I saw the other response, but you may be able to source batteries locally. Check places that rebuild batteries. You can frequently find golfcart batteries (6vdc) or RV batteries (group 8D, 12vdc, 1200aH). Watch your charge cycle though. The lead acid batteries don't do so well if they're discharged below 50% frequently. Still, if you're only discharging 25% most of the time, the price is very affordable when they need to be replaced. I spent $65/ea for "rebuilt" group 8D batteries for my RV. They're used both for the "start" (to start the engine) and "house" (to provide lights and stuff inside the RV). My RV takes two just to start the engine (Detroit Diesel 6v92), and I couldn't fake that with 4 strong car batteries. I couldn't find 6 batteries to try a larger array with, but I doubt that would have worked either. I plan on putting in as many group 8D batteries as I can can fit in one section (probably 8 to 10). How long could I run my laptop on 12,000 aH?:)
I've looked at doing this in a home, with group 8D batteries. The price starts going up, when you start looking at inverters/charge controllers that can be grid tied.
I laid out plans for using cheaper inverters (one per 15A circuit), and an independent charging system, but even still, the price is pretty high. That idea was to convert homes one circuit at a time, until they were fully "green".
The idea of charging the batteries when the rate is cheaper will unfortunately go away as these are adopted. Right now, it's an insanely small amount of homes have their own battery room, and run off their own power during peak prices. If it even approached say 10%, the utilities would start charging accordingly.
It's something I'd love to see. If they made these affordable for most homes, you'd see alternative energy sources take off. Ok, so I have batteries. Now I can put on a solar array, and a wind generator. I can supplement that with a generator (which most homes have, depending on your area). You'd see priority go to solar, wind, grid, and generator. The automatic inverter/charger/switches aren't exactly cheap though. And, they're frequently difficult to source locally. You can't exactly run down to Home Depot or Lowes and pick one up. The day will come though. They're already offering a small election of solar appliances (like solar attic fans).
I've played hardball in the past. It got me some pretty healthy advances in salary. That had it's risks though, but I was prepared to take which ever option was better. "I'm leaving this company for a 50% salary increase and additional perks." "No, we'll give you a 100% increase, but not the perks." Quick math said the 100% was the better deal, so I took it. The whole negotiation was quite a bit more prolonged than that, but that's the executive summary.
It's a fun exercise. I'll let you know if I my store ever stagnates.:)
It's not a race to get to the bottom though, I take pleasure in every new experience. Well, except some of the BDSM stuff. Some of that hurts. It's a lot easier to give than receive there. At least I got rid of some of the ickier ones when I was young, like "have you had sex with a fat chick?":) No more fat chicks for me.:)
I have family who live over there, and I've heard a lot about their laws. They really do favor the employee.
My family knew someone who was "depressed". He took a year off work. A lot was paid at full salary. The rest was paid at partial salary. He went back to work for a couple weeks, and decided he was still depressed, and had to go home. As far as I know, he still isn't working. From everything I've heard about him, his "depression" was that he didn't want to go to work. I still can't wrap my head around that one. I get depressed about *NOT* working.
By changing your pricing, you sorted out the riff-raff. At $10/hr, anyone could afford you, and would expect the world of you for that $10/hr. At $100/hr, you are an IT professional (even if you're subcontracting it for $50/hr to someone else). They'll ask you to do exactly what they want and nothing else, knowing it will cost them a lot.
For the $10/hr, sure you can diagnose a network problem. And, since you're here, can you change the ink in my printer, and find out why my computer is slow? It easily becomes 3-4 hours work, which you didn't really want.
At the $100/hr, they don't want to keep you there any longer than necessary to fix the urgent problem. Really, is it worth 3 hours of your time to clean out a virus, when they could spend the same money on a new low-end computer that's faster than their current machine? Not usually.
Too bad it's so hard to get the jobs now. My price is $100/hr for just about everything IT. Where I would normally have enough clients to keep myself busy, it's almost impossible to find anyone that's willing to pay. Businesses are pulled so tight lately, that they can't afford to get me to their site for even an hour.:( I don't bill fractional hours, unless it was agreed upon before hand, and even then, they have to be a dedicated customer, so 3.25 hours here, and 4.5 hours there all make it worth my while. You can't get me to a site for.25 hours @$100/hr. That can sometimes be the cost of gas to get there. If I was charging $10/hr and made the trip for a.25 hr job, the job would cost *me* money.
I was having that cause/effect discussion with someone recently. Folks associate all kinds of wrong things, and ya, you'll be to blame. I fixed the computer, which is why the toaster doesn't work any more. But hey, they both plug into the wall, right? It's obviously the problem. Right?
Luckily, I don't know anyone using a VCR any more, so they'll never ask me to set the time.:) The one friend who still has one has a collection of VHS movies, and the player is in it's original box in the garage, and it'll probably never get used.:)
I don't blame anyone in the crowd for making that call. I didn't see him holding up a badge. I know the video doesn't start at the beginning of the problem, but it would have been better to be properly displayed.
