The author of the article forgot to mention one thing: OS X has is based on Mach microkernel with a BSD layer on top of it. The latter provides a UNIX security model which is far better than what Windows has to offer because UNIX was designed with simple and efficent security principles in mind (access control and user administration are a part of the system, not an option in most of the cases).
UNIX haters complain that 'root' is way too poweful and that other users should be able to do privileged things too. Well, first of all, UNIX was designed as a multi-user system and secondly, please do 'man sudo.' The concept of breaking down users into groups and have one root to rule them all is one of the reasons why UNIX servers can be so secure with proper system administration. One of the key principles of UNIX security is the ability to manage users and restrict their access. Also, this feature is a part of the operating system, it is not optional.
Secondly, you must be pretty fucking smart to write a UNIX virus that can damage a system through an e-mail attachement. First of all, you need to learn the architecture of the different platform you try to exploit. Secondly, you must find a program that can be "stack smashed" and that runs under uid 0. Then you must create a trojan horse and let a user run it. Now, it is pretty hard to find a right combination of all these things. May be that is why I haven't seen a worm designed to exploit a UNIX OS via e-mail.
Panther has a security feather that can encrypt and decrypt a user's home directory on the fly. Does Windows offer that? I mean you have to be pretty fucking paranoid to do that to your $HOME, but the option is there.
I do not care about the rest of the article that explains some exploits that can be achieved if a hacker gets to my DHCP server. Panther has most of these settings disabled by default and if somebody gets into my DHCP server, I should be blamed and not the OS that has a potential of being exploited.
Seriously, what if somebody wants to be in charge of a software development team some day? What should that person do? Do you get a B.A. in English, work as a school teacher for several years and then become a VP of Development? I think not. I think that every decent development manager started to work as a software coding grunt. Without low-level jobs there will be no high level positions. Period.
I have not seen any recent Comp. Sci. graduates who can become managers right out of school. Most of them were hoping to get these 'low-level' coding jobs (not to be confused with positions related to assembly programming) and work their way up. Today we ship all these position abroad because somebody wants to make extra profit and get yet another personal jet. Tomorrow we will have to import (or outsource) project managers because nobody will be able to replace them.
I am one of the graduates who is struggling to find a job now and let me tell you one thing: it sucks to work at a liquor store while paying off $345 per month for the next fifteen years. Unlike the majority of dot-com born programmers, I knew that the salaries of the late nineties were inflated. I did not expect to earn $80K after college and something told me that VB and Access programmers did not deserve six digit pay checks. Most of these people were in IT because of the money, not because of their own passion. Now most of them have several years of experience and they compete with college grads like myself. The battle is hard, but I think that as long as I meet software engineers who do not know what threads are, I am going to win. (Yeah, you heard me right: I met a couple of mid-level "software engineers" who had zero knowledge about concepts like threads.)
Finally, the trend to move software development to other countries does not mean that our projects end up in the hands of highly trained professionals as many manages like to say. People of different trades and backgrounds will notice that software development is profitable because "you get to work for American corporations." Mark my words, in several years the rest of the world will experience what we have gone through during the late nineties. Many countries will face a surplus of barely skilled developers who ended up in IT because of the money.
Forget what commercials say: customer support is never a number one priority in any business. Companies would like you, customers, to think this way; the reality is quite different. I have heard many customer support representatives say that they could not spend longer than X amount of time per customer. Either that or be fired! See, businesses do not like customer service people who are friendly with customers and who can go an extra mile in order to provide a quality service. What any business wants is to make profit and remain profitable.
Sounds bizzare? You bet, and I was really surprised when my boss told me to stop "making friends with customers and spend less time assisting them." See, I work for a liquor store and we have a lot of people who are curious about different kids of wines, spirits, and beer. According to my boss, I should sell them any item, as long as the sale does not take a long time. Even if the item is not something that they are looking for, I have to sell it. Any other deal for a customer means more question and explanation on my side, therefore it is not profitable.
The bottom line, customer service reps are designed to bullshit people and get rid of them within the shortest time frame. Otherwise they are going to be fired. Now, given the fact that most customer service jobs are at the bottom of the corporate food ladder, it is not a surprise that you end up with barely quialified techical support representatives who cannot suggest any ideas that are not on the corporate script. I'd imagine that Dell has received so many calls about spyware, that they had to come up with a certain policy. True user support is the last thing that I expect from any company.
