Populate the net with files like this full of E-mail addresses that are not valid. Have dummy accounts on the appropriate servers that will accept the logins, allow the spambots to think they're successfully sending E-mails when in fact they're all going into the bit bucket.
For added effect, make the servers respond v e r y s l o w l y under these accounts, taking tens of seconds to "send" the E-mail, a minute or so to log in, etc. Basically, slow the spam bots down and waste their time. Of course, the bots will probably eventually evolve to detect such shenanigans, but why make spammers' jobs easy?:)
Kids should have at least a couple of months out of the year when they can just not worry about their studies and have fun and BE KIDS.
I mean, jeez! You only get to be a kid once. Let them enjoy those summer vacations. When I think back to my childhood, my fondest memories are during those summer vacations! Why the heck should we take that away from our future generations?
Leave summer vacation in place. And stop freaking shortening it.
The iPhone would actually be a more effective test because iPhones tend to be identical regardless of what carrier you are on. I'm extremely surprised they did not test the iPhone for this reason.
PalmOS is a rather antiquated system. No memory protection, no native multitasking, clunky APIs...
Depending on your personality type and the coding experience you have, it's either going to be a TON of fun, or you're going to want to smash and break things on the very first night.
Or maybe both.:) I don't have any pointers, but as a former Palm OS user, godspeed.
(Palm IIIxe from 2000-2005, Palm Treo 650 from 2005 to 2009)
Have these problems actually been happening a lot?
When I first started to help manage a computer lab, I was concerned users would behave really badly and do horrible things. The truth is, very few users did, and we just talked to those users and told them how to behave.
If you get the occasional repeatedly defiant user, locking out their account can be the final solution. But most people (at least at our site) aren't jerks and listen. Most "bad things" are due more to incompetence than malice, and educating students is easy.
Also, as someone with experience in these matters, allow me to recommend AGAINST Fedora for production systems. I like to call Fedora the self-breaking distro; updates break things CONSTANTLY. You're much better off running Ubuntu (even non-LTS is more stable than Fedora) or the RHEL clones like CentOS or Scientific Linux.
It must be horrifyingly frustrating to work for a company like Verizon as a tech, know that you can fix a problem by adding a few more links between two switches, and being told my management that you cannot because of idiotic reasons.
I'd be half tempted to just fix the issue behind their back, but then of course I'd likely be fired for insubordination!
Imagine that, fired for improving network performance. Might even be worth it if the tech doing it had another job lined up at a company that isn't as evil.
Or even a low end receiver. You don't HAVE to use all the fancy featues. And as an added bonus, most receivers have toslink inputs so you can avoid analog signal degradation between the computer and amplifier.
Any money spent on a sound card is better off spent on speakers and a good DAC, which often come together.
High end sound systems and speaker systems these days have digital inputs, thus an onboard DAC. If you're using a digital output on your motherboard to connect to a digital input on the speaker, the onboard sound card has ZERO effect on the quality of the audio. The bits are traveling directly, unmolested from the application generating them to the amplifiers in the speakers.
Now, if you have audiophile-type equipment that uses analog inputs, then YES, the analog sound you feed into those inputs needs to come from a high quality DAC. High end sound cards tend to have good DACs, but you can get the same effect by using an outboard DAC, which has a digital input and analog outputs, and is also AWAY from your PC, so your analog audio is less likely to be affected by interference from the motherboard or power supply.
You can get DACs with USB inputs, but USB adds latency so is best avoided for gaming. For music, go to town with a USB DAC; it won't matter there.
The gist of it is, the most important component is the DAC. The DAC completely determines the quality. Everything else is just hype.:)
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
If they had not asked, DC probably would never have noticed that their logo was used there. On top of that, even if they had, I doubt they would have acted on it. Suing a grieving family over a harmless supposed trademark violation isn't too good for the company's reputation.
If they tried to use the logo now, after having been denied permission, DC would probably have no choice but to sue since this is in the public spotlight.
This would have been a total non-issue had they just done it and not asked anyone or publicized it.
Microsoft could have avoided all this mess by simply listening to people who were beta testing and using 8 and complaining about the horrible start screen. I'm sure they got PILES of feedback, but they were so stubborn they even went out of their way to keep people from bringing back the traditional start menu.
What happened to listening to your customers? To providing options? Historically MS has always been all about that, and *Apple* has been the "our way, or the highway" company. It was really strange to see things reversed for Windows 8.
Also, MS really should break free of their "we are the only OS that exists" philosophy. Other operating systems support a wide variety of filesystems and networking protocols out of the box. Windows still only supports its own and assumes nothing else exists. It's time to knock that shit off, Microsoft.
