Ok, here is a fair way to fix this. Everyone who wants to send AIDS drugs to Africa can pay a voluntary tax. This money will then be used to buy AIDS drugs from the drug companies. In return for "at-cost" drugs these companies will receive a tax break or something to make it worthwile.
This way all the people who are complaining about evil drug companies can actually do something instead of blaming others.
Mr_Perl, I have to ask what you are doing to help the poor Africans? You said that you and your nation have benefitted directly from their exploitation and that you owe them a great deal.
Well sir, I have to tell you that your being a Perl afficiando is not helping these poor souls. You could do much more by actually going to Africa and volunteering to help these people. They really could get much more help from you if you were emptying bedpans in Mogadishu than say creating web scripts for some company. Won't you please stop thinking of yourself for a moment and consider helping these people?
Sounds like you're the one blaming people pal. The U.N., "Us", whatever. What the hell are YOU doing about it? Looks to me like you're nice and comfy in your house posting to Slashdot. Why don't you hop a flight to Zimbabwe and lend a hand?
Come on bud. Stop your hand wringing and moralizing and start helping! This shit isn't gonna fix itself! There are people DYING in Africa right now from AIDS related complications! You need to get a suitcase full of meds and go help somebody.
Well I do systems work for the legal arm of a large company and all of our law offices switched from Word Perfect 8 to Office 97 last year. About 600 attorneys/paralegals/secretaries in total. So I'd say Corel can't take the sales to legal types for granted anymore.
I agree with your analysis. I work in a cube and I think I would do a lot better in a war room. To be honest, I don't have the greatest work ethic but I am a competitive person. If I were in a war room I think I'd feel more pressure to produce and not let the team down.
My.02 from cubeville.
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and not limitation, uses described below of the Services and Products are expressly prohibited.
You agree to their terms of service when you sign up. If you didn't read those terms carefully then that is your fault. If you don't like their terms, find another ISP. This all boils down to personal responsibility. Pay attention to the contracts you sign and vote with your wallet.
I'll just point out that Clinton carried Ohio in the last two presidential elections. I know that doesn't disprove your statement but let's not make Ohio out to be the cradle of conservatism.
I live in Ohio and voted for Bush because:
He supports a smaller, less invasive federal government.
Broad based tax cut that includes everyone. I've had enough of these targeted cuts for families with 2.5 kids who are college aged with blue eyes and brown hair. Whatever. There are 60 million single adult Americans who want a tax cut too!
2nd ammendment. I don't own a gun but I support private gun ownership without registration.
I do not want to see a huge government prescription drug entitlement.
That's the way I do it too. In my area there is a $1/month charge to have "no LD carrier" but it's better than the $4 or $5 I was paying per month to ATT for the privilege of making asolutely no LD calls. I got so fed up with it that I made several more changes to my phone billing options and I now pay $11 month. Down from about $23. Watch em like a hawk!
I met a fellow from India who had the whole thing wired. First you go to CANADA. Apparently it's much easier to get Canadian citizenship. Then you can work or go to school in the US with no problems. Then you can work on your green card or whatever with the comfort of knowing that at worst you can always live in some Canadian border city and commute to work.
Get your class some hardware exposure! Have them build a piece of hardware and then write the drivers for it. The specs for ethernet devices can be found on the web.
Security through obscurity is great for systems that have little appeal to most developers. Think about Tandem's operating system. Very small developer pool. Tiny when you consider most people don't have the hardware at home to even compile or run it. Now they open source it. How many friendly eyes are going to be poring over code they can't even compile? Not many. How many unfriendly eyes are going to be looking for holes they can use to gain access to insurance companies, banks and stock exchanges? Probably more.
Well if you are advocating that the ATC system be open sourced then I... I don't know what to say to that except that it seems crazy to me.
Code review is indeed a very valuable tool but I do not equate that with open source. Take the group that writes the shuttle software. They have extremely stringent code review policies and it seems to work quite well. They do not open source their stuff. Why? Because nobody else needs to read that code. Nobody else is programming the shuttle.
