whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting.
If child porn were speech, it would be just talk. As it stands, at the best it is evidence of a crime that was committed in creating it. At the worst, it is a product that required the rape of a child to create and is a tainted product.
I find it interesting that things "have" to work like another, older thing. When people start to think this way, they leave room for another new idea to dispace the old.
It wasn't so long ago that the web replaced several technologies that did many of the same things: BBSes, Gopher and HyperCard type development environments. People will drop the web in a heartbeat if something better and different comes along. The trillion dollar question is when will it, and what will it be?
Stop trying to copy something that's already been done and find a better way to do it.
Sgi should drop their arrogant attitude and start caring about anyone who wants to buy their stuff. Actually, all customers are not created equal. If you are a business, you have to sell your product into a profitable market. Small companies don't have the resources to hire SGI grade users, support staff or afford the software and service contracts that SGI needs to sell to be profitable, or for that matter to survive in their low volume market. Then you have cost of sales. Because of SGI's complexity and price, it takes about the same time, effort, travel etc to sell 25 or 100 boxes to a big company as it does one to a small company.
Ultimately, SGI is not equiped to satisfy the demands of small business on the support, training and repair side either. So they go where they can make money. Back in the day the workstation manufacturers would outsource the support and sales function by using distribution to sell their systems.
Actually, the original poster's got a point: When peoople start to see what is happening, the law must be changed. You are right that the US is not democracy, but it is close enough that when a law creates criminals of the common citizen, the law is changed. A great example is prohibition.
I'd like to see the EFF do a PR campaign with the theme "You are next."
call center market is past its prime The call center market has matured - it's not past it's prime unless you are looking for easy $$$. The days of going in and selling $7.5 Mil of crappy CRM/Call Center software and ridiculous ammounts of unneeded hardware are over. Now that the market has reached saturation, buyers become more savvy and vendors have to become more useful.
Call Center managers and owners have their metrics down to a science and increasingly benefit from custom applications. Why? call centers that are prospering are able to more seamlessly integrate with their client's systems. Many large call centers are big-time users of CRM software -- which simply can't automate the way that custom software can.
There is nothing about this patent that is novel. It's yet another land grab for licensing fees later on. It's a shame that the patent process allows so many to patent something that already exists and collect fees for it.
Hey, let's everyone kill the internet with regulation! Let's make bandwith more expensive because ISPs are getting hounded by lawyers. Let's get rid of some of the freedom of speech and the ability to communicate without borders and lawsuits.
Antispam laws are a waste of time. They won't stop spam, and at the end of the day, they will succeed in:
Making the internet more expensive
-and-
Making the internet less usefull for communication.
I've been waiting for years for RIAA to do what they are now doing. There is no way the industry will survive attacking their consumers. Consumers vote.
Actually, I did listen. You missed the real point: why am I going to replace the item I bought and paid for last year with a freeware clone this year?
Most software users already have bought the level of functionality that is being duplicated right now. There's no reason to invest time/money/energy into the opensource replacement. Many companies don't even see a compelling reason to replace the 1997 version of excel they have with Office XP.
My point is that for any software product to take a leadership position in the market you have to do more than imitate. I like some of the direction with Gnumeric - the functions, potential for python/perl scripting, etc...
On the idea of having to catch up, I disagree - you can direct energy at innovation at any point.
What's interesting is the stuff like MW Coherent where a private company saw the market for a full power OS for the Intel platform. SCO could have owned a huge piece of the market if they could have only left those pennies alone and tried to pick up the dollars instead. BTW - being semi-correct in business is a good way to come up bankrupt.
do this simply with the cpus= boot argument LMAO - this is a mac user talking about a boot argument! I thought that was for users of less sophisticated, difficult to use, antiquated command line based oses. Apparently the grass was greener... in the neighbor's yard.
if Linux and GNU stuff perfectly emulated existing commercial (and expensive) software, which do you think would be big? The closed source stuff. User base is entrenched and would see no reason to retrain. Many companies (to the chagrin of MS) still use Office 97 for this reason. If you want to displace a segment in the software market you've go to have a compelling reason to change:
* Highly desired enhancements of existing features * New functionality - tools that give people new ways to use your package. Pivot tables, for example, allowed many business users to scrap crystal reports. * Easier data interchange. Interestingly enough, MS Excel will talk to just about anything.
Remember, software's real value isn't measured in cool. It's a matter of if your package will let people get more done in less time with less work.
