I don't think this is really true, but if I were a conspiracy nut - I might consider this a brilliant move by Microsoft. They get the data back (insulation from lawsuits) yet manage to scare people away from the biggest threat to their market share in decades - the cloud! Don't put your email onto GoogleApps - buy Exchange, retain control.
That's the thing that has always worried me most about SANs: you have all your eggs in one basket. No matter how redundant or reliable the hardware is, one bad update or trigger-happy admin can cause the instant loss of all your data. That's only slightly better than having your data center burn down. You still have your hardware, but a total restore like that can be a nightmare. I've heard somewhere that 80% of corporations couldn't recover from a scenario like that.
If you have one admin with unfettered access to everything, then yes, you could have a problem. But SANs don't put "all your eggs in one basket". First of all, that same admin would have that same access if you used DAS. Which of our three SANs would you say we have all of our eggs in, by the way?
Here's some fun numbers: a typical tape restore runs at something like 70MB/sec, if you're lucky, per tape drive. Some small low-end SANs that I see people buying these days are 10TB or bigger. At those speeds, it takes 40 hours to restore the complete system. What's worse is that it doesn't scale all that well either, you can get more drives, but the storage controllers and back-end FC loops become a limit. If you have some big cloud provider scenario, a complete restore could take days, or even weeks.
I don't want to argue your point, since you are correct - small shops are buying setups like that. The smart shops, of course aren't. They are using a combination of nearline storage for recent backups, tape for long term storage, deduplication for efficiency, snapshots for quick recoveries, mirroring for offsite recovery, and naturally they have more than one LTO-4 drive driving their backups. Even those cheap Dell TL's support multiple drives. But you are right, a lot of people are buying hardware they have no ability to manage effectively.
What's scary is that mirroring or off-site replicas don't help. If your array starts writing bad blocks, those will get mirrored also.
I'm not really sure that's something to worry about, granted, I have less experience with the lower end of the SAN market.
Further, responsibility would probably be shared between a storage department, a server operations department and an application management department, neatly ensuring that no single person or function is in the position to even know what data is supposed to be backed up, what limitations there are to ensure consistency (cold/hot/inc/etc), to monitor that that's actually what does happen and that it keeps happening as the application and server configuration evolves.
I'm in charge of storage (and many other things) for a MUCH smaller shop, our app is used by 300 locations comprising 55 companies and has a mere 4,000 users. Even if we didn't backup reliably (we do) and do twice yearly disaster recovery tests (we do), before a SAN upgrade, we also halt snapshots, upgrade our DR SAN, resume snapshots assuming the two versions are compatible (they tend to be), catchup, then halt snapshots, upgrade the production SAN, test, go back online.
Seriously, Microsoft ran one data center for the whole operation and had no other available data online? Forget tapes for a minute - that's nuts!
If the information is critical then you need to stipulate that only employees at outsourcer are:
1. Americans
2. Have credit score of 650 or better
3. Have no criminal background
4. Outsourcer agrees to pay costs of lawsuits from stolen property.
#4 is a big one and many might just refuse such a contract. I am waiting for an interview from an outsourcer who wants a thorough credit check and criminal background. THe client is a mortgage firm and I would be working at the site and in the office of outsourcer but its what the mortage company requires.
#4 is and should be ten times easier to get than #1. If you really feel strongly about #1, at least make sure your requirement is that they hold a green card or US citizenship. Now you are asking for almost the same thing and not asking your vendor to potentially violate equal employment law.
#4 is no big deal at all, or you deal with the wrong vendors. Google "fidelity bond" and make sure you get a company that bonds their employees appropriately. I just signed a big contract with a major data center firm. The easiest language I had struck from our contract was in regards to limiting their damages in case of gross negligence and misconduct by their staff. It's one thing to limit damages from negligence, but fraud and gross negligence?
Can you become a bonded sysadmin now? That seems like a logical step.
Get a fidelity bond. Work for enough staffing agencies and you'll get one, since that's usually the key to dealing with a recruiting firm on a corp-to-corp basis instead of continually going on their payroll.
