I've never really believed in Astrology, but something bothered me. My sister used to cast horoscopes and do other things with it, and several years ago, mentioned to me that based on the charts and other information, that there should be 10 planets, not just 9.
I don't know what to make of this, except to point out two things. There can be some forms of analysis that may have some valid elements even if not all of it is valid. (Then again, I don't know if astrology has any validity yet, but something like this bothers me.) And that we shouldn't always immediately dismiss someone's ideas every time even if we think they are a crackpot.
I think one of the really crackpot ideas that professional physicians were dismissing was the idea that diseases were passed around by tiny organisms we could not see, and that it was a good idea for a physician doing an autopsy to wash his hands before tending to other sick patients so as not to transfer the disease carrying organisms from the dead to the sick, or even to the well. Semelweiss was routinely criticized as being a crackpot who didn't know what he was talking about. We now know that he was.
Now, of course, the converse, of humongous numbers of really crackpot ideas being exactly that can't be ignored either. But occasionally, they aren't.
Sure, Price is a factor in PC sales but... OS ultimatly comes down to what they're familiar with. My mother would love to go out and purchase a new PC for 350$ but if it doesn't have a copy of Windows with it, she'll simply go out and buy one.
If you bought a car for $3500 (or $35000) and discover that you have to spend another $1850 ($18500) for the engine you are going to be very angry or if you discover this ahead of time you will probably not buy it. If a PC sells for $350 it's going to be a hard sell to get someone to also then spend an additional $185 for the full version of Microsoft Windows 2004 (list price for a copy when you do not own a prior operating system). Even if it's $85 or so it's still a bit expensive for the home buyer. The only way they will get that much money for a copy is if they do what they've done with XP; impose anti-copying controls so strict that they virtually cannot be evaded. Which will encourage even more pirates to try to break it and may start another cycle of trying to implement even more draconian licensing systems.
In essence, they will not be able to charge the kind of prices they have before and they will either have to cut prices (almost a certainty) or see people stick with older and cheaper versions or perhaps used copies or bootlegs. (very likely)
I suspect that this may eventually trigger a copyright lawsuit that gets lost by them if they (or the SPA) really try to enforce their no transfer rule on bundled software, a restriction the Supreme Court has ruled was not permissible back in the Bobbs-Merrill case back near the turn of the (19th) Century; despite what the software companies claim, their mass-market software is sold, not licensed and is subject to the "first sale" rule.
Inexpensive computers are going to be real trouble for Microsoft's bottom line.
First, incorporating for $100 is not going to happen. While IANAL or accountant, just filing the paperwork in the US costs that much. Then of course, you have corporate taxes and foreign corporation filings in the event you incorporate in a state like Delaware, but chose to work in say Maryland. These folks get paid even if you do not. Yep, zero income still pays the taxman. Most states have a minimum corporate tax.
Having done this myself I am aware that it costs $40 to file a corporation charter in MD if you either incorporate non-stock or incorporate with par value of less than $10,000. That fee covers you for the first year, and it's $50 a year to renew. After the first year there is a yearly tax if you declare a stock corporation. You can declare a non-stock for profit corporation and skip the stock tax. But you either have to be able to read the statutes or have professional assistance. Much of this stuff is not that complicated or difficult; mostly it's paperwork and paying fees. But sometimes you may need assistance; if you're doing enough business you may want it to save you the headaches of doing it yourself.
In fact, someone once said that anyone who makes more than about $75,000 (that number might be higher now) probably needs to incorporate and get legal and financial advice in order to use the advantages to pay less in taxes as well as take advantages of certain benefits us unincorporated wage slaves don't have.
Oh, and if the contracting company declares bankruptcy (not sure if the contracting company as well) while you're working for them, YOU CANNOT QUIT! Under federal law, you cannot stop servicing a company in bankruptcy just because they cannot pay you. READ THAT AGAIN!
I find this highly unbelievable in view of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery. Even in the case of government agencies where one can be jailed for striking because it's illegal to strike, I've never heard of a case where a person who is a civilian employee of a non-military organization can't quit their job. I think it was F. Lee Bailey who mentioned in a TV newscast how he was advising some air traffic controllers who were members of the PATCO union who wanted to strike - and it was illegal for them to do so - and his response to them was while it was illegal to strike, they could send a message by quitting, which apparently is legal to do.
Now, if one quits work with a company one could be sued if there is a contract with appropriate provisions, and in such a case the courts might award damages but I do not believe they can order someone to work. To the best of my knowledge I've never heard of someone being forced to work for a private employer or prohibited from resigning employment.
Now, if one is incorporated and employed by one's own corporation, I could see where that corporation might be prohibited from refusing to do business with the other organization but if the only employee resigns from his corporation there's no way for it to continue to operate. I find such a claim - that one can't quit a private employer merely because it or its customer has gone bankrupt - hard to believe. I think during World War II certain occupations were considered protected and there were certain provisions then that could have prohibited some people from quitting but I'd like to see legal citations to court cases or statute law prove such a claim that a civilian employee can't quit a non-government private employer when it goes into bankruptcy or one of its customers does so.
It doesn't matter. They also have to pay the time for the people who deal with the calls,
Places that take a lot of calls use equipment to process the calls in order to eliminate people.
If you're on the line with a live person, you're costing them at least $.10/minute. (presumimg a $4.00/hr minimum wage lackey plus the cost of their office space).
Federal law sets the current minimum wage at $5.25. This is in addition to the 3% federal unemployment tax, the employer's 7.5% share of the 15% Social Security tax, the state unemployment tax and overhead. (The other taxes are deducted from the employee's pay.) So if you do get hold of someone it's probably somewhat more than that. Good luck getting a live person.
Where the fuck do you people get the right to start talking about infosec and the world trade center attacks????
You seem to miss the analogy. There is a failure of security - had there been no failure, the terrorists could not have taken over the planes - and as a result someone took over someone else's property and used it to commit damage.
Consider someone using a hijacked plane to destroy a building and make it unusable.
Now consider someone using a compromised computer to generate a denial of service attack upon a major site and make it inaccessible.
I think the analogy is very close.
