This statement always amazes me. Many christians attest to a friend or family member who shared the gospel with them as the source of their spiritual journey. It is a fundamental tenet of christianity that we (christians) should share our faith, much in the way that someone shares other good news. You would like someone to figure it out themselves, but if they have no bible (and very few in China have bibles) then how are they to do this?
Face it, you said a very crass thing and it was wrong. You can play it off as sarcasm, defend it as honesty and defer it with your anger towards christianity, but in the end what you said was wrong. Of course, you may be thinking of me as another christian trying to push my belief on you, but I don't believe you have the luxery of living life without someone else being blunt with you.
They say this is the first computer to come standard with an optical mouse. Hm... I guess my Sun SparcServer 20 at home with the optical mouse is a figment of my imagination.
I used to live in Indiana, but now I live in a large East coast city. The thing which amazes me is how many Hoosiers have a dislike for the place, yet they never leave. I find Indiana to be a quaint and simple place, and I enjoy it all the more when visiting. You might think better of it if you left too.
I agree in principle with you on this, however I don't think it is the function of government to liberate people from their stresses and difficulties.
I believe it is time for us to reconsider the role of the military. After WWI (or was it WWII) we renamed the War Department into the Defense Department. This reflected a more peaceful mindset. Since we haven't had any defense of land and life in the US for over 50 years, it seems appropriate to rename it to the Foreign Economic Interests Department, since the military is used as a pawn to secure American economic interests.
Of course, this is a separate matter again, but certainly there is something better to simulate than an explosion. What possibly could they seek to understand about it other than how to improve it? This being the last thing society needs.
You might feel differently about this if when you operate a network and pay for the bandwidth. When you expect users to do something legitimate and reasonable, but instead they are soaking up the network so that they don't have to pay for something. In essense the users are hell bent on finding a way for someone else, anyone else, to pay for their entertainment.
The readership of/. must have enough system and network administrators to balance this sort of rubbish. I'm all for the use the network to connect people and so on, but if I run my own network, you better believe I have the right to stop bandwidth hogs from ruining it for others.
In a word, I'm a NIMBY. The phrase comes from the late 80s when people cared about cleaning up pollution, but really they just didn't want sanitation services near their suburban homes, hence Not In My Back Yard. Well, I don't want these creeps in my Bandwidth Yard and I would personally filter and boot them in order to serve legitimate uses on the network.
I operate an online business and we deal with more credit card fraud than your average over-the-counter merchant. The fact is that it can be hard to keep fraud under control, and merchants are trying to find ways of discouraging the large majority of punks who find it easy to committ credit card fraud. Believe me, we take efforts to stop this. Over half of the time we nip it in the bud with a phone call, but now and then one slips through.
It is safe to say that someone who wants to committ fraud badly enough will succeed, but this stuff follows the same logic as a bike lock or a car lock. You try to create an environment where the would-be thief moves on to a simpler target. Merchants realize that fraud will happen... they are just looking for ways to reduce it, and the laziness of many theives is our best ally.
As far as asking for your photo, I personally think that is going a little far and I think it crosses the threshold of diminishing returns. It will probably decrease fraud, but it will turn off way too many people, as it has done for you. A courtesy phone call stops enough fraud and sends a positive image to clients.
I live in Washington DC and I found the exact opposite experience. The local DSL provider is Bell Atlantic, and I'm convinced they are the most clueless organization I have ever encountered. They have perfected Murphey's Law.
Because they couldn't even offer basic services, like a static IP address, I went with a third party ISP, Potomac Networks. They were able to supplement Bell Atlantic's service with a static IP and handle all my support issue much more effectively than if I had to call Bell Atlantic directly. I'm convinced that it would have taken over a month for DSL to work if I had worked directly with Bell Atlantic. My DSL ISP partner (potomac) joined me on the line when signing up with Bell Atlantic and had to correct them several times regarding how to set it up.
Of course, not all third parties are as good, but my experience has been good. I would rather use a dial up modem than use DSL direct through Bell Atlantic.
I'm a little irked that the major emphasis of the article is the profit margin that Intel wants by targetted the high end, not the technological nitty gritty. It is a pretty pompous thing to just assert that this processor will give Sun a challenge (when Sparc already scales much more than Intel). See the following:
``Now they will be able to charge these high prices and they have their cost structure under control...The new version is so much more economical.''
This is a financial article, not technical. Bleah. Don't get me wrong, I'm not apposed to Intel making money, I just find the article content to be flimsy and not to be "News for Nerds."
