It's lousy as a flashlight, but very useful as a barcode reader (with minor surgery).
As you say, CueCats are a little more useful than RealNames, but the majority of CueCats are sitting in landfills because the average user doesn't know how to properly declaw them.
Mistake #1: Relying on a single customer Mistake #2: The single customer is Microsoft Mistake #3: Relying on the monopoly of M$ and IE Mistake #4: Creating an AOL-keyword knockoff and thinking it would somehow generate revenue Mistake #5: Failing to realize that the keyword concept would either die on its own or be emulated by others -- no profit either way!
So RealNames is in the Internet cemetary -- buried next to the Cue Cats.
It's the increased expectations that will hurt M$ the most. Especially stability. I find that most of the younger IT workers grew up with M$ and they seem to tolerate BSOD and other nonsense.
I remember (early 90's) when my dept. migrated from VAXstations to high-end PCs. The programmers were irate because they were used to leaving the VAXstations running 24x7 for months on end. They were too lazy to reboot (and it took almost 30 minutes so they were motivated to simply log out). I had to explain to these people that their "upgraded" Win311 machines were not stable enough to run that way -- thou shalt shutdown at night and cold boot in the morning. Even then, we averaged one crash per day per machine. It was comical to hear programmers asking the systems group to look at their PC crash dumps. These guys really thought the crashes were the result of hardware problems that needed to be fixed, or OS bugs that needed to be patched. I guess they were half right.
I agree. This is the ideal time for a well-planned migration.
From the schools' perspective, the negative publicity will force M$ to keep BSA on a leash -- at least for now. With the end of the school year approaching, this is the perfect time to migrate -- while BSA is still in "the penalty box."
"So, in conclusion, Free Software is a lot like the no-name products that you see at grocery stores. It is cheaper, but you get what you pay for, an inferior product."
We have three types of servers at my job: Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Ranking them by reliability, Linux is #1 in the uptime stats, Windows is #2, and Solaris is dead last (due to a nasty recurring hardware problem). If closed source is the way to go, how did the Linux servers beat the others? You won't find many people who claim Windows to be more reliable than Linux.
At first glance, schools are a dream target for the BSA. They have lots of machines, minimal system administration, and plenty of rogue software installations from faculty & students. If you're looking for piracy, you won't have to look very hard if you visit a school. From the "Let's justify our existance" perspective of BSA, schools are a target that is too juicy to be ignored.
But there's a catch: Schools are chronically short of funds. Paying the BSA "fines" or submitting to extortion is not part of anyone's budget. Never underestimate the penny-pinching creativity of a school system. They won't hesitate to throw labor at a problem to make the short-term cost go away. Considering their resources (teachers on salary and students as slave labor), they have inexpensive man-hours available if there is cash to be saved.
What starts out as BSA's dream turns into a nightmare when the schools use their resources to migrate to Linux. For starters, M$ loses the upgrade revenue. Then we have students learning non-M$ technology. Parents who discover that the school finds M$ to be very expensive. If the schools are successful in ditching M$, they become role models for parents who face the same BSA nonsense at work.
Prerequisite: A "fair use" bill of rights
on
Fair IP Laws?
·
· Score: 2
Given the opportunity, the media middlemen will outlaw or surcharge for anything resembling fair use. They seem to think that encryption and legislation will let them turn every user's activity into a revenue stream. If this becomes a "pay-per-click" world, then I'll join the opposition.
Job #1 is to define precisely what fair use is, and to enact meaningful penalties for those companies who violate it. It might be as simple as legalizing piracy of those products that violate the "Fair Use Bill of Rights (FUBOR)". Want to market a non-standard/crippleware CD? Great, but you have no recourse against anyone when it's cracked and P2P'ed onto every PC between here and Jupiter. To me, the concepts of backup, time-shifting, space-shifting, and media-shifting are fundamental. Those distributors who play games with the fundamental principles of fair use should be left to suffer the wrath of the hacker community.
Make no mistake, the consideration of consumers' rights is key to the process. Currently, the DMCA and other related legislation makes it a clear-cut battle of all consumers against all media distributors, or "the pirates" vs. "the greedy sleazebags". The current one-sided approach to legislation is not going to achieve voluntary compliance. Anyone who chooses to crack, copy, and distribute their media will think of their actions as the modern-day equivalent of "The Boston Tea Party".
The media companies need to realize that their interests cannot be fully protected without consideration for their customers.
