And in between all your firewalls, client firewalls, calls to the help desk because "hey, this program needs admin rights", modifications to the registry because the program cannot run without admin rights to the registry, spyware scans, A/V scans, and your extensive user training - do you get any work done? I see you're at a university, which means you're probably not accountable to a bottom line, but... really? What you're describing sounds great, but here in the real world, where money matters, and IT does NOT dictate what accounting package is used, or what vendor will be supplying the next package for a certain function... it's a little more difficult.
I hate this kind of thing. By "keeping a memory alive", and revisiting that memory every day, I feel you can't get past grief, and move on with your life. Parents who keep a shrine, friends who keep facebook pages going forward - are you actually moving through your life?
The person is dead. They don't care anymore about Facebook. Let them fade, remember the good times you shared, and move forward. Honoring someone's memory doesn't mean canonizing them. If that person was the only thing keeping a group of people connected, then their absence means that the group should drift apart and move on - that's how humans should work.
All these sorts of things do is keep a wound open and fresh. Keep a page up for maybe a short time for those people who can't attend the funeral/wake/whatever ceremony you have, then gracefully remove the page.
Commercial Application FabricCAD = $2,000 per seat, for 10 users. $20,000. Yearly maintenance, say 20%. So $4k/year. 5 year costs: $40,000. IT Support Technician; including initial deployment, patching, and maintenance: 10% of admin time; say $50,000/annual, $80,000 w/ bennies. 10% of his time for FabriCAD: ($8,000*5)=$40,000. Total FabriCAM investment: $80,000 for 10 users over 5 years, or $1,600/user.
Programmer to recreate all of the features of FabricCAD via Open Source: $75,000/yearly salary, plus bennies, perks: Say $100k for a round number. 5 year costs: $500,000.
Sure, you can create OpenFabricCAD in say... a year? Fair? Due Diligence, feature comparison, coding, revisions, testing, revise, test, revise, deploy, train, patch... there, now you're at version 1. Expect MORE time if you're going to read/write proprietary data files to be compatible with suppliers and vendors.
Let's say you spend 30% of your time per year maintaining and improving OpenFabricCAD - $33,000/year. Again, give 10% of the above admin for supporting your application.
So in 5 years, OpenFabriCAD has cost the company ($100,000+($33,000*5)+($8,000*5))=$305,000 for 10 users for 5 years, OR - $6,100 per user. You've also got a product that very few people understand, and your userbase is a handful of people that use it.
Rather than mod you 'troll', I'll be trolled here.
Every damned thing you talk about here can be fixed, turned off, or quickly "worked around".
The problems you claim to have on XP but don't have on Win2K are highly suspect.
And while you're at "Lake-No-phones-here" for the summer, why do you have a computer along for your kids? Isn't there a lake and outdoor stuff to do, rather than rot in front of the fucking computer?
Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right." Really though, we're pretty lucky the shortsighted and careless way in which the nuclear industry in this country operates hasn't resulted in more Three Mile Islands"
Actually, if you do a little research on Three Mile Island (TMI), you'll find that there was little appreciable radiation released beyond the facility. In fact, Robert A. Heinlein made a very good point of it in his book(s) _Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein_ and the later _Expanded Universe_. His followup procedure following a medical treatments exposed him to several hundred TIMES the radiation levels of TMI - with no apparent ill effects to his condition.
The 'shortsighted and careless way' you talk about - I'd like to see it backed up with hard facts - oh, right, an AC. Never mind.
Nuclear power is very safe, and has some long-term benefits that our world is ignoring. Any power plant can kill you - a coal-fired plant can catch fire, possibly releasing tons of harmful toxins into the air; a hydro plant could fail, either letting millions of gallons of water downstream in seconds. Either case is a pretty catastrophic environmental event.
The nuclear danger has been overstated, and I'm sure is willingly fed by the oil and coal industries.
Until the government decides that something you do is now illegal. Will you just calmly quit doing it?
Take smoking, for example. Soon, I imagine, smoking will be illegal, since it's allegedly bad for you and your neighbors. If you're a smoker, will you just say, "oh, well, ok, time to quit"?
How about speed limits? If they change on a certain street from 75 to 65, do you drop 10mph because they said so?