I may be off topic, but I think that we should start using a better technology (may be low-tech?) for file sharing in order to avoid a big clusterfuck that is about to explode. I have no doubt that RIAA wins a lot of cases because it has money, unlike many of the students it is trying to sue. Here is one example:
You and your friends download different stuff by using Bit Torrent. Then, you visit each other (or have a party) with external hard drives. Plug-and-play baby!
I have had an office, an "open space" desk and a cubicle. I love the office and the cubicle, but I truly hated my desk that was stuck in the middle of the floor. See, programming requires a lot of thinking, especially at the early stage of the development. Whenever I was writing something on a piece of paper or tried to concentrate on thinking, at least one person would stop by and ask something. Then there were certain managers who loved to get a progress report update everytime they went past my desk to get some coffee. Then there was a tech support dude (Level 1) talking on the phone for hours and hours a day.
Most of these people were doing their jobs and I had nothing against them; however, with time the unwanted interraction became a royal pain in the rear. I could cope with the tech support representative because he was was aware of his impact on the "free space" people. Unfortunately that was not true for a couple of women from the sales department...
On my opinion, the best way to improve efficiency is to have a relatively big office with several people whose job is related. I remember sharing an office with a dude from India. We got along pretty well and concentrated on our tasks while helping each other.
BestBuy is nothing but a shit hole. When the chain came to our area, I was happy to see it because Circuit City did not cut it for me. I hoped to see a better selection, lower prices and somewhat educated sales people. Yeah, right...
What we have here is a complete clusterfuck that is full of high school dropouts, stupid managers and anal security folks who check my bags everytime I come there. The prices are not as good as on PriceWatch and the service is poor. In fact, I am not going to purchase a single item from them after one of the sales people told my friend that a more expensive video card had a longer life span than the cheaper one (ATI 9800 was the cheaper card in this case).
I have to admit, their initial DVD collection was impressive compared to what their competitors had to offer. But it all changed after I got a high-speed internet connection.
For a good operating system, $129 is small price to pay because you get an excellent operating system that is user-friendly and stable at the same time. I am sorry, but Apple has the best GUI engineers that actually put a lot of time into usability testing (open any HCI book and you will see the reference to Apple's products here and there); combined with a solid backbone OS X is an excellent choice for everybody who wants the beauty (the interface) and the beast (UNIX) combined into one.
I used to be a big Linux fan, but that OS has become a pain in the rear due to inconsistency probelms between distributions and other misc. stuff that pissed me off on the daily basis. I switched to FreeBSD and I still use it on my servers; however, my primary desktop is a G4 running 10.3. Now I spend more time doing useful things rather than trying the interface to work. I will switch to any Open Source product that offers a clean and functional (from the user's point of view) GUI + precise guidelines for developers. Unfortunately, neither KDE nor GNOME can offer it at this point of time.
Also, I found out that my productivity increased after I switched to OS X because I do not have to spend hours on tweaking a desktop or trying to fight any of its features. Plus, $129 is a small price to pay for a piece of mind. My shoes are worth more than that and yet I change them on a yearly basis.
I wonder if not going along with Microsoft is going to be cost effective in a long run. I have several computers at home and opted to get a Mac for my main "office" computers. Although most of my development work has been done on FreeBSD, I found that some Open Source software is not at the level where I'd like it to be for everyday careless work.
Take office applications for example. When I was in college, I wrote most of my papers with Emacs and LaTex. However, it is complicated and definitely not for everybody. I tried using KWord, but after it crashed "on-save" several times, I quite using it. Do things like that bother me? Absolutely. Oh, then there is a big HCI (human-computer interaction) factor. As far as I am concerned, most Open Source GUIs that come with Linux boxes are very far from what I'd expect from a solid system and that can do some damage to productivity. Going all the way with Open Source may be a good money saver for now, but what will happen in the long run? I think we should opt for a mix of Open Source and commerical software for some time.
This is may be off topic, but I must ask, "What the fuck is going on?" Why are companies like Microsoft, Amazon, SCO, etc. are still around? This country gave them a chance to succeed and instead of giving something back they continue to screw their own customer base! Patents, outsourncing, security holes, buggy software, lawsuits on a daily basis... Now Microsoft is playing a role of a cookie monster. Isn't it enough? If I were the judge for this case, I'd throw this case out right away and threaten to sue MS back for stupidity and wasting court time. And if Microsoft does not like it, may be it should move to India.
