Meanwhile... On the road...

After getting the part about the music ranting, time to put in some good old fashion Road Rage on the net.

As someone once said, and this was coming from a Southern Californian, "So Cal people don't know how to drive in the rain." Which is true... We have idiots who drive without the lights on, so obviously they think just cause they can see other cars in a hazy mist, that people with windows spotted with water and a misty air, can see them without their headlights on.

Come on, So Cal People... Wake up. The law states you should have your headlights on during FOGGY DAYS as well as RAINY DAYS. There is a reason for that, especially you people in your SILVER like cars.

One of my other rants is just plain stupid people driving out there. Like people who do last minute "Oh crap, exit is here!" and do sharp lane changes. Or people who make turns in lanes they aren't suppose to. If my old DMV instructor saw you people out on the road doing that, he would be yelling at you and throwing things at you. Me, I just call you *bleepin* moron. Cause, in all honesty, you are.

The cops may not be out there to catch you, but honestly, you shouldn't be doing that even if the cops aren't there. You aren't saving time, you are going to get someone killed who can't react, all in the effort to 'save time' for your stupidity.

Do the world a favor... GET OFF THE ROAD. I will admit, I speed a little, I want to save time, but when I make a mistake like miss my exit or my turn... I don't try to fix it by doing something even more stupid like make sharp lane changes or turn where I am not suppose to.

Remember, the best thing to do is to show up late than not show up at all because you got in an accident or got someone else in an accident trying to save time.

More on Tron Legacy

Yup... Talking more about Tron, this time about the music. I decided to get the music and start listening to it. Some of it I liked, other parts, not so much.

So I did a little reading up and see a few reviews where people were condemning Daft Punk for not doing well with the music.

Well, to be honest, the Music alone is not going to stand out... Especially after I started looking at some of Daft Punk's other stuff, like "All around the world" or "Technologic". And to be honest, the music for Tron Legacy isn't like the norm for Daft Punk's earlier style.

The problem is, style changes over time. But also the fact that the music fits more for the movie, not just the over all Daft Punk's usual ways.

When I listen to some of the songs that one reviewer states where they did a good job in mixing Synth with Strings. To be honest, I also try to picture the scene or the mood that the music goes with it.

I want to point to another person, Frank Klepacki... Not many people know of his name at all, but those who have played the Command and Conquer series or even Westwood's Blade Runner game... He is the one who composed the majority of the music.

One I enjoyed the most from Frank is him doing 'Hellmarch' Which has been redone again by him and then someone retouched it slight for their 3rd Red Alert game. The point here, however, is the music and the mood. The reviewers tried to fit the music to the Artists. And to be honest, the artists made the music to fit the scene, just as the other composers they speak of, like John Williams. Some of these scores are composed to fit the mood of the scene.

While I admit I would have loved to hear a longer version of Derezzed to get psyched in the mood, same with End of Line, I started checking out some of the remixes and note, remixes also are fueled by people inspired by the music composed.

Sometimes, you just can't be 'purist' to things.

Tron Legacy...

Well, it has been a while since I have written, partly due to having to find work again and then getting work, dealing with WoW Cataclysm.

But what I want to write about is Tron Legacy.

Just to put it in perspective, I was a kid when I saw Tron. In fact, I loved it to death right next to Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and other Sci-Fi stuff. And like some, I was anticipating the movie to see what they had in mind with it.

Of course, Ebert posted a scathing review of it... Boring as hell and probably find a beer label more entertaining.

Well, to be honest, it is a Disney Movie. It wasn't setup to be a major adult movie, hell, the Pirate series hasn't exactly been one to be one for a lot of adults either, although it did try to stay true to the pirate motiff and didn't exactly follow general 'morals' either.

But back to Tron Legacy.

One of the things I will state, this post will have some spoilers, so if you don't want to read the spoilers, stop reading. If you are one who doesn't care or read Wikipedia entry about it which probably has the plot distilled already...

But one thing that was interesting, and probably ignored by some, is something we should be aware of. In Tron Legacy, Kevin Flynn, one of the heroes from the Original Tron movie, sought to create the 'perfect system'. And for those people who are not Tron Fans, probably didn't look to get the comics that sort of lead up to the movie, one of which sets up what happen when Kevin Flynn disappeared that fateful night. It is retold by Kevin to Sam, but there was a little more to it.

Clu, the movie's Villain, is a second generation program. Created by Kevin Flynn to 'take his place' according to the graphic novel. As Kevin was running Encom, and in the graphic novel, he had a wife who was having his child. He wanted to spend more time with his wife as his daily Encom Business and his work in the Grid was making him constantly late. In the Grid, there were problems that Tron and he could not keep up, mostly 'bugs' in the system. Clu was created to help build the perfect system that Flynn was striving for.

However, the problem with 'perfect' is that 'perfect' is relative to the person. And while Tron makes 'programs' seem like people within the computer, the inevitable problem with a directive is how does one define 'perfect'.

Now I will point to Babylon 5 for a second... Jeffrey Sinclair mentioned to the weapon that was to 'destroy anything that was not pure Ikaran (Or whatever the name of the race was)' But he pointed out what is 'pure'... There is always someone who is too short, too tall. Too dark, too light... The definition of pure is blurred.

Perfection is the same problem. In both the graphic novel, the game and the movie, the introduction of ISOs (Isometric Algorhythms) are programs that were not created by Flynn. They are programs that evolved from the system. Clu's directive believes that this disrupts the Perfection of the system. They were not part of the original system.

And here is where the moral of the movie points out. The corruption of the 'good intention' that most might not understand. People driven by purpose, for the 'good', will be corrupted into doing something that is no longer for the good but for the self interest.

Clu becomes like the evil that Flynn once fought in the original Tron. He takes programs of the grid and repurposes them, as he cannot create programs, he takes their 'function' and changes them to something else, in this case to make them into an army. In the beginning of the movie, we hear Flynn's speech about how the computer world is where our destiny is... This is echoed by Clu, where he wishes to 'perfect' the User world. All of this is driven around the fact that when the ISOs come to the Grid and how Flynn is in awe of it and focusing his attentions on them and then almost literally abandoning Clu to do his job while taking care of his son.

Like many other stories, it shows how the creation given the task to do the most difficult, only to be ignored and never appreciated. And much like our own history, Clu also twists it so that he makes others 'hate' or take down what he considers imperfect, which is the ISOs.

Does this sound familiar from our own history?

