you could say that this is actually more polluting than conventional energy sources
More than a NiCD, Li-ion, or NiMH battery? Those systems also require that you put energy into them, and they are extremely far away from being 100% efficient.
It should be obvious to the casual observer that plugging a device directly into the wall is more energy efficient than using a portable energy storage system with a device. There is simply no such thing as 100% efficiency in any energy storage products.
The big question is how much energy you can store in the smallest space with the smallest amount of nasty chemicals. Charging efficiency is only a small part of the picture - heck, I'm confident that driving your SUV for a mile uses more energy than all the batteries I have ever used in my entire life... and then some.
In addition, the chemicals involved in traditional "batteries" are known to be very toxic. If you want to talk about polutants, look at all the cell phone batteries that are thrown away year after year.
Energy efficiency isn't the only piece of the pie when it comes to polutants. Especially when you consider the toxicity of traditional batteries.
Businesses do not want to have to search the internet and post to newsgroups, mailing lists and forums to find solutions. That's not to say those support methods are not very helpful but a business wants a dedicated team.
Most of the time, my organization -does- want a strong community support group. On the ground, it's much more important than vendor support.
We have found time and time again that vendor support is both very expensive and very ineffective. We leverage the community first, and 99% of the time it is faster and more helpful than the extremely expensive paid support offered by the vendors.
There are exceptions - I have worked with one vendor who had an excellent support technician... I learned a lot from that guy, and eventually I met him in person at a conference after he moved on. Then again, that support cost my company $65,000 per year. And that was 7 or 8 years ago.
(In any case, I agree with your analysis of the rebuttal)
Because the PRESS claims that with a little smarts, the average guy can beat the casino! If you're really smart and really quiet about it, you can beat 'em and become rich beyond your wildest dreams!
Therefore, you get a lot of quasi-smart losers into the casinos, all who have the fantisy of "out-smarting Vegas". Those people proceed to lose all kinds of money as they "hone their smarts".
This is exactly how casinos attract people who are "too smart" to waste their time gambling.
Card counting, roulette prediction, psuedo-random numbers of elecontrics-based slot machines - they're all an ADVERTISEMENT designed to attract those who imagine that they're super-smart enough to tilt the odds. Of course, it simply isn't true.
The casinos in Vegas would love you to come to Vegas and attempt to put your super-smart skills into action... just as long as other players don't see you "attempting to cheat" - the casinos don't want you to scare any other customers away.
I agree with the points as presented - I believe that they can be a barrier to entry.
On the other hand, not all open source products suffer from those "barriers", and many closed source products do.
Lack of formal support? Damn, most of the packages my company purcahsed don't have any formal support. I remember one commercial software package we bought for about $100,000: the sales guy sold us some support, charging us 10% of the initial purchase price annually. But that support was ineffective. When we found major bugs, they took many months to address them (if ever). And finally, when the vendor was bought up by a 3rd party, the product was abandoned and is now truly unsupported. Bummer for the CIO, who now has to go to the plate to fire up a $1 million replacement project.
Now you know that Apple has really hit the nail on the head... the president of Real says that Apple must license technologies like Real... or die!
I kind of agree with the premise - Apple will have to change their business model over time. And maybe that will include other highly proprietary audio formats. Or maybe more open audio formats. Or something.
In any case, this isn't really news. This is a press release by Real, wishing that Apple would support their product.
I wonder if the annoying Real pop-up ads are part of Real's proposed licensing deal.
I use OOo exclusively. Formerly, I used MS-Office 2000. I use OOo on both Windows and Linux.
I'm happy with OOo. I don't feel that it's missing any features.
OOo is nearly as pretty and intuitive as MS-Office. That may not be saying much, but it's true. Regarding support: I haven't had any luck getting support from Microsoft (professionally or personally), so I'm not too concerned about that. I think the "poorly supported" point is often over-emphasized, especially when you consider the cost/benefit of professional support channels.
I'm not saying that OOo is better than MS-Office, or that OOo is the right product for everyone. But OOo is a compelling alternative for me. And I'd be shocked if it were not a compelling alternative for others.
But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE. My clients use IE, the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard (even though it doesn't follow the "standards").
