I've got a question. Does everybody on Slashdot believe that all of Africa is starving babies with flies covering their mouths?
That's a serious question, by the way. Because whilst there are certainly places where that is still happening and it's terrible, there's a fuck of a lot of places where it isn't like that.
Far too many people do, yes. I saw a television aired debate once where an African ambassador lambasted organizations like Christian Children's Fund et al. for their depictions of Africa in exactly this light. He said it undermined and ignored all the progress they've made in the past few decades.
Umm, yes, it is a form of birth control by definition. And your straw man argument on driving and eating is a little off. You see, there isn't a necessity to have sex where there is to eat. The same can be said for driving a car too depending on where you live and work. But unless you are a prostitute, then nothing it forcing you to have sex. So you see, they just don't jive.
I don't think you quite understand what constitutes a straw man. For the record, BTW, not having sex was your argument not mine so if it is a straw man it's you who put it up in the first place. You're also rationalizing driving a car. Hmm. You also don't seem to understand that humans have a biological, physiological and emotional need for companionship in the form of intercourse.
I know you won't bother. Because doing a simple google search for the words "percentage of abortions attributed to rape" give you all the information you need to know.
The reason I didn't ask for a cite was because the "statistic" is absurd, but I wouldn't expect you to understand.
Well, if you would have read a little further, you would have seen that I don't advocate stopping people from doing it. It doesn't matter that I have moralized it. There are downsides to it. The fact that you are upset over moralizing it means that it make you feel guilty or some way that you wouldn't want to feel for supporting it. That is a sign that you actually do believe something is wrong with them.
Wow, that's a twisty maze of tiny little passages you've created there. I don't believe anybody has the right to foist their own morality on others. But if you believe somehow that my opposition to your moralizing is support for your position then you're even more twisted than I'd thought. See, this is why this is such a piss poor topic to have in any venue. I've yet to speak to somebody opposed to abortions that has a lick of sense about them and you've just proven it yet again.
and what's with the slippery slope talk. Is that some code for wackjob or something? I mean there isn't really any slippery slope at all, just some things about making sure people know what causes babies and what to do to not have one before abortion is even a consideration.
If you're going to use terms about logical fallacies you should learn what the hell they mean. This discussion started because of your nonsensical slippery slope argument (come on - killing 5 year old children?!?).
Get a clue and meanwhile please, for the love of humanity, stop spreading your ridiculous world views when they're so short sighted, jaded and ill understood.
Oh, and do yourself and humanity a favour - go get laid and relax.
I don't know about staying out of it. I would like to see people being responsible enough that they don't need abortions. I think education is a key there. They big problem is how to teach it without appearing to be pushing sex in the process.
What exactly is the problem with "pushing sex"? As opposed to what?
Lets be clear here, I'm not a pro-lifer. I am a pro-choicer who choses life. But more importantly, the choice was always there, there are different methods of birth control, abstaining from intercourse and so on.
Abstinence isn't a form of birth control, it's a form of self deprivation. It's also completely ridiculous on its face. If I don't drive I won't be involved in a collision, if I don't eat I won't get fat, if I don't participate in sports I won't hurt myself,...
Choosing to ignore them doesn't mean something was forced on you, it means you didn't think about your actions. Now, has those options failed, then we are talking about a different story.
Condoms break, birth control pills, injections et al. are not 100% certain, the "pull out early" method is a sick joke, IUDs are not fool-proof and aren't the most comfortable (or hygienic) option so what then? What of a couple who's taken all these actions yet still pregnancy occurs?
More realistically a couple will use one or two methods concurrently, not all at once - after all sex is supposed to be romantic not systematic.
Rape and incest alone only account for 1% or so of the abortions performed in a year.
I won't even bother asking for a cite for such a ridiculous statistic.
As for not being ready, well like I said before, there are options before abortions become a form of birth control.
Regardless of how pious you want to sound about not stopping people, you're still moralizing. Just because you wouldn't perform an abortion based on certain criteria has no bearing on what other people do with their own lives, bodies and futures. You want to set an arbitrary limit on where people are allowed to prevent a pregnancy. Well the limits you prescribe are unreasonably restrictive to some and way over the top to others.
Your original slippery slope argument is almost the same argument people heard decades ago when condoms and pills became widely available. Why, that'll lead to in-term abortions! Live birth abortions! Abandoned or aborted infants! Oh, the humanity! Let's just stick with pulling out early and praying!
But you have to ask, We stop kids from driving cars until they reach a certain age because they aren't mature or responsible enough to drive without the risk of killing someone. And then when we do let the drive, we send them though some pretty decent training first. But for sex, well, we don't train them well enough in the forms and options of birth control and we are talking right now about killing someone.
Send them to decent training? Where is that mandated? Here in Ontario we have a pretty arduous drivers licensing program yet you can still get a full 'G' class automotive license without so much as a minute's training. Read a book, pass a multiple-guess written exam, fool a couple driving instructors and you're all set to go.
If we're going to stick to the car analogy (I was beginning to forget where I was!) consider this; I've taken defensive drivers training. I've driven successfully well over a quarter million kilometers in my life without an incident yet my car was written off about a year ago when I was t-boned.
Now, which necessary precaution did I miss?
Maybe the answer is to have a 6 week sex ed course that goes more into detail about what can go wrong.
Drugs are bad, premature sex can cause pregnancy, smoking kills, driving fast is dangerous, drinking and driving don't mix, ice skating on a frozen lake/pond/river is dangerous, etc. etc.
How many more things are we going to drill into kids' heads that are "BAD, DANGEROUS, BAD!" and expect them to listen to us? Moreover have you considered the fact that teenage pregnancy is socially acceptable and in some circles considered a sign of cool? It makes kids more like adults and that's a good thing! So how, exactly do you plan on tel
One of the biggest problems I have with abortion is that the time for birth control should have happened long before an abortion is part of any plan. And without objections, how long until someone decides that you can perform an abortion outside the human body? Lets say you can kill the kid until his 5th birthday.
The problem with slippery slope arguments is their inherent sensationalism, and I'm sorry to say that yours was very blatantly bad.
Pro-lifers tend to forget about the situations where people do not want or need their lives ruined because of something that was forced on them (eg, attempting to remove their choice to terminate a pregnancy that was not their choice in the first place).
There are a lot of rape victims who find themselves pregnant. There are a lot of incest victims who find themselves in the same situation. There are a lot of young couples who are not ready in their housing, educational, career or financial situation to have children but surprise surprise they still want to have sex. There are also people who choose not to have children for personal reasons including people who have a certain number of children but who do not want more.
Complicating the situation you have doctors who will steadfastly refuse to perform tubligations or vasectomies based solely on a woman's age rather than medical or personal necessity or choice. A friend of mine had a child with his wife after the doctor made them choose whether they would rather the mother or the child survive the birth. After the birth when both survived they were told in no uncertain terms that another pregnancy carried with it a 100% certainty that she would die. She probably wouldn't even make it halfway to term and she would be dead. Even in the face of this knowledge he was providing them the doctor refused to perform a tubiligation because they were too young and she should be given the chance to have more children.
Moreover, for people who want to manage their pregnancy status birth control is hardly infallible (and some slippery slope types liken birth control to abortion anyways which really muddys the waters).
But I do care about the point in time when life begins because it is pivotal in all other discussions about it. We have found newborn babies in dumpsters and their parents only received 2 years sentences or almost nothing when if the kid was older, they would have received a lot more punishment.
Sentience is the real key here. If a fetus hasn't got a developed brain and no brain activity exists there can be no sentience; no understanding of one's own existence and therefore no understanding of the end of same.
A similar rationalization comes into play when we consider what foods we eat and what repulses us. We eat cows. Cows are stupid. We do not eat dogs. Dogs are intelligent.
why make a law & then challenge it instead of remove unconstitutional parts from the bill before it is made into a law? Because that's how the legal system works?
