I was more referring to sites like Penny Arcade (online comic), Blue's News (video game news), and the like. It takes a fair amount of time to upkeep a site like that. It starts as a hobby, something you do in your spare time. Before you know it, not only do you need to pay for hosting, but you've hit the threshold where you either have to drop everything but the site, and make it better, or cut back and keep it a "spare time" activity, at which time the quality begins to drop.
If there exist ways for these folks to get paid, and there are users who are willing to pay, then why not encourage that? Why not build the infrastructure?
I don't have time to keep watch on everything in the video game industry. I rely on Blue and his small crew to keep me up to date. Just like I rely on the Ars Technica crew to keep me up to date on new hardware. And Penny Arcade to make me laugh (and point me to timewasting games like Counter-Strike and Bejeweled). Those services are worth a few bucks a month -- and if enough of us think so, enough that those guys can actually make that their day job -- then great. I'm all for it.
These days, the net is too big for something really good to be a "labor of love." Somebody has a hobby. They say, "I can afford to spend $X on my hobby." So they find a way to set up a server with their little labor of love, and it costs them around $X.
Someone says, "What a great site!" and tells all their friends. Sooner or later, the traffic to the site increases way beyond what can be served by $X. So our friendly hobbyist who had such a great site to share has very few options:
1. Shut down
2. Relocate and hope people don't find him
3. Hope some nice sponsor funds his work.
4. Get money from somewhere to increase bandwidth.
Nobody wants option 1. Otherwise you have dozens of little sites popping up and dying as soon as they gather some intertia.
Option 2 is hardly better than option 1.
Option 3 is not going to happen often, and may be unattractive as you're bowing to their control, possibly.
Option 4 is all that's left. So how do these guys get money? Banner Ads? But we know those aren't working -- ad companies refusing to pay sites running their ads, etc. What about asking their dedicated fans to pony up a little... contributions, as it were.
If it works, why not have it?
I visit Penny Arcade religiously. I've told everyone I know who plays video games to check out the site. I've learned about great games from them, I've laughed my ass off at their strips. When they put up a micropayment box I immediately sent my micropayment in.
If your fans love your work enough to pay you to do it...great! You've succeeded. How many sites would I be willing to micropay to get at? 3, maybe. But it's one way to cope with the increased monetary restrictions of what was originally a little hobby turning into something that costs an incredible amount to maintain.
It almost hurts to explain it, as I'm sure it destroys half the humor. Oh well.
A long time ago there was released upon the earth a not-very-good side-scrolling game for a Sega system (genesis? master drive? whatever?) called "Zero Wing." Its intro sequence was horribly translated, including such gems as:
"Someone set up us the bomb"
"All your base are belong to us"
"You have no chance to survive make your time"
and
"For great justice!"
Now, the gaming community being what it is, there are a number of people who "collect" oddities like this. For some unknown reason, this one caught on to an incredible degree (much more than other bad translations, like "A winner is you").
I personally think the real popularity began in the Something Awful forums -- but I could be wrong. From there, it spread to other forums, and was used quite a bit by Stile, of the famous Stile Project. Folks began modifying images using photoshop, placing the phrase in ads, and famous net photos. It's a huge in-joke that's gotten so big it's amazing.
Now, it has a life of its own. Do a google search on the phrase; you'll be astounded. Look at mp3.com for a song inspired by it (Invasion of the Gabber Robots is the name, I believe). Pure genius. Somewhere out there someone put together a collage of shots from the original game and modified images, set it to the afore-mentioned MP3, and made a movie out of it. And it's damned funny.
Speaking as someone who was raised in a very bible-oriented "Christian" home, I can say this won't change any minds.
Yes, this may be a more impressive "proof" than the fossil record. But it still doesn't stand up to the unwavering faith these people have in their bibles.
The belief that their god created everything as part of his master plan doesn't really depend on implementation. Why are our genes the wacky way they are? Well, for the same reason dinosaurs walked the earth for so long only to die out -- because their god wanted it that way, and made it that way.
