build one yourself from scratch, and keep track of how much you spend, and even more importantly, how many hours it takes you. that'll give you an idea of what it takes for someone else to build it for you.
There's a surprising amount of machining that goes into a rack. Think about the holes you screw the shelves into -- there's a lot of them. the equipment needed to gang-drill multiple holes at once is expensive. paying someone to drill them without the expensive hardware is also expensive...
Last week, I redid my home theater system in the back office using black anodized bakers racks. I like it so much I'm going to use it instead of a traditionaln rack when I redo the server room in the house later this summer. You can get a good, solid rack to hold your gear (on good casters) for about $150. Just what I need, as opposed to a traditionaln rack.
(check out places like Organized Living, Storables, or similar stores, and you can have one parted out exactly the way you want)
> They don't "own" the name, they've trademarked it, and that trademark, in the view of many of us (myself included) is not legitimate
Then hire a lawyer and challenge the trademark. If you think it's invalid, there's a legal process to prove that it is. Simply saying "I don't like it" means nothing; that's whining.
I don't like it that the bank won't give me $50,000. Saying so won't make the bank change it's mind. And just because I want it to be so, doesn't mean it ought to be so. Sheesh.
Let's see. You choose a name that directly ties your program to another program (kIllustrator -- it's just like Illustrator, but for Kde!) -- the author shows no respect to Adobe, doesn't ask permission to use the name, a turnip should realize the name infringes on Adobe's trademarks -- but hey, we're all open source people, and the laws don't apply to us! Or maybe they do, but they shouldn't! (why not? Because god is on our side! really!).
And then adobe comes and says "stop it", and while it's okay for the author to do anything, bceause open source is Good, Adobe is Bad for challenging the open source people and actually making them follow the laws. Which we shouldn't ahve to, because we don't like them. Heck, murderers think the murder laws are wrong, too -- especially once they get caught. But that's different. This is open source, and it's SPECIAL.
If there's one thing that's going to cause the failure of the open source movement, it's this:
too many people hiding behind the cloak of open source as an excuse to do what they want, but demanding that everyone else follow the laws. God help someone if they (gasp) don't follow the open source licensing agreements to the letter -- hell, if they violate rules we forgot to put in but think ought to be in the GPL, they should be put to death.
There's a horrible double standard here, folks. If the laws are going to protect open source from Microsoft and the Big Nasty Companies, then open source better figure out the laws apply to them, too, even if they don't like them. Because if the movement continues with this double standard, you'll lose the support of the business sector - the people who actually pay for this stuff.
even ignoring who pays for it, don't people have enough ethics to feel guilty about these double-standards? guess not.
First, anyone who thinks any signal that they can reach is free for them to use should go to radio shack and try to buy a scanner with cellular frequencies. They're illegal -- and it's illegal to build something to listen to them. It's been a long, long time since frequencies were free.
Interesting technology, but as someone else noted, it's one I'd be very careful using; unlike older satellite hack technologies (where you'd call up a BBS for access codes), you're easily tracked here. I sure wouldn't do this.
Arbitrary beginning of the piracy flamewars: people have to remember that there's no free lunch. If you steal content from DirectTV, those of us who DO pay for the service are subsidizing you. Someone has to pay for this stuff; if everyone tried to steal if, it'd disappear. (we now stand back to watch all of the pirates attempt to rationalize away their theft by calling it other things...)
But most importantly, and the reason I delurked in the first place, this is yet another example of a company that uses stupid, weak, badly designed encryption techniques and tries to enforce them with obscurity and bluster. Companies like DirectTV need to learn that if they want to protect their content, they can't cheap out on the technology. DeCSS is a classic example of this -- you lock your front door with a piece of twine, and tell everyone that if they dare open the door, they'll call the police.
Anyone with half a brain knows to get a deadbolt and keep them out in the first place. Sooner or later, enough of these cracks will occur to convince even the stupid companies to get their act together. Until then, even if the pirates are wrong -- it's hard to sympathize with companies that make it easy...
