As the (former) SW OEM account liason (for a computer company that is now HP) to (a printer company that used to be IBM), I learned quite a bit on this subject.
First, printers and particularly inkjet printers, follow the Gillette 'sell razor blades, not razors' marketing model. They practicaly give you the printer as an ink burner. So they do all kinds of nifty stuff to make sure you have things to burn ink on, and you keep running down to CompUSA to plop down another $50 on an ink cartridge. The printer also comes with lots of nifty printing software to give you reasons to burn ink.
In our printers, the cartridge was intelligent, and would keep count (yes, the cartridge did) of the number of individual dots of ink for each color of ink emitted. Knowing the average dot capacity of the cartridge (for each color), we could predict when the cartridge was running low and (kindly) tell the user to go buy another cartridge, and would even provide a handy hyperlink to our online store. Better, we would track the printer's average dots/page and page/day statistics to tell them they had x days of printing left. Buy now!
So this comes to me as no surprise that they have put an expiration date on the printer cartridge. They will due it under the guise that its ensuring 'fresh ink supply' and to ensure 'highest quality printing'. But, in reality, its only another means to force the customer into buying yet more ink. Cha-ching!
My advice, shitcan the inkjet printer, go buy a good laser printer. The total cost-of-ownership is much less in the long run.
p.s. - giving the inkjet away is evil and rude and only perpetuates the problem.
FYI - the problem with spam is not the day-to-day sanitation of it. It's the cost of processing it. Not to get into the aggregate costs of lost bandwidth, file storage, and each person having to empty their email boxes. For those who still have dial-ups and download quoatas, they're sure to be livid that their honestly purchased bandwidth being eaten away by traffic they didn't ask for and don't want, not to mention their time while its being downloaded just so they can spend more time deleting it.
As the costs for this goes up, the slippery-slope endgame will be that email addresses are registered (like DNS), and mail servers and intermediate systems will have to reject email with unknown endpoints. Actually, this could be cool in a carbomite maneuver sort of way - all 'illegal' email is directed back to the sender along with an additional message saying why it was rejected.
On a personal note, I have a problem with my ISP right now where spam actually chokes my inbound download (because of invalid headers, etc.), so I have to use POP3 Scan Mailbox to roto-rooter the queue before all my mail can download. Major pita. But, I'm hoping to make mods to Thunderbird to allow me to do this in one swell foop, as it were.
Just think if they had rejected the idea like you said. Back then women were still considered inferior. If we start rejecting patents and heed to certain standards it might ultimately take us longer time before any groundbreaking technology comes our way.
This is not what he's suggesting. The fact is that nowadays a patent can be obtained for just about any idea at all, without any real consderation for prior art, etc. The patent office should spend their time considering those that have real merit, instead of just rubber stamping what comes through.
Quick example, a friend of mine asked me once how to make the mouse pointer invisible. I told him how. He was granted a patent on that idea. Now, given that I repeated to him what I was taught, it's clear that it was prior art, obvious, etc. yet he still received the patent. The patent office doesn't know what its looking at, so its granting everything! So, why not go ahead and patent chicken soup?
I just found a position after two years of searching. The pay is less than I was making 10 years ago, but its a real good job, and one that's not likely to go away any time soon.
I found in my job search that my longevity in the field was a problem. In general, years in the saddle directly translates into dollars. So its actually easier for younger less experienced yet well exposed candidates to land jobs because their lower cost.
So I would go in for a job that was a perfect fit for my experience, plus I could bring so much to the team. But never heard a thing. After talking with headhunters and other recruiters, it was clear that companies were looking at dollars first. In fact, I almost didn't get the job I have because they didn't feel that I would be happy with what they'd be willing to pay. This is true, but hey, its better than the nothing* I was making before!
In other news, the people I know in the VC arena say we're in year three of a six year slump in the IT industry.
Its great that you found a good job right out of school.
*Actually, panning $25/hr doing odd contracting work, when I could get it, and only then if I could get the client to pay up!
So give it. It's up to them to decide to heed it or not. In the end you're a soldier and you should do what you're told. After all, it's their business. You get paid the same either way.
The problem would be if you didn't give your opinion and it would have saved them from a big mistake. Then you got problems.
