Those who are on shared networks and turn on the "file-sharing" option, will be hacked into.
The same thing will happen with DSL as well. The only difference is that the person who hacks you on cable will be the punk kid down the street as opposed to the punk kid on hte other end of the country.
In the ISP business, though, it costs money to support each subscriber - in technical support, fixed wiring costs, phone/modem server costs (for dial-up networks), wholesale DSL costs (for folks like WinFire), and bandwidth. These costs don't magically get cheaper with size - they continue to grow. If you lose $5 per subscriber-month, then you lose $50,000 per month with 10K subscribers, and assuming (generously) that you can reduce your expenses by $3 per subsciber-month at 100,000 subscribers, you're still losing $200,000 per month at that level. It doesn't make sense now, and it didn't make sense then, either.
This is generally true, but there is more to it than that. You are assuming that there is a fixed cost per user, and that isn't necessarily the case because it does not take into account certain economies of scale.
For example, if I have an ISP with a T1 and 20 dialup lines I can easily support 20 users. However, in this situation it would hardly be profitable. But the same setup could also support 200 users. Now we're talking more profit. So let's bump it to 1000 users, and now I'm making money hand-over-fist, but my users get a lot of busy signals. So maybe I bump it to 100 phone lines. Now we're back to a minimum of busy-signals, and the T1 will still be more than sufficient to support 100 simultaneous dialup users, but the phoneline costs are killing me. I want to cut costs further, so instead of having 100 phone lines I consolidate them into a digital connection from the phone company directly into my ISP network and slap in some 56K equipment to support higher speed modems. Now I've cut out a large chunk of the cost of having 100 phone lines. And the great thing about that is, if I need more phone lines I can just have the telco add additional channels to my incoming digital circuit. And maybe when I hit 5000 users I'll need an additional T1.
At any rate, my point is that the expenses don't necessarily increase in a linear fashion as the user base increases. Certain expenses (like the T1 in this example) will be there from the beginning and will not increase significantly as the user base grows. Other expenses will be further economized when you reach the appropriate scale (ditching many analog dialup lines with a single digital circuit from the telco).
The problem with the free ISPs isn't that their expenses grew linearly with their userbase (which they didn't) but that Internet-based advertising doesn't work nearly as well as everyone thought that it would. Free ISPs are just like most of the ad-based web revenue and hosting networks.
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
That's why for several years now I always make sure that I do have broadband available before I move. When checking out apartments, I always ask the rental agent if broadband is available. Then I find out who the cable and telco providers are and then contact them to be sure. Granted, you could still end up getting doinked on the DSL deal if they don't know for sure if it is available in your area, but it's better to at least try and find out. Some people thought I was crazy, but it's worth it to make sure.
I don't think i was connected more than 10-15 minutes at a time, just enough to use my offline newsreader (blue-something) to fetch the new news.
I'd completely forgotten about those. I used to use one called OLX (OffLine Express?) to read and post without tying up phone lines. I live in the states and we had flat-rate calling, but I decided to use an offline-reader because "it was the right thing to do" to spend 10 minutes connected to transfer posts rather than spend 90 minutes connected to read and reply.
I mostly read and responded to posts. The BBSs that I frequented were pretty much centered around conversation. They had file areas, but they were usually pretty small and limited to system/BBS utilities. And then TW2002. That was the one game that every BBS had to have.
No way.. VBBS was the way to go. In Columbus, Metrodata was where it was happening.. back in the days of 16 lines.. oh yeah.
Hah! I laugh at all these multi-line subscription monsters that I remember from the old days here in Columbus. Where it was really at was in the single-line boards (most of whose names I can't recall) running WWIV or (on the Apple) GBBS Pro.
and i still have my $300 'SysOp Deal' USR Courier v.Everything. works like a charm when i need it, after 6 years
Yep...I still have my old USR Courier 14.4 with the big metal plate screwed onto it that says "Not for retail sale!" I tell ya what, I tried many a modem for hosting a BBS, but that USR Courier was the only one that ALWAYS worked.
I work for the MIS department of an insurance company. The few years I've been working here, I've become highly irritated and acutely aware of the AGONY of dealing with and servicing obsolete crap technology. Having to keep a small fleet of 486 systems going (for some reason?) has given me a particular bias on this issue. As far as I'm concerned, any hardware or software more than 3yrs old should be thrown away....no, OBLITERATED. permanently...to save everyones sanity, and prevent good money being spent preserving old junk.
I dunno about everyone else here, but I've never had any problems keeping older systems running. I believe the phrase to keep in mind is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Perhaps it's your skills that are lacking rather than the old hardware? Being on the "bleeding edge" has it's problems.
You seem to be obsessed with the notion that "newer is better." That's not necessarily the case. In my home environment I have been far happier with my system running Windows 98 than I am now that I upgraded to Windows 2000 Pro. I've looked at the Windows XP beta, and I like that even less. Programmed obsolesence is not a good thing. Everybody likes to throw shiny new features at us that we probably don't even need. Don't get me wrong, progress is a good thing, but it's incredibly short-sighted of you to believe that everything that isn't the "latest and greatest" is junk.
