Month: May 2014

I promised I’d write something about NBC’s interview with Eddie The Ops Guy.

The flippant answer is channeling Dennis Green, and that this is just a sweeps bit. (Guess Andy Fox chasing after cars ain’t workin’ anymore….) I’ve written about Eddie The Ops Guy a couple of times.

I found three decent reaction pieces on the interview.

• The first, from Howard Kurtz (Someone I used in college, and his coverage of the Clinton Impeachment. You know, college, that place the high school dropout Eddie has never even considered.)
• The Baltimore Sun
• And the best one from the New York Times.

The interview didn’t really answer much, but it did reconfirm my initial suspicions about the guy.

He’s a self-important douchenozzle.

I kept waiting for him to invoke the name of his lord and savior, RON PAUL, but he never did.

If you, fundamentally, have a problem with what the people you work for are doing, you quit. GTFO. If it’s so egregious, then you go to the authorities. You don’t steal things, then run off to places hostile for security.

If you really think you were defending American values, why are you so scared of allowing its systems of justice and redress to work?

I do, without reservation, despite my failing vision.

Went onto Google News this afternoon, and saw a new story about people I knew from previous jobs. Three are already going to Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison. Yesterday, another was indicted.

I seem to recall being lectured by a Minesweeper Expert about how nobody ever would end up in serious trouble for merely “unethical” behavior. “IT’S NOT A MORAL ISSUE!”

Really? Seriously?

I suppose I should feel somewhat vindicated, but I don’t. Even with, now, a fourth example, my take on the issue would be disregarded because I haven’t bought enough extra letters after my name.

Message received.

I hope you’ll get yours down the road. I also hope your cellmate(s) want to hear your treatise about the distinction between moral and ethical behavior.

It’s not as disturbing as 2G1C, but could be if you think about it enough.

I tweeted this earlier, and said I’d say more about it.

For the 1970s Business School Republicans, lots more immigrants and fresh STEM graduates means that they can drop wages as the labor pool expands.

For the paid-for Democrats, STEM keeps graying college professors employed until they finally decide they want to quit, teaching outdated technology and methods for a ton of money. The immigration side of it doesn’t enter the equation, there, though, because pretty much everybody in their base would be negatively affected by lower salaries. No worries, though, since all the new folks will come vote Democrat, anyway.

Still, the larger point is: what’s passing as STEM education really tends to teach nothing useful. Ask an MCSE to explain how email works. Yes, you can do it without Microsoft Exchange. In fact, it’s a fuckton more secure if you omit Exchange. You also don’t need to buy an aftermarket appliance to sit between every SMTP server and the Internet to prevent spam. Really.

You can communicate over SMTP using telent if you know how it works. Bubuhbut there’s no more HYPTERTERMINAL, ANYMORE.

*HEADDESK*

SMDH over the responses I’ve been seeing to the FCC’s Net Neutereality rules.

The three Democrats on the panel supported the rule, while the two token Republicans opposed it.

Ultimately, it says that providers can do whatever the hell they want. If they’re being paid by content providers for preferred access, so be it.

Cluestick: they already had the authority to do this. The FCC ruling just codifies it. Had the FCC ruled the other way, the big telecommunications companies would have filed suit over the rules. These new rules are akin to a state government giving permission to a neighboring state to do something they’re already permitted to do. The Virginia General Assembly could pass a bill saying it’s okay for North Carolinians to root for Duke. (We’ll set aside, for a moment, the fact that Duke sucks, and if you have the misfortune of residing in North Carolina, you could root for something a little better, like UNC or NC State….)

Congress could have given the FCC the power to regulate in 2009-2010, but they chose not to. Even if they had gotten a NN bill through the House in 2010, it likely would have died in the Senate at the hands of people like Mark “Nextel” Warner.

Since the bill never got to him, he can run and say he supports it. O.o And the NoVA Hipster Democrats will totally believe him for saying it. (And ignore the fact that come election day, he’ll have passed only two yearly budgets during his six-year term.)

On a somewhat-related note, interesting Sweeps reporting from WTKR about getting rid of cable. Naturally, they omitted the part about how the broadcasters are actually charging the cable companies money to carry a freely-available signal, but, this is what my wife and I tried to do last winter during my last period of goverment-inflicted unemployment. FORWARD. Unfortunately, that experiment didn’t work as planned to the incompetence of the local phone company, and its wonderful “employees.”

I’m getting a bit off-point; the reason the FCC can’t do anything about providers giving priority (or throttling) to content providers isn’t because of Republicans in the House. The Hipster Dems would prefer despotic action to get whatever it is that they claim to want. Nobody in Washington is willing to go through the processes to do things the right way.

It’s sad.

Much like what I’ve faced lately with my work prospects, doing the wrong thing faster doesn’t make it the right thing. That you’re authoritative, either by your office, or by the store-bought letters after your name, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to abide by the processes in place to get things done.

Listen, I understand that you’re awesome. I get it. You still have to follow the rules. (And that’s why I’m not linking to my new stuff. 1. It’s not ready for public-consumption. 2. I haven’t finished the necessary paperwork to make it legitimate. So it goes….)

when do they finally land on small and mid-sized businesses?

How many small and mid-sized companies are doing things in-house that could be done cheaper and more efficiently by a network utility company? (Note the phrasology there…)

For a few years now, I’ve contemplated how to send Nick Burns back to selling the latest Android devices at the Verizon Wireless store. Where I was getting hung up is that as my business idea succeeded, the customer base would almost disappear.

I’m not sure that’s that important, now. Yes, there is opportunity in transition operations, but there’s a lot of messes to clean up that Nick Burns, MCP+, Net+, Sec+, CCNA, RHCE, etc. created.

After the transition work, there’ll be places where you’d need to convince the 1970/80s MBA that he doesn’t need to run everything in-house to be zomgsekur.

What’s the 4191 on Win XP?

I’ve gotten probably five phone calls from some Asian company (I’m guessing India or Pakistan) about my PC being infected with spyware.

The senior technician wanted me to download a program called “teamview” so he could diagnose my problem.

I asked for their information. Here is what he gave me:

Computer Maintenance Company
Frank Rogers
800.778.8162

Call and ask for Martin.

The 800notes info on this number.

Since it appears that barfing out WHOIS information willy-nilly might get me in trouble, I’ll leave this so others can look it up, themselves.

http://www.teamviewer.com
http://www.ammyy.com/en/

I called the 800 number Frank Ro/d/gers gave me, and got a completely different company name.

I really don’t know how much of their time I wasted, butl…..

“What version of Microsoft Windows is my PC running?”
“Open Internet Explorer, and go to…”
“I don’t have Internet Explorer>’
“…”

I think I’ve managed a promise that they won’t again call my cell number. I’m skeptical.

In line with what I was bitching about last week, my friend Mike posted this to Facebook. (I met Mike through Orkut, which, amazingly, Google has let survive.  I guess it’s still big in Brazil and India….  I’ll post this to G+, but I don’t know who’ll notice., or how long it’ll be there)

Much like the endless collapsing malls, this is something else where nobody will assign responsibility for allowing it to collapse.

My wife read me a story yesterday from a British publication about how bad the bridges into New York City were getting.  That’s been news in Tidewater for years.

I’m starting to think the world actually did end sometime around 1994.  Nobody got the memo, thouh.