>Maybe the vast majority of them don't have the time and inclination to throw away all their programs and spend months learning to use lame F/OSS stuff that offers half the functionality, and only twice the inconvenience.
So what did swearing off Microsoft entail? We looked at all the alternatives. We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.) We just looked around. We looked at Sun's Sun Ray systems. We looked at a lot of things. And it just came back to Linux, and Red Hat in particular, was a good solution.
I know I saved $80,000 right away by going to open source, and each time something like (Windows) XP comes along, I save even more money because I don't have to buy new equipment to run the software.
One of the analysts said it costs $1,250 per person to change over to open source. It wasn't anywhere near that for us.
The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy. It just creates distractions.
>Here's a novel idea for you: when recommending a solution, how about thinking about what the victim _needs_, rather than just thinking about your religious duty to convert everyone to Linux?
For those of us atheists using linux, how does this fit in?
>This "thinking" stuff is hard.
You're right, it is. I mean, when you do it, you realize that you're wrong, don't you?
Or are you having trouble typing that link into your address bar?
Or perhaps you don't believe successful businessmen when they give you advice?
>Instead they would invent a new closed protocol that would give them total control over the email system and shut out the little guy entirely. Forget running your own mail server, or having free email accounts. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
Seriously, man, don't be so paranoid. That simply isn't going to happen. They can't even get their act together trying to do that with IM clients (which have generally always been controlled by big corporations) which connect to their own servers!
>You just don't grasp that the standards are going to have to change.
Why? That is bad form. Even bang addresses are still supported on the internet. New standards shouldn't just break existing, *working*, standards. That's poor design and poor policy no matter who you are.
>SPF is already on its way to becoming an Internet standard.
From what I can see, it has a long way to go before it gets even close. It's about as "internet standard" as far as mail is concerned as POP-prior-to-SMTP.
>Having to pay a tiny amount for the privelege of using a mail account at a different ISP is not the end of the world, and it doesn't "cripple" anything.
Since when was using an internet standard a privelege? I am not priveleged to use a mail server I pay for. I demand full email functionality from it, and I expect all RFC standards to be adhered to. Full stop.
Any email system that breaks RFC standards is crippled and wrong.
DirecPC from Canada is a totally different animal than DirecPC from the US. So different they are run by different companies and on different satellites (DirecPC Canada runs on Nimiq 1 / Nimiq 2).
Partly because of the price. DirecPC Canada charged $100 per GB when they opened, ensuring they had the cash to stay alive and fast. They're down to $20 per GB, still an outrageous (but probably necessary) price.
DirecPC US prefers to charge less, in exchange for throttling heavy users.
Sending email from your ISPs account: Free, and an internet standard.
Sending email from another ISPs account: Not Free. Internet standard, but becoming a difficulty with ISPs blocking ports.
Catch the drift?
>If you don't want to pay, use an account on your ISP's servers.
Why should one when standards dictate that's not necessary? That sucks. Anything that cripples internet functions just to get rid of spammers smacks of zealotry. It's killing the patient to cure the disease.
>Either SMTP will change or it will get replaced by a protocol that works better, and if you think this minor change is bad I can guarantee you won't like SMTP's replacement.
You mean DJBs idea? Nahhh, that'd be cool with me. I already run qmail, it'd be a smooth upgrade. As long as people don't castrate standards through their own petty bickering over the "right" implementation.
>Using your ISP's mail server is a retarded way to do it, and the fact that it is possible now is the *whole problem* that SPF was designed to solve.
Using a mailserver outside the realm of your ISP, on a properly configured, pay by the byte ISP, costs money. On the same ISP, using their mail server should be free.
If the mailing lists would simply specify the address the mail would be coming from (oh, for the perfect world that website forms and lists *tell* you what address will mail you) it would be easy to whitelist them and not require a hash.
>And then fixes developed for the one would have no bearing on the other.
Exactly. That's the whole point. One is broken from a problem, while the problem shouldn't exist (and therefore doesn't need fixing) in the other.
While common problems can exist, it's about as likely as linux and windows having similar problems. ie: It has happened, rarely, but in the norm, never happens.
>Having the two the same gives you another identical platform to compare readings against
A particularly bad thing when trying to investigate something completely foreign. You want different units to check that the readings *do* come out identically. Any discoveries that are particularly different are suspect until another mission.
>you can apply it to the other as soon as you're confident of the fix.
That's no good if the problem turns out to be unrepairable. This one might be repairable, but they still haven't implemented a fix yet.
