They are only shooting themselves in the foot if they fire you because not only can you likely sue them...
This is just stupid. This is a choice. The employer should have the right (and most courts would rule this way) to terminate employment for willful decisions made by employees. Exceptions to this include the family medical leave act and other Pro-Family measures to prevent descrimination for participation in non-job related activities. HOWEVER, choosing not to accept a promotion is most definately job related and the company is well within its rights to dismiss a person for this reason.
As another poster so rightly pointed out, refusal of a promotion can be both considered to an indication of faltering job committment as well as a perceived insult to other management. In both cases the company may be best advised to dismiss the individual.
Businesses (contrary to popular young person belief [full disclosure: I myself am a young person not suffering from this particular mental disease]) are about making money and prospering. If they're not, they should go out of business. This means the good of the whole outweighs the good of the one (no matter who he is...even if he's the CEO [which btw, happens all the time]).
While I'll agree that it is probably a poor business practice, it is NOT and SHOULD NOT be illegal or grounds for litigation.
Also, if you work in an at-will employment state (like me), no grounds are required for dismissal and the burdon of proof weighs heavily on those claiming some protected status under the law. Pretty much better be pregnant or covered by the ADA (which seems to be almost anyone nowadays).
Anyway, I just hate it when the solution to every problem is litigation. Move on. If they fire you, you probably don't want your job back. If rehire is not your goal, your suit is vengeful and should be considered frivolous as you are not entitled to the job and are compensated regularly for your work.
While I'm not a big fan of government intervention, regulation of 'embrace and extend' practices on the procedural level (i.e. you can't do it to a `sanctioned' standard EVER, whether or not it constitutes an anti-trust violation or not) wouldn't be so bad as long as the gov't wasn't involved in setting the standard.
Basically preventing Microsoft from calling `MS Kerberos' Kerberos. There would need to be some indication that it was different. We can descend into largely useless debates about whether or not Microsoft's implementation is within the scope of the standard or not (as that arguement CAN be made), but I don't think that it moves the discussion forward. The Kerberos issue may not be the best example, but it comes readily to most trying to have this discussion.
You do run into problems with enforcement in cases like the SQL standard. Nearly every RDBMS or ORDBMS expands on the SQL standard or fails to fully implement it. As it is common practice in that application industry, it is taken for granted that special care be needed to make code portable. HTML is another issue in much the same case as SQL, though I don't seem myself complaining about mandating that browsers support w3 standards.
I don't mean teachers challenging kids to crack school computers--I mean teachers being just plain stupid.
In this nation we continually lament the low pay of teachers. This, to me, is an insult to my intelligence.
(Full Disclosure: I live in a college town and our local university is "known" for it's ed school)
Teachers, in general, are stupid. At least 50% of my H.S. teachers (some with Masters Degrees) didn't know their subject. In fact, I had math teachers teach us WRONG math that was corrected by student investigation...not once, not twice, but weekly. I had teachers make baseless claims of fact about historical events and school policy. Many teachers were ready to lower their gauntlet of authority in violation of law, policy, and decency. Long time vetrans (30+ yrs) were given near total discretion over their own behavior. When this behavior was reported it was swept under the rug....why you ask? The WEA/NEA--The Teacher's Union. That's right. For those of you still living under a rock, the Unions determine local school policy. Don't believe me? You should see their PAC funding and lobbying budgets. Teachers can't be fired.
Case in point: A local teacher was removed from a Junior High School science position because he was repeatedly accused of sexually harrassing the young ladies in his class. The solution? Make him a H.S. girls P.E. teacher (where he is allowed extensive discretion when mandating a class dress code).
This is pretty ranty, and anecdotal, so you can write it off as blathering. You can even pick it apart. The truth value, however, is not determined by the eloquence of the bearer of that truth. (The efficacy of the communication most certainly is...but that goes without saying).
Teachers like this convince me ever more that Home Schooling is a much better educational solution than public schools. Oh...I'll still pay for everybody else's kids to go to those sad institutions of LCD learning, but I won't be caught dead putting my kids through that needless torture.
Oh...and teachers? I'll support higher wages when you decide that earning them, instead of picketing for them, is the way to get them.
It would appear that all of the permissions listed
are of a technical nature, and are indicitive of the document's ability to be utilized/modified by the ebook system.
The system won't allow copying to the clipboard.
The system won't enable the print function.
The system won't allow this PARTICULAR electronic set of bits be lent or given to someone else
Maybe somebody should RTFM next time they want to interpret the output of a program.
Possibly you are not familiar with how the electoral college actually works.
That is why we have a Senate, good for small states, and House of Representatives, good for large states. The electoral system gives political power to small states, who would otherwise be ignored in a system based on a direct popular vote.
