I might not have been originally intended to be a meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme, but it seems to have become one. The idea that "DRM technology is Defective by Design" seems pretty memetic.
Creative/artistic type people have active imaginations?! Holy News Flash Batman! I can't wait for the story about how librarians have a gene that has been tied to OCD.
Americans brought the English language to the continent. They coined the terms North America and South America. Seems fair to me that they appropriated the word American for themselves. I have a lot of friends from Central and South America. They don't want to be called Americans. They want to be called Brazilians, or Salvadorians, or Mexicans, or otherwise associated with their country. It's really similar to the way that people from America like being called Americans. Go figure.
Are you just bitter because you have to be a European, and there isn't a country called Europe? Maybe you're feeling a little small because your entire country probably fits within a couple American states?
Things like this happen where I work with our AT&T bills all the time. We're on the smaller end of businesses and have a little over 200 lines. At least a couple of times a year we find a number on our bill that isn't one of our numbers. We contact AT&T, they act baffled, and then they credit us for the error. It's so common that they barely even ask any questions when we dispute the charge. I have to imagine that there are numerous other businesses out there in the same situation, but they aren't going through their bills and are subsiquently paying for services they aren't even using. AT&T even has some BS verbage on their statements that says charges not disputed within 60 days can't be disputed. So they can ream someone for years, and then if the company finds out, they can only recoup the last 60 days worth of over charges.
Re:Software Projects vs. Traditional Projects
on
Why New Systems Fail
·
· Score: 1
Not only should not short change the developers, you should probably give them even more time. If they say they need four months, give them six. That leaves some leeway for the often frequent delays that most rookie project managers and developers fail to account for. If you come in ahead of schedule then you look good. When I was a consultant, we would always overbid our hours. Given the choice between coming in under budget, or having to go to the client with delays and ask for more money, the choice was obvious. It's a difficult strategy to use when starting out and you're hungry for work. But once you have a few successful jobs under your belt, the word of mouth buzz is good. You become, "The guy who did it in 25% less time than he said it would take."
Re:Didn't need a book to know this
on
Why New Systems Fail
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As to lying suppliers, well, it's a lot easier to assess these things nowadays than when the one project failed in the mid-1990s.
What is different now from the 1990s? I've been involved with one software project that failed because the vendor promised functionality that they couldn't deliver. The client spent a significant amount of money on the project. Once it came out that the software couldn't do what the vendor promised it could do, the client sued the vendor and recouped all of their money plus legal fees. The client was able to sue because the vendor put it in writing.
Getting things in writing from the vendor is of paramount importance. Doing a needs analysis with the client before shopping around for software vendors is key. With a needs analysis in hand, you can present that to the vendors and ask them point blank whether or not their software fits the needs. If they say it does, make them sign a contract to back up their claims. Then they either deliver what they promised or they get sued.
I tend to agree with you. I'd rather that California (and the nation as a whole) make it easier to exercise our second amendment rights. However, I don't agree with the "camera = imprisonment" mindset. It's jumping at shadows.
If you're really worried about life and liberty, worry about the central banks. Read some of the things that Woodrow Wilson wrote after the Federal Reserve was created. Cameras on the corners are the least of your worries when your entire life hangs in the balance of the whims of people who control the monetary system, and wage wars for profit and control of resources. Globalization is a bigger threat to your standard of living than cameras on the corners. China using their dollar reserves to buy up foreign resources (like that huge oil field in Iraq that they just purchased with BP) are bigger threats to your well being than some cameras in Lancaster to watch the gangsters.
Have you personally had problems with cops? Are you targeted by them in any way? I can't speak about Lancaster, but I know in Long Beach the cops here are way too busy dealing with real criminals to be over-bearing and tyrannical toward law abiding citizens. Everyone I know in law enforcement doesn't have the time or inclination to mess with people if they don't have probable cause. Even the patrol officers I know, whose job is to be highly visible and (to a certain extent) in people's faces, would rather be patrolling and responding to calls as opposed to being proactive and looking for problems (ie. "hassling" random people for no reason).
There are two major groups who cry the loudest about their rights. People like yourself and criminals. Of the two groups, criminals are the loudest. They are the ones who deal with the police on a regular basis. They are the ones constantly trying to game the system and figure out what they can get away with.
