insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend
It's sort of ironic that this has been Microsoft's argument again Linux all along. It all comes down to "Total Cost of Ownership" and which vendor's completely made up numbers are more believable (and which "research" firm they've "sponsored").
I was rather unimpressed with the pictures I saw. OK, so free snacks (debatable if that's good or bad) but personally I find that work environment rather poor. Some big warehouse with waist high cubicle walls. Oh boy, sounds great until you've actually worked in one such cubicle farm. No thank you. I'll buy my own snacks.
No. First of all, it's a good bet that the people in Customer Service at your local Walmart store would not have the faintest idea what you're asking them. They're probably barely aware that Walmart even has a website. And if they did, the only people you'd be pissing off is the minimum wage folks that would have to put every item back on the shelf.
I suppose it's nice if you have that luxury. But most people won't quit unless they've found a new job, and the new job is not gonna wait forever for you to start. I suppose you could say don't even look for a new job before the project ends, but typically if you're leaving a job there is a reason (not happy, not enough money, whatever) and so that may not be something most people are willing to do, especially on long running projects.
So, maybe that's a myth they'd like to keep alive (thus the blurring)? Either way, blurring the pictures is not about hiding the building itself. So the only logical explanation is to blur what's on the building.
I think the blurring probably had to do more with what's on the roof of the white house (rather than where it's located, which everybody knows), and some level of paranoia that an attacker would benefit from being able to make that out. It's my understanding they have quite a bit of weaponry up there to defend from potential attacker both from the ground and from the air (that, or I watch too many movies).
Not too long ago, it used to be that the White House and Capitol (and others) were blurred on Google too. I remember getting a kick out of search for those "special sites" on Google and see if they missed any. I guess they've switched their source of data for Washington, DC....
Google chose nothing. You chose the shipper from a list of shipping options the merchant passed off to Google Checkout, along with the prices of each shipping options. Google Checkout is nothing but an intermediary between the merchant, and the credit card processor - just like Paypal's merchant service.
Hum... The package handling and (mis-)delivering parts, how does that have ANYTHING to do with Google Checkout? All they do is process your credit card. The shipping and handling is still (mis-)handled by the merchant. And then, a carrier of the merchant's choice. Google has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.
Let's look at another contest show involving extreme acts. Fear Factor. These people do seemingly incredibly dangerous and/or stupid things: balancing on beams at incredible heights, underwater stunts, staying in boxes with snakes, spiders, etc - either the grossest things. But the truth of the matter is that the venomous animals aren't, the stuff they eat are gross, but safe, they are wearing harnesses at those heights, and there are divers with oxygen tanks ready to give it to the contestant if the first signs of distress. This contest is safe, well researched and the contestants know it, expect it and they have ever right to.
This station screwed up big time. And you can be sure they know it, just bracing for the civil lawsuit or even a criminal indictments. There defense will be we didn't know, or we wouldn't have done it. We'll see how far that gets them.
So, since we've established they're both arbitrary, and putting aside your apparent aversion to the French (not that I blame you there), I think metric is considered "thee" system for three principal reasons: 1. everybody (but the US, and possibly an African country or two) uses it, 2. it is generally accepted by scientists (even in the us) as being the preferred units and 3. it just seems easier to do base-10 math for most people.
Well, true:) Or is it? All economies seem inter-related these days... Problems with the US economy would probably have ripple effects across other economies. Maybe less so for other (smaller) countries than the US.
This dollar has been falling in general (not just against the rouble that is). So much so that many countries are now considering selling off some of their dollar reserves, and considering "diversifying" in other currency (the Euro primarily). Not being an economist I am not sure what effect a sell off would have, but I imagine it can't be too good.
You haven't said anything that's incorrect, but everything you said applies to your own PC/Server/whatever at home...
Failures/outages happen at home too, and when they happen (for most people, which don't maintain a backups) it's a lot more catastrophic than gmail (or other web service) being down for a little bit. So you had an unforeseen and untimely outage of your web-based email service, well, it could have just as easily have been an unforeseen and untimely failure of your PC. And I suspect it would have taken you more than a couple of hours that get it back up, and possibly without any data.
Other than outages, generally access is enhanced by these web-based services. Ever been NOT at home and needed to lookup something from your inbox? Well, it's pretty hard if all your email are in outlook/thunderbird on your PC at home... And I do realize that many people on Slashdot probably run their own webmail and imap server on their basement server farm (me included), but again I am talking for most people here.
