Congrats. You just proved that you've never had to listen to either quilting or fishing nuts. If you had, you'd be snoring loudly.
I've been in a similar boat where the pesty thing that I did was NOT ASK FOR ANY FUCKING SUPPORT AT ALL. I quit and the whole department was dissolved within a few months, because only the helpless were left and it all imploded.
Let's get this straight. You are want the folks from marketing to be less evil. That's hilarious.
The answer, of course, is to stomp them with a greater evil: find someplace this conflicts with stated privacy policies and alert the company lawyers.
Back right around the time the whole DoubleClick/Abacus thing was going down, a marketer brought up in a meeting how great it would be if we bought their service so we could learn who was looking at our sites and send them stuff. After carefully explaining that the whole scheme was dicey, and we would have no way of knowing if the data was even any good at all (though it was sure to be expensive), I further explained that this was a major privacy conflict brewing, and that it was likely to get our company in particular, which was/is a large household name, a lot of negative publicity, hostile letters, hate mail, and if we were unlucky, front-page attention on how Evil our company was. The response from Marketing? "Wow, so when can we sign up for it." Sam, you fucking idiot. I was right, of course: lucky for you our department didn't get on that train before it crashed (and lucky it crashed before it got out of the station).
That's an interesting idea... but who, exactly, has made money from e-mail? Well, either no one or everyone, depending on how you look at it. Almost no one if you imagine that the answer depends on fees for the service; shitloads of money for a number of companies if you consider revenues based on access to the service, AOL being perhaps the best example.
Now consider Instant Messaging. No one is making money off it. Why? Because everyone thinks they are going to make money off of fees for the service. Stupid, stupid assholes. Had they done this with email, you might not be reading this right now. If IM became a universal, standards-based, interoperable service, like, say, e-mail, it would be rapidly changing the universe right now. But since AOL, Microsoft, and others choose to fight for monopoly dominance of the medium, they are fucking every single one of us... and themselves and each other... right up the ass.
But the entire point is that week could easily be solved in 5 minutes now with more convenient and less over-engineered solutions - and you aren't likely to spend that week fixing the "inferior" ad hoc solution during the life of most code projects - and those that do live longer have proven that learning a local dialect isn't much of a problem compared to learning the software itself.
In this sense, XML is like the local communist party boss insisting that everyone choose new words for hammers and gaffs and threshers because they represent counter-revolutionary forces.
XML does suck. It sucks because:
The tools for programming with XML suck
The tools for writing XML suck
The tools for designing and distributing XML DTDS suck
It's not a failure of concept, it's a failure of execution. It's a proof of a dirty secret of software engineering, which is that formal practices are no better at producing quality results than entertainment companies are at producing quality entertainment; in fact, the best results usually come from small, unrestricted forces. XML the concept doesn't suck, but XML the reality definitely sucks.
Yes, very funny indeed. But I don't think that "access to a telephone" can be discounted as a key to modern life, and that's what cellphones are in most of the developing world.
Which is the reason that this congress-crat is a total cunt who should be strapped to the next cruise missile launched into Iraq. Despite what much of the world likes to pretend to think, there are very few in the US who support sheer domination of another nation just for the sake of it; that's why we don't need worthless fucks making proposals like this.
To put this in perspective, however, let's remember that it was the French who rounded up the
Gypsies to be killed in WWII (the Germans just finished the job), that both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence are more common in Europe than in the USA AT THIS VERY MOMENT, and that in in Pakistan, dozens of Christians have been killed in hate-crimes since Sept-11, yet in the same period in America there has been perhaps a single anti-Muslim murder (in Texas, natch), and that across the Mulslim world, Hindus and Muslims alike murder and expel foreigners (particularly each other) for religious reasons, and dinosaur mullahs are widely, persistantly, and openly calling for the death of all non-Muslims with little or no objection from moderates in their own culture or notice by the anti-war believers in the West who cannot see the real perpetration of religious hatred when it calls itself by name, etc etc etc.
