I'm happy that using Windoze is easier for you than Gnome. I don't appreciate being called a stupid Zealot and a troll for thinking otherwise.
Then again, you are full of contradictions. Though you say that you are a "die-hard linux fan", I don't see you saying many good things about free software. A quick review of your comments convinces me that you have a strange way of showing your affection:
To Twitter: I'm starting to think you really are a Linux zealot troll. You're off my friends list for now.
Tell me any user would be better off with Winblows than a Gnome desktop. For saying so, you would perpetuate Microsoft FUD language and call me a Zealot? With friends like that who needs enemies?
Now for the core of your gripe:
the biggest point: it opens a new f**king window for each folder.
I don't know how you missed that. Every single review of Gnome has trashed the whole thing for this one annoyance that many people have been begging for. The level of Gnome FUD has reached a climax in this thread and it disgusts me.
The Windows UI might be easy for you, but I have trouble finding the "preferences dialog". Do you right click on "my computer", find it under the start menu, or what? I've used 3.1, NT, 95, 98, and 2000. The controls, if they exist, were in different places in each of them for most things. When it comes to Winblows, I'm lost and generally can't find the answer with a quick Google search. This is learned behavior, not a matter of "some intelligence" and it goes away quickly.
_I_ use computers, and I want _my_ needs catered for, not some mythical mother, or aunt, or grandmother, or whatever the current model "Average User" is.
Fine, there are dozens of window managers and file managers. What's the point of flaming Gnome?
Why are you standing up for an obvious troll who's saying something as stupid as "everyone hates Gnome"? I don't use Nautilus but I've got great respect for the Gnome team and don't think they need this kind of abuse. Are you pissed because all of their other tools have been so useful to you but suddenly you don't like the direction of one or two prominent pieces of their desktop?
Don't worry, the code will get back to you without much effort on your part. Evolution, Mono, and the whole Gnome framework are still awesome pieces of code that everyone can use. Besides being able to use whole utilities like Evolution, others will be porting their work to other frameworks. Free software is like that.
However, xp does provide an easy way to turn it off, which nautilus apparently doesn't.
It's a single button in Gconf. I don't know where to look in Winblows for such a feature, but I do know that most "easy" things in that terrible UI are only easy if you have memorized the 6 different ways Microsoft has done it over they years.
How about instead of trying to justify why people should like Gnome, the open source community make it better so that people stop hating it?
Do you have a usability study or something to back that up with? I know people that this interface would be perfect for and they represent the vast majority of computer users. People like my mom, who fell in love with Windoze 3.1 and demand icons to EVERYTHING will be very happy with an interface just like this.
If I'm to believe all the M$ generated FUD about Linux not being ready for the desktop, Gnome is the best thing since CRTs. Gnome answers every single complaint about inconsistent and complicated GUIs in a unified framework that puts Winblows to shame.
It's not easy to stand up for such a snotty author as Sokol, but you have out done him. Anyone who could complain that gconf is "so crap" deserves a good bitch slap. Such unwarranted criticism is what drove Sokol over the edge to begin with.
You complain:
However, when users flat out reject them it is not the place of the developers to say "quit your bitching, we know what is best for you." As for the guy that wrote the article, attacking users that complain and don't know how to use gconf? What, only power users are allowed to choose how their desktop feels?
Yeah, Bullshit. Users have not gotten their hands on the new Gnome yet. The author is pissed off at what reviewers, fucking M$ "power users", have been saying. They should know better. What the author said was:
... if it is not enough, one can click one field in the gconf configuration editor and turn Nautilus into "classical" non-spatial file browser.
I can understand the author's frustration. He's peeved at such bad reviews for a feature that can be turned off and thinks that the way Gnome made things work is nifty and exactly what people asked for. Why have so many WinTel rag trolls panned it?
Why not be pissed about pans of software that's free and easily avoided? Gconf is easy enough to use. The user could call up Konqueror and have a first rate file manager for all the people at Gnome care. They have responded to what users asked them for.
Gnome has gone out of it's way to make a Windoze experience that out dozes Windoze. People have screamed and yelled that Joe Sixpacks wants something easy for his shallow file structure. People, such as my wife, who have never owned more than a few dozen files at a time demand desktop shortcuts and "consistency" of just the type Gnome offers. They want one directory for their hundreds of picture directories and no funny business that might "hide" something. In short, they demand and love clutter. Now they can have it and more.
The author could have been nicer in his write up, but he has a point. Gnome has indeed done the Microsoft Monkey dance. The kinds of people who ohh and ahh over the XP and it's simplified, single desktop, GUI, should love Gnome. It's exactly what people have asked for. But those people are the same jackasses who have forever been claiming "Linux is not ready for the desktop". Two years ago, they pointed to a lack of an "integrated" browser and utilities that were "thrown together" and used different rules. They called inconsistency in the user interface and pretended that Winblows did it any better. They also complained of a lack of "innovation". Well, here it all is! What does it elicit? Complaints. Those people will never be happy with anything but their stale, broken, Microsoft junk.
This software has it's place. Do I use Gnome? No, I don't. At the same time, I know it's just right for people like my mom. She's been pining for her Windows 3.1 machine for years and has made everything look just like it since.
