Re:So who was the more pragmatic CSO?...
on
The Pragmatic CSO
·
· Score: 1
T'Pol is sexier.
No wait, I'm speaking as a straight male. I seem to recall that back in the 60s many women considered Spock the sexiest character on TV. It was all that torment caused by his inner human-vulcan conflict.
Anyway, they're equally pragmatic. You have to deal with facts. To do otherwise would Not Be Logical(tm).
Does nobody here understand how commerce works? These are wholesale lots. (As are all the things sold on Alibaba.) This is not a $130 laptop. $250 is probably a better guess at the retail price.
If you want some cheap, slow piece of crap that can surf the web and type documents, just buy a used laptop on ebay for even cheaper.
Sure, if you can live with zero tech support and have the technical skill to deal with all the hardware and software issues.
Why is it that Slashdotters can't grasp that most people are not techies? They cannot do stuff like resolve subtle system conflicts or install news OS.
My niece wanted a new computer, and didn't have much money. I found her an old XP system (actually pretty powerful) on Craigslist for $50. Except to keep it working, I have to answer a support call from her every few weeks. A few weeks ago, the mechanical mouse she had stopped working. I told her to go buy an optical mouse. She did, but then last week she accidentally unplugged it from the PS2 port while the system was live. I told her to disconnect the PS2 adapter and plug it into a USB port. Didn't work, and I wasn't up to figuring out why over the phone. So I had her reboot, which meant explaining how to do that from the keyboard. Which fixed the problem — until next time. I don't mind giving her all this tech support for free, but most people don't have access to somebody like me.
These are all problems you or I could solve faster than it takes to describe them. But most people can't. That's why a simple, Linux-based, preconfigured laptop without a lot of features that most people don't need is a good deal, even if it's more expensive than a more powerful used machine.
Fine, people need to be able to use word processors. But why does it have to be a Microsoft word processor?
Microsoft Word is the "default standard" in most big businesses because people need to share word processor files, and copying complex documents between word processor formats in not practical. But if you're writing simple letters or preparing a CV, any word processor will do — and Sugar/OLPC comes with one. And it's probably better suited to a casual user than is Word.
Re:So who was the more pragmatic CSO?...
on
The Pragmatic CSO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Somehow I keep thinking "Crime Scene Optimization".
Here's why posting a bad article shouldn't affect your karma. Karma and moderation is Slashdot's way of giving good posts more visibility than bad ones. (It doesn't work that way currently, but that's the idea.) For articles, that same function is provided by the editors. Articles like this get posted because because the editors are sloppy. The accept stories where the language is unclear, where the story misrepresents (or even flatly contradicts) TFA, or where TFA is just a stupid blog entry that cites no facts beyond other stupid blog entries.
What we need is for editors to take the time to read — and think about — the articles they see before they post them. Maybe even take a class in English or Journalism. Skipping the part on spelling, of course. Wouldn't want to break with tradition!
Here's the problem with being a Nation of Laws: the laws get really complicated as various interests compete to get the laws written their way. That makes for a lot of subtle language that a lot of highly-paid lawyers spend a lot of time interpreting to suit their clients. I'm not saying it's a good thing that we let lawyers have so much power over us, but it's a natural consequence of both legalism and our long history of refusing to compromise.
Now, you may disagree with how the supremes interpret the constitution, but somebody has to, and somebody has to have the last word. They're not saying "green is red" they're interpreting some complex and subtle issues. They often disagree with each other on these issues. Why should your dissent (an ill-informed dissent, since you don't seem to have actually read the constitution) count for more than the dissent of judges who have spent their entire lives studying these issues?
As for "keeping the proles down", you're full of shit. The Pure Food and Drug laws were not imposed by some evil cabal. They were written by popular demand after people realized that food and drug processors were selling people tainted foods and drugs that were worse than useless. It may well be that their constitutionality under the interstate commerce clause is dubious. So what? What's more important, safe food, or a constitutional principle based on a 200-year-old political compromise that never really worked?
Yes, the law is misused. All laws are. That's another consequence of the Nation of Laws thing.
You consider riot suppression a military function? Most cops and soldiers would disagree.
