People buy Cinemax for softcore porn. HBO's porn is all lame and they don't show enough of it. As far as I can tell, people watch HBO for bad movies repeated 800 times a month and boxing matches.
MySpace is the Detroit of social networking...once vibrant and full of life, it's not a much smaller and more depressing version of its former self. Adding things that are already widely available all over the Internet isn't going to change anything.
News Corp. wildly overspent for a turkey when they bought MySpace because, as has been proven over and over again by Mr. Murdoch himself, they have no understanding at all of how the Internet works, they have no idea what it takes to make money on the Internet, and they have no idea what anything on the Internet is actually worth.
Why should they have minded? Because, in your opinion, sexuality is to there to be enjoyed not sold? Why should their sense of shame or morality have any relation to your opinion? What makes you so special?
I'm not a big fan of strip clubs, and I personally find the whole concept of selling sex as off-putting, but I'm not going to go around saying people who do it should feel ashamed of themselves. You assume they are relaxing their own principles or boundaries in exchange for money, when in fact in many cases their principles and boundaries are simply more permissive than yours. I accept that some people have more liberal boundaries than my own. However, when they're doing things that, ultimately, don't hurt anyone, I can't justify getting offended by it, and I certainly can't justify trying to get anyone to feel bad about it.
This sort of nonsense is taking time and effort away from truly valuable sexbot research. This is a totally irresponsible use of scarce money and talent.
And there is no chance in hell Sun/Oracle is using this as an excuse to lay off some unprofitable workforce!
I think there's very little chance of that. Everyone knows massive layoffs are an inevitable consequence of most large-scale mergers, so no one is going to hammer Oracle too hard if they lay some people off when the merger is complete. Given that, they have little to gain by forcing Sun to lay people off right now. Also, there's no doubt that other companies, especially hardware manufacturers, are doing everything they can to exploit the uncertainty and poach Sun's customers. IBM and HP have both admitted as much. So, while the $100 million a month figure may or may not be exaggerated, Sun is definitely losing customers, and therefore revenue, at a very rapid pace these days because of this delay.
Also, until the Change in Control takes place, the companies are still required to operate as two separate entities. If it was discovered Oracle was exerting enough control over Sun to order them to shed employees, Oracle would be in a heap of trouble with regulators on both sides of the pond.
its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
The letter is clearly written as a suggestion, not a demand. Yes, it uses standard scare tactics to suggest that if their point of view loses, there will be massive layoffs, but it doesn't actually say you'll be fired or even disciplined in any way for failing to participate in this particular lobbying effort. Thus, if you're fired and you can show that you were fired because you didn't do this, you can likely sue for damages and win (especially if you can show others who didn't participate were also fired). Even in at-will states, you're begging for a lawsuit if you fire an employee for something like this.
Along the same lines, my employer has its very own Political Action Committee. I occasionally get emails asking me to join the PAC and help advance "our interests". I ignore those emails, and am not a member of the PAC, nor have I ever donated a penny to it. And yet, I've not been fired nor have I been denied promotions or raises.
Have you ever tried to read an entire book on an iPhone? I get serious eyestrain after about 30 minutes, I can't imagine sitting there with that light shining directly into my eyes for hours at a time. The real strength of e-book readers is not the whizbang features, all of which are easily duplicated in any given smartphone, but rather in the screen itself, which is conducive to reading for extended periods of time with, in theory, no more eyestrain than a regular book.
Having said that, I'm still not ready to jump on the e-book bandwagon. The price is still a tad high, and there's too much uncertainty with the distribution models out there, like Amazon's deal with being able to arbitrarily revoke access to your own books and whatnot. Once they can give me a standard open e-book format that allows me to download books from anywhere, for pay or not, and keep them forever, and once they sell the readers at sub-$200 prices, I'll probably take the plunge.
I never said he was compelled to give back. Okay, using the term "moral imperative" was not the right choice of words. What I meant was that people feel compelled to give back because they've used the product to their benefit, not that using the product is in and of itself giving back, which is what the article writer seemed to be implying. This is not to say that the OSS community is forcing you to give back, but rather that you feel in your gut that you ought to give back because the project has given you a tangible benefit at no cost to you. You're under no obligation to follow that gut feeling, of course.
