Buy this crappy threesome (provider + OS + computer) for nowhere near $600
And as a special bonus we will provide you with an endless supply of spam, virusses and spyware.
Believe it or not, this offer will surely keep you off those dangerous streets for the next few years! Wouldn't it be nice if you neighbor went out to purchase one? Oh yes....
I have three linux boxes and one Powerbook... The Linux boxes are for experimental purposes: how good is that desktop, what can I do on it, etc. And it IS good, really good. I could even use it for my daily homestuff.
However, I have to do my workrelated stuff at my Powerbook... and while I'm at it, I organise my pictures, my music, synchronise my smartphone, Ipod and more of those 'little' things.
After turning it off, I power up one of those Linux boxes. Nice operating systems... nice desktop too, but only accounting for 2% of my time.
"Hey linking to our site at M$.com? Do you have a written permission for this? Don't you know we have this patent pending on free hyperlinks? And what are you eating there? Is that an American Pizza with 4 cheeses? We own that patent too! Bill help, they are at it again!"
We can't have a new Galactica. It is simply not possible, so it isn't there. It is all that Win XP SP 2 thing that has gotton into your heads. You all see things that simply aren't there. See. Okay, repeat after me: a new Galactica doesn't exist.
Now, off you go, do something usefull. How about downloading Win XP SP3 at: www.suse.com
If my girlfriend was going for a Dell over a Mac I would seriously start wondering about her. Especially when she is a grafix designer... god Windows.
On the other hand, mine is a Mac addict (she uses a powerbook for her BSD/Python magic) and that isn't easy to live with too. But I must admit that I rather live with someone asking about the status on that G5 Powerbook (Is it out yet?) than someone complaining about designs being off-colour.
True, I think it is a matter of definition and jobtitles. When IT was fashion, everybody had to have some kind of IT related title... now people feel pitty when you tell 'm you work in IT. This translates in more and more functions getting non-IT related titles without changing the things they actually do very much.
Eg, we have 'Tech Support' seeing changed to 'Sales Engineer' and now to 'Technical Sales Assistant'... and all the time it's someone driving around visiting customers and fixing stuff on location... I think next year I can call him 'Tech Support' again:)
So very, very, very right you are.... having this same argument in a Dutch newspaper right now about 'stolen' creditcard info. My statement is that all those losers who like clicking on everything that is 'free' shouldn't blame their creditcardcompany when all their personals show up on the internet....
You can get so muuuuuuuch more fun out of the internet by just using a real browser... or even better: a real operating system. Try OS X with Camino. You'll love it and as an extra bonus: you can also visit your porn sites again and your neofascistic material. Wow!
You must have known that this was coming. Now, troll me:)
What a complete BS. What about Symbian dude??? Seen the sales figures of last week? Marketshares of Palm (22%), Windows CD (23%), Symbian (35%). And there is one lousy conceptuel virus detected for Symbian UIQ (SE P900 Smartphone).
Just face it... Windows is crappy code and crappy code gets exploited. It doesn't get much simpler.
For now and the years to come, typing is a must. In many companies, too many (often elderly) people in senior management position rely for typing on their secretary or whatever. Besides from the fact that it is expensive, it is also very inefficient. In a time where email is often extremely important, it is a must that you can type yourself! I dare to state that companies, where senior management rely on secretaries for their typing stuff (even simple emails), simply lack competitive edge. And there are plenty of those companies. I mean: I don't want to pay a Euro for each Manager I encounter that calls his secretary to bring up a folder with printed emails, when I say "I mailed you four days ago.... "
On typing vs. voicerecog, handwriting and such: right now, no system beats anyone typing. And believe me, as an addicted Palm Graffiti user, I know. I'm fast with it, but I can't beat someone typing. It's good for short notes, but not good enough for something that involves multiple sentences. And I certainly tried: I wrote an 9Kb Xmas story on my Palm using graffiti:)
Since 4 months I use a P900 by SE. It has a 'better-than-graffiti' (no troll!) handwriting set, but it still doesn't beat a keyboard, so I still carry the foldable bluetooth thing around:)
I msyelf learned typing blindfolded on old mechanical machines in the early '80's, using 10 fingers. However, back then I was doing something with code and that meant using six fingers at most. Especially since I did a lot of Ansi related stuff. Then I got this internship at the Dutch IRS and they forced me to use all 10 fingers (if you know how, you better use 'm!).... I hated them at that time, because those 6 fingers where sooooo fast, but looking back, I think it is the best thing I got from my education.
