...but ideally it's not a good idea to practice ass-covering over doing something productive.
Every company of reasonable size has one or more recalcitrant users who refuse to change the way they do things, period-- and the higher up the org chart you go, the more likely you are to find such people. If I didn't have experience dealing with these sort of people, I would not attach so much importance to CYOA maneuvers.
At my last job, the IT department faced a user revolt that stopped just shy of torches-and-pitchforks, over a newly-instituted, mandatory password-change-every-60-days policy. By day 62 (i.e. two days after the first mandatory password change), we were forced to relent and let everyone go back to using "password" or their first name, and never having to change it. But guess whose heads would have rolled if we were ever 0wn3d because of an easily-guessed password?
I'm all for doing the best possible job, but I'm also all for not getting fired because someone else was a moron but decided it was my fault.
If the user doesn't want to be bothered backing up their data, make them sign a waiver absolving you of responsibility when (not IF) disaster strikes and s/he loses vital data. At least then, when they're angry and upset and looking for a chump to take the fall for their stupidity, you've got a convenient ass-cover with their autograph on it, and it won't cost you your job.:-)
Reducing a product to an insanely cheap price won't work, because you just can't beat free.
Sure you can.
I'd pay a nickel a song in a second, for 128Kbps or 192Kbps MP3 files that downloaded quickly, and that I could freely burn to CD or transfer to any other playback device as I (NOT Hilary Rosen or any other of those RIAA fucks) saw fit.
Right now with KaZaa [Lite], I usually have to download the same song multiple times before I get a file that is the entire song, not cut off in the middle, and is of high enough quality to be a keeper. And unless you get really lucky (or listen to nothing but Top 40 corporate CRAP that EVERYONE has on their HDDs), you don't get really speedy downloads.
I don't mind paying for a decent product, but the RIAA wants to sell me the tires and then tell me when and where I can drive on them. As long as they want to foist DRM shit on me and take my money in exchange for a bunch of restrictions, they can kiss my ass in Macy's window.
If so, first off, it is NOT free-- according to the web site it costs $64 for a single-user license.
Secondly, a "3rd party utility" != "OS support." OS support would be if Microsoft built the ability right into Windows. The Mac can transparently read and write PC-formatted disks. The user doesn't have to download and install anything, or even change a setting to enable it. It's there from the moment you power on the Mac when you take it out of the box.
A different "stink" is the lack of Macdrive support for other OSses. Whereas Apps and special hardware are their own deal, the lack of support for mac disk formats is another. In the best interest of Apple buyers, and people sharing data with them, it is _needed_ to buy third party stuff like MacOpener for windows from dataviz.
Awwww, poor baby. Cry me a river.
Your OS of choice doesn't support the Mac filesystem. That is Apple's fault how, exactly? Macs have been able to read and write PC disks (floppy, Zip, CD, etc-- even HDs, in some cases) for YEARS, out of the box. Apple saw it was an important capability to have, so they added it into the OS. Microsoft wants to lock your ass into their platform for life to serve their own interests, whereas Apple needs to be somewhat compatible with the Windows world to make things easier on their users.
The iPod is an *Apple* device designed for use with *Apple* computers. If you're using some third party hack to make it work with Windows, tough shit if you don't like something about it. If you want to use it in the most hassle-free way possible, buy a Mac. Otherwise, shut up and pick from the tens of MP3 players that are Windows-only or fully cross-platform. Nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy the iPod.
And by the way, how does it feel to want/have a cool device that is better supported on some other OS than your OS of choice? Mac users have been on the outside looking in for as long as Windows has ruled the market. Now the shoe is on the other foot and some of you Windows people can see what we've endured for so long. It's not nice when a company tells you that your money is not worth their time or effort, is it?
