Companies, large and small with no internal developers do make contributions to OSS without even thinking about it or being noticed.
These are the same companies who PAY the likes of RedHat for "support". The auditors sometimes insist that we buy "licenses" for all "production platforms". So which companies do and sponsor the most Linux development? Why these same OSS vendors.
On top of that, those companies with internal talent tend to contribute without management even being aware. It gos along the lines of:
Manager-: Geeks, we need this by next Friday, get cracking.
Geeks-: Sure boss (don't know how but we will do it)
Then the geeks go to the community and together they hack code and make "whatever" work. That code becomes part of the community's stockpile and sometimes ends up in the official tree.
Next time say "I". You have no idea what the needs of another person are. Especially when it comes to secondary or tertiary needs like entertainment or information.
In my case I like to read Jamaican newspapers, play online game, and post messages on Slashdot.
This result is actually not surprising. Note that "air" doesn't even make the list.
Food is available in virtually every terminal of nearly all airports. It's no big deal because you always have it.
By contrast many Airports do not have WiFi and of those that do, many attempt to charge for the service.
So when you open your Laptop in Fort Lauderdale and see skype connected right away, it feels like a big deal. I don't know about other people but since this year I have chosen 2 flights that stop in FLL over comparable flights which stop in MIA, because of the Internet access.
Granted on one of those flights the price of the ticket was far lower but on the other I actually payed $5 more and spent 90 minutes extra in the airport.
As any Slashdoter can attest a 5 hour wait with internet is a lot shorter than a 3 1/2 hour wait without it.
Another point to consider. Internal hard drive connectors (ATA, SCSI and SATA) were not designed for frequent connection and disconnection. And as such can cause problems. Also the circuitry on the bottom of the drive is quite fragile, vulnerable to scratches, moisture and static.
Even really rely cheap USB/SATA shells ($10 or less) would work well for the scenario described.
Or you can just grab some of these bags if the budget is really tight.
Usually the problem isn't how dumb the guard is. Most guards just aren't permitted to think anyway.
More than once I have asked "why do you have this rule or that" and gotten the response: "Because the boss must be on crack or something".
As for the cameras issue. That is legit. Not only do courts sometimes deal with cases where identities must be protected (I.e. It's bad enough little Sandy has to testify against her Daddy for molesting her, but putting her picture on the net would make it a whole lot worse) but there are other "institutions" that have vested interest in being photograph free. I.e. Many titty Bars ban Cams to protect the day jobs and church membership of part time strippers as well as the Senate seat of tonight's #1 tipper.
As for cam less devices. Nothing wrong with having a low end device. I.e. In a courtroom, You don't need a high frame rate or surround sound. Even my lowly old Dell Latitude D620 is overkill for legitimate courtroom usage.
Phones are a bigger problem. It's getting real hard to find phones with Email, 3G and WiFi without a built in Camera.
I'm shocked nobody has capitalized on this to release "Cam-less mods" for those Blackberrys where the cam can be hidden and crippled by changing the user removable back panel for one without the lens opening.
1. Amateur cable. These are done just any old way as long as the colors match at both ends. The pairs don't even have to be twisted for it to work over very short distances (2 to 6 feet) at 1GB.
2. Professional Cable. All the pinouts done properly according to whichever standard you are working with, by someone who knows what he is doing.
3. Factory cables. Here is the dirty secret. Some of these are done by robots and some are just professional cables. There is no way for you to tell which is which.
Now to your specific problem. If your boss insists on paying $300 for $20 worth of cable just to satisfy his own misguided notions of quality, you as the highered help just have to accept his decision and go cry into your beer.
Or better yet. Smile. they had no intention of using the money you would have saved to enhance your salary.
I have an elegant solution. Regardless of where I shop or what I buy, if they ask for a phone number and don't obliviously need one, I give them my number in Jamaica. 22c per minute on Skype, even more with most other services. It won't discourage them (still get some calls) but it dose my heart good to know that I am costing them money, even if it's just a few cents to leave a voicemail I will ignore.
