Another flawed strategy, the first suggestion on the main page, is to contact the DMA. Compliance with the Direct Marketing Association 'Don't call' list is purely voluntary. Few telemarketers check it (even if they're members of the DMA)...
I have to say, while this is true, I have used the DMA to reduce the amount of junk mail I've gotten. The relevant web page is at http://www.the-dma.org/con sumers/consumerassistance.html. (It's a couple short links from there to the actual forms for removing yourself from the lists.)
I noticed that they are now offering a service for removing yourself from email lists, which I haven't tried, but I can vouch for the telemarketing and mass mailing stuff, which in my case worked quite well (though not a complete solution).
At one job once, an coworker called in to the IS department and asked if her computer could be leaking. (There was a puddle of water on the floor.) We laughed our heads off over that one. Now, it could be coming true.
I wonder what they'll do to boost the second volume, "The Two Towers." Most people find that volume to be a hard bridge to cross between the more exciting introduction and conclusion volumes.
The Two Towers is great, and not only on a "war strategy" level:
The strange alliance of Frodo and Gollum comes into play.
The ents are introduced. Treebeard is one of the most memorable characters (at least for the young reader).
Gandalf confronts Saruman, something that was set up when he mysteriously vanished in the first book.
Everything almost falls apart when Pippin is tempted by the Palantir. It's the only time we actually see the face of Sauron, in the whole book.
As an open source coder from a (third world|developing|whatever) country, could you comment on the prospects of the open source model as it relates to the zillions of folks in the world compared to the closed source proprietary stuff our of Redmond (and elsewhere)?
Specifically, it seems like places without a lot of cash can adopt one of three paths:
pirate closed source software
pay an arm and a leg through the nose
open source
What the real status as you see it? And where is it going? And are the pointy haired jefes any wiser than their industrialized counterparts?
And they can steer the satellites to re-enter them in the middle of the ocean so there's no hazard even if they did reach ground level.
Speak for yourself! The Interplanetary Federation of Octopi consider sea-crashing sattelites a majorly life threatening danger. That's why we constructed a thick shell of ice on our home planet of Europa.
There was a low budget, very funny, sci-fi flick (early 80's?) called Dark Star that had a talking nuclear bomb stuck in the starship bay that was *determined* to detonate on schedule. The captain had to make a daring spacewalk to reason with the bomb and convince it not to go off. This conversation went off into a metaphysical contemplation of sorts.
My threshold is set to 2 and I just did a quick and dirty word count of the postings on this subject so far.
The word intuitive was used 60 times.
The word consistent was used twice.
My sense is that most people here are saying that an intuitive interface is difficult or hard to create. (Who was it that said "The only intuitive interface is the nipple"?) But I think that most people agree that consistent interfaces are easier to learn -- that is, once you've learned your CLI, emacs, or GUI interface, something that's a lot like it is easier to use.
Forget about whether this is a good idea or not (for a minute). But assuming it does happen, where would they draw the line between OS and apps?
Obviously, MS-Office would go to the apps company, and MS-Windows 9X and NT would go to the OS company. But who would get IE? What about Notepad, Wordpad, Paint? (They're currently distributed with the OS, but they are applications.)
Who would/should decide this? What would MS want? What would the DOJ want? What would we want? Why?
Any thoughts on this out there?
And does a MS Internet Services company have a chance?
...but they are also giving up security, important benefits and entangling themselves in a potential tax nightmare. Unless you know that you are dealing with savvy business people, I would question the wisdom of your contractors.
Just an observation: How much someone values security and benefits, etc. doesn't necessarily map to how well he/she codes or what his/her job skills are.
A very enjoyable, heart-warming movie, brilliantly acted by Cliff Robertson. His transition from addled to super-intelligent and back again was astonishing. Probably one of the lowest-budget "science fiction" movies ever made, based on the short story "Flowers for Algernon," which is a must read. There have been many "mentally challenged to mental giant" movies since, but this was the first and best. "
The fact that Linux and GNU software are open sourced is a fundamentally different and institutional change that the Suck author misses. Of course the appearance of cold hard cash will have an effect on the whole community. It is, however, too soon to say what that effect will be.
All the cash in the world doesn't (by itself) undo what has already been done. That would take a techonological breakthrough that leaves Linux and GNU in the dust, but is also closed source. I don't see it. Do you?
Software is too easy to copy (legally or illegally) for it to remain tied up in a basement in Redmond. The open source community has pointed that out, and extended the concept by setting the bits free. That this is being accepted by Wall Street just underlines the fact that we were right from the beginning. That Wall Street is here now will change things. We just don't know how.
Yeah, and Alfred E Einstein couldn't even remember his own phone number, yet he was no sloucher! (Not at all.)
Just cause people can't find an ocean on a blank map (like, is that a map on a blank piece of paper or what?), doesn't mean it matters. The fact is no one has used the Atlantic Ocean since 1492! Who needs it?
