Yep - I agree too, except 3Com network cards aren't always all they're cracked up to be.
It's not so much a problem with driver support (or lack thereof), but they've produced millions of cards with flawed chipsets/hardware.
Ever use/see a 3C595 10/100 PCI card, for example? They've got issues. I've had a number of auto-sensing switches that wouldn't work with these cards unless you locked the cards at 10 mbit. first. Even on a cheap D-Link 8 port switch at home, I only get half-duplex operation whenever I plug in a 3C595.
There are acknowledgements that these cards were buggy, but you really have to dig around to find it stated on the manufacturer web site.
Then too, you have the extremely popular 3C905 (Etherlink XL) series adapters. Good cards, but 3Com made numerous revisions to them over the years - causing lots of confusion. Their latest Windows drivers simply probe the card and automatically deal with whichever variation it happens to be, hiding the problem from the end user -- but it's a hassle for others. (Look at www.rom-o-matic.net, where you can download Etherboot disks, and see how many 3C905 images they have posted up there!)
In my opinion, a revision that renders the previous driver completely unusable deserves giving the card a whole new model number.
I understand your concerns, but at the same time, I'm not sure if handling your account in an office environment vs. agents working from home is anything more than a false sense of security.
While it's true you won't have kids potentially playing with the laptop computer at work, you still have employees opening virus-infected emails and executables, disgruntled workers stealing information or inserting bad data into databases on purpose, and other such possibilities.
I know from working in I.T. administration myself, supervisors walking past isn't really going to save you from an employee bent on leaking out secure information. As long as the office has laser printers, it's pretty darn easy to crank off a print job in the background (minimized task or whatever) and print a whole slew of customer account records, sandwiched between a couple legitimate print jobs - and grab the whole stack off the printer.
It still comes down to having to trust your employees.
I read it, and no - I'm not about to even consider calling that piece of trash a "good job"!
It was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the terrorist threat, and gives government much more wiggle room to do what they like without oversight and checks on their powers.
Attempting to use the "poor underpaid, overworked us" excuse isn't going to win me over either. If the legal system is too "weird and confusing" for them to handle, then maybe we need better training for them and revision of existing laws so they make more sense. We *don't* need to give confused and misguided people more rope to hang themselves (and us) with.
To use your specific example of computer trespass, no - there's nothing "silly" about preventing an FBI agent from monitoring an alleged hacker's activity on a PC without getting a warrant first. The fact is, the law today would allow you to invite an agent into your home or business to observe what's happening on your screen. The agent you call wouldn't say "Thanks for inviting me over, but I have to close my eyes when I step into your computer room because I didn't get my warrant paperwork together yet."
The problem comes in when they want to do such things as log incoming data, trace the source of incoming calls, and install software to set up traps for the hacker. Without a warrant, they have no business doing these things. Otherwise, any number of other people who remotely connect to your systems could get tangled up in a big legal mess before it's sorted out.
The reason most of these plans settle for tracking identities and not individual behaviors is because humans are largely unpredictable.
Government already attempts to database individual behavior, largely with disasterous consequences!
Case in point: My wife and I just had our first kid (a baby girl). Before we even got out of the hospital, we got a visit from the "Dept. of Social Services". The lady acted friendly enough, but both of us were rather confused as to why she was visiting us. She started asking a number of questions, starting out with where I worked, and proceeded to psycho-analyze my wife, followed by signing us up (despite our protests) to have a nurse come check on our daughter every week for the first year or two.
Only when we got a chance to look at a copy of the notes she jotted down (she accidently left them in our room) did we realize what was going on. When my wife was 15 years old, she tried to commit suicide. After that, one psychologist she went to was convinced she was mentally unstable and made notes to that effect in her medical records. (Other psychologists refuted that claim, and said she was simply a normal but upset teenager.) Apparently, the state automatically gets social services involved when they see someone "marked" in this way is having a baby.
Considering she's almost 30 years old now (as am I), this is insanity. I, too, had a difficult time growing up and often thought about suicide. So what? Am I unfit to be a parent now because of it? I dare say I'm better equipped to handle it if my child grows up having similar thoughts and problems!
Umm, when you refer to "You All", please don't include me!
I'm always been an advocate of preserving the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to keep and bear firearms!
What's sad is that the framers of the Constitution didn't have the ability to envision today's society with gigantic computer databases capable of data-mining. Nor did they forsee parabolic microphones that can eavesdrop on conversations from hundreds of feet away, infra-red cameras that let you see past walls and curtains, and many other things. If they lived in this world, I think you'd see a pronounced right to privacy in there too.
Anyway, the right for individual citizens to own and carry firearms was a key piece of the "freedom" puzzle back then, and still is today. The bottom line is, without this right, citizens will always be forced to bow down to government that still has ready access to these instruments controlling immediate "life or death".
