The employee is the supplier. The employer is the customer.
That's a good point, but I don't think it's the only issue at play. There's also the issue of power, and big companies have much more power than individual people. When I buy something from Best Buy, I'm forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. If I work for Best Buy, then I'm pretty much forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. It's not a negotiation between equals.
And also businesses can hide behind an organization. When a company acts, it's not always entirely clear whether it's the decision of "the company" or the individual within the company. If I'm a manager and I want to make someone's life miserable, I can do that while justifying it as "policy" or "good for business". I can say, "Sorry, it's out of my hands. It's just policy." If the employee turns around and tries to make my life miserable, he can't hide behind his actions as easily.
That's not to say there's nothing you can do. There are strategies for managing relationships where you're the weaker party. But let's not pretend that power doesn't come into play.
Yeah, seriously. This is the sort of stuff that, when someone complains about it, people act like it's some far-out conspiracy theory.
Trying to break interoperability and disallow people from using "open standards" is pretty screwed up. Either he fully understands the ramifications of his attitudes and is extremely unethical, or he doesn't understand, in which case he's just selfish and childish.
I really wish the management at Microsoft would grow up.
Under DNS, if you are the holder of the example.com domain, you have the authority to assign names within example.com, and to delegate the authority to assign names within subdomains thereof.
I'm talking about domains, not subdomains. I'm saying if the point were not to organize, we wouldn't need to bother having TLDs and domains. We could just issue serial numbers. It'd be simple, and you wouldn't have to deal with domain squatting and such.
This just goes to demonstrate the point I started this thread with: the point of the hierarchy of domain names is to delegate the authority to assign stable hostnames and respond to queries about assignments.
No, your point is that's what you want domain names to be about, and think domain names should be about. The truth is that it's not why domain names exist and it's not how they're used. One of the benefits of being hierarchical is that it allows greater organizational units to delegate authority for smaller organizational units to someone else-- that much is true-- but people do create smaller organizational units without delegating authority, too. The intention of making them "names" in the dictionary sense is so that the organization would be capable of meaning things other than just delegation of authority. Domain names are also memorable and identifiable labels, and the hierarchy is also used in such a way as to be descriptive of organization.
The ability to change what IP address a request to a symbolic hostname gets sent to is of certainly valuable, because a host's IP address is determined by details about routing that are not relevant to a protocol like HTTP
Right, so then why not just issue a separate serial number that identifies the host and link based on that? Why bother allocating names in a hierarchical system if not in order to organize?
But my larger point is that that use of TLDs is wrong.
According to who? If it's just according to you, then I wouldn't say it's "wrong". You don't like it, and you don't think it's best. That's fine. But I'm not really "wrong".
True, but again: why should DNS encode that as part of the domain name? If you want to know what kind of organization you're connecting to, why not just search the web for information about them? Or, why not consult some sort of trusted, non-DNS database that catalogues organizations of that kind?
If you're not going to use DNS to find and identify anything and instead are only going to use Google, then why bother at all? Why not just stick to IPs? Or if you need a dynamic way of identifying things independently of IPs, why not just issue some other serial number?
DNS is a naming system. It was built to be treated as hierarchical organizational scheme. If you want it to be a complete free-for-all with no particular organizational structure, I think that's an interesting idea, and would constitute the sort of reevaluation I'm suggesting. It would not be the same as how things stand now.
Plato created the fiction of Atlantis to make a point in one of his dialogues.
Yeah, I'm always tempted to interject when people start talking about Atlantis. There's some kind of misunderstanding that pops up now and then where people think that Plato wrote historical texts or something. Now you can get into some nuanced arguments about exactly how much reality is in Plato's dialogs, but if you don't know any better, it's best to think of them like plays. Maybe think of Plato's account of Socrates to be something like Shakespeare's account of Julius Caesar-- it might be based on some realities, but it's essentially a work of fiction.
Now on top of that, the speakers in Platonic dialogs aren't necessarily any more honest than characters in Shakespeare's plays. Just because Socrates says something doesn't mean it's true. In fact, he's a little bit of a trickster, so the fact that he says it might just as well be taken as an indication that it's not true.
