there is absolutely nothing anyone can do this short of destroying the internet
And you are talking about the people who control a significant chunk of said internet.
The corollary of your discourse is that the powers-that-be will continue to be more diligent, more far reaching, and more determined in their efforts to track down and stop people who are engaging in these illegal activities.
I have seen many debates here on Slashdot, which usually focus on semantics of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement", but everyone agrees that it is illegal, regardless of what you call it. Might I suggest that if you don't want the authorities to get more draconian and controlling in packet inspection, working with ISPs, etc., then you should consider obeying the law?
game over morons. please don't destroy the most imporatnt media invention since the written word and the printing press
Then stop giving them a reason. If you don't want the enforcement agencies to kill the internet, then find another way to protest. Many posters here proclaim they pirate movies and music because it's not worth spending money on the dreck that is produced these days. I don't believe that; if it's so terrible, why is it magically worthwhile if you can get it for free?
Two wrongs don't make a right. If the stuff is so terrible, have some principles and don't watch the movies or listen to the music at all. Write letters. Buy indie music direct from the musician. Go to independent films. Read a book instead.
The only alternative explanation is what so many people posting here hasten to dispute: you're a cheapskate who doesn't want to pay for something, and you don't care that you're provoking the ruination of the freedom of the internet for everyone else.
I do a lot of traveling for business, and am in the fortunate position of being able to read pretty much anything I like. By that I mean I can read what I enjoy, rather than what someone says I have to read (for school, business development, or what have you).
I think you will get a lot of votes for classic science fiction, so I won't go there (mainly because I don't read it. Nothing wrong with it, just not my style.)
My personal favorites:
Russian classics
I love Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. "Anna Karenina" is a perpetual favorite of mine. If you want a long read, then go for "War and Peace". It really is riveting, and very easy to get into. "Crime and Punishment" is another favorite of mine, even over "The Idiot".
Political histories
By which I mean not only biographies (Thatcher, for instance), but also periods or themes such as "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". That is a classic.
Other
Okay, this one is probably a very geek-friendly vote, but it is a seriously fantastic book. "The History of the Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. If memory serves, he won a Pulitzer for it. Lots of high level physics, lots of sociological and political examinations, just a fabulous read all around.
"The Forsyte Saga" is also quite engrossing. John Galsworthy, I think, but you'll find it pretty easily.
For a lighter read, "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister". Not sure how well those translate to someone who didn't grow up in one of the British Empire countries, but I think they're hilarious (although fairly dated by now).
Quick and easy
I like the "Agent Pendergast" books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. They're quick reads, so don't expect to just pick up one of them and have it sustain you for longer than a few hours. But I do tend to take one of those when I'm traveling and read it depending on my mood - sometimes I just don't feel like reading Dostoevsky.
Something being meaningless to you does not make it automatically meaningless to everyone else on the planet. Nor does it give you the right to pontificate that others should follow your lead.
You have no need for Facebook or high school reunions. Fine. You have no sentiment. So be it. Don't be a killjoy and tell others they're inferior to you because they do find pleasure in those diversions.
We have so many freedoms in that area that people who violate the law are way outside their lane. There are so many opportunities for people to do it lawfully that it's irresponsible for them to do it otherwise.
How, precisely, are your rights and liberties being destroyed? What can you no longer do that you could do 20 years ago?
And if you do come up with a concrete example - please ask yourself sincerely if it's because of the FBI or because of selfish brats like Anonymous that things have changed.
I shudder to think who would win in a hacking duel, Anonymous or the FBI.
Methinks that while the Anonymous script kiddies are throwing back another slug of that hard core Red Bull and giggling at the thought of how tough they are to engage in a "hacking duel", the FBI will just say "screw this" and let the children hammer away at some honeypot and generally waste time (which is all they usually manage to accomplish) while the agents quietly drive off to their parents' homes and invite themselves in to have a little chat.
("Hacking duel"? Really? Oh dear...)
Try looking beyond your own circle for a change. Don't be so stupidly insular - read Donne. Remember? "No man is an island..."
"Stupid sales/marketing drones. It's Oracle, of course. They should've asked technical support, then they'd get the real answer. These things always take five times as much money as the salesman says."
In January 2012 there will be a story on some major project with high visibility that is suffering cost overruns. Slashdot will respond.
