Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot
on
Orwellian Tech Support
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· Score: 5, Funny
Q: how many tech support personnell does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: i have a copy of the light bulb here at my desk and it works fine for me. are you familiar with the use of light bulb? okay, can you tell me which version of light bulb you are running - it should say either 60w or 100w on the top rounded surface of the the bulb itself. so, to check the version number you will need to remove the fixture if you have one. is the light bulb installed in a ceiling-mounted fixture light or is it for a desktop style lamp? okay?
right, it appears as if you have the correct version of light bulb. there are a number of possible reasons why you are experiencing this problem. first, however, i need you to explain the nature of the darkness. is the darkness intermittent? is it partial or total? are there other light bulbs in your work environment that are displaying the same problem? are there other problems aside from the darkness?
let's start with the simplest possible solution first. if you have a desklamp or other exposed-bulb installation, could you check to see if the appliance is plugged in. to do this, locate the black power cord at the bottom of the lamp or other installation and follow it to the end. you should find a plug connected to a socket on the wall approximately ten to fifteen centimeters above the floor.
if you are using a ceiling or other permanent installation we'll have to test the switch. first, locate the switch. it should be attached to the wall and be from 1.25 to 1.75 meters above the floor. switches are usually located adjacent to doorways. now, toggle the switch up and down. is the darkness persisting?
hm. is your installation battery operated? like a flashlight? is your installation on a timer or motion detector? is this a refrigerator light bulb? have you tried opening and closing the door? is the bulb florescent rather than incandescant? has it had time to warm up?
okay, it appears as if the bulb will need to be changed. i'm going to give you an incident number. someone from physical plant will be by within ten working days to change your light bulb. please give him your incident number.
this is the question that is going to make or break y windows (or berlin or whatever the "next" window manager is)
if you want an example of a successful transition of a key technology look at two examples from apple. that's right, apple.
m68k to ppc: it took years for apple to get ppc compliant software across the entire platform and to wean the userbase off their 68k rigs. but it went damn near flawlessly. why? backward compatibility. if you bought a 601e ppc mac you knew that your old 68k apps would run.
it was a lot of work to keep that backwards compatibility, but it's what made the transition work.
classic to os x: all that blue/yellow box cocoa/carbon stuff? that was a lot of effort to maintain backward compatibility. apple basically implemented a whole api (carbon) just to ease the transition. it was never intended to be a permanent feature, just a stepping stone. but the switch to os x ultimately went very well.
so. the lesson: invest a lot of time and effort into backwards compatibility. lots.
the drug dealers do in fact create a market by giving away meth in new areas.
and legit business doesn't do this? the "first one free" marketing angle is well entrenched in legit business. look at the free itunes giveaway... or better yet, remember how red hat used to hand out free iso's of the standard distro?
unlikely. i have it on good authority that they will be using the same formula for choosing victims that the riaa used. so, that means they'll be suing either:
I find it mildly amusing that protecting capitalism is linked to this seeing as how our capitalist economy here in the U.S. has more than its fair share of open source development houses
oss is the product of democtratic freedoms of expression, publishing and association, not capitalism. while liberal democracies and capitalism tend to co-exist in the western world, they are not dependent on one another - lots of brutal dictatorships are capitalist by nature.
i, for one, find the reference to the billy bragg song "making the world safe for capitalism" quite apt:
We help the multi-nationals
When they cry out protect us
The locals scream and shout a bit
But we don't let that affect us
We're here to lend a helping hand
In case they don't elect us
How dare they buy our products
Yet still they don't respect us
I'd still like to see how someone would go about copying transparent sections of notes
this brings up a very good point, though: the only true way to prevent counterfeiting is to have the legitimate currency producer have exclusive and restricted access to the materials required to mint money, those being:
paper
ink
if the paper and ink are noticably unique to money and access to those materials is restricted to the minter, counterfeiters are out of luck - no mater what software they have.
i should note that in canada the new $100 bill really stresses unique inks as an anti-counterfeit measure - there's translucent printing, a holographic stripe and some funky watermarks. read up on it here.
even my city's municipal currency (a local "barter" currency) uses this crazy plasticized paper that is custom designed for printing money and is only sold to legit minters.
so, go ahead and get that old version of photoshop and yr swank inkjet... it won't do you any good if you want to make canadian $100's or calgary $1's!
