My apologies... I assumed it was common knowledge (and thus was implied, if not implicitly stated). I thought everybody knew that a woman automatically becomes 25% more desirable, in objective terms, when you discover she has some European accent.
And if a survey of 2000 people is done properly, it *is* significant, and representative of a much larger population. The response from the world in general to the recent coverage of ID & Creationism in the media here in the States has taken the form of a self-satisfied smirk & a little snicker, as if to say, "Heh, what can you do? It's those crazy Americans. What a bunch of wankers." (And for the record, I'll agree -- the people who want to see creationism & ID taught in schools *are* a bunch of wankers. Faith & religion have no business masquerading as science.)
But, how much of your statement that there's "no coverage in popular daily newspapers" can be attributed to the simple fact that the British media are turning a blind eye to something they just don't wish to see, or admit to, as part of your national character? (And yes, I'm assuming you're British -- my apologies if that's not the case!)
By trying to explain away the survey results as some bland mix of "apathy towards & distrust of science," it really sounds like you're trying to rationalize this in some way... as if somehow, Britons who subscribe to irrational theories & unsubstantiated beliefs are a more reasonable group than their American counterparts. No matter which way you slice it, holding to irrational theories is... well, irrational.
And it's funny... despite all the hubbub about ID & Creationism in the United States, I've heard and seen absolutely nothing about it in my area (New England). I'm aware that there's discussion about it, and that the "theory" received a boost in prominence when George Bush said that it was a valid alternative. And I'm also quite aware that a small number of school districts have been trying to (or HAVE) added ID & Creationism to the science curriculum. But I also think that the perceptions that there's a widespread push to include ID & Creationism in school curricula isn't accurate -- a distortion mostly fueled by the fact that the national media loves a story that sells well in its high-circulation (high population density) areas... the east & west coasts. I guess I find it equally interesting that there seems to be a sizable (though perhaps mostly silent) minority in other countries who have similar feelings.
As I said before... it's comforting to know that idiocy apparently knows no national boundaries.
One is an article (can't remember who by, sorry) that I read shortly after the 2004 election, taking Democrats to task for the re-election of George Bush. Essentially, the author was relating her conversation with a Democrat friend, who exclaimed something to the effect of, "I don't know HOW that man could have gotten re-elected, I don't know ANYBODY who voted for him!" The point of the article was that we all tend to assume that everybody thinks the same way we (and our small circle of friends) do, and it's often disconcerting to find that we're outside the mainstream, or that a very sizable portion of the general population disagrees with us.
I'm also tickled to see that, despite all of the characterizations of Americans as backwoods hillbillies due to the seeming popularity of ID & Creationism here, apparently idiocy knows no national boundaries. I'll be waiting to see the coverage of this in the newspapers & magazines like Time & Newsweek... I probably shouldn't hold my breath for it, because this thinking doesn't dovetail with the image of americans that the world has grown comfortable with, namely that we're overwhelmingly mouth-breathing troglodytes, while the rest of the world consists of polished, cosmopolitan, urbane, well-manicured people.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the notion of taking a course on whatever topic you're looking for at a local university. If your company offers you some sort of tuition reimbursement program, then you'd have to front the money, but then you have incentive to do well in the course, and get paid back when you finish the course successfully.
In my experience:
1) Most mid- and large-sized companies offer some form of tuition reimbursement; I don't know if this statement holds true for smaller business, though I'm sure you could make the case to your boss if you work at a smaller company.
2) Most colleges that offer technical majors offer at least some basic programming, system administration, and other "IT / MIS" related courses.
Given this, I don't think it's unreasonable that you look for, and take, a course and get reimbursed for it. Your primary focus WHENEVER you're proposing something to your boss should be: "Here's how the company benefits." Remember, he doesn't give two shits for something that you *want* that won't benefit the company in some way. Benefits to the company of this approach:
1) Most courses at a college are a term or semester in length; You get more exposure, and probably retain more useful info as a result.
2) It's on YOUR time, so the company doesn't lose a valuable employee for 5 days of off-site training at a vendor site.
3) It's on YOUR dime, and it's YOUR risk with the money -- if you sign up for the class, spend a couple thousand dollars on the class, and then fuck around and do nothing, the company doesn't lose money.
4) The company only reimburses you if you actually pass the class.
Now, secretly, there are these incentives for you, which you should never share with your boss:
1) You get the knowledge you need. This means shorter hours & a more manageable work environment for you in the long run.
2) You will be seen as a creative go-getter who is willing to place a bet with your own money (the tuition) on your own ability to learn.
3) You don't lose money, so long as you apply yourself and pass the class.
4) You have a HUGE incentive to pass the class, because you know that if you get lazy, you lose the tuition you paid.
Remember: Your boss doesn't give two shits about all the benefits to you. If the company is going to reimburse you for training expenses, they need to know how it benefits THEM. What's their ROI? Other than that, get yourself some books, keep a browser open to your favorite search engine, and dive in. Learning by doing is also a very good educational experience.
You're complaining about advertisements in "free" television? You do understand that the advertising you're watching is what makes that television free, right? If you want commercial-free television, then you can go pay for a cable / satellite subscription, or buy the tv show on dvd when it's released on dvd. Like it or not, advertising on tv is what subsidizes the cost of producing the "free" shows that you wish to enjoy for 30 minutes or an hour.
If you want to eliminate the people calling you, sign up for the "Do Not Call" list. I signed up about 6 months ago, and it really does work -- I have not had an unsolicited call on my phone in the past few months.
And as for your beef about supermarkets... I have no idea where you're shopping, but I've never had a sales person (or droid, for that matter) talk to me at a grocery store. Yes, there are print ads everywhere... yes, they want you to sign up for their store card, and they may ask you if you have a card at the register... but I don't consider ignoring print advertising and answering politely, "No, I'm sorry, I don't have a card, and I don't want one," to be a particularly onerous.
With that said, Spam isn't much of a problem for me, either... I use SpamBayes, installed with Outlook 2003, and have been using it for about a year now. I get very few false positives, and maybe 1 or 2 spam messages a week end up in my Inbox. If you're not using a product like SpamBayes, I'd recommend it.
Sounds suspiciously similar to a bout of Cellulitis I dealt with about a year and a half ago... essentially, an infection of the connective tissue under the skin -- lots of pain, swelling, redness... and it was actually in the back of my throat -- official diagnosis of "tonsillar cellulitis."
The doctor's first guess was that I had strep throat... so she prescribed a course of amoxycillin. This damped down the infection, but didn't knock it out... it came roaring back with a vengeance by the third day after finishing the course of amoxycillin. When I ended up back at the doctor's office, she prescribed another round of amoxycillin, thinking that it hadn't had enough time to do the job it should. Within 2 more days of amoxycillin, it became quite clear that the amoxycillin wasn't doing the trick -- I was unable to swallow anything but water (and that, painfully), and my ability to breathe was rapidly becoming an issue due to the swelling in my throat.
I ended up in the ER, where they pumped me full of an iv mix of saline & clindamycin, another antibiotic, and then sent me home with a prescription for a liquid clindamycin medication. And I'll tell you this: the liquid clindamycin solution tastes like what I'd imagine snot & ass would taste like, if you could ever mix the two together. But it did the trick... knocked the infection right out in a matter of a couple days (but I completed the course, don't worry, I will not be the source of a clindamycin resistant throat infection for anyone).
The really difficult thing here -- and I don't blame the doctors, because there's only so much they can do -- was for them to determine what the infection was caused by. There are literally millions of bacteria on, in, and around your body... they treat based on symptoms, and I initially presented with symptoms strongly similar to strep throat. They pulled a strep culture, but that took time to come back (it came back negative). They never found out what specific type of bacteria caused my cellulitis, and truly told, I don't know if they could have figured it out without a whole lot of expensive testing & equipment. It's clear that the standard of care is to throw some antibiotics at it, and hope that it'll allow my body to clean up the problem and heal itself up.
Shit man, you're lucky... I've still got Solaris 2.6 boxes I'm hoping to get upgraded to Solaris 8 by the end of 2006...
