When I see fedoras, I don't think so much of the mob... nowadays, it's more like, "Uh, oh, better change lanes, I don't want to get stuck behind THAT guy." Also, you want to make sure you don't stand in front of one while they're backing up. A brick wall is scant cover from a rampaging Buick Regal.
I suppose I should give equal time to the Dems... the sponsor of this bill is Fritz Hollings, who's pretty much the biggest whore in Congress these days.
Barr was considered a weirdo becuase he actually believed in things, and wasn't the type to sign on to something just because HP, Sony, Microsoft, Intel and Nokia were willing to pony up. I'm sure he handled some pork and favors over the years, but he's known best for his strong opinions.
It's refreshing to read this, especially in CL. His position on this truly is the the same as conservative and libertarian thinkers, if not Republican policticians. Left and right can agree on a lot of things if you erase the party labels. This issue isn't about left vs. right, it's about insiders vs. outsiders.
Unfortunately, the Repubs who actually stood for something before they got into power now seem all too willing to stick their fingers in the air and follow the winds of public opinion, or if they feel no wind, to take some cash and mumble something about "creating jobs."
>> Java Desktop System could be dropped into most non-technical enterprises in places where general productivity was the mission,
What he misses (like nearly all of the Linux On The Corporate Desktop advocates) is that nearly every small business uses some sort of vertical-market application as their central IS system. There are packages for real estate agents, beverage wholesalers, dental offices, auto repair shops, property management, and for practically every other business you can think of. And nearly all of them run on Windows.
Every small business I've ever worked with uses something like this, and that's always the obstacle to having such companies even consider Linux.
Perhaps as more of these are moved to an HTTP-based architecture, the doors will open for Linux on the business desktop, but until then, the real lock-in isn't MS Office but the zillions of vertical-market apps that run on Windows.
>> we have a customer who likes to create daily new domains such as somenewcompany.theircompany.com somenewcompany2.theircompany.com blahblah.theircompany.com
Oh, yeah, I think I know who you mean... we've been getting a lot of mail from them lately.
What's even weirder is that since it started, all the guys in Marketing have been bragging about their, ahem, size.
More to the point, the company isn't even hiring to begin with. Restated, the page amounts to:
"We're going to throw away all resumes, but especially those from SCO."
BTW, note that submitter chrisd is listed on the exec team of damagestudios, along with other former VA/Andover/Sourceforge folks. Basically this is a just a tacky PR ploy, and I guess I fell for it. Looks like they're trying to get some free hits on their site more than anything else. They should just pay for their ads like everybody else.
You've obviously never run a mail server that has actual human customers on it.
Ever get one of those rejection messages from Osirusoft and try to figure out what to do next? (answer: there's nothing you can do except repent.) Now imagine an end user, or a customer getting one of those. This is improving e-mail? And the server admin has no ability whatsoever to fix it, other than to try and convince the jackboots at SPEWS or some other dipshit little club that they've mnade a mistake.
But, if that's what you want, then go ahead and turn your mail delivery over to those folks. But once you've turned over your delvery to them, then you're subject to anything they do and anything that gets done to them, right or wrong. Maybe one day you'll wake up and they'll be bouncing all mail... oh wait, that already happened.
But don't look for sympathy from me. My customers got their mail yesterday, with about 90% of the spam filtered out through more tactful means. The phones in customer service didn't light up like a Christmas tree, and I didn't have to explain to the CEO why a message from his mother resulted in a cryptic rejection notice.
IP blacklisting is for lazy pricks and idiots who couldn't figure out that this was going to happen someday.
Well, you crammed a lot of assumptions into that reply, and I guess my original message did, too.
I just know that everybody I know who's had that line used on him has taken it as a smartass remark, or as a declaration of the employee's limitations. Problem is, everybody who says it thinks they're being clever and orginal, but every manager has heard it before.
Sure it's effective. So is shutting off your mail server.
The problem is that collective IP blacklisting is so mistake-prone that it's just unacceptable. I had a server, one that hosted e-mail for several domains (none of which do anything remotely spam-like), and somebody forged the IP in a header, and the server got into some darned blacklist based on three anonymous "reports". Thankfully, most people are smart enough to use better anti-spam measures such as keyword or header filtering, which don't cede control to external mobs.
On a corporate server, you'd be nuts to use one of those blacklists; at the very least, you want to be able to whitelist your important business partners. Perhaps the DDOS attacks are from some disgruntled syadmin who got canned when an important e-mail to the CEO mistakenly bounced.
