I'm thinking that they don't want their Hotmail accounts (source of porn, perhaps?) to close after that 30 days...
Or better yet, they just got gmail - and are too busy signing up to have Swedish 16 year olds sent to their emailbox in some vain attempt to use all 1000mb of storage...
Whatchu readin' for? Why do' all that fancy learn'in, when if y'all finish in 6 er' 7 years, y'all come out like i'jits anyway.
Year 10 in Australia and NZ includes the equivalent of elementary (can't you just say primary) and middle (intermediate) schools.
Here in NZ, we do School cert in Year 11, because we start education off (yechnically) a year before you aussies. Then there is HSC in Year 12 and University Entrance/Bursary in Year 13. (Y12 and 13 are optional. I myself went to Japan and got my Y12 and 13 years of High School Education there).
RECOMMENDED LISTENING FOR THIS TOPIC: Bill Hicks - from his standup about the Flying Saucer Tour.
Sweeet. I should copywrite the "hello world" scripts in all languages, (and all likenesses thereof) - charging small royalites for each time it was used
Even like, 5c over say, 1,000,000 users/training institutions et cetera would pay a modest yearly salary...
What about those storage arrays from LaCie? You can get a terabytes per device (or more) for only like US$1,199, with a firewire interface...
What about NAS? Such as IDE over IP (storage units with network connections)? or whatever
What about SCSI storage units (like 6 hard drives in a box or whatever - connecting to an external SCSI interface)?
Maybe they could have something like System X - you know, 1,100 PowerMac G5's clustered - at a total cost of about US$5.5m.
Netfinity - so-so, but horrendously expensive if you every want, say, a hard drive or ram for it. (To be expected, but kingston supplies ram at like 1/5 the price and WD do a SCSI hard disk for about 1/3 the price...)
Hardly. In the company where I USED to work (I left to start my own venture), I was able to go in on the weekend (while there were staff out front) and make fresh copies of the new MS Action Pack Software (w2k3 server, office 2003 pro etc) which I used to pretty much own when I did work there. No search. No questions.
They have pretty reasonable security, but if I was in the boss' office (where the software is kept), no-one would have even said anything.
I don't think they suspected I am so... corrupt... so I call it quasi-legal. (or semi-legal, meta-legal... whatever)
Actually, in my expreience in actually creating installsheild/wise install (et al) setup programs, the "restart computer" dialog at the end is only an option. It's not mandatory.
I can usually simply start the program and use it straight away - except certain programs which like, need to get really low level into the OS to do stuff, and apps like some virus scanners, some firewalls and things like pcanywhere... oh yeah, and vmware... stuff like that:)
where i used to work, we used to ask customers if they wanted ad-aware or spybot installed on their new machine. more often than not, we got a blank face, but some customers knew about it.
some even used to complain to me that they find ad-aware too difficult to download because it offers multiple download locations...
Hey, like, what happens if you rent out something like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy - you wouldn't have time to watch them all before the DVD disc shit itself.
One minute gandalf would be pointing his stick thing at some orc, next minute: blank. Just what the consumer wants!
That goes for other movies/trilogies/series, too - it was just LOTR that came to mind first
This is true, but most people ignore the windows updates. it simply comes up and says "new updates are ready to install" right? most people click away that annoying yellow (default) bubble to get rid of it.
What I was meaning was, MS should be slightly (and I hate to say it) more instrusive in this respect - one of the things I hate most is having to solve problems for users who havent downloaded the last 30 critical patches (as I did today). So what I'm saying is, it should be a big ugly dialog, with big red text - not unlike Norton AV - saying "your shitty buggy product is out of date" - to catch joe numbnuts users attention slightly better than the little lemon bubble.
the only worry i would have with that is - ms could trick people into purchasing a subscription model:D
that would be funny, huh.
about as funny, really as, say
When my mother double clicks on an unknown attachment and says "it just flicked up then flicked closed again..." (doesnt consider the fact it was a virus until afterward) THEN expects me to fix it
Or, when my mother is about to send a check to one of those domain-scam companies for like, $200 bucks without checking with the person who runs the domain name. eg/ me. [needless to say, those domains all now have my company name on them]
so, yeah, back to the original topic - in some respects it is microsofts fault for not being as pushy about forcing windows updates upon people, but it is mostly the users fault for not reading the manual or the "configure your computer for automatic updates wizard" - in fact, it could even partially be the computer stores fault.
