I won't argue 'taste' with anybody, and the analog vs. digital thing has been played out a lot over the years...
That being said, my home recording system, for many years, consisted of a tube-driven 52-input Trident console, a Scully 8-track, and a Scully 2-Track mastering deck, and the sound was something you could wrap yourself in, or eat, understand?
I had all the 'right' mics, and, as the years passed, eventually added a timecode generator, a Mac SE, and Vision (later Performer). It was great fun.
Guys can argue analog/digital all they want, but to get that 'collision' (likened to a 'trainwreck' by some Brit buddy engineers), in the mid-highs, you had to either use digital media, or really fuck up on a good analog system.
It might be the math. If you accept that a sampling rate is a Constant, and that all pitches and timbres are variable, then certain audio tones are going to be more accurately represented (due to multiple 'snapshots' of the longer wave) than others. Just math.
Still, analog recording and playback was, itself, an engineering attempt at reproducing what human ears do all the time, effortlessly. Thank Bell Labs (AT&T, Northern Electric) for that. I preferred analog, despite the multiple opportunities to screw it up. But the digital scene has come a long way since the first MCIs came out, and home studios, today, are just amazing. Comparisons of the two mediums are difficult, given that the best and worst of both mediums are inherently apples and oranges, and then there's the time 'continuum', to deal with. It's a bit like comparing modern athletes with the folks in the 'old days'...plenty of fodder for argument, but seriously faulty in terms of science.
So put my vote on 'good' music, regardless of the time/space/medium 'source'.
I don't feel the financial need, or consider it my moral imperative, to download the movie and save that extra $5.
Given your setup, and situation, then you are doing the right thing, no question about it...for you. To do otherwise, to borrow, without benefit of a visit to a Library, in your case, would be gratuitous.
But, (and this won't come as a shock), for many people in society, seeing a film, or a play, or even a cable TV show (shown on Cable they can't afford) isn't a simple question of I-have-the-time/desire, I-have-the-cash, let's call some buddies.
But be honest, (not that you aren't, figure of speech) when you see a film on your system, with friends, and the film is funny/great (whatever) and you all have a good time, is your enjoyment diminished because somewhere, someone has decided that if they can eat Ramen to afford school, then they can treat themselves to a movie, on the house, on the weekend?
I realize that there are plenty of people out there who download things they could easily afford. That's not ethical, by my way of thinking. But, looking back over 4 - 5 decades, now, it occurs to me that no one really 'gets away' with much of anything, in the long run. One has to have faith. (A good re-read of Crime and Punishment doesn't hurt either.)
The problem with 'bad' law, is that it can demonize whomever the enforcers of the law choose. It's easy to feel morally superior to spoiled suburban kids taking shortcuts and choosing clothes, or boozy weekends, to devote finances to, rather than paying for entertainment, but what about the huge numbers of honestly disenfranchised working poor in this country?
I don't want to believe that there are great numbers of us who are unable to enjoy the fruits of our earnings, birthrights, and luck, unless there are masses of folks who cannot have even 'access' to a small slice of what we machine our way through. People are better than that, aren't they?
why would anyone be insane enough to blissfully ignore a growing problem until it grows much bigger and takes up a heck of a lot more of your resources to fight it? thats like saying dont worry about crime in your neighborhood as long as its petty theft and start taking action only when someone's car gets stolen.
Ah, a sociological tone to the discussion. I like that. The crime 'level' parallel is valid, so let's look at it in a realistic context. The down-loaders, right or wrong, tend to be folks who do not have a budget to purchase these things. Doesn't mean they should 'steal' them, of course.
But, it does mean that they aren't exactly, in terms of socio-economics, in the same neighborhood as the bonafide, price-abiding others who make up the mainstream. They're more like in, say, the nigga-hood. And we all know (those of us in the two-tiered (justice, health care, education, etc) society of America, that crime in those neighborhoods isn't really 'our' problem until it encroaches upon 'our' neighborhood. When heroin was just killing Negro jazz musicians, whores and 'bad' Jews like Lenny Bruce, it was no big deal, but as soon as suburban white guys starting buying the farm, oh shit 'there's a drug problem'.
.Black-on-black crime is great for the corporate-owned prison business, to say nothing of the police business. Both businesses would be scrambling, come budget time, without 'the bad guys'. Heheh. So, relax, people who must see every blockbuster that the TV tells them to see, will accept higher prices, and Eisner's salary, because it's those poor people, again, fuckin' it up for the rest of us. If people are seriously concerned with the well-being of a relative handful of billionaires, they should 'do the right thing', and start seeing movies 4 times, and buying double of everything. Meanwhile, the 'dummies' will download, watch, and then 'trash' the crap.