Sorry, at this moment, despite our flaws, despite our hypocrisies, despite our puritan objections to the freedom we claim to love (Ashcroft is very much like the Taliban in his heart) and despite a leader who has failed in nearly every test of diplomacy, I don't see many other nations actually doing anything about the values they claim to espouse, except many in the Muslim world who are doing something about attacking everyone who isn't them. What does France support? Their world leadership in hating both Arabs and Jews and other etrangees? At least China has the decency to be purely and openly cynical and opportunistic and machiavellian. At this point, that counts as refreshing (and no, Rumsfeld is not refreshing, though he is openly cynical and Machiavellian).
And yes, giving Iraqis, post-war, quality mobile phone service based on their needs and not the needs of a few Washington whores still counts for something, and I am confident that most Americans would agree, whether they are for or against the war.
Any honest person can admit there is plenty of cause for disgust all around.
Yup. Orwell never quite comes true (thank lowercase-g-god) but never goes out of relevance, either.
that being said, the Economist is STILL one of the few publications that is actually "fair and balanced" without being either a crypt-leftist affair or a vast right-wing fox-spiracy. witness:
If content industries get their way, the critics say, content providers will gain unprecedented control over consumers. It is impossible to view or listen to digital content without making a copy of it, so even this simple activity could be subject to a payment.
Simple, fair, balanced, accurate, and sufficiently non-technical for anyone to understand. And yet clear enough to understand how the Orlando brownshirts plan to hit you up like a two-dollar whore looking for an up-sell, only with NORAD aiming the fucking bomb between your eyebrows.
e. In her book "Digital Copyright", Jessica Litman argues that any attempt to regulate copying should be abandoned. Instead, the law should give creators the exclusive right of commercial exploitation of their works. Most of the public, she maintains, believe that copyright laws already incorporate that distinction.
Again, cut through all the bullshit and get to the common-sense understanding. To arrest someone for making a copy of music for their friends is even more stupid than arresting people for pre-marital sex. Sex for money: in most places illegal. Being a slut: illegal only in places no one smarter than a sea cucumber wants to live in. No one in Congress or a major media company's lobby whore orgs will support this idea openly, but it's obvious and morally fair: non-commercial sharing shouldn't be illegal, while commercial sharing should be illegal. Works for sex, and that's more complicated than music. Anyone who can't accept this is a fucking retard. "Share" privately, fine; share commerically, not fine.
Sure, some people who really, really want free music/content will get it without paying for it, just as sex outside of marriage has continued, yet in 50,000 years has failed to destroy the institution. Big fucking deal Most of us settle for the security, pay for it, and that's enough to keep the institution going even in complete absence of rules. The rules are there only to make sure your account gets debited every time you even fucking dream of mickey mouse. May Sonny Bono rot in hell.
and taping (or now, making a CD-R) from a friend is also arguably just as easy. so if you were right on the money, the music industry should have died 15 years ago.
sorry, but the guy's got a point. the most common open source databases have ways to export the data in the form of sql that can be used to re-create the database. that's not the same as a dump of, say, an oracle database. if you could do this from oracle, or sqlserver, it would be easier to convert from one type of database to another. they make this harder just to show you what a punk-ass bitch you are (and you are). of course you can write scripts to accomplish the same. they just make it a little more difficult to create friction; and that friction is called vendor lock-in.
goddamn i have to clean my guts off the floor, cause my side split over that one. i have to say it's neither. it doesn't smell like real irony. and alanis irony would be more like, oh, i dunno, having a spelling test when you've got your period or something. not that that's a slag (no pun intended) against wimmin, because
one look at my record collection would show you how much i respect women. the point is, it's (ed - ironic) a lot like alanis irony, only without the intention of irony that makes it's (ed - still ironic, but not funny this time) non-irony itself a little bit ironic. but it's still ironic. in that kind of "because it's stupid" way.
Yup. And the rats are going to replace her with a sharp-toothed, feces-smothered, flea-ridden, plague-carrying, baby-eating monster that is going to make her look like a cupcake. that doesn't mean history will look kindly on her: she might be conducting the band as the ship goes down, but her replacement is going to be ramming the iceberg repeatedly trying to sink it.