So the most you can really infer from Plato referencing Atlantis is that it might have been a common myth at the time-- but even that assumes that he didn't just make it up off of the top of his head. However, even if it were a myth at the time, that still doesn't mean that there's any factual reality to the myth. Talking about Atlantis then might have been like talking about Krypton now.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. The reason we have different TLDs certainly is about organization as well as delegation of authority. If it was only about authority, why bother having.net,.org,.com,.info, and.biz addresses?
Schools are supposed to have EDU addresses, government organizations are supposed to have GOV. I believe that ORG addresses were supposed to be non-profits, COM were supposed to be for commercial entities, and NET addresses were supposed to be mainly for ISPs and companies providing network services. And then countries were supposed to have their own addresses for sites specific to their country. The idea was partially so that you'd know the type of organization you were connecting to by its name.
But look what's happened-- there's no real distrinction between how ORG, COM, and NET addresses are used. Nobody really uses INFO or BIZ. On top of that, country-specific TLDs are being used for various purposes, depending on whether their abbreviation is somehow catchy. People are using WS as though it's an abbreviation for "web site", and they're using ME to be the word "me" and therefore using it for personal sites. The whole thing is kind of a mess.
So I'm just thinking they should go back to the drawing board and come up with a TLD structure that makes sense. Or maybe even reevaluate the whole DNS idea, because the TLD issue isn't the only, or even the biggest, problem with DNS.
We already have too many gTLDs. What is the difference between foo.com and foo.net? Most likely foo.com got there first, and then foo.net was the second comer.
I'm not sure that's a sign that we have too many, but perhaps rather that the attempt at organizing these things has been a failure so far. Personally, I'd like to see the whole thing reevaluated, figuring out what the goals of the organization are, and then figuring out what organization is likely to achieve those goals based on the reality of the Internet today (i.e. spammers, phishing, fraud, domain squatting).
But how much of that is squatters, anyway? I know I've had many times where I've gone to register an domain name and it's been taken, but when I go to the sites under that domain, I find placeholder pages with ads.
And I never heard anyone express annoyance at being "stuck" using Internet Explorer
I've heard plenty of people complain about IE. I heard people complaining very shortly after they started bundling it. I've heard people complain about incompatible rendering for years.
Another one might be, to what extent do people use one service because it's bundled and well-integrated with another, even if it doesn't bother them -- and not because it's a good service in its own right?
Some of that depends on whether the vendor is overly-dominant in any of the bundled services. So you could say that Google Apps and Gmail are "integrated", but it's not as though anyone is saying that Google has a monopoly on email or on office applications. Integration of applications isn't inherently a bad thing.
That's a helpful tip. At the same time, though that may fix this particular piece of malware, the real issue is the malware that's brand new and that you might not have definitions for yet.
If I were in your position, I would probably only reinstall Windows as a last resort too-- but that's because I'm assuming you can't tell people what they can and can't run on their computers. You can't tell them where they must store their documents. When you get into a business environment, you can arrange things such that re-applying an image is much faster and more secure than scanning for malware.
Yeah, I'm not prepared to claim that Google isn't a problem at all. They certainly are dominating online search and advertisement, and they do have their fingers in a lot of pies.
On the other hand (and this is the crux of my earlier post) I think that it's still the case that they're in the position they're in because they're the best at what they do. Of all the people I know who use Gmail and Google Apps, I've never heard one express annoyance at being "stuck" using those because they want to use Google Search, nor have I heard any complaints that people are stuck using their Search because they want to use their Google Maps.
The current reality is that people use each of those services to whatever degree they choose to, and they aren't particularly forced into it. Insofar as Google is dominant, it's because their products are actually better than their competitors. Because of that, I can't really see them being the "bigger problem".
If you don't see Microsoft as a problem, you aren't looking.
I agree-- but the problem isn't just who has what market share. I mean, I don't know about all the legalities of anti-trust laws, but it seems to me that even if Google had 100% control of internet ads and Microsoft had 70% control of the desktop market, Microsoft may still be a bigger problem.