> Secondly, the fact that every message seems to be broadcasted to every peer, forcing them to periodically split the network, really isn't a very scalable approach at all.
Hasn't anyone learned from USENET? Sigh. Teh concept of sending every byte to every computer everywhere in case anyone anywhere might want that byte is stupid. USENET's proven just how much work and resources it takes to scale that.
Heck -- it's like going on vacation, but having the entire house shipped where you're going, just in case you need an extra pair of blue socks on the trip.
> Why would Google make this request? I would guess to defend themselves legally
Another reason -- by doing so, they eliminate a poster's right to demand that a message be removed from the archive, since by posting it, you've given them right to store it there in a way that can't be revoked. Given the size of their data store, this removes a potentially huge administrative headache.
> Get a second monitor to read documentation from. Not only would it pay for itself within 4 books,
you go ahead and buy the monitor. I'll buy the book, tell my boss I'm researching my latest project,and you'll find me out in the park by the lake with my laptop while you're stuck in your office...
Oh,and you might want to go research the retention studies that compare how well people remember what's learned on a monitor vs printed material. I'm sure there are some nice references online (I know I've seen them, but I've forgotten where...)
> Please take a deep breath and go in for one last go-around with the FSF lawyers. Pretty please?
Why? the FSF position seems to be "we're happy to compromise, as soon as you do it our way" and "we won't tell you how to fix it, just that it's wrong. Keep guessing"
When will the FSF start working with these groups, instead of simply demanding everyone do it their way or else?
> Doesn't it always seem as if mergers end up hurting consumers rather than helping them?
Not always, but one thing I've noticed is that once a company gets too big, it stops wanting your business, and only wants your money.
I'm planning on swapping banks for just that reason. The reason they are going to lose me after 15+ years is simple: when I was out of state on a trip, I went to an ATM to get monoey -- an ATM run by the same bank I bank with. And because it was out of state, they charged me a fee to take money out of my account -- using own bank's ATM, just not in my home state.
That's being interested in my money, not my business. it's not the only way they've proven it, ti's simply the last straw. So I'm going to move to a smaller bank that deals with customers, not spreadsheets.
Guess what? Juno isn't free. it simply charges a different pound of flesh. And, as it keeps finding that it can't survive on what it's getting from you, it raises it's price. Only their price isn't cash.
If this doesn't finally kill them off, I'll be amazed. I see it as a sign of desperation that they've finally hit this level of invasion to try to find ways to avoid actually charging money like everyone else.
Juno is simply proving that putting it on the internet doesn't make it immune to business realities -- or Darwin.
After reading the articles, and reading the responses, my only thought is:
I wish people would figure out that sometimes there is MORE THAN ONE RIGHT ANSWER. Why does it seem everyone reacts with "there can only be one way to do this, and gee, it happens to be the way I prefer things"
Jef is right. Tog is right. the CLI bigots are right. the gnome bigots are right. The kde bigots are right. AOL is right, even.
What's wrong is thinking that any one of those is right to the exclusion of everything else. there's a wonderful advantage to appliance-computers -- for some people, like my mom. there's a great freedom to Linux as a desktop -- but my mom would never touch it.
It can be a floor wax AND a dessert topping. We'll get a lot more done once people figure out there is no One True Way, and quit fighting over which way is the only way. There are lots of right answers. Really.
I dunno. I host ioccc.org. My site's holding up well, all things considered. I'm monitoring it from an outside location, and while it's slow, it's up and feeding as fast as the network can feed it (it's on a 384K DSL line) -- the server itself is bored and 95% idle (so the setiathome folks are happy), running on a YellowDog Linux G3 box.
Frankly, I'm having a lot LESS trouble checking the response time on my site today than I am accessing slashdot to see if people are complaining about how my site's responding... Maybe slashdot's been slashdotted or something....
