a friend of mine told me that he paid for a subscription to Kazaa Lite network. I tried to tell him that Kazaa Lite was no longer being made, and never had a subscription model, but he didn't listen. Besides, I told him, it is based on Kazaa without the spyware/adware, and thus illegal. I am not sure what exactly he got, but it is some Kazaa named P2P program that you apparently pay a monthly fee for.
P2P file sharing is full of such scams, because people are gullable. Apparently file sharing, to them, is illegal, unless you pay a monthly fee for access to the files, and then it is legal? Internet Pirates with a business plan, who'dathunkit?
Once he wises up, I'll have to uninstall the malware from his system for him.
Figure that someone in those countries rich enough to buy a computer can afford an OS. Who are they trying to sell it to, people who live in a vacant lot in a tent? Those people don't even have electricity and if they had the money for a computer, they'd most likely use it to buy food, clothing, and other useful things.
No, it is oriented more towards those lucky enough to be hired as managers in factories or that own their own business and can afford a computer, who are smart enough to realize that either Linux or Windows XP Pro is much better to use than this crippleware. $50 for crippleware, or $0 for Linux which has no limits, hmmmmm, tough choice.
Those unlucky enough to be hired as factory workers will be using their $100 to $200 a month for food, clothing, rent, transportation, etc and not have any left for a computer much less an OS.
Plus Linux is more compatable with countries that have a Socialist/Communist government, or believe in something like Buddism that rejects materialism. All they will see the XP crippled edition as would be a piece of crap that a materialist company is trying to force them to buy.
Linspire disables apt-get and rpm in the latest version of Linspire. I know how to get around that.
For details Visit here, at least until that server gets Slashdotted.;)
Linspire/Lindows is a good idea, but it markets towards the newbies who don't know what a Unix shell is or how to use it. I switched recently to HDInstall version of KNOPPIX and reformatted my Linspire partition. Linspire's CNR program got upset that I used rpm and apt-get to install libraries that it thought were bad, and it tried to remove them, yet it failed to do so. There was a picture of a guy hanging by his underware on a hook in the error dialog message. I just said frell it, download the KNOPPIX 3.4 ISO, and do a HDInstall, and use QPartD to reformat the drive.
everyone will be forced to use CP/M with a 64K memory limitation and all other OSes will be outlawed! I'd bring Wordstar back into business as well as Visicalc. I'll force Mac, Linux, and Windows users to use CP/M. Then I'll laugh as they try to figure out what PIP does and why it was named that and not something user friendly like copy. Muahahahhaahahahahaahah! Plus the two offical languages will be FORTRAN and COBOL, everything else will be banned. Bwaahahaahahahahahahahha!
Only then will CP/M have 100% marketshare and exist for every computer in existance! The CP/M user groups will thank me for this.;)
Walmart only cares that it can sell $300 computers and undercut other competitors who sell $500 computers with Windows on it. The fact that the $300 computer has Linux on it does not matter, as Walmart does not provide tech support, and Walmart figures the buyer will not be smart enough to notice that until they get it home and unpack it and set it up. Then the buyer goes back to Walmart and buys a copy of Windows XP for $300 and MS-Office Pro for $500, or they bootleg a copy from a friend or relative or their work or college. No matter what the buyer does with the system, Walmart wins. Also Walmart has a strict exchange policy on opened computer products.
Issue two discs. One a standard CD, and the other a DVD. It costs them like what, 50 cents to burn a CD? Maybe $2 to burn a DVD? It will cost them more in R&D and legal fees to get a dual-format disk.
Using the Wisdom of Solomon, this problem is solved! Split it in two, and have two disks!
I tried that on my laptop. Found I set Thunderbird to the default email client, and it needed Outlook as the default email client in order to migrate.
The Outlook Calendar, Tasks, and Notes apparently did not migrate. I do not think that Thunderbird has support for those yet. Which leaves me stuck between using Thunderbird and Outlook.
Also missing in Thunderbird is the virus vault feature of AVG Antivirus, which works with Outlook, but has no support for Thunderbird.
Also missing was the Intergration or synching with my Cell Phone, PalmOS device, and iPaq, I fond Thunderbird was missing these as well.
Also missing was integration with my Timex Datalink watch, no support for that either.
Thunderbird was not able to migrate accounts I use in Hotmail with Outlook XP(2002). I heard there may be an external program for that to convert Hotmail into POP3, but from what I read of it, it was still in beta and not properly tested.