...the producers of The Matrix will funnel cash through a front corporation to fund the re-emergence of Films88.com in Sydney, then tip off the MPAA. The MPAA will then shut Sydney down, and the camera crews will spring into action.:-)
If that doesn't work, Plan B is to have the BSA tell Sydney to 'prepare to have your software licenses audited'-- as we all know, that can basically cripple whatever entity it's aimed at for a while.
~Philly
Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 2
Joo Janta is making a new version of their Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses. The new version turns black when you are in danger of taking food out of Jack Valenti's mouth by seeing something that you haven't paid for.
The company announced that they will soon enter the audio products market with a pair of Peril-Sensitive Headphones, that pass through all sounds except when the wearer is in danger of depriving Hilary Rosen of a nickel by hearing something they haven't paid for-- then they react by cancelling out all sound until the danger to her income has passed.
...because we need coffee cups that says "Caution, contents HOT!" and commercials that have "Don't try this yourself" at the bottom of the screen as the SUV being advertised drives vertically up the side of a skyscraper and parks on the roof. In another few years, they'll probably have to interrupt movies every 15 minutes with a slide of text bearing a disclaimer that says, "The events you are watching are not really happening, but are fictional." Actually, this has already happened once, in 1983.
Contrary to popular belief, the primary reason to declare bankruptcy is not to enable you to screw your creditors, loot the company treasury, and head off to someplace warm that has no extradition treaty with the U.S. It's to keep creditors off your back until you get your ducks in a row.
I got DSL from SpeakEasy/Covad in January 2002, to rid myself of Comcast's crappy cable modem service. If they end up getting the plug pulled on them by the bastards at Verizon, I'll be pretty pissed off, because I want to be able to run servers in my house without worrying about jackbooted AUP Police kicking down my door.
Comcast is the only cable internet service provider in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so they have a monopoly on that market.
Same in Philadelphia. Another cable company, RCN, tried to come into the city to create competition, but Comcast fought them tooth and nail and kept them out.
And we are not seeing any kind of advantages because one company controls everything. Comcast's customer service sucks rocks, and my cable bill has gone up and up and up... a friend of mine recently spent three weeks fighting them to get them to fix a problem on their end. I ditched them in January to get DSL because I wanted to run servers in my house. And now the God damned FCC is gonna let the telcos pull the plug on the independent DSL providers and I'll be stuck with Verizon's suck-ass DSL and no ability to run servers in my house for $50/mo like I'm doing now.
As a side note, it's even worse in Philadelphia if you're a sports fan, because Comcast owns the NHL and NBA teams here. So if you want to watch home games on TV, you have to have Comcast cable TV. Comcast refuses to sell game broadcast rights to any satellite provider, for any price.
Expect things to get worse once the AT&T merger goes through.
Homer: Hey, do we get to land on an aircraft carrier? Pilot: No, Sir, the closest vessel in the USS Walter Mondale. It's a laundry ship. They'll take you the rest of the way.
Nope, it's not. There's a fan that draws cool air in the bottom of the dome and vents hot air out an array of holes around the base of the display arm.
The space inside the iMac was just too confined to allow for normal convection to do the job.
Take a Sharpie and write "Caution! U.S. nuclear secrets inside!" on the equipment you want to get rid of. Then the Chinese will be more than happy to take it.
Unless you're really feature-hungry, buy the cheapest Series 1 TiVo you can find on eBay, crack it open, put a HUGE hard drive (or two) in it, and get the lifetime subscription if the TiVo auction doesn't include it.
Works for me-- 120GB HD = 90 hours of programming at "medium" quality. I've got a huge library of shows I like enough to watch a second or third time if nothing good is being recorded, and I still have plenty of space left for the 'disposable' shows that I just time-shift, watch without commercials, and delete.
TiVo picked up aggregate data on this, from those who have not opted out of having their TiVo send such data.
They ARE aware that a large group of Joe Schmoes rewound and watched Britney bounce around on Pepsi's dime a few extra times. They ARE NOT aware that you, Joe Q. Schmoe, watched it ten more times that night with a box of Kleenex in close proximity, while Mrs. Schmoe was upstairs fast asleep.
