E-mail. You e-mail me a note suggesting a meeting at a certain time, I look at my schedule and what the meeting's about and either shoot you an acceptance and mark it on my calendar, suggest a different time or just send back a regrets-decline note. The advantage is that this works no matter which e-mail clients and calendar system each of us is using, and works when I have priorities and things on my schedule that you aren't supposed to be aware of.
That's a grand idea. wait, lets make it even better! I'll write down what times I'm available, put it in a small paper sleeve, write your name on it and wait for someone to come pick it up from me, and bring it to you! You can check off what times you have available, slip it in another sleeve, write my name on it, and send it back! Cool, huh?
And the camera? Well, two weeks later I got a call from the merchant demanding the return of their camera. They realized they weren't getting the money, and figured at least they could cut their losses by ripping someone else off. I told them if they wanted it back, they would need to send me a cashiers check or money order for the cost of shipping, insurance, packaging, and my time to take it in to the shipping center (at my hourly consulting rate). I think the total came to about $96. At this point, the threats came out and I informed the guy I was going to start recording this call and he immediately hung up.
You'll be lucky if two guys named Guido and Tony don't show up at your door with baseball bats and take the camera back with a little "collateral damage".
They have a "business reputation" to maintain, just not the type of business you're used to dealing with.
I sent a brief synopsis of the story to CNN news tips and my local AP bureau, hoping to get some mainstream press comverage on it. Maybe more of us should do that. Just remember to keep it brief enough to read in 10 seconds,and relevant enough that someone will think it's a good story idea.
Haven't seen too many mainstream hits yet, but the story is growing. I hope they get a lot of bad press over this.
Desparate Housewives, Season 1 costs $38 on DVD on Amazon. It's enhanced for widescreen which means it is encoded at 720x480 (some of which may not be used due to matting). The same content available from the Apple Music store is $35 for a 320x240 cropped version.
There's an interesting point. The video iPod seems to have a 4:3 screen ratio, while TV is moving to 16:9 on more and more programming as wide-screen HDTV gets more popular. I gotta think a letterboxed show on the iPod screen would need a magnifying glass to see. Are we going to see a widescreen model iPod next? Maybe turn your iPod sideways ala "landscape" format?
This is not about portable TV, this is about legitimate, for pay, TV downloads. I downloaded the season premiere of Lost this morning, it's playback quality was perfectly acceptable, full-screen on my 19" monitor. For the life of me I don't understand why Apple is marketting this as Video IPod only. It works great on a PC with I-Tunes. I too think the video IPod will be a market failure, but for-Pay TV downloads have a great future. Screw the cable companies. I only want to pay for the shows I watch, and I want to watch them on my own schedule
Yeah, but at that price, you aren't saving much. 2 bucks an episode is $8 a month. 22 episodes is $44 a year, maybe there's 5 series you want to watch, that's $220 a year. Add in the occasional $4 movie, $30 to $40 a year. You're already close to $300 a year.
Maybe you'll be able to get a season pass at a discount?
Science is hard; in many fields it's impossible to prove causation completely. But when you have a theory, and the theory holds up to all the available data, you act as if the theory were true and make decisions based on that. You don't over-react as long as there are competing theories that imply otherwise, but this is one more piece of data to suggest that global warming is very real and quite possibly man-made.
You sound like one of those consarned liberal eevo-lushonists!
So you practice blanket intolerance, then use a quote like...
What! Have you no monks to teach, to dispute, to govern, to intrigue and to burn people who do not agree with them?...to criticize those people for their intolerance. I'm guessing irony isn't your forte.
The thing is, people who are non-religious are more than happy to be tolerant of people who are religious, provided they MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.
But they don't seem to be able to do that.So if they are going to express their opinion that we are godless evil people who are going to hell, we are going to express our opinion that they are brain-dead whack jobs that believe in mystical all-powerful beings absent any physical proof.
Then we are labeled as intolerant, when we didn't start the argument in the first place.
Why anybody would swerve and risk their own life and the lives of others to avoid hitting a rabbit, squirrel, cat, et al is beyond rational comprehension
the place where I work has gone to a simple policy: ALL computer-related purchases MUST go through the IT department then the accounting department. If one doesn't squash it the other usually does
And have you gone down to the local Best Buy and told the employees there that under NO circumstances are they to sell any computer equipment to your employees?