GPG using Engimail or whatever it was called, did not work properly. I am not sure what went wrong, but I am unable to encrypt and decrypt messages. I cannot get GPG working with Outlook either, and I have to fall back to PGP. I have the latest version of GPG, but it says it cannot find my private keys, despite me loading them, and creating a new one just in case, it still reports they are missing. Fbog! I think this is more of a GPG problem than a Thunderbird one.
Should I ever decide to read/write a MS-Exchange account, will Thunderbird ever support that?
Thunderbird junk mail treats each account seperately. I use Spambayes with Outlook which learns from all the email accounts and can filter spam on account B by learning from account A.
Also the email rules only work on one email account, I have to create duplicate rules for each email account (I have four POP3/SMTP accounts) to filter mail just right. Also I am confused as to what SMTP server it uses to send mail. I am not yet sure how to pick one, it seems to use the same SMTP server for each account, this may be seen as possible Spam by Spam filters, until I can figure it out.
So I am stuck with Outlook until Thunderbird can properly address these issues.
Yeah right, Yahoo is so unsecure that people can use an alias to register an account with them. They can sign up for a Yahoo Mail address using bogus info and automatically get an Yahoo Account to use on message boards.
I wonder what names Yahoo will give that Lawyer?
Let's see, we have like 38 Bill Gates, 31 Steve Jobs, 26 William T. Kirks, 24 Bruce Waynes, etc. None of them are their real names. Or maybe you can track them by IP address? Yet what if they were using a library, or grade school, or high school, or college system? Get the IPs from Yahoo, track it to their ISP, and then subpeona the ISPs to see who holds the accounts. Stand in line next to the RIAA and MPAA who want the names of IP numbers behind file sharing accounts. Good luck!
On the other hand, if the Yahoo Member paid for anything on Yahoo, Yahoo then has their billing address, credit card, etc.
Watch what you say about the lawyer on Slashdot, he may subpeona Slashdot to get the details behind your accounts. See ya in court!
Despite the uncounted viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, and other malware infections that happen every week, no almost every day now, and the fact that Windows has security holes so big that you could fly a Space Shuttle through them, and that Windows reliability is so bad that many companies have to reboot servers at least once or more a day, you are telling me that none of that matters? Microsoft, apparently, can take a crap in a box, label it "Windows" and then sell it to 75% of the market because they bundle it with the PCs sold, and use their monopoly to bundle IE, Media Player, and other goodies to shut out competition, and none of this matters because Linux is slowly gaining marketshare? That Linux does not use DirectX, or support sub-standard hardware (with poor quality control), or use bleeding edge hardware (not because the Linux community won't write drivers, but the hardware company refuses to release technical details so the Linux community can write those drivers for the state of the art hardware, because Microsoft signed an exclusive deal with SATA hard drive makers, and other bleding edge hardware companies to not release Linux drivers or technical specs to write Linux drivers), that none of this matters?
That Microsoft is so scared of Linux now, that they have a "Linux: Get The Facts" website and advertise it in almost every magazine and newspaper that I read now? Yet to you, that does not matter.
I say to you, bullsh*t! Linux marketshare doubles every year. Linspire (nee Lindows) and Xandros make more user friendly Linux versions, and KNOPPIX and other Live Linux CD distros still continue to gain marketshare and convert people to Linux. In fact, due to the nature that Linux is distributed, the Linux marketshare is under-rated, and may be higher due to the dual-boot nature of LILO and GRUB. You can record a Linux sale, but you cannot record someone getting a KNOPPIX CD ISO via Bit Torrent for free, etc. So if only Linux sales are recorded, and file sharing distributes Linux as well, there may be more Linux users out there than you know.
Microsoft is a dinosaur, they cannot innovate anymore, so they have to compete and/or buy technology to improve their products. Microsoft having 75% marketshare, can no longer promise the growth that they used to promise to their investors. Each new Windows operating system and each new software package from Microsoft requires new and more expensive hardware to run it on. There are a ton of people out there that have machines that cannot run Windows 2000, XP, or even Longhorn when it comes out. They also cannot afford to upgrade their software. Yet Microsoft puts out technology and encourages firms to not support anything less than Windows 2000. Case in point, Napster and iTunes won't run on 95 or 98.
