If you play video games to procrastinate, then you're an addict. If you play video games because you love them, you've found something you love.
Let me play devil's advocate.
If you inject heroin to procrastinate, then you're an addict. If you inject heroin because you love it, you've found something you love.
P.S. My ex was a heroin addict, so I've seen it firsthand.
So for CDN 12/hr you want me to jump for fucking joy at your existence. Are you jumping for mine? I used to care, and burnt out, because in the end, everything is taken for granted. You can spend 5 min or 45 min with a call. And they're back the next day wanting more. More of what I don't have. Asking for things we don't have, things I cannot do, things not part of our support. And when you can't do anymore, they whip out their little get-outta-jail-free card, and bitch about the service.
Whatever you do for a living, I'm sure that a lowly peon like me doesnt register on the radar of someone as distinguished as yourself. I get ignored and treated like shit most places I go (retailers, restaurants, etc,) because I'm not dressed in designer black leather, holding a $10 cup of coffee I bought with my Visa Gold. I'm difficult to ignore too, as I'm 6ft 2, skinny 160lbs and bald as a cue ball with a friggin big nose. So don't give me that suburban father attitude about MY poor attitude. I've bent over backwards for people like you for a long time, and your kind just keeps treating us like shit. You're just the kind of self-important asshole that goes out of his way to make the small people feel smaller. And calls back the next day expecting "superior service".
Like I said, you get what you pay for. You want superior service, pay for it. $40/month doesn't get you a CCNA OK? Hell, if I had my CCNA, I wouldn't be needing to do tech support.
Wow, your comment is so stupid, you must be U.S.
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Let me get this straight:
How many Americans are there?
280 Million.
How many sq miles of land do you have?
3.5 million.
How many sq miles per person?
80.
(rough stats from here) That's a lotta space for you and me. Hence the automobile.
Now, pick a nation that does not reside in Europe or North America, and is not so automobile-centred. That is where this will take off. Places where cars are a luxury item, population is high and land is at a premium. Most of the developing/developed world.
This thing will not be used by anybody in Europe or North America simply because of the uncool factor. You said it yourself :
You will look so stupid riding these, that you'll get even more shit than those idiots who rode razor scooters around back in the.com days. Yes, yes, and guys that drive cars get laid, and guys that don't...don't.
In the Phillipines, cell-phones are used to txt-msg most of the time, rather than talk. Funny how not everything is used the way Americans use it. I mean, gosh, did you know that in parts of the world, people drive on the OTHER side of the road? <gasp!>
For $3000 a person can buy a used car here. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I imagine a used car is a whole lot more than $3000, making this Ginger at least a cost-efficient, people-friendly etc, alternative solution. Just try removing yourself from the suburban shopping mall long enough to see that maybe, "changing the world" doesn't start in the U.S. of A.
OTH, if you wanna look cool in your car, while staying Saudi Arabia's bitch, be my guest.
Still, you were giving her shit, plain and simple. Don't give the front liners shit OK, people?
We don't make the decisions and we don't make enough to care about you. We will pretend as best as we can to keep from getting fired, that's all. We don't see your $40 a month pal, so if you want to talk to a manager who can get something done, go down to the damn offices in person, because *everybody* thinks that they are important enough to speak to a manager.
If you were really concerned with venting against those responsible, you would have explained right off the bat to "Angela" that you were on a hell-ride and that you would like to speak to her supervisor by phone or smoke-signal. Instead you pissed and moaned and if you're lucky, you made her Top 50 list of Assholes for the Day.
For christ sakes, who the hell are people dealing with? You know, maybe this is the ugly spectre of "the customer is always right". Companies are trying to standardize service to make sure the CS robots give everyone a fair shake, and all you get is a maze of tele-prompts, script-readers, and auto-reply mails.
Maybe I haven't had the "pleasure" of working for a really big ISP, but I have never had a script. I do have answer the phone with "$ISP_NAME, my name is_____, how may I help you?
Someone calls me up, I give them the greeting and ask what is wrong. What works; what doesn't; when did it start. No script. Let them spill their guts, figure out what the problem really is, then fix it.
Let me clarify: *nix users should never call tech support for help. And I will probably think you are full of shit;)
Example:
I will tell you your ass smells like roses for $40/hr as a consultant (not sure what you do, but I know consultants are pretty "customer-oriented" if you get my drift), but if you think that for $12/hr (in a backbreaking chair) I'm going to provide you with the same level of service think again. I've got 12 other calls to take involving lost passwords, bounced mail that has NOTHING to do with us, and instructing folks on the ins/outs of FTP. Glamourous stuff.
I dont want to get into an argument here. I dislike tech support immensely. If I could get out I would. But it REALLY pisses me off to hear people slam it.
Realtors, travel agents, bankers, laywers, and doctors need my help to make sure that whatever they are trying to do with their computer is working. That makes me important. Because those important people need me to help them through their day.