Well, I have news for you... That's the theoretical risk of using any software in a society where software patents for trivialities are handed out like hot cakes. It only takes one NTP-like(1) company on a nothing-to-loose suicide quest to have the balls to say Company X - I am going to sue you because you use Microsoft Office which has some of our patented technologies in it. Regardless of the merit of the case, and regardless of whether Microsoft might come and help you - it's going to cost you time and money to properly defend yourself.
(1) the IP company that nearly shutdown the entire Blackberry network a few months ago
The device in question does have two SSIDs, one is "private" and encrypted for the owner of the device (no login required, other than the encryption passphrase of course - which you can change). The other is the unencrypted public signal, which does require login and may have bandwidth limitation (as setup by the owner).
(and yes, I have one - although I don't live in a place where I'd expect to get anybody to take advantage of it other than me)
A SMALL (and ever shrinking) portion of their funds come from the government. The largest portion come from people like me, who donate $x/year to them so that I can continue to listen to their excellent content. Another large portion comes from corporate sponsors.
- First of all, you have no idea how they funded this research and complaint. You're making assumptions. If let's say I donate x thousands of dollars for NPR to figure out why I am getting all kinds of interference while trying to listen to it, would that be something you think you should have ANY say about?
- Second if it is funded by their government grant, why is it not ok? Making sure their spectrum is not being infringed by the competition is a perfectly legit use of their money regardless of source. It's called customer service. People seem to be saying they're trying to cause trouble to the competition. That is a weird statement for two reasons: 1) they pretty much are one of a kind, they don't have any competition that I am aware of. 2) NPR has a channel on either XM or Sirius (or both)
If you take that definition of a "DVR", then that leaves out the very subject of the article out as well: MythTV is also a software solution. There may be third party integrators that sell complete solutions based on either of these sofware though, not sure.
Even Tivo I think detects commercials. They just won't let you skip them outright, you have to fast forward through them.
Or... just raise the base price of the service by $2.70.
Frankly these fees are ridiculous. Everytime I call a utility company for a quote on phone or broadband services, I specifically request they add all their random little fees and made-up taxes in any price they quote me. It usually takes a little bit of scrambling from the salesperson to get me that number, but they've always been able to tell me. I make my decision accordingly.
The best so far: Verizon Fios (fiber, if you're lucky enough to have it available in your area). It was $35/month, no fees, no taxes (not even sales taxes!) charged to my credit card monthly. But I moves to the other side of town about 8 months ago and there no Fios available on my street. I do understand that they started charging taxes and/or fees now. I guess it was good while it lasted.
Not really - in every commercial software evaluation I have ever participated in, the vendor's reputation is a significant factor. It's sometimes hard to evaluate that, but not so hard when the "bad experiences" are in-house. For most of the other factors the vendors really score very close. There is just not that much that differentiate one Linux vendor from another other than the name of the vendor. Redhat used to be the "big name" company. Not so much anymore since Novell bought Suse.
I don't know about Ubuntu specifically, but there is no doubt in my mind that RH made a very bad move, and that all the other Linux vendors will collectively benefit from it. I used to be a big RedHat fan. I have installed every version since 5.1, I owned stock at some point, I was RHCE certified (company paid for it), I paid for RHN licenses for my personal boxes at home (partly for convenience, partly to support a worthy company), and even got the company to buy a few support contracts for servers at work. When they changed their business model, I looked elsewhere, and I haven't looked back. At work, we're still using RH 7.3 to this day but looking at finally upgrading. Guess what? It won't be a RedHat product. Stuff like that happens when you alienate the little people - they're the ones influencing the decisions.
I hope someone from Redhat still reads Slashdot and this post.
Knowing that there is a disagreement is all that is needed to know to invalidate the results. And really, there should only be a disagreement if someone tampered with the results (i.e. changed the data on the flash drive, or changed the ballots). Checks and balance is what this is all about. With no paper trail, nobody can know that someone tampered with the data, or that there is some weird bug that didn't creep up during testing that made a few hundred votes dissapear here and there (maliciously or not).
That's theory anyway.
As a side note - I think it's much harder to tamper with the paper trail (it's not like there are hanging shads, etc) if it's locked in a nice big plexiglass box that only two keys (one from each party) under the watchful eye of several more witnesses... Much harder than tampering with some bits on a computer.
Thanks for the clarification, mr-obvious. I think/hope we all understand the distinction of being guilty and being guilty in a court of law, and understand that one may not be equal to the other. After all, didn't we all watch OJ on TV? My bad for not taking the time to be careful and use the correct legal phrasing (with the all important "presumed" in it), which apparently caused a whole lot of people to waste their time and write insightful posts just like yours making the exact same irrelevant point.