"How can it take so long? That's what you get for hiring Lockheed (or whomever). Here's the solution, it'd take three weeks and cost a tenth the price. Salesmen overselling, get the technical guys in, we'll do it quickly and much cheaper."
Man and woman date, break up. He harasses her for several months until she finally gets a restraining order. He agrees to it. This, by the way, was a six month order.
He then two days later starts this harassing blog. He posts links to it on a number of other web sites. He creates false Facebook profiles (brave, isn't he) and posts the blog to other Facebook users.
It gets worse. Under false names - yes, more than one...he's serious about this - he contacts the father of her child and says child & family services is involved. He does this nine times in the space of a month.
Still under false names, he contacts her grandmother and says the woman must've been sexually molested as a kid, and other equally charming comments.
Again under false names, he sends messages to her high school graduating class about this blog. And a local television news anchor. As well as various other organizations who have nothing to do with the woman. Totally random companies. For no reason other than...well, who knows? Because he's unhinged, mentally?
Still under false names - because, you know, free speech is all well and good but not if you might have to face consequences - he contacts her employer and says she's involved with hardened criminals and is a serious risk to the company.
The 50 year restraining order got put in place after all of this.
This is not someone expressing his frustration. People express their frustration by going over to their friend's place and complaining about "what a horrible person she is, she did this, that, and the other". People express their frustration by having one or two angry yelling phone calls if it's a bad breakup. Maybe they write a nasty e-mail.
And then a normal person moves on.
This is someone going way beyond reason and trying to destroy this person's personal life & career. I'm thinking he's the one who best fits the label "overreaching bully" at this point. He goes on and on, for almost a year, uses multiple false names, contacts her family, her old school mates, her work, a local news reporter. If he was legitimately concerned that she posed a danger to her child or to other people, he should have contacted the police or child services, like he claimed to have done. I didn't read anywhere that said he did this.
I'll get him to relay messages to me and I'll post them anonymously to a blog.
This sounds very much like a sociopath who seeks to deliberately harass a complete stranger for no reason other than a misguided thought process of "anyone should be able to say anything any time with absolutely no consequences, regardless of impact to someone else, just because they want to".
My advice to the subject of the story is to move on. There's no way this can end well. Sometimes it really is best (cheaper, better for your mental health, whatever) to just say "this battle isn't worth fighting".
As for you - please remember that this isn't just a story you're reading on a page. Real people's lives are being devastated here. You're thinking of him. I'm thinking of her and her family.
Yeah, really. I'm yawning, and all the discussion I've seen in this thread so far are on the same single point - should Facebook keep data after you've pressed the Delete button?
Other than that...
Young person signs up for social networking site.
Presumably said young person then proceeds to use it for social networking, which by my definition involves sharing personal information with people...
...using Facebook as the intermediary
After a year of social networking, young person says to Facebook - "I say, Facebook, what information do you still have out of everything I've shared using your services?"
Facebook says "here you are. This is what you shared using our servers. We stored it for you so you could share it. You know, that social networking functionality."
Lot of hue and cry about, well, bugger all, really.
1. I have a lot of experience with law firms, and before you pitch going with Google (and turning over all your confidential data) you'd better have your ducks in a row.
I haven't read their usage agreement
2. This isn't having your ducks in a row.
Point being, there seems to be a trade off that makes outsourcing the deal worth looking into, especially for small firms where budgets and manpower face more constraints than with fortune500 companies.
3. Yep.
4. If you're going to make a significant pitch, get someone else to check the grammar before sending it off to lawyers. (Hint - much as I dislike Google, going to Google apps still can't really be said to help increase security in a defiant manner.)
Document. Look at your critical systems. Document what they are. Start at a high level - line of business, internal (HR, etc). Drill down - I have an Oracle server, I have a Citrix system to allow the users to remote connect, which uses a VPN, etc.
Cost: your time.
Step 2.
Prioritize. What are the most important systems? Start with the systems which, if they go down, will cause the company to lose money. Then the ones which support internal processes. Rank order.
Cost: your time. Possibly management's time - they may have input into priorities.
Step 3.
Audit. Start at the top and find out just what state they're in. If you don't feel sufficiently comfortable with a particular technology to do this yourself, hire an SME for a few hours.
Cost: potentially the consulting SME to evaluate various systems. Note - the initial contract is an audit, not a "find everything and fix".
Step 4.