"if I uninstalled WinXP I would void my HARDWARE warranty"
Seems weird, but makes some sense. I once ('98 or so) terminated the grafical capabilities of my Toshiba Laptop trying to make X windows run from my Red Hat 4.2 (or something) distro. After 2 days of messing with scripts I finally found that newsgroup were someone said how I might get it to work and he/she made clear that it was AT my own risk.... 20 minutes later, my screen was black and I smelled burning plastic... something I hadn't smelled since the time (1986) I upgraded my Atari ST from 512Kb to 1024 by stacking 20-something IC's on each other (Sun, eat this!).......
It's always best to keep your product away from the market where it might stand a real change. Compared to the US, in Europe SuSe at least have a decent userbase. Why not launching that thing here? Don't tell me we have to wait for that Dell running R......
Ah, now I know why my BMW 740i has al those electrical problems.... it's just the Blue Screen of death in a different shape... Might as well sell it right aways (anyone interested in a 16 months old 740i?) and buy back a 70's 650 CSI. Better:)
Basically the situation is even worse.... here in Europe most people's salary is based on the number of people in their team. The bigger the number, the bigger their salary.
So, if your salary is based on your team of 9 people that service 35 servers and 120 desktops, why would you start thinking of an alternative situation in which you can do the same with 4 people or even less.... in most situations you end up ripping off yourself....
I know this is a terribly message, but right now a lot of those such called IT managers are being paid because they waste money.
Hardly anyone gets fired on overspending on MS based solutions including overpriced maintenance. Hardly anyone gets rewarded for picking a cheaper solution that gives someone more uptime and productivity.
I have a customer running 4000 servers. Most of them MS stuff, some Unix (RS 6000), some Linux, some solaris and -yes- a few Netware. If we talk about platform with the IT director, he is always talking about MS, MS, MS... while the average uptime of those w2k servers is barely 100 days. On the other hand, the Novell servers have an average uptime of 970 days. They even run an old 3.2 machine with an uptime of over 1500 days!
Can you imagine that the day is coming on which the IT manager involved is being rewarded for the fact that he finally got rid of that old Novell stuff.... (I think here in Holland I pay 1.5% taxes just to pay for all that MS crap).
their loyalty. Let me explain.
Back in the '90s I ran a salesdepartment of a big IT shop with big customers. All my salesguys worked on a basic pay, with a great bonus. Then came the millennium saga....
They all got training.. you can upgrade this application with this update and that application with that upgrade. All my guys made the quotation on their customers: what are they running now and how am I going to make the most money out of their upgrade.
More than one of those guys earned a second home just by upgrading its customers to Windows. Why Windows? Because Microsoft forced customers into buying whole new license packs, with new software. Even customers running older versions of Windows. It were the days that we simply couldn't find enough people to install and implement upgrades. Microsoft couldn't even ship CD's, licenses and boxes fast enough. In the end we did complete conversions from blanc CD's and provided the customer with its formal material later. And crew was even worse: we sent whole groups of 'people_handy_with_computers' off to South Africa where we bought MCSE documents, just to be able to put them on jobs in Europe...