How about books? Would you burn your collection of Stephen King if they were decreed Satanic and unholy? Or would you never visit Slashdot again because it was declared a breeding ground for dissidents and 'political terrorists'?
Your statement shows the exact ignorance that the current administration wants to spread to the rest of the country. Do some reading on the history of America and the world in general.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Don't ever forget that - it doesn't mean just for wars or extreme measures - it means stopping the gradual erosion of our way of life and freedom of thought.
I read the link from your signature. Absolutely perfect, and exactly how I feel. You're exactly the type of person that more people need to talk to and listen to - someone who remembers their history. I'd love to plagiarize your sig, if possible - you've hit the nail on the head.
Indeed, drinking too much water is toxic Yes, but.....
From webmd.com:
You would need to chug down about three quarts of water or more all at once to come down with a case of true water intoxication. It does happen, but so rarely that I couldn't find statistics on the number of cases. These people become drowsy, lightheaded, and weak. They have trouble coordinating bodily movements and thinking straight, looking and feeling as if they just stumbled out of the local bar.
About 2 years ago, I broke the "continuous upgrade cycle". I still play games - Quake III Arena mostly, UT2004, Flight Sim 2004, Dark Age of Camelot - on Windows XP with an Athlon 1500XP+, a GeForce 3 Ti500, 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB drive. I also do 'serious amateur' (25-50MB images) with Photoshop, and have MS Outlook running pretty much 90% of the time. Currently dual booting with XP is Fedora Core 2 Test 3, using Evolution, Mozilla, a couple terminal sessions, a Terminal Services connection, and the Bluefish editor.
For those requirements, this machine is perfectly adequate. Sure, my Photoshop could get stuff done faster. Sure, my frame rates in my games could be higher. But fuck, for most everything I do anymore, it's perfectly acceptable.
When this machine won't keep up with the games I want to play, or the programs I need to work with, then I'll pony up for a new one.
Most folks I work with/for are still on Pentium II or III machines, with 256MB of RAM being "a TON of memory, dude!"
What a lovely attitude towards the people you support. You're like the caricature on SNL - "The Computer Guy". Eventually, even though you're apparently God's gift to PC support, you'll eventually piss off the boss's secretary, Bob in accounting, and Jessica in HR - and you'll be known as "that asshole from Tech Support."
Wonder how you'll do on your raise?
If people like you *are* perceived as the best that IT support can offer, then it's no wonder people perceive computers as mystical, hard to use, and intimidating. They don't want to learn or ask questions, because you make them feel insignificant and stupid.
If people aren't 'catching on' to what you're teaching - not just one or two, but many - why would you assume that *they're* the problem?
It's this exact elitist asshole attitude that plagues IT and support personnel in many companies.
Oh, yeah - I also did 6 years of phone and desk-side computer support. I was always courteous, friendly, and tried my damndest to be understanding. We know this shit. They don't, and don't care HOW it works.
I can only hope that someday you'll realize how arrogant and rude you sound in your posts. It's YOUR FUCKING JOB to provide support for these people, according to the message you posted.
Nope, you're right. When (not *if* - *when*) you do have the misfortune of crashing on a bike, try and relax. That's why you wear leathers - they abrade and slow your body, hopefully before it wears through the leather and into you...:)
Tumbling is bad... that's why many times drunk/asleep crash victims survive - their bodies were limp, and didn't tense and begin bouncing and tumbling down the highway.
I agree with you about if it's the "right" thing to do. Now, if this baby grows up, gets married, and reproduces, it's passing on the same flawed genetic material that it inherited n years ago.
I fear that because we can fix things, we're weakening our species as a whole. Survival of the fittest means that the weak die so they can't reproduce.
These new miracle cures, drugs for fixing all the ills of the body, etc. are wonderful money makers and boons to the afflicted, but nobody seems to be thinking long term on this issue.
All the parents will scream "but what if it was *your* baby?!?" That's exactly why I don't have children. I know my genetic code has some flaws in it. I will do what I can to make it through this life, and then die. The 'weird' and otherwise imperfect DNA will die with me instead of being perpetuated.