BBSes died out because they SUCKED. The internet came along and swept the BBS scene (and rightly so) overnight -- it thoroughly kicked its ass to death.
That's not really true. BBS's died out because the Internet came along and was the next big thing. Though the Internet can't be centrally controlled, access to it was generally controlled by several large service providers in the beginning. It was packaged and mass-marketed to the world and the world bought into it. You can't market an individual BBS to 100 million people like you could Compuserve or AOL or Netcom. ISP's became like a utility company and BBS's were like the corner pub or coffee shop.
Now, I'm not saying that BBSs are better than the Internet, because that's a subjective judgement. But there are some areas where BBSs excelled and the Internet does not. Like forming a community of users who are not tied together by any special common interest, but only because they enjoy the company.
As far as you personally, it's truly sad that you have so little respect for the past. You might actually be able to learn something from it.
There is still something interesting about a SMALL community, where you know a lot of the people. A large community is more anonymous. You don't know who's making various proclamations. You don't care about anyone and you don't get to know anyone.
Exactly. I was very heavy into the BBS scene in the mid-late 80's and even a couple years into the 90's. It was almost like a family where everyone knew everybody else (at least by handle). Then there were the inevitable BBS gatherings. We'd plan to get together for a picnic or something and play volleyball all afternoon (imagine a pack of geeks playing volleyball in the sun!), or someone would host a potlock or party at their house. I made a lot of good friends on the BBS scene. I met my first roommates on a BBS. And we still hang out regularly 10 years later.
There is definitely something about small communities.
Last time I checked, the population of the earth was growing out of control, thanks to medical treatments, etc.. But I really do think we should be focusing on ways to fit more people or earth, or populate the moon or mars or at least something before we work on ways to keep people living longer and having more children.
It's not fitting them in here on earth that's the problem, there's plenty of room for that. The problem is what to do with them when they get here. Starvation, unemployment, poverty...those are the problems that get lumped into the topic of "overpopulation". Fortuantely, it won't be an issue for anyone wealthy enough to afford to have this procedure...
So without knowing if it would do any good, someone went ahead and did it. I have always lived by the saying to "look before you leap." I wish others did the same.
While I agree that "look before you leap" is a good motto, there's only so far you can look before you have to leap or go home. I find it interesting that all of the anti-modding scientists were claiming that there was no evidence to support this "as a possible valuable treatment for infertility" when it obviously wouldn't have been attempted if there wasn't at least some evidence that it might work. Since it wasn't government funded, that means that it was done by private enterprise (read: business). I don't know about you, but I can't imagine that any company would willingly open themselves up to that kind of a beating on "moral" and financial ground unless they were highly confident of success.
Beyond that, define "possible valuable treatment." What is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. Is it considered valuable when there are currently more economical and reliable ways to to achieve a similar effect (in vitro fertilization)? Probably not. Is it valuable if it is a proof-of-concept of a technique that will in all likelyhood become as affordable as in vitro is today, but will permanently correct the problem in future generations rather simply working around it for this generation? I would think so.
Keep in mind that the man who made that statement works for a government that has outlawed this kind of experimentation. It's his job the toe the line in the press...
So you'd advocate such a superior, inhuman being?
What next? Telepathy? You can bet that us normals would be quickly replaced in the evolution by the unnatural telepaths.
Sure, why not. If evolution is gonna do it, then we don't really have much choice now, do we?
Maybe we could find a way to genetically eliminate trolls...;)
These critics will be looked on as niave luddites at best (racist at worst) in a few decades. How will these children feel about being called "wrong in principle"?
On the other hand, will there be a "godhatesclones.com"* in 20 years?
I kept thinking the same thing to myself. I was somewhat young at the time, but I seem to recall that 20-25 years ago there was a very similar outcry against in vitro fertilisation and other fertility techniques. Nowdays they are pretty standard practice. I can't imagine that things won't be the same way 20-25 years from now, only we'll be talking about genetic manipulation.
The thing to remember is that this will happen, no matter what you do to stop it. You're better off allowing it so that it can be monitored and regulated, otherwise you'll end up with a genetic engineering lab that keeps a "land of misfit toddlers" for when the experiments go wrong and nobody wants to claim the result.
I mean, certain things are inevitable. And if it's inevitable that it is going to happen, then I think that it needs to be approached responsibly rather than with semi-hysterical castigation.
They have been for quite a while now. They'd be trading even lower if they hadn't stopped trading on it before the decision was announced. But even at 10% of their previous price, it's hardly a bargain if the company proves to have an unsustainable business model (or its only revenue generating product tanks a la RDRAM). I can't possibly imagine why so many people have been so bullish on it's stock for so long to begin with (unless it was dot-com induced euphoric mania).
Now Rambus is going to have to *gasp* actually make a product instead of just go after other companies
Nah, first they'll have their lawyers appeal. And in the meantime, they are still collecting royalties from a) RDRAM and b) companies that decided to "license" SDRAM and DDR SDRAM from them to begin with.
