That *start* with 3 out of 5 and only go up. Ones that never mention the drawbacks of a product or only seem to have read the manufacturers publicity material (and have never actually seen or used the product).
The one that did it for me was a review, many years ago, in a well known publication that reviews a product that flat out didn't work. They admitted that they couldn't get it to do anything - yet still scored it "average" as they explained that according to the supplier it should have worked, and if/when it did, it was really good.
With all these review sites, look at where the money comes from. If there appears to be a conflict of interest between the advertisers who pay the site and the readers who want honest and accurate information, just assume that money talks.
If the target of this injunction is anonymous, how can the writ be enforced? If he (or she) decides to ignore it, there seems very little that the server can do. It sounds to me like there is a good chance that the law will be shown to be an ass in this case.
Don't just look at the ticket price of the printer itself. if you're planning on printing another 30,000 pages with the new printer over 16 years (hint: you won't - modern stuff just won't last) the paper, toner, drums and even electricity consumed. will far exceed the cost of the hardware.
Re:The only person dumber than a computer salesper
on
Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's features verses benefits.
We all talk about the features that a computer has. That's wrong, the users don't care, they want to know how it will improve their lives: make things easier, let them do things cheaper or faster or better. So instead of a salesperson saying "this computer has a 1 terabyte hard drive and a quad core I7 processor" and expecting the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer to understand how that helps them, we should know what their goals are and explain what model will best suit them. Even a car salesperson can do that (though soe might choose not to, they could if it pleased them.)
Plus all this garbage about compatibility just shows what an immature industry we have. We're at the same point the car (american: automobile) industry was at when they were still trying to decide whether to have a steering wheel, and which position the various pedals and levers should be in.
Most industries: medicine, law, engineering etc. use jargon as a way of excluding the general public. It acts as a barrier to entry for their arcane knowledge and practices - thus preserving jobs and keeping fees high. That only works when an industry regulates it's own people with professional qualifications, guilds that enforce standards and legal obligations that they have to comply with. When you're trying to sell commodity goods at knock-down prices; especially when customers don't actually need to buy them, this doesn't work. They just spend their money on beer, or something else.
The only person dumber than a computer salesperson
on
Bad PC Sales Staff Exposed
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
... is the majority of their customers
While we, computer elites can laugh, or cry, at some of the stupid, stupid things that come out of the mouths of the sales drones - for a lot of people they are the experts. Most people neither know nor care about computers. They just want to GET STUFF DONE. They don't know or care about Gigahertz or Terabytes: just as they don't know or care about the kilo-Watt rating of their electric kettle: it's merely an appliance - it works or it doesn't.
Maybe the IT industry should look inwards on itself and consider how we've failed to educate the public about the technology we make them use. Even worse, maybe we should reflect on how we've turned a subject that has such a huge potential for good, into a nerdy hell: full of jargon, technobabble and misinformation. To the point where the sales-staff don't even know when they're talking rubbish.
It would be nice if PCs could just switch off just as fast, too.
Really, what is there to do? Kill everything with extreme prejudice and flush the cache. Unless you've got gigabytes of pending writes it really shouldn't take as long as it does.
Though, the power switch achieves (almost) the same effect with no waiting at all.
And if a PC booted in sub 1-second, more people would switch off and stop wasting power - and then marvel at the savings they make.
The two reasons for ever-on PCs is either when the user doesn't like to wait the (in my case) minutes for the boot sequence to run through: whether that's Linux or Microsoft, it's far too long.
The second reason is when they're running stuff in that background: a server or data collection, or just a long download,. Obviously in this case, faster booting won't help but ignoring these power-users (which is probably a big proportion of the/. base, so there's no need to identify yourselves - I get it), if it gets a few million more PCs turned off then it's a good thing.
At some point, some government official will either be exposed to be pervert or some such,
Makes no difference, they'll just get a tap on thw wrist, resign for a little while and then, when all the fuss has died down (a year or two later) be brought back into government.
For example the british attorney general has just been found guilty of employing an illegal immigrant - contrary to a law that she wrote. So far there's little pressure on her to resign (even though she's been found guilty and paid a £5000 fine).
