Damn newbies don't understand how to do anti-piracy properly!
If I were the Spanish king I would have mandated all ISPs shape the p2p traffic to 50 bps. Or even better, pass a net 'neutrality' law where the ISPs have to drop connections to non-whitelisted sites (microsoft, MTV, cnn, etc. so long as they pay).
Easy to check, verify, and punish non-compliars...Mission Accoumplished!
Instead they decided making the p2p 'illegal', which is hard to monitor, verify, and enforce.
Our Nigerian IT minister has tasked us with providing free support to the US universities.
Kindly forward us the backup tapes with your data as well as a representative list of personal data you are striving to secure (such as student SS#, birth dates, Mother Maiden Names, corporate purchase cards, etc.) and we will promptly perform the audit for you. This is absolutely legal, and you will be allowed to keep 10% of whatever we find.
Was I the only one having the eery deja vu feeling when beta-testing Vista? Feeling like it's 2000, and you are beta-testing Apple's OS X. Fast hardware suddenly feeling unresponsive? Simple apps taking up 100 MBs of RAM? Each window stored uncompressed in VRAM? Crap paging system? Cut corners on POSIX compliance? Connected to a network share with less than 20,000 time-lapse tiffs, and the Vista freezes, crashes to 'classic' shell (complete with NT4-style 'Start' button!), then reboots:(
I just couldn't stop asking myself: they spent 5 years building THIS?
Given the availability of user-friendly Linux distros (SuSe, RedHat, Ubuntu), and given that Apple's OS X.5 runs flawlessly on x86, I am drawn to conclusion that MS is fatally late.
X2 4400+ getting 1.2 'performance' rating, I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. Maybe I just got sucked in by all that talk about 3D interface, aux.display support during sleep, new printing subsystem, and revolutionary user security framework?
This tax is meant to subsidize free emergency payphones, rural access, and public library/school access. Since there is no Free Lunch, let us be pragmatic and realize that someone does have to pay for these 'free' services. For example, in the past you used to have to pay to dial 911 from a payphone, but we the People decided against it, so now we pay.
From TFA: The $7.3 billion [phone tax] fund, which has been a feature of U.S. policy for more than 70 years, subsidizes telephone service in rural and low-income areas. It also runs a controversy-plagued program called E-Rate that provides discounted Internet and phone service to schools and libraries.
On the other hand, whether the VoIP tax should be going to baby Bells (as opposed to subsidizing sattelite access internet for rural areas is a question we should be debating. The article quotes Kohlenberger's amazingly insightful analogy
"The FCC's efforts on VoIP are like trying to solve traffic and energy problems by stifling the rollout of energy-efficient hybrid vehicles, while subsidizing SUVs"
The good news that this tax is not a flat fee (like a wiretap access) but is taken as a portion of what one already spends, which means those making $3/month worth of calls will likely pay $0.10 and not $2.00 as everybody else
a filesystem failing. I thought it was the OS so forced him to upgrade to tiger.
Thank you, that was just priceless. And next time your power supply catches fire, remember to add nosmoke.sys to your win.ini . Upgrading to OS X 10.5 also fixes those dead MacBook LCD pixels... [no, no not really]
Next time your neighbor needs help, he is better off FSCK-ing himself than listening you you, is what I am saying
Didn't mean to be sexist, sorry. What I meant is that the hormones severely alter brain functionality in females in a particular way (or so I am told). As women grow up, however, they learn to deal with their bodies' nature, rather succesfully; most are even able to turn this hormonal 'bug' into a 'feature'.
And no, I am not trying to defend AOL as a company or their employees as a group. All I am saying is that in just this particular case the rep was actually trying to help the guy out. And after all, Vincent did get his account cancelled despite sounding on the phone like a jumpy teenage script-kiddie that got hold of some CC#'s (did I mention that he lied about his account use? and no, I do not care what he may have said during the media interview about his behavior and intentions: just listen to his recording, not his spin).
Also, ask yourself why anyone would record their phone conversation in the first place (and I mean, this was set-up from the start, and he became confrontational at the onset), and go to great lengths to publicize how offended and mistreated he was by the big bad AOL... Could Vincent be the NSA pawn trying to get back at AOL for not turning over their logs? Nah, probably just an immature attention-whoring middle-aged loser.
