... Their web server is a stock Red Hat Linux box. They don't even serve their pages off their own alleged Linux distribution.
... Despite their claim of being a US company, linuxone.com is registered to some outfit in Austria.
... Despite their so-called "free download", they will ask people for $9.95.
... Their order page is a... BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHA... a formmail CGI script. I'll bet a lot of people are perfectly comfortable sending their credit card number over the Internet in clear text.
If this isn't a big joke, I don't know what is. --
Well, I can finally say that I've seen at all. This is the first instance I can remember of going to download some stuff, and when it comes to the customary "click here to agree to the license agreement" part, I get to see the GPL.
Well, no, on second thought, I haven't seen at all just yet. I will have seen at all when I see the GPL being presented in the license box for any Microsoft product. --
The 1,150 number given by Donnie has to come from E*TRADE. There's no way Red Hat can know the exact number, except from E*TRADE themselves.
Now, take a look at this article. If you read further on, you'll see that many people reported that E*TRADE was giving them only up to 400 shares.
According to my abacus, 400*1150 does not come out anywhere near 800,000 shares which were allocated to this directed share program. People should've been able to purchase at least 700 shares, using these numbers, assuming that everyone applied for at least that amount. There were many people, it seems, that only applied for 100 or 200 shares, so the excess amount had to go back into the pot for people who applied for more shares.
Also, I seem to recall that earlier E*TRADE claimed that there were 2,000 participants left, but I can't find that reference anywhere. If anyone kept the link to that story, please forward it to me via the feedback form on my web page.
Now, this 1,150 number also comes from E*TRADE, and I'm suspicious of this number as well. Let's refresh our collective memories, and go back to the previous Slashdot article. The day before, if you recall, E*TRADE basically threw everyone out of the directed share program. Their excuse, as far as anyone could tell, was that everyone must reconfirm their application because the IPO has been repriced at $14. Furthermore, people claimed that they had ridiculously small time window where they were supposed to reconfirm.
The extension announced in that Slashdot article came about as a result of this latest move by E*TRADE. Now, take a careful look at that telephone number where people were directed to call. Go back to that Slashdot announcement, and read it.
Now, that doesn't look like the number of E*TRADE's toll-free call center, does it? It looks to me like a telephone number for one of E*TRADE's offices. Reviewing my files, I believe that this telephone number really belongs to E*TRADE's Legal and Compliance division. Apparently, this whole mess was kicked up to them to handle, after being horribly botched by their lower-level staff. Or, it might've been Jason Saxon's extension, but in either case, this is a single telephone line.
Now, the extension of the reconfirmation interval was for one business day only. Can anyone please convince me that E*TRADE fully expected to handle almost 1,200 calls on that lone telephone number within the space of one business day??? Can someone make that case for me, please?
Now, as far as I can tell, E*TRADE was legally required to distribute that 800,000 shares allocated to the directed share program, unless there was insufficient number of applications. By all accounts, E*TRADE put an upper limit on the maximum number of shares anyone could've purchased, and this number of 1,150 participants just doesn't add up. Just doesn't add up at all. --
It doesn't really matter. The loose ends in the plotline will probably be all resolved by the end of this season. It's pretty certain that X-Files will continue on the silver screen.
The show had a very good, long, run. It's time to move on to something else. Although, I have absolutely no clue what else I'm going to watch on Sunday nights... Whatshisname's - the producer's - other shows were complete flops. --
The copyright holder, the owner of the source code, can use whatever license he/she wants at any time. Now, if someone ELSE takes the source code, they are the ones who have obligations under the GPL.
The GPL specifies the rights and obligations granted to you from someone else. Unless that someone else also received the GPLed source code, they have no GPL-related obligations whatsoever. --
I mean, if Linus has something important to say, I'm sure I'll hear it here, or on linuxtoday...
Oh, those people are just whining and moaning, because they won't be the first ones to tell the word every time Linus sneezes. --
One difference between the mainstream press.
on
Wired on Slashdot
·
· Score: 1
Unlike (cough) traditional webnews media,/. does not chop up a single story into multiple pages, just for the purpose of serving as many banner ads as possible (you can get/. to spew the whole discussion thread at you, at once). --
SCO are lusers. They were once the leading x86 *nix, and they squandered that lead. SCO's glory days are long over.
