Are you saying they are wrong? Have you managed to articulate that in a meaningful way to your management?
If IT people can't pick out a "haha only serious" comment and realize that it is only half true (yes, we expect swag, no it is not the only reason we go), then it is a good indication of the dilution of the industry. In other words, if you don't know better, how can you expect your management to? If you can't give them a good reason why you should go, then you shouldn't go. Simple as that.
Vendors have marketing departments, and marketing people know that a key to getting market share is getting attention from consumers. This can be done with flashy ads, give-aways, informal dialogs over lunches, and other ways of getting mindshare previous to marketshare. Ultimately, vendors (usually) have to compete based on features, i.e., merit. However, getting someone to look at your product in more depth or showing a customer that you think of them often involves giving them a tshirt, a mug, or some other treat, whether that is pre- or post-sale.
I assumed people still knew all this, but maybe the industry is in such a depression that it has been forgotten... or maybe it has always been different up here in Canada.
Gawd... "Compare the best prices on: Software/Programming Development".
That is lame, placed right at the top of the related links. On one hand, that is pretty sneaky way to sucker people into looking at products, not as honest as a good ol' banner. On the other hand, it costs money to run the site, pay for bandwidth, etc.
I suppose we could support/. and click the everliving FSCK out of those links... I'm sure not buying any whateverthehell they want to advertise, I'm immune to that ad brainwashing... oh look, a nice pretty banner for a Netgear access point! I'm going to the computer store, bbl...
No doubt the highlight for many at this year's ApacheCon attendees was the Closing Session where Ken Coar raffled off a number of goodies supplied by the conference vendors including books, AMD processors and other wonderful swag.
+1 Insightful
I expect good swag for any conference or seminar, whether or not it is a simple day seminar or something more elaborate. If there isn't the possibility of vendor treats, most IT monkeys don't go.
I think it would be pretty funny to watch a robot go through a BSOD or kernel panic, for that matter.
One of the things about windows that we forget is that its is perfectly fine until you try to do foolish things like "run applications" or "allows users to touch it". How is XBox stability? I would expect something like this special purpose robot should be along the same lines in terms of reliability.
What the hell is "may not work"? This is 2002, there is no excuse for such shoddy support in a release-quality Operating System. Maybe the x86 port of Darwin should be flagged as Alpha, and stuck with version numbers somewhat less than 6.x... maybe.00601!
"Do people lurk on this board waiting for the opportunity to lash out and prove their intellectual superiority?"
<whisper>
Did you just figure that out??
Sure, they decided to use "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." instead of "We're smarter than you. Suck it." like originally planned, but the result has been the same.
</whisper>
Anyways, I'm really trying hard not to get too excited about little AI warriors each making their own combat decisions on screen. I'm really trying hard not to think about this. I tell myself, repeatedly, that getting excited about artificial intelligence is normal.
Of course if a Microsoft format had been used we'd see streams of anti-Microsoft hate invoking antitrust etc etc. When it is Apple's format that they don't have the courtesy of releasing a *nix player for its all "yay for the underdog!"
This is interesting to Canadians too, believe it or not.
Rumor has it that Verizon has a huge chunk of Telus (the dominant telco in western Canada) shares, something in the 40% range. If Verizon can complete their little shopping spree at some point and take over, maybe their evil ways will seep north of the border.
The current US government doesn't have the strongest track record in regards to privacy. Lets hope that they truly only care about national security and finding terrorists and prefer to protect privacy in all other cases... and that view is shared by the judicial branch.
Dammit, the day I *don't* have mod points is the day they have the test. I always get screwed =(
Times like these make me wish there were more options for negative moderations like "-1 Lame" and "-2 ALERT! YOU ARE A FUCKTARD."
For the record, I think the next Linux distro to die, primarily intended for desktop or not, will be something like Lycoris or Caldera. Distributions like Mandrake and Red Hat provide ease of use and power in one package, providing a solution for all levels of users, while the "elite" distros requiring clue such as Gentoo (and maybe Debian and Slackware) will satisfy the tinkerers, superority complex, "make world" and other types of Linux users. A lot of choice is a good thing, but the key is identifying redundancy and figuring out which redundant distro is inferior. I think that will help pick off the next to go under.