> You've obviously got no idea how unions work. I work in the office of a Local of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
Um not quite. I used to be in the teamsters in my youth, and my sister is a honcho in a big local office in southern california. I'm quite familiar with how unions work, good (my sisters) and bad (my former one)
But nice try. Unfortunately, just because someone says something you don't like doesn't mean they're clueless. Although it's easier to claim so than refute the actual argument....
Name me the five companies in "traditional" companies that said "unions? gee, we love unions. you don't even have to vote! Just come in and have a chair, we'll talk".
Why is it news that these companies don't want unions around? Basically, NO company wants unions around. this is news?
> Thats my recipe.. can anyone implement it? In todays day of litigation and corporate fear of the former, probably not.
At the risk of being laughed at, or worse, ignored:
this is my current worldview of how this stuff ought to work, tempered by the reality that some of the stuff I want to do I can't because the technologies aren't mature enough yet.
Feel free to tell me where I've screwed up or gotten it wrong. I've been focussing on the site and technology to get it right, and now am just starting to think in terms of marketing to help people find it, because I hate "under construction signs" and I'd rather do it right than do it now.
> It's a shame that so many so-called "open source" advocates are just as blind and irrationally motivated like [... dropping the religious flamebait..]
No, they aren't irrational or blind. They simply equate "open source" with "free". As many have pointed out, open source != public domain, and they don't understand the difference. Or more likely, don't care, as long as they get what they want.
they're people who want the advantages of open source, but not be part of the open source community. They're software lurkers.
I have issues with GPL -- but I abide by it, or I don't use it. If I had serious issues with it, I wouldn't use it at all, or I'd work within the system to fix the problems.
You don't cut a PO for open source. You pay for it by (a) abiding by the licenses, and (b) paying forward back into the community with sweat equity of some sort -- at least in theory. Many do, and that's why open source works.
Open source is no more free than microsoft code it. the price of purchase is simply different. People who grab open source and abuse the licensing terms are just as much pirates as those who grab Windows and post it to the Warez sites.
How does Norway plan to enforce its spam ban when the spam is created outside of Norway?
if a person in Brazil, or more likely, Malaysia, sends you spam, and it's not illegal where he sends it (which it's not in both those countries), wha's Norway going to do? Hold its breath until it turns blue? Extradite you (oops, Brazil doesn't have extradition treaties) and charge you with a misdemeanor?
what is Norway's definition of spam? is it generally accepted and legally unambiguous?
it's great they're banning spam. i'm all for it. Now -- how do you enforce the ban? Especially since almost all of norway's spam starts somewhere other than norway?
> The defining requirement about spam is its unsolicited nature.
So you're saying that if I see your posting on/., and I send you private mail to say I liked it, I've spammed you, since you didn't solicit my opinion?
> it hasn't really been talked about much, as burning DVDs is not something any of us would be planning on doing (unless we're pirating DVDs).
Not true. My wife and I have been hoping for the DVD environment for over two years for video and archival work we're doing. A couple of weeks ago, the least-expensive system that could remotely do waht we want was $12K or more. Now, it'd under $5K, works better, *and* the DVD's play in consumer players. it's just what we've needed for our libraries and research...
Slashdot Mirror
>Why are racks so damn expensive?
build one yourself from scratch, and keep track of how much you spend, and even more importantly, how many hours it takes you. that'll give you an idea of what it takes for someone else to build it for you.
There's a surprising amount of machining that goes into a rack. Think about the holes you screw the shelves into -- there's a lot of them. the equipment needed to gang-drill multiple holes at once is expensive. paying someone to drill them without the expensive hardware is also expensive...
Last week, I redid my home theater system in the back office using black anodized bakers racks. I like it so much I'm going to use it instead of a traditionaln rack when I redo the server room in the house later this summer. You can get a good, solid rack to hold your gear (on good casters) for about $150. Just what I need, as opposed to a traditionaln rack.
