Stock options are a way of saying to an employee, "You're worth more than we're paying you, and we can't afford to give you the pay you deserve, so we'll give you a tiny cut of the company itself, instead."
A not-yet-profitable company uses stock options to keep employees around until the company becomes profitable.
A profitable company either doesn't issue stock options, or it issues them to suckers who will take them in lieu of a real salary (see Microsoft) as a way to limit per-employee costs.
If you're company's both 1) profitable and 2) offering stock options, then they think you're dumb enough to fall for it. Tell 'em to stuff it and ask for more money instead.
As admirable as the idea behind this project is, I don't think it'll succeed. In a word: money. The programming and research aren't the problem -- someone's getting a thesis out of this, so MIT'll foot the bill. The problem comes with finding money for maintaining and improving the servers, handling abuse, support, etc.
It's a service that's only useful for poor third-world schools. Those organizations are probably running on a donated 486. They sure don't have money to pay, or even the money to pay to download ads. Charity-wise, "fund a search engine for poor third-worlders" is somewhat less compelling than "feed a starving child".
I see this idea living on research and enthusiasm for a year or two then dying a quiet, broke death.
Credit where credit's due: the problem was recognized and solved by IBM and CMU. It was spun off into an open-source project after they'd pretty much stopped making money from it.
The problem, really, is that most MMORPG-ers don't like PVPers. Bitch all you want about "bias", but bias against people who are runing a game for you is reasonable. If a company has people who are dropping accounts because those people are sick of the PVPers, then the company has to decide who's more important.
EQ had a really elegant solution: on most of the servers, anyone who wanted to could become PVP at any time. The trick: if you were PVP, you could only kill other PVPers. You had to leave everyone else alone. The funny part: the PVPers were still easily identifiable, even if you ignored the name marker. They were the griefers and annoying twits who were doing everything in their power to make the game less enjoyable for everyone else. When EQ finally set up a PVP server, everyone was happy. The PVPers could finally prey on everyone, and the players on all of the other servers were thrilled that the griefer element was suddenly mostly gone.
UO didn't have that, so the majority of gamers had no recourse from the PVPers and left for greener pastures (EQ and the like). UO realized the problem too late, and ended up alienating the small percentage of their market who was still left.
Check out the "So what can I do?" section. The answer: "an out-of-the-box subscription management solution". Other tips: don't do it yourself, expect it to take time and cost a lot of money.
Now, skip down to the bottom of the article:
Dale Munk is CEO of subscription management software provider Sandlot - www.sandlot.com
A subscription management software provider recommending that people spend a lot of money on subscription management software. Who'd have thought?
I have a friend who has some sprinklers in part of his house (the garage and basement), and when they trip, the home security system sets off alarms, calls the fire department, and cuts electricity to that part of the building.
Computers and water aren't terrible enemies IF the machine's powered down -- most computers can be dried out and used again. It's the short circuits that come from water hitting a live circuit board that cause problems.
Wow, a voluntary Mulberry user. Did you actually buy it, or do you go to a school that has a site license?
The school where I work uses it because it's really the only cross-platform client that can handle the Cyrus IMAP server (in particular, mixed messages and subfolders) without doing stupid things like trying to open all of the messages when you enter a folder.
If there was any alternative, we'd run screaming in a heartbeat.
Sheesh. "I have an idea, but not enough talent to follow through. If anyone else does have the talent, I want something for spouting off for 10 seconds!"
I pry 'em off of my keyboards, so when we're all LAN gaming, the other guys scream "DAMN IT! I JUST HIT THE WINDOWS KEY!" and I frag them before they get back into the game.:-)
Same here, only I bought Mechwarrior Mercenaries, then bought the Sidewinder 3d because it was so perfect with that game. The "walk in one direction, shoot in another" element made the game a lot better.
