A sensasional artical than it is factual. Now I don't doubt that many of the issues raised in call centers ring true, been there done that, there are a few things that I personally have seen that need to be taken into consideration.
First of all, it's average call time. While most of my experiance has to do with ISP support there are still a lot of parallels. Say you get a 30 min call, then a 5 min call, then a 10 min call. Right there your at 15 mins ACT. Not great but if your trying to actually solve problems rather than "punt" or "give" the call away it's a respectable ACT to have. Now how do you know that 15 mins is a respectable call time if it's 3 mins over your 12 min limit? Next point...
Any good call center has peer review and then the big client review. (I don't touch on client review here but suffice to say there are often frantic scrambles down to the "floor" from the boardroom to tell tech X that he better do a good job on this call, time be dammed!) Peer review is typically a weekly thing that every manager has to submit to their "Account Manger" every week. Plug into the call queue and listen though a call. Not the most fun but it really does need to be done to ensure that people have a clue what they are talking about. (This is assuming you as the manager actually have a clue, but I digress.) Many times this job is left to the managers lackys, sometimes called "Team Leads", but the important thing is that it gets done by someone who has a good understanding of what to listen for in a call. You then can use this data with the statistics on call times and such to get a real picture of how a tech is dealing with calls. Only looking at the #'s leads to...
The drive to get as many calls as humanly possable, problem solving be dammed. And yeah, it's there and will be until the clients (The people who outsource their support needs.) realize that paying by call instead of "resolutions" is a truely asinine way of doing things. However, since many companys have yet to realize this you will have call centers gouging at the trough of calls/money. So often what is done by clever managers is to strike a balance of techs who do both, those "turn and burn" calls and those who actually try to fix problems. It is far from a perfect solution as those who don't fix anything tend to leave the customers in a very upset state for those that do actually try and fix things, or even worse the punters manage to make the problem worse before ending the call. But it's a way to actually keep the gravy train running while still being able to keep most of the angry customers from writing scathing letters to the powers that might actually cancel your contract.
I could go on but I think everyone should get the idea by now. Hopefully one of these days the people who outsource their support will get a clue and use that magic word resolution rather than trying to just look at #'s but for right now it's at best a frog in the blender mix of both kinda deal.
Many posts here have been modded up, and rightly so I suppose, for pointing out that this is business as useal.
However, unless people like us are in the know about things like this we there is nothing to stop large business groups from railroading whatever they see fit though standardizing boards.
Yes this is a news site. Yes, guys and gals this IS news. Yeah, the editors have a anti-MS bias but that does not mean that it's not newsworthy.
Have you ever heard of police corruption? Or when an offical abuses their power? I sure hope you have because unless you are 100% sure that the justice system is 100% honest any one of those measures could be used against you if you were to upset the wrong person.
The wrong person could be as simple as some jilted lover who's dad/mom is a cop. An elected offical who didn't like it when you pointed out that a bill they wish to pass will directly pay their company the taxpayers money. Or even just some scumbag you looked at the wrong way one day who happens to know a dirty cop that will have no qualms about framing you.
I think there were a lot of people concerned that the court wouldn't respond this way. The telemarketing industry has deep pockets to spend on lobbying and/or buying out congressmen/women's votes.
The point is in this case it was not up to the congresscritters but the courts which are not nearly as easily bought as the former.
The hard part, for now until all the loopholes need be patched, has been done by getting the bill passed. We must now watch to make sure it does not get repealed or nutered by said congresscritters when we arn't looking.
Why is the Hubble being scrapped when we don't have anything that can currently replace it?
Politics. Dirty, stinking, no forward looking, get the powers that be to look away from what matters and focus on voting the encumbents in this November, politics.
Am I pissed? Yeah. Am I biased, maybe. Am I right? Definatly.
To be quite honest I never gave that Dev X's troll any thought. But apparently/. seems to feel that this very poorly written piece of work deserves not one but two front page storys. So be it. (I sure hope to hell that OSDN is not getting any cash from those losers. It would really ruin my day.)
