Speaking as a clinet-server programmer who has dealt with hundreds of configurations, I can say with impugnity: if there is a problem connecting to the database, and there is also a firewall, the problem will probably be traced back to the firewall. In fact, in cases where a firewall was present, I cannot remember a single time when there was not at least some small problem with the firewall.
One place we went to, we had maddening disconnection errors. Turns out it was a new firewall, and it occasionally would lose namerserver recognition of the rest of the building. The solution? Well, the IT guy said unplug it when that happens, and so they did -- and there's your disconnection error.
I think it's worse when people call it the CPU. I breathe in, breathe out, and say "The CPU is a piece of silicon the size of your thumbnail attached to a gigantic fan INSIDE that box."
At some companies, a developer would go to his project manager, propose this feature, and get a head shake. Too much work to test and spec, not worth the gains. Let's devote our time to our core competencies.
Apple on the other hand was built on details like this. In fact, one of my favorite things about OS 10.3 is Expose...a feature nobody really asked for, and now I can't live without it (fuck virtual desktops...I want one desktop I can use!)
But then, files larger than 20 meg generally aren't accessed very often, and when they are, they are generally accessed sequentially. Therefore, the fragmentation isn't that big a deal -- unless that file happens to be a database, in which case your database engine should be doing the defrag work itself.
They can't. iTunes relies on background services for access to the music store and cd burning, I imagine because of their similarity to UNIX background threads. The 9x kernel is too primitive for this, they'd have to come up with another way of using and interfacing threads, which I imagine is too much of a pain in the ass just to support a six year old deprecated operating system.
i think my point was this: if he said "unzipped," and thought that particular icon looked "trustworthy," he wasn't much of a mac user. More likely, he was an ex-Windows enthusiast who thought, "wow let's steal software on a mac using limewire!"
Not really. Systems that come with a DVD reader come with a DVD codec that is compatible with said reader. Licensing the codec would add the cost of the MPEG-2 license to every copy of Windows, whether you had a DVD player or not. That's sort of stupid. Now, adding that extra dollar on to the cost of a DVD-ROM, that makes complete sense.
Really, this whole idea of Windows DVD player relying on an external codec came out of the early days of DVD, when it was common to buy a seperate decoder card for DVDs. Each decoder had its own proprietary API. So it made more sense for Microsoft to write a wrapper and ask OEMs to integrate with it, then for Microsoft to write connector code for every piece of hardware. It's still a useful thing...those of us with WinDVD and a card that supports hardware acceleration can benefit from it even when using Windows Media.
A Mac Users famous last words: The file unzipped, and to my delight the Microsoft icon looked genuine and trustworthy.
The word you're looking for are "unstuffed" (macs use stuff-it, not zip, to preserve icons and metadata ZIP files cannot).
Also, I've seen the Word 2004 trojan, and no, the icon did not look genuine nor trustworthy. It was an OS 9 Icon, of significantly lower resolution, and missing the necessary file metadata.
Finally: a big problem with Linux *IS* that you should be a programmer to administrate it, whereas for a Microsoft environment you only need to be a competent researcher. This basically invalidates the skills of many of the IT professionals on the market today, including many who make the decision on which operating system to use. A truly ubiquitus Linux would be one that automated common tasks with a pleasant GUI.
The problem is, it's impossible to find an independent group to perform the study, as any truly independent group would have to reason to CARE to do so. It would have to be an academic project...with a student that wasn't a blind OSS activist, nor a Microsoft apologist, and who was willing to study every detail of each organization, right down to the time spent by a receptionist looking for a copy of Solitaire that would run on command line gentoo.
Personally, I'd like to see a three way TCO study with Apple thrown in there to embarrass both of the others. In my informal study -- money + time spent on PC vs money + time spent on Linux box vs. money + time spent on powerbooks -- the powerbook comes out on top by about 1000 dollarhours.
Hello. I am das Megabyte. I have a degree in Rhetoric from a prominent, accredited university and would like to explain to you a commonly used practice in discourse known as "offering an example."