Like others, I was impressed with the joystick, but exceedingly UNimpressed with the driver. Once I upgraded from 95 to 98, the joystick would flake out on a regular basis (rarely less often than every hour) and a hard reboot would be necessary. That made it pretty useless for long gaming sessions.
From that point on, I avoided MS joysticks. The sad part is that there's not much competition (and never really has been) in the mid-range gaming peripheral market: you either have to buy the $10 el-crap-o joystick or the $200 Flightmaster Deluxe Extreme Pro with 25 little buttons under your fingers.
I disagree: centrex service is actually pretty nice IF you're not utterly dependent on phone service (not a call center, etc.) and you don't want/don't need a dedicated telecom admin.
The "you have to get them to fix problems" argument isn't a good one if you have nobody in-house who can fix problems. It's better if the phone company fixes a problem in an hour than if your sysadmin has to spend an hour reading the manual each time there's a problem. I've also seen very few problems with the centrex systems where I've worked, but that's obviously related to the quality of your local provider.
The "they have to do everything for you" is also an advantage if you don't want to do it yourself.
Unfortunately, linksys boxes do get hotter than 131F. They're worse than most, according to the helpful folks at my ISP.
Easy option 1: buy a fan, and ensure that there's room for airflow. One of those little "desktop fans" will do wonders. That's how I keep my Linksys POS from overheating.
Easy option 2: Turn off the box when you're not using it. This has the side effect of making the network more secure.:-)
First, just hold off on that purchase until you move. That'll eliminate the problem entirely.
If you're not willing to do that, save the boxes. Most machines (and Macs for certain) come in large styrofoam-lined boxes that can handle a lot of abuse.
When you ship, the important rules are: Rattling is your enemy. Rigid and brittle is your enemy.
Make sure that nothing in the box can bang into anything else in the box. Gently loosen (but don't remove!) any non-critical screws that make the inside more rigid (add-on card screws, for example), but ensure that anything that holds important parts in place (hard drive screws, etc.) is tight.
When you ship, take it to a mailing place like Mailboxes Etc. They'll charge you $30 for a box and shipping material, but then they'll pack it well and ensure that it's shipped with appropriate labels. For a $3000 computer, that's a bargain.
Finally, do a thorough inspection of your machine when it arrives. Ensure that every internal cable is attached, every screw is in place and tightened, every bit of packing material is removed, etc.
I know this is going to sound rude, but with the amount of money that you're going to spend, you really need to spend time talking to someone who knows what they're doing.
Given your lack of experience, consider talking to your local telco: a lot of them offer package deals of hardware and support for organizations that want a PBX but don't want to run it.
Failing that, find someone who's willing to talk. Again, your local phone company may be willing to offer consultants on a contract basis. Another good source of advice: colleges. Talk to a few schools in your area. Ask to talk to someone in their telecom group. Find out what they're using for staff and faculty (where per-user billing is less important), and also find out what magazines they read and how they stay current on new hardware and trends. Get up to speed on trends and terminology before you start talking specifics. Find out what info you need before you talk to vendors. Find out which vendors they use and which they'd like to use.
Then, throw all of that work into the trash can when your boss tells you that his brother-in-law's nephew is a phone contractor, so you'll be using whatever he installs.;-)
The problem with this plan is that a lot of larger sites SEND with one set of machines and RECEIVE with another. We (a medium-sized private university) have 3 inbound-only machines, 3 outbound-only machines, and 6 IMAP servers.
Some big companies go as far as "the inbound mail subnet" and "the outbound mail subnet".
Where I work, we have that problem frequently. Often, it's a result of an overzealous spam list that decides that because the spammer forged headers that make it look like mail passed through one of our machines, mail MUST HAVE come through that machine, so we should be blocked.
Call the ISP and ask which spam filtering or RBL services they use. The first-level drone won't know, but if you explain that you're being blocked and you need this information to fix the problem, you'll probably get transferred or get a call back from someone who -does- know. You'll probably discover that their filtering was overzealous.
