Some other threads have summarized the charges pretty well, and have come down for or against Randall; For those of you who are trying to understand why a good net citizen could end up doing something like this, (indictable, mostly well intentioned actions toward an employer), I have a few comments. FYI, I've read Randall's perl stuff, and found him to be quite helpful. I've also read the entire linked to site FAQ and comments, notes from the law enforcement, etc tonight, so I'm dangerously informed.
Geeks, especially ubergeeks, tend to have a perspective that they know better than their management how computers should be run. I think this is understandable, and makes sense from a geek point of view. As a geek and manager, I also understand the management point of view.
Frequently, conflicts arise between policy (management) and desire (geek). Management usually wins the war of words with their geeks, but it does not always win the war of intentions.
Randall fits a classic ubergeek profile, from reading his responses -- he apparently
values convenience over policy
sees himself as a (potentially) anarchic do-gooder
likes to create clever hacks
wants to keep his computing options open
Also, please remember that it was 1994; the internet was a wildly different place. Computers with net access were harder to find; security was viewed differently. There wasn't even such a thing as web based e-mail in 1994.
A gateway allowing e-mail checking was a compelling application for him. It also would be a compelling application for someone intent on distributing Intel chip design secrets, worth multi-tens of millions. It's not hard to connect the dots, and see why they would prosecute so aggressively, from a different department than the one he worked in. Reading Mark(last name?)'s written comments in the FAQ are pretty illuminating -- he understands exactly what's happened; Randall's mostly do-gooder, some skirt-the-system work was noticed in a particularly sensitive venue in a particularly sensitive company. The rest was just bad bad news.
It fits a pattern that many geeks fall into to comply with the letter of a management law, and skirt the intent for their own convenience. I just call this bad judgment, not criminal intent. (Given the Oregon law, this is not even a valid point where he's being tried, but I believe it is probably personally important to him to make the distinction.)
In any event, regrets / congratulations on the decision, and may you overcome the giant in the end. Also, may your admin duties be either ratified by management, or subdued in the future!
I'm chagrined to see that you and your son are more gracious and funnier than I am. All the best; I think it's clear I need to learn to use your shell.
Dear Dr. Korn,
I feel I owe you an apology, and this seemed like
a great chance! I went to school with Adam at Brown. And, in 1993, my roommate, Matt Smith, woke me up at about midnight, excitedly telling me "Do you know the Korn Shell? This guy's dad wrote the Korn shell!!!" He was coming in with Adam from somewhere.
I sort of turned over in my sleep, (I was extremely groggy), and said "I hate the Korn shell." and went back to bed. Adam never really talked to me after that, although he was polite enough to me at parties.
So, Dr. Korn, I feel I owe you an apology. I didn't mean to disrespect your lifework in front of your son! I still can't use the korn shell, but call it fear of the unknown, please, rather than lucid comments on your code.
Here's my perspective on this: I use a 19" monitor all day, usually two at a time. I do not travel with my 19" monitor -- it's too heavy. I used to have an 8lb laptop, 166mhz pentium, 32 megabytes of RAM. it was slow, it ran windows 95, and later windows 98, and most importantly, it was too damn heavy. I get shoulder pains just thinking about it.
Now, (3.5 years later), I have a 3.5 lb laptop, with a 166mhz pentium chip and 240 megabytes of ram. it's about an inch thick, and it cost me $800 used. I love this thing! I use it for word processing, e-mail, ssh, and the occasional web browsing. It's the same size as a pad of paper.
I'm not writing a novel with it -- it's not my work computer. I just use it for basic functionality.
The transmeta laptops fill this need for me PERFECTLY. They're small, their battery life is (conservatively) double the length of my current laptop's, and they're at least twice as fast. I might get to put some games on this thing. But, if I don't, and I only word process, that will be fine. Why? I just use it for basic functionality. On a plane, when I'm carrying it on my back, the damn thing better be light. And, if it's got wireless networking, that doubles the effectiveness. But, if it doesn't have DVD, or even a CD-ROM, does that matter? No, because I just use it for basic functionality. My 2cents.
