If none of the copy protection requires software applications to be loaded, why does the very same article say that it sets up an audio player in RAM?
Reading the rest of the article indicates the player is there to play the compressed WMA files. Somehow, I don't think this is a redbook Philips standard Compact Disk. Always look for the Compact Disk logo to get redbook CD audio disc's instead of compressed data files.
They really should have put this energy into legislating against the real scam currently being run by retailers and manufacturers, namely, rebates.
I agree. Some retailers want a bit of everything including the UPC, box top, original sales reciept, etc. to make sure rebate breakage is high. They also list prices on the shelf in big print as after rebate, not the price you have to pay now which is in very fine print. (Best Buy) A couple times I put stuff back on the shelf as I was mis-lead to the price of some items and added the prices in my head, only to not have enough money at checkout to buy them. OOPS! How many people put stuff on a card and not notice the total is $20-40 than the big prices on the shelf indicated?
Other retailers do a much better job and provide the extra copy to mail and if you wish you could file online for the rebate instead of sending anything (good job Costco!). I bought some items from Costco that I didn't know had a rebate, but the paperwork generated at the register let me know about the rebate. The big price in the shelf is the price to pay and the amount of the rebate, not just the price after the rebate in bit print. I've never had an issue of late or missing rebates from Costco unlike some other retailers. You did remember to include the UPC and proof of purchase token didn't you?
I'm not entirely sure we need a law to govern this. If someone is naive enough to take money that is good everywhere and make it good only in one place and expire after a while, then so be it I say.
My favorite way to educate them is to keep the cards a year and send them back as gifts next year. The card seldom has a purchase date, so they find the details when they use it. Next time they are a little more educated in their purchase decisions. It's best if you get a couple cards from a couple friends and swap them so they don't get the same card. Let them deal with the card shrinkage and the store.
2: Best Buy sells music as a loss leader to get people in the stores to buy other things, mainly product accessories where margins are at their highest. This loss leader approach is a proven, successful marketing technique, especially for Best Buy.
Boy, got that one right. I was in to buy the deal they had on a Linksys router. Decided to pick up some network cables to plug it in... About fell over from sticker shock. (a set of 4 cables were about the same price as the router) Left them on the shelf and went to my favorite store to pick up the $2 cables instead.
Download songs in your choise of format AND enoding bit rate.
All for 3 cents per song.
Not only does Best Buy and Napster have the price too high, they are selling a product in a format that I can't use. My living room DVD, my car indash MP3, and my portable MP3 are all incompatible with DRM files of any format and bitrate. Don't sell me a product I can't take with me.
Now if they can get www.allofmp3.com to get a few mirrors in the US and Canada, then there would be a usable product and a reasonable price. I might even have a reason to ditch dial-up.
Already done that. I have a geocaching account. It doesn't permit bulk mail of any kind. To mail me, get an account, choose send mail to another user, and fill in the online form. This type of mail so far has been spam free and works. I know for those on bulk lists, it doesn't work for you. But it's a place my family can reach me without haveing to weed out a stuffed inbox and possibly loose the important stuff.
Mailboxes and bulk mail just don't mix. Newsgroup notifications and such should use another protocol other than mail. Mail should be personal person-to-person like a phone call. That is why IM has begun to replace e-mail. You can close your input to a select group that you trust and reject everyone else. E-mail needs to do the same.
Who cares? I'm more interested in all the Windows games that won't run on Windows. Will they run? All too often Windows games won't run on most Windows PC's. It's a challange sometime trying to find the right combination of hardware and software configuration to get a game to run. I have several LAN games that I can't play on my LAN simply because there is only one machine in the house that will run it. If they will run in WINE, that's a great move.
It's a bad idea, students will either hack it or switch to cellular modems.
I wonder why nobody mentioned peer to peer over IRDA. It is short range and hard to detect and block. It would work fine for a couple facing each other cross a table in an exam.
I forgot to mention, read the instructions that come with the current transformer. When you are not using it, short the output. Otherwise it tries to be a potential transformer. If it drops 1 volt in the primary the 1000 turn ratio can easly produce 1 KV on the secondary. You would rather short the secondary to 0 volts and reflect that into the primary so it also has 0 volts drop.
