I don't necessarily disagree that these "diseases" are over-hyped, but I don't think there's much question that they exist. Just because a condition has a treatment or behavior that can mitigate it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Does berry-berry not exist because people could get more Thayamine and drink less alocohol?
Does scurvy not exist because people could get more Vitamine C?
I suppose malaria doesn't exist, only people stupid enough to live where there are mosquitoes?
Personally I want Free software to be easily installable on Windows. More to the point, I have a proprieatry program that I want to be able to install on Windows and I don't like our current solution for this. The company that produces our current installer has been worthless at providing support and fixes.
Having a Free installer will let us scratch whatever Windows installation itches we may have.
Damn, I've never (until now) posted "I'd mod you if I had points" posts, but:
I'd mod you +1 Insightfull if I had points.
Actually, I still couldn't, because I posted earlier. None the less, all the whiny posters to this story need to read this post and take it to heart.
The only addendums I'd make are:
4. Projects - Don't over-extend yourself, though. When you step up, you need to be able to execute.
8. Do Things by the Book - Know what the whole "book" says, not just the parts written down. And know when/how to break/change the rules when they are broken. Each organization has a mechanism for change, written or unwritten. If you're stuck in an organization that does not, get out -- down that path lies madness.
Acutally, where I work management is very good about sharing with us the kind of numbers you speak of. We do "keep score" with the competition, at many levels, as well as "keeping score" against where we think we can lead the industry and our goals for the company itself vis a vie growth, innovation, etc. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. And backstabbing of the sort that the OP talks about is virtually non-existant. Or rather, the few that indulged in that behavior are now non-existant.
Your ideas are orthoganal to a ranked grading system. Ranking, in and of itself, is not (IMHO) a bad thing. It can be construed to be a bad thing by those unwilling to be ranked (because they don't want to know, or don't want others to know, how they rank) and by those who are unwilling to rank (same reasons, as well as avoidance of conflict and responsibility). But, handled in an ethical and intellegent way, I see it as a benefit. I strongly believe that the "quotas" for each ranking need to be adjusted from time to time as both the quality of your team and the level of your expectations change. I also believe (and the company I work for agrees) that there needs to be compensation/feedback that is not based on this ranking as well as merit compensation. Some sort of profit sharing or incentive payout based on whole company (or at least whole business unit) performance is necessary to help keep perspective.
Also, w/o management working actively to make use of the rankings to help their employees improve, the whole thing becomes not just much less usefull, but almost certain to become damaging to the organization. If you get ranked lower than you want to be, you need to know how to get where you want to be or you'll not be very damn happy. Also, there needs to be some sort of feedback loop so that gross misrankings can be caught before they are final... sometimes your manager (being, I hope, human) messes up and doesn't take everything into account that they should when evaluating you.
Again, I agree with most of the things you posted -- I just don't see them as any sort of argument against a ranking system of evaluation. (and I don't remember addressing "deadwood"... that was a parent post, I believe).
While I agree that B. got screwed, I don't agree that this is the fault of the rating system, but rather unethical management. Given the latter, all bets are off and no system of review will keep employees from being screwed.
I have mixed feelings on this subjext. On the one hand, though it is obviously true that half of the people at any company are below average, that's only true within that company. They may all be well above average for the industry. That should probably count for something. This can (and usually is) addressed by leaving more room at the top of the curve than the bottom.
OTOH, the "forced" rankings are, in my opinion, a good thing. It requires managers to not take the easy way out and just rank (relatively) poor performers as "average" and avoid confrontation. Also, it allows people to know where they stand within the company. The company I work for uses a system somewhat like the OP's, and though initially I was against it, after giving it some thought I think it's a good thing.
As for the backstabbing, etc. -- that is a problem that management needs to address. That sort of thing usually becomes pretty obvious after a short time and it shouldn't be tolerated. If those who are ranked lower than they want to be are given the support of management to address their areas of weakness, they can (and will) move up in ranking, unless everyone else does a better job of improving.
