Current presidents never slam former presidents because the current president will be a former someday and the other party will have a president in office in the future.
As a guy who took a semester of Mexican History in college and loved it. I can tell you that Mexico's version of Graft and Embezzlement makes American Graft and Embezzlement look like a kid taking a buck or two out of his mom's purse.
It's that bad.
This can be tricky, for something that should be simple.
Somethings to be aware of:
1) Make sure your getting usable goods. Some companies will "cook the books" when it comes to hardware and dump something of nothing of value onto a school and then write off the donated hardware as a tax break. More common than you think.
2) Make sure you get enough people to help you. It sucks taking all that crap apart yourself.
I did something like this for a college lab. Here is what we did.
Nothing was going to be counted as a loss. Meaning, if the motherboard was dead, then we get the cache, CPU and memory off it. Keep all spare parts, you will need them.
So my suggestion is:
1) Have a disassembly line. One person takes out hardrives, another does motherboards and so on. After about 4 or 5 machines, a person is really quick at removing the part. You should be done real quick after that.
2) Put all the parts you yank out into seperate box or area. Make sure to dust them off and look for the obvious problems with the part. This might sound like a waste of time, but you need to clean the parts if they are dusty.
3) After your all done with the disassemble, figure out how many machines your should get, and start assembling them. Your not going to have a perfect match. Some stuff is not going to work, your going to be short of certain items.
4) Make all machines a simular as possible. I know for a fact this will save you lots of time in the future.
Government investments are often justified as adding in some meaningful way to the economy as measured by GDP and other economic statistics. Proprietary software lives up to this expectation - it can be sold, it has value. How can the "product" of GPL software be quantified in such a way as to add to these statistics? If it can't, then spending $1 billion on free software is equivalent in monetary policy terms to burning $1 billion.
Who ever thinks this can not be more wrong than wrong can be.
1) The government spending is not going to make or break the economy, unless it is alot. A billion is not that much in the big picture.
2) Almost all of Government spending can be considered a waste of money and resources, except for services that need to done that the free market can't provide (Feeding the poor, low cost medical care, free education, and other preventive expenses).
If the government does not spend that billion on software, because they get the same for free, it can provide other services or return the money to the tax payer so they may spend the money as they truely wish.
A counter agruement can be given that open-source software is nothing but good. If you get something for free, you can spend you money on other things, the cost of living is less, and the amount of work one must do to live is less. Thus the standard of living increases for all.
Governments care greatly about the economy, and there's no other way to measure it. If GDP falls, we are said to be in recession. When it rises, we're in a boom. So if the people in government believe the conventional wisdom that they can best serve their fellow citizens by continuing GDP (and tax base) growth, then they are forced to accept Allchin's argument on GPL. Allchin could even go farther in this logic by blaming some of the current economic slowdown on the increased "destruction" of property caused by the recent growth of Linux.
I could also blame Microsoft for the slowdown. With everyone having to spend too much money on MS software, since they take away from other investments that might make the economy really grow. Of course, if you look a 1) I would not believe that.
[Note: I work for Amazon.com, but I speak for myself and not my employer]
Just sell it on Amazon.com. Yes, you'll make less money per-order, but you'll get something like 100 times the traffic and brand name of selling it at Amazon.com.
What your doing is putting yourself in really a small market, then your going to limit yourself even more by selling it off your own tiny website.
Just ask yourself, would you give your credit card number to me or any other person? Now, how about giving your Credit Card to a big established name?
Whatever you do, make sure you don't limit yourself anymore by making your small business smaller than it already is.
As person who went to Chico State, I can say you left out the most important part.
The Free Speech area is right out in front of the administration building and the BMU (Bookstore, coffee shop, bowling alley). The only reason people don't care about the free speech outside of the Free Speech Area is that if you wanted to gain as much attention as possiable, the Free Speech Area is the highest traffic area. It's not off in some far off location, it's where everyone *has* to walk by everyday.
I don't think this will happen.
