I agree it was a bit extreme, and it could have back-fired. This person is in the definite, yet vocal, minority of 'no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft' camp. This little episode has shredded what little credibility she had left.
Had it been a different situation where open source didn't have a strong foot-hold here, I agree that it would have been a very chancey move to pull a sophmoric stunt like this and risk having the PHB's view it in a bad light. Instead, this little prank got a good chuckle out of the boss, and when she came into his office to complain about her office being 'decorated', he pretty much told her to expect stuff like this if she was going to stand on such an un-popular opinion with such a baseless article as proof. All-in-all it was a very satisfying experience. Just wish I had come in early enough to have participated!
and as for debian packages, I'm not sure what the gripe is, my experience (albeit limited) is that the kernel source packages seem to be up-to-date by the time I go to update my system.
Yeah, what about that blatant plug for Goddard Space Flight Center and the Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences!? Sheesh, guy puts in a few hundred thousand hours writing and maintaining network drivers for Linux and he has the gall to actually put a plug in for his boss? The nerve!
Man, at least I don't have to boot my linux box for much except hardware changes and new kernels. Imagine if NT used drivers from Donald Becker then I'd have to see his spam on a daily basis!:-) (Note for the humor-impaired, this is called sarcasm)
I there was a freeware program (BSOD Properties) floating around that let you customize BSOD somewhat, but it basically let you change the background and text colors. Doubt this is what you were thinking of but was somewhat related.
Yes, I thought this was excellent as well. One of my cow-workers printed out the article yesterday and tacked it to her cube (thinks Bill Gates is sexiest man alive).
This morning before she came in someone had printed out Young's rebuttal and made about 500 copies which were used to wallpaper her entire cubicle (wish I had my camera today!)
This is the silver lining in the whole debacle of yesterday's article. Instead of only an angry hornet's nest of slashdot 'zealots' giving them fuel for the 'see, these open source types are just a bunch of foul-mouthed kids' slant, we have a well-written, fact-filled response from a very credible source that sets the record straight and makes that PC Week columnist look like the bafoon he is. Great.
well, sure,I realize this. what I responded to is emmett equating this to a MIT hack. No, the brilliant part was videotaping themselves so they would be sure to get caught.
>These are college pranks which require ingenuity to pull off
I challenge you to point out where in this story there is any 'ingenuity' required to drop a christmas tree down a flight of stairs with no one to see it, you take a couple pictures, leave a note and run like hell.
If you were referring to something like the cop car on top of a building or turning a dome into a likeness of R2D2, then you are right. Sadly, in this case this was simple littering. (tee hee, we dropped a bunch of pumpkins filled with shaving cream down 9 floors!)
I'm halfway through the site and it looks so far like they just are dropping stuff down a stairwell. Seems more like Letterman than MIT. Where is the brilliant hack aspect to watching pumpkins fall nine stories?
>. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
OT, but anyone get an AOL5 CD in the mail in a DVD case like I did the other day? I couldn't believe it! Turned out handy 'cause my daughter had ruined a DVD case and this made a nice replacement.
Yes. My wife and I moved into a new house a couple years ago and when we were planning out how to use the floorspace, she wanted the study which turns out is the coldest room in the house in the winter as it is on the corner sharing a wall with the garage and is the farthest room on the ground floor from the furnace. I took an extra bedroom upstairs as my 'lab'.
She talked me into trading. I didn't mind because the study is built over a crawlspace and it is closer to the phone lines, cable and power and overall it was a much more convenient location to wire up my network and stuff. After I got my two servers, my masq box, cable modem and my workstation into this room, we noticed that it was appreciably warmer. Almost too warm. We did this around Thanksgiving and I was toasty all throught the winter. Worried now though about how hot it will get in the summer. Might have to think about putting some ceiling vents in or something.
>Will breaking up MS not just make them a more powerful force? See AT&T/Lucent/Misc Bells. They were split up... and now they are merging again... hmmm.