OTOH, I'm also going to plead not guilty by reason of sleep deprivation. Also, mitigating circumstances included typing comment one-handed while holding my 10 day old son (thus the sleep deprivation).
The actual point of my post cum flame stands, however.
It is crazy, but you're coment is -1 Stupid. Of course there's trade going on. The product is entertainment. People enjoy the thrill of risk. I predict that if the Nanny State continues to nerf Real Life, people will more often turn to gambling.
As a native Minnesotan, let me be the first to thank you. We work hard to keep the rest of y'all thinking that this is a frozen, helish tundra. Please, keep up the good work. The less people from around the country move here, the less of 'em we have to deal with.
I'll assume the first, and attempt to educate you. I've already pissed off a bunch of people who instead provided the usual whiny/. repsonse to your (possibly unintiontional) troll, so I figure I better piss off the rest. wheee!
So what if the drivers are closed source?
I value my time far to much to fully answer this one, but there are many reasons for preferring open source: philosophy, practicality, curiosity and quality are four of the biggest.
ATI cant [sic] and wont [sic] expose the low level details of their hardware's functionality to competitors.
This is, frankly, mostly an argument made by marketing and PHBs (and people who just plain don't know any better, but I repeat myself). The fact is, they can and they will. They have no choice if they want to ship a product. Rest assured that, to the extent that they care to, NVIDIA knows lots about the low level details of the ATI designs. Having the source to the drivers would be a small bit of help, but, frankly, things move so fast that by the time a competitor could reverse engineer ATI's current feature set and figure out a way to integrate sait technology into their own, ATI would have rolled on to the next level. The architectures of the leading solutions are sufficiently different that reverse engineering the competitor is of primarily academic value (and perhaps a bit of marketing). Both ATI and NVIDIA have some of the best engineers in the world on their teams... I assure you, we engineers would much rather design new stuff the copy someone else's stuff. Hell, more often than not developers will reinvent the f'ing wheel rather than use something NIH.
Whats the difference anyway? It is naive to think that you could even understand, let alone improve, what the engineers - who know the hardware intimately - have written?
You must be kidding, right? Not only are there plenty of engineers reading/., but, frankly, if the code is so poorly written that a reasonably smart person who knows C can't figure it out given specs and time, it probably sucks ass and I probably don't want to be running it anyway. The lowest levels of driver code can indeed be twisty, but much of this stuff is code to present an interface to client code. Also, while Joe User may well not be able to understand the code, a) the XFree86 folks sure as hell can and b) if it mattered enough he could hire someone who does understand it. One of the beauties of open source, BTW.
And by the way, Nvidia does not publish its source either...
You f'ed up, man. You got one accurate (if obvious) point into your message. Bad troll... no cookie.
Nope. I'm running 3.7.0 under XFree 4.3 on my T41 using 2.6.3 kernel as I type. In fact, I've been running 3.7.0 under 4.3 for months and under 2.6 kernel since (IIRC) pre1.
Quitcherbitchin. Gentoo can use RPMs just fine... install RPM. Or is that too hard for an 3L337 63|\|700 |-|4x0r?
They link against glibc 2.2, so it works great with either 2.2 or 2.3 installations. I'm running it on a 2.3.2 system right now. This could become an issue... but it is not at this time.
Then you should, at this time, get a damn NVIDIA card. This does suck a bit, and is a perfect example of where having competition is a good thing. OTOH, you could also use a 9100 or earlier Radeon and use the open-source drivers, or do withought 3D acceleration. You have options.
Sheesh. No one is holding a gun to your head saying "Buy an ATI video card or die!". If you don't like 'em, don't buy 'em.
Would it be better if both ATI and NVIDIA released their X servers as open-source? Hell yeah! OTOH, it is a very good thing that they are supporting Linux with current cards. The rest, we can work on with time.
Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick, could you MORONS at least sniff-test stories? I downloaded 3.7.0 for 4.3 back on January 3rd. Earlier versions (at least 3.2.8, probably others) were available for 4.3 long before that.