To respond to the original question of the poster, my preference is, "Stop supporting it when the vendor stops supporting it." If you want to drop support before the vendor, then have a *damn* good reason for it. And sometimes, you may be forced to maintain support after a vendor stops supporting something, to reach a crucial audience, because the people using the software may just not want to upgrade.
I have a fair idea of what should be in it (history of the Internet, how computers talk to each other, what a hard drive does, etc.), but I'm interested to see what you all have to say. What do you wish your users knew? What kind of questions are you so sick of answering because you hear them every week? What does the general public think they understand, but really don't?
You've given yourself a Herculean (perhaps even Sisyphean) task with that topic. By definition, this would have to be a very general book. This means it would, by definition, have to cover a VAST amount of territory if you want it to be at all useful, even on a conceptual level. The problem here is that, at least in my experience, books that are that general & high level cover 400 acres, but only about 1/8 inch deep.
In other words, I don't see how you can do much more than barely scratch the surface when writing a "general purpose" book like this, and probably that scratch will be virtually useless to 99% of the people out there.
At what point do you stop explaining? How many options will you cover, if there are half a dozen perfectly usable tools available to do something as basic as printing a letter? Do you tell them to go install OpenOffice, Emacs, Vi, MS Word, something else? Do you explain how to do THAT, too? Hell, those are just the options on Windows, too... there's probably a dozen or two more readily available on Linux, and I have no idea how many options there are on OS X, but I'd guess there's quite a few there, too. Do you see where I'm going yet?
I think there are too many choices to write a useful all-purpose book for everybody. Most every-day users don't care that much about how the hardware works, so long as it DOES work... so I don't think you're going to have a terrifically high readership in that market segment. My best advice is, write a book titled something like, "How To: 50 Things you can get done today with your new Dell Windows XP PC." Keep it focused to a specific OS, set of hardware options, and applications. If you're going to cover a particular app, it either better be pre-installed on the hardware, or available for install from the CD which accompanies the book.
Keep it task-oriented. Sending & receiving email using Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Browsing a web site. "Five things you absolutely SHOULD have running on your system at all times" -- something along the lines of antivirus, spybot, backups, firewall, automatic updates, and explain how to set it up with some good default settings.
I think you're undertaking something that's damn near impossible as you described it, or virtually unreadable if you do manage to finish. Without keeping it very focused, you'll drive yourself insane.
In reading your comment, I can see two possible interpretations:
In your rush to leave the first comment, you didn't read the fucking article, which bemoans the "Web 2.0" hype & frenzy. --OR--
You did read the article, but your reading comprehension is sorely lacking.
From the article:
It was while attending that debate that my discomfort with the hype surrounding an emerging genre of web development turned into a full-blown hate-on. [ . . . ]
Was anyone else really annoyed by the extreme bias imparted with the opening sentence? [ . . . ] Sounds like someone who sees Firefox as a small upstart instead of the serious competetor that it is. Either that, or a MS Shill. (I'm more likely inclined to say that its someone who's not very in tune with technology).
I wasn't particularly bothered by it, but I'm curious as to why you'd be so annoyed. Let's look at it logically, from the perspective of end-users. Yes, Firefox is a good browser (I'm using it to post this comment, in fact!), and yes, the Firefox team deserves kudos for spurring Microsoft to invest more time, money, and effort into IE again after such a long period of stagnation. But do you really see Firefox dethroning IE? I don't. Here's why...
Microsoft, in true competitive fashion, will invest enough time, effort, and money in IE 7 (and 8, and 9, etc.) to make it *good enough* to continue competing with Firefox. And for that reason, I think Firefox will always have a reasonable market share -- huge among tech-savvy users -- but I don't ever see it giving IE the big K.O. punch you seem to think it will... as long as there's a large market of non-tech-savvy computer users out there who simply don't care what browser they're using, so long as they can access the sites they regularly want to visit, why should they bother to switch?
You have to understand your target market, and I think Microsoft has (and will continue to) target the market that includes your tech-illiterate friends & family... I simply don't see Firefox "killing" IE, because MSFT will continue to invest enough resources in it to keep it alive, and with more or less the same functionality as Firefox & Opera & Safari.
Anybody looking at the notion of Linux on a business *desktop* back in 1999 - 2000 (RH 6.0 days) with a shred of sense in their head would know that it was not a good investment at the time... the applications were not there for business or home use, and arguably, still have a ways to go. Any VC who made bets like that with my hard-earned money would not be given a second chance to gamble on my dime...
Mulligan had once been the richest and, consequently, the most denounced man in the country. He had never taken a loss on any investment he made; everything he touched turned into gold. "It's because I know what to touch," he said. Nobody could grasp the pattern of his investments: he rejected deals that were considered flawlessly safe, and he put enormous amounts into ventures that no other banker would handle. [ . . . ] When an economist referred to him once as an audacious gambler, Mulligan said, "The reason why you'll never get rich is because you think that what I do is gambling."
Honestly, I've seen it happen both ways, though the overwhelming majority of cases has been that people leaving work out their 2 weeks as normal... the "escorted out by security" thing has been a small minority of the cases.
About 7 years ago, one of my coworkers & myself were hired away from our employer at the same time... we gave our notice on the same exact day. I had spent my time at that job doing my level best at the work, being a good team player, and in general, making an effort to play well with others. My coworker was NOT a "team player", and in fact had engaged in 2 years worth of running battles with management and lead development staff... not enough of a pain in the ass to get fired, but enough that management had categorized him as a troublemaker, and a drain on morale and productivity. So what happened the day we both gave our notice, you ask?
-- My coworker's manager said, "You're leaving?" with a big grin on his face, escorted him back to his desk, watched him pack his personal belongings, and then called security to escort him out of the building and told him they'd send him a check for his last two weeks.
-- My manager first said to me, "Is there anything we can do that would make you change your mind?" (To which I responded, no, the opportunity was exactly right for me, and I couldn't turn it down.) He then said to me, "Well, this is going to really hurt us, but I really wish you the best... Is there any way you could give us an extra week or two, so you can help bring your replacement up to speed?" I went back to my new employer, and asked them if I could delay my start date an extra week, and they were agreeable, so I gave a three weeks of notice, during which I worked as hard, if not harder, than I had for the entire time I had been there previously.
So what's the moral of this story? Leaving on a good note with your boss will help you in the future... call it karma, call it good luck, call it whatever... it's entirely possible that you'll run into these managers again, and they'll remember you, even if you're painted with the broad brush of "nice guy, good to work with," or "shithead, avoid at all costs." Even if you have no intention of ever working for that company or those managers again because they mistreated you so badly, take the high road.
To be perfectly honest, the people I've seen being "escorted out" in the jobs I've worked, have really been the trouble makers, the antagonists, and the people who everybody was like, "Oh god, it's such a relief that guy is gone." So you might want to ask yourself... "Am I a prick?" If your employers make a habit of escorting you out the door the moment you give your notice, then there's a pretty good chance that the answer to that questions is, "Yes!"
And before you go and say, "I'm not a prick, the people I always end up stuck working with are just a bunch of blithering, clueless idiots -- I HAVE to tell them how wrong they are," think long and hard about this:
YOU think they're all blithering idiots.
THEY think you're a prick.
Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong.
In short, there's ways to be both technically correct AND personable. And if you can manage both, you'll find that your coworkers & managers respect you, and actually come to you to seek out your advice, rather than try to avoid you because they know that to be wrong in your presence will incur your wrath...
This is exactly why I was so puzzled at the collective gasps of indignation and outrage over this... I have a hotmail account I use exclusively for online registrations, forms, etc., and I don't really care if that account gets spammed into oblivion, because it's simply not the one I look at for important information. My family & friends get my "real" address, and I've actually had very few problems with spam coming to that address, and the address has existed for almost 2 years now...
Does anybody really think that the CDC is going to be sending you verification emails before you're allowed to board the plane?
The CDC would be stupid not to interview these people anyway. If a nasty new disease comes out, and it was caused by people fucking a pig, looking for airline information would be a waste of time and money. Also, the CDC does want the tracking of this information according to the article.[... quote from article removed...]