Do you really want to be the IT guy who takes the call that says: "Hi, I'm with British Army operations in the middle of Iraq, and my soldiers here -- who are getting shot at on your behalf -- are really fucking annoyed that they can't send video messages home because it's possible that there may be some mild Quality of Service issues at your office in Slough"
I dealt with this at my last job, people whining because they couldn't send gargantuan emails to people. So we upped the limit and...surprise! Many email servers rejected the messages because they were too big!
Bullshit. Open up Printers and Faxes and shift-Right click anywhere in the window, other than on a printer. Choose Run As.. and it will ask if you want Add Printer or Server Properties.
a GUI (!) login screen will open, log in using admin credentials and do what you need to.
We aren't allowed to be logged on as admin at work, so I have shortcuts on my desktop for all the admin rights tools I need, for example:
%windir%\System32\runas.exe/profile/env/user:domain\ID regedit - for Regedit
%windir%\System32\runas.exe/profile/env/user:domain\ID "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo\msinfo32.exe" - for Sytem info, local or remote boxes.
%windir%\System32\runas.exe/profile/env/user:domain\id "mmc %windir%\system32\dsa.msc" - for AD users and computers
Click the icon, a DOS box opens and asks for your password, and away you go. I do %90 of my desktop support work from my desk, without ever logging out of my non-admin account.
And if any unix weenies complain that the syntax is too hard, you must be kidding, given some of the things I've had to learn in Unix command line. If you complain that they aren't already prefab and built in, why do I keep hearing that Unix is so wonderful because you can pipe and redirect various tools from the command line, and build little custom utilities in Perl, and so on?
Maybe next time you should ask a system admin, instead of a developer, if you want to know how Windows works.
I'm sorry, but you must be a moron. Clinton is saying that after such and such a date, Social security will need to cut benefits to 75 cents on the dollar, which is exactly what everyone who says there is no crisis is saying!!!
Most people tend to get stuck in a certain era of music, don't like the new stuff? Don't act suprised about it, you're getting old. Every generation tends to think that the next generation's music sucks, that's not going to change for you, you're not special, get over it.
That's a good point. I know I started to lose interest in the "music scene" around my early to mid thirties, settled down, quit my band, got married, etcetera.
Has anyone charted the baby boomers' ages in regards to music purchases? Maybe there's just a lot of people getting older who just don't give a fuck about new music anymore.
Kerry's record in the Senate is virtually nonexistent. I live next door (statewise) to Kerry and I know virtually nothing about him. And I am very politically aware.
Did you know Bush was born in Connecticut?
Did you know Bush's grandfather was a US Senator from Connecticut?
No, you wouldn't know that, because that doesn't match up with his down home folksy Texas act. He's no more "common man" then Kerry, except for his ability to party.
I actually heard some NASCAR driver yapping that bush is more in touch with the NASCAR dad crowd because "Kerry's got a mansion, but Bush has a farm. What the fuck?
Yeah, bush is jus' takin' time off from sloppin' pigs to run into town and be president for a spell, 'fore he has ta git on back and harvest the corn crop.
"When you connect to an XP or 2000 machine using RD, then the remote XP machine redirects all local console functions of that machine to your client. This has the effect of knocking out whoever is sitting at the local console of the machine you are RD'ing into"
Thank you for expressing that clearly!
It seems to be the biggest thing that people planning on using MS Rdesktop fail to grasp and will *not* believe until you demonstrate it in action.
XP also includes a Remote Assistance function allowing support personnel to connect to a users desktop and view their session. Includes a chat screen and other helpful goodies.
It's a pain to use, since the user has to request help through email or MS's IM client, sending a token of sorts to the helper.
We use a product called Dameware, which is pretty fast, and also allows a push install to PC's that don't currently have the software installed.
Great.. a whole bunch more people who think they are now "networking experts"
Until the first spanning tree problem arises..
or something simple like a duplex mismatch drags the server offline..
which will prompt the usual.. reboot.. or unplug and replug.. which probably wont solve the problem.