Unless you've personally had problems with police officers causing you inordinate amounts of grief over trivial things, I think you're over reacting. Sure, the mayor may be a prick. He's a politician, what else do you expect? He knows that there is crime in Lancaster, and by appearing tough on crime, he stands a better chance of getting re-elected. His motives may not be completely pure, but he is addressing a real problem in the community.
What's your alternative for dealing with gang crime?
Let me ask you this. Do YOU want to live in Lancaster and hang out with the cholos and the home boys? The tone of your post seems to imply that you prefer that. Of course the reality of the situation at this point is that the gangsters aren't going anywhere. They have just as much right to live there as anyone else. The best you can hope for are some mitigation efforts that keep them in check.
If any place in southern California needs military surveillance technology to crack down on crime, its Lancaster. One of the trends that took place in the early 21st century was that large numbers of people from South Central moved out to Lancaster and Palmdale. They were drawn by the affordable housing and the hope for a new start. Unfortunately they took all of their ghetto children and relatives with them, and now Palmdale is nick named Pompton to reflect its characteristic similarities to everything bad about Compton. The tax revenues in those cities are very low and consequently the police departments are small and under funded. It's a good place to be if you're a gangster and a bad place to be if you're just about anyone else.
When I see people on here decrying surveillance technology, I wonder if they've ever lived in borderline neighborhoods. I live in Long Beach, and it isn't by any means a full fledged, crime ridden neighborhood like Watts, but it has its fair share of property crime and other crimes of opportunity. One of the nicer neighborhoods that I used to live in just put up cameras because the residents were sick of having their cars and homes broken into. The cameras are accessible by the police department. To nobody's surprise, crime has gone down in the neighborhood.
Its easy to live in the comfort of a place like South Orange County, or any other affluent suburb and moan on internet about the evils of big brother surveillance technology. Where the police already have everything under control and you can safely walk down the street at night, there probably isn't a need for a network of cameras blanketing the city. On the other hand, in places that are borderline, where there aren't enough police to be everywhere and there are good sized populations of convicted criminals on probation and parole, a simple technology like security cameras can make a difference.
There are a lot of nods to the original cartoon. I was having some flash backs to some of the original dialogues while watching the "first" Transformers movie. In fact, when Megatron finally came onto the scene, I was waiting for him to say, "Star Scream, you have failed me for the last time!" And sure enough, he did.
Don't talk yourself into not liking Transformers. It was a good movie. I haven't seen the most recent one yet, so maybe they completely blew it on the second time around?
I think the real question is whether or not you find the G1 or other Android devices easy to use. I've been underwhelmed by the G1. The interface is quirky and not very intuitive.
It has been a LONG time since Viewsonic displays were the best. Back in the days of CRT tubes when they were one of the few vendors using Trinitron tubes, they were among the best. They make average LCD screens. I'm using two of their VP2030b displays right now. They aren't anything special.
The article mentions that he is starting a job at a new employer. The systems that he listed are systems that he has experience with. It seems to me that he's open to the possibility that, despite having had experience with numerous systems, there might be a better way to do things than he has done them in the past.
What does Madoff have to do with Goldman Sachs or the rest of the industry? His lack of ethics didn't have much of anything to do with trading on the stock market. He ran a huge Ponzi scheme and completely falsified the results of his "investment strategy". Goldman Sachs actually has an investment strategy, and they invest money in real securities. Madoff did nothing of the sort.
Contrary to what another poster who replied to you has to say, I agree that Postini has gone down hill within the last month or so. The software is missing virii attached as normal attachments to emails. Virii that the Symantec anti-virus on our in house Exchange server is catching. I never in a million years thought I would see the day when Symantec would be doing a better job than Google.
How do you feel? Do you feel better and morally superior for having reaffirmed for your ego that you're the person you think you want to be, and not the person that you assume I am? Great. Enjoy your weekend.
Getting "everyone" to agree on a single standard often times proves to be next to impossible. What ends up happening is that a large player in the market *coughMICROSOFTcough* ends up doing things their way.