Instead, techs are mocked for being stupid, called lazy or uneducated, and constantly have their abilites questioned by customers. Screw that. I'm a damn good tech, and I've had to help a number of overpriced IT goons through some rather simple stuff. How does this sound:
Net Admin calls up, tells me our DNS cache is poisoned. Says our DNS is reporting the wrong records for his domain. Do a dig, do a whois, domain is not hosted by us. Whois and dig don't agree either. Guy tells me to flush the DNS, I say it's not us, it's you, fix your records or call your host to get it fixed. We go back and forth a bit, in the end, he was hosting the domain with another company, he thougt they only answered for his website, all other records (cname, MX) would be forwarded to a DynDNS service, that would then forward again to his MS DNS box running Exchange on the ADSL line we provided. WTF? I have to deal with this all the time.
I am extremely patient and polite to people in all service industries. Because I know what it's like on the other side. I've done every menial fuckin minimum wage McJob from burger flipper to bartender to cook to tech support. Now, I intend to stay in IT and build something. I'm not some 18 yr old skate punk on the phone doing a shift after school.
What is ridiculous is that I get paid so little to assist so many people in using something so ubiquitous -- the computer. Electricians, Plumbers, Mechanics, and Welders make good money. Techs get spat on. Nice.
Perhaps people are beginning to get sick of the blind evangelism. Apparently, there are some views here that are not allowed to be expressed without being called a shit-disturber.
Get stuffed. I'm here to read about technology and news that affects Nerds. I didn't come here to push some twisted fucking agenda. Maybe I'm in the wrong place. I always thought/. was about tech. I don't remember seeing a sign above the door that said "Slashdot: A place to endlessly slam anything not Linux".
Urrgh. I dont give a shit anymore. I'm just gonna come out and say it, karma be damned.
Free is free, not not necessarily Open.
Ok, I can follow that.
Open is free. Or not. But the source must be released to the public. Hmm. Sounds free to me.
So. Software is free. No money to you. No money for food. Now you gotta get a job. You can hack in your spare time. Work doing what? Coding for Profit? If you get paid to code, then profit must be generated from the software, which means...Holdonaminute...what the FUCK is wrong with this picture?!?
Does anybody else believe that this all-or-nothing Free Software attitude is fundamentally flawed? Now I know that someone is is gonna say that a completely Free model is not what "it's all about". So, if we don't like Sun, or MS, or Apple.. then just who sells software that we do like huh? Are game makers the only ones free of Open Source wrath?
As a tech support monkey, I can guarantee you that if you called me and were not using MS or Apple, I would blow you off just as fast. It's a survival mechanism. I don't want to get hung up on a call with someone who may or may not be savvy with their OS ( it's bad enough with Win users). With Windows, the setup is predictable and straight-forward. If you are Winuser with a firewall, I will tell you to either disable the software or unistall it, as I DO NOT want anything interfering with the standard setup during a troubleshooting process. Like most things, get to the bare essentials and work your way out.
With *nix, there are a zillion variations on the same theme, and chances are you will have some funky setup that you and I will have to go through to define the problem, then troubleshoot and resolve.
Now, if we were sitting face to face and had the time to geek out together, then I would be happy to assist you. But not over the phone. However, the tech should be able to reasonably converse with you about the nature of the problem, without being expected to do a walk-through.
Besides, anyone running a *nix variant should not be calling tech support EVER. No excuses.
I have called support a total of 5 times ever. Twice when I was a Luser (and I shut the fuck and did what they asked). The other 3 were to inquire as to when service would be restored. If the problem is severe enough that you cannot fix it yourself, chances are the tech at the other end is either hog-tied, or is not in the chain-of-command to get something done about it. Techs are isolated in a bubble and used by management as warm meat to answer the phones. Tech support dept's don't generate revenue, and the wages we receive reflect that. And you act surprised when I cannot <insert unrealistic expectation here>?
Case in point, Shaw cable in Vancouver just went on a hiring spree for cable installers and sales reps. And it's still a ~45 minute wait to speak to a tech rep.
It really seems as though technology is outpacing the market right now, and companies are actually holding back products and services, in order to squeeze every last exhorbitant drop of cash out of their entrenched business model (T1's come to mind). I have personally seen 2 ISPs brought to thir knees becasue the Telco was slow in response to ADSL Trouble Tickets. Those ISPs no longer exist.
Although I can understand that after investing a great deal of money into infrastructure, only to see it obsoleted before you break even would really suck. Still,that's no excuse for Gov't to use the law to support a company's bad planning or industry meltdown. Or to allow shit like DeCSS and the RIAA to go on.
I just subscribed to digital cable service in my area. It is only a matter of $5-10 difference between their digital package, and getting their regular cable service+cable internet.
Reg cable = ~60 channels of crap.
Cable internet = 2 IP's and ~50K upstream cap, friggin fast downstream.
Digital Cable = ~60 channels of crap, Cable Internet, 5 movie channels, music channels ( like a radio thru your TV), and access to pay-per-view, and rent cable box @ $10/month, or buy box @ $200.
So for almost the same price as two seperate packages, I get some movies and music and the access to pay flicks. Picture quality is not better or anything though.
