>A properly trained front-end employee will hand over an unsatisfied (and unruly) customer to a manager ASAP
You really meant to say: A properly trained front-end employee working in an ideal environment will hand over an unsatisfied (and unruly) customer to a manager ASAP
Many companies do not have set escalation paths, or their use is discouraged (particularly true with outsourced phone banks... even continental US callcenters). If escalating a call earns you (or your boss, or your call center) a black mark, it won't happen. Besides, reps that use "yelling" as an excuse to hang up are often loved by managers -- they have shorter call times and take more calls. It looks good on paper.
No, I don't work in an outsourced call center, but I often have to interface with company Support elsewhere. If I don't have an official tech contact, it really sucks and requires 3 days to get to a real company employee at Router-Vendor-X. I have to use email because, well, I don't speak English with an Indian accent.
Ideally, a company has an escalation path. It just makes sense because the front line people can stay busy on the easy stuff, while the "supervisor" handles damage control. People automatically feel better being escalated, even if the communication problem was their doing. They feel special, talking less and listening more (so you can fix the problem instead of listening to anger).
Who is this "Johnny X" (I see no/. UserID) and how did he come to the conclusion iTunes hurts Wierd Al?
The sensationalist story submission implies iTunes does something unique relitive to other participants in this field. You could just as unreasonably write a story submission about Repetitive Stress Injury, and blame it on "Microsoft". Sure, Microsoft is what people mostly use, but RSI is not their doing (minor quibbles aside, one cour argue they need more anti-rsi researche, yadda yadda yadda).
What is not well said is, the recording labels have ways of screwing the artist. NEWS FLASH! That's not Apple's fault. In fact the Wierd Al link (for those that RTFA) clearly says DIGITAL sales, not iTunes. Johnny, are you some sort of Creative flack? What's with the bias?
Read Courtney Love's insightful Slate article from like 6 years ago. If the record label wants to show NEGATIVE SALES, they'll find a way to do it.
In the meantime, iTunes is in the long term a way to BYPASS record labels. Young creative artists will take advantage of this to break out of the crowd. It's not hard to imagine record stations (at least not those owned by Clear Channel) using iTunes statistics to decide what people want to hear. In addition to payola of course.;-)
No disrespect to Al, but I can readily agree he loses out in the digital world: I might be tempted to buy one of his songs, but NEVER the entire album. Artists don't make concept albums (like Rush's 2112) anymore, for one thing, and in Al's case... I'll wager most people who like his music, like only a few tracks. They're funny, but don't have the replay power (IMHO).
Johnny, don't hide - please go work for Fox News if you want to create news spin. (I'm sure that statement will get me -50, Troll, like I'm really trolling on such an old Slashdot account - not.).
Trolltech did not found the KDE project; Matthias Ettrich created KDE. Trolltech just created QT, the widget toolkit library used by KDE. God, don't the Slashdot editors know anything?!
Slashdot made millions posing as a "Linux resource" during the.com bubble... fine, OK. But you don't believe Slackdot editors actually use _use_ Linux (or know what the hell it is)...... do you?
You must be young, idealistic, or have a 6-digit Slashdot ID.:)
Resolution is important -- the current mainstream HDTVs only do 720P. They advertise support for 1080i, but they do it at 720p. Pixels squish and "fuzzy pixels" (is this what you saw? Might have been due to a NON-NATIVE screen resolution)interlacing... yum!
Be sceptical of the media used to demo TV's... if you were viewing the same media on 2 TVs that support different resolutions, one of these TVs has an artificial resolution. You would need 2 streams of media for the same content, but different resolutions, to make a blind judgement on quality.
I waited, and was not planning to go HDTV this year: HD DVDs were not settled yet, the HDCP fiasco, little content, and the fact that these things will get better and cheaper. Also note that HD supports 1080p, and that is the ultimate ceiling for the current spec: anything you buy today that can't handle 1080p, will be obsolete in just a few years. And if you think it doesn't matter for 1080i - it does. 1080i looks "perfect" on a 1080p screen, while on a 720p screen a 1080i image looks fuzzy.
I was going to wait... that is until I saw the Costco deal on the Sceptre 42" Naga LCD: 1080p, HDMI/HDCP, VGA, DVI, component, 2 tuner inputs....plenty of inputs, screen is GREAT... $2200 shipped. This is not in-store gasp!) so I researched it and bought it online, sight-unseen (I was a nervous wreck). NOTE that if you don't like it you can cart it to the Costco store (NO RETURN SHIPPING OR RESTOCKING FEE). Frickin sweet!