As for the poster's whining about RPM, get real. There is no current major distribution that cannot handle RPMs right out of the box. Choosing RPM as a package format is a no-brainer if you only want to support one.
As for the closed-source X server, I, too, would much prefer that it be open-source. But, given the choice between full support for the ATI chip in my T41 and having open source, I'll take the former. The open-source server just doesn't cut it for me. Or, rather, it is great for 2D, but the 3D makes playing NWN even more painfull that it is now.
The Free license is the one that restricts how you can make use of the code, the license that is NOT Free is the one that only demands that you acknowledge the original authors, but otherwise lets you do whatever you want with the code? (And don't play games with the word "use", either... that whole GPLer pedantry about "use" vs. "distribute" don't play here.)
OK, cool. Now I'm straight on this.
<sigh>
I just don't have words to describe how stupid that is. Not saying that people shouldn't, if that is their goal, try to prevent "proprietizing of a work" (whatever that means). I personally avoid using any software I dont have the source to and the right to redistribute said software with fixes/changes it I choose. However, calling that "Free" and saying that BSD is not is simply double-plus ungood.
Typical. Fucking strawman argument. The parent never said that sunlight doesn't cause cancer. He implied that the fear-mongers have gone too far in encouraging avoidance of sunlight.
I'd love to say that only on \. (slash intentionally leaning to the left) would such a pathetic excuse for an argument be modded "interesting"... unfortunately, conservatives are just as bad. Seems like every time I turn around I want to scream at people "stop being on my side... you're an idiot!", regardless of whether my view on that topic is more liberal or conservative.
I don't mind people disagreeing with me, in fact I enjoy it very much. What I do mind is people disagreeing with me mindlessly.
Re:Magnusson Moss Warranty Act
on
Hack Your Car
·
· Score: 1
Nice try bucko. Though some/. users might be too stupid to understand the concept of mitigating damages, but most of us are not.
Besides, the ones who have a third grade concept of liability ("we better not try to fix it, otherwise we'd just look guilty") wouldn't be able to fix the alleged infringing code anyway, so their opinions are worth nearly as much as SCO's claims.
WTF makes RedHat a "greedy anti-free distro"? They've given more code and deloper cycles to the "community" than virtually any other organization around. They've been very open about all their moves, more so that any company I can think of offhand. They warned about the EOL f'ing ages ago and Fedora is the non-free-as-in-here's-a-damn-ISO migration path that they're supporting.
/** mini_httpd - small HTTP server
**
** Copyright (C) 1999,2000 by Jef Poskanzer <xxx@xxx.xxx>.
** All rights reserved.
**
** Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
** modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
** are met:
** 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
** notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
** 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
** notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
** documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
**
** <disclamer snipped because of lame-ass Lameness filter.>
*/
How exactly is that "odd"? Because it's not GPL?
OTOH, your point about micro_httpd running from inetd is a good point.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't necessarily disagree that these "diseases" are over-hyped, but I don't think there's much question that they exist. Just because a condition has a treatment or behavior that can mitigate it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Does berry-berry not exist because people could get more Thayamine and drink less alocohol?
Does scurvy not exist because people could get more Vitamine C?
I suppose malaria doesn't exist, only people stupid enough to live where there are mosquitoes?
Twit.
Personally I want Free software to be easily installable on Windows. More to the point, I have a proprieatry program that I want to be able to install on Windows and I don't like our current solution for this. The company that produces our current installer has been worthless at providing support and fixes.
Having a Free installer will let us scratch whatever Windows installation itches we may have.
OTOH, I expect several hundred postings, all the rough equivalent of:
The only addendums I'd make are:
4. Projects - Don't over-extend yourself, though. When you step up, you need to be able to execute.
8. Do Things by the Book - Know what the whole "book" says, not just the parts written down. And know when/how to break/change the rules when they are broken. Each organization has a mechanism for change, written or unwritten. If you're stuck in an organization that does not, get out -- down that path lies madness.
