This is no different then the manufactoring jobs that went to Mexico, or the auto factory jobs that robots replaced, or the tobacco farmers that have to grow grapes now to make a living.
I live in rural North Carolina and I have seen this long before the outsourcing of IT jobs with the textile mills and the farmers who are going bankrupt. I agree that this sucks for the people who lose their jobs.
The big picture is that because of this overall outsourcing of jobs, each and everyone of us can go to Walmart and buy whatever we want for a cheap price.
Due to the constant pressure on companies to not only make it better, but make it cheaper, companies are always looking for a cheaper labor source. As my boss says all the time, my company made over 30 Billion last year and my department made exactly 0 dollars of that. So as long as we are an expense, we as an IT industry have to learn to adapt to the ever changing environment. I know it sucks, but it's a fact of life....I see it all the time with the textile ghost towns in my backyard.
Blah Blah...microsoft sucks...blah blah...unix rules...blah blah...I can't believe that there are all these holes...whawhawha...my MAC kicks ass...doogity doogity doogity....I blow Bill Gates. Please troll this article, admins disable my account. I am removing/. from my bookmarks.
I come to this site for the newest news in the tech world. If I wanted MS bashing everyday I would bookmark microsoftsucks.com.
I use MS products (all of them) everyday. I prefer them over Mozilla (You're famed Java 1.4.2 doesn't work right with the version I have), Opera, OpenOffice, OS X, Redhat, etc etc. I have used them all and I honestly have not found a version of a free product that I like better other then dvdshrink.
Call me stupid, flame me, whatever. But in my 10 years of computing, I have never had a virus, never been infected by a worm, and other then the travesty that was ME I would give MS a rating 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Now granted, I am sure that if you are still reading this post, your finger is moving towards troll me, or you are getting ready to post the biggest FREE software movement reply to rebute everything I have said so far, but I tell you from experience that nothing you can say can change me.
I installed Redhat at home, it's ok, not bad, certainly great for free, but I don't use it. I like XP, I am used to XP, and overall I admin my network here at work and at home well and enjoy it. I don't think of hanging myself everyday or picture myself jumping out this second story window because of it.
The fact is I dislike listening to the crap everyday on here, more then I mind turning on automatic updates. Flame me, troll me, kill me. Goodbye/. world, may Apple and Linux consume us all.
You have to remember that sysadmins and support professions only have one purpose...which is to put ourselves out of a job. The goal ultimately is to have no issues that need our attention. That's why we fix so many. Thankfully, companies continue to produce software that need our attention. Thank you Microsoft, Novell, IBM Talisma.
This argument may be just as unsolvable as which came first?....the chicken or the egg. Or what does it take to win in NASCAR a good driver or a good car...or (GASP) which is a better OS...OS X or Windows XP!!!....
We actually don't have a competent admin, but a team of competent admins and a full time Microsoft Employeed Engineer onsite all of the time. We also run about 10 mail servers all in redundancy. No it's not HP. We do not allow users to gain VPN access from non corporate machines. We also don't allow users to connect outside PCs to the network here at the office.
If they need VPN, their desktop is replaced with a laptop that has the standard corporate image on it. Their pst is kept on their laptop and they are encouraged, but not required, to run a batch file on their desktop that copies all data of importance to their home drive. We leave the responsibility of the user's data in the user's hands. It is their duty to make sure that they keep anything of importance whether in electronic format or printed.
My point is that if the city government would do the same thing, they wouldn't have this issue.
Got to argue against you here. PIII 500mhz, running Windows 2000 Server at home as we speak. Got 4 40 gig drives in it and it supports all of my ftp needs.
I would have to disagree with you. Apple tends to innovate to the techno-conscience of us in the world. While MS tends to build to the dumber parts society or the comman man so to speak. Most people are happy having everything integrated into one thing. I know plenty of end users who love clippy and keep him turned on at all times.
I think it's safe to say that as far as Windows goes, XP is my favorite. Sure I hate the integrated firewall and I am the first to turn of MDM and about 10 other worthless services. The first thing I do when I install Office, after the updating, is disable the assistant and turn off the damn startup pane.
This is because I know better though. When you dumb yourself down to the 60 year old computer illiterates of the world, or the people who know just enough to get email, type a letter, and check the weather and sports scores. I think Microsoft does what it needs to do to own 95% of the market share.
Apple has the developer and the super user innovation that keeps it fun and interesting and cool.
Think of it like this, we have shoe repairmen in this world not because shoes are overly expensive or hard to get. We get our shoes repaired because they are comfortable and because we as humans do not like change. We fight it, and stay with what we are used to. This is the same reason why MS had to continue support of 98. Because many people still USE it!