i have worked in two shops in the last four years. one is a red hat shop. we use rhel es with paid support. the other was a full-meal-deal sparc/solaris shop.
in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes with a grocery bag full of spare parts (gbic cards, if you care). the problem was solved in a total time of one hour.
in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question (that being: is stronghold bundled with rhel es like the marketing material says? it doesn't seem to be... anyone know?). i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician". twelve days! and every time i go to check the status the web page throws a NullPointerException. and i got an email for resolution on a support request i didn't even make. i informed red hat that i'd received someone elses support mail and they replied that it would be rerouted, but the erroneous issue still shows up on my incident tracker a week later.
so... sun costs a bundle. but if you need tech support from a team that makes the justice league of america look like a quilting bee, they're your guys.
My greater fear is that they will outlaw individual possession of RFID readers.
for the dedicated, though, such bans never seem to work. police scanners are illegal in my country... but i picked one up at a pawn shop for $100. and every city desker at your local newspaper worth his/her nacl has one.
only a few years ago, military grade crypto was restricted for private use in the state, and that didn't stop anyone who wanted it from getting it.
Why exactly do I need to be root to send mail? All i need to do is open a connection to some mta on port 25.
sigh. i offered two options - open a connection on 25, which i referred to as "telnet 25" because i am old, for which root is not required, and start up the mta (postfix on panther) for which you do need to be root.
anything else i should avoid doing? i think you amply illustrate the point that the virusmania has reduced the usability of windows.
with my linux box and mac i can do whatever i want - including open attachments... i bought a computer so i could use it.
is it possible for a binary file to open ports and send itself as an email attachment on a Mac?
do you mean, "can i telnet 25 to another host"? well, yes. i hope that was a rhetorical question.
if you mean, "can i fire up an mta and start spraying email all over creation"? then the answer is only if you have root. and if that virus has root... well, you've got bigger problems.
that's the best description of the root cause of "rpm hell" i've read yet.
the problem with rpm is it's success. when a half dozen distro's start using it a half dozen versions of any given package are developed... throw in rawhides and their ilk and suddenly package management becomes a nightmarek.
if you are going to use rpms stick to your vendor. it may suck being a slave to up2date but it beats the conflicts.
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po
on
Hackers Hall of Fame
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· Score: 3, Funny
it allows US companies to concentrate on their core competencies
ack! if i have to hear that "core competencies" argument one more time i will scream... louder.
it's basically just a rehash of david ricardo's "comparative advantage" argument. it goes like this: there is a surgeon and a typist. the surgeon types 60 wpm, the typist only 40. however, despite the fact that the surgeon is faster on the keyboard, it is better overall for the typist to do the typing and leave the surgeon to surgery.
that analogy, of course, makes good sense.... but when you start expanding it to global economics it becomes shakey. we in north america have been fancying ourselves the surgeons for a long time and been foisting the "typing" work (like making sweatshop running shoes) onto the "third world".
the breakdown is this: comparative advantage theory leads to a narrowing of the economic base. if your country doesn't have the infrastructure and labour force to create an auto industry the theory is you shouldn't try. just stick to labour-intensive, capital-light industries like agriculture or textiles. this has proven to be bad news for the developing nations of the world because it a) ties the entire economy to a few industries b) offers little room for development. an economic ghettoization if you will.
and now india is foisting this argument back on the united states.
the fact of the matter is this: every economy needs diversity. there need to be un and low-skilled jobs and there need to be highly-skilled jobs. there need to be labour and capital intensive industries.
if the united states focuses exclusively on "more creative, more value generating jobs" then a dot-com burst (or the equivalent) can do greater damage to the economy as a whole... in the same way that a bad coffee harvest can tank a small latin american country.
the irony here is that it's debatable whether winnie the pooh is really disney's to use and distribute.
some guy called slesinger bought, lock stock and honey pot, all the rights to pooh from a.a. milne back in something like 1930. he licensed those rights to walt disney (the guy, not the company) sometime later for a royalty payment.
now disney co. is apparently being remiss in their royalty payments and has been manufacturing poohware outside of the scope of the licensing agreement for twenty-something years. so slesinger's widow is suing.
and now disney wants to put drm on pooh content to stop people from "stealing their property."
