Exactly. These are the exact same reasons I love my Macbook. I've had it for 2 years and it works JUST like it did when I brought it home from Microcenter.
I've reinstalled Windows on my Acer laptop 3 times in that same time.
And yes, they have resale value. My mom sold her Macbook Pro a year after she bought it for over 70 % of what she gave new for it. That's NOT going to happen with a PC laptop.
Yes, there is hype, but it's backed up.
I'm going to add more to what I said above. I make $50,000 a year as a sysadmin in the Atlanta area. On average, rent or a mortgage here is going to run anywhere from $1200 to $1500 a month.
Another user somewhere in the comments said something about having 20 ft ceilings. I have 20 foot ceilings too. In the winter I run a space heater and in the summer I run a littler air conditioner (window unit) instead of central heat air/gas. Otherwise my electric bill in the summer can shoot up to $400 a month (which is INSANE for this area) and $400 for gas in the winter (which is also insane).
I also put money back for retirement and my car is paid for. I don't see how anyone who can't make it ANYWHERE on a six figure salary gets through life. If rent is too much, get a roommate. Quit your whining.
Umm. He makes 160k and he's having trouble making ends meet? I don't care if rent really IS 3k a month. If you can't make $160,000 go around, you shouldn't be making $160,000.
Then came the evolution where the record label was THE entity. The record label is responsible for A&R, promotion, marketing, getting the tape/vinyl/cd transferred to media, concert promotion, and on and on.
The evolution I'm referring to here is probably the mid 60's to the late 90's (somewhere in there). There was actually a period in the middle of all that mess where the label wasn't constantly calling the artist saying "I'm not hearing a hit" or ""give me more cowbel"".
As far as I can tell, it's the first rule of business - Figure out a way to generate recurring revenue. What business owner wants to get $500.00 from you one time and then take their hands out of you pockets? Most of these greedy bastards would take everything you have and leave you homeless if they got the chance. I worked for a major cell phone provider and it was miserable under the regime I was working for.
First of all, they hope that there are lots of "features" on your phone that you pay for and don't use or even know about.
I'll give an example : this company rolled out a "pay per use" data package and sent it to EVERY customer (even the ones with flip phones where data is basically useless) and didn't tell them about it. When these devices have a data connection they use it whether it's intentional or not.
I had tons of customers calling in saying "What is this Pay Per Use Data" on my bill? By the way, I want all of that money back.
I would go to my supervisor and was told to reimburse the customer for _some_ of the charges and then try and sell them some OTHER useless feature. It made me sick to my stomach to do that to another human being. By the way, this is leaving out all the customers who don't look at their bill and just pay it.
After that experience (luckily I don't work for those a-holes anymore) I started paying more attention to how other businesses billed for certain things and learned that this is a pretty common practice - get as much money as you can for as little as possible.
I don't mind someone trying to make a buck. We all have to have a living, but to outright rip someone off to make your living is sickening.
Actually, a lot of people don't get what they "should get" when dealing with the courts. If he didn't have legal counsel (that he paid for) I could see him doing a couple of years on a first time drug charge. I went to school with a guy that got sentenced to a LONG time in federal prison for selling cocaine. He got out "early" after spending about 5 years behind bars.
If you ever have the misfortune of getting mixed up in the system, good luck to you. Maybe you have been in trouble and have gotten lucky. I went to court on two VERY ridiculous charges. I paid for a lawyer. He kept putting the case off until the DA finally agreed to drop the charges. It all depends on what mood you catch them in. It was proven to me when my charges were dropped. My lawyer didn't tell me what he was doing, but I figured it out. I wound up showing up to court about 6 or 7 times on the same charge. The first several times, the DA didn't agree to drop the charges. Finally, one random day, he said "OK" and the charges were dropped. Before that he had offered something dumb like community service. My lawyer just kept saying "I wouldn't take it". So I kept going back to court and one day the DA just agreed to drop the charges. The first charge cost me $250.00. The second one cost me $1500.00.
