It's much more than the US is doing for its neighbors.
I'm all for U.S. bashing in it's necessary situations...but I am curious as to what you are talking about. The U.S.'s two biggest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, are as high tech as the U.S. is, although there is less money in Mexico so a smaller percentage of people get to use the internet. Actually though, from talking with people in Canada, they seem to have a better environment for internet related business than the U.S. does. And as far as Mexico, I know a lot of stuff going on there that I have not seen in the U.S. yet. They have had cable modems for many years in Guadalajara through companies like MegaRed, and they had prepaid pagers and cellphones before I even heard about anything like that in the U.S. The latest thing that I think is starting to come out in the U.S. is some sort of wireless phone connection to your house. I'm not sure how it works but I know my girlfriend's parents have it at their house. They have an antenna or something on their roof, and that connects to their phone and it's cheaper than a landline via the phone monopoly Telmex.
I think that what should be done is to help people in the U.S. such as politicians. They have obviously never used computers, otherwise they wouldn't continue to try to pass such stupid laws. I saw we donate our old equipment to them and set up free ISP accounts so we can try to show them exactly what the internet is and how we use it. Then, even though they are being bought by big business, they could at least cut down on some of the stupid laws because it would possibly affect them.
I dream of a world where Jesse Helms has a deCSS mirror, and Bob Dole is downloading the new N'Sync album from Napster. Hmmmm...nevermind, that just sounds scary.
Yeah.. it's true.. and part of the reason our call times are so high is because our remedy applications are so godamn slow.. do you guys intentionally cause us this hell to amuse yourselves?
Ok...I want to let you in on a secret. Do you know what Remedy is? Do you know how to log in? If you can answer at least "maybe" to both of these questions, then you are more qualified than over half of the Remedy developers out there. Personally I think I do a good job with it, but that's because I started out with "real" programming and eventually went to Remedy. The problem is that there are less than 200 people in the world qualified to work with Remedy. I'd say even less, around 100 even have half of a brain.
Anyways, to help troubleshoot your problems, ask your Remedy Administrator (if this same person is also known as "The Remedy Person" you are already screwed, it takes a team of people to work on it.) Often it is slow because of the network sucking. I've had times where Remedy works really fast and others where it's slow. Any halfway intelligent Remedy administrator will set up the servers properly so that they have a good number of threads and such, as well as the dba doing similar optimizations to the database. After that, of course you need a lot of memory and to a lesser extent cpu, because it is a memory hog in the older versions.
The newer version of Remedy, 4.51 is supposed to be much better for the administrator, and also faster than 4.0.3 or whatever older version you are probably using. However, I am not going to lie. Remedy is a bandwidth and memory hog. And, if your developers are idiots and use a lot of things called "escalations" (basically like putting a script in cron) then the server will be much slower. Another thing that I do to help make things a little better is to use perl scripts with Remedy. Certain things are accomplished much better through scripting, and you can even just use DBI rather than the ARSperl api.
Oh, and one more thing. You see those menus you have on character fields? Depending on how you have your client set up, those things can cache their info from the server upon each time you open that form, or each time you open the menu. If I were you, I'd set that to be each time you open the form. While good programmers (like myself) will have those menus being data driven from another table, most of the morons out there have static menus so there's no point in loading it each time you use the menu. Also, don't use that notifier program. If you want to bog things down even more than you thought possible, you would use that. The notifier sucks. Hmmm...the only other thing I can think to suggest is that you don't really want to ever delete *.arf and *.arv in your HOME directory unless you are having a problem seeing a field. It's the cache of Remedy so if you delete those, it has to recache everything in those forms again. Oh yeah, and if you are using the java version of Remedy...no wonder it's so damn slow. Get the user tool. I use both the win32 4.0.3 version and the Solaris 4.51 version and they work fine.
If your developers are idiots and their management is looking for someone intelligent be sure to send me an email with their contact info. I won't work for less than $85 an hour but I could probably speed up your process (unless it is just that your network sucks major ass, although I've used Remedy over a 56K modem before.)
The 10 digit dialing in Atlanta, and also 4 digit dialing in a small town I used to live in not too long ago. I don't think either is really superior. I write down numbers anyways because they tend to get reversed in my mind, even with the 4 digit numbers. That's what palm pilots/cellphone number storage/address books/paper/etc. is for. And as far as dialing the extra 3 digits as compared to most places (with 7 digit dialing) it's not going to take much more effort. It would be good to have a nationwide standard on these things, especially for those of us that travel a lot and forget what to do.
I know that helpdesks are pretty stringent about trying to get the fastest times they can. I develop applications with some software that is used primarily with helpdesks (Remedy.) However, I would think that they are not quite this strict with helpdesk people. It is a stark contrast to my job: I am highly paid, there is so much beaurocracy I can barely do work, I play a lot of ping pong and pool in the game room, I work on Solaris and perl scripting on my sparcstation at my desk, read slashdot, and when a new request comes for me to fix a bug, I get it in 15 minutes or so, then it has to wait a month to be tested and put into production. Only when I work on new projects, which can sometimes take a couple months, give me something interesting to do. I know the helpdesks have a high turnover rate, but I would have expected at least a little bit of concern about the quality of their work and support. The same managers that tell these people to keep their call times down are the same ones that come to me and look for ways to better track problems and how they were solved with the phone support. Is the industry that screwed up that everyone is basically doing useless work? Also, why do these people have their time scrutinized down to the minutes, when I can come and go as I please, and go play ping pong with my manager? I bet these helpdesk people think that something stinks in Shitsville...and their management is the mayor.
Yes, we all know that stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." The palm interface is really popular. There are a few reasons for this:
1) Graffitti, while difficult to learn compared to typing, eventually is much more natural than typing on a tiny keyboard which only serves to make the device larger.
2) Simple GUI. The palmos GUI is really really simple. You have one app open at a time, and that seems to work well for a handheld device. If you don't like the palm interface, there is a better one that I use called LauncherIII. It's free and has a few enhancements over the standard palm interface. If you want something different, there are others, such as Silver Screen, that you can get.