Yeah. I have also done one better, I turned a FreeBSD box into a 'MacOS X' server for netboot and AppleTalk.
netinfo and other 'PITA' stuff is there to deal with Mac-specific issues, you do not need to use those if you do not wish. Other things (e.g. OpenLDAP) can be substituted as needed.
Also, you can use OS X client to do exactly same things as a server; server just got a GUI config suite, and server-oriented default configs. If you do not mind vim'ing a bit, the client will do exactly same things.
I am pretty sure that's already done in Texas. Isn't that how 'the Hammer' got in trouble? Using corporate money for local elections in TX?
Also, as I recall there is a $2,000/person limit of presidential election donations, so there seems to be no First Ammendment problem there either (I could be wrong on this one).
The guy sounds exactly 16-17 years old. At 2:50 he gets an attack of hysteria, at which point he sounds 15 y.o., hence the rep asks for his dad.
Now, as a rep., you hear a 'teen' trying to cancel a regular, paid-for account, still in use (as the rep. sees it). This 'teen' claims to have had broadband for years and not even have that AOL software installed, yet, I repeat, the accound was in regular use, and has been regularly paid for.
Now, do you buy this teen's story that he is 30 years old, paid for the account he never used, and just decided to cancel today out of the blue, or do you think that maybe, just maybe this teen got grounded for pot smoking or something, and tries to get back at his teacher/uncle/neighbor by cancelling his regular account?
Use your brain, the rep. did exactly the right thing. And the fact that a 30-year-old man behaves like a pre-menstrual school girl just tells you something about our men today...
before you go condemning this guy, sign up for an AOL free trial and try to cancel a month later
I did exactly that back in winter of 2000 while waiting for my campus LAN jack to come alive. I used AOL for seven days, then called them up, (did spend 20 minutes on hold), spoke to a live American I could actually understand, and he cancelled my account in 5 minutes. I told him that I was using that as a temp solution, explained the situation, and that I will never need it again. See other replies to your post: people that work with the rep. get their concerns addressed in a timely manner. People that act up get shafted.
Finally, a self-help guide for Vincent et al.: 1) stop expecting strangers to a) shuffle shit for you b) kiss your ass for free c) tell you how nice it all smells 2) start treating others with respect and dignity 3) quit impersonating quixotic knights and stop fighting ethereal windmill monsters
You SPECULATE that PERHAPS the customer is an "idiot". For this insult, you can go to hell.
Sorry to be blunt, but 99% of AOLers ARE computer-illiterate newbies. In case of that service rep, the speculation you mentioned is a fair assumption. Your and Vincent's attitude remind me of a time back in college when I had work-study position at the HellDesk, we had a 'literate' mac user that wanted help 'erasing my hard disk', which he wanted done 'right now'. And don't ask him 'stupid questions, I know what I want'... turned out he was a 'l33t [Windows newbie] hax0r' that wanted to make his Mac eject a floppy! Just imagine how much more shit he would have given us if we did what he asked! You call a Helpline or come to a HeckDesk, be ready to be presumed an idiot; there's just no way around.
face to face with me, I would have sent him to the hospital after having to repeat an initial demand to cancel services.
Tough guy, huh? Well, why don't you try that at your local bank or car repair shop? no balls, that's why [Assuming you are in America and not in Kraplickistan where such attitude still flies]
What would you expect if you came up to a bank teller, gave her your ATM card, and started screaming: Bitch, give me the money, just give me the money, give me the money. Help me by giving me the money?
Vincent sounds like a silver-spoon teenager with an attitude. He probably does the same thing when his folks buy him a Lexus instead of a BMW.
Instead of 'cancel the account' hysterics (you can almost hear this guy's forced crying and foot-stomping) he should have cooperated with the AOL rep and had his account settled in less than 5 minutes.
There are many many reasons why customer rep acted the way he did:
1) A whinny teenager cancelling parents' account on a whim might not be in parents' best interests. 2) Given most AOLers are computer 'newbies', the user may have meant: 'recall the last email', 'help me fix parental control', 'I need to change my dialup prefix', or any number of things... 3) His story did not agree with the usage pattern: probably would turn out to be nothing, or could turn out to be some heavy-shit hacking, with crying Vincent leashed up in Gitmo for messing with the nuclear launch codes... 4) He could be a prankster trying to highjack someone else's account: &c &c.