The gun control advocates are looking at the "big picture" with tunnel vision. They see killing (and accidental death) as a bad thing which clearly gets lessened if you take away citizens access to firearms. I don't really have an argument with that. It's just a question of values. Do we strive for freedom and liberty, or do we strive for control and safety? It's pretty easy to design a safe world, at the expense of almost all individual rights. But sorry pal, that's not the world I want to live in!
You just *now* realize why? Shoot, I've never lived in CA and I've known about this problem all along. That's one big reason I have little interest in ever moving there, despite the allure of their "digital economy".
Cali has been blowing money on all sorts of big government spending fiascos since I can remember. (Much of it in the name of environmentalism.)
Out of all 50 states, only CA thinks automobile emissions aren't good enough for them and imposes their own, stricter, rules. Nevermind the fact that all the pollution control systems on modern automobiles eliminate 99% of the pollutants already. They have to get rid of another.1 to.4% at *any* cost! Also, ask any performance car minded CA resident how they like their gasoline choices out there. State govt. seems to think 91 octane "super" unleaded is plenty good enough. The rest the country can at least get 93, and often 94 at Sunoco stations.
Their bungled attempts at semi de-regulated power sure didn't help anyone out either.
Isn't there a community in CA that has the dubious distinction of being the only one in the U.S. that ran high-speed Internet via fiber to every single home - all paid for by taxes? I'm sorry, but I'd rather pay my own way for *my* access than pay into a shared pot so everyone, including the unemployed beach bums living off welfare in subsidized housing, gets access.
Re: system building *is* a pain, nowdays!
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PC Prices to Rise?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I've always been a big fan of "build your own clone!" too - but it almost doesn't make sense anymore. Oh sure, from a "coolness" standpoint - there's really no substitute. That's only because LAN gamers and the computer "3lit3" turn up their noses at anything that isn't overclocked, hacked up with extra cooling fans, and has neon lighting inside of it.
If you're a regular or "power user", however, and want value for your dollar, the home-built clone is looking less and less viable.
In recent years, I've built several home-built clones for use at home, as well as used a couple of Dell systems. Neither Dell has given me *any* reliability problems, but all of the home-built PCs have. Conventional "wisdom" of the self-proclaimed PC gurus says "Oh, you need to use better quality parts!" Well, Adaptec SCSI controllers, Muskin memory and Asus motherboards haven't been the magic answer for me - so I'm not sure what they expect I should be buying instead?
Fact is, most clone cases use crappy quality power supplies. I had one literally go up in smoke while the machine was plugged in but powered off! (Before that, it worked fine for about a year - but 1 year before burning up isn't what I call quality.) Cases with *good* power supplies in them cost big $'s, making the system cost uncompetitive with companies like Dell or HP.
Then, you struggle with warranty issues. If I buy a name brand PC, at least I can buy an extended warranty that pretty much guarantees me free replacement of any parts that die for 3 years. Try that with a generic clone! You might get a manufacturer 3 year warranty on the hard drives, but that's probably about it.
One of my Asus motherboards constantly freezes up running Win '9x. With Linux, 2000, or XP however, it's fine. (I wanted Win '98 on it because I used it for MIDI and hard disk audio recording, and had some older software.) No amount of driver updating ever got it stable, even with the latest BIOS updates.
Of course, now, if you ask the same people that praised that board when I bought it, most will simply tell you "Oh, yeah - that chipset is screwed up. You need the new Asus model XXXX!" Whatever.... This kind of thing only happens to people building clone PCs. The name brand systems get returned as defective when they can't run a popular OS properly, so that's usually weeded out before they go on sale.
A while ago, I started receiving emails from Microsoft's home advisor web site. I think I visited their site a time or two to look at real-estate listings, but I never recall signing up for any type of email from them.
Anyway, each time, their messages say I can click on a link to change my preferences (so I no longer receive this email "newsletter"). I've tried this at least 4 times now, and still - I get spammed with more of their mail.
Now, honestly, I don't think a company the size of Microsoft is interested in purposely spamming people. (The negative press that would generate makes it a very bad idea.) Instead, I think their automated system for unsubscribing is just buggy/defective (or overloaded at the times I'm trying to use it).
Huh? I don't think it's as bad as you're saying.... For starters, look what DirecTV satellite already did. Instead of trying to cram everything on the same group of satellites, they designed "spot beams" - so local stations could be beamed down to only specific areas. That way, a given amount of total bandwidth for programming can be much more efficiently used. This method allows them to carry many more locals than they'd have been able to otherwise.
Furthermore, the local stations could do a lot more to improve their viewership. I live in a big city, and even here - our local stations are pretty pathetic. Sure, I'll still watch them occasionally for the local news, but that's about all they offer of value. Their movies and sitcoms are "bottom of the barrel", and I'll pass on the soaps and game shows, thanks.
I really believe that most locals have come to rely on their news coverage as the reason they're "guaranteed an existance". (Look how often they pimp up a given weather forecaster or news anchor throughout the day, on little blurbs between shows.) Maybe, making it easier for people paying upwards of $40 per month for satellite or cable to watch alternatives would force them to improve their programming!
