Same thing here. I work for county level government in Texas and I got this thing about getting a decent retirement. A lot of people seemed to jump into this field because they thought they could make giant bank in no time but to me they're in this for the wrong reasons. I love what I do and I get to do it here for a good (not great mind you, merely good) salary and with the end culminating in a fat (by my standards) retirement plan. I came up through doing this in my spare time as a hobby and one day just suddenly discovered that it could actually be a paying job.
My younger brother on the other hand had little or no interest in it but wanted the $$$ and so went and got the degree and then the certifications and jumped out ahead of me making more money than I did with a fraction of the knowledge. Now he's worried his company will let him go, hates the technical side of his job (that would be a fate worse than death for me, hating what I had to do every day) and isn't all that interested in finding another job he hates once this one peters out. He's not even sure he could find another one paying what he makes.
Anyway I make around 46K a year, will be here until the day I die unless I get tired of doing it (unlikely) and at this point my retirement plan estimates that my first retirement check which I will recieve at the age of 52 should be a little over 12K. I can live with that.
Did you happen to catch the Super Bowl ad for Reebok with "Terry Tate - Office Linebacker"? Over at Reeboks website they have a four minute extended version of this spot (in Quicktime and Real formats) where Tate knocks out one of those middle management types and stands over him screaming "You KNOW you need a cover on those TPS reports RICHARD! That ain't new BABY!"
My wife is still trying to figure out why I think that's so damned funny.
Well the figures may indeed be wrong. I am quoting them from a commentary that figured into an article that was posted on Slashdot yesterday.
It's located here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/dirge.htm l
In it the writer stated the following: "Last year, the Big Five together sold about $20 billion worth of music. Meanwhile, Sony alone saw about $42 billion in electronics and computer sales. If Sony wants to sell MP3-capable cell phones - a big thing in Japan and potentially worldwide - how much attention will it pay to Sony Music's protests?"
Now certainly the numbers I used are only as accurate as the information he used in putting together his article and I'll admit that right up front. That's not to say that I'm debating you or questioning your meaning in your apples analogy. That made complete sense to me. I do think though that if this man is correct in his numbers that Sony would not let the priorities of their music division (and I'm not talking about all content here, merely their music label holdings) get in the way of their larger cash maker.
Like another person who replied to my post said though I could see them making an attempt at changing their way of doing business to leverage their music content to better push their electronics. That would be sensible of them and probably a better plan than simply cutting Sony Music loose like I stated.
I know if I were Sony I would certainly consider it. A slice of a 20 billion dollar industry in conflict with your own 40+ billion dollar electronics business would make a pretty clear decision for me.
I see what you're talking about and your points are all good ones. I can't help thinking though that there's always going to be someone trying to be the new big-bad and it's just a matter of time before the next one steps up to bat. Then we have to do it all over again. The Devil you know is indeed better than the one you don't but it's a perpetual series of them that we're always going to be facing.
And I tend to agree with you with a single exception.
You're right that it's (on the surface at least) neither particularly good nor bad for OSS but if you consider the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" way of looking at things then on some level this kind of thing may help. What's the single biggest obsticle for anyone else in the software universe other than Microsoft? That would be "Microsoft" I think. Anything that competes with them successfully, anything that takes their full attention from what you are doing to compete with them, and anything that demonstrates an ability to win anything against them is good for everyone hoping to do the same.
Just to raise the bar some and because there isn't a doubt in my mind that some geek somewhere would give it a try (in the fantasy world where this man apparently wrote this article) lets make the very next version of Linux based on Windows.
Damned Straight. msfodder has it pretty much correct with the exception of not capitalizing the entire sentence dealing with "who you know". That alone is worth more than everything else mentioned. Second would come experience and frankly nothing can replace time. Certification as a means to a career by itself is effectively dead and rightfuly so.
I think that if they could use their money to get out of this without overtly doing so then they already would have done so. I also think that the further along this moves the more inclined they will be to use the power they have.