Fix. If you have audit notes which say "this critical line of business system is on the verge of death and once it dies it can't be resurrected", that goes first. If you have audit notes which say "this is a system which provides some reporting capabilities and it's a bit shaky, but worst case is you have to reboot the server and the reports to management go out a bit late", not so bad.
If you get to step 3 and management won't pay, then you have a problem.
If you get to step 2 and management won't give up their time, then you have a very big problem.
A big question will be the level of support from management. If they are not supportive, or if money is tight and they say "we'd like to pay for the consultants but", then that's why you've rank ordered.
If they're cooperative but don't have the money, work with them to figure out some kind of timeline based on highest risk.
If they're stubborn, urgh, bad spot. Do your best to determine level of risk. Work with the company accountant to figure out the cost to the company if a critical line of business system goes down for 10 minutes. 2 hours. Include some waffle about reputation, if you can. Include any penalties or SLA violations, if you have those.
Preamble: totally off-topic, but the parent post started a vast raft of comments from people cheerily ignoring the story (i.e. the technology, not the content), so I'll continue.
Most depressing part of the article:
But the real clue comes, again, from the Isaacson biography. Jobs talks about having a really tough time balancing his return to Apple in 1997 with his obligations as CEO of Pixar. "I would go to work at 7 a.m. and get back at 9 at night and the kids would be in bed. And I couldn't speak, I literally couldn't, I was so exhausted....All I could do was watch a half hour of TV and vegetate."
Why have kids if you never see them? Why work that much that you're totally exhausted, all the time, and have no chance to enjoy life? Why bother? How depressing...
I just don't want to know that the lazy sales guy down the hall makes double what I do for taking a few phone calls
If sales is so easy why don't you do it? The answer to that question is the reason why he makes more than you.
This seconded. If he makes so much money, it's either because he's raking it in on commission, in which case he's certainly earning it, or someone thinks he's worth a large retainer. If he's still there after six months or a year and still getting paid that much, guess what - apparently he is worth it.
The GP's post is just as asinine as a sales guy who wonders why IT guys make so much money "just for clicking the next button every so often when they have to install software". Or "web site design? Pfft, my kid can do web site design, that's not worth $50k a year."
So despite the fact that the sites were targeted at Korean speaking visitors, the websites appear to belong to a Seattle-based company.
So while I'm not going to comment on whether ICE is the right group, it's certainly a U.S. group that should be doing it, not "some kind of international thing".
1. Read the article. They are counterfeiting in some cases. In other cases, they're charging a fee for access to the pirated movies. Most people here on Slashdot, even if they support piracy, argue that charging for the pirated goods is wrong.
2. What would you suggest instead of "allowing"? As far as your comment about the US having authority over Korea, again, you should read the article.
So despite the fact that the sites were targeted at Korean speaking visitors, the websites appear to belong to a Seattle-based company.
3. I suppose the poster doesn't know for sure what effect it has on jobs, but I posit that you don't either. I could just as easily say for all you know, not doing this and instead allowing the U.S. based piracy that is aimed at Korean audiences will kill jobs.
The advantage is its central location between various tech incubation areas. Boston and Philadelphia both have technical corridors. Plenty of people in the Philadelphia region commute daily to NYC. Boston, probably not so much...but close enough that moving there isn't a big uprooting and you can still visit friends and family on the weekends.
Nah, I've been reading/. since it started. If I'd registered when I started reading I'd have a four digit UID. (Smugness.) I'm just contrary...they keep me around for comic effect and to be provocative.
So you prefer the programs that run on Windows, but I still don't hear an argument for Windows itself.
Well, gosh, that sounds like a fairly decent argument for Windows right there.
"Hi, I run Linux."
"And I run Windows."
"(Sneer) I'm super reliable. And free! And Open Source!!! (Angelic music cue.)"
"Oh, nice. What programs do you run?"
"Ummm, none. But I'm very, very stable while I'm sitting at rest, doing nothing!"
"Err, well, golly, isn't that nice..."
"You poor sucker. You're Windows. You BSOD all the time while you're running Photoshop."
"Well, actually, I haven't seen a blue screen of death in ages. Windows is pretty stable now. How about you? Stable, huh? No problems running Photoshop, I bet..."
"Umm, well, actually I can't run Photoshop. But anyone who wanted to get a team of coders and expert graphics editors together to dedicate a few years of their life could write an open source and free equivalent and it'd be lightning fast."
"But, look, I hate to press the matter, but what do you run now, not in the theoretical future?"
