Hey, if you're expected to give more support than 9-5, office-time, then you company needs to give you the tools, eh?
My corporate notebook does offer VPN access, which is very functional, and with that I can do everything offsite but walk over 2 rows and chitchat about the Packers. And we have managed IM for that. I'm expected to proxy through the corporate firewall for Internet sites, cause if I don't, and there is a compromise, I was warned specifically about this and I will be sitting in a courtroom. If I play by the rules, I am absolved.
But my outfit gives me the tools to do my job. Yours?
This response illustrates a phenomenon my friends in the business refer to as:
"More friendly advice from the helpful Linux community"
Other examples include:
"Did you read the documentation?" - Ah, usually offered in response to your post that the documentation didn't help...
"If you don't understand this, you shouldn't be doing this" - Yes, that exaplains why Linux is so often touted as a great way to learn stuff.
"Did you try reinstalling?" - When not offered in response to your question which includes describing repeated installations, it is offered as a rational first step, especially to kernel problems...
"You should be using {insert other distro name here}, {insert your ditro name here} sucks" - You can count on this response immediately after a distro update, though it is also offered when you use a distro that is not one of the top 2...
"Can you give us your {insert all manner of filenames here}?" - usually asked for in response to problems that cause panics, but also offered for problems that do, after much investigation, not have any logs. Like games.
Sorry, but I had to blurt out another "this is not helpful" response. The fact is, some Linux machines do actually get shutdown, and for valid reasons. And the question presupposes that shutdown is a given, since the question was about startup...
But I get where you're coming from. Many Linux users have no concept of the conditions and uses that other Linux users work within. None whatsoever.
I rarely post helpful advice to Linux questions, mostly cause I don't have answers, but when I do I try to actually be helpful. And I usually try to be polite to those who aren't. But I slip now and then...
It's not quite as bad as Windows advice, which varies from "reboot" to "reinstall" to "post your hijackthis logs". You have to cultivate excellent technical sites for good advice, and give back when you can.
No Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube at my workplace. I don't think iTunes works either, but I haven't tried.
Since our business has no use for those sites, they are simply blocked. Along with a host of others, including known malware sites of course.
My field support days often included long and tedious recoveries from users 'needing' Limewire so they could sync their music at work. No, they don't read the warnings, so when they got pwned they feigned ignorance.
And at my current employer, since they provide the PDA or whatever you're trying to sync with, they also provide the workstation to sync to. Arguments that you 'needed' to sync to your home system fall on deaf ears. Arguments that you 'want' to sync to your home system result in admonitions that corporate data is not to be on your home systems, in fact on nothing but provided corporate systems.
Many employers are more lenient, and I've worked with some. We inevitably sufferd a lot more trouble with those users, since their non-corporate systems were often subject to more threats, often including children and visitors.
It really depends on the security risk, your corporate culture, regulatory requirements, and howmuch your company values its data. Where I'm at now, data is beyond critical. I've been in less demanding environments, but users caused even more interruptions there. While I see both sides to the issue, I come down squarely on the side of the employer. It is, after all, their data. You just work there.
We considered that, but waiting for evolution to process butterflies wasn't an option. We went with Daleks. Time Lords were busy...
Or course, the Daleks caused more trouble than they solved. We shoulda waited for the butterflies after all. Let that be a warning to you.NET types. Don't glom onto the most insanely great thing just cause it's pretty, louder, or has a bigger gun, ok?
Actually, to further muddy the waters, BMW, GM, Toyota, and Honda developed a 'top-tier' gasoline standard that at least Shell met in 2004. The list of retailers has grown.
More interesting to me than the top-tier concept (marketing at its best, driving a product feature) is the list of 'retailers'. QuikTrip, Turkey Hill, not refiners or perto companies, but convenience store chains. I use Quiktrip a lot because I like their business philosophy. Now I like their gas a little better.
And no surprise that a 1995 EPA standard resulted in less detergent in gas, in general. If the gummint sets a standard, most will barely meet it, and claim 'hey, we're meeting the standard'. Even if the standard isn't as good as the prevailing industry standard before... Nice.
The Exxon distributor in Bangor, Maine delivers Exxon gas to convenience stores that sell it without disclosing a brand name.
Around Phoenix, I see various distributors delivering gas to any number of convenience stores who don't bother to advertise a brand name. And some do.
I don't believe you. Yes, there are probably many refineries that produce gasoline that lacks the 'best' additives, but in Phoenix at least all fuel needs to meet EPA standards, 'cause the EPA enforces these standards somehow.
In Maine, when we figured out that MTBE was water-soluble and therefore contaminated groundwater quite quickly, we also found out that even the bargain-basement, no-name gas had it.
You're wrong. Chevron does use additives such as Techron that is good enough for them to bottle and sell separately, and some other brands may have their own recipes, but there isn't much gas out there that gets past the oxygenation additives, if any.
ps- Most of these oxygenators seem to reduce my fuel effiency. Hate it.
pps- I see brand-name gas within 2-3 cents of no-name gas. Occasionally less. From what I've been told by operators, the retail price -difference- has more to do with real estate costs, franchise arrangements, and volume, though volume has the least impact.