This is a spurious argument on several levels:
The reason the CDC wants the airlines to track this information is specifically because they want to be able to interview these people, and track the potential transmission vectors for a disease. And if they have to spend 3 weeks recreating passenger manifests, then their work just got much harder, and the chance of the infection spreading beyond control gets exponentially higher.
If the only way to transmit the disease is by a person fucking a pig, it's not very likely to become a pandemic outbreak... unless your friends and family are the sort of people who run train on a pig -- which I sincerely doubt they are, and which I sincerely HOPE they are not -- then this argument is just stupid. The CDC would not need to get involved, it would be a case for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals & PETA.
There's a difference between the CDC "wanting" the tracking of this information -- 90% of which is already tracked by airlines already, which is a point you tried, and failed, to address by saying it's some sort of financial burden on the government to do so -- and the CDC tracking the information itself. It wants access to the info, and it wants to standardize the info that airlines track. That's all the article says.
Oh, and by the way... do you really, truly, believe that the FBI or even local police couldn't get at your lawnmower repair information if there was some bizarre reason they needed to have it for reasons of public safety or law enforcement?
How much time does it take to cure something like SARS, AIDS or flu? These things have not yet been cured in a matter of days, weeks, years, or decades to date. Diseases come from many different places. Fleas, mosquitos, sex, airborne, food. What makes airlines so special? So, if its OK for the CDC to track airline information, what about my sexual partners? What about the insects I've been exposed to? What about my diet?
Another spurious argument. They're not saying that with this information they'll be able to cure all of those diseases. Nobody made that claim, so to use this as a counter-argument is a little silly. BUT, if they can intervene before a disease spreads to pandemic proportions in the population, they can prevent a lot of people from getting sick in the first place.
As far as your question of what makes airlines different from fleas, mosquitoes, etc. -- you're confusing the issue. Fleas, sex, etc. are vectors for transmission, just like people are in these cases. The airlines are "special" in that they allow an infected person to travel around the world in a matter of hours, greatly increasing the distance a disease can travel, and as a direct consequence, the number of people around the world that can be affected by a nasty disease that jumps out of a local quarantine.
And incidentally, if you contract a disease which is being monitored by the CDC, you'd better believe they're going to ask you a lot of questions about your diet, your sexual partners, and who you've been associating with lately. All that the airline info tracking does is make it easier for the CDC to find out who an infected person may have been in contact with, which allows them to intervene and perhaps halt the spread of something nasty before it reaches pandemic proportions. As I said before, time spent gathering data == lives lost to disease == more money spent on more sick & dying people, when you're talking about epidemics.
As a taxpayer, do you want every government agency tracking your every move just from a financial point of view?
Okay, let's look at it from a financial perspective:
It's not the government tracking this information, so I fail to see how it costs the government any money aside from the time spent developing the standards. They're asking the airlines to maintain a database of information -- most of which they already maintain, probably in multiple, diverse, insecure, incompatible formats -- in order to allow the CDC to find out who's been exposed to some sort of transmissible health issue as rapidly as possible. I fail to see how this costs the government inordinate amounts of money, if the airlines are charged with implementing, tracking, and maintaining the system.
In the case of a massive outbreak of flu, or SARS, or ebola, or some other nasty virus, how much time & money would it cost for the CDC to track this data after the fact? When you're trying to stop the spread of a transmissible disease, time is a crucial factor -- the more time you let infected people walk around, passing it on to others, the more people become infected, and end up walking around passing it on to others. It's an exponential curve... that extra week it would take to find all the possibly infected people could cost the government a lot to our health care system, because the response needed to contain the disease becomes all that much more massive -- rather than quarantining & treating 5000 people who've been exposed, you have to try and quarantine & treat several million... so in terms of economics, what's cheaper, paying to find & treat five thousand people who've come in contact with an infected person in the 2 days since the person was exposed, or mobilizing the military to quarantine a few dozen cities where the disease has been possibly spread to millions in the 2 weeks it took the CDC to track all the people on that plane?
In the final analysis, I still fail to see how this is a bad thing, or really even all that newsworthy... The airlines already track 90% of the data the CDC would ask for already, so it can't be THAT much of a privacy issue -- if you didn't want them having that info, you'd already refuse to purchase air travel on grounds of privacy... and by your financial argument, it seems that NOT doing it would be at least as expensive, financially, due to the simple fact of infection following an exponential growth curve -- and in that case, time is money in a very real sense.
Actually, did you read the article? From the article [bold-italics mine]:
The new regulations, which are available on the CDC's Web site and will be posted for a 60-day comment period in the Federal Register starting Nov. 30, would require airlines, travel agents and global reservations systems to collect personal information that exceeds the quantity of information currently collected by the Transportation Security Administration or the Homeland Security Department.
If you look at what the CDC is asking the airlines to track, any airline I've traveled on has MOST of that information already... and expedia, or travelocity, or any other booking agency I've used could probably supply the rest (email address, phone number, etc.)
The amount of data they're asking the airlines to track is only more than what the TSA or Dept. of Homeland Security requires them to track... and just because it's above & beyond what the TSA & DHS require, that doesn't mean that it's not almost all tracked already by the airlines. This would simply require the airlines to standardize the data tracked into a format the CDC could work with in case of a public health crisis, such as SARS or a flu outbreak.
I'm having trouble seeing how this is such a terrible thing... take a look at what they're proposing to collect, FTFA [numbered items, below... italics are my comments]
First, last and middle names, in addition to suffixes. You already have to provide your name due to security regulations. So I don't see how there's any change there, really.
Current home address, including street, apartment number, city, state/province and ZIP code If you want to book travel, chances are you already provided this, in the form of a billing address, or a shipping address... so I don't see why this would be a big deal.
Mobile, home or pager phone numbers Not too hard to give a fake one, and really, if you want to take the risk of being out-of-contact when the CDC is trying to contact you to tell you you have just been exposed to some sort of new strain of Hemorrhagic Fever... hey, it's your ass that's bleeding, not mine.:)
E-mail address Okay, perhaps a stretch. But again, not too hard to set up a hotmail account, "mikes_garbage_email@hotmail.com", and provide that. You never even have to check it, if you don't want to.
Passport or travel document, including the issuing country or organization I'm not sure of the regs on this, but it would seem to me that using your passport when you travel would get tracked somewhere in some government database already.
Traveling companions or group And if you don't want to say who you're traveling with? Say you're traveling alone... not so hard, is it? What are they, going to deny you access to the airplane because you talked to someone while waiting in line?
Flight information, including date, airline, flight number and return flight details Well, seems to me the airline would already know this, since you booked yourself on the flight and purchased tickets... so I think this falls in the "already tracked" category.
Name, address and phone number of an emergency contact Again, not a particularly unreasonable request... but not hard to give bogus info if you really wanted to, either.
I guess I'm just having a lot of trouble seeing this as any sort of risk or violation of privacy, as I think most of this stuff would either be: a) already tracked, or b) easy to look up given that you HAVE to give your name to get on the plane... with a name and a credit card number, I'd imagine it would be pretty straightforward to track down pretty much anybody. (And let's be honest... sure, you could probably pay cash to buy the ticket... but how many people are REALLY going to do that?) It seems to me that this would simply allow the CDC to speed up the data collection... which means that it would take them 3 days to notify me I've been exposed to the new Ultra-death-killer SARS strain on my return flight from Singapore... rather than 2 weeks later, when I've already developed a strange cough . . .:)
Strangely enough, what you describe below just shows the contrary to what you say here
Ahahahah... oooh that was a zinger!
What I "describe below" just shows that both Windows AND Linux have problems, and I'm not particularly happy with either of them as a solution to my computing needs. I went back to Windows because I was tired of spending half my time on my home computer trying to solve problems and get things working. Fedora was fun as a learning exercise, but it wasn't very *useful* to me as a system with which to get things done. You may not like that analysis, as it's clear you don't, but that's my verdict.
All those hardware whose company won't support on Linux, if they work, that's not because of magic, but because of people dedicated to make them work, at least for them.
Well gee, thanks. After 8 years of working in the industry, I had NO idea that that was the case.