Ya know, I find that a funny statement.
I manage a software development group, and we have to build for IE too. But we also have to make sure our software works with Mozilla. And for Opera, and Mac, and everything else. We support all "modern" browsers (basicly, verions >=5)
You see, we can't really dictate a browser, and we're not interested in getting locked into one vendor product. We want to remain flexible for the future, and we want to remain reliable when a new browser hits the market.
So we support all browsers.
Happily, this is a very minor expense. In fact, as project manager, I can say with confidence that it costs us well under 1/1000th of our development budget. The only difficulty is to get contractors and new employees to use web standards.
In the end, our maintenance costs are lower, and our user satisfaction is sky high. We never ever get complaints about browser compatibility.... not even once in over 4 years of high-volume operation.
Oh yeah, and our apps look and work damned good too.
So what's the deal? What is wrong with organizations that can't support regular browsers without undo expense and difficulty???
This situation reminds me of the mid-nineties, where technology companies were laying off in droves. The only ones that stayed were the researchers that had no choice due to talent or life situation.
In my former company, their research arm all but died. We once did very very cool things. Now the company is just a shell trying to make the best of it's past glories.
Just you wait until the foreign competition catches up. Remember the U.S.'s leadership in consumer electronics? Where did THAT go?
Yep, as I understand it, it is possible for the US to manipulate GPS signals over a certain region.
So let's say you're in the middle of a ground war in the, um, let's say Middle East. The (accessible) public signals can be scewed in a fairly localized manner... so that everything in the area appears to be about 1 km to the east, let's say. That's not very handy if you have a rouge nation deploying a weapon that depends on GPS accuracy.
However, the encrypted military signal can retain it's accuracy... so US bombs can still retain their accuracy.
Advantage: US.
In any case, GPS is pretty cool. I don't think I'd like to put my life in it's hands (automated aircraft landing, let's say). But GPS is very cool if you consider the "within a few meters" accuracy you can get with an approx. $100 WAAS-capable unit.
It's a weekend, why should they care about putting out their timely alerts, eh?
Hey, you know it does take some time to put together a statement. After all, there isn't an urgent rush at this point, and any statements have to be approved by the corporations involved.
Heck, it isn't the "Department of Homeland Security That Makes US-based Technology Companies Look Incompetent". In fact, it might make sense to put together a statement on corporate indemnification legislation before any announcements are made.
Happily, such "shill bidding" activity does cost the seller a significant amount of money. Auction fees add up pretty quickly. For a $20 item, $1 or $2 of fees per auction (listing fee + closing fee) can really start to rack up - especially if you "buy your own crap" a few hundred times!
Do people "shill bid" on eBay? You bet. It is against federal law, and it is against eBay rules, but it's always possible to have someone try to rig the deck in any auction setting.
As an eBay seller, I've had several items sell for much less than I hoped to get. I can feel pretty crappy about that, but that's what "reserve" and "starting bid" is all about, so I really have no one to blame.
At other times, stuff gets bid up way higher than I thought. Sometimes I feel crappy about that too. But then again, I accurately describe my stuff with plenty-o-pictures... so if people want to spend big bucks on my stuff, well, that's what they want to do.
And of course, I always ship quickly, and I always package stuff well. My feedback is 100% because I'm fair and lucky.
Your best eBay bet is to shy away from people who have a lot of feedback from the same user. It -should- be rare that one person buys more than one item from one seller. Also, you can look to see how many feedbacks a feedback GIVER has. This is pretty handy in determining the legitimacy of the feedback.
It is a pain in the butt to "study" someone's feedback, but it's worth the time if you're dealing with a potentially risky transaction. A "fast" eBay purchase is almost always a mistake. Learn everything you can about the seller and the item up for auction before you bid. If you're uncomfortable at all, move on. If you win and wish to back out, give the seller some bucks to cover his auction fee expenses and learn from the mistake.
That's another great eBay tip - Don't fall for any transactions that include a significant sum of money.
Determine how much a significant sum of money is. Don't spend more than that on any one eBay transaction unless you have a way to reduce the transaction's risk.