So always give your opinion - clear, consice, and tactfully. Answer questions. Then sit back and wait for instructions.
M$ has not produced any innovative software in the last several years...
Thus spake Obvious Man:
Better put, M$ has not produced any innovative software ever. Everything M$ has done, ever, has been a derivitive of prior art, or outright theft. I believe I can make this case universally for any M$ technology.
Exactly my point! What NBC wanted was not a coherent deep sci-fi show, but almost-but-not-quite mindless entertainment. So, back to the original post, this is why TOS is so disjunct and difficult to blend into a unified story line.
To continue the rant, by the time TNG came around the audience was much more sophisticated. Deep science, diplomacy, and politics can make for interesting entertainment if its done right. What Roddenberry had the freedom to do (because of fan base pressure on Paramount to give it to him),and the Star Trek franchise continues to acheive, is a coherence to an oversight that assures that something which happened in TNG is respected much later, say, in Star Trek XXV.
Yes, I agree with this, so far as the selling part went. In production, however, the censors reviewed the scripts from what they knew - westerns and cop shows. So out with the deep science, diplomacy, and politics, and in with fist fights and the Captain getting the girl - every week. There are many TOS scripts that would function perfectly well on the set of Rawhide.
Romulan Apples and Organian Oranges
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
... now Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later
Woah - hold on there Captain. Let's see. The Original Star Trek (OST) was written in 1965 and spoon-fed to NBC as a "wagon train to the stars", which means NBC viewed it as a futuristic western; and westerns dominated that era's television programming (hence the incredible number of bare-knuckled fist fights). OST was episodic and disjunct, with many writers doing as they pleased with the characters within a very gray scope (see Whitfield and Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek, Bantam Books). In fact, they were making it all up as they went along, especially when it came to matters of science.
Then the Star Trek franchise happens quite by accident, so that all subsequent efforts are placed very carefully under the control of the Great Overseer of the Grand Story Line. In fact, all of Star Trek goes through a single office, including books, movies, and television shows to keep the product, well, pure. Now, trying to take what was in the OST and blend it into what is makes for no easy task. In fact, there of those of us who would be happy if OST were basically ignored, except for a few basic concepts and events.
I could go on, but I've already revealed the extent of my Star Trek Geekdom.
I honestly appreciate what OSDN did with the banner ads. I checked slashdot a little after midnight and it almost made me cry when I say the banner ad. I'm glad someone saw it as a time when they should take a step back from everyday "grabbing for the cash" and honor those who died, those who sacraficed, and those who where close to them.
Hear! Hear! After reading that the ads had been suspended today - I decided to subscribe!
I am 41, and I have found that since passing that milestone that my marketablity has fallen to zero. To wit, I was laid off from a dot-com in January 2001. I put my resume on Hotjobs and Monster, and within hours I had sixteen responses from headhunters. I spent the first week doing phone screens. I spent the next week going through seven interviews. By the weekend, I had three offers.
Then I was laid off in May 2001. Not worrying, I updated me resume and within hours I had received nothing. It's now one year later and I have received nothing. I am telecommuting as a contractor, but there is no job market for me.
I find several reasons for this:
I am over 40, and a such I demand too high a salary. I made $190K last year, but there are no listings that I can find that pay more than $80K. Contract jobs are common at $25-$35/hour.
Hiring managers have terminal tunnel-vision. They ask for impossible experience (2 years of.NET!?) on propietary if not esoteric systems and tools. They also demand work experience. Research on my own or personal projects simply do not count. The endgame: they want you to have been doing exactly what they want you to do for them for the past two years, AND they would PREFER that it was for one of their competitors.
The glut of engineers on the market makes it impossible to be considered if you do NOT live in the area. In fact, I saw one listing that instructed no applicants that didn't live within 10 minutes of the office! This makes my zone of jobs limited to F*ING PORTLAND OREGON, so I am in the soup big time.
At this time I'm not sure what to do. I've got cash in the bank that's getting thin, and we're moving to a more lucrative area (Dallas or Houston) where the COL is lower and the jobs more plentiful, and hopefully I can get a survival job until the market opens up.