Have the results verified by people we can trust
on
China Plans Moonbase
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· Score: 2
They could send an Arthur Andersen representative, who can verify that the landing actually took place. That should settle it once and for all.
We bid for (and won) a Sun E420-R on Ebay. Not exactly "big iron", but more substantial than the average server. The seller (who shall remain nameless) was a reasonably large dealer, and had high feedback ratings (not anymore:-)).
The box arrived via FedEx. No visible damge on the outside, but inside it was destroyed. The front panel was cracked, and the entire contents of box had somehow shifted forward, so the ports in the back were almost flush with the sheet metal. Inside, we could see how the brackets that held the motherboard assembly were actually bent from the impact.. Anyone who has seen the inside of a Sun box knows it's not like a Taiwan clone -- you don't just whip out the vice-grip pliers and twist it back into shape.
Now the fun begins. We call the seller, who basically gives us the runaround, stating that this is really a FedEx shipping damage claim and should be handled as such. Even though we paid for shipping, the seller is FedEx's customer for this transaction, so they have to initiate the claim (not us). As an added bonus, the morons who shipped the package underinsured it (5K instead of 10K, even though we paid for the full coverage). Then FedEx drags their feet for about two months before they actually have someone come out and inspect the damage. I'm getting really nervous at this point, because I have $10K tied up in what is now junkware. FedEx saw that the shipper did a crappy job of packing and denied the claim. FedEx is right, the packing was piss-poor. On the other hand, the box absorbed tremendous force -- how much packing material would it take to make a difference? Packing issues aside, FedEx's foot dragging was costing us time and money. It may have been within their rights to deny the claim, but their lack of prompt investigation was inexcusable.
In the end, the seller refunded the money, and allegedly fired the idiot who handled the shipment. My unsubstantiated guess is that someone was not merely mispacking the shipments; they may have been pocketing the money that was supposed to pay for full insurance. The problem was solved, but not before a few lessons were learned. We had very little recourse against anyone except the seller, and they could have easily screwed us with relative impunity.
Turn off the TV. Don't record anything. Find other things to do with the time. If you think they're upset about skipping commercials, just wait and see how upset they get when nobody is paying attention.
The "armies of rebooters" are a byproduct of the cost-savings that came from the client-server revolution. Killing the big glass room had a price tag associated with it: We put way too much intelligence into the client side and then expected a dumbed-down OS to keep the whole thing running. OK, we learn our lessons and move on. A more stable OS, thin clients, platform independence, smarter servers, centralized storage of data -- the return of the glass room. Back in the early 90's I predicted that people wanted PCs (instead of ASCII terminals) on their desktops only to get a GUI interface -- that local CPU power would be mostly wasted and installing local copies of front-end software would prove to be more of a liability than an asset.
This is the same theme we hear all the time from the entertainment/media industry. Anytime their business model faces a technological challenge, it's because of
"Theft" (of something that cannot be stolen)
"Breach of contract" (without having a contract in the first place)
"Piracy" (which is often confused with fair use)
I find it absolutely amazing to see how any unprofitable situation is caused by "illegal" behavior, and the only solution is more laws & government intervention to prosecute the "thieves".
The Kellners of the world seem to have their own laws and contracts that the rest of us don't seem to be aware of. It must be really great to draft your own laws and unilaterally enforce unwritten contracts on billions of people. Could we skip all the BS and simply let the entertainment/media industry print as much money as it wants?
I like the concept -- it needs a little work, but I see the potential. The #1 weakness is that it relies on BSA business practices remaining as-is. I think the increasing threat of OSS on the desktop is going to rain on the BSA parade, with or without an army of Linux consulting commandos.
To really make it work, you would need to custom build a Linux distro for the explicit purpose of replacing a Windoze/Office PC, being sure to include the basic capabilities that everyone needs. To assist in rapid deployment, it would have to allow the installer to auto-discover the printers & file servers. Then look for directories that are likely to have documents. Keep those and nuke everything else, while converting the file system to ext3. The whole process would have to involve minimal interaction, and probably a combination of USB gizmos to facilitate scratch space or quickie Ethernet cards (nobody is going to have the time to take apart cases and fumble with PCI "plug-and-pray").
Maybe the install process takes whatever files are kept and encrypts them with GPG. At the end of all this, the BSA folks would be faced with a bunch of locked-down PCs, not a single BSA program to be found, no way to log in, and nothing to be learned from the users' old files. It might take a little while to train all the users on the replacement software, but given the outrageous cost of BSA fun & games, this extreme concept is probably better than dealing with the BSA, even for companies that are not actively trying to steal anything.