Now, again, the plot wasn't really 'great', but then again, depending on how you look at it, the movie does point out something interesting. The duality of man. Just as in the first movie, Flynn talks to Tron saying, "You know, you run around doing what you think you are suppose to be doing?" "That is how it is for us programs." "Well, I hate to break it to you, Tron, but that is how it is with Users as well." The good and evil in all people. Clu was made with good intentions, trying to do good, but in the end, became evil, corrupted and focused on the wrong principles, just as many others have in the past and will in the future.

I am sure many won't care about one possible meaning of the story. The visuals were pretty good, although not so sure about the 3D effects if you went to see the 3D showing of it. But remember this, there could be a deeper point in the movie, of course, my interpretation of it might be reaching a bit.

The joys of certain programs... And people...

Well, I must show some disdain for some programs... Such as McAfee... To add to my trials and tribulations, I was forced to get a new laptop, in this case, a Dell Inspirion 17R. It is a nice laptop, works reasonably well. What I have disdain for McAfee is how I tried to uninstall it, it didn't uninstall nicely.

McAfee tries very hard to help in keeping viruses out, however, it left itself on there for vbscript. When you have programs making use of vbscript and McAfee leaves its registry information in there, you can't run vbscript without making sure you get a program remover cleaner to fix the entries it changes or leaves behind because the installer doesn't de-install cleanly.

Lately, a lot of programs have become very sloppy. Programs designed for computers with more than necessary memory and CPU requirements. Not surprising as nowadays, the need to write programs faster takes priority over programs done properly. The old way of writing programs have become rather unnecessary as programming tools are put out to make things easier.

The real problem is, today's programmers and people who make the modern code these days never consider the 'idiot factor'.

The 'idiot factor' is situations where some one will do something idiotic that will make a program break down. Most programmers assume, "No one would do this..." And a hacker will go, "Hey... I can do this and use it to bypass something."

Sad thing is, a lot of people also fail this, as they assume people won't know your password or what not, and use very simple or easy passwords that they can remember, but fail to understand certain password security and the need for strong passwords as well.

Inception - The Movie

People have liken the movie to "The Matrix".

Well, I have to say, this is not the case. While yes, The Matrix has one person defying the machine's reality, changing things to his liking, but it is actually more bending the Machine's reality. Even ignoring the last two movies which people found to be sort of an attempt at the Messiah level... I have to say that Inception leans a little more to the following Movies:

Dark City
Dreamscape
The Thirteenth Floor
Total Recall

Dreamscape - Old 80s movie featuring Dennis Quaid where people delve into people's dreams. The Cell sort of touches that, but focuses more on Comatosed people, Dreamscape focused on psychics delving into normal people's dreams, then going into the fantastic.

Dark City - A surreal Sci-Fi Story about aliens changing people's dreams and perceptions.

The Thirteenth Floor - A virtual reality upon Virtual reality... This one is closer to what Inception is in concept.

Total Recall - Yes... I point to Total Recall because one of the things they kind of harp on it is "Is this a dream or is this reality?"

Well, not to go too far into the movie to ruin it for people, I will say this:

This is not a Matrix Rehash. Yes, there is the whole slow motion stuff, but not the "dodging of bullets". No super power play. The movie will make you wonder though at the end. I won't say more than that.

I would recommend the movie. The concept is interesting, it combines some of the elements of the movies I mentioned. The style is also pretty interesting as well.

Speaking of different ways of tackling problems...

One of the things I found interesting is one of the popular Free Mailclients, Mozilla Thunderbird, has made me wonder how 'good' it is. And to be honest... I find it short on some things.

Now I know many hate Microsoft. I will also admit, I'm sort of a Microsoft user, with Windows and all, but I do have to harp that Windows' problems stem mostly from bad programming, not well thought out issues (Which is par for the course for any program rushed out.) and just plain Borg of Microsoft assimilation of various things and ideas.

One thing I have to say about how Outlook handles mail, though, it has its good points and bad points.

One of the annoying bad points is how it handles IMAP servers. I have noticed with some IMAP servers, it tends to have some issues on updating IMAP flags at times or in cases of very large mailboxes, the lag time it takes for it to deal with mail. That and the fact that it wants to cache mail, so large mailboxes... Be prepared to watch your system crawl at times while Outlook tries to sync large number of messages for the first time. (Trust me... It's like watching paint dry.)

Thunderbird isn't necessarily as bad, but it does have an annoying bad habit with archiving. Such as... Its concept of archiving... You pull down e-mail from the server, and save it in some file on your computer. Unless you took the time to specify where your 'Local Folders' are... You will be hard pressed to know where they are if you want to save them somewhere else. And what more, the fun thing about it is, you won't be able to make reasonable organized file folders, cause each folder is considered a 'file' and if you have 'subfolders' those create a folder of the main folder and files for the folders containing messages.

What more, if you want to bounce between mail clients, IE: You want to take mail you archive from Outlook or from Thunderbird... Your options from outlook to thunderbird are lots. Thunderbird to Outlook - Practically trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Now, where I work, my section will be moving to another group's Exchange server, mostly because this other group will take over the IT position at my section. That's great, I wanted to move people to use an Exchange server for a few reasons. Only one problem... Majority of the users are on Thunderbird with YEARS worth of data in their Local Folder.

Well, doing a little research, and the fact that we were doing mail through an IMAP server, the solution to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook had to be looked into. What I found funny was the group who we were joining to, their research into it was a little behind. I did this research a little before I found out about this change, mostly because on of the division's heads was getting tired of how Thunderbird handled her archiving, usually resulting instability because of slow reaction with the IMAP server and her getting impatient due to it seeming like it froze up.

My solution was taking the mail from the Thunderbird client and uploading it to an IMAP server, in my case, I had to upload it to another one since our mail IMAP server has limits and years worth of data can sometimes be in the gigabyte range.

Well, I can tell you, free IMAP servers you put on some piddly desktop machine with some SQL server on it... Painfully slow, especially pulling back down on Outlook. Never want to do it again, especially with large data.

What I found interesting, was how the other group wanted to import this stuff. Similar idea, but strangely enough, wanted to also go through a Macintosh Mail Client, which made no sense to me. Of course, they also claimed they never worked with Thunderbird. So I told them, from my experience with Thunderbird, and with Exchange... Exchange has IMAP capability. While I lacked the ability to setup my own Exchange server to test the idea out, I felt that having Thunderbird making a connection to the Exchange Server via IMAP, is more likely to be faster than trying to do it some other way.