Also, concerning free software. There's a ton of it out there. I usually go to www.palmgear.com to get everything I need for the palm pilot. There's a lot of software out there, a good amount of it is free. You can also get a version of C, Basic, Java, etc. for the palm pilot if you wish to do your own programming but don't want to learn a new language to do so.
The palm pilot is not the most advanced piece of equipment out there, but for me it is the most useful of the handheld machines. CE is based on windows 95, and thus works better on machines with keyboard and very small laptop type computers. What will truly advance the handheld computer will be voice recognition but it's so hard to do it correctly, so I'll stick with my palm pilot for now.
...of what is arguably the best and what people like simply because they are used to it.
Yeah, I've been trying for a while to completely ditch NT and go with FreeBSD but I'm too used to the 95 interface. Oh! You meant the different mac os's!:oD
Hmmm...I thought the basic idea of capitalism included something about having a product or service, and selling that to a consumer. I didn't know that capitalism meant greed and extortion.
When I was a little kid, I used to sell pyrite to kids in my school and tell them it was gold. When my parents found out I got in trouble. They told me that in order for business to be done right, you have to honestly provide a good product or a good service to please the customer, and to get an amount of money back to satisfy you.
That is a bit innocent sounding but it is the best way to go if you intend to keep customers. Had I been MR. RIAA jr. growing up, I would have taken a baseball bat around with me to beat up the kids that find their own pyrite and take their money.
Interesting post. I remember when I was in school and would play basketball with my friends almost every day (as well as video games.) You said something that I would like to convert to the example of basketball:
And what, pray tell, is socially unbalanced about playing basketball? People talk smack in game to taunt opponents into making mistakes, I've yet to meet anyone (both of my younger brothers, two of my cousins, and about 5 or 6 other real life friends of mine are all b-ball fanatics in game) who takes it seriously and applies anything in game to real life.
Now, I have seen some fist fights between people from playing basketball, but have seen nothing similar to that from a game of Quake.
It was North Carolina actually. Of course, now I live in Atlanta so everything is even more mixed up. Basically what the guy told me was something to the effect of, "Ah wun buy uh tar" or something like that. I think he was from pretty far in the sticks, but that is still being nitpicky of the original point.
If you would like, I could say that in the northeast "use" is a pronoun that in the south is commonly known as "ya'll.":o) Ok, so most people write it like "you's" but it still works too.
Alright. I'll take the one to Mexico. I have a lot more confidence in Fox than I ever had in Gore or Bush. However, I don't think it is time to say that Bush is the president yet. I don't think this will be over until one of them is actually living in the white house.
One of the problems with VOIP is that it needs to be higher priority traffic than normal traffic- it pretty much needs guaranteed bandwidth.
While this is true, technology has been improving a lot. This is a technical problem you are speaking about, not a problem of laws. Perhaps improving the way TCP/IP works, or finding another protocol that would work better could work. Perhaps finding ways to increase bandwidth even more is also part of the solution.
Therefore having a higher tarrif for higher priority traffic probably is the way to go. (Some scheme like a free number of packets per month might work too...)
In the words of the Grinch. "Wrong-o."
Sorry, I had to say that.:oD Anyways, first of all there is no tarrif for any traffic right now. Second, we pay for a connection. If I get a 56k modem connection from my ISP, the fastest I can connect is 53k but lets just say 56. What it means is that while I am connected through them, I can use that bandwidth. They are already making money off of it, because noone (except a few/. readers) leave their modems connected every day of the month, and use up all of the bandwidth they possibly could all the time. Sure, with DSL and cable modems you are connected constantly, but you rarely are using all the bandwidth allotted to you. So, what you are paying for in the case of a modem is 1) phone access and 2) ISP. With DSL or cable you are still paying for the ISP, but with that rate also comes the network access in the place of the phone. However, in the DSL example, you are still, even if indirectly, paying the phone company.
The point is, the local phone companies are being paid. AT&T and MCI is not being paid for your long distance, but as they are also ISP's and also have some internet infrastructure already being paid for by ISP's, then I would say it is safe to say they are making a profit, even if you are not the one paying for it. There's no need for the government to intercede, at least in the U.S.
Of course, by now you must know that ICQ is owned by none other than AOL,...
ICQ is a decent product in my opinion, and the opinions of many. Just because it is owned by AOL doesn't mean it is a horrible product. I am pretty sure you are using either Netscape or Internet Explorer. Both of these companies are hated and bashed a lot for their problems and the way they do business. However, that doesn't mean that they don't do something right once in a while.
...and that the company is planning on merging the services. (Don't believe me? Download AIM 4.3, and log in using your UIN and password.)
Well, that is their choice, however, for the year or two that they've owned ICQ, I've never had to stop using the older versions. At this point I have no need to "upgrade" to AIM 4.3 so this doesn't really affect us yet. If they do merge the two and force everyone to upgrade, I see the potential for people finding something else similar to ICQ because it has a lot better features than AIM. In fact, it could be possible for a rogue ICQ network running ICQ groupware servers. I've done that before, and even though that only runs on NT, I believe there is a unix or linux clone that someone made.
Furthermore, ICQ's security is pathetic.
Messages are sent person-to-person directly, opening up unnecessary ports on your system. Your password is sent in plaintext (as opposed to AIM's brilliant method of XOR'ing it with "TicToc") so anyone with a sniffer could find it.
Excluding the peer-to-peer part, the exact same could be said for pop/sendmail based email systems. However, we all know how widely used it is. Email, and to a greater extent instant messaging, should not be your main form of communication. I use ICQ to keep in touch with friends and family, not to send credit card orders or discuss top secret plans. I don't want people to read my instant messages, but if they do it will not actually hurt me. It is basically just a toy, like talking on walkie talkies or sending a postcard. If you want some form of encryption, you can encode your messages with pgp quite easily, and I believe there may be an ICQ plugin for doing that as well. Also, as far as security, you mentioned another thing...that the messages from ICQ are peer to peer and do not go through the server. That is one advantage over AIM. If my messages go directly to the person I want to send them to, how can AOL log them?
I think Bruce Willis is a great actor in movies such as the Sixth Sense and Die Hard, but to see him running around in blue and red spandex would make me sick to my stomach.
