While the OP used the geek spelling of the term... The sentiment is good (so is the song) and what most thouhgtfull, intelligent people say when ordered to do something stupid or in violation of thier beliefs.
As someone else pointed out, this is a lot like DARE, only the consequences are much less severe (I'd rather be sued than have a drug habit). I was in the first class of DARE in MN, and let me tell you, _many_ of us learned what and how to use from the program. Maybe we used more responsibly, but we certainly did try a bunch of things, many of which we learned from.... yup.
That's where this program is going. Kids who didn't know about or didn't understand file sharing will have the knowledge to give it a try. Maybe they'll be more responsible and go buy albums from artists they like, but they're sure not going to be discouraged from song swapping.
The real issue can be summed by a different RATM lyric: 'Yes I know my enimies, they're the TEACHERS who taught me to fight me, Compromise, conformity, assimilation, SUBMISSION, IGNORANCE, HYPOCRISY, brutality, the elite All of which are american dreams." (emph mine, the whole thing is really shouting;-)
Corporations advertising to kids in school is bad enough, pushing thier agenda in schools to build consumer robots is ridiculous. They get enough propaganda from being raised by TV.
You are 100% correct, but maybe your friend also keeps in mind that even if MS did *try* to do searches on personal email the only results returned would be for MS advertising partners, not actual personal information or anything usefull. Its the Microsoft way!
We do (did) were I work (which is a small company so we get away with lots of stuff). We've go Vinny, Bubba, SonOfBubba, a few more. We found a old baseball card of some guy named Bubba something with a HUGE plug of chew, and taped him to our server.
Its good to laugh a little when you connect to a network share. And you don't have to remember if that folder is on MN04523 or MN04526. Granted, in a large enough institution you will run out of names and/or offend somebody by naming a server butmunch.
I sort of expected an article about people preffering to use thier own PCs and going to lengths to not have to use someone elses or a public terminal.
But, after I RTFA, there seem to more questions than answers. For example, were they Windows PCs? I don't ask just because this is/., but I can see some psych major wanting to use a specific PC because it had never crashed on her/him before, but the one over there _always_ crashes when trying to save a Word doc. There may be a bit of truth to this midnset, I have Windows boxes that crash once in a blue moon, and I some that crash daily, mostly due to what is loaded/running. Or, maybe that psych major just happens to go to the copmuter lab when the sun and moon are aligned just so, and the PCs birthday and the users birthday happens to correspond with the orbit of Jupiter and it IS the magic PC that never crashes.
Or were some people willing to wait so they could use a Mac? I do this all the time. Sure I could write up that documentation at work, but I'd rather go home and do it on my Mac. OK, maybe I'm crazy if I specifically bring work home so I can do it on Mac. Yes, certianly a bit crazy....
Take these two posts, and I think the moral here is that best option is to own whatever German car you can get your hands on.
Seriously, the Germans make some of the highest quality cars around - VW, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, some of the highest quality (and fun!) vehicles available.
yes,... I shamelessly enjoy my BMW. My first one was 230K+ miles before she needed work I couldn't justify getting done (tranny). Sold her to someone who likes to work on cars and she's running still today. I once saw one over 350K miles! Try getting that out of Dodge.
As an American, thanks for the kind words. They apply to Americans too; not everybody else is bad!
Its depressing that many Americans are so xenophobic and US centric that they think everyone else evil or stupid (cough bush cough). It would probably be good for every American student to spend some time studying overseas, learning a different culture and realizing that people are people whether black, yellow, white; Muslim, Jew, Hindu.
Thanks again for the kind words, I at least have some hope that there are people who can look past external differences and get along in a local and global community.
While slightly 'side topic', one point I haven't seen is that, from an economics point of view, sales tax is actually 'better' than income taxes.
Let me explain - income tax is levied on you based on your gross income minus adjustments (401K etc, but they'll get it eventually). You don't get much choice, and the government taxes you without (much) regard to your expenses (someone making the same amount as I, but who has 2 kids probably shouldn't be taxed at about the same rate as I am, with no kids and a BMW).
Enter sales tax. You get to choose. Don't have sales tax on essential items - food, clothing and shelter. Tax non-essential items at a higher rate. You have a choice. If I don't want to pay $5K taxes on a car, I can get a cheaper car, or walk/bus whatever. If I don't what to pay the tax on a new Mac I just don't buy it (well, Mac may be essential).