Simple: higher population density leads to more conflict, more anti-social behaviour and less tolerance.
Plus of course the reason any government does anything: because they can, and brits (I know, I'm one) do not have the legal framework to object - not having any sort of constitution.
news is worth what you can get advertisers to pay for access to the consumers
This has dangerous implications. More people will watch entertaining news than factual news. They prefer "easy" news to abstract (but possibly of greater effect) news and will turn off if it's not presented as a series of soundbites: which makes in-depth coverage and analysis impossible.
I can see a good case to say that informing citizens is as important as protecting them and therefore should be financed (if not controlled by) the state.
While a free site will get a lot of visitors (most of whom are merely casual browser types) as soon as they start charging even the slightest amount you can expect their readership to fall off dramatically. Why is that?
Well most people regard news as just another form of entertainment - we know this, as the most popular news programmes on TV are not the authoritative ones that tell us important information about events that will affect us. The one's that get the biggest audiances are the "populist" news programmes that deal more with celebrity gossip, scandals and rumours (oh yes, and sport). The conclusion is that people want entertainment more than they want information. Occasionally, when there's a Sept-11 type event people pile in to news channels, but since these almost never happen there's no way to build a profitable news channel or website based on regularly occurring disasters.
So if people are given two options: free entertainment websites on the one hand and paid-for sites on the other, they will almost always choose the free stuff. The small number of individuals who want and need in-depth analysis and coverage are already buying papers like the FT and WSJ and using their onlibe outlets, too. There's no room for much more in that field.
If you're good, you will have the flexibility to be able to work with many different systems. Not all of them will be the "best" (whatever that means) and some will have egregious faults. However the difference between a pro and a prima-donna is that the pros will have the depth of experience, confidence in their abilities and integrity to get on with the job without complaining, holding the company to ransom or spitting their dummy out of the pram. They may have to explain why a solution takes longer to implement, or costs more, or doesn't work as well as thought. However good people will also have the communications skills to explain this in simple terms and will be able to do so without bitching about other solutions they think are better.
Remember: the first responsibility of any subordinate is to make the boss look good.
All you will get is a trace leading to the Mall, or whever your kids go to hang out. After that, you'll get nothing until they venture outside again.
Plus, since this must have a way to be removed with using force, I think we can guarantee that the kids will very quickly come up with ways to subvert the locks and take these off if they don't want to wear them.
Since these guys aren't using the same definitions that the original book used to describe hits, niches and long-tails it's really no surprise that they get different results - they've interpreted the data in different ways!
The thing that's always struck me about the long-tail effect is that you've got to work it, to get value from it. Just having all the books or films by a particular author / actor isn't enough. You have to use that information and have the intelligent algorithms to guide your website visitors (or maybe "entice" would be a better word) to consider those alternate products. Just saying "Uuh, here's all the other stuff that guy's done" isn't enough, it needs enthusiasm and some knowledge of *why* a visitor might like a particular past work. That's where the gold lies: not in the long tail itself, but how you utilitise it.
Taking unknown software from people you don't know. Isn't that what the security community has been telling everyone NOT to do for years, decades. Maybe these advocates should think a little about the underlying message they are sending out and stop undoing the good work that others are doing to stop the spread of malware.
surely that's down to public officials who do stupid and arbitrary things (such as trying to censor, prosecute or shut down his critics), not the people who criticise them for it.
Maybe if this guy wants to be respected, he should start acting respectably.
Well, in rural Spain WiMax or using your 3G phone (or a 3G dongle for a PC) are all there is - leaving out the excruciatingly expensive and hopelessly slow and capped satellite circuits . Speed's lousy and costs are high (as are all tech. costs in Spain). However when you can't even get the telephone monopoly to run a land-line to your place, the options are few.
Given the choice between Wimax and ADSL I'd go for the hard-wired option any day: faster, more reliable, lower install cost and (maybe) scalable to faster speeds when more than 1 person is using the Wimax node.
put together a collection of security/privacy related issues that may or may not relate to things at work but definitely relate to their personal life
...
