advertisers don't have the right to make truly horrible ads (like every car or shampoo ad ever) and force them down our throats.
You have it half right: They have the right (free speech) to make their commercial as uninteresting as they want, but you also have the right to not watch the commercial.
I gladly would...If I had that option. There ARE no big&tall shops in my neighborhood besides other branches of this outfit. I was also in a situation (lost luggage) where I had to have some clean shirts right away, and didn't really have an option...If I was at home, I wouldn't have needed clothes since I had plenty more in the closet.
I do plan on dropping a phone call into the district supervisor of the store, though. I've never been told this at other locations, and indeed have returned items without hassle or inconvenience, and without giving them my phone number.
You could always just tell them, "No". I always did.
So what? Most people are in the habit of doing what they're told. Your average person isn't aware that their information is being sold without their knowledge. Many people would object if they thought about it, but it's easier to reply than to consider the ramifications.
And even if they do care enough to say "no, thanks" to the telemarketing harassment and direct marketing, the latest trend is to punish "non-disclosers."
Case in point: I bought some shirts at a Casual Male store that was sort of far from my house. I've bought stuff at other locations without problems, always had a good experience, never got any grief about keeping personal info private.
When I give this salesman whom I've never met before my stock response (ie: A politely stated "Sorry, I don't give it out") he tells me that this is okay, but that I won't be allowed to return my shirts if I should decide to because I'm not giving out my phone number and address.
I am also amused that they were able to pick people at random from their friends, and say "Tell us a windows PC horror story" and then that somehow equalled a series of TV commercials...
In the U.S., a cable television franchise is awarded by a community's cable television board. Find out who is on the board, make them aware of the issue, your stance, and some logical reasons supporting your stance.
You want to keep caps out of your town? Do it! Cable board members represent a vote that can be used to take away the cable franchise in a community and award it to somebody else. (Not immediately, but they can choose not to renew next time around...)
If you need action taken against your cable company, this is often the best way to go about it: They may not care if you take your $45/month to a competitor, but they wlil care if somebody who has a vote on whether or not they can do business in your municipality brings it to their attention.
It's funny how interested the cable company gets in everybody being satisfied when you've got a board member on your side. If your complaint is reasonable and logical, chances are you can find somebody from the board to help.
On the other had there are very good reasons to oppose the line-tem veto. It hands way to much power over legislation to the executive branch. There needs to be a mechanism that at least puts a roadblock or two to stop abuse of the ammendment process BUT that mechanism should be found in the legislative not the executive branch.
Our system of government is based on the concept of checks and balances: The three branches policing each other. Congress policing itself is both improbable (since the current membership has proven itself for sale to the highest bidder) and not consistent with our theory of government (since by definition, a system of checks and balances assumes that no branch can police itself.)
I agree that adding JUST the line-item veto would upset the constitutional apple cart, but that's only because you're adding a power to one branch without putting a check on it in another branch.
Which is why I propose this solution:
1) Give the President the line-item veto and ALSO 2) Allow congress to over-ride that line-item veto with the 2/3 majority that they can already use to over-ride a presidential veto of a whole bill.
This seems to achieve what we want:
- Power doesn't get over concentrated in just one branch of government. - Everytime some piece of crap gets attached to a bill to study the mating habits of deep-sea slugs there is a chance AFTER it hits the news and before it becomes law to keep from paying for it. - We get lower taxes and have more money to spend on our own families' needs, and tertiary benefits could include a stronger economy, which is something many of the readers of this sight (myself included) are desperate for.
Defining "success" as a reduction in tax-money spent on special-interest pork, could this work? It's true, the president could only cut pork from the other party, but I postulate that any pork reduced is a "good thing."
Why is the article posting the FULL names including street adresses... This would be highly illegal in most of the rest of the world.
I don't think it's illegal here, but it is very rare to see that. I imagine the author of that piece will get slapped around for doing it, but maybe not. Who knows, this may be the norm for that community.
