I don't even dissagree. Its cumbersome, feels slow, and the editors and things feel outdated. Even most of IBM agrees that needs work. They're actually spending a fortune on it for the next rev (Hannover) which is built on the Eclipse framework and is much more extensible.
Lets get a few things straight given that I actually KNOW THE F'ing products involved:
1. Notes has an odd UI with some challenges, we agree on that. Of course, that's because it was DESIGNED TO BE CROSS PLATFORM. In fact, the next rev includes a LINUX CLIENT.
2. Notes is VERY STABLE. I am personally aware of a major financial firm where 12,000 users are doing mail, calendaring, I.M., discussions, and workflow applications with the support of less than 15 people. They have had no outages. They have had no works.
3. Notes is inherently secure. It was doing public/private key encryption from day 1, back in the late 80's and is still doing so. It even supports PKI plug ins. Apparently, it was the only one because nobody else ever made any.
4. The notes CLIENT is inherently secure. It use execution control lists and design elements are signed. There are not worms or trojans that use Notes to replicate because THEY CAN'T.
5. Notes is OPEN. Yes, it uses a proprietary storage and transport format, but it also FULLY SUPPORTS XML for every design and and data element. It also includes Java (w/ IIOP and CORBA as well) object models, COM object models, and a published XML schema. It FULLY SUPPORTS MIME, SNMP, SMTP, LDAP (as client or server), NTP, HTTP, SSL, DIIOP, WEBDAV, WEB SERVICES (as client or server), ODBC.
6. Notes is PROGRAMABLE. Its objects are openly accessable and it includes full support for JAVA, Javascript, and its own Lotusscript and formula language.
7. Domino (the server) is MULTI-OS cross platform. It runs EQUALLY WELL on Linux, AIX, Solaris (in the past, and soon again) iSeries (OS400). I even know of one web accessible server running on Linux on XBOX! (no, I'm not going to/. it by linking it here).
8. Notes owns roughly 50% of the corporate mail and calendaring marketing. No, not in small business or home use, but in major corporations.
9. Notes & Domino are backward compatible. No rip and replace upgrades. EVER. I can take a version 8 beta client and open a version 2 application (that I have) and it will WORK. Now. It is cheaper to upgrade to Domino 7 from Exchange 5.5 than to upgrade to Exchange 2000 or 2003 from the Exchange 5.5.
--- So, given all these things -- every one of which is something in general/.'ers scream for, WHAT IS THE F'ING PROBLEM?
You yourself say "THEY" and are talking about hundreds or thousands of people. That is, by definition, a commodity.
"Treating people like shit" is a corporate mistake -- but let me tell you something big guy, 50 years ago management treated people at least as bad, often MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.
The good old days, were not. In 1956 you could be fired or passed over without question for being black, gay, or female. You could be fired for dissagreeing with your boss, or for saying no to his amorous advances. You worked more hours, and were paid less (in any adjusted scale) and were treated worse.
The only real difference, was that in that technology marketplace you couldn't outsource high tech jobs to India. In fact, over the years that followed 1956, the trend was to send the lowest wage manufacturing jobs overseas, and to lay off factory workers as you replaced them with better machines (and in the longer term robotics).
I just finished a security review at a financial firm. They have 12,000 users using Notes & Domino for Mail, Calendaring, and collaborative applications.
It only requires 15 people to support the entire environment.
Other than basic human rights, nobody deserves anything.
The animators "deserve" exactly what they bargained for in exchange for doing the work. Their value is exactly what they are able to get in exchange for their work. Not more, not less. As is yours, as is mine.
Its all the same thing. If you're perfect at your job, but your job is a commodity -- or is percieved as one by the people who pay you -- you're out on your ass the minute they can find that commodity cheaper somewhere else. That's the way the world works. Does it suck? Its sure sucks if you're a commodity -- or seen as one.
Was Disney wrong to decide its animators were a commodity? I don't know. I don't know anything about the animation business and don't follow Disney's bottom line. They seem to be wrong about nearly everything else I've seen them do for years, so I would tend to believe they were wrong here too -- but that's not proof of anything.