This does not apply to the potential transformer. Shorting it is a good way to fry it.
1st stop would be at an electrical supply house. You want two things right off the bat. One is current transformers. They take the high current of the mains and using a turns ratio, cut it down to something that won't fry your metering. I would recommend a copuple 1000:1 for a good start. (Don't install the current transformer yourself! Use an electrician. Messing with the line from the meter before any circuit breakers is a Darwin Award canidate activity.)A fully loaded 200 amp home panel would give a much easer to meter 200 mA representing the draw. The wires for 200 mA is much easier to work with than wires for 200 amps. Next would be a potential transformer. That knocks the 120/240 volts down to about 12/24 volts depending on the ratio transformer you choose. From there that can be fed into a true RMS wattmeter interface. Beyond that, find your favorite graphing/logging software.
A great place to look for these items and monitoring software is on the web. Look up suppliers of co-generation supplies. Those who generate their own have created a market in monitoring and metering for the small guy.
Just for grins, let's take a typical LCD monitor with an external DC supply. The Monitor is 60 watts and uses 12 volts. In DC Amps X Volts = Watts. To run the monitor, it needs 12V X 5A = 60 Watts. If you simply used a resistor to drop 120 volts to 12 volts, the series current would still be 5 Amps. (the current is the same in all parts of a series circuit) 120 Volts at 5 amps is 600 Watts. You would be tossing out 600-60 = 540 Watts out as heat in that resistor.
On the other hand a power supply changes the voltage and the amps. The power supply for the monitor would draw 0.5 Amps to provide 5 amps at 12 volts for 60 watts in and 60 watts out if it was 100% effecient. It is not 100% effecient, so you may notice the supply draws 75 watts instead of 60 watts. Tossing 15 watts out as heat is a lot more effecient than tossing out 540 watts as heat. That is why power supplies are not simply a resistor, diode and capacitor.
I don't know about you, but I use Daemon Tools to handle copy-protected software.
Unfortunately that defeats the free market vote. I vote with my wallet. You accept the hardship with the DMCA liability in doing so. I'd rather have the DRM go away just like the hardware dongle and laser burned floppies of the past. Lots of copy protection was attempted on floppies, but the trouble they caused affected sales and support costs, so they generaly went away. I would like to have the same sway on the software industry. I make back-up's, I buy software.
I avoid stuff that has problems and is overpriced, not work around it. It's my vote against bad software and DRM DMCA legal problems.
If companies replace my broken CDs at cost ($1-2). I have no problem with me not being able to make backup copies of my own.
I do have a problem having to wait 6-8 weeks and pay $5-15 for a replacement when I already have a CD burner and blanks are $0.25 each. Some games such as Nerf Arena was purchased for under $10 and does not have copy protection. $5-15 is not replacement media cost, it's retal replacement cost. (Nerf Arena works fine without the CD in the drive after editing it's.ini text file. It would have been nice if they eliminated the editing step.) Other than copy protection, I'd rather make the backup myself for about 2 minutes time on my part and 10 minutes on my computer's time. That way a spare is on hand with no waiting needed. All too often the game CD's the kids use end up being carpet protectors under the wheels of the chair. I back up all my games, software, and music and run from working copies due to the cost of originals. Games that prohibit that are simply not used by the kids. Other titles from the same manufacture go un-purchased.
DVD's because of the DMCA don't get a working copy. Due to the lack of back-ups, I pretty much limit DVD purchases to the under $10 movies. Copy protection lowers the value, not increases it.
The same applies to my music and PC software. My laptop does not travel with the originals of any software to prevent loss or dammage. Software that runs without the disk in the drive is a big plus. (Minesweeper and Hearts are the biggest office time wasters because they run from the hard drive. If they needed the original CD in the drive, they would not be work time-wasters that they are.) CD's for my car are also all working copies, not originals. They are at home in the case ready to produce another working copy if the work copy becomes dammaged.
Copy protected software that requires the originals in the drive are being ignored because there are online alternatives for the kids, such as NeoPets. It's free and there is no hunting for it's disk.
The copy protection keeps me from buying pig in a poke software. (No impulse buys because it looks like it might be nice) I pretty much limit my purchases to software that others have reviewed and given an OK for user friendlieness.