If I were the boss in Scenario One, I'd fire the tech. Okay, I wouldn't fire him, but I'd chew his ass out good. That's a smartass response no matter what the workload. My reply would simply be, "Never mind, I'll find a tech who can get all the work done." Smartass replies cut both ways, you know.
Scenario Two is slightly more understandable, assuming your department actually has a procedure for new projects. Usually, though, the "procedure" is a process by which tech can deep-six anything they don't like.
The saying I live by is, "give them what they want, not what they ask for." Sometimes, this sounds like you're saying no, but what you really want to do is get into the requestor's head and try to figure out what he needs to accomplish from a business perspective. If they say, "We need ACT! installed on every computer in the department," the right response isn't yes or no but, "Why?" Often, the reply reveals that all they want is one small feature, or access to a subset of the data. Usually you can implement it in a way that is both eaier for you, easier for the user, and saves the company money. That's the difference between a good IT guy and one who's simply good at saying no.
Oh, just wait until it becomes the latest fad among Japanese hot-rodders. Seriously, imagine a thousand Japanese kids all showing up on a Saturday night to strut their... well, to strut their struts. I can picture it, just can't describe it.
Seriously, this is a cool idea for what it is, but it's also so cheap that.... the frivolous possibilities for the technology are mind-boggling. I predict Tokyo sidewalks will become completely unnavigable within a few years.
Yeah, sure, like I almost believe this article. Hoaxamtic. Look, here's the real scoop.
Phone rings:
Marc Smith: Hello
Voice: Hello, Mark!
Marc Smith: Oh, Hello, Mr. Gates. Nice to hear from you.
Gates: What have you been up to in the Sociology Department there?
Marc Smith: Oh, the usual, surfing for po.. uh, I mean, invading people's privacy. Yeah, that's it, we've been scouring Usenet looking for the "quality users" if you know what I mean.
Gates: Good work. Be sure to send me a list of who posts all the best... uh, you know, Usenet stuff. And make sure the press gets wind of it. It'll keeps the Linux weenies distracted whining about privacy.
Smith: Yes sir, Mr. Gates. Thank you for your inetrest in our "project".
Of course you think it would be a Good Thing, you want Free Software. People who want to sell lots of prescription drugs think it would be a Good Thing if we paid for those. People who want time off to take their pets to the vets think that mandatory leave is a Good Thing. Others think it would be a Good Thing if government subsidized blow jobs.
Unfortunately, it's just another case of taking money from many for for the benefit of a few.
And would it really be more economically efficient? How would they decide which free software to develop? You might want an Outlook replacement for e-mail, but Microsoft's lobbyists might want to have something to say about it. Oracle would squash any attempts at making a better database. Think about it.
It's tempting to think that an "organized" process of development would be more efficient than the seeming haphazard system now in place. But the system's very haphazardness is what makes it effective. People develop the tools that are useful, because that's what they need. Companies happily subsidize open source software when it's worthwhile, but there are a zillion justly unsponsored projects for that one. So the system isn't as haphazard as it appears, and any government planning process would not only become a politcal football, it would also be slow as molasses. Just read your damned tax return form, that'll give you a hint of what a programmer would have to go through to get his project approved.
Remember, we want Free as in Speech, not as in Beer. This suggestion is just free beer.
Of cousre, the natural response is that what you really want is for the government to simply give money to kind-hearted developers who will choose their own projects and standards, and make great free stuff available for the rest of us. Unfortunately, the reality of government is that once it starts giving out money, you find people lining up to collect it who have no business being there, and anybody who would be affected by it, positively or negatively, would be pulling strings and corrupting the process.
If they just wanted to throw a few million a year at some university or something to see what they came up with, then fine. But even that is subject to politcal machinations, and I think you'd be disappointed with the results. Free Software is alive, thriving and prospering, and it's a fantastic phenomenon. That's reality. Suggestions like this are simply dreams.
I dunno... Imagine this... Tandy determines that Seattle Computer's DOS was a derivative of TRS-DOS (a much stronger claim than SCO's). As we all know, bits of that old code still exist in modern versions of Windows. So Tandy writes to all Windows users offering to sell them a license.
The scary part is, Tandy already has everybody's address.
Wow, post was moderated as Troll, Insightful, Interesting, Funny, Underrated, Overrated, and Flamebait. In baseball, that's called hitting for the cycle.