Let me remind everybody about one little thing. Once you throw things out, like put them out in a trash can on the street, those things become a public good. It means that anybody who wishes to go through your garbage and get something out of it can do it without breaking any laws. I have started shredding most of my paper long time ago, and now I am careful about what I do on a regular basis. As for the guy in the article, there are a couple of things that you can do.
First of all, get a credit report and make sure that everything is okay. Secondly, you should call 1-888-5OPTOUT (as far as I remember). That is a number you call if you do not want any credit reporting agency to release the information about yourself. Currently, if you call them they will stop four major credit report companies from selling your information either for 2 years or permanently. You should see a decrease in junk email from credit card companies, banks, etc. Then put a sticker on your mailbox that says "No Junk Mail Please." A similar thing happened to me and after performing all these steps I am relatively clean of junk in my mailbox. Inbox is a totally different story.
I have tried to call the number several times and it seemed to be busy every time I dialed. My best guess is that tons of people are calling them at the same time.
The article is interesting, but misleading. See, I was unemployed for several weeks and I found the same benefits of having a butt load of free time. I started designing my own site, running, reading more physics books, etc. However, I could not do any of these things without thinking "How am I going to survive without money?" Also, I have learned a couple of things.
For example, I have found out that corporations do not give a damn about their employees when shit hits the fan. Businesses are good to you when they're doing well. If not, the owners will pocket the money and disappear faster than a prom dress. Moreover, I learned how to work the system.
Yes, even humans should go through a social evolution and learn how to survive. Please do not waste your time while you're unemployed and learn how to fight back. As for me, I learned some taxation laws. Specifically, how to write things off taxes, how benefit from college loans and mortgages. Additionally, I signed up for several college courses that I am going to attend for free! That is right, free education. It is very easy to do, especially when you're unemployed or have a small income. Next year I am going to go to UMass and because my last years W2 forms (and taxt returns) scream "This dude is broke!" I am going to get a full ride paid for by the state of Massachusetts. I am going to take a few business and English classes, mainly to improve my weak areas: economics and grammar. I am sure that the rest of you could learn something. Later.
A spaming scheme with a good return
on
Building Better Spam
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Here is what companies need to do if they wany any positive return from me:
1. Make sure that I want to read e-mail that contains ads. For example, take $10 off my net bill every month and I'll opt-in to receive some offers that interest me. Limit the qunatity of such offers to a reasonable number.
2. Make professional e-mail ads. Please no heavy graphics, javascript, foreign characters, random subject lines that read "!!!!!!! Women will beg for more!!!!!!!," etc. Also, make sure that the companies that you represent are responsible for what they sell.
3. Provide effective methods for cancelling the service. If I want to unsubscribe, I must be able to do so without clicking through thousands of pages and user agreements.
This method has worked for me in the past. I was shopping for a leather jacket last fall and my girlfriend signed up for notifications from J.Crew. She received an ad about a hidden online sale, I went to the site and purchased a leather jacket for a reasobly low price (it was cheaper than anywhere I shopped in the area). I had no problems doing it because I knew that it was from a legid company that offered me a good price on what I wanted to buy.
I have lived in several parts of the country and I have not experienced anything like what is going on in Boston right now. I just moved here and my phone is ringing off the hook every twenty-thirty minutes. Moreover, these telefuckers leave long messages on my answering machine. On average, I end up with 4 messages per day that say "Hi my name is such and such and I am with this organization. We have a promotion in your area and blah blah blah...."
Does it piss me off? Absolutely! First of all, I feel that my privacy is being violated on a constant basis, secondly I hardly doubt that telemarketers are going to win by saying that their business is free speech and can be protected by the First Amedment. The "do not call list" is set up on purpose for people, like myself, who do not want to be contacted. Stopping telemarketers from placing calls is like having a restraining order from a group of people, which is perfectly legal in this country.
Oh, before businesses start bitching about unemployment among telemarketers, I would like to hear a thing or two about IT jobs being shipped off-shore (and what can be done about it) by a boat load on a daily basis...
Wrong. Let's say that you do not have a land line and you put your cell phone number whenever you do business: banking accounts, credit cards, etc. Then, you are going to get unsolicited calls because when companies exchange information about their customers they are going to give out your primary phone number. When I had a cell phone in college, it was the only phone number under my name; thus I am still receving random calls once in a while. Of course the volume of such calls is lower than it used to be on my land line.