... because you are a Paranoid Coward. Its unfortunate that you need to try to discredit my point by associating it with the enemy.
I've seen SPEWS clumsiness in action. That isn't to say the ISPs involved could do their side of fighting SPAM a bit better. Nobody is perfect, my opinion based on observation of fact is that SPEWS is less perfect than I'm willing to tolerate as a solution for fighting spam.
That sounds great in theory, except when you get unreasonable and difficult to deal with processes for addressing problems. Spam havens aren't the only ones slapped with the SPEWS ClueBat of Indescriminant Wacking.
SPAM sucks, we can all agree. Truly SPAM tolerant ISPs need to be educated, we can all agree to that too. I don't think SPEWS is particularly good at doing that effectively or respectfully.
And probably lots of legit mail too, unless you have a tiny mail server. SPEWS is an awful choice for large commercial services, they subscribe to the "throw the baby our with the bathwater" theory. They are ever more clumsy and heavyhanded than ORBS was.
The cease and desist letter is on its way, chump, pray that your lawyer is as slimey and petty as mine!
I might as well say something on topic that may be of interest. I use Evolution as my primary email application at home, and love it. It has features that has allowed me to kiss Outlook goodbye, and the PDA conduits to sync up the calendar etc with my Palm are fantastic. I wish there was better GnomeCard importation/integration support (I'm having a hell of a time getting Evo 1.08 to import GnomeCard entries synced from my Palm correctly), I've yet to try 1.2 so maybe this issue is resolved. Anyone try this out?
Until one of two things happens (my office migrates to Exchange 2000 or Ximian releases older Exchange server support) I won't be able to use Evolution in the corporate environment, but I intend to as soon as it is feasible.
And now, a treat for those of you with mod points to get rid of...
Guide to Moderators: 1. Sarcastic DMCA references are not funny enought o earn modding up on their own, but are still above Domo-Kun/Kitten references in the 'net cliche scale 2. Use of "pray" and "lawyer" in the same sentence is worth "+1 Isn't it ironic?" 3. Meta-reference to bad Alanis song in Guide to Moderators is worth "-1 Bad taste in music" 4. Lack of beowulf cluster, Linux, or anti-Microsoft comments are worth "-1 off meta-topic" 5. Including of "beowulf cluster, Linux, or anti-Microsoft" comments in Guide are worth "+1 Insightful" for cutting commentary on sociology of Slashdot 6. Guide itself is worth "-1 Offtopic" for the obvious reasons
Getting a broadband residential connection for your home or office doesn't mean you have a dedicated and guaranteed 512/256 mb slice of the available bandwidth. You simply AREN'T paying for that, despite how much your tiny $30-40/mo may feel like it is worth to you. There is no way your monthly broadband bill is fair compensation to the ISP for 24/7 usage of that level. Residential connections and networks are engineered for bursty traffic, and there is nothing in the marketing literature that contradicts this. The terms like "unlimited" that just about every ISP uses comes from the context of dialup, wherein you are limited to a certain time connected to the network. Broadband (most implementations) connect you to the network 24/7, but aren't a dedicated pipe for your server. Make no mistake about it, when you configure a P2P app to share out without limits you are running a server, and can/should be shut off by your ISP for breach of their TOS.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but many of today's Internet users have somehow come upon the idea that they have a right to do whatever they want. Your rights end at the cable modem, past that it is the ISP's network, resources, and rules that govern the priveledge of connecting to the Internet. Just because you pay a piddling amount of money every month does not let you dictate terms of service. Despite common misperception, the customer is not always right.
Actually, this isn't all that expensive. Content filtering a real option that
ISPs may take increasingly in the future. Technology to do this will come out of the same flow and signature analysis IDS relies on. Port schmort, its all about the payload.
I suppose the question coming out of this release is just how do the stability and/or quality of these drivers compare to Linux and Microsoft drivers? I hate to even bring it down to this, but has anyone done benchmarks comparing the three? I realize that a game is likely to be the most common test and FreeBSD tests would have to run through Linux emulation, but is an interesting exercise just the same.
