My car already has options such as this. I have a remote car starter that only works if you pay the annual fee. Mind you, this fee covers remote monitoring, gps and emergency services as well. So, what would it take to make the seat heater or the mirror defroster or the driving lights an after purchase option, not much. Just a few more things attached to the internal computer.
Now if someone can figure out how to permanently configure my starter to run without paying the fee and installing another unit, I'd be excited!
Now, for the devils advocate. What happens if the company goes out of business? Who maintains the database that states that you bought that option? What happens when they decide that they don't like an option or it gives them problems they just shut it off without notice? I'm sure a class action would resolve that, but something to think about.
I call first dibs if it is not already taken. I will patent the "pinch to unlock gesture". Most screens will recognize a two figure gesture (Multi-touch) Instead of sliding your finger to the side, bring both fingers together on the screen to unlock. I understand it may be difficult for a user missing fingers, and we may be able to come up with a resolution for that, but this will correct the issue for now. When it is pattented, I will open source the patent and then anyone can use it. Sound like a plan?
Why is everyone pushing universal healthcare? Have any of you talked with anyone from a country that provides universal healthcare? Everyone I have ever talked to says it sucks. You are either waiting in line to get to the doctor or you are waiting six months to get treated. The only way to make insurance affordable to to make it cost money. This will stop people with the sniffles from going to the doctor all the time. Get a health savings plan and a high deductible insurance policy. Pay cash, negotiate with the doctor over costs to get the price down and have the high deductible to pay when there is a high cost issue (Transplant, bypass, etc.). In turn, keep the physicians code that if you can't pay, they have to trear you anyways.
Terminator (oil and electric)
Half Life (Creatures and chemicals)
Need for Speed (Oil and Gas)
Army of Two (Gun Powder and Burning wreckage)
And these are the tame games. I'm sure I could come up with some others that would smell worse. Have a good gaming session and no one would come to your house anymore or they would call the cops figuring you were burning the place down with your new maserratti.
The first story comes from an old admin I worked with. Apparently he worked for a hospital as a helpdesk person and received a call from one of the higher ups. The issue expressed over the phone was a request for a larger mouse pad as he kept running out of room. When he heard this, he shook his head and decided to take a walk up to the office to find out what was going on, When he got there and looked in the door, he had to turn around and walk away, because he was laughing so hard. The executive would use his mouse and hit the end of the mouse pad. Instead of picking the mouse up, pulling it back and then moving the mouse again, he would pick the mouse up, slide the mouse pad forward, set the mouse down and then move it. Anytime it hit the edge of the pad, he would do the same thing.
The next story comes from my old beowulf days. I was working for a company as an admin. They staff were programmers that designed DSL Modem Processors and the software that run on them. One day another admin and myself decided to play a prank on the staff. I remebered a tool that we used when creating beowulf clusters that would allow me to issue a command to multiple machines at once. We used it for configuration. Well, it is also good for ejecting cd-roms. We loaded up an inventory of machines and typed eject cdrom. Its amazing the sound of 35-40 cdroms drives opening at the same time. It's even more funny when you hear the expressions of 35-40 staffers saying "WTF?"
Its called XP Mode, microsoft ships it with IE6 installed and can be legally run on any Windows 7 Professional PC. Just download and install for free. When the sites are upgraded, swap back over to IE8 and uninstall. Plus it has the added benefit of running all your old software that won't run under 7.
One thing you are not taking into account is labor. By buying a Dell (I don't like Dell, but this applies to any manufacturer), the time and expense in building is included in the cost. When you look at parts, it looks less, but add your time in building, time to diagnose an issue when the machine doesn't boot, and time to RMA parts and repair said machine when it breaks. This adds up quick. I work for a company that built its own machines for sale and we found a company that could build and warranty them for $10 more. That $10 extra was very well spent. So remember, you are getting more than just parts, you are getting the time to assemble, repair and replace.
1. Why not just setup a dual boot system. Hide the offending partition and boot into a clean OS. They're not CS majors and most won't have a clue anyways.
2. What if I have bath shots of my kids on my laptop. You know, blackmail for when they are in their teens or getting married. Many of my customers have swapped over to laptops from desktops and keep this kind of material on them. Are they instantly child porn offenders when they walk in the country?
3. As far as encrypting the drive goes, that may be counterproductive. I'm sure the minute they see a drive that is encrypted, they pull you aside and get a manager involved. Flip side is like I said with #1, they're not CS majors and may figure the drive is blank.