Similarly, people are not runnning ATC servers on their home PC. But for the sake of discussion, let's say they did release their stuff. Who is going to be interested in poring over that code? Practically no one. Why? Nobody has any use for it! It's also probably written for hardware that you don't have (a VAX perhaps?) Why spend hours and hours poring over this code if you can't even USE it?! You wouldn't of course. Only a few people would play with it for the gee whiz factor. The rest would be those with malicious intent.
In short, I'm glad you are not the Secretary of Transportation.
The many eyes mantra only applies when many eyes are actually looking at the code. In most cases there are about two people (the programmers) who actually look through the code to fix it, and everyone else is hackers looking for their latest backdoor penetration
I think you make a good point. I think "Security through obscurity" really does work in many many cases where it would be disastrous to release source or publicize exploits. Think of something like the air traffic control system. I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin if I wanted to crack that system. Don't know what operating system it uses. Don't know if it's accessible from public networks. Don't know what it looks like even if I stumbled across it. And I'm guessing that information isn't just sitting around on the internet. THAT is security through obscurity and it's working very well.
I think the "many eyes" thing works great for something like Linux because there actually are lots of people working on the source code. But those benefits are lost on things too small or boring to attract enough developers.
I happen to agree with the original poster. The ISS is largely a waste of time and money. Here's an article that points out some of the gross mis-management of this project. I'm all for scientific research and expandning our knowledge of the universe but I would like to see it done more responsibly than NASA and it's contractors have done.
I've also been in the situation where I've found questionable material on someone's hard drive. I kept my mouth shut. Heck, you don't know for sure that the person who uses the machine actually downloaded those files. It could be their kid (if it's a laptop or home machine) or their secretary or somebody trying to get them fired.
Hey sometimes you hit a link and wind up somewhere you shouldn't be but the when you try to close the browser, it pops a new window with new jpgs. That could be a perfectly reasonable explanation of how jpgs wound up in the temp folder.
I never felt like I was risking my job but not ratting the people out either. Nobody likes a rat. Even if you do tell someone and the guy winds up getting fired, that doesn't put you in a good light. First, whatever supervisor you told is probably thinking, "Great, now I have to do something about this because this PC tech can't keep his mouth shut." You put him and everyone else that gets dragged into it in a very uncomfortable position. Second, nobody who knows about this incident is going to want you working on their machine. Third, if the guy gets fired and goes off the deep end you could wind up in the hospital or worse.
My advice is
Unless it's REALLY bad (like a plan to bomb the building or something) then keep your mouth shut.
You'll never need rule 1 if you don't open a client's data files. (ie NO SNOOPING)
I think the thing that's bothering people about the feature creep is that the developers do not seem focused on the important stuff. It's great that the package is modular and people can load what they want but what they want most is a fast, stable browser that renders correctly.
They shouldn't even be considering "skins" and all the other fluff until the browser is done and done right.
Slashdot Mirror
This way all the people who are complaining about evil drug companies can actually do something instead of blaming others.
Those who don't care, don't have to pay the tax.
Well sir, I have to tell you that your being a Perl afficiando is not helping these poor souls. You could do much more by actually going to Africa and volunteering to help these people. They really could get much more help from you if you were emptying bedpans in Mogadishu than say creating web scripts for some company. Won't you please stop thinking of yourself for a moment and consider helping these people?
Come on bud. Stop your hand wringing and moralizing and start helping! This shit isn't gonna fix itself! There are people DYING in Africa right now from AIDS related complications! You need to get a suitcase full of meds and go help somebody.
Or are you all talk and no game?
Well I do systems work for the legal arm of a large company and all of our law offices switched from Word Perfect 8 to Office 97 last year. About 600 attorneys/paralegals/secretaries in total. So I'd say Corel can't take the sales to legal types for granted anymore.
Yup, Corel is just a poorly run company.
I agree with your analysis. I work in a cube and I think I would do a lot better in a war room. To be honest, I don't have the greatest work ethic but I am a competitive person. If I were in a war room I think I'd feel more pressure to produce and not let the team down. My .02 from cubeville.