I would choose a slightly more adversarial name, like "DefCon 1", "The L Team", "Delta Force", "OSS Ninjas", or something like that.
I even have the TV commercial worked out: It starts with the good guys receiving a phone call from an IT manager who has just received a BSA nastygram. The alarm sounds, the geeks start grabbing laptops as they run towards the hangar, where a jet is starting up. As the plane takes off, the commentator says "Are you under attack from the BSA? Don't just sit there, call in an air strike!"
Not only does Linux cure the "BSA blues", it may even cause M$ to put a leash on BSA when they realize the end result of BSA activity is to ditch BSA members' products.
Build a "phone-home" trojan into a modified p2p program and distribute it? To me, that sounds like a job for the Copyright Police.
In the version 1.0, they get rid of the spyware and open the door to later infection and shutdown when the evildoers decide to walk into their underground command center (directly under RIAA headquarters), and push the "shutdown" button.
If my business model was threatened by technology and I wasn't smart enough to adapt and sell what the customer wants, I might be motivated to attempt this "replace spyware with virusware" as a desperation tactic. It might keep my investors happy for 3 to 6 months.
So if aircraft black boxes are good, then autmotive black boxes are good too? I don't think so.
The aircraft black boxes have direct, proven safety benefits. This is because the #1 threat is mechanical failure, and the boxes play a part in detecting it. Weather is second, pilot error a distant third. Considering how many crashes happen over water or other inhospitable places and how few survivors there are, the boxes are a necessity, and not much of a problem when the aircraft already weights 50 tons and costs $50 million. Since cars are only a tiny fraction of the size, weight, and cost of an airliner, it's worth thinking about cost effectiveness of this little exercise.
If my car crashes because of a mechanical failure, it probably won't fall to the bottom of the ocean or leave pieces scattered over 1000 square miles. Even without a black box, it won't be that hard to figure out that my gas tank exploded because I got rear-ended by an Alzheimer's patient.
If I drive in bad weather and slide off the road, the box is going to do what? Prove that I should have stayed home? Fantastic.
The biggest threat to automotive safety is the unskilled/drunk/inattentive driver. When the boxes can detect that condition, safely stop the car & summon assistance, then it will be worth the size, weight, and cost. Until then, it's just a free revenue source for insurers, lawyers, and law enforcement.
Just what we need: one more piece of crap to add cost, weight, and take up space. Benefits for insurers, law enforcement, just about everyone except the poor fool who has to pay for it.
Given his track record, I have to assume Holling's latest initiative is merely a smokescreen for CBDTPA/SSSCA. I can't wait to see the Disney ammendments.
(1) Most trial packages will install cleanly, but uninstall is often a nightmare. This is a bigger issue with Windows that other operating systems, but uninstalls are never to be taken lightly.
(2) The stability of Windows is inversely proportional to the number of packages installed. Uninstalling doesn't help the stability issue.
(3) Some of the setup procedures prompt for way too much personal contact information. The last thing I want is to get plugged into someone's perpetual telemarketing machine. I have seen this happen often enough to the point where I don't bother with trial versions of software.
(4) I have seen too many examples of trial versions that had undocumented limitations in a addition to the 30-day limit.
(5) Since you only get 30 days, it makes sense to wait until you actually have time to evaluate the package. If I install the software and then get busy with other things, the 30 days runs out, and I still get stuck with the problems as noted in (1) and (2) above.
(6) For any given application, I look for open source software first. I can evaluate indefinitely. If it's lousy I throw it away. If it works I keep it running. Either way, I pay nothing and there are no annoying telemarketing salesmen to deal with!
If a few more of these M$ parodies turn up, a clever individual could build a site that essentially cloned the M$ home page and linked to the various funny stuff. Maybe some kind of silly domain name like "wheredoyouwantogotomorrow.com" or something equally amusing. I'm not sure I have all the details worked out yet, but I never miss a chance to laugh at the "evil empire".
"I still believe that if the bigs let us download MP3s for a quarter a track, we'd do it."
I would cheerfully pay $0.25 per track (for uncrippled MP3s). That would be infinitely more than I spend now. Currently, my music budget is $0.00 because I won't pay $17.99 for what amounts to be one track, distributed with some other junk, all of which is potentially crippled by copyware. And to think RIAA blames their problem on piracy! Idiots!