[adjective] successors to the [product] that eliminate the frustration of [action accomplished by product] have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among [group or groups of greedy, old, rich white men] who see the devices as a threat to the economics of [industry that refuses to change with the times].
I've got one!:
"Internal-combustion successors to the horse and buggy that eliminate the frustration of traveling moderate distances have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among buggy whip manufacturers who see the devices as a threat to the economics of the entire horse-beating-implement industry."
The solution is simple: If you want people to watch the ads, make ads worth watching. When an ad is interesting or funny, I will go back and watch it a second time with my TiVo's replay feature. When it insults my intelligence or is otherwise annoying, I skip it.
Good ads are out there, you know. If they weren't, AdCritic would still be operational. Instead, it was a victim of its own success, so popular that the guys who ran it couldn't afford the bandwidth bills and had to cease operations [yes, I know it will be reborn soon, but probably in a form inferior to the original]. Though why they didn't try to get a 5 or 10 cent payment from advertisers per viewing/downloading of the ads they hosted is beyond me-- people were willing to sit and wait for a COMMERCIAL to download, for the specific purpose of WATCHING the thing-- probably more than once-- for God's sake.
All Windows OS' are supported including Windows Me, 2000 and XP. We will emphasize Windows XP since the functionality is much more suitable for the PaceBook than Windows Me and 2000. Also, we read Jerry Kaplan's book and didn't want to make the same mistake of pissing off Bill so he'd dust off Pen Windows and crush us under his boot heel like GO Corp-- so no proprietary, better-suited, pen-based OSes here. Just the same old bloat you've come to love from Microsoft.
Okay, those last two sentences aren't really in there...:-)
The 500XJ was my favorite joystick of the era, but the stick seemed to have an awful tendency to break just above where the metal inside ended. My friends and I went through several of them when we discovered Activision Decathlon on the C64, so the frantic back-and-forth motion to run in that game may have played a part in the plastic's fatigue and eventual failure.
I have a pair of NES 500XJ's as well, but for the real nostalgia-inducing times, you really have to use the original, boxy NES joypads (ergonomics? what's that?).
God, I miss Epyx. So many afternoons spent after school playing their games.... [sigh]
...how does it feel to be told "Go F yourself, we don't need you" by a vendor who then promptly goes and works with a competitor that you can't crush with your boot heel?
I can feel the soon-to-be-damning-when-revealed-in-open-court e-mails flying already.... saying "XP SP1 isn't done, until EA games for Windows won't run."
My biggest gripe with Wawa is the wildly inconsistent hoagie quality. I'm not a demanding consumer who lists a hundred toppings and blows up if one is missing-- I ask for a little mayo, and a little lettuce. Sometimes they will come out perfectly, but more often to the person making the hoagie, "a little mayo" means, there should be so much that the rest of the stuff in the sandwich shoots out of the bread when I take the first bite. And "a little lettuce" usually means that I can pick up the sandwich, shake it for five seconds, and wind up with a hoagie *and* a huge side salad.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
...but ideally it's not a good idea to practice ass-covering over doing something productive.
Every company of reasonable size has one or more recalcitrant users who refuse to change the way they do things, period-- and the higher up the org chart you go, the more likely you are to find such people. If I didn't have experience dealing with these sort of people, I would not attach so much importance to CYOA maneuvers.
At my last job, the IT department faced a user revolt that stopped just shy of torches-and-pitchforks, over a newly-instituted, mandatory password-change-every-60-days policy. By day 62 (i.e. two days after the first mandatory password change), we were forced to relent and let everyone go back to using "password" or their first name, and never having to change it. But guess whose heads would have rolled if we were ever 0wn3d because of an easily-guessed password?
I'm all for doing the best possible job, but I'm also all for not getting fired because someone else was a moron but decided it was my fault.