Just a hint for the future, you miss out on those highly covetted "Troll" and "Flamebait" moderations if you actually spell Microsoft correctly. If you want to be really elite and properly anti-Microsoft, you should incorporate a $, or use "shaft" or "sloth" instead of -soft.
Without those <sarcasm>insightful plays on the word 'Microsoft'</sarcasm> one typically only manages to produce an asinine off-topic comment.
Just some hints for the future, your mileage may vary, all standard disclaimers apply.
Thank you for not choosing Microsoft... meanwhile, back on topic:
This is great news for the FreeBSD community. One of the complaints against the OS and long sought-after milestones has been graphics drivers for desktop applications, design work, and even gaming. FreeBSD, like most other OSes, isn't just for servers, and this helps make it better for the desktop.
nVidia always impresses me with their efforts to support operating systems other than the 500 lb Redmond gorilla that dominates the desktop market. Linux and FreeBSD support is a great PR move for nVidia, and is one of the reasons I will ALWAYS choose nVidia over ATi, Matrox, etc.
This idea will fail. The future is the nanofax, information sharing is a fad. Its going to be all about object sharing. Or something. The Internet is a fad too... and Linux... and... Slashdot.
On a serious not, that universal platform for interpreting data and so forth is called "the brain". Once we can get data directly into it and sift through a variety of abstractions (i.e., languages), we'll get to the concept behind this article. The trick is getting the data into the wetwear.
Motorola needs more than Microsoft to help, they are the prime causes of GUI poisoning in North America.
I like how technology is embracing ADD now. How many subjects in test groups could avoid playing games during boring phone calls while on speaker or earphone mode?
As another comment said, this isn't the decision of IT. Most IT workers will want to stay with Microsoft, it is what they know, what they have certs in, and what they find easy. Most IT workers are not extremely clued in Open Source solutions... at least in my experience. It is upper management's job to make these decisions.
I know very well that IT cannot stand on high and pass down decisions. The best decisions can be impossible to implement, despite there being no compelling reason against implementation, simply because some executive doesn't like the idea. That is real life. However, when the executives trying to stop the hemoraging of money from the corporate coffers realize that there are substantial cost savings with another solution will not hesitate to do exactly what you describe. However, they have the authority and responsibility to make those decisions for the good of the organization, NOT the good of the workers unwilling or unable to learn new skills.
Normally, I'd agree. However, I work in a large corporate environment, and I see the gradual shift away from expensive (in terms of license fees) proprietary/commercial applications and operating systems. Larger organizations are embracing Open Source solutions right down the the desktop. They might be arguably expensive in terms of peoples' time at the outset, however that type of soft cost is easy to ignore next to a purchase order for another year of Microsoft or HP licenses, for example. Its fun watching upper managers grimace when they are confronted with another set of license fees... "didn't we already pay for this?!"... I've got some IT people seriously looking at SuSE OpenExchange, as an example. I think organizations are ready to look at change, it is not all about maintaining the status quo anymore.
People will learn... it is what we do, and I think it is time that the "people are resistant to chance" problem wasn't given so much credence. Its time to force people to chance, open their minds, and think outside the box. Change happens, and I see no reason to shield the change-phobic from that fact.
Slashdot Mirror
If IT people can't pick out a "haha only serious" comment and realize that it is only half true (yes, we expect swag, no it is not the only reason we go), then it is a good indication of the dilution of the industry. In other words, if you don't know better, how can you expect your management to? If you can't give them a good reason why you should go, then you shouldn't go. Simple as that.
Vendors have marketing departments, and marketing people know that a key to getting market share is getting attention from consumers. This can be done with flashy ads, give-aways, informal dialogs over lunches, and other ways of getting mindshare previous to marketshare. Ultimately, vendors (usually) have to compete based on features, i.e., merit. However, getting someone to look at your product in more depth or showing a customer that you think of them often involves giving them a tshirt, a mug, or some other treat, whether that is pre- or post-sale.
I assumed people still knew all this, but maybe the industry is in such a depression that it has been forgotten... or maybe it has always been different up here in Canada.