Not one bit of this does anything BUT prove my point. If you are one of a thousand people doing exactly the same thing in a company, and there are a thousand more who can do it also; then unless you can convince someone that YOU PERSONALLY can do it better, you're a commodity. The minute you are a commodity in today's workforce, you'd better learn to speak Chinese or whatever dialect they're speaking in India and get used to eating white rice from a bowl two or three times a day.
Does the corporate world suck because it works that way? Yes, but find me any other system that is as productive, feeds as many people, grows economies as well. Communism is a great idea on paper. We all share the wealth. That didn't work out too well. Human nature doesn't allow communism on a large scale to work well. Humans are opportunistic by nature. That's why capitolism works.
I will say this though - those laid off people are not going to starve to death. It will suck for them for a while, and I don't take that lightly, but our economic system overall has been so unbelievably successful that even where it fails individuals it leaves both oportunity and minimal safety nets the like of which have never before been seen in the history of the world.
I personally do not believe in the "globalization" that has recently played out. Not because I don't believe in globalization in general, but because what we have is manipulated globalization not a true free market, and that breaks the system. Nonetheless, we live in a globalized marketplace. Commodities are going to always migrate to the cheapest source of production.
I'll close by saying what I started with. To save your job, don't be a commodity.
Forgive me for saying so, but you seem very personally invested in this particular case so maybe that's not a good example for discussion. If you'd like me to stop, I will. In the meantime...
When I say they sold themselves by volume, what I mean is that the model being used for employment in that industry was to take an entry level job at almost an apprentice level and work your way up through the ranks in a very bottom heavy management structure where there were very view 'top' posts compared to entry level positions -- and the line of entry level animators was so long at the door, that nobody had any feeling they'd be hard to replace. This is VERY similar to starting IT in a tech support role.
The failure was that projects could be assigned to animators in terms of how many man-days would be required from the pool of all available man-days in the animation house. That's volume. They didn't ask "how long do I have to wait for Bob to be available?" Once a few very top level people picked the look and style of the key characters, all the rest could be done by any of dozens in an available pool.
I say again -- if you allow yourself be considered part of an available pool, you're a commodity item not an individual with value.
....failed to convince Disney that they were not a commodity. They didn't fail at being animators -- I'll take your word for it and agree they were Godlike in their skills. Still, they sold themselves to Disney by the pound rather than as people. They failed to convince Disney that they couldn't be replaced with CGI for less money. Disney failed in its attempt to do so. They've bought Pixar rather than admit that failure and attempt to recover internally. Those in that group who were truly Godlike animators will have jobs.
1. I've made a living as a consultant for more than 15 years -- most of that on my own, without a firm to hide behind. I'm not talking contractor -- I don't take on site gigs paid by the day or week.
2. My primary application focus went through several years of downturn in popularity. Contractor's rates dropped from a high of $90 to a low of around $40. I charge $1500 per day (or $187.50 per hour).
3. I have a home and car, my kids are fed. We did not starve.
4. Most of the peers I know who dropped their rates are no longer in the consulting business.
5. When a client asked me to compete with a price they could get for offshore work, my response was "I will not compete on price with someone who merely has to support something I came up with until it breaks and they can't fix it. When somethings goes wrong and you need help, please feel free to call me." I am still doing work with that client -- and have for more than 10 years.
Be the best at something -- even if its a small thing, or a less popular thing -- and you will be in demand for that. There are times when people want things done right. Outsourcing fails because most customers cannot make good use of it effectively. With outsourcing the curse is that you get exactly what you ask for, not one thing more or less -- and you deserve exactly that.
Look at the market. Traditionally, people say "oh, we're going to need lots of Java developers. I'll go learn Java." Bad plan. Everyone is learning the same thing. If you make yourself a commodity, you will be priced by volume not talent.
To avoid being outsourced, be exceptionally good at something. People will always pay for exceptional talent.
In the worst of the IT economy most of my peers in the consulting world dropped their rates. I raised mine. I worked a little less, but when I worked it was good work. It was enjoyable, challenging, respected work. When someone really needed to pry open the purse they wanted the best, not the cheapest.
If you make yourself a commodity, get used to saying "would you like fries with that?":-)
Theaters traditionally make more money per ticket the longer a film is out. The first hot weekend, much more of the ticket costs go to the distributors, later, the theater keeps more and more of the ticket price.