You're totally missing the point, which is probably what the Democrats and Republicans want. The issue isn't how spammer should be sued. Sheesh, is anybody ever going to really collect money from a spammer in Korea? Or from one who works out of a mobile home soemwhere in Arkansas?
The anti-spam legislation should aim to prevent spam. Is that too controversial? Unfortunately, lawsuits, no matter how structured, are only a disincentive for people who have money. But I don't get offensive sexually oriented spam from major corporations, I get it from sexygirlxxxwhatever. Far more effective would be a law that forbade mass mailings with an invalid bounce address, forged headers, etc., which would be enforced under criminal law. I don't even know if there are any such provisions in the pending bill, but I sure don't turn to my my congressperson when I need to learn about RFC compliance. I do know that if you want to stop McDonald's from sending spam, you shouldn't need a class-action lawsuit; any lawmaker worth his salt ought to be able to think of an easier way than that. But the trial lawyers are showering money on the Dems, drooling over the possibilities; meanwhile, the potential defendants are sending money to the Repubs to stop them. What a racket.
It's not "SUV mentality" (whatever that is), it's VARIETY. No, it's not for everybody, duh. But it's interesting because it's a little DIFFERENT from the lookalike laptops we see these days. It's not exactly what I want, but any departure from the standard form factor is welcome.
One of the odd things about the free market is that there's a tendency to have a lot of people doing the same thing. We tend to end up with lower prices than we really need, and not enough variety. This is especially true of "mass-market" items that require a large capital investment to produce. So there are a zillion lookalike laptops out there. You could probably buy one at random and spend a lot of time choosing another, and be happy with both.
It's nice to see Toshiba trying something a little different. Hope they try a bunch of other form factors, too, maybe I'll like one of 'em.
Slashdot Mirror
When I see fedoras, I don't think so much of the mob... nowadays, it's more like, "Uh, oh, better change lanes, I don't want to get stuck behind THAT guy." Also, you want to make sure you don't stand in front of one while they're backing up. A brick wall is scant cover from a rampaging Buick Regal.
I suppose I should give equal time to the Dems... the sponsor of this bill is Fritz Hollings, who's pretty much the biggest whore in Congress these days.
Barr was considered a weirdo becuase he actually believed in things, and wasn't the type to sign on to something just because HP, Sony, Microsoft, Intel and Nokia were willing to pony up. I'm sure he handled some pork and favors over the years, but he's known best for his strong opinions.
It's refreshing to read this, especially in CL. His position on this truly is the the same as conservative and libertarian thinkers, if not Republican policticians. Left and right can agree on a lot of things if you erase the party labels. This issue isn't about left vs. right, it's about insiders vs. outsiders.
Unfortunately, the Repubs who actually stood for something before they got into power now seem all too willing to stick their fingers in the air and follow the winds of public opinion, or if they feel no wind, to take some cash and mumble something about "creating jobs."
From the article:
>> Java Desktop System could be dropped into most non-technical enterprises in places where general productivity was the mission,
What he misses (like nearly all of the Linux On The Corporate Desktop advocates) is that nearly every small business uses some sort of vertical-market application as their central IS system. There are packages for real estate agents, beverage wholesalers, dental offices, auto repair shops, property management, and for practically every other business you can think of. And nearly all of them run on Windows.
Every small business I've ever worked with uses something like this, and that's always the obstacle to having such companies even consider Linux.
Perhaps as more of these are moved to an HTTP-based architecture, the doors will open for Linux on the business desktop, but until then, the real lock-in isn't MS Office but the zillions of vertical-market apps that run on Windows.
>> we have a customer who likes to create daily new domains such as somenewcompany.theircompany.com somenewcompany2.theircompany.com blahblah.theircompany.com
Oh, yeah, I think I know who you mean... we've been getting a lot of mail from them lately.
What's even weirder is that since it started, all the guys in Marketing have been bragging about their, ahem, size.
More to the point, the company isn't even hiring to begin with. Restated, the page amounts to:
"We're going to throw away all resumes, but especially those from SCO."
BTW, note that submitter chrisd is listed on the exec team of damagestudios, along with other former VA/Andover/Sourceforge folks. Basically this is a just a tacky PR ploy, and I guess I fell for it. Looks like they're trying to get some free hits on their site more than anything else. They should just pay for their ads like everybody else.