Crazney, if you don't like gconf, why don't you fix it? I'm sure you have such good ideas that everyone will want your fork. Can't do that? Fine, be happy with your fluxbox and leave Gnome alone.
What's the difference between people arrested for a felony and everyone else? The answer is reasonable suspicion. Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but obviously society has some power over people under reasonable suspicion. If society had no power over them, there would be no arrest.
The question then is if DNA sampling is part of a reasonable arrest. The fears expressed in the article were:
"DNA is not like a fingerprint, since getting it is more invasive and it holds information beyond mere identification,'' said Tania Simoncelli, a science and technology fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Storing it permanently for future criminal investigations doesn't comply with the Constitution.''
Is that true? What information does a DNA "fingerprint" reveal? How is it any different from storing an image of someone's face, fingerprints and other identifying information permanently for future criminal investigation?
Free software is going to eliminate vendor forced upgrades.
It's funny that you should mention a Handspring Visor that your friend had been using for years. What operating system are they using? Mine came with drivers for Windoze that worked on 98 and NT but had serious issues with 2000. I don't know if there are drivers for XP, but the trend was NO.
Kpilot, however, works and syncs great with KDE's excellent PIM programs. Interestingly enough, my Visor is going to get information from an old job that I though was lost forever. I have an old Windoze 98 backup that I'm going to sync and then move sync with KDE. I've been using it with a serial cable under Debian and my little brother had good experiences with USB stuff and Fedora Core 1. Because of this, it's more useful to me than my fancier and nicer Zaurus which is reported to work with Evolution.
I loved my Handspring and now I can love it again. It got months of service from regular AAA batteries, and worked with rechargeables AAAs. It was cheap when I bought it and I'm sure that replacements can be had for next to nothing used.
It's only a matter of time before I'll be able to easily sync the same data onto my Zaurus, but I'll still have uses for the Handspring. The Zaurus is much nicer, has a music player and can be programmed easily, but the Handspring has all of the above named advantages. Moreover, I'm more comfortable with it's input methods. The Zaurus is just a little different but that matters.
With free software, I only buy a PDA when the features of the new one clearly warrant the purchase. No one is going to be forced to buy a new gadget to get the same feature set again. Free software is making the market more honest.
Could you please tell us where exactly is that pawer plant in question located? Thanks..
The company has lots of plants, but the dissaster I refer to is an economic one and not a safety issue. The program was administrative not operations. Poor maintenance and records keeping will force them to shut down more often, and operators may be harmed but there is no public safety risk associated with it. The engineers will remember and have paper records when the databases don't work right. Also, Operations still has 1970 era analog devices to monitor the actual condition and state of the plant. When things break, they can turn it off if it does not shut down on it's own. It's going to cost lots of money and the cost will be passed onto the public but there's not going to be accidents.
Spam is a weapon that's being used to destroy conventional email and competitive ISPs. Connect the dots and follow the money. Spam is being used for more than promoting dubious products. Spam is a cheap DoS and some people have plenty of money and reason to buy it.
I imagine that Microsoft is a big spam purchaser but is not alone. Microsoft spent more than a billion dollars promoting XP and has been known to break competitor's service. It's easy to imagine them and other big ISPs paying spammers to bomb their competitor's mail. Microsoft also has a long record for astroturfing and disrespect of other people's property and business. Does anyone think they would shrink from using spam this way?
If that's not enough reason, Microsoft has also announced that they want to make money from new kinds of "secure" email. Schemes have been advocated where every user of email would pay them and everyone would need their software. They also would sell advertising to the same "respectable" businesses who have polluted TV, radio and billboards, the sky itself and every other place you might glance. Sounds like they would like real email to die, no?
The US Government agrees with Microsoft on that score. Their carnivore system will not work if people run their own mail servers and encrypt their mail. It's much easier for them to intercept and filter mail that has to go, unencrypted, through a few large ISP owned smpt servers.
To top it all off, Microsoft and AOL threatened my ISP with blacklisting if they did not block all port 25. My ISP complied. Another poster here has the same story about their ISP.
Comcast is fighting them. Good for them and everyone.
Cox did the same a while back and for the same reason. Tech support told me that AOL and M$ threatened to blacklist them. I'm glad that Comcast has the balls to tell them off.
What Microsoft told the Washington Post, based on what Cox told me, is clearly disingenuous:
Webb said he thinks port 25 should be blocked by default, and customers should be required to apply for an exception.
They don't want exceptions for anyone.
Comcast's policy, the best for the user and the net as a whole, is really bad for the Soft. Customers are going to learn just how bad M$ junk is when their mail is blocked. Credit is being given where credit is due.
The worry is that someone will set up a scanner in a vending machine and rob people who walk by. I'm not sure how these things will practically work, especially if everything has an RFID tag in it. A scammer can collect all the numbers it can and try them out one at a time. The legitimate vendor has the same problem. It will be creepy enough to have the billboard recognize you by the RFID in your shoes. Lining your wallet with foil might keep you from being ripped off, but I doubt it.
