Depends on the issue. I simplified my explanation for brevity, but it's not just computers and operating systems, but a lot of other technical equipment (mostly video related). They can't tell me why, when I select source A and destination B on our video router that I'm not seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing. But in the one case I had at my computer, it was not so much the computer, but one of our systems not accepting my password. I personally didn't have any issues in which them logging in would have helped.
I work for a rather large (and here nameless) entertainment company. They tried off-shoring our technical support to Romania. Our various sub-companies make a very good profit, year after year - as much of the entertainment industry, we generally weather bad economies better than most because people fall back to less expensive forms of entertainment like TV and movies rather than concerts or vacations. Why did the bean counters feel like it wasn't enough? I don't know.... but looking at numbers on paper is far different than what happens in reality.
Yes, our tech support was expensive - but responsive, fast, taking care of issues correctly the first time and right away, largely because someone could actually come to our desk and fix things. The Romania deal was a disaster. It's not that Romanians are stupid - far from it; it's that it's a lot more difficult to troubleshoot an issue from 5000 miles away than it is when you're sitting in front of the computer having problems. Then this bean counter probably got accolades and a big bonus, all the while actually COSTING the company more money in lost productivity. We have since switched back. Unfortunately, the company has already taken a number of other cost cutting measures that look good on paper, but have already started to backfire. They will not learn, they are only interested in the short term gain. Companies need more forward thinking leaders, but when CEO's get golden parachutes while driving companies into bankruptcy, it doesn't happen.
So... long story short, it is indeed valuable actually having people here. And no H1B visas needed - none of the fired tech support people were H1B, and they didn't need to be.
Had a similar reply - wanted to put an exclamation point on your rewrite of point 3. We are the customers of the ISP, we pay for the bandwidth, we should be able to decide how to use it. Period. If that's Netflix or Hulu, so be it.
Except for point four, your requests are impossible. When the net is busy, it's busy. We all get filtered through bottlenecks at some point. What would be better is if they had to advertise average speeds, and include peak and non-peak hours, so that consumers would get a much fairer assessment of what they're buying into.
For me the issue of net-neutrality is that content being pulled by your customers should not be restricted, for any reason. Netflix is NOT Comcast's customer, I am - and if I choose to use the bandwidth I paid for by watching Netflix, Comcast shouldn't be able to restrict, throttle, or charge Netflix for it. But otherwise, the net neutrality laws go too far, and I think it's fair enough for companies like AT&T and T-Mobile to offer free streaming for services as long as they don't block or throttle other services. If you're paying for X GB per month, then it's ridiculous to complain that a service you like counts against that quota just because some services don't. Either take the free shit from your phone company or don't, it's your decision.
Some people actually feel responsibility towards the country that made them successful, and feel it's a civic duty. Of course, nobody like that has actually won a public office for nearly 200 years. Well... not a federal office, anyway. I'm sure there's a mayor or city councilperson somewhere that actually feels it's their duty to serve the people.
Nobody has to "justify" a Trump win, that's the problem with all the liberals going ape-shit over his victory. You can explain it by virtue of the fact that in key districts people disliked Trump less than they disliked Clinton. It didn't require sexism, and democrats gerrymander just as badly as republicans. Very few people are happy Trump is president. Very few people would have been happy if Clinton was president. The balance had to tip in somebody's favor.
Because there's gluten intolerant, and then there's gluten sensitive. Few people are actually gluten intolerant. More people are sensitive (and a lot don't even know that's why they feel terrible, bloated, gassy or whatnot after eating).
I don't get it either. It's not even a matter of give-and-take with respect to privacy, it's "here, take all my privacy NOW! I don't need anything worthwhile in return! Just take it!"
The applications are easier, the financial aid applications are ridiculous. After doing FAFSA, many of these top-tier schools are asking for more intrusive information than you can imagine, including what savings we have for other children and having to estimate what our income and taxes will be for the next year and the year after. I was getting infuriated with my son's forms, had to dig out old tax records, my wife is self-employed, but doesn't technically own a company (freelance), but they wouldn't accept that as an answer... the financial aid forms take 10x longer to fill out. This might be a great reason why so few poor people are doing them. One of the forms even wanted my voter registration number and date I applied for it. WTF?