The idea that RHAT should buy APLX makes a lot more sense. Does anyone know if the official RHAT distribution includes Applixware on the applications CD? And even if it does, bundling Applixware into the mainline distribution should generate some very interesting press. --
Reminds me of the way Ebay kept making up excuses for their down time: it's not our fault, blame Solaris!
I always wondered how they expected to maintain a good relationship with Sun's engineers, after they pointed the finger at them and called them every name in the book. --
Besides Applixware, there's also StarOffice, plus there's a suite coming from the KDE folks.
But hey, if Sun wants to make some folks in Redmond to start packing their shorts, this is a definitely a way to do it. Imagine what pumping a few million dollars worth of R&D into StarOffice would do? Heh, heh... --
Oh, I remember those babies! And the dual-headed external 5.25" inch drives. Those drives are something special. If you take them apart, you'll discover that they're really a small computer of their own, complete with a 6510 CPU, and 2 or 3K worth of RAM.
There wasn't enough ROM space inside the PET to put a full disk operating system, so what Commodore did was put their entire disk operating system inside the disk drive, and the disk drive talks to the PET via a serial cable.
The PET may not be really that old. I remember hacking on them in high school, between 1984 and 1986. --
Does it seem like there's much more NT/Win trolls in here than usual? What gives?
We need a new name for these posters. My suggestions: wintrolls. --
GNOME has it, it's the sloppy packagers.
on
The Future of GNOME
·
· Score: 1
There are no specs to extend, it's the fault of the packagers for not putting in the start menu. For example, take a look at my SmIRC (you can find it on freshmeat). If you install the RPMs, you'll have SmIRC added to both the Gnome start menu, or the fvwm2/AnotherLevel menu, if you're running those window managers. It's just sloppy packaging, that's all. --
As for me, I'm going all the way with this. E*TRADE doesn't have the luxury of throwing me a handful of shares to shut me up. So, I'm going to wait and see if NASD wants to give them an anal exam; then go shopping for a lawyer. I now finally received my money back from E*TRADE. I think I'm going to use that money to pay for a nice Armani suit. --
In the future do not invest through on-line brokerage accounts. You will not have the service when you need it (it is even legal for them to freeze your account for up to 60 days).
Transfer your accounts at E-Trade to a full-service brokerage firm.
There's nothing wrong with discount electronic brokers, as long as they're honest, and on the ball. I don't have to transfer anything, as I've kept my current trading account, and only sent E*TRADE some spare change I was keeping under the mattress. --
First of all, if E*TRADE's problem really was that there wasn't enough shares to go around, you wouldn't see so many people bitching about it. A few would be barking at Red Hat, for not allocating enough shares, but that's pretty much it.
If E*TRADE simply told me: Sorry, can't give you X shares, we only can give you X/2, or even X/4, because of demand, I wouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever.
But that's not what happened, was it? At first, while I believed that E*TRADE did have valid and reasonable reasons why they blew me off, I wasn't really upset that much. It was only after I started reading what everyone else was saying, and after I obtained more information, did I start to get pissed off, when it became more and more obvious to me that this whole affinity program, as managed by E*TRADE, was a complete and utter sham.
First, they started declaring pretty much everyone to be ineligible for the program. Then, when called to task for it, E*TRADE backpedaled, and with a "wink wink nudge nudge" attitude started telling people to claim that their net worth exceeds Donald Trump's.
Then, after some people were actually accepted into the affinity program, E*TRADE suddenly decided to throw them, and everyone else, out of it, unless they receive a telepathic message that they must "reconfirm" their application within a fifteen second time slot, and in the middle of the night for people in some time zones. And after they figured out that the instructions E*TRADE E-mailed for reconfirmation were actually wrong.
Only after someone (probably Young) ripped them a couple of new assholes, did they backpedal again, and sheepishly agreed to extend the alleged "reconfirmation" period for one more today, FINALLY giving people enough time to jump through the hoops that E*TRADE erected for them.
And then, after all that, E*TRADE still claimed that there weren't enough shares to go around?