You see, when you have a series of problems with a product or service you are reviewing, griping about it without explaining any of the problems you have is rather defeatest, not to mention obnoxious. Furthermore, explaining ALL of the problems you have quickly devolves into a list of grievances which hardly makes for a fun to read article.
So, one or more of the problems are chosen from the list, usually the most obnoxious ones, but occasionally a problem is chosen at random for its unusual nature. This is the presented along with the general complaint as an "example," one problem encountered out of many. In this case, an annoying printer issue was cited as an example of many obscure problems that a person had with the Linux operating system. It is implied that he also had other problems, some of which are commonly cited by Linux reviewers.
It is not expected for the example to be the complete explanation of the experience. Several days spent using a product or service for review could not be condensed into a few paragraphs if this were so.
I think it's been well documented that Linux zealots are blind to all arguments against their chosen messiah. They're also blind to their own sowing of FUD.
Microsoft: Linux has a higher TCO than Windows. Linux Apostle: But, what if Microsoft drops support for your obscure version of Windows? Then they force you to upgrade! IT'S PIRACY! THAT SORT OF THING NEVER HAPPENS WITH OPEN SOURCE! YOUR SECRETARY CAN MAINTAIN HER OWN CODE!
SCO: Linux stole code from our systems. Linux Apostle: No we didn't! No way would any Linux programmer steal anything! All our ideas are new! GNU's not unix!
There's just no reasoning with somebody who will spend three hours typing configuration files on the command line to get a printer working, the whole time SWEARING it's easy to use.
So...your argument against PayPal is that they lie to people by telling them exactly what they do?
That's an amazingly stupid argument. People probably don't read loan contracts or credit card portfolios or bank terms either. Are you suggesting we invalidate all of these until such time as people learn to read?
Goddamn it man, stop trying to villify people for doing the right thing when there are so many people doing wrong things!
How in the hell can a company imply it is a bank when it strictly says WE ARE NOT A BANK AND YOUR MONEY IS NOT INSURED all over the sign up agreement?
PayPal is a wire service. Like Western Union, which is also not insured. The difference is, PayPal offers you the ability to transfer your money into a credit account (managed by Providian, who IS a bank if I'm not mistaken), transfer it using a debit card (which is sooo much faster than transfering it to a checking account), or to keep it there and have them invest it for you.
How that varies from a bank is simple. Your money is not insured! You trade insurance for a lack of regulation that in turn means faster transfers and more options. If you are unwilling to make that trade, fine. Don't use PayPal -- because they are not for a SECOND implying that they are going to keep your hard-auctioned cash in a vault somewhere.
Neither is Western Union. The difference is, if Western Union has your money for three weeks, you don't get any of their interest on it. It's not like PayPal doesn't have a big warning that says "Your money is not insured. If you keep it in here, there's a chance we might lose it." It does have such a warning...or did, when I signed up for the money market. I can't imagine it went away!
Seriously. Sometimes I think all the PayPal haters don't realize how much WORSE the banks and credit card companies are than anything PayPal has done. What, hold a payment to be sure it wasn't fraud? Deactivate some small-change accounts that have suspicious access records? Place an arbitrarily long "clearing" period on any transaction it pleases? Paypal is great because 99% of the time, it Just Works. And it's got great tracking and reporting features.
Besides, my point of view is this: a guy has an unreasonable expectation of a service. Service does not provide. Guy makes unreasonable demands of said service. Said service carefully continues the process, to be sure they aren't being scammed. Guy gets pissed off and makes ServiceSucksAndIsAScam.org. Meanwhile, the service has figured everything out and sent the guy a check, which he grudgingly accepts -- but leaves the domain live! Basically, one asshole can lash out and make a lot of bad press based on completely unreasonable demands.