Try drinking as much water as you can hold. You'll pee alot the first few days as your body flushes the toxins from your system, but you'll feel much better.:)
"What's wrong with your car reporting to your insurance agency that you're speeding?
Please, please, tell me you're just going for flamebait points. You've got to be kidding, right?
The problem with this is just that: my CAR telling somebody about my habits? Isn't that what we have police officers for? If I let my buddy borrow my pickup to move a desk, and he speeds, I get the ticket & the insurance ding? Oh wait. Why not use the RFID tags in my clothing to make sure that I get the ticket?
Wrong. Automated data collection will just keep forcing us into a submissive role. And you're FOR this?
I assume, then, the first time you drive like an idiot, or forget to signal, you'll be prepared for the officers when you pull in your driveway.
OK. DJ = Disc Jockey, yes? So... what "original" music are you creating? Is not the work of a "digital DJ" derivative by it's very nature? Unless you're creating the melody, basslines, percussion, vocal arrangements, etc. ALL BY YOURSELF, you are also creating a derivative work based on somebody else's efforts.
Unless you are above the law, of course. Just checking.
"The guy does great music but has become one of the biggest a**holes in music"
Mwaaahaaahaaahaaa! You're kidding me, right? Music? More like the verbal tirades of an angry 6-year old that didn't get his way, using previously popular music snippets/snatches/samples.
He and Aaron Lewis of Staind should both get help since their Mommies didn't love 'em enough.
Slashdot Mirror
And in between all your firewalls, client firewalls, calls to the help desk because "hey, this program needs admin rights", modifications to the registry because the program cannot run without admin rights to the registry, spyware scans, A/V scans, and your extensive user training - do you get any work done? I see you're at a university, which means you're probably not accountable to a bottom line, but ... really? What you're describing sounds great, but here in the real world, where money matters, and IT does NOT dictate what accounting package is used, or what vendor will be supplying the next package for a certain function ... it's a little more difficult.
Amen. I work in Sundance, WY, and I've had people PISSED because I didn't respond to their text. I've had them show up DAYS later (yay Alltel).
Guess that's the penalty for living in WY. :)
I hate this kind of thing. By "keeping a memory alive", and revisiting that memory every day, I feel you can't get past grief, and move on with your life. Parents who keep a shrine, friends who keep facebook pages going forward - are you actually moving through your life?
The person is dead. They don't care anymore about Facebook. Let them fade, remember the good times you shared, and move forward. Honoring someone's memory doesn't mean canonizing them. If that person was the only thing keeping a group of people connected, then their absence means that the group should drift apart and move on - that's how humans should work.
All these sorts of things do is keep a wound open and fresh. Keep a page up for maybe a short time for those people who can't attend the funeral/wake/whatever ceremony you have, then gracefully remove the page.
Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
Excellent points - as long as, as you say, there is a need for said project. Thanks for the counterpoint.
Except you're not playing fair, here.
... a year? Fair? Due Diligence, feature comparison, coding, revisions, testing, revise, test, revise, deploy, train, patch ... there, now you're at version 1. Expect MORE time if you're going to read/write proprietary data files to be compatible with suppliers and vendors.
Commercial Application FabricCAD = $2,000 per seat, for 10 users. $20,000. Yearly maintenance, say 20%. So $4k/year. 5 year costs: $40,000. IT Support Technician; including initial deployment, patching, and maintenance: 10% of admin time; say $50,000/annual, $80,000 w/ bennies. 10% of his time for FabriCAD: ($8,000*5)=$40,000. Total FabriCAM investment: $80,000 for 10 users over 5 years, or $1,600/user.
Programmer to recreate all of the features of FabricCAD via Open Source: $75,000/yearly salary, plus bennies, perks: Say $100k for a round number. 5 year costs: $500,000.
Sure, you can create OpenFabricCAD in say
Let's say you spend 30% of your time per year maintaining and improving OpenFabricCAD - $33,000/year. Again, give 10% of the above admin for supporting your application.
So in 5 years, OpenFabriCAD has cost the company ($100,000+($33,000*5)+($8,000*5))=$305,000 for 10 users for 5 years, OR - $6,100 per user. You've also got a product that very few people understand, and your userbase is a handful of people that use it.
Where's the value proposition, again?