The point is, with sales tax, if you don't want to pay the tax, don't buy something, with income tax, if you don't want to pay the tax, stop working and start living off the dole.
Y'know, I've thought about that. But I really enjoy my job. Its the people I work for and work with that make it a lot of fun to go to work everyday. We are all on board, we know what sucks and we know how to make it better, so really, we are starting a new company, but we already have customers, paychecks and revenue!
At the same time, there are some major frustrations, we all share them, so some days someone just goes and gets some beer and we talk about how great it will be to get to a solid technological foundation.
Please also don't forget that Wal-Mart also strong arms thier employees, forcing overtime without pay, looking the other way on sexual harassment, and corporate then blames 'a rouge manager', who was following the (unofficial) corporate policy.
I read a NYT article recently about Wal-Mart locking overnight employees in the building to prevent theft. People with serious injuries/illness would wait until a manager got in for fear of losing thier jobs if they used the fire exit, that is if the fire exit wasn't chained shut.
Wal-Mart is an evil company, for killing small towns and making life even shittier for people who are so poorly paid they can barely afford to shop there. (Read _Nickle and Dimed_ for a good overview)
For a minute there I thought we work together. I got excited that we finally got permission to re-write the damn thing from scratch.
I was really let down when you talked about the triggers, you must work somewhere else. That and I have to support SQL Server, Oracle and, _and_ MS Access for a backend database. _Every_ SQL statement is inline, except for all the damn Access query objects.
Other than that, exactly the same. I feel your pain. Maybe we need to start a support group.
I have to agree a bit the parent. I use OO on my windows machines, for work (becuase no one notices), but I bought Office for my Mac because I read that is great. And y'know what - it is. I love Word and Excel in Office X for my Mac (haven't bothered with Entourage and, PP...ugh). I take extra steps to make Word and Excel files available to me on my personal Mac because, damn its nice.
I love OO too. I made my wife use it on her laptop. There was a bit of a learning curve, but not too bad. Most of the things she had questions about were unusual formatting issues or special footers or something. We learned together. What got her is that she could send her resume to PDF without a second thought, or a license. Yet, if I had my way, I'd get her a Mac with Office X, cut down a few questions, and DAMN is it nice to use. (and to get her off windows because she keeps downloading these fscking screensavers...)
In sum, MS Office XP, sucks; MS Office X on Mac, very, very nice.
The thing we should all keep in mind is that advertising/marketing and technology are _totally_ different. That said, anyone who has been paying any attention for a portion of thier lives will know that advertising is just that, and no part of it can be considered true, in a factual sense.
I'm suprised Apple was even reprimanded for this. If I recall my marketing classes of old, many statements like this are considered acceptable because people _know_ that a product is being pushed and and the ads are trying, by hook or by crook, to get you to buy it. Most people know that 'World's fastest/biggest/most popular' are just fluff.
No doubt - and how about the kid in the same aisle as me at Wal-Mart when I say to my wife 'Shit hon, they're out of my fucking shampoo again'?
Or what about when the kid walks past the teacher's lounge and hears 'Those fucking cretin 3rd graders, they should have thier asses kicked'.
Kids are going to need to need to a get a thick skin sometime, why try to make 'em wait until college. Why not just tell them 'I fucked your mom's brains out, then 9 nine months later you were born'? Matbe the kid will think 'geez, if I fuck this chick's brains out I might end up with a kid'.
The thing is that some people don't want to ask a friend or a friend of a friend to fix it. They feel guilty/ashamed to ask for help. They like the idea that they can call someone up, and pay for the service, rather than ask a friend to do it for free (we all bitch about this).
With 1+ computers in many people's houses it is a great opportunity for some people to make a buck helping them out. I mean, everyone wins - the boxen get cleaned of tojans and such and one of us nerds makes some money. In this economy it seems like a nice niche. It may be becoming a commidity, but at least there would be fewer open boxes if more home users _hired_ a geek to help them with thier box sometimes.
I think the point is that the software is on the shelf at Sam's Club. The market is not for Web/tech savy types like you and I, its being targeted at the average user. So, here some guy goes to Sam's for a 10lb. bag of Gummi Bears and sees this software as he walks by, thinking, 'man, that jackass neighbor pissed me off, now I can get dirt on him.'
