To the show that never ends So glad you could attend Come inside Come inside
I quit journalism because I got pressure to favor advertisers' products. I had the Exec Editor of a trade print publication attribute my name to a press release and it was called a "review." I told her that if she did it again, I'd sue for defamation of character. \
For related reasons about the integrity of the mag, I quit.
That was 2000. I can do more good as a poster than a writer...
Anyone that seriously shops for a mobile email platform comes to only one conclusion. And if they then choose a Treo, which costs much more, weighs much more, and performs comparitively poorly, they deserve what they get.
I also can't fathom anyone that looked at the patent/lawsuit issues as likely to stop RIM. The Fed is too big of a client, the product is too popular.
I was an early Handspring Visor adopter, I found much utility in Palm OS, but once I carried a Blackberry for a few months, all that was history.
Want mobile email cheap? - get a Sidekick. Want a lot of gadgety features, a lot of applications, and a keyboard? Get a Treo. Want a well-designed wireless email solution with GPS(7520) and a blossoming development climate - Get a Blackberry.
Given the battery life of mobile Windows devices - they aren't even in the running.
Old news. Granted, the 7.62mm SAW is a nice touch. These armed 'bots are remote controlled, like bomb-squad robots used by sherriff's departments all over the country. And yes, the bomb squad bots are armed: usually a single-shot 12-gauge.
These bots can be programmed to follow a sequence, and self-stabilize. And they FLY. Full-auto 12-guage.
I've seen pictures of South Korean automated sentry guns, armed w/ a 7.62 SAW, deplyed in Iraq. If I can find them, I'll post them. Supposedly, like the Phalanx, minimal user interaction is involved during "watch."
"Bigger" people than you have "gone down" for sending an email they thought was private.
Four big names:
Morgan Stanley (the firm): <URL:http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsA rticle.a spx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-05-20T164453Z_0 1_EIC060235_RTRIDST_0_OUKIN-FINANCIAL-MORGANSTANLE Y-PERELMAN-EMAILS.XML> Gotta save those emails, or you might be dirty-dealing....
Bill Gates: <URL:http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2400/ 2496.htm > DOJ calls Gates on his internal emails.
Ollie North: <URL:http://www.rotten.com/library/history /politic al-scandal/iran-contra/> Tower Commission reports Ollie discussed weapons sales through "private back channel" of White House email system.
"Little Nicky" Scarfo: <URL:http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dlt r/article s/2002dltr0002.html> Mobster Scarfo subject to warantless (under wiretap definitions) keystroke-logger, as his email was encrypted.
Your privacy is only important to you. It is encumbent on you to enforce the degree of privacy you wish to retain. Your employer has a minefield to navigate in data retention (i.e. Arthur Anderson's document retention policy, and the recent Supreme Court findings), but that does not mean that you are not being monitored.
This sounds really lame, but ultimately makes sense - some old advice I read in Phrack comes to mind: <b>"Consider how you would explain your actions (as evidenced through your employer's email system) to a jury."</b>
If you do just that, you'll be ahead of all those guys listed above...
In my experience as a contibuting editor to an industry print publication, I was, at times, pressured to favor coverage for advertisers' products, over what may have actually been more newsworthy. In the face of these tests, it occurred to me, because of the longevity of data on the Internet and the speed and ease at which information is disseminated, that I had an obligation to myself and my readers to uphold a higher standard.
When my byline was attributed to an unedited press release, as opposed to an actual product review, I quit.
Think about the changing face of journalism these days: Dan Rather, Matt Gannon, Bill O'Rielly, Hunter S. Thompson, Al Franken - all of these people have provided some form of reportage and taken on considerable controversy because of it. Whether you agree with their facts, their opinions, or their methods, what really seperates one news source from another is the effect of its' reporting: did it make you question your preconceptions? Did you gain some information that you previously lacked?
I, for one am quite glad that "blogs" are now being given more journalistic weight. Why? Because it means that people are even more skeptical. People that were skeptical of big media do not blindly turn to "the little guy" based on an underdog fantasy, they consider the opinions of the blogger to be possibly suspect as well.