And given the fact we were planning on going to Outlook and on an Exchange server, wouldn't it be more prudent to have the users push their email archive first onto Exchange and then bring it back down on Outlook's PST folders, especially lacking any nice tool to do thunderbird to outlook pst conversions.

That idea is getting adopted for the transition, which is cool. Of course, now Mozilla just needs to be willing to allow their users to archive off mail in a different way, one that is a bit more user friendly.

VBScript Programming...

So... At my current job, I took it upon myself to do a little learning of VB Script for Logins.

I do a search, and one of the links is to Microsoft's Technet, namely, this one:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758918%28WS.10%29.aspx

It helped me figure out how to make a VBScript, but one of the more annoying things was... The script was semi-generic and kind of assumed a few things... Things that could go HORRIBLY HORRIBLY wrong, with little explanation.

For example:

Set ADSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")
Set CurrentUser = GetObject("LDAP://" &
ADSysInfo.UserName)
strGroups = LCase(Join(CurrentUser.MemberOf))

I get this part. Create a nice little Object and assign it to ADSysInfo, create another Object that gets User object info and set it to CurrentUser.

But here is the twist.

strGroups... It's an object. You use the function LCase, which puts everything in a STRING into lower case. What throws everything off is the Join function.

The Join function expects certain information, in this case, an Array and it takes an array of things and joins it into one string.

Little does the explanation of this page does is tell you what CurrentUser.MemberOf returns. In fact, I had to find it in other webpages. What happens is that it can kick out 3 different kinds of answers.

1) If the user is not part of any groups, just Domain Users, which is also a default, catch-all group for a user in a Domain. CurrentUser.MemberOf returns "". That's right... A null string.

2) If the user is in ONE group, other than Domain Users... It returns a STRING of that group.

3) If the user is in more than one group, other than Domain Users... It returns an ARRAY of those groups.

So... This part wasn't really well thought out, at least, not logically.

So we come up to the next interesting part that I found entertaining on how many programmers of this tackled this.

Many used a lot of methods, that I felt was a bit over the top. My solution to how to handle this three tier issue was to do the following:

If IsArray(CurrentUser.MemberOf) then
strGroups = LCase(Join(CurrentUser.MemberOf))
Else
strGroups = LCase(CurrentUser.MemberOf)
End If

It took me a bit of digging to find a function that could simplify the whole "Is it an Array or Not?" part. A lot of the other solutions seemed to want to do something more elaborate or complex when it could just be done this way. And believe me, do a search on this, you will find some that seem to want to do a lot more than just this to simply get the groups in something that is a little more usable and overly complex.

Now I will admit, I didn't exactly make my own login script any more 'simpler', but then again, every place has their own way of handling things, my job is no different with that regard as well. Also, I won't claim to be a VBscript expert... I just find it interesting that out of all the posts I saw, a lot of them focused on a very complex, overly coded way to do something that I finally figured out how to do with one simple function and broke it down to a simple if then else type setup.

Course, it could also be that the IsArray function came a little later on some of the posts, but then again, different ways to figure out problems.

Why the hoopla on Real Name Posting...

This week, there was a massive player response to Blizzard's intentions of having Real Names be part of the player's posting which you will see here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1

If you took a few hours, (Yes, hours) to read some of it... A fair deal of people have had issues with it, myself included. There were some who felt there was nothing wrong with it.

Their reasoning: It makes the trolls fear or not post on the forums.

Well, here is the thing. Yes, anonymity has 'empowered' people to be jerks, feeling like they can do whatever they want without repercussions of retribution. However, the Real Name associated with posting introduces a new problem, one listed off with many people posting in that forum.

For instance, several of the players on that forum have mention the following concerns:

Being a Female (On a Gaming Forum)
Being a Minor
Being of a Minority Ethnicity
Having been Harassed
Have been stalked
Having been Hacked
Being Transgendered (In the game)

Many of you wonder, what do these things have to do with having your name on a forum?

Well, first off, let's point to the first two items, being either a Female or a Minor.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/06/predator-met-16/
http://exgamer.net/blog/?p=1314

These are two articles relating to Minors and one being a minor and a female. While real names are not in place, these incidents happen. The introduction of real names allow predators, stalkers and the like to find their targets easier.

The most common response to this concern, "You are overreacting." Unfortunately, the above is only a small sample of things found on the internet. The other thing to consider is the fact that there are numerous people who read forums that cater to minors, such as games, that allow sexual predators to seek minors. It happens all the time.

There are also people who have low impulse control. Case in point:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/04/01/2003248619

One could say, "It's the chinese... They aren't Americans..." Need I remind people that Columbine happened. I am not one to say games make people killers, as I am a gamer. But to say "It's someone else..." is not something we can say. Anyone out there can have their fit of rage, their snapping point. Having the name of another person, to help in tracking down a person down to do vile things... Things like this can happen.

Again, it isn't overreaction, but the necessity to protect people from others.

Now, there is a mention of the South Korean Law made back in 2009 about Real Names to help stop cyber-bullying. A couple of the articles I have read point to the necessity for the law. However there is something I noticed with the articles referencing the law.

On Youtube forums, the following came up:


I live and work in Korea but am an American. My user name is piriajeoshi, but my full real name, Allen Bruce Ray is on view in my profile. In the past couple of months, I noticed that every time I try to comment on videos or respond to comments on my own, I get this error message: "본인확인제로 인해 한국 국가 설정시 동영상/댓글 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 비활성화합니다. We have voluntarily disabled this functionality on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law." I searched HELP for a way to circumvent this and saw a post that suggested I change my country to United States. I did this, but it didn't help. I'm on a Korean IP. Is there now no way I can effectively use text to communicate with my subscribers or make comments? This is extremely frustrating!

Basically, South Korean law says that anyone signing up to a website with more than a certain number of members must officially verify their real name -- just putting it in a profile isn't enough, you actually need to produce ID

From this posting, the Username was not given as theirs, just in the profile they put in their Real Name. The clarification given for the law, however, is that for the user, it wasn't JUST the name, but some verifiable proof that the person is who they say they are. IE: Some form of verifiable ID to link your name properly to the account posting.

This is what YouTube and Google viewed as a breach of personal privacy. It required 'more' information to 'prove' who you were, not just the name. And the reasoning for this is to prevent protesters and cyber-criminals from posting anonymously, IE: without some form of 'proof' of who you were, especially if you abuse a system in such a way.

