I have to say the one major hurdle that has steered me away from downloading music from the iTunes and others has been the DRM. I'm sure there's few among this crowd that would disagree. I realize, I could still burn my downloaded music to a CD and do what I please with it, but it's really the principal of the fact.
But my complaint comes out at lossy codecs. Maybe I'm just being too picky, but the less compressed the better. A few years ago I put my whole CD collection in MP3 format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment. All at 160K CBR using XING. Of course, with the availability of an ogg player for my handheld PC, I have converted again much of my CD collection to ogg format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment.
If I hadn't had the uncompressed quality of the CD, I'd be stuck with my older MP3 encoded files. I had heard of a project earlier put forth where the company/band was releasing tracks in multiple formats, including FLAC (curious if anyone has a link or knows what I'm talking about?).
I personally wish that others would go this route--more choice.
I'm done complaining though. Seeing artists walk away from DRM is a great thing. Seeing them recognize the importance of the higher bitrate is also very encouraging. I hope this causes more of a rift between the good bands and the strong arm of the RIAA. It can only be a move in the right direction for consumers.
I had to comment on this one having gone through this with a customer myself in the past.
Let me bring in an old analogy. In my High School, the Cool/Rich kids had Ford Mustang GTs (5.0 litre V8 at the time). The car (so they thought) turned heads at school. About a year later, a kid started showing up to school in a Mustang as well. Of course, he talked about how he paid for it with his own hard cash and 'Mommy/Daddy' didn't buy it for him. Upon closer investigation, we found out that the his car had a 4 banger. Learned later that he stole the "5.0" from another Ford Mustang and swapped the LS with a GT as well. Other than that, from the outside, not much looked different. From the inside...well, I'm sure I don't have to say how evident it was that this was, in fact, not a 5 litre V8, but a (1.8?) Litre 4 banger. (Put simply, it was the lowest end Mustang made to look like the expensive one)
I use this analogy when selling. One has to realize that both aspects are important. The site has to look "slick" because in reality, the customer you're dealing cannot recognize anything else. And it has to be functional because if it's not, you're going to hear from the customer well after you've sold your product, you won't get recommendations as a result of it and other technical individuals will bash you on Slashdot.
The last time I was in this predicament, I explained the situation and said "I'd be happy to put together something like that for you. It'll be done in a day or two, but I won't put my name on it, and I don't think you'll be happy with it."
This is pretty simple to sum up in my mind. Although my desktop is still running windows at work, at home I rarely see it.
But when asked the question why I have moved to Open Office from Microsoft Office, and why I have moved to Linux from Windows, what is the answer? It's mostly about rights and freedom. I'm not yet willing to admit that I am a full out FSF supporter, though I have been a supporter of the Open Source movement. Microsoft's licensing tactics (and not just theirs but the general tactics of manyotherfolks have led me as far away from proprietary "treat-the-custer-as-a-theif" software as I can possibly get. Linux is great, and it has been an incredible learning experience (I've honestly never felt so dumb sitting in front of a command prompt as I did during my first Gentoo installation).
I was never a *NIX user. I never had any desire to run anything other than Windows because I was happy with the product.
But they forced me to look elsewhere, and when I did I learned what I was missing. So IMO, what lies ahead for linux is more users...and I don't believe that is limited to the server. From the desktop side, the strides that have been made in KDE and GNOME in the last couple of revisions have made them dramatically nicer to work with. From the server side...not having to have a GUI running on a server is quite a bit more efficient.
Back in the day I remeber Microsoft recommending you change the screen saver to the black screen instead of one of those OpenGL screen savers on your Windows NT SQL server because the screen saver would bury your processor. I couldn't help but think why do I have this huge GUI running on what is supposed to resemble a somewhat powerful database server?!!
Our company did a pilot with Books24x7, and I found it to be incredibly useful. I thought the same thing you did, but while I was using it I had a revelation: I read alot of crap online already. Being a programmer/analyst/support rep, having a computer library on my computer was far more logical than having the 5 shelves of books behind me. They had some problems... They lacked Photoshop books (in recent versions anyway), and others of their books were a little out of date (though my bookshelves behind me are far more out of date). But even with those deficiencies, I found the service very useful. The search capabilities were excellent. In a technical crisis, I used it to solve a problem and it proved far faster with a lower "signal to noise ratio" than Google or other internet searches. I wouldn't have dreamed of going through the 30 books behind me in a crisis.
During the pilot I read two books nearly cover to cover (I skipped a couple of chapters with the click of a mouse). But I was also able to gather snippits of very good information out of about 40 of the books they had related to my job. The efficiency improvement would be worth $400 a year.
More than half the guys list their positions as "technical evangelist."
At what point did Microsoft become a religeon? I have never liked their usage of the word "evangelist" in job titles. At some point they're going to cross the line and send someone to my house to knock on my door with something they call a "bible" (it'll probably be blue, cryptic and the book won't open properly). But all kidding aside, IMO, that's kinda wierd. I always laughed at those web sites about how Bill Gates was the devil. But they chose the words, not me!
I must disagree. It was not typical at our company. In fact, for several of the people who were let go, the departments within which they worked seemed to work much better...My department included. When a supervisor of mine who operated as a constant "road block" to anything that came his way was let go, our job lives improved and we began to provide valuable services to the areas we supported.
Yes, I still have my job. But also yes, I have experienced a lay-off before and I've even been demoted at another company. In all cases, I would have responded like you, however upon reflection of those incidents I realized I had it coming. Whether it was my attitude, or the fact that I worked in a department headed by someone who thought it was his right to have a job and thus led us all down the road to irrelevance. It was my own damn fault for continuing to work at that job without making any effort to find new employment.
I won't disagree that you can't trim fat without trimming some muscle and bone. But--at least in my experience--it was more exception than rule. The ironic part is that the people who always said "this company won't survive without me" were almost always the first to go. Hence attitude determining altitude.