The labels don't want the content online where it can be copied and shared. If they sign up to provide content and price it and criple it so nobody uses it, but buy's the CD from the conventional retailer instead, then they won.
If they wanted it to work, all they had to do was provide high quality un-encumbered MP3's and other formats for a nominal charge. Subscribing to a newspaper isn't a budget buster, so there isn't much 2nd hand market for pass me along newspapers. Anybody that wants one, just buys one. Music isn't priced that way. Getting a few new albums a week is a serious budget decision for many people. There is competition for the entertainment dollar. I haven't been buying music CD's simply because the money is much better spent elsewhere. I'm into Geocaching. (www.geocaching.com) I just bought a 17 CD topo map set by National Geographic which supports my GPS. (Back Roads Explorer) The cost is under $50. For me, it's much an alternative entertainment purchace. That entertainment money is not going to buy music CD's. I'm also buying several Linux Distrobutions to try. This is also money better spent. Music CD's are simply not priced for a casual purchase such as buying a newspaper. Online music offerings are crippled to the point I can't take them with me without extra expense and trouble. To play these tracks in my car, it would be the equivilant of having to photocopy any part of a newspaper you wanted to read at any location other than your computer. The newspaper example would be $10 per copy or $1 per page. The extra cost of materials and the time penalty to do the transfer make the online offerings less of a value. For me, the price and the restrictions equate to no sale.
Remember (betamax) VHS was going to kill cable TV? Everybody was going to leach by recording the shows and giving them to their non-cable friends? That fear was back in the day when blank tapes were over $10 each. If cable was $500/month, then it might be worth the hastle of taping shows for friends and family.
RIAA, get a clue. Price a quality unrestricted product for mass market consumption, not just the high disposable income demographic and produce good music, not just the shock jock rap and girl band star's and watch the sales pick up.
In a nutshell, open the archives for in-expensive downloading. Watch the low priced hard to find stuff get high volume (like old Napster). There has to be a way to make money on high volume instead of low volume high price.
I know they won't do that, because the sales of the old stuff will kill the sales of the new stuff, then they can't get artists to sign up with the labels anymore.
Not providing power may be a business stratagy. It discourages campers that just come to surf KaZa all day. This makes room for the morning, evening, and lunch business folks to get a seat, grab their caffene fix and mail on battery power. You don't make much money on the campers. Higher turnover is better. Imagine if you ate lunch regularly at McDee's. Now immagine if most people instead of staying 30 minutes for lunch now just got a drink and stayed 4 hours. In busy places, creating an environment that discourages camping is good business. The limited life of most laptop batteries can help encourage the business traveler to check mail on a break because there is room and discourage camping.
without sysadmins, who'll deal with the "someone stole the post-it with my password on" queries?
That reminds me of a funny one that happened to me. I visited our sysadmin. He gave me a phone number on a post-it. I got done with the phone number and was ready to toss the post-it when I noticed a login and password were written on the back. This was a classic case of a password on a post-it stuck to a computer. It was on the back to hide the password. A sysadmin in a rush to provide a note, grabbed the first blank post-it he saw.
To prevent job ending temptations, I returned the post-it and recommended they become more security concious and change the password very soon.;-) They were suprised I had the system password. I hope they changed it. I didn't try it as it could have been a job ending move.
IF he is interested, let me know. I could ship him a maybe still working 40 Meg 1/2 height drive and a 70 Meg full height drive.;-) Just send a shipping pre-paid container. I won't even format them first. (no longer have a machine with ISA slots for the controller) Neither drive has been in a machine with personal information or internet connected. I think they still have DOS 3.21 and Red Hat something old.
Whoa, are you channelling the angry economist or what?? Well written!
I grew up in the power industry. I've seen regulation and politics muck up the works first hand. I was going to apply, but during the affirmative action era ('70's & '80's), I found my chances as a white male were nil. My brother applied for the apprenticeship program but lost the position to a minority with lower test scores. Politics has reduced the average talant level. Now we wonder why we can't compete with forign talant. Why get a degree when all you can do with it is flip burgers? Now if politics stayed out, I may have had the incentive to get an advanced degree and push for an engineering position. Instead I became a technician. I now work in R & D.
So yes, there was a political action that discouraged me from doing my best.
The problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
Oh you mean the corporate america is willing to work for less and pay the workers wages, health insurance, retirement, vacation, etc.? Get real. If you believe that, drop your lifestyle that gets you a computer and internet access, hot and cold running water, and get a real job picking lettuce for the good of mankind. The job usualy doesn't pay enough to cover lifestyle things like buying a house, buying a car and insurance, broadband Internet, etc. Not many americans will sign up for jobs without benifits. Corporate america is no different. Make an industry a loser and the talent moves on. When the talant moves on, expect poor or no service and a failure to meet demand. Migrant workers are taking jobs the american workers won't even apply for. Without them, much of the american crop would go un-harvested which would cause a cheaper to harvest crop to be planted next year (corn or hay). Then you would be finding your big mac might start not having lettuce due to the shortage. You are asking the power company to do the same. The result is the same, a shortage of supply. Fuel must be bought. Generation and distribution systems need designed, installed, and operated. You don't find the qualified talant for this in the minimum wage and you don't find the fuel in the next to free prices. Caping the electric prices means that only cheaper fuel is used, cleaner burning high price fuel is not used, and high cost system rudancy and surge capacity is simply not built. Why build a couple extra plants for capacity when 90% of the time they make no money? It's cheaper to shed 10% load during peaks than have 10% of plants idle 90% of the time. Price caps do influence planning.
Contrary to popular conception, most corporations face competition and do not get huge margins.
The problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
The bad news is if they didn't make a profit, they would fail to continue producing. Sorry to break it to you, but that is how a free economy works. Competition is what keeps the prices reasonable. Gasoline is still cheaper than bottled Pepsi.
Slashdot Mirror
If none of the copy protection requires software applications to be loaded, why does the very same article say that it sets up an audio player in RAM?
Reading the rest of the article indicates the player is there to play the compressed WMA files. Somehow, I don't think this is a redbook Philips standard Compact Disk. Always look for the Compact Disk logo to get redbook CD audio disc's instead of compressed data files.
They really should have put this energy into legislating against the real scam currently being run by retailers and manufacturers, namely, rebates.
I agree. Some retailers want a bit of everything including the UPC, box top, original sales reciept, etc. to make sure rebate breakage is high. They also list prices on the shelf in big print as after rebate, not the price you have to pay now which is in very fine print. (Best Buy) A couple times I put stuff back on the shelf as I was mis-lead to the price of some items and added the prices in my head, only to not have enough money at checkout to buy them. OOPS! How many people put stuff on a card and not notice the total is $20-40 than the big prices on the shelf indicated?
Other retailers do a much better job and provide the extra copy to mail and if you wish you could file online for the rebate instead of sending anything (good job Costco!). I bought some items from Costco that I didn't know had a rebate, but the paperwork generated at the register let me know about the rebate. The big price in the shelf is the price to pay and the amount of the rebate, not just the price after the rebate in bit print. I've never had an issue of late or missing rebates from Costco unlike some other retailers. You did remember to include the UPC and proof of purchase token didn't you?
I'm not entirely sure we need a law to govern this. If someone is naive enough to take money that is good everywhere and make it good only in one place and expire after a while, then so be it I say.
My favorite way to educate them is to keep the cards a year and send them back as gifts next year. The card seldom has a purchase date, so they find the details when they use it. Next time they are a little more educated in their purchase decisions. It's best if you get a couple cards from a couple friends and swap them so they don't get the same card. Let them deal with the card shrinkage and the store.
2: Best Buy sells music as a loss leader to get people in the stores to buy other things, mainly product accessories where margins are at their highest. This loss leader approach is a proven, successful marketing technique, especially for Best Buy.
Boy, got that one right. I was in to buy the deal they had on a Linksys router. Decided to pick up some network cables to plug it in... About fell over from sticker shock. (a set of 4 cables were about the same price as the router) Left them on the shelf and went to my favorite store to pick up the $2 cables instead.
Download songs in your choise of format AND enoding bit rate.
All for 3 cents per song.
Not only does Best Buy and Napster have the price too high, they are selling a product in a format that I can't use. My living room DVD, my car indash MP3, and my portable MP3 are all incompatible with DRM files of any format and bitrate. Don't sell me a product I can't take with me.