~Philly
If the user doesn't want to be bothered backing up their data, make them sign a waiver absolving you of responsibility when (not IF) disaster strikes and s/he loses vital data. At least then, when they're angry and upset and looking for a chump to take the fall for their stupidity, you've got a convenient ass-cover with their autograph on it, and it won't cost you your job. :-)
~Philly
Reducing a product to an insanely cheap price won't work, because you just can't beat free.
Sure you can.
I'd pay a nickel a song in a second, for 128Kbps or 192Kbps MP3 files that downloaded quickly, and that I could freely burn to CD or transfer to any other playback device as I (NOT Hilary Rosen or any other of those RIAA fucks) saw fit.
Right now with KaZaa [Lite], I usually have to download the same song multiple times before I get a file that is the entire song, not cut off in the middle, and is of high enough quality to be a keeper. And unless you get really lucky (or listen to nothing but Top 40 corporate CRAP that EVERYONE has on their HDDs), you don't get really speedy downloads.
I don't mind paying for a decent product, but the RIAA wants to sell me the tires and then tell me when and where I can drive on them. As long as they want to foist DRM shit on me and take my money in exchange for a bunch of restrictions, they can kiss my ass in Macy's window.
~Philly
Yes it does. The "Transmac" free utility has been out there for the PC for years.
I presume you're talking about this.
If so, first off, it is NOT free-- according to the web site it costs $64 for a single-user license.
Secondly, a "3rd party utility" != "OS support." OS support would be if Microsoft built the ability right into Windows. The Mac can transparently read and write PC-formatted disks. The user doesn't have to download and install anything, or even change a setting to enable it. It's there from the moment you power on the Mac when you take it out of the box.
~Philly
A different "stink" is the lack of Macdrive support for other OSses. Whereas Apps and special hardware are their own deal, the lack of support for mac disk formats is another. In the best interest of Apple buyers, and people sharing data with them, it is _needed_ to buy third party stuff like MacOpener for windows from dataviz.
Awwww, poor baby. Cry me a river.
Your OS of choice doesn't support the Mac filesystem. That is Apple's fault how, exactly? Macs have been able to read and write PC disks (floppy, Zip, CD, etc-- even HDs, in some cases) for YEARS, out of the box. Apple saw it was an important capability to have, so they added it into the OS. Microsoft wants to lock your ass into their platform for life to serve their own interests, whereas Apple needs to be somewhat compatible with the Windows world to make things easier on their users.
The iPod is an *Apple* device designed for use with *Apple* computers. If you're using some third party hack to make it work with Windows, tough shit if you don't like something about it. If you want to use it in the most hassle-free way possible, buy a Mac. Otherwise, shut up and pick from the tens of MP3 players that are Windows-only or fully cross-platform. Nobody put a gun to your head and made you buy the iPod.
And by the way, how does it feel to want/have a cool device that is better supported on some other OS than your OS of choice? Mac users have been on the outside looking in for as long as Windows has ruled the market. Now the shoe is on the other foot and some of you Windows people can see what we've endured for so long. It's not nice when a company tells you that your money is not worth their time or effort, is it?
~Philly
...the producers of The Matrix will funnel cash through a front corporation to fund the re-emergence of Films88.com in Sydney, then tip off the MPAA. The MPAA will then shut Sydney down, and the camera crews will spring into action. :-)
If that doesn't work, Plan B is to have the BSA tell Sydney to 'prepare to have your software licenses audited'-- as we all know, that can basically cripple whatever entity it's aimed at for a while.
~Philly
Joo Janta is making a new version of their Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses. The new version turns black when you are in danger of taking food out of Jack Valenti's mouth by seeing something that you haven't paid for.
The company announced that they will soon enter the audio products market with a pair of Peril-Sensitive Headphones, that pass through all sounds except when the wearer is in danger of depriving Hilary Rosen of a nickel by hearing something they haven't paid for-- then they react by cancelling out all sound until the danger to her income has passed.
