I would argue, whoever's job it is to trim said bush, that's who cares. I agree that it is entirely inapropriate to put someone on a sex offender list for public urination. I do not think however that one should be allowed to urinate on another's property without some form of punishment.
For a while I lived in a neighborhood with a large number of childeren running around whose parents did not care what they were up to. They would simply drop there pants when and where they felt the urge. We lived on a corner lot and caught them many times peeing on our trees or even on our garage. It is not fun to do yard work and wonder if everything you touch has been peed on recently.
Ok, I see the point regarding international roaming. I was more directing my statement towards those with regional phones. If you spend $200 or more on the phone but then skimp on the $2 nationwide plan or go with some tiny local telco maybe it's time to re-evaluate something, either the phone or the service. For people who frequently travel internationaly I guess this is a valid problem until Google (or the Android OSS community???) fixes it.
Why do people buy a mutlti-hundred dollar phone capable of running pretty much the same apps as a home computer and not get a Nationwide plan with unlimitted data. Don't get me wrong, those plans are expensive and not everyone needs them... but... for those that don't just get a plain old cellphone!
Umm... it's been a little over a year since I tried to do anything with UPSs webservice but the last I tried it it was pretty much just a random number generator. Or maybe shipping prices for a paralled universe or something. They never matched the quotes from their desktop app which prints the shipping labels.
At least a webservice which is down isn't misleading. I still prefer USPS!!
So... then public IPs can be considered a techie luxury. No doubt resulting in residential ISPs not offering them anymore. Cool, then the only way information can be transfered from one computer to another will have to involve a server somewhere sitting on a comercial host. No more anything that involves one peer communicating directly with another.
Hey, this idea is so great its revolutionary. Let's give it a new name. I know, how about AOL?
How does this filter work again? By IP? Considering all the cheap shared hosting out there where 20-50 sites are hosted on one ip address that would be doomed to create more false positives than real hits. Or is it just in the DNS? Maybe it can be sidestepped by using a foreign DNS server (hopefully with a local cacheing server in the middle).
Being able to access my stuff wherever I go has been my goal for a long time. When I was in college (before cheap USB sticks) I used to have a business card CD for my wallet with a java based ssh client (putty wasn't around yet) and a vncviewer executable. This way I could reach my stuff from the lab computers or anywhere else without installing anything. Realizing that wallet CDs suck I moved on to a web based solution. (try finding a wallet they actually fit in and then try to carry it everywhere without breaking it!) I had a javascript ssh client (mindterm) and a javascript vnc client on a webpage hosted from my machine. This worked... ok.... for the time.
My point is I get it... I get what is so convenient about cloud computing. but... is it really a good idea for allowing the placing of ones documents on someone else's machine (Mickeysoft, Google, etc...) become so commonplace? I realize 90% of what most people's data is going to be uninteresting and not worth getting concerned about. But... if what happens to the 10% of data that truly is sensative when erveryone's in the mindset of just use Google or just use Microsoft? IT guys/gals, do you really think the business suites in your company are going to even understand the differenct between working on a document hosted at some other company vs. running an office suite localy? Most will only know that this is what is easy, this is what they know, this is what their peers are using... For that matter, even people who do understand the difference, once they have been using the cloud for the unimportant data, are they even going to think about it or will it be second nature?
So... inaviteable as cloud computing seems to be, maybe it's time for an OSS web based Office Suite. Something that a company can install on it's own ssl encrypted web server, something that more adventurous home users can install in their own homes and use along with dynamic dns.
Open source developer should support his/her users within reason. Not because there is a moral obligation but because users do provide a service to the developer, they provide testing and feedback. Also, what's the point of developing something if no one is going to use it? I can see if it's some obscure program which is usefull only to the author but if for example ndiswrapper disappeared compeletely tomorrow then somebody else would start a new project and replace it. Who wants to put all that work into something just to see another group come along and make it irrelevant? What good is it? Bragging rights? Still, this is the developer's choice. There was never any agreement to maintain support and no one paid for it.
If the developer has accepted contributions of code however... it could be argued that the contributors do in part own the code. If the developer is going to abandon or close source it then there is probably an obligation to keep all source and documentation accessable for a while to give others a chance to fork it.