It's a systemic issue which I have no idea how to possibly stop.
Well, that's okay, because in capitalist, free-market economies there already is a mechanism to correct imbalances, inflation, and inefficiencies: It has to do with 'price' being set by demand and supply, and in a more micro sense, or cynical sense, it's 'whatever the market will bear'. And like it or not, downloaders are part of the 'market'. The consumers and 'middlemen' simply have a difference of opinion where price/value is concerned, as it relates to consumables issuing forth from Hollywood.
Tinkering with the rules, to 'fix' a market, inevitably gives rise to unforeseen reactions in the market, over time. As another poster, in an earlier segment of this see-saw topic put it: (and i quote loosely:), Hollywood's business model is already dead, but doesn't 'know' it yet.
To further my point in 1999 Michael Eisner was paid $589 MILLION dollars for his annual salary.
Thanks for pointing that out. That happened to be the a year in which 20% of American children went to bed hungry. Eisner can rot in Hell, and Disney can go with him.
Oh, by the way. You're planning to discredit a Wired Article by signing as "anonymous coward"? Yeah, right.
Really, what has the world come to when a fellow hides behind Anonymity while brave souls with names like 'Spy der Mann" let it all hang out, eh?
Tell me something Herr der Mann, do you feel extra-brave, today? Good Christ, forget relativist morality, hypocrites have sucked ass since time immemorial.
Yeah, they've either shelved the last version of the pre-Xcode developer's Tools, or it's just buried somewhere. Your Jaguar Installer CDs include the Developer's Tools (CD 3, if memory serves me well). But you really want to have the BSD subsystem installed also (that's an option on the main Installer disk.
I think December 2002 was the last version of the pre-Panther Tools. If you want the Tools, reply back, here, and name an alt.binaries group (a.b.ma. would make sense) and i'll post them for ya. They're around 3-400MB, and loads of fun.
~flipper
On a Mac running Jaguar I get zero vulnerabilities (35 out of 35 tests) using 0.10.0 Firefox, Java loaded. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that OSX includes Perl, Java, Apache, etc (yeah, and/etc -laughs-), so it's up to a Firefox user whether or not to actually implement Java. Not Mozilla's responsibility at all...my machine, my responsibility, that's the way we like it.
Yeah, remember that when you're dying from cancer, because corporate 'special interests' were let off 'the hook', and you're too fucked up on morphine to say goodbye to your kids.
hopefully not every update will require a reboot,...
read the info on updates and patches, and reboot only the affected sub-systems. There are up-to-date Xserves out there that haven't rebooted in many a month.
I use a Mac at home, Windows at work, and started on old IBM mainframes (Fortran/COBOL) in the early Seventies.
I read, respond to, and often ignore, posts on a variety of Mac user support LISTSERVS and whatnot. I hear bitching, from people who never read manuals, QuickStart guides, ReadMe.txt files, etc, all the fucking time, saying "This co. sucks", "these -company name- tech support/call desk people Suck", etc, etc...Okay, already, we all know that 1) Help Desk isn't a lot of people's first priority when it comes to Vocational Choices, and 2) Nobody had a gun held to their head (unless you count the need for food, shelter, 'stupid' things like hungry kids, as a 'gun', which I would), when they took those jobs. All that being said, every company I've seen singled out as being the 'worst', happens to be a company I've called. Earthlink, let's say, there have been times, back in Boca, after severe storms, when I wanted to rule out local damage as a 'fault' for net interruptions, and, even though I knew they might not admit it, I would call Earthlink in Atlanta, to see if the DHCP servers in Miami were okay. Nine times out of ten I could get the guy on the phone to get past 'All systems are go", or "Did you reboot?" script-talk, and actually poll the servers in Miami, and give me info. Amazing, eh? How did I do that? By being polite on the fucking phone.
For a while I would just say "Win2kPro" when they'd ask what OS are you on? Heheh, and then I'd silently translate their advice into mac-speak. That worked pretty good too, but talking to human beings as if they were human beings is just the simplest 'ticket', not only for 'support', but in Life.
