This is quite an understatement. I do occasional web development on the side, and I recently had my first client in a while. I told her to go ahead and sign up for the domain with GoDaddy, but she said she couldn't figure out what to do. So I helped her out in person and I couldn't *believe* the amount of crap they try to push on you. Pages full of options and "upgrades" and packages on every step... even after you finish your purchase! It's a tremendously confusing experience for someone who doesn't know how to filter out the signal from the noise.
That's why I use ChangeIP.com for domain registrations.
You pick the name, give them a credit card, press the button and get on with your life. They won't hijack it, hold it hostage, try to sell you anything (except DDNS if you want it). You pay, they register. As it should be.
I now have three (count'em 3) clients that have lost their domains to GoDaddy. However, for only $400 or so, GoDaddy will sell you back your own domain.
I wouldn't use GoDaddy if my ass was on fire and they had free water.
My clan has been playing Modern Warfare 2 recently and if you find a cheater the only thing you can do is back out of the match.
My clan has been playing "Emergency Application Support," has been awarded several gold bars, and has booked a few weeks of SCUBA diving in the Caribbean.
The good part is that this means that it's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court throws the lower decision out on the grounds of being "unbelievably stupid"
but it sure will make you look a bit dopey if you're still rolling with hotmail or aol.
I see usa.net is still around too, I had one of those a long long time ago too.
Now if you're not rolling your own domain, gmail or at least a respectable ISP in the very least your co-workers will give you a bit of shit.
Even though I don't need to apply for jobs anymore, I wish I had my original email address from "The Source".
I worked for a large ISP that did both managed and colo hosting. The big secret is that I already have root on the boxes we manage, and I don't want root on yours. If you want to send in part of a log file, I'm happy to take a look, but I wouldn't login to your box on a bet.
When your box craps out and you loose [insert valuable service/data here], you send in the lawyers and my boss comes by to ask what happened, one of the biggest thrills of my life is being able to say "Beats me, we don't have a login for that box."
And if we're managing it, you don't have root, and your box won't crap out because we've got 500 others just like it that are working just fine and yours is nothing special.
The trial is free, but it's a trial of the $10/month service. If you want the service that's actually useful, it's $35/month.
Intuit still blows.
And FWIW, Quickbooks Online doesn't work with with Linux. I had to change my user agent string to Firefox/Windows to get past the 'Screw you, Linux User" page.
> "... don't really trust Intuit with my data,..."
> My impression of Intuit is that they are one of the most abusive big companies in the United States.
> Here are just a few examples: Intuit abuses.
Minor update. I just signed up for the free trial for $10/month.
It sucks. Everything useful (sync with online checking, etc.) is only available in the $35/month package, and there's no way in hell I'm giving them over $400/year just to handle a small business. And I have zero trust that they won't sell my data for ad revenue or worse.
I'm looking into Front Accounting right now (GPL).
I spent a great deal of time looking for good web based, open-source accounting software, but found absolutely nothing that comes close to Quickbooks.
Right now, I'm using SQL Ledger, which is more-or-less OK, but the UI is firmly rooted in about 1990 and printing (especially checks) is really lacking. And while Quickbooks might run udner Wine, I'm really looking for something web-based so I can enter billing information and look stuff up from "wherever", instead of waiting to get back to the office.
Quickbooks Online might be an option, although for some reason, they support Firefox, but not on Linux (User agent switcher seems to make it work just fine).
As much as I hate paying for something every month, and don't really trust Intuit with my data, they're pretty much the only reasonable choice right now for a small business.
Why did nobody slap AES or blowfish block ciphers around the video packets? I admit I am assuming the video is digital. There are inexpensive (in terms of the cost of a drone) silicon implementations of both for the planes and BSD licensed software for the stations. If they just used preshared keys its would have been trivial to do and probably would have prevented this.
My best guess is that it:
Doesn't matter if they know we're watching. OR:
It's to our advantage for them to know we're watching.
The only stuff they can watch is stuff we want them to watch.
If you were planning Something Evil, and noticed that there was a live video feed of your "hideout", you might want to think about postponing your plans for a while.