Actually, ICQ is even better than AIM in these regards. I don't know about the newer version because I hadn't upgraded, but the older ones do not show you ads at all. That goes to another point, that you don't have to upgrade the client all the time. I am running ICQ99b right now and will not upgrade. I tried the 2000 version and I didn't like it, so I went back to the old one. Another advantage is that it doesn't pop up windows while you are working. I hate when I am typing something and then someone sends a message on AIM (I am forced to use it at work) and I end up sending them a message of some code or something. Also, the ICQ protocol is not kept as secret as AIM. There are plenty of clones out there, and I believe ICQ does have a unix version that they made, as well as a palmOS version, mac, and CE in addition to the rest. Also for AIM, there is a java applet that is not too big and you can run to connect to the AIM service. I use it at work on my Sparcstation and have no problems with performance or any lack of features.
Ummm...I want to reply but I have been drinking so now is probably not the best time. If you want to continue this discussion feel free to email me at the_boz@email.com. I will try to show you some of my points anyways though.
And what the White people use to maintain their grip on power.
I have always believed that if someone does you wrong, you should do better than them rather than lowering yourself to their level. Now, I am a mix of different nationalities, including the Irish, who probably have more in common with latin people than the typical white American does (my family is definite proof.) But the point is that if you think that whites are evil people who are keeping you down, then make yourself better. Complaining about it or lowering yourself to the level of your enemy does not make you any better. I still do not believe that "whites" as a group are out to get anyone, just certain minorities of the European descendants in the U.S. No group of people is fundamentally better than any other group. Just different in some way.
It is impossible to "know thyself" if you don't know your family history.
The point I was trying to get across was that you should not view someone by the color of their skin, or what culture they come from. It is important to know your culture and your people, but don't let them decide who you are. You should be your own person. An example is that my aunt was married to a man from Libya. That does not make him a terrorist (futbol actually) just because his country is known for that. Instead, she got to know him as a person, and his culture enhanced and helped him become who he is, but he was an individual.
Besides, HATE isn't all that bad! If we didn't HATE disease and dying, medicine would have never
advanced. If we didn't HATE heat, humidity and mosquitos, air conditioners would have never been
invented. If we didn't HATE poverty so much, we would not have gotten rid of capitalism... errr, my bad!
I disagree but it depends on your definition of hate. It is not hate that caused these things to be invented, but of wanting something better. From what I have seen, hate can only be destructive. It is an emotion based on anger and does not allow people to thnk logically. What gave us medicine was caring. When you see people dying of cancer, you should not think, "I hate cancer" but rather, "Those poor people, I want to help them." Hatred of a disease would be dealt with irrationally, but if someone cared about the victims, they would try to help them. If you hate ebola, you're going to simply try to avoid the people with it. If you care about the people that have the disease, you will want to help find a cure.
To be honest, you and I have similar goals from what I can perceive. The only difference in the way I see it is that you are more like Malcolm X, and I am more like Martin Luther King Jr. The best way to fix things is peacefully.
If your message is hostile, you will be met with hostility. If your message is peaceful, that is what you will be met with as well. I do call for a revolution, but I want a peaceful one. Too many Americans have forgotten their past, and simply need to be reminded that almost none of us are naturally supposed to be here. People are all the same everywhere, just with minor differences like language, culture, etc. but almost everyone has the same goals to live a happy life, and provide for the ones they care for. That's it. White, black, latin, oriental, etc. are all the same in my eyes.
I'm not going to go in and refute your points, but you are a paranoid racist and don't realize it. The majority of the points you mentioned are the same as what the KKK uses to justify their racism. Now, as someone that comes from a mixed background I do see both sodes well enough to know that the battle is between the insane. White racists, black racists, latin racists, you all use the same things to justify your hatred rather than learn to get along with each other. Before you tell me I am a crazy gabacho, you are only partially correct. However, when I see a person, I see them for who the individual is, not the color of their skin or where their ancestors are from. Learn to care, not hate.
I've always wanted to know, is it actually true that in American there's such a large amount(maybe a small percentile, but in human terms a large amount) of people who can't speak US English?
There is a large amount of people in some areas that are unable to speak American English very well. There are many causes.
For example, our corrupt U.S. government doesn't allow people to come in to the country as freely as the founding fathers of the U.S. had intended, so we get a lot of people here illegally. The biggest problem with that is they have to hide, and are virtually slaves to rich white landowners who hire them at almost no wage to work really hard to send money back to their families. These people don't go out in the general public much because they have no money, they are afraid of being caught by our nazi police force, so they generally just talk to other people that speak spanish.
Another reason is that the education system in the U.S. is completely screwed. If the school system fails to teach English to people that speak English as a first language, what hope can they have for teaching anyone else how to speak English? In the U.S., anyone who really cares about their child's education and makes enough money will always put them in a private school.
Also, Americans tend to be pretty xenophobic sometimes. Well, at least the more vocal people are the biggest idiots. There are a lot of people that think we should kick everyone but white christian people out of this country, and have no tolerance for other nationalities. I have seen too many times a person attempting to speak English to a cashier at a store, only for the cashier to pretend not to understand just to be spiteful. I think it discourages a lot of people that are trying to learn English to be met with that much hostility. I try to help these people out as I understand both languages, and try to make sure they understand the English words I am saying so they can use it in future reference.
Another thing is that the U.S. has no official language. I have just as much right to speak Spanish as I do English here, however, English is the most common language so most business is done in it. I think that eventually the two languages will merge even closer. I think already, you can ask anyone in the U.S. what "quiero" means, and they will know it means "I want" simply because of TV.
Also, on a side note, I could easily survive in the U.S. with only speaking Spanish. I've tried it a little bit, and it's not that difficult. You can make sure you get a cashier at your local grocery store that looks like a latin woman, or go to restaurants you know will have people speaking Spanish (any real Mexican restaurant), most government agencies have someone on hand that speak it, and even telemarketers do. Of course, that's why I answer the phone in Arabic so I know they won't be able to harass me.:oD
All in all, I don't see it as a problem, just a merging of American and latin cultures.