One last example: Microsoft. Everybody hates the company, of course, that's a no-brainer, but the people that work there? I don't know, they might be 'people' too... let's see: I run VirtualPC on a Titanium Powerbook. (I run a lot of things in VPC, but 2kpro was my example.) So, after a few years, some unrelated issues and whatnot, I find myself with a re-install of Windows, that was simple, and no ID, no Auth number, no serial, etc, can't find the "card" with the number on it. (Which I'm convinced never existed, until 9 months later when I find it). Ok? So, I call Redmond, expecting the worst, and who wouldn't expect the same? Call answered on 2nd or 3rd ring. Whoa. No voice mail. (WTF?). Nice enough fellow, believes I 'never had 'the Card', says "Hang on a minute, I'll be right back". Meanwhile, he knows I'm on a Mac, because I set the scene... 15 fucking seconds later he's back on the line, gives me a new serial, and Auth Number, says if I find the 'card that never existed, don't worry about it, you'll have 2 then". And I'm golden. So much for that. The point is: Companies are about people. "Corporations" are 'entities'. There's a difference. And as for attitude on the part of help desk, etc, it's a software issue, used to have an acronym: GIGO, anybody old enough to remember that? The old Garbage In, Garbage Out.
As for the guy with the 'Insult to injury' regarding Cleveland... I spent 5 hours in rain, on the tarmac at Kennedy, before they taxied back to the gate to let us all off a cramped 747 to stretch and eat. (airline regs said nothing but peanuts and candy till at elevation)... I stood in a nice long line, was one lady away from the cash register with 'dinner', when the girl from the Airline entered with "Flight blah blah Reboarding Immediately!!!", waved bye-bye to dins, and proceeded to re-board, and wait another 5 hours out on the tarmac. Heheh. A greasy spoon, with a coffee, a smoke, and dinner-on-the-way in Cleveland would have been "Nirvana Tonight", as far as I was concerned. (this from a current New Yorker).
I have to wonder about the Healthcare area being worse.
I worked, off and on, at a major VA Hospital. The VA, of course, like all parts of the Military system not related to procurement, is seriously underfunded. But, the only localised system in the entire facility I worked in, was the CT-scanners. They needed super hi-def imaging, so they used SGIs, and something that 'looked like' an X-window-type OS. I never ran those boxes, so I don't have better, more accurate info on that, sorry. (It might have been some version of solaris with a KDE or Gnome lookalike desktop, don't know. They were all leased from GE, anyway, and had really intelligent people running them. Every other department was tied-in to the same over-all 'system', as far as boxes and software, but separated from other departments (for obvious reasons, "Admissions" didn't need to be looking at/accessing Food Services, etc).
As for the rest of the hospital, all of it was on a unified system. With the exception of paper-based Medical Records. You cannot imagine the enormity of the paper-based issue. It defies simple 'scanning' and conversion to electronic docs, due to the wide range of forms, crazy handwriting, etc. All that aside, maybe the 'normal' hospital systems are different. Or your post was referring to the Healthcare industry at the governmental level. Not sure.
But (this is the 'plug'): If you, or anyone, care(s) about the kids and fellows that have already 'done their duty' (whether you're pro- or anti- political war is irrelevant, IMHO) be aware that the Administration (White House, power structure, whatever) is contemplating further severe cutbacks in health care, hazard duty pay, death benefits for families, etc, and write to your representatives, expressing your opinions.
As far as the attitude, expressed by some, that the airlines (or any company, for that matter) should go bankrupt, to be 'taught a lesson', for management stupidity, or bean-counting decisions, may seem reasonable, but the only people hurt (and they are numerous) are the ones with the least responsibility for the failures, as a whole. Think of it this way: In a country that has a tax and Congress (whose primary purpose is to divy up tax dollars between competing corporations (aka the real 'Special Interests') working as a system designed to facillitate Corporate Welfare for the rich and powerful, the last thing we need are more 'little people' needing money for food, shelter, their families, etc.
How in the name of even the most warped US-is-No 1 whacko math, if pigs could fly bullshit, is this crap marked Informative?
Look pal, the US lags a good number of nations, globally, in a lot of areas, like infant Mortality, universal access to health care, etc. We're number one in areas, all right. Like bombing other countries, supporting right-wing terrorist paramilitary groups (who've killed far more people on our behalf than Osama could possibly imagine). Being a huge polluter of the world environment. Wake up.
Where are the europeans, i can't believe this jingoistic crap can even get on here. Americans BUY more SPAM-adverted products than the rest of the World, so of course the ads originate here. That's just moronic yanks fulfilling their end of what is basically good old yankee capitalist free market economics, a need, a filling of that need, the marketing, etc.
You can already re-launch all the varied OSX sub-systems after patches, assuming one reads the info re: the patch, and which subs are involved. All that Apple stuff about "Requires a re-start" is for newbs, heheh.
If you patch Apache, you'd have to reboot the server, but the OS stays up and running. But anyone in a 'critical' spot has redundancy anyway, no?
