...for a good long time, methinks. I found this passage in the article at Electronics Times most interesting.
"The company's problems became apparent when its sales dropped for calendar 2000 to $239.2m from the previous year's $245.1m... The fall was blamed on a disasterous diversification away from Zilog's core microprocessor and microcontroller lines."
This really rings true for me. Zilog knew how to do microcontrollers very well indeed, and they were making good money at it. They still can, and I hope they still will even with the re-org.
Oh, and to the troll who posted earlier about "They're still pushing the Z80," and to those who wonder if anyone "still uses 8-bit microprocessors," it is painfully obvious that you're not hardware engineering folk. Otherwise, I doubt you would have even imagined making such narrow-minded comments.
Text messaging on phones. E-mail on phones. And now "video clips" on phones?
Do drivers really need another distraction on the road? I've lost count of how many idiots I've seen on our local freeways, phone seemingly surgically attached to their ear or hand, yakking away or trying to read an E-mail, utterly oblivious to the fact that they just cut off a busload of people moving near the speed limit.
I know that this stuff's going to happen no matter how I feel. The only thing I will say is pay attention to your LIFE and OTHERS on the road FIRST! Pull off if you need to fool with your phone, or get a good handsfree kit.
I feel sorry, though, for those who seem to fear the "Off" switch to the degree that they feel they can't live without getting everything on their portable phone...
I do feel sorry for all the users who will be left out in the cold on this one (at least until they find an alternate ISP), but one thing I will NOT miss from @Home's netspace is their large infestation of spammers.
As it stands now, about 5% of my 700+ line block file is made up of @Home's various IP ranges from all over the US, and some in Canada as well. I will be happy to be able to trim that back a bit.
This, of course, assumes that @Home doesn't find a buyer by midnight.
http://www.stargateinc.com -- I moved to them after Domain Bank started spamming me. I've found Stargate to be very inexpensive ($8.85/domain), and they have a full-blown web-based configuration section where domain owners can make whatever changes they want at any time.
As for the service, Stargate really does make NSI look like the sick joke they've become. When I had some minor trouble assigning two new domain names I'd registered to my own DNS boxes, I simply dropped a note to Stargate's tech support. The problem was promptly fixed in less than 24 hours, and I had a courteous and informative response to show for it.
Whatever registrar you select, let THEM take care of the transfer paperwork for you. SG did an outstanding job here as well.
FWIW: I wouldn't go with Dotster. They support spammers. Avoid register.com as well -- big-time spam support, despite their ToS.
Dang it... That's what I get for trying to type intelligent feedback after a 12+ hour day with minimal sleep the night before...
Fine... I screwed up. Let me rephrase. Seeing 'Nightmare Before Christmas' made me swear off (and at!) TIM BURTON'S movies permanently.
I still don't like the ending of "Time Bandits." And I'm still glad that Janet Rowling didn't let Terry Gilliam near her creation(s).
How's that?
You're overlooking something...
on
Concept PC 2001
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Any sort of RF-based wireless hardware bears a much greater risk of interfering with, or getting interference from, ham radio equipment, cordless phones, and other RF devices nearby.
Given this, wireless accessories make a lot less sense if you're also an amateur radio op, especially if you're operating on the UHF and microwave bands required for things like satcomm and moonbounce/EME communications.
The endless hype surrounding wireless devices really makes me wonder how long it's going to be before someone starts playing with their RF-based wireless keyboard, and their typing ends up on their neighbor's PC or something equally annoying.
If Terry Gilliam had directed the film, I would have avoided it like the plague (my mate and I are going to see it next weekend).
Why? Simple enough. Terry Gilliam does a fine job of directing except for one fatal flaw: The endings of his films all stink! In "Time Bandits," the kid's parents get blown away, and the film ends. In "Nightmare Before Christmas," the FX and animation were wonderful -- but the ending left me with the feeling that I'd been ripped off where the admission cost was concerned.
And 'Brazil?' Criminys, don't even get me started. You'd have to be drunk, high, or both to even follow that abomination, and even then you'd probably need a copy of the script nearby. No, Terry Gilliam would have been absolutely the worst possible choice to direct movies made from Rowling's works.