Because the issue isn't who has more market share, but rather why they have that market share and what they're doing with that market share. Google isn't particularly trying to create vendor lock-in, at least not as far as I can tell. They aren't actively trying to run competitors out of the market. The reason they have so much control over the Internet is mostly because they do a really good job at it.
For example, it doesn't seem to me that people use Gmail because they use Google Search, or that people would have any particular difficulty using Live Search for their web searches and Gmail for their email. There's not much abuse to speak of, at least not in anything I've heard about.
Microsoft, is a different issue. Microsoft uses licensing terms with various hardware vendors to discourage use of other operating systems. They use MS Office to lock people into Windows. They influence standards bodies to sell MS Office. They make their XBox work better with Windows. They try to push WMA as the standard media type while failing to provide support to other platforms. I could go on, but that's just some recent stuff off the top of my head.
So really I don't know-- maybe Google is a problem? But it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the biggest problems in terms of monopolization. What about having a couple of media companies owning almost all the newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations in the entire country? What about Verizon controlling half the Internet? And what about Microsoft's repeated abuses?
All the benefits of ftp without the bandwidth cost of a fileserver.
You know you don't particularly need a dedicated file server to use something like FTP, right?
All the problems with running FTP on a home desktop machine are associated with having a dynamic IP rather than static, and otherwise with the fact that FTP kind of sucks as a protocol.
Anyway, I'm not sure all that matters. If this provides new functionality that's helpful for their customers, then good for Microsoft for including those features. File sharing is still a little too painful.
But it's still not in the living room, aside from the Xbox console, which does not need the media industry to get there
And with DRM dying (at least for music) there isn't a lot of hope that they'll be able to monopolize the living room. I don't see any particularly good reason for any online stores to choose to distribute in WMA when they can choose MP3 or AAC.
To follow up on parent, if you work in a IT department where you can image computers, it's far more effective to just back up their files and reimage the compute
To follow up on your follow-up, yes, I put, "wipe the drive and start over" first on purpose. If that's an option, it can often be much faster and safer. I've seen some antivirus packages take >5 hours to scan an entire computer, even on a new-ish computer. If you're scanning with a couple different pieces of software, you can easily end up taking a very long time trying to clean one computer.
On top of that, I've seen situations where I've scanned a computer with 5 different anti-malware packages, and the fifth was still finding things that the other 4 missed. I've seen it happen that I've used a couple different scanners, and they kept finding the same pieces of malware over and over again. I eventually figured out that there was a piece of malware that all the scanners were missing, and that malware was re-downloading and re-installing malware as fast as it was being removed.
So having seen that enough times, I never quite feel sure that I've gotten everything unless I've completely wiped the drive and started over. I do that when it's an option, and when I control the situation I try to make a good image to make that process faster. I generally only try to clean a system when I'm uncertain as to what's on the computer and I'm not sure that I can actually get everything back the way the user needs it to be after a reinstall.
I haven't really found any single solution to be good enough. Once you're infected with one of these things, it seems like the best idea is to either (a) wipe the drive and start over; or (b) download and install every malware/spyware/virus removal program that you can get your hands on, run them serially, and remove anything that any of them find. Ideally you run each from a live CD or something that doesn't allow the virus a chance to load before you can run the remover.
And then to be really careful, run each of them again.
I've noticed this too, particularly surrounding Antivirus 2009. Not only do they hijack review sites to post positive reviews about Antivirus 2009, but they reroute traffic to legitimate antivirus software. So if you go to the website for AVG or Norton or something, it will point you towards downloading Antivirus 2009.
I would recommend NOT using any special software like a wiki for your primary documentation. It should be simple and printable
A wiki can be simple and printable.
I agree though that part of getting other people organized is acknowledging that they may have different methods and tools that work better for them. Sometimes it's helpful to let people write up their notes and changes however works best for them, but make sure they set aside times to enter those notes into whatever constitutes your central repository. Whether or not your repository is a wiki, you should try to have some kind of change management so you're keeping a history.