I know plenty of guys do that all the time with Xserves and even regular old G4 or G5 boxes running OSX Server...they stay completely up-to-date, zero downtime. No partitioning required.
But the ideas that folks have come up with in these threads, re: possibilities, are truly interesting and exciting, no question about it.
One of the many setups I use in VirtualPC is a really lean NT 4.0 sp6, and it flies ( laughs ), no seriously, compared to any of the other Windows OSes in VPC.
I know nothing about the developer's boxes, but when I saw the NT - PPC connection my first thought was yeah, a working thing, no doubt.
I understand the "What, 1994, already?" though, but different tasks require different boxes/systems, and sometimes what you don't use is almost more important than what you do use.
I like Macs and old Unix big boxes, but my military project day job, SGML stuff, has me on a 5 or 6 yr-old Compaq,, runnin' NT... would I want it at home? Not really, but I run a shitload of apps, and since starting back in April, it has yet to crash.. the box, or the network. It's all about applying the correct tool for the job.
I agree with the anti-automatically-better thing. I use Apple gear, including a first gen 5GB iPod, and for my needs, 5GB is fine. I have a little over a terabyte of samples, and a half TB of high bit-rate mp3s. But between home 'work', and work 'work', I don't have time to listen to more than a fraction of what's on the Pod anyway.
I like it because it's well-made. Not everything Apple ever produced (be it updates to apps, or certain revs of hardware) was a huge marvel, and some stuff just didn't cut it.
But it is important for other companies to give Apple a run for the money.And this iRiver box sounds good, on paper, to me, and I'm sure, that in the same way a relatively 'lame' 1st Gen iPod suits me, for a lot of folks it wouldn't 'do it'. But Apple isn't all about design, not quite yet, there's a little thing called R&D, and then there's engineering, and fussiness regarding suppliers... I don't want them getting complacent because of a one-in-a-row 'hit'.
I'd rather see OpenSource, or Linux (whatever) development, because it gets ported over here to Darwin (NeXTSTEP, mach-O, etc) which suits me just fine, AND serves to keep Apple mindful of keeping one eye on the competition, and 'vision',etc.
You have no interest in what Apple makes? Oh no, we really give a shit. So why are reading at apple.slashdot? Fuckin PC people, if your boxes are so fuckin brilliant, why the hemorrhoid between your ears regarding Apple? Fuck off.
And just how fo you figure that? Th laws are usually simple misdemeanors such as "Minor in possession of alcohol'. Compare that to the major misdemeanor, and the loss of license/income, when a bar or store violates the "No sales to minors", and it's obviously in the bartender's own interest to check IDs. Sometimes,....wow, logic, does it only exist in software,or what?
One method: A 'waiting period". New users at my favorite tracker are confronted with 72 hour waits (from the time a torrent is queued-up on their client, until it actually starts d-loading), the wait drops to 60, then 45 hours, as the material available is 'older', i.e. most recently upped material=longer waits, older material=less wait, etc, until you have two-week old material=no wait.
BUT, to avoid the 'wait' there is an AND built in: Upload 4.5 GB of 'unique' material AND get to a 1:1 ratio up/down.
One can simply download 2.25 GBs and seed them back to a 2:1 ratio,and there's both sides of the "AND" covered. Or, d-load 4.5GB and seed back 1:1, either way, but the 'no-wait' status is only maintained when the ratio [1:1, or better] is also maintained. Very simple, very effective.
then you guys at work just don't know what you're doing. I download 3 GB files all the fucking time, and you know what? I'm n a shitty verizon dsl that only gets 16kB up and maxes at 90kB down... and guess what Mr. It-Doesn't Work, if I use a news reader, i get the same stats, EXCEPT if I'm upping something, in which case my downloads at the same time will just crawl... But with Azareus, and my 2.50 ratio, i can get (now get this) more upload kBs, around 18-24), AND, on a nicely seeded 'down', at the same time... 100kBs down, with bursts of 120... Eh? Doesn't work? It's all about ports, and having those inky-dinky packets and file pieces. The ISPs all throttle rates, over time, more or less, but when a new packet hits, to commence a stream, the initial rate is higher, then decreases, which is a bummer with most protocols, but with BT, for some reason, just when the throttle 'kicks in', the packets 'done', and a new packet comes scraming in before the throttle clamps down... Bottom line, distributed computing at its fucking (current) finest.
yo!! Buggeroff, not everybody's got the same dsl/cable speeds, just be glad your mom and dad let you spend your life and their bucks in the rec room down there, and lay off the generalizing.... eh, like a good boy? thanks
On the Bright Side, maybe there'll be fewer of those whacko Dutch "Top 100" floods in the sounds.mp3 groups. My european trackers are all humming along quite nicely, regardless of the dutch troubles.