There isn't a fact out there that can challenge their beliefs. That's the whole point of faith, isn't it?
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Damnit, I wanted to post a nice thoughtful reply on their message board, but after half an hour of fucking around with things, I had lost several postings and it still wouldn't recognize my login even after I activated it.
Man, they ask for a lot of info before they let you post, too. Wow.
Instead of merely helping its host compete against non-infected hosts as many parasites do, Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing.
This suggests that it is relatively common for parasites to _help_ their hosts in some way, thereby securing the parasite's survival.
So how do you make the leap of logic that the wasps without the parasite will prevail?
I've worked with "teens" in this industry. They think they know everything because they've been hacking since they were in diapers. So what? How does that _at all_ translate into a job skill?
So you can build a server. So you can write a web page. So you can optimize the hell out of 8088 assembly code. I don't care. Anyone can do these things, or find someone who can.
Can you sit through a four hour meeting with the VP of your division and not somehow piss anyone off?
Can you accept an assignment that you have no desire to do and do it to the best of your ability because it's what's best for your company, or best for your group? Are you willing to do the shit work while those with more experience get the credit?
Can you communicate effectively with senior members of other teams and other divisions?
Do you talk bad about your fellow employees behind their backs? Your management? Are you a source or a sink of morale?
Can you write quality code? Can you follow a coding standard without bitching and moaning? Can you put out a quality functional spec that your boss is willing to send to a dozen representatives from various departments without even reading it because _he trusts you_?
Maybe you can. But in general, young people without "real world" experience are lacking in most of these areas. They think their technical expertise will get them farther than it will. There is value in being smart, and there is value in technical experience. But in terms of respect -- no, you won't get any respect for just that. Everybody knows a half dozen "smart" people that they wouldn't let near their boss, never mind an actual customer. And they know there's a half dozen more lining up at the local college.
Maybe it's not your age. I thought I was pretty mature at 17. I look back now, 10 years later, and realize I had a lot of growing up left to do. Being respected at work (or anywhere) isn't _just_ about technical expertise, it's also about your personality, maturity, people-skills, and tons of other hard-to-measure qualities.
BTW, when you get to college, take an English class. Keep your posting, reread it when you understand grammar a little better, and ask again why you were being treated differently.
>> Sorry, dude, there's just not an infinite amount of coal on this earth
Coal? No.
Geothermal, nuclear, solar, wind power?
Close enough to infinite so it doesn't matter.
Better technology could yield more than enough power for our needs AND our silly "wants." Asking _people_ to conserve will never work as well as coming up with
A: More power
B: Devices which conserve by their nature.
If all computers use less power, if all light bulbs use less power, etc., etc.... obviously Joe Average doesn't need to conserve; it will happen for him.
Everyone should conserve; I'm not arguing against that. But not everyone will, and I think planning your national strategy for power consumption on hoping people will "do the right thing" is a bit naive.
I'm SO SICK of the open source community rallying behind Netscape as if it were the second coming, just because they are anti-Microsoft.
Netscape was HATED by the online community in the mid-90's. Don't you remember the protest pages, people turning their pages black-on-black with netscape-specific tags, with little comments "If you can't read this page, you're using Netscape."
Netscape tried to do the exact same thing MS does. They offered their software for free, and then tried to screw up an existing standard by securing market share and then making their own extensions more popular than the standard.
Netscape is just as guilty of shady practices as Microsoft. You can't be anti-MS for these reasons and be pro-Netscape. Some of you people are just so blind with your anti-MS fervor that you don't realize MS did what any company would do in its place -- even your beloved Netscape.
I stopped using Netscape 5 years ago and I'll never use it again.
Part of the problem is the general confidence people have in the computer. "Well, my computer says so, so I can't think any more about the subject." It's funny to deal with someone who is in front of a computer and doesn't agree with what it's saying.
"Hmm. This can't be right. But the computer says we owe you $77, so we'll get that taken care of" (paraphrased quote, actually happened to me this week when disputing something with AT&T).