No sir! Many newspapers print identifying information about the person besides their name. The purpose is to make sure your reader understands which John Smith you're talking about. In larger cities (like Chicago) they usually say "John Smith of the 3700 block of Main Street" rather than "John Smith of 3751 Main street", just because you worry about psycho vigilantes in the big city.
This has been the case ever since the first guy with a generic name sued a newspaper for accusing him of horrible crimes he didn't commit. Example...
"John Smith was arrested today and charged with killing and eating several puppies."
In any town of more than a couple hundred, there will be many John Smiths. One of the John Smiths who didn't get arrested for eating puppies decides this article defames his character and good name and he decides to sue for damages. Actually, this isn't hypothetical: It has already happened, and the defamed person won.
is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high."
You could buy a PowerBook G4 like I have...The kid was so amazed that I Didn't have a Windows PC, he actually asked me if my Mac was compatible with TCP/IP! His Macintosh knowledge was SO out of date he thought it was only capable of Appletalk...
Anyway, I gave him a crash course in networking macs via TCP/IP, and at the end I had made another convert...
Me: "Okay, so you go into System Preferences, click this drop-down menu, select "Ethernet adapter", click DHCP, and click Apply Now. That's it." Him: "Don't you have to restart the machine?" Me: "Nope." Him: "Wow, that's 100 times easier than what I have to do for a PC!"
Correct me if I'm wrong (i.e. correct me, I don't know what I'm talking about) but do radio stations pay to broadcast music?
I'd always assumed that the transmission of the songs was free, in that the songs had to get airplay to get into the charts - if no-one had heard them then no-one would know about them to buy them. I was actually under the impression that occasionally (and non-legitimately?) stations were payed to give more airtime to new music to this end.
Radio stations do have to pay royalties to broadcast music. They pay ASCAP and BMI fees which, while not exactly "cheap", aren't so high as to bankrupt the stations, as the webcaster fees were explicitly designed to.
As for your other question, about broadcasters being paid to play records... There are two ways it happens.
Payola = Surreptitiously accepting money to play a record without telling anybody. Patently illegal, and dangerous to a company's holding of a broadcast license. But, luckily, thanks to some creative lawyering, you don't have to do it illegally anymore, thanks to...
"Music promotion contracts" = Currently used by Clear Channel and other broadcasters to charge labels to get airplay. Sleazy, but technically legal. (In some cities they can also add clauses to rope artists into playing concerts at Clear Channel venues...) Disgusting? Yes. Illegal? It should be, but isn't.
After all, the whole reason payola was made illegal in the first place was that stations technically exist to broadcast programs "in the public interest." When you're accepting bribes from third parties to alter your programming, you are no longer acting in the public interest, you're acting in the best interests of the record label. (In my opinion, of course.)
Is a very good public speaker, but you should resist the urge to put him in a play. He will take the director literally and "break a leg" the day of the show.
It must be late in the month--we've got another "OS X running on Intel is the only way for Apple to survive" story. Also, somebody point out that to this guy that the reason Apple machines "just work" is that they use a small set of heavily tested hardware. They don't have to support every piece of crap under the sun...
Such a move on Apple's part would complicate matters significantly. Consider that if hardware devices would STILL need mac specific drivers to meet whatever "hardware security" apple uses to make their machines proprietary--Meaning much hardware STILL won't function with OS X, whether it's on top of Intel or a PowerPC proc from Motorola or IBM.
My favorite uninformed reader was this guy:
Ian Crooks, operations engineer at Pennsylvania-American Water Co., declares: "I for one would switch tomorrow if they would release a [Pentium] machine."
This guy doesn't understand the term "switch." If he starts off running an Intel PC, and buys an "Intel mac" what has he really changed? Still using the same ancient hardware architecture kludged on top of a 32-bit chip sucking more juice that an a electric battleship.
"The content you are accessing requires an additional level of security. In order to play it, you will need to update your Digital Rights Management Installation.
"When you click OK, Windows Media Player sends a unique identifier for your computer to a Microsoft service on the Internet. Click learn more to find out how the Microsoft service protects your licenses, files, and your privacy."
