Let's say some poor business has some form of router failure on their internal network and you are in the area. It just so happens that you are a Cisco guru and you know how to get them back in order, but you will require $100 to do it. Unfortunately, they can't pay but their business depends on it.
By your logic, the person's need means that you should give away the service.
This is a parasitic ethic and it makes every competent or productive person a slave to anyone with a need. Granted, I don't like the idea of people dieing because they don't have the means to save themselves. Unfortunately we are talking about the oldest problem on earth. It could be the case that the drug companies are total jerks, but they did the research. I would really like it if they would give it away, but that is their perogative.
Just a personal note, in case someone would think that I don't personally care about AIDS and those who suffer from it. I'm currently raising funds for AIDS research through the AIDS Ride. I think that private donations toward a cure is the way to go. If you feel strongly on the matter, I suggest you endorse and support organizations that are seeking a cure without a profit motive. Sorry for the personal plug, but I want to curtail the person who says that I don't give a damn... I actually do, but I don't expect drug companies to care in the same way I do.
Darn... you took my question already.;) If I may clarify a little, a friend of mine told me this story and I'm really interested to know how true it is:
Microsoft was doing a presentation about the upcoming features of Windows NT 5.0 and the presenter enthusiastically told about how the DOS shell was borrowing many features from ksh. He went on to explain this features and someone in the crowd tried to get the presenter's question. The individual asked a few pointed and technical questions, hinting as some doubt if MS could do what they planned. The presenter "pooh-poohed" the questioner and basically told him the MS engineers would work out the details and that the questioner had nothing to worry about.
At this point, another person stood up and proclaimed, "Do you know that he is David Korn?"
Anyhow, this is the version I know of, and I found the story to be a riot. It is probably off base, but a little more clear than the original poster's description. I'm *really* curious to know how much of this is true.
I'm pretty impressed by this. I'm sure the real hackers, namely the ones who worked on the code and enjoyed tinkering respect this sort of orchestrated response. The 99% of lusers who just bought a card and plugged in the code I'm sure are very ticked off, but they were never into for a good hack, they just wanted free TV.
There may be some ground to say that DirectTV overstepped its bounds to destroy cards that were at one time rightfully sold. I would suspect that their legal department has some sort of "appropriate use" clause. Besides, any one with a functional frontal lobe knows that people were stealing. Those who had their cards fried should think fondly on their time of beating the system, but above all they should respect that DirectTV outsmarted them.
Of course... this assumes that someone isn't right now figuring out a way to reverse the process or come up with a new way of hacking the system. Any way you cut it, this is one of the most interesting and impressive reactions in years. Maybe the cuecat people could take a hint and decide to get smarter instead of making legal threats.
You say that some of your co-workers are quite talented. Have you considered the possibility that they also smell the rotting flesh of the corporation? Plenty of other people will explain why it isn't your job to prop up a failing company. Why not venture on your own... form your own company and invite the talented group to come and join you? I'm sure you don't want to nose dive your current company, but if they are screwed without you, at least you can make something better for you co-workers.
Besides, then you have the joy of reporting your old business to FuckedCompany.com.
I don't understand the allure of IM. I have used it before, but it just feels like stupid email. Before you know it, you have burnt an hour yacking back and forth. I have much more meaningful exchanges over email, where there is a buffer of time. Having something instant often just coddles idle communication.
Maybe I'm old fashioned about it, but I figure IRC is a better way of doing this stuff, but then I also don't like IRC that much. Like MUDs and other things, they steal a lot of time. IRC, MUD and IM are the sitcoms of the internet.
I'm not sure where the mention of delinquient clients comes into this. You always have people who don't pay their bills, and the figure is higher than most people realize. Probably one of the reasons that./ sold out to Andover is because they didn't have a gameplan for dealing with the rigors of selling a service like banner space. That is fine, that probably isn't what they wanted to do, but there are pretty effective tried and true ways to get people to pay their bills. I have found that the casual mention of a collection agency does wonders. It works through my personal site and my business site.