Poor reasoning though, in today's marketplace. Fact is, most people still interested in watching the local stations are doing so precisely because either A) they're too cheap or poor to subscribe to a cable or satellite subscription, or B) they want to watch the local news.
Local stations will pretty much be able to stay in business as long as there are a fair number of people interested in receiving free TV via antenna. (With cable and satellite prices climbing ever higher, I think it's safe to bet that "free" sounds good enough to lots of local residents.)
Issues about what's carried on monthly subscription-based alternates to broadcast TV seem rather moot to me. Even the argument about advertising makes little sense to me.
If you're a small, local store - why do you *care* that people thousands of miles away see your TV ad? They're not your target customer anyway. The ad still reaches the audience it was created for, and everything else is just "spillover" that doesn't typically benefit the person buying the advertising.
Therefore, letting local stations be re-broadcast nationwide via satellite and/or cable shouldn't really change anything.
Huh? Do I mod you down for stupidity, or up for humor? I'm not quite sure....
I suppose it's also morally reprehensible to have coin-operated soda machines in today's society, when everyone should have the technology of a refrigerator at home, and can chill and serve their own sodas!
All coin-op devices are there for one of two reasons. 1. convenience, and 2. entertainment value. If you decide it's more convenient (financially convenient, even!) to use a coin-op based service than to invest in your own system at home, so what? That should be a valid choice.
I agree with you up to that point.... But more legislation isn't the best long-term solution. It's a quick band-aid fix to try to keep people happy. Like most computer legislation, it will end up restricting software that it was never intended to restrict.
The *real* solution is education. The masses aren't smart enough not to click on www.yahoo.com.exe which downloads a virus on their PC? Well, they need to learn then. Maybe they'll start getting more interested in learning after their drive gets trashed a time or two.
Of course, this also leaves lots of room for businesses to profit from building safer systems for "the masses" to use - which isn't a bad idea either.
It's sort of a pet-peeve of mine, but it also relates to monitor clarity.
I can't stand when people crank the brightness control up all the way on their monitors, thinking "brighter is better".
To get the maximum clarity and contrast possible with a given monitor, I recommend turning up the contrast control to around 100%. (Some monitors will draw small fonts a bit too thick or blocky like this. If so, back it off to 95% or even 90%, but probably not any lower than that.)
Then, when you have an image on your screen, you want to turn down the brightness control just far enough so the border around the image appears to be black/not lit up at all.
This combination should be much easier on the eyes. (Especially important when you're at the command line on a full screen text mode, where there's lots of black background.)
I'm not even quite sure I buy into the argument that businesses place higher demands on their analog lines than residential customers!
When a telco stalls on rolling out broadband, they create a situation where residential customers put much higher usage on their voice circuit.... They have to do faxing and Internet via modem over it, plus make/take voice calls.
When this guy upgrades his system and sells his old parts on eBay, you'll know it.
(Hey, what the.... this video card is covered with some sort of bubbly foam! Doesn't he know he should package things with foam peanuts, *not* spray foam, before shipping!)
I totally see your point, and I do much of the same with my own net connection, but I still think my online time directly impacts the time I'd otherwise spend watching TV.
Maybe that's because when I watch TV, I expect some of the same things I get from web surfing/research. Channels like TLC, TechTV, or Discovery catch my interest when they have something interesting to say... something that teaches me something new.
I never watch garbage like sitcoms. I don't find them all that funny. (If I want comedy, I'd rather watch stand-up and get a more pure form.)
Whether I sit down and watch some TV or I sit down at the PC to web-surf, I have the same goals; entertain me with some useful information about topics I'm interested in.
But! Ximian has made it pretty clear they have goals of improving the Linux *desktop* experience. Building an Exchange server clone would be a little bit out of the scope of what they're trying to accomplish.
I do wish *someone* would seriously work on an Exchange server replacement though. The closest thing out there was HP's OpenMail (which I guess was now bought out - but the future of it still looks rather dismal), and OpenMail wasn't user-friendly enough anyway.
One BIG advantage they could code into a Linux Exchange replacement server would be spam filtering capabilities and integrated email virus scanning. Both of those currently require additional 3rd. party commercial software and/or hardware to do with MS Exchange.
What I don't get is why organizations like this don't implement terminal server or Citrix, and issue thin clients to everyone? Then, the thin client is completely under I.T.'s centralized control. They upgrade an application once, on the server, and everyone instantly has it. Nothing "non-approved" can be loaded either.
Then, let developers, testers and power users have a regular PC that they can do what they like with. If that's too frightening for I.T., let them segment those machines off onto their own seperate ethernet network where they can't mess with the thin clients and terminal servers.
I'm not a fan of MS proprietary protocols either, but they often *do* find it unprofitable, and end up resigning themselves to using a more "open" standard. When this doesn't happen, it's simply because the majority are voting with their dollars, saying "What you've already given us is just fine, thanks."
