Someone has modded the above comment, "Flamebait". However, flamebait means that it is a statement given only to cause an argument. In this case, there is no argument, is there? The comment states undeniable facts, and the book gives more facts by quoting stories from some of the world's most prestigious news agencies. Where is the argument?
The United States government uses its most advanced technology to kill people.
Even the beginning of the Internet was part of an effort to find more
efficient ways to kill people. The Internet was begun by DARPA, the United
States government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The U.S. government, largely without complete understanding by U.S. citizens,
has has killed more than 3,000,000 people in the last 30 years partly by
bombing 14 countries, if I have counted correctly.
The violence on 9/11 was a direct result of U.S. government policy. Here is a
book about how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
If the citizens of the U.S. really understood, would they support the
violence?
See ZoneAlarm Pro at ZoneLabs.com. That program (Windows only) has a feature whereby it renames files with extensions executable in Windows. Go to Security settings/Advanced/MailSafe. The executable extensions are listed there. I believe there is a trial version available.
Question: How did it happen that Microsoft Windows has 33 executable extensions?
I don't know about VA Linux, but Slashdot could DEFINITELY be a viable business.
The people who run Slashdot have no understanding of marketing or advertising. Yes, those are big intellectual challenges, but it is surprising how little skill they have.
Am I saying I could do better? Yes. I could turn Slashdot into a viable business.
Here's a quote from the article by Bill Parish, Microsoft Financial
Pyramid: "The fundamental problem is that Microsoft is incurring
massive losses and only by accounting illusions are they able to show a
profit." (The quote is from the second paragraph of the article.)
Sometimes it seems that Microsoft's main product is abuse, not software.
Some teenagers react to having an insufficient, abusive family life by testing the limits of the adults around them. Usually they adjust and stop making their anger a problem for everyone around them by the time they are 25 or so. Maybe Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer never adjusted. Maybe they are still abused teenagers at heart, who see themselves as separate, and not connected, with other people in the world.
Whatever theory explains their behavior, they are building up a truly awesomely intense dislike. They often have the complete opposite of customer loyalty, even among people with little technical knowledge.
My experience with Microsoft technical support has been that, in 19 years of dealing with them, they have only answered one technical support question correctly.
I know someone who headed
the system administration at the headquarters of a $300,000,000 a year
company, and he also found MS technical support useless. Microsoft's technical
support representatives didn't know why SQL Server was failing, and they could
not discover the reason.
In my extensive experience with Microsoft technical support, since the days before PCs existed
and we had the CP/M OS, Microsoft has only answered one question correctly.
That was a question about a C compiler problem.
Obviously, part of the reason I don't get help from Microsoft is that I don't
call to ask easy questions. I'm sure that Microsoft provides help to many of
its customers who are novices.
I have called Microsoft technical support about operating system problems many
times, and they have NEVER been able to solve the problems, although once a
technical support representative and I worked out a solution together, after 4
difficult hours.
Once several years ago I talked to a friendly Microsoft technical support
representative. He was very knowledgeable. I had a written list of questions
about Windows. He was able to give me no answers. He just laughed at some of
them and said he wouldn't know how to begin finding the solution. He did,
however, provide me with some very useful information concerning problems I
wasn't currently having. I remember this representative so clearly because I
called expecting the usual Microsoft roughness, and he was friendly.
Companies that have virtual monopolies in their fields are deliberately allowing their products to be shoddy, so that they can get people to "upgrade".
If the products worked, you wouldn't need tech support.
The conclusion: The Psychic Friends Network is better at answering technical
support questions for Microsoft products. Neither organization has useful
answers, but The Psychic Friends Network is more friendly and less expensive.
We are currently having problems with Matrox video adapters and LogiTech mice on new computers that we build. They don't work under Windows XP, and there is apparently no fix.
Matrox drivers are causing blue screen crashes in Windows XP. The blue screen blames a matrox DLL.
The Matrox technical representative told me to try a video card from another manufacturer. I told him that, if the Matrox card didn't work, and nVidia did, we would just begin selling nVidia cards. This did not bother him.