Bottom line for me is that FUD is FUD is FUD is FUD. There are several ways to combat it and one of them is to just let those that want to FUD away while we continue to build, create, use, and accept that OSS is a good thing for everyone. Those with small minds are scared, good. I don't want those people involved with me and it makes me actually feel good when I see that they have to resort to such lies and FUD to try to defend what they see as "the only way".
I read a comment here the other day about how someone viewed OSS OSes as the ultimate capitalist leveling field. By making not only the hardware but the base software, the OS, open you then allow everyone to create things as they wish and without any strings. They even can make them closed source if they so wish but the hooks, protocals, and standards are open such that you can make the software work correctly, regardless of platform.
As has been sited here many times MS has not even given that freedom to it's programmers with it's lack of API documentation in addition to it's lack of standards (Unless you think that they are alone in being able to set them. Go away then you shrill.) and numerous changes in even their own types of file standards. (Why does MS Word docs have to change so often? Hello, forced upgrades.)
I really could care less about such FUD from some lame ass website that I personally have never visisted or even heard of until reading the inital/. artical. They can go toil in obscurity imo and we are ill served by even giving them the time of day.
Are these trolls even worthy of/.ers posting to their forums? They write a dated troll and then wait for the traffic to roll in so they can say to their advertisers that they actually have some traffic.
While I'm not the end all be all expect of web pages I've never heard of these losers. And furthermore I'm not going to waste my time by having anything to do with them.
I'm giving them -1 Troll and doing so by not even helping/. their lame IIS server.
I'm sure your right but when you think about it I can walk into some dollar store and buy 100 cheapo watches for the same price. If each one of them were to only last 6 months that would be 50 years worth of watches, and you would get a brand new one 2 times a year.
Don't get me wrong thou, I would not be caught dead in one of those things.
I beg to differ! I've been running a 2.2.x gateway computer for years now and it's done a heck of a job. ipmasqadm with portfw makes it a very flexable tool and there are even many other additions that allow for tunneling of some of the more tricky protocals.
There are plenty of reasons to run newer kernels, I would never discount any of the linux even series as a "bust".
Taking the more specific point first, the fact that assembly language is readable doesn't mean that binary machine language is. You seem to be conflating the two.
Not at all, I simply wish that you understand the fact that while machine code is not typically ment to be read by humans, there are steps that can be made to turn it back into some form of code that can be read.
Why are binary files called binarys? That in iself is a misrepresentation of what that actually is. It's not a magic set of 1's and 0's that some how got thrown together and then do what was intended in the source, rather it's a set of instructions, typically refered to as opcodes, that on a very low level tell the CPU what to do. What they really are are programs that operate on a much lower level, and thus faster and typically more flexable, than an interpreted language does. (For the record does an interpreted language operate as machine code? Yes, it just does it "on the fly" in a sence.)
Now, if you want to go down to a really low level and think about what the CPU might be doing by caching certin parts of that program (The Binary if you will.) then you get into things that are really beyond what a human could/should be looking at. However if I were to write a simple Hello World program and then watch the gates flip, if I knew what I was looking for I bet I could tell you what was going on.
Bottom line is, that "binarys" arn't really binary in the sence that they are just a collection of 1's and 0's. They are rather a set of instructions that is based, in a compiled laguage, on source. Yes, in this day and age there is little reason to have to disassemble programs due to the fact that typically the source exists, even if it is closed source. However in some cases, a very good example being viri and the likes, there is a definite need to be able to take the program (binary) and use the tools that we developed to "decompile" it into human readable format.
I respect what your trying to say but I think your missing what I'm really saying myself.
I realize I'm the one who started picking nits here but lets be clear on what exactly is what.
Back in the old days when the//e had a built in disassembler, called the monitor for those who remember, it was possable to type in hex code directly into the computer. Basicly, if you knew the hex opcodes for what you wanted you could program you computer directly.