Look at NT 3.51 compared to Win2K and you can see quite a shift towards recognizing the value in such things as DNS and more flexibility in DHCP. These changes came about because NT server started having an obvious disadvantage, lacking some of these protocols and standards.
With email, the same thing could easily happen, but right now - the only other real player in the competition against Exchange is Lotus Notes, which also features a proprietary mail connector.
MS and Lotus took the marketplace by storm because they realized a mail server could be enhanced to provide calendar/scheduling/address filing as well as simple email, and did a pretty good job of integrating it all together.
No, my friend, what I see is that in the "real world", people charge as much as the market will bear -- and right now, there are still a lot of businesses that need fast connections badly enough that they'll pony up $600+ per month for each T1.
Does this mean the individual should be forever doomed to getting much less? Not necessarily. Consider plain old voice lines. Businesses have *always* paid considerably more for the exact same voice circuit than residential customers did. (I believe right now, SW Bell charges roughly $42 per month for an analog phone line run to a business, vs. about $18.50 after taxes for a residential line.)
Despite this, you don't really see people making a big issue out of it. (In fact, the only time I remember it being brought up at all is when someone orders multiple lines in their home, and Bell starts asking questions.)
It may seem a little unfair at first, charging two different prices for the same thing; but it's really just another way of dividing things up. Indirectly, everyone helps pay the extra costs that companies get charged - because it's all passed along in higher prices for goods and services you buy from said companies.
I don't think anyone's saying it's wise to set up a high-tech startup in the middle of Kansas farmland... but I also think many people play down the suitability of larger midwestern cities.
For example, look at Chicago. You've got a number of major players there (AKA. Motorola), and IBM certainly has a large presence. In a recent survey, Chicago was in the top 20 for tech-savvy cities. You can't tell me it's impossible to find tech-knowledgable people in the Chicagoland area!
There are many disadvantages to the Silicon Valley area. Questions about electrical power available should certainly be key, along with the high risk of earthquake damage, heavy taxes and govt. regulation, occasional water shortages, and an expectation of high wages so employees can afford the high cost of living in the area.
Sure, the weather is great -- but I'd gladly trade some of that off for more personal freedoms. (I like being able to own my own home, instead of pay out big $'s just to rent from someone. I also like being able to drive my car when and where I want to go someplace, and not get penalized with stricter emissions requirements than the other 49 states have.)
Oh, and FYI, I don't even live in Chicago. I've just visited enough to know that it'd be a prime choice if I was to form a tech. company.
I disagree! A search warrant most certainly *is* a big deal. Primarily, it's "carte blanche" for authorities to invade your privacy, for the purpose of trying to collect evidence against you for a legal case.
Most often, it also includes seizures (supposedly necessary because the authorities can't fully determine the purpose/value of the "suspicious items" they turn up during the search without taking them to their labs and experts). That means ORBZ would lose use of their computer equipment until the investigation was completed. (And don't think they're always quick about it. They can, and usually do, hold onto seized items for years - meaning they'll be of little to no value by the time you get them back, even if they find you completely innocent!)
I like my PS2, but if they're even considering the possiblity of doing a distributed network of PS3's over the Internet, they need to make sure they've designed a more solid unit.
The PS2 is already notorious for having problems when the cooling fan gets clogged up and fails, and that's often with use by people who turn it off when they're done playing.
Ideally, you want a low power consumption unit that doesn't really ever power off completely. It should be designed to stay on all the time, so it can share CPU resources with other gamers whenever you're not actively playing on it.
Of course, this won't really go over so well unless/until broadband prices drop and it becomes more commonplace. Right now, I think even a lot of DSL customers would unplug a box designed this way because they only have 14K per second or so of upload bandwidth, and they might want to use it for other things besides an idle PS3.
While I have nothing but admiration for the lengths you apparently went to, to make sure you're still allowed to expose the true nature of this "religion" - I also have some doubts as to whether it's even worthwhile to fight the SoC in court.
As far as I can tell, their "religion" revolves around money-making and counts on the power of money to increase their influence and membership.
There's a fundamental problem with any organization that works this way; most people who feel they need to "find religion" are looking for something beyond cash as their saviour.
Sure, these characters can prey on the easily-influenced... but those types will always be out there, getting taken advantage of by one crooked group or another.
It seems to me, if you're able to fight them in the courts to the point where they're making cash settlement offers, you've already "won" - because you're sapping some of their perceived power (money). I could see refusing the first, or maybe even the second cash settlement offer, but even the 3rd.?
Every time one of their members becomes an ex-member (and most assuredly, it will continue to happen), if they have to pay to shut them up - they're being weakened. Anything else is just playing their favorite game; manipulate who can see and reveal our paperwork.
Has anyone compiled a list of all the businesses and "charities" these clowns are running?
I understand that the ISP Earthlink is owned by them, for example - and if it's really serving as a cash cow for their cult, that's one pretty hefty source of income!
I doubt most people even realize that they're contributing to some of these things.