Of course, imagine how the other memory companies are looking right now, now that Infineon is royalty-free for the time being. One wonders if other companies are going to now announce that they are going to discontinue sending rambus royalty checks.;)
There might be some egg on their face, but they're not home free yet. For starters, the "licensing agreements" that yield the royalties for Rambus are contracts. IANAL, but I imagine that there will still be some legal wrangling that Samsung and the others will have to go through to get out of those deals (maybe make a case that they were based on invalid patents???). But that process can't even begin until the case has been appealed and re-appealed and finally settled.
After I got the CPUs I found that the RAM that Crucial had listed on their site as being compatible with the board actually didn't work with the board. So I called Crucial about an exchange. Since so much time had passed the first person I talked to didn't know if they could do it. But after they talked to a manager, they said it would be no problem. I got the exchange, and since RAM prices had dropped in the mean time, they gave me some money back.
I have no problem recommended Micron/Crucial to anyone.
That's cool. I've never met anyone who's had problems with Micron/Crucial memory. I personally always order from Crucial and I recommend to friends and co-workers that they do the same. The prices are actually quite reasonable for top quality memory, and they have an excellent warranty as well.
That being said, I have nothing against buying Infineon memory either. If Crucial would ever go away, they'd be next on my list simply because they stood up to the IP bully.
Exactly right. Check the Corbis web site for all the art you thought was in the public domain, but you now have to pay for. And although the site says that Corbis is a privately owned comapny, nowhere does it say that Gates owns it.
Dennis Miller was right, "Bill Gates is a monocle and a persian cat away from being a Bond villian."
That's OK. Wanna hear something really scary? Gates is also heavily invested in Biotechnology. I'm not aware of any firms that he owns outright, but he owns large chunks of several of them. He's slowly but surely acquiring ownership of the future of mankind.
Gates controls a company named Corbis (sp?) that charges a fee to access digital versions of a range of Da Vinci works. But before Gates bought out Corbis (what, 5 years ago now?) they were public domain.
This is not correct. Corbis was a company that Gates founded specifically to acquire the rights to digitally reproduce a wide range of artwork, photographs, paintings, etc. I am not sure if those deals were for exclusive rights or not. The reason (at least the one stated at the time) was because he didn't have digital rights to the artwork that he wanted to display in his house.
For those who don't recall, Bill's house is supposed to have LCD screens on certain internal walls that would randomly cycle through various works of art, etc.
Well, it seems like it could be more efficient. Considering a person who would buy a car like this, is probably more concerned about the environment than going Really Fast(TM). The car is designed obviously to get the most power out of the biomass.
I agree. I mean, right now it can go only 62 miles on a 220lb load of organic waste. Think about it. That's a pile of shit bigger than the average man (though still not a pile of shit as big as me...err...that's not quite how I meant it). I can't imagine that refueling is much fun either. Still, it's a good start.
Currently I am employed as a SysAdmin/desktop support/network tech. I work for a large company at a site that only has about 85 employees. I handle all the IT work for our site, and I am also a contractor. I normally do 40-45 hours per week, assuming that nothing breaks. I am on call 24/7, but my systems run smooth enough that I rarely have to do anything during off-hours.
Before I became a consultant I was a manager for a transportation company. I usually worked 75-80 hours a week then, and was also on-call 24/7 (and something ALWAYS happened during off-hours).
Overall, the IT job pays about 30% better, and I'm much happier with my life and the way that I spend my free time. I still haven't had a proper vacation/get-away in years, but I did take 3 months off back when I changed jobs. Call it an epiphany, but I decided that after working like a madman and then having 3 months to do absolutely nothing I would never work those insane hours again.
My general feeling is that there is a lot to be said for an ASP-like model. If I have 20 people out of 2000 using a complicated ERP package, for instance, why should I have 2 or 3 of my IT support staff learning all about it so that they can support it all the hours of the day? It may be mission critical, but if I can find someone else to provide access to it, and not have to worry about training for support, then that's got to be a good thing. The problem seems to be that either the market isn't ready, or the model isn't mature enough. Maybe the applications don't suit the deployment model.
Well, there are a lot of problems with the current "ASP model." Speaking as a former ASP employee, I'll name a few.
First off, the company I used to work for was an ASP before there was even a TLA for waht they did (that's Three Letter Acronym). They were a complete IT outsourcing company that handled everything, including application hosting. It was a moderately profitable company that understood the importance of the words "mission critical." They had solutions in place to preserve, protect, and host our customers' applications and there weren't many problems.
Before long, the dot-com boom hits, and the CEO starts thinking that we should be a part of it. ASP becomes a buzzword, and suddenly everybody is doing it (or rather trying to). Many companies are awash in VC money (which our company didn't have). We were facing a lot of competition from newly formed "ASP's" and decided that we would need to merge with another company to survive the "impending shakeout."