Then you speak of GTKPod crashing
Can you offer any other alternative for making an ipod work? I tried YAMMI... didn't work... I tried GTKPod... worked sporadically, and crashed... short of writing my own ipod management code, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to do, that "beta" code was the best available. Or maybe I should throw away my ipod, because Linux doesn't support it?
are forced to say sth good about Firefox
I give credit where credit is due... I'm not "forced" to say anything. If you'd like, I'll happily give credit to perl, apache, and mysql for doing things well, as well -- I use them every day, and love those products.
try to say all kind of bad things about MPlayer
No, what I said was that installing MPlayer was only possible by using RPMs from a non-standard RPM source, which updated things I had downloaded from a *standard* rpm source, and that screwed up my update system. Mplayer was the only USABLE video & audio player on my system. Totem just didn't cut it.
What you think is standard behaviour for audio on a Gnome desktop
Actually this was quite surprising to me... but if you happen to have a Gnome desktop running Fedora Core 4 with ALSA, try this little experiment: Start xmms from a terminal window (xmms &), and start playing a song. Then, load up firefox, or some other application that provides some audio feedback -- using an icon on your little "toolbar" down the bottom (you'll have to excuse me, I don't recall what the Gnome desktop calls their analog for KDE's Kicker). Do something in the application you started up through Gnome that causes a sound. Invariably, this would cause my XMMS player to stop playing audio. I tried several other combinations of apps, and the same behavior was seen every time. Now I'm sure there's a reason for this... but that's just hokey behavior.
to finish with stupidity about you updating your kernel and breaking your binary drivers, because of course, you tested all of that on a downloaded distro, which is for experienced linux users.
And am I really that inexperienced if I was able to get this far with FC4? I understand, and knew, that I would have to reinstall drivers when I updated a kernel... the point is, Linux has it's foibles (some by design, some by accident) and drawbacks, just like any other operating system. And if you want to increase the penetration of Linux in the market, the linux community has got to address these issues. You cannot just tell users, "Oh, it's your fault, you don't know what you're doing. Go buy a bunch of new hardware and try again." If you use that high-handed response on someone who doesn't have even my admittedly middling level of computer skill, then you just guaranteed a sale of Windows XP to Microsoft, because every piece of hardware I have attached to my computer does "just work" under Windows.
Your (our) problem starts as soon as you say that freedom and choice are just noble statements. Some people
I think it's a good description of the Windows users who tend to complain that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" based on the 5 minutes following an Ubuntu/Fedora install and before returning to Windows.
I hope I don't fall into the category of asshole or dick or whining windows ex-pat...
I gave FC4 a little over 2 months, as my ONLY home operating system -- i.e., blew Windows away completely, and recovered my docs & audio etc. from backups. It worked -- mostly -- but not as well as I hoped it would. Please feel free to read my other post on this topic (http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169549& cid=14132302) for additional info about my Linux trial period...
I want to love Linux, I really do. But every time I try it, I end up disappointed because my experience just isn't any better with Linux than it was with Windows.
I have to agree with the parent poster's point. I'm a reasonably experienced software engineer, and have worked for the last 8 years on or with Windows, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Red Hat Linux, Gentoo Linux, and Fedora Core Linux. I have some rudimentary sys admin skills. I can -- and have -- set up, to a functional, networked state, all of the systems above, and can troubleshoot them when things go wrong, given a couple books, google, and a few days -- I'm certainly not a "professional" sys admin, but I can do the basics with a little time & research.
I use Windows XP Pro (SP2) at home, and have been for at least a year and a half now... before that, I was using Windows 2000. With XP, I don't get the BSOD that everybody incessantly complains about, and I've *never* seen my system have one of those "random reboots" somebody else mentioned, unless my power goes out. Still haven't gotten around to buying a decent UPS for my home system, because I really don't do too much critical work there.
No, Windows XP isn't perfect, and I'd never claim it is... I'd love to see my system support firewire devices better, since they sometimes cause the system to begin spitting out "delayed write" errors, and force me to reboot. Sometimes a process or two gets out of control with CPU / RAM usage, and the system starts getting flaky, so I reboot. Sometimes, on reboot, my iPod Service hangs, and I have to reboot into safe mode to disable it, then re-enable it after I get logged in... Windows isn't perfect, and anybody who claims it is is lying.
However, Linux is by no means a better solution, at least for me. A few months back, I attempted to install Fedora Core 4 on the same system, with the same devices that I use under Windows without any particular issues: a printer, a scanner, a digital camera, a bluetooth usb dongle w/keyboard & mouse, a web cam, a wireless card, a radio receiver, an iPod, and an external USB drive for backups. Bottom line is, I had MUCH more frustration getting all of this to work under Fedora Core 4, and spent about 10 times more time than I did setting up Windows, and I never managed to get everything up & running before I decided to say, "Screw this," and reinstalled Windows again. Here's the issues I ran into:
My webcam worked -- but ONLY when it wasn't plugged into a USB hub -- ONLY if plugged directly into the port would it work properly.
My Linksys wireless card required about 2 weeks of research and fiddling before I could get it up and running... thank god I happened to have a card with a chipset that Linux supports, or I'd still be working on it.
Bluetooth: well, let's just say the only way I could get my bluetooth mouse & keyboard to work was if I *disabled*! the Bluetooth services that start up during Fedora boot... and even then, the bluetoogh pairing for the keyboard & mouse would stop working.
Speaking of crashes... GTKPod crashed. Repeatedly.
OpenOffice... slow & ugly... not very impressed with what I saw, it looked like a cheap knockoff of Office that was slower, and didn't work as well. Perhaps 2.0 looks better... but the 1.x I tried wasn't very compelling, or useful.
Thunderbird: Worked Okay... but to me, not significantly different than Outlook Express. I prefer using Outlook to OE, because I prefer the familiar interface.
Firefox: Actually pleased with this experience, and like it enough that it's my primary browser on my Windows system now. LOVE the tabbed browsing.
Video & Audio support for FC4 was pure, unmitigated SHITE... the only way I got it to work for all of the music & video files I tried watching was by following instructions I found through google to hack together a copy of MPlayer -- which led me into dependency hell -- MPlayer was good, once it worked, but the video & audio was choppy. Oh, and let's also not forget that, if you start a program from the command line, any audio event in the Gnome gui kills the audio or video you're
If you're looking for an un-encrypted wireless signal, come on over... the guy upstairs from me is wide open... the family down the hall is also... one of the apartments on the first floor of my complex is too... the Panera Bread down the street, the public library a couple miles away... all of these are unsecured wireless networks, and that's all within a few miles of where I live. I suspect the results would be much the same in lots of residential areas where high speed connections are in use... I think I'm just about the only person in my building who actually has encryption & MAC address filtering turned on.
Well, I stand corrected then. Where your stale bromides & vague generalities failed to convince me before, your obvious partisan leanings and irrelevant examples (Soviet steel mills? The space program?) have me solidly on your side now...
Let's look at the steel industry for a moment. Massive tariffs on imported stell and subsidies are the only thing that has kept the American steel industry afloat in the recent past (take a look at recent WTO rulings against the US, I think as recently as this past summer). I'm sure you, as a proponent of freedom and free markets, will agree that those are bad policies. I think they're bad policies, myself. Now, if you really want to understand why the Soviet steel mills (and the entire USSR) failed, here's the secret -- it's because there was no profit motive for ANYBODY involved, except the owners in the government who grew rich by oppressing & mistreating their workers. In a capitalist (free market) economy, people are rewarded based on the value of their contribution. If their contribution is crap, they will be rewarded with nothing.
Oh, and your example of Linux back in 1993? Thanks for making my point for me. Linux was not adopted until very recently as a viable contender in the enterprise market, and it still doesn't have a very big share. The reason? Because for the first few years it was out there, it was crappy. Unstable, flaky, and just plain a pain in the ass. It hasn't been until recently, when people have figured out how to make a profit off of open source projects (your "accountability and growth stream", I believe you called it?) that large-scale adoption of Linux has been possible by enterprise customers.