I think this language is very deceptive. By claiming to "protect you" and by claiming they are enabling "additional security", they're implying that you will receive some sort of benefit. What benefit is that, exactly?
Say you've recorded bought CDs using WMP, and you decide before upgrading to XP you'll do a clean install, so you back up your music files, vape the disk and then do the install. You did back up your licences as well, didn't you? Oh dear...
This giant PITA scenario illustrates why DRM without force of law is destined to fail: Any solution that requires an end user to think along the lines of an IT department in order to work will not be acecpted by Joe Blow or his family.
Joe isn't going to get the concept of "digital certificates" that allow him to play his media files, and won't remember to backup his licenses.
Instead of starting over, re-ripping everything again (hopefully not in WMA) they're going to look for a way around it, and his 10 year old will know where to download the player software that breaks it, and the port to block to keep it from tattling to Microsoft.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that this does suck but it isn't the end of the world. What we need to concentrate on is defeating the laws that will ban non DRM media players.
As long as we can access non-DRM media players, we are still free. I for one think we should continue to fight like hell to stay that way.
Never again will I listen to the wife when it comes to buying a printer. I wanted a black and white laser with a network connector. She was like "but that is expensive when you could get this one"...
Uhm, unless your wife knows more about computers than you, why'd you take her advice in the first place? Every female I've ever been involved with sees only the price tag on things they don't understand. (ie. Your laser printer that works with linux.)
I don't give my lady unsolicited "how to's" regarding what she does best, and likewise I don't appreciate unsolicited advice from her on how to do what I do best.
Yes, I take her advice on how to run my business (she's an MBA) but no, I don't take her advice on setting up squid...
Nope. I've used the product many times, and was just reporting to the individual in question that it was (among other things) an IRC client that handled aliaees...
Favorite quote from the story, respondent John Lyon explaining to Tim O'Reilly why he hates Windows 2000:
I'm not pleased that MS seems to rearrange where all the admin tools are from NT4 to NT5 to NT5.1. Active Directory is crap. It makes NDS seem like child's play. Or maybe I'm really dense about the DNS server.
Yeah, I'm a recovering MCSE and the only reason I can see to move tools around is to drive revenue in the training division.
My other Win2k gripe relating to Active Directory is that, by design, you HAVE to use their goofy-ass DNS server. Further, said DNS server must be on the domain controller.
Why in the world does DNS have to be on the same box as the domain controller? I mean, if you're running a huge enterprise, having iron to do both functions simultaneously and also buy a redundant box that gets expensive. Tell me how much Dell stock Gates owns, anyway?
Finally, there were some capabilities that just don't exist on the Mac right now. I like using GAIM [sourceforge.net] for instant messaging because I can create aliases for my friends and don't have to remember screen names. I couldn't find a program for Mac that let me alias screennames. You may think it's silly, but because I use IM for work it's important for me to have a person's name handy.
No, what's silly is that you didn't find Fire, which is a multi-protocol chat client that lets you (big drum roll) enter aliases for gobbledygook screen names on IRC. I have never been a big IRC fan, but according to Epicware, Fire supports IRC just fine, and has the aliasing feature you wanted.
Moral of the story really is to ask experienced Mac users before you assume something "can't" be done with the mac and do something drastic like sell it/throw it out the window. A good start is the forum at MacAddict.com. If that particular site doesn't turn you on, you can google for literally thousands of Macintosh discussion bulletin boards. Maybe your friend will sell the Mac back to you?
It seems like it would be a good idea to implement this as distributed honeypots instead of one on ISP's network. Otherwise, what would stop the RIAA attack drones/bots from just blacklisting the blacklist and ignoring the honeypot.
By throwing them curveballs. Expire DHCP on these machines every two hours... Write a script that changes the hostnames on the machines after each DHCP renewal... Give the honeypot machines "customer block" ips... If the RIAA wants to just ignore your entire customer IP block, they can avoid attacking your honeypots and thus exposing themselves to your blacklist.
