And how 'bout an anonymizer account, encryption software, and a *nix based notebook for listening to listening to Democracy Now and staying in touch with friends and family without prying government eyes...
Great, now I HAVE to get DSL from BellSouth. I've been using a Mom & Pop ISP that has given me great service, great bandwidth, a cheap IP, and doesn't block my ports. Bayou.com, I salute you.
Anyway, WTF does it take to get decent, non-nosy, affordable broadband? I don't want to leech or serve. I just want to telecommute, serve a web site, and game in peace.
Now off to Memorial Day celebrations where we remember the billions of bots and soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in LAN parties throughout the world. This is best done by sacrificing more bots with a LAN party of your own.
M'kay, usually I go on a massive super left-wing rant about protecting civil liberties and yadda yadda. However, in this case I have to agree with the court. {gasp!}
Putting up a hit list ain't protected speech, however you slice it. Putting up a list of people you thing should be dead is nutball in the first place, but might be protected if they were public figures. However, slapping up picts of them, where they live and work, their numbers, and crossing them out ala America's Most Wanted ain't free speech. It's an implied threat at best.
Each shop is unique, so there's no boilerplate migration plan. But here's my two cents:
I'm slowly migrating to Linux at my company. So far it's going pretty well. We had to add an extra box to everyone's desk in the call center due to [Non-Disclosure Agreement], so I spent $1000 for some old P233MMX w/64MB RAM, slapped Linux on them, and the users went to town.
After a couple of months with Linux in production I have to say that it's going well. Help desk calls are waaaaay down and users are happy. I've said this before, but here goes: users don't remember the last time they rebooted the Linux box, but sure remember the last time they rebooted Windows.
We're replacing Windows boxes right now by attrition, but plan to replace them all by the end of the year - OS, not hardware.
Since Office runs on Linux now it's at least theoretically possible to standardize on Open Office or something internally and have a single box with a single MS Office license converting both incoming and outgoing attachments to and from MS office format. When an open-source conversion utility comes out, you'll probably be able to abandon MS Office altogether but keep compatability with others.
Be aware that Citrix ain't really that cheap a solution. You'll pay through the nose for licenses (application licenses for each connectd user, terminal server client access licenses for each connection, citrix licenses for each user, and connection licenses for each computer). You have to get licenses for client machines (unless they're Windows 2k or XP which have their own) that connect to a Citrix server, which defeats the financial purpose of replacing Windows with Linux.
Aeons ago I worked for a software company that sold software for download and coded for stores on Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL. My AOL producer comped my personal account and gave me the same access to programming areas my work account had. Eventually, I left the job and sent off an email to my producer that I was leaving so they could restrict my access. This was back in the days where AOL was $2.95 an hour.
I used the account on and off as a backup and to talk with some family members here and there. My account was still comped and a bit of investigation showed that I still had access to the Rainman Plus (AOL's programming language at the time) areas. I kicked off another set of emails about the deal, not wanting to later be accused of something or have someone hijack my account.
Nothing came of it. Finally, 18 months after I'd left the gig I received an apologetic email that basically said "hey, we dont' have a record that you're working with an AOL partner, so we're going to cancel your account in a month unless you provide billing info".
Out of curiosity I paid for a month's access and discovered that hey, I STILL had access to the programming areas of AOL. Oops. I cancelled the account after arguing with Customer Disservice for a while. Despite several phone calls it took six weeks for them to actually cancel it and I never got refunded for the extra two months of charges. Not that I really had much to complain about - it was a comped account for two years.
Biggest thing that pisses me off about ISPs these days is slamming. I set up a branch office with [BrandX] DSL, which we'd get comped for because we do work for [BrandX]'s main business. Anyway, I signed up for it and the next thing I know we were SouthWestern Bell DSL customers. Cancelling service I never ordered would result in an outage of 4-6 weeks, I was told. [BrandX] DSL claimed helplessness about the situation and I had more pressing matters to attend to, so we stuck with SouthWestern Bell.