Cardinal sin of replying to myself, but this one is too good not to post (in the spirit of the apochryphal "640K should be enough for anyone"). From page 1962:
...most installations do not use groups at all (all users are in the same group), and even those that do would be happy to have more possible user IDs and fewer group-IDs. (Older versions of the system had only 256 of each; the current system has 65536, however, which should be enough.)
UNIX systems generally have a good, though not impeccable, record for software reliability. The typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation.
(The term "fortnight" is not widely used in the U.S., so I'll clarify that a fortnight is two weeks.)
I think it's good to point out inaccuracies, semantics or not.
It can also be done for little purpose other than to shift attention away from the actual topic.
Not losing something is not the same as gaining something. You didn't gain anything, you just kept what you already had.
Nope, wrong. I understand what you're getting at, but it's pure pedantic sophistry. Read the definition of profit. In my case, you gained my music, representing a huge investment of time and money on my part, and I lost something - that investment that I made. Personally. Not a record exec. Me, and the other guys in my band.
If it could be worse, then the current situation is good...
At best that's debatable. At worst, it's amoral, narcissistic, and verging on sociopathic.
On Slashdot? They're present everywhere. And 'bad' arguments are, from what I've seen, present on both sides.
Shrug...I can't disagree with you on this point. My background is that I'm an artist who has suffered from people pirating my music. I watched them shrug their shoulders when the lead singer told them they're hurting us. We put everything into our music, stayed out of the corporate circle, self-produced albums, and people pirated them and didn't give us anything, even at concerts where they had plenty of opportunity. They told us it was easier and cheaper to copy my CD. We asked them to at least buy a t-shirt. Nobody did.
We all lost a lot of money. Some of us got divorced. One of the bass players descended into drugs. I think he's healthy now, but he literally has nothing other than his clothes and his guitar. He never gets to see his kids and spends every night sleeping on someone's couch. It's a shitty life. One of us is trying again, a solo career, after having made a lot of money outside of the music industry. He's struggling but optimistic.
I'm not saying that all of this happened because of piracy. Of course it didn't. But piracy hurt us all financially - measurably, and significantly. We could quantify how much we lost due to piracy (and again - we never went through a record company - it wasn't a faceless exec losing money, it was me and my bandmates having to sell a guitar or an amp or a keyboard to get to the next gig), and it was too much for us to go on. It wasn't even that high a hurdle. If we'd sold 20% of the albums that were copied, we'd have been able to keep going.
If someone wants a figure, there you have one. For my band, my specific context, if one fifth of the people who copied our album had bought it instead, we'd have been able to continue, financially speaking.
Not one of us produces commercial music now. Me, I lost a lot of money from piracy and had to sell a lot my equipment at one point to pay debts. I'm not bitter. Some of my band mates are, but I'm not. Stuff happens. You take risks and sometimes they don't pay off, and I always knew the music industry was hard. But I do have a perspective that a lot of people on Slashdot don't understand.
$2 is not reasonable. $1 is not reasonable in my mind. Knock it down to 25 cents or so, and I'm sure they'll see sales skyrocket
Good heavens, you're right. Because there's no support infrastructure, supply chain, or any overhead to support.
there's zero post production CD stamping
Oh thank heavens you clarified this. And here the entire rest of the planet was mistakenly budgeting for things like machines, capital investment and depreciation, maintenance, buildings, etc. Silly buggers.
That's why 99% of their money should come from their day job, aka: playing live shows.
Right. Because writing songs, editing them, and recording them takes no time whatsoever. That's free.
Re:Without Napster we'd still be buying all CD's
on
Napster Being Shut Down
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This. I haven't lived in New Zealand for a few years, so I don't know if Real Groovy Records on Queen Street in Auckland still exists. But it was amazing. A room full of used albums, many of which were genuine rarities that you couldn't find anywhere else.
And that includes on-line. There are albums that I cannot buy on-line. The mega-stores don't carry them. They're not available from the artist directly. But I can sometimes find them at the local used music store.
Or I could, before they went out of business because nobody buys albums any more. I do care about the mega-stores going out of business, because there are people who work there who are without a job (I'm talking about the high school kids who had a weekend job there, that kind of person). But I care more about the independent shop that was started with someone's life savings because he loved music. He's the guy who'd find the rarities. And he's the guy who lost his life savings.
Slashdot Mirror
there is absolutely nothing anyone can do this short of destroying the internet
And you are talking about the people who control a significant chunk of said internet.
