Better than incorporate, form an LLC. It's a lot cheaper at tax time.
I am a lone coder, 5 years and 160K lines of C frontend and 110 tables of sql into the project. Probably 400k lines total, if you count all the stuff that's been rewritten, redesigned, and obsoleted.
It's closed source, because I have to make a living, and because I've spent thousands of hours re-inventing the wheel so that it's entirely my wheel. The systems are for a specialized market (translation, the competition is big companies with lots of overhead)
Personally, I'm more worried with getting customers to pay on time than infringement. As far as actual infringement goes, I regularly mail myself a copy of the source tree, and the CVS tree, at least once every other month. Been doing that for years. It's cheap.. and effective enough to keep me losing sleep.
A lot of the features in the software are customer requests. These are easily documented, witnessable (if that's even a word) by a living breathing customer, and tied by date into various cd backups of the CVS tree that I mail myself.
Simply put, I don't have the resources and certainly not the time to dig about and see who might have designed a similar wheel. I don't care. All I care about is that customers get a product that is reliable as their lights so that my tech support cell doesn't ring and I can get some sleep.
Ohh, and yeah, pay me on time you lazy bums.. you know who you are.
Seems swap via NFS might cause some bottlenecks. Since cost doesn't seem to be the issue, why not compile ide and fs support into your tagged client kernels? You could then on the client boxes (theoretically?) add a hd and set up swap locally. Though I suppose there might be security concerns at LL about the theoretical possibility of removal of a 'swap' harddrive and subsequent inspection elsewhere.
The company I work for (actually, the company I own) builds and sells specialized systems that use diskless via NFS. One server and up to 10 terminals. Each terminal has it's own (very stripped down) root fs, and they all share a single usr fs mounted ro.
I use e2fs still, despite other options available. It benchmarks reasonably well across the board. (Personally, I think it's a lot more important to have more than sufficient memory on the server than to quibble about benchmark numbers.. cache cache cache.) More importantly, e2fs has proven reliable, even when tired customers just turn their server off rather than shut it down. (the system does send internal "Nag" notes to upper management whenever the server is improperly shut down) More than that though, as I'm a (totally) small time business with very limited human resources, the customers all need to be on the same page. Much easier to troubleshoot over the phone when everybody's running the same 'stuff'.
Much ado has been given to configuring the sizes of rsize and wsize in NFS mounted filesystems. I've tested and tested and tested. The default value (4096 in the server/terminal kernels i run) works the best over the most situations, but that's perhaps due to the combination of hardware I'm using, so if you're setting one up yourself, you'll probably want to investigate. (see the current NFS howto at linuxdoc.org. There's a section on tuning, and links to some benchmark suites.). At any rate, you definitely want your NICs to run in full duplex to avoid collision overhead on NFS so do your homework before picking a card. Performance in my case isn't an issue anyways, except when booting a terminal. Even on my local setup here, where I do a lot of box backups on the back-net via NFS, the defaults seem to work as well as anything else.
The terminals are typically pentiums, recycled. They're cheap, and need to be given the harsh environment the terminals work in. I've used both netboot and etherboot as loaders, and have finally settled on etherboot as it seems to build loaders that for are more tolerant of NIC card firmware revisions.
Network hardware is just a switch and 100mbit network cards. I support only one card at present (actually 3, but two are being deprecated), but bought a dozen or so of the most commonly available cards and played with them for a while before deciding on one. I want consistency in loaders, especially across a single site. Mostly though, I want the customers to be able to replace *anything* that breaks with commonly available stuff themselves so they can get back up quickly. Not that I mind the fees for on site service, but I'd much prefer happy customers. Rabidly happy customers have basically done 95% of my sales for me. Those sort of relationships aren't worth jeopardizing over specialized hardware or a fee.
The terminals all run our proprietary software package. (While that might offend some OSS guys, it pays my bills.. and at ~130K lines of C, represents a *substantial* investment in time, and a long period of being 'not paid'.) A hook in/etc/inittab to the software replaces getty in the appropriate runlevels, and since my customers all own pizza/pasta stores, the replacement is named 'pizgetty'. Pizgetty is just a wrapper that strips root perms and starts the frontend of the real software package. Each terminal runs several separate connections (typically.. it's configurable) to the server software so a terminal actually provides more than one virtual/independent screen. The software handles all configuration internally, so changing node names around, re-configuring printers or other hardware is done (hopefully) only from menus within the software. However if you're swapping nodes, the affected nodes do have to be rebooted once the config is written. Things are statically routed, which keeps configurations easy to manage.
Likewise, the server screens function like a terminal's screens. There's no login prompt without a high level of p
I didn't see a real definition of spam in the article. (I did RTFA, but I'm on my first cup of coffee.. it might have been there, bear with me)
The first question was, "What is spam?" This is much harder to answer than it at first sounds. For example, some people define spam as "any e-mail I don't want to get," even if the mail is for a list that they really did sign up for. As one panelist pointed out, some people really do want to receive pornography. Most people agreed that getting a newsletter that the recipient has actually requested is not spam. My personal take on the only "reasonable" definition comes down to consent: If you request that you receive something, it's by definition not spam. However, reselling such a list may or may not result in spam, and not everything unsolicited is spam.
