNIX issues that they have had to solve as well as microsoft issues.
Think about this - do you wear a tie to work? Why? It's corporate policy. Do you work better with a tie on? Why don't we just ban tie's because wearing them seems useless. Corporate polices are there for a reason. Apperance, preformance, and substinance counts. It's what seperates the Fortune 100 from the rest of the pack. Polices like the ones discussed further this mentality. If you don't agree, fine. Work for a small more personalize company, but don't expect to be on the cover of Forbes anytime soon.
Bottom line, most users not in IT are computer ignorant. They call up and ask what their password is, after they create it themselves. Should we blame the companies that make the software? Should we blame measures put forth to stop people from hurting themselves? Why should we try and place blame on anyone? This is more of a western philosophy. In eastern thinking, people focus on the problem and fixing it, not on placing blame on a group or individual.
An old tech guy I used to work with summed up this argument pretty well in something he said to me about the shipping department in a company I used to work for. The department had multiple new calls to the helpdesk every week from these guys. Many times, the guys down there (large, burly, bearded men) would break their boxen so bad they would have to be replaced. We couldn't even figure out how they broke some of this stuff, but they did, constantly. I asked about it one day and he said to me:
"The shippping department? Well...I'll put it this way, you could leave three cannonballs down there on Monday, and by Wednesday, they will have broken two of them and lost the third one."
I have two mail servers that still are blacklisted on many services because of their configuration, not their ability to relay spam. I am an avid MS user (no comments from the cheap seats) and we run Exchange. I have installed some custom addons that run in Exchange to stop spam. I won't go into to much detail, but the gist of it is, it allows relays to send the spam to my server, then it moves it to an account I have to review it and either release it or kill it. Now, organizations like ORDB continue to let me know I am an 'open relay' but in reality I am killing more spam in a week than some people even get (about 180 or so a day, mostly from one or two sources overseas all destined for US addresses).
However, I can't send mail to friends from account on those boxes because they have been deemed relays by the ORDB. Emails to ORDB come back with automated replies, and there is no number I can call.
I have contacted an attorney on this and they are looking into some case law for me. The bottom line is I am being accused of something I am not doing, and being punished for it, because the software I run is different. I am wondering where simple mistakes end and liability begins.
I have complained about this before and the eBay staff told me it was perfectly legal. Most people don't realize that almost every item in the computer parts and under electronics and in the video game section (and I'm sure other areas) are being fixed by companies looking to offload merch online. How it works:
For the example we use a 'video card' (pick any kind, they all work for this example. Just bear with me on the prices here - they are merely an example.
Your a merchant. You buy video cards for $10 and sell for $15. You go online under many other accounts and bid on all other video cards of the same type. You bid $9, so even if you win, you are getting them below your cost and can turn around and still make a profit. You then put your card up for sale starting @ 1.00 - people will start bidding on it first since it is the lowest and push it up to the other matching auctions. Now, if anyone bids on the other auctions they will push the price above your cost, which also means your auction will soon be pushed above this limit as well.
Watch the people who bid on things like a chip or motherboard. Check their accounts- you will see a small group is always bidding on all the same items, and if you check their history they have already won like a dozen or so of similar items.
What this means - you will never get anything below cost on ebay, and since people in rural areas have no CostCo or Sams Club, they will pay 20% over normal retail plus shipping for the same item promising you that your auctions will always end in some outrageous amount.
I contacted UUNET (My T1 provider) and they told me it was a strain of Code Red. It seems to be everywhere. I have isolated a few dozen IP's from my logs already. I have contacted the web admins of the sites in question as well. I am getting about 100+ hits a minute now, utilizing about 10%-20% of the T1 the main webserver is on. I'm guessing this will be a problem for everyone, even if your not running IIS, or your server is patched (like mine), the hundreds of scans can eat your bandwidth away regardless.
Like no one saw this coming? I mean, if anyone deserves this, Adobe looks like a prime candidate. I mean, after all, trying to find out HOW a virus attacks from a PDF file and trying to STOP it could land you in prison for 5 years...
It's quite funny that C|Net is covering this story about the ads being placed in the middle of email, on a news page with a large ad placed right in the middle...