Good points. A former roommate of mine is an audiophile who was on a college budget, consequently he had to seek every affordable performance advantage. He found that placement had a profound effect on his modest (yet still high end) equipment. He used a laser pointer to verify that the speakers were directed to the sweat spot. He also used a decibal meeter to balance the audio. He also had a DVD which helped calibrate the color settings of his TV. Through a bit of reading and effort he made a noticable improvement over even an informed placement of speakers.
This is the worst "ask slashdot" ever. The questions were much more insightful than the answers. In the future I hope that./ screens potential interviewees for their ability to carry a coherent thought. Even the interview with Lars Ulrich of Metallica was better, and he had someone dictate his spoken response.
He compares OOP to Communism. Give me a break. This is really a matter of perception. He sees it as beaurocratic to have a series of steps before calling a final proceedure. To me this looks orderly and increases the odds that my superclasses or logic wrappers can catch sequence errors.
The athor actually makes a few good arguments, but it takes some effort to get past laughable comparisons like OOP and Communism. Oh well, I don't mind being a Java programmer, comrade.
As a regular user of Mac OS X I can say that it has staved off any desire for me to jump ship to LinuxPPC. I'm aware of some limitations and quirks with Mac OS X, however it satisfies enough of my need for more power to settle my restlessness. Before Mac OS X I almost always had my mac set to dual boot into some other OS, but these days I live in comfort with one OS on my mac. Of course, I admin a bunch of other boxen so my fingers don't get rusty to other systems, but I think it is a good workstation OS for my purposes.
My company rolled its own software. Although many principles would apply to many businesses, we wanted the flexibility of our own system. Don't get me wrong, and open source solution could be modified and flexed sure enough, but this was just the particular path we chose. The only reason we haven't opened the source for our system is because it is so custom that we doubt if others would find value in it. If you are running an ISP then you may find it a helpful experience to do your own system. Eventually you may be called upon to do it for a client, assuming you also do development.
Slightly off topic, but a fun way to threaten with the IRS. In times past when I got some spam where a person claimed to have made 50k last year from [insert scam here] *and* they used a valid email address I write back. I have written back basically saying:
I'm so glad this has worked for you. Since you are volunteering that you made 50k I'm sure you will remember to report it to the IRS this year. For your convenience I'm copying this message to the IRS also. Good luck avoiding an audit!
As some others have pointed out, this announcement doesn't bring Aqua and X together, but Tenon has a neat product called Xtools which basically lets you run X programs seamlessly under Aqua. I'm using it now and it is pretty impressive.
Personally I decline to play ball. I would like digital TV, but if I'm treated like a criminal then I'll find my entertainment elsewhere. It is not necessary to be a media consumer. I repeat... you don't have to consume media. Most people will continue, and it bums me out to see the industry do this stuff, but I'll get my kicks elsewhere.
Thank you for stating exactly what I was thinking. I also despise other combo devices because they alway go cheap on something. Of course the person who asked the question didn't really ask about a good setup, but we have to assume that some people care about quality. Your point about the interconnects is valid, and most people are shocked to find out how much a decent cable actually costs. I have an audiophile friend who even explains how it is important to make sure that you don't ever reverse your cables. That is a little extreme for me, but I have never heard good audio come from a chincy combo unit.
I believe I did make the obligitory statement that there are a few exceptions, but the fact is that most people give lip service to health and then ignore it, especially around this time of year.
As an example, I woke up at 6am on Thanksgiving morning to go for a bike ride. Later that afternoon I had a large meal along with the rest of the family. Naturally some people started bemoaning how much they have eaten and they start to exclaim how they will gain weight. I politely suggested the idea of going for a evening walk to get a little excercise and no one was interested. Mind you, this is a room full of able bodied people who simply don't give a damn. They want to complain. They want an excuse, but I guarantee you they don't really want fitness.
