Yeah, after watching a number of their episodes (with my wife, yes...), both of us came to the conclusion that most of their designers are hacks, and basically suck at what they do.
We're almost always impressed with Frank's work, on the other hand. He tends to make rather "kid friendly" designs, with lots of bright colors and creativity - but for a family, that's often what you're looking for. (Once you have kids, the lava lamps, black lights, posters, and so on don't really seem appropriate anymore.)
That oriental-looking guy seems like he usually has good ideas too, for a more "adult contemporary" look.
There's one guy, in particular, who always seems like he decorates things in brown. It's awful, and he's probably the one who made the lady cry.... As I recall, he seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem too.
I figured the particle board furniture wouldn't last though... If we ever let these people redo *our* place, we'd skip that completely, or just use the particle board stuff as "templates" for real replacement furniture afterwards.
You know, perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this whole issue is the *greatly flawed* notion that the materials one reads has any bearing on their guilt or innocence in the acts they perform.
No matter how many books I choose to read about serial killers, it doesn't make me one. The very idea that somebody would label me as "suspicious" of such activity if I did read these books smacks of "circumstantial evidence" - which should have very little value in a court of law.
Attach this sticker to the back of your wifi unit, and instantly, you can as much as double your reception? Yeah, yeah -- they tried to sell me that for my cellphone too. Doesn't work.:)
The only part of this story that really bothers/concerns me is the idea that an ISP may suspend one's account, yet leave their mailbox active.
I had this happen once with a local ISP I tried out for a couple months, and then decided not to use. (Luckily for me, I didn't keep them long enough for it to create BIG hassles for me.)
They actually left my email account fully functional, but they simply deleted my password allowing me to establish a PPP connection with them. I had no idea they did this (assuming, of course, they'd delete my mailbox to save disk space and all), until months later. A few people were asking me why I never replied to their email.
I finally realized they'd been sending mail to my old account all this time, and it wasn't bouncing back because it *was* delivered successfully, onto the server I no longer connected to.
By this time, I'd almost forgotten my password, but managed to remember it - and connected to their mail server via my current ISP's connection, and pulled down well over 1500 emails that were piled up in there.
I think everyone important knows my current address now, so I haven't worried about it again -- but for all I know, that account is *still* active on their system today!
Maybe your real problem is the power-suckage of Citrix?
I'm sorry, but after doing some Citrix administration for a couple years - I'm convinced that the product is a solution to a problem that never really existed.
1. Their "reduced cost of ownership" is a blatant lie. Not only is Citrix ungodly expensive for licensing, but instead of having 30 or 40 users running a Win desktop happily on systems most firms already owned, they have to invest in monster servers to handle the load of serving all 30 or 40 of those desktops out. (Either served to the same, existing hardware that used to run the Win desktops anyway, or to overpriced "thin clients" which tend to break down as often (or more often) than the PCs they replaced.)
2. The "ease of administration" is questionable, at best. EG. I don't know many Citrix admins who found sharing multiple printers in the environment was "smooth sailing". I also don't really see the supposed advantage behind the "change it once on your server, and everyone gets the update!" concept. You can accomplish the same with a number of remote deployment tools for workstations (Enterprise edition of Norton Ghost, for example?). You also don't have to hassle with getting everyone logged out of a Citrix box to restart it after you make changes requiring a reboot. (I find it easier to schedule individual workstations to reboot at night or over people's lunch hour.)
Look, we all agreed that the mainframe/dumb terminal model was "outmoded" after the 60's and 70's. We embraced the personal computer, and eventually the usefulness of "peer to peer networking". Now, Citrix comes along and drags all the modern things back into the 60's and 70's -- yet this time, we're supposed to think it's "innovative"?
Right now, things are especially lopsided - because some online retailers do charge sales tax, added on to your web-based purchases.
(I often wonder if those extra "sales tax" charges are really getting turned in as sales tax, or if it's just a scheme to bump up their profit margins?)
Anyway, I see your point that there's no logical reason to treat web commerce differently than catalog/mail order commerce. But I'd like to see no taxes on either. As someone already pointed out - the cost of enforcing this type of tax is too great. M
Well, I wouldn't necessarily disagree that "even Britney Spears deserves a couple of years of copyright protection" -- but that's far from the situation we have today.
The very definition of what users can and can't do with a work covered by "copyright" in America has been twisted by the industry lobbyists. (Consider this: Every time Britney Spears puts out some new music on the DVD audio format, you're breaking federal law to even play the thing back on a machine running Linux!)
Furthermore, instead of works being covered "for a couple years", we have people lobbying to extend it to well past the artist's own lifetime. (Heck, it already extends out decades and decades as it is.)
You can point much of the blame for this on organizations like the RIAA. Every time they "win" an extension of copyright, it gives them something to wave in front of the artists signed up with them, to say "Look what we did for YOU!" Meanwhile, everyone else is losing out.