NewEgg doesn't sell eggs. You can't order a real Bengal from TigerDirect. You can't buy Micro Stars from MSI. and finally... Macintosh does not sell real Apples.
You may be right on the first three, but the last one would be Apple does not sell real Macintoshes. And even then... it's McIntosh. There is no fruit called Macintosh. Must be a boring lunch for me to even write this.
hardware company and not like a software company. Clones aren't necessarily bad as long as they can build superior devices (or have the image for it) and where they would still make money on every sale. They could make decent money being the #1 music site on the web. So what the device isn't an iPod?
Surprised? I mean, since Jobs came back and... umm... killed off the Mac clones, are you really surprised that they don't want clones? Besides, you can still use iTunes to buy music for your Pre phone, Windows Mobile phone and even your ass (well ok, not your ass, but the other two), you just can't use iTunes to sync.
And no, they can't make decent money being the #1 music site on the web. The margins on their hardware dwarf that, and they use music to sell iPods, not iPods to sell music.
And so what if the device isn't an iPod? Apple wants to sell iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs and oh yeah Macs too. That's the things they want market share in. The other stuff helps drive that. Yeah, they make a ton of money on the App Store, but the App Store exists to make you want an iPhone. Yeah, they probably turn a decent profit on music sales, but that exists to make you want an iPhone. Yeah, it's nice that they sell iLife every year for $100, but it really exists to help sell Macs, which is why the current version always comes free with any new Mac purchase.
Urgh... Why do people insist on using some overhyped, bloated services that only work in US? My favorite applications of this type are those that can be open neatly in an FF tab, without taking up half of my RAM and which reside in countries where **AA is just a funky notion those crazy Americans keep babbling about.
Because those of us in the US that want to watch US tv show content legally have to either go to the web site, or use one of the aforementioned programs? Besides, Hulu's desktop app is basically a shell around their Flash content, the overhead is nothing above and beyond the Flash CPU overhead itself. Oh, and Zinc is available as a Firefox plugin, and can be opened neatly in a FF tab.
My first guess is that you're using Exchange. If so, ever since Exchange evolved into the emacs of mail servers (boy, it does a lot of awesome stuff, but it sure would be nice if they had a MTA in there somewhere), the "new hotness" has been to put a real mailserver in front of the Exchange server to "soften the blow" of incoming mail and deal with all of the crap. Of course, whether you go with an appliance like the barracuda, or some other server, it'll take a bit of money and elbow grease to get it to work well (eg validating incoming addresses against AD rather than just bouncing them off the exchange server, defeating the purpose).
While you are 100% correct in the sheer crap that is referred to as "SMTP" in Exchange, setting up a Barracuda to verify against AD (or LDAP) is drop dead simple. It's default LDAP search string covers both OpenLDAP and Active Directory servers out of the box. If entering in a couple of hostnames and making sure there's a path from your front-end server to your back-end LDAP infrastructure in your firewall is complex... then you probably are lucky to be using a Barracuda, since a hand built setup is beyond you for sure.
We have multiple domains, multiple LDAP environments, multiple mail servers (corporate: Exchange, our franchises are on a Zimbra cluster), yet we still have no problems even though Exchange has shit support for split domains. We even got single sign on to the mail quarantines to work relatively easily.
It's also the best bet for someone who needs local and remote clustering but maybe isn't an expert in Linux. Also, another advantage to such a person not having gone with a FOSS solution would be the vendor support. Even the front line guys at Barracuda aren't bad (well except that one moron who keeps posting strangely incoherant and ignorant ramblings about amavisd-new on the Postfix list the last couple of days - but I hear he doesn't work there presently). I haven't needed this, but a former client of mine has Barracudas in place, and their support routinely configures it for you.
Probably the biggest disadvantage to more experienced but time challenged administrators is that you can't put your own custom rules into Spam Assassin, although you can send their support any requests and they'll implement them.