If I would have walked in there with a public defender, I would have gotten (probably) 80 hours of community service and a charge on my record that would have kept me from EVER getting a decent job. I have a family. My son is GOING TO EAT whether I get his food through legitimate means or not. If that would have been put on my record, I would probably be in prison or headed there today for some BS charge (and it was BS, trust me on that) that I shouldn't have been charged with in the first place.
Some people deserve to be in jail for the things they do. A lot of people are sitting in prison right now who don't deserve to be there by a long stretch.
You send ALL of your pictures and your phone number and your email address to this site..
Every morning you post everything that little mitzi and junior did at the ball game yesterday, as if anyone cares. You're favorite movies, books, TV shows, who you are in a relationship with. People will put EVERYTHING about them in their Facebook profile, and then they're surprised that it's easy for this company to track your habits, or for potential employers to screen you?
Smokescreen? I could be wrong but doesn't AT&T already own a lot of that cable that comes to a lot of houses right now? It seems to me like that would be the biggest hurdle in regards to rolling something like that.
It all comes down to being a responsible parent. If some of these people are handing them a tablet to babysit the kid, well yea, that's all they're going to know how to do. However, if the parents actually spend some time with their kids and do other things with them, there shouldn't be a problem. Let the kids use the tools and tech that is there for what they are : tools.
I'd also say that a tablet is better than just TV. Wouldn't you?
Hmm. Looks to me like all the contenders for the "worst" companies in the world are just the biggest companies in the world. It makes sense. More people have used Comcast, Verizon, and shopped at Walmart than they have other companies...
I heard somewhere (to lazy to google it atm) that they would be extending Windows defender updates (and maybe some other updates for the OS) for ONE more year after the targeted April 2014 date.
Having said that, I'll say this:
Remeber this story from a few days ago? They won't do anything beyond what I said at the top of my post about this. It would cost too much money, and we all know Microsoft isn't out to lose money. I'm sure the same pertained to Windows 95/98 (on a much smaller scale of course) when those EOL'ed. Nothing was done about that.
I think what he meant to say was that small telcos (CLEC's, etc) are required to provide landlines to everyone in the area they serve (not that too many people use landlines anymore). As far as ISP's go, they aren't "required" to serve anyone...
It's good enough for me at $7.99 USD / month. I can stream LOTS of different TV shows that I grew up watching and probably wouldn't have had the chance to watch otherwise (unless I wanted to go buy every season on DVD for $30.00 per season at best).
I'm perfectly satisfied with what Netflix offers as far as streaming goes. Let's keep one thing in mind here. It's a business and they're in it to make money. I think $7.99 a month is perfectly fair for what they offer and I see new titles show up all the time.
Am I going to be able to search for any movie I want and stream it to my TV? No, and I shouldn't be able to for that price.
Not sure what this guy means by "not good enough" and I did RTFA.
It's dependable as well. I watch shows just about EVERY night and never have any problems with the streams not keeping up.
I'm well satisfied with the service personally. If you don't like it, don't pay for it. Simple.
I would go even a step further than my subject line suggests and create a guest account and lock it down as much as you can. Turn off all the browser features as well.
A guest shouldn't be doing anything except for browsing the web and checking web based email. Turning the browsers security settings on "high" (which would generally mean disabling scripting, cookies, etc) will keep them from doing too much there.
Also, as I said above, let them use the guest account and lock it down tight. You didn't mention which version of Windows you are running, but if it's fairly new you could use the Local Security Policy MMC and prevent them from running applications.
This on top of your standard AV and the other precautions that I'm assuming you are talking about should do it.
I watched the following happen. T-mobile launched "pay per use" web service and were putting the service on customers' phones without notice. All phones (like any other computer) is going to try and use a network connection if it has one. Customers with flip phones would call in and have a $10.00 data bill. It was discouraged to credit the money back.