I'm not saying that every movie needs to have a nice, happy ending. I'd settle for an ending where the lead character(s) experience some sort of growth or life-changing experience. Unfortunately, Gilliam seems to think that every one of his movies should end with someone getting blown up, or losing someone very close to them, or something equally rotten.
Seeing "Nightmare Before Christmas" made me swear off (and at) Gilliam's films permanently, and I know I can't be the only one who feels that way. Given Gilliam's touch, "Harry Potter" would probably have ended with the school getting blown up by a series of well-intentioned spells, or some similar idiocy.
Thank God Janet Rowling had more sense than to let him direct!
Airborne Express is cheaper than FedEx for any sort of overnight or 2-day (at least from what I've found), and I've never had service problems with them.
UPS is on-again, off-again. I've had widely variant results.
If you're going to ship ANY sort of electronic equipment, computers included, your best bet is to get it professionally packaged with Foam-in-Place (FIP) packaging. What this process does is create custom-molded polyurethane foam blocks all around your equipment.
The stuff is incredibly tough if it's done right. Impacts to the outside of the box are completely absorbed by the foam, and punctures or penetrations go into the foam barrier without ever getting near the equipment packed inside.
Yes, FiP is pricier than standard stuff, and it's harder to find a packing place that will do it (the equipment is fairly expensive), but it's just about the best protection you can get outside of a custom-built enviro-sealed wood crate.
Sorry to hear about your hardware. Good luck getting UPS to cough up what it sounds like they owe you.
Yes, and register.com are spammers as well. Contrary to their advertised policies, they don't do a bloody thing about spammer domain registrations, and they have been known to spam their own registrants.
And you honestly think I'd trust them to do any sort of DNS right?
For many years, I was a PC tech/support guy. Well, let me rephrase that: Since at least the early 90's, I've been a frustrated electronics engineering tech masquerading as a computer/network support guy. I didn't realize that I really wanted to go the EE-T route, complete with 4-year degree, until I turned 37, but that's another story.
One day, I suddenly realized that I was completely, utterly, burned out on maintaining PC's, and wiping the collective noses of the computing-skill challenged (ha!) crowd that tends to use them.
I had been, at home, developing and polishing my *nix skills by putting together a small server farm to provide our 'net presence. My goal was to be entirely self-hosted, dependent on our ISP only for a pipeline and some static addresses.
Finally, I started hunting for an internal transfer (Boeing is big enough that you can do that) into the Unix admin side. Took about two months of digging, but I finally found a slot that was a good match. I've been a Unix admin ever since, and I'm just completing a course in PERL scripting today.
The moral of the story: Get a broadband connection (preferably DSL), gain as much skill with *nix as you can on the side by making your own 'net presence, and USE that accomplishment on your resume and in the interview! Would-be bosses seem to be impressed if you go through the effort and learning curve required to set up your own server farm. There's plenty of surplus hardware available dirt-cheap, and NetBSD and all kinds of apps are available free for the downloading.
My long-term goal is still to dump computing support and go into avionics mod/refit, but that's a different story.;-)
Granted, most stations are pretty good about putting it in the lower right of the screen, but every so often it covers a detail that I want to catch. SciFi Channel, USA, TBS, etc., have been doing it for years, and I'd love to see the practice stop.
If anyone finds out about a concerted effort in the States to get rid of the silly things, please say so. Thanks!
So we're supposed to believe that DOS is dead just because some magazine says so?
Sorry, gang... There are STILL things you can do simpler, easier, and quicker in DOS than you can with any version of Windoze. Specialized areas such as electronic test/measurement equipment control (via GPIB or serial), some embedded devices, and simple go/no-go peripheral testing on legacy hardware are all areas where DOS will still find a good home. Outside of early minicomputer OS's, DOS is still one of the few OS's that can easily run in less than a meg of RAM.
Don't like MS-DOS? No problem. See http://www.drdos.com. And that doesn't even touch on the availability of Lord only knows how many copies of MS-DOS made it to the surplus arena, and are often available for $5 or less.
I don't care what Byte or any of the other trade journals are blabbing about. DOS still has a warm place in my lab, and I suspect those of a lot of other companies and end users as well.
...Especially considering the theory that dolphins and other cetaceans may communicate by means of sonic holography.
Could make things interesting if, say, a blue whale misinterprets part of the transmitted message from a sub as an invitation to mate. Let's see the boat's skipper explain THAT one to Pearl Harbor! (or wherever).