I'm going to patent the RFID equivalent of "one click shopping" . A system of readers will record all items on a customer, so that a profile can be generated and saved. The customer's means of payment will also be stored in the profile so that the customer can purchase anything in my store, or at a computer monitor without any special credit card on their person. Theives and legitimate companies who use this method to vend must call me "Exalted Inventor" and pay me a portion of the proceeds. Advertisers who abuse this system, as grocery stores do now, to push brands that I never buy will be forced to bathe in honey and dance naked on fire ant mounds. Vendors dumb enough to purchase said advertising will be separated from their money and require no further punishment. They are invited to the mound dance.
At first glance, this looked really dumb. Why not put the silly RFID into the ID card most corporate types are forced to wear around their necks like so many tagged cows? Sure, there's a picture of one like that on the linked article. How about people who have a sentimental attachment to their current watch? Then the brain kicked in, this is just a demo and there may be something good about RFIDs after all.
Being able to hide your credit anywhere has an appeal. Sure, a mugger might ask for your cheap watch, but would they bother with your ink pen? Kinda cool to be able to give one your wallet without fear. Of course, in my case, the mugger will know which object has my credit. It will be the one wrapped in tin foil.
RFIDs creep me out. Someone being able to identify me by a device in my shoes, in my car's tires, in my shirt? It's weird and the nasty part is that no one I care about will have the ability, just big dumb companies that want to milk me. Vending machines that can take my money while I walk by are more bothersome still. I have a feeling that foil liners will become very fashionable soon, but it won't really work.
I read and like "How to stop worrying and start living." It has much of the same sound advice.
I don't like agreeing with the above post because it's obvious flamebait. "teenage nitwit," is the most obvious attack. The straw men constructed show the author advocates kindness more than he practices it. Garyok, how the hell do you know how our anonymous reader treats people or tells them? How do you know that they are not really clever? As you say, "people deserve respect".
That being said, my best advice is to get over being clever. I gave myself lots of problems before I did this for myself. I was self defeatingly lazy about the way I did my work.
Every little thing counts. More than anything else, your school work shows that you can follow directions and are willing to do things that are boring to get what you want. Companies want employees that do everything they are told, not just the "exciting" things. Yeah, it's stupid but that's the way the world is made. You may not like working for a company that judges people this way, but most are like that and it beats being unemployed.
The most important thing for my technical work was to see good examples. The Given, Find, Solution method is the best way to avoid mistakes and it really saves time even for trivial problems. Trivial problems don't require as much write up. You don't have to be a neat fanatic about it or even have good penmanship, but stating all of your assumptions and referencing equations and other sources makes your mistakes obvious to you when go back to check it. It gives you time to clear your head and avoids transcription problems because you can put your finger on your work and in the book at the same time to check. It also gives you a body of work to take to interviews.
Look for other bright people and work with them. It will help you understand just where you fit into the world and you will understand more. I picked people at random and did well with one or two of them. One of them is still a very good friend and I have no idea why he thinks I'm brighter than he is.
Spam is a weapon that's being used to destroy conventional email and competitive ISPs. Connect the dots and follow the money. Spam is being used for more than promoting dubious products. Spam is a cheap DoS and some people have plenty of money and reason to buy it.
I imagine that Microsoft is a big spam purchaser but is not alone. Microsoft spent more than a billion dollars promoting XP and has been known to break competitor's service. It's easy to imagine them and other big ISPs paying spammers to bomb their competitor's mail. Microsoft also has a long record for astroturfing and disrespect of other people's property and business.
If that's not enough reason, Microsoft has also announced that they want to make money from new kinds of "secure" email. Schemes have been advocated where every user of email would pay them and everyone would need their software. They also would sell advertising to the same "respectable" businesses who have polluted TV, radio and billboards, the sky itself and every other place you might glance. Sounds like they would like real email to die, no?
The US Government agrees with Microsoft on that score. Their carnivore system will not work if people run their own mail servers and encrypt their mail. It's much easier for them to intercept and filter mail that has to go, unencrypted, through a few large ISP owned smpt servers.
To top it all off, Microsoft and AOL threatened my ISP with blacklisting if they did not block all port 25. My ISP complied.
Comcast is fighting them. Good for them and everyone.
Perhaps one day if more ISPs follow Comcast we'll be able to trust those domains again.
I hope so. Before Cox blocked port 25, I started getting more and more bounces but Exim was still more reliable than Cox's SMTP server. Not being able to run a real mail server bothered me, but having to point my MTA at Cox's SMTP servers has been a real pain.
This inconvenience to cheap-o owners of SMTP servers with DHCP-assigned addresses has been a real shame...
Do me a favor and tell Cox to get rid of their expensive and money losing DHCP infrastructure for their "always on" internet connection with a 1:1 IP to client ratio. I liked the static IP I got from AtHome and I paid for one from Cox when they started to charge for that "service". I dropped it when they wanted $70/month for service that was slower than DSL.
I have concluded that Comcast is a lost cause. Damaged goods. The best thing to do is to blacklist their whole stinking sewer pit, and move on with your life.
This from a guy that has something to do with Courier, a MTA? Do you not want people to be able to use your nice GPL'd software from Comcast's network? I don't get it.