Puhleeeze...
Look, how many people, REALLY, are bitching about this on Slashdot? I'd say less than a hundred. Even if that's only 5% of everyone who was left in the affinity program, after E*TRADE finished throwing as many people out as they could, and there were about two thousand people left, you're telling me that the average number of shares in an application was 400?
There was certainly individuals who applied for a thousand or more shares, but, there weren't many of them. Most people, as you said, sent in just enough money for 100 or 200 shares.
This doesn't add up. Red Hat should demand a full accounting from E*TRADE as to where every one of those 800,000 shares went. E*TRADE better be able to document that there were at least 800,000 shares distributed through the affinity program. If they can't, and if they did not give everyone the amount of shares they requested, that's food for NASD and SEC's lawyers. --
The IPO itself may be over, but the ball is still rolling full steam ahead. I anticipate that this week's is going to be when NASD and SEC get flooded with all the complaints, and E*TRADE's Legal and Compliance gets a bunch of certified mail. At least one very well respected Wall Street daily is going to do a major story on E*TRADE's fiasco, according to their reporter who extensively interviewed me last week.
The fireworks haven't even started. E*TRADE may have screwed me out of some major cash, but I'll get it back in form of priceless entertainment, watching them SQUIRM. --
This story broke last week, and is old news by now.
What really amazes me (or doesn't amaze me, depending on your viewpoint) is that the MS lamer thought that he can cover his tracks simply by the virtue of sending the mail from his Yahoo account. The lack of understanding of basic Internet principles, on the part of MS developers, never ceases to amaze me. --
Slashdot Mirror
... Company has existed since March, 1999.
... Their web site is a total joke.
... Their web server is a stock Red Hat Linux box. They don't even serve their pages off their own alleged Linux distribution.
... Despite their claim of being a US company, linuxone.com is registered to some outfit in Austria.
... Despite their so-called "free download", they will ask people for $9.95.
... Their order page is a ... BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHA ... a formmail CGI script. I'll bet a lot of people are perfectly comfortable sending their credit card number over the Internet in clear text.
If this isn't a big joke, I don't know what is.
--
I haven't looked at Jessie yet, but I'd be surprised if Jessie will be able to read automake's Makefile.am files.
The first outfit that figures out that there's a demand for an IDE that understands autoconf and automake should make a pile of money.
Here's a great stress test for all of these IDEs that have been showing up lately: feed them an automake-generated Makefile :-).
--
Well, I can finally say that I've seen at all. This is the first instance I can remember of going to download some stuff, and when it comes to the customary "click here to agree to the license agreement" part, I get to see the GPL.
Well, no, on second thought, I haven't seen at all just yet. I will have seen at all when I see the GPL being presented in the license box for any Microsoft product.
--
If memory serves me correct, that BSOD picture was shot by none other than our very own Alan Cox.
--
The 1,150 number given by Donnie has to come from E*TRADE. There's no way Red Hat can know the exact number, except from E*TRADE themselves.
Now, take a look at this article. If you read further on, you'll see that many people reported that E*TRADE was giving them only up to 400 shares.
According to my abacus, 400*1150 does not come out anywhere near 800,000 shares which were allocated to this directed share program. People should've been able to purchase at least 700 shares, using these numbers, assuming that everyone applied for at least that amount. There were many people, it seems, that only applied for 100 or 200 shares, so the excess amount had to go back into the pot for people who applied for more shares.
Also, I seem to recall that earlier E*TRADE claimed that there were 2,000 participants left, but I can't find that reference anywhere. If anyone kept the link to that story, please forward it to me via the feedback form on my web page.
Now, this 1,150 number also comes from E*TRADE, and I'm suspicious of this number as well. Let's refresh our collective memories, and go back to the previous Slashdot article. The day before, if you recall, E*TRADE basically threw everyone out of the directed share program. Their excuse, as far as anyone could tell, was that everyone must reconfirm their application because the IPO has been repriced at $14. Furthermore, people claimed that they had ridiculously small time window where they were supposed to reconfirm.
