I've used off-brand computer parts/equipment where it makes sense to do so, and have never had a problem. My Actiontec wireless access point is four years old and has always worked great with all brands of wireless NICs. I've used Hawking switches and hubs. StarTech is great for network cards, add-on port cards.
What you have to watch out for is the online retailers. Pay attention to the customer ratings.
In a nutshell, in my experience it matters less what brand of equipment you buy, and more who you buy it from.
When a society decides that certain subjects are off-limits (think anti-Semitism in Germany), and everyone says, "We don't talk about that," it just drives the nut jobs out of the public view. Oh, the nut jobs are still there, lurking in the shadows, spouting nonsense to anyone who will listen. But that nonsense, since it's hidden from public view, goes unchallenged.
This is why I am all for the ACLU taking up the case of neo-Nazis wanting to demonstrate in Skokie, etc. Get those "big fish" out of their little ponds, and let them demonstrate to the world how stupid they are. That gives knowledgeable people the opportunity to educate the young (new to all kinds of ideas) and ignorant (long sheltered from all kinds of ideas).
For me, it's not a case of "I'll listen to you so that you'll listen to me," because I don't expect them to listen to me. It's "I know you're talking to people; I want you to do it in front of the world so that you may be properly refuted."
If you don't use Bluetooth, IR, transfer files to your phone from your PC, install unsigned third party applications, surf the web from your phone or ever receive MMS from anyone...
Turns out that I use my phone to -- wait for it -- make phone calls. Thanks for validating me.
Oh yeah, now I remember. It was something about Florida and tomatoes.
Here's the pertinent excerpt from the above link:
In March 2005 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers pressured Yum!, a company selling agricultural goods to businesses such as Taco Bell to increase worker' wages. Workers were given 40 cents per 32 pound bucket of tomatoes. These wages are the same as they were 30 years ago. Many workers were incarcerated, and beaten. The CIW was able to free 1,000 workers by forcing an increase in wages and rewriting the terms of slavery in Yum!'s supplier code of conduct.
So what "version" was the web when Java applets became popular? What about frames? What about annoying midi background music? What about inline images?
It's fairly obvious that "Web 2.0" and "blogosphere" and the like are marketing terms. The real questions are: What marketers are coming up with these things, and who's paying them to do it? I'm thinking it's The Carlyle Group, or the Bilderbergers, or the Knights Templar.
Actually, slashdotting origamiproject.com could serve to drive down "supply" of information, or in other words, causing a relative increase in "demand." Anything where demand is greater than supply becomes more valuable.
So, slashdotting it could be just what the marketing people are after.
If I have a cell phone that is either not internet-enabled (or that I do not use to browse the internet), and has no bluetooth, what do I need antivirus software for?
Trying to sell me antivirus software for my cell phone is like trying to sell winter coats to Ecuadorians.
When I was charged with taking multiple tech support people at different offices around the country and assembling them into a single help desk, I tried to get management to realize that there would need to be a huge change in how workflow was organized.
There should be a first tier that receives calls, logs them, prioritizes them, deals with the simplest ones and passes the more difficult ones to tier two/three/etc. That would relieve tiers two/three/etc from having to stop every five minutes to "route incoming traffic," and allow them to focus on resolving problems.
Nobody seemed to understand that, so they kept it in an "everyone does everything" arrangement. Totally inefficient, and ultimately unsatisfying for customers and employees alike.
Yes, there is a lot of information coming in to people as they work. Yes, that information must be parsed and prioritized. Parsing and prioritizing information in an ad hoc fashion doesn't scale at all.
People say they actually accomplish less now than they did a decade ago.
When are you going to learn - don't listen to what people say. As much as middle managers would like us to believe, perception is not reality, except at the quantum level, and I can't remember the last time I was in a meeting with a neutrino.
People tend towards believing that they are good and hardworking. It's all too easy for an individual to say, "Oh yes, I am so busy, and I wish I could get more done." It's very difficult to say, "Yeah, I have all sorts of free time now that I could be doing something productive with, but I'm not," because believing that is tantamount to believing that you're lazy.
I would almost argue that multiple survey results that showed a trend towards people believing that they're not getting as much done are indicative of the opposite - that people are getting plenty more done, have plenty more free time, and feel a stronger urge to deny that.
If you work at a company where it is truly believed that skill > time, never ever quit. Most of the working world still values time spent working far more than daily/weekly/etc productivity. I generally get yelled at for not taking long enough to do things, because my consulting company bills by the hour, and if I haven't maximized billable hours," then I'm in trouble. Never mind that I'm keeping clients happy, thereby generating repeat business, which is far more valuable to my company than a one-off day at a one-time client.
