Yeah, my favorite GW relabled crap was the $.50 tape measure they had slapped a Games Workshop logo on and wanted $6 for. Man am I glad I kicked my WH40K habit.
I don't know. If the "company whose name rhymes with hell" is the one *i'm* thinking of, I've never had a problem with their tech support. The few times I've called them about a machine that was under warranty and needed a new part, the person was easy to understand, listened to me, and had my new part in the mail quickly and effeciently. Granted, I was calling about very obvious things like the video card has suddenly started making everything look dim and streaked. I've tried different monitors with no result. In other words, I had already troubleshooted the problem before calling so the person the phone was able to skip all that drek. YMMV.
I don't work in a doctor's office, and you didn't mention what else was listed on your bill, but I thought I'd point out that it's possible that "EKG Consultation Fee" could have just been the doctor looking at the EKG output and interpreting it.
I recently had to have some X-rays done of my heart and when I got the insurance information for it, it listed a cost for the actual X-ray, a cost for the radioactive stuff they injected me with, and then a fee for the radiologist's "interpretation" of the results....
Also, keep in mind that there might be other reasons for the person not having a kick ass home network. Money being one. I myself have worked in the field for nearly ten years and my home network consists of three boxes. ONe linux box that does everything useful, one windows box for me to play games on, and one windows box for my wife. Why is it so small? Because my wife doesn't want our house to look like a server room. *grin*
So, because I'm not being physically beaten I should be happy? Sure, you're civil liberties are being taken away one at a time, but look on the bright side: At least you aren't being beaten with batons in the middle of the street....
Warning Labels are great! I LOVE warning labels. Especially those Explicit Lyrics warning labels. It makes it easier for me to find the GOOD stuff. *grin* Hell, if I saw a game with a label on it that said "WARNING! THis game may be addictive!" I'd buy it in a heartbeat! Might be a cool game!:)
I don't know what Best Buy YOU guys are going to, but it certainly isn't MINE. If I want to speak with an employee at MY Best Buy, I have really search for one, and hope that I'm not Interrupting said employee's all important conversation about his "bitchin'" stereo and the "totally awesome party" he went to that weekend that actually had "beer". Then I ask my question and am treated to a desultory "I don't know." I've actually had frustrated people in the computer section come and ask ME questions about stuff. I should send Best Buy a bill for my services.
So...out of curiosity...do you actually BELIEVE that if someone was researching cars that they'd actually be able to FIND a piece of literature somewhere that said "Oh, and in addition to all these great features and the attractive financing offers, your brand new Pinto has a better than average chance of blossoming into a beautiful ball of searing, burning death if someone so much as looks askance at the back bumper!"?
I can't believe that you would so off-handedly refer to a decision to PURPOSELY build a rolling death trap as being a "decision for cost-effectiveness".
Oh definitely check out viahardware.com. I have an Athlon system at home that uses the Via chipset and I had all kinds of problems with games and video locking up because of a compatibility problem between the SB Live! and that chipset. They finally nailed down the problem and MOBO manufacturers started releasing new BIOS's. I flashed my board and haven't had a problem since.
Oh man, tell me about it! For me it was Eye of the Beholder on my old Amiga. There was this level that had these wierd jackal/hyena men on it that would walk around. When one was nearby, you could hear these spooky, echoing footsteps. I was playing late at night, with the lights out and the constant spooky footsteps were starting to creep me out a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, I round a corner and there's this big, dog headed thing making horrible barking/screeching noises. I think I jumped right out of my skin!
or is the following quote from the story just a CLASSIC example of Lawyer Double Speak:
"Federal law allows people to make personal copies of songs but does not require record companies to stand aside so consumers can do so."
Now, IANAL and all, but it seems to me that if there is a Federal law allowing me to make a personal copy of a song, and the Record companies do something to prevent me from doing that, that they are breaking the law. I mean, that's like saying "You have the right to walk through this door, but we don't require the doorman to actually unlock it for you." And THEN, if you pick the lock (because the doorman is being obstinate) they throw you in jail for violating the DMCA!! Boy, I sure love living in a country owned by corporations. You always have something to talk about on a weekday.:)
Ummm...ummmm....please explain to me how letting people carry weapons onto an airplane would have prevented anything?? If the passengers can bring guns (which I assume you mean), then doesn't it stand to reason that the TERRORISTS would bring guns on as well? A little forethought please....