Ultimately, considering the efficacy of the argument and the veracity of the facts presented MOG has certianly not convinced me that PJ works for IBM - She's convinced me that she does not truly understand the Interent medium: 1. She has no remorse about putting her name on a piece of wrtiting that has the tone of a 0day web defacement or IRC taunt (minus the l337 5p34k). And surprise! Its' going to be floating around the Web for the rest of her life (and beyond).
2. Frontier justice may rear its' ugly head and expose her personal details, and she may be targeted by some kind of retribution.
3. The constraints of physical space, finance, and logic do not apply equally to all situations, as some people actually do work where from they live, and like to keep their home lives somewhat private.
Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Right you are... The BES server can enforce the backup policy, the backup file location can be redirected (or more invisibly, copied via script) from the local PC to a server anyway, and then audited.
From the article, it looks like some of these folks were using the Blackberry Web Client (ie, Blackberry.net) instead of BES as their redirector. That doesn't mean you couldn't still snag the backups.
Of course, if the business owns the accounts, they simply ask Blackberry for the emails (or for them to be BCC'd to a company audit account), which would not be the property of the end user anyway.
Alternately, for future offenders out there: When you get fired/quit, you prolly would want to erase the device completely (Backup/Restore Tool) before you hand it over. Doing so might alert you to the location of previous backup files... Doh! Too late... What about the fax machine? Can be audited too...
Plotting something? Stick to voice...
Or, find a developer that has written a small Java-based encrypted email client. I haven't been looking, but I'm sure someone has, somewhere.
Crucial bit of history that you touched on with Intergraph....
Intergraph had been selling Unix workstations to government shops and major engineering contractors for years (NASA, General Motors,etc.), and engaging in healthy competitition with SGI, who was alreading aiming for Hollywood... But Intergraph saw the future, and hotrodded the PCI bus and AGP/PCI-based graphics pipelines straight into the heart of the entertainment biz. Problem is, they got into some tangles with Intel -- the chipmaker leveraged out some of the reciprocity in their relationship and claimed to be the owner of some key technologies. 3DLabs saw that the iron was hot in the high-power GPU workstation market, and struck, taking on the Wildcat cards (from Intergraph's Extreme 3D). In car terms, think of an Intergraph PC as an Corbra - a capable performer with highly-massaged, yet at it's root, massive American V8.
Meanwhile, SGI was getting mixed up in Cray and Microsoft... On on hand, looking at the supercomputer as their future, and on the other, re-inventing Windows NT. SGI would be Ferrari, a long time rival, with many consistent wins, but due to timing, tripped up by being pulled in too many directions, and spending too much on development, not enough on brute force.
Around '98, HP, Compaq, and IBM (and yes, newcomer Dell, too) began to realize that they could now compete with Intergraph workstations, if their graphics cards were hot enough, and their motherboards were piped right. It used to be that no one would sell you a Wildcat card if your system was not on a very short list. Elsa, Evans & Sutherland, Diamond, and 3DLabs all cranked out great cards in the late 90's, but more importantly, great drivers - that worked with all the up and coming, user-freindly, affordable 3D software (3DMAX).
HP really cracked that nut, with goverment contracts, studio contracts, education contracts, and surprise - GL support for Linux, and their own Unix...
If I remember correctly, SGI grabbed up Intergraph's graphics workstation division in 2000.... Perhaps if they'd both played nice back in 97, things could have been very different... Think McLaren F1 on your desktop...
Was the ability to run off of a SAN volume and be relatively hardware/driver agnostic -- For example: I have a SAN with production OSs running and server hardware takes a dump in a big way... I can point a less-important machine (or spare) at a preconfigured OS image, or in a pinch, the original machine's image, do some minor tweaking, make sure it is pointed to the data share, and have service quickly restored while repairs can be made on the downed hardware.
NT4 could not do this... Win2K takes more time, and is still risky (esp w/ a difft chipset), but 2K3 has an envelope for swapping out an entire server, with a different manufacturer, model, etc...