Unfortunately, the asshole Vincent got famous, and the AOL rep got fired I am not a psychiatrist, but I would prescribe a can of whoop-ass for the little bitch twice daily, until he grows up and learns exactly how to be a functional society member.
And since I am not an AT&T customer, I have not agreed to their privacy policy. Is there any legal remedy for this?
If a criminal shoots you, you do not sue the gun-maker, you sue the criminal. If your mother calls you using ATT, you do not sue ATT, you sue your mother.
So why don't you write to the DHS and tell them you are not a terrorist and ask them stop spying on you?
What I am saying, Mister Whirly, is that claiming "I am not a terrorist/pedophile/Mexican" would be interpreted like crying "I am not a thief" out of the blue.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks William Shakespeare
Well, I can program 'Hello World' in qbasic, but since no other developer is going to enter, I win by default:p
On an unrelated note, anyone in the market for a new 10 cyl. car?
Also explain to [legislators] that your privacy is important to you and that you want them to support as many privacy bills as they can.
Currently the mantra If you are not a terrorist/paedophile/Mexican, you have nothing to hide and you'll have no privacy when the terrorists win seems to be the flavor of the day.
Or as one prominent FoxNews commentator puts it, the American People would rather the Govt. collected their records than their remains.
Of course, if that doesn't work, just ditch AT&T. I know there is enough competition out there to cripple them.
As the parent (bleh-of-the-huns) said, such a move will not impact ATT's bottom line. If anything, it will save them bandwidth costs as those customers that tend to be privacy-aware also tend to consume more of their all-you-can-eat subscription plans than the sheeople customers.
Here is something for the tinfoil hatters [emphasis added]:
VA's "Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture VISTA is the primary repository of clinical, administrative/financial, and infrastructure data in VA. It consists of computer systems at each VA medical center and the national network that links them. Within each VISTA implementation is a large number of separate 'modules' or 'packages' designed to store data on a particular subject and to produce management reports."
Slashdot Mirror
Damn newbies don't understand how to do anti-piracy properly!
If I were the Spanish king I would have mandated all ISPs shape the p2p traffic to 50 bps. Or even better, pass a net 'neutrality' law where the ISPs have to drop connections to non-whitelisted sites (microsoft, MTV, cnn, etc. so long as they pay).
Easy to check, verify, and punish non-compliars...Mission Accoumplished!
Instead they decided making the p2p 'illegal', which is hard to monitor, verify, and enforce.
Our Nigerian IT minister has tasked us with providing free support to the US universities.
Kindly forward us the backup tapes with your data as well as a representative list of personal data you are striving to secure (such as student SS#, birth dates, Mother Maiden Names, corporate purchase cards, etc.) and we will promptly perform the audit for you.
This is absolutely legal, and you will be allowed to keep 10% of whatever we find.
[no, no it's a joke, dammit!]
Well, then Ozzie should stay out of Texas. The use of such technological 'devices' is illegal there even for consenting, married adults:
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2005/03/03/O
I would paste the joke about Melinda's wedding night when she realized why Bill used words 'soft' and 'micro' to name his company...
But that would be lame and disrespectful given how much I appreciate Bill giving half his money to the Foundation that actually helps people.
Was I the only one having the eery deja vu feeling when beta-testing Vista? Feeling like it's 2000, and you are beta-testing Apple's OS X. Fast hardware suddenly feeling unresponsive? Simple apps taking up 100 MBs of RAM? Each window stored uncompressed in VRAM? Crap paging system? Cut corners on POSIX compliance? Connected to a network share with less than 20,000 time-lapse tiffs, and the Vista freezes, crashes to 'classic' shell (complete with NT4-style 'Start' button!), then reboots :(
I just couldn't stop asking myself: they spent 5 years building THIS?
Given the availability of user-friendly Linux distros (SuSe, RedHat, Ubuntu), and given that Apple's OS X.5 runs flawlessly on x86, I am drawn to conclusion that MS is fatally late.
X2 4400+ getting 1.2 'performance' rating, I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. Maybe I just got sucked in by all that talk about 3D interface, aux.display support during sleep, new printing subsystem, and revolutionary user security framework?