"Such a shutdown could slow or disrupt anti-spam efforts for large numbers of mail hosts worldwide. "
While I happen to agree that SORBS was... well let's just say not the RBL for my organization's needs, the statement is sadly probably very true. So many mail hosts have poorly configured antispam setups, point to half a dozen or more RBLs, with longer than acceptable timeouts. When one goes dead, they start accepting mail slowly while they wait 4-6 seconds for a DNS query to timeout. Some don't even have anything setup to stop checking a list for a set period of time in case of excessive failures.
I'm sure the operator of SORBS meant it more as a plea "hey look at me, I'm so important to keeping spam away", but in reality, if it goes dark, some companies relying on systems setup by lousy administrators will suffer while they try to figure out what's up.
Having a PTR record on your IP that matches the SMTP hostname is common practice. In fact, us mail administrators in particular love it, because except for the people who happen to have their own AS number and own their own IP space, it pretty much requires you to involve your ISP or hosting provider to get the entry setup. Which pretty much guarantees that those people have an ISP that knows you are running a mail server. Checking that your SMTP server's HELO/EHLO broadcast matches it's rdns lookup is one of my favorite checks in my mail gateways, since it's low cost (simple DNS query, easily cached) and very effective at weeding out people who maybe shouldn't be running a mail server in the first place due to having the wrong plan with an ISP, or perhaps someone who suffers from ineptitude about how to setup an outbound mail server. Sorry, those glory days of just opening up a SMTP server on port 25 and sending mail have been gone... for years!
Actually, Barracuda's "whitelist" is far worse in this regard.
No it's not. If I can't get on a "whitelist" then I'm still not necessarily on a blacklist, and still not necessarily prevented from emailing Barracuda customers. That's better than being able to get on their blacklist for "free" and then having to pay to get off. In the latter, if I don't pay, I can't mail. In the former, if I don't pay, I can't bypass all the checks.
There was a consumer reports article about condoms a few years back -- it reported that the ones least likely to break were the LifeStyles Extra Thin or Ultra Thin or whatever they are called. I don't remember the data from the study, so the conclusion might not have been statistically significant; It seems implausible that the thinner condoms were less likely to break than the regular condoms, but maybe they use a different rubber formulation in the thin ones or something.
No shit... really? The thinner ones aren't as sturdy?
Does OS X actually recognize modern mice with *more* than three buttons? I use a Logitech MX518 with two thumb buttons (which Firefox on Windows thoughtfully maps to forward and back), and I don't think I'd ever want to do without that.
Considering the mouse they ship new systems with has four clickable buttons... I guess so. There's a right, a left, the two side buttons (but they are the same - they provide one action), and then the scroll button can be clicked.
I don't really understand why they wanted exclusivity especially with as terrible of carrier as AT&T. Really, if they opened up they would lead and the rest of the cell carriers would follow with everything so long as they made the specs available such as with Visual Voicemail.
Although nobody knows the exact numbers, I've heard stories of $250 to $525 per activation paid to Apple by AT&T. It's quite possible no other carrier in the US would touch the specific amount of money. Exclusivity is a LOT of revenue to Apple. It was worth it for AT&T too, which was in danger of following Sprint down the path of huge churn, Once that cow's been milked dry, Apple will let the deal expire and then go after mass volume.
You must stay in dumps then.:) I've noticed the nicer the hotel, the more likely there is a charge for in-room Internet, although many have free Internet if you are willing to sit in a chair in the lobby.
Finally, at the behest of one of my online friends I looked at the first 40 minutes of the 1 hour and 20 minute presentation from last week's Google I/O conference, and I finally had an inkling of the potential.
I tuned out right after the opening where he talks about not even bothering to watch the whole presentation. I can form my own poorly researched opinions.
Well I guess if you have the mind and attention span of a 3 year old this is for you. For those of us who are actually adults and can control ourselves this is laughable.
I guess if you have the mind of a 3 year old you might simplify things like you just did. Here's a concrete example of why it might be useful. In Florida, if you get a speeding ticket, and haven't had too many, you can take a 4 hour online course which reduces your points to ZERO (and therefore preserves your insurance rates). Guess what, when I took it, I found the Q&A far to easy and the pace of the audio WAY to slow, so I was... yup, in another window most of the time! Is that really because I have the mind of a 3 year old?
