I wish I could take credit for this but it was posted by an AC way back.... it may be closer to the truth than anyone could have guessed:
"150 years from now when men find the crashed probe on mars, the LCD display will probably read: PH33R/\/\y 31337 h4x0r1n6 5K1LLZ!
- K1n6 Kr4x0r! 1999"
"But it doesn't work that way. In the "real world", access is something that is given, and it is assumed that if you have not been given access that you should have none. Why should we make special rules for the digital world? Unless you are given access, you have no right to be there."
I disagree. It IS different online. Think of FTP sites. Where would we be if we had to request access to all of those great publiclly available resources?
After reading posts about this, I think that this could be one of the best things to happen to America. Think about it -- the media companies switch to pay-per-view mode and drive away much of their viewer base and eliminate the need for advertising all at the same time. The net result will be that Americans will move to other forms of entertainment such as *gasp* reading a book, going to the theater, or *another gasp* spending quality time with their families.
The media will lose the strangle hold they have on the American mind and people will begin to think for themselves for the first time in decades.
Of course, they (the media companies) will probably lobby (and win) that TVs should be required in every household for the good of mankind.......
It could also be that the broadcasters see the writing on the wall.... that avdertising revenue is going to become a thing of the past when everyone out there has a Tivo.
If they can charge a fee to view a show then they can do away with the advertising. I doubt that would happen as greed will play a big part in what develops but it is possible.
The way I see it, they will wait for enough market penetration before they launch the fee based viewing. Think it impossible? How much do you now pay to use a non-home branch MAC?
There is nothing hypocritical about it. Whether it's a book or a CD, I can do anything I want with it so long as it doesn't violate copyright laws. Selling it outright, so long as I don't keep a copy for myself is perfectly legal. This isn't the problem the RIAA has with Napster. The problem is that Napster *allows* (and it is the choice of the user not Napster) to go way beyond the fair use provisions of the copyright laws in that you can download music that you didn't already purchase in some other format. But that's a whole other discussion.
The only difference is that music is widely available in several formats. Books are not. But that still doesn't change anything.
isn't a peak, it's businesses collectively going back to the drawing board to try and figure out how to make money off of the Net. So far, and with the exception of the porn industry, only a few have pulled this off.
Personally, I hope they never figure it out. The minute they do the average surfer is toast. If anyone thinks for a second that their privacy would be protected in the face of a fat profit, they're seriously mistaken. Once the formula is figured out, they'll use the Net to track everything we do with impunity. No politician in their right mind would speak out against a large profit margin to protect our rights.
What we need to do is keep the hype going. Let them think that the answer is right around the corner, when it really is just one large circle. For if the know they can never make a profit, they'll pull out entirely, leaving a pretty barren Net.
If all communications are being archived wouldn't moot expose far more data than just your email?
I mean, if all I transmit is email then that's all they can archive. If, however, every single thing I do on my machine involves communication with a server then they get everything.
If they can find a way to trace the packets, then they can single you out and force you to give up your keys. Then, instead of just giving them the keys to your mail, they get the entire 'hard drive'.
No question about the complexity of the configurations out there today. I've been saying the same thing for years but there was always someone who would come back with the same question:
"What's Apple's excuse then? Why does my stock PowerMac with nothing but Apple Hardware and Apple software consistently crash for no apparent reason?"
You know what? It's a great question. Yes, it's near impossible to test all of the possible configs out there for the PC. But Apple controls what goes into their base systems and they code the OS, yet it's still crash prone.
I can think of another quality control problem with the line of PowerBooks that melted down. I'm sure that there are several more (and I'm sure someone will post them too) but my point is, and I'm picking on Apple because they're as American as apple pie (lame pun intended), that here is a manufacturer who controls almost every aspect of what they ship from the ground up and they still have serious problems shiping a low defect product.
I have to agree with the author of the article for the most part: the corps don't care so long as their stock is on the rise.
To the Mac fans out there: please don't take this as a flame against Apple. It's not. You should be ticked off everytime your Finder bombs out. I think Apple is a typical example of what the author is griping about. I'm sure there are many others.
