vi scares people, even old timers and especially newbies. IMHO vi should *never* be the defauly editor on any distribution. If a power user wants it, let them change it. Give the newbies (the ones that don't know how to change it) something they can use like pico or joe. If we really want to make our OS user-friendly (read: newbie-friendly) we're going to have to start making some compromises on the default settings. The default editor should be easy to use; by default the firewall shouldn't allow local services; daemons and all their friends and relatives should NOT be running by default. Until we make concessions such as these, we can not expect Linux (or any other *nix except for OS X) to be easy for newbies to grasp. We're skilled enough to be able to turn on advanced features and change the defaults to suit our needs. Newbies are usually barely competent enough to get the install right. Lets think about our next Linux generations for a while.
...greatly increase the possibly of disaster. Just because the surface ice isn't there anymore or is greatly reduced doesn't mean that there aren't icebergs to contend with. Remember, at least 2/3 of an iceberg is under water. At least. And in all truth icebergs aren't always floating at the surface. They can and have been found hovering below the surface of the water. I forget what the reason for this was but I saw the video. Pretty neat. I do remember that artic ice (icebergs) is formed from the bottom up very slowly (read: below the surface of the water and up). This eliminates the trapping of air in the ice which makes artic ice transparent rather than translucent. This was also the last bit of evidence needed to counter the biologists claims that Snowball Earth couldn't have happened. They claimed that if the Earth was covered in 60-90m of ice at the thinnest point, no life could survive on the planet. No sunlight could reach the basic organisms and obviously nothing could survive above the ice. The transparent artic ice disproved the biologists claim. The ice allowed an abundance of light down to the single-celled organisms in the water below.
Now repeat after me: Stupid shit happens. Sure you're only supposed to trust tested and validated CDs from reputable places. Sure that's the way it's supposed to happen. Aren't all CDs from Microsoft trusted? Surely they wouldn't let a virus slip out their door on one of their own CDs. If you think that you're wrong. Microsoft distributed copies of Visual Studio.Net that were infected by Nimda! Companies do dumb shit. IT workers don't always scan incoming media for viruses on isolated machines. Weird shit happens. Dumb shit happens. Eliminating one of the most common conductors of the effects of dumb shit makes sense.
Well at least I can say that my state isn't contributing to this shit. Oh wait. Dammit! #24 is from Kansas. Son of a bitch. Well we almost had a clean slate. And we're even fighting MS.
You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see a website geared towards techs and gear-heads that rate politicians on their tech stances. I would love to see that actually happen. I'd love to know which of the people I'm supposed to vote for tomorrow would do the least to screw me and my tech job. I'd like to see it cover all US states and Fed openings. I think it would be a great thing. If we had volunteers from other countries that would like to compile and contribute data, I think they should be more than welcome to have a site for their country. Thoughts? Suggestions? I'd really like to see this happen. Something like this could help me tomorrow because all the possible people to vote for sounds like absolute dumbasses. You would not believe the mud-slinging on my radio right now. Sheesh.
...Episode II. Besides Natalie Portman (yum) am I missing anything? Heck I didn't even see Episode I until many many months after it hit the theaters. There were only a handful of folks in the audience. Wait, maybe that was opening day...
I can't decide what's better. Accepting it or rejecting. I live in KS, one of the states that told the DOJ and MS to stick it. I *think* it would be better to see it rejected which might make our case stronger. Thoughts?
Hopefully this will help them retain important members of their sales and service teams.
What I interpreted that to mean was that they were fleecing the pockets of the upper management before they totally rolled under rather than paying the hard-working grunts that make $$$ for the company. That was my take when I read that comment.
I agree but I'd also say that anyone that knows about this case should instantly dismiss the plaintiffs as idiots and wouldn't want to purchase their products anyways. IMHO. Of course that would be the ideal world. We live in a world run by suits.
Better analogy: the video store put "Episode I" DVDs on the shelf early thinking that since they hadn't advertised they had them they'd be safe. A customer looking in the obvious location (next to the "later" releases) found the video and told his friend. The store got pissy and complained. That's a better analogy.
Honestly, where's the risk? You're 15-20 under water with a diving bell that wasn't actually attached to you in any way. Ie, your head is stuck in it. That was it. If the water started getting high and you started to fear for you life, kick off the weights, duck out of the bell, and swim to the surface. Not hard. Not risky. Hell I've been a lot further down than 20 feet with no air line or tanks. Not too hard. If you can't swim, you shouldn't be in the water anyways.
