That's some lovely insights you have there. Do you actually have any experience in an emergency service to back up you up your claims (none of which are correct)? I certainly hope that next time you are trapped in a vehicle covered in blood and sitting in your own shit and vomit, your flesh all broken and mangled and your eyes hanging our of their sockets that society can spare $50 in fuel to pay for extra services to be directed your way. If they aren't needed, well they can return to station.
Road Crash Rescue (RCR) is vastly different than it once was even 10 to 15 years ago. If you doubt me, go to your nearest station and ask them to show you the equipment on the truck and about the training they undertake to be RCR qualified. They can explain to you how many tasks they have to complete in a very limited timeframe and you can learn for yourself why two trucks are often needed. Even you want to play the numbers game about costs, you will find that the huge medical and rehabilitation costs to get people back to being productive members of society vastly outweigh the relatively small cost of having extra emergency service personnel attend and assist at the initial stages of a RCR.
So while I can appreciate that as a taxpayer while you are sitting at home nice and safe you can think about how much something costs. I hope that you can also appreciate that when I get to an incident I have more important things to think about.
Open source costs nothing? It's the time consuming necessity of manual upgrading hundreds of machines which stops me deploying more apps in government. I may not be the system admin at the governmental organisation you work at but then again I might be. I will install deploy firefox, openoffice and a open source media player in our next SOE if you can show me a reliable, simple system which will allow me to update the above programs through a single interface without repackaging/recompiling/wasting time each individual app or update.
Just like every other employee I need to CMA and part of my job is to be the person responsible for every outdated and insecure app on our network.
Sure some jobs have respect but respect isn't everything. Frankly I found my full time shifts as a firefighter boring: Clean the truck check the equipment. Wait. Do an inspection. Wait. Clean the station. Wait. Do some skills / drills. Wait. Wait. Wait. Get a cat down from a tree. Wait. Wait Wait. Did I mention the waiting?
IT on the other hand, there's always something going on (and I still moonlight as a firefighter so I still get to go to all the good jobs anyway, I'm just a few minutes behind the full time crew).
Well I find my IT job a pleasant change from my other job as a firefighter where I'm in the public eye, TV crews, people thinking you can do anything (and expecting you to do everything for them no matter how lame (ie finding their lost "pedigree" dog)) and most of all the unjustified hero worship.
The two two jobs are actually very similar: Troubleshooting, helping people, lateral thinking, consistency and always, always, have a backup, the more the better. I enjoy both jobs equally (for different reasons) so if you are finding IT not as rewarding as you would like, retrain yourself and try something different (like volunteer/part-time firefighting on the side. (The hardest part about it for me was getting over my self doubt to actually turn up to join.)).
Just to add a data point to the discussion: When I owned and operated a bookstore some of the most commonly purchased books were the classics. These newly printed books are out of copyright and were bought and sold cheaply ($5) despite being available for free elsewhere (Project Gutenburg). For works that are not protected by copyright there is still a viable market for those works to be reproduced, bought and sold.
Whith a fully loaded character carying a bucket, use a nearby well you will get a new bucket spawned at your feet. Not really useful unless you consider houses made of buckets a good thing..
I don't know about the potential hearing problems, but as a firefighter I have found that our bone induction radios work much better in noisy environments (such as near the pump) than the normal handheld speaker units (much better signal to noise ration). While I used to have the radio cranked up to full and struggle to understand the person on the other end, now I can have it at half. They don't make up for bad radio habits (talking to close to the receiver, talking too loud and too fast), and the units have to be fitted correctly for the bone induction to work but I think they are great. We only have them attached to our breathing apparatus (SCBA) gear, so only really get to use them in structure fires (and other air quality affected environments), but not having to worry about comms so much anymore makes the job that little bit easier.