Let me guess, you must be one of those people who are jealous of the others who became rich due to inheritance. Well, first of all, the world is not fair. Learn how to deal with it. Secondly, believe it or not there are people who gained wealth due to legid everyday work. A friend of my family, for example, owned a construction business and when he passed away, his daughters inherited several houses that he had built along with the land, tools, trucks, etc. It was not their fault that thier dad built right things at the right time. Why do not you ask them how they feel after paying $400k in taxes for what was already in their family? Do they think its fair?
I am not really upset about all these CEOs earning a butt load of money if the economy is good and their companies are doing fine. However, when executives start to come up with insane salaries and benefits during the times of high unemployment and economical downturn... that is totally another story.
Take HP for example. The company has been in the toilet for a long while. It experienced layoffs and moved jobs to India. However, nothing stopped it from buying two Golfstream jets. Read here about it. Is it banged up or what? If they hired thousdands of American IT workers, started making profits and moved jobs from India, I would not bitch about it. Why bitch if they can afford the jets? Nowadays, the situation is different. American workers are overworked and we still consider medical benefits a luxury. It is really fucking nice to know that while thousands of qualified people are looking for jobs, there is a couple of people that can fly jets to work. Rock on, Mr. President.
Guys, telemarketing can be a lot of fun if you add some positive atmosphere to it. Just think of it, since the chances of meeting your friend on the other end of the line are pretty slim, you can get away with almost anything: dirty jokes, humiliation, etc. Whenever a telemarketer calls me, especially if the person has a thick foreign (Indian, most of the time) accent, I have fun. Here is how to do it:
a. Pretend to be somebody else, like an old person with a hearing problem or a recent immigrant who speaks poor English. Make the telemarketer re-read the offer and ask stupid questions: start with product related stuff and then move onto personal issues. For example, in the middle of conversation say "Wow, you know, you have a really sexy voice!" Works like a charm:)
b. If you have roommates, set up a plot. I remember when my roommate pretended to be an abusive husband and I played a role of a wife for unwanted calls. Whenever a telemarketer called us, we would be 'in the middle of a physical conflict.' "The husband" would swear at his wife and beat her (just slap your naked leg for the sound effect); the wife on the other turn would say things like "Stop beating me! I've had enough already" and then she would continue to talk about her personal problems to the telemarketer in between the beatings. Basically, use your imagination; most of the time the other party will hang up.
c. Put them on hold. This is by far the easiest one, unless you're expecting some other call. When you receive an unwanted call, tell them that you're in the middle of something that you must finish asap; therefore, offer them to stay on the line for a minute or so. Then go read a newspaper, drink a cup of tea. This may sound stupid, but this brings positive results: you keep telemarketers from calling other people through your personal sacrifice.
There is more stuff and it usually depends on who is calling and when. Sometimes when I have a bad day, I find telemarketers to be my stress relievers: I bitch and swear at them for several minutes. After hanging up I start feeling better right away.
Yesterday, a survey conducted by a group of civil engineers was released; turns out that USA is not #1 at all. USA's infrastracture received a D- and 75 percent of schools need structural adjustment. Then there are roads that can't handle the traffic, increasing amount of cars that further the pollution, etc. With this in mind, I think that having companies that pay for schools is a brilliant idea.
It does not have to be MS only, I am sure that Apple, IBM, HP, and Dell can do the same. A school does not have to be financed by only one company; instead multiple companies can chip in. What it if the United States uses this method of financing schools and pulic institution as a punishment for tax ivasion and some other white-collared crimes? I have always wanted to study in a school with a lot of high-tech toys; I guess my dream became reality for some kids and Philly. Keep up the good work, MS.
Good idea, but waste of time.
on
MIT Everyware
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· Score: 2
MIT is not the only school in the United States that has online notes. As a matter of fact, most of my classes had some sort of online reference avaliable. The key is that all these lectures notes are not intended to be the primary source of information. They are suppliments that help students to keep track of what has been studied throughout the semester. If you do not believe me, please go to the web site and read through some lecture notes. They represent typical outlines that help teachers in course organization; I really doubt that these notes have significant educational value unless you happen to be a student taking that particular class from the very same teacher.
This kind of online work helped me out big time when I missed classes and had to catch up with my work before the exams: from these class notes I knew what I had to study. However, I doubt that there is a person who can read these notes only and then test out of a course.