Now, this is something that has to be addressed and understood. I am not advocating that people should be completely anonymous, but at the same time, people should have the choice of what is shared. The proof of who you are should also be limited. This is for protection of the users, to avoid leaving people 'open' to elements that neither we nor the company who is hosting the forum, can control.

Now I do expect the company to give up information about users to the law when it is shown that the user in question is a danger to him/herself or to another user, however it there is no justification to sacrifice a user's real name to give a false sense of security for some, and open people to be singularly targeted.

High School of the Dead

So, it has been a while since I have posted, and now I have something to post to those who might actually read this.

High School of the Dead

I mention this little thing, as it is one of the subjects I enjoy, Anime/Manga. Just recently, Japan has put out the Anime for the Manga titled 'High School of the Dead' for people to check out.

Strangely enough, the Manga is not as popular as Naruto, by that, I mean, it is not out on a weekly basis as Naruto, one of Jump's more popular Manga or Bleach which is also another popular manga.

Synopsis - Well, we have all seen the Zombie Apocalypse movies, like all of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the rest of the Dead series... The silly 'Return of the Living Dead' series, even 'Shaun of the Dead'. High School of the Dead is, by no means, too different from these series, well, with the exception of the Return of the Living Dead was pretty bad to begin with.

The setting takes place in Japan, right around spring time, as the first Chapter and Episode both titled 'Spring of the Dead' lends to the title. The focus happens to be set on a School in the middle of the outbreak, 3 students fighting for their lives. We then flash back a little to the main character and the girl before the outbreak starts, setting up the scene for what happens next.

Suffice it to say, the focus of the series is about this variation of the Zombie Apocalypse, and of course, the authors of the series make no bones on saying it is limited to just Japan itself.

The reason why I mention this series is how the author tries to keep the series going, showing different sides of the situation and even putting the one thing Romero tended to show in his own series, how the world begins to fall apart and how people react to the situation.

Now this is not to say we all wouldn't react the same way or should be prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse, but it does show that sometimes, people have different rationalizations, or handle the situation in different ways.

Of course, as noticed in the manga and the anime's first episode, it does lend a lot of fan service for the male population, the gratuitous underwear flashing like crazy or the bountiful showing of female nudity which probably has given it some popularity among the males, despite its sporadic showing.

The one thing I can say, is that Max Brooks might be subtly impressed with this series, being the author of both 'Survival Guide to Zombie Attacks' and 'World War Z' in the world fashioned by this manga group, as his book, "World War Z" did relate stories of things during the Zombie Apocalypse, this even goes farther than that as well as farther than some of the snippets of the Romero movies.

Should the manga hit the US market, I highly recommend getting it if you are a 'Zombie' type fan.

Ding Dong Bosses.

Oh, that reminds me... I heard from one of my former co-workers about one of his more recent frustrations.

The No IT experienced boss decides to tell my co-worker that he needs to cut back on his overtime.

Well, that's all good and what not, I mean, with the economy not being so great and needing to cut back on spending... One of the better places to cut back on spending is to not encourage overtime.

Just one problem... When your boss is the one who decides to pile work after work... Ignoring things like "Hey, we need to research this before we can say this is working..." with time tables that are on the level of "I'm the customer and what I say is right!" expectations. You soon learn that the brain dead don't take reality into consideration.

The old military axiom of "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." This is due to the fact that any plan laid out assumes perfect conditions and the enemy doing exactly what you expect. And as noted with "Operation Market Garden" and the Battle of the Bulge in World War II... Plans like that don't always follow through what you think they will.

So back to the Mr "No IT Experience" IT director. He obviously didn't talk or understand the situation my former co-worker has to deal with. Which is no surprise. He never, once, bothered to understand the process. He never, once, bothered to communicate with other people.

Why? Because, he is like the puppy dog, wanting to make people think he is doing great for the company and telling people it can be done. And that is the problem today with a lot of companies. Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, and the left hand making promises it can't keep because he thinks the right hand can do it.

Again, I always say that people expect IT to pull stuff out of their butts like we can poop golden eggs. To be honest... Even the best of us can't do that. When you have no resources to do testing, or only production resources to test upon... You are playing with fire standing next to gasoline. And when you rush people to get it going with the belief you know what you are talking about but don't have the understanding or experience behind it... You are basically shooting yourself in the foot.

Suffice it to say, said IT director is getting demoted by the end of this month, from what I hear. In all honesty, I think the new president of the company should seriously review his decisions and consider asking him to "retire" from the company. He is young enough to find another job, but at this point, he has done quite enough damage in the year he has been with the company as the IT director that his future prospects at the company are at the end and should not continue.

So... How Anti-Virus Suites handle certain things.

I found something entertaining on a forum for one of the Anti-Virus programs out there.

AVG posted something in response to a person using their Free version of AVG. They consider Office Macro viruses "obsolete". By this, their solution for documents infected with the macro virus should either be deleted or the users who want to keep them, should clean the documents themselves, as the current version of Office Suite programs have protection against Macro Viruses as long as people keep the security high enough to block the execution of Macros.

This is great, but big draw back on this concept. The target audience their product is for cheap people... And most of them will also be non-technical people. Non-technical people who will look at you and go, "Buh?" as to how to do this.

As much as it is 'obsolete', people sometimes might want the program to clean it if it can. What if it was a bunch of old documents that have the virus? I mean, there are people who do have old files and heck, I have seen some people who have not activated anti-virus on their laptops cause they didn't know they had to.

Well, I can understand that a free AV solution isn't suppose to be fully featured, but I think in that same post, this is also how their paid version works. Yikes. I hope a lot of you people don't have old office files saved somewhere and need them again. Cause AVG won't help you with them.

The Law and Video Games...

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/violent-games-pc-games-downloads,news-6596.html

An interesting article, which I want to point out something very interesting:

The state's appeal argues that violent games should be classified in the same category as porn, and should apply the same legal consequences to parties who sell the "violent" material to minors.

I italicized the interesting point, and even BOLDED the one thing I find fairly hilarious.

Violent games should be classified in the same category as PORN...

Now hold on here... I grew up in the 80s and 90s. Witnessed the whole tirade about how Doom and the Basketball Diaries was the 'whole reason' the two boys went on a shooting spree in Columbine. I grew up playing games like Doom, Duke Nukem, and other violent games and I have hardly went out of my way to get a gun and want to shoot up where I work, or where I went to school out of rage because of some stupidity.

