You didn't decide that before you started pushing this out the door????
Dude!
That said, you can still salvage the situation. It would depend on what you're doing with the box.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Debian distros because they don't update their packages often enough to suit me. That's really my only criticism of them though. The whole packaging system that they use is pretty powerful and I'm sure that you can bend it to your will to update what ever it is that you're rolling out.
There are a lot of things to consider though. How are you going to contact the client thingys? Will they phone home or will you be pushing updates? How do you handle authentication for the updates? License management? What kind of updates will you be pushing - just text config files or whole new binaries? What about kernel and other software packages? If the hardware is all the same, why not just unpack a gzipped tar ball, hup the service, and forget about it?
I've used just about everything on the planet and the one thing I keep going back to is my Tivo. The user interface on it is simple, intuitive and it just plain works. The add ons like photos, music, and even movies from other PC's in the house is super simple to work out.
My only complaint is that because of the way the remote is shaped, it's easy to pick up backward in the dark. That's really saying something when that's the only bad thing I can come up with. Their support has always been awesome and the devices have gotten so darn cheap, there's no reason not to have a real Tivo. I've seen them on sale here for $49.99.
2 cents,
QueenB
PS: No, I don't work for Tivo. I just really like mine.
In a perfect world, spammers would be caught, stripped naked, coated in honey and tossed into a gargantuan fire ant mound. The whole process would be web cast to discourage any other would-be spammers from following them.
Still, this isn't a perfect world... They'll just do what the casinos did and move off shore to some tin-pot country where they can buy the government.
If they're basing their educaitonal strategy on "a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques." then that means that they should be teaching the kids how to run other successful students out of the class room based on intimidation and monopolizing the teacher's time.
Sheesh! School of the futuer?? Sounds more like "How to be Hitler 101"
Here's the skinny and I'll give you some examples where I've seen this happen, as well as the fall out from it. If your company doesn't respect you, find another one. There is one out there that will.
With a network segment down hard in a "mission critical" environment -
Do you say a) I have to leave now because it's my time to go home or b) Wow! Let me take a look at that and see if I can fix it?
When you are under a DDOS attack -
Do you a) pop up from your desk and mosey off because its 4:55 pm or b) dig in and get the work done?
Launching a new *HUGE* web application (millions of users affected) -
Do you a) tell the Boss that it should be postponed because the husband can't be bothered to fetch a sick child from school or b) make some kind of arrangements to get someone (husband or otherwise) to pick up the kid?
The women that I'm complaining about chose A, or something very close to it - EVERY - SINGLE - FREAKING - TIME. Then they wonder why they don't get the same respect, raises, etc. Your behavior has shown that you'll only be around when it's convienent.
You know that rotten smell you've been smelling, well, that's your privacy. It's been dead for a long time and now it's really starting to stink the place up.
Companies don't care about your privacy because they make a LOT of money off selling data about you to other companies. Some, like the credit bureaus, are more open about it. Others, like RealPlayer & Symantec, are far more clandestine about it. The whole thing is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. If you ask for a catalog, or subscribe to a magazine, chances are your name and address have been "whored out" by the companies that send your catalog or magazine. If it's a catalog, they may even sell data about items you've purchased in the past. If it's a magazine, they may sell data about anything in the magazine that you've responded to in the past. If it's a web site where you set up an account, they can track which ads you might have clicked on, what sites you came in from, what sites you left to go look at, which pages you browsed and for how long. If it's a site you have to subscribe to, well now, they've got all that data tied to your real name, home address, credit card number and heavens only knows what else.
If more of you knew how intrusive these sons of biscuits are, there might be a riot over it.
Once upon a time, CD burners were a very new thing. We had just gotten one in at work. We didn't burn much because the disks were expensive. This new guy started in our shipping department and he asked if we would copy a game for him if he bought the disk. We told him that would be fine. He brings in his software and his blank disk. We carefully put everything in the machine and set the disk to burn.
When it's done, I very calmly pull some oven mitts out of my desk drawer and pull them on as I wander over to the machine. I pick up the newly burned disk and juggle it for a bit (like a hot potato) as I walk over to his desk. He looks up and sees me, taking in the oven mitts "What're those for?" "Oh...because the disk is hot. Why do you think it's called burning a CD?" I toss him the CD and tell him not to burn himself.
