Yeah, it's just not going to happen. Look at the high scores for insightful or interesting. Almost all of them are left-wing liberal whinings. You can't criticize the author of the post, the editors of the site, AND the readers... and still get modded up.:-)
I love the sources sited in this obviously unbiased Slashdot article. Thank you so much, CmdrTaco, for your dedication to objective journalism.
I'm sorry... I've enjoyed Slashdot for years, but it's just getting farther and farther from the tagline of "news for nerds, stuff that matters". The sources you cited are, in order:
Common Dreams report: Nice. Common Dreams. An extremely "progressive" (in their own words) news source with rave reviews from Bill Moyers and (go figure) Ralph Nader, which Don Imus (of MSNBC) calls "a must read from the left". Hmmm....
optically scanned votes have a strange anomoly: From UsTogether.org, a web site dedicated to "peace, democracy, and well-being". The list of local resources display a myriad of internet sites dedicated to the Democratic and Green parties, and ONLY to those parties. Hardly an unbiased news source.
88,000 more votes than there were voters: While I couldn't find a clear agenda on their site, the article referenced in the posting has already been updated with the fact that Palm Beach County had no such discrepancy. If you look at the page that the Washington Dispatch quotes, the actual numbers from Palm Beach County are quite different. In fact, there were 544,378 votes cast for President from 547,340 voters that turned out, showing 2,962 voters that never cast a vote for President, as opposed to the 88,000 votes over voter turnout that the article claims. Interesting...
discounted 50,000 voters: CmdrTaco claims this took place in LaPorte, Michigan... when it actually took place in LaPorte, Indiana. This shows a complete lack of effort to verify this data. LaPorte was, in fact, a problem. They believe it was due to a power surge of some sort. They are still working on sorting through the mess there and are still counting ballots and working to certify the election there. At any rate, to state they "discounted 50,000 voters" is not only misleading, it's flat out wrong. In fact, the current data from LaPorte, INDIANA states that they had 43,278 voters voting (with 42,582 votes being cast for President) with just over 79,309 voters registered. That's a 55% turnout for that county, which is just about on par with the rest of the state. Whie I have yet to see viable precinct-by-precinct data for that county, it's clear that "discounting 50,000 voters" is not what happened at all. Incidentally, for all you Kerry fans out there, Kerry actually had more votes in this county.
gave Bush an extra 4,000 votes: Oh. My. $DIETY. The county in which this took place, still shows more votes for KERRY than for Bush. However, this is actually a problem if you look at the (still unofficial) data from Franklin County. The key here is that the document here referenced is UNOFFICIAL, and even CNN (left as they are) admits to that. The offical tally for Bush in that precinct is 365 votes. Perhaps the headline should read "Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio According to an Unofficial Document That is Only Used by the Media".
I understand the desire for mobile administration, however, I do not understand the desire to use AIM as the carrier.
I have a Handspring Visor with a Visorphone attachment. In conjunction with a dial-in ISP, I can obtain a nice little internet connection. Now that I'm online with my Visor, I can use the spiffy little Palm OS SSH client. It's a breeze to setup and would provide you with a *cough* secure hand-held remote administration tool. I've used it and it works great for commands and returns, and so-so for things like mutt and vi. For anything else, you have to play with your terminal modes on your *NIX box, though this is not a difficult task.
All you have to do is tell level one support things you know they can't comprehend and they bump you right along...
Yeah, right. When I first had my cable service activated through @Home, I told level one support things they couldn't comprehend (i.e. "oh... by the way... I run Linux"). They then assumed I was running servers and attempted to shut down my connection.
Well, I'm in my final semester as a *IS (MIS to be exact) major at a large University. I work alongside a CS major at a nearby dot-com. We work very well together, but there are a couple of glaring differences between us. I believe these differences speak volumes to the differences of CS and *IS.
Management -- Typically the CS major works late into the night developing. I develop, but half my time is spent trying to find ways to convince management that what we are working on is worth backing. The CS major is typically trained to interact with only the systems on which he or she develops on. While the typical CS major knows more technology than the typical *IS major, I feel that the interaction with management is stronger with IS because of the business training they endure.
Clients -- This is a biggie. The CS major I work with hates clients. He would much rather they not exist. *IS majors, however, are trained to cater to clients. The typical *IS major understands that the technology is useless if clients can't be sought after to use it.
Now, I would not want to steer you either way. I suggest that with either choice, you need to be on top of things. You need to study outside of class. For example, as a *IS major, I knew that the technology tought would be limited. So I took the initiative to teach myself. In a Windows-based department, I embraced Linux and the open-source community and tought myself advanced web development and programming that I knew I would need later. As a CS major, you need to realize that business problems, management, and clients are a part of the deal. You should learn early how to deal with these.
Education is a wonderful thing... don't let it stop in class.
Anyone can claim to be a.com... As far as dot-coms go, it is the size that matters! You can get an ISP and a host, purchase a domain, throw some rubbish up and claim to be a dot-com. I don't think so.