Tío, se me murió el disco duro así que tuve que ejecutar fsck en el raid scsi y en el disco ide (que uso para las fotos)
Man, my hard disk died on me so I had to run fsck on the scsi raid and on the ide disk (which I use for photos).
The correct statement, in either language is simply, "DOH!"
Your figures are wrong. While English is still the most-used language on the internet, ". ..the Internet IS becoming increasingly multinational, with English-speaking surfers dwindling below the 50% mark".
Actually, you are misinterpreting data yourself.
I do agree that the internet is becoming very multinational, however, that little snippet raises a few questions:
- English speaking surfers...does that mean English as a first language, or just people that understand it at all?
- The part about dwindling below the 50% mark...saying that English is the most used language on the internet, is not saying that the majority of websites out there are in English. A majority would be over 50% if I am correct. However, what the person stated in the parent post, was that it is the most used, as opposed to the smaller percentages of Spanish, Dutch, German, Japanese, etc. However I would disagree with even that English has less than 50% of websites out there. I think the statement would be better translated to:
"The internet is becoming increasingly multinational, with people that speak English as their first language making up less than 50% of the total of all internet users."
This backlash against the English language [?] must be taken in a wider context. English is silently creeping its way to Absolute World Domination, IT being only its last (and most powerful) Trojan horse.
Ummm...it's scary to know that there are people who have this opinion. I hope you were being sarcastic and that it was lost on me this early in the morning. English is not a being, so it is not "creeping" and it is not trying to dominate the world. It is a way of communication. You also made some valid points how the majority of documentation for computer related materials is in English.
By your standards, whenever we make a website we should translate it into every language, such as the languages the Pigmy tribe in Africa speaks just so we can be fair. Why is there so much English in technology? Because a lot of it is from the U.S. While we might be nice enough to translate it sometimes, we are going to release documentation and use terms we come up with. If you don't like that, you are free to write your own documentation or come up with your own terms but don't expect anyone else to use them just because you don't like the English versions.
If you feel that English is dominating the world, it is because that is what people want to speak. Right now, the U.S. is a very central point for technology. There is a lot of money here, a lot of resources (human and materials) so it is pretty far ahead of most countries in Technology. The reason we have more documentation in English instead of Japanese for example, is that the U.S. is where the internet came from, as well as such useful things as TCP/IP, unix, Windows, Macintosh, etc. I won't ignore that other countries are very significant in the technological world. I think if Japan were to fall off the face of the Earth, we'd all be in danger of losing our jobs. Also, a lot of good research and development goes on in Europe. Various European countries seem to come up with some really cool stuff that the U.S. doesn't implement or use for years after it can be used. I am aware that a European man (I forget what country though) came up with the concept of the world wide web.
Anyways, if English is "invading" your country, it is because you, your family, coworkers, friends, and neighbors want it to. Noone is forcing you to do business with the U.S. I find your logic to be extremely flawed. Almost as flawed as that of an American.;-D
That's not a very good arguement in my opinion. Let me turn it around for English:
I live in texas, and I know a lot of english speakers (I speak a very tiny amount myself). English is a myth, there is no "English" language anymore.
The "problem', if you wish to define it as such, is that it has mutated heavily in the Americas away from "Proper English" (ie. european or "high" english), and within the Americas the differences between, say, the northern U.S. speech in Boston (northern U.S. town) and in Nashville are larger than you would expect (I seem to recall that "tar" was a black sticky substance in New York and a thing you put on the wheel of a car in Alabama, or some such, as an example). This has been occuring long before tech jargon. The differences have grown to the point that the european and american versions of the tongue are almost mutually unitelligible (according to my sources anyway).
It must be emphasized that this "blurring" was I think due more to migration than contact with other languages. (Not to say that that didn't play an important role as well, within 100 miles in either direction of the U.S.'s French, Spanish, English, and Dutch borders, pretty much everyone is in linguistic euilibrium between many tongues,
"American English" as it's referred to.
Seriously, the tar example happened to me after moving to the south. It confused the hell out of me when I was working at Sam's Club and a guy was asking where he could get tar from. However, I think even though there are differences, I can understand the British (their language, not their minds), the Australians, Canadians, etc. It is the same with Spanish. Even though I know Spanish as my second language, I can understand someone from Los Mochis and how they sort of pronounce their "ch" as "sh", and in Guadalajara (which sounds normal to me) and even someone from Spain (but their lisp on the letter "d" sounds like faggy Spanish IMHO.) I even understand a little Italian and Portugese because of the Spanish I know. I do agree that this guy is a purist, and copying the French. I do think the Spanish speaking people have a lot of pride in their culture, including their language but sometimes pride gets in the way of intelligence.
Actually, you are mostly correct, but it isn't that bad. I won't talk about linux, but instead Solaris right now. I assume you can do pretty much the same with linux as well as install a bettter office application. I want to show that there are things I do at work that normally run on windows but I do on Solaris now instead:
1) Netscape. Sure, the new one sucks. I think I have 4.7 or something old. It works prefectly fine for me on Solaris, and never crashes.
2) Exchange email. Unfortunately, where I work we are required to use exchange. The good thing is that there is a web based version that works in netscape. It has most of the same functionality as the Windows client, so I can send emails and do whatever I want, except those annoying macro virus things, and of course not view Word or Excel files (yet.)
3) AOL Instant Messenger. It's too easy to run that via the web. There is the java applet, which I like better than the Win32 client because it stores my list on AOL's server and I never have to set that up again on each computer I use. And yes, I am required to use that at work. At home I prefer ICQ/ICQnix.
4) ssh. I won't even go in to this one, but my job does require me to use ssh. I do like being able to do it in an xterm instead of the bulky Win32 program SecureCRT that I have to use at work.
There are other apps but those are probably some of the more common ones. I think if I had a decent office program for Solaris I'd be 99% completely using it, but I have not been happy enough with what I have found so far. Also, I think that with things like SunRay, you can set up terminals for your users that they can simply pop in a smart card and will be at their own machine. It would be very preferable than lugging a laptop around to the conference room, or to another person's desk to show them something on your machine. Plus, the CDE desktop is more suited to me than the Windows GUI. However, if it wasn't, and if the users preferred something else, I have been told that it's not that difficult to install another one like gnome. A sysadmin could do that on the server for all the users of the sunrays. That would also save time in system upgrades because you only need to install it once, rather than on every machine like you would with Windows 9x, NT, 2k, ME, etc.