Now, unfortunately our competition wasn't the most prepared. Most ASPs (or at least companies that call themselves ASPs) are actually web hosting companies who decided to add another bullet point to their product list. These were not companies that were familiar with hosting mission-critical applications, nor were they very familiar with the concept of fault tolerance, redundancy, or security. But they were Internet companies and dot-coms were sexy at the time, so they got the VC cash anyway.
Our company ended up merging with one of these web hosting companies-cum-ASPs. Things were fine for awhile, the new company took it's VC money and went on a buying spree. The business plan was to completely phase out web hosting because (in the CEO's words) "it would soon become a commodity market, and ASPs are where the money will be." They actually bought something like 25 hosting and solution providers in the course of a year and a half, but they never took the time to fully assimilate the technology or knowledge of the companies that they acquired. The burn-rate was insane. They kept doing things the web hosting company way. They tried to be the cheapest because that's how you sell web hosting space, but it doesn't work in the ASP model. The ASP divisions weren't making money anymore (though they had been individually before they were acquired).
And then the bubble burst. There was dot-com fallout everywhere you looked. The VC's said "cut the burn rate and become profitable." The company said "we don't expect to see profits in the ASP end of the business for another year." So the ASP groups were all let go or shut down, and now the company is back to being just antoher web hosting company.
So what does this mean? The ASP model can and will work, if it is applied correctly. The problem in the ASP market isn't with the concept, it's with the people who are implementing it. Everybody wanted to be an ASP but very few companies actually knew what they had to do in order to be one. Some CIOs got suckered on it and they got burned.
So apple is exploiting BSD license software. Big whoop, Microsoft, and damn near every company that makes a form of UNIX does too.
Exactly. If you don't want some other developer grabbing your code and incorporating it into their product and selling it without making the source available, then don't release it under the BSD license. Release it under the GPL instead.
This may be an implementation issue. I did work at one company that made you take a 2-hour crash course (except for the IT staff) and I found that we didn't get nearly as many "stupid question" style calls as I have at other companies. But it still could have been done better.
Regarding the recycling bin and temp directory, that's just sad on the part of the "help desk." I know that finding qualified help is tough, but those are some of the basics. In a similar vein though, I do try to write up a monthly article for my users explaining how to use some neat "new" (aka, previously undiscovered by them) feature of their programs, and even include lots of screenshots. Common topics are freeing up disk space, archiving old messages in Outlook, sharing message folders with other users in Outlook, etc. I've finally caved in and admitted that if I don't try to teach these people something then they'll never learn it...
When I did a bit of tech support a few years ago, the best term for those who couldn't or wouldn't RTFM was PEBKAC: Problem exists between keyboard and chair. True now as ever!
Nope...can't do that. It's become a very common term now, even to the point that I've heard mainstream radio DJ's talking about it. If you pull that one out, you're bound to get busted.
My personal favorite (and I'm swearing you guys to secrecy on this because I don't want it to get out) is to tell the user that it is a "pre-input processor error." Then you show them the correct way to do whatever it was and say, "That's the work-around for the pre-input processor error." Most users aren't smart enough to know what you're saying, so they'll just nod their head and do what you tell them. Sooner or later they'll be calling you to say, "Hey, I'm having trouble with my computer again. I think that it's another pre-input processor error."
I just wish that companies would provide mandatory computer training (or a computer assessment test) for incoming employees that taught the basics. It's truly insane that they don't already. But the assumption is that if a person has been working in a business environment then they already know how to use a computer. It just isn't so! You would not believe the number of people who I have to teach about right-clicking and how to save email attachments or how to attach files to email and so on and so on. The productivity gains would be astounding if every PC-using employee in every company was replaced with a PC-literate employee doing the same job.
The problem is, most people don't realize just how computer illiterate they really are, so they don't even know to ask for help. I find it odd that at most companies you have to be trained or licensed in order to be allowed to operate any kind of machinery, but that they set you loose with a PC and proprietary company data without even so much as a skill assessment. I know that upper management likes to scream about TCO, but if you made the effort or spent the money to ensure that employees were properly trained to begin with then you could probably eliminate a couple of support positions. There's some real cost savings.
I usually resort to their language- "hit the power button on the hard drive".... but man oh man, do i feel like a gimp when i do that.
I can't do it. I absolutely cannot bring myself to use their butchered language. Of course, I'm the kind of guy that gets upset when people say that they're "feeling nauseous." (For those outside the loop, the correct word there is "nauseated." Something that is "nauseous" is what makes you feel "nauseated.")
I actually snapped on somebody once. We use Compaq PC's here at work with the easy, snap in, screwless cases and mounting kits for drives. Someone kept calling their computer the "hard drive," and I took the cover off the case and pulled out the actual hard drive and said, "No, this is the hard drive, and it's coming with me!"
They were not amused, but they did learn to call it by the correct name.
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Those who are on shared networks and turn on the "file-sharing" option, will be hacked into.
The same thing will happen with DSL as well. The only difference is that the person who hacks you on cable will be the punk kid down the street as opposed to the punk kid on hte other end of the country.