So, while granted it would be a hell of a job to take even the hex opcodes and disassemble them it is possable. My major problem with the statment is that it makes binary code seem all but indechiperable to anything but a machine. But keep in mind this is not some sort of alien artifact that we don't know the interal workings of. With the proper tools it's more than possable to take a binary file, translate those binary codes into hex, match up the hex with the proper opcodes, then read the disassembled work.
Again, I know I started this but my orignal statment still is very valid. And for the record while I could never do more than write some short stuff in the x300 range but a buddy of mine, whom I witnessed on many occasions, was able to write code directly into the monitor all the way from x800 well into the 2nd hires page.;)
Humans can read and understand source code; only a computer can understand and run the binary program.
Now I realize that they had to dumb the flyer down a bit beacuse it was going to law students. (Zing!) But really, after seeing how cool and actually intelligent some of them were (Normally I'd not even consider saying something like that but hey, these are MIT students so they get the benifit of my doubt.) do they really need to be misinformed about something so basic?
While it is very hard these days to read asm vs the early, oh say 8 bit, days it's still not impossable as that line seems to suggest. It is, however, true that only computers can run binary. Although I suppose if someone really wanted to, ie was as crazy as Darl, they could sit down with a piece of paper and a pen (No calculators now; thats a computer!) and write out how something would run. But even that would not work out well if it was a GUI.
Anyway, it is just a minor thing but of my key things when countering FUD is the facts and I feel that everyone should keep that in mind.
Re:Oh Darl, when will you ever learn?
on
Darl Goes to Harvard
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· Score: 2, Insightful
From the MIT summary it was noted that at least some elements of SCO read/., it should be no suprise then that some of them astroturf as ACs here.
I'm not suprised one bit that within every SCO thread here there is someone saying such silly things. If anything, I would be much more suprised if there were none.
And luckily, even the densest of mods seem to know this and I've not seen anything that bad above +2 yet.
MS got a lot of bad press a year ago when they tried to make a Portland, OR school pay up for their licensing scheme. I doubt they want the bad press that would come from trying to enforce an anti-benchmark clause.
Thing is, that some bad press over a lisance or two is one thing. A set of reproducable data that would be, in effect, bad press for MS is a whole other thing.
The lisances of any one instatution is really a drop in the bucket for MS. As I'm sure you know MS tons of cash so if it's an option over getting some bad press over a few lisances I'm quite sure they will drop the matter...for now.
A study that shows how MS products perform vs other products would be however, depending on the actual results, a very bad thing for them. Hard studys that are reproducable are things that even the denseist of PHB's tend to pay attention to. IE, will it effect the bottom line?
Put another way, say for example that the study were to show that implimenting OSS is better as a whole than MS packages based on the 3 S's, security, stability, and scaleability. (Yeah there are other things involved but lets keep it simple for this example.) Then they would have to actually compeate on price and I think most of us know that all the FUD aside that would be a very hard thing for them to do.
Bottom line is that I have yet to see any reproducable studys that compares OSS (Throw MacOS in there if you wish.) to MS software. I have, however, seen a bunch of psudo-studys that all say that MS stuff is "Grrrrrate!" (Sorry Tony.) and some how that just don't pass the sniff test in my book.
I know your being serious but the sad thing is that there is proably a lot of truth in the fear that a lawsuit can bring. Especially when your talking about MS.
Just take a quick look at all the SCO links that we have racked up over time here. Think about the lack of morals involved. And they are operating on a relativly small budget. Now, think about the endless coffers that MS has to give to a team of high priced lawyers who have a similar set of morals or even worse some sort of righteous set of thinking that MS would be doing the right thing.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that while there may be no law or even precedent for them to be able to bring a suit against someone who were to displease them in any way they still can and will do so at the drop of a hat. Great legal system we got here eh?
Intresting policy but I think it does limit your options. What I have done for some of my friends who I help is install Opera/Mozilla/Netscape (yeah yeah, hey thats what they wanted) and then remove all the shortcuts to IE save one buryed in the Start menu.