The fact is that fitness isn't easy. If it were I suppose everyone would do it. There are some who simply can't excercise, and that is unfortunate, but the fact is that most people simply don't make it a priority. If something is a priority you find a way to do it.
It's a choice. Plain and simple. The way I see it, a person can choose the discipline required for good fitness or they can choose to suffer the consequences. The consequences may take 40 years to manifest, and there are always exceptions to the rule, but everyone has the choice. Hurt now under your own volition or hurt when it is generally too late to make a significant difference in the outcome.
and I'm tired of people complaining that they have no control over their own bodies. I'm amazed at how many excuses people will make in order to justify their choice to be unhealthy. Granted, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but if most people put half as much energy into their diet as they do into their bag of excuses, they would be fine.
Personally, I am very athletic. I do aerobic exercise over 20 hours a week (cycling) and my body fat is about 4%. I don't expect everyone to do what I do, but I hurt on a daily basis for my fitness. Incidentally, I have to consume about 3500 calories a day (versus the normal 2500) in order to maintain good health.
My point here is that everyone has ownership of their health and excuses are pretty easy to come up with. This may seem a little harsh, but I see pain as a way of life. If it is important you are willing to hurt for it. I would prefer if people who avoid good diets and fitness would simply say that it isn't a priority than shrug it off as being too hard.
As a citizen of Washington, I take offense to these statements, but this is a typical type of response unfortunately. If you think denying 600,000 people who live and work in DC representation, then I am saddened. This is a very unique city, and it bears many costs so that people from all over the world can come, visit and litter the landscape.
I have met tons of people who wise crack about DC, but once they spend a little time here they realize it is a fine city. When they find out that we are taxed without representation in congress, they are usually amazed. What? Don't we live in America?
I don't entirely agree. I learned things by RTFM and figuring stuff out and I have seen people who had their hands held. Many of them expect it all their lives. It may seem a little harsh, but I think that any difficult task simply requires the personal effort to learn it. Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place. I have encountered my share of elite responses to my questions, and I try to be polite when someone is trying to take my time to comprehend basic things. Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.
...but not for anyone else. This is one of the stupidest ideas I have heard in a while. It reminds of when people had email addresses from prodigy that looked like "h378cg@prodigy.com". It looks like a squirrel ran over the keyboard. The simple truth is that people remember names better than numbers.
I have a theory that even phone numbers will go to the wayside in the 5-10 year range. Seriously, why should I have to remember Joe Blow's phone number? A good phone service would be a voice recognition which lets me say in effect that I want to talk to Joe Blow in Detroit. The system then would do the dirty work of resolving this into a phone number. Just as we think it is antiquated how our grandparents had to ask an operator to connect the wires to make a call, or use a party line, I believe remembering phone numbers will a thing of the past in the near future.
I'm rambling just a little, but the point is that the future involves letting machines do what they do well... dealing with number. Let us humans do what we do well, interconnnecting concepts. Names have better hinges to concepts than numbers for most of us.
I have never understood the big deal with training. You pay thousands of dollars to send your employees to day classes and they party by night. Sure, they come back with a few more notions and paperwork to prove they attended the training, but it doesn't seem like that great of an investment to me.
I have been given the opportunity several times to go to training, but the company puts my neck in a noose with a contract. No thank you, I would rather buy the O'Reilly book.
This is what really bothers me... most of this training stuff can be figured out if the person just spends a little time reading and thinking through matters. Being sent to a training session has all the appearance of learning something (just like college courses), but it doesn't compare with spending some time learning it yourself. This route does have some limitations, especially if you are learning a proprietary technology. In my company we solve that problem by adopting no proprietary technologies. Basically, if O'Reilly doesn't write a book about it (or they conceivably couldn't do so) then we don't adopt the technology. It is really that simple.
I miss the days when space exploration didn't have to pay for itself and when everyone was simply in awe of the fact that we were exploring space. I've heard some very negative things about space exploration, basically saying that the only good result of NASA is the production of that Tang drink. It is a shame.
