"Because the install script crapped all over itself, and I'm trying to figure out what it's doing."
"Didn't you call support?"
"Yeah, but apparently our latest set of OS patches is not something they tested with."
"Did you get an ETA on the fix?"
"A couple of weeks, maybe more."
"But we need it now!"
"I know. That's why I've been here the last two days going over 120k of poorly written, documented and tested install script!"
Any vendor shipping an install that requires more than a few lines of/bin/sh gets a defect call from me. There is no reason on earth not to ship and use more robust tools if your install truely is that complicated.
OK, first, if the shipping company won't insure it and you can't find a seperate policy, don't ship it with that company. You don't have any real recourse (other than maybe small claims court) if things get smashed.
Second, don't pack the gear yourself unless you've got the correct materials and the knowledge of how to use them. Or maybe the orginal shipping containers (I keep those myself). The place I used to buy gear from a number of years ago did something they called Gorilla Pack, which was factory boxes, wrapped in plastic and placed in an outer box and surrounded by expanding packing foam. Works great.
Last, never sign for a package (or allow one to be signed for) without inspecting for damage. Once you've signed, you're screwed. I actually had to train the receiving clerks at $FORMER_CLIENT to call the appropriate hardware guys when stuff came in before letting the driver off the hook. Threatening to take the cost of a server that cost an order of magnitude more than they made in a year out of their paycheck got the point across.:)
This is the sort of thing I hear from people who seem to have a lot of ego invested in "process and procedure" over "skill and talent". This kind of thinking is one of the reasons that management regards programmers as interchangable cogs and why so few people actually stay in the business.
I love the assertion that skyscraper and bridge projects don't go over on time and budget on a regular basis. They do, and for a lot of the same reasons that software projects do: change orders from the customers, unreasonable expectations, incomplete and/or incorrect specs, and PMs calling meetings seemingly every 30 seconds. Any large project is primarily a human endeavor, and human factors are the reason they succeed or fail.
And if the coding portion of the projects you've worked on have been "little more than data entry", I'd suggest you didn't write any of the code.
Actually, unless the "code as speech" part of the decision is reversed, all of the other challenges to DeCSS are suddenly going to be climbing a lot steeper hill. And "improper disclosure" in a First Admendment context, reference the Pentagon Papers.
What interests me most is what happens if, by some tiny chance, code doesn't equal speech. Can you legitimately copyright or patent something that doesn't "promote the progress of science and useful arts"? Particularly since the SC has repeatly said art == speech.
Nice theory. And it works real well when there is a bilateral agreement to the contract between two known parties, but it falls over rather badly in the consumer arena.
Scenario 1: ABC Corp. would like to use Windows whatever with the entire MS productivity suite across the entire company. MS rep shows up, delivers a contract, company lawyers strike this clause, add that clause, MS negotiates, both companies come to agreement, the check is written, the software is delivered. Now, if that contract denies ABC Corp. to transfer the licenses, it probably (all things being equal) can't transfer them without getting a rider.
Scenario 2: Joe Sixpack goes and buys a copy of GruntPage from WorstBuy. Under traditional consumer law, the software publisher doesn't have a lot of recourse if Joe decides that GruntPage doesn't meet his needs. And neither does Joe. He can try to get a refund from WorstBuy, but they are only likely to give him a new copy of GruntPage, provided he shows them that his copy was materially defective, but he's not likely to get a cash refund on an opened software product. Joe can, however, sell his copy of GruntPage under First Sale doctrine, the EULA not withstanding. There is no current case law that I am aware of that allows the unilateral restriction of the transfer of copyrighted materials.
I've said it before, but I can't really believe that MS or any other consumer software producer really believes that these click-thru, skrink-wrap, so-called "contracts" will really withstand a court test. The only thing that I've ever seen the BSA and similar orginizations go after are standard copyright violations, and I really don't have a problem with that.
The usual IANAL disclaimers apply, and if anyone can point me to a link(s) to counter anything I've written, I'd love to see it.
Private contracts can and do place restrictions on speech (NDAs being a good example), but they imply that the party doing the restricting is providing consideration (something of value) to the restricted party in exchange, and there are limits on how far such a contract can go on legal and public policy grounds.