The extension announced in that Slashdot article came about as a result of this latest move by E*TRADE. Now, take a careful look at that telephone number where people were directed to call. Go back to that Slashdot announcement, and read it.
Now, that doesn't look like the number of E*TRADE's toll-free call center, does it? It looks to me like a telephone number for one of E*TRADE's offices. Reviewing my files, I believe that this telephone number really belongs to E*TRADE's Legal and Compliance division. Apparently, this whole mess was kicked up to them to handle, after being horribly botched by their lower-level staff. Or, it might've been Jason Saxon's extension, but in either case, this is a single telephone line.
Now, the extension of the reconfirmation interval was for one business day only. Can anyone please convince me that E*TRADE fully expected to handle almost 1,200 calls on that lone telephone number within the space of one business day??? Can someone make that case for me, please?
Now, as far as I can tell, E*TRADE was legally required to distribute that 800,000 shares allocated to the directed share program, unless there was insufficient number of applications. By all accounts, E*TRADE put an upper limit on the maximum number of shares anyone could've purchased, and this number of 1,150 participants just doesn't add up. Just doesn't add up at all.
--
Anyone know what's the respective timeline of XF86 4.0's scheduled release, versus the next RH dist?
If 4.0's not going into 6.1, there's really no point in getting 6.1 in the first place. Might as well wait for 6.2.
--
It doesn't really matter. The loose ends in the plotline will probably be all resolved by the end of this season. It's pretty certain that X-Files will continue on the silver screen.
The show had a very good, long, run. It's time to move on to something else. Although, I have absolutely no clue what else I'm going to watch on Sunday nights... Whatshisname's - the producer's - other shows were complete flops.
--
It's been reported that Microsoft extended you a job offer once.
How much was it for?
--
The copyright holder, the owner of the source code, can use whatever license he/she wants at any time. Now, if someone ELSE takes the source code, they are the ones who have obligations under the GPL.
The GPL specifies the rights and obligations granted to you from someone else. Unless that someone else also received the GPLed source code, they have no GPL-related obligations whatsoever.
--
I mean, if Linus has something important to say, I'm sure I'll hear it here, or on linuxtoday...
Oh, those people are just whining and moaning, because they won't be the first ones to tell the word every time Linus sneezes.
--
Unlike (cough) traditional webnews media, /. does not chop up a single story into multiple pages, just for the purpose of serving as many banner ads as possible (you can get /. to spew the whole discussion thread at you, at once).
--
SCO are lusers. They were once the leading x86 *nix, and they squandered that lead. SCO's glory days are long over.
The idea that RHAT should buy APLX makes a lot more sense. Does anyone know if the official RHAT distribution includes Applixware on the applications CD? And even if it does, bundling Applixware into the mainline distribution should generate some very interesting press.
--
Reminds me of the way Ebay kept making up excuses for their down time: it's not our fault, blame Solaris!
I always wondered how they expected to maintain a good relationship with Sun's engineers, after they pointed the finger at them and called them every name in the book.
--
Here's what I would like to know:
will anyone on the AOL channel be able to say "breast"???????
Inquiring minds want to know.
--
Besides Applixware, there's also StarOffice, plus there's a suite coming from the KDE folks.
But hey, if Sun wants to make some folks in Redmond to start packing their shorts, this is a definitely a way to do it. Imagine what pumping a few million dollars worth of R&D into StarOffice would do? Heh, heh...
--
Oh, I remember those babies! And the dual-headed external 5.25" inch drives. Those drives are something special. If you take them apart, you'll discover that they're really a small computer of their own, complete with a 6510 CPU, and 2 or 3K worth of RAM.
There wasn't enough ROM space inside the PET to put a full disk operating system, so what Commodore did was put their entire disk operating system inside the disk drive, and the disk drive talks to the PET via a serial cable.
The PET may not be really that old. I remember hacking on them in high school, between 1984 and 1986.
--
And, you'll get a kick-ass beowulf cluster out of these babies...
--
Does it seem like there's much more NT/Win trolls in here than usual? What gives?
We need a new name for these posters. My suggestions: wintrolls.
