Actually, use of the Canadian MBNA/BofA Linux Fund Master Card continues to support F/OSS through the Linux Fund. In logic unique to American Banking, when the USA MBNA/BofA cut The Linux Fund agreement, the Canadian agreement was not affected. If your Tux Master Card bills come from the USA, funds stopped flowing to The Linux Fund on July 1. In Canada however, they continue.
There is no such thing as "equally qualified." By virtue of reading/. you are clearly way above any candidate who does not.;-)
However the employer is bigger than you are. You won't ge the job unless you take the %@#%$@#$%@ test. Whether you wish to work for a company that requires this BS, or not is up to you.
Recently took one for a job opening where the skill and personality match were pretty solid. Never heard back from them.
Guess that means I'm... well nevermind that.
Try this: Agree to take the test but require that they give you a copy of your results. That way at least you won't be listening the the phone not ringing.
I've always been dismayed at the way the C:\Windows\ tree bloats by 200% - 300% - 500% and more over time.
One lightly loaded system I support is as clean as I can keep it, but \Windows\.. has 10,000+ files, 1,800+ directories and 2,000,000+ bytes! No human I know can manage that level of complexity directly.
I've always been dismayed at the way uninstalling via \Control_Panel\Add_Remove Programs\ not only leave files behind in the \Windows\ tree but also in the C:\Program Files\ tree.
Beyond being ugly-messy, it intuitively seems like a security nightmare to me.
Q: Isn't it time Windows stopped this madness not just by locking the \Windows\ tree away from applications by also by including an OS level uninstall function?
I worked with GEM a lot in 1987. It was plenty fast on an 8 mhz 286... ESPECIALLY when compared to Windows 3.1. Fast as in 10x to 20x as fast. Plenty fast for desktop publishing, which was my main app. GEM even ran on 21" displays.
In 20/20 hindisight, we're probably well served that Windoz is such a resource hog. Moore's law isn't enough to give us 4Ghz CPUs or a Gigabyte of RAM for $100... it also takes big market demand.
But imagine a world where an 8mhz 286 with 2-4 MEG of RAM was fast enough to do everything you do today. We could have been building on that for nearly 20 years.
Today I have a Gig of RAM and a 3Ghz CPU. It's barely adequate on many apps. This story certainly makes me ask "what if?"
FWIW, I'm a very happy customer of registrar Dotster and have been for about six years. Pricing is pretty standard $14.95/year for domains $9.95 to transfer from other registrars. IMNSHO What sets them apart, and makes them worth a bit more than the rock bottom registrars, is that you can reach a real human being in tech support within about 10 minutes.
Perhaps you will be amused to know that the city of Portland Oregon puts most of that stuff online now... for free. The home page is http://portlandmaps.com but that won't suggest how much fun it can be. Let's pick on one of my neigbors at random:
Surely there are people at Red Hat who are sufficiently non-geek to realize that Linux offers too many choices for the average user. Doesn't Red Hat know it has sufficient mind-share to market: . . . . The Red Hat Desktop
If "The Red Hat Workstation v1.0" CD makes all of the tough choices for the newbie/SOHO client... won't they be more likely to get it working the first time?
If they can get it working, surely a lot more will adopt it?
You don't need to claim "best;" you only need to say: "We know that it works." By making all of the tough choices for the newbie/SOHO client, you could advance Linux, and your brand big time.
Just make sure the disk asks less than a dozen simple questions then installs a complete home or SOHO workstation environment including GUI, Office Suite, Browser, Multimedia etc.
Wouldn't a "branded" standard desktop advance the market share of Linux Desktop 200% in 6 months?
Would a "Common Linux Desktop Install" which was shared by IBM, Red Hat, Suze and a few other major players have serious market building inpact?
Would it help create a "critical mass" of Linux Desktops if a multi-vendor consensus desiged a quickly installable, common "first boot" Linux Desktop?
Is there value, in market building terms, of bringing to desktop Linux "The Familiar Windows Experience" of allowing a low-to-medium skilled user to sit down at a new-to-them "Standard" machine where they have a reasonable expection of knowing where resources can be found?