As with any HD model you consider, you want to check the forums the HD community has on that model. Learn what to look for, and know in advance what bothers other people. There are flaws in the Sceptre (cheap plastic finish... if that's my only complaint, it's not a complaint...). This model's HD tuner outputs to 2 speakers... no digital out. This isn't a problem for me as my tuner is the Comcast HD box (which routes 5.1 to my amp) but this bothers some people in the forums.
There are other 1080p screens out there... the next cheapest though is at least $4800. If your budget limits you to 720P screens, don't rule out the Sceptre. I have a media PC hooked up to it also, and I'm composing this from an odd vertical angle (sittng on the floor 6' away, below the center) and it looks fine.
This is going to be one of those TVs that changes the market. Everyone is going to have to drop HD prices faster, and shove last year's sub-1080p screens out the door discounted.
How is it this fellow grew to depend on you for third party Support in the first place?
I know you're having a tough time right now, but if you were my employee I would remind you to stick to the plan for your job, and send you home if you tied up the lines. Don't get sucked into being the guy's preferred support contact.
How would you handle training someone? I imagine you'd draw up a checklist or flowchart how to proceed with a call, so they don't skip important steps. Stick to it yourself... and you'll be amazed you can get out of work only 30 minutes after the final call for the day.:-)
You need to politely, professionally and firmly push back on the guy. There are many good quotes already suggested to you. Just don't get caught in an argumentative loop or cases where the customer tries to build a logical case that it is your problem.
>Coupla decades of building brand recognition and customer base?
Um, brand recognition is why I AVOID BlockBuster. They are evil, and have a tendancy to not account for movies dropped in the overnight mail slot. Plus their website is (or was) horribly broken in FireFox when I tried it 12 months ago (not formatting issues... real things like "Submit" buttons not working due to use of Jscript instead of JavaScript... just retarded MSIE-ness).
BlockBuster is avout as behind the times as mullets and flannel.
I deal with crappy routers all the time. The market will NOT punish them because -- by avoiding dealing with the problem -- D-Link shifts costs to SOMEONE ELSE'S SUPPORT.
'The market' is often a reference to do nothing.
I don't see anything that is going to cause Joe Sixpack to stop buying D-Link. I don't see bestbuy dropping these models. This issue quite clearly is protected by a S.E.P. shield.
>Firstly, just because the NTP server is "advertised in the NTP projects list of Stratum 1 NTP servers" (http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html ) with a restriction of use does not make what DLink is doing is illegal.
Why not? Is this NOT the place to advertise usage and requirements?
>Just as if I say in a newsgroup posting "do not spider my website" would not prevent Google from doing so (automatically, or by legal necessity).
Great example, wrong info.
That's because Usenet is not the place to post that request. There is no convention or RFC saying Google should look there. There IS convention to look to ROBOTS.TXT -- FYI.
If Google hammers you and chooses to ignore your ROBOTS.TXT you would have a case (not a case if they spidered you gently... it's 'public' enough... I mean you'd have a case if they BEAT THE CRAP out of your servers).
>>"He had to drop out of school due to harassment." >No, he CHOSE to drop out of school. He wasn't forced, stop portraying it that way.
Semantics. You are re-defining 'forced' to exclusively mean physical force, as in assualt or violent harassment.
I do not think you honestly believe harassment only comes in physical forms, but building a `strawman'... then tearing it down is not exactly honest. You must be an aspiring politician.:-)
I'm not sure what I think of the judgement, but you are letting your opinion get in the way of the argument and trying to frame the circumstances into something different, so you can attack it.
What boggles my mind is why anyone who bought these things thought they were going to get a full resolution digital picture out of an analog interface. Come on. It's obvious that wasn't going to work. Stop whining.
I'm not sure if you're saying you were not aware an analog signal can not carry the full resolution, or you are saying to the parent poster that this is tough cookies -- he's getting screwed over by the fine print NOT on the box (and you support this).
To answer the first, over the air HD is carried on analog. To answer the second, that perspective would be quite offensive to anyone who's been screwed over. You may take a Charles Darwin approach to consumer protection, but I smell a class action lawsuit merited by fraud. I hope you don't get the jury duty.
Heck, I'm a techie myself, and I wasn't aware until recently that 'content protection' would deliberately scale down the resolution. I've never seen it on the boxes for DVD players or TVs, and never had it disclosed to me by authorized sales representitives of Best Buy, etc. You might as well put the notice in a locked file cabinet, behind a door that says 'beware of lions' or something.
I'm SO glad I didn't go HD earlier.