I grew up watching movies like Terminator, hell, even saw Tourist Trap when I was Young and scared crapless about it that I didn't want to touch certain things again for the longest time. Now I watch horror movies and Zombie Apocalypse movies without feeling nauseousness.

But the simple statement of regarding Violent games, which involves violence to human beings on the same level as PORN... Then let's consider how the ramifications of all this, shall we?

What should be on that list, besides games that also is 'pornographic', by this definition that is NOT Rated R currently, but fits all this.

Star Wars - An Epic Fantasy that has good guys SLICING OFF people's hands or body parts. Even a depiction of Darth Maul getting cut in two. People DYING from getting shot, and that is violent. What's it rating? PG to PG-13

Toy Story - No humans involved, but I heard one person who said, "Should I show this to my kid... He was pretty sensitive to scary things and there are some things in there he knows something bad is going to happen." And let's be honest... Anthropomorphized toys where some of them get blow up by Butch... That's pretty messed up for little kids.

Disney Animated Cartoon Movies in general - Where do I begin... Classic Sleeping Beauty, you have the prince fighting a dragon, Snow White, the Queen wanting Snow White Dead and again, the Prince fighting the Queen in her evil form. 101 Dalmatians, where Cruella DeVil wants to skin puppies for her fur fetish and we have anthropomorphized dogs once again. Alladin where again violence used on Jafar to win the day...

Here is one thing also in this article:

The "Governator," California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who coincidentally is in several older "violent" video games), told Reuters that he looks forward to the final Supreme Court ruling. "We have a responsibility to our kids and our communities to protect against the effects of games that depict ultra-violent actions, just as we already do with movies," he said.

I agree... We, not just the government, but WE the people, should have the responsibility to our kids and to our communities to protect them against the effects of things of these nature.

It isn't just games that have this, but simply the fact that TV and Movies also depict this and even things that supposidly have 'better' ratings are not depicted as 'porn' despite hitting the 'norms' one person alleges violent games seem to be.

The ESRB is there despite the fact that parents back when it first came to be didn't BOTHER to look at the games they were getting their kids. I remember those games before ESRB as well as how certain things on TV were easy access, but I also had parents who made sure I knew right from wrong.

These days, protecting the kids seems more of the 'Other person's' job, than that of the parent.

Just cause your paranoid...

As the saying goes:

Just cause your paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you.

Here is an article from C-Net back in March 22nd, 2010:

Malware delivered by Yahoo, Fox, Google ads

Malware delivered by Yahoo, Fox and of all people Google ads.

Now this is not a rant towards Google, (Given the fact blogger is with Google)... This is to point out something people have always wondered how the hell they are getting Malware on their computer.

The sad thing of it all, it is mostly because people aren't paranoid enough about where they browse. It used to be the joke that it is just going to the porn sites... All those damn pop ups and what not. But now a days, it isn't JUST the porn sites that are creating the problems.

6 years ago... It spread to the Lyric Sites, the cheap sites where they have ads or even some popular sites that focus on ads to support themselves. A lot of those sites have affiliates that are not well secured.

Now Yahoo, Fox and Google Ads are considered the 3 of the few sources of Malware delivery based on their advertising methods.

The problem is, the current methodologies to stop this are not 'easily' available to people. The current Security Suites rely on a 'signature', just like anti-virus programs, but of course, Anti-Virus programs are only as good as their most recent definition updates, which means a new malware or virus hitting the net is like you taking a sneeze in the face from someone with the flu before you got the flu vaccination.

And this is where the paranoia has to kick in... With the need to support websites with ads, there is the need to make ads be 'attractable'. Which means using scripting or other flashier means... And to make it easier to do it, the tools to make them are put out, but at the same time, it enables hackers and the like to create their malware and find weakly defended servers to host their malware and infect others, by passing all possible security measures...

So what can you do to protect yourself? Besides being paranoid and never going out to the internet again?

Well, self-education would be a good start. Learn what the hackers are trying to do to mess with your computer. Take the time to do research on things, both online and off.

Next, look at what you use to browse the internet, also WHERE you browse to the internet. Internet Explorer, not one of the best Browsers out there at the moment. Why? Well, besides the usual banter and insults about it being a Microsoft Product, it is because it is a Microsoft Product you want to be careful where you go out on the web for. The reason why: Ease of programming. Microsoft got most of its power from how it made things easy for users, which also included interoperability with its OS, its Office Suite, and also with many of their other products, which means their Web Browsers, their Web Servers products and basically anything Microsoft. The original intention, just like many things, was to provide a medium for users to develop communication and linking of things.

The real drawback on it, was not considering the security ramifications and making sure such things were properly secured to avoid how they could be easily exploited. And unfortunately, you can't put in a lot of security if you want things to have interoperability, the quintessential catch 22.

Now Google's Chrome... I haven't played with it, but I know there are some complaints about it for other reasons. Opera and Safari, well, not enough information for me to comment on them either. The one thing I seem to prefer is Firefox and some of the Add-ons like NoScript and AdBlock Plus to help in some of the issues, if not all of them.

The drawback of using this solution is taking the stance of "OMG - BLOCK EVERYTHING!"... Which is what they sort of do... And then you slowly go, "Ok... I will let you do what you do..." Which can be annoying at times when you keep going to a site for the first time and you are filling out stuff, and finding out you can't go further unless you allow scripting for that site, which means... Re-entering all that information you spent x minutes filling in the first place.

But again... Even with this precaution, this doesn't stop the e-mail tricks, which rely on you to be informed and paranoid to not trust the link!

The best way to be internet savvy... Is to question everything!

The 'Customer'...

One of my bosses referred people we help in IT as the 'customer'... And IT is sort of Customer Service.

The sad thing of it all, the motto of "The customer is always right..." is always touted so many times when it comes to Customer Service. Sometimes, it is ranted about by the very customers in the face of the Customer Service Rep who is doing their job.

Now, I will tell you, I am no 'shining' or 'happy' type of person at times. It always makes me want to hang up on some people who think that yelling at me would make me be 'more effective'.

Now, let's point out some examples of 'customers' that make me wonder just how they could be 'right' in any sense of the word.

1) The Angry Customer
Now these are the usual, red in the face "I'm PISSED and you are going to give me what I want or I will just yell at you!" type of people. You've all seen it, some of you have actually acted it out with the customer service agent when they don't give you what you want and thinking that yelling at them will make them cower and bow down before you.