By "Common Desktop Install", I mean a single CD which would after 3-8 clicks, auto install a fairly well tuned desktop version of the OS with a single GUI showing, plus several major productivity packages like Star Office, Netscape etc. Under the hood stuff would still be unique to each vendor, but what the lightweight user saw would be highly consistent.
I do not suggest removing the customizing capabilities of the OS, only the creation of a common first boot desktop for the masses.
Great list but....
MISSES
1. Airports in the centre of town
Probably, but the old Hong Kong airport was.
2. Lack of pollution
3. Cheap electrical heating
In terms of middle class hourly wage it is
4. Factories burning gas
Some in co-generation, but it's not common
5. Highways with different decks for different speeds
High density Rush hour lanes do exist.
6. Roads reserved exclusively for business traffic
7. Widespread use of nuclear generating stations in Canada and South America
8. Widespread use of solar power
Wide but not deep
9. Use of nuclear reactors in civilian passenger cruise ships
10. Use of lightweight metals in large building construction
Not in framework, but aluminum is heavily used on glazing frames
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
Not total, but many major components
12. One multipurpose unit to handle a home's hot water, heating and cooling
Common but not major
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
Common and major - Trailer / manufactured housing
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Nair
15. Use of plastic plates that decompes at temperatures above 250 F
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
Lawn furniture
17. Paper tablecloths that are burned after use
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
Common and major but not universal. Happily
19. Processes to turn wood pulp and sawdust into edible foods
More common than you might expect - High fiber processed foods are often high fiber from
added wood fiber.
20. Discarded paper linen and rayon underwear turned into candy
21. Videophones in every home
Close - computer video telephony is here, but not common or major
22. Using computers to generate forecasts (people still make the calls)
23. Preventing hurricanes by buring oil on the ocean
24. Not making it to the mooon
25. $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) to fly from Chicago to Paris
26. Rocket powered planes
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
Mandated by law for 10% of the bulk in summer. Thanks ADM (NOT)
28. Family helicopters
29. Arial busses that hold 200 people for 100 mile commutes to work
30. Easy cures for bacterial diseases such as TB
You missed that?
31. Physical signs of aging no longer apparent
BIG shift though. More people look younger longer. My 33 year old
companion got carded at 4 out of 5 bars we cruised recently.
32. Widespread cures for viral diseases
Polio, Smallpox... Wonderful Vaccines and hostpital treatments make avoidance and / or survival the norm
33. Widespread treatments and cures of Parkinson's and Cerebral Palsy
We are very very close....
This just sounds like really suspicious behaviour to me.
All valid points, but do recall a few others.
Schwartz was hired at least in part, to be concerned with system security. Trying to crack a system as a way of proving it is secure is exactly what this kind of job description includes.
Lots of people seem to forget that, including the manager who caused Intel to spend about $1.5 million assisting Washington County in the Prosecution. Whatever his actual crimes may be; his biggest crime was embarrasing a VP.
Check around and you'll find athat at intel, there is a near critical mass of "peter principle" management promotions, the scale of which is very truly awesome to behold. Musical chairs in management roles is simply awesome. I know one contractor who had FIVE different supervisors in one 90 day project.
So Randall is a contractor, whose responsibility includes making the system more secure. Most Slashdotters know that this is not an on off switch. It is a continum of less or more secure and the process of getting more secure involves very intense digging, testing and fixing and more testing.
Nobody says that Randall was not one of the best at this. So some manager decides to NOT renew his contract, probably just to prove that he had the authority. Randall tried to make the point that the job is far from done.
At the other end, there is his client, - Intel, not the PHB manager - who has genuine security problems.
So Randall has been working to make it better and he considers the job not finished. He can see the problems but the boss has said "I don't wanna know about that Iceberg - go away."
If you really cared about the company and their mission, what would YOU Do?
Nobody has said that Randall ever tried to anything other than document the problem.
Does he have an economic interest in a renewed contract? Absolutely, but there was NEVER any suggestion that what was done was for any expectation of gain other than another 90-day contract extension.
Put it another way: The guy you work for is walking down the sidewalk ahead of you and his wallet is about to fall out of his back pocket. You grab the wallet, and hand it to him, with appropriate explanation. Do you expect him to thank you or have you arrested?
