I went out for dinner the other night, with a bunch of friends, male and female. We're all in our mid-late 30's, none of us have kids.
I happened to notice a family of 3 at a table a couple of metres away. Dad and Mom were sitting silently, watching the world go by, making the odd comment to each other. The young daughter, of about 12 or 13 was sitting with her nose buried in her celery phone, playing a game or texting her friends. This is not the first time I've seen this sort of thing. Every time I go out to eat, there's at least one family where this is happening. Usually the phone only goes down long enough for the kid to spoon something sweet and nasty into its cakehole, and then it's back at it.
I commented (loudly, in retrospect) to my girlfriend that when I was that age, the cellphone would have been left at home (forcibly if necessary), and I would have had to sit and make decent conversation with mom and dad. Either that or my mom/dad would have taken the thing away from me and turned it off. My friends would have understood that I would be incommunicado for a couple of hours. I doubt now that kids that age even know the meaning of the term. Anyway, daughter must have heard me, because she actually put the phone down for a few minutes and took a bit of interest in what was going on around her. 10 minutes later, her phone peeped again, and being short on memory and attention span (like most kids these days) she was back at it. Mom and dad gave each other resigned looks, but didn't say a word.
I remember a time when cellphones didn't even exist. Somehow we survived without them.
I couldn't even get XP SP2 installed inside an M$ virtual PC on a Win2K box. But it worked perfectly under VMWare. Micro$oft - always the bridesmaid, never the bride...
It's a classic example of the stupidity vs ignorance debate.
The guy could be an actuary or a brain surgeon, and be just as "stupid" about wireless networks. Did you know that a Mark II Hoofengaffer can't be used on someone with a frontal lobe aneurism? Does that make you stupid? I doubt the surgeon thinks so. He might think that a surgical resident who doesn't know this is stupid, but would see your average network administrator as merely be ignorant. It's all about what you are required and qualified to know.
Simply not knowing about something doesn't constitute one as stupid, merely ignorant.
I had a similar problem with Dragon Dictate a few years ago. It refused to accept anything I said, even in the training phase, unless I spoke with an American accent (and I can only do a lousy American accent).
I guess this all depends what country you're living in. I have a feeling there's a number of Chinese, Koreans and Zimbabweans who would disagree with you.
I was a strong supporter of the Symantec stuff. IT admin and programmer, paranoid about adware and spyware and spam crap. Kept up to date, subscriptions current, the works. The POP3 email scanner used to nail all kinds of nasties. Several per day.
Then, all of a sudden, the nasties stopped. They stopped for a long time. But I was complacent, never bothered to run any other checks. I was a PC God, I knew it all. Had never been hit. Until I moved house, to an area where high speed internet access wasn't available, and I had to switch back to dialup. Everything was grindingly slow, I blamed the dialup, until I noticed after a couple of days that the 'send data' light on my modem was permanently on, regardless of what I was doing. Suspicious, I did a full system scan (with Norton Antivirus), it came up empty. On a whim, I loaded up ad-aware (which I hadn't touched in several months) and did a full scan. It went bananas! Turned out I'd managed to pick up a keyboard logger and some sort of other spyware goodness (fsck knows how, I browse with firefox, maybe my gf did it without realising). Couldn't get rid of it all though. So I promptly tossed out the symantec stuff, installed AVG free, and I've been clean ever since.
Lesson learned. Complacency is as bad as having no protection.
Oh, and my gf has her own VM now, if she needs to use the net:)
Just cancel 'Big Brother'. Who cares about that shit anyway? These people obviously believe the world doesn't pay them enough attention, so they go and live in a fish bowl for a few weeks. What exactly do they expect to happen?
...if you're not living in a third world country, with expensive, severely crippled, capped broadband. In South Africa, for example, it's cheaper to FLY to Hong Kong, spend few couple of hours downloading and burning 100GB, and then fly back again with your disks. I kid you not:)
Surely the cameras would need to be mounted on the back of the tank? Facing AWAY from the enemy? Isn't that why they call it the background? If the guy's in front, the last thing you'd want him to see is a picture of himself, moving towards (or would that be rapidly away from?:)) himself?