Sometimes, you'll run into a knee-jerk admin who unconditionally believes anything the RBL tells them. It's best just to write off this ISP -- you won't convince them that you weren't sending spam. Put a custom "ISP admin is an idiot" bounce message in for that domain so that your users know why the mail didn't get through, then move on.
Of course, this assumes that you're already actively handling open relays and abuse on your end. That's part of the job, and you should check carefully to ensure that your setup is okay before contacting anyone.
Everybody sells records these days, including (and especially) Amazon.
If I want to buy a "top 40" record, I'll pick it up for $12 at Best Buy or Target or something like that the next time I'm in the neighborhood.
If I want to buy an obscure record by a local or indie artist, I'll visit the local House O' Piercings And Attitude (aka indie record store).
If I want to buy something that nobody'll have in stock and it'll have to be special-ordered anyway, I'll go to Amazon.
See Sam Goody in there? Neither do I. There's no reason for me to go out of my way to visit a place that charges 50% more than Best Buy for the same mainstream crap. Besides, my days of "gotta have that new record right now" are over. If I am feeling lazy and willing to pay the premium, I'll just buy it from Amazon.
I have the files and I'd be happy to participate in the seeding, but I'm on a laptop that will be moving in a few hours, so I don't want to set up a tracker.
I suspect that there are others in the same boat: have the files, willing to participate in a torrent, unwilling to take the hammering that would ensue from a FTP/HTTP mirror.
Does this work "out of the box" with any of the released major distributions (not beta or rc)?
My experience with linux games has been that they work with the released version EXCEPT something. i.e. EXCEPT you need to compile your own version of XFree86 from CVS to get some patch or another.
Maybe that's why Gentoo users always respond with "what's the problem?".;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Stock options are a way of saying to an employee, "You're worth more than we're paying you, and we can't afford to give you the pay you deserve, so we'll give you a tiny cut of the company itself, instead."
A not-yet-profitable company uses stock options to keep employees around until the company becomes profitable.
A profitable company either doesn't issue stock options, or it issues them to suckers who will take them in lieu of a real salary (see Microsoft) as a way to limit per-employee costs.
If you're company's both 1) profitable and 2) offering stock options, then they think you're dumb enough to fall for it. Tell 'em to stuff it and ask for more money instead.
As admirable as the idea behind this project is, I don't think it'll succeed. In a word: money. The programming and research aren't the problem -- someone's getting a thesis out of this, so MIT'll foot the bill. The problem comes with finding money for maintaining and improving the servers, handling abuse, support, etc.
It's a service that's only useful for poor third-world schools. Those organizations are probably running on a donated 486. They sure don't have money to pay, or even the money to pay to download ads. Charity-wise, "fund a search engine for poor third-worlders" is somewhat less compelling than "feed a starving child".
I see this idea living on research and enthusiasm for a year or two then dying a quiet, broke death.
Credit where credit's due: the problem was recognized and solved by IBM and CMU. It was spun off into an open-source project after they'd pretty much stopped making money from it.
The problem, really, is that most MMORPG-ers don't like PVPers. Bitch all you want about "bias", but
bias against people who are runing a game for you is reasonable. If a company has people who are dropping accounts because those people are sick of the PVPers, then the company has to decide who's more important.
EQ had a really elegant solution: on most of the servers, anyone who wanted to could become PVP at any time. The trick: if you were PVP, you could only kill other PVPers. You had to leave everyone else alone. The funny part: the PVPers were still easily identifiable, even if you ignored the name marker. They were the griefers and annoying twits who were doing everything in their power to make the game less enjoyable for everyone else. When EQ finally set up a PVP server, everyone was happy. The PVPers could finally prey on everyone, and the players on all of the other servers were thrilled that the griefer element was suddenly mostly gone.
UO didn't have that, so the majority of gamers had no recourse from the PVPers and left for greener pastures (EQ and the like). UO realized the problem too late, and ended up alienating the small percentage of their market who was still left.