The interesting thing to me about getting Basic on PS2 is the ability to write an MP3 player for it. A DVD-RAM disc can hold about 150 - 200 CD's worth of music -- if one could write an MP3 player which fit on a memory card, I think my PS2's usefulness would about double. As it is, I still need a CD jukebox. I'd definitely pay $35 dollars for MP3 software for the PS2.
Jakob Nielsen has an essay on why differential pricing is a bad idea. Although this particular essay of his is fairly low on content, it's a good introduction to some user-centric ways to think about the web.
example quote:
It is also very easy to plot a product's price elasticity curve on the Web: randomly serve up pages with different prices to the first thousand users
or so who visit a given product page and measure how many buy at each of the price points. With this information, profits can be maximized by
multiplying the profit margins and their corresponding conversion rates and picking the price that comes out best.
I played the mines of moria on CDC's Plato system up through the mid 1980s, actually! Wow, this totally takes me back. I'd play until 3 am every day of the summer (3 being when the system went down)... And, another one I just loved, called...Oh, damn. Don't remember. It was a pre-wizardry type game with 3-d isometric wire graphics, hundreds of levels, multi-user parties, and a full economy, including supply and demand based shopping.
Gameplay has not actually improved very much in the last 15 years. Anyone else want to reminisce about Plato?
Acutally, yes, the hardware grabbing of computer information is also referred to as Van Eck phreaking, thanks to Neil Stephenson for popularizing the term. Markus refers to it as "Tempest," and in the case of using software to grab information, "Soft Tempest."
This article quotes sony as saying that the PSX2 will use PC Card slots for expansion, and USB ports as well: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026 . This is news to me! I thought I'd kept up on the PSX2 pretty well, but I think we have a viable thin-client computer here. If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.
This is a great deal: $400 for a game console, and a thin-client (or server) for the internet.
Markus Kuhn, a researcher at Cambridge University published a paper in 1997 on using monitors to emit radio frequencies which could be picked up by a short wave radio. His goal was to provide covert information dissemination techniques that worked solely in software. (His other goal was to provide information protection techniques that worked solely in software. I think the dissemination stuff is cooler. He's a good guy, though in my opinion.)
The upshot of his research is that a) A computer monitor can be made to make certain visual patterns which will sound like something on a nearby radio b) You can get about 6 bytes per second like that, which is small, but enough to steal passwords, etc and transmit them at night when everyone's screensaver is running to a nearby hidden radio. c) He did this in Linux with XFree86.
I find this totally cool. He also suggests that a graphics card could make a radio transmitter; this is also extremely cool. You can now publish over the airwaves. That would make a great icecast/shoutcast plugin...
Why not mail 3com's linux drivers address, and thank them for all their hard work?
Here, I'll make it easy for you all. linux_drivers@3com.com.. I've already sent them mail thanking them for releasing the source under the GPL, and affirmed that they'll be part of my next purchasing list because of it.
This sort of positive advocacy is what Open Source really lacks; so, come on, click through and mail!
One Reason is that Debian's package management system is so draconian that finding, and fixing, all dependency problems with apt takes too long for certain packages. This means developers take a long time to get something rolled into apt. In turn, this means it's hard for users to get the software they want for apt. Not just bleeding edge types, but anyone who wants their packages within months of the software release.
Technically superior is less important than useful to most people.
More irritating -- for non-affinity applicants to the IPO, it looks like E*trade opened the conditional offers, and closed them again in under 15 minutes..All old conditional offers are void, and new ones cannot be placed. I'm on the phone with Customers service right now complaining. How were we supposed to make a 15 minute window?
I'd recommend you turn your efforts to an established charity at first.. There are a few reasons for this: 1) They've done the hard legal work, which sounds like one of your concerns. You won't be responsible, you'll just be volunteering. 2) An established charity or organization has a much larger chance of impacting an area -- these people spend every day thinking about how to reach and serve people in a certain community, as opposed to you and I who have day jobs, and will just be starting out with our best guesses as to what will work and what won't.
Also, it's easy to volunteer time to a local charitable organization...Really easy. Most inner city charities and public projects are desparately short staffed, especially when it comes to qualified technical individuals. It's just a matter of finding one. If you have a religious affiliation (that likes children), you might want to start there. Just calling your local YMCA in an urban setting should provide you with some solid leads..