I know that Microsoft would like to blacklist Comcast. What they have done will inconvenience people with who are running zombies, which are the real problem. Cox was threatened with a blacklist from them if they did not block, without recourse, all port 25. Comcast is brave to stand up to them.
Last I checked, faculty was not generally responsible for doing IT software upgrades.
You must have missed this in the article:
Stanford CIO Chris Handley, a former psychology instructor who joined Stanford from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1999.
Granted, he's not an instructor now but he surely is responsible for fixing the mess and has been for five years:
Handley joined Stanford in November 1999 as executive director of administrative systems. Previously, he directed the national PeopleSoft Practice for Higher Education at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Before that he held positions at the University of Toronto, where he enjoyed a 14-year career as a psychology instructor before taking responsibility for university systems there.
No mention of a CS degree or any technical background, just an affiliation to PeopleSoft? Is this why Stanford has been screwed around by their vendors for so long?
Cox did the same a while back and for the same reason. AOL and M$ threatened to blacklist them. I'm glad that Comcast has the balls to tell them off.
What Microsoft told the Washington Post, based on what Cox told me, is clearly disingenuous:
Webb said he thinks port 25 should be blocked by default, and customers should be required to apply for an exception.
They don't want exceptions for anyone.
Comcast's policy, the best for the user and the net as a whole, is really bad for the Soft. Customers are going to learn just how bad M$ junk is when their mail is blocked. Credit is being given where credit is due.
Comcast is doing this right. It lets you do what you want and punishes those who cause problems.
They are only going to block your port 25 if they notice something wrong, like you suddenly made 5,000 new friends to sell penis enlargers too. You will still be able to run a legitimate mail server. If your mail server is compromised, you will learn about it. People who spam deliberately will be stopped cold.
People who have their email blocked frequently will consider getting software that is not so easy to compromise. Windoze lusers who took the attitude, "If it does not interfer with my browsing, I don't care." are going to get what they deserve. Most of them are already using their ISP's SMTP server and will never notice anyway.
You can contrast this to Cox and other shitty ISPs that blocked everyone's port 25. First they blocked inbound, which made it difficult to run a mail server. Then they blocked outbound, which forced me to use their shitty SMTP server. They have had frequent problems. Had my own mail server been as unreliable as Cox's is, I'd have given up running one.
I proposed this idea to Clarkson University -- that it should become the first university to commit to 100% open source in five years.
They must have thought it would cost too much. Anyone who objects on those grounds should be shown this $150,000,000 vendor nightmare.
The nuclear power plant I used to work for had spent $5,000,000 building custom software for itself with Powersoft tools. It worked beautifully. The administration types thought that it cost too much and fired their programmers with the bone headed attitude, "we are an electric company not a software company." Now they are putting in a fifteen million dollar commercial package. I'm not there anymore, but I'm sure it's going to be a dissaster. You have to wonder if they are going to fire their engineers and clerks because they are not an engineering firm or a filing company.
Just think of how much money everyone would have saved had they switched over to free software in the mid or late 90s.
You assert:
A lot of it stems from unnacountable and incompetent administration for large.edu and government projects that change specs often and insist on a lot of customization which then has to be redone every time they change the specs.... In most cases the needs fulfilled by these systems could be done with very little customization and be planned and implemented in less than 2 years. Consultants can cost a lot but its a lot less than the cost of buying something that never works
Blame the user, eh? Let's have a look at a few choice quotes from the article:
... controller Susan Calandra says some of the projects in the original plan were never started.... The university must cope with what Handley calls "version upgrade gridlock"?installing Oracle v. 11.5.9 requires changing PeopleSoft v. 7.6, upgrading to PeopleSoft v. 8 requires changing Oracle v. 11.5.9, and so on.
There might be some spec changing going on, but it looks more like the University got ripped off. The vendors not only failed to deliver what they promissed, ten years ago, they broke what they provided. The solution chosen, to offshore report writing, won't solve the vendor incompatibility issues.
For all $150,000,000 spent over the last ten years, they could have written their own system from scratch about 30 times. That would be a good use of consultants. I don't think the university got it's money's worth from the consultants who set them up for their vendor supplied nightmare.
What's so frickin' hard? I am a programmer, and I know how hard programming is, but (correct me if I'm wrong) the goal of ERP is to use a single integrated program to do tasks that have been written a million times before: accounting, payroll, inventory, etc.... The more you try to customize it, the more likely that it is you are simply doing the wrong thing.
If you read the article, you see that they have a vendor cluster fuck going on. Versioning and custom software to fit the institution that break forward compatibility. They are right to demand custom modules. A university is not a corporation and operates on a different set of rules. Indeed, there's no one size fits all solution for companies either. A few different modules should not break anything and the problem is more between the vendors. Quoting the article, "The university must cope with what Handley calls "version upgrade gridlock"?installing Oracle v. 11.5.9 requires changing PeopleSoft v. 7.6, upgrading to PeopleSoft v. 8 requires changing Oracle v. 11.5.9, and so on." For the money they have spent, they should have a working system second to none.
They should dump all of this expensive cruft and just go with free software. The solution they are taking now is "outsourcing" stuff to India. That will work if they free themselves from their vendor supplied nightmare.