At some point the potential "damage" they see this order (and this entire case) doing will either outweigh the downside to making this go away OR they will decide to accept it and then skirt around it some other way. Plan "B" in other words.
The whole point is that I think this case (like the anti-trust case that preceeded it) goes as far as Microsoft lets it and no further. Therein lies the problem. The Judge isn't calling the shots here. It just appears that way.
"If my order doesn't get stayed or reversed (on appeal), it's going to get done," Motz said.
Anyone else read this and get the impression that Motz isn't particularly confident that it will happen? I read that line and my brain converted it to: "If Microsoft doesn't mind and decides not to take their money and lawyers to a more friendly court farther up stream then it's going to get done, but don't count on it."
I think it's possible (not certain mind you, just possible) that you may have made mention of the point and then missed it again.
As you say (correctly I might add) "what is it about iCommune that was so different from sharing files over a network vie network protocols anyway?"
So we're talking about something that lets you share your stolen downloads with all of your friends and lets you copy as many of their stolen downloads as you like right? I mean, aren't all mp3 files in the universe stolen?
Now what happens to companies (Napster) and programs that steal music? They get jumped on by the big bad labels and sued into the stone age.
Any chance Apple doesn't want to see iTunes become synonymous with LimeWire, Kazaa, and Morpheus in the minds of the public? Maybe they just want to avoid straining already edgy relations with content producers? I think they would simply like to be the company that has the final say over any kind of participation by their software in file sharing if for no other reason than to be able to incorporate whatever necessary digital rights warts into it that are needed.
You know, with 5,000 credit card numbers you could buy an awful big pile of used hard drives on ebay, which then might contain even more credit card numbers that you could use to......profit!
These two posts, these two wonderful and amazing posts (the orginal and your reply) have provided me with what may very well be the best laugh (and most disturbing mental image) I might get all week or possibly even in the month of January.
My hat's off to you both. Thanks. If I had any mod points to give I'd be adding to your already impressive totals.
Damn Straight! Now those monsters where heavy! I've had to haul around a monitor like you describe and it was a backbreaker.
Everything was heavier back in the day. Even components. You go pick up a CDROM/CDR/CDRW or whatever kind of optical drive today and it weighs nothing. I got a 4Plex that's friggin metal! Inside and out with the exception of a couple of parts. That thing is heavy man. And it still works like the day it was pulled from the box. A PC full of parts from that era weighed way more than one today. I seen some old IBM machines that you could use as boat anchors. Huge things.
Re:Non castrated RedHat...KDE sings "My Way..."
on
Ark Linux
·
· Score: 1
So I do.
Engage Yule Brynner voice: "So let it be written, so let it be done."
Simple fact man.
Re:Non castrated RedHat...KDE sings "My Way..."
on
Ark Linux
·
· Score: 1
And the simple fact that it matters (not having the KDE groups, or anyone elses "seal of approval") is why the words desktop, linux, newbie, and success will never be mentioned in the same sentence outside of the geek community.
The core people who make linux great are the single largest obstruction to making it work for mom. A castrated Red Hat is what mom needs. A castrated "anything" linux is what mom needs. What she doesn't need is KDE AND Gnome AND some other fucked up GUI because some geeks in Australia or Lithuania decided that the other two were too big or two small or too whatever. One thing, one look, one style, one OS. That's what they want to see and it's all they understand.
When it's all said and done she'll go buy a Compaq at Best Buy that's running Windows XP cause the Mac costs too much and she uses Windows at work so she doesn't have to learn anything new. Path of least resistance is always going to win this race.
Normally I'd be annoyed by the implication since I'm male, don't have (or want) a boyfriend (happily hetero and married thank you BUT "not that there's anything wrong with it...") but I'm still laughing. Have to admit, it was funny.
And who says PCs (or Macs for that matter) are heavy. Anyone griping about how heavy their PC is needs to spend an afternoon putting 22" CRT's on CAD users desks. Do twenty or so of those babys and then bitch.
You don't think they have one? Then the years you've spent trying to figure out their position on OS/2 have paid off bigtime. Correct conclusion drawn my friend.