A short time later, I moved and got into an area provided by a Mom & Pop ISP offering DSL with a static IP. Next thing I know, I'm getting sign-up discs from BellSouth and calls from them about setting up my service. BellSouth was slamming me at home. I got it straightened out after 2 days, then got a couple of calls from BellSouth trying to get me to switch. They said rather than waiting 4 weeks for them to do my DSL install for the Mom & Pop, if I signed up with them they'd get it done in 4-5 days. I stuck with the Mom & Pop who run FreeBSD (yay), are more than happy to provide DNS service, don't mind me running my own web servers, and haven't blocked my ports or filtered my access. Huzzah!
Right, that was a bit of a stretch. I should have said Europe. Well, and bits of Asia. But mostly Europe. Most Europeans really don't get what all the fuss is about.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of Cingular - if they're filtering pr0n, what else are they filtering?
Now let the rant begin:
<rant>
Hate to burst your bubble, but I'm an American - I was born here and currently live here. Hopefully I won't die here.:)
You're right that the average Jane and Joe Sixpack have dick to do with American foreign policy. We vote, there's election fraud, a coup, and we have a White House full of nutball right-wingers and an Attorney General who's such a prude that he shelled out US$8k for a curtain to cover Lady Liberty's bodacious boobs. Now that dude is a prude AND a dick. But I digress...
I've spent quite a bit of time overseas --- thanks to Uncle Sam --- and was quite distressed to be lumped in with knee-jerk right-wing Americans. I was more distressed to get beaten down because I'm an American and my hosts took exception to our military presence (I wasn't in the military at the time).
Sweeping generalisations are not applicable to everyone, of course. However, it's accurate to say that Americans are generally very prudish. Not all Americans, of course, but most of them are, especially in the South.
When an adult store/tat parlor opened in town there was quite a row. There were no lewd displays, kids were verboten, and the "adult" section of the store was segregated within the store. But people screamed because it was - well, lewd to have such a store.
Once it opened there was an outcry and quick legislation by the Police Jury (aka City Council) forbade another such business to open within a certain distance from schools, churches (hoo boy, do we have a lot of those), residential areas, and so forth. In addition, special licensing was required for any SOB (their unfortunate acronym meaning Sexually Oriented Business).
Needless to say, the hue and cry gave the shop an enormous amount of free advertising and business boomed. The owners of the shop were delighted at the overreaction which essentially ensured they would have no competition. Since the American Constitution forbids ex-post-facto laws, they're grandfathered in as long as the business remains alive.
The whole affair was terribly amusing.
This is a single example, of course, that can't rightly be extended to include the sum of American society. However, having lived in America most of my life, empirical evidence says most Americans are prudish souls. Many of these same people are hypocrites who go surfing for porn after church.
</rant>
To me - and many others - sex is not an expression of mutual love between two people. It's two (or more!) people having fun, enjoying the sexual experience together. This is exactly the problem I have with this "morality" business. What sex means to you and what it means to me are quite different. I do not want your view of sex foisted upon me, nor should my view get forced on anyone else. This is why freedom of expression exists.
Why must entertainment have redeeming social qualities? Does "The Terminator" have redeeming social qualities? Entertainment comes in many different forms; if you don't find pornography entertaining, don't watch it. But don't interfere with the right of others to do so.
The objection to pornography on the grounds that it objectifies people as sexual objects is ridiculous. People lust after other people, regardless of whether or not they're acting in a skin flick. Whether you see other people selfishly as only objects of sexual desire says more about a person's lack of character than it does of the pornography industry. I'm quite able to have non-sexual interactions with other people - that consists of most of my interaction with other people. Can I have a strong non-sexual relationship with someone I'm attracted to? Sure. Can I have a strong relationship with someone I'm NOT sexually attracted to. Yup.
As to the question of why I'd look at pictures of sex when I can have sex - well, I wouldn't. When I can have sex, I have sex. When I can't have sex, I don't have sex. I think that's true of most people.
