I agree completely. Most of the comments in this thread are written by people who don't understand that sometimes you really do have to fight fire with fire. Sometimes there is absolutely no way you can appease a person who thinks you are just out to annoy them. The best you can hope for is that they don't escalate the situation too far. You gear any actions you take towards minimizing their ability or desire to escalate it while reducing your own discomfort.
In this case I don't really care who is specifically right or wrong, because it all went sideways. The guy asking the question has done something to annoy his elderly neighbor. Or maybe he didn't, and the old guy needs to realize the world doesn't revolve around him. We weren't there, we don't know. The elderly guy decided to get one of these Mosquito devices, and personally, that'd do it for me, too, because I can hear those things. Since I don't have an unlimited budget by which to fund my lawyer's legal assault on this dude (with no hope for any remuneration) I'd opt for a more direct approach, too. Like the person asking the question I too would try the police. If it isn't panning out I'm not going to waste time on trying to find a cop that can hear it. I'm not willing to live in misery during the interim.
I'm also quite disappointed that people here can't put down their kind/gentle/be-nice crap, grow a set, and just think up some good ways to disable this thing. The ideas here have been so lackluster, complex, expensive, and dangerous. Just fill the damn thing with water via the speaker hole. Or stick a propane torch in it for 30 seconds. As long as you aren't an idiot about time of day or where you enter his yard from the problem is solved. At least with the water if it doesn't short circuit it'll take a while to dry out and will give you time to contemplate new attack vectors.
With regard to the people commenting that he wouldn't be able to call the cops for the vandalism, all he has to do is say that it was a very expensive Mosquito repellent system. The cops aren't going to check, and if he phrases it that way he's not lying, either (ah, semantics). They will file the report, which then may influence property values, etc. So you have to do something to it that the cops won't file a vandalism/destruction of property report on, or be able to pin on a person. An act of God type of problem, like water. Dude, your mosquito thing got wet when it rained yesterday. It's not vandalism, it's nature.
Heck, put some sugar in the water you spray in there and it'll be full of ants, too.
How many of those are because of upgrades, like those due to security problems? Rhetorical question, though, since it's really hard to figure that out. It's easy to count the lines in a log file.:-)
Of course, other vendors play by these rules, too, especially when they count the browser as part of the OS. Fight fire with fire, ya know?
There is a lot of government control that's been foisted upon us in the name of protecting the children. It seems that we wouldn't endure such legislation normally, but once we start thinking about how we don't want our kids to grow up as violent individuals we stop thinking and start letting others tell us what to do. Parents seem to have lost any sense of personal responsibility they should have for the way their children turn out, and things like the war on drugs is just the rest of society trying to treat the symptoms of the problem.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brooks Brown, and ostensibly his parents, about how it's not the video games, but it is the parenting, or lack thereof, that is causing this violence. As a kid I watched cartoons, like G.I. Joe, that have since been taken off the air because they are too violent. I didn't turn out as a psychopath, though, and that's because when I started being violent my parents intervened. I fully understand the difference between a made-up, imaginary world where you can shoot others without consequence, and the real world where you can shoot others with consequence. I understand this because my parents made sure I understood it.
I was a Boy Scout assistant scoutmaster for a number of years, and during that time I saw a lot of parental hypocrisy that really opened my eyes to how my parents were absolutely exceptional when it came to imparting right and wrong on my brother and I, and teaching us responsibility for our actions. Parents who are told their child is being violent (or stealing, or being a criminal in general) at camp respond with an adamant "I have a good son, you caught the wrong kid" or "It's your training him to use a knife that caused him to carve his name in everything." The knife comment actually came from a parent who had told me once that he didn't know what he'd do without a pocket knife as a tool. Okay, so instead of shutting your brain off, why don't you use this opportunity to help your son learn to be perfect, rather than just pretend he's already an angel? And stop hiding behind comments like "boys will be boys" - while that's true, they don't turn into men unless someone points out the error of their ways so they become better people. Who better than parents to set a good example for their child and provide constant pressure to do the right thing?