That is lame, placed right at the top of the related links. On one hand, that is pretty sneaky way to sucker people into looking at products, not as honest as a good ol' banner. On the other hand, it costs money to run the site, pay for bandwidth, etc.
I suppose we could support /. and click the everliving FSCK out of those links... I'm sure not buying any whateverthehell they want to advertise, I'm immune to that ad brainwashing... oh look, a nice pretty banner for a Netgear access point! I'm going to the computer store, bbl...
I expect good swag for any conference or seminar, whether or not it is a simple day seminar or something more elaborate. If there isn't the possibility of vendor treats, most IT monkeys don't go.
One of the things about windows that we forget is that its is perfectly fine until you try to do foolish things like "run applications" or "allows users to touch it". How is XBox stability? I would expect something like this special purpose robot should be along the same lines in terms of reliability.
All I want for Christmas is
Kernel 2 point 6
The obligatory nature/seasonal reference is just too damn easy. Why can't /.ers post in iambic pentameter?
What the hell is "may not work"? This is 2002, there is no excuse for such shoddy support in a release-quality Operating System. Maybe the x86 port of Darwin should be flagged as Alpha, and stuck with version numbers somewhat less than 6.x... maybe .00601!
<whisper>
Did you just figure that out??
Sure, they decided to use "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." instead of "We're smarter than you. Suck it." like originally planned, but the result has been the same. </whisper>
Anyways, I'm really trying hard not to get too excited about little AI warriors each making their own combat decisions on screen. I'm really trying hard not to think about this. I tell myself, repeatedly, that getting excited about artificial intelligence is normal.
I think I need to shower.
Scientist of not, maybe this guy shouldn't have reproduced.
Of course if a Microsoft format had been used we'd see streams of anti-Microsoft hate invoking antitrust etc etc. When it is Apple's format that they don't have the courtesy of releasing a *nix player for its all "yay for the underdog!"
Rumor has it that Verizon has a huge chunk of Telus (the dominant telco in western Canada) shares, something in the 40% range. If Verizon can complete their little shopping spree at some point and take over, maybe their evil ways will seep north of the border.
The current US government doesn't have the strongest track record in regards to privacy. Lets hope that they truly only care about national security and finding terrorists and prefer to protect privacy in all other cases... and that view is shared by the judicial branch.
Times like these make me wish there were more options for negative moderations like "-1 Lame" and "-2 ALERT! YOU ARE A FUCKTARD."
For the record, I think the next Linux distro to die, primarily intended for desktop or not, will be something like Lycoris or Caldera. Distributions like Mandrake and Red Hat provide ease of use and power in one package, providing a solution for all levels of users, while the "elite" distros requiring clue such as Gentoo (and maybe Debian and Slackware) will satisfy the tinkerers, superority complex, "make world" and other types of Linux users. A lot of choice is a good thing, but the key is identifying redundancy and figuring out which redundant distro is inferior. I think that will help pick off the next to go under.
I've seen SPEWS clumsiness in action. That isn't to say the ISPs involved could do their side of fighting SPAM a bit better. Nobody is perfect, my opinion based on observation of fact is that SPEWS is less perfect than I'm willing to tolerate as a solution for fighting spam.
SPAM sucks, we can all agree. Truly SPAM tolerant ISPs need to be educated, we can all agree to that too. I don't think SPEWS is particularly good at doing that effectively or respectfully.
And probably lots of legit mail too, unless you have a tiny mail server. SPEWS is an awful choice for large commercial services, they subscribe to the "throw the baby our with the bathwater" theory. They are ever more clumsy and heavyhanded than ORBS was.
ln -s apt-get windows-update
Who did the Russians steal it from, anyways?
... for using my markup!
The cease and desist letter is on its way, chump, pray that your lawyer is as slimey and petty as mine!
I might as well say something on topic that may be of interest. I use Evolution as my primary email application at home, and love it. It has features that has allowed me to kiss Outlook goodbye, and the PDA conduits to sync up the calendar etc with my Palm are fantastic. I wish there was better GnomeCard importation/integration support (I'm having a hell of a time getting Evo 1.08 to import GnomeCard entries synced from my Palm correctly), I've yet to try 1.2 so maybe this issue is resolved. Anyone try this out?