City officials turned down Nees, saying the teen could come in and hand-copy the list. Officials said giving out copies of address lists would leave the newsletter subscribers open to spam and computer viruses.
So, an electronic copy is dangerous while a handwritten copy is not? Hey, "officials" - data is data, regardless of the medium it's recorded on.
All that offer was was a way for the "officials" to say that they were making the data available, while making it impossibly inconvenient for anyone to access it in a compiled form (electronic or otherwise). Note that they didn't even offer to provide the data in printed form, but would require someone to come and copy it themselves.
Glad someone with judicial oversight called shenanigans on that move.
I think I would love to have digital reference materials (including news), but for entertainment, I would still like to hold something printed on paper and bound. So far, the devices I have available to me are either too bulky to read easily (laptop) or too small to read easily (PDA). A book is cheap, light, durable, and (god forbid) disposable.
Oh, I'll definitely check them out now that I have heard of them. I guess I just think it's a bit early in the game to be shouting the praises of web office tools as though they're going to take over the business market this year.
Maybe I'll end up eating my hat on that last statement, but there you have it.
As for Ms. Abdala, she says a mea culpa "will never happen." She's living on funds provided by her father and has rented office space for her own practice. "I've never been the type to work under someone," she says.
I won't work under someone, earning my own way, but I'll shamelessly nurse from the teat. That doesn't work for people whose parents don't have the funds to be venture capitalists for their children.
Sometimes when you apply for a job via Monster, there's a short form to fill out, to narrow down your aptitude for the position. I see no reason why Monster couldn't offer such a service to seekers as well, requiring solicitors to answer a few questions for you before they're allowed to contact you. And if it turns out that they've answered the questions falsely just to get to you, then you can give them eBay-esque negative feedback.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't bother putting any more effort into things like SenderID, which could work towards a technological solution to the problem of spam.
Keep working hard on letting us play Whack-A-Mole with our feet instead.
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
When did "theory" get redefined to mean "Here's something you can take as true, or make up anything you like"?
Furthermore, I would graciously request that the Creator (or spokespeople thereof) explain to me what my tailbone and appendix are for.
Human nature being what it is will continue ...
Human nature is what makes spam profitable in the first place. There's still a sucker born every minute; now it's just easier to advertise to them.
What technology do you propose we implement to keep people from being stupid?
You'd think that with all those ill-gotten gains, he could have gotten a better haircut.
Someone needs to get down to that address with a webcam to record the imminent destruction.
I've used off-brand computer parts/equipment where it makes sense to do so, and have never had a problem. My Actiontec wireless access point is four years old and has always worked great with all brands of wireless NICs. I've used Hawking switches and hubs. StarTech is great for network cards, add-on port cards.
What you have to watch out for is the online retailers. Pay attention to the customer ratings.
In a nutshell, in my experience it matters less what brand of equipment you buy, and more who you buy it from.
I'm not using until they package it in a miniscule pocket device with four or five buttons arranged in a white circle.
Maybe they could call it "iDiot."
When a society decides that certain subjects are off-limits (think anti-Semitism in Germany), and everyone says, "We don't talk about that," it just drives the nut jobs out of the public view. Oh, the nut jobs are still there, lurking in the shadows, spouting nonsense to anyone who will listen. But that nonsense, since it's hidden from public view, goes unchallenged.
This is why I am all for the ACLU taking up the case of neo-Nazis wanting to demonstrate in Skokie, etc. Get those "big fish" out of their little ponds, and let them demonstrate to the world how stupid they are. That gives knowledgeable people the opportunity to educate the young (new to all kinds of ideas) and ignorant (long sheltered from all kinds of ideas).
For me, it's not a case of "I'll listen to you so that you'll listen to me," because I don't expect them to listen to me. It's "I know you're talking to people; I want you to do it in front of the world so that you may be properly refuted."
They should have bought TurboTax.
If you don't use Bluetooth, IR, transfer files to your phone from your PC, install unsigned third party applications, surf the web from your phone or ever receive MMS from anyone ...
Turns out that I use my phone to -- wait for it -- make phone calls. Thanks for validating me.
Oh yeah, now I remember. It was something about Florida and tomatoes.
Here's the pertinent excerpt from the above link:
In March 2005 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers pressured Yum!, a company selling agricultural goods to businesses such as Taco Bell to increase worker' wages. Workers were given 40 cents per 32 pound bucket of tomatoes. These wages are the same as they were 30 years ago. Many workers were incarcerated, and beaten. The CIW was able to free 1,000 workers by forcing an increase in wages and rewriting the terms of slavery in Yum!'s supplier code of conduct.
I just figured you might want to know.
So what "version" was the web when Java applets became popular? What about frames? What about annoying midi background music? What about inline images?