BUT... By doing so they'd be de facto "allowing" an entire ISP to "pirate" (their term, not mine) as much music as they want. So, of course, their superiors would never let that come to pass.
Of course, if they tried to track everybody via MAC addresses, you'd have to do a little creative kung-fu... But spoofing a MAC address can't be that hard: My $100 linksys router does it just fine, so I imagine the equipment available at this ISP can easily handle the task.
2) who do I bitch-slap at the FCC for this insanity?
Nobody at the FCC...You bitch-slap the unelected President of the United States for installing his big-business cronies into the FCC to make sure that "industry-friendly" (read: anti-Consumer) rules make it through without all that pesky congressional debate.
Michael Powell seems exclusively interested in taking more rights away from citizens...If he had been around during LPFM, we wouldn't HAVE LPFM...
They have your e-mail address. OH NO! You are now part of their evil plan to get your e-mail address and allow you to view their content. Those monsters! While I admit it might be annoying, its not criminal, and it's certainly more generous than many other pay sites. Get OFF it people and try to be original.
I agree 100% Not in all cases mind you, but I have no objection to giving this particular site my email. So far I have had zero emails from NY Times that weren't requested (ie I reinstalled my browser and forgot my spaghetti-goobledygook password.)
But you (as a whole) wanted them to come working in the US, you have to deal with the consequences...
[stuff removed]
You have also to keep in mind that the US wanted these workers to come. They came, they worked, they paid taxes, now they bother you.
Wrong, but thanks for playing...
I have no beef with the H1-B people that are already here. They do not bother me. Please stop putting words in my mouth. I'm only opposed to bringing EVEN more workers into an already flooded market. (As you also seem to be.)
Also, I think its disingenuous to imply that because the US government approved of it that the citizens of the US "wanted" it. Far from it. Many workers who said "there is no tech boom" all along knew H1-B was a way for the corporations to reclaim power over their employees. After all, a wealthy employee in a strong job market is one you can't bully into taking on quadruple the work for no corresponding increase in salary. You can't arbitrarily take away benefits from somebody who has a thriving job market to choose from. What to do? The same thing the railroads did in the 1800s...Import tons of cheap labor, treat them like slaves, and if they get in the way, kick them out of the country.
If anything, H1-B is the ultimate corporate flim-flam.... They can import cheap labor to depress wages for those "greedy Americans who need to be put int heir place", enjoy those people for a few years, and then send them home before they can become permanent residents or citizens. It's vitally important to the corporations that H1-B holders NOT become citizens or permanent residents, though: If they could, the corporation would no longer have the option of "sending them back" if they quit.
First, at its peak, they allowed 200,000 H1-Bs in the country, before that and after that, it was more around 60K. The US population is like 288,000,000 people [census.gov] so we're talking here less than 1% of the US population.
Your math is correct, but your logic is flawed. The statistic of 1% is only meaningful if all 288 million of us are tech workers, and we aren't.
According to this the number of "tech" and computer workers (defined as Computer engineers, programmers, DBA, and support analysts by this particular government subcommittee) is around 2.5 million. (Or it was in 1998...)
Now, if you plug those ~300,000 H1-Bs in, we see this is almost 12% of the IT workforce, certainly a significant enough number to depress wages.
If the americans originally hadn't acted the way they did and did not (even now) ask ludicrous salaries, the company would still be employing a majority of americans...
If by "ludicrous salary" you mean "Allows me to pay all my bills" then, yes, I am looking for a ludicrous salary.
Since my layoff, recruiters and potential employers are all talking about salary cuts--some as large as 50%!--if I'm to have any hope of finding a job. Somehow, I have to cover a $43k set of bills with $24k-34k.
My house is for sale right now for exactly this reason...All the positions I'm looking at are posting up for significantly less than I'm used to getting--and I'm not one of these overpaid six-figure salary people. Even if I get re-employed tomorrow, chances are I can't afford my house, food, and student loans for the (tops) $34,000 being offered as a "competitive" salary. Something has to give, and Uncle Sam isn't in the mood to forgive my college debts just yet.