It, so far, has worked out rather well. They use the non-IE browser for all the day to day stuff. However, due to lazy webdesigners there are those pages out there that just refuse to work properly in anything but IE and so I tell them, if they really truely need to use it they can go fire it up and view that page in IE.
However, just that simple act of having to dig though the Start menu means that they have to remember my stern warning about how they are now taking their computers virtual life in their hands and subjecting it to whatever nastyness the IE only site might have. And since they are using what really is, Netscape not withstanding, a superior browser most of the time they normally can't wait to get out of IE and back to the better one.
But the one hard fact that you provide, Levis, seems to have a other story that you forgot to mention.
During the 80's Levi's saw the trend that WalMart was going to tear down the small town stores that were selling things for way too high a profit margin. At the same time the malls were booming in America like never before. The "mall culture" if you will became a staple for many people including the youth. In steps the Gap.
Now joke what you want about the Gap but I'm sure that they are turning an excellent profit. Their online store seems pretty nice and while it runs IIS, I bet it does pretty good as well.
Anyway, I have heard the pro's and con's of the WalMartization of America and it seems to me that that that old saying holds true, "If you dance with the devil..." And then maybe another one too, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
I had my Casio Module No. 82 watch. (Mid/late 70's)
It played no less than 10 sounds/songs: a song for each day of the week, Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, and it chimed bells at noon.
Plus, it played the scales when you went though it's menu options. It had a sidelight (If you looked close you could see the little led bulb), and a stopwatch. Kept great time too.
I think the point of your argument is that since NASA is the only one that currenly flys into space in this country they are the only game in town?
What about the fact that a geek close to our hearts, John Carmack, has his own areospace co. or the Russans are always willing to send up a rocket for some cash. (With ppl in them even.)
The Hubble is American and as of right now it's NASAs responsability, however if they see fit they could give the responsability to a set of insititusions. With letters like MIT, GT, UCLA (Sorry, I'm east coast. Drawing a blank on what west coast schools do rocket science.), and then add a few other schools in there and you have one powerful set of heads working there.
While, and I'm not sure of the the actual #'s, most TV shows do end up getting canceled some of them actually do just end. (Most time the actors are the ones who call it quits.)
Most notably would be Seifeld. When Jerry called it quits NBC was reportatly dropping a a few mill per ep and would have gladly given more.
Anyway, to get back on topic I'm not sure if TNG was canceled or they actually called it quits but it seemed like they did end it pretty gracefully. (Somewhat weak time travel plot ending not withstanding.)
Here in the states we curn out a ton of content every day. More than any other country in the world, and while I'm just guessing on that I'm quite sure it's true.
So, we have this mass of content that everyone has been copywriting since late night talk show hosts have been making fun of MLB. Add to that we then invent this "internet" thing an then start to build a bunch of powerful computers to use on/with it.
Now, consider the goverment. Lumbering, slow, never in touch. The 1st Bush's comment about how he was suprised at how checkout lines in the 90's had laser UPC scanners comes to mind.
So, as many of us here know that computers move fast and the buissness of computers moves even faster we have a fast moving object meeting a very large slow lumbering object. One wonders at how we have made it this far. (And taken in that contect it's easy to see how an object like MS can move much faster than the goverment can ever catch, especially when they don't want to.)
Finally, add in the buildup of the internet such that now end users can have bandwidth that easily can do many may things, well...wow. You know I'm not really jealous of Europe and their adaption of even faster bandwidth right now. At this point I think the goverment needs to catch up so badly that if we were do do any sort of major push on tech right now we would all just go crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
So no, this isn't a news site. It's a propoganda site.
Heh, you know...nah, your not even worth more than a laugh.
A sensasional artical than it is factual. Now I don't doubt that many of the issues raised in call centers ring true, been there done that, there are a few things that I personally have seen that need to be taken into consideration.
