Funny you should mention this. I work in Tech support for a DSL company, and one day a customer called in complaining that their DSL was out. Upon troubleshooting, I found that they were on the east coast in the wake of a Hurricane, and their power was out.
It is times like that, that make me lose faith in the human race...
Besides that, even if the power is still on, couldn't they shut down the Internet transmissions on an AS-NEEDED basis?
Surely attending to a disaster could be seen as more important than the Internet connection going over the lines. All they need to do is add a kill switch.
This reminds me of something I have noticed about licenses that are displayed with some software.
Occasionally, I find a license in a textbox that is editable. So, I can just edit the agreement and remove the parts I don't like before clicking agree.
In doing so, I am clicking ACCEPT, though what I am accepting is a little different than it started off.
I just love it when those agreements from certain companies are that "Flexible";)
That reminds me of a "Conversation" that I once saw between an NT4 PDC and BDC on a network, as displayed by Event viewer... It went something like this:
PDC: I am Master.
BDC: No, I am master.
PDC: Ok, You are master.
BDC: No, YOU are master.
PDC: Ok, I am..
BDC: NO, I AM!
PDC: Ok.
Needless to say, Browser elections are just weird.
Anyone else wonder if this might have something to do with the problems with the Spirit rover that just happened to be running a VxWare OS?
Maybe the next rover will be running Red Hat Embedded Linux...
Maybe they should make a multi-booting rover. Win2k, a few flavors of Linux, and *BSD. They could boot into Windows to play solitaire on the rover during slow research days. The next rover should also have a nice speaker system on it, and should be able to stream MP3's from NASA to play... To keep the Aliens away from it like in Mars Attacks!... Would hate for it to get stolen and turned into a Little martion child's RC car like Solourner...
You get what you pay for. One metric I have heard where I work is that it costs about $11 per call to the company that is taking tech support calls. With Many thousands of calls per day, and charging low rates for Internet access that barely leaves anything for Tech support, they cannot afford to pay enough to hire people with credentials...
Most have just Some customer service experience, and are trained for maybe 2 weeks onsite. Part of the reason is the high turnover rate. It is a very stressful job. Having to meet certain times, and quality standards, and speak to people who (sometimes) chew you out because they are angry at the company. People don't usually work there long, so you get new people a lot.
Anyone there for more than a couple of months is usually good enough to help out. I have been doing it for 2 and 1/2 years now, with a Dialup ISP, then with a DSL ISP. I do all I can to help out, and luckily, my call center at least recognizes Satisfaction and QA stats over call times when necessary.
Dell's support is mostly awful... I work for an unnamed ISP doing DSL support... Both me, as well as other agents have had to call Dell on a customer's behalf, because Dell was just sending them back to us. One agent was speaking to Dell, and it took them 15 minutes and 3 different Dell techies before he convinced someone that a known OS issue that is actually in the MS KB, was actually an OS issue. After the Dell agent did the necessary steps, they ran into another error that even we know results from the Local area connection under XP being Disabled in the network settings, but the techie immediately blamed the ISP.
Not to mention you can usually barely understand what they are saying, most of them are in India.
Not how it works at all... Call centers have certain performance metrics to maintin, therefore they opt to meet those to keep their client's business rather than to try and make a "quick buck" at the expense of the account.
The US is actually doing a lot more than other countries such as Russia and China, regarding pollution and other environmental issues.
Fact is, I've always seen "Global Warming" as a bunch of balony... the Earth goes through Cycles. Ice ages, warmer periods, etc. There are a lot of paranoid people out there.
Yes, pollution harms the environment, but it happens slowly. People like Green Gore that want to eliminate the Internal Combustion engine overnight are just nuts. This technology needs to Develop properly.
That said, I think that oil companies are doing harm to the process of switching to alternative energy sources (can you guess why?). I would really like to see this recent fuel cell/ethanol technology make it into affordable vehicles.
There are extremists to every camp. Unfortunately, they are usually the loudest. Greepeace is ridiculous, as is most of the NRA. Some open source people are just plain zealots with no restraint. It is not representative of the majority.
I have tried many of them. SquirrelMail was VERY slow when it came to parsing, creating a list of messages, etc. Horde/IMP is much more polished, and MUCH faster, more efficient PHP code...
Who wants to have a bottle of highly volitile gas in their car (Oxygen). You know that stuff is explosive, right?
On the other hand... this could be used to power small submeribles... And provide oxygen for the crew. Or, suits for working in hazardous areas, with their own electricity and oxygen supply. This is a very interesting technology.
"...or MS is agressivly pushing their customers over to XP"
Doubtful. Even if the Kernel had extensive modifications from 2k to XP, I'm willing to bet that 90% of the code is the same. Leaking it would bring down probably every other OS they have put out to date, since none of the are complete, from the ground-up rewrites.
