In this particular case, voting in the public interest, as opposed to a specific vendor's interest, is the honest thing to do. The standard is a public standard.
Open Office has some functionality issues, but most users don't notice. It's a free install, only takes some time. When your manager hands you a CD and says, here you go, install this at home, it's already licensed even if you quit, most users will get around to installing it.
The real kicker is when we start seeing application specific document software built using ODF. ODF still has too much formatting information in it, but it can be used in a semantic sense.
Microsoft has never cared in the slightest for meaning, and their software shows it. (Well, they do care about meaning in one context, their perverted version of how an office should be run.) For Microsoft, meaning is always in the format. Microsoft simply cannot grok tags.
Or they think that Microsoft really means it this time because they are making promises. (Not realizing what drives those promises, and not considering how empty those promises will turn out to be once the competition is out of the way, because ODF hasn't really registered in their minds yet. They don't know why they need to read between the lines.)
Shoot, many of them are still under the impression that only Microsoft has what it takes to make a document format.
There's a Japanese guy with a patent on blue-end LEDs, and most of the Japanese companies involved in that base their products on technology that comes under his patent.
education is everything, but uni doesn't have a patent or any other kind of monopoly on it.
Lots of kinds of education you simply can't get at uni.
But, yeah, if he's motivated to go to school now, best to do it now and get it over with. And, as someone else said, he shouldn't worry about the money when he applies. If he's good enough to get the admission, he should go talk to the profs, counselors, and the financial aid department. Paths may open up, especially if his project is any good. MIT is definitely one place that will recognize open source projects, if they're good.
But if it doesn't work out, he should be willing to be glad he tried and move on. Go to a school he can afford, or go to the school of hard knocks.
It ain't the degree, it's what you can do with it.
What you can do and are willing to do.
But the advice to go ahead and try for admission to MIT (or insert college of choice) is good. If you really want to go to such a college. Big name schools also help getting good pay out of college, but if you can't make it worth it to your employer, well, every ride has an end.
And, as far as I'm concerned, critical thinking has killed itself. The one thing they don't teach you at college is to think critically about critical thinking.
He infers that he is keeping it as a public service.
If I had the money and time, I think I'd do the same.
But I'd also load my site with pages that show the places to make appropriate minimal settings with the common servers, and the explanations of how each option works.
And at the bottom of each page offer consultation on mail setup for doing a proper job of catching the donotreply replies and filtering and sorting them.
Even when you ostensibly don't want replies, putting up a brick wall is just bad business. Lots of lost opportunities.
Spam filter the donotreply@companydomain.com mail, and send the rest to customer service if external source, or the ombudsman if internal. Otherwise, you're losing important information.
donotreply@companydomain.com.invalid might be useful in some cases where you want people to at least be thinking far enough to strip the.invalid before hitting the send button.
Although, if I really did have a reason to build a brick wall, donotreply@nodnsrecords. companydomain.com or donotreply@blackholeontheborder.companydomain.com would serve to at least keep the potentially embarrassing stuff bound back to my domain before hitting the bit bucket.
You really don't want to tell people to not reply at the same time as telling them (via the headers) to go shout their replies on some arbitrary street corner in some arbitrary city where you won't ever know that they are embarrassing you or worse. (passwords, credit card numbers, etc. kind of embarrassment.)
I would tend to think that the mail server without the domain name is a symptom of the problem to be solved first. If you have some situation where you're sending mail and don't want replies, you really should be questioning why you are sending e-mail.
One-way communication is not communication. If there is a reason to send something, there is a reason to at least accept an ack.
Otherwise, you're like the guy who hires kids to go plaster the town with handbills and doesn't care about the litter left behind, or the bundles of handbills that get dumped in dumpsters instead of handed out. Maybe you think you can't afford to deal with it, but it's bad business practice, and is someday going to eat your lunch (cost you fines, get your company boycotted, result in deforestation, etc.).
That mail that goes to whatever donotreply address you are using has useful information in it, along with the spam.
Apply spam filters, send the rest to customer service. If there's still too much for them to handle, their management can determine criteria for tossing some of it, and IT should help them set the filters.
Internal mail to donotreply@company.com in one bucket.
Further sort that bucket by obviously forged headers and go hunting for deployed bots to re-format.