The crusade against violent video games, the war against drugs, and even things like metal detectors in schools are symptoms of the same problem: the lack of responsible parental involvement. While it isn't like parents get a manual for how to raise their kids, sometimes it seems that they also forget that it's the parent's job, not the government's, or the day care staff's, or the teacher's, to make sure that their children end up as responsible adults. So while we can safely explain a lot of behavior on youth itself, if parents treat their children as if they were adults, and hold their children to the same standards as adults, they'll turn out as excellent adults. And when someone else tells you your child is a little devil, act on it. Fix the problem behavior and you won't ever have to worry about the level of violence in a video game, or your kid taking drugs, or what they're doing with a knife at Scout camp. Your child will already know how it works.
Too funny? I'm not sure how much more insulting you could get. It isn't like all poor people are violent. Maybe they're just that way to you (and I really don't wonder why). Go back to your gated community.
It'd be cooler if they'd find some people in that part of town who could beta-test the whole process, and live in a few of these houses. Like an automated Habitat for Humanity or something.
You have to upgrade once in a while regardless of the OS you're running.
And with Microsoft's release schedules slipping, it looks like the support timelines for things like Windows XP will be as long as the support from Red Hat for Enterprise Linux (5 years). Oops! Fortunately, Red Hat will have two new OS releases before Microsoft gets one new one out.
So basically you're saying that because users are clueless regardless of the OS or windowing system it doesn't really matter what they're using. They'll ask the same stupid questions regardless.
Yeah, I can see that. In the enterprise software deployments I've done I've seen so much complaining about stupid things, baseless complaints, complaints that buttons are in a different place, complaints that things are different (duh, it's a different fricking product), etc. that I totally agree. Most of the users I deal with can handle basic window operation, though (which is neither for or against Linux, BTW, because KDE and Gnome and stuff obviously have the same controls).
I think this started mostly as commentary on managerial fears, though, and that's where I see the biggest problem. Maybe you're in a situation where you're the manager of the IT department, or the management is cool with Linux, but in a lot of cases the idea of switching to Linux is scary to managers. Why? Because it's the unknown, and what if it doesn't work and it screws something up, and they get fired? If you're not a manager try walking up to yours and suggesting you all switch to Linux on the desktop. Actually, this should be homework for everybody reading this.:-) Plant the seeds of change by just suggesting it...
Anyhow, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in many cases managers are just as clueless about this stuff as the users. They just get to make the decisions.
I totally agree with you. It's just that people follow the path of least resistance, not what might be better for them in the long term. I've been through a number of migrations of enterprise systems, from one product to another, and the users complain about everything. It isn't surprising to me that IT management wouldn't want to do anything "radical" that would cause people to complain more. Yeah, I know, and you know, that it isn't necessarily that radical, but it's the whole "sticking your neck out" thing, and that's what Linux feels like to a lot of people right now, at least on the desktop. Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft, it seems.
Again, I agree with you, and I think that this behaviour is lame. As more work is done by corporations like Red Hat and SuSe on the desktop, as SCO dies and burns in hell, as organizations that are less "risk averse" start switching to Linux on the desktop, things will get better because the stodgy organizations won't feel like they're sticking their necks out so far.
Now, if IBM were to switch their desktops internally to Linux, and publish their results...
If there was one kernel of truth in Steve Ballmer's last anti-Linux email, his comments on the cost of switching were right on. So are yours. It's really hard to switch away from something that people, especially the average users, are so used to, and most places considering the switch would do well to do it in stages anyhow. Or slowly, replacing services that operate better on Linux (like name servers, web servers, etc.).
Nine years is a time to be trapped with one vendor. One would hope that Linux will be an absolute no-brainer on the desktop by then.
I take half-gallon milk jugs and freeze water in them for camping reasons (coolers, then to drink). They've come in handy in my freezer, though, during power outages, especially since they're already in there so I don't have to rush home from work or anything. And you can move them to the fridge, too, to keep that cool.