Yes, that music executive hasn't been talking to people in his own company, probably. Time Warner Cable has ads for broadband access that show people downloading music for last-minute gifts... Their record labels execs can sputter and fume all they want, but it doesn't take a genius to see that the downloaders will win, b/c the music industry has NEVER really been much of a money-maker. So they will lose to, well, more profitable divisions of the same giant companies.
No, they can't. If they do, they give up their status as a "common carrier". In other words, the second they begin making value judgements about what traffic to carry and what not (unless otherwise compelled by law) they become targets for legal action. The DMCA's takedown provisions address this specifically; if you want to stay a "common carrier", you have to always assume that the copyright holder is right and the alleged whatever is a fucking commie bastard.
It IS a terrible idea; if you want to offer a public data service, then that's what you offer. You don't get to make exceptions just because you feel like it, unless you are declaring, in essence, that you are providing the service of selectively restricting traffic. And in that case, you become liable for every judgement you make about who to service and who not.
A bar/pub/saloon can restrict you all sorts of ways just because they feel like it. But this doesn't give anyone the right to stop you from getting drunk, trying to pick up strangers, or making a fool of yourself in public. A public communications service is different, and for a very good reason. bars and saloons are primarily there to provide a space for private associations; a communications infrastructure is there to provide a public infrastructure. and the internet points this out very well; it's public, accept the fact or build your own fucking internet.
It comes down to this; you are advancing the idea that the primary argument is "it's mine, i can do whatever i want with it". but in the interest of creating a just society (one where few people have an interest in destroying it), we recognize many "level playing field" exceptions to this. separate water fountains, "whites only" policies, etc. tell me who and what you are and i'll tell you how you depend on this fundamental fairness. i'll also point out that the internet isn't yours and if you can't play by its fundamental rules of openness then you have no business connecting to it.
So Congress perverts the Constitution, takes away cultural riches from the American public, gives Disney et al hundreds of billions in welfare... Apparently, when Republicans hate welfare, it's only the kind that goes to poor people, and when they speak of our cultural heritage, they mean stand in line and be a good sheep, and when they speak of freedom, they speak of the freedom of corporations, not citizens.
What a joke.
Yes, but your answer gives the impression that you actually read the article or understand the goals of the project. Shame on you. You are interfering with trolls bashing the icons on the interface as if it's more important than the actual functionality, even considering that the final product will have an entirely different graphics toolkit and therefore look very different.
FWIW I think it's a great idea, I could use it, you can certainly cobble together something like this from existing OS technologies, but they really suck and you want to shoot yourself by the time you are done. This is far better.
You are goddamned fucking lucky that the government tells you what the default values for things should be. That's what the government is there for, mostly; to tell you that the default value for a building is to have a fire exit and that it may not be locked. And without standards, there is no interchangeability of parts. And without that, every consumer and customer gets assraped by manipulative vendors. And since you can never tell precisely how this battery differs from that battery, you just have shit exploding battery acid all over the place.
But if you really think they have no right doing these things, go live in a 3rd world country; they generallly have the government telling you less about what to do. Except once in a while when they kill your familiy. You could be armed of course. You know what a totally armed society with a weak government looks like? Afghanistan.
That being said, it's hard to see what business the government has engineering document formats. They could, on the other hand, specify disclosure of formats as a remedy in an anti-trust case, but they generally fall into one of two categories which precludes this: stupid or bought.
Right on. And next to them, the real heroes are men - flawed, mortal, and all. Aragorn is, of course, "elevated" by his Elven blood and status as a king, but his relationship to Arwen and his huge doubts and reluctance to rule are a pretty strong sign that the whole King thing isn't where the future lies.
So true. Sadly, the conservatives are still loyalists, in that they are still promoting the aristocracy. Witness King George Bush II and the like. And those who are today called liberals are in fact descended from the church bureaucracy peanut gallery - the right-wing-nuts have a point with that "secular humanist" tripe, though mostly their point is that we should kiss the kings's ass instead.
Those who are today called libertarians are in fact far more like the founders of the USA than most would like to believe. Lefties hate the guns and independence, conservatives hate the guns and lack of submission. Same shit, different century.