Regarding a partner. First, you assume I'm straight, and yes it's a correct assumption. No, I'm not married and have no desire to get married; I don't believe in the institution of marriage.
Yes, I've had loving, intimate relationships that have lasted longer than most marriages. Nor do I believe that intimate relationships must necessarily be sexually monogamous; that depends on how you and your partner feel about it.
Do I find my girlfriend sexy and think she's great? Sure. Just because I look at pornography or have sex with other women doesn't mean that I don't love her and find her satisfying. Just because you love steak doesn't mean that you won't eat chicken. Sex is an appetite. By the same standard, I don't get bent out of shape when she looks at pornography or has sex with other people.
Obviously, I don't subscribe to the puritanical view of sex that you describe. I just don't find pornography self-degradating or degradating of others. The reason that women are viewed as objects aren't because people lust after them after seeing pornography; it's because Western culture has historically treated them as property at worst and second-class citizens at best.
As to the right to do stuff: yes, it's my right to view porn. And yes, just because I can do something doesn't mean that I should. For example, just because I have unfiltered internet access at work and CAN view porn at work doesn't mean that I should view porn at work. I don't. Of course, that's not what you meant. But I can't think of another context where I'd find it wrong to look at porn.
WTF? Where's the connexion between pr0n and terrorism? It must be as tenuous as the current anti-drug commercials so prevalent on American television. Where do terrorists get their money for weapons? Historically, it's from the United States of America. Drugs are bad, of course, unless they're funding an illegal American war in Central America.
My quip about pr0n not turning me into Osama bin Laden was simply a comment that looking at pr0n as a kid doesn't turn that kid into a maladjusted adult.
Quite the contrary, sex education that promotes responsible sex - both gay and straight - without moralising about it results in healthy, well-adjusted adults. It reduces unwanted pregnancy and transmission of STDs. Compare the percentages of Dutch kids having unwanted pregnancies versus American kids, infection rates, and so on. The policies of "protecting kids" does just the opposite, yet admitting it undermines the entire "moral" underpinnings of education. It's simply insane.
You may be sick of hearing it, but Americans are prudes. Horrific violence on television and in cinema is quite acceptable, while curse words and nakedness are taboo. When's the last time you've seen a cock on TV or film, even rated "R". Breasts are fine on pay channels, but other "naughty bits" are left to "adult" channels. In America, apparently only adults are allowed to have sex or exposure to sexuality.
Now, totally OT, but picking up on the tangent:
The reason many other countries are pissed off at America because of its foreign policy, not because of strip clubs and pr0n. America is like a spoiled schoolyard bully and its "allies" his gang. Most other kids are relieved that America just steals them blind and doesn't beat the crap out of them. As the Japanese are fond of saying "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", thus the reluctance of most countries to tell America to piss off.
Why is pr0n 'bad' for kids? When I was a kid, I looked at pr0n out of curiosity of what the big deal was. From puberty on, I looked at pr0n because of raging hormones. I wasn't sexually active as a teen, but sure looked at a lot of pr0n. It didn't turn me into Osama bin Laden.
I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans. Most everywhere else in the world porn and sex aren't that big of a deal.
You can't really censor out pr0n; when I didn't get it from BBSes there was always my dad's magazine collection. It's just not worth the effort, except for stamping out child porn. I mean, really, can anyone demonstrate that pornography is bad for kids?
You apparently are not a paranoid leftist. You are not even "paranoid" enough to be a realist in today's world.
Damn, you're right. Time to boost my paranoia to straight-jacket levels! I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the Bush gang and the coup in December of 2000 (fraudulent 'election' in November, Supreme Court supported coup in December).
I'm so incredibly tired of this bullshit 'War on Terrorism' where the definition of a terrorist gets expanded on a daily basis to include anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration. To paraphrase Ari Fleicher says 'Americans better watch what they do and what they say' and Ashcroft 'Either you're with us, or with the terrorists'.