Still, I've heard of so many failures costing tens of millions of dollars with these programs that I start looking to blame something other than the software and software developers.
The article also names the cost of this failure is around 150 milion dollars.
"Sometimes I look back and wonder if this wave of ERP software ? wasn't a collective hallucination," says Stanford CIO Chris Handley, a former psychology instructor who joined Stanford from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1999. "Just buying the software does not solve the problem. You have to change the institution, and that's something Stanford struggled with."
Change an institution to match software? Why not change the software to match the institution?
the board of trustees since 1999 has been asked to approve $93.4 million in capital expenditures for applications and infrastructure . The trustees had approved $60 million in 1994 to overhaul Stanford's entire administrative information systems, a project they expected would take five years, even though controller Susan Calandra says some of the projects in the original plan were never started.
For $60,000,000 they should have a custom system that works with anything. Hell, they should have as much for $5,000,000. Now they want 93,000,000 more?
The delay has been caused in part by Oracle itself, which helped Stanford customize the software so heavily?changing Oracle Financials to accommodate the way Stanford redistributes overhead costs across its grants, for instance?that together they broke continuity with future versions of the software, rendering portions of what they put in place unusable.
I can't imagine something so poorly modularized. What's going on here?
The university must cope with what Handley calls "version upgrade gridlock"?installing Oracle v. 11.5.9 requires changing PeopleSoft v. 7.6, upgrading to PeopleSoft v. 8 requires changing Oracle v. 11.5.9, and so on.
Oh, now I see they should have used free software from the get go and done it themselves.
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Then again, you are full of contradictions. Though you say that you are a "die-hard linux fan", I don't see you saying many good things about free software. A quick review of your comments convinces me that you have a strange way of showing your affection:
- You say bad things about Debian "cruft" as well as complaining about how long it took for this Gnome 2.6 to hit the repository.
- You don't like PHP or Perl and by God are too good for it
- You don't even have nice things to say about koala bears
On the other hand, Well, you do have some good things to say about encryption while beating up an honest to God M$ Astroturfer and you do say a few reasonable things. This, however is weird to the core:To Twitter: I'm starting to think you really are a Linux zealot troll. You're off my friends list for now.
Tell me any user would be better off with Winblows than a Gnome desktop. For saying so, you would perpetuate Microsoft FUD language and call me a Zealot? With friends like that who needs enemies?
Now for the core of your gripe:
the biggest point: it opens a new f**king window for each folder.
I don't know how you missed that. Every single review of Gnome has trashed the whole thing for this one annoyance that many people have been begging for. The level of Gnome FUD has reached a climax in this thread and it disgusts me.
The Windows UI might be easy for you, but I have trouble finding the "preferences dialog". Do you right click on "my computer", find it under the start menu, or what? I've used 3.1, NT, 95, 98, and 2000. The controls, if they exist, were in different places in each of them for most things. When it comes to Winblows, I'm lost and generally can't find the answer with a quick Google search. This is learned behavior, not a matter of "some intelligence" and it goes away quickly.
Fine, there are dozens of window managers and file managers. What's the point of flaming Gnome?
Why are you standing up for an obvious troll who's saying something as stupid as "everyone hates Gnome"? I don't use Nautilus but I've got great respect for the Gnome team and don't think they need this kind of abuse. Are you pissed because all of their other tools have been so useful to you but suddenly you don't like the direction of one or two prominent pieces of their desktop?
Don't worry, the code will get back to you without much effort on your part. Evolution, Mono, and the whole Gnome framework are still awesome pieces of code that everyone can use. Besides being able to use whole utilities like Evolution, others will be porting their work to other frameworks. Free software is like that.
It's a single button in Gconf. I don't know where to look in Winblows for such a feature, but I do know that most "easy" things in that terrible UI are only easy if you have memorized the 6 different ways Microsoft has done it over they years.
Do you have a usability study or something to back that up with? I know people that this interface would be perfect for and they represent the vast majority of computer users. People like my mom, who fell in love with Windoze 3.1 and demand icons to EVERYTHING will be very happy with an interface just like this.
If I'm to believe all the M$ generated FUD about Linux not being ready for the desktop, Gnome is the best thing since CRTs. Gnome answers every single complaint about inconsistent and complicated GUIs in a unified framework that puts Winblows to shame.
You complain:
However, when users flat out reject them it is not the place of the developers to say "quit your bitching, we know what is best for you." As for the guy that wrote the article, attacking users that complain and don't know how to use gconf? What, only power users are allowed to choose how their desktop feels?
Yeah, Bullshit. Users have not gotten their hands on the new Gnome yet. The author is pissed off at what reviewers, fucking M$ "power users", have been saying. They should know better. What the author said was:
I can understand the author's frustration. He's peeved at such bad reviews for a feature that can be turned off and thinks that the way Gnome made things work is nifty and exactly what people asked for. Why have so many WinTel rag trolls panned it?
Why not be pissed about pans of software that's free and easily avoided? Gconf is easy enough to use. The user could call up Konqueror and have a first rate file manager for all the people at Gnome care. They have responded to what users asked them for.