First off, just to stay on-thread, yes, I think Dell should replace the laptop AND redesign the hinges.
To continue: This problem is not by any means limited to computer hardware. I'm seeing it rampant throughout the electronics field, particularly in test equipment. Example: About two years ago, Tektronix made one of the stupidest decisions ever: They discontinued their entire line of analog oscilloscopes.
Anyone who's been into EE for any length of time will be the first to tell you that digital o-scopes, by their very nature, have inherent limitations that make them unsuitable for some tasks, and that these same tasks will be better served by using an analog 'scope. Tektronix, though, doesn't seem to agree with this.
To make matters worse, Tek, like HP (I -loathe- their new name of "Agilent"), now drops ALL support -- even down to tech manuals! -- for any of their hardware that's over ten years old.
I can understand dropping some spare parts and such, but MANUALS? The most important information needed to keep a useful device alive? Tektronix used to have a whole fleet of the best frelling hardware engineers and technical writers on the planet, and this quality showed in their stuff, all the time.
Now, though, you're lucky if you get even a simple cal procedure in one of their "service" manuals, let alone anything really useful like schematics or parts lists.
Anyway... a friend of mine and I were talking about this a few nights back, and our thought is that Tek, HP, and other test gear makers do this because they know darn good and well that the older stuff is often much better built than their newer hardware, and they don't want the old stuff competing with their new offerings.
My response is simple: Build the new stuff to be just as good as the old, and you won't have a problem. But no, it cuts into their short-term profits.
Dell is no different. Having had personal (and unfortunate) experience with the flimsy notebook systems they're turning out these days, I'm not in the least surprised they're balking at supporting their new lemons.
Good luck with your fight. I know it's not much help, but you've got plenty of company!
Normally, I agree with them. I was among those cheering EFF on in their defense of Skylarov (sp?), and I've watched them tackle a number of other "cyber-liberties" cases that made me think "yep, good work."
I speak now, though, as a SysAdmin of my own domain. I run all my own servers - DNS, FTP, web, mail, the works - and I'll be switched if I'm going to let some moron spew their unwanted advertising into my mail systems just because they think they have a right to. The MAPS RSS has helped me greatly in keeping spammers out of our network, and I'm not about to stop using them just because the EFF is whining about their methods.
The EFF says:
"The rights of users to send and receive email must not be compromised for quick and dirty ways to limit unsolicited bulk email..."
That may be true. HOWEVER: The EFF forgot to add to it that "the rights of server/network owners and SysAdmins to determine what traffic they choose to carry, and which hosts they decline to peer with, must not be compromised for any reason."
Spammers and the EFF appear to have forgotten that the issue with bulk E-mail is NOT ABOUT CONTENT. I repeat, it is NOT ABOUT CONTENT. It IS about CONSENT. 'Consent' as in 'permission.' Advance and informed permission, from the owner of any given E-mail box, that says "OK, I want to receive ads and special offers. Send them to me!"
In short: I don't care what's being sent, whether it's a request for a legitimate charity or the sleaziest porno ad imaginable. If I, or my users, didn't ASK, in ADVANCE, to receive it I will take whatever steps I feel are necessary to block said traffic out of my mail system or router, whichever is appropriate.
Rep. Chris Smith, some years ago, tried to get a very good piece of legislation going (I don't recall the number of the bill at the moment) that would have extended the existing Junk FAX law to cover spam as well. Said legislation, unfortunately, died due in part to the efforts of the EFF. As an active spam-fighter, I can't ever forget that.
The EFF said that they were concerned about the constitutionality of the proposed legislation. Well, guess what? The anti-Junk FAX law passed the constitutionality test. I don't see why extending it to be anti-Junk E-mail would have done any worse. The exact same private-property rights are involved, something that spammers (and the EFF, apparently) seem to have no interest in recognizing.
So, in summary, that's why I'm saying, in this particular case: EFF, screw off!
If this is the kind of "settlement" they reached, then they're spammers. Period. I'll be placing Experian's ENTIRE IP range into my domain's 'Deny' list immediately, and they can rot in there for all I care.
I would imagine that many other SysAdmins, once this news breaks on news.admin.net-abuse.email, will do so as well. I think Experian may well wish, later on, that they had never bullied out this kind of deal. They're going to find it a heck of a lot harder to get out of several thousand local blacklists than they ever would to get out of one.