If "freedom" (in the sense you're using it) was the only reason to pick Linux, do you really think that IBM, HP, Sun, et. al. would be embracing it? Of course not. They're embracing it because:
a) It makes for *great* public relations for them... "IBM, the friend of the little man."
b) It makes *great* business sense for them. They've found a way to make money off of it, by selling services, hardware, support contracts, customizations, etc., for software which is essentially "found software" -- free, in the cost sense, in other words.
Do you *really* think that IBM and all the other companies adopting and supporting Linux are doing so because of some sort of noble philosophy about openness and freedom? Those companies don't care much for your noble philosophy... but they certainly do care about their bottom line.
You're right in one regard -- transparency is a great idea. But honestly... have you read through the source code of every piece of "free" software you've ever used, just to make the judgement of whether or not it'll serve your needs now & in the future? Who has the time for it? Yes, you can do it... but no, most people aren't likely to do it.
I don't want to have to be an expert in video codecs & dvd formats to decide whether I want to use Totem, MPlayer, Helix, or something else on my Fedora system. The average user (and the average *technical* user as well) is just as likely, if not more likely, to decide what software to use based on word of mouth, or by throwing all three packages at their system and seeing what works. When I found that Totem wouldn't play some formats of video properly on my system, I tried the same videos in MPlayer, and found they worked perfectly... so now MPlayer is my choice. Do I know if it'll continue to suit my needs in the future? Hell no. But it works now, and I see what I want to see, when I want to see it... yes, it's a trivial example... but do you think that anybody (aside from the person whose full time job it is) really has time to read every single line of the Linux kernel to see what they're getting?
Theories are great... but if those theories are never (or almost never) put into practice, how has the status quo changed? You still have a vast set of users choosing software based on marketing and word of mouth...
I'm not sure why a couple responses to this got modded down as trolls, but the parent gets a 5/insightful. The parent post is certainly not "insightful", unless you also subscribe to the theory that Dr. Phil's stale bromides & vague generalities are "insightful".
Free software is not inherently better because it is free. In free markets, merit & usefulness matters -- if your software is good, then it will be used. If your software is a pile of crap hacked together by a kid that doesn't know what he's doing, then even if it's free crap... it's still crap.
"Free" doesn't matter. Technical or usage reasons are the only reasons to use a piece of software. I use some free software every day -- perl, gcc, Apache, Samba, Firefox, Thunderbird, Fedora... and I use some "non-free" software every day -- MS Office, Windows XP, Quicken, Visual Studio, various IBM/Rational tools, Solaris & its compiler set (used to be Forte?) -- all of them have their merits, but NONE of them were chosen primarily based on cost. If two packages are absolutely the same, and the only distinguishing factor is cost, then (and only then) you should choose the cheapest one for your needs.
God, people, this whole mantra of "Free is the best, non-free is the devil" is completely pointless. Computers, and the software they run, are tools -- choose the tool that suits your requirements, don't let the tools dictate what your requirements can be based on some sort of political agenda.
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Or even *explicitly* stated, as I meant to say.
My apologies... I assumed it was common knowledge (and thus was implied, if not implicitly stated). I thought everybody knew that a woman automatically becomes 25% more desirable, in objective terms, when you discover she has some European accent.
And if a survey of 2000 people is done properly, it *is* significant, and representative of a much larger population. The response from the world in general to the recent coverage of ID & Creationism in the media here in the States has taken the form of a self-satisfied smirk & a little snicker, as if to say, "Heh, what can you do? It's those crazy Americans. What a bunch of wankers." (And for the record, I'll agree -- the people who want to see creationism & ID taught in schools *are* a bunch of wankers. Faith & religion have no business masquerading as science.)
But, how much of your statement that there's "no coverage in popular daily newspapers" can be attributed to the simple fact that the British media are turning a blind eye to something they just don't wish to see, or admit to, as part of your national character? (And yes, I'm assuming you're British -- my apologies if that's not the case!)
By trying to explain away the survey results as some bland mix of "apathy towards & distrust of science," it really sounds like you're trying to rationalize this in some way... as if somehow, Britons who subscribe to irrational theories & unsubstantiated beliefs are a more reasonable group than their American counterparts. No matter which way you slice it, holding to irrational theories is... well, irrational.
And it's funny... despite all the hubbub about ID & Creationism in the United States, I've heard and seen absolutely nothing about it in my area (New England). I'm aware that there's discussion about it, and that the "theory" received a boost in prominence when George Bush said that it was a valid alternative. And I'm also quite aware that a small number of school districts have been trying to (or HAVE) added ID & Creationism to the science curriculum. But I also think that the perceptions that there's a widespread push to include ID & Creationism in school curricula isn't accurate -- a distortion mostly fueled by the fact that the national media loves a story that sells well in its high-circulation (high population density) areas... the east & west coasts. I guess I find it equally interesting that there seems to be a sizable (though perhaps mostly silent) minority in other countries who have similar feelings.
As I said before... it's comforting to know that idiocy apparently knows no national boundaries.
Two comments brought to mind by this article...
One is an article (can't remember who by, sorry) that I read shortly after the 2004 election, taking Democrats to task for the re-election of George Bush. Essentially, the author was relating her conversation with a Democrat friend, who exclaimed something to the effect of, "I don't know HOW that man could have gotten re-elected, I don't know ANYBODY who voted for him!" The point of the article was that we all tend to assume that everybody thinks the same way we (and our small circle of friends) do, and it's often disconcerting to find that we're outside the mainstream, or that a very sizable portion of the general population disagrees with us.
I'm also tickled to see that, despite all of the characterizations of Americans as backwoods hillbillies due to the seeming popularity of ID & Creationism here, apparently idiocy knows no national boundaries. I'll be waiting to see the coverage of this in the newspapers & magazines like Time & Newsweek... I probably shouldn't hold my breath for it, because this thinking doesn't dovetail with the image of americans that the world has grown comfortable with, namely that we're overwhelmingly mouth-breathing troglodytes, while the rest of the world consists of polished, cosmopolitan, urbane, well-manicured people.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the notion of taking a course on whatever topic you're looking for at a local university. If your company offers you some sort of tuition reimbursement program, then you'd have to front the money, but then you have incentive to do well in the course, and get paid back when you finish the course successfully.
In my experience:
1) Most mid- and large-sized companies offer some form of tuition reimbursement; I don't know if this statement holds true for smaller business, though I'm sure you could make the case to your boss if you work at a smaller company.
2) Most colleges that offer technical majors offer at least some basic programming, system administration, and other "IT / MIS" related courses.
Given this, I don't think it's unreasonable that you look for, and take, a course and get reimbursed for it. Your primary focus WHENEVER you're proposing something to your boss should be: "Here's how the company benefits." Remember, he doesn't give two shits for something that you *want* that won't benefit the company in some way. Benefits to the company of this approach:
1) Most courses at a college are a term or semester in length; You get more exposure, and probably retain more useful info as a result.
2) It's on YOUR time, so the company doesn't lose a valuable employee for 5 days of off-site training at a vendor site.
3) It's on YOUR dime, and it's YOUR risk with the money -- if you sign up for the class, spend a couple thousand dollars on the class, and then fuck around and do nothing, the company doesn't lose money.
4) The company only reimburses you if you actually pass the class.
Now, secretly, there are these incentives for you, which you should never share with your boss:
1) You get the knowledge you need. This means shorter hours & a more manageable work environment for you in the long run.
2) You will be seen as a creative go-getter who is willing to place a bet with your own money (the tuition) on your own ability to learn.
3) You don't lose money, so long as you apply yourself and pass the class.
4) You have a HUGE incentive to pass the class, because you know that if you get lazy, you lose the tuition you paid.
Remember: Your boss doesn't give two shits about all the benefits to you. If the company is going to reimburse you for training expenses, they need to know how it benefits THEM. What's their ROI? Other than that, get yourself some books, keep a browser open to your favorite search engine, and dive in. Learning by doing is also a very good educational experience.
You're complaining about advertisements in "free" television? You do understand that the advertising you're watching is what makes that television free, right? If you want commercial-free television, then you can go pay for a cable / satellite subscription, or buy the tv show on dvd when it's released on dvd. Like it or not, advertising on tv is what subsidizes the cost of producing the "free" shows that you wish to enjoy for 30 minutes or an hour.
