Old hardware can always be reused and/or sold off for temporary budget increases.
That depends entirely on the number of machines. If you have hundreds or thousands of computers, there is not a need for that many old, and more likely to break machines around. Also, as far as older PCs and many x86 based servers, the resale value plus the time involved in selling it is simply not worthwhile.
That brings up another question. Where do the returned leased items go? And how is this profitable for the companies that lease the equipment?
Also, a person (at least in the US) spends more on taxes than any other single item out of their pay. Realtors say your house is number one & car salesmen say cars are number two. Both are off by one. Reducing your tax burden is the easiest way to make more money without changing jobs.
I'd reconsider. If the Justice Department ever lays a subpeona on your ass, how are you going to prove that you haven't been visiting unapproved websites?
Its the Justice Dept's burden to prove that I was visiting unapproved websites. Being that I load multiple sites all the time, for me, this tracking "feature" would not be much of an alibi.
It never ceases to amaze me that computers (at least at the hardware level) are very logical things, but people seem to have their IQ reduced by about 1/2 in front of them and think very illogically.
I'm not complaining about free wireless access, but aside from roads and parks, what other freebies do city governments provide? How long do you think this will really last? What about the security/privacy issues?
I guess I can applaud the thought, but this makes no sense that I have to pay for water and sewage, yet I get free wireless internet access.
Even once games support mutli-threading, this wont end up boosting their framerate much. Instead this will raise the lower framerate and give them smoother gameplay.
From the benchmarks I read, all CPUs performed equally well at the higher resolution ~ 50 FPS, whereas the new CPU _only_ did ~82 FPS compared to the top at ~97 FPS.
I am not a gamer, nor have I used a CRT display in quite some time, but when a friend of mine was game programming and he could not figure out why he could not get a FPS beyond 70 or so, it was because that was the refresh rate of his monitor. I seriously doubt many monitors go much beyond 80 Hz, and if they did I doubt it is humanly perceptible as "better".
In other words, what is up with the framerate game? Being that I watch HDTV at 60 FPS and film is at 24 FPS, I don't see where the advantage is here. If there is a difference, please let me know, but I'm guessing that a framerate of at least 50 or 60, maybe 70 is as good as it needs to get.
That Firefox flashblock is one of the best technologies ever. The idea is so simple, and should have been an option in the actual flash itself: the thing doesn't load unless you click on it and say so.
Maybe I'm just a simplistic extremist, but I prefer to download all non web stuff and run a program for the particular downloaded file.
Although its fixed now, the acrobat plugin failed for a while to allow you to do stupid things like save the file. I find that even with the best network connection, inlined multimedia videos and whatnot are choppy or laggy, difficult to watch again (depending on the plugin) or whatever. Flash ads are so bad, they are the number one reason I don't load _any_ plugins. My browser does not have the flashblock feature, but that sounds pretty nice for those occasional silly websites that have a goofy flash intro page and no other text in order to click a part of it to go to the real content. Flash also has sound. Pretty annoying when your at work.
Fortunately, flash and occasionally java are the only plugins really left, and it is rare if I "need" them. Once the first spyware plugin comes into being (like this one, ghesh forgot the topic of discussion, but this has been a prediction of mine for years), I think people's opinions of plugins will change to be more like mine.
I'm not interested in "targeted" advertising any more than I'm interested in the "plain" variety.
I'm pretty much against advertising for the most part, but I will say that I do like targeted advertising at times.
When reading specialty magazines, a good majority of the content of the magazine is about using goods and services that are advertised almost exclusively in that magazine or similar ones. Things like woodworking, computers, photography, etc. Now I will not buy something based on marketing hype alone. I usually do other research, reading, and ask other people about a product and then be pissed because the marketers got all the budget instead of the QA people, but that is another topic.
I just think that marketers have gone overboard in the past 10 to 15 years. You see, marketing can only do so much. If a product sucks or if quality control is low service, or anything negative in the long haul, no marketing can save that. Marketing has not created phrases like "No one gets fired for choosing IBM" or similar that I know you all have heard before.
A friend of mine asked me to consciously take into account how often I see "Bud" or "Bud lite" marketing stuff. Being that I spend a lot of time in bars and looking at the muted TVs and whatnot I will say. Damn. Bud is everywhere. Is it offensive? No. I don't think it is. I've seen NASCAR schedules and other rosters for sporting events that are informational and decorative which were paid for by Budweiser. I've noticed a guy with a Bud lite hat, I see their trucks all the time. Wow, they are a marketing machine. But the strange thing is that I didn't notice before I was told to notice.
