What's interesting is I feel the same way about FireFox's tab management. That said, being different isn't being worse. I do wish there was a way to get either to behave like the other, but I guess on either side it would be re designing much of the low level tab code.
Yeah, but you all assume there is some motivation to do this. Look, at Best Buy, you don't get commission. So, you get your $8 an hour if you spend time helping customers, or spend time chatting with other workers. Guess which they'd rather do?
And, they only make money on Cables and the like anyway, so who cares if you buy the PC there?
Yea, I was going to ask why he would use the OS install from the OEM. Even working where I do (with the fun of NT4 Server, and no Active Directory yet - maybe this year) we have a ghost image that will restore to damn near anything and be ready to go with a driver pack (that can be made from the OEM install w/ our licenses of Driver Genius 2006) in like 30 minutes while reading/.
First of all, I work in the Geek Squad. The problem with the above method is the price GS charges for that. They'd charge $99 for 9.4GB data backup, and $129 to reload windows + basic software. Plus likely $69 for a hardware diagnostic. VS $199 to try and fix the base install, including up to an OS reload if necessary. So most people won't pay more for a reload + backup.
Now, the other thing is that GS from the top says DON'T RESTORE! IDK why, seems like a waste in some situations.
Thirdly, there is a set SOP for what is now the Advanced Computer Diagnostic and Repair (virus removal). It includes 3 command line virus scans from a PE environment, a scan with Ad-Aware, CounterSpy, Ewido, SpySweeper in safe mode and Hijack This scans, KazaaBeGone, CWShredder etc. A final Spysweeper scan is used to verify cleanness.
So it's not supposed to be a quick process or a glance at it and eh...
Do lots of automated scans, registry fixers and the like fix a major infection... Sometimes. Not always, and here's where a restore is appropriate.
As always, even if something is SOP, YMMV at a local store, as there are 3 layers of management between the people who set the policy, and those who carry it out.
Actually, they are pushing BBFB - Best Buy for Business, though I am constantly suprised that any business would trust BB to do an consulting level task... There are apparently positions and clients for server deployment, Exchange migration and such from the Geek Squad. Scary if you ask me.
As far as I know, (as an in store tech) we are not allowed to even recommend products we don't sell, so I don't get how that works - we don't sell Exchange for instance. That said, I just ignore the dictums.
What's interesting is that at the Geek Squad, they are leery to let me work on hardware at all, just want me to do paperwork, while at the local Ivy League college where I work for one of the labs doing desktop support, I'm one of the Windows go to guys for deployment and strategic planning (well - out of 3 so not that amazing I guess). Best Buy believes that the A+ is more important than experiance, time spent keeping up with tech info or a 4 year degree in Info Systems (you know, IT service tech stuff). Whatever.
So... don't use RFID for the bracelet whatever, use something that works as a deadman's switch. You let go/the ring not touching the gun, and it doesn't fire. That seems as good as it can get, but I don't know if we can actually make something like this right now practically.
How unlimited is virtually unlimited? I have about a terabyte of data, plus system drive images. If I have all the time in the world, and set these to upload, will I be considered an abuser? Do they have any limits on transfers either way?
Well, except you don't get offsite storage there. That's the main benefit over convienience in setting it up. For most users, to pay you to set up such a solution, maintain it, and buy the hardware would be well over the cost of some of the online services.
I particularily like Streamload's no cost storage/upload and pay for download system for backups. You get 25 GB free, or for a basic account at $5 a month, you get unlimited storage and access anywhere for 2GB decimal of that. If disaster strikes, for one month you pay a higher transfer fee, and then drop back to the maintanence account.
there is no productivity loss associated with staying with IE in the minds of most people. Most of this I see and agree with, but htis I'm not so sure. IE7 looks pretty different from IE6. It sounds like it might work kind of differnet too - tabs being the least difference.
And MS is doing this with *all* of their new products. The screenshots of Vista look as different from Windows Classic as KDE4 does.
Word 12 looks as different from Word 2003 as EMACS does.
This probably will mitigate the no retraining needed mantra - though probably won't get anyone off of MS because no one ever got fired for buying MS. And if you just buy MS, while there's a retraining cost, there's no evaulation cost to compare alternatives.
Of course MS is still haunted by the people who (rightly) will figure they can just stay where they are and be fine.
I disagree that MS should provide alt browsers. But the OEM's ought to - they are creating the Windows "distro's" if you will, and they haven't been doing much, if any, value add in years (except perhaps Sony). That said, with PCs averaging $800 at your local consumer electronics stores, there isn't enough money coming in to pay for licenses for much beyond Windows or stuff they can get for free. And the problem with that is if they stick it on there, they have to support it.
All that said, there are some premium bundles for say laptops that the stores are putting together like Gateways with full Norton + Spysweeper installed w/ 1 year subscription as opposed to 60 day trials. This could go further - Office or OpenOffice, etc.