Gnome has gone out of it's way to make a Windoze experience that out dozes Windoze. People have screamed and yelled that Joe Sixpacks wants something easy for his shallow file structure. People, such as my wife, who have never owned more than a few dozen files at a time demand desktop shortcuts and "consistency" of just the type Gnome offers. They want one directory for their hundreds of picture directories and no funny business that might "hide" something. In short, they demand and love clutter. Now they can have it and more.
The author could have been nicer in his write up, but he has a point. Gnome has indeed done the Microsoft Monkey dance. The kinds of people who ohh and ahh over the XP and it's simplified, single desktop, GUI, should love Gnome. It's exactly what people have asked for. But those people are the same jackasses who have forever been claiming "Linux is not ready for the desktop". Two years ago, they pointed to a lack of an "integrated" browser and utilities that were "thrown together" and used different rules. They called inconsistency in the user interface and pretended that Winblows did it any better. They also complained of a lack of "innovation". Well, here it all is! What does it elicit? Complaints. Those people will never be happy with anything but their stale, broken, Microsoft junk.
This software has it's place. Do I use Gnome? No, I don't. At the same time, I know it's just right for people like my mom. She's been pining for her Windows 3.1 machine for years and has made everything look just like it since.
Crazney, if you don't like gconf, why don't you fix it? I'm sure you have such good ideas that everyone will want your fork. Can't do that? Fine, be happy with your fluxbox and leave Gnome alone.
The question then is if DNA sampling is part of a reasonable arrest. The fears expressed in the article were:
"DNA is not like a fingerprint, since getting it is more invasive and it holds information beyond mere identification,'' said Tania Simoncelli, a science and technology fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Storing it permanently for future criminal investigations doesn't comply with the Constitution.''
Is that true? What information does a DNA "fingerprint" reveal? How is it any different from storing an image of someone's face, fingerprints and other identifying information permanently for future criminal investigation?
It's funny that you should mention a Handspring Visor that your friend had been using for years. What operating system are they using? Mine came with drivers for Windoze that worked on 98 and NT but had serious issues with 2000. I don't know if there are drivers for XP, but the trend was NO.
Kpilot, however, works and syncs great with KDE's excellent PIM programs. Interestingly enough, my Visor is going to get information from an old job that I though was lost forever. I have an old Windoze 98 backup that I'm going to sync and then move sync with KDE. I've been using it with a serial cable under Debian and my little brother had good experiences with USB stuff and Fedora Core 1. Because of this, it's more useful to me than my fancier and nicer Zaurus which is reported to work with Evolution.
I loved my Handspring and now I can love it again. It got months of service from regular AAA batteries, and worked with rechargeables AAAs. It was cheap when I bought it and I'm sure that replacements can be had for next to nothing used.
It's only a matter of time before I'll be able to easily sync the same data onto my Zaurus, but I'll still have uses for the Handspring. The Zaurus is much nicer, has a music player and can be programmed easily, but the Handspring has all of the above named advantages. Moreover, I'm more comfortable with it's input methods. The Zaurus is just a little different but that matters.
With free software, I only buy a PDA when the features of the new one clearly warrant the purchase. No one is going to be forced to buy a new gadget to get the same feature set again. Free software is making the market more honest.
The company has lots of plants, but the dissaster I refer to is an economic one and not a safety issue. The program was administrative not operations. Poor maintenance and records keeping will force them to shut down more often, and operators may be harmed but there is no public safety risk associated with it. The engineers will remember and have paper records when the databases don't work right. Also, Operations still has 1970 era analog devices to monitor the actual condition and state of the plant. When things break, they can turn it off if it does not shut down on it's own. It's going to cost lots of money and the cost will be passed onto the public but there's not going to be accidents.
Spam is a weapon that's being used to destroy conventional email and competitive ISPs. Connect the dots and follow the money. Spam is being used for more than promoting dubious products. Spam is a cheap DoS and some people have plenty of money and reason to buy it.
I imagine that Microsoft is a big spam purchaser but is not alone. Microsoft spent more than a billion dollars promoting XP and has been known to break competitor's service. It's easy to imagine them and other big ISPs paying spammers to bomb their competitor's mail. Microsoft also has a long record for astroturfing and disrespect of other people's property and business. Does anyone think they would shrink from using spam this way?
If that's not enough reason, Microsoft has also announced that they want to make money from new kinds of "secure" email. Schemes have been advocated where every user of email would pay them and everyone would need their software. They also would sell advertising to the same "respectable" businesses who have polluted TV, radio and billboards, the sky itself and every other place you might glance. Sounds like they would like real email to die, no?
The US Government agrees with Microsoft on that score. Their carnivore system will not work if people run their own mail servers and encrypt their mail. It's much easier for them to intercept and filter mail that has to go, unencrypted, through a few large ISP owned smpt servers.
To top it all off, Microsoft and AOL threatened my ISP with blacklisting if they did not block all port 25. My ISP complied. Another poster here has the same story about their ISP.
Comcast is fighting them. Good for them and everyone.
What Microsoft told the Washington Post, based on what Cox told me, is clearly disingenuous:
Webb said he thinks port 25 should be blocked by default, and customers should be required to apply for an exception.