They certainly do. Every place I work seems to be filled with people who don't like the idea of documenting things and following checklists. I get the sense that it's like an intellectual pissing contest sometimes, just to see who can keep the most things in their head. But that's kind of pointless and stupid, really. Even if you can keep track of more things in your head than I can, I can make fewer mistakes by writing things down and end up doing a measurably better job.
And I also agree with the idea of things you can print out. I know the idea of being paperless is seductive, but I think there's something in human psychology that's just more willing to write out a minor note by hand. It might not be innate, but it's there. Once you put in on paper, people feel more comfortable circling things, drawing arrows, writing little notes in the margins, etc.
If there are important notes, then you take the time to enter them back into a computer when you're done. Otherwise you can just store the old pages or shred them.
If you create a table of steps you could then create a "fold" with greater detail should someone want to open it up and see it. The nice thing is you are not taken to a new page and you can continue to work and read the page you are already on.
That actually sounds terrific. Does anyone have additional information about whether pluglins like this are available for other wikis?
Also, do not forget that the best way to ensure you will never be promoted, is to make yourself indispensable at your current position.
This is an excellent point. I've found the best way to get promoted, in fact, can be to eliminate the need for your current position entirely. It's counter-intuitive, but it can work out
Imagine you're paying someone a full-time salary, and they take the initiative to figure out how organize everything such that, instead of working 40 hours a week, he's getting the same amount done only working 2 hours a week. And then he comes to you, tells you this.
Now, are you really going to say, "Your position isn't necessary anymore, so you're fired."? Or might you possibly think that he's a helpful guy and decide to put all his new free time to good use?
Ah, yes, that's quite a great demonstration of how right you are. Name calling. Please, tell me more.
Sigh, yes. I know that. Everyone knows that. It's only the title of the fucking section I'm quoting.
All the more unfortunate that you don't seem to understand the concepts. You do not own the software. You do not own rights to the software when you buy a copy. What you own is the copy, can you can legally do whatever you want with it so long as you don't make other copies. If you want to make other copies, there are certain things that the law is particularly spelling out that you are permitted to do. Any other copies you wish to make are forbidden unless you have some kind of license agreement.
Just because you bought the copy doesn't give you a blanket right to copy it however you like. You are given set boundaries. The law you yourself quotes gives you two explicit rights, which are to install the software and to make backups. That law does not give you the blanket right to make any modifications you choose or install it under any/all circumstances. It simply doesn't. I don't know how to say it more explicitly or explain more explicitly.
The law by default says you can't copy without a license. So the default is that you can't copy. Then there are laws that spell out circumstances when you can copy. All other copying is still forbidden. That's how law works. Does that make sense to you, or do you have questions about that?
But if in the process of 'utilizing the software' it is essential to copy it to HD (it usually is - known as installing as you so helpfully point out), or to RAM, etc, you may do so.
Ok, maybe I'll explain a little more about law then, in case this helps you understand. That law is meant to provide a general blanket scenario in which you are given the right to copy in spite of copyrights. But the process doesn't stop there. It then falls to the court system to interpret laws in their execution for particular cases. What I'm saying is, there's no sign to me in that law that the intention of the law is to specifically to permit people to circumvent the need to have a copyright license in order to copy software. I doubt a judge would interpret it as a blanket right to subvert any and all other license agreements. Consider this emphasis:
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
So what it's saying is that installation is an assumed right of software, and so you can't generally be sued for just installing software. Though installation almost always modifies the copy, those modifications are legal since they are part of the installation procedure. However, it doesn't give you any particular rights to do anything with the software other than to install it under those normal circumstances.
If you made massive modifications to a program and you said, "Oh, well, those were changes that I had to make in order to make it work for me," that would most likely be ruled to not be the intention of the law you're citing. If you went around installing software on other people's computers and said, "But I own this copy, and all copying was done as part of an essential stop in the utilization of the program in conjunction with a machine," then I find it unlikely that a judge would accept that interpretation.
So sorry, no, this doesn't do away with the idea of licenses. If you don't believe me, then ask a competent lawyer.