The rest of the internal stuff goes to the internal ombudsman, who is instructed to scan for serious issues and bounce the rest back to the replier, possibly CC-ed to the replier's manager, with a note that donotreply means do not reply.
Costs a little, but drastically improves both internal communication and the rate of finding the bots.
External stuff into another bucket, again sorted into spam (to the null device, unless the company can afford to hire someone to examine the spam for attacks), bounces, and possible valid attempts to contact the company. Send the latter to customer service. Even the bounced addresses could be used to trim the promotional mailing lists.
When there is too much of the stuff going either to the ombudsman or to customer service, something is wrong. Management should want that information so they can go try to find out what's wrong and fix it.
Information is useful. Why should people in IT be helping their companies throw out potentially useful information?
Those are RESERVED names, which means you're not supposed to use them in internet traffic.
It is really stupid to put a return address which is not under your control in your emails, no matter if that is a valid third-party-address, an invalid address or a reserved but technically valid address. You do not want emails to you to end up anywhere else, not even in the case of a misconfiguration (for example, when the postmaster of the remote MTA redirects mail addressed to reserved domains to a local address to keep them from going on the net in the event of DNS problems, etc. etc.) You do want all mail meant to reach you to arrive at your MTA, where it can be accepted, dropped or rejected. You also want to encrypt all emails which contain confidential information and make your business partners encrypt all email as well.
donotreply@we-really-mean-it.invalid, maybe, as has been mentioned.
But, of course, if they have so much traffic going to their do-not-reply address (after filtering spam), they have a serious business problem that they are trying to solve by opening a hole to someone else's cistern. That is not a good indication for the future of the business.
Serious business problems are all too often just tomorrow's business opportunity come knocking in disguise.
But that's okay, too, because it more room for people to work than if we all had to work for either Jobs or Google or the Bill&Steve act.
It would be better, I think, if the wannabees would just decide up front that imitation is not going to win the war any better than being who they are and doing what they do right. But if they did, I suspect the whole world would already be open source.
Open source is what we do when we don't have the great vision of things like the iPod. The small vision is still a vision of good things, and still improves the world. In many ways, the small vision is the one that lasts longest, as well.
You really are into the M side of s&M, aren't you?
I'm not a great Elvis fan, but I know enough about women to refrain from encouraging one who one comes up to me screaming, "Iwannabeyourgirlfriend!!!!!!!"
(No, don't run. You can't outrun her. Don't fight. That's not going to end up very pretty, either. Smile pleasantly, nod, and leave as quietly as you can as soon as her back is turned. Lack of reaction is the best way to throw her off her guard.)
Well, that sound re-assuring, and then again it doesn't.
I mean, if they are going to do PKI, they should do it right.
But this is the government's database, isn't it? And you have third parties controlling the validity of the id numbers stored in it?
And it stores everything, right? So your non-governmental registrar's error could seriously effect your ability to, well, function in a day-to-day setting?
Identity is out-of-band to any system we can build. No system should try to manage identity all by itself. Government needs to keep records, and needs systems (mechanized or otherwise) to do so, but trying to tie them all up into one grand unified system opposes nature, induces conflicting requirements to the systems, and simply reflects a lack of understanding of the function of governments that are supposed to support their people's free and responsible behavior (ergo, in "free" societies).
By the way, the reason the first item in the bookmarks bar is a menu is because it's a menu of bookmarks. That is not the same as a file menu and you probably at least subconsciously know this, so you are just playing semantics games to try to defend your arguments that everyone should be a poweruser just like you.
I'm a poweruser of sorts, but I'm not a poweruser just like you, thankyouverymuch. I don't really appreciate having to hunt for a safe place to click non-foreground windows to bring them front.
Oh, and the first item on the left in the bookmarks bar (which you can get rid of if arguing about it is going to distract you from real work) is not a menu, I think.
Well, you're the one saying Apple should have fixed it, and they did, in the only reasonable way.
Maybe the guy you were responding to was lamenting all the programers who will not even look to see if there is a way to put the Java menu up in the Mac menu bar. (Or consider the consequences of doing so.)
Slashdot Mirror
Huh?
Are you serious?
In this particular case, voting in the public interest, as opposed to a specific vendor's interest, is the honest thing to do. The standard is a public standard.
Google apps, for starters.
Open Office has some functionality issues, but most users don't notice. It's a free install, only takes some time. When your manager hands you a CD and says, here you go, install this at home, it's already licensed even if you quit, most users will get around to installing it.