RIAA better get smart before everyone's music collection is limited to what they bought during the heyday of "orange book compliance". Then again, waiting for them to get smart is like waiting for hell to freeze over.
If expended our energy towards getting rid of M$ instead of complaining about their licensing, nobody would care what their "agreement" says. It's not like M$ licensing problems are a new concept. They are bad now, with the forecast for even more restrictions & limitations. When sales drop, they'll know they went too far. Until that happens, it's a green light for licensing "innovation".
Then again, when their sales figures drop, maybe they'll just blame piracy.
They seem to be having a hell of a time explaining how M$ is trustworthy and able to "play well with others", but they have at least demonstrated their presence. Ideally, I would like to get original post to hit +5 despite all the Flamebait and Overrated mods that come from the Redmond fans. I expect even more downmods as soon as their systems reboot. In this case, I actually get a certain amount of enjoyment from all the downmods. Althought it wasn't my original intention, it would be nice to get a few "Trolls". Go ahead, make my day.
"When a stone is thrown into a pack of dogs, the one that is hit will bark."
If the government salary scales were competitive, they wouldn't be seeking to borrow workers from private industry. This problem of non-competitiveness will only get worse. At the end of the day, the private companies will pick and choose which government employees to keep and which of their own workers to take back from government service. In the end, smart people will get real money working for private industry and the government will get the rest.
Having worked in government, I will take this opportunity to challenge the theory that government employment == job security. During my years in state government, there were several proposed departmental mergers and outsourcing proposals that were systematically shot down like incoming missiles. While the odds of a layoff may have been low, the odds of having my career derailed were high enough to get my attention.
Myth number two is that government service means a "normal" work week and a country club atmosphere. Far from it. Nowhere else on earth is the staffing level quite so out of line with management's idea of the proper level of service. The easy hours are for the people who cheerfully accept the miniscule salaries. To me, the best government career path is to latch onto some mission-critical function, work crazy hours, and allow the early retirements and turnover to create promotion opportunities. I did this for 13 years (5 promotions) -- it was fun and eventually profitable.
By the way, does the government intend to include HB-1's in the mix? Now that would make it interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
It's lousy as a flashlight, but very useful as a barcode reader (with minor surgery).
As you say, CueCats are a little more useful than RealNames, but the majority of CueCats are sitting in landfills because the average user doesn't know how to properly declaw them.
Mistake #1: Relying on a single customer
Mistake #2: The single customer is Microsoft
Mistake #3: Relying on the monopoly of M$ and IE
Mistake #4: Creating an AOL-keyword knockoff and thinking it would somehow generate revenue
Mistake #5: Failing to realize that the keyword concept would either die on its own or be emulated by others -- no profit either way!
So RealNames is in the Internet cemetary -- buried next to the Cue Cats.
It's the increased expectations that will hurt M$ the most. Especially stability. I find that most of the younger IT workers grew up with M$ and they seem to tolerate BSOD and other nonsense.
I remember (early 90's) when my dept. migrated from VAXstations to high-end PCs. The programmers were irate because they were used to leaving the VAXstations running 24x7 for months on end. They were too lazy to reboot (and it took almost 30 minutes so they were motivated to simply log out). I had to explain to these people that their "upgraded" Win311 machines were not stable enough to run that way -- thou shalt shutdown at night and cold boot in the morning. Even then, we averaged one crash per day per machine. It was comical to hear programmers asking the systems group to look at their PC crash dumps. These guys really thought the crashes were the result of hardware problems that needed to be fixed, or OS bugs that needed to be patched. I guess they were half right.
I agree. This is the ideal time for a well-planned migration.
From the schools' perspective, the negative publicity will force M$ to keep BSA on a leash -- at least for now. With the end of the school year approaching, this is the perfect time to migrate -- while BSA is still in "the penalty box."
"So, in conclusion, Free Software is a lot like the no-name products that you see at grocery stores. It is cheaper, but you get what you pay for, an inferior product."
We have three types of servers at my job: Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Ranking them by reliability, Linux is #1 in the uptime stats, Windows is #2, and Solaris is dead last (due to a nasty recurring hardware problem). If closed source is the way to go, how did the Linux servers beat the others? You won't find many people who claim Windows to be more reliable than Linux.