Using unix in any form on the desktop is not realy that bad of an idea. I do think if you have a good sysadmin the users won't need to know the command line or how to edit their.profile or anything.
This whole concept of licensing has gone wrong. I would think it should be Microsoft's job to keep track of that information, not the customer. For warranty and other customer benefits, I can see how it would be a better idea to let the customer keep control of the information, but if Microsoft really cared about stopping piracy, they would have the license information already and find a way to make it harder to pirate (for their more expensive apps and OS's.) A product I work with gives you the software, but to use it, you have to buy licenses, which are assigned to a certain domain name and MAC address. Sure, it is a hassle of your NIC dies, but it helps them have a stronger control over their products.
In this case, it is almost a scam by M$ to get money for nothing. It's pretty simple to have a lawyer send a generic threat to an organization, then expect that organization to get scared because they made running a city a higher priority than doing Micro$oft's work. I say screw M$, and I only use their software at work because I have to...although I'm about 90% able to use Solaris instead, which I like a lot better for doing work (well, and running xsnow right now.)
I think it was not off topic. It is a picture of someone sitting on a sofa watching other people on their sofas while a camera is pointing at them. I think it was very relevant in the thread. The caption at the bottom says, "News from 2012: The next generation of entertainment will be 'Universal Television', in which anyone can watch anyone else at any time. Finally made obsolete, the concept of art passes away."
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I'm all for U.S. bashing in it's necessary situations...but I am curious as to what you are talking about. The U.S.'s two biggest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, are as high tech as the U.S. is, although there is less money in Mexico so a smaller percentage of people get to use the internet. Actually though, from talking with people in Canada, they seem to have a better environment for internet related business than the U.S. does. And as far as Mexico, I know a lot of stuff going on there that I have not seen in the U.S. yet. They have had cable modems for many years in Guadalajara through companies like MegaRed, and they had prepaid pagers and cellphones before I even heard about anything like that in the U.S. The latest thing that I think is starting to come out in the U.S. is some sort of wireless phone connection to your house. I'm not sure how it works but I know my girlfriend's parents have it at their house. They have an antenna or something on their roof, and that connects to their phone and it's cheaper than a landline via the phone monopoly Telmex.
I think that what should be done is to help people in the U.S. such as politicians. They have obviously never used computers, otherwise they wouldn't continue to try to pass such stupid laws. I saw we donate our old equipment to them and set up free ISP accounts so we can try to show them exactly what the internet is and how we use it. Then, even though they are being bought by big business, they could at least cut down on some of the stupid laws because it would possibly affect them.
I dream of a world where Jesse Helms has a deCSS mirror, and Bob Dole is downloading the new N'Sync album from Napster. Hmmmm...nevermind, that just sounds scary.
Ok...I want to let you in on a secret. Do you know what Remedy is? Do you know how to log in? If you can answer at least "maybe" to both of these questions, then you are more qualified than over half of the Remedy developers out there. Personally I think I do a good job with it, but that's because I started out with "real" programming and eventually went to Remedy. The problem is that there are less than 200 people in the world qualified to work with Remedy. I'd say even less, around 100 even have half of a brain.
Anyways, to help troubleshoot your problems, ask your Remedy Administrator (if this same person is also known as "The Remedy Person" you are already screwed, it takes a team of people to work on it.) Often it is slow because of the network sucking. I've had times where Remedy works really fast and others where it's slow. Any halfway intelligent Remedy administrator will set up the servers properly so that they have a good number of threads and such, as well as the dba doing similar optimizations to the database. After that, of course you need a lot of memory and to a lesser extent cpu, because it is a memory hog in the older versions.
The newer version of Remedy, 4.51 is supposed to be much better for the administrator, and also faster than 4.0.3 or whatever older version you are probably using. However, I am not going to lie. Remedy is a bandwidth and memory hog. And, if your developers are idiots and use a lot of things called "escalations" (basically like putting a script in cron) then the server will be much slower. Another thing that I do to help make things a little better is to use perl scripts with Remedy. Certain things are accomplished much better through scripting, and you can even just use DBI rather than the ARSperl api.
Oh, and one more thing. You see those menus you have on character fields? Depending on how you have your client set up, those things can cache their info from the server upon each time you open that form, or each time you open the menu. If I were you, I'd set that to be each time you open the form. While good programmers (like myself) will have those menus being data driven from another table, most of the morons out there have static menus so there's no point in loading it each time you use the menu. Also, don't use that notifier program. If you want to bog things down even more than you thought possible, you would use that. The notifier sucks. Hmmm...the only other thing I can think to suggest is that you don't really want to ever delete *.arf and *.arv in your HOME directory unless you are having a problem seeing a field. It's the cache of Remedy so if you delete those, it has to recache everything in those forms again. Oh yeah, and if you are using the java version of Remedy...no wonder it's so damn slow. Get the user tool. I use both the win32 4.0.3 version and the Solaris 4.51 version and they work fine.
If your developers are idiots and their management is looking for someone intelligent be sure to send me an email with their contact info. I won't work for less than $85 an hour but I could probably speed up your process (unless it is just that your network sucks major ass, although I've used Remedy over a 56K modem before.)
The 10 digit dialing in Atlanta, and also 4 digit dialing in a small town I used to live in not too long ago. I don't think either is really superior. I write down numbers anyways because they tend to get reversed in my mind, even with the 4 digit numbers. That's what palm pilots/cellphone number storage/address books/paper/etc. is for. And as far as dialing the extra 3 digits as compared to most places (with 7 digit dialing) it's not going to take much more effort. It would be good to have a nationwide standard on these things, especially for those of us that travel a lot and forget what to do.