The real kicker is when we start seeing application specific document software built using ODF. ODF still has too much formatting information in it, but it can be used in a semantic sense.
Microsoft has never cared in the slightest for meaning, and their software shows it. (Well, they do care about meaning in one context, their perverted version of how an office should be run.) For Microsoft, meaning is always in the format. Microsoft simply cannot grok tags.
You know stevie is not programmed for that.
Bill might be able to stand it now, it's hard to tell.
Hey, did you realize, we're actually holding the real BRMs here!
Hope springs eternal.
They forget rtf.
Or they think that Microsoft really means it this time because they are making promises. (Not realizing what drives those promises, and not considering how empty those promises will turn out to be once the competition is out of the way, because ODF hasn't really registered in their minds yet. They don't know why they need to read between the lines.)
Shoot, many of them are still under the impression that only Microsoft has what it takes to make a document format.
Haven't checked the details, but there is a Japanese researcher who has a patent in blue end stuff that the Japanese manufacturers are licensing.
I should go find out who it was and whether it's the same stuff, but I have other things to do. Been here too long today.
There's a Japanese guy with a patent on blue-end LEDs, and most of the Japanese companies involved in that base their products on technology that comes under his patent.
Scholarships are often from people who want a monopoly on your time.
FOSS is not yet that kind of place.
In fact, much of the FOSS world recognizes product more than certificates and diplomas, anyway.
But, go to the big name companies involved and ask. High school counsellors should be able to tell you how to approach companies about scholarships.
education is everything, but uni doesn't have a patent or any other kind of monopoly on it.
Lots of kinds of education you simply can't get at uni.
But, yeah, if he's motivated to go to school now, best to do it now and get it over with. And, as someone else said, he shouldn't worry about the money when he applies. If he's good enough to get the admission, he should go talk to the profs, counselors, and the financial aid department. Paths may open up, especially if his project is any good. MIT is definitely one place that will recognize open source projects, if they're good.
But if it doesn't work out, he should be willing to be glad he tried and move on. Go to a school he can afford, or go to the school of hard knocks.
Work is its own reward.
It ain't the degree, it's what you can do with it.
What you can do and are willing to do.
But the advice to go ahead and try for admission to MIT (or insert college of choice) is good. If you really want to go to such a college. Big name schools also help getting good pay out of college, but if you can't make it worth it to your employer, well, every ride has an end.
And, as far as I'm concerned, critical thinking has killed itself. The one thing they don't teach you at college is to think critically about critical thinking.
He bought it as a joke, he said.
He infers that he is keeping it as a public service.
If I had the money and time, I think I'd do the same.
But I'd also load my site with pages that show the places to make appropriate minimal settings with the common servers, and the explanations of how each option works.
And at the bottom of each page offer consultation on mail setup for doing a proper job of catching the donotreply replies and filtering and sorting them.
My memory is that used to be a legitimate a-mail provider.
... in solving the larger problem.
.invalid before hitting the send button.
Even when you ostensibly don't want replies, putting up a brick wall is just bad business. Lots of lost opportunities.
Spam filter the donotreply@companydomain.com mail, and send the rest to customer service if external source, or the ombudsman if internal. Otherwise, you're losing important information.
donotreply@companydomain.com.invalid might be useful in some cases where you want people to at least be thinking far enough to strip the
Although, if I really did have a reason to build a brick wall, donotreply@nodnsrecords. companydomain.com or donotreply@blackholeontheborder.companydomain.com would serve to at least keep the potentially embarrassing stuff bound back to my domain before hitting the bit bucket.
You really don't want to tell people to not reply at the same time as telling them (via the headers) to go shout their replies on some arbitrary street corner in some arbitrary city where you won't ever know that they are embarrassing you or worse. (passwords, credit card numbers, etc. kind of embarrassment.)
I know people do it, but why?
I would tend to think that the mail server without the domain name is a symptom of the problem to be solved first. If you have some situation where you're sending mail and don't want replies, you really should be questioning why you are sending e-mail.
One-way communication is not communication. If there is a reason to send something, there is a reason to at least accept an ack.
Otherwise, you're like the guy who hires kids to go plaster the town with handbills and doesn't care about the litter left behind, or the bundles of handbills that get dumped in dumpsters instead of handed out. Maybe you think you can't afford to deal with it, but it's bad business practice, and is someday going to eat your lunch (cost you fines, get your company boycotted, result in deforestation, etc.).