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Yep - I agree too, except 3Com network cards aren't always all they're cracked up to be.
It's not so much a problem with driver support (or lack thereof), but they've produced millions of cards with flawed chipsets/hardware.
Ever use/see a 3C595 10/100 PCI card, for example? They've got issues. I've had a number of auto-sensing switches that wouldn't work with these cards unless you locked the cards at 10 mbit. first. Even on a cheap D-Link 8 port switch at home, I only get half-duplex operation whenever I plug in a 3C595.
There are acknowledgements that these cards were buggy, but you really have to dig around to find it stated on the manufacturer web site.
Then too, you have the extremely popular 3C905 (Etherlink XL) series adapters. Good cards, but 3Com made numerous revisions to them over the years - causing lots of confusion. Their latest Windows drivers simply probe the card and automatically deal with whichever variation it happens to be, hiding the problem from the end user -- but it's a hassle for others. (Look at www.rom-o-matic.net, where you can download Etherboot disks, and see how many 3C905 images they have posted up there!)
In my opinion, a revision that renders the previous driver completely unusable deserves giving the card a whole new model number.
I understand your concerns, but at the same time, I'm not sure if handling your account in an office environment vs. agents working from home is anything more than a false sense of security.
While it's true you won't have kids potentially playing with the laptop computer at work, you still have employees opening virus-infected emails and executables, disgruntled workers stealing information or inserting bad data into databases on purpose, and other such possibilities.
I know from working in I.T. administration myself, supervisors walking past isn't really going to save you from an employee bent on leaking out secure information. As long as the office has laser printers, it's pretty darn easy to crank off a print job in the background (minimized task or whatever) and print a whole slew of customer account records, sandwiched between a couple legitimate print jobs - and grab the whole stack off the printer.
It still comes down to having to trust your employees.
I read it, and no - I'm not about to even consider calling that piece of trash a "good job"!
It was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the terrorist threat, and gives government much more wiggle room to do what they like without oversight and checks on their powers.
Attempting to use the "poor underpaid, overworked us" excuse isn't going to win me over either. If the legal system is too "weird and confusing" for them to handle, then maybe we need better training for them and revision of existing laws so they make more sense. We *don't* need to give confused and misguided people more rope to hang themselves (and us) with.
To use your specific example of computer trespass, no - there's nothing "silly" about preventing an FBI agent from monitoring an alleged hacker's activity on a PC without getting a warrant first. The fact is, the law today would allow you to invite an agent into your home or business to observe what's happening on your screen. The agent you call wouldn't say "Thanks for inviting me over, but I have to close my eyes when I step into your computer room because I didn't get my warrant paperwork together yet."
The problem comes in when they want to do such things as log incoming data, trace the source of incoming calls, and install software to set up traps for the hacker. Without a warrant, they have no business doing these things. Otherwise, any number of other people who remotely connect to your systems could get tangled up in a big legal mess before it's sorted out.
The reason most of these plans settle for tracking identities and not individual behaviors is because humans are largely unpredictable.
Government already attempts to database individual behavior, largely with disasterous consequences!
Case in point:
My wife and I just had our first kid (a baby girl). Before we even got out of the hospital, we got a visit from the "Dept. of Social Services". The lady acted friendly enough, but both of us were rather confused as to why she was visiting us. She started asking a number of questions, starting out with where I worked, and proceeded to psycho-analyze my wife, followed by signing us up (despite our protests) to have a nurse come check on our daughter every week for the first year or two.
Only when we got a chance to look at a copy of the notes she jotted down (she accidently left them in our room) did we realize what was going on. When my wife was 15 years old, she tried to commit suicide. After that, one psychologist she went to was convinced she was mentally unstable and made notes to that effect in her medical records. (Other psychologists refuted that claim, and said she was simply a normal but upset teenager.) Apparently, the state automatically gets social services involved when they see someone "marked" in this way is having a baby.
Considering she's almost 30 years old now (as am I), this is insanity. I, too, had a difficult time growing up and often thought about suicide. So what? Am I unfit to be a parent now because of it? I dare say I'm better equipped to handle it if my child grows up having similar thoughts and problems!
Umm, when you refer to "You All", please don't include me!
I'm always been an advocate of preserving the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to keep and bear firearms!
What's sad is that the framers of the Constitution didn't have the ability to envision today's society with gigantic computer databases capable of data-mining. Nor did they forsee parabolic microphones that can eavesdrop on conversations from hundreds of feet away, infra-red cameras that let you see past walls and curtains, and many other things. If they lived in this world, I think you'd see a pronounced right to privacy in there too.
Anyway, the right for individual citizens to own and carry firearms was a key piece of the "freedom" puzzle back then, and still is today. The bottom line is, without this right, citizens will always be forced to bow down to government that still has ready access to these instruments controlling immediate "life or death".