There was even a Slashdot posting some weeks back, covering the Anandtech report, how video card manufacturers are covering upand deleting website documentation that claimed their cards supported HDMI copy protections. Just having the HDMI interface does not mean it supports the HD copy protection. A lot of people were misled into building Media Center boxes that will forcibly downgrade the resolution. But I bet you support that also, after all consumers should have known (and besides, they shouldn't CREATE a DVR - that just flies in the face of consumerism.. right?).
I am working on a project right now where I'm getting 508 compliance in as part of Google optomization and a CSS rewrite of a table/slice-and-dice image based site.
The point missed is subtle. This is not a legal reading, but I believe it captures the spirit:
* NOT EVERY IMAGE needs an ALT tag. For images that are spacers, you can used empty ALT or better yet a space character. * Every image that is required to conduct a transaction, needs ALT text. Examples would be navigation images (natch). Products do NOT need a full textual description of the image -- that is what the product page text is for (hopefully the webmaster is not so lame as to publish a page directly from Photoshop!). For example, the alt text would list the make model and perhaps color of the product.
The alt text is not supposed to require a full textual description, like the finer details of some furniture photo. But you should be able to navigate your way through the site in w3m or elinks and buy an iPod (some 'known' object for example).
In the OP's defense, he doesn't say he is from the USA, which means "a grand" could be a non-trivial sum. Windows 95? Sounds like these systems were all donations, and no one has had the sense to retire OS hardware that is just a bit too old.
As a Linux advocate, I'd have to agree with you overall -- The poster already said he won't be a full time admin. If he WERE the admin, and had someone as backup admin, he should not be gambling with his and other folks time trying to fix this... especially in one fell swoop.
My suggestion is to configure 1 new and 2 old systems as a diskless Linux Terminal, with the better system running as a server of course. DON'T SELL the folks on WINE compatability -- you asked about it, meaning you (OP) don't know much about configuring WINE to actually run more than Minesweeper and Notepad (think: native DLL's). If some things work in wine, BONUS, but from the start remove this feature from the plate.
If the k12 Linux Terminal Server project works for these systems, you have a good pilot. Now draw up a chart showing what a $1500 investment in the lab would get you (A few new XP systems, or a bunch of upgrades or new OS-less systems). Then let the customer decide.
It's a huge undertaking what you propose. You are not prepared for it if you have to ask Slashdot (no offense to anyone). If you do this and fail, your credibility will be destroyed, and when Linux gets better and better they will be the last folks on the planet to try it again because of the bad experience.
Aim for a pilot program, or a fileserver, but only if you are at least 80% technically capable of it. Some things you can find in Google, but there's nothing worse than some newbie posting on the forums, whining that they have to finish Something they don't know how to, and on a deadline at that.
Still OT, related to mainland.CN internet censorship and blocking of sites.
Has anyone done any research regarding China blocking Dynamic DNS providers? You can not even get to the tzo.com website from inside mainland China. I am told the same restrictions apply to DynDNS and other providers.
I assume the theory is because it's relatively EASY to set up a website on dynamic DNS, and you will not need a static IP which is almost impossible in China (without deep pockets anyways).
There seems to be no technical contact to even query for the policy behind the ban.
China is hurting itself here, because dynamic IPs are about the only IPs it has to work with (relative to the demand for fixed IPs anyways).
>The only reason most LEDs use so little power is that they emit so little light.
Your facts are WAYY wrong. If you want to refute something, at least do a lazy Google search and you could have saved yourself a bad post.
1) LEDs approach 100% efficiency. 2) Florescent lights are about 50% efficient (and varies.. compact Edison style bulbs are less efficient... LED doesn't care about the form factor) 3) Incandescent lights (including halogen) are about 5-10% efficient. That is NOT a typo they are 90% heat waste.
Not sure where the heck you live, but in most US cities they have begin using TWENTY WATT LED lights to replace TWO HUNDRED WATT traffic bulbs. The LED lamp uses 90% less power but has 100% the same brightness.
The LED bulbs longer and does not burn out all at once -- lowers the accident rate and requires less maintenance.
> Not only that, but white LEDs cost so damned much that even if they were more efficient it would be a REALLY LONG TIME before you ever saw return on your investment.
I'll concede that point.
It also takes a REALLY LONG TIME to recover the investment in a hybrid.
It's gonna get cheaper now that China is in the manufacturing game. Their government has "selfishly" decided they don't want to export their newfound wealth to Saudi Arabia they want to keep those energy costs at home (something a lot of Americans would shrug off unfortunately).
I'd expect something competitive with CF bulbs in 4 years tops.