One recruiter came out and said it like this: While they can't legally REPLACE American's in the same position with an H1-B, what they can do is eliminate the position and create a new one with a different title but essentially the same responsibilities. Unethical as hell, but easy enough to get away with. End result?
Tech workers who made $40-45k last year and got laid off are competing for jobs with guys who will do it for $22,500 just so they can get into the country.
Which leads to this question: Do the benefits to the company engaging in this unethical practice outweigh (dollars only, no moral judgement...yet) the damage done to the economy by the decrease in buying power for Americans (and the H1-B's lack of buying power to start with based on his slave salary?)
When conceived, H1-B was a good idea. At the time, there was a perceived shortage in the marketplace which led to positions that went unfilled due to lack of qualified applicants. Having a project not get finished because you couldn't find somebody to do the work in time (and thus, it can't be sold to make a profit) can kill a company just as fast as paying $200k per year for your developers and $75k for helpdesk people. But that was then.
Now positions are filled before they're announced, if they're even announced. The ones that are getting advertised are for people with 10 years Windows 95 experience, and 20 years of Java. Nowadays, we don't need more tech workers, we honestly (right now) need less.
I'm definitely in favor of a drastic reduction in the number of NEW H1-B visas issued. We don't need any more new high-skilled non-citizens depressing wages and taking jobs that would otherwise go to an out-of-work American. Don't think of it as "protectionism" or "racism", because its neither of those things. Its like a bus. There's a fixed number of seats. Once those seats are full, the driver can't let any more passengers on.
Well, sorry folks, this bus is full. You'll have to wait for the next one.
Slashdot Mirror
You have it half right: They have the right (free speech) to make their commercial as uninteresting as they want, but you also have the right to not watch the commercial.
I gladly would...If I had that option. There ARE no big&tall shops in my neighborhood besides other branches of this outfit. I was also in a situation (lost luggage) where I had to have some clean shirts right away, and didn't really have an option...If I was at home, I wouldn't have needed clothes since I had plenty more in the closet.
I do plan on dropping a phone call into the district supervisor of the store, though. I've never been told this at other locations, and indeed have returned items without hassle or inconvenience, and without giving them my phone number.
And even if they do care enough to say "no, thanks" to the telemarketing harassment and direct marketing, the latest trend is to punish "non-disclosers."
Case in point: I bought some shirts at a Casual Male store that was sort of far from my house. I've bought stuff at other locations without problems, always had a good experience, never got any grief about keeping personal info private.
When I give this salesman whom I've never met before my stock response (ie: A politely stated "Sorry, I don't give it out") he tells me that this is okay, but that I won't be allowed to return my shirts if I should decide to because I'm not giving out my phone number and address.
Really, really not cool.
...That they weren't real switchers.
I am also amused that they were able to pick people at random from their friends, and say "Tell us a windows PC horror story" and then that somehow equalled a series of TV commercials...
What does that tell you?
In the U.S., a cable television franchise is awarded by a community's cable television board. Find out who is on the board, make them aware of the issue, your stance, and some logical reasons supporting your stance.
You want to keep caps out of your town? Do it! Cable board members represent a vote that can be used to take away the cable franchise in a community and award it to somebody else. (Not immediately, but they can choose not to renew next time around...)
If you need action taken against your cable company, this is often the best way to go about it: They may not care if you take your $45/month to a competitor, but they wlil care if somebody who has a vote on whether or not they can do business in your municipality brings it to their attention.
It's funny how interested the cable company gets in everybody being satisfied when you've got a board member on your side. If your complaint is reasonable and logical, chances are you can find somebody from the board to help.
Ooops.
Our system of government is based on the concept of checks and balances: The three branches policing each other. Congress policing itself is both improbable (since the current membership has proven itself for sale to the highest bidder) and not consistent with our theory of government (since by definition, a system of checks and balances assumes that no branch can police itself.)