~Philly
...because we need coffee cups that says "Caution, contents HOT!" and commercials that have "Don't try this yourself" at the bottom of the screen as the SUV being advertised drives vertically up the side of a skyscraper and parks on the roof. In another few years, they'll probably have to interrupt movies every 15 minutes with a slide of text bearing a disclaimer that says, "The events you are watching are not really happening, but are fictional." Actually, this has already happened once, in 1983.
~Philly
...about China's space program and their wish to land on the moon by 2010:
Are they actually doing their own R&D, or just feverishly combing the Internet trying to find out how to make Cavorite?
~Philly
Contrary to popular belief, the primary reason to declare bankruptcy is not to enable you to screw your creditors, loot the company treasury, and head off to someplace warm that has no extradition treaty with the U.S. It's to keep creditors off your back until you get your ducks in a row.
This is what Covad did, re-emerging from bankruptcy protection in mid-December.
I got DSL from SpeakEasy/Covad in January 2002, to rid myself of Comcast's crappy cable modem service. If they end up getting the plug pulled on them by the bastards at Verizon, I'll be pretty pissed off, because I want to be able to run servers in my house without worrying about jackbooted AUP Police kicking down my door.
~Philly
Comcast is the only cable internet service provider in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so they have a monopoly on that market.
Same in Philadelphia. Another cable company, RCN, tried to come into the city to create competition, but Comcast fought them tooth and nail and kept them out.
And we are not seeing any kind of advantages because one company controls everything. Comcast's customer service sucks rocks, and my cable bill has gone up and up and up... a friend of mine recently spent three weeks fighting them to get them to fix a problem on their end. I ditched them in January to get DSL because I wanted to run servers in my house. And now the God damned FCC is gonna let the telcos pull the plug on the independent DSL providers and I'll be stuck with Verizon's suck-ass DSL and no ability to run servers in my house for $50/mo like I'm doing now.
As a side note, it's even worse in Philadelphia if you're a sports fan, because Comcast owns the NHL and NBA teams here. So if you want to watch home games on TV, you have to have Comcast cable TV. Comcast refuses to sell game broadcast rights to any satellite provider, for any price.
Expect things to get worse once the AT&T merger goes through.
~Philly
...gets my vote for the "Too Much Time On His Hands Award of the Week."
Bonus points for bringing a Slashdotting upon himself.
~Philly
Homer: Hey, do we get to land on an aircraft carrier?
Pilot: No, Sir, the closest vessel in the USS Walter Mondale. It's a laundry ship. They'll take you the rest of the way.
~Philly
Nope, it's not. There's a fan that draws cool air in the bottom of the dome and vents hot air out an array of holes around the base of the display arm.
The space inside the iMac was just too confined to allow for normal convection to do the job.
Take a Sharpie and write "Caution! U.S. nuclear secrets inside!" on the equipment you want to get rid of. Then the Chinese will be more than happy to take it.
2002-05-23 12:32:50 Comcast Mulls Heavy-Usage Charges (articles,money) (rejected)
I guess this wasn't newsworthy the day the article actually appeared in the paper, when I submitted it.
I propose a new Slashdot slogan: "Stale News for Nerds, Stuff that mattered a few days ago."
Go ahead and mod me down, I'm at the cap.
~Philly
Give us Larry Niven movies instead!
I dunno, I think The Outer Limits would be the best vehicle for his stuff. They did a pretty good job with "Inconstant Moon" already.
I'd really love to see them do something with "Flash Crowd," though.
~Philly
Unless you're really feature-hungry, buy the cheapest Series 1 TiVo you can find on eBay, crack it open, put a HUGE hard drive (or two) in it, and get the lifetime subscription if the TiVo auction doesn't include it.