If you want to eliminate the people calling you, sign up for the "Do Not Call" list. I signed up about 6 months ago, and it really does work -- I have not had an unsolicited call on my phone in the past few months.
And as for your beef about supermarkets... I have no idea where you're shopping, but I've never had a sales person (or droid, for that matter) talk to me at a grocery store. Yes, there are print ads everywhere... yes, they want you to sign up for their store card, and they may ask you if you have a card at the register... but I don't consider ignoring print advertising and answering politely, "No, I'm sorry, I don't have a card, and I don't want one," to be a particularly onerous.
With that said, Spam isn't much of a problem for me, either... I use SpamBayes, installed with Outlook 2003, and have been using it for about a year now. I get very few false positives, and maybe 1 or 2 spam messages a week end up in my Inbox. If you're not using a product like SpamBayes, I'd recommend it.
Sounds suspiciously similar to a bout of Cellulitis I dealt with about a year and a half ago... essentially, an infection of the connective tissue under the skin -- lots of pain, swelling, redness... and it was actually in the back of my throat -- official diagnosis of "tonsillar cellulitis."
The doctor's first guess was that I had strep throat... so she prescribed a course of amoxycillin. This damped down the infection, but didn't knock it out... it came roaring back with a vengeance by the third day after finishing the course of amoxycillin. When I ended up back at the doctor's office, she prescribed another round of amoxycillin, thinking that it hadn't had enough time to do the job it should. Within 2 more days of amoxycillin, it became quite clear that the amoxycillin wasn't doing the trick -- I was unable to swallow anything but water (and that, painfully), and my ability to breathe was rapidly becoming an issue due to the swelling in my throat.
I ended up in the ER, where they pumped me full of an iv mix of saline & clindamycin, another antibiotic, and then sent me home with a prescription for a liquid clindamycin medication. And I'll tell you this: the liquid clindamycin solution tastes like what I'd imagine snot & ass would taste like, if you could ever mix the two together. But it did the trick... knocked the infection right out in a matter of a couple days (but I completed the course, don't worry, I will not be the source of a clindamycin resistant throat infection for anyone).
The really difficult thing here -- and I don't blame the doctors, because there's only so much they can do -- was for them to determine what the infection was caused by. There are literally millions of bacteria on, in, and around your body... they treat based on symptoms, and I initially presented with symptoms strongly similar to strep throat. They pulled a strep culture, but that took time to come back (it came back negative). They never found out what specific type of bacteria caused my cellulitis, and truly told, I don't know if they could have figured it out without a whole lot of expensive testing & equipment. It's clear that the standard of care is to throw some antibiotics at it, and hope that it'll allow my body to clean up the problem and heal itself up.
Shit man, you're lucky... I've still got Solaris 2.6 boxes I'm hoping to get upgraded to Solaris 8 by the end of 2006...
To respond to the original question of the poster, my preference is, "Stop supporting it when the vendor stops supporting it." If you want to drop support before the vendor, then have a *damn* good reason for it. And sometimes, you may be forced to maintain support after a vendor stops supporting something, to reach a crucial audience, because the people using the software may just not want to upgrade.
In other words, I don't see how you can do much more than barely scratch the surface when writing a "general purpose" book like this, and probably that scratch will be virtually useless to 99% of the people out there.
At what point do you stop explaining? How many options will you cover, if there are half a dozen perfectly usable tools available to do something as basic as printing a letter? Do you tell them to go install OpenOffice, Emacs, Vi, MS Word, something else? Do you explain how to do THAT, too? Hell, those are just the options on Windows, too... there's probably a dozen or two more readily available on Linux, and I have no idea how many options there are on OS X, but I'd guess there's quite a few there, too. Do you see where I'm going yet?
I think there are too many choices to write a useful all-purpose book for everybody. Most every-day users don't care that much about how the hardware works, so long as it DOES work... so I don't think you're going to have a terrifically high readership in that market segment. My best advice is, write a book titled something like, "How To: 50 Things you can get done today with your new Dell Windows XP PC." Keep it focused to a specific OS, set of hardware options, and applications. If you're going to cover a particular app, it either better be pre-installed on the hardware, or available for install from the CD which accompanies the book.
Keep it task-oriented. Sending & receiving email using Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Browsing a web site. "Five things you absolutely SHOULD have running on your system at all times" -- something along the lines of antivirus, spybot, backups, firewall, automatic updates, and explain how to set it up with some good default settings.
I think you're undertaking something that's damn near impossible as you described it, or virtually unreadable if you do manage to finish. Without keeping it very focused, you'll drive yourself insane.
--OR--
From the article:
Was anyone else really annoyed by the extreme bias imparted with the opening sentence? [ . . . ] Sounds like someone who sees Firefox as a small upstart instead of the serious competetor that it is. Either that, or a MS Shill. (I'm more likely inclined to say that its someone who's not very in tune with technology).
I wasn't particularly bothered by it, but I'm curious as to why you'd be so annoyed. Let's look at it logically, from the perspective of end-users. Yes, Firefox is a good browser (I'm using it to post this comment, in fact!), and yes, the Firefox team deserves kudos for spurring Microsoft to invest more time, money, and effort into IE again after such a long period of stagnation. But do you really see Firefox dethroning IE? I don't. Here's why...
Microsoft, in true competitive fashion, will invest enough time, effort, and money in IE 7 (and 8, and 9, etc.) to make it *good enough* to continue competing with Firefox. And for that reason, I think Firefox will always have a reasonable market share -- huge among tech-savvy users -- but I don't ever see it giving IE the big K.O. punch you seem to think it will... as long as there's a large market of non-tech-savvy computer users out there who simply don't care what browser they're using, so long as they can access the sites they regularly want to visit, why should they bother to switch?
You have to understand your target market, and I think Microsoft has (and will continue to) target the market that includes your tech-illiterate friends & family... I simply don't see Firefox "killing" IE, because MSFT will continue to invest enough resources in it to keep it alive, and with more or less the same functionality as Firefox & Opera & Safari.
About 7 years ago, one of my coworkers & myself were hired away from our employer at the same time... we gave our notice on the same exact day. I had spent my time at that job doing my level best at the work, being a good team player, and in general, making an effort to play well with others. My coworker was NOT a "team player", and in fact had engaged in 2 years worth of running battles with management and lead development staff... not enough of a pain in the ass to get fired, but enough that management had categorized him as a troublemaker, and a drain on morale and productivity. So what happened the day we both gave our notice, you ask?
-- My coworker's manager said, "You're leaving?" with a big grin on his face, escorted him back to his desk, watched him pack his personal belongings, and then called security to escort him out of the building and told him they'd send him a check for his last two weeks.
-- My manager first said to me, "Is there anything we can do that would make you change your mind?" (To which I responded, no, the opportunity was exactly right for me, and I couldn't turn it down.) He then said to me, "Well, this is going to really hurt us, but I really wish you the best... Is there any way you could give us an extra week or two, so you can help bring your replacement up to speed?" I went back to my new employer, and asked them if I could delay my start date an extra week, and they were agreeable, so I gave a three weeks of notice, during which I worked as hard, if not harder, than I had for the entire time I had been there previously.
So what's the moral of this story? Leaving on a good note with your boss will help you in the future... call it karma, call it good luck, call it whatever... it's entirely possible that you'll run into these managers again, and they'll remember you, even if you're painted with the broad brush of "nice guy, good to work with," or "shithead, avoid at all costs." Even if you have no intention of ever working for that company or those managers again because they mistreated you so badly, take the high road.
To be perfectly honest, the people I've seen being "escorted out" in the jobs I've worked, have really been the trouble makers, the antagonists, and the people who everybody was like, "Oh god, it's such a relief that guy is gone." So you might want to ask yourself... "Am I a prick?" If your employers make a habit of escorting you out the door the moment you give your notice, then there's a pretty good chance that the answer to that questions is, "Yes!"