Since when has copy protection stopped the net community? Doesn't anyone remember the CSS case? The code was cracked in less than 24 hours. What about when Adobe introduced the 'dongle' protection, and it too was cracked within 24 hours of first release. I'm also tempted to mention software releases such as 3D Max and all of the Checkpoint products, both which use the clearinghouse method for key authentication, and both have cracks for all of their software located on thousands of websites across the world. I do not promote the use of such cracks, but I do know as a registred user of many products that support such tactics, I use cracks from time to time to save myself lots of time (ever buy a piece of software 'cough, cough ARCSERVE, cough, cough') and have to wait a week to get it running because the clearinghouse site is so busy they can't process your 'automatic online' registration?
Having worked in the IT field in the medical industry, I can tell you that this will not be happening in this decade. A company I contracted for before 2000 that specialized in upgrading networks in doctors offices showed me a side of the medical profession I have never seen before. We contacted hundreds of doctors up and down the east coast (private practices and some large ones as well) in efforts to bring their systems up to date prior to the Y2K issues. Sounds like a useful service, and we had a fair share of clients, but you would not believe the number of doctors who do not want to use modern technology. Many are using 8088 (I am not making this up) and 286 machines running DOS apps on a monochrome monitor. They would ask if we could get their old machines hooked to the internet, but when they found out it would cost em $500 to revamp the hardware they would freak. Many would state 'I just paid $3000 for this system 8 years ago' and things of this nature. After talking with the sales team and seeing the stats on paper, there are hundreds of doctors in the central east coast area alone with computers that today would not be able to run even the most basic software. Of course when Y2K hit, we had many callbacks because many of the older systems that ran on older mainframes/databases crashed and now they believed the problems we told them they had. Kinda funny, since most just decided to upgrade AFTER the problem, and pay a dozen people to sit around and type in the old records from hardcopies on file. Thats another thing I don't think most people know - the number of companies who LOST their complete network in Y2K and paid people to come in and manual resotre the database from hardcopy, and denied ever having problems (if you think a doctor is going to let you know he lost all the patient records and billing information for the past couple decades you better think again).
You would think with the profits they make they wouldn't be so cheap, but as I said before, it's quite amazing seeing an office with a pair of 8088's still running the billing software.
Most people are worried about what this will do to backups and free software, but what about security? I mean, if they can tell if software has been installed on your computer by an unique identifier, could someone else write software that will also read that id and use it to track your movements on the web? I mean, I have written software that runs through the web and searches a client machine for a filename, the idea of searching for an id of this type could not be that hard to setup once this technology is implemented. Not only that, software manufactures can scan your PC for other software and without the user knowing during registration send back that list, and by using previous registrations see what you have bought before. Why yes, this is done today, but with the new technology manufactures can see exactly which computer you set it up on and also find out if you may be running something they did not register for you.
Scary.
After installing the plugin and checking out the samples, I saw that what most people are saying is true, it is a PDF clone, not an image compressor format. If you look at some of the sample files, you will also see they are MUCH bigger than standard PDF files, the majority of them range from 120,000 to 190,000 per page. It appears to initally load faster than Acrobat, but I think that's because it's more of a streamlined plugin rather than a whole system. The images themselvces however seem to be much bigger than any PDF I have ever encountered. Anyone else go through their sample directory?
This sounds quite scary, but if you work in a small office with legitimate copies of the software (If you only have four servers and have the original box for each copy of Windows you are running plus the ten that came with the workstations you have) and the BSA tries this, can't you sue them for a list of offenses? I mean, I know I haven't kidnapped anyone, and if some lawyer wrote me a letter asking me to search my residence for a kidnapped kid, I'd ignore it. If the feds busted down my down later searching for the same kid on the word of the lawyers who wrote the letter, not only is that person liable for slander, but for a multitude of other crimes as well. I mean, I would like to own my own company so someone could send the BSA my way, I think a few good lawsuits could bankrupt those nazis...