(check out places like Organized Living, Storables, or similar stores, and you can have one parted out exactly the way you want)
> They don't "own" the name, they've trademarked it, and that trademark, in the view of many of us (myself included) is not legitimate
Then hire a lawyer and challenge the trademark. If you think it's invalid, there's a legal process to prove that it is. Simply saying "I don't like it" means nothing; that's whining.
I don't like it that the bank won't give me $50,000. Saying so won't make the bank change it's mind. And just because I want it to be so, doesn't mean it ought to be so. Sheesh.
Let's see. You choose a name that directly ties your program to another program (kIllustrator -- it's just like Illustrator, but for Kde!) -- the author shows no respect to Adobe, doesn't ask permission to use the name, a turnip should realize the name infringes on Adobe's trademarks -- but hey, we're all open source people, and the laws don't apply to us! Or maybe they do, but they shouldn't! (why not? Because god is on our side! really!).
And then adobe comes and says "stop it", and while it's okay for the author to do anything, bceause open source is Good, Adobe is Bad for challenging the open source people and actually making them follow the laws. Which we shouldn't ahve to, because we don't like them. Heck, murderers think the murder laws are wrong, too -- especially once they get caught. But that's different. This is open source, and it's SPECIAL.
If there's one thing that's going to cause the failure of the open source movement, it's this:
too many people hiding behind the cloak of open source as an excuse to do what they want, but demanding that everyone else follow the laws. God help someone if they (gasp) don't follow the open source licensing agreements to the letter -- hell, if they violate rules we forgot to put in but think ought to be in the GPL, they should be put to death.
There's a horrible double standard here, folks. If the laws are going to protect open source from Microsoft and the Big Nasty Companies, then open source better figure out the laws apply to them, too, even if they don't like them. Because if the movement continues with this double standard, you'll lose the support of the business sector - the people who actually pay for this stuff.
even ignoring who pays for it, don't people have enough ethics to feel guilty about these double-standards? guess not.
> send the bastard to Mars.
they tried that already, only the last time, they called it "australia" -- and look how that turned out.
Just a couple of thoughts on this.
First, anyone who thinks any signal that they can reach is free for them to use should go to radio shack and try to buy a scanner with cellular frequencies. They're illegal -- and it's illegal to build something to listen to them. It's been a long, long time since frequencies were free.
Interesting technology, but as someone else noted, it's one I'd be very careful using; unlike older satellite hack technologies (where you'd call up a BBS for access codes), you're easily tracked here. I sure wouldn't do this.
Arbitrary beginning of the piracy flamewars: people have to remember that there's no free lunch. If you steal content from DirectTV, those of us who DO pay for the service are subsidizing you. Someone has to pay for this stuff; if everyone tried to steal if, it'd disappear. (we now stand back to watch all of the pirates attempt to rationalize away their theft by calling it other things...)
But most importantly, and the reason I delurked in the first place, this is yet another example of a company that uses stupid, weak, badly designed encryption techniques and tries to enforce them with obscurity and bluster. Companies like DirectTV need to learn that if they want to protect their content, they can't cheap out on the technology. DeCSS is a classic example of this -- you lock your front door with a piece of twine, and tell everyone that if they dare open the door, they'll call the police.
Anyone with half a brain knows to get a deadbolt and keep them out in the first place. Sooner or later, enough of these cracks will occur to convince even the stupid companies to get their act together. Until then, even if the pirates are wrong -- it's hard to sympathize with companies that make it easy...
... and a partridge in a pear tree....
> Secondly, the fact that every message seems to be broadcasted to every peer, forcing them to periodically split the network, really isn't a very scalable approach at all.
Hasn't anyone learned from USENET? Sigh. Teh concept of sending every byte to every computer everywhere in case anyone anywhere might want that byte is stupid. USENET's proven just how much work and resources it takes to scale that.