It works the other way, however, far more often. "The computer says you are denied; I don't know why. Sorry, that's all I can do." Add to this that you're dealing with "drones" most of the time who are not empowered to make actual decisions, and you see why it's such an uphill battle to fix a problem once it shows up in these databases.
The burden of proof in these situations is yours. All you can do is be vigilant with your own records, from now on....
That was MUDding. None of this leveling up crap. Who needs levels when you have Lynx, Random, and the whole crew. (Julia the bot... or was she just on TinyMUD and not on Islandia?)
Met many good friends on Islandia. Still keep in contact with... well only one of them, but hey....
I mean, beyond the absolute silliness of this, isn't it fairly (for low values of fairly) common for folks who have trouble reading to read aloud in an effort to understand the text?
Sorry, you can't learn to read on this book. Hey! Stop sounding that out!
Just because you don't understand, don't criticize. Some of us relish the experience of seeing something as soon as it's available. Some of us relish the experience of meeting fellow geeks or fanatics and being a part of something big like that.
I have _absolutely no desire_ to buy a PS2. Yet I've got this little itch at the base of my skull knowing a new gaming system is out and I haven't tried it out.
One of my fondest memories of high school was a trip to the movies to see (wait for it...) Star Trek V. Oh wow, did that movie suck. But I went opening night, and the theatre was filled with hardcore trek fans. And what a blast.
That's why I waited in line for Star Wars I. That's why I'll wait in line for Lord of The Rings. And maybe even Star Wars 2, though damn I'm hard pressed to after TPM:).
So sit back and enjoy what makes you tick, and don't call other people pathetic for what makes them tick.
Just because someone drives an SUV to work every day during the week doesn't mean they don't fill it with camping equipment on the weekends. Just because a guy wears a suit to work doesn't mean he never gets out of the suit. Just because the guy has grey hair and talks on a cellphone doesn't mean he exists only to play the role of 'businessman' in your fantasy world.
I'm not a big fan of SUVs. They piss me off, they block my view of the road, and I think a lot of people are spoiled by the current economy and buy them. But I don't blame them for that. --
People who demonize Microsoft and praise Netscape really bother me.
Does nobody remember when Netscape came along and started adding all sorts of non-standard tags? When people used to color their pages black in protest of Netscape ("If you cannot read this page, it is because you are using Netscape. Get a real web browser and return.")?
Netscape used some shady tactics to get where they were, and when Microsoft does the same thing, and Netscape starts losing the war, they cry foul.
It's one of the things I keep telling my non-techie "people" (ok, so that's mainly family)... we're living so incredibly close to a science fiction reality, it's not funny.
Molecularly perfect sword blades (drool). Straight out of half a dozen futuristic RPGs, not to mention countless novels.
Mapping the human genome (floored). Yeah it's only one step but...wow.
Molecular computing, pervasive wireless networking(hell, just the Internet itself is something incredible -- we just take it so much for granted we forget how out of this world it is), nanotech, etc, etc, etc!
We live in fascinating times, people. I just wonder whether our grandkids will say, "Wow, you lived in fascinating times" or if they'll think their advances are as amazing as ours. I mean, the past 100 years has been incredible. Will the next hundred? With the stuff we're on the horizon of figuring out, it's hard to imagine it being anything less....
"The problem is Free software is being shoehorned into an environment where people are used to proprietry software needing an the vendors to correct bugs. The culture of software distribution means it doesn't occur to them to fix it themselves."
Part of the problem is that not every software house can afford to fix it themselves. The whole reason they bought (or downloaded for free) a solution is because they don't have the resources, the personnel, the experience, or the willingness to write (or fix) the software they had to get.
"I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster?"
No. But it allows for accountability. Let's say your company wants to make a product that does Foo. Now, in order to make something that can do Foo, you really need a library that provides Bar. But you can't afford to hire any programmers who know anything about Bar.
Now, you can buy MS-Bar2.0, or you can download gBar. Let's assume both of them have the same tricky bug in them.
