Well, I'm drunk, so I tracked down this email address: publiccomplaints@soca.x.gsi.gov.uk and sent them a note protesting their legal threats for just visiting a website for the first time in my life and asking them to send an agent to track me down here in the US.
Of course, any agent they send to my home will be welcomed by me, my dogs and my Second Amendment rights.
I see I am not in before the cloud is good/cloud is bad discussion, but I do want to say I am glad Sky Map has a chance to continue. It is the first thing I use to show older relatives what smart phones can do.
My father, who is pretty savvy, fell victim to this. He's pretty good with computers for someone 73 years old. I had recommended VLC to him, he googled it, and got crapware.
After fixing the problem, we both contacted the VLC developers, who were kind enough to reply. We suggested they seek legal recourse, but although they were aware of the problem, they were not inclined to pursue the matter. Total respect, their code, their choice.
I felt bad that I recommended VLC without specifying videolan.org. Now I do.
...how to put it politely? Nope, can't think of a gentle way to say it, so quite bluntly, you are an idiot.
You may be the best programmer in the world, but without studying the things you now consider to be a waste of your time, you do not know how to think or communicate.
Being better at what you consider your job is not everything. You need general education to be able to handle all of the other work-place and meat-space things that are not programming related.
NOAA is currently seeking submissions to a survey of how they are doing. If you like their stuff, as I do, please go to the survey and give them an honest review.
And if that weren't enough he was an excellent musician as well.
I consider myself fortunate to have seen him play live, must have been about 1986. He was one of the finest guitarists ever, IMHO.
Before seeing him live, I had heard many of his recordings. Knowing that he like to use tape effects, etc. I thought that some of his fast riffs were done with double speed tape, as they sounded super-humanly fast. I was amazed to find that he actually could play that fast, live, without error.
The only other guitarist I have seen play live at that level is Robert Fripp, but that's a story for another day - King Crimson, Discipline tour, 1982.
I see I did not get in before the Arduino haters. Yes, I know, it's a simple board, I understand that it's not a PIC or whatever embedded thing you prefer. I accept that.
But it's a nice, easy to use board. It's fun. You can do stuff quickly with it. It's good for quick little things. I'm sorry that us Arduino users don't measure up to your expectations. I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong for your embedded choices. Can I get the same courtesy?
Seconded. Thinkpad, always.
I've been doing front-line small business IT for twelve years. Over that time, the Thinkpad line has proven itself. Yes, hardware is a commodity and you do pay a bit more for a Thinkpad. The difference is in the support and service. Lenovo has done a fine job keeping up their end of the bargain. You may be able to find a cheaper laptop from HP, or better specs from Toshiba, but when it needs fixing, and it will, Thinkpad.
They are asking for open access to networks that were privately funded, like Comcast's _access_ network. The government didn't help AT&T (or any of the component companies SBC, Bellsouth, etc) run copper lines to houses nor wire fiber to digital loop carriers in neighborhoods.
Just my opinion, and please pardon my bluntness.
Bullshit.
Easements, government granted regional monopolies, etc.
Comcast et. al. have all received plenty of government assistance in the construction of their physical plants.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
The American Museum of Natural History of course, the NJ State Aquarium - excellent main tank, cool jelly-fish and some of the few dragon fish in captivity (it's in Camden, so watch your step!) and the Edison Museum.
Ummm, not true. BES has supported 64-bit windows and 64-bit databases for quite a long time.
OK, I'll look into that.
Well, then you & your clients don't know how to administer a BES & blackberries. The devices are extremely solid, and almost never need a factory wipe. Of course, most problems will be resolved by a factory wipe & reactivating, but there is almost always a far easier & faster way to resolve the issue, but it seems you don't know that.
Well. since you are posting AC, I've no problem showing my claws on this response. If you are going to say I don't know what I'm doing, have the courage to state your slashdot ID, at the least.
When something goes wrong with a windows pc, do you wipe your hard disk & reinstall every time? That will resolve the issue, but there is almost always a simpler, easier & faster solution.
Seems to be the one of the most common solutions in "enterprise" situations.
Reactivating a blackberry user on a BES is REALLY HARD! How hard is it? On the BES 4 series, you run the BES console, find the user, right-click on the user, and set the activation password to whatever you like. Then, on the blackberry, go to options, advanced options, enterprise activation, enter your email address, enter the activation password you just set, and click activate. Wasn't that hard?
Not hard for me, but please see my above reply to Growse detailing the realities of what I do and where I live.
Frankly, if your clients can't activate a blackberry by themselves, then maybe they aren't smart enough to use email.