Now, let's ask the question: Let's say someone figured out that you could slip box cutters and knives onto a plane and use them to hijack it. Would publicising this help? Well, considering that almost anyone who thought about it could figure it out, you wouldn't be giving anyone any new ideas. The exact same thing has been pointed out many times in a number of books and even done as a plot device in some movies, so it's not like it's a secret. Therefore, making such information public might have helped people be aware of vulnerabilities. But if the passengers on the Pennsylvania plane hadn't known about the other attacks as soon as possible we might also be comiserating the destruction of the White House, too.
Once the 'exploit' was known - that there were hijackers taking planes and using them as bombs - then making people aware of the danger - fully informing everyone, including passengers on the plane in Pennsylvania - resulted in preventing further attacks from occurring. Even if the hijackers knew that the passengers knew, they can still fight back against them. Full disclosure informs everyone and can give some people the opportunity to stop something from happening.
I worked there and lost 700 co-workers and posts like this just show how lame people in general really are. And how is an attack on 1 world trade center a military attack??? I don't recall peopel working in that tower working for the US government!!!
It is arguable that those involved are allegedly in some sort of (what they call) a holy war or 'jihad'. If the World Trade Center had been, say, a privately-owned factory building armaments for the Military, then it would have been a legitimate military target, same as the Pentagon. But the fact of the matter is that even if they were legitimately fighting a war, when you intentionally target non-combatant civilians you're not a soldier, you're a criminal and the organization you operate within, if it sanctions this, is a terrorist organization.
I know you think the analogy is amusing but I assure you it isn't. I was in the WTC 1 when this happened and I assure that it isn't amusing at all.
I think it was an accurate analogy, and I don't think it was intended as amusing.
Thank you, you got it exactly right.
So next time think before you open you mouth and conjure horrible memories just to be a sorry troll bastard.
Apparently he has no understanding of analogy as the comments of sigwinch pointed out beautifully:
The full disclosure mode is that the everybody is informed of the vulnerability and they deploy countermeasures as fast as they desire... [That] worked admirably on flight 93, reducing losses by at least tens of millions of dollars, and possibly by billions.
I must disagree on one point, however:
Attacking the first WTC tower was a military action. The second was a publicity stunt designed to increase indirect losses.
I agree with your second point, I think you have it right on the head. I figured it out: the first one was to get our attention, the second was to make sure the TV cameras caught it, e.g. the first attack was to bash the American public over the head with a 2x4, the second was a sucker punch in the stomach.
But I must disagree with your first statement: If all they were doing was attacking the Pentagon then that was a reasonable and legitimate military action (but it still was wrong for reasons I state below). But attacking the WTC was NOT a legitimate military operation and constituted an act of terrorism. If whoever did this believes they are fighting a war of some kind against the U.S. then - whether we like it or not - the Pentagon was a valid target for attack. Intentionally targeting a civilian structure that does not provide either military operations or military support changes you from a legitimate military operation into criminals. This was settled more than 30 years ago with the trial of Lt. Calley in the Mei Lai Massacre incident. But beyond that, legitimate civilized conduct of any military operation doesn't grab civilian transports and intentionally kill noncombatants.
If they had used planes without civilians on the Pentagon attack or pulled a McVeigh by using a truck bomb there, I'd have no argument that it was a legitimate military attack. But when you intentionally target noncombatants, you're no longer a soldier or a legitimate military, you cross the line into terrorism and criminality.
And don't anybody tell me that it's a poor comparison, that computer viruses don't cost lives and how can I be so insensitive.
There's already been a example of this on the TV Show Law and Order where someone figured out a way to reprogram a hospital's insulin pumps to randomly kill some patients because they didn't like one of the doctors who was an owner of the place. That this example of a computer virus killing people is a fictional incident does not make the possibility of a real one that might someday do so any less credible.
Most current guerrillas lack the competence to carry out severe infosec attacks
All I can respond to that is fortunately that is the situation now and for the moment that we've been lucky. If only those hypocrites who allegedly support the Muslim religion through violence would practice what they preach and stay as ignorant as they want everyone else to be made, then there wouldn't be too much of a problem. Unfortunately, the possibility of infowar is very real and will happen eventually. Just like those who predicted serious terrorist attacks on the U.S. would be coming: We just don't know when.
I really liked the point about software companies being liable for the software they produce. The implication from his article was that a firewall manufacturer isn't not liable if a hacker breaks in because of shoddy code in their firewall. Is this true? Anyone know of (or have a subscription to one of those cool legal services) any legal cases that have proved or disproved this?
I'll just respond this way: Can anyone name a company that is releasing any kind of code for a mass-market product except "as is" and without warranty?
I've yet to find any software at all being released with any kind of claim beyond "as is" except maybe software for nuclear power plants or aircraft where the software is produced for one customer, hopefully is rigorously tested and carefully introduced with severe restrictions on changes and very, very high levels of failsafe design. This software would also be very expensive - and worth it - and would take a long, long, long, long, long, long time to be released.
Approximately two months ago there was a major security failure involving 3 sites. In two of the cases the people there were unaware of the problem, and as a result the criminals involved were able to use the machines that they had taken control of to cause damage they were attempting upon two large facilities.
In the third case, the people there were informed about the attack and were able to stop it in time, because they had full disclosure of what was happening in the other cases.
Now, looking at these two security exploits, which do you think was the better solution, the passengers who were unaware of what was happening until their planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings, or the ones who were informed and fought back?
.BIZ - Why bother? (Unless yours is reg elsewhere)
on
.biz Open For Biz
·
· Score: 1
The registration fee for.biz is more than a.COM or some of the other more "well known" Top Level Domains. Short term it's almost twice as much; long term it's triple. You can register in.com,.org or.net for around $18 each for two years vs. $30 for.biz (or.info). A 10-year registration in one of the "big 3" is about $90 vs. a minimum of $280 for.biz or.info. And that's from a "discount broker". The more famous registrars charge more.
Choose.BIZ: "Less recognizable and more expensive." Sounds like a winning advertising slogan!
About the only reason for using it is if someone else has the one you want in.com, etc. Otherwise it's overpriced.
The article presents an interesting arguement for why a completely new software project must have an arbitrarily large upper bound for time/quality estimates and can have no lower bound.
But herein lies the rub -- exactly how many software systems are "completely new?"
Damn few!!
Unless you're merely doing maintenance on an existing program and know exactly what you need to change, what you are doing is new. Especially if you are trying to fix a problem with a software package that you are not familiar with.
The average software project in an average industry will be primarily a repackaging of previously solved problems.The majority of integration tasks will be sufficiently similar to previous integration tasks as to be known.