It occurs to me that spam is better defined by the sender's intent rather than by the victim's lack of interest or want of it. I'd define spam to be randomly targeted bulk e-mail, similar to junk snail-mail. A blanket coverage message. The sender intends to sell the reader something, be it a product, idea, etc. I get bills in the mail all the time that I don't want, but they're different than junk mail in that they require attention, and are specifically targeted.
Would integrating a standardized blackhole-izer into the browser spam filters already available work? As users get spams and mark them as junk, they optionally send feedback to the system.
Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of how to distribute blackhole information, but a well distributed architecture is already in place if you could convince ISP's to do the redirecting.
But does plenty of warning means anything to the point and click masses? I suspect 'Joe User' is mostly aware of the recent rash of worms, but I also suspect that 'Joe User' isn't as motivated as IT staff to install patches.. unless his computer ceases to work.
Perhaps it's laziness, lack of computer education, fear (of breaking something).
The message's out there.. even this morning I was on the phone with my ISP, trapped in voice-mail hell. Had to wait an additional 1 minute while some recording droned on about 'if you use MS Windows, Windows NT.. blabla'. Even the guy who finally took the call asked 'What version of Windows do you run?' 'Linux', I replied. 'Ohh. Then I don't need to tell you to patch your system.' he said.
I write software for a living. Our coding policy around here is designed around the idea that the general user is too lazy to follow management policy. While we don't deny the end user the opportunity to ignore his company's internal policies (whatever they are), we make it in general, much more painful to NOT do it the right way.
Perhaps the ISP's should begin scanning machines for these worms, and only route service to patch sites until they are patched. It'd be expensive for all the support calls they'd get, but they could probably make a little droning recording for that too.
Makes me think of this 'classic flame' I acquired years ago (at least 8), and occasionally consult.. don't remember exactly where I ran across it, but it still ranks as about the funniest flame I've ever seen.
Because, among the people who read this newsgroup, you are granted the same respect as would be granted, say, your average root fungus. Not only are your language skills highly suspect, not only do you refuse to answer the most basic of questions about your qualifications and/or background, not only are you posting from AOL, you are annoying, your information is often wrong or unsubstantiated, and you have this air of blithe idiocy that makes people with more than eight operating neurons want to put you in a small envelope and mail you back and forth between people in Washington, D.C. until the Post Office finally sticks you in some pile of undelivered mail, where you would then remain until the weight of accumulating mail compresses you into a small lump of peat, at which point you would be ground into mulch and spread over someone's garden,
thus gaining in death what you failed to obtain in life; a useful purpose on this planet.
I didn't get the sense that Linus was preaching to the choir from the text of his letter. Perhaps it follows the OSS spirit in the sense that it's an Open Letter.. but not in a 'is not.. is too.. is not..' way.
If I were Linus, I'd take it a bit personal that my ethics and principles were being brought into question by the SCO lawsuits simply by the association of being the being the creator. If I'd put countless hours hard work to *give* something free and unique to the better good, I'd probably be a bit incensed at being called, in so many words, a thief.
He's not saying 'is not.. is not..' He's saying.. 'prove it, or stfu.'
Supposing for a minute, the statistics were accurate..
What might be the deeper truth behind them? I think that the large number of MS developers relative to a smaller number of Linux/OSS developers is key here. With a smaller userbase, and a smaller developer base, costs will be higher, as the tools are slower to evolve, and there are not as many 'off the shelf' products in a stable state to support some types of rapid development. (Key phrase, SOME types of rapid development)
The more userbase Linux develops, the lower the costs and times for development. Tools will evolve faster, and the sheer numbers of folks who know what it means when 'lpt1 is on fire' will grow. Development costs will drop as the number of monkeys grows.
Linux isn't yet as mainstream "end userish" as MS. YET. Any advantage MS has now will slip as Linux gains market share. These statistics might be interesting in two years time. (I'm betting my business on it)
Not surprisingly, the article contained no statistics comparing reliability or uptimes and their associated costs. My uneducated guess: It probably costs many more man-hours to support MS based products. If you want a superior product, you develop in Linux. Yes, you will have to invent some wheels, and adapt many other people's (often poorly documented) wheels to your particular application, which may take more time.
Which brings us to the grain of salt: Statistics are generally cited in such a way as to favor the citer.. after all, if they were not cited as such, why would they even be cited at all.
In a way that suggests that if you want to produce "optimal" product, you can go about it in a purely statistical manner.
Very interesting idea, yes. I wonder what the result would be if the 'standards' of the various genres were used as weighted samples.
Art is I guess, art. You bring your own preconceptions.. though it's anybody's guess how this accounts for similarities in taste. Perhaps it is that music is often a shared experience.. not just listening alone in the car on the way home from work. I find that my interests are similar to a lot of others, even across many genres. I guess the quality would then depend on the individual radio stations ability to guess those tastes.
'makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live.'
That's all well and good, but what if more than half of those stations happen to be playing music that sucks? (even good stations use filler too..)
I'm the head developer of a totally small time specialized systems company. (And cook, janitor, bottle washer too, small time translates to: just me) Now i'm not an IT guy really, but I have a similar situatuion: Enough requests to keep 12 of me busy.
One must condition one's customers. There are several ways of conditioning: I don't recommend the piss-poor way that some large software companies condition their users to expect little if any help. In your case, you'd probably get fired.