Recent case - end user bought a new blackberry on a whim. No idea what the monkeys at the verizon store did, no idea what the end user did prior to calling me. Had to walk the end user thru inserting the SIM card right side up over the phone. Given the above, first action = factory reset.
Yes, this end user is barely able to use email. Yes, the office manager at my client was concerned about my cost to get him working. So, keeping cost down for my customer = factory reset.
Better? How many other solutions have real push email? None (windows mobile comes close with their fake push). How many other mobile email solutions have remote lock, remote unlock, remote wipe, solid AES encryption, certification by many governments [blackberry.com] and other agencies?. Can you force your users to have a password? Can you force your users to always encrypt the blackberry contents? Does your iphone overwrite freed memory so that the contents can't be read by disassembling the device? Nope.
Do you need to restrict your user from browsing the web? Do you need to centrally track SMS, email & phone calls? All this is easy on the BES.
These do not apply to me or my customers. See my reply to Growse above before you flame me.
As previously mentioned, I should have included details of what I do and what my customers do and need. Bottom line for me and mine is that while BES/blackberry is fine for large deployments and has all sort of features for regulatory compliance, etc. in the SMB space, they are not, IMHO the best option.
I appreciate you considering my side. As mentioned, I really should have mentioned the specifics of what I do and what my clients need. I do understand that BES/blackberry give a ton of stuff that is good for large deployments and enterprise. That's not where I live.
OK, fair enough to yours and all of the above replies. I'm replying to yours as it is the harshest, but no hard feelings.
I should have mentioned that I provide services to small and almost medium-sized businesses and orgs. If I was in an "enterprise" admin role my feelings would be different, and so would the needs and realities my clients face. Picture a law office with 8 users, a business with 20 users, an org with 40 users - that's my space. For this space, licensing and labor cost far more than hardware.
For this market segment, BES is not, IMHO, the way to go. Licensing and maintenance will bleed my customers dry. Exchange is the cheapest "groupware"-ish solution I can provide for them. For their mobile devices, the same logic applies - keep licensing and maintenance to a minimum. I appreciate that for "enterprise" the added security and logging of BES/blackberry are desirable. Where I live, selling a decent backup solution is a hard task.
And for those about to suggest it - yes, I have tried the open source route. Hate to say it - they want Office, they want Outlook, they want their calendars/contacts/tasks/etc. That means Exchange. Pains me a bit, but I get over it.
Yes, the web and email and other internet facing servers are on linux VPSs - not gonna put Exchange or Sharepoint on a public IP, but in the LAN I have to go win*. Don't like it, would prefer otherwise, hope to see the day...
Interesting read, ballwall, and I truly wish you luck with your efforts.
I'm not much of a programmer, but as a SysAdmin (*nix by preference, win* by necessity) I was struck by some parallels I've observed. I find blackberries to be painful. Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.
If a client bothers to ask, (and they don't), I tell them iPhone first, WinMobile second, blackberry distant third.
BES is, IMHO, a steaming pile - java, dot.net, 32-bit only. Feh. Recent iPhones handle active sync nicely and don't bitch about self-signed certs. WinMobile is a bit harder, but install your certs and you're done. blackberries (I refuse to capitalize) give me pain.
My clients pay $$ for BES CALs, the devices get stupid and need to be factory reset often and re-activated, costing my client more $$ for my time.
A colleague says "blackberries are great, they help me spot THOSE people". I tend to agree. I honestly cannot see the attraction when there are better solutions to talk to an Exchange server - previously mentioned iPhones, WinMobile or a laptop with RPC over HTTP(S) all work more simply and more reliably, and I tell my clients so. Nevertheless, I still hear "but I've got to have a blackberry"!
Ya, if I read this correctly, a quick scan of TFA (I know, not supposed to do that here) seems to indicate this is a *Pastebud problem, not an iPhone problem.
Of course, if the iPhone does not have cut'n'paste, that's entirely another problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Hoorah! You voiced it more eloquently than I did up-thread, I agree completely.
Well, I'm drunk, so I tracked down this email address: publiccomplaints@soca.x.gsi.gov.uk and sent them a note protesting their legal threats for just visiting a website for the first time in my life and asking them to send an agent to track me down here in the US. Of course, any agent they send to my home will be welcomed by me, my dogs and my Second Amendment rights.
I see I am not in before the cloud is good/cloud is bad discussion, but I do want to say I am glad Sky Map has a chance to continue. It is the first thing I use to show older relatives what smart phones can do.