They don't want exceptions for anyone.
Comcast's policy, the best for the user and the net as a whole, is really bad for the Soft. Customers are going to learn just how bad M$ junk is when their mail is blocked. Credit is being given where credit is due.
I feel like dancing in the streets.
I'm going to patent the RFID equivalent of "one click shopping" . A system of readers will record all items on a customer, so that a profile can be generated and saved. The customer's means of payment will also be stored in the profile so that the customer can purchase anything in my store, or at a computer monitor without any special credit card on their person. Theives and legitimate companies who use this method to vend must call me "Exalted Inventor" and pay me a portion of the proceeds. Advertisers who abuse this system, as grocery stores do now, to push brands that I never buy will be forced to bathe in honey and dance naked on fire ant mounds. Vendors dumb enough to purchase said advertising will be separated from their money and require no further punishment. They are invited to the mound dance.
Being able to hide your credit anywhere has an appeal. Sure, a mugger might ask for your cheap watch, but would they bother with your ink pen? Kinda cool to be able to give one your wallet without fear. Of course, in my case, the mugger will know which object has my credit. It will be the one wrapped in tin foil.
RFIDs creep me out. Someone being able to identify me by a device in my shoes, in my car's tires, in my shirt? It's weird and the nasty part is that no one I care about will have the ability, just big dumb companies that want to milk me. Vending machines that can take my money while I walk by are more bothersome still. I have a feeling that foil liners will become very fashionable soon, but it won't really work.
I don't like agreeing with the above post because it's obvious flamebait. "teenage nitwit," is the most obvious attack. The straw men constructed show the author advocates kindness more than he practices it. Garyok, how the hell do you know how our anonymous reader treats people or tells them? How do you know that they are not really clever? As you say, "people deserve respect".
That being said, my best advice is to get over being clever. I gave myself lots of problems before I did this for myself. I was self defeatingly lazy about the way I did my work.
Every little thing counts. More than anything else, your school work shows that you can follow directions and are willing to do things that are boring to get what you want. Companies want employees that do everything they are told, not just the "exciting" things. Yeah, it's stupid but that's the way the world is made. You may not like working for a company that judges people this way, but most are like that and it beats being unemployed.
The most important thing for my technical work was to see good examples. The Given, Find, Solution method is the best way to avoid mistakes and it really saves time even for trivial problems. Trivial problems don't require as much write up. You don't have to be a neat fanatic about it or even have good penmanship, but stating all of your assumptions and referencing equations and other sources makes your mistakes obvious to you when go back to check it. It gives you time to clear your head and avoids transcription problems because you can put your finger on your work and in the book at the same time to check. It also gives you a body of work to take to interviews.
Look for other bright people and work with them. It will help you understand just where you fit into the world and you will understand more. I picked people at random and did well with one or two of them. One of them is still a very good friend and I have no idea why he thinks I'm brighter than he is.
I imagine that Microsoft is a big spam purchaser but is not alone. Microsoft spent more than a billion dollars promoting XP and has been known to break competitor's service. It's easy to imagine them and other big ISPs paying spammers to bomb their competitor's mail. Microsoft also has a long record for astroturfing and disrespect of other people's property and business.
If that's not enough reason, Microsoft has also announced that they want to make money from new kinds of "secure" email. Schemes have been advocated where every user of email would pay them and everyone would need their software. They also would sell advertising to the same "respectable" businesses who have polluted TV, radio and billboards, the sky itself and every other place you might glance. Sounds like they would like real email to die, no?
The US Government agrees with Microsoft on that score. Their carnivore system will not work if people run their own mail servers and encrypt their mail. It's much easier for them to intercept and filter mail that has to go, unencrypted, through a few large ISP owned smpt servers.
To top it all off, Microsoft and AOL threatened my ISP with blacklisting if they did not block all port 25. My ISP complied.
Comcast is fighting them. Good for them and everyone.
I hope so. Before Cox blocked port 25, I started getting more and more bounces but Exim was still more reliable than Cox's SMTP server. Not being able to run a real mail server bothered me, but having to point my MTA at Cox's SMTP servers has been a real pain.
This inconvenience to cheap-o owners of SMTP servers with DHCP-assigned addresses has been a real shame ...
Do me a favor and tell Cox to get rid of their expensive and money losing DHCP infrastructure for their "always on" internet connection with a 1:1 IP to client ratio. I liked the static IP I got from AtHome and I paid for one from Cox when they started to charge for that "service". I dropped it when they wanted $70/month for service that was slower than DSL.
This from a guy that has something to do with Courier, a MTA? Do you not want people to be able to use your nice GPL'd software from Comcast's network? I don't get it.
I know that Microsoft would like to blacklist Comcast. What they have done will inconvenience people with who are running zombies, which are the real problem. Cox was threatened with a blacklist from them if they did not block, without recourse, all port 25. Comcast is brave to stand up to them.
What am I missing here?
Last I checked, faculty was not generally responsible for doing IT software upgrades.
You must have missed this in the article: Stanford CIO Chris Handley, a former psychology instructor who joined Stanford from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1999.