The trick is to NOT open the freezer or refrigerator when it isn't powered.
Vitamin C and iodine react and neutralize each other. That's why hikers make Gatorade a lot. Well, that is if they aren't just using a portable water purification filter.
Plus, sometimes it tastes better as Kool-Aid or Gatorade.:-)
Excellent point. The same family of stuff you're killing in your water supply lives in your intestines, too, and they don't like the iodine much. Problem is, you need the stuff living in your intestines...
If you're concerned with water supply issues you should get a couple of decent sized containers (two 5 gallon jugs) and keep water in them. Especially if you rely on a well for your water source (other than a city well). You might think "Oh, I'll keep bottled water around" but you can't flush the toilet with that...:-) Keep Kool-Aid around instead to deal with the taste.
You might not be able to get a copier that does this for a couple hundred bucks, but if a place on campus has a copier you can use, either for free or cheap (since scanning doesn't use toner or paper, after all), you win.
The Konica ones where I work do a similar thing -- they can email you a TIFF or a PDF of a huge stack of paper. Ours are only black & white, and will only do a fixed resolution, but a newer color copier would fix all those shortcomings. Many universities and colleges have print centers that have this type of equipment if your department doesn't.
Worse case, you can get an HP scanner and the automatic document feeder for it. If this is going to happen a lot it should be pretty easy to justify the $500 or so for the scanner, ADF, and a copy of Acrobat.
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I agree completely. Most of the comments in this thread are written by people who don't understand that sometimes you really do have to fight fire with fire. Sometimes there is absolutely no way you can appease a person who thinks you are just out to annoy them. The best you can hope for is that they don't escalate the situation too far. You gear any actions you take towards minimizing their ability or desire to escalate it while reducing your own discomfort.
In this case I don't really care who is specifically right or wrong, because it all went sideways. The guy asking the question has done something to annoy his elderly neighbor. Or maybe he didn't, and the old guy needs to realize the world doesn't revolve around him. We weren't there, we don't know. The elderly guy decided to get one of these Mosquito devices, and personally, that'd do it for me, too, because I can hear those things. Since I don't have an unlimited budget by which to fund my lawyer's legal assault on this dude (with no hope for any remuneration) I'd opt for a more direct approach, too. Like the person asking the question I too would try the police. If it isn't panning out I'm not going to waste time on trying to find a cop that can hear it. I'm not willing to live in misery during the interim.
I'm also quite disappointed that people here can't put down their kind/gentle/be-nice crap, grow a set, and just think up some good ways to disable this thing. The ideas here have been so lackluster, complex, expensive, and dangerous. Just fill the damn thing with water via the speaker hole. Or stick a propane torch in it for 30 seconds. As long as you aren't an idiot about time of day or where you enter his yard from the problem is solved. At least with the water if it doesn't short circuit it'll take a while to dry out and will give you time to contemplate new attack vectors.
With regard to the people commenting that he wouldn't be able to call the cops for the vandalism, all he has to do is say that it was a very expensive Mosquito repellent system. The cops aren't going to check, and if he phrases it that way he's not lying, either (ah, semantics). They will file the report, which then may influence property values, etc. So you have to do something to it that the cops won't file a vandalism/destruction of property report on, or be able to pin on a person. An act of God type of problem, like water. Dude, your mosquito thing got wet when it rained yesterday. It's not vandalism, it's nature.
Heck, put some sugar in the water you spray in there and it'll be full of ants, too.
NTSC horizontal scan is 15.7 kHz.
Wildfire and Psi.
It was Lewis Black that said:
"The Republicans are the party of bad ideas. The Democrats are the party of no ideas."
How many of those are because of upgrades, like those due to security problems? Rhetorical question, though, since it's really hard to figure that out. It's easy to count the lines in a log file. :-)
Of course, other vendors play by these rules, too, especially when they count the browser as part of the OS. Fight fire with fire, ya know?