Now if they can get www.allofmp3.com to get a few mirrors in the US and Canada, then there would be a usable product and a reasonable price. I might even have a reason to ditch dial-up.
just a different button...
;-) There is more to life than hitting the delete key.
I assume you are not referring to the delete key.
Already done that. I have a geocaching account. It doesn't permit bulk mail of any kind. To mail me, get an account, choose send mail to another user, and fill in the online form. This type of mail so far has been spam free and works. I know for those on bulk lists, it doesn't work for you. But it's a place my family can reach me without haveing to weed out a stuffed inbox and possibly loose the important stuff.
Mailboxes and bulk mail just don't mix. Newsgroup notifications and such should use another protocol other than mail. Mail should be personal person-to-person like a phone call. That is why IM has begun to replace e-mail. You can close your input to a select group that you trust and reject everyone else. E-mail needs to do the same.
Baysian, gaysian. Real men hit delete.
Real men have a life instead of spending the day poking a small button over and over.
does that mean that wine is now an emulator? ;-O
Who cares? I'm more interested in all the Windows games that won't run on Windows. Will they run? All too often Windows games won't run on most Windows PC's. It's a challange sometime trying to find the right combination of hardware and software configuration to get a game to run. I have several LAN games that I can't play on my LAN simply because there is only one machine in the house that will run it. If they will run in WINE, that's a great move.
determining a wireless node's location based on its signal strength at multiple APs
That would work well unless someone is using a high gain directional antenna.
It's a bad idea, students will either hack it or switch to cellular modems.
I wonder why nobody mentioned peer to peer over IRDA. It is short range and hard to detect and block. It would work fine for a couple facing each other cross a table in an exam.
Non-lethal my ass
;-)
Now if only I can get them to demonstrate it by taking a pot shot at the 500KV power line nearby and producing an ionized current path...
I forgot to mention, read the instructions that come with the current transformer. When you are not using it, short the output. Otherwise it tries to be a potential transformer. If it drops 1 volt in the primary the 1000 turn ratio can easly produce 1 KV on the secondary. You would rather short the secondary to 0 volts and reflect that into the primary so it also has 0 volts drop.
This does not apply to the potential transformer. Shorting it is a good way to fry it.
1st stop would be at an electrical supply house. You want two things right off the bat. One is current transformers. They take the high current of the mains and using a turns ratio, cut it down to something that won't fry your metering. I would recommend a copuple 1000:1 for a good start. (Don't install the current transformer yourself! Use an electrician. Messing with the line from the meter before any circuit breakers is a Darwin Award canidate activity.)A fully loaded 200 amp home panel would give a much easer to meter 200 mA representing the draw. The wires for 200 mA is much easier to work with than wires for 200 amps. Next would be a potential transformer. That knocks the 120/240 volts down to about 12/24 volts depending on the ratio transformer you choose. From there that can be fed into a true RMS wattmeter interface. Beyond that, find your favorite graphing/logging software.
A great place to look for these items and monitoring software is on the web. Look up suppliers of co-generation supplies. Those who generate their own have created a market in monitoring and metering for the small guy.
Just for grins, let's take a typical LCD monitor with an external DC supply. The Monitor is 60 watts and uses 12 volts. In DC Amps X Volts = Watts. To run the monitor, it needs 12V X 5A = 60 Watts. If you simply used a resistor to drop 120 volts to 12 volts, the series current would still be 5 Amps. (the current is the same in all parts of a series circuit) 120 Volts at 5 amps is 600 Watts. You would be tossing out 600-60 = 540 Watts out as heat in that resistor.
On the other hand a power supply changes the voltage and the amps. The power supply for the monitor would draw 0.5 Amps to provide 5 amps at 12 volts for 60 watts in and 60 watts out if it was 100% effecient. It is not 100% effecient, so you may notice the supply draws 75 watts instead of 60 watts. Tossing 15 watts out as heat is a lot more effecient than tossing out 540 watts as heat. That is why power supplies are not simply a resistor, diode and capacitor.
I don't know about you, but I use Daemon Tools to handle copy-protected software.