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The employee is the supplier. The employer is the customer.
That's a good point, but I don't think it's the only issue at play. There's also the issue of power, and big companies have much more power than individual people. When I buy something from Best Buy, I'm forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. If I work for Best Buy, then I'm pretty much forced to agree to their terms, take it or leave it. It's not a negotiation between equals.
And also businesses can hide behind an organization. When a company acts, it's not always entirely clear whether it's the decision of "the company" or the individual within the company. If I'm a manager and I want to make someone's life miserable, I can do that while justifying it as "policy" or "good for business". I can say, "Sorry, it's out of my hands. It's just policy." If the employee turns around and tries to make my life miserable, he can't hide behind his actions as easily.
That's not to say there's nothing you can do. There are strategies for managing relationships where you're the weaker party. But let's not pretend that power doesn't come into play.
Yeah, seriously. This is the sort of stuff that, when someone complains about it, people act like it's some far-out conspiracy theory.
Trying to break interoperability and disallow people from using "open standards" is pretty screwed up. Either he fully understands the ramifications of his attitudes and is extremely unethical, or he doesn't understand, in which case he's just selfish and childish.
I really wish the management at Microsoft would grow up.
Under DNS, if you are the holder of the example.com domain, you have the authority to assign names within example.com, and to delegate the authority to assign names within subdomains thereof.
I'm talking about domains, not subdomains. I'm saying if the point were not to organize, we wouldn't need to bother having TLDs and domains. We could just issue serial numbers. It'd be simple, and you wouldn't have to deal with domain squatting and such.
This just goes to demonstrate the point I started this thread with: the point of the hierarchy of domain names is to delegate the authority to assign stable hostnames and respond to queries about assignments.
No, your point is that's what you want domain names to be about, and think domain names should be about. The truth is that it's not why domain names exist and it's not how they're used. One of the benefits of being hierarchical is that it allows greater organizational units to delegate authority for smaller organizational units to someone else-- that much is true-- but people do create smaller organizational units without delegating authority, too. The intention of making them "names" in the dictionary sense is so that the organization would be capable of meaning things other than just delegation of authority. Domain names are also memorable and identifiable labels, and the hierarchy is also used in such a way as to be descriptive of organization.
The ability to change what IP address a request to a symbolic hostname gets sent to is of certainly valuable, because a host's IP address is determined by details about routing that are not relevant to a protocol like HTTP
Right, so then why not just issue a separate serial number that identifies the host and link based on that? Why bother allocating names in a hierarchical system if not in order to organize?
But my larger point is that that use of TLDs is wrong.
According to who? If it's just according to you, then I wouldn't say it's "wrong". You don't like it, and you don't think it's best. That's fine. But I'm not really "wrong".
True, but again: why should DNS encode that as part of the domain name? If you want to know what kind of organization you're connecting to, why not just search the web for information about them? Or, why not consult some sort of trusted, non-DNS database that catalogues organizations of that kind?
If you're not going to use DNS to find and identify anything and instead are only going to use Google, then why bother at all? Why not just stick to IPs? Or if you need a dynamic way of identifying things independently of IPs, why not just issue some other serial number?
DNS is a naming system. It was built to be treated as hierarchical organizational scheme. If you want it to be a complete free-for-all with no particular organizational structure, I think that's an interesting idea, and would constitute the sort of reevaluation I'm suggesting. It would not be the same as how things stand now.
Plato created the fiction of Atlantis to make a point in one of his dialogues.
Yeah, I'm always tempted to interject when people start talking about Atlantis. There's some kind of misunderstanding that pops up now and then where people think that Plato wrote historical texts or something. Now you can get into some nuanced arguments about exactly how much reality is in Plato's dialogs, but if you don't know any better, it's best to think of them like plays. Maybe think of Plato's account of Socrates to be something like Shakespeare's account of Julius Caesar-- it might be based on some realities, but it's essentially a work of fiction.
Now on top of that, the speakers in Platonic dialogs aren't necessarily any more honest than characters in Shakespeare's plays. Just because Socrates says something doesn't mean it's true. In fact, he's a little bit of a trickster, so the fact that he says it might just as well be taken as an indication that it's not true.