Slashdot Mirror
And read it too.
The author of the article forgot to mention one thing: OS X has is based on Mach microkernel with a BSD layer on top of it. The latter provides a UNIX security model which is far better than what Windows has to offer because UNIX was designed with simple and efficent security principles in mind (access control and user administration are a part of the system, not an option in most of the cases).
UNIX haters complain that 'root' is way too poweful and that other users should be able to do privileged things too. Well, first of all, UNIX was designed as a multi-user system and secondly, please do 'man sudo.' The concept of breaking down users into groups and have one root to rule them all is one of the reasons why UNIX servers can be so secure with proper system administration. One of the key principles of UNIX security is the ability to manage users and restrict their access. Also, this feature is a part of the operating system, it is not optional.
Secondly, you must be pretty fucking smart to write a UNIX virus that can damage a system through an e-mail attachement. First of all, you need to learn the architecture of the different platform you try to exploit. Secondly, you must find a program that can be "stack smashed" and that runs under uid 0. Then you must create a trojan horse and let a user run it. Now, it is pretty hard to find a right combination of all these things. May be that is why I haven't seen a worm designed to exploit a UNIX OS via e-mail.
Panther has a security feather that can encrypt and decrypt a user's home directory on the fly. Does Windows offer that? I mean you have to be pretty fucking paranoid to do that to your $HOME, but the option is there.
I do not care about the rest of the article that explains some exploits that can be achieved if a hacker gets to my DHCP server. Panther has most of these settings disabled by default and if somebody gets into my DHCP server, I should be blamed and not the OS that has a potential of being exploited.
Seriously, what if somebody wants to be in charge of a software development team some day? What should that person do? Do you get a B.A. in English, work as a school teacher for several years and then become a VP of Development? I think not. I think that every decent development manager started to work as a software coding grunt. Without low-level jobs there will be no high level positions. Period.
I have not seen any recent Comp. Sci. graduates who can become managers right out of school. Most of them were hoping to get these 'low-level' coding jobs (not to be confused with positions related to assembly programming) and work their way up. Today we ship all these position abroad because somebody wants to make extra profit and get yet another personal jet. Tomorrow we will have to import (or outsource) project managers because nobody will be able to replace them.
I am one of the graduates who is struggling to find a job now and let me tell you one thing: it sucks to work at a liquor store while paying off $345 per month for the next fifteen years. Unlike the majority of dot-com born programmers, I knew that the salaries of the late nineties were inflated. I did not expect to earn $80K after college and something told me that VB and Access programmers did not deserve six digit pay checks. Most of these people were in IT because of the money, not because of their own passion. Now most of them have several years of experience and they compete with college grads like myself. The battle is hard, but I think that as long as I meet software engineers who do not know what threads are, I am going to win. (Yeah, you heard me right: I met a couple of mid-level "software engineers" who had zero knowledge about concepts like threads.)Finally, the trend to move software development to other countries does not mean that our projects end up in the hands of highly trained professionals as many manages like to say. People of different trades and backgrounds will notice that software development is profitable because "you get to work for American corporations." Mark my words, in several years the rest of the world will experience what we have gone through during the late nineties. Many countries will face a surplus of barely skilled developers who ended up in IT because of the money.
Forget what commercials say: customer support is never a number one priority in any business. Companies would like you, customers, to think this way; the reality is quite different. I have heard many customer support representatives say that they could not spend longer than X amount of time per customer. Either that or be fired! See, businesses do not like customer service people who are friendly with customers and who can go an extra mile in order to provide a quality service. What any business wants is to make profit and remain profitable.
Sounds bizzare? You bet, and I was really surprised when my boss told me to stop "making friends with customers and spend less time assisting them." See, I work for a liquor store and we have a lot of people who are curious about different kids of wines, spirits, and beer. According to my boss, I should sell them any item, as long as the sale does not take a long time. Even if the item is not something that they are looking for, I have to sell it. Any other deal for a customer means more question and explanation on my side, therefore it is not profitable.
The bottom line, customer service reps are designed to bullshit people and get rid of them within the shortest time frame. Otherwise they are going to be fired. Now, given the fact that most customer service jobs are at the bottom of the corporate food ladder, it is not a surprise that you end up with barely quialified techical support representatives who cannot suggest any ideas that are not on the corporate script. I'd imagine that Dell has received so many calls about spyware, that they had to come up with a certain policy. True user support is the last thing that I expect from any company.