If I buy MS-Bar2.0, then there's some accountability. "Look, we knew at the beginning we didn't know how to do Bar. Turns out MS's product has some problems. They've told us that v2.1 will fix it, but it'll be 30 days before that comes out. What do you want to do?"
If I download gBar, there's nothing to be done. "Yes, we have nobody who understands Bar. We tried to save money buy downloading something written by a few college kids in their spare time, and what do you know, it has a bug. And no, we can't fix it -- if we could have fixed it, we would have written it ourselves. Time to go buy MS-Bar, I guess."
Now, which one makes you look worse to upper management?
It may not be a pleasant fact, but carreers ride on this sort of thing. Which bag would you rather be left holding when the smoke clears?
You might want to post some benchmarks (I know, lies, damned lies, and benchmarks) comparing CLARiiON FC boxes to comparable EMC boxes before posting something like that.
I understand DG carries a bit of a reputation with it, but CLARiiON arrays are generally considered top of the line for the market they are in. CLARiiON also gives some features EMC boxes just don't. They may not be as high end (8 GB cache might not be available), but they compete very well in their market. If CLARiiON has a fault, it's more with their PR departments than their product itself. [This URL shows how NEC recently broke some record for best performance on a specified benchmark using CLARiiON boxes for storage: Press release.]
Also, the previous AC who said CLARiiON was porting their drivers and management software to Linux, pending a port of a third party tool; I wasn't aware such an operation was officially underway. A search of CLARiiON's web page shows no reference to the word "Linux" anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
I was more referring to sites like Penny Arcade (online comic), Blue's News (video game news), and the like. It takes a fair amount of time to upkeep a site like that. It starts as a hobby, something you do in your spare time. Before you know it, not only do you need to pay for hosting, but you've hit the threshold where you either have to drop everything but the site, and make it better, or cut back and keep it a "spare time" activity, at which time the quality begins to drop.
If there exist ways for these folks to get paid, and there are users who are willing to pay, then why not encourage that? Why not build the infrastructure?
I don't have time to keep watch on everything in the video game industry. I rely on Blue and his small crew to keep me up to date. Just like I rely on the Ars Technica crew to keep me up to date on new hardware. And Penny Arcade to make me laugh (and point me to timewasting games like Counter-Strike and Bejeweled). Those services are worth a few bucks a month -- and if enough of us think so, enough that those guys can actually make that their day job -- then great. I'm all for it.
These days, the net is too big for something really good to be a "labor of love." Somebody has a hobby. They say, "I can afford to spend $X on my hobby." So they find a way to set up a server with their little labor of love, and it costs them around $X.
... contributions, as it were.
Someone says, "What a great site!" and tells all their friends. Sooner or later, the traffic to the site increases way beyond what can be served by $X. So our friendly hobbyist who had such a great site to share has very few options:
1. Shut down
2. Relocate and hope people don't find him
3. Hope some nice sponsor funds his work.
4. Get money from somewhere to increase bandwidth.
Nobody wants option 1. Otherwise you have dozens of little sites popping up and dying as soon as they gather some intertia.
Option 2 is hardly better than option 1.
Option 3 is not going to happen often, and may be unattractive as you're bowing to their control, possibly.
Option 4 is all that's left. So how do these guys get money? Banner Ads? But we know those aren't working -- ad companies refusing to pay sites running their ads, etc. What about asking their dedicated fans to pony up a little
If it works, why not have it?
I visit Penny Arcade religiously. I've told everyone I know who plays video games to check out the site. I've learned about great games from them, I've laughed my ass off at their strips. When they put up a micropayment box I immediately sent my micropayment in.
If your fans love your work enough to pay you to do it...great! You've succeeded. How many sites would I be willing to micropay to get at? 3, maybe. But it's one way to cope with the increased monetary restrictions of what was originally a little hobby turning into something that costs an incredible amount to maintain.
"No beer and no tv make homer go crazy!!!"
.. something something.
Actually, it was:
Homer: No beer and no TV make Homer
Marge: Go crazy?