Your ideas are orthoganal to a ranked grading system. Ranking, in and of itself, is not (IMHO) a bad thing. It can be construed to be a bad thing by those unwilling to be ranked (because they don't want to know, or don't want others to know, how they rank) and by those who are unwilling to rank (same reasons, as well as avoidance of conflict and responsibility). But, handled in an ethical and intellegent way, I see it as a benefit. I strongly believe that the "quotas" for each ranking need to be adjusted from time to time as both the quality of your team and the level of your expectations change. I also believe (and the company I work for agrees) that there needs to be compensation/feedback that is not based on this ranking as well as merit compensation. Some sort of profit sharing or incentive payout based on whole company (or at least whole business unit) performance is necessary to help keep perspective.
Also, w/o management working actively to make use of the rankings to help their employees improve, the whole thing becomes not just much less usefull, but almost certain to become damaging to the organization. If you get ranked lower than you want to be, you need to know how to get where you want to be or you'll not be very damn happy. Also, there needs to be some sort of feedback loop so that gross misrankings can be caught before they are final ... sometimes your manager (being, I hope, human) messes up and doesn't take everything into account that they should when evaluating you.
Again, I agree with most of the things you posted -- I just don't see them as any sort of argument against a ranking system of evaluation. (and I don't remember addressing "deadwood" ... that was a parent post, I believe).
While I agree that B. got screwed, I don't agree that this is the fault of the rating system, but rather unethical management. Given the latter, all bets are off and no system of review will keep employees from being screwed.
OTOH, the "forced" rankings are, in my opinion, a good thing. It requires managers to not take the easy way out and just rank (relatively) poor performers as "average" and avoid confrontation. Also, it allows people to know where they stand within the company. The company I work for uses a system somewhat like the OP's, and though initially I was against it, after giving it some thought I think it's a good thing.
As for the backstabbing, etc. -- that is a problem that management needs to address. That sort of thing usually becomes pretty obvious after a short time and it shouldn't be tolerated. If those who are ranked lower than they want to be are given the support of management to address their areas of weakness, they can (and will) move up in ranking, unless everyone else does a better job of improving.
I'll cop to the second definition.
OTOH, I'm also going to plead not guilty by reason of sleep deprivation. Also, mitigating circumstances included typing comment one-handed while holding my 10 day old son (thus the sleep deprivation).
The actual point of my post cum flame stands, however.
It is crazy, but you're coment is -1 Stupid. Of course there's trade going on. The product is entertainment. People enjoy the thrill of risk. I predict that if the Nanny State continues to nerf Real Life, people will more often turn to gambling.
Minnesnowta -- Proud to be flyover country!
(and I'm only half kidding ...)
I'll assume the first, and attempt to educate you. I've already pissed off a bunch of people who instead provided the usual whiny /. repsonse to your (possibly unintiontional) troll, so I figure I better piss off the rest. wheee!
I value my time far to much to fully answer this one, but there are many reasons for preferring open source: philosophy, practicality, curiosity and quality are four of the biggest. This is, frankly, mostly an argument made by marketing and PHBs (and people who just plain don't know any better, but I repeat myself). The fact is, they can and they will. They have no choice if they want to ship a product. Rest assured that, to the extent that they care to, NVIDIA knows lots about the low level details of the ATI designs. Having the source to the drivers would be a small bit of help, but, frankly, things move so fast that by the time a competitor could reverse engineer ATI's current feature set and figure out a way to integrate sait technology into their own, ATI would have rolled on to the next level. The architectures of the leading solutions are sufficiently different that reverse engineering the competitor is of primarily academic value (and perhaps a bit of marketing). Both ATI and NVIDIA have some of the best engineers in the world on their teamsHTH HAND
or not
No really. Wow.
That has got to be the most stunning ripost I've ever been subject to.
<snicker>
<humor type=troll>Not necessarily. Many CS programs teach LISP, after all!</humor>
As for FreeBSD, this was about Linux "drivers".
OTOH, if those 63|\|700 |-|4x0r5 can't figure out how to install rpm, guess that's just too bad for them, eh?