Studios are incented to pack everyone into the first weekend. Theaters want nothing more than the sleeper hit of the year -- where audience builds over time.
Faster dvd releases mean less opportunity for the most profitable time a movie is in the theaters.
You are either someone who plays or your are not. Decide what you are and be that. I have no patience for this panzy-ass "trying to quit", be it smoking, drinking, gaming, or whatever.
Unplug the computer. Do what you need to do and stop playing.
If its just YOU who thinks its a problem for someone else, say something -- once. If he doesn't agree, then fine. Its his life. Maybe he just enjoys it. He's not out robbing banks or molesting children. He's spending HIS money on HIS form of entertainment. If you can't live with it, walk away.
.net isn't active-x now. You'll see localized "CLR" engine stuff running in a sandbox just like the java JVM. MS would LOVE to go there, and blaming someone else for the forced transition is not a problem for them.
It doesn't currently cost anything cost to even 1 cent per message. My point is that even if you made it cost as much ast 2-3 cents per message, you're no where neer expensive enough to make it unprofitable for the spammer. You couldn't raise the per message cost high enough to stop the spammer without also stopping the not-for-profit email lists and so on. The spammer will have more money to spend, and has proven more than willing to spend it.
Author: Andrew Pollack Story Date: Feb 28, 2006 10:56 PM Subject: Proof that "Sender Pays" will not stop spam even one little bit
Category: Geek Stuff
For those who don't know, the idea of "Sender Pays" is to make the cost of sending an email slightly higher than zero for bulk emails -- some say for everyone. Say a penny a message or less. AOL and YAHOO are talking about using this method for public bulk mailing lists. While neither is saying they'd charge users directly, the idea is that if bulk mail comes it without paying it would be treated with a higher degree of suspicion.
Along comes this article about reputed "spam king" Adam Vitale being busted by the Secret Service. Allegedly, Vitale charged an undercover agent $6,500 for equipment then sent spam out to as many as 1.5 million people in return for an agreed price of at least $40,000 off the top of the first revenue generated plus 50% of all proceeds. Do the math, at that price the going rate for sending the messages already well exceeds 2.5 cents per message -- plus the threat of jail time.
At a rate of 2.5 cents per message, sleazy sales pitches for porn, pills, and promises are still extremely profitable. The techniques of spam are so effective in fact, that now many of those products have "upscaled" and we're seeing the same products and scams advertised on radio, direct mail, and late night television. If THAT's true, its a hell of a lot more profitable than 5 cents, or even 25 cents per message is likely to stop. Unless you believe consumers are willing to voluntarily make email cost more than that, you can only conclude that "Sender Pays" is a nonstarter.
No problem with picking nits -- I will point out
on
Why Windows is Slow
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· Score: 1
...that the issue pervades office products since they started requiring the framework as well as application development products. Always, they ask for the other framework version. Annoying. I've taken to using different VM's for each individual project. That's also annoying.
I'm a Microsoft action pack customer and partner (hell, its a good deal) so I've got all the happy new versions as they come out. I've had major problems installing office add-on components for example with existing versions of office that are different. I've had way more problems trying to have say, Visual C++ loaded with Visual Basic then adding Visual Studio.Net -- whatever one I'd add last would wipe out the other -- and always they are asking me to update the foundation library to the other version.
the whole .NET thing breaks compability more
on
Why Windows is Slow
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· Score: 1, Interesting
...than it fixes it. How many times have you found.net foundation issues installing something? Some want 1.1 then you install something 2.0 and it get overwritten next time a 1.1 thing gets installed. Hell, I've had this with office productions that are off version from each other.
The CLR (Microsoft's.net version of the JVM) is way too each to jump out of, and most programmers do so quite reguarly. By doing this, Microsoft has created a new kind of "dos interrupt problem" like the one that prevented them from moving to a true 32 bit operating system for so many years -- and ended up inflicting windows 95, 98, and FSM help us, Windows ME.
look, if not for the complete and total lack of ability to easily creat a digital library on a basement media server which handles your tivo-esque timeshifting, storage of dvd movies and cd quality audio, channel tuning, etc., we'd all be doing it.