While reading this article I'm sure some people were thinking of the investment possibilities of funding an asteroid mining operation. The thought of a multi-trillion dollar asteroid is appealing, but the article takes a pretty naive view of wealth.
We really live in a world of plenty. There is more than enough food and resources for everyone on earth, but a small portion of the population controls the majority of the resources for political reasons. Make no doubt about it, the same entities which control the majority of wealth now would claim ownership of space resources. I doubt if this would improve the lives of the disenfranchised or make many changes here on earth.
I can definitely see how this would make long term space station operation more affordable. In fact, I would tend to think that the most sensible route would be to use a large asteroid as a space station foundation. Build the station on the asteroid itself. I can't see the point of harvesting the materials and moving them to another location. This probably relates to the potential for altering the trajectory of an asteroid for our purposes, and I'll confess I'm not familiar with the challenges of doing this.
I'm rambling a bit, but my point is that pure science shouldn't have to promise us that it can turn lead to gold or turn a profit. It also shouldn't imply that riches in space will change the inequity of life on earth, because that is a political and social challenge that science is largely unable to affect.
I did notice a bit much of the technology brain rot in SV and I currently live in Washington DC and feel much more balanced out here. The little known fact is that there is a very vibrant technology culture out here, but it doesn't dominate the cultural scene... it compliments it.
Slashdot Mirror
By your logic, the person's need means that you should give away the service.
This is a parasitic ethic and it makes every competent or productive person a slave to anyone with a need. Granted, I don't like the idea of people dieing because they don't have the means to save themselves. Unfortunately we are talking about the oldest problem on earth. It could be the case that the drug companies are total jerks, but they did the research. I would really like it if they would give it away, but that is their perogative.
Just a personal note, in case someone would think that I don't personally care about AIDS and those who suffer from it. I'm currently raising funds for AIDS research through the AIDS Ride. I think that private donations toward a cure is the way to go. If you feel strongly on the matter, I suggest you endorse and support organizations that are seeking a cure without a profit motive. Sorry for the personal plug, but I want to curtail the person who says that I don't give a damn... I actually do, but I don't expect drug companies to care in the same way I do.
Microsoft was doing a presentation about the upcoming features of Windows NT 5.0 and the presenter enthusiastically told about how the DOS shell was borrowing many features from ksh. He went on to explain this features and someone in the crowd tried to get the presenter's question. The individual asked a few pointed and technical questions, hinting as some doubt if MS could do what they planned. The presenter "pooh-poohed" the questioner and basically told him the MS engineers would work out the details and that the questioner had nothing to worry about.
At this point, another person stood up and proclaimed, "Do you know that he is David Korn?"
Anyhow, this is the version I know of, and I found the story to be a riot. It is probably off base, but a little more clear than the original poster's description. I'm *really* curious to know how much of this is true.
There may be some ground to say that DirectTV overstepped its bounds to destroy cards that were at one time rightfully sold. I would suspect that their legal department has some sort of "appropriate use" clause. Besides, any one with a functional frontal lobe knows that people were stealing. Those who had their cards fried should think fondly on their time of beating the system, but above all they should respect that DirectTV outsmarted them.
Of course... this assumes that someone isn't right now figuring out a way to reverse the process or come up with a new way of hacking the system. Any way you cut it, this is one of the most interesting and impressive reactions in years. Maybe the cuecat people could take a hint and decide to get smarter instead of making legal threats.
Besides, then you have the joy of reporting your old business to FuckedCompany.com.
Maybe I'm old fashioned about it, but I figure IRC is a better way of doing this stuff, but then I also don't like IRC that much. Like MUDs and other things, they steal a lot of time. IRC, MUD and IM are the sitcoms of the internet.