For an email address I give them a disposable address. It's good to have a few of these. That way if one of your retailers is selling info to Spammers you can probably narrow it down.
More importantly you can just not read that inbox since you never gave the address to anyone you want to hear from.
They will lose big time if, and only IF the court awards full compensation, legal expenses AND punitive damages.
Anything less and they win just by paying the claim a couple years late and discouraging other customers from pursuing claims that were unfairly denied.
Some insurance companies just flatly reject all claims and pay only after you file a lawsuit if the legal teem says there is no way in hell they are going to win, otherwise they pay court ordered damages. Because most people are just looking for a little cash to ease pain and send the kids to school, they give up and go grumble about how nasty company X is. The insurers have to pay so few claims, they are forced to buy banks and real estate, just so the huge piles of blood money won't start gathering taxes.
Let me start off by saying I was a runner in High school. Fast enough to make the Olympic sprint team for some countries but a little below average in Jamaica.
Not only did we find shoos necessary, we had to pick them according to the terrain.
Thick soft soles for running on Roads.
Long spikes for running on grass,
Shorter spikes for running on the rubber based surface at the Stadium.
Once you got to boys who ran at close to the same speed, wearing the wrong shoos or running barefoot would virtually guarantee defeat.
The reason is skidding. Basically: The soles of our feet were relatively smooth, so at each stride we would slide a little. The direction and scope of the slide varied with each stride and you expend so much effort just trying to remain upright your speed over the 100M drops by as much as a second.
With Long distance and running shoos and cross trainers (I am less of an expert here). Where the problems come in is probably a lack of understanding of what each shoe is designed for. While this is bad with running shoos it was most glaringly obvious with Basketball shoos. The high end (and price) shoos were made for use on a cushioned wooden surface, polished to a mirror finish. Guess what happens when you wear that onto a Rough asfoult court?
I'm just betting that expensive cross trainers "fail" for the same reason. I.e. People buy $200 shoos that are only good on a treadmill and try to go cross country.
So the grand parent is entirely correct. If you don't like the official version go fork it yourself.
...or join the dev team if you're that passionate about it.
"Submitting patches" IS joining the Dev team. Forking is for when the official maintainer doesn't want you on his team or doesn't want your patches in his software.
Which means we have brilliant scientists at all levels along the spectrum. Atheist, Agnostics, and Believers. (Don Knott), is at that other extreme.
Re:What about MySQL?
on
Oracle Buys Sun
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· Score: 4, Interesting
No he is correct.
They are under no obligation to accept any contributions. What they cannot do is prevent other people from distributing their own modified versions.
Just as Linus rejected my Kernel mod claiming "this piece of $#!7 doesn't even compile and from my reading of the changes if it did the machine wouldn't boot."
So the grand parent is entirely correct. If you don't like the official version go fork it yourself.
these days, the lowest cost hard drive available from major server vendors (at least Dell) is 160GB.
Meanwhile many of the server applications we use need only a small fraction of that space. What I would like to see is a software that allows me to share an arbitrary portion of the unused space on each server as part of a storage cloud.
Right now, we could squeeze out 20 or so Terabytes from the server hardware we already own and 80 unused Terabytes, just from those desktops which have to run 24/7 and have pretty locked down software configurations.
Dose anyone know where we can find a reliable and inexpensive software package to turn this unused space into a virtual SAN?
Seriously, We don't play American Football in Jamaica so I'm a little Hazy as to what 4,244 sq mi (10,991 sq km) translates to in more standard SlashDot measurements.
Patients on the chemotherepy ward were discussing how Cervical Cancer is more prevalent in women who start having sex early, have sex often and/or with multiple partners.
The conclusion they came to is that excess stimulation of a sexual nature actually causes the cancer to develop. The guy with testicular cancer nodded approval, the woman with Brest cancer started to cry, The woman with throat cancer managed to cough out "not true".
The guy with Prostate Cancer ran away screaming "I am not gay. I am not gay"
There. See, people can joke about Cancer patients.
Dell dose onsite repairs for both corporate and home customers, which led to some of my most interesting on the job experiences.