He didn't have good control of what was in his hands. I believe it was his radio that he was digging in the snow looking for. What if he lost control of the gun instead? What if he slid on ice under the snow, and fell, accidentally shooting someone? That was a really bad call on his part, and ya, completely mishandled.
There are good cops, who would have handed it well, and that would never make the news. I wonder how often the police just stop and say "Hey, that's not safe here, go do it somewhere else", with no call in to dispatch and no report? It really would have been the better thing to do.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was something else going on. Maybe he was just coming back from a nasty crime scene. Maybe he had a fight with his wife/girlfriend on the phone before leaving work. Maybe someone cut him off a few minutes before. In any case, he shouldn't have let anything else interfere with handling *this* case professionally.
There were much better ways to mitigate the situation. He could have gotten out of his car with his **BADGE** drawn.
"I'm a DC Police officer. What you guys are doing is illegal, and a danger to drivers. Please don't do this here. Go play in a parking lot or somewhere else that's safer."
I'd suspect they may have been a little upset, but would have complied. The drawn firearm was beyond the required force for the situation. The police have a "Use Of Force Matrix", which simply says what kind of force you can use in given situations.
A snowball is an aggravated battery (if DC's laws are like laws in my state), but not anything that would require deadly force to stop. They could have arrested (and convicted) someone on aggravated battery, but I seriously doubt it would make it through the DA's office before it was dropped.
Now, a large group of people, in a potential street fight/riot situation? That could qualify for his level of force. Those people didn't look like they were an angry mob. Well, not until he came out with his weapon drawn.
Notice the responding officers had their hands on their weapons, but they did not draw them. Why? Because that was proper procedure. They evaluated the situation, and knew a gun had already been drawn by someone, (who turned out to be the detective), so they were in a potentially hazardous situation.
My honest good answers were honest. Well, except for the sex.;) I had plenty of that in high school. And the Nintendo was involved. A bunch of people come over to play, and I'd sneak away with the prettiest girl, and do everything we were told not to.:) "No mom, we were playing Nintendo all night".:)
All the real partying came later, when I could actually afford it, because I had a real job. There's a good reason when I take the purity test, I always score the least pure in any group that takes it, unless they lie. The purity test becomes a "Damn, I missed that one.", and again take the prettiest girl(s) into the next room to lower my score a little more. Well, sometimes not into the next room any more. I gave up being shy when my score dropped below 50%, which also helped on the "have you had sex with people watching" type of questions.:) Still, I'll never accomplish a true 0%, because animals, kids, gay stuff, and dead people aren't something I'd be willing to do. The rest of it? Why not?:)
When I was in high school, we took part in a mandatory survey. It ranged through sex, drugs, and alcohol. I answered honestly, but I was talking to people afterwards that blatantly lied. Well, unless they really believed how many alcoholic drug addicted whores we had in school (no, we didn't have many). Surveys are as honest as the people taking the results would like to believe.
I think about that every time there is a story on the news about how young girls are having sex with multiple partners, and how wide spread drug use is among high school students. None of them care what they said on an anonymous survey.
Oblig. nitpick: if you dated and married a gamer girl, then you CANNOT say from experience what a non-gamer girl will or won't ever do. You'd have to have dated and married a non-gamer girl (actually, all of them) in order to make that blanket statement.
Well, as the official Slashdot manwhore (and many official manwhore of many other organizations), I will say that... I do not comment about my clients.:)
Are we talking about Stargate Atlantis, Season 5 Episode 16, "Brain Storm"? I don't think I've seen this one. There were some gaps in my viewing of Atlantis, and I suspect this may have been one of them.
This release finish is usually enough for most companies. They can thin the herd of most of their developers, keep just a very few on, and when it's time to start on the next release, hire on fresh meat for a fraction of the cost of the last crew.
There used to be company loyalty. That's long since gone. Back in the day, if you had a job and were good at it, you would continue the job for the rest of your life, get yearly raises and promotions. Now, once they can terminate you and bring on someone cheaper, they will.
How many people have you worked with for more than 10 years? If you've had the same job for that long, I'd be willing to bet the number could be counted on one hand. My record is 8 years. I could tell you everyone who had come and gone. There was some loyalty there, but they shifted their view and started looking at the cost over loyalty. "Oh, we can get rid of this senior guy with 8 years experience with us, for someone who doesn't know us at all, and pay less than half as much." Unfortunately, I had settled myself into being there as my long term career.
But, code is a product, and expected to be created. The value is obvious when it's completed, but still worthless to the bean counters until someone in sales sells it to a customer. The more customers they sell the code to, the more profitable it's become.
The thanks never comes down to the programmers. When the product is completed, it's likely they'll be let go, since no more work needs to be done. The sales staff could continue selling it for years, and making a profit.
I was told, I have to be able to sell the product. That's not where I want to be. I like creating things. I prefer to leave it up to sales to make it profitable. Unfortunately, the way most bosses run the show, development will always be a negative cashflow area, and sales will always be positive. In that, they consider development bad for the company, and forget that without our work, they'd never turn a profit.
I don't remember that episode. Of course, as soon as I watch it, I'll remember it.