An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission
The reason people are prob. not going ahead and downloading is that it takes several hours to get the userid and password. I do alot of download/install of evaluation software, and it must be a bam-bam-bam sequence for me. Find it - download it - run it. Just that fast. By the time they get to the next step, they've already gone on to something else.
I also found this statement hung in the air like a brick. It cannot be a legal requirement to include the "pre-installed" OS with the computer. Since, like a lot of people here, the first I do with a new box is wipe it and configure it the way I want it.
When donating a box, I would also wipe it beforehand, and make sure that all the OS materials (backup CD's, documentation, etc.) went with it. It's really up to the receiving institution to do something with it.
What this seems to suggest is that it's bound by law that you cannot modify a PC from its factory state.
If I buy their "business service" is my cable is routed through "special" switches on a more reliable and fault tolerant network than my "residential service?" All they really want is a reason to charge more money for the same service.
I don't believe that people, except for a very sick few, commit such violence because of movies of video games but, I do think that they are desensitized by the constant onslaught of such violent entertainment.
I disagree completely that playing violent video games does in any way desentisize the player to anything other than the video game violence. As someone who loves to blast foes to chopped liver in UT, HL, MP, etc. AND as a frequent viewer of explosion movies, I was still moved to tears by the 9.11 attrocities, as apparently was everyone else. When its real, its real.
Having said that, I'm sure the developers of GTA3 could have found more politically correct targets to destroy than old women. Killing virtual soldiers is one thing, but there is something sick about killing virtual innocents...
Having come from a computer hardware manufacturer after many years, the goal of thier support is to put you off for as long as possible and do as little as possible. For some real insight, check out the bitch sites. Their support is run by third-party support centers who have quotas and impose time limits on their calls, etc.
Their whole support model is a WOMBAT, because with the money they're spending putting you off, they could have covered the COGS on the lemon laptop.
I have been RIF'd twice this year - once due to VC pull out because of the market conditions, and once due to irresponsible expansion plans.
When I worked for larger corporations (>10000 employees) and spoke of expanding the organization, the question was always what would we do with these people should the program go away or once the program is complete? There was always the concern of getting into the position where we would have to lay someone off simply because we had nothing for them to do anymore.
In the dot-bomb economy, however, companies are more concerned in getting the product to market ASAP and expand rapidly, hiring many more people than they actually need (cf. The Mythical Man Month) without any concern, really, as to what is to happen to these people once they get product to market.
They seem to view people as a commodity (which is sorta true), but completely ignore the fact that they're dicking with peoples' lives. In a contract situtation it is understood that it can end at any moment, so prepare for that. But when one accepts a position, even though it is at-will, the employer has the responsbility to do everything in their power to ensure that employment continues.
No real argument here - I just feel that m$ is, once again, trying to get away with something that, in reality, would not stand up to muster.
As far as violating our rights, no they aren't. But what they are trying to do is to get their customers to involuntarily through deception give up their fundamental right to free speach as guaranteed etc. etc. I don't think that would stand up in court unless M$ explicity spelled it out, to wit "I agree that I am waiving my right to free speach by using this product" OWTTE. I also don't think M$ could prove monetary damages. The worst that would happen is you would have to stop using their tool.
I see your point, but it seems to me that a web-building tool is akin to a typewriter, and that to say that I can't use that typewriter to compose anything bad about the company that made the typewriter is direct violation of the first ammendment.
In essense, what M$ is saying is "buy our product, but only use it for things we find valuable." In this context this is also a direct violation of the first ammendment. You cannot provide a publishing tool and then attempt to restrict what its being used to publish.
Having said that (I'm rambling I know), if M$ assets were involved, say MSN, then they could restrict such content. IOW - "We don't wish to host sites that say bad things about M$ or our friends" seems to me to be well within their rights.
Best policy, it seems, would be to use something else.
Slashdot Mirror
First, printers and particularly inkjet printers, follow the Gillette 'sell razor blades, not razors' marketing model. They practicaly give you the printer as an ink burner. So they do all kinds of nifty stuff to make sure you have things to burn ink on, and you keep running down to CompUSA to plop down another $50 on an ink cartridge. The printer also comes with lots of nifty printing software to give you reasons to burn ink.