Now, skip down to the bottom of the article:
A subscription management software provider recommending that people spend a lot of money on subscription management software. Who'd have thought?I have a friend who has some sprinklers in part of his house (the garage and basement), and when they trip, the home security system sets off alarms, calls the fire department, and cuts electricity to that part of the building.
Computers and water aren't terrible enemies IF the machine's powered down -- most computers can be dried out and used again. It's the short circuits that come from water hitting a live circuit board that cause problems.
Just for the record, downloads have slowed to a crawl, and the machine that I borrowed to host the .torrent will be moving on Friday night.
So, the tracker and torrent are going down.
Wow, a voluntary Mulberry user. Did you actually buy it, or do you go to a school that has a site license?
The school where I work uses it because it's really the only cross-platform client that can handle the Cyrus IMAP server (in particular, mixed messages and subfolders) without doing stupid things like trying to open all of the messages when you enter a folder.
If there was any alternative, we'd run screaming in a heartbeat.
Option 1: Implement it your own damned self.
Option 2: Shut up.
Sheesh. "I have an idea, but not enough talent to follow through. If anyone else does have the talent, I want something for spouting off for 10 seconds!"
Pac Man and Dig Dug both appear on the Namco Museum compilation (along with Galaga and Pole Position).
The windows key and context menu keys are great!
:-)
I pry 'em off of my keyboards, so when we're all LAN gaming, the other guys scream "DAMN IT! I JUST HIT THE WINDOWS KEY!" and I frag them before they get back into the game.
Same here, only I bought Mechwarrior Mercenaries, then bought the Sidewinder 3d because it was so perfect with that game. The "walk in one direction, shoot in another" element made the game a lot better.
Like others, I was impressed with the joystick, but exceedingly UNimpressed with the driver. Once I upgraded from 95 to 98, the joystick would flake out on a regular basis (rarely less often than every hour) and a hard reboot would be necessary. That made it pretty useless for long gaming sessions.
From that point on, I avoided MS joysticks. The sad part is that there's not much competition (and never really has been) in the mid-range gaming peripheral market: you either have to buy the $10 el-crap-o joystick or the $200 Flightmaster Deluxe Extreme Pro with 25 little buttons under your fingers.
Am I the only one who thinks of a really cold toilet seat everytime people start talking about Frozen Throne?
I disagree: centrex service is actually pretty nice IF you're not utterly dependent on phone service (not a call center, etc.) and you don't want/don't need a dedicated telecom admin.
The "you have to get them to fix problems" argument isn't a good one if you have nobody in-house who can fix problems. It's better if the phone company fixes a problem in an hour than if your sysadmin has to spend an hour reading the manual each time there's a problem. I've also seen very few problems with the centrex systems where I've worked, but that's obviously related to the quality of your local provider.
The "they have to do everything for you" is also an advantage if you don't want to do it yourself.
Unfortunately, linksys boxes do get hotter than 131F. They're worse than most, according to the helpful folks at my ISP.
:-)
Easy option 1: buy a fan, and ensure that there's room for airflow. One of those little "desktop fans" will do wonders. That's how I keep my Linksys POS from overheating.
Easy option 2: Turn off the box when you're not using it. This has the side effect of making the network more secure.
First, just hold off on that purchase until you move. That'll eliminate the problem entirely.
If you're not willing to do that, save the boxes. Most machines (and Macs for certain) come in large styrofoam-lined boxes that can handle a lot of abuse.
When you ship, the important rules are:
Rattling is your enemy.
Rigid and brittle is your enemy.
Make sure that nothing in the box can bang into anything else in the box. Gently loosen (but don't remove!) any non-critical screws that make the inside more rigid (add-on card screws, for example), but ensure that anything that holds important parts in place (hard drive screws, etc.) is tight.