On the days I don't have mod points I see these kinds of posts. I'd give you an Insightful if I had one. When I do have them all I'll see is junk.
How long before someone has one of those things polished to a mirror finish. I want a 17" chrome lookin PowerBook.
The wife already said no to the $3300 price tag. If she said no that fast for the computer I can only imagine the look on her face if I told her after getting one that I was planning on gutting and refinishing it.
That would probably be worth the price of the PowerBook.
What's "Interesting" about the observation that it's missing something? It's in beta for crying out loud. tabbed browsing isn't exactly the worst possible thing it could be missing.
How is this a rip-off? They aren't planning on taking the software off of your friends machines until the pay up are they? You make it sound like now their hardware isn't going to work anymore since the iApps won't be getting free upgrades.
As I understand it if you bought a Mac with iDVD, iTunes, iCalc, or iPorn then that Mac will always have that software on it and it will be no "less" capable once a new version comes out than it was when it was the newest version out there.
I'm both a spelling and grammar serial killer I confess. Not terribly proud of it but then again, if you are good at something then why hide it. I'm good at mauling the English language I guess.
What you mentioned was something I hadn't considered. The lack of any kind of guidance for the end user. Just "My Documents" and that's it. Granted you would think that they might take the initiative and go ahead and create those folders themselves (bah, who am I kidding) but it would be nice if during the installation of Office it would go ahead and create those, then point it's save location to the folders it just created.
If it did that for Word, Excel, and Power Point that would actually be a change we might appreciate. It would help.
Not me of course. It wouldn't help me in the least but it would make sense. We create nice, neat home folders on the network for all of our people and inside each of those we give them a little Word, Excel, and PowerPoint folder and we point each of those applications to the folder that they have been provided. They save everything right in the root of their H and lump it all together. And of course try to open all of it in Word.
Slashdot Mirror
How did this get modded insightful? The guy (from the looks of this reply) didn't even understand what was being said.
These moderators keep using this word "insightful". I do not think it means what they think it means (yet again).
Same thing here. I work for county level government in Texas and I got this thing about getting a decent retirement. A lot of people seemed to jump into this field because they thought they could make giant bank in no time but to me they're in this for the wrong reasons. I love what I do and I get to do it here for a good (not great mind you, merely good) salary and with the end culminating in a fat (by my standards) retirement plan. I came up through doing this in my spare time as a hobby and one day just suddenly discovered that it could actually be a paying job.
My younger brother on the other hand had little or no interest in it but wanted the $$$ and so went and got the degree and then the certifications and jumped out ahead of me making more money than I did with a fraction of the knowledge. Now he's worried his company will let him go, hates the technical side of his job (that would be a fate worse than death for me, hating what I had to do every day) and isn't all that interested in finding another job he hates once this one peters out. He's not even sure he could find another one paying what he makes.
Anyway I make around 46K a year, will be here until the day I die unless I get tired of doing it (unlikely) and at this point my retirement plan estimates that my first retirement check which I will recieve at the age of 52 should be a little over 12K. I can live with that.
Did you happen to catch the Super Bowl ad for Reebok with "Terry Tate - Office Linebacker"? Over at Reeboks website they have a four minute extended version of this spot (in Quicktime and Real formats) where Tate knocks out one of those middle management types and stands over him screaming "You KNOW you need a cover on those TPS reports RICHARD! That ain't new BABY!"
My wife is still trying to figure out why I think that's so damned funny.
Well the figures may indeed be wrong. I am quoting them from a commentary that figured into an article that was posted on Slashdot yesterday.
m l
It's located here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/dirge.ht
In it the writer stated the following: "Last year, the Big Five together sold about $20 billion worth of music. Meanwhile, Sony alone saw about $42 billion in electronics and computer sales. If Sony wants to sell MP3-capable cell phones - a big thing in Japan and potentially worldwide - how much attention will it pay to Sony Music's protests?"