I'm sorry that Exodus's iminent demise/re-org/whatever is probably going to put a bunch of people on the street, job-wise.
I'm not sorry that one of the biggest havens for spammers on the face of the 'net is about to go flooey. I've got huge chunks of Exodus IP space in my domain's local 'Deny' list due to Exodus doing bupkis about their spammy customers. I wonder if I will soon be able to clean some of that out...?
You're missing some critical points: First, Apache is open-source. Yes, the crackers have access to it, but so does every single end user and Apache developer. How long do you think any Apache security hole would go unfixed?
Next point: Psychology. The Redmond Empire is greatly despised, often with good reason, by Lord only knows how many programmers and would-be crackers. Also, M$ is a Very Large Corporation, while the Apache foundation is microscopic in comparison. Large corporations have become something of a symbol of uncontrolled greed and (in many cases) environmental destruction.
Crackers, in many case, crave some sort of recognition for their work. Given that, plus all the above, you tell ME which package you think will be a more likely target no matter how many sites adopt Apache.
In any case, Apache would, I think, still turn up with far fewer holes per version than anything the Redmond Empire has cranked out to date, web server wise.
My take: There are WAY too many web sites on the air today that are so crammed with graphics, Java applets, ActiveX crap, and whizzy animations that the useful information (if any in many cases) is lost to the visual and audible noise. When I'm looking for product information, I want a clear photo of the product, a clear and concise list of features AND SPECIFICATIONS, and perhaps some comparisons on how it stacks up against its competition.
I neither want nor need animated fonts, flashing colors, or crappy electronic "music." If you can't say what you need to say with plain ASCII text, and maybe a photo or two, then no amount of Shockwave animations or fancy electronic noise is going to help you get your message across. In fact, it may have the opposite effect: It may well drive people AWAY from your site.
The bottom line: Maybe switching away from IIS would be of benefit in the area of cleaning up a great deal of electronic noise, as it would give the web developer(s) in question reason to re-write the site in question.
Very tough indeed. I disagree with the implication from other posters that the fact that you could bring nerf toys in (and use them, yes) was the cause of the company's downfall. No job should be "sterile" per se... it's critical that there -always- be room for some small amount of humor or fun.
Anyway... I'm kind of in the same situation, if a little more stable with my current employer. By hobby, training, and natural interests, I'm a hardware hack. Always have been, always will be. I'm far more comfortable with a soldering iron in one hand and an oscilloscope probe in the other than I'll ever be with a keyboard and display in front of me.
My problem is that all the "interesting" (to me, anyway) jobs in engineering, specifically avionics, require a four-year degree. So, I spend my days as a (somewhat) frustrated engineering tech masquerading as a Unix SysAdmin, and going to school at night towards my degree. Before that, I was a PC support guy. Before that, I was in datacomm and networking. Do we see a pattern here?
The bottom line, I think, is that you need to know for sure what you're interested in, and then work towards it in any way you can. Sometimes, it can take years before you know, beyond any shadow of doubt, what you want to be doing. Heck, I didn't realize I really wanted engineering until I turned 37!
My favorite projects involve avionic systems modification/refit. This is the process of taking older hardware, seeing what it does, and updating it to make it better or more efficient. My biggest fear is that there may not be too many positions left doing this by the time I graduate (about 2005 or so at the current rate, earlier if I can push myself).
But you know what? I'm going to do it anyway, no matter WHAT the industry does! Never, EVER believe you're "over the hill" to do what you really want in life!! That's a great way to lock yourself into a tailspin.
The bottom line? Don't worry so much about whether a job is "fun." Find an occupation YOU think is fun, and push for it with everything you've got.
Oh... almost forgot. Get your ham radio license, too. That's always fun.;-)
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...for a good long time, methinks. I found this passage in the article at Electronics Times most interesting.
"The company's problems became apparent when its sales dropped for calendar 2000 to $239.2m from the previous year's $245.1m... The fall was blamed on a disasterous diversification away from Zilog's core microprocessor and microcontroller lines."
This really rings true for me. Zilog knew how to do microcontrollers very well indeed, and they were making good money at it. They still can, and I hope they still will even with the re-org.