So basically these people are screwed, right? Either buy new hardware with the new OS, or suffer for not being able to run the latest and greatest from Microsoft? Well I say give Microsoft the middle finger and download a KNOPPIX CD and try it out. Use QPart to repartition your hard drive, and use "KNOPPIX-INSTALL" to install a copy of KNOPPIX to your hard drive and dual boot. Or try another Linux flavor. It is cheaper than buying a $500 machine and then $300 worth of MS-Office software.
Even if you don't want to try Linux, keep 95, 98 and try Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, OpenOffice.Org, and other open source software available for Windows.
Face facts, there are more older systems out there, than there are newer systems. Microsoft is cutting their own throats by refusing to support the older hardware. Soon Windows Longhorn will require such powerful hardware that those $500 el cheapo systems will not be powerful enough for it. You'll be looking at the more expensive $800 to $2000 systems.
Web Services that require registration use that information to:
1. Target online advertising towards based on reading habits.
2. Sell the information to other companies, based on viewing habits.
3. They can do demographics based on who actually reads what articles. Sort of like an instant survey based on reading habits.
4. They want to control who reads their stories, so web robots and other programs cannot steal stories without using an account to verify who they are.
The problem is that many use bogus info to register an account. For example, my alias, Orion Blastar, I use to register with various services. I use a real phone number and address, but I add an extra line to my address to tell me who got the information. So I can tell if Microsoft, NYT, etc sold my info to another company without my permission. I always check that "no" box to contact third parties and special offers. Yet I still get spam and postal mailings. Many Big Brother companies think that Orion Blastar exists for real, and I even get loan offers and credit card offers with rates lower than my real name can get, I just shread those and throw them away. Orion Blastar is not just my alias, but also my alter ego, another side of my personality, that somehow got a presense in the real world.
When I worked for companies I had a non-compete agreement that only lasted for the duration of the employment. My employers limited what tools I had, what resources I had, and how I should program (for example no OOP, follow their style and guidelines). I was very limited in what I could do, and they accused me of not meeting my potential. I argued that if they let me program my way and laid off the stress that was causing illnesses that made it harder for me to work, that I could meet my potential. Instead more stress was heaped on me, as well as verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and psychological abuse. I was given the despair treatment, to get rid of me.
I learned from them how not to write programs, and what not to do. I feel that I can now safely develop my own programs, from scratch, to solve problems differently than their half-arsed solutions, and maybe use a different programming language or platform, that I can do better on my own than in the box they placed me in with major limits on what I could and could not do.
I did not develop any programs or code during my off-time or break time, and I did not release any programs and this fact can be verified. I had a paper notebook I wrote ideas on while I was riding a train to and from work, but I lost it before I was let go from one company. One of my ideas, they had implemented as a Human Resource Information System. Without that notebook, I cannot prove that I had thought of it or invented it. I was let go in 2001, and from ex-coworkers I find that the IT department is still struggling because of the poor management placing limitations on staff. That the programs I wrote, they attempted to re-write to DotNet in 2001/2002 and that they are still having problems converting them.
I feel, that after I finish college, I can safely work on programs of my own, and no past employer can own them.
So can they try to own my thoughts after I've been let go for 2 or 3 years? I think not.
the users did the QA testing, just like Microsoft has the users do. We had QA people, but I am not sure what exactly they were doing becuase many flaws and mistakes got past them. Just not from my programs, but ones my coworkers wrote. I did my own QA testing, and took longer to develop code, hence I was let go.
Shipping cost of $4USD or more for a CD and $2USD for insurance? I wonder why? Shipping and insurance seem to cost more than the bid for the CD. I can buy the CD from a used CD store for $5USD.
This is a Pets.com paradox, where the shipping costs more than the product. Like $15USD for a 50 pound bag of dog food that costs $40USD to ship it. Net cost $55USD, cheaper to buy it for $20USD at a local Pet Store and spend $2USD on gas to get there and back.
Perhaps I'd have better luck selling them to the Whitney Houston fan club in a country where they cannot buy the CDs because they are not distributed there.
Somewhere on the planet is a demand for those CDs, the hard part is finding out who wants to buy it. Now price is a totally different matter.
As a programmer, I find that making a change to a query or table can cause me rewriting code in every application I've developed.
With stored procedures, I just refence the stored procedure name and leave the query tinkering to a DBA.