My $600 laptop has various forms of encryption ranging from "Secret Decoder Ring" to "GFL". I'm pretty sure if we wanted an encrypted video feed, we'd have it.
In fact, one of the huge advantages during the Cold War was that the Soviets knew we were watching them, and we knew they were watching us.
It might be paid support, but unfortunately, it's not truly professional support - when I contacted them about it, they were unable to meet the 15 minute SLA response time and 24x7x365 support that our organization was looking for.
Unless you're a company very deep pockets, those are going to be difficult terms to meet. If you have the money that it costs to essentially keep four - six developers (need to be able to handle vacations and illness)on call 24x7 along with a call center and support staff, you shouldn't have any problems finding someone willing to do it. In fact, if you can't find anybody, I would be happy to add on the necessary staff, however you're going to be looking at more than a million $/year. Since this is usually cost-prohibitive, companies that require this level of support typically hire their own staff and obtain any necessary and training.
Be a man and take responsibility for your actions.
Pretty much.
Unfortunately, nobody can get your virginity back. Depending on how awful the thing was, and what lengths your willing to go to, you could change your name.
Unless what you did was truly horrible, nobody will care anyway, so I'd just ignore it and get on with your life.
I'm sure the reason the Burmese junta are still in power is because Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't have your willpower. Shame on her!
And if that guy standing in front of the tank had swung his shopping bags with a little more determination China would be a democracy by now.
You don't even know what I'm referring to, do you? You soft little trust-fund wanker.
Nice try at a hijack, but none of what you wrote has anything to do with a crappy job.
If you're really good at what you do and like your job, it's time to say no.
Tell them "no", and turn the job down. If they fire you, start your own consulting business.
"Management" is code for "You're responsible when things go wrong" and "On call" is code for "We own you and every molecule of your time." If this is a high profile job, you won't be able to go on vacation or leave town without arranging for coverage, which means that all the major holidays and nice weekends just vanished off your plate.
In fact, as long as I'm on a roll here, "No" is the most valuable word an employee has. Once they know you'll take a stand and won't be a doormat, they'll respect you and will think twice before trying to get you to clean up somebody else's mess. They may also fire you, but the job sucks anyway, so you haven't lost anything.
"We need you to work this weekend."
"No. I don't work weekends"
"We need you to take over this doomed project"
"Sorry, I don't accept projects with little chance of success."
Your life can only suck as much as you're willing to allow it to.
And go back to before you opened your trap where you should have kept it closed.
First, assuming you're not responsible for license management, you should have ignored it. It's simply not your responsibility any more than it is for you to go inspect registrations in the motor pool.
However this particular cat is out of the bag. I'd suggest finding a different job or hoping that the company replaces the president (whichever you think would be faster) since your chances for advancement are now zero.
The most valuable lesson you can learn in or out of work is "when to keep your mouth shut." Some things require immediate action (like if you found out that your company was sweetening their products with antifreeze) and other things require "not noticing" (like software licensing) if you plan on keeping your job. Licence management is the company's problem, they can either purchase the correct licenses and not worry or use stolen software and run the risk of being caught. In either case, it's not your responsibility unless you've specifically been tasked with license management. There is no "up side" to doing anything about it, since telling your boss or his superiors will make them angry or nervous, and telling the vendor will get you fired when they figure out who squealed.
Now if they want you to obtain or install stolen software, that's a horse of a different color, but even then, I wouldn't walk in and accuse anybody of theft, I'd just say "Sorry, it's not worth the risk." One of the things you can't ever get back is virginity. Once you install the stolen software, you're in it with the rest of them.
If you reduce the cost of software to zero and compete only on the hardware, you shut out some people from the market and trample others with your behemoth size.
If anyone disagrees, then name a single piece of open source software that is better than its closed source competition. You cannot, because open source means lower quality due to its inherent lack of focus.
So, I take your '20 year challenge' to heart and I work daily to keep that from happening with my own code or my co-workers. IMHO, there are way too many programmers out there that will read this 'duct tape' piece and use it to justify their own shoddy methods for me to read it without my head spinning around and taking the time to spout off about taking the time to do it right.