And the ISPs ought to at least provide a browser on those useless discs they distribute.
What I find amazing is that people are willing to (every few months) pay now $199 @ Geek Squad or whatever a local tech charges (you aren't billing enough lol) to deal with this, rather than learning how to avoid the problem.
Even the masses with IE could pay $159 ONCE to GeekSquad for an "In Home Training" where they show them how to lock down IE or help them migrate to FireFox or Opera, and give them some basic "don't use Kazaa, don't download 'free' screensavers" which would likely prevent ~80% or more of infections (assuming the people DO learn and follow the recommendations).
Mostly that no one really knows what IE's rendering *is* except Microsoft. I suppose if they documented it and stuck to that document in future revisions or updated it, other browsers could target compatibility.
The other aspect is many websites do dumb things like script exclusions - they don't check for actual feature compatibility, or just let it go, they look for a name, and if they don't know the name of the UA, they block it. Worse, they may send code to IE that works in FF and Opera equally well, but when they see FF or Opera, they send broken code that wouldn't work in IE.
I regularily see people complain about loading time. Now I don't use FireFox on a daily basis, and where I do use it, it's v1.0.7 with no extensions, but a) it takes about 5 seconds to load, a negligable difference to IE (under 2 seconds either way - what? 2 seconds makes a difference?) b) Why is it loading more than once a day? Does it crash that much?
Opening a new tab is instant as far as I know - or again, near enough.
What's most amusing about this is that Opera has the same feature sort of problems. For years there'd be people complaining about memory use till FF started doing the same caching in memory. Then it suddenly dried up as most people came to understand the "memory leak" was actually memory cache, and disabling that reduced memory use but hurt back/forward performance.
Opera loves it some memory cache, on my 1GB box with memory cache set to auto it will eat 350MB virtual memory without a problem. Of course, then modern memory management comes into play.
Isn't this basically what ESX Server from VMWare is? Or really anything that uses high performance virtulization?
The big problem is for this to take off, MS could not continue their current licensing scheme - they'd basically need to include a license for (all? or a few recent) past OS releases along with the current one, at least for the virtualized versions. If I had to buy Vista @ $450 *and* XP @ $200 *and* 98SE @ $80 or whatever MS might charge separately to run legacy apps, I wouldn't do it.
I'm sorry, but War on Terror is an abstract idea, same as the war on drugs. A War on Al Queda gives you some sort of endgame, but a war on terror, or even the actually tangible terrorists is unwiniable. It's the same as the war on Pirates - there's many different groups spread out geographically with far different operational designs.
Wars without a defined endgame should not be allowed, or I at least want no part in them.
Terrorists aren't that different from Drug cartels, hell some claim several terrorist groups *are* drug cartels. And just like with drug cartels, you can take down a leader, destroy a particular groups HQ and the like, but there are 50 more where that came from.
In all three situations, traditional applications of force has from practically zero to negative effect. The best you can do is try and change the environment to limit the amount of the "bad" thing, be it drug use, piracy, or terrorism.
Education and legalization (specifically taxes associated with that) worked well with tabacco, and might have similar effects on other drugs - what we're doing now isn't working, and didn't work last time with prohibition.
Giving consumers what they wanted (digital downloads, a la cart purchasing, non-invasive DRM and ease of use) has caused iTMS to skyrocket, not to mention other digital services where companies get paid also are doing well. The release of TV episodes is also doing well.
Terrorism seems to be a mix of true fundamentalists who we likely can't do anything about and bad conditions in the middle east that breeds new recruits. We can't convince bin Laden we aren't Satan, but we might be able to convince some younger countrymen if we chage our outside face. That said, the past 3 years have consistently made relations worse with even traditional allies, so we've got lots of ground to make up to get back to the starting point, forget about much progress.
Traditional force has never worked against "terrorists". The Nazi's couldn't stomp out the French resistance. We lost Vietnam against a similar enemy tactic. The Soviets lost in Afganistan. The Isralies haven't had much luck with the Palistinians. And Iraq isn't going any better for us.
All that said, history seems to indicate we will continue pumping money into a method that hasn't worked before, isn't working now, and most people don't think will work in the future. Probably because it's better to be seen doing something and failing then to not do anything in politics.
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What's interesting is I feel the same way about FireFox's tab management. That said, being different isn't being worse. I do wish there was a way to get either to behave like the other, but I guess on either side it would be re designing much of the low level tab code.
What's interesting is Opera's fit to width and tiling pages. Better than thumbnails IMHO.
I'm an Opera devotee, and I'm amazed - usually printing is one of Opera's weaker areas.
What's wrong with getright? I personally prefer it as my download manager.
I still think an hourly rate is more fair for everybody, assuming you are able to give decent estimates as to the time it might take to fix something.