On the upside, maybe MS will start all over... and make it more secure this time...
Re:Some of the testimonials are very old
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 1
I did leave the (R)'s there, and put it in quote form, as well as citing the source at the top.
"Welcome to Walmart, my name is Larry. You're most recent purchases include:
The XFiles, Seasons 1-8 on DVD The book "Big Brother: The truth about RFID." 2 Rolls of tin foil. A Plaid hunting vest. A.44 Magnum 2 150 round boxes of ammo.
Not necessarily... I expect they will release version 6.0 LE [Lawyers Edition] soon, which will contain upgrades of all license agreements and the entire source code re-written from the ground up in legalese.
I can see it now... Typing "I hereby certify, this 12th day of February in the year 2004, that I am an authorized user of this system, identified as "root", and authorized to log into this system at 1:48PM on this day..." to log in as root.
What else are they going to do with all the lawyers that they have replaced their OS programmers with?
Re:Some of the testimonials are very old
on
SCOoby Snacks
·
· Score: 4, Funny
From SCO site: " 1. SCO UNIX(R) is a Proven, Stable and Reliable Platform [Maybe 10-15 years ago...] 2. SCO UNIX(R) is backed by a single, experienced vendor [Experienced litigators...] 3. SCO UNIX(R) has a Committed, Well-Defined Roadmap [Over the river and through the woods... then to hell in a handbasket when their litigation fails.] 4. SCO UNIX(R) is Secure [Can't exploit something no one uses...] 5. SCO UNIX(R) is Legally Unencumbered [Buy Unix, and we promise we won't sue you.*]"
*Limited time only!
[Comments added for clarification.]
Now back you your regularly [re-]scheduled fiaSCO.
I don't see what the nickname of the person has to do with the quality of the post.
Now, for my opinion on the whole matter... bear with me, and consider it with an open mind please...
The fact is, there are simply more men in technical fields, because they are more technical. Not because of some difference in intelligence, but because there seem to be far more men interested in technology than women (this is speaking generally, there are plenty of exceptions)...
I choose to see men and women as "different, but equal"... There are strengths and weaknesses that have a basis in our DNA. Men tend to be more interested in how things work, and thus end up in technical fields. Now a woman that is just as interested has nothing stopping her from being just as good. I wish there were more of them, but from experience I have found they there is a lack of interest.
Just as an example to elaborate a bit:
I am a techie. Yeah. That dreaded technical support guy you get on the phone when you call your ISP because your connection is down. One of many drones that follow scripts, and aree trained in-house with the minumum of information needed to troubleshoot. That said, I have always been interested in troubleshooting, and PCs in general, and I'm quite good at it... That gives me an edge when troubleshooting. What is my point?
Well, the ratio of men to women here is unfortunately around 20:1. The majority of male agents here are here because they are interested in PCs, and have troubleshooting experience. Though there is also a large percentage that are just here because they need the job. Of the women here, I know of none that actually do this because they are interested. It is simply a job. They are excellent with the customer service aspects, but, like nearly half of the guys, they do not have the technical interest to come up with their own solutions to problems. Sales and Billing departments tend to have a much larger number of women, probably because that area does not draw much interest from men, and because women seem to be much more comfortable for most people to talk to.
So, my whole point is my belief that it is not because of preconceptions alome that there are not many women in the field, it is patially due to their lack of interest. Let's face it, genetically we are different, physically we are different, and we even think differently. There are going to be certain jobs that draw more interest from one gender than the other. That said, I believe that any woman interested in the field should jump into it. Do whatever suits you. People treating you as if you don't know anything about it just gives you an advantage in many situations. Suprise them.
These opinions are based purely on my experience. Yours may vary, so feel free to express them.
I must admit that being on the giving end of a panzer can be amusing... Especially when you see a bunch of enemy medics, and field ops giving each other stuff in a big circle, and can fire down and get 6 of them with 1 shot.
Anyway... Back on the topic, doesn't that sound like a lot of fun? I'd everyone I know that plays it has been hooked on it. Even with all the panzerweenies with n00b t00bs, this game stands out to me as one of the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny you should mention this. I work in Tech support for a DSL company, and one day a customer called in complaining that their DSL was out. Upon troubleshooting, I found that they were on the east coast in the wake of a Hurricane, and their power was out.
It is times like that, that make me lose faith in the human race...
Besides that, even if the power is still on, couldn't they shut down the Internet transmissions on an AS-NEEDED basis?
Surely attending to a disaster could be seen as more important than the Internet connection going over the lines. All they need to do is add a kill switch.
Looks like I'll have to find a new way to make those all-important, life-changing decisions.