Okay, maybe I'm just a paranoid leftist, but I'm deeply suspicious any time the goverment wants more data on me. They've already got my fingerprints and DNA, a catalogue of my scars, photographs, background checks, and "interviews". WTF do they need my retina prints or other biometric data for? Damn.
I'm worried (like other posters) that all this is going to end up in a massive, clustered relational database. I can see how all someone's habits, financial transactions, phone calls, etc., will be linked together and analyzed for patterns that fit certain "criminal/terrorist profiles".
Sorry, but last time I checked the United States was a FREE COUNTRY where the 4th Amendment (among others) protects us from heavy-handed government prying like this. I don't think we should allow our government to do this kind of BS. Otherwise, twenty or thirty years from now we may be seeing mind-search warrants.
A century ago phrenology was all the craze. Seems like things haven't changed all that much.
Don't quit. Send out resumes, start the job hunt. But tell HR you do not accept the paycut, nor will you quit. That way you're in the clear for your severance.
Uh, yeah. The Catholic Church big, rich, and evil. Just take a gander at the last 1,000 years of history there, Chief. It's not evil *because* it's big and rich, but it's big and rich because it's evil.
I could (and have) ranted about Microsoft. But seriously - you don't find their behaviour...atrocious? Illegal? Immoral? Destructive? Abusive? Asinine?
I mean, seriously dude, what they're arguing here is that it's good that they're shutting out competition. That's about as anti-free-market-capitalist as you can get. A free market has competition. Microsoft is the OS market. And it's not good for consumers or OEMs.
I'm not saying that Rich=Evil. But I don't believe that Rich!=Evil either. But it's sure evident that Microsoft is Rich AND Evil.
I'm seriously considering them for our next call center, then upgrade our current call center down the line. These old desktops came cheap ($1000 for 10 workstations) and were easy to integrate.
From an admin standpoint, thin clients seem the way to go. A centralized server for x and other apps. Any suggestions on what you've found useful?
It's not that a 233MMX Pentium w/64MB of RAM running Linux outperforms a 1GHz box with 256MB of RAM running Windows 2000. I'd classify someone who made that argument as an id10t as well.
It's that the 1GHz box is waaaay waaay waaay overpowered for what the users need.
They run 2 applications on the Linux box: a small java applet and a database client. They don't run anything else on the Linux box other than a bit of light web surfing, checking email.
These boxes would be pokey doing other stuff - running KOffice or whatever. I'm going to bump up the RAM on the Linux boxes to when I can scare up some more SIMMs, but these boxes are doing their job and the users are happy.
For my setup, this mix of hardware works splendiferously. As to whether it works for other shops - depends on your needs.
For me, 64MB of RAM and a 233MMX would not be adequate. But for our CSR's, it's fine. If their needs change - well, 400MHz boxes with 128MB of RAM are pretty cheap too.
Why get a top-of-the-line box for a user running two small applications?
I played this a bit under the "slash the budget scenario". Athletics was the first targeted, followed by cuts to administration budget, increase in IT and distance learning budgets, decrease in non-traditional students. Got accolades from state board and students.:)
Game crashed when allocating budget for year 2, though. Blah. Kinda buggy.
Their arrogance never ceases to amaze me. It's pretty clear that massive companies are beyond the law. Enron, Microsoft, whoever - if you're big enough and rich enough you don't have to be bothered by pesky lawsuits. Sure, there needs to be some kind of proceeding to ensure that "fairness" is given lip-service.
While a superfast Windows=>Linux migration might sound appealing it's just not terribly feasible for all organizations. A gradual migration, sure. But strike-force fast? I don't think so - that's the WRONG way to do a migration.
But if you're a small to mid-sized company, take a long hard look. You can do a quick roll-out, but not to stick it to the SBA. Do it for the RIGHT reasons.
A transition isn't quite as traumatic as it might seem on the face. When we needed to add an additional workstation (KVM switched) to each CSR's desk the rollout was done for about $250 apiece - most of which was for the KVM switch and cables. Each box was only $100, an old refurb. The experiment was nice, but I expected a slew of support calls. Lo and behold, there are a lot fewer!