Until one of two things happens (my office migrates to Exchange 2000 or Ximian releases older Exchange server support) I won't be able to use Evolution in the corporate environment, but I intend to as soon as it is feasible.
And now, a treat for those of you with mod points to get rid of...
Guide to Moderators:
1. Sarcastic DMCA references are not funny enought o earn modding up on their own, but are still above Domo-Kun/Kitten references in the 'net cliche scale
2. Use of "pray" and "lawyer" in the same sentence is worth "+1 Isn't it ironic?"
3. Meta-reference to bad Alanis song in Guide to Moderators is worth "-1 Bad taste in music"
4. Lack of beowulf cluster, Linux, or anti-Microsoft comments are worth "-1 off meta-topic"
5. Including of "beowulf cluster, Linux, or anti-Microsoft" comments in Guide are worth "+1 Insightful" for cutting commentary on sociology of Slashdot
6. Guide itself is worth "-1 Offtopic" for the obvious reasons
Thank you for choosing EvilAlien.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but many of today's Internet users have somehow come upon the idea that they have a right to do whatever they want. Your rights end at the cable modem, past that it is the ISP's network, resources, and rules that govern the priveledge of connecting to the Internet. Just because you pay a piddling amount of money every month does not let you dictate terms of service. Despite common misperception, the customer is not always right.
Actually, this isn't all that expensive. Content filtering a real option that ISPs may take increasingly in the future. Technology to do this will come out of the same flow and signature analysis IDS relies on. Port schmort, its all about the payload.
Hah, yes, yes I did. Thanks for noticing.
I suppose the question coming out of this release is just how do the stability and/or quality of these drivers compare to Linux and Microsoft drivers? I hate to even bring it down to this, but has anyone done benchmarks comparing the three? I realize that a game is likely to be the most common test and FreeBSD tests would have to run through Linux emulation, but is an interesting exercise just the same.
Just a hint for the future, you miss out on those highly covetted "Troll" and "Flamebait" moderations if you actually spell Microsoft correctly. If you want to be really elite and properly anti-Microsoft, you should incorporate a $, or use "shaft" or "sloth" instead of -soft.
Without those <sarcasm>insightful plays on the word 'Microsoft'</sarcasm> one typically only manages to produce an asinine off-topic comment.
Just some hints for the future, your mileage may vary, all standard disclaimers apply.
Thank you for not choosing Microsoft... meanwhile, back on topic:
This is great news for the FreeBSD community. One of the complaints against the OS and long sought-after milestones has been graphics drivers for desktop applications, design work, and even gaming. FreeBSD, like most other OSes, isn't just for servers, and this helps make it better for the desktop.
nVidia always impresses me with their efforts to support operating systems other than the 500 lb Redmond gorilla that dominates the desktop market. Linux and FreeBSD support is a great PR move for nVidia, and is one of the reasons I will ALWAYS choose nVidia over ATi, Matrox, etc.
This idea will fail. The future is the nanofax, information sharing is a fad. Its going to be all about object sharing. Or something. The Internet is a fad too... and Linux... and... Slashdot.
On a serious not, that universal platform for interpreting data and so forth is called "the brain". Once we can get data directly into it and sift through a variety of abstractions (i.e., languages), we'll get to the concept behind this article. The trick is getting the data into the wetwear.
I like how technology is embracing ADD now. How many subjects in test groups could avoid playing games during boring phone calls while on speaker or earphone mode?
I know very well that IT cannot stand on high and pass down decisions. The best decisions can be impossible to implement, despite there being no compelling reason against implementation, simply because some executive doesn't like the idea. That is real life. However, when the executives trying to stop the hemoraging of money from the corporate coffers realize that there are substantial cost savings with another solution will not hesitate to do exactly what you describe. However, they have the authority and responsibility to make those decisions for the good of the organization, NOT the good of the workers unwilling or unable to learn new skills.
People will learn... it is what we do, and I think it is time that the "people are resistant to chance" problem wasn't given so much credence. Its time to force people to chance, open their minds, and think outside the box. Change happens, and I see no reason to shield the change-phobic from that fact.