I refuse to suck up. I just treat everyone like an equal
You really said it right there. From CEO on down, all of us are human beings. If you talk to your superiors as though you are afraid to speak your mind, they stop trusting your decisions. I don't tell people what they want to hear, I tell people what I believe is right and true. I won't say it hasn't caused me grief in the past, but it goes a long way to earning the respect of those who depend on your expertise.
Good managers depend on their technical staff to provide insight they either don't have time to research or don't have the background to understand. If you support something simply because you know management will like that thing better than the truth, it may gain you some momentum for a little bit, but in the long run when the project fails...they'll be looking back to you for the reason why.
I work for a well known telecommunications company. We're not well known because we are a huge company that is in every household in the country...we're well known because we had a large bankruptcy shortly after the Enron debacle.
In the past 5 years, I have watched about 8 different "lay-off" periods (situations in which over a hundred people (sometimes a few thousand) were given their walking papers) and survived each of them.
The interesting part to me is that about 80% of the people who were let go were no surprise to most of the people who worked with them. Several of them spent most of their time worrying about how to protect their job rather than actually doing their job. In fact, if some of them put as much energy into doing their job rather than fearing their lay-off, they'd probably still be employed.
I'm not saying that everyone who got laid off deserved it (several good folks were lost due to whole department eliminations).
During two years there was (significant) uncertainty that we would survive as a company, relegating all of us to the unemployment line. The way to survive a lay-off is to ensure that you are focusing on the company's goals. If you're not, don't wait to be chopped. Start hunting now and get out.
I will say that if you look at who remained and still remains at my place of employment, you will find that 99% of those folks did their job to the best of their abilities, never complained, took on more work than they were asked to take on, and most of them never feared being let go.
I have to chock it up to attitude. I watched several folks with better degrees, more experience, more technical knowledge, and more skill than I get let go. But I remained because I work well on a team and am willing to take any task with a smile on my face.
I apologize if this sounds like a "buck up, camper" kind of speech, or if I come off not sympathizing with those who have been let go (I really do. I've been there!). But if you go to work worried about getting fired...you're probably going to get fired.
Yeah... I can see it now. "Microsoft is suing end-users of Linux due to the discovery that the latest version of the kernel incorporated Windows 2000 code. The discovery of the code theft was made after someone at Microsoft plugged a USB scanner into a system running the latest Linux kernel and received the Blue Screen of Death."
...but I have to say it. Who Cares?
We all realize that the success of Linux has not been because Linux has a large marketing arm that allows Linux Open Source Developers to produce a weak product and make up for it with pretty little catch-phrases like "Do more with Less!" (Windows Server 2003...I kinda though it was less too).
Allow me to admit something (Without being lit on fire). I was a huge Microsoft Advocate up until about 2 years ago. I argued with all of you "*nix People" until my keyboard wore out. I laughed at all of you who said it was better, faster, more reliable, and scoffed at the notion of Microsoft being an indestructable Monopoly. But yet, today, I sit in front of my Gentoo Linux based OS, running KDE, viewing Slashdot on Konquerer (something just couldn't get me away from browsers integrated into operating systems). Why? Because it works better, I can run my one copy on all of my computers without paying for it, and I genuinly like the Linux Experience over that of the Windows Experience (Hey, I can run an FTP server, mail server, file server, and still browse the internet without paying for a server based license).
Linux *never* provided me any kind of candy coated marketing slogans or white papers. Microsoft did. And they're only doing this because they realize that Marketing is the one place where they can over-power Linux. Too bad marketing doesn't run my computer.
Honestly, from my perspective the learning curve was difficult (still is, actually), and it is harder to find lower-wage technical staff that can troubleshoot Linux...but that's only because Microsoft has the operating system that is on most peoples' computers. It's not always going to be like that, and it appears to be trending in a direction away from MS. What in the heck are they going to do when they can no longer depend on support staff being unfamiliar with Linux?
When people realize that their next Windows is going to give more control to the Software Vendors and Content Providers than it gives to the user as it "Checks in" to ever-more-common Activation Code systems on the Internet to make sure you're not stealing crap that isn't worth what they want to charge you for it in the first place...how is Microsoft going to market their way out of it? It's doubtful that they will be able to depend on their "Hey, what other choice do you have?" attitude anymore.
But from my perspective: I don't treat my OS with any more reverence than I treat my toaster. I don't care who runs it, I don't care who doesn't. There's plenty of software for it, plenty of reasons I wouldn't run anything else, and I think others would agree regardless of what a Microsoft Sponsord report from IDC says. Linux is like a virus. We got the "brass" to allow us to install one of them into our shop about 2 years ago. Everyone was so happy with its performance that now we have several and are planning to move ever more important enterprise based functions in that direction.
...but I do take issue with one thing. Stock price is no indication of a successful or strategically positioned company or business plan. I work for a telecom that went bankrupt. Just prior to merger, our stock price went through the roof. Many thought we had this great business plan that was going to be incredibly profitable--or at least that's what you'd think from a stock that tripled in value in a very short period of time. To make a long story short...Last month we emerged from Bankruptcy. There was a point at which the investors started to see the company was not going to make it. Much was written about our chances of success being slim, but yet there were several times at which our stock price still went up. In fact, during our period of bankruptcy--when it was known upon exiting of Chapter 11 our stock value would be ZERO, our stock still traded, up a few cents down a few cents.
So while your point about investors buying the stock under the assumption that it will go up is true. They don't necessarily buy the stock assuming it will go up as a result of the activities of the company.
1. Go to your favorite cheep-o-discount store and pick up a timer that will handle a good wattage and a cheap smoke detector. Don't worry about how sensative it is, just get the loudest one they sell. Also might not be a bad idea to grab a fire extinguisher.
2. Purchase a basic set of stereo speakers (ensure that they are of a lower wattage than your stereo can put out).
3. Plug your stereo into your timer, turn the volume all the way up and remove the volume knob. (Do this while the timer is OFF). Super glue the power switch in the permenently ON position. Tune to the most obnoxious music radio station you can find on the dial in your local area (for me it would be RAP, but I've heard Country works well too).