Besides, we just found a new ocean on Titan, so who can be expected to keep track of these things when they keep changing all the time anyway?
Let's say for the sake of argument that he's right though, and Easy PC's with Linux take off and make a serious dent in Windows. Even then, we'll have a problem (I predict).
Ever notice how a new PC user starts by saying "All I need is word processing (or email, or whatever)..." but down the line a year or so, they end up wanting more functionality just because they now realize there's so much more it can do? The same thing will happen here. Aunt Bertha will get her computer to do email and web surfing and then will see someone running the latest version of Micros~1 Outlook with God knows what new whiz bang feature she now wants. She'll want to run it and won't be able to, unless we want to write an app to do what she wants. And most of the kind of apps we value don't fit into the mold of what Aunt Bertha wants, so there's a high probability for conflict.
If this comes to pass, I bet it'll be followed by a "consumer backlash" against Linux or whatever OS ends up running on these boxes.
Well, maybe "fair" isn't exactly the right word (but it does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people), but I don't think it works economically to force people into a higher cost lifestyle simply because of where they live. The whole world can't live in the cities. Some people need to live on the farms. If it costs more to serve them than it does us, we're going to be paying for it one way or another.
Let's say it does cost ten times as much to send a letter to my a guy out on the farm than it does to send the same letter to a friend across town. If I pay $2.00 for one and $0.20 for the other, I'm subsidizing the rural guy when I send him a letter. He's going to be paying more for postage than I am, so he'll have to raise the price of his corn and soy beans, which will affect anyone who eats.
Hmmm... There's also going to be a lot of people living in places in between those two extremes ($0.20 and $2.00). Isn't there already enough complexity in postage prices? Why add more?
Iit's gotta be most expensive to deliver mail (or electricity and telephone services for that matter) to rural areas. If folks out on the farm had to pay ten times as much to mail their payments in to the phone company as I did (living in the city), it just wouldn't be fair. Some things are better priced if you spread out the cost and we all share and share alike. Pretty much any communications infrastructure falls into this category.
>Airlines.... From California, you can usually get to Bangkok cheaper than you can get to New York.
Yeah. And from California, you can get to New York cheaper than you can get to Des Moines or Omaha, or any other place about half way there. What gives? Must be the strange laws of the marketplace in action.
I mean really, where can I get one of those skimpy black dresses to try on? I can just image going out on a hot and heavy date wearing only software. That would be an eye turner!
Sorehand has a bunch of information about RSI which I found quite useful as I was going thourhg these problems a few years ago. Especially useful to me was the mailing list and The Typing Injury FAQ
people can then say "Well, windows is open source too - so the only difference between windows and Linux is Linux crashes less".
Reality check. People will also talk about how many applications are available for Windows and how easy they are to use. It makes no difference to the end user whether they are unable to use the OS because it keeps crashing (Windows) or because they don't know how (Linux) or because they can't find an application to do what they need (Linux).
Slashdot Mirror
Another flawed strategy, the first suggestion on the main page, is to contact the DMA. Compliance with the Direct Marketing Association 'Don't call' list is purely voluntary. Few telemarketers check it (even if they're members of the DMA)...
I have to say, while this is true, I have used the DMA to reduce the amount of junk mail I've gotten. The relevant web page is at http://www.the-dma.org/con sumers/consumerassistance.html. (It's a couple short links from there to the actual forms for removing yourself from the lists.)
I noticed that they are now offering a service for removing yourself from email lists, which I haven't tried, but I can vouch for the telemarketing and mass mailing stuff, which in my case worked quite well (though not a complete solution).
such as Colombian. Which I probably spelt wrong
Know, ewe spelled it write. :-)
At one job once, an coworker called in to the IS department and asked if her computer could be leaking. (There was a puddle of water on the floor.) We laughed our heads off over that one. Now, it could be coming true.
The Two Towers is great, and not only on a "war strategy" level:
As an open source coder from a (third world|developing|whatever) country, could you comment on the prospects of the open source model as it relates to the zillions of folks in the world compared to the closed source proprietary stuff our of Redmond (and elsewhere)?
Specifically, it seems like places without a lot of cash can adopt one of three paths:
What the real status as you see it? And where is it going? And are the pointy haired jefes any wiser than their industrialized counterparts?
Speak for yourself! The Interplanetary Federation of Octopi consider sea-crashing sattelites a majorly life threatening danger. That's why we constructed a thick shell of ice on our home planet of Europa.
It just means that more people will be able to move their Active Server Pages based sites off of the micros~1 platform when they next have a problem.
(Same punchline later on in the movie.)
My threshold is set to 2 and I just did a quick and dirty word count of the postings on this subject so far.
The word intuitive was used 60 times.
The word consistent was used twice.
My sense is that most people here are saying that an intuitive interface is difficult or hard to create. (Who was it that said "The only intuitive interface is the nipple"?) But I think that most people agree that consistent interfaces are easier to learn -- that is, once you've learned your CLI, emacs, or GUI interface, something that's a lot like it is easier to use.