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I won't argue 'taste' with anybody, and the analog vs. digital thing has been played out a lot over the years...
That being said, my home recording system, for many years, consisted of a tube-driven 52-input Trident console, a Scully 8-track, and a Scully 2-Track mastering deck, and the sound was something you could wrap yourself in, or eat, understand?
I had all the 'right' mics, and, as the years passed, eventually added a timecode generator, a Mac SE, and Vision (later Performer). It was great fun.
Guys can argue analog/digital all they want, but to get that 'collision' (likened to a 'trainwreck' by some Brit buddy engineers), in the mid-highs, you had to either use digital media, or really fuck up on a good analog system.
It might be the math. If you accept that a sampling rate is a Constant, and that all pitches and timbres are variable, then certain audio tones are going to be more accurately represented (due to multiple 'snapshots' of the longer wave) than others. Just math.
Still, analog recording and playback was, itself, an engineering attempt at reproducing what human ears do all the time, effortlessly. Thank Bell Labs (AT&T, Northern Electric) for that. I preferred analog, despite the multiple opportunities to screw it up. But the digital scene has come a long way since the first MCIs came out, and home studios, today, are just amazing. Comparisons of the two mediums are difficult, given that the best and worst of both mediums are inherently apples and oranges, and then there's the time 'continuum', to deal with. It's a bit like comparing modern athletes with the folks in the 'old days'...plenty of fodder for argument, but seriously faulty in terms of science.
So put my vote on 'good' music, regardless of the time/space/medium 'source'.
Given your setup, and situation, then you are doing the right thing, no question about it...for you. To do otherwise, to borrow, without benefit of a visit to a Library, in your case, would be gratuitous.
But, (and this won't come as a shock), for many people in society, seeing a film, or a play, or even a cable TV show (shown on Cable they can't afford) isn't a simple question of I-have-the-time/desire, I-have-the-cash, let's call some buddies.
But be honest, (not that you aren't, figure of speech) when you see a film on your system, with friends, and the film is funny/great (whatever) and you all have a good time, is your enjoyment diminished because somewhere, someone has decided that if they can eat Ramen to afford school, then they can treat themselves to a movie, on the house, on the weekend?
I realize that there are plenty of people out there who download things they could easily afford. That's not ethical, by my way of thinking. But, looking back over 4 - 5 decades, now, it occurs to me that no one really 'gets away' with much of anything, in the long run. One has to have faith. (A good re-read of Crime and Punishment doesn't hurt either.)
The problem with 'bad' law, is that it can demonize whomever the enforcers of the law choose. It's easy to feel morally superior to spoiled suburban kids taking shortcuts and choosing clothes, or boozy weekends, to devote finances to, rather than paying for entertainment, but what about the huge numbers of honestly disenfranchised working poor in this country?
I don't want to believe that there are great numbers of us who are unable to enjoy the fruits of our earnings, birthrights, and luck, unless there are masses of folks who cannot have even 'access' to a small slice of what we machine our way through. People are better than that, aren't they?
Ah, a sociological tone to the discussion. I like that. The crime 'level' parallel is valid, so let's look at it in a realistic context. The down-loaders, right or wrong, tend to be folks who do not have a budget to purchase these things. Doesn't mean they should 'steal' them, of course.
But, it does mean that they aren't exactly, in terms of socio-economics, in the same neighborhood as the bonafide, price-abiding others who make up the mainstream. They're more like in, say, the nigga-hood. And we all know (those of us in the two-tiered (justice, health care, education, etc) society of America, that crime in those neighborhoods isn't really 'our' problem until it encroaches upon 'our' neighborhood. When heroin was just killing Negro jazz musicians, whores and 'bad' Jews like Lenny Bruce, it was no big deal, but as soon as suburban white guys starting buying the farm, oh shit 'there's a drug problem'.
.Black-on-black crime is great for the corporate-owned prison business, to say nothing of the police business. Both businesses would be scrambling, come budget time, without 'the bad guys'. Heheh. So, relax, people who must see every blockbuster that the TV tells them to see, will accept higher prices, and Eisner's salary, because it's those poor people, again, fuckin' it up for the rest of us. If people are seriously concerned with the well-being of a relative handful of billionaires, they should 'do the right thing', and start seeing movies 4 times, and buying double of everything. Meanwhile, the 'dummies' will download, watch, and then 'trash' the crap.