Why? Who is more powerfull lobby group? Sony, Panasonic and the other eletronic equipment makers or Hollywood? If the eletronic equipment makers are agaist it then there is a good chance it is not going to happen. They will simply poorly implement the whole copy-protection schemes or not at all.
Bush and his idiots friends don't know anything about this stuff and they don't care much for Hollywood either. I personally think this is a slamdunk for the eletronics makers.
But Amazon is still a pretty yukky company in lots of ways:
Well, I think I will respond, not as the spokes person for Amazon.com, but as an employee who thinks it is the coolest company.
They have a lousy record on privacy (1, 2).
We don't sell our records to anyone. Period. I know it might come as a suprise to all the Anti-Amazon.com Slashdot.org trolls, but it's true. The selling of records if we go out of business is a standard clause in getting funds to raise cash. If things don't work out, investors are going to want to recover what money they can get back and saying we reserve the right to sell records is one of those ways. If you look at any company, you will find the same thing. I even bet Andover.net will sell your Slashdot.org account information to the highest bidder if they go under.
However, Amazon.com is not going out of business and it might come as a shock, but we are going to stay around for a long time.
They have a union-busting campaign, complete with instructions on their internal web pages explaining how managers can thwart union organizers.
Absolute bullshit. I searched the interal webpage for this and found nothing. The only infomation I have recieved is to ask unathorized person to leave Amazon.com property if they are caught. This again is standard; would you want people who are not bound by a NDA wondering around your property?
If you know the URL of this "Union Busting" webpage, let me know, I would like to see it.
Did you know that when you write a review on their site, it becomes their property?
All submitted comments become the licensed property of Amazon.com as set forth in our Legal Notices.
Well, Duh! Of course we own it because we want to control the content. We are not going to post anti-Amazon.com infomation on our own site, and we are going to post reviews that are off topic or incorrect. We want reviews that are good, so unless we can set up a slashdot.org style posting area, Amazon.com is going to tightly control the information on its site.
Here is the big question I have, where can I find a list of ISP's that have Carnivore installed?
We are never going to get the FBI to change their minds about Carnivore, but if people start to know about Carnivore and the ISP's that have it, then people will not use those ISP's.
I can see it now, advertisements for ISP's who's big selling point is not having Carnivore installed.
[Let me first say, yes, I am an employee of Amazon.com, however, I speak for myself and not Amazon.com or any of its partners in any way. I am only speaking as a person who uses thier Amazon.com account often]
When you sign up for an account at Amazon.com you given the option of recieving mass mailings. If ths person did not want to recieve want to recieve them, they should have clicked the opt-out. It is simple and painless and you can change it to opt-in or opt-out rather easily when you login.
This does not qualify as spam in anyway. You asked for it, and Amazon.com sends it.
Also, It is too bad that the poster's wife did not keep track of her Amazon.com account properly and he feels that getting her Amazon.com account password is too difficult. However, this is done for security, which is in her best intrest.
She should keep track of which Credit Cards she uses and where. This not only makes retreiving your Amazon account much easier, but also is good sound advice for shopping anywhere.
[And while I am here]
As some others have pointed out, this question is, another, cheap shot at Amazon.com from Slashdot. Amazon.com sells quality products at good prices to millions of people around the world. Amazon.com does not do anything unethical or illegal in its business practices. If at anytime you don't like how Amazon.com does business, you can send email to feedback@amazon.com and real person will read it.
If your an ISP and your getting Amazon.com email sent to dead accounts, you can contact techhelp@amazon.com and someone will work with you stop the email.
P.S. I dread seeing Slashdot turn into, not only a Anti-Microsoft, but also an Anti-Amazon.com site on the back of cheap posts and flimsy Ask Slashdot Questions.
Here here!
Although I do have broadband (Cox@home), I do remember not having access to broadband, and it sucked. People whine about @home, RoadRunner, or DSL, but try a 56K modem then go back to broadband and they won't complain anymore.
I am one @home customer that is greatful to be able to download at 100K/sec+ and have 40ms Quake3 ping times.