I agree that adding JUST the line-item veto would upset the constitutional apple cart, but that's only because you're adding a power to one branch without putting a check on it in another branch.
Which is why I propose this solution:
1) Give the President the line-item veto and ALSO
2) Allow congress to over-ride that line-item veto with the 2/3 majority that they can already use to over-ride a presidential veto of a whole bill.
This seems to achieve what we want:
- Power doesn't get over concentrated in just one branch of government.
- Everytime some piece of crap gets attached to a bill to study the mating habits of deep-sea slugs there is a chance AFTER it hits the news and before it becomes law to keep from paying for it.
- We get lower taxes and have more money to spend on our own families' needs, and tertiary benefits could include a stronger economy, which is something many of the readers of this sight (myself included) are desperate for.
Defining "success" as a reduction in tax-money spent on special-interest pork, could this work? It's true, the president could only cut pork from the other party, but I postulate that any pork reduced is a "good thing."
Comments?
Last time I checked John Conyers was from Georgia...
No sir! Many newspapers print identifying information about the person besides their name. The purpose is to make sure your reader understands which John Smith you're talking about. In larger cities (like Chicago) they usually say "John Smith of the 3700 block of Main Street" rather than "John Smith of 3751 Main street", just because you worry about psycho vigilantes in the big city.
This has been the case ever since the first guy with a generic name sued a newspaper for accusing him of horrible crimes he didn't commit. Example...
"John Smith was arrested today and charged with killing and eating several puppies."
In any town of more than a couple hundred, there will be many John Smiths. One of the John Smiths who didn't get arrested for eating puppies decides this article defames his character and good name and he decides to sue for damages. Actually, this isn't hypothetical: It has already happened, and the defamed person won.
You could buy a PowerBook G4 like I have...The kid was so amazed that I Didn't have a Windows PC, he actually asked me if my Mac was compatible with TCP/IP! His Macintosh knowledge was SO out of date he thought it was only capable of Appletalk...
Anyway, I gave him a crash course in networking macs via TCP/IP, and at the end I had made another convert...
Me: "Okay, so you go into System Preferences, click this drop-down menu, select "Ethernet adapter", click DHCP, and click Apply Now. That's it."
Him: "Don't you have to restart the machine?"
Me: "Nope."
Him: "Wow, that's 100 times easier than what I have to do for a PC!"
Gotta' love that...
Radio stations do have to pay royalties to broadcast music. They pay ASCAP and BMI fees which, while not exactly "cheap", aren't so high as to bankrupt the stations, as the webcaster fees were explicitly designed to.
As for your other question, about broadcasters being paid to play records... There are two ways it happens.
Payola = Surreptitiously accepting money to play a record without telling anybody. Patently illegal, and dangerous to a company's holding of a broadcast license. But, luckily, thanks to some creative lawyering, you don't have to do it illegally anymore, thanks to...
"Music promotion contracts" = Currently used by Clear Channel and other broadcasters to charge labels to get airplay. Sleazy, but technically legal. (In some cities they can also add clauses to rope artists into playing concerts at Clear Channel venues...) Disgusting? Yes. Illegal? It should be, but isn't.
After all, the whole reason payola was made illegal in the first place was that stations technically exist to broadcast programs "in the public interest." When you're accepting bribes from third parties to alter your programming, you are no longer acting in the public interest, you're acting in the best interests of the record label. (In my opinion, of course.)
Is a very good public speaker, but you should resist the urge to put him in a play. He will take the director literally and "break a leg" the day of the show.
[/rimshot]
Such a move on Apple's part would complicate matters significantly. Consider that if hardware devices would STILL need mac specific drivers to meet whatever "hardware security" apple uses to make their machines proprietary--Meaning much hardware STILL won't function with OS X, whether it's on top of Intel or a PowerPC proc from Motorola or IBM.