The gun control advocates are looking at the "big picture" with tunnel vision. They see killing (and accidental death) as a bad thing which clearly gets lessened if you take away citizens access to firearms. I don't really have an argument with that. It's just a question of values. Do we strive for freedom and liberty, or do we strive for control and safety? It's pretty easy to design a safe world, at the expense of almost all individual rights. But sorry pal, that's not the world I want to live in!
You just *now* realize why? Shoot, I've never lived in CA and I've known about this problem all along. That's one big reason I have little interest in ever moving there, despite the allure of their "digital economy".
.1 to .4% at *any* cost! Also, ask any performance car minded CA resident how they like their gasoline choices out there. State govt. seems to think 91 octane "super" unleaded is plenty good enough. The rest the country can at least get 93, and often 94 at Sunoco stations.
Cali has been blowing money on all sorts of big government spending fiascos since I can remember. (Much of it in the name of environmentalism.)
Out of all 50 states, only CA thinks automobile emissions aren't good enough for them and imposes their own, stricter, rules.
Nevermind the fact that all the pollution control systems on modern automobiles eliminate 99% of the pollutants already. They have to get rid of another
Their bungled attempts at semi de-regulated power sure didn't help anyone out either.
Isn't there a community in CA that has the dubious distinction of being the only one in the U.S. that ran high-speed Internet via fiber to every single home - all paid for by taxes?
I'm sorry, but I'd rather pay my own way for *my* access than pay into a shared pot so everyone, including the unemployed beach bums living off welfare in subsidized housing, gets access.
I've always been a big fan of "build your own clone!" too - but it almost doesn't make sense anymore. Oh sure, from a "coolness" standpoint - there's really no substitute. That's only because LAN gamers and the computer "3lit3" turn up their noses at anything that isn't overclocked, hacked up with extra cooling fans, and has neon lighting inside of it.
If you're a regular or "power user", however, and want value for your dollar, the home-built clone is looking less and less viable.
In recent years, I've built several home-built clones for use at home, as well as used a couple of Dell systems. Neither Dell has given me *any* reliability problems, but all of the home-built PCs have. Conventional "wisdom" of the self-proclaimed PC gurus says "Oh, you need to use better quality parts!" Well, Adaptec SCSI controllers, Muskin memory and Asus motherboards haven't been the magic answer for me - so I'm not sure what they expect I should be buying instead?
Fact is, most clone cases use crappy quality power supplies. I had one literally go up in smoke while the machine was plugged in but powered off! (Before that, it worked fine for about a year - but 1 year before burning up isn't what I call quality.) Cases with *good* power supplies in them cost big $'s, making the system cost uncompetitive with companies like Dell or HP.
Then, you struggle with warranty issues. If I buy a name brand PC, at least I can buy an extended warranty that pretty much guarantees me free replacement of any parts that die for 3 years. Try that with a generic clone! You might get a manufacturer 3 year warranty on the hard drives, but that's probably about it.
One of my Asus motherboards constantly freezes up running Win '9x. With Linux, 2000, or XP however, it's fine. (I wanted Win '98 on it because I used it for MIDI and hard disk audio recording, and had some older software.) No amount of driver updating ever got it stable, even with the latest BIOS updates.
Of course, now, if you ask the same people that praised that board when I bought it, most will simply tell you "Oh, yeah - that chipset is screwed up. You need the new Asus model XXXX!" Whatever.... This kind of thing only happens to people building clone PCs. The name brand systems get returned as defective when they can't run a popular OS properly, so that's usually weeded out before they go on sale.
A while ago, I started receiving emails from Microsoft's home advisor web site. I think I visited their site a time or two to look at real-estate listings, but I never recall signing up for any type of email from them.
Anyway, each time, their messages say I can click on a link to change my preferences (so I no longer receive this email "newsletter"). I've tried this at least 4 times now, and still - I get spammed with more of their mail.
Now, honestly, I don't think a company the size of Microsoft is interested in purposely spamming people. (The negative press that would generate makes it a very bad idea.) Instead, I think their automated system for unsubscribing is just buggy/defective (or overloaded at the times I'm trying to use it).
Huh? I don't think it's as bad as you're saying.... For starters, look what DirecTV satellite already did. Instead of trying to cram everything on the same group of satellites, they designed "spot beams" - so local stations could be beamed down to only specific areas. That way, a given amount of total bandwidth for programming can be much more efficiently used. This method allows them to carry many more locals than they'd have been able to otherwise.
Furthermore, the local stations could do a lot more to improve their viewership. I live in a big city, and even here - our local stations are pretty pathetic. Sure, I'll still watch them occasionally for the local news, but that's about all they offer of value. Their movies and sitcoms are "bottom of the barrel", and I'll pass on the soaps and game shows, thanks.
I really believe that most locals have come to rely on their news coverage as the reason they're "guaranteed an existance". (Look how often they pimp up a given weather forecaster or news anchor throughout the day, on little blurbs between shows.) Maybe, making it easier for people paying upwards of $40 per month for satellite or cable to watch alternatives would force them to improve their programming!