My mechanic doesn't recommend injector cleaning treatements. He says they are no longer needed, and as a partial proof he tells me that the outfits selling the treatments talk about incremental profit, add-on sales, and 'even your tire-changer could perform this service'. And he says his tire-changer is smarter than some of his ASE-certified techs, cause tires aren't as simple as you think. No discussion of the car makers endorsing these treatments. And 2) the car makers either don't endorse these treatments.
He describes these treatments as profit centers only. I've never had an injector problem in a car, though, so I have no reason to use them either.
ps- What is 'cheap gas'? Are there fly-by-night refineries out there producing inferior gas? Which ones? What brands or stores do we avoid?
"Beta means we don't want to be limited to the features we are offering, said we would offer, or offered once but no longer. We don't want to be accountable for any problems you have with the product. We don't want to be held to account for any promise we made concerning the product, even its existence. And we want to be able to change anything about the product without notice, no matter the impact, without consequences."
Or more succinctly: "You are on your own. Good luck with it".
From what I can tell, Google doesn't bother with alpha releases. It's all beta, and it's all good.
The evil meter didn't even have to budge for this one...
"80% of mobile phones being sold today have cameras on them, yet the number of people who actually know how to use them or get the images off the phones ranges between 10% and 50%, depending on the model"
"80% of mobile phones being sold today have cameras on them, yet the number of people who actually know how to use them or get the images off the phones ranges between 10% and 50%, depending ontheCARRIER"
There, fixed that for ya.
Verizon is legendary for crippling phones, forcing you to use their website stuff to work with photo files, and of course denying any way to copy ringtones to the phone - for the obvious and logical reason to increase their profits. I understand, but I've never owned a Verizon phone. Not even when they weren't Verizon.
ATT/Cingular less so, but they do seem to play games with wacko web tools, or require you to buy/download the special software, and sometimes it just doesn't work very well. My last Cingular phone was a T637, and fLOAT's tools were slicker than snot. I would never hesitate to have a Sony Ericsson phone, knowing that there are great tools out there to make these into more useful devices.
I dunno much about Sprint, except that people have told me that their tools vary from inscrutable to unusable. But the people I know think Sprint is pus anyways, so I discount their opinions a little. They're all NASCAR freaks anyways...
TMobile seems as simple as can be, but I have a BlackBerry, so it's not fair. But their web album thing is unnecessarily complicated. And Bluetooth transfers are not so easy with a 7105t.
Don't blame the player, blame the game. Using phones as camers leaves you prey to the carrier's revenue enhancement schemes. And some carriers play hard.
"Richard Keil Memorial Abend #27" on Novell servers.
Yes, this is a valid abend message. From Novell TID101112,
"The Abend stems from debug code, used to debug a server problem, that was mistakenly left in the NetWare v3.12 code base when NetWare v3.12 shipped"
From a Novell engineer,
"This is the error message for abends that do not have a documented abend message", which could I suppose cover debug code that wasn't fully removed, even though the NetWare kernel includes a debugger in production versions. He claims Richard Keil didn't do a good job with abend messages in his code. Dick, you out there? Say it ain't so...
I believe the engineer. And this does exists in Netware 4.x, despite Novell claiming it does not, unless they did finally include the patch in some release package, which they had not as of 5.0...
A close second is the message "Device deactivated due to non-media defect". Returned when a storage device fails for, and this required some careful reading to realize this is an error 'other than' data... For instance, disk drive being disconnected, or powering off, or failing with smoke and flames. I haven't seen the error in response to device errors other than storage devices, but one engineer claims it can be used for any hardware device...
We asked him what other sort of device might there be, besides hardware. He had an answer. Smartass.
There is a school of thought that declares we are four meals away from anarchy. I prefer to think of it as 'the possibility of four meals', but then I'm pretty patient on some things. My wife heartily agrees, four meals and it's time to dig up the weapons.
Then again, TV is more useful than you know. It's how you might be able to figure out if the fifth missed meal is the end, or if the pain will continue.
I went without electricity for 2 days in Maine, back in 1998. Destroyed most of the state's electrical distribution infrastructure. The temp didn't get much below 25, and was above freezing for some of the time. Actually, my house had no power for 11 days, and my sister went for 17 days. I bailed out and stayed with friends in New Hampshire, but sis burned a lot of wood.
I go to visit my mom in North Carolina a few years later, and we get caught in an ice storm there. Sheesh.
Now, if I had to live at home without electricty, it gets interesting. At the time I had a tent heater which I didn't break out, a Coleman lantern which was not only wicked bright but hot as could be and warmed water for tea, and sleeping bags. But I went to work in Portland during that stretch, and that meant I got food, warmth, and could wash up a little. I left for NH when I got through to a power co. rep I knew and he confirmed they had 'no date' for restoration. As an example of how bad it was, they replaced 7 miles of poles and lines just on my road. All the rest of the town required the same work, and they prioritized as best they could. Central Maine Power spent $250M+, replaced probably 70% of the lines and 50% of the poles they had. Most rural areas of Maine were without power for 10+ days.
How does this relate to TV?
I'm a little disappionted that so many people either aren't paying attention or haven't checked out the HD signal. I suspect HD (ATSC, I know) will not offer the coverage the same way NTSC did, and some people will not get usable signal without real effort. I had the lantern and heater 'just in case'. When NTSC goes off-air, I'll already have a tuner box as a backup, and I'll test in advance and have an antenna if necessary. Wouldn't be prudent otherwise...