Oh, and Novell? They simply produced upgrades, even for aging versions of their OS, like 3.12 and such. Each upgrade was about $200 (or something) with which you could make your server OS millennium proof. 3.x went to 3.2 and 4.x went to 4.2. And that was it... my Novell guys just sold a handful of CD's, didn't earn a second home on bonusses, but scored a ten on customer satifaction. And the problem was that Novell informed all customers about the possibility. My guys simply didn't have the opportunity to scale 'm up from 3.x to 4.2 or even version 5.... every customer was already informed about the $200 update kit for the 3 and 4 series.
Since most salesguys don't have a heart or basically don't care about quality (it's just about the bonus), they simply advised customers to ignore the opdate: it's better switching to Windows... you see, I have a second mortgage to pay...
It was terrible to see such a nice product becoming a victim of its customer loyalty, especially since the Windows customers simply didn't (and still don't) see that they are being toyed with.
And I? I left the circus in September 1999 on 'matters of principle'....
As a fellow European who worked in the US for quite some time, I know that Americans indeed work long hours, but also live their live during that time. I mean: they arrange their insurance, health stuff, car problems, lottery stuff, etc.
In Europe people work shorter, but also are used to dealing with those things in their OWN time. (their productivity also is higher)
It is true that overall employees benefits have been over arranged in Europe. As an employer myself, I do have quite a few frustrating experiences. Just a few:
If I pay one of my specialists extra because I think he outperforms the rest, I have to pay all specialists extra. Equal rights stuff. This effectively means that you basically can't reward people individually. You are always rewarding a group of people. Effectively this leads to job-titles you only find in Dilbert, because this gives you the possibility to reward individuals who care, work overtime when needed or just perform in an extraordinary way (like not laughing at a customer when he says that his core business runs on windows and such...).
Then we have lease car, like cell. phones, company car, house phone, broadband at home, parking expenses, lunch fees and such. This is terrible in Europe. Most of them are seen as taxable benefits for the employee. This means as an employee you pay taxes of 25% the showroom value of your lease car. No matter if you drive 104.000 kms a year for business and 10.000 privat...
Tax department thinks that lunch is allowed to cost something of 6 euros. That's not even gonna bring you a decent cracker with a decaf.... insane those tax boys.
The logic conclusion is that when the employee needs to pay all those taxes, they want to earn more. And so they should... So in the end, all the funny regulations just makes money go around, being taxed at multiple moments.
And the best of them.... as an employer I have to pay the salary of my workers if they get ill. And that is no problem. But I also have to keep on paying them, even if they can't work because of own decisions. And that can last two complete years. So, if one of those guys crashes his car with 200 km/h during holidays, I end up paying for his treatment, including two years of salary.... think about Skiing, Bungeejumping, etc... awww.
It just makes you (and us) outsource everything to places where the law is a bit more normal.
Well, at first I left my IBM notebook on the roof of my car. I only found out the next day, when I called my office to check if my notebook was there or with some customer.. nope, it wasn't, so the car roof was the only option left. Bad thing of course, but it got worse.
I got a new notebook. Brand new. And a brand new lease car. First ride, I park the car in the back of a cement truck, with 50 km/s and my brand new IBM notebook out of the bag, on the seat next to me....after all dust had settled and my bloodpressure was back to normal, I retrieved part of the casing with the Logo. The notebook had left the car through the windshield and flew some 10 metres before finding its end in the dirt....
Good that we had this so called millennium problem, so that guys like me still had some change in persuing this marvelous career in IT:)
Great link! The form was messed up a little, but I managed to get a message out to El Al.
Does the site needs any improvement? Support for people with other than Micro$$oft Equipment because they know that using Internet Explorer is 20 times more dangerous than walking through Gaza city wrapped in an Israeli national flag.
Slashdot Mirror
Buy this crappy threesome (provider + OS + computer) for nowhere near $600
And as a special bonus we will provide you with an endless supply of spam, virusses and spyware.
Believe it or not, this offer will surely keep you off those dangerous streets for the next few years! Wouldn't it be nice if you neighbor went out to purchase one? Oh yes....
I have three linux boxes and one Powerbook... The Linux boxes are for experimental purposes: how good is that desktop, what can I do on it, etc. And it IS good, really good. I could even use it for my daily homestuff.