The corollary of your discourse is that the powers-that-be will continue to be more diligent, more far reaching, and more determined in their efforts to track down and stop people who are engaging in these illegal activities.
I have seen many debates here on Slashdot, which usually focus on semantics of "stealing" versus "copyright infringement", but everyone agrees that it is illegal, regardless of what you call it. Might I suggest that if you don't want the authorities to get more draconian and controlling in packet inspection, working with ISPs, etc., then you should consider obeying the law?
game over morons. please don't destroy the most imporatnt media invention since the written word and the printing press
Then stop giving them a reason. If you don't want the enforcement agencies to kill the internet, then find another way to protest. Many posters here proclaim they pirate movies and music because it's not worth spending money on the dreck that is produced these days. I don't believe that; if it's so terrible, why is it magically worthwhile if you can get it for free?
Two wrongs don't make a right. If the stuff is so terrible, have some principles and don't watch the movies or listen to the music at all. Write letters. Buy indie music direct from the musician. Go to independent films. Read a book instead.
The only alternative explanation is what so many people posting here hasten to dispute: you're a cheapskate who doesn't want to pay for something, and you don't care that you're provoking the ruination of the freedom of the internet for everyone else.
I do a lot of traveling for business, and am in the fortunate position of being able to read pretty much anything I like. By that I mean I can read what I enjoy, rather than what someone says I have to read (for school, business development, or what have you).
I think you will get a lot of votes for classic science fiction, so I won't go there (mainly because I don't read it. Nothing wrong with it, just not my style.)
My personal favorites:
Russian classics
I love Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. "Anna Karenina" is a perpetual favorite of mine. If you want a long read, then go for "War and Peace". It really is riveting, and very easy to get into. "Crime and Punishment" is another favorite of mine, even over "The Idiot".
Political histories
By which I mean not only biographies (Thatcher, for instance), but also periods or themes such as "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". That is a classic.
Other
Okay, this one is probably a very geek-friendly vote, but it is a seriously fantastic book. "The History of the Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes. If memory serves, he won a Pulitzer for it. Lots of high level physics, lots of sociological and political examinations, just a fabulous read all around.
"The Forsyte Saga" is also quite engrossing. John Galsworthy, I think, but you'll find it pretty easily.
For a lighter read, "Yes Minister" and "Yes Prime Minister". Not sure how well those translate to someone who didn't grow up in one of the British Empire countries, but I think they're hilarious (although fairly dated by now).
Quick and easy
I like the "Agent Pendergast" books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. They're quick reads, so don't expect to just pick up one of them and have it sustain you for longer than a few hours. But I do tend to take one of those when I'm traveling and read it depending on my mood - sometimes I just don't feel like reading Dostoevsky.
Something being meaningless to you does not make it automatically meaningless to everyone else on the planet. Nor does it give you the right to pontificate that others should follow your lead.
You have no need for Facebook or high school reunions. Fine. You have no sentiment. So be it. Don't be a killjoy and tell others they're inferior to you because they do find pleasure in those diversions.
Yes, grow up and stop being so melodramatic.
We have so many freedoms in that area that people who violate the law are way outside their lane. There are so many opportunities for people to do it lawfully that it's irresponsible for them to do it otherwise.
How, precisely, are your rights and liberties being destroyed? What can you no longer do that you could do 20 years ago?
And if you do come up with a concrete example - please ask yourself sincerely if it's because of the FBI or because of selfish brats like Anonymous that things have changed.
I shudder to think who would win in a hacking duel, Anonymous or the FBI.
Methinks that while the Anonymous script kiddies are throwing back another slug of that hard core Red Bull and giggling at the thought of how tough they are to engage in a "hacking duel", the FBI will just say "screw this" and let the children hammer away at some honeypot and generally waste time (which is all they usually manage to accomplish) while the agents quietly drive off to their parents' homes and invite themselves in to have a little chat.
("Hacking duel"? Really? Oh dear...)
Try looking beyond your own circle for a change. Don't be so stupidly insular - read Donne. Remember? "No man is an island..."
Predictable response from Slashdot:
"Stupid sales/marketing drones. It's Oracle, of course. They should've asked technical support, then they'd get the real answer. These things always take five times as much money as the salesman says."
In January 2012 there will be a story on some major project with high visibility that is suffering cost overruns. Slashdot will respond.