Works for me-- 120GB HD = 90 hours of programming at "medium" quality. I've got a huge library of shows I like enough to watch a second or third time if nothing good is being recorded, and I still have plenty of space left for the 'disposable' shows that I just time-shift, watch without commercials, and delete.
~Philly
[sigh]
Where were you five months ago, when this was discussed at length?
TiVo picked up aggregate data on this, from those who have not opted out of having their TiVo send such data.
They ARE aware that a large group of Joe Schmoes rewound and watched Britney bounce around on Pepsi's dime a few extra times. They ARE NOT aware that you, Joe Q. Schmoe, watched it ten more times that night with a box of Kleenex in close proximity, while Mrs. Schmoe was upstairs fast asleep.
~Philly
[adjective] successors to the [product] that eliminate the frustration of [action accomplished by product] have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among [group or groups of greedy, old, rich white men] who see the devices as a threat to the economics of [industry that refuses to change with the times].
I've got one!:
"Internal-combustion successors to the horse and buggy that eliminate the frustration of traveling moderate distances have crossed a popularity threshold, raising alarm among buggy whip manufacturers who see the devices as a threat to the economics of the entire horse-beating-implement industry."
Now you try!
~Philly
The solution is simple: If you want people to watch the ads, make ads worth watching. When an ad is interesting or funny, I will go back and watch it a second time with my TiVo's replay feature. When it insults my intelligence or is otherwise annoying, I skip it.
Good ads are out there, you know. If they weren't, AdCritic would still be operational. Instead, it was a victim of its own success, so popular that the guys who ran it couldn't afford the bandwidth bills and had to cease operations [yes, I know it will be reborn soon, but probably in a form inferior to the original]. Though why they didn't try to get a 5 or 10 cent payment from advertisers per viewing/downloading of the ads they hosted is beyond me-- people were willing to sit and wait for a COMMERCIAL to download, for the specific purpose of WATCHING the thing-- probably more than once-- for God's sake.
~Philly
Which OS is supported on the PaceBook?
:-)
All Windows OS' are supported including Windows Me, 2000 and XP. We will emphasize Windows XP since the functionality is much more suitable for the PaceBook than Windows Me and 2000. Also, we read Jerry Kaplan's book and didn't want to make the same mistake of pissing off Bill so he'd dust off Pen Windows and crush us under his boot heel like GO Corp-- so no proprietary, better-suited, pen-based OSes here. Just the same old bloat you've come to love from Microsoft.
Okay, those last two sentences aren't really in there...
~Philly
The 500XJ was my favorite joystick of the era, but the stick seemed to have an awful tendency to break just above where the metal inside ended. My friends and I went through several of them when we discovered Activision Decathlon on the C64, so the frantic back-and-forth motion to run in that game may have played a part in the plastic's fatigue and eventual failure.
I have a pair of NES 500XJ's as well, but for the real nostalgia-inducing times, you really have to use the original, boxy NES joypads (ergonomics? what's that?).
God, I miss Epyx. So many afternoons spent after school playing their games.... [sigh]
~Philly
...how does it feel to be told "Go F yourself, we don't need you" by a vendor who then promptly goes and works with a competitor that you can't crush with your boot heel?
I can feel the soon-to-be-damning-when-revealed-in-open-court e-mails flying already.... saying "XP SP1 isn't done, until EA games for Windows won't run."
~Philly
Yeah, those bolis were good.
:-)
My biggest gripe with Wawa is the wildly inconsistent hoagie quality. I'm not a demanding consumer who lists a hundred toppings and blows up if one is missing-- I ask for a little mayo, and a little lettuce. Sometimes they will come out perfectly, but more often to the person making the hoagie, "a little mayo" means, there should be so much that the rest of the stuff in the sandwich shoots out of the bread when I take the first bite. And "a little lettuce" usually means that I can pick up the sandwich, shake it for five seconds, and wind up with a hoagie *and* a huge side salad.
~Philly