Now this is a damn good point! I've had my car broken into TWICE and had some miscreant make off with all of my original, fully paid for, not burned off the computer CD's. After that I started making copies of every CD I BOUGHT (If anyone from the RIAA is reading this, please make special note of that last word. Here, I'll even spell it out real slow so you can understand it: B-O-U-G-H-T....) so that I could put the copies in my car. If they got stolen, I just make new ones. If someone breaks into my HOUSE and makes off with the originals, well, I probably have bigger problems.:)
I'm incredibly curious as to how they came up with this fellow's IP as the offender. Posting to Usenet with a spoofed IP isn't that difficult really. When I worked for an ISP, yeah, we'd get calls about "So and So is hacking my server" and we'd shut those accounts down only if we could VERIFY that this person was actually doing it. i.e., they were in the PROCESS of doing it or we could track said activity in our logs. We didn't just look at the headers of some printout and
go "Yep! That's the Cretin, get 'em!"
Someone else posted earlier that this isn't a case of "innocent until proven guilty" because no government body was involved. IMHO, this situation is much WORSE because a PRIVATE corporation is sticking it's big nose into someone else's PRIVATE business and getting thier paid-for
services turned off without having to go through any sort of governmental check and balance procedure.
You know, just because it's old doesn't mean it's better. I started out building Linux from pure command line with the old Slakware distros. It was a pain in the ass. And setting up X? Oh good god, better get out the voodoo charms and chicken bones on THAT one. I LIKE the GUI installs. It's easier on the eyes, and makes less work for me. I'm not fully disagreeing with your point, as being able to get down to the nitty gritty command line is VITAL for any decent sysadmin, but I'd just like to point out that we should avoid being crusty old computer users who are resistant to change and sit around telling stories about how "Back in my day, we didn't HAVE Cdroms! We had to
install Linux from cassette tapes played over a
loudspeaker! But we were THANKFULL! Ya darn whippersnapper..."
I really like this statement you made: "In New York,
Police keep the rioting after a parade contained to a park. No one is arrested. Everyone complains. Lawsuits follow. Simple: Do you want police protection or not?"
Do you even know what the hell happened there? There mobs of men assaulting and attempting to rape dozens of women. DOZENS!! Any woman that was unfortunate to to have entered the area was grabbed, thrown the ground, her clothing ripped and torn as tons of hooting, hollering, laughing men fondled and groped them!! The police were there. They sat by and watched. Crying, half naked, brutalized women were coming up to them and screaming for help to which they replied "There's nothing I can do." and shooed them away.
If THAT is what you mean by police protection, I'll have none because that's all we're getting anyway!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that Sendmail's "workaround" isn't very useful. If you aren't able to upgrade to the 2.2.16 kernel right away, they suggest that you download sendmail 8.10.2. This version of sendmail will check for the bug, and if it detects it, will stop running. What use is that? The only machines that should be running sendmail in the first place are mail servers....and if sendmail bombs unless you've upgraded the kernel, installing it BEFORE upgrading the kernel would only result in a broken mail server.
Wow, someone needs to smack the people who came up with those numbers with a very large, preferably spiked, clue-by-four. Still, I can see how they came up with it. Take my last job. I came in at 9am, I left at 6 Pm with an hour for lunch. I was a salaried employee working 40 hours a week. So there you go. BUT, like the article says, I had a pager. And a cell phone. And dedicated ISDN access at home. As a sysadmin for a large ISP I was always on call. Very rarely did I have 2 hours togethor where my pager didn't go off at LEAST once. If I was "officially" on call, I wasn't allowed to leave town. I had to be able to reach the NOC in 10 minutes or less if ANYTHING occured. Every week I put in an extra 15-20 hours answering pages, talking to other sysadmins on my cell phone about problems, etc. All of which was IMLICITLY MANDATORY and COMPLETELY uncompensated. Not to mention that my salary was a damn joke. Me and my fellow sysadmins were doing things like driving an hour and a half in a blizzard to bring a generator to a remote site. Then, we'd bed down in sleeping bags in a 10x10 room full of computer equipment to babysit said generator. Taking one hour shifts sleeping and then getting up to check the fuel. Compensation for this? Not on your life brother!! That's just "Our Job" we were told. The best day of my life is when I told that company to take a hike and quit!
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Yeah, my favorite GW relabled crap was the $.50 tape measure they had slapped a Games Workshop logo on and wanted $6 for. Man am I glad I kicked my WH40K habit.
...is this the point at which all of us just say
"Well.....DUH!"