In our printers, the cartridge was intelligent, and would keep count (yes, the cartridge did) of the number of individual dots of ink for each color of ink emitted. Knowing the average dot capacity of the cartridge (for each color), we could predict when the cartridge was running low and (kindly) tell the user to go buy another cartridge, and would even provide a handy hyperlink to our online store. Better, we would track the printer's average dots/page and page/day statistics to tell them they had x days of printing left. Buy now!
So this comes to me as no surprise that they have put an expiration date on the printer cartridge. They will due it under the guise that its ensuring 'fresh ink supply' and to ensure 'highest quality printing'. But, in reality, its only another means to force the customer into buying yet more ink. Cha-ching!
My advice, shitcan the inkjet printer, go buy a good laser printer. The total cost-of-ownership is much less in the long run.
p.s. - giving the inkjet away is evil and rude and only perpetuates the problem.
As the costs for this goes up, the slippery-slope endgame will be that email addresses are registered (like DNS), and mail servers and intermediate systems will have to reject email with unknown endpoints. Actually, this could be cool in a carbomite maneuver sort of way - all 'illegal' email is directed back to the sender along with an additional message saying why it was rejected.
On a personal note, I have a problem with my ISP right now where spam actually chokes my inbound download (because of invalid headers, etc.), so I have to use POP3 Scan Mailbox to roto-rooter the queue before all my mail can download. Major pita. But, I'm hoping to make mods to Thunderbird to allow me to do this in one swell foop, as it were.
Quick example, a friend of mine asked me once how to make the mouse pointer invisible. I told him how. He was granted a patent on that idea. Now, given that I repeated to him what I was taught, it's clear that it was prior art, obvious, etc. yet he still received the patent. The patent office doesn't know what its looking at, so its granting everything! So, why not go ahead and patent chicken soup?
I've always been of the opinion that the best way to build better locks is to hire the people that can break them ...
I found in my job search that my longevity in the field was a problem. In general, years in the saddle directly translates into dollars. So its actually easier for younger less experienced yet well exposed candidates to land jobs because their lower cost.
So I would go in for a job that was a perfect fit for my experience, plus I could bring so much to the team. But never heard a thing. After talking with headhunters and other recruiters, it was clear that companies were looking at dollars first. In fact, I almost didn't get the job I have because they didn't feel that I would be happy with what they'd be willing to pay. This is true, but hey, its better than the nothing* I was making before!
In other news, the people I know in the VC arena say we're in year three of a six year slump in the IT industry.
Its great that you found a good job right out of school.
*Actually, panning $25/hr doing odd contracting work, when I could get it, and only then if I could get the client to pay up!
The problem would be if you didn't give your opinion and it would have saved them from a big mistake. Then you got problems.
So always give your opinion - clear, consice, and tactfully. Answer questions. Then sit back and wait for instructions.
Thus spake Obvious Man:
Better put, M$ has not produced any innovative software ever. Everything M$ has done, ever, has been a derivitive of prior art, or outright theft. I believe I can make this case universally for any M$ technology.
They just keep coming up with reasons why Oregon is a good place to visit. Glad I escaped. 'nuf said.
Oooo - I stand corrected. It's been too many years since I've wandered about the USENET trek forums. Thanks for the clarification.
To continue the rant, by the time TNG came around the audience was much more sophisticated. Deep science, diplomacy, and politics can make for interesting entertainment if its done right. What Roddenberry had the freedom to do (because of fan base pressure on Paramount to give it to him),and the Star Trek franchise continues to acheive, is a coherence to an oversight that assures that something which happened in TNG is respected much later, say, in Star Trek XXV.
Yes, I agree with this, so far as the selling part went. In production, however, the censors reviewed the scripts from what they knew - westerns and cop shows. So out with the deep science, diplomacy, and politics, and in with fist fights and the Captain getting the girl - every week. There are many TOS scripts that would function perfectly well on the set of Rawhide.
Woah - hold on there Captain. Let's see. The Original Star Trek (OST) was written in 1965 and spoon-fed to NBC as a "wagon train to the stars", which means NBC viewed it as a futuristic western; and westerns dominated that era's television programming (hence the incredible number of bare-knuckled fist fights). OST was episodic and disjunct, with many writers doing as they pleased with the characters within a very gray scope (see Whitfield and Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek, Bantam Books). In fact, they were making it all up as they went along, especially when it came to matters of science.
