On an extended business trip to Austin, Texas, a colleague told me that someone there actually shot their computer. I didn't buy it, and told him that he was just bullshitting me. Background: My girlfriend tagged along for part of the time. We had an apartment with a swimming pool, and I invited him and his wife over for a swim. My girlfriend got hit by a car as a child, and had to go through multiple operation on her right leg, which left nasty looking scars. She is sometime sensitive about that, and notices that people are looking at them. She asked me what she should say if someone asks (she's German, so was uncertain). I told her to say that she was bit by a shark, but was able to fight it off, with punches to the nose. She was able to hold out for about five minutes, before my colleague shouted, "bullshit!"
So that is why I am skeptical of his claim about someone shooting his computer. On the other hand, there is probably a clip on You-tube of someone doing this.
But as much as I despise most phone carriers, it's a little unfair for criticizing them for wanting to recoup the money they spent subsidizing your phone.
So when your contract expires, do they unlock it . . . or does it remain locked to force you renew with them? It reminds me of films in the 70's where the dealers give out free heroin to get folks "hooked."
Were you able to get a cheaper plan to use that phone with?
My employer pays for my chip and the fees. Can you get any cheaper than that? My girlfriend has a cheap rate, with unlimited data, and she is self-employed, so she gets it all back as a business expense anyway. And if she sees that another carrier is cheaper, she can switch, and still keep her number. Since she had experience with abysmal support for T-Mobile, she had no interest in being forced to give them her business anymore.
And no, pay as you go plans don't come out cheaper when you include data services, which is the entire point of a smartphone.
Well, I guess that depends on where you live, doesn't it? If you live in a densely populated country, where you can get coverage anywhere, from anyone, and there is ferocious competition from a lot of carriers., you'll get a good rate. Things can be cheaper than if your only choice is between between a couple of semi-monopoly carriers.
I think Americans (and I am one, by the way) have been brainwashed into thinking that phones locked to a carrier is somehow good for them. Something to do with fluoride in the water. On the other hand, the Deutsche Telekom (the folks behind T-Mobile here in Germany brainwashed folks by convincing them that they needed ISDN in order to have caller ID on their telephones. A friend of ours here told me that, and I answered her that lots of folks in the US have caller ID on normal, analog lines. An ISDN subscription costs more than a simple analogue one. The moral of the story? Phone companies are out to screw you, and sell you something you don't need, at a price that you can't afford.
That's been my experience with 25+ years in a major IT player. What engineers want, is someone that will listen to them. And someone who will grab them under the arms and pull them up and support them when things get ugly, and they get knocked out cold. It's quite simple actually, but it's quite amazing how few managers can do it right. I have seen a few cases exemplary performance. When I was in southern France, doing some firefighting on a project where the shit had hit the fan, and knocked the damn thing over. A couple of the employees there told me that they were coming in on the weekend to work on problems. This was not an order from the management there. Their attitude so impressed me, that I said, "I'll be in with you guys!" The second line manager got wind of the renegade action and showed up in the lab on the weekend. She didn't ask any questions about progress, but just discretely sat at a terminal, and did manager email stuff. And brought pastry snacks for the folks. But you had the feeling that she was there for us, in case we needed anything. One manager did a great job of filtering us from nasty emails about bad management decisions, that would be reversed anyway. Some folks in another department asked us, "Hey, did you see the email about capping our overtime pay?" There was another email a week later, that it was retracted. So our manager had tried to shield us from some unnecessary stress.
On the other hand, my manager left the company. A manager from another department was appointed as his successor. He did nothing for a month, aside from forwarding management and policy notes that he received to us. He didn't even come by to introduce himself. Well, duh! I started the rumor that he didn't exist, but was actually some kind of ELIZA type forwarding engine. Then he invited is to a meeting.
One brilliant engineer colleague of mine had excellent people skills, but declined to be put in the manager career path. He told me, "I don't want to explain to employees all day, why they can't have a bigger monitor."
So, back to the point, Ballmer has a very aggressive ego. I'm not sure if he will be able to take advice from a "mere" engineer. And I'm not sure that good engineers will be able to take his abuse for long.
Imported, from the UK to Germany. When the purchase of an iPhone here would mean tying our souls to T-Mobile for two years, I adamantly refused. I really can't understand how folks put up with that bullshit: "OK, you can buy the phone cheap, but you will be locked into a contract for years, which will offset the discount on your phone." And if I buy something, I don't want to have to jailbreak it. I paid for it, it's my phone! What's up next? Buy a GM car, but only be able to tank it at GM gas (petrol) stations?