Now, as for taking down the list. I'm not sure why they would have to do that just to make a new site. If it were static pages they could just keep the old version up till the new one is ready. I'm sure in this case though they are not dealing with static pages, rather it's a database being accessed by some sort of framework, probably PHP based.
Good practice would be to do this new development on a separate copy of the site, probably on a development server. Using a code versioning system such as SVN and keeping all server specific config stuff in one place it should then be trivial to update the live site all at once from the development copy only when it is ready.
This would be ideal, however it's probably a bit much to ask every developer to develop their site in an ideal way, after all not everyone specializes in developing websites. It is much better that a person specialized in developing device drivers run a project like ndiswrapper.
If the author(s) of ndiswrapper do not want to use a separate development copy of the site while the rebuild it but do want to keep their users around there is another way. They could just dump the card compatibility database to a static spreadsheet file and just post it on their (under construction) page. It's not nearly as convenient but it would be much better for the user than just not giving access to that information at all and it would only take a few minutes.
Pidgin's a great client for personal use. I use it and like it a lot.
Sure, they can set up a Jabber server of their own, then connect to it with Pidgin and use one of the encryption plugins for security but I doubt an organization that is concerned about secure IM is going to be interested in a solution with so much possibility for the users to start adding their own personal, outside, public IM accounts.
I would say Jabber server with any jabber only client which supports encryption and can have it's config locked down. Of course, they can block access to outside Jabber servers with a firewall but why not stop them from trying in the first place too.
The author has a very narrow view of what motivates one to contribute to open source. He also seems to lump a lot of different trends involving people banging on a keyboard w/o pay into the same thing.
He seems to think that people write blogs and participate in social networks out of some charitable desire to better the world with free journalism. I suppose there is some of that out there, Groklaw perhaps? I think most of it comes from a desire to be heard, to be recognised. That and simply a need to socialize. This is human nature and will not go away simply because there is a recession. Not while the power is still on anyway! He also mentions the monetary value of some of these sites. This comes purely from advertising. They will lose this if things become so bad that companies can't afford to advertise but short of that they will be ok.
As for open source software, sure, some people donate code simply as a gift to society. Some may even refocus their efforts towards more for-profit things as they get short on cash. That's only a small fraction of the reason people and organisations contribute to OSS. Mostly I think it's just because they want the feature or bugfix that they are working on but don't want to have to maintain the whole codebase just to get it! Even if you fix something or add the feature then keep it to yourself you lose because your fix might not be compatible with the next release. Until existing software, open or closed satisfies all of all user's needs with no bugs there will still be this motivation to contribute code. Even to the leader of the project it's less work if it's shared among other coders.
On the other hand, expensive support might be a tougher sell to struggling companies who may by supporting their own software. This could hurt the write it for free, make money on the support business model. Then again, these same companies will not want to pay for extra IT staff and more training. It may be cheaper to just buy the support contract.
As for OSS users, OSS is usually also free. It doesn't have to be but it's hard to put DRM in source code, it can just be ripped out and rebuilt. Given hard times one would certainly think that being free is a good selling point.
First rule of recovering wet electronics... act fast. Don't wait for a good day to get around to it, this leaves time for oxidation.
Second rule. Take stuff apart. You've got to get that water out and you have got to do it quickly. You aren't going to get water out of the inside of a device quickly through the vent holes or the spaces around the knobs in the chasis. You need to take them apart and expose the boards.
If the inside is muddy you may consider putting the circuit boards in a dishwasher. I know people whom have done this with computer motherboards and expansion cards. I have not tried it myself though. If you do, skip the soap. You aren't going to eat off the thing anyway, listen to the people whom say chlorine is corrosive. That's what's in dishwasher detergent. Electronics rely on some very narrow copper channels. It doesn't take much to eat through one.
You may also put the chasis in the dishwasher. Sometimes it can be a little rough on ink labeling controls but usually not too bad unless the ink is almost worn off to begin with. It can make old yellowed plastic look much newer and can get the gunk out of ventilation slits much easier than by hand. I have used this method to make old items from garage sales or EBay look like new. For this you can use the soap. Again, taking things apart is good. Wherever two parts come together is a crack where water can hide and take a long time to dry. If you do this make sure to remove any wood, paper or cloth parts. You mentioned a home theatre, I imagine there might be grill cloth over speakers. If you had some old style equipment there might be wood trim to remove.