Due to flagrant inaccuracies this article has been pulled and is being re-written.
Occasionally one of these slips through the editorial process.
Computer Currents regrets the error.
February 11,2000 11:17:00 AM PST
From Phoenix's press release:
The Crusoe processor family consists of two solutions, the TM5400 and the TM5400, for the Mobile Internet Computing market.
Only two chips? And both with the same model number? Geez! Intel and AMD each gotta put of zillions of chips.
Forget about whether this is a good idea or not (for a minute). But assuming it does happen, where would they draw the line between OS and apps?
Obviously, MS-Office would go to the apps company, and MS-Windows 9X and NT would go to the OS company. But who would get IE? What about Notepad, Wordpad, Paint? (They're currently distributed with the OS, but they are applications.)
Who would/should decide this? What would MS want? What would the DOJ want? What would we want? Why?
Any thoughts on this out there?
And does a MS Internet Services company have a chance?
that the number of times the End of Moore's Law is predicted doubles every sixteen months?
The sorehand mailing list (web site at http://www.ucsf.edu/sorehand/) helped me through a bad bout of RSI several years ago.
Just an observation: How much someone values security and benefits, etc. doesn't necessarily map to how well he/she codes or what his/her job skills are.
Yeah. that was it. Also made into a movie called "Charly". Charly was the name of the retarded man they worked on. Algernon was the mouse.
All the cash in the world doesn't (by itself) undo what has already been done. That would take a techonological breakthrough that leaves Linux and GNU in the dust, but is also closed source. I don't see it. Do you?
Software is too easy to copy (legally or illegally) for it to remain tied up in a basement in Redmond. The open source community has pointed that out, and extended the concept by setting the bits free. That this is being accepted by Wall Street just underlines the fact that we were right from the beginning. That Wall Street is here now will change things. We just don't know how.
Yeah, and Alfred E Einstein couldn't even remember his own phone number, yet he was no sloucher! (Not at all.)
Just cause people can't find an ocean on a blank map (like, is that a map on a blank piece of paper or what?), doesn't mean it matters. The fact is no one has used the Atlantic Ocean since 1492! Who needs it?
Besides, we just found a new ocean on Titan, so who can be expected to keep track of these things when they keep changing all the time anyway?
Let's say for the sake of argument that he's right though, and Easy PC's with Linux take off and make a serious dent in Windows. Even then, we'll have a problem (I predict).
Ever notice how a new PC user starts by saying "All I need is word processing (or email, or whatever)..." but down the line a year or so, they end up wanting more functionality just because they now realize there's so much more it can do?
The same thing will happen here. Aunt Bertha will get her computer to do email and web surfing and then will see someone running the latest version of Micros~1 Outlook with God knows what new whiz bang feature she now wants. She'll want to run it and won't be able to, unless we want to write an app to do what she wants. And most of the kind of apps we value don't fit into the mold of what Aunt Bertha wants, so there's a high probability for conflict.
If this comes to pass, I bet it'll be followed by a "consumer backlash" against Linux or whatever OS ends up running on these boxes.
Let's say it does cost ten times as much to send a letter to my a guy out on the farm than it does to send the same letter to a friend across town. If I pay $2.00 for one and $0.20 for the other, I'm subsidizing the rural guy when I send him a letter. He's going to be paying more for postage than I am, so he'll have to raise the price of his corn and soy beans, which will affect anyone who eats.
Hmmm... There's also going to be a lot of people living in places in between those two extremes ($0.20 and $2.00). Isn't there already enough complexity in postage prices? Why add more?
Iit's gotta be most expensive to deliver mail (or electricity and telephone services for that matter) to rural areas. If folks out on the farm had to pay ten times as much to mail their payments in to the phone company as I did (living in the city), it just wouldn't be fair. Some things are better priced if you spread out the cost and we all share and share alike. Pretty much any communications infrastructure falls into this category.
>Airlines.... From California, you can usually get to Bangkok cheaper than you can get to New York.
Yeah. And from California, you can get to New York cheaper than you can get to Des Moines or Omaha, or any other place about half way there. What gives? Must be the strange laws of the marketplace in action.
I mean really, where can I get one of those skimpy black dresses to try on?
I can just image going out on a hot and heavy date wearing only software. That would be an eye turner!
Yep! I got Han Solo on the first try. Will sell my answers on E-Bay to highest bidder (if E-Bay's actually on line).
Sorehand has a bunch of information about RSI which I found quite useful as I was going thourhg these problems a few years ago. Especially useful to me was the mailing list and The Typing Injury FAQ
Reality check. People will also talk about how many applications are available for Windows and how easy they are to use. It makes no difference to the end user whether they are unable to use the OS because it keeps crashing (Windows) or because they don't know how (Linux) or because they can't find an application to do what they need (Linux).
We're on our way, but we're not there yet.