My point (it's in here somewhere I promise) is that MS isn't an innovator because it doesn't have to be. As long as people are running 98 in 2008 that is reason enough not too.
Since nothing new came out in the news today that/. could use to bash MS. They decided to repost this story from last week. Just in case anyone out there forgot how bad Billy and the Windows team was over the weekend, remove your beer goggles and realize!
A personal folder isn't just for "personal" messages. I am talking about a Personal Folder. As in a *.pst file. As in a place, where you can store messages in an archived format in a file that Outlook treats like that file cabinet that can be saved locally on hard disk and backed up to the server at the end users leisure.
Any of these so called "important governement documents" shouldn't be stores in an email archive anyway. They should be on a network drive getting backed up.
My point is that a better solution is to put the email storage in the end user's hands. Set file size limits on their accounts and have them move all important mail off of their server mailbox and into a Microsoft PST file...aka Personal folder.
I work for Fortune 50 company, running in an exchange environment and this is the method we use for about 4000 corporate employees. They have 10 MB mailbox limitations that will not allow them to send any email when their account reaches 10 MB. We then shut the accounts off when they reach 50 MB and kick messages back to the sender.
Users who have important email setup Personal folders in Outlook and move messages from their inbox to their PST file. This file is stored locally on laptops (for travel purposes) and on the user's network home drive for desktop PCs.
We run standard incremental backups daily and full backups once a week. The only problem we have with this is that MS's PST files have a 1 gb limitation before they get corrupt so some of the legal and credit employees have three or four personal folders normally sorted by year. So you would have one file for 2004, one for 2003, etc etc. Works for us, has to work for the government.
Any email that is worth keeping should be moved to a personal folder. I don't see how this is any different then putting a 10 MB limit on an account. Definitely not front page material either.
They say there is a fine line between a genius and a lunatic and this man treads that water constantly. It is amazing that someone so successful in technology is so afraid that success is going to be his downfall.
I am no doctor but I would suggest that he seek some therapy on this and other issues in his life. I mean who buys movies based on three books. From what I read in the article, he bought three movie books, and took 600 of the titles that were in all three books and bought them.
I would just suggest that he not point his life in an analytical fashion and realize that fate and good ole advanced decision making can lead to wonderful marvels of life.
I don't want to come across as a troll here, but I really felt sad for the guy as I read that article because I got the feeling that he tries to lead life like he is writing a computer program, instead of going out on a whim every once in awhile. I hope his kids don't pick up on dads habits. Heaven forbid we watch a movie because we like the box art.
If I am going to pay 80 bucks for the Hauppage device, I might as well pay 20 more and get another TIVO. Or for 109 bucks, you can get a refurbished Xbox. Little hacking on it, and you have the perfect media center PC.
I am not discrediting the Hauppage device as it sounds really cool. But for 80 bucks I think I would compare the other devices in this category and find a better alternative. IMO that is.
The large similarity is that you completely own both items so you should be able to decide the who, what, when, where, and how of fixing and breaking them.
First off, you can get the engine light code by doing some magic combination with the console. Like with my Neon, I turn the switch on, off, on, off, on and wait three seconds and my engine light will flash the code....google the code, I know what is wrong
This is common on most vehicles. Just google your manufactor and you will find out the combo for your gas guzzler.
Secondly, the ten year warranty is only power train. Which means if you blow a motor, or rip the trannie out, you are covered with somewhere around a $250 deductable(sp?). Otherwise, that warranty isn't worth the ink it's printed with.
"Dashboard screen to monitor kids in the back seat"....
Whatever happened to just looking in the rear view mirror and trying to beat your kids with one arm while driving with the other...jeez...take all the fun out of it why don't ya...
"there's certainly no incentive for the US Government"
I would utterly disagree. Their incentive is our anger towards the system.
And it wouldn't be impossible. Time comsuming possibly. It would be no different then your work intranet having a gateway to the outside world. This would only be done on a large scale environment. Require that all mail sent through any mail protocol be routed through a proxy server. Not that hard I don't think.
I am not an expert on email. I am would say I am not overly smart. I may be in the top 5% in intelligence if you measure the room I am currently in, but that isn't saying much. This is painfully obvious to me that SPAM is going to be a continued problem unless the government takes over email.
Now I realize I am asking to be flamed on this one, but before you do, let me explain.
Imagine what a crap hole the snail mail system would be if it was unregulated from the start. This is the same problem that is faced in todays society through email because no one realized from day one that it would become the medium it is today.
Now many of you may ask, how would you regulate electronic mail? Simply put, the government could require that all email be routed through server farms that were strategically (sp) placed throughout the country.