4. Install the fire alarm directly above the stereo.
4. Set the timer for about 30 minutes prior to the point at which you want to be awake.
5. Go to sleep.
The following morning, if the sound of speakers nearly breaking under the stress of awful music is too much to bear, the sound of the smoke detector going off works as a great secondary alarm. (my last set took about 30 minutes before the cheap speakrs began to smoke).
All kidding aside, I had the same problem and found that I wake up more effectively to music than to the buzzer. My body would get used to the buzzer and I'd hear it in my dream, but not wake up. The solution is to buy a good quality, loud alarm clock that plays music or a CD. I have a Bose Wave Radio alarm clock and it can be cranked quite loud. As long as it's on RADIO and not the beeper, it never fails to wake me...my wife and my neighbors up on time. Oh, and it helps to put the alarm clock on the other side of the room so that you don't accidentally turn it off in your sleep.
Everyone I know who has tried (and failed) to quit, failed because they did not want to quit smoking.
Never underestimate the power of a physical addiction, my friend. Having been a former smoker, I can tell you I wanted to quit. I wanted to quit about 1700 times. I succeeded on the 1700th try. You know its bad for you, you can feel it every day when you light up, but there's that tinge of happiness that comes from the action. It's been 10 years since I quit and even now there are still times I'm jamming on some code...get pissed off at it and think "Gee, if I could just go outside, light up and relieve my stress, I could get back to this mess of code and maybe make some sense of it." 10 Years and I wonder if they succeeded in eliminating all of the health risks and side effects if I wouldn't light up right now.
Also, it's not really mind over matter. That same mind is telling you "one more won't hurt you, you can go back to quitting after you have one more...". You go through this sort of multiple-personality situation where you have one half of you telling you not to touch the damn things, and the other half telling you that you're life would be entirely easier if you just give in. Some people find it easier than others, I found it to be one of the most difficult things I have had to do. And I remeber that every time a temptation rolls my way.
The interesting thing I noticed when I was a smoker was how many people who had never smoked in their life (or never were addicted) would tell me how easy it is to quit. It was also amazing how many of these people had their own unhealthy habbits (being a geek, I've seen plenty of other geeks who happen to have a few hundred extra pounds they would be well off to get rid of). Now they're not putting anyone else at risk with their bad habbit, but I wounder if I walked up to someone who was fat and said "eat healthy and exercise every day like I do, it's easy." how many people would agree with me. (Hint: not many!) Cigarrettes feel like food to an addict.
I purchased this DVD player late last summer and discovered the Linux kernel present on the upgrade BIOS disc.
This is the response I got from them:
----
From: DCTW_Service@liteonit.com
Subject: Re: Request for GPL Code
Dear Sir,
Sorry at the present, we don't provide the source code.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best Regards!
----
Of course, my understanding isn't important. The copyright owner's understanding is what matters.
I decided to e-mail the folks at the FSF for a follow up. I assumed that was the place to go, though I admit even today, that I'm not exactly sure sometimes.
Here was the response from them:
----
From: license-violation@fsf.org
Subject: [gnu.org #114549] Linux GPL Code Violation - LiteOn Phomaster LVD-2001
For some reason, your mail never reached my inbox (indeed, the web interface to our RequestTracker seems to be having a bit of a hard time with it too). So, sorry for the late response.
We've already seen a few violations which look to be the same product as this under different packaging. We will add LiteOn to the list of people to write to about this. Thanks for the report.
--
-Dave "Novalis" Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation
----
The whole process was really quite daunting from my perspective. It is my understanding that the Linux Kernel is not a GNU product (though much of the software in a typical linux distrubtion is). Being a linux/GPL/FSF/GNU newbie, it took me quite a bit of time to hunt down a place to submit my complaint. Does anybody know of a database of copyright owners who use the GPL, and more importantly a convenient location for notifying said individuals when a breach is found or suspected? Even the FSF site didn't have a spot that was blaringly obvious to someone who had never visited the site before for reporting GPL violations of their software.
I will say, its nice to see some attention being payed to this with regard to my DVD player. Not to advertise for the theifs, but its a great player...the new BIOS even allows one to play ogg encoded files written to a DVD or CF card. I'm interested, obviously, in getting my hands on the code and potentially flashing the BIOS with my own handy-work...maybe see if I can get the thing to take a hard drive or wireless network adapter in its PC card slot.
We can fully expect that there will be a marked increase in efforts to directly hack the BIOS of PCs (Can you imagine having to Mod Chip your own computer?)
If it can be avoided, I will never purchase a BIOS chip with this trusted computing garbage. The only thing I trust in computing is myself, and if the BIOS isn't going to trust me, don't expect me to use it. If that means I don't get to run some (or even any of) the commercial apps out there, then fine. I use very few now-adays anyway.
Quite frankly, this change in BIOS/OS will very likely be rejected by customers. I mean, think of the stink that was made over the Pentium III (was it?) regarding the embedded serial number. This could work in the favour of the open source movement. I know, for me, Windows XP Product activation was what got me looking into Linux "on my desktop" for the first time.
General/Corporate Inquiries
For general comments and questions about Best Buy Co., Inc., contact:
Best Buy Co., Inc.
Corporate Headquarters
P.O. Box 9312
Minneapolis, MN 55440-9312
This story hasn't gotten a lot of attention outside of FatWallet's forums and Slashdot. If this activity bothers you, take a few minutes, write a letter, lick a stamp, and let them know you're paying attention. They are very unlikely to win if this goes to court, so they don't need a whole lot of motivation to stop the idiotic activity. I, for one, won't be patronizing their store again. I mean really, if you need your "retail" electronics fix, they have plenty of competitors who offer the same junk at the same high prices. Kick them a letter and thank them for making the choice of where to shop a little easier.