I wish I had a link back to it; somebody asked in another thread, but this is a prime example of begging the question.
"That's what business is about - making as much money as you possibly can, however you can do it"
Business is about making money, but by keeping your customers happy. Microsoft has done everything in their power to piss off their customers and make the world hate Vista. That's not good business. Wake up to MS' endless mistakes. It's ok to like Apple, since they're doing the complete opposite.
The OP was correct, actually. Business is about making money. It just so happens that keeping your customers happy is a good way to make more money so most companies try to go that route.
I'd wager that anyone who got Vista preinstalled on a general-purpose box (not a gaming machine, and not a homebuild) would be pretty happy. It's actually quite well behaved if you're not trying to do Serious Business with it, and I've lived reasonably comfortably with an HP Vista Business notebook for the past 6 months. Alas these people are not the most vocal part of the customer base.
I have an interesting problem at work. Our LAN is pretty simple. SonicWall firewall box connected to our dual ADSL Internet connections, connected at the other end to a Cisco Catalyst 1924 24-port 10Mbit switch, static IPs in the 10.x.x.x range each location has its own/24 so we properly co-mingle on the WAN with the rest of the group.
Each PC is assigned its own IP address, no conflicts, gateway is the SonicWall box, DNS servers belong to the ISP and are routed without issue.
Our network is primarily static with most of our machines running Windows 2000, my machine runs Windows XP Pro. Two employees and our boss all bought new laptops within a 3 month period. Two Toshiba Satellites and one Sony Vaio. All three run Vista (Home Ultimate, I think). All three of them were configured as simply as possible with their IPs plugged into the network card configuration along with gateway and both DNS servers. All three, without fail, have problems connecting to certain websites. www.tdcanadatrust.com, www.msn.com, www.hotmail.com, www.cnn.com, www.gotomeeting.com and a plethora of others. They will, however, visit the vast majority of sites out there.
None of these websites are secure - just entry pages for various sites and services.
Each Vista laptop came pre-installed with a copy of Symantec/Norton Internet Security / Antivirus suite (90 day trial). In my efforts to make the computers 'work' as expected I've systematically disabled and then uninstalled this suite from 2 of the 3, I've disabled UAC, the firewall on the network interface, as well as anything Vista had that was related in any way to security. The pages simply do not load, I can not ping their addresses (I can, however, resolve the names in DNS).
For the record, these sites work flawlessly on any of the Windows 2000 and my Windows XP machine and under Linux (my machine dual-boots) there are no glitches, pauses, delays or hiccups that could indicate any sort of network problem. Ping, traceroute and HTTP work perfectly as expected. The problem occurs under both Internet Explorer (7 - fully up to date) that comes with Vista and the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (2.0.0.8 I believe). This happens on any network drop the machines connect to - even in cases where a (perfectly functional) Windows 2000 machine is unplugged and the Vista laptop immediately connected the same problem occurs. There are no VLANs or overly complex configurations present on the switch. It merely passes packets back and forth and that's it.
So I'm at a loss. Without an error message or popup or anything to describe the source of the problem I just can not for the life of me figure out what is causing this problem. I've tried configuring the network settings as both the primary and the alternate configurations (alternate being preferred because each of the three use their laptops both at home with DHCP and at work with a static) but to no avail. I've gone through trials with all security functions fully enabled and locked down as tight as Vista can be right through trials with no security whatsoever and every viable stage in between. The consistent symptom remains the computer unable to visit these web pages, only telling me after considerable delay that it was "unable to connect" with the usual balderdash about the server may be down, blah blah.
Yes lol, totally agree. Why is this relevant? I am disheartened that something like this could be accepted as news, considering that something as much larger (than a.0.0.1 change to a firefox version) as Australia changing leadership is noticeably absent from/.... interesting =)
I think you'll find that this is the site for nerd related news. Now, if the new Australian leader(s) use Firefox or supported it as a campaign promise, then I can see the relevance.
Bottom line? Another level of state-sponsored certification guarantees nothing if the person holding the cert is fundamentally worthless. Past performance is probably the best indicator of future capability. Caveat emptor - always has been, always will be.
That's kind of the crux of the problem; how many years' experience should an applicant have in maintaining a Windows Vista network?
Atleast with a board/government certification body there would be a minimum set of skills / achievements required to call oneself a professional. There'd also be a place where industry people and managers could file formal complaints when one of their certified members royally fouls up a project and doesn't know enough to fix it (ie; when they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they fudged the certification exams).
I think you miss read the AC's post. He never said it would take hours to extract all the media from a client's computer. He said, "I honestly don't have time to look through everyone's personal image files and mp3 caches."
With automated search tools you don't have to look through anything. That was kind of my point, which you've apparently missed.:)
When I run a search for media I can quickly and with a few keystrokes / mouse clicks eliminate most of the junk, clipart, etc. from the search results. Anything below 10K gets thrown away immediately, for example, which would likely eliminate the majority of hits on any system with an installed encyclopedia software, office suite or anything else that comes with "clipart".
Doing a quick search for all media files on my computer returned 34K files, of which only about 3% is anything other than application resources. Assuming the files average only 100KB (because I think I might have just crashed explorer by trying to get file properties on that many files) that's still ~3.4GB, or about 30 minutes of burn time (and 5 cd swaps) with my CD burner.
It's a few minutes and 1 DVD-R(W) disc (do modern computers even have "CD-RW" options anymore?!?), and again, it can be performed while running a genuine work-related task on a neighboring PC so again, back to the original AC's point, it's not taking "hours" of company time, it's taking a few seconds to a couple minutes worth of mouse clicks while you wait for the next "Next" prompt to appear on a clients PC.
Not to mention the client's PC is probably already unstable, so even trying to copy that many files could be an exercise in futility. (Have you tried multitasking on a thrashed Windows installation?)
I'm not sure quite how unstable the machine(s) in question would be; keeping in mind the experiment originally involved GS installing iTunes on a reasonably stable machine.
In other words, you would have to do spend some time digging or burning, to get anything useful from a client's computer.
When I was administering a high school LAN a few years ago we ran into a problem with students out stripping the storage capacity of our RAID array (long story; IBM NetFinity server, Windows NT, no quota support, no upstream support, many Tums later I'm no longer there.:) so I and my co-administrator would routinely run a search across the array for all multimedia content and sift it to find the worst offenders who'd be notified, through their homeroom teachers, of their violation of the schools AUP and the files would be backed up to CD then deleted. (Backed up just in case some were related to a project, but when you have 1700.JPG PokeMon / Digimon files in a directory chances are that's not a school project, but hey, better safe than raked over the coals!)
Sorry that isn't enough to give high salaries. It is a good beginning step though. You want to know what the ??? step is towards profit? Scarcity.
That's part of the problem with not having any sort of standardized governing body from the start. The cost of entry to IT is effectively the cost of either a home PC setup and an Internet connection, a couple books, the cost to sit for an A+ exam, etc. In other words, the cost is practically nil. Hence we have every high school/college kid or every burger flipper with a home PC and broadband (or dial-up in the beginning) thinking they're qualified to be a computer / network technician.
Then comes the dot-com era. Techies are suddenly glamorous and anybody can make $75k/year out of high school, or if you graduate college/university you can walk into six figures straight away! Dilute that to include anybody with an MCSE, A+ et al. and you've got this massive influx of students into any educational facility or diploma mill that's accepting tuition cheques and we have this enormous surplus of "graduates" who now believe themselves qualified.
In a way that killed us. HR departments and hiring managers never really, truly knew what to look for in terms of certifications. Experience was up in the air because so much technology was so new who could put a time frame on it, and how well did you learn it in the time you had with it? Remember back in '97 all those ads requiring "Minimum 5 years experience with Microsoft Windows'95"?