Aside from the obvious question of whether someone purchasing FrontPage at a retail output is receiving something of value, the MS EULA is subject to a different set of rules concerning its enforcablilty than, say, a home sale contract. I'd be amazed if any software maker's lawyers would actually want to test UCITA with a clause like that. Their level of arrogance would have to be horrendous, er wait. Never mind.
First off, I highly recommend not giving your mananger the "my way or the highway" speech. Even in a good job market, it would be considred a CLM. Right now you'd be better off withdrawing 2 to 3 months worth of income and pitching it off the nearest bridge than getting in management's face.
I'm not sure what code reuse has to do with poor product quaility, unless the modules themselves are broken somehow. What you've described really sounds like a development manager's wet dream. Drop-in, pretested modules with a minimal amount of modification? That's the holy grail of the coders-as-cogs management mentality! If the customers themselves aren't complaining about quality, I doubt management is going to give a hoot what the rank and file thinks.
If you really insist on pushing this, I've got a few pointers for you:
Send a polite e-mail asking for some time to discuss some concerns. Don't go into to too much detail, and keep a copy for yourself.
Prepare a written document on exactly what your concerns are, and exactly why you believe these to be problems for either your customers or your company
It's best if you can quantify the impact (x numbers of customers lost, y dollars in revenue gone), but you need to at least show a solid link between your issues and valid potential consequences.
Be as professional and calm as possible. Going on about how stupid something or someone is doesn't impress management types, and probably gets your issues routed to the circular file pretty quickly.
If all else fails, start looking for that new position quietly!. Getting the boot before you've gotten something else lined up is expensive and foolish if you've got the option of keeping your current gig until the next thing comes along.
Best case, management addresses your issues, and you look like a "team player". Worst case, they drop kick your arse out without even giving you a listen. The outcome depends on how you play your cards.
I'll admit to being rabid on the subject of Katz, to posting in such a way sure to get me modded down, but not to being out of line. Unless, of course, slashdot is not the place for people who have different opinions from the majority of posters. Whether or not Katz has ever said anything unkind to me or about me is completely irrelevant. His articles are published on a forum which, by its nature and design, invites instant feedback. I'm sure he's used to being slammed.
Please note that I at least identified the comments as my opinion, something I'm surely entitled to. Perhaps it could have been expressed with less vitriol, but I'll stand by the substance of what I wrote. And frankly, I'm little suprised to be getting the "if you can't say anything nice" treatment on this forum.
I'm really not sure how you've managed to connect how I feel about Katz's work to his not being responsible for the bug (I was aware that it was reported and assigned at the time of my post, and had been for some time), but I notice that you responded well after I had been modded down. Did it occur to you that the message might have been delivered already? Or were you just piling on? Pimping for points?
As for slashdot karma, I expect that's gone forever. I noticed that a more recent posting has been modded down, despite being on topic and non-abusive (as far as I can tell).
After reading through all of the material posted on Paetec's site (yes, I was bored), it seems to me that Paetec's mistake was two-fold: failure to exempt violations of its AUP from the 30 day cure clause, and negotiating that remarkably clueless addendum 1A. I'm still wondering what they really thought when Monsterhut wanted language specifying a 2% complaint threshold.
Hopefully, Paetec will be more careful (read: less greedy) in future contract negotiations.
This seems to be tailor-made for Border's competition to use as ad-fodder: "We trust our customers! 30% off George Orwell this week!"
My major problem with this is that most corporations have a spotty history at best with data accuracy, and no real incentive to correct bad information. Even if Border's keeps its shoplifter database internal, and resists the impulse to make money off of it (dubious), they have no reason to ever pull an entry out of it. If an individual is unjustly accused, or accidently entered into the system they may never get out. Even companies which are theoretically legally obligated to correct erroneous data have miserable track records Try getting a bogus bad credit item off of your credit report.
Even more frightening is that for those of us in the States there is almost no limit on what a company can do with data it has gathered. Security firms doing employee background checks would absolutely love this, and unlike credit data, the hiring company has no obligation to tell you why they failed you on the check. Imagine being turned down for a job at age 37 for pocketing a CD at age 17. Sound far-fetched? Just remember the "personality" profiles that some HR departments love so dearly.