I work with a Christian organization in Cambridge, Mass, for example. It's a collaboration between a Cambridge church (CVCF), full of Ivy League grads with money, or time, (not many have both), and Dorchester Temple, an inner city church with plenty of people, young and old, who would not otherwise have access to computer training, or exposure. The Ivy Leaguers do training at various levels, and are implementing a mentorship program for the kids. Some of the kids want to become entrepeneurs, artists, etc. Totally exciting stuff! It's easy, too..anyone on slashdot could make an impact -- the inner city is still largely at a mid-80s level of computer education.
I'll stop my exuberant cheering, here. But, in short, a couple of phone calls should book as much of your time as you'd like to fill helping charitable organizations, and they'll probably be able to help you fulfill your dreams of helping out much sooner than you could do on your own.
Well, opening price is different from the IPO price. Note MP3, which opened at like $100, and dropped all day. The IPO price on MP3 was like $28. The first day close of $60 something meant everybody made money. I don't know the store on Quokka.com, however, so YMMV. And, yes, many IPOs fail, (remember Wired's IPO a few years ago?) the market rejects them, and everyone gets screwed.
The General Public will be able to participate in the purchase and sale of RedHat stock the day of the Public Offering. It's not clear what day that will be. All the hooplah here is because certain investors (myself included) expect the pre public offering price to be significantly lower than the high price and low price on the first day of trading. Thus, if one can get in before day 1 of trading, some money can be made.
If you just dig the idea of owning RedHat, wait until a week or so after the offering, when most of the hype has bled out of the stock, and buy it.
For an interesting historical look at a successful IPO, and the weeks after, take a look at the first month of ebay pricing. It dropped for the first two weeks, and then took off again. For a look at a stock that probably won't do that, check out Be's stock (BEOS). My bet is that BEOS is going to sit where it is for a while.
Many early PC games did this. (I'm talking like early..Sierra's first game, oh I forget the name. It involved crossing a desert, and finding a magic pair of shoes with the word Shazam on them.
Also I recall a game for the XT called "BigTop" which had its own OS.
The reason it's a horrible idea is...you're stuck with their OS!
Why lose all the benefits of your shiny new kernel and system? Do you really expect your game publisher to provide updates for your TNT2.9a, which has a compatibility problem with your ATA/66 controller and celerons? They will not. I'll just burst your bubble now.
Especially because Games tend to push technology, it's hard to imagine a game publisher keeping up on drivers and OS issues enough to create their own distribution. Really Hard.
Additionally, you may want to reboot, but the vast majority of Linux users love linux (in part) because frequent reboots are not necessary.
In short this is like replacing a horse's front legs with wheels. It looks cool, but won't get you where you want to go.
MP3.com's stock is so high because people are buying into the idea of MP3s with MP3.com, not any profitability, etc.
You make a bet with MP3.com that it will become the dissemination spot for MP3s in the next few years, and that owning the online MP3 market is worth something.
That's the reason it's bid into the billions; people are buying a chance at ownership of all online MP3 distribution.
If this doesn't make sense to you, then amazon.com stock prices probably don't either, for the same reason -- people are buying the risky chance that amazon.com will become the online clearing house for many goods.
Note that amazon.com is down today on their earnings reports, which are not substantially lower than analysts expected. What's lower is the volume growth in revenue -- the market is upset that amazon is not growing quickly. They're perfectly happy to fund a cash-loss business scheme at this point, as evidenced by amazon.com's market-cap. They're not pleased that amazon.com's growth is slowing.
It will be the same story with RedHat -- the market will be buying "Linux" by buying redhat. Expect it to be huge.
Incidentally, I did get in on the MP3 IPO. Tripled my money in 2 hours. I will do the same for RedHat if I can get any shares.
In my experience a pompous ass who works his undergrads like they were grad students, but provides no credit or job security.
When I took his intro to CS programming course, he appeared in the same sweater you see in the picture, with Birkenstocks and red socks. Eek. Ah well. I now make more money than his professors salary. Without his damn class.