I do some small things, which basically cost little in resources and time. While not in your exact situation, there's enough similarity to warrant a reply. Anyways, this is what I do. There are guys out there far better at this than I am, but I have a lot of bottles to wash. (:
My customers each run a linux server, and a pile of diskless terminals in their stores. The software is specific to the type of store. I do all coding, upgrades, troubleshooting, most over the phone or via modem, as most of these systems are > 500 miles away. Luckily I get about 1 service call every two months, the system and software's pretty reliable. Most phone time is about upgrades, or ideas for features, steering, etc.
My strategy for having some time outside of the business:
1> Prepare the customer. Make sure the customer understands there are a lot of moving parts under the hood.. and yes, while it might be nice to have a new version of 'right hand', you might also need to backport changes to 'right wrist' else 'right arm' turns purple, and falls off. Make the customer aware of both the complexities, and the time it takes to balance a complex system after a change is made. Once the customer understands this, you can be more choosy about what you sink time into. You can even get away with things like 'i don't think it works with the existing architecture, but lemee look at the code to see if it's possible.' Always leave them with the notion that it 'Might' be possible, but temper it with the notion that it 'Might' be painful, or next quarter.
2> Having scared the customer with #1 above, I *ENCOURAGE* them to request new features, suggest changes, etc. You really have to hammer folks about this. Whether or not they have a clue or not, they all want input. Give it an outlet, whether or not you can deliver. Listen carefully. Best to talk in person/phone than via e-mail. The customer will likely respect a 'No.' if he feels like he's been heard.
2a> Amongst all the chaff you'll get from 2 above, there will be some gems. You'll also spend a fair amount of time talking to customers, developing a more personal relationship, which is crucial in being able to say NO. There's a wide spectrum of requests and types of folks that make the requests for features. At one end of the spectrum, requests are utterly impossible / impractical given the existing architecture, or sometimes just poorly scaled to a computer. In the middle of the spectrum are the comical.. ('can you make the computer beat my employees with a stick when they ignore store policy? Yes, I've gotten this request. (: I took it to mean that I was doing *something* right in the PR dept. for a customer to actually ask this.) At the other end of the spectrum are things you can do which take little time, but make somebody else's life a lot easier. Often times users are afraid to ask for these features because 'they don't want to be a bother, think it'd be too hard.. etc' Shoot for these in the lulls. You'll get a reputation for delivering. Yes, you still have to take on the 'BIG' projects, but it's always ALWAYS 'bang for the buck'.
3> Keep todo lists, one version called 'short term' and another version called 'Long Term'. Make absolutely sure your customers KNOW you have a todo list, and that they are on it. Make SURE that customers are informed as to just how much time is involved, and that it's probably a conservative estimate. Even if you know you can't deliver something, tell them you'll put
It did brownout seconds after we started the AC compressor.. we looked at each other and said Uhh-Ohh, and shut it down. Lights went really bright right after, and the jokes began to fly as soon as we saw the news.
Not joking, i phoned my house to see if the boxes were all still up.. i have no idea how long 3kva of batteries can power all this junk, but prolly not long enough to get home and shut the whole mess down. Luckily i'm on a county loop right off the plant, and the boxes were happily humming.
A bit about Niagara Mohawk:
NIMO (as the locals here call it with varying looks of disgust) owns all the transmission lines. The Niagara Power Project (U.S side of the river) is run by the Power Authority.. (New York State). NIMO purchases power from the Authority and others, and does the T&D. (transmission / distribution)
The Niagara hydroelectric plants (if you include the Canadian plant, which is also tied into the grid) produce an enormous amount of very inexpensive power. Unfortunately, our bills reflect the costs of maintaining infastructure. (we have perhaps the highest cost/kwh in the country) This is largely due to the majority of power produced here being exported to Ohio, Toronto, and NYC (points east). The Niagara area and New York in general have very high taxes, which has caused a lot of the high amperage heavy industry to move elsewhere. As consumer base decreased, NIMO exported more and more power outside the area.
Enter deregulation. Deregulation allows, among other things, consumers to purchase power from other providers, and requires NIMO to buy any excess power from providers. (i forget the cost in kwh now, but i remember thinking at the time that it looked rather high). As more and more providers come online, NIMO's base is eroded unless they can export the "surplus" power to another area. Hence, the grid sees traffic it might not otherwise see. A phase to phase fault at 500kv on some lonely tower could cause this sort of thing under present conditions, or at least i wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be the case.
Anyways, it will probably take some sort of re-regulation and a fair amount of time to correct. In the meantime, it's sort of like taxes.. we pay the bill and hope for the best.
I live in the Niagara Falls area, ~1 mile from the US-Canada Hydroelectric plants which generate some of the most expensive free power in the US. (You should see my fscking bill)
I was at my cousin's house yesterday morning, and we just completed installation of his Brand New Central Air-Conditioning around 4pm. Overjoyed at the idea of "mmm.. cold air," we started it up and Bingo.. the straw that broke the camel's back.
"She said the experiments should force opponents of cloning research to identify more clearly than they have until now exactly where they would draw the line against human embryo cloning -- in effect: How human does an embryo have to be to have the moral standing these advocates confer on embryos?"
Clones are people, two?