Do you know whether I reported it or not, prick? As to trolling, if I am, you responded. Note that you wouldn't have had the opportunity to get sarcastic if the filter was working.
Mine is that Katz is a highly derivative, pandering, clueless freak who somehow continues to get published. I don't even want to know when he produces another hairball, which is why I very carefully selected the "exclude Jon Katz" option on my profile. It doesn't seem to work anymore, and I would like it fixed. I suspect a significant number of others would, too.
Aside from Wintel, who else do you pay a premium for an OS? SUN? Apple? HP? You get the damn thing with your hardware, as intended. Apps get reduced in cost in porportion to the community that buys them (wanna guess why you pay for native Dev packs now?)
Nice FUD, but if M$ charges 1k+ for the OS, they are going to disappear faster than SCO, and the other M$ will be porting to anything they can.
39 pages that breaks down in the exec sum. M$ lobbyist can't even pass ECON 101. Let's hope the circuit court can.
Sybase ASE has a well-known, default password for the sa user. So does Oracle, for System and Manager. Sybase doesn't even prompt for a change on install, and neither does Oracle 8.0.x. Oracle 8i prompts for a change, but if you're in a hurry you'll blow right by it.
I think the real lesson here is for admins to RTFM. Anyone installing things on exposed or production machines had better damn well understand what they are doing.
Well, first of all a judge can basically do whatever he wants. The appeals courts are there exactly to deal with bloopers, judge prejudice and just plain ol' stupidity. A judge doesn't have
to follow case law. He makes case law. [nitpick] Well, really in the US it's the Circuit Courts that make case law, not lower-level judges, but the idea is still valid[/nitpick].
Well, not exactly. Judges only make case law when there are no applicable controlling authorities, which would include statute and existing case law. (There is a third item, but I've forgotten what it is.) Kaplan effectively bypassed the constitutional issue by saying the controlling authority is the DMCA, and that 2600 was in violation of that statute. It's not terribly surprising, in that there isn't really a lot of precedent on code-as-speech (2 rulings from different districts, diametricly opposed), and judges tend to be loath to put themselves in a position to be overruled on constitutional opinions. Despite the interpretation that I've seen posted here, Kaplan most certainly could have invalidated the DMCA. I think he just didn't want to put his reputation at risk by ruling one way or the other on the speech issue.
The NY Times piece was interesting. Kaplan's thinking seems a bit skewed to me.
``Society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstances,'' the judge wrote. ``The Constitution, after all, is a framework for building a just and democratic society. It is not a suicide pact.''
Aside from the fact that the last sentence is a direct ripoff of Tom Clancy (who may have ripped it off from someone else), I fail to see how disseminating information is the equivilant of assasination. After all, posting instruction for making explosives has been upheld as protected, right?
Just read the amended complaint from the 2600 site. Just two named defendants. I am wrong again! To little sleep makes for fuzzy thinking.
Upon further reflection, I don't see how it would be possible to add a defendant to a trial already underway, so I am left with the conclusion that one party or another has pulled Copyleft in as a witness. My guess is that is the defendants.
Actually, it isn't an NY court, but a US District Court in NY. The MPAA might have stuck a few John Doe defendents into their initial filing (which I can't locate at the moment.) I can't imagine what the MPAA would think it could gain by bringing in Copyleft as a witness.
Hopefully. BR> I had an interesting discission with someone the other night on this subject, and despite my best efforts, he still didn't get it. And to top it off, he is (nominally) tech.
I'm puzzled. The phrase "Application Programming Interface" is businesseze for making a program call. Writing something saying "int fudget(foo, bar)" is fundemental to coding. An API is nothing more that a doc set describing what is actually available, correct? The Mac toolbox and libc is mostly what I'm familiar with in terms of terminology. A draw() function is provided by MacOS, a malloc() by whichever libc you use.
Windows can be reverse-engineered, and it should be possible to clean room all the functionality. The APIs are an extension of that. Aside from the base question of "why", the issue will be time and interest. The other question is "which windows?" NT is one hell of a lot harder that 95/98/whatever.
Beautiful. There are ways to make money from digitized music after all. What a suprise. I don't know about the rest of you, but I will at least check out Chris's samples.