So the most you can really infer from Plato referencing Atlantis is that it might have been a common myth at the time-- but even that assumes that he didn't just make it up off of the top of his head. However, even if it were a myth at the time, that still doesn't mean that there's any factual reality to the myth. Talking about Atlantis then might have been like talking about Krypton now.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. The reason we have different TLDs certainly is about organization as well as delegation of authority. If it was only about authority, why bother having .net, .org, .com, .info, and .biz addresses?
Schools are supposed to have EDU addresses, government organizations are supposed to have GOV. I believe that ORG addresses were supposed to be non-profits, COM were supposed to be for commercial entities, and NET addresses were supposed to be mainly for ISPs and companies providing network services. And then countries were supposed to have their own addresses for sites specific to their country. The idea was partially so that you'd know the type of organization you were connecting to by its name.
But look what's happened-- there's no real distrinction between how ORG, COM, and NET addresses are used. Nobody really uses INFO or BIZ. On top of that, country-specific TLDs are being used for various purposes, depending on whether their abbreviation is somehow catchy. People are using WS as though it's an abbreviation for "web site", and they're using ME to be the word "me" and therefore using it for personal sites. The whole thing is kind of a mess.
So I'm just thinking they should go back to the drawing board and come up with a TLD structure that makes sense. Or maybe even reevaluate the whole DNS idea, because the TLD issue isn't the only, or even the biggest, problem with DNS.
Not sure what you mean. I use the ActiveSync on my iPhone and it works pretty much perfectly. Maybe your Exchange server isn't set up right?
We already have too many gTLDs. What is the difference between foo.com and foo.net? Most likely foo.com got there first, and then foo.net was the second comer.
I'm not sure that's a sign that we have too many, but perhaps rather that the attempt at organizing these things has been a failure so far. Personally, I'd like to see the whole thing reevaluated, figuring out what the goals of the organization are, and then figuring out what organization is likely to achieve those goals based on the reality of the Internet today (i.e. spammers, phishing, fraud, domain squatting).
But how much of that is squatters, anyway? I know I've had many times where I've gone to register an domain name and it's been taken, but when I go to the sites under that domain, I find placeholder pages with ads.
And I never heard anyone express annoyance at being "stuck" using Internet Explorer
I've heard plenty of people complain about IE. I heard people complaining very shortly after they started bundling it. I've heard people complain about incompatible rendering for years.
Another one might be, to what extent do people use one service because it's bundled and well-integrated with another, even if it doesn't bother them -- and not because it's a good service in its own right?
Some of that depends on whether the vendor is overly-dominant in any of the bundled services. So you could say that Google Apps and Gmail are "integrated", but it's not as though anyone is saying that Google has a monopoly on email or on office applications. Integration of applications isn't inherently a bad thing.
That's a helpful tip. At the same time, though that may fix this particular piece of malware, the real issue is the malware that's brand new and that you might not have definitions for yet.
If I were in your position, I would probably only reinstall Windows as a last resort too-- but that's because I'm assuming you can't tell people what they can and can't run on their computers. You can't tell them where they must store their documents. When you get into a business environment, you can arrange things such that re-applying an image is much faster and more secure than scanning for malware.
Yeah, I'm not prepared to claim that Google isn't a problem at all. They certainly are dominating online search and advertisement, and they do have their fingers in a lot of pies.
On the other hand (and this is the crux of my earlier post) I think that it's still the case that they're in the position they're in because they're the best at what they do. Of all the people I know who use Gmail and Google Apps, I've never heard one express annoyance at being "stuck" using those because they want to use Google Search, nor have I heard any complaints that people are stuck using their Search because they want to use their Google Maps.
The current reality is that people use each of those services to whatever degree they choose to, and they aren't particularly forced into it. Insofar as Google is dominant, it's because their products are actually better than their competitors. Because of that, I can't really see them being the "bigger problem".
If you don't see Microsoft as a problem, you aren't looking.