If that was the case we would be able to make better estimates. This is almost always not the case.
You will be left with a small number of "sub problems" which are unique and new. But now we have a situation where the caveats of the article are very important. Specifically, if we have decomposed the programming tasks to a sufficient degree, it should be the case that the estimation is tractable.
Software development is an art form. You can hire someone to paint your house and he can tell you exactly what it will cost. This is presumed upon the house being already built and it being an exact structure before he starts; that you not rebuild the house while he is painting it; nor change the paint color in the moddle of the job; and not asking him to remove the previous paint coat, etc. Otherwise it's akin to doing the Sistine Chapel without even an image to start with. An unlimited job results in an unlimited requirement. Until someone pulls the plug.
Also, it should be noted, that the author assumes that a good estimate is one obtained through formal methods that is objectively defensible. However, in project maangement, a good estimate is defined as one that is believable and acceptable to all stakeholders in the process. The method for obtaining the estimate is not important.
It is if you want it to be realistic. Usually the estimate is either totally unrealistic or it's manufactured from whole cloth.
Moreover, good project management will include some significant up-front analysis. One common (at least common to companies with good PM'ing track records) is to run "monte-carlo" simulations of project work with large variances in schedule-v-actual work. With a run of a few thousand simulations, those processes that are most important to the time and budget performance of the project.
This is ridiculous. If management knew what it was doing we wouldn't have so many businesses run themselves into the ground and the dot com bubble would never have happened in the first place.
These "key" work packages are often non-obvious without this type of simulation work. However, with a good work breakdown structure and a good simulator, it is possible to generate a reasonably accurate picture of project performance based on what is not known.
Asking for estimates on the development of art work is ridiculous unless you have fixed guidelines and an exact idea of what you want, something which is usually lacking.
This means that in the "real world" of business, the article's claim is irrelevant!!
If it's irrelevant, why is it in the "real world" more than 3/4 of all projects run over time and over budget and something near 1/2 end up being cancelled?
We don't NEED objectively defined and defensible estimates. Instead we need estimates that the project stakeholders (which includes the people doing the work) can agree to.
You can get people to agree to anything. The question is whether the estimates are anything close to accurate. In most cases, they are not.
We don't NEED our estimates to be generated by formal methodologies. Subjective estimates backed up by years of experience are just as good, and often better, from a planning perspective.
True. But the problem is, most places don't know enough about what they are doing or how it is defined to be able to give any kind of reasonable estimate. If you don't measure what's going on, and you do everything in an ad-hoc style, you will get estimates that are essentially about as valid as rolling dice to get an answer. And maybe less valid than that.
This whole article strikes me as another programmer trying to show how dumb the business people are.
It is not that business people are dumb, it is that we are failing to make adequate estimates and standing up for them as based upon what we know to be correct. But again, since the measurements of what is being done are often missing, the estimates are usually nothing better than seat-of-the-pants guesses, and wildly wrong.
Hey folks, good business people KNOW that estimating is hard and that it isn't objective. But just because something isn't objective doesn't mean it can't be done well. It is possible to build models that compensate for unknowns if you can do enough decompossing of the problem to limit the unknowns to a well defined, small manageable few.
If that was the case, why is it common place for managers to demand increases in functionality and cuts in the schedule? Because those who hear the estimates think they are overly padded (and therefore should be cut), and those who make the estimates don't have the means to show where they get the numbers from (and therefore can't show why their estimate is even close to correct, when it probably wasn't anyway).
So, in the view of this PM, this is all just academic and has no bearing on the real world.
Believe that if you will; the way things are really happening in the world prove otherwise.
Whether you want to believe it or not, programmers are a highly optimistic bunch.
I think that being optimistic is a good thing; it keeps most programmers from going out and getting other (less-stressful) jobs (my favorite one is to suggest I'll quit being a programmer in order to do something less stressful like driving a truck of unstable explosives) or going Postal.:)
This is especially true WRT
[with respect to] any technological issue, where you almost never see actual analysis of possible problems with a system. Most of the time, this is a good thing, as most systems are relatively benign (actually, most are banal, but that's another issue) and developers need their optimism to face ever more complex code and systems. However it does make them tend to underestimate the time that development will take.
I have learned, myself. One thing I started to do - and I explained to my manager, who, thank goodness, used to be a programmer - that I am taking what I think things will take and doubling the estimate based on the fact that something ALWAYS goes wrong. There's always some snag part way through the work that causes it to slow to a crawl or come a cropper [grind to a halt]. Some piece takes longer, or the implementation I choose doesn't work, or factor X. [an otherwise unknown event or circumstance] This means that I have slack space in the other items to make up for the one that goes wrong.
Carleton Sheets, a man who was talking about how to buy real estate on his instruction tapes said something useful which I decided I can use in estimating time requirements for various fixes:
If what you are offering doesn't embarass you (in effect, if you don't feel like you're being greedy in offering too little to them, or you don't feel that your offer is so favorable to you that you are taking advantage of the other person) you're offering them too much.
We need to learn to ask for the proper amount of resources and point out that less than the minimum makes it impossible to respond within the requirements no matter how much someone wants it to happen. (As Brooks points out, it doesn't matter how many women you throw at the task it still takes 9 months to produce a baby. Demand the baby be brought forth in less time and you either get a dead fetus (and possibly mother) or a sickly premature baby.)
Another reason that developers tend to underestimate development time is that they tend to have very healthy egos when it comes to technological issues. Again, when facing the complexity of modern code and systems, this is probably a healthy defense mechanism.
We need to learn that this is not a good idea because if you are consistently wrong on your estimates, eventually you get the "kid that cried wolf" syndrome: nobody believes you any more and all of the estimating systems become what everyone knows they are: a joke.
But when you couple all of this with a management that wants to believe deflated time estimates, it's no wonder that most project end up taking more time than initially thought.
It's actually no wonder "most" projects end up being cancelled. They take too long (because the people who are supposed to implement them were too aggressive in what they would deliver) and cost too much (because they routinely run overtime because the estimate was wrong in the first place).
SafeSurf's reply - plus a casual browsing of their site - makes your response ridiculous. As ridiculous as asking Napster for a list of all the files that have been traded on their network.
That depends on whether they keep a list of which files have had requests to start transfers made. They may or may not depending on how they set up their system and what they were required to do, especially with respect to potential royalty payments.