In the legal field, finding context in a search is typically as (or more) important as finding a single word... Products like Summation (Summation.com) and Adobe's industrial strength Acrobat Capture (? - may have a new name... Server-based - uses "hot folders" that are monitored, batches, etc.) have OCR capabilities that are pretty flexible, reading from text, pdf, MS Word, JPEG, BMP, GIF, or TIFF... Of course, these can be expensive...
But, being able to get quickly to a target word is very useful indeed when the verbatim answer requires human eyes to confirm or contextualize, or,if you just next a good start point...
I used Acrobat Capture and a digital camera (I was not permitted to flatbed or sheetfeed scan - the items were deemed too "fragile") to make archive materals text-searchable for a law firm's special project, to very good result.
Granted, these materals were written in decent fonts, not handwritten, but with many graphic illustrations interspersed in them, which can trip up some OCR solutions. Capture could have read the documents' Japanese too, if I'd bought the correct Adobe plugin, and the project had required it.
Massaged correctly, OCR's come a long way, baby...
This has saved me a lot of trouble in many avenues of my financial life:
When concluding a transaction with the provider of services or goods -- such as utilities (gas, electric, etc.), revolving credit (any credit cards, or credit accounts - store or vendor accounts possibly), cell carriers, hotels, health clubs --- the list goes on -- get a "zero balance receipt."
This is a receipt prepared by the vendor that shows you owe nothing more. If you should ever have a dispute, you now have some evidence of payment. Handy thing to have.
Some vendors will not even let you close an account with a positive balance -- when they owe you money! With a zero-balance, your business is done.
It is precisely this type of invoice that the vendor must send to the credit bureaus to correct errors in your account. If you have a copy, show it to the vendor, and ask them to write a letter to the bureau(s) to that effect.
CYA. Plain and simple.
I am occasionally have tabs at my local bars... when I pay them off... I ask to see that my name is crossed off the notepad.... Saves us both an ugly dispute...
The Secret Lab was credited at the end... But that's not the whole story...
Disney has had a CG team at Feature Animation for some time.... But Disney proper has also farmed a lot of work out (around the world) for their various needs, and as such, has relationships with studios and individual artists, making an endeavor such as a divorce from Pixar a viable proposition.
The gaming industry is more akin to the entertainment industry than it is to the software industry:
Unions in the entertainment industry are hardly a new idea: Walt Disney himself was a "union-buster" in the early days of his studios, when young artists were looking to get better treatment and benefits in opposition to long hours and mediocre pay. As in live action, there is a union scale for everything from "Digital Ink and Paint," to "Director." Workers have extended benefits, and can petition in numbers to deal with grievences.
Unfortunately, while union penetration is high in the bigger studios, the strength of the industry and the union is undermined by those that moonlight non-union jobs on the side.... As a sysadmin, I've never been eligible for a Union postion, and I worked ~80 hr weeks for months at a time. And, I've worked in union-eligble positions in non-union shops for 1/3rd scale. And, even though Cali has tough labor laws, the competition is fierce and entertainment lawyers and accountants can make the notion of a decent job an uphill battle. Try working 80hr/wk in a non-union state...
Like movies, music, and TV, gaming is selling an experience, not so much a tangible product (CDs and printing are often done offshore) and potentially taking large risks with development to secure a sizeable profit. Other software is much more akin to a physical tool: Photoshop is to artist as saw is to carpenter, etc. For those that "make tools," there are unions, of course, like UAW, and one does wonder why the software industry in general isn't moving that direction.
Unions in gaming is inevitable, as the profits are becoming to real to ignore. At some point, the workers will demand better protections from exploitation - especially since many artists working in unionized entertainment cross over to gaming and vice-versa.
In the end, American companies will have to choose how much they value American workers. I have to believe that the horror stories and flagrant abuse of employment law will continue until there is a serious outcry.
Pundits were worried about lawyers and activists, votes in the trash cans, voter tampering at polling places - Rightly so - but bomb threats? What is this country coming to?
Nationally, how many polling places were disrupted (or PHYSICALLY RELOCATED) due to bomb threats?