It is so difficult to deal with Matrox that it makes me wonder if they are going out of business.
LogiTech is similar. There are problems with mouse wheel scrolling. LogiTech has a variety of "try this, try that" solutions. None of them work for us. Obviously, no one has bothered to actually troubleshoot the problems.
My opinion is to be very, very careful about this.
You can certainly spend $50,000 on training. You may not be able to get
$50,000 in value.
The only people who are successful in computing, I have found, are people who
teach themselves. The field is too fast-moving to have a good class in every
subject. On the contrary, I have never seen a class that was excellent. Everyone has
his or her own special needs. It is unlikely those needs can be met in a
group.
People in the field of computing need the skills to pick up a book of 1,000
pages and extract useful information in less than a day. Developing those
skills is of fundamental importance to being successful in our field. You can
only develop the skills needed to
teach yourself by teaching yourself.
Also, consider the business tactics here. Why would your company want this
arrangement? It is easy to guess. They don't care about the training.
They want to lock you in to your present salary for a very small amount of
money. No doubt your employer has seen the cost of acquiring and keeping an
employee with computer skills, and no doubt that cost is greater than
$16,666.67 per year ($50,000 / 3 years).
It is easy to guess that you will find yourself not getting raises when you
should. It is easy to guess that the value of lost raises might be more than
the actual value of the agreement.
You say, "I'm not really happy with my current employer...". Take
this seriously. It may be your brain saying that you don't like something that
it, at present, quite well hidden, such as, for example, that your current
employer is sneaky.
Maybe you won't be able to spend $50,000 in one year. However, you will still
be locked into the 3 years of the agreement, won't you? Maybe the company
knows you can't spend $50,000, and would find some reason not to let you, if
you tried. Remember, the arrangement requires you to do useful work in that
year, also. They can reduce the amount you spend easily, by merely assigning you
to a rush job.
In reality, this arrangement may just reflect a desire to lock the average
employee in your group into 3 years of unsatisfactory employment for much less
than $50,000.
The trick here is that the employer is guessing that the average employee in
your group will not have the cash in the bank to allow himself or herself to
change employers. Remember, anyone who tries to trick you is a crook. It
doesn't matter if that person is successful.
My comment above is only relevant if you need a seriously loud siren. In many large factories, this is necessary, because speakers just don't make enough sound. The sirens run on AC power, and would need to be controlled from a PC port.
If you have a sound system that is loud enough to signal to everyone, it is better to use a PC sound card, and control that from a timer program, as someone has said above. An advantage of a sound system is that you can configure the sound easily, and you can use it for voice.
I wrote a program to control a parallel (printer) port. It's easy, in several languages. There are eight data lines, so you have eight outputs.
It is possible to buy power controllers that control 30 amps from an isolated 5 milliampere 5 volt input, which is perfect for controlling from a computer.
For a long time, the login name "password" worked with the password "password".
Just don't give any accurate information. You make $200,000 to 300,000 per year, remember?
Set Mozilla or Opera to throw away cookies on exit.
The quality of the articles is excellent. Probably the best newspaper writing in the United States for any stories that don't involve Jewish interests. Then there is conflict of interest.
From the Netmar web site:
"Our Linux server is a 1500 megahertz Pentium 4 processor, equipped with 128 megabytes of RAM to handle computation-heavy facets of your site."
I don't think it is possible to buy less memory than that. Do I mis-read that? They have ONE computer?
The reason many companies have no limits on bandwidth is that they are very, very small, and don't have much bandwidth for their entire company. They expect to host mom's family fotos website.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the error was not really an error, but caused by the complete overload of being Slashdotted.
Someone has modded the above comment, "Flamebait". However, flamebait means that it is a statement given only to cause an argument. In this case, there is no argument, is there? The comment states undeniable facts, and the book gives more facts by quoting stories from some of the world's most prestigious news agencies. Where is the argument?
The United States government uses its most advanced technology to kill people. Even the beginning of the Internet was part of an effort to find more efficient ways to kill people. The Internet was begun by DARPA, the United States government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The U.S. government, largely without complete understanding by U.S. citizens, has has killed more than 3,000,000 people in the last 30 years partly by bombing 14 countries, if I have counted correctly.
