We discovered during an SMS 2003 rollout that if you try to initiate a Remote Assistance session to a machine that had NewSID run on it (part of our post-imaging processes), that Remote Assistance would not connect.. so, good riddance to NewSID as far as I'm concerned. (Running Sysprep on the machine would fix the problem.)
In Canada, where $1 and $2 bills disappeared many years back, the ladies at the ballet now do a sort of game where you try to knock a rolled-up poster off their bottom (while they're on all fours) with the $1/$2 coins. That's nowhere near as classy as tucking a bill into the G-string and giving a playful smack on the bottom, but..
The solution mentioned by the European gentlemen is still doable for the rich types - use $5 bills, our lowest denomination of bills.
Mine was a TI-99/4A as well, which my dad bought when I was about 7 years old. He bought it with the swank-ass speech synthesizer, so that when you played Parsec you could hear a female voice saying "alien forces advancing" and "nice shot, pilot".:) The computer's still in my parents' attic.
..for someone to bring a lawsuit against Sony under the DMCA for circumventing Windows security or something. Surely the DMCA is ambiguously worded enough to allow for this?:)
Qzukk wrote: Did the contract these people agreed to in order to get service mention "oh by the way, we censor websites that we don't like?
TELUS defends their actions in terms of not allowing access to "harfmful"/legally questionable (in their opinion) content like pictures of employees who cross the picket lines and the site encouraging people to "jam the phone lines" at TELUS. In their Terms of Service for their internet service, TELUS does say:
45. You acknowledge that TELUS has no obligation to censor or monitor use of the TELUS Internet Services by you, any customer or any third party, including, without limitation, any obligation to censor or monitor any content, material or other information sent, received or accessible through the TELUS Internet Services or the Internet. However, you agree that TELUS has the right to, without notice, monitor use of the TELUS Internet Services and monitor, review and retain such content, material or information if TELUS believes in good faith that such activity is reasonably necessary to provide the TELUS Internet Services to customers, ensure adherence to or enforce the terms of this Agreement, comply with any laws or regulations, respond to any allegation of illegal conduct or claimed violation of third party rights, or protect itself or others.
So you might want to take a close look at the TOS for your own ISP; you might end up finding something similar.
This product performs the same functions (and more) than Microsoft's SMS. (different from SUS, I know.) The application packaging/deployment part of Altiris would be a way to apply updates for FOSS products, and the database tracks which application packages have been applied to which machines. It has its own client that has to be installed on each machine (though there is a client install wizard to speed that along). You might also sell this based on the ability to integrate Altiris' real-time inventory solution, using the same client software.
Consider this: you have one company that provides for all of the needs of the citizen in the town, and a lion's share of the citizens work for that company.
Sounds a lot like the old days in mining towns, where the mine owned the houses that the workers lived in, owned the store where the workers bought their goods, and of course paid them just enough to cover the price they charged for shelter and food, even taking it off their paychecks directly or issuing the pay in their own currency rather than US currency.
Yep, had the same problems with Compaq Deskpro 2000s with Quantum Bigfoot drives in the 2GB range. I only personally experienced 4 or 5 of them failing, because that was all of the Deskpros we had with the Quantum Bigfoot drives in them at the place I worked.
Is there something wrong with someone standing up for principles?
Nope, nothing wrong with that. The only question would be, what's your time worth? Divide $25 (or whatever you figure your OEM pays per copy of Window$) by the number of hours you'll spend on the phone trying to convince said OEM to give you a refund or sell you a laptop without an OS. Personally, it wouldn't take me long before I'd say fsck it. But I'm perhaps not as passionate about this as the original poster.:) I like the idea of donating an equivalent or greater amount to EFF or the Free Software Foundation.
I mean, why not sell to the US from Toronto, and to Canada from New York?
In large part, it's not worth ordering from the US when you live in Canada because of the low value of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar. But, on the outside chance that I find something that's reasonably priced even with the currency exchange rate, one of the following will usually deter me from buying:
Many online retailers in the US either won't ship to Canada or charge some ridiculously high shipping fee. (ie. usually double or more what they charge to ship within the US)
Because of brokerage fees (all couriers now charge them - used to be only UPS, but now FedEx screws you over too), import duties (not charged on all goods, but still charged on some) and then 7% Gouge 'N Screw Tax (GST) on top of all that.
The only way around some of this is to have the seller ship via USPS ground, which most won't do. At least that way you don't get dinged for brokerage fees, just applicable duty and GST at the post office when you pick it up. There have been many times where I'd love to buy something from a web site in the US, but either can't get it shipped here or it would be prohibitively expensive.
Just to give you an idea, I ordered a couple of VCDs (cd-i's actually.. remember those?:)) a while back. I paid $20 US each, plus $5 US each in shipping. Total of $50 US charged to my Visa. Items were shipped to me via UPS, and when the package shows up, the UPS dude demands $32 CDN in brokerage fees and GST. So, adding up and using a rate of exchange of 1.5, I paid $107 CDN for two VCDs. Had I known that I'd be paying that much, not fscking likely that I'd have ordered them in the first place!
And now they want to add state tax on top of this? Pffffft...
Panagopoulos Pizza did exactly this in Canada - they changed their name to Panago so that they could register it as a trademark, since Panagopoulos is apparently a family name.
I've had good luck with I.T. Xchange.
