"Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic."
- Wikipedia
Sure sounds a lot like America's current situation to me. Can anyone seriously believe that the US is becoming MORE enlightened, encouraging free and open discussions about any topic, using words like 'shit' and 'fuck'? Did Janet Jackson's boob actually place a tear in the fabric of space/time? Hardly.
And as far as the discussion of free speech in other countries is concerned, my original comment was restricted to the US, as we're talking about the FCC here in this topic.
The eroding of our freedoms in America, especially freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the 'guaranteed' right to pursue life, liberty and happiness (who's going to do that on a WalMart wage?) is very dangerous. We are not on the right path when we have any religion's agenda being so aggressively pursued by our President, restricting everyone else's ability to express themselves freely, print the truth, etc.
Now, here's the cool think about free speech, unencumbered by governmental restrictions. Everything I've said, you can disagree with it point by point. You can call me a shithead, a dummy, a retard. You know why? You have that right, and I'd fight to protect that right, even though I would completely disagree with the content of what you say. Because it's that incredibly important that both sides of any view be able to be openly and freely discussed!
If you're living in a free society, that society does not restrict 'offensive' or 'indecent' speech. This is Christian fundamentalism, right-wing Republican bullshit, and is actually one of the telling signs of Fascism, not Democracy. By the way, there is no such thing as 'indecent' speech. This was an FCC fabrication to suit their purposes.
By the way, the FCC was established to govern the FREQUENCIES that over-the-air broadcasts and electrical devices use. In today's age of cable and satellite, the FCC should be little more than a VERY small government organization that tries to make sure that your cell phone doesn't interfere with your TV set, and that the government can jam any consumer electronic device they choose. They should not be involved, in any way, in censorship, broadcast licensing blackmail or fining anyone for content.
I am an American, and I'm ashamed at what our society and government have become.
You might be well-served to speak with the top financial person in your organization to develop a more systemic solution. If your company does not have an IT budget, I can only assume that there are other aras within your company that are not budgeted. Most companies like to categorize expenses into 'accounting logical buckets', and include items such as salaries, benefits, office supplies, maintenance, licensing, hardware, even going to things like departmental depreciation and office furniture.
If you're going to set up an IT budget, it would make more sense to me to dovetail that into a company-wide strategy that your accounting folks and upper management support. After all, the reasons you'd want to provide structure are to track and report performance to management, utilize budgeting and planning to justify the things your department has done and want to do, lay the groundwork for additional human resources, etc. As a result, you'll want to be speaking in a language and format that management both supports and understands.
As for my experience as a Director of IT, I start with a rolling three-year strategic plan, reviewed bi-annually and signed off by the President and his staff. Flowing from that are my expense budget and capital budget. Expenditures are tallied against account numbers and tracked monthly. Capital items are scheduled by quarter. Both are tied to the strategic plan. Major projects receive detailed project planning via a statement of work, and are tracked to time and budget using a simple spreadsheet and/or GAANT chart.
Day-to-day project planning, including what used to be 'walk-in' requests, are handled by aweb-based system (developed in-house) where end users can make requests (including predicted cost savings), I either reject requests or assign them to an employee, the employee carries out the request, documenting what was done, time taken, testing performed, etc., and the end user ultimately 'approves' the request by indicating that the work done satisfies the request requirements. This approach is also Sarbanes-Oxley friendly, btw.
Emergency work is done and documented with my approval, and is documented post-mortem.
I have never needed to track my employees' use of time. As with every IT department I have ever been associated with, the amount of requested work far outweighs the available time. My people and I are busy from the moment we walk into work until we leave for the day. For the value a good IT department can provide a company, I have never seen a need to have them 'punch a clock'. Tracking overall project status is more than enough.
AM radio is unlistenable even without this new interference. It is static-laden, low-fi and intolerable, given any other option.
That other option is satellite, of course. $0.33 per day plus a $50 radio is enough to get you set you up with a Sirius or XM satellite radio with terrific digital fidelity and static-free reception from coast-to-coast. On top of that, you get to hear people talk like human beings, not watered-down, pussified, 'G'-rated, FCC-compliant clones.
I don't know anyone who can afford to drive a car that could not afford the above. I have Sirius, and I can tell you that once you start listening, you simply don't listen to FM radio anymore, let alone AM radio.
While I think this is a 'good thing' for all concerned, I would not be sharing that icon for free. Microsoft should be required to license it from the Moz folks. I'm not talking anything uber-subtantial, but a reasonable donation for the rights to use this icon should be something the parties can figure out together.
Sorry, but as an IT Director, I see how much money Microsoft sucks out of my company, and I think it only fair and rational for our friends at Mozilla to benefit from this.
Pete
Apple can release any number of iPod variants they'd like, but I will not purchase one until I can easily replace the battery. I wonder how long it's going to be before they get with the program on that?
I own a Mini, which requires the use of a heat gun / hair dryer to perform a task that should be accomplished via a few screws at most. The new Nano is even worse.
I wonder what percentage of my Brit IT friends gripe about their dental plan...