I grow weary of slashdot stories that talk about paying for software as some evil thing just around the corner. There is nothing wrong with paying for software. I don't see anyone trying to champion the cause of making other valuable services free, but for some people you can't give enough to make them happy.
I'm all for the hippie ethic of giving it away and asking nothing in return. This is a cool idea, but everyone doesn't have to agree. It is okay for someone to charge money for their software, and just because they initially give it away doesn't meant they are trying to bait a young generation.
Good point. I hate the soap opera crap on the show and I'm not remotely enticed by the sexual tension between the characters which has been built up for seasons. It used to be a good show, but it is a thorough waste of an hour now. I wish that Steven King would write another episode. Chris Carter has run out of ideas.
Sorry to bum you all out on this. I don't wish to digress too much, but it *is* important to some people. I know that the general definition and understanding of the term is benign, but it is so easy to be sensitive that it makes no sense not to make the effort. It was simply a gentle nudge, and you won't break my heart no matter what term you use.
First off, I have worked over 3 years at a helpdesk (and thank God I no longer do that). I would like to offer the following:
You need enough support staff so that you can spend half your time answering calls and email and spend the other half on training and documentation. If the staff has no time or energy to do the latter, you will burn out the support staff and dig yourself in a hole. Without a strategy for updating and improving documentation you spend all your time putting out the same fires. It is much quicker to tell someone 10 times a day to read a good article you wrote explaining things than to explain it multiple times.
This is very important because it also means that you allot time for your staff to conduct training of others. Many times users in different departments want to support themselves, but if they don't have a basic understanding of technologies you deploy, all calls will come to the helpdesk. It is a positive thing to enable support throughout the organization, and you can't do this if the staff simply answers calls all day. I can't stress this enough.
On the issue of documentation, it is critical that a helpdesk uses some form of Knowledge Base. There should be an external KB for end users and an internal KB for staff. The latter helps you to train and equip new members of the staff. It also helps formalize the way you communicate.
Now for the suggestion... please don't refer to this as "manpower." This is a very sexist term. A woman supervised the helpdesk I worked. This may be a trivial matter, but it *is* a big turnoff to many.
What do say to people like myself, who have been a supporter of yours since the early albums, who is simply disgusted? Seriously, back in 1985 when I was a "sk8ter" and hated being in high school, I identified with the angst in your music. Back then you would have been happy that more people were interested in the music (another way of saying interested in the art).
Basically what I'm saying is that Metallica used to mean something, but your recent actions are so corporate. Basically, I'm a bummed out fan. Maybe you are a bummed out artist, but there are thousands of bands who wish that people would listen to their music. They wish they could be you, and you are getting corporate on people. That disgusts me.
I used to think like this, back when I believed everything that Ayn Rand said. Although I still believe in capitalism and its benefits, it shows something in the character of a business to be generous.
You said yourself that no one wants to live in a polluted world. By this logic, a business who invests in processes that polute less, even though it cuts into the margin, is a wise business. The real problem is when a business determines that they (or least the upper echelon) of the business don't have to live in polution, but someone else can. This is the scary part in my opinion.
I happen to believe that no one has the right to cause harm to another person, and poluting another's environment is precisely this - harm. A sensibly selfish business wouldn't poison anyone's back yard, let alone their's, but it is a lot easier to dump on someone else. Until we are entirely self regulating, I am thankful that many people pressure businesses to be socially responsible.
I run my own web design company, I wouldn't hire her based on what I see of her work on Linda.com. The colors are garish and the text is hard to read against the backdrop. On top of all that, when you click on a link (tips), the left navigation bar goes away. Rule #1 of web design is consistency.
She is no expert. I would like to see an interview with the folks at WebPagesThatSuck.com. At least they are up front about what works and doesn't, and they tell you.
Could it be that the reason this cryptograph has remained unsolved for so long is that it is actually insoluble?
But of course! The molecular structure of a cryptogram is polar, meaning that it is insoluable in water. However, if you stir it up enough, it might look like it dissoved.
Of course, that still doesn't mean it insolvable.;)
Without making too much of a pitch out of it, I assure we can take care of your domain transfer issues convienently. We host on Unix systems and are used to hosting high profile sites. email me if you would like to discuss it in more detail.
This is simply rediculous, to claim that a few migrant customers are the result of a reliability issue. Microsoft can't even migrate its Hotmail service from Sun machines to NT because NT isn't scalable and reliable enough, but yet they say others are ready and able to make this jump.