I know that helpdesks are pretty stringent about trying to get the fastest times they can. I develop applications with some software that is used primarily with helpdesks (Remedy.) However, I would think that they are not quite this strict with helpdesk people. It is a stark contrast to my job: I am highly paid, there is so much beaurocracy I can barely do work, I play a lot of ping pong and pool in the game room, I work on Solaris and perl scripting on my sparcstation at my desk, read slashdot, and when a new request comes for me to fix a bug, I get it in 15 minutes or so, then it has to wait a month to be tested and put into production. Only when I work on new projects, which can sometimes take a couple months, give me something interesting to do. I know the helpdesks have a high turnover rate, but I would have expected at least a little bit of concern about the quality of their work and support. The same managers that tell these people to keep their call times down are the same ones that come to me and look for ways to better track problems and how they were solved with the phone support. Is the industry that screwed up that everyone is basically doing useless work? Also, why do these people have their time scrutinized down to the minutes, when I can come and go as I please, and go play ping pong with my manager? I bet these helpdesk people think that something stinks in Shitsville...and their management is the mayor.
1) Graffitti, while difficult to learn compared to typing, eventually is much more natural than typing on a tiny keyboard which only serves to make the device larger.
2) Simple GUI. The palmos GUI is really really simple. You have one app open at a time, and that seems to work well for a handheld device. If you don't like the palm interface, there is a better one that I use called LauncherIII. It's free and has a few enhancements over the standard palm interface. If you want something different, there are others, such as Silver Screen, that you can get.
Also, concerning free software. There's a ton of it out there. I usually go to www.palmgear.com to get everything I need for the palm pilot. There's a lot of software out there, a good amount of it is free. You can also get a version of C, Basic, Java, etc. for the palm pilot if you wish to do your own programming but don't want to learn a new language to do so.
The palm pilot is not the most advanced piece of equipment out there, but for me it is the most useful of the handheld machines. CE is based on windows 95, and thus works better on machines with keyboard and very small laptop type computers. What will truly advance the handheld computer will be voice recognition but it's so hard to do it correctly, so I'll stick with my palm pilot for now.
Yeah, I've been trying for a while to completely ditch NT and go with FreeBSD but I'm too used to the 95 interface. Oh! You meant the different mac os's! :oD
When I was a little kid, I used to sell pyrite to kids in my school and tell them it was gold. When my parents found out I got in trouble. They told me that in order for business to be done right, you have to honestly provide a good product or a good service to please the customer, and to get an amount of money back to satisfy you.
That is a bit innocent sounding but it is the best way to go if you intend to keep customers. Had I been MR. RIAA jr. growing up, I would have taken a baseball bat around with me to beat up the kids that find their own pyrite and take their money.
And what, pray tell, is socially unbalanced about playing basketball? People talk smack in game to taunt opponents into making mistakes, I've yet to meet anyone (both of my younger brothers, two of my cousins, and about 5 or 6 other real life friends of mine are all b-ball fanatics in game) who takes it seriously and applies anything in game to real life.
Now, I have seen some fist fights between people from playing basketball, but have seen nothing similar to that from a game of Quake.
If you would like, I could say that in the northeast "use" is a pronoun that in the south is commonly known as "ya'll." :o) Ok, so most people write it like "you's" but it still works too.
Alright. I'll take the one to Mexico. I have a lot more confidence in Fox than I ever had in Gore or Bush. However, I don't think it is time to say that Bush is the president yet. I don't think this will be over until one of them is actually living in the white house.
While this is true, technology has been improving a lot. This is a technical problem you are speaking about, not a problem of laws. Perhaps improving the way TCP/IP works, or finding another protocol that would work better could work. Perhaps finding ways to increase bandwidth even more is also part of the solution.
Therefore having a higher tarrif for higher priority traffic probably is the way to go. (Some scheme like a free number of packets per month might work too...)
In the words of the Grinch. "Wrong-o."
Sorry, I had to say that. :oD Anyways, first of all there is no tarrif for any traffic right now. Second, we pay for a connection. If I get a 56k modem connection from my ISP, the fastest I can connect is 53k but lets just say 56. What it means is that while I am connected through them, I can use that bandwidth. They are already making money off of it, because noone (except a few /. readers) leave their modems connected every day of the month, and use up all of the bandwidth they possibly could all the time. Sure, with DSL and cable modems you are connected constantly, but you rarely are using all the bandwidth allotted to you. So, what you are paying for in the case of a modem is 1) phone access and 2) ISP. With DSL or cable you are still paying for the ISP, but with that rate also comes the network access in the place of the phone. However, in the DSL example, you are still, even if indirectly, paying the phone company.
The point is, the local phone companies are being paid. AT&T and MCI is not being paid for your long distance, but as they are also ISP's and also have some internet infrastructure already being paid for by ISP's, then I would say it is safe to say they are making a profit, even if you are not the one paying for it. There's no need for the government to intercede, at least in the U.S.
ICQ is a decent product in my opinion, and the opinions of many. Just because it is owned by AOL doesn't mean it is a horrible product. I am pretty sure you are using either Netscape or Internet Explorer. Both of these companies are hated and bashed a lot for their problems and the way they do business. However, that doesn't mean that they don't do something right once in a while.
Well, that is their choice, however, for the year or two that they've owned ICQ, I've never had to stop using the older versions. At this point I have no need to "upgrade" to AIM 4.3 so this doesn't really affect us yet. If they do merge the two and force everyone to upgrade, I see the potential for people finding something else similar to ICQ because it has a lot better features than AIM. In fact, it could be possible for a rogue ICQ network running ICQ groupware servers. I've done that before, and even though that only runs on NT, I believe there is a unix or linux clone that someone made.
Furthermore, ICQ's security is pathetic. Messages are sent person-to-person directly, opening up unnecessary ports on your system. Your password is sent in plaintext (as opposed to AIM's brilliant method of XOR'ing it with "TicToc") so anyone with a sniffer could find it.
Excluding the peer-to-peer part, the exact same could be said for pop/sendmail based email systems. However, we all know how widely used it is. Email, and to a greater extent instant messaging, should not be your main form of communication. I use ICQ to keep in touch with friends and family, not to send credit card orders or discuss top secret plans. I don't want people to read my instant messages, but if they do it will not actually hurt me. It is basically just a toy, like talking on walkie talkies or sending a postcard. If you want some form of encryption, you can encode your messages with pgp quite easily, and I believe there may be an ICQ plugin for doing that as well. Also, as far as security, you mentioned another thing...that the messages from ICQ are peer to peer and do not go through the server. That is one advantage over AIM. If my messages go directly to the person I want to send them to, how can AOL log them?