He sits there juggling his new disk for about 30 seconds before he realizes that it's not really hot. In retaliation, he chases me around the warehouse with Nerf gun.
The only real requirements are the ability to keep a straight face and to come up with something that is remotely plausible.
If you're a woman in an all guy enviroment, just be the first one to tell an off-color joke. That usually breaks the tension enough that it's pretty easy from there on out.
My biggest complaint with my female co-workers has been a total unwillingness to put in any overtime, work on any extra projects, etc. The usual excuse always has something to do with their kids - picking them up, taking them to practice, etc. Seriously, is it going to kill your husband if he has to be the one to take Suzie to band practice one night out of how many months? Since they don't really carry their share, they are seen as second string contributors by most of my male colleagues. I have to admit that in many ways I seem them in the same light.
Then when they get passed over for promotions, plum assignments, etc. they get bitter and resentful. Since I've always been willing to do what needs doing to get the job done, I get a lot of respect from my male counterparts and superiors. If something's broken, I'm staying until it's fixed. I work pretty hard to make sure that nothing's going to be broken, but hey, stuff happens. Patches don't always perform as expected. Maybe the router needs to be rebooted. It doesn't really matter what the problem is, but if it's genuinely mission critical, I'm not going home until it's back on line.
Because of this, I'm a frequent recipient of bonuses, very positive performance appraisals, interesting projects, etc. I've had to deal with some female colleagues who were unhappy because they got passed over and I didn't. They would have liked to be able to file a complaint with HR that they were being discriminated against because of gender, but since so many of the things they wanted went to me, they could not. I actually got into a shouting match with one of them because I got an assignement she wanted. She made some accusations about favoritism and had no idea that her turning into a pumpkin promptly at 3pm, no matter what else was happening, was costing her. She thought that it was because I went outside and smoked with all the guys. That had very little to do with it. I got invited to go out and smoke with the guys precisely because I was "one of the team" and not "one of the candya$$&$". I tried to explain to her that if she'd just stick around or work an overtime assignment once in a while, it would go a long way toward smoothing things over for her, but she didn't want to hear it.
Instead of her own bad behvior, she made a bunch of accusations that ended up with her getting fired. She complained that I was getting favorable treatment when she was just a competent (which she wasn't - she made a lot of high profile mistakes including knocking out our external connection), doing the same work (which she wasn't - system operator vs. network administrator), and doing just as good a job (which she wasn't - HR said that the performance reviews were "no comparision"). After a few interviews with our co-workers, HR decided that she was the one with the problem and asked me if I'd like to file a complaint about her creating a hostile work environment (the whole incident where she cornered me in the women's bathroom and screamed at me - so loudly and so long that several other employees came into the restroom to find out what was going on). After consulting with my boss, I decided that it was probably best that I file the complaint. You cannot imagine how surprised she was when she was the one that got fired. Sadly, it only got worse from there because I started getting threatening phone calls from her husband. I called the police, filed a complaint, and they got arrested.
Frankly, a lot of the women I work with really make me angry because they give the rest of us a bad name. They want all the gravy, but they don't want to pay the dues to get it.
OMFG! What are we teaching our kids? Has the curriculum really dumbed down to the point that using PowerPoint is "cricical"? I hate it! The entire universe cannot be distilled down to some bullet points!
What happened to the "Three R's"? In an age where we're turning out an increasing number of high school graduates who are functionally illiterate, what are we doing? It's time to put an end to the "New Education" and get back to basics. Just recently, Dallas ISD published the stastic that only 26% of their high school graduates were functionally illiterate and they were actually *HAPPY* about it because it was down from 33% the previous year.
DISD credits this increase in basic literacy to "removing distractions from the classroom". They've been working on quite a few things, including mandatory school uniforms, banning cell phones, etc. Now you want to introduce the biggest distration of all - portable computers. One of the biggest problems is that most people are so uneducated that they aren't able to determine a "good source" from a bad one. Quoting from a recent newspaper article here "Students may know how to use an Internet search engine, but professors have complained that the online information students use is not reliable, said Mary Jo Lyons, information literacy coordinator at UT-Arlington....."There's nothing wrong with Google," Lyons said. "They know how to type in words and search, but it's how they evaluate whether it's a quality site. That's the problem.... They're citing Joe Schmo's paper in their paper, but who is Joe Schmo? And is he objective?"