The fact is that mainframes are probably the most reliable systems in commercial use, but there are compelling reasons why people use Sun hardware and software. Reliability and scalability are the main reasons, and practically any seasoned admin will tell you that NT has neither.
Possibly the most annoying thing about the Microsoft propeganda is the mention of the Ebay issue. I have written an extensive analysis of this in the past. In short, their problems were due to a system administration error, which Ebay admitted to later. Shame on Microsoft for claiming that their systems can be more reliable, regardless of the monkey behind the keyboard.
You bring up a very good issue, one which I have been involved before. Accessibility is very overlooked. I do contracting for a government agency, and by law they cannot do business with my company if we are not ADA compliant. From what I have seen, this isn't enforced 100%, but it is a powerful tool to pursuade organizations to get their act together.
If your company has any contracts with the government at all, they should get compliant immediately. I looked for the article and evidence for this, but couldn't relocate it. If you can't find info on it, contact me directly and I'll help you.
On a side note, I would encourage any organization to not use html tools like Frontpage or Hotmetal Pro. Both of these tools populate the ALT tag with frivolous data, simply telling the image name and dimensions. The only things worse than failing compliance is to obfuscate the meaning of the page and make a blind person to listen to enumerable image names.
I'm not convinced, and being told about the wonderful fruits of the internet doesn't make me think that the CEO's are hip and with it.
The consequences of the Andover sellout have already been felt. When Appwatch opened up they were blackballed by slashdot. Appwatch competes with freshmeat, but that doesn't mean that freshmeat should be the endorsed site from slashdot.
I think someone this weekend had a great idea with regard to allowing all posts to be seen and voted on. I challenge the uber-moderators of slashdot to really open and let the readers vote on the stories which matter to them, along with being able to read what is rejected.
I believe you can have the best of both worlds. My company, Spinweb is quite small when compared to the giant hosters, but we lease our servers and bandwidth from heavy players (Verio and Digital Nation). I'll try to keep the sales pitch to a minumum, but what this means is that your interface for support has the benefits of a small company, but the architecture of the servers has the benefits of the large company. contact me if you have any questions about this arrangement.
This is good advice, and it shows that the person has hosted with companies before and researched the issue, but I have some other advice for potential hostees:
Ask questions to your provider about their infrastructure. Ask them what kind of routers they use and if they are flexible with changing the MX records to forward mail to another domain. Ask them to tell you the current uptime and load averages of the machine your site will be hosted with, especially if you will be on a virtual host.
You should also look at the type of online support offered by a hosting company. If they have a short FAQ, this isn't sufficient. If they have a knowledge base which appears to be updated and modern, this is a good sign. If a hosting company doesn't look like they make good use of technology on their own site to convey information then it is clear they don't "get it."
Finally, ask these questions to support@hosting_company.com. See how long it takes them to write back. Sales@hosting_company.com will write back quickly, but this isn't an indicator of the company's committment, but their support is. Even if you consider yourself to be an uber-geek and don't think you need support, when the site is down or there is some router problem, there isn't much you can do. At that stage you have to hope they respond quickly and professionally.
That said, I would like to make a small plug for my hosting company, SpinWeb Net Designs. I would be happy to address questions you have regarding hosting with us. Don't hesitate to email me directly.
Slashdot Mirror
Face it, you said a very crass thing and it was wrong. You can play it off as sarcasm, defend it as honesty and defer it with your anger towards christianity, but in the end what you said was wrong. Of course, you may be thinking of me as another christian trying to push my belief on you, but I don't believe you have the luxery of living life without someone else being blunt with you.
They say this is the first computer to come standard with an optical mouse. Hm... I guess my Sun SparcServer 20 at home with the optical mouse is a figment of my imagination.
I used to live in Indiana, but now I live in a large East coast city. The thing which amazes me is how many Hoosiers have a dislike for the place, yet they never leave. I find Indiana to be a quaint and simple place, and I enjoy it all the more when visiting. You might think better of it if you left too.
I believe it is time for us to reconsider the role of the military. After WWI (or was it WWII) we renamed the War Department into the Defense Department. This reflected a more peaceful mindset. Since we haven't had any defense of land and life in the US for over 50 years, it seems appropriate to rename it to the Foreign Economic Interests Department, since the military is used as a pawn to secure American economic interests.