>There's a reason you can't by LED lightbulbs for your home lamps.
Good thing I did not ask you before I bought one. And yes, I only bought one they ARE expensive.. like $35 when I got one and down to like $25 now. The nice thing about it is there's no heat waste. When the cost goes down, I expect air conditioning to be cheaper since you're not fighting waste heat generation.
The early adopter applications will drive this down... think of all the bulbs running in car lights and RV's and motorcycles. LED replacements for those are just as bright and not much more. Bright LED brakelights are already standard on many commercial trucks.
>Can I set this up so that I have, say a win98 session running under XP, using a different usb keyboard and mouse and monitor, so that 2 people can use the same computer? That'd be cool.
No.
VMWare makes your secondary OS just a program. So, how do you run Windows and assign one monitor & keyboard to one user while another person uses the same desktop?
multiple-login Remote Desktop (Citrix?) maybe?
You could do this on Linux using X11, and a network login from another PC. You might also be able to assign in Linux keyboards & mice to displays, but I don't know for a fact this is true.
It was important enough to mention your client's boss wants a handheld-friendly website, but you neglect to mention what the website is all about. Context is everything.
Are you providing technology/services that can be managed by a web browser? Or is this a shopping cart for buying rocking chairs?
If you provide a web-based management interface for configuring customer services... something a technology consultant might actually NEED when equipped only with a handheld... then yes I can see the business case. It all depends how the case is framed.
Of course, if you have to generate each "site" from scratch, sans templates like "version 3" websites did 10 years ago, you're stuck. You can only adapt if you've outgrown "Photoshop Slice And Dice". If you have outgrown the Old Way of Doing things, you probably can support other interesting technologies like Section 508, Accessibility, and XML. These are all RELATED and development work done on these are cross-beneficial to the others.
Disclaimer: I browse -- almost daily -- on a Windows 2003 Mobile, a Samsung i-700. It would be foolish to advocate mobile browsing IMO without tying it to at least 1 other technology I listed above.. otherwise you are dead-ended on a browser-specific site that goes nowhere. You can imagine future content changes leaving the old handheld site behind.
Alternatively, every US citizen (rich and poor) could simply INVEST in these ex-USA companies, and we'd all be rolling in cash and not need to work, right?
Well, at least *some* Americans would. (The same Americans who will renouce their citizenship and move to Bermuda when the Bush tax cuts run out and we have to not only finance the government again, but actually PAY back those trillions of US Treasury Bonds and interest now held by Japan, Saudi Arabia, and China).
China has an interest in fueling US tax breaks, since the mortgage-cash-out economy spending is financing the Chinese military. Sorry, it's fueling Chinese factories owned by the Chinese military.
Given my country's history in leveraging corrupt foreign rulers into harming their own country's economy and future -- I find the Bush economic strategy ironic and decidedly un-American.
You are right about the finance industry, but the other nail in the US coffin is the SUV market. Detroit will not make vehicles like Toyota and Honda does -- Ford and Chevy don't want technology, they want fat executive bonuses and Mexican manufacturing. All that will change though... China is about to enter the US market with a $10,000 SUV gas guzzler and that's going to eat Detroit's lunch.
On the plus side, we can probably import Chinese tanks cheaper than we can build them in the USA, so no worries let's outsource that too, and we won't have to have US troops riding around in unsafe Hummers, protecting the drain of the US treasury into the 'Japan of the middle east', Iraq.
What kernel version are you running? Even on an old OS, if you do not expose any unnecessary functions to the Internet (such as BIND DNS), you should be relatively safe.
I have an old Redhat 8 system running on a AMD K63-500. It hasn't been rebooted in 4 years (yes, the kernel is horribly out of date... but there are few outside services, and no untrusted users). I'm afraid to upgrade such an old beast... I can't imagine Fedora Redhat and the QA folks spending much time on these ancient chipsets.
Slashdot Mirror
>So they wanted Google to pay them because they sucked? If it was like that, then every sucky blog writer could sue them for cash.
Next stop: sue Billboard for not fitting your music track in their top 40, sue Oprah for not reviewing your book.
Heck, I should sue Slashdot for my account being banned from moderating.
>Games are not storytelling.
So, you've never encountered a grue then?
INFOCOM games were actually the REASON I upgraded my Atari 1200XL from cassette-only media, to 90KB floppies.