I thought this might be relevant in that we're discussing patching related to this (giant gaping) hole. Has anyone figured out why this 043 patch modifies the Workstation DLL? I can understand its interaction with the messanger service DLL, but why Workstation? I wouldn't worry about rapidly patching a large number of workstations with just a modification of the Messenger service, but now that it's changing a major DLL--and knowing the reliability of some MS Patches--I'm concerned at this point. Also with changes like this, Is it possible this hole is deeper than what was originally stated?
I was a long time IE user, and even advocate in some cases. I also work with several people who felt the same way.
In January or so I switched over to Opera because I got sick and tired of the pop-ups and IE had no good defense against them. I had been using Mozilla at work for some time--having to develop for both IE and Mozilla platforms--but I hadn't been too impressed with it until about the end of the summer. These security holes and the apparent lax nature by which MS is handling them in IE have actually scared most of my coworkers away from Internet Explorer for their day-to-day ops. I mean, of course, when you go to the MSDN web site, you can't find a damn browser out there other then theirs that displays their pages with any kind of reliability (and I'm sure that's intentional). But for almost anything else, most sites written for IE display relatively well in Mozilla, better IMHO in Opera, and seem to display almost the same as IE in the latest build of Konquerer. And quite frankly, things seem quite a bit zippier in any one of those than in IE. Most people won't switch because their too lazy to download the latest builds of the alternative platforms...fear though, is quite a powerful motivator.
The MS Requirements are buried all throughout their program. Almost as if MS gave them a grant to require them to use their technology. For a while they were using online books which were available in PDF for MS-Reader format (I'm personally surprised it wasn't all MS reader).
It's the biggest drawback of their program, really. I tried to us Mozilla's Mail/News reader but I had trouble configuring it to use the Secure Password Authentication system they were using. I didn't spend much time on getting it to function simply because I have windows workstations here that work well enough for the task. And it's OE not Outlook (even better, right?).
Beyond that, most of the classes I have taken don't advertise for MS. In fact, the operating system class that I took we were required to do an evaluation of Linux vs. Unix vs. MS environments. We spent a great deal of time discussing each of the pro's/cons. The class itself is one of the reasons that I chose to look deeper into Linux (I'm a *gasp* windows admin).
The professors, like I mentioned before, are real-world. Right now, Linux is a big part of the "real world" if for no other reason than the fact that most companies are trying to reduce costs of licensing (Hey, at least it got their foot in the door).
UOP claims that you dont have to spend much time on HomeWork or in Class.
Having attended the local UOP classes and now being a UOP Online attendee, I can tell you that there are stark differences between the two. I found that the UOP standard classes were, IMHO, about equivelent to the local community college (which I also attended for a semester). There was a reasonable amount of homework and if you failed to achieve the minimum requirements that a college would expect of a student, most of the professors would reflect that in your grade.
The online university was quite different. The first thing I realized was that it was the first time in a university setting that I actually learned something. You have to realize that the people in most of your classes are presently employed doing the things that you are learning. Because of the participation requirements, you learn far more from the students themselves than you ever learn from a university class at an undergrad level. An outline of the typical class goes as follows: Each week you are given 3-4 questions about the reading/lecture that you must answer (different requirements per class on what constitutes an answer but usually a 100/200 or so word essay style question is asked). In addition to answering the questions, you are expected to post well-thought-out replies to the answers of other class mates (typically minimum 3 reponses per day for 5 days out of the week). This is your participation grade. In addition to that grade, you receive a grade on written assignments (usually 2/3 per week depending on the class, content, and professor). Then comes the group project that starts in week 2. You are given a major project that you must complete in a group setting with 3-4 other students. The projects range from introducing 2/3 more written assignments per week to just a single large (report style) project you have to complete at the end of the class.
I was very surprised at the extent of work each class required. Now, of course, there are professors who will let you get away with doing next-to-nothing, who relax the participation restrictions (including one who didn't get the notice that I dropped his class and gave me a full passing grade in week 3...even though I had done none of the work) But you get that kind of crap in the university setting. The things I didn't get in the university setting was a group of professors with Master's degrees who had been working in the field (after degree completion) for at least 2 years. It's amazing going to a computer class being taught by someone who is presently employed in the field talking about the *real world*, not some BS set of concepts that programming instructors teach that when you get to the "First Job" you realize are done completely differently. And I'll tell you, if you're aiming for a 4.0 in the class, you spend an hour or two per day just doing your participation requirements. You also dread landing a class where there are too few or too many students (too few means you can't come up with posts to make your participation grade, too many means you spend two hours reading through replies).
I'm amazed at how many *truly technically savvy people* I work with just randomly install p2p apps and then are surprised that they have holes, bugs and even Malware. I mean, really, if networked applications that are *supposed* to be bullet proof like OpenSSH encounter vulnerabilities--in an open source environment--with so many people reviewing the actual code, can we be too surprised that some silly P2P application with authors who make no bones about the fact that they are violating (albiet bad) American laws might slip something like this in intentionally? Even if there was no intention to slip this code in there (which I find hard to believe in this case), the idea that there would be Buffer Overflow vulnerabilities and the like doesn't surprise me one bit. Most people don't take security seriously...even those who you would expect to.
Yes, because if we were on the new Longhorn operating system using MS Trustworthly computing, you'd only be able to run software that it was determined you legitimately purchased or software that was installed remotely through an RPC vulnerability.
Here's how you get Microsoft more interested in security:
Write the next Blaster virus to create a distributed computing network (similar to SETI@Home) designed to hack the private key of the XBox console. Use said private key to create a linux distribution that makes installing linux on the XBox as easy as playing Halo.
Wait a minute, I went looking through the archive and I didn't see this version of Linux that was derived from SCO Unix. I thought Darl said that all operating systems were derived from SCO Unix? Since this is undoubtedly the case (because Darl McBride said so, and he is a smart man) then this archive is incredibly incomplete...
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say the one major hurdle that has steered me away from downloading music from the iTunes and others has been the DRM. I'm sure there's few among this crowd that would disagree. I realize, I could still burn my downloaded music to a CD and do what I please with it, but it's really the principal of the fact.