In open source, who do you sue when the bug loses you money?
The same people you sue when you run commerical software; You sue no one.
I have never heard a case where some one sued a software company because the software had bugs. This is what the EULA is for, protection of the software maker.
I dont get this. Slashdot readers are a group techincal people who should be making their own servers. Why are people buying prebuild crap from companies that treat them like crap?
I had to make 3 servers, and I just got online and searched around and got the parts. Made sure the SCSI controllers worked with FreeBSD (We are a FreeBSD shop). Looked around a few places, got some killer deals on good hardware and found a couple places that I could recommend to others.
I my whole point is that when you order and build the stuff yourself, you know what is in the server and know where it is in the computer (PCI Slot 1 and all that). You know the memory makers, and the harddrive makers. I have build whole computer labs where I speced out the whole thing and went to a shop and told them this is what I wanted. They put it together, but I opened them all up to verify what they did.
It seems that if my ass was on the line, I would not trust anyone to make an important server for me. I would make it, and if I was the boss, I personally hold the person who bought the machine on the same level as though they built it themselves. None of this, "But it is VA's fault!" crap. I would still demote or fire someone who bought a bad product or built a crappy server.
A Man's work is a reflection of himself.
Maybe its just me.
Even suff like the Linux User Registration (or whatever it is called) is not useful for all known installs of Linux.
It is too easy download an ISO image of your favorite Linux dist and install where ever you want.
I had an extensive discussion with one of my old Statatics professors in college. After explaining what Linux was, how you can get it for free, how there is no central Linux download site, how there are so many places to get Linux, how there are no restrictions on installing Linux, and how easy it is share the same CDROM, NFS, or FTP site; she came to the conclusion that there is no way to count the machines that have Linux on it.
There are simply too many variables in the "Linux counting problem."
So my point is, when you read something about how many Linux machines there are out there, the author is smoking crack. It is nearly impossiable to count all the Linux machines in the world.
I know Alec would not like to here this, but most people would not give a rats ass nor know who he is unless he played Obi Wan.
He played a number of very good roles and he played them very well. However, no one would have know who this guy is unless he was Obi Wan. Again, I know Alec would not like to here this, but he made alot of money as Obi Wan that let him play the art'sy roles. He sold out for one (or 3) role(s), then took the art'sy roles, and lived well.
I glad to see that Id is making a game that will fun to play as a single player, but what happens when you finish it? Play it again; maybe. But what happens when you play it couple of times; you play multi-player.
Good example is Half-Life. An very good single player experience, but the multi player sucked. The single player stuff only gets you so far, then it is a multi player game.
If you only can play single player, then you give it to your cheap friend and buy something else. With good online playing, you keep it, and play it online and recommending it to all your friends. A hugh online community builds up, and the software make tons of sales from word of mouth.
I, personally (I'm not a software sales tracker or gaming sales expert), think that games that target online playing do much better, and are more enjoyable to play. Q3 sucks as a single player, but online, rules. Thus, there are now coming out a bunch of great mods (q3Fortress, Urban Terror, Weapon Factory), with the new Doom, I think this will not happen. Ya, its great eye candy, but when you finish it you will toss it on the shelf and buy the "next thing" and not recommend it to friends.
Ya, not only that, Win2000 sucks for games too! If your going to sell you soul, go all the way and use Win98SE and get all the bonus cool graphics and sound stuff.
Playing any game on Win2000 is like playing it on Linux.
A couple of weeks ago I was working on some perl and hit that block. I was really stuck/burnt out. So I simply went and did something else; built a couple of servers and configured them. Gave me a chance to do something else, and think (Building servers is not a real brain intense thing to me). After a couple of days, I felt alot better, and got back to programming.
Slashdot Mirror
Current presidents never slam former presidents because the current president will be a former someday and the other party will have a president in office in the future.
IFES is a drinking club. No one in it or out of it takes it seriously.
As a guy who took a semester of Mexican History in college and loved it. I can tell you that Mexico's version of Graft and Embezzlement makes American Graft and Embezzlement look like a kid taking a buck or two out of his mom's purse.