Make sure everything is completely dry before putting it back together. And of course, remember how it goes together when you take it apart! If it looks real difficult, do it in front of a video camera. Or, stop and take pictures at different steps of disassembly. If there are many different size/type of screw to keep track of, empty egg cartons can be good for that.
Again, the sooner you do this the better! I have to wonder about the fact they are currently under a tarp. Yes, that will keep additional water out but it also holds the current water in! If they have been sitting that way long it may have already done additional damage.
OK, not the SL-5000 that people in the US remember but the more recent SL-C... series which had microdrives, better screen resolution, etc...
It sounds like a great little device but why would someone want to carry that plus their cellphone. It will fail for that reason. I can't wait for an actual open cellphone, no kill switches, not locked into some company's app store, etc... That means you iPhone. It would be great if it ran Linux and GPE (basically X & gdk scaled down for mobile use). Then existing apps would port easily rather than trying to develop a whole new software base for mobile use, not like Android.
Ok, that's horribly Microsoft-like but it is quite possible that someone chosing between this product and someone else's 2.0, if they can't find a better reason to chose one might go with the higher version number. Not just b/c of possible bug fixes but also because having been around long enough to make a second version shows you might still be there for the next.
But... if they realize it is really just the first release... and you are calling it 6, 7, etc... I don't know about your customers but I would definately be concerned that your product is all marketing and will turn out to suck.
If you just name it for the year you aren't pushing the fact that this is the first release. But... you aren't hiding anything either.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes He Did!!
Why did you have to say that!
You brought back all the memories. I'm going to have to see my therapist now. Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!
"if you duck behind a bush, who the hell cares?"
I would argue, whoever's job it is to trim said bush, that's who cares. I agree that it is entirely inapropriate to put someone on a sex offender list for public urination. I do not think however that one should be allowed to urinate on another's property without some form of punishment.
For a while I lived in a neighborhood with a large number of childeren running around whose parents did not care what they were up to. They would simply drop there pants when and where they felt the urge. We lived on a corner lot and caught them many times peeing on our trees or even on our garage. It is not fun to do yard work and wonder if everything you touch has been peed on recently.
That's $10 for each of us right?
As far as I can tell, it's just a free as in beer version of free as in speech + beer QEMU.
How long before it comes out that virtualbox actually is QEMU, with a Sun sticker on it?
Ok, I see the point regarding international roaming. I was more directing my statement towards those with regional phones. If you spend $200 or more on the phone but then skimp on the $2 nationwide plan or go with some tiny local telco maybe it's time to re-evaluate something, either the phone or the service. For people who frequently travel internationaly I guess this is a valid problem until Google (or the Android OSS community???) fixes it.
Why do people buy a mutlti-hundred dollar phone capable of running pretty much the same apps as a home computer and not get a Nationwide plan with unlimitted data. Don't get me wrong, those plans are expensive and not everyone needs them... but... for those that don't just get a plain old cellphone!
Umm... it's been a little over a year since I tried to do anything with UPSs webservice but the last I tried it it was pretty much just a random number generator. Or maybe shipping prices for a paralled universe or something. They never matched the quotes from their desktop app which prints the shipping labels.
At least a webservice which is down isn't misleading. I still prefer USPS!!
Hmmm...
then "Secure NASA systems" weren't so secure were they?
What a great idea!
So... then public IPs can be considered a techie luxury. No doubt resulting in residential ISPs not offering them anymore. Cool, then the only way information can be transfered from one computer to another will have to involve a server somewhere sitting on a comercial host. No more anything that involves one peer communicating directly with another.
Hey, this idea is so great its revolutionary. Let's give it a new name. I know, how about AOL?
How does this filter work again? By IP? Considering all the cheap shared hosting out there where 20-50 sites are hosted on one ip address that would be doomed to create more false positives than real hits. Or is it just in the DNS? Maybe it can be sidestepped by using a foreign DNS server (hopefully with a local cacheing server in the middle).
At the "right" heigh:
pressure good
temperature good
chemical content of atmosphere - kind of like having multiple car batteries exploding all around you continuously
sorry, not quite right after all.
Ok,I'm a pretty big geek.