Slashdot Mirror
insisting that customers were unlikely to be convinced by cost savings that are a small percentage of their overall software spend
It's sort of ironic that this has been Microsoft's argument again Linux all along. It all comes down to "Total Cost of Ownership" and which vendor's completely made up numbers are more believable (and which "research" firm they've "sponsored").
I was rather unimpressed with the pictures I saw. OK, so free snacks (debatable if that's good or bad) but personally I find that work environment rather poor. Some big warehouse with waist high cubicle walls. Oh boy, sounds great until you've actually worked in one such cubicle farm. No thank you. I'll buy my own snacks.
No. First of all, it's a good bet that the people in Customer Service at your local Walmart store would not have the faintest idea what you're asking them. They're probably barely aware that Walmart even has a website. And if they did, the only people you'd be pissing off is the minimum wage folks that would have to put every item back on the shelf.
I suppose it's nice if you have that luxury. But most people won't quit unless they've found a new job, and the new job is not gonna wait forever for you to start. I suppose you could say don't even look for a new job before the project ends, but typically if you're leaving a job there is a reason (not happy, not enough money, whatever) and so that may not be something most people are willing to do, especially on long running projects.
So, maybe that's a myth they'd like to keep alive (thus the blurring)? Either way, blurring the pictures is not about hiding the building itself. So the only logical explanation is to blur what's on the building.
We'll never know... it's blurred! ;)
I think the blurring probably had to do more with what's on the roof of the white house (rather than where it's located, which everybody knows), and some level of paranoia that an attacker would benefit from being able to make that out. It's my understanding they have quite a bit of weaponry up there to defend from potential attacker both from the ground and from the air (that, or I watch too many movies).
Not too long ago, it used to be that the White House and Capitol (and others) were blurred on Google too. I remember getting a kick out of search for those "special sites" on Google and see if they missed any. I guess they've switched their source of data for Washington, DC....
Google chose nothing. You chose the shipper from a list of shipping options the merchant passed off to Google Checkout, along with the prices of each shipping options. Google Checkout is nothing but an intermediary between the merchant, and the credit card processor - just like Paypal's merchant service.
Hum... The package handling and (mis-)delivering parts, how does that have ANYTHING to do with Google Checkout? All they do is process your credit card. The shipping and handling is still (mis-)handled by the merchant. And then, a carrier of the merchant's choice. Google has absolutely nothing to do with any of that.
I agree.
Let's look at another contest show involving extreme acts. Fear Factor. These people do seemingly incredibly dangerous and/or stupid things: balancing on beams at incredible heights, underwater stunts, staying in boxes with snakes, spiders, etc - either the grossest things. But the truth of the matter is that the venomous animals aren't, the stuff they eat are gross, but safe, they are wearing harnesses at those heights, and there are divers with oxygen tanks ready to give it to the contestant if the first signs of distress. This contest is safe, well researched and the contestants know it, expect it and they have ever right to.
This station screwed up big time. And you can be sure they know it, just bracing for the civil lawsuit or even a criminal indictments. There defense will be we didn't know, or we wouldn't have done it. We'll see how far that gets them.
So, since we've established they're both arbitrary, and putting aside your apparent aversion to the French (not that I blame you there), I think metric is considered "thee" system for three principal reasons: 1. everybody (but the US, and possibly an African country or two) uses it, 2. it is generally accepted by scientists (even in the us) as being the preferred units and 3. it just seems easier to do base-10 math for most people.
I have Vonage and I have E911. Never had to use it so far, but it's there. It's by law (fairly recent) that they provide this service.
Well, true :) Or is it? All economies seem inter-related these days... Problems with the US economy would probably have ripple effects across other economies. Maybe less so for other (smaller) countries than the US.
This dollar has been falling in general (not just against the rouble that is). So much so that many countries are now considering selling off some of their dollar reserves, and considering "diversifying" in other currency (the Euro primarily). Not being an economist I am not sure what effect a sell off would have, but I imagine it can't be too good.
You haven't said anything that's incorrect, but everything you said applies to your own PC/Server/whatever at home...
Failures/outages happen at home too, and when they happen (for most people, which don't maintain a backups) it's a lot more catastrophic than gmail (or other web service) being down for a little bit. So you had an unforeseen and untimely outage of your web-based email service, well, it could have just as easily have been an unforeseen and untimely failure of your PC. And I suspect it would have taken you more than a couple of hours that get it back up, and possibly without any data.
Other than outages, generally access is enhanced by these web-based services. Ever been NOT at home and needed to lookup something from your inbox? Well, it's pretty hard if all your email are in outlook/thunderbird on your PC at home... And I do realize that many people on Slashdot probably run their own webmail and imap server on their basement server farm (me included), but again I am talking for most people here.
