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User: daviddennis

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  1. Re:conspiracies... on Office Assistant: Yet Another Security Hole · · Score: 2

    When I first saw him, the very first thing I typed in Office 1997 was that he was The Paperclip Spy, sending everything you type to Redmond for analysis.

    So you're not alone in your paranoid ravings, but I liked your imaginative new theory. :-)

    D

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  2. Re:What?? A patch?? on Office Assistant: Yet Another Security Hole · · Score: 5
    Never!

    Binky the Talking Paper Clip is Immortal!

    I realized why when I analyzed my own behaviour.

    In the good old days, when I asked for assistance on any Microsoft(tm) product, the help system was startlingly inept at providing same. So what would I do? Why, curse Microsoft and try and figure it out on my own, of course.

    Now we have a modern, sleek, polished system, complete with a glorious cartoon character who's going to offer friendly assistance and tell us what to do.

    A big improvement, of course! So, when I ask for help and get answers that are even worse than under the old system, what do I do?

    Why, curse that (bleep) paper clip, of course! Microsoft is an Innocent Creator of Brilliant Software, it's Binky the talking paper clip I blame.

    It's a neat emotional transformation, but I'm willing to bet it's worth millions to Microsoft.

    Oh, by the way, I'd like to endorse the following link on Binky:

    Binky on the Witness Stand

    D
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  3. Benchmarks versus the "Feel Good Factor" on Apple Demonstrates A Dual-G4 Power Mac · · Score: 3

    The best reason to get a Mac is if you prefer the look and feel of MacOS to Windows. Although MacOS X is going to be a radical change, I don't think the essential aesthetic rightness of the Mac is going to change as a result.

    Certainly I find it more pleasing to work in Photoshop or Painter or any other graphics program on the Mac than to work in Windows, even though the software is basically the same. It has to do with design quality, just like a Mercedes-Benz feels better than a Chevy. The Mercedes might have the exact same statistics - speed to 60mph, quarter mile, etc - but it still feels better because it's better designed and built.

    Curiously enough, my Mac has been a pretty cost-effective purchase, too. It's about three years and two generations old, and it still works well with current software. During the time I've owned it, Windows has gone from 95 to 98 to 2000. In the PC universe, I've owned three different systems, which in total cost more than the Mac.

    I'll probably replace this machine with one of the multiprocessor G4s (assuming the price isn't too ghastly, which admittedly might be a forlorn hope), and then it will go to serve another owner, or I'll use it to try Mac Linux or something. Either way, its useful lifetime is significantly longer than a PC.

    I'll replace it because I enjoy the MacOS, and because I think MacOS X is going to be far superior to any version of Windows. It will be a quality multiprocessing system, unburdened by the tiresome flaws of the Windows world, but it will still run mainstream software like Photoshop and (dare I say it?) Word.

    Sure, it's expensive - of course as I grow richer over the years, that's less and less important for me. And of course there's less software than for Windows, but who cares? You couldn't buy every piece of available software for either platform, anyway.

    Of course the reality of it all is that I will always own multiple computers and multiple platforms. Right now, I have an old SGI workstation (currently awaiting repairs), a Windows NT 4 system, a Linux notebook, and the Mac. I use the Linux notebook for work-related stuff, and don't take it home every night. My Mac waits patiently for me, smoothly and reliably telling me that there is mainstream life in the computing world after Microsoft.

    To me, that's something beyond price.

    D


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  4. Re:Mirsky! on Mirsky Makes "Open Business Plans" · · Score: 3

    I was so proud a few years back when a site I nominated for Mirsky's Worst of the Web got accepted, albiet in a different form. It was http://www.netcenter.com , home of this incredibly cheesy fellow who claimed to be "the center of the Internet". Netcenter then symbolized all that is tawdry in the world of the net, those odd entrupeneurs who would create a concept without any regard as to whether it was in any way useful or well done, filled with BLINK tags and bad writing.

    It's quite ironic that netcenter.com was eventually bought by Netscape for its portal. Shed a tear for someone's dreams -- or don't, since I'm sure he held up Netscape for more than he could have ever made from the name himself.

    D

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  5. Re:Apple is putting MP's on Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying! · · Score: 2

    Photoshop is one of the few applications I know of that really challenges today's computers, and where extra computer power can really do a lot of good.

    It may not be a fair test for the PC platform as a whole, but it's a great test for Photoshop users :-).