I remember Carter was on a planet with two suns, and a dead DHD, so they were trying to figure out how to make it cooler for them to survive. "Well, we could send these reflective blankets...." did go over so well.:)
Of course, O'Neill had the entire ancient database in his head, so he sent over instructions on how to fix it just in time. Funny, how they always manage to save the day, just in time.:)
That all depends on where you usually live. Here, our "normal" comfortable days are about 78F. Our "warm" days are about 90F. Our "it's hot" days start at about 100F. Right now, it's 68 degrees outside, and you don't see anyone without a jacket, and all buildings are heated to at least 75F.
It usually takes me a little while to acclimate to traveling to northern states. After a few days, I look perfectly at home standing in the snow, but for those few days until I get used to it, I'm freezing.
Ya, I was aware of it, even though no one on the DTV side ever confirmed it. It's the same with most systems. If they want (or are allowed) to cooperate, they can. For example, I've terminated cell phones early without the early termination fee. They'd disable it, and simply marked to terminate on the date it was allowed to be terminated. That was usually in the case where I had multiple phones, and wanted just one shut off. For quite a while, my accounts would have mine, my girlfriend, her kid, a friend, etc, etc, on the same plan.
They just preferred to play the odds that I wouldn't remember to call in within the window where termination was allowed. If I miss the window, they get an extra year of a product that I won't use. I'm sure part of it was that they got to brag to whoever (like the NFL in that case) that they had X many subscribers, which would then be used for their own sales numbers, which would in turn be used for calculating advertising rates. If everyone who wanted out could get out, they'd be down by a substantial number of their "watching" demographic.
I'm not a sports fan. Well, let me rephrase that. I'm not a professional sports fan. I love sports. I love playing the games, and I love watching when there's someone I know playing. I'm not a fan of watching millionaires that I don't know play against each other. I knew one person who went from high school football to college football, but I don't know if he ever went pro. Even then, I didn't know him well enough to want to watch so many years later.
The LIR is usually the ISP. So, they're filling out the IP justification form to ask for a block of IP's, just like anyone with their own rack or cabinet would. Big deal. I once had over a dozen/24's, but it was for legitimate purposes, and I properly (and honestly) justified them.
I watched spammers do that in the past. They'd get multiple T1's (at their location) or ethernet handoffs (in datacenters). They'd be able to do a spam run for about 3 days on a block of IP's. When they got the complaint, they'd simply switch to another line. Say they have 7 of these circuits. It would take 21 days before they rotated back around to the original provider. If one should (oh my gosh) cut them off for the illegal activity, they'd simply bring in new circuits under new names.
By combining providers in a single rack, that saved them the money of needing more servers. They'd frequently have a few cabinets, in a few different datacenters. So, 4 racks, 7 circuits each, would give them 28 unique identities. At 3 days before the line is burnt, that would give 84 days before they'd rotate back around to the original line.
They would let a line sit idle for 84 days. That would just be stupid. They'd run multiple campaigns at the same time, so they'd rotate through them. It was an art, playing providers and the spam traps. They'd send a nice apology to the provider when they got the notice to stop, saying some machine was compromised, and the complaints would stop after just a couple days, and no one would care.
Of course, some legitimate traffic would be hosted on these lines also, just to make things look good. In a 40u rack, they may have 30u's populated with spam servers, and a couple u's with web servers and what looked like paying customers on them.
It's just like a black market operation run by the mob. Sure, you can buy merchandise in the store front. You'd never see the mobsters counting out suitcases full of cash, or shelves full of stolen merchandise bound for other places. No one questions what you're doing, because your store front *looks* legitimate.
All they're indicating is that the spammer crowd has realized that there is no money in spam any more, and they've migrated to malware.
All in all, it's not hard to get a cabinet, nor a circuit or three, in a datacenter. You don't even need a legitimate company. You just need to *appear* that you have a legitimate company. $100 and a few minutes of your time will incorporate a company to use. Corporate address? A PO box somewhere. Company phone? A "magicjack" or throw away cell phone. The only things that would tie anything to anything would be who's signing the contracts, which can be anyone. For minimum wage, you can have an employee of your illicit corp sign off on papers as "CEO".
At one job, I wasn't listed as an "officer" in the company, so I couldn't sign anything. I got annoyed with trying to deal with the provider, so the next time I called to do something, I was "Vice President of Information Technology", and suddenly I was allowed to make changes. It was with the CEO's blessing, so I wasn't doing anything wrong. It was just to get through the providers annoying "protective" measures. The CEO never even got a phone call asking if I was allowed to make the changes. He just saw it reflected on the next bill.
They may have improved their CS. I really hope so. I won't be going back anytime soon though. A year and a half is more than since I left them, and got the bad taste of their world.
The cited complaints in the original post are far from unique. Virtually every provider these days advertise great prices, and it's only if/when you read the fine print (when available) that you can see what the real costs are.
As for owning the equipment, I strongly suggest going to eBay and buying some. When I got my first receiver, it was directly from them. Other pieces were a mix of direct purchases, and from eBay. In the end, I owned every piece of equipment that I had, much of which was purchased from eBay. Since I had a few series 2 TiVO's, I had modified them with upgraded OS's and larger drives. The upgrades were for newer feature sets, such as folders in the saved movies, which wasn't available from DirecTV at the time.
