Just before the turn of the century Declan McCullagh wrote articles about how Y2K would cause the end of the world as we know it. He was a regular part of the doom brood over at comp.software.year-2000, amplifying any minor negative aspect to Y2K he could find. You can find articles he wrote about his bias before researching the story.
Same Declan, same approach.
Interesting to see that he still amplifies government news items beyond reason. Too bad it's for CNET, though. They once held a certain cachet...
When I plaster my Ibanez with stickers, it becomes MY GUITAR, dude, no matter that it is identical to all the others. It is MINE!
This soldier/robot story is not about compassion--it is about ownership and wishing you could be back in the States workin' 40-square saving up for performance parts and modding your rod and attracting girls on Friday nights.
It's a Godforsaken Grease playing out in a hopeless situation. And of course the soldier brought the bot back on its last leg, or otherwise he'd have to drag ass out there and haul it back himself. Through a mine field.
Either that, or those bots perform much better in mine fields than Iraqis with sticks...
I wouldn't quit the job--I'd take another approach first.
Why not approach all first-level managers and state the facts. Let them allocate the licenses that are legitimate. Make the department heads decide how they will supply licenses to their users, or if they will try other products, such as Google's documents apps.
Turn up the heat on the manager who stonewalls. You might as well, because he will either force you to his will, or replace you with someone else. At least you leave having created a basis for his ouster.
Whatever action you choose, it is the IT Guy's responsibility.
Women's stilletto heels are made with steel spikes.
Have you ever been in a ground-floor office where the electric power was run over the concrete floor below the carpet, without trenching the concrete? And if you've worked in an office like this you know that women's high heels tend to drive that steel spike down into the material and cause an explosive short across the damp concrete.
Best not use your electric table cloth in the wrong kind of establishment. Spill a beer, go to jail!
You really have to have a discussion with the management. Take your stones to that meeting, you'll need them.
Here's the deal--if your company is caught doing the crime, it is your fingerprints on the keyboard, no matter how many written directives you have. You are complicit because you did the deed, AND you have a responsibility to your company to protect it from exposure to criminal activity.
I recommend that you not offer technical options. Instead, spend your time explaining how Microsoft tracks down dirty little license cheats, and how they enforce payment. Bring case studies of companies that are similar to yours that have lost a license fight. It is your job to make management understand the true risk and consequence of violating the law--don't assume they understand at all.
That's YOUR JOB, Mr. IT Guy. It comes with the territory, so suck it up and do your duty, or sure as shit, your job will be sent to India.
The bee disappearance suddenly began in America this year. It spread to Europe. But America and Eupope have both had cell phones for many years. If it was cell phones then wouldn't we have seen this effect progressively over time, instead of all of a sudden?
The key here is the use of cell phones, and perhaps there are so many ppl gabbing at length on their free minutes plans that the effect of radiation on the bees has reached the tipping point where enough befuddled bees fail to return that the entire hive collapses.
So, when it was just farmer John a few years ago in his field talking all day to adult phone services from the cab of his combine, now it he's lost his farm to a conglomerate that commands its corporate work force by cell, and whose families all gab all day very close to the cell towers that were erected near the fields just for that purpose.
If they can Africanize bees to survive the tropics, perhaps they can Finlandize bees to be immune to cell radiation.
Regardless of the merit of the theory (of which I am highly skeptical), it is not scientific. A theory can not be scientific. A theory is essentially an idea. it either precludes scientific work or is the result of it.
What's this? Muddy thinking about the scientific method?
A hypothesis is an idea. A theory is a hypothesis that has data to back it up. Scientific data.
As in data about honeybees and cell phone radiation, of which there is an apparent abundance.
As in, "We have measured radiation from cell towers and the reaction of honeybees to that radiation and have found evidence to support our hypothesis that cell radiation interferes with honeybee navigation, which is now our theory, our theory alone, and what it is, too."
Now, run along to your studies or I shall send Anne Elk to lecture you.
I miss that period of my life when I killed time playing video games and dreaming and thinking big thoughts.
I've discovered that my second childhood has come around just as the Wii has been delivered and life has never been better!