I'd really like to see someone do time over this... Think they'll get caught/convicted?
Any time you have to deal with a technical issue that involves user interaction as a component of success, you will need to propose to management, a policy that bolsters the behavioral aspect of the solution; Users need to be made, by management, to have some degree of awareness and culpability for virus and spyware infections.
"Frequent-fires" users will be compelled to learn some digital hygine.
Most large and medium-sized businesses operating today have some sort of policy on sexual harassment/hostile workplace/conflict of interest/Internet and PC usage policy, etc. Generally, users understand that these policies are for eveyone's protection - With ~2000 PCs in the mix... This is definately where you should start... Policy Covers Your Ass.
On the technical side:
1. Router logs, intrusion detection, and sniffing as trending tools to show your boss what's up with traffic.
2. Good, solid desktop images/ app pushes/ GPO's - harden the Registry, Security Policy, individual apps as necessary. Beyond that - when a machine is sufficiently infected, it should be replaced with a re-imaged one --- it can be faster than cleaning, and is a hell of a lot more complete. This also reinforces the notion of users not storing important things locally.
3. Helpdesk tracking software - What users/machines/network segments are continually having the same problems? Does Human Resources need to be the next step for some people?
4. Desktop management software - provide your boss with stats on just what kind of crap is showing up.
5. If you must use/develop software that may enable or even contain spyware, you have a particularly tricky problem that concerns both company policy and IT best practices.
Of course, you know your boss, I don't... How you implement these suggestions is different for everyone. To some, it may seem draconian, to others, quite lax.... To some, budgets will not allow the necessary attention - for others, this kind of focus could perhaps justify a budget increase.
Oh... And consider the broswer's role in the business - what is an acceptable $$ loss for a preventable issue? Have you already spent that?
A few years ago, I was a worked for a graphics industry print publication. I noticed that oddly, for a time, Apple and Microsoft used the same PR agency, Edelman. The approaches were very different:
* Microsoft requests were met with meetings with engineers and project managers, and evaluation materials. They followed up and they gave me access to what I wanted - albeit under timed NDA sometimes.
* Apple would seldom let me talk to engineers directly, even in a moderated setting. I was offered press passes to MacWorld, but never any evaluation hardware/software, and even press releases were rare.
* Having MacWorld coincide with SIGGRAPH is a really dumb move. Journalists have tight travel budgets y'know, and we can't be 2 places @ once.
* I'm not an Apple-hater, I like their products - but their handling of the media makes it difficult to be enthusiastic about their products, especially in print.
* Only an idiot would let a lack free passes get in the way of covering something worthwhile.
You can thank NeXT running on PCs - DEC Alpha and Intel for a good many animated TV shows, and a number of features in the balance of the past decade.
Cambidge Animation's Animo (http://www.cam-ani.co.uk/) ran on this setup, and was (and still is, on IRIX and NT) a major player in the 2D animation suite market. It's used all over the world... China, Korea, India, Europe, Burbank...
I was battlefield promoted to administrate such a pipeline (OpenStep too), and think fondly of this OS when I see file operations on current NT servers crawl. What a way to get into *NIX - by diving into a bastard child of UNIX, Apple, and Intel.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear hear.... For FREE... there is no better all-around image editor that is familiar to the Windows Photoshop user.
I have GIMP at work and Paint.net, and they compliment each other well... And Irfanview, too....
To the show that never ends
So glad you could attend
Come inside
Come inside
I quit journalism because I got pressure to favor advertisers' products. I had the Exec Editor of a trade print publication attribute my name to a press release and it was called a "review." I told her that if she did it again, I'd sue for defamation of character. \
For related reasons about the integrity of the mag, I quit.
That was 2000. I can do more good as a poster than a writer...
=D
Is it possible that CD sales are down because there's no mass audience for music videos?
Gee...
Yep - I want my Laguna Beach... cough cough.. MTV...
Anyone that seriously shops for a mobile email platform comes to only one conclusion. And if they then choose a Treo, which costs much more, weighs much more, and performs comparitively poorly, they deserve what they get.