The only thing that I have to make changes for is when the DBA changes a column name in a table or a parameter for the stored procedure. Also when a stored procedure is in use, and it needs to be changed, I have to make the program use a second procedure name and switch procedure names each change, because if the procedure is changed as my program is running, it will break if a parameter is added or removed.
I had to work on a docket calendar program for a law firm and we used stored procedures with the reports. The managers and lawyers were always adding things to the reports which needed changes to the stored procedures. We eventually maxed out the max number of tables allowed, and each stored procedure was five pages long with if else statements because of all the things that the managers and lawyers wanted.
Using regular queries would not work because of the flexability that T-SQL had to meet the law firm's demand. MySQL would not have cut it. The reports were in Crystal Reports.
if you like redheads who got their hair color from a bottle and have a small bust size.
If you just like looking at good looking women, redheads or not, Visit Orfie's avvies site and see the Avatars that she uses on Stumble Upon and other places. I think a few of them are redheads too.
Error 666: Your modem (or other connecting device) is not functioning (properly and has been possessed). That should be the whole error for that number.;)
They won't make a new Newton for the same reason why they won't make a new Apple// computer, they want to move on to other things.
They most likely think that the iPod has more priority than making a Newton, so R&D goes towards improving the iPod and not the Newton.
Besides the iPod can easily be turned into a PDA with the right software. Just no handwriting recognition like the Newton has.
What Apple should do is sell the Newton technology or license it to a third party interested in making Newtons. Then sit back and collect the royalties or whatever.
At one time Apple almost considered using a PalmOS device. Remember that is what the Newton would be competing against.
a settlement, would they have used Confederate Dollars?:)
Actually have the libraries use eBay or half.com to sell off the extra CDs they don't want, and then buy the ones that they do want to have in stock. That way the RIAA doesn't get any more money from them.
Watch an aging Indy in a wheelchair fight off seniale ex-Nazis in a search for the bathroom so he doesn't have to use that bedpan any more. Yet when he gets there, a seniale ex-Nazi has the last roll of toliet paper! Watch as they battle it out with canes, and pause many times to take a breather and adjust their bifocal glasses.
See Indy wonder were Shortround is, and why he had him committed to the nursing home.
Watch as Indy trys to make a break and sneak past Nurses readying trashy novels during the night time hours.
Watch the drama that unfolds during the Bingo game.
Uh, yeah, right, whatever. That's another one I am not going to see.:)
what is annoying to one person may not be to another. People in Non-IT departments were annoying to me in many ways. Yet I do not have the luxtury of avoiding them, as they have for me. I have to deal with them, as I am part of IT and therefor support them.
Annoying is when they blame the program for their not being able to get work done, and I believe them and go to their system (which is on the other side of the building) and ask them to repeat what they did to cause the error, and it does not error out. I examine their system thoroughly, and I find no problems. I watch them work on the system for a while, and no errors. I ask them what the error said exactly and they answer "I dunno", and in the past they have been told repeatedly to write down any error messages to help us debug the problems. I tell them I'll make a note of it, and examine the code to see if it causes any errors, but if it happens again, please write down the error message exactly as it is stated on the screen and I can better help them. Then they say "Thank you" and I go back to my coding. Then my boss gets a complain from them on me that I didn't fix the problem. How could I? The problem wasn't even shown to me, nor did it happen. I suspect the user was faking a problem to get out of doing work. The old "The computer is down/ the program broke/ had an error" excuse, and then blame IT. Pollitics annoy me greatly, and this is pollitical in nature to make me and IT look bad. I did everything in my power to recreate the error to see what it said. It didn't even show up in the error log at all, as my program trapped errors and wrote them to progname_err.log in the user's hard drive, before exiting and the Windows Event Viewer didn't show anything either. Fbog!
Micrsoft sees the worm attacks taking down systems and decided to do something about it, and thus XP SP2 was born.
Worms took down 60% of the systems they got installed on, and now too, so does XP SP2.
Protect yourself from the next round of worms due out in a few weeks, and install XP SP2 to take down your system before a Worm does. If your system is offline, it cannot be infected by a worm, you are protected 100%!
Microsoft also competes with spyware/adware companies by making XP SP2 hard to uninstall as well without some clever hacks, or the uninstall program from the creator of the software.
"We're just looking out for your best interests." an anonymous Microsoft employee is quoted as saying.