Re:Still looking for decent charting app
on
Gnumeric Turns 5
·
· Score: 1
If you would like a way to make instant raving fans, let's make the charting routines produce graphics that were made in 2003, not 1992 like Excel. Business communicators would be all over Gnumeric if:
* Ran on windows AND: * Produced charts and graphs with true 3d, texture fills transparent mac aqua style bars/lines * a few "themes" for graphs to make the non-designers (like me) look good * allowed for a little display animation (i.e. growing bars, transitions between number sets (ie last year transform to this year) * export to svg, gif and/or swf for animated charts. * Support for WMF and EMF is critical for those who have to use PowerPoint/Word
Unix on Intel = SCO was true at one time, but not entirely. There were always other Unix like oses that were begining to chip away at SCO's overpriced position like Mark Williams Coherent, QNX, and Minix. QNX excepted (it's a realtime commercial OS). These "unix like oses" were largely killed off by Linux. There's an interesting "pre-SCO gave a rat's ass" list of *nix Oses from 1996 here. Even if Linux (or any other open source OS) had never materialized, it's likely that the commercial competition would have killed them. The niche for an inexpensive multiuser, multitasking, posix compliant, OS friendly to those who know Unix was just too big.
Also ran *nix oses aside, the biggest driver for Linux came ironically for SCO: Their Unix product was WAY OVERPRICED. Why spend $500 for a OS for a $700 computer? By 1994, Pentium class computers were much more powerful than Windows allowed them to be. Unix unlocked a lot of that power (think multiuser apps, networking and the internet). Linux and the like let me turn a $600 Packard Bell into a minicomputer class machine for fun and profit. Tinkering on open source oeses and tools was a pretty novel way to untap the power, learn and eventually make money.
Here's a thought: if SCO had a full version, no limits Unix for intel boxes that sold for MS-DOS's (or even Windows 3.11 + DOS) price, where would the computing world be now?
Save the name-calling for usenet. At the end of the day, some of the UN's actions are laughable because they ammount to trying to put out a forest fire with a matchbook. You did do a good job of making my point: the UN appears to prioritize poorly. Clean water, food and the like all should go before wifi...
The internet does not cure disease, end oppression or feed the hungry.
Starving family: We're hungry feed us. UN: Have a WIFI adapter for your computer. Starving family: What's a computer? UN: It's the reason there is no food in starving land. Starving family: Can I have some rice? UN: No, we don't have that because it's held in customs, but you can have a gross of condoms and a safe sex video on DVD. Starving family: I must return to forraging through the trash now.
Competition is good. Look at all the technology that came out of competition between the free world and the communist block... You can't follow up to this post without using several hundred innovations that resulted from nationalistic competition.
Now if we could figure out how to compete without having wars and stuff...
Nothing is more tacky, boorish or sick than when someone intentionally or unintentionally brings up a picture of a person doing _____ with an animal in the middle of kid's section of the library. I was at a library a week ago and this happened prompting a near-riot from those of us with kids. Say what you want, but I'd prefer not to explain what horse that part of a horse is called and what it's function is, why the lady was naked to my four year old.
Unfortunately, I doubt the filters will do any good anyway.
One of the things I love about America is the ease that one can get around -- if you can afford a car. What scares me is anything that makes care ownership more expensive.
That's your software revolution: customization, adaptation and competent small businessmen. And it's already happening.
This is what wakes guys like Tom Siebel up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Open source is frightening to the corporate technology world because it allows a small company to have the toolset to compete with the big boys in a way they can't deal with. A small development shop can build the exact solution to a given business problem - not an approximate solution that gets us 90% there and can never bridge the 10% gap.
The part of the problem you are seeing is what is not so hard to see.
You are right, that some salespersons (it's not just the male kind) lie. On the other hand, there are many salespersons who pride themselves for their integrity - and are painfully honest at all times. The problem is that buyers lie, too and developers? Let's just say that honesty is a human problem, not a "salesperson" problem.
The real problem is what your salesperson has to do to keep the lights on at your firm: he or she has to find someone who needs what you do, then create a deal that is profitable for you and is good for the customer. Now imagine what happens when the customer does not disclose information or misleads the salesperson? What about managers who insulate salespeople from developers and engineers? The hell of it really is that doing good business is hard: everyone has to do their part, sales, marketing, finance, production, accounting and operations with integrity and accuracy or there is a liar or two created and possibly a bad deal done.
So far as bonus goes, I can assure you for every 60-80 week you put in coding, there is a salesperson who puts in 80-100 hours on the road, away from family presenting your software, writing proposals and getting completely and utterly rejected by 200 people to find one that wants whatever your company makes. At the end of the day, you make the product. Your salesperson finds a buyer and pays your paycheck. The dotcom folks learned the hard way: you go out of business if you don't sell anything or if you don't have anything to sell.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder when everyone is going to chill out on electronic file replication. Once you let something into the wild, it will take a life of it's own.
whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting.
If child porn were speech, it would be just talk. As it stands, at the best it is evidence of a crime that was committed in creating it. At the worst, it is a product that required the rape of a child to create and is a tainted product.