As modern music becomes ever more dependent on samplers and "re-mixes", the current copyright gets in the way and impedes creation of new music more and more. (Though some might not choose to respect it, the ability to copy/paste portions of existing musical works into a "collage" of something new counts as a valid form of artistic creation, in my way of thinking.) Right now, doing this generates a massive pile of paperwork for an artist. You have to request permission for every single lousy section of a work you sample, pay royalties out to everyone involved, and some might even say "No, sorry. I don't like your type of music, so I'm going to disallow your use of that sample from my album."
IMO, artists disallowing use of small clips from their songs are usually just trying to be vengeful against the other artist. What harm can it possibly do? Even if you hate the style of music being created - it doesn't change anything about your original work. If anything, it might turn more people on to it.
Ok, I see I touched a nerve with some people. (Being modded down as "flamebait" is usually a good indicator, in and of itself.)
But yes, United Devices appears to be an actual *corporation*.
(See: http://www.ud.com/company/)
The only reason I brought up SETI@home is because it was the first successful, wide-scale implementation of a distributed computing client that conveniently runs as a screen saver. I think that, in itself, was quite significant. It paved the way for others to do the same with a more useful computing project behind it. (I will admit, the search for alien life using their methods seems pretty unlikely to pan out.)
I didn't even realize they did a Mac port of SETI, but obviously they did. I'm quite certain it wasn't available at the same time they first released the PC version, though. (They even has OS/2 ports of SETI after a long enough delay....)
Also, I fail to see how you can make your claim that running distributed computing clients is a task "the G4 does better and faster than any other processor"??
What are you benchmarking against? It's pretty much cold, hard fact that the latest P4 processors outperform anything in the G4 series. That's why Apple was considering the idea of possibly moving towards an Intel-based Mac someday. They have a CPU that won't scale as far, and doesn't perform as well as what Intel has.
I would dismiss it as just such a "read between the lines" article bashing the Mac - except Wired, of all magazines, broke the story.
As you surely must admit, Wired has traditionally been very much a "pro Mac" magazine since its inception. I own every one of Wired's issues for the first 3 years they were published, and I often recall being a bit frustrated at their editorial bias towards the Mac, without giving any real justifications for it.
Wired is very much a magazine concerned with a "hip, techno-savvy image" - and focuses in on the artistic and creative (even concerned enough with that to print itself on expensive glossy paper). This is quite often the crowd that aligns itself with the Mac, since the Mac is traditionally seen as an "artist-friendly" platform.
Furthermore, Slashdot tends to run stories that feature anything non-Windows in nature - so once again, you can count on a bit of a pro-Mac bias. (It ain't Linux, but OSX is closer than Windows, right?)
Therefore, no - I really have to assume some people think this type of get-together helps sell the Mac as the computer of a "hipper, more fun" crowd. Sorry, I'll pass on that....
As another Libertarian, I agree wholeheartedly with you.
In fact, I often find myself at odds with other Libertarian-leaning individuals on the whole copyright/piracy debate.
Certainly, Thomas Jefferson himself was not a fan of the ideas of patenting ideas or extending terms of copyright out to great lengths of time.
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors." - Jefferson
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." - Jefferson on Copyright
Yep! I have to laugh now, at those people who spent loads on the big Cryotech cases to overclock their PIII's to the then unheard-of speeds of 1Ghz or so.
I mean, just how many months of use did they get out of those before faster CPUs came along and equalled their CPU power with no refrigerated cooling necessary? 6 months, maybe?
"Wow man, that sure is awesome! You've got this 75lb. case with a refrigeration system in it, sucking down electricity, so you can rival the clock speed of this new chip I cool with a $19 fan!"
Wow, maybe I'm just getting old and bitter? But I don't see how this is "newsworthy" at all, except maybe on the macfreaks.org web site itself?
It strikes me as yet another attempt to drum up some more support for Apple's platform -- but it's a pretty pathetic one. "Come on, join the Mac revolution! You too can perform stupid stunts like tossing old Windows-based PCs and look at porn!"
Wake me up when a group of Mac users accomplishes something truly significant and new/interesting with their machines. Right now, they still seem to mostly be playing "catch up" with the PC world. (EG. The distributed computing projects like SETI@home and United Devices' search for cures for cancer are milestones in personal computing. But where was Apple at the forefront of that revolution? Nowhere....)
Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the case of government offices, it seems like quite a bit of very important information is stuck inside outdated mainframes or minicomputers.
I should mention that I'm not personally a DBA. I know a little bit, but much of my information is second-hand. (I have many friends and contacts who are DBA's... so I get to hear a lot about their issues and problems.)
Nonetheless, I suspect that anyone with mission-critical type data stored on a system constructed back around 1968 has othe pressing concerns that might cause the money to be coughed-up for a migration (whether it was Oracle or anything else modern). Often times, you can't really get repairs done to systems that old in reasonable amounts of time. If the hardware dies on you, what then? Even if you have a service contract with guaranteed service levels, I bet you're paying through the nose for it on systems that old. That sure would tip the tables in favor of a migration, right there.
Sure, but you know what? I don't really think this is a case of "non-business types" not understanding these concepts.
In fact, it irritates me when some "management type" uses examples such as the.com fiascos to illustrate his/her own usefulness and self-worth.