The cable companies won't let a decent PC card cable tuner onto the market which can handle all the channels to which you subscribe. The music people work to prevent reasonable in-home music storage and access for the desperate fear that *GASP* you could share music across a network. The dvd people work to prevent any reasonable disk based storage and access of quality video.
What's really needed is a different paradigm altogether. Ideally, a pass through set top box on one tv in each room, which uses IP to connect to a base unit in the basement or media closet. The base unit is a PC. The set top box provides user friendly tv based menus to the device. The device itself controlls one or more cable company tuners -- the cheapest ones they have that will give you your content descrambled. For additional concurrent non-scrambled channels, regular PC tuner cards could be used. The device would be responsible for which tuner is being used by which tv or whatever.
The total number of tuners would then reflect the number of LIVE concurrently different channels of content you could capture or watch. Once captured, the limit is bandwidth in the house. If two tv's were looking at the same content, it would require only a single tuner. Suppose you mostly watch network TV but also like HBO. You now would need one cable company tuner which you'd use for capturing the HBO content, while you could have several tuner cards (or external USB versions of same) to capture unscrampbled video. Each tuner could supply one or many tv set tops within your house provided they were on the same live channel. Content could be captured to disk just as it is with most dvr's now, so that each set top box could still have pause/rewind/fast forward capability independant of each other.
Additional menus on the set top box could easily stream back to the main box from a dvd player or whatever, effectively making the act of watching a dvd tantamount to capturing that content and adding it to your library. You could get fancy and automatically record new feature movies as your subscribed channels show them, and add them to your home library. The same could easily be done with a sat. radio subscription assuming your can read the track data while capturing the audio.
Hell, we can already be our own phone company with Asterisk. Its time to think about being our own media companies.
2. It will only think one thought at a time, unless you buy MS Brain Enterprise Server
3. Sometimes, it will stop thinking. The human will need to be killed and brought back with the paddles. This will be considered normal.
4. Windows software will suddenly make sense.
5. All your thoughts will be covered under DRM. You can share thoughts with up to three other people, but only if you are in a connected wireless area and your thoughts can register their new owners.
6. You may live longer, but large parts of your life will be spent watching a blue bar slowly crawl across your field of vision.
7. All sex will be done by oblique references. Nudity will not exist in any form other than pixilated and blurred images.
8. There will be Open Source brains -- called "Open Minds" but the people who choose them will be considered insane and untrusted by the rest of the MS Brain using world. These people will be locked away in insane asylums.
9. There will be Apple OS-X brains. The people who choose this will be seen as misguided flower children, wandering in airports with be smiles and preaching their message of peace and good music. They will be largely ignored.
10. There will be <>(@!*@($&&) * [[<< 0x000000BE or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY >>]]
There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945 (although there were two gaps with no sailings between July and September 1942, and March and November 1943). At first, the convoys sailed from Iceland but after September 1942 they assembled and sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland. The route was around occupied Norway to the Soviet ports and was particularly dangerous due to the proximity of German air, submarine and surface forces and also because of the severe weather.
The idea of reading a great piece on anything in Forbes leaves me a bit suspicious. That could just be because they keep letting Dan Lyons write for them.
sent via arctic North Atlantic ports. These routes were under constant threat by U-boats. Its a fascinating story, by the way. The question of Russia having the shear mass of humans to swamp the Germans is interesting. Without food, both sides were starving and the most likely outcome would have been an unfinished war settled by disease as had WWI.
....just throwing bodies and bad weather at the Germans. Germany and Japan made the same mistake British had made 150 years prior. They believed that the people of the United States (or in the case of the British the disparate group of colonial rabble) could not agree on anything long enough to make use of the resources at hand -- which in all cases were grossly underestimated -- long enough to put up any kind of serious organized fight. The British were very close to right, but by the time WWII came around the Germans and Japanese had absolutely no understanding of the combined industrial, human, and natural resources available to the American people nor the pride and resolve that would allow such divided people to unify in a common goal.
Once Japan and Germany woke the sleeping dog, there was no other possible outcome if you just look at resources and people.
Of course, we all need to be VERY careful not to make the same mistake underestimating China or India -- both of whom have vast resources, people, knowledge, and a deeply held social pride to draw on.