That's BS; most people pirate stuff because they don't want to pay, plain and simple, and for everyone that insists it's only to "try" content, and that they buy it if it's good, they represent a tiny fraction of people, and 99% of the ones claiming it are f#@kling liars.
I wasn't suggesting the primary factor in these government contracts wasn't low-balling, but part of the low-balling is using current land value for some undeveloped piece of property that nobody wants because it's not near anything without any attempt to compensate for the fact the value will skyrocket once the project is approved (or even announced, at which point the "estimate" is already complete). "Part of" the low-balling - a pretty minor part, but still there.
Not really - as soon as they announce the project (with the current spending estimates), all the property along the route immediately increases in value.
Here in GA they were going to build a "Northern Arc," to complement the the I285 by-pass that circles around Atlanta. It would by-pass the city even farther away, as the metro area has grown way beyond the original by-pass. Anyway, the corrupt a-holes in charge at the time bought the land that would be near the exits... and then announced the plan about where the highway would run.
In an all-too-infrequent bout of sanity, the voters elected a new governor who immediately stopped the program.
Too bad that doesn't happen more often. But yes, I agree with an earlier poster - whatever the government says it will cost, you need to at least triple it, but expect it to be even higher.
What really bothers me is the politicians at the federal level are not subject to insider trading rules dealing with companies they are examining (either for contracts, or looking to sanction them for violations of something).
It sounds like the survey asked if you had a bad customer service experience in the last year. I have. The year started out good enough - they told me my service was being upgraded to 75Mbs without any cost to me; they'd upgrade my modem (I was renting from them), and wouldn't have to do anything else, all I had to do was log in and request the service, so I did. They said I'd get a ship notification for the new modem within 7 (or 10, I forget) business days.
A month later I checked the status and they said I submitted for it, and they said I'd receive a ship notification within 7 days. Then again a month later. So I went and bought a supported modem, called up, and the operator at that point helped get me up and running pretty painlessly, and I was up to 90Mbs peak.
Now, if I got a survey asking if I had a bad customer service problem, what should I respond? Their system for upgrading was terrible - I had to do it on my own. But that's not all - I decided to drop DirecTV and just get basic cable in order to save money, since I was getting internet from Comcast anyway. That was a f@#king nightmare. Not only calls, but I ended up going to the customer service center a half dozen times in addition to spending hours on the phone.
I also think a lot of people have gone into to programming, but weren't really interested in it - like a lot of engineers in the 60s and 70s, they were told this is where the money is going to be, so that's where the went. Then when they got there they discovered they didn't really like it, or couldn't find any specialty because they weren't really all that interested.
The person in question here seems the same way. Programming is not an island - you apply programming to something, and then you get good at that. I liked games and computer graphics, so that's where I applied myself, and I didn't just do what I had to in college, I went off on my own and learned things, contributed to the graphics programming news groups (yes, a long time ago, now there are other means to discuss things with people); wrote a lot of demo programs, created a website that showed off images and movies I generated with my code (and put links to it in my resume and email correspondence), programatically, and had a job offer to do graphics before the graduation ceremony. I've been here over 20 years; my job has morphed around a bit, but I'm still doing computer graphics and still love my job.
But because I was passionate about it, I became a very good programmer overall, and had job offers doing programming in fields I wasn't particularly interested in (I interviewed because hey, I was graduating and knew I would need a job somewhere). I would gladly have worked doing some database programming or something to pay the bills while I kept looking for something involved with graphics.... I've already had this discussion with my wife, as I've made my position somewhat unique, but I've lasted through round after round of layoffs over the past 15 years - I'd do anything and not whine about it; I'd just keep looking in the field that I want the whole time.
Not only that, but Hollywood doesn't even discriminate based on age, they discriminate based on how old someone appears to be, so knowing or publishing the dates has zero effect.
Yes, you can make that argument because your view is consistent with mine, as I've said all along. We're not talking about abandoned works, trademarks, or patents. We're talking about warnings not affecting piracy of new movies.