Newbies may have to bear with me on this, but most old timers will at minimum give this proposal a Hmmmm.....
Once upon a time, Wordperfect was The Standard with over 70% market share. *
All word processors since then support the file format, due to the market share it enjoyed.
You can do most everything you want within that 1987 standard.
Most modern Wordprocessors especially those of the evil empire will embed astonishing quantities of useless unnecessary glop but there are public domain programs which will clean that crap out nicely.
If my personal favorite file format gets popular again, somebody with a clue may even buy it off Corel and release a reasonable upgrade.
I for one would jump on a chance to buy a stable Wordperfect 5.4! It's not competitive as a general document prep tool, without WSIWG; but as a programming tool, I have to go there nearly every day for a function that just doesn't work as well in other processors: Search/replace on CR, or Cut/copy/past a rectangle of monospaced text.
* Why that was lost has been flogged to death eleswhere. Beyond some poor decisions on the part of the products former custodians, the primary suspect's initials are BG.
The point about power companies doing internet plays is not bits over the big heavy copper in the air... wrong physical/electrical characteristics for high frequencies for starters.
The thing power companies have to bring to the internet game is "rights of way."
See, they've got the rights to pass wires over all this land all over the map. Originally it was all thick copper carying kilowats. Now they just need ot hang an additional (fiber optic) cable on the same towers and viola! Low entry cost to good margin biz with significant barriers to competitors.
No human-run organization operates with Borg-like singlemindedness. People are incapable of that kind of groupthink. Not even the old Soviet Union achieved it.
Micro Nit: Imperial Japan.
One of today's Sunday Morning Network Talking Heads shows featured a lady professor of Japanese origins at an American University.
She has just published an English translation of a book first published over 50 years ago in Japan:
Letters home from Kamakazi pilots about to fly off into eternity.
While fascinating, I did not expect to read the book and cannot tell you the title. However rather than the stereotype of foaming at the mouth fanatics, these were often university students who wrote home in the most eloquent phrases. They did not wish to die, they did not wish for their brothers to follow them. They were doing their duty to Emperor and country.
Dr. Scott MacRae is a serious guy therefore I will go out on a limb and suggest that this stuff is worthy of serious consideration.
MacRae is at the Casey Eye Institute, and one of the Doc's on the FDA team to research and approve Laser Eye Surgery Machines. His research partner, Dr. Larry Rich is co-editor of the biggest research book on the topic.
Dr. MacRae did about half of the people I sent to the clinic as a happy camper, happy customer. Though Dr. Rich did my surgery, I've watched Dr. MacRay do several. I'm very pleased and very impressed.
This is a superb example of the power of slashdot and a a presentation of it's limitations.
What's great is, direct access to a major personality, and lively insightful discussion of the issues thereby raised.
What's soft is the verbatum transcription of that personality's words without editing, and the transient nature of/. postings. One poster said he seemed to have a bit of difficulty with the english language which is not at all true. What we see is an unedited transcription of spoken English. Read the court reporter's transcripts of any court proceeding and you'll see the same thing. We do not talk the way we write. Most interviews go through an editing process, but the urgency of/. makes a transcription like this the norm.
Another softness is that/. exists in internet time. My reply is a few days after the original posting so it will probably never be seen by more than a handful of readers.
That said, and mostly to please myself I extracted the points that Lars was making and did heavy editing. Please don't cancel my license to your CD's Lars. I just think this makes it easier for some to follow ________________________________________
You have to remember that you're talking to somebody who advocates bootlegging, who has alwyas been pro-bootlegging. We have always let fans audio and video tape our shows. We've always had a thing for bootlegging live materials, for special appearances, for that type of stuff.
We are not stupid. Of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet. But the question is, on whose conditions, and obviously we want it to be on our conditions. We do not condone, and do not want to be part of, illegal trading of our masters through sources we have not authorized, it's that simple.
Why did napster bounce Metalica fans rather than simply prohibit Metallica songs from being distributed? It clearly looks like Napster was not dealing in good faith when you take that into consideration.
The record company had nothing to do with the lawsuit. The band discussed it, did research and launched the project.
Just because somebody feels that that CD is too expensive doesn't give them a right to steal it. When somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them.