    D

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  6. Re:It was a wise move. on iMovie For Free · · Score: 2

    True, but the beige system feels a shade poky nowadays. Time to upgrade (well, at least when MacOS X comes out, the perfect excuse);

    D

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  7. Re:Pricing Speculations on Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying! · · Score: 2

    Apple's probably listening, but as long as they have a big shortage of those 500mhz chips, I doubt that they can do much about it.

    I wonder if Apple pricing is impacted in any way by Steve Jobs' income. I know that the more I earn, the less $ 1,000 seems to matter. If he's selling primarily to the top 1% of incomes in this country, his pricing is really about right. Since Steve himself is somewhere at the top .00001% of incomes, that probably doesn't seem like a big deal to him. Heck, even his most expensive computer isn't any more than a month's rent of a half-decent house in Malibu -- or just about anywhere in the Bay Area.

    D

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  8. Re:...Leading to dot com failures? on Effectiveness Of Online User Databases Questioned · · Score: 2

    That's not all that much in today's economy, considering the kind of value they've brought to the table. However, the $ 1.5 million downpayment plus the $ 4.5 million they've been promised in the future is enough to keep them in Jolt colas, gadgets and shiny new real estate for quite some time.

    But the site itself has to make money for it to continue operation long-term, so I'd still say it's a good idea to lend it support.

    D

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  9. Re:Deep underestimation on Effectiveness Of Online User Databases Questioned · · Score: 2

    Sadly, the rate card is not the entire story, or even a small amount of it.

    Most sites sell their ads for substantially less than what's on their rate cards. It's not easy to sell 500,000 ad impressions a day.

    Don't bet on Slashdot making as much as you think.

    D

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  10. It was a wise move. on iMovie For Free · · Score: 2

    I currently own a beige G3, and while it was fine for its time, it certainly could use an upgrade. I really wanted to try iMovie, but I didn't want to buy an iMac due to its limited expandability and the small monitor it has (my beige system has a 19" Sony).

    Now I can have my cake and eat it too - I can get a G4/500 or thereabouts, AND get to play around with iMovie for free. That's a great deal, since I tried out iMovie in the store and was pretty impressed. Before this, I might have bought a much cheaper iMac just so I could play with iMovie; now I'll probably buy a G4 at double the price.

    Of course I don't think I'll buy the G4 until MacOS X comes out, so I can have a fully MacOS X ready computer without the tiresome trouble of upgrading. I wonder how many people like me there are; it might pay to buy Apple stock and watch it take off when people buy their new MacOS X toys.

    D

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  11. Re:...Leading to dot com failures? on Effectiveness Of Online User Databases Questioned · · Score: 3

    The answer was in the article - as little as $ 5 per thousand impressions. So if your site got 1,000 impressions a day, you'd earn $ 5 a day, or $150/month.

    Of course if you get 200 million-odd impressions a day, you'll get about $ 1 million a day.

    Slashdot gets about 500,000 impressions a day, so it earns a minimum of about $ 2,500 a day. This means gross annual income is around $ 912,500 if they sell all their ads at $5 CPM [ad industry jargon for cost per thousand]. Fortunately, Slashdot doesn't have all that much in the way of expenses - I believe Rob and Hemos make about $ 90k per year each, and there are probably a few others at lower salaries. The people selling ads get a commission, so it's fairly likely that Slashdot in and of itself either is fairly profitable, or could be.

    The reality is that most of that profit is most likely absorbed by andover.net corporate overhead, but Slashdot is probably doing better than ever in sales terms thanks to that same corporate overhead. - a dedicated ad sales force is a healthy part of it.

    The picture might not be so rosy, since sometimes a lot of ad inventory remains unsold. There's probably some sort of deal to pick up unsold inventory, but usually it's for next to nothing.

    If you want to support Slashdot and make sure it grows and thrives, it's probably a good idea to click on the banners. They are closely tracked, so if there's a company you'd like to learn more about, by all means click. It can't hurt.

    D

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  12. Banner ads and why targeting doesn't work on Effectiveness Of Online User Databases Questioned · · Score: 3

    I think it's self-defeating to say, "Oh, I'll never, ever click on a banner". Sometimes the products and services offered through them are of value. When I think clicking would be worth my time, I'll click.

    I don't click on ads often, simply because I'm normally focused on the content of the page I'm reading. I'm much more likely to click on an ad when it's what I'm looking for.

    For instance, say I'm looking for a good deal on a Mercedes-Benz automobile. I go to Yahoo's Mercedes-Benz section and see a banner: "Buy your Mercedes today from CarsDirect.com". I click, because it's something I really want to check out.