Being able to access my stuff wherever I go has been my goal for a long time. When I was in college (before cheap USB sticks) I used to have a business card CD for my wallet with a java based ssh client (putty wasn't around yet) and a vncviewer executable. This way I could reach my stuff from the lab computers or anywhere else without installing anything. Realizing that wallet CDs suck I moved on to a web based solution. (try finding a wallet they actually fit in and then try to carry it everywhere without breaking it!) I had a javascript ssh client (mindterm) and a javascript vnc client on a webpage hosted from my machine. This worked... ok.... for the time.
My point is I get it... I get what is so convenient about cloud computing. but... is it really a good idea for allowing the placing of ones documents on someone else's machine (Mickeysoft, Google, etc...) become so commonplace? I realize 90% of what most people's data is going to be uninteresting and not worth getting concerned about. But... if what happens to the 10% of data that truly is sensative when erveryone's in the mindset of just use Google or just use Microsoft? IT guys/gals, do you really think the business suites in your company are going to even understand the differenct between working on a document hosted at some other company vs. running an office suite localy? Most will only know that this is what is easy, this is what they know, this is what their peers are using... For that matter, even people who do understand the difference, once they have been using the cloud for the unimportant data, are they even going to think about it or will it be second nature?
So... inaviteable as cloud computing seems to be, maybe it's time for an OSS web based Office Suite. Something that a company can install on it's own ssl encrypted web server, something that more adventurous home users can install in their own homes and use along with dynamic dns.
Now somebody else go write it :-)
Open source developer should support his/her users within reason. Not because there is a moral obligation but because users do provide a service to the developer, they provide testing and feedback. Also, what's the point of developing something if no one is going to use it? I can see if it's some obscure program which is usefull only to the author but if for example ndiswrapper disappeared compeletely tomorrow then somebody else would start a new project and replace it. Who wants to put all that work into something just to see another group come along and make it irrelevant? What good is it? Bragging rights? Still, this is the developer's choice. There was never any agreement to maintain support and no one paid for it.
If the developer has accepted contributions of code however... it could be argued that the contributors do in part own the code. If the developer is going to abandon or close source it then there is probably an obligation to keep all source and documentation accessable for a while to give others a chance to fork it.
Now, as for taking down the list. I'm not sure why they would have to do that just to make a new site. If it were static pages they could just keep the old version up till the new one is ready. I'm sure in this case though they are not dealing with static pages, rather it's a database being accessed by some sort of framework, probably PHP based.
Good practice would be to do this new development on a separate copy of the site, probably on a development server. Using a code versioning system such as SVN and keeping all server specific config stuff in one place it should then be trivial to update the live site all at once from the development copy only when it is ready.
This would be ideal, however it's probably a bit much to ask every developer to develop their site in an ideal way, after all not everyone specializes in developing websites. It is much better that a person specialized in developing device drivers run a project like ndiswrapper.
If the author(s) of ndiswrapper do not want to use a separate development copy of the site while the rebuild it but do want to keep their users around there is another way. They could just dump the card compatibility database to a static spreadsheet file and just post it on their (under construction) page. It's not nearly as convenient but it would be much better for the user than just not giving access to that information at all and it would only take a few minutes.
"The largest truck in the world is about to become..." No, I'm pretty sure the Apollo/Shuttle crawlers have them beat.
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/crawler.html.
Might still be the biggest robots though.
I know! A convicted criminal, as opposed to the non-convicted ones the rest of us elect. Alaska is sooo backwards!
Careful!
I remember where I was when Bush was elected... Don't you?
I'd be happy if he's at least good enough that I don't remember...
Wait, there are results already? But the flier i got says Democrats don't vote until today!!
And voted for by plenty of Democrats too!
McCain is a vi junkie...
Pidgin's a great client for personal use. I use it and like it a lot.
Sure, they can set up a Jabber server of their own, then connect to it with Pidgin and use one of the encryption plugins for security but I doubt an organization that is concerned about secure IM is going to be interested in a solution with so much possibility for the users to start adding their own personal, outside, public IM accounts.
I would say Jabber server with any jabber only client which supports encryption and can have it's config locked down. Of course, they can block access to outside Jabber servers with a firewall but why not stop them from trying in the first place too.
The author has a very narrow view of what motivates one to contribute to open source. He also seems to lump a lot of different trends involving people banging on a keyboard w/o pay into the same thing.