The summary seems to suggest that it comes down to H.264 and Ogg. Why don't they just implement a [video:] tag and leave it up to the browser to decide? The webmaster will have to make both encodings available, and as a community we're still in the days of having to support the quirks of multiple browsers, but how is that any different than now? At least everyone would be one step closer to open standards like Ogg.
It would be nice to see the community just throw their weight behind Ogg and be done with it. If a large majority of webmasters out there simply decided to use Ogg it would solve the "problem" of needing the browser vendors to agree on a standard.
It pretty much has to be as blunt as "combine this with alchohol and you will die"
Do you have any idea why warning labels aren't as blunt as that? I was in the UK a few years ago. One of the things that really stood out for me was the way their warnings were done. The one that was the most vivid was an electrocution warning on a power transformer. There was a picture of a guy touching the transformer and getting electrocuted. It may have even had a skull and crossbones on there. It was as clear as day. "If you mess with this, you will die." The equivalent here in the US would be, "Danger, high voltage" without any indicator what so ever as to the consiquences of "high voltage".
It seems like we are given a certain sense of false security here. Nobody wants to come out and say, "This IS dangerous." 99% of the time, the message we get is, "This COULD be dangerous IF..." Then what happens is someone kills themself, a lawsuit happens, and another condition gets added onto the IF... list.
With drugs, the lines get blurred even further. There are the Schedule I drugs that "everyone" knows are bad (cocaine, heroin, marijuana (don't even get me started on how absurd this one is), meth, etc). Then there are the rest of the drugs that are advertised on television, and prescribed by doctors or available over the counter. Since they aren't explicity touted as BAD, they are therefore assumed to be GOOD. The reality is that the message people should be getting is that ALL DRUGS have side effects and can be bad. Some just mess you up faster than others.
What's really gained by putting them in one pill anyway?
As it was explained to me by my doctor a few years ago, the acetomenaphine helps speed the absorption of whatever it is combined with. I think it adds as a blood thinner?
Or just realize that there are certain environments where nice/expensive gadgets shouldn't be taken. My girl friend is pretty notorious for losing things or damaging them. When she goes out with her friends, she leaves the Blackberry at home and puts her SIM into a cheap LG phone. If the phone gets lost or damaged it isn't as big of a deal.
Slashdot Mirror
I might not have been originally intended to be a meme http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme, but it seems to have become one. The idea that "DRM technology is Defective by Design" seems pretty memetic.
It's safe to say that the meme has been co-opted. It seems to pop up in a fair number of articles these days.
That isn't at all unheard of in southern California. Traffic can be a real time sink.
Creative/artistic type people have active imaginations?! Holy News Flash Batman! I can't wait for the story about how librarians have a gene that has been tied to OCD.
Just like we understand your need for anonomity due to the lack of a spine you Europeans seem to have. ;)
Americans brought the English language to the continent. They coined the terms North America and South America. Seems fair to me that they appropriated the word American for themselves. I have a lot of friends from Central and South America. They don't want to be called Americans. They want to be called Brazilians, or Salvadorians, or Mexicans, or otherwise associated with their country. It's really similar to the way that people from America like being called Americans. Go figure.
Are you just bitter because you have to be a European, and there isn't a country called Europe? Maybe you're feeling a little small because your entire country probably fits within a couple American states?
Things like this happen where I work with our AT&T bills all the time. We're on the smaller end of businesses and have a little over 200 lines. At least a couple of times a year we find a number on our bill that isn't one of our numbers. We contact AT&T, they act baffled, and then they credit us for the error. It's so common that they barely even ask any questions when we dispute the charge. I have to imagine that there are numerous other businesses out there in the same situation, but they aren't going through their bills and are subsiquently paying for services they aren't even using. AT&T even has some BS verbage on their statements that says charges not disputed within 60 days can't be disputed. So they can ream someone for years, and then if the company finds out, they can only recoup the last 60 days worth of over charges.
Not only should not short change the developers, you should probably give them even more time. If they say they need four months, give them six. That leaves some leeway for the often frequent delays that most rookie project managers and developers fail to account for. If you come in ahead of schedule then you look good. When I was a consultant, we would always overbid our hours. Given the choice between coming in under budget, or having to go to the client with delays and ask for more money, the choice was obvious. It's a difficult strategy to use when starting out and you're hungry for work. But once you have a few successful jobs under your belt, the word of mouth buzz is good. You become, "The guy who did it in 25% less time than he said it would take."