And before you go and say, "I'm not a prick, the people I always end up stuck working with are just a bunch of blithering, clueless idiots -- I HAVE to tell them how wrong they are," think long and hard about this:
In short, there's ways to be both technically correct AND personable. And if you can manage both, you'll find that your coworkers & managers respect you, and actually come to you to seek out your advice, rather than try to avoid you because they know that to be wrong in your presence will incur your wrath...
This is exactly why I was so puzzled at the collective gasps of indignation and outrage over this... I have a hotmail account I use exclusively for online registrations, forms, etc., and I don't really care if that account gets spammed into oblivion, because it's simply not the one I look at for important information. My family & friends get my "real" address, and I've actually had very few problems with spam coming to that address, and the address has existed for almost 2 years now...
Does anybody really think that the CDC is going to be sending you verification emails before you're allowed to board the plane?
This is a spurious argument on several levels:
Oh, and by the way... do you really, truly, believe that the FBI or even local police couldn't get at your lawnmower repair information if there was some bizarre reason they needed to have it for reasons of public safety or law enforcement?
How much time does it take to cure something like SARS, AIDS or flu? These things have not yet been cured in a matter of days, weeks, years, or decades to date. Diseases come from many different places. Fleas, mosquitos, sex, airborne, food. What makes airlines so special? So, if its OK for the CDC to track airline information, what about my sexual partners? What about the insects I've been exposed to? What about my diet?
Another spurious argument. They're not saying that with this information they'll be able to cure all of those diseases. Nobody made that claim, so to use this as a counter-argument is a little silly. BUT, if they can intervene before a disease spreads to pandemic proportions in the population, they can prevent a lot of people from getting sick in the first place.
As far as your question of what makes airlines different from fleas, mosquitoes, etc. -- you're confusing the issue. Fleas, sex, etc. are vectors for transmission, just like people are in these cases. The airlines are "special" in that they allow an infected person to travel around the world in a matter of hours, greatly increasing the distance a disease can travel, and as a direct consequence, the number of people around the world that can be affected by a nasty disease that jumps out of a local quarantine.
And incidentally, if you contract a disease which is being monitored by the CDC, you'd better believe they're going to ask you a lot of questions about your diet, your sexual partners, and who you've been associating with lately. All that the airline info tracking does is make it easier for the CDC to find out who an infected person may have been in contact with, which allows them to intervene and perhaps halt the spread of something nasty before it reaches pandemic proportions. As I said before, time spent gathering data == lives lost to disease == more money spent on more sick & dying people, when you're talking about epidemics.
Okay, let's look at it from a financial perspective:
- It's not the government tracking this information, so I fail to see how it costs the government any money aside from the time spent developing the standards. They're asking the airlines to maintain a database of information -- most of which they already maintain , probably in multiple, diverse, insecure, incompatible formats -- in order to allow the CDC to find out who's been exposed to some sort of transmissible health issue as rapidly as possible. I fail to see how this costs the government inordinate amounts of money, if the airlines are charged with implementing, tracking, and maintaining the system.
- In the case of a massive outbreak of flu, or SARS, or ebola, or some other nasty virus, how much time & money would it cost for the CDC to track this data after the fact? When you're trying to stop the spread of a transmissible disease, time is a crucial factor -- the more time you let infected people walk around, passing it on to others, the more people become infected, and end up walking around passing it on to others. It's an exponential curve... that extra week it would take to find all the possibly infected people could cost the government a lot to our health care system, because the response needed to contain the disease becomes all that much more massive -- rather than quarantining & treating 5000 people who've been exposed, you have to try and quarantine & treat several million... so in terms of economics, what's cheaper, paying to find & treat five thousand people who've come in contact with an infected person in the 2 days since the person was exposed, or mobilizing the military to quarantine a few dozen cities where the disease has been possibly spread to millions in the 2 weeks it took the CDC to track all the people on that plane?
In the final analysis, I still fail to see how this is a bad thing, or really even all that newsworthy... The airlines already track 90% of the data the CDC would ask for already, so it can't be THAT much of a privacy issue -- if you didn't want them having that info, you'd already refuse to purchase air travel on grounds of privacy... and by your financial argument, it seems that NOT doing it would be at least as expensive, financially, due to the simple fact of infection following an exponential growth curve -- and in that case, time is money in a very real sense.If you look at what the CDC is asking the airlines to track, any airline I've traveled on has MOST of that information already... and expedia, or travelocity, or any other booking agency I've used could probably supply the rest (email address, phone number, etc.)
The amount of data they're asking the airlines to track is only more than what the TSA or Dept. of Homeland Security requires them to track... and just because it's above & beyond what the TSA & DHS require, that doesn't mean that it's not almost all tracked already by the airlines. This would simply require the airlines to standardize the data tracked into a format the CDC could work with in case of a public health crisis, such as SARS or a flu outbreak.
You already have to provide your name due to security regulations. So I don't see how there's any change there, really.
If you want to book travel, chances are you already provided this, in the form of a billing address, or a shipping address... so I don't see why this would be a big deal.
Not too hard to give a fake one, and really, if you want to take the risk of being out-of-contact when the CDC is trying to contact you to tell you you have just been exposed to some sort of new strain of Hemorrhagic Fever... hey, it's your ass that's bleeding, not mine.
Okay, perhaps a stretch. But again, not too hard to set up a hotmail account, "mikes_garbage_email@hotmail.com", and provide that. You never even have to check it, if you don't want to.
I'm not sure of the regs on this, but it would seem to me that using your passport when you travel would get tracked somewhere in some government database already.
And if you don't want to say who you're traveling with? Say you're traveling alone... not so hard, is it? What are they, going to deny you access to the airplane because you talked to someone while waiting in line?
Well, seems to me the airline would already know this, since you booked yourself on the flight and purchased tickets... so I think this falls in the "already tracked" category.
Again, not a particularly unreasonable request... but not hard to give bogus info if you really wanted to, either.
I guess I'm just having a lot of trouble seeing this as any sort of risk or violation of privacy, as I think most of this stuff would either be: a) already tracked, or b) easy to look up given that you HAVE to give your name to get on the plane... with a name and a credit card number, I'd imagine it would be pretty straightforward to track down pretty much anybody. (And let's be honest... sure, you could probably pay cash to buy the ticket... but how many people are REALLY going to do that?) It seems to me that this would simply allow the CDC to speed up the data collection... which means that it would take them 3 days to notify me I've been exposed to the new Ultra-death-killer SARS strain on my return flight from Singapore... rather than 2 weeks later, when I've already developed a strange cough . . .
Strangely enough, what you describe below just shows the contrary to what you say here
Ahahahah... oooh that was a zinger!
What I "describe below" just shows that both Windows AND Linux have problems, and I'm not particularly happy with either of them as a solution to my computing needs. I went back to Windows because I was tired of spending half my time on my home computer trying to solve problems and get things working. Fedora was fun as a learning exercise, but it wasn't very *useful* to me as a system with which to get things done. You may not like that analysis, as it's clear you don't, but that's my verdict.
All those hardware whose company won't support on Linux, if they work, that's not because of magic, but because of people dedicated to make them work, at least for them.
Well gee, thanks. After 8 years of working in the industry, I had NO idea that that was the case.
Then you speak of GTKPod crashing
Can you offer any other alternative for making an ipod work? I tried YAMMI... didn't work... I tried GTKPod... worked sporadically, and crashed... short of writing my own ipod management code, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to do, that "beta" code was the best available. Or maybe I should throw away my ipod, because Linux doesn't support it?
are forced to say sth good about Firefox
I give credit where credit is due... I'm not "forced" to say anything. If you'd like, I'll happily give credit to perl, apache, and mysql for doing things well, as well -- I use them every day, and love those products.
try to say all kind of bad things about MPlayer
No, what I said was that installing MPlayer was only possible by using RPMs from a non-standard RPM source, which updated things I had downloaded from a *standard* rpm source, and that screwed up my update system. Mplayer was the only USABLE video & audio player on my system. Totem just didn't cut it.