Slashdot Mirror
A: i have a copy of the light bulb here at my desk and it works fine for me. are you familiar with the use of light bulb? okay, can you tell me which version of light bulb you are running - it should say either 60w or 100w on the top rounded surface of the the bulb itself. so, to check the version number you will need to remove the fixture if you have one. is the light bulb installed in a ceiling-mounted fixture light or is it for a desktop style lamp? okay?
right, it appears as if you have the correct version of light bulb. there are a number of possible reasons why you are experiencing this problem. first, however, i need you to explain the nature of the darkness. is the darkness intermittent? is it partial or total? are there other light bulbs in your work environment that are displaying the same problem? are there other problems aside from the darkness?
let's start with the simplest possible solution first. if you have a desklamp or other exposed-bulb installation, could you check to see if the appliance is plugged in. to do this, locate the black power cord at the bottom of the lamp or other installation and follow it to the end. you should find a plug connected to a socket on the wall approximately ten to fifteen centimeters above the floor.
if you are using a ceiling or other permanent installation we'll have to test the switch. first, locate the switch. it should be attached to the wall and be from 1.25 to 1.75 meters above the floor. switches are usually located adjacent to doorways. now, toggle the switch up and down. is the darkness persisting?
hm. is your installation battery operated? like a flashlight? is your installation on a timer or motion detector? is this a refrigerator light bulb? have you tried opening and closing the door? is the bulb florescent rather than incandescant? has it had time to warm up?
okay, it appears as if the bulb will need to be changed. i'm going to give you an incident number. someone from physical plant will be by within ten working days to change your light bulb. please give him your incident number.
all gone.
hm. where did i put that tinfoil yarmulka?
this is the question that is going to make or break y windows (or berlin or whatever the "next" window manager is)
if you want an example of a successful transition of a key technology look at two examples from apple. that's right, apple.
it was a lot of work to keep that backwards compatibility, but it's what made the transition work.
so. the lesson: invest a lot of time and effort into backwards compatibility. lots.
and legit business doesn't do this? the "first one free" marketing angle is well entrenched in legit business. look at the free itunes giveaway... or better yet, remember how red hat used to hand out free iso's of the standard distro?
this list of "infringements" is way smaller than the one the bsd folks dealt with.
i've got $5 that says it's done by next wednesday.
unlikely. i have it on good authority that they will be using the same formula for choosing victims that the riaa used. so, that means they'll be suing either:
- a twelve year old girl
- a senior citizen who actually owns a mac
you should be safe.oss is the product of democtratic freedoms of expression, publishing and association, not capitalism. while liberal democracies and capitalism tend to co-exist in the western world, they are not dependent on one another - lots of brutal dictatorships are capitalist by nature.
i, for one, find the reference to the billy bragg song "making the world safe for capitalism" quite apt:
We help the multi-nationals
When they cry out protect us
The locals scream and shout a bit
But we don't let that affect us
We're here to lend a helping hand
In case they don't elect us
How dare they buy our products
Yet still they don't respect us
We're making the world safe for capitalism
i vote for:
this brings up a very good point, though: the only true way to prevent counterfeiting is to have the legitimate currency producer have exclusive and restricted access to the materials required to mint money, those being:
- paper
- ink
if the paper and ink are noticably unique to money and access to those materials is restricted to the minter, counterfeiters are out of luck - no mater what software they have.i should note that in canada the new $100 bill really stresses unique inks as an anti-counterfeit measure - there's translucent printing, a holographic stripe and some funky watermarks. read up on it here.
even my city's municipal currency (a local "barter" currency) uses this crazy plasticized paper that is custom designed for printing money and is only sold to legit minters.
so, go ahead and get that old version of photoshop and yr swank inkjet... it won't do you any good if you want to make canadian $100's or calgary $1's!
one word: support.
i have worked in two shops in the last four years. one is a red hat shop. we use rhel es with paid support. the other was a full-meal-deal sparc/solaris shop.
in the solaris shop we had a dramatic failure of a storedge sena array. i called the sun support line and a guy in tweed jacket was at my door in 40 minutes with a grocery bag full of spare parts (gbic cards, if you care). the problem was solved in a total time of one hour.
in the linux shop i made a web support request for a very simple question (that being: is stronghold bundled with rhel es like the marketing material says? it doesn't seem to be... anyone know?). i logged that request twelve days ago and it's still listed as "awaiting technician". twelve days! and every time i go to check the status the web page throws a NullPointerException. and i got an email for resolution on a support request i didn't even make. i informed red hat that i'd received someone elses support mail and they replied that it would be rerouted, but the erroneous issue still shows up on my incident tracker a week later.