In reality, most of these businesses were run by people trying to get rich quick. Everyone was playing games with investment capital that they didn't *really* care if they were ever able to pay back or not. They just wanted to build a big company for themselves, inflate their stock prices, sell out and move on to something else.
The masses got caught up in all the excitement - and started ignoring the obvious, that this was going to all come crashing down sooner or later. (Hey, why worry? You'll get lots of free stuff, attend some cool parties, and get an inflated salary designing web pages for a year or so, right!?)
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. Problem is, most of the people using Oracle made that purchasing decision quite a while ago - when the alternatives weren't so clear or plentiful.
My last employer, for example, set up Oracle back when it shipped on floppy disks for the installation!
Once you have all your important/critical data in an Oracle database, it becomes nearly impossible to justify pulling it all back out and migrating to something new.
True, you grit your teeth every time that maintenance renewal fee comes up (another $35,000 please!).... but most "TCO surveys" fail to estimate in your true costs of doing a conversion. All those years your I.T. people have been learning and working with Oracle are going to be "down the tubes" after a migration. All the initial money you spent for the thing is for naught. Not to mention, all the time invested in moving the data, setting up Postgres or MySQL for your company's needs.
I'd really question anyone just now planning a new Oracle database purchase -- but Oracle is probably living nicely off all those who bought into it years ago.
Well, if you want to know what *I* think is more of a crime, it's probably the govt. organizations and charities that seem to believe a computer, high-speed internet access, and whatever else goes with it is a "basic life necessity". I'm stuck paying extra fees on every phone bill so Bell can hand out subsidized DSL lines to "the poor".
I have no qualm with providing easy and free access to the net from such places as public libraries. The poor should certainly have some way to type up and print out a resume, or conduct an online job search. (In fact, most states do give them this type of access at the unemployment offices.)
If you give someone a nice, relatively new, computer system of their own though - what kind of service are you doing them if they can't afford the software to go with it? I don't see why a poor person has to run Windows XP? Give them an older PC, "recycled" from someone else's pile of "useless old junk systems" and let them run an older version of Windows.
I bet they can do anything they need with Windows '95. If you feel even more willing to help, you could try setting them up with Linux and teaching them how it works -- but I bet you'd be wasting your time in many cases. They don't need a server-class OS. They just want to type some papers and use the interface they see when they go to work.
Thank you! I was just about to post something similar. I mean, I would expect Slashdot to at least discuss the merits vs. disadvantages of this new notebook. Perhaps someone who actually *used* one could submit a story about it?
But to simply make inane comments because you're miffed it "looks like a Mac" notebook? Whatever.... If you haven't noticed, Winbook has been making a really light-weight, thin silver high-end notebook for well over a year now. I think it resembles a TIbook a little bit, too. Should be all bash on Winbook now, and make senseless comments about it not being useful "for any real work" and being a "ripoff of a Mac"?
Personally, I've contended that Apple has always been a "hot seller" primarily with folks concerned with "style over substance". (Note, this has *no* bearing on whether their OS is technically "good" or "useful". It simply means that most of their loyal customers are concerned first and foremost with the styling/looks of the machine.) Apple would be long dead by now if they sold all of their systems in standard beige "clone-style" mini and mid-tower cases.
If someone else (figures it'd be a maker of "status symbol" cars, like Porsche) wants to try to capitalize on this "style over substance" sales idea - then more power to them. As a self-proclaimed "techno-geek", though, I'll still be much more worried about the functionality and performance of said system.
I'm not sure this "party line" of "check your network often for rogue APs" is all that sensible of a solution.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing it, if you so choose. I just feel like it's playing "whack a mole" with a technology that network admins would be better off dealing with "head-on".
If a given environment requires a high level of security from people outside the building gaining network access, they should make efforts to block the radiation of the wi-fi signal beyond their perimeter. A farraday cage of sorts could be constructed to shield the signals from getting out. This might make a lot of sense in the construction of new bank buildings, for example. (Just place wire mesh behind the drywall that goes up against outer walls.)
For those unwilling to go this far to solve the problem, it still seems like good network practices should "save the day". Let's say, for example, war-driver X does find your sale guy's new, unsecured access point, and gets on your corporate LAN. How is he/she any different from a visitor who decided to plug his laptop into an available network port when he sits down in one of your company's conference rooms for a meeting?
In both cases, you'd assume the person wouldn't be able to do much more than get issued a valid IP address and be able to "ping" stuff. He/she doesn't have a username or password, so therefore, no security granted to modify or open any resources. (Or is your network lacking security on important files and/or directories, so all users get default access? If so, *there* is your primary issue!)
Even if your only concern is that war-driver X not be able to bum free Internet access off of you - that's solvable too. If you set up a front-end that requires authentication before using the web (or ftp), you can stop that. Of course, your employees might resist the inconvenience of having to "log in again" to use the net each time.... but hey, you should really be logging what sites they're visiting anyway if you're concerned about security and legal liability.
Air pollution? Nah - this seems highly improbable. For one thing, California has the most anti-pollution legislation of the 50 states. Unless you're saying that this legislation does absolutely nothing to curb pollution, I'd say California might be one of the last places you'd expect a rise in a pollution-induced abnormality.