Once the mail routes through these servers, the servers could scan the headers and tag valid ones as authenic and SPAM as junk mail. You would have an option to be added to a "Do Not Spam List" and you could complain about any unsolicited email that you receive after being added to this list.
Drawbacks to this system are as follows:
1. Out money pays for it through stamp charge if you will to send email.
2. Privacy concerns over the government having easy access to all email messages in the the country.
My rebuttal to these two concerns are that I may actually get a 100 pieces of email that I want to read a month and I would gladly pay 5 to 10 bucks a month to be able to read them in peace. In addition, I would forfeit a small margin of possible privacy invasion to run these bastards out of town.
Before you kill my karma, I will quote Dennis Miller: that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Karma me to death if you wish, but I don't see how that is easier then one hotmail account that never changes and a decent spam utility. That's IMO only though.
I believe that cars and grocery stores both have those. I was under the impression that the WiFi was ad based. Turns out I was wrong. Stayed tuned because I promise that will happen again.
Slashdot Mirror
I live in rural North Carolina and I have seen this long before the outsourcing of IT jobs with the textile mills and the farmers who are going bankrupt. I agree that this sucks for the people who lose their jobs.
The big picture is that because of this overall outsourcing of jobs, each and everyone of us can go to Walmart and buy whatever we want for a cheap price.
Due to the constant pressure on companies to not only make it better, but make it cheaper, companies are always looking for a cheaper labor source. As my boss says all the time, my company made over 30 Billion last year and my department made exactly 0 dollars of that. So as long as we are an expense, we as an IT industry have to learn to adapt to the ever changing environment. I know it sucks, but it's a fact of life....I see it all the time with the textile ghost towns in my backyard.
they figured out how to get more beers in a case? AH!...well shit....
am not singing my songs loudly and annoying other people. I can have annoying phone conversations. Yippie!
I come to this site for the newest news in the tech world. If I wanted MS bashing everyday I would bookmark microsoftsucks.com.
I use MS products (all of them) everyday. I prefer them over Mozilla (You're famed Java 1.4.2 doesn't work right with the version I have), Opera, OpenOffice, OS X, Redhat, etc etc. I have used them all and I honestly have not found a version of a free product that I like better other then dvdshrink.
Call me stupid, flame me, whatever. But in my 10 years of computing, I have never had a virus, never been infected by a worm, and other then the travesty that was ME I would give MS a rating 4 on a scale of 1 to 5.
Now granted, I am sure that if you are still reading this post, your finger is moving towards troll me, or you are getting ready to post the biggest FREE software movement reply to rebute everything I have said so far, but I tell you from experience that nothing you can say can change me.
I installed Redhat at home, it's ok, not bad, certainly great for free, but I don't use it. I like XP, I am used to XP, and overall I admin my network here at work and at home well and enjoy it. I don't think of hanging myself everyday or picture myself jumping out this second story window because of it.
The fact is I dislike listening to the crap everyday on here, more then I mind turning on automatic updates. Flame me, troll me, kill me. Goodbye /. world, may Apple and Linux consume us all.
You have to remember that sysadmins and support professions only have one purpose...which is to put ourselves out of a job. The goal ultimately is to have no issues that need our attention. That's why we fix so many. Thankfully, companies continue to produce software that need our attention. Thank you Microsoft, Novell, IBM Talisma.
I think I just started something on that one! :)
Netgear engineer, "Stupid hackers....there is no way they will ever figure out we add man onto the end of super...BAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAAAAA!!!!"
In order for me to continue, I need payment in the form one two beaded necklaces and a beaver pelt. Thank you...
I break wind and raise an eyebrow or two...MS buys a dumpster and the eyebrows of the DOJ raise so high they knock their own hats off.
If they need VPN, their desktop is replaced with a laptop that has the standard corporate image on it. Their pst is kept on their laptop and they are encouraged, but not required, to run a batch file on their desktop that copies all data of importance to their home drive. We leave the responsibility of the user's data in the user's hands. It is their duty to make sure that they keep anything of importance whether in electronic format or printed.
My point is that if the city government would do the same thing, they wouldn't have this issue.
Got to argue against you here. PIII 500mhz, running Windows 2000 Server at home as we speak. Got 4 40 gig drives in it and it supports all of my ftp needs.
I think it's safe to say that as far as Windows goes, XP is my favorite. Sure I hate the integrated firewall and I am the first to turn of MDM and about 10 other worthless services. The first thing I do when I install Office, after the updating, is disable the assistant and turn off the damn startup pane.
This is because I know better though. When you dumb yourself down to the 60 year old computer illiterates of the world, or the people who know just enough to get email, type a letter, and check the weather and sports scores. I think Microsoft does what it needs to do to own 95% of the market share.