Oh, there were issues. A little bugginess in KDE 2.2.2, a printer problem here and there. When inquiring about stability (reboot frequency), people bitch about Windows. I asked about Linux and smiled at the replies:
"Oh, I like it. It doesn't crash."
"I've never rebooted it. Am I supposed to?" (3 months+ uptime)
"Huh? Go away, I hate you."
Now I have people asking for Linux. Is this or that available, yadda yadda. It's growing here, and I'll happily replace a 1GHz Pentium III w/256MB RAM running Windows with an old 233MHz Pentium MMX w/64MB RAM running Linux. The 1GHz box becomes a Linux server, the license goes into a filing cabinet, and everyone's happy.
Do a complete IT assessment, soup to nuts. Take a long, hard look at your licensing and TCC (total cost of compliance). Are there tenable replacements for the software you're currently using? Can you improve performance AND save money with a migration to Linux (or BSD or whatever)? If so, where? Servers or workstations or both? Timetable.
I believe that I can get rid of every single Windows box in my company. I've got 2/3 of mission-critical applications running on Linux. One more and it's on like Donkey Kong.
Slashdot Mirror
And how 'bout an anonymizer account, encryption software, and a *nix based notebook for listening to listening to Democracy Now and staying in touch with friends and family without prying government eyes...
Pretty interface and nice flowchart of interrelated subjects and sites. Pretty neat.
Anyway, WTF does it take to get decent, non-nosy, affordable broadband? I don't want to leech or serve. I just want to telecommute, serve a web site, and game in peace.
Now off to Memorial Day celebrations where we remember the billions of bots and soldiers who have sacrificed their lives in LAN parties throughout the world. This is best done by sacrificing more bots with a LAN party of your own.
Won't somebody stop this cycle of violence?
Putting up a hit list ain't protected speech, however you slice it. Putting up a list of people you thing should be dead is nutball in the first place, but might be protected if they were public figures. However, slapping up picts of them, where they live and work, their numbers, and crossing them out ala America's Most Wanted ain't free speech. It's an implied threat at best.
I wouldn't call Lott friendly period. :)
I'm slowly migrating to Linux at my company. So far it's going pretty well. We had to add an extra box to everyone's desk in the call center due to [Non-Disclosure Agreement], so I spent $1000 for some old P233MMX w/64MB RAM, slapped Linux on them, and the users went to town.
After a couple of months with Linux in production I have to say that it's going well. Help desk calls are waaaaay down and users are happy. I've said this before, but here goes: users don't remember the last time they rebooted the Linux box, but sure remember the last time they rebooted Windows.
We're replacing Windows boxes right now by attrition, but plan to replace them all by the end of the year - OS, not hardware.
Since Office runs on Linux now it's at least theoretically possible to standardize on Open Office or something internally and have a single box with a single MS Office license converting both incoming and outgoing attachments to and from MS office format. When an open-source conversion utility comes out, you'll probably be able to abandon MS Office altogether but keep compatability with others.
Be aware that Citrix ain't really that cheap a solution. You'll pay through the nose for licenses (application licenses for each connectd user, terminal server client access licenses for each connection, citrix licenses for each user, and connection licenses for each computer). You have to get licenses for client machines (unless they're Windows 2k or XP which have their own) that connect to a Citrix server, which defeats the financial purpose of replacing Windows with Linux.
Flightgear is an open-source flight sim that kicks ass. Check out some screen shots - especially this one or download it.
I used the account on and off as a backup and to talk with some family members here and there. My account was still comped and a bit of investigation showed that I still had access to the Rainman Plus (AOL's programming language at the time) areas. I kicked off another set of emails about the deal, not wanting to later be accused of something or have someone hijack my account.
Nothing came of it. Finally, 18 months after I'd left the gig I received an apologetic email that basically said "hey, we dont' have a record that you're working with an AOL partner, so we're going to cancel your account in a month unless you provide billing info".