Solution 1: if you can, work for an IT company. Solution 2: Don't do desktop support.
I do work for an IT company. I no longer do desktop support.
I am a happy man.
Yep. Big time. Think about it. Do you REALLY know more about IT (your job) than that accountant knows about Accounting (his job)?
I will happily tell you and Mr. Accounting that Mr. Accounting knows more about accounting (his job) than I do (not my job).
However, I am positive that I know more about IT (my job) than Mr. Accounting (not his job).
My father, who is pretty savvy, fell victim to this. He's pretty good with computers for someone 73 years old. I had recommended VLC to him, he googled it, and got crapware.
After fixing the problem, we both contacted the VLC developers, who were kind enough to reply. We suggested they seek legal recourse, but although they were aware of the problem, they were not inclined to pursue the matter. Total respect, their code, their choice.
I felt bad that I recommended VLC without specifying videolan.org. Now I do.
...how to put it politely? Nope, can't think of a gentle way to say it, so quite bluntly, you are an idiot.
You may be the best programmer in the world, but without studying the things you now consider to be a waste of your time, you do not know how to think or communicate.
Being better at what you consider your job is not everything. You need general education to be able to handle all of the other work-place and meat-space things that are not programming related.
Cool, happy to help. I am glad that you get value out of NOAA's services. NOAA is one of the things that I am very happy to pay taxes for.
NOAA is currently seeking submissions to a survey of how they are doing. If you like their stuff, as I do, please go to the survey and give them an honest review.
And if that weren't enough he was an excellent musician as well.
I consider myself fortunate to have seen him play live, must have been about 1986. He was one of the finest guitarists ever, IMHO.
Before seeing him live, I had heard many of his recordings. Knowing that he like to use tape effects, etc. I thought that some of his fast riffs were done with double speed tape, as they sounded super-humanly fast. I was amazed to find that he actually could play that fast, live, without error.
The only other guitarist I have seen play live at that level is Robert Fripp, but that's a story for another day - King Crimson, Discipline tour, 1982.
OK, that's fair. I'll admit to defensiveness after seeing many posts bashing the Arduino.
I see I did not get in before the Arduino haters. Yes, I know, it's a simple board, I understand that it's not a PIC or whatever embedded thing you prefer. I accept that. But it's a nice, easy to use board. It's fun. You can do stuff quickly with it. It's good for quick little things. I'm sorry that us Arduino users don't measure up to your expectations. I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong for your embedded choices. Can I get the same courtesy?
Seconded. Thinkpad, always. I've been doing front-line small business IT for twelve years. Over that time, the Thinkpad line has proven itself. Yes, hardware is a commodity and you do pay a bit more for a Thinkpad. The difference is in the support and service. Lenovo has done a fine job keeping up their end of the bargain. You may be able to find a cheaper laptop from HP, or better specs from Toshiba, but when it needs fixing, and it will, Thinkpad.
Just my opinion, and please pardon my bluntness.
Bullshit.
Easements, government granted regional monopolies, etc.
Comcast et. al. have all received plenty of government assistance in the construction of their physical plants.
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favorite. You see we lease it back from the company we sold it to and that way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
I for one say welcome to our cancer immune naked mole rat overlords.
Good question.
I got my sandbox account this morning and am trying to figure out what it is and what it is good for.
My initial drunken impression is that it is a free form, real-time, google apps mash-up sort of thing, with bots written by smart people.
Still messing with it...
The American Museum of Natural History of course, the NJ State Aquarium - excellent main tank, cool jelly-fish and some of the few dragon fish in captivity (it's in Camden, so watch your step!) and the Edison Museum.
Whatever - too much whiskey at this point to remember if it was verizon, AT&T, T-mobile, etc. They all suck, and the store monkeys make it worse.
Bottom line, the end use had the thingamajig in upside-fuckin-down. You weren't there.
After fixing this part, the factory reset and activation of the new device went fine.
Ummm, not true. BES has supported 64-bit windows and 64-bit databases for quite a long time.
OK, I'll look into that.
Well, then you & your clients don't know how to administer a BES & blackberries. The devices are extremely solid, and almost never need a factory wipe. Of course, most problems will be resolved by a factory wipe & reactivating, but there is almost always a far easier & faster way to resolve the issue, but it seems you don't know that.
Well. since you are posting AC, I've no problem showing my claws on this response. If you are going to say I don't know what I'm doing, have the courage to state your slashdot ID, at the least.
When something goes wrong with a windows pc, do you wipe your hard disk & reinstall every time? That will resolve the issue, but there is almost always a simpler, easier & faster solution.