Are the old games better than today's? While there is no accounting for taste, be happy that all the oldies can be played on modern platforms, if you like. Makes it fun to host a retro party.
It seems to me that putting a logo on the product gives the attacker the advantage of being able to prepare an attack before even connecting the device. If the basis for the claim to a secure device is that the logo looks impressive enough to prevent theft, then the world would be a secure place, wouldn't it?
Now, if the stick were unmarked and the guy who stole it connected it, was challenged for a password in a manner consistent with other lightly protected devices, and then was surprised when it went up in smoke, then that would add a level of complexity, wouldn't it? At least you would have security by obscurity enough to foil the attacks by circumstance (you know, random theft drops the device into the hands of the curious).
Say, this product does go up in smoke, doesn't it? I mean, real thick Peter-Graves-class white smoke, not the greasy stinkbomb smoke typical of burnt electronics.
Well, anyway, I suppose if someone were intent on stealing from a government agency, they'd already know the type of products that agency had purchased, and would have the attack prepared before even stealing the items.
It's all for naught! Governments should delete all of their data every day, before going home.
I just spoke to a guy who knows a guy who has hands-on experience with iphone and he says the phone underperforms.
Guess that makes it an expensive, bloated video ipod...
Yes Yes John Dvorak is 100% right (about just about anything) and everyone is wrong. A Cassandra in the wilderness. Of course. Thanks for clearing that up.
I don't know if Dvorak is right, and YOU don't know if he is wrong, and I'm not willing to dismiss his reasoned opinion just because Steve Jobs showed us photos of a techie's wet dream.
Every time I hear an outsider attack a business plan without really knowing of anything about it, based solely on their own gut feelings about it I wonder why pundits have the clout that they do.
Dvorak is an outsider? No way! He's got a golden rolodex in the industry--THIS industry. How else do you think he is able to keep his franchise alive when so many other tech pundits are long gone? This is why you cannot simply dismiss his opinion--he has the knowledge and experience to put it in context.
There are for example, a million pre orders of iPhone thusfar. Even if 50% of those turn out to be real that's a $150 million business day one. Considering that cell phone companies are cutting their own throats with model differentiation to the point where few of them are actually making a profit (how many phones can you 'buy' for free?) maybe iPhone gets it right.
Day one is a given, assuming Apple can even ship those million units. And Apple ordered, what, 10 million units from its contract manufacturer? It's a drop in the bucket of the cell market. The amount of cash flowing in won't even cover development and rollout cost. Apple can only hope to make $ from iPhone by selling content to them--videos and music.
Dvorak wasn't talking about day one. It's days two through n that matter, and that was his point--that Apple isn't the kind of n-day company to do more than dabble in this market. One or two bloody noses and they'll drop out. All it takes is for the iPhone battery life to be less than acceptable. Or for its batteries to spark a fire.
So, yeah, Palm is trembling in its boots, and Palm commands what tiny percent of the cell market?
It was a rhetorical question which clearly zoomed right over your head.
Oh, geez. Another lazy/. cut-and-paste retort. Why do you even bother defending the original ad hominem attack?
The premise of the original post, rhetorical or not, is that only the CEOs of multibillion $ companies can have an opinion of Steve Jobs and his iPhone. Never mind that Dvorak has a 30+ year career as a published opinion leader in the tech field, his arguments are dismissed because of who he is.
The low-brow approach is something you concur with, no doubt. Although why you believe you have the bona fides to express your opinion about my response makes me think you lack the courage of your convictions.
Don't try, because you'll probably fail. If everyone thought like that, we wouldn't be where we are today.
No, what Dvorak is saying is that the cool little lab project with the sexy design should be sold to a fierce competitor already in the phone market. He's saying that Apple does not have what it takes to fight hard in a . And they don't! Apple is only too happy to suck hind teat in the personal computer market, satisfied with 5%, and unable to break out.
Look at Motorola--frequently complaining of losing money in the cell phone market. Do you think Apple would take that stance to try to dominate the market and make the iPhone profitable? Naw, they'll roll out the first iPhone, wonder why it didn't sell well, and be satisfied to call it quits.