I can guarantee you it's costing us tenfold to fight it in lawyer's compensation, than it is for measly little pennies in royalties being lost. That's not what it's about.
Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change. It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months. Then it can become a money issue.
Where it can affect people, where it is about money, is for the band that sells 600 copies of their CD. If they all of a sudden go from selling 600 copies of their CD down to 50 copies, because the other 550 copies get downloaded for free, that's where it starts affecting real people with real money.
Comparing home taping to going on the Internet and getting 1st generation, perfect digital copies of master recordings from all the over world, is just not a valid.
[
Making an audio cassette copy from record or CD results in a loss of quality with each "generation" of duplication. The copy itself degrades with time and temperature changes. This technological limitation on "bootleging" copyrighted performances, no longer applies to digital copies of those same performances. ]
I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it. The music world, is littered with the careers of people who did not pay enough attention to the business side of what they were doing and ended up getting majorly fucked.
I don't use the Internet a lot in my daily life, personally, because I choose to pick up the phone rather than send somebody an email. It doesn't mean I despise the Internet. I respect it, I understand that it plays a major role in a lot of people's lives.
I don't think the record labels have paid attention to this. I think that there's been a major, major wakeup call in the last couple of months.
When we monitored Napster for 48 hours we came up with 1.4 million downloads of Metallica music. There was one downloading of an unsigned artist that whole time.
You have to remember that for every one band that you hear about, [the record companies] lose their shirt on nine other ones you never hear about.
I have come to actually change my position. I believe that if it's not Napster, then a type of service like Napster has the right to exist, on the condition that the only thing being traded through that service is music by artists and owners who have given that service permission.
Why is this a music issue right now? Music is most easily transferrable with today's technology. We're probably not more than a year away from downloading Mission Impossible 3 the same day that it opens in the theatre. If you could download movies right now, Hollywood would come out swinging.
One of the main things that needs to be worked on for the next year, is the public debate about it.
The bottom line is the scale and the quality of it. When we check Napster out, we get 1.4 million copyright infringements in 48 hours. This is different than trading cassette tapes with your buddy at school.
Again, it's the quality. The quality and the scale.
I discovered Metalica late, with their self titled black album and now consider myself a fan owning several of their CD's.
Like others on/. I was dismayed by the lawsuit, but the residual goodwill I feel for the Band caused me to read the interview and form my own conclusions.
I don't mind if your conclusions are different than mine if you've also read the interview.
Really? he seemed to have a bit of difficulty with the english language
Ah Grasshopper, you have so much yet to learn.
That's the nature of transcribing spoken English. Read the legal transcripts of any court proceeding or legal wiretap and you'll see the same thing.
As humans, we only rarely speak as we write, and most of those times we're reading what was already written, as in giving a speech; or performing, as in a play.
and an obvious ignorance of the technology involved.
Since he admitted early that he has a life and doesn't spend much time surfing, I hardly think this an important point.
The important point is that it's his intellectual property and therefore he should have some control over how it's used for someone else's profit.
The good part about this lawsuit is that it's going to focus attention on the issue. Lars and Co are also going to learn a lot in this process as will you, me and the IP industry.
http://www.borealis.com/motor/index.htm The Chorus motor is a multiphase AC motor which has low end torque similar to a DC motor and better high RPM efficiency than a standard AC motor.
The company that developed it has been very careful about patent and trade secret issues, so the progress bringing this engine to market has been painfully slow. A tech to watch though.
Actually the full name of the character played by Walter Koenig (a.k.a. corporal checkov) was Alfred Bester
I had no clue till recently that there was a SciFi author by the same name. Further research indicates that he was quiet in terms of book output during the production arc of B5. His most recent release has an intro by none other than Harlan Ellison.
It occured to me that Alfred Bester might be a pen name for JMS.... Anybody got a clue?
Crusade succeeded spectacularly where it counts - ratings. Ratings were quite high for a non network series.
Didn't matter a bit.
It got killed by a power tripping suit at TNT who wanted "more horney aliens" and "more space kabooms" and when JMS (writer producer director) refused to be bullied, they showed him who was boss and killed his project in a display of infantilism normally only seen in Washingtoon.
