While I agree with him in general, one thing you need to be aware of is: Be careful that advertising before your product is ready doesn't tarnish your company's reputation. While such a thing can be turned around later, it can easily kill your company early on.
Well, I keep spending $49.95 on my pre-release, pre-advance version of Duke Nukem Forever in hopes that it'll come out sooner, so maybe advertising your product (wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy) before it's ready isn't such a bad thing after all.
Despite this demand for home viewing, only 5% admitted to downloading a movie from the internet.
The reasons (especially the first post) stated above are very true, but one thing has been left out:
The vast majority of movies released now suck.
No longer do I try to catch a movie on its opening day. Instead, I read review after review, talk to a few friends who saw it, and only then will I consider seeing it in a theater.
But with the turnaround time from theater to DVD being 3-6 months, I usually end up waiting to watch it at home if it's worth watching at all. Instead, I'd rather rent tried and true movies that I haven't seen yet. After 50 years of great film-making, there are still plenty to choose from!
Those that I've seen a few times are those that I'll buy, pre-viewed, from Blockbuster or some place like that for a much reduced cost.
Did anyone else notice that both pages of that article were half content, half crap? The lower half of both pages were loaded with nonsense. There's already AdBlock; maybe someone should write CrapBlock?
Re:AOL is on crack. Here's why.
on
Zombie Report By ISP
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What you're missing is the whole "economies of scale" concept. If someone is "acquiring" a botnet of 10,000 computers that is quite a lot of bandwidth even if all of them are providing a "wimpy 48 K/bps of DDoS power."
Remember: most zombies involved in a DDoS attack are simply opening a connection, sending a malformed request then closing the connection. They aren't playing FPS games or downloading porn, so high bandwidth isn't really required. What is required is a vast diversity in IP address so that the firewall and server are overwhelmed trying to process every incoming request.
Oh well. The key concept behind security is, has been, and always will be trust. You should always ask yourself when you receive something from someone else how much you trust the source, and act accordingly.
This is even truer in light of the Israeli spyware incident. The spyware was installed via the Autoplay feature of Windows and was distributed on CDs sent to target companies that supposedly contained business proposals, if memory serves me correctly.
And their dividend was responsible for, what, 2% of the GDP in 4Q2004? So they may have been late in acknowledging a lot of stuff but the little toe of most of the Microsoft old timers makes more money per hour than you or I.
I don't like Microsoft's business practices any more than the next guy. But the senseless "oh, they'll screw it up" whining that has been incessent since Windows 3.0 was released serves no purpose.
I remember once being a speaker at ColoradOS/2 and Andrew Schulman (author of the various "Undocumented Windows" books) was the speaker. While he was demonstrating the limitations of Windows 95 and it's "multitasking abilities" he was constantly berated by the (rather large) audience as if he were Bill Gates himself. All because he simply wrote a book that explored the previously undocumented parts of Windows.
After listening to this enough, I took the floor (I was a speaker at the conference and - scary thought - a rather well-respected member of the global OS/2 community then...we all see where that got me. [Rolls eyes]) and basically told everyone to shut up.
(Paraphrasing) "Berating Andrew or Windows isn't going to make it go away," I said. "If you are so against Windows and Microsoft you had better learn what it is about the system that makes it so successful because you aren't going to beat it by whining like little babies."
(That was basically the message I brought, even though I was considerably more diplomatic about it.)
The same goes here: whine all you want, but in spite of the fact that Linux and OSX are better operating systems, Microsoft didn't become as successful as they are by being a bunch of dumbasses. If they enter the online music industry, Apple better beware.
But look at the quality of the products since then. Apple has gone on to make a user-friendly OS with a relatively minute percentage of market share that no virus writer wants to spend their time targetting
Fixed.
Don't get me wrong - I love Macs and OSX - but no virus writer is going to spend their time going after an OS that is in 3rd behind Windows and the various forms of Unix.
Apple's closed-minded philosophy got them in trouble once and, unless they change course, it'll get them in trouble again.
To be fair, they are all making enough money over there that they might not care as much as we think they do...