Rather than mod you 'troll', I'll be trolled here.
Every damned thing you talk about here can be fixed, turned off, or quickly "worked around".
The problems you claim to have on XP but don't have on Win2K are highly suspect.
And while you're at "Lake-No-phones-here" for the summer, why do you have a computer along for your kids? Isn't there a lake and outdoor stuff to do, rather than rot in front of the fucking computer?
Good to know. Thanks for the information!
D
And that's why this shit will succeed. "Oh, well, today this cause doesn't jive with my personal views, so never mind."
I was a huge GnR fan back in the day, as well as STP. I won't be buying this album, however, as it's not a REAL CD by the established standard.
As much as I'd like to have all the songs, if more of us 'drew the line' somewhere, we'd have our voices heard.
Acquiescing to the RIAA just reinforces their silly little business model.
Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right." Really though, we're pretty lucky the shortsighted and careless way in which the nuclear industry in this country operates hasn't resulted in more Three Mile Islands"
Actually, if you do a little research on Three Mile Island (TMI), you'll find that there was little appreciable radiation released beyond the facility. In fact, Robert A. Heinlein made a very good point of it in his book(s) _Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein_ and the later _Expanded Universe_. His followup procedure following a medical treatments exposed him to several hundred TIMES the radiation levels of TMI - with no apparent ill effects to his condition.
The 'shortsighted and careless way' you talk about - I'd like to see it backed up with hard facts - oh, right, an AC. Never mind.
Nuclear power is very safe, and has some long-term benefits that our world is ignoring. Any power plant can kill you - a coal-fired plant can catch fire, possibly releasing tons of harmful toxins into the air; a hydro plant could fail, either letting millions of gallons of water downstream in seconds. Either case is a pretty catastrophic environmental event.
The nuclear danger has been overstated, and I'm sure is willingly fed by the oil and coal industries.
Until the government decides that something you do is now illegal. Will you just calmly quit doing it?
Take smoking, for example. Soon, I imagine, smoking will be illegal, since it's allegedly bad for you and your neighbors. If you're a smoker, will you just say, "oh, well, ok, time to quit"?
How about speed limits? If they change on a certain street from 75 to 65, do you drop 10mph because they said so?
How about books? Would you burn your collection of Stephen King if they were decreed Satanic and unholy? Or would you never visit Slashdot again because it was declared a breeding ground for dissidents and 'political terrorists'?
Your statement shows the exact ignorance that the current administration wants to spread to the rest of the country. Do some reading on the history of America and the world in general.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Don't ever forget that - it doesn't mean just for wars or extreme measures - it means stopping the gradual erosion of our way of life and freedom of thought.
I read the link from your signature. Absolutely perfect, and exactly how I feel. You're exactly the type of person that more people need to talk to and listen to - someone who remembers their history. I'd love to plagiarize your sig, if possible - you've hit the nail on the head.
Indeed, drinking too much water is toxic
Yes, but.....
From webmd.com:
You would need to chug down about three quarts of water or more all at once to come down with a case of true water intoxication. It does happen, but so rarely that I couldn't find statistics on the number of cases. These people become drowsy, lightheaded, and weak. They have trouble coordinating bodily movements and thinking straight, looking and feeling as if they just stumbled out of the local bar.
Probably. ;) I should have looked first before taking up my Sarcasm Blaster.
So now, instead of enjoying his wife's new boobjob, he's playing with a Segway, thereby doing *less* physical activity.
:) I imagine her next husband will pay a bit more attention to her.
Wonder why his wife got a boobjob?
True enough on the PS comment. And yeah, I hear ya on the Ad-Aware scans!
It is, actually... just unplug the Ethernet cable, remove the drive, and carry it in the steel briefcase shackled to your wrist.
Oh, shit, now *that* was funny. Must've been a Freudian slip! Thanks for a great laugh.
About 2 years ago, I broke the "continuous upgrade cycle". I still play games - Quake III Arena mostly, UT2004, Flight Sim 2004, Dark Age of Camelot - on Windows XP with an Athlon 1500XP+, a GeForce 3 Ti500, 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB drive. I also do 'serious amateur' (25-50MB images) with Photoshop, and have MS Outlook running pretty much 90% of the time. Currently dual booting with XP is Fedora Core 2 Test 3, using Evolution, Mozilla, a couple terminal sessions, a Terminal Services connection, and the Bluefish editor.