The bosses will be impressed with the extra work you did
And the company lawyer will have a fit that you are representing the company and giving employees personal advice, which the company then (by implication, as it was their representative who distributed it) are subsequently liable for.
That'll get you a reputation as the IT guy that's tech smart
... and (provided you aren't stopped in mid-session and frog-marched directly out onto the street, your reputation means that every person in the company will now regard you as their own personal IT resource who is ready, willing and able to fix all their IT related problems (and probably do their job for them too). Even worse, you'll become the excuse they have when things break ("well, that IT guy told me to do that..." ) or when they can't get hold of you - and haven't gone through the help-desk . fault reporting process
While this advice is meant to be helpful, for you personally (apart from the huge ego trip, if you're into that sort of thing), it's probably the fastest single way to sabotage your own career, short of sleeping with the bosses' dog.
Sadly, that doesn't work either. When there's more than one presentation it's the first few minutes of the first one and the last few minutes of the last one. Presuming of course that yours isn't the first one of the day - in which case half the people will be late and everyone will be spending their time settling in, or in the session after lunch, which *everyone* will sleep through. Or for that matter the last one of the day as everyone will just be focussed on getting home.
The only time presentations work is in a "golden" period between about 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m That's when they'll remember the first and last few minutes and nothing in between. And when I say "remember" I mean for the remainder of that particular day.
Don't freelance - stick to the topic assigned to you.
People's time is very, very expensive - just because you've be alloted 40 minutes, doesn't mean you have to use it all up. Say what needs to be said, then stop... Having you rattling on about things you reckon are interesting and that you reckon they don't know about is extremely arrogant. Since it's almost certain that either you, or some other presentation in this "mandatory" session will run over time, why not just finish a few minutes early. THAT ALONE will make people remember your presentation:
Oh yeah, he was the guy who actually stopped talking when he'd said all that needed to be said. Jeez, I wish some of the others had done that - now I've wasted a whole afternoon listening to stuff I already knew or that doesn't affect me."
Even if someone/thing was able to visit all the start systems and planets in our galaxy, they wouldn't come up with an answer. As the time it would take to do the measurement would be so long that civilisations would have been born, developed and vanished during the counting period. That alone would make the theory useless, and until we have the ability to detect even one other form of life: intelligent or not, there is not even one single calibration point.
Treat this as a bit of fun, but don't spend any money on it.
SANS found that most organizations are focusing their patching efforts and vulnerability scanning on the operating system, but they're missing the boat
They make it sound as if it's the fault of the client companies. In fact they probably apply all the security patches they get from their suppliers. If most of them come from the O/S vendors and relatively few come from the application vendors - you can hardly blame their cleints.
Maybe SANS should, instead, be asking why application vendors are so tardy about providing fixes for the vulnerabilities that SANS seem to think are the most exploited? Of course, the answer would be that the baddies focus their efforts on the weakest link, which is why more attacks target the (weak) applications than the better supported operating systems.
I don't know if it's the climate of fear that we all (seem to) live in these days, but most adults I know are much more concerned with fitting in and conforming, than to ask questions. Whether that's questions about science, the world as it is now, or just questions about abstract topics as a whole, they seem scared to stand out: from the crowd, or their peer group.
Obviously, if the parents feel like this, they will bring up their children to act in similarly oppressed ways, not only at home but as teachers at school, law-enforcement types and social/church leaders, too.
The only hope I can hold out for is another "60'" where a generation rejects the views (in this case of unquestioning conformity) of their elders and start to become iconoclasts. Maybe then they'll stop being afraid of everything around them (esp. other people) and start to ask the right questions and shake us all out of this malaise.
Slashdot Mirror
The one that did it for me was a review, many years ago, in a well known publication that reviews a product that flat out didn't work. They admitted that they couldn't get it to do anything - yet still scored it "average" as they explained that according to the supplier it should have worked, and if/when it did, it was really good.
With all these review sites, look at where the money comes from. If there appears to be a conflict of interest between the advertisers who pay the site and the readers who want honest and accurate information, just assume that money talks.
Yes, it's amazing what you can achieve with a limitless amount of slave labour and no planning regulations to hold you back.