Anyone can get ripped off anywhere. A legit seller can "turn bad". eBay sellers are usually not professionals with storefronts... they are individuals who may be... well, on the verge of bankrupcy. Or have a drug problem and "fall off the wagon". Or who are sick and die. Who knows! All this is more likely than Circuit City going out of business. (Of course, that could happen too)
Most good sellers stay good. But remember that whenever you buy something, you take a risk. When you buy from an individual, it's a bigger risk. That's one reason why you can get great deals on eBay... lower price, higher risk. If you do your homework, you can minimize that risk.
eBay's feedback system is pretty effective. A combintation of eBay feedback and how the seller represents the goods can really help you determine how legit the seller is.
Also, it is reasonable to send the seller and email, or call the seller. You can even have someone visit the seller if necessary.
As both a buyer and a seller, I've had very few problems. I bought one item that didn't work as advertised, but it was only $9. Not a bad loss.
I've sold some stuff to a bunch of people that didn't pay. All said, illegit bidders cost me over $85. That pisses me off, but it's part of business on eBay.
I always make sure that there's a lot of quality feedback when buying. If there are some negative feedbacks, I read them and try to figure out who the loser is. Often times, the loser is a first-time (and last-time) eBay buyer.
A seller with little-to-no feedback is a huge warning sign. I can't imagine someone selling on eBay without first buying several items on eBay. It's OK to buy from a person with little feedback, as long as then item is very little money. I won't panic if I lose a few bucks (like less than $10).
I watch to see where the product is coming from. Something that's in the USA is much safer in my eyes. It's rare that someone will be selling a Plasma TV on eBay from some east Asian country. I simply stay away from that kind of unwieldy, unlikely-to-be-true stuff.
Paypal is easier for me as a buyer and seller. However, PayPal's fee (for the seller) is quite high. I usually sell with some kind of proof-of-delivery. I understand that Paypal doesn't offer me any real protection - so I always think safety first.
Funny, I just tried out a Cisco WIFI phone yesterday.
It's shaped a bit like an older Nokia cell phone - relatively big by today's cell phone standards. And, of course, it's VoIP.
My office is all VoIP (with Cisco VoIP phones at each desk), so a WIFI version would be a great benefit to those of us to scurry around the facility. Especially considering the poor cell phone reception in the area.
The real beauty is the possibility of taking this phone home - I could use my office phone on my home network (and broadband ISP). Then again, I don't want work calls when I'm home.
True. People make mistakes. But where is the line between a simple operational error and a preventable error? How many errors does it take to become a "problem"?
What's to prevent someone from merely claiming that they had a bad day? We're talking about highly paid professionals here, and people putting lives in their hands. I want some assurances that there won't be any mistakes on me.
Maybe there should be a system of checks and balances. Maybe there should be more redundancy in the O.R. Maybe the surgeon should forgo surgury if he's going through a nasty divorce. Maybe he should defer to one of his colleauges if he finds he can't spend the time to read what procedure he is going to perform. To the surgeon, it's just a day's work. If he can't be competent at it on one day, he shouldn't do it.
I'm sure it's rarely the case where during the malpractice suit, the doctor says "but I was going through a nasty divorce".
Remember, we're talking life and death here, not some spot welding on a 1996 Honda Civic exhaust system.
As a patient who has been on the "wrong side" of malpractice, all I can say is that this blacklist is bullshit.
In my case, the surgeon performed the wrong procedure on me. He simply didn't read the orders correctly and screwed up.
Happily, it wasn't a kidney or leg that had to come out. But I can tell you that it put me through a lot of pain, left permanent damage, and was just a huge crappy event in my life.
Being young at the time (under 20), I was stupid and didn't sue. Should have. This guy had no real right to practice. I'd be happy if he couldn't afford his malpractice insurance. This guy shouldn't have been in the business, and it would have been good for EVERY ONE of his patients if I sued his ass off. Why anyone would want to keep this guy in the business is beyond me.
So don't tell me about doctors needing relief. I have several friends who are MDs, and they're all doing just fine and have little to complain about. Perhaps it's only the bottom feeders who have this problem.