Fortunately, for more dangerous missions, NASA does employ a strategy of independant teams when building a Space Shuttle (although the independant teams are mostly separated by development and test procedures).
>Please don't call graphics people stupid for disliking Corel Draw
I didn't call them stupid for disliking it (although, for an amateur, I absolutely love Corel Draw). I simply call them stupid for pretending it isn't being used.
>Must... resist...telling...horror stories (nobody cares but us hoity-toitys).
You're certainly not included! You freely admit there's a lot of people using Corel Draw. Or so I assume from the horror stories you suppress.:-)
>Now, Mac based print shops have a good reason to refuse the format, just like *shudder* publisher.
Most places do refuse the format, but at their own loss. Those places have to put together papers explaining how to deal with them if you run Corel Draw. Their crap systems can't deal with Corel Draw eps files properly. I call their systems crap because even after that eps has been run through eps to pdf, the PDF is still not readable by their systems (although it works great in Acrobat Reader and xpdf). That's really lame.
In the end, they have to deal with HUGE TIFF files, which I can't imagine makes their lives easier.
>Have a boilerplate response ready explaining that you only accept documents in open formats
That isn't going to work nearly as well as:
"Our office is standardized on Office 97, and with 200 seats, the cost to 'upgrade' to Office 2003 is beyond our capacity. Please resend the file in a backwards compatible manner."
That will get their computing department to ensure people save their files in a compatible format, as most businesses *are* going to stick to Office 2000 or Office 97. They've probably had that message sent to them dozens of times before you give it to them, so they're going to listen to it.
A one-off "it's not open source" message wouldn't get my suppliers, for example, to stop sending me their pricesheets in Excel files.
This is the same as using corel draw for your graphics. It might not be the graphics industry standard, but all the companies I've dealt with (From the National and Regional Phone Books to Local Newspapers, all the way down to the local Ad-Rag) will explain, in detail, how you can save corel draw files in a manner they will accept. They specifically mention corel draw because it *is* popular enough that not supporting it means lost business (despite popular belief by stupid hoity-toity graphics folks at the local learning centers). However, I'd not expect a document on how to save a compatible Xfig file...
(cough), a difference of only 50,000 Quebecers is a really, really, really, big minority. As in, what it takes to get Bush elected type of minority. Had I hindsight, myself and 49,999 Canadians would have found it worth their time to move there for a short while to get them the hell outta Canada.
If Canada were the US we'd be rid of that annoying wart. Doctor, bust out the Compound U already!
Mix those facts in with a liberal splash of our once second-in-commandparty being a group intent on breaking Quebec from Canada along with Bill 101 outlawing English Free Speech in Quebec public schools (a RIGHT guaranteed to ALL CANADIANS by the charter) and I, for one, after that, refer to Quebec as a separate country also. I mean, WTF do they keep that "I will remember the time you damn British beat us" license plate motto for? Because they prefer to use "tough love"?
Fuck 'em, eh? Most Quebecers are assholes, and I fairly judge that by the fact they keep electing a separatist majority government for themselves, over, and over, and over again.
Oh, and for those who aren't convinced, how about this? Only *TOTAL* assholes try to turn a known burial ground into a golf course. At least the original inhabitants of Canada have better manners.
We don't need them, and they DEFINATELY don't want us.
>I don't think that's in the jurisdiction of the courts that these lawsuits were filed in (Washington and New York).
In fact, in the case of that school, they weren't even breaking the law. It isn't illegal to download pirated music in Canada. Even attempting to sue them for downloading there might get the RIAA in trouble (well, I assume it's illegal to try to file a lawsuit on someone for a non-existant "crime").
Remember, for all your favourite downloads, alt.binaries.mp3.dance is your legal music source (if you're Canadian)!
>Someone remind me to pick up my "Neoanarchism Safety Kit" before a/.er gets ellected president of the world.
Sounds like a good deal! Better buy one up quickly. I hear that now the "Non-WASP Safety Kits" have sold out strangely in the US, the Neoanarchism Kits are being used as a temporary substitute!
>At the cost of $2 per day, 5 million dollars wil sustain almost 7,000 refugees/famine victims in less privileged regions of the world for a whole year.
Give a man a fish, he can eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he can eat forever.
Don't waste your money on that suggestion. Instead, it makes infinitely more sense to educate the people in those regions. The only reason they're stuck there is because there's ususally some sociopathic dictator opressing them. Only education can help these people figure out how to enact true political change (and that's what they really need -- they don't need more food -- that's not the real problem).
All of the long-term problems in these countries often reduce to education.