Look at all the midwestern and southern states that produce coal and burn plenty of coal for power plants. Consider that CA has the most stringent requirements for motor vehicle pollution of the whole U.S. Also consider that CA has an advantage of non-polluting hydroelectric power, being a coastal state.
One of the biggest reasons people seem to like Roomba is its ability to easily go all the way under beds, tables, and the like and vacuum underneath them.
Sure, you can vacuum an apartment in only minutes, but do you really bother to switch to the crevice tool and make sure you get everything under your bed, etc.? (Probably not, if you're like most people.)
I do agree though... it's one of those "gee whiz" things that initially sounds teriffic, but I bet most owners quit using it after the first year or so. The small lint tray instead of a decent-capacity bag, the rechargeable battery which will no-doubt quit holding a charge after a year or so of use, and the fact it can't do any stairs (the part people hate vacuuming the most!) means it's not quite as useful as it first appears.
Actually, I thought I read that one of these robot mowers had a built in alarm system. If it strays too far outside the perimeter you set up by planting stakes in the ground - it sounds a loud alarm - deterring theft.
I don't really see that what you did was a problem. Consider this.... Who ended up looking bad for sending out the spam? Was it you? Quite doubtful. The lighting manufacturer is left holding the bag.
It's your job to make a given company's computer systems perform the tasks that they want them to perform. If that includes sending out spam, well - we all know it's a stupid idea, but let them figure that out for themselves.
I see much more of an ethical question coming up if you're asked to do something that negatively affects your co-workers. Those are much stickier situations, that do directly pit you against other employees. (Your co-workers either know, or will find out, who is behind a measure taken that affects them. They won't simply blame the company, as though it was an individual, and be done with it.)
I think perhaps you're being a bit too harsh, although I believe your facts are correct.
The one piece of information we're lacking here is details on exactly what was said in this CEO's email. Perhaps the sysadmin felt the email was expressing feelings or facts that were in everyone's long-term best interest to be passed along, even though the CEO later started having 2nd. thoughts about it?
Again, this isn't really so much a question of legality as it is morality/ethics. Yes, it's quite clearly *legal* for a company to demand to look ay any email they like on their system, delete any email they like on their system, etc. The courts will back them up on this.
On the other hand, should a corporation be this heavy-handed in their treatment of their email system? That's a completely different question.
Putting myself in the CEO's shoes for a moment, I could envision scenarios where I might make some comments in email that really needed to be said. (Perhaps, I expose my true feelings about a problem in middle management - instead of hiding it behind the usual shield of "we want to empower our people to make their own decisions without interference"?) Perhaps, shortly afterwards, I start thinking twice about my statements, and decide it's more "appropriate" to let these managers bury themselves with their own ineptness.
Well, say my I.T. guy believes my initial statements were correct, and he doesn't want to see a number of employees working beneath these inept managers suffer any longer. He decides to challenge my request to recall my initial email. What then?
Ultimately, I'm the CEO. I have the right to hire or fire "at will" in my state. Sure, I can just can this I.T. guy.... but does that make me the better person in this case?
Right.... Only the very small (usually shareware) operations would bother re-using a floppy disk.
These days, it probably costs little more for a floppy disk than it does to print a single flyer on a piece of paper. The real cost is in the labor/time to format a disk or write data to them.
I'm sure the biggest reason, truth be told, that someone like AOL would just throw out all their old disks is because the labels don't come off cleanly or easily. If the disks had no labels stuck to them, they could probably sell the whole lot to a company that would resell the bulk disks. (I remember ordering bulk floppies before that said they were "recycled" and "re-certified" to be error free.)
Who wants to sit around and carefully peel away thousands of AOL labels from floppies though, to make them resellable?
So wait a minute? Given the two options, it's automatically far better for someone to join the army than the peace corps?
Nah, you're entitled to your opinion - but I think that's completely "apples to oranges". The Peace Corps. seems to thrive on individuals who like to teach or train others. There's a lot of education going on there. The Army, on the other hand, tends to attract those who lack direction in their lives. Perhaps someone who just "needs a change" and hate the routine they're stuck in. But if you want to teach people, the Army isn't the place to be. You're there to pretty much "shut up and learn" and then "do, based on what we told you".
Freedom sure isn't free, but it's also a fact that if you end up dead, you absolutely lost all of your own freedom.
Also, I know this is just a generalization - but an awful lot of people I knew who joined the military came out as sort of "empty shells" of the people they once were. True, they might have been washed clean of their bad habits they used to have -- but they also seemed like their brains got re-loaded with a bunch of indoctrination about the way to be a "real man" in the U.S.A.
There's something eerily "zombie-like" about some of these guys. They're suddenly almost "too polite" and dress a little "too sharp" at any semi-formal occasion. Many times, they suddenly get a strong urge to get married, have kids, and become a cookie-cutter image of the "family man". I know you can't really fault any of this. On the surface, it looks like the guys really "cleaned up their act" -- but it's a little unnatural. I don't think they came to these lifestyle conclusions and changes purely on their own.....