Come on guys, why haven't you come up with showmypc.com. It uses SSH and VNC in a small utility that they can download from a webpage. Works everytime. It is a free service unless you want to run it as a service. I use it with my clients all the time. The only thing you have to tell the person to do is go to the website, run the software and tell you the passphrase.
The only downfall is that it does not sustain a connection through a reboot. Logmein has this capability. If they could fix this, I would be very happy.
Try coding in a language that MIT designed (LISP) that no one uses outside the classroom, with a bunch of college guys, up all night, no showers, in a computer lab, on monochrome serial terminals, when you are a commuter and home is better than half an hour away. AND, you have to work full time an hour away the next day. AND your attractive live in girlfriend is waiting breathlessly for you at home.... Torture that even Gitmo couldn't beat...
1. What did they charge the GOVERNMENT to do this?
2. Should I be upset that this guy needed to use my tax money to hire an outside company to do something when my tax money goes for a goverment IT person making $100K+ that could do it or that the person could have used the theoretical $700 hammer to get the job done?
3. Did Geeks on Call have licensed software to do the job? (OK aBB reference)
4. Did Geeks on Call backup the data to a portable drive to take back to the office (Yes I know this was BB, but who else does this?)
So many questions and no answers. I'm sure I could think of more.
I personally ran into this problem myself. Back a couple of years ago, I drove up to my bank to get some cash. A guy came out of the ATM with a big sh*t eating grin on his face. I went in and chose to get $60 cash and was then handed $120. Just my luck!
When I came out, he asked if the same thing had happened to me and I said yes. We both left and went about our ways.
An article showed up in the news paper that had explained that a programming up date that had been updated that day had caused the machine to dispense double your withdrawal. In turn, the bank would withdraw the money from your account for the additional money that was dispensed.
I would think that they should eat it as it was their mistake (they have insurance), but the other side of it is that I don't think I should go to jail for some guys programming error.
I had a friend bring up this point and I have to agree. There is one commercial where PC is talking about going in for an Upgrade for Vista. The one thing MAC lacks to mention is that if apple decides to release a new version of OS, have their line can't run in and the MAC needs to be replaced. I can see it now (in it's corrected version):
MAC: Hi PC
PC: Hi MAC
MAC: What are you up to?
PC: I'm going in to have some memory added and a new video card installed so I can run Vista.
MAC: Sounds rough.
PC: Hey, what about OS 10.5, isn't that coming out soon?
MAC: Yeah
See MAC go flying into a garbage can and a new bling laden MAC enter screen right.
MAC-New: Yoh, check out all this money I'm wearing.
PC: Nice.
Fred: Charlie, swap in some of that new transient paper and we can pull a fast one on the next guy that uses the printer. We'll get him good!
Next morning:
Greg to Boss: Hey I have those reports you were looking for. I worked all night and got them ready. Fortunately I printed them at the office because my hard drive crashed right after I finished working on them.
Boss: What are you kidding, these pages are blank!
Don't use DVDs. They are slow and cumbersome. Pay the couple of bucks and get an external drive. Then setup a backup routine with ntbackup (it has come with every version of windows and its free! Set it up to run at night when no one is using the computer (difficult in my house as people are using the thing all the time:)
I have used this at customer's sites with a two dive rotation and it has worked very well. I had one customer that somehow managed to wipe their server (still not sure how, but it was 2003 SBS) and had them from dead in the water to fully up and running in 45 minutes. Tape would have taken me a minimum of three hours never mind DVD. It also is quick to backup. Most tape drives take 3 hours to backup an average small server and I can get an external drive backup in 10-30 minutes.
I have used the one touches and tapes. Tapes are slow and I have had major reliability problems and cost per MB seems high. A new (not questionable from ebay) AIT 72GB setup cost one of my customers over a grand (SCSI controller, cables, drive and tapes) versus 100 to 150 per drive for externals. The one touch worked well for a couple of my customers, but I'm not a really good advocate of the Dantz software. Its clunky from the server version I've tried, its confusing versus ntbackup which asks "backup or restore". Easy to figure out as that.
xcopy is good too, but if there is an issue, not too many users these day are familiar with DOS and know how to maintain it versus determine what the issue is.
Slashdot Mirror
My car already has options such as this. I have a remote car starter that only works if you pay the annual fee. Mind you, this fee covers remote monitoring, gps and emergency services as well. So, what would it take to make the seat heater or the mirror defroster or the driving lights an after purchase option, not much. Just a few more things attached to the internal computer.