At the computer store i used to work at, we even said to people to keep their things updated at least bi-weekly. if they wanted, we offered a free windows update service... just bring your computer in and you can leech off of our (by that time it was cached) T3...
supporting users is really the worst thing about being an IT guy. without those users, my life would be so much easier, but i wouldn't be nearly as well off - unless i tapped some other market:)
The patch is six weeks old. At what point does it cease to be Microsoft's problem and become the PC owner's?
Well, Microsoft's marketing department seems to do quite well in actually selling the software... but they just aren't creative enough to come up with something offered for FREE by that company...
(funny jingle in the background, loud sales-voiceover) Make the move to MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP, SERVICE PACK 2(echo "service pack 2"), and you'll be glad you did. Offers FREE firewall, BETTER virus protection, and FASTER DOWNLOADS... of critical patches from windowsupdate.com
doesnt sound quite the same, huh? plus, a little white lie never hurt anybody, now, did it? (in this instance it wouldn't).
I mean, how hard can it be for you, joe user, to go tools>windows update while browsing around looking for something more to entertain your feeble little mind? beats going to some of the shitty websites out there... i mean, like, bored.com (not knocking bored.com... just came out)... whats the deal?
Maybe Microsoft should send all those hotmail users update notices (eg. Click here to update your computer [links to https://www.windowsupdate.com] or something. Or... anyone who has MSN explorer... OR -
EVEN BETTER - use the (open by default) NETWORK MESSENGER PORT - like... SPAM users with a short, yet convincing "sales pitch" telling them to VISIT www.windowsupdate.com NOW!...
or... how about, like, the antivirus software - windows could pop up (randomly) and say "you havent visited windowsupdate.com in 632 days. your windows patches could be out of date, making your computer insecure, and making you vulnerable to viruses and stuff. go to www.windowsupdate.com" to update... (nb: does not update your version of windows, eg from windows 98 to windows xp)
I brought my new notebook, and it ran XP Pro beautifully for the first couple of months. Then, the obligitory OS degradation came in, and now the machine pretty much runs like shit.
I turned off all those "visual enhacements" - and is better, but still clunky. It takes AGES to bring up anything from the taskbar... among other things.
Next thing I'm going to try is to replace the hard drive - I think its slightly dodgy:) It goes "click" every once in a while. I might go and get a Warranty replacement...
What about Microsoft Thailand? Dont they offer Thai users valid licenses of Windows/Office for a very small fraction of the price (I'm talking like 1/10), as some sort of strange way to "solve the problem" of almost 100% piracy in Thailand.
Well, when a pirate downloads something from windowsupdate, they are sucking up all of MSes bandwidth... that probably costs them tens of thousands a month... easy!
I am an OEM - I have a 30 pack of OEM copies of Windows. I have 9 computers. I don't have a problem when it comes to finding a new key...
I have had, however, a legitimate key be rejected - I just offered to fax through a copy of the license, sticker and CD and they said 'nah, thats alright' - and gave me a code.
The other story I use is: replaced the motherboard or the NIC. Because, one of the primary factors to making a unique pid for your computer is the MAC address of the nic, you just say "nic failed" and they are usually sweet...
Man, I would kick the guy who put an NEC machine in my kids school (if they did, and in the event that I had kids)...
Here in NZ, NEC has a bad name because they are one and the same (at least, here) as Packard Bell.
For those techies who've worked on Packard Bell machines, you'll know what I mean - for the rest, trust me when I say PB machines can be evil.
The same way the Compaq Presario 5000 series was evil, yet Compaq generally (was) pretty good.
I do remember, howeverm the NEC machines being quite good in Japan. Had myself a "valuestar" - was alright apart from the whole Windows ME thing.
But yeah, here in NZ - wouldn't trust em. That and now Harvey Norman has had those "Pay $2999 for this ($1999) Laptop and get this FREE ($1000) Packard Bell Computer, valued at ($700) $1399.
Values in brackets are approximate actual values of the respective machines. Its all about perceptive value. All these (morons) people were all like "WOW! 2 Computers for $3k! Lets get four!...
Listen to the comedy by Bill Hicks along the lines of the album "philosophy - the best of", specifically "sex on trial", "politics in america", and from another album (revelations) - "go back to bed america". you will all probably enjoy and agree with most of the concepts presented.
i would consider making the tracks available for download, apart from, well, i dont really want to use like, 50GB in a day:) I dont know how much my upstream provider(s) would appreciate that:)
Even worse - anyone looking to be remotely humanoid will be considered a potential terrorist and will be detained without question, hesitation or trial until they feel like doing something..