You've obviously never run a mail server that has actual human customers on it.
Ever get one of those rejection messages from Osirusoft and try to figure out what to do next? (answer: there's nothing you can do except repent.) Now imagine an end user, or a customer getting one of those. This is improving e-mail? And the server admin has no ability whatsoever to fix it, other than to try and convince the jackboots at SPEWS or some other dipshit little club that they've mnade a mistake.
But, if that's what you want, then go ahead and turn your mail delivery over to those folks. But once you've turned over your delvery to them, then you're subject to anything they do and anything that gets done to them, right or wrong. Maybe one day you'll wake up and they'll be bouncing all mail... oh wait, that already happened.
But don't look for sympathy from me. My customers got their mail yesterday, with about 90% of the spam filtered out through more tactful means. The phones in customer service didn't light up like a Christmas tree, and I didn't have to explain to the CEO why a message from his mother resulted in a cryptic rejection notice.
IP blacklisting is for lazy pricks and idiots who couldn't figure out that this was going to happen someday.
Well, you crammed a lot of assumptions into that reply, and I guess my original message did, too.
I just know that everybody I know who's had that line used on him has taken it as a smartass remark, or as a declaration of the employee's limitations. Problem is, everybody who says it thinks they're being clever and orginal, but every manager has heard it before.
Sure it's effective. So is shutting off your mail server.
The problem is that collective IP blacklisting is so mistake-prone that it's just unacceptable. I had a server, one that hosted e-mail for several domains (none of which do anything remotely spam-like), and somebody forged the IP in a header, and the server got into some darned blacklist based on three anonymous "reports". Thankfully, most people are smart enough to use better anti-spam measures such as keyword or header filtering, which don't cede control to external mobs.
On a corporate server, you'd be nuts to use one of those blacklists; at the very least, you want to be able to whitelist your important business partners. Perhaps the DDOS attacks are from some disgruntled syadmin who got canned when an important e-mail to the CEO mistakenly bounced.
If I were the boss in Scenario One, I'd fire the tech. Okay, I wouldn't fire him, but I'd chew his ass out good. That's a smartass response no matter what the workload. My reply would simply be, "Never mind, I'll find a tech who can get all the work done." Smartass replies cut both ways, you know.
Scenario Two is slightly more understandable, assuming your department actually has a procedure for new projects. Usually, though, the "procedure" is a process by which tech can deep-six anything they don't like.
The saying I live by is, "give them what they want, not what they ask for." Sometimes, this sounds like you're saying no, but what you really want to do is get into the requestor's head and try to figure out what he needs to accomplish from a business perspective. If they say, "We need ACT! installed on every computer in the department," the right response isn't yes or no but, "Why?" Often, the reply reveals that all they want is one small feature, or access to a subset of the data. Usually you can implement it in a way that is both eaier for you, easier for the user, and saves the company money. That's the difference between a good IT guy and one who's simply good at saying no.
Oh, just wait until it becomes the latest fad among Japanese hot-rodders. Seriously, imagine a thousand Japanese kids all showing up on a Saturday night to strut their... well, to strut their struts. I can picture it, just can't describe it.
Seriously, this is a cool idea for what it is, but it's also so cheap that.... the frivolous possibilities for the technology are mind-boggling. I predict Tokyo sidewalks will become completely unnavigable within a few years.
Yeah, sure, like I almost believe this article. Hoaxamtic. Look, here's the real scoop.
Phone rings:
Marc Smith: Hello
Voice: Hello, Mark!
Marc Smith: Oh, Hello, Mr. Gates. Nice to hear from you.
Gates: What have you been up to in the Sociology Department there?
Marc Smith: Oh, the usual, surfing for po.. uh, I mean, invading people's privacy. Yeah, that's it, we've been scouring Usenet looking for the "quality users" if you know what I mean.
Gates: Good work. Be sure to send me a list of who posts all the best... uh, you know, Usenet stuff. And make sure the press gets wind of it. It'll keeps the Linux weenies distracted whining about privacy.
Smith: Yes sir, Mr. Gates. Thank you for your inetrest in our "project".
SCO is what you'd get if Microsoft laid off all the programmers.
>> Is he living on the same earth we do?
Notwithstanding the overwhelming indications to the contary, yes.
MySQL [warn]: database full - recycling 1998 entries.
If downtown Boston is operating normally, then something's DEFINITELY wrong.