I think they are talking about the grid, where the voltages are on the order of 100 kV, UK or US.
Regarding the 240/110 debate, accidental 110V exposure @60 Hz is a little bit safer because it is much less likely to cause heart attacks in children.
On the other hand, whether the VoIP tax should be going to baby Bells (as opposed to subsidizing sattelite access internet for rural areas is a question we should be debating. The article quotes Kohlenberger's amazingly insightful analogy
The good news that this tax is not a flat fee (like a wiretap access) but is taken as a portion of what one already spends, which means those making $3/month worth of calls will likely pay $0.10 and not $2.00 as everybody else
Thank you, that was just priceless. And next time your power supply catches fire, remember to add nosmoke.sys to your win.ini . Upgrading to OS X 10.5 also fixes those dead MacBook LCD pixels... [no, no not really]
Next time your neighbor needs help, he is better off FSCK-ing himself than listening you you, is what I am saying
Really want to thank her? Why not mail her $10 or something?
Oh, you mean like clicking the Start Button to Shut down your computer?
Didn't mean to be sexist, sorry. What I meant is that the hormones severely alter brain functionality in females in a particular way (or so I am told). As women grow up, however, they learn to deal with their bodies' nature, rather succesfully; most are even able to turn this hormonal 'bug' into a 'feature'.
And no, I am not trying to defend AOL as a company or their employees as a group. All I am saying is that in just this particular case the rep was actually trying to help the guy out. And after all, Vincent did get his account cancelled despite sounding on the phone like a jumpy teenage script-kiddie that got hold of some CC#'s (did I mention that he lied about his account use? and no, I do not care what he may have said during the media interview about his behavior and intentions: just listen to his recording, not his spin).
Also, ask yourself why anyone would record their phone conversation in the first place (and I mean, this was set-up from the start, and he became confrontational at the onset), and go to great lengths to publicize how offended and mistreated he was by the big bad AOL... Could Vincent be the NSA pawn trying to get back at AOL for not turning over their logs? Nah, probably just an immature attention-whoring middle-aged loser.
Yeah. I have also done one better, I turned a FreeBSD box into a 'MacOS X' server for netboot and AppleTalk.
netinfo and other 'PITA' stuff is there to deal with Mac-specific issues, you do not need to use those if you do not wish. Other things (e.g. OpenLDAP) can be substituted as needed.
Also, you can use OS X client to do exactly same things as a server; server just got a GUI config suite, and server-oriented default configs. If you do not mind vim'ing a bit, the client will do exactly same things.
I am pretty sure that's already done in Texas. Isn't that how 'the Hammer' got in trouble? Using corporate money for local elections in TX?
Also, as I recall there is a $2,000/person limit of presidential election donations, so there seems to be no First Ammendment problem there either (I could be wrong on this one).
Mac OS X is fully POSIX
It
- is
a *NIXAww, come on! If anything, it's off-topic, but it's also insightfull, funny, and incredibly sad.
The guy sounds exactly 16-17 years old. At 2:50 he gets an attack of hysteria, at which point he sounds 15 y.o., hence the rep asks for his dad.
Now, as a rep., you hear a 'teen' trying to cancel a regular, paid-for account, still in use (as the rep. sees it). This 'teen' claims to have had broadband for years and not even have that AOL software installed, yet, I repeat, the accound was in regular use, and has been regularly paid for.
Now, do you buy this teen's story that he is 30 years old, paid for the account he never used, and just decided to cancel today out of the blue, or do you think that maybe, just maybe this teen got grounded for pot smoking or something, and tries to get back at his teacher/uncle/neighbor by cancelling his regular account?
Use your brain, the rep. did exactly the right thing. And the fact that a 30-year-old man behaves like a pre-menstrual school girl just tells you something about our men today...
I did exactly that back in winter of 2000 while waiting for my campus LAN jack to come alive. I used AOL for seven days, then called them up, (did spend 20 minutes on hold), spoke to a live American I could actually understand, and he cancelled my account in 5 minutes. I told him that I was using that as a temp solution, explained the situation, and that I will never need it again. See other replies to your post: people that work with the rep. get their concerns addressed in a timely manner. People that act up get shafted.