First of all, it's average call time. While most of my experiance has to do with ISP support there are still a lot of parallels. Say you get a 30 min call, then a 5 min call, then a 10 min call. Right there your at 15 mins ACT. Not great but if your trying to actually solve problems rather than "punt" or "give" the call away it's a respectable ACT to have. Now how do you know that 15 mins is a respectable call time if it's 3 mins over your 12 min limit? Next point...
Any good call center has peer review and then the big client review. (I don't touch on client review here but suffice to say there are often frantic scrambles down to the "floor" from the boardroom to tell tech X that he better do a good job on this call, time be dammed!) Peer review is typically a weekly thing that every manager has to submit to their "Account Manger" every week. Plug into the call queue and listen though a call. Not the most fun but it really does need to be done to ensure that people have a clue what they are talking about. (This is assuming you as the manager actually have a clue, but I digress.) Many times this job is left to the managers lackys, sometimes called "Team Leads", but the important thing is that it gets done by someone who has a good understanding of what to listen for in a call. You then can use this data with the statistics on call times and such to get a real picture of how a tech is dealing with calls. Only looking at the #'s leads to...
The drive to get as many calls as humanly possable, problem solving be dammed. And yeah, it's there and will be until the clients (The people who outsource their support needs.) realize that paying by call instead of "resolutions" is a truely asinine way of doing things. However, since many companys have yet to realize this you will have call centers gouging at the trough of calls/money. So often what is done by clever managers is to strike a balance of techs who do both, those "turn and burn" calls and those who actually try to fix problems. It is far from a perfect solution as those who don't fix anything tend to leave the customers in a very upset state for those that do actually try and fix things, or even worse the punters manage to make the problem worse before ending the call. But it's a way to actually keep the gravy train running while still being able to keep most of the angry customers from writing scathing letters to the powers that might actually cancel your contract.
I could go on but I think everyone should get the idea by now. Hopefully one of these days the people who outsource their support will get a clue and use that magic word resolution rather than trying to just look at #'s but for right now it's at best a frog in the blender mix of both kinda deal.
Many posts here have been modded up, and rightly so I suppose, for pointing out that this is business as useal.
However, unless people like us are in the know about things like this we there is nothing to stop large business groups from railroading whatever they see fit though standardizing boards.
Yes this is a news site. Yes, guys and gals this IS news. Yeah, the editors have a anti-MS bias but that does not mean that it's not newsworthy.
Have you ever heard of police corruption? Or when an offical abuses their power? I sure hope you have because unless you are 100% sure that the justice system is 100% honest any one of those measures could be used against you if you were to upset the wrong person.
The wrong person could be as simple as some jilted lover who's dad/mom is a cop. An elected offical who didn't like it when you pointed out that a bill they wish to pass will directly pay their company the taxpayers money. Or even just some scumbag you looked at the wrong way one day who happens to know a dirty cop that will have no qualms about framing you.
Think about it.
I think there were a lot of people concerned that the court wouldn't respond this way. The telemarketing industry has deep pockets to spend on lobbying and/or buying out congressmen/women's votes.
The point is in this case it was not up to the congresscritters but the courts which are not nearly as easily bought as the former.
The hard part, for now until all the loopholes need be patched, has been done by getting the bill passed. We must now watch to make sure it does not get repealed or nutered by said congresscritters when we arn't looking.
Why is the Hubble being scrapped when we don't have anything that can currently replace it?
Politics. Dirty, stinking, no forward looking, get the powers that be to look away from what matters and focus on voting the encumbents in this November, politics.
Am I pissed? Yeah. Am I biased, maybe. Am I right? Definatly.
To be quite honest I never gave that Dev X's troll any thought. But apparently /. seems to feel that this very poorly written piece of work deserves not one but two front page storys. So be it. (I sure hope to hell that OSDN is not getting any cash from those losers. It would really ruin my day.)
/. artical. They can go toil in obscurity imo and we are ill served by even giving them the time of day.