As to if they would be useful for playing music or not is a different matter. I am not sure that they would deliver the same frequency range as normal speakers. Our units do come with a small external speaker which does add somewhat to the clarity so that might overcome any frequency problems. When wearing them there are some differences understanding male / female voices through them (a small percentage of female voices being slightly harder to hear).
The units we have are expensive ($1200AU not including the radio), but the tech is pretty simple. If I get a chance I will test them out with some music tonight and see what the quality is like...
Well, we see the bandwidth caps here in Oz, and the transatlantic cables are why there's caps and high costs.
No, the reason that we have high costs is because of the Telstra/ Southern Cross duopoly. Telstra are well known for their high costs (for example the NT pays two to three times as much as the rest of the country only because there is one link. Tasmania has even worse problems). Southern Cross provided much needed capacity when it went in but (AFAICS) doesn't compete on price.
Consider this: When Pipe International announced it was building a new cable (PPC-1) and were selling it at a much lower cost to their customers, Southern Cross massively increased it's capacity and Telstra announced they intend to build new fibre. Pipe have stated that they intend to market their cable at approx 30% less for those who sign up now (IIRC). I can only conclude that we are currently paying far to much to the incumbents. Considering that Telstra and Southern Cross have probably paid for the cost of the infrastructure a high percentage of the money they get now is pure profit. Given the impact that Pipe Networks has had in the peering arrangement between ISP's in Australia I have high hopes that they will have just as much of an impact in international transit.
Recently I received a large box about 2ft by 2ft containing a smaller box which contained a smaller box which contained a letter wrapped in bubble wrap.
The letter said they would be shipping me some boxes to pack my returning item in.
I'm am more than a little surprised at your comments, especialy considering that some of those people being detained have not actully done anything yet, in fact some of those people are simply related to people who thought of doing something. Some of those people are also chldren.
Lets say for example that *you* were that "one American life" (and it was only your life that was the target) and that the USA could not catch the people who were trying to kill you but they could get access to their wives. How many wives would you be prepared to have tortured to save your life?
I'm not trying to be an ass, I would just like to know exactly how much you think your life is worth.
It's funny the kind of commecnts you get from people involved in MVA's. One lady wanted me to shred her blank check which was in the boot of the car. Sure, I thought thats a reasonable request, but if I was there sitting my car with my legs crushed, blood spewing out of my face and torso and a car engine in he passenger seat I think I might have asked for a beer.
They are all brain dead. They they have no critical thinking skills, intuition, enthusiasm or initiative. When hiring I don't expect them to have the knowledge to do the job but I do expect them to be able to learn. If the education system wants to improve, then stop turning out mindless drones. And for fucks sake let them retain just a little of their original personality.
Sorry, we had had a few and were just having a quick game on the scope and some prick hit some equipment. We didn't think anybody would notice. It's all a bit embarrassing really and we don't do that sort of thing anymore. But if anyone cares Parkes won by three wickets and 34 runs.
BTW: Over the edge of the dish is out and the batsman gets the ball.
You fool! Although kero does produce a lot of light, it's not very environmentally friendly. I aim a dozen or more energy efficient globes at my solar array, it makes almost the same amount of light as the kero but the solar panels last much longer, plus the light bulbs are powered by panel itself! I have submitted this proposal to the OLPC program so those poor kids don't have to pedal all day to use their laptops.
This sounds like a waste of money on a technology without much hope of being economically viable . I'm hearing you loud and clear. Thats exactly what I said about ENIAC/electricity/antibiotics/plumbing/the wheel/fire and how useful have they been?
ITIL "The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both high financial quality and value in IT operations."
Get them to pony up the money to send you away for the foundation course so that you can provide them with the information they want. (once you get back you may need some more money to buy some tools to collect the data, but there are OSS ITIL tools also).
I have just got back from a 3 day course and it was surprisingly good (better than what I expected (being a cynic). Apart from the paper certificate (for the resume) I came back with a whole stack of ideas to implement in the workplace.