WRONG. The electoral college largely favors the big states. Little states have little or no influence in the elections. Ever wondered why nobody campaigns in Alaska? or Montana? or Hawaii? And they spend all their time in California, Florida, New York, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc? Well, it's because they have large populations. It takes only 11 states to win the election, and because winner takes all in all those states, it is possible to actuall lose the popular vote by more than 20% points, and still win the election. That has never happened, but the system would allow it.
Just gotta get > 50% of 11 states and you're in.
That still doesn't take into account the fact that electors are not obligated to actually vote for the candidate they're sent to vote for. Not that they'd send people that wouldn't make the right decision...but it's nonetheless possible.
Anyway...just thought I'd clarify that for you since the electoral college was actually (as is mentioned in an earlier post by someone else) a means of making sure there weren't 13+ candidates with relatively similar amounts of the vote. Why do you think so many elections were decided in the House of Reps in the beginning?
Well, although I may be of base, but I figure, if I'm paying for hosting...with, say, metered bandwidth, I don't necessarily want all of the traffic that this story will generate at my site. In fact, I may just throw it up on Geocities to submit to slashdot, while mirroring the same content on my personal site just to avoid the Slashdot Effect. I figure it's a pretty smart way to do it.
-fp
The Qube has two major purposes in the locations we deployed them--NAT/Firewall and bringing e-mail admin onto the LAN.
The current Qube has severe problems performing increadibly standard procedures in both functions:
The kernel used (as you stated) is old and doesn't support some of the newer redirection and advanced firewall capabilities. In a couple of cases, new kernels have been built from scratch (bye bye warranty).
The PERL implementation (as I described before) choked on the ETRN script that 'ships' with sendmail. I had to hack a bunch of the headerish files in the PERL setup (I'm not a PERL guy, so forgive my terminology) and generate some with the tool (name escapes me) that takes.h files and makes them into something usable by PERL.
I should also mention that the above post proves my newest theory about slashdot: I can no longer post without being moderated up.
Ok, ok...so the title might be a bit trollish/flamebait...
<disclaimer>I used to work for a Cobalt Authorized Reseller, and I didn't like their gear </disclaimer>
If you've ever tried to use a cobalt machine to anything besides what it is designed for, you're in for a treat. PERL is usually broken (have to manually fix files that are standard in most other PERL implementations). There are a number of bugs in their web interface, and their implementations of most services are non-standard or just funky enough to make it pretty annoying.
The cobalt mentality is also pretty closed in general and support is lacking in response time.
These boxes aren't built for hackers, their built to be canned solutions for Linux neophytes and web-farm admins that don't want to get into the nitty-gritty. Switching to solaris would be a net change of 0 in my book, as most people using cobalt equipment don't care anyway. If you don't want a toaster-like solution, don't buy Cobalt Networks gear...it's underpowered and overpriced.
This comment is wild and rambling. I hope someone else says something similar, but more coherantly. I apologize.
The trouble with this argument is that it hasn't shown itself to be true over the last 20 years of computing and it is in fact making great strides in the OPPOSITE direction.
I'm beginning to empathize with RMS (that scares me...really). I understand his frustration. People just don't pay attention. HP is contributing significant resources to the SAMBA project which is, in my opinion, one of the most significant pieces of open source software available. IBM has devoted manpower and hardware resources to various linux porting efforts (specifically RS/6000). Apache, though not predominantly on Linux, still runs most of the web. Sendmail routes enomous amounts of mail. BIND works...what else can I say? XFree86 is in heavy use among commercial entities. SGI, SUN, IBM, HP are all involved in OSS. Are there bigger names in computing? Anyone?
Open Source basically isn't catching on in the Wintel world. I'm sorry, I missed the part where Microsoft won. Last time I checked, the battle was raging and OSS is still on the assault.
No, open source software is in use every day by companies the world over. They may not know it, but they use it, they fund it, and they LIKE it.
The beauty of open source software is that it cannot die. While the current momentum of the ideological craze and the love affair with popular computing may taper off, the software will never die. Grow old, atrophy, stagnate, whatever--it won't die. It'll be there for me to pick up in 10, 20, 30 years and start working again, if for nothing other than the joy of it.
Free Software and Open Source Software has been around since before I was born. In fact, the idea that you DON'T get the source code is newer than completely closed source projects. Sure there were some NDAs and whatnot before (which I agree hamper progress) but the source was still there.
This kind of prediction is frivolous and basically a higher form of trolling--and the poster and Slashdot bit. We've heard about the coming death of USENET, IRC, UNIX(tm) and even the Internet--none of which have died. In fact, most have seen a massive resurgence in recent years.