But my complaint comes out at lossy codecs. Maybe I'm just being too picky, but the less compressed the better. A few years ago I put my whole CD collection in MP3 format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment. All at 160K CBR using XING. Of course, with the availability of an ogg player for my handheld PC, I have converted again much of my CD collection to ogg format for my computer/portable listening enjoyment.
If I hadn't had the uncompressed quality of the CD, I'd be stuck with my older MP3 encoded files. I had heard of a project earlier put forth where the company/band was releasing tracks in multiple formats, including FLAC (curious if anyone has a link or knows what I'm talking about?).
I personally wish that others would go this route--more choice.
I'm done complaining though. Seeing artists walk away from DRM is a great thing. Seeing them recognize the importance of the higher bitrate is also very encouraging. I hope this causes more of a rift between the good bands and the strong arm of the RIAA. It can only be a move in the right direction for consumers.
I had to comment on this one having gone through this with a customer myself in the past.
Let me bring in an old analogy. In my High School, the Cool/Rich kids had Ford Mustang GTs (5.0 litre V8 at the time). The car (so they thought) turned heads at school.
About a year later, a kid started showing up to school in a Mustang as well. Of course, he talked about how he paid for it with his own hard cash and 'Mommy/Daddy' didn't buy it for him. Upon closer investigation, we found out that the his car had a 4 banger. Learned later that he stole the "5.0" from another Ford Mustang and swapped the LS with a GT as well. Other than that, from the outside, not much looked different. From the inside...well, I'm sure I don't have to say how evident it was that this was, in fact, not a 5 litre V8, but a (1.8?) Litre 4 banger. (Put simply, it was the lowest end Mustang made to look like the expensive one)
I use this analogy when selling. One has to realize that both aspects are important. The site has to look "slick" because in reality, the customer you're dealing cannot recognize anything else. And it has to be functional because if it's not, you're going to hear from the customer well after you've sold your product, you won't get recommendations as a result of it and other technical individuals will bash you on Slashdot.
The last time I was in this predicament, I explained the situation and said "I'd be happy to put together something like that for you. It'll be done in a day or two, but I won't put my name on it, and I don't think you'll be happy with it."
This is pretty simple to sum up in my mind. Although my desktop is still running windows at work, at home I rarely see it.
But when asked the question why I have moved to Open Office from Microsoft Office, and why I have moved to Linux from Windows, what is the answer?
It's mostly about rights and freedom. I'm not yet willing to admit that I am a full out FSF supporter, though I have been a supporter of the Open Source movement. Microsoft's licensing tactics (and not just theirs but the general tactics of many other folks have led me as far away from proprietary "treat-the-custer-as-a-theif" software as I can possibly get.
Linux is great, and it has been an incredible learning experience (I've honestly never felt so dumb sitting in front of a command prompt as I did during my first Gentoo installation).
I was never a *NIX user. I never had any desire to run anything other than Windows because I was happy with the product.
But they forced me to look elsewhere, and when I did I learned what I was missing.
So IMO, what lies ahead for linux is more users...and I don't believe that is limited to the server. From the desktop side, the strides that have been made in KDE and GNOME in the last couple of revisions have made them dramatically nicer to work with. From the server side...not having to have a GUI running on a server is quite a bit more efficient.
Back in the day I remeber Microsoft recommending you change the screen saver to the black screen instead of one of those OpenGL screen savers on your Windows NT SQL server because the screen saver would bury your processor. I couldn't help but think why do I have this huge GUI running on what is supposed to resemble a somewhat powerful database server?!!
Our company did a pilot with Books24x7, and I found it to be incredibly useful.
I thought the same thing you did, but while I was using it I had a revelation: I read alot of crap online already. Being a programmer/analyst/support rep, having a computer library on my computer was far more logical than having the 5 shelves of books behind me. They had some problems... They lacked Photoshop books (in recent versions anyway), and others of their books were a little out of date (though my bookshelves behind me are far more out of date). But even with those deficiencies, I found the service very useful. The search capabilities were excellent. In a technical crisis, I used it to solve a problem and it proved far faster with a lower "signal to noise ratio" than Google or other internet searches. I wouldn't have dreamed of going through the 30 books behind me in a crisis.
During the pilot I read two books nearly cover to cover (I skipped a couple of chapters with the click of a mouse). But I was also able to gather snippits of very good information out of about 40 of the books they had related to my job. The efficiency improvement would be worth $400 a year.
More than half the guys list their positions as "technical evangelist."
At what point did Microsoft become a religeon? I have never liked their usage of the word "evangelist" in job titles. At some point they're going to cross the line and send someone to my house to knock on my door with something they call a "bible" (it'll probably be blue, cryptic and the book won't open properly). But all kidding aside, IMO, that's kinda wierd. I always laughed at those web sites about how Bill Gates was the devil. But they chose the words, not me!
And Microsoft would make one with 5 nipples, and two of them would be useless unless the individual was wearing a particular bra.
Wait a second...are we still talking about the same thing?
Random chance, luck of the draw, fluke.
I must disagree. It was not typical at our company. In fact, for several of the people who were let go, the departments within which they worked seemed to work much better...My department included. When a supervisor of mine who operated as a constant "road block" to anything that came his way was let go, our job lives improved and we began to provide valuable services to the areas we supported.
Yes, I still have my job. But also yes, I have experienced a lay-off before and I've even been demoted at another company. In all cases, I would have responded like you, however upon reflection of those incidents I realized I had it coming. Whether it was my attitude, or the fact that I worked in a department headed by someone who thought it was his right to have a job and thus led us all down the road to irrelevance. It was my own damn fault for continuing to work at that job without making any effort to find new employment.
I won't disagree that you can't trim fat without trimming some muscle and bone. But--at least in my experience--it was more exception than rule. The ironic part is that the people who always said "this company won't survive without me" were almost always the first to go. Hence attitude determining altitude.