1) Old boxes just won't die. 2) Cable companies don't want to replace equipment unless they absolutely have to.
Comcast still supports the old VCR-sized, power guzzling GeneralInstruments/Motorola cable boxes that they gave out when digital cable just started. These fuckers are huge, heavy, consume ridiculous amounts of energy and spew out tons of heat.
I had one for a few years in the early 00s until I got rid of cable.
They don't even support HD, they're THAT old. Yet there's still millions of them out there, mostly owned by people who don't care about HD, and they won't be replaced until they die or the cable company stops supporting them, which is likely to be not until they do die. Good luck with that.
Telling people that you'll come arrest them when they speak out against you is admitting that you're not acting in the best interest of the people. Hence people will be less likely to support you in the long run than if you just allow and *gasp* maybe even listen to criticism.
These people act more like playground bullies than adults governing a nation. It's pretty sad and despicable. Imagine if they just came out and said "You may say whatever you like about us; tell us how you really feel. No harm will ever befall you for stating your opinion." The good will that would generate would be FAR more effective than arresting those who disagree with you!
I recall that back in the day, when people started charging for computer software, it was treated as a book. If you paid for the book, it was yours and you could use it for whatever you want.
Then someone came along and decided that copying the software from disk into memory was considered copyright infringement, and thus you needed a license to do so. Hence the software license and all its associated pain in the ass restrictions was born.
So basically, these idiots are trying to use the same concept to add additional legal hurdles to simply browsing the web. At least this time, unlike back in the day with software, sanity ended up being victorious.
We had an OCZ drive fail at work and kill the iMac it was installed in.
Yes, KILL. The machine would no longer power up at all.
At that moment we didn't know it was drive's fault, so we moved the drive to a different iMac. (These are older iMacs, out of warranty.)
*POP* a second dead iMac.
I will NEVER buy an OCZ product as long as I live. I don't know how the heck the drive killed the machine, and I have no easy way to find out. Maybe I'll sacrifice an ancient PC to see if the drive kills it as well.
This is a wonderful idea! Placing control of your mission-critical infrastructure in the hands of others is DIVINE!
Sorry, but I think we'll retain control of our own stuff. At least when we have downtime then we can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, rather than whine helplessly to tech support.
I'm still amazed at how many geeks don't realize that stuff like virtual memory and paging was invented in the freaking *1960s*, and was used by the big mainframes of the day like the IBM System/360.
Virtual memory has been around far longer than even us middle-aged geeks. It just didn't become feasible to implement in *micro*computers until the late 80s and early 90s because IC density wasn't really there yet and cost was such a huge factor in microcomputer designs at the time. (When the 386 chip came out, a 386 system cost around $4K)
This may sound crass, but this is a problem that'll solve itself in a couple of decades, after which you'll have a much lower population on the island, which given the lack of space (especially in large cities) is probably a good thing.
There are way too many people on the planet in general. Breeding more is NOT the answer. Do the best we can to take care of our elders, and when they're gone, let's be more responsible about population growth going forward.
- Pay for the system. - Pay for the game. - Pay for a subscription to an online service so you can play the game. - Pay for additional content to add to the game.
Pay, pay, pay, pay more, pay more again. It's like bringing the arcade experience of feeding quarters home. Is this really progress?
It feels like every few years, distros switch to a new way of doing things.
Why not just improve on whatever the current way is, and evolve it into the perfect init, rather than switch to an entirely new system so often? It annoys current sysadmins who have to learn new software for no good reason, it introduces bugs that make systems less stable, and it further breaks/fragments compatibility between distros.
With a key, you switch it to 1 and can run accessories. You switch it to 2 and the ignition computer is powered. Switch and hold it to 3 and you crank. You decide exactly how to start your engine.
With the newer systems, you just push the button and it decides what to do. You lose the control. What if you want to crank for a while because it won't start? What if you want to switch it to position 2 and push-start a manual transmission car? You can't.
I like the standard keys. And really, just because one manufacturer happened to use a defective part, we lose them? Key switches have been around for decade and are reliable. Just fix the reliability issue in that one model and that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
Populate the net with files like this full of E-mail addresses that are not valid. Have dummy accounts on the appropriate servers that will accept the logins, allow the spambots to think they're successfully sending E-mails when in fact they're all going into the bit bucket.
For added effect, make the servers respond v e r y s l o w l y under these accounts, taking tens of seconds to "send" the E-mail, a minute or so to log in, etc. Basically, slow the spam bots down and waste their time. Of course, the bots will probably eventually evolve to detect such shenanigans, but why make spammers' jobs easy? :)
Kids should have at least a couple of months out of the year when they can just not worry about their studies and have fun and BE KIDS.