Best Episode? All of 112 of them - because it is all one story.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually Jobs was choice number 3, after Sergey and Larry as co-CEO.
Wired has it this month, from the same author. Oddly I don't recall a book reference.
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/mf_larrypage/
I can't be the only person here who doesn't EVER read Sci-fi, and has no interest whatsoever in them, or ....
At this URL... yes, I think so.
Actually, use of the Canadian MBNA/BofA Linux Fund Master Card continues to support F/OSS through the Linux Fund. In logic unique to American Banking, when the USA MBNA/BofA cut The Linux Fund agreement, the Canadian agreement was not affected. If your Tux Master Card bills come from the USA, funds stopped flowing to The Linux Fund on July 1. In Canada however, they continue.
There is no such thing as "equally qualified." By virtue of reading /. you are clearly way above any candidate who does not. ;-)
However the employer is bigger than you are. You won't ge the job unless you take the %@#%$@#$%@ test. Whether you wish to work for a company that requires this BS, or not is up to you.
Recently took one for a job opening where the skill and personality match were pretty solid. Never heard back from them.
Guess that means I'm... well nevermind that.
Try this: Agree to take the test but require that they give you a copy of your results. That way at least you won't be listening the the phone not ringing.
Agreed. Yea, that's piling on, but the parent comment was only "2" when I wrote this, and I don't have any points to award today.
I've always been dismayed at the way uninstalling via \Control_Panel\Add_Remove Programs\ not only leave files behind in the \Windows\ tree but also in the C:\Program Files\ tree.
Q: Isn't it time Windows stopped this madness not just by locking the \Windows\ tree away from applications by also by including an OS level uninstall function?
it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"
Survey Says: No.
An RSA Conference will take place February 13-17 2006 in San Jose, CA.
;-)
You could all live on unemployment and separation packages for two months, then pool your resources, and rent a booth.
I worked with GEM a lot in 1987. It was plenty fast on an 8 mhz 286... ESPECIALLY when compared to Windows 3.1. Fast as in 10x to 20x as fast. Plenty fast for desktop publishing, which was my main app. GEM even ran on 21" displays.
In 20/20 hindisight, we're probably well served that Windoz is such a resource hog. Moore's law isn't enough to give us 4Ghz CPUs or a Gigabyte of RAM for $100... it also takes big market demand.
But imagine a world where an 8mhz 286 with 2-4 MEG of RAM was fast enough to do everything you do today. We could have been building on that for nearly 20 years.
Today I have a Gig of RAM and a 3Ghz CPU. It's barely adequate on many apps. This story certainly makes me ask "what if?"
FWIW, I'm a very happy customer of registrar Dotster and have been for about six years. Pricing is pretty standard $14.95/year for domains $9.95 to transfer from other registrars. IMNSHO What sets them apart, and makes them worth a bit more than the rock bottom registrars, is that you can reach a real human being in tech support within about 10 minutes.
General Info
Satellite Mapping
With Property Lines
Elevation
Crime Stats
Well you get the idea.
Surely there are people at Red Hat who are sufficiently non-geek to realize that Linux offers too many choices for the average user. Doesn't Red Hat know it has sufficient mind-share to market:
. . . . The Red Hat Desktop
If "The Red Hat Workstation v1.0" CD makes all of the tough choices for the newbie/SOHO client... won't they be more likely to get it working the first time?
If they can get it working, surely a lot more will adopt it?
You don't need to claim "best;" you only need to say: "We know that it works." By making all of the tough choices for the newbie/SOHO client, you could advance Linux, and your brand big time. Just make sure the disk asks less than a dozen simple questions then installs a complete home or SOHO workstation environment including GUI, Office Suite, Browser, Multimedia etc.
Wouldn't a "branded" standard desktop advance the market share of Linux Desktop 200% in 6 months?
Why has RH avoided such a product?
Would it help create a "critical mass" of Linux Desktops if a multi-vendor consensus desiged a quickly installable, common "first boot" Linux Desktop?
Is there value, in market building terms, of bringing to desktop Linux "The Familiar Windows Experience" of allowing a low-to-medium skilled user to sit down at a new-to-them "Standard" machine where they have a reasonable expection of knowing where resources can be found?