If the target of this injunction is anonymous, how can the writ be enforced? If he (or she) decides to ignore it, there seems very little that the server can do. It sounds to me like there is a good chance that the law will be shown to be an ass in this case.
Don't just look at the ticket price of the printer itself. if you're planning on printing another 30,000 pages with the new printer over 16 years (hint: you won't - modern stuff just won't last) the paper, toner, drums and even electricity consumed. will far exceed the cost of the hardware.
We all talk about the features that a computer has. That's wrong, the users don't care, they want to know how it will improve their lives: make things easier, let them do things cheaper or faster or better. So instead of a salesperson saying "this computer has a 1 terabyte hard drive and a quad core I7 processor" and expecting the victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer to understand how that helps them, we should know what their goals are and explain what model will best suit them. Even a car salesperson can do that (though soe might choose not to, they could if it pleased them.)
Plus all this garbage about compatibility just shows what an immature industry we have. We're at the same point the car (american: automobile) industry was at when they were still trying to decide whether to have a steering wheel, and which position the various pedals and levers should be in.
Most industries: medicine, law, engineering etc. use jargon as a way of excluding the general public. It acts as a barrier to entry for their arcane knowledge and practices - thus preserving jobs and keeping fees high. That only works when an industry regulates it's own people with professional qualifications, guilds that enforce standards and legal obligations that they have to comply with. When you're trying to sell commodity goods at knock-down prices; especially when customers don't actually need to buy them, this doesn't work. They just spend their money on beer, or something else.
While we, computer elites can laugh, or cry, at some of the stupid, stupid things that come out of the mouths of the sales drones - for a lot of people they are the experts. Most people neither know nor care about computers. They just want to GET STUFF DONE. They don't know or care about Gigahertz or Terabytes: just as they don't know or care about the kilo-Watt rating of their electric kettle: it's merely an appliance - it works or it doesn't.
Maybe the IT industry should look inwards on itself and consider how we've failed to educate the public about the technology we make them use. Even worse, maybe we should reflect on how we've turned a subject that has such a huge potential for good, into a nerdy hell: full of jargon, technobabble and misinformation. To the point where the sales-staff don't even know when they're talking rubbish.
It would be nice if PCs could just switch off just as fast, too.
Really, what is there to do? Kill everything with extreme prejudice and flush the cache. Unless you've got gigabytes of pending writes it really shouldn't take as long as it does.
Though, the power switch achieves (almost) the same effect with no waiting at all.
The two reasons for ever-on PCs is either when the user doesn't like to wait the (in my case) minutes for the boot sequence to run through: whether that's Linux or Microsoft, it's far too long. /. base, so there's no need to identify yourselves - I get it), if it gets a few million more PCs turned off then it's a good thing.
The second reason is when they're running stuff in that background: a server or data collection, or just a long download,. Obviously in this case, faster booting won't help but ignoring these power-users (which is probably a big proportion of the
At some point, some government official will either be exposed to be pervert or some such,
Makes no difference, they'll just get a tap on thw wrist, resign for a little while and then, when all the fuss has died down (a year or two later) be brought back into government.
For example the british attorney general has just been found guilty of employing an illegal immigrant - contrary to a law that she wrote. So far there's little pressure on her to resign (even though she's been found guilty and paid a £5000 fine).
Plus of course the reason any government does anything: because they can, and brits (I know, I'm one) do not have the legal framework to object - not having any sort of constitution.
news is worth what you can get advertisers to pay for access to the consumers
This has dangerous implications. More people will watch entertaining news than factual news. They prefer "easy" news to abstract (but possibly of greater effect) news and will turn off if it's not presented as a series of soundbites: which makes in-depth coverage and analysis impossible.
I can see a good case to say that informing citizens is as important as protecting them and therefore should be financed (if not controlled by) the state.
Well most people regard news as just another form of entertainment - we know this, as the most popular news programmes on TV are not the authoritative ones that tell us important information about events that will affect us. The one's that get the biggest audiances are the "populist" news programmes that deal more with celebrity gossip, scandals and rumours (oh yes, and sport). The conclusion is that people want entertainment more than they want information. Occasionally, when there's a Sept-11 type event people pile in to news channels, but since these almost never happen there's no way to build a profitable news channel or website based on regularly occurring disasters.