Basically, the writer said he wanted to "give back" by using the software. My assertion is that simply using the software is not giving back, and by using that language when you have no apparent (at least not stated) intention of actually giving back in a substantive way, you're essentially trying to take advantage of the idealism of the OSS community to get free stuff. Had he said he wanted to explore getting involved in an OSS project, rather than just using the software, that would have been something entirely different. Hell, he could have just flat out said he wanted a free solution that was already done, and that would have been okay too. What I objected to was specifically the fact that he equates simply using the software with giving back to the community in some way, and that it seemed he was trying to garner more positive responses by hinting that his motivation for using OSS was to "give back" rather than just to get free software.
Again, if your motivation for using OSS is simply because it's free, that's fine. Just don't jerk us around about it and act like you're doing us a favor by doing so.
Another option is to completely rewrite the scripts (or hire someone to do it for me), but I would much rather use something OSS so I can give back to the community. How have fellow slashdotters managed this process, what systems/scripts have you used, and what advice do you have?"
I'm sure you have a legitimate problem, and there are lots of ways to solve it, but this line just cracks me up. You COULD write it yourself or pay someone but if you use someone else's Open Source work (note: nothing is said about contributing to an OSS project, just using it) you'd be "giving back to the community.
Translation: I have a problem, and I don't want to spend any of my own time or money to solve it, so I'm going to try and butter up the people on Slashdot in hope of taking advantage of the free labor force that is the OSS community.
Simply using Open Source software is not giving back to the community...using open source software is what gives you the moral imperative to give back to the community, which you can do through contributing code, documentation, beta testing, providing support on the mailing lists, or whatever.
While that certainly would fulfill our baser desires for revenge, it would have a ton of consequences for a lot of innocent people. You would be putting tens of thousands of people out of work because something only a tiny fraction of them had anything to do with, or any knowledge of.
My iPhone farting application is way better than all the other farting applications, and yet I've only had 3 downloads so far! Sure, my application costs 2 bucks more than anyone else's, but it has the largest selection of flatulence noises in the business, and the ads are very unobtrusive. I really don't understand why I'm not a bazillionaire by now. Seriously, this thing took me 3 hours to write, and I want my damn money!
That's really not fair...you have no idea that people would die from that radiation. It's at least equally likely they would develop super powers, join up with others who have received similar doses of radiation, and form a crime fighting team of mutants.
All I'm saying here is we shouldn't just dismiss this as a bad thing until we've fully explored the legislative and societal implications a team of crime-fighting mutants with superpowers would have.
The actual downtime is no big deal, but the reason it happened is. Evidently, the registrar for an entire country's domain likes to roll out changes to the primary zone file without any sort of testing or syntax checking first. Simply having a small network (one or two computers) running a test root server, and running your scripts against that first, would have discovered the bug.
DNS is very simple, but it's just as prone to human error as anything else. If you're responsible for the records of a large number of domains (like, say, an entire country), you probably ought to take some time to develop proper testing and change control procedures before you fiddle with it. It sounds like these guys didn't take it seriously enough and got burned. I hope they'll learn their lesson from this and change their procedures.
I'm not sure what the algorithm is for determining who gets mod points. I went through a period where I got new mod points on almost a daily basis for like 6 months, then I didn't get any for more than 3 years. About 6 months ago, I got 5 mod points, and none since then. I've been at Excellent karma the entire time. The frequency with which I post or meta-moderate, both of which have varied wildly over the years, doesn't seem to have any easily discernible effect.
Slashdot Mirror
People buy Cinemax for softcore porn. HBO's porn is all lame and they don't show enough of it. As far as I can tell, people watch HBO for bad movies repeated 800 times a month and boxing matches.
it's not a much smaller and more depressing version of its former self.
s/not/now. Sort of changes the meaning a bit.
MySpace is the Detroit of social networking...once vibrant and full of life, it's not a much smaller and more depressing version of its former self. Adding things that are already widely available all over the Internet isn't going to change anything.