Equipment on eBay can be purchased pretty cheap. You may also find some on Craigslist, or other individuals selling. Just watch for the right deals, and have fun with it. I have a couple boxes full of DirecTV equipment that I'm going to be selling eventually (i.e., when I get around to it), but most is standard def, so there isn't a big market for it. I'll sell it when I want the space in the garage.:) Who knows, maybe I'll go back to them someday, but I'll probably want all high def equipment, and there are only two high def pieces in my collection (one DVR, one receiver). I never had any problem adding my own purchased equipment, and they were unable to hit me with the lease costs. I guess the only problem was that I couldn't get a warranty, but if I spend less than half price and I can upgrade the only moving part (the hard drive) what do I care about the warranty? It's actually nice to have working spares at the house. We did have a box go out, so it was a simple matter of swapping in a known good unit, rather than waiting for a tech to come out and do the same thing.
I've worked all over, including Washington DC, and Washington (state for those not paying attention). Trips were scheduled close enough, where I may be in each one within a week of the other trip. I've always been clear to say "Washington" to mean the state" and "Washington DC" to mean the area with the White House in it.:) Even still, people would get confused.
"I'm in Washington"
"oh, so you're on the East coast now?"
"No, like just outside of Seattle."
"oh."
I gave up on telling people city names. I frequently worked in cities that people wouldn't recognize unless they were from the area. "I'm in Tukwila" has little meaning to someone who doesn't know the area. Then again, when I'd say it to someone who does know the area, they'd ask me if I'd been to some little restaurant, and I'd have to explain that I only know my way from the airport, to the hotel, and to the datacenter.:) Some places, like Sterling (Virginia) had more of a chance of making people think I was close to their hometown. There are 27 cities named Sterling in the US. Sometimes I was thankful to be in New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. People tend not to get confused, but sometimes I'd slip up and say "LA" for "Los Angeles", and they'd ask how far was I from New Orleans. Ummm. I've been to New Orleans a few times. Different places, sorry.
So, get used to it. People will get confused. There are plenty of places like that. I do better by just saying the closest metro area, and leaving it at that. Most people recognize the major metro area names.
What I really hate is when I say I lived somewhere (like Los Angeles), and they ask me if I knew someone in particular. That person would usually be in San Francisco or San Diego. {sigh} And no, I didn't meet any major actors. I swore I saw Steven Spielberg driving a beat up 1985 Honda once, but I'm fairly confident it wasn't him.:)
A long time ago, they used to be good folks to deal with. That's gone down hill.
I had bought a HDVR2 (Standard def TiVO receiver), which was their latest greatest at the time. They wanted to send someone out to install it, but I bought on a Friday night, and they couldn't schedule until Monday. No big deal there. I installed it myself that night. It worked well. Over a span of a few years, I bought a few other pieces of equipment. I think I only ever called once during that period for a repair, and the guy was at my house the next day to help. It was for a defective regular receiver for my girlfriend's kid's room.
The last time I moved, the install went ok. It took a few extra days to get someone out. This was a big move for us, so I didn't have time to get on the roof and wire everything up. I also wanted the newer dish, which I could have bought online for a few bucks. It took them several days to show up. At the prior house, we had gotten the NFL sports package, but that was for a friend to watch. Since the friend wouldn't be watching, we didn't need it any more. "Sorry, you can't cancel at this time, you have to cancel in 3 months." I forgot, and on the 4th month I called and they said the same thing again. Perpetually trapped with an add-on package that I couldn't get rid of.
Not too long after that, the signal started going. I'm fairly sure it was the multiplexer. I called them to come fix it. They scheduled for a week later. The guy never showed, so they rescheduled for another week later. (2 weeks, no service). The guy showed a day after the scheduled date, with a new DVR in hand. He said they had not scheduled for a repair, only a DVR upgrade. Huh? He couldn't do the repair, only the upgrade that I hadn't asked for. I spent an hour on the phone with DTV, and they finally scheduled a repair in two weeks. So, a month with no service. I called, told them to go screw themselves, and called a local wired provider, who was out the next day to do the install.
I was fairly lucky, my pricing was fixed because I was grandfathered in. The "current" rate was much higher than what I was paying. A month or so after I cancelled, I started getting nasty calls from them saying I was late on my bill. It was a month of daily calls, where they asked for money, and I told them to go screw themselves. Ok, I was a little clearer on the phone, but that was the end of each conversation. They finally realized I wasn't going to give them anything, and they went away. It wasn't worth their time to call, since I had made it abundantly clear that I had cancelled, and wasn't going to pay them anything.
Ya, they got pretty bad. It's really unfortunate, I liked their service. I was a customer for many years, and they managed to alienate me. Obviously, I'm not the only one.