Slashdot Mirror
Geeks, especially ubergeeks, tend to have a perspective that they know better than their management how computers should be run. I think this is understandable, and makes sense from a geek point of view. As a geek and manager, I also understand the management point of view.
Frequently, conflicts arise between policy (management) and desire (geek). Management usually wins the war of words with their geeks, but it does not always win the war of intentions.
Randall fits a classic ubergeek profile, from reading his responses -- he apparently
- values convenience over policy
- sees himself as a (potentially) anarchic do-gooder
- likes to create clever hacks
- wants to keep his computing options open
Also, please remember that it was 1994; the internet was a wildly different place. Computers with net access were harder to find; security was viewed differently. There wasn't even such a thing as web based e-mail in 1994.A gateway allowing e-mail checking was a compelling application for him. It also would be a compelling application for someone intent on distributing Intel chip design secrets, worth multi-tens of millions. It's not hard to connect the dots, and see why they would prosecute so aggressively, from a different department than the one he worked in. Reading Mark(last name?)'s written comments in the FAQ are pretty illuminating -- he understands exactly what's happened; Randall's mostly do-gooder, some skirt-the-system work was noticed in a particularly sensitive venue in a particularly sensitive company. The rest was just bad bad news.
It fits a pattern that many geeks fall into to comply with the letter of a management law, and skirt the intent for their own convenience. I just call this bad judgment, not criminal intent. (Given the Oregon law, this is not even a valid point where he's being tried, but I believe it is probably personally important to him to make the distinction.)
In any event, regrets / congratulations on the decision, and may you overcome the giant in the end. Also, may your admin duties be either ratified by management, or subdued in the future!
I'm chagrined to see that you and your son are more gracious and funnier than I am. All the best; I think it's clear I need to learn to use your shell.
- Peter Vessenes
I sort of turned over in my sleep, (I was extremely groggy), and said "I hate the Korn shell." and went back to bed. Adam never really talked to me after that, although he was polite enough to me at parties.
So, Dr. Korn, I feel I owe you an apology. I didn't mean to disrespect your lifework in front of your son! I still can't use the korn shell, but call it fear of the unknown, please, rather than lucid comments on your code.
Peter Vessenes, Brown '97
Now, (3.5 years later), I have a 3.5 lb laptop, with a 166mhz pentium chip and 240 megabytes of ram. it's about an inch thick, and it cost me $800 used. I love this thing! I use it for word processing, e-mail, ssh, and the occasional web browsing. It's the same size as a pad of paper. I'm not writing a novel with it -- it's not my work computer. I just use it for basic functionality.
The transmeta laptops fill this need for me PERFECTLY. They're small, their battery life is (conservatively) double the length of my current laptop's, and they're at least twice as fast. I might get to put some games on this thing. But, if I don't, and I only word process, that will be fine. Why? I just use it for basic functionality. On a plane, when I'm carrying it on my back, the damn thing better be light. And, if it's got wireless networking, that doubles the effectiveness. But, if it doesn't have DVD, or even a CD-ROM, does that matter? No, because I just use it for basic functionality. My 2cents.
Developers, are you listening?
Note current slashdot article.
example quote:
You can do this now in XFree86, (and hence KDE); you just set your virtual desktop size larger than your chosen screen resolution.
Wow.
I believe you and I are in exactly the same gaming universe. I would rate all games on the same scale as you, in fact. Impressive!
I played Ultima IV on the PC, but other than that.. I just played nethack tonight. (solidarity solidarity solidarity)
I played the mines of moria on CDC's Plato system up through the mid 1980s, actually! Wow, this totally takes me back. I'd play until 3 am every day of the summer (3 being when the system went down)... And, another one I just loved, called...Oh, damn. Don't remember. It was a pre-wizardry type game with 3-d isometric wire graphics, hundreds of levels, multi-user parties, and a full economy, including supply and demand based shopping.
Gameplay has not actually improved very much in the last 15 years. Anyone else want to reminisce about Plato?
Acutally, yes, the hardware grabbing of computer information is also referred to as Van Eck phreaking, thanks to Neil Stephenson for popularizing the term. Markus refers to it as "Tempest," and in the case of using software to grab information, "Soft Tempest."