The real question is, is really that inconvenient to extract human eggs in a technical sense, or have the church, lifers, authorities, etc. placed so much ethical/moral baggage upon stem cell research that making plausibly less than human embryos for study is the only remaining (unencumbered) avenue of progress?
Cool pictures. Yes, I found Waldo after an exhaustive fuzzy search. He was hiding next to the rock.
We'd undoubtedly have more pictures added to the global wealth if we'd given NASA/JPL failed Mars missions just 1% of the money the DMCA will cost the taxpayers by the time all the litigation is settled.
So much power, so little idea of what to do with it.
Interesting would be to argue that the specification, is the property of MicroSoft, hereafter referred to as MS. The specification *is* the property of MS, they wrote every character that is in that piece of text, right down to the convoluted legalese. IMHO, if MS wants to lay claim to the text of the specification, let them. It was probably typed by a full time Bubble-Gum V-2.1 compatible MS-Typist.
However, kerberos itself does not belong to MS. Kerberos seems to be the property of one "MIT", a guy I've never met who lives "up north."
This is the license as I could find in 5 minutes of digging for kerberos.. perhaps a bit dated, as it references old U.S. export control rubbish, but..: " Copyright (C) 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Export of this software from the United States of America is assumed to require a specific license from the United States Government. It is the responsibility of any person or organization contemplating export to obtain such a license before exporting.
WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of M.I.T. not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. M.I.T. makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
..."
I didn't see a copy of this licence accompaning the MS specs. Very odd indeed, considering the legalese used in the spec license.
A question to consider: Is MS in violation of the MIT license?
As for what should/. do: I don't know, honestly.. I'd love to see/. take on MS and WIN. (pun tactlessly intended) I love it when anybody takes on MS and wins though. Every time I see MS getting the bad press they genuinely deserve, I think we all win.
(I won: I havn't used a MS product in 3 years, and for me, the wonderfully broken and unstable MS stuff just brings me more business writing and installing for non-MS platforms.. thanks again for the props, Bill. Keep up the good work.)
The more important question however: Is this the right battle? A smart fighter chooses his battles, and I'm not convinced that MS doesn't have a good case to have the verbatim posts removed. As for verbatim posts of the specs, I don't think copyright infringment will be covered by the first amendment should this go to court, and I think that even the most avid MS haters suspect that this is also the case. I'd hate to see/. go down over the wrong battle, but I sure do admire the stance. Links should remain, as those sites are arguably more responsible for the content than./ is. Methods of circumventing the EULA should have been considered by MS before release, that's their oversight and thus their problem.
Sure, MS would love to cement the DMCA, and it would be unfortunate to provide them with easy circumstance to do so. (I picture some MS VP in an office saying "Excellent.. Smithers" in response to a report of how things are going here at/.) Those arguing (myself included) that the DMCA is a Bad Thing might consider that using provisions of the DMCA itself as arguments against the DMCA is potentially self defeating. Perhaps a better approach is to wait until a clear case of unconstitutionality arises.
"power belongs in the hands of those who know no lust."
I once wrote a rather complex fuzzy logic algorithm that evaluated a new user's preferences, and tailored their BBS account (This was an ASCII BBS) to their tastes. It amounted to getting rid of things they wouldn't like, rather than adding things they would. The code was implemented initally on a test basis, and most users who bothered to try it out said it was accurate within an average of 5 rooms of a total of 150 rooms. This, I attribute to dumb luck.
Anyways, at the bottom of the "evaluation" screen was the following disclaimer:
"All evaluations are inherently innacurate, garnish to taste."
And they are. There's probably two degrees of separation from the code I wrote and what I'd wanted it to select/discard for my own tastes. Add another two or more for a person who doesn't think like I do, and behold the chaotic equation.
The code itself arose out of more boredom, and an "I'd bet i could write that.." attitude. Yet it became the tail end of the new user interface, and most new users seemed to like it. (unusual-diversions-dept. probably) The privacy policy probably had something to do with that though, since anything the user entered went to the bit-bucket after the selection code ran. If I'd told the users their data would "go on their permanent record.." I'd bet we'd have had much different results. (i.e. completely unusable to the user.. a fair bet that the so-called "alternative lifestyles" categories would have taken a beating.)
If I had to make a prediction about anything, it'd be that privacy will be the next *huge* issue over the internet. (Not that it isn't already, I'm speaking in the greater future tense, the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.) Consider that the sheer number of capable systems that can garner information about internet identities. Even now, consider the ever growing number of companies that do so overtly. What is the purpose of having this information if it is not used? What is the purpose of having the capability of garnering such information if it is not used? The end user has no control whatsoever over the use or exchange of this information. And granted, It may be collected responsibly, with an ethical privacy policy, but supposing the company is sold, or stocks drop 70% and there are offers to buy the information. What then? Most readers here are well aware of the vunerability of the machines that hold that data.
I wouldn't want Cracker Bob (pardons if there is such a person) or some script lamer with all sorts of information about me. Bob's no different than a company though, as I can't predict what Bob will do any more than I can predict what a company would do.
Not that I think it even remotely likely that my information would be used against me, but rather, as a Matter Of Principle, I want control and final say over it's use.