>A properly trained front-end employee will hand over an unsatisfied (and unruly) customer to a manager ASAP
You really meant to say:
A properly trained front-end employee working in an ideal environment will hand over an unsatisfied (and unruly) customer to a manager ASAP
Many companies do not have set escalation paths, or their use is discouraged (particularly true with outsourced phone banks... even continental US callcenters). If escalating a call earns you (or your boss, or your call center) a black mark, it won't happen. Besides, reps that use "yelling" as an excuse to hang up are often loved by managers -- they have shorter call times and take more calls. It looks good on paper.
No, I don't work in an outsourced call center, but I often have to interface with company Support elsewhere. If I don't have an official tech contact, it really sucks and requires 3 days to get to a real company employee at Router-Vendor-X. I have to use email because, well, I don't speak English with an Indian accent.
Ideally, a company has an escalation path. It just makes sense because the front line people can stay busy on the easy stuff, while the "supervisor" handles damage control. People automatically feel better being escalated, even if the communication problem was their doing. They feel special, talking less and listening more (so you can fix the problem instead of listening to anger).
Who is this "Johnny X" (I see no /. UserID) and how did he come to the conclusion iTunes hurts Wierd Al?
;-)
The sensationalist story submission implies iTunes does something unique relitive to other participants in this field. You could just as unreasonably write a story submission about Repetitive Stress Injury, and blame it on "Microsoft". Sure, Microsoft is what people mostly use, but RSI is not their doing (minor quibbles aside, one cour argue they need more anti-rsi researche, yadda yadda yadda).
What is not well said is, the recording labels have ways of screwing the artist. NEWS FLASH! That's not Apple's fault. In fact the Wierd Al link (for those that RTFA) clearly says DIGITAL sales, not iTunes. Johnny, are you some sort of Creative flack? What's with the bias?
Read Courtney Love's insightful Slate article from like 6 years ago. If the record label wants to show NEGATIVE SALES, they'll find a way to do it.
In the meantime, iTunes is in the long term a way to BYPASS record labels. Young creative artists will take advantage of this to break out of the crowd. It's not hard to imagine record stations (at least not those owned by Clear Channel) using iTunes statistics to decide what people want to hear. In addition to payola of course.
No disrespect to Al, but I can readily agree he loses out in the digital world: I might be tempted to buy one of his songs, but NEVER the entire album. Artists don't make concept albums (like Rush's 2112) anymore, for one thing, and in Al's case... I'll wager most people who like his music, like only a few tracks. They're funny, but don't have the replay power (IMHO).
Johnny, don't hide - please go work for Fox News if you want to create news spin. (I'm sure that statement will get me -50, Troll, like I'm really trolling on such an old Slashdot account - not.).
>The pirate party and thepiratebay are not affiliated in any way. They are to different movements.
Don't you mean... Vey are different movements. ?
Trolltech did not found the KDE project; Matthias Ettrich created KDE. Trolltech just created QT, the widget toolkit library used by KDE. God, don't the Slashdot editors know anything?!
.com bubble... fine, OK. ... do you?
:)
Slashdot made millions posing as a "Linux resource" during the
But you don't believe Slackdot editors actually use _use_ Linux (or know what the hell it is)...
You must be young, idealistic, or have a 6-digit Slashdot ID.
Resolution is important -- the current mainstream HDTVs only do 720P. They advertise support for 1080i, but they do it at 720p. Pixels squish and "fuzzy pixels" (is this what you saw? Might have been due to a NON-NATIVE screen resolution)interlacing... yum!
Be sceptical of the media used to demo TV's... if you were viewing the same media on 2 TVs that support different resolutions, one of these TVs has an artificial resolution. You would need 2 streams of media for the same content, but different resolutions, to make a blind judgement on quality.
I waited, and was not planning to go HDTV this year: HD DVDs were not settled yet, the HDCP fiasco, little content, and the fact that these things will get better and cheaper. Also note that HD supports 1080p, and that is the ultimate ceiling for the current spec: anything you buy today that can't handle 1080p, will be obsolete in just a few years. And if you think it doesn't matter for 1080i - it does. 1080i looks "perfect" on a 1080p screen, while on a 720p screen a 1080i image looks fuzzy.
I was going to wait... that is until I saw the Costco deal on the Sceptre 42" Naga LCD:
1080p, HDMI/HDCP, VGA, DVI, component, 2 tuner inputs....plenty of inputs, screen is GREAT... $2200 shipped. This is not in-store gasp!) so I researched it and bought it online, sight-unseen (I was a nervous wreck). NOTE that if you don't like it you can cart it to the Costco store (NO RETURN SHIPPING OR RESTOCKING FEE). Frickin sweet!