While you and I might be fine with paying for a service on the Web, lots of people don't get it, they want a box, a manual, tangible items that they can hold. For example, I bought a Powerbook recently. I wanted the iMac service for a bit of extra online storage and it seemed convenient. Y'know what, they gave me a BOX with an activation code inside (ok, iSync too, which I could've downloaded). But, for the market Apple is after, giving them the box makes all the difference. the sales guy holds up the box and says 'Do you want iMac too?' and the regular guys says 'Well, it comes in a box it must BE something.'
Just becuase the resources are already out there doesn't make this software/article meaningless.
Wow, you should pull your head out of your ass, or make your jokes less oblique. I don't even know where to begin, other than to assume that you are serious.
First, one of the few things the government is actually good at is protecting you, the little guy, from abuse by big corporations. The gov is not always great at it, but we DO have things like the EPA and OSHA, that are at least intended to protect us from evil corporations.
Second, why should the US governmnet run around policing the rest of the world? Why should the US government spend more on the war in Iraq than on all sorts of domestic issues. I can't find a nice summary of the numbers right now, but it is appalling. we also must be diligent in ensuring our rights are not imposed on by companies or the government.
But, if your comment wasn't a joke, then I gues you think the Patriot Act is a good idea and that Shrub is the best pres. ever. I don't care if you're a super conservative, at least think about what these sorts of things could mean to your life.
If no one considered the consequences of this sort of thing we would wake up one morning and think 1984 is an accurate description of our daily lives.
Slashdot Mirror
You would be SO screwed if you rearranged your room. Moving could be a disaster too.
;-)
Good practical joke for one of your friends though.
While the OP used the geek spelling of the term...
;-)
The sentiment is good (so is the song) and what most thouhgtfull, intelligent people say when ordered to do something stupid or in violation of thier beliefs.
As someone else pointed out, this is a lot like DARE, only the consequences are much less severe (I'd rather be sued than have a drug habit). I was in the first class of DARE in MN, and let me tell you, _many_ of us learned what and how to use from the program. Maybe we used more responsibly, but we certainly did try a bunch of things, many of which we learned from.... yup.
That's where this program is going. Kids who didn't know about or didn't understand file sharing will have the knowledge to give it a try. Maybe they'll be more responsible and go buy albums from artists they like, but they're sure not going to be discouraged from song swapping.
The real issue can be summed by a different RATM lyric:
'Yes I know my enimies, they're the TEACHERS who taught me to fight me,
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, SUBMISSION,
IGNORANCE, HYPOCRISY, brutality, the elite
All of which are american dreams." (emph mine, the whole thing is really shouting
Corporations advertising to kids in school is bad enough, pushing thier agenda in schools to build consumer robots is ridiculous. They get enough propaganda from being raised by TV.
You are 100% correct, but maybe your friend also keeps in mind that even if MS did *try* to do searches on personal email the only results returned would be for MS advertising partners, not actual personal information or anything usefull. Its the Microsoft way!
We do (did) were I work (which is a small company so we get away with lots of stuff). We've go Vinny, Bubba, SonOfBubba, a few more. We found a old baseball card of some guy named Bubba something with a HUGE plug of chew, and taped him to our server.
Its good to laugh a little when you connect to a network share. And you don't have to remember if that folder is on MN04523 or MN04526. Granted, in a large enough institution you will run out of names and/or offend somebody by naming a server butmunch.
I sort of expected an article about people preffering to use thier own PCs and going to lengths to not have to use someone elses or a public terminal.
/., but I can see some psych major wanting to use a specific PC because it had never crashed on her/him before, but the one over there _always_ crashes when trying to save a Word doc. There may be a bit of truth to this midnset, I have Windows boxes that crash once in a blue moon, and I some that crash daily, mostly due to what is loaded/running. Or, maybe that psych major just happens to go to the copmuter lab when the sun and moon are aligned just so, and the PCs birthday and the users birthday happens to correspond with the orbit of Jupiter and it IS the magic PC that never crashes.
But, after I RTFA, there seem to more questions than answers. For example, were they Windows PCs? I don't ask just because this is
Or were some people willing to wait so they could use a Mac? I do this all the time. Sure I could write up that documentation at work, but I'd rather go home and do it on my Mac. OK, maybe I'm crazy if I specifically bring work home so I can do it on Mac. Yes, certianly a bit crazy....
Take these two posts, and I think the moral here is that best option is to own whatever German car you can get your hands on.