Slashdot Mirror
a friend of mine told me that he paid for a subscription to Kazaa Lite network. I tried to tell him that Kazaa Lite was no longer being made, and never had a subscription model, but he didn't listen. Besides, I told him, it is based on Kazaa without the spyware/adware, and thus illegal. I am not sure what exactly he got, but it is some Kazaa named P2P program that you apparently pay a monthly fee for.
P2P file sharing is full of such scams, because people are gullable. Apparently file sharing, to them, is illegal, unless you pay a monthly fee for access to the files, and then it is legal? Internet Pirates with a business plan, who'dathunkit?
Once he wises up, I'll have to uninstall the malware from his system for him.
Figure that someone in those countries rich enough to buy a computer can afford an OS. Who are they trying to sell it to, people who live in a vacant lot in a tent? Those people don't even have electricity and if they had the money for a computer, they'd most likely use it to buy food, clothing, and other useful things.
No, it is oriented more towards those lucky enough to be hired as managers in factories or that own their own business and can afford a computer, who are smart enough to realize that either Linux or Windows XP Pro is much better to use than this crippleware. $50 for crippleware, or $0 for Linux which has no limits, hmmmmm, tough choice.
Those unlucky enough to be hired as factory workers will be using their $100 to $200 a month for food, clothing, rent, transportation, etc and not have any left for a computer much less an OS.
Plus Linux is more compatable with countries that have a Socialist/Communist government, or believe in something like Buddism that rejects materialism. All they will see the XP crippled edition as would be a piece of crap that a materialist company is trying to force them to buy.
For details Visit here, at least until that server gets Slashdotted. ;)
Linspire/Lindows is a good idea, but it markets towards the newbies who don't know what a Unix shell is or how to use it. I switched recently to HDInstall version of KNOPPIX and reformatted my Linspire partition. Linspire's CNR program got upset that I used rpm and apt-get to install libraries that it thought were bad, and it tried to remove them, yet it failed to do so. There was a picture of a guy hanging by his underware on a hook in the error dialog message. I just said frell it, download the KNOPPIX 3.4 ISO, and do a HDInstall, and use QPartD to reformat the drive.
everyone will be forced to use CP/M with a 64K memory limitation and all other OSes will be outlawed! I'd bring Wordstar back into business as well as Visicalc. I'll force Mac, Linux, and Windows users to use CP/M. Then I'll laugh as they try to figure out what PIP does and why it was named that and not something user friendly like copy. Muahahahhaahahahahaahah! Plus the two offical languages will be FORTRAN and COBOL, everything else will be banned. Bwaahahaahahahahahahahha!
;)
Only then will CP/M have 100% marketshare and exist for every computer in existance! The CP/M user groups will thank me for this.
Walmart only cares that it can sell $300 computers and undercut other competitors who sell $500 computers with Windows on it. The fact that the $300 computer has Linux on it does not matter, as Walmart does not provide tech support, and Walmart figures the buyer will not be smart enough to notice that until they get it home and unpack it and set it up. Then the buyer goes back to Walmart and buys a copy of Windows XP for $300 and MS-Office Pro for $500, or they bootleg a copy from a friend or relative or their work or college. No matter what the buyer does with the system, Walmart wins. Also Walmart has a strict exchange policy on opened computer products.
Issue two discs. One a standard CD, and the other a DVD. It costs them like what, 50 cents to burn a CD? Maybe $2 to burn a DVD? It will cost them more in R&D and legal fees to get a dual-format disk.
Using the Wisdom of Solomon, this problem is solved! Split it in two, and have two disks!
I tried that on my laptop. Found I set Thunderbird to the default email client, and it needed Outlook as the default email client in order to migrate.
The Outlook Calendar, Tasks, and Notes apparently did not migrate. I do not think that Thunderbird has support for those yet. Which leaves me stuck between using Thunderbird and Outlook.
Also missing in Thunderbird is the virus vault feature of AVG Antivirus, which works with Outlook, but has no support for Thunderbird.
Also missing was the Intergration or synching with my Cell Phone, PalmOS device, and iPaq, I fond Thunderbird was missing these as well.
Also missing was integration with my Timex Datalink watch, no support for that either.
Thunderbird was not able to migrate accounts I use in Hotmail with Outlook XP(2002). I heard there may be an external program for that to convert Hotmail into POP3, but from what I read of it, it was still in beta and not properly tested.