Actually I don't have to tell them I'm recording the conversation. I don't have to tell them squat. I can't use the tape in court because it would be inadmissable but I can use the tape any other way I wish. Just because it can't be used in court doesn't mean it's illegal. Now on the other hand RR couldn't use the tape in court if the guy wanted to sue them because again it's not admissable. However they could just as easily say that I've filed a formal complaint against the person. If they've documented problems with that person previously, they could then safely can him.
What IS Paypal's fault is not being of ANY assistance to their customer to regain their money. I'm not saying the Paypal should cough up the missing greenbacks. I'm saying that Paypal should be responsible enough to give assistance to the victim. Provide the victim with web logs (before they're rotated out of existence). Provide them with information about the fraudulent transaction that took the $$$. Would Paypal be as uncooperative to law enforcement? If there were they'd be up on obstruction charges pretty god damned fast.
One thing that I'd sure as hell do is file a formal complaint with the BBB and state AG about Paypal's uncooperativeness.
So your sidewalk merchants choose to do business with people that don't have physical access to their storefront? With people thousands of miles away over the Internet? I doubt it. Big, big difference.
If I need to contact somebody for an emergency, I will do it over a regulated "legally-provable" means like a telephone or via certified USPS. Email isn't regulated. Hell email isn't even garunteed. Just because an email from your MUA was received by you MTA does not mean that it managed to find a path across the Internet to their MTA, their LDA, and their MUA. Any number of things could have happened to it in the process.
Ha! I ordered a clock for my motorcycle from a company in Portugal. It arrived in less than 48 hours via UPS, standard shipping. The day before I made that order I placed another order for something of similar size/weight (I forget what it was now) from a Florida company. It took a total of 6 days to get to me in KANSAS! UPS, standard shipping.:)
Almost all banks have the ability to not authorize overdrafts. Overdrafts are a privelege and something you can request be taken away.
Personally I'm still using my Visa Check Card on Paypal. I'm lucky they've only tried to screw me once. A seller didn't ship the product so I called to report it to Paypal. They said there wasn't anything they could do about it. I asked why I couldn't just contest the charges. Then the seller would loose the $$. She said that it couldn't be done and would be illegal to boot. (What was she smoking?). I said that was fine. I'd just call my bank and contest the charges since my bank can make the Visa contest on my behalf like they have before. The woman quickly forwarded me on to another operator who tried to jump down my throat and threaten me with Paypal's legal staff that would love to haul me into court. He was prepped for this. I've come to believe that it's his whole job. He didn't know anything about me. He only knew that calls forwarded to him were people that were wanting to contest charges. That's my belief. In the end I contested the charges. The bank credited my account 2 weeks later. I never heard back from the dicks at Paypal.
I really do need to use a separate account for online purchases though. The way I'm doing it now just isn't safe. American Express has disposable credit cards. This would be something similar.
When I had cable installed, they had to come out and do the install. They didn't have the option. They did support Mac though. Yes, I'm a Mac, Linux, Sun guy. He walked in the to my second bedroom and his jaw dropped. He handed me the box of stuff and said that I probably wasn't going to need any assistance. He then went outside to do something to the cable box, came back in, I said I was on, and he left. Maybe it was the stack of Enterasys switches or the stack of Suns in the corner. Might even have been the Ciscos routers on the corner desk next to the laser printer. Of course I can't leave out the cluster of Mac towers running next to the door. Perhaps the general heat in the room made him weak in the knees. Needless to say I don't normally have trouble with the techs when they come onsite.:)
Now techs on the phone is another problem. Back when I had cable, I quickly discovered that the national helpdesk for RR was staffed by a bunch of dicks. I called them to let them know about a case of router flap that had been going on for over a week. They started giving me the wrong around about my "Windows" box being misconfigured. I informed him that I own no Microsoft products. To that he replied that everyone runs Microsoft. I laughed and said that I was one person that didn't. He asked what I ran and I replied I used a Mac. He then said something to the effect, "don't you know? Microsoft owns Apple". He also said that he couldn't see why anyone would want to use such a worthless operating system. I was starting to get a little pissed at this point. I asked if he'd say the same about my Linux boxes or my Suns. He said Sun is dead. Microsoft was buying them out. He also said that Linux was a hacker's tool and that he could have me arrested for using it..... Now being a Mac user, I know what it's like to have my OS insulted. You don't insult a Mac guru's OS. You don't insult a Linux guru's OS either. You damned sure don't insult both in the same paragraph. If he had been there in person I would have firmly planted a Sun keyboard in his ass sideways. Since he wasn't all I could do was cuss at him and demand to speak to his super. He refused and hung up on me.