What happens if the tank in front suddenly breaks down? Will the tanks driving behind it know in enough time to stop or take evasive action to avoid driving into it?
Just a thought: If a zombie PC is hosting a spam website, then surely a DoS of any type aimed at that PC might just wake the user up to the fact that they're infected (coz their net access goes tits up). Maybe then they'd sit up and take notice?
user - OMG!!11!. I can't get onto my blog about ponies LOL!!!!?!!. OMG!!!1
isp - well sir, there's an inordinate amount of what appear to be mailing list unsubscription requests aimed at your IP address
user - eh? what's an IP address????
isp - we strongly recommend that you call your local IT support people and get
someone to secure things for you.
user - will I be able to see pictures of ponies again?!?!?!?!??!!!!!!
...it's like that already. We've never had more than one fixed line telecoms company. The monopoly is held by a company called Telkom. Every fixed line in the country is controlled and run by them. VoIP was illegal here up until about a year ago (and they still discourage it where they can).
It's "regulated" (I use the term extremely loosely) by a government that has a very hefty financial stake in the same company.
It costs roughly 2000% more to surf the internet at bottom-of-the-range ADSL (1Mbps is as fast as we can go) speeds than it does in the US of A, and UK. Oh, and lest I forget, the bandwidth usage is capped at 3GB (tho you can buy an extra gig at USD25 if you really need it). That's if they can even provide the ADSL service in your area.
Check out http://www.hellkom.co.za/ to see what other joyful benefits this company provides for the people who paid for its infrastructure with their tax bucks.
So, every time I hear an someone in the first world countries whining about the high costs of their (essentially unlimited) internet access I have a manic little giggle, and recount the days before I can emigrate from this shit tip of a country.
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I went out for dinner the other night, with a bunch of friends, male and female. We're all in our mid-late 30's, none of us have kids.
I happened to notice a family of 3 at a table a couple of metres away. Dad and Mom were sitting silently, watching the world go by, making the odd comment to each other. The young daughter, of about 12 or 13 was sitting with her nose buried in her celery phone, playing a game or texting her friends. This is not the first time I've seen this sort of thing. Every time I go out to eat, there's at least one family where this is happening. Usually the phone only goes down long enough for the kid to spoon something sweet and nasty into its cakehole, and then it's back at it.
I commented (loudly, in retrospect) to my girlfriend that when I was that age, the cellphone would have been left at home (forcibly if necessary), and I would have had to sit and make decent conversation with mom and dad. Either that or my mom/dad would have taken the thing away from me and turned it off. My friends would have understood that I would be incommunicado for a couple of hours. I doubt now that kids that age even know the meaning of the term. Anyway, daughter must have heard me, because she actually put the phone down for a few minutes and took a bit of interest in what was going on around her. 10 minutes later, her phone peeped again, and being short on memory and attention span (like most kids these days) she was back at it. Mom and dad gave each other resigned looks, but didn't say a word.
I remember a time when cellphones didn't even exist. Somehow we survived without them.
Sounds to me a little like Jack Thompson (bless his cotton socks) is trying to bully a copy out of Take-Two. Does anyone else see the irony in this?
"If it hasn't been christened with blood, it hasn't been done properly" :)
I couldn't even get XP SP2 installed inside an M$ virtual PC on a Win2K box. But it worked perfectly under VMWare. Micro$oft - always the bridesmaid, never the bride...
It's a classic example of the stupidity vs ignorance debate.
The guy could be an actuary or a brain surgeon, and be just as "stupid" about wireless networks. Did you know that a Mark II Hoofengaffer can't be used on someone with a frontal lobe aneurism? Does that make you stupid? I doubt the surgeon thinks so. He might think that a surgical resident who doesn't know this is stupid, but would see your average network administrator as merely be ignorant. It's all about what you are required and qualified to know.