Finally, a self-help guide for Vincent et al.:
1) stop expecting strangers to a) shuffle shit for you b) kiss your ass for free c) tell you how nice it all smells
2) start treating others with respect and dignity
3) quit impersonating quixotic knights and stop fighting ethereal windmill monsters
Sorry to be blunt, but 99% of AOLers ARE computer-illiterate newbies. In case of that service rep, the speculation you mentioned is a fair assumption. Your and Vincent's attitude remind me of a time back in college when I had work-study position at the HellDesk, we had a 'literate' mac user that wanted help 'erasing my hard disk', which he wanted done 'right now'. And don't ask him 'stupid questions, I know what I want'... turned out he was a 'l33t [Windows newbie] hax0r' that wanted to make his Mac eject a floppy! Just imagine how much more shit he would have given us if we did what he asked! You call a Helpline or come to a HeckDesk, be ready to be presumed an idiot; there's just no way around.
Tough guy, huh? Well, why don't you try that at your local bank or car repair shop? no balls, that's why [Assuming you are in America and not in Kraplickistan where such attitude still flies]
Ah, thanks, that clears it up.
I also get 2500 minimum count by going 1 over 0.04%
Not sure if that's 2500 unique hit or unique users. I know I google up >500 pages a day at times.
What would you expect if you came up to a bank teller, gave her your ATM card, and started screaming: Bitch, give me the money, just give me the money, give me the money. Help me by giving me the money?
Vincent sounds like a silver-spoon teenager with an attitude. He probably does the same thing when his folks buy him a Lexus instead of a BMW.
Instead of 'cancel the account' hysterics (you can almost hear this guy's forced crying and foot-stomping) he should have cooperated with the AOL rep and had his account settled in less than 5 minutes.
There are many many reasons why customer rep acted the way he did:
1) A whinny teenager cancelling parents' account on a whim might not be in parents' best interests.
2) Given most AOLers are computer 'newbies', the user may have meant: 'recall the last email', 'help me fix parental control', 'I need to change my dialup prefix', or any number of things...
3) His story did not agree with the usage pattern: probably would turn out to be nothing, or could turn out to be some heavy-shit hacking, with crying Vincent leashed up in Gitmo for messing with the nuclear launch codes...
4) He could be a prankster trying to highjack someone else's account:
&c &c.
Unfortunately, the asshole Vincent got famous, and the AOL rep got fired
I am not a psychiatrist, but I would prescribe a can of whoop-ass for the little bitch twice daily, until he grows up and learns exactly how to be a functional society member.
Given the VisitorVille's error margins (e.g. +192.08%) their sample size is crap. Can I hotlink here? http://intelligence.visitorville.com/images/vvi-fr ont-tn.gif if not, just see their site.
If a criminal shoots you, you do not sue the gun-maker, you sue the criminal.
If your mother calls you using ATT, you do not sue ATT, you sue your mother.
So why don't you write to the DHS and tell them you are not a terrorist and ask them stop spying on you?
What I am saying, Mister Whirly, is that claiming "I am not a terrorist/pedophile/Mexican" would be interpreted like crying "I am not a thief" out of the blue.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks William Shakespeare
Well, I can program 'Hello World' in qbasic, but since no other developer is going to enter, I win by default :p
On an unrelated note, anyone in the market for a new 10 cyl. car?
Currently the mantra If you are not a terrorist/paedophile/Mexican, you have nothing to hide and you'll have no privacy when the terrorists win seems to be the flavor of the day.
Or as one prominent FoxNews commentator puts it, the American People would rather the Govt. collected their records than their remains.
As the parent (bleh-of-the-huns) said, such a move will not impact ATT's bottom line. If anything, it will save them bandwidth costs as those customers that tend to be privacy-aware also tend to consume more of their all-you-can-eat subscription plans than the sheeople customers.
Here is something for the tinfoil hatters [emphasis added]:
VA's "Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture VISTA is the primary repository of clinical, administrative/financial, and infrastructure data in VA. It consists of computer systems at each VA medical center and the national network that links them. Within each VISTA implementation is a large number of separate 'modules' or 'packages' designed to store data on a particular subject and to produce management reports."
from www.herc.research.med.va.gov/Glossary.htm