I read this review thinking of my dad, a retired Bell Atlantic/Verizon worker, who spent his last days installing and troubleshooting T1 circuits for businesses, and is just now learning to use an Internet connected PC for entertainment. I thought he might be interested in a fresh look at how his small piece of "networking" fits into the larger picture of Internet connectivity, with the added perspective of actually owning a PC and DSL connection.
I really don't expect him to be working on spanning tree problems or duplex mismatches. Some people just want a 30,000 foot view of something, for their own curiosity. I read In Search of Schrodinger's Cat once, that doesn't qualify me to hang out with Stephen Hawking, nor would I assume that it does.
"If the customer doesn't have access to original install media (and you're going to be a Good Little Tech and refuse to put pirated software on), you're going to have to do it the hard way."
This is quite laughable. You will have more luck seeing little green men than a Windows "Good Little Tech" that does not have a trough full of pirated Windows software that they are not only willing to use but think it is almost silly not to.
Hey!
Policemen don't pay for donuts.
Car mechanics use the service bays and tools free after work.
Lan Admins don't pay for software. Call it a perk
(and don't tell me none of you developers has a work-owned copy of Visual C++ or whatever at home "for working from home on the weekends").
(Plant tongue firmly in cheek) I think if these companies want me to recommend and support their buggy crapware, it's a professional courtesy for them to supply me with a copy so I can become experienced on it.;')
That being said, I don't pass out free software to others, both for legal reasons and I don't want them to get caught or left hanging by vendor support, since they don't realize what they have is illegal. But if I need a copy of something for a re-install or troubleshooting session, I've got a humongous 3-ring binder full of everything that ever went across my desk.
Once a year I want to muck around with Photoshop for personal amusement, if I didn't burn a copy, there's no way I'd buy one.
Application developers deserve just as much blame for this as Microsoft. It's a catch-22: practically everyone who uses Windows logs on as Administrator, so making sure non-administrative users can run your app is generally not a requirement.
And since the first thing developers do when they get their new PC is complain that they have to have admin rights, they never find out that their install routines don't work if they aren't admin.
Now, I suppose I should explain why I expect a certain amount of special treatment from the get-go. First, I do believe that developers should have control of their machine. Period, end of story. This may sometimes cause problems, but it generally saves us from the old "I have a critical thing that needs to get done, but the system lockdown is preventing it." As for myself, I tend to expect a bit more leeway because I am hired as a senior developer, usually the Lead Programmer or Chief Architect. While I still have to prove myself to my peers, my position does require a certain degree of respect and system access that would otherwise not be allowed.
On *two* seperate occasions at my last job, developers who didn't want sysadmins on their systems denied access to "everyone" at the root of C: and propogated it down the tree.
Apparently their giant brains couldn't comprehend that if you are someone, you are part of everyone. As is the system itself. Needless to say, things went downhill from there.
Of course, they had critical work on their drives that they had to get back immediately and critical deadlines they couldn't miss, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth by them and their managers.
No one bothered to point out that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't have been messing with things they didn't understand. But, noooooooo. The IT people just had to get their PC's up immediately! Drop everything!
i should have just said "Woops, it's a Winderz box, I gots to re-foor-mat it" and laughed, instead of staying late after work dicking around trying to put them back together.
You sound like just the sort of prick that would barge in and demand that this gets fixed right away!
That sort of shit gets old in a 200 seat company, it's unallowable in a 6000 seat company.
Locking down systems saves us from the old "We have a critical thing that needs to get done, but the idiot developers fucking around instead of coding is preventing it."
Virus scanners can usually be disabled by setting the Windows Service to "manual" instead of automatic. This nicely circumvents that stupid taskbar control. The taskbar control can be removed by killing the process on boot, or hacking the registry to disable to password check. How to edit the registry? That's easy!
In order for programs to run, they must be capable of reading and writing to the registry, right? So why can't some other program modify the registry? Answer: It can! Just download an alternative registry editor and modify the various keys locking you out of your system. You should be good to go in no time flat.
My SysAdmins have pretty much given up on "securing" my machine. Besides, once you demonstrate that you know what you're doing, they tend to leave you alone. Oh, and I have never contracted a virus on my machine. Even when our network became infested with RPC worms.