I don't know. If the "company whose name rhymes with hell" is the one *i'm* thinking of, I've never had a problem with their tech support. The few times I've called them about a machine that was under warranty and needed a new part, the person was easy to understand, listened to me, and had my new part in the mail quickly and effeciently. Granted, I was calling about very obvious things like the video card has suddenly started making everything look dim and streaked. I've tried different monitors with no result. In other words, I had already troubleshooted the problem before calling so the person the phone was able to skip all that drek. YMMV.
The Safehouse, a spy themed bar in downtown Milwaukee Wisconsin has a pay phone that does this very thing. Has had it for years.
I don't work in a doctor's office, and you didn't mention what else was listed on your bill, but I thought I'd point out that it's possible that "EKG Consultation Fee" could have just been the doctor looking at the EKG output and interpreting it.
I recently had to have some X-rays done of my heart and when I got the insurance information for it, it listed a cost for the actual X-ray, a cost for the radioactive stuff they injected me with, and then a fee for the radiologist's "interpretation" of the results....
Good Riddance to BAD rubbish!
Also, keep in mind that there might be other reasons for the person not having a kick ass home network. Money being one. I myself have worked in the field for nearly ten years and my home network consists of three boxes. ONe linux box that does everything useful, one windows box for me to play games on, and one windows box for my wife. Why is it so small? Because my wife doesn't want our house to look like a server room. *grin*
So, because I'm not being physically beaten I should be happy? Sure, you're civil liberties are being taken away one at a time, but look on the bright side: At least you aren't being beaten with batons in the middle of the street....
I feel so much better now.
Or, you could just bring it down a notch and stop being so damned anal about everything....Oi....
Warning Labels are great! I LOVE warning labels. Especially those Explicit Lyrics warning labels. It makes it easier for me to find the GOOD stuff. *grin* Hell, if I saw a game with a label on it that said "WARNING! THis game may be addictive!" I'd buy it in a heartbeat! Might be a cool game! :)
I don't know what Best Buy YOU guys are going to, but it certainly isn't MINE. If I want to speak with an employee at MY Best Buy, I have really search for one, and hope that I'm not Interrupting said employee's all important conversation about his "bitchin'" stereo and the "totally awesome party" he went to that weekend that actually had "beer". Then I ask my question and am treated to a desultory "I don't know." I've actually had frustrated people in the computer section come and ask ME questions about stuff. I should send Best Buy a bill for my services.
So...out of curiosity...do you actually BELIEVE that if someone was researching cars that they'd actually be able to FIND a piece of literature somewhere that said "Oh, and in addition to all these great features and the attractive financing offers, your brand new Pinto has a better than average chance of blossoming into a beautiful ball of searing, burning death if someone so much as looks askance at the back bumper!"?
I can't believe that you would so off-handedly refer to a decision to PURPOSELY build a rolling death trap as being a "decision for cost-effectiveness".
Any word yet on whether it's terrorist related or not?
Oh definitely check out viahardware.com. I have an Athlon system at home that uses the Via chipset and I had all kinds of problems with games and video locking up because of a compatibility problem between the SB Live! and that chipset. They finally nailed down the problem and MOBO manufacturers started releasing new BIOS's. I flashed my board and haven't had a problem since.
Oh man, tell me about it! For me it was Eye of the Beholder on my old Amiga. There was this level that had these wierd jackal/hyena men on it that would walk around. When one was nearby, you could hear these spooky, echoing footsteps. I was playing late at night, with the lights out and the constant spooky footsteps were starting to creep me out a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, I round a corner and there's this big, dog headed thing making horrible barking/screeching noises. I think I jumped right out of my skin!
or is the following quote from the story just a CLASSIC example of Lawyer Double Speak:
:)
"Federal law allows people to make personal copies of songs but does not require record companies to stand aside so consumers can do so."
Now, IANAL and all, but it seems to me that if there is a Federal law allowing me to make a personal copy of a song, and the Record companies do something to prevent me from doing that, that they are breaking the law. I mean, that's like saying "You have the right to walk through this door, but we don't require the doorman to actually unlock it for you." And THEN, if you pick the lock (because the doorman is being obstinate) they throw you in jail for violating the DMCA!! Boy, I sure love living in a country owned by corporations. You always have something to talk about on a weekday.
Ummm...ummmm....please explain to me how letting people carry weapons onto an airplane would have prevented anything?? If the passengers can bring guns (which I assume you mean), then doesn't it stand to reason that the TERRORISTS would bring guns on as well? A little forethought please....