It was a _requirement_ of your job to push features to customers EVERY time they called in and your metrics were based on whether or not you sold them anything. I'm sure lots of the "top sellers" were adding features onto people's accounts without authorization from the customer.
Here's the best part : If you call in and ask for a manager, your'e given the run around. If you ask to have the call pulled (since they are all supposed to be recorded), expect to wait at least two weeks and most of the time you won't get a call back ever.
Want to cancel your account? Fine. You will be credited NOTHING and will have to pay your contract termination fees. The entire call structure is built around NOT giving you access to a manager to talk to about the problem. The manager is in the background telling the rep your'e on the phone with to sell you EVEN MORE as you're complaining about being robbed. It is completely ridiculous.
(rant on)
Some people will fall for anything. Red Bull does nothing more for you than a plain old caffinated soda (the taurine and other "supplements" have NO effect whatsoever). People hear things on the news, read articles in magazines, or hear through word of mouth that there's some new miracle herb or supplement that's gonna change their lives and they waste hundreds to thousands of dollars a year on crap.
Want to be healthy? EAT RIGHT and EXERCISE. Period.
(rant off)
I used to work at a telco and 2 of us supported about 100 users. It got WAY out of hand because they would just call us or email us if they had a problem. There was no way to prioritize the work that had to be done. If you got a call in the morning on a problem that would take most of the day, and then got calls for things that were minor (in terms of TTR), a lot of time was wasted.
I now do basically the same thing at another company and we use a ticketing system. We rarely, if ever, run into those problems. Even if we did, we'd have more time to deal with it, because everyone MUST put in a ticket when they have an issue. If you aren't using a system like this now it will require that you talk to some higher-ups about getting a system implemented and there will be policy change at the company, but the people that you are pushing the idea to should immediately see the benefits.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. These are the exact same reasons I love my Macbook. I've had it for 2 years and it works JUST like it did when I brought it home from Microcenter.
I've reinstalled Windows on my Acer laptop 3 times in that same time.
And yes, they have resale value. My mom sold her Macbook Pro a year after she bought it for over 70 % of what she gave new for it. That's NOT going to happen with a PC laptop.
Yes, there is hype, but it's backed up.
I'm going to add more to what I said above. I make $50,000 a year as a sysadmin in the Atlanta area. On average, rent or a mortgage here is going to run anywhere from $1200 to $1500 a month.
Another user somewhere in the comments said something about having 20 ft ceilings. I have 20 foot ceilings too. In the winter I run a space heater and in the summer I run a littler air conditioner (window unit) instead of central heat air/gas. Otherwise my electric bill in the summer can shoot up to $400 a month (which is INSANE for this area) and $400 for gas in the winter (which is also insane).
I also put money back for retirement and my car is paid for. I don't see how anyone who can't make it ANYWHERE on a six figure salary gets through life. If rent is too much, get a roommate. Quit your whining.
Umm. He makes 160k and he's having trouble making ends meet? I don't care if rent really IS 3k a month. If you can't make $160,000 go around, you shouldn't be making $160,000.
They are building a battery that you can walk into.
Then came the evolution where the record label was THE entity. The record label is responsible for A&R, promotion, marketing, getting the tape/vinyl/cd transferred to media, concert promotion, and on and on.
The evolution I'm referring to here is probably the mid 60's to the late 90's (somewhere in there). There was actually a period in the middle of all that mess where the label wasn't constantly calling the artist saying "I'm not hearing a hit" or ""give me more cowbel"".
As far as I can tell, it's the first rule of business - Figure out a way to generate recurring revenue. What business owner wants to get $500.00 from you one time and then take their hands out of you pockets? Most of these greedy bastards would take everything you have and leave you homeless if they got the chance. I worked for a major cell phone provider and it was miserable under the regime I was working for.
First of all, they hope that there are lots of "features" on your phone that you pay for and don't use or even know about.