As a prior employee of the Federal government, I can tell you that a raise of $7,000 - $10,000 is nothing. Most engineers I worked with made under $60k and Senior Admins made under $50k. Most left within 4 years (4 years working for 'the man' always looks good on your resume). After they left they could almost double their salaries in the private sector. Thats what I did. Not to mention all the HASSELS you don't have to deal with (i.e. random monthly drug testing, extensive background checks, way overboard security policies, meetings, OH the meetings!). One thing you will learn right away when working for the government is: they don't worry about wasting all day in meetings discussing whatever people want to talk about (I remember once we renamed a directory on our web server where we stored some older acrobat forms, fifty of us spent three hours discussing it - a meeting where basically nothing was accomplished, but if you do the math, it cost about six grand in time for the labor there, of course it's not like they are worries about loosing sales or NOT making a profit in the next quarter).
Working for the government bites. The pay really bites. A minimal increase in pay will do nothing for them. I mean, if I have the choice of working in a near militaristic environment where you have to beg for money to upgrade RAM on the servers while getting paid less than average while working in an old delapidated building when I could work for a hot new company with a vision and goal, people my own age group who are wide open and not stuff old government persons, in a nice new office park, making almost double, and not having to worry about the time I got arrested taking a leak in a parking lot in college (which I might add almost cost me my job when they found out), I mean, is it REALLY that hard of a choice?
I have been blocking doublclick for months now. If you use a firewall on your network, you can not only block themm, you can find out everywhere they are. FW1 does a nice job of hiding real IP's behind a fake Ip, which I use to catch all attempts from doubleclick (and other sites attempting to send/scan a users information). The scary thing is, they are not the only large company out there that is doing this...
Slashdot Mirror
A head-hunter company which I have used for 3 jobs and have been quite happy with is QuantumResources. They are part of Aramark, which was listed in the top 100 favorite companies in the US by Forbes.
Nice people, and since they specialize in just tech/sci/engineering jobs, you don't get them trying to sell you on crap. Only problem is they only operate in a small number of states right now, mostly on the east coast and south eastern part of the country.
Still, I have had good experiences with them in the past and would recommend them.
www.quantumresources.net
-S
80% of high school students couldn't find Europe on a map.
To combat this, we reduce their learning curriculum even more so they learn about the evils of file sharing.
And people wonder why every other country has higher levels of learning than ours.
Priorities people.
Remember also thats your tax dollars at work. Who do you think lobbied to have this put into our public schools?
Think it's an issue? Take it up with your local congressman. You can email them right from their websites and 90% of them will respond within a day or so.
Slan
-S
I have an almost identical situation here at work. I found a way to deal with the issue though. Hire a prviate investigator and get pictures of one of the higher-ups cheating on his wife.
;)
Then whenever you need to say no, do so, and tell the user if they have an issue they can take it up with that guy. He will defend you and your decision like a champ
Cavalier (CavTel) kicks much arse. For anyone on the East Coast who can get it, do so. They are about half the price of Verizon, offer more services, and are extremely helpful when you call them.
And plus you don't have to deal with Verizon.
The only problem is Verizon doesn't like it's customers switching, so as others have pointed out getting switched is an issue. Verizon screws up the orders on purpose usually meaning you will go a day or two without service. Verizon is losing you as a customer, so they really don't care if you complain or not. I know of a dozen or more people who have had them kill their service a few days early when switching.
And Verizon also tells techs your loop distance from the CO is too long when you order CavTel DSL. However a few persistant phone calls will force them to actually send out a tech who will report this is not the case.
In fact, two friends who had Verizon report to COVAD their loops were two small got sales calls from Verizon trying to sell them DSL just a week or so after they were told it wasn't possible.
My suggestiong is any solution other than Verizon is good. They are evil bastards.
-S
So Dr. Dre is, for the second time, hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit, and has lost.
And after all the complaining about Napster. Hell, he was one of 2 artists who made a PSA against Napster, and yelled the loudest.
Anyone else find this extremely funny?
The only more ironic thing is the lawyers who are defending him are more than likely the same ones he had that attacked Napster. In fact, I am willing to bet they are part of, if not paid for by, the RIAA.
I would throw out the old "it's time for the doctor to take his own medicine" but it looks like someone beat me to it.
So I'll just say hahahah. hah.
Karma is a bi0tch.
-S
All Bush needs to do to get funding is figure some way to work this disaster into the 'War On Terrorism' like he has done with CD copying, 'The War On Drugs', and a dozen environmental issues.