When you ship, take it to a mailing place like Mailboxes Etc. They'll charge you $30 for a box and shipping material, but then they'll pack it well and ensure that it's shipped with appropriate labels. For a $3000 computer, that's a bargain.
Finally, do a thorough inspection of your machine when it arrives. Ensure that every internal cable is attached, every screw is in place and tightened, every bit of packing material is removed, etc.
I know this is going to sound rude, but with the amount of money that you're going to spend, you really need to spend time talking to someone who knows what they're doing.
;-)
Given your lack of experience, consider talking to your local telco: a lot of them offer package deals of hardware and support for organizations that want a PBX but don't want to run it.
Failing that, find someone who's willing to talk. Again, your local phone company may be willing to offer consultants on a contract basis. Another good source of advice: colleges. Talk to a few schools in your area. Ask to talk to someone in their telecom group. Find out what they're using for staff and faculty (where per-user billing is less important), and also find out what magazines they read and how they stay current on new hardware and trends. Get up to speed on trends and terminology before you start talking specifics. Find out what info you need before you talk to vendors. Find out which vendors they use and which they'd like to use.
Then, throw all of that work into the trash can when your boss tells you that his brother-in-law's nephew is a phone contractor, so you'll be using whatever he installs.
The problem with this plan is that a lot of larger sites SEND with one set of machines and RECEIVE with another. We (a medium-sized private university) have 3 inbound-only machines, 3 outbound-only machines, and 6 IMAP servers.
Some big companies go as far as "the inbound mail subnet" and "the outbound mail subnet".
Where I work, we have that problem frequently. Often, it's a result of an overzealous spam list that decides that because the spammer forged headers that make it look like mail passed through one of our machines, mail MUST HAVE come through that machine, so we should be blocked.
Call the ISP and ask which spam filtering or RBL services they use. The first-level drone won't know, but if you explain that you're being blocked and you need this information to fix the problem, you'll probably get transferred or get a call back from someone who -does- know. You'll probably discover that their filtering was overzealous.
Sometimes, you'll run into a knee-jerk admin who unconditionally believes anything the RBL tells them. It's best just to write off this ISP -- you won't convince them that you weren't sending spam. Put a custom "ISP admin is an idiot" bounce message in for that domain so that your users know why the mail didn't get through, then move on.
Of course, this assumes that you're already actively handling open relays and abuse on your end. That's part of the job, and you should check carefully to ensure that your setup is okay before contacting anyone.
D'oh!
I cut-and-paste the URL when I use BitTorrent, so I didn't notice.
Webserver fixed and restarted. Try again.
- If I want to buy a "top 40" record, I'll pick it up for $12 at Best Buy or Target or something like that the next time I'm in the neighborhood.
- If I want to buy an obscure record by a local or indie artist, I'll visit the local House O' Piercings And Attitude (aka indie record store).
- If I want to buy something that nobody'll have in stock and it'll have to be special-ordered anyway, I'll go to Amazon.
See Sam Goody in there? Neither do I. There's no reason for me to go out of my way to visit a place that charges 50% more than Best Buy for the same mainstream crap. Besides, my days of "gotta have that new record right now" are over. If I am feeling lazy and willing to pay the premium, I'll just buy it from Amazon.BitTorrent link with the resources and the client. I've not even unpacked it, let alone tested it. I'm just hoping that Fileshack gave me a good copy.
I have the files and I'd be happy to participate in the seeding, but I'm on a laptop that will be moving in a few hours, so I don't want to set up a tracker.
I suspect that there are others in the same boat: have the files, willing to participate in a torrent, unwilling to take the hammering that would ensue from a FTP/HTTP mirror.
Does this work "out of the box" with any of the released major distributions (not beta or rc)?
;-)
My experience with linux games has been that they work with the released version EXCEPT something. i.e. EXCEPT you need to compile your own version of XFree86 from CVS to get some patch or another.
Maybe that's why Gentoo users always respond with "what's the problem?".
Actually, she just gets 'em rotated every thousand...