Out of curiosity I paid for a month's access and discovered that hey, I STILL had access to the programming areas of AOL. Oops. I cancelled the account after arguing with Customer Disservice for a while. Despite several phone calls it took six weeks for them to actually cancel it and I never got refunded for the extra two months of charges. Not that I really had much to complain about - it was a comped account for two years.
Biggest thing that pisses me off about ISPs these days is slamming. I set up a branch office with [BrandX] DSL, which we'd get comped for because we do work for [BrandX]'s main business. Anyway, I signed up for it and the next thing I know we were SouthWestern Bell DSL customers. Cancelling service I never ordered would result in an outage of 4-6 weeks, I was told. [BrandX] DSL claimed helplessness about the situation and I had more pressing matters to attend to, so we stuck with SouthWestern Bell.
A short time later, I moved and got into an area provided by a Mom & Pop ISP offering DSL with a static IP. Next thing I know, I'm getting sign-up discs from BellSouth and calls from them about setting up my service. BellSouth was slamming me at home. I got it straightened out after 2 days, then got a couple of calls from BellSouth trying to get me to switch. They said rather than waiting 4 weeks for them to do my DSL install for the Mom & Pop, if I signed up with them they'd get it done in 4-5 days. I stuck with the Mom & Pop who run FreeBSD (yay), are more than happy to provide DNS service, don't mind me running my own web servers, and haven't blocked my ports or filtered my access. Huzzah!
Right, that was a bit of a stretch. I should have said Europe. Well, and bits of Asia. But mostly Europe. Most Europeans really don't get what all the fuss is about.
Now let the rant begin:
<rant> :)
Hate to burst your bubble, but I'm an American - I was born here and currently live here. Hopefully I won't die here.
You're right that the average Jane and Joe Sixpack have dick to do with American foreign policy. We vote, there's election fraud, a coup, and we have a White House full of nutball right-wingers and an Attorney General who's such a prude that he shelled out US$8k for a curtain to cover Lady Liberty's bodacious boobs. Now that dude is a prude AND a dick. But I digress...
I've spent quite a bit of time overseas --- thanks to Uncle Sam --- and was quite distressed to be lumped in with knee-jerk right-wing Americans. I was more distressed to get beaten down because I'm an American and my hosts took exception to our military presence (I wasn't in the military at the time).
Sweeping generalisations are not applicable to everyone, of course. However, it's accurate to say that Americans are generally very prudish. Not all Americans, of course, but most of them are, especially in the South.
When an adult store/tat parlor opened in town there was quite a row. There were no lewd displays, kids were verboten, and the "adult" section of the store was segregated within the store. But people screamed because it was - well, lewd to have such a store.
Once it opened there was an outcry and quick legislation by the Police Jury (aka City Council) forbade another such business to open within a certain distance from schools, churches (hoo boy, do we have a lot of those), residential areas, and so forth. In addition, special licensing was required for any SOB (their unfortunate acronym meaning Sexually Oriented Business).
Needless to say, the hue and cry gave the shop an enormous amount of free advertising and business boomed. The owners of the shop were delighted at the overreaction which essentially ensured they would have no competition. Since the American Constitution forbids ex-post-facto laws, they're grandfathered in as long as the business remains alive.
The whole affair was terribly amusing.
This is a single example, of course, that can't rightly be extended to include the sum of American society. However, having lived in America most of my life, empirical evidence says most Americans are prudish souls. Many of these same people are hypocrites who go surfing for porn after church. </rant>
Why must entertainment have redeeming social qualities? Does "The Terminator" have redeeming social qualities? Entertainment comes in many different forms; if you don't find pornography entertaining, don't watch it. But don't interfere with the right of others to do so.
The objection to pornography on the grounds that it objectifies people as sexual objects is ridiculous. People lust after other people, regardless of whether or not they're acting in a skin flick. Whether you see other people selfishly as only objects of sexual desire says more about a person's lack of character than it does of the pornography industry. I'm quite able to have non-sexual interactions with other people - that consists of most of my interaction with other people. Can I have a strong non-sexual relationship with someone I'm attracted to? Sure. Can I have a strong relationship with someone I'm NOT sexually attracted to. Yup.