I mean, if he can get a bill that allows logging in a national park past , has a dozen national parks which protect endangered wildlife turned into army training grounds, and opens up artic wildlife reserves for oil drilling all in an 'effort to fight terrorism' I don't see why getting funding for building a better space shuttle should be that difficult.
Remember, if your using a regionless DVD player the terrorists have already won...
They mention how 'successful' springsteen has been because of his tactics, but in reality, he is catering to a whole different audience and has been for a while. People in the generation that primarily listen to springsteen are not the ones using p2p networks.
Even if he did send out a ton of pre-release albums, you can bet there wouldn't be that many passing around on p2p networks like there would be if a new Limp Bizkit album was out.
Saying that tactic is an effective anti-piracy strategy would be like saying the new Charlie Pride encoded CD they just released was effective because you don't see it on the p2p networks either.
By that logic, I could say a computer monitor will keep tigers away as a natural repellant, I mean has anyone ever been attacked by a tiger while reading something on your screen?
The fallacy in the logic of this article is astounding, especially since it came from the NYT.
-S
I think most people are being sucked into the whole child porn argument and missing the bigger picture - the government has passed a law censoring the internet and holding ISP's liable. They chose a topic they knew no one, not even the ACLU would side with. By doing this, they start the country on the proverbial slippery slope down. After this settles, they can go after other 'illegal' ventures, like MP3 sites. Why? There is now a legal precendent which is not being challenged. It's a small jump in a legal standpoint from one illegal activity to another, and one you can bet the RIAA will be pushing for as soon as the dust settles on this one.
What this law really says:
1. ISP's can be held liable for content, even if it is in other countries on someone elses server.
2. Content can be legislated by the government, and anything deemed unappropriate by their terms can and will be censored from our society.
Welcome to 1984.
I can't believe people here actually think the policies stated in that article are BAD. I mean, anyone with a few weeks experience in a decent sized corporate IT environment can tell you these kinds of rules are needed to keep order on the network.
Yes, we have virus scanning software that scans all email, desktops, and user shares, but that still does not mean viruses do not get in. Users like to check their 'free' email on Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, and other places and bring many in around our normal system.
People complain filtering content in the workplace seems draconian, but I see no reason users need to be viewing 'hot, young, fill-in-the-blank' websites anyway. In fact, in some states, like in Virginia, it is illegal to view adult content on state owned computers. As a former employee of the state, I saw 14 people fired in a one year period for surfing adult sites. You first get a warning and they start monitoring all http traffic from your box. Next your gone. People still thought they could get away with it.
As far as the other so called harsh draconian measures, think about this - most users are not techno-savvy. It's not a Microsoft issue, it's a person issue. Some people hate computers, they hate to use them, and they break them often. All software crashes as some point or another. Reviewing our helpdesk tracking software I can point out many Mac's and UNIX issues that they have had to solve as well as microsoft issues.
Think about this - do you wear a tie to work? Why? It's corporate policy. Do you work better with a tie on? Why don't we just ban tie's because wearing them seems useless. Corporate polices are there for a reason. Apperance, preformance, and substinance counts. It's what seperates the Fortune 100 from the rest of the pack. Polices like the ones discussed further this mentality. If you don't agree, fine. Work for a small more personalize company, but don't expect to be on the cover of Forbes anytime soon.
Bottom line, most users not in IT are computer ignorant. They call up and ask what their password is, after they create it themselves. Should we blame the companies that make the software? Should we blame measures put forth to stop people from hurting themselves? Why should we try and place blame on anyone? This is more of a western philosophy. In eastern thinking, people focus on the problem and fixing it, not on placing blame on a group or individual.
An old tech guy I used to work with summed up this argument pretty well in something he said to me about the shipping department in a company I used to work for. The department had multiple new calls to the helpdesk every week from these guys. Many times, the guys down there (large, burly, bearded men) would break their boxen so bad they would have to be replaced. We couldn't even figure out how they broke some of this stuff, but they did, constantly. I asked about it one day and he said to me:
"The shippping department? Well...I'll put it this way, you could leave three cannonballs down there on Monday, and by Wednesday, they will have broken two of them and lost the third one."
Sometimes you have to save users from themselves.