It doesn't matter whether or not we're "willing to die as much". That's what long range weaponry is for.
Now this is a damn good point! I've had my car broken into TWICE and had some miscreant make off with all of my original, fully paid for, not burned off the computer CD's. After that I started making copies of every CD I BOUGHT (If anyone from the RIAA is reading this, please make special note of that last word. Here, I'll even spell it out real slow so you can understand it: B-O-U-G-H-T....) so that I could put the copies in my car. If they got stolen, I just make new ones. If someone breaks into my HOUSE and makes off with the originals, well, I probably have bigger problems. :)
I'm incredibly curious as to how they came up with this fellow's IP as the offender. Posting to Usenet with a spoofed IP isn't that difficult really. When I worked for an ISP, yeah, we'd get calls about "So and So is hacking my server" and we'd shut those accounts down only if we could VERIFY that this person was actually doing it. i.e., they were in the PROCESS of doing it or we could track said activity in our logs. We didn't just look at the headers of some printout and
go "Yep! That's the Cretin, get 'em!"
Someone else posted earlier that this isn't a case of "innocent until proven guilty" because no government body was involved. IMHO, this situation is much WORSE because a PRIVATE corporation is sticking it's big nose into someone else's PRIVATE business and getting thier paid-for
services turned off without having to go through any sort of governmental check and balance procedure.
You know, just because it's old doesn't mean it's better. I started out building Linux from pure command line with the old Slakware distros. It was a pain in the ass. And setting up X? Oh good god, better get out the voodoo charms and chicken bones on THAT one. I LIKE the GUI installs. It's easier on the eyes, and makes less work for me. I'm not fully disagreeing with your point, as being able to get down to the nitty gritty command line is VITAL for any decent sysadmin, but I'd just like to point out that we should avoid being crusty old computer users who are resistant to change and sit around telling stories about how "Back in my day, we didn't HAVE Cdroms! We had to install Linux from cassette tapes played over a loudspeaker! But we were THANKFULL! Ya darn whippersnapper..."
I really like this statement you made: "In New York,
Police keep the rioting after a parade contained to a park. No one is arrested. Everyone complains. Lawsuits follow. Simple: Do you want police protection or not?"
Do you even know what the hell happened there? There mobs of men assaulting and attempting to rape dozens of women. DOZENS!! Any woman that was unfortunate to to have entered the area was grabbed, thrown the ground, her clothing ripped and torn as tons of hooting, hollering, laughing men fondled and groped them!! The police were there. They sat by and watched. Crying, half naked, brutalized women were coming up to them and screaming for help to which they replied "There's nothing I can do." and shooed them away.
If THAT is what you mean by police protection, I'll have none because that's all we're getting anyway!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that Sendmail's "workaround" isn't very useful.
If you aren't able to upgrade to the 2.2.16 kernel right away, they suggest that you download sendmail 8.10.2. This version of sendmail will check for the bug, and if it detects it, will stop
running. What use is that? The only machines that should be running sendmail in the first place are mail servers....and if sendmail bombs unless you've upgraded the kernel, installing it BEFORE upgrading the kernel would only result in a broken mail server.
Wow, someone needs to smack the people who came up with those numbers with a very large, preferably spiked, clue-by-four. Still, I can see how they
came up with it. Take my last job. I came in at 9am, I left at 6 Pm with an hour for lunch. I was a salaried employee working 40 hours a week. So there you go. BUT, like the article says, I had a pager. And a cell phone. And dedicated ISDN access at home. As a sysadmin for a large ISP I
was always on call. Very rarely did I have 2 hours togethor where my pager didn't go off at LEAST once. If I was "officially" on call, I wasn't allowed to leave town. I had to be able to reach the NOC in 10 minutes or less if ANYTHING occured. Every week I put in an extra 15-20 hours
answering pages, talking to other sysadmins on my cell phone about problems, etc. All of which was
IMLICITLY MANDATORY and COMPLETELY uncompensated. Not to mention that my salary was a damn joke. Me
and my fellow sysadmins were doing things like driving an hour and a half in a blizzard to bring a generator to a remote site. Then, we'd bed down in sleeping bags in a 10x10 room full of computer
equipment to babysit said generator. Taking one hour shifts sleeping and then getting up to check the fuel. Compensation for this? Not on your life brother!! That's just "Our Job" we were told. The best day of my life is when I told that
company to take a hike and quit!