Besides... you're confusing the people who might be interested in such a system (those who have had to set up webinar facilities) with those who might be attending such sessions. I'm a three year old with no attention span because I realize if you host 100 employees in a webinar 30-40% of them are going to be tempted to check their email instead?
They invented nothing. They created nothing. I've been going to meetings for years and have been "suppressing de-focusing activities" during those meetings by not touching a computer. Is it so hard to not touch the computer that a process needs to be patented? This is the epitome of retarded patents.
This has nothing to do with popping up a message that says "please don't touch your computer" - this is about a patent that prevents you from doing so, presumably by forcing the meeting or webinar to full screen, and disabling alt-tab, etc.... the only way to go to another program is to LEAVE the conference.
This is actually incredibly useful. This is why products like Citrix's GoToWebinar tell you what percentage of time your attendees were in other windows, and why they support pop-up polling to see if you were paying attention. In some circles (classes offering CEU credits in certain fields for example) being able to show attentiveness is a requirement. I worked for a firm where we setup a very elaborate local and remote training system, and it was those features that convinced the licensing board to allow us to offer the class remotely. Our customers loved it, since some were quite far away and just paid for classes elsewhere, rather than travel to our free ones.
CUPS is overkill for occasionally converting a document into a printer language and then sending it off. Worse, CUPS doesn't even do that all that reliably (OS X is stuck with the same flaky printing system as Linux).
Wonder why OS X uses CUPS... must have something to do with Apple owning the project these days.
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I don't think this is really true, but if I were a conspiracy nut - I might consider this a brilliant move by Microsoft. They get the data back (insulation from lawsuits) yet manage to scare people away from the biggest threat to their market share in decades - the cloud! Don't put your email onto GoogleApps - buy Exchange, retain control.
That's the thing that has always worried me most about SANs: you have all your eggs in one basket. No matter how redundant or reliable the hardware is, one bad update or trigger-happy admin can cause the instant loss of all your data. That's only slightly better than having your data center burn down. You still have your hardware, but a total restore like that can be a nightmare. I've heard somewhere that 80% of corporations couldn't recover from a scenario like that.
If you have one admin with unfettered access to everything, then yes, you could have a problem. But SANs don't put "all your eggs in one basket". First of all, that same admin would have that same access if you used DAS. Which of our three SANs would you say we have all of our eggs in, by the way?
Here's some fun numbers: a typical tape restore runs at something like 70MB/sec, if you're lucky, per tape drive. Some small low-end SANs that I see people buying these days are 10TB or bigger. At those speeds, it takes 40 hours to restore the complete system. What's worse is that it doesn't scale all that well either, you can get more drives, but the storage controllers and back-end FC loops become a limit. If you have some big cloud provider scenario, a complete restore could take days, or even weeks.
I don't want to argue your point, since you are correct - small shops are buying setups like that. The smart shops, of course aren't. They are using a combination of nearline storage for recent backups, tape for long term storage, deduplication for efficiency, snapshots for quick recoveries, mirroring for offsite recovery, and naturally they have more than one LTO-4 drive driving their backups. Even those cheap Dell TL's support multiple drives. But you are right, a lot of people are buying hardware they have no ability to manage effectively.
What's scary is that mirroring or off-site replicas don't help. If your array starts writing bad blocks, those will get mirrored also.
I'm not really sure that's something to worry about, granted, I have less experience with the lower end of the SAN market.
Further, responsibility would probably be shared between a storage department, a server operations department and an application management department, neatly ensuring that no single person or function is in the position to even know what data is supposed to be backed up, what limitations there are to ensure consistency (cold/hot/inc/etc), to monitor that that's actually what does happen and that it keeps happening as the application and server configuration evolves.
I'm in charge of storage (and many other things) for a MUCH smaller shop, our app is used by 300 locations comprising 55 companies and has a mere 4,000 users. Even if we didn't backup reliably (we do) and do twice yearly disaster recovery tests (we do), before a SAN upgrade, we also halt snapshots, upgrade our DR SAN, resume snapshots assuming the two versions are compatible (they tend to be), catchup, then halt snapshots, upgrade the production SAN, test, go back online.