And then they want to know why we don't like giving them local administrator rights.
Of course, the flip side of that is that the sysadmins end up with the "keys to the kingdom", and since they're basically janitorial staff, they fail to understand that developers are not just another category of end-users. This becomes more prevalent the larger the company is.
I think most sys admins would agree. Developers are a whole 'nother category of end-users.
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That's a grand idea. wait, lets make it even better! I'll write down what times I'm available, put it in a small paper sleeve, write your name on it and wait for someone to come pick it up from me, and bring it to you! You can check off what times you have available, slip it in another sleeve, write my name on it, and send it back! Cool, huh?
You'll be lucky if two guys named Guido and Tony don't show up at your door with baseball bats and take the camera back with a little "collateral damage".
They have a "business reputation" to maintain, just not the type of business you're used to dealing with.
Maybe he's the populous of love?
Haven't seen too many mainstream hits yet, but the story is growing. I hope they get a lot of bad press over this.
Anything I don't understand must be easy.
- PHB
There's an interesting point. The video iPod seems to have a 4:3 screen ratio, while TV is moving to 16:9 on more and more programming as wide-screen HDTV gets more popular. I gotta think a letterboxed show on the iPod screen would need a magnifying glass to see. Are we going to see a widescreen model iPod next? Maybe turn your iPod sideways ala "landscape" format?
Yeah, but at that price, you aren't saving much. 2 bucks an episode is $8 a month. 22 episodes is $44 a year, maybe there's 5 series you want to watch, that's $220 a year. Add in the occasional $4 movie, $30 to $40 a year. You're already close to $300 a year.
Maybe you'll be able to get a season pass at a discount?
You sound like one of those consarned liberal eevo-lushonists!
The thing is, people who are non-religious are more than happy to be tolerant of people who are religious, provided they MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.
But they don't seem to be able to do that.So if they are going to express their opinion that we are godless evil people who are going to hell, we are going to express our opinion that they are brain-dead whack jobs that believe in mystical all-powerful beings absent any physical proof.
Then we are labeled as intolerant, when we didn't start the argument in the first place.
Hmmm, compassion and empathy come to mind.
And have you gone down to the local Best Buy and told the employees there that under NO circumstances are they to sell any computer equipment to your employees?
I dealt with this at my last job, people whining because they couldn't send gargantuan emails to people. So we upped the limit and ...surprise! Many email servers rejected the messages because they were too big!
a GUI (!) login screen will open, log in using admin credentials and do what you need to.
We aren't allowed to be logged on as admin at work, so I have shortcuts on my desktop for all the admin rights tools I need, for example:
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /profile /env /user:domain\ID regedit - for Regedit
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /profile /env /user:domain\ID "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo\msinfo32.exe" - for Sytem info, local or remote boxes.
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /profile /env /user:domain\id "mmc %windir%\system32\dsa.msc" - for AD users and computers
Click the icon, a DOS box opens and asks for your password, and away you go. I do %90 of my desktop support work from my desk, without ever logging out of my non-admin account. And if any unix weenies complain that the syntax is too hard, you must be kidding, given some of the things I've had to learn in Unix command line. If you complain that they aren't already prefab and built in, why do I keep hearing that Unix is so wonderful because you can pipe and redirect various tools from the command line, and build little custom utilities in Perl, and so on?
Maybe next time you should ask a system admin, instead of a developer, if you want to know how Windows works.
I'm sorry, but you must be a moron. Clinton is saying that after such and such a date, Social security will need to cut benefits to 75 cents on the dollar, which is exactly what everyone who says there is no crisis is saying!!!
Wal-mart shoppin' red-state values voter thinks homosexuality = bad, but girl-on-girl porn = good.
That's a good point. I know I started to lose interest in the "music scene" around my early to mid thirties, settled down, quit my band, got married, etcetera.
Has anyone charted the baby boomers' ages in regards to music purchases? Maybe there's just a lot of people getting older who just don't give a fuck about new music anymore.
Did you know Bush was born in Connecticut? Did you know Bush's grandfather was a US Senator from Connecticut?
No, you wouldn't know that, because that doesn't match up with his down home folksy Texas act. He's no more "common man" then Kerry, except for his ability to party.