I mean, jeez! You only get to be a kid once. Let them enjoy those summer vacations. When I think back to my childhood, my fondest memories are during those summer vacations! Why the heck should we take that away from our future generations?
Leave summer vacation in place. And stop freaking shortening it.
The iPhone would actually be a more effective test because iPhones tend to be identical regardless of what carrier you are on. I'm extremely surprised they did not test the iPhone for this reason.
Don't they realize that a policy like this is more likely to SCARE potential customers away than to help their reputation?
Do these idiots think this through at all before coming up with crap like this?
PalmOS is a rather antiquated system. No memory protection, no native multitasking, clunky APIs...
Depending on your personality type and the coding experience you have, it's either going to be a TON of fun, or you're going to want to smash and break things on the very first night.
Or maybe both. :) I don't have any pointers, but as a former Palm OS user, godspeed.
(Palm IIIxe from 2000-2005, Palm Treo 650 from 2005 to 2009)
Have these problems actually been happening a lot?
When I first started to help manage a computer lab, I was concerned users would behave really badly and do horrible things. The truth is, very few users did, and we just talked to those users and told them how to behave.
If you get the occasional repeatedly defiant user, locking out their account can be the final solution. But most people (at least at our site) aren't jerks and listen. Most "bad things" are due more to incompetence than malice, and educating students is easy.
Also, as someone with experience in these matters, allow me to recommend AGAINST Fedora for production systems. I like to call Fedora the self-breaking distro; updates break things CONSTANTLY. You're much better off running Ubuntu (even non-LTS is more stable than Fedora) or the RHEL clones like CentOS or Scientific Linux.
It must be horrifyingly frustrating to work for a company like Verizon as a tech, know that you can fix a problem by adding a few more links between two switches, and being told my management that you cannot because of idiotic reasons.
I'd be half tempted to just fix the issue behind their back, but then of course I'd likely be fired for insubordination!
Imagine that, fired for improving network performance. Might even be worth it if the tech doing it had another job lined up at a company that isn't as evil.
Or even a low end receiver. You don't HAVE to use all the fancy featues. And as an added bonus, most receivers have toslink inputs so you can avoid analog signal degradation between the computer and amplifier.
Any money spent on a sound card is better off spent on speakers and a good DAC, which often come together.
High end sound systems and speaker systems these days have digital inputs, thus an onboard DAC. If you're using a digital output on your motherboard to connect to a digital input on the speaker, the onboard sound card has ZERO effect on the quality of the audio. The bits are traveling directly, unmolested from the application generating them to the amplifiers in the speakers.
Now, if you have audiophile-type equipment that uses analog inputs, then YES, the analog sound you feed into those inputs needs to come from a high quality DAC. High end sound cards tend to have good DACs, but you can get the same effect by using an outboard DAC, which has a digital input and analog outputs, and is also AWAY from your PC, so your analog audio is less likely to be affected by interference from the motherboard or power supply.
You can get DACs with USB inputs, but USB adds latency so is best avoided for gaming. For music, go to town with a USB DAC; it won't matter there.
The gist of it is, the most important component is the DAC. The DAC completely determines the quality. Everything else is just hype. :)
...one good thing DID come out of this. We now know that DC are a bunch of heartless asses.
I guess finding this out is good for society. Makes me want to be their customer less, that's for sure.
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
If they had not asked, DC probably would never have noticed that their logo was used there. On top of that, even if they had, I doubt they would have acted on it. Suing a grieving family over a harmless supposed trademark violation isn't too good for the company's reputation.
If they tried to use the logo now, after having been denied permission, DC would probably have no choice but to sue since this is in the public spotlight.
This would have been a total non-issue had they just done it and not asked anyone or publicized it.
Anyone else getting tired of sites demanding that you log in to see photos?
I don't care if it's a FREE account; I'm not going through the trouble of making an account I'll never use again just to see some photos!
Whoever came up with this practice needs to be forced to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special on infinite repeat. With the Boba Fett cartoon cut out.
I may be the product for Google, which provides services for free, but last I heard, you have to pay for Windows.
If I'm paying for it, I'm the customer. Done. If they think otherwise, I will simply continue to not use Windows.
I know, ridiculous, right?
Microsoft could have avoided all this mess by simply listening to people who were beta testing and using 8 and complaining about the horrible start screen. I'm sure they got PILES of feedback, but they were so stubborn they even went out of their way to keep people from bringing back the traditional start menu.