After all, there are many lousy doctors out there. Just ask any doctor.
also she said that the damage was probably caused by our use of third party wax ink cartridges
Reminds me of the time I installed a non-Factory radio in my new car. The car wouldn't start, so I had it towed back to the dealer. Bad solenoid in the starter, but then they claimed that my new RADIO caused an electrical fault in the solenoid. I thought it sounded VERY fishy, and since I had a roadtrip to make in the next two days, I told them to "just #$((# replace it".
I had them replace the starter and I -KEPT- the core (old part) for personal inspection.
After opening it up, I saw that the pushrod of the solenoid was manufactured a little suished - like a press mistkenly whacked it and distorted it - clearly a manufacturing error. Wrote a nasty-gram with a photo of the part... and the repair turned into being a freebee (except for my time and effort, of course).
Lesson learned: if someone tells you it's not covered by warrenty because YOU did something wrong, don't believe them.
Most industry analyists knew that Microsoft was concerned about Linux.
But I for one never quite realized that Microsoft was in a panic.
I heard all the rumors - "maybe Microsoft is behind the SCO lawsuit"... but I didn't think Microsoft would actually be funding this entire effort. I mean, isn't Microsoft focusing on the Next Generation Great Thing that will put Linux to bed once and for all? Obviously, the answer we now have is "no".
I read the news yesterday, and it seemed pretty clear that the memo was a fabrication. I mean how could such a blatent memo be true? And with all the grammar and spelling errors? It just didn't add up. Mircosoft is smart, right? They hire smart people, right? They may be a monopoly, and they may make try to lock their customers into their products, but they're doing it to make globs of $. That's smart, right?
Well obviously I was mistaken. Microsoft was more-or-less caught trying to fuck up the entire Linux industry by buying what is looking more and more like secretly misusing the courts. On top of that, Microsoft is looking like it's releasing blatent lies about the Linux industry under the guise of Microsoft fabricated or controlled companies.
Microsoft, it's time to come clean. Don't you think it's time that you admit that you're funding these lawsuits?
Or is Microsoft so scared about Linux and the Law that it'll continue to shelter itself behind a quickly diminishing cloud of deception and covert control of companies like SCO?
Yep, I think this guy must be a loser. For some reason, I just assumed that this guy was between the ages of 12 and 14. It's shocking that a 43 year old would be so... so stupid.
But a terrorist? That's a mighty strong word these days. I don't think I'd be willing to put this guy in the same camp as the 9/11 terrorists, the DC snippers, or the folks who plan to blow up a bus.
If his crimes do manage to fit the legal definition of "Cyber Terrorist", then it's LAME legal terminology, and someone ought to change it. I'd bet there are smarter legal terms that fit his crime.
And yeah, I think jail might be a good solution for this guy.
Funny, because Kerry's wealth is really his wife's fortune. And where did she get that fortune? She inherited it from her former husband, who died in an air crash. And what was he when he died? A Republican U.S. Senator!
My group uses CVS every day. It does a great job for us.
However, some other groups in my organization like alternatives like PVCS. Now I have little against PVCS (price tag being one thing, and some crappy network functionality that likely has been resolved by now).
These people mostly like PVCS because it can do stuff like renames.
And I like renames too. And therefore, Subversion is pretty compelling. Yay! Congrats to the team, this is pretty exciting, I've been watching subversion for a couple years now. Yay!
mi2g analysed 17.074 successful digital attacks against servers and networks. It states: "With Linux accounting for 13,654 breaches, Windows for 2,005 breaches followed by BSD and Mac OS X with 555 breaches worldwide in January 2004."
They say how many attacks they analyzed, but they didn't mention the pool of hosts that these attacks were taken from.
Were there 1000000 linux hosts, 200 Windows hosts, and 6 Mac OS hosts? If so, that would radically change the conclusion that is implied.
Also, it's interesting to note that they did NOT count automated attacks by viruses, etc.
I'm sure there are interesting conclusions in their study of attacks, but given the lack of data, this study doesn't provide enough data to conclude that one OS is safer than other.
Slashdot Mirror
you could say that this is actually more polluting than conventional energy sources
More than a NiCD, Li-ion, or NiMH battery? Those systems also require that you put energy into them, and they are extremely far away from being 100% efficient.