This article quotes sony as saying that the PSX2 will use PC Card slots for expansion, and USB ports as well: http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990302S0026 . This is news to me! I thought I'd kept up on the PSX2 pretty well, but I think we have a viable thin-client computer here. If only we could have a small hard drive on the thing. Well, I guess I'm assuming ethernet will take up the PC Card slot. Perhaps not, we could use a USB->Ethernet connection, and slam 340meg or so into the PC Card slot.
This is a great deal: $400 for a game console, and a thin-client (or server) for the internet.
This is somewhat related --
Markus Kuhn, a researcher at Cambridge University published a paper in 1997 on using monitors to emit radio frequencies which could be picked up by a short wave radio. His goal was to provide covert information dissemination techniques that worked solely in software. (His other goal was to provide information protection techniques that worked solely in software. I think the dissemination stuff is cooler. He's a good guy, though in my opinion.)
The upshot of his research is that
a) A computer monitor can be made to make certain visual patterns which will sound like something on a nearby radio
b) You can get about 6 bytes per second like that, which is small, but enough to steal passwords, etc and transmit them at night when everyone's screensaver is running to a nearby hidden radio.
c) He did this in Linux with XFree86.
I find this totally cool. He also suggests that a graphics card could make a radio transmitter; this is also extremely cool. You can now publish over the airwaves. That would make a great icecast/shoutcast plugin...
The paper is at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-t empest.pdf.
His homepage is at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25.
Why not mail 3com's linux drivers address, and thank them for all their hard work?
Here, I'll make it easy for you all. linux_drivers@3com.com.. I've already sent them mail thanking them for releasing the source under the GPL, and affirmed that they'll be part of my next purchasing list because of it.
This sort of positive advocacy is what Open Source really lacks; so, come on, click through and mail!
One Reason is that Debian's package management system is so draconian that finding, and fixing, all dependency problems with apt takes too long for certain packages. This means developers take a long time to get something rolled into apt. In turn, this means it's hard for users to get the software they want for apt. Not just bleeding edge types, but anyone who wants their packages within months of the software release.
Technically superior is less important than useful to most people.
E*Trade will not help you if you're not an affinity customer. I just spoke to three customer service reps -- the conversations went like
"The window was open approximately forty minutes, between 10:05AM EST, and 10:50AM EST."
I say, "Then why did I get an alert at 10:38 AM? Wouldn't you agree that's an unreasonable amount of time to notice, and react?"
"Well, sir,
"Yes, but was it too much to ask that you notify us more than 10 minutes before the offering closed? I'm extremely pissed off!"
"..."
More irritating -- for non-affinity applicants
to the IPO, it looks like E*trade opened the
conditional offers, and closed them again in
under 15 minutes..All old conditional offers
are void, and new ones cannot be placed. I'm
on the phone with Customers service right now complaining. How were we supposed to make a 15 minute window?
I'd recommend you turn your efforts to an established charity at first.. There are a few reasons for this: 1) They've done the hard legal work, which sounds like one of your concerns. You won't be responsible, you'll just be volunteering. 2) An established charity or organization has a much larger chance of impacting an area -- these people spend every day thinking about how to reach and serve people in a certain community, as opposed to you and I who have day jobs, and will just be starting out with our best guesses as to what will work and what won't.
Also, it's easy to volunteer time to a local charitable organization...Really easy. Most inner city charities and public projects are desparately short staffed, especially when it comes to qualified technical individuals. It's just a matter of finding one. If you have a religious affiliation (that likes children), you might want to start there. Just calling your local YMCA in an urban setting should provide you with some solid leads..
I work with a Christian organization in Cambridge, Mass, for example. It's a collaboration between a Cambridge church (CVCF), full of Ivy League grads with money, or time, (not many have both), and Dorchester Temple, an inner city church with plenty of people, young and old, who would not otherwise have access to computer training, or exposure. The Ivy Leaguers do training at various levels, and are implementing a mentorship program for the kids. Some of the kids want to become entrepeneurs, artists, etc. Totally exciting stuff! It's easy, too..anyone on slashdot could make an impact -- the inner city is still largely at a mid-80s level of computer education.