I'll give an example : this company rolled out a "pay per use" data package and sent it to EVERY customer (even the ones with flip phones where data is basically useless) and didn't tell them about it. When these devices have a data connection they use it whether it's intentional or not.
I had tons of customers calling in saying "What is this Pay Per Use Data" on my bill? By the way, I want all of that money back.
I would go to my supervisor and was told to reimburse the customer for _some_ of the charges and then try and sell them some OTHER useless feature. It made me sick to my stomach to do that to another human being. By the way, this is leaving out all the customers who don't look at their bill and just pay it.
After that experience (luckily I don't work for those a-holes anymore) I started paying more attention to how other businesses billed for certain things and learned that this is a pretty common practice - get as much money as you can for as little as possible.
I don't mind someone trying to make a buck. We all have to have a living, but to outright rip someone off to make your living is sickening.
Actually, a lot of people don't get what they "should get" when dealing with the courts. If he didn't have legal counsel (that he paid for) I could see him doing a couple of years on a first time drug charge. I went to school with a guy that got sentenced to a LONG time in federal prison for selling cocaine. He got out "early" after spending about 5 years behind bars.
If you ever have the misfortune of getting mixed up in the system, good luck to you. Maybe you have been in trouble and have gotten lucky. I went to court on two VERY ridiculous charges. I paid for a lawyer. He kept putting the case off until the DA finally agreed to drop the charges. It all depends on what mood you catch them in. It was proven to me when my charges were dropped. My lawyer didn't tell me what he was doing, but I figured it out. I wound up showing up to court about 6 or 7 times on the same charge. The first several times, the DA didn't agree to drop the charges. Finally, one random day, he said "OK" and the charges were dropped. Before that he had offered something dumb like community service. My lawyer just kept saying "I wouldn't take it". So I kept going back to court and one day the DA just agreed to drop the charges. The first charge cost me $250.00. The second one cost me $1500.00.
If I would have walked in there with a public defender, I would have gotten (probably) 80 hours of community service and a charge on my record that would have kept me from EVER getting a decent job. I have a family. My son is GOING TO EAT whether I get his food through legitimate means or not. If that would have been put on my record, I would probably be in prison or headed there today for some BS charge (and it was BS, trust me on that) that I shouldn't have been charged with in the first place.
Some people deserve to be in jail for the things they do. A lot of people are sitting in prison right now who don't deserve to be there by a long stretch.
I can't believe I put an apostrophe in there. It was early :)
You send ALL of your pictures and your phone number and your email address to this site..
Every morning you post everything that little mitzi and junior did at the ball game yesterday, as if anyone cares. You're favorite movies, books, TV shows, who you are in a relationship with. People will put EVERYTHING about them in their Facebook profile, and then they're surprised that it's easy for this company to track your habits, or for potential employers to screen you?
Smokescreen? I could be wrong but doesn't AT&T already own a lot of that cable that comes to a lot of houses right now? It seems to me like that would be the biggest hurdle in regards to rolling something like that.
It all comes down to being a responsible parent. If some of these people are handing them a tablet to babysit the kid, well yea, that's all they're going to know how to do. However, if the parents actually spend some time with their kids and do other things with them, there shouldn't be a problem. Let the kids use the tools and tech that is there for what they are : tools.
I'd also say that a tablet is better than just TV. Wouldn't you?
For habit #2 Nagios comes in really handy (could watch MRTG et al as well).
Setup all hosts in Nagios, sending alerts to an email for a couple weeks. Figure out what hosts have certain patterns.
Hmm. Looks to me like all the contenders for the "worst" companies in the world are just the biggest companies in the world. It makes sense. More people have used Comcast, Verizon, and shopped at Walmart than they have other companies...
No kidding. I'd say about .01% of U.S. cops are honest.
I heard somewhere (to lazy to google it atm) that they would be extending Windows defender updates (and maybe some other updates for the OS) for ONE more year after the targeted April 2014 date.