He seems to think that people write blogs and participate in social networks out of some charitable desire to better the world with free journalism. I suppose there is some of that out there, Groklaw perhaps? I think most of it comes from a desire to be heard, to be recognised. That and simply a need to socialize. This is human nature and will not go away simply because there is a recession. Not while the power is still on anyway! He also mentions the monetary value of some of these sites. This comes purely from advertising. They will lose this if things become so bad that companies can't afford to advertise but short of that they will be ok.
As for open source software, sure, some people donate code simply as a gift to society. Some may even refocus their efforts towards more for-profit things as they get short on cash. That's only a small fraction of the reason people and organisations contribute to OSS. Mostly I think it's just because they want the feature or bugfix that they are working on but don't want to have to maintain the whole codebase just to get it! Even if you fix something or add the feature then keep it to yourself you lose because your fix might not be compatible with the next release. Until existing software, open or closed satisfies all of all user's needs with no bugs there will still be this motivation to contribute code. Even to the leader of the project it's less work if it's shared among other coders.
On the other hand, expensive support might be a tougher sell to struggling companies who may by supporting their own software. This could hurt the write it for free, make money on the support business model. Then again, these same companies will not want to pay for extra IT staff and more training. It may be cheaper to just buy the support contract.
As for OSS users, OSS is usually also free. It doesn't have to be but it's hard to put DRM in source code, it can just be ripped out and rebuilt. Given hard times one would certainly think that being free is a good selling point.
First rule of recovering wet electronics... act fast. Don't wait for a good day to get around to it, this leaves time for oxidation.
Second rule. Take stuff apart. You've got to get that water out and you have got to do it quickly. You aren't going to get water out of the inside of a device quickly through the vent holes or the spaces around the knobs in the chasis. You need to take them apart and expose the boards.
If the inside is muddy you may consider putting the circuit boards in a dishwasher. I know people whom have done this with computer motherboards and expansion cards. I have not tried it myself though. If you do, skip the soap. You aren't going to eat off the thing anyway, listen to the people whom say chlorine is corrosive. That's what's in dishwasher detergent. Electronics rely on some very narrow copper channels. It doesn't take much to eat through one.
You may also put the chasis in the dishwasher. Sometimes it can be a little rough on ink labeling controls but usually not too bad unless the ink is almost worn off to begin with. It can make old yellowed plastic look much newer and can get the gunk out of ventilation slits much easier than by hand. I have used this method to make old items from garage sales or EBay look like new. For this you can use the soap. Again, taking things apart is good. Wherever two parts come together is a crack where water can hide and take a long time to dry. If you do this make sure to remove any wood, paper or cloth parts. You mentioned a home theatre, I imagine there might be grill cloth over speakers. If you had some old style equipment there might be wood trim to remove.
Make sure everything is completely dry before putting it back together. And of course, remember how it goes together when you take it apart! If it looks real difficult, do it in front of a video camera. Or, stop and take pictures at different steps of disassembly. If there are many different size/type of screw to keep track of, empty egg cartons can be good for that.
Again, the sooner you do this the better! I have to wonder about the fact they are currently under a tarp. Yes, that will keep additional water out but it also holds the current water in! If they have been sitting that way long it may have already done additional damage.
"the problem lies not with the person releasing their information, but with the society in which they live"
No doubt! But... It's not society that pays the price is it? Better safe than sorry on that one I think.
OK, not the SL-5000 that people in the US remember but the more recent SL-C... series which had microdrives, better screen resolution, etc...
It sounds like a great little device but why would someone want to carry that plus their cellphone. It will fail for that reason. I can't wait for an actual open cellphone, no kill switches, not locked into some company's app store, etc... That means you iPhone. It would be great if it ran Linux and GPE (basically X & gdk scaled down for mobile use). Then existing apps would port easily rather than trying to develop a whole new software base for mobile use, not like Android.
Ok, that's horribly Microsoft-like but it is quite possible that someone chosing between this product and someone else's 2.0, if they can't find a better reason to chose one might go with the higher version number. Not just b/c of possible bug fixes but also because having been around long enough to make a second version shows you might still be there for the next.
But... if they realize it is really just the first release... and you are calling it 6, 7, etc... I don't know about your customers but I would definately be concerned that your product is all marketing and will turn out to suck.
If you just name it for the year you aren't pushing the fact that this is the first release. But... you aren't hiding anything either.