I really hate to sound like I'm justifying crap, however with the current economy, businesses want something that works now, not in a year or two (or even six months). Something that does pretty much what they want and takes a month is worth much more than something that does 100% of what they want and takes a year.
For a lot of businesses, if they can't get what they need right away, next year might not come.
In fact, lately I've been seeing a lot of businesses going for Open Source solutions that don't quite do exactly what they want, but are close enough that the cost and time difference makes it a bargain.
Just for an example, one client was considering Exchange/Outlook/Barracuda with some custom Outlook add-ons to connect to some internal systems, however after seeing the difference in software, hardware and development costs and time, decided that Postfix, Squirrelmail, Spamassassin, WebCalendar, Apache & PHP would be just fine.
I hope all your projects work out for you, but I really don't think you'll have all the time available that you need to do a nice, neat, documented, provably-correct job on any non-trivial projects.
In any case, have fun and if it starts eating your brain, just leave. There's plenty of work available if you can delver a reasonable solution in a reasonable time.
I manage a small team of programmers. When I first started, I 'inherited' a developer, let's call him Crufty Joe, who had worked at the company for 20 years and had developed financial and hr routines on the old mainframe and spiffy new oracle apps system. Joe had developed a lot of code, but he was always having to perform updates and corrections...
Before throwing "Crufty Joe" under the bus, you should realize that his "cruft" came from an infinite stream of seemingly-minor change requests that were not part of the original design and had to be "duct-taped" on to the original application.
And I'd be willing to bet that if you stay there for 20 years that your code will look just like his.
"We want to handle this type of customer just like these guys, except when this happens do that." "Except if they're part of this group. Or their name is 'xxxx', in which case do this other thing."
Slashdot Mirror
This is quite an understatement. I do occasional web development on the side, and I recently had my first client in a while. I told her to go ahead and sign up for the domain with GoDaddy, but she said she couldn't figure out what to do. So I helped her out in person and I couldn't *believe* the amount of crap they try to push on you. Pages full of options and "upgrades" and packages on every step ... even after you finish your purchase! It's a tremendously confusing experience for someone who doesn't know how to filter out the signal from the noise.
That's why I use ChangeIP.com for domain registrations.
You pick the name, give them a credit card, press the button and get on with your life. They won't hijack it, hold it hostage, try to sell you anything (except DDNS if you want it). You pay, they register. As it should be.
I now have three (count'em 3) clients that have lost their domains to GoDaddy. However, for only $400 or so, GoDaddy will sell you back your own domain.
I wouldn't use GoDaddy if my ass was on fire and they had free water.
My clan has been playing Modern Warfare 2 recently and if you find a cheater the only thing you can do is back out of the match.
My clan has been playing "Emergency Application Support," has been awarded several gold bars, and has booked a few weeks of SCUBA diving in the Caribbean.
Oh, wait, that's actual reality, not virtual.
Sorry. Wrong category.
The good part is that this means that it's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court throws the lower decision out on the grounds of being "unbelievably stupid"
I've got a better one. "Don't talk to botnets"
No rDNS? Goodbye? rDNS looks dynamic? Click.
If your mail server only talks to properly allocated static IPs, most spam simply vanishes.
but it sure will make you look a bit dopey if you're still rolling with hotmail or aol. I see usa.net is still around too, I had one of those a long long time ago too. Now if you're not rolling your own domain, gmail or at least a respectable ISP in the very least your co-workers will give you a bit of shit.
Even though I don't need to apply for jobs anymore, I wish I had my original email address from "The Source".
"12345"
That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
I worked for a large ISP that did both managed and colo hosting. The big secret is that I already have root on the boxes we manage, and I don't want root on yours. If you want to send in part of a log file, I'm happy to take a look, but I wouldn't login to your box on a bet.
When your box craps out and you loose [insert valuable service/data here], you send in the lawyers and my boss comes by to ask what happened, one of the biggest thrills of my life is being able to say "Beats me, we don't have a login for that box."