During the '60s a lot of National Guard units got put on riot duty. They often screwed up, leading to a lot of unnecessary deaths. Nowadays, they do better, because they have better training — police training.
If building you own computer works for you, fine. If you have fun doing it, so much the better. Lots of people save money and have fun building their own computers, cars, houses, etc. I'm simply pointing out that this is not an option for most people.
From one of your links: "Provides for the continued enforcement of marijuana laws against those who cultivate, transport and possess marijuana for sale." Not exactly legalization.
They're showing that they know how to make a "real" Mac. Like many geeks, they don't understand that making something kewl is not the same thing as having a viable business model.
Actually, they do. Well, not quite, but you do need a lot of scale to be profitable. And we're talking about semi-proprietary hardware that is inherently less profitable than a generic PC.
Apple itself is just barely big enough to make that work. Even so, they're considered a niche market. Now these guys think they can make a profit with the same semi-proprietary hardware, and a target customer base that's a small niche within Apple's small niche. Oh yeah, and they have to charge less than Apple, or else nobody has any reason to buy from them. I don't think so.
Because most moderators think that "troll" means "stupid". And in fact, Twitter is not extremely bright. The idea that ACPI is designed to sabotage Linux is absurd. His "evidence" is Linus's statement that it's a bad protocol and some ambiguous email from a former Microsofter.
I work for the x64 group at Sun. We support ACPI on Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and Solaris. (And Windows, though I shouldn't mention it, since this is "proof" that we're part of the conspiracy.) If there's sabotage of non-Windows systems via this technology, none of our customers has thought to mention it to us.
The point of comparing Sugar to XP is to demonstrate what most of us predicted -- i.e., that XP is completely unsuitable for this application.
And that, believe it or not, is actually good news.
People want Windows on the XO because they think that kids need "practical" tools, like Microsoft Office, so they can develop "marketable" skills. Which is nonsense. There aren't that many jobs for people with those kinds of skills, especially not in rural villages in the developing world. Kids in those places need learning tools that help them build their knowledge and skill base on their own.
So Windows on the XO is unworkable. Great. Now the OLPC people can get back to doing something more useful than producing yet another Wintel clone.
Fine, Apple can't stop people from selling computer that have the ability to run MacOS. But there isn't much market for machines where you have to install the OS yourself.
"Huh? I'd buy a computer like that. So would my friends. We install OSs all the time." True. But you and your friends are not typical consumers. Most people will not buy a computer that doesn't already have an OS on it.
Of course, there's the corporate customers, who have the resources for to install their own OSs, and who buy most computers anyway. But they have a disadvantage individual consumers don't: they're big enough for Apple to sue.
As to the topic at hand, you need to be a real idiot to install a road on your property without a closed gate at the entrance and not expect cars to accidentally drive down the road.
The submitter did say he'd found places where Google ignored gates (didn't say whether they were closed) and "No Trespassing" signs.
The Feds do have the power to seize control of the National Guard in the event of war or other emergency (there are National Guard units in Iraq), but otherwise the National Guard is controlled by the states.
The federal government provides most of the National Guard's funding and training. The governors don't "control" them, they just borrow them from time to time. And if they tried to use them for actual military purposes, rather than as relief workers or temporary cops, there'd be hell to pay.
No way is a major corp like Comcast going to give you a shortcut. The "trick" is to switch to a geek-friendly ISP, such as Speakeasy or sonic.net. Not an option, of course, if want a speed that isn't available on DSL in your area.
I use the AT&T/Yahoo ISP. They're a lot less expensive than Speakeasy, which seems to have lost interest in the home market. They're the same price as sonic.net, but sonic doesn't offer "naked" DSL, and I don't want to pay $20 a month for a phone line I'll never use. But if I have to deal with AT&T's clueless support people again, I may bite the bullet and switch.
State law takes precedence, according to our Constitution.
You should try reading a document before you make statements about what it says. The constitution specifies many situations where federal law trumps state law: coinage, war powers, interstate commerce, etc. And these powers have gradually been expanded by amendment.
U.S. states are not just jurisdictional division. They're actually quasi-sovereign entities, with their own laws, their own courts, even their own armies. Only specific powers are ceded to the federal government.