As to the question of why I'd look at pictures of sex when I can have sex - well, I wouldn't. When I can have sex, I have sex. When I can't have sex, I don't have sex. I think that's true of most people.
Regarding a partner. First, you assume I'm straight, and yes it's a correct assumption. No, I'm not married and have no desire to get married; I don't believe in the institution of marriage.
Yes, I've had loving, intimate relationships that have lasted longer than most marriages. Nor do I believe that intimate relationships must necessarily be sexually monogamous; that depends on how you and your partner feel about it.
Do I find my girlfriend sexy and think she's great? Sure. Just because I look at pornography or have sex with other women doesn't mean that I don't love her and find her satisfying. Just because you love steak doesn't mean that you won't eat chicken. Sex is an appetite. By the same standard, I don't get bent out of shape when she looks at pornography or has sex with other people.
Obviously, I don't subscribe to the puritanical view of sex that you describe. I just don't find pornography self-degradating or degradating of others. The reason that women are viewed as objects aren't because people lust after them after seeing pornography; it's because Western culture has historically treated them as property at worst and second-class citizens at best.
As to the right to do stuff: yes, it's my right to view porn. And yes, just because I can do something doesn't mean that I should. For example, just because I have unfiltered internet access at work and CAN view porn at work doesn't mean that I should view porn at work. I don't. Of course, that's not what you meant. But I can't think of another context where I'd find it wrong to look at porn.
My quip about pr0n not turning me into Osama bin Laden was simply a comment that looking at pr0n as a kid doesn't turn that kid into a maladjusted adult.
Quite the contrary, sex education that promotes responsible sex - both gay and straight - without moralising about it results in healthy, well-adjusted adults. It reduces unwanted pregnancy and transmission of STDs. Compare the percentages of Dutch kids having unwanted pregnancies versus American kids, infection rates, and so on. The policies of "protecting kids" does just the opposite, yet admitting it undermines the entire "moral" underpinnings of education. It's simply insane.
You may be sick of hearing it, but Americans are prudes. Horrific violence on television and in cinema is quite acceptable, while curse words and nakedness are taboo. When's the last time you've seen a cock on TV or film, even rated "R". Breasts are fine on pay channels, but other "naughty bits" are left to "adult" channels. In America, apparently only adults are allowed to have sex or exposure to sexuality.
Now, totally OT, but picking up on the tangent:
The reason many other countries are pissed off at America because of its foreign policy, not because of strip clubs and pr0n. America is like a spoiled schoolyard bully and its "allies" his gang. Most other kids are relieved that America just steals them blind and doesn't beat the crap out of them. As the Japanese are fond of saying "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", thus the reluctance of most countries to tell America to piss off.
Why is pr0n 'bad' for kids? When I was a kid, I looked at pr0n out of curiosity of what the big deal was. From puberty on, I looked at pr0n because of raging hormones. I wasn't sexually active as a teen, but sure looked at a lot of pr0n. It didn't turn me into Osama bin Laden.
I just don't understand why Americans get into such a snit over sex and pornography; and yes, it's mostly Americans. Most everywhere else in the world porn and sex aren't that big of a deal.
You can't really censor out pr0n; when I didn't get it from BBSes there was always my dad's magazine collection. It's just not worth the effort, except for stamping out child porn. I mean, really, can anyone demonstrate that pornography is bad for kids?
Man, and I thought that white powdery substance in my keyboard was sugar!
Damn, you're right. Time to boost my paranoia to straight-jacket levels! I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the Bush gang and the coup in December of 2000 (fraudulent 'election' in November, Supreme Court supported coup in December).
I'm so incredibly tired of this bullshit 'War on Terrorism' where the definition of a terrorist gets expanded on a daily basis to include anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration. To paraphrase Ari Fleicher says 'Americans better watch what they do and what they say' and Ashcroft 'Either you're with us, or with the terrorists'.