Braniacs: check out "sarcasm" at http://www.m-w.com and see if you can figure out where I'm coming from.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this sound familar:
/bin/sh gets a defect call from me. There is no reason on earth not to ship and use more robust tools if your install truely is that complicated.
"Why isn't $NEW_SW available?"
"Because the install script crapped all over itself, and I'm trying to figure out what it's doing."
"Didn't you call support?"
"Yeah, but apparently our latest set of OS patches is not something they tested with."
"Did you get an ETA on the fix?"
"A couple of weeks, maybe more."
"But we need it now!"
"I know. That's why I've been here the last two days going over 120k of poorly written, documented and tested install script!"
Any vendor shipping an install that requires more than a few lines of
OK, first, if the shipping company won't insure it and you can't find a seperate policy, don't ship it with that company. You don't have any real recourse (other than maybe small claims court) if things get smashed.
:)
Second, don't pack the gear yourself unless you've got the correct materials and the knowledge of how to use them. Or maybe the orginal shipping containers (I keep those myself). The place I used to buy gear from a number of years ago did something they called Gorilla Pack, which was factory boxes, wrapped in plastic and placed in an outer box and surrounded by expanding packing foam. Works great.
Last, never sign for a package (or allow one to be signed for) without inspecting for damage. Once you've signed, you're screwed. I actually had to train the receiving clerks at $FORMER_CLIENT to call the appropriate hardware guys when stuff came in before letting the driver off the hook. Threatening to take the cost of a server that cost an order of magnitude more than they made in a year out of their paycheck got the point across.
Man, I hope you have backups.
Pish Posh.
This is the sort of thing I hear from people who seem to have a lot of ego invested in "process and procedure" over "skill and talent". This kind of thinking is one of the reasons that management regards programmers as interchangable cogs and why so few people actually stay in the business.
I love the assertion that skyscraper and bridge projects don't go over on time and budget on a regular basis. They do, and for a lot of the same reasons that software projects do: change orders from the customers, unreasonable expectations, incomplete and/or incorrect specs, and PMs calling meetings seemingly every 30 seconds. Any large project is primarily a human endeavor, and human factors are the reason they succeed or fail.
And if the coding portion of the projects you've worked on have been "little more than data entry", I'd suggest you didn't write any of the code.
Actually, unless the "code as speech" part of the decision is reversed, all of the other challenges to DeCSS are suddenly going to be climbing a lot steeper hill. And "improper disclosure" in a First Admendment context, reference the Pentagon Papers.
What interests me most is what happens if, by some tiny chance, code doesn't equal speech. Can you legitimately copyright or patent something that doesn't "promote the progress of science and useful arts"? Particularly since the SC has repeatly said art == speech.
Nice theory. And it works real well when there is a bilateral agreement to the contract between two known parties, but it falls over rather badly in the consumer arena.
Scenario 1: ABC Corp. would like to use Windows whatever with the entire MS productivity suite across the entire company. MS rep shows up, delivers a contract, company lawyers strike this clause, add that clause, MS negotiates, both companies come to agreement, the check is written, the software is delivered. Now, if that contract denies ABC Corp. to transfer the licenses, it probably (all things being equal) can't transfer them without getting a rider.
Scenario 2: Joe Sixpack goes and buys a copy of GruntPage from WorstBuy. Under traditional consumer law, the software publisher doesn't have a lot of recourse if Joe decides that GruntPage doesn't meet his needs. And neither does Joe. He can try to get a refund from WorstBuy, but they are only likely to give him a new copy of GruntPage, provided he shows them that his copy was materially defective, but he's not likely to get a cash refund on an opened software product. Joe can, however, sell his copy of GruntPage under First Sale doctrine, the EULA not withstanding. There is no current case law that I am aware of that allows the unilateral restriction of the transfer of copyrighted materials.
I've said it before, but I can't really believe that MS or any other consumer software producer really believes that these click-thru, skrink-wrap, so-called "contracts" will really withstand a court test. The only thing that I've ever seen the BSA and similar orginizations go after are standard copyright violations, and I really don't have a problem with that.
The usual IANAL disclaimers apply, and if anyone can point me to a link(s) to counter anything I've written, I'd love to see it.