Well, that's okay, because in capitalist, free-market economies there already is a mechanism to correct imbalances, inflation, and inefficiencies: It has to do with 'price' being set by demand and supply, and in a more micro sense, or cynical sense, it's 'whatever the market will bear'. And like it or not, downloaders are part of the 'market'. The consumers and 'middlemen' simply have a difference of opinion where price/value is concerned, as it relates to consumables issuing forth from Hollywood.
Tinkering with the rules, to 'fix' a market, inevitably gives rise to unforeseen reactions in the market, over time. As another poster, in an earlier segment of this see-saw topic put it: (and i quote loosely:), Hollywood's business model is already dead, but doesn't 'know' it yet.
Thanks for pointing that out. That happened to be the a year in which 20% of American children went to bed hungry. Eisner can rot in Hell, and Disney can go with him.
Really, what has the world come to when a fellow hides behind Anonymity while brave souls with names like 'Spy der Mann" let it all hang out, eh?
Tell me something Herr der Mann, do you feel extra-brave, today? Good Christ, forget relativist morality, hypocrites have sucked ass since time immemorial.
~flipper not my real name, either, buttwipeyou mean where you get to go to the snack bar in your PJs? jesus, i'd go back to the theaters, maybe
Yeah, they've either shelved the last version of the pre-Xcode developer's Tools, or it's just buried somewhere. Your Jaguar Installer CDs include the Developer's Tools (CD 3, if memory serves me well). But you really want to have the BSD subsystem installed also (that's an option on the main Installer disk. I think December 2002 was the last version of the pre-Panther Tools. If you want the Tools, reply back, here, and name an alt.binaries group (a.b.ma. would make sense) and i'll post them for ya. They're around 3-400MB, and loads of fun. ~flipper
They have more active developers working on OSX apps than they've ever had.
On a Mac running Jaguar I get zero vulnerabilities (35 out of 35 tests) using 0.10.0 Firefox, Java loaded. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that OSX includes Perl, Java, Apache, etc (yeah, and /etc -laughs-), so it's up to a Firefox user whether or not to actually implement Java. Not Mozilla's responsibility at all...my machine, my responsibility, that's the way we like it.
Yeah, remember that when you're dying from cancer, because corporate 'special interests' were let off 'the hook', and you're too fucked up on morphine to say goodbye to your kids.
Oh, and have a nice day. Heheh...sucker
hopefully not every update will require a reboot,... read the info on updates and patches, and reboot only the affected sub-systems. There are up-to-date Xserves out there that haven't rebooted in many a month.
Agreed 100%
I use a Mac at home, Windows at work, and started on old IBM mainframes (Fortran/COBOL) in the early Seventies.
I read, respond to, and often ignore, posts on a variety of Mac user support LISTSERVS and whatnot. I hear bitching, from people who never read manuals, QuickStart guides, ReadMe.txt files, etc, all the fucking time, saying "This co. sucks", "these -company name- tech support/call desk people Suck", etc, etc...Okay, already, we all know that 1) Help Desk isn't a lot of people's first priority when it comes to Vocational Choices, and 2) Nobody had a gun held to their head (unless you count the need for food, shelter, 'stupid' things like hungry kids, as a 'gun', which I would), when they took those jobs. All that being said, every company I've seen singled out as being the 'worst', happens to be a company I've called. Earthlink, let's say, there have been times, back in Boca, after severe storms, when I wanted to rule out local damage as a 'fault' for net interruptions, and, even though I knew they might not admit it, I would call Earthlink in Atlanta, to see if the DHCP servers in Miami were okay. Nine times out of ten I could get the guy on the phone to get past 'All systems are go", or "Did you reboot?" script-talk, and actually poll the servers in Miami, and give me info. Amazing, eh? How did I do that? By being polite on the fucking phone.
For a while I would just say "Win2kPro" when they'd ask what OS are you on? Heheh, and then I'd silently translate their advice into mac-speak. That worked pretty good too, but talking to human beings as if they were human beings is just the simplest 'ticket', not only for 'support', but in Life.
One last example: Microsoft. Everybody hates the company, of course, that's a no-brainer, but the people that work there? I don't know, they might be 'people' too... let's see: I run VirtualPC on a Titanium Powerbook. (I run a lot of things in VPC, but 2kpro was my example.) So, after a few years, some unrelated issues and whatnot, I find myself with a re-install of Windows, that was simple, and no ID, no Auth number, no serial, etc, can't find the "card" with the number on it. (Which I'm convinced never existed, until 9 months later when I find it). Ok? So, I call Redmond, expecting the worst, and who wouldn't expect the same? Call answered on 2nd or 3rd ring. Whoa. No voice mail. (WTF?). Nice enough fellow, believes I 'never had 'the Card', says "Hang on a minute, I'll be right back". Meanwhile, he knows I'm on a Mac, because I set the scene... 15 fucking seconds later he's back on the line, gives me a new serial, and Auth Number, says if I find the 'card that never existed, don't worry about it, you'll have 2 then". And I'm golden. So much for that. The point is: Companies are about people. "Corporations" are 'entities'. There's a difference. And as for attitude on the part of help desk, etc, it's a software issue, used to have an acronym: GIGO, anybody old enough to remember that? The old Garbage In, Garbage Out.