I want a machine that will allow my wife and I to use with sessions running simultaneously. I want mail and printing and scanning to work right. I want Bluetooth syncing to our phones and my wife's Tungsten to work. I want to be able to use my iPod, and my digital camera, and edit videos. I want it to all be integrated, and I want it to, yes, "just work".
I think a Mac is ideal for you and your wife. The transition takes a while, and no OS X is not perfect, but considering the alternatives, its better than all of them, especially for what you want to use it for.
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to.
Me too. I'll warn you, my job satisfaction level has gone done since switching to a Mac for my personal machine at work. You ask yourself, "Why in 2005 am I still having to do XYZ to get PDQ done?"
As users got more and more frustrated with malware they took out their frustrations on us techs for not being able to prevent their PCs from being infested.
That, and then us techies come in and blame 1) the user and 2) their software.
I'm a sysadmin, and I tell people not in the field that my job is much like that of a janitor.
If I do my job perfectly, noone knows who I am, nor really cares.
If I don't do my job, people bitch about this and that.
On a tangent, I refuse to give autorespect to someone wearing a suit and tie. I always think to myself "Maybe their lawyer put them up to it".
Actually, after being convicted in court of my special crime, I was waiting to sign forms and stuff, and a mother and daughter were talking and the mother turned to me and said "Ask him, he's a lawyer". To which I smiled and said "No, I'm the defendant".:)
It may not be due to you personally, but from people like you.
Your being a technician used to have respect, but now it doesn't because maybe people are sick of computers being fundamentally broken. I know I am (hardware wise), software I can fix, or choose something reputable from the beginning.
For me respect goes like this:
1) Tabla Rasa (blank slate) this is the ground state, where I give you basic respect as a human being
2) initial impression respect. This is where I make judgments about your "type". For me, if your a technician, thats not too high on my respect continuum.
3) Real respect. This is where you earn or loose points here. Its up to you, and subject to change.
The problem is that putting porn in the.xxx tld would make the registrars accountable for selling domains, which they don't want to do. However, think about how simple filtering for kids would be?
Also, if registrars were accountable, that would eliminate spam as well. The registrar would simply terminate their name if they did any funny business, but instead of doing any good, lets keep selling domains by the random letter until they are all full.
It used to be that.org,.edu,.com,.net and.gov had distinct, unique purposes..com means nothing..org means not much more..net is even more illusive than.com.
Its still pretty much if it does not end in.com, most people will ask you a few times about your email address or URL.
Try telling a "normal" computer user to go to slashdot.org (bad one because of the name semantics, but hang with me), odds are they will type slashdot.org slashdot.com, which will silently redirect you to slashdot.org.
If.com and.org meant anything different (and assuming no cybersquatters), slashdot would not have ever bought slashdot.com.
Now we have.biz,.info and.name? Please, someone tell me what these new TLD's add to the overall namespace (aside from ongoing legal battles over trademarks)..biz is 99% spammers because the names are worthless and cheap so they buy them by the alphabet soup full. Its handy because one spamassassin rule is to match a url in the.biz tld..info is for information, duh! I've really only seen this for spam as well, so I guess its not very informational..name is probably for someone who wants their full or last name as a.com address, and the.com is already taken, so they opt for the.name tld, and have to explain to everybody until they dump the domain why the NAME.com does not work.
TLDs are stupid and a waste of time and 4+ characters of typing.
Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).
Everyone I know has typed "name" in google and clicked on the first link.
TLDs are absolutely stupid. The only ones that mean anything are.edu,.gov, and.XX for country codes, all the others are the same or just bullshit domains that spammers bought from the.biz tld.
"Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million federal study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 federal law, the Next Generation Internet Research Act."
Thats a bargain. It took between $6 and $10 million to figure out Clinton got head from a fat girl.
A study shows that 95% of clients don't know what they want.
In my experience, they know _exactly_ what they want. Sometimes they even know the platform and development tools necessary to create said project. Then we tell them that with a small bit of more effort they can have an exponential gain in functionality. But they reiterate that they know exactly what they want.
So we give them what they want.
They take it home, play with it a while, and come back with, "Its nice, but wouldn't it be cool if it also did X". We think to ourselves, that is what we told you from the beginning. But since this is business, and you have to smoose every idiot as if they actually are capable of thinking for themselves, we smile, and say "Yes, it would be possible to add X", and the process continues until the client says thats good enough.
Just like that 8-track that you will never find a car to use in.
The 8-track is a low fidelity end user thing that seemed neat to someone at sometime.
However, I would bet that any commercially available recording that has made it on 8-track is stored on some other more standard media that is still usable today.
