I feel incredibly alienated at work. Really.
As for my job, I do IT support for a local business where I live in Michigan. I rarely leave my office anymore, even for lunch. I go to the kitchen, make my lunch, go back to my office. I do this while wearing my headphones the entire time.
This incident happened yesterday, Wednesday the 21st of October. Have any of you seen that Sony Ericsson chain letter including an image of a fake Sony Ericsson campaign that tells you to send this email to 20 people CCing the fake Sony address for a free laptop?
Snopes - Sony Ericsson Laptop Giveaway Hoax
Yeah, that one. Well, it was circulating at the office yesterday and was starting to spread like wildfire. There were many people that were sending it to at least 20 people, including non-employees, which is a big no-no already.
I didn't want people to continue spamming this JPEG (another no-no) for free laptops in this economy right before the holidays. Not only that, but what if someone got in trouble for sending this around? This would definitely fall under company email abuse. I felt it was my duty as the IT guy, I guess.
I figured I'd just send out an email with Sony's official statement straight from Snopes. I figured the worst that would happen would be a few people going, "Oh, well. I knew it was fake, but whatever, right? Just another chain letter."
I was wrong.
Moments after sending my reply, I had one employee call my extension and started complaining about how I sent it to everyone listed in the forward. That I did, yes. I sent it to everyone listed in the chain, not just the employees. She apparently thought I was trying to make her look silly to her friends, family, and coworkers.
She eventually hung up after a few kind words. I don't want to be stubborn, but I thought I was trying to help. It's a desperate time and those that could really use an awesome gift, such as a laptop, would send this to everyone they know.
Second response from another coworker, except this time, she actually came into my office. She tried to explain that I had no business telling everyone that this campaign was false and I should have let them go on with their bliss. That is almost verbatim.
About 30 minutes went by and I have this email sitting in my inbox...
Hey……………..you are being mean, I don’t think it hurts to try and get something for free. Did it cost anything to forward it? The answer to that should be ‘NO’ but you yelled at me!!!!!!!!!!! I was being a friend and thought MAYBE you could use one for a Xmas gift.
*Her Name,* the PRESIDENT and CO-FOUNDER of the he’s being mean club
Here is my email in full.
This is a hoax. Please do not spam this chain letter around.
Please go to http://www.snopes.com and check it for yourself. Sony Ericsson has made no such offer. This is a really old chain letter.
“Sony Ericsson has been made aware of an online email campaign claiming that Ericsson will give away a free laptop computer to users who forward the promotional information. The same campaign includes a photograph of the Sony Ericsson logo and mentions an Ericsson contact name and email number.
Sony Ericsson confirms that this email campaign is a hoax. In addition, Sony Ericsson confirms that the Ericsson contact name does not exist.
All competitions and promotions involving Sony Ericsson are run through official channels such as Sony Ericsson's website or Sony Ericsson's partners' websites. Please be wary of any competition or promotion that appears to come from outside of Sony Ericsson or Sony Ericsson's partners official channels. Examples of these include via spam emails or SMS.
Please do not reply to or forward the email if you receive it.”
I started having doubts about sending that email later, but the email was the last of the responses of the 30-40 people as of today. Maybe the people that appreciated the input remained silent?
Do you, dear reader, think I was wrong for sending that response?
Digital Depression
The Digital Age technology has been increasing at a very rapid rate. From the debut of the internet in the palm of our hands to the quarter inch thick LCD television set. The internet and other technologies such as carbon nanotubes and metal free transistors will allow a computer to be just about anywhere, even sewn onto clothing. There will be very few spots in this country where we will not be able to check our e-mail. With entire towns giving free wireless internet to the citizens tax free, there will be no reason why we cannot simply log on to check our mail at any given time of the day, regardless of the location. Technology will destroy all of our best excuses.
Even with the current and proposed technological breakthroughs, I still feel a little sad when I go through old photos, letters, and books. Everything has been digitized and in twenty years, no one will have any evidence that certain people existed because an email server in Texas went down taking all their precious memories with them. In snail mail, at least only fire or theft could truly destroy the memories, but with technology, we have many different factors that could wipe our memories including fire. It is sad that we will no longer have the amazing letters at our disposal to reminisce about when we are old and gray, only one worded or abbreviated responses in an old cell phone.
Perhaps it was the creation of e-shorthand that doomed our language for many years to come. When we receive a text message, the contents are usually rather brief and mangled. With letters replacing full words for speed, eventually, this quick-to-type language may replace our language in other mediums as well. Imagine that the 11 o'clock news no longer prattles on longer than twenty seconds per story because the amount of data and information they are being received is coming in faster than they can report. When an event happens, the world can know about it immediately. One man on a laptop in the middle of a war zone can perform podcasts telling the world of his or her thoughts and sights.