For those requirements, this machine is perfectly adequate. Sure, my Photoshop could get stuff done faster. Sure, my frame rates in my games could be higher. But fuck, for most everything I do anymore, it's perfectly acceptable.
When this machine won't keep up with the games I want to play, or the programs I need to work with, then I'll pony up for a new one.
Most folks I work with/for are still on Pentium II or III machines, with 256MB of RAM being "a TON of memory, dude!"
"...you can go fuck yaself."
What a lovely attitude towards the people you support. You're like the caricature on SNL - "The Computer Guy". Eventually, even though you're apparently God's gift to PC support, you'll eventually piss off the boss's secretary, Bob in accounting, and Jessica in HR - and you'll be known as "that asshole from Tech Support."
Wonder how you'll do on your raise?
If people like you *are* perceived as the best that IT support can offer, then it's no wonder people perceive computers as mystical, hard to use, and intimidating. They don't want to learn or ask questions, because you make them feel insignificant and stupid.
If people aren't 'catching on' to what you're teaching - not just one or two, but many - why would you assume that *they're* the problem?
It's this exact elitist asshole attitude that plagues IT and support personnel in many companies.
Oh, yeah - I also did 6 years of phone and desk-side computer support. I was always courteous, friendly, and tried my damndest to be understanding. We know this shit. They don't, and don't care HOW it works.
I can only hope that someday you'll realize how arrogant and rude you sound in your posts. It's YOUR FUCKING JOB to provide support for these people, according to the message you posted.
Nope, you're right. When (not *if* - *when*) you do have the misfortune of crashing on a bike, try and relax. That's why you wear leathers - they abrade and slow your body, hopefully before it wears through the leather and into you... :)
Tumbling is bad... that's why many times drunk/asleep crash victims survive - their bodies were limp, and didn't tense and begin bouncing and tumbling down the highway.
I agree with you about if it's the "right" thing to do. Now, if this baby grows up, gets married, and reproduces, it's passing on the same flawed genetic material that it inherited n years ago.
I fear that because we can fix things, we're weakening our species as a whole. Survival of the fittest means that the weak die so they can't reproduce.
These new miracle cures, drugs for fixing all the ills of the body, etc. are wonderful money makers and boons to the afflicted, but nobody seems to be thinking long term on this issue.
All the parents will scream "but what if it was *your* baby?!?" That's exactly why I don't have children. I know my genetic code has some flaws in it. I will do what I can to make it through this life, and then die. The 'weird' and otherwise imperfect DNA will die with me instead of being perpetuated.
Try drinking as much water as you can hold. You'll pee alot the first few days as your body flushes the toxins from your system, but you'll feel much better. :)
"What's wrong with your car reporting to your insurance agency that you're speeding?
Please, please, tell me you're just going for flamebait points. You've got to be kidding, right?
The problem with this is just that: my CAR telling somebody about my habits? Isn't that what we have police officers for? If I let my buddy borrow my pickup to move a desk, and he speeds, I get the ticket & the insurance ding? Oh wait. Why not use the RFID tags in my clothing to make sure that I get the ticket?
Wrong. Automated data collection will just keep forcing us into a submissive role. And you're FOR this?
I assume, then, the first time you drive like an idiot, or forget to signal, you'll be prepared for the officers when you pull in your driveway.
"As a digital DJ myself"...
OK. DJ = Disc Jockey, yes? So... what "original" music are you creating? Is not the work of a "digital DJ" derivative by it's very nature? Unless you're creating the melody, basslines, percussion, vocal arrangements, etc. ALL BY YOURSELF, you are also creating a derivative work based on somebody else's efforts.
Unless you are above the law, of course. Just checking.
"The guy does great music but has become one of the biggest a**holes in music"
Mwaaahaaahaaahaaa! You're kidding me, right? Music? More like the verbal tirades of an angry 6-year old that didn't get his way, using previously popular music snippets/snatches/samples.
He and Aaron Lewis of Staind should both get help since their Mommies didn't love 'em enough.