I know, it's the one-man shop, and he has a deadline to meet after he gets his microsoft server 2000 box set up.
Someone needs to educate him on lost business opportunities. Then he knows how to bill himself for the hour or two setting the filters up.
That mail that goes to whatever donotreply address you are using has useful information in it, along with the spam.
Apply spam filters, send the rest to customer service. If there's still too much for them to handle, their management can determine criteria for tossing some of it, and IT should help them set the filters.
Internal mail to donotreply@company.com in one bucket.
Further sort that bucket by obviously forged headers and go hunting for deployed bots to re-format.
The rest of the internal stuff goes to the internal ombudsman, who is instructed to scan for serious issues and bounce the rest back to the replier, possibly CC-ed to the replier's manager, with a note that donotreply means do not reply.
Costs a little, but drastically improves both internal communication and the rate of finding the bots.
External stuff into another bucket, again sorted into spam (to the null device, unless the company can afford to hire someone to examine the spam for attacks), bounces, and possible valid attempts to contact the company. Send the latter to customer service. Even the bounced addresses could be used to trim the promotional mailing lists.
When there is too much of the stuff going either to the ombudsman or to customer service, something is wrong. Management should want that information so they can go try to find out what's wrong and fix it.
Information is useful. Why should people in IT be helping their companies throw out potentially useful information?
(Helping the clueless see the clues, maybe:)
com.test and com.invalid are implicitly mentioned, but they aren't in use.
donotreply@we-really-mean-it.invalid, maybe, as has been mentioned.
But, of course, if they have so much traffic going to their do-not-reply address (after filtering spam), they have a serious business problem that they are trying to solve by opening a hole to someone else's cistern. That is not a good indication for the future of the business.
Serious business problems are all too often just tomorrow's business opportunity come knocking in disguise.
But that's okay, too, because it more room for people to work than if we all had to work for either Jobs or Google or the Bill&Steve act.
It would be better, I think, if the wannabees would just decide up front that imitation is not going to win the war any better than being who they are and doing what they do right. But if they did, I suspect the whole world would already be open source.
Open source is what we do when we don't have the great vision of things like the iPod. The small vision is still a vision of good things, and still improves the world. In many ways, the small vision is the one that lasts longest, as well.
You really are into the M side of s&M, aren't you?
I'm not a great Elvis fan, but I know enough about women to refrain from encouraging one who one comes up to me screaming, "Iwannabeyourgirlfriend!!!!!!!"
(No, don't run. You can't outrun her. Don't fight. That's not going to end up very pretty, either. Smile pleasantly, nod, and leave as quietly as you can as soon as her back is turned. Lack of reaction is the best way to throw her off her guard.)
Well, that sound re-assuring, and then again it doesn't.
I mean, if they are going to do PKI, they should do it right.
But this is the government's database, isn't it? And you have third parties controlling the validity of the id numbers stored in it?
And it stores everything, right? So your non-governmental registrar's error could seriously effect your ability to, well, function in a day-to-day setting?
Identity is out-of-band to any system we can build. No system should try to manage identity all by itself. Government needs to keep records, and needs systems (mechanized or otherwise) to do so, but trying to tie them all up into one grand unified system opposes nature, induces conflicting requirements to the systems, and simply reflects a lack of understanding of the function of governments that are supposed to support their people's free and responsible behavior (ergo, in "free" societies).
Do you customize your Mac UIs very much?
By the way, the reason the first item in the bookmarks bar is a menu is because it's a menu of bookmarks. That is not the same as a file menu and you probably at least subconsciously know this, so you are just playing semantics games to try to defend your arguments that everyone should be a poweruser just like you.
I'm a poweruser of sorts, but I'm not a poweruser just like you, thankyouverymuch. I don't really appreciate having to hunt for a safe place to click non-foreground windows to bring them front.
Oh, and the first item on the left in the bookmarks bar (which you can get rid of if arguing about it is going to distract you from real work) is not a menu, I think.
Well, you're the one saying Apple should have fixed it, and they did, in the only reasonable way.
Maybe the guy you were responding to was lamenting all the programers who will not even look to see if there is a way to put the Java menu up in the Mac menu bar. (Or consider the consequences of doing so.)