Seriously, Microsoft ran one data center for the whole operation and had no other available data online? Forget tapes for a minute - that's nuts!
I wonder how long it will be before developers are able to effectively develop and distribute their own titles without the big publishers?
If you're an iPhone game developer, the answer's either right now, or never, depending on if you see Apple as a "publisher".
If the information is critical then you need to stipulate that only employees at outsourcer are: 1. Americans 2. Have credit score of 650 or better 3. Have no criminal background 4. Outsourcer agrees to pay costs of lawsuits from stolen property. #4 is a big one and many might just refuse such a contract. I am waiting for an interview from an outsourcer who wants a thorough credit check and criminal background. THe client is a mortgage firm and I would be working at the site and in the office of outsourcer but its what the mortage company requires.
#4 is and should be ten times easier to get than #1. If you really feel strongly about #1, at least make sure your requirement is that they hold a green card or US citizenship. Now you are asking for almost the same thing and not asking your vendor to potentially violate equal employment law.
#4 is no big deal at all, or you deal with the wrong vendors. Google "fidelity bond" and make sure you get a company that bonds their employees appropriately. I just signed a big contract with a major data center firm. The easiest language I had struck from our contract was in regards to limiting their damages in case of gross negligence and misconduct by their staff. It's one thing to limit damages from negligence, but fraud and gross negligence?
Can you become a bonded sysadmin now? That seems like a logical step.
Get a fidelity bond. Work for enough staffing agencies and you'll get one, since that's usually the key to dealing with a recruiting firm on a corp-to-corp basis instead of continually going on their payroll.
Many other firms require it as well.
NewEgg doesn't sell eggs. You can't order a real Bengal from TigerDirect. You can't buy Micro Stars from MSI. and finally... Macintosh does not sell real Apples.
You may be right on the first three, but the last one would be Apple does not sell real Macintoshes. And even then... it's McIntosh. There is no fruit called Macintosh. Must be a boring lunch for me to even write this.
hardware company and not like a software company. Clones aren't necessarily bad as long as they can build superior devices (or have the image for it) and where they would still make money on every sale. They could make decent money being the #1 music site on the web. So what the device isn't an iPod?
Surprised? I mean, since Jobs came back and... umm... killed off the Mac clones, are you really surprised that they don't want clones? Besides, you can still use iTunes to buy music for your Pre phone, Windows Mobile phone and even your ass (well ok, not your ass, but the other two), you just can't use iTunes to sync.
And no, they can't make decent money being the #1 music site on the web. The margins on their hardware dwarf that, and they use music to sell iPods, not iPods to sell music.
And so what if the device isn't an iPod? Apple wants to sell iPods, iPhones, AppleTVs and oh yeah Macs too. That's the things they want market share in. The other stuff helps drive that. Yeah, they make a ton of money on the App Store, but the App Store exists to make you want an iPhone. Yeah, they probably turn a decent profit on music sales, but that exists to make you want an iPhone. Yeah, it's nice that they sell iLife every year for $100, but it really exists to help sell Macs, which is why the current version always comes free with any new Mac purchase.
Urgh... Why do people insist on using some overhyped, bloated services that only work in US? My favorite applications of this type are those that can be open neatly in an FF tab, without taking up half of my RAM and which reside in countries where **AA is just a funky notion those crazy Americans keep babbling about.
Because those of us in the US that want to watch US tv show content legally have to either go to the web site, or use one of the aforementioned programs? Besides, Hulu's desktop app is basically a shell around their Flash content, the overhead is nothing above and beyond the Flash CPU overhead itself. Oh, and Zinc is available as a Firefox plugin, and can be opened neatly in a FF tab.
My first guess is that you're using Exchange. If so, ever since Exchange evolved into the emacs of mail servers (boy, it does a lot of awesome stuff, but it sure would be nice if they had a MTA in there somewhere), the "new hotness" has been to put a real mailserver in front of the Exchange server to "soften the blow" of incoming mail and deal with all of the crap. Of course, whether you go with an appliance like the barracuda, or some other server, it'll take a bit of money and elbow grease to get it to work well (eg validating incoming addresses against AD rather than just bouncing them off the exchange server, defeating the purpose).