As with any HD model you consider, you want to check the forums the HD community has on that model. Learn what to look for, and know in advance what bothers other people. There are flaws in the Sceptre (cheap plastic finish... if that's my only complaint, it's not a complaint...). This model's HD tuner outputs to 2 speakers... no digital out. This isn't a problem for me as my tuner is the Comcast HD box (which routes 5.1 to my amp) but this bothers some people in the forums.
There are other 1080p screens out there... the next cheapest though is at least $4800. If your budget limits you to 720P screens, don't rule out the Sceptre. I have a media PC hooked up to it also, and I'm composing this from an odd vertical angle (sittng on the floor 6' away, below the center) and it looks fine.
This is going to be one of those TVs that changes the market. Everyone is going to have to drop HD prices faster, and shove last year's sub-1080p screens out the door discounted.
How is it this fellow grew to depend on you for third party Support in the first place?
:-)
I know you're having a tough time right now, but if you were my employee I would remind you to stick to the plan for your job, and send you home if you tied up the lines. Don't get sucked into being the guy's preferred support contact.
How would you handle training someone? I imagine you'd draw up a checklist or flowchart how to proceed with a call, so they don't skip important steps. Stick to it yourself... and you'll be amazed you can get out of work only 30 minutes after the final call for the day.
You need to politely, professionally and firmly push back on the guy. There are many good quotes already suggested to you. Just don't get caught in an argumentative loop or cases where the customer tries to build a logical case that it is your problem.
>>What's blockbuster got to top that?
>Coupla decades of building brand recognition and customer base?
Um, brand recognition is why I AVOID BlockBuster. They are evil, and have a tendancy to not account for movies dropped in the overnight mail slot. Plus their website is (or was) horribly broken in FireFox when I tried it 12 months ago (not formatting issues... real things like "Submit" buttons not working due to use of Jscript instead of JavaScript... just retarded MSIE-ness).
BlockBuster is avout as behind the times as mullets and flannel.
... isn't this already served by the Microsoft "blue screen" feature??
...Red Hat that will buy JBoss and not Oracle as previously thought.
I'm SOOO relieved Red Hat will not be buying Oracle at this time!
I can't imagine RedHat shipping a non-GPL database at this time.
>the market will punish them.
I deal with crappy routers all the time. The market will NOT punish them because -- by avoiding dealing with the problem -- D-Link shifts costs to SOMEONE ELSE'S SUPPORT.
'The market' is often a reference to do nothing.
I don't see anything that is going to cause Joe Sixpack to stop buying D-Link. I don't see bestbuy dropping these models. This issue quite clearly is protected by a S.E.P. shield.
>Firstly, just because the NTP server is "advertised in the NTP projects list of Stratum 1 NTP servers" (http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock1a.html ) with a restriction of use does not make what DLink is doing is illegal.
Why not? Is this NOT the place to advertise usage and requirements?
>Just as if I say in a newsgroup posting "do not spider my website" would not prevent Google from doing so (automatically, or by legal necessity).
Great example, wrong info.
That's because Usenet is not the place to post that request.
There is no convention or RFC saying Google should look there.
There IS convention to look to ROBOTS.TXT -- FYI.
If Google hammers you and chooses to ignore your ROBOTS.TXT you would have a case (not a case if they spidered you gently... it's 'public' enough... I mean you'd have a case if they BEAT THE CRAP out of your servers).
>In regards to item 1., if you aren't replying to packets, what's the problem? Is it the overhead/cost of receiving and dumping the packets?
He said they are not willing to even cover his pocket expenses, so I imagine raw bandwidth costs are an issue no matter what you do at the firewall.
You must be from Canada or something... :-)
>>"He had to drop out of school due to harassment."
:-)
>No, he CHOSE to drop out of school. He wasn't forced, stop portraying it that way.
Semantics.
You are re-defining 'forced' to exclusively mean physical force, as in assualt or violent harassment.
I do not think you honestly believe harassment only comes in physical forms, but building a `strawman'... then tearing it down is not exactly honest. You must be an aspiring politician.
I'm not sure what I think of the judgement, but you are letting your opinion get in the way of the argument and trying to frame the circumstances into something different, so you can attack it.
What boggles my mind is why anyone who bought these things thought they were going to get a full resolution digital picture out of an analog interface. Come on. It's obvious that wasn't going to work. Stop whining.
I'm not sure if you're saying you were not aware an analog signal can not carry the full resolution, or you are saying to the parent poster that this is tough cookies -- he's getting screwed over by the fine print NOT on the box (and you support this).
To answer the first, over the air HD is carried on analog.
To answer the second, that perspective would be quite offensive to anyone who's been screwed over. You may take a Charles Darwin approach to consumer protection, but I smell a class action lawsuit merited by fraud. I hope you don't get the jury duty.