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I don't even dissagree. Its cumbersome, feels slow, and the editors and things feel outdated. Even most of IBM agrees that needs work. They're actually spending a fortune on it for the next rev (Hannover) which is built on the Eclipse framework and is much more extensible.
...that you can tell someone that being a commodity isn't the surest way to eventually be outsourced.
Lets get a few things straight given that I actually KNOW THE F'ing products involved:
/. it by linking it here).
/.'ers scream for, WHAT IS THE F'ING PROBLEM?
1. Notes has an odd UI with some challenges, we agree on that. Of course, that's because it was DESIGNED TO BE CROSS PLATFORM. In fact, the next rev includes a LINUX CLIENT.
2. Notes is VERY STABLE. I am personally aware of a major financial firm where 12,000 users are doing mail, calendaring, I.M., discussions, and workflow applications with the support of less than 15 people. They have had no outages. They have had no works.
3. Notes is inherently secure. It was doing public/private key encryption from day 1, back in the late 80's and is still doing so. It even supports PKI plug ins. Apparently, it was the only one because nobody else ever made any.
4. The notes CLIENT is inherently secure. It use execution control lists and design elements are signed. There are not worms or trojans that use Notes to replicate because THEY CAN'T.
5. Notes is OPEN. Yes, it uses a proprietary storage and transport format, but it also FULLY SUPPORTS XML for every design and and data element. It also includes Java (w/ IIOP and CORBA as well) object models, COM object models, and a published XML schema. It FULLY SUPPORTS MIME, SNMP, SMTP, LDAP (as client or server), NTP, HTTP, SSL, DIIOP, WEBDAV, WEB SERVICES (as client or server), ODBC.
6. Notes is PROGRAMABLE. Its objects are openly accessable and it includes full support for JAVA, Javascript, and its own Lotusscript and formula language.
7. Domino (the server) is MULTI-OS cross platform. It runs EQUALLY WELL on Linux, AIX, Solaris (in the past, and soon again) iSeries (OS400). I even know of one web accessible server running on Linux on XBOX! (no, I'm not going to
8. Notes owns roughly 50% of the corporate mail and calendaring marketing. No, not in small business or home use, but in major corporations.
9. Notes & Domino are backward compatible. No rip and replace upgrades. EVER. I can take a version 8 beta client and open a version 2 application (that I have) and it will WORK. Now. It is cheaper to upgrade to Domino 7 from Exchange 5.5 than to upgrade to Exchange 2000 or 2003 from the Exchange 5.5.
---
So, given all these things -- every one of which is something in general
You yourself say "THEY" and are talking about hundreds or thousands of people. That is, by definition, a commodity.
"Treating people like shit" is a corporate mistake -- but let me tell you something big guy, 50 years ago management treated people at least as bad, often MUCH MUCH MUCH worse.
The good old days, were not. In 1956 you could be fired or passed over without question for being black, gay, or female. You could be fired for dissagreeing with your boss, or for saying no to his amorous advances. You worked more hours, and were paid less (in any adjusted scale) and were treated worse.
The only real difference, was that in that technology marketplace you couldn't outsource high tech jobs to India. In fact, over the years that followed 1956, the trend was to send the lowest wage manufacturing jobs overseas, and to lay off factory workers as you replaced them with better machines (and in the longer term robotics).
Are you like 20 years old or what?
I just finished a security review at a financial firm. They have 12,000 users using Notes & Domino for Mail, Calendaring, and collaborative applications.
It only requires 15 people to support the entire environment.
They have had no downtime in 5 years.
They have never had a worm.
Other than basic human rights, nobody deserves anything.
The animators "deserve" exactly what they bargained for in exchange for doing the work. Their value is exactly what they are able to get in exchange for their work. Not more, not less. As is yours, as is mine.
Its all the same thing. If you're perfect at your job, but your job is a commodity -- or is percieved as one by the people who pay you -- you're out on your ass the minute they can find that commodity cheaper somewhere else. That's the way the world works. Does it suck? Its sure sucks if you're a commodity -- or seen as one.
Was Disney wrong to decide its animators were a commodity? I don't know. I don't know anything about the animation business and don't follow Disney's bottom line. They seem to be wrong about nearly everything else I've seen them do for years, so I would tend to believe they were wrong here too -- but that's not proof of anything.
