I was browsing around the FAQs for a particular product and read one of their entries that looked eerily similar to something I had written, somewhere on the web recently. As it turns out, the answer to the question in the FAQ was almost a direct copy/paste of an answer I posted in their on-line forums on October 28, 2004. I am pissed. I've already sent them an e-mail asking them if it was their practice to pilfer people's work without citing the original author. Had they taken the concepts of what I wrote, which isn't rocket science, and re-stated it in their own language, I wouldn't care so much. However, THE DID A DRIECT COPY PASTE!!

The offending text from their website:

Open up Terminal.
At the command prompt type ifconfig -a and hit enter.
look for a line under en0 that says:
media: autoselect (100baseTX ****-duplex) status: active.
If the **** says full, disregard. If it say half, then you might have a duplex mismatch with the switch which can cause problems.

My text:

Open up Terminal.
At the command prompt type ifconfig -a and hit enter.
look for a line under en0 that says:
media: autoselect (100baseTX ****-duplex) status: active.
If the **** says full, disregard. If it say half, then you might have a duplex mismatch with the switch which can cause all kinds of weird problems when copying files.

Similarities??????

*GRUMBLE*

College is not a vocational school.

College is not a vocational school.

College is not a vocational school.

College is not a vocational school.

College is not a vocational school.

*grumble*

Why do web forms trust me to enter in my name, address, zip code, birthday, et al. yet DON'T TRUST ME TO ENTER MY TWO LETTER STATE CODE. WHY MUST I PICK IT FROM A DROP-DOWN LIST OF STATES.

Half of the time the drop-down just includes the abbreviations, not the state names. If I didn't know the abbreviation to start with, how is this going to help me?

I know that New Jersey in NJ, Virginia is VA, Missouri is MO, Mississippi is MS, Michigan is MI, Montana is MT, and Minnesota is MN.

*grumble*

Just a rant. Nothing more, nothing less. I get an e-mail from my technical contact in Japan on 11/27 that he will be on vacation from 11/26 through 12/17 and that if I needed anything done (like the migration of 127 PCs from the NT 4 domain to the AD) to please contact two other guys I don't know and whose Enlgish is a bit less than perfect.

France was easy. London was easy.

*Grumble*