Unfortunately the real world doesn't work that way. I can manufacture (write code) my widget. Now if someone uses that widget to commit a crime, I will not be forced to stop making said widget. Say for example something mundane like a potato peeler. Then some trenchcoat wearing teenager runs out and stabs six people because Marilyn Manson told him to. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure only legal use of the product. Napster can still be used to trade music that is free.
Not explicitly no, but you responded to an article talking about: Why Won't You Pay for Content?
This is specifically talking about paying for online content (not banner removal, or special features, but CONTENT).
Then you say: Funny you mentioned it as kuro5hin became a pay site as of today. check it at www.kuro5hin.org
To me, and probably most slashdot readers, this indicates you now have to pay for content at kuro5hin, but you don't
Before modding something up as "Informative" check your facts. Kuro5hin is not charging for content. The FAQ on the subject covers it exactly. Instead, your paying a fee to visit the site without banners, the content, and all of it will always be free.
When is this going to be in our FPSs? Hit a key and bring up your handy sniper locator... of course it would only work when your buddy is lying on the floor beside you and your crouching behind some cover, hoping the sniper is in front of you and not behind, but still.
Honestly I don't see this as being that huge of a deal, but it sure is getting submitted a lot. Then again, 25k Linux boxes inside the DoD is cool
Aside from the linux thing, this is still great. While not a US taxpayer, I think all of you that are should rejoice. The DoD just saved $15M!!! (~$600 * 25K).
I just downloaded SO for the first time yesterday and started playing it. I work for the Feds here in Canada. In our department, we've got somewhere between 25K-35K machines. We're also in a budget crunch, trying to save every dollar we can. Not too mention that we're also in the middle of a big audit on our MS-Office Licenses. After looking at SO for only a bit, I really think its a feasible alternative. I'm considering writing up a proposal and sending it off to both the heads of the IT department as well as the Treasury Board (who does funding for all Federal departments).
The only added cost would be training, but even sending a dozen or so of our folks to wherever to get an instructor led course would be far cheaper than spending the $$$ on licensing Office! As a taxpayer, I'd be extatic.
Anyone have any good links on writing up such a proposal - or even a draft they'd be willing to let me fit to our situation? Any help is appreciated.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is Duke Nukem 3d. Had the Z-axis... not sure if it came out before or after Quake though. I think before, but not really sure. Personally I enjoyed Duke a lot more than Quake. I just didn't like the look and feel of Quake nearly as much as I did Duke.
I know we use the metric system, but I'd read or heard a stat recently (obviously from an American source) that said 1/7 Sq miles and I was too lazy to do the conversion.
As for internet access, Saskatchewan was one of the first to do it. I believe they started in about 95 offering ADSL. At the time is was about $100/month and required a one year contract.
Um, I think you missed the point. The fact is Canada has a lot of smaller centers. Much more so than the States. Agreed *MOST* of the population lives in the urban centers you mentioned, but that still leaves a substantial number of people who do not have access to high speed internet. For those people this is a wonderful option to have.
Okay, a lot of people are complaining about the fact that there might be a 1/2 second delay. Well guess what, that's still a hell of a lot better than the rural folks are getting now. Remember, Canada isn't nearly as densely populated as the US. I think its about 1 person per 7 sq miles where the US is about 10 times that (or more).
This isn't going to be the solution for those of us living in big centers where we hae our choice of DSL and cable. This is for rural areaa, some of whom still dial in over radio! Yes, northern Saskatchewan still uses some Radio for phone communications. So, this is a huge step forward. Lets face it, A town of
This is "the last mile". Its the most difficult thing in connecting to the Internet. Here's an answer. Give it some time to drop in price. I know when DSL started around here, it was over $100/month, not the $45 it is now.
Its nice to see competeing platforms actually working together on something like this. Of course I can also see complaints that platform X is better at game Y then platform Z becoming the main topic on various forums.
There's other interesting things as well, but I wouldn't want to post their names is this forum, though I have no respect for either of them. Send me an email and maybe we can talk.