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, after watching a number of their episodes (with my wife, yes...), both of us came to the conclusion that most of their designers are hacks, and basically suck at what they do.
We're almost always impressed with Frank's work, on the other hand. He tends to make rather "kid friendly" designs, with lots of bright colors and creativity - but for a family, that's often what you're looking for. (Once you have kids, the lava lamps, black lights, posters, and so on don't really seem appropriate anymore.)
That oriental-looking guy seems like he usually has good ideas too, for a more "adult contemporary" look.
There's one guy, in particular, who always seems like he decorates things in brown. It's awful, and he's probably the one who made the lady cry.... As I recall, he seemed to have a bit of an attitude problem too.
I figured the particle board furniture wouldn't last though... If we ever let these people redo *our* place, we'd skip that completely, or just use the particle board stuff as "templates" for real replacement furniture afterwards.
Exactly right!
You know, perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this whole issue is the *greatly flawed* notion that the materials one reads has any bearing on their guilt or innocence in the acts they perform.
No matter how many books I choose to read about serial killers, it doesn't make me one. The very idea that somebody would label me as "suspicious" of such activity if I did read these books smacks of "circumstantial evidence" - which should have very little value in a court of law.
Attach this sticker to the back of your wifi unit, and instantly, you can as much as double your reception? Yeah, yeah -- they tried to sell me that for my cellphone too. Doesn't work. :)
The only part of this story that really bothers/concerns me is the idea that an ISP may suspend one's account, yet leave their mailbox active.
I had this happen once with a local ISP I tried out for a couple months, and then decided not to use. (Luckily for me, I didn't keep them long enough for it to create BIG hassles for me.)
They actually left my email account fully functional, but they simply deleted my password allowing me to establish a PPP connection with them. I had no idea they did this (assuming, of course, they'd delete my mailbox to save disk space and all), until months later. A few people were asking me why I never replied to their email.
I finally realized they'd been sending mail to my old account all this time, and it wasn't bouncing back because it *was* delivered successfully, onto the server I no longer connected to.
By this time, I'd almost forgotten my password, but managed to remember it - and connected to their mail server via my current ISP's connection, and pulled down well over 1500 emails that were piled up in there.
I think everyone important knows my current address now, so I haven't worried about it again -- but for all I know, that account is *still* active on their system today!
Maybe your real problem is the power-suckage of Citrix?
I'm sorry, but after doing some Citrix administration for a couple years - I'm convinced that the product is a solution to a problem that never really existed.
1. Their "reduced cost of ownership" is a blatant lie. Not only is Citrix ungodly expensive for licensing, but instead of having 30 or 40 users running a Win desktop happily on systems most firms already owned, they have to invest in monster servers to handle the load of serving all 30 or 40 of those desktops out. (Either served to the same, existing hardware that used to run the Win desktops anyway, or to overpriced "thin clients" which tend to break down as often (or more often) than the PCs they replaced.)
2. The "ease of administration" is questionable, at best. EG. I don't know many Citrix admins who found sharing multiple printers in the environment was "smooth sailing". I also don't really see the supposed advantage behind the "change it once on your server, and everyone gets the update!" concept. You can accomplish the same with a number of remote deployment tools for workstations (Enterprise edition of Norton Ghost, for example?). You also don't have to hassle with getting everyone logged out of a Citrix box to restart it after you make changes requiring a reboot. (I find it easier to schedule individual workstations to reboot at night or over people's lunch hour.)
Look, we all agreed that the mainframe/dumb terminal model was "outmoded" after the 60's and 70's. We embraced the personal computer, and eventually the usefulness of "peer to peer networking". Now, Citrix comes along and drags all the modern things back into the 60's and 70's -- yet this time, we're supposed to think it's "innovative"?
Right now, things are especially lopsided - because some online retailers do charge sales tax, added on to your web-based purchases.
(I often wonder if those extra "sales tax" charges are really getting turned in as sales tax, or if it's just a scheme to bump up their profit margins?)
Anyway, I see your point that there's no logical reason to treat web commerce differently than catalog/mail order commerce. But I'd like to see no taxes on either. As someone already pointed out - the cost of enforcing this type of tax is too great. M
Well, I wouldn't necessarily disagree that "even Britney Spears deserves a couple of years of copyright protection" -- but that's far from the situation we have today.
The very definition of what users can and can't do with a work covered by "copyright" in America has been twisted by the industry lobbyists. (Consider this: Every time Britney Spears puts out some new music on the DVD audio format, you're breaking federal law to even play the thing back on a machine running Linux!)
Furthermore, instead of works being covered "for a couple years", we have people lobbying to extend it to well past the artist's own lifetime. (Heck, it already extends out decades and decades as it is.)
You can point much of the blame for this on organizations like the RIAA. Every time they "win" an extension of copyright, it gives them something to wave in front of the artists signed up with them, to say "Look what we did for YOU!" Meanwhile, everyone else is losing out.