GPG using Engimail or whatever it was called, did not work properly. I am not sure what went wrong, but I am unable to encrypt and decrypt messages. I cannot get GPG working with Outlook either, and I have to fall back to PGP. I have the latest version of GPG, but it says it cannot find my private keys, despite me loading them, and creating a new one just in case, it still reports they are missing. Fbog! I think this is more of a GPG problem than a Thunderbird one.
Should I ever decide to read/write a MS-Exchange account, will Thunderbird ever support that?
Thunderbird junk mail treats each account seperately. I use Spambayes with Outlook which learns from all the email accounts and can filter spam on account B by learning from account A.
Also the email rules only work on one email account, I have to create duplicate rules for each email account (I have four POP3/SMTP accounts) to filter mail just right. Also I am confused as to what SMTP server it uses to send mail. I am not yet sure how to pick one, it seems to use the same SMTP server for each account, this may be seen as possible Spam by Spam filters, until I can figure it out.
So I am stuck with Outlook until Thunderbird can properly address these issues.
Yeah right, Yahoo is so unsecure that people can use an alias to register an account with them. They can sign up for a Yahoo Mail address using bogus info and automatically get an Yahoo Account to use on message boards.
I wonder what names Yahoo will give that Lawyer?
Let's see, we have like 38 Bill Gates, 31 Steve Jobs, 26 William T. Kirks, 24 Bruce Waynes, etc. None of them are their real names. Or maybe you can track them by IP address? Yet what if they were using a library, or grade school, or high school, or college system? Get the IPs from Yahoo, track it to their ISP, and then subpeona the ISPs to see who holds the accounts. Stand in line next to the RIAA and MPAA who want the names of IP numbers behind file sharing accounts. Good luck!
On the other hand, if the Yahoo Member paid for anything on Yahoo, Yahoo then has their billing address, credit card, etc.
Watch what you say about the lawyer on Slashdot, he may subpeona Slashdot to get the details behind your accounts. See ya in court!
Despite the uncounted viruses, trojans, adware, spyware, and other malware infections that happen every week, no almost every day now, and the fact that Windows has security holes so big that you could fly a Space Shuttle through them, and that Windows reliability is so bad that many companies have to reboot servers at least once or more a day, you are telling me that none of that matters? Microsoft, apparently, can take a crap in a box, label it "Windows" and then sell it to 75% of the market because they bundle it with the PCs sold, and use their monopoly to bundle IE, Media Player, and other goodies to shut out competition, and none of this matters because Linux is slowly gaining marketshare? That Linux does not use DirectX, or support sub-standard hardware (with poor quality control), or use bleeding edge hardware (not because the Linux community won't write drivers, but the hardware company refuses to release technical details so the Linux community can write those drivers for the state of the art hardware, because Microsoft signed an exclusive deal with SATA hard drive makers, and other bleding edge hardware companies to not release Linux drivers or technical specs to write Linux drivers), that none of this matters?
That Microsoft is so scared of Linux now, that they have a "Linux: Get The Facts" website and advertise it in almost every magazine and newspaper that I read now? Yet to you, that does not matter.
I say to you, bullsh*t! Linux marketshare doubles every year. Linspire (nee Lindows) and Xandros make more user friendly Linux versions, and KNOPPIX and other Live Linux CD distros still continue to gain marketshare and convert people to Linux. In fact, due to the nature that Linux is distributed, the Linux marketshare is under-rated, and may be higher due to the dual-boot nature of LILO and GRUB. You can record a Linux sale, but you cannot record someone getting a KNOPPIX CD ISO via Bit Torrent for free, etc. So if only Linux sales are recorded, and file sharing distributes Linux as well, there may be more Linux users out there than you know.
Microsoft is a dinosaur, they cannot innovate anymore, so they have to compete and/or buy technology to improve their products. Microsoft having 75% marketshare, can no longer promise the growth that they used to promise to their investors. Each new Windows operating system and each new software package from Microsoft requires new and more expensive hardware to run it on. There are a ton of people out there that have machines that cannot run Windows 2000, XP, or even Longhorn when it comes out. They also cannot afford to upgrade their software. Yet Microsoft puts out technology and encourages firms to not support anything less than Windows 2000. Case in point, Napster and iTunes won't run on 95 or 98.
So basically these people are screwed, right? Either buy new hardware with the new OS, or suffer for not being able to run the latest and greatest from Microsoft? Well I say give Microsoft the middle finger and download a KNOPPIX CD and try it out. Use QPart to repartition your hard drive, and use "KNOPPIX-INSTALL" to install a copy of KNOPPIX to your hard drive and dual boot. Or try another Linux flavor. It is cheaper than buying a $500 machine and then $300 worth of MS-Office software.