I'm not sure where the mention of delinquient clients comes into this. You always have people who don't pay their bills, and the figure is higher than most people realize. Probably one of the reasons that ./ sold out to Andover is because they didn't have a gameplan for dealing with the rigors of selling a service like banner space. That is fine, that probably isn't what they wanted to do, but there are pretty effective tried and true ways to get people to pay their bills. I have found that the casual mention of a collection agency does wonders. It works through my personal site and my business site.
Good points. A former roommate of mine is an audiophile who was on a college budget, consequently he had to seek every affordable performance advantage. He found that placement had a profound effect on his modest (yet still high end) equipment. He used a laser pointer to verify that the speakers were directed to the sweat spot. He also used a decibal meeter to balance the audio. He also had a DVD which helped calibrate the color settings of his TV. Through a bit of reading and effort he made a noticable improvement over even an informed placement of speakers.
This is the worst "ask slashdot" ever. The questions were much more insightful than the answers. In the future I hope that ./ screens potential interviewees for their ability to carry a coherent thought. Even the interview with Lars Ulrich of Metallica was better, and he had someone dictate his spoken response.
The athor actually makes a few good arguments, but it takes some effort to get past laughable comparisons like OOP and Communism. Oh well, I don't mind being a Java programmer, comrade.
As a regular user of Mac OS X I can say that it has staved off any desire for me to jump ship to LinuxPPC. I'm aware of some limitations and quirks with Mac OS X, however it satisfies enough of my need for more power to settle my restlessness. Before Mac OS X I almost always had my mac set to dual boot into some other OS, but these days I live in comfort with one OS on my mac. Of course, I admin a bunch of other boxen so my fingers don't get rusty to other systems, but I think it is a good workstation OS for my purposes.
My company rolled its own software. Although many principles would apply to many businesses, we wanted the flexibility of our own system. Don't get me wrong, and open source solution could be modified and flexed sure enough, but this was just the particular path we chose. The only reason we haven't opened the source for our system is because it is so custom that we doubt if others would find value in it. If you are running an ISP then you may find it a helpful experience to do your own system. Eventually you may be called upon to do it for a client, assuming you also do development.
I'm so glad this has worked for you. Since you are volunteering that you made 50k I'm sure you will remember to report it to the IRS this year. For your convenience I'm copying this message to the IRS also. Good luck avoiding an audit!
Actually, you can run local X programs. It includes all the standard stuff from X11r6. It is pretty nify.
As some others have pointed out, this announcement doesn't bring Aqua and X together, but Tenon has a neat product called Xtools which basically lets you run X programs seamlessly under Aqua. I'm using it now and it is pretty impressive.
Personally I decline to play ball. I would like digital TV, but if I'm treated like a criminal then I'll find my entertainment elsewhere. It is not necessary to be a media consumer. I repeat... you don't have to consume media. Most people will continue, and it bums me out to see the industry do this stuff, but I'll get my kicks elsewhere.
Thank you for stating exactly what I was thinking. I also despise other combo devices because they alway go cheap on something. Of course the person who asked the question didn't really ask about a good setup, but we have to assume that some people care about quality. Your point about the interconnects is valid, and most people are shocked to find out how much a decent cable actually costs. I have an audiophile friend who even explains how it is important to make sure that you don't ever reverse your cables. That is a little extreme for me, but I have never heard good audio come from a chincy combo unit.
As an example, I woke up at 6am on Thanksgiving morning to go for a bike ride. Later that afternoon I had a large meal along with the rest of the family. Naturally some people started bemoaning how much they have eaten and they start to exclaim how they will gain weight. I politely suggested the idea of going for a evening walk to get a little excercise and no one was interested. Mind you, this is a room full of able bodied people who simply don't give a damn. They want to complain. They want an excuse, but I guarantee you they don't really want fitness.
The fact is that fitness isn't easy. If it were I suppose everyone would do it. There are some who simply can't excercise, and that is unfortunate, but the fact is that most people simply don't make it a priority. If something is a priority you find a way to do it.