... nice desktop too, but only accounting for 2% of my time.
However, I have to do my workrelated stuff at my Powerbook... and while I'm at it, I organise my pictures, my music, synchronise my smartphone, Ipod and more of those 'little' things.
After turning it off, I power up one of those Linux boxes. Nice operating systems
For two days now, I have been trying to install the hot XP SP2 security update on my Powerbook running OS X. But without luck.
But guess what? This update by Apple was just a matter of minutes.
Phew!! Apple sure rules in the field of userfriendlyness...
"Hey linking to our site at M$.com? Do you have a written permission for this? Don't you know we have this patent pending on free hyperlinks? And what are you eating there? Is that an American Pizza with 4 cheeses? We own that patent too!
Bill help, they are at it again!"
Steve
Americans in Ba.... oooh, sorry, wrong Rant.
We can't have a new Galactica. It is simply not possible, so it isn't there. It is all that Win XP SP 2 thing that has gotton into your heads. You all see things that simply aren't there. See. Okay, repeat after me: a new Galactica doesn't exist.
Now, off you go, do something usefull. How about downloading Win XP SP3 at: www.suse.com
If my girlfriend was going for a Dell over a Mac I would seriously start wondering about her. Especially when she is a grafix designer... god Windows.
On the other hand, mine is a Mac addict (she uses a powerbook for her BSD/Python magic) and that isn't easy to live with too. But I must admit that I rather live with someone asking about the status on that G5 Powerbook (Is it out yet?) than someone complaining about designs being off-colour.
True, I think it is a matter of definition and jobtitles. When IT was fashion, everybody had to have some kind of IT related title ... now people feel pitty when you tell 'm you work in IT. This translates in more and more functions getting non-IT related titles without changing the things they actually do very much.
... and all the time it's someone driving around visiting customers and fixing stuff on location... I think next year I can call him 'Tech Support' again :)
Eg, we have 'Tech Support' seeing changed to 'Sales Engineer' and now to 'Technical Sales Assistant'
So very, very, very right you are.... having this same argument in a Dutch newspaper right now about 'stolen' creditcard info. My statement is that all those losers who like clicking on everything that is 'free' shouldn't blame their creditcardcompany when all their personals show up on the internet....
From France? Does anyone know if the garlic is included?
You can get so muuuuuuuch more fun out of the internet by just using a real browser ... or even better: a real operating system. Try OS X with Camino. You'll love it and as an extra bonus: you can also visit your porn sites again and your neofascistic material. Wow!
You must have known that this was coming. Now, troll me :)
So this must be hot. I downloaded a file of 266MB and I have this nice icon standing on my OS X desktop. Now what?
What a complete BS. What about Symbian dude??? Seen the sales figures of last week? Marketshares of Palm (22%), Windows CD (23%), Symbian (35%). And there is one lousy conceptuel virus detected for Symbian UIQ (SE P900 Smartphone).
Just face it... Windows is crappy code and crappy code gets exploited. It doesn't get much simpler.
For now and the years to come, typing is a must. In many companies, too many (often elderly) people in senior management position rely for typing on their secretary or whatever. Besides from the fact that it is expensive, it is also very inefficient. In a time where email is often extremely important, it is a must that you can type yourself! I dare to state that companies, where senior management rely on secretaries for their typing stuff (even simple emails), simply lack competitive edge. And there are plenty of those companies. I mean: I don't want to pay a Euro for each Manager I encounter that calls his secretary to bring up a folder with printed emails, when I say "I mailed you four days ago .... "
:) :)
On typing vs. voicerecog, handwriting and such: right now, no system beats anyone typing. And believe me, as an addicted Palm Graffiti user, I know. I'm fast with it, but I can't beat someone typing. It's good for short notes, but not good enough for something that involves multiple sentences. And I certainly tried: I wrote an 9Kb Xmas story on my Palm using graffiti
Since 4 months I use a P900 by SE. It has a 'better-than-graffiti' (no troll!) handwriting set, but it still doesn't beat a keyboard, so I still carry the foldable bluetooth thing around
I msyelf learned typing blindfolded on old mechanical machines in the early '80's, using 10 fingers. However, back then I was doing something with code and that meant using six fingers at most. Especially since I did a lot of Ansi related stuff. Then I got this internship at the Dutch IRS and they forced me to use all 10 fingers (if you know how, you better use 'm!).... I hated them at that time, because those 6 fingers where sooooo fast, but looking back, I think it is the best thing I got from my education.