In a world where knowlege, if not education is power all we're doing is setting ourselves up for becoming the next Third World country.
Once upon a time, corporate giants and goverment entities could ignore the little guys with impunity. Now, anyone with a sufficiently good story can post it and attract a large public audience.
Which is why I specifically said - "Seems to be that they need to look at their mechanisms again. I can see landing the plane and evacuating it while the item is retreived and verified to be an iPod, but it shouldn't be any more than that."
The extensive questioning, etc. was totally unnecessary.
2 cents,
QueenB
Only Thing Missing Was A Cavity Search
on
Do Not Flush Your iPod
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Poor kid! Why didn't the stewardesses call them back and tell them it was an iPod and that a passenger had just reported it missing?
Seems to be that they need to look at their mechanisms again. I can see landing the plane and evacuating it while the item is retreived and verified to be an iPod, but it shouldn't be any more than that.
The hostile treatment...what ever happened to innocent until presumed guilty?
This is what crap like the Patriot Act gets us!
"Government, like fire, is a fearsome servant and a terrible master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - George Washington
Harassing some poor kid who dropped his iPod in the toilet is pretty irresponsible. How many of you have doused cell phones, pagers, PDA's, or other more esoteric devices in a similar manner? Sheehs, if they're going to call the bomb squad out for that every time....
Let's just say that isn't the best use of my tax dollars.
Most IT people hold and are held to an ethical standard that doesn't exist in say, sales. We have access to salary data simply because we can talk straight to the HR database. We know that Suzie is pregnant because we saw the email when we were looking at the damage done by the virus she double clicked on. We know that Bobby is surfing porn during his lunch hour. Mostly we don't care.
Oh, and if you are one of the sales guys who's been eating my lunch, well...I've only got one word for you. WOOF!
Frankly, I think this is probably the smartest thing that they could do. No, I don't like it, but then I'm not overly fond of a lot of the intellectual property laws either. However, I think that given the nature of the intellectual property laws, it is a completely unavoidable step. Somethings you simply cannot develop an open source equivalent of because the existing patents just have it locked down too tightly. Anything you might try to do will step on someone's patent.
That said, I think that once people realize that allowing the OS community to use their patent is in their best interest, I think you'll see a rush to allow licenseing at little or no cost. The ultimate issue here is that who ever lets the OS community have a license, is likely to see their particular widget become the de facto standard. VHS has proven that you don't have to be superior, just first. LP's, 8-tracks, cassettes, and CD's have proven that people will change formats, but that it's a dang slow process. Becoming the de facto standard should be quite profitable.
2 cents,
QueenB
Geez! Only Slightly Better than My Savings Acct.
on
Buy Low, Spam High
·
· Score: 1
(sarcasm) Wow! A whole whopping 6%! (/sarcasm)
I get a 5% return on my CD and I don't have to send out email and try to manipulate the stock market or do anything that might land me in jail.
Where are the parents? You - dear parent - are the one who decided to squeeze out a kid. Therefore, you should be the one raising it. If you're buying your 13 year old kid games like GTA, Hitman, Manhunt, etc., I'm guessing that you buy him booze and hookers too...
Here's the deal, O stupid parent. THE WHOLE $%&*!@# WORLD IS NOT CHILDPROOFED. Nor should it be. Responsbile adults should get to have their fun too. Look at what you are buying for your kid. Take some and read about it on the internet or sit down and play through it yourself before you blindly hand it over to little Timmy. Just because he asks for it doesn't mean he ought to have it.
The PS2 , XBox, etc. is not a substitute for interacting with your child. I know that a lot of parents use the gaming console as a substitute baby-sitter. It keeps the kid quiet and occupied. However, just like the TV, you - stupid parent - need to be paying attention to what little Timmy is doing. Pull that head out of that double-wide behind and start looking around.
Now that we have all that horsepower, the big decision comes....what to do with it? I have some suggestions that I think would greatly benefit mankind as a whole.
1) Decrypt NSA keys so we can spy on them for a change 2) Develop a fool-proof method of determing what is spam and forwarding it all to Bill Gates 3) Calculate winning lotto numbers and donate the money to random charities 4) Develop an algorythm that decides where to go for dinner 5) Figure out how to make a pad that acutally stays in place AND doesn't stick to my a$$
Eating a dot isn't violent! We all eat. What's the difference between Pac-Man eating dots and me sitting at my desk, eating Nerds candy? or Dippin' Dots? Dots are dots... They aren't something you'd be expected to have any respect for - deer, rabbits, or NPC's.