QuantumRiff mentioned plumbers and I'm afraid in a multitude of ways he couldn't be more wrong. The prescribed method to gain full journeyman status in any skilled trade is exactly what he said and it's there for good reason. First you have to prove yourself educated and intelligent enough to gain entry which narrows the field right off the blocks. Next you have to gain your hours of apprenticeship working in the field with actual, experienced professionals. Yes, you have to earn your stripes doing B.S. work which will include coffee and lunch runs, sweeping floors and all the other crap jobs that come along. But hey, some day you'll have your own apprentice to do the same exact thing. Everybody went through it, new people are no exception. During the course of your apprenticeship you have to attend mandatory school sessions teaching gradually more and more advanced materials which you can now relate to your actual on-the-job experience so what your experienced bosses are telling you starts to make sense.
After your 4-5 years and your x000 hours of service (with increasing pay every year, mind you) you're now a full-fledged plumber, electrician, mechanic, glazier, mason, etc. Now, if this were the case with computer / IT professionals - don't you think there'd be much fewer of [us|them] out there, namely the unqualified sort? The few who remained would logically command a much higher pay scale and who knows, maybe this (digital) world would even be a better place for it.:)
As a side note to QuantumRiff; have you ever experienced a house with improper plumbing/venting? Ever experienced sewer gas creeping into the building, killing all the residents? Ever had a toilet back up so severely there is literally 8" deep raw sewage covering the floor? Ever taken a shower and been scalded to the point of permanent disfigurement?
Yeah, didn't think so. Next time you have a problem with your skilled tradesman, keep it the hell to yourself.
I don't. It is for the same reason we don't use $100/hour TV repairmen. It's cheaper to replace it than fix it. I used to fix VCR's and Camcorders when they were well over $500 items. Now that many of them can be replaced for about 2 hours of labor or less, I have found other employment. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it and have no work.
Oh. At which retail outlet can I replace the last decades' worth of financials and client data for my company? What's that worth, the cost of a CD-R and some shrink wrap?
It's not the cost of the vessel that matters, it's what's contained within that's worth $350/hour. I have nothing critical in my television set, however I would like the DVD back when I throw away my DVD player.
So you'd pull every single gif, jpg, bmp, etc that the search tool finds (including all those associated with help files, caches, etc) and then just give that all back to the client in a big lump, with their real photos and whatever else mixed in? Nice.
{SIGH!} Ok, let me spell this out for you. Read slowly;
The issue at hand is Geek Squad members taking files, specifically pornography, but generally including any and all media files from clients' computers.
Anonymous Coward indicated that it takes "hours" to burn such data, and that doing so on company time is wasteful and deserves disciplinary action.
I responded that any knowledgeable computer tech could locate and copy said data in mere seconds/minutes and safely burn it while performing other job-related tasks in the meantime.
You said that such data would be filed irregularly throughout the file system, therefore making it more difficult to locate / copy / abscond with.
I told you that it takes seconds, not minutes, and certainly not hours to do so and in fact guided you step-by-step through the process by which one could assimilate all (multi)media files on a clients computer for later perusal.
You responded with some verbal diarrhea about giving files to the client?
I'm afraid, son, that you've wildly missed the point. Try re-reading the thread from beginning to end starting here and come back when you've figured out just what it is we're talking about. Now run along.
You assume that the computer owner stores their files in some sort of logical arrangement. More often than not, files are scattered across directories all over the system--usually whatever the save window's default was. Typically this includes the root of the C drive, My Documents, the Desktop, the specific application's application directory, and sometimes the Windows directory. If you're going to do a good job (not what I would expect from a BB/GS employee), you'll need to check each of those places and more.
I'm sorry, I should have clarified. I was talking about people fixing computers and troubleshooting operating system issues having some sort of knowledge on how to use same.
Start -> Search -> For Files or Folders -> Pictures, Music or Video. Select all three types, click Search. Alt-Tab or just plain minimize the window, perform other tasks. When search is complete, Ctrl-A (select all), copy, open thumbdrive or similar, paste, minimize, perform other tasks, remove thumbdrive from computer and store your bounty in your pocket. Repeat for documents if desired.
If the client isn't using Windows XP or later with its fan-dancy search tool, you could just search for the likes of "*.jpg;*.gif;*.bmp;*.mp3;*.mov;*.mp4;*.avi" etc. and perform the same copy/paste operation.
I just ran a test. It literally took me longer to type out that explanation than it did to search my entire system - including network attached drives - for all multimedia content.
Safe to say I won't be bringing my computer to you for support my friend.:)
I've mentioned this guy before; he had graduated from a local technical school and was even a card-carrying A+ tech. As this school had the reputation of "pay to pass", I decided to test him, and pointing at an open box, asked him to point at the motherboard.
No, I specifically avoided mentioning them because I firmly believe their organization and the certificates they provide aren't worth the paper they're printed on (even if they provided PDF files). It's also widely known amongst the technically literate which "schools" are little more than diploma factories (if you pay your $8 grand, hell, here's your diploma! You're now educated!) I've dealt with way too many "I have ${cert} so I'm qualified to make six figures! Hire me or your company will wither and die!" types to mention.
My boss informed one of them that he should be a garbage man. See, he was trying to string together an ethernet LAN without using a hub or switch (because that's wrong, or something) but instead by installing two network cards in each of the fifteen computers and cabling them one to the next to the next in a lovely bastardization of, I dunno, token ring with ethernet with thinnet with...
What we need is a professional standards body that actually measures skills and mandates periodic skills reviews to maintain certification according to accepted industry guidelines. Practical examinations as well as an apprenticeship period would be preferable to ensure capability.
If I'm not mistaken, one can still go out and buy a CompTIA A+ certification book, schedule a time to take the test and be certified without ever actually opening the case on a computer, which was also the cause of the complete industry-wide invalidation of the MCSE certification when it came out.
Take for example Cisco certs (yeah yeah); the CCNA means nothing in a practical sense, but it does indicate that you have some grounding in networking fundamentals. Ok. So you can assist our network techs and troubleshoot problems at the LAN level. After a couple years experience you write the CCNP test. Now you're able to move into the bigger office and assist our WAN techs and touch the real routers. A few years of this and you enroll in the CCIE program. Combine that with 10+ years in the trenches and suddenly four letters mean you can pretty much write your own ticket.
However if you somehow do manage to aquire even a CCIE but don't have a decades worth of relevant experience you may as well have saved yourself the few grand and just written your CCNA because, hey, you're our new tape switcher.
Combine all this certification nonsense with HR people and management who don't understand anything about the computer industry but who do recognize "industry recognized certification body" and associate it with "skilled professional" and make the leap to "qualified for this position" and you have a very large disconnect from reality, compound that a million fold and welcome to today.
I see that in the comments some people have complained about the "non-copyrighted" CD. Was it public domain material, or a CD of stuff that didn't infringe upon copyright? They're not the same thing, but I don't think it's worth nearly as much fuss as some of the commentators in TFA made of it.
I've seen a lot of head scratching over the "non-copyrighted" comment as well. A CD is a storage medium. Anything can be on it from FOSS software / source code, pictures, public domain music, pictures, documents, spreadsheets, logfiles, videos and on and on and on.
Just because he said "CD" doesn't mean it's a commercial, shrink-wrapped disc. It could be literally anything and hypothesizing about it seems to me to be a glorious waste of time and comment space.
But there's a reason Doctors and Lawyers cost so much. Do we really want $350/hr computer technicians?
No, but $100-200/hour depending on the skill levels required sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
I was priced out of the market in computer and networking repair in my area because of every Joe and Sally who'd taken a crash course, read a few books or were just "the smart computer person" in their house opening up shop and charging ridiculously low rates for repair work.
Sure, for on-site work I was billing myself out at $60/hr and they were billing out at $20/hr. Sounds great, right? Sure it does; until you realize it takes them 5 hours to perform the tasks I can perform in 1 and mine won't be a cobbled together nightmare.
Sure, a few clients realized this and called us back in to fix the problems these cheap techs caused them (usually more problems than solutions) but it simply wasn't enough. We couldn't compete with the prices, we couldn't stand (or afford) to contract ourselves out for such low rates and we wouldn't dream of resorting to the tactics these places used to ensure job security (namely "leave behinds").