    Now, Yahoo could then track my click to, say, the real estate page. I'm looking for real estate in Malibu, and a "CarsIndirect.com" banner pops up: "Buy your Mercedes at CarsIndirect for the best prices!". But then I'm focused on my real estate, so I don't click.

    This, in my opinion, is why targeting doesn't work. We're all focused on a particular task. Right now, I'm posting a message to Slashdot. Unless the banner ad blinking above me was totally compelling, I'm not going to click on it because I'm focused on my message. This is Yahoo's problem; Yahoo email gets negligible clickthrough no matter what because people are thinking about their email and what to say in response to it. So if Yahoo sells a few targeted ads in the Mercedes section, they can't sell them when people are reading their email. But if they sell sitewide ads, Mercedes would have to buy some email placements to get the one they really wanted.

    D


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  13. Ask your boss; he might surprise you. on Smuggling Open Source Past The Boss · · Score: 5

    I work for a mid-sized company of about 100 employees. The contract house I worked for had produced a Windows-based web site for them; I started with a Linux-based system that did a small part of their site.

    The owner of the company noticed that I was far more responsive than the other people at the contract house, so he hired me as a programmer/manager to straighten things out.

    The first thing I did was to propose that we change the web site from Windows to Linux. The original site was taking 4.5 seconds to pull up a page with no load. I did a demonstration that was instantaneous, and Windows' doom was sealed.

    I will treasure the moment forever where I was in the room with my former boss and the owner of the company. The FB was claiming that I could get my neck wrung if Linux wasn't good enough for the job. I said that I'd used it elsewhere, and I knew it was. "Microsoft provides a level of acceptable mediocrity," saith the FB in a tone that made it clear that this was something good.

    The owner exploded: "Our company does not seek mediocrity."

    We've been running the Linux system for about a month, and so far it's exceeded company expectations and I've become a corporate hero for the first time in my life.

    So don't underestimate bosses. Sometimes you can convince them to do the right thing.

    D

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  14. ACID et al on Why Not MySQL? · · Score: 2

    I am doing mission-critical stuff with mySQL. It started when I created the company's elabourate e-commerce web site, moving it from SQL Server on Windows to mySQL under Linux. When that proved to provide superior performance, we are now moving our contact management system (under test at this very moment) to mySQL.

    I really don't understand this oddly religious love for ACID. Yes, you need it if you're a bank and must coordinate double-entry accounting transactions. But darn few things in the world really require double-entry accounting.

    What we most assuredly need is a database that hangs together, working with minimal maintenance and bother, one that a single person can easily maintain without reading 10,000 pages of documentation.

    If there is a power outage, the UPS fails, and our server dies, we might well have bits and pieces of a sales order in our database. We can handle that, because I set a flag in the main sales order file saying "this isn't done, ignore it", and when everyting's done, I set the flag to "looks OK, let's do it". In one sense, I'd really rather have some evidence of the order in our database, because then we can call the customer, apologise, and ask her or him to re-enter the order. Far better than leaving her or him in doubt.

    Other than that, I see no compelling advantage to using a database with ACID. You might argue that my company could have afforded Oracle, and you would have been right. But I'd used mySQL on databases used for all sorts of stuff on my web site, and it had never let me down. I already knew the APIs and how to administrate a server, so I was ready to rock and roll on the new application. If I'd had to use Oracle or Postgres, it would have taken me a week or two of precious development time to get comfortable with the tool. This might have been acceptable if we weren't running on web time nowadays.

    The bottom line is that I'm inclined to defend mySQL from its formalist detractors. We've used it, and in the month or so of hard use we've given it, it hasn't let us down yet. I might add that everyone loves the application, its responsiveness and my ability to make changes rapidly and efficiently. This is all because I used an environment I already knew well.

    I should give a caveat based on the nature of financial transactions. I suspect that the original poster's database did not use double-entry bookkeeping principles. If you do, I'd argue for transactions based on the complexity of updates. But for a single-entry database with simple updates, mySQL will work just fine.

    My system uses mySQL to connect to a Microsoft SQL Server system running an accounting program to do the double-entry stuff.

    D

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  15. Re:Excellent reference on Ranking The Domain Name Registrars · · Score: 2

    Wow, and I thought I had it good with DD72! :-)

    NSI still has a wretched email-based domain modification system that must date from the prehistoric era.

    When I tried, I was able to reach someone who was reasonably helpful. When I tried registering a domain via Joker.com, I was never able to make it work because apparently you have to register your name servers using some horribly confusing process that apparently required that I use servers that were never, ever used for a NSI domain, which I couldn't do :-(.