This reminds me of a story. I once worked for a company that specialized in tape backup software, name withheld. (I worked on Long Island then, not the on the plains of CHEYENNE, so don't try to guess the name of the company.) A few months after I stopped working there, I received a phone call from my ex-manager that went something like this:
Mgr: So how's it going? Blah blah blah...
Me: It's fine. Blah blah blah...
Mgr: So..um..did you ever "borrow" a copy of the source code to the Disaster Recovery solution that you single-handedly wrote? You know, for "posterity" reasons?
Me: Of course I didn't. That wouldn't be ethical for sure and probably would be illegal. Why do you ask?
Mgr: Well, it seems that the hard drive that your machine used crashed and we don't have a backup.
How long until an open source version of a CD-RW or DVD+RW (or many of the other writable DVD formats) is started? It's not like there aren't other open source hardware projects.
Also yeah, the first 3 Dune books were good - the rest of them sucked (come on !.. honored matres' ?... sex that blinds)... Same for Star War movies.
I disagree. Maybe the vehicles for getting the overall message of the books could have been better, but they were plausible. Don't even try to tell me that/.'ers haven't gone blind from too much mastur...I mean sex.
The first 3 books dealt with the overcoming of the totalitarian influence as exerted by outside influences (most notably Corrino). The last 3 books dealt with the overcoming of the totalitarian influence as exerted by the prescience of the one that freed them from the oppression: this is an irony that should not be overlooked.
However, I always found it funny that all 6 books could be summed up with: "Be careful what you wish for." LOL
By the way, I've read the "House Atreides," "House Harkonnen" and "House Corrino" prequels, and while slow at first ended up being great auxilliary material to the original Dune series. I have yet to begin "The Butlerian Jihad."
I understand your point, and it's a good one, but you are not taking into consideration the loss of productivity due to a non-standard user interface paradigm.
Gawd, I sound like the Pointy Haired Boss. (Thank goodness I shave my head!)
For example: my ex-wife was a Controller and used a text-mode accounting package, MAS90. Until they released a new, Windows version (several years ago), people who knew MAS90 were commanding a premium in pay.
Why? Because the program's interface was archaic. This caused the learning curve to be steeper than many people could handle, since they were all used to the other 99% of applications on the market, all written using the Windows GUI.
My salary is $100,000/year. (It isn't, but let's assume that because it's a nice, round number.)
A Universal Life policy will cost $100/month for $300,000 of coverage. This isn't too far out of whack based on what I know people are paying for this exact amount of coverage / type of policy.
Most companies will only give you a life insurance policy in the amount of 1 year of your annual salary, so this figure is decreased further.
The infamous "payroll tax" benefit was what I was referring to specifically when I said my tax deductions offset the supposed difference between fulltime and 1099 salaries.
For example:
A consultant makes $50/hour.
40 hrs/wk * 50 wks/yr = 2,000 hrs/yr
$50/hr * 2,000 hrs/yr = $100,000/yr
(Now you know why I chose $50/hr)
I used 50 wks/yr to eliminate the cost of a paid vacation.
$100,000/yr * 25% = $75,000 (1099 with Schedule H tax deductions)
$100,000/yr * 30% = $70,000 (to convert to fulltime, not including taxes, based on what the HR person told me in the very first post of my thread)
$70,000/yr * 25% = $52,500. I'm making an assumption on the tax bracket.
That's a difference ($75,000 - $52,500) of $22,500. I've eliminated vacation by using 50 weeks per year instead of 52. That leaves:
Medical
Dental
Vision
Short-term disability
Long-term disability
401(k) or Profit Sharing plan
Life insurance
I don't care how strong a company's benefits package is, the list of items above will not cost them $22,500.
A good health package will cost $1,000 / month for a family. (It may be a little less, but I like using round numbers.)
A 401(k) with a 1-for-1 match of up to 5% annual salary could, at maximum, cost the company $3,500 ($70,000 * 5%), but we all know that no company matches under these terms anymore.
Short- and long-term disability is an unknown cost to me, but I cannot imagine it costing more than $200/month. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
Life insurance, as stated in the beginning, is no more than $100/month.