I've said for years that there should be a standard body for establishing credentials for computer technicians that includes proof of skills and semi-annual retesting to ensure skills development matches the pace of the industry and that a standardized set of fees should be established by this body to be charged by its members. If an organization chooses to have their work done by a non-member they do so at their own peril.
I think they were right in sacking the agents who weren't working while on the clock. Our budgets are pretty harsh, so we don't have the service budget to give you hours to burn porn on the clock.
Pardon me? If you're representative of a typical GS member I'm glad I've never taken one of my machines to you for any work. It takes all of 2-3 minutes to locate, copy, and initiate a transfer of a media directory. It takes about the same amount of time or less to initiate a CD-R burn of said data.
You're aware that with modern operating systems users can perform multiple operations simultaneously, right? It's entirely possible to copy files to, say, a thumbdrive whilst installing iTunes and re-arranging some desktop icons. I can then burn them to a CD-R on one machine on the bench while I perform a large operation on the machine beside it. Realistically, I'll be burning my stolen porn collection while I'm performing on the clock duties so it literally won't cost the company a dime!
It is, however, morally repugnant to do so and the entire time I was a PC technician often working on as many as three or four computers at a time I would never browse a persons personal documents, images, videos or music files except as required for regular virus/trojan/malware removal.
We've had clients ask about our data integrity policy and go so far as to suggest removing their hard drive prior to or immediately at the start of our repair process. It was always made perfectly clear to them that their data was 100% secure and that there was nothing to worry about. Once our (high school) co-op student connected our bench speakers to a customer machine and began playing an MP3 they had on their hard drive and was nearly sent home for it. Data snooping was simply not tolerated under any circumstances and I wouldn't expect any less from any establishment I'd bring my computer to.
The other one that always gets me is car commercials. 90% of all car commercials show the vehicle being used in an illegal manner with often unreadble text at the bottom stating "Closed course. Professional driver." Yes, they have the sometimes readable disclaimer, but clearly the commercials are specifically designed to show people how the vehicle is really great at doing illegal things. While usually it is a vehicle driving too fast on twisty mountain roads, there was actually one running for a while where a car was driving way too fast, through city streets with traffic cones chasing it. The commercial actually had a part showing a pedestrian jumping into a dumpster to avoid being run down!
We had a taste of this in Canada. Mitsubishi were running commercials for the all-new 2008 Lancer showing off some of the rally and street tuner heritage of Mitsubishi which included closed-course "street" races as well as some off-road rally racing. They took a lot of flak over that from various bleeding heart agencies but it was oft pointed out that Honda, who run ads showcasing their safety and 'green' vehicles are the brand most notorious for street tuning and illegal racing (it was a Honda Civic and a Ford Mustang who caused the death of a truck driver on Highway 400 northbound that prompted the crack-down on street racing and related adverts).
Sometimes the hype about advertising is just hype, and the illegal maneuvers you speak of are there to showcase the cars fun driving/handling characteristics. Now, if a car commercial shows a car doing something it's clearly not capable of then we'd have a closer (famous Slashdot) car analogy on our hands, but, we don't.
Yes, actually, I have. Even engaged in a discussion with him over the future of the advertising strategy of our corporation in Canada. The man had some really interesting ideas and I've seen several of them unfold over the past several months.
But, the crux of every single hypothetical on this website is "Customer Makes Assumption, Customer Gets Burned." Yet, nobody here is espousing some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!
You've hit a sore spot with me with the idea of personal responsibility. That is an area I wish we had more of nowadays but it's also very difficult nowadays with so much specialized 'stuff' as a part of our every day lives.
Think about the complex purchase decisions you have to make on a day to day basis. I'll start large with your living situation; once you've decided whether it's best to purchase, lease or rent you then have to decide on an area, a configuration and a budget. You should also plan ahead for the next 3-5 years to make sure you're not moving every year as things change. Now you'll need transportation. Are you better off to take public transit, taxi cabs, or purchase a car? If the latter, do you go new or used? Private or dealer? Finance, save the cash or lease? Now that you've got that figured out, what kind of car do you buy? How many doors? Cylinders? Speakers? How many wheels drive the thing? What size should the wheels be? Automatic or manual or manu-matic or sportronic or...? Well now you've got your ride and your pad you'll want some electronics. Home theatre or simple television? What kind? CRT, plasma or LCD? What size? Wide or full screen? Brand or off-make? To HD or not to HD? HD or Blu-ray? Cable, satellite or antenna? Now on to your computer; PC or Mac? Intel or AMD? How much power do you need? How much should you spend? Order online or in store? White box do-it-yourself or pre-fab? Do you go for the extended warranty? What of accessories? Monitor(s)?
All that stuff under control, your home furnishings need tending to, flooring, drapes, bed clothes, your kitchen needs to be outfitted, you constantly have to amend and supplement your wardrobe. You'll have to pick doctors and dentists and veterinarians for yourself, your children and your pets (you decide who goes where) then you have to take in their advise based on their years of medical school and filter it and apply appropriately.
All through this you've been somehow managing your personal finances including your credit rating. Investments, savings, RRSPs or whatever the American retirement savings equivalent is. You have to file your taxes every year being mindful of not going to prison. Do you do it yourself or hire a company? Which one? Private or store front? If the former, do you do it on paper, do it online or buy software? Which software do you use?
The long and short of it is we're faced with information overload from every direction. Now I'll grant you that it's generally best if you slow down and take stock of your situation and research everything you ever do before going ahead, but as someone who presently does just that I can tell you it frustrates the living daylights out of the people around you. Consequently, it indicates that I'm an extremely conservative (small 'c') person which means this sort of thing doesn't bode well with people who are more outgoing and shall we say impulsive?
It never ceases to amaze me how people go through life not understanding the fundamentals that affect everybody. Forget knowing how the amount, type and speed of RAM affects your desktop experience - but things like not knowing what their credit score is or how their rating is calculated! How many people do you know who believe that if they have no credit their score is perfect, or the people who have all the credit everybody will ever give them and think that makes them golden?
But in the end, where do you draw the line between doing and not doing something based on your understanding of the situation? Am I being overly pedantic in each avenue of my life? Am I missing out on opportunities and experiences because I don't know enough about it before I proceed?
So personal responsibility is a good thing, but on the other side of the coin marketing mater
Are you certain about your hypothetical you added at the end? Because all in all, there isn't a terrible difference between Home Basic and Home Premium. Most likely, it was machines listed as Vista Capable that couldn't run Ultimate.
And I have to say that I'd side with Microsoft here. I mean, when it comes down to it, if the PC can run any version of Windows Vista then it's CAPABLE of running Vista. Maybe it would be nice to have more info given to consumers, maybe a compatibility sticker on the bottom of the laptop, or even on the top lid of the laptop that's able to be easily peeled off.
I think the big problem here is the consumers who could go out and buy a machine, regardless of cost, that is labeled "Vista Capable". Shortly thereafter they purchase either the Vista Ultimate Upgrade ($299.99 CDN at Future Shop) or even just plain old Vista Ultimate ($499 at Future Shop) because it is "The best edition of Windows Vista with the power, security, and mobility features you need for work, and the entertainment and ease you want for fun. It has everything you need to shift seamlessly between the worlds of play and productivity."
So now that they've dropped well over $300 or $500 (sales taxes inclusive) for this product, opened it, spent 4 hours installing it - now they can't return it because it's open and they have to replace their brand new computer.
I don't think that it would be a benefit to consumers to only label PC's capable of running Ultimate as "Vista Capable." It would perhaps lead consumers, on average, to buy more expensive machines than they need.