1. Take away his electronics - computers, cell phones, Gameboy, PS2, etc. 2. Incarcarate him if he's caught using any electronic device. 3. Make him make restitution to both the ISP's and the recipients of his missives. He has to work to pay for the bandwidth that he used up. 4. He has to write, by hand (no electronic devices) apology letters to each recipient of one of his messages. Then he has to look up the address of each person, by hand and address the envelopes. Then he has to pay for the stamps and mail them.
I work in a building full of PhD's in all kinds of areas. The help desk folks refer to them as PhD retards. They may know everything in the universe about tax law or a specific kind of rock, but they can't always find the power button on their PC. A surprising number of them think that the monitor IS the PC.
Just because you have letters after your name doesn't mean you know a hill of beans about the topic at hand. Pac-Man is 62% violent??? If that's the case, how does she rate Manhunt? or Hitman? or GTA? or Legend of Zelda? or EverQuest?
If Pac-Man is 62% violent, the rest of those titles have to be off the top of the chart. That brings us to something else that all kids love...cartoons. Wonder what she thinks of Wylee Coyote or Porky Pig?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I suppose that it depends on your budget.
IBM's Tivoli is something to look at
BMC's Patrol
HP's Openview
NetIQ (which I hated)
Nortel's Optivity
Sun's Solstice
CA's Unicenter
Any one of the those ought to be able to do anything and everything you're asking for. Out of that list, I personally prefer BMC, but that's me.
2 cents,
QueenB
You didn't decide that before you started pushing this out the door????
Dude!
That said, you can still salvage the situation. It would depend on what you're doing with the box.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Debian distros because they don't update their packages often enough to suit me. That's really my only criticism of them though. The whole packaging system that they use is pretty powerful and I'm sure that you can bend it to your will to update what ever it is that you're rolling out.
There are a lot of things to consider though. How are you going to contact the client thingys? Will they phone home or will you be pushing updates? How do you handle authentication for the updates? License management? What kind of updates will you be pushing - just text config files or whole new binaries? What about kernel and other software packages? If the hardware is all the same, why not just unpack a gzipped tar ball, hup the service, and forget about it?
You guys have a lot to think about.....
2 cents,
QueenB
Hence our reference to them as PhD-retards....
Size of human brain = x
Knowledge of PhD in his field = x
Brain Power required for body functions (breathing, digestion, etc.) = 1
x x+1 this leaves no room for anything else.....
2 cents,
QueenB
I've used just about everything on the planet and the one thing I keep going back to is my Tivo. The user interface on it is simple, intuitive and it just plain works. The add ons like photos, music, and even movies from other PC's in the house is super simple to work out.
My only complaint is that because of the way the remote is shaped, it's easy to pick up backward in the dark. That's really saying something when that's the only bad thing I can come up with. Their support has always been awesome and the devices have gotten so darn cheap, there's no reason not to have a real Tivo. I've seen them on sale here for $49.99.
2 cents,
QueenB
PS: No, I don't work for Tivo. I just really like mine.
In a perfect world, spammers would be caught, stripped naked, coated in honey and tossed into a gargantuan fire ant mound. The whole process would be web cast to discourage any other would-be spammers from following them.
Still, this isn't a perfect world... They'll just do what the casinos did and move off shore to some tin-pot country where they can buy the government.
2 cents,
QueenB
If they're basing their educaitonal strategy on "a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques." then that means that they should be teaching the kids how to run other successful students out of the class room based on intimidation and monopolizing the teacher's time.
Sheesh! School of the futuer?? Sounds more like "How to be Hitler 101"
2 cents,
QueenB
Here's the skinny and I'll give you some examples where I've seen this happen, as well as the fall out from it. If your company doesn't respect you, find another one. There is one out there that will.
With a network segment down hard in a "mission critical" environment -
Do you say a) I have to leave now because it's my time to go home or b) Wow! Let me take a look at that and see if I can fix it?
When you are under a DDOS attack -
Do you a) pop up from your desk and mosey off because its 4:55 pm or b) dig in and get the work done?