Slightly related - they sell mostly refurbished brand-name stuff but at reasonably good prices. Particularly good prices on laptops - at the last place I worked, we bought our laptops from them and had no difficulties with the products. Anyway, they have a depot in Oakville, ON and two others in North Carolina and Florida, and they list both Canadian and American dollar pricing on their site. You also don't have to worry about duty/GST if you're ordering in Canada because they'll be shipping to you from the depot in Ontario.
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We discovered during an SMS 2003 rollout that if you try to initiate a Remote Assistance session to a machine that had NewSID run on it (part of our post-imaging processes), that Remote Assistance would not connect.. so, good riddance to NewSID as far as I'm concerned. (Running Sysprep on the machine would fix the problem.)
In Canada, where $1 and $2 bills disappeared many years back, the ladies at the ballet now do a sort of game where you try to knock a rolled-up poster off their bottom (while they're on all fours) with the $1/$2 coins. That's nowhere near as classy as tucking a bill into the G-string and giving a playful smack on the bottom, but..
The solution mentioned by the European gentlemen is still doable for the rich types - use $5 bills, our lowest denomination of bills.
Mine was a TI-99/4A as well, which my dad bought when I was about 7 years old. He bought it with the swank-ass speech synthesizer, so that when you played Parsec you could hear a female voice saying "alien forces advancing" and "nice shot, pilot". :) The computer's still in my parents' attic.
..for someone to bring a lawsuit against Sony under the DMCA for circumventing Windows security or something. Surely the DMCA is ambiguously worded enough to allow for this? :)
Did the contract these people agreed to in order to get service mention "oh by the way, we censor websites that we don't like?
TELUS defends their actions in terms of not allowing access to "harfmful"/legally questionable (in their opinion) content like pictures of employees who cross the picket lines and the site encouraging people to "jam the phone lines" at TELUS. In their Terms of Service for their internet service, TELUS does say:
So you might want to take a close look at the TOS for your own ISP; you might end up finding something similar.This product performs the same functions (and more) than Microsoft's SMS. (different from SUS, I know.) The application packaging/deployment part of Altiris would be a way to apply updates for FOSS products, and the database tracks which application packages have been applied to which machines. It has its own client that has to be installed on each machine (though there is a client install wizard to speed that along). You might also sell this based on the ability to integrate Altiris' real-time inventory solution, using the same client software.
http://www.altiris.com/products/clientmgmt/
Unfortunately, the additional user account you're forced to create during the install still has admin privileges anyway.
Sounds a lot like the old days in mining towns, where the mine owned the houses that the workers lived in, owned the store where the workers bought their goods, and of course paid them just enough to cover the price they charged for shelter and food, even taking it off their paychecks directly or issuing the pay in their own currency rather than US currency.
If you've heard the song "Sixteen Tons", you've heard the expression "I owe my soul to the company store". This is a description of conditions in those kinds of mining towns.
Yep, had the same problems with Compaq Deskpro 2000s with Quantum Bigfoot drives in the 2GB range. I only personally experienced 4 or 5 of them failing, because that was all of the Deskpros we had with the Quantum Bigfoot drives in them at the place I worked.
Nope, nothing wrong with that. The only question would be, what's your time worth? Divide $25 (or whatever you figure your OEM pays per copy of Window$) by the number of hours you'll spend on the phone trying to convince said OEM to give you a refund or sell you a laptop without an OS. Personally, it wouldn't take me long before I'd say fsck it. But I'm perhaps not as passionate about this as the original poster. :) I like the idea of donating an equivalent or greater amount to EFF or the Free Software Foundation.
Why, the scientists at Simmons have been doing it for years!
In large part, it's not worth ordering from the US when you live in Canada because of the low value of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar. But, on the outside chance that I find something that's reasonably priced even with the currency exchange rate, one of the following will usually deter me from buying:
- Many online retailers in the US either won't ship to Canada or charge some ridiculously high shipping fee. (ie. usually double or more what they charge to ship within the US)
- Because of brokerage fees (all couriers now charge them - used to be only UPS, but now FedEx screws you over too), import duties (not charged on all goods, but still charged on some) and then 7% Gouge 'N Screw Tax (GST) on top of all that.
The only way around some of this is to have the seller ship via USPS ground, which most won't do. At least that way you don't get dinged for brokerage fees, just applicable duty and GST at the post office when you pick it up. There have been many times where I'd love to buy something from a web site in the US, but either can't get it shipped here or it would be prohibitively expensive.Just to give you an idea, I ordered a couple of VCDs (cd-i's actually.. remember those? :)) a while back. I paid $20 US each, plus $5 US each in shipping. Total of $50 US charged to my Visa. Items were shipped to me via UPS, and when the package shows up, the UPS dude demands $32 CDN in brokerage fees and GST. So, adding up and using a rate of exchange of 1.5, I paid $107 CDN for two VCDs. Had I known that I'd be paying that much, not fscking likely that I'd have ordered them in the first place!
And now they want to add state tax on top of this? Pffffft...
Panagopoulos Pizza did exactly this in Canada - they changed their name to Panago so that they could register it as a trademark, since Panagopoulos is apparently a family name.
I've had good luck with I.T. Xchange. Slightly related - they sell mostly refurbished brand-name stuff but at reasonably good prices. Particularly good prices on laptops - at the last place I worked, we bought our laptops from them and had no difficulties with the products. Anyway, they have a depot in Oakville, ON and two others in North Carolina and Florida, and they list both Canadian and American dollar pricing on their site. You also don't have to worry about duty/GST if you're ordering in Canada because they'll be shipping to you from the depot in Ontario.