Seriously, it reads like a mix of some real issues and griping. Sounds like every job I've ever had, including my current one as Director of IT for an automotive parts manufacturer.
Pete
I thought the TV series was smartly written and had pretty cool stories to tell (hey, what's original anymore anyway?), but what didn't work for me was the Western+Space Adventure aspect of the series. You might as well cast Britney Spears as Xena, Warrior Princess, or Andy Dick as The Thing. Westerns turn most people off, and everything western about Firefly/Serenity is going to be a turnoff as well, including the theme music.
I'm the Director of IT for a $100 million dollar 'small' company, and we use Linux where we can. Where we *can't* use it effectively is on the desktop, or to replace our MS Exchange 2003 server (two of several examples). Reasons: Linux distros are *still* not ready for prime time on the desktop, and until we have a killer Linux desktop distro being preinstalled on Dell boxes, it's just not going to happen. As for Exchange 2003, Open Exchange, in all its flavors, is still not quite there from a functional standpoint.
Yeah, I know I could get out my shoehorn and jam a Linux foot in my company's shoe, but frankly, it's not the right thing to do (yet). Still hoping...
While I'm disgusted at this whole DNS poisoning crap (I've personally seen two exploits at two different locations today using different DNS servers), I echo your thoughts, gru3hunt3r. This sort of attack, once refined, can bring down the entire internet (for some ISPs, it has). More attention needs to be paid to how to secure this incredibly precious resource than is spent on crap politial 'issues' like how to regulate cable/satellite programming (here in the US), and a myriad of other useless pursuits. Perhaps when enough businesses lose enough money, we'll get the technical focus that we need to improve our internet performance and security. Frankly, I'm sick of fixing and securing my entire cadre of friends' and families' PCs, as well as my work servers and PCs, against the latest script kiddie attack.
Pete
Re:What about downloading stuff you already bought
on
The File Sharing Database
·
· Score: 2, Informative
And let's not forget about copy protected CDs (which are more and more prevalent), that don't even PLAY in a Linux computer or let you burn them 'white noise free' to your computer from your data CD drive. I know several people who have purchased the latest Hoobastank, Norah Jones and Velvet Revolver CDs, to name three, only to be forced to go out and download the.mp3 files so they can listen to the music they purchased on their systems...
People need to be careful when making conclusions over what they get from a Google search. One example: Google won't even correctly spider my site (which gets approximately 275,000 page views per day) and list results, although I have given the green light to Googlebot in our robots.txt file. Google News, in particular, rejected our application to be spidered at all. The semi-automated reply said that our content needed to be on separate pages, not in a 'digest'. Strange, we have it as both...
I wouldn't even venture a guess as to the amount of web content that Google doesn't display, given its limitations.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic."
/.
- Wikipedia
Sure sounds a lot like America's current situation to me. Can anyone seriously believe that the US is becoming MORE enlightened, encouraging free and open discussions about any topic, using words like 'shit' and 'fuck'? Did Janet Jackson's boob actually place a tear in the fabric of space/time? Hardly.
And as far as the discussion of free speech in other countries is concerned, my original comment was restricted to the US, as we're talking about the FCC here in this topic.
The eroding of our freedoms in America, especially freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the 'guaranteed' right to pursue life, liberty and happiness (who's going to do that on a WalMart wage?) is very dangerous. We are not on the right path when we have any religion's agenda being so aggressively pursued by our President, restricting everyone else's ability to express themselves freely, print the truth, etc.
Now, here's the cool think about free speech, unencumbered by governmental restrictions. Everything I've said, you can disagree with it point by point. You can call me a shithead, a dummy, a retard. You know why? You have that right, and I'd fight to protect that right, even though I would completely disagree with the content of what you say. Because it's that incredibly important that both sides of any view be able to be openly and freely discussed!
Gotta love
If you're living in a free society, that society does not restrict 'offensive' or 'indecent' speech. This is Christian fundamentalism, right-wing Republican bullshit, and is actually one of the telling signs of Fascism, not Democracy. By the way, there is no such thing as 'indecent' speech. This was an FCC fabrication to suit their purposes.
By the way, the FCC was established to govern the FREQUENCIES that over-the-air broadcasts and electrical devices use. In today's age of cable and satellite, the FCC should be little more than a VERY small government organization that tries to make sure that your cell phone doesn't interfere with your TV set, and that the government can jam any consumer electronic device they choose. They should not be involved, in any way, in censorship, broadcast licensing blackmail or fining anyone for content.
I am an American, and I'm ashamed at what our society and government have become.
You might be well-served to speak with the top financial person in your organization to develop a more systemic solution. If your company does not have an IT budget, I can only assume that there are other aras within your company that are not budgeted. Most companies like to categorize expenses into 'accounting logical buckets', and include items such as salaries, benefits, office supplies, maintenance, licensing, hardware, even going to things like departmental depreciation and office furniture.