Granted, he's not an instructor now but he surely is responsible for fixing the mess and has been for five years:
Handley joined Stanford in November 1999 as executive director of administrative systems. Previously, he directed the national PeopleSoft Practice for Higher Education at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Before that he held positions at the University of Toronto, where he enjoyed a 14-year career as a psychology instructor before taking responsibility for university systems there.
No mention of a CS degree or any technical background, just an affiliation to PeopleSoft? Is this why Stanford has been screwed around by their vendors for so long?
The plot thickens, he's spoken at Open Source conferences! He should know better. I'd love to know what he said.
Anyone known anything else about Chris?
What Microsoft told the Washington Post, based on what Cox told me, is clearly disingenuous:
Webb said he thinks port 25 should be blocked by default, and customers should be required to apply for an exception.
They don't want exceptions for anyone.
Comcast's policy, the best for the user and the net as a whole, is really bad for the Soft. Customers are going to learn just how bad M$ junk is when their mail is blocked. Credit is being given where credit is due.
I feel like dancing in the streets.
They are only going to block your port 25 if they notice something wrong, like you suddenly made 5,000 new friends to sell penis enlargers too. You will still be able to run a legitimate mail server. If your mail server is compromised, you will learn about it. People who spam deliberately will be stopped cold.
People who have their email blocked frequently will consider getting software that is not so easy to compromise. Windoze lusers who took the attitude, "If it does not interfer with my browsing, I don't care." are going to get what they deserve. Most of them are already using their ISP's SMTP server and will never notice anyway.
You can contrast this to Cox and other shitty ISPs that blocked everyone's port 25. First they blocked inbound, which made it difficult to run a mail server. Then they blocked outbound, which forced me to use their shitty SMTP server. They have had frequent problems. Had my own mail server been as unreliable as Cox's is, I'd have given up running one.
Comcast rocks.
So is it a sleep chamber, or New Age Music Torture Chamber?
That depends on how you program it. It's got a big screen, speakers and a matres that vibrates and moves. It's a Quake booth.
They must have thought it would cost too much. Anyone who objects on those grounds should be shown this $150,000,000 vendor nightmare.
The nuclear power plant I used to work for had spent $5,000,000 building custom software for itself with Powersoft tools. It worked beautifully. The administration types thought that it cost too much and fired their programmers with the bone headed attitude, "we are an electric company not a software company." Now they are putting in a fifteen million dollar commercial package. I'm not there anymore, but I'm sure it's going to be a dissaster. You have to wonder if they are going to fire their engineers and clerks because they are not an engineering firm or a filing company.
Just think of how much money everyone would have saved had they switched over to free software in the mid or late 90s.
Blame the user, eh? Let's have a look at a few choice quotes from the article:
There might be some spec changing going on, but it looks more like the University got ripped off. The vendors not only failed to deliver what they promissed, ten years ago, they broke what they provided. The solution chosen, to offshore report writing, won't solve the vendor incompatibility issues.
For all $150,000,000 spent over the last ten years, they could have written their own system from scratch about 30 times. That would be a good use of consultants. I don't think the university got it's money's worth from the consultants who set them up for their vendor supplied nightmare.
If you read the article, you see that they have a vendor cluster fuck going on. Versioning and custom software to fit the institution that break forward compatibility. They are right to demand custom modules. A university is not a corporation and operates on a different set of rules. Indeed, there's no one size fits all solution for companies either. A few different modules should not break anything and the problem is more between the vendors. Quoting the article, "The university must cope with what Handley calls "version upgrade gridlock"?installing Oracle v. 11.5.9 requires changing PeopleSoft v. 7.6, upgrading to PeopleSoft v. 8 requires changing Oracle v. 11.5.9, and so on." For the money they have spent, they should have a working system second to none.
They should dump all of this expensive cruft and just go with free software. The solution they are taking now is "outsourcing" stuff to India. That will work if they free themselves from their vendor supplied nightmare.
Still, I've heard of so many failures costing tens of millions of dollars with these programs that I start looking to blame something other than the software and software developers.
The article also names the cost of this failure is around 150 milion dollars.
Change an institution to match software? Why not change the software to match the institution?
the board of trustees since 1999 has been asked to approve $93.4 million in capital expenditures for applications and infrastructure . The trustees had approved $60 million in 1994 to overhaul Stanford's entire administrative information systems, a project they expected would take five years, even though controller Susan Calandra says some of the projects in the original plan were never started.
For $60,000,000 they should have a custom system that works with anything. Hell, they should have as much for $5,000,000. Now they want 93,000,000 more?
The delay has been caused in part by Oracle itself, which helped Stanford customize the software so heavily?changing Oracle Financials to accommodate the way Stanford redistributes overhead costs across its grants, for instance?that together they broke continuity with future versions of the software, rendering portions of what they put in place unusable.
I can't imagine something so poorly modularized. What's going on here?
The university must cope with what Handley calls "version upgrade gridlock"?installing Oracle v. 11.5.9 requires changing PeopleSoft v. 7.6, upgrading to PeopleSoft v. 8 requires changing Oracle v. 11.5.9, and so on.
Oh, now I see they should have used free software from the get go and done it themselves.
That's true. The author's point was that you should be aware of the cost. I don't see a conflict.