Then the Star Trek franchise happens quite by accident, so that all subsequent efforts are placed very carefully under the control of the Great Overseer of the Grand Story Line. In fact, all of Star Trek goes through a single office, including books, movies, and television shows to keep the product, well, pure. Now, trying to take what was in the OST and blend it into what is makes for no easy task. In fact, there of those of us who would be happy if OST were basically ignored, except for a few basic concepts and events.
I could go on, but I've already revealed the extent of my Star Trek Geekdom.
I agree with another poster - this show won't last 12 episodes, if that.
Never forget.
Then I was laid off in May 2001. Not worrying, I updated me resume and within hours I had received nothing. It's now one year later and I have received nothing. I am telecommuting as a contractor, but there is no job market for me.
I find several reasons for this:
At this time I'm not sure what to do. I've got cash in the bank that's getting thin, and we're moving to a more lucrative area (Dallas or Houston) where the COL is lower and the jobs more plentiful, and hopefully I can get a survival job until the market opens up.
Thank you Mr. Greenspan.
The reason people are prob. not going ahead and downloading is that it takes several hours to get the userid and password. I do alot of download/install of evaluation software, and it must be a bam-bam-bam sequence for me. Find it - download it - run it. Just that fast. By the time they get to the next step, they've already gone on to something else.
I also found this statement hung in the air like a brick. It cannot be a legal requirement to include the "pre-installed" OS with the computer. Since, like a lot of people here, the first I do with a new box is wipe it and configure it the way I want it.
When donating a box, I would also wipe it beforehand, and make sure that all the OS materials (backup CD's, documentation, etc.) went with it. It's really up to the receiving institution to do something with it.
What this seems to suggest is that it's bound by law that you cannot modify a PC from its factory state.
If I buy their "business service" is my cable is routed through "special" switches on a more reliable and fault tolerant network than my "residential service?" All they really want is a reason to charge more money for the same service.
I disagree completely that playing violent video games does in any way desentisize the player to anything other than the video game violence. As someone who loves to blast foes to chopped liver in UT, HL, MP, etc. AND as a frequent viewer of explosion movies, I was still moved to tears by the 9.11 attrocities, as apparently was everyone else. When its real, its real.
Having said that, I'm sure the developers of GTA3 could have found more politically correct targets to destroy than old women. Killing virtual soldiers is one thing, but there is something sick about killing virtual innocents...
Their whole support model is a WOMBAT, because with the money they're spending putting you off, they could have covered the COGS on the lemon laptop.
When I worked for larger corporations (>10000 employees) and spoke of expanding the organization, the question was always what would we do with these people should the program go away or once the program is complete? There was always the concern of getting into the position where we would have to lay someone off simply because we had nothing for them to do anymore.
In the dot-bomb economy, however, companies are more concerned in getting the product to market ASAP and expand rapidly, hiring many more people than they actually need (cf. The Mythical Man Month) without any concern, really, as to what is to happen to these people once they get product to market.
They seem to view people as a commodity (which is sorta true), but completely ignore the fact that they're dicking with peoples' lives. In a contract situtation it is understood that it can end at any moment, so prepare for that. But when one accepts a position, even though it is at-will, the employer has the responsbility to do everything in their power to ensure that employment continues.
As far as violating our rights, no they aren't. But what they are trying to do is to get their customers to involuntarily through deception give up their fundamental right to free speach as guaranteed etc. etc. I don't think that would stand up in court unless M$ explicity spelled it out, to wit "I agree that I am waiving my right to free speach by using this product" OWTTE. I also don't think M$ could prove monetary damages. The worst that would happen is you would have to stop using their tool.
Not using m$ is getting easier everyday.
In essense, what M$ is saying is "buy our product, but only use it for things we find valuable." In this context this is also a direct violation of the first ammendment. You cannot provide a publishing tool and then attempt to restrict what its being used to publish.
Having said that (I'm rambling I know), if M$ assets were involved, say MSN, then they could restrict such content. IOW - "We don't wish to host sites that say bad things about M$ or our friends" seems to me to be well within their rights.
Best policy, it seems, would be to use something else.
People paying real money for virtual items is simply nature's way of leveling the brains to money ratio.