How many car accidents will happen this year due to user error (drunk driving, falling asleep, other poor judgement)? How many billions of dollars have the auto makers, insurance companies, and auto repair coompanies made over the years? It is absolutely outrageous that drivers have to go through the effort and expense of getting a license and fork out thousands of dollars to simply get from point A to point B.
I thought of something along those lines. But for some reason even very sharp and perceptive people such as Mossberg don't accept it. Computers are somehow "different" from any other tool in their lives. Although I can explain why computers are different from other tools in some ways (and similar in others), the people making these criticisms typically cannot. So I am at a loss as to how to respond to them.
If I worked as head of IT at any other corporation, I would find it COMPLETELY unacceptable that the users could do anything to install applications onto their PCs. I would find it entirely unacceptable, if our users were compromised by an Email virus.
Um, that depends a bit on the corporate culture and the attitude of the guys at the top of the pyramid. Ever work for a company staffed entirely with "nothing gets in our way; we can break down any brick wall"-type people? Such people do not accept limitations on what they can do with "their" computer. And regardless of what policy document the boss agrees to sign and distribute, he actually rewards the people who violate the policy to "get the job done".
I would guess that most IT professionals are not in tech support. I've not seen numbers on it, but if you lump together programmers, DBA's, web developers, analysts, etc, vs. sysads and tech support I bet you get something like an 80/20 ratio. Anyone seen stats on it?
That is in fact a fundamental part of the problem: everyone in IT is considered to be part of tech support. The CEO of Acme wouldn't call the CFO in for a meeting, and at the end of that meeting say "oh, here's my checkbook - add up those numbers for me will you" [1]. But he thinks nothing of ending a meeting with the CIO (who is directly responsible for managing larger projects, budgets, and headcounts than the CFO, and who has far more daily interaction with the "business units" than any of the other CXOs) by telling him to crawl under his desk and reconnect the printer.
The disconnect between value provided to the business (which, despite the stereotypes, is quite high in my experience) and the perception/treatment of the "IT nerds" (what a contemptuous term BTW) is what causes a lot of the unhappiness.
sPh
[1] Yes, I know: you can cite a counterexample. And everyone gets the occational humiliation, particularly in smaller companies. But no - not on the daily basis that the IT people get.
I have been trying to compose a reply to William Mossberg's March 11th column in the Wall Street Journal but haven't been able to capture exactly how I feel in polite enough language. Your post does that very well in few words. Would you consider sending it to Mossberg?
I don't want to be too critical of something written in a humorous style, but there were several comments of the form:
He decided to use the standard and got again a whole bunch of lines of funny things he didn't understand. "Quite a log of stuff I don't understand today" he thought.
There was nothing I saw on any of the installation screens that would have stopped (or for the most part even confused) anyone who has installed, from scratch, any version of MS Windows from 3.0 through 2000 (I haven't done XP from scratch yet personally). Sure, there are things he wouldn't understand, but then again I don't think there is even anyone at Microsoft who understands what "registering components...updating registry" means!
If he had never installed any OS from scratch before, sure, he would be confused - but he would be just as confused if he had pulled out the raw W2K install disks on a rainy Saturday.
Burning pvc?? why worry by the time it starts buring your dead anyway. no need to worry about fumes.
The point of modern residential fire protection codes is to give the firefighters enough time to get everyone out of the house alive, then and only then to start trying to save the structure. Your comment is snappy, but wouldn't seem so funny if you were trying to crawl out of a smoke-filled house (most people can't do it unless they practice regularly with their eyes closed, and very few people do that unless they have a fire-fighting-obsessed 4 year old son).
e lives in Utah though, doesn't he? Isn't that a 'shall-issue' state with regard to carry licenses?
You may have read a bit about the controversy in Missouri (central USA) over the recently passed "concealed carry" law. A Missouri Supreme Court ruling a few weeks ago put the law into final effect.
Quote from the commander of the Illinois State Police: "We don't have concealed carry in Illinois. And if you come across that bridge carrying a concealed weapon, be prepared to spend 15-20 years in Illinos."
I think the chances that Darl McBride has received death threats, both at his place of business and his residence, are so close to 100 percent as makes no difference. Some people can laugh that stuff off. Others choose to take it seriously. Who can argue with either approach?
That may well be so, but the law in various parts of the United States does not allow one to carry firearms or to be protected by "sharpshooters" who are not government employees. In San Francisco, for example, where Darl claimed he had armed bodyguards inside the Moscone Center. Were they properly licensed in the City of SF?