Well, I returned the favor. <g%gt; I always record my tech support calls. I dubbed a couple copies of the tape and certified USPSed them to Cox, RR, and my state AG. I also included a letter that indicated who all received a copy of the tape, summarized the coversation, gave a time and date for the call, back ground to counter the ill-informed knowledge, and finally notified them in writing of the router flap. About 4 days later, I noticed that the router flap had been fixed. A few days letter I received a letter from Cox apologizing for the problems and promising to investigate further. The next day I received a letter from RR apologizing for their employee's action and informing me that the tech was no longer with RR. Oh happy day.:-)
I've found a couple tricks when calling a tech support line that might help you. Always start off the conversation in a calm voice. Don't act pissed. Stay calm and collected. Ideally you would do this even if you felt you needed to ask for the tech's super. State your name, where you're calling from, and on behalf of what company. This is a good thing to do even if it's for you home line. Pretend the loss of access if affecting you at work. "My name is John Wayne; I'm the Network God at Such n Such Unv in Smallville, St; I'm calling to inform of that you have a case of router flap that is causing us problems downstream.". Be concise and to the point. If you think you need to drop some techy stuff to make them feel you know what you're talking about, drop big things only. Don't jargon-drop little stuff. Spend more of your time keeping everything else you say technically accurate. Don't let yourself slip up. Stay calm. Always stay calm. Say "I'm calling to inform you of a DDoS attack coming from one of your customers" not "You're DDoSing us! We're gonna sue! Our routers are melting. We're melting. ARGH!". The latter makes a bad impression. Try to maintain control of the conversation. Don't let them BS you into doing weird shit. State the facts up front. Tell them exactly what you've done to diagnose the problem. This is how I get hard drives replaced without all the reformatting bullshit. When I know the HD is bad I call them and tell them I've low-leveled it, checked jumpers, tried it in another machine, and run two bad blocks checks on it; here at the results. I've covered all their bases with the facts. All they have to do next is RMA it. Good luck!
I can't remember where exactly I heard this from. It was either one of the techs at either of Cabletron cert classes I took or it was one of my peer institutions. It seems that during a school break, some construction work was done in a building. On one of the lower floors of the building, not in an area under construction, was a rack with a Cabletron MMAC8. It was a nice rack with a door and everything. Apparently the construction folks were poring concrete on the floor above the rack. There was a small hole in the floor and concrete kept seeping out it. The contractors kept adding more concrete until it stopped seeping out that hole. Unfortunately the hole was directly above the rack. The netadmins came back to campus once the break was over. Eventually one of them noticed that the rack looked a bit odd. The opened the door only to find that the MMAC8 had been encased in concrete. it was still working fine, chugging away. The fiber lines were sticking out the front and everything. Talk about drastic measures in physical security!
I put an Antec TruePower 480w (about $90) in my CoolerMaster 200 case. I'm running an AMD 1800 XP on a Asus A7V333 w/ RAID option, Radeon 128MB (non-LE), 4 120GB WD w/ 8MB cache, and a total of 7 80mm fans. Toss in a CDRW and DVD-ROM and that's my PC in a nutshell. I've been happy with it but I haven't stressed it much either.
Slashdot Mirror
export EDITOR=pico
or for you tcsh-challenged people
setenv EDITOR=pico
vi scares people, even old timers and especially newbies. IMHO vi should *never* be the defauly editor on any distribution. If a power user wants it, let them change it. Give the newbies (the ones that don't know how to change it) something they can use like pico or joe. If we really want to make our OS user-friendly (read: newbie-friendly) we're going to have to start making some compromises on the default settings. The default editor should be easy to use; by default the firewall shouldn't allow local services; daemons and all their friends and relatives should NOT be running by default. Until we make concessions such as these, we can not expect Linux (or any other *nix except for OS X) to be easy for newbies to grasp. We're skilled enough to be able to turn on advanced features and change the defaults to suit our needs. Newbies are usually barely competent enough to get the install right. Lets think about our next Linux generations for a while.
No, I'd rather have someone in the target audience review the book.
...greatly increase the possibly of disaster. Just because the surface ice isn't there anymore or is greatly reduced doesn't mean that there aren't icebergs to contend with. Remember, at least 2/3 of an iceberg is under water. At least. And in all truth icebergs aren't always floating at the surface. They can and have been found hovering below the surface of the water. I forget what the reason for this was but I saw the video. Pretty neat. I do remember that artic ice (icebergs) is formed from the bottom up very slowly (read: below the surface of the water and up). This eliminates the trapping of air in the ice which makes artic ice transparent rather than translucent. This was also the last bit of evidence needed to counter the biologists claims that Snowball Earth couldn't have happened. They claimed that if the Earth was covered in 60-90m of ice at the thinnest point, no life could survive on the planet. No sunlight could reach the basic organisms and obviously nothing could survive above the ice. The transparent artic ice disproved the biologists claim. The ice allowed an abundance of light down to the single-celled organisms in the water below.