So if people are given two options: free entertainment websites on the one hand and paid-for sites on the other, they will almost always choose the free stuff. The small number of individuals who want and need in-depth analysis and coverage are already buying papers like the FT and WSJ and using their onlibe outlets, too. There's no room for much more in that field.
Remember: the first responsibility of any subordinate is to make the boss look good.
Plus, since this must have a way to be removed with using force, I think we can guarantee that the kids will very quickly come up with ways to subvert the locks and take these off if they don't want to wear them.
The thing that's always struck me about the long-tail effect is that you've got to work it, to get value from it. Just having all the books or films by a particular author / actor isn't enough. You have to use that information and have the intelligent algorithms to guide your website visitors (or maybe "entice" would be a better word) to consider those alternate products. Just saying "Uuh, here's all the other stuff that guy's done" isn't enough, it needs enthusiasm and some knowledge of *why* a visitor might like a particular past work. That's where the gold lies: not in the long tail itself, but how you utilitise it.
handing out Linux and FOSS collections...
Taking unknown software from people you don't know. Isn't that what the security community has been telling everyone NOT to do for years, decades. Maybe these advocates should think a little about the underlying message they are sending out and stop undoing the good work that others are doing to stop the spread of malware.
this is probably the most ignorant statement I'll read all month
Maybe if this guy wants to be respected, he should start acting respectably.
Given the choice between Wimax and ADSL I'd go for the hard-wired option any day: faster, more reliable, lower install cost and (maybe) scalable to faster speeds when more than 1 person is using the Wimax node.
put together a collection of security/privacy related issues that may or may not relate to things at work but definitely relate to their personal life
...
The bosses will be impressed with the extra work you did
And the company lawyer will have a fit that you are representing the company and giving employees personal advice, which the company then (by implication, as it was their representative who distributed it) are subsequently liable for.
That'll get you a reputation as the IT guy that's tech smart
While this advice is meant to be helpful, for you personally (apart from the huge ego trip, if you're into that sort of thing), it's probably the fastest single way to sabotage your own career, short of sleeping with the bosses' dog.
The only time presentations work is in a "golden" period between about 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m That's when they'll remember the first and last few minutes and nothing in between. And when I say "remember" I mean for the remainder of that particular day.
People's time is very, very expensive - just because you've be alloted 40 minutes, doesn't mean you have to use it all up. Say what needs to be said, then stop... Having you rattling on about things you reckon are interesting and that you reckon they don't know about is extremely arrogant. Since it's almost certain that either you, or some other presentation in this "mandatory" session will run over time, why not just finish a few minutes early. THAT ALONE will make people remember your presentation:
Oh yeah, he was the guy who actually stopped talking when he'd said all that needed to be said. Jeez, I wish some of the others had done that - now I've wasted a whole afternoon listening to stuff I already knew or that doesn't affect me."
Treat this as a bit of fun, but don't spend any money on it.
SANS found that most organizations are focusing their patching efforts and vulnerability scanning on the operating system, but they're missing the boat
They make it sound as if it's the fault of the client companies. In fact they probably apply all the security patches they get from their suppliers. If most of them come from the O/S vendors and relatively few come from the application vendors - you can hardly blame their cleints.
Maybe SANS should, instead, be asking why application vendors are so tardy about providing fixes for the vulnerabilities that SANS seem to think are the most exploited? Of course, the answer would be that the baddies focus their efforts on the weakest link, which is why more attacks target the (weak) applications than the better supported operating systems.
Obviously, if the parents feel like this, they will bring up their children to act in similarly oppressed ways, not only at home but as teachers at school, law-enforcement types and social/church leaders, too.
The only hope I can hold out for is another "60'" where a generation rejects the views (in this case of unquestioning conformity) of their elders and start to become iconoclasts. Maybe then they'll stop being afraid of everything around them (esp. other people) and start to ask the right questions and shake us all out of this malaise.