What is different now from the 1990s? I've been involved with one software project that failed because the vendor promised functionality that they couldn't deliver. The client spent a significant amount of money on the project. Once it came out that the software couldn't do what the vendor promised it could do, the client sued the vendor and recouped all of their money plus legal fees. The client was able to sue because the vendor put it in writing.
Getting things in writing from the vendor is of paramount importance. Doing a needs analysis with the client before shopping around for software vendors is key. With a needs analysis in hand, you can present that to the vendors and ask them point blank whether or not their software fits the needs. If they say it does, make them sign a contract to back up their claims. Then they either deliver what they promised or they get sued.
I tend to agree with you. I'd rather that California (and the nation as a whole) make it easier to exercise our second amendment rights. However, I don't agree with the "camera = imprisonment" mindset. It's jumping at shadows.
If you're really worried about life and liberty, worry about the central banks. Read some of the things that Woodrow Wilson wrote after the Federal Reserve was created. Cameras on the corners are the least of your worries when your entire life hangs in the balance of the whims of people who control the monetary system, and wage wars for profit and control of resources. Globalization is a bigger threat to your standard of living than cameras on the corners. China using their dollar reserves to buy up foreign resources (like that huge oil field in Iraq that they just purchased with BP) are bigger threats to your well being than some cameras in Lancaster to watch the gangsters.
Have you personally had problems with cops? Are you targeted by them in any way? I can't speak about Lancaster, but I know in Long Beach the cops here are way too busy dealing with real criminals to be over-bearing and tyrannical toward law abiding citizens. Everyone I know in law enforcement doesn't have the time or inclination to mess with people if they don't have probable cause. Even the patrol officers I know, whose job is to be highly visible and (to a certain extent) in people's faces, would rather be patrolling and responding to calls as opposed to being proactive and looking for problems (ie. "hassling" random people for no reason).
There are two major groups who cry the loudest about their rights. People like yourself and criminals. Of the two groups, criminals are the loudest. They are the ones who deal with the police on a regular basis. They are the ones constantly trying to game the system and figure out what they can get away with.
Unless you've personally had problems with police officers causing you inordinate amounts of grief over trivial things, I think you're over reacting. Sure, the mayor may be a prick. He's a politician, what else do you expect? He knows that there is crime in Lancaster, and by appearing tough on crime, he stands a better chance of getting re-elected. His motives may not be completely pure, but he is addressing a real problem in the community.
What's your alternative for dealing with gang crime?
Let me ask you this. Do YOU want to live in Lancaster and hang out with the cholos and the home boys? The tone of your post seems to imply that you prefer that. Of course the reality of the situation at this point is that the gangsters aren't going anywhere. They have just as much right to live there as anyone else. The best you can hope for are some mitigation efforts that keep them in check.
If any place in southern California needs military surveillance technology to crack down on crime, its Lancaster. One of the trends that took place in the early 21st century was that large numbers of people from South Central moved out to Lancaster and Palmdale. They were drawn by the affordable housing and the hope for a new start. Unfortunately they took all of their ghetto children and relatives with them, and now Palmdale is nick named Pompton to reflect its characteristic similarities to everything bad about Compton. The tax revenues in those cities are very low and consequently the police departments are small and under funded. It's a good place to be if you're a gangster and a bad place to be if you're just about anyone else.
When I see people on here decrying surveillance technology, I wonder if they've ever lived in borderline neighborhoods. I live in Long Beach, and it isn't by any means a full fledged, crime ridden neighborhood like Watts, but it has its fair share of property crime and other crimes of opportunity. One of the nicer neighborhoods that I used to live in just put up cameras because the residents were sick of having their cars and homes broken into. The cameras are accessible by the police department. To nobody's surprise, crime has gone down in the neighborhood.
Its easy to live in the comfort of a place like South Orange County, or any other affluent suburb and moan on internet about the evils of big brother surveillance technology. Where the police already have everything under control and you can safely walk down the street at night, there probably isn't a need for a network of cameras blanketing the city. On the other hand, in places that are borderline, where there aren't enough police to be everywhere and there are good sized populations of convicted criminals on probation and parole, a simple technology like security cameras can make a difference.