The piss-off here is that all this time they have been pushing all these new channels only available on Digicable ( National Geographic, Discovery Civilizations, etc) but now I find out that those channels are for trial purposes only.
AHA. I see now. I just coughed up $200 bones for a $15 dollar blackbox, to get the virtually the same service for the same price. And I get this neato box. Whoopdedoo.
Sounds like I'm helping to offset their infrasrtucture costs with this new technology, without any real benefits, other than they get to entice me to pay even more per month to watch some decent channels. They should be providing an option to watch only TLC, Discovery etc, cause I sure don't watch Ally McBeal.
I did read the thread, and I understand how it grew. I am simply protesting the fact that so many people failed to make the distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and the apparent lack of control on the part of the moderators.
AHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ooh! ouch Oooohhhh... ...ooh my sides...
Among other things question 9 stands out:
Gnome: Will you represent the interests of GNOME and the GNOME Foundation over all other personal or corporate interests you may represent?
Stallman: All personal and corporate interests, certainly. But there are two higher interests that rightfully apply to GNOME: the GNU system, and free software.
Translation: No. I will use the BOD position to surreptitiously hijack the goals of this project and subvert them until I alone control all your projects and they are under my license. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Moderators, realise that if the comment was made about anyone else, it would be +1 Funny, so watch it.
How you got +5 Insightful is beyond me, at least in the context of the original discussion. What a waste of mod points. You ought to be slapped down to -1 Offtopic.
Apparently very few people chose to read any of the linked articles, evidenced by Chicken Little here crying about the more pressing problems of the modern age. I'll agree with you that couples attempting to have a child by cloning is "silly", but the need to reproduce is a biological imperative hard-wired into our brains. As a species, our reproductive priorities probably fall in the loose order of:
immaculate(God)
natural(you and me baby)
invitro(you, me OR someone else, and a test tube)
cloning(me, possibly you or someone else - but not neccesarily, and a test tube)
adoption(maybe you, maybe me, maybe neither of us)
Folks, the article is about therapeutic cloning, not reproductive cloning. You can get off your soapboxes and stop warning us about the End of Man. Read the Scientific American article before you start clucking, OK?
In a nutshell, for those of you who are too mired in ignorance/sensationalism:
At our current stage of tech, a mature female egg can be stripped of it's nucleus, and a donor cell (skin in this case) is implanted itno the egg. This "embryo/zygote" is then encouraged to divide. Alternatively, they managed to get a mature female egg to divide without the introductionof any foreign material at all. (Guys, we are no longer needed;)
The point behind all this was not to implant these embryos into a uterus and bring to term. The point is to supply stem cells, for therapy of autoimmune diseases and spinal injuries.
My spine cells, used to create more of my spine cells, to be re-introduced into my damaged spine, to grow an undamaged spine.
I don't see an army of cloned soldiers or designer babies here. Now move along.
I guess I am upset at the fact that his stance appears to suggest that to exercise any license other than the GPL is "bad", and that I have no right to choose my license. That just does not sit right with me at all. I know that I can use any license I darn well please; but to suggest that any other license is "evil" is ridiculous.
He comes across as if I should turn ownership of my creations over to the GPL on the grounds that if I don't, I am a power monger. Talk like that just makes him appear to be the power monger, trying to control the software of the world. Hmm. now where have we seen that before...?
If I release the source, chances are no matter what I do, someone will violate whatever license I have spelled out. So be it.
If I release a binary, I would expect that the license is adhered to.
The "recipe" is my own. I own that particular smattering of lines, and it is a unique solution to a problem. If you look at my source or reverse my binary and dream up a new soltution that is "unique" I have no problem with that. I feele that my ownership lies in the implementation of an idea, not the idea itself.
I choose the license. And if at a later time I choose to re-release it under a new license, I will dammit.
And I don't like your license you transparent control-freak. Don't you dare try to define my freedoms for me, under the guise of a freedom-fighter, for that is the true mark of a fascist.
Silly Canadian, you know nothing about economics or politics. That's why your dollar sucks shit.
Haha. Put down that flamethrower, I'm 100% pure CDN.;)
The reasons are as follows:
1) We are good buddies with the US. We do pretty much what they ask of us; if we don't, they dont care and simply ignore us.
2) Alot of our trading partners are US trading partners. Being good buddies with the popular kids means we get to reap the benefits.
3) Most of the time, because of our ("The West") dependency on gold and oil, we look the other way when alot of shady stuff takes place. We don't really mind if most South African gold miners are black, and they're bosses are white. Hell just 2 days ago we finally gave Nelson Mandela CDN citizenship.
We also look the other way when Israel continues to wage a war of genocide on the Palestinian population, or at least are highly discriminatory against them. And we really couldn't give a flying fuck about Afghan women in burkhas, until the problem lands on our collective doorstep.
So, no, I don't think many people care about a billion Chinese not being able to surf porn and Amnesty Intl. (Aside: I moved to Vancouver during the HK exodus, shortly before the HK takeover. From what I've been told, it's definitely not nice in China, but not abominable either. Remember folks, the culture of the Chinese people is RADICALLY different than ours. The American dream or ideal is not global.)