Go to SafeSurf's site now. They describe the exact technical method by which they "block" sites. As their ref notes, sites are blocked by being marked by an administrator using a special HTML meta tag.
SafeSurf do not, nor do they need to, administer a list of "blocked" sites. They don't even decide the ratings themselves. All SafeSurf do is provide the plug-in to read the metatags.
Fine, then they should be able to explicitly say that. If they don't explicitly say that there is no blocking list, you have to wonder why they do not. Even the DMCA regulations specifically have an exemption for the blocking list for website blocking software. Considering how much is being taken away from fair use and so little given back when it comes to the DMCA, such an exemption wouldn't be necessary if there wasn't some form of list being used by some blocking software.
And in view of the rather nasty treatement of people who tried to find anything about what blocking software is doing, I would presume that such programs are guilty until proven innocent.
Of course digital photos don't endanger history. See, history tends to be the stuff that has already happened? And well, hate to break the news to you, but... you can't change history. So therefore, nothing will EVER endanger history - that is until we invent a time machine;).
History is the record of what has happened. And if the records are unreadable, lost or destroyed, the history is gone. And if people are unaware of it, same thing.
Are you aware that an almost identical incident to what happened in Tianamen Square happened in the United States. In Washington DC, in the 1930s. This is where General McArthur had his first battle experience: rounding up and driving WWI veterans out of the makeshift hovels they had built in Anacostia. But we didn't hear much about that because it was virtually forgotten.
When the records of history are lost, that is the loss of history.
To access data stored in this fashion, you need a computer with the proper hardware and software. At this time, this presents no problem; few computers today come without CD-ROM drives, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with absolutely no access to one. But that may not be the case tomorrow.
Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read CDs, and the next we won't?
Historical precedent says - over and over - that this is exactly the case.
Rubbish.
Let me throw your own words back at you, sir.
Comments that could have been made in..
1910:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read wax cylinders, and the next we won't?
1930:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read player piano rolls, and the next we won't?
1940:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read wire recordings, and the next we won't?
1950:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read dictaphone belts, and the next we won't?
1960:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a Teletype paper tape, and the next we won't?
1970:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read an 8-track tape, and the next we won't?
1975:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a mainframe mag tape, and the next we won't?
1980:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a 45 RPM phonorecord, and the next we won't? They've been around for almost a hundred years, it's highly unlikely they will just disappear all of a sudden.
1990:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a 5 1/4" diskette, and the next we won't?
Technology evolves. And during that evolution the data can be migrated from the old storage to the new.
Provided the technology is still around to continue to use and migrate the data before it becomes obsolete. And provided the file formats are still known or the means (software and computer systems) to copy it is available. And provided the personnel and resources are available to regularly migrate the data.
There are lots of cases where there is old data stored on media which might be useful, the problem is there was too much media and the cost to convert it was prohibitive. I think some of the space missions which were operated by some of the technical universities for the government generated the equivalent of thousands of magtapes of data. But it became unreadable because the equipment became obsolete and there was no money in the budget to support the cost of maintaining the equipment to convert it or to pay the cost of the people needed to do so.
Most libraries suffer from severe funding problems just to cover regular operations. Now add the cost of converting media over every few years and it can't be done; the resources to do so are not there.
Problem solved.
The problem has not been solved. In fact, it isn't even close to solved. If anything, it has steadily gotten worse over the decades.
That companies are converting their photo archives into digital so that photos will stay the same forever. I disagree of what he is saying, I think converting to digital will ensure more people can look at the work and make sure the quality stays constant.
The problem is that if the originals are not around, all you have is the digital material. If the technology... Strike that. When the technology becomes obsolete, now you can't even use the digital material if someone hasn't taken the effort and expense to move them from the old storage media to newer media. And the storage media keeps changing every few years as we learn to pack more and more data onto smaller spaces.
Not to mention the problems if the media uses a proprietary format that doesn't make it in the mainstream or the manufacturer goes belly up and you can't get replacements, it can become unavailable even faster.
Just about any photographer worth their salt isn't going to throw away ANY shot.
I would beg to differ with you, sir. The evidence quite clearly shows that the contrary is true. It could be either photographers are deciding that they should send back or keep fewer shots or haven't realized the cost of keeping material is very low, but the fact is, they are discarding shots. Same as was done on film, the difference being, on film they still kept negatives and had index prints. With digital, if the picture isn't kept, you have nothing.
A very famous point about this was the man who discovered he had a (film) copy of a photo of Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky. There were dozens of other (professional) photographers there shooting pictures. All the rest had digital cameras and apparently discarded the unimportant pictures. His apparently was the only one left because he had it on film, which apparently makes it less likely one will discard it. As a result he still had the image when it became important. Nobody else did.
The technology exists out there to
dump memory cards to devices (http://www.mindsgear.com), get extra memory cards, or just bring along a cheap laptop to dump to while there isn't any news going on.
Professionals in an industry often don't want to take the time to learn about ancilliary effects, e.g. they just want to take pictures, they don't want to take the time to learn new ways to use what they have. That's why it took architects thousands of years to learn that you could build things which were lighter and stronger with steel instead of stone, but you have to use different methods than copying stone structures.
Looks like the so-called "Experienced" photographer isn't very "Experienced" with digital photography technology yet...
Many people here argue that it will be easy for future generations to decode JPG, CD format storage, file systems etc.
May I strongly suggest they are either not thinking or extremely nai've.
And no doubt will it be possible, if you have the money and resources to do so. So a well funded research project will be able to decode the important parts of history, like the forgotten pictures of president X etc. But it is a very different matter when it comes to ordinary citizens.
No kidding.
Lets say you take a lot of pictures of your children with your new digital camera. You burn these pictures to a CD and in time this CD ends up in a box on an attic somewhere. Your childrens grandchildren finds it in 100 years. Will they be able to see your pictures (or more correct: will they actually try to see them, given it will cost them lots of time and money?). Probably not.
Can we even watch old 8-mm motion picture film today? I think we have a considerable amount of expensive film ($3 for 3 minutes) we have shot of events of our family. We no longer have either an 8mm camera nor 8mm projector and I think buying one is new is probably impossible. Those memories are essentially lost because we had no means to transfer them over to video and when you could it was expensive.