Southwest Bell has merged with PacBell and Ameritech, Bell Atlantic has merged with NyNex. AT&T has bought up wireless and cable compaines. The original "Bell System" with the monopoly local service business, tied to a single long distance network coupled with the world's premier telecommunications R&D (Bell Labs) is never going to become reality again.
Each has it's own goals and motivations. Ma Bell simply can't charge whatever she wants and provide whatever level of service she sees fit. She doesn't exist anymore and never will again.
The same should happen to Microsoft. Divide it up into separate businesses that fight for different markets, have different goals and drivers and there may not be a business advantage to continuing on the dark-path. After all, contrary to what some may think, Microsoft did all this for profit motive, not because they worship Satan and the devil told them to do this.
I hope that when they are done with Microsoft, there won't be any business advantage for them to break the law anymore. I'm not interested in seeing them blasted out of existance. I want to see them develop sell and support products that stand on their own merit. Maybe they can - they will thrive. Maybe they can't - they will die.
> Look at AT&T. They were broken up into one long distance company and several RBOC's (I think 7). However, if you wanted a telephone, you bought service from an RBOC and AT&T.
This analogy has come up before, and it's not entirely appropriate. The breakup of the "Bell System" did indeed leave a monopoly in pace for local telephone service. The difference was that long-distance could not be provided by the local carriers, and these local carriers had to allow "equal access" to LD carriers like AT&T, MCI and Sprint or anyone else who wanted to offer LD service.
Then the 1996 Telecom Act set up provisions for the RBOCs to offer in-state LD and for the LD companies to offer competitive local access. The laws now allow competition in both local and long distance service. Why this competition has not come about to any real degree is a separate discussion about the FCC's implementation of regulations and policy in regards to '96 Telecom.
>In other words, breaking up the company does not introduce competition into the market. It just makes for several sub-monopolies.
I don't agree. Using the analogy of the Bell System breakup, you can indeed choose from LD service providers and prices for LD have come down over time as a result of competitive pressure. To be sure, the telephone service industry is not the Utopia of competition that it could be, but customers, especially business customers, do have choice and benefit from competition.
I think it is certainly possible for a breakup of Microsoft to result in an improved competitive marketplace for software. It is also possible for the breakup to be poorly designed and/or implemented and that the result could be little benefit for the consumer.
I'm hoping that they break up into several business to cripple the leverage that MS has used illegally to attempt to force OEM's and consumers to use only MS browsers and apps with MS OSes. But I also hope they go a step farther. Force MS to publish API's and make them offer them at a reasonable price to all comers with no strings attached.
Sorry to reply to my own post, got off my lazy ass an found it, someone actually posted in an earlier story on/. about pizza hut buying space on a proton.
http://www.reston.com/nasa/humor/shuttle.ads.htm l and http://www.reston.com/nasa/commercialization/iss .ads.cooke.html
Actually, now that I look at it, the liquid fuel tank is mcdonalds, it is one of the solid boosters that is painted like an energizer.
(oh, and sorry I'm too lazy to actually submit with working links)
Oh yeah, where's that link to a picture someone did of the shuttle sitting on the pad covered in ad banners, the biggest being the liquid-fuel tank painted to resemble an energizer battery!
*mumbles* (damn, why didn't I bookmark it, cache is long gone)
Slashdot Mirror
here's a link
'In December 1996 he said the market's rise was due to "irrational exuberance." '
Dan Briklin
"Bricklin never received a patent for VisiCalc, it was not until 1981 that software programs were made eligible for patenting by the supreme court. "
Yup, I've got a G400 Max Dual and I haven't had any luck getting XF86 to do a second monitor yet.
http://www.linux.org.uk/VERSION/relnotes.2214.html
apt-get install kernel-image-2.2.15
:-) )
(sorry, couldn't resist
I agree it was a bit extreme, and it could have back-fired. This person is in the definite, yet vocal, minority of 'no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft' camp. This little episode has shredded what little credibility she had left.