My understanding is that a FreeBSD port of the X server is under way. I'm sure that it will not be an RPM, though rpm runs on FreeBSD as well.
Nope. I'm running 3.7.0 under XFree 4.3 on my T41 using 2.6.3 kernel as I type. In fact, I've been running 3.7.0 under 4.3 for months and under 2.6 kernel since (IIRC) pre1.
So, pray tell us all, which company is it that provides open source drivers, hmmm?
- Quitcherbitchin. Gentoo can use RPMs just fine
... install RPM. Or is that too hard for an 3L337 63|\|700 |-|4x0r?
- They link against glibc 2.2, so it works great with either 2.2 or 2.3 installations. I'm running it on a 2.3.2 system right now. This could become an issue
... but it is not at this time.
- Then you should, at this time, get a damn NVIDIA card. This does suck a bit, and is a perfect example of where having competition is a good thing. OTOH, you could also use a 9100 or earlier Radeon and use the open-source drivers, or do withought 3D acceleration. You have options.
Sheesh. No one is holding a gun to your head saying "Buy an ATI video card or die!". If you don't like 'em, don't buy 'em.Would it be better if both ATI and NVIDIA released their X servers as open-source? Hell yeah! OTOH, it is a very good thing that they are supporting Linux with current cards. The rest, we can work on with time.
As for the poster's whining about RPM, get real. There is no current major distribution that cannot handle RPMs right out of the box. Choosing RPM as a package format is a no-brainer if you only want to support one.
As for the closed-source X server, I, too, would much prefer that it be open-source. But, given the choice between full support for the ATI chip in my T41 and having open source, I'll take the former. The open-source server just doesn't cut it for me. Or, rather, it is great for 2D, but the 3D makes playing NWN even more painfull that it is now.
The Free license is the one that restricts how you can make use of the code, the license that is NOT Free is the one that only demands that you acknowledge the original authors, but otherwise lets you do whatever you want with the code? (And don't play games with the word "use", either ... that whole GPLer pedantry about "use" vs. "distribute" don't play here.)
OK, cool. Now I'm straight on this.
<sigh>
I just don't have words to describe how stupid that is. Not saying that people shouldn't, if that is their goal, try to prevent "proprietizing of a work" (whatever that means). I personally avoid using any software I dont have the source to and the right to redistribute said software with fixes/changes it I choose. However, calling that "Free" and saying that BSD is not is simply double-plus ungood.
I'd love to say that only on \. (slash intentionally leaning to the left) would such a pathetic excuse for an argument be modded "interesting" ... unfortunately, conservatives are just as bad. Seems like every time I turn around I want to scream at people "stop being on my side ... you're an idiot!", regardless of whether my view on that topic is more liberal or conservative.
I don't mind people disagreeing with me, in fact I enjoy it very much. What I do mind is people disagreeing with me mindlessly.
Otherwise, I agree with you that the whiny twit who doesn't like high horesepower cars is full of shit.
Some do. I'm proof by existance.
There is a way to get the work out. /., USENET, mailing lists and distro alerts are just a few ways.
As for the malware in the source, you are of course correct. However, it is exposed, so therefore can be found. In fact, will be found, eventually.
Nice try bucko. Though some /. users might be too stupid to understand the concept of mitigating damages, but most of us are not.
Besides, the ones who have a third grade concept of liability ("we better not try to fix it, otherwise we'd just look guilty") wouldn't be able to fix the alleged infringing code anyway, so their opinions are worth nearly as much as SCO's claims.
Enjoy your snack, troll.
Or not. It's basically a modified BSD license.
**
** Copyright (C) 1999,2000 by Jef Poskanzer <xxx@xxx.xxx>.
** All rights reserved.
**
** Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
** modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
** are met:
** 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
** notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
** 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
** notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
** documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
**
** <disclamer snipped because of lame-ass Lameness filter.>
*/
How exactly is that "odd"? Because it's not GPL?
OTOH, your point about micro_httpd running from inetd is a good point.