Launching a new *HUGE* web application (millions of users affected) -
Do you a) tell the Boss that it should be postponed because the husband can't be bothered to fetch a sick child from school or b) make some kind of arrangements to get someone (husband or otherwise) to pick up the kid?
The women that I'm complaining about chose A, or something very close to it - EVERY - SINGLE - FREAKING - TIME. Then they wonder why they don't get the same respect, raises, etc. Your behavior has shown that you'll only be around when it's convienent.
To which I reply - DUH!!!!
2 cents,
QueenB
You know that rotten smell you've been smelling, well, that's your privacy. It's been dead for a long time and now it's really starting to stink the place up.
Companies don't care about your privacy because they make a LOT of money off selling data about you to other companies. Some, like the credit bureaus, are more open about it. Others, like RealPlayer & Symantec, are far more clandestine about it. The whole thing is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. If you ask for a catalog, or subscribe to a magazine, chances are your name and address have been "whored out" by the companies that send your catalog or magazine. If it's a catalog, they may even sell data about items you've purchased in the past. If it's a magazine, they may sell data about anything in the magazine that you've responded to in the past. If it's a web site where you set up an account, they can track which ads you might have clicked on, what sites you came in from, what sites you left to go look at, which pages you browsed and for how long. If it's a site you have to subscribe to, well now, they've got all that data tied to your real name, home address, credit card number and heavens only knows what else.
If more of you knew how intrusive these sons of biscuits are, there might be a riot over it.
2 cents,
QueenB
This is really going to date me but here goes....
Once upon a time, CD burners were a very new thing. We had just gotten one in at work. We didn't burn much because the disks were expensive. This new guy started in our shipping department and he asked if we would copy a game for him if he bought the disk. We told him that would be fine. He brings in his software and his blank disk. We carefully put everything in the machine and set the disk to burn.
When it's done, I very calmly pull some oven mitts out of my desk drawer and pull them on as I wander over to the machine. I pick up the newly burned disk and juggle it for a bit (like a hot potato) as I walk over to his desk. He looks up and sees me, taking in the oven mitts "What're those for?" "Oh...because the disk is hot. Why do you think it's called burning a CD?" I toss him the CD and tell him not to burn himself.
He sits there juggling his new disk for about 30 seconds before he realizes that it's not really hot. In retaliation, he chases me around the warehouse with Nerf gun.
The only real requirements are the ability to keep a straight face and to come up with something that is remotely plausible.
2 cents,
QueenB
If you're a woman in an all guy enviroment, just be the first one to tell an off-color joke. That usually breaks the tension enough that it's pretty easy from there on out.
My biggest complaint with my female co-workers has been a total unwillingness to put in any overtime, work on any extra projects, etc. The usual excuse always has something to do with their kids - picking them up, taking them to practice, etc. Seriously, is it going to kill your husband if he has to be the one to take Suzie to band practice one night out of how many months? Since they don't really carry their share, they are seen as second string contributors by most of my male colleagues. I have to admit that in many ways I seem them in the same light.
Then when they get passed over for promotions, plum assignments, etc. they get bitter and resentful. Since I've always been willing to do what needs doing to get the job done, I get a lot of respect from my male counterparts and superiors. If something's broken, I'm staying until it's fixed. I work pretty hard to make sure that nothing's going to be broken, but hey, stuff happens. Patches don't always perform as expected. Maybe the router needs to be rebooted. It doesn't really matter what the problem is, but if it's genuinely mission critical, I'm not going home until it's back on line.
Because of this, I'm a frequent recipient of bonuses, very positive performance appraisals, interesting projects, etc. I've had to deal with some female colleagues who were unhappy because they got passed over and I didn't. They would have liked to be able to file a complaint with HR that they were being discriminated against because of gender, but since so many of the things they wanted went to me, they could not. I actually got into a shouting match with one of them because I got an assignement she wanted. She made some accusations about favoritism and had no idea that her turning into a pumpkin promptly at 3pm, no matter what else was happening, was costing her. She thought that it was because I went outside and smoked with all the guys. That had very little to do with it. I got invited to go out and smoke with the guys precisely because I was "one of the team" and not "one of the candya$$&$". I tried to explain to her that if she'd just stick around or work an overtime assignment once in a while, it would go a long way toward smoothing things over for her, but she didn't want to hear it.