Oh, and to the troll who posted earlier about "They're still pushing the Z80," and to those who wonder if anyone "still uses 8-bit microprocessors," it is painfully obvious that you're not hardware engineering folk. Otherwise, I doubt you would have even imagined making such narrow-minded comments.
Text messaging on phones. E-mail on phones. And now "video clips" on phones?
Do drivers really need another distraction on the road? I've lost count of how many idiots I've seen on our local freeways, phone seemingly surgically attached to their ear or hand, yakking away or trying to read an E-mail, utterly oblivious to the fact that they just cut off a busload of people moving near the speed limit.
I know that this stuff's going to happen no matter how I feel. The only thing I will say is pay attention to your LIFE and OTHERS on the road FIRST! Pull off if you need to fool with your phone, or get a good handsfree kit.
I feel sorry, though, for those who seem to fear the "Off" switch to the degree that they feel they can't live without getting everything on their portable phone...
I do feel sorry for all the users who will be left out in the cold on this one (at least until they find an alternate ISP), but one thing I will NOT miss from @Home's netspace is their large infestation of spammers.
As it stands now, about 5% of my 700+ line block file is made up of @Home's various IP ranges from all over the US, and some in Canada as well. I will be happy to be able to trim that back a bit.
This, of course, assumes that @Home doesn't find a buyer by midnight.
Keep the peace(es).
Oh yeah? Well, Steve Ballmer has no ideas, and just steals everyone else's technical sense!
;-)
How's THAT for a space-waster opinion?
So 'Andromeda' is "the last bastion of scifi for people with half a brain?"
If that really is/was ever true, it certainly bodes ill for the current state of SF&F, and its future. Heinlein help us all...
Oh, BTW... LONG LIVE FARSCAPE!!!
Well, nobody's perfect. ;-)
Drop a note to Stargate's support address and let them know about it. They'll fix it post-haste.
http://www.stargateinc.com -- I moved to them after Domain Bank started spamming me. I've found Stargate to be very inexpensive ($8.85/domain), and they have a full-blown web-based configuration section where domain owners can make whatever changes they want at any time.
As for the service, Stargate really does make NSI look like the sick joke they've become. When I had some minor trouble assigning two new domain names I'd registered to my own DNS boxes, I simply dropped a note to Stargate's tech support. The problem was promptly fixed in less than 24 hours, and I had a courteous and informative response to show for it.
Whatever registrar you select, let THEM take care of the transfer paperwork for you. SG did an outstanding job here as well.
FWIW: I wouldn't go with Dotster. They support spammers. Avoid register.com as well -- big-time spam support, despite their ToS.
Good hunting.
Dang it... That's what I get for trying to type intelligent feedback after a 12+ hour day with minimal sleep the night before...
Fine... I screwed up. Let me rephrase. Seeing 'Nightmare Before Christmas' made me swear off (and at!) TIM BURTON'S movies permanently.
I still don't like the ending of "Time Bandits." And I'm still glad that Janet Rowling didn't let Terry Gilliam near her creation(s).
How's that?
Any sort of RF-based wireless hardware bears a much greater risk of interfering with, or getting interference from, ham radio equipment, cordless phones, and other RF devices nearby.
Given this, wireless accessories make a lot less sense if you're also an amateur radio op, especially if you're operating on the UHF and microwave bands required for things like satcomm and moonbounce/EME communications.
The endless hype surrounding wireless devices really makes me wonder how long it's going to be before someone starts playing with their RF-based wireless keyboard, and their typing ends up on their neighbor's PC or something equally annoying.
If Terry Gilliam had directed the film, I would have avoided it like the plague (my mate and I are going to see it next weekend).
Why? Simple enough. Terry Gilliam does a fine job of directing except for one fatal flaw: The endings of his films all stink! In "Time Bandits," the kid's parents get blown away, and the film ends. In "Nightmare Before Christmas," the FX and animation were wonderful -- but the ending left me with the feeling that I'd been ripped off where the admission cost was concerned.
And 'Brazil?' Criminys, don't even get me started. You'd have to be drunk, high, or both to even follow that abomination, and even then you'd probably need a copy of the script nearby. No, Terry Gilliam would have been absolutely the worst possible choice to direct movies made from Rowling's works.