{/rant}
I have two mail servers that still are blacklisted on many services because of their configuration, not their ability to relay spam. I am an avid MS user (no comments from the cheap seats) and we run Exchange. I have installed some custom addons that run in Exchange to stop spam. I won't go into to much detail, but the gist of it is, it allows relays to send the spam to my server, then it moves it to an account I have to review it and either release it or kill it. Now, organizations like ORDB continue to let me know I am an 'open relay' but in reality I am killing more spam in a week than some people even get (about 180 or so a day, mostly from one or two sources overseas all destined for US addresses).
However, I can't send mail to friends from account on those boxes because they have been deemed relays by the ORDB. Emails to ORDB come back with automated replies, and there is no number I can call.
I have contacted an attorney on this and they are looking into some case law for me. The bottom line is I am being accused of something I am not doing, and being punished for it, because the software I run is different. I am wondering where simple mistakes end and liability begins.
I have complained about this before and the eBay staff told me it was perfectly legal. Most people don't realize that almost every item in the computer parts and under electronics and in the video game section (and I'm sure other areas) are being fixed by companies looking to offload merch online. How it works:
For the example we use a 'video card' (pick any kind, they all work for this example. Just bear with me on the prices here - they are merely an example.
Your a merchant. You buy video cards for $10 and sell for $15. You go online under many other accounts and bid on all other video cards of the same type. You bid $9, so even if you win, you are getting them below your cost and can turn around and still make a profit. You then put your card up for sale starting @ 1.00 - people will start bidding on it first since it is the lowest and push it up to the other matching auctions. Now, if anyone bids on the other auctions they will push the price above your cost, which also means your auction will soon be pushed above this limit as well.
Watch the people who bid on things like a chip or motherboard. Check their accounts- you will see a small group is always bidding on all the same items, and if you check their history they have already won like a dozen or so of similar items.
What this means - you will never get anything below cost on ebay, and since people in rural areas have no CostCo or Sams Club, they will pay 20% over normal retail plus shipping for the same item promising you that your auctions will always end in some outrageous amount.
Maybe it's just me but I think this is a problem.
-S
I contacted UUNET (My T1 provider) and they told me it was a strain of Code Red. It seems to be everywhere. I have isolated a few dozen IP's from my logs already. I have contacted the web admins of the sites in question as well. I am getting about 100+ hits a minute now, utilizing about 10%-20% of the T1 the main webserver is on. I'm guessing this will be a problem for everyone, even if your not running IIS, or your server is patched (like mine), the hundreds of scans can eat your bandwidth away regardless.
-S
Like no one saw this coming? I mean, if anyone deserves this, Adobe looks like a prime candidate. I mean, after all, trying to find out HOW a virus attacks from a PDF file and trying to STOP it could land you in prison for 5 years...
It's quite funny that C|Net is covering this story about the ads being placed in the middle of email, on a news page with a large ad placed right in the middle...
Since when has copy protection stopped the net community? Doesn't anyone remember the CSS case? The code was cracked in less than 24 hours. What about when Adobe introduced the 'dongle' protection, and it too was cracked within 24 hours of first release. I'm also tempted to mention software releases such as 3D Max and all of the Checkpoint products, both which use the clearinghouse method for key authentication, and both have cracks for all of their software located on thousands of websites across the world. I do not promote the use of such cracks, but I do know as a registred user of many products that support such tactics, I use cracks from time to time to save myself lots of time (ever buy a piece of software 'cough, cough ARCSERVE, cough, cough') and have to wait a week to get it running because the clearinghouse site is so busy they can't process your 'automatic online' registration?