The University I attended had a system with "preceptors." A course would have a lecture with all the students from full prof once or twice a week, and a few more times a week a session with a smaller group (~10-15 students). The preceptor could be a grad student, or an assistant prof, or also even the full prof. In that smaller group, the preceptor gets to know the students, which makes cheating impossible. The preceptor would know if some dumb-ass in class wrote a brilliant essay, which was way beyond his or her intellectual faculties. The preceptor also gave you your grade.
Unfortunately, this was not as extremely enforced in engineering, which was my major. But the prof would come by during the lab exercises, and grill everyone on what they were doing and why and what they thought they would learn.
I took a lot of high level literature courses as electives. After the first essay that I had to write for one course, the preceptor pulled me aside after the class. She said, "You're not a literature major, are you? I'll bet that you are an engineering student!" She told me that essays from literature majors had very good ideas, but they tended to ramble. Engineers didn't have the best ideas, but their essays were all very well structured. She knew that I didn't cheat on the essay, because she heard what I said in class.
Want to cut out cheating? Get more direct prof to student contact.
A colleague of mine was a victim; it's a royal pain in the ass to get straightened out. The perpetrator somehow got a hold of his Social Security number, and got a credit card in my colleague's name at either Lowe's or Home Depot (building suppliers, for the non US folks). The perpetrator maxed out the card in one day. Since the crook gave a false address, my colleague never got the bill. So it wasn't paid, and this set off some sort off nuclear credit chain reaction which blocked all his credit cards. When he finally figured out what happened, it took him weeks to get it all right again. So the money is the smallest problem. It's the collateral damage that is the big problem.
Although us geekier types read, "recommence shipments of the faulty silicon," and scream, "Well that's a fine idea of how to get rid of a warehouse of faulty chips!"
And Devo did a song about it, years before it happened:
"When chip bug comes along . . . you must ship it! Ship it! Ship it good!"
I wonder if the sales kid at your local super-computer store will inform you, "Oh, by the way, this model has a faulty chip." Or, maybe a sticker on the computer: "Faulty Intel Chip Inside!" That should do wonders for sales.
I remember that once the floating point division problem got mainstream press coverage, folks got all ornery, despite statements from Intel that most users would never see this problem. Most folks don't even know what floating point is. Intel eventually bought off the math prof who discovered the bug, by giving him testing contract. He deserved it, because he did a damn good job tracking down the bug. He is really, "a geek's geek."
Interviewer: "So what do you want to do here at our company?"
Interviewee: "I want to develop innovative products!"
Interviewer: "Sorry, we're looking for someone to help sue our competition. And any other company that we don't like, as well. Even if they aren't competition."
With all these lawsuits, instead of stories about who is suing who, it would be easier to report on which companies is not being sued:
"Hey, we found one! Company XXX is not being sued this week by anyone! Amazing!"
Sony is also demanding "A bajillion kajillion dollars, all the chocolate in the world, and a pony."
Well, I don't have a pony to offer them, but I do have an ass. It's hairy, and Sony is cordially invited to kiss it.
I don't understand Sony. Back in the 80's and 90's, when I needed some electronic thingie, I would just walk into the store and ask what Sony had to offer. I have a CD player from 1989 that refuses to do, despite years of abuse from a dumb-ass like me. My camcorder from 1998 is still the toast of the town, for all the features that it has. It also refuses to die, despite my drunken friends at parties, dropping it, spilling beer on it, etc.
As a child/teenager, back in the 70's, I used to read my father's copy of . When they had stories about top executives, I used to think, "Wow! Those must be really intelligent guys, to be running a big company like that!" Now, I look at Sony, with their root-kit action, and now this, and I ask, "How did such dumb-asses get to be running such a large company? Don't they realize that they are pissing their customers off with stuff like this?"
Well, let me join the chorus. The next time I buy some electronic thingie, instead of asking, "What does Sony have?", I will ask, "What can you recommend?" Sorry Sony, I just seem to not have much trust in you anymore.
We'll see what's left over from Sun in a few years, after Larry Ellison is finished with it. After the Compaq takeover, I met some former DEC employees, who were then Compaq employees, in a hotel on a business trip. After a few drinks, they had some blunt advice: "If your company gets taken over by another company, quit as soon as you can, and get a job somewhere else. Takeovers always end in tears."