I refuse to suck up. I just treat everyone like an equal
You really said it right there. From CEO on down, all of us are human beings. If you talk to your superiors as though you are afraid to speak your mind, they stop trusting your decisions. I don't tell people what they want to hear, I tell people what I believe is right and true. I won't say it hasn't caused me grief in the past, but it goes a long way to earning the respect of those who depend on your expertise.
Good managers depend on their technical staff to provide insight they either don't have time to research or don't have the background to understand. If you support something simply because you know management will like that thing better than the truth, it may gain you some momentum for a little bit, but in the long run when the project fails...they'll be looking back to you for the reason why.
I work for a well known telecommunications company. We're not well known because we are a huge company that is in every household in the country...we're well known because we had a large bankruptcy shortly after the Enron debacle.
In the past 5 years, I have watched about 8 different "lay-off" periods (situations in which over a hundred people (sometimes a few thousand) were given their walking papers) and survived each of them.
The interesting part to me is that about 80% of the people who were let go were no surprise to most of the people who worked with them. Several of them spent most of their time worrying about how to protect their job rather than actually doing their job. In fact, if some of them put as much energy into doing their job rather than fearing their lay-off, they'd probably still be employed.
I'm not saying that everyone who got laid off deserved it (several good folks were lost due to whole department eliminations).
During two years there was (significant) uncertainty that we would survive as a company, relegating all of us to the unemployment line. The way to survive a lay-off is to ensure that you are focusing on the company's goals. If you're not, don't wait to be chopped. Start hunting now and get out.
I will say that if you look at who remained and still remains at my place of employment, you will find that 99% of those folks did their job to the best of their abilities, never complained, took on more work than they were asked to take on, and most of them never feared being let go.
I have to chock it up to attitude. I watched several folks with better degrees, more experience, more technical knowledge, and more skill than I get let go. But I remained because I work well on a team and am willing to take any task with a smile on my face.
I apologize if this sounds like a "buck up, camper" kind of speech, or if I come off not sympathizing with those who have been let go (I really do. I've been there!). But if you go to work worried about getting fired...you're probably going to get fired.
Yeah... I can see it now.
"Microsoft is suing end-users of Linux due to the discovery that the latest version of the kernel incorporated Windows 2000 code. The discovery of the code theft was made after someone at Microsoft plugged a USB scanner into a system running the latest Linux kernel and received the Blue Screen of Death."
...but I have to say it. Who Cares?
We all realize that the success of Linux has not been because Linux has a large marketing arm that allows Linux Open Source Developers to produce a weak product and make up for it with pretty little catch-phrases like "Do more with Less!" (Windows Server 2003...I kinda though it was less too).
Allow me to admit something (Without being lit on fire). I was a huge Microsoft Advocate up until about 2 years ago. I argued with all of you "*nix People" until my keyboard wore out. I laughed at all of you who said it was better, faster, more reliable, and scoffed at the notion of Microsoft being an indestructable Monopoly. But yet, today, I sit in front of my Gentoo Linux based OS, running KDE, viewing Slashdot on Konquerer (something just couldn't get me away from browsers integrated into operating systems). Why? Because it works better, I can run my one copy on all of my computers without paying for it, and I genuinly like the Linux Experience over that of the Windows Experience (Hey, I can run an FTP server, mail server, file server, and still browse the internet without paying for a server based license).
Linux *never* provided me any kind of candy coated marketing slogans or white papers. Microsoft did. And they're only doing this because they realize that Marketing is the one place where they can over-power Linux. Too bad marketing doesn't run my computer.
Honestly, from my perspective the learning curve was difficult (still is, actually), and it is harder to find lower-wage technical staff that can troubleshoot Linux...but that's only because Microsoft has the operating system that is on most peoples' computers. It's not always going to be like that, and it appears to be trending in a direction away from MS. What in the heck are they going to do when they can no longer depend on support staff being unfamiliar with Linux?
When people realize that their next Windows is going to give more control to the Software Vendors and Content Providers than it gives to the user as it "Checks in" to ever-more-common Activation Code systems on the Internet to make sure you're not stealing crap that isn't worth what they want to charge you for it in the first place...how is Microsoft going to market their way out of it? It's doubtful that they will be able to depend on their "Hey, what other choice do you have?" attitude anymore.
But from my perspective: I don't treat my OS with any more reverence than I treat my toaster. I don't care who runs it, I don't care who doesn't. There's plenty of software for it, plenty of reasons I wouldn't run anything else, and I think others would agree regardless of what a Microsoft Sponsord report from IDC says. Linux is like a virus. We got the "brass" to allow us to install one of them into our shop about 2 years ago. Everyone was so happy with its performance that now we have several and are planning to move ever more important enterprise based functions in that direction.
...but I do take issue with one thing. Stock price is no indication of a successful or strategically positioned company or business plan.
I work for a telecom that went bankrupt. Just prior to merger, our stock price went through the roof. Many thought we had this great business plan that was going to be incredibly profitable--or at least that's what you'd think from a stock that tripled in value in a very short period of time. To make a long story short...Last month we emerged from Bankruptcy. There was a point at which the investors started to see the company was not going to make it. Much was written about our chances of success being slim, but yet there were several times at which our stock price still went up. In fact, during our period of bankruptcy--when it was known upon exiting of Chapter 11 our stock value would be ZERO, our stock still traded, up a few cents down a few cents.
So while your point about investors buying the stock under the assumption that it will go up is true. They don't necessarily buy the stock assuming it will go up as a result of the activities of the company.
1. Go to your favorite cheep-o-discount store and pick up a timer that will handle a good wattage and a cheap smoke detector. Don't worry about how sensative it is, just get the loudest one they sell. Also might not be a bad idea to grab a fire extinguisher.
2. Purchase a basic set of stereo speakers (ensure that they are of a lower wattage than your stereo can put out).
3. Plug your stereo into your timer, turn the volume all the way up and remove the volume knob. (Do this while the timer is OFF). Super glue the power switch in the permenently ON position. Tune to the most obnoxious music radio station you can find on the dial in your local area (for me it would be RAP, but I've heard Country works well too).