I'm not saying that every movie needs to have a nice, happy ending. I'd settle for an ending where the lead character(s) experience some sort of growth or life-changing experience. Unfortunately, Gilliam seems to think that every one of his movies should end with someone getting blown up, or losing someone very close to them, or something equally rotten.
Seeing "Nightmare Before Christmas" made me swear off (and at) Gilliam's films permanently, and I know I can't be the only one who feels that way. Given Gilliam's touch, "Harry Potter" would probably have ended with the school getting blown up by a series of well-intentioned spells, or some similar idiocy.
Thank God Janet Rowling had more sense than to let him direct!
Airborne Express is cheaper than FedEx for any sort of overnight or 2-day (at least from what I've found), and I've never had service problems with them.
UPS is on-again, off-again. I've had widely variant results.
If you're going to ship ANY sort of electronic equipment, computers included, your best bet is to get it professionally packaged with Foam-in-Place (FIP) packaging. What this process does is create custom-molded polyurethane foam blocks all around your equipment.
The stuff is incredibly tough if it's done right. Impacts to the outside of the box are completely absorbed by the foam, and punctures or penetrations go into the foam barrier without ever getting near the equipment packed inside.
Yes, FiP is pricier than standard stuff, and it's harder to find a packing place that will do it (the equipment is fairly expensive), but it's just about the best protection you can get outside of a custom-built enviro-sealed wood crate.
Sorry to hear about your hardware. Good luck getting UPS to cough up what it sounds like they owe you.
Yes, and register.com are spammers as well. Contrary to their advertised policies, they don't do a bloody thing about spammer domain registrations, and they have been known to spam their own registrants.
And you honestly think I'd trust them to do any sort of DNS right?
Sheesh...
The elephants. You forgot the elephants. Terry Pratchett would be most displeased.
Get it wrong again, and I'll alert the Ankh-Morpork militia.
...and it just turned into a full-time career.
;-)
For many years, I was a PC tech/support guy. Well, let me rephrase that: Since at least the early 90's, I've been a frustrated electronics engineering tech masquerading as a computer/network support guy. I didn't realize that I really wanted to go the EE-T route, complete with 4-year degree, until I turned 37, but that's another story.
One day, I suddenly realized that I was completely, utterly, burned out on maintaining PC's, and wiping the collective noses of the computing-skill challenged (ha!) crowd that tends to use them.
I had been, at home, developing and polishing my *nix skills by putting together a small server farm to provide our 'net presence. My goal was to be entirely self-hosted, dependent on our ISP only for a pipeline and some static addresses.
Finally, I started hunting for an internal transfer (Boeing is big enough that you can do that) into the Unix admin side. Took about two months of digging, but I finally found a slot that was a good match. I've been a Unix admin ever since, and I'm just completing a course in PERL scripting today.
The moral of the story: Get a broadband connection (preferably DSL), gain as much skill with *nix as you can on the side by making your own 'net presence, and USE that accomplishment on your resume and in the interview! Would-be bosses seem to be impressed if you go through the effort and learning curve required to set up your own server farm. There's plenty of surplus hardware available dirt-cheap, and NetBSD and all kinds of apps are available free for the downloading.
My long-term goal is still to dump computing support and go into avionics mod/refit, but that's a different story.
Good hunting.
Granted, most stations are pretty good about putting it in the lower right of the screen, but every so often it covers a detail that I want to catch. SciFi Channel, USA, TBS, etc., have been doing it for years, and I'd love to see the practice stop.
If anyone finds out about a concerted effort in the States to get rid of the silly things, please say so. Thanks!
So we're supposed to believe that DOS is dead just because some magazine says so?
Sorry, gang... There are STILL things you can do simpler, easier, and quicker in DOS than you can with any version of Windoze. Specialized areas such as electronic test/measurement equipment control (via GPIB or serial), some embedded devices, and simple go/no-go peripheral testing on legacy hardware are all areas where DOS will still find a good home. Outside of early minicomputer OS's, DOS is still one of the few OS's that can easily run in less than a meg of RAM.
Don't like MS-DOS? No problem. See http://www.drdos.com. And that doesn't even touch on the availability of Lord only knows how many copies of MS-DOS made it to the surplus arena, and are often available for $5 or less.
I don't care what Byte or any of the other trade journals are blabbing about. DOS still has a warm place in my lab, and I suspect those of a lot of other companies and end users as well.