News Corp. wildly overspent for a turkey when they bought MySpace because, as has been proven over and over again by Mr. Murdoch himself, they have no understanding at all of how the Internet works, they have no idea what it takes to make money on the Internet, and they have no idea what anything on the Internet is actually worth.
I agree. Your comment is a triumph. I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
Mine ends in 0002...damn that Roosevelt.
A kind of space janitor if you will.
This can only be a good thing. We're going to need all the space janitors we can get in case the Sariens attack.
Why should they have minded? Because, in your opinion, sexuality is to there to be enjoyed not sold? Why should their sense of shame or morality have any relation to your opinion? What makes you so special?
I'm not a big fan of strip clubs, and I personally find the whole concept of selling sex as off-putting, but I'm not going to go around saying people who do it should feel ashamed of themselves. You assume they are relaxing their own principles or boundaries in exchange for money, when in fact in many cases their principles and boundaries are simply more permissive than yours. I accept that some people have more liberal boundaries than my own. However, when they're doing things that, ultimately, don't hurt anyone, I can't justify getting offended by it, and I certainly can't justify trying to get anyone to feel bad about it.
This sort of nonsense is taking time and effort away from truly valuable sexbot research. This is a totally irresponsible use of scarce money and talent.
And there is no chance in hell Sun/Oracle is using this as an excuse to lay off some unprofitable workforce!
I think there's very little chance of that. Everyone knows massive layoffs are an inevitable consequence of most large-scale mergers, so no one is going to hammer Oracle too hard if they lay some people off when the merger is complete. Given that, they have little to gain by forcing Sun to lay people off right now. Also, there's no doubt that other companies, especially hardware manufacturers, are doing everything they can to exploit the uncertainty and poach Sun's customers. IBM and HP have both admitted as much. So, while the $100 million a month figure may or may not be exaggerated, Sun is definitely losing customers, and therefore revenue, at a very rapid pace these days because of this delay.
Also, until the Change in Control takes place, the companies are still required to operate as two separate entities. If it was discovered Oracle was exerting enough control over Sun to order them to shed employees, Oracle would be in a heap of trouble with regulators on both sides of the pond.
its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
The letter is clearly written as a suggestion, not a demand. Yes, it uses standard scare tactics to suggest that if their point of view loses, there will be massive layoffs, but it doesn't actually say you'll be fired or even disciplined in any way for failing to participate in this particular lobbying effort. Thus, if you're fired and you can show that you were fired because you didn't do this, you can likely sue for damages and win (especially if you can show others who didn't participate were also fired). Even in at-will states, you're begging for a lawsuit if you fire an employee for something like this.
Along the same lines, my employer has its very own Political Action Committee. I occasionally get emails asking me to join the PAC and help advance "our interests". I ignore those emails, and am not a member of the PAC, nor have I ever donated a penny to it. And yet, I've not been fired nor have I been denied promotions or raises.
Have you ever tried to read an entire book on an iPhone? I get serious eyestrain after about 30 minutes, I can't imagine sitting there with that light shining directly into my eyes for hours at a time. The real strength of e-book readers is not the whizbang features, all of which are easily duplicated in any given smartphone, but rather in the screen itself, which is conducive to reading for extended periods of time with, in theory, no more eyestrain than a regular book.
Having said that, I'm still not ready to jump on the e-book bandwagon. The price is still a tad high, and there's too much uncertainty with the distribution models out there, like Amazon's deal with being able to arbitrarily revoke access to your own books and whatnot. Once they can give me a standard open e-book format that allows me to download books from anywhere, for pay or not, and keep them forever, and once they sell the readers at sub-$200 prices, I'll probably take the plunge.
I never said he was compelled to give back. Okay, using the term "moral imperative" was not the right choice of words. What I meant was that people feel compelled to give back because they've used the product to their benefit, not that using the product is in and of itself giving back, which is what the article writer seemed to be implying. This is not to say that the OSS community is forcing you to give back, but rather that you feel in your gut that you ought to give back because the project has given you a tangible benefit at no cost to you. You're under no obligation to follow that gut feeling, of course.