Open Source will die when all of the hardware that runs Open Source software is gone. I'm not forseeing that soon.
I think, Mr. Metcalfe, you'd find your time better spent solving technical problems. Leave the punditry to persons more deserving of the ridicule that goes with that job.
While I tend to agree with you, I don't see how it has any bearing on my comment. Not only do I NOT slam the GPL (it is one of the licenses I use, I use the MPL and the BSD license as well from time to time). I merely sought to use humor to poke fun at the arrogance of RMS. While agreeing with some (not all) of his principles, I still find him to be arrogant and condescending (as much of acedemia is).
Possibly the greatest sign of maturity is the ability to laugh at onesself without shame or feeling humiliated.
Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness. To lead the way, the FSF hereby grants this forgiveness for all code that is copyright FSF.
Oh what a wicked generation of thieves and harlots. Repent now, and be saved. Accept the One True Way(tm).
Blessed are they who walk among the gnomes, for they will be Free(tm).
Blessed are those change their licenses, for they will be forgiven.
Blessed are those who assign copyright to the FSF, for they will inherit the Kingdom of GNU(tm).
If you truly be followers of RMS, you must daily take up your soapbox and follow him.
I am posting this in a good faith effort to clarify my position on this issue, and the issue of posting in a public forum in general.
This morning I received an e-mail from Jamie (see, proper spelling this time) summarizing his thoughts on the issue and linking back to his comments on this article. I do appreciate this response and I also appreciate that he is likely a very busy person.
Why I posted publicly:
Well, mainly because I wanted to get an answer. I went about things the right way. I e-mailed someone that could get me the answer I needed. I got some response, but no answer. I waited. And waited.
So, I posted publicly. It tends to be a motivator. Every day on slashdot I read about people waxing philosophical about all of the injustices of the technological world--with privacy concerns at the top of the list.
I then noticed that DoubleClick (one of the largest offenders according to many articles) served ads were showing up on slashdot. Do I know why? Yup. Did I in fact suggest what I thought was happening when I wrote Jamie initially? Yup. Was I right? Yup. Do I yet have an answer to my question? Nope.
The reason these adds are showing up on Slashdot is because a number of people use outsource banner add management to DoubleClick. These people then want to run ads on Slashdot, so Slashdot must pull the ads from DoubleClick. Business is Business.
My question was, and still is, can we expect these adds to perform the tracking they are known to do. Now, you say, what am I afraid of? What personal info is there on slashdot? None, really. I'm not worried that they'll get my nick and my e-mail address. It's all publicly available via my user info page anyway.
The issue for me is the princple. As much as people would like to deny this, publications, online or otherwise, project an image. This image is driven by the editorial staff. This image garners a reputation (good or bad) for the publicatoin. When a marketing decision flies in the face of obvious editorial position, I believe it becomes the obligation of the publication to comment on the activity. I'm glad that they are separate, and I applaud slashdot for the community that it has built. I do believe that as a journalistic organization it still has much maturing to do.
These are of course, my opinions. And I have no reasonable expectation that the Slashdot editors abide by them.
Those are my thoughts. I'll check into the behaivor of the DoubleClick adds myself and I may post the results. I may not. At this point, I have enough of an answer. Privacy is not a priority for Slashdot.
I apologize for my spelling. Many of the main page articles suffer the spelling problems once in a while:-).
Again, as I've posted now i think 3 times (both in this SID and one other) that I don't take it personally, I'm just looking for an answer. Sure I figure he's busy. I'm busy. Do I think I fell to the bottom of the priority list? Sure. I bet I did. Does that offend me? Not really, but it in no way changes my need/desire for an answer.
I admire your readiness to defend him, but no one is being attacked (save possibly myself). I'm just looking for answers to questions. Ya'll are about the only people I know of to ask.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I made it seem like I' m pissed. I realize that my last comment may suggest that, but I believe that I can lose my respect for the decisions made by Andover (to carry double-click ads in particular...which even Mr. Bates admits is lamentable) without calling it complete crap.
Life's about trade-offs and so the organization trades my respect to make money. That's ok, to each their own. It only becomes a problem when that balance is so upset that there are no more customers.
I'm flattered that you find my input on the issue worth your effort.
While I DO appreciate the response, It still doesn't answer my basic question which was likely unclear in my initial post(s).
Can we expect these DoubleClick Ads to behave similarly to the ads and DoubleClick systems described in any of these stories?