Ever repaired a computer on a beach? Or had to park 1/2 a mile from the house, because that's as close as your car can get? I have, thanks to being a Dell repair guy.
The site is not to everyone's taste and it has been getting worse. But hey. At least it works. You would be surprised how many people go to a site to buy something and click away with the credit card untouched because they just couldn't figure out how to get what they want even though the site in question sells it.
As for the service. I will not comment on the quality because I used to be one of the guys who went to people's homes and offices to repair Dell gear so my my bias is clear even to me.
What I can say is that it _exists_ even in places where customers of major competitors are asked to ship out computers in the hope that they will be repaired and returned in a few months.
Back to the story. Dell (as in Micheal Dell) needs to walk down to the corner where they are working on Mobile phones, bitchslap everyone for a little while then remind them what Dell's main asset is.
People like to buy stuff from them. If Dell started to sell and support Apple PCs as just another product line, sales of Apple PCs would climb.
This is no accident:
#1. In some places, (Jamaica) Dell provides onsite support and a warehouse of spare parts that's already cleared customs and can thus be delivered in compliance with the Next business day or even the 4 hour response Warranties.
#2. Dell still has the best designed site for customizing and buying Computer hardware.
In simple terms Dell doesn't need it's own products. It just needs decent quality stuff with the Dell brand on it. Let someone else design and build the Dell phone. Ignore the carriers (except for making sure the phone is compatible) and start selling unlocked Dell phones for whatever they cost to make and deliver plus a markup.
Once the carriers see the numbers delivered whoever has the fewest on it's network will go to Dell on bended knee to get a bundling deal.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies, large and small with no internal developers do make contributions to OSS without even thinking about it or being noticed.
These are the same companies who PAY the likes of RedHat for "support". The auditors sometimes insist that we buy "licenses" for all "production platforms". So which companies do and sponsor the most Linux development? Why these same OSS vendors.
On top of that, those companies with internal talent tend to contribute without management even being aware. It gos along the lines of:
Manager-: Geeks, we need this by next Friday, get cracking. Geeks-: Sure boss (don't know how but we will do it)
Then the geeks go to the community and together they hack code and make "whatever" work. That code becomes part of the community's stockpile and sometimes ends up in the official tree.
Next time say "I". You have no idea what the needs of another person are. Especially when it comes to secondary or tertiary needs like entertainment or information.
In my case I like to read Jamaican newspapers, play online game, and post messages on Slashdot.
This result is actually not surprising. Note that "air" doesn't even make the list.
Food is available in virtually every terminal of nearly all airports. It's no big deal because you always have it.
By contrast many Airports do not have WiFi and of those that do, many attempt to charge for the service.
So when you open your Laptop in Fort Lauderdale and see skype connected right away, it feels like a big deal. I don't know about other people but since this year I have chosen 2 flights that stop in FLL over comparable flights which stop in MIA, because of the Internet access.
Granted on one of those flights the price of the ticket was far lower but on the other I actually payed $5 more and spent 90 minutes extra in the airport.
As any Slashdoter can attest a 5 hour wait with internet is a lot shorter than a 3 1/2 hour wait without it.
True. We also drink recycled Blood, vomit, pus and other miscellaneous bodily fluids.
For those who read/watched Dune, the fremins just do in minutes with a machine what nature dose for us in months with sunlight.
Another point to consider. Internal hard drive connectors (ATA, SCSI and SATA) were not designed for frequent connection and disconnection. And as such can cause problems. Also the circuitry on the bottom of the drive is quite fragile, vulnerable to scratches, moisture and static.
Even really rely cheap USB/SATA shells ($10 or less) would work well for the scenario described.
Or you can just grab some of these bags if the budget is really tight.
Hmm... A Titty Bar where everyone must wear a blindfold?
They would have no need to employ pretty girls. Just small ones who smell nice. Bad teeth? Discolored skin? no problem.
Usually the problem isn't how dumb the guard is. Most guards just aren't permitted to think anyway.
More than once I have asked "why do you have this rule or that" and gotten the response: "Because the boss must be on crack or something".