That all being said, if one were to answer this to all frivolous spendature, the country's worth would decrease, causing all sorts of interesting economic problems.
>Would you rather I put traces of animal fat in your food and soil
Considering in Walkerton farm runoff killed 7 and made 5000 sick, the second looks like a great option.
>would you rather have benzene and arsenic in your drinking water.
Arsenic has no smell (so that can't be the problem in that city!) and considering the maximum exposure factories can give you to benzene (legally), and that it's effects are only from really, really, really long term exposure (unlike that farm water), I think you can guess where I'm heading.
>Why do you think it's illogical to make a distinction between pollutants?
Well, to me, wether I drink naturally poisoned water or synthetically poisoned water, I'm still dead. When something is a dangerous pollutant, to me it really makes no difference if the source is a pig's ass or a tipped over bottle of arsenic. To me they are both deadly, and therefore get the same rating.
I suppose this comes down to arguments like "Would you rather be shot by a musket point blank or an AK-47 round from a distance" Either way, you're probably going to be sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
>See my journal :)
Check your powersupply for faults.
When this type of thing happens, it usually comes down to the power supply.
>Maybe the vast majority of them don't have the time and inclination to throw away all their programs and spend months learning to use lame F/OSS stuff that offers half the functionality, and only twice the inconvenience.
????????
So what did swearing off Microsoft entail?
We looked at all the alternatives. We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft. (Editor's note: Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple in 1997.) We just looked around. We looked at Sun's Sun Ray systems. We looked at a lot of things. And it just came back to Linux, and Red Hat in particular, was a good solution.
I know I saved $80,000 right away by going to open source, and each time something like (Windows) XP comes along, I save even more money because I don't have to buy new equipment to run the software.
One of the analysts said it costs $1,250 per person to change over to open source. It wasn't anywhere near that for us.
The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy. It just creates distractions.
>Here's a novel idea for you: when recommending a solution, how about thinking about what the victim _needs_, rather than just thinking about your religious duty to convert everyone to Linux?
For those of us atheists using linux, how does this fit in?
>This "thinking" stuff is hard.
You're right, it is. I mean, when you do it, you realize that you're wrong, don't you?
Or are you having trouble typing that link into your address bar?
Or perhaps you don't believe successful businessmen when they give you advice?
>ever since I had the screen fixed by pocketpctechs.com it's made an annoying high pitched hum
The transformer in it (or perhaps an inductor, probably the backlight transformer, though) has a loose winding.
HTH!
>Why didn't you buy the extended warranty?
Homer: "Extended warranty? How can I lose?!?!?"
Moe: "Uhhh... too dumb."
Moe moves the crayon out just a little.
>Once again, SPF doesn't break anything.
Cool. So, you can email from outside SPFed servers using their domain and expect the email to go through?
No?
Yup, broken.
>You have to ask? The answer is spam.
Yes, I have to ask. Why should we break things just to annoy spammers? That's no good. Killing the patient to cure the disease again.
It's like liberating a country by killing everyone there. Sure, it's liberated..... But it's a crap solution.
>If you don't like SPF, you don't have to use providers that support it.
Actually, I simply don't run it for my company. Better that way.
>You just better not complain when you're joe-jobbed.
Not a problem. I could always use the extra notoriety! You know what they say, there's no such thing as bad advertising.
>You actually had to know fudge to write one.
Yeah, like the words "chiba north".
(Or did I get that wrong? It's been a long while.)
Me lose brain?
:-)
[laughs]
Why I laugh?
>Instead they would invent a new closed protocol that would give them total control over the email system and shut out the little guy entirely. Forget running your own mail server, or having free email accounts. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
Seriously, man, don't be so paranoid. That simply isn't going to happen. They can't even get their act together trying to do that with IM clients (which have generally always been controlled by big corporations) which connect to their own servers!
>You just don't grasp that the standards are going to have to change.
Why? That is bad form. Even bang addresses are still supported on the internet. New standards shouldn't just break existing, *working*, standards. That's poor design and poor policy no matter who you are.
>SPF is already on its way to becoming an Internet standard.
From what I can see, it has a long way to go before it gets even close. It's about as "internet standard" as far as mail is concerned as POP-prior-to-SMTP.
>Having to pay a tiny amount for the privelege of using a mail account at a different ISP is not the end of the world, and it doesn't "cripple" anything.
Since when was using an internet standard a privelege? I am not priveleged to use a mail server I pay for. I demand full email functionality from it, and I expect all RFC standards to be adhered to. Full stop.
