I think a comment from the Cluetrain might be good here: Do not limit who gets to talk to the reporters. The more sources of clear, honest information available, the less chance that you will be seen as a faceless corporation. Reporters like people they can call for a quick quote or a good conversation.
A second comment, from "Contented Cows Give Better Milk", is to be more strict in your hiring than in your internal control. Once you have good people in a good situation, you don't need to worry about what they'll say: it will be the truth, and everyone should hear it, especially you.
The instant you gain outside investors, Nervous Nellies who will try to destroy your company at the first hint of bad news, it becomes extremely tempting to place controls on who may speak and what may be said. I suggest that at that time you perform an internal review of personnel. If everything looks fine, just keep on keeping on; your good people will do right regardless of outside comment. If there's something wrong, make sure you know why it's wrong before you attempt to fix it by throwing out the good with the bad.
But that's one man's opinion, and he has only philosophy to guide him.
The Hellmouth is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. Basically, it's a gate to Hell, and demons constantly appear in the area to torment and control the citizens; destroy order and well-being; and variously wreak other physical, emotional, and social havoc.
Okay, so I'm driving to work. I turn on my radio. Static. I go through all the channel buttons. Static. I start scanning. Loud static, quiet static, a little talk radio, no music. You see, a radio station's equipment is all circumvention equipment. The machines are almost all illegal, even though the station has purchased licenses to play proprietary music. You see, they can play the music, they just can't use machines that will let someone record any... off the air. Yep, same old argument when cassette tapes and digital radio and other such things were new.
I finally find a pirate station playing some obscure band nobody's heard of, but they're good. Then the announcer comes on and says they'll be off the air for an hour so the police don't find them. Later that evening, I hear on the news that a playback and recording device (a tape deck with built-in CD player) has been confiscated from a pirate broadcaster. But the FCC isn't pressing charges, just the music companies.. the guy had all the FCC licenses he needed.
Is the DMCA this draconian? By the spirit of the law, and by the strictest letter, I believe that it most certainly is.
Titan AE did not feel like a coherent two-hour story. It felt like an entire season or two of animation compressed (lossily) into a movie.
Don Bluth does incredible work, but he obviously wanted to do a lot more with this material than he had space and time for. I'm sure there was a lot of trimming to make it slightly more coherent, but the direction still keeps changing on a per-minute basis.
I've said from the very beginning of this, that the best (and only viable) solution would be for MicroSoft to GPL their OS and sell development and support services instead.
Indeed, should someone post a defamatory message on Slashdot about some Scoutmaster, said message would be moderated to the depths for being offtopic flameage, virtually guaranteed. Andover.net does not need to exert editorial control; the moderators have enough of that to ensure that the defamatory message is only viewable through an inconvenience to the viewer.
Sorry about the extra post.. something occurred to me after I hit the "submit" button.
I recently expressed interest in a job at a restaurant. I'm male. They obviously needed servers, but the clerk behind the counter said they needed cooks. Now, they may have needed a cook or two, but I wanted to wait on tables.. I can't cook worth dirt for any group larger than a small family. In fact, the one server working had earlier (briefly) made the assumption that I had already been hired to help her, because of my clothes (I tend to dress semi-formally, in black, white, and grey).
I do wonder if other industries went through the opposite growth pains. Did the flight attendants of the 60's lament the lack of men in that role? How about in nursing?
While I'm not sure about flight attendants, I have family and friends in the medical professions; in nursing, the majority of women *did* want men working with them (instead of talking down to them like doctors do so often).
Slashdot is a community, but not a highly social community. We're more like a continuous panel discussion; whereas these questions are geared more towards people who play on MU*'s and other, more social fora (bulletin boards and IRC come to mind). Note especially this quote, which can be taken in more than one way:
In order to give me an idea of your character, the following information would be helpful when replying.
This could mean your personal character (morals, ethics, personality) *or* it could mean a "fronted" or role-played character, an identity you assume. I would suggest, in replying to these people, that everyone include this revised information:
1. A brief biography and description of yourself (This one's okay as-is, I think) 2. Where you first heard of Slashdot (as opposed to how you became interested.. as the header says, "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.") 3. Any interesting anecdotes from your time reading Slashdot (as opposed to time *in* it) 4. An explanation of what Slashdot and its community means to you, and what lasting impressions it has made on you (as opposed to just friendships) 5. How Slashdot affects your daily life, especially contrasting times you participate and times you don't (After all, Slashdot doesn't encourage the making and playing of alternate identities like a focused role-playing community would.)