"How can it take so long? That's what you get for hiring Lockheed (or whomever). Here's the solution, it'd take three weeks and cost a tenth the price. Salesmen overselling, get the technical guys in, we'll do it quickly and much cheaper."
Serious question - did you read the story?
Man and woman date, break up. He harasses her for several months until she finally gets a restraining order. He agrees to it. This, by the way, was a six month order.
He then two days later starts this harassing blog. He posts links to it on a number of other web sites. He creates false Facebook profiles (brave, isn't he) and posts the blog to other Facebook users.
It gets worse. Under false names - yes, more than one...he's serious about this - he contacts the father of her child and says child & family services is involved. He does this nine times in the space of a month.
Still under false names, he contacts her grandmother and says the woman must've been sexually molested as a kid, and other equally charming comments.
Again under false names, he sends messages to her high school graduating class about this blog. And a local television news anchor. As well as various other organizations who have nothing to do with the woman. Totally random companies. For no reason other than...well, who knows? Because he's unhinged, mentally?
Still under false names - because, you know, free speech is all well and good but not if you might have to face consequences - he contacts her employer and says she's involved with hardened criminals and is a serious risk to the company.
The 50 year restraining order got put in place after all of this.
This is not someone expressing his frustration. People express their frustration by going over to their friend's place and complaining about "what a horrible person she is, she did this, that, and the other". People express their frustration by having one or two angry yelling phone calls if it's a bad breakup. Maybe they write a nasty e-mail.
And then a normal person moves on.
This is someone going way beyond reason and trying to destroy this person's personal life & career. I'm thinking he's the one who best fits the label "overreaching bully" at this point. He goes on and on, for almost a year, uses multiple false names, contacts her family, her old school mates, her work, a local news reporter. If he was legitimately concerned that she posed a danger to her child or to other people, he should have contacted the police or child services, like he claimed to have done. I didn't read anywhere that said he did this.
Do you want to rethink your position?
I'll get him to relay messages to me and I'll post them anonymously to a blog.
This sounds very much like a sociopath who seeks to deliberately harass a complete stranger for no reason other than a misguided thought process of "anyone should be able to say anything any time with absolutely no consequences, regardless of impact to someone else, just because they want to".
My advice to the subject of the story is to move on. There's no way this can end well. Sometimes it really is best (cheaper, better for your mental health, whatever) to just say "this battle isn't worth fighting".
As for you - please remember that this isn't just a story you're reading on a page. Real people's lives are being devastated here. You're thinking of him. I'm thinking of her and her family.
Yeah, really. I'm yawning, and all the discussion I've seen in this thread so far are on the same single point - should Facebook keep data after you've pressed the Delete button?
Other than that...
Lot of hue and cry about, well, bugger all, really.
Any thoughts for or against?
Yes.
1. I have a lot of experience with law firms, and before you pitch going with Google (and turning over all your confidential data) you'd better have your ducks in a row.
I haven't read their usage agreement
2. This isn't having your ducks in a row.
Point being, there seems to be a trade off that makes outsourcing the deal worth looking into, especially for small firms where budgets and manpower face more constraints than with fortune500 companies.
3. Yep.
4. If you're going to make a significant pitch, get someone else to check the grammar before sending it off to lawyers. (Hint - much as I dislike Google, going to Google apps still can't really be said to help increase security in a defiant manner.)
HIRE outside consultants to evaluate your system(s), and give you a hard copy report on their findings that you can present to MGMT.
I agree.
Exactly correct.
Step 1.
Document. Look at your critical systems. Document what they are. Start at a high level - line of business, internal (HR, etc). Drill down - I have an Oracle server, I have a Citrix system to allow the users to remote connect, which uses a VPN, etc.
Cost: your time.
Step 2.
Prioritize. What are the most important systems? Start with the systems which, if they go down, will cause the company to lose money. Then the ones which support internal processes. Rank order.
Cost: your time. Possibly management's time - they may have input into priorities.
Step 3.
Audit. Start at the top and find out just what state they're in. If you don't feel sufficiently comfortable with a particular technology to do this yourself, hire an SME for a few hours.
Cost: potentially the consulting SME to evaluate various systems. Note - the initial contract is an audit, not a "find everything and fix".
Step 4.
Fix. If you have audit notes which say "this critical line of business system is on the verge of death and once it dies it can't be resurrected", that goes first. If you have audit notes which say "this is a system which provides some reporting capabilities and it's a bit shaky, but worst case is you have to reboot the server and the reports to management go out a bit late", not so bad.