Instead of her own bad behvior, she made a bunch of accusations that ended up with her getting fired. She complained that I was getting favorable treatment when she was just a competent (which she wasn't - she made a lot of high profile mistakes including knocking out our external connection), doing the same work (which she wasn't - system operator vs. network administrator), and doing just as good a job (which she wasn't - HR said that the performance reviews were "no comparision"). After a few interviews with our co-workers, HR decided that she was the one with the problem and asked me if I'd like to file a complaint about her creating a hostile work environment (the whole incident where she cornered me in the women's bathroom and screamed at me - so loudly and so long that several other employees came into the restroom to find out what was going on). After consulting with my boss, I decided that it was probably best that I file the complaint. You cannot imagine how surprised she was when she was the one that got fired. Sadly, it only got worse from there because I started getting threatening phone calls from her husband. I called the police, filed a complaint, and they got arrested.
Frankly, a lot of the women I work with really make me angry because they give the rest of us a bad name. They want all the gravy, but they don't want to pay the dues to get it.
2 cents,
QueenB
OMFG! What are we teaching our kids? Has the curriculum really dumbed down to the point that using PowerPoint is "cricical"? I hate it! The entire universe cannot be distilled down to some bullet points!
... They're citing Joe Schmo's paper in their paper, but who is Joe Schmo? And is he objective?"
What happened to the "Three R's"? In an age where we're turning out an increasing number of high school graduates who are functionally illiterate, what are we doing? It's time to put an end to the "New Education" and get back to basics. Just recently, Dallas ISD published the stastic that only 26% of their high school graduates were functionally illiterate and they were actually *HAPPY* about it because it was down from 33% the previous year.
DISD credits this increase in basic literacy to "removing distractions from the classroom". They've been working on quite a few things, including mandatory school uniforms, banning cell phones, etc. Now you want to introduce the biggest distration of all - portable computers. One of the biggest problems is that most people are so uneducated that they aren't able to determine a "good source" from a bad one. Quoting from a recent newspaper article here "Students may know how to use an Internet search engine, but professors have complained that the online information students use is not reliable, said Mary Jo Lyons, information literacy coordinator at UT-Arlington....."There's nothing wrong with Google," Lyons said. "They know how to type in words and search, but it's how they evaluate whether it's a quality site. That's the problem.
In a world where knowlege, if not education is power all we're doing is setting ourselves up for becoming the next Third World country.
2 cents,
QueenB
Once upon a time, corporate giants and goverment entities could ignore the little guys with impunity. Now, anyone with a sufficiently good story can post it and attract a large public audience.
Power to the people!
2 cents,
QueenB
Which is why I specifically said - "Seems to be that they need to look at their mechanisms again. I can see landing the plane and evacuating it while the item is retreived and verified to be an iPod, but it shouldn't be any more than that."
The extensive questioning, etc. was totally unnecessary.
2 cents,
QueenB
Poor kid! Why didn't the stewardesses call them back and tell them it was an iPod and that a passenger had just reported it missing?
Seems to be that they need to look at their mechanisms again. I can see landing the plane and evacuating it while the item is retreived and verified to be an iPod, but it shouldn't be any more than that.
The hostile treatment...what ever happened to innocent until presumed guilty?
This is what crap like the Patriot Act gets us!
"Government, like fire, is a fearsome servant and a terrible master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - George Washington
Harassing some poor kid who dropped his iPod in the toilet is pretty irresponsible. How many of you have doused cell phones, pagers, PDA's, or other more esoteric devices in a similar manner? Sheehs, if they're going to call the bomb squad out for that every time....
Let's just say that isn't the best use of my tax dollars.
2 cents,
QueeB
Most IT people hold and are held to an ethical standard that doesn't exist in say, sales. We have access to salary data simply because we can talk straight to the HR database. We know that Suzie is pregnant because we saw the email when we were looking at the damage done by the virus she double clicked on. We know that Bobby is surfing porn during his lunch hour. Mostly we don't care.
Oh, and if you are one of the sales guys who's been eating my lunch, well...I've only got one word for you. WOOF!
2 cents,
QueenB
Frankly, I think this is probably the smartest thing that they could do. No, I don't like it, but then I'm not overly fond of a lot of the intellectual property laws either. However, I think that given the nature of the intellectual property laws, it is a completely unavoidable step. Somethings you simply cannot develop an open source equivalent of because the existing patents just have it locked down too tightly. Anything you might try to do will step on someone's patent.