I am still scratching my head over how DEC ended that way: from being the heavyweight champion in the Unix server business, to being taken over by a PC company. Maybe I'll have to Google for a good book with insightful analysis. Or if any folks here can recommend anything, I'm all ears.
Actually IBM had plans for a micro-kernel called IBM Workplace OS or WPOS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Workplace_OS . One of the ideas was to get it running on other non-PC architectures, so OS/2 could run on them. It was developed at IBM Boca Raton in Florida, where OS/2 came from. They actually shipped a product, OS/2 Warp 4, that ran on the micro-kernel.
I talked to an ex-IBM AIX developer years after the whole project was shit-canned. He told me he attempted to use WPOS with AIX on their POWER platform. He told me how the system struggled with booting, and then rolled over and died. As a true Texan (where POWER and AIX systems were developed), he added that if that system had been a horse, he would have shot it in the head to take it out of its misery.
You forgot the regular bribe to the party official
It's not a bribe. Consider it a "facilitation fee." My father worked for a company that was looking to win a big contract in Southeast Asia. It is illegal for US companies to pay bribes abroad. So they hired a local "consultant" to help them win the contract. He got paid $1 million for his "services." What he did with the money, was his business. The company won the contract. How much of the money stayed in the "consultant's" pocket, and how much landed in the pockets of other folks, nobody wanted to know.
I remember reading an article in The Economist about DEC and their VAXes in the 80's. The point was the a VAX was cheap enough that a low level executive could approve the expenditure. An IBM mainframe purchase would require approval at the top executive level of the company. IBM responded by bringing out a mini-mainframe called the 9370 as a "VAX killer," but it was a flop. The minicomputer was killed by PCs. However, IBM still makes a lot of money with their mainframes, with folks who have tons of data, and need high availability: like banks and insurance companies.
For DEC they could have gone downscale to PCs, but the profit margins are too low: it's a commodity item. IBM doesn't build PCs anymore; they sold their PC business to Lenovo. Or they could have gone upscale, to compete with IBM mainframes. In the 90's, big Sun servers were causing IBM some grief. But we all see what happened to Sun.
I like to have choice. So the more vendors that are out there, the better. When I look at the passenger airplane industry, there are only two choices: Airbus or Boeing. I would welcome more competition, from say, Japan or Russia. Russia!?!?! Well, their Soyuz is the only way to get into space now, so they could probably be able to build good passenger airplanes.
The federal fund, known as the Universal Service Fund, comes from a line-item charge for phone customers, usually about $2 a month. That money goes toward building and maintaining copper-wire phone connections to remote areas that would be too costly to serve otherwise. The subsidy was created by the 1934 Communications Act, and regulators today say the fund needs to be used for high-speed Internet connections as people increasingly rely on the Web to gather information and communicate.
So, instead of paying $2 a month, so that yokels in the boonies can call each other and gossip, all them them city folks will now pay $20 a month, to subsidize broadband for folks who live on in the boonies can download porn to their ranches!?!?
[Checks Slashdot name] . . . Oh, wait, maybe it is a good idea to subsidize folks who live on ranches in the boonies.
Although, I read an article in The Economist about UNESCO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Controversy_and_reform . The article said that half of the UNESCO budget never made in out of Paris, France, where the headquarters are located. I thought that was pretty amusing, until I was on a business trip in Geneva. Then we went out for lunch and waiter asked us if we worked for the UN (which was just down the road). When we said no, he treated us like unwanted, unwashed infidels. We noticed that the UN folks there were chowing down on kings' portions of food, and just got a bill for their meals, which the UN would pay for. Well, who pays the budget for the UN . . . ?
This is another trick in politics: Get someone else to pay for what you consume. When this FCC "reform" passes into law, I would be interested to see where all those dollars were being spent. But, alas, politicians do their best to avoid transparency . . .
and won't for several years (unless you're a spook working off-budget and have a friend at Vandenberg AFB.)
Not Vandenberg, but maybe the Secret Squirrels at Groom Lake (aka, Area 51) have something up their sleeves. But I wouldn't bet on it. A hobby pilot in Texas told me about "scramjet" sitings around the area, all rumors of course, but who knows. Probably the Kremlin is better informed than the American public about this. The Russians are very smart. Their spy motto is, "Why pay for an expensive spy satellite, when we can bribe a disgruntled scientist for a fraction of the price for better information?"
it's a slickly clever plan to push the danger and the responsiblity out to a contractor. it will, by necessity of course, succeed.