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I saw the other response, but you may be able to source batteries locally. Check places that rebuild batteries. You can frequently find golfcart batteries (6vdc) or RV batteries (group 8D, 12vdc, 1200aH). Watch your charge cycle though. The lead acid batteries don't do so well if they're discharged below 50% frequently. Still, if you're only discharging 25% most of the time, the price is very affordable when they need to be replaced. I spent $65/ea for "rebuilt" group 8D batteries for my RV. They're used both for the "start" (to start the engine) and "house" (to provide lights and stuff inside the RV). My RV takes two just to start the engine (Detroit Diesel 6v92), and I couldn't fake that with 4 strong car batteries. I couldn't find 6 batteries to try a larger array with, but I doubt that would have worked either. I plan on putting in as many group 8D batteries as I can can fit in one section (probably 8 to 10). How long could I run my laptop on 12,000 aH? :)
I've looked at doing this in a home, with group 8D batteries. The price starts going up, when you start looking at inverters/charge controllers that can be grid tied.
I laid out plans for using cheaper inverters (one per 15A circuit), and an independent charging system, but even still, the price is pretty high. That idea was to convert homes one circuit at a time, until they were fully "green".
The idea of charging the batteries when the rate is cheaper will unfortunately go away as these are adopted. Right now, it's an insanely small amount of homes have their own battery room, and run off their own power during peak prices. If it even approached say 10%, the utilities would start charging accordingly.
It's something I'd love to see. If they made these affordable for most homes, you'd see alternative energy sources take off. Ok, so I have batteries. Now I can put on a solar array, and a wind generator. I can supplement that with a generator (which most homes have, depending on your area). You'd see priority go to solar, wind, grid, and generator. The automatic inverter/charger/switches aren't exactly cheap though. And, they're frequently difficult to source locally. You can't exactly run down to Home Depot or Lowes and pick one up. The day will come though. They're already offering a small election of solar appliances (like solar attic fans).
Taking a date also gives you something to do before the movie starts, and during the boring parts. :) "Hey this scene sucks, wanna fool around?"
By yourself, people get offended that you're sitting in a raincoat, jerking off to the blue aliens.
And no, I haven't seen it. I'm waiting for it to come out on Betamax. :)
Well, it'll make us better money at least.
I've played hardball in the past. It got me some pretty healthy advances in salary. That had it's risks though, but I was prepared to take which ever option was better. "I'm leaving this company for a 50% salary increase and additional perks." "No, we'll give you a 100% increase, but not the perks." Quick math said the 100% was the better deal, so I took it. The whole negotiation was quite a bit more prolonged than that, but that's the executive summary.
It's a fun exercise. I'll let you know if I my store ever stagnates. :)
It's not a race to get to the bottom though, I take pleasure in every new experience. Well, except some of the BDSM stuff. Some of that hurts. It's a lot easier to give than receive there. At least I got rid of some of the ickier ones when I was young, like "have you had sex with a fat chick?" :) No more fat chicks for me. :)
I have family who live over there, and I've heard a lot about their laws. They really do favor the employee.
My family knew someone who was "depressed". He took a year off work. A lot was paid at full salary. The rest was paid at partial salary. He went back to work for a couple weeks, and decided he was still depressed, and had to go home. As far as I know, he still isn't working. From everything I've heard about him, his "depression" was that he didn't want to go to work. I still can't wrap my head around that one. I get depressed about *NOT* working.
By changing your pricing, you sorted out the riff-raff. At $10/hr, anyone could afford you, and would expect the world of you for that $10/hr. At $100/hr, you are an IT professional (even if you're subcontracting it for $50/hr to someone else). They'll ask you to do exactly what they want and nothing else, knowing it will cost them a lot.
For the $10/hr, sure you can diagnose a network problem. And, since you're here, can you change the ink in my printer, and find out why my computer is slow? It easily becomes 3-4 hours work, which you didn't really want.
At the $100/hr, they don't want to keep you there any longer than necessary to fix the urgent problem. Really, is it worth 3 hours of your time to clean out a virus, when they could spend the same money on a new low-end computer that's faster than their current machine? Not usually.
Too bad it's so hard to get the jobs now. My price is $100/hr for just about everything IT. Where I would normally have enough clients to keep myself busy, it's almost impossible to find anyone that's willing to pay. Businesses are pulled so tight lately, that they can't afford to get me to their site for even an hour. :( I don't bill fractional hours, unless it was agreed upon before hand, and even then, they have to be a dedicated customer, so 3.25 hours here, and 4.5 hours there all make it worth my while. You can't get me to a site for .25 hours @$100/hr. That can sometimes be the cost of gas to get there. If I was charging $10/hr and made the trip for a .25 hr job, the job would cost *me* money.
I was having that cause/effect discussion with someone recently. Folks associate all kinds of wrong things, and ya, you'll be to blame. I fixed the computer, which is why the toaster doesn't work any more. But hey, they both plug into the wall, right? It's obviously the problem. Right?
Luckily, I don't know anyone using a VCR any more, so they'll never ask me to set the time. :) The one friend who still has one has a collection of VHS movies, and the player is in it's original box in the garage, and it'll probably never get used. :)
Bring a super soaker. :) It's hard for someone to throw snowballs, if their arms are frozen in place. :)
I doubt it was cold enough for that to happen fast though.