Had these pictures been printed on durable paper, this would not have been an issue. When the box is found, the finder yells: "Look, some ancient pictures" and starts looking at them. I have pictures like these of my grandparents grandparents. Not that I look much at them. But I can. This is also history.
You're probably preaching to the converted here, as far as I'm concerned. The problem is that technologically advanced methods of storage have overtaken others because the immediate advantages, especially cost, far outweigh the future benefits of portability and longevity.
Irving Thalberg, the man who ran MGM back in the 30s and 40s, made the short-sighted decision to take thousands of (supposedly unimportant) movies the studio made and ordered them rendered to salvage the silver content. All those films are gone forever because someone decided the small salvage value was more important than future preservation of what might potentially be valuable material.
It's the same issue in using technologically advanced methods of storage. The important things - whatever is considered important at the time - will get moved to the new media. Unimportant things or that which is considered not cost-effective to move will be left behind and effectively forgotten. And we may never know what we have lost or whether it might be more valuable than what was saved.
Yes, we
can maintain digital information much better then we can maintain paper info.
I think there are people, used to the days of non-computer or non-digital information that tend to discard material because they don't realize the cost of saving it is essentially almost zero.
The problem is that we don't do it.
What's the cost of 10 meg on a CD-RW? With them at about US $4 apiece (if you include the cost of pre-formatted ones, maybe 80c (US $0.80) if you buy them blank and format them yourself), and hold perhaps 500,000,000 bytes, that's a cost of about 0.4c/meg or each 10 megabyte photo costs about 4c. If photos use about 3 megabytes the cost is 1 1/2c for each photo. Some people have not realized yet how inexpensive the cost of storage is now.
It's often said that the military is perpetually fighting the previous war. And it may be that people storing things are perpetually using the (much more expensive) cost levels of prior storage systems. As a result, they don't save as much as they could. But the explosion of more data then exacerbates the new-technology transfer issue you mention below.
The good thing about paper is that it will be readable for a very long time WITHOUT anyone bothering with it.
This has been a problem with paper as well. Old paper technology used to use high-acid systems because it was much cheaper, which meant that some paper tended to deteriorate after only a short time. ("Short Time" in paper is a few decades, versus, say copies of the London Times which I've seen copies of Volume 1, Number 1 on Microfilm, meaning that copy had to be around on paper for 200 years until microfilming was invented.)
Obsolescence of older storage systems has been a much bigger problem with digital technology than with paper, the new technological-based storage formats keep becoming cheaper and cheaper, which makes the old stuff with limited quantity even less valuable, and people don't always get around to moving stuff over because it takes too long or there are too many other things to do. And you have to have some means that supports both old and new storage systems simultaneously (or a means to transfer between them) and take the time to do so before the old stuff becomes obsolete and you can't because the equipment isn't available.
If you have CD or whatever
or player piano roll (all but dead before I was born), or 8" disk (died about 1980), or 5 1/4" disk (died about 1995), or 16 or 78 rpm phonograph record (those speeds started to die off in the early 1960s), or 8-track tape (died about 1980), or beta video cassettes (DOA)...
you need to backup/alter your data at least every 20 years to keep up with technology.
Maybe more often than that.
This seems OK for one CD, but what if it comes to the entire historical record?
I sometimes wonder what to do about our home music collection, which consists of about 200 phonograph records. Phonographs are getting harder and harder to find these days and who wants to take the time to rip phonorecords into MP3s even if you have a good phonograph from which to make the recordings? I should not have to repurchase all the music I owned before because the technology to play it has gone obsolete, but in some cases that may be the end result. Then again, is the work I like then still available?
To give an example: lots of data from the Vietnam war was kept on 1960-technology digital equipment.
As was lots of data from WWII was probably kept on wire recorders, the high technology of their day. Seen a wire recorder (or even a playback device for wire recordings) lately? As was probably data from Korea was kept on Teletype machine paper tape, which I think was the high-end technology then. Neither paper-tape readers nor teletype machines even exist today except as museum-class relics. And there's also 7- and 9-track magtape as used on mainframes: almost gone, replaced by cartridge. Oh, let's not forget those dinosaur mainframes' washing-machine-sized disk drives that held less data than a CD-ROM today.
This resulted in a total loss of data as there is not a single machine left that can read that info back
That may be unfortunate but it's not always tragic. Large parts of that material may be unimportant. The problem is we may not know that at the time or even now. It may be years down the line before people know what's important or useful.
But archival science is in its infancy and archival of material is expensive and requires regular maintenance same as everything else. The problem is a lot of things get deferred maintenance due to lack of funds in some areas and archives are even lower on the food chain than other things.
Again a ccTLD which is only of use for residents of this country.
As the actual owner of a.US domain for more than two years now, that's not my understanding, I believe that.US has always been open to anyone who wants to register a compliant address. (Compliant means it has to be under a 2-character state and a specific city in that state).
In fact, you don't even have to be where the domain is named; for example, my domain is listed as Washington, DC, but I do not live there (I live about 5 miles from Washington in another state). When I filled out the application with the nic for.US, which then was ISI at the University of Southern California (USC-ISI), I put down my address in Virginia and was issued the domain name the next day.
That's not fair - why is my country then giving away it's domain to people all around the world?
Doubtful that there are very many people outside of the US would want to bother with a.US address. I only got it because they're free, and basically about the only ones getting them are organizations tied to a specific city and state (local governments) and people or companies who are (to put it bluntly), cheapskates like me. The price of "free" was a lot more affordable for me when I wasn't working, as opposed to the (then exorbitant) $35 a year for a.COM or other TLD address.
In my opinion this should be standarized. So that all ccTLDs are open for everybody.
A country code TLD is subject to whatever rules that the country code agency of that country decides. You can't get a ham radio license in a particular country unless you follow its rules and there's no reason that whomever runs a particular TLD can't set rules on who can apply or what they can get.
Since most countries are charging for domains in their TLD the domain operator usually sees it as a profit center, and with the exception of the few remaining communist countries - and maybe some of them, too - I suspect you can get a registration in just about any country's tld whether or not you live there.
My home machine has a 30GB drive with Windows 98 on it because a number of games and other programs I have will only run on it.
When I formatted the drive I reserved 8 GB of space for alternative operating systems. I've tried several distros of Linux, and tried Atheos. In most cases I've deleted the alternative OS because either I wanted to try something else, or X would not work with the hardware on my computer, or whatever.