At first glance, schools are a dream target for the BSA. They have lots of machines, minimal system administration, and plenty of rogue software installations from faculty & students. If you're looking for piracy, you won't have to look very hard if you visit a school. From the "Let's justify our existance" perspective of BSA, schools are a target that is too juicy to be ignored.
But there's a catch: Schools are chronically short of funds. Paying the BSA "fines" or submitting to extortion is not part of anyone's budget. Never underestimate the penny-pinching creativity of a school system. They won't hesitate to throw labor at a problem to make the short-term cost go away. Considering their resources (teachers on salary and students as slave labor), they have inexpensive man-hours available if there is cash to be saved.
What starts out as BSA's dream turns into a nightmare when the schools use their resources to migrate to Linux. For starters, M$ loses the upgrade revenue. Then we have students learning non-M$ technology. Parents who discover that the school finds M$ to be very expensive. If the schools are successful in ditching M$, they become role models for parents who face the same BSA nonsense at work.
Given the opportunity, the media middlemen will outlaw or surcharge for anything resembling fair use. They seem to think that encryption and legislation will let them turn every user's activity into a revenue stream. If this becomes a "pay-per-click" world, then I'll join the opposition.
Job #1 is to define precisely what fair use is, and to enact meaningful penalties for those companies who violate it. It might be as simple as legalizing piracy of those products that violate the "Fair Use Bill of Rights (FUBOR)". Want to market a non-standard/crippleware CD? Great, but you have no recourse against anyone when it's cracked and P2P'ed onto every PC between here and Jupiter. To me, the concepts of backup, time-shifting, space-shifting, and media-shifting are fundamental. Those distributors who play games with the fundamental principles of fair use should be left to suffer the wrath of the hacker community.
Make no mistake, the consideration of consumers' rights is key to the process. Currently, the DMCA and other related legislation makes it a clear-cut battle of all consumers against all media distributors, or "the pirates" vs. "the greedy sleazebags". The current one-sided approach to legislation is not going to achieve voluntary compliance. Anyone who chooses to crack, copy, and distribute their media will think of their actions as the modern-day equivalent of "The Boston Tea Party".
The media companies need to realize that their interests cannot be fully protected without consideration for their customers.
They could send an Arthur Andersen representative, who can verify that the landing actually took place. That should settle it once and for all.
We bid for (and won) a Sun E420-R on Ebay. Not exactly "big iron", but more substantial than the average server. The seller (who shall remain nameless) was a reasonably large dealer, and had high feedback ratings (not anymore :-)).
The box arrived via FedEx. No visible damge on the outside, but inside it was destroyed. The front panel was cracked, and the entire contents of box had somehow shifted forward, so the ports in the back were almost flush with the sheet metal. Inside, we could see how the brackets that held the motherboard assembly were actually bent from the impact.. Anyone who has seen the inside of a Sun box knows it's not like a Taiwan clone -- you don't just whip out the vice-grip pliers and twist it back into shape.
Now the fun begins. We call the seller, who basically gives us the runaround, stating that this is really a FedEx shipping damage claim and should be handled as such. Even though we paid for shipping, the seller is FedEx's customer for this transaction, so they have to initiate the claim (not us). As an added bonus, the morons who shipped the package underinsured it (5K instead of 10K, even though we paid for the full coverage). Then FedEx drags their feet for about two months before they actually have someone come out and inspect the damage. I'm getting really nervous at this point, because I have $10K tied up in what is now junkware. FedEx saw that the shipper did a crappy job of packing and denied the claim. FedEx is right, the packing was piss-poor. On the other hand, the box absorbed tremendous force -- how much packing material would it take to make a difference? Packing issues aside, FedEx's foot dragging was costing us time and money. It may have been within their rights to deny the claim, but their lack of prompt investigation was inexcusable.
In the end, the seller refunded the money, and allegedly fired the idiot who handled the shipment. My unsubstantiated guess is that someone was not merely mispacking the shipments; they may have been pocketing the money that was supposed to pay for full insurance. The problem was solved, but not before a few lessons were learned. We had very little recourse against anyone except the seller, and they could have easily screwed us with relative impunity.
Turn off the TV. Don't record anything. Find other things to do with the time. If you think they're upset about skipping commercials, just wait and see how upset they get when nobody is paying attention.