On a day-to-day basis I really get the feeling that management don't really know how hard I work or the amount of work I get done each day (they have said in the past that they don't really know what I get up to (which is curse more than a blessing)). I think if I can get ITIL implemented (or even half the processes) not only will my job be easier but I will have quantifiable data to show the boss. Once I get some of the stuff working I'm going for a pay rise:-)
I am also very interested in anything anybody has to say about ITIL (especially for smaller setups).
This article really did come as a surprise to me that the IT crowd don't like some of their customers. I work in customer service and I really enjoy helping every signle customer and never complain about them at all. It is truly a joy to serve and I look forward to comming to work every day. I really don't mind that most of them are so stupid that it is a wonder they are standing and breathing, and their bizzare requests of things which we obviously don't sell and ramblings of their nephews dog are of great interest to me while I am trying to eat my lunch.
I don't even mind when they bring in their kids who mess the place up and the parents pretend not to notice so that I have to either ask them to clean up after their spawn or tell the kids myself to please mind where they put that chocolate bar, it does make quite a mess doesn't it... Woops, now it seems as though *I* have gone to far and the kids are crying because they have never had an ounce of dicipline in their lives, and well now the parents are shouting at me too because I have to ask them to pay for the damage their kids do and they don't like that..
Truly this is a wonderful world where we are all happy at work.
It doesn't really surprise me that these things happen, what does surprise me is that in some countries there is no comsumer protection. I myself had had similar problems with my phone company but after two calls trying to sort it out I gave up and simply passed the matter over to the Telecommunications Ombudsman who then made their own judgement (in my favour in this case) about the matter and told the telephone company to refund me the money ($300). They also invoiced them for their costs to the tune of $2000.
Slashdot Mirror
To play devils advocate, one would hope that in 10 or 20 years time you may look back on that comment and realise how limited and naive it is.
How about fixing this bug from 2004?
Bug 235853 - [PAC] Defer proxy resolution for HTTP and HTTPS PAC to avoid blocking main thread during DNS resolution
I just hope those IT guys get the credit they deserve this time. They do a hell of a job.
That's some lovely insights you have there. Do you actually have any experience in an emergency service to back up you up your claims (none of which are correct)? I certainly hope that next time you are trapped in a vehicle covered in blood and sitting in your own shit and vomit, your flesh all broken and mangled and your eyes hanging our of their sockets that society can spare $50 in fuel to pay for extra services to be directed your way. If they aren't needed, well they can return to station.
Road Crash Rescue (RCR) is vastly different than it once was even 10 to 15 years ago. If you doubt me, go to your nearest station and ask them to show you the equipment on the truck and about the training they undertake to be RCR qualified. They can explain to you how many tasks they have to complete in a very limited timeframe and you can learn for yourself why two trucks are often needed. Even you want to play the numbers game about costs, you will find that the huge medical and rehabilitation costs to get people back to being productive members of society vastly outweigh the relatively small cost of having extra emergency service personnel attend and assist at the initial stages of a RCR.
So while I can appreciate that as a taxpayer while you are sitting at home nice and safe you can think about how much something costs. I hope that you can also appreciate that when I get to an incident I have more important things to think about.
Open source costs nothing?
It's the time consuming necessity of manual upgrading hundreds of machines which stops me deploying more apps in government. I may not be the system admin at the governmental organisation you work at but then again I might be. I will install deploy firefox, openoffice and a open source media player in our next SOE if you can show me a reliable, simple system which will allow me to update the above programs through a single interface without repackaging/recompiling/wasting time each individual app or update.
Just like every other employee I need to CMA and part of my job is to be the person responsible for every outdated and insecure app on our network.
Sure some jobs have respect but respect isn't everything. Frankly I found my full time shifts as a firefighter boring: Clean the truck check the equipment. Wait. Do an inspection. Wait. Clean the station. Wait. Do some skills / drills. Wait. Wait. Wait. Get a cat down from a tree. Wait. Wait Wait. Did I mention the waiting?