It's that bad.
This can be tricky, for something that should be simple.
Somethings to be aware of:
1) Make sure your getting usable goods. Some companies will "cook the books" when it comes to hardware and dump something of nothing of value onto a school and then write off the donated hardware as a tax break. More common than you think.
2) Make sure you get enough people to help you. It sucks taking all that crap apart yourself.
I did something like this for a college lab. Here is what we did.
Nothing was going to be counted as a loss. Meaning, if the motherboard was dead, then we get the cache, CPU and memory off it. Keep all spare parts, you will need them.
So my suggestion is:
1) Have a disassembly line. One person takes out hardrives, another does motherboards and so on. After about 4 or 5 machines, a person is really quick at removing the part. You should be done real quick after that.
2) Put all the parts you yank out into seperate box or area. Make sure to dust them off and look for the obvious problems with the part. This might sound like a waste of time, but you need to clean the parts if they are dusty.
3) After your all done with the disassemble, figure out how many machines your should get, and start assembling them. Your not going to have a perfect match. Some stuff is not going to work, your going to be short of certain items.
4) Make all machines a simular as possible. I know for a fact this will save you lots of time in the future.
Good Luck.
Who ever thinks this can not be more wrong than wrong can be.
1) The government spending is not going to make or break the economy, unless it is alot. A billion is not that much in the big picture.
2) Almost all of Government spending can be considered a waste of money and resources, except for services that need to done that the free market can't provide (Feeding the poor, low cost medical care, free education, and other preventive expenses).
If the government does not spend that billion on software, because they get the same for free, it can provide other services or return the money to the tax payer so they may spend the money as they truely wish.
A counter agruement can be given that open-source software is nothing but good. If you get something for free, you can spend you money on other things, the cost of living is less, and the amount of work one must do to live is less. Thus the standard of living increases for all.
Governments care greatly about the economy, and there's no other way to measure it. If GDP falls, we are said to be in recession. When it rises, we're in a boom. So if the people in government believe the conventional wisdom that they can best serve their fellow citizens by continuing GDP (and tax base) growth, then they are forced to accept Allchin's argument on GPL. Allchin could even go farther in this logic by blaming some of the current economic slowdown on the increased "destruction" of property caused by the recent growth of Linux.
I could also blame Microsoft for the slowdown. With everyone having to spend too much money on MS software, since they take away from other investments that might make the economy really grow. Of course, if you look a 1) I would not believe that.
[Note: I work for Amazon.com, but I speak for myself and not my employer]
Just sell it on Amazon.com. Yes, you'll make less money per-order, but you'll get something like 100 times the traffic and brand name of selling it at Amazon.com.
What your doing is putting yourself in really a small market, then your going to limit yourself even more by selling it off your own tiny website.
Just ask yourself, would you give your credit card number to me or any other person? Now, how about giving your Credit Card to a big established name?
Whatever you do, make sure you don't limit yourself anymore by making your small business smaller than it already is.
As person who went to Chico State, I can say you left out the most important part.
The Free Speech area is right out in front of the administration building and the BMU (Bookstore, coffee shop, bowling alley). The only reason people don't care about the free speech outside of the Free Speech Area is that if you wanted to gain as much attention as possiable, the Free Speech Area is the highest traffic area. It's not off in some far off location, it's where everyone *has* to walk by everyday.
I don't think this will happen.
Why? Who is more powerfull lobby group? Sony, Panasonic and the other eletronic equipment makers or Hollywood? If the eletronic equipment makers are agaist it then there is a good chance it is not going to happen. They will simply poorly implement the whole copy-protection schemes or not at all.
Bush and his idiots friends don't know anything about this stuff and they don't care much for Hollywood either. I personally think this is a slamdunk for the eletronics makers.
Well, I think I will respond, not as the spokes person for Amazon.com, but as an employee who thinks it is the coolest company.
They have a lousy record on privacy (1, 2).