While the answer may be a resounding maybe, I want to clarify again that my goal is not to "expose" this or anything like that. I really did try to go about it the right way (or I thought so anyway) by emailing the member of the Slashdot Team that appears to be the most concerned about these type of issues. I got some response, but never an answer. I'm a full disclosure kind of guy, and I believe wild speculation is a waste of my time. Notice that I never accused anyone of anything underhanded, I just asked a question. Sometimes, as we've all read, posting in a public forum is the only way to get an answer.
Slashdot has run numerous stories about the questionable behaivior of DoubleClick and its affiliate sites. In fact, this article aludes to it.
However, slashdot has been serving DoubleClick ads with increasing frequency of late. NOW, I am NOT suggesting that Slashdot is corrupt or evil. I'm just curious to know whether or not we can expect these adds to behave similarly to the DoubleClick ads that have been described in previous stories.
If so, doesn't that fall into the "web bug" catagory. Why hide it in a 1x 1 GIF when it's right there in a DoubleClick ad?
Anyway, I'm just curious. I posted this on the root level of the story and have already been modded down to -1. So moderators, do your worst. I'm just looking for an answer, not a flame war.
So I'm a troll? Why? Because I'm curious about this?
Jaime and I exchanged like 4 e-mails on the subject, and then, all of a sudden, he wouldn't get back to me. I realize that people are busy, but it seems odd when they can respond as quickly as he initially did, and then just stop all at once.
My e-mail address is valid, so if anybody wants to shed some light on this, it'd be great.
I sent e-mail to Jaime almost 2 weeks ago asking about the use of doubleclick served adds (from doubleclick servers) on Slashdot. He promised to get back to me. He never did.
Would anyone on the Slashdot Team like to comment on whether or not these adds perform functions similar to DoubleClick ads on other sites? I've seen posts about this in some discussions, but this seems like the good place to post it.
I have noticed a STEADY increase in the number of DoubleClick served adds since I initally contacted Jaime. All the SuSE ads, the Genuity add, and now some IBM (and I'm sure others) ads are all DoubleClick served. This is true on other Andover sites like freshmeat as well. Many adds are served from Slashdot's addserver, but often DoubleClick ads load.
I can provide links to any and all ads that I've seen if I need to, but I think that it would be overkill.
The small, independant retailer I work for decided to stock some Linux Distros once. We know have an official "Out of Date Linux Distros" shelf. It has, Redhat 6.1, YellowDog Linux Champion Server 1.1, and Mandrake 7.0 on it right now.
I wonder if the issue isn't simply proprietary extensions to W3C standards (as netscape has done) but the failure to support key W3C standards which Microsoft committed to supporting and helped to develop (Namely, CSS). The fact that Microsoft would forgo a standard to re-implement similar functionality by using a proprietary extension is what appals me. Fine, they wanna add screwy EXTRA stuff...fine...I think we'd be hard pressed to say the shouldn't expand on the standards...but at least adhere to a baseline of standards based functionality as the core of the program.
Granted, even netscape hasn't seen fit to do CSS right. But lets at least attack the right issue.
He only need mess up once. Once caught, he could be easily prosecuted. At that point, if convicted, he could be further sanctioned with regard to his actual abilities to gain access to the resources necessary to continue his harassment.
I don't know about the rest of the towns you live in, but Search Warrents are easy to get. I think I've posted this before (wiretapping are harder to get). It takes approximately 15 minutes from the unwarrented knock at the door to the knock w/ warrant in hand in our town (small, nw washington...less than 100k ppl).
The process works this way:
Officer: Sir, I'd like to come in your house. Your neighbor's brother's sister's cousin said you might have a gun, and based on this we would like to search your home.
Homeowner: What? Umm...What is this about?
Officer: Sir, I think you know what I'm speaking about.
Homeowner: Well, I think you're going to need to get a warrant before you come making demands like that.
Officer: Ok, be right back. (Walks back to car, picks up radio) Hey dispatch, I need a warrant...wake up that judge. (waits for judge to be patched through, busts out his warrant form, fills it out, lists "asked me to show a warrant, I think he did it" as his probable cause, raises his right hand, swears an oath, gets approval, and signs the judge's name to the warrant, returns to door) Sir, I now have a warrant, please step aside.
Homeowner: WTF? (Watches his house get ransacked).
The following story was related to me (along with a number of others) by our County Prosecutor at a breakfast I attended. He was attempting to reassure us that Law Enforcement had very few practical limitations on it's exercise of power...therefore we could sleep easy at night knowing that.
Slashdot Mirror
They are only shooting themselves in the foot if they fire you because not only can you likely sue them...
This is just stupid. This is a choice. The employer should have the right (and most courts would rule this way) to terminate employment for willful decisions made by employees. Exceptions to this include the family medical leave act and other Pro-Family measures to prevent descrimination for participation in non-job related activities. HOWEVER, choosing not to accept a promotion is most definately job related and the company is well within its rights to dismiss a person for this reason.