Now repeat after me: Stupid shit happens. Sure you're only supposed to trust tested and validated CDs from reputable places. Sure that's the way it's supposed to happen. Aren't all CDs from Microsoft trusted? Surely they wouldn't let a virus slip out their door on one of their own CDs. If you think that you're wrong. Microsoft distributed copies of Visual Studio .Net that were infected by Nimda! Companies do dumb shit. IT workers don't always scan incoming media for viruses on isolated machines. Weird shit happens. Dumb shit happens. Eliminating one of the most common conductors of the effects of dumb shit makes sense.
Fox News: News for Rednecks
You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see a website geared towards techs and gear-heads that rate politicians on their tech stances. I would love to see that actually happen. I'd love to know which of the people I'm supposed to vote for tomorrow would do the least to screw me and my tech job. I'd like to see it cover all US states and Fed openings. I think it would be a great thing. If we had volunteers from other countries that would like to compile and contribute data, I think they should be more than welcome to have a site for their country. Thoughts? Suggestions? I'd really like to see this happen. Something like this could help me tomorrow because all the possible people to vote for sounds like absolute dumbasses. You would not believe the mud-slinging on my radio right now. Sheesh.
...Episode II. Besides Natalie Portman (yum) am I missing anything? Heck I didn't even see Episode I until many many months after it hit the theaters. There were only a handful of folks in the audience. Wait, maybe that was opening day...
...that email was considered an unreliable, non-garunteed form of communication that has no legal bounds?
This was exactly what I was thinking. How is this going to affect w3mir, WebWhacker (on Windows and Mac), or WebDevil (on Mac)?
I can't decide what's better. Accepting it or rejecting. I live in KS, one of the states that told the DOJ and MS to stick it. I *think* it would be better to see it rejected which might make our case stronger. Thoughts?
What I interpreted that to mean was that they were fleecing the pockets of the upper management before they totally rolled under rather than paying the hard-working grunts that make $$$ for the company. That was my take when I read that comment.
I agree but I'd also say that anyone that knows about this case should instantly dismiss the plaintiffs as idiots and wouldn't want to purchase their products anyways. IMHO. Of course that would be the ideal world. We live in a world run by suits.
Better analogy: the video store put "Episode I" DVDs on the shelf early thinking that since they hadn't advertised they had them they'd be safe. A customer looking in the obvious location (next to the "later" releases) found the video and told his friend. The store got pissy and complained. That's a better analogy.
Honestly, where's the risk? You're 15-20 under water with a diving bell that wasn't actually attached to you in any way. Ie, your head is stuck in it. That was it. If the water started getting high and you started to fear for you life, kick off the weights, duck out of the bell, and swim to the surface. Not hard. Not risky. Hell I've been a lot further down than 20 feet with no air line or tanks. Not too hard. If you can't swim, you shouldn't be in the water anyways.
And yes, the conversation did take place.
One thing that I'd sure as hell do is file a formal complaint with the BBB and state AG about Paypal's uncooperativeness.
If I need to contact somebody for an emergency, I will do it over a regulated "legally-provable" means like a telephone or via certified USPS. Email isn't regulated. Hell email isn't even garunteed. Just because an email from your MUA was received by you MTA does not mean that it managed to find a path across the Internet to their MTA, their LDA, and their MUA. Any number of things could have happened to it in the process.
Ha! I ordered a clock for my motorcycle from a company in Portugal. It arrived in less than 48 hours via UPS, standard shipping. The day before I made that order I placed another order for something of similar size/weight (I forget what it was now) from a Florida company. It took a total of 6 days to get to me in KANSAS! UPS, standard shipping. :)
Personally I'm still using my Visa Check Card on Paypal. I'm lucky they've only tried to screw me once. A seller didn't ship the product so I called to report it to Paypal. They said there wasn't anything they could do about it. I asked why I couldn't just contest the charges. Then the seller would loose the $$. She said that it couldn't be done and would be illegal to boot. (What was she smoking?). I said that was fine. I'd just call my bank and contest the charges since my bank can make the Visa contest on my behalf like they have before. The woman quickly forwarded me on to another operator who tried to jump down my throat and threaten me with Paypal's legal staff that would love to haul me into court. He was prepped for this. I've come to believe that it's his whole job. He didn't know anything about me. He only knew that calls forwarded to him were people that were wanting to contest charges. That's my belief. In the end I contested the charges. The bank credited my account 2 weeks later. I never heard back from the dicks at Paypal.