You're right. Telling them that you know what you're doing only helps when you've got second level or higher on the line. First level is usually reading from a script and wouldn't know how to 'shorten' it in a useful way without getting lost anyway.
My typical call to @home goes something like "My config hasn't changed in months and it was working fine 10 minutes ago. I can ping *my* side of *your* router and about 5 other nodes on my loop. Can you ping me? No? Ok. I'll hold for second level. Thanks." It's getting to the point where I know their scripts as well as they do.
"Back at AOL (am i violating my NDA here?) we used to fuck around all the time to try to ease the boredom of monotonous "i can't sign on" calls." and "It wasn't uncommon for those of us who knew our shit to fall asleep on calls or put people on hold to run over and see what our friend was up to. Half of the calls i took, i would forget the problem, come back from chatting 5 minutes later, and tell the customer one of several canned answers i had for that sort of thing. (usually: "you need to delete and reinstall AOL ma'am")"
Sorry, but that's slacking in my book. Someone who was trying to resolve the problem would work to actually resolve it.
I'm not arguing the monotony of the job. I know what it's like to have some raving asshole, moron on the other end of the line where all you want to do is reach through the phone and strangle the misserable bastard. I know it well... I worked on a support desk for a few months until I started to not care anymore. I promptly got out but *never* did I once put someone on hold to goof off just to come back and give a canned answer or pass them off to someone else. I now run the network operations for a publicly traded company. We have a call center of about 100 staff (non-tech related). Something close to 75 of them are worthless and almost to a person, under 30. I watch these people go out of their way to not do their jobs. They do it because they know that someone else will pick up the slack. Worst part is, IT'S A GREAT PLACE TO WORK! I mean, really, it's a nice environment. Best I've ever seen. We don't time, monitor or pressure the call center staff in any way. They get generous breaks and other 'sanity checks' and the staff level is maintained so that the normal call volume per operator is around 20 calls/day at an average 10 minutes/call. Yet they still spend most of the day chatting it up with their neighbors, surfing the net and making personal calls while the average time in queue is 7 to 10 minutes. It drives me nuts. My company really goes above and beyond to provide a good work environment and it gets shit on for it.
I'm part of that twenty-something generation. My entire staff is under 25. They all bust their asses off each and every day and I take care of them for it. I pay them well, they get more comp days than I can count and I never question them or dock them if they need to leave early. All I ask is that they work and be there when I need them. It works. They don't take advantage of it nor do they complain when we have an emergency and they need to stay until the wee hours of the morning.
The problem, which is also my point, is too many twenty-somethings have little or no work ethic and will never be successful, nor do they deserve to be, until they do. Most of them in the tech field don't even qualify as script kiddies because they're too lazy to pilfer someone else's hacks but they want to work in 'computers' because they think it's an easy, fat paycheck. Guess what, reality sucks. There are plenty of real sysadmins reading/. who know what it's like to put in 36 hours straight and most of them, I would venture, are young but they have a decent work ethic. They deserve every cent they make and probably much, much more. Unfortunately, I think they're a small minority for the age group.
However, instead of being a typical slacker who wastes everyone's time bitching about how your job sucks, how you deserve more money while doing a piss poor job all along, just get out of it.
That's the problem with far too many kids nowadays: They see all these twenty-something millionaires and think that they deserve the same but are too lazy to lift a finger, let alone actually *work* at something. Here's a clue: Try earning it. Come up with the million dollar idea and execute it. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
The Olympic games are nothing more than a two week long commercial anyway. The only true sport left is the race to see who can grab the most market share. The one with the most $$$ when the whistle blows wins. It wouldn't matter to me if the were exclusively broadcast on the net -- I still wouldn't watch. The way I see it, that's less bandwidth being drained away on useless content.
If there was a true, positive, lasting impact on the world as a result of all the money grabbing, I would reconsider my opinion. But, alas, this isn't the case. The economics just don't trickle down. There are no long-term, well paying jobs created in the cities hosting the games and the licensing arangements are setup to bleed as much out of the fans as possible while providing as much of a tax break as possible to the sponsors (how else can a city win it's bid to host the games) so all that is left when the games are over is one huge mess to clean up. And don't forget to add the fact that every single terrorist orginization out there just drools over the chance to blow something up during a world-wide broadcast event. I just fail to see the positive in it all.