Private contracts can and do place restrictions on speech (NDAs being a good example), but they imply that the party doing the restricting is providing consideration (something of value) to the restricted party in exchange, and there are limits on how far such a contract can go on legal and public policy grounds.
Aside from the obvious question of whether someone purchasing FrontPage at a retail output is receiving something of value, the MS EULA is subject to a different set of rules concerning its enforcablilty than, say, a home sale contract. I'd be amazed if any software maker's lawyers would actually want to test UCITA with a clause like that. Their level of arrogance would have to be horrendous, er wait. Never mind.
I'm not sure what code reuse has to do with poor product quaility, unless the modules themselves are broken somehow. What you've described really sounds like a development manager's wet dream. Drop-in, pretested modules with a minimal amount of modification? That's the holy grail of the coders-as-cogs management mentality! If the customers themselves aren't complaining about quality, I doubt management is going to give a hoot what the rank and file thinks.
If you really insist on pushing this, I've got a few pointers for you:
Best case, management addresses your issues, and you look like a "team player". Worst case, they drop kick your arse out without even giving you a listen. The outcome depends on how you play your cards.
I'll admit to being rabid on the subject of Katz, to posting in such a way sure to get me modded down, but not to being out of line. Unless, of course, slashdot is not the place for people who have different opinions from the majority of posters. Whether or not Katz has ever said anything unkind to me or about me is completely irrelevant. His articles are published on a forum which, by its nature and design, invites instant feedback. I'm sure he's used to being slammed.
Please note that I at least identified the comments as my opinion, something I'm surely entitled to. Perhaps it could have been expressed with less vitriol, but I'll stand by the substance of what I wrote. And frankly, I'm little suprised to be getting the "if you can't say anything nice" treatment on this forum.
I'm really not sure how you've managed to connect how I feel about Katz's work to his not being responsible for the bug (I was aware that it was reported and assigned at the time of my post, and had been for some time), but I notice that you responded well after I had been modded down. Did it occur to you that the message might have been delivered already? Or were you just piling on? Pimping for points?
As for slashdot karma, I expect that's gone forever. I noticed that a more recent posting has been modded down, despite being on topic and non-abusive (as far as I can tell).
Could someone tell me why this was modded down? I'm really curious.
After reading through all of the material posted on Paetec's site (yes, I was bored), it seems to me that Paetec's mistake was two-fold: failure to exempt violations of its AUP from the 30 day cure clause, and negotiating that remarkably clueless addendum 1A. I'm still wondering what they really thought when Monsterhut wanted language specifying a 2% complaint threshold.
Hopefully, Paetec will be more careful (read: less greedy) in future contract negotiations.
Hey, cool! Microsoft now has a solution to their Hotmail scalability issues!
This seems to be tailor-made for Border's competition to use as ad-fodder: "We trust our customers! 30% off George Orwell this week!"
My major problem with this is that most corporations have a spotty history at best with data accuracy, and no real incentive to correct bad information. Even if Border's keeps its shoplifter database internal, and resists the impulse to make money off of it (dubious), they have no reason to ever pull an entry out of it. If an individual is unjustly accused, or accidently entered into the system they may never get out. Even companies which are theoretically legally obligated to correct erroneous data have miserable track records Try getting a bogus bad credit item off of your credit report.
Even more frightening is that for those of us in the States there is almost no limit on what a company can do with data it has gathered. Security firms doing employee background checks would absolutely love this, and unlike credit data, the hiring company has no obligation to tell you why they failed you on the check. Imagine being turned down for a job at age 37 for pocketing a CD at age 17. Sound far-fetched? Just remember the "personality" profiles that some HR departments love so dearly.
Do you know whether I reported it or not, prick? As to trolling, if I am, you responded. Note that you wouldn't have had the opportunity to get sarcastic if the filter was working.
You are welcome to your opinion, of course.
Mine is that Katz is a highly derivative, pandering, clueless freak who somehow continues to get published. I don't even want to know when he produces another hairball, which is why I very carefully selected the "exclude Jon Katz" option on my profile. It doesn't seem to work anymore, and I would like it fixed. I suspect a significant number of others would, too.