- By "Common Desktop Install", I mean a single CD which would after 3-8 clicks, auto install a fairly well tuned desktop version of the OS with a single GUI showing, plus several major productivity packages like Star Office, Netscape etc. Under the hood stuff would still be unique to each vendor, but what the lightweight user saw would be highly consistent.
I do not suggest removing the customizing capabilities of the OS, only the creation of a common first boot desktop for the masses.Great list but.... MISSES
1. Airports in the centre of town
Probably, but the old Hong Kong airport was.
2. Lack of pollution
3. Cheap electrical heating
In terms of middle class hourly wage it is
4. Factories burning gas Some in co-generation, but it's not common
5. Highways with different decks for different speeds
High density Rush hour lanes do exist.
6. Roads reserved exclusively for business traffic
7. Widespread use of nuclear generating stations in Canada and South America
8. Widespread use of solar power
Wide but not deep
9. Use of nuclear reactors in civilian passenger cruise ships
10. Use of lightweight metals in large building construction
Not in framework, but aluminum is heavily used on glazing frames
11. Use of plastics to construct houses
Not total, but many major components
12. One multipurpose unit to handle a home's hot water, heating and cooling
Common but not major
13. Houses that cost $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) and last only 25 years
Common and major - Trailer / manufactured housing
14. Chemical removal of facial hair
Nair
15. Use of plastic plates that decompes at temperatures above 250 F
16. Cleaning plastic waterproof furniture by turning a hose on it
Lawn furniture
17. Paper tablecloths that are burned after use
18. Loss of culinary skills due to all food being delivered "fresh frozen"
Common and major but not universal. Happily
19. Processes to turn wood pulp and sawdust into edible foods
More common than you might expect - High fiber processed foods are often high fiber from added wood fiber.
20. Discarded paper linen and rayon underwear turned into candy
21. Videophones in every home
Close - computer video telephony is here, but not common or major
22. Using computers to generate forecasts (people still make the calls)
23. Preventing hurricanes by buring oil on the ocean
24. Not making it to the mooon
25. $36,000 (year 2000 dollars) to fly from Chicago to Paris
26. Rocket powered planes
27. Cars burning denatured alchohol as their primary fuel
Mandated by law for 10% of the bulk in summer. Thanks ADM (NOT)
28. Family helicopters
29. Arial busses that hold 200 people for 100 mile commutes to work
30. Easy cures for bacterial diseases such as TB
You missed that?
31. Physical signs of aging no longer apparent
BIG shift though. More people look younger longer.
My 33 year old companion got carded at 4 out of 5 bars we cruised recently.
32. Widespread cures for viral diseases
Polio, Smallpox... Wonderful Vaccines and hostpital treatments make avoidance and / or survival the norm
33. Widespread treatments and cures of Parkinson's and Cerebral Palsy
We are very very close....
Ah, try again. In a criminal trial, somebody has to file charges.
Do not forget the $1.5 Million Intel spent assisting the Washington County DA in the prosecution.
All valid points, but do recall a few others.
Schwartz was hired at least in part, to be concerned with system security. Trying to crack a system as a way of proving it is secure is exactly what this kind of job description includes.
Lots of people seem to forget that, including the manager who caused Intel to spend about $1.5 million assisting Washington County in the Prosecution. Whatever his actual crimes may be; his biggest crime was embarrasing a VP.
Check around and you'll find athat at intel, there is a near critical mass of "peter principle" management promotions, the scale of which is very truly awesome to behold. Musical chairs in management roles is simply awesome. I know one contractor who had FIVE different supervisors in one 90 day project.
So Randall is a contractor, whose responsibility includes making the system more secure. Most Slashdotters know that this is not an on off switch. It is a continum of less or more secure and the process of getting more secure involves very intense digging, testing and fixing and more testing.
Nobody says that Randall was not one of the best at this. So some manager decides to NOT renew his contract, probably just to prove that he had the authority. Randall tried to make the point that the job is far from done.
At the other end, there is his client, - Intel, not the PHB manager - who has genuine security problems.
So Randall has been working to make it better and he considers the job not finished. He can see the problems but the boss has said "I don't wanna know about that Iceberg - go away."