Had it been a different situation where open source didn't have a strong foot-hold here, I agree that it would have been a very chancey move to pull a sophmoric stunt like this and risk having the PHB's view it in a bad light. Instead, this little prank got a good chuckle out of the boss, and when she came into his office to complain about her office being 'decorated', he pretty much told her to expect stuff like this if she was going to stand on such an un-popular opinion with such a baseless article as proof. All-in-all it was a very satisfying experience. Just wish I had come in early enough to have participated!
and as for debian packages, I'm not sure what the gripe is, my experience (albeit limited) is that the kernel source packages seem to be up-to-date by the time I go to update my system.
shouldn't you be home helping the wife with the new baby?
.bruce - god this is lame)
(Iknow, not the real bruce, but
Man, at least I don't have to boot my linux box for much except hardware changes and new kernels. Imagine if NT used drivers from Donald Becker then I'd have to see his spam on a daily basis! :-) (Note for the humor-impaired, this is called sarcasm)
Think this was a joke that circulated on the net. See microsoft customizable BSOD announcement
I there was a freeware program (BSOD Properties) floating around that let you customize BSOD somewhat, but it basically let you change the background and text colors. Doubt this is what you were thinking of but was somewhat related.
BSOD properties
Yes, I thought this was excellent as well. One of my cow-workers printed out the article yesterday and tacked it to her cube (thinks Bill Gates is sexiest man alive).
This morning before she came in someone had printed out Young's rebuttal and made about 500 copies which were used to wallpaper her entire cubicle (wish I had my camera today!)
This is the silver lining in the whole debacle of yesterday's article. Instead of only an angry hornet's nest of slashdot 'zealots' giving them fuel for the 'see, these open source types are just a bunch of foul-mouthed kids' slant, we have a well-written, fact-filled response from a very credible source that sets the record straight and makes that PC Week columnist look like the bafoon he is. Great.
>If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed ... oh, wait a minute -- he already does.
... oh, wait a minute -- he already does.
Except with the recent slide in M$ share price, it's more like...
If Bill Gates had $0.046 for every time a Windows box crashed
:-)
>On a related topic, I really must insist that the US postal service start opening every letter and examining the contents for objectional material.
:p
You mean they don't already?
>because it ISN'T MIT
well, sure,I realize this. what I responded to is emmett equating this to a MIT hack. No, the brilliant part was videotaping themselves so they would be sure to get caught.
Oh, that's a _good_ one! Heh, I think I know just the windoze-lovin asshole I'm gonna do that to right now (or as soon as he leaves for the day)
>These are college pranks which require ingenuity to pull off
I challenge you to point out where in this story there is any 'ingenuity' required to drop a christmas tree down a flight of stairs with no one to see it, you take a couple pictures, leave a note and run like hell.
If you were referring to something like the cop car on top of a building or turning a dome into a likeness of R2D2, then you are right. Sadly, in this case this was simple littering. (tee hee, we dropped a bunch of pumpkins filled with shaving cream down 9 floors!)
I'm halfway through the site and it looks so far like they just are dropping stuff down a stairwell. Seems more like Letterman than MIT. Where is the brilliant hack aspect to watching pumpkins fall nine stories?
>. At least they'd be more useful than those stupid CDs...
OT, but anyone get an AOL5 CD in the mail in a DVD case like I did the other day? I couldn't believe it! Turned out handy 'cause my daughter had ruined a DVD case and this made a nice replacement.
Yes. My wife and I moved into a new house a couple years ago and when we were planning out how to use the floorspace, she wanted the study which turns out is the coldest room in the house in the winter as it is on the corner sharing a wall with the garage and is the farthest room on the ground floor from the furnace. I took an extra bedroom upstairs as my 'lab'.