Even if you don't want to try Linux, keep 95, 98 and try Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, OpenOffice.Org, and other open source software available for Windows.
Face facts, there are more older systems out there, than there are newer systems. Microsoft is cutting their own throats by refusing to support the older hardware. Soon Windows Longhorn will require such powerful hardware that those $500 el cheapo systems will not be powerful enough for it. You'll be looking at the more expensive $800 to $2000 systems.
Web Services that require registration use that information to: 1. Target online advertising towards based on reading habits.
2. Sell the information to other companies, based on viewing habits.
3. They can do demographics based on who actually reads what articles. Sort of like an instant survey based on reading habits.
4. They want to control who reads their stories, so web robots and other programs cannot steal stories without using an account to verify who they are.
The problem is that many use bogus info to register an account. For example, my alias, Orion Blastar, I use to register with various services. I use a real phone number and address, but I add an extra line to my address to tell me who got the information. So I can tell if Microsoft, NYT, etc sold my info to another company without my permission. I always check that "no" box to contact third parties and special offers. Yet I still get spam and postal mailings. Many Big Brother companies think that Orion Blastar exists for real, and I even get loan offers and credit card offers with rates lower than my real name can get, I just shread those and throw them away. Orion Blastar is not just my alias, but also my alter ego, another side of my personality, that somehow got a presense in the real world.
When I worked for companies I had a non-compete agreement that only lasted for the duration of the employment. My employers limited what tools I had, what resources I had, and how I should program (for example no OOP, follow their style and guidelines). I was very limited in what I could do, and they accused me of not meeting my potential. I argued that if they let me program my way and laid off the stress that was causing illnesses that made it harder for me to work, that I could meet my potential. Instead more stress was heaped on me, as well as verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and psychological abuse. I was given the despair treatment, to get rid of me.
I learned from them how not to write programs, and what not to do. I feel that I can now safely develop my own programs, from scratch, to solve problems differently than their half-arsed solutions, and maybe use a different programming language or platform, that I can do better on my own than in the box they placed me in with major limits on what I could and could not do.
I did not develop any programs or code during my off-time or break time, and I did not release any programs and this fact can be verified. I had a paper notebook I wrote ideas on while I was riding a train to and from work, but I lost it before I was let go from one company. One of my ideas, they had implemented as a Human Resource Information System. Without that notebook, I cannot prove that I had thought of it or invented it. I was let go in 2001, and from ex-coworkers I find that the IT department is still struggling because of the poor management placing limitations on staff. That the programs I wrote, they attempted to re-write to DotNet in 2001/2002 and that they are still having problems converting them.
I feel, that after I finish college, I can safely work on programs of my own, and no past employer can own them.
So can they try to own my thoughts after I've been let go for 2 or 3 years? I think not.
the users did the QA testing, just like Microsoft has the users do. We had QA people, but I am not sure what exactly they were doing becuase many flaws and mistakes got past them. Just not from my programs, but ones my coworkers wrote. I did my own QA testing, and took longer to develop code, hence I was let go.
Shipping cost of $4USD or more for a CD and $2USD for insurance? I wonder why? Shipping and insurance seem to cost more than the bid for the CD. I can buy the CD from a used CD store for $5USD.
This is a Pets.com paradox, where the shipping costs more than the product. Like $15USD for a 50 pound bag of dog food that costs $40USD to ship it. Net cost $55USD, cheaper to buy it for $20USD at a local Pet Store and spend $2USD on gas to get there and back.
Perhaps I'd have better luck selling them to the Whitney Houston fan club in a country where they cannot buy the CDs because they are not distributed there.
Somewhere on the planet is a demand for those CDs, the hard part is finding out who wants to buy it. Now price is a totally different matter.
As a programmer, I find that making a change to a query or table can cause me rewriting code in every application I've developed.
With stored procedures, I just refence the stored procedure name and leave the query tinkering to a DBA.
The only thing that I have to make changes for is when the DBA changes a column name in a table or a parameter for the stored procedure. Also when a stored procedure is in use, and it needs to be changed, I have to make the program use a second procedure name and switch procedure names each change, because if the procedure is changed as my program is running, it will break if a parameter is added or removed.