--
There are no specs to extend, it's the fault of the packagers for not putting in the start menu. For example, take a look at my SmIRC (you can find it on freshmeat). If you install the RPMs, you'll have SmIRC added to both the Gnome start menu, or the fvwm2/AnotherLevel menu, if you're running those window managers. It's just sloppy packaging, that's all.
--
That's cute.
As for me, I'm going all the way with this. E*TRADE doesn't have the luxury of throwing me a handful of shares to shut me up. So, I'm going to wait and see if NASD wants to give them an anal exam; then go shopping for a lawyer. I now finally received my money back from E*TRADE. I think I'm going to use that money to pay for a nice Armani suit.
--
In the future do not invest through on-line brokerage accounts. You will not have the service when you need it (it is even legal for them to freeze your account for up to 60 days).
Transfer your accounts at E-Trade to a full-service brokerage firm.
There's nothing wrong with discount electronic brokers, as long as they're honest, and on the ball. I don't have to transfer anything, as I've kept my current trading account, and only sent E*TRADE some spare change I was keeping under the mattress.
--
First of all, if E*TRADE's problem really was that there wasn't enough shares to go around, you wouldn't see so many people bitching about it. A few would be barking at Red Hat, for not allocating enough shares, but that's pretty much it.
If E*TRADE simply told me: Sorry, can't give you X shares, we only can give you X/2, or even X/4, because of demand, I wouldn't have any problem with this whatsoever.
But that's not what happened, was it? At first, while I believed that E*TRADE did have valid and reasonable reasons why they blew me off, I wasn't really upset that much. It was only after I started reading what everyone else was saying, and after I obtained more information, did I start to get pissed off, when it became more and more obvious to me that this whole affinity program, as managed by E*TRADE, was a complete and utter sham.
First, they started declaring pretty much everyone to be ineligible for the program. Then, when called to task for it, E*TRADE backpedaled, and with a "wink wink nudge nudge" attitude started telling people to claim that their net worth exceeds Donald Trump's.
Then, after some people were actually accepted into the affinity program, E*TRADE suddenly decided to throw them, and everyone else, out of it, unless they receive a telepathic message that they must "reconfirm" their application within a fifteen second time slot, and in the middle of the night for people in some time zones. And after they figured out that the instructions E*TRADE E-mailed for reconfirmation were actually wrong.
Only after someone (probably Young) ripped them a couple of new assholes, did they backpedal again, and sheepishly agreed to extend the alleged "reconfirmation" period for one more today, FINALLY giving people enough time to jump through the hoops that E*TRADE erected for them.
And then, after all that, E*TRADE still claimed that there weren't enough shares to go around?
Puhleeeze...
Look, how many people, REALLY, are bitching about this on Slashdot? I'd say less than a hundred. Even if that's only 5% of everyone who was left in the affinity program, after E*TRADE finished throwing as many people out as they could, and there were about two thousand people left, you're telling me that the average number of shares in an application was 400?
There was certainly individuals who applied for a thousand or more shares, but, there weren't many of them. Most people, as you said, sent in just enough money for 100 or 200 shares.
This doesn't add up. Red Hat should demand a full accounting from E*TRADE as to where every one of those 800,000 shares went. E*TRADE better be able to document that there were at least 800,000 shares distributed through the affinity program. If they can't, and if they did not give everyone the amount of shares they requested, that's food for NASD and SEC's lawyers.
--
The IPO itself may be over, but the ball is still rolling full steam ahead. I anticipate that this week's is going to be when NASD and SEC get flooded with all the complaints, and E*TRADE's Legal and Compliance gets a bunch of certified mail. At least one very well respected Wall Street daily is going to do a major story on E*TRADE's fiasco, according to their reporter who extensively interviewed me last week.
The fireworks haven't even started. E*TRADE may have screwed me out of some major cash, but I'll get it back in form of priceless entertainment, watching them SQUIRM.
--
Please, let's not make any Monica Lewinsky jokes here, OK?
--
This story broke last week, and is old news by now.
What really amazes me (or doesn't amaze me, depending on your viewpoint) is that the MS lamer thought that he can cover his tracks simply by the virtue of sending the mail from his Yahoo account. The lack of understanding of basic Internet principles, on the part of MS developers, never ceases to amaze me.
--