...which is why I turn down admin/AD/Windows consulting jobs. I'm tired of being the angel of death, declaring death and data loss, due to past decisions and previous admins/mercenaries who did bad things.
Yeah, I hear ya. After 17 years, I finally told my boss it wasn't worth it. He really didn't understand. Then again, he never really understood what we did.
I do miss GroupWise, though. It just plain worked. But that's another story...
Anyways, the Exchange/Outlook environment has its issues.
- Ever try to recover a corrupted.PST file over 2GB? I know it isn't supposed to happen but it has, and it's not pretty. Tell your CEO that some time.
- Every try to migrate off of Exchange? I can understand not caring, but this is something I would not expect to find in the seventh ring of Hell. Just too nasty.
- Ever try to juggle backups, antivirus, patch management, and users saving EVERYTHING FOR THE PAST SEVEN YEARS, including the 1GB Photoshop file attached to an email? And then explaining to the CEO's wife why she can't reliably use Outlook as a backup device? Well, actually, I wonder what email system could do that... any that I could hope would are gone now.
I've learned to loathe Exchange, then tolerate it, then long for the days when I could sell GroupWise, and finally wish for the good old days of Postfix and Eudora. Exchange is pretty functional now, save for some serious deficiencies in the Outlook client (.PST files are just plain wrong), but an FOSS replacement makes for some very profitable opportunities. Should be plenty of outfits offering open-source Exchange replacements, and pocketing the cash for themselves instead of sending in license fees to Microsoft. Now, do they have decent management tools? We can hope...
ps- My largest Exchange sites were users in the hundreds, so I wasn't out there as an admin legend. But the Exchange tamers I know who work in massive installations tell me of the horrors of keeping big systems alive, what with clustering, database maintenance, and the joys of working in academia and inputing the new class each year. And moving another class to the alumni system. One describes it as making an omelette in the shell. Sounds easy, until you realize it's a fragile container. 'Woops' is not what you want to hear. But you do.
Without reading any other posts, there are commercial uses for CO2. How about finding a way to sell this CO2 to legitimate commercial users, thereby avoiding actually extracting it from wherever it is being extracted now, and all the energy use in doing so. Two uses I can think of are for soft drinks and dry ice...
Now, of course, this will displace those other current providers of CO2, but hey, one of the benefits of green technology is destroying industries that seem to be dirty, so this is a good thing, no?
And send some over here. We drink soda too. And want stuff really cold.
...and then there's the concept that for every one person that actually writes in with an incomprehensible rant about anything, there are a thousand or more equally disturbed and marginally functional individuals, who, sitting in their parents' basement all day, sleep-deprived and sunshine-deficient, are just thinking about writing something oh-so-clever to them, but virtually unreadable to the normal world upstairs, if not even to their blogmates and fellow fraggers who are equally incomprehensible but hide it around their wives, bosses, and gold futures brokers.
Or to state it another way, two things happened, probably three or four:
1. Securitizing mortage loans distanced them from the 'underwriters'. They became the 'investors' problem. We are now seeing that the investors are realizing that these were oversold, are nearly worthless as investments, are not returning the yields they were promised, and so are bailing. Logical.
2. Securitizing mortgage loans also 'absolved' the originators etc from a sense of responsibility and most importantly from the usual vulnerability to failures. Meaning originators could write anything for a loan and sell it off to the poor schlubs known as 'investors'. And the originators got paid first, right after the home sellers of course. Recognize this? Part of the S&L scam was developers getting paid up front and letting everyone else take the fall. I know of several developments in the Northeast that bombed spectacularly, with the only units paid for belonging to the developer. And some of those ended up being auctioned off to - you guessed it - the developers.
3. Wall Street has indeed been working with a casino mentality for a while. Find the 'deal', get in quick, make the big $$$, bail out, on to the next 'deal'. We've allowed banks to skirt meaningful regulation, either by diluting it or outright deregulation, and this began in the first Clinton administration. The dot-com boom didn't help, and we saw there the synergy of:
- Startups without revenue being funded as the 'next big thing'. - Their accounting firms (Big-8 every one of them) also becoming their IPO bankers - Cooking the books to pump the IPO (this is still illegal, but how many got jail? just a few) - Hype the investors into believing (oh, many 'journalists' were in on thus too) - Stock falling to zero when reality hit and there was no more money - Being absorbed into the 'next big thing' - Repeat until a big investor gets stung
A similar cycle is at the root of the mortgage mess. Everyone lied about these weak loans until there was no place to hide. The numbers are just even more stupendous.
Martha Stewart deservedly got jail time for scamming some poor schlub for a few thousand dollars, the more remarkable because she didn't need that little money. Will the perps at the bottom of this mortgage mess see jail time? That might, just might, be the ultimate deterrent to future debacles like this.
Gone are the days of no-money-down home loans, probably. The equity requirement of a 10-20% down payment changes your perspective greatly. I know so many people that have bailed out of their mortages mostly because they have none of their own money invested. Why bother paying three times the payment when your house is also now worth $100k-$200k less than you owe? Not uncommon in Phoenix, and also in the worst markets. I hear this is a problem in the rustbelt, the numbers are just proportionally lower. It owuld be different if you had to put down $60k for that $600k house, which 2 years later is 'worth' $450k. You are still on the hook. And frankly, I suspect that if you had to put in $60k, you'd be examining that purchase price more carefully, and realize that the truth is the house was never worth that.