In the ISP business, though, it costs money to support each subscriber - in technical support, fixed wiring costs, phone/modem server costs (for dial-up networks), wholesale DSL costs (for folks like WinFire), and bandwidth. These costs don't magically get cheaper with size - they continue to grow. If you lose $5 per subscriber-month, then you lose $50,000 per month with 10K subscribers, and assuming (generously) that you can reduce your expenses by $3 per subsciber-month at 100,000 subscribers, you're still losing $200,000 per month at that level. It doesn't make sense now, and it didn't make sense then, either.
This is generally true, but there is more to it than that. You are assuming that there is a fixed cost per user, and that isn't necessarily the case because it does not take into account certain economies of scale.
For example, if I have an ISP with a T1 and 20 dialup lines I can easily support 20 users. However, in this situation it would hardly be profitable. But the same setup could also support 200 users. Now we're talking more profit. So let's bump it to 1000 users, and now I'm making money hand-over-fist, but my users get a lot of busy signals. So maybe I bump it to 100 phone lines. Now we're back to a minimum of busy-signals, and the T1 will still be more than sufficient to support 100 simultaneous dialup users, but the phoneline costs are killing me. I want to cut costs further, so instead of having 100 phone lines I consolidate them into a digital connection from the phone company directly into my ISP network and slap in some 56K equipment to support higher speed modems. Now I've cut out a large chunk of the cost of having 100 phone lines. And the great thing about that is, if I need more phone lines I can just have the telco add additional channels to my incoming digital circuit. And maybe when I hit 5000 users I'll need an additional T1.
At any rate, my point is that the expenses don't necessarily increase in a linear fashion as the user base increases. Certain expenses (like the T1 in this example) will be there from the beginning and will not increase significantly as the user base grows. Other expenses will be further economized when you reach the appropriate scale (ditching many analog dialup lines with a single digital circuit from the telco).
The problem with the free ISPs isn't that their expenses grew linearly with their userbase (which they didn't) but that Internet-based advertising doesn't work nearly as well as everyone thought that it would. Free ISPs are just like most of the ad-based web revenue and hosting networks.
Timing is everything. I recently moved back to the big city, very much against my wishes. The one plus to the move, I thought, was that I'd be able to get DSL.
After moving in, I discovered that there is _no_ form of broadband that services my house. No DSL, no cable modem, and I don't have a clear view of the right part of the sky for one of those sattelite link-ups.
That's why for several years now I always make sure that I do have broadband available before I move. When checking out apartments, I always ask the rental agent if broadband is available. Then I find out who the cable and telco providers are and then contact them to be sure. Granted, you could still end up getting doinked on the DSL deal if they don't know for sure if it is available in your area, but it's better to at least try and find out. Some people thought I was crazy, but it's worth it to make sure.
I don't think i was connected more than 10-15 minutes at a time, just enough to use my offline newsreader (blue-something) to fetch the new news.
I'd completely forgotten about those. I used to use one called OLX (OffLine Express?) to read and post without tying up phone lines. I live in the states and we had flat-rate calling, but I decided to use an offline-reader because "it was the right thing to do" to spend 10 minutes connected to transfer posts rather than spend 90 minutes connected to read and reply.
I mostly read and responded to posts. The BBSs that I frequented were pretty much centered around conversation. They had file areas, but they were usually pretty small and limited to system/BBS utilities. And then TW2002. That was the one game that every BBS had to have.
No way.. VBBS was the way to go. In Columbus, Metrodata was where it was happening.. back in the days of 16 lines.. oh yeah.
Hah! I laugh at all these multi-line subscription monsters that I remember from the old days here in Columbus. Where it was really at was in the single-line boards (most of whose names I can't recall) running WWIV or (on the Apple) GBBS Pro.
and i still have my $300 'SysOp Deal' USR Courier v.Everything. works like a charm when i need it, after 6 years
Yep...I still have my old USR Courier 14.4 with the big metal plate screwed onto it that says "Not for retail sale!" I tell ya what, I tried many a modem for hosting a BBS, but that USR Courier was the only one that ALWAYS worked.
I work for the MIS department of an insurance company. The few years I've been working here, I've become highly irritated and acutely aware of the AGONY of dealing with and servicing obsolete crap technology. Having to keep a small fleet of 486 systems going (for some reason?) has given me a particular bias on this issue. As far as I'm concerned, any hardware or software more than 3yrs old should be thrown away....no, OBLITERATED. permanently...to save everyones sanity, and prevent good money being spent preserving old junk.
I dunno about everyone else here, but I've never had any problems keeping older systems running. I believe the phrase to keep in mind is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Perhaps it's your skills that are lacking rather than the old hardware? Being on the "bleeding edge" has it's problems.
You seem to be obsessed with the notion that "newer is better." That's not necessarily the case. In my home environment I have been far happier with my system running Windows 98 than I am now that I upgraded to Windows 2000 Pro. I've looked at the Windows XP beta, and I like that even less. Programmed obsolesence is not a good thing. Everybody likes to throw shiny new features at us that we probably don't even need. Don't get me wrong, progress is a good thing, but it's incredibly short-sighted of you to believe that everything that isn't the "latest and greatest" is junk.