Seriously... Take a moment to consider what you are doing. The whole angry routine just stresses out the agent. He or she wants to help you, but treating them with hostility isn't really winning you points. Sure, it might get their manager to come over and see what they can do, but the thing you all have to understand is, there are some things just throwing a fit at won't really solve.

2) Playing the 'Title' Card
I have had this pulled on me a few times. One where I literally had a VP ask me if it would help if they called a vendor and use their name and title to help 'grease' the wheels. Sometimes it works, but often times, a title doesn't mean anything unless you happen to be Mr. Moneybags who can move mountains of cash and can afford to throw money like you were exhaling gold.

On the flip side, I had to take a call from someone, he was actually using his company to get tech support on something of a personal nature, and given I was contracted only for company support, I couldn't help him. Now he tried to pull the whole "I'm one of the principles of this company..." with me, but I was told that given the nature of his call wasn't company related, I couldn't help him.

So something has to be said about this. Be realistic. There are limitations to what a title can seriously do. In the first case, the problem was there was a procedure, one that couldn't be expedited any further than the situation, but given the answer wasn't good enough, time to throw the title around. Same with the second part, given I had to tell him I couldn't help him with a personal problem with his company's account, he tried to use his title to justify that we HAD to help him.

In both cases, the customer was simply in the wrong.

3) The stupid customer...
Now this is a story someone mentioned:

'I graduated in 2009. How can I get my student e-mail account back?'
'You'd have to re-enroll as a student.'
'Okay, transfer me to Admissions.'
'okey dokey'

Now, just to be clear... Someone graduated from this College/University... And they want their student e-mail account back... So, the person is going to re-enroll to get their student account. *boggle*

Now, sure, I can understand people wanting to keep certain things, but there is also some things you can't keep. Unless this person wanted a copy of their old e-mail, which would be kind of amazing if it was still there after several months of not being in the system anymore.

It does make you wonder about how people like this could be 'right' in any way. As I posted before, there are some people who make these lame ass arguments from no real experience other than their ASSUMED belief. And as the old saying goes for 'ASSUME'...

4) The Arrogant Customer
This type of customer is right next to the angry ones in 'numbers'. They are sort of a mixture of 'stupid' or 'title' types as well, but they tend to push their ego in enough to try and beat people in doing what they want, ignoring the whole 'reality' thing all together.

It doesn't matter that in the existence of Reality, what they believe is utterly wrong and completely insane... It is simply not something they will accept and will just put forth that something can be done simply because they said so.

These types tend to make you want to back hand them, but of course, being the customer service person, you have to make them happy.

These few types I put up are just ones I can think of that bug me the most. It bugs me because they prove that there are people who aren't grounded by being rational or willing to be rational, simply because it does not 'fit' their view of things.

To follow up on the iPad...

Something to share with people from Gizmodo... I am one for some pranks, and given it is after April Fool's day that the iPad came out, doesn't stop people from playing pranks with it:

8 Cruel, but completely justified iPad Wallpaper pranks

Not too original, but still ones people could easily pull on other people, just like many others. :)

iPad and Star Trek's PADD...

So here we are... We have finally reached the point were we have a device similar to the Star Trek: The Next Generation PADD. Yes, originally, we could have said that for the Blackberry, or for the iPhone or even with the Droid, as they have touch screens and display stuff, but then again, they were small in comparison to what the Star Trek PADD is. There is even eBook readers now about the same size as the iPad, but in this case, not quite as 'versatile' as what the iPad is now.

Now, the iPad isn't really original technology. Microsoft pushed out TabletPC several years before Apple made iPad. Why is it not popular? Well, partially, spin. Tablet PCs, like PocketPCs weren't advertised as much as the iPad is, the style of it is basically an expensive laptop with a flip and touch screen.

Apple is taking advantage of its current iPhone and iPod 'look and feel' appeal that is the hit for many of their iPhone and iPod users. The simplicity of it. Amazon's Kindle is working on the same premise, although given it is using eInk, basically plain black and white technology for basically, pure paper and ease of Reading, which is what an eBook focuses on... The iPad will blow the pants of eBook reading as it will allow users to not only read documents, but watch videos and compose documents on something simple.

Looking at the technical specification, it is literally an oversized iPhone/iPod... The biggest storage capacity is about 64 gigs. It comes with WiFi or WiFi/3G (Through AT&T), so it isn't going to act like a laptop, more like a Netbook without the keyboard. At best, it is literally an iPhone/iPod for people who don't want the small screen, but a much better size screen to read text like papers and one of the pushes, comic books.

Now I know some people have written some interesting comments about the iPad and what it will do for some of us.

1. Publications - Reduces the need to use paper for various publications, such as newspapers, books and comics that a lot of us have nowadays. Which means less impact on the tons of wood and chemicals needed to make these items.
   
2. Faster access to information - No longer waiting for things to be delivered to your doorstep or to your store, it can be pulled up when you are near a WiFi or using a cellular service.
3. Elimination of multiple forms - While I saw this before the iPad, there are some medical facilities using Data Pad entry systems to help get patients registered without having to do 'double entry'. Double entry being that the patient puts down the information, and then the nurse or person at the office has to re-enter it into the computer system. The multiple forms would be for areas who have large ethnic diversities, where not everyone reads or writes in the same language.
   

But there are some things that people didn't consider to be a drawback

1. Publications - The old Science Fiction book by Ray Bradbury, 451 Fahrenheit, comes to mind. Controlled publication and information. Similar to the movie, 'The Net', where electronic information can be manipulated, where as printed information can also be manipulated as well, but once printed, it cannot be unprinted. A record of something is now physically manifested until it is destroyed. Paper based information, while not environmentally friendly, is also harder to manipulate short of destruction, and eventually, it might lead to such things.
2. Eventual dumbing down of technology - As more and more electronic toys are being made for the simplistic use, the less need to care how it works, just that it works. A classic example is something my junior high school teacher noticed that annoyed the crap out of him. Go to a fast food restaurant. When the computer is down, watch how they tend to twiddle their thumbs. "Can't take your order, our system is down." This was back in the 80s. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but paper orders and calculating the cost of something on paper when you have posted prices... Isn't that hard.