My wife and I avoided buying our own house apart from our income property, and are glad we did. We would have paid too much, the market was over-inflated. Today, we are looking at some of the homes we saw in 2006 for $300k-400k, and they are now listed for $220k and less. One we saw for $330k in 2006 is now in short sale for $86k. No takers.
I'm not a mortgage broker, nor a banker, but this is how *I* approached buying a house:
- I spend $40 on a 'first-time homeowner's class'. Worth 10 times that. I learned about PITI, interest rates, amortization schedules, and had a memorable class (1 of 8) with a Realtor who warned us that real estate brokers were not our friends, and Realtors were the best of the bunch (something to do with the name and ethical promises that they broke less often than merely licensed brokers) and we should watch THEM just as carefully. He was right, except for my first broker.
- Assisted my GF in 2001 in buying her first house. Read the loan documents several times, and then explained to her in English what they meant. check the interest rate (fixed), the schedule of payments (all the same except for the last one, about $5 off) and the general terms (no balloons, no adjustments, nothing wierd). She still has the house, and is damned lucky. It didn't work out between us, but that's not the point of this little ditty. I easily spent 10-15 hours understanding the load, being my first, and focusing on much stuff that isn't important like state law regarding defaults, boilerplate about terms and conditions, etc.
- Assisted my wife in both selling 2 houses and buying another. The sales were painful, since one had to be completed after we moved cross-country. But done. Again, in buying, we got a NINJA loan, and again I read everything and explained it in English - fixed rate, level payments, no tricky stuff. The first loan we got presented to us was an 80/20, ARM, IO. this was in Phoenix in 2005, the height of the market here. We had plenty of down payment, didn't want an ARM, and didn't need interest-only, since we were buying an income property to hold. Told the broker the next time she pulled that we would be looking elsewhere. No problem, no more jokes, we got it. Probably spend 4 hours reading over the loan, now knowing what was important and what could be deferred.
- A year later, we refinanced, to change the interest rate. Again, going over the documents, same drill. This time, I paid extra-close attention, being a refi, and ti did take three tries to get various stuff right, like avoiding PMI since we had 30%+ equity, and still they screwed up the escrow afterwards.
I can see where a first-time buyer could easily look at a house, hear about deals, call a broker, get hooked up with their 'mortgage guy', and shown a loan for so little money that they have to buy, it's "cheaper than renting"! Never look at the details, never see a payment amount 3x what they thought it would be in a few years, and yeah, when the statemnet comes in and their $1150 payment turns into $3700, they probably soil themselves. And can't figure out how it happened. And call the bank and ask what error they made, and find out they were scammed. Do they hope for a handout from the government? I bet many do. By this standard, we would be spending a LOT of money bailing out people who were scammed. Sadly, while I sympathize, buying a house is the biggest transaction most people ever make in their lives. And many spend more time choosing their next party dress or table saw than they do checking their next mortgage.
My front tenant went through a different travail. He had an ARM, but expected to refi in plenty of time. That was in 2006 in Phoenix. In 2007, he found out the market was in the dumper, he owed 20% more than the house could be sold for, and wasn't going to get refinananced. His payment went from $1500 to $4200. He moved into my front unit and left the keys to his house with the bank. Timing on his part, and he just got caught in the grinder. Plenty of people did that too. He doesn't expect a handout from the government. he just hopes to be ok in 5-7 years.
Cruel to say they oughta pay the price? Somehow Darwin is celebrated but his theory is selectively applauded.
Now, if you look carefully, you will find that the FBI has 19 mortgage fraud investigations open, 3 in the las
- Out here in Phoenix, people think it's a God-given right to go 125+ on the 101 through Scottsdale, right up there with owning a gun and being bailed out of your 80/20-upside-down-ARM. Don't need no stinkin' speed cameras. The first response by many is to put on one of those license plate covers that masks either half of the plate, depending on the angle. Pretty effective. This will make the surveillance plan somewhat more difficult to implement. Of course, the police will appreciate being tasked with ticketing us for having these things installed, seein' as the imgirints have stopped comin' over th' border, dontyaknow.
- I'm not entirely in opposition to this, except for one thing or two. If this is intended to aid in Amber Alert/APB/known bad guy apprehending, well then I would expect the system to track those vehicles that were interesting, ie the ones with plates matching the Amber Alert, or a known felon, or the meth head that just took a liqour store. The rest, I would expect to be discarded, since without a warrant, there isn't really much use for the data, being law-abiding citizens and all.
Somehow, I'm afraid that won't happen.
This isn't Britain. We shouldn't let our police keep a trace of where we go just because they can.
Period.
If this goes live, I may have to get involved in politics again. And so should you. Use it or lose it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, if you're expected to give more support than 9-5, office-time, then you company needs to give you the tools, eh?
My corporate notebook does offer VPN access, which is very functional, and with that I can do everything offsite but walk over 2 rows and chitchat about the Packers. And we have managed IM for that. I'm expected to proxy through the corporate firewall for Internet sites, cause if I don't, and there is a compromise, I was warned specifically about this and I will be sitting in a courtroom. If I play by the rules, I am absolved.
But my outfit gives me the tools to do my job. Yours?
This response illustrates a phenomenon my friends in the business refer to as:
"More friendly advice from the helpful Linux community"
Other examples include:
"Did you read the documentation?" - Ah, usually offered in response to your post that the documentation didn't help...