Well, since this thread is about Hugo, a program for writing Interactive Fiction (text adventures, to the rest of you), I don't think you can get too far from the CLI. Of course, Hugo (as well as TADS and Inform, it's competitors) allows both graphics and sound, so a gui is nice too. Maybe it's time to compromise?
Can you say Sierra Interactive? The King's Quest games were basically IF with graphics and mousing. So another comment was right: This is about the place DOS games were in the 1980's.
I suppose you would see nothing wrong in having your favorite pet torn apart by a pack of feral dogs. I mean, it's a perfectly natural thing to have stray animals do that, right?
Trading hate for hate just makes more hate. There's no point to it, and it leads quite naturally to things like lynchings. Which is something one generally wishes to avoid; it looks bad on the resume, so to speak.
No, but they might after reviewing the relevant patents and patent applications.
Re:The real loser isn't MS, its users who needed a
on
Hotmail Cracked Badly
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· Score: 1
There may have been a lot of survivors who used it, but I was also once sent flame-mail via the service. Of course I suggested that someone who dared insult me should do it to my face, which amazingly stopped that dead in its tracks.
*ahem* Why do you insist on blaming everything on low self-esteem? "We're miserable because we don't like ourselves, we beat up on people because we don't like ourselves, we act up because we don't like ourselves..."
That only works for about half the cases available. Self-esteem boosting is apparently effective because the mind says, "See, we did this, so where are the results?" But if you look at the entire results, you see that boosting some egos was too much, and some of *those* kids turned into bullies and braggarts.
It is important that a person feel good about him- or herself, but the greater importance is to have an *accurate* opinion of one's value and capabilities. Placing value on creative thinking and hard work is important, and encouraging these abilities starting from a very early age. But one should also know one's limits, and how to get around them.
As I love the RotoRouter, the ICan'tInternet, and other fake box labels, will you have other made-up or joke names on those cartons? I just gotta get me a RotoRouter 8000 for the home LAN, after all, and want some neat-o accessories to go with it.
The problem with a system of checkboxes and pre-packaged terms is, who gets to add and remove these words and phrases? What if someone decided not to include Fortran (because it's an old language and unlikely to come up), but a company needed a Fortran programmer to fix or replace some of their old and failing software (Y2K comes to mind, dated as the concept is)?
Re:Word, the bane of this industry
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
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· Score: 1
Y'know, I've never fully understood what all the extra crud was for in a Word file anyway. I mean, it should include basic page formatting, and specific definitions, and so on... but why should it include stuff that never gets used by the document or even the software that created it?
Oh, yes, that's right...you hate Microsoft because they're successful!
I don't hate MicroSoft because they're successful, I hate them because they distribute bloated crap software that occasionally invades both my privacy and my legal rights.
I don't hate Intel for making a business of faster, bigger chips, but I do dislike those ID numbers they want all their Pentium !!!'s to broadcast.
And Red Hat doesn't bother me, so long as they don't try to make their Linux the only Linux out there...which is a monopolistic practice that calls up shades of MicroSoft's marketing practices, and hints that the quality of the software will degrade when the choice of software is lacking.
"Such a well-thought-out and thoroughly mature rationale," indeed.
In essence, you don't really have a paper, because there is no "dark side of the Internet". It is people that can have dark sides, and focussing on the Internet only serves to bury heads deeper in the sand.
In which case, having their opinions freely and openly available to be seen for what they are is the focus of debate. If you see someone with a bald head and semi-combatant dress hanging around on a street corner, what will you think? Now go read a website filled with slick, professional graphics; clear, concise, accurate commentary; and highly usable links. Who made the website? What do they look like? What if the skinhead on the street made it?
And what opinions were expressed in that website, anyway?
Can you fear the shameless self-expression made possible by speaking to an audience of strangers who seem like they aren't likely to meet you? Depending on subject, I certainly can. Even with a slick presentation, even with the coolness of it being on the internet (not so cool anymore), there are some things I just don't want some random stranger telling me. I properly admit to that.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a comment from the Cluetrain might be good here: Do not limit who gets to talk to the reporters. The more sources of clear, honest information available, the less chance that you will be seen as a faceless corporation. Reporters like people they can call for a quick quote or a good conversation.
A second comment, from "Contented Cows Give Better Milk", is to be more strict in your hiring than in your internal control. Once you have good people in a good situation, you don't need to worry about what they'll say: it will be the truth, and everyone should hear it, especially you.