Heck -- it's like going on vacation, but having the entire house shipped where you're going, just in case you need an extra pair of blue socks on the trip.
> I'm an Internet "oldster" .. I was surfing the Web as far back as 1996
tee hee. heh heh.
Thanks, sonnie. you gave me a good giggle there.
now pass grampa his teeth, so he can bite your nose off....
>> should a hospital be a ".com" or an ".org"?
.org, why would it be .com?
.org, for-profit ones .com.
>
are you sure? some hospitals are non-profit, others are for-profit. Non-profit hospitals probably ought to be
Except why should a user have to know whether a hospital is for-profit or non-profit when trying to type in a URL to visit their site?
> Why would Google make this request? I would guess to defend themselves legally
Another reason -- by doing so, they eliminate a poster's right to demand that a message be removed from the archive, since by posting it, you've given them right to store it there in a way that can't be revoked. Given the size of their data store, this removes a potentially huge administrative headache.
> Get a second monitor to read documentation from. Not only would it pay for itself within 4 books,
you go ahead and buy the monitor. I'll buy the book, tell my boss I'm researching my latest project,and you'll find me out in the park by the lake with my laptop while you're stuck in your office...
Oh,and you might want to go research the retention studies that compare how well people remember what's learned on a monitor vs printed material. I'm sure there are some nice references online (I know I've seen them, but I've forgotten where...)
> Please take a deep breath and go in for one last go-around with the FSF lawyers. Pretty please?
Why? the FSF position seems to be "we're happy to compromise, as soon as you do it our way" and "we won't tell you how to fix it, just that it's wrong. Keep guessing"
When will the FSF start working with these groups, instead of simply demanding everyone do it their way or else?
> Doesn't it always seem as if mergers end up hurting consumers rather than helping them?
Not always, but one thing I've noticed is that once a company gets too big, it stops wanting your business, and only wants your money.
I'm planning on swapping banks for just that reason. The reason they are going to lose me after 15+ years is simple: when I was out of state on a trip, I went to an ATM to get monoey -- an ATM run by the same bank I bank with. And because it was out of state, they charged me a fee to take money out of my account -- using own bank's ATM, just not in my home state.
That's being interested in my money, not my business. it's not the only way they've proven it, ti's simply the last straw. So I'm going to move to a smaller bank that deals with customers, not spreadsheets.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Guess what? Juno isn't free. it simply charges a different pound of flesh. And, as it keeps finding that it can't survive on what it's getting from you, it raises it's price. Only their price isn't cash.
If this doesn't finally kill them off, I'll be amazed. I see it as a sign of desperation that they've finally hit this level of invasion to try to find ways to avoid actually charging money like everyone else.
Juno is simply proving that putting it on the internet doesn't make it immune to business realities -- or Darwin.
After reading the articles, and reading the responses, my only thought is:
I wish people would figure out that sometimes there is MORE THAN ONE RIGHT ANSWER. Why does it seem everyone reacts with "there can only be one way to do this, and gee, it happens to be the way I prefer things"
Jef is right. Tog is right. the CLI bigots are right. the gnome bigots are right. The kde bigots are right. AOL is right, even.
What's wrong is thinking that any one of those is right to the exclusion of everything else. there's a wonderful advantage to appliance-computers -- for some people, like my mom. there's a great freedom to Linux as a desktop -- but my mom would never touch it.
It can be a floor wax AND a dessert topping. We'll get a lot more done once people figure out there is no One True Way, and quit fighting over which way is the only way. There are lots of right answers. Really.
I dunno. I host ioccc.org. My site's holding up well, all things considered. I'm monitoring it from an outside location, and while it's slow, it's up and feeding as fast as the network can feed it (it's on a 384K DSL line) -- the server itself is bored and 95% idle (so the setiathome folks are happy), running on a YellowDog Linux G3 box.