Now certainly the numbers I used are only as accurate as the information he used in putting together his article and I'll admit that right up front. That's not to say that I'm debating you or questioning your meaning in your apples analogy. That made complete sense to me. I do think though that if this man is correct in his numbers that Sony would not let the priorities of their music division (and I'm not talking about all content here, merely their music label holdings) get in the way of their larger cash maker.
Like another person who replied to my post said though I could see them making an attempt at changing their way of doing business to leverage their music content to better push their electronics. That would be sensible of them and probably a better plan than simply cutting Sony Music loose like I stated.
I know if I were Sony I would certainly consider it. A slice of a 20 billion dollar industry in conflict with your own 40+ billion dollar electronics business would make a pretty clear decision for me.
I see what you're talking about and your points are all good ones. I can't help thinking though that there's always going to be someone trying to be the new big-bad and it's just a matter of time before the next one steps up to bat. Then we have to do it all over again. The Devil you know is indeed better than the one you don't but it's a perpetual series of them that we're always going to be facing.
And I tend to agree with you with a single exception.
You're right that it's (on the surface at least) neither particularly good nor bad for OSS but if you consider the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" way of looking at things then on some level this kind of thing may help. What's the single biggest obsticle for anyone else in the software universe other than Microsoft? That would be "Microsoft" I think. Anything that competes with them successfully, anything that takes their full attention from what you are doing to compete with them, and anything that demonstrates an ability to win anything against them is good for everyone hoping to do the same.
Just to raise the bar some and because there isn't a doubt in my mind that some geek somewhere would give it a try (in the fantasy world where this man apparently wrote this article) lets make the very next version of Linux based on Windows.
Come on, you know you want to do it.
Damned Straight. msfodder has it pretty much correct with the exception of not capitalizing the entire sentence dealing with "who you know". That alone is worth more than everything else mentioned. Second would come experience and frankly nothing can replace time. Certification as a means to a career by itself is effectively dead and rightfuly so.
I think that if they could use their money to get out of this without overtly doing so then they already would have done so. I also think that the further along this moves the more inclined they will be to use the power they have.
At some point the potential "damage" they see this order (and this entire case) doing will either outweigh the downside to making this go away OR they will decide to accept it and then skirt around it some other way. Plan "B" in other words.
The whole point is that I think this case (like the anti-trust case that preceeded it) goes as far as Microsoft lets it and no further. Therein lies the problem. The Judge isn't calling the shots here. It just appears that way.
"If my order doesn't get stayed or reversed (on appeal), it's going to get done," Motz said.
Anyone else read this and get the impression that Motz isn't particularly confident that it will happen? I read that line and my brain converted it to: "If Microsoft doesn't mind and decides not to take their money and lawyers to a more friendly court farther up stream then it's going to get done, but don't count on it."
I think it's possible (not certain mind you, just possible) that you may have made mention of the point and then missed it again.
As you say (correctly I might add) "what is it about iCommune that was so different from sharing files over a network vie network protocols anyway?"
So we're talking about something that lets you share your stolen downloads with all of your friends and lets you copy as many of their stolen downloads as you like right? I mean, aren't all mp3 files in the universe stolen?
Now what happens to companies (Napster) and programs that steal music? They get jumped on by the big bad labels and sued into the stone age.
Any chance Apple doesn't want to see iTunes become synonymous with LimeWire, Kazaa, and Morpheus in the minds of the public? Maybe they just want to avoid straining already edgy relations with content producers? I think they would simply like to be the company that has the final say over any kind of participation by their software in file sharing if for no other reason than to be able to incorporate whatever necessary digital rights warts into it that are needed.
You know, with 5,000 credit card numbers you could buy an awful big pile of used hard drives on ebay, which then might contain even more credit card numbers that you could use to... ...profit!
These two posts, these two wonderful and amazing posts (the orginal and your reply) have provided me with what may very well be the best laugh (and most disturbing mental image) I might get all week or possibly even in the month of January.
My hat's off to you both. Thanks. If I had any mod points to give I'd be adding to your already impressive totals.