Yeah, that outsourcing risk worked wonders with BP and Tony Hayward in the Gulf of Mexico. Hey, maybe he is looking for a new job? Could we convince him to take a ride in a spacecraft, that his own company built? Probably not.
"Hate" is good politics. No politician, in a democracy, or a dictatorship, or anything in between, ever kept his job by calling his population a bunch of lazy dumb-asses, who are responsible for their own dire status. Pin the blame on some folks out of the country, or a minority group in the country too small to defend themselves.
Embezzle, and stash the cash away in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Make sure to flee the country to your Villa on the Cote D'Azur before the shit hits the fan.
Profit? Fuck that shit. Just relax by the pool.
Um, does anyone know of a country looking for a dictator? I think I understand the work and could do the job.
Olsen Twins, or if they are just the Mary-Kate and Ashley's faces photo-shopped on the bodies of Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse
It would be more amusing to really transform the heads of Arnold Schwartenegger's and Martin Sheen's onto bodies Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse.
Plastic surgeons in California can do that with Botox, can't they?
The cops would be too afraid to arrest a Arnold Schwartenegger headed Lindsay Lohoan. Poor Martin Sheen headed Amy Winehouse would hear from the traffic cops:
"I'm sorry Mr. Sheen, but are those two and a half double D's on your chest?"
... and some chick asks him what he does for a living. He answers, "I'm a computer geek." She replies, "Oh, wow, that turns me on! Go to the restroom and get some condoms, and then we'll go back to my place!" If any Slashdotter posted something like that, the responses would be, "Yeah, right, in your dreams!"
So then three days later, he goes to another bar, and a different chick hits on him. The whole story seems quite apocryphal.
If this story is true, it sounds like Assange must be as charming as George Clooney and must be a skilled martial artist with nunchucks, which he needs to beat back the women folk.
I speculate that it went down like this:
CIA boss: "This WikiLeaks guy has really shoved a weed up our ass. What can we do?"
CIA lackey: "Oh, we have a pile of Hawaiian shellfish poison hidden in the cellar! If we prick him with a needle of that stuff, he will be dead before he hits the ground!"
CIA boss: "Hmmm. That sounds too drastic, and would raise suspicions. Can't we deck him with a honey trap?"
50 billion years ALL the stars will have burnt-out to dying red embers.
Then what do we do?
I guess that is best a problem that we leave to future generations to solve. I ain't certainly going to be around to worry about it. Kinda sorta like that nuclear waste that the US is doing with the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. If the folks haven't learned in 50 billion years from how to deal with this stuff . . . well then, fuck 'em. Lazy bastards. Maybe the great-great-recursion-needed grandson of Steven Hawking will figure a way to light up a new sun.
That sure makes a great family heirloom:
Guy one: "What did you inherit from your forefathers?
Guy two: "A pile of nuclear waste, and a bunch of burnt-out stars."
I've been looking out from my balcony since I read this article, looking for the drone that will drop my satphone for free, fast Internet access. I haven't seen one yet.
Oh, wait. The country where I live is not at war with the USA. Does anyone know how to start a war? Maybe we need a dictator or something.
English is a fault tolerant language, so don't sweat it. You can make all kinds of errors in English, and everyone will still understand what you meant to say, nonetheless. At a lab from my employer, in Austin, Texas, a guy from Taiwan was speaking English with a guy from India. Their English would have made my 7th grade English teacher commit Seppuku (aka, Harakiri), but they were able to communicate with it.
In my opinion this is why English is so dominant on the Internet: you don't need to know much to communicate. Unless some sesquipedalian like me starts using terms like obsequious and innocuous.
This is why dictators are scared of the Internet: Folks can get across what is going on in their country to a wide audience.
Slashdot Mirror
On an extended business trip to Austin, Texas, a colleague told me that someone there actually shot their computer. I didn't buy it, and told him that he was just bullshitting me. Background: My girlfriend tagged along for part of the time. We had an apartment with a swimming pool, and I invited him and his wife over for a swim. My girlfriend got hit by a car as a child, and had to go through multiple operation on her right leg, which left nasty looking scars. She is sometime sensitive about that, and notices that people are looking at them. She asked me what she should say if someone asks (she's German, so was uncertain). I told her to say that she was bit by a shark, but was able to fight it off, with punches to the nose. She was able to hold out for about five minutes, before my colleague shouted, "bullshit!"