BBSes died out because they SUCKED. The internet came along and swept the BBS scene (and rightly so) overnight -- it thoroughly kicked its ass to death.
That's not really true. BBS's died out because the Internet came along and was the next big thing. Though the Internet can't be centrally controlled, access to it was generally controlled by several large service providers in the beginning. It was packaged and mass-marketed to the world and the world bought into it. You can't market an individual BBS to 100 million people like you could Compuserve or AOL or Netcom. ISP's became like a utility company and BBS's were like the corner pub or coffee shop.
Now, I'm not saying that BBSs are better than the Internet, because that's a subjective judgement. But there are some areas where BBSs excelled and the Internet does not. Like forming a community of users who are not tied together by any special common interest, but only because they enjoy the company.
As far as you personally, it's truly sad that you have so little respect for the past. You might actually be able to learn something from it.
There is still something interesting about a SMALL community, where you know a lot of the people. A large community is more anonymous. You don't know who's making various proclamations. You don't care about anyone and you don't get to know anyone.
Exactly. I was very heavy into the BBS scene in the mid-late 80's and even a couple years into the 90's. It was almost like a family where everyone knew everybody else (at least by handle). Then there were the inevitable BBS gatherings. We'd plan to get together for a picnic or something and play volleyball all afternoon (imagine a pack of geeks playing volleyball in the sun!), or someone would host a potlock or party at their house. I made a lot of good friends on the BBS scene. I met my first roommates on a BBS. And we still hang out regularly 10 years later.
There is definitely something about small communities.
Last time I checked, the population of the earth was growing out of control, thanks to medical treatments, etc.. But I really do think we should be focusing on ways to fit more people or earth, or populate the moon or mars or at least something before we work on ways to keep people living longer and having more children.
It's not fitting them in here on earth that's the problem, there's plenty of room for that. The problem is what to do with them when they get here. Starvation, unemployment, poverty...those are the problems that get lumped into the topic of "overpopulation". Fortuantely, it won't be an issue for anyone wealthy enough to afford to have this procedure...
So without knowing if it would do any good, someone went ahead and did it. I have always lived by the saying to "look before you leap." I wish others did the same.
While I agree that "look before you leap" is a good motto, there's only so far you can look before you have to leap or go home. I find it interesting that all of the anti-modding scientists were claiming that there was no evidence to support this "as a possible valuable treatment for infertility" when it obviously wouldn't have been attempted if there wasn't at least some evidence that it might work. Since it wasn't government funded, that means that it was done by private enterprise (read: business). I don't know about you, but I can't imagine that any company would willingly open themselves up to that kind of a beating on "moral" and financial ground unless they were highly confident of success.
Beyond that, define "possible valuable treatment." What is valuable to one person may not be valuable to another. Is it considered valuable when there are currently more economical and reliable ways to to achieve a similar effect (in vitro fertilization)? Probably not. Is it valuable if it is a proof-of-concept of a technique that will in all likelyhood become as affordable as in vitro is today, but will permanently correct the problem in future generations rather simply working around it for this generation? I would think so.
Keep in mind that the man who made that statement works for a government that has outlawed this kind of experimentation. It's his job the toe the line in the press...
So you'd advocate such a superior, inhuman being?
;)
What next? Telepathy? You can bet that us normals would be quickly replaced in the evolution by the unnatural telepaths.
Sure, why not. If evolution is gonna do it, then we don't really have much choice now, do we?
Maybe we could find a way to genetically eliminate trolls...
These critics will be looked on as niave luddites at best (racist at worst) in a few decades. How will these children feel about being called "wrong in principle"?
On the other hand, will there be a "godhatesclones.com"* in 20 years?
I kept thinking the same thing to myself. I was somewhat young at the time, but I seem to recall that 20-25 years ago there was a very similar outcry against in vitro fertilisation and other fertility techniques. Nowdays they are pretty standard practice. I can't imagine that things won't be the same way 20-25 years from now, only we'll be talking about genetic manipulation.
The thing to remember is that this will happen, no matter what you do to stop it. You're better off allowing it so that it can be monitored and regulated, otherwise you'll end up with a genetic engineering lab that keeps a "land of misfit toddlers" for when the experiments go wrong and nobody wants to claim the result.
I mean, certain things are inevitable. And if it's inevitable that it is going to happen, then I think that it needs to be approached responsibly rather than with semi-hysterical castigation.
RMBS shares should be trading at a discount now.
They have been for quite a while now. They'd be trading even lower if they hadn't stopped trading on it before the decision was announced. But even at 10% of their previous price, it's hardly a bargain if the company proves to have an unsustainable business model (or its only revenue generating product tanks a la RDRAM). I can't possibly imagine why so many people have been so bullish on it's stock for so long to begin with (unless it was dot-com induced euphoric mania).