Heck, I'm a techie myself, and I wasn't aware until recently that 'content protection' would deliberately scale down the resolution. I've never seen it on the boxes for DVD players or TVs, and never had it disclosed to me by authorized sales representitives of Best Buy, etc. You might as well put the notice in a locked file cabinet, behind a door that says 'beware of lions' or something.
I'm SO glad I didn't go HD earlier.
There was even a Slashdot posting some weeks back, covering the Anandtech report, how video card manufacturers are covering upand deleting website documentation that claimed their cards supported HDMI copy protections. Just having the HDMI interface does not mean it supports the HD copy protection. A lot of people were misled into building Media Center boxes that will forcibly downgrade the resolution. But I bet you support that also, after all consumers should have known (and besides, they shouldn't CREATE a DVR - that just flies in the face of consumerism.. right?).
I am working on a project right now where I'm getting 508 compliance in as part of Google optomization and a CSS rewrite of a table/slice-and-dice image based site.
The point missed is subtle. This is not a legal reading, but I believe it captures the spirit:
* NOT EVERY IMAGE needs an ALT tag. For images that are spacers, you can used empty ALT or better yet a space character.
* Every image that is required to conduct a transaction, needs ALT text. Examples would be navigation images (natch). Products do NOT need a full textual description of the image -- that is what the product page text is for (hopefully the webmaster is not so lame as to publish a page directly from Photoshop!). For example, the alt text would list the make model and perhaps color of the product.
The alt text is not supposed to require a full textual description, like the finer details of some furniture photo. But you should be able to navigate your way through the site in w3m or elinks and buy an iPod (some 'known' object for example).
In the OP's defense, he doesn't say he is from the USA, which means "a grand" could be a non-trivial sum. Windows 95? Sounds like these systems were all donations, and no one has had the sense to retire OS hardware that is just a bit too old.
As a Linux advocate, I'd have to agree with you overall -- The poster already said he won't be a full time admin.
If he WERE the admin, and had someone as backup admin, he should not be gambling with his and other folks time trying to fix this... especially in one fell swoop.
My suggestion is to configure 1 new and 2 old systems as a diskless Linux Terminal, with the better system running as a server of course. DON'T SELL the folks on WINE compatability -- you asked about it, meaning you (OP) don't know much about configuring WINE to actually run more than Minesweeper and Notepad (think: native DLL's). If some things work in wine, BONUS, but from the start remove this feature from the plate.
If the k12 Linux Terminal Server project works for these systems, you have a good pilot. Now draw up a chart showing what a $1500 investment in the lab would get you (A few new XP systems, or a bunch of upgrades or new OS-less systems). Then let the customer decide.
It's a huge undertaking what you propose. You are not prepared for it if you have to ask Slashdot (no offense to anyone). If you do this and fail, your credibility will be destroyed, and when Linux gets better and better they will be the last folks on the planet to try it again because of the bad experience.
Aim for a pilot program, or a fileserver, but only if you are at least 80% technically capable of it. Some things you can find in Google, but there's nothing worse than some newbie posting on the forums, whining that they have to finish Something they don't know how to, and on a deadline at that.
Still OT, related to mainland .CN internet censorship and blocking of sites.
Has anyone done any research regarding China blocking Dynamic DNS providers?
You can not even get to the tzo.com website from inside mainland China. I am told the same restrictions apply to DynDNS and other providers.
I assume the theory is because it's relatively EASY to set up a website on dynamic DNS, and you will not need a static IP which is almost impossible in China (without deep pockets anyways).
There seems to be no technical contact to even query for the policy behind the ban.
China is hurting itself here, because dynamic IPs are about the only IPs it has to work with (relative to the demand for fixed IPs anyways).
If anyone has data, I would appreciate it.
>The only reason most LEDs use so little power is that they emit so little light.
9 ,294,p2.htmlc y-led-lights-to.html
Your facts are WAYY wrong. If you want to refute something, at least do a lazy Google search and you could have saved yourself a bad post.
1) LEDs approach 100% efficiency.
2) Florescent lights are about 50% efficient (and varies.. compact Edison style bulbs are less efficient... LED doesn't care about the form factor)
3) Incandescent lights (including halogen) are about 5-10% efficient. That is NOT a typo they are 90% heat waste.
Not sure where the heck you live, but in most US cities they have begin using TWENTY WATT LED lights to replace TWO HUNDRED WATT traffic bulbs. The LED lamp uses 90% less power but has 100% the same brightness.