I also can't fathom anyone that looked at the patent/lawsuit issues as likely to stop RIM. The Fed is too big of a client, the product is too popular.
I was an early Handspring Visor adopter, I found much utility in Palm OS, but once I carried a Blackberry for a few months, all that was history.
Want mobile email cheap? - get a Sidekick. Want a lot of gadgety features, a lot of applications, and a keyboard? Get a Treo. Want a well-designed wireless email solution with GPS(7520) and a blossoming development climate - Get a Blackberry.
Given the battery life of mobile Windows devices - they aren't even in the running.
Old news. Granted, the 7.62mm SAW is a nice touch. These armed 'bots are remote controlled, like bomb-squad robots used by sherriff's departments all over the country. And yes, the bomb squad bots are armed: usually a single-shot 12-gauge.
These bots can be programmed to follow a sequence, and self-stabilize. And they FLY. Full-auto 12-guage.
I've seen pictures of South Korean automated sentry guns, armed w/ a 7.62 SAW, deplyed in Iraq. If I can find them, I'll post them. Supposedly, like the Phalanx, minimal user interaction is involved during "watch."
"Bigger" people than you have "gone down" for sending an email they thought was private.
A rticle.a spx?type=internetNews&storyID=2005-05-20T164453Z_0 1_EIC060235_RTRIDST_0_OUKIN-FINANCIAL-MORGANSTANLE Y-PERELMAN-EMAILS.XML>
/ 2496.htm >
y /politic al-scandal/iran-contra/>
t r/article s/2002dltr0002.html>
Four big names:
Morgan Stanley (the firm):
<URL:http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/news
Gotta save those emails, or you might be dirty-dealing....
Bill Gates:
<URL:http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2400
DOJ calls Gates on his internal emails.
Ollie North:
<URL:http://www.rotten.com/library/histor
Tower Commission reports Ollie discussed weapons sales through "private back channel" of White House email system.
"Little Nicky" Scarfo:
<URL:http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dl
Mobster Scarfo subject to warantless (under wiretap definitions) keystroke-logger, as his email was encrypted.
Your privacy is only important to you. It is encumbent on you to enforce the degree of privacy you wish to retain. Your employer has a minefield to navigate in data retention (i.e. Arthur Anderson's document retention policy, and the recent Supreme Court findings), but that does not mean that you are not being monitored.
This sounds really lame, but ultimately makes sense - some old advice I read in Phrack comes to mind: <b>"Consider how you would explain your actions (as evidenced through your employer's email system) to a jury."</b>
If you do just that, you'll be ahead of all those guys listed above...
In my experience as a contibuting editor to an industry print publication, I was, at times, pressured to favor coverage for advertisers' products, over what may have actually been more newsworthy. In the face of these tests, it occurred to me, because of the longevity of data on the Internet and the speed and ease at which information is disseminated, that I had an obligation to myself and my readers to uphold a higher standard.
When my byline was attributed to an unedited press release, as opposed to an actual product review, I quit.
Think about the changing face of journalism these days: Dan Rather, Matt Gannon, Bill O'Rielly, Hunter S. Thompson, Al Franken - all of these people have provided some form of reportage and taken on considerable controversy because of it. Whether you agree with their facts, their opinions, or their methods, what really seperates one news source from another is the effect of its' reporting: did it make you question your preconceptions? Did you gain some information that you previously lacked?
I, for one am quite glad that "blogs" are now being given more journalistic weight. Why? Because it means that people are even more skeptical. People that were skeptical of big media do not blindly turn to "the little guy" based on an underdog fantasy, they consider the opinions of the blogger to be possibly suspect as well.
Ultimately, considering the efficacy of the argument and the veracity of the facts presented MOG has certianly not convinced me that PJ works for IBM - She's convinced me that she does not truly understand the Interent medium:
1. She has no remorse about putting her name on a piece of wrtiting that has the tone of a 0day web defacement or IRC taunt (minus the l337 5p34k). And surprise! Its' going to be floating around the Web for the rest of her life (and beyond).