The violence on 9/11 was a direct result of U.S. government policy. Here is a book about how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
If the citizens of the U.S. really understood, would they support the violence?
Ask Slashdot: Is Slashdot the worst-edited publication on the planet?
The title: "Ask Slashdot: Are American Vacation Policies are Outdated?"
See ZoneAlarm Pro at ZoneLabs.com. That program (Windows only) has a feature whereby it renames files with extensions executable in Windows. Go to Security settings/Advanced/MailSafe. The executable extensions are listed there. I believe there is a trial version available.
Question: How did it happen that Microsoft Windows has 33 executable extensions?
This NASA story, Hubble's New Camera Delivers Breathtaking Views Of The Universe, has links to the photos. One of the linked sites, Hubblesite.org has stories such as Hubble's Advanced Camera Unveils a Panoramic New View of the Universe, which has thumbnail photos.
Very good point. Changing the license might push people to stay with their old versions of MS Office. This is not what Microsoft wants.
I don't know about VA Linux, but Slashdot could DEFINITELY be a viable business.
The people who run Slashdot have no understanding of marketing or advertising. Yes, those are big intellectual challenges, but it is surprising how little skill they have.
Am I saying I could do better? Yes. I could turn Slashdot into a viable business.
Thanks!!! That's what I was looking for.
Here's a quote from the article by Bill Parish, Microsoft Financial Pyramid: "The fundamental problem is that Microsoft is incurring massive losses and only by accounting illusions are they able to show a profit." (The quote is from the second paragraph of the article.)
That's interesting. Someone in my city wrote several long papers about this. I had forgotten about them. I can't find the link immediately.
So, they are abusing the shareholders too?
"How can Microsoft use GPL licensed products..."
Sometimes it seems that Microsoft's main product is abuse, not software.
Some teenagers react to having an insufficient, abusive family life by testing the limits of the adults around them. Usually they adjust and stop making their anger a problem for everyone around them by the time they are 25 or so. Maybe Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer never adjusted. Maybe they are still abused teenagers at heart, who see themselves as separate, and not connected, with other people in the world.
Whatever theory explains their behavior, they are building up a truly awesomely intense dislike. They often have the complete opposite of customer loyalty, even among people with little technical knowledge.
My experience with Microsoft technical support has been that, in 19 years of dealing with them, they have only answered one technical support question correctly.
I know someone who headed the system administration at the headquarters of a $300,000,000 a year company, and he also found MS technical support useless. Microsoft's technical support representatives didn't know why SQL Server was failing, and they could not discover the reason.
In my extensive experience with Microsoft technical support, since the days before PCs existed and we had the CP/M OS, Microsoft has only answered one question correctly. That was a question about a C compiler problem.
Obviously, part of the reason I don't get help from Microsoft is that I don't call to ask easy questions. I'm sure that Microsoft provides help to many of its customers who are novices.
I have called Microsoft technical support about operating system problems many times, and they have NEVER been able to solve the problems, although once a technical support representative and I worked out a solution together, after 4 difficult hours.
Once several years ago I talked to a friendly Microsoft technical support representative. He was very knowledgeable. I had a written list of questions about Windows. He was able to give me no answers. He just laughed at some of them and said he wouldn't know how to begin finding the solution. He did, however, provide me with some very useful information concerning problems I wasn't currently having. I remember this representative so clearly because I called expecting the usual Microsoft roughness, and he was friendly.
Companies that have virtual monopolies in their fields are deliberately allowing their products to be shoddy, so that they can get people to "upgrade".
If the products worked, you wouldn't need tech support.
See Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network
The conclusion: The Psychic Friends Network is better at answering technical support questions for Microsoft products. Neither organization has useful answers, but The Psychic Friends Network is more friendly and less expensive.
We are currently having problems with Matrox video adapters and LogiTech mice on new computers that we build. They don't work under Windows XP, and there is apparently no fix.
Matrox drivers are causing blue screen crashes in Windows XP. The blue screen blames a matrox DLL.