While they're at it, can they make my car run forever? I also want to stay young forever, if that's not too much trouble.
Sure it would be nice if our bodies or car lasted forever, but if your 1900 Model T still ran like it did in 1900 would you still want to drive it to and from work every day? I wouldn't.
Now data is a different story. It is very common for data in one form or another to outlive a human life. Although its not that old, I am listening to a music recording that is 30 years old. Audio tape archiving is what I'm most familiar with, and I know that it is common to store audio reels in climate controlled conditions and in some instances a recording with the best available technology at the time is made _every time_ the tape is played, just in case.
Stone tablets have pretty good longevity, but they are not very portable and have difficulty in interfacing with other equipment. Paper has its limitations as well. Its difficult to duplicate, its bulky, and pretty much a fire hazard in itself.
Digital archiving of data seems to me to be the best way to do so. Compression techniques can dramatically increase capacities of current devices. Its easy to replicate, etc.
However, there is bit rot and other physical limitations of digital media that exist. For photography, film, and audio, I still believe that analog is clearly the best way to record the data. But again, there are many physical limitations in preserving that data.
The government rules they can tax yet more of our money.
Taxes are the number one thing that people (at least in the US) pay for in their life. No its not a house or car like your lead to believe.
That is why I'm working with a lawyer and an accountant to get a business license or incorporate myself and pay less taxes.
By reducing taxes, it is the easiest way to get a pay raise in one's working career.
Also, its worth mentioning that a Fedex airline pilot recently was acquitted of avoiding paying federal taxes because a jury was unable to find any law that said she had to pay taxes.
A highly trained and educated federal prosecutor in Memphis was unable to convince 12 American citizens that Vernice Kuglin was required to pay federal income taxes. He was clearly unable to produce a single section of the Tax Code to that end, and the jury was unanimous in clearing Kuglin of all charges against her.
Slashdot Mirror
Old hardware can always be reused and/or sold off for temporary budget increases.
That depends entirely on the number of machines. If you have hundreds or thousands of computers, there is not a need for that many old, and more likely to break machines around. Also, as far as older PCs and many x86 based servers, the resale value plus the time involved in selling it is simply not worthwhile.
That brings up another question. Where do the returned leased items go? And how is this profitable for the companies that lease the equipment?
Also, a person (at least in the US) spends more on taxes than any other single item out of their pay. Realtors say your house is number one & car salesmen say cars are number two. Both are off by one. Reducing your tax burden is the easiest way to make more money without changing jobs.
I'd reconsider. If the Justice Department ever lays a subpeona on your ass, how are you going to prove that you haven't been visiting unapproved websites?
Its the Justice Dept's burden to prove that I was visiting unapproved websites. Being that I load multiple sites all the time, for me, this tracking "feature" would not be much of an alibi.
That and the why factor.
It never ceases to amaze me that computers (at least at the hardware level) are very logical things, but people seem to have their IQ reduced by about 1/2 in front of them and think very illogically.
I'm not complaining about free wireless access, but aside from roads and parks, what other freebies do city governments provide? How long do you think this will really last? What about the security/privacy issues?
I guess I can applaud the thought, but this makes no sense that I have to pay for water and sewage, yet I get free wireless internet access.
Even once games support mutli-threading, this wont end up boosting their framerate much. Instead this will raise the lower framerate and give them smoother gameplay.
From the benchmarks I read, all CPUs performed equally well at the higher resolution ~ 50 FPS, whereas the new CPU _only_ did ~82 FPS compared to the top at ~97 FPS.
I am not a gamer, nor have I used a CRT display in quite some time, but when a friend of mine was game programming and he could not figure out why he could not get a FPS beyond 70 or so, it was because that was the refresh rate of his monitor. I seriously doubt many monitors go much beyond 80 Hz, and if they did I doubt it is humanly perceptible as "better".
In other words, what is up with the framerate game? Being that I watch HDTV at 60 FPS and film is at 24 FPS, I don't see where the advantage is here. If there is a difference, please let me know, but I'm guessing that a framerate of at least 50 or 60, maybe 70 is as good as it needs to get.
Any ideas?
That Firefox flashblock is one of the best technologies ever. The idea is so simple, and should have been an option in the actual flash itself: the thing doesn't load unless you click on it and say so.
Maybe I'm just a simplistic extremist, but I prefer to download all non web stuff and run a program for the particular downloaded file.