Damn Straight! Now those monsters where heavy! I've had to haul around a monitor like you describe and it was a backbreaker.
Everything was heavier back in the day. Even components. You go pick up a CDROM/CDR/CDRW or whatever kind of optical drive today and it weighs nothing. I got a 4Plex that's friggin metal! Inside and out with the exception of a couple of parts. That thing is heavy man. And it still works like the day it was pulled from the box. A PC full of parts from that era weighed way more than one today. I seen some old IBM machines that you could use as boat anchors. Huge things.
So I do.
Engage Yule Brynner voice: "So let it be written, so let it be done."
Simple fact man.
And the simple fact that it matters (not having the KDE groups, or anyone elses "seal of approval") is why the words desktop, linux, newbie, and success will never be mentioned in the same sentence outside of the geek community.
The core people who make linux great are the single largest obstruction to making it work for mom. A castrated Red Hat is what mom needs. A castrated "anything" linux is what mom needs. What she doesn't need is KDE AND Gnome AND some other fucked up GUI because some geeks in Australia or Lithuania decided that the other two were too big or two small or too whatever. One thing, one look, one style, one OS. That's what they want to see and it's all they understand.
When it's all said and done she'll go buy a Compaq at Best Buy that's running Windows XP cause the Mac costs too much and she uses Windows at work so she doesn't have to learn anything new. Path of least resistance is always going to win this race.
So only women, or guys who are gay own Macs huh?
Normally I'd be annoyed by the implication since I'm male, don't have (or want) a boyfriend (happily hetero and married thank you BUT "not that there's anything wrong with it...") but I'm still laughing. Have to admit, it was funny.
And who says PCs (or Macs for that matter) are heavy. Anyone griping about how heavy their PC is needs to spend an afternoon putting 22" CRT's on CAD users desks. Do twenty or so of those babys and then bitch.
You don't think they have one? Then the years you've spent trying to figure out their position on OS/2 have paid off bigtime. Correct conclusion drawn my friend.
On the days I don't have mod points I see these kinds of posts. I'd give you an Insightful if I had one. When I do have them all I'll see is junk.
For some strange reason I read this as:
Or better still.... print a more sophisticated printer on my existing printer. Repeat. Profit!
How long before someone has one of those things polished to a mirror finish. I want a 17" chrome lookin PowerBook.
The wife already said no to the $3300 price tag. If she said no that fast for the computer I can only imagine the look on her face if I told her after getting one that I was planning on gutting and refinishing it.
That would probably be worth the price of the PowerBook.
What's "Interesting" about the observation that it's missing something? It's in beta for crying out loud. tabbed browsing isn't exactly the worst possible thing it could be missing.
Happy to be of service. Do I get a free copy and a credit for naming it?
How is this a rip-off? They aren't planning on taking the software off of your friends machines until the pay up are they? You make it sound like now their hardware isn't going to work anymore since the iApps won't be getting free upgrades.
As I understand it if you bought a Mac with iDVD, iTunes, iCalc, or iPorn then that Mac will always have that software on it and it will be no "less" capable once a new version comes out than it was when it was the newest version out there.
Did Apple take you to raise or what?
I'm both a spelling and grammar serial killer I confess. Not terribly proud of it but then again, if you are good at something then why hide it. I'm good at mauling the English language I guess.
What you mentioned was something I hadn't considered. The lack of any kind of guidance for the end user. Just "My Documents" and that's it. Granted you would think that they might take the initiative and go ahead and create those folders themselves (bah, who am I kidding) but it would be nice if during the installation of Office it would go ahead and create those, then point it's save location to the folders it just created.
If it did that for Word, Excel, and Power Point that would actually be a change we might appreciate. It would help.
Not me of course. It wouldn't help me in the least but it would make sense. We create nice, neat home folders on the network for all of our people and inside each of those we give them a little Word, Excel, and PowerPoint folder and we point each of those applications to the folder that they have been provided. They save everything right in the root of their H and lump it all together. And of course try to open all of it in Word.
I hate these people sometimes.