We may pay lip service to their plight and hold fucking transparent rock concerts for Tibet, while aging rockstars play their wheelchair RocknRoll, and we get to go home and pat ourselves on the back. Now, if you'll excuse me Mr. Canadian leftist;), my Columbian teenage boy latte is getting cold and I need some more Hot Asian Teens to weave me some new Gap chinos.
Heh, well, in the 80's I was in <sheepish> elementary school, so please appreciate that my perspective in this matter is limited to ~'94 and after...
FWIW, my point about VC cash was that the gold-rush mentality helped fund OSDN,/., Sourceforge, and the like ( from my observations) allowing an explosion of collaboration (plus time/effort) and hype that has since died off somewhat.
OK, here is my general rebuttal/addition to the responses received thus far...
The original article focused, as most mainstream articles do, on the business aspect of OSS. I feel I made my stance on that clear, so I won't persue it further.
I would like to add to my position on OSS the movement. Again, I believe that it will continue to grow, and perhaps I should add that "undignifiable death" was a little off. Maybe "waning from" the radar of the mainstream press is more fitting. Which is fine, as some posters commented. I think OSS will still have a strong position within IT depts all over the planet, based on it's strengths of (duh) openess, managebility, and extensibility. OSS is a great tool for custom solutions and extending what is already there. Don't have what you need? DIY or have a look on Google.
However, as an example, my employer is looking to purchase a front/backend "e-commerce" (egad...) solution to increase our webhosting, dial-up, etc sales. Instead of taking the available tools out there and creating a custom solution to their specs, they are willing to throw money at a proprietary solution. Now, I'm no VP or CTO, so perhaps they have their reasons, but when there are so many options for tooling up something yourself, why not use OSS?
Also, with OSS as a "failed business model", it looks to the uninformed as if OSS itself tanked. The only thing that could fix that for the people that make decisions (on the whole, MBAs PHBs) is a massive marketing campaign to clean up the image.
I've said it before on/. that.NET as a marketing push is far more sexier than Apache+PHP+MySql, or Apache+Jserv+J2EE (hope I got that right). Still, OSS tools will always find their way into the backroom and I hope (know?) it will thrive there.
I just shudder at the thought that the only companies that will be using OSS
will be the ones thinking, "Geez, can't afford.NET, what else is there?" Instead of choosing it on merit, they chose it simply on price. When they get a bit bigger , the company may (gak!) move over to.NET or whatever "solution" they need, ignoring what they have working for them. Everone's a sucker for a shiny new toy, software is no different.
OSS will obviuosly continue, the only thing that will kill an idea is lack of interest in that idea. I guess my point was that in a few years, lack of interest could hobble OSS, due to fewer people being aware, or a bad rap or whatever.
And BTW, nice dig about "hearing from Bill Gates".
Clever.
The economy is in the shitter. This whole article is nearly pointless. Open-source (the business model) was circling the drain before any other sector of industry was, and this is news?
And now to burn some karma....
I think that the open-source phenomenon will quietly, undignifiably, dissapear soon. It is a lofty and noble goal to be sure, however as a sustainable movement, I believe it will become less important over time. Why? Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source. The time to code the time to host it, the time to collaborate, just aint there any more during the dot-bomb hangover.
Open-source is an idea; that will remain. Linux the kernel, and any derivatives; they will remain. Unix is still with us after 30 odd years, and so too will Linux and OSS. Good. But, making money and supplanting a capitalistic machine that is designed for high proiduct turn-over, planned obsolecence, and not giving the customer what they want is the sustainable model, not selling services to free products. If you pay for the product, then you will pay for support. Get a free product, and you find out its not up to par or whatver, why pay for support, just get another free clone....
As an example, look at the mp3, CDR, DVD products out there. Is there a single product (game console, entertainment device or otherwise) that can play mp3s, read and write CDR, CDRW, DVD, DVD-ROM/RAM/RW and any other format? No. It is much better business sense to force the consumer to buy a couple of different devices than one do-it all device.
As with software, you want return customers, hence the excruciatingly long path to a stable windows platform (some may argue this point, although at this time I think it's the licensing/terms of use that is the problem not the OS itself).
There is alot of uncertainty around everthing right now, both socially and economically, and open-source is a real gamble. Will it become a security threat to use OSS? Of course it isnt, we know better than that, but we don't make the law.
Where does crypto stand? Do you want to continue to code for free, or maybe you're unemployed (or facing it) and would like to see a return on your effort? I dont think selling services is the way. I can just as easily support your software as you can.
Anyways flame away, mod me down for blasphemy, whatever, maybe I forgot my happy pills this morning...
Slashdot Mirror
Let me play devil's advocate.
If you inject heroin to procrastinate, then you're an addict. If you inject heroin because you love it, you've found something you love.
P.S. My ex was a heroin addict, so I've seen it firsthand.