Bottom line for me is that FUD is FUD is FUD is FUD. There are several ways to combat it and one of them is to just let those that want to FUD away while we continue to build, create, use, and accept that OSS is a good thing for everyone. Those with small minds are scared, good. I don't want those people involved with me and it makes me actually feel good when I see that they have to resort to such lies and FUD to try to defend what they see as "the only way".
I read a comment here the other day about how someone viewed OSS OSes as the ultimate capitalist leveling field. By making not only the hardware but the base software, the OS, open you then allow everyone to create things as they wish and without any strings. They even can make them closed source if they so wish but the hooks, protocals, and standards are open such that you can make the software work correctly, regardless of platform.
As has been sited here many times MS has not even given that freedom to it's programmers with it's lack of API documentation in addition to it's lack of standards (Unless you think that they are alone in being able to set them. Go away then you shrill.) and numerous changes in even their own types of file standards. (Why does MS Word docs have to change so often? Hello, forced upgrades.)
I really could care less about such FUD from some lame ass website that I personally have never visisted or even heard of until reading the inital
Are these trolls even worthy of /.ers posting to their forums? They write a dated troll and then wait for the traffic to roll in so they can say to their advertisers that they actually have some traffic.
/. their lame IIS server.
While I'm not the end all be all expect of web pages I've never heard of these losers. And furthermore I'm not going to waste my time by having anything to do with them.
I'm giving them -1 Troll and doing so by not even helping
This is not a flame but just a suggestion, if your sick of the WC3 croud might I suggest Rise Of Nations?
RON is a more grown-up RTS that has a more grown-up player base. And it's gameplay is just outstanding.
It had MP issues when it 1st came out but as of right now, patch 3, it is very easy to play MP and there are plenty of games to be had.
I'm sure your right but when you think about it I can walk into some dollar store and buy 100 cheapo watches for the same price. If each one of them were to only last 6 months that would be 50 years worth of watches, and you would get a brand new one 2 times a year.
Don't get me wrong thou, I would not be caught dead in one of those things.
While the 2.2 kernel was pretty much a bust...
I beg to differ! I've been running a 2.2.x gateway computer for years now and it's done a heck of a job. ipmasqadm with portfw makes it a very flexable tool and there are even many other additions that allow for tunneling of some of the more tricky protocals.
There are plenty of reasons to run newer kernels, I would never discount any of the linux even series as a "bust".
Taking the more specific point first, the fact that assembly language is readable doesn't mean that binary machine language is. You seem to be conflating the two.
Not at all, I simply wish that you understand the fact that while machine code is not typically ment to be read by humans, there are steps that can be made to turn it back into some form of code that can be read.
Why are binary files called binarys? That in iself is a misrepresentation of what that actually is. It's not a magic set of 1's and 0's that some how got thrown together and then do what was intended in the source, rather it's a set of instructions, typically refered to as opcodes, that on a very low level tell the CPU what to do. What they really are are programs that operate on a much lower level, and thus faster and typically more flexable, than an interpreted language does. (For the record does an interpreted language operate as machine code? Yes, it just does it "on the fly" in a sence.)
Now, if you want to go down to a really low level and think about what the CPU might be doing by caching certin parts of that program (The Binary if you will.) then you get into things that are really beyond what a human could/should be looking at. However if I were to write a simple Hello World program and then watch the gates flip, if I knew what I was looking for I bet I could tell you what was going on.
Bottom line is, that "binarys" arn't really binary in the sence that they are just a collection of 1's and 0's. They are rather a set of instructions that is based, in a compiled laguage, on source. Yes, in this day and age there is little reason to have to disassemble programs due to the fact that typically the source exists, even if it is closed source. However in some cases, a very good example being viri and the likes, there is a definite need to be able to take the program (binary) and use the tools that we developed to "decompile" it into human readable format.
I respect what your trying to say but I think your missing what I'm really saying myself.
I realize I'm the one who started picking nits here but lets be clear on what exactly is what.