Child Porn != Speech.
Child Porn != Expression.
I find it interesting that things "have" to work like another, older thing. When people start to think this way, they leave room for another new idea to dispace the old.
It wasn't so long ago that the web replaced several technologies that did many of the same things: BBSes, Gopher and HyperCard type development environments. People will drop the web in a heartbeat if something better and different comes along. The trillion dollar question is when will it, and what will it be?
Stop trying to copy something that's already been done and find a better way to do it.
Sgi should drop their arrogant attitude and start caring about anyone who wants to buy their stuff.
Actually, all customers are not created equal. If you are a business, you have to sell your product into a profitable market. Small companies don't have the resources to hire SGI grade users, support staff or afford the software and service contracts that SGI needs to sell to be profitable, or for that matter to survive in their low volume market. Then you have cost of sales. Because of SGI's complexity and price, it takes about the same time, effort, travel etc to sell 25 or 100 boxes to a big company as it does one to a small company.
Ultimately, SGI is not equiped to satisfy the demands of small business on the support, training and repair side either. So they go where they can make money. Back in the day the workstation manufacturers would outsource the support and sales function by using distribution to sell their systems.
$G
Actually, the original poster's got a point: When peoople start to see what is happening, the law must be changed. You are right that the US is not democracy, but it is close enough that when a law creates criminals of the common citizen, the law is changed. A great example is prohibition.
I'd like to see the EFF do a PR campaign with the theme "You are next."
call center market is past its prime
The call center market has matured - it's not past it's prime unless you are looking for easy $$$. The days of going in and selling $7.5 Mil of crappy CRM/Call Center software and ridiculous ammounts of unneeded hardware are over. Now that the market has reached saturation, buyers become more savvy and vendors have to become more useful.
Call Center managers and owners have their metrics down to a science and increasingly benefit from custom applications. Why? call centers that are prospering are able to more seamlessly integrate with their client's systems. Many large call centers are big-time users of CRM software -- which simply can't automate the way that custom software can.
There is nothing about this patent that is novel. It's yet another land grab for licensing fees later on. It's a shame that the patent process allows so many to patent something that already exists and collect fees for it.
Hey, let's everyone kill the internet with regulation! Let's make bandwith more expensive because ISPs are getting hounded by lawyers. Let's get rid of some of the freedom of speech and the ability to communicate without borders and lawsuits.
Antispam laws are a waste of time. They won't stop spam, and at the end of the day, they will succeed in:
Making the internet more expensive
-and-
Making the internet less usefull for communication.
Well, to clarify:
*Pontification Deleted*
Thank you. I get it now.
I've been waiting for years for RIAA to do what they are now doing. There is no way the industry will survive attacking their consumers. Consumers vote.
OSX users are part of the BSD crowd and hence scoff at the limitations of the command line on windows
Ok. That makes it all better. It's still funny as hell: Mac users now like the command line.
$G
Actually, I did listen. You missed the real point: why am I going to replace the item I bought and paid for last year with a freeware clone this year?
Most software users already have bought the level of functionality that is being duplicated right now. There's no reason to invest time/money/energy into the opensource replacement. Many companies don't even see a compelling reason to replace the 1997 version of excel they have with Office XP.
My point is that for any software product to take a leadership position in the market you have to do more than imitate. I like some of the direction with Gnumeric - the functions, potential for python/perl scripting, etc...
On the idea of having to catch up, I disagree - you can direct energy at innovation at any point.
What's interesting is the stuff like MW Coherent where a private company saw the market for a full power OS for the Intel platform. SCO could have owned a huge piece of the market if they could have only left those pennies alone and tried to pick up the dollars instead. BTW - being semi-correct in business is a good way to come up bankrupt.
$G
do this simply with the cpus= boot argument
LMAO - this is a mac user talking about a boot argument! I thought that was for users of less sophisticated, difficult to use, antiquated command line based oses. Apparently the grass was greener... in the neighbor's yard.
$G
if Linux and GNU stuff perfectly emulated existing commercial (and expensive) software, which do you think would be big?
The closed source stuff. User base is entrenched and would see no reason to retrain. Many companies (to the chagrin of MS) still use Office 97 for this reason. If you want to displace a segment in the software market you've go to have a compelling reason to change:
* Highly desired enhancements of existing features
* New functionality - tools that give people new ways to use your package. Pivot tables, for example, allowed many business users to scrap crystal reports.
* Easier data interchange. Interestingly enough, MS Excel will talk to just about anything.
Remember, software's real value isn't measured in cool. It's a matter of if your package will let people get more done in less time with less work.