That's $1,000 + 3,500 + 200 + 100. Let's round up and say a total of $5,000. That's considerably less than the $22,500 difference calculated above.
I'm assuming that you're not speaking out of direct experience, but instead from the big book of "how things are supposed to be" because in the real world, reboots cause LOTS of disruption.
Maybe I simply led a sheltered life, because the past 5 jobs I've had, going back to 1996, didn't have this problem on the order of magnitude that everyone here is describing. These weren't Mom and Pop Shops either. With the exception of 1, all were Fortune 1000 companies (if not Fortune 500).
I'm still waiting for the science behind cloning to be completed so that I can have my clone come to the office and earn money for me while I stay at home and play CoD:UO all day.
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Well, I keep spending $49.95 on my pre-release, pre-advance version of Duke Nukem Forever in hopes that it'll come out sooner, so maybe advertising your product (wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyy) before it's ready isn't such a bad thing after all.
Yeah, sometimes people's websites take things to the 5th degree. [Sigh]
The reasons (especially the first post) stated above are very true, but one thing has been left out:
The vast majority of movies released now suck.
No longer do I try to catch a movie on its opening day. Instead, I read review after review, talk to a few friends who saw it, and only then will I consider seeing it in a theater.
But with the turnaround time from theater to DVD being 3-6 months, I usually end up waiting to watch it at home if it's worth watching at all. Instead, I'd rather rent tried and true movies that I haven't seen yet. After 50 years of great film-making, there are still plenty to choose from!
Those that I've seen a few times are those that I'll buy, pre-viewed, from Blockbuster or some place like that for a much reduced cost.
Did anyone else notice that both pages of that article were half content, half crap? The lower half of both pages were loaded with nonsense. There's already AdBlock; maybe someone should write CrapBlock?
Remember: most zombies involved in a DDoS attack are simply opening a connection, sending a malformed request then closing the connection. They aren't playing FPS games or downloading porn, so high bandwidth isn't really required. What is required is a vast diversity in IP address so that the firewall and server are overwhelmed trying to process every incoming request.
Your problem is that you listen to Kim Commando in the first place. :P
This is even truer in light of the Israeli spyware incident. The spyware was installed via the Autoplay feature of Windows and was distributed on CDs sent to target companies that supposedly contained business proposals, if memory serves me correctly.
Trust is everything vis-a-vis computer security.
I don't like Microsoft's business practices any more than the next guy. But the senseless "oh, they'll screw it up" whining that has been incessent since Windows 3.0 was released serves no purpose.
I remember once being a speaker at ColoradOS/2 and Andrew Schulman (author of the various "Undocumented Windows" books) was the speaker. While he was demonstrating the limitations of Windows 95 and it's "multitasking abilities" he was constantly berated by the (rather large) audience as if he were Bill Gates himself. All because he simply wrote a book that explored the previously undocumented parts of Windows.
After listening to this enough, I took the floor (I was a speaker at the conference and - scary thought - a rather well-respected member of the global OS/2 community then...we all see where that got me. [Rolls eyes]) and basically told everyone to shut up.
(Paraphrasing) "Berating Andrew or Windows isn't going to make it go away," I said. "If you are so against Windows and Microsoft you had better learn what it is about the system that makes it so successful because you aren't going to beat it by whining like little babies."
(That was basically the message I brought, even though I was considerably more diplomatic about it.)
The same goes here: whine all you want, but in spite of the fact that Linux and OSX are better operating systems, Microsoft didn't become as successful as they are by being a bunch of dumbasses. If they enter the online music industry, Apple better beware.
Fixed.
Don't get me wrong - I love Macs and OSX - but no virus writer is going to spend their time going after an OS that is in 3rd behind Windows and the various forms of Unix.
Apple's closed-minded philosophy got them in trouble once and, unless they change course, it'll get them in trouble again.
To be fair, they are all making enough money over there that they might not care as much as we think they do...
So..um..are you doing anything later?