Simply not knowing about something doesn't constitute one as stupid, merely ignorant.
As long as it doesn't make my network interfaces stick together...
I had a similar problem with Dragon Dictate a few years ago. It refused to accept anything I said, even in the training phase, unless I spoke with an American accent (and I can only do a lousy American accent).
I guess this all depends what country you're living in. I have a feeling there's a number of Chinese, Koreans and Zimbabweans who would disagree with you.
I was a strong supporter of the Symantec stuff. IT admin and programmer, paranoid about adware and spyware and spam crap. Kept up to date, subscriptions current, the works. The POP3 email scanner used to nail all kinds of nasties. Several per day. :)
Then, all of a sudden, the nasties stopped. They stopped for a long time. But I was complacent, never bothered to run any other checks. I was a PC God, I knew it all. Had never been hit. Until I moved house, to an area where high speed internet access wasn't available, and I had to switch back to dialup. Everything was grindingly slow, I blamed the dialup, until I noticed after a couple of days that the 'send data' light on my modem was permanently on, regardless of what I was doing. Suspicious, I did a full system scan (with Norton Antivirus), it came up empty. On a whim, I loaded up ad-aware (which I hadn't touched in several months) and did a full scan. It went bananas! Turned out I'd managed to pick up a keyboard logger and some sort of other spyware goodness (fsck knows how, I browse with firefox, maybe my gf did it without realising). Couldn't get rid of it all though. So I promptly tossed out the symantec stuff, installed AVG free, and I've been clean ever since.
Lesson learned. Complacency is as bad as having no protection.
Oh, and my gf has her own VM now, if she needs to use the net
in line with that, I'm sure there'll be a new search engine for gay pr0n called StinkyWinky :)
My money's on Bambi :)
Just cancel 'Big Brother'. Who cares about that shit anyway? These people obviously believe the world doesn't pay them enough attention, so they go and live in a fish bowl for a few weeks. What exactly do they expect to happen?
One of the few who was willing to admit that he'd actually screwed up, and didn't try and blame someone else for it!
...does anyone want to put money on the cops from this department making this family's life a misery from now on?
...if you're not living in a third world country, with expensive, severely crippled, capped broadband. In South Africa, for example, it's cheaper to FLY to Hong Kong, spend few couple of hours downloading and burning 100GB, and then fly back again with your disks. I kid you not :)
I already have a black belt in origami.
What happens if the tank in front suddenly breaks down? Will the tanks driving behind it know in enough time to stop or take evasive action to avoid driving into it?
Even the old sailing ships used to have THREE compasses.
And anyway, why the surprise that it's not symmetrical?
...to those of us who are stuck using dial-up :)
user - OMG!!11!. I can't get onto my blog about ponies LOL!!!!?!!. OMG!!!1
isp - well sir, there's an inordinate amount of what appear to be mailing list unsubscription requests aimed at your IP address
user - eh? what's an IP address????
isp - we strongly recommend that you call your local IT support people and get someone to secure things for you.
user - will I be able to see pictures of ponies again?!?!?!?!??!!!!!!
etc.
...or in GW's case (among others), "nyucular" :)
It's "regulated" (I use the term extremely loosely) by a government that has a very hefty financial stake in the same company.
It costs roughly 2000% more to surf the internet at bottom-of-the-range ADSL (1Mbps is as fast as we can go) speeds than it does in the US of A, and UK. Oh, and lest I forget, the bandwidth usage is capped at 3GB (tho you can buy an extra gig at USD25 if you really need it). That's if they can even provide the ADSL service in your area.
Check out http://www.hellkom.co.za/ to see what other joyful benefits this company provides for the people who paid for its infrastructure with their tax bucks.
So, every time I hear an someone in the first world countries whining about the high costs of their (essentially unlimited) internet access I have a manic little giggle, and recount the days before I can emigrate from this shit tip of a country.
It's easy to quit WoW. I've done it a hundred times :)
which is exactly what Google is doing :)
or Stargate Atlantis...