Any email system that breaks RFC standards is crippled and wrong.
It works in linux for free. And uses standard DVB equipment.
Or use any other DVB internet provider. Forget about anyone using proprietary crap hardware. Stick with standards.
DirecPC from Canada is a totally different animal than DirecPC from the US. So different they are run by different companies and on different satellites (DirecPC Canada runs on Nimiq 1 / Nimiq 2).
Partly because of the price. DirecPC Canada charged $100 per GB when they opened, ensuring they had the cash to stay alive and fast. They're down to $20 per GB, still an outrageous (but probably necessary) price.
DirecPC US prefers to charge less, in exchange for throttling heavy users.
Pick your poisons!
>I still fail to see a huge problem here
Okay. Let me detail it then:
Sending email from your ISPs account: Free, and an internet standard.
Sending email from another ISPs account: Not Free. Internet standard, but becoming a difficulty with ISPs blocking ports.
Catch the drift?
>If you don't want to pay, use an account on your ISP's servers.
Why should one when standards dictate that's not necessary? That sucks. Anything that cripples internet functions just to get rid of spammers smacks of zealotry. It's killing the patient to cure the disease.
>Either SMTP will change or it will get replaced by a protocol that works better, and if you think this minor change is bad I can guarantee you won't like SMTP's replacement.
You mean DJBs idea? Nahhh, that'd be cool with me. I already run qmail, it'd be a smooth upgrade. As long as people don't castrate standards through their own petty bickering over the "right" implementation.
>Using your ISP's mail server is a retarded way to do it, and the fact that it is possible now is the *whole problem* that SPF was designed to solve.
Using a mailserver outside the realm of your ISP, on a properly configured, pay by the byte ISP, costs money. On the same ISP, using their mail server should be free.
That's a fundamental thing that SPF breaks.
>I bet the mailing lists would love that..
If the mailing lists would simply specify the address the mail would be coming from (oh, for the perfect world that website forms and lists *tell* you what address will mail you) it would be easy to whitelist them and not require a hash.
>And then fixes developed for the one would have no bearing on the other.
Exactly. That's the whole point. One is broken from a problem, while the problem shouldn't exist (and therefore doesn't need fixing) in the other.
While common problems can exist, it's about as likely as linux and windows having similar problems. ie: It has happened, rarely, but in the norm, never happens.
>Having the two the same gives you another identical platform to compare readings against
A particularly bad thing when trying to investigate something completely foreign. You want different units to check that the readings *do* come out identically. Any discoveries that are particularly different are suspect until another mission.
>you can apply it to the other as soon as you're confident of the fix.
That's no good if the problem turns out to be unrepairable. This one might be repairable, but they still haven't implemented a fix yet.
Fortunately, for more dangerous missions, NASA does employ a strategy of independant teams when building a Space Shuttle (although the independant teams are mostly separated by development and test procedures).
>Why wouldn't NASA just develop the same software for both?
Because then errors on one wouldn't necessarialy be present on the other, perhaps?
It seems I am wrong, but it also seems NASA would have been prudent to use two different teams.
>I suppose that Opportunity may have the same software issue.
IIRC, the software for each rover was independently developed, and therefore totally different. I might be wrong, though.
>Please don't call graphics people stupid for disliking Corel Draw
:-)
I didn't call them stupid for disliking it (although, for an amateur, I absolutely love Corel Draw). I simply call them stupid for pretending it isn't being used.
>Must... resist...telling...horror stories (nobody cares but us hoity-toitys).
You're certainly not included! You freely admit there's a lot of people using Corel Draw. Or so I assume from the horror stories you suppress.
>Now, Mac based print shops have a good reason to refuse the format, just like *shudder* publisher.
Most places do refuse the format, but at their own loss. Those places have to put together papers explaining how to deal with them if you run Corel Draw. Their crap systems can't deal with Corel Draw eps files properly. I call their systems crap because even after that eps has been run through eps to pdf, the PDF is still not readable by their systems (although it works great in Acrobat Reader and xpdf). That's really lame.
In the end, they have to deal with HUGE TIFF files, which I can't imagine makes their lives easier.
As I say, it's their loss, in time, that is.
>Have a boilerplate response ready explaining that you only accept documents in open formats
That isn't going to work nearly as well as:
"Our office is standardized on Office 97, and with 200 seats, the cost to 'upgrade' to Office 2003 is beyond our capacity. Please resend the file in a backwards compatible manner."