Now if someone can figure out how to permanently configure my starter to run without paying the fee and installing another unit, I'd be excited!
Now, for the devils advocate. What happens if the company goes out of business? Who maintains the database that states that you bought that option? What happens when they decide that they don't like an option or it gives them problems they just shut it off without notice? I'm sure a class action would resolve that, but something to think about.
I call first dibs if it is not already taken. I will patent the "pinch to unlock gesture". Most screens will recognize a two figure gesture (Multi-touch) Instead of sliding your finger to the side, bring both fingers together on the screen to unlock. I understand it may be difficult for a user missing fingers, and we may be able to come up with a resolution for that, but this will correct the issue for now. When it is pattented, I will open source the patent and then anyone can use it. Sound like a plan?
Why is everyone pushing universal healthcare? Have any of you talked with anyone from a country that provides universal healthcare? Everyone I have ever talked to says it sucks. You are either waiting in line to get to the doctor or you are waiting six months to get treated.
The only way to make insurance affordable to to make it cost money. This will stop people with the sniffles from going to the doctor all the time. Get a health savings plan and a high deductible insurance policy. Pay cash, negotiate with the doctor over costs to get the price down and have the high deductible to pay when there is a high cost issue (Transplant, bypass, etc.).
In turn, keep the physicians code that if you can't pay, they have to trear you anyways.
Imagine the following games with smell added:
Terminator (oil and electric)
Half Life (Creatures and chemicals)
Need for Speed (Oil and Gas)
Army of Two (Gun Powder and Burning wreckage)
And these are the tame games. I'm sure I could come up with some others that would smell worse. Have a good gaming session and no one would come to your house anymore or they would call the cops figuring you were burning the place down with your new maserratti.
The first story comes from an old admin I worked with. Apparently he worked for a hospital as a helpdesk person and received a call from one of the higher ups. The issue expressed over the phone was a request for a larger mouse pad as he kept running out of room. When he heard this, he shook his head and decided to take a walk up to the office to find out what was going on, When he got there and looked in the door, he had to turn around and walk away, because he was laughing so hard. The executive would use his mouse and hit the end of the mouse pad. Instead of picking the mouse up, pulling it back and then moving the mouse again, he would pick the mouse up, slide the mouse pad forward, set the mouse down and then move it. Anytime it hit the edge of the pad, he would do the same thing.
The next story comes from my old beowulf days. I was working for a company as an admin. They staff were programmers that designed DSL Modem Processors and the software that run on them. One day another admin and myself decided to play a prank on the staff. I remebered a tool that we used when creating beowulf clusters that would allow me to issue a command to multiple machines at once. We used it for configuration. Well, it is also good for ejecting cd-roms. We loaded up an inventory of machines and typed eject cdrom. Its amazing the sound of 35-40 cdroms drives opening at the same time. It's even more funny when you hear the expressions of 35-40 staffers saying "WTF?"
Good Times
That's like saying that every car that isn't Chevy isn't a car (but ironically all can carry people?). Someone needs to strung up for this definition.
Its called XP Mode, microsoft ships it with IE6 installed and can be legally run on any Windows 7 Professional PC. Just download and install for free. When the sites are upgraded, swap back over to IE8 and uninstall. Plus it has the added benefit of running all your old software that won't run under 7.
One thing you are not taking into account is labor. By buying a Dell (I don't like Dell, but this applies to any manufacturer), the time and expense in building is included in the cost. When you look at parts, it looks less, but add your time in building, time to diagnose an issue when the machine doesn't boot, and time to RMA parts and repair said machine when it breaks. This adds up quick. I work for a company that built its own machines for sale and we found a company that could build and warranty them for $10 more. That $10 extra was very well spent. So remember, you are getting more than just parts, you are getting the time to assemble, repair and replace.
1. Why not just setup a dual boot system. Hide the offending partition and boot into a clean OS. They're not CS majors and most won't have a clue anyways.
2. What if I have bath shots of my kids on my laptop. You know, blackmail for when they are in their teens or getting married. Many of my customers have swapped over to laptops from desktops and keep this kind of material on them. Are they instantly child porn offenders when they walk in the country?
3. As far as encrypting the drive goes, that may be counterproductive. I'm sure the minute they see a drive that is encrypted, they pull you aside and get a manager involved. Flip side is like I said with #1, they're not CS majors and may figure the drive is blank.