As for the guy with the 'Insult to injury' regarding Cleveland... I spent 5 hours in rain, on the tarmac at Kennedy, before they taxied back to the gate to let us all off a cramped 747 to stretch and eat. (airline regs said nothing but peanuts and candy till at elevation)... I stood in a nice long line, was one lady away from the cash register with 'dinner', when the girl from the Airline entered with "Flight blah blah Reboarding Immediately!!!", waved bye-bye to dins, and proceeded to re-board, and wait another 5 hours out on the tarmac. Heheh. A greasy spoon, with a coffee, a smoke, and dinner-on-the-way in Cleveland would have been "Nirvana Tonight", as far as I was concerned. (this from a current New Yorker).
I have to wonder about the Healthcare area being worse.
I worked, off and on, at a major VA Hospital. The VA, of course, like all parts of the Military system not related to procurement, is seriously underfunded. But, the only localised system in the entire facility I worked in, was the CT-scanners. They needed super hi-def imaging, so they used SGIs, and something that 'looked like' an X-window-type OS. I never ran those boxes, so I don't have better, more accurate info on that, sorry. (It might have been some version of solaris with a KDE or Gnome lookalike desktop, don't know. They were all leased from GE, anyway, and had really intelligent people running them. Every other department was tied-in to the same over-all 'system', as far as boxes and software, but separated from other departments (for obvious reasons, "Admissions" didn't need to be looking at/accessing Food Services, etc).
As for the rest of the hospital, all of it was on a unified system. With the exception of paper-based Medical Records. You cannot imagine the enormity of the paper-based issue. It defies simple 'scanning' and conversion to electronic docs, due to the wide range of forms, crazy handwriting, etc. All that aside, maybe the 'normal' hospital systems are different. Or your post was referring to the Healthcare industry at the governmental level. Not sure.
But (this is the 'plug'): If you, or anyone, care(s) about the kids and fellows that have already 'done their duty' (whether you're pro- or anti- political war is irrelevant, IMHO) be aware that the Administration (White House, power structure, whatever) is contemplating further severe cutbacks in health care, hazard duty pay, death benefits for families, etc, and write to your representatives, expressing your opinions.
As far as the attitude, expressed by some, that the airlines (or any company, for that matter) should go bankrupt, to be 'taught a lesson', for management stupidity, or bean-counting decisions, may seem reasonable, but the only people hurt (and they are numerous) are the ones with the least responsibility for the failures, as a whole. Think of it this way: In a country that has a tax and Congress (whose primary purpose is to divy up tax dollars between competing corporations (aka the real 'Special Interests') working as a system designed to facillitate Corporate Welfare for the rich and powerful, the last thing we need are more 'little people' needing money for food, shelter, their families, etc.
How in the name of even the most warped US-is-No 1 whacko math, if pigs could fly bullshit, is this crap marked Informative? Look pal, the US lags a good number of nations, globally, in a lot of areas, like infant Mortality, universal access to health care, etc. We're number one in areas, all right. Like bombing other countries, supporting right-wing terrorist paramilitary groups (who've killed far more people on our behalf than Osama could possibly imagine). Being a huge polluter of the world environment. Wake up. Where are the europeans, i can't believe this jingoistic crap can even get on here. Americans BUY more SPAM-adverted products than the rest of the World, so of course the ads originate here. That's just moronic yanks fulfilling their end of what is basically good old yankee capitalist free market economics, a need, a filling of that need, the marketing, etc.
You can already re-launch all the varied OSX sub-systems after patches, assuming one reads the info re: the patch, and which subs are involved. All that Apple stuff about "Requires a re-start" is for newbs, heheh.
If you patch Apache, you'd have to reboot the server, but the OS stays up and running. But anyone in a 'critical' spot has redundancy anyway, no?
I know plenty of guys do that all the time with Xserves and even regular old G4 or G5 boxes running OSX Server...they stay completely up-to-date, zero downtime. No partitioning required.
But the ideas that folks have come up with in these threads, re: possibilities, are truly interesting and exciting, no question about it.