This suggestion is IMHO pretty bang-on. It should list XP Home|Pro, Vista Home Basic|Home Premium|Ultimate and rate them on compatability (in full-featured mode) rather than "Yeah, it'll run a form of Vista if you disable all cool stuff that makes Vista Vista" (for whatever definition of 'cool' and 'stuff' you or the marketing people would prefer). The problem here is the disconnect between the marketing of the product and the capabilities required to actually unleash same. I have a pretty darned powerful computer connected to my home theatre system and much to my chagrin it's not up to snuff to run Vista Ultimate - letalone perform up to its multimedia requirements at the same time!
simple solution to that is to cover or remove your license plate when you aren't driving your vehicle. cover isnt infallible, and remove would be a PITA with screws, but I imagine a quick-removal mount would not be hard to come up with, just a latch or two.
I think you'll return to find your vehicle impounded. In many jurisdictions an unplated vehicle in a public place isn't legal and will therefore be towed by either the police or an over zealous tow driver on a slow night. If not, of course, you'd give any police officer a great reason to run your place when you return to your vehicle and bolt the plates back on.
The simple solution is to not do anything illegal. Don't speed, don't drive overly aggressively, don't drive under the influence and you shouldn't have a problem when leaving the bar.
It drives me nuts when I hear about the poor repeat drunk driver (or the person with 12 speeding tickets, or a couple careless charges, or or or... ) who's harassed when leaving the bar after having "just one too many" and the mean police officer who pulled, tested and ticketed him. Did you ever think of the side effects of that same jackass being allowed to remain licensed and on the very roads you drive on with your friends and family? Did you ever think about their civil rights to not be killed by a drunk driver?
Now move away. Your heart is bleeding all over my shirt.
My main concern is not the ads, but the spying. I don't like it. When you list Gmail as the least invasive alternative, you ignore that we can pay for our own email accounts. You can pay for an email service for less than £15.00 per year which most people can afford. I do not understand why people must have a free account when the cost of a professional service that you actually control is so low.
Every e-mail provider, to some degree, snoops atleast portions of your communications. Google are just more up front about it. If you don't like the way your free e-mail service gains funding stop using it and pay for a service. End of story. Meanwhile, stop complaining about it.
Meanwhile GMail is a more desirable service than Hotmail (kind of the point of the article) because the ads are less invasive, more pointed and therefore more useful to its users.
The whole thing really boils down to the fact that while you're using their services they have access to all the data you store within it no matter what your opinion on the matter. Moreover, e-mail is a best-effort delivery system and it's as secure as a postcard. If you don't want every person and service provider in the delivery chain snooping within your correspondence - encrypt it.
This isn't any kind of major privacy invasion. Nothing to see here, moving right along...
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That's a serious question, by the way. Because whilst there are certainly places where that is still happening and it's terrible, there's a fuck of a lot of places where it isn't like that.
Far too many people do, yes. I saw a television aired debate once where an African ambassador lambasted organizations like Christian Children's Fund et al. for their depictions of Africa in exactly this light. He said it undermined and ignored all the progress they've made in the past few decades.
I don't think you quite understand what constitutes a straw man. For the record, BTW, not having sex was your argument not mine so if it is a straw man it's you who put it up in the first place. You're also rationalizing driving a car. Hmm. You also don't seem to understand that humans have a biological, physiological and emotional need for companionship in the form of intercourse.
I know you won't bother. Because doing a simple google search for the words "percentage of abortions attributed to rape" give you all the information you need to know.The reason I didn't ask for a cite was because the "statistic" is absurd, but I wouldn't expect you to understand.
Well, if you would have read a little further, you would have seen that I don't advocate stopping people from doing it. It doesn't matter that I have moralized it. There are downsides to it. The fact that you are upset over moralizing it means that it make you feel guilty or some way that you wouldn't want to feel for supporting it. That is a sign that you actually do believe something is wrong with them.Wow, that's a twisty maze of tiny little passages you've created there. I don't believe anybody has the right to foist their own morality on others. But if you believe somehow that my opposition to your moralizing is support for your position then you're even more twisted than I'd thought. See, this is why this is such a piss poor topic to have in any venue. I've yet to speak to somebody opposed to abortions that has a lick of sense about them and you've just proven it yet again.
and what's with the slippery slope talk. Is that some code for wackjob or something? I mean there isn't really any slippery slope at all, just some things about making sure people know what causes babies and what to do to not have one before abortion is even a consideration.If you're going to use terms about logical fallacies you should learn what the hell they mean. This discussion started because of your nonsensical slippery slope argument (come on - killing 5 year old children?!?).
Get a clue and meanwhile please, for the love of humanity, stop spreading your ridiculous world views when they're so short sighted, jaded and ill understood.
Oh, and do yourself and humanity a favour - go get laid and relax.
What exactly is the problem with "pushing sex"? As opposed to what?
Lets be clear here, I'm not a pro-lifer. I am a pro-choicer who choses life. But more importantly, the choice was always there, there are different methods of birth control, abstaining from intercourse and so on.
Abstinence isn't a form of birth control, it's a form of self deprivation. It's also completely ridiculous on its face. If I don't drive I won't be involved in a collision, if I don't eat I won't get fat, if I don't participate in sports I won't hurt myself, ...
Choosing to ignore them doesn't mean something was forced on you, it means you didn't think about your actions. Now, has those options failed, then we are talking about a different story.
Condoms break, birth control pills, injections et al. are not 100% certain, the "pull out early" method is a sick joke, IUDs are not fool-proof and aren't the most comfortable (or hygienic) option so what then? What of a couple who's taken all these actions yet still pregnancy occurs?
More realistically a couple will use one or two methods concurrently, not all at once - after all sex is supposed to be romantic not systematic.
Rape and incest alone only account for 1% or so of the abortions performed in a year.
I won't even bother asking for a cite for such a ridiculous statistic.
As for not being ready, well like I said before, there are options before abortions become a form of birth control.
Regardless of how pious you want to sound about not stopping people, you're still moralizing. Just because you wouldn't perform an abortion based on certain criteria has no bearing on what other people do with their own lives, bodies and futures. You want to set an arbitrary limit on where people are allowed to prevent a pregnancy. Well the limits you prescribe are unreasonably restrictive to some and way over the top to others.
Your original slippery slope argument is almost the same argument people heard decades ago when condoms and pills became widely available. Why, that'll lead to in-term abortions! Live birth abortions! Abandoned or aborted infants! Oh, the humanity! Let's just stick with pulling out early and praying!
But you have to ask, We stop kids from driving cars until they reach a certain age because they aren't mature or responsible enough to drive without the risk of killing someone. And then when we do let the drive, we send them though some pretty decent training first. But for sex, well, we don't train them well enough in the forms and options of birth control and we are talking right now about killing someone.
Send them to decent training? Where is that mandated? Here in Ontario we have a pretty arduous drivers licensing program yet you can still get a full 'G' class automotive license without so much as a minute's training. Read a book, pass a multiple-guess written exam, fool a couple driving instructors and you're all set to go.
If we're going to stick to the car analogy (I was beginning to forget where I was!) consider this; I've taken defensive drivers training. I've driven successfully well over a quarter million kilometers in my life without an incident yet my car was written off about a year ago when I was t-boned.
Now, which necessary precaution did I miss?
Maybe the answer is to have a 6 week sex ed course that goes more into detail about what can go wrong.
Drugs are bad, premature sex can cause pregnancy, smoking kills, driving fast is dangerous, drinking and driving don't mix, ice skating on a frozen lake/pond/river is dangerous, etc. etc.
How many more things are we going to drill into kids' heads that are "BAD, DANGEROUS, BAD!" and expect them to listen to us? Moreover have you considered the fact that teenage pregnancy is socially acceptable and in some circles considered a sign of cool? It makes kids more like adults and that's a good thing! So how, exactly do you plan on tel
The problem with slippery slope arguments is their inherent sensationalism, and I'm sorry to say that yours was very blatantly bad.
Pro-lifers tend to forget about the situations where people do not want or need their lives ruined because of something that was forced on them (eg, attempting to remove their choice to terminate a pregnancy that was not their choice in the first place).