Notice that I spent more on writing on the cons than the pros, and unfortunately, that is the pessimistic side of me kicking in. Yes, a techno-geek insulting technology, but at the same time, look at the types of people we have nowadays. Look at the trend of how things are being handled and of course, the paranoid in me kicking in on regards to certain things like... How things change to fit the needs of the people.

Political Correctness tends to do that. And eventually, would direct some of the technology to allow it to happen much easier.

The treatment of IT...

Well, given I am currently working at an IT Consulting firm as well as part of a corporation IT, I have seen something that really makes me think people really don't understand how they treat IT people.

1) We're human... - I know it is a shock for some of you. When IT people are hired, they are expected to know everything technical about things. But believe it or not, we get sick, we get tired, we even pitch hissy fits like the rest of the human race. And at the same time, there will be things we have no clue about.

This means, there are things we don't know, and need to look it up. Certifications also don't guarantee those people know what is wrong. Believe it nor not, even certified people ask others if they have encountered a situation that comes up, because complex systems can have multiple things go horribly, horribly wrong.

2) We tend to get treated like crap - While I admit, there are times some of us IT people seem like we are condescending to people, at the same time, stop and think for a moment too. We get people who come to us, sometimes with a "I'm better than you..." attitude at times.

Case in point, my former boss (The one with NO IT experience.) In a meeting, he tells us that our Internet should be faster. The company has 2 T1 Data lines, that is about 2.8 megabit/second pipe for up and downloading data. Now, for a small company, that is within reason for just mail and some web browsing. Big file downloads, well, they will slow things down for a company, but it won't kill the business unless we are talking downloading gigabytes of information. For those of you who don't know, roughly 10 gigabits == 1 gigabyte. (For the more literal types, it is closer to 8 gigabits == gigabyte).

Getting back to the 'I know better than you...' part of the story... In this meeting, he tells me that GE's Internet is faster than what we have... Amgen's Internet is faster than what we have.

Well, this is literally true. GE is a NATIONAL based company. Amgen is, at the very least, a large corporation. Our company, on the other hand, just shy of 200 people.

The thing is, you want to know how he measured how fast the internet is?

By how long a web page loaded up on a web browser.

Yes, my friends... He measured our internet speed by how fast a web page loaded up. But it gets better. He has never WORKED for GE. He has never WORKED for Amgen. So, I am being told that the internet is too slow for our company, based on his perception of how fast a web page loads up, and also his belief that bigger companies have a web page that loads up in 2 seconds.

But wait! It gets better!!! Despite having an ISP help us look into a few things and making some minor changes... He feels it STILL has not improved. Despite my assurance that this isn't going to be any better, he insists that his internet connection at home is FASTER.

Now, to put this in proper perspective for everyone... Both he and I are on cable modem. Same provider. We time the web page, getting an average of a 9 to 10 second load time for it at the corporation, sitting behind a Firewall, an ISA server and using a 3 or so year old computer.

At home, for both of us... We get about 10 to 13 second load time for the same page. Me, I am sitting behind a D-Link Wireless Router, directly wired to the router and sharing with some people here. He is, presumably behind some wireless router. But basically, the same amount of time as me.

So now there is egg on his face about this. But it seems he approached other people about it, and of course, not giving them the same criteria... They give him different results.

Now, to help educate some of you a little on this... Faster Internet speeds does mean 'faster downloads'. However, it depends on what you are transferring and how. A web browser downloads content a little at a time. Most web pages have tons of content, little stuff as well as just the basic information. Things like tracking pixels that retail sites use to register hits. The pretty background pictures to various image farms all over the US cause having thousands of users hitting one little server for images and content would kill one internet connection. The ads hosted by another group to fund the page. The media hosted by another server for more data. After a while, you are establishing multiple attempts to get the stuff on one web page. Your computer is chugging along, saving some of that locally, writing it to your hard drive to make it faster to look at if you were to go back to the page at some point, which, in itself, slows things down cause the browser is waiting for that to be done before getting more stuff.

No matter how fast your internet speed is, there will be a limit to how fast a web page will load up. If you were on dial-up, yes, you would notice it. Dial-up speeds currently cap out at 56 kilobits/second, if you are lucky. DSL's cheapest, slowest connection is 512 kilobits/second. If the content is over the 50 kilobytes (That's roughly 500 kilobits in size), you will notice an improvement in loading web pages, but it will still cap out, purely on the amount of multiple connections to pull content and also how fast the sites can give the content out, because they can only go so fast with X number of people also trying to access that content or similar.

So with that little education, why all the hype about 'High Speed Internet'? Well, the high speed internet hype is true when you look at '1' file transfer. When you and the other side have as much speed possible, you will download content faster. This is why Bit Torrent is currently the most widely used and reviled method of getting files. But we will save that for another rant.

3) We aren't mind readers... - You will be surprised how many calls I get where I know people are frustrated. However, the biggest gripe all IT people have is that when we get calls from people, we are expected to know what you are talking about.

Case in point: One location is having a problem with their computers. The manager is frustrated and he is calling me. The problem is, he is saying some things that just doesn't make sense. To him, it makes perfect sense, but again, I am not there, I can't see what he is talking about and I try to speak with him to get a better idea of what is going on.

Now, I don't expect people to be a tech to know what I am talking about. But when you tell me the computer isn't working, when your location has like 5 computers, it helps to know which computer is having the problem... And what the problem is. It's like taking your car to a mechanic and saying your car isn't working and then expecting him to fix it, and he has no idea WHERE to begin short of that the car engine MIGHT be ok because you drove the car to him.

4) Rage... - Now, a lot of techs are expected to be professional to people. But just like those people who take your phone calls for customer service, IT techs also get the fair share of 'angry' people yelling at them. This goes along with my earlier mention of being Human... We aren't smiling yes men, but expected to be smiling yes men.

I will tell you, when we have vacations... We want to turn off the phones and hope that the building doesn't, or more work piling up. When you walk away, there will be times we want to close the door and pull out the voodoo doll and stick pins in it, thinking bad thoughts about you because you raged on us and we have to sit there and take it. Or some, like me... Go home and vent our rage in very violent games, imagining you being on the other end of the virtual gun to satisfy the grief of having to deal with you.

Now while some of these things we all could go to HR about this, the problem is, most times, people don't take the time to understand the simple fact that the IT's job is to help the company as a whole.

5) Unfair expectations... - This happens a lot. Believe it or not, someone comes to IT, expecting them to whip out something with little prep time or proper testing.