There's more than money and time invested that makes an employee want to stay. Myself, working for the Feds in Canada, I'm looking hard for a new job. Why? Well, the pay isn't great, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is my supervisor and management.
One of the projects I look after is our teleworkers. Currently we use an ISDN line that provides data at 128K until the phone is picked up, then the 2nd BRI is dropped as data and becomes voice. Recently, our supplier of our ISDN routers went out of business. As a result, we took it as an opportunity to investigate other solutions (a Megalink at the office to ISDN lines, or VPN... both result in substantial $$$ savings). My manager sent out a message to all the other groups saying we wouldn't be setting up any more teleworkers while we investigated other options. No sooner did this happen that I was told to order an addon to a PCMCIA adaptor that would connect to ISDN as opposed to POTS. When I mentioned that this wasn't a great idea (no voice cabablility which is essential, don't have a laptop for the new teleworker, plus, nothing on the office end for them to dial into) I was told to just order it, they didn't want to hear about problems.
So, I spend $400 of taxpayers' money on a piece of gear that we couldn't use. When it showed up, I was told to make it work. When I again brought up these problems, I was told I was "making excuses and putting up road blocks". I actually got in trouble for this!!
I'm not the only one either. Over half of our second level group has had loud arguments with management in the last few weeks, and they don't appear to see the problem!
Similarly, I was asked to look at different DHCP solutions. I did. Surprise, after costing out W2K, Win NT4, Linux, and standalone hardware devices, Linux came out the cheapest. We have 3 people in the office who are familiar enough to support a Linux based server running DHCP. When I submitted my paper with costs, support issues, and finally my reccommendation, I was told that when writing up the paper there was too much personal prejudice, that Linux wasn't the answer just because I liked it. So instead, we bought a W2K license ($1500) put it on a big Dell Server ($40,000) which serves up addresses to ~500 users. Geez, I've got a 486 at home that could do the same thing running Linux.
So, as I said, I'm looking for a new job. They offer lots of training, I work with a great bunch of people, but management can't admit when they're wrong, can't treat us with respect, and refuse to even consider a technology they know nothing about (not that they know much about any technology, they just think they do).
Hi, My name is Andrew
I had a Cable Modem. After frequent routing problems, poor speed, and total lack of competent service people, I swithced to DSL. Had it installed in about 2 weeks. No service charge. In over a year of service, I've been down a total of about 2 hours.
There, now you know somebody who had Cable and was unhappy with it.
What can I say except THANKS!. No, installing them probably wouldn't take all day, but downloading 110+ MB through our connection at work did take all day:).
Quick notes: I'm installing Server, not advanced. As with any install, you go check for updates, well, for 2000 Server, since June 6/2000, there are 31 critical updates for Windows 2000 Server, not including SP1. That's a little less than 1 per week. I'm going to be spending the rest of the day patching!
Micrsoft should be fined, or punished in some way for this. Anyplace they say that IIS is more secure, has just been proven false. I mean how can any software be considered more secure than anything if it contains a backdoor! For example, the linked article in the post says Windows is more secure out of the box. Well, Win2K Advanced Server installs IIS by default (not sure about Front Page extensions though). Therefore, it is definitely NOT more secure.
The sad thing is, this probably won't affect sales of MS products one bit. Those who weren't informed, will probably miss this bit, or downplay its importance. I know I'm supposed to be migrating our web server from NT4.0 and IIS to Win2K and IIS 5.0, but even if I brought this article to my boss, he'd downplay the importance. He'd bring up that at a regional level we're not supposed to install Linux, of course we're not supposed to intall Win2K servers either, but that doesn't seem to matter.
Except that like a lot of us, I want to build my own, but aside from that, here's a completely open source design. I'd like more details (are they going to use the crusoe chip, or stick with x86). Also, it made no mention of DVD capability which I really think they should add in. Lets face it, if its a decent speed processor and video card, all you'd have to do is add the DVD drive and you'd be set.
Why?
Publicity, pride and fame would be the top reasons I guess, though I don't think its purely a US thing, I think its a human thing. Look at it from a species survival angle. The more planets, solar systems, etc. that we colonize, the more likely humans are to survive. With the talk of an asteroid or comet crashing into earth, I think the human civilization as a whole would feel better (aside from various groups) knowing that even if the Earth was destroyed, human kind would live on. Of course this is assuming that any Mars colony would be or could be self-substaining.