As another poster so rightly pointed out, refusal of a promotion can be both considered to an indication of faltering job committment as well as a perceived insult to other management. In both cases the company may be best advised to dismiss the individual.
Businesses (contrary to popular young person belief [full disclosure: I myself am a young person not suffering from this particular mental disease]) are about making money and prospering. If they're not, they should go out of business. This means the good of the whole outweighs the good of the one (no matter who he is...even if he's the CEO [which btw, happens all the time]).
While I'll agree that it is probably a poor business practice, it is NOT and SHOULD NOT be illegal or grounds for litigation.
Also, if you work in an at-will employment state (like me), no grounds are required for dismissal and the burdon of proof weighs heavily on those claiming some protected status under the law. Pretty much better be pregnant or covered by the ADA (which seems to be almost anyone nowadays).
Anyway, I just hate it when the solution to every problem is litigation. Move on. If they fire you, you probably don't want your job back. If rehire is not your goal, your suit is vengeful and should be considered frivolous as you are not entitled to the job and are compensated regularly for your work.
-fp
Basically preventing Microsoft from calling `MS Kerberos' Kerberos. There would need to be some indication that it was different. We can descend into largely useless debates about whether or not Microsoft's implementation is within the scope of the standard or not (as that arguement CAN be made), but I don't think that it moves the discussion forward. The Kerberos issue may not be the best example, but it comes readily to most trying to have this discussion.
You do run into problems with enforcement in cases like the SQL standard. Nearly every RDBMS or ORDBMS expands on the SQL standard or fails to fully implement it. As it is common practice in that application industry, it is taken for granted that special care be needed to make code portable. HTML is another issue in much the same case as SQL, though I don't seem myself complaining about mandating that browsers support w3 standards.
-fp
I don't mean teachers challenging kids to crack school computers--I mean teachers being just plain stupid.
In this nation we continually lament the low pay of teachers. This, to me, is an insult to my intelligence.
(Full Disclosure: I live in a college town and our local university is "known" for it's ed school)
Teachers, in general, are stupid. At least 50% of my H.S. teachers (some with Masters Degrees) didn't know their subject. In fact, I had math teachers teach us WRONG math that was corrected by student investigation...not once, not twice, but weekly. I had teachers make baseless claims of fact about historical events and school policy. Many teachers were ready to lower their gauntlet of authority in violation of law, policy, and decency. Long time vetrans (30+ yrs) were given near total discretion over their own behavior. When this behavior was reported it was swept under the rug....why you ask? The WEA/NEA--The Teacher's Union. That's right. For those of you still living under a rock, the Unions determine local school policy. Don't believe me? You should see their PAC funding and lobbying budgets. Teachers can't be fired.
Case in point: A local teacher was removed from a Junior High School science position because he was repeatedly accused of sexually harrassing the young ladies in his class. The solution? Make him a H.S. girls P.E. teacher (where he is allowed extensive discretion when mandating a class dress code).
This is pretty ranty, and anecdotal, so you can write it off as blathering. You can even pick it apart. The truth value, however, is not determined by the eloquence of the bearer of that truth. (The efficacy of the communication most certainly is...but that goes without saying).
Teachers like this convince me ever more that Home Schooling is a much better educational solution than public schools. Oh...I'll still pay for everybody else's kids to go to those sad institutions of LCD learning, but I won't be caught dead putting my kids through that needless torture.
Oh...and teachers? I'll support higher wages when you decide that earning them, instead of picketing for them, is the way to get them.
-fp
are of a technical nature, and are indicitive of the document's ability to be utilized/modified by the ebook system.
The system won't allow copying to the clipboard.
The system won't enable the print function.
The system won't allow this PARTICULAR electronic set of bits be lent or given to someone else
Maybe somebody should RTFM next time they want to interpret the output of a program.
-fp
Hmm...
Possibly you are not familiar with how the electoral college actually works.
That is why we have a Senate, good for small states, and House of Representatives, good for large states. The electoral system gives political power to small states, who would otherwise be ignored in a system based on a direct popular vote.
WRONG. The electoral college largely favors the big states. Little states have little or no influence in the elections. Ever wondered why nobody campaigns in Alaska? or Montana? or Hawaii? And they spend all their time in California, Florida, New York, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc? Well, it's because they have large populations. It takes only 11 states to win the election, and because winner takes all in all those states, it is possible to actuall lose the popular vote by more than 20% points, and still win the election. That has never happened, but the system would allow it.
Just gotta get > 50% of 11 states and you're in.