It's fairly obvious that "Web 2.0" and "blogosphere" and the like are marketing terms. The real questions are: What marketers are coming up with these things, and who's paying them to do it? I'm thinking it's The Carlyle Group, or the Bilderbergers, or the Knights Templar.
Actually, slashdotting origamiproject.com could serve to drive down "supply" of information, or in other words, causing a relative increase in "demand." Anything where demand is greater than supply becomes more valuable.
So, slashdotting it could be just what the marketing people are after.
Don't bother.
If I have a cell phone that is either not internet-enabled (or that I do not use to browse the internet), and has no bluetooth, what do I need antivirus software for?
Trying to sell me antivirus software for my cell phone is like trying to sell winter coats to Ecuadorians.
When I was charged with taking multiple tech support people at different offices around the country and assembling them into a single help desk, I tried to get management to realize that there would need to be a huge change in how workflow was organized.
There should be a first tier that receives calls, logs them, prioritizes them, deals with the simplest ones and passes the more difficult ones to tier two/three/etc. That would relieve tiers two/three/etc from having to stop every five minutes to "route incoming traffic," and allow them to focus on resolving problems.
Nobody seemed to understand that, so they kept it in an "everyone does everything" arrangement. Totally inefficient, and ultimately unsatisfying for customers and employees alike.
Yes, there is a lot of information coming in to people as they work. Yes, that information must be parsed and prioritized. Parsing and prioritizing information in an ad hoc fashion doesn't scale at all.
People say they actually accomplish less now than they did a decade ago.
When are you going to learn - don't listen to what people say. As much as middle managers would like us to believe, perception is not reality, except at the quantum level, and I can't remember the last time I was in a meeting with a neutrino.
People tend towards believing that they are good and hardworking. It's all too easy for an individual to say, "Oh yes, I am so busy, and I wish I could get more done." It's very difficult to say, "Yeah, I have all sorts of free time now that I could be doing something productive with, but I'm not," because believing that is tantamount to believing that you're lazy.
I would almost argue that multiple survey results that showed a trend towards people believing that they're not getting as much done are indicative of the opposite - that people are getting plenty more done, have plenty more free time, and feel a stronger urge to deny that.
Also like drunkely registering for a "free vacation" at a bar, only to deal with calls from the time-share outfit for the next three months.
No thank you.
If you work at a company where it is truly believed that skill > time, never ever quit. Most of the working world still values time spent working far more than daily/weekly/etc productivity. I generally get yelled at for not taking long enough to do things, because my consulting company bills by the hour, and if I haven't maximized billable hours," then I'm in trouble. Never mind that I'm keeping clients happy, thereby generating repeat business, which is far more valuable to my company than a one-off day at a one-time client.
From TFA:
City officials turned down Nees, saying the teen could come in and hand-copy the list. Officials said giving out copies of address lists would leave the newsletter subscribers open to spam and computer viruses.
So, an electronic copy is dangerous while a handwritten copy is not? Hey, "officials" - data is data, regardless of the medium it's recorded on.
All that offer was was a way for the "officials" to say that they were making the data available, while making it impossibly inconvenient for anyone to access it in a compiled form (electronic or otherwise). Note that they didn't even offer to provide the data in printed form, but would require someone to come and copy it themselves.
Glad someone with judicial oversight called shenanigans on that move.
I think I would love to have digital reference materials (including news), but for entertainment, I would still like to hold something printed on paper and bound. So far, the devices I have available to me are either too bulky to read easily (laptop) or too small to read easily (PDA). A book is cheap, light, durable, and (god forbid) disposable.
Oh, I'll definitely check them out now that I have heard of them. I guess I just think it's a bit early in the game to be shouting the praises of web office tools as though they're going to take over the business market this year.
Maybe I'll end up eating my hat on that last statement, but there you have it.
Because I haven't heard of any of these things. Seems like if you want to contend with MS Office, you're going to need to get more notariety.
Only if IE7 can be run on Linux.
Or, wait, only if IE7 can't be run on Linux.
From TFA:
As for Ms. Abdala, she says a mea culpa "will never happen." She's living on funds provided by her father and has rented office space for her own practice. "I've never been the type to work under someone," she says.
I won't work under someone, earning my own way, but I'll shamelessly nurse from the teat. That doesn't work for people whose parents don't have the funds to be venture capitalists for their children.
Sometimes when you apply for a job via Monster, there's a short form to fill out, to narrow down your aptitude for the position. I see no reason why Monster couldn't offer such a service to seekers as well, requiring solicitors to answer a few questions for you before they're allowed to contact you. And if it turns out that they've answered the questions falsely just to get to you, then you can give them eBay-esque negative feedback.