Homer: Don't mind if I do!! (insert whooping and hollering sounds here)
It almost hurts to explain it, as I'm sure it destroys half the humor. Oh well.
A long time ago there was released upon the earth a not-very-good side-scrolling game for a Sega system (genesis? master drive? whatever?) called "Zero Wing." Its intro sequence was horribly translated, including such gems as:
"Someone set up us the bomb"
"All your base are belong to us"
"You have no chance to survive make your time"
and
"For great justice!"
Now, the gaming community being what it is, there are a number of people who "collect" oddities like this. For some unknown reason, this one caught on to an incredible degree (much more than other bad translations, like "A winner is you").
I personally think the real popularity began in the Something Awful forums -- but I could be wrong. From there, it spread to other forums, and was used quite a bit by Stile, of the famous Stile Project. Folks began modifying images using photoshop, placing the phrase in ads, and famous net photos. It's a huge in-joke that's gotten so big it's amazing.
Now, it has a life of its own. Do a google search on the phrase; you'll be astounded. Look at mp3.com for a song inspired by it (Invasion of the Gabber Robots is the name, I believe). Pure genius. Somewhere out there someone put together a collage of shots from the original game and modified images, set it to the afore-mentioned MP3, and made a movie out of it. And it's damned funny.
-Take off every 'zig'!
Speaking as someone who was raised in a very bible-oriented "Christian" home, I can say this won't change any minds.
Yes, this may be a more impressive "proof" than the fossil record. But it still doesn't stand up to the unwavering faith these people have in their bibles.
The belief that their god created everything as part of his master plan doesn't really depend on implementation. Why are our genes the wacky way they are? Well, for the same reason dinosaurs walked the earth for so long only to die out -- because their god wanted it that way, and made it that way.
There isn't a fact out there that can challenge their beliefs. That's the whole point of faith, isn't it?
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Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . We
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plus process your orders within seconds ! The best
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Damnit, I wanted to post a nice thoughtful reply on their message board, but after half an hour of fucking around with things, I had lost several postings and it still wouldn't recognize my login even after I activated it.
Man, they ask for a lot of info before they let you post, too. Wow.
Oh well. Their loss.
:-)
Agreed, wording is poor.
....
But one thing you fail to bring up is that if a female is infected, an uninfected male may mate with her, and the offspring will be infected.
At least that's how I think I read it.
Did you read the article?
Here's a relevant quote:
Instead of merely helping its host compete against non-infected hosts as many parasites do, Wolbachia actively seeks to eliminate non-infected hosts by stopping them from reproducing.
This suggests that it is relatively common for parasites to _help_ their hosts in some way, thereby securing the parasite's survival.
So how do you make the leap of logic that the wasps without the parasite will prevail?
Discrimination without basis? I don't think so.
I've worked with "teens" in this industry. They think they know everything because they've been hacking since they were in diapers. So what? How does that _at all_ translate into a job skill?
So you can build a server. So you can write a web page. So you can optimize the hell out of 8088 assembly code. I don't care. Anyone can do these things, or find someone who can.
Can you sit through a four hour meeting with the VP of your division and not somehow piss anyone off?
Can you accept an assignment that you have no desire to do and do it to the best of your ability because it's what's best for your company, or best for your group? Are you willing to do the shit work while those with more experience get the credit?
Can you communicate effectively with senior members of other teams and other divisions?
Do you talk bad about your fellow employees behind their backs? Your management? Are you a source or a sink of morale?
Can you write quality code? Can you follow a coding standard without bitching and moaning? Can you put out a quality functional spec that your boss is willing to send to a dozen representatives from various departments without even reading it because _he trusts you_?
Maybe you can. But in general, young people without "real world" experience are lacking in most of these areas. They think their technical expertise will get them farther than it will. There is value in being smart, and there is value in technical experience. But in terms of respect -- no, you won't get any respect for just that. Everybody knows a half dozen "smart" people that they wouldn't let near their boss, never mind an actual customer. And they know there's a half dozen more lining up at the local college.