The instant you gain outside investors, Nervous Nellies who will try to destroy your company at the first hint of bad news, it becomes extremely tempting to place controls on who may speak and what may be said. I suggest that at that time you perform an internal review of personnel. If everything looks fine, just keep on keeping on; your good people will do right regardless of outside comment. If there's something wrong, make sure you know why it's wrong before you attempt to fix it by throwing out the good with the bad.
But that's one man's opinion, and he has only philosophy to guide him.
What I wouldn't give to see that performed in honest Beatnik style at some late-night cafe in my own hometown.
The Hellmouth is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. Basically, it's a gate to Hell, and demons constantly appear in the area to torment and control the citizens; destroy order and well-being; and variously wreak other physical, emotional, and social havoc.
Okay, so I'm driving to work. I turn on my radio. Static. I go through all the channel buttons. Static. I start scanning. Loud static, quiet static, a little talk radio, no music. You see, a radio station's equipment is all circumvention equipment. The machines are almost all illegal, even though the station has purchased licenses to play proprietary music. You see, they can play the music, they just can't use machines that will let someone record any... off the air. Yep, same old argument when cassette tapes and digital radio and other such things were new.
I finally find a pirate station playing some obscure band nobody's heard of, but they're good. Then the announcer comes on and says they'll be off the air for an hour so the police don't find them. Later that evening, I hear on the news that a playback and recording device (a tape deck with built-in CD player) has been confiscated from a pirate broadcaster. But the FCC isn't pressing charges, just the music companies.. the guy had all the FCC licenses he needed.
Is the DMCA this draconian? By the spirit of the law, and by the strictest letter, I believe that it most certainly is.
Titan AE did not feel like a coherent two-hour story. It felt like an entire season or two of animation compressed (lossily) into a movie.
Don Bluth does incredible work, but he obviously wanted to do a lot more with this material than he had space and time for. I'm sure there was a lot of trimming to make it slightly more coherent, but the direction still keeps changing on a per-minute basis.
I've said from the very beginning of this, that the best (and only viable) solution would be for MicroSoft to GPL their OS and sell development and support services instead.
Does anyone remember the movie Tron?
The MCP, the Master Control Program.. how appropriate.
Indeed, should someone post a defamatory message on Slashdot about some Scoutmaster, said message would be moderated to the depths for being offtopic flameage, virtually guaranteed. Andover.net does not need to exert editorial control; the moderators have enough of that to ensure that the defamatory message is only viewable through an inconvenience to the viewer.
Sorry about the extra post.. something occurred to me after I hit the "submit" button.
I recently expressed interest in a job at a restaurant. I'm male. They obviously needed servers, but the clerk behind the counter said they needed cooks. Now, they may have needed a cook or two, but I wanted to wait on tables.. I can't cook worth dirt for any group larger than a small family. In fact, the one server working had earlier (briefly) made the assumption that I had already been hired to help her, because of my clothes (I tend to dress semi-formally, in black, white, and grey).
I do wonder if other industries went through the opposite growth pains. Did the flight attendants of the 60's lament the lack of men in that role? How about in nursing?
While I'm not sure about flight attendants, I have family and friends in the medical professions; in nursing, the majority of women *did* want men working with them (instead of talking down to them like doctors do so often).
Slashdot is a community, but not a highly social community. We're more like a continuous panel discussion; whereas these questions are geared more towards people who play on MU*'s and other, more social fora (bulletin boards and IRC come to mind). Note especially this quote, which can be taken in more than one way:
In order to give me an idea of your character, the following information would be helpful when replying.
This could mean your personal character (morals, ethics, personality) *or* it could mean a "fronted" or role-played character, an identity you assume. I would suggest, in replying to these people, that everyone include this revised information:
1. A brief biography and description of yourself (This one's okay as-is, I think)
2. Where you first heard of Slashdot (as opposed to how you became interested.. as the header says, "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters.")
3. Any interesting anecdotes from your time reading Slashdot (as opposed to time *in* it)
4. An explanation of what Slashdot and its community means to you, and what lasting impressions it has made on you (as opposed to just friendships)
5. How Slashdot affects your daily life, especially contrasting times you participate and times you don't (After all, Slashdot doesn't encourage the making and playing of alternate identities like a focused role-playing community would.)
I thought there was a Half-Life player client for Linux already? There sure are plenty of Linux *servers* for HL and Team Fortress Classic...