[...] You don't understand the purpose of RICO or how it's used anymore, so stop claiming it can be used against SCO or the RIAA or anybody else for that matter.
SCO did nothing illegal. The RIAA did nothing illegal.[...]
The RIAA, of course, is currently facing at least one civil RICO suit. Whether or not it will succeed is a different question.
Pournelle has had some good discussions on this. Here is one: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail298.html#Sa turday and scroll down a bit into the Saturday letters. He has also written several interesting essays on the topic.
OK Tom (and others of similar ilk): we have all taken Micro/Macro 101/102. We know what the theory of comparative advantage is, and how it is supposed to work in theory (of course, the difference between theory and practice is...).
Now, could you please answer just one question? We in the US were told when we shipped all our manufacturing jobs, and most of our dirty work, to the Third World, that all would be OK, because we would retrain to do the work of the mind. Which supposedly has a higher value.
Now that all the work of the hands is gone, we are starting to ship the work of the mind elsewhere. When the work of the hands and the work of the mind is gone, what exactly is left?
Please be precise, specific, and complete in your answer. Thanks.
And Salon's restriction of the flow of information is a God-given right? Get off your high horse.
Information can't be bought or sold. They still have it if you get it, so they don't lose anything except the ability to restrict what you think and say.
And you are free to make that argument to your elected representative. I may or may not support you in that: we are currently in an era of "too much control" over copyrights, but IMHO there does need to be some (socially-constructed) set of restrictions/permissions to allow creative people to benefit from their work, while not stifling creativity.
However, at the moment that is not where the law stands. And I don't see this as being a "Martin Luther King" issue either, so references to civil disobedience will have to be very well thought-out.
And your justification for gross violation of copyright laws is what exactly? Salon.com is a paid-subscription site with limited public access. Its content is NOT under a Creative Commons or GPL license. You have no right to copy an article in bulk from Salon to another site.
No lightning has ever been detected on Mars. Tho it's not impossible, it is very very unlikely.
Wow, that's interesting. I would have thought with the monster dust storms on Mars that there would be some lightning. Do you have any links on the lack thereof?
Postal fraud requires intent. Your going to have to prove that SCO knowingly and intentionally attempted to defraud those 1500 recipients. I don't beleive that's the case, and you'll have a very difficult time PROVING it.
Not in a criminal case, no. You (realistically, enough businesses with enough political clout) just have to get the postal inspector interested in the situation; the Post Office, the FTC, and the Attorney General's office will then determine if there was a criminal action and, if so, prosecute.
If SCO has been sending invoices to politically connected Wall Street firms, they could be in a difficult situation.
Once again.. If we do change these "offending" code blocks, we would be admitting to our "guilt". The kernel hackers should not even think about changi anything until these lawsuits are resolved..
The lawyers over on Groklaw will probably discuss this in more depth, but I believe the opposite is actually true: the copyright owner has a duty to notify you of infringement and give you an opportunity to cure it, and you have a duty to minimize damages from said infringement. As a result, the courts have held that proactive actions on your part (such as replacing code that is in litigation) cannot be used against you. Sort of a 5th Amendment for IP lawsuits.
I downloaded a diagnostic (DOS) program and it tested the memory for hours without finding a single problem. Yet when I changed the SIMM the problems when away. I remember similar results with motherboard errors. The only diagnostic program that I have found that actually do anything useful are the disk checking programs
I had a piece of process control equipment where the vendor kept telling me to "run the diagnostics. run the diagnostics". I actually had the diagnostics up and telling me that everything was "running great" when the flames started coming out of the air vents. Yeah, that was good for a laugh, after I found the CO2 extinguisher.
I'd call every month, and every month, they'd take off the late fees when I complained about it, but do you know how old this gets? Every single month calling them to get them to correct their errors. I switched off of them and evaluated AT&T and Verizon as potential new service providers, and decided on Verizon only because of the glowing testimony given by a coworker, who also lent me his phone for a day so I could check to see if those dead spots (eg, my house and my work) in Cingular's network were there for Verizon, when they were non existant under Verizon.
I am happy for you, but my experience with Verizon was just the opposite. I got in a 3-month battle with them over dead spots in one of St. Louis' largest suburbs (average income, average density, average or above average cell phone usage). They WOULD NOT acknowledge that there was a problem (blaming everything from the instrument {which worked fine elsewhere} to sunspots), WOULD NOT send out a signal-strength truck ("What's that sir? We don't have those"), and WOULD lose the trouble ticket every day or two.