We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us. Kept putting up porno pages in direct violation of our co-loc's TOS (thus endangering everybody on the server). One day, four months into this, he asks for a hand with CGI. I say sure, help him, and ask when he intends to pay us. In exchange for this, he puts up a website bashing our service, and calling us money-grubbers. Considering 85% of our sites owe us money at any given time, we're anything but "grubbers." Still, in this delusional pervert's eyes, we were out to get him. Thank god my superintendent knows the kid and could smack some sense into him...that completely libelous and unwarranted bad press would still be out there, otherwise, because we haven't got the money to send his (poor) new ISP a C&D.
Really? Sounds like you went about things all wrong. I have changed the names on my accounts, as well as my DBA, contact email, and banks, numerous times with PayPal and with no troubles. I even "split" one of my accounts to separate my personal funds from my business funds, and there was no problem...certainly no complaint that it was against policy to hold two accounts!
Sounds like you got the wrong people on the wrong day. Maybe your emails were taken in the wrong tone?
No shit, sherlock. Western Union's not a bank, either, nor is Visa. Neither is a brokerage firm, though many money market accounts are FDIC insured. I still trust my broker not to lose my money between the time I transfer it and he makes the buy.
Paypal's only crime seems to be offering so many services that it looks a little like a bank...but if you don't have that FDIC stamp, nobody should trust their money there for long.
However, the services and incetives PayPal does offer are enough to encourage a lot of people to use their services. The whiners who complain about insurance need to step back and ask themselves whether the insurance on two or three days worth of back payments is worth losing those features. I don't think it is. I've never had a problem with PayPal. I HAVE had problems with eGold, click2pay and others.
"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit. I have used Paypal for years -- since its inception -- transferred tens of thousands of dollars with it and never had a serious problem, and only a handful of minor ones (most during the first couple years). Talk about YMMV. It all comes down to how much you trust Paypal...my money's never there for more than a week. Nor should it be...they make no claim to be a bank, so why use them as one?
It's more likely that they shut down freenet because they were using an anonymous email address. I'm sure you can see where an anonymous email address could be a bad thing for a company that wants to make its money transfers secure and trackable. Paypal recently placed a hold on my account for my use of fake DNS information on my domain unlogged.org (the whole idea of which was to create a form of private computing by not logging anything). I removed the account, verified my other email addresses, and everything was flowing again within the week.
And, I should point out, it's a good idea to put your Linux, UN*X and Mac machines behind a firewall as well, just in case. Plus most good firewalls double as routers or wireless access points, which are certainly worthwhile add-ons. if you're gonna spring for a $50 wireless access point, why not dump an extra $30 into it and make it a wireless "gateway?"
He probably means it has no fulltime virus scanner, but runs HouseCalls from TrendMicro or something similar once in a while. I do the same with my parents, who had never gotten a virus but were fed up with paying $30 a year or whatever to Norton.
Actually, the problem isn't Microsoft's innovation making products unusable...it's shady types committing what are essentially con jobs to get people to bypass the browser security Microsoft innovated to make it easy to extend the web with third party plugins such as Flash, or any of a number of useful active X acessibility widgets such as that used by TrendMicro's housecalls free virus scanner or some of the multiple file upload tools used on popular image sites.
Obviously, since this technology hadn't existed before, Microsoft hadn't anticipated that some folks would hijack the API and use it to get people to install software that will spy on them. You can't plug holes in a bucket you haven't made yet! And now that these companies are out there, even Microsoft locks things down tight as can be, there will still be shady types instructing people on how to bypass their own security to install some bitchincool new screensaver (with only a few hundred added pieces of malware).
The reason for this is that it's just too easy to fool people in the digital world, because they don't care about the precious data on their computers as much as they do pretty widgets. Windows software is attacked not because it is inherently insecure, but because so many people who just don't care use it.
Of course, one wonders how useful it is to spy on people who do nothing with their PCs but install spyware...
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Speaking as a clinet-server programmer who has dealt with hundreds of configurations, I can say with impugnity: if there is a problem connecting to the database, and there is also a firewall, the problem will probably be traced back to the firewall. In fact, in cases where a firewall was present, I cannot remember a single time when there was not at least some small problem with the firewall.