Yes, "just" entertainment - clearly not a necessity. And I'm not going to debate it with you - you either believe in IP (I do), or you don't, and if you believe people have the right to their property (I do) then you must believe it's a violation of their rights to take it without their permission, and like any other property we, as a society, protect those rights. You make it out like Disney and Fox and all the huge companies are the only winners here, but copyright protects the little guys, too.
To quote TFS: "In September, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that made the use of ransomware a crime, essentially a form of extortion." The topic says that the law "finally makes ransomware illegal," but the law makes it a "form of" extortion.... my question stands, how was it NOT extortion before?
It doesn't matter if DRM isn't justifiable unless you want to argue that two wrongs make a right.
I claim that stuff pirating things which should be long out of copyright, or for which there is no apparent owner is entirely justified.
I'm not going to argue with you about that. Look again at the topic of the thread - it's piracy warnings vs. box office revenue - that's movies that are in theaters RIGHT NOW, not the first print of Gone with the Wind. I do think copyright terms are far too long - thank Disney and Sonny Bono for that; I do think they ought to be challenged and made more reasonable, but it's still ultimately just entertainment, and there's a reason I'm limiting my views on this subject to simple entertainment - and recent entertainment. There's never, ever, an excuse to "pirate" "Manos: Hands of Fate." You don't need it; you don't need Star Wars; there's no valid justification for copyright infringement in these cases.
90 years is a limited time. A very long limit, but still a limit. The founding fathers, on this and many other topics, should have been more clear. While I agree it's far too long, it's not an argument in favor of pirating. Since that's the topic at hand, that's why I make the comments I've been making. You're taking it too personally.
But the issue isn't streaming on android, it's accessing the DVD mailing service from an android app - they only made it for Apple. Nothing to do with streaming.
I don't work for any movie theaters, I promise you.
1: I know. People like you have justified violating the rights of others for too long for me to convince you otherwise... I've heard all the excuses why someone needs their movie now, in the format they demand, for free, and it's all good. It doesn't make me mad; the lack of respect for others makes me sad. Oh well, though, I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on the issue. I simplified my explanation for brevity, but it's not just computers and operating systems, but a lot of other technical equipment (mostly video related). They can't tell me why, when I select source A and destination B on our video router that I'm not seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing. But in the one case I had at my computer, it was not so much the computer, but one of our systems not accepting my password. I personally didn't have any issues in which them logging in would have helped.
I work for a rather large (and here nameless) entertainment company. They tried off-shoring our technical support to Romania. Our various sub-companies make a very good profit, year after year - as much of the entertainment industry, we generally weather bad economies better than most because people fall back to less expensive forms of entertainment like TV and movies rather than concerts or vacations. Why did the bean counters feel like it wasn't enough? I don't know.... but looking at numbers on paper is far different than what happens in reality.
Yes, our tech support was expensive - but responsive, fast, taking care of issues correctly the first time and right away, largely because someone could actually come to our desk and fix things. The Romania deal was a disaster. It's not that Romanians are stupid - far from it; it's that it's a lot more difficult to troubleshoot an issue from 5000 miles away than it is when you're sitting in front of the computer having problems. Then this bean counter probably got accolades and a big bonus, all the while actually COSTING the company more money in lost productivity. We have since switched back. Unfortunately, the company has already taken a number of other cost cutting measures that look good on paper, but have already started to backfire. They will not learn, they are only interested in the short term gain. Companies need more forward thinking leaders, but when CEO's get golden parachutes while driving companies into bankruptcy, it doesn't happen.
So... long story short, it is indeed valuable actually having people here. And no H1B visas needed - none of the fired tech support people were H1B, and they didn't need to be.
Had a similar reply - wanted to put an exclamation point on your rewrite of point 3. We are the customers of the ISP, we pay for the bandwidth, we should be able to decide how to use it. Period. If that's Netflix or Hulu, so be it.
Except for point four, your requests are impossible. When the net is busy, it's busy. We all get filtered through bottlenecks at some point. What would be better is if they had to advertise average speeds, and include peak and non-peak hours, so that consumers would get a much fairer assessment of what they're buying into.