Well, since this thread is about Hugo, a program for writing Interactive Fiction (text adventures, to the rest of you), I don't think you can get too far from the CLI. Of course, Hugo (as well as TADS and Inform, it's competitors) allows both graphics and sound, so a gui is nice too. Maybe it's time to compromise?
Can you say Sierra Interactive? The King's Quest games were basically IF with graphics and mousing. So another comment was right: This is about the place DOS games were in the 1980's.
X/OS said it all, baby. Now let's go get laid and forget about SCO.
I suppose you would see nothing wrong in having your favorite pet torn apart by a pack of feral dogs. I mean, it's a perfectly natural thing to have stray animals do that, right?
Trading hate for hate just makes more hate. There's no point to it, and it leads quite naturally to things like lynchings. Which is something one generally wishes to avoid; it looks bad on the resume, so to speak.
No, but they might after reviewing the relevant patents and patent applications.
There may have been a lot of survivors who used it, but I was also once sent flame-mail via the service. Of course I suggested that someone who dared insult me should do it to my face, which amazingly stopped that dead in its tracks.
*ahem*
Why do you insist on blaming everything on low self-esteem? "We're miserable because we don't like ourselves, we beat up on people because we don't like ourselves, we act up because we don't like ourselves..."
That only works for about half the cases available. Self-esteem boosting is apparently effective because the mind says, "See, we did this, so where are the results?" But if you look at the entire results, you see that boosting some egos was too much, and some of *those* kids turned into bullies and braggarts.
It is important that a person feel good about him- or herself, but the greater importance is to have an *accurate* opinion of one's value and capabilities. Placing value on creative thinking and hard work is important, and encouraging these abilities starting from a very early age. But one should also know one's limits, and how to get around them.
As I love the RotoRouter, the ICan'tInternet, and other fake box labels, will you have other made-up or joke names on those cartons? I just gotta get me a RotoRouter 8000 for the home LAN, after all, and want some neat-o accessories to go with it.
I find the last line of the article to be the scariest.
"If [the links] take you off a particular Web site, right now we're not pursuing that at all," Amenica said.
It's the "right now" that bothers me. Who's to say they won't pursue it at some future time?
The problem with a system of checkboxes and pre-packaged terms is, who gets to add and remove these words and phrases? What if someone decided not to include Fortran (because it's an old language and unlikely to come up), but a company needed a Fortran programmer to fix or replace some of their old and failing software (Y2K comes to mind, dated as the concept is)?
Y'know, I've never fully understood what all the extra crud was for in a Word file anyway. I mean, it should include basic page formatting, and specific definitions, and so on... but why should it include stuff that never gets used by the document or even the software that created it?
Oh, yes, that's right...you hate Microsoft because they're successful!
I don't hate MicroSoft because they're successful, I hate them because they distribute bloated crap software that occasionally invades both my privacy and my legal rights.
I don't hate Intel for making a business of faster, bigger chips, but I do dislike those ID numbers they want all their Pentium !!!'s to broadcast.
And Red Hat doesn't bother me, so long as they don't try to make their Linux the only Linux out there...which is a monopolistic practice that calls up shades of MicroSoft's marketing practices, and hints that the quality of the software will degrade when the choice of software is lacking.
"Such a well-thought-out and thoroughly mature rationale," indeed.
coding is by nature a violent act - getting the machine to do what you want, how you want.
Not so. Coding is, by nature, an act of both creation and control. And the violence arises when what control you thought you had slips.
Which is why practice and study help. And that's why my own code sucks odd rocks (translation: can't practice, no study).
In essence, you don't really have a paper, because there is no "dark side of the Internet". It is people that can have dark sides, and focussing on the Internet only serves to bury heads deeper in the sand.
In which case, having their opinions freely and openly available to be seen for what they are is the focus of debate. If you see someone with a bald head and semi-combatant dress hanging around on a street corner, what will you think? Now go read a website filled with slick, professional graphics; clear, concise, accurate commentary; and highly usable links. Who made the website? What do they look like? What if the skinhead on the street made it?
And what opinions were expressed in that website, anyway?
Can you fear the shameless self-expression made possible by speaking to an audience of strangers who seem like they aren't likely to meet you? Depending on subject, I certainly can. Even with a slick presentation, even with the coolness of it being on the internet (not so cool anymore), there are some things I just don't want some random stranger telling me. I properly admit to that.