Maybe it's not your age. I thought I was pretty mature at 17. I look back now, 10 years later, and realize I had a lot of growing up left to do. Being respected at work (or anywhere) isn't _just_ about technical expertise, it's also about your personality, maturity, people-skills, and tons of other hard-to-measure qualities.
BTW, when you get to college, take an English class. Keep your posting, reread it when you understand grammar a little better, and ask again why you were being treated differently.
[Sorry, that was harsh.]
>> Sorry, dude, there's just not an infinite amount of coal on this earth
Coal? No.
Geothermal, nuclear, solar, wind power?
Close enough to infinite so it doesn't matter.
Better technology could yield more than enough power for our needs AND our silly "wants." Asking _people_ to conserve will never work as well as coming up with
A: More power
B: Devices which conserve by their nature.
If all computers use less power, if all light bulbs use less power, etc., etc.... obviously Joe Average doesn't need to conserve; it will happen for him.
Everyone should conserve; I'm not arguing against that. But not everyone will, and I think planning your national strategy for power consumption on hoping people will "do the right thing" is a bit naive.
This isn't a troll. It's a vent.
I'm SO SICK of the open source community rallying behind Netscape as if it were the second coming, just because they are anti-Microsoft.
Netscape was HATED by the online community in the mid-90's. Don't you remember the protest pages, people turning their pages black-on-black with netscape-specific tags, with little comments "If you can't read this page, you're using Netscape."
Netscape tried to do the exact same thing MS does. They offered their software for free, and then tried to screw up an existing standard by securing market share and then making their own extensions more popular than the standard.
Netscape is just as guilty of shady practices as Microsoft. You can't be anti-MS for these reasons and be pro-Netscape. Some of you people are just so blind with your anti-MS fervor that you don't realize MS did what any company would do in its place -- even your beloved Netscape.
I stopped using Netscape 5 years ago and I'll never use it again.
Part of the problem is the general confidence people have in the computer. "Well, my computer says so, so I can't think any more about the subject." It's funny to deal with someone who is in front of a computer and doesn't agree with what it's saying.
"Hmm. This can't be right. But the computer says we owe you $77, so we'll get that taken care of" (paraphrased quote, actually happened to me this week when disputing something with AT&T).
It works the other way, however, far more often. "The computer says you are denied; I don't know why. Sorry, that's all I can do." Add to this that you're dealing with "drones" most of the time who are not empowered to make actual decisions, and you see why it's such an uphill battle to fix a problem once it shows up in these databases.
The burden of proof in these situations is yours. All you can do is be vigilant with your own records, from now on....
Yes. Islandia! Tree house.
... or was she just on TinyMUD and not on Islandia?)
... well only one of them, but hey....
That was MUDding. None of this leveling up crap. Who needs levels when you have Lynx, Random, and the whole crew. (Julia the bot
Met many good friends on Islandia. Still keep in contact with
(went by the embarassing name of LongThorn)
-D
I mean, beyond the absolute silliness of this, isn't it fairly (for low values of fairly) common for folks who have trouble reading to read aloud in an effort to understand the text?
Sorry, you can't learn to read on this book. Hey! Stop sounding that out!
Just because you don't understand, don't criticize. Some of us relish the experience of seeing something as soon as it's available. Some of us relish the experience of meeting fellow geeks or fanatics and being a part of something big like that.
:).
I have _absolutely no desire_ to buy a PS2. Yet I've got this little itch at the base of my skull knowing a new gaming system is out and I haven't tried it out.
One of my fondest memories of high school was a trip to the movies to see (wait for it...) Star Trek V. Oh wow, did that movie suck. But I went opening night, and the theatre was filled with hardcore trek fans. And what a blast.
That's why I waited in line for Star Wars I. That's why I'll wait in line for Lord of The Rings. And maybe even Star Wars 2, though damn I'm hard pressed to after TPM
So sit back and enjoy what makes you tick, and don't call other people pathetic for what makes them tick.
Take a deep breath.
Don't rush to judge someone.