As the Simpson's so aptly pointed out, look at all the wonderful things the Olympics did for Sarayevo.
Maybe I live in a cave, but I personally have never seen an AMD advertisment on TV or in the trade mags.
That AMD is gaining so much market share from Intel is indeed a tribute to their price and performance but I'm sure they could do even better if they would launch a real advertising campaign.
Besides, someone needs to take a shot at those blue Intel whatever they ares.... everytime I see those ads I want to puke.
It's pretty obvious that SmartFilter is aimed at businesses NOT home users, libraries or schools. Just take a look at the list. It blocks way too many useful, honest to goodness web sites. HOWEVER, if I wanted to seriously curb non-work related surfing, SmartFilter looks pretty good to me. It blocks the types of sites that most surfers hit at work... travel related, ecommerce, entertainment, etc.
I look at our usage logs every single day and sites like those are where most of the traffic is going.
I'm not defending censorship... I hate the thought as much as most of us do. But I think that this particular product is being taken out of context. It's being marketed towards businesses. That's clear from the product page. Can it be used for other reasons, sure. But, sorry, businesses have every right to restrict what is done on their hardware and over their lines.
From looking at the product page, SmartFilter isn't really aimed at 'home' users -- it's marketed towards corporations.
While I am a strongly against any form of censorship in libraries and such, I support businesses in their quest to limit surfing in the work place. SmartFilter's blacklist is absolutely geared at restricting access to 'non-business' related sites. If I were looking to block categories of pages, those would be what I would shoot for with exceptions made to the categories relevant to the type of business my company does.
Presently, my workplace does not employ filtering software. However, only those users with specific business reasons are given access to the Internet.
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I wish I could take credit for this but it was posted by an AC way back.... it may be closer to the truth than anyone could have guessed:
/\/\y 31337 h4x0r1n6 5K1LLZ!
"150 years from now when men find the crashed probe on mars, the LCD display will probably read: PH33R
- K1n6 Kr4x0r! 1999"
I disagree. It IS different online. Think of FTP sites. Where would we be if we had to request access to all of those great publiclly available resources?
Not to knock the science of the article but the whole thing sounds like something Lex Luther and the Legion of Doom would come up with.
Mod this up! That was way funny.
"this is like taxing cars because some of them can be used as getaway vehicle in a bank robbery ;)"
Shhhhh! Quit giving them ideas.
After reading posts about this, I think that this could be one of the best things to happen to America. Think about it -- the media companies switch to pay-per-view mode and drive away much of their viewer base and eliminate the need for advertising all at the same time. The net result will be that Americans will move to other forms of entertainment such as *gasp* reading a book, going to the theater, or *another gasp* spending quality time with their families.
The media will lose the strangle hold they have on the American mind and people will begin to think for themselves for the first time in decades.
Of course, they (the media companies) will probably lobby (and win) that TVs should be required in every household for the good of mankind.......
It could also be that the broadcasters see the writing on the wall.... that avdertising revenue is going to become a thing of the past when everyone out there has a Tivo.
If they can charge a fee to view a show then they can do away with the advertising. I doubt that would happen as greed will play a big part in what develops but it is possible.
The way I see it, they will wait for enough market penetration before they launch the fee based viewing. Think it impossible? How much do you now pay to use a non-home branch MAC?
There is nothing hypocritical about it. Whether it's a book or a CD, I can do anything I want with it so long as it doesn't violate copyright laws. Selling it outright, so long as I don't keep a copy for myself is perfectly legal. This isn't the problem the RIAA has with Napster. The problem is that Napster *allows* (and it is the choice of the user not Napster) to go way beyond the fair use provisions of the copyright laws in that you can download music that you didn't already purchase in some other format. But that's a whole other discussion.
The only difference is that music is widely available in several formats. Books are not. But that still doesn't change anything.
Ahh.... an NVoodia card, you mean?
isn't a peak, it's businesses collectively going back to the drawing board to try and figure out how to make money off of the Net. So far, and with the exception of the porn industry, only a few have pulled this off.
