As a fluent PowerShell and bash user, I would bet money that PowerShell was designed by some poor sot from the Visual Basic team after watching a 15-minute presentation on bash.
I'm sure the answer is "drivers", but I've dreamed of the same for years. These days, it's not even that much of an inconvenience, as game load times are significantly longer than boot times.
I have worked at a Fortune 500 company for almost five years. A few things I have observed there:
1. Most businesses larger than, say, fifty employees are going to have very complex problems -- problems that only dedicated IT personnel can solve. I fail to see how any outsourced "mashup" (whatever that *really* is) could tailor itself adequately to these problems. It's just a restatement of the common problem of customizing third-party vertical software for a specific business. In my experience, that endeavor tends to faily miserably, draining productivity as users are forced by the software into a non-intuitive mode. Eventually, the offending system is removed and replaced with something else. You need IT personnel for all of this.
2. In a large IT group, there are a lot of people who don't contribute value. You have your sycophants, ass-kissers, hiring mistakes, misassigned resources, bumbling managers, etc. The problem is that the corporate culture can make it very hard to get rid of these people. They may have influence with the powers that be, or they may even *be* the powers. If you see some downsizing, you have to ask *who* got downsized. Perhaps it wasn't the people actually adding value.
What kind of project can one do that would help one learn ASM if one doesn't have embedded systems handy to work with?
Answer: Get an embedded system handy to work with. There are hundreds of types of embedded dev kits out there that can get you started. If you need a project, build a security system for your own home, network a coffee maker, or build an autonomous blimp-bot.
WTF is a "rich application"?
It seems that the word 'rich' is a buzzword that MS tries to drag out every five years to pad its marketing babble for whatever is the current product push. Just a few years ago, we were talking about the rich interface of Windows 95 or the richness of the.NET platform. Frankly, I think it is an inside joke sourced by MS insiders with heavy stock option portfolios.
Amazingly, the summary has an error, the link is to a CNET article, not a CNN article. It doesn't make much sense for CNN to be covering the RTM of an operating system.
This is wonderful news. I have long held that Spaceballs is one of mankind's greatest comedic achievements. Finally, there will be new material! This fanboy is excited.
...
And when they release the DVD box set, it better come in Spaceballs: The Lunchbox!
Nah, karma's fine. Our discussion is lively on-topic debate.
If we sent all our business to other stores, what would we have?
I'm not talking about *all* your business. I'm talking about the ones you consider totalled. You're not going to make any money besides the 15-minute diagnostic, so what does it matter if you recommend another shop or a family geek?
Besides, what kind of a (take your pick) donates a broken computer for a tax write-off?
I imagine the charity would use it to build a working medium-end system, same your guy does.
My argument stands that there are ethical problems with what your shop is doing. Sure, you can offer that as a "get it out of my hair NOW" solution. But if you really want to help the customer, you'd try a little harder to get his/her machine fixed (even if another shop does it), or at least get him a little more compensation than "we'll waive the diag fee".
Now where my argument breaks down is here: if the diag fee is more than they'd make back on their taxes anyway, it becomes monetarily better for them to donate it at your store and have their diagnostic fee waived (since you said you do that).
The customer donates the machine to us for disposal. "Machines left at Business or abandoned will be disposed of as Business sees fit". This almost always means we donate them to the guy that volunteers his time to rebuild new mid-end systems to be donated to low income families in our area.
You never said anything about donation in your original post. Now it makes a little more sense. 'Organized crime' is certainly way off, but there are still some sticky points:
Do you give the customer the option of taking the broken machine back home?
Do you encourage the customer to seek estimates at other shops?
Do you ask the customer if they know a family geek that could fix it for cheap?
Can the customer claim a tax deduction for his donation?
Point is, it's 'totalled' only from YOUR pricing and perspective. There may be other people willing to repair it, especially if all it needs is a reinstall of Win98 and MS Works. And if the customer donates it, they sure as hell better get a tax deduction out of it. They'd get one if they donated it to, say, Goodwill.
I have all those services turned off too, a really minimal configuration. WGA works fine on both my Windows machines.
What's probably going on here is that someone using a key generator generated your key already, and that key has been used in a large number of installs. Or, perhaps MS reverse engineered a key generator and invalidated (via pattern matching) any keys likely to be produced by that keygen. You should call Microsoft support and ask for a fix, like a new key. That should prove quite fun.
So let me get this straight. You declare it "totalled" when it's a perfectly fine piece of hardware. You then take the customer's property, stash it in the back, and eventually give it to some guy who resells it as a mid-end system?
Sounds like an organized crime operation to me. I mean, seriously, is this not against the law?
Pack the sucker in foam, put it in a box and send it UPS insured for $1k or actual value, whichever is more. They'll handle it like a newborn kitten.