That still doesn't take into account the fact that electors are not obligated to actually vote for the candidate they're sent to vote for. Not that they'd send people that wouldn't make the right decision...but it's nonetheless possible.
Anyway...just thought I'd clarify that for you since the electoral college was actually (as is mentioned in an earlier post by someone else) a means of making sure there weren't 13+ candidates with relatively similar amounts of the vote. Why do you think so many elections were decided in the House of Reps in the beginning?
-fp
Well, although I may be of base, but I figure, if I'm paying for hosting...with, say, metered bandwidth, I don't necessarily want all of the traffic that this story will generate at my site. In fact, I may just throw it up on Geocities to submit to slashdot, while mirroring the same content on my personal site just to avoid the Slashdot Effect. I figure it's a pretty smart way to do it. -fp
Exactly,
.h files and makes them into something usable by PERL.
The Qube has two major purposes in the locations we deployed them--NAT/Firewall and bringing e-mail admin onto the LAN.
The current Qube has severe problems performing increadibly standard procedures in both functions:
The kernel used (as you stated) is old and doesn't support some of the newer redirection and advanced firewall capabilities. In a couple of cases, new kernels have been built from scratch (bye bye warranty).
The PERL implementation (as I described before) choked on the ETRN script that 'ships' with sendmail. I had to hack a bunch of the headerish files in the PERL setup (I'm not a PERL guy, so forgive my terminology) and generate some with the tool (name escapes me) that takes
I should also mention that the above post proves my newest theory about slashdot: I can no longer post without being moderated up.
-fp
That is only true for the machines you mentioned. Other current cobalt products running on MIPS include:
All Qube Models
All Nasraq Models
All CacheRaq Models
I imagine, however, they'll be moving future versions of these products to IA32 architecture soon enough.
-fp
Ok, ok...so the title might be a bit trollish/flamebait...
<disclaimer>I used to work for a Cobalt Authorized Reseller, and I didn't like their gear </disclaimer>
If you've ever tried to use a cobalt machine to anything besides what it is designed for, you're in for a treat. PERL is usually broken (have to manually fix files that are standard in most other PERL implementations). There are a number of bugs in their web interface, and their implementations of most services are non-standard or just funky enough to make it pretty annoying.
The cobalt mentality is also pretty closed in general and support is lacking in response time.
These boxes aren't built for hackers, their built to be canned solutions for Linux neophytes and web-farm admins that don't want to get into the nitty-gritty. Switching to solaris would be a net change of 0 in my book, as most people using cobalt equipment don't care anyway. If you don't want a toaster-like solution, don't buy Cobalt Networks gear...it's underpowered and overpriced.
This comment is wild and rambling. I hope someone else says something similar, but more coherantly. I apologize.
-fp
That's why I use netscape 1.12. They hadn't even thought up all of these stupid ideas back then. And it's really small too.
-fp
The trouble with this argument is that it hasn't shown itself to be true over the last 20 years of computing and it is in fact making great strides in the OPPOSITE direction.
I'm beginning to empathize with RMS (that scares me...really). I understand his frustration. People just don't pay attention. HP is contributing significant resources to the SAMBA project which is, in my opinion, one of the most significant pieces of open source software available. IBM has devoted manpower and hardware resources to various linux porting efforts (specifically RS/6000). Apache, though not predominantly on Linux, still runs most of the web. Sendmail routes enomous amounts of mail. BIND works...what else can I say? XFree86 is in heavy use among commercial entities. SGI, SUN, IBM, HP are all involved in OSS. Are there bigger names in computing? Anyone?
Open Source basically isn't catching on in the Wintel world. I'm sorry, I missed the part where Microsoft won. Last time I checked, the battle was raging and OSS is still on the assault.
No, open source software is in use every day by companies the world over. They may not know it, but they use it, they fund it, and they LIKE it.
-fp
The beauty of open source software is that it cannot die. While the current momentum of the ideological craze and the love affair with popular computing may taper off, the software will never die. Grow old, atrophy, stagnate, whatever--it won't die. It'll be there for me to pick up in 10, 20, 30 years and start working again, if for nothing other than the joy of it.
Free Software and Open Source Software has been around since before I was born. In fact, the idea that you DON'T get the source code is newer than completely closed source projects. Sure there were some NDAs and whatnot before (which I agree hamper progress) but the source was still there.
This kind of prediction is frivolous and basically a higher form of trolling--and the poster and Slashdot bit. We've heard about the coming death of USENET, IRC, UNIX(tm) and even the Internet--none of which have died. In fact, most have seen a massive resurgence in recent years.
Open Source will die when all of the hardware that runs Open Source software is gone. I'm not forseeing that soon.