There are a lot of nods to the original cartoon. I was having some flash backs to some of the original dialogues while watching the "first" Transformers movie. In fact, when Megatron finally came onto the scene, I was waiting for him to say, "Star Scream, you have failed me for the last time!" And sure enough, he did.
Don't talk yourself into not liking Transformers. It was a good movie. I haven't seen the most recent one yet, so maybe they completely blew it on the second time around?
I think the real question is whether or not you find the G1 or other Android devices easy to use. I've been underwhelmed by the G1. The interface is quirky and not very intuitive.
It has been a LONG time since Viewsonic displays were the best. Back in the days of CRT tubes when they were one of the few vendors using Trinitron tubes, they were among the best. They make average LCD screens. I'm using two of their VP2030b displays right now. They aren't anything special.
The article mentions that he is starting a job at a new employer. The systems that he listed are systems that he has experience with. It seems to me that he's open to the possibility that, despite having had experience with numerous systems, there might be a better way to do things than he has done them in the past.
What does Madoff have to do with Goldman Sachs or the rest of the industry? His lack of ethics didn't have much of anything to do with trading on the stock market. He ran a huge Ponzi scheme and completely falsified the results of his "investment strategy". Goldman Sachs actually has an investment strategy, and they invest money in real securities. Madoff did nothing of the sort.
Contrary to what another poster who replied to you has to say, I agree that Postini has gone down hill within the last month or so. The software is missing virii attached as normal attachments to emails. Virii that the Symantec anti-virus on our in house Exchange server is catching. I never in a million years thought I would see the day when Symantec would be doing a better job than Google.
How do you feel? Do you feel better and morally superior for having reaffirmed for your ego that you're the person you think you want to be, and not the person that you assume I am? Great. Enjoy your weekend.
Getting "everyone" to agree on a single standard often times proves to be next to impossible. What ends up happening is that a large player in the market *coughMICROSOFTcough* ends up doing things their way.
The summary seems to suggest that it comes down to H.264 and Ogg. Why don't they just implement a [video:] tag and leave it up to the browser to decide? The webmaster will have to make both encodings available, and as a community we're still in the days of having to support the quirks of multiple browsers, but how is that any different than now? At least everyone would be one step closer to open standards like Ogg.
It would be nice to see the community just throw their weight behind Ogg and be done with it. If a large majority of webmasters out there simply decided to use Ogg it would solve the "problem" of needing the browser vendors to agree on a standard.
Do you have any idea why warning labels aren't as blunt as that? I was in the UK a few years ago. One of the things that really stood out for me was the way their warnings were done. The one that was the most vivid was an electrocution warning on a power transformer. There was a picture of a guy touching the transformer and getting electrocuted. It may have even had a skull and crossbones on there. It was as clear as day. "If you mess with this, you will die." The equivalent here in the US would be, "Danger, high voltage" without any indicator what so ever as to the consiquences of "high voltage".
It seems like we are given a certain sense of false security here. Nobody wants to come out and say, "This IS dangerous." 99% of the time, the message we get is, "This COULD be dangerous IF..." Then what happens is someone kills themself, a lawsuit happens, and another condition gets added onto the IF... list.
With drugs, the lines get blurred even further. There are the Schedule I drugs that "everyone" knows are bad (cocaine, heroin, marijuana (don't even get me started on how absurd this one is), meth, etc). Then there are the rest of the drugs that are advertised on television, and prescribed by doctors or available over the counter. Since they aren't explicity touted as BAD, they are therefore assumed to be GOOD. The reality is that the message people should be getting is that ALL DRUGS have side effects and can be bad. Some just mess you up faster than others.
As it was explained to me by my doctor a few years ago, the acetomenaphine helps speed the absorption of whatever it is combined with. I think it adds as a blood thinner?
Trust me, if anyone needs a tracking device and call history checking its me... or at least, it was me a few years ago.
Or just realize that there are certain environments where nice/expensive gadgets shouldn't be taken. My girl friend is pretty notorious for losing things or damaging them. When she goes out with her friends, she leaves the Blackberry at home and puts her SIM into a cheap LG phone. If the phone gets lost or damaged it isn't as big of a deal.