That's the theory, and there's always been a conflict between the theory and the practice. (The worst war in American history was a very literal conflict over this very issue.) And over the years, "states rights" have steadily eroded. Those state armies, for example, are now known as the National Guard and for most purposes, they're effectively under the control of the Feds. There have been many changes to the Constitution that took rights away from the states, most notably the 14th amendment.
The end result is that you have a constant legal tug-of-war between the federal legal system and the state. In some cases, federal law always has the last word, but not always. In this particular case, there's no legal principle that says that the state has to help the federal government enforce its anti-drug laws. So if you have a stash of medicinal marijane and live in California, you can't be busted by a city, county, or state copy; you just show them your special ID card. But it won't protect you from the DEA.
Of course the federales can do a bust, but prosecuting people for trivial offenses which don't cross state lines is normally done on the State's dime; and I doubt the people of Wyoming want their taxes raised to keep all those California pot-heads in federal prisons if they manage to get a conviction.
People in Wyoming mostly have common sense. People in Washington do not.
Good would be training their call center employees to solve problems (instead of reading, tediously, from the "unplug your modem, reboot all your computers..." book)
Comcast call center people could be better trained. (I'm not actually a Comcast customer, I'm just assuming that Comcast does as lousy a job of training its call center staff as everybody else.) But no matter how well trained call center people are, there's no getting away from the Moronic Flowchart model of level 1 tech support. That's because 90% of tech support is asking really bonehead questions, like "Is it plugged in?" That's frustrating for techies like us, who already know to do that stuff, but there's no way around it. When you're answering millions of support calls, you have to have some filtering mechanism. It's just too expensive to give every caller a highly-skilled techie with serious problem-solving skills.
Of course, it often happens that after you've patiently told the Level 1 guy Yes, I've plugged it in, yes, I've reset it, and all the other stuff you know has nothing to do with your problem, you'll get handed to a Level 2 guy who's just as clueless. No excuse for that.
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T'Pol is sexier.
No wait, I'm speaking as a straight male. I seem to recall that back in the 60s many women considered Spock the sexiest character on TV. It was all that torment caused by his inner human-vulcan conflict.
Anyway, they're equally pragmatic. You have to deal with facts. To do otherwise would Not Be Logical(tm).
Does nobody here understand how commerce works? These are wholesale lots. (As are all the things sold on Alibaba.) This is not a $130 laptop. $250 is probably a better guess at the retail price.
If you want some cheap, slow piece of crap that can surf the web and type documents, just buy a used laptop on ebay for even cheaper.
Sure, if you can live with zero tech support and have the technical skill to deal with all the hardware and software issues.
Why is it that Slashdotters can't grasp that most people are not techies? They cannot do stuff like resolve subtle system conflicts or install news OS.
My niece wanted a new computer, and didn't have much money. I found her an old XP system (actually pretty powerful) on Craigslist for $50. Except to keep it working, I have to answer a support call from her every few weeks. A few weeks ago, the mechanical mouse she had stopped working. I told her to go buy an optical mouse. She did, but then last week she accidentally unplugged it from the PS2 port while the system was live. I told her to disconnect the PS2 adapter and plug it into a USB port. Didn't work, and I wasn't up to figuring out why over the phone. So I had her reboot, which meant explaining how to do that from the keyboard. Which fixed the problem — until next time. I don't mind giving her all this tech support for free, but most people don't have access to somebody like me.
These are all problems you or I could solve faster than it takes to describe them. But most people can't. That's why a simple, Linux-based, preconfigured laptop without a lot of features that most people don't need is a good deal, even if it's more expensive than a more powerful used machine.
Fine, people need to be able to use word processors. But why does it have to be a Microsoft word processor?
Microsoft Word is the "default standard" in most big businesses because people need to share word processor files, and copying complex documents between word processor formats in not practical. But if you're writing simple letters or preparing a CV, any word processor will do — and Sugar/OLPC comes with one. And it's probably better suited to a casual user than is Word.
Somehow I keep thinking "Crime Scene Optimization".