It should be obvious to the casual observer that plugging a device directly into the wall is more energy efficient than using a portable energy storage system with a device. There is simply no such thing as 100% efficiency in any energy storage products.
The big question is how much energy you can store in the smallest space with the smallest amount of nasty chemicals. Charging efficiency is only a small part of the picture - heck, I'm confident that driving your SUV for a mile uses more energy than all the batteries I have ever used in my entire life... and then some.
In addition, the chemicals involved in traditional "batteries" are known to be very toxic. If you want to talk about polutants, look at all the cell phone batteries that are thrown away year after year.
Energy efficiency isn't the only piece of the pie when it comes to polutants. Especially when you consider the toxicity of traditional batteries.
Businesses do not want to have to search the internet and post to newsgroups, mailing lists and forums to find solutions. That's not to say those support methods are not very helpful but a business wants a dedicated team.
Most of the time, my organization -does- want a strong community support group. On the ground, it's much more important than vendor support.
We have found time and time again that vendor support is both very expensive and very ineffective. We leverage the community first, and 99% of the time it is faster and more helpful than the extremely expensive paid support offered by the vendors.
There are exceptions - I have worked with one vendor who had an excellent support technician... I learned a lot from that guy, and eventually I met him in person at a conference after he moved on. Then again, that support cost my company $65,000 per year. And that was 7 or 8 years ago.
(In any case, I agree with your analysis of the rebuttal)
Casinos LOVE this type of thing.
Why?
Because the PRESS claims that with a little smarts, the average guy can beat the casino! If you're really smart and really quiet about it, you can beat 'em and become rich beyond your wildest dreams!
Therefore, you get a lot of quasi-smart losers into the casinos, all who have the fantisy of "out-smarting Vegas". Those people proceed to lose all kinds of money as they "hone their smarts".
This is exactly how casinos attract people who are "too smart" to waste their time gambling.
Card counting, roulette prediction, psuedo-random numbers of elecontrics-based slot machines - they're all an ADVERTISEMENT designed to attract those who imagine that they're super-smart enough to tilt the odds. Of course, it simply isn't true.
The casinos in Vegas would love you to come to Vegas and attempt to put your super-smart skills into action... just as long as other players don't see you "attempting to cheat" - the casinos don't want you to scare any other customers away.
I agree with the points as presented - I believe that they can be a barrier to entry.
On the other hand, not all open source products suffer from those "barriers", and many closed source products do.
Lack of formal support? Damn, most of the packages my company purcahsed don't have any formal support. I remember one commercial software package we bought for about $100,000: the sales guy sold us some support, charging us 10% of the initial purchase price annually. But that support was ineffective. When we found major bugs, they took many months to address them (if ever). And finally, when the vendor was bought up by a 3rd party, the product was abandoned and is now truly unsupported. Bummer for the CIO, who now has to go to the plate to fire up a $1 million replacement project.
Now you know that Apple has really hit the nail on the head... the president of Real says that Apple must license technologies like Real... or die!
I kind of agree with the premise - Apple will have to change their business model over time. And maybe that will include other highly proprietary audio formats. Or maybe more open audio formats. Or something.
In any case, this isn't really news. This is a press release by Real, wishing that Apple would support their product.
I wonder if the annoying Real pop-up ads are part of Real's proposed licensing deal.
I use OOo exclusively. Formerly, I used MS-Office 2000. I use OOo on both Windows and Linux.
I'm happy with OOo. I don't feel that it's missing any features.
OOo is nearly as pretty and intuitive as MS-Office. That may not be saying much, but it's true. Regarding support: I haven't had any luck getting support from Microsoft (professionally or personally), so I'm not too concerned about that. I think the "poorly supported" point is often over-emphasized, especially when you consider the cost/benefit of professional support channels.
I'm not saying that OOo is better than MS-Office, or that OOo is the right product for everyone. But OOo is a compelling alternative for me. And I'd be shocked if it were not a compelling alternative for others.
But I can't build for Mozilla. I have to build for IE. My clients use IE, the visitors use IE and that makes it the standard (even though it doesn't follow the "standards").