Unfortunately that defeats the free market vote. I vote with my wallet. You accept the hardship with the DMCA liability in doing so. I'd rather have the DRM go away just like the hardware dongle and laser burned floppies of the past. Lots of copy protection was attempted on floppies, but the trouble they caused affected sales and support costs, so they generaly went away. I would like to have the same sway on the software industry. I make back-up's, I buy software.
I avoid stuff that has problems and is overpriced, not work around it. It's my vote against bad software and DRM DMCA legal problems.
If companies replace my broken CDs at cost ($1-2). I have no problem with me not being able to make backup copies of my own.
.ini text file. It would have been nice if they eliminated the editing step.) Other than copy protection, I'd rather make the backup myself for about 2 minutes time on my part and 10 minutes on my computer's time. That way a spare is on hand with no waiting needed. All too often the game CD's the kids use end up being carpet protectors under the wheels of the chair. I back up all my games, software, and music and run from working copies due to the cost of originals. Games that prohibit that are simply not used by the kids. Other titles from the same manufacture go un-purchased.
I do have a problem having to wait 6-8 weeks and pay $5-15 for a replacement when I already have a CD burner and blanks are $0.25 each. Some games such as Nerf Arena was purchased for under $10 and does not have copy protection. $5-15 is not replacement media cost, it's retal replacement cost. (Nerf Arena works fine without the CD in the drive after editing it's
DVD's because of the DMCA don't get a working copy. Due to the lack of back-ups, I pretty much limit DVD purchases to the under $10 movies. Copy protection lowers the value, not increases it.
The same applies to my music and PC software. My laptop does not travel with the originals of any software to prevent loss or dammage. Software that runs without the disk in the drive is a big plus. (Minesweeper and Hearts are the biggest office time wasters because they run from the hard drive. If they needed the original CD in the drive, they would not be work time-wasters that they are.) CD's for my car are also all working copies, not originals. They are at home in the case ready to produce another working copy if the work copy becomes dammaged.
Copy protected software that requires the originals in the drive are being ignored because there are online alternatives for the kids, such as NeoPets. It's free and there is no hunting for it's disk.
The copy protection keeps me from buying pig in a poke software. (No impulse buys because it looks like it might be nice) I pretty much limit my purchases to software that others have reviewed and given an OK for user friendlieness.
Oh well, I guess I'll stick to burning CDs.
The labels don't want the content online where it can be copied and shared. If they sign up to provide content and price it and criple it so nobody uses it, but buy's the CD from the conventional retailer instead, then they won.
If they wanted it to work, all they had to do was provide high quality un-encumbered MP3's and other formats for a nominal charge. Subscribing to a newspaper isn't a budget buster, so there isn't much 2nd hand market for pass me along newspapers. Anybody that wants one, just buys one. Music isn't priced that way. Getting a few new albums a week is a serious budget decision for many people. There is competition for the entertainment dollar. I haven't been buying music CD's simply because the money is much better spent elsewhere. I'm into Geocaching. (www.geocaching.com) I just bought a 17 CD topo map set by National Geographic which supports my GPS. (Back Roads Explorer) The cost is under $50. For me, it's much an alternative entertainment purchace. That entertainment money is not going to buy music CD's. I'm also buying several Linux Distrobutions to try. This is also money better spent. Music CD's are simply not priced for a casual purchase such as buying a newspaper. Online music offerings are crippled to the point I can't take them with me without extra expense and trouble. To play these tracks in my car, it would be the equivilant of having to photocopy any part of a newspaper you wanted to read at any location other than your computer. The newspaper example would be $10 per copy or $1 per page. The extra cost of materials and the time penalty to do the transfer make the online offerings less of a value. For me, the price and the restrictions equate to no sale.
Remember (betamax) VHS was going to kill cable TV? Everybody was going to leach by recording the shows and giving them to their non-cable friends? That fear was back in the day when blank tapes were over $10 each. If cable was $500/month, then it might be worth the hastle of taping shows for friends and family.
RIAA, get a clue. Price a quality unrestricted product for mass market consumption, not just the high disposable income demographic and produce good music, not just the shock jock rap and girl band star's and watch the sales pick up.
In a nutshell, open the archives for in-expensive downloading. Watch the low priced hard to find stuff get high volume (like old Napster). There has to be a way to make money on high volume instead of low volume high price.