Poor reasoning though, in today's marketplace.
Fact is, most people still interested in watching the local stations are doing so precisely because either A) they're too cheap or poor to subscribe to a cable or satellite subscription, or B) they want to watch the local news.
Local stations will pretty much be able to stay in business as long as there are a fair number of people interested in receiving free TV via antenna. (With cable and satellite prices climbing ever higher, I think it's safe to bet that "free" sounds good enough to lots of local residents.)
Issues about what's carried on monthly subscription-based alternates to broadcast TV seem rather moot to me. Even the argument about advertising makes little sense to me.
If you're a small, local store - why do you *care* that people thousands of miles away see your TV ad? They're not your target customer anyway. The ad still reaches the audience it was created for, and everything else is just "spillover" that doesn't typically benefit the person buying the advertising.
Therefore, letting local stations be re-broadcast nationwide via satellite and/or cable shouldn't really change anything.
Huh? Do I mod you down for stupidity, or up for humor? I'm not quite sure....
I suppose it's also morally reprehensible to have coin-operated soda machines in today's society, when everyone should have the technology of a refrigerator at home, and can chill and serve their own sodas!
All coin-op devices are there for one of two reasons. 1. convenience, and 2. entertainment value. If you decide it's more convenient (financially convenient, even!) to use a coin-op based service than to invest in your own system at home, so what? That should be a valid choice.
I agree with you up to that point....
But more legislation isn't the best long-term solution. It's a quick band-aid fix to try to keep people happy. Like most computer legislation, it will end up restricting software that it was never intended to restrict.
The *real* solution is education. The masses aren't smart enough not to click on www.yahoo.com.exe which downloads a virus on their PC? Well, they need to learn then. Maybe they'll start getting more interested in learning after their drive gets trashed a time or two.
Of course, this also leaves lots of room for businesses to profit from building safer systems for "the masses" to use - which isn't a bad idea either.
It's sort of a pet-peeve of mine, but it also relates to monitor clarity.
I can't stand when people crank the brightness control up all the way on their monitors, thinking "brighter is better".
To get the maximum clarity and contrast possible with a given monitor, I recommend turning up the contrast control to around 100%. (Some monitors will draw small fonts a bit too thick or blocky like this. If so, back it off to 95% or even 90%, but probably not any lower than that.)
Then, when you have an image on your screen, you want to turn down the brightness control just far enough so the border around the image appears to be black/not lit up at all.
This combination should be much easier on the eyes. (Especially important when you're at the command line on a full screen text mode, where there's lots of black background.)
I'm not even quite sure I buy into the argument that businesses place higher demands on their analog lines than residential customers!
When a telco stalls on rolling out broadband, they create a situation where residential customers put much higher usage on their voice circuit.... They have to do faxing and Internet via modem over it, plus make/take voice calls.
When this guy upgrades his system and sells his old parts on eBay, you'll know it.
(Hey, what the.... this video card is covered with some sort of bubbly foam! Doesn't he know he should package things with foam peanuts, *not* spray foam, before shipping!)
Mmm... yes and no.
I totally see your point, and I do much of the same with my own net connection, but I still think my online time directly impacts the time I'd otherwise spend watching TV.
Maybe that's because when I watch TV, I expect some of the same things I get from web surfing/research. Channels like TLC, TechTV, or Discovery catch my interest when they have something interesting to say... something that teaches me something new.
I never watch garbage like sitcoms. I don't find them all that funny. (If I want comedy, I'd rather watch stand-up and get a more pure form.)
Whether I sit down and watch some TV or I sit down at the PC to web-surf, I have the same goals; entertain me with some useful information about topics I'm interested in.
Agreed 100 percent!
But! Ximian has made it pretty clear they have goals of improving the Linux *desktop* experience. Building an Exchange server clone would be a little bit out of the scope of what they're trying to accomplish.
I do wish *someone* would seriously work on an Exchange server replacement though. The closest thing out there was HP's OpenMail (which I guess was now bought out - but the future of it still looks rather dismal), and OpenMail wasn't user-friendly enough anyway.
One BIG advantage they could code into a Linux Exchange replacement server would be spam filtering capabilities and integrated email virus scanning. Both of those currently require additional 3rd. party commercial software and/or hardware to do with MS Exchange.
What I don't get is why organizations like this don't implement terminal server or Citrix, and issue thin clients to everyone? Then, the thin client is completely under I.T.'s centralized control. They upgrade an application once, on the server, and everyone instantly has it. Nothing "non-approved" can be loaded either.
Then, let developers, testers and power users have a regular PC that they can do what they like with. If that's too frightening for I.T., let them segment those machines off onto their own seperate ethernet network where they can't mess with the thin clients and terminal servers.
I'm not a fan of MS proprietary protocols either, but they often *do* find it unprofitable, and end up resigning themselves to using a more "open" standard. When this doesn't happen, it's simply because the majority are voting with their dollars, saying "What you've already given us is just fine, thanks."