Here's why posting a bad article shouldn't affect your karma. Karma and moderation is Slashdot's way of giving good posts more visibility than bad ones. (It doesn't work that way currently, but that's the idea.) For articles, that same function is provided by the editors. Articles like this get posted because because the editors are sloppy. The accept stories where the language is unclear, where the story misrepresents (or even flatly contradicts) TFA, or where TFA is just a stupid blog entry that cites no facts beyond other stupid blog entries.
What we need is for editors to take the time to read — and think about — the articles they see before they post them. Maybe even take a class in English or Journalism. Skipping the part on spelling, of course. Wouldn't want to break with tradition!
Here's the problem with being a Nation of Laws: the laws get really complicated as various interests compete to get the laws written their way. That makes for a lot of subtle language that a lot of highly-paid lawyers spend a lot of time interpreting to suit their clients. I'm not saying it's a good thing that we let lawyers have so much power over us, but it's a natural consequence of both legalism and our long history of refusing to compromise.
Now, you may disagree with how the supremes interpret the constitution, but somebody has to, and somebody has to have the last word. They're not saying "green is red" they're interpreting some complex and subtle issues. They often disagree with each other on these issues. Why should your dissent (an ill-informed dissent, since you don't seem to have actually read the constitution) count for more than the dissent of judges who have spent their entire lives studying these issues?
As for "keeping the proles down", you're full of shit. The Pure Food and Drug laws were not imposed by some evil cabal. They were written by popular demand after people realized that food and drug processors were selling people tainted foods and drugs that were worse than useless. It may well be that their constitutionality under the interstate commerce clause is dubious. So what? What's more important, safe food, or a constitutional principle based on a 200-year-old political compromise that never really worked?
Yes, the law is misused. All laws are. That's another consequence of the Nation of Laws thing.
You consider riot suppression a military function? Most cops and soldiers would disagree.
During the '60s a lot of National Guard units got put on riot duty. They often screwed up, leading to a lot of unnecessary deaths. Nowadays, they do better, because they have better training — police training.
If building you own computer works for you, fine. If you have fun doing it, so much the better. Lots of people save money and have fun building their own computers, cars, houses, etc. I'm simply pointing out that this is not an option for most people.
From one of your links: "Provides for the continued enforcement of marijuana laws against those who cultivate, transport and possess marijuana for sale." Not exactly legalization.
They're showing that they know how to make a "real" Mac. Like many geeks, they don't understand that making something kewl is not the same thing as having a viable business model.
Not every computer company needs to be Dell.
Actually, they do. Well, not quite, but you do need a lot of scale to be profitable. And we're talking about semi-proprietary hardware that is inherently less profitable than a generic PC.
Apple itself is just barely big enough to make that work. Even so, they're considered a niche market. Now these guys think they can make a profit with the same semi-proprietary hardware, and a target customer base that's a small niche within Apple's small niche. Oh yeah, and they have to charge less than Apple, or else nobody has any reason to buy from them. I don't think so.
Where do you get your figures? My guess: you have 3 friends and 1 of them builds his own computers, as do you.
Because most moderators think that "troll" means "stupid". And in fact, Twitter is not extremely bright. The idea that ACPI is designed to sabotage Linux is absurd. His "evidence" is Linus's statement that it's a bad protocol and some ambiguous email from a former Microsofter.
I work for the x64 group at Sun. We support ACPI on Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and Solaris. (And Windows, though I shouldn't mention it, since this is "proof" that we're part of the conspiracy.) If there's sabotage of non-Windows systems via this technology, none of our customers has thought to mention it to us.
The point of comparing Sugar to XP is to demonstrate what most of us predicted -- i.e., that XP is completely unsuitable for this application.
And that, believe it or not, is actually good news.
People want Windows on the XO because they think that kids need "practical" tools, like Microsoft Office, so they can develop "marketable" skills. Which is nonsense. There aren't that many jobs for people with those kinds of skills, especially not in rural villages in the developing world. Kids in those places need learning tools that help them build their knowledge and skill base on their own.
So Windows on the XO is unworkable. Great. Now the OLPC people can get back to doing something more useful than producing yet another Wintel clone.
Fine, Apple can't stop people from selling computer that have the ability to run MacOS. But there isn't much market for machines where you have to install the OS yourself.