The Matrox technical representative told me to try a video card from another manufacturer. I told him that, if the Matrox card didn't work, and nVidia did, we would just begin selling nVidia cards. This did not bother him.
It is so difficult to deal with Matrox that it makes me wonder if they are going out of business.
LogiTech is similar. There are problems with mouse wheel scrolling. LogiTech has a variety of "try this, try that" solutions. None of them work for us. Obviously, no one has bothered to actually troubleshoot the problems.
I strongly agree with the above comment. Unfortunately I don't have moderation points.
Companies are following Microsoft's lead in being abusive.
I agree. There are times when Off Topic is very helpful. This is one of them.
I suggest you submit this as a story.
My understanding is that the speed penalty is very small. Is that correct?
My opinion is to be very, very careful about this.
You can certainly spend $50,000 on training. You may not be able to get $50,000 in value.
The only people who are successful in computing, I have found, are people who teach themselves. The field is too fast-moving to have a good class in every subject. On the contrary, I have never seen a class that was excellent. Everyone has his or her own special needs. It is unlikely those needs can be met in a group.
People in the field of computing need the skills to pick up a book of 1,000 pages and extract useful information in less than a day. Developing those skills is of fundamental importance to being successful in our field. You can only develop the skills needed to teach yourself by teaching yourself.
Also, consider the business tactics here. Why would your company want this arrangement? It is easy to guess. They don't care about the training. They want to lock you in to your present salary for a very small amount of money. No doubt your employer has seen the cost of acquiring and keeping an employee with computer skills, and no doubt that cost is greater than $16,666.67 per year ($50,000 / 3 years).
It is easy to guess that you will find yourself not getting raises when you should. It is easy to guess that the value of lost raises might be more than the actual value of the agreement.
You say, "I'm not really happy with my current employer...". Take this seriously. It may be your brain saying that you don't like something that it, at present, quite well hidden, such as, for example, that your current employer is sneaky.
Maybe you won't be able to spend $50,000 in one year. However, you will still be locked into the 3 years of the agreement, won't you? Maybe the company knows you can't spend $50,000, and would find some reason not to let you, if you tried. Remember, the arrangement requires you to do useful work in that year, also. They can reduce the amount you spend easily, by merely assigning you to a rush job.
In reality, this arrangement may just reflect a desire to lock the average employee in your group into 3 years of unsatisfactory employment for much less than $50,000.
The trick here is that the employer is guessing that the average employee in your group will not have the cash in the bank to allow himself or herself to change employers. Remember, anyone who tries to trick you is a crook. It doesn't matter if that person is successful.
This sounds very good.
A useful point has been made, however. The explanation above needs to be put on your web site, so it doesn't sound like you have only one computer.
My comment above is only relevant if you need a seriously loud siren. In many large factories, this is necessary, because speakers just don't make enough sound. The sirens run on AC power, and would need to be controlled from a PC port.
If you have a sound system that is loud enough to signal to everyone, it is better to use a PC sound card, and control that from a timer program, as someone has said above. An advantage of a sound system is that you can configure the sound easily, and you can use it for voice.
You must be Jewish, seeing anti-semitism in what I said. I said it was the best newspaper in the U.S.
I wrote a program to control a parallel (printer) port. It's easy, in several languages. There are eight data lines, so you have eight outputs.
It is possible to buy power controllers that control 30 amps from an isolated 5 milliampere 5 volt input, which is perfect for controlling from a computer.
For a long time, the login name "password" worked with the password "password".
Just don't give any accurate information. You make $200,000 to 300,000 per year, remember?
Set Mozilla or Opera to throw away cookies on exit.
The quality of the articles is excellent. Probably the best newspaper writing in the United States for any stories that don't involve Jewish interests. Then there is conflict of interest.
From the Netmar web site: "Our Linux server is a 1500 megahertz Pentium 4 processor, equipped with 128 megabytes of RAM to handle computation-heavy facets of your site."
I don't think it is possible to buy less memory than that. Do I mis-read that? They have ONE computer?
The reason many companies have no limits on bandwidth is that they are very, very small, and don't have much bandwidth for their entire company. They expect to host mom's family fotos website.