As our technology grows, I'm fairly confident that we will begin things like terraforming, making Mars a suitable habitat for humans. At which point some of your above reasons come in: lots of space, and land. Not too mention that there probably are some minerals that we value on Mars. I'm no expert on this, but I'm sure there is something there we would find a use (abuse?) for.
Besides, as the ISS becomes bigger and better, we'll start making these flights from there, as opposed to the surface, which significantly reduces the cost (even if we have to get the materials up there beforehand).
I see your point entirely, but that's not going to stop it. Lets face it, this will happen eventually (barring some world wide disaster), maybe not in 2020, but sometime. However, lets face it, we can design robots to do a lot, but having a human there does allow a greater possibilty of actions. Part of it is definitely a public relations move, lets face it the Apollo moon landing was a huge publicity generator.
But, at some point, humans are going to attempt to colonize another planet, Mars being the most likely. The first step to colonization will be a visit - not for any really GOOD reason, but it will be the first step.
but also linux itself. The main reason I have a Windows machine at home is for gaming. However, while games running via WINE vs ported source code may not make a difference - however, for the good of the linux community and wider use of it, I think it would be better if games were actually ported.
Wouldn't be nice to see a few of the top people from both Mirosoft and FSF, GNU, etc to sit down, in a live broadcast and have an honest to goodness debate! No fanatics from either side, but a true debate where they discuss issues like public licensing vs proprietary, open and closed source. Instead of all these articles, and responses, and follow-ups, an actual sit down debate.
Yup, that's exactly what the telco's use. I was lucky enough to get a tour of Bell's main office in Ottawa (Canada). The batteries are a little larger than you'd find in your average car, but that's exactly what they are. All connected up to the power coming into the building, and all the equipment is then hooked up to these batteries.
We actually have PBX here where I work, and its the same thing, about 6 batteries inbetween the building power and the PBX.
As a point of interest, if anyone remembers the big "telephony blackout" awhile back around Toronto, where even 911 calls were down, the folks at Bell in Ottawa explained what happened. Apparently someone was changing batteries, or working near them, and a wrench fell onto the batteries and happenend to connect the + and - connectors (which are bare metal). As a result, a lot of equipment fried. Guess their surge suppression wasn't quite up to snuff!
Not to take away from your experience, but where I work, I wouldn't trade Dell's support for anything. We have a lot of Dell Laptops, as well as many servers (quad Xeons, redundant everything, etc). In any case, we have the same type of support contract, 2 business days, on site. I'm pretty sure everytime we've called, they've been here the next day. Very rarely to they even do anyh troubleshooting over the phone. I'm not to sure if they trust our diagnosis, or if they just find it easier to show up on site.
Admittedly, I've never had the problem you described, but they have come out (or shipped parts) to use immediately. We lost one of the HDD in one of the servers, and Dell had a new one shipped overnight to us, it was here about 20 hours after making the call.
Slashdot Mirror
ACK!! NOT the responsiblity of the manufaturer! Must always use preview, even when not using html!
Unfortunately the real world doesn't work that way. I can manufacture (write code) my widget. Now if someone uses that widget to commit a crime, I will not be forced to stop making said widget. Say for example something mundane like a potato peeler. Then some trenchcoat wearing teenager runs out and stabs six people because Marilyn Manson told him to. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to ensure only legal use of the product. Napster can still be used to trade music that is free.
Why Won't You Pay for Content?
This is specifically talking about paying for online content (not banner removal, or special features, but CONTENT).
Then you say:
Funny you mentioned it as kuro5hin became a pay site as of today. check it at www.kuro5hin.org
To me, and probably most slashdot readers, this indicates you now have to pay for content at kuro5hin, but you don't
Before modding something up as "Informative" check your facts. Kuro5hin is not charging for content. The FAQ on the subject covers it exactly. Instead, your paying a fee to visit the site without banners, the content, and all of it will always be free.