IT on the other hand, there's always something going on (and I still moonlight as a firefighter so I still get to go to all the good jobs anyway, I'm just a few minutes behind the full time crew).
Well I find my IT job a pleasant change from my other job as a firefighter where I'm in the public eye, TV crews, people thinking you can do anything (and expecting you to do everything for them no matter how lame (ie finding their lost "pedigree" dog)) and most of all the unjustified hero worship.
The two two jobs are actually very similar: Troubleshooting, helping people, lateral thinking, consistency and always, always, have a backup, the more the better. I enjoy both jobs equally (for different reasons) so if you are finding IT not as rewarding as you would like, retrain yourself and try something different (like volunteer /part-time firefighting on the side. (The hardest part about it for me was getting over my self doubt to actually turn up to join.)).
Just to add a data point to the discussion: When I owned and operated a bookstore some of the most commonly purchased books were the classics. These newly printed books are out of copyright and were bought and sold cheaply ($5) despite being available for free elsewhere (Project Gutenburg). For works that are not protected by copyright there is still a viable market for those works to be reproduced, bought and sold.
Whith a fully loaded character carying a bucket, use a nearby well you will get a new bucket spawned at your feet. Not really useful unless you consider houses made of buckets a good thing..
EAL12+ means it can drink your milkshake.
I don't know about the potential hearing problems, but as a firefighter I have found that our bone induction radios work much better in noisy environments (such as near the pump) than the normal handheld speaker units (much better signal to noise ration). While I used to have the radio cranked up to full and struggle to understand the person on the other end, now I can have it at half. They don't make up for bad radio habits (talking to close to the receiver, talking too loud and too fast), and the units have to be fitted correctly for the bone induction to work but I think they are great. We only have them attached to our breathing apparatus (SCBA) gear, so only really get to use them in structure fires (and other air quality affected environments), but not having to worry about comms so much anymore makes the job that little bit easier.
As to if they would be useful for playing music or not is a different matter. I am not sure that they would deliver the same frequency range as normal speakers. Our units do come with a small external speaker which does add somewhat to the clarity so that might overcome any frequency problems. When wearing them there are some differences understanding male / female voices through them (a small percentage of female voices being slightly harder to hear).
The units we have are expensive ($1200AU not including the radio), but the tech is pretty simple. If I get a chance I will test them out with some music tonight and see what the quality is like...
Well, we see the bandwidth caps here in Oz, and the transatlantic cables are why there's caps and high costs.
No, the reason that we have high costs is because of the Telstra/ Southern Cross duopoly. Telstra are well known for their high costs (for example the NT pays two to three times as much as the rest of the country only because there is one link. Tasmania has even worse problems). Southern Cross provided much needed capacity when it went in but (AFAICS) doesn't compete on price.
Consider this: When Pipe International announced it was building a new cable (PPC-1) and were selling it at a much lower cost to their customers, Southern Cross massively increased it's capacity and Telstra announced they intend to build new fibre. Pipe have stated that they intend to market their cable at approx 30% less for those who sign up now (IIRC). I can only conclude that we are currently paying far to much to the incumbents. Considering that Telstra and Southern Cross have probably paid for the cost of the infrastructure a high percentage of the money they get now is pure profit. Given the impact that Pipe Networks has had in the peering arrangement between ISP's in Australia I have high hopes that they will have just as much of an impact in international transit.
Recently I received a large box about 2ft by 2ft containing a smaller box which contained a smaller box which contained a letter wrapped in bubble wrap.
The letter said they would be shipping me some boxes to pack my returning item in.
Apparently todays mods don't live in Australia, otherwise the parent post would have been "Insightful".
I'm am more than a little surprised at your comments, especialy considering that some of those people being detained have not actully done anything yet, in fact some of those people are simply related to people who thought of doing something. Some of those people are also chldren.