Big deal, we've been doing precisely this for years. Why is it astonishing that someone else might be doing this?
There is a lot of government control that's been foisted upon us in the name of protecting the children. It seems that we wouldn't endure such legislation normally, but once we start thinking about how we don't want our kids to grow up as violent individuals we stop thinking and start letting others tell us what to do. Parents seem to have lost any sense of personal responsibility they should have for the way their children turn out, and things like the war on drugs is just the rest of society trying to treat the symptoms of the problem.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brooks Brown, and ostensibly his parents, about how it's not the video games, but it is the parenting, or lack thereof, that is causing this violence. As a kid I watched cartoons, like G.I. Joe, that have since been taken off the air because they are too violent. I didn't turn out as a psychopath, though, and that's because when I started being violent my parents intervened. I fully understand the difference between a made-up, imaginary world where you can shoot others without consequence, and the real world where you can shoot others with consequence. I understand this because my parents made sure I understood it.
I was a Boy Scout assistant scoutmaster for a number of years, and during that time I saw a lot of parental hypocrisy that really opened my eyes to how my parents were absolutely exceptional when it came to imparting right and wrong on my brother and I, and teaching us responsibility for our actions. Parents who are told their child is being violent (or stealing, or being a criminal in general) at camp respond with an adamant "I have a good son, you caught the wrong kid" or "It's your training him to use a knife that caused him to carve his name in everything." The knife comment actually came from a parent who had told me once that he didn't know what he'd do without a pocket knife as a tool. Okay, so instead of shutting your brain off, why don't you use this opportunity to help your son learn to be perfect, rather than just pretend he's already an angel? And stop hiding behind comments like "boys will be boys" - while that's true, they don't turn into men unless someone points out the error of their ways so they become better people. Who better than parents to set a good example for their child and provide constant pressure to do the right thing?
The crusade against violent video games, the war against drugs, and even things like metal detectors in schools are symptoms of the same problem: the lack of responsible parental involvement. While it isn't like parents get a manual for how to raise their kids, sometimes it seems that they also forget that it's the parent's job, not the government's, or the day care staff's, or the teacher's, to make sure that their children end up as responsible adults. So while we can safely explain a lot of behavior on youth itself, if parents treat their children as if they were adults, and hold their children to the same standards as adults, they'll turn out as excellent adults. And when someone else tells you your child is a little devil, act on it. Fix the problem behavior and you won't ever have to worry about the level of violence in a video game, or your kid taking drugs, or what they're doing with a knife at Scout camp. Your child will already know how it works.
It'd have to be more along the lines of Habitat for Humanity...
I bet they could find *someone* to live there, in a sort of beta-test of the thing. Heck, build me one and I'll live there on vacation. :-)
Just wait until SkyNet becomes active. At least our machine overlords will have nice office buildings.
Too funny? I'm not sure how much more insulting you could get. It isn't like all poor people are violent. Maybe they're just that way to you (and I really don't wonder why). Go back to your gated community.
It'd be cooler if they'd find some people in that part of town who could beta-test the whole process, and live in a few of these houses. Like an automated Habitat for Humanity or something.
Yeah, because IBM is the mother of all stodgy organizations. :-)
You have to upgrade once in a while regardless of the OS you're running.
And with Microsoft's release schedules slipping, it looks like the support timelines for things like Windows XP will be as long as the support from Red Hat for Enterprise Linux (5 years). Oops! Fortunately, Red Hat will have two new OS releases before Microsoft gets one new one out.
So basically you're saying that because users are clueless regardless of the OS or windowing system it doesn't really matter what they're using. They'll ask the same stupid questions regardless.
:-) Plant the seeds of change by just suggesting it...
Yeah, I can see that. In the enterprise software deployments I've done I've seen so much complaining about stupid things, baseless complaints, complaints that buttons are in a different place, complaints that things are different (duh, it's a different fricking product), etc. that I totally agree. Most of the users I deal with can handle basic window operation, though (which is neither for or against Linux, BTW, because KDE and Gnome and stuff obviously have the same controls).