As for the cameras issue. That is legit. Not only do courts sometimes deal with cases where identities must be protected (I.e. It's bad enough little Sandy has to testify against her Daddy for molesting her, but putting her picture on the net would make it a whole lot worse) but there are other "institutions" that have vested interest in being photograph free. I.e. Many titty Bars ban Cams to protect the day jobs and church membership of part time strippers as well as the Senate seat of tonight's #1 tipper.
As for cam less devices. Nothing wrong with having a low end device. I.e. In a courtroom, You don't need a high frame rate or surround sound. Even my lowly old Dell Latitude D620 is overkill for legitimate courtroom usage.
Phones are a bigger problem. It's getting real hard to find phones with Email, 3G and WiFi without a built in Camera.
I'm shocked nobody has capitalized on this to release "Cam-less mods" for those Blackberrys where the cam can be hidden and crippled by changing the user removable back panel for one without the lens opening.
Nothing. They consistently do things the way they are programed to ontil a part wears out or breaks.
One word. BRILLIANT
There are 3 types of Ethernet cable.
1. Amateur cable. These are done just any old way as long as the colors match at both ends. The pairs don't even have to be twisted for it to work over very short distances (2 to 6 feet) at 1GB.
2. Professional Cable. All the pinouts done properly according to whichever standard you are working with, by someone who knows what he is doing.
3. Factory cables. Here is the dirty secret. Some of these are done by robots and some are just professional cables. There is no way for you to tell which is which.
Now to your specific problem. If your boss insists on paying $300 for $20 worth of cable just to satisfy his own misguided notions of quality, you as the highered help just have to accept his decision and go cry into your beer.
Or better yet. Smile. they had no intention of using the money you would have saved to enhance your salary.
I have an elegant solution. Regardless of where I shop or what I buy, if they ask for a phone number and don't obliviously need one, I give them my number in Jamaica. 22c per minute on Skype, even more with most other services. It won't discourage them (still get some calls) but it dose my heart good to know that I am costing them money, even if it's just a few cents to leave a voicemail I will ignore.
For an email address I give them a disposable address. It's good to have a few of these. That way if one of your retailers is selling info to Spammers you can probably narrow it down.
More importantly you can just not read that inbox since you never gave the address to anyone you want to hear from.
They will lose big time if, and only IF the court awards full compensation, legal expenses AND punitive damages. Anything less and they win just by paying the claim a couple years late and discouraging other customers from pursuing claims that were unfairly denied. Some insurance companies just flatly reject all claims and pay only after you file a lawsuit if the legal teem says there is no way in hell they are going to win, otherwise they pay court ordered damages. Because most people are just looking for a little cash to ease pain and send the kids to school, they give up and go grumble about how nasty company X is. The insurers have to pay so few claims, they are forced to buy banks and real estate, just so the huge piles of blood money won't start gathering taxes.
Let me start off by saying I was a runner in High school. Fast enough to make the Olympic sprint team for some countries but a little below average in Jamaica.
Not only did we find shoos necessary, we had to pick them according to the terrain.
Thick soft soles for running on Roads. Long spikes for running on grass, Shorter spikes for running on the rubber based surface at the Stadium.
Once you got to boys who ran at close to the same speed, wearing the wrong shoos or running barefoot would virtually guarantee defeat.
The reason is skidding. Basically: The soles of our feet were relatively smooth, so at each stride we would slide a little. The direction and scope of the slide varied with each stride and you expend so much effort just trying to remain upright your speed over the 100M drops by as much as a second.
With Long distance and running shoos and cross trainers (I am less of an expert here). Where the problems come in is probably a lack of understanding of what each shoe is designed for. While this is bad with running shoos it was most glaringly obvious with Basketball shoos. The high end (and price) shoos were made for use on a cushioned wooden surface, polished to a mirror finish. Guess what happens when you wear that onto a Rough asfoult court?
I'm just betting that expensive cross trainers "fail" for the same reason. I.e. People buy $200 shoos that are only good on a treadmill and try to go cross country.
So the grand parent is entirely correct. If you don't like the official version go fork it yourself.
...or join the dev team if you're that passionate about it.