... I shamelessly enjoy my BMW. My first one was 230K+ miles before she needed work I couldn't justify getting done (tranny). Sold her to someone who likes to work on cars and she's running still today. I once saw one over 350K miles! Try getting that out of Dodge.
Seriously, the Germans make some of the highest quality cars around - VW, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, some of the highest quality (and fun!) vehicles available.
yes,
Best comment ever....
I almost blew Bass Ale out my nose!
Really, that was just f-ing funny.
I just don't want to think about Clippy popping up to 'help' me something........
As an American, thanks for the kind words. They apply to Americans too; not everybody else is bad!
Its depressing that many Americans are so xenophobic and US centric that they think everyone else evil or stupid (cough bush cough). It would probably be good for every American student to spend some time studying overseas, learning a different culture and realizing that people are people whether black, yellow, white; Muslim, Jew, Hindu.
Thanks again for the kind words, I at least have some hope that there are people who can look past external differences and get along in a local and global community.
I don't need a bright blue blast visually screaming "HEY! YOU! EVERYTHING'S OK! I'M STILL ON!" all day long.
The article was worth it because this line reminded me of Homer's Everything's OK Alarm:
BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEP, IT WILL KEEP GOING, BEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, EVERY 5 SECONDS, BEEEEEEEP, BEEEEEEEP, UNLESS EVERYTHING'S NOT OK, BEEEEEEEP.
Now I'm going to spend all day searching through Simpsons tapes trying to find that episode.
At any rate, hasn't this guy heard of duct tape?
While slightly 'side topic', one point I haven't seen is that, from an economics point of view, sales tax is actually 'better' than income taxes.
Let me explain - income tax is levied on you based on your gross income minus adjustments (401K etc, but they'll get it eventually). You don't get much choice, and the government taxes you without (much) regard to your expenses (someone making the same amount as I, but who has 2 kids probably shouldn't be taxed at about the same rate as I am, with no kids and a BMW).
Enter sales tax. You get to choose. Don't have sales tax on essential items - food, clothing and shelter. Tax non-essential items at a higher rate. You have a choice. If I don't want to pay $5K taxes on a car, I can get a cheaper car, or walk/bus whatever. If I don't what to pay the tax on a new Mac I just don't buy it (well, Mac may be essential).
The point is, with sales tax, if you don't want to pay the tax, don't buy something, with income tax, if you don't want to pay the tax, stop working and start living off the dole.
BK
Unless you're planning on a five-finger discount on the Windows license
Did you think Windows is _worth_ paying for? If you do, I know a guy who will sell you a copy for a bag of Cheetohs.
Y'know, I've thought about that. But I really enjoy my job. Its the people I work for and work with that make it a lot of fun to go to work everyday. We are all on board, we know what sucks and we know how to make it better, so really, we are starting a new company, but we already have customers, paychecks and revenue!
At the same time, there are some major frustrations, we all share them, so some days someone just goes and gets some beer and we talk about how great it will be to get to a solid technological foundation.
Please also don't forget that Wal-Mart also strong arms thier employees, forcing overtime without pay, looking the other way on sexual harassment, and corporate then blames 'a rouge manager', who was following the (unofficial) corporate policy.
I read a NYT article recently about Wal-Mart locking overnight employees in the building to prevent theft. People with serious injuries/illness would wait until a manager got in for fear of losing thier jobs if they used the fire exit, that is if the fire exit wasn't chained shut.
Wal-Mart is an evil company, for killing small towns and making life even shittier for people who are so poorly paid they can barely afford to shop there. (Read _Nickle and Dimed_ for a good overview)
For a minute there I thought we work together. I got excited that we finally got permission to re-write the damn thing from scratch.
I was really let down when you talked about the triggers, you must work somewhere else. That and I have to support SQL Server, Oracle and, _and_ MS Access for a backend database. _Every_ SQL statement is inline, except for all the damn Access query objects.
Other than that, exactly the same. I feel your pain. Maybe we need to start a support group.
I have to agree a bit the parent. I use OO on my windows machines, for work (becuase no one notices), but I bought Office for my Mac because I read that is great. And y'know what - it is. I love Word and Excel in Office X for my Mac (haven't bothered with Entourage and, PP...ugh). I take extra steps to make Word and Excel files available to me on my personal Mac because, damn its nice.