I don't blame anyone in the crowd for making that call. I didn't see him holding up a badge. I know the video doesn't start at the beginning of the problem, but it would have been better to be properly displayed.
He didn't have good control of what was in his hands. I believe it was his radio that he was digging in the snow looking for. What if he lost control of the gun instead? What if he slid on ice under the snow, and fell, accidentally shooting someone? That was a really bad call on his part, and ya, completely mishandled.
There are good cops, who would have handed it well, and that would never make the news. I wonder how often the police just stop and say "Hey, that's not safe here, go do it somewhere else", with no call in to dispatch and no report? It really would have been the better thing to do.
I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was something else going on. Maybe he was just coming back from a nasty crime scene. Maybe he had a fight with his wife/girlfriend on the phone before leaving work. Maybe someone cut him off a few minutes before. In any case, he shouldn't have let anything else interfere with handling *this* case professionally.
There were much better ways to mitigate the situation. He could have gotten out of his car with his **BADGE** drawn.
"I'm a DC Police officer. What you guys are doing is illegal, and a danger to drivers. Please don't do this here. Go play in a parking lot or somewhere else that's safer."
I'd suspect they may have been a little upset, but would have complied. The drawn firearm was beyond the required force for the situation. The police have a "Use Of Force Matrix", which simply says what kind of force you can use in given situations.
A snowball is an aggravated battery (if DC's laws are like laws in my state), but not anything that would require deadly force to stop. They could have arrested (and convicted) someone on aggravated battery, but I seriously doubt it would make it through the DA's office before it was dropped.
Now, a large group of people, in a potential street fight/riot situation? That could qualify for his level of force. Those people didn't look like they were an angry mob. Well, not until he came out with his weapon drawn.
Notice the responding officers had their hands on their weapons, but they did not draw them. Why? Because that was proper procedure. They evaluated the situation, and knew a gun had already been drawn by someone, (who turned out to be the detective), so they were in a potentially hazardous situation.
Teenage rebellion and surveys don't mix. :)
My honest good answers were honest. Well, except for the sex. ;) I had plenty of that in high school. And the Nintendo was involved. A bunch of people come over to play, and I'd sneak away with the prettiest girl, and do everything we were told not to. :) "No mom, we were playing Nintendo all night". :)
All the real partying came later, when I could actually afford it, because I had a real job. There's a good reason when I take the purity test, I always score the least pure in any group that takes it, unless they lie. The purity test becomes a "Damn, I missed that one.", and again take the prettiest girl(s) into the next room to lower my score a little more. Well, sometimes not into the next room any more. I gave up being shy when my score dropped below 50%, which also helped on the "have you had sex with people watching" type of questions. :) Still, I'll never accomplish a true 0%, because animals, kids, gay stuff, and dead people aren't something I'd be willing to do. The rest of it? Why not? :)
When I was in high school, we took part in a mandatory survey. It ranged through sex, drugs, and alcohol. I answered honestly, but I was talking to people afterwards that blatantly lied. Well, unless they really believed how many alcoholic drug addicted whores we had in school (no, we didn't have many). Surveys are as honest as the people taking the results would like to believe.
I think about that every time there is a story on the news about how young girls are having sex with multiple partners, and how wide spread drug use is among high school students. None of them care what they said on an anonymous survey.
Well, as the official Slashdot manwhore (and many official manwhore of many other organizations), I will say that ... I do not comment about my clients. :)
Are we talking about Stargate Atlantis, Season 5 Episode 16, "Brain Storm"? I don't think I've seen this one. There were some gaps in my viewing of Atlantis, and I suspect this may have been one of them.
This release finish is usually enough for most companies. They can thin the herd of most of their developers, keep just a very few on, and when it's time to start on the next release, hire on fresh meat for a fraction of the cost of the last crew.
There used to be company loyalty. That's long since gone. Back in the day, if you had a job and were good at it, you would continue the job for the rest of your life, get yearly raises and promotions. Now, once they can terminate you and bring on someone cheaper, they will.
How many people have you worked with for more than 10 years? If you've had the same job for that long, I'd be willing to bet the number could be counted on one hand. My record is 8 years. I could tell you everyone who had come and gone. There was some loyalty there, but they shifted their view and started looking at the cost over loyalty. "Oh, we can get rid of this senior guy with 8 years experience with us, for someone who doesn't know us at all, and pay less than half as much." Unfortunately, I had settled myself into being there as my long term career.
But, code is a product, and expected to be created. The value is obvious when it's completed, but still worthless to the bean counters until someone in sales sells it to a customer. The more customers they sell the code to, the more profitable it's become.
The thanks never comes down to the programmers. When the product is completed, it's likely they'll be let go, since no more work needs to be done. The sales staff could continue selling it for years, and making a profit.
I was told, I have to be able to sell the product. That's not where I want to be. I like creating things. I prefer to leave it up to sales to make it profitable. Unfortunately, the way most bosses run the show, development will always be a negative cashflow area, and sales will always be positive. In that, they consider development bad for the company, and forget that without our work, they'd never turn a profit.
I don't remember that episode. Of course, as soon as I watch it, I'll remember it.