One place we went to, we had maddening disconnection errors. Turns out it was a new firewall, and it occasionally would lose namerserver recognition of the rest of the building. The solution? Well, the IT guy said unplug it when that happens, and so they did -- and there's your disconnection error.
I think it's worse when people call it the CPU. I breathe in, breathe out, and say "The CPU is a piece of silicon the size of your thumbnail attached to a gigantic fan INSIDE that box."
And I doubt that copying 120 gig, fragmented or not, took him "days." Took me about three hours to do it today over a friggin 100 baseT line.
Good idea. I'm sick of this whole being-able-to-look-up-domain-names thing. Back to numbers!
Which is why Apple is such a great company.
At some companies, a developer would go to his project manager, propose this feature, and get a head shake. Too much work to test and spec, not worth the gains. Let's devote our time to our core competencies.
Apple on the other hand was built on details like this. In fact, one of my favorite things about OS 10.3 is Expose...a feature nobody really asked for, and now I can't live without it (fuck virtual desktops...I want one desktop I can use!)
But then, files larger than 20 meg generally aren't accessed very often, and when they are, they are generally accessed sequentially. Therefore, the fragmentation isn't that big a deal -- unless that file happens to be a database, in which case your database engine should be doing the defrag work itself.
A comment I made here ended up in CIOInsider magazine, or so I was told. They gave my initials as "D.M. via Internet"
They can't. iTunes relies on background services for access to the music store and cd burning, I imagine because of their similarity to UNIX background threads. The 9x kernel is too primitive for this, they'd have to come up with another way of using and interfacing threads, which I imagine is too much of a pain in the ass just to support a six year old deprecated operating system.
i think my point was this: if he said "unzipped," and thought that particular icon looked "trustworthy," he wasn't much of a mac user. More likely, he was an ex-Windows enthusiast who thought, "wow let's steal software on a mac using limewire!"
Not really. Systems that come with a DVD reader come with a DVD codec that is compatible with said reader. Licensing the codec would add the cost of the MPEG-2 license to every copy of Windows, whether you had a DVD player or not. That's sort of stupid. Now, adding that extra dollar on to the cost of a DVD-ROM, that makes complete sense.
Really, this whole idea of Windows DVD player relying on an external codec came out of the early days of DVD, when it was common to buy a seperate decoder card for DVDs. Each decoder had its own proprietary API. So it made more sense for Microsoft to write a wrapper and ask OEMs to integrate with it, then for Microsoft to write connector code for every piece of hardware. It's still a useful thing...those of us with WinDVD and a card that supports hardware acceleration can benefit from it even when using Windows Media.
A Mac Users famous last words: The file unzipped, and to my delight the Microsoft icon looked genuine and trustworthy.
The word you're looking for are "unstuffed" (macs use stuff-it, not zip, to preserve icons and metadata ZIP files cannot).
Also, I've seen the Word 2004 trojan, and no, the icon did not look genuine nor trustworthy. It was an OS 9 Icon, of significantly lower resolution, and missing the necessary file metadata.
Finally: a big problem with Linux *IS* that you should be a programmer to administrate it, whereas for a Microsoft environment you only need to be a competent researcher. This basically invalidates the skills of many of the IT professionals on the market today, including many who make the decision on which operating system to use. A truly ubiquitus Linux would be one that automated common tasks with a pleasant GUI.
The problem is, it's impossible to find an independent group to perform the study, as any truly independent group would have to reason to CARE to do so. It would have to be an academic project...with a student that wasn't a blind OSS activist, nor a Microsoft apologist, and who was willing to study every detail of each organization, right down to the time spent by a receptionist looking for a copy of Solitaire that would run on command line gentoo.
Personally, I'd like to see a three way TCO study with Apple thrown in there to embarrass both of the others. In my informal study -- money + time spent on PC vs money + time spent on Linux box vs. money + time spent on powerbooks -- the powerbook comes out on top by about 1000 dollarhours.