Look at NT 3.51 compared to Win2K and you can see quite a shift towards recognizing the value in such things as DNS and more flexibility in DHCP.
These changes came about because NT server started having an obvious disadvantage, lacking some of these protocols and standards.
With email, the same thing could easily happen, but right now - the only other real player in the competition against Exchange is Lotus Notes, which also features a proprietary mail connector.
MS and Lotus took the marketplace by storm because they realized a mail server could be enhanced to provide calendar/scheduling/address filing as well as simple email, and did a pretty good job of integrating it all together.
No, my friend, what I see is that in the "real world", people charge as much as the market will bear -- and right now, there are still a lot of businesses that need fast connections badly enough that they'll pony up $600+ per month for each T1.
Does this mean the individual should be forever doomed to getting much less? Not necessarily. Consider plain old voice lines. Businesses have *always* paid considerably more for the exact same voice circuit than residential customers did. (I believe right now, SW Bell charges roughly $42 per month for an analog phone line run to a business, vs. about $18.50 after taxes for a residential line.)
Despite this, you don't really see people making a big issue out of it. (In fact, the only time I remember it being brought up at all is when someone orders multiple lines in their home, and Bell starts asking questions.)
It may seem a little unfair at first, charging two different prices for the same thing; but it's really just another way of dividing things up. Indirectly, everyone helps pay the extra costs that companies get charged - because it's all passed along in higher prices for goods and services you buy from said companies.
I don't think anyone's saying it's wise to set up a high-tech startup in the middle of Kansas farmland ... but I also think many people play down the suitability of larger midwestern cities.
For example, look at Chicago. You've got a number of major players there (AKA. Motorola), and IBM certainly has a large presence. In a recent survey, Chicago was in the top 20 for tech-savvy cities. You can't tell me it's impossible to find tech-knowledgable people in the Chicagoland area!
There are many disadvantages to the Silicon Valley area. Questions about electrical power available should certainly be key, along with the high risk of earthquake damage, heavy taxes and govt. regulation, occasional water shortages, and an expectation of high wages so employees can afford the high cost of living in the area.
Sure, the weather is great -- but I'd gladly trade some of that off for more personal freedoms. (I like being able to own my own home, instead of pay out big $'s just to rent from someone. I also like being able to drive my car when and where I want to go someplace, and not get penalized with stricter emissions requirements than the other 49 states have.)
Oh, and FYI, I don't even live in Chicago. I've just visited enough to know that it'd be a prime choice if I was to form a tech. company.
I disagree! A search warrant most certainly *is* a big deal. Primarily, it's "carte blanche" for authorities to invade your privacy, for the purpose of trying to collect evidence against you for a legal case.
Most often, it also includes seizures (supposedly necessary because the authorities can't fully determine the purpose/value of the "suspicious items" they turn up during the search without taking them to their labs and experts). That means ORBZ would lose use of their computer equipment until the investigation was completed. (And don't think they're always quick about it. They can, and usually do, hold onto seized items for years - meaning they'll be of little to no value by the time you get them back, even if they find you completely innocent!)
I like my PS2, but if they're even considering the possiblity of doing a distributed network of PS3's over the Internet, they need to make sure they've designed a more solid unit.
The PS2 is already notorious for having problems when the cooling fan gets clogged up and fails, and that's often with use by people who turn it off when they're done playing.
Ideally, you want a low power consumption unit that doesn't really ever power off completely. It should be designed to stay on all the time, so it can share CPU resources with other gamers whenever you're not actively playing on it.
Of course, this won't really go over so well unless/until broadband prices drop and it becomes more commonplace. Right now, I think even a lot of DSL customers would unplug a box designed this way because they only have 14K per second or so of upload bandwidth, and they might want to use it for other things besides an idle PS3.
While I have nothing but admiration for the lengths you apparently went to, to make sure you're still allowed to expose the true nature of this "religion" - I also have some doubts as to whether it's even worthwhile to fight the SoC in court.
... but those types will always be out there, getting taken advantage of by one crooked group or another.
As far as I can tell, their "religion" revolves around money-making and counts on the power of money to increase their influence and membership.
There's a fundamental problem with any organization that works this way; most people who feel they need to "find religion" are looking for something beyond cash as their saviour.
Sure, these characters can prey on the easily-influenced
It seems to me, if you're able to fight them in the courts to the point where they're making cash settlement offers, you've already "won" - because you're sapping some of their perceived power (money). I could see refusing the first, or maybe even the second cash settlement offer, but even the 3rd.?
Every time one of their members becomes an ex-member (and most assuredly, it will continue to happen), if they have to pay to shut them up - they're being weakened. Anything else is just playing their favorite game; manipulate who can see and reveal our paperwork.
Has anyone compiled a list of all the businesses and "charities" these clowns are running?
I understand that the ISP Earthlink is owned by them, for example - and if it's really serving as a cash cow for their cult, that's one pretty hefty source of income!
I doubt most people even realize that they're contributing to some of these things.