Of course, this is a separate matter again, but certainly there is something better to simulate than an explosion. What possibly could they seek to understand about it other than how to improve it? This being the last thing society needs.
The readership of /. must have enough system and network administrators to balance this sort of rubbish. I'm all for the use the network to connect people and so on, but if I run my own network, you better believe I have the right to stop bandwidth hogs from ruining it for others.
In a word, I'm a NIMBY. The phrase comes from the late 80s when people cared about cleaning up pollution, but really they just didn't want sanitation services near their suburban homes, hence Not In My Back Yard. Well, I don't want these creeps in my Bandwidth Yard and I would personally filter and boot them in order to serve legitimate uses on the network.
It is safe to say that someone who wants to committ fraud badly enough will succeed, but this stuff follows the same logic as a bike lock or a car lock. You try to create an environment where the would-be thief moves on to a simpler target. Merchants realize that fraud will happen... they are just looking for ways to reduce it, and the laziness of many theives is our best ally.
As far as asking for your photo, I personally think that is going a little far and I think it crosses the threshold of diminishing returns. It will probably decrease fraud, but it will turn off way too many people, as it has done for you. A courtesy phone call stops enough fraud and sends a positive image to clients.
Because they couldn't even offer basic services, like a static IP address, I went with a third party ISP, Potomac Networks. They were able to supplement Bell Atlantic's service with a static IP and handle all my support issue much more effectively than if I had to call Bell Atlantic directly. I'm convinced that it would have taken over a month for DSL to work if I had worked directly with Bell Atlantic. My DSL ISP partner (potomac) joined me on the line when signing up with Bell Atlantic and had to correct them several times regarding how to set it up.
Of course, not all third parties are as good, but my experience has been good. I would rather use a dial up modem than use DSL direct through Bell Atlantic.
``Now they will be able to charge these high prices and they have their cost structure under control...The new version is so much more economical.''
This is a financial article, not technical. Bleah. Don't get me wrong, I'm not apposed to Intel making money, I just find the article content to be flimsy and not to be "News for Nerds."
This is a good observation, and I agree. I think one can rationally expect to get feedback and peer review from free software. Good point.
I'm all for the hippie ethic of giving it away and asking nothing in return. This is a cool idea, but everyone doesn't have to agree. It is okay for someone to charge money for their software, and just because they initially give it away doesn't meant they are trying to bait a young generation.
Good point. I hate the soap opera crap on the show and I'm not remotely enticed by the sexual tension between the characters which has been built up for seasons. It used to be a good show, but it is a thorough waste of an hour now. I wish that Steven King would write another episode. Chris Carter has run out of ideas.
Sorry to bum you all out on this. I don't wish to digress too much, but it *is* important to some people. I know that the general definition and understanding of the term is benign, but it is so easy to be sensitive that it makes no sense not to make the effort. It was simply a gentle nudge, and you won't break my heart no matter what term you use.
You need enough support staff so that you can spend half your time answering calls and email and spend the other half on training and documentation. If the staff has no time or energy to do the latter, you will burn out the support staff and dig yourself in a hole. Without a strategy for updating and improving documentation you spend all your time putting out the same fires. It is much quicker to tell someone 10 times a day to read a good article you wrote explaining things than to explain it multiple times.
This is very important because it also means that you allot time for your staff to conduct training of others. Many times users in different departments want to support themselves, but if they don't have a basic understanding of technologies you deploy, all calls will come to the helpdesk. It is a positive thing to enable support throughout the organization, and you can't do this if the staff simply answers calls all day. I can't stress this enough.
On the issue of documentation, it is critical that a helpdesk uses some form of Knowledge Base. There should be an external KB for end users and an internal KB for staff. The latter helps you to train and equip new members of the staff. It also helps formalize the way you communicate.
Now for the suggestion... please don't refer to this as "manpower." This is a very sexist term. A woman supervised the helpdesk I worked. This may be a trivial matter, but it *is* a big turnoff to many.
Basically what I'm saying is that Metallica used to mean something, but your recent actions are so corporate. Basically, I'm a bummed out fan. Maybe you are a bummed out artist, but there are thousands of bands who wish that people would listen to their music. They wish they could be you, and you are getting corporate on people. That disgusts me.
You said yourself that no one wants to live in a polluted world. By this logic, a business who invests in processes that polute less, even though it cuts into the margin, is a wise business. The real problem is when a business determines that they (or least the upper echelon) of the business don't have to live in polution, but someone else can. This is the scary part in my opinion.