2. Frontier justice may rear its' ugly head and expose her personal details, and she may be targeted by some kind of retribution.
3. The constraints of physical space, finance, and logic do not apply equally to all situations, as some people actually do work where from they live, and like to keep their home lives somewhat private.
Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Right you are... The BES server can enforce the backup policy, the backup file location can be redirected (or more invisibly, copied via script) from the local PC to a server anyway, and then audited.
From the article, it looks like some of these folks were using the Blackberry Web Client (ie, Blackberry.net) instead of BES as their redirector. That doesn't mean you couldn't still snag the backups.
Of course, if the business owns the accounts, they simply ask Blackberry for the emails (or for them to be BCC'd to a company audit account), which would not be the property of the end user anyway.
Alternately, for future offenders out there: When you get fired/quit, you prolly would want to erase the device completely (Backup/Restore Tool) before you hand it over. Doing so might alert you to the location of previous backup files... Doh! Too late... What about the fax machine? Can be audited too...
Plotting something? Stick to voice...
Or, find a developer that has written a small Java-based encrypted email client. I haven't been looking, but I'm sure someone has, somewhere.
Crucial bit of history that you touched on with Intergraph....
Intergraph had been selling Unix workstations to government shops and major engineering contractors for years (NASA, General Motors,etc.), and engaging in healthy competitition with SGI, who was alreading aiming for Hollywood... But Intergraph saw the future, and hotrodded the PCI bus and AGP/PCI-based graphics pipelines straight into the heart of the entertainment biz. Problem is, they got into some tangles with Intel -- the chipmaker leveraged out some of the reciprocity in their relationship and claimed to be the owner of some key technologies. 3DLabs saw that the iron was hot in the high-power GPU workstation market, and struck, taking on the Wildcat cards (from Intergraph's Extreme 3D). In car terms, think of an Intergraph PC as an Corbra - a capable performer with highly-massaged, yet at it's root, massive American V8.
Meanwhile, SGI was getting mixed up in Cray and Microsoft... On on hand, looking at the supercomputer as their future, and on the other, re-inventing Windows NT. SGI would be Ferrari, a long time rival, with many consistent wins, but due to timing, tripped up by being pulled in too many directions, and spending too much on development, not enough on brute force.
Around '98, HP, Compaq, and IBM (and yes, newcomer Dell, too) began to realize that they could now compete with Intergraph workstations, if their graphics cards were hot enough, and their motherboards were piped right. It used to be that no one would sell you a Wildcat card if your system was not on a very short list. Elsa, Evans & Sutherland, Diamond, and 3DLabs all cranked out great cards in the late 90's, but more importantly, great drivers - that worked with all the up and coming, user-freindly, affordable 3D software (3DMAX).
HP really cracked that nut, with goverment contracts, studio contracts, education contracts, and surprise - GL support for Linux, and their own Unix...
If I remember correctly, SGI grabbed up Intergraph's graphics workstation division in 2000.... Perhaps if they'd both played nice back in 97, things could have been very different... Think McLaren F1 on your desktop...
Was the ability to run off of a SAN volume and be relatively hardware/driver agnostic -- For example: I have a SAN with production OSs running and server hardware takes a dump in a big way... I can point a less-important machine (or spare) at a preconfigured OS image, or in a pinch, the original machine's image, do some minor tweaking, make sure it is pointed to the data share, and have service quickly restored while repairs can be made on the downed hardware.
NT4 could not do this... Win2K takes more time, and is still risky (esp w/ a difft chipset), but 2K3 has an envelope for swapping out an entire server, with a different manufacturer, model, etc...
Excellent point!
,if you just next a good start point...
In the legal field, finding context in a search is typically as (or more) important as finding a single word... Products like Summation (Summation.com) and Adobe's industrial strength Acrobat Capture (? - may have a new name... Server-based - uses "hot folders" that are monitored, batches, etc.) have OCR capabilities that are pretty flexible, reading from text, pdf, MS Word, JPEG, BMP, GIF, or TIFF... Of course, these can be expensive...