"If you don't understand this, you shouldn't be doing this" - Yes, that exaplains why Linux is so often touted as a great way to learn stuff.
"Did you try reinstalling?" - When not offered in response to your question which includes describing repeated installations, it is offered as a rational first step, especially to kernel problems...
"You should be using {insert other distro name here}, {insert your ditro name here} sucks" - You can count on this response immediately after a distro update, though it is also offered when you use a distro that is not one of the top 2...
"Can you give us your {insert all manner of filenames here}?" - usually asked for in response to problems that cause panics, but also offered for problems that do, after much investigation, not have any logs. Like games.
Sorry, but I had to blurt out another "this is not helpful" response. The fact is, some Linux machines do actually get shutdown, and for valid reasons. And the question presupposes that shutdown is a given, since the question was about startup...
But I get where you're coming from. Many Linux users have no concept of the conditions and uses that other Linux users work within. None whatsoever.
I rarely post helpful advice to Linux questions, mostly cause I don't have answers, but when I do I try to actually be helpful. And I usually try to be polite to those who aren't. But I slip now and then...
It's not quite as bad as Windows advice, which varies from "reboot" to "reinstall" to "post your hijackthis logs". You have to cultivate excellent technical sites for good advice, and give back when you can.
Oh, wait. this is /. after all... nevermind.
No Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube at my workplace. I don't think iTunes works either, but I haven't tried.
Since our business has no use for those sites, they are simply blocked. Along with a host of others, including known malware sites of course.
My field support days often included long and tedious recoveries from users 'needing' Limewire so they could sync their music at work. No, they don't read the warnings, so when they got pwned they feigned ignorance.
And at my current employer, since they provide the PDA or whatever you're trying to sync with, they also provide the workstation to sync to. Arguments that you 'needed' to sync to your home system fall on deaf ears. Arguments that you 'want' to sync to your home system result in admonitions that corporate data is not to be on your home systems, in fact on nothing but provided corporate systems.
Many employers are more lenient, and I've worked with some. We inevitably sufferd a lot more trouble with those users, since their non-corporate systems were often subject to more threats, often including children and visitors.
It really depends on the security risk, your corporate culture, regulatory requirements, and howmuch your company values its data. Where I'm at now, data is beyond critical. I've been in less demanding environments, but users caused even more interruptions there. While I see both sides to the issue, I come down squarely on the side of the employer. It is, after all, their data. You just work there.
Bah (waving paw at you)...
A Myrdmonic Carbonizer would have kept the Geth in check. Then just take the keys to the Winnebago. Like little puppies...
Butterflies?
We considered that, but waiting for evolution to process butterflies wasn't an option. We went with Daleks. Time Lords were busy...
Or course, the Daleks caused more trouble than they solved. We shoulda waited for the butterflies after all. Let that be a warning to you .NET types. Don't glom onto the most insanely great thing just cause it's pretty, louder, or has a bigger gun, ok?
Actually, to further muddy the waters, BMW, GM, Toyota, and Honda developed a 'top-tier' gasoline standard that at least Shell met in 2004. The list of retailers has grown.
More interesting to me than the top-tier concept (marketing at its best, driving a product feature) is the list of 'retailers'. QuikTrip, Turkey Hill, not refiners or perto companies, but convenience store chains. I use Quiktrip a lot because I like their business philosophy. Now I like their gas a little better.
And no surprise that a 1995 EPA standard resulted in less detergent in gas, in general. If the gummint sets a standard, most will barely meet it, and claim 'hey, we're meeting the standard'. Even if the standard isn't as good as the prevailing industry standard before... Nice.
Visualize changing your spark plugs. And wires.
Hmmm....
The Exxon distributor in Bangor, Maine delivers Exxon gas to convenience stores that sell it without disclosing a brand name.
Around Phoenix, I see various distributors delivering gas to any number of convenience stores who don't bother to advertise a brand name. And some do.
I don't believe you. Yes, there are probably many refineries that produce gasoline that lacks the 'best' additives, but in Phoenix at least all fuel needs to meet EPA standards, 'cause the EPA enforces these standards somehow.
In Maine, when we figured out that MTBE was water-soluble and therefore contaminated groundwater quite quickly, we also found out that even the bargain-basement, no-name gas had it.
You're wrong. Chevron does use additives such as Techron that is good enough for them to bottle and sell separately, and some other brands may have their own recipes, but there isn't much gas out there that gets past the oxygenation additives, if any.
ps- Most of these oxygenators seem to reduce my fuel effiency. Hate it.
pps- I see brand-name gas within 2-3 cents of no-name gas. Occasionally less. From what I've been told by operators, the retail price -difference- has more to do with real estate costs, franchise arrangements, and volume, though volume has the least impact.
My mechanic doesn't recommend injector cleaning treatements. He says they are no longer needed, and as a partial proof he tells me that the outfits selling the treatments talk about incremental profit, add-on sales, and 'even your tire-changer could perform this service'. And he says his tire-changer is smarter than some of his ASE-certified techs, cause tires aren't as simple as you think. No discussion of the car makers endorsing these treatments. And 2) the car makers either don't endorse these treatments.