Frankly, I'm having a lot LESS trouble checking the response time on my site today than I am accessing slashdot to see if people are complaining about how my site's responding... Maybe slashdot's been slashdotted or something....
not to beat a dead horse, but...
My first posting said to "name five". You keep saying it's demonstrably wrong, but you've never named any names to prove it.
Ohwell.
> You've obviously got no idea how unions work. I work in the office of a Local of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
Um not quite. I used to be in the teamsters in my youth, and my sister is a honcho in a big local office in southern california. I'm quite familiar with how unions work, good (my sisters) and bad (my former one)
But nice try. Unfortunately, just because someone says something you don't like doesn't mean they're clueless. Although it's easier to claim so than refute the actual argument....
so dot-com companies don't like unions.
Name me the five companies in "traditional" companies that said "unions? gee, we love unions. you don't even have to vote! Just come in and have a chair, we'll talk".
Why is it news that these companies don't want unions around? Basically, NO company wants unions around. this is news?
I gotta get used to using the preview button (mutter)
it helps if I don't mung the URLs:
http://www.hockeyfanz.com
(moderated to -33 for braincramp)
> Thats my recipe.. can anyone implement it? In todays day of litigation and corporate fear of the former, probably not.
At the risk of being laughed at, or worse, ignored:
this is my current worldview of how this stuff ought to work, tempered by the reality that some of the stuff I want to do I can't because the technologies aren't mature enough yet.
Feel free to tell me where I've screwed up or gotten it wrong. I've been focussing on the site and technology to get it right, and now am just starting to think in terms of marketing to help people find it, because I hate "under construction signs" and I'd rather do it right than do it now.
slash@chuqui.com
> It's a shame that so many so-called "open source" advocates are just as blind and irrationally motivated like [... dropping the religious flamebait..]
No, they aren't irrational or blind. They simply equate "open source" with "free". As many have pointed out, open source != public domain, and they don't understand the difference. Or more likely, don't care, as long as they get what they want.
they're people who want the advantages of open source, but not be part of the open source community. They're software lurkers.
I have issues with GPL -- but I abide by it, or I don't use it. If I had serious issues with it, I wouldn't use it at all, or I'd work within the system to fix the problems.
You don't cut a PO for open source. You pay for it by (a) abiding by the licenses, and (b) paying forward back into the community with sweat equity of some sort -- at least in theory. Many do, and that's why open source works.
Open source is no more free than microsoft code it. the price of purchase is simply different. People who grab open source and abuse the licensing terms are just as much pirates as those who grab Windows and post it to the Warez sites.
> There is a noticable difference between "Free Speech" and spam. I can walk away from Free Speech.
Tell that to the doctors and patients at abortion clinics that are harrassed and abused by Operation Rescue under the claims of Free Speech.
chuq (this posting self-moderated to -1:flamebait)
How does Norway plan to enforce its spam ban when the spam is created outside of Norway?
if a person in Brazil, or more likely, Malaysia, sends you spam, and it's not illegal where he sends it (which it's not in both those countries), wha's Norway going to do? Hold its breath until it turns blue? Extradite you (oops, Brazil doesn't have extradition treaties) and charge you with a misdemeanor?
what is Norway's definition of spam? is it generally accepted and legally unambiguous?
it's great they're banning spam. i'm all for it. Now -- how do you enforce the ban? Especially since almost all of norway's spam starts somewhere other than norway?
> The defining requirement about spam is its unsolicited nature.
/., and I send you private mail to say I liked it, I've spammed you, since you didn't solicit my opinion?
So you're saying that if I see your posting on
> it hasn't really been talked about much, as burning DVDs is not something any of us would be planning on doing (unless we're pirating DVDs).
Not true. My wife and I have been hoping for the DVD environment for over two years for video and archival work we're doing. A couple of weeks ago, the least-expensive system that could remotely do waht we want was $12K or more. Now, it'd under $5K, works better, *and* the DVD's play in consumer players. it's just what we've needed for our libraries and research...