And if we're managing it, you don't have root, and your box won't crap out because we've got 500 others just like it that are working just fine and yours is nothing special.
Switch providers.
Linode has been excellent and they never mess with my stuff.
The trial is free, but it's a trial of the $10/month service. If you want the service that's actually useful, it's $35/month.
Intuit still blows.
And FWIW, Quickbooks Online doesn't work with with Linux. I had to change my user agent string to Firefox/Windows to get past the 'Screw you, Linux User" page.
> "... don't really trust Intuit with my data, ..."
> My impression of Intuit is that they are one of the most abusive big companies in the United States.
> Here are just a few examples: Intuit abuses.
Minor update. I just signed up for the free trial for $10/month.
It sucks. Everything useful (sync with online checking, etc.) is only available in the $35/month package, and there's no way in hell I'm giving them over $400/year just to handle a small business. And I have zero trust that they won't sell my data for ad revenue or worse.
I'm looking into Front Accounting right now (GPL).
I spent a great deal of time looking for good web based, open-source accounting software, but found absolutely nothing that comes close to Quickbooks.
Right now, I'm using SQL Ledger, which is more-or-less OK, but the UI is firmly rooted in about 1990 and printing (especially checks) is really lacking. And while Quickbooks might run udner Wine, I'm really looking for something web-based so I can enter billing information and look stuff up from "wherever", instead of waiting to get back to the office.
Quickbooks Online might be an option, although for some reason, they support Firefox, but not on Linux (User agent switcher seems to make it work just fine).
As much as I hate paying for something every month, and don't really trust Intuit with my data, they're pretty much the only reasonable choice right now for a small business.
My best guess is that it:
If you were planning Something Evil, and noticed that there was a live video feed of your "hideout", you might want to think about postponing your plans for a while. My $600 laptop has various forms of encryption ranging from "Secret Decoder Ring" to "GFL". I'm pretty sure if we wanted an encrypted video feed, we'd have it.
In fact, one of the huge advantages during the Cold War was that the Soviets knew we were watching them, and we knew they were watching us.
It might be paid support, but unfortunately, it's not truly professional support - when I contacted them about it, they were unable to meet the 15 minute SLA response time and 24x7x365 support that our organization was looking for.
Unless you're a company very deep pockets, those are going to be difficult terms to meet. If you have the money that it costs to essentially keep four - six developers (need to be able to handle vacations and illness)on call 24x7 along with a call center and support staff, you shouldn't have any problems finding someone willing to do it. In fact, if you can't find anybody, I would be happy to add on the necessary staff, however you're going to be looking at more than a million $/year. Since this is usually cost-prohibitive, companies that require this level of support typically hire their own staff and obtain any necessary and training.
Be a man and take responsibility for your actions.
Pretty much.
Unfortunately, nobody can get your virginity back. Depending on how awful the thing was, and what lengths your willing to go to, you could change your name.
Unless what you did was truly horrible, nobody will care anyway, so I'd just ignore it and get on with your life.
I'm sure the reason the Burmese junta are still in power is because Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't have your willpower. Shame on her! And if that guy standing in front of the tank had swung his shopping bags with a little more determination China would be a democracy by now. You don't even know what I'm referring to, do you? You soft little trust-fund wanker.
Nice try at a hijack, but none of what you wrote has anything to do with a crappy job.
[citation needed]
As long as you think like that, you'll always be a doormat.
If you're really good at what you do and like your job, it's time to say no.
Tell them "no", and turn the job down. If they fire you, start your own consulting business.
"Management" is code for "You're responsible when things go wrong" and "On call" is code for "We own you and every molecule of your time." If this is a high profile job, you won't be able to go on vacation or leave town without arranging for coverage, which means that all the major holidays and nice weekends just vanished off your plate.
In fact, as long as I'm on a roll here, "No" is the most valuable word an employee has. Once they know you'll take a stand and won't be a doormat, they'll respect you and will think twice before trying to get you to clean up somebody else's mess. They may also fire you, but the job sucks anyway, so you haven't lost anything.