Hello. I am das Megabyte. I have a degree in Rhetoric from a prominent, accredited university and would like to explain to you a commonly used practice in discourse known as "offering an example."
You see, when you have a series of problems with a product or service you are reviewing, griping about it without explaining any of the problems you have is rather defeatest, not to mention obnoxious. Furthermore, explaining ALL of the problems you have quickly devolves into a list of grievances which hardly makes for a fun to read article.
So, one or more of the problems are chosen from the list, usually the most obnoxious ones, but occasionally a problem is chosen at random for its unusual nature. This is the presented along with the general complaint as an "example," one problem encountered out of many. In this case, an annoying printer issue was cited as an example of many obscure problems that a person had with the Linux operating system. It is implied that he also had other problems, some of which are commonly cited by Linux reviewers.
It is not expected for the example to be the complete explanation of the experience. Several days spent using a product or service for review could not be condensed into a few paragraphs if this were so.
I think it's been well documented that Linux zealots are blind to all arguments against their chosen messiah. They're also blind to their own sowing of FUD.
Microsoft: Linux has a higher TCO than Windows.
Linux Apostle: But, what if Microsoft drops support for your obscure version of Windows? Then they force you to upgrade! IT'S PIRACY! THAT SORT OF THING NEVER HAPPENS WITH OPEN SOURCE! YOUR SECRETARY CAN MAINTAIN HER OWN CODE!
SCO: Linux stole code from our systems.
Linux Apostle: No we didn't! No way would any Linux programmer steal anything! All our ideas are new! GNU's not unix!
There's just no reasoning with somebody who will spend three hours typing configuration files on the command line to get a printer working, the whole time SWEARING it's easy to use.
So...your argument against PayPal is that they lie to people by telling them exactly what they do?
That's an amazingly stupid argument. People probably don't read loan contracts or credit card portfolios or bank terms either. Are you suggesting we invalidate all of these until such time as people learn to read?
Goddamn it man, stop trying to villify people for doing the right thing when there are so many people doing wrong things!
How in the hell can a company imply it is a bank when it strictly says WE ARE NOT A BANK AND YOUR MONEY IS NOT INSURED all over the sign up agreement?
PayPal is a wire service. Like Western Union, which is also not insured. The difference is, PayPal offers you the ability to transfer your money into a credit account (managed by Providian, who IS a bank if I'm not mistaken), transfer it using a debit card (which is sooo much faster than transfering it to a checking account), or to keep it there and have them invest it for you.
How that varies from a bank is simple. Your money is not insured! You trade insurance for a lack of regulation that in turn means faster transfers and more options. If you are unwilling to make that trade, fine. Don't use PayPal -- because they are not for a SECOND implying that they are going to keep your hard-auctioned cash in a vault somewhere.
Neither is Western Union. The difference is, if Western Union has your money for three weeks, you don't get any of their interest on it. It's not like PayPal doesn't have a big warning that says "Your money is not insured. If you keep it in here, there's a chance we might lose it." It does have such a warning...or did, when I signed up for the money market. I can't imagine it went away!
Seriously. Sometimes I think all the PayPal haters don't realize how much WORSE the banks and credit card companies are than anything PayPal has done. What, hold a payment to be sure it wasn't fraud? Deactivate some small-change accounts that have suspicious access records? Place an arbitrarily long "clearing" period on any transaction it pleases? Paypal is great because 99% of the time, it Just Works. And it's got great tracking and reporting features.
Besides, my point of view is this: a guy has an unreasonable expectation of a service. Service does not provide. Guy makes unreasonable demands of said service. Said service carefully continues the process, to be sure they aren't being scammed. Guy gets pissed off and makes ServiceSucksAndIsAScam.org. Meanwhile, the service has figured everything out and sent the guy a check, which he grudgingly accepts -- but leaves the domain live! Basically, one asshole can lash out and make a lot of bad press based on completely unreasonable demands.