Basically, the writer said he wanted to "give back" by using the software. My assertion is that simply using the software is not giving back, and by using that language when you have no apparent (at least not stated) intention of actually giving back in a substantive way, you're essentially trying to take advantage of the idealism of the OSS community to get free stuff. Had he said he wanted to explore getting involved in an OSS project, rather than just using the software, that would have been something entirely different. Hell, he could have just flat out said he wanted a free solution that was already done, and that would have been okay too. What I objected to was specifically the fact that he equates simply using the software with giving back to the community in some way, and that it seemed he was trying to garner more positive responses by hinting that his motivation for using OSS was to "give back" rather than just to get free software.
Again, if your motivation for using OSS is simply because it's free, that's fine. Just don't jerk us around about it and act like you're doing us a favor by doing so.
Another option is to completely rewrite the scripts (or hire someone to do it for me), but I would much rather use something OSS so I can give back to the community. How have fellow slashdotters managed this process, what systems/scripts have you used, and what advice do you have?"
I'm sure you have a legitimate problem, and there are lots of ways to solve it, but this line just cracks me up. You COULD write it yourself or pay someone but if you use someone else's Open Source work (note: nothing is said about contributing to an OSS project, just using it) you'd be "giving back to the community.
Translation: I have a problem, and I don't want to spend any of my own time or money to solve it, so I'm going to try and butter up the people on Slashdot in hope of taking advantage of the free labor force that is the OSS community.
Simply using Open Source software is not giving back to the community...using open source software is what gives you the moral imperative to give back to the community, which you can do through contributing code, documentation, beta testing, providing support on the mailing lists, or whatever.
We offer our engineers "20-percent time" so that they're free to work on what they're really passionate about.
So apparently Dan is really passionate about making interns lug a 250-pound tricycle all over creation. Dan must be some kind of sadist.
While that certainly would fulfill our baser desires for revenge, it would have a ton of consequences for a lot of innocent people. You would be putting tens of thousands of people out of work because something only a tiny fraction of them had anything to do with, or any knowledge of.
Either he's using the UK definition of "fag" (aka "cigarette"), or this dude really knows how to throw a party.
My iPhone farting application is way better than all the other farting applications, and yet I've only had 3 downloads so far! Sure, my application costs 2 bucks more than anyone else's, but it has the largest selection of flatulence noises in the business, and the ads are very unobtrusive. I really don't understand why I'm not a bazillionaire by now. Seriously, this thing took me 3 hours to write, and I want my damn money!
That's really not fair...you have no idea that people would die from that radiation. It's at least equally likely they would develop super powers, join up with others who have received similar doses of radiation, and form a crime fighting team of mutants.
All I'm saying here is we shouldn't just dismiss this as a bad thing until we've fully explored the legislative and societal implications a team of crime-fighting mutants with superpowers would have.
That sounds like a wager to me!
What happens if you mix plot and anti-plot together?!
Battlefield Earth.
So essentially, he should repeat to himself "It's just a show, I should really just relax"?
Sure, but the true secret to appearing intelligent is quick and accurate Googling.
Everyone knows the time traveler's objective in going back in time is not to kill his own grandfather, but rather to BECOME his own grandfather.
The actual downtime is no big deal, but the reason it happened is. Evidently, the registrar for an entire country's domain likes to roll out changes to the primary zone file without any sort of testing or syntax checking first. Simply having a small network (one or two computers) running a test root server, and running your scripts against that first, would have discovered the bug.
DNS is very simple, but it's just as prone to human error as anything else. If you're responsible for the records of a large number of domains (like, say, an entire country), you probably ought to take some time to develop proper testing and change control procedures before you fiddle with it. It sounds like these guys didn't take it seriously enough and got burned. I hope they'll learn their lesson from this and change their procedures.
I'm not sure what the algorithm is for determining who gets mod points. I went through a period where I got new mod points on almost a daily basis for like 6 months, then I didn't get any for more than 3 years. About 6 months ago, I got 5 mod points, and none since then. I've been at Excellent karma the entire time. The frequency with which I post or meta-moderate, both of which have varied wildly over the years, doesn't seem to have any easily discernible effect.
Not that any of that helps you at all.