Look, at the Geek Squad, 70%+ of the people are paying $200 for a hour's fix to offset the few who take 10+ hrs to fix.
Mechanics do ok with an hourly rate, and I don't really see why it ought to be much different for computer work.
Then the people who need a sound driver installed pay for 30 minutes of work, while the people who need massive spyware fixes pay for that work.
Nope - over 18 with a clean driving record is all that's needed. The sole DA in my store is 19.
Yeah, but you all assume there is some motivation to do this. Look, at Best Buy, you don't get commission. So, you get your $8 an hour if you spend time helping customers, or spend time chatting with other workers. Guess which they'd rather do?
And, they only make money on Cables and the like anyway, so who cares if you buy the PC there?
Interestingly enough - the PCs the Geek Squad uses for running inventory/service order tracking and point of sale transactions all run NT4.
Yea, I was going to ask why he would use the OS install from the OEM. Even working where I do (with the fun of NT4 Server, and no Active Directory yet - maybe this year) we have a ghost image that will restore to damn near anything and be ready to go with a driver pack (that can be made from the OEM install w/ our licenses of Driver Genius 2006) in like 30 minutes while reading /.
First of all, I work in the Geek Squad. The problem with the above method is the price GS charges for that. They'd charge $99 for 9.4GB data backup, and $129 to reload windows + basic software. Plus likely $69 for a hardware diagnostic. VS $199 to try and fix the base install, including up to an OS reload if necessary. So most people won't pay more for a reload + backup.
Now, the other thing is that GS from the top says DON'T RESTORE! IDK why, seems like a waste in some situations.
Thirdly, there is a set SOP for what is now the Advanced Computer Diagnostic and Repair (virus removal). It includes 3 command line virus scans from a PE environment, a scan with Ad-Aware, CounterSpy, Ewido, SpySweeper in safe mode and Hijack This scans, KazaaBeGone, CWShredder etc. A final Spysweeper scan is used to verify cleanness.
So it's not supposed to be a quick process or a glance at it and eh...
Do lots of automated scans, registry fixers and the like fix a major infection... Sometimes. Not always, and here's where a restore is appropriate.
As always, even if something is SOP, YMMV at a local store, as there are 3 layers of management between the people who set the policy, and those who carry it out.
Actually, they are pushing BBFB - Best Buy for Business, though I am constantly suprised that any business would trust BB to do an consulting level task... There are apparently positions and clients for server deployment, Exchange migration and such from the Geek Squad. Scary if you ask me.
As far as I know, (as an in store tech) we are not allowed to even recommend products we don't sell, so I don't get how that works - we don't sell Exchange for instance. That said, I just ignore the dictums.
What's interesting is that at the Geek Squad, they are leery to let me work on hardware at all, just want me to do paperwork, while at the local Ivy League college where I work for one of the labs doing desktop support, I'm one of the Windows go to guys for deployment and strategic planning (well - out of 3 so not that amazing I guess). Best Buy believes that the A+ is more important than experiance, time spent keeping up with tech info or a 4 year degree in Info Systems (you know, IT service tech stuff). Whatever.
So... don't use RFID for the bracelet whatever, use something that works as a deadman's switch. You let go/the ring not touching the gun, and it doesn't fire. That seems as good as it can get, but I don't know if we can actually make something like this right now practically.
How unlimited is virtually unlimited? I have about a terabyte of data, plus system drive images. If I have all the time in the world, and set these to upload, will I be considered an abuser? Do they have any limits on transfers either way?
Well, except you don't get offsite storage there. That's the main benefit over convienience in setting it up. For most users, to pay you to set up such a solution, maintain it, and buy the hardware would be well over the cost of some of the online services.
I particularily like Streamload's no cost storage/upload and pay for download system for backups. You get 25 GB free, or for a basic account at $5 a month, you get unlimited storage and access anywhere for 2GB decimal of that. If disaster strikes, for one month you pay a higher transfer fee, and then drop back to the maintanence account.
there is no productivity loss associated with staying with IE in the minds of most people.
Most of this I see and agree with, but htis I'm not so sure. IE7 looks pretty different from IE6. It sounds like it might work kind of differnet too - tabs being the least difference.
And MS is doing this with *all* of their new products. The screenshots of Vista look as different from Windows Classic as KDE4 does.
Word 12 looks as different from Word 2003 as EMACS does.
This probably will mitigate the no retraining needed mantra - though probably won't get anyone off of MS because no one ever got fired for buying MS. And if you just buy MS, while there's a retraining cost, there's no evaulation cost to compare alternatives.
Of course MS is still haunted by the people who (rightly) will figure they can just stay where they are and be fine.