When is this going to be in our FPSs? Hit a key and bring up your handy sniper locator... of course it would only work when your buddy is lying on the floor beside you and your crouching behind some cover, hoping the sniper is in front of you and not behind, but still.
Aside from the linux thing, this is still great. While not a US taxpayer, I think all of you that are should rejoice. The DoD just saved $15M!!! (~$600 * 25K).
I just downloaded SO for the first time yesterday and started playing it. I work for the Feds here in Canada. In our department, we've got somewhere between 25K-35K machines. We're also in a budget crunch, trying to save every dollar we can. Not too mention that we're also in the middle of a big audit on our MS-Office Licenses. After looking at SO for only a bit, I really think its a feasible alternative. I'm considering writing up a proposal and sending it off to both the heads of the IT department as well as the Treasury Board (who does funding for all Federal departments).
The only added cost would be training, but even sending a dozen or so of our folks to wherever to get an instructor led course would be far cheaper than spending the $$$ on licensing Office! As a taxpayer, I'd be extatic.
Anyone have any good links on writing up such a proposal - or even a draft they'd be willing to let me fit to our situation? Any help is appreciated.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is Duke Nukem 3d. Had the Z-axis... not sure if it came out before or after Quake though. I think before, but not really sure. Personally I enjoyed Duke a lot more than Quake. I just didn't like the look and feel of Quake nearly as much as I did Duke.
I know we use the metric system, but I'd read or heard a stat recently (obviously from an American source) that said 1/7 Sq miles and I was too lazy to do the conversion.
As for internet access, Saskatchewan was one of the first to do it. I believe they started in about 95 offering ADSL. At the time is was about $100/month and required a one year contract.
Um, I think you missed the point. The fact is Canada has a lot of smaller centers. Much more so than the States. Agreed *MOST* of the population lives in the urban centers you mentioned, but that still leaves a substantial number of people who do not have access to high speed internet. For those people this is a wonderful option to have.
This isn't going to be the solution for those of us living in big centers where we hae our choice of DSL and cable. This is for rural areaa, some of whom still dial in over radio! Yes, northern Saskatchewan still uses some Radio for phone communications. So, this is a huge step forward. Lets face it, A town of This is "the last mile". Its the most difficult thing in connecting to the Internet. Here's an answer. Give it some time to drop in price. I know when DSL started around here, it was over $100/month, not the $45 it is now.
Its nice to see competeing platforms actually working together on something like this. Of course I can also see complaints that platform X is better at game Y then platform Z becoming the main topic on various forums.
There's other interesting things as well, but I wouldn't want to post their names is this forum, though I have no respect for either of them. Send me an email and maybe we can talk.
One of the projects I look after is our teleworkers. Currently we use an ISDN line that provides data at 128K until the phone is picked up, then the 2nd BRI is dropped as data and becomes voice. Recently, our supplier of our ISDN routers went out of business. As a result, we took it as an opportunity to investigate other solutions (a Megalink at the office to ISDN lines, or VPN... both result in substantial $$$ savings). My manager sent out a message to all the other groups saying we wouldn't be setting up any more teleworkers while we investigated other options. No sooner did this happen that I was told to order an addon to a PCMCIA adaptor that would connect to ISDN as opposed to POTS. When I mentioned that this wasn't a great idea (no voice cabablility which is essential, don't have a laptop for the new teleworker, plus, nothing on the office end for them to dial into) I was told to just order it, they didn't want to hear about problems.
I'm not the only one either. Over half of our second level group has had loud arguments with management in the last few weeks, and they don't appear to see the problem!So, I spend $400 of taxpayers' money on a piece of gear that we couldn't use. When it showed up, I was told to make it work. When I again brought up these problems, I was told I was "making excuses and putting up road blocks". I actually got in trouble for this!!
Similarly, I was asked to look at different DHCP solutions. I did. Surprise, after costing out W2K, Win NT4, Linux, and standalone hardware devices, Linux came out the cheapest. We have 3 people in the office who are familiar enough to support a Linux based server running DHCP. When I submitted my paper with costs, support issues, and finally my reccommendation, I was told that when writing up the paper there was too much personal prejudice, that Linux wasn't the answer just because I liked it. So instead, we bought a W2K license ($1500) put it on a big Dell Server ($40,000) which serves up addresses to ~500 users. Geez, I've got a 486 at home that could do the same thing running Linux.