As modern music becomes ever more dependent on samplers and "re-mixes", the current copyright gets in the way and impedes creation of new music more and more. (Though some might not choose to respect it, the ability to copy/paste portions of existing musical works into a "collage" of something new counts as a valid form of artistic creation, in my way of thinking.) Right now, doing this generates a massive pile of paperwork for an artist. You have to request permission for every single lousy section of a work you sample, pay royalties out to everyone involved, and some might even say "No, sorry. I don't like your type of music, so I'm going to disallow your use of that sample from my album."
IMO, artists disallowing use of small clips from their songs are usually just trying to be vengeful against the other artist. What harm can it possibly do? Even if you hate the style of music being created - it doesn't change anything about your original work. If anything, it might turn more people on to it.
Ok, I see I touched a nerve with some people. (Being modded down as "flamebait" is usually a good indicator, in and of itself.)
But yes, United Devices appears to be an actual *corporation*.
(See: http://www.ud.com/company/)
The only reason I brought up SETI@home is because it was the first successful, wide-scale implementation of a distributed computing client that conveniently runs as a screen saver. I think that, in itself, was quite significant. It paved the way for others to do the same with a more useful computing project behind it. (I will admit, the search for alien life using their methods seems pretty unlikely to pan out.)
I didn't even realize they did a Mac port of SETI, but obviously they did. I'm quite certain it wasn't available at the same time they first released the PC version, though. (They even has OS/2 ports of SETI after a long enough delay....)
Also, I fail to see how you can make your claim that running distributed computing clients is a task "the G4 does better and faster than any other processor"??
What are you benchmarking against? It's pretty much cold, hard fact that the latest P4 processors outperform anything in the G4 series. That's why Apple was considering the idea of possibly moving towards an Intel-based Mac someday. They have a CPU that won't scale as far, and doesn't perform as well as what Intel has.
I would dismiss it as just such a "read between the lines" article bashing the Mac - except Wired, of all magazines, broke the story.
As you surely must admit, Wired has traditionally been very much a "pro Mac" magazine since its inception. I own every one of Wired's issues for the first 3 years they were published, and I often recall being a bit frustrated at their editorial bias towards the Mac, without giving any real justifications for it.
Wired is very much a magazine concerned with a "hip, techno-savvy image" - and focuses in on the artistic and creative (even concerned enough with that to print itself on expensive glossy paper). This is quite often the crowd that aligns itself with the Mac, since the Mac is traditionally seen as an "artist-friendly" platform.
Furthermore, Slashdot tends to run stories that feature anything non-Windows in nature - so once again, you can count on a bit of a pro-Mac bias. (It ain't Linux, but OSX is closer than Windows, right?)
Therefore, no - I really have to assume some people think this type of get-together helps sell the Mac as the computer of a "hipper, more fun" crowd. Sorry, I'll pass on that....
As another Libertarian, I agree wholeheartedly with you.
In fact, I often find myself at odds with other Libertarian-leaning individuals on the whole copyright/piracy debate.
Certainly, Thomas Jefferson himself was not a fan of the ideas of patenting ideas or extending terms of copyright out to great lengths of time.
"It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors." - Jefferson
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." - Jefferson on Copyright
Yep! I have to laugh now, at those people who spent loads on the big Cryotech cases to overclock their PIII's to the then unheard-of speeds of 1Ghz or so.
I mean, just how many months of use did they get out of those before faster CPUs came along and equalled their CPU power with no refrigerated cooling necessary? 6 months, maybe?
"Wow man, that sure is awesome! You've got this 75lb. case with a refrigeration system in it, sucking down electricity, so you can rival the clock speed of this new chip I cool with a $19 fan!"
Wow, maybe I'm just getting old and bitter?
But I don't see how this is "newsworthy" at all, except maybe on the macfreaks.org web site itself?
It strikes me as yet another attempt to drum up some more support for Apple's platform -- but it's a pretty pathetic one. "Come on, join the Mac revolution! You too can perform stupid stunts like tossing old Windows-based PCs and look at porn!"
Wake me up when a group of Mac users accomplishes something truly significant and new/interesting with their machines. Right now, they still seem to mostly be playing "catch up" with the PC world. (EG. The distributed computing projects like SETI@home and United Devices' search for cures for cancer are milestones in personal computing. But where was Apple at the forefront of that revolution? Nowhere....)
Yeah, absolutely. Especially in the case of government offices, it seems like quite a bit of very important information is stuck inside outdated mainframes or minicomputers.
... so I get to hear a lot about their issues and problems.)
I should mention that I'm not personally a DBA. I know a little bit, but much of my information is second-hand. (I have many friends and contacts who are DBA's
Nonetheless, I suspect that anyone with mission-critical type data stored on a system constructed back around 1968 has othe pressing concerns that might cause the money to be coughed-up for a migration (whether it was Oracle or anything else modern). Often times, you can't really get repairs done to systems that old in reasonable amounts of time. If the hardware dies on you, what then? Even if you have a service contract with guaranteed service levels, I bet you're paying through the nose for it on systems that old. That sure would tip the tables in favor of a migration, right there.
Sure, but you know what? I don't really think this is a case of "non-business types" not understanding these concepts.
.com fiascos to illustrate his/her own usefulness and self-worth.