"if I uninstalled WinXP I would void my HARDWARE warranty" Seems weird, but makes some sense. I once ('98 or so) terminated the grafical capabilities of my Toshiba Laptop trying to make X windows run from my Red Hat 4.2 (or something) distro. After 2 days of messing with scripts I finally found that newsgroup were someone said how I might get it to work and he/she made clear that it was AT my own risk.... 20 minutes later, my screen was black and I smelled burning plastic... something I hadn't smelled since the time (1986) I upgraded my Atari ST from 512Kb to 1024 by stacking 20-something IC's on each other (Sun, eat this!).......
It's always best to keep your product away from the market where it might stand a real change. Compared to the US, in Europe SuSe at least have a decent userbase. Why not launching that thing here? Don't tell me we have to wait for that Dell running R......
Ah, now I know why my BMW 740i has al those electrical problems.... it's just the Blue Screen of death in a different shape... :)
Might as well sell it right aways (anyone interested in a 16 months old 740i?) and buy back a 70's 650 CSI. Better
Basically the situation is even worse .... here in Europe most people's salary is based on the number of people in their team. The bigger the number, the bigger their salary. .... in most situations you end up ripping off yourself .... ... while the average uptime of those w2k servers is barely 100 days. On the other hand, the Novell servers have an average uptime of 970 days. They even run an old 3.2 machine with an uptime of over 1500 days!
So, if your salary is based on your team of 9 people that service 35 servers and 120 desktops, why would you start thinking of an alternative situation in which you can do the same with 4 people or even less
I know this is a terribly message, but right now a lot of those such called IT managers are being paid because they waste money.
Hardly anyone gets fired on overspending on MS based solutions including overpriced maintenance. Hardly anyone gets rewarded for picking a cheaper solution that gives someone more uptime and productivity.
I have a customer running 4000 servers. Most of them MS stuff, some Unix (RS 6000), some Linux, some solaris and -yes- a few Netware. If we talk about platform with the IT director, he is always talking about MS, MS, MS
Can you imagine that the day is coming on which the IT manager involved is being rewarded for the fact that he finally got rid of that old Novell stuff.... (I think here in Holland I pay 1.5% taxes just to pay for all that MS crap).
their loyalty. Let me explain. Back in the '90s I ran a salesdepartment of a big IT shop with big customers. All my salesguys worked on a basic pay, with a great bonus. Then came the millennium saga .... .. you can upgrade this application with this update and that application with that upgrade. All my guys made the quotation on their customers: what are they running now and how am I going to make the most money out of their upgrade. ... ....
They all got training
More than one of those guys earned a second home just by upgrading its customers to Windows. Why Windows? Because Microsoft forced customers into buying whole new license packs, with new software. Even customers running older versions of Windows. It were the days that we simply couldn't find enough people to install and implement upgrades. Microsoft couldn't even ship CD's, licenses and boxes fast enough. In the end we did complete conversions from blanc CD's and provided the customer with its formal material later. And crew was even worse: we sent whole groups of 'people_handy_with_computers' off to South Africa where we bought MCSE documents, just to be able to put them on jobs in Europe...