I have had an office, an "open space" desk and a cubicle. I love the office and the cubicle, but I truly hated my desk that was stuck in the middle of the floor. See, programming requires a lot of thinking, especially at the early stage of the development. Whenever I was writing something on a piece of paper or tried to concentrate on thinking, at least one person would stop by and ask something. Then there were certain managers who loved to get a progress report update everytime they went past my desk to get some coffee. Then there was a tech support dude (Level 1) talking on the phone for hours and hours a day.
Most of these people were doing their jobs and I had nothing against them; however, with time the unwanted interraction became a royal pain in the rear. I could cope with the tech support representative because he was was aware of his impact on the "free space" people. Unfortunately that was not true for a couple of women from the sales department...
On my opinion, the best way to improve efficiency is to have a relatively big office with several people whose job is related. I remember sharing an office with a dude from India. We got along pretty well and concentrated on our tasks while helping each other.
BestBuy is nothing but a shit hole. When the chain came to our area, I was happy to see it because Circuit City did not cut it for me. I hoped to see a better selection, lower prices and somewhat educated sales people. Yeah, right...
What we have here is a complete clusterfuck that is full of high school dropouts, stupid managers and anal security folks who check my bags everytime I come there. The prices are not as good as on PriceWatch and the service is poor. In fact, I am not going to purchase a single item from them after one of the sales people told my friend that a more expensive video card had a longer life span than the cheaper one (ATI 9800 was the cheaper card in this case).
I have to admit, their initial DVD collection was impressive compared to what their competitors had to offer. But it all changed after I got a high-speed internet connection.
For a good operating system, $129 is small price to pay because you get an excellent operating system that is user-friendly and stable at the same time. I am sorry, but Apple has the best GUI engineers that actually put a lot of time into usability testing (open any HCI book and you will see the reference to Apple's products here and there); combined with a solid backbone OS X is an excellent choice for everybody who wants the beauty (the interface) and the beast (UNIX) combined into one.
I used to be a big Linux fan, but that OS has become a pain in the rear due to inconsistency probelms between distributions and other misc. stuff that pissed me off on the daily basis. I switched to FreeBSD and I still use it on my servers; however, my primary desktop is a G4 running 10.3. Now I spend more time doing useful things rather than trying the interface to work. I will switch to any Open Source product that offers a clean and functional (from the user's point of view) GUI + precise guidelines for developers. Unfortunately, neither KDE nor GNOME can offer it at this point of time.
Also, I found out that my productivity increased after I switched to OS X because I do not have to spend hours on tweaking a desktop or trying to fight any of its features. Plus, $129 is a small price to pay for a piece of mind. My shoes are worth more than that and yet I change them on a yearly basis.
I have come up with a better definition at www.inboxlog.com. Let's see if they sue me.
I wonder if not going along with Microsoft is going to be cost effective in a long run. I have several computers at home and opted to get a Mac for my main "office" computers. Although most of my development work has been done on FreeBSD, I found that some Open Source software is not at the level where I'd like it to be for everyday careless work.
Take office applications for example. When I was in college, I wrote most of my papers with Emacs and LaTex. However, it is complicated and definitely not for everybody. I tried using KWord, but after it crashed "on-save" several times, I quite using it. Do things like that bother me? Absolutely. Oh, then there is a big HCI (human-computer interaction) factor. As far as I am concerned, most Open Source GUIs that come with Linux boxes are very far from what I'd expect from a solid system and that can do some damage to productivity. Going all the way with Open Source may be a good money saver for now, but what will happen in the long run? I think we should opt for a mix of Open Source and commerical software for some time.
Wow dude, I bet you drink!
This is may be off topic, but I must ask, "What the fuck is going on?" Why are companies like Microsoft, Amazon, SCO, etc. are still around? This country gave them a chance to succeed and instead of giving something back they continue to screw their own customer base! Patents, outsourncing, security holes, buggy software, lawsuits on a daily basis... Now Microsoft is playing a role of a cookie monster. Isn't it enough? If I were the judge for this case, I'd throw this case out right away and threaten to sue MS back for stupidity and wasting court time. And if Microsoft does not like it, may be it should move to India.