But, being able to get quickly to a target word is very useful indeed when the verbatim answer requires human eyes to confirm or contextualize, or
I used Acrobat Capture and a digital camera (I was not permitted to flatbed or sheetfeed scan - the items were deemed too "fragile") to make archive materals text-searchable for a law firm's special project, to very good result.
Granted, these materals were written in decent fonts, not handwritten, but with many graphic illustrations interspersed in them, which can trip up some OCR solutions. Capture could have read the documents' Japanese too, if I'd bought the correct Adobe plugin, and the project had required it.
Massaged correctly, OCR's come a long way, baby...
This has saved me a lot of trouble in many avenues of my financial life:
When concluding a transaction with the provider of services or goods -- such as utilities (gas, electric, etc.), revolving credit (any credit cards, or credit accounts - store or vendor accounts possibly), cell carriers, hotels, health clubs --- the list goes on -- get a "zero balance receipt."
This is a receipt prepared by the vendor that shows you owe nothing more. If you should ever have a dispute, you now have some evidence of payment. Handy thing to have.
Some vendors will not even let you close an account with a positive balance -- when they owe you money! With a zero-balance, your business is done.
It is precisely this type of invoice that the vendor must send to the credit bureaus to correct errors in your account. If you have a copy, show it to the vendor, and ask them to write a letter to the bureau(s) to that effect.
CYA. Plain and simple.
I am occasionally have tabs at my local bars... when I pay them off... I ask to see that my name is crossed off the notepad.... Saves us both an ugly dispute...
As far as a "bricks and mortar" studio, they've been down this road before...
Anybody remember this (pretty cool-looking) Disney flick?
Dinosaur
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/
No, it wasn't a Pixar film...
The Secret Lab was credited at the end... But that's not the whole story...
Disney has had a CG team at Feature Animation for some time.... But Disney proper has also farmed a lot of work out (around the world) for their various needs, and as such, has relationships with studios and individual artists, making an endeavor such as a divorce from Pixar a viable proposition.
I hate to cite AICN, but this is a pretty good read, and it jives with what I'd heard at the time:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12700
Dinosaur credits:
http://www.dinosaur.org/disneydinosaur.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/fullcredits
Anyone out there closer to the source care to shed more light?
There's an old saying in animation:
"Everyone works for Disney at least once."
Agreed - to elaborate...
The gaming industry is more akin to the entertainment industry than it is to the software industry:
Unions in the entertainment industry are hardly a new idea: Walt Disney himself was a "union-buster" in the early days of his studios, when young artists were looking to get better treatment and benefits in opposition to long hours and mediocre pay. As in live action, there is a union scale for everything from "Digital Ink and Paint," to "Director." Workers have extended benefits, and can petition in numbers to deal with grievences.
Unfortunately, while union penetration is high in the bigger studios, the strength of the industry and the union is undermined by those that moonlight non-union jobs on the side.... As a sysadmin, I've never been eligible for a Union postion, and I worked ~80 hr weeks for months at a time. And, I've worked in union-eligble positions in non-union shops for 1/3rd scale. And, even though Cali has tough labor laws, the competition is fierce and entertainment lawyers and accountants can make the notion of a decent job an uphill battle. Try working 80hr/wk in a non-union state...
Like movies, music, and TV, gaming is selling an experience, not so much a tangible product (CDs and printing are often done offshore) and potentially taking large risks with development to
secure a sizeable profit. Other software is much more akin to a physical tool: Photoshop is to artist as saw is to carpenter, etc. For those that "make tools," there are unions, of course, like UAW, and one does wonder why the software industry in general isn't moving that direction.
Unions in gaming is inevitable, as the profits are becoming to real to ignore. At some point, the workers will demand better protections from exploitation - especially since many artists working in unionized entertainment cross over to gaming and vice-versa.
In the end, American companies will have to choose how much they value American workers. I have to believe that the horror stories and flagrant abuse of employment law will continue until there is a serious outcry.