Lets say for example that *you* were that "one American life" (and it was only your life that was the target) and that the USA could not catch the people who were trying to kill you but they could get access to their wives. How many wives would you be prepared to have tortured to save your life?
I'm not trying to be an ass, I would just like to know exactly how much you think your life is worth.
It's funny the kind of commecnts you get from people involved in MVA's. One lady wanted me to shred her blank check which was in the boot of the car. Sure, I thought thats a reasonable request, but if I was there sitting my car with my legs crushed, blood spewing out of my face and torso and a car engine in he passenger seat I think I might have asked for a beer.
What about:
Continuous Use of Naughty Terms day?
They are all brain dead. They they have no critical thinking skills, intuition, enthusiasm or initiative. When hiring I don't expect them to have the knowledge to do the job but I do expect them to be able to learn. If the education system wants to improve, then stop turning out mindless drones. And for fucks sake let them retain just a little of their original personality.
Sorry, we had had a few and were just having a quick game on the scope and some prick hit some equipment. We didn't think anybody would notice. It's all a bit embarrassing really and we don't do that sort of thing anymore. But if anyone cares Parkes won by three wickets and 34 runs.
BTW: Over the edge of the dish is out and the batsman gets the ball.
You fool! Although kero does produce a lot of light, it's not very environmentally friendly. I aim a dozen or more energy efficient globes at my solar array, it makes almost the same amount of light as the kero but the solar panels last much longer, plus the light bulbs are powered by panel itself! I have submitted this proposal to the OLPC program so those poor kids don't have to pedal all day to use their laptops.
I'm hearing you loud and clear. Thats exactly what I said about ENIAC/electricity/antibiotics/plumbing/the wheel/fire and how useful have they been?
ITIL
:-)
"The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of best practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality information technology (IT) services. ITIL outlines an extensive set of management procedures that are intended to support businesses in achieving both high financial quality and value in IT operations."
Get them to pony up the money to send you away for the foundation course so that you can provide them with the information they want. (once you get back you may need some more money to buy some tools to collect the data, but there are OSS ITIL tools also).
I have just got back from a 3 day course and it was surprisingly good (better than what I expected (being a cynic). Apart from the paper certificate (for the resume) I came back with a whole stack of ideas to implement in the workplace.
On a day-to-day basis I really get the feeling that management don't really know how hard I work or the amount of work I get done each day (they have said in the past that they don't really know what I get up to (which is curse more than a blessing)). I think if I can get ITIL implemented (or even half the processes) not only will my job be easier but I will have quantifiable data to show the boss. Once I get some of the stuff working I'm going for a pay rise
I am also very interested in anything anybody has to say about ITIL (especially for smaller setups).
... or human rights.
This article really did come as a surprise to me that the IT crowd don't like some of their customers. I work in customer service and I really enjoy helping every signle customer and never complain about them at all. It is truly a joy to serve and I look forward to comming to work every day. I really don't mind that most of them are so stupid that it is a wonder they are standing and breathing, and their bizzare requests of things which we obviously don't sell and ramblings of their nephews dog are of great interest to me while I am trying to eat my lunch.
I don't even mind when they bring in their kids who mess the place up and the parents pretend not to notice so that I have to either ask them to clean up after their spawn or tell the kids myself to please mind where they put that chocolate bar, it does make quite a mess doesn't it... Woops, now it seems as though *I* have gone to far and the kids are crying because they have never had an ounce of dicipline in their lives, and well now the parents are shouting at me too because I have to ask them to pay for the damage their kids do and they don't like that..
Truly this is a wonderful world where we are all happy at work.
It doesn't really surprise me that these things happen, what does surprise me is that in some countries there is no comsumer protection. I myself had had similar problems with my phone company but after two calls trying to sort it out I gave up and simply passed the matter over to the Telecommunications Ombudsman who then made their own judgement (in my favour in this case) about the matter and told the telephone company to refund me the money ($300). They also invoiced them for their costs to the tune of $2000.