Having worked in the IT field in the medical industry, I can tell you that this will not be happening in this decade. A company I contracted for before 2000 that specialized in upgrading networks in doctors offices showed me a side of the medical profession I have never seen before. We contacted hundreds of doctors up and down the east coast (private practices and some large ones as well) in efforts to bring their systems up to date prior to the Y2K issues. Sounds like a useful service, and we had a fair share of clients, but you would not believe the number of doctors who do not want to use modern technology. Many are using 8088 (I am not making this up) and 286 machines running DOS apps on a monochrome monitor. They would ask if we could get their old machines hooked to the internet, but when they found out it would cost em $500 to revamp the hardware they would freak. Many would state 'I just paid $3000 for this system 8 years ago' and things of this nature. After talking with the sales team and seeing the stats on paper, there are hundreds of doctors in the central east coast area alone with computers that today would not be able to run even the most basic software. Of course when Y2K hit, we had many callbacks because many of the older systems that ran on older mainframes/databases crashed and now they believed the problems we told them they had. Kinda funny, since most just decided to upgrade AFTER the problem, and pay a dozen people to sit around and type in the old records from hardcopies on file. Thats another thing I don't think most people know - the number of companies who LOST their complete network in Y2K and paid people to come in and manual resotre the database from hardcopy, and denied ever having problems (if you think a doctor is going to let you know he lost all the patient records and billing information for the past couple decades you better think again). You would think with the profits they make they wouldn't be so cheap, but as I said before, it's quite amazing seeing an office with a pair of 8088's still running the billing software.
Most people are worried about what this will do to backups and free software, but what about security? I mean, if they can tell if software has been installed on your computer by an unique identifier, could someone else write software that will also read that id and use it to track your movements on the web? I mean, I have written software that runs through the web and searches a client machine for a filename, the idea of searching for an id of this type could not be that hard to setup once this technology is implemented. Not only that, software manufactures can scan your PC for other software and without the user knowing during registration send back that list, and by using previous registrations see what you have bought before. Why yes, this is done today, but with the new technology manufactures can see exactly which computer you set it up on and also find out if you may be running something they did not register for you. Scary.
After installing the plugin and checking out the samples, I saw that what most people are saying is true, it is a PDF clone, not an image compressor format. If you look at some of the sample files, you will also see they are MUCH bigger than standard PDF files, the majority of them range from 120,000 to 190,000 per page. It appears to initally load faster than Acrobat, but I think that's because it's more of a streamlined plugin rather than a whole system. The images themselvces however seem to be much bigger than any PDF I have ever encountered. Anyone else go through their sample directory?
This sounds quite scary, but if you work in a small office with legitimate copies of the software (If you only have four servers and have the original box for each copy of Windows you are running plus the ten that came with the workstations you have) and the BSA tries this, can't you sue them for a list of offenses? I mean, I know I haven't kidnapped anyone, and if some lawyer wrote me a letter asking me to search my residence for a kidnapped kid, I'd ignore it. If the feds busted down my down later searching for the same kid on the word of the lawyers who wrote the letter, not only is that person liable for slander, but for a multitude of other crimes as well. I mean, I would like to own my own company so someone could send the BSA my way, I think a few good lawsuits could bankrupt those nazis...
As a prior employee of the Federal government, I can tell you that a raise of $7,000 - $10,000 is nothing. Most engineers I worked with made under $60k and Senior Admins made under $50k. Most left within 4 years (4 years working for 'the man' always looks good on your resume). After they left they could almost double their salaries in the private sector. Thats what I did. Not to mention all the HASSELS you don't have to deal with (i.e. random monthly drug testing, extensive background checks, way overboard security policies, meetings, OH the meetings!). One thing you will learn right away when working for the government is: they don't worry about wasting all day in meetings discussing whatever people want to talk about (I remember once we renamed a directory on our web server where we stored some older acrobat forms, fifty of us spent three hours discussing it - a meeting where basically nothing was accomplished, but if you do the math, it cost about six grand in time for the labor there, of course it's not like they are worries about loosing sales or NOT making a profit in the next quarter). Working for the government bites. The pay really bites. A minimal increase in pay will do nothing for them. I mean, if I have the choice of working in a near militaristic environment where you have to beg for money to upgrade RAM on the servers while getting paid less than average while working in an old delapidated building when I could work for a hot new company with a vision and goal, people my own age group who are wide open and not stuff old government persons, in a nice new office park, making almost double, and not having to worry about the time I got arrested taking a leak in a parking lot in college (which I might add almost cost me my job when they found out), I mean, is it REALLY that hard of a choice?
I have been blocking doublclick for months now. If you use a firewall on your network, you can not only block themm, you can find out everywhere they are. FW1 does a nice job of hiding real IP's behind a fake Ip, which I use to catch all attempts from doubleclick (and other sites attempting to send/scan a users information). The scary thing is, they are not the only large company out there that is doing this...