I happen to believe that no one has the right to cause harm to another person, and poluting another's environment is precisely this - harm. A sensibly selfish business wouldn't poison anyone's back yard, let alone their's, but it is a lot easier to dump on someone else. Until we are entirely self regulating, I am thankful that many people pressure businesses to be socially responsible.
I run my own web design company, I wouldn't hire her based on what I see of her work on Linda.com. The colors are garish and the text is hard to read against the backdrop. On top of all that, when you click on a link (tips), the left navigation bar goes away. Rule #1 of web design is consistency.
She is no expert. I would like to see an interview with the folks at WebPagesThatSuck.com. At least they are up front about what works and doesn't, and they tell you.
But of course! The molecular structure of a cryptogram is polar, meaning that it is insoluable in water. However, if you stir it up enough, it might look like it dissoved.
Of course, that still doesn't mean it insolvable. ;)
SpinWeb Net Designs
Without making too much of a pitch out of it, I assure we can take care of your domain transfer issues convienently. We host on Unix systems and are used to hosting high profile sites. email me if you would like to discuss it in more detail.
The plug in for tera term is here.
This is simply rediculous, to claim that a few migrant customers are the result of a reliability issue. Microsoft can't even migrate its Hotmail service from Sun machines to NT because NT isn't scalable and reliable enough, but yet they say others are ready and able to make this jump.
The fact is that mainframes are probably the most reliable systems in commercial use, but there are compelling reasons why people use Sun hardware and software. Reliability and scalability are the main reasons, and practically any seasoned admin will tell you that NT has neither.
Possibly the most annoying thing about the Microsoft propeganda is the mention of the Ebay issue. I have written an extensive analysis of this in the past. In short, their problems were due to a system administration error, which Ebay admitted to later. Shame on Microsoft for claiming that their systems can be more reliable, regardless of the monkey behind the keyboard.
You bring up a very good issue, one which I have been involved before. Accessibility is very overlooked. I do contracting for a government agency, and by law they cannot do business with my company if we are not ADA compliant. From what I have seen, this isn't enforced 100%, but it is a powerful tool to pursuade organizations to get their act together.
If your company has any contracts with the government at all, they should get compliant immediately. I looked for the article and evidence for this, but couldn't relocate it. If you can't find info on it, contact me directly and I'll help you.
On a side note, I would encourage any organization to not use html tools like Frontpage or Hotmetal Pro. Both of these tools populate the ALT tag with frivolous data, simply telling the image name and dimensions. The only things worse than failing compliance is to obfuscate the meaning of the page and make a blind person to listen to enumerable image names.
I'm not convinced, and being told about the wonderful fruits of the internet doesn't make me think that the CEO's are hip and with it.
The consequences of the Andover sellout have already been felt. When Appwatch opened up they were blackballed by slashdot. Appwatch competes with freshmeat, but that doesn't mean that freshmeat should be the endorsed site from slashdot.
I think someone this weekend had a great idea with regard to allowing all posts to be seen and voted on. I challenge the uber-moderators of slashdot to really open and let the readers vote on the stories which matter to them, along with being able to read what is rejected.
Duane
Yes, my company has a developer account specifically for this purpose. You can find details about it here:
SpinWeb Developer Account
Please let me know if you have any questions, or if I can be of any help.
This is good advice, and it shows that the person has hosted with companies before and researched the issue, but I have some other advice for potential hostees:
Ask questions to your provider about their infrastructure. Ask them what kind of routers they use and if they are flexible with changing the MX records to forward mail to another domain. Ask them to tell you the current uptime and load averages of the machine your site will be hosted with, especially if you will be on a virtual host.
You should also look at the type of online support offered by a hosting company. If they have a short FAQ, this isn't sufficient. If they have a knowledge base which appears to be updated and modern, this is a good sign. If a hosting company doesn't look like they make good use of technology on their own site to convey information then it is clear they don't "get it."
Finally, ask these questions to support@hosting_company.com. See how long it takes them to write back. Sales@hosting_company.com will write back quickly, but this isn't an indicator of the company's committment, but their support is. Even if you consider yourself to be an uber-geek and don't think you need support, when the site is down or there is some router problem, there isn't much you can do. At that stage you have to hope they respond quickly and professionally.
That said, I would like to make a small plug for my hosting company, SpinWeb Net Designs. I would be happy to address questions you have regarding hosting with us. Don't hesitate to email me directly.