Perhaps not in practice now, but at some point in the future, this sort of personal information will be much more valued as a commodity. The thought I had about the NYT article is that it illustrates that this time is not here "in practice" yet, but there are those out there who are working hard to see that it's sooner rather than later. I think that since the capabilities are here already, they will be fully exploited eventually. So too, the "evaluation" code will improve, while still being inherently innacurate.
It's that inherent innacuracy that worries me most of all.
Slashdot Mirror
Better than incorporate, form an LLC. It's a lot cheaper at tax time.
I am a lone coder, 5 years and 160K lines of C frontend and 110 tables of sql into the project. Probably 400k lines total, if you count all the stuff that's been rewritten, redesigned, and obsoleted.
It's closed source, because I have to make a living, and because I've spent thousands of hours re-inventing the wheel so that it's entirely my wheel. The systems are for a specialized market (translation, the competition is big companies with lots of overhead)
Personally, I'm more worried with getting customers to pay on time than infringement. As far as actual infringement goes, I regularly mail myself a copy of the source tree, and the CVS tree, at least once every other month. Been doing that for years. It's cheap.. and effective enough to keep me losing sleep.
A lot of the features in the software are customer requests. These are easily documented, witnessable (if that's even a word) by a living breathing customer, and tied by date into various cd backups of the CVS tree that I mail myself.
Simply put, I don't have the resources and certainly not the time to dig about and see who might have designed a similar wheel. I don't care. All I care about is that customers get a product that is reliable as their lights so that my tech support cell doesn't ring and I can get some sleep.
Ohh, and yeah, pay me on time you lazy bums.. you know who you are.
Seems swap via NFS might cause some bottlenecks. Since cost doesn't seem to be the issue, why not compile ide and fs support into your tagged client kernels? You could then on the client boxes (theoretically?) add a hd and set up swap locally. Though I suppose there might be security concerns at LL about the theoretical possibility of removal of a 'swap' harddrive and subsequent inspection elsewhere.
The company I work for (actually, the company I own) builds and sells specialized systems that use diskless via NFS. One server and up to 10 terminals. Each terminal has it's own (very stripped down) root fs, and they all share a single usr fs mounted ro.
I use e2fs still, despite other options available. It benchmarks reasonably well across the board. (Personally, I think it's a lot more important to have more than sufficient memory on the server than to quibble about benchmark numbers.. cache cache cache.) More importantly, e2fs has proven reliable, even when tired customers just turn their server off rather than shut it down. (the system does send internal "Nag" notes to upper management whenever the server is improperly shut down) More than that though, as I'm a (totally) small time business with very limited human resources, the customers all need to be on the same page. Much easier to troubleshoot over the phone when everybody's running the same 'stuff'.
Much ado has been given to configuring the sizes of rsize and wsize in NFS mounted filesystems. I've tested and tested and tested. The default value (4096 in the server/terminal kernels i run) works the best over the most situations, but that's perhaps due to the combination of hardware I'm using, so if you're setting one up yourself, you'll probably want to investigate. (see the current NFS howto at linuxdoc.org. There's a section on tuning, and links to some benchmark suites.). At any rate, you definitely want your NICs to run in full duplex to avoid collision overhead on NFS so do your homework before picking a card. Performance in my case isn't an issue anyways, except when booting a terminal. Even on my local setup here, where I do a lot of box backups on the back-net via NFS, the defaults seem to work as well as anything else.
The terminals are typically pentiums, recycled. They're cheap, and need to be given the harsh environment the terminals work in. I've used both netboot and etherboot as loaders, and have finally settled on etherboot as it seems to build loaders that for are more tolerant of NIC card firmware revisions.
Network hardware is just a switch and 100mbit network cards. I support only one card at present (actually 3, but two are being deprecated), but bought a dozen or so of the most commonly available cards and played with them for a while before deciding on one. I want consistency in loaders, especially across a single site. Mostly though, I want the customers to be able to replace *anything* that breaks with commonly available stuff themselves so they can get back up quickly. Not that I mind the fees for on site service, but I'd much prefer happy customers. Rabidly happy customers have basically done 95% of my sales for me. Those sort of relationships aren't worth jeopardizing over specialized hardware or a fee.
The terminals all run our proprietary software package. (While that might offend some OSS guys, it pays my bills.. and at ~130K lines of C, represents a *substantial* investment in time, and a long period of being 'not paid'.) A hook in /etc/inittab to the software replaces getty in the appropriate runlevels, and since my customers all own pizza/pasta stores, the replacement is named 'pizgetty'. Pizgetty is just a wrapper that strips root perms and starts the frontend of the real software package. Each terminal runs several separate connections (typically.. it's configurable) to the server software so a terminal actually provides more than one virtual/independent screen. The software handles all configuration internally, so changing node names around, re-configuring printers or other hardware is done (hopefully) only from menus within the software. However if you're swapping nodes, the affected nodes do have to be rebooted once the config is written. Things are statically routed, which keeps configurations easy to manage.
Likewise, the server screens function like a terminal's screens. There's no login prompt without a high level of p
The first question was, "What is spam?" This is much harder to answer than it at first sounds. For example, some people define spam as "any e-mail I don't want to get," even if the mail is for a list that they really did sign up for. As one panelist pointed out, some people really do want to receive pornography. Most people agreed that getting a newsletter that the recipient has actually requested is not spam. My personal take on the only "reasonable" definition comes down to consent: If you request that you receive something, it's by definition not spam. However, reselling such a list may or may not result in spam, and not everything unsolicited is spam.