I don't think I'm that stupid. I've been a programmer for more than 20 years and I've been on-line for 15, going back to when BBSs were the height of high-technology communications. I've been around a while. But I've had trouble with making boot loaders and some systems work properly.
I tried GRUB. I tried LILO. First, I would have trouble setting them up or couldn't understand how to get them to work correctly. Or I couldn't install them unless I got the Linux (or Atheos) distribution running first, creating sort of a chicken-and-egg problem.
LILO was okay. GRUB was better: It would work okay at providing me with the means to dual-boot my computer.
But in every case if I changed something like deleting the LINUX distro because I wanted to try something else, the boot manager was tied to whatever distribution was on the non-windows partition which means that if I formatted it the boot manager couldn't find whatever information it needed so I now owned a boat anchor. This meant I had to find a rescue floppy, boot it up, FDISK/MBR the drive to allow Windows to be used, and so on.
Last Night I installed XOSL. Now, I was able to install this from Windows without having to do a whole bunch of contortions involving switching operating systems or using a boot diskette, could select which things to run, and it allows me to change what is going to run before the OS is even loaded, and also, it will keep the changes from run to run. (Grub would allow me to change things but only for that boot. Also when I removed the non-windows partition I could no longer boot at all.)
And it doesn't hurt that it looks nice. But that's a side issue. XOSL, for me, was easier to use and does a better job in its core capability than LILO (would never work because the Windows partition was above 8GB) or GRUB (worked as long as you didn't reformat the non-windows partition). I suspect that the functionality of GRUB or LILO will move into this product, and it could conceivably become "best of breed" in boot loaders. (I believe it is likely that people will start pulling the functions that aren't in this package from the others and adding them.)
This product is a tremendous improvement in usability from what was there before and I recommend it highly as well.
I write open source software. If someone sent me a nice long request for a proposal, I'd give them this in reply:
"Sure, use my program. Read the GPL for license details. Thanks."
If they don't like it, I won't lose any sleep.
On the other hand, they could be writing you because they want your program to do something it does not do now. They could be paying because they are going to use it in house without releasing it (and the copyright owner can always negotiate special terms so that someone can have a different license than the GPL), or because they want to encourage you to work on their request first ahead of others and are willing to even let what they are paying for be open sourced.
Perhaps they don't have in-house staff and you might be cheaper than hiring someone else. Or they don't know if someone else would be as good as the original developer. Or you can make the change faster and better than someone who has to learn the product from scratch.
Perhaps they agree to pay you a retainer and you agree to continue working on the project when you were going to abandon it.
Just because the original product is 'free' doesn't mean that it isn't worth paying for it to some customers, for all sorts of reasons.
It makes no sense for an "open source project" to respond to an RFP. It is the nature of Open Source Licenses PRECISELY TO DISCLAIM that the software does anything or is suitable for any purpose. Most OSS projects are a decentralized group, or a deepcore+fuzzypenumbra of individuals, who do not have authority to act for or on behalf of one another.
Please consider this for a moment. Since most open-source projects are given away, gratis, there is no money received from the users, therefore there is no money available for those involved to purchase liability insurance or provide support. Besides, when was the last time you saw anything but an indemnity or a warranty promise from a proprietary software company? When was the last time you saw a Microsoft product that had any kind of warranty claim OTHER than a long disclaimer of warranties? Why should we expect unpaid software to be provided with better protection than stuff people are supposed to pay for?
But a straight-up response to a traditional commercial RFP? That's silly. Also, read your RFP language -- most standard forms require commitments of a vendor that NO Open Source software can provide, as to warranties, indemnities and so forth. Remember, you not only need to get the beans to count, you also need to please legal.
I doubt you'll get much in the way of indemnities from a major proprietary developer and very little in the way of warranties either. But in the case of an open-source product if you want to pay for it you can get someone to support it, even if that someone is your own staff. If someone wants to pay the developers to provide support, then there is the ability to have warranty protection and whatever terms people are willing to agree to. As the saying goes, "you gets what you pays for." But sometimes you can get considerably MORE than you're paying for.
Slashdot Mirror
(Disk Pack Name) has placed subsystem in I/O Silent Death.
I never did figure out what that error meant.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
http://paul.washington.dc.us
I don't know what to make of this, except to point out two things. There can be some forms of analysis that may have some valid elements even if not all of it is valid. (Then again, I don't know if astrology has any validity yet, but something like this bothers me.) And that we shouldn't always immediately dismiss someone's ideas every time even if we think they are a crackpot.
I think one of the really crackpot ideas that professional physicians were dismissing was the idea that diseases were passed around by tiny organisms we could not see, and that it was a good idea for a physician doing an autopsy to wash his hands before tending to other sick patients so as not to transfer the disease carrying organisms from the dead to the sick, or even to the well. Semelweiss was routinely criticized as being a crackpot who didn't know what he was talking about. We now know that he was.
Now, of course, the converse, of humongous numbers of really crackpot ideas being exactly that can't be ignored either. But occasionally, they aren't.
Paul Robinson < postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
In essence, they will not be able to charge the kind of prices they have before and they will either have to cut prices (almost a certainty) or see people stick with older and cheaper versions or perhaps used copies or bootlegs. (very likely)
I suspect that this may eventually trigger a copyright lawsuit that gets lost by them if they (or the SPA) really try to enforce their no transfer rule on bundled software, a restriction the Supreme Court has ruled was not permissible back in the Bobbs-Merrill case back near the turn of the (19th) Century; despite what the software companies claim, their mass-market software is sold, not licensed and is subject to the "first sale" rule.
Inexpensive computers are going to be real trouble for Microsoft's bottom line.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
http://paul.washington.dc.us
In fact, someone once said that anyone who makes more than about $75,000 (that number might be higher now) probably needs to incorporate and get legal and financial advice in order to use the advantages to pay less in taxes as well as take advantages of certain benefits us unincorporated wage slaves don't have.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Now, if one quits work with a company one could be sued if there is a contract with appropriate provisions, and in such a case the courts might award damages but I do not believe they can order someone to work. To the best of my knowledge I've never heard of someone being forced to work for a private employer or prohibited from resigning employment.