So for CDN 12/hr you want me to jump for fucking joy at your existence. Are you jumping for mine? I used to care, and burnt out, because in the end, everything is taken for granted. You can spend 5 min or 45 min with a call. And they're back the next day wanting more. More of what I don't have. Asking for things we don't have, things I cannot do, things not part of our support. And when you can't do anymore, they whip out their little get-outta-jail-free card, and bitch about the service.
Whatever you do for a living, I'm sure that a lowly peon like me doesnt register on the radar of someone as distinguished as yourself. I get ignored and treated like shit most places I go (retailers, restaurants, etc,) because I'm not dressed in designer black leather, holding a $10 cup of coffee I bought with my Visa Gold. I'm difficult to ignore too, as I'm 6ft 2, skinny 160lbs and bald as a cue ball with a friggin big nose. So don't give me that suburban father attitude about MY poor attitude. I've bent over backwards for people like you for a long time, and your kind just keeps treating us like shit. You're just the kind of self-important asshole that goes out of his way to make the small people feel smaller. And calls back the next day expecting "superior service".
Like I said, you get what you pay for. You want superior service, pay for it. $40/month doesn't get you a CCNA OK? Hell, if I had my CCNA, I wouldn't be needing to do tech support.
Let me get this straight:
.com days.
;)
How many Americans are there?
280 Million.
How many sq miles of land do you have?
3.5 million.
How many sq miles per person?
80.
(rough stats from here) That's a lotta space for you and me. Hence the automobile.
Now, pick a nation that does not reside in Europe or North America, and is not so automobile-centred. That is where this will take off. Places where cars are a luxury item, population is high and land is at a premium. Most of the developing/developed world.
This thing will not be used by anybody in Europe or North America simply because of the uncool factor. You said it yourself :
You will look so stupid riding these, that you'll get even more shit than those idiots who rode razor scooters around back in the
Yes, yes, and guys that drive cars get laid, and guys that don't...don't.
In the Phillipines, cell-phones are used to txt-msg most of the time, rather than talk. Funny how not everything is used the way Americans use it. I mean, gosh, did you know that in parts of the world, people drive on the OTHER side of the road? <gasp!>
For $3000 a person can buy a used car here. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I imagine a used car is a whole lot more than $3000, making this Ginger at least a cost-efficient, people-friendly etc, alternative solution. Just try removing yourself from the suburban shopping mall long enough to see that maybe, "changing the world" doesn't start in the U.S. of A.
OTH, if you wanna look cool in your car, while staying Saudi Arabia's bitch, be my guest.
P.S. Do you have a mustache?
Still, you were giving her shit, plain and simple. Don't give the front liners shit OK, people?
We don't make the decisions and we don't make enough to care about you. We will pretend as best as we can to keep from getting fired, that's all. We don't see your $40 a month pal, so if you want to talk to a manager who can get something done, go down to the damn offices in person, because *everybody* thinks that they are important enough to speak to a manager.
If you were really concerned with venting against those responsible, you would have explained right off the bat to "Angela" that you were on a hell-ride and that you would like to speak to her supervisor by phone or smoke-signal. Instead you pissed and moaned and if you're lucky, you made her Top 50 list of Assholes for the Day.
idiots reading scripts
For christ sakes, who the hell are people dealing with? You know, maybe this is the ugly spectre of "the customer is always right". Companies are trying to standardize service to make sure the CS robots give everyone a fair shake, and all you get is a maze of tele-prompts, script-readers, and auto-reply mails.
Maybe I haven't had the "pleasure" of working for a really big ISP, but I have never had a script. I do have answer the phone with "$ISP_NAME, my name is_____, how may I help you?
Someone calls me up, I give them the greeting and ask what is wrong. What works; what doesn't; when did it start. No script. Let them spill their guts, figure out what the problem really is, then fix it.
Let me clarify: *nix users should never call tech support for help. And I will probably think you are full of shit ;)
Example:
I will tell you your ass smells like roses for $40/hr as a consultant (not sure what you do, but I know consultants are pretty "customer-oriented" if you get my drift), but if you think that for $12/hr (in a backbreaking chair) I'm going to provide you with the same level of service think again. I've got 12 other calls to take involving lost passwords, bounced mail that has NOTHING to do with us, and instructing folks on the ins/outs of FTP. Glamourous stuff.
I dont want to get into an argument here. I dislike tech support immensely. If I could get out I would. But it REALLY pisses me off to hear people slam it.
Realtors, travel agents, bankers, laywers, and doctors need my help to make sure that whatever they are trying to do with their computer is working. That makes me important. Because those important people need me to help them through their day.
Instead, techs are mocked for being stupid, called lazy or uneducated, and constantly have their abilites questioned by customers. Screw that. I'm a damn good tech, and I've had to help a number of overpriced IT goons through some rather simple stuff. How does this sound:
Net Admin calls up, tells me our DNS cache is poisoned. Says our DNS is reporting the wrong records for his domain. Do a dig, do a whois, domain is not hosted by us. Whois and dig don't agree either. Guy tells me to flush the DNS, I say it's not us, it's you, fix your records or call your host to get it fixed. We go back and forth a bit, in the end, he was hosting the domain with another company, he thougt they only answered for his website, all other records (cname, MX) would be forwarded to a DynDNS service, that would then forward again to his MS DNS box running Exchange on the ADSL line we provided. WTF? I have to deal with this all the time.