It occurs to me that spam is better defined by the sender's intent rather than by the victim's lack of interest or want of it. I'd define spam to be randomly targeted bulk e-mail, similar to junk snail-mail. A blanket coverage message. The sender intends to sell the reader something, be it a product, idea, etc. I get bills in the mail all the time that I don't want, but they're different than junk mail in that they require attention, and are specifically targeted.
Would integrating a standardized blackhole-izer into the browser spam filters already available work? As users get spams and mark them as junk, they optionally send feedback to the system.
Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of how to distribute blackhole information, but a well distributed architecture is already in place if you could convince ISP's to do the redirecting.
But does plenty of warning means anything to the point and click masses? I suspect 'Joe User' is mostly aware of the recent rash of worms, but I also suspect that 'Joe User' isn't as motivated as IT staff to install patches.. unless his computer ceases to work.
Perhaps it's laziness, lack of computer education, fear (of breaking something).
The message's out there.. even this morning I was on the phone with my ISP, trapped in voice-mail hell. Had to wait an additional 1 minute while some recording droned on about 'if you use MS Windows, Windows NT.. blabla'. Even the guy who finally took the call asked 'What version of Windows do you run?' 'Linux', I replied. 'Ohh. Then I don't need to tell you to patch your system.' he said.
I write software for a living. Our coding policy around here is designed around the idea that the general user is too lazy to follow management policy. While we don't deny the end user the opportunity to ignore his company's internal policies (whatever they are), we make it in general, much more painful to NOT do it the right way.
Perhaps the ISP's should begin scanning machines for these worms, and only route service to patch sites until they are patched. It'd be expensive for all the support calls they'd get, but they could probably make a little droning recording for that too.
I didn't get the sense that Linus was preaching to the choir from the text of his letter. Perhaps it follows the OSS spirit in the sense that it's an Open Letter.. but not in a 'is not.. is too.. is not..' way.
If I were Linus, I'd take it a bit personal that my ethics and principles were being brought into question by the SCO lawsuits simply by the association of being the being the creator. If I'd put countless hours hard work to *give* something free and unique to the better good, I'd probably be a bit incensed at being called, in so many words, a thief.
He's not saying 'is not.. is not..' He's saying.. 'prove it, or stfu.'
I don't blame him a bit.
Supposing for a minute, the statistics were accurate..
What might be the deeper truth behind them? I think that the large number of MS developers relative to a smaller number of Linux/OSS developers is key here. With a smaller userbase, and a smaller developer base, costs will be higher, as the tools are slower to evolve, and there are not as many 'off the shelf' products in a stable state to support some types of rapid development. (Key phrase, SOME types of rapid development)
The more userbase Linux develops, the lower the costs and times for development. Tools will evolve faster, and the sheer numbers of folks who know what it means when 'lpt1 is on fire' will grow. Development costs will drop as the number of monkeys grows.
Linux isn't yet as mainstream "end userish" as MS. YET. Any advantage MS has now will slip as Linux gains market share. These statistics might be interesting in two years time. (I'm betting my business on it)
Not surprisingly, the article contained no statistics comparing reliability or uptimes and their associated costs. My uneducated guess: It probably costs many more man-hours to support MS based products. If you want a superior product, you develop in Linux. Yes, you will have to invent some wheels, and adapt many other people's (often poorly documented) wheels to your particular application, which may take more time.
Which brings us to the grain of salt:
Statistics are generally cited in such a way as to favor the citer.. after all, if they were not cited as such, why would they even be cited at all.
In a way that suggests that if you want to produce "optimal" product, you can go about it in a purely statistical manner.
Very interesting idea, yes. I wonder what the result would be if the 'standards' of the various genres were used as weighted samples.
Art is I guess, art. You bring your own preconceptions.. though it's anybody's guess how this accounts for similarities in taste. Perhaps it is that music is often a shared experience.. not just listening alone in the car on the way home from work. I find that my interests are similar to a lot of others, even across many genres. I guess the quality would then depend on the individual radio stations ability to guess those tastes.
'makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live.'
That's all well and good, but what if more than half of those stations happen to be playing music that sucks? (even good stations use filler too..)
I'm the head developer of a totally small time specialized systems company. (And cook, janitor, bottle washer too, small time translates to: just me) Now i'm not an IT guy really, but I have a similar situatuion: Enough requests to keep 12 of me busy.
One must condition one's customers. There are several ways of conditioning: I don't recommend the piss-poor way that some large software companies condition their users to expect little if any help. In your case, you'd probably get fired.
I do some small things, which basically cost little in resources and time. While not in your exact situation, there's enough similarity to warrant a reply. Anyways, this is what I do. There are guys out there far better at this than I am, but I have a lot of bottles to wash. (:
My customers each run a linux server, and a pile of diskless terminals in their stores. The software is specific to the type of store. I do all coding, upgrades, troubleshooting, most over the phone or via modem, as most of these systems are > 500 miles away. Luckily I get about 1 service call every two months, the system and software's pretty reliable. Most phone time is about upgrades, or ideas for features, steering, etc.