Your average Joe User probably thinks his cellphones/GPSs/Navigation Systems/etc are really cool for telling HIM/HER where HE/SHE is... but, does Joe User ever stop to think that, well, now his/her government and probably 2 private companies now also know where he is?
Does Joe User really want his government knowing that yes, in fact, he was in that Adult video store on Thursday, 10 March, 2003 at precisely 11:54am? Probably not. But, Joe User probably just thinks his new gadgets are cool.
Easier communications and more sophisticated tracking devices will only lead to an invasion of privacy, just short of Feds busting into your house (or country) before you've even had the time to finish committing a crime.
Maybe hardware manufacturers were coerced (rather forced) into making tracking available in the microprocessors: (remember the early PIII's with IDs encoded in there?).
DONT track where my computer is sitting under the desk gathering dust etc... but hey, if that cellphones gonna make it easier to find me under a bunch of rubble next time I call 111 (911/999/000/110/whatever your emergency code is), then thats really cool!
Or what about some phones which detect which node you are closest to... thats almost creepy. Cool feature, or is big brother watching me a little too closely?.
I once stayed in a place in Auckland back in 2000 where my (at the time) Philips Savvy changed node depending on which part of the room I was in (I counted 7 different nodes in approx 3x4m space)
To quote Nullsoft on installation of Winamp (Since Versions even before 2.09): Allow anonymous usage statistics: Y/N. Stop bugging me: Y/N. Tell me - who would in their right mind answer Y then N?
Or, what you could do is: print whatever it is you want to distribute on t-shirts, or write a song/tell a story about it - then record and distribute an MP3 - A LA deCSS source code.
Maybe I should host/. on a smallish (ok, huge) cluster of machines here in New Zealand.
I don't mind telling any foreign governments to screw themselves:) (Done it once before, and to 3 multi national corperations)
Alternatively, Slashdot (and everyone else who wants to undermine the US governments authority) could host its servers with HavenCo, (www.havenco.com) located on the principality of Sealand - where the motto pretty much is: "Welcome to Sealand. Now FUCK OFF".:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm thinking that they don't want their Hotmail accounts (source of porn, perhaps?) to close after that 30 days...
Or better yet, they just got gmail - and are too busy signing up to have Swedish 16 year olds sent to their emailbox in some vain attempt to use all 1000mb of storage...
Whatchu readin' for? Why do' all that fancy learn'in, when if y'all finish in 6 er' 7 years, y'all come out like i'jits anyway.
Year 10 in Australia and NZ includes the equivalent of elementary (can't you just say primary) and middle (intermediate) schools.
Here in NZ, we do School cert in Year 11, because we start education off (yechnically) a year before you aussies. Then there is HSC in Year 12 and University Entrance/Bursary in Year 13. (Y12 and 13 are optional. I myself went to Japan and got my Y12 and 13 years of High School Education there).
RECOMMENDED LISTENING FOR THIS TOPIC: Bill Hicks - from his standup about the Flying Saucer Tour.
Sweeet. I should copywrite the "hello world" scripts in all languages, (and all likenesses thereof) - charging small royalites for each time it was used
Even like, 5c over say, 1,000,000 users/training institutions et cetera would pay a modest yearly salary...
What about those storage arrays from LaCie? You can get a terabytes per device (or more) for only like US$1,199, with a firewire interface...
What about NAS? Such as IDE over IP (storage units with network connections)? or whatever
What about SCSI storage units (like 6 hard drives in a box or whatever - connecting to an external SCSI interface)?
Maybe they could have something like System X - you know, 1,100 PowerMac G5's clustered - at a total cost of about US$5.5m.
Netfinity - so-so, but horrendously expensive if you every want, say, a hard drive or ram for it. (To be expected, but kingston supplies ram at like 1/5 the price and WD do a SCSI hard disk for about 1/3 the price...)
I think welchia was partly a "solution" to msblast wasn't it?
Hardly. In the company where I USED to work (I left to start my own venture), I was able to go in on the weekend (while there were staff out front) and make fresh copies of the new MS Action Pack Software (w2k3 server, office 2003 pro etc) which I used to pretty much own when I did work there. No search. No questions.
They have pretty reasonable security, but if I was in the boss' office (where the software is kept), no-one would have even said anything.