Personally, I hope they never figure it out. The minute they do the average surfer is toast. If anyone thinks for a second that their privacy would be protected in the face of a fat profit, they're seriously mistaken. Once the formula is figured out, they'll use the Net to track everything we do with impunity. No politician in their right mind would speak out against a large profit margin to protect our rights.
What we need to do is keep the hype going. Let them think that the answer is right around the corner, when it really is just one large circle. For if the know they can never make a profit, they'll pull out entirely, leaving a pretty barren Net.
I just checked my maps and I sure don't see any possibility of an inner ocean in Europe. As for the chances to find life in Europe, well, any takers?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
If all communications are being archived wouldn't moot expose far more data than just your email?
I mean, if all I transmit is email then that's all they can archive. If, however, every single thing I do on my machine involves communication with a server then they get everything.
If they can find a way to trace the packets, then they can single you out and force you to give up your keys. Then, instead of just giving them the keys to your mail, they get the entire 'hard drive'.
No question about the complexity of the configurations out there today. I've been saying the same thing for years but there was always someone who would come back with the same question:
"What's Apple's excuse then? Why does my stock PowerMac with nothing but Apple Hardware and Apple software consistently crash for no apparent reason?"
You know what? It's a great question. Yes, it's near impossible to test all of the possible configs out there for the PC. But Apple controls what goes into their base systems and they code the OS, yet it's still crash prone.
I can think of another quality control problem with the line of PowerBooks that melted down. I'm sure that there are several more (and I'm sure someone will post them too) but my point is, and I'm picking on Apple because they're as American as apple pie (lame pun intended), that here is a manufacturer who controls almost every aspect of what they ship from the ground up and they still have serious problems shiping a low defect product.
I have to agree with the author of the article for the most part: the corps don't care so long as their stock is on the rise.
To the Mac fans out there: please don't take this as a flame against Apple. It's not. You should be ticked off everytime your Finder bombs out. I think Apple is a typical example of what the author is griping about. I'm sure there are many others.
You're right. Telling them that you know what you're doing only helps when you've got second level or higher on the line. First level is usually reading from a script and wouldn't know how to 'shorten' it in a useful way without getting lost anyway.
My typical call to @home goes something like "My config hasn't changed in months and it was working fine 10 minutes ago. I can ping *my* side of *your* router and about 5 other nodes on my loop. Can you ping me? No? Ok. I'll hold for second level. Thanks." It's getting to the point where I know their scripts as well as they do.
Perhaps I read something wrong:
/. who know what it's like to put in 36 hours straight and most of them, I would venture, are young but they have a decent work ethic. They deserve every cent they make and probably much, much more. Unfortunately, I think they're a small minority for the age group.
"Back at AOL (am i violating my NDA here?) we used to fuck around all the time to try to ease the boredom of monotonous "i can't sign on" calls." and "It wasn't uncommon for those of us who knew our shit to fall asleep on calls or put people on hold to run over and see what our friend was up to. Half of the calls i took, i would forget the problem, come back from chatting 5 minutes later, and tell the customer one of several canned answers i had for that sort of thing. (usually: "you need to delete and reinstall AOL ma'am")"
Sorry, but that's slacking in my book. Someone who was trying to resolve the problem would work to actually resolve it.
I'm not arguing the monotony of the job. I know what it's like to have some raving asshole, moron on the other end of the line where all you want to do is reach through the phone and strangle the misserable bastard. I know it well... I worked on a support desk for a few months until I started to not care anymore. I promptly got out but *never* did I once put someone on hold to goof off just to come back and give a canned answer or pass them off to someone else. I now run the network operations for a publicly traded company. We have a call center of about 100 staff (non-tech related). Something close to 75 of them are worthless and almost to a person, under 30. I watch these people go out of their way to not do their jobs. They do it because they know that someone else will pick up the slack. Worst part is, IT'S A GREAT PLACE TO WORK! I mean, really, it's a nice environment. Best I've ever seen. We don't time, monitor or pressure the call center staff in any way. They get generous breaks and other 'sanity checks' and the staff level is maintained so that the normal call volume per operator is around 20 calls/day at an average 10 minutes/call. Yet they still spend most of the day chatting it up with their neighbors, surfing the net and making personal calls while the average time in queue is 7 to 10 minutes. It drives me nuts. My company really goes above and beyond to provide a good work environment and it gets shit on for it.