This reminds me of a story. I once worked for a company that specialized in tape backup software, name withheld. (I worked on Long Island then, not the on the plains of CHEYENNE, so don't try to guess the name of the company.) A few months after I stopped working there, I received a phone call from my ex-manager that went something like this:
Mgr: So how's it going? Blah blah blah...
Me: It's fine. Blah blah blah...
Mgr: So..um..did you ever "borrow" a copy of the source code to the Disaster Recovery solution that you single-handedly wrote? You know, for "posterity" reasons?
Me: Of course I didn't. That wouldn't be ethical for sure and probably would be illegal. Why do you ask?
Mgr: Well, it seems that the hard drive that your machine used crashed and we don't have a backup.
I guess no one has used the F7 key in a Windows command prompt, huh?
Great. Now I can't get Twisted Sister out of my head.
I knew it! Yoda does read Slashdot!
I'd rather lay in bed with twin blondes, but call me a Contrarian.
How long until an open source version of a CD-RW or DVD+RW (or many of the other writable DVD formats) is started? It's not like there aren't other open source hardware projects.
Let me guess: the "single descendent" technology behind this was developed in China?
I disagree. Maybe the vehicles for getting the overall message of the books could have been better, but they were plausible. Don't even try to tell me that /.'ers haven't gone blind from too much mastur...I mean sex.
The first 3 books dealt with the overcoming of the totalitarian influence as exerted by outside influences (most notably Corrino). The last 3 books dealt with the overcoming of the totalitarian influence as exerted by the prescience of the one that freed them from the oppression: this is an irony that should not be overlooked.
However, I always found it funny that all 6 books could be summed up with: "Be careful what you wish for." LOL
By the way, I've read the "House Atreides," "House Harkonnen" and "House Corrino" prequels, and while slow at first ended up being great auxilliary material to the original Dune series. I have yet to begin "The Butlerian Jihad."
Regarding the Cisco stuff, it sounds like a new business dying to be born, pun intended. :D
Gawd, I sound like the Pointy Haired Boss. (Thank goodness I shave my head!)
For example: my ex-wife was a Controller and used a text-mode accounting package, MAS90. Until they released a new, Windows version (several years ago), people who knew MAS90 were commanding a premium in pay.
Why? Because the program's interface was archaic. This caused the learning curve to be steeper than many people could handle, since they were all used to the other 99% of applications on the market, all written using the Windows GUI.
Assumptions:
$100,000/year / 12 months/year = $8,333.33/month
$100 / $8,333.33 = approximately 1.2%.
Most companies will only give you a life insurance policy in the amount of 1 year of your annual salary, so this figure is decreased further.
The infamous "payroll tax" benefit was what I was referring to specifically when I said my tax deductions offset the supposed difference between fulltime and 1099 salaries.
For example:
A consultant makes $50/hour.
40 hrs/wk * 50 wks/yr = 2,000 hrs/yr
$50/hr * 2,000 hrs/yr = $100,000/yr
(Now you know why I chose $50/hr)
I used 50 wks/yr to eliminate the cost of a paid vacation.
$100,000/yr * 25% = $75,000 (1099 with Schedule H tax deductions)
$100,000/yr * 30% = $70,000 (to convert to fulltime, not including taxes, based on what the HR person told me in the very first post of my thread)
$70,000/yr * 25% = $52,500. I'm making an assumption on the tax bracket.
That's a difference ($75,000 - $52,500) of $22,500. I've eliminated vacation by using 50 weeks per year instead of 52. That leaves:
I don't care how strong a company's benefits package is, the list of items above will not cost them $22,500.
That's $1,000 + 3,500 + 200 + 100. Let's round up and say a total of $5,000. That's considerably less than the $22,500 difference calculated above.
Maybe I simply led a sheltered life, because the past 5 jobs I've had, going back to 1996, didn't have this problem on the order of magnitude that everyone here is describing. These weren't Mom and Pop Shops either. With the exception of 1, all were Fortune 1000 companies (if not Fortune 500).
I'm still waiting for the science behind cloning to be completed so that I can have my clone come to the office and earn money for me while I stay at home and play CoD:UO all day.
...and so began the birth of Frankenstein.
What would the porn films call it? Double-single penetration?