//e had a built in disassembler, called the monitor for those who remember, it was possable to type in hex code directly into the computer. Basicly, if you knew the hex opcodes for what you wanted you could program you computer directly.
;)
Back in the old days when the
So, while granted it would be a hell of a job to take even the hex opcodes and disassemble them it is possable. My major problem with the statment is that it makes binary code seem all but indechiperable to anything but a machine. But keep in mind this is not some sort of alien artifact that we don't know the interal workings of. With the proper tools it's more than possable to take a binary file, translate those binary codes into hex, match up the hex with the proper opcodes, then read the disassembled work.
Again, I know I started this but my orignal statment still is very valid. And for the record while I could never do more than write some short stuff in the x300 range but a buddy of mine, whom I witnessed on many occasions, was able to write code directly into the monitor all the way from x800 well into the 2nd hires page.
From the flyer that they were handing out:
Humans can read and understand source code; only a computer can understand and run the binary program.
Now I realize that they had to dumb the flyer down a bit beacuse it was going to law students. (Zing!) But really, after seeing how cool and actually intelligent some of them were (Normally I'd not even consider saying something like that but hey, these are MIT students so they get the benifit of my doubt.) do they really need to be misinformed about something so basic?
While it is very hard these days to read asm vs the early, oh say 8 bit, days it's still not impossable as that line seems to suggest. It is, however, true that only computers can run binary. Although I suppose if someone really wanted to, ie was as crazy as Darl, they could sit down with a piece of paper and a pen (No calculators now; thats a computer!) and write out how something would run. But even that would not work out well if it was a GUI.
Anyway, it is just a minor thing but of my key things when countering FUD is the facts and I feel that everyone should keep that in mind.
From the MIT summary it was noted that at least some elements of SCO read /., it should be no suprise then that some of them astroturf as ACs here.
I'm not suprised one bit that within every SCO thread here there is someone saying such silly things. If anything, I would be much more suprised if there were none.
And luckily, even the densest of mods seem to know this and I've not seen anything that bad above +2 yet.
MS got a lot of bad press a year ago when they tried to make a Portland, OR school pay up for their licensing scheme. I doubt they want the bad press that would come from trying to enforce an anti-benchmark clause.
Thing is, that some bad press over a lisance or two is one thing. A set of reproducable data that would be, in effect, bad press for MS is a whole other thing.
The lisances of any one instatution is really a drop in the bucket for MS. As I'm sure you know MS tons of cash so if it's an option over getting some bad press over a few lisances I'm quite sure they will drop the matter...for now.
A study that shows how MS products perform vs other products would be however, depending on the actual results, a very bad thing for them. Hard studys that are reproducable are things that even the denseist of PHB's tend to pay attention to. IE, will it effect the bottom line?
Put another way, say for example that the study were to show that implimenting OSS is better as a whole than MS packages based on the 3 S's, security, stability, and scaleability. (Yeah there are other things involved but lets keep it simple for this example.) Then they would have to actually compeate on price and I think most of us know that all the FUD aside that would be a very hard thing for them to do.
Bottom line is that I have yet to see any reproducable studys that compares OSS (Throw MacOS in there if you wish.) to MS software. I have, however, seen a bunch of psudo-studys that all say that MS stuff is "Grrrrrate!" (Sorry Tony.) and some how that just don't pass the sniff test in my book.
I know your being serious but the sad thing is that there is proably a lot of truth in the fear that a lawsuit can bring. Especially when your talking about MS.
Just take a quick look at all the SCO links that we have racked up over time here. Think about the lack of morals involved. And they are operating on a relativly small budget. Now, think about the endless coffers that MS has to give to a team of high priced lawyers who have a similar set of morals or even worse some sort of righteous set of thinking that MS would be doing the right thing.
Anyway, the bottom line here is that while there may be no law or even precedent for them to be able to bring a suit against someone who were to displease them in any way they still can and will do so at the drop of a hat. Great legal system we got here eh?
Our policy is the exact opposite: Mozilla only.