Now Rambus is going to have to *gasp* actually make a product instead of just go after other companies
;)
Nah, first they'll have their lawyers appeal. And in the meantime, they are still collecting royalties from a) RDRAM and b) companies that decided to "license" SDRAM and DDR SDRAM from them to begin with.
Of course, imagine how the other memory companies are looking right now, now that Infineon is royalty-free for the time being. One wonders if other companies are going to now announce that they are going to discontinue sending rambus royalty checks.
There might be some egg on their face, but they're not home free yet. For starters, the "licensing agreements" that yield the royalties for Rambus are contracts. IANAL, but I imagine that there will still be some legal wrangling that Samsung and the others will have to go through to get out of those deals (maybe make a case that they were based on invalid patents???). But that process can't even begin until the case has been appealed and re-appealed and finally settled.
After I got the CPUs I found that the RAM that Crucial had listed on their site as being compatible with the board actually didn't work with the board. So I called Crucial about an exchange. Since so much time had passed the first person I talked to didn't know if they could do it. But after they talked to a manager, they said it would be no problem. I got the exchange, and since RAM prices had dropped in the mean time, they gave me some money back. I have no problem recommended Micron/Crucial to anyone.
That's cool. I've never met anyone who's had problems with Micron/Crucial memory. I personally always order from Crucial and I recommend to friends and co-workers that they do the same. The prices are actually quite reasonable for top quality memory, and they have an excellent warranty as well.
That being said, I have nothing against buying Infineon memory either. If Crucial would ever go away, they'd be next on my list simply because they stood up to the IP bully.
Exactly right. Check the Corbis web site for all the art you thought was in the public domain, but you now have to pay for. And although the site says that Corbis is a privately owned comapny, nowhere does it say that Gates owns it. Dennis Miller was right, "Bill Gates is a monocle and a persian cat away from being a Bond villian."
That's OK. Wanna hear something really scary? Gates is also heavily invested in Biotechnology. I'm not aware of any firms that he owns outright, but he owns large chunks of several of them. He's slowly but surely acquiring ownership of the future of mankind.
Gates controls a company named Corbis (sp?) that charges a fee to access digital versions of a range of Da Vinci works. But before Gates bought out Corbis (what, 5 years ago now?) they were public domain.
This is not correct. Corbis was a company that Gates founded specifically to acquire the rights to digitally reproduce a wide range of artwork, photographs, paintings, etc. I am not sure if those deals were for exclusive rights or not. The reason (at least the one stated at the time) was because he didn't have digital rights to the artwork that he wanted to display in his house.
For those who don't recall, Bill's house is supposed to have LCD screens on certain internal walls that would randomly cycle through various works of art, etc.
Well, it seems like it could be more efficient. Considering a person who would buy a car like this, is probably more concerned about the environment than going Really Fast(TM). The car is designed obviously to get the most power out of the biomass.
I agree. I mean, right now it can go only 62 miles on a 220lb load of organic waste. Think about it. That's a pile of shit bigger than the average man (though still not a pile of shit as big as me...err...that's not quite how I meant it). I can't imagine that refueling is much fun either. Still, it's a good start.
Currently I am employed as a SysAdmin/desktop support/network tech. I work for a large company at a site that only has about 85 employees. I handle all the IT work for our site, and I am also a contractor. I normally do 40-45 hours per week, assuming that nothing breaks. I am on call 24/7, but my systems run smooth enough that I rarely have to do anything during off-hours.
Before I became a consultant I was a manager for a transportation company. I usually worked 75-80 hours a week then, and was also on-call 24/7 (and something ALWAYS happened during off-hours).
Overall, the IT job pays about 30% better, and I'm much happier with my life and the way that I spend my free time. I still haven't had a proper vacation/get-away in years, but I did take 3 months off back when I changed jobs. Call it an epiphany, but I decided that after working like a madman and then having 3 months to do absolutely nothing I would never work those insane hours again.
My general feeling is that there is a lot to be said for an ASP-like model. If I have 20 people out of 2000 using a complicated ERP package, for instance, why should I have 2 or 3 of my IT support staff learning all about it so that they can support it all the hours of the day? It may be mission critical, but if I can find someone else to provide access to it, and not have to worry about training for support, then that's got to be a good thing. The problem seems to be that either the market isn't ready, or the model isn't mature enough. Maybe the applications don't suit the deployment model.
Well, there are a lot of problems with the current "ASP model." Speaking as a former ASP employee, I'll name a few.
First off, the company I used to work for was an ASP before there was even a TLA for waht they did (that's Three Letter Acronym). They were a complete IT outsourcing company that handled everything, including application hosting. It was a moderately profitable company that understood the importance of the words "mission critical." They had solutions in place to preserve, protect, and host our customers' applications and there weren't many problems.
Before long, the dot-com boom hits, and the CEO starts thinking that we should be a part of it. ASP becomes a buzzword, and suddenly everybody is doing it (or rather trying to). Many companies are awash in VC money (which our company didn't have). We were facing a lot of competition from newly formed "ASP's" and decided that we would need to merge with another company to survive the "impending shakeout."