And I predicted this story two days ago. Kiss my ass.
Well trolled, my friend. Start out with something questionable - "new rock", quickly hustle the reader past it with clearheaded commentary, then bury it home with complete nonsense. "New rock"? Wham!? What? The only thing even remotely rock about Wham! was that two members were previously in Big Flame. And then you drive it home with an inane observation that the pot is not quite as black as the kettle.
Assume that the security issues can be resolved - perhaps no one uses it long enough to just crack WEP, for example. Now also assume that payphones set them up next to, say, coffee shops that offer free wireless: perhaps whoever gives out DHCP first wins. Now the coffee shop is getting poached by the payphone and customers don't like this coffee shop, because their free access doesn't work.
Now add into the mix that coffee shop is Starbucks, and can easily afford to sue the people running the phones. WiFi is going to get heavily regulated, and soon.
I predict that within the next 18 months they do a story on terrorists or bad, bad hackers using anonymous access points to do bad things and a real regulatory crush gets on, the real purpose of which will be to ensure that only Big Companies can compete to provide public WiFi.
I'm sure you are right. But, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde (or some other wit or bon vivant who surely exhibited better personal hygiene than many, including Stallman, to whom the following comment applies), the reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable man demands that the world adapt to him; therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
You're right, but, so there. It's not something you have to choose to deal with, personally (I hope), but his unreasonableness has an important place in the history of software. Really, really important, if you've thought about the implications 100 years from now.
Martin Luther was an unreasonable crank, too, with lots of personal flaws (like, "Satan is making my poopy stink" kind of flaws), but that was critical at that point in time - and not entirely dissimilar to RMS. Stallman just pounded the GPL on a door.
Both have worked for the liberation of humans from rulership by sacred and secret texts hidden in the hands of an elite bureaucracy.
Seriously, I believe that if I met the guy, I couldn't stand him, but the principles he has fought for are that clear and that important.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been in a similar boat where the pesty thing that I did was NOT ASK FOR ANY FUCKING SUPPORT AT ALL. I quit and the whole department was dissolved within a few months, because only the helpless were left and it all imploded.
Back right around the time the whole DoubleClick/Abacus thing was going down, a marketer brought up in a meeting how great it would be if we bought their service so we could learn who was looking at our sites and send them stuff. After carefully explaining that the whole scheme was dicey, and we would have no way of knowing if the data was even any good at all (though it was sure to be expensive), I further explained that this was a major privacy conflict brewing, and that it was likely to get our company in particular, which was/is a large household name, a lot of negative publicity, hostile letters, hate mail, and if we were unlucky, front-page attention on how Evil our company was. The response from Marketing? "Wow, so when can we sign up for it." Sam, you fucking idiot. I was right, of course: lucky for you our department didn't get on that train before it crashed (and lucky it crashed before it got out of the station).
So that's what you can expect from Marketing.
Now consider Instant Messaging. No one is making money off it. Why? Because everyone thinks they are going to make money off of fees for the service. Stupid, stupid assholes. Had they done this with email, you might not be reading this right now. If IM became a universal, standards-based, interoperable service, like, say, e-mail, it would be rapidly changing the universe right now. But since AOL, Microsoft, and others choose to fight for monopoly dominance of the medium, they are fucking every single one of us... and themselves and each other... right up the ass.
In this sense, XML is like the local communist party boss insisting that everyone choose new words for hammers and gaffs and threshers because they represent counter-revolutionary forces.
XML does suck. It sucks because:
It's not a failure of concept, it's a failure of execution. It's a proof of a dirty secret of software engineering, which is that formal practices are no better at producing quality results than entertainment companies are at producing quality entertainment; in fact, the best results usually come from small, unrestricted forces. XML the concept doesn't suck, but XML the reality definitely sucks.
Which is the reason that this congress-crat is a total cunt who should be strapped to the next cruise missile launched into Iraq. Despite what much of the world likes to pretend to think, there are very few in the US who support sheer domination of another nation just for the sake of it; that's why we don't need worthless fucks making proposals like this.