In fact, it irritates me when some "management type" uses examples such as the
In reality, most of these businesses were run by people trying to get rich quick. Everyone was playing games with investment capital that they didn't *really* care if they were ever able to pay back or not. They just wanted to build a big company for themselves, inflate their stock prices, sell out and move on to something else.
The masses got caught up in all the excitement - and started ignoring the obvious, that this was going to all come crashing down sooner or later. (Hey, why worry? You'll get lots of free stuff, attend some cool parties, and get an inflated salary designing web pages for a year or so, right!?)
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. Problem is, most of the people using Oracle made that purchasing decision quite a while ago - when the alternatives weren't so clear or plentiful.
.... but most "TCO surveys" fail to estimate in your true costs of doing a conversion. All those years your I.T. people have been learning and working with Oracle are going to be "down the tubes" after a migration. All the initial money you spent for the thing is for naught. Not to mention, all the time invested in moving the data, setting up Postgres or MySQL for your company's needs.
My last employer, for example, set up Oracle back when it shipped on floppy disks for the installation!
Once you have all your important/critical data in an Oracle database, it becomes nearly impossible to justify pulling it all back out and migrating to something new.
True, you grit your teeth every time that maintenance renewal fee comes up (another $35,000 please!)
I'd really question anyone just now planning a new Oracle database purchase -- but Oracle is probably living nicely off all those who bought into it years ago.
Well, if you want to know what *I* think is more of a crime, it's probably the govt. organizations and charities that seem to believe a computer, high-speed internet access, and whatever else goes with it is a "basic life necessity". I'm stuck paying extra fees on every phone bill so Bell can hand out subsidized DSL lines to "the poor".
I have no qualm with providing easy and free access to the net from such places as public libraries. The poor should certainly have some way to type up and print out a resume, or conduct an online job search. (In fact, most states do give them this type of access at the unemployment offices.)
If you give someone a nice, relatively new, computer system of their own though - what kind of service are you doing them if they can't afford the software to go with it? I don't see why a poor person has to run Windows XP? Give them an older PC, "recycled" from someone else's pile of "useless old junk systems" and let them run an older version of Windows.
I bet they can do anything they need with Windows '95. If you feel even more willing to help, you could try setting them up with Linux and teaching them how it works -- but I bet you'd be wasting your time in many cases. They don't need a server-class OS. They just want to type some papers and use the interface they see when they go to work.
Thank you! I was just about to post something similar. I mean, I would expect Slashdot to at least discuss the merits vs. disadvantages of this new notebook. Perhaps someone who actually *used* one could submit a story about it?
But to simply make inane comments because you're miffed it "looks like a Mac" notebook? Whatever.... If you haven't noticed, Winbook has been making a really light-weight, thin silver high-end notebook for well over a year now. I think it resembles a TIbook a little bit, too. Should be all bash on Winbook now, and make senseless comments about it not being useful "for any real work" and being a "ripoff of a Mac"?
Personally, I've contended that Apple has always been a "hot seller" primarily with folks concerned with "style over substance". (Note, this has *no* bearing on whether their OS is technically "good" or "useful". It simply means that most of their loyal customers are concerned first and foremost with the styling/looks of the machine.) Apple would be long dead by now if they sold all of their systems in standard beige "clone-style" mini and mid-tower cases.
If someone else (figures it'd be a maker of "status symbol" cars, like Porsche) wants to try to capitalize on this "style over substance" sales idea - then more power to them. As a self-proclaimed "techno-geek", though, I'll still be much more worried about the functionality and performance of said system.
I'm not sure this "party line" of "check your network often for rogue APs" is all that sensible of a solution.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with doing it, if you so choose. I just feel like it's playing "whack a mole" with a technology that network admins would be better off dealing with "head-on".
If a given environment requires a high level of security from people outside the building gaining network access, they should make efforts to block the radiation of the wi-fi signal beyond their perimeter. A farraday cage of sorts could be constructed to shield the signals from getting out. This might make a lot of sense in the construction of new bank buildings, for example. (Just place wire mesh behind the drywall that goes up against outer walls.)
For those unwilling to go this far to solve the problem, it still seems like good network practices should "save the day". Let's say, for example, war-driver X does find your sale guy's new, unsecured access point, and gets on your corporate LAN. How is he/she any different from a visitor who decided to plug his laptop into an available network port when he sits down in one of your company's conference rooms for a meeting?
In both cases, you'd assume the person wouldn't be able to do much more than get issued a valid IP address and be able to "ping" stuff. He/she doesn't have a username or password, so therefore, no security granted to modify or open any resources. (Or is your network lacking security on important files and/or directories, so all users get default access? If so, *there* is your primary issue!)
Even if your only concern is that war-driver X not be able to bum free Internet access off of you - that's solvable too. If you set up a front-end that requires authentication before using the web (or ftp), you can stop that. Of course, your employees might resist the inconvenience of having to "log in again" to use the net each time.... but hey, you should really be logging what sites they're visiting anyway if you're concerned about security and legal liability.
Air pollution? Nah - this seems highly improbable. For one thing, California has the most anti-pollution legislation of the 50 states. Unless you're saying that this legislation does absolutely nothing to curb pollution, I'd say California might be one of the last places you'd expect a rise in a pollution-induced abnormality.