You want IT to set up a new user, new computer and everything. That new user starts tomorrow. Well, unless you bothered to check with IT to see if they have a new computer stored in their department (Which 90% of the time, this is not the case)... It takes a minimum of 2 days to get a computer to the company. A minimum of 2 hours for the IT to prep the computer for the company needs (This is provided the belief that they have a prepared system image for the computer in question to put onto the computer, and then preparing any additional software or setups for the particular user.) So you are at least looking at 2 days of no computer availability to a user, longer if you want specific, custom setup, which means, no image to load, software needs to be loaded, and properly setup and waiting for specific parts to show up based on availability. Even more fun, is the haggling of the COST of it.

Again, unfair expectations given to the IT department. What I just outlined to you is what I have seen commonly among some companies when they want to setup new people, but don't plan ahead, they just assume it magically appears and is ready to go.

This is the same with projects getting assigned. Some groups think, "Hey, this is a good idea, have IT implement it in two weeks." The problem is, some projects take longer than that depending on what is involved, which requires research and testing. However, many people don't bother asking, they just assume it can be done and push it forward. Again, unfair expectations given to the IT department and we are treated as the villain or the fools for not meeting your expectations.

6) Just make it work... But we don't want to pay for more... - There are some companies who have a setup that is working, but it is amazing it is still holding together. One company I am supporting has a Windows Domain Controller with DHCP and DNS for their domain. They also have some Router... Which is also doing DHCP and DNS. For those of you who don't know what either are... DHCP, in layman's terms, is what tells your computer what address you have and where your computer goes next to get to the internet. DNS is the service that translates things like www.yahoo.com to a computer address, so the computer can send a communication to.

Well, here's the problem with having a Windows Domain Controller with DHCP and DNS service competing with a Router that does the same thing. If you happen to have a computer that needs to talk to the domain controller for things like accessing a server for files, or some services, and your computer gets its DHCP from the Router... The router will tell your computer, "You get your DNS from me..." Well, if you are trying to talk to the domain controller named \\Server1... Sometimes, your Domain controller doesn't tell the router 'I'm Server1, I'm the Domain Controller'. And when your computer is trying to authenticate for your Domain of 'MyDomain', the router doesn't know that 'Server1' is the 'Domain Controller'. So it won't let you know where to go for the domain controller.

Well, for this company, their problems are slowly beginning to show as their computers are slowly going, "Hey, I can't talk to the domain controller!" And my company is offering to fix the whole thing properly, but we are told, "No, it is only affecting this one computer, fix it for just this one..."

Well, you know... If you don't want to trust IT to help you to fix it right... Be sure not to fault them for future problems when they are trying to help you do it the right way the first time, and you aren't willing to go there.

Now I know... A lot of people are not IT type people, they have no IT experience or know what it is like. And that is also the reason why you get irritable techs or high turn over with those types, it is simply the fact that people don't realize that IT is treated like that by people in the company. No place is immune to this unless they take the steps to understand this, the sad thing of it all, however, is that most people are not willing to see that.

The idiocy of corporate decisions...

So, as an IT tech, it is amazing how you can see poor decisions being made.

The one that comes to mind is the where I last worked at.

The company's VP of IT is leaving... So a decision is made to promote someone within the company to run the IT department. Who gets picked to run the department of IT? Not one of the four guys who have been in the IT department for 9-10 years... Not a VP who might have some IT experience or again, one of the four guys with over 10 years of IT experience...

A 27-28 year old person who started in marketing, goes into inventory, and becomes some planning manager gets picked. No IT experience, and with the rumor that he was 'recommended' by the VP of IT as a joke.

Suffice it to say, ever had to deal with a person with no IT experience trying to run an IT department?

Here is an example of a train wreck waiting to happen:

You have a person who is only familiar with some aspects of the company, mostly in marketing and inventory of the company. A person who believes he has a better grasp of the company than anyone else. Now take said person, and give him a job that allows him to direct IT to do whatever he wants, he just has to run it. It's like giving a kid the keys to a toy store and telling him to run it. He will only care about what he wants, and others will just have to accept it.

Well, this happened. One decision was, "Hey, let's go redo this server room. Clean it up and rewire everything."

Great idea. Only one problem... No redundancy for the business to afford a lot of down time.

His response, "Well, we will be down a day... No big deal, it is for the good of the company."

Ok... As long as they know that...

But wait, it gets better. The company has a call center, that accesses some of the servers. We get told that we will plan to do this server redo next weekend. But wait, was this worked out with other departments? NOPE.

What's real fun is also how he handled the situation... We informed the Call Center about this plan and they said this can't happen, because they have scheduled people 2 weeks in advance, they can't afford to have servers down because they were not prepared for this. When he heard about this, he tried to end run around the manager to push it through. Luckily, the person above that manager had sense enough to state that this had to be worked out with the call center manager.

Another problem this 'director' had, is his inability to listen and reasonably plan out things. As you can see above, he never really bothered to talk to other departments or see how it would affect people. One of his 'great' ideas is to make departments pay for their IT needs. Which for Finance, it was great... But for the other departments, which were not told about this... Found it to be a shock to their budgets... And most wouldn't have had an issue, had it been discussed to them before hand.

Another good example of inability to listen: Explaining migration of Windows Servers, namely, going from an older Windows System to a Newer one. It is generally recommended to do a clean install of a Windows Server OS and run things parallel. We had an old Windows 2000 server running some business critical systems. He wanted to upgrade it to the latest and greatest. I informed him the proper way to do it, but he wouldn't hear that it isn't the best way... Truly professional to ignore your own staff and treat them like they don't know what they are talking about when you, yourself, don't know enough about IT.

So now the question is... How sane is it for people to keep a director in a position he is not suited for or in this case, making the department that has supported the company, no longer care about the company's well being?

Well, sadly, the company is still having said person running the department. Two of those people, myself included, are no longer with the company. One of the two remaining people are frustrated and wants to be fired.

So people, if you see something like this happening... It's time to bail the ship. When the monkeys want to run the show, it is something bound to go down burning.

First Entry...

Well, this is my first Entry. I won't say who I am, so I will go by the name of Keiichi Sakai, since I kind of use this handle somewhere else and go, what the hell, stick with the name.

I decided to create Ranting Technician cause I'm a computer tech... Which means, I'm one of those damn computer geeks and like many of us, we got something to rant about. So I was planning on just ranting about stuff I have seen and I am sure many others have something similar, but what the hey, maybe someone might like to read about some of the things I rant about...