Well, I have news for you... That's the theoretical risk of using any software in a society where software patents for trivialities are handed out like hot cakes. It only takes one NTP-like(1) company on a nothing-to-loose suicide quest to have the balls to say Company X - I am going to sue you because you use Microsoft Office which has some of our patented technologies in it. Regardless of the merit of the case, and regardless of whether Microsoft might come and help you - it's going to cost you time and money to properly defend yourself.
(1) the IP company that nearly shutdown the entire Blackberry network a few months ago
The device in question does have two SSIDs, one is "private" and encrypted for the owner of the device (no login required, other than the encryption passphrase of course - which you can change). The other is the unencrypted public signal, which does require login and may have bandwidth limitation (as setup by the owner).
(and yes, I have one - although I don't live in a place where I'd expect to get anybody to take advantage of it other than me)
A SMALL (and ever shrinking) portion of their funds come from the government. The largest portion come from people like me, who donate $x/year to them so that I can continue to listen to their excellent content. Another large portion comes from corporate sponsors.
- First of all, you have no idea how they funded this research and complaint. You're making assumptions. If let's say I donate x thousands of dollars for NPR to figure out why I am getting all kinds of interference while trying to listen to it, would that be something you think you should have ANY say about?
- Second if it is funded by their government grant, why is it not ok? Making sure their spectrum is not being infringed by the competition is a perfectly legit use of their money regardless of source. It's called customer service. People seem to be saying they're trying to cause trouble to the competition. That is a weird statement for two reasons: 1) they pretty much are one of a kind, they don't have any competition that I am aware of. 2) NPR has a channel on either XM or Sirius (or both)
If you take that definition of a "DVR", then that leaves out the very subject of the article out as well: MythTV is also a software solution. There may be third party integrators that sell complete solutions based on either of these sofware though, not sure.
Even Tivo I think detects commercials. They just won't let you skip them outright, you have to fast forward through them.
Or... just raise the base price of the service by $2.70.
Frankly these fees are ridiculous. Everytime I call a utility company for a quote on phone or broadband services, I specifically request they add all their random little fees and made-up taxes in any price they quote me. It usually takes a little bit of scrambling from the salesperson to get me that number, but they've always been able to tell me. I make my decision accordingly.
The best so far: Verizon Fios (fiber, if you're lucky enough to have it available in your area). It was $35/month, no fees, no taxes (not even sales taxes!) charged to my credit card monthly. But I moves to the other side of town about 8 months ago and there no Fios available on my street. I do understand that they started charging taxes and/or fees now. I guess it was good while it lasted.
Not really - in every commercial software evaluation I have ever participated in, the vendor's reputation is a significant factor. It's sometimes hard to evaluate that, but not so hard when the "bad experiences" are in-house. For most of the other factors the vendors really score very close. There is just not that much that differentiate one Linux vendor from another other than the name of the vendor. Redhat used to be the "big name" company. Not so much anymore since Novell bought Suse.
I don't know about Ubuntu specifically, but there is no doubt in my mind that RH made a very bad move, and that all the other Linux vendors will collectively benefit from it. I used to be a big RedHat fan. I have installed every version since 5.1, I owned stock at some point, I was RHCE certified (company paid for it), I paid for RHN licenses for my personal boxes at home (partly for convenience, partly to support a worthy company), and even got the company to buy a few support contracts for servers at work. When they changed their business model, I looked elsewhere, and I haven't looked back. At work, we're still using RH 7.3 to this day but looking at finally upgrading. Guess what? It won't be a RedHat product. Stuff like that happens when you alienate the little people - they're the ones influencing the decisions.
I hope someone from Redhat still reads Slashdot and this post.
Knowing that there is a disagreement is all that is needed to know to invalidate the results. And really, there should only be a disagreement if someone tampered with the results (i.e. changed the data on the flash drive, or changed the ballots). Checks and balance is what this is all about. With no paper trail, nobody can know that someone tampered with the data, or that there is some weird bug that didn't creep up during testing that made a few hundred votes dissapear here and there (maliciously or not).
That's theory anyway.
As a side note - I think it's much harder to tamper with the paper trail (it's not like there are hanging shads, etc) if it's locked in a nice big plexiglass box that only two keys (one from each party) under the watchful eye of several more witnesses... Much harder than tampering with some bits on a computer.
Thanks for the clarification, mr-obvious. I think/hope we all understand the distinction of being guilty and being guilty in a court of law, and understand that one may not be equal to the other. After all, didn't we all watch OJ on TV? My bad for not taking the time to be careful and use the correct legal phrasing (with the all important "presumed" in it), which apparently caused a whole lot of people to waste their time and write insightful posts just like yours making the exact same irrelevant point.