Let me remind everybody about one little thing. Once you throw things out, like put them out in a trash can on the street, those things become a public good. It means that anybody who wishes to go through your garbage and get something out of it can do it without breaking any laws. I have started shredding most of my paper long time ago, and now I am careful about what I do on a regular basis. As for the guy in the article, there are a couple of things that you can do.
First of all, get a credit report and make sure that everything is okay. Secondly, you should call 1-888-5OPTOUT (as far as I remember). That is a number you call if you do not want any credit reporting agency to release the information about yourself. Currently, if you call them they will stop four major credit report companies from selling your information either for 2 years or permanently. You should see a decrease in junk email from credit card companies, banks, etc. Then put a sticker on your mailbox that says "No Junk Mail Please." A similar thing happened to me and after performing all these steps I am relatively clean of junk in my mailbox. Inbox is a totally different story.
I have tried to call the number several times and it seemed to be busy every time I dialed. My best guess is that tons of people are calling them at the same time.
The article is interesting, but misleading. See, I was unemployed for several weeks and I found the same benefits of having a butt load of free time. I started designing my own site, running, reading more physics books, etc. However, I could not do any of these things without thinking "How am I going to survive without money?" Also, I have learned a couple of things.
For example, I have found out that corporations do not give a damn about their employees when shit hits the fan. Businesses are good to you when they're doing well. If not, the owners will pocket the money and disappear faster than a prom dress. Moreover, I learned how to work the system.
Yes, even humans should go through a social evolution and learn how to survive. Please do not waste your time while you're unemployed and learn how to fight back. As for me, I learned some taxation laws. Specifically, how to write things off taxes, how benefit from college loans and mortgages. Additionally, I signed up for several college courses that I am going to attend for free! That is right, free education. It is very easy to do, especially when you're unemployed or have a small income. Next year I am going to go to UMass and because my last years W2 forms (and taxt returns) scream "This dude is broke!" I am going to get a full ride paid for by the state of Massachusetts. I am going to take a few business and English classes, mainly to improve my weak areas: economics and grammar. I am sure that the rest of you could learn something. Later.
Here is what companies need to do if they wany any positive return from me:
1. Make sure that I want to read e-mail that contains ads. For example, take $10 off my net bill every month and I'll opt-in to receive some offers that interest me. Limit the qunatity of such offers to a reasonable number.
2. Make professional e-mail ads. Please no heavy graphics, javascript, foreign characters, random subject lines that read "!!!!!!! Women will beg for more!!!!!!!," etc. Also, make sure that the companies that you represent are responsible for what they sell.
3. Provide effective methods for cancelling the service. If I want to unsubscribe, I must be able to do so without clicking through thousands of pages and user agreements.
This method has worked for me in the past. I was shopping for a leather jacket last fall and my girlfriend signed up for notifications from J.Crew. She received an ad about a hidden online sale, I went to the site and purchased a leather jacket for a reasobly low price (it was cheaper than anywhere I shopped in the area). I had no problems doing it because I knew that it was from a legid company that offered me a good price on what I wanted to buy.
I have lived in several parts of the country and I have not experienced anything like what is going on in Boston right now. I just moved here and my phone is ringing off the hook every twenty-thirty minutes. Moreover, these telefuckers leave long messages on my answering machine. On average, I end up with 4 messages per day that say "Hi my name is such and such and I am with this organization. We have a promotion in your area and blah blah blah...."
Does it piss me off? Absolutely! First of all, I feel that my privacy is being violated on a constant basis, secondly I hardly doubt that telemarketers are going to win by saying that their business is free speech and can be protected by the First Amedment. The "do not call list" is set up on purpose for people, like myself, who do not want to be contacted. Stopping telemarketers from placing calls is like having a restraining order from a group of people, which is perfectly legal in this country.
Oh, before businesses start bitching about unemployment among telemarketers, I would like to hear a thing or two about IT jobs being shipped off-shore (and what can be done about it) by a boat load on a daily basis...
Wrong. Let's say that you do not have a land line and you put your cell phone number whenever you do business: banking accounts, credit cards, etc. Then, you are going to get unsolicited calls because when companies exchange information about their customers they are going to give out your primary phone number. When I had a cell phone in college, it was the only phone number under my name; thus I am still receving random calls once in a while. Of course the volume of such calls is lower than it used to be on my land line.