Tech skills and loyalty count for nothing in retail. It's all sales, and not just trended sales. It is "how much did you sell today?"
Loyalty just means you've been around a long time and failed to make much more of yourself (you didn't move into management, so you are at a dead end).
Tech skills only get in the way of the sale, because either the customer knows the details (from the internet) or the customer will make the choice based on brand name and model color. Either way, talking tech delays getting $$$ to the cash register, and opens the door for arguing with the customer over esoterica.
Customers don't trust tech talk in a store, anyway, because they know that you will try to sell them only what you have available to sell, not what actually suits them. They know (and your boss knows) you won't refer them to a product your store doesn't sell.
So, Circuit City knows its customers and it knows its competition, and is making a shrewd business move. They know their sales ppl will find other retail jobs, and in 10 months come knocking on the door once more (assuming the doors are still open--perhaps Circuit City will shed some storefront property now.)
Another lazy/. youth... What's it take to google dvorak? Try "Dvorak NOT keyboard". Your ignorance of the man's work does not invalidate his opinion.
John Dvorak has been commenting on tech and markets for a long time and he's got bona fides. He watched Steve Jobs fail with the NeXT, the Newton, the Lisa, and fumfer with the Mac over the years.
On this one he's got a point--Apple better be ready to roll a new iphone every 6 months or less, because after they prove the market, the competition will be fierce.
Doubt me? Look at Palm's product offerings.
Actually, Dvorak's opinion on this one isn't even a stretch of the imagination. Most new technology product introductions fail, even the nice-looking ones.
If the debris was both in front of and behind the aircraft at the same time, and pilot Heisenberg was uncertain just where it was in the space/time continuum relative to his point of observation, then perhaps all planes should be fitted out with string theory calculators.
Or their weather report should be updated to include expected orbital re-entries.
About a decade ago I heard a song on college radio that featured a phone conversation between a guy who wanted to kill his wife, and the hired killer who had murdered his neighbor's wife by mistake, and the guy didn't want to pay the bill. I could have sworn the name of that song was "Don't hire a killer" or some such.
I have not heard that song since and I occasionally google for lyrics or titles, to discover the artist so I can find the song and hear it again. I've not been successful, and I'm sure I have left a long trail of incriminating searches.
Say, anyone out there got any pointers for finding this song?
People who live in a black & white world see no value in plea bargains. Or defense lawyers, for that matter.
And yet, plea bargains and settlements are quite common and useful. It is left to you to figure out how the standard of "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" squares with the inability of any human to have absolute knowledge of any event.
So, when India absconds with an orbiting satellite it is heralded as a positive event, and when the Chinese merely slam a rod into one, it's a very serious threat! Is this a recycling thing?
Oh, how the Pentagon will quake in its boots should China and India ever decide to blind the eyes above Asia.
Slashdot Mirror
Just before the turn of the century Declan McCullagh wrote articles about how Y2K would cause the end of the world as we know it. He was a regular part of the doom brood over at comp.software.year-2000, amplifying any minor negative aspect to Y2K he could find. You can find articles he wrote about his bias before researching the story.
Same Declan, same approach.
Interesting to see that he still amplifies government news items beyond reason. Too bad it's for CNET, though. They once held a certain cachet...
When I plaster my Ibanez with stickers, it becomes MY GUITAR, dude, no matter that it is identical to all the others. It is MINE!
This soldier/robot story is not about compassion--it is about ownership and wishing you could be back in the States workin' 40-square saving up for performance parts and modding your rod and attracting girls on Friday nights.
It's a Godforsaken Grease playing out in a hopeless situation. And of course the soldier brought the bot back on its last leg, or otherwise he'd have to drag ass out there and haul it back himself. Through a mine field.
Either that, or those bots perform much better in mine fields than Iraqis with sticks...
I wouldn't quit the job--I'd take another approach first.
Why not approach all first-level managers and state the facts. Let them allocate the licenses that are legitimate. Make the department heads decide how they will supply licenses to their users, or if they will try other products, such as Google's documents apps.