"Submitting patches" IS joining the Dev team. Forking is for when the official maintainer doesn't want you on his team or doesn't want your patches in his software.
Why the blanket assumption that Hawkins is an Atheist?
Some of his quotes Imply that he is more of an Agnostic.
Which means we have brilliant scientists at all levels along the spectrum. Atheist, Agnostics, and Believers. (Don Knott), is at that other extreme.
No he is correct.
They are under no obligation to accept any contributions. What they cannot do is prevent other people from distributing their own modified versions.
Just as Linus rejected my Kernel mod claiming "this piece of $#!7 doesn't even compile and from my reading of the changes if it did the machine wouldn't boot."
So the grand parent is entirely correct. If you don't like the official version go fork it yourself.
I'm taking bets that this contract dosn't put the cost of this "change of heart", where it rightfuly belongs.
Hurray for the MS Legal teem, once again ensuring that Microsoft can screw it's business partners with impunity.
Not my home page. Just a site I happened to like 2 years ago when I last edited my /. profile.
What about a private cloud?
these days, the lowest cost hard drive available from major server vendors (at least Dell) is 160GB.
Meanwhile many of the server applications we use need only a small fraction of that space. What I would like to see is a software that allows me to share an arbitrary portion of the unused space on each server as part of a storage cloud.
Right now, we could squeeze out 20 or so Terabytes from the server hardware we already own and 80 unused Terabytes, just from those desktops which have to run 24/7 and have pretty locked down software configurations.
Dose anyone know where we can find a reliable and inexpensive software package to turn this unused space into a virtual SAN?
How much is that in Football fields?
Seriously, We don't play American Football in Jamaica so I'm a little Hazy as to what 4,244 sq mi (10,991 sq km) translates to in more standard SlashDot measurements.
Patients on the chemotherepy ward were discussing how Cervical Cancer is more prevalent in women who start having sex early, have sex often and/or with multiple partners.
The conclusion they came to is that excess stimulation of a sexual nature actually causes the cancer to develop. The guy with testicular cancer nodded approval, the woman with Brest cancer started to cry, The woman with throat cancer managed to cough out "not true".
The guy with Prostate Cancer ran away screaming "I am not gay. I am not gay"
There. See, people can joke about Cancer patients.
Dell dose onsite repairs for both corporate and home customers, which led to some of my most interesting on the job experiences. Ever repaired a computer on a beach? Or had to park 1/2 a mile from the house, because that's as close as your car can get? I have, thanks to being a Dell repair guy.
Point taken.
The site is not to everyone's taste and it has been getting worse. But hey. At least it works. You would be surprised how many people go to a site to buy something and click away with the credit card untouched because they just couldn't figure out how to get what they want even though the site in question sells it.
As for the service. I will not comment on the quality because I used to be one of the guys who went to people's homes and offices to repair Dell gear so my my bias is clear even to me.
What I can say is that it _exists_ even in places where customers of major competitors are asked to ship out computers in the hope that they will be repaired and returned in a few months.
Poor thing can't come here anymore so he has decided it's a crap place.
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
Yeah, but seriously. Who cares?
Back to the story. Dell (as in Micheal Dell) needs to walk down to the corner where they are working on Mobile phones, bitchslap everyone for a little while then remind them what Dell's main asset is.
People like to buy stuff from them. If Dell started to sell and support Apple PCs as just another product line, sales of Apple PCs would climb.
This is no accident:
#1. In some places, (Jamaica) Dell provides onsite support and a warehouse of spare parts that's already cleared customs and can thus be delivered in compliance with the Next business day or even the 4 hour response Warranties.
#2. Dell still has the best designed site for customizing and buying Computer hardware.
In simple terms Dell doesn't need it's own products. It just needs decent quality stuff with the Dell brand on it. Let someone else design and build the Dell phone. Ignore the carriers (except for making sure the phone is compatible) and start selling unlocked Dell phones for whatever they cost to make and deliver plus a markup.
Once the carriers see the numbers delivered whoever has the fewest on it's network will go to Dell on bended knee to get a bundling deal.