What do Brin's politics have to do with "News for Nerds?" I didn't think that Slashdot was a political-junkie forum.
Oh So Hard To Rip Up.
Aside from Wintel, who else do you pay a premium for an OS? SUN? Apple? HP? You get the damn thing with your hardware, as intended. Apps get reduced in cost in porportion to the community that buys them (wanna guess why you pay for native Dev packs now?)
Nice FUD, but if M$ charges 1k+ for the OS, they are going to disappear faster than SCO, and the other M$ will be porting to anything they can.
39 pages that breaks down in the exec sum. M$ lobbyist can't even pass ECON 101. Let's hope the circuit court can.
Let's see:
Sybase ASE has a well-known, default password for the sa user. So does Oracle, for System and Manager. Sybase doesn't even prompt for a change on install, and neither does Oracle 8.0.x. Oracle 8i prompts for a change, but if you're in a hurry you'll blow right by it.
I think the real lesson here is for admins to RTFM. Anyone installing things on exposed or production machines had better damn well understand what they are doing.
Well, first of all a judge can basically do whatever he wants. The appeals courts are there exactly to deal with bloopers, judge prejudice and just plain ol' stupidity. A judge doesn't have to follow case law. He makes case law. [nitpick] Well, really in the US it's the Circuit Courts that make case law, not lower-level judges, but the idea is still valid[/nitpick].
Well, not exactly. Judges only make case law when there are no applicable controlling authorities, which would include statute and existing case law. (There is a third item, but I've forgotten what it is.) Kaplan effectively bypassed the constitutional issue by saying the controlling authority is the DMCA, and that 2600 was in violation of that statute. It's not terribly surprising, in that there isn't really a lot of precedent on code-as-speech (2 rulings from different districts, diametricly opposed), and judges tend to be loath to put themselves in a position to be overruled on constitutional opinions. Despite the interpretation that I've seen posted here, Kaplan most certainly could have invalidated the DMCA. I think he just didn't want to put his reputation at risk by ruling one way or the other on the speech issue.
The NY Times piece was interesting. Kaplan's thinking seems a bit skewed to me.
``Society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code in appropriate circumstances,'' the judge wrote. ``The Constitution, after all, is a framework for building a just and democratic society. It is not a suicide pact.''
Aside from the fact that the last sentence is a direct ripoff of Tom Clancy (who may have ripped it off from someone else), I fail to see how disseminating information is the equivilant of assasination. After all, posting instruction for making explosives has been upheld as protected, right?
Ops.
Just read the amended complaint from the 2600 site. Just two named defendants. I am wrong again! To little sleep makes for fuzzy thinking.
Upon further reflection, I don't see how it would be possible to add a defendant to a trial already underway, so I am left with the conclusion that one party or another has pulled Copyleft in as a witness. My guess is that is the defendants.
Actually, it isn't an NY court, but a US District Court in NY. The MPAA might have stuck a few John Doe defendents into their initial filing (which I can't locate at the moment.) I can't imagine what the MPAA would think it could gain by bringing in Copyleft as a witness.
Hopefully.
BR> I had an interesting discission with someone the other night on this subject, and despite my best efforts, he still didn't get it. And to top it off, he is (nominally) tech.
My worst fear is we end up with status quo.
I'm puzzled. The phrase "Application Programming Interface" is businesseze for making a program call. Writing something saying "int fudget(foo, bar)" is fundemental to coding. An API is nothing more that a doc set describing what is actually available, correct? The Mac toolbox and libc is mostly what I'm familiar with in terms of terminology. A draw() function is provided by MacOS, a malloc() by whichever libc you use.
Windows can be reverse-engineered, and it should be possible to clean room all the functionality. The APIs are an extension of that. Aside from the base question of "why", the issue will be time and interest. The other question is "which windows?" NT is one hell of a lot harder that 95/98/whatever.
Thinking out loud,
prong
Oh,Please.
What ever happened to "caveat emptor?" Get a life.
Beautiful. There are ways to make money from digitized music after all. What a suprise. I don't know about the rest of you, but I will at least check out Chris's samples.
Braniacs: check out "sarcasm" at http://www.m-w.com and see if you can figure out where I'm coming from.
Regards,
prong