You keep falling for this guys trolls. Yeesh.
Pan Am didn't go out of business until late 1991.
$18.5M in revenues!! That is just tiny for a company with this market cap (still over a Billion).
Check out this article about some peoples recent experience with Macs.
Just remember, "When they come for your guns, give 'em the ammo first."
You agree to their terms of service when you sign up. If you didn't read those terms carefully then that is your fault. If you don't like their terms, find another ISP. This all boils down to personal responsibility. Pay attention to the contracts you sign and vote with your wallet.
Why bother posting the article if it's such a non-event?
I live in Ohio and voted for Bush because:
That's the way I do it too. In my area there is a $1/month charge to have "no LD carrier" but it's better than the $4 or $5 I was paying per month to ATT for the privilege of making asolutely no LD calls. I got so fed up with it that I made several more changes to my phone billing options and I now pay $11 month. Down from about $23. Watch em like a hawk!
I met a fellow from India who had the whole thing wired. First you go to CANADA. Apparently it's much easier to get Canadian citizenship. Then you can work or go to school in the US with no problems. Then you can work on your green card or whatever with the comfort of knowing that at worst you can always live in some Canadian border city and commute to work.
Get your class some hardware exposure! Have them build a piece of hardware and then write the drivers for it. The specs for ethernet devices can be found on the web.
Security through obscurity is great for systems that have little appeal to most developers. Think about Tandem's operating system. Very small developer pool. Tiny when you consider most people don't have the hardware at home to even compile or run it. Now they open source it. How many friendly eyes are going to be poring over code they can't even compile? Not many. How many unfriendly eyes are going to be looking for holes they can use to gain access to insurance companies, banks and stock exchanges? Probably more.
Code review is indeed a very valuable tool but I do not equate that with open source. Take the group that writes the shuttle software. They have extremely stringent code review policies and it seems to work quite well. They do not open source their stuff. Why? Because nobody else needs to read that code. Nobody else is programming the shuttle.
Similarly, people are not runnning ATC servers on their home PC. But for the sake of discussion, let's say they did release their stuff. Who is going to be interested in poring over that code? Practically no one. Why? Nobody has any use for it! It's also probably written for hardware that you don't have (a VAX perhaps?) Why spend hours and hours poring over this code if you can't even USE it?! You wouldn't of course. Only a few people would play with it for the gee whiz factor. The rest would be those with malicious intent.
In short, I'm glad you are not the Secretary of Transportation.
I think you make a good point. I think "Security through obscurity" really does work in many many cases where it would be disastrous to release source or publicize exploits. Think of something like the air traffic control system. I wouldn't have the slightest idea where to begin if I wanted to crack that system. Don't know what operating system it uses. Don't know if it's accessible from public networks. Don't know what it looks like even if I stumbled across it. And I'm guessing that information isn't just sitting around on the internet. THAT is security through obscurity and it's working very well.
I think the "many eyes" thing works great for something like Linux because there actually are lots of people working on the source code. But those benefits are lost on things too small or boring to attract enough developers.
I happen to agree with the original poster. The ISS is largely a waste of time and money. Here's an article that points out some of the gross mis-management of this project. I'm all for scientific research and expandning our knowledge of the universe but I would like to see it done more responsibly than NASA and it's contractors have done.
rtt
Hey sometimes you hit a link and wind up somewhere you shouldn't be but the when you try to close the browser, it pops a new window with new jpgs. That could be a perfectly reasonable explanation of how jpgs wound up in the temp folder.
I never felt like I was risking my job but not ratting the people out either. Nobody likes a rat. Even if you do tell someone and the guy winds up getting fired, that doesn't put you in a good light. First, whatever supervisor you told is probably thinking, "Great, now I have to do something about this because this PC tech can't keep his mouth shut." You put him and everyone else that gets dragged into it in a very uncomfortable position. Second, nobody who knows about this incident is going to want you working on their machine. Third, if the guy gets fired and goes off the deep end you could wind up in the hospital or worse.
My advice isThey shouldn't even be considering "skins" and all the other fluff until the browser is done and done right.