Not one bit of this does anything BUT prove my point. If you are one of a thousand people doing exactly the same thing in a company, and there are a thousand more who can do it also; then unless you can convince someone that YOU PERSONALLY can do it better, you're a commodity. The minute you are a commodity in today's workforce, you'd better learn to speak Chinese or whatever dialect they're speaking in India and get used to eating white rice from a bowl two or three times a day.
Does the corporate world suck because it works that way? Yes, but find me any other system that is as productive, feeds as many people, grows economies as well. Communism is a great idea on paper. We all share the wealth. That didn't work out too well. Human nature doesn't allow communism on a large scale to work well. Humans are opportunistic by nature. That's why capitolism works.
I will say this though - those laid off people are not going to starve to death. It will suck for them for a while, and I don't take that lightly, but our economic system overall has been so unbelievably successful that even where it fails individuals it leaves both oportunity and minimal safety nets the like of which have never before been seen in the history of the world.
I personally do not believe in the "globalization" that has recently played out. Not because I don't believe in globalization in general, but because what we have is manipulated globalization not a true free market, and that breaks the system. Nonetheless, we live in a globalized marketplace. Commodities are going to always migrate to the cheapest source of production.
I'll close by saying what I started with. To save your job, don't be a commodity.
Forgive me for saying so, but you seem very personally invested in this particular case so maybe that's not a good example for discussion. If you'd like me to stop, I will. In the meantime...
When I say they sold themselves by volume, what I mean is that the model being used for employment in that industry was to take an entry level job at almost an apprentice level and work your way up through the ranks in a very bottom heavy management structure where there were very view 'top' posts compared to entry level positions -- and the line of entry level animators was so long at the door, that nobody had any feeling they'd be hard to replace. This is VERY similar to starting IT in a tech support role.
The failure was that projects could be assigned to animators in terms of how many man-days would be required from the pool of all available man-days in the animation house. That's volume. They didn't ask "how long do I have to wait for Bob to be available?" Once a few very top level people picked the look and style of the key characters, all the rest could be done by any of dozens in an available pool.
I say again -- if you allow yourself be considered part of an available pool, you're a commodity item not an individual with value.
....failed to convince Disney that they were not a commodity. They didn't fail at being animators -- I'll take your word for it and agree they were Godlike in their skills. Still, they sold themselves to Disney by the pound rather than as people. They failed to convince Disney that they couldn't be replaced with CGI for less money. Disney failed in its attempt to do so. They've bought Pixar rather than admit that failure and attempt to recover internally. Those in that group who were truly Godlike animators will have jobs.
Here's some facts for you.
1. I've made a living as a consultant for more than 15 years -- most of that on my own, without a firm to hide behind. I'm not talking contractor -- I don't take on site gigs paid by the day or week.
2. My primary application focus went through several years of downturn in popularity. Contractor's rates dropped from a high of $90 to a low of around $40. I charge $1500 per day (or $187.50 per hour).
3. I have a home and car, my kids are fed. We did not starve.
4. Most of the peers I know who dropped their rates are no longer in the consulting business.
5. When a client asked me to compete with a price they could get for offshore work, my response was "I will not compete on price with someone who merely has to support something I came up with until it breaks and they can't fix it. When somethings goes wrong and you need help, please feel free to call me." I am still doing work with that client -- and have for more than 10 years.
Be the best at something -- even if its a small thing, or a less popular thing -- and you will be in demand for that. There are times when people want things done right. Outsourcing fails because most customers cannot make good use of it effectively. With outsourcing the curse is that you get exactly what you ask for, not one thing more or less -- and you deserve exactly that.
Look at the market. Traditionally, people say "oh, we're going to need lots of Java developers. I'll go learn Java." Bad plan. Everyone is learning the same thing. If you make yourself a commodity, you will be priced by volume not talent.
:-)
To avoid being outsourced, be exceptionally good at something. People will always pay for exceptional talent.
In the worst of the IT economy most of my peers in the consulting world dropped their rates. I raised mine. I worked a little less, but when I worked it was good work. It was enjoyable, challenging, respected work. When someone really needed to pry open the purse they wanted the best, not the cheapest.
If you make yourself a commodity, get used to saying "would you like fries with that?"