Now, if one is incorporated and employed by one's own corporation, I could see where that corporation might be prohibited from refusing to do business with the other organization but if the only employee resigns from his corporation there's no way for it to continue to operate. I find such a claim - that one can't quit a private employer merely because it or its customer has gone bankrupt - hard to believe. I think during World War II certain occupations were considered protected and there were certain provisions then that could have prohibited some people from quitting but I'd like to see legal citations to court cases or statute law prove such a claim that a civilian employee can't quit a non-government private employer when it goes into bankruptcy or one of its customers does so.
Paul Robinson <mailto:Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Consider someone using a hijacked plane to destroy a building and make it unusable.
Now consider someone using a compromised computer to generate a denial of service attack upon a major site and make it inaccessible.
I think the analogy is very close.
Now, let's ask the question: Let's say someone figured out that you could slip box cutters and knives onto a plane and use them to hijack it. Would publicising this help? Well, considering that almost anyone who thought about it could figure it out, you wouldn't be giving anyone any new ideas. The exact same thing has been pointed out many times in a number of books and even done as a plot device in some movies, so it's not like it's a secret. Therefore, making such information public might have helped people be aware of vulnerabilities. But if the passengers on the Pennsylvania plane hadn't known about the other attacks as soon as possible we might also be comiserating the destruction of the White House, too.
Once the 'exploit' was known - that there were hijackers taking planes and using them as bombs - then making people aware of the danger - fully informing everyone, including passengers on the plane in Pennsylvania - resulted in preventing further attacks from occurring. Even if the hijackers knew that the passengers knew, they can still fight back against them. Full disclosure informs everyone and can give some people the opportunity to stop something from happening.
It is arguable that those involved are allegedly in some sort of (what they call) a holy war or 'jihad'. If the World Trade Center had been, say, a privately-owned factory building armaments for the Military, then it would have been a legitimate military target, same as the Pentagon. But the fact of the matter is that even if they were legitimately fighting a war, when you intentionally target non-combatant civilians you're not a soldier, you're a criminal and the organization you operate within, if it sanctions this, is a terrorist organization.Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
But I must disagree with your first statement: If all they were doing was attacking the Pentagon then that was a reasonable and legitimate military action (but it still was wrong for reasons I state below). But attacking the WTC was NOT a legitimate military operation and constituted an act of terrorism. If whoever did this believes they are fighting a war of some kind against the U.S. then - whether we like it or not - the Pentagon was a valid target for attack. Intentionally targeting a civilian structure that does not provide either military operations or military support changes you from a legitimate military operation into criminals. This was settled more than 30 years ago with the trial of Lt. Calley in the Mei Lai Massacre incident. But beyond that, legitimate civilized conduct of any military operation doesn't grab civilian transports and intentionally kill noncombatants.
If they had used planes without civilians on the Pentagon attack or pulled a McVeigh by using a truck bomb there, I'd have no argument that it was a legitimate military attack. But when you intentionally target noncombatants, you're no longer a soldier or a legitimate military, you cross the line into terrorism and criminality.
There's already been a example of this on the TV Show Law and Order where someone figured out a way to reprogram a hospital's insulin pumps to randomly kill some patients because they didn't like one of the doctors who was an owner of the place. That this example of a computer virus killing people is a fictional incident does not make the possibility of a real one that might someday do so any less credible. All I can respond to that is fortunately that is the situation now and for the moment that we've been lucky. If only those hypocrites who allegedly support the Muslim religion through violence would practice what they preach and stay as ignorant as they want everyone else to be made, then there wouldn't be too much of a problem. Unfortunately, the possibility of infowar is very real and will happen eventually. Just like those who predicted serious terrorist attacks on the U.S. would be coming: We just don't know when.Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
I've yet to find any software at all being released with any kind of claim beyond "as is" except maybe software for nuclear power plants or aircraft where the software is produced for one customer, hopefully is rigorously tested and carefully introduced with severe restrictions on changes and very, very high levels of failsafe design. This software would also be very expensive - and worth it - and would take a long, long, long, long, long, long time to be released.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
In the third case, the people there were informed about the attack and were able to stop it in time, because they had full disclosure of what was happening in the other cases.
Now, looking at these two security exploits, which do you think was the better solution, the passengers who were unaware of what was happening until their planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings, or the ones who were informed and fought back?
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Choose .BIZ: "Less recognizable and more expensive." Sounds like a winning advertising slogan!
About the only reason for using it is if someone else has the one you want in .com, etc. Otherwise it's overpriced.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Carleton Sheets, a man who was talking about how to buy real estate on his instruction tapes said something useful which I decided I can use in estimating time requirements for various fixes:
We need to learn to ask for the proper amount of resources and point out that less than the minimum makes it impossible to respond within the requirements no matter how much someone wants it to happen. (As Brooks points out, it doesn't matter how many women you throw at the task it still takes 9 months to produce a baby. Demand the baby be brought forth in less time and you either get a dead fetus (and possibly mother) or a sickly premature baby.) We need to learn that this is not a good idea because if you are consistently wrong on your estimates, eventually you get the "kid that cried wolf" syndrome: nobody believes you any more and all of the estimating systems become what everyone knows they are: a joke. It's actually no wonder "most" projects end up being cancelled. They take too long (because the people who are supposed to implement them were too aggressive in what they would deliver) and cost too much (because they routinely run overtime because the estimate was wrong in the first place).Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
And in view of the rather nasty treatement of people who tried to find anything about what blocking software is doing, I would presume that such programs are guilty until proven innocent.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Are you aware that an almost identical incident to what happened in Tianamen Square happened in the United States. In Washington DC, in the 1930s. This is where General McArthur had his first battle experience: rounding up and driving WWI veterans out of the makeshift hovels they had built in Anacostia. But we didn't hear much about that because it was virtually forgotten.
When the records of history are lost, that is the loss of history.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Comments that could have been made in..
- 1910:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read wax cylinders, and the next we won't?
- 1930:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read player piano rolls, and the next we won't?
- 1940:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read wire recordings, and the next we won't?
- 1950:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read dictaphone belts, and the next we won't?
- 1960:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a Teletype paper tape, and the next we won't?
- 1970:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read an 8-track tape, and the next we won't?
- 1975:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a mainframe mag tape, and the next we won't?
- 1980:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a 45 RPM phonorecord, and the next we won't? They've been around for almost a hundred years, it's highly unlikely they will just disappear all of a sudden.
- 1990:Oh for goodness sake. Do you honestly believe that one day we'll be able to read a 5 1/4" diskette, and the next we won't?