Apple has the developer and the super user innovation that keeps it fun and interesting and cool.
Think of it like this, we have shoe repairmen in this world not because shoes are overly expensive or hard to get. We get our shoes repaired because they are comfortable and because we as humans do not like change. We fight it, and stay with what we are used to. This is the same reason why MS had to continue support of 98. Because many people still USE it!
My point (it's in here somewhere I promise) is that MS isn't an innovator because it doesn't have to be. As long as people are running 98 in 2008 that is reason enough not too.
Any of these so called "important governement documents" shouldn't be stores in an email archive anyway. They should be on a network drive getting backed up.
My point is that a better solution is to put the email storage in the end user's hands. Set file size limits on their accounts and have them move all important mail off of their server mailbox and into a Microsoft PST file...aka Personal folder.
I work for Fortune 50 company, running in an exchange environment and this is the method we use for about 4000 corporate employees. They have 10 MB mailbox limitations that will not allow them to send any email when their account reaches 10 MB. We then shut the accounts off when they reach 50 MB and kick messages back to the sender.
Users who have important email setup Personal folders in Outlook and move messages from their inbox to their PST file. This file is stored locally on laptops (for travel purposes) and on the user's network home drive for desktop PCs.
We run standard incremental backups daily and full backups once a week. The only problem we have with this is that MS's PST files have a 1 gb limitation before they get corrupt so some of the legal and credit employees have three or four personal folders normally sorted by year. So you would have one file for 2004, one for 2003, etc etc. Works for us, has to work for the government.
Any email that is worth keeping should be moved to a personal folder. I don't see how this is any different then putting a 10 MB limit on an account. Definitely not front page material either.
I am no doctor but I would suggest that he seek some therapy on this and other issues in his life. I mean who buys movies based on three books. From what I read in the article, he bought three movie books, and took 600 of the titles that were in all three books and bought them.
I would just suggest that he not point his life in an analytical fashion and realize that fate and good ole advanced decision making can lead to wonderful marvels of life.
I don't want to come across as a troll here, but I really felt sad for the guy as I read that article because I got the feeling that he tries to lead life like he is writing a computer program, instead of going out on a whim every once in awhile. I hope his kids don't pick up on dads habits. Heaven forbid we watch a movie because we like the box art.
I am not discrediting the Hauppage device as it sounds really cool. But for 80 bucks I think I would compare the other devices in this category and find a better alternative. IMO that is.
The large similarity is that you completely own both items so you should be able to decide the who, what, when, where, and how of fixing and breaking them.
This is common on most vehicles. Just google your manufactor and you will find out the combo for your gas guzzler.
Secondly, the ten year warranty is only power train. Which means if you blow a motor, or rip the trannie out, you are covered with somewhere around a $250 deductable(sp?). Otherwise, that warranty isn't worth the ink it's printed with.
Whatever happened to just looking in the rear view mirror and trying to beat your kids with one arm while driving with the other...jeez...take all the fun out of it why don't ya...
Block all mail coming in from anyone in Chinese.
I would utterly disagree. Their incentive is our anger towards the system.
And it wouldn't be impossible. Time comsuming possibly. It would be no different then your work intranet having a gateway to the outside world. This would only be done on a large scale environment. Require that all mail sent through any mail protocol be routed through a proxy server. Not that hard I don't think.
Now I realize I am asking to be flamed on this one, but before you do, let me explain.
Imagine what a crap hole the snail mail system would be if it was unregulated from the start. This is the same problem that is faced in todays society through email because no one realized from day one that it would become the medium it is today.
Now many of you may ask, how would you regulate electronic mail? Simply put, the government could require that all email be routed through server farms that were strategically (sp) placed throughout the country.
Once the mail routes through these servers, the servers could scan the headers and tag valid ones as authenic and SPAM as junk mail. You would have an option to be added to a "Do Not Spam List" and you could complain about any unsolicited email that you receive after being added to this list.
Drawbacks to this system are as follows:
1. Out money pays for it through stamp charge if you will to send email.
2. Privacy concerns over the government having easy access to all email messages in the the country.
My rebuttal to these two concerns are that I may actually get a 100 pieces of email that I want to read a month and I would gladly pay 5 to 10 bucks a month to be able to read them in peace. In addition, I would forfeit a small margin of possible privacy invasion to run these bastards out of town.
Before you kill my karma, I will quote Dennis Miller: that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Karma me to death if you wish, but I don't see how that is easier then one hotmail account that never changes and a decent spam utility. That's IMO only though.
Unless there is some viable way to make money
I believe that cars and grocery stores both have those. I was under the impression that the WiFi was ad based. Turns out I was wrong. Stayed tuned because I promise that will happen again.