Theaters traditionally make more money per ticket the longer a film is out. The first hot weekend, much more of the ticket costs go to the distributors, later, the theater keeps more and more of the ticket price.
Studios are incented to pack everyone into the first weekend. Theaters want nothing more than the sleeper hit of the year -- where audience builds over time.
Faster dvd releases mean less opportunity for the most profitable time a movie is in the theaters.
You are either someone who plays or your are not. Decide what you are and be that. I have no patience for this panzy-ass "trying to quit", be it smoking, drinking, gaming, or whatever.
Unplug the computer. Do what you need to do and stop playing.
If its just YOU who thinks its a problem for someone else, say something -- once. If he doesn't agree, then fine. Its his life. Maybe he just enjoys it. He's not out robbing banks or molesting children. He's spending HIS money on HIS form of entertainment. If you can't live with it, walk away.
.net isn't active-x now. You'll see localized "CLR" engine stuff running in a sandbox just like the java JVM. MS would LOVE to go there, and blaming someone else for the forced transition is not a problem for them.
It doesn't currently cost anything cost to even 1 cent per message. My point is that even if you made it cost as much ast 2-3 cents per message, you're no where neer expensive enough to make it unprofitable for the spammer. You couldn't raise the per message cost high enough to stop the spammer without also stopping the not-for-profit email lists and so on. The spammer will have more money to spend, and has proven more than willing to spend it.
...the power of the future, and always will be.
Author: Andrew Pollack
Story Date: Feb 28, 2006 10:56 PM
Subject: Proof that "Sender Pays" will not stop spam even one little bit
Category: Geek Stuff
For those who don't know, the idea of "Sender Pays" is to make the cost of sending an email slightly higher than zero for bulk emails -- some say for everyone. Say a penny a message or less. AOL and YAHOO are talking about using this method for public bulk mailing lists. While neither is saying they'd charge users directly, the idea is that if bulk mail comes it without paying it would be treated with a higher degree of suspicion.
Along comes this article about reputed "spam king" Adam Vitale being busted by the Secret Service. Allegedly, Vitale charged an undercover agent $6,500 for equipment then sent spam out to as many as 1.5 million people in return for an agreed price of at least $40,000 off the top of the first revenue generated plus 50% of all proceeds. Do the math, at that price the going rate for sending the messages already well exceeds 2.5 cents per message -- plus the threat of jail time.
At a rate of 2.5 cents per message, sleazy sales pitches for porn, pills, and promises are still extremely profitable. The techniques of spam are so effective in fact, that now many of those products have "upscaled" and we're seeing the same products and scams advertised on radio, direct mail, and late night television. If THAT's true, its a hell of a lot more profitable than 5 cents, or even 25 cents per message is likely to stop. Unless you believe consumers are willing to voluntarily make email cost more than that, you can only conclude that "Sender Pays" is a nonstarter.
...that the issue pervades office products since they started requiring the framework as well as application development products. Always, they ask for the other framework version. Annoying. I've taken to using different VM's for each individual project. That's also annoying.
I'm a Microsoft action pack customer and partner (hell, its a good deal) so I've got all the happy new versions as they come out. I've had major problems installing office add-on components for example with existing versions of office that are different. I've had way more problems trying to have say, Visual C++ loaded with Visual Basic then adding Visual Studio.Net -- whatever one I'd add last would wipe out the other -- and always they are asking me to update the foundation library to the other version.
...than it fixes it. How many times have you found .net foundation issues installing something? Some want 1.1 then you install something 2.0 and it get overwritten next time a 1.1 thing gets installed. Hell, I've had this with office productions that are off version from each other.
.net version of the JVM) is way too each to jump out of, and most programmers do so quite reguarly. By doing this, Microsoft has created a new kind of "dos interrupt problem" like the one that prevented them from moving to a true 32 bit operating system for so many years -- and ended up inflicting windows 95, 98, and FSM help us, Windows ME.
The CLR (Microsoft's
look, if not for the complete and total lack of ability to easily creat a digital library on a basement media server which handles your tivo-esque timeshifting, storage of dvd movies and cd quality audio, channel tuning, etc., we'd all be doing it.