Ya know, I find that a funny statement.
I manage a software development group, and we have to build for IE too. But we also have to make sure our software works with Mozilla. And for Opera, and Mac, and everything else. We support all "modern" browsers (basicly, verions >=5)
You see, we can't really dictate a browser, and we're not interested in getting locked into one vendor product. We want to remain flexible for the future, and we want to remain reliable when a new browser hits the market.
So we support all browsers.
Happily, this is a very minor expense. In fact, as project manager, I can say with confidence that it costs us well under 1/1000th of our development budget. The only difficulty is to get contractors and new employees to use web standards.
In the end, our maintenance costs are lower, and our user satisfaction is sky high. We never ever get complaints about browser compatibility.... not even once in over 4 years of high-volume operation.
Oh yeah, and our apps look and work damned good too.
So what's the deal? What is wrong with organizations that can't support regular browsers without undo expense and difficulty???
This situation reminds me of the mid-nineties, where technology companies were laying off in droves. The only ones that stayed were the researchers that had no choice due to talent or life situation.
In my former company, their research arm all but died. We once did very very cool things. Now the company is just a shell trying to make the best of it's past glories.
Just you wait until the foreign competition catches up. Remember the U.S.'s leadership in consumer electronics? Where did THAT go?
Yep, as I understand it, it is possible for the US to manipulate GPS signals over a certain region.
So let's say you're in the middle of a ground war in the, um, let's say Middle East. The (accessible) public signals can be scewed in a fairly localized manner... so that everything in the area appears to be about 1 km to the east, let's say. That's not very handy if you have a rouge nation deploying a weapon that depends on GPS accuracy.
However, the encrypted military signal can retain it's accuracy... so US bombs can still retain their accuracy.
Advantage: US.
In any case, GPS is pretty cool. I don't think I'd like to put my life in it's hands (automated aircraft landing, let's say). But GPS is very cool if you consider the "within a few meters" accuracy you can get with an approx. $100 WAAS-capable unit.
It's a weekend, why should they care about putting out their timely alerts, eh?
Hey, you know it does take some time to put together a statement. After all, there isn't an urgent rush at this point, and any statements have to be approved by the corporations involved.
Heck, it isn't the "Department of Homeland Security That Makes US-based Technology Companies Look Incompetent". In fact, it might make sense to put together a statement on corporate indemnification legislation before any announcements are made.
Hey, serves these folks right! I mean who'd be stupid enough to have a Windows machine on the internet without any kind of firewa...
err, never mind.
Happily, such "shill bidding" activity does cost the seller a significant amount of money. Auction fees add up pretty quickly. For a $20 item, $1 or $2 of fees per auction (listing fee + closing fee) can really start to rack up - especially if you "buy your own crap" a few hundred times!
Do people "shill bid" on eBay? You bet. It is against federal law, and it is against eBay rules, but it's always possible to have someone try to rig the deck in any auction setting.
As an eBay seller, I've had several items sell for much less than I hoped to get. I can feel pretty crappy about that, but that's what "reserve" and "starting bid" is all about, so I really have no one to blame.
At other times, stuff gets bid up way higher than I thought. Sometimes I feel crappy about that too. But then again, I accurately describe my stuff with plenty-o-pictures... so if people want to spend big bucks on my stuff, well, that's what they want to do.
And of course, I always ship quickly, and I always package stuff well. My feedback is 100% because I'm fair and lucky.
Your best eBay bet is to shy away from people who have a lot of feedback from the same user. It -should- be rare that one person buys more than one item from one seller. Also, you can look to see how many feedbacks a feedback GIVER has. This is pretty handy in determining the legitimacy of the feedback.
It is a pain in the butt to "study" someone's feedback, but it's worth the time if you're dealing with a potentially risky transaction. A "fast" eBay purchase is almost always a mistake. Learn everything you can about the seller and the item up for auction before you bid. If you're uncomfortable at all, move on. If you win and wish to back out, give the seller some bucks to cover his auction fee expenses and learn from the mistake.
That's another great eBay tip - Don't fall for any transactions that include a significant sum of money.