I am extremely patient and polite to people in all service industries. Because I know what it's like on the other side. I've done every menial fuckin minimum wage McJob from burger flipper to bartender to cook to tech support. Now, I intend to stay in IT and build something. I'm not some 18 yr old skate punk on the phone doing a shift after school.
What is ridiculous is that I get paid so little to assist so many people in using something so ubiquitous -- the computer. Electricians, Plumbers, Mechanics, and Welders make good money. Techs get spat on. Nice.
Perhaps people are beginning to get sick of the blind evangelism. Apparently, there are some views here that are not allowed to be expressed without being called a shit-disturber.
/. was about tech. I don't remember seeing a sign above the door that said "Slashdot: A place to endlessly slam anything not Linux".
I for one am sick of the self-satisfied Anti-MS trolling. And the fanatical pro-linux-anything stance. If it's not Linux, It's Bad©
Get stuffed. I'm here to read about technology and news that affects Nerds. I didn't come here to push some twisted fucking agenda. Maybe I'm in the wrong place. I always thought
Urrgh. I dont give a shit anymore. I'm just gonna come out and say it, karma be damned.
Free is free, not not necessarily Open.
Ok, I can follow that.
Open is free. Or not. But the source must be released to the public. Hmm. Sounds free to me.
So. Software is free. No money to you. No money for food. Now you gotta get a job. You can hack in your spare time. Work doing what? Coding for Profit? If you get paid to code, then profit must be generated from the software, which means...Holdonaminute...what the FUCK is wrong with this picture?!?
Does anybody else believe that this all-or-nothing Free Software attitude is fundamentally flawed? Now I know that someone is is gonna say that a completely Free model is not what "it's all about". So, if we don't like Sun, or MS, or Apple.. then just who sells software that we do like huh? Are game makers the only ones free of Open Source wrath?
posting without +1...
Ahhahaahhaah! LOL!
Guess he touched a nerve eh?
As a tech support monkey, I can guarantee you that if you called me and were not using MS or Apple, I would blow you off just as fast. It's a survival mechanism. I don't want to get hung up on a call with someone who may or may not be savvy with their OS ( it's bad enough with Win users). With Windows, the setup is predictable and straight-forward. If you are Winuser with a firewall, I will tell you to either disable the software or unistall it, as I DO NOT want anything interfering with the standard setup during a troubleshooting process. Like most things, get to the bare essentials and work your way out.
With *nix, there are a zillion variations on the same theme, and chances are you will have some funky setup that you and I will have to go through to define the problem, then troubleshoot and resolve.
Now, if we were sitting face to face and had the time to geek out together, then I would be happy to assist you. But not over the phone. However, the tech should be able to reasonably converse with you about the nature of the problem, without being expected to do a walk-through.
Besides, anyone running a *nix variant should not be calling tech support EVER. No excuses.
I have called support a total of 5 times ever. Twice when I was a Luser (and I shut the fuck and did what they asked). The other 3 were to inquire as to when service would be restored. If the problem is severe enough that you cannot fix it yourself, chances are the tech at the other end is either hog-tied, or is not in the chain-of-command to get something done about it. Techs are isolated in a bubble and used by management as warm meat to answer the phones. Tech support dept's don't generate revenue, and the wages we receive reflect that. And you act surprised when I cannot <insert unrealistic expectation here>?
Case in point, Shaw cable in Vancouver just went on a hiring spree for cable installers and sales reps. And it's still a ~45 minute wait to speak to a tech rep.
Amen.
It really seems as though technology is outpacing the market right now, and companies are actually holding back products and services, in order to squeeze every last exhorbitant drop of cash out of their entrenched business model (T1's come to mind). I have personally seen 2 ISPs brought to thir knees becasue the Telco was slow in response to ADSL Trouble Tickets. Those ISPs no longer exist.
Although I can understand that after investing a great deal of money into infrastructure, only to see it obsoleted before you break even would really suck. Still,that's no excuse for Gov't to use the law to support a company's bad planning or industry meltdown. Or to allow shit like DeCSS and the RIAA to go on.
I just subscribed to digital cable service in my area. It is only a matter of $5-10 difference between their digital package, and getting their regular cable service+cable internet.
Reg cable = ~60 channels of crap.
Cable internet = 2 IP's and ~50K upstream cap, friggin fast downstream.
Digital Cable = ~60 channels of crap, Cable Internet, 5 movie channels, music channels ( like a radio thru your TV), and access to pay-per-view, and rent cable box @ $10/month, or buy box @ $200.
So for almost the same price as two seperate packages, I get some movies and music and the access to pay flicks. Picture quality is not better or anything though.
The piss-off here is that all this time they have been pushing all these new channels only available on Digicable ( National Geographic, Discovery Civilizations, etc) but now I find out that those channels are for trial purposes only.