Turn up the heat on the manager who stonewalls. You might as well, because he will either force you to his will, or replace you with someone else. At least you leave having created a basis for his ouster.
Whatever action you choose, it is the IT Guy's responsibility.
Women's stilletto heels are made with steel spikes.
Have you ever been in a ground-floor office where the electric power was run over the concrete floor below the carpet, without trenching the concrete? And if you've worked in an office like this you know that women's high heels tend to drive that steel spike down into the material and cause an explosive short across the damp concrete.
Best not use your electric table cloth in the wrong kind of establishment. Spill a beer, go to jail!
You really have to have a discussion with the management. Take your stones to that meeting, you'll need them.
Here's the deal--if your company is caught doing the crime, it is your fingerprints on the keyboard, no matter how many written directives you have. You are complicit because you did the deed, AND you have a responsibility to your company to protect it from exposure to criminal activity.
I recommend that you not offer technical options. Instead, spend your time explaining how Microsoft tracks down dirty little license cheats, and how they enforce payment. Bring case studies of companies that are similar to yours that have lost a license fight. It is your job to make management understand the true risk and consequence of violating the law--don't assume they understand at all.
That's YOUR JOB, Mr. IT Guy. It comes with the territory, so suck it up and do your duty, or sure as shit, your job will be sent to India.
OH, I KNOW what you really want to do with that Wii Glove while you play the Leisure Suite Larry anthology...
Here's another thing you need to know:
They sometimes refill your cartridge with the wrong color.
I reckon they'll be clear-cutting them yew trees to get at that soil...
Before you go any further, have a look at this month's National Geographic. There is a photos by cell phone story.
So, when it was just farmer John a few years ago in his field talking all day to adult phone services from the cab of his combine, now it he's lost his farm to a conglomerate that commands its corporate work force by cell, and whose families all gab all day very close to the cell towers that were erected near the fields just for that purpose.
If they can Africanize bees to survive the tropics, perhaps they can Finlandize bees to be immune to cell radiation.
A hypothesis is an idea. A theory is a hypothesis that has data to back it up. Scientific data.
As in data about honeybees and cell phone radiation, of which there is an apparent abundance. As in, "We have measured radiation from cell towers and the reaction of honeybees to that radiation and have found evidence to support our hypothesis that cell radiation interferes with honeybee navigation, which is now our theory, our theory alone, and what it is, too."
Now, run along to your studies or I shall send Anne Elk to lecture you.
I miss that period of my life when I killed time playing video games and dreaming and thinking big thoughts.
I've discovered that my second childhood has come around just as the Wii has been delivered and life has never been better!
Are the old games better than today's? While there is no accounting for taste, be happy that all the oldies can be played on modern platforms, if you like. Makes it fun to host a retro party.
It seems to me that putting a logo on the product gives the attacker the advantage of being able to prepare an attack before even connecting the device. If the basis for the claim to a secure device is that the logo looks impressive enough to prevent theft, then the world would be a secure place, wouldn't it?
Now, if the stick were unmarked and the guy who stole it connected it, was challenged for a password in a manner consistent with other lightly protected devices, and then was surprised when it went up in smoke, then that would add a level of complexity, wouldn't it? At least you would have security by obscurity enough to foil the attacks by circumstance (you know, random theft drops the device into the hands of the curious).
Say, this product does go up in smoke, doesn't it? I mean, real thick Peter-Graves-class white smoke, not the greasy stinkbomb smoke typical of burnt electronics.
Well, anyway, I suppose if someone were intent on stealing from a government agency, they'd already know the type of products that agency had purchased, and would have the attack prepared before even stealing the items.
It's all for naught! Governments should delete all of their data every day, before going home.
Guess that makes it an expensive, bloated video ipod...
I don't know if Dvorak is right, and YOU don't know if he is wrong, and I'm not willing to dismiss his reasoned opinion just because Steve Jobs showed us photos of a techie's wet dream.Hope they get that phone working...
Dvorak is an outsider? No way! He's got a golden rolodex in the industry--THIS industry. How else do you think he is able to keep his franchise alive when so many other tech pundits are long gone? This is why you cannot simply dismiss his opinion--he has the knowledge and experience to put it in context.