    D

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  16. Re:What's the best way to sell a high-value domain on UNIX.com On eBay? · · Score: 2

    Oh, there are plenty of them.

    I just wanted guidance as to which one was best.

    Best
    D

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  17. Re:What's the best way to sell a high-value domain on UNIX.com On eBay? · · Score: 2

    Fortunately, I don't think anyone who seriously looked at my situation would consider me a cyber squatter. I got the name in 1994, before anyone had even heard of cybersquatting. amazing.com also doesn't map to any specific company or type of business; since it's an ordinary English word there are no trademark issues.

    I normally wouldn't want to sell the name, but at the same time when the values of these things are getting close to otherwise hopelesslly unaffordable Malibu real estate, it looks like a tempting proposition.

    You can see the content that currently resides under amazing.com at http://207.8.214.218 .

    D

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  18. What's the best way to sell a high-value domain? on UNIX.com On eBay? · · Score: 2

    I own amazing.com . Had it for years, ran my personal web site. Right now, my site is "between servers", so it might not be a bad time to sell.

    Has anyone tried selling a high-value name, and if so, what was the experience like?

    D

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  19. Re:which system calls are bad? on Libsafe: Protecting Critical Elements of Stacks · · Score: 2

    Any call that does copying without requiring a copy of what's counted. Best examples are sprintf() and strcpy(). sprintf is particularly insideous since it's a great temptation to use it, and you might not think of its fundemental function as copying.

    D

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  20. It's redundant ... on Ars Digita Founder Philip Greenspun · · Score: 2

    because that question is answered on his site. Look for "the book behind the book" for details. In a word, though, several publishers were interested in his newest opus, and he picked the one that allowed him to publish it on the web.

    He got that clout because, although his previous book was not a bestseller, it got stellar reviews and was becoming a bit of a "cult classic".

    D

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  21. Re:Let's get this straight on ABCNews:Potential Recommended MS Break-Up · · Score: 2

    Actually, the apps company would continue to make money; I'd bet Office is a bigger earner than Windows.

    The three-company split is extremely probematical, though; as far as I know, MSN has negligible revenues and losses for as far as the eye can see, and of course the IE browser is strictly a cash drain. I don't see how that company could survive for more than a year or two, depending on how generious its initial funding is.

    What I'm wondering is how the "Baby Bills" could become independent. This is not like the AT&T breakup, where management of the individual companies became in control. Bill would still be a controlling shareholder in all the babies, and he'd still be able to do what he would with them. If he was ordered to sell them off, I would assume that he'd wind up appointing his successors in management. If Gates took over one company and Ballmer the other, wouldn't they just continue working together as before? I don't think he'd hand over his company to his worst enemy or anything.

    Thoughts?

    D

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  22. Re:Would like to know the rest of the story on Phillip W. Katz, Creator Of PKZIP, Dead At 37 · · Score: 2

    That command line version is what I use, but I was pretty unhappy when I discovered all the command line options were radically different from the old one.

    I was still grateful for having it, though - I hate hate hate all those Windows-based GUI programs with the clunky interface. Give me

    pkzip25 -add foo.zip *

    any day over going through menus and what-not.

    D

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  23. Re:Symbolics Lisp Machine (was Re:Way back then) on Httpd Written In Postscript? Shell? · · Score: 2

    I used a Lisp machine at MIT in the late 1970s.

    There were a lot of really cool things about it, but it was way ahead of its time in terms of computing power. The mouse action was so sluggish it gave me an intense prejudice against GUIs which lived on for decades.

    D

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  24. Re:The red button? on What Are Good Web Coding Practices? · · Score: 2

    I'd love to make money off this idea, but I really don't think it's a patentable process :-).

    To be safe, call it something other than the red button, maybe the green cube or something.

    It's worked out really well at our company.

    Enjoy!

    D

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  25. Re:Certification on What Are Good Web Coding Practices? · · Score: 2

    Oh, I love my company and will be the first to defend it. I have total access to the owner, and nobody who isn't really good at what s/he does survives very long.

    The downside is that with a loose structure comes heavy responsibility. But with that comes the opportunity to do a great job and earn the warmth and affection of the employees, which makes it a really fantastic environment if you can cut it in the first place.

    Of course if you can't, it's a real nightmare. The BOFH wasn't fired; he quit because his stress level was way too high. Saved us the bother of firing him.

    D

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