For me the issue of net-neutrality is that content being pulled by your customers should not be restricted, for any reason. Netflix is NOT Comcast's customer, I am - and if I choose to use the bandwidth I paid for by watching Netflix, Comcast shouldn't be able to restrict, throttle, or charge Netflix for it. But otherwise, the net neutrality laws go too far, and I think it's fair enough for companies like AT&T and T-Mobile to offer free streaming for services as long as they don't block or throttle other services. If you're paying for X GB per month, then it's ridiculous to complain that a service you like counts against that quota just because some services don't. Either take the free shit from your phone company or don't, it's your decision.
Some people actually feel responsibility towards the country that made them successful, and feel it's a civic duty. Of course, nobody like that has actually won a public office for nearly 200 years. Well... not a federal office, anyway. I'm sure there's a mayor or city councilperson somewhere that actually feels it's their duty to serve the people.
Nobody has to "justify" a Trump win, that's the problem with all the liberals going ape-shit over his victory. You can explain it by virtue of the fact that in key districts people disliked Trump less than they disliked Clinton. It didn't require sexism, and democrats gerrymander just as badly as republicans. Very few people are happy Trump is president. Very few people would have been happy if Clinton was president. The balance had to tip in somebody's favor.
Because there's gluten intolerant, and then there's gluten sensitive. Few people are actually gluten intolerant. More people are sensitive (and a lot don't even know that's why they feel terrible, bloated, gassy or whatnot after eating).
I don't get it either. It's not even a matter of give-and-take with respect to privacy, it's "here, take all my privacy NOW! I don't need anything worthwhile in return! Just take it!"
That's all I have - no investments besides my 401k, no other property besides my house... WTF do they need my voter registration for?
The applications are easier, the financial aid applications are ridiculous. After doing FAFSA, many of these top-tier schools are asking for more intrusive information than you can imagine, including what savings we have for other children and having to estimate what our income and taxes will be for the next year and the year after. I was getting infuriated with my son's forms, had to dig out old tax records, my wife is self-employed, but doesn't technically own a company (freelance), but they wouldn't accept that as an answer... the financial aid forms take 10x longer to fill out. This might be a great reason why so few poor people are doing them. One of the forms even wanted my voter registration number and date I applied for it. WTF?
That's BS; most people pirate stuff because they don't want to pay, plain and simple, and for everyone that insists it's only to "try" content, and that they buy it if it's good, they represent a tiny fraction of people, and 99% of the ones claiming it are f#@kling liars.
I wasn't suggesting the primary factor in these government contracts wasn't low-balling, but part of the low-balling is using current land value for some undeveloped piece of property that nobody wants because it's not near anything without any attempt to compensate for the fact the value will skyrocket once the project is approved (or even announced, at which point the "estimate" is already complete). "Part of" the low-balling - a pretty minor part, but still there.
Not really - as soon as they announce the project (with the current spending estimates), all the property along the route immediately increases in value.
Here in GA they were going to build a "Northern Arc," to complement the the I285 by-pass that circles around Atlanta. It would by-pass the city even farther away, as the metro area has grown way beyond the original by-pass. Anyway, the corrupt a-holes in charge at the time bought the land that would be near the exits... and then announced the plan about where the highway would run.
In an all-too-infrequent bout of sanity, the voters elected a new governor who immediately stopped the program.
Too bad that doesn't happen more often. But yes, I agree with an earlier poster - whatever the government says it will cost, you need to at least triple it, but expect it to be even higher.
What really bothers me is the politicians at the federal level are not subject to insider trading rules dealing with companies they are examining (either for contracts, or looking to sanction them for violations of something).
I've had a problem with routers, but it turned out to be cheap power supplies. Replace the wall-wart with something compatible and worked just fine.
It sounds like the survey asked if you had a bad customer service experience in the last year. I have. The year started out good enough - they told me my service was being upgraded to 75Mbs without any cost to me; they'd upgrade my modem (I was renting from them), and wouldn't have to do anything else, all I had to do was log in and request the service, so I did. They said I'd get a ship notification for the new modem within 7 (or 10, I forget) business days.
A month later I checked the status and they said I submitted for it, and they said I'd receive a ship notification within 7 days. Then again a month later. So I went and bought a supported modem, called up, and the operator at that point helped get me up and running pretty painlessly, and I was up to 90Mbs peak.