So, as I said, I'm looking for a new job. They offer lots of training, I work with a great bunch of people, but management can't admit when they're wrong, can't treat us with respect, and refuse to even consider a technology they know nothing about (not that they know much about any technology, they just think they do).
Okay, rant mode off!I had a Cable Modem. After frequent routing problems, poor speed, and total lack of competent service people, I swithced to DSL. Had it installed in about 2 weeks. No service charge. In over a year of service, I've been down a total of about 2 hours.
There, now you know somebody who had Cable and was unhappy with it.
Maybe, but who would want to go up to stay in a beta version of a space station!
What can I say except THANKS!. No, installing them probably wouldn't take all day, but downloading 110+ MB through our connection at work did take all day :).
This is what passes for secure these days?
The sad thing is, this probably won't affect sales of MS products one bit. Those who weren't informed, will probably miss this bit, or downplay its importance. I know I'm supposed to be migrating our web server from NT4.0 and IIS to Win2K and IIS 5.0, but even if I brought this article to my boss, he'd downplay the importance. He'd bring up that at a regional level we're not supposed to install Linux, of course we're not supposed to intall Win2K servers either, but that doesn't seem to matter.
Here's hoping its not vapourware.
Publicity, pride and fame would be the top reasons I guess, though I don't think its purely a US thing, I think its a human thing. Look at it from a species survival angle. The more planets, solar systems, etc. that we colonize, the more likely humans are to survive. With the talk of an asteroid or comet crashing into earth, I think the human civilization as a whole would feel better (aside from various groups) knowing that even if the Earth was destroyed, human kind would live on. Of course this is assuming that any Mars colony would be or could be self-substaining.
As our technology grows, I'm fairly confident that we will begin things like terraforming, making Mars a suitable habitat for humans. At which point some of your above reasons come in: lots of space, and land. Not too mention that there probably are some minerals that we value on Mars. I'm no expert on this, but I'm sure there is something there we would find a use (abuse?) for.
Besides, as the ISS becomes bigger and better, we'll start making these flights from there, as opposed to the surface, which significantly reduces the cost (even if we have to get the materials up there beforehand).I see your point entirely, but that's not going to stop it. Lets face it, this will happen eventually (barring some world wide disaster), maybe not in 2020, but sometime. However, lets face it, we can design robots to do a lot, but having a human there does allow a greater possibilty of actions. Part of it is definitely a public relations move, lets face it the Apollo moon landing was a huge publicity generator.
But, at some point, humans are going to attempt to colonize another planet, Mars being the most likely. The first step to colonization will be a visit - not for any really GOOD reason, but it will be the first step.
but also linux itself. The main reason I have a Windows machine at home is for gaming. However, while games running via WINE vs ported source code may not make a difference - however, for the good of the linux community and wider use of it, I think it would be better if games were actually ported.
Wouldn't be nice to see a few of the top people from both Mirosoft and FSF, GNU, etc to sit down, in a live broadcast and have an honest to goodness debate! No fanatics from either side, but a true debate where they discuss issues like public licensing vs proprietary, open and closed source. Instead of all these articles, and responses, and follow-ups, an actual sit down debate.
We actually have PBX here where I work, and its the same thing, about 6 batteries inbetween the building power and the PBX.
As a point of interest, if anyone remembers the big "telephony blackout" awhile back around Toronto, where even 911 calls were down, the folks at Bell in Ottawa explained what happened. Apparently someone was changing batteries, or working near them, and a wrench fell onto the batteries and happenend to connect the + and - connectors (which are bare metal). As a result, a lot of equipment fried. Guess their surge suppression wasn't quite up to snuff!
Admittedly, I've never had the problem you described, but they have come out (or shipped parts) to use immediately. We lost one of the HDD in one of the servers, and Dell had a new one shipped overnight to us, it was here about 20 hours after making the call.