There are a lot of rape victims who find themselves pregnant. There are a lot of incest victims who find themselves in the same situation. There are a lot of young couples who are not ready in their housing, educational, career or financial situation to have children but surprise surprise they still want to have sex. There are also people who choose not to have children for personal reasons including people who have a certain number of children but who do not want more.
Complicating the situation you have doctors who will steadfastly refuse to perform tubligations or vasectomies based solely on a woman's age rather than medical or personal necessity or choice. A friend of mine had a child with his wife after the doctor made them choose whether they would rather the mother or the child survive the birth. After the birth when both survived they were told in no uncertain terms that another pregnancy carried with it a 100% certainty that she would die. She probably wouldn't even make it halfway to term and she would be dead. Even in the face of this knowledge he was providing them the doctor refused to perform a tubiligation because they were too young and she should be given the chance to have more children.
Moreover, for people who want to manage their pregnancy status birth control is hardly infallible (and some slippery slope types liken birth control to abortion anyways which really muddys the waters).
But I do care about the point in time when life begins because it is pivotal in all other discussions about it. We have found newborn babies in dumpsters and their parents only received 2 years sentences or almost nothing when if the kid was older, they would have received a lot more punishment.Sentience is the real key here. If a fetus hasn't got a developed brain and no brain activity exists there can be no sentience; no understanding of one's own existence and therefore no understanding of the end of same.
A similar rationalization comes into play when we consider what foods we eat and what repulses us. We eat cows. Cows are stupid. We do not eat dogs. Dogs are intelligent.
I wish I had a link back to it; somebody asked in another thread, but this is a prime example of begging the question.
Well done, sir. Circular logic at its finest.
Business is about making money, but by keeping your customers happy. Microsoft has done everything in their power to piss off their customers and make the world hate Vista. That's not good business. Wake up to MS' endless mistakes. It's ok to like Apple, since they're doing the complete opposite.
The OP was correct, actually. Business is about making money. It just so happens that keeping your customers happy is a good way to make more money so most companies try to go that route.
I have an interesting problem at work. Our LAN is pretty simple. SonicWall firewall box connected to our dual ADSL Internet connections, connected at the other end to a Cisco Catalyst 1924 24-port 10Mbit switch, static IPs in the 10.x.x.x range each location has its own /24 so we properly co-mingle on the WAN with the rest of the group.
Each PC is assigned its own IP address, no conflicts, gateway is the SonicWall box, DNS servers belong to the ISP and are routed without issue.
Our network is primarily static with most of our machines running Windows 2000, my machine runs Windows XP Pro. Two employees and our boss all bought new laptops within a 3 month period. Two Toshiba Satellites and one Sony Vaio. All three run Vista (Home Ultimate, I think). All three of them were configured as simply as possible with their IPs plugged into the network card configuration along with gateway and both DNS servers. All three, without fail, have problems connecting to certain websites. www.tdcanadatrust.com, www.msn.com, www.hotmail.com, www.cnn.com, www.gotomeeting.com and a plethora of others. They will, however, visit the vast majority of sites out there.
None of these websites are secure - just entry pages for various sites and services.
Each Vista laptop came pre-installed with a copy of Symantec/Norton Internet Security / Antivirus suite (90 day trial). In my efforts to make the computers 'work' as expected I've systematically disabled and then uninstalled this suite from 2 of the 3, I've disabled UAC, the firewall on the network interface, as well as anything Vista had that was related in any way to security. The pages simply do not load, I can not ping their addresses (I can, however, resolve the names in DNS).
For the record, these sites work flawlessly on any of the Windows 2000 and my Windows XP machine and under Linux (my machine dual-boots) there are no glitches, pauses, delays or hiccups that could indicate any sort of network problem. Ping, traceroute and HTTP work perfectly as expected. The problem occurs under both Internet Explorer (7 - fully up to date) that comes with Vista and the latest version of Mozilla Firefox (2.0.0.8 I believe). This happens on any network drop the machines connect to - even in cases where a (perfectly functional) Windows 2000 machine is unplugged and the Vista laptop immediately connected the same problem occurs. There are no VLANs or overly complex configurations present on the switch. It merely passes packets back and forth and that's it.
So I'm at a loss. Without an error message or popup or anything to describe the source of the problem I just can not for the life of me figure out what is causing this problem. I've tried configuring the network settings as both the primary and the alternate configurations (alternate being preferred because each of the three use their laptops both at home with DHCP and at work with a static) but to no avail. I've gone through trials with all security functions fully enabled and locked down as tight as Vista can be right through trials with no security whatsoever and every viable stage in between. The consistent symptom remains the computer unable to visit these web pages, only telling me after considerable delay that it was "unable to connect" with the usual balderdash about the server may be down, blah blah.
I think you'll find that this is the site for nerd related news. Now, if the new Australian leader(s) use Firefox or supported it as a campaign promise, then I can see the relevance.
Meanwhile, the politics rag is over there. ---->
That's kind of the crux of the problem; how many years' experience should an applicant have in maintaining a Windows Vista network?
Atleast with a board/government certification body there would be a minimum set of skills / achievements required to call oneself a professional. There'd also be a place where industry people and managers could file formal complaints when one of their certified members royally fouls up a project and doesn't know enough to fix it (ie; when they prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they fudged the certification exams).
I think you miss read the AC's post. He never said it would take hours to extract all the media from a client's computer. He said, "I honestly don't have time to look through everyone's personal image files and mp3 caches."
With automated search tools you don't have to look through anything. That was kind of my point, which you've apparently missed. :)
When I run a search for media I can quickly and with a few keystrokes / mouse clicks eliminate most of the junk, clipart, etc. from the search results. Anything below 10K gets thrown away immediately, for example, which would likely eliminate the majority of hits on any system with an installed encyclopedia software, office suite or anything else that comes with "clipart".
Doing a quick search for all media files on my computer returned 34K files, of which only about 3% is anything other than application resources. Assuming the files average only 100KB (because I think I might have just crashed explorer by trying to get file properties on that many files) that's still ~3.4GB, or about 30 minutes of burn time (and 5 cd swaps) with my CD burner.
It's a few minutes and 1 DVD-R(W) disc (do modern computers even have "CD-RW" options anymore?!?), and again, it can be performed while running a genuine work-related task on a neighboring PC so again, back to the original AC's point, it's not taking "hours" of company time, it's taking a few seconds to a couple minutes worth of mouse clicks while you wait for the next "Next" prompt to appear on a clients PC.
Not to mention the client's PC is probably already unstable, so even trying to copy that many files could be an exercise in futility. (Have you tried multitasking on a thrashed Windows installation?)
I'm not sure quite how unstable the machine(s) in question would be; keeping in mind the experiment originally involved GS installing iTunes on a reasonably stable machine.
In other words, you would have to do spend some time digging or burning, to get anything useful from a client's computer.
When I was administering a high school LAN a few years ago we ran into a problem with students out stripping the storage capacity of our RAID array (long story; IBM NetFinity server, Windows NT, no quota support, no upstream support, many Tums later I'm no longer there. :) so I and my co-administrator would routinely run a search across the array for all multimedia content and sift it to find the worst offenders who'd be notified, through their homeroom teachers, of their violation of the schools AUP and the files would be backed up to CD then deleted. (Backed up just in case some were related to a project, but when you have 1700 .JPG PokeMon / Digimon files in a directory chances are that's not a school project, but hey, better safe than raked over the coals!)
That's part of the problem with not having any sort of standardized governing body from the start. The cost of entry to IT is effectively the cost of either a home PC setup and an Internet connection, a couple books, the cost to sit for an A+ exam, etc. In other words, the cost is practically nil. Hence we have every high school/college kid or every burger flipper with a home PC and broadband (or dial-up in the beginning) thinking they're qualified to be a computer / network technician.