Let me guess, you must be one of those people who are jealous of the others who became rich due to inheritance. Well, first of all, the world is not fair. Learn how to deal with it. Secondly, believe it or not there are people who gained wealth due to legid everyday work. A friend of my family, for example, owned a construction business and when he passed away, his daughters inherited several houses that he had built along with the land, tools, trucks, etc. It was not their fault that thier dad built right things at the right time. Why do not you ask them how they feel after paying $400k in taxes for what was already in their family? Do they think its fair?
I am not really upset about all these CEOs earning a butt load of money if the economy is good and their companies are doing fine. However, when executives start to come up with insane salaries and benefits during the times of high unemployment and economical downturn... that is totally another story.
Take HP for example. The company has been in the toilet for a long while. It experienced layoffs and moved jobs to India. However, nothing stopped it from buying two Golfstream jets. Read here about it. Is it banged up or what? If they hired thousdands of American IT workers, started making profits and moved jobs from India, I would not bitch about it. Why bitch if they can afford the jets? Nowadays, the situation is different. American workers are overworked and we still consider medical benefits a luxury. It is really fucking nice to know that while thousands of qualified people are looking for jobs, there is a couple of people that can fly jets to work. Rock on, Mr. President.
First, how interesting how loudly programmers cry now when during the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs they said nothing.
Manufacturing began outsourcing in 1960s... what programmers are we talking about?
I do not have problems with it as long as we outsource management along with the other workforce at 1:1 ratio.
Guys, telemarketing can be a lot of fun if you add some positive atmosphere to it. Just think of it, since the chances of meeting your friend on the other end of the line are pretty slim, you can get away with almost anything: dirty jokes, humiliation, etc. Whenever a telemarketer calls me, especially if the person has a thick foreign (Indian, most of the time) accent, I have fun. Here is how to do it:
:)
a. Pretend to be somebody else, like an old person with a hearing problem or a recent immigrant who speaks poor English. Make the telemarketer re-read the offer and ask stupid questions: start with product related stuff and then move onto personal issues. For example, in the middle of conversation say "Wow, you know, you have a really sexy voice!" Works like a charm
b. If you have roommates, set up a plot. I remember when my roommate pretended to be an abusive husband and I played a role of a wife for unwanted calls. Whenever a telemarketer called us, we would be 'in the middle of a physical conflict.' "The husband" would swear at his wife and beat her (just slap your naked leg for the sound effect); the wife on the other turn would say things like "Stop beating me! I've had enough already" and then she would continue to talk about her personal problems to the telemarketer in between the beatings. Basically, use your imagination; most of the time the other party will hang up.
c. Put them on hold. This is by far the easiest one, unless you're expecting some other call. When you receive an unwanted call, tell them that you're in the middle of something that you must finish asap; therefore, offer them to stay on the line for a minute or so. Then go read a newspaper, drink a cup of tea. This may sound stupid, but this brings positive results: you keep telemarketers from calling other people through your personal sacrifice.
There is more stuff and it usually depends on who is calling and when. Sometimes when I have a bad day, I find telemarketers to be my stress relievers: I bitch and swear at them for several minutes. After hanging up I start feeling better right away.
Yesterday, a survey conducted by a group of civil engineers was released; turns out that USA is not #1 at all. USA's infrastracture received a D- and 75 percent of schools need structural adjustment. Then there are roads that can't handle the traffic, increasing amount of cars that further the pollution, etc. With this in mind, I think that having companies that pay for schools is a brilliant idea.
It does not have to be MS only, I am sure that Apple, IBM, HP, and Dell can do the same. A school does not have to be financed by only one company; instead multiple companies can chip in. What it if the United States uses this method of financing schools and pulic institution as a punishment for tax ivasion and some other white-collared crimes? I have always wanted to study in a school with a lot of high-tech toys; I guess my dream became reality for some kids and Philly. Keep up the good work, MS.
MIT is not the only school in the United States that has online notes. As a matter of fact, most of my classes had some sort of online reference avaliable. The key is that all these lectures notes are not intended to be the primary source of information. They are suppliments that help students to keep track of what has been studied throughout the semester. If you do not believe me, please go to the web site and read through some lecture notes. They represent typical outlines that help teachers in course organization; I really doubt that these notes have significant educational value unless you happen to be a student taking that particular class from the very same teacher.
This kind of online work helped me out big time when I missed classes and had to catch up with my work before the exams: from these class notes I knew what I had to study. However, I doubt that there is a person who can read these notes only and then test out of a course.