Oh, and Novell? They simply produced upgrades, even for aging versions of their OS, like 3.12 and such. Each upgrade was about $200 (or something) with which you could make your server OS millennium proof. 3.x went to 3.2 and 4.x went to 4.2. And that was it... my Novell guys just sold a handful of CD's, didn't earn a second home on bonusses, but scored a ten on customer satifaction. And the problem was that Novell informed all customers about the possibility. My guys simply didn't have the opportunity to scale 'm up from 3.x to 4.2 or even version 5.... every customer was already informed about the $200 update kit for the 3 and 4 series.
Since most salesguys don't have a heart or basically don't care about quality (it's just about the bonus), they simply advised customers to ignore the opdate: it's better switching to Windows... you see, I have a second mortgage to pay
It was terrible to see such a nice product becoming a victim of its customer loyalty, especially since the Windows customers simply didn't (and still don't) see that they are being toyed with.
And I? I left the circus in September 1999 on 'matters of principle'
As a fellow European who worked in the US for quite some time, I know that Americans indeed work long hours, but also live their live during that time. I mean: they arrange their insurance, health stuff, car problems, lottery stuff, etc.
.... as an employer I have to pay the salary of my workers if they get ill. And that is no problem. But I also have to keep on paying them, even if they can't work because of own decisions. And that can last two complete years. So, if one of those guys crashes his car with 200 km/h during holidays, I end up paying for his treatment, including two years of salary.... think about Skiing, Bungeejumping, etc... awww.
In Europe people work shorter, but also are used to dealing with those things in their OWN time. (their productivity also is higher)
It is true that overall employees benefits have been over arranged in Europe. As an employer myself, I do have quite a few frustrating experiences. Just a few:
If I pay one of my specialists extra because I think he outperforms the rest, I have to pay all specialists extra. Equal rights stuff. This effectively means that you basically can't reward people individually. You are always rewarding a group of people. Effectively this leads to job-titles you only find in Dilbert, because this gives you the possibility to reward individuals who care, work overtime when needed or just perform in an extraordinary way (like not laughing at a customer when he says that his core business runs on windows and such...).
Then we have lease car, like cell. phones, company car, house phone, broadband at home, parking expenses, lunch fees and such. This is terrible in Europe. Most of them are seen as taxable benefits for the employee. This means as an employee you pay taxes of 25% the showroom value of your lease car. No matter if you drive 104.000 kms a year for business and 10.000 privat...
Tax department thinks that lunch is allowed to cost something of 6 euros. That's not even gonna bring you a decent cracker with a decaf.... insane those tax boys.
The logic conclusion is that when the employee needs to pay all those taxes, they want to earn more. And so they should... So in the end, all the funny regulations just makes money go around, being taxed at multiple moments.
And the best of them
It just makes you (and us) outsource everything to places where the law is a bit more normal.
What about webmail. What about IM.
Well, at first I left my IBM notebook on the roof of my car. I only found out the next day, when I called my office to check if my notebook was there or with some customer.. nope, it wasn't, so the car roof was the only option left. Bad thing of course, but it got worse.
:)
I got a new notebook. Brand new. And a brand new lease car. First ride, I park the car in the back of a cement truck, with 50 km/s and my brand new IBM notebook out of the bag, on the seat next to me....after all dust had settled and my bloodpressure was back to normal, I retrieved part of the casing with the Logo. The notebook had left the car through the windshield and flew some 10 metres before finding its end in the dirt....
Good that we had this so called millennium problem, so that guys like me still had some change in persuing this marvelous career in IT
I knew there was a reason why my final Cartridge 3 is still in the drawer of my desk.
Does this mean even more functionality and less stability or did they finally decided to first finish some product?
Great link! The form was messed up a little, but I managed to get a message out to El Al.
Does the site needs any improvement?
Support for people with other than Micro$$oft Equipment because they know that using Internet Explorer is 20 times more dangerous than walking through Gaza city wrapped in an Israeli national flag.
www.elal.co.il .... can't even check my frequent flyer details using:
- Opera
- Mozilla
- Firefox
- Camino
- Safari
- IE 5.2
For Mac OS X.