So that is why I am skeptical of his claim about someone shooting his computer. On the other hand, there is probably a clip on You-tube of someone doing this.
But as much as I despise most phone carriers, it's a little unfair for criticizing them for wanting to recoup the money they spent subsidizing your phone.
So when your contract expires, do they unlock it . . . or does it remain locked to force you renew with them? It reminds me of films in the 70's where the dealers give out free heroin to get folks "hooked."
Were you able to get a cheaper plan to use that phone with?
My employer pays for my chip and the fees. Can you get any cheaper than that? My girlfriend has a cheap rate, with unlimited data, and she is self-employed, so she gets it all back as a business expense anyway. And if she sees that another carrier is cheaper, she can switch, and still keep her number. Since she had experience with abysmal support for T-Mobile, she had no interest in being forced to give them her business anymore.
And no, pay as you go plans don't come out cheaper when you include data services, which is the entire point of a smartphone.
Well, I guess that depends on where you live, doesn't it? If you live in a densely populated country, where you can get coverage anywhere, from anyone, and there is ferocious competition from a lot of carriers., you'll get a good rate. Things can be cheaper than if your only choice is between between a couple of semi-monopoly carriers.
I think Americans (and I am one, by the way) have been brainwashed into thinking that phones locked to a carrier is somehow good for them. Something to do with fluoride in the water. On the other hand, the Deutsche Telekom (the folks behind T-Mobile here in Germany brainwashed folks by convincing them that they needed ISDN in order to have caller ID on their telephones. A friend of ours here told me that, and I answered her that lots of folks in the US have caller ID on normal, analog lines. An ISDN subscription costs more than a simple analogue one. The moral of the story? Phone companies are out to screw you, and sell you something you don't need, at a price that you can't afford.
That's been my experience with 25+ years in a major IT player. What engineers want, is someone that will listen to them. And someone who will grab them under the arms and pull them up and support them when things get ugly, and they get knocked out cold. It's quite simple actually, but it's quite amazing how few managers can do it right. I have seen a few cases exemplary performance. When I was in southern France, doing some firefighting on a project where the shit had hit the fan, and knocked the damn thing over. A couple of the employees there told me that they were coming in on the weekend to work on problems. This was not an order from the management there. Their attitude so impressed me, that I said, "I'll be in with you guys!" The second line manager got wind of the renegade action and showed up in the lab on the weekend. She didn't ask any questions about progress, but just discretely sat at a terminal, and did manager email stuff. And brought pastry snacks for the folks. But you had the feeling that she was there for us, in case we needed anything. One manager did a great job of filtering us from nasty emails about bad management decisions, that would be reversed anyway. Some folks in another department asked us, "Hey, did you see the email about capping our overtime pay?" There was another email a week later, that it was retracted. So our manager had tried to shield us from some unnecessary stress.
On the other hand, my manager left the company. A manager from another department was appointed as his successor. He did nothing for a month, aside from forwarding management and policy notes that he received to us. He didn't even come by to introduce himself. Well, duh! I started the rumor that he didn't exist, but was actually some kind of ELIZA type forwarding engine. Then he invited is to a meeting.
One brilliant engineer colleague of mine had excellent people skills, but declined to be put in the manager career path. He told me, "I don't want to explain to employees all day, why they can't have a bigger monitor."
So, back to the point, Ballmer has a very aggressive ego. I'm not sure if he will be able to take advice from a "mere" engineer. And I'm not sure that good engineers will be able to take his abuse for long.
Imported, from the UK to Germany. When the purchase of an iPhone here would mean tying our souls to T-Mobile for two years, I adamantly refused. I really can't understand how folks put up with that bullshit: "OK, you can buy the phone cheap, but you will be locked into a contract for years, which will offset the discount on your phone." And if I buy something, I don't want to have to jailbreak it. I paid for it, it's my phone! What's up next? Buy a GM car, but only be able to tank it at GM gas (petrol) stations?
The University I attended had a system with "preceptors." A course would have a lecture with all the students from full prof once or twice a week, and a few more times a week a session with a smaller group (~10-15 students). The preceptor could be a grad student, or an assistant prof, or also even the full prof. In that smaller group, the preceptor gets to know the students, which makes cheating impossible. The preceptor would know if some dumb-ass in class wrote a brilliant essay, which was way beyond his or her intellectual faculties. The preceptor also gave you your grade.