AHA. I see now. I just coughed up $200 bones for a $15 dollar blackbox, to get the virtually the same service for the same price. And I get this neato box. Whoopdedoo.
Sounds like I'm helping to offset their infrasrtucture costs with this new technology, without any real benefits, other than they get to entice me to pay even more per month to watch some decent channels. They should be providing an option to watch only TLC, Discovery etc, cause I sure don't watch Ally McBeal.
I did read the thread, and I understand how it grew. I am simply protesting the fact that so many people failed to make the distinction between therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and the apparent lack of control on the part of the moderators.
AHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ooh! ouch Oooohhhh... ...ooh my sides...
Among other things question 9 stands out:
Gnome: Will you represent the interests of GNOME and the GNOME Foundation over all other personal or corporate interests you may represent?
Stallman: All personal and corporate interests, certainly. But there are two higher interests that rightfully apply to GNOME: the GNU system, and free software.
Translation: No. I will use the BOD position to surreptitiously hijack the goals of this project and subvert them until I alone control all your projects and they are under my license. MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Moderators, realise that if the comment was made about anyone else, it would be +1 Funny, so watch it.
Actually the sciam article says that the telomeres in the cloned cells are "rebooted".
How you got +5 Insightful is beyond me, at least in the context of the original discussion. What a waste of mod points. You ought to be slapped down to -1 Offtopic.
;)
Apparently very few people chose to read any of the linked articles, evidenced by Chicken Little here crying about the more pressing problems of the modern age. I'll agree with you that couples attempting to have a child by cloning is "silly", but the need to reproduce is a biological imperative hard-wired into our brains. As a species, our reproductive priorities probably fall in the loose order of:
immaculate(God)
natural(you and me baby)
invitro(you, me OR someone else, and a test tube)
cloning(me, possibly you or someone else - but not neccesarily, and a test tube)
adoption(maybe you, maybe me, maybe neither of us)
Folks, the article is about therapeutic cloning, not reproductive cloning. You can get off your soapboxes and stop warning us about the End of Man. Read the Scientific American article before you start clucking, OK?
In a nutshell, for those of you who are too mired in ignorance/sensationalism:
At our current stage of tech, a mature female egg can be stripped of it's nucleus, and a donor cell (skin in this case) is implanted itno the egg. This "embryo/zygote" is then encouraged to divide. Alternatively, they managed to get a mature female egg to divide without the introductionof any foreign material at all. (Guys, we are no longer needed
The point behind all this was not to implant these embryos into a uterus and bring to term. The point is to supply stem cells, for therapy of autoimmune diseases and spinal injuries.
My spine cells, used to create more of my spine cells, to be re-introduced into my damaged spine, to grow an undamaged spine.
I don't see an army of cloned soldiers or designer babies here. Now move along.
I guess I am upset at the fact that his stance appears to suggest that to exercise any license other than the GPL is "bad", and that I have no right to choose my license. That just does not sit right with me at all. I know that I can use any license I darn well please; but to suggest that any other license is "evil" is ridiculous.
He comes across as if I should turn ownership of my creations over to the GPL on the grounds that if I don't, I am a power monger. Talk like that just makes him appear to be the power monger, trying to control the software of the world. Hmm. now where have we seen that before...?
If I release the source, chances are no matter what I do, someone will violate whatever license I have spelled out. So be it.
If I release a binary, I would expect that the license is adhered to.
The "recipe" is my own. I own that particular smattering of lines, and it is a unique solution to a problem. If you look at my source or reverse my binary and dream up a new soltution that is "unique" I have no problem with that. I feele that my ownership lies in the implementation of an idea, not the idea itself.
I wrote it.
I can release it. Or not.
I can burn it, delete it, print it out and use it as Kleenex©
It's mine.
If I want to give it away, that's MY decision.
It's mine.
I choose the license. And if at a later time I choose to re-release it under a new license, I will dammit.
And I don't like your license you transparent control-freak. Don't you dare try to define my freedoms for me, under the guise of a freedom-fighter, for that is the true mark of a fascist.
Silly Canadian, you know nothing about economics or politics. That's why your dollar sucks shit.
;)
;), my Columbian teenage boy latte is getting cold and I need some more Hot Asian Teens to weave me some new Gap chinos.
Haha. Put down that flamethrower, I'm 100% pure CDN.
The reasons are as follows:
1) We are good buddies with the US. We do pretty much what they ask of us; if we don't, they dont care and simply ignore us.
2) Alot of our trading partners are US trading partners. Being good buddies with the popular kids means we get to reap the benefits.
3) Most of the time, because of our ("The West") dependency on gold and oil, we look the other way when alot of shady stuff takes place. We don't really mind if most South African gold miners are black, and they're bosses are white. Hell just 2 days ago we finally gave Nelson Mandela CDN citizenship.
We also look the other way when Israel continues to wage a war of genocide on the Palestinian population, or at least are highly discriminatory against them. And we really couldn't give a flying fuck about Afghan women in burkhas, until the problem lands on our collective doorstep.