I think, Mr. Metcalfe, you'd find your time better spent solving technical problems. Leave the punditry to persons more deserving of the ridicule that goes with that job.
-fp
While I tend to agree with you, I don't see how it has any bearing on my comment. Not only do I NOT slam the GPL (it is one of the licenses I use, I use the MPL and the BSD license as well from time to time). I merely sought to use humor to poke fun at the arrogance of RMS. While agreeing with some (not all) of his principles, I still find him to be arrogant and condescending (as much of acedemia is).
Possibly the greatest sign of maturity is the ability to laugh at onesself without shame or feeling humiliated.
In Short: Lighten Up!
-c
Oh what a wicked generation of thieves and harlots. Repent now, and be saved. Accept the One True Way(tm).
Blessed are they who walk among the gnomes, for they will be Free(tm).
Blessed are those change their licenses, for they will be forgiven.
Blessed are those who assign copyright to the FSF, for they will inherit the Kingdom of GNU(tm).
If you truly be followers of RMS, you must daily take up your soapbox and follow him.
--1 Perenthians 2:14-20
(this is clearly a troll...i couldn't resist)
DAMN YOU MODERATORS!!!
I posted this anonymously cause I figured it was too funky to post under my nick.
DAMN YOU ALL!!! WASTED KARMA!
-fp
Ok,
I am posting this in a good faith effort to clarify my position on this issue, and the issue of posting in a public forum in general.
This morning I received an e-mail from Jamie (see, proper spelling this time) summarizing his thoughts on the issue and linking back to his comments on this article. I do appreciate this response and I also appreciate that he is likely a very busy person.
Why I posted publicly:
Well, mainly because I wanted to get an answer. I went about things the right way. I e-mailed someone that could get me the answer I needed. I got some response, but no answer. I waited. And waited.
So, I posted publicly. It tends to be a motivator. Every day on slashdot I read about people waxing philosophical about all of the injustices of the technological world--with privacy concerns at the top of the list.
I then noticed that DoubleClick (one of the largest offenders according to many articles) served ads were showing up on slashdot. Do I know why? Yup. Did I in fact suggest what I thought was happening when I wrote Jamie initially? Yup. Was I right? Yup. Do I yet have an answer to my question? Nope.
The reason these adds are showing up on Slashdot is because a number of people use outsource banner add management to DoubleClick. These people then want to run ads on Slashdot, so Slashdot must pull the ads from DoubleClick. Business is Business.
My question was, and still is, can we expect these adds to perform the tracking they are known to do. Now, you say, what am I afraid of? What personal info is there on slashdot? None, really. I'm not worried that they'll get my nick and my e-mail address. It's all publicly available via my user info page anyway.
The issue for me is the princple. As much as people would like to deny this, publications, online or otherwise, project an image. This image is driven by the editorial staff. This image garners a reputation (good or bad) for the publicatoin. When a marketing decision flies in the face of obvious editorial position, I believe it becomes the obligation of the publication to comment on the activity. I'm glad that they are separate, and I applaud slashdot for the community that it has built. I do believe that as a journalistic organization it still has much maturing to do.
These are of course, my opinions. And I have no reasonable expectation that the Slashdot editors abide by them.
Those are my thoughts. I'll check into the behaivor of the DoubleClick adds myself and I may post the results. I may not. At this point, I have enough of an answer. Privacy is not a priority for Slashdot.
Thanks,
fp
I apologize for my spelling. Many of the main page articles suffer the spelling problems once in a while :-).
Again, as I've posted now i think 3 times (both in this SID and one other) that I don't take it personally, I'm just looking for an answer. Sure I figure he's busy. I'm busy. Do I think I fell to the bottom of the priority list? Sure. I bet I did. Does that offend me? Not really, but it in no way changes my need/desire for an answer.
I admire your readiness to defend him, but no one is being attacked (save possibly myself). I'm just looking for answers to questions. Ya'll are about the only people I know of to ask.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I made it seem like I' m pissed. I realize that my last comment may suggest that, but I believe that I can lose my respect for the decisions made by Andover (to carry double-click ads in particular...which even Mr. Bates admits is lamentable) without calling it complete crap.
Life's about trade-offs and so the organization trades my respect to make money. That's ok, to each their own. It only becomes a problem when that balance is so upset that there are no more customers.
I'm flattered that you find my input on the issue worth your effort.
Again, sorry for mangling the name.
-fp
The only reply I could find was here.
While I DO appreciate the response, It still doesn't answer my basic question which was likely unclear in my initial post(s).
Can we expect these DoubleClick Ads to behave similarly to the ads and DoubleClick systems described in any of these stories?