Unfortunately, this was not as extremely enforced in engineering, which was my major. But the prof would come by during the lab exercises, and grill everyone on what they were doing and why and what they thought they would learn.
I took a lot of high level literature courses as electives. After the first essay that I had to write for one course, the preceptor pulled me aside after the class. She said, "You're not a literature major, are you? I'll bet that you are an engineering student!" She told me that essays from literature majors had very good ideas, but they tended to ramble. Engineers didn't have the best ideas, but their essays were all very well structured. She knew that I didn't cheat on the essay, because she heard what I said in class.
Want to cut out cheating? Get more direct prof to student contact.
A colleague of mine was a victim; it's a royal pain in the ass to get straightened out. The perpetrator somehow got a hold of his Social Security number, and got a credit card in my colleague's name at either Lowe's or Home Depot (building suppliers, for the non US folks). The perpetrator maxed out the card in one day. Since the crook gave a false address, my colleague never got the bill. So it wasn't paid, and this set off some sort off nuclear credit chain reaction which blocked all his credit cards. When he finally figured out what happened, it took him weeks to get it all right again. So the money is the smallest problem. It's the collateral damage that is the big problem.
Although us geekier types read, "recommence shipments of the faulty silicon," and scream, "Well that's a fine idea of how to get rid of a warehouse of faulty chips!"
Didn't we have this with Intel already, with floating point division? Oh, yeah, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug .
And Devo did a song about it, years before it happened:
"When chip bug comes along . . . you must ship it! Ship it! Ship it good!"
I wonder if the sales kid at your local super-computer store will inform you, "Oh, by the way, this model has a faulty chip." Or, maybe a sticker on the computer: "Faulty Intel Chip Inside!" That should do wonders for sales.
I remember that once the floating point division problem got mainstream press coverage, folks got all ornery, despite statements from Intel that most users would never see this problem. Most folks don't even know what floating point is. Intel eventually bought off the math prof who discovered the bug, by giving him testing contract. He deserved it, because he did a damn good job tracking down the bug. He is really, "a geek's geek."
Interviewer: "So what do you want to do here at our company?"
Interviewee: "I want to develop innovative products!"
Interviewer: "Sorry, we're looking for someone to help sue our competition. And any other company that we don't like, as well. Even if they aren't competition."
With all these lawsuits, instead of stories about who is suing who, it would be easier to report on which companies is not being sued:
"Hey, we found one! Company XXX is not being sued this week by anyone! Amazing!"
I have a CD player from 1989 that refuses to die, despite years of abuse from a dumb-ass like me.
There, fixed that for me . . .
Sony is also demanding "A bajillion kajillion dollars, all the chocolate in the world, and a pony."
Well, I don't have a pony to offer them, but I do have an ass. It's hairy, and Sony is cordially invited to kiss it.
I don't understand Sony. Back in the 80's and 90's, when I needed some electronic thingie, I would just walk into the store and ask what Sony had to offer. I have a CD player from 1989 that refuses to do, despite years of abuse from a dumb-ass like me. My camcorder from 1998 is still the toast of the town, for all the features that it has. It also refuses to die, despite my drunken friends at parties, dropping it, spilling beer on it, etc.
As a child/teenager, back in the 70's, I used to read my father's copy of . When they had stories about top executives, I used to think, "Wow! Those must be really intelligent guys, to be running a big company like that!" Now, I look at Sony, with their root-kit action, and now this, and I ask, "How did such dumb-asses get to be running such a large company? Don't they realize that they are pissing their customers off with stuff like this?"
Well, let me join the chorus. The next time I buy some electronic thingie, instead of asking, "What does Sony have?", I will ask, "What can you recommend?" Sorry Sony, I just seem to not have much trust in you anymore.
Compaq really killed DEC after the takeover.
We'll see what's left over from Sun in a few years, after Larry Ellison is finished with it. After the Compaq takeover, I met some former DEC employees, who were then Compaq employees, in a hotel on a business trip. After a few drinks, they had some blunt advice: "If your company gets taken over by another company, quit as soon as you can, and get a job somewhere else. Takeovers always end in tears."