...Especially considering the theory that dolphins and other cetaceans may communicate by means of sonic holography.
Could make things interesting if, say, a blue whale misinterprets part of the transmitted message from a sub as an invitation to mate. Let's see the boat's skipper explain THAT one to Pearl Harbor! (or wherever).
First off, just to stay on-thread, yes, I think Dell should replace the laptop AND redesign the hinges.
To continue: This problem is not by any means limited to computer hardware. I'm seeing it rampant throughout the electronics field, particularly in test equipment. Example: About two years ago, Tektronix made one of the stupidest decisions ever: They discontinued their entire line of analog oscilloscopes.
Anyone who's been into EE for any length of time will be the first to tell you that digital o-scopes, by their very nature, have inherent limitations that make them unsuitable for some tasks, and that these same tasks will be better served by using an analog 'scope. Tektronix, though, doesn't seem to agree with this.
To make matters worse, Tek, like HP (I -loathe- their new name of "Agilent"), now drops ALL support -- even down to tech manuals! -- for any of their hardware that's over ten years old.
I can understand dropping some spare parts and such, but MANUALS? The most important information needed to keep a useful device alive? Tektronix used to have a whole fleet of the best frelling hardware engineers and technical writers on the planet, and this quality showed in their stuff, all the time.
Now, though, you're lucky if you get even a simple cal procedure in one of their "service" manuals, let alone anything really useful like schematics or parts lists.
Anyway... a friend of mine and I were talking about this a few nights back, and our thought is that Tek, HP, and other test gear makers do this because they know darn good and well that the older stuff is often much better built than their newer hardware, and they don't want the old stuff competing with their new offerings.
My response is simple: Build the new stuff to be just as good as the old, and you won't have a problem. But no, it cuts into their short-term profits.
Dell is no different. Having had personal (and unfortunate) experience with the flimsy notebook systems they're turning out these days, I'm not in the least surprised they're balking at supporting their new lemons.
Good luck with your fight. I know it's not much help, but you've got plenty of company!
Normally, I agree with them. I was among those cheering EFF on in their defense of Skylarov (sp?), and I've watched them tackle a number of other "cyber-liberties" cases that made me think "yep, good work."
I speak now, though, as a SysAdmin of my own domain. I run all my own servers - DNS, FTP, web, mail, the works - and I'll be switched if I'm going to let some moron spew their unwanted advertising into my mail systems just because they think they have a right to. The MAPS RSS has helped me greatly in keeping spammers out of our network, and I'm not about to stop using them just because the EFF is whining about their methods.
The EFF says:
"The rights of users to send and receive email must not be compromised for quick and dirty ways to limit unsolicited bulk email..."
That may be true. HOWEVER: The EFF forgot to add to it that "the rights of server/network owners and SysAdmins to determine what traffic they choose to carry, and which hosts they decline to peer with, must not be compromised for any reason."
Spammers and the EFF appear to have forgotten that the issue with bulk E-mail is NOT ABOUT CONTENT. I repeat, it is NOT ABOUT CONTENT. It IS about CONSENT. 'Consent' as in 'permission.' Advance and informed permission, from the owner of any given E-mail box, that says "OK, I want to receive ads and special offers. Send them to me!"
In short: I don't care what's being sent, whether it's a request for a legitimate charity or the sleaziest porno ad imaginable. If I, or my users, didn't ASK, in ADVANCE, to receive it I will take whatever steps I feel are necessary to block said traffic out of my mail system or router, whichever is appropriate.
Rep. Chris Smith, some years ago, tried to get a very good piece of legislation going (I don't recall the number of the bill at the moment) that would have extended the existing Junk FAX law to cover spam as well. Said legislation, unfortunately, died due in part to the efforts of the EFF. As an active spam-fighter, I can't ever forget that.
The EFF said that they were concerned about the constitutionality of the proposed legislation. Well, guess what? The anti-Junk FAX law passed the constitutionality test. I don't see why extending it to be anti-Junk E-mail would have done any worse. The exact same private-property rights are involved, something that spammers (and the EFF, apparently) seem to have no interest in recognizing.
So, in summary, that's why I'm saying, in this particular case: EFF, screw off!