It's a choice. Plain and simple. The way I see it, a person can choose the discipline required for good fitness or they can choose to suffer the consequences. The consequences may take 40 years to manifest, and there are always exceptions to the rule, but everyone has the choice. Hurt now under your own volition or hurt when it is generally too late to make a significant difference in the outcome.
Personally, I am very athletic. I do aerobic exercise over 20 hours a week (cycling) and my body fat is about 4%. I don't expect everyone to do what I do, but I hurt on a daily basis for my fitness. Incidentally, I have to consume about 3500 calories a day (versus the normal 2500) in order to maintain good health.
My point here is that everyone has ownership of their health and excuses are pretty easy to come up with. This may seem a little harsh, but I see pain as a way of life. If it is important you are willing to hurt for it. I would prefer if people who avoid good diets and fitness would simply say that it isn't a priority than shrug it off as being too hard.
I have met tons of people who wise crack about DC, but once they spend a little time here they realize it is a fine city. When they find out that we are taxed without representation in congress, they are usually amazed. What? Don't we live in America?
I don't entirely agree. I learned things by RTFM and figuring stuff out and I have seen people who had their hands held. Many of them expect it all their lives. It may seem a little harsh, but I think that any difficult task simply requires the personal effort to learn it. Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place. I have encountered my share of elite responses to my questions, and I try to be polite when someone is trying to take my time to comprehend basic things. Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.
I have a theory that even phone numbers will go to the wayside in the 5-10 year range. Seriously, why should I have to remember Joe Blow's phone number? A good phone service would be a voice recognition which lets me say in effect that I want to talk to Joe Blow in Detroit. The system then would do the dirty work of resolving this into a phone number. Just as we think it is antiquated how our grandparents had to ask an operator to connect the wires to make a call, or use a party line, I believe remembering phone numbers will a thing of the past in the near future.
I'm rambling just a little, but the point is that the future involves letting machines do what they do well... dealing with number. Let us humans do what we do well, interconnnecting concepts. Names have better hinges to concepts than numbers for most of us.
I have been given the opportunity several times to go to training, but the company puts my neck in a noose with a contract. No thank you, I would rather buy the O'Reilly book.
This is what really bothers me... most of this training stuff can be figured out if the person just spends a little time reading and thinking through matters. Being sent to a training session has all the appearance of learning something (just like college courses), but it doesn't compare with spending some time learning it yourself. This route does have some limitations, especially if you are learning a proprietary technology. In my company we solve that problem by adopting no proprietary technologies. Basically, if O'Reilly doesn't write a book about it (or they conceivably couldn't do so) then we don't adopt the technology. It is really that simple.
While reading this article I'm sure some people were thinking of the investment possibilities of funding an asteroid mining operation. The thought of a multi-trillion dollar asteroid is appealing, but the article takes a pretty naive view of wealth.
We really live in a world of plenty. There is more than enough food and resources for everyone on earth, but a small portion of the population controls the majority of the resources for political reasons. Make no doubt about it, the same entities which control the majority of wealth now would claim ownership of space resources. I doubt if this would improve the lives of the disenfranchised or make many changes here on earth.
I can definitely see how this would make long term space station operation more affordable. In fact, I would tend to think that the most sensible route would be to use a large asteroid as a space station foundation. Build the station on the asteroid itself. I can't see the point of harvesting the materials and moving them to another location. This probably relates to the potential for altering the trajectory of an asteroid for our purposes, and I'll confess I'm not familiar with the challenges of doing this.
I'm rambling a bit, but my point is that pure science shouldn't have to promise us that it can turn lead to gold or turn a profit. It also shouldn't imply that riches in space will change the inequity of life on earth, because that is a political and social challenge that science is largely unable to affect.
I did notice a bit much of the technology brain rot in SV and I currently live in Washington DC and feel much more balanced out here. The little known fact is that there is a very vibrant technology culture out here, but it doesn't dominate the cultural scene... it compliments it.