I had to work on a docket calendar program for a law firm and we used stored procedures with the reports. The managers and lawyers were always adding things to the reports which needed changes to the stored procedures. We eventually maxed out the max number of tables allowed, and each stored procedure was five pages long with if else statements because of all the things that the managers and lawyers wanted.
Using regular queries would not work because of the flexability that T-SQL had to meet the law firm's demand. MySQL would not have cut it. The reports were in Crystal Reports.
If you just like looking at good looking women, redheads or not, Visit Orfie's avvies site and see the Avatars that she uses on Stumble Upon and other places. I think a few of them are redheads too.
Error 666: Your modem (or other connecting device) is not functioning (properly and has been possessed). That should be the whole error for that number. ;)
They won't make a new Newton for the same reason why they won't make a new Apple // computer, they want to move on to other things.
They most likely think that the iPod has more priority than making a Newton, so R&D goes towards improving the iPod and not the Newton.
Besides the iPod can easily be turned into a PDA with the right software. Just no handwriting recognition like the Newton has.
What Apple should do is sell the Newton technology or license it to a third party interested in making Newtons. Then sit back and collect the royalties or whatever.
At one time Apple almost considered using a PalmOS device. Remember that is what the Newton would be competing against.
a settlement, would they have used Confederate Dollars? :)
Actually have the libraries use eBay or half.com to sell off the extra CDs they don't want, and then buy the ones that they do want to have in stock. That way the RIAA doesn't get any more money from them.
please watch "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", they put a spell on him that turned him bad, but Shortround broke it.
except instead of releasing it, it escapes. ;)
Oh yeah, I think they got a new one:
:)
Indiana Jones IV: The Nursing Home Adventures
Watch an aging Indy in a wheelchair fight off seniale ex-Nazis in a search for the bathroom so he doesn't have to use that bedpan any more. Yet when he gets there, a seniale ex-Nazi has the last roll of toliet paper! Watch as they battle it out with canes, and pause many times to take a breather and adjust their bifocal glasses.
See Indy wonder were Shortround is, and why he had him committed to the nursing home.
Watch as Indy trys to make a break and sneak past Nurses readying trashy novels during the night time hours.
Watch the drama that unfolds during the Bingo game.
Uh, yeah, right, whatever. That's another one I am not going to see.
People who try to make short, senseless comments to my posts annoy me.
Mod that post down as a troll, or flamebait.
what is annoying to one person may not be to another. People in Non-IT departments were annoying to me in many ways. Yet I do not have the luxtury of avoiding them, as they have for me. I have to deal with them, as I am part of IT and therefor support them.
Annoying is when they blame the program for their not being able to get work done, and I believe them and go to their system (which is on the other side of the building) and ask them to repeat what they did to cause the error, and it does not error out. I examine their system thoroughly, and I find no problems. I watch them work on the system for a while, and no errors. I ask them what the error said exactly and they answer "I dunno", and in the past they have been told repeatedly to write down any error messages to help us debug the problems. I tell them I'll make a note of it, and examine the code to see if it causes any errors, but if it happens again, please write down the error message exactly as it is stated on the screen and I can better help them. Then they say "Thank you" and I go back to my coding. Then my boss gets a complain from them on me that I didn't fix the problem. How could I? The problem wasn't even shown to me, nor did it happen. I suspect the user was faking a problem to get out of doing work. The old "The computer is down/ the program broke/ had an error" excuse, and then blame IT. Pollitics annoy me greatly, and this is pollitical in nature to make me and IT look bad. I did everything in my power to recreate the error to see what it said. It didn't even show up in the error log at all, as my program trapped errors and wrote them to progname_err.log in the user's hard drive, before exiting and the Windows Event Viewer didn't show anything either. Fbog!
Micrsoft sees the worm attacks taking down systems and decided to do something about it, and thus XP SP2 was born.
Worms took down 60% of the systems they got installed on, and now too, so does XP SP2.
Protect yourself from the next round of worms due out in a few weeks, and install XP SP2 to take down your system before a Worm does. If your system is offline, it cannot be infected by a worm, you are protected 100%!
Microsoft also competes with spyware/adware companies by making XP SP2 hard to uninstall as well without some clever hacks, or the uninstall program from the creator of the software.
"We're just looking out for your best interests." an anonymous Microsoft employee is quoted as saying.
"Warning, slippery when sarcastic!"