"Huh? I'd buy a computer like that. So would my friends. We install OSs all the time." True. But you and your friends are not typical consumers. Most people will not buy a computer that doesn't already have an OS on it.
Of course, there's the corporate customers, who have the resources for to install their own OSs, and who buy most computers anyway. But they have a disadvantage individual consumers don't: they're big enough for Apple to sue.
As to the topic at hand, you need to be a real idiot to install a road on your property without a closed gate at the entrance and not expect cars to accidentally drive down the road.
The submitter did say he'd found places where Google ignored gates (didn't say whether they were closed) and "No Trespassing" signs.
The Feds do have the power to seize control of the National Guard in the event of war or other emergency (there are National Guard units in Iraq), but otherwise the National Guard is controlled by the states.
The federal government provides most of the National Guard's funding and training. The governors don't "control" them, they just borrow them from time to time. And if they tried to use them for actual military purposes, rather than as relief workers or temporary cops, there'd be hell to pay.
No way is a major corp like Comcast going to give you a shortcut. The "trick" is to switch to a geek-friendly ISP, such as Speakeasy or sonic.net. Not an option, of course, if want a speed that isn't available on DSL in your area.
I use the AT&T/Yahoo ISP. They're a lot less expensive than Speakeasy, which seems to have lost interest in the home market. They're the same price as sonic.net, but sonic doesn't offer "naked" DSL, and I don't want to pay $20 a month for a phone line I'll never use. But if I have to deal with AT&T's clueless support people again, I may bite the bullet and switch.
State law takes precedence, according to our Constitution.
You should try reading a document before you make statements about what it says. The constitution specifies many situations where federal law trumps state law: coinage, war powers, interstate commerce, etc. And these powers have gradually been expanded by amendment.
U.S. states are not just jurisdictional division. They're actually quasi-sovereign entities, with their own laws, their own courts, even their own armies. Only specific powers are ceded to the federal government.
That's the theory, and there's always been a conflict between the theory and the practice. (The worst war in American history was a very literal conflict over this very issue.) And over the years, "states rights" have steadily eroded. Those state armies, for example, are now known as the National Guard and for most purposes, they're effectively under the control of the Feds. There have been many changes to the Constitution that took rights away from the states, most notably the 14th amendment.
The end result is that you have a constant legal tug-of-war between the federal legal system and the state. In some cases, federal law always has the last word, but not always. In this particular case, there's no legal principle that says that the state has to help the federal government enforce its anti-drug laws. So if you have a stash of medicinal marijane and live in California, you can't be busted by a city, county, or state copy; you just show them your special ID card. But it won't protect you from the DEA.
Why do people have such a hard time posting replies under the post they're actually replying to?
Of course the federales can do a bust, but prosecuting people for trivial offenses which don't cross state lines is normally done on the State's dime; and I doubt the people of Wyoming want their taxes raised to keep all those California pot-heads in federal prisons if they manage to get a conviction.
People in Wyoming mostly have common sense. People in Washington do not.
Most pot growing is still illegal under California Law. Under Prop 215 you can grow pot for personal use provided your doctor has prescribed it.
That was a joke. A bad one, but still a joke. Even Twitter is allow to make a joke.
Good would be training their call center employees to solve problems (instead of reading, tediously, from the "unplug your modem, reboot all your computers..." book)
Comcast call center people could be better trained. (I'm not actually a Comcast customer, I'm just assuming that Comcast does as lousy a job of training its call center staff as everybody else.) But no matter how well trained call center people are, there's no getting away from the Moronic Flowchart model of level 1 tech support. That's because 90% of tech support is asking really bonehead questions, like "Is it plugged in?" That's frustrating for techies like us, who already know to do that stuff, but there's no way around it. When you're answering millions of support calls, you have to have some filtering mechanism. It's just too expensive to give every caller a highly-skilled techie with serious problem-solving skills.
Of course, it often happens that after you've patiently told the Level 1 guy Yes, I've plugged it in, yes, I've reset it, and all the other stuff you know has nothing to do with your problem, you'll get handed to a Level 2 guy who's just as clueless. No excuse for that.