Their usefulness for me finding answers to tech problems has nose dived lately due to SEO shenanigans to get these tech solution pages full of ads to top of results.

Like no matter what error code you search for lately you get the first page full of

"The problem you searched for" [SOLVED] ... then a bunch of pages that say to run SFC /SCANNOW, the trio of DISM commands and if that doesn't work, try system restore.

It's gotten so bad I get better answers if I just append "site:reddit.com" to any issue I want to look for.

Without RMS *AND* Linus, all the benefits of free "Unix" we have now would have never existed.

It used to really suck when a copy of Unix, even for a 386, was a few thousand dollars.

Congress went to year round DST back in the 70s and people hated it so bad it only lasted one year.

https://www.mercurynews.com/20...

Why would it be different this time?

Well that article was lacking in a lot of details. It'd be helpful to know how the compromises happened.

From all the cases I've read, none of the MSPs had 2FA enabled on their accounts.

I'm old.

I don't get people around my age who are starting to retire and complain they have nothing to do and are bored. My God, I wish I had the time to play the games I want to play.

I just hope by the time I end up in a nursing home they are equipped with decent VR stations. Just plug me in in the morning after breakfast and don't bother me until it's time for dinner. Then take me back and plug me back in again.

Oh yeah, I agree. I just activated a switch with a 6 year (one year free) license and my end date for all my equipment went forward by a whopping one week. And yeah, it sat in the box for two months before I could get to it -- and I did notice the license started at purchase date.

Then again, I like it because it forces my employer's hand. Too often in the past they've let service contracts expire despite my pleading because they say they are comfortable with the risks, then when a failure happens they hold ME responsible because they say I didn't adequately explain the risk allegedly. If I try to show evidence I did, then I'm seen as making excuses and not being a problem solver.

There's no grey area with Meraki. You don't pay, it stops working. Period.

Also, I'm not in a big shop. I do it all so I'm truly a jack of all trades, master of none. I've had regular Cisco kit in the past and I swear that shit is way more complicated to make work than it really has to be. I don't want to have to be a CCIE just to make my network work. I just want it to work.

Like I currently have a Cisco UCS 560 phone system that I need to replace -- but I'm certainly not getting Meraki MC now. So I've learned THAT lesson at least! :-)

It's near impossible to actually predict when your devices will expire because of the complexity of the contract.

I'll let the other bits of your rant go but this one is not true. It's pretty straight forward. Go into Organization -> License Info and it says right there the date when everything expires. And since everything co-terminates, your entire infrastructure goes tits up at the same time.

I used to work for a union and I helped organize a grocery store -- Jewel T -- in Philly area in the early 80s. They had just ventured into the northeast market from Chicago at the time. I organized one small store of 10 people. And to avoid going union the chain closed down EVERY FUCKING STORE IN THE ENTIRE REGION and moved out of the region. To this day Jewel has not re-entered this market. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people lost their jobs. I felt horrible, and my boss's response was "good, at least that scab chain is out of our territory."

So yeah, I know there is a dark side. There's also a dark side to management too.

But the answer is not to throw out unions, but to reform them and make them work better.

And this is yet another reason why the middle class has been dying. In the old days people would support each other even if this time it wasn't their own job on strike.

But now it's like no one gives a shit about anyone else but themselves so we are all weaker as a result.

Jennicam!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

My credit card is Chip and PIN preferred and it was wonderful using it in Europe last week.

Unfortunately, it was issued by Diners Club (a Mastercard) and they stopped accepting applications.

Waze has methods of dealing with this. It's called a private installation...

https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Pri...

But we don't just go putting them anywhere arbitrarily. We rely on local governments and DOTs to tell us where to put them. How? By determining if it's a private road or if there are regulatory signs prohibiting through traffic.

So if the homeowners don't want traffic routed through their neighborhood they need to go to their local government and get that done. Then soon as that's legally accomplished, then us editors for Waze will take the steps to prevent through routing through the neighborhood.

The cities need to sue Waze.

No. The city needs to put up a sign that says no through traffic and us Waze editors will make it a private installation. https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Pri...

I have SA for server licenses. It's ridiculous for desktops -- especially when businesses rarely upgrade their desktop OS and more often than not want to downgrade the OEM license that comes with a box.

Meanwhile many companies don't get that option. I managed a few small companies ... like 10-20 computers each. I took the OEM version of Windows 7 Pro and replaced it with a standard install using a volume license key that each company purchased to make management easier. Well unless you have Software Advantage, they can't upgrade to Windows 10 without paying. That's ridiculous. They paid for Windows 7 with purchase of new PC. If I hadn't wiped it and replaced it with a vol license install, they could upgrade to 10 for free. But no.... So you have to pay for Windows once, then again for the volume license install, then again to go to 10.