I love OO too. I made my wife use it on her laptop. There was a bit of a learning curve, but not too bad. Most of the things she had questions about were unusual formatting issues or special footers or something. We learned together. What got her is that she could send her resume to PDF without a second thought, or a license. Yet, if I had my way, I'd get her a Mac with Office X, cut down a few questions, and DAMN is it nice to use. (and to get her off windows because she keeps downloading these fscking screensavers...)
In sum, MS Office XP, sucks; MS Office X on Mac, very, very nice.
I am _not_ going to defile my Mac with Real. Not for pr0n, not for science, not for anything.
Anyone have a link to a format that doesn't suck? Or do I have to bother booting a Windows box.
The thing we should all keep in mind is that advertising/marketing and technology are _totally_ different. That said, anyone who has been paying any attention for a portion of thier lives will know that advertising is just that, and no part of it can be considered true, in a factual sense.
I'm suprised Apple was even reprimanded for this. If I recall my marketing classes of old, many statements like this are considered acceptable because people _know_ that a product is being pushed and and the ads are trying, by hook or by crook, to get you to buy it. Most people know that 'World's fastest/biggest/most popular' are just fluff.
No doubt - and how about the kid in the same aisle as me at Wal-Mart when I say to my wife 'Shit hon, they're out of my fucking shampoo again'?
Or what about when the kid walks past the teacher's lounge and hears 'Those fucking cretin 3rd graders, they should have thier asses kicked'.
Kids are going to need to need to a get a thick skin sometime, why try to make 'em wait until college. Why not just tell them 'I fucked your mom's brains out, then 9 nine months later you were born'? Matbe the kid will think 'geez, if I fuck this chick's brains out I might end up with a kid'.
--
The Christian Right is neither
The thing is that some people don't want to ask a friend or a friend of a friend to fix it. They feel guilty/ashamed to ask for help. They like the idea that they can call someone up, and pay for the service, rather than ask a friend to do it for free (we all bitch about this).
With 1+ computers in many people's houses it is a great opportunity for some people to make a buck helping them out. I mean, everyone wins - the boxen get cleaned of tojans and such and one of us nerds makes some money. In this economy it seems like a nice niche. It may be becoming a commidity, but at least there would be fewer open boxes if more home users _hired_ a geek to help them with thier box sometimes.
Um.... its also mentioned in TFA.
Duh..Only convicted felons would use software that doesn't cost money, so Darl convicted them!
I think the point is that the software is on the shelf at Sam's Club. The market is not for Web/tech savy types like you and I, its being targeted at the average user. So, here some guy goes to Sam's for a 10lb. bag of Gummi Bears and sees this software as he walks by, thinking, 'man, that jackass neighbor pissed me off, now I can get dirt on him.'
While you and I might be fine with paying for a service on the Web, lots of people don't get it, they want a box, a manual, tangible items that they can hold. For example, I bought a Powerbook recently. I wanted the iMac service for a bit of extra online storage and it seemed convenient. Y'know what, they gave me a BOX with an activation code inside (ok, iSync too, which I could've downloaded). But, for the market Apple is after, giving them the box makes all the difference. the sales guy holds up the box and says 'Do you want iMac too?' and the regular guys says 'Well, it comes in a box it must BE something.'
Just becuase the resources are already out there doesn't make this software/article meaningless.
Wow, you should pull your head out of your ass, or make your jokes less oblique. I don't even know where to begin, other than to assume that you are serious.
First, one of the few things the government is actually good at is protecting you, the little guy, from abuse by big corporations. The gov is not always great at it, but we DO have things like the EPA and OSHA, that are at least intended to protect us from evil corporations.
Second, why should the US governmnet run around policing the rest of the world? Why should the US government spend more on the war in Iraq than on all sorts of domestic issues. I can't find a nice summary of the numbers right now, but it is appalling. we also must be diligent in ensuring our rights are not imposed on by companies or the government.
But, if your comment wasn't a joke, then I gues you think the Patriot Act is a good idea and that Shrub is the best pres. ever. I don't care if you're a super conservative, at least think about what these sorts of things could mean to your life.
If no one considered the consequences of this sort of thing we would wake up one morning and think 1984 is an accurate description of our daily lives.
Ob Office Space:
"Lawernce, what would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"Two chicks at the same time"
You are sadly cynical and .... right.
Keep speaking, thinking, and vote for whoever wants to kill the fewest people.