I agree-- but the problem isn't just who has what market share. I mean, I don't know about all the legalities of anti-trust laws, but it seems to me that even if Google had 100% control of internet ads and Microsoft had 70% control of the desktop market, Microsoft may still be a bigger problem.
Because the issue isn't who has more market share, but rather why they have that market share and what they're doing with that market share. Google isn't particularly trying to create vendor lock-in, at least not as far as I can tell. They aren't actively trying to run competitors out of the market. The reason they have so much control over the Internet is mostly because they do a really good job at it.
For example, it doesn't seem to me that people use Gmail because they use Google Search, or that people would have any particular difficulty using Live Search for their web searches and Gmail for their email. There's not much abuse to speak of, at least not in anything I've heard about.
Microsoft, is a different issue. Microsoft uses licensing terms with various hardware vendors to discourage use of other operating systems. They use MS Office to lock people into Windows. They influence standards bodies to sell MS Office. They make their XBox work better with Windows. They try to push WMA as the standard media type while failing to provide support to other platforms. I could go on, but that's just some recent stuff off the top of my head.
So really I don't know-- maybe Google is a problem? But it doesn't seem to be anywhere near the biggest problems in terms of monopolization. What about having a couple of media companies owning almost all the newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations in the entire country? What about Verizon controlling half the Internet? And what about Microsoft's repeated abuses?
Well it does seem like there's a third option: pick something that is relative simple but that gives the user some idea of what the service does.
All the benefits of ftp without the bandwidth cost of a fileserver.
You know you don't particularly need a dedicated file server to use something like FTP, right?
All the problems with running FTP on a home desktop machine are associated with having a dynamic IP rather than static, and otherwise with the fact that FTP kind of sucks as a protocol.
Anyway, I'm not sure all that matters. If this provides new functionality that's helpful for their customers, then good for Microsoft for including those features. File sharing is still a little too painful.
But it's still not in the living room, aside from the Xbox console, which does not need the media industry to get there
And with DRM dying (at least for music) there isn't a lot of hope that they'll be able to monopolize the living room. I don't see any particularly good reason for any online stores to choose to distribute in WMA when they can choose MP3 or AAC.
To follow up on parent, if you work in a IT department where you can image computers, it's far more effective to just back up their files and reimage the compute
To follow up on your follow-up, yes, I put, "wipe the drive and start over" first on purpose. If that's an option, it can often be much faster and safer. I've seen some antivirus packages take >5 hours to scan an entire computer, even on a new-ish computer. If you're scanning with a couple different pieces of software, you can easily end up taking a very long time trying to clean one computer.
On top of that, I've seen situations where I've scanned a computer with 5 different anti-malware packages, and the fifth was still finding things that the other 4 missed. I've seen it happen that I've used a couple different scanners, and they kept finding the same pieces of malware over and over again. I eventually figured out that there was a piece of malware that all the scanners were missing, and that malware was re-downloading and re-installing malware as fast as it was being removed.
So having seen that enough times, I never quite feel sure that I've gotten everything unless I've completely wiped the drive and started over. I do that when it's an option, and when I control the situation I try to make a good image to make that process faster. I generally only try to clean a system when I'm uncertain as to what's on the computer and I'm not sure that I can actually get everything back the way the user needs it to be after a reinstall.
And then to be really careful, run each of them again.
I've noticed this too, particularly surrounding Antivirus 2009. Not only do they hijack review sites to post positive reviews about Antivirus 2009, but they reroute traffic to legitimate antivirus software. So if you go to the website for AVG or Norton or something, it will point you towards downloading Antivirus 2009.
It's a nasty little bugger.
I would recommend NOT using any special software like a wiki for your primary documentation. It should be simple and printable
A wiki can be simple and printable.
I agree though that part of getting other people organized is acknowledging that they may have different methods and tools that work better for them. Sometimes it's helpful to let people write up their notes and changes however works best for them, but make sure they set aside times to enter those notes into whatever constitutes your central repository. Whether or not your repository is a wiki, you should try to have some kind of change management so you're keeping a history.
Checklists work.