Although its fixed now, the acrobat plugin failed for a while to allow you to do stupid things like save the file. I find that even with the best network connection, inlined multimedia videos and whatnot are choppy or laggy, difficult to watch again (depending on the plugin) or whatever. Flash ads are so bad, they are the number one reason I don't load _any_ plugins. My browser does not have the flashblock feature, but that sounds pretty nice for those occasional silly websites that have a goofy flash intro page and no other text in order to click a part of it to go to the real content. Flash also has sound. Pretty annoying when your at work.
Fortunately, flash and occasionally java are the only plugins really left, and it is rare if I "need" them. Once the first spyware plugin comes into being (like this one, ghesh forgot the topic of discussion, but this has been a prediction of mine for years), I think people's opinions of plugins will change to be more like mine.
I'm not interested in "targeted" advertising any more than I'm interested in the "plain" variety.
I'm pretty much against advertising for the most part, but I will say that I do like targeted advertising at times.
When reading specialty magazines, a good majority of the content of the magazine is about using goods and services that are advertised almost exclusively in that magazine or similar ones. Things like woodworking, computers, photography, etc. Now I will not buy something based on marketing hype alone. I usually do other research, reading, and ask other people about a product and then be pissed because the marketers got all the budget instead of the QA people, but that is another topic.
I just think that marketers have gone overboard in the past 10 to 15 years. You see, marketing can only do so much. If a product sucks or if quality control is low service, or anything negative in the long haul, no marketing can save that. Marketing has not created phrases like "No one gets fired for choosing IBM" or similar that I know you all have heard before.
A friend of mine asked me to consciously take into account how often I see "Bud" or "Bud lite" marketing stuff. Being that I spend a lot of time in bars and looking at the muted TVs and whatnot I will say. Damn. Bud is everywhere. Is it offensive? No. I don't think it is. I've seen NASCAR schedules and other rosters for sporting events that are informational and decorative which were paid for by Budweiser. I've noticed a guy with a Bud lite hat, I see their trucks all the time. Wow, they are a marketing machine. But the strange thing is that I didn't notice before I was told to notice.
Maybe more marketers should learn from this.
I still won't load plugins into my browser, even if they offer the feature of being able to track me better.
Try defragging that whole 1 Terabyte or even large partitions of it.
Hmm, or maybe try an OS that automatically defrags files on the fly.
Science is a process, not a result.
Shhhh. You might upset all of those slashdotters that know everything about science.
Science is simply a method of knowing. Its really nothing more than systematic and organized trial and error.
...we know that Buick makes the best cars in the world
Buick doesn't make cars.
They build excitement!
"Traditionally, pranks are supposed to end by noon. Those done afterwards are supposed to bring bad luck to the perpetrator."
Would you consider a mass migration of readers from slashdot bad luck or karma?
I want a machine that will allow my wife and I to use with sessions running simultaneously. I want mail and printing and scanning to work right. I want Bluetooth syncing to our phones and my wife's Tungsten to work. I want to be able to use my iPod, and my digital camera, and edit videos. I want it to all be integrated, and I want it to, yes, "just work".
I think a Mac is ideal for you and your wife. The transition takes a while, and no OS X is not perfect, but considering the alternatives, its better than all of them, especially for what you want to use it for.
I mess around with things enough at work and home. When I want to play, I have plenty of things to play with. But I want something that I don't have to think about unless I want to.
Me too. I'll warn you, my job satisfaction level has gone done since switching to a Mac for my personal machine at work. You ask yourself, "Why in 2005 am I still having to do XYZ to get PDQ done?"
Have fun.
As users got more and more frustrated with malware they took out their frustrations on us techs for not being able to prevent their PCs from being infested.
That, and then us techies come in and blame 1) the user and 2) their software.
I'm a sysadmin, and I tell people not in the field that my job is much like that of a janitor.
If I do my job perfectly, noone knows who I am, nor really cares.
If I don't do my job, people bitch about this and that.
On a tangent, I refuse to give autorespect to someone wearing a suit and tie. I always think to myself "Maybe their lawyer put them up to it".
Actually, after being convicted in court of my special crime, I was waiting to sign forms and stuff, and a mother and daughter were talking and the mother turned to me and said "Ask him, he's a lawyer". To which I smiled and said "No, I'm the defendant".
It may not be due to you personally, but from people like you.
Your being a technician used to have respect, but now it doesn't because maybe people are sick of computers being fundamentally broken. I know I am (hardware wise), software I can fix, or choose something reputable from the beginning.
For me respect goes like this:
1) Tabla Rasa (blank slate) this is the ground state, where I give you basic respect as a human being
2) initial impression respect. This is where I make judgments about your "type". For me, if your a technician, thats not too high on my respect continuum.
3) Real respect. This is where you earn or loose points here. Its up to you, and subject to change.
One need not revert to sneaky tactics to do well.