We don't sell our records to anyone. Period. I know it might come as a suprise to all the Anti-Amazon.com Slashdot.org trolls, but it's true. The selling of records if we go out of business is a standard clause in getting funds to raise cash. If things don't work out, investors are going to want to recover what money they can get back and saying we reserve the right to sell records is one of those ways. If you look at any company, you will find the same thing. I even bet Andover.net will sell your Slashdot.org account information to the highest bidder if they go under.
However, Amazon.com is not going out of business and it might come as a shock, but we are going to stay around for a long time.
They have a union-busting campaign, complete with instructions on their internal web pages explaining how managers can thwart union organizers.
Absolute bullshit. I searched the interal webpage for this and found nothing. The only infomation I have recieved is to ask unathorized person to leave Amazon.com property if they are caught. This again is standard; would you want people who are not bound by a NDA wondering around your property?
If you know the URL of this "Union Busting" webpage, let me know, I would like to see it.
Did you know that when you write a review on their site, it becomes their property? All submitted comments become the licensed property of Amazon.com as set forth in our Legal Notices.
Well, Duh! Of course we own it because we want to control the content. We are not going to post anti-Amazon.com infomation on our own site, and we are going to post reviews that are off topic or incorrect. We want reviews that are good, so unless we can set up a slashdot.org style posting area, Amazon.com is going to tightly control the information on its site.
I always thought Carnivore would be installed everywhere and then turned on when needed.
Here is the big question I have, where can I find a list of ISP's that have Carnivore installed?
We are never going to get the FBI to change their minds about Carnivore, but if people start to know about Carnivore and the ISP's that have it, then people will not use those ISP's.
I can see it now, advertisements for ISP's who's big selling point is not having Carnivore installed.
Of course it's dry, they never repealed Prohibition!
That's why on Earth we see so many Martian ships, they come here for the booze!
[Let me first say, yes, I am an employee of Amazon.com, however, I speak for myself and not Amazon.com or any of its partners in any way. I am only speaking as a person who uses thier Amazon.com account often]
When you sign up for an account at Amazon.com you given the option of recieving mass mailings. If ths person did not want to recieve want to recieve them, they should have clicked the opt-out. It is simple and painless and you can change it to opt-in or opt-out rather easily when you login.
This does not qualify as spam in anyway. You asked for it, and Amazon.com sends it.
Also, It is too bad that the poster's wife did not keep track of her Amazon.com account properly and he feels that getting her Amazon.com account password is too difficult. However, this is done for security, which is in her best intrest.
She should keep track of which Credit Cards she uses and where. This not only makes retreiving your Amazon account much easier, but also is good sound advice for shopping anywhere.
[And while I am here]
As some others have pointed out, this question is, another, cheap shot at Amazon.com from Slashdot. Amazon.com sells quality products at good prices to millions of people around the world. Amazon.com does not do anything unethical or illegal in its business practices. If at anytime you don't like how Amazon.com does business, you can send email to feedback@amazon.com and real person will read it.
If your an ISP and your getting Amazon.com email sent to dead accounts, you can contact techhelp@amazon.com and someone will work with you stop the email.
P.S. I dread seeing Slashdot turn into, not only a Anti-Microsoft, but also an Anti-Amazon.com site on the back of cheap posts and flimsy Ask Slashdot Questions.
Sounds like that Win2000 machine was setup for educational purposes only. Not the best example.
Disclaimer; this is a rumour and we all know about Apple rumors..."
What's this? Is Slashdot pandering to Kings English as well as American English?
Hey, your in America, it's rumor. When Slashdot moves to England, it's rumour!
Here here!
Although I do have broadband (Cox@home), I do remember not having access to broadband, and it sucked. People whine about @home, RoadRunner, or DSL, but try a 56K modem then go back to broadband and they won't complain anymore.
I am one @home customer that is greatful to be able to download at 100K/sec+ and have 40ms Quake3 ping times.
In open source, who do you sue when the bug loses you money?
The same people you sue when you run commerical software; You sue no one.