The cable companies won't let a decent PC card cable tuner onto the market which can handle all the channels to which you subscribe. The music people work to prevent reasonable in-home music storage and access for the desperate fear that *GASP* you could share music across a network. The dvd people work to prevent any reasonable disk based storage and access of quality video.
What's really needed is a different paradigm altogether. Ideally, a pass through set top box on one tv in each room, which uses IP to connect to a base unit in the basement or media closet. The base unit is a PC. The set top box provides user friendly tv based menus to the device. The device itself controlls one or more cable company tuners -- the cheapest ones they have that will give you your content descrambled. For additional concurrent non-scrambled channels, regular PC tuner cards could be used. The device would be responsible for which tuner is being used by which tv or whatever.
The total number of tuners would then reflect the number of LIVE concurrently different channels of content you could capture or watch. Once captured, the limit is bandwidth in the house. If two tv's were looking at the same content, it would require only a single tuner. Suppose you mostly watch network TV but also like HBO. You now would need one cable company tuner which you'd use for capturing the HBO content, while you could have several tuner cards (or external USB versions of same) to capture unscrampbled video. Each tuner could supply one or many tv set tops within your house provided they were on the same live channel. Content could be captured to disk just as it is with most dvr's now, so that each set top box could still have pause/rewind/fast forward capability independant of each other.
Additional menus on the set top box could easily stream back to the main box from a dvd player or whatever, effectively making the act of watching a dvd tantamount to capturing that content and adding it to your library. You could get fancy and automatically record new feature movies as your subscribed channels show them, and add them to your home library. The same could easily be done with a sat. radio subscription assuming your can read the track data while capturing the audio.
Hell, we can already be our own phone company with Asterisk. Its time to think about being our own media companies.
1. It will only think Microsoft Thoughts.
2. It will only think one thought at a time, unless you buy MS Brain Enterprise Server
3. Sometimes, it will stop thinking. The human will need to be killed and brought back with the paddles. This will be considered normal.
4. Windows software will suddenly make sense.
5. All your thoughts will be covered under DRM. You can share thoughts with up to three other people, but only if you are in a connected wireless area and your thoughts can register their new owners.
6. You may live longer, but large parts of your life will be spent watching a blue bar slowly crawl across your field of vision.
7. All sex will be done by oblique references. Nudity will not exist in any form other than pixilated and blurred images.
8. There will be Open Source brains -- called "Open Minds" but the people who choose them will be considered insane and untrusted by the rest of the MS Brain using world. These people will be locked away in insane asylums.
9. There will be Apple OS-X brains. The people who choose this will be seen as misguided flower children, wandering in airports with be smiles and preaching their message of peace and good music. They will be largely ignored.
10. There will be <>(@!*@($&&) * [[<< 0x000000BE or ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY >>]]
There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945 (although there were two gaps with no sailings between July and September 1942, and March and November 1943). At first, the convoys sailed from Iceland but after September 1942 they assembled and sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland. The route was around occupied Norway to the Soviet ports and was particularly dangerous due to the proximity of German air, submarine and surface forces and also because of the severe weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_convoys_of_Wo
The idea of reading a great piece on anything in Forbes leaves me a bit suspicious. That could just be because they keep letting Dan Lyons write for them.
http://wiki.vowe.org/DanLyons
sent via arctic North Atlantic ports. These routes were under constant threat by U-boats. Its a fascinating story, by the way. The question of Russia having the shear mass of humans to swamp the Germans is interesting. Without food, both sides were starving and the most likely outcome would have been an unfinished war settled by disease as had WWI.
....just throwing bodies and bad weather at the Germans. Germany and Japan made the same mistake British had made 150 years prior. They believed that the people of the United States (or in the case of the British the disparate group of colonial rabble) could not agree on anything long enough to make use of the resources at hand -- which in all cases were grossly underestimated -- long enough to put up any kind of serious organized fight. The British were very close to right, but by the time WWII came around the Germans and Japanese had absolutely no understanding of the combined industrial, human, and natural resources available to the American people nor the pride and resolve that would allow such divided people to unify in a common goal.
Once Japan and Germany woke the sleeping dog, there was no other possible outcome if you just look at resources and people.
Of course, we all need to be VERY careful not to make the same mistake underestimating China or India -- both of whom have vast resources, people, knowledge, and a deeply held social pride to draw on.