I disagree that MS should provide alt browsers. But the OEM's ought to - they are creating the Windows "distro's" if you will, and they haven't been doing much, if any, value add in years (except perhaps Sony). That said, with PCs averaging $800 at your local consumer electronics stores, there isn't enough money coming in to pay for licenses for much beyond Windows or stuff they can get for free. And the problem with that is if they stick it on there, they have to support it.
All that said, there are some premium bundles for say laptops that the stores are putting together like Gateways with full Norton + Spysweeper installed w/ 1 year subscription as opposed to 60 day trials. This could go further - Office or OpenOffice, etc.
And the ISPs ought to at least provide a browser on those useless discs they distribute.
What I find amazing is that people are willing to (every few months) pay now $199 @ Geek Squad or whatever a local tech charges (you aren't billing enough lol) to deal with this, rather than learning how to avoid the problem.
Even the masses with IE could pay $159 ONCE to GeekSquad for an "In Home Training" where they show them how to lock down IE or help them migrate to FireFox or Opera, and give them some basic "don't use Kazaa, don't download 'free' screensavers" which would likely prevent ~80% or more of infections (assuming the people DO learn and follow the recommendations).
Mostly that no one really knows what IE's rendering *is* except Microsoft. I suppose if they documented it and stuck to that document in future revisions or updated it, other browsers could target compatibility.
The other aspect is many websites do dumb things like script exclusions - they don't check for actual feature compatibility, or just let it go, they look for a name, and if they don't know the name of the UA, they block it. Worse, they may send code to IE that works in FF and Opera equally well, but when they see FF or Opera, they send broken code that wouldn't work in IE.
I regularily see people complain about loading time. Now I don't use FireFox on a daily basis, and where I do use it, it's v1.0.7 with no extensions, but
a) it takes about 5 seconds to load, a negligable difference to IE (under 2 seconds either way - what? 2 seconds makes a difference?)
b) Why is it loading more than once a day? Does it crash that much?
Opening a new tab is instant as far as I know - or again, near enough.
What's most amusing about this is that Opera has the same feature sort of problems. For years there'd be people complaining about memory use till FF started doing the same caching in memory. Then it suddenly dried up as most people came to understand the "memory leak" was actually memory cache, and disabling that reduced memory use but hurt back/forward performance.
Opera loves it some memory cache, on my 1GB box with memory cache set to auto it will eat 350MB virtual memory without a problem. Of course, then modern memory management comes into play.
Run on windows?
Isn't this basically what ESX Server from VMWare is? Or really anything that uses high performance virtulization?
The big problem is for this to take off, MS could not continue their current licensing scheme - they'd basically need to include a license for (all? or a few recent) past OS releases along with the current one, at least for the virtualized versions. If I had to buy Vista @ $450 *and* XP @ $200 *and* 98SE @ $80 or whatever MS might charge separately to run legacy apps, I wouldn't do it.
I'm sorry, but War on Terror is an abstract idea, same as the war on drugs. A War on Al Queda gives you some sort of endgame, but a war on terror, or even the actually tangible terrorists is unwiniable. It's the same as the war on Pirates - there's many different groups spread out geographically with far different operational designs.
Wars without a defined endgame should not be allowed, or I at least want no part in them.
Terrorists aren't that different from Drug cartels, hell some claim several terrorist groups *are* drug cartels. And just like with drug cartels, you can take down a leader, destroy a particular groups HQ and the like, but there are 50 more where that came from.
In all three situations, traditional applications of force has from practically zero to negative effect. The best you can do is try and change the environment to limit the amount of the "bad" thing, be it drug use, piracy, or terrorism.
Education and legalization (specifically taxes associated with that) worked well with tabacco, and might have similar effects on other drugs - what we're doing now isn't working, and didn't work last time with prohibition.
Giving consumers what they wanted (digital downloads, a la cart purchasing, non-invasive DRM and ease of use) has caused iTMS to skyrocket, not to mention other digital services where companies get paid also are doing well. The release of TV episodes is also doing well.
Terrorism seems to be a mix of true fundamentalists who we likely can't do anything about and bad conditions in the middle east that breeds new recruits. We can't convince bin Laden we aren't Satan, but we might be able to convince some younger countrymen if we chage our outside face. That said, the past 3 years have consistently made relations worse with even traditional allies, so we've got lots of ground to make up to get back to the starting point, forget about much progress.
Traditional force has never worked against "terrorists". The Nazi's couldn't stomp out the French resistance. We lost Vietnam against a similar enemy tactic. The Soviets lost in Afganistan. The Isralies haven't had much luck with the Palistinians. And Iraq isn't going any better for us.
All that said, history seems to indicate we will continue pumping money into a method that hasn't worked before, isn't working now, and most people don't think will work in the future. Probably because it's better to be seen doing something and failing then to not do anything in politics.
There is a way to uninstall it. http://www.u3.com/uninstall/
Just a question, are you using a native windows skin that uses the windows widgets, or a skin that utilizes QT?