He describes these treatments as profit centers only. I've never had an injector problem in a car, though, so I have no reason to use them either.
ps- What is 'cheap gas'? Are there fly-by-night refineries out there producing inferior gas? Which ones? What brands or stores do we avoid?
whatever.
For Google:
"Beta means we don't want to be limited to the features we are offering, said we would offer, or offered once but no longer. We don't want to be accountable for any problems you have with the product. We don't want to be held to account for any promise we made concerning the product, even its existence. And we want to be able to change anything about the product without notice, no matter the impact, without consequences."
Or more succinctly: "You are on your own. Good luck with it".
From what I can tell, Google doesn't bother with alpha releases. It's all beta, and it's all good.
The evil meter didn't even have to budge for this one...
What?
"80% of mobile phones being sold today have cameras on them, yet the number of people who actually know how to use them or get the images off the phones ranges between 10% and 50%, depending on the model"
"80% of mobile phones being sold today have cameras on them, yet the number of people who actually know how to use them or get the images off the phones ranges between 10% and 50%, depending on the CARRIER"
There, fixed that for ya.
Verizon is legendary for crippling phones, forcing you to use their website stuff to work with photo files, and of course denying any way to copy ringtones to the phone - for the obvious and logical reason to increase their profits. I understand, but I've never owned a Verizon phone. Not even when they weren't Verizon.
ATT/Cingular less so, but they do seem to play games with wacko web tools, or require you to buy/download the special software, and sometimes it just doesn't work very well. My last Cingular phone was a T637, and fLOAT's tools were slicker than snot. I would never hesitate to have a Sony Ericsson phone, knowing that there are great tools out there to make these into more useful devices.
I dunno much about Sprint, except that people have told me that their tools vary from inscrutable to unusable. But the people I know think Sprint is pus anyways, so I discount their opinions a little. They're all NASCAR freaks anyways...
TMobile seems as simple as can be, but I have a BlackBerry, so it's not fair. But their web album thing is unnecessarily complicated. And Bluetooth transfers are not so easy with a 7105t.
Don't blame the player, blame the game. Using phones as camers leaves you prey to the carrier's revenue enhancement schemes. And some carriers play hard.
oh, and some phones are impossible to use. Yup.
"Richard Keil Memorial Abend #27" on Novell servers.
Yes, this is a valid abend message. From Novell TID101112,
"The Abend stems from debug code, used to debug a server problem, that was mistakenly left in the NetWare v3.12 code base when NetWare v3.12 shipped"
From a Novell engineer,
"This is the error message for abends that do not have a documented abend message", which could I suppose cover debug code that wasn't fully removed, even though the NetWare kernel includes a debugger in production versions. He claims Richard Keil didn't do a good job with abend messages in his code. Dick, you out there? Say it ain't so...
I believe the engineer. And this does exists in Netware 4.x, despite Novell claiming it does not, unless they did finally include the patch in some release package, which they had not as of 5.0...
A close second is the message "Device deactivated due to non-media defect". Returned when a storage device fails for, and this required some careful reading to realize this is an error 'other than' data... For instance, disk drive being disconnected, or powering off, or failing with smoke and flames. I haven't seen the error in response to device errors other than storage devices, but one engineer claims it can be used for any hardware device...
We asked him what other sort of device might there be, besides hardware. He had an answer. Smartass.
I really don't have a problem with that.
And if it becomes illegal, then I don't have a lot of trouble there either.
Are they trying to break Google or what?
ps- note to you crazy guys at Jones Day: Don't bother. Not worth it. Google doesn't care about your business.
There is a school of thought that declares we are four meals away from anarchy. I prefer to think of it as 'the possibility of four meals', but then I'm pretty patient on some things. My wife heartily agrees, four meals and it's time to dig up the weapons.
Then again, TV is more useful than you know. It's how you might be able to figure out if the fifth missed meal is the end, or if the pain will continue.
I went without electricity for 2 days in Maine, back in 1998. Destroyed most of the state's electrical distribution infrastructure. The temp didn't get much below 25, and was above freezing for some of the time. Actually, my house had no power for 11 days, and my sister went for 17 days. I bailed out and stayed with friends in New Hampshire, but sis burned a lot of wood.
I go to visit my mom in North Carolina a few years later, and we get caught in an ice storm there. Sheesh.
Now, if I had to live at home without electricty, it gets interesting. At the time I had a tent heater which I didn't break out, a Coleman lantern which was not only wicked bright but hot as could be and warmed water for tea, and sleeping bags. But I went to work in Portland during that stretch, and that meant I got food, warmth, and could wash up a little. I left for NH when I got through to a power co. rep I knew and he confirmed they had 'no date' for restoration. As an example of how bad it was, they replaced 7 miles of poles and lines just on my road. All the rest of the town required the same work, and they prioritized as best they could. Central Maine Power spent $250M+, replaced probably 70% of the lines and 50% of the poles they had. Most rural areas of Maine were without power for 10+ days.
How does this relate to TV?
I'm a little disappionted that so many people either aren't paying attention or haven't checked out the HD signal. I suspect HD (ATSC, I know) will not offer the coverage the same way NTSC did, and some people will not get usable signal without real effort. I had the lantern and heater 'just in case'. When NTSC goes off-air, I'll already have a tuner box as a backup, and I'll test in advance and have an antenna if necessary. Wouldn't be prudent otherwise...
Me? I've got cable. I just have to pay.