I had to threaten to file a formal complaint with the state commerce commission and FCC (funny how ears suddenly perk up when they realize you know the difference between a gripe letter and a formal complaint) to get them to cancel the contract with no fees.
I switched back to AT&T and have been using them ever since. No problems connecting anywhere in North America, including some places I really don't expect to get a signal.
True diversity, Charney said, would require thousands of different operating systems, which would make integrating computer systems and networks virtually impossible. Without a Microsoft monoculture, he said, most of the recent progress in information technology could not have happened.
While the first part of Charney's statement makes for an interesting discussion starter, the second part is absolutely side-splitting. Could Microsoft finish adding the basic capabilities of Multics, TOPS-20, and Netware 3.11 into its systems before it starts claiming ownership of all innovation in computer technology? Please?
Very interesting, Do you have any more info? who was the private EMS co?
I didn't pry, as I figured it wasn't my business. The EMS was just a local company that provides contract ambulence services, private ambulence, EMS augmentation, etc. We did learn later that she had been experiencing irregular heartbeat and her doctor had prescribed the EKG recorder which also included the wireless alert service.
She is back at work now with no apparent harm done.
f the cardiologist is far enough away to need telemetry via cellular to tell him about the heart attack, there's nothing he can do about it. Anyone close enough to help is going to see him clutch his left arm and keel over.
Two weeks ago a private EMS service got off the elevator with a gurney in tow, walked through our office, grabbed one of our employees, and wheeled her out. Their explanation: "she is having a heart attack, although she doesn't know it yet". Pretty weird experience.
So no, I don't think your rationalization is valid.
Slashdot Mirror
That's pretty good. I am curious how he would reply to it.
The only thing I would change is to emphasize the danger of analogies in the technology world a bit more.
Why don't you fire it off to him and see what happens? You can't be anonymous in that case though.
sPh
sPh
Now, how does your theory apply there?
sPh
The disconnect between value provided to the business (which, despite the stereotypes, is quite high in my experience) and the perception/treatment of the "IT nerds" (what a contemptuous term BTW) is what causes a lot of the unhappiness.
sPh
[1] Yes, I know: you can cite a counterexample. And everyone gets the occational humiliation, particularly in smaller companies. But no - not on the daily basis that the IT people get.
sPh
If he had never installed any OS from scratch before, sure, he would be confused - but he would be just as confused if he had pulled out the raw W2K install disks on a rainy Saturday.
sPh
So please - do pay attention to stuff like that.
sPh
Quote from the commander of the Illinois State Police: "We don't have concealed carry in Illinois. And if you come across that bridge carrying a concealed weapon, be prepared to spend 15-20 years in Illinos."
sPh
sPh
sPh
So to boil that down to one sentence: you don't have any answer to my question either ;-)
sPh
sPh
Now, could you please answer just one question? We in the US were told when we shipped all our manufacturing jobs, and most of our dirty work, to the Third World, that all would be OK, because we would retrain to do the work of the mind. Which supposedly has a higher value.
Now that all the work of the hands is gone, we are starting to ship the work of the mind elsewhere. When the work of the hands and the work of the mind is gone, what exactly is left?
Please be precise, specific, and complete in your answer. Thanks.
sPh
However, at the moment that is not where the law stands. And I don't see this as being a "Martin Luther King" issue either, so references to civil disobedience will have to be very well thought-out.
sPh
Admittedly, "Orwellian" is most often applied directly the 1984, but not always or exclusively.
sPh
And your justification for gross violation of copyright laws is what exactly? Salon.com is a paid-subscription site with limited public access. Its content is NOT under a Creative Commons or GPL license. You have no right to copy an article in bulk from Salon to another site.
sPh
sPh
If SCO has been sending invoices to politically connected Wall Street firms, they could be in a difficult situation.
sPh
sPh
sPh
I had to threaten to file a formal complaint with the state commerce commission and FCC (funny how ears suddenly perk up when they realize you know the difference between a gripe letter and a formal complaint) to get them to cancel the contract with no fees.
I switched back to AT&T and have been using them ever since. No problems connecting anywhere in North America, including some places I really don't expect to get a signal.
sph
Now a P-38...
sPh
sPh
She is back at work now with no apparent harm done.
sPh
So no, I don't think your rationalization is valid.
sPh