My strategy for having some time outside of the business:
1> Prepare the customer. Make sure the customer understands there are a lot of moving parts under the hood.. and yes, while it might be nice to have a new version of 'right hand', you might also need to backport changes to 'right wrist' else 'right arm' turns purple, and falls off. Make the customer aware of both the complexities, and the time it takes to balance a complex system after a change is made. Once the customer understands this, you can be more choosy about what you sink time into. You can even get away with things like 'i don't think it works with the existing architecture, but lemee look at the code to see if it's possible.' Always leave them with the notion that it 'Might' be possible, but temper it with the notion that it 'Might' be painful, or next quarter.
2> Having scared the customer with #1 above, I *ENCOURAGE* them to request new features, suggest changes, etc. You really have to hammer folks about this. Whether or not they have a clue or not, they all want input. Give it an outlet, whether or not you can deliver. Listen carefully. Best to talk in person/phone than via e-mail. The customer will likely respect a 'No.' if he feels like he's been heard.
2a> Amongst all the chaff you'll get from 2 above, there will be some gems. You'll also spend a fair amount of time talking to customers, developing a more personal relationship, which is crucial in being able to say NO. There's a wide spectrum of requests and types of folks that make the requests for features. At one end of the spectrum, requests are utterly impossible / impractical given the existing architecture, or sometimes just poorly scaled to a computer. In the middle of the spectrum are the comical.. ('can you make the computer beat my employees with a stick when they ignore store policy? Yes, I've gotten this request. (: I took it to mean that I was doing *something* right in the PR dept. for a customer to actually ask this.) At the other end of the spectrum are things you can do which take little time, but make somebody else's life a lot easier. Often times users are afraid to ask for these features because 'they don't want to be a bother, think it'd be too hard.. etc' Shoot for these in the lulls. You'll get a reputation for delivering. Yes, you still have to take on the 'BIG' projects, but it's always ALWAYS 'bang for the buck'.
3> Keep todo lists, one version called 'short term' and another version called 'Long Term'. Make absolutely sure your customers KNOW you have a todo list, and that they are on it. Make SURE that customers are informed as to just how much time is involved, and that it's probably a conservative estimate. Even if you know you can't deliver something, tell them you'll put
Ohh no worries about the points..
It did brownout seconds after we started the AC compressor.. we looked at each other and said Uhh-Ohh, and shut it down. Lights went really bright right after, and the jokes began to fly as soon as we saw the news.
Not joking, i phoned my house to see if the boxes were all still up.. i have no idea how long 3kva of batteries can power all this junk, but prolly not long enough to get home and shut the whole mess down. Luckily i'm on a county loop right off the plant, and the boxes were happily humming.
A bit about Niagara Mohawk:
NIMO (as the locals here call it with varying looks of disgust) owns all the transmission lines. The Niagara Power Project (U.S side of the river) is run by the Power Authority.. (New York State). NIMO purchases power from the Authority and others, and does the T&D. (transmission / distribution)
The Niagara hydroelectric plants (if you include the Canadian plant, which is also tied into the grid) produce an enormous amount of very inexpensive power. Unfortunately, our bills reflect the costs of maintaining infastructure. (we have perhaps the highest cost/kwh in the country) This is largely due to the majority of power produced here being exported to Ohio, Toronto, and NYC (points east). The Niagara area and New York in general have very high taxes, which has caused a lot of the high amperage heavy industry to move elsewhere. As consumer base decreased, NIMO exported more and more power outside the area.
Enter deregulation. Deregulation allows, among other things, consumers to purchase power from other providers, and requires NIMO to buy any excess power from providers. (i forget the cost in kwh now, but i remember thinking at the time that it looked rather high). As more and more providers come online, NIMO's base is eroded unless they can export the "surplus" power to another area. Hence, the grid sees traffic it might not otherwise see. A phase to phase fault at 500kv on some lonely tower could cause this sort of thing under present conditions, or at least i wouldn't be surprised if this turns out to be the case.
Anyways, it will probably take some sort of re-regulation and a fair amount of time to correct. In the meantime, it's sort of like taxes.. we pay the bill and hope for the best.
I live in the Niagara Falls area, ~1 mile from the US-Canada Hydroelectric plants which generate some of the most expensive free power in the US. (You should see my fscking bill)
I was at my cousin's house yesterday morning, and we just completed installation of his Brand New Central Air-Conditioning around 4pm. Overjoyed at the idea of "mmm.. cold air," we started it up and Bingo.. the straw that broke the camel's back.
You heard it here first, folks.
"She said the experiments should force opponents of cloning research to identify more clearly than they have until now exactly where they would draw the line against human embryo cloning -- in effect: How human does an embryo have to be to have the moral standing these advocates confer on embryos?"
Clones are people, two?
The real question is, is really that inconvenient to extract human eggs in a technical sense, or have the church, lifers, authorities, etc. placed so much ethical/moral baggage upon stem cell research that making plausibly less than human embryos for study is the only remaining (unencumbered) avenue of progress?
Cool pictures. Yes, I found Waldo after an exhaustive fuzzy search. He was hiding next to the rock.
We'd undoubtedly have more pictures added to the global wealth if we'd given NASA/JPL failed Mars missions just 1% of the money the DMCA will cost the taxpayers by the time all the litigation is settled.
So much power, so little idea of what to do with it.