What you think is standard behaviour for audio on a Gnome desktop
Actually this was quite surprising to me... but if you happen to have a Gnome desktop running Fedora Core 4 with ALSA, try this little experiment: Start xmms from a terminal window (xmms &), and start playing a song. Then, load up firefox, or some other application that provides some audio feedback -- using an icon on your little "toolbar" down the bottom (you'll have to excuse me, I don't recall what the Gnome desktop calls their analog for KDE's Kicker). Do something in the application you started up through Gnome that causes a sound. Invariably, this would cause my XMMS player to stop playing audio. I tried several other combinations of apps, and the same behavior was seen every time. Now I'm sure there's a reason for this... but that's just hokey behavior.
to finish with stupidity about you updating your kernel and breaking your binary drivers, because of course, you tested all of that on a downloaded distro, which is for experienced linux users.
And am I really that inexperienced if I was able to get this far with FC4? I understand, and knew, that I would have to reinstall drivers when I updated a kernel... the point is, Linux has it's foibles (some by design, some by accident) and drawbacks, just like any other operating system. And if you want to increase the penetration of Linux in the market, the linux community has got to address these issues . You cannot just tell users, "Oh, it's your fault, you don't know what you're doing. Go buy a bunch of new hardware and try again." If you use that high-handed response on someone who doesn't have even my admittedly middling level of computer skill, then you just guaranteed a sale of Windows XP to Microsoft, because every piece of hardware I have attached to my computer does "just work" under Windows.
Your (our) problem starts as soon as you say that freedom and choice are just noble statements. Some people
I think it's a good description of the Windows users who tend to complain that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" based on the 5 minutes following an Ubuntu/Fedora install and before returning to Windows.
& cid=14132302) for additional info about my Linux trial period...
I hope I don't fall into the category of asshole or dick or whining windows ex-pat...
I gave FC4 a little over 2 months, as my ONLY home operating system -- i.e., blew Windows away completely, and recovered my docs & audio etc. from backups. It worked -- mostly -- but not as well as I hoped it would. Please feel free to read my other post on this topic (http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169549
I want to love Linux, I really do. But every time I try it, I end up disappointed because my experience just isn't any better with Linux than it was with Windows.
I use Windows XP Pro (SP2) at home, and have been for at least a year and a half now... before that, I was using Windows 2000. With XP, I don't get the BSOD that everybody incessantly complains about, and I've *never* seen my system have one of those "random reboots" somebody else mentioned, unless my power goes out. Still haven't gotten around to buying a decent UPS for my home system, because I really don't do too much critical work there.
No, Windows XP isn't perfect, and I'd never claim it is... I'd love to see my system support firewire devices better, since they sometimes cause the system to begin spitting out "delayed write" errors, and force me to reboot. Sometimes a process or two gets out of control with CPU / RAM usage, and the system starts getting flaky, so I reboot. Sometimes, on reboot, my iPod Service hangs, and I have to reboot into safe mode to disable it, then re-enable it after I get logged in... Windows isn't perfect, and anybody who claims it is is lying.
However, Linux is by no means a better solution, at least for me. A few months back, I attempted to install Fedora Core 4 on the same system, with the same devices that I use under Windows without any particular issues: a printer, a scanner, a digital camera, a bluetooth usb dongle w/keyboard & mouse, a web cam, a wireless card, a radio receiver, an iPod, and an external USB drive for backups. Bottom line is, I had MUCH more frustration getting all of this to work under Fedora Core 4, and spent about 10 times more time than I did setting up Windows, and I never managed to get everything up & running before I decided to say, "Screw this," and reinstalled Windows again. Here's the issues I ran into:
If you're looking for an un-encrypted wireless signal, come on over... the guy upstairs from me is wide open... the family down the hall is also... one of the apartments on the first floor of my complex is too... the Panera Bread down the street, the public library a couple miles away... all of these are unsecured wireless networks, and that's all within a few miles of where I live. I suspect the results would be much the same in lots of residential areas where high speed connections are in use... I think I'm just about the only person in my building who actually has encryption & MAC address filtering turned on.
[ . . . ] You don't understand freedom.[ . . . ]
Well, I stand corrected then. Where your stale bromides & vague generalities failed to convince me before, your obvious partisan leanings and irrelevant examples (Soviet steel mills? The space program?) have me solidly on your side now...
Let's look at the steel industry for a moment. Massive tariffs on imported stell and subsidies are the only thing that has kept the American steel industry afloat in the recent past (take a look at recent WTO rulings against the US, I think as recently as this past summer). I'm sure you, as a proponent of freedom and free markets, will agree that those are bad policies. I think they're bad policies, myself. Now, if you really want to understand why the Soviet steel mills (and the entire USSR) failed, here's the secret -- it's because there was no profit motive for ANYBODY involved, except the owners in the government who grew rich by oppressing & mistreating their workers. In a capitalist (free market) economy, people are rewarded based on the value of their contribution. If their contribution is crap, they will be rewarded with nothing.
Oh, and your example of Linux back in 1993? Thanks for making my point for me. Linux was not adopted until very recently as a viable contender in the enterprise market, and it still doesn't have a very big share. The reason? Because for the first few years it was out there, it was crappy. Unstable, flaky, and just plain a pain in the ass. It hasn't been until recently, when people have figured out how to make a profit off of open source projects (your "accountability and growth stream", I believe you called it?) that large-scale adoption of Linux has been possible by enterprise customers.
If "freedom" (in the sense you're using it) was the only reason to pick Linux, do you really think that IBM, HP, Sun, et. al. would be embracing it? Of course not. They're embracing it because:
a) It makes for *great* public relations for them... "IBM, the friend of the little man."
b) It makes *great* business sense for them. They've found a way to make money off of it, by selling services, hardware, support contracts, customizations, etc., for software which is essentially "found software" -- free, in the cost sense, in other words.
Do you *really* think that IBM and all the other companies adopting and supporting Linux are doing so because of some sort of noble philosophy about openness and freedom? Those companies don't care much for your noble philosophy... but they certainly do care about their bottom line.
You're right in one regard -- transparency is a great idea. But honestly... have you read through the source code of every piece of "free" software you've ever used, just to make the judgement of whether or not it'll serve your needs now & in the future? Who has the time for it? Yes, you can do it... but no, most people aren't likely to do it.
I don't want to have to be an expert in video codecs & dvd formats to decide whether I want to use Totem, MPlayer, Helix, or something else on my Fedora system. The average user (and the average *technical* user as well) is just as likely, if not more likely, to decide what software to use based on word of mouth, or by throwing all three packages at their system and seeing what works. When I found that Totem wouldn't play some formats of video properly on my system, I tried the same videos in MPlayer, and found they worked perfectly... so now MPlayer is my choice. Do I know if it'll continue to suit my needs in the future? Hell no. But it works now, and I see what I want to see, when I want to see it... yes, it's a trivial example... but do you think that anybody (aside from the person whose full time job it is) really has time to read every single line of the Linux kernel to see what they're getting?
Theories are great... but if those theories are never (or almost never) put into practice, how has the status quo changed? You still have a vast set of users choosing software based on marketing and word of mouth...
I'm not sure why a couple responses to this got modded down as trolls, but the parent gets a 5/insightful. The parent post is certainly not "insightful", unless you also subscribe to the theory that Dr. Phil's stale bromides & vague generalities are "insightful".
Free software is not inherently better because it is free. In free markets, merit & usefulness matters -- if your software is good, then it will be used. If your software is a pile of crap hacked together by a kid that doesn't know what he's doing, then even if it's free crap... it's still crap.
"Free" doesn't matter. Technical or usage reasons are the only reasons to use a piece of software. I use some free software every day -- perl, gcc, Apache, Samba, Firefox, Thunderbird, Fedora... and I use some "non-free" software every day -- MS Office, Windows XP, Quicken, Visual Studio, various IBM/Rational tools, Solaris & its compiler set (used to be Forte?) -- all of them have their merits, but NONE of them were chosen primarily based on cost. If two packages are absolutely the same, and the only distinguishing factor is cost, then (and only then) you should choose the cheapest one for your needs.
God, people, this whole mantra of "Free is the best, non-free is the devil" is completely pointless. Computers, and the software they run, are tools -- choose the tool that suits your requirements, don't let the tools dictate what your requirements can be based on some sort of political agenda.