If this is the kind of "settlement" they reached, then they're spammers. Period. I'll be placing Experian's ENTIRE IP range into my domain's 'Deny' list immediately, and they can rot in there for all I care.
I would imagine that many other SysAdmins, once this news breaks on news.admin.net-abuse.email, will do so as well. I think Experian may well wish, later on, that they had never bullied out this kind of deal. They're going to find it a heck of a lot harder to get out of several thousand local blacklists than they ever would to get out of one.
Experian, you're a bunch of spamming jerks.
Boy... Cow farmers won't EVER run out of power! Talk about 24/7/365... ;-)
I'm sorry that Exodus's iminent demise/re-org/whatever is probably going to put a bunch of people on the street, job-wise.
I'm not sorry that one of the biggest havens for spammers on the face of the 'net is about to go flooey. I've got huge chunks of Exodus IP space in my domain's local 'Deny' list due to Exodus doing bupkis about their spammy customers. I wonder if I will soon be able to clean some of that out...?
You're missing some critical points: First, Apache is open-source. Yes, the crackers have access to it, but so does every single end user and Apache developer. How long do you think any Apache security hole would go unfixed?
Next point: Psychology. The Redmond Empire is greatly despised, often with good reason, by Lord only knows how many programmers and would-be crackers. Also, M$ is a Very Large Corporation, while the Apache foundation is microscopic in comparison. Large corporations have become something of a symbol of uncontrolled greed and (in many cases) environmental destruction.
Crackers, in many case, crave some sort of recognition for their work. Given that, plus all the above, you tell ME which package you think will be a more likely target no matter how many sites adopt Apache.
In any case, Apache would, I think, still turn up with far fewer holes per version than anything the Redmond Empire has cranked out to date, web server wise.
My take: There are WAY too many web sites on the air today that are so crammed with graphics, Java applets, ActiveX crap, and whizzy animations that the useful information (if any in many cases) is lost to the visual and audible noise. When I'm looking for product information, I want a clear photo of the product, a clear and concise list of features AND SPECIFICATIONS, and perhaps some comparisons on how it stacks up against its competition.
I neither want nor need animated fonts, flashing colors, or crappy electronic "music." If you can't say what you need to say with plain ASCII text, and maybe a photo or two, then no amount of Shockwave animations or fancy electronic noise is going to help you get your message across. In fact, it may have the opposite effect: It may well drive people AWAY from your site.
The bottom line: Maybe switching away from IIS would be of benefit in the area of cleaning up a great deal of electronic noise, as it would give the web developer(s) in question reason to re-write the site in question.
Very tough indeed. I disagree with the implication from other posters that the fact that you could bring nerf toys in (and use them, yes) was the cause of the company's downfall. No job should be "sterile" per se... it's critical that there -always- be room for some small amount of humor or fun.
;-)
Anyway... I'm kind of in the same situation, if a little more stable with my current employer. By hobby, training, and natural interests, I'm a hardware hack. Always have been, always will be. I'm far more comfortable with a soldering iron in one hand and an oscilloscope probe in the other than I'll ever be with a keyboard and display in front of me.
My problem is that all the "interesting" (to me, anyway) jobs in engineering, specifically avionics, require a four-year degree. So, I spend my days as a (somewhat) frustrated engineering tech masquerading as a Unix SysAdmin, and going to school at night towards my degree. Before that, I was a PC support guy. Before that, I was in datacomm and networking. Do we see a pattern here?
The bottom line, I think, is that you need to know for sure what you're interested in, and then work towards it in any way you can. Sometimes, it can take years before you know, beyond any shadow of doubt, what you want to be doing. Heck, I didn't realize I really wanted engineering until I turned 37!
My favorite projects involve avionic systems modification/refit. This is the process of taking older hardware, seeing what it does, and updating it to make it better or more efficient. My biggest fear is that there may not be too many positions left doing this by the time I graduate (about 2005 or so at the current rate, earlier if I can push myself).
But you know what? I'm going to do it anyway, no matter WHAT the industry does! Never, EVER believe you're "over the hill" to do what you really want in life!! That's a great way to lock yourself into a tailspin.
The bottom line? Don't worry so much about whether a job is "fun." Find an occupation YOU think is fun, and push for it with everything you've got.
Oh... almost forgot. Get your ham radio license, too. That's always fun.
Good hunting.