That said, I think that once people realize that allowing the OS community to use their patent is in their best interest, I think you'll see a rush to allow licenseing at little or no cost. The ultimate issue here is that who ever lets the OS community have a license, is likely to see their particular widget become the de facto standard. VHS has proven that you don't have to be superior, just first. LP's, 8-tracks, cassettes, and CD's have proven that people will change formats, but that it's a dang slow process. Becoming the de facto standard should be quite profitable.
2 cents,
QueenB
(sarcasm)
Wow! A whole whopping 6%!
(/sarcasm)
I get a 5% return on my CD and I don't have to send out email and try to manipulate the stock market or do anything that might land me in jail.
2 cents,
QueenB
Where are the parents? You - dear parent - are the one who decided to squeeze out a kid. Therefore, you should be the one raising it. If you're buying your 13 year old kid games like GTA, Hitman, Manhunt, etc., I'm guessing that you buy him booze and hookers too...
Here's the deal, O stupid parent. THE WHOLE $%&*!@# WORLD IS NOT CHILDPROOFED. Nor should it be. Responsbile adults should get to have their fun too. Look at what you are buying for your kid. Take some and read about it on the internet or sit down and play through it yourself before you blindly hand it over to little Timmy. Just because he asks for it doesn't mean he ought to have it.
The PS2 , XBox, etc. is not a substitute for interacting with your child. I know that a lot of parents use the gaming console as a substitute baby-sitter. It keeps the kid quiet and occupied. However, just like the TV, you - stupid parent - need to be paying attention to what little Timmy is doing. Pull that head out of that double-wide behind and start looking around.
2 cents,
QueenB
Now that we have all that horsepower, the big decision comes....what to do with it? I have some suggestions that I think would greatly benefit mankind as a whole.
1) Decrypt NSA keys so we can spy on them for a change
2) Develop a fool-proof method of determing what is spam and forwarding it all to Bill Gates
3) Calculate winning lotto numbers and donate the money to random charities
4) Develop an algorythm that decides where to go for dinner
5) Figure out how to make a pad that acutally stays in place AND doesn't stick to my a$$
2 cents,
QueenB
I was hoping that they'd have this whole foam thing resolved before launching another one. I just hope that they say their prayers before they launch.
2 cents,
QueenB
Eating a dot isn't violent! We all eat. What's the difference between Pac-Man eating dots and me sitting at my desk, eating Nerds candy? or Dippin' Dots? Dots are dots... They aren't something you'd be expected to have any respect for - deer, rabbits, or NPC's.
2 more cents,
QueenB
1. Take away his electronics - computers, cell phones, Gameboy, PS2, etc.
2. Incarcarate him if he's caught using any electronic device.
3. Make him make restitution to both the ISP's and the recipients of his missives. He has to work to pay for the bandwidth that he used up.
4. He has to write, by hand (no electronic devices) apology letters to each recipient of one of his messages. Then he has to look up the address of each person, by hand and address the envelopes. Then he has to pay for the stamps and mail them.
2 cents,
QueenB
From the folks that brought you the Spanish Inquisition...
Sun really revolves around the earth
Man at the center of the universe
Stars are just angels holding candles
Burning of heretics that dare to disagree
2 cents,
QueenB
Yikes! The poor girl...she might get the wrong impression that this how she should make a living.
Age 11 - 5 pin lock with wrong key
Age 14 - 7 pin lock with picks
Age 18 - Safes
Age 21 - Bank Vaults
So many banks...so little time
2 cents,
QueenB
I work in a building full of PhD's in all kinds of areas. The help desk folks refer to them as PhD retards. They may know everything in the universe about tax law or a specific kind of rock, but they can't always find the power button on their PC. A surprising number of them think that the monitor IS the PC.
Just because you have letters after your name doesn't mean you know a hill of beans about the topic at hand. Pac-Man is 62% violent??? If that's the case, how does she rate Manhunt? or Hitman? or GTA? or Legend of Zelda? or EverQuest?
If Pac-Man is 62% violent, the rest of those titles have to be off the top of the chart. That brings us to something else that all kids love...cartoons. Wonder what she thinks of Wylee Coyote or Porky Pig?
2 cents,
QueenB