"We need you to work this weekend."
"No. I don't work weekends"
"We need you to take over this doomed project"
"Sorry, I don't accept projects with little chance of success."
Your life can only suck as much as you're willing to allow it to.
So I guess instead of paying money to pretend to be someone else, I'll go make and eat a gourmet meal, get laid, then maybe do some SCUBA diving.
Oops! did I say that out loud?
This just in: "Actual reality is much better than virtual reality"
If they thought DPI was expensive, wait until they try real-time decryption
And go back to before you opened your trap where you should have kept it closed.
First, assuming you're not responsible for license management, you should have ignored it. It's simply not your responsibility any more than it is for you to go inspect registrations in the motor pool.
However this particular cat is out of the bag. I'd suggest finding a different job or hoping that the company replaces the president (whichever you think would be faster) since your chances for advancement are now zero.
The most valuable lesson you can learn in or out of work is "when to keep your mouth shut." Some things require immediate action (like if you found out that your company was sweetening their products with antifreeze) and other things require "not noticing" (like software licensing) if you plan on keeping your job. Licence management is the company's problem, they can either purchase the correct licenses and not worry or use stolen software and run the risk of being caught. In either case, it's not your responsibility unless you've specifically been tasked with license management. There is no "up side" to doing anything about it, since telling your boss or his superiors will make them angry or nervous, and telling the vendor will get you fired when they figure out who squealed.
Now if they want you to obtain or install stolen software, that's a horse of a different color, but even then, I wouldn't walk in and accuse anybody of theft, I'd just say "Sorry, it's not worth the risk." One of the things you can't ever get back is virginity. Once you install the stolen software, you're in it with the rest of them.
"Or click here to skip the advertisement"
I didn't bother.
If you reduce the cost of software to zero and compete only on the hardware, you shut out some people from the market and trample others with your behemoth size.
Yeah, what a shame.
If anyone disagrees, then name a single piece of open source software that is better than its closed source competition. You cannot, because open source means lower quality due to its inherent lack of focus.
Postfix.
So, I take your '20 year challenge' to heart and I work daily to keep that from happening with my own code or my co-workers. IMHO, there are way too many programmers out there that will read this 'duct tape' piece and use it to justify their own shoddy methods for me to read it without my head spinning around and taking the time to spout off about taking the time to do it right.
I really hate to sound like I'm justifying crap, however with the current economy, businesses want something that works now, not in a year or two (or even six months). Something that does pretty much what they want and takes a month is worth much more than something that does 100% of what they want and takes a year.
For a lot of businesses, if they can't get what they need right away, next year might not come.
In fact, lately I've been seeing a lot of businesses going for Open Source solutions that don't quite do exactly what they want, but are close enough that the cost and time difference makes it a bargain.
Just for an example, one client was considering Exchange/Outlook/Barracuda with some custom Outlook add-ons to connect to some internal systems, however after seeing the difference in software, hardware and development costs and time, decided that Postfix, Squirrelmail, Spamassassin, WebCalendar, Apache & PHP would be just fine.
I hope all your projects work out for you, but I really don't think you'll have all the time available that you need to do a nice, neat, documented, provably-correct job on any non-trivial projects.
In any case, have fun and if it starts eating your brain, just leave. There's plenty of work available if you can delver a reasonable solution in a reasonable time.
I manage a small team of programmers. When I first started, I 'inherited' a developer, let's call him Crufty Joe, who had worked at the company for 20 years and had developed financial and hr routines on the old mainframe and spiffy new oracle apps system. Joe had developed a lot of code, but he was always having to perform updates and corrections...
Before throwing "Crufty Joe" under the bus, you should realize that his "cruft" came from an infinite stream of seemingly-minor change requests that were not part of the original design and had to be "duct-taped" on to the original application.
And I'd be willing to bet that if you stay there for 20 years that your code will look just like his.
"We want to handle this type of customer just like these guys, except when this happens do that." "Except if they're part of this group. Or their name is 'xxxx', in which case do this other thing."