I'm part of that twenty-something generation. My entire staff is under 25. They all bust their asses off each and every day and I take care of them for it. I pay them well, they get more comp days than I can count and I never question them or dock them if they need to leave early. All I ask is that they work and be there when I need them. It works. They don't take advantage of it nor do they complain when we have an emergency and they need to stay until the wee hours of the morning.
The problem, which is also my point, is too many twenty-somethings have little or no work ethic and will never be successful, nor do they deserve to be, until they do. Most of them in the tech field don't even qualify as script kiddies because they're too lazy to pilfer someone else's hacks but they want to work in 'computers' because they think it's an easy, fat paycheck. Guess what, reality sucks. There are plenty of real sysadmins reading
You're absolutely right: Tech support IS hell.
However, instead of being a typical slacker who wastes everyone's time bitching about how your job sucks, how you deserve more money while doing a piss poor job all along, just get out of it.
That's the problem with far too many kids nowadays: They see all these twenty-something millionaires and think that they deserve the same but are too lazy to lift a finger, let alone actually *work* at something. Here's a clue: Try earning it. Come up with the million dollar idea and execute it. Otherwise, quit your bitching.
The Olympic games are nothing more than a two week long commercial anyway. The only true sport left is the race to see who can grab the most market share. The one with the most $$$ when the whistle blows wins. It wouldn't matter to me if the were exclusively broadcast on the net -- I still wouldn't watch. The way I see it, that's less bandwidth being drained away on useless content.
If there was a true, positive, lasting impact on the world as a result of all the money grabbing, I would reconsider my opinion. But, alas, this isn't the case. The economics just don't trickle down. There are no long-term, well paying jobs created in the cities hosting the games and the licensing arangements are setup to bleed as much out of the fans as possible while providing as much of a tax break as possible to the sponsors (how else can a city win it's bid to host the games) so all that is left when the games are over is one huge mess to clean up. And don't forget to add the fact that every single terrorist orginization out there just drools over the chance to blow something up during a world-wide broadcast event. I just fail to see the positive in it all.
As the Simpson's so aptly pointed out, look at all the wonderful things the Olympics did for Sarayevo.
Maybe I live in a cave, but I personally have never seen an AMD advertisment on TV or in the trade mags.
That AMD is gaining so much market share from Intel is indeed a tribute to their price and performance but I'm sure they could do even better if they would launch a real advertising campaign.
Besides, someone needs to take a shot at those blue Intel whatever they ares.... everytime I see those ads I want to puke.
The incentive will be when they change file formats yet again. You'll need to upgrade if you want to open files created in the newer versions.
It's pretty obvious that SmartFilter is aimed at businesses NOT home users, libraries or schools. Just take a look at the list. It blocks way too many useful, honest to goodness web sites. HOWEVER, if I wanted to seriously curb non-work related surfing, SmartFilter looks pretty good to me. It blocks the types of sites that most surfers hit at work... travel related, ecommerce, entertainment, etc.
I look at our usage logs every single day and sites like those are where most of the traffic is going.
I'm not defending censorship... I hate the thought as much as most of us do. But I think that this particular product is being taken out of context. It's being marketed towards businesses. That's clear from the product page. Can it be used for other reasons, sure. But, sorry, businesses have every right to restrict what is done on their hardware and over their lines.
From looking at the product page, SmartFilter isn't really aimed at 'home' users -- it's marketed towards corporations.
While I am a strongly against any form of censorship in libraries and such, I support businesses in their quest to limit surfing in the work place. SmartFilter's blacklist is absolutely geared at restricting access to 'non-business' related sites. If I were looking to block categories of pages, those would be what I would shoot for with exceptions made to the categories relevant to the type of business my company does.
Presently, my workplace does not employ filtering software. However, only those users with specific business reasons are given access to the Internet.
"Computers are just simple turing machines. This means that everything they do is utterly predictable."
You obviously don't run Windows on your PC.
Sorry, couldn't resist.