The "armies of rebooters" are a byproduct of the cost-savings that came from the client-server revolution. Killing the big glass room had a price tag associated with it: We put way too much intelligence into the client side and then expected a dumbed-down OS to keep the whole thing running. OK, we learn our lessons and move on. A more stable OS, thin clients, platform independence, smarter servers, centralized storage of data -- the return of the glass room. Back in the early 90's I predicted that people wanted PCs (instead of ASCII terminals) on their desktops only to get a GUI interface -- that local CPU power would be mostly wasted and installing local copies of front-end software would prove to be more of a liability than an asset.
- "Theft" (of something that cannot be stolen)
- "Breach of contract" (without having a contract in the first place)
- "Piracy" (which is often confused with fair use)
I find it absolutely amazing to see how any unprofitable situation is caused by "illegal" behavior, and the only solution is more laws & government intervention to prosecute the "thieves".The Kellners of the world seem to have their own laws and contracts that the rest of us don't seem to be aware of. It must be really great to draft your own laws and unilaterally enforce unwritten contracts on billions of people. Could we skip all the BS and simply let the entertainment/media industry print as much money as it wants?
I like the concept -- it needs a little work, but I see the potential. The #1 weakness is that it relies on BSA business practices remaining as-is. I think the increasing threat of OSS on the desktop is going to rain on the BSA parade, with or without an army of Linux consulting commandos.
To really make it work, you would need to custom build a Linux distro for the explicit purpose of replacing a Windoze/Office PC, being sure to include the basic capabilities that everyone needs. To assist in rapid deployment, it would have to allow the installer to auto-discover the printers & file servers. Then look for directories that are likely to have documents. Keep those and nuke everything else, while converting the file system to ext3. The whole process would have to involve minimal interaction, and probably a combination of USB gizmos to facilitate scratch space or quickie Ethernet cards (nobody is going to have the time to take apart cases and fumble with PCI "plug-and-pray").
Maybe the install process takes whatever files are kept and encrypts them with GPG. At the end of all this, the BSA folks would be faced with a bunch of locked-down PCs, not a single BSA program to be found, no way to log in, and nothing to be learned from the users' old files. It might take a little while to train all the users on the replacement software, but given the outrageous cost of BSA fun & games, this extreme concept is probably better than dealing with the BSA, even for companies that are not actively trying to steal anything.
I would choose a slightly more adversarial name, like "DefCon 1", "The L Team", "Delta Force", "OSS Ninjas", or something like that.
I even have the TV commercial worked out: It starts with the good guys receiving a phone call from an IT manager who has just received a BSA nastygram. The alarm sounds, the geeks start grabbing laptops as they run towards the hangar, where a jet is starting up. As the plane takes off, the commentator says "Are you under attack from the BSA? Don't just sit there, call in an air strike!"
Not only does Linux cure the "BSA blues", it may even cause M$ to put a leash on BSA when they realize the end result of BSA activity is to ditch BSA members' products.
Build a "phone-home" trojan into a modified p2p program and distribute it? To me, that sounds like a job for the Copyright Police.
In the version 1.0, they get rid of the spyware and open the door to later infection and shutdown when the evildoers decide to walk into their underground command center (directly under RIAA headquarters), and push the "shutdown" button.
If my business model was threatened by technology and I wasn't smart enough to adapt and sell what the customer wants, I might be motivated to attempt this "replace spyware with virusware" as a desperation tactic. It might keep my investors happy for 3 to 6 months.
So if aircraft black boxes are good, then autmotive black boxes are good too? I don't think so.
The aircraft black boxes have direct, proven safety benefits. This is because the #1 threat is mechanical failure, and the boxes play a part in detecting it. Weather is second, pilot error a distant third. Considering how many crashes happen over water or other inhospitable places and how few survivors there are, the boxes are a necessity, and not much of a problem when the aircraft already weights 50 tons and costs $50 million. Since cars are only a tiny fraction of the size, weight, and cost of an airliner, it's worth thinking about cost effectiveness of this little exercise.
If my car crashes because of a mechanical failure, it probably won't fall to the bottom of the ocean or leave pieces scattered over 1000 square miles. Even without a black box, it won't be that hard to figure out that my gas tank exploded because I got rear-ended by an Alzheimer's patient.
If I drive in bad weather and slide off the road, the box is going to do what? Prove that I should have stayed home? Fantastic.
The biggest threat to automotive safety is the unskilled/drunk/inattentive driver. When the boxes can detect that condition, safely stop the car & summon assistance, then it will be worth the size, weight, and cost. Until then, it's just a free revenue source for insurers, lawyers, and law enforcement.