Day one is a given, assuming Apple can even ship those million units. And Apple ordered, what, 10 million units from its contract manufacturer? It's a drop in the bucket of the cell market. The amount of cash flowing in won't even cover development and rollout cost. Apple can only hope to make $ from iPhone by selling content to them--videos and music.
Dvorak wasn't talking about day one. It's days two through n that matter, and that was his point--that Apple isn't the kind of n-day company to do more than dabble in this market. One or two bloody noses and they'll drop out. All it takes is for the iPhone battery life to be less than acceptable. Or for its batteries to spark a fire.
So, yeah, Palm is trembling in its boots, and Palm commands what tiny percent of the cell market?
The premise of the original post, rhetorical or not, is that only the CEOs of multibillion $ companies can have an opinion of Steve Jobs and his iPhone. Never mind that Dvorak has a 30+ year career as a published opinion leader in the tech field, his arguments are dismissed because of who he is.
The low-brow approach is something you concur with, no doubt. Although why you believe you have the bona fides to express your opinion about my response makes me think you lack the courage of your convictions.
No, what Dvorak is saying is that the cool little lab project with the sexy design should be sold to a fierce competitor already in the phone market. He's saying that Apple does not have what it takes to fight hard in a . And they don't! Apple is only too happy to suck hind teat in the personal computer market, satisfied with 5%, and unable to break out.
Look at Motorola--frequently complaining of losing money in the cell phone market. Do you think Apple would take that stance to try to dominate the market and make the iPhone profitable? Naw, they'll roll out the first iPhone, wonder why it didn't sell well, and be satisfied to call it quits.
I guess the kittens can relax, because Jobs hasn't sold a single phone.
And I bet more kittens will be put down by ppl than iPhones sold for any period of time you care to choose.
Tech skills and loyalty count for nothing in retail. It's all sales, and not just trended sales. It is "how much did you sell today?"
Loyalty just means you've been around a long time and failed to make much more of yourself (you didn't move into management, so you are at a dead end).
Tech skills only get in the way of the sale, because either the customer knows the details (from the internet) or the customer will make the choice based on brand name and model color. Either way, talking tech delays getting $$$ to the cash register, and opens the door for arguing with the customer over esoterica.
Customers don't trust tech talk in a store, anyway, because they know that you will try to sell them only what you have available to sell, not what actually suits them. They know (and your boss knows) you won't refer them to a product your store doesn't sell.
So, Circuit City knows its customers and it knows its competition, and is making a shrewd business move. They know their sales ppl will find other retail jobs, and in 10 months come knocking on the door once more (assuming the doors are still open--perhaps Circuit City will shed some storefront property now.)
If the debris was both in front of and behind the aircraft at the same time, and pilot Heisenberg was uncertain just where it was in the space/time continuum relative to his point of observation, then perhaps all planes should be fitted out with string theory calculators.
Or their weather report should be updated to include expected orbital re-entries.
About a decade ago I heard a song on college radio that featured a phone conversation between a guy who wanted to kill his wife, and the hired killer who had murdered his neighbor's wife by mistake, and the guy didn't want to pay the bill. I could have sworn the name of that song was "Don't hire a killer" or some such.
I have not heard that song since and I occasionally google for lyrics or titles, to discover the artist so I can find the song and hear it again. I've not been successful, and I'm sure I have left a long trail of incriminating searches.
Say, anyone out there got any pointers for finding this song?
People who live in a black & white world see no value in plea bargains. Or defense lawyers, for that matter.
And yet, plea bargains and settlements are quite common and useful. It is left to you to figure out how the standard of "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt" squares with the inability of any human to have absolute knowledge of any event.
As I recall, the average CIO has a tenure of 3 years.
They clearly are not in the same league as the CEO clan.
So, when India absconds with an orbiting satellite it is heralded as a positive event, and when the Chinese merely slam a rod into one, it's a very serious threat! Is this a recycling thing?
Oh, how the Pentagon will quake in its boots should China and India ever decide to blind the eyes above Asia.