I know they won't do that, because the sales of the old stuff will kill the sales of the new stuff, then they can't get artists to sign up with the labels anymore.
Hmm.. Looks like this provides assistance for circumventing a mechanism to controlling access of copyrighted material.
So far, it's not protected by encryption, so you are ok for now.
Not providing power may be a business stratagy. It discourages campers that just come to surf KaZa all day. This makes room for the morning, evening, and lunch business folks to get a seat, grab their caffene fix and mail on battery power. You don't make much money on the campers. Higher turnover is better. Imagine if you ate lunch regularly at McDee's. Now immagine if most people instead of staying 30 minutes for lunch now just got a drink and stayed 4 hours. In busy places, creating an environment that discourages camping is good business. The limited life of most laptop batteries can help encourage the business traveler to check mail on a break because there is room and discourage camping.
How much dirt on company execs could be found with the root password?
It wasn't the mailserver password. They are located in another state. It was for a local department automation server.
without sysadmins, who'll deal with the "someone stole the post-it with my password on" queries?
;-) They were suprised I had the system password. I hope they changed it. I didn't try it as it could have been a job ending move.
That reminds me of a funny one that happened to me. I visited our sysadmin. He gave me a phone number on a post-it. I got done with the phone number and was ready to toss the post-it when I noticed a login and password were written on the back. This was a classic case of a password on a post-it stuck to a computer. It was on the back to hide the password. A sysadmin in a rush to provide a note, grabbed the first blank post-it he saw.
To prevent job ending temptations, I returned the post-it and recommended they become more security concious and change the password very soon.
IF he is interested, let me know. I could ship him a maybe still working 40 Meg 1/2 height drive and a 70 Meg full height drive. ;-) Just send a shipping pre-paid container. I won't even format them first. (no longer have a machine with ISA slots for the controller) Neither drive has been in a machine with personal information or internet connected. I think they still have DOS 3.21 and Red Hat something old.
Whoa, are you channelling the angry economist or what?? Well written!
I grew up in the power industry. I've seen regulation and politics muck up the works first hand. I was going to apply, but during the affirmative action era ('70's & '80's), I found my chances as a white male were nil. My brother applied for the apprenticeship program but lost the position to a minority with lower test scores. Politics has reduced the average talant level. Now we wonder why we can't compete with forign talant. Why get a degree when all you can do with it is flip burgers? Now if politics stayed out, I may have had the incentive to get an advanced degree and push for an engineering position. Instead I became a technician. I now work in R & D.
So yes, there was a political action that discouraged me from doing my best.
The problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
Oh you mean the corporate america is willing to work for less and pay the workers wages, health insurance, retirement, vacation, etc.? Get real. If you believe that, drop your lifestyle that gets you a computer and internet access, hot and cold running water, and get a real job picking lettuce for the good of mankind. The job usualy doesn't pay enough to cover lifestyle things like buying a house, buying a car and insurance, broadband Internet, etc. Not many americans will sign up for jobs without benifits. Corporate america is no different. Make an industry a loser and the talent moves on. When the talant moves on, expect poor or no service and a failure to meet demand. Migrant workers are taking jobs the american workers won't even apply for. Without them, much of the american crop would go un-harvested which would cause a cheaper to harvest crop to be planted next year (corn or hay). Then you would be finding your big mac might start not having lettuce due to the shortage. You are asking the power company to do the same. The result is the same, a shortage of supply. Fuel must be bought. Generation and distribution systems need designed, installed, and operated. You don't find the qualified talant for this in the minimum wage and you don't find the fuel in the next to free prices. Caping the electric prices means that only cheaper fuel is used, cleaner burning high price fuel is not used, and high cost system rudancy and surge capacity is simply not built. Why build a couple extra plants for capacity when 90% of the time they make no money? It's cheaper to shed 10% load during peaks than have 10% of plants idle 90% of the time. Price caps do influence planning.
Contrary to popular conception, most corporations face competition and do not get huge margins.
The problem is that most companies simply don't care about anything but profit, and that's wrong.
The bad news is if they didn't make a profit, they would fail to continue producing. Sorry to break it to you, but that is how a free economy works. Competition is what keeps the prices reasonable. Gasoline is still cheaper than bottled Pepsi.