Now, unfortunately our competition wasn't the most prepared. Most ASPs (or at least companies that call themselves ASPs) are actually web hosting companies who decided to add another bullet point to their product list. These were not companies that were familiar with hosting mission-critical applications, nor were they very familiar with the concept of fault tolerance, redundancy, or security. But they were Internet companies and dot-coms were sexy at the time, so they got the VC cash anyway.
Our company ended up merging with one of these web hosting companies-cum-ASPs. Things were fine for awhile, the new company took it's VC money and went on a buying spree. The business plan was to completely phase out web hosting because (in the CEO's words) "it would soon become a commodity market, and ASPs are where the money will be." They actually bought something like 25 hosting and solution providers in the course of a year and a half, but they never took the time to fully assimilate the technology or knowledge of the companies that they acquired. The burn-rate was insane. They kept doing things the web hosting company way. They tried to be the cheapest because that's how you sell web hosting space, but it doesn't work in the ASP model. The ASP divisions weren't making money anymore (though they had been individually before they were acquired).
And then the bubble burst. There was dot-com fallout everywhere you looked. The VC's said "cut the burn rate and become profitable." The company said "we don't expect to see profits in the ASP end of the business for another year." So the ASP groups were all let go or shut down, and now the company is back to being just antoher web hosting company.
So what does this mean? The ASP model can and will work, if it is applied correctly. The problem in the ASP market isn't with the concept, it's with the people who are implementing it. Everybody wanted to be an ASP but very few companies actually knew what they had to do in order to be one. Some CIOs got suckered on it and they got burned.
So apple is exploiting BSD license software. Big whoop, Microsoft, and damn near every company that makes a form of UNIX does too.
Exactly. If you don't want some other developer grabbing your code and incorporating it into their product and selling it without making the source available, then don't release it under the BSD license. Release it under the GPL instead.
This may be an implementation issue. I did work at one company that made you take a 2-hour crash course (except for the IT staff) and I found that we didn't get nearly as many "stupid question" style calls as I have at other companies. But it still could have been done better.
Regarding the recycling bin and temp directory, that's just sad on the part of the "help desk." I know that finding qualified help is tough, but those are some of the basics. In a similar vein though, I do try to write up a monthly article for my users explaining how to use some neat "new" (aka, previously undiscovered by them) feature of their programs, and even include lots of screenshots. Common topics are freeing up disk space, archiving old messages in Outlook, sharing message folders with other users in Outlook, etc. I've finally caved in and admitted that if I don't try to teach these people something then they'll never learn it...
When I did a bit of tech support a few years ago, the best term for those who couldn't or wouldn't RTFM was PEBKAC: Problem exists between keyboard and chair. True now as ever!
Nope...can't do that. It's become a very common term now, even to the point that I've heard mainstream radio DJ's talking about it. If you pull that one out, you're bound to get busted.
My personal favorite (and I'm swearing you guys to secrecy on this because I don't want it to get out) is to tell the user that it is a "pre-input processor error." Then you show them the correct way to do whatever it was and say, "That's the work-around for the pre-input processor error." Most users aren't smart enough to know what you're saying, so they'll just nod their head and do what you tell them. Sooner or later they'll be calling you to say, "Hey, I'm having trouble with my computer again. I think that it's another pre-input processor error."
And the laughs just keep on coming...
I just wish that companies would provide mandatory computer training (or a computer assessment test) for incoming employees that taught the basics. It's truly insane that they don't already. But the assumption is that if a person has been working in a business environment then they already know how to use a computer. It just isn't so! You would not believe the number of people who I have to teach about right-clicking and how to save email attachments or how to attach files to email and so on and so on. The productivity gains would be astounding if every PC-using employee in every company was replaced with a PC-literate employee doing the same job.
The problem is, most people don't realize just how computer illiterate they really are, so they don't even know to ask for help. I find it odd that at most companies you have to be trained or licensed in order to be allowed to operate any kind of machinery, but that they set you loose with a PC and proprietary company data without even so much as a skill assessment. I know that upper management likes to scream about TCO, but if you made the effort or spent the money to ensure that employees were properly trained to begin with then you could probably eliminate a couple of support positions. There's some real cost savings.
i have one user that keeps calling it the PCU...
"Can you blow me where the pampers are?"
I usually resort to their language- "hit the power button on the hard drive".... but man oh man, do i feel like a gimp when i do that.
I can't do it. I absolutely cannot bring myself to use their butchered language. Of course, I'm the kind of guy that gets upset when people say that they're "feeling nauseous." (For those outside the loop, the correct word there is "nauseated." Something that is "nauseous" is what makes you feel "nauseated.")
I actually snapped on somebody once. We use Compaq PC's here at work with the easy, snap in, screwless cases and mounting kits for drives. Someone kept calling their computer the "hard drive," and I took the cover off the case and pulled out the actual hard drive and said, "No, this is the hard drive, and it's coming with me!"
They were not amused, but they did learn to call it by the correct name.