I think this started mostly as commentary on managerial fears, though, and that's where I see the biggest problem. Maybe you're in a situation where you're the manager of the IT department, or the management is cool with Linux, but in a lot of cases the idea of switching to Linux is scary to managers. Why? Because it's the unknown, and what if it doesn't work and it screws something up, and they get fired? If you're not a manager try walking up to yours and suggesting you all switch to Linux on the desktop. Actually, this should be homework for everybody reading this.
Anyhow, I guess what I'm trying to say is that in many cases managers are just as clueless about this stuff as the users. They just get to make the decisions.
I totally agree with you. It's just that people follow the path of least resistance, not what might be better for them in the long term. I've been through a number of migrations of enterprise systems, from one product to another, and the users complain about everything. It isn't surprising to me that IT management wouldn't want to do anything "radical" that would cause people to complain more. Yeah, I know, and you know, that it isn't necessarily that radical, but it's the whole "sticking your neck out" thing, and that's what Linux feels like to a lot of people right now, at least on the desktop. Nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft, it seems.
Again, I agree with you, and I think that this behaviour is lame. As more work is done by corporations like Red Hat and SuSe on the desktop, as SCO dies and burns in hell, as organizations that are less "risk averse" start switching to Linux on the desktop, things will get better because the stodgy organizations won't feel like they're sticking their necks out so far.
Now, if IBM were to switch their desktops internally to Linux, and publish their results...
If there was one kernel of truth in Steve Ballmer's last anti-Linux email, his comments on the cost of switching were right on. So are yours. It's really hard to switch away from something that people, especially the average users, are so used to, and most places considering the switch would do well to do it in stages anyhow. Or slowly, replacing services that operate better on Linux (like name servers, web servers, etc.).
Nine years is a time to be trapped with one vendor. One would hope that Linux will be an absolute no-brainer on the desktop by then.
Yes, yes I am. There are also twelve clowns, an elephant, and the Great Wall of China in my freezer.
I meant in general, not to open the fridge. Sorry, I wasn't PERFECTLY clear about it.
I take half-gallon milk jugs and freeze water in them for camping reasons (coolers, then to drink). They've come in handy in my freezer, though, during power outages, especially since they're already in there so I don't have to rush home from work or anything. And you can move them to the fridge, too, to keep that cool.
The trick is to NOT open the freezer or refrigerator when it isn't powered.
Vitamin C and iodine react and neutralize each other. That's why hikers make Gatorade a lot. Well, that is if they aren't just using a portable water purification filter.
:-)
Plus, sometimes it tastes better as Kool-Aid or Gatorade.
Excellent point. The same family of stuff you're killing in your water supply lives in your intestines, too, and they don't like the iodine much. Problem is, you need the stuff living in your intestines...
:-) Keep Kool-Aid around instead to deal with the taste.
If you're concerned with water supply issues you should get a couple of decent sized containers (two 5 gallon jugs) and keep water in them. Especially if you rely on a well for your water source (other than a city well). You might think "Oh, I'll keep bottled water around" but you can't flush the toilet with that...
..and JFS and JFS2 have been this way for years.
You call your broadband company/ISP and have them fix the situation.
You might not be able to get a copier that does this for a couple hundred bucks, but if a place on campus has a copier you can use, either for free or cheap (since scanning doesn't use toner or paper, after all), you win.
The Konica ones where I work do a similar thing -- they can email you a TIFF or a PDF of a huge stack of paper. Ours are only black & white, and will only do a fixed resolution, but a newer color copier would fix all those shortcomings. Many universities and colleges have print centers that have this type of equipment if your department doesn't.
Worse case, you can get an HP scanner and the automatic document feeder for it. If this is going to happen a lot it should be pretty easy to justify the $500 or so for the scanner, ADF, and a copy of Acrobat.
This might be slightly OT, but you can't ignore the BOFH excuse server!