4. Install the fire alarm directly above the stereo.
4. Set the timer for about 30 minutes prior to the point at which you want to be awake.
5. Go to sleep.
The following morning, if the sound of speakers nearly breaking under the stress of awful music is too much to bear, the sound of the smoke detector going off works as a great secondary alarm. (my last set took about 30 minutes before the cheap speakrs began to smoke).
All kidding aside, I had the same problem and found that I wake up more effectively to music than to the buzzer. My body would get used to the buzzer and I'd hear it in my dream, but not wake up.
The solution is to buy a good quality, loud alarm clock that plays music or a CD.
I have a Bose Wave Radio alarm clock and it can be cranked quite loud. As long as it's on RADIO and not the beeper, it never fails to wake me...my wife and my neighbors up on time. Oh, and it helps to put the alarm clock on the other side of the room so that you don't accidentally turn it off in your sleep.
Everyone I know who has tried (and failed) to quit, failed because they did not want to quit smoking.
Never underestimate the power of a physical addiction, my friend.
Having been a former smoker, I can tell you I wanted to quit. I wanted to quit about 1700 times. I succeeded on the 1700th try. You know its bad for you, you can feel it every day when you light up, but there's that tinge of happiness that comes from the action.
It's been 10 years since I quit and even now there are still times I'm jamming on some code...get pissed off at it and think "Gee, if I could just go outside, light up and relieve my stress, I could get back to this mess of code and maybe make some sense of it."
10 Years and I wonder if they succeeded in eliminating all of the health risks and side effects if I wouldn't light up right now.
Also, it's not really mind over matter. That same mind is telling you "one more won't hurt you, you can go back to quitting after you have one more...". You go through this sort of multiple-personality situation where you have one half of you telling you not to touch the damn things, and the other half telling you that you're life would be entirely easier if you just give in.
Some people find it easier than others, I found it to be one of the most difficult things I have had to do. And I remeber that every time a temptation rolls my way.
The interesting thing I noticed when I was a smoker was how many people who had never smoked in their life (or never were addicted) would tell me how easy it is to quit. It was also amazing how many of these people had their own unhealthy habbits (being a geek, I've seen plenty of other geeks who happen to have a few hundred extra pounds they would be well off to get rid of). Now they're not putting anyone else at risk with their bad habbit, but I wounder if I walked up to someone who was fat and said "eat healthy and exercise every day like I do, it's easy." how many people would agree with me. (Hint: not many!)
Cigarrettes feel like food to an addict.
I purchased this DVD player late last summer and discovered the Linux kernel present on the upgrade BIOS disc.
This is the response I got from them:
----
From: DCTW_Service@liteonit.com
Subject: Re: Request for GPL Code
Dear Sir,
Sorry at the present, we don't provide the source code.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best Regards!
----
Of course, my understanding isn't important. The copyright owner's understanding is what matters.
I decided to e-mail the folks at the FSF for a follow up. I assumed that was the place to go, though I admit even today, that I'm not exactly sure sometimes.
Here was the response from them:
----
From: license-violation@fsf.org Subject: [gnu.org #114549] Linux GPL Code Violation - LiteOn Phomaster LVD-2001
For some reason, your mail never reached my inbox (indeed, the web interface to our RequestTracker seems to be having a bit of a hard time with it too). So, sorry for the late response.
We've already seen a few violations which look to be the same product as this under different packaging. We will add LiteOn to the list of people to write to about this. Thanks for the report.
--
-Dave "Novalis" Turner
GPL Compliance Engineer
Free Software Foundation
----
The whole process was really quite daunting from my perspective. It is my understanding that the Linux Kernel is not a GNU product (though much of the software in a typical linux distrubtion is). Being a linux/GPL/FSF/GNU newbie, it took me quite a bit of time to hunt down a place to submit my complaint. Does anybody know of a database of copyright owners who use the GPL, and more importantly a convenient location for notifying said individuals when a breach is found or suspected? Even the FSF site didn't have a spot that was blaringly obvious to someone who had never visited the site before for reporting GPL violations of their software.
I will say, its nice to see some attention being payed to this with regard to my DVD player. Not to advertise for the theifs, but its a great player...the new BIOS even allows one to play ogg encoded files written to a DVD or CF card. I'm interested, obviously, in getting my hands on the code and potentially flashing the BIOS with my own handy-work...maybe see if I can get the thing to take a hard drive or wireless network adapter in its PC card slot.
We can fully expect that there will be a marked increase in efforts to directly hack the BIOS of PCs (Can you imagine having to Mod Chip your own computer?)
If it can be avoided, I will never purchase a BIOS chip with this trusted computing garbage. The only thing I trust in computing is myself, and if the BIOS isn't going to trust me, don't expect me to use it. If that means I don't get to run some (or even any of) the commercial apps out there, then fine. I use very few now-adays anyway.
Quite frankly, this change in BIOS/OS will very likely be rejected by customers. I mean, think of the stink that was made over the Pentium III (was it?) regarding the embedded serial number. This could work in the favour of the open source movement. I know, for me, Windows XP Product activation was what got me looking into Linux "on my desktop" for the first time.
General/Corporate Inquiries
For general comments and questions about Best Buy Co., Inc., contact:
Best Buy Co., Inc.
Corporate Headquarters
P.O. Box 9312
Minneapolis, MN 55440-9312
This story hasn't gotten a lot of attention outside of FatWallet's forums and Slashdot. If this activity bothers you, take a few minutes, write a letter, lick a stamp, and let them know you're paying attention. They are very unlikely to win if this goes to court, so they don't need a whole lot of motivation to stop the idiotic activity. I, for one, won't be patronizing their store again. I mean really, if you need your "retail" electronics fix, they have plenty of competitors who offer the same junk at the same high prices.
Kick them a letter and thank them for making the choice of where to shop a little easier.