If you really cared about the company and their mission, what would YOU Do?
Nobody has said that Randall ever tried to anything other than document the problem.
Does he have an economic interest in a renewed contract? Absolutely, but there was NEVER any suggestion that what was done was for any expectation of gain other than another 90-day contract extension.
Put it another way: The guy you work for is walking down the sidewalk ahead of you and his wallet is about to fall out of his back pocket. You grab the wallet, and hand it to him, with appropriate explanation. Do you expect him to thank you or have you arrested?
Once upon a time, Wordperfect was The Standard with over 70% market share. * All word processors since then support the file format, due to the market share it enjoyed.
You can do most everything you want within that 1987 standard.
Most modern Wordprocessors especially those of the evil empire will embed astonishing quantities of useless unnecessary glop but there are public domain programs which will clean that crap out nicely.
If my personal favorite file format gets popular again, somebody with a clue may even buy it off Corel and release a reasonable upgrade.
I for one would jump on a chance to buy a stable Wordperfect 5.4! It's not competitive as a general document prep tool, without WSIWG; but as a programming tool, I have to go there nearly every day for a function that just doesn't work as well in other processors: Search/replace on CR, or Cut/copy/past a rectangle of monospaced text.
* Why that was lost has been flogged to death eleswhere. Beyond some poor decisions on the part of the products former custodians, the primary suspect's initials are BG.
The thing power companies have to bring to the internet game is "rights of way."
See, they've got the rights to pass wires over all this land all over the map. Originally it was all thick copper carying kilowats. Now they just need ot hang an additional (fiber optic) cable on the same towers and viola! Low entry cost to good margin biz with significant barriers to competitors.
- No human-run organization operates with Borg-like singlemindedness. People are incapable of that kind of groupthink. Not even the old Soviet Union achieved it.
Micro Nit: Imperial Japan.One of today's Sunday Morning Network Talking Heads shows featured a lady professor of Japanese origins at an American University.
She has just published an English translation of a book first published over 50 years ago in Japan:
- Letters home from Kamakazi pilots about to fly off into eternity.
While fascinating, I did not expect to read the book and cannot tell you the title. However rather than the stereotype of foaming at the mouth fanatics, these were often university students who wrote home in the most eloquent phrases. They did not wish to die, they did not wish for their brothers to follow them. They were doing their duty to Emperor and country.MacRae is at the Casey Eye Institute, and one of the Doc's on the FDA team to research and approve Laser Eye Surgery Machines. His research partner, Dr. Larry Rich is co-editor of the biggest research book on the topic.
Dr. MacRae did about half of the people I sent to the clinic as a happy camper, happy customer. Though Dr. Rich did my surgery, I've watched Dr. MacRay do several. I'm very pleased and very impressed.
If you're considering the surgery, you may wish to look at my report on the experience from 3 years ago.
What's great is, direct access to a major personality, and lively insightful discussion of the issues thereby raised.
What's soft is the verbatum transcription of that personality's words without editing, and the transient nature of /. postings. One poster said he seemed to have a bit of difficulty with the english language which is not at all true. What we see is an unedited transcription of spoken English. Read the court reporter's transcripts of any court proceeding and you'll see the same thing. We do not talk the way we write. Most interviews go through an editing process, but the urgency of /. makes a transcription like this the norm.
Another softness is that /. exists in internet time. My reply is a few days after the original posting so it will probably never be seen by more than a handful of readers.
That said, and mostly to please myself I extracted the points that Lars was making and did heavy editing. Please don't cancel my license to your CD's Lars. I just think this makes it easier for some to follow
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- You have to remember that you're talking to somebody who advocates bootlegging, who has alwyas been pro-bootlegging. We have always let fans audio and video tape our shows. We've always had a thing for bootlegging live materials, for special appearances, for that type of stuff.
_________________________________________We are not stupid. Of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet. But the question is, on whose conditions, and obviously we want it to be on our conditions. We do not condone, and do not want to be part of, illegal trading of our masters through sources we have not authorized, it's that simple.
Why did napster bounce Metalica fans rather than simply prohibit Metallica songs from being distributed? It clearly looks like Napster was not dealing in good faith when you take that into consideration.