If you get to step 3 and management won't pay, then you have a problem.
If you get to step 2 and management won't give up their time, then you have a very big problem.
A big question will be the level of support from management. If they are not supportive, or if money is tight and they say "we'd like to pay for the consultants but", then that's why you've rank ordered.
If they're cooperative but don't have the money, work with them to figure out some kind of timeline based on highest risk.
If they're stubborn, urgh, bad spot. Do your best to determine level of risk. Work with the company accountant to figure out the cost to the company if a critical line of business system goes down for 10 minutes. 2 hours. Include some waffle about reputation, if you can. Include any penalties or SLA violations, if you have those.
Preamble: totally off-topic, but the parent post started a vast raft of comments from people cheerily ignoring the story (i.e. the technology, not the content), so I'll continue.
Most depressing part of the article:
But the real clue comes, again, from the Isaacson biography. Jobs talks about having a really tough time balancing his return to Apple in 1997 with his obligations as CEO of Pixar. "I would go to work at 7 a.m. and get back at 9 at night and the kids would be in bed. And I couldn't speak, I literally couldn't, I was so exhausted....All I could do was watch a half hour of TV and vegetate."
Why have kids if you never see them? Why work that much that you're totally exhausted, all the time, and have no chance to enjoy life? Why bother? How depressing...
I am not an IE fan but If I get your free market logic, IE is winning because it's the better browser
As is Windows on the desktop.
I just don't want to know that the lazy sales guy down the hall makes double what I do for taking a few phone calls
If sales is so easy why don't you do it? The answer to that question is the reason why he makes more than you.
This seconded. If he makes so much money, it's either because he's raking it in on commission, in which case he's certainly earning it, or someone thinks he's worth a large retainer. If he's still there after six months or a year and still getting paid that much, guess what - apparently he is worth it.
The GP's post is just as asinine as a sales guy who wonders why IT guys make so much money "just for clicking the next button every so often when they have to install software". Or "web site design? Pfft, my kid can do web site design, that's not worth $50k a year."
From the article:
So despite the fact that the sites were targeted at Korean speaking visitors, the websites appear to belong to a Seattle-based company.
So while I'm not going to comment on whether ICE is the right group, it's certainly a U.S. group that should be doing it, not "some kind of international thing".
1. Read the article. They are counterfeiting in some cases. In other cases, they're charging a fee for access to the pirated movies. Most people here on Slashdot, even if they support piracy, argue that charging for the pirated goods is wrong.
2. What would you suggest instead of "allowing"? As far as your comment about the US having authority over Korea, again, you should read the article.
So despite the fact that the sites were targeted at Korean speaking visitors, the websites appear to belong to a Seattle-based company.
3. I suppose the poster doesn't know for sure what effect it has on jobs, but I posit that you don't either. I could just as easily say for all you know, not doing this and instead allowing the U.S. based piracy that is aimed at Korean audiences will kill jobs.
The advantage is its central location between various tech incubation areas. Boston and Philadelphia both have technical corridors. Plenty of people in the Philadelphia region commute daily to NYC. Boston, probably not so much...but close enough that moving there isn't a big uprooting and you can still visit friends and family on the weekends.
Nah, I've been reading /. since it started. If I'd registered when I started reading I'd have a four digit UID. (Smugness.) I'm just contrary...they keep me around for comic effect and to be provocative.
So you prefer the programs that run on Windows, but I still don't hear an argument for Windows itself.
Well, gosh, that sounds like a fairly decent argument for Windows right there.
"Hi, I run Linux."
"And I run Windows."
"(Sneer) I'm super reliable. And free! And Open Source!!! (Angelic music cue.)"
"Oh, nice. What programs do you run?"
"Ummm, none. But I'm very, very stable while I'm sitting at rest, doing nothing!"
"Err, well, golly, isn't that nice..."
"You poor sucker. You're Windows. You BSOD all the time while you're running Photoshop."
"Well, actually, I haven't seen a blue screen of death in ages. Windows is pretty stable now. How about you? Stable, huh? No problems running Photoshop, I bet..."
"Umm, well, actually I can't run Photoshop. But anyone who wanted to get a team of coders and expert graphics editors together to dedicate a few years of their life could write an open source and free equivalent and it'd be lightning fast."
"But, look, I hate to press the matter, but what do you run now, not in the theoretical future?"