My favorite uninformed reader was this guy:
This guy doesn't understand the term "switch." If he starts off running an Intel PC, and buys an "Intel mac" what has he really changed? Still using the same ancient hardware architecture kludged on top of a 32-bit chip sucking more juice that an a electric battleship.
I think this language is very deceptive. By claiming to "protect you" and by claiming they are enabling "additional security", they're implying that you will receive some sort of benefit. What benefit is that, exactly?
This giant PITA scenario illustrates why DRM without force of law is destined to fail: Any solution that requires an end user to think along the lines of an IT department in order to work will not be acecpted by Joe Blow or his family.
Joe isn't going to get the concept of "digital certificates" that allow him to play his media files, and won't remember to backup his licenses.
Instead of starting over, re-ripping everything again (hopefully not in WMA) they're going to look for a way around it, and his 10 year old will know where to download the player software that breaks it, and the port to block to keep it from tattling to Microsoft.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that this does suck but it isn't the end of the world. What we need to concentrate on is defeating the laws that will ban non DRM media players.
As long as we can access non-DRM media players, we are still free. I for one think we should continue to fight like hell to stay that way.
Uhm, unless your wife knows more about computers than you, why'd you take her advice in the first place? Every female I've ever been involved with sees only the price tag on things they don't understand. (ie. Your laser printer that works with linux.)
I don't give my lady unsolicited "how to's" regarding what she does best, and likewise I don't appreciate unsolicited advice from her on how to do what I do best.
Yes, I take her advice on how to run my business (she's an MBA) but no, I don't take her advice on setting up squid...
Nope. I've used the product many times, and was just reporting to the individual in question that it was (among other things) an IRC client that handled aliaees...
Yeah, I'm a recovering MCSE and the only reason I can see to move tools around is to drive revenue in the training division.
My other Win2k gripe relating to Active Directory is that, by design, you HAVE to use their goofy-ass DNS server. Further, said DNS server must be on the domain controller.
Why in the world does DNS have to be on the same box as the domain controller? I mean, if you're running a huge enterprise, having iron to do both functions simultaneously and also buy a redundant box that gets expensive. Tell me how much Dell stock Gates owns, anyway?
No, what's silly is that you didn't find Fire, which is a multi-protocol chat client that lets you (big drum roll) enter aliases for gobbledygook screen names on IRC. I have never been a big IRC fan, but according to Epicware, Fire supports IRC just fine, and has the aliasing feature you wanted.
Moral of the story really is to ask experienced Mac users before you assume something "can't" be done with the mac and do something drastic like sell it/throw it out the window. A good start is the forum at MacAddict.com. If that particular site doesn't turn you on, you can google for literally thousands of Macintosh discussion bulletin boards. Maybe your friend will sell the Mac back to you?
By throwing them curveballs. Expire DHCP on these machines every two hours... Write a script that changes the hostnames on the machines after each DHCP renewal... Give the honeypot machines "customer block" ips... If the RIAA wants to just ignore your entire customer IP block, they can avoid attacking your honeypots and thus exposing themselves to your blacklist.
BUT... By doing so they'd be de facto "allowing" an entire ISP to "pirate" (their term, not mine) as much music as they want. So, of course, their superiors would never let that come to pass.
Of course, if they tried to track everybody via MAC addresses, you'd have to do a little creative kung-fu... But spoofing a MAC address can't be that hard: My $100 linksys router does it just fine, so I imagine the equipment available at this ISP can easily handle the task.
Man: What he meant is that Monster Island is actually a peninsula.
I believe that "man" was "Lenny" from the power plant... Another great Lenny-ism:
"Ow, my eye! The doctor said I wasn't supposed to get pudding in it!"
We now return to our regularly scheduled conversation...
I voted for Harry Browne...You probably should've too...
Nobody at the FCC...You bitch-slap the unelected President of the United States for installing his big-business cronies into the FCC to make sure that "industry-friendly" (read: anti-Consumer) rules make it through without all that pesky congressional debate.
Michael Powell seems exclusively interested in taking more rights away from citizens...If he had been around during LPFM, we wouldn't HAVE LPFM...