I am still scratching my head over how DEC ended that way: from being the heavyweight champion in the Unix server business, to being taken over by a PC company. Maybe I'll have to Google for a good book with insightful analysis. Or if any folks here can recommend anything, I'm all ears.
Actually IBM had plans for a micro-kernel called IBM Workplace OS or WPOS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Workplace_OS . One of the ideas was to get it running on other non-PC architectures, so OS/2 could run on them. It was developed at IBM Boca Raton in Florida, where OS/2 came from. They actually shipped a product, OS/2 Warp 4, that ran on the micro-kernel.
I talked to an ex-IBM AIX developer years after the whole project was shit-canned. He told me he attempted to use WPOS with AIX on their POWER platform. He told me how the system struggled with booting, and then rolled over and died. As a true Texan (where POWER and AIX systems were developed), he added that if that system had been a horse, he would have shot it in the head to take it out of its misery.
You forgot the regular bribe to the party official
It's not a bribe. Consider it a "facilitation fee." My father worked for a company that was looking to win a big contract in Southeast Asia. It is illegal for US companies to pay bribes abroad. So they hired a local "consultant" to help them win the contract. He got paid $1 million for his "services." What he did with the money, was his business. The company won the contract. How much of the money stayed in the "consultant's" pocket, and how much landed in the pockets of other folks, nobody wanted to know.
I remember reading an article in The Economist about DEC and their VAXes in the 80's. The point was the a VAX was cheap enough that a low level executive could approve the expenditure. An IBM mainframe purchase would require approval at the top executive level of the company. IBM responded by bringing out a mini-mainframe called the 9370 as a "VAX killer," but it was a flop. The minicomputer was killed by PCs. However, IBM still makes a lot of money with their mainframes, with folks who have tons of data, and need high availability: like banks and insurance companies.
For DEC they could have gone downscale to PCs, but the profit margins are too low: it's a commodity item. IBM doesn't build PCs anymore; they sold their PC business to Lenovo. Or they could have gone upscale, to compete with IBM mainframes. In the 90's, big Sun servers were causing IBM some grief. But we all see what happened to Sun.
I like to have choice. So the more vendors that are out there, the better. When I look at the passenger airplane industry, there are only two choices: Airbus or Boeing. I would welcome more competition, from say, Japan or Russia. Russia!?!?! Well, their Soyuz is the only way to get into space now, so they could probably be able to build good passenger airplanes.
They flip out when someone says, "Hey, let's just build a little Hiroshima or Nagasaki right across from your backyard!"
The Kennedy Clan gets their drawer in an uproar, when anyone suggests that they build windmills anywhere near their property on Cape Cpd.
So, sadly, switching to alternative energy sources is not a technological problem, but a political one.
The federal fund, known as the Universal Service Fund, comes from a line-item charge for phone customers, usually about $2 a month. That money goes toward building and maintaining copper-wire phone connections to remote areas that would be too costly to serve otherwise. The subsidy was created by the 1934 Communications Act, and regulators today say the fund needs to be used for high-speed Internet connections as people increasingly rely on the Web to gather information and communicate.
So, instead of paying $2 a month, so that yokels in the boonies can call each other and gossip, all them them city folks will now pay $20 a month, to subsidize broadband for folks who live on in the boonies can download porn to their ranches!?!?
[Checks Slashdot name] . . . Oh, wait, maybe it is a good idea to subsidize folks who live on ranches in the boonies.
Although, I read an article in The Economist about UNESCO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Controversy_and_reform . The article said that half of the UNESCO budget never made in out of Paris, France, where the headquarters are located. I thought that was pretty amusing, until I was on a business trip in Geneva. Then we went out for lunch and waiter asked us if we worked for the UN (which was just down the road). When we said no, he treated us like unwanted, unwashed infidels. We noticed that the UN folks there were chowing down on kings' portions of food, and just got a bill for their meals, which the UN would pay for. Well, who pays the budget for the UN . . . ?
This is another trick in politics: Get someone else to pay for what you consume. When this FCC "reform" passes into law, I would be interested to see where all those dollars were being spent. But, alas, politicians do their best to avoid transparency . . .
Oh, well.
nothing else flies except Soyuz.
Want to fly to space? Learn Russian.
and won't for several years (unless you're a spook working off-budget and have a friend at Vandenberg AFB.)