I guess they don't have to change the acronym then. Saves on Apple and Microsoft's marketing budgets next year! First Post!
Come on guys, why haven't you come up with showmypc.com. It uses SSH and VNC in a small utility that they can download from a webpage. Works everytime. It is a free service unless you want to run it as a service. I use it with my clients all the time. The only thing you have to tell the person to do is go to the website, run the software and tell you the passphrase.
The only downfall is that it does not sustain a connection through a reboot. Logmein has this capability. If they could fix this, I would be very happy.
Try coding in a language that MIT designed (LISP) that no one uses outside the classroom, with a bunch of college guys, up all night, no showers, in a computer lab, on monochrome serial terminals, when you are a commuter and home is better than half an hour away. AND, you have to work full time an hour away the next day. AND your attractive live in girlfriend is waiting breathlessly for you at home.... Torture that even Gitmo couldn't beat...
Remember the movie Real Genius? We in NH, would need something that size to unload our Mosquitos. They get big enough up here to carry you off.
All these thoughts come to mind:
1. What did they charge the GOVERNMENT to do this?
2. Should I be upset that this guy needed to use my tax money to hire an outside company to do something when my tax money goes for a goverment IT person making $100K+ that could do it or that the person could have used the theoretical $700 hammer to get the job done?
3. Did Geeks on Call have licensed software to do the job? (OK aBB reference)
4. Did Geeks on Call backup the data to a portable drive to take back to the office (Yes I know this was BB, but who else does this?)
So many questions and no answers. I'm sure I could think of more.
I personally ran into this problem myself. Back a couple of years ago, I drove up to my bank to get some cash. A guy came out of the ATM with a big sh*t eating grin on his face. I went in and chose to get $60 cash and was then handed $120. Just my luck!
When I came out, he asked if the same thing had happened to me and I said yes. We both left and went about our ways.
An article showed up in the news paper that had explained that a programming up date that had been updated that day had caused the machine to dispense double your withdrawal. In turn, the bank would withdraw the money from your account for the additional money that was dispensed.
I would think that they should eat it as it was their mistake (they have insurance), but the other side of it is that I don't think I should go to jail for some guys programming error.
I had a friend bring up this point and I have to agree. There is one commercial where PC is talking about going in for an Upgrade for Vista. The one thing MAC lacks to mention is that if apple decides to release a new version of OS, have their line can't run in and the MAC needs to be replaced. I can see it now (in it's corrected version):
MAC: Hi PC
PC: Hi MAC
MAC: What are you up to?
PC: I'm going in to have some memory added and a new video card installed so I can run Vista.
MAC: Sounds rough.
PC: Hey, what about OS 10.5, isn't that coming out soon?
MAC: Yeah
See MAC go flying into a garbage can and a new bling laden MAC enter screen right.
MAC-New: Yoh, check out all this money I'm wearing.
PC: Nice.
The End
Fred: Charlie, swap in some of that new transient paper and we can pull a fast one on the next guy that uses the printer. We'll get him good! Next morning: Greg to Boss: Hey I have those reports you were looking for. I worked all night and got them ready. Fortunately I printed them at the office because my hard drive crashed right after I finished working on them. Boss: What are you kidding, these pages are blank!
Don't use DVDs. They are slow and cumbersome. Pay the couple of bucks and get an external drive. Then setup a backup routine with ntbackup (it has come with every version of windows and its free! Set it up to run at night when no one is using the computer (difficult in my house as people are using the thing all the time :)
I have used this at customer's sites with a two dive rotation and it has worked very well. I had one customer that somehow managed to wipe their server (still not sure how, but it was 2003 SBS) and had them from dead in the water to fully up and running in 45 minutes. Tape would have taken me a minimum of three hours never mind DVD. It also is quick to backup. Most tape drives take 3 hours to backup an average small server and I can get an external drive backup in 10-30 minutes.
I have used the one touches and tapes. Tapes are slow and I have had major reliability problems and cost per MB seems high. A new (not questionable from ebay) AIT 72GB setup cost one of my customers over a grand (SCSI controller, cables, drive and tapes) versus 100 to 150 per drive for externals. The one touch worked well for a couple of my customers, but I'm not a really good advocate of the Dantz software. Its clunky from the server version I've tried, its confusing versus ntbackup which asks "backup or restore". Easy to figure out as that.
xcopy is good too, but if there is an issue, not too many users these day are familiar with DOS and know how to maintain it versus determine what the issue is.
my 3.14195 cents worth.