Baloney. Pack it like it is going to be dropped 4 meters onto concrete - because it will be, regardless of insurance. Double box it. Insure it for cost of replacement. If they destroy your laptop, then maybe, perhaps you might get a claim check after six months of fighting.
As an Oklahoman, I can assure you that there are not nearly as many savvy users here as are needed to "complain about the loopholes". The best bet is to not run the software that allows the loopholes to be exercised. That is a choice any Oklahoman can make.
I was going to submit an Ask Slashdot myself, but from a different perspective. I'm a professional software engineer. I'm not one of those simpletons with a ju-co degree writing Windows logon scripts because they heard there was good money. No, I get up in the morning and write RSX-11M device drivers just to wake up. I've learned maybe 30 or 40 languages, from various assemblies to Haskell. I became fluent in Spanish in four years. Languages are easy, and many/. readers are in the same predicament.
So how can people like us learn Japanese? We don't have the patience to work through the standard type of "learn a little bit at a time with no view of the big picture" learning material. What we want is a big-picture view of the entire language, from which we can pick individual pieces of lexeme, grammar, vocabulary, and usage to study. We long ago stopped using the hopelessly verbose SAMS $LANGUAGE Bible books to learn programming languages, and we would still prefer BNF to the front of a Nutshell book. What is the equivalent for conversational languages, especially Japanese?
Anyone else here think that Google should throw some cash at RIM to get CL2 and GMail doing full wireless sync with BlackBerries? I would gladly pay money for that feature.
If you're one of two in the country that can solve the problem, and the problem happens outside of business hours, you are effectively on call 24/7, with or without a BlackBerry. Sounds like either (A) you're screwed, because this is all the support staff your employer can afford, or (B) you need to reorganize your support staff to support 24/7 business without 24/7 on-call.
Thank you, KFC, for getting it. When technology began to obsolete your marketing channel, you didn't legislate the continued existence of the marketing channel. Instead, you got smart people together to figure out a new way to market your product. You now understand what it takes to do marketing in a society of ubiquitous, ever-changing technology.
Slashdot Mirror
As a fluent PowerShell and bash user, I would bet money that PowerShell was designed by some poor sot from the Visual Basic team after watching a 15-minute presentation on bash.
And apparently, I can't remember how to log into /. I'm the AC who posted above.
I'm sure the answer is "drivers", but I've dreamed of the same for years. These days, it's not even that much of an inconvenience, as game load times are significantly longer than boot times.
I have worked at a Fortune 500 company for almost five years. A few things I have observed there:
1. Most businesses larger than, say, fifty employees are going to have very complex problems -- problems that only dedicated IT personnel can solve. I fail to see how any outsourced "mashup" (whatever that *really* is) could tailor itself adequately to these problems. It's just a restatement of the common problem of customizing third-party vertical software for a specific business. In my experience, that endeavor tends to faily miserably, draining productivity as users are forced by the software into a non-intuitive mode. Eventually, the offending system is removed and replaced with something else. You need IT personnel for all of this.
2. In a large IT group, there are a lot of people who don't contribute value. You have your sycophants, ass-kissers, hiring mistakes, misassigned resources, bumbling managers, etc. The problem is that the corporate culture can make it very hard to get rid of these people. They may have influence with the powers that be, or they may even *be* the powers. If you see some downsizing, you have to ask *who* got downsized. Perhaps it wasn't the people actually adding value.
Answer: Get an embedded system handy to work with. There are hundreds of types of embedded dev kits out there that can get you started. If you need a project, build a security system for your own home, network a coffee maker, or build an autonomous blimp-bot.
I had the exact same experience about 8 or 9 years ago with my ThinkPad. The IBM support was awesome.
WTF is a "rich application"? It seems that the word 'rich' is a buzzword that MS tries to drag out every five years to pad its marketing babble for whatever is the current product push. Just a few years ago, we were talking about the rich interface of Windows 95 or the richness of the .NET platform. Frankly, I think it is an inside joke sourced by MS insiders with heavy stock option portfolios.
Amazingly, the summary has an error, the link is to a CNET article, not a CNN article. It doesn't make much sense for CNN to be covering the RTM of an operating system.
Think again:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/11/08/windows.v ista.ap/index.html
I also heard about it on NPR during the commute this morning.
This is wonderful news. I have long held that Spaceballs is one of mankind's greatest comedic achievements. Finally, there will be new material! This fanboy is excited.
...
And when they release the DVD box set, it better come in Spaceballs: The Lunchbox!
Ooh, can I make the obvious comment?
Oh boy, I can't wait until the MPAA takes away my PRINT SCREEN key!
Nah, karma's fine. Our discussion is lively on-topic debate.
If we sent all our business to other stores, what would we have?
I'm not talking about *all* your business. I'm talking about the ones you consider totalled. You're not going to make any money besides the 15-minute diagnostic, so what does it matter if you recommend another shop or a family geek?