Now, if I got a survey asking if I had a bad customer service problem, what should I respond? Their system for upgrading was terrible - I had to do it on my own. But that's not all - I decided to drop DirecTV and just get basic cable in order to save money, since I was getting internet from Comcast anyway. That was a f@#king nightmare. Not only calls, but I ended up going to the customer service center a half dozen times in addition to spending hours on the phone.
I also think a lot of people have gone into to programming, but weren't really interested in it - like a lot of engineers in the 60s and 70s, they were told this is where the money is going to be, so that's where the went. Then when they got there they discovered they didn't really like it, or couldn't find any specialty because they weren't really all that interested.
The person in question here seems the same way. Programming is not an island - you apply programming to something, and then you get good at that. I liked games and computer graphics, so that's where I applied myself, and I didn't just do what I had to in college, I went off on my own and learned things, contributed to the graphics programming news groups (yes, a long time ago, now there are other means to discuss things with people); wrote a lot of demo programs, created a website that showed off images and movies I generated with my code (and put links to it in my resume and email correspondence), programatically, and had a job offer to do graphics before the graduation ceremony. I've been here over 20 years; my job has morphed around a bit, but I'm still doing computer graphics and still love my job.
But because I was passionate about it, I became a very good programmer overall, and had job offers doing programming in fields I wasn't particularly interested in (I interviewed because hey, I was graduating and knew I would need a job somewhere). I would gladly have worked doing some database programming or something to pay the bills while I kept looking for something involved with graphics.... I've already had this discussion with my wife, as I've made my position somewhat unique, but I've lasted through round after round of layoffs over the past 15 years - I'd do anything and not whine about it; I'd just keep looking in the field that I want the whole time.
Not only that, but Hollywood doesn't even discriminate based on age, they discriminate based on how old someone appears to be, so knowing or publishing the dates has zero effect.
Yes, you can make that argument because your view is consistent with mine, as I've said all along. We're not talking about abandoned works, trademarks, or patents. We're talking about warnings not affecting piracy of new movies.
Yes, "just" entertainment - clearly not a necessity. And I'm not going to debate it with you - you either believe in IP (I do), or you don't, and if you believe people have the right to their property (I do) then you must believe it's a violation of their rights to take it without their permission, and like any other property we, as a society, protect those rights. You make it out like Disney and Fox and all the huge companies are the only winners here, but copyright protects the little guys, too.
To quote TFS: "In September, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that made the use of ransomware a crime, essentially a form of extortion." The topic says that the law "finally makes ransomware illegal," but the law makes it a "form of" extortion.... my question stands, how was it NOT extortion before?
It doesn't matter if DRM isn't justifiable unless you want to argue that two wrongs make a right.
I claim that stuff pirating things which should be long out of copyright, or for which there is no apparent owner is entirely justified.
I'm not going to argue with you about that. Look again at the topic of the thread - it's piracy warnings vs. box office revenue - that's movies that are in theaters RIGHT NOW, not the first print of Gone with the Wind. I do think copyright terms are far too long - thank Disney and Sonny Bono for that; I do think they ought to be challenged and made more reasonable, but it's still ultimately just entertainment, and there's a reason I'm limiting my views on this subject to simple entertainment - and recent entertainment. There's never, ever, an excuse to "pirate" "Manos: Hands of Fate." You don't need it; you don't need Star Wars; there's no valid justification for copyright infringement in these cases.
90 years is a limited time. A very long limit, but still a limit. The founding fathers, on this and many other topics, should have been more clear. While I agree it's far too long, it's not an argument in favor of pirating. Since that's the topic at hand, that's why I make the comments I've been making. You're taking it too personally.
But the issue isn't streaming on android, it's accessing the DVD mailing service from an android app - they only made it for Apple. Nothing to do with streaming.
I don't work for any movie theaters, I promise you.
1: I know. People like you have justified violating the rights of others for too long for me to convince you otherwise... I've heard all the excuses why someone needs their movie now, in the format they demand, for free, and it's all good. It doesn't make me mad; the lack of respect for others makes me sad. Oh well, though, I suppose.