Cool!
Now once the spammers figure that out, spam will stop.
.xxx for the porn
.xxx tld would make the registrars accountable for selling domains, which they don't want to do. However, think about how simple filtering for kids would be?
But that would be too simple and good.
The problem is that putting porn in the
Also, if registrars were accountable, that would eliminate spam as well. The registrar would simply terminate their name if they did any funny business, but instead of doing any good, lets keep selling domains by the random letter until they are all full.
It used to be that .org, .edu, .com, .net and .gov had distinct, unique purposes. .com means nothing. .org means not much more. .net is even more illusive than .com.
.com, most people will ask you a few times about your email address or URL.
.com and .org meant anything different (and assuming no cybersquatters), slashdot would not have ever bought slashdot.com.
.biz, .info and .name? Please, someone tell me what these new TLD's add to the overall namespace (aside from ongoing legal battles over trademarks). .biz is 99% spammers because the names are worthless and cheap so they buy them by the alphabet soup full. Its handy because one spamassassin rule is to match a url in the .biz tld. .info is for information, duh! I've really only seen this for spam as well, so I guess its not very informational. .name is probably for someone who wants their full or last name as a .com address, and the .com is already taken, so they opt for the .name tld, and have to explain to everybody until they dump the domain why the NAME.com does not work.
Its still pretty much if it does not end in
Try telling a "normal" computer user to go to slashdot.org (bad one because of the name semantics, but hang with me), odds are they will type slashdot.org slashdot.com, which will silently redirect you to slashdot.org.
If
Now we have
TLDs are stupid and a waste of time and 4+ characters of typing.
Everybody tries name.com, name.net and finally name.org (generally in that order).
.edu, .gov, and .XX for country codes, all the others are the same or just bullshit domains that spammers bought from the .biz tld.
Everyone I know has typed "name" in google and clicked on the first link.
TLDs are absolutely stupid. The only ones that mean anything are
"Lawmakers had demanded the $1 million federal study, ultimately called "Signposts in Cyberspace," under a 1998 federal law, the Next Generation Internet Research Act."
Thats a bargain. It took between $6 and $10 million to figure out Clinton got head from a fat girl.
A study shows that 95% of clients don't know what they want.
In my experience, they know _exactly_ what they want. Sometimes they even know the platform and development tools necessary to create said project. Then we tell them that with a small bit of more effort they can have an exponential gain in functionality. But they reiterate that they know exactly what they want.
So we give them what they want.
They take it home, play with it a while, and come back with, "Its nice, but wouldn't it be cool if it also did X". We think to ourselves, that is what we told you from the beginning. But since this is business, and you have to smoose every idiot as if they actually are capable of thinking for themselves, we smile, and say "Yes, it would be possible to add X", and the process continues until the client says thats good enough.
Just like that 8-track that you will never find a car to use in.
The 8-track is a low fidelity end user thing that seemed neat to someone at sometime.
However, I would bet that any commercially available recording that has made it on 8-track is stored on some other more standard media that is still usable today.
Yeah, I'd like my digital media to last forever.
While they're at it, can they make my car run forever? I also want to stay young forever, if that's not too much trouble.
Sure it would be nice if our bodies or car lasted forever, but if your 1900 Model T still ran like it did in 1900 would you still want to drive it to and from work every day? I wouldn't.
Now data is a different story. It is very common for data in one form or another to outlive a human life. Although its not that old, I am listening to a music recording that is 30 years old. Audio tape archiving is what I'm most familiar with, and I know that it is common to store audio reels in climate controlled conditions and in some instances a recording with the best available technology at the time is made _every time_ the tape is played, just in case.
Stone tablets have pretty good longevity, but they are not very portable and have difficulty in interfacing with other equipment. Paper has its limitations as well. Its difficult to duplicate, its bulky, and pretty much a fire hazard in itself.
Digital archiving of data seems to me to be the best way to do so. Compression techniques can dramatically increase capacities of current devices. Its easy to replicate, etc.
However, there is bit rot and other physical limitations of digital media that exist. For photography, film, and audio, I still believe that analog is clearly the best way to record the data. But again, there are many physical limitations in preserving that data.
Taxes are the number one thing that people (at least in the US) pay for in their life. No its not a house or car like your lead to believe.
That is why I'm working with a lawyer and an accountant to get a business license or incorporate myself and pay less taxes.
By reducing taxes, it is the easiest way to get a pay raise in one's working career.
Also, its worth mentioning that a Fedex airline pilot recently was acquitted of avoiding paying federal taxes because a jury was unable to find any law that said she had to pay taxes.Makes you wonder...