Besides, what kind of a (take your pick) donates a broken computer for a tax write-off?
I imagine the charity would use it to build a working medium-end system, same your guy does.
My argument stands that there are ethical problems with what your shop is doing. Sure, you can offer that as a "get it out of my hair NOW" solution. But if you really want to help the customer, you'd try a little harder to get his/her machine fixed (even if another shop does it), or at least get him a little more compensation than "we'll waive the diag fee".
Now where my argument breaks down is here: if the diag fee is more than they'd make back on their taxes anyway, it becomes monetarily better for them to donate it at your store and have their diagnostic fee waived (since you said you do that).
The customer donates the machine to us for disposal. "Machines left at Business or abandoned will be disposed of as Business sees fit". This almost always means we donate them to the guy that volunteers his time to rebuild new mid-end systems to be donated to low income families in our area.
You never said anything about donation in your original post. Now it makes a little more sense. 'Organized crime' is certainly way off, but there are still some sticky points:
Point is, it's 'totalled' only from YOUR pricing and perspective. There may be other people willing to repair it, especially if all it needs is a reinstall of Win98 and MS Works. And if the customer donates it, they sure as hell better get a tax deduction out of it. They'd get one if they donated it to, say, Goodwill.
I have all those services turned off too, a really minimal configuration. WGA works fine on both my Windows machines.
What's probably going on here is that someone using a key generator generated your key already, and that key has been used in a large number of installs. Or, perhaps MS reverse engineered a key generator and invalidated (via pattern matching) any keys likely to be produced by that keygen. You should call Microsoft support and ask for a fix, like a new key. That should prove quite fun.
So let me get this straight. You declare it "totalled" when it's a perfectly fine piece of hardware. You then take the customer's property, stash it in the back, and eventually give it to some guy who resells it as a mid-end system?
Sounds like an organized crime operation to me. I mean, seriously, is this not against the law?
Pack the sucker in foam, put it in a box and send it UPS insured for $1k or actual value, whichever is more. They'll handle it like a newborn kitten.
Baloney. Pack it like it is going to be dropped 4 meters onto concrete - because it will be, regardless of insurance. Double box it. Insure it for cost of replacement. If they destroy your laptop, then maybe, perhaps you might get a claim check after six months of fighting.
Obviously, you have no sense of how quickly technology becomes obsolete.
Otherwise, you wouldn't want to implant that technology into you.
TFA: Both YouTube and MySpace fit the textbook definition of Web 2.0
Anybody know where I can get a copy of this textbook?
As an Oklahoman, I can assure you that there are not nearly as many savvy users here as are needed to "complain about the loopholes". The best bet is to not run the software that allows the loopholes to be exercised. That is a choice any Oklahoman can make.
I was going to submit an Ask Slashdot myself, but from a different perspective. I'm a professional software engineer. I'm not one of those simpletons with a ju-co degree writing Windows logon scripts because they heard there was good money. No, I get up in the morning and write RSX-11M device drivers just to wake up. I've learned maybe 30 or 40 languages, from various assemblies to Haskell. I became fluent in Spanish in four years. Languages are easy, and many /. readers are in the same predicament.
So how can people like us learn Japanese? We don't have the patience to work through the standard type of "learn a little bit at a time with no view of the big picture" learning material. What we want is a big-picture view of the entire language, from which we can pick individual pieces of lexeme, grammar, vocabulary, and usage to study. We long ago stopped using the hopelessly verbose SAMS $LANGUAGE Bible books to learn programming languages, and we would still prefer BNF to the front of a Nutshell book. What is the equivalent for conversational languages, especially Japanese?
I've noticed that Google seem to wait for a technology to develop, see where it trips up, then make its own GVersion. Kind of nifty, really.
Sounds like "embrace and extend"...
Anyone else here think that Google should throw some cash at RIM to get CL2 and GMail doing full wireless sync with BlackBerries? I would gladly pay money for that feature.
He also happens to own The Sun.
You mean he fell for those "Buy property on the Sun!" ads he saw in the classified ads?
If you're one of two in the country that can solve the problem, and the problem happens outside of business hours, you are effectively on call 24/7, with or without a BlackBerry. Sounds like either (A) you're screwed, because this is all the support staff your employer can afford, or (B) you need to reorganize your support staff to support 24/7 business without 24/7 on-call.
+1 Insightful to the parent
Thank you, KFC, for getting it. When technology began to obsolete your marketing channel, you didn't legislate the continued existence of the marketing channel. Instead, you got smart people together to figure out a new way to market your product. You now understand what it takes to do marketing in a society of ubiquitous, ever-changing technology.
...and it delays my thought process for a small but excruciatingly annoying moment.
IMHO, one-button is a design target that is good for software but bad for hardware.