The record company had nothing to do with the lawsuit. The band discussed it, did research and launched the project.
Just because somebody feels that that CD is too expensive doesn't give them a right to steal it. When somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them.
I can guarantee you it's costing us tenfold to fight it in lawyer's compensation, than it is for measly little pennies in royalties being lost. That's not what it's about.
Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change. It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months. Then it can become a money issue.
Where it can affect people, where it is about money, is for the band that sells 600 copies of their CD. If they all of a sudden go from selling 600 copies of their CD down to 50 copies, because the other 550 copies get downloaded for free, that's where it starts affecting real people with real money.
Comparing home taping to going on the Internet and getting 1st generation, perfect digital copies of master recordings from all the over world, is just not a valid.
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- Making an audio cassette copy from record or CD results in a loss of quality with each "generation" of duplication. The copy itself degrades with time and temperature changes. This technological limitation on "bootleging" copyrighted performances, no longer applies to digital copies of those same performances. ]
I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it. The music world, is littered with the careers of people who did not pay enough attention to the business side of what they were doing and ended up getting majorly fucked.I don't use the Internet a lot in my daily life, personally, because I choose to pick up the phone rather than send somebody an email. It doesn't mean I despise the Internet. I respect it, I understand that it plays a major role in a lot of people's lives.
I don't think the record labels have paid attention to this. I think that there's been a major, major wakeup call in the last couple of months.
When we monitored Napster for 48 hours we came up with 1.4 million downloads of Metallica music. There was one downloading of an unsigned artist that whole time.
You have to remember that for every one band that you hear about, [the record companies] lose their shirt on nine other ones you never hear about.
I have come to actually change my position. I believe that if it's not Napster, then a type of service like Napster has the right to exist, on the condition that the only thing being traded through that service is music by artists and owners who have given that service permission.
Why is this a music issue right now? Music is most easily transferrable with today's technology. We're probably not more than a year away from downloading Mission Impossible 3 the same day that it opens in the theatre. If you could download movies right now, Hollywood would come out swinging.
One of the main things that needs to be worked on for the next year, is the public debate about it.
The bottom line is the scale and the quality of it. When we check Napster out, we get 1.4 million copyright infringements in 48 hours. This is different than trading cassette tapes with your buddy at school.
Again, it's the quality. The quality and the scale.
Commentary:
I discovered Metalica late, with their self titled black album and now consider myself a fan owning several of their CD's.
Like others on /. I was dismayed by the lawsuit, but the residual goodwill I feel for the Band caused me to read the interview and form my own conclusions.
I don't mind if your conclusions are different than mine if you've also read the interview.
- Really? he seemed to have a bit of difficulty with the english language
Ah Grasshopper, you have so much yet to learn.That's the nature of transcribing spoken English. Read the legal transcripts of any court proceeding or legal wiretap and you'll see the same thing.
As humans, we only rarely speak as we write, and most of those times we're reading what was already written, as in giving a speech; or performing, as in a play.
- and an obvious ignorance of the technology involved.
Since he admitted early that he has a life and doesn't spend much time surfing, I hardly think this an important point.The important point is that it's his intellectual property and therefore he should have some control over how it's used for someone else's profit.
The good part about this lawsuit is that it's going to focus attention on the issue. Lars and Co are also going to learn a lot in this process as will you, me and the IP industry.
http://www.borealis.com/motor/index.htm The Chorus motor is a multiphase AC motor which has low end torque similar to a DC motor and better high RPM efficiency than a standard AC motor.
The company that developed it has been very careful about patent and trade secret issues, so the progress bringing this engine to market has been painfully slow. A tech to watch though.
I had no clue till recently that there was a SciFi author by the same name. Further research indicates that he was quiet in terms of book output during the production arc of B5. His most recent release has an intro by none other than Harlan Ellison.
It occured to me that Alfred Bester might be a pen name for JMS.... Anybody got a clue?
Didn't matter a bit.
It got killed by a power tripping suit at TNT who wanted "more horney aliens" and "more space kabooms" and when JMS (writer producer director) refused to be bullied, they showed him who was boss and killed his project in a display of infantilism normally only seen in Washingtoon.
Best Episode? All of 112 of them - because it is all one story.