Then comes the dot-com era. Techies are suddenly glamorous and anybody can make $75k/year out of high school, or if you graduate college/university you can walk into six figures straight away! Dilute that to include anybody with an MCSE, A+ et al. and you've got this massive influx of students into any educational facility or diploma mill that's accepting tuition cheques and we have this enormous surplus of "graduates" who now believe themselves qualified.
In a way that killed us. HR departments and hiring managers never really, truly knew what to look for in terms of certifications. Experience was up in the air because so much technology was so new who could put a time frame on it, and how well did you learn it in the time you had with it? Remember back in '97 all those ads requiring "Minimum 5 years experience with Microsoft Windows'95"?
QuantumRiff mentioned plumbers and I'm afraid in a multitude of ways he couldn't be more wrong. The prescribed method to gain full journeyman status in any skilled trade is exactly what he said and it's there for good reason. First you have to prove yourself educated and intelligent enough to gain entry which narrows the field right off the blocks. Next you have to gain your hours of apprenticeship working in the field with actual, experienced professionals. Yes, you have to earn your stripes doing B.S. work which will include coffee and lunch runs, sweeping floors and all the other crap jobs that come along. But hey, some day you'll have your own apprentice to do the same exact thing. Everybody went through it, new people are no exception. During the course of your apprenticeship you have to attend mandatory school sessions teaching gradually more and more advanced materials which you can now relate to your actual on-the-job experience so what your experienced bosses are telling you starts to make sense.
After your 4-5 years and your x000 hours of service (with increasing pay every year, mind you) you're now a full-fledged plumber, electrician, mechanic, glazier, mason, etc. Now, if this were the case with computer / IT professionals - don't you think there'd be much fewer of [us|them] out there, namely the unqualified sort? The few who remained would logically command a much higher pay scale and who knows, maybe this (digital) world would even be a better place for it. :)
As a side note to QuantumRiff; have you ever experienced a house with improper plumbing/venting? Ever experienced sewer gas creeping into the building, killing all the residents? Ever had a toilet back up so severely there is literally 8" deep raw sewage covering the floor? Ever taken a shower and been scalded to the point of permanent disfigurement?
Yeah, didn't think so. Next time you have a problem with your skilled tradesman, keep it the hell to yourself.
Oh. At which retail outlet can I replace the last decades' worth of financials and client data for my company? What's that worth, the cost of a CD-R and some shrink wrap?
It's not the cost of the vessel that matters, it's what's contained within that's worth $350/hour. I have nothing critical in my television set, however I would like the DVD back when I throw away my DVD player.
{SIGH!} Ok, let me spell this out for you. Read slowly;
I'm afraid, son, that you've wildly missed the point. Try re-reading the thread from beginning to end starting here and come back when you've figured out just what it is we're talking about. Now run along.
I'm sorry, I should have clarified. I was talking about people fixing computers and troubleshooting operating system issues having some sort of knowledge on how to use same.
Start -> Search -> For Files or Folders -> Pictures, Music or Video. Select all three types, click Search. Alt-Tab or just plain minimize the window, perform other tasks. When search is complete, Ctrl-A (select all), copy, open thumbdrive or similar, paste, minimize, perform other tasks, remove thumbdrive from computer and store your bounty in your pocket. Repeat for documents if desired.
If the client isn't using Windows XP or later with its fan-dancy search tool, you could just search for the likes of "*.jpg;*.gif;*.bmp;*.mp3;*.mov;*.mp4;*.avi" etc. and perform the same copy/paste operation.
I just ran a test. It literally took me longer to type out that explanation than it did to search my entire system - including network attached drives - for all multimedia content.
Safe to say I won't be bringing my computer to you for support my friend. :)
You mean something like CompTIA?
I've mentioned this guy before; he had graduated from a local technical school and was even a card-carrying A+ tech. As this school had the reputation of "pay to pass", I decided to test him, and pointing at an open box, asked him to point at the motherboard.
No, I specifically avoided mentioning them because I firmly believe their organization and the certificates they provide aren't worth the paper they're printed on (even if they provided PDF files). It's also widely known amongst the technically literate which "schools" are little more than diploma factories (if you pay your $8 grand, hell, here's your diploma! You're now educated!) I've dealt with way too many "I have ${cert} so I'm qualified to make six figures! Hire me or your company will wither and die!" types to mention.
My boss informed one of them that he should be a garbage man. See, he was trying to string together an ethernet LAN without using a hub or switch (because that's wrong, or something) but instead by installing two network cards in each of the fifteen computers and cabling them one to the next to the next in a lovely bastardization of, I dunno, token ring with ethernet with thinnet with ...
What we need is a professional standards body that actually measures skills and mandates periodic skills reviews to maintain certification according to accepted industry guidelines. Practical examinations as well as an apprenticeship period would be preferable to ensure capability.
If I'm not mistaken, one can still go out and buy a CompTIA A+ certification book, schedule a time to take the test and be certified without ever actually opening the case on a computer, which was also the cause of the complete industry-wide invalidation of the MCSE certification when it came out.
Take for example Cisco certs (yeah yeah); the CCNA means nothing in a practical sense, but it does indicate that you have some grounding in networking fundamentals. Ok. So you can assist our network techs and troubleshoot problems at the LAN level. After a couple years experience you write the CCNP test. Now you're able to move into the bigger office and assist our WAN techs and touch the real routers. A few years of this and you enroll in the CCIE program. Combine that with 10+ years in the trenches and suddenly four letters mean you can pretty much write your own ticket.
However if you somehow do manage to aquire even a CCIE but don't have a decades worth of relevant experience you may as well have saved yourself the few grand and just written your CCNA because, hey, you're our new tape switcher.
Combine all this certification nonsense with HR people and management who don't understand anything about the computer industry but who do recognize "industry recognized certification body" and associate it with "skilled professional" and make the leap to "qualified for this position" and you have a very large disconnect from reality, compound that a million fold and welcome to today.
I've seen a lot of head scratching over the "non-copyrighted" comment as well. A CD is a storage medium. Anything can be on it from FOSS software / source code, pictures, public domain music, pictures, documents, spreadsheets, logfiles, videos and on and on and on.
Just because he said "CD" doesn't mean it's a commercial, shrink-wrapped disc. It could be literally anything and hypothesizing about it seems to me to be a glorious waste of time and comment space.
No, but $100-200/hour depending on the skill levels required sounds perfectly acceptable to me.
I was priced out of the market in computer and networking repair in my area because of every Joe and Sally who'd taken a crash course, read a few books or were just "the smart computer person" in their house opening up shop and charging ridiculously low rates for repair work.
Sure, for on-site work I was billing myself out at $60/hr and they were billing out at $20/hr. Sounds great, right? Sure it does; until you realize it takes them 5 hours to perform the tasks I can perform in 1 and mine won't be a cobbled together nightmare.
Sure, a few clients realized this and called us back in to fix the problems these cheap techs caused them (usually more problems than solutions) but it simply wasn't enough. We couldn't compete with the prices, we couldn't stand (or afford) to contract ourselves out for such low rates and we wouldn't dream of resorting to the tactics these places used to ensure job security (namely "leave behinds").
I've said for years that there should be a standard body for establishing credentials for computer technicians that includes proof of skills and semi-annual retesting to ensure skills development matches the pace of the industry and that a standardized set of fees should be established by this body to be charged by its members. If an organization chooses to have their work done by a non-member they do so at their own peril.
Pardon me? If you're representative of a typical GS member I'm glad I've never taken one of my machines to you for any work. It takes all of 2-3 minutes to locate, copy, and initiate a transfer of a media directory. It takes about the same amount of time or less to initiate a CD-R burn of said data.
You're aware that with modern operating systems users can perform multiple operations simultaneously, right? It's entirely possible to copy files to, say, a thumbdrive whilst installing iTunes and re-arranging some desktop icons. I can then burn them to a CD-R on one machine on the bench while I perform a large operation on the machine beside it. Realistically, I'll be burning my stolen porn collection while I'm performing on the clock duties so it literally won't cost the company a dime!