This reminds me of something I have noticed about licenses that are displayed with some software. Occasionally, I find a license in a textbox that is editable. So, I can just edit the agreement and remove the parts I don't like before clicking agree. In doing so, I am clicking ACCEPT, though what I am accepting is a little different than it started off. I just love it when those agreements from certain companies are that "Flexible" ;)
That reminds me of a "Conversation" that I once saw between an NT4 PDC and BDC on a network, as displayed by Event viewer... It went something like this: PDC: I am Master. BDC: No, I am master. PDC: Ok, You are master. BDC: No, YOU are master. PDC: Ok, I am.. BDC: NO, I AM! PDC: Ok. Needless to say, Browser elections are just weird.
Anyone else wonder if this might have something to do with the problems with the Spirit rover that just happened to be running a VxWare OS?
Maybe the next rover will be running Red Hat Embedded Linux...
Maybe they should make a multi-booting rover. Win2k, a few flavors of Linux, and *BSD. They could boot into Windows to play solitaire on the rover during slow research days. The next rover should also have a nice speaker system on it, and should be able to stream MP3's from NASA to play... To keep the Aliens away from it like in Mars Attacks!... Would hate for it to get stolen and turned into a Little martion child's RC car like Solourner...
MADMEN diverts a disaster by knocking an asteroid off course.
2 years later, Aliens invade because we "attacked" their home planet with an asteroid.
That's a way to initiate first contact!
Honestly, I'd rather be incenerated by an asteroid collision than be dissected by thousands of Alien Hordes angry because we threw rocks at them.
You get what you pay for. One metric I have heard where I work is that it costs about $11 per call to the company that is taking tech support calls. With Many thousands of calls per day, and charging low rates for Internet access that barely leaves anything for Tech support, they cannot afford to pay enough to hire people with credentials...
Most have just Some customer service experience, and are trained for maybe 2 weeks onsite. Part of the reason is the high turnover rate. It is a very stressful job. Having to meet certain times, and quality standards, and speak to people who (sometimes) chew you out because they are angry at the company. People don't usually work there long, so you get new people a lot.
Anyone there for more than a couple of months is usually good enough to help out. I have been doing it for 2 and 1/2 years now, with a Dialup ISP, then with a DSL ISP. I do all I can to help out, and luckily, my call center at least recognizes Satisfaction and QA stats over call times when necessary.
Don't knock it 'till you've tried it.
Dell's support is mostly awful... I work for an unnamed ISP doing DSL support... Both me, as well as other agents have had to call Dell on a customer's behalf, because Dell was just sending them back to us. One agent was speaking to Dell, and it took them 15 minutes and 3 different Dell techies before he convinced someone that a known OS issue that is actually in the MS KB, was actually an OS issue. After the Dell agent did the necessary steps, they ran into another error that even we know results from the Local area connection under XP being Disabled in the network settings, but the techie immediately blamed the ISP.
Not to mention you can usually barely understand what they are saying, most of them are in India.
Not how it works at all... Call centers have certain performance metrics to maintin, therefore they opt to meet those to keep their client's business rather than to try and make a "quick buck" at the expense of the account.
The US is actually doing a lot more than other countries such as Russia and China, regarding pollution and other environmental issues.
Fact is, I've always seen "Global Warming" as a bunch of balony... the Earth goes through Cycles. Ice ages, warmer periods, etc. There are a lot of paranoid people out there.
Yes, pollution harms the environment, but it happens slowly. People like Green Gore that want to eliminate the Internal Combustion engine overnight are just nuts. This technology needs to Develop properly.
That said, I think that oil companies are doing harm to the process of switching to alternative energy sources (can you guess why?). I would really like to see this recent fuel cell/ethanol technology make it into affordable vehicles.
There are extremists to every camp. Unfortunately, they are usually the loudest. Greepeace is ridiculous, as is most of the NRA. Some open source people are just plain zealots with no restraint. It is not representative of the majority.
The ground that is most sound is in the middle.
I can see it now:
1. Hear about bounty for bugs found.
2. Add a few "bugs" into the code.
3. "Discover" it a few weeks later...
4. ??
5. PROFIT!!
SquirrelMail? Why not just use IMP?
I have tried many of them. SquirrelMail was VERY slow when it came to parsing, creating a list of messages, etc. Horde/IMP is much more polished, and MUCH faster, more efficient PHP code...
Compaq or HP? I doubt even Linux would run stable on those PCs...
:P
And before anyone says anything about my comtempt of those 2 PC makers, this comes from experience
You ever see the "Safety Car"? It runs Windows 98...2 20.shtml?tid=126
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/07/17/2322
Scary!
Who wants to have a bottle of highly volitile gas in their car (Oxygen). You know that stuff is explosive, right?