I actually heard some NASCAR driver yapping that bush is more in touch with the NASCAR dad crowd because "Kerry's got a mansion, but Bush has a farm. What the fuck?
Yeah, bush is jus' takin' time off from sloppin' pigs to run into town and be president for a spell, 'fore he has ta git on back and harvest the corn crop.
Thank you for expressing that clearly!
It seems to be the biggest thing that people planning on using MS Rdesktop fail to grasp and will *not* believe until you demonstrate it in action.
XP also includes a Remote Assistance function allowing support personnel to connect to a users desktop and view their session. Includes a chat screen and other helpful goodies.
It's a pain to use, since the user has to request help through email or MS's IM client, sending a token of sorts to the helper.
We use a product called Dameware, which is pretty fast, and also allows a push install to PC's that don't currently have the software installed.
I read this review thinking of my dad, a retired Bell Atlantic/Verizon worker, who spent his last days installing and troubleshooting T1 circuits for businesses, and is just now learning to use an Internet connected PC for entertainment. I thought he might be interested in a fresh look at how his small piece of "networking" fits into the larger picture of Internet connectivity, with the added perspective of actually owning a PC and DSL connection.
I really don't expect him to be working on spanning tree problems or duplex mismatches. Some people just want a 30,000 foot view of something, for their own curiosity. I read In Search of Schrodinger's Cat once, that doesn't qualify me to hang out with Stephen Hawking, nor would I assume that it does.
This is quite laughable. You will have more luck seeing little green men than a Windows "Good Little Tech" that does not have a trough full of pirated Windows software that they are not only willing to use but think it is almost silly not to.
Hey!
Policemen don't pay for donuts.
Car mechanics use the service bays and tools free after work.
Lan Admins don't pay for software. Call it a perk
(and don't tell me none of you developers has a work-owned copy of Visual C++ or whatever at home "for working from home on the weekends").
(Plant tongue firmly in cheek) I think if these companies want me to recommend and support their buggy crapware, it's a professional courtesy for them to supply me with a copy so I can become experienced on it. ;')
That being said, I don't pass out free software to others, both for legal reasons and I don't want them to get caught or left hanging by vendor support, since they don't realize what they have is illegal. But if I need a copy of something for a re-install or troubleshooting session, I've got a humongous 3-ring binder full of everything that ever went across my desk.
Once a year I want to muck around with Photoshop for personal amusement, if I didn't burn a copy, there's no way I'd buy one.
And since the first thing developers do when they get their new PC is complain that they have to have admin rights, they never find out that their install routines don't work if they aren't admin.
errr, no. It'd be ipconfig on a win box.
On *two* seperate occasions at my last job, developers who didn't want sysadmins on their systems denied access to "everyone" at the root of C: and propogated it down the tree.
Apparently their giant brains couldn't comprehend that if you are someone, you are part of everyone. As is the system itself. Needless to say, things went downhill from there.
Of course, they had critical work on their drives that they had to get back immediately and critical deadlines they couldn't miss, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth by them and their managers.
No one bothered to point out that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't have been messing with things they didn't understand. But, noooooooo. The IT people just had to get their PC's up immediately! Drop everything!
i should have just said "Woops, it's a Winderz box, I gots to re-foor-mat it" and laughed, instead of staying late after work dicking around trying to put them back together.
You sound like just the sort of prick that would barge in and demand that this gets fixed right away!
That sort of shit gets old in a 200 seat company, it's unallowable in a 6000 seat company. Locking down systems saves us from the old "We have a critical thing that needs to get done, but the idiot developers fucking around instead of coding is preventing it."
In order for programs to run, they must be capable of reading and writing to the registry, right? So why can't some other program modify the registry? Answer: It can! Just download an alternative registry editor and modify the various keys locking you out of your system. You should be good to go in no time flat.
My SysAdmins have pretty much given up on "securing" my machine. Besides, once you demonstrate that you know what you're doing, they tend to leave you alone. Oh, and I have never contracted a virus on my machine. Even when our network became infested with RPC worms.
And then they want to know why we don't like giving them local administrator rights.
I think most sys admins would agree. Developers are a whole 'nother category of end-users.