They certainly do. Every place I work seems to be filled with people who don't like the idea of documenting things and following checklists. I get the sense that it's like an intellectual pissing contest sometimes, just to see who can keep the most things in their head. But that's kind of pointless and stupid, really. Even if you can keep track of more things in your head than I can, I can make fewer mistakes by writing things down and end up doing a measurably better job.
And I also agree with the idea of things you can print out. I know the idea of being paperless is seductive, but I think there's something in human psychology that's just more willing to write out a minor note by hand. It might not be innate, but it's there. Once you put in on paper, people feel more comfortable circling things, drawing arrows, writing little notes in the margins, etc.
If there are important notes, then you take the time to enter them back into a computer when you're done. Otherwise you can just store the old pages or shred them.
If you create a table of steps you could then create a "fold" with greater detail should someone want to open it up and see it. The nice thing is you are not taken to a new page and you can continue to work and read the page you are already on.
That actually sounds terrific. Does anyone have additional information about whether pluglins like this are available for other wikis?
Also, do not forget that the best way to ensure you will never be promoted, is to make yourself indispensable at your current position.
This is an excellent point. I've found the best way to get promoted, in fact, can be to eliminate the need for your current position entirely. It's counter-intuitive, but it can work out
Imagine you're paying someone a full-time salary, and they take the initiative to figure out how organize everything such that, instead of working 40 hours a week, he's getting the same amount done only working 2 hours a week. And then he comes to you, tells you this.
Now, are you really going to say, "Your position isn't necessary anymore, so you're fired."? Or might you possibly think that he's a helpful guy and decide to put all his new free time to good use?
You are ferociously dumb.
Ah, yes, that's quite a great demonstration of how right you are. Name calling. Please, tell me more.
Sigh, yes. I know that. Everyone knows that. It's only the title of the fucking section I'm quoting.
All the more unfortunate that you don't seem to understand the concepts. You do not own the software. You do not own rights to the software when you buy a copy. What you own is the copy, can you can legally do whatever you want with it so long as you don't make other copies. If you want to make other copies, there are certain things that the law is particularly spelling out that you are permitted to do. Any other copies you wish to make are forbidden unless you have some kind of license agreement.
Just because you bought the copy doesn't give you a blanket right to copy it however you like. You are given set boundaries. The law you yourself quotes gives you two explicit rights, which are to install the software and to make backups. That law does not give you the blanket right to make any modifications you choose or install it under any/all circumstances. It simply doesn't. I don't know how to say it more explicitly or explain more explicitly.
The law by default says you can't copy without a license. So the default is that you can't copy. Then there are laws that spell out circumstances when you can copy. All other copying is still forbidden. That's how law works. Does that make sense to you, or do you have questions about that?
But if in the process of 'utilizing the software' it is essential to copy it to HD (it usually is - known as installing as you so helpfully point out), or to RAM, etc, you may do so.
Ok, maybe I'll explain a little more about law then, in case this helps you understand. That law is meant to provide a general blanket scenario in which you are given the right to copy in spite of copyrights. But the process doesn't stop there. It then falls to the court system to interpret laws in their execution for particular cases. What I'm saying is, there's no sign to me in that law that the intention of the law is to specifically to permit people to circumvent the need to have a copyright license in order to copy software. I doubt a judge would interpret it as a blanket right to subvert any and all other license agreements. Consider this emphasis:
that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
So what it's saying is that installation is an assumed right of software, and so you can't generally be sued for just installing software. Though installation almost always modifies the copy, those modifications are legal since they are part of the installation procedure. However, it doesn't give you any particular rights to do anything with the software other than to install it under those normal circumstances.
If you made massive modifications to a program and you said, "Oh, well, those were changes that I had to make in order to make it work for me," that would most likely be ruled to not be the intention of the law you're citing. If you went around installing software on other people's computers and said, "But I own this copy, and all copying was done as part of an essential stop in the utilization of the program in conjunction with a machine," then I find it unlikely that a judge would accept that interpretation.
So sorry, no, this doesn't do away with the idea of licenses. If you don't believe me, then ask a competent lawyer.