I think Bruce Willis is a great actor in movies such as the Sixth Sense and Die Hard, but to see him running around in blue and red spandex would make me sick to my stomach.
Actually, ICQ is even better than AIM in these regards. I don't know about the newer version because I hadn't upgraded, but the older ones do not show you ads at all. That goes to another point, that you don't have to upgrade the client all the time. I am running ICQ99b right now and will not upgrade. I tried the 2000 version and I didn't like it, so I went back to the old one. Another advantage is that it doesn't pop up windows while you are working. I hate when I am typing something and then someone sends a message on AIM (I am forced to use it at work) and I end up sending them a message of some code or something. Also, the ICQ protocol is not kept as secret as AIM. There are plenty of clones out there, and I believe ICQ does have a unix version that they made, as well as a palmOS version, mac, and CE in addition to the rest. Also for AIM, there is a java applet that is not too big and you can run to connect to the AIM service. I use it at work on my Sparcstation and have no problems with performance or any lack of features.
And what the White people use to maintain their grip on power.
I have always believed that if someone does you wrong, you should do better than them rather than lowering yourself to their level. Now, I am a mix of different nationalities, including the Irish, who probably have more in common with latin people than the typical white American does (my family is definite proof.) But the point is that if you think that whites are evil people who are keeping you down, then make yourself better. Complaining about it or lowering yourself to the level of your enemy does not make you any better. I still do not believe that "whites" as a group are out to get anyone, just certain minorities of the European descendants in the U.S. No group of people is fundamentally better than any other group. Just different in some way.
It is impossible to "know thyself" if you don't know your family history.
The point I was trying to get across was that you should not view someone by the color of their skin, or what culture they come from. It is important to know your culture and your people, but don't let them decide who you are. You should be your own person. An example is that my aunt was married to a man from Libya. That does not make him a terrorist (futbol actually) just because his country is known for that. Instead, she got to know him as a person, and his culture enhanced and helped him become who he is, but he was an individual.
Besides, HATE isn't all that bad! If we didn't HATE disease and dying, medicine would have never advanced. If we didn't HATE heat, humidity and mosquitos, air conditioners would have never been invented. If we didn't HATE poverty so much, we would not have gotten rid of capitalism... errr, my bad!
I disagree but it depends on your definition of hate. It is not hate that caused these things to be invented, but of wanting something better. From what I have seen, hate can only be destructive. It is an emotion based on anger and does not allow people to thnk logically. What gave us medicine was caring. When you see people dying of cancer, you should not think, "I hate cancer" but rather, "Those poor people, I want to help them." Hatred of a disease would be dealt with irrationally, but if someone cared about the victims, they would try to help them. If you hate ebola, you're going to simply try to avoid the people with it. If you care about the people that have the disease, you will want to help find a cure.
To be honest, you and I have similar goals from what I can perceive. The only difference in the way I see it is that you are more like Malcolm X, and I am more like Martin Luther King Jr. The best way to fix things is peacefully.
If your message is hostile, you will be met with hostility. If your message is peaceful, that is what you will be met with as well. I do call for a revolution, but I want a peaceful one. Too many Americans have forgotten their past, and simply need to be reminded that almost none of us are naturally supposed to be here. People are all the same everywhere, just with minor differences like language, culture, etc. but almost everyone has the same goals to live a happy life, and provide for the ones they care for. That's it. White, black, latin, oriental, etc. are all the same in my eyes.
I'm not going to go in and refute your points, but you are a paranoid racist and don't realize it. The majority of the points you mentioned are the same as what the KKK uses to justify their racism. Now, as someone that comes from a mixed background I do see both sodes well enough to know that the battle is between the insane. White racists, black racists, latin racists, you all use the same things to justify your hatred rather than learn to get along with each other. Before you tell me I am a crazy gabacho, you are only partially correct. However, when I see a person, I see them for who the individual is, not the color of their skin or where their ancestors are from. Learn to care, not hate.
There is a large amount of people in some areas that are unable to speak American English very well. There are many causes.
For example, our corrupt U.S. government doesn't allow people to come in to the country as freely as the founding fathers of the U.S. had intended, so we get a lot of people here illegally. The biggest problem with that is they have to hide, and are virtually slaves to rich white landowners who hire them at almost no wage to work really hard to send money back to their families. These people don't go out in the general public much because they have no money, they are afraid of being caught by our nazi police force, so they generally just talk to other people that speak spanish.
Another reason is that the education system in the U.S. is completely screwed. If the school system fails to teach English to people that speak English as a first language, what hope can they have for teaching anyone else how to speak English? In the U.S., anyone who really cares about their child's education and makes enough money will always put them in a private school.
Also, Americans tend to be pretty xenophobic sometimes. Well, at least the more vocal people are the biggest idiots. There are a lot of people that think we should kick everyone but white christian people out of this country, and have no tolerance for other nationalities. I have seen too many times a person attempting to speak English to a cashier at a store, only for the cashier to pretend not to understand just to be spiteful. I think it discourages a lot of people that are trying to learn English to be met with that much hostility. I try to help these people out as I understand both languages, and try to make sure they understand the English words I am saying so they can use it in future reference.
Another thing is that the U.S. has no official language. I have just as much right to speak Spanish as I do English here, however, English is the most common language so most business is done in it. I think that eventually the two languages will merge even closer. I think already, you can ask anyone in the U.S. what "quiero" means, and they will know it means "I want" simply because of TV.
Also, on a side note, I could easily survive in the U.S. with only speaking Spanish. I've tried it a little bit, and it's not that difficult. You can make sure you get a cashier at your local grocery store that looks like a latin woman, or go to restaurants you know will have people speaking Spanish (any real Mexican restaurant), most government agencies have someone on hand that speak it, and even telemarketers do. Of course, that's why I answer the phone in Arabic so I know they won't be able to harass me. :oD
All in all, I don't see it as a problem, just a merging of American and latin cultures.
The correct statement, in either language is simply, "DOH!"