... well, on the verge of bankrupcy. Or have a drug problem and "fall off the wagon". Or who are sick and die. Who knows! All this is more likely than Circuit City going out of business. (Of course, that could happen too)
Determine how much a significant sum of money is. Don't spend more than that on any one eBay transaction unless you have a way to reduce the transaction's risk.
Anyone can get ripped off anywhere. A legit seller can "turn bad". eBay sellers are usually not professionals with storefronts... they are individuals who may be
Most good sellers stay good. But remember that whenever you buy something, you take a risk. When you buy from an individual, it's a bigger risk. That's one reason why you can get great deals on eBay... lower price, higher risk. If you do your homework, you can minimize that risk.
eBay's feedback system is pretty effective. A combintation of eBay feedback and how the seller represents the goods can really help you determine how legit the seller is.
Also, it is reasonable to send the seller and email, or call the seller. You can even have someone visit the seller if necessary.
As both a buyer and a seller, I've had very few problems. I bought one item that didn't work as advertised, but it was only $9. Not a bad loss.
I've sold some stuff to a bunch of people that didn't pay. All said, illegit bidders cost me over $85. That pisses me off, but it's part of business on eBay.
I always make sure that there's a lot of quality feedback when buying. If there are some negative feedbacks, I read them and try to figure out who the loser is. Often times, the loser is a first-time (and last-time) eBay buyer.
A seller with little-to-no feedback is a huge warning sign. I can't imagine someone selling on eBay without first buying several items on eBay. It's OK to buy from a person with little feedback, as long as then item is very little money. I won't panic if I lose a few bucks (like less than $10).
I watch to see where the product is coming from. Something that's in the USA is much safer in my eyes. It's rare that someone will be selling a Plasma TV on eBay from some east Asian country. I simply stay away from that kind of unwieldy, unlikely-to-be-true stuff.
Paypal is easier for me as a buyer and seller. However, PayPal's fee (for the seller) is quite high. I usually sell with some kind of proof-of-delivery. I understand that Paypal doesn't offer me any real protection - so I always think safety first.
Or, they can buy SCO Unix for $600 and do the same, right?
One might think a brick jammed on the accelerator of a jeep or H2 might have a chance to make it 7 miles.
Not without refueling, of course.
Funny, I just tried out a Cisco WIFI phone yesterday.
It's shaped a bit like an older Nokia cell phone - relatively big by today's cell phone standards. And, of course, it's VoIP.
My office is all VoIP (with Cisco VoIP phones at each desk), so a WIFI version would be a great benefit to those of us to scurry around the facility. Especially considering the poor cell phone reception in the area.
The real beauty is the possibility of taking this phone home - I could use my office phone on my home network (and broadband ISP). Then again, I don't want work calls when I'm home.
True. People make mistakes. But where is the line between a simple operational error and a preventable error? How many errors does it take to become a "problem"?
What's to prevent someone from merely claiming that they had a bad day? We're talking about highly paid professionals here, and people putting lives in their hands. I want some assurances that there won't be any mistakes on me.
Maybe there should be a system of checks and balances. Maybe there should be more redundancy in the O.R. Maybe the surgeon should forgo surgury if he's going through a nasty divorce. Maybe he should defer to one of his colleauges if he finds he can't spend the time to read what procedure he is going to perform. To the surgeon, it's just a day's work. If he can't be competent at it on one day, he shouldn't do it.
I'm sure it's rarely the case where during the malpractice suit, the doctor says "but I was going through a nasty divorce".
Remember, we're talking life and death here, not some spot welding on a 1996 Honda Civic exhaust system.
As a patient who has been on the "wrong side" of malpractice, all I can say is that this blacklist is bullshit.
In my case, the surgeon performed the wrong procedure on me. He simply didn't read the orders correctly and screwed up.
Happily, it wasn't a kidney or leg that had to come out. But I can tell you that it put me through a lot of pain, left permanent damage, and was just a huge crappy event in my life.
Being young at the time (under 20), I was stupid and didn't sue. Should have. This guy had no real right to practice. I'd be happy if he couldn't afford his malpractice insurance. This guy shouldn't have been in the business, and it would have been good for EVERY ONE of his patients if I sued his ass off. Why anyone would want to keep this guy in the business is beyond me.