Let's see what this legal "tool against terrorism" can do with a real incident:
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AP Reports: Arizona Bomb Threat forces Poll Relocation and Evacuation of Children from Nearby School
http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=2512654&na
Pundits were worried about lawyers and activists, votes in the trash cans, voter tampering at polling places - Rightly so - but bomb threats? What is this country coming to?
Nationally, how many polling places were disrupted (or PHYSICALLY RELOCATED) due to bomb threats?
I'd really like to see someone do time over this...
Think they'll get caught/convicted?
Seen this?:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/2994556245611989/
It's a sub-$250 pc (w/ monitor) running WinCE + XP extensions - actually intended for Russia, Mexico, India, other markets....
In the US, I'd like to be able to go to a 7-11 or Circle-K and rent one of these for $10/day if I needed to... Or something....
I used the Engadget link 'cuz of the cool photo...
Any time you have to deal with a technical issue that involves user interaction as a component of success, you will need to propose to management, a policy that bolsters the behavioral aspect of the solution; Users need to be made, by management, to have some degree of awareness and culpability for virus and spyware infections.
"Frequent-fires" users will be compelled to learn some digital hygine.
Most large and medium-sized businesses operating today have some sort of policy on sexual harassment/hostile workplace/conflict of interest/Internet and PC usage policy, etc. Generally, users understand that these policies are for eveyone's protection - With ~2000 PCs in the mix... This is definately where you should start... Policy Covers Your Ass.
On the technical side:
1. Router logs, intrusion detection, and sniffing as trending tools to show your boss what's up with traffic.
2. Good, solid desktop images/ app pushes/ GPO's - harden the Registry, Security Policy, individual apps as necessary. Beyond that - when a machine is sufficiently infected, it should be replaced with a re-imaged one --- it can be faster than cleaning, and is a hell of a lot more complete. This also reinforces the notion of users not storing important things locally.
3. Helpdesk tracking software - What users/machines/network segments are continually having the same problems? Does Human Resources need to be the next step for some people?
4. Desktop management software - provide your boss with stats on just what kind of crap is showing up.
5. If you must use/develop software that may enable or even contain spyware, you have a particularly tricky problem that concerns both company policy and IT best practices.
Of course, you know your boss, I don't... How you implement these suggestions is different for everyone. To some, it may seem draconian, to others, quite lax.... To some, budgets will not allow the necessary attention - for others, this kind of focus could perhaps justify a budget increase.
Oh... And consider the broswer's role in the business - what is an acceptable $$ loss for a preventable issue? Have you already spent that?
My $.02
Apple (er, Steve Jobs) got there first...
Remember NeXT Step? Open Step?
OS X is a direct descendent of the *NIX-with-an-Apple-GUI bunch.
Great OS, way ahead of its' time...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEXTSTEP
A few years ago, I was a worked for a graphics industry print publication. I noticed that oddly, for a time, Apple and Microsoft used the same PR agency, Edelman. The approaches were very different:
* Microsoft requests were met with meetings with engineers and project managers, and evaluation materials. They followed up and they gave me access to what I wanted - albeit under timed NDA sometimes.
* Apple would seldom let me talk to engineers directly, even in a moderated setting. I was offered press passes to MacWorld, but never any evaluation hardware/software, and even press releases were rare.
* Having MacWorld coincide with SIGGRAPH is a really dumb move. Journalists have tight travel budgets y'know, and we can't be 2 places @ once.
* I'm not an Apple-hater, I like their products - but their handling of the media makes it difficult to be enthusiastic about their products, especially in print.
* Only an idiot would let a lack free passes get in the way of covering something worthwhile.
You can thank NeXT running on PCs - DEC Alpha and Intel for a good many animated TV shows, and a number of features in the balance of the past decade.
Cambidge Animation's Animo (http://www.cam-ani.co.uk/) ran on this setup, and was (and still is, on IRIX and NT) a major player in the 2D animation suite market. It's used all over the world... China, Korea, India, Europe, Burbank...
I was battlefield promoted to administrate such a pipeline (OpenStep too), and think fondly of this OS when I see file operations on current NT servers crawl. What a way to get into *NIX - by diving into a bastard child of UNIX, Apple, and Intel.