I'm worried (like other posters) that all this is going to end up in a massive, clustered relational database. I can see how all someone's habits, financial transactions, phone calls, etc., will be linked together and analyzed for patterns that fit certain "criminal/terrorist profiles".
Sorry, but last time I checked the United States was a FREE COUNTRY where the 4th Amendment (among others) protects us from heavy-handed government prying like this. I don't think we should allow our government to do this kind of BS. Otherwise, twenty or thirty years from now we may be seeing mind-search warrants.
A century ago phrenology was all the craze. Seems like things haven't changed all that much.
Don't quit. Send out resumes, start the job hunt. But tell HR you do not accept the paycut, nor will you quit. That way you're in the clear for your severance.
Uh, yeah. The Catholic Church big, rich, and evil. Just take a gander at the last 1,000 years of history there, Chief. It's not evil *because* it's big and rich, but it's big and rich because it's evil.
I mean, seriously dude, what they're arguing here is that it's good that they're shutting out competition. That's about as anti-free-market-capitalist as you can get. A free market has competition. Microsoft is the OS market. And it's not good for consumers or OEMs.
I'm not saying that Rich=Evil. But I don't believe that Rich!=Evil either. But it's sure evident that Microsoft is Rich AND Evil.
From an admin standpoint, thin clients seem the way to go. A centralized server for x and other apps. Any suggestions on what you've found useful?
It's that the 1GHz box is waaaay waaay waaay overpowered for what the users need.
They run 2 applications on the Linux box: a small java applet and a database client. They don't run anything else on the Linux box other than a bit of light web surfing, checking email.
These boxes would be pokey doing other stuff - running KOffice or whatever. I'm going to bump up the RAM on the Linux boxes to when I can scare up some more SIMMs, but these boxes are doing their job and the users are happy.
For my setup, this mix of hardware works splendiferously. As to whether it works for other shops - depends on your needs.
For me, 64MB of RAM and a 233MMX would not be adequate. But for our CSR's, it's fine. If their needs change - well, 400MHz boxes with 128MB of RAM are pretty cheap too.
Why get a top-of-the-line box for a user running two small applications?
Game crashed when allocating budget for year 2, though. Blah. Kinda buggy.
I'm completely disgusted.
But if you're a small to mid-sized company, take a long hard look. You can do a quick roll-out, but not to stick it to the SBA. Do it for the RIGHT reasons.
A transition isn't quite as traumatic as it might seem on the face. When we needed to add an additional workstation (KVM switched) to each CSR's desk the rollout was done for about $250 apiece - most of which was for the KVM switch and cables. Each box was only $100, an old refurb. The experiment was nice, but I expected a slew of support calls. Lo and behold, there are a lot fewer!
Oh, there were issues. A little bugginess in KDE 2.2.2, a printer problem here and there. When inquiring about stability (reboot frequency), people bitch about Windows. I asked about Linux and smiled at the replies:
"Oh, I like it. It doesn't crash."
"I've never rebooted it. Am I supposed to?" (3 months+ uptime)
"Huh? Go away, I hate you."
Now I have people asking for Linux. Is this or that available, yadda yadda. It's growing here, and I'll happily replace a 1GHz Pentium III w/256MB RAM running Windows with an old 233MHz Pentium MMX w/64MB RAM running Linux. The 1GHz box becomes a Linux server, the license goes into a filing cabinet, and everyone's happy.
Do a complete IT assessment, soup to nuts. Take a long, hard look at your licensing and TCC (total cost of compliance). Are there tenable replacements for the software you're currently using? Can you improve performance AND save money with a migration to Linux (or BSD or whatever)? If so, where? Servers or workstations or both? Timetable.
I believe that I can get rid of every single Windows box in my company. I've got 2/3 of mission-critical applications running on Linux. One more and it's on like Donkey Kong.
Excellent point. I haven't explored gnucleus yet, but I'll give it a shot.