While you are 100% correct in the sheer crap that is referred to as "SMTP" in Exchange, setting up a Barracuda to verify against AD (or LDAP) is drop dead simple. It's default LDAP search string covers both OpenLDAP and Active Directory servers out of the box. If entering in a couple of hostnames and making sure there's a path from your front-end server to your back-end LDAP infrastructure in your firewall is complex... then you probably are lucky to be using a Barracuda, since a hand built setup is beyond you for sure.
We have multiple domains, multiple LDAP environments, multiple mail servers (corporate: Exchange, our franchises are on a Zimbra cluster), yet we still have no problems even though Exchange has shit support for split domains. We even got single sign on to the mail quarantines to work relatively easily.
It's also the best bet for someone who needs local and remote clustering but maybe isn't an expert in Linux. Also, another advantage to such a person not having gone with a FOSS solution would be the vendor support. Even the front line guys at Barracuda aren't bad (well except that one moron who keeps posting strangely incoherant and ignorant ramblings about amavisd-new on the Postfix list the last couple of days - but I hear he doesn't work there presently). I haven't needed this, but a former client of mine has Barracudas in place, and their support routinely configures it for you.
Probably the biggest disadvantage to more experienced but time challenged administrators is that you can't put your own custom rules into Spam Assassin, although you can send their support any requests and they'll implement them.
"Such a shutdown could slow or disrupt anti-spam efforts for large numbers of mail hosts worldwide. "
While I happen to agree that SORBS was... well let's just say not the RBL for my organization's needs, the statement is sadly probably very true. So many mail hosts have poorly configured antispam setups, point to half a dozen or more RBLs, with longer than acceptable timeouts. When one goes dead, they start accepting mail slowly while they wait 4-6 seconds for a DNS query to timeout. Some don't even have anything setup to stop checking a list for a set period of time in case of excessive failures.
I'm sure the operator of SORBS meant it more as a plea "hey look at me, I'm so important to keeping spam away", but in reality, if it goes dark, some companies relying on systems setup by lousy administrators will suffer while they try to figure out what's up.
Having a PTR record on your IP that matches the SMTP hostname is common practice. In fact, us mail administrators in particular love it, because except for the people who happen to have their own AS number and own their own IP space, it pretty much requires you to involve your ISP or hosting provider to get the entry setup. Which pretty much guarantees that those people have an ISP that knows you are running a mail server. Checking that your SMTP server's HELO/EHLO broadcast matches it's rdns lookup is one of my favorite checks in my mail gateways, since it's low cost (simple DNS query, easily cached) and very effective at weeding out people who maybe shouldn't be running a mail server in the first place due to having the wrong plan with an ISP, or perhaps someone who suffers from ineptitude about how to setup an outbound mail server. Sorry, those glory days of just opening up a SMTP server on port 25 and sending mail have been gone... for years!
Actually, Barracuda's "whitelist" is far worse in this regard.
No it's not. If I can't get on a "whitelist" then I'm still not necessarily on a blacklist, and still not necessarily prevented from emailing Barracuda customers. That's better than being able to get on their blacklist for "free" and then having to pay to get off. In the latter, if I don't pay, I can't mail. In the former, if I don't pay, I can't bypass all the checks.
There was a consumer reports article about condoms a few years back -- it reported that the ones least likely to break were the LifeStyles Extra Thin or Ultra Thin or whatever they are called. I don't remember the data from the study, so the conclusion might not have been statistically significant; It seems implausible that the thinner condoms were less likely to break than the regular condoms, but maybe they use a different rubber formulation in the thin ones or something.
No shit... really? The thinner ones aren't as sturdy?
Does OS X actually recognize modern mice with *more* than three buttons? I use a Logitech MX518 with two thumb buttons (which Firefox on Windows thoughtfully maps to forward and back), and I don't think I'd ever want to do without that.
Considering the mouse they ship new systems with has four clickable buttons... I guess so. There's a right, a left, the two side buttons (but they are the same - they provide one action), and then the scroll button can be clicked.