I really do need to use a separate account for online purchases though. The way I'm doing it now just isn't safe. American Express has disposable credit cards. This would be something similar.
Now techs on the phone is another problem. Back when I had cable, I quickly discovered that the national helpdesk for RR was staffed by a bunch of dicks. I called them to let them know about a case of router flap that had been going on for over a week. They started giving me the wrong around about my "Windows" box being misconfigured. I informed him that I own no Microsoft products. To that he replied that everyone runs Microsoft. I laughed and said that I was one person that didn't. He asked what I ran and I replied I used a Mac. He then said something to the effect, "don't you know? Microsoft owns Apple". He also said that he couldn't see why anyone would want to use such a worthless operating system. I was starting to get a little pissed at this point. I asked if he'd say the same about my Linux boxes or my Suns. He said Sun is dead. Microsoft was buying them out. He also said that Linux was a hacker's tool and that he could have me arrested for using it. .... Now being a Mac user, I know what it's like to have my OS insulted. You don't insult a Mac guru's OS. You don't insult a Linux guru's OS either. You damned sure don't insult both in the same paragraph. If he had been there in person I would have firmly planted a Sun keyboard in his ass sideways. Since he wasn't all I could do was cuss at him and demand to speak to his super. He refused and hung up on me.
Well, I returned the favor. <g%gt; I always record my tech support calls. I dubbed a couple copies of the tape and certified USPSed them to Cox, RR, and my state AG. I also included a letter that indicated who all received a copy of the tape, summarized the coversation, gave a time and date for the call, back ground to counter the ill-informed knowledge, and finally notified them in writing of the router flap. About 4 days later, I noticed that the router flap had been fixed. A few days letter I received a letter from Cox apologizing for the problems and promising to investigate further. The next day I received a letter from RR apologizing for their employee's action and informing me that the tech was no longer with RR. Oh happy day. :-)
I've found a couple tricks when calling a tech support line that might help you. Always start off the conversation in a calm voice. Don't act pissed. Stay calm and collected. Ideally you would do this even if you felt you needed to ask for the tech's super. State your name, where you're calling from, and on behalf of what company. This is a good thing to do even if it's for you home line. Pretend the loss of access if affecting you at work. "My name is John Wayne; I'm the Network God at Such n Such Unv in Smallville, St; I'm calling to inform of that you have a case of router flap that is causing us problems downstream.". Be concise and to the point. If you think you need to drop some techy stuff to make them feel you know what you're talking about, drop big things only. Don't jargon-drop little stuff. Spend more of your time keeping everything else you say technically accurate. Don't let yourself slip up. Stay calm. Always stay calm. Say "I'm calling to inform you of a DDoS attack coming from one of your customers" not "You're DDoSing us! We're gonna sue! Our routers are melting. We're melting. ARGH!". The latter makes a bad impression. Try to maintain control of the conversation. Don't let them BS you into doing weird shit. State the facts up front. Tell them exactly what you've done to diagnose the problem. This is how I get hard drives replaced without all the reformatting bullshit. When I know the HD is bad I call them and tell them I've low-leveled it, checked jumpers, tried it in another machine, and run two bad blocks checks on it; here at the results. I've covered all their bases with the facts. All they have to do next is RMA it. Good luck!
Does anyone have the domains or netblocks that are being used? I'd like to blacklist them for spamming.
I can't remember where exactly I heard this from. It was either one of the techs at either of Cabletron cert classes I took or it was one of my peer institutions. It seems that during a school break, some construction work was done in a building. On one of the lower floors of the building, not in an area under construction, was a rack with a Cabletron MMAC8. It was a nice rack with a door and everything. Apparently the construction folks were poring concrete on the floor above the rack. There was a small hole in the floor and concrete kept seeping out it. The contractors kept adding more concrete until it stopped seeping out that hole. Unfortunately the hole was directly above the rack. The netadmins came back to campus once the break was over. Eventually one of them noticed that the rack looked a bit odd. The opened the door only to find that the MMAC8 had been encased in concrete. it was still working fine, chugging away. The fiber lines were sticking out the front and everything. Talk about drastic measures in physical security!
That's barbed wire. :-) Bob doesn't have his own standard yet.
Does grease and cold steel turn you on? :-)
I put an Antec TruePower 480w (about $90) in my CoolerMaster 200 case. I'm running an AMD 1800 XP on a Asus A7V333 w/ RAID option, Radeon 128MB (non-LE), 4 120GB WD w/ 8MB cache, and a total of 7 80mm fans. Toss in a CDRW and DVD-ROM and that's my PC in a nutshell. I've been happy with it but I haven't stressed it much either.