>> And the difference between that and private funding is?
Microsoft isn't allowed to use guns to get its way.
would be a Good Thing
Of course you think it would be a Good Thing, you want Free Software. People who want to sell lots of prescription drugs think it would be a Good Thing if we paid for those. People who want time off to take their pets to the vets think that mandatory leave is a Good Thing. Others think it would be a Good Thing if government subsidized blow jobs.
Unfortunately, it's just another case of taking money from many for for the benefit of a few.
And would it really be more economically efficient? How would they decide which free software to develop? You might want an Outlook replacement for e-mail, but Microsoft's lobbyists might want to have something to say about it. Oracle would squash any attempts at making a better database. Think about it.
It's tempting to think that an "organized" process of development would be more efficient than the seeming haphazard system now in place. But the system's very haphazardness is what makes it effective. People develop the tools that are useful, because that's what they need. Companies happily subsidize open source software when it's worthwhile, but there are a zillion justly unsponsored projects for that one. So the system isn't as haphazard as it appears, and any government planning process would not only become a politcal football, it would also be slow as molasses. Just read your damned tax return form, that'll give you a hint of what a programmer would have to go through to get his project approved.
Remember, we want Free as in Speech, not as in Beer. This suggestion is just free beer.
Of cousre, the natural response is that what you really want is for the government to simply give money to kind-hearted developers who will choose their own projects and standards, and make great free stuff available for the rest of us. Unfortunately, the reality of government is that once it starts giving out money, you find people lining up to collect it who have no business being there, and anybody who would be affected by it, positively or negatively, would be pulling strings and corrupting the process.
If they just wanted to throw a few million a year at some university or something to see what they came up with, then fine. But even that is subject to politcal machinations, and I think you'd be disappointed with the results. Free Software is alive, thriving and prospering, and it's a fantastic phenomenon. That's reality. Suggestions like this are simply dreams.
I dunno... Imagine this... Tandy determines that Seattle Computer's DOS was a derivative of TRS-DOS (a much stronger claim than SCO's). As we all know, bits of that old code still exist in modern versions of Windows. So Tandy writes to all Windows users offering to sell them a license.
The scary part is, Tandy already has everybody's address.
>> Could the next must-have computer input device be a morse key ?"
Only if Apple releases a mouse that's shaped like one.
Wow, post was moderated as Troll, Insightful, Interesting, Funny, Underrated, Overrated, and Flamebait. In baseball, that's called hitting for the cycle.
Hey, why throw out a $50 NIC when you can get it working by simply investing thousands of dollars' worth of your own time?
Nothing new. I've had Linux on my desktop for years.
One of these days maybe I'll open the box and install it.
You're totally missing the point, which is probably what the Democrats and Republicans want. The issue isn't how spammer should be sued. Sheesh, is anybody ever going to really collect money from a spammer in Korea? Or from one who works out of a mobile home soemwhere in Arkansas?
The anti-spam legislation should aim to prevent spam. Is that too controversial? Unfortunately, lawsuits, no matter how structured, are only a disincentive for people who have money. But I don't get offensive sexually oriented spam from major corporations, I get it from sexygirlxxxwhatever. Far more effective would be a law that forbade mass mailings with an invalid bounce address, forged headers, etc., which would be enforced under criminal law. I don't even know if there are any such provisions in the pending bill, but I sure don't turn to my my congressperson when I need to learn about RFC compliance. I do know that if you want to stop McDonald's from sending spam, you shouldn't need a class-action lawsuit; any lawmaker worth his salt ought to be able to think of an easier way than that. But the trial lawyers are showering money on the Dems, drooling over the possibilities; meanwhile, the potential defendants are sending money to the Repubs to stop them. What a racket.
It's not "SUV mentality" (whatever that is), it's VARIETY. No, it's not for everybody, duh. But it's interesting because it's a little DIFFERENT from the lookalike laptops we see these days. It's not exactly what I want, but any departure from the standard form factor is welcome.
One of the odd things about the free market is that there's a tendency to have a lot of people doing the same thing. We tend to end up with lower prices than we really need, and not enough variety. This is especially true of "mass-market" items that require a large capital investment to produce. So there are a zillion lookalike laptops out there. You could probably buy one at random and spend a lot of time choosing another, and be happy with both.
It's nice to see Toshiba trying something a little different. Hope they try a bunch of other form factors, too, maybe I'll like one of 'em.