I thought this might be relevant in that we're discussing patching related to this (giant gaping) hole. Has anyone figured out why this 043 patch modifies the Workstation DLL? I can understand its interaction with the messanger service DLL, but why Workstation?
I wouldn't worry about rapidly patching a large number of workstations with just a modification of the Messenger service, but now that it's changing a major DLL--and knowing the reliability of some MS Patches--I'm concerned at this point. Also with changes like this, Is it possible this hole is deeper than what was originally stated?
I was a long time IE user, and even advocate in some cases.
I also work with several people who felt the same way.
In January or so I switched over to Opera because I got sick and tired of the pop-ups and IE had no good defense against them.
I had been using Mozilla at work for some time--having to develop for both IE and Mozilla platforms--but I hadn't been too impressed with it until about the end of the summer.
These security holes and the apparent lax nature by which MS is handling them in IE have actually scared most of my coworkers away from Internet Explorer for their day-to-day ops.
I mean, of course, when you go to the MSDN web site, you can't find a damn browser out there other then theirs that displays their pages with any kind of reliability (and I'm sure that's intentional). But for almost anything else, most sites written for IE display relatively well in Mozilla, better IMHO in Opera, and seem to display almost the same as IE in the latest build of Konquerer. And quite frankly, things seem quite a bit zippier in any one of those than in IE.
Most people won't switch because their too lazy to download the latest builds of the alternative platforms...fear though, is quite a powerful motivator.
The MS Requirements are buried all throughout their program. Almost as if MS gave them a grant to require them to use their technology. For a while they were using online books which were available in PDF for MS-Reader format (I'm personally surprised it wasn't all MS reader).
It's the biggest drawback of their program, really. I tried to us Mozilla's Mail/News reader but I had trouble configuring it to use the Secure Password Authentication system they were using. I didn't spend much time on getting it to function simply because I have windows workstations here that work well enough for the task. And it's OE not Outlook (even better, right?).
Beyond that, most of the classes I have taken don't advertise for MS. In fact, the operating system class that I took we were required to do an evaluation of Linux vs. Unix vs. MS environments. We spent a great deal of time discussing each of the pro's/cons. The class itself is one of the reasons that I chose to look deeper into Linux (I'm a *gasp* windows admin).
The professors, like I mentioned before, are real-world. Right now, Linux is a big part of the "real world" if for no other reason than the fact that most companies are trying to reduce costs of licensing (Hey, at least it got their foot in the door).
UOP claims that you dont have to spend much time on HomeWork or in Class.
Having attended the local UOP classes and now being a UOP Online attendee, I can tell you that there are stark differences between the two. I found that the UOP standard classes were, IMHO, about equivelent to the local community college (which I also attended for a semester). There was a reasonable amount of homework and if you failed to achieve the minimum requirements that a college would expect of a student, most of the professors would reflect that in your grade.
The online university was quite different. The first thing I realized was that it was the first time in a university setting that I actually learned something.
You have to realize that the people in most of your classes are presently employed doing the things that you are learning. Because of the participation requirements, you learn far more from the students themselves than you ever learn from a university class at an undergrad level.
An outline of the typical class goes as follows: Each week you are given 3-4 questions about the reading/lecture that you must answer (different requirements per class on what constitutes an answer but usually a 100/200 or so word essay style question is asked). In addition to answering the questions, you are expected to post well-thought-out replies to the answers of other class mates (typically minimum 3 reponses per day for 5 days out of the week). This is your participation grade. In addition to that grade, you receive a grade on written assignments (usually 2/3 per week depending on the class, content, and professor).
Then comes the group project that starts in week 2. You are given a major project that you must complete in a group setting with 3-4 other students. The projects range from introducing 2/3 more written assignments per week to just a single large (report style) project you have to complete at the end of the class.
I was very surprised at the extent of work each class required. Now, of course, there are professors who will let you get away with doing next-to-nothing, who relax the participation restrictions (including one who didn't get the notice that I dropped his class and gave me a full passing grade in week 3...even though I had done none of the work) But you get that kind of crap in the university setting. The things I didn't get in the university setting was a group of professors with Master's degrees who had been working in the field (after degree completion) for at least 2 years. It's amazing going to a computer class being taught by someone who is presently employed in the field talking about the *real world*, not some BS set of concepts that programming instructors teach that when you get to the "First Job" you realize are done completely differently.
And I'll tell you, if you're aiming for a 4.0 in the class, you spend an hour or two per day just doing your participation requirements. You also dread landing a class where there are too few or too many students (too few means you can't come up with posts to make your participation grade, too many means you spend two hours reading through replies).
I'm amazed at how many *truly technically savvy people* I work with just randomly install p2p apps and then are surprised that they have holes, bugs and even Malware.
I mean, really, if networked applications that are *supposed* to be bullet proof like OpenSSH encounter vulnerabilities--in an open source environment--with so many people reviewing the actual code, can we be too surprised that some silly P2P application with authors who make no bones about the fact that they are violating (albiet bad) American laws might slip something like this in intentionally?
Even if there was no intention to slip this code in there (which I find hard to believe in this case), the idea that there would be Buffer Overflow vulnerabilities and the like doesn't surprise me one bit.
Most people don't take security seriously...even those who you would expect to.
Trustworthy computing is NOT working...
Yes, because if we were on the new Longhorn operating system using MS Trustworthly computing, you'd only be able to run software that it was determined you legitimately purchased or software that was installed remotely through an RPC vulnerability.
Here's how you get Microsoft more interested in security:
Write the next Blaster virus to create a distributed computing network (similar to SETI@Home) designed to hack the private key of the XBox console.
Use said private key to create a linux distribution that makes installing linux on the XBox as easy as playing Halo.
Wait a minute, I went looking through the archive and I didn't see this version of Linux that was derived from SCO Unix.
I thought Darl said that all operating systems were derived from SCO Unix? Since this is undoubtedly the case (because Darl McBride said so, and he is a smart man) then this archive is incredibly incomplete...