I don't really understand why they wanted exclusivity especially with as terrible of carrier as AT&T. Really, if they opened up they would lead and the rest of the cell carriers would follow with everything so long as they made the specs available such as with Visual Voicemail.
Although nobody knows the exact numbers, I've heard stories of $250 to $525 per activation paid to Apple by AT&T. It's quite possible no other carrier in the US would touch the specific amount of money. Exclusivity is a LOT of revenue to Apple. It was worth it for AT&T too, which was in danger of following Sprint down the path of huge churn, Once that cow's been milked dry, Apple will let the deal expire and then go after mass volume.
You must stay in dumps then. :) I've noticed the nicer the hotel, the more likely there is a charge for in-room Internet, although many have free Internet if you are willing to sit in a chair in the lobby.
Finally, at the behest of one of my online friends I looked at the first 40 minutes of the 1 hour and 20 minute presentation from last week's Google I/O conference, and I finally had an inkling of the potential.
I tuned out right after the opening where he talks about not even bothering to watch the whole presentation. I can form my own poorly researched opinions.
- Can't do email if you can't access Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo.
When my Internet's down, I normally have trouble sending email anyway.
- Can't chat with friends on IM
When my Internet's down, I normally have trouble getting on IM anyway.
- Can't socialize on Facebook/Myspace
When my Internet's down, I normally have trouble getting on social networking sites.
- Can't surf YouTube for funny or interesting videos.
When my Internet's down, YouTube rarely works.
- Can't pay your bills online or manage your bank account
When my Internet's down, I have trouble accessing my online banking sites.
While I get your point, these were pretty bad examples.
Your hammer doesn't tell you which nails you may drive with it.
No but my flathead screwdriver tells me which screws I can screw.
My local ford dealer is also just $30 for a syn-blend oil & lube job, and they do a wet wash with hand dry for that.
Anybody else misread that at first?
Well I guess if you have the mind and attention span of a 3 year old this is for you. For those of us who are actually adults and can control ourselves this is laughable.
I guess if you have the mind of a 3 year old you might simplify things like you just did. Here's a concrete example of why it might be useful. In Florida, if you get a speeding ticket, and haven't had too many, you can take a 4 hour online course which reduces your points to ZERO (and therefore preserves your insurance rates). Guess what, when I took it, I found the Q&A far to easy and the pace of the audio WAY to slow, so I was... yup, in another window most of the time! Is that really because I have the mind of a 3 year old?
Besides... you're confusing the people who might be interested in such a system (those who have had to set up webinar facilities) with those who might be attending such sessions. I'm a three year old with no attention span because I realize if you host 100 employees in a webinar 30-40% of them are going to be tempted to check their email instead?
They invented nothing. They created nothing. I've been going to meetings for years and have been "suppressing de-focusing activities" during those meetings by not touching a computer. Is it so hard to not touch the computer that a process needs to be patented? This is the epitome of retarded patents.
This has nothing to do with popping up a message that says "please don't touch your computer" - this is about a patent that prevents you from doing so, presumably by forcing the meeting or webinar to full screen, and disabling alt-tab, etc.... the only way to go to another program is to LEAVE the conference.
This is actually incredibly useful. This is why products like Citrix's GoToWebinar tell you what percentage of time your attendees were in other windows, and why they support pop-up polling to see if you were paying attention. In some circles (classes offering CEU credits in certain fields for example) being able to show attentiveness is a requirement. I worked for a firm where we setup a very elaborate local and remote training system, and it was those features that convinced the licensing board to allow us to offer the class remotely. Our customers loved it, since some were quite far away and just paid for classes elsewhere, rather than travel to our free ones.
Trovalds isn't the only Linus in the world.
Trovalds isn't even the Linus you thought you were typing.
CUPS is overkill for occasionally converting a document into a printer language and then sending it off. Worse, CUPS doesn't even do that all that reliably (OS X is stuck with the same flaky printing system as Linux).
Wonder why OS X uses CUPS... must have something to do with Apple owning the project these days.