One of the many setups I use in VirtualPC is a really lean NT 4.0 sp6, and it flies ( laughs ), no seriously, compared to any of the other Windows OSes in VPC.
I know nothing about the developer's boxes, but when I saw the NT - PPC connection my first thought was yeah, a working thing, no doubt.
I understand the "What, 1994, already?" though, but different tasks require different boxes/systems, and sometimes what you don't use is almost more important than what you do use.
I like Macs and old Unix big boxes, but my military project day job, SGML stuff, has me on a 5 or 6 yr-old Compaq,, runnin' NT... would I want it at home? Not really, but I run a shitload of apps, and since starting back in April, it has yet to crash.. the box, or the network. It's all about applying the correct tool for the job.
I agree with the anti-automatically-better thing. I use Apple gear, including a first gen 5GB iPod, and for my needs, 5GB is fine. I have a little over a terabyte of samples, and a half TB of high bit-rate mp3s. But between home 'work', and work 'work', I don't have time to listen to more than a fraction of what's on the Pod anyway.
I like it because it's well-made. Not everything Apple ever produced (be it updates to apps, or certain revs of hardware) was a huge marvel, and some stuff just didn't cut it.
But it is important for other companies to give Apple a run for the money.And this iRiver box sounds good, on paper, to me, and I'm sure, that in the same way a relatively 'lame' 1st Gen iPod suits me, for a lot of folks it wouldn't 'do it'. But Apple isn't all about design, not quite yet, there's a little thing called R&D, and then there's engineering, and fussiness regarding suppliers... I don't want them getting complacent because of a one-in-a-row 'hit'.
I'd rather see OpenSource, or Linux (whatever) development, because it gets ported over here to Darwin (NeXTSTEP, mach-O, etc) which suits me just fine, AND serves to keep Apple mindful of keeping one eye on the competition, and 'vision',etc.
You have no interest in what Apple makes? Oh no, we really give a shit. So why are reading at apple.slashdot? Fuckin PC people, if your boxes are so fuckin brilliant, why the hemorrhoid between your ears regarding Apple? Fuck off.
And just how fo you figure that? Th laws are usually simple misdemeanors such as "Minor in possession of alcohol'. Compare that to the major misdemeanor, and the loss of license/income, when a bar or store violates the "No sales to minors", and it's obviously in the bartender's own interest to check IDs. Sometimes,....wow, logic, does it only exist in software,or what?
One method: A 'waiting period". New users at my favorite tracker are confronted with 72 hour waits (from the time a torrent is queued-up on their client, until it actually starts d-loading), the wait drops to 60, then 45 hours, as the material available is 'older', i.e. most recently upped material=longer waits, older material=less wait, etc, until you have two-week old material=no wait.
BUT, to avoid the 'wait' there is an AND built in: Upload 4.5 GB of 'unique' material AND get to a 1:1 ratio up/down.
One can simply download 2.25 GBs and seed them back to a 2:1 ratio,and there's both sides of the "AND" covered. Or, d-load 4.5GB and seed back 1:1, either way, but the 'no-wait' status is only maintained when the ratio [1:1, or better] is also maintained. Very simple, very effective.
then you guys at work just don't know what you're doing. I download 3 GB files all the fucking time, and you know what? I'm n a shitty verizon dsl that only gets 16kB up and maxes at 90kB down... and guess what Mr. It-Doesn't Work, if I use a news reader, i get the same stats, EXCEPT if I'm upping something, in which case my downloads at the same time will just crawl... But with Azareus, and my 2.50 ratio, i can get (now get this) more upload kBs, around 18-24), AND, on a nicely seeded 'down', at the same time... 100kBs down, with bursts of 120... Eh? Doesn't work? It's all about ports, and having those inky-dinky packets and file pieces. The ISPs all throttle rates, over time, more or less, but when a new packet hits, to commence a stream, the initial rate is higher, then decreases, which is a bummer with most protocols, but with BT, for some reason, just when the throttle 'kicks in', the packets 'done', and a new packet comes scraming in before the throttle clamps down... Bottom line, distributed computing at its fucking (current) finest.
Heheh, sorry, it ain't a 'violation', either, it's infringement.
.yo!! Buggeroff, not everybody's got the same dsl/cable speeds, just be glad your mom and dad let you spend your life and their bucks in the rec room down there, and lay off the generalizing.... eh, like a good boy? thanks
On the Bright Side, maybe there'll be fewer of those whacko Dutch "Top 100" floods in the sounds.mp3 groups. My european trackers are all humming along quite nicely, regardless of the dutch troubles.