I'll stop my exuberant cheering, here. But, in short, a couple of phone calls should book as much of your time as you'd like to fill helping charitable organizations, and they'll probably be able to help you fulfill your dreams of helping out much sooner than you could do on your own.
(e-mail Andrew Sears for more information.)
Although I usually don't reply to ACs, this link gives part of the story:
Here. Essentially, Wired kept trying, and nobody would buy. Failure.
Well, opening price is different from the IPO price. Note MP3, which opened at like $100, and dropped all day. The IPO price on MP3 was like $28. The first day close of $60 something meant
everybody made money. I don't know the store on Quokka.com, however, so YMMV. And, yes, many IPOs fail, (remember Wired's IPO a few years ago?) the market rejects them, and everyone gets screwed.
The General Public will be able to participate in the purchase and sale of RedHat stock the day of the Public Offering. It's not clear what day that will be. All the hooplah here is because certain investors (myself included) expect the pre public offering price to be significantly lower than the high price and low price on the first day of trading. Thus, if one can get in before day 1 of trading, some money can be made.
If you just dig the idea of owning RedHat, wait until a week or so after the offering, when most of the hype has bled out of the stock, and buy it.
For an interesting historical look at a successful IPO, and the weeks after, take a look at the first month of ebay pricing. It dropped for the first two weeks, and then took off again. For a look at a stock that probably won't do that, check out Be's stock (BEOS). My bet is that BEOS is going to sit where it is for a while.
This is a horrible idea.
Many early PC games did this. (I'm talking
like early..Sierra's first game, oh I forget
the name. It involved crossing a desert, and
finding a magic pair of shoes with the word
Shazam on them.
Also I recall a game for the XT called "BigTop"
which had its own OS.
The reason it's a horrible idea is...you're
stuck with their OS!
Why lose all the benefits of your
shiny new kernel and system? Do you really expect
your game publisher to provide updates for your
TNT2.9a, which has a compatibility problem with
your ATA/66 controller and celerons? They
will not. I'll just burst your bubble now.
Especially because Games tend to push technology,
it's hard to imagine a game publisher keeping up
on drivers and OS issues enough to create their
own distribution. Really Hard.
Additionally, you may want to reboot, but the
vast majority of Linux users love linux
(in part) because frequent reboots are not
necessary.
In short this is like replacing a horse's front
legs with wheels. It looks cool, but won't
get you where you want to go.
Certain people in the Open Source community
were forwarded a pre offer in a letter from
RedHat, apparently.
The rest of the IPO investors are unable to
indicate interest yet; E*trade seems to be
saying mid-to late August.
Sadly, I'm not one of those who got the letter,
so I don't have the special URL. Anyone want
to mail it to me? peterv[at]ivcfne.org..
MP3.com's stock is so high because people are
buying into the idea of MP3s with
MP3.com, not any profitability, etc.
You make a bet with MP3.com that it will become
the dissemination spot for MP3s in the
next few years, and that owning the online
MP3 market is worth something.
That's the reason it's bid into the billions;
people are buying a chance at ownership of
all online MP3 distribution.
If this doesn't make sense to you, then amazon.com
stock prices probably don't either, for the
same reason -- people are buying the risky
chance that amazon.com will become the online
clearing house for many goods.
Note that amazon.com is down today on their
earnings reports, which are not substantially
lower than analysts expected. What's lower
is the volume growth in revenue -- the market
is upset that amazon is not growing quickly.
They're perfectly happy to fund a cash-loss
business scheme at this point, as evidenced
by amazon.com's market-cap. They're not pleased
that amazon.com's growth is slowing.
It will be the same story with RedHat --
the market will be buying "Linux" by buying
redhat. Expect it to be huge.
Incidentally, I did get in on the MP3 IPO.
Tripled my money in 2 hours. I will do the
same for RedHat if I can get any shares.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/avd
In my experience a pompous ass who works his undergrads like they were grad students,
but provides no credit or job security.
When I took his intro to CS programming course, he appeared in the same sweater you
see in the picture, with Birkenstocks and red socks. Eek. Ah well. I now make more money
than his professors salary. Without his damn class.
Clearly I am bitter. : ).