Intresting policy but I think it does limit your options. What I have done for some of my friends who I help is install Opera/Mozilla/Netscape (yeah yeah, hey thats what they wanted) and then remove all the shortcuts to IE save one buryed in the Start menu.
It, so far, has worked out rather well. They use the non-IE browser for all the day to day stuff. However, due to lazy webdesigners there are those pages out there that just refuse to work properly in anything but IE and so I tell them, if they really truely need to use it they can go fire it up and view that page in IE.
However, just that simple act of having to dig though the Start menu means that they have to remember my stern warning about how they are now taking their computers virtual life in their hands and subjecting it to whatever nastyness the IE only site might have. And since they are using what really is, Netscape not withstanding, a superior browser most of the time they normally can't wait to get out of IE and back to the better one.
But the one hard fact that you provide, Levis, seems to have a other story that you forgot to mention.
During the 80's Levi's saw the trend that WalMart was going to tear down the small town stores that were selling things for way too high a profit margin. At the same time the malls were booming in America like never before. The "mall culture" if you will became a staple for many people including the youth. In steps the Gap.
Now joke what you want about the Gap but I'm sure that they are turning an excellent profit. Their online store seems pretty nice and while it runs IIS, I bet it does pretty good as well.
Anyway, I have heard the pro's and con's of the WalMartization of America and it seems to me that that that old saying holds true, "If you dance with the devil..." And then maybe another one too, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
I had my Casio Module No. 82 watch. (Mid/late 70's)
It played no less than 10 sounds/songs: a song for each day of the week, Happy Birthday, Jingle Bells, and it chimed bells at noon.
Plus, it played the scales when you went though it's menu options. It had a sidelight (If you looked close you could see the little led bulb), and a stopwatch. Kept great time too.
I think the point of your argument is that since NASA is the only one that currenly flys into space in this country they are the only game in town?
What about the fact that a geek close to our hearts, John Carmack, has his own areospace co. or the Russans are always willing to send up a rocket for some cash. (With ppl in them even.)
The Hubble is American and as of right now it's NASAs responsability, however if they see fit they could give the responsability to a set of insititusions. With letters like MIT, GT, UCLA (Sorry, I'm east coast. Drawing a blank on what west coast schools do rocket science.), and then add a few other schools in there and you have one powerful set of heads working there.
It could work...but again, it's up to NASA.
While, and I'm not sure of the the actual #'s, most TV shows do end up getting canceled some of them actually do just end. (Most time the actors are the ones who call it quits.)
Most notably would be Seifeld. When Jerry called it quits NBC was reportatly dropping a a few mill per ep and would have gladly given more.
Anyway, to get back on topic I'm not sure if TNG was canceled or they actually called it quits but it seemed like they did end it pretty gracefully. (Somewhat weak time travel plot ending not withstanding.)
And I, for one, welcome our new crack smoking overlords.
I didn't even want to go there. Picking out clueless quotes from that guy would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Here in the states we curn out a ton of content every day. More than any other country in the world, and while I'm just guessing on that I'm quite sure it's true.
So, we have this mass of content that everyone has been copywriting since late night talk show hosts have been making fun of MLB. Add to that we then invent this "internet" thing an then start to build a bunch of powerful computers to use on/with it.
Now, consider the goverment. Lumbering, slow, never in touch. The 1st Bush's comment about how he was suprised at how checkout lines in the 90's had laser UPC scanners comes to mind.
So, as many of us here know that computers move fast and the buissness of computers moves even faster we have a fast moving object meeting a very large slow lumbering object. One wonders at how we have made it this far. (And taken in that contect it's easy to see how an object like MS can move much faster than the goverment can ever catch, especially when they don't want to.)
Finally, add in the buildup of the internet such that now end users can have bandwidth that easily can do many may things, well...wow. You know I'm not really jealous of Europe and their adaption of even faster bandwidth right now. At this point I think the goverment needs to catch up so badly that if we were do do any sort of major push on tech right now we would all just go crazy.