The LED bulbs longer and does not burn out all at once -- lowers the accident rate and requires less maintenance.
cite:
MIT Technology Review: http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_1317
http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/04/energy-efficien
etc.
> Not only that, but white LEDs cost so damned much that even if they were more efficient it would be a REALLY LONG TIME before you ever saw return on your investment.
I'll concede that point.
It also takes a REALLY LONG TIME to recover the investment in a hybrid.
It's gonna get cheaper now that China is in the manufacturing game. Their government has "selfishly" decided they don't want to export their newfound wealth to Saudi Arabia they want to keep those energy costs at home (something a lot of Americans would shrug off unfortunately).
I'd expect something competitive with CF bulbs in 4 years tops.
>There's a reason you can't by LED lightbulbs for your home lamps.
Good thing I did not ask you before I bought one. And yes, I only bought one they ARE expensive.. like $35 when I got one and down to like $25 now. The nice thing about it is there's no heat waste. When the cost goes down, I expect air conditioning to be cheaper since you're not fighting waste heat generation.
The early adopter applications will drive this down... think of all the bulbs running in car lights and RV's and motorcycles. LED replacements for those are just as bright and not much more. Bright LED brakelights are already standard on many commercial trucks.
>Can I set this up so that I have, say a win98 session running under XP, using a different usb keyboard and mouse and monitor, so that 2 people can use the same computer? That'd be cool.
No.
VMWare makes your secondary OS just a program.
So, how do you run Windows and assign one monitor & keyboard to one user while another person uses the same desktop?
multiple-login Remote Desktop (Citrix?) maybe?
You could do this on Linux using X11, and a network login from another PC. You might also be able to assign in Linux keyboards & mice to displays, but I don't know for a fact this is true.
It was important enough to mention your client's boss wants a handheld-friendly website, but you neglect to mention what the website is all about. Context is everything.
Are you providing technology/services that can be managed by a web browser? Or is this a shopping cart for buying rocking chairs?
If you provide a web-based management interface for configuring customer services... something a technology consultant might actually NEED when equipped only with a handheld... then yes I can see the business case. It all depends how the case is framed.
Of course, if you have to generate each "site" from scratch, sans templates like "version 3" websites did 10 years ago, you're stuck. You can only adapt if you've outgrown "Photoshop Slice And Dice". If you have outgrown the Old Way of Doing things, you probably can support other interesting technologies like Section 508, Accessibility, and XML. These are all RELATED and development work done on these are cross-beneficial to the others.
Disclaimer: I browse -- almost daily -- on a Windows 2003 Mobile, a Samsung i-700. It would be foolish to advocate mobile browsing IMO without tying it to at least 1 other technology I listed above.. otherwise you are dead-ended on a browser-specific site that goes nowhere. You can imagine future content changes leaving the old handheld site behind.
Alternatively, every US citizen (rich and poor) could simply INVEST in these ex-USA companies, and we'd all be rolling in cash and not need to work, right?
Well, at least *some* Americans would.
(The same Americans who will renouce their citizenship and move to Bermuda when the Bush tax cuts run out and we have to not only finance the government again, but actually PAY back those trillions of US Treasury Bonds and interest now held by Japan, Saudi Arabia, and China).
China has an interest in fueling US tax breaks, since the mortgage-cash-out economy spending is financing the Chinese military. Sorry, it's fueling Chinese factories owned by the Chinese military.
Given my country's history in leveraging corrupt foreign rulers into harming their own country's economy and future -- I find the Bush economic strategy ironic and decidedly un-American.
You are right about the finance industry, but the other nail in the US coffin is the SUV market. Detroit will not make vehicles like Toyota and Honda does -- Ford and Chevy don't want technology, they want fat executive bonuses and Mexican manufacturing. All that will change though... China is about to enter the US market with a $10,000 SUV gas guzzler and that's going to eat Detroit's lunch.
On the plus side, we can probably import Chinese tanks cheaper than we can build them in the USA, so no worries let's outsource that too, and we won't have to have US troops riding around in unsafe Hummers, protecting the drain of the US treasury into the 'Japan of the middle east', Iraq.
What kernel version are you running? Even on an old OS, if you do not expose any unnecessary functions to the Internet (such as BIND DNS), you should be relatively safe.
I have an old Redhat 8 system running on a AMD K63-500. It hasn't been rebooted in 4 years (yes, the kernel is horribly out of date... but there are few outside services, and no untrusted users). I'm afraid to upgrade such an old beast... I can't imagine Fedora Redhat and the QA folks spending much time on these ancient chipsets.
You aren't running Windows, are you?