Just what we need: one more piece of crap to add cost, weight, and take up space. Benefits for insurers, law enforcement, just about everyone except the poor fool who has to pay for it.
Given his track record, I have to assume Holling's latest initiative is merely a smokescreen for CBDTPA/SSSCA. I can't wait to see the Disney ammendments.
(1) Most trial packages will install cleanly, but uninstall is often a nightmare. This is a bigger issue with Windows that other operating systems, but uninstalls are never to be taken lightly.
(2) The stability of Windows is inversely proportional to the number of packages installed. Uninstalling doesn't help the stability issue.
(3) Some of the setup procedures prompt for way too much personal contact information. The last thing I want is to get plugged into someone's perpetual telemarketing machine. I have seen this happen often enough to the point where I don't bother with trial versions of software.
(4) I have seen too many examples of trial versions that had undocumented limitations in a addition to the 30-day limit.
(5) Since you only get 30 days, it makes sense to wait until you actually have time to evaluate the package. If I install the software and then get busy with other things, the 30 days runs out, and I still get stuck with the problems as noted in (1) and (2) above.
(6) For any given application, I look for open source software first. I can evaluate indefinitely. If it's lousy I throw it away. If it works I keep it running. Either way, I pay nothing and there are no annoying telemarketing salesmen to deal with!
Well done!
If a few more of these M$ parodies turn up, a clever individual could build a site that essentially cloned the M$ home page and linked to the various funny stuff. Maybe some kind of silly domain name like "wheredoyouwantogotomorrow.com" or something equally amusing. I'm not sure I have all the details worked out yet, but I never miss a chance to laugh at the "evil empire".
Something that looks like the M$ page, except it would describe how easy it is to take the donated computers, ditch the OS, and install Linux.
I'm still laughing about www.wehavethewayin.com, although it's only half as funny as the site it emulates www.wehavethewayout.com
"I still believe that if the bigs let us download MP3s for a quarter a track, we'd do it."
I would cheerfully pay $0.25 per track (for uncrippled MP3s). That would be infinitely more than I spend now. Currently, my music budget is $0.00 because I won't pay $17.99 for what amounts to be one track, distributed with some other junk, all of which is potentially crippled by copyware. And to think RIAA blames their problem on piracy! Idiots!
RIAA better get smart before everyone's music collection is limited to what they bought during the heyday of "orange book compliance". Then again, waiting for them to get smart is like waiting for hell to freeze over.
If expended our energy towards getting rid of M$ instead of complaining about their licensing, nobody would care what their "agreement" says. It's not like M$ licensing problems are a new concept. They are bad now, with the forecast for even more restrictions & limitations. When sales drop, they'll know they went too far. Until that happens, it's a green light for licensing "innovation".
Then again, when their sales figures drop, maybe they'll just blame piracy.
My original post has drawn out the M$ supporters!
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Insightful=3, Interesting=1, Overrated=2, Total=7.
They seem to be having a hell of a time explaining how M$ is trustworthy and able to "play well with others", but they have at least demonstrated their presence. Ideally, I would like to get original post to hit +5 despite all the Flamebait and Overrated mods that come from the Redmond fans. I expect even more downmods as soon as their systems reboot. In this case, I actually get a certain amount of enjoyment from all the downmods. Althought it wasn't my original intention, it would be nice to get a few "Trolls". Go ahead, make my day.
"When a stone is thrown into a pack of dogs, the one that is hit will bark."
If the government salary scales were competitive, they wouldn't be seeking to borrow workers from private industry. This problem of non-competitiveness will only get worse. At the end of the day, the private companies will pick and choose which government employees to keep and which of their own workers to take back from government service. In the end, smart people will get real money working for private industry and the government will get the rest.
Having worked in government, I will take this opportunity to challenge the theory that government employment == job security. During my years in state government, there were several proposed departmental mergers and outsourcing proposals that were systematically shot down like incoming missiles. While the odds of a layoff may have been low, the odds of having my career derailed were high enough to get my attention.
Myth number two is that government service means a "normal" work week and a country club atmosphere. Far from it. Nowhere else on earth is the staffing level quite so out of line with management's idea of the proper level of service. The easy hours are for the people who cheerfully accept the miniscule salaries. To me, the best government career path is to latch onto some mission-critical function, work crazy hours, and allow the early retirements and turnover to create promotion opportunities. I did this for 13 years (5 promotions) -- it was fun and eventually profitable.
By the way, does the government intend to include HB-1's in the mix? Now that would make it interesting.