I agree 100% Not in all cases mind you, but I have no objection to giving this particular site my email. So far I have had zero emails from NY Times that weren't requested (ie I reinstalled my browser and forgot my spaghetti-goobledygook password.)
I have no beef with the H1-B people that are already here. They do not bother me. Please stop putting words in my mouth. I'm only opposed to bringing EVEN more workers into an already flooded market. (As you also seem to be.)
Also, I think its disingenuous to imply that because the US government approved of it that the citizens of the US "wanted" it. Far from it. Many workers who said "there is no tech boom" all along knew H1-B was a way for the corporations to reclaim power over their employees. After all, a wealthy employee in a strong job market is one you can't bully into taking on quadruple the work for no corresponding increase in salary. You can't arbitrarily take away benefits from somebody who has a thriving job market to choose from. What to do? The same thing the railroads did in the 1800s...Import tons of cheap labor, treat them like slaves, and if they get in the way, kick them out of the country.
If anything, H1-B is the ultimate corporate flim-flam.... They can import cheap labor to depress wages for those "greedy Americans who need to be put int heir place", enjoy those people for a few years, and then send them home before they can become permanent residents or citizens. It's vitally important to the corporations that H1-B holders NOT become citizens or permanent residents, though: If they could, the corporation would no longer have the option of "sending them back" if they quit.
Your math is correct, but your logic is flawed. The statistic of 1% is only meaningful if all 288 million of us are tech workers, and we aren't.
According to this the number of "tech" and computer workers (defined as Computer engineers, programmers, DBA, and support analysts by this particular government subcommittee) is around 2.5 million. (Or it was in 1998...)
Now, if you plug those ~300,000 H1-Bs in, we see this is almost 12% of the IT workforce, certainly a significant enough number to depress wages.
Since my layoff, recruiters and potential employers are all talking about salary cuts--some as large as 50%!--if I'm to have any hope of finding a job. Somehow, I have to cover a $43k set of bills with $24k-34k.
My house is for sale right now for exactly this reason...All the positions I'm looking at are posting up for significantly less than I'm used to getting--and I'm not one of these overpaid six-figure salary people. Even if I get re-employed tomorrow, chances are I can't afford my house, food, and student loans for the (tops) $34,000 being offered as a "competitive" salary. Something has to give, and Uncle Sam isn't in the mood to forgive my college debts just yet.
One recruiter came out and said it like this: While they can't legally REPLACE American's in the same position with an H1-B, what they can do is eliminate the position and create a new one with a different title but essentially the same responsibilities. Unethical as hell, but easy enough to get away with. End result?
Tech workers who made $40-45k last year and got laid off are competing for jobs with guys who will do it for $22,500 just so they can get into the country.
Which leads to this question: Do the benefits to the company engaging in this unethical practice outweigh (dollars only, no moral judgement...yet) the damage done to the economy by the decrease in buying power for Americans (and the H1-B's lack of buying power to start with based on his slave salary?)
When conceived, H1-B was a good idea. At the time, there was a perceived shortage in the marketplace which led to positions that went unfilled due to lack of qualified applicants. Having a project not get finished because you couldn't find somebody to do the work in time (and thus, it can't be sold to make a profit) can kill a company just as fast as paying $200k per year for your developers and $75k for helpdesk people. But that was then.
Now positions are filled before they're announced, if they're even announced. The ones that are getting advertised are for people with 10 years Windows 95 experience, and 20 years of Java. Nowadays, we don't need more tech workers, we honestly (right now) need less.
I'm definitely in favor of a drastic reduction in the number of NEW H1-B visas issued. We don't need any more new high-skilled non-citizens depressing wages and taking jobs that would otherwise go to an out-of-work American. Don't think of it as "protectionism" or "racism", because its neither of those things. Its like a bus. There's a fixed number of seats. Once those seats are full, the driver can't let any more passengers on.
Well, sorry folks, this bus is full. You'll have to wait for the next one.
[/soapbox]