To put this in perspective, however, let's remember that it was the French who rounded up the Gypsies to be killed in WWII (the Germans just finished the job), that both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim violence are more common in Europe than in the USA AT THIS VERY MOMENT, and that in in Pakistan, dozens of Christians have been killed in hate-crimes since Sept-11, yet in the same period in America there has been perhaps a single anti-Muslim murder (in Texas, natch), and that across the Mulslim world, Hindus and Muslims alike murder and expel foreigners (particularly each other) for religious reasons, and dinosaur mullahs are widely, persistantly, and openly calling for the death of all non-Muslims with little or no objection from moderates in their own culture or notice by the anti-war believers in the West who cannot see the real perpetration of religious hatred when it calls itself by name, etc etc etc.
Sorry, at this moment, despite our flaws, despite our hypocrisies, despite our puritan objections to the freedom we claim to love (Ashcroft is very much like the Taliban in his heart) and despite a leader who has failed in nearly every test of diplomacy, I don't see many other nations actually doing anything about the values they claim to espouse, except many in the Muslim world who are doing something about attacking everyone who isn't them. What does France support? Their world leadership in hating both Arabs and Jews and other etrangees? At least China has the decency to be purely and openly cynical and opportunistic and machiavellian. At this point, that counts as refreshing (and no, Rumsfeld is not refreshing, though he is openly cynical and Machiavellian).
And yes, giving Iraqis, post-war, quality mobile phone service based on their needs and not the needs of a few Washington whores still counts for something, and I am confident that most Americans would agree, whether they are for or against the war.
Any honest person can admit there is plenty of cause for disgust all around.
Don't do April Fool's jokes during Chinese New Year. That's racist, dude.
Oh, well, I'm an old-timer now.
Slashdot comments eradicate common sense in 70% of readers.
to all of those worried about the apocalypse: do something be something; stop talking shit
that being said, the Economist is STILL one of the few publications that is actually "fair and balanced" without being either a crypt-leftist affair or a vast right-wing fox-spiracy. witness:
Simple, fair, balanced, accurate, and sufficiently non-technical for anyone to understand. And yet clear enough to understand how the Orlando brownshirts plan to hit you up like a two-dollar whore looking for an up-sell, only with NORAD aiming the fucking bomb between your eyebrows. Again, cut through all the bullshit and get to the common-sense understanding. To arrest someone for making a copy of music for their friends is even more stupid than arresting people for pre-marital sex. Sex for money: in most places illegal. Being a slut: illegal only in places no one smarter than a sea cucumber wants to live in. No one in Congress or a major media company's lobby whore orgs will support this idea openly, but it's obvious and morally fair: non-commercial sharing shouldn't be illegal, while commercial sharing should be illegal. Works for sex, and that's more complicated than music. Anyone who can't accept this is a fucking retard. "Share" privately, fine; share commerically, not fine.Sure, some people who really, really want free music/content will get it without paying for it, just as sex outside of marriage has continued, yet in 50,000 years has failed to destroy the institution. Big fucking deal Most of us settle for the security, pay for it, and that's enough to keep the institution going even in complete absence of rules. The rules are there only to make sure your account gets debited every time you even fucking dream of mickey mouse. May Sonny Bono rot in hell.
and taping (or now, making a CD-R) from a friend is also arguably just as easy. so if you were right on the money, the music industry should have died 15 years ago.
stop being such a ig-nant spinning motha focka.
goddamn i have to clean my guts off the floor, cause my side split over that one. i have to say it's neither. it doesn't smell like real irony. and alanis irony would be more like, oh, i dunno, having a spelling test when you've got your period or something. not that that's a slag (no pun intended) against wimmin, because one look at my record collection would show you how much i respect women. the point is, it's (ed - ironic) a lot like alanis irony, only without the intention of irony that makes it's (ed - still ironic, but not funny this time) non-irony itself a little bit ironic. but it's still ironic. in that kind of "because it's stupid" way.
Yup. And the rats are going to replace her with a sharp-toothed, feces-smothered, flea-ridden, plague-carrying, baby-eating monster that is going to make her look like a cupcake. that doesn't mean history will look kindly on her: she might be conducting the band as the ship goes down, but her replacement is going to be ramming the iceberg repeatedly trying to sink it.