While the answer may be a resounding maybe, I want to clarify again that my goal is not to "expose" this or anything like that. I really did try to go about it the right way (or I thought so anyway) by emailing the member of the Slashdot Team that appears to be the most concerned about these type of issues. I got some response, but never an answer. I'm a full disclosure kind of guy, and I believe wild speculation is a waste of my time. Notice that I never accused anyone of anything underhanded, I just asked a question. Sometimes, as we've all read, posting in a public forum is the only way to get an answer.
Thanks
-fp
Slashdot has run numerous stories about the questionable behaivior of DoubleClick and its affiliate sites. In fact, this article aludes to it.
However, slashdot has been serving DoubleClick ads with increasing frequency of late. NOW, I am NOT suggesting that Slashdot is corrupt or evil. I'm just curious to know whether or not we can expect these adds to behave similarly to the DoubleClick ads that have been described in previous stories.
If so, doesn't that fall into the "web bug" catagory. Why hide it in a 1x 1 GIF when it's right there in a DoubleClick ad?
Anyway, I'm just curious. I posted this on the root level of the story and have already been modded down to -1. So moderators, do your worst. I'm just looking for an answer, not a flame war.
-fp
So I'm a troll? Why? Because I'm curious about this?
Jaime and I exchanged like 4 e-mails on the subject, and then, all of a sudden, he wouldn't get back to me. I realize that people are busy, but it seems odd when they can respond as quickly as he initially did, and then just stop all at once.
My e-mail address is valid, so if anybody wants to shed some light on this, it'd be great.
My respect for slashdot diminishes daily.
-fp
Ok,
I sent e-mail to Jaime almost 2 weeks ago asking about the use of doubleclick served adds (from doubleclick servers) on Slashdot. He promised to get back to me. He never did.
Would anyone on the Slashdot Team like to comment on whether or not these adds perform functions similar to DoubleClick ads on other sites? I've seen posts about this in some discussions, but this seems like the good place to post it.
I have noticed a STEADY increase in the number of DoubleClick served adds since I initally contacted Jaime. All the SuSE ads, the Genuity add, and now some IBM (and I'm sure others) ads are all DoubleClick served. This is true on other Andover sites like freshmeat as well. Many adds are served from Slashdot's addserver, but often DoubleClick ads load.
I can provide links to any and all ads that I've seen if I need to, but I think that it would be overkill.
Just curious
-fp
The small, independant retailer I work for decided to stock some Linux Distros once. We know have an official "Out of Date Linux Distros" shelf. It has, Redhat 6.1, YellowDog Linux Champion Server 1.1, and Mandrake 7.0 on it right now.
-fp
I wonder if the issue isn't simply proprietary extensions to W3C standards (as netscape has done) but the failure to support key W3C standards which Microsoft committed to supporting and helped to develop (Namely, CSS). The fact that Microsoft would forgo a standard to re-implement similar functionality by using a proprietary extension is what appals me. Fine, they wanna add screwy EXTRA stuff...fine...I think we'd be hard pressed to say the shouldn't expand on the standards...but at least adhere to a baseline of standards based functionality as the core of the program.
Granted, even netscape hasn't seen fit to do CSS right. But lets at least attack the right issue.
-fp
He only need mess up once. Once caught, he could be easily prosecuted. At that point, if convicted, he could be further sanctioned with regard to his actual abilities to gain access to the resources necessary to continue his harassment.
-fp
Well,
I don't know about the rest of the towns you live in, but Search Warrents are easy to get. I think I've posted this before (wiretapping are harder to get). It takes approximately 15 minutes from the unwarrented knock at the door to the knock w/ warrant in hand in our town (small, nw washington...less than 100k ppl).
The process works this way:
Officer: Sir, I'd like to come in your house. Your neighbor's brother's sister's cousin said you might have a gun, and based on this we would like to search your home.
Homeowner: What? Umm...What is this about?
Officer: Sir, I think you know what I'm speaking about.
Homeowner: Well, I think you're going to need to get a warrant before you come making demands like that.
Officer: Ok, be right back. (Walks back to car, picks up radio) Hey dispatch, I need a warrant...wake up that judge. (waits for judge to be patched through, busts out his warrant form, fills it out, lists "asked me to show a warrant, I think he did it" as his probable cause, raises his right hand, swears an oath, gets approval, and signs the judge's name to the warrant, returns to door) Sir, I now have a warrant, please step aside.
Homeowner: WTF? (Watches his house get ransacked).
The following story was related to me (along with a number of others) by our County Prosecutor at a breakfast I attended. He was attempting to reassure us that Law Enforcement had very few practical limitations on it's exercise of power...therefore we could sleep easy at night knowing that.
-fp