Not Vandenberg, but maybe the Secret Squirrels at Groom Lake (aka, Area 51) have something up their sleeves. But I wouldn't bet on it. A hobby pilot in Texas told me about "scramjet" sitings around the area, all rumors of course, but who knows. Probably the Kremlin is better informed than the American public about this. The Russians are very smart. Their spy motto is, "Why pay for an expensive spy satellite, when we can bribe a disgruntled scientist for a fraction of the price for better information?"
it's a slickly clever plan to push the danger and the responsiblity out to a contractor. it will, by necessity of course, succeed.
Yeah, that outsourcing risk worked wonders with BP and Tony Hayward in the Gulf of Mexico. Hey, maybe he is looking for a new job? Could we convince him to take a ride in a spacecraft, that his own company built? Probably not.
"Hate" is good politics. No politician, in a democracy, or a dictatorship, or anything in between, ever kept his job by calling his population a bunch of lazy dumb-asses, who are responsible for their own dire status. Pin the blame on some folks out of the country, or a minority group in the country too small to defend themselves.
Embezzle, and stash the cash away in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Make sure to flee the country to your Villa on the Cote D'Azur before the shit hits the fan.
Profit? Fuck that shit. Just relax by the pool.
Um, does anyone know of a country looking for a dictator? I think I understand the work and could do the job.
Before I get my hairy ass out of the country.
Olsen Twins, or if they are just the Mary-Kate and Ashley's faces photo-shopped on the bodies of Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse
It would be more amusing to really transform the heads of Arnold Schwartenegger's and Martin Sheen's onto bodies Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse.
Plastic surgeons in California can do that with Botox, can't they?
The cops would be too afraid to arrest a Arnold Schwartenegger headed Lindsay Lohoan. Poor Martin Sheen headed Amy Winehouse would hear from the traffic cops:
"I'm sorry Mr. Sheen, but are those two and a half double D's on your chest?"
... and some chick asks him what he does for a living. He answers, "I'm a computer geek." She replies, "Oh, wow, that turns me on! Go to the restroom and get some condoms, and then we'll go back to my place!" If any Slashdotter posted something like that, the responses would be, "Yeah, right, in your dreams!"
So then three days later, he goes to another bar, and a different chick hits on him. The whole story seems quite apocryphal.
If this story is true, it sounds like Assange must be as charming as George Clooney and must be a skilled martial artist with nunchucks, which he needs to beat back the women folk.
I speculate that it went down like this:
CIA boss: "This WikiLeaks guy has really shoved a weed up our ass. What can we do?"
CIA lackey: "Oh, we have a pile of Hawaiian shellfish poison hidden in the cellar! If we prick him with a needle of that stuff, he will be dead before he hits the ground!"
CIA boss: "Hmmm. That sounds too drastic, and would raise suspicions. Can't we deck him with a honey trap?"
CIA lackey: "I'll call Stockholm."
50 billion years ALL the stars will have burnt-out to dying red embers.
Then what do we do?
I guess that is best a problem that we leave to future generations to solve. I ain't certainly going to be around to worry about it. Kinda sorta like that nuclear waste that the US is doing with the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. If the folks haven't learned in 50 billion years from how to deal with this stuff . . . well then, fuck 'em. Lazy bastards. Maybe the great-great-recursion-needed grandson of Steven Hawking will figure a way to light up a new sun.
That sure makes a great family heirloom:
Guy one: "What did you inherit from your forefathers?
Guy two: "A pile of nuclear waste, and a bunch of burnt-out stars."
I've been looking out from my balcony since I read this article, looking for the drone that will drop my satphone for free, fast Internet access. I haven't seen one yet.
Oh, wait. The country where I live is not at war with the USA. Does anyone know how to start a war? Maybe we need a dictator or something.
"may still has"
Ugh. Engrish fail. Need more caffeine.
English is a fault tolerant language, so don't sweat it. You can make all kinds of errors in English, and everyone will still understand what you meant to say, nonetheless. At a lab from my employer, in Austin, Texas, a guy from Taiwan was speaking English with a guy from India. Their English would have made my 7th grade English teacher commit Seppuku (aka, Harakiri), but they were able to communicate with it.
In my opinion this is why English is so dominant on the Internet: you don't need to know much to communicate. Unless some sesquipedalian like me starts using terms like obsequious and innocuous.
This is why dictators are scared of the Internet: Folks can get across what is going on in their country to a wide audience.
Or were they the ones whose users always posted responses to porn trolls on Usenet groups in the early 90's, "Add me to the list!" . . . "Me, too!"