...which is why I turn down admin/AD/Windows consulting jobs. I'm tired of being the angel of death, declaring death and data loss, due to past decisions and previous admins/mercenaries who did bad things.
Yeah, I hear ya. After 17 years, I finally told my boss it wasn't worth it. He really didn't understand. Then again, he never really understood what we did.
I do miss GroupWise, though. It just plain worked. But that's another story...
Now now, children... Or something like that.
Anyways, the Exchange/Outlook environment has its issues.
- Ever try to recover a corrupted .PST file over 2GB? I know it isn't supposed to happen but it has, and it's not pretty. Tell your CEO that some time.
- Every try to migrate off of Exchange? I can understand not caring, but this is something I would not expect to find in the seventh ring of Hell. Just too nasty.
- Ever try to juggle backups, antivirus, patch management, and users saving EVERYTHING FOR THE PAST SEVEN YEARS, including the 1GB Photoshop file attached to an email? And then explaining to the CEO's wife why she can't reliably use Outlook as a backup device? Well, actually, I wonder what email system could do that... any that I could hope would are gone now.
I've learned to loathe Exchange, then tolerate it, then long for the days when I could sell GroupWise, and finally wish for the good old days of Postfix and Eudora. Exchange is pretty functional now, save for some serious deficiencies in the Outlook client (.PST files are just plain wrong), but an FOSS replacement makes for some very profitable opportunities. Should be plenty of outfits offering open-source Exchange replacements, and pocketing the cash for themselves instead of sending in license fees to Microsoft. Now, do they have decent management tools? We can hope...
ps- My largest Exchange sites were users in the hundreds, so I wasn't out there as an admin legend. But the Exchange tamers I know who work in massive installations tell me of the horrors of keeping big systems alive, what with clustering, database maintenance, and the joys of working in academia and inputing the new class each year. And moving another class to the alumni system. One describes it as making an omelette in the shell. Sounds easy, until you realize it's a fragile container. 'Woops' is not what you want to hear. But you do.
Without reading any other posts, there are commercial uses for CO2. How about finding a way to sell this CO2 to legitimate commercial users, thereby avoiding actually extracting it from wherever it is being extracted now, and all the energy use in doing so. Two uses I can think of are for soft drinks and dry ice...
Now, of course, this will displace those other current providers of CO2, but hey, one of the benefits of green technology is destroying industries that seem to be dirty, so this is a good thing, no?
And send some over here. We drink soda too. And want stuff really cold.
...and then there's the concept that for every one person that actually writes in with an incomprehensible rant about anything, there are a thousand or more equally disturbed and marginally functional individuals, who, sitting in their parents' basement all day, sleep-deprived and sunshine-deficient, are just thinking about writing something oh-so-clever to them, but virtually unreadable to the normal world upstairs, if not even to their blogmates and fellow fraggers who are equally incomprehensible but hide it around their wives, bosses, and gold futures brokers.
I'm not one of them, of course...
"I will have to find a news source that hasn't been swallowed by Google".
You do that.
Or to state it another way, two things happened, probably three or four:
1. Securitizing mortage loans distanced them from the 'underwriters'. They became the 'investors' problem. We are now seeing that the investors are realizing that these were oversold, are nearly worthless as investments, are not returning the yields they were promised, and so are bailing. Logical.
2. Securitizing mortgage loans also 'absolved' the originators etc from a sense of responsibility and most importantly from the usual vulnerability to failures. Meaning originators could write anything for a loan and sell it off to the poor schlubs known as 'investors'. And the originators got paid first, right after the home sellers of course. Recognize this? Part of the S&L scam was developers getting paid up front and letting everyone else take the fall. I know of several developments in the Northeast that bombed spectacularly, with the only units paid for belonging to the developer. And some of those ended up being auctioned off to - you guessed it - the developers.
3. Wall Street has indeed been working with a casino mentality for a while. Find the 'deal', get in quick, make the big $$$, bail out, on to the next 'deal'. We've allowed banks to skirt meaningful regulation, either by diluting it or outright deregulation, and this began in the first Clinton administration. The dot-com boom didn't help, and we saw there the synergy of:
- Startups without revenue being funded as the 'next big thing'.
- Their accounting firms (Big-8 every one of them) also becoming their IPO bankers
- Cooking the books to pump the IPO (this is still illegal, but how many got jail? just a few)
- Hype the investors into believing (oh, many 'journalists' were in on thus too)
- Stock falling to zero when reality hit and there was no more money
- Being absorbed into the 'next big thing'
- Repeat until a big investor gets stung
A similar cycle is at the root of the mortgage mess. Everyone lied about these weak loans until there was no place to hide. The numbers are just even more stupendous.
Martha Stewart deservedly got jail time for scamming some poor schlub for a few thousand dollars, the more remarkable because she didn't need that little money. Will the perps at the bottom of this mortgage mess see jail time? That might, just might, be the ultimate deterrent to future debacles like this.
Gone are the days of no-money-down home loans, probably. The equity requirement of a 10-20% down payment changes your perspective greatly. I know so many people that have bailed out of their mortages mostly because they have none of their own money invested. Why bother paying three times the payment when your house is also now worth $100k-$200k less than you owe? Not uncommon in Phoenix, and also in the worst markets. I hear this is a problem in the rustbelt, the numbers are just proportionally lower. It owuld be different if you had to put down $60k for that $600k house, which 2 years later is 'worth' $450k. You are still on the hook. And frankly, I suspect that if you had to put in $60k, you'd be examining that purchase price more carefully, and realize that the truth is the house was never worth that.