Seems to be the one of the most common solutions in "enterprise" situations.
Reactivating a blackberry user on a BES is REALLY HARD! How hard is it? On the BES 4 series, you run the BES console, find the user, right-click on the user, and set the activation password to whatever you like. Then, on the blackberry, go to options, advanced options, enterprise activation, enter your email address, enter the activation password you just set, and click activate. Wasn't that hard?
Not hard for me, but please see my above reply to Growse detailing the realities of what I do and where I live.
Frankly, if your clients can't activate a blackberry by themselves, then maybe they aren't smart enough to use email.
Recent case - end user bought a new blackberry on a whim. No idea what the monkeys at the verizon store did, no idea what the end user did prior to calling me. Had to walk the end user thru inserting the SIM card right side up over the phone. Given the above, first action = factory reset.
Yes, this end user is barely able to use email. Yes, the office manager at my client was concerned about my cost to get him working. So, keeping cost down for my customer = factory reset.
Better? How many other solutions have real push email? None (windows mobile comes close with their fake push). How many other mobile email solutions have remote lock, remote unlock, remote wipe, solid AES encryption, certification by many governments [blackberry.com] and other agencies?. Can you force your users to have a password? Can you force your users to always encrypt the blackberry contents? Does your iphone overwrite freed memory so that the contents can't be read by disassembling the device? Nope.
Do you need to restrict your user from browsing the web? Do you need to centrally track SMS, email & phone calls? All this is easy on the BES.
These do not apply to me or my customers. See my reply to Growse above before you flame me.
As previously mentioned, I should have included details of what I do and what my customers do and need. Bottom line for me and mine is that while BES/blackberry is fine for large deployments and has all sort of features for regulatory compliance, etc. in the SMB space, they are not, IMHO the best option.
Thanks Growse,
I appreciate you considering my side. As mentioned, I really should have mentioned the specifics of what I do and what my clients need. I do understand that BES/blackberry give a ton of stuff that is good for large deployments and enterprise. That's not where I live.
OK, fair enough to yours and all of the above replies. I'm replying to yours as it is the harshest, but no hard feelings.
I should have mentioned that I provide services to small and almost medium-sized businesses and orgs. If I was in an "enterprise" admin role my feelings would be different, and so would the needs and realities my clients face. Picture a law office with 8 users, a business with 20 users, an org with 40 users - that's my space. For this space, licensing and labor cost far more than hardware.
For this market segment, BES is not, IMHO, the way to go. Licensing and maintenance will bleed my customers dry. Exchange is the cheapest "groupware"-ish solution I can provide for them. For their mobile devices, the same logic applies - keep licensing and maintenance to a minimum. I appreciate that for "enterprise" the added security and logging of BES/blackberry are desirable. Where I live, selling a decent backup solution is a hard task.
And for those about to suggest it - yes, I have tried the open source route. Hate to say it - they want Office, they want Outlook, they want their calendars/contacts/tasks/etc. That means Exchange. Pains me a bit, but I get over it.
Yes, the web and email and other internet facing servers are on linux VPSs - not gonna put Exchange or Sharepoint on a public IP, but in the LAN I have to go win*. Don't like it, would prefer otherwise, hope to see the day...
Interesting read, ballwall, and I truly wish you luck with your efforts.
I'm not much of a programmer, but as a SysAdmin (*nix by preference, win* by necessity) I was struck by some parallels I've observed. I find blackberries to be painful. Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.
If a client bothers to ask, (and they don't), I tell them iPhone first, WinMobile second, blackberry distant third.
BES is, IMHO, a steaming pile - java, dot.net, 32-bit only. Feh. Recent iPhones handle active sync nicely and don't bitch about self-signed certs. WinMobile is a bit harder, but install your certs and you're done. blackberries (I refuse to capitalize) give me pain.
My clients pay $$ for BES CALs, the devices get stupid and need to be factory reset often and re-activated, costing my client more $$ for my time.
A colleague says "blackberries are great, they help me spot THOSE people". I tend to agree. I honestly cannot see the attraction when there are better solutions to talk to an Exchange server - previously mentioned iPhones, WinMobile or a laptop with RPC over HTTP(S) all work more simply and more reliably, and I tell my clients so. Nevertheless, I still hear "but I've got to have a blackberry"!
Ya, if I read this correctly, a quick scan of TFA (I know, not supposed to do that here) seems to indicate this is a *Pastebud problem, not an iPhone problem. Of course, if the iPhone does not have cut'n'paste, that's entirely another problem.
Johnny Mnemonic http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113481/