I remember Carter was on a planet with two suns, and a dead DHD, so they were trying to figure out how to make it cooler for them to survive. "Well, we could send these reflective blankets...." did go over so well. :)
Of course, O'Neill had the entire ancient database in his head, so he sent over instructions on how to fix it just in time. Funny, how they always manage to save the day, just in time. :)
But that depends on your time of year, and altitude. :)
Here's it's a downright cold 68F now. It's the two weeks a year to wear a jacket. :)
That all depends on where you usually live. Here, our "normal" comfortable days are about 78F. Our "warm" days are about 90F. Our "it's hot" days start at about 100F. Right now, it's 68 degrees outside, and you don't see anyone without a jacket, and all buildings are heated to at least 75F.
It usually takes me a little while to acclimate to traveling to northern states. After a few days, I look perfectly at home standing in the snow, but for those few days until I get used to it, I'm freezing.
Ya, I was aware of it, even though no one on the DTV side ever confirmed it. It's the same with most systems. If they want (or are allowed) to cooperate, they can. For example, I've terminated cell phones early without the early termination fee. They'd disable it, and simply marked to terminate on the date it was allowed to be terminated. That was usually in the case where I had multiple phones, and wanted just one shut off. For quite a while, my accounts would have mine, my girlfriend, her kid, a friend, etc, etc, on the same plan.
They just preferred to play the odds that I wouldn't remember to call in within the window where termination was allowed. If I miss the window, they get an extra year of a product that I won't use. I'm sure part of it was that they got to brag to whoever (like the NFL in that case) that they had X many subscribers, which would then be used for their own sales numbers, which would in turn be used for calculating advertising rates. If everyone who wanted out could get out, they'd be down by a substantial number of their "watching" demographic.
I'm not a sports fan. Well, let me rephrase that. I'm not a professional sports fan. I love sports. I love playing the games, and I love watching when there's someone I know playing. I'm not a fan of watching millionaires that I don't know play against each other. I knew one person who went from high school football to college football, but I don't know if he ever went pro. Even then, I didn't know him well enough to want to watch so many years later.
The article (and story here) are a bit deceiving.
The LIR is usually the ISP. So, they're filling out the IP justification form to ask for a block of IP's, just like anyone with their own rack or cabinet would. Big deal. I once had over a dozen /24's, but it was for legitimate purposes, and I properly (and honestly) justified them.
I watched spammers do that in the past. They'd get multiple T1's (at their location) or ethernet handoffs (in datacenters). They'd be able to do a spam run for about 3 days on a block of IP's. When they got the complaint, they'd simply switch to another line. Say they have 7 of these circuits. It would take 21 days before they rotated back around to the original provider. If one should (oh my gosh) cut them off for the illegal activity, they'd simply bring in new circuits under new names.
By combining providers in a single rack, that saved them the money of needing more servers. They'd frequently have a few cabinets, in a few different datacenters. So, 4 racks, 7 circuits each, would give them 28 unique identities. At 3 days before the line is burnt, that would give 84 days before they'd rotate back around to the original line.
They would let a line sit idle for 84 days. That would just be stupid. They'd run multiple campaigns at the same time, so they'd rotate through them. It was an art, playing providers and the spam traps. They'd send a nice apology to the provider when they got the notice to stop, saying some machine was compromised, and the complaints would stop after just a couple days, and no one would care.
Of course, some legitimate traffic would be hosted on these lines also, just to make things look good. In a 40u rack, they may have 30u's populated with spam servers, and a couple u's with web servers and what looked like paying customers on them.
It's just like a black market operation run by the mob. Sure, you can buy merchandise in the store front. You'd never see the mobsters counting out suitcases full of cash, or shelves full of stolen merchandise bound for other places. No one questions what you're doing, because your store front *looks* legitimate.
All they're indicating is that the spammer crowd has realized that there is no money in spam any more, and they've migrated to malware.
All in all, it's not hard to get a cabinet, nor a circuit or three, in a datacenter. You don't even need a legitimate company. You just need to *appear* that you have a legitimate company. $100 and a few minutes of your time will incorporate a company to use. Corporate address? A PO box somewhere. Company phone? A "magicjack" or throw away cell phone. The only things that would tie anything to anything would be who's signing the contracts, which can be anyone. For minimum wage, you can have an employee of your illicit corp sign off on papers as "CEO".
At one job, I wasn't listed as an "officer" in the company, so I couldn't sign anything. I got annoyed with trying to deal with the provider, so the next time I called to do something, I was "Vice President of Information Technology", and suddenly I was allowed to make changes. It was with the CEO's blessing, so I wasn't doing anything wrong. It was just to get through the providers annoying "protective" measures. The CEO never even got a phone call asking if I was allowed to make the changes. He just saw it reflected on the next bill.
They may have improved their CS. I really hope so. I won't be going back anytime soon though. A year and a half is more than since I left them, and got the bad taste of their world.
The cited complaints in the original post are far from unique. Virtually every provider these days advertise great prices, and it's only if/when you read the fine print (when available) that you can see what the real costs are.