If you're going to set up an IT budget, it would make more sense to me to dovetail that into a company-wide strategy that your accounting folks and upper management support. After all, the reasons you'd want to provide structure are to track and report performance to management, utilize budgeting and planning to justify the things your department has done and want to do, lay the groundwork for additional human resources, etc. As a result, you'll want to be speaking in a language and format that management both supports and understands.
As for my experience as a Director of IT, I start with a rolling three-year strategic plan, reviewed bi-annually and signed off by the President and his staff. Flowing from that are my expense budget and capital budget. Expenditures are tallied against account numbers and tracked monthly. Capital items are scheduled by quarter. Both are tied to the strategic plan. Major projects receive detailed project planning via a statement of work, and are tracked to time and budget using a simple spreadsheet and/or GAANT chart.
Day-to-day project planning, including what used to be 'walk-in' requests, are handled by aweb-based system (developed in-house) where end users can make requests (including predicted cost savings), I either reject requests or assign them to an employee, the employee carries out the request, documenting what was done, time taken, testing performed, etc., and the end user ultimately 'approves' the request by indicating that the work done satisfies the request requirements. This approach is also Sarbanes-Oxley friendly, btw.
Emergency work is done and documented with my approval, and is documented post-mortem.
I have never needed to track my employees' use of time. As with every IT department I have ever been associated with, the amount of requested work far outweighs the available time. My people and I are busy from the moment we walk into work until we leave for the day. For the value a good IT department can provide a company, I have never seen a need to have them 'punch a clock'. Tracking overall project status is more than enough.
AM radio is unlistenable even without this new interference. It is static-laden, low-fi and intolerable, given any other option. That other option is satellite, of course. $0.33 per day plus a $50 radio is enough to get you set you up with a Sirius or XM satellite radio with terrific digital fidelity and static-free reception from coast-to-coast. On top of that, you get to hear people talk like human beings, not watered-down, pussified, 'G'-rated, FCC-compliant clones. I don't know anyone who can afford to drive a car that could not afford the above. I have Sirius, and I can tell you that once you start listening, you simply don't listen to FM radio anymore, let alone AM radio.
While I think this is a 'good thing' for all concerned, I would not be sharing that icon for free. Microsoft should be required to license it from the Moz folks. I'm not talking anything uber-subtantial, but a reasonable donation for the rights to use this icon should be something the parties can figure out together. Sorry, but as an IT Director, I see how much money Microsoft sucks out of my company, and I think it only fair and rational for our friends at Mozilla to benefit from this. Pete
Apple can release any number of iPod variants they'd like, but I will not purchase one until I can easily replace the battery. I wonder how long it's going to be before they get with the program on that? I own a Mini, which requires the use of a heat gun / hair dryer to perform a task that should be accomplished via a few screws at most. The new Nano is even worse.
I wonder what percentage of my Brit IT friends gripe about their dental plan... Seriously, it reads like a mix of some real issues and griping. Sounds like every job I've ever had, including my current one as Director of IT for an automotive parts manufacturer. Pete
I thought the TV series was smartly written and had pretty cool stories to tell (hey, what's original anymore anyway?), but what didn't work for me was the Western+Space Adventure aspect of the series. You might as well cast Britney Spears as Xena, Warrior Princess, or Andy Dick as The Thing. Westerns turn most people off, and everything western about Firefly/Serenity is going to be a turnoff as well, including the theme music.
I'm the Director of IT for a $100 million dollar 'small' company, and we use Linux where we can. Where we *can't* use it effectively is on the desktop, or to replace our MS Exchange 2003 server (two of several examples). Reasons: Linux distros are *still* not ready for prime time on the desktop, and until we have a killer Linux desktop distro being preinstalled on Dell boxes, it's just not going to happen. As for Exchange 2003, Open Exchange, in all its flavors, is still not quite there from a functional standpoint. Yeah, I know I could get out my shoehorn and jam a Linux foot in my company's shoe, but frankly, it's not the right thing to do (yet). Still hoping...
While I'm disgusted at this whole DNS poisoning crap (I've personally seen two exploits at two different locations today using different DNS servers), I echo your thoughts, gru3hunt3r. This sort of attack, once refined, can bring down the entire internet (for some ISPs, it has). More attention needs to be paid to how to secure this incredibly precious resource than is spent on crap politial 'issues' like how to regulate cable/satellite programming (here in the US), and a myriad of other useless pursuits. Perhaps when enough businesses lose enough money, we'll get the technical focus that we need to improve our internet performance and security. Frankly, I'm sick of fixing and securing my entire cadre of friends' and families' PCs, as well as my work servers and PCs, against the latest script kiddie attack. Pete
And let's not forget about copy protected CDs (which are more and more prevalent), that don't even PLAY in a Linux computer or let you burn them 'white noise free' to your computer from your data CD drive. I know several people who have purchased the latest Hoobastank, Norah Jones and Velvet Revolver CDs, to name three, only to be forced to go out and download the .mp3 files so they can listen to the music they purchased on their systems...
I wouldn't even venture a guess as to the amount of web content that Google doesn't display, given its limitations.