Yes, that music executive hasn't been talking to people in his own company, probably. Time Warner Cable has ads for broadband access that show people downloading music for last-minute gifts... Their record labels execs can sputter and fume all they want, but it doesn't take a genius to see that the downloaders will win, b/c the music industry has NEVER really been much of a money-maker. So they will lose to, well, more profitable divisions of the same giant companies.
It IS a terrible idea; if you want to offer a public data service, then that's what you offer. You don't get to make exceptions just because you feel like it, unless you are declaring, in essence, that you are providing the service of selectively restricting traffic. And in that case, you become liable for every judgement you make about who to service and who not.
A bar/pub/saloon can restrict you all sorts of ways just because they feel like it. But this doesn't give anyone the right to stop you from getting drunk, trying to pick up strangers, or making a fool of yourself in public. A public communications service is different, and for a very good reason. bars and saloons are primarily there to provide a space for private associations; a communications infrastructure is there to provide a public infrastructure. and the internet points this out very well; it's public, accept the fact or build your own fucking internet.
It comes down to this; you are advancing the idea that the primary argument is "it's mine, i can do whatever i want with it". but in the interest of creating a just society (one where few people have an interest in destroying it), we recognize many "level playing field" exceptions to this. separate water fountains, "whites only" policies, etc. tell me who and what you are and i'll tell you how you depend on this fundamental fairness. i'll also point out that the internet isn't yours and if you can't play by its fundamental rules of openness then you have no business connecting to it.
So Congress perverts the Constitution, takes away cultural riches from the American public, gives Disney et al hundreds of billions in welfare... Apparently, when Republicans hate welfare, it's only the kind that goes to poor people, and when they speak of our cultural heritage, they mean stand in line and be a good sheep, and when they speak of freedom, they speak of the freedom of corporations, not citizens. What a joke.
FWIW I think it's a great idea, I could use it, you can certainly cobble together something like this from existing OS technologies, but they really suck and you want to shoot yourself by the time you are done. This is far better.
But if you really think they have no right doing these things, go live in a 3rd world country; they generallly have the government telling you less about what to do. Except once in a while when they kill your familiy. You could be armed of course. You know what a totally armed society with a weak government looks like? Afghanistan.
That being said, it's hard to see what business the government has engineering document formats. They could, on the other hand, specify disclosure of formats as a remedy in an anti-trust case, but they generally fall into one of two categories which precludes this: stupid or bought.
Right on. And next to them, the real heroes are men - flawed, mortal, and all. Aragorn is, of course, "elevated" by his Elven blood and status as a king, but his relationship to Arwen and his huge doubts and reluctance to rule are a pretty strong sign that the whole King thing isn't where the future lies.
Those who are today called libertarians are in fact far more like the founders of the USA than most would like to believe. Lefties hate the guns and independence, conservatives hate the guns and lack of submission. Same shit, different century.
And I predicted this story two days ago. Kiss my ass.
Kidding, of course. DRM is a mandatory buggy whip in every car.
Well done.
Now add into the mix that coffee shop is Starbucks, and can easily afford to sue the people running the phones. WiFi is going to get heavily regulated, and soon.
I predict that within the next 18 months they do a story on terrorists or bad, bad hackers using anonymous access points to do bad things and a real regulatory crush gets on, the real purpose of which will be to ensure that only Big Companies can compete to provide public WiFi.
You're right, but, so there. It's not something you have to choose to deal with, personally (I hope), but his unreasonableness has an important place in the history of software. Really, really important, if you've thought about the implications 100 years from now.
Martin Luther was an unreasonable crank, too, with lots of personal flaws (like, "Satan is making my poopy stink" kind of flaws), but that was critical at that point in time - and not entirely dissimilar to RMS. Stallman just pounded the GPL on a door. Both have worked for the liberation of humans from rulership by sacred and secret texts hidden in the hands of an elite bureaucracy.
Seriously, I believe that if I met the guy, I couldn't stand him, but the principles he has fought for are that clear and that important.