On the other hand... this could be used to power small submeribles... And provide oxygen for the crew. Or, suits for working in hazardous areas, with their own electricity and oxygen supply. This is a very interesting technology.
Or, you could just stop breathing ;)
"...or MS is agressivly pushing their customers over to XP"
Doubtful. Even if the Kernel had extensive modifications from 2k to XP, I'm willing to bet that 90% of the code is the same. Leaking it would bring down probably every other OS they have put out to date, since none of the are complete, from the ground-up rewrites.
On the upside, maybe MS will start all over... and make it more secure this time...
I did leave the (R)'s there, and put it in quote form, as well as citing the source at the top.
How about this one?
.44 Magnum
"Welcome to Walmart, my name is Larry. You're most recent purchases include:
The XFiles, Seasons 1-8 on DVD
The book "Big Brother: The truth about RFID."
2 Rolls of tin foil.
A Plaid hunting vest.
A
2 150 round boxes of ammo.
[Click, Click, Click, CLICK, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG, THUD, *Crazed ranting*]...
Not necessarily... I expect they will release version 6.0 LE [Lawyers Edition] soon, which will contain upgrades of all license agreements and the entire source code re-written from the ground up in legalese. I can see it now... Typing "I hereby certify, this 12th day of February in the year 2004, that I am an authorized user of this system, identified as "root", and authorized to log into this system at 1:48PM on this day..." to log in as root. What else are they going to do with all the lawyers that they have replaced their OS programmers with?
From SCO site:
"
1. SCO UNIX(R) is a Proven, Stable and Reliable Platform [Maybe 10-15 years ago...]
2. SCO UNIX(R) is backed by a single, experienced vendor [Experienced litigators...]
3. SCO UNIX(R) has a Committed, Well-Defined Roadmap [Over the river and through the woods... then to hell in a handbasket when their litigation fails.]
4. SCO UNIX(R) is Secure [Can't exploit something no one uses...]
5. SCO UNIX(R) is Legally Unencumbered [Buy Unix, and we promise we won't sue you.*]"
*Limited time only!
[Comments added for clarification.]
Now back you your regularly [re-]scheduled fiaSCO.
I don't see what the nickname of the person has to do with the quality of the post. Now, for my opinion on the whole matter... bear with me, and consider it with an open mind please... The fact is, there are simply more men in technical fields, because they are more technical. Not because of some difference in intelligence, but because there seem to be far more men interested in technology than women (this is speaking generally, there are plenty of exceptions)... I choose to see men and women as "different, but equal"... There are strengths and weaknesses that have a basis in our DNA. Men tend to be more interested in how things work, and thus end up in technical fields. Now a woman that is just as interested has nothing stopping her from being just as good. I wish there were more of them, but from experience I have found they there is a lack of interest. Just as an example to elaborate a bit: I am a techie. Yeah. That dreaded technical support guy you get on the phone when you call your ISP because your connection is down. One of many drones that follow scripts, and aree trained in-house with the minumum of information needed to troubleshoot. That said, I have always been interested in troubleshooting, and PCs in general, and I'm quite good at it... That gives me an edge when troubleshooting. What is my point? Well, the ratio of men to women here is unfortunately around 20:1. The majority of male agents here are here because they are interested in PCs, and have troubleshooting experience. Though there is also a large percentage that are just here because they need the job. Of the women here, I know of none that actually do this because they are interested. It is simply a job. They are excellent with the customer service aspects, but, like nearly half of the guys, they do not have the technical interest to come up with their own solutions to problems. Sales and Billing departments tend to have a much larger number of women, probably because that area does not draw much interest from men, and because women seem to be much more comfortable for most people to talk to. So, my whole point is my belief that it is not because of preconceptions alome that there are not many women in the field, it is patially due to their lack of interest. Let's face it, genetically we are different, physically we are different, and we even think differently. There are going to be certain jobs that draw more interest from one gender than the other. That said, I believe that any woman interested in the field should jump into it. Do whatever suits you. People treating you as if you don't know anything about it just gives you an advantage in many situations. Suprise them. These opinions are based purely on my experience. Yours may vary, so feel free to express them.
It works Ok on my AthlonXP 1800+, with a GeForce4 Ti 4200, 512MB of RAM. At 320x240, you wouldn't need anywhere near that much power, though.
I run it at 800x600, and probably get upwards of 50fps.
I must admit that being on the giving end of a panzer can be amusing... Especially when you see a bunch of enemy medics, and field ops giving each other stuff in a big circle, and can fire down and get 6 of them with 1 shot.
Anyway... Back on the topic, doesn't that sound like a lot of fun? I'd everyone I know that plays it has been hooked on it. Even with all the panzerweenies with n00b t00bs, this game stands out to me as one of the best.
You post fast, btw.