That will get their computing department to ensure people save their files in a compatible format, as most businesses *are* going to stick to Office 2000 or Office 97. They've probably had that message sent to them dozens of times before you give it to them, so they're going to listen to it.
A one-off "it's not open source" message wouldn't get my suppliers, for example, to stop sending me their pricesheets in Excel files.
This is the same as using corel draw for your graphics. It might not be the graphics industry standard, but all the companies I've dealt with (From the National and Regional Phone Books to Local Newspapers, all the way down to the local Ad-Rag) will explain, in detail, how you can save corel draw files in a manner they will accept. They specifically mention corel draw because it *is* popular enough that not supporting it means lost business (despite popular belief by stupid hoity-toity graphics folks at the local learning centers). However, I'd not expect a document on how to save a compatible Xfig file...
>Contrary to a minority of Quebecer's wishes
(cough), a difference of only 50,000 Quebecers is a really, really, really, big minority. As in, what it takes to get Bush elected type of minority. Had I hindsight, myself and 49,999 Canadians would have found it worth their time to move there for a short while to get them the hell outta Canada.
If Canada were the US we'd be rid of that annoying wart. Doctor, bust out the Compound U already!
Mix those facts in with a liberal splash of our once second-in-command party being a group intent on breaking Quebec from Canada along with Bill 101 outlawing English Free Speech in Quebec public schools (a RIGHT guaranteed to ALL CANADIANS by the charter) and I, for one, after that, refer to Quebec as a separate country also. I mean, WTF do they keep that "I will remember the time you damn British beat us" license plate motto for? Because they prefer to use "tough love"?
Fuck 'em, eh? Most Quebecers are assholes, and I fairly judge that by the fact they keep electing a separatist majority government for themselves, over, and over, and over again.
Oh, and for those who aren't convinced, how about this? Only *TOTAL* assholes try to turn a known burial ground into a golf course. At least the original inhabitants of Canada have better manners.
We don't need them, and they DEFINATELY don't want us.
[It was worth the karma]
>I don't think that's in the jurisdiction of the courts that these lawsuits were filed in (Washington and New York).
In fact, in the case of that school, they weren't even breaking the law. It isn't illegal to download pirated music in Canada. Even attempting to sue them for downloading there might get the RIAA in trouble (well, I assume it's illegal to try to file a lawsuit on someone for a non-existant "crime").
Remember, for all your favourite downloads, alt.binaries.mp3.dance is your legal music source (if you're Canadian)!
>Someone remind me to pick up my "Neoanarchism Safety Kit" before a /.er gets ellected president of the world.
Sounds like a good deal! Better buy one up quickly. I hear that now the "Non-WASP Safety Kits" have sold out strangely in the US, the Neoanarchism Kits are being used as a temporary substitute!
>At the cost of $2 per day, 5 million dollars wil sustain almost 7,000 refugees/famine victims in less privileged regions of the world for a whole year.
Give a man a fish, he can eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he can eat forever.
Don't waste your money on that suggestion. Instead, it makes infinitely more sense to educate the people in those regions. The only reason they're stuck there is because there's ususally some sociopathic dictator opressing them. Only education can help these people figure out how to enact true political change (and that's what they really need -- they don't need more food -- that's not the real problem).
All of the long-term problems in these countries often reduce to education.
That all being said, if one were to answer this to all frivolous spendature, the country's worth would decrease, causing all sorts of interesting economic problems.
>Would you rather I put traces of animal fat in your food and soil
Considering in Walkerton farm runoff killed 7 and made 5000 sick, the second looks like a great option.
>would you rather have benzene and arsenic in your drinking water.
Arsenic has no smell (so that can't be the problem in that city!) and considering the maximum exposure factories can give you to benzene (legally), and that it's effects are only from really, really, really long term exposure (unlike that farm water), I think you can guess where I'm heading.
>Why do you think it's illogical to make a distinction between pollutants?
Well, to me, wether I drink naturally poisoned water or synthetically poisoned water, I'm still dead. When something is a dangerous pollutant, to me it really makes no difference if the source is a pig's ass or a tipped over bottle of arsenic. To me they are both deadly, and therefore get the same rating.
I suppose this comes down to arguments like "Would you rather be shot by a musket point blank or an AK-47 round from a distance" Either way, you're probably going to be sorry.
>Is that too much to ask?
:-)
Nahh, it's your opinion, you're welcome to it!
However, it does seem a bit illogical...
>I don't think you have to be much of a tree hugger to be appalled by this.
Question: Do you eat ham?
Just asking, because if you think that's bad, people have sued city planning departments because they live too near a hog farm.