It is, however, morally repugnant to do so and the entire time I was a PC technician often working on as many as three or four computers at a time I would never browse a persons personal documents, images, videos or music files except as required for regular virus/trojan/malware removal.
We've had clients ask about our data integrity policy and go so far as to suggest removing their hard drive prior to or immediately at the start of our repair process. It was always made perfectly clear to them that their data was 100% secure and that there was nothing to worry about. Once our (high school) co-op student connected our bench speakers to a customer machine and began playing an MP3 they had on their hard drive and was nearly sent home for it. Data snooping was simply not tolerated under any circumstances and I wouldn't expect any less from any establishment I'd bring my computer to.
We had a taste of this in Canada. Mitsubishi were running commercials for the all-new 2008 Lancer showing off some of the rally and street tuner heritage of Mitsubishi which included closed-course "street" races as well as some off-road rally racing. They took a lot of flak over that from various bleeding heart agencies but it was oft pointed out that Honda, who run ads showcasing their safety and 'green' vehicles are the brand most notorious for street tuning and illegal racing (it was a Honda Civic and a Ford Mustang who caused the death of a truck driver on Highway 400 northbound that prompted the crack-down on street racing and related adverts).
Sometimes the hype about advertising is just hype, and the illegal maneuvers you speak of are there to showcase the cars fun driving/handling characteristics. Now, if a car commercial shows a car doing something it's clearly not capable of then we'd have a closer (famous Slashdot) car analogy on our hands, but, we don't.
Yes, actually, I have. Even engaged in a discussion with him over the future of the advertising strategy of our corporation in Canada. The man had some really interesting ideas and I've seen several of them unfold over the past several months.
You've hit a sore spot with me with the idea of personal responsibility. That is an area I wish we had more of nowadays but it's also very difficult nowadays with so much specialized 'stuff' as a part of our every day lives.
Think about the complex purchase decisions you have to make on a day to day basis. I'll start large with your living situation; once you've decided whether it's best to purchase, lease or rent you then have to decide on an area, a configuration and a budget. You should also plan ahead for the next 3-5 years to make sure you're not moving every year as things change. Now you'll need transportation. Are you better off to take public transit, taxi cabs, or purchase a car? If the latter, do you go new or used? Private or dealer? Finance, save the cash or lease? Now that you've got that figured out, what kind of car do you buy? How many doors? Cylinders? Speakers? How many wheels drive the thing? What size should the wheels be? Automatic or manual or manu-matic or sportronic or ...? Well now you've got your ride and your pad you'll want some electronics. Home theatre or simple television? What kind? CRT, plasma or LCD? What size? Wide or full screen? Brand or off-make? To HD or not to HD? HD or Blu-ray? Cable, satellite or antenna? Now on to your computer; PC or Mac? Intel or AMD? How much power do you need? How much should you spend? Order online or in store? White box do-it-yourself or pre-fab? Do you go for the extended warranty? What of accessories? Monitor(s)?
All that stuff under control, your home furnishings need tending to, flooring, drapes, bed clothes, your kitchen needs to be outfitted, you constantly have to amend and supplement your wardrobe. You'll have to pick doctors and dentists and veterinarians for yourself, your children and your pets (you decide who goes where) then you have to take in their advise based on their years of medical school and filter it and apply appropriately.
All through this you've been somehow managing your personal finances including your credit rating. Investments, savings, RRSPs or whatever the American retirement savings equivalent is. You have to file your taxes every year being mindful of not going to prison. Do you do it yourself or hire a company? Which one? Private or store front? If the former, do you do it on paper, do it online or buy software? Which software do you use?
The long and short of it is we're faced with information overload from every direction. Now I'll grant you that it's generally best if you slow down and take stock of your situation and research everything you ever do before going ahead, but as someone who presently does just that I can tell you it frustrates the living daylights out of the people around you. Consequently, it indicates that I'm an extremely conservative (small 'c') person which means this sort of thing doesn't bode well with people who are more outgoing and shall we say impulsive?
It never ceases to amaze me how people go through life not understanding the fundamentals that affect everybody. Forget knowing how the amount, type and speed of RAM affects your desktop experience - but things like not knowing what their credit score is or how their rating is calculated! How many people do you know who believe that if they have no credit their score is perfect, or the people who have all the credit everybody will ever give them and think that makes them golden?
But in the end, where do you draw the line between doing and not doing something based on your understanding of the situation? Am I being overly pedantic in each avenue of my life? Am I missing out on opportunities and experiences because I don't know enough about it before I proceed?
So personal responsibility is a good thing, but on the other side of the coin marketing mater
And I have to say that I'd side with Microsoft here. I mean, when it comes down to it, if the PC can run any version of Windows Vista then it's CAPABLE of running Vista. Maybe it would be nice to have more info given to consumers, maybe a compatibility sticker on the bottom of the laptop, or even on the top lid of the laptop that's able to be easily peeled off.
I think the big problem here is the consumers who could go out and buy a machine, regardless of cost, that is labeled "Vista Capable". Shortly thereafter they purchase either the Vista Ultimate Upgrade ($299.99 CDN at Future Shop) or even just plain old Vista Ultimate ($499 at Future Shop) because it is "The best edition of Windows Vista with the power, security, and mobility features you need for work, and the entertainment and ease you want for fun. It has everything you need to shift seamlessly between the worlds of play and productivity."
So now that they've dropped well over $300 or $500 (sales taxes inclusive) for this product, opened it, spent 4 hours installing it - now they can't return it because it's open and they have to replace their brand new computer.
I don't think that it would be a benefit to consumers to only label PC's capable of running Ultimate as "Vista Capable." It would perhaps lead consumers, on average, to buy more expensive machines than they need.This suggestion is IMHO pretty bang-on. It should list XP Home|Pro, Vista Home Basic|Home Premium|Ultimate and rate them on compatability (in full-featured mode) rather than "Yeah, it'll run a form of Vista if you disable all cool stuff that makes Vista Vista" (for whatever definition of 'cool' and 'stuff' you or the marketing people would prefer). The problem here is the disconnect between the marketing of the product and the capabilities required to actually unleash same. I have a pretty darned powerful computer connected to my home theatre system and much to my chagrin it's not up to snuff to run Vista Ultimate - letalone perform up to its multimedia requirements at the same time!
I think you'll return to find your vehicle impounded. In many jurisdictions an unplated vehicle in a public place isn't legal and will therefore be towed by either the police or an over zealous tow driver on a slow night. If not, of course, you'd give any police officer a great reason to run your place when you return to your vehicle and bolt the plates back on.
The simple solution is to not do anything illegal. Don't speed, don't drive overly aggressively, don't drive under the influence and you shouldn't have a problem when leaving the bar.
It drives me nuts when I hear about the poor repeat drunk driver (or the person with 12 speeding tickets, or a couple careless charges, or or or ... ) who's harassed when leaving the bar after having "just one too many" and the mean police officer who pulled, tested and ticketed him. Did you ever think of the side effects of that same jackass being allowed to remain licensed and on the very roads you drive on with your friends and family? Did you ever think about their civil rights to not be killed by a drunk driver?
Now move away. Your heart is bleeding all over my shirt.
Every e-mail provider, to some degree, snoops atleast portions of your communications. Google are just more up front about it. If you don't like the way your free e-mail service gains funding stop using it and pay for a service. End of story. Meanwhile, stop complaining about it.
Meanwhile GMail is a more desirable service than Hotmail (kind of the point of the article) because the ads are less invasive, more pointed and therefore more useful to its users.
The whole thing really boils down to the fact that while you're using their services they have access to all the data you store within it no matter what your opinion on the matter. Moreover, e-mail is a best-effort delivery system and it's as secure as a postcard. If you don't want every person and service provider in the delivery chain snooping within your correspondence - encrypt it.
This isn't any kind of major privacy invasion. Nothing to see here, moving right along ...