Provided the technology is still around to continue to use and migrate the data before it becomes obsolete. And provided the file formats are still known or the means (software and computer systems) to copy it is available. And provided the personnel and resources are available to regularly migrate the data.There are lots of cases where there is old data stored on media which might be useful, the problem is there was too much media and the cost to convert it was prohibitive. I think some of the space missions which were operated by some of the technical universities for the government generated the equivalent of thousands of magtapes of data. But it became unreadable because the equipment became obsolete and there was no money in the budget to support the cost of maintaining the equipment to convert it or to pay the cost of the people needed to do so.
Most libraries suffer from severe funding problems just to cover regular operations. Now add the cost of converting media over every few years and it can't be done; the resources to do so are not there.
The problem has not been solved. In fact, it isn't even close to solved. If anything, it has steadily gotten worse over the decades.Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us
Not to mention the problems if the media uses a proprietary format that doesn't make it in the mainstream or the manufacturer goes belly up and you can't get replacements, it can become unavailable even faster.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
A very famous point about this was the man who discovered he had a (film) copy of a photo of Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky. There were dozens of other (professional) photographers there shooting pictures. All the rest had digital cameras and apparently discarded the unimportant pictures. His apparently was the only one left because he had it on film, which apparently makes it less likely one will discard it. As a result he still had the image when it became important. Nobody else did.
Professionals in an industry often don't want to take the time to learn about ancilliary effects, e.g. they just want to take pictures, they don't want to take the time to learn new ways to use what they have. That's why it took architects thousands of years to learn that you could build things which were lighter and stronger with steel instead of stone, but you have to use different methods than copying stone structures. Perhaps that is the case.Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Irving Thalberg, the man who ran MGM back in the 30s and 40s, made the short-sighted decision to take thousands of (supposedly unimportant) movies the studio made and ordered them rendered to salvage the silver content. All those films are gone forever because someone decided the small salvage value was more important than future preservation of what might potentially be valuable material.
It's the same issue in using technologically advanced methods of storage. The important things - whatever is considered important at the time - will get moved to the new media. Unimportant things or that which is considered not cost-effective to move will be left behind and effectively forgotten. And we may never know what we have lost or whether it might be more valuable than what was saved.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
It's often said that the military is perpetually fighting the previous war. And it may be that people storing things are perpetually using the (much more expensive) cost levels of prior storage systems. As a result, they don't save as much as they could. But the explosion of more data then exacerbates the new-technology transfer issue you mention below.
This has been a problem with paper as well. Old paper technology used to use high-acid systems because it was much cheaper, which meant that some paper tended to deteriorate after only a short time. ("Short Time" in paper is a few decades, versus, say copies of the London Times which I've seen copies of Volume 1, Number 1 on Microfilm, meaning that copy had to be around on paper for 200 years until microfilming was invented.)Obsolescence of older storage systems has been a much bigger problem with digital technology than with paper, the new technological-based storage formats keep becoming cheaper and cheaper, which makes the old stuff with limited quantity even less valuable, and people don't always get around to moving stuff over because it takes too long or there are too many other things to do. And you have to have some means that supports both old and new storage systems simultaneously (or a means to transfer between them) and take the time to do so before the old stuff becomes obsolete and you can't because the equipment isn't available.
or player piano roll (all but dead before I was born), or 8" disk (died about 1980), or 5 1/4" disk (died about 1995), or 16 or 78 rpm phonograph record (those speeds started to die off in the early 1960s), or 8-track tape (died about 1980), or beta video cassettes (DOA)But archival science is in its infancy and archival of material is expensive and requires regular maintenance same as everything else. The problem is a lot of things get deferred maintenance due to lack of funds in some areas and archives are even lower on the food chain than other things.
But to answer your question, read my tagline.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Since most countries are charging for domains in their TLD the domain operator usually sees it as a profit center, and with the exception of the few remaining communist countries - and maybe some of them, too - I suspect you can get a registration in just about any country's tld whether or not you live there.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
When I formatted the drive I reserved 8 GB of space for alternative operating systems. I've tried several distros of Linux, and tried Atheos. In most cases I've deleted the alternative OS because either I wanted to try something else, or X would not work with the hardware on my computer, or whatever.
I don't think I'm that stupid. I've been a programmer for more than 20 years and I've been on-line for 15, going back to when BBSs were the height of high-technology communications. I've been around a while. But I've had trouble with making boot loaders and some systems work properly.
I tried GRUB. I tried LILO. First, I would have trouble setting them up or couldn't understand how to get them to work correctly. Or I couldn't install them unless I got the Linux (or Atheos) distribution running first, creating sort of a chicken-and-egg problem.
LILO was okay. GRUB was better: It would work okay at providing me with the means to dual-boot my computer.
But in every case if I changed something like deleting the LINUX distro because I wanted to try something else, the boot manager was tied to whatever distribution was on the non-windows partition which means that if I formatted it the boot manager couldn't find whatever information it needed so I now owned a boat anchor. This meant I had to find a rescue floppy, boot it up, FDISK /MBR the drive to allow Windows to be used, and so on.
Last Night I installed XOSL. Now, I was able to install this from Windows without having to do a whole bunch of contortions involving switching operating systems or using a boot diskette, could select which things to run, and it allows me to change what is going to run before the OS is even loaded, and also, it will keep the changes from run to run. (Grub would allow me to change things but only for that boot. Also when I removed the non-windows partition I could no longer boot at all.)
And it doesn't hurt that it looks nice. But that's a side issue. XOSL, for me, was easier to use and does a better job in its core capability than LILO (would never work because the Windows partition was above 8GB) or GRUB (worked as long as you didn't reformat the non-windows partition). I suspect that the functionality of GRUB or LILO will move into this product, and it could conceivably become "best of breed" in boot loaders. (I believe it is likely that people will start pulling the functions that aren't in this package from the others and adding them.)
This product is a tremendous improvement in usability from what was there before and I recommend it highly as well.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us
Perhaps they don't have in-house staff and you might be cheaper than hiring someone else. Or they don't know if someone else would be as good as the original developer. Or you can make the change faster and better than someone who has to learn the product from scratch.
Perhaps they agree to pay you a retainer and you agree to continue working on the project when you were going to abandon it.
Just because the original product is 'free' doesn't mean that it isn't worth paying for it to some customers, for all sorts of reasons.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>