Digital transmission has become the absolute bane of our culture, yet, too convenient to not abuse. Eventually, it will be common for our digital picture frames to display incoming post cards and pictures on the fly by friends and family by them simply emailing them to a certain address. Imagine a digital camera that has the power to email without any additional software, it has an integrated wireless network card. With an entire town wireless, we will be able to send high resolution images by the gross within minutes the pictures were snapped. Future generations will be spoiled by not having to wait on the film to develop, but waiting on their current uploads because their ISP capped the bandwidth on their digital camera to a quarter of what it was for going over their monthly limit.
These are dark times and in the second Digital Age, it seems our hands are truly growing out of touch with reality and manual labor, which now includes hand writing messages instead of typing on a keyboard. I have to admit, writing more than a paragraph without it being homework related feels rather odd. Even then, majority of everything in college and late in high school was typed on a computer, unless, of course, detention is involved. Isn't it funny how in the future, detention will be truly a grueling punishment because the punishment will not have changed? Children will groan at the idea they may have to hand write disciplinary statements with a pen and paper repeatedly until the end of the day.
There are many reasons why it is necessary to move quickly to the next Digital Age for the technology being withheld and developed to be released over the next ten years will make our lives even easier. Nanotechnology is our future and the applications are limitless. Imagine an entire country creating enough weapons to arm every citizen twice over in record time. Perhaps the day will come when nanotechnology is in the home, albeit limited, but will allow us to ask the computer to create articles of clothing, food, and other objects of desire in minutes or even seconds. Not only will we be able to receive merchandise from a machine, but we could customize it to our liking. Computer, I would like a pair of maroon tinted turtle sunglasses with a built in digital camera with zooming capabilities.
Speaking of such advanced features for a machine, Artificial Intelligence will be the first action taken by a foreign entity to the human race that is not extraterrestrial. As of now, we only know natural disasters, the occasional animal attack, and another human being with an agenda. It may be cynical to confess that by the year 2030, computers will definitely be able to not only think on their, but plot as well. Our children may have to enter into intense diplomatic discussions with a man made of steel with a brain created meticulously by human hands. With these ideas in mind, the future may not prove to be a scary place, but it will be depressing.
Sorry Microsoft, I’m Done
Update: The reason behind this blog is undoubtedly that Microsoft may be dropping Vista in favor of Windows 7. Excellent. Let Vista rest in stagnation because there are too many issues by users crying out to be fixed or give options to adjust certain annoyances. Ah, well. Windows 7, for me, will be the answer, but I feel sorry for consumers everywhere that invested in Windows Vista. This includes the latest expensive productivity software when earlier purchased versions should have sufficed and brand new Vista certified hardware.
Everyone has that one friend in their lives that never seems get things right, but try their best. They may imitate others because they probably have this crazy notion they aren't good enough on their own. What's worse is that they make mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Though, I wouldn't call this friend lazy, but he or she will sit on a resolution for months, or years, before attempting to repair the error. This kind of friend is not just a teenager, but is displayed through all spheres of life. This friend is quite literally everywhere you go. At first, regretfully, when you lose contact permanently, you seem to become a better person.
In my spheres of life, Windows has been that friend of mine. Microsoft has never learned from past mistakes, which has led to serious security compromises. We all vividly remember the Blaster worm and numerous other exploits. Well, here is a lovely little networking flaw that can be abused to crash Vista systems. It can allow rootkits to be hidden and DoS attacks to create chaos for your daily computing needs. Meaning that your Vista machine could be exposed to damaging attacks.
Well, I've been trying to keep up with Windows and stay optimistic, but I have to finally admit, Vista was a failure. Windows 7 seems more and more like what Vista would have been if they let it stay in the oven a couple more years. Windows 7 is going to be a failure as many people who already painstakingly upgraded to Vista now feel they will be pressured into upgrading to Windows 7. Though, Windows XP will not be retired for quite a while until Vista/7 get their game together; you will not be able to purchase XP in stores on preconfigured manufacturer computers. Only online through the same retailers.
I was sad to hear that Microsoft will address this vulnerability in their next service pack. There is no estimated release date for SP2 and I feel it will bring little to the table to resurrect Vista. The damage has been done and so many Windows users have felt cheated by a half-finished product, which is clearly evident now with videos displaying Windows 7 features and technology. Sure, it may be feature rich, but just like Vista, there is nothing that changed the productivity and convenience for Windows. Well, aside from easy to use parental controls.
Sadly, I'm telling Microsoft I'm done defending and supporting them and now it seems the once proud software giant has taken a knee during an important play. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have two more days to wait until the official release of Fedora 10. With a speedy GUI boot process and many other amazing changes, there will be no reason I will have to do anything Windows again besides emulate Windows XP. Come to think of it, I don't recall the last piece of software that won't install properly with Wine. Hell, even recent big name MMOs install under Linux now.
I used to actually enjoy Windows with the amount of customization and choices. Even though Windows XP wasn't quite "good" until Service Pack 2, that does not entitle M$ to give the same treatment towards Vista. At least try to hammer out security flaws when found. Albeit, Mac OS X is full of security flaws, at least Apple will hot fix them as soon as when it matters.