I have never heard a case where some one sued a software company because the software had bugs. This is what the EULA is for, protection of the software maker.
I dont get this. Slashdot readers are a group techincal people who should be making their own servers. Why are people buying prebuild crap from companies that treat them like crap?
I had to make 3 servers, and I just got online and searched around and got the parts. Made sure the SCSI controllers worked with FreeBSD (We are a FreeBSD shop). Looked around a few places, got some killer deals on good hardware and found a couple places that I could recommend to others.
I my whole point is that when you order and build the stuff yourself, you know what is in the server and know where it is in the computer (PCI Slot 1 and all that). You know the memory makers, and the harddrive makers. I have build whole computer labs where I speced out the whole thing and went to a shop and told them this is what I wanted. They put it together, but I opened them all up to verify what they did.
It seems that if my ass was on the line, I would not trust anyone to make an important server for me. I would make it, and if I was the boss, I personally hold the person who bought the machine on the same level as though they built it themselves. None of this, "But it is VA's fault!" crap. I would still demote or fire someone who bought a bad product or built a crappy server.
A Man's work is a reflection of himself.
Maybe its just me.
Oh, Phil, your such a moron.
Exactly!
Even suff like the Linux User Registration (or whatever it is called) is not useful for all known installs of Linux.
It is too easy download an ISO image of your favorite Linux dist and install where ever you want.
I had an extensive discussion with one of my old Statatics professors in college. After explaining what Linux was, how you can get it for free, how there is no central Linux download site, how there are so many places to get Linux, how there are no restrictions on installing Linux, and how easy it is share the same CDROM, NFS, or FTP site; she came to the conclusion that there is no way to count the machines that have Linux on it.
There are simply too many variables in the "Linux counting problem."
So my point is, when you read something about how many Linux machines there are out there, the author is smoking crack. It is nearly impossiable to count all the Linux machines in the world.
I know Alec would not like to here this, but most people would not give a rats ass nor know who he is unless he played Obi Wan.
He played a number of very good roles and he played them very well. However, no one would have know who this guy is unless he was Obi Wan. Again, I know Alec would not like to here this, but he made alot of money as Obi Wan that let him play the art'sy roles. He sold out for one (or 3) role(s), then took the art'sy roles, and lived well.
Art'sy crap only gets so much food on the table.
Anyways, my other non-Obi Wan files I like are:
The Bridge on the River Kwai (really good!)
Hitler: The Last Ten Days
Raise the Titanic (This must be a sell out role)
A Passage to India
I glad to see that Id is making a game that will fun to play as a single player, but what happens when you finish it? Play it again; maybe. But what happens when you play it couple of times; you play multi-player.
Good example is Half-Life. An very good single player experience, but the multi player sucked. The single player stuff only gets you so far, then it is a multi player game.
If you only can play single player, then you give it to your cheap friend and buy something else. With good online playing, you keep it, and play it online and recommending it to all your friends. A hugh online community builds up, and the software make tons of sales from word of mouth.
I, personally (I'm not a software sales tracker or gaming sales expert), think that games that target online playing do much better, and are more enjoyable to play. Q3 sucks as a single player, but online, rules. Thus, there are now coming out a bunch of great mods (q3Fortress, Urban Terror, Weapon Factory), with the new Doom, I think this will not happen. Ya, its great eye candy, but when you finish it you will toss it on the shelf and buy the "next thing" and not recommend it to friends.
Maybe its just me.
Ya, not only that, Win2000 sucks for games too! If your going to sell you soul, go all the way and use Win98SE and get all the bonus cool graphics and sound stuff.
Playing any game on Win2000 is like playing it on Linux.
I simply take a break from it.
A couple of weeks ago I was working on some perl and hit that block. I was really stuck/burnt out. So I simply went and did something else; built a couple of servers and configured them. Gave me a chance to do something else, and think (Building servers is not a real brain intense thing to me). After a couple of days, I felt alot better, and got back to programming.
It's called Junkbusters and a good blockfile.