So don't tell me about doctors needing relief. I have several friends who are MDs, and they're all doing just fine and have little to complain about. Perhaps it's only the bottom feeders who have this problem.
After all, there are many lousy doctors out there. Just ask any doctor.
also she said that the damage was probably caused by
... and the repair turned into being a freebee (except for my time and effort, of course).
our use of third party wax ink cartridges
Reminds me of the time I installed a non-Factory radio in
my new car. The car wouldn't start, so I had it towed back
to the dealer. Bad solenoid in the starter, but then they
claimed that my new RADIO caused an electrical fault in the solenoid. I thought it sounded VERY fishy, and since I had a roadtrip to make in the next two days, I told them to "just #$((# replace it".
I had them replace the starter and I -KEPT- the core (old part) for
personal inspection.
After opening it up, I saw that the pushrod of the solenoid was manufactured a little suished - like a press mistkenly whacked it and distorted it - clearly a manufacturing error. Wrote a nasty-gram with a photo of the part
Lesson learned: if someone tells you it's not covered by warrenty because YOU did something wrong, don't believe them.
Most industry analyists knew that Microsoft was concerned about Linux.
But I for one never quite realized that Microsoft was in a panic.
I heard all the rumors - "maybe Microsoft is behind the SCO lawsuit"... but I didn't think Microsoft would actually be funding this entire effort. I mean, isn't Microsoft focusing on the Next Generation Great Thing that will put Linux to bed once and for all? Obviously, the answer we now have is "no".
I read the news yesterday, and it seemed pretty clear that the memo was a fabrication. I mean how could such a blatent memo be true? And with all the grammar and spelling errors? It just didn't add up. Mircosoft is smart, right? They hire smart people, right? They may be a monopoly, and they may make try to lock their customers into their products, but they're doing it to make globs of $. That's smart, right?
Well obviously I was mistaken. Microsoft was more-or-less caught trying to fuck up the entire Linux industry by buying what is looking more and more like secretly misusing the courts. On top of that, Microsoft is looking like it's releasing blatent lies about the Linux industry under the guise of Microsoft fabricated or controlled companies.
Microsoft, it's time to come clean. Don't you think it's time that you admit that you're funding these lawsuits?
Or is Microsoft so scared about Linux and the Law that it'll continue to shelter itself behind a quickly diminishing cloud of deception and covert control of companies like SCO?
But a terrorist? That's a mighty strong word these days. I don't think I'd be willing to put this guy in the same camp as the 9/11 terrorists, the DC snippers, or the folks who plan to blow up a bus.
If his crimes do manage to fit the legal definition of "Cyber Terrorist", then it's LAME legal terminology, and someone ought to change it. I'd bet there are smarter legal terms that fit his crime.
And yeah, I think jail might be a good solution for this guy.
Funny, because Kerry's wealth is really his wife's fortune. And where did she get that fortune? She inherited it from her former husband, who died in an air crash. And what was he when he died? A Republican U.S. Senator!
My group uses CVS every day. It does a great job for us.
However, some other groups in my organization like alternatives like PVCS. Now I have little against PVCS (price tag being one thing, and some crappy network functionality that likely has been resolved by now).
These people mostly like PVCS because it can do stuff like renames.
And I like renames too. And therefore, Subversion is pretty compelling. Yay! Congrats to the team, this is pretty exciting, I've been watching subversion for a couple years now. Yay!
mi2g analysed 17.074 successful digital attacks against servers and networks. It states: "With Linux accounting for 13,654 breaches, Windows for 2,005 breaches followed by BSD and Mac OS X with 555 breaches worldwide in January 2004."
They say how many attacks they analyzed, but they didn't mention the pool of hosts that these attacks were taken from.
Were there 1000000 linux hosts, 200 Windows hosts, and 6 Mac OS hosts? If so, that would radically change the conclusion that is implied.
Also, it's interesting to note that they did NOT count automated attacks by viruses, etc.
I'm sure there are interesting conclusions in their study of attacks, but given the lack of data, this study doesn't provide enough data to conclude that one OS is safer than other.