Interesting would be to argue that the specification, is the property of MicroSoft, hereafter referred to as MS. The specification *is* the property of MS, they wrote every character that is in that piece of text, right down to the convoluted legalese. IMHO, if MS wants to lay claim to the text of the specification, let them. It was probably typed by a full time Bubble-Gum V-2.1 compatible MS-Typist.
/. do: I don't know, honestly.. I'd love to see /. take on MS and WIN. (pun tactlessly intended) I love it when anybody takes on MS and wins though. Every time I see MS getting the bad press they genuinely deserve, I think we all win.
/. go down over the wrong battle, but I sure do admire the stance. Links should remain, as those sites are arguably more responsible for the content than ./ is. Methods of circumventing the EULA should have been considered by MS before release, that's their oversight and thus their problem.
/.) Those arguing (myself included) that the DMCA is a Bad Thing might consider that using provisions of the DMCA itself as arguments against the DMCA is potentially self defeating. Perhaps a better approach is to wait until a clear case of unconstitutionality arises.
However, kerberos itself does not belong to MS. Kerberos seems to be the property of one "MIT", a guy I've never met who lives "up north."
This is the license as I could find in 5 minutes of digging for kerberos.. perhaps a bit dated, as it references old U.S. export control rubbish, but..:
"
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Export of this software from the United States of America is
assumed to require a specific license from the United States
Government. It is the responsibility of any person or
organization contemplating export to obtain such a license
before exporting.
WITHIN THAT CONSTRAINT, permission to use, copy, modify, and
distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and
without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright
notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and
this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that
the name of M.I.T. not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining
to distribution of the software without specific, written prior
permission. M.I.T. makes no representations about the suitability of
this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express
or implied warranty.
..."
I didn't see a copy of this licence accompaning the MS specs. Very odd indeed, considering the legalese used in the spec license.
A question to consider: Is MS in violation of the MIT license?
As for what should
(I won: I havn't used a MS product in 3 years, and for me, the wonderfully broken and unstable MS stuff just brings me more business writing and installing for non-MS platforms.. thanks again for the props, Bill. Keep up the good work.)
The more important question however: Is this the right battle? A smart fighter chooses his battles, and I'm not convinced that MS doesn't have a good case to have the verbatim posts removed. As for verbatim posts of the specs, I don't think copyright infringment will be covered by the first amendment should this go to court, and I think that even the most avid MS haters suspect that this is also the case. I'd hate to see
Sure, MS would love to cement the DMCA, and it would be unfortunate to provide them with easy circumstance to do so. (I picture some MS VP in an office saying "Excellent.. Smithers" in response to a report of how things are going here at
"power belongs in the hands of those who know no lust."
I once wrote a rather complex fuzzy logic algorithm that evaluated a new user's preferences, and tailored their BBS account (This was an ASCII BBS) to their tastes. It amounted to getting rid of things they wouldn't like, rather than adding things they would. The code was implemented initally on a test basis, and most users who bothered to try it out said it was accurate within an average of 5 rooms of a total of 150 rooms. This, I attribute to dumb luck.
Anyways, at the bottom of the "evaluation" screen was the following disclaimer:
"All evaluations are inherently innacurate, garnish to taste."
And they are. There's probably two degrees of separation from the code I wrote and what I'd wanted it to select/discard for my own tastes. Add another two or more for a person who doesn't think like I do, and behold the chaotic equation.
The code itself arose out of more boredom, and an "I'd bet i could write that.." attitude. Yet it became the tail end of the new user interface, and most new users seemed to like it. (unusual-diversions-dept. probably) The privacy policy probably had something to do with that though, since anything the user entered went to the bit-bucket after the selection code ran. If I'd told the users their data would "go on their permanent record.." I'd bet we'd have had much different results. (i.e. completely unusable to the user.. a fair bet that the so-called "alternative lifestyles" categories would have taken a beating.)
If I had to make a prediction about anything, it'd be that privacy will be the next *huge* issue over the internet. (Not that it isn't already, I'm speaking in the greater future tense, the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.) Consider that the sheer number of capable systems that can garner information about internet identities. Even now, consider the ever growing number of companies that do so overtly. What is the purpose of having this information if it is not used? What is the purpose of having the capability of garnering such information if it is not used? The end user has no control whatsoever over the use or exchange of this information. And granted, It may be collected responsibly, with an ethical privacy policy, but supposing the company is sold, or stocks drop 70% and there are offers to buy the information. What then? Most readers here are well aware of the vunerability of the machines that hold that data.
I wouldn't want Cracker Bob (pardons if there is such a person) or some script lamer with all sorts of information about me. Bob's no different than a company though, as I can't predict what Bob will do any more than I can predict what a company would do.
Not that I think it even remotely likely that my information would be used against me, but rather, as a Matter Of Principle, I want control and final say over it's use.
Perhaps not in practice now, but at some point in the future, this sort of personal information will be much more valued as a commodity. The thought I had about the NYT article is that it illustrates that this time is not here "in practice" yet, but there are those out there who are working hard to see that it's sooner rather than later. I think that since the capabilities are here already, they will be fully exploited eventually. So too, the "evaluation" code will improve, while still being inherently innacurate.
It's that inherent innacuracy that worries me most of all.
Gonna be a warm summer.