Having said that, I'll say this:
Remeber this story from a few days ago? They won't do anything beyond what I said at the top of my post about this. It would cost too much money, and we all know Microsoft isn't out to lose money. I'm sure the same pertained to Windows 95/98 (on a much smaller scale of course) when those EOL'ed. Nothing was done about that.
I think what he meant to say was that small telcos (CLEC's, etc) are required to provide landlines to everyone in the area they serve (not that too many people use landlines anymore). As far as ISP's go, they aren't "required" to serve anyone...
It's good enough for me at $7.99 USD / month. I can stream LOTS of different TV shows that I grew up watching and probably wouldn't have had the chance to watch otherwise (unless I wanted to go buy every season on DVD for $30.00 per season at best). I'm perfectly satisfied with what Netflix offers as far as streaming goes. Let's keep one thing in mind here. It's a business and they're in it to make money. I think $7.99 a month is perfectly fair for what they offer and I see new titles show up all the time.
Am I going to be able to search for any movie I want and stream it to my TV? No, and I shouldn't be able to for that price.
Not sure what this guy means by "not good enough" and I did RTFA.
It's dependable as well. I watch shows just about EVERY night and never have any problems with the streams not keeping up.
I'm well satisfied with the service personally. If you don't like it, don't pay for it. Simple.
I would go even a step further than my subject line suggests and create a guest account and lock it down as much as you can. Turn off all the browser features as well.
A guest shouldn't be doing anything except for browsing the web and checking web based email. Turning the browsers security settings on "high" (which would generally mean disabling scripting, cookies, etc) will keep them from doing too much there.
Also, as I said above, let them use the guest account and lock it down tight. You didn't mention which version of Windows you are running, but if it's fairly new you could use the Local Security Policy MMC and prevent them from running applications.
This on top of your standard AV and the other precautions that I'm assuming you are talking about should do it.
I watched the following happen. T-mobile launched "pay per use" web service and were putting the service on customers' phones without notice. All phones (like any other computer) is going to try and use a network connection if it has one. Customers with flip phones would call in and have a $10.00 data bill. It was discouraged to credit the money back.
It was a _requirement_ of your job to push features to customers EVERY time they called in and your metrics were based on whether or not you sold them anything. I'm sure lots of the "top sellers" were adding features onto people's accounts without authorization from the customer.
Here's the best part : If you call in and ask for a manager, your'e given the run around. If you ask to have the call pulled (since they are all supposed to be recorded), expect to wait at least two weeks and most of the time you won't get a call back ever.
Want to cancel your account? Fine. You will be credited NOTHING and will have to pay your contract termination fees. The entire call structure is built around NOT giving you access to a manager to talk to about the problem. The manager is in the background telling the rep your'e on the phone with to sell you EVEN MORE as you're complaining about being robbed. It is completely ridiculous.
Racing destruction set was great! Building your own tracks with lots of jumps and "Lunar" gravity.
(rant on) Some people will fall for anything. Red Bull does nothing more for you than a plain old caffinated soda (the taurine and other "supplements" have NO effect whatsoever). People hear things on the news, read articles in magazines, or hear through word of mouth that there's some new miracle herb or supplement that's gonna change their lives and they waste hundreds to thousands of dollars a year on crap.
Want to be healthy? EAT RIGHT and EXERCISE. Period. (rant off)
I used to work at a telco and 2 of us supported about 100 users. It got WAY out of hand because they would just call us or email us if they had a problem. There was no way to prioritize the work that had to be done. If you got a call in the morning on a problem that would take most of the day, and then got calls for things that were minor (in terms of TTR), a lot of time was wasted. I now do basically the same thing at another company and we use a ticketing system. We rarely, if ever, run into those problems. Even if we did, we'd have more time to deal with it, because everyone MUST put in a ticket when they have an issue. If you aren't using a system like this now it will require that you talk to some higher-ups about getting a system implemented and there will be policy change at the company, but the people that you are pushing the idea to should immediately see the benefits.