I don't think they suspected I am so... corrupt... so I call it quasi-legal. (or semi-legal, meta-legal... whatever)
Actually, in my expreience in actually creating installsheild/wise install (et al) setup programs, the "restart computer" dialog at the end is only an option. It's not mandatory.
:)
I can usually simply start the program and use it straight away - except certain programs which like, need to get really low level into the OS to do stuff, and apps like some virus scanners, some firewalls and things like pcanywhere... oh yeah, and vmware... stuff like that
with all those CAPITALIZED TAGS, it wouldn't be XHTML compliant!
where i used to work, we used to ask customers if they wanted ad-aware or spybot installed on their new machine. more often than not, we got a blank face, but some customers knew about it.
some even used to complain to me that they find ad-aware too difficult to download because it offers multiple download locations...
Hey, like, what happens if you rent out something like the Lord of the Rings Trilogy - you wouldn't have time to watch them all before the DVD disc shit itself.
One minute gandalf would be pointing his stick thing at some orc, next minute: blank. Just what the consumer wants!
That goes for other movies/trilogies/series, too - it was just LOTR that came to mind first
Wouldn't you rather zero-fill it? I know Seagate has a tool for this (and other functions), and I'm sure Maxtor and Western Digital do as well.
This is true, but most people ignore the windows updates. it simply comes up and says "new updates are ready to install" right? most people click away that annoying yellow (default) bubble to get rid of it.
What I was meaning was, MS should be slightly (and I hate to say it) more instrusive in this respect - one of the things I hate most is having to solve problems for users who havent downloaded the last 30 critical patches (as I did today). So what I'm saying is, it should be a big ugly dialog, with big red text - not unlike Norton AV - saying "your shitty buggy product is out of date" - to catch joe numbnuts users attention slightly better than the little lemon bubble.
the only worry i would have with that is - ms could trick people into purchasing a subscription model :D
that would be funny, huh.
about as funny, really as, say
so, yeah, back to the original topic - in some respects it is microsofts fault for not being as pushy about forcing windows updates upon people, but it is mostly the users fault for not reading the manual or the "configure your computer for automatic updates wizard" - in fact, it could even partially be the computer stores fault.
At the computer store i used to work at, we even said to people to keep their things updated at least bi-weekly. if they wanted, we offered a free windows update service... just bring your computer in and you can leech off of our (by that time it was cached) T3...
supporting users is really the worst thing about being an IT guy. without those users, my life would be so much easier, but i wouldn't be nearly as well off - unless i tapped some other market :)
The patch is six weeks old. At what point does it cease to be Microsoft's problem and become the PC owner's?
Well, Microsoft's marketing department seems to do quite well in actually selling the software... but they just aren't creative enough to come up with something offered for FREE by that company...
(funny jingle in the background, loud sales-voiceover) Make the move to MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP, SERVICE PACK 2(echo "service pack 2"), and you'll be glad you did. Offers FREE firewall, BETTER virus protection, and FASTER DOWNLOADS... of critical patches from windowsupdate.com
doesnt sound quite the same, huh? plus, a little white lie never hurt anybody, now, did it? (in this instance it wouldn't).
I mean, how hard can it be for you, joe user, to go tools>windows update while browsing around looking for something more to entertain your feeble little mind? beats going to some of the shitty websites out there... i mean, like, bored.com (not knocking bored.com... just came out)... whats the deal?
Maybe Microsoft should send all those hotmail users update notices (eg. Click here to update your computer [links to https://www.windowsupdate.com] or something. Or... anyone who has MSN explorer... OR -
EVEN BETTER - use the (open by default) NETWORK MESSENGER PORT - like... SPAM users with a short, yet convincing "sales pitch" telling them to VISIT www.windowsupdate.com NOW!...
or... how about, like, the antivirus software - windows could pop up (randomly) and say "you havent visited windowsupdate.com in 632 days. your windows patches could be out of date, making your computer insecure, and making you vulnerable to viruses and stuff. go to www.windowsupdate.com" to update... (nb: does not update your version of windows, eg from windows 98 to windows xp)
hrm?
Windows XP is pretty clunky, huh?
:) It goes "click" every once in a while. I might go and get a Warranty replacement...
I brought my new notebook, and it ran XP Pro beautifully for the first couple of months. Then, the obligitory OS degradation came in, and now the machine pretty much runs like shit.
I turned off all those "visual enhacements" - and is better, but still clunky. It takes AGES to bring up anything from the taskbar... among other things.