so... sun costs a bundle. but if you need tech support from a team that makes the justice league of america look like a quilting bee, they're your guys.
you can easily roll your own one of these with a combo of sudo and acls.
but of course if you let sun do it for you a) you save yourself some work b) management feels more comfortable about it.
for the dedicated, though, such bans never seem to work. police scanners are illegal in my country... but i picked one up at a pawn shop for $100. and every city desker at your local newspaper worth his/her nacl has one.
only a few years ago, military grade crypto was restricted for private use in the state, and that didn't stop anyone who wanted it from getting it.
windows developers have had access to gpl'd source for well over a decade... but that hasn't legally impaired their ability to make their products.
any legal action against opensource projects by microsoft relating to these leaks will still have to demonstrate that:
tell me about it. i can't tell if you're supposed to be m.w. heeler or m. wheeler!
sigh. i offered two options - open a connection on 25, which i referred to as "telnet 25" because i am old, for which root is not required, and start up the mta (postfix on panther) for which you do need to be root.
anything else i should avoid doing? i think you amply illustrate the point that the virusmania has reduced the usability of windows.
with my linux box and mac i can do whatever i want - including open attachments... i bought a computer so i could use it.
is it possible for a binary file to open ports and send itself as an email attachment on a Mac?
do you mean, "can i telnet 25 to another host"? well, yes. i hope that was a rhetorical question.
if you mean, "can i fire up an mta and start spraying email all over creation"? then the answer is only if you have root. and if that virus has root... well, you've got bigger problems.
me too. it's called man.
the tragedy is that real "average" users use whichever browser ships as the default on their operating system.
a not insignifcant chunk of computer users aren't even aware of the concept of "applications". they don't see "explorer" it's just "the internet".
the most interesting thing about all of this is that they remodeled the rover for earthside use under the brand name lada.
the problem with rpm is it's success. when a half dozen distro's start using it a half dozen versions of any given package are developed... throw in rawhides and their ilk and suddenly package management becomes a nightmarek.
if you are going to use rpms stick to your vendor. it may suck being a slave to up2date but it beats the conflicts.
ack! if i have to hear that "core competencies" argument one more time i will scream... louder.
it's basically just a rehash of david ricardo's "comparative advantage" argument. it goes like this: there is a surgeon and a typist. the surgeon types 60 wpm, the typist only 40. however, despite the fact that the surgeon is faster on the keyboard, it is better overall for the typist to do the typing and leave the surgeon to surgery.
that analogy, of course, makes good sense.... but when you start expanding it to global economics it becomes shakey. we in north america have been fancying ourselves the surgeons for a long time and been foisting the "typing" work (like making sweatshop running shoes) onto the "third world".
the breakdown is this: comparative advantage theory leads to a narrowing of the economic base. if your country doesn't have the infrastructure and labour force to create an auto industry the theory is you shouldn't try. just stick to labour-intensive, capital-light industries like agriculture or textiles. this has proven to be bad news for the developing nations of the world because it a) ties the entire economy to a few industries b) offers little room for development. an economic ghettoization if you will.
and now india is foisting this argument back on the united states.
the fact of the matter is this: every economy needs diversity. there need to be un and low-skilled jobs and there need to be highly-skilled jobs. there need to be labour and capital intensive industries.
if the united states focuses exclusively on "more creative, more value generating jobs" then a dot-com burst (or the equivalent) can do greater damage to the economy as a whole... in the same way that a bad coffee harvest can tank a small latin american country.
er... ansi c is available for all platforms too.
i think h.d.'s angle was write an intro to programming book that uses an interpreter that comes default with every os install... hence the javascript.
of course it's an incredibly lame angle since it breaks frymaster 14th rule of programming:
"if you can't install the interpreter/compiler you probably can't code in the language"
the irony here is that it's debatable whether winnie the pooh is really disney's to use and distribute.
some guy called slesinger bought, lock stock and honey pot, all the rights to pooh from a.a. milne back in something like 1930. he licensed those rights to walt disney (the guy, not the company) sometime later for a royalty payment.
now disney co. is apparently being remiss in their royalty payments and has been manufacturing poohware outside of the scope of the licensing agreement for twenty-something years. so slesinger's widow is suing.
and now disney wants to put drm on pooh content to stop people from "stealing their property."
sweet irony.
smart. who's going to defend you on that murder rap then?