My wife and I avoided buying our own house apart from our income property, and are glad we did. We would have paid too much, the market was over-inflated. Today, we are looking at some of the homes we saw in 2006 for $300k-400k, and they are now listed for $220k and less. One we saw for $330k in 2006 is now in short sale for $86k. No takers.
A very painful adjustment we are in.
I'm not a mortgage broker, nor a banker, but this is how *I* approached buying a house:
- I spend $40 on a 'first-time homeowner's class'. Worth 10 times that. I learned about PITI, interest rates, amortization schedules, and had a memorable class (1 of 8) with a Realtor who warned us that real estate brokers were not our friends, and Realtors were the best of the bunch (something to do with the name and ethical promises that they broke less often than merely licensed brokers) and we should watch THEM just as carefully. He was right, except for my first broker.
- Assisted my GF in 2001 in buying her first house. Read the loan documents several times, and then explained to her in English what they meant. check the interest rate (fixed), the schedule of payments (all the same except for the last one, about $5 off) and the general terms (no balloons, no adjustments, nothing wierd). She still has the house, and is damned lucky. It didn't work out between us, but that's not the point of this little ditty. I easily spent 10-15 hours understanding the load, being my first, and focusing on much stuff that isn't important like state law regarding defaults, boilerplate about terms and conditions, etc.
- Assisted my wife in both selling 2 houses and buying another. The sales were painful, since one had to be completed after we moved cross-country. But done. Again, in buying, we got a NINJA loan, and again I read everything and explained it in English - fixed rate, level payments, no tricky stuff. The first loan we got presented to us was an 80/20, ARM, IO. this was in Phoenix in 2005, the height of the market here. We had plenty of down payment, didn't want an ARM, and didn't need interest-only, since we were buying an income property to hold. Told the broker the next time she pulled that we would be looking elsewhere. No problem, no more jokes, we got it. Probably spend 4 hours reading over the loan, now knowing what was important and what could be deferred.
- A year later, we refinanced, to change the interest rate. Again, going over the documents, same drill. This time, I paid extra-close attention, being a refi, and ti did take three tries to get various stuff right, like avoiding PMI since we had 30%+ equity, and still they screwed up the escrow afterwards.
I can see where a first-time buyer could easily look at a house, hear about deals, call a broker, get hooked up with their 'mortgage guy', and shown a loan for so little money that they have to buy, it's "cheaper than renting"! Never look at the details, never see a payment amount 3x what they thought it would be in a few years, and yeah, when the statemnet comes in and their $1150 payment turns into $3700, they probably soil themselves. And can't figure out how it happened. And call the bank and ask what error they made, and find out they were scammed. Do they hope for a handout from the government? I bet many do. By this standard, we would be spending a LOT of money bailing out people who were scammed. Sadly, while I sympathize, buying a house is the biggest transaction most people ever make in their lives. And many spend more time choosing their next party dress or table saw than they do checking their next mortgage.
My front tenant went through a different travail. He had an ARM, but expected to refi in plenty of time. That was in 2006 in Phoenix. In 2007, he found out the market was in the dumper, he owed 20% more than the house could be sold for, and wasn't going to get refinananced. His payment went from $1500 to $4200. He moved into my front unit and left the keys to his house with the bank. Timing on his part, and he just got caught in the grinder. Plenty of people did that too. He doesn't expect a handout from the government. he just hopes to be ok in 5-7 years.
Cruel to say they oughta pay the price? Somehow Darwin is celebrated but his theory is selectively applauded.
Now, if you look carefully, you will find that the FBI has 19 mortgage fraud investigations open, 3 in the las
- Out here in Phoenix, people think it's a God-given right to go 125+ on the 101 through Scottsdale, right up there with owning a gun and being bailed out of your 80/20-upside-down-ARM. Don't need no stinkin' speed cameras. The first response by many is to put on one of those license plate covers that masks either half of the plate, depending on the angle. Pretty effective. This will make the surveillance plan somewhat more difficult to implement. Of course, the police will appreciate being tasked with ticketing us for having these things installed, seein' as the imgirints have stopped comin' over th' border, dontyaknow.
- I'm not entirely in opposition to this, except for one thing or two. If this is intended to aid in Amber Alert/APB/known bad guy apprehending, well then I would expect the system to track those vehicles that were interesting, ie the ones with plates matching the Amber Alert, or a known felon, or the meth head that just took a liqour store. The rest, I would expect to be discarded, since without a warrant, there isn't really much use for the data, being law-abiding citizens and all.
Somehow, I'm afraid that won't happen.
This isn't Britain. We shouldn't let our police keep a trace of where we go just because they can.
Period.
If this goes live, I may have to get involved in politics again. And so should you. Use it or lose it.
Since it is fairly inevitable that there would be at least 43 comments on this post, the was/is/will be certainty that there will be a post #42.
This is not remarkeable.
Now, if the first post were something other than #1, that would be remarkeable.
And if the last post, whichever one it was, were #42, then I would certainly want to read it. There may be a question there.
But someone had to respond to post #42, and ruin it for all the rest of us. Thanks for nothing.
Define adequate