If you would like a way to make instant raving fans, let's make the charting routines produce graphics that were made in 2003, not 1992 like Excel. Business communicators would be all over Gnumeric if:
* Ran on windows AND:
* Produced charts and graphs with true 3d, texture fills transparent mac aqua style bars/lines
* a few "themes" for graphs to make the non-designers (like me) look good
* allowed for a little display animation (i.e. growing bars, transitions between number sets (ie last year transform to this year)
* export to svg, gif and/or swf for animated charts.
* Support for WMF and EMF is critical for those who have to use PowerPoint/Word
Unix on Intel = SCO was true at one time, but not entirely. There were always other Unix like oses that were begining to chip away at SCO's overpriced position like Mark Williams Coherent, QNX, and Minix. QNX excepted (it's a realtime commercial OS). These "unix like oses" were largely killed off by Linux. There's an interesting "pre-SCO gave a rat's ass" list of *nix Oses from 1996 here. Even if Linux (or any other open source OS) had never materialized, it's likely that the commercial competition would have killed them. The niche for an inexpensive multiuser, multitasking, posix compliant, OS friendly to those who know Unix was just too big.
Also ran *nix oses aside, the biggest driver for Linux came ironically for SCO: Their Unix product was WAY OVERPRICED. Why spend $500 for a OS for a $700 computer? By 1994, Pentium class computers were much more powerful than Windows allowed them to be. Unix unlocked a lot of that power (think multiuser apps, networking and the internet). Linux and the like let me turn a $600 Packard Bell into a minicomputer class machine for fun and profit. Tinkering on open source oeses and tools was a pretty novel way to untap the power, learn and eventually make money.
Here's a thought: if SCO had a full version, no limits Unix for intel boxes that sold for MS-DOS's (or even Windows 3.11 + DOS) price, where would the computing world be now?
$G
Save the name-calling for usenet. At the end of the day, some of the UN's actions are laughable because they ammount to trying to put out a forest fire with a matchbook. You did do a good job of making my point: the UN appears to prioritize poorly. Clean water, food and the like all should go before wifi...
The internet does not cure disease, end oppression or feed the hungry.
Starving family: We're hungry feed us.
UN: Have a WIFI adapter for your computer.
Starving family: What's a computer?
UN: It's the reason there is no food in starving land.
Starving family: Can I have some rice?
UN: No, we don't have that because it's held in customs, but you can have a gross of condoms and a safe sex video on DVD.
Starving family: I must return to forraging through the trash now.
and we wonder why the un doesn"t stop wars?
Competition is good. Look at all the technology that came out of competition between the free world and the communist block... You can't follow up to this post without using several hundred innovations that resulted from nationalistic competition.
Now if we could figure out how to compete without having wars and stuff...
I doubt this sentence will make it past appeal #1. Let alone the conviction.
Nothing is more tacky, boorish or sick than when someone intentionally or unintentionally brings up a picture of a person doing _____ with an animal in the middle of kid's section of the library. I was at a library a week ago and this happened prompting a near-riot from those of us with kids. Say what you want, but I'd prefer not to explain what horse that part of a horse is called and what it's function is, why the lady was naked to my four year old.
Unfortunately, I doubt the filters will do any good anyway.
$G
One of the things I love about America is the ease that one can get around -- if you can afford a car. What scares me is anything that makes care ownership more expensive.
That's your software revolution: customization, adaptation and competent small businessmen. And it's already happening.
This is what wakes guys like Tom Siebel up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Open source is frightening to the corporate technology world because it allows a small company to have the toolset to compete with the big boys in a way they can't deal with. A small development shop can build the exact solution to a given business problem - not an approximate solution that gets us 90% there and can never bridge the 10% gap.
The part of the problem you are seeing is what is not so hard to see.
You are right, that some salespersons (it's not just the male kind) lie. On the other hand, there are many salespersons who pride themselves for their integrity - and are painfully honest at all times. The problem is that buyers lie, too and developers? Let's just say that honesty is a human problem, not a "salesperson" problem.
The real problem is what your salesperson has to do to keep the lights on at your firm: he or she has to find someone who needs what you do, then create a deal that is profitable for you and is good for the customer. Now imagine what happens when the customer does not disclose information or misleads the salesperson? What about managers who insulate salespeople from developers and engineers? The hell of it really is that doing good business is hard: everyone has to do their part, sales, marketing, finance, production, accounting and operations with integrity and accuracy or there is a liar or two created and possibly a bad deal done.
So far as bonus goes, I can assure you for every 60-80 week you put in coding, there is a salesperson who puts in 80-100 hours on the road, away from family presenting your software, writing proposals and getting completely and utterly rejected by 200 people to find one that wants whatever your company makes. At the end of the day, you make the product. Your salesperson finds a buyer and pays your paycheck. The dotcom folks learned the hard way: you go out of business if you don't sell anything or if you don't have anything to sell.
$G