As for owning the equipment, I strongly suggest going to eBay and buying some. When I got my first receiver, it was directly from them. Other pieces were a mix of direct purchases, and from eBay. In the end, I owned every piece of equipment that I had, much of which was purchased from eBay. Since I had a few series 2 TiVO's, I had modified them with upgraded OS's and larger drives. The upgrades were for newer feature sets, such as folders in the saved movies, which wasn't available from DirecTV at the time.
Equipment on eBay can be purchased pretty cheap. You may also find some on Craigslist, or other individuals selling. Just watch for the right deals, and have fun with it. I have a couple boxes full of DirecTV equipment that I'm going to be selling eventually (i.e., when I get around to it), but most is standard def, so there isn't a big market for it. I'll sell it when I want the space in the garage. :) Who knows, maybe I'll go back to them someday, but I'll probably want all high def equipment, and there are only two high def pieces in my collection (one DVR, one receiver). I never had any problem adding my own purchased equipment, and they were unable to hit me with the lease costs. I guess the only problem was that I couldn't get a warranty, but if I spend less than half price and I can upgrade the only moving part (the hard drive) what do I care about the warranty? It's actually nice to have working spares at the house. We did have a box go out, so it was a simple matter of swapping in a known good unit, rather than waiting for a tech to come out and do the same thing.
I've worked all over, including Washington DC, and Washington (state for those not paying attention). Trips were scheduled close enough, where I may be in each one within a week of the other trip. I've always been clear to say "Washington" to mean the state" and "Washington DC" to mean the area with the White House in it. :) Even still, people would get confused.
"I'm in Washington"
"oh, so you're on the East coast now?"
"No, like just outside of Seattle."
"oh."
I gave up on telling people city names. I frequently worked in cities that people wouldn't recognize unless they were from the area. "I'm in Tukwila" has little meaning to someone who doesn't know the area. Then again, when I'd say it to someone who does know the area, they'd ask me if I'd been to some little restaurant, and I'd have to explain that I only know my way from the airport, to the hotel, and to the datacenter. :) Some places, like Sterling (Virginia) had more of a chance of making people think I was close to their hometown. There are 27 cities named Sterling in the US. Sometimes I was thankful to be in New York, Miami, or Los Angeles. People tend not to get confused, but sometimes I'd slip up and say "LA" for "Los Angeles", and they'd ask how far was I from New Orleans. Ummm. I've been to New Orleans a few times. Different places, sorry.
So, get used to it. People will get confused. There are plenty of places like that. I do better by just saying the closest metro area, and leaving it at that. Most people recognize the major metro area names.
What I really hate is when I say I lived somewhere (like Los Angeles), and they ask me if I knew someone in particular. That person would usually be in San Francisco or San Diego. {sigh} And no, I didn't meet any major actors. I swore I saw Steven Spielberg driving a beat up 1985 Honda once, but I'm fairly confident it wasn't him. :)
A long time ago, they used to be good folks to deal with. That's gone down hill.
I had bought a HDVR2 (Standard def TiVO receiver), which was their latest greatest at the time. They wanted to send someone out to install it, but I bought on a Friday night, and they couldn't schedule until Monday. No big deal there. I installed it myself that night. It worked well. Over a span of a few years, I bought a few other pieces of equipment. I think I only ever called once during that period for a repair, and the guy was at my house the next day to help. It was for a defective regular receiver for my girlfriend's kid's room.
The last time I moved, the install went ok. It took a few extra days to get someone out. This was a big move for us, so I didn't have time to get on the roof and wire everything up. I also wanted the newer dish, which I could have bought online for a few bucks. It took them several days to show up. At the prior house, we had gotten the NFL sports package, but that was for a friend to watch. Since the friend wouldn't be watching, we didn't need it any more. "Sorry, you can't cancel at this time, you have to cancel in 3 months." I forgot, and on the 4th month I called and they said the same thing again. Perpetually trapped with an add-on package that I couldn't get rid of.
Not too long after that, the signal started going. I'm fairly sure it was the multiplexer. I called them to come fix it. They scheduled for a week later. The guy never showed, so they rescheduled for another week later. (2 weeks, no service). The guy showed a day after the scheduled date, with a new DVR in hand. He said they had not scheduled for a repair, only a DVR upgrade. Huh? He couldn't do the repair, only the upgrade that I hadn't asked for. I spent an hour on the phone with DTV, and they finally scheduled a repair in two weeks. So, a month with no service. I called, told them to go screw themselves, and called a local wired provider, who was out the next day to do the install.
I was fairly lucky, my pricing was fixed because I was grandfathered in. The "current" rate was much higher than what I was paying. A month or so after I cancelled, I started getting nasty calls from them saying I was late on my bill. It was a month of daily calls, where they asked for money, and I told them to go screw themselves. Ok, I was a little clearer on the phone, but that was the end of each conversation. They finally realized I wasn't going to give them anything, and they went away. It wasn't worth their time to call, since I had made it abundantly clear that I had cancelled, and wasn't going to pay them anything.
Ya, they got pretty bad. It's really unfortunate, I liked their service. I was a customer for many years, and they managed to alienate me. Obviously, I'm not the only one.