We had a kid who used our hosting service but never paid us. Kept putting up porno pages in direct violation of our co-loc's TOS (thus endangering everybody on the server). One day, four months into this, he asks for a hand with CGI. I say sure, help him, and ask when he intends to pay us. In exchange for this, he puts up a website bashing our service, and calling us money-grubbers. Considering 85% of our sites owe us money at any given time, we're anything but "grubbers." Still, in this delusional pervert's eyes, we were out to get him. Thank god my superintendent knows the kid and could smack some sense into him...that completely libelous and unwarranted bad press would still be out there, otherwise, because we haven't got the money to send his (poor) new ISP a C&D.
Really? Sounds like you went about things all wrong. I have changed the names on my accounts, as well as my DBA, contact email, and banks, numerous times with PayPal and with no troubles. I even "split" one of my accounts to separate my personal funds from my business funds, and there was no problem...certainly no complaint that it was against policy to hold two accounts!
Sounds like you got the wrong people on the wrong day. Maybe your emails were taken in the wrong tone?
No shit, sherlock. Western Union's not a bank, either, nor is Visa. Neither is a brokerage firm, though many money market accounts are FDIC insured. I still trust my broker not to lose my money between the time I transfer it and he makes the buy.
Paypal's only crime seems to be offering so many services that it looks a little like a bank...but if you don't have that FDIC stamp, nobody should trust their money there for long.
However, the services and incetives PayPal does offer are enough to encourage a lot of people to use their services. The whiners who complain about insurance need to step back and ask themselves whether the insurance on two or three days worth of back payments is worth losing those features. I don't think it is. I've never had a problem with PayPal. I HAVE had problems with eGold, click2pay and others.
"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit. I have used Paypal for years -- since its inception -- transferred tens of thousands of dollars with it and never had a serious problem, and only a handful of minor ones (most during the first couple years). Talk about YMMV. It all comes down to how much you trust Paypal...my money's never there for more than a week. Nor should it be...they make no claim to be a bank, so why use them as one?
It's more likely that they shut down freenet because they were using an anonymous email address. I'm sure you can see where an anonymous email address could be a bad thing for a company that wants to make its money transfers secure and trackable. Paypal recently placed a hold on my account for my use of fake DNS information on my domain unlogged.org (the whole idea of which was to create a form of private computing by not logging anything). I removed the account, verified my other email addresses, and everything was flowing again within the week.
Oh yeah?
Me and the iTunes Music Store, along with about 50,000 games, would like to beg to differ.
And, I should point out, it's a good idea to put your Linux, UN*X and Mac machines behind a firewall as well, just in case. Plus most good firewalls double as routers or wireless access points, which are certainly worthwhile add-ons. if you're gonna spring for a $50 wireless access point, why not dump an extra $30 into it and make it a wireless "gateway?"
He probably means it has no fulltime virus scanner, but runs HouseCalls from TrendMicro or something similar once in a while. I do the same with my parents, who had never gotten a virus but were fed up with paying $30 a year or whatever to Norton.
Actually, the problem isn't Microsoft's innovation making products unusable...it's shady types committing what are essentially con jobs to get people to bypass the browser security Microsoft innovated to make it easy to extend the web with third party plugins such as Flash, or any of a number of useful active X acessibility widgets such as that used by TrendMicro's housecalls free virus scanner or some of the multiple file upload tools used on popular image sites.
Obviously, since this technology hadn't existed before, Microsoft hadn't anticipated that some folks would hijack the API and use it to get people to install software that will spy on them. You can't plug holes in a bucket you haven't made yet! And now that these companies are out there, even Microsoft locks things down tight as can be, there will still be shady types instructing people on how to bypass their own security to install some bitchincool new screensaver (with only a few hundred added pieces of malware).
The reason for this is that it's just too easy to fool people in the digital world, because they don't care about the precious data on their computers as much as they do pretty widgets. Windows software is attacked not because it is inherently insecure, but because so many people who just don't care use it.
Of course, one wonders how useful it is to spy on people who do nothing with their PCs but install spyware...