She talked me into trading. I didn't mind because the study is built over a crawlspace and it is closer to the phone lines, cable and power and overall it was a much more convenient location to wire up my network and stuff. After I got my two servers, my masq box, cable modem and my workstation into this room, we noticed that it was appreciably warmer. Almost too warm. We did this around Thanksgiving and I was toasty all throught the winter. Worried now though about how hot it will get in the summer. Might have to think about putting some ceiling vents in or something.
>Will breaking up MS not just make them a more powerful force? See AT&T/Lucent/Misc Bells. They were split up... and now they are merging again ... hmmm.
Southwest Bell has merged with PacBell and Ameritech, Bell Atlantic has merged with NyNex. AT&T has bought up wireless and cable compaines. The original "Bell System" with the monopoly local service business, tied to a single long distance network coupled with the world's premier telecommunications R&D (Bell Labs) is never going to become reality again.
Each has it's own goals and motivations. Ma Bell simply can't charge whatever she wants and provide whatever level of service she sees fit. She doesn't exist anymore and never will again.
The same should happen to Microsoft. Divide it up into separate businesses that fight for different markets, have different goals and drivers and there may not be a business advantage to continuing on the dark-path. After all, contrary to what some may think, Microsoft did all this for profit motive, not because they worship Satan and the devil told them to do this.
I hope that when they are done with Microsoft, there won't be any business advantage for them to break the law anymore. I'm not interested in seeing them blasted out of existance. I want to see them develop sell and support products that stand on their own merit. Maybe they can - they will thrive. Maybe they can't - they will die.
> Look at AT&T. They were broken up into one long distance company and several RBOC's (I think 7). However, if you wanted a telephone, you bought service from an RBOC and AT&T.
This analogy has come up before, and it's not entirely appropriate. The breakup of the "Bell System" did indeed leave a monopoly in pace for local telephone service. The difference was that long-distance could not be provided by the local carriers, and these local carriers had to allow "equal access" to LD carriers like AT&T, MCI and Sprint or anyone else who wanted to offer LD service.
Then the 1996 Telecom Act set up provisions for the RBOCs to offer in-state LD and for the LD companies to offer competitive local access. The laws now allow competition in both local and long distance service. Why this competition has not come about to any real degree is a separate discussion about the FCC's implementation of regulations and policy in regards to '96 Telecom.
>In other words, breaking up the company does not introduce competition into the market. It just makes for several sub-monopolies.
I don't agree. Using the analogy of the Bell System breakup, you can indeed choose from LD service providers and prices for LD have come down over time as a result of competitive pressure. To be sure, the telephone service industry is not the Utopia of competition that it could be, but customers, especially business customers, do have choice and benefit from competition.
I think it is certainly possible for a breakup of Microsoft to result in an improved competitive marketplace for software. It is also possible for the breakup to be poorly designed and/or implemented and that the result could be little benefit for the consumer.
I'm hoping that they break up into several business to cripple the leverage that MS has used illegally to attempt to force OEM's and consumers to use only MS browsers and apps with MS OSes. But I also hope they go a step farther. Force MS to publish API's and make them offer them at a reasonable price to all comers with no strings attached.
Sorry to reply to my own post, got off my lazy ass an found it, someone actually posted in an earlier story on /. about pizza hut buying space on a proton.
m l s .ads.cooke.html
http://www.reston.com/nasa/humor/shuttle.ads.ht
and
http://www.reston.com/nasa/commercialization/is
Actually, now that I look at it, the liquid fuel tank is mcdonalds, it is one of the solid boosters that is painted like an energizer.
(oh, and sorry I'm too lazy to actually submit with working links)
Oh yeah, where's that link to a picture someone did of the shuttle sitting on the pad covered in ad banners, the biggest being the liquid-fuel tank painted to resemble an energizer battery!
*mumbles* (damn, why didn't I bookmark it, cache is long gone)
Kids in the Hall reference:
Canadian?
Yeah, kind of like an American but without a gun.
Ohhh!
Do you want to shoot him now, or wait until you get home?
I INSIST that you shoot me now! (nyaaah!)