What happened to listening to your customers? To providing options? Historically MS has always been all about that, and *Apple* has been the "our way, or the highway" company. It was really strange to see things reversed for Windows 8.
Also, MS really should break free of their "we are the only OS that exists" philosophy. Other operating systems support a wide variety of filesystems and networking protocols out of the box. Windows still only supports its own and assumes nothing else exists. It's time to knock that shit off, Microsoft.
The problem is simple:
1) Old boxes just won't die.
2) Cable companies don't want to replace equipment unless they absolutely have to.
Comcast still supports the old VCR-sized, power guzzling GeneralInstruments/Motorola cable boxes that they gave out when digital cable just started. These fuckers are huge, heavy, consume ridiculous amounts of energy and spew out tons of heat.
I had one for a few years in the early 00s until I got rid of cable.
They don't even support HD, they're THAT old. Yet there's still millions of them out there, mostly owned by people who don't care about HD, and they won't be replaced until they die or the cable company stops supporting them, which is likely to be not until they do die. Good luck with that.
Telling people that you'll come arrest them when they speak out against you is admitting that you're not acting in the best interest of the people. Hence people will be less likely to support you in the long run than if you just allow and *gasp* maybe even listen to criticism.
These people act more like playground bullies than adults governing a nation. It's pretty sad and despicable. Imagine if they just came out and said "You may say whatever you like about us; tell us how you really feel. No harm will ever befall you for stating your opinion." The good will that would generate would be FAR more effective than arresting those who disagree with you!
I recall that back in the day, when people started charging for computer software, it was treated as a book. If you paid for the book, it was yours and you could use it for whatever you want.
Then someone came along and decided that copying the software from disk into memory was considered copyright infringement, and thus you needed a license to do so. Hence the software license and all its associated pain in the ass restrictions was born.
So basically, these idiots are trying to use the same concept to add additional legal hurdles to simply browsing the web. At least this time, unlike back in the day with software, sanity ended up being victorious.
We had an OCZ drive fail at work and kill the iMac it was installed in.
Yes, KILL. The machine would no longer power up at all.
At that moment we didn't know it was drive's fault, so we moved the drive to a different iMac. (These are older iMacs, out of warranty.)
*POP* a second dead iMac.
I will NEVER buy an OCZ product as long as I live. I don't know how the heck the drive killed the machine, and I have no easy way to find out. Maybe I'll sacrifice an ancient PC to see if the drive kills it as well.
MMS has been around for many years. Google really has no excuse to not support receiving it.
This is entirely Google's fault.
This is a wonderful idea! Placing control of your mission-critical infrastructure in the hands of others is DIVINE!
Sorry, but I think we'll retain control of our own stuff. At least when we have downtime then we can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, rather than whine helplessly to tech support.
I'm still amazed at how many geeks don't realize that stuff like virtual memory and paging was invented in the freaking *1960s*, and was used by the big mainframes of the day like the IBM System/360.
Virtual memory has been around far longer than even us middle-aged geeks. It just didn't become feasible to implement in *micro*computers until the late 80s and early 90s because IC density wasn't really there yet and cost was such a huge factor in microcomputer designs at the time. (When the 386 chip came out, a 386 system cost around $4K)
This may sound crass, but this is a problem that'll solve itself in a couple of decades, after which you'll have a much lower population on the island, which given the lack of space (especially in large cities) is probably a good thing.
There are way too many people on the planet in general. Breeding more is NOT the answer. Do the best we can to take care of our elders, and when they're gone, let's be more responsible about population growth going forward.
- Pay for the system.
- Pay for the game.
- Pay for a subscription to an online service so you can play the game.
- Pay for additional content to add to the game.
Pay, pay, pay, pay more, pay more again. It's like bringing the arcade experience of feeding quarters home. Is this really progress?
It feels like every few years, distros switch to a new way of doing things.
Why not just improve on whatever the current way is, and evolve it into the perfect init, rather than switch to an entirely new system so often? It annoys current sysadmins who have to learn new software for no good reason, it introduces bugs that make systems less stable, and it further breaks/fragments compatibility between distros.
With a key, you switch it to 1 and can run accessories. You switch it to 2 and the ignition computer is powered. Switch and hold it to 3 and you crank. You decide exactly how to start your engine.
With the newer systems, you just push the button and it decides what to do. You lose the control. What if you want to crank for a while because it won't start? What if you want to switch it to position 2 and push-start a manual transmission car? You can't.
I like the standard keys. And really, just because one manufacturer happened to use a defective part, we lose them? Key switches have been around for decade and are reliable. Just fix the reliability issue in that one model and that's it.