Actually, you are misinterpreting data yourself.
I do agree that the internet is becoming very multinational, however, that little snippet raises a few questions:
- English speaking surfers...does that mean English as a first language, or just people that understand it at all?
- The part about dwindling below the 50% mark...saying that English is the most used language on the internet, is not saying that the majority of websites out there are in English. A majority would be over 50% if I am correct. However, what the person stated in the parent post, was that it is the most used, as opposed to the smaller percentages of Spanish, Dutch, German, Japanese, etc. However I would disagree with even that English has less than 50% of websites out there. I think the statement would be better translated to:
"The internet is becoming increasingly multinational, with people that speak English as their first language making up less than 50% of the total of all internet users."
Ummm...it's scary to know that there are people who have this opinion. I hope you were being sarcastic and that it was lost on me this early in the morning. English is not a being, so it is not "creeping" and it is not trying to dominate the world. It is a way of communication. You also made some valid points how the majority of documentation for computer related materials is in English.
By your standards, whenever we make a website we should translate it into every language, such as the languages the Pigmy tribe in Africa speaks just so we can be fair. Why is there so much English in technology? Because a lot of it is from the U.S. While we might be nice enough to translate it sometimes, we are going to release documentation and use terms we come up with. If you don't like that, you are free to write your own documentation or come up with your own terms but don't expect anyone else to use them just because you don't like the English versions.
If you feel that English is dominating the world, it is because that is what people want to speak. Right now, the U.S. is a very central point for technology. There is a lot of money here, a lot of resources (human and materials) so it is pretty far ahead of most countries in Technology. The reason we have more documentation in English instead of Japanese for example, is that the U.S. is where the internet came from, as well as such useful things as TCP/IP, unix, Windows, Macintosh, etc. I won't ignore that other countries are very significant in the technological world. I think if Japan were to fall off the face of the Earth, we'd all be in danger of losing our jobs. Also, a lot of good research and development goes on in Europe. Various European countries seem to come up with some really cool stuff that the U.S. doesn't implement or use for years after it can be used. I am aware that a European man (I forget what country though) came up with the concept of the world wide web.
Anyways, if English is "invading" your country, it is because you, your family, coworkers, friends, and neighbors want it to. Noone is forcing you to do business with the U.S. I find your logic to be extremely flawed. Almost as flawed as that of an American. ;-D
I live in texas, and I know a lot of english speakers (I speak a very tiny amount myself). English is a myth, there is no "English" language anymore. The "problem', if you wish to define it as such, is that it has mutated heavily in the Americas away from "Proper English" (ie. european or "high" english), and within the Americas the differences between, say, the northern U.S. speech in Boston (northern U.S. town) and in Nashville are larger than you would expect (I seem to recall that "tar" was a black sticky substance in New York and a thing you put on the wheel of a car in Alabama, or some such, as an example). This has been occuring long before tech jargon. The differences have grown to the point that the european and american versions of the tongue are almost mutually unitelligible (according to my sources anyway). It must be emphasized that this "blurring" was I think due more to migration than contact with other languages. (Not to say that that didn't play an important role as well, within 100 miles in either direction of the U.S.'s French, Spanish, English, and Dutch borders, pretty much everyone is in linguistic euilibrium between many tongues, "American English" as it's referred to.
Seriously, the tar example happened to me after moving to the south. It confused the hell out of me when I was working at Sam's Club and a guy was asking where he could get tar from. However, I think even though there are differences, I can understand the British (their language, not their minds), the Australians, Canadians, etc. It is the same with Spanish. Even though I know Spanish as my second language, I can understand someone from Los Mochis and how they sort of pronounce their "ch" as "sh", and in Guadalajara (which sounds normal to me) and even someone from Spain (but their lisp on the letter "d" sounds like faggy Spanish IMHO.) I even understand a little Italian and Portugese because of the Spanish I know. I do agree that this guy is a purist, and copying the French. I do think the Spanish speaking people have a lot of pride in their culture, including their language but sometimes pride gets in the way of intelligence.
1) Netscape. Sure, the new one sucks. I think I have 4.7 or something old. It works prefectly fine for me on Solaris, and never crashes.
2) Exchange email. Unfortunately, where I work we are required to use exchange. The good thing is that there is a web based version that works in netscape. It has most of the same functionality as the Windows client, so I can send emails and do whatever I want, except those annoying macro virus things, and of course not view Word or Excel files (yet.)
3) AOL Instant Messenger. It's too easy to run that via the web. There is the java applet, which I like better than the Win32 client because it stores my list on AOL's server and I never have to set that up again on each computer I use. And yes, I am required to use that at work. At home I prefer ICQ/ICQnix.
4) ssh. I won't even go in to this one, but my job does require me to use ssh. I do like being able to do it in an xterm instead of the bulky Win32 program SecureCRT that I have to use at work.
There are other apps but those are probably some of the more common ones. I think if I had a decent office program for Solaris I'd be 99% completely using it, but I have not been happy enough with what I have found so far. Also, I think that with things like SunRay, you can set up terminals for your users that they can simply pop in a smart card and will be at their own machine. It would be very preferable than lugging a laptop around to the conference room, or to another person's desk to show them something on your machine. Plus, the CDE desktop is more suited to me than the Windows GUI. However, if it wasn't, and if the users preferred something else, I have been told that it's not that difficult to install another one like gnome. A sysadmin could do that on the server for all the users of the sunrays. That would also save time in system upgrades because you only need to install it once, rather than on every machine like you would with Windows 9x, NT, 2k, ME, etc.
Using unix in any form on the desktop is not realy that bad of an idea. I do think if you have a good sysadmin the users won't need to know the command line or how to edit their .profile or anything.
In this case, it is almost a scam by M$ to get money for nothing. It's pretty simple to have a lawyer send a generic threat to an organization, then expect that organization to get scared because they made running a city a higher priority than doing Micro$oft's work. I say screw M$, and I only use their software at work because I have to...although I'm about 90% able to use Solaris instead, which I like a lot better for doing work (well, and running xsnow right now.)
Just look at this, from my favorite internet comic (although it's usually pretty twisted so not exactly a comic.)