Just because someone drives an SUV to work every day during the week doesn't mean they don't fill it with camping equipment on the weekends. Just because a guy wears a suit to work doesn't mean he never gets out of the suit. Just because the guy has grey hair and talks on a cellphone doesn't mean he exists only to play the role of 'businessman' in your fantasy world.
I'm not a big fan of SUVs. They piss me off, they block my view of the road, and I think a lot of people are spoiled by the current economy and buy them. But I don't blame them for that.
--
People who demonize Microsoft and praise Netscape really bother me.
Does nobody remember when Netscape came along and started adding all sorts of non-standard tags? When people used to color their pages black in protest of Netscape ("If you cannot read this page, it is because you are using Netscape. Get a real web browser and return.")?
Netscape used some shady tactics to get where they were, and when Microsoft does the same thing, and Netscape starts losing the war, they cry foul.
This is how business works. Get over it.
It's one of the things I keep telling my non-techie "people" (ok, so that's mainly family) ... we're living so incredibly close to a science fiction reality, it's not funny.
Molecularly perfect sword blades (drool). Straight out of half a dozen futuristic RPGs, not to mention countless novels.
Mapping the human genome (floored). Yeah it's only one step but...wow.
Molecular computing, pervasive wireless networking(hell, just the Internet itself is something incredible -- we just take it so much for granted we forget how out of this world it is), nanotech, etc, etc, etc!
We live in fascinating times, people. I just wonder whether our grandkids will say, "Wow, you lived in fascinating times" or if they'll think their advances are as amazing as ours. I mean, the past 100 years has been incredible. Will the next hundred? With the stuff we're on the horizon of figuring out, it's hard to imagine it being anything less....
"The problem is Free software is being shoehorned into an environment where people are used to proprietry software needing an the vendors to correct bugs. The culture of software distribution means it doesn't occur to them to fix it themselves."
Part of the problem is that not every software house can afford to fix it themselves. The whole reason they bought (or downloaded for free) a solution is because they don't have the resources, the personnel, the experience, or the willingness to write (or fix) the software they had to get.
"I agree that being stuck with software that doesn't do what you want is a pain. But does having someone to blame get you out of your hole any faster?"
No. But it allows for accountability. Let's say your company wants to make a product that does Foo. Now, in order to make something that can do Foo, you really need a library that provides Bar. But you can't afford to hire any programmers who know anything about Bar.
Now, you can buy MS-Bar2.0, or you can download gBar. Let's assume both of them have the same tricky bug in them.
If I buy MS-Bar2.0, then there's some accountability. "Look, we knew at the beginning we didn't know how to do Bar. Turns out MS's product has some problems. They've told us that v2.1 will fix it, but it'll be 30 days before that comes out. What do you want to do?"
If I download gBar, there's nothing to be done. "Yes, we have nobody who understands Bar. We tried to save money buy downloading something written by a few college kids in their spare time, and what do you know, it has a bug. And no, we can't fix it -- if we could have fixed it, we would have written it ourselves. Time to go buy MS-Bar, I guess."
Now, which one makes you look worse to upper management?
It may not be a pleasant fact, but carreers ride on this sort of thing. Which bag would you rather be left holding when the smoke clears?
You might want to post some benchmarks (I know, lies, damned lies, and benchmarks) comparing CLARiiON FC boxes to comparable EMC boxes before posting something like that.
I understand DG carries a bit of a reputation with it, but CLARiiON arrays are generally considered top of the line for the market they are in. CLARiiON also gives some features EMC boxes just don't. They may not be as high end (8 GB cache might not be available), but they compete very well in their market. If CLARiiON has a fault, it's more with their PR departments than their product itself. [This URL shows how NEC recently broke some record for best performance on a specified benchmark using CLARiiON boxes for storage: Press release.]
Also, the previous AC who said CLARiiON was porting their drivers and management software to Linux, pending a port of a third party tool; I wasn't aware such an operation was officially underway. A search of CLARiiON's web page shows no reference to the word "Linux" anywhere.
-SDog