"Well, nothing. But I do it really, really well."
(Pats Linux on the head...)
Cardinal sin of replying to myself, but this one is too good not to post (in the spirit of the apochryphal "640K should be enough for anyone"). From page 1962:
...most installations do not use groups at all (all users are in the same group), and even those that do would be happy to have more possible user IDs and fewer group-IDs. (Older versions of the system had only 256 of each; the current system has 65536, however, which should be enough.)
Thanks! Fascinating reading. Like this snippet:
UNIX systems generally have a good, though not impeccable, record for software reliability. The typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation.
(The term "fortnight" is not widely used in the U.S., so I'll clarify that a fortnight is two weeks.)
I think it's good to point out inaccuracies, semantics or not.
It can also be done for little purpose other than to shift attention away from the actual topic.
Not losing something is not the same as gaining something. You didn't gain anything, you just kept what you already had.
Nope, wrong. I understand what you're getting at, but it's pure pedantic sophistry. Read the definition of profit. In my case, you gained my music, representing a huge investment of time and money on my part, and I lost something - that investment that I made. Personally. Not a record exec. Me, and the other guys in my band.
If it could be worse, then the current situation is good...
At best that's debatable. At worst, it's amoral, narcissistic, and verging on sociopathic.
On Slashdot? They're present everywhere. And 'bad' arguments are, from what I've seen, present on both sides.
Shrug...I can't disagree with you on this point. My background is that I'm an artist who has suffered from people pirating my music. I watched them shrug their shoulders when the lead singer told them they're hurting us. We put everything into our music, stayed out of the corporate circle, self-produced albums, and people pirated them and didn't give us anything, even at concerts where they had plenty of opportunity. They told us it was easier and cheaper to copy my CD. We asked them to at least buy a t-shirt. Nobody did.
We all lost a lot of money. Some of us got divorced. One of the bass players descended into drugs. I think he's healthy now, but he literally has nothing other than his clothes and his guitar. He never gets to see his kids and spends every night sleeping on someone's couch. It's a shitty life. One of us is trying again, a solo career, after having made a lot of money outside of the music industry. He's struggling but optimistic.
I'm not saying that all of this happened because of piracy. Of course it didn't. But piracy hurt us all financially - measurably, and significantly. We could quantify how much we lost due to piracy (and again - we never went through a record company - it wasn't a faceless exec losing money, it was me and my bandmates having to sell a guitar or an amp or a keyboard to get to the next gig), and it was too much for us to go on. It wasn't even that high a hurdle. If we'd sold 20% of the albums that were copied, we'd have been able to keep going.
If someone wants a figure, there you have one. For my band, my specific context, if one fifth of the people who copied our album had bought it instead, we'd have been able to continue, financially speaking.
Not one of us produces commercial music now. Me, I lost a lot of money from piracy and had to sell a lot my equipment at one point to pay debts. I'm not bitter. Some of my band mates are, but I'm not. Stuff happens. You take risks and sometimes they don't pay off, and I always knew the music industry was hard. But I do have a perspective that a lot of people on Slashdot don't understand.
$2 is not reasonable. $1 is not reasonable in my mind. Knock it down to 25 cents or so, and I'm sure they'll see sales skyrocket
Good heavens, you're right. Because there's no support infrastructure, supply chain, or any overhead to support.
there's zero post production CD stamping
Oh thank heavens you clarified this. And here the entire rest of the planet was mistakenly budgeting for things like machines, capital investment and depreciation, maintenance, buildings, etc. Silly buggers.
That's why 99% of their money should come from their day job, aka: playing live shows.
Right. Because writing songs, editing them, and recording them takes no time whatsoever. That's free.
This. I haven't lived in New Zealand for a few years, so I don't know if Real Groovy Records on Queen Street in Auckland still exists. But it was amazing. A room full of used albums, many of which were genuine rarities that you couldn't find anywhere else.
And that includes on-line. There are albums that I cannot buy on-line. The mega-stores don't carry them. They're not available from the artist directly. But I can sometimes find them at the local used music store.
Or I could, before they went out of business because nobody buys albums any more. I do care about the mega-stores going out of business, because there are people who work there who are without a job (I'm talking about the high school kids who had a weekend job there, that kind of person). But I care more about the independent shop that was started with someone's life savings because he loved music. He's the guy who'd find the rarities. And he's the guy who lost his life savings.