A large-scale dot com requires much more than this bare-bones concept. Servers, security (both physical and net-based), employees, secretaries, lawyers, buildings... all the necessities of a brick and mortar if you look at it in the right light. These things cost money and lots of it. Where does that come from?
Most dot coms start out-of-pocket (plus the occasional angel investors). That can't last. That WON'T last. If people catch on and the counter begins to speed up, additional bandwidth and HD space is needed. Possibly more and faster processors. Probably a beefed up security concept. All of this adds to the cost. How many people can afford to out-of-pocket this?
This is not a solution, only a reformulation of the problem. It's impossible to compare a grassroots dot com to a full throttle marketable dot com. Try comparing a kid's lemonade stand to Wal-Mart. Big difference there.
True, it would be nice if all the web sites in the world were there only for the information they provide. But information cannot be free. It is costly to provide, so why should we receive it for free?
And it's not just the money -- *sigh* -- it's the time. A full-scale dot com takes dedication. It is your life, your love, and your sustanance. A true dot com does not allow a day job. It is your day job. When that's all you do, how will you pay the bills?
It's very commendable for webmasters to pay for their own web sites because they want them there. Not-for-profit has a nice ring to it. However, realism needs to set in eventually. Try starting an Amazon without revenue... it simply won't last. Myopia is a disease and it's catching on.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's just not going to happen. Look at the high scores for insightful or interesting. Almost all of them are left-wing liberal whinings. You can't criticize the author of the post, the editors of the site, AND the readers ... and still get modded up. :-)
I'm sorry
I understand the desire for mobile administration, however, I do not understand the desire to use AIM as the carrier.
I have a Handspring Visor with a Visorphone attachment. In conjunction with a dial-in ISP, I can obtain a nice little internet connection. Now that I'm online with my Visor, I can use the spiffy little Palm OS SSH client. It's a breeze to setup and would provide you with a *cough* secure hand-held remote administration tool. I've used it and it works great for commands and returns, and so-so for things like mutt and vi. For anything else, you have to play with your terminal modes on your *NIX box, though this is not a difficult task.
Hope this helps.
*cough*: 'secure' is a relative term here
What our narrator doesn't know is that "Grandma" (which is just a hacker alias) is really 1337:
Me: Oh come on now Grandma don't be coy. You know you've been secretly sshing into my servers to check your AOL mail via Pine.
Grandma: No, no dear. Pine is for wussies. I use mutt.
Grandma: You still in there?
All you have to do is tell level one support things you know they can't comprehend and they bump you right along...
... by the way ... I run Linux"). They then assumed I was running servers and attempted to shut down my connection.
Yeah, right. When I first had my cable service activated through @Home, I told level one support things they couldn't comprehend (i.e. "oh
- Management -- Typically the CS major works late into the night developing. I develop, but half my time is spent trying to find ways to convince management that what we are working on is worth backing. The CS major is typically trained to interact with only the systems on which he or she develops on. While the typical CS major knows more technology than the typical *IS major, I feel that the interaction with management is stronger with IS because of the business training they endure.
- Clients -- This is a biggie. The CS major I work with hates clients. He would much rather they not exist. *IS majors, however, are trained to cater to clients. The typical *IS major understands that the technology is useless if clients can't be sought after to use it.
Now, I would not want to steer you either way. I suggest that with either choice, you need to be on top of things. You need to study outside of class. For example, as a *IS major, I knew that the technology tought would be limited. So I took the initiative to teach myself. In a Windows-based department, I embraced Linux and the open-source community and tought myself advanced web development and programming that I knew I would need later. As a CS major, you need to realize that business problems, management, and clients are a part of the deal. You should learn early how to deal with these. Education is a wonderful thingA large-scale dot com requires much more than this bare-bones concept. Servers, security (both physical and net-based), employees, secretaries, lawyers, buildings ... all the necessities of a brick and mortar if you look at it in the right light. These things cost money and lots of it. Where does that come from?
Most dot coms start out-of-pocket (plus the occasional angel investors). That can't last. That WON'T last. If people catch on and the counter begins to speed up, additional bandwidth and HD space is needed. Possibly more and faster processors. Probably a beefed up security concept. All of this adds to the cost. How many people can afford to out-of-pocket this?
This is not a solution, only a reformulation of the problem. It's impossible to compare a grassroots dot com to a full throttle marketable dot com. Try comparing a kid's lemonade stand to Wal-Mart. Big difference there.
True, it would be nice if all the web sites in the world were there only for the information they provide. But information cannot be free. It is costly to provide, so why should we receive it for free?
And it's not just the money -- *sigh* -- it's the time. A full-scale dot com takes dedication. It is your life, your love, and your sustanance. A true dot com does not allow a day job. It is your day job. When that's all you do, how will you pay the bills?
It's very commendable for webmasters to pay for their own web sites because they want them there. Not-for-profit has a nice ring to it. However, realism needs to set in eventually. Try starting an Amazon without revenue ... it simply won't last. Myopia is a disease and it's catching on.