Look at all the midwestern and southern states that produce coal and burn plenty of coal for power plants. Consider that CA has the most stringent requirements for motor vehicle pollution of the whole U.S. Also consider that CA has an advantage of non-polluting hydroelectric power, being a coastal state.
One of the biggest reasons people seem to like Roomba is its ability to easily go all the way under beds, tables, and the like and vacuum underneath them.
Sure, you can vacuum an apartment in only minutes, but do you really bother to switch to the crevice tool and make sure you get everything under your bed, etc.? (Probably not, if you're like most people.)
I do agree though... it's one of those "gee whiz" things that initially sounds teriffic, but I bet most owners quit using it after the first year or so. The small lint tray instead of a decent-capacity bag, the rechargeable battery which will no-doubt quit holding a charge after a year or so of use, and the fact it can't do any stairs (the part people hate vacuuming the most!) means it's not quite as useful as it first appears.
Actually, I thought I read that one of these robot mowers had a built in alarm system. If it strays too far outside the perimeter you set up by planting stakes in the ground - it sounds a loud alarm - deterring theft.
I don't really see that what you did was a problem. Consider this.... Who ended up looking bad for sending out the spam? Was it you? Quite doubtful. The lighting manufacturer is left holding the bag.
It's your job to make a given company's computer systems perform the tasks that they want them to perform. If that includes sending out spam, well - we all know it's a stupid idea, but let them figure that out for themselves.
I see much more of an ethical question coming up if you're asked to do something that negatively affects your co-workers. Those are much stickier situations, that do directly pit you against other employees. (Your co-workers either know, or will find out, who is behind a measure taken that affects them. They won't simply blame the company, as though it was an individual, and be done with it.)
I think perhaps you're being a bit too harsh, although I believe your facts are correct.
The one piece of information we're lacking here is details on exactly what was said in this CEO's email. Perhaps the sysadmin felt the email was expressing feelings or facts that were in everyone's long-term best interest to be passed along, even though the CEO later started having 2nd. thoughts about it?
Again, this isn't really so much a question of legality as it is morality/ethics. Yes, it's quite clearly *legal* for a company to demand to look ay any email they like on their system, delete any email they like on their system, etc. The courts will back them up on this.
On the other hand, should a corporation be this heavy-handed in their treatment of their email system? That's a completely different question.
Putting myself in the CEO's shoes for a moment, I could envision scenarios where I might make some comments in email that really needed to be said. (Perhaps, I expose my true feelings about a problem in middle management - instead of hiding it behind the usual shield of "we want to empower our people to make their own decisions without interference"?) Perhaps, shortly afterwards, I start thinking twice about my statements, and decide it's more "appropriate" to let these managers bury themselves with their own ineptness.
Well, say my I.T. guy believes my initial statements were correct, and he doesn't want to see a number of employees working beneath these inept managers suffer any longer. He decides to challenge my request to recall my initial email. What then?
Ultimately, I'm the CEO. I have the right to hire or fire "at will" in my state. Sure, I can just can this I.T. guy.... but does that make me the better person in this case?
Just food for thought.....
Right.... Only the very small (usually shareware) operations would bother re-using a floppy disk.
These days, it probably costs little more for a floppy disk than it does to print a single flyer on a piece of paper. The real cost is in the labor/time to format a disk or write data to them.
I'm sure the biggest reason, truth be told, that someone like AOL would just throw out all their old disks is because the labels don't come off cleanly or easily. If the disks had no labels stuck to them, they could probably sell the whole lot to a company that would resell the bulk disks. (I remember ordering bulk floppies before that said they were "recycled" and "re-certified" to be error free.)
Who wants to sit around and carefully peel away thousands of AOL labels from floppies though, to make them resellable?
So wait a minute? Given the two options, it's automatically far better for someone to join the army than the peace corps?
Nah, you're entitled to your opinion - but I think that's completely "apples to oranges". The Peace Corps. seems to thrive on individuals who like to teach or train others. There's a lot of education going on there. The Army, on the other hand, tends to attract those who lack direction in their lives. Perhaps someone who just "needs a change" and hate the routine they're stuck in. But if you want to teach people, the Army isn't the place to be. You're there to pretty much "shut up and learn" and then "do, based on what we told you".
Freedom sure isn't free, but it's also a fact that if you end up dead, you absolutely lost all of your own freedom.
Also, I know this is just a generalization - but an awful lot of people I knew who joined the military came out as sort of "empty shells" of the people they once were. True, they might have been washed clean of their bad habits they used to have -- but they also seemed like their brains got re-loaded with a bunch of indoctrination about the way to be a "real man" in the U.S.A.
There's something eerily "zombie-like" about some of these guys. They're suddenly almost "too polite" and dress a little "too sharp" at any semi-formal occasion. Many times, they suddenly get a strong urge to get married, have kids, and become a cookie-cutter image of the "family man". I know you can't really fault any of this. On the surface, it looks like the guys really "cleaned up their act" -- but it's a little unnatural. I don't think they came to these lifestyle conclusions and changes purely on their own.....