Next thing I'm going to try is to replace the hard drive - I think its slightly dodgy
What about Microsoft Thailand? Dont they offer Thai users valid licenses of Windows/Office for a very small fraction of the price (I'm talking like 1/10), as some sort of strange way to "solve the problem" of almost 100% piracy in Thailand.
Well, when a pirate downloads something from windowsupdate, they are sucking up all of MSes bandwidth... that probably costs them tens of thousands a month... easy!
I am an OEM - I have a 30 pack of OEM copies of Windows. I have 9 computers. I don't have a problem when it comes to finding a new key...
I have had, however, a legitimate key be rejected - I just offered to fax through a copy of the license, sticker and CD and they said 'nah, thats alright' - and gave me a code.
The other story I use is: replaced the motherboard or the NIC. Because, one of the primary factors to making a unique pid for your computer is the MAC address of the nic, you just say "nic failed" and they are usually sweet...
Man, I would kick the guy who put an NEC machine in my kids school (if they did, and in the event that I had kids)...
Here in NZ, NEC has a bad name because they are one and the same (at least, here) as Packard Bell.
For those techies who've worked on Packard Bell machines, you'll know what I mean - for the rest, trust me when I say PB machines can be evil.
The same way the Compaq Presario 5000 series was evil, yet Compaq generally (was) pretty good.
I do remember, howeverm the NEC machines being quite good in Japan. Had myself a "valuestar" - was alright apart from the whole Windows ME thing.
But yeah, here in NZ - wouldn't trust em. That and now Harvey Norman has had those "Pay $2999 for this ($1999) Laptop and get this FREE ($1000) Packard Bell Computer, valued at ($700) $1399.
Values in brackets are approximate actual values of the respective machines. Its all about perceptive value. All these (morons) people were all like "WOW! 2 Computers for $3k! Lets get four!...
n stuff.
Listen to the comedy by Bill Hicks along the lines of the album "philosophy - the best of", specifically "sex on trial", "politics in america", and from another album (revelations) - "go back to bed america". you will all probably enjoy and agree with most of the concepts presented.
:) I dont know how much my upstream provider(s) would appreciate that :)
i would consider making the tracks available for download, apart from, well, i dont really want to use like, 50GB in a day
Even worse - anyone looking to be remotely humanoid will be considered a potential terrorist and will be detained without question, hesitation or trial until they feel like doing something..
Your average Joe User probably thinks his cellphones/GPSs/Navigation Systems/etc are really cool for telling HIM/HER where HE/SHE is... but, does Joe User ever stop to think that, well, now his/her government and probably 2 private companies now also know where he is?
Does Joe User really want his government knowing that yes, in fact, he was in that Adult video store on Thursday, 10 March, 2003 at precisely 11:54am? Probably not. But, Joe User probably just thinks his new gadgets are cool.
Easier communications and more sophisticated tracking devices will only lead to an invasion of privacy, just short of Feds busting into your house (or country) before you've even had the time to finish committing a crime.
Maybe hardware manufacturers were coerced (rather forced) into making tracking available in the microprocessors: (remember the early PIII's with IDs encoded in there?).
DONT track where my computer is sitting under the desk gathering dust etc... but hey, if that cellphones gonna make it easier to find me under a bunch of rubble next time I call 111 (911/999/000/110/whatever your emergency code is), then thats really cool!
Or what about some phones which detect which node you are closest to... thats almost creepy. Cool feature, or is big brother watching me a little too closely?.
I once stayed in a place in Auckland back in 2000 where my (at the time) Philips Savvy changed node depending on which part of the room I was in (I counted 7 different nodes in approx 3x4m space)
To quote Nullsoft on installation of Winamp (Since Versions even before 2.09): Allow anonymous usage statistics: Y/N. Stop bugging me: Y/N. Tell me - who would in their right mind answer Y then N?
Maybe Orson Wells was 20 years too early - instead of calling his story "1984", it should have been "2004"...
Or, what you could do is: print whatever it is you want to distribute on t-shirts, or write a song/tell a story about it - then record and distribute an MP3 - A LA deCSS source code.
Maybe I should host /. on a smallish (ok, huge) cluster of machines here in New Zealand.
:) (Done it once before, and to 3 multi national corperations)
:)
I don't mind telling any foreign governments to screw themselves
Alternatively, Slashdot (and everyone else who wants to undermine the US governments authority) could host its servers with HavenCo, (www.havenco.com) located on the principality of Sealand - where the motto pretty much is: "Welcome to Sealand. Now FUCK OFF".