So, no, I don't think many people care about a billion Chinese not being able to surf porn and Amnesty Intl. (Aside: I moved to Vancouver during the HK exodus, shortly before the HK takeover. From what I've been told, it's definitely not nice in China, but not abominable either. Remember folks, the culture of the Chinese people is RADICALLY different than ours. The American dream or ideal is not global.)
We may pay lip service to their plight and hold fucking transparent rock concerts for Tibet, while aging rockstars play their wheelchair RocknRoll, and we get to go home and pat ourselves on the back. Now, if you'll excuse me Mr. Canadian leftist
OMG! Bruce Perens!
/., Sourceforge, and the like ( from my observations) allowing an explosion of collaboration (plus time/effort) and hype that has since died off somewhat.
Heh, well, in the 80's I was in <sheepish> elementary school, so please appreciate that my perspective in this matter is limited to ~'94 and after...
FWIW, my point about VC cash was that the gold-rush mentality helped fund OSDN,
OK, here is my general rebuttal/addition to the responses received thus far...
/. that .NET as a marketing push is far more sexier than Apache+PHP+MySql, or Apache+Jserv+J2EE (hope I got that right). Still, OSS tools will always find their way into the backroom and I hope (know?) it will thrive there.
.NET, what else is there?" Instead of choosing it on merit, they chose it simply on price. When they get a bit bigger , the company may (gak!) move over to .NET or whatever "solution" they need, ignoring what they have working for them. Everone's a sucker for a shiny new toy, software is no different.
The original article focused, as most mainstream articles do, on the business aspect of OSS. I feel I made my stance on that clear, so I won't persue it further.
I would like to add to my position on OSS the movement. Again, I believe that it will continue to grow, and perhaps I should add that "undignifiable death" was a little off. Maybe "waning from" the radar of the mainstream press is more fitting. Which is fine, as some posters commented. I think OSS will still have a strong position within IT depts all over the planet, based on it's strengths of (duh) openess, managebility, and extensibility. OSS is a great tool for custom solutions and extending what is already there. Don't have what you need? DIY or have a look on Google.
However, as an example, my employer is looking to purchase a front/backend "e-commerce" (egad...) solution to increase our webhosting, dial-up, etc sales. Instead of taking the available tools out there and creating a custom solution to their specs, they are willing to throw money at a proprietary solution. Now, I'm no VP or CTO, so perhaps they have their reasons, but when there are so many options for tooling up something yourself, why not use OSS?
Also, with OSS as a "failed business model", it looks to the uninformed as if OSS itself tanked. The only thing that could fix that for the people that make decisions (on the whole, MBAs PHBs) is a massive marketing campaign to clean up the image.
I've said it before on
I just shudder at the thought that the only companies that will be using OSS
will be the ones thinking, "Geez, can't afford
OSS will obviuosly continue, the only thing that will kill an idea is lack of interest in that idea. I guess my point was that in a few years, lack of interest could hobble OSS, due to fewer people being aware, or a bad rap or whatever.
And BTW, nice dig about "hearing from Bill Gates".
Clever.
OS atheist -- underpaidISPtech
The economy is in the shitter. This whole article is nearly pointless. Open-source (the business model) was circling the drain before any other sector of industry was, and this is news?
And now to burn some karma....
I think that the open-source phenomenon will quietly, undignifiably, dissapear soon. It is a lofty and noble goal to be sure, however as a sustainable movement, I believe it will become less important over time. Why? Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source. The time to code the time to host it, the time to collaborate, just aint there any more during the dot-bomb hangover.
Open-source is an idea; that will remain. Linux the kernel, and any derivatives; they will remain. Unix is still with us after 30 odd years, and so too will Linux and OSS. Good. But, making money and supplanting a capitalistic machine that is designed for high proiduct turn-over, planned obsolecence, and not giving the customer what they want is the sustainable model, not selling services to free products. If you pay for the product, then you will pay for support. Get a free product, and you find out its not up to par or whatver, why pay for support, just get another free clone....
As an example, look at the mp3, CDR, DVD products out there. Is there a single product (game console, entertainment device or otherwise) that can play mp3s, read and write CDR, CDRW, DVD, DVD-ROM/RAM/RW and any other format? No. It is much better business sense to force the consumer to buy a couple of different devices than one do-it all device.
As with software, you want return customers, hence the excruciatingly long path to a stable windows platform (some may argue this point, although at this time I think it's the licensing/terms of use that is the problem not the OS itself).
There is alot of uncertainty around everthing right now, both socially and economically, and open-source is a real gamble. Will it become a security threat to use OSS? Of course it isnt, we know better than that, but we don't make the law.
Where does crypto stand? Do you want to continue to code for free, or maybe you're unemployed (or facing it) and would like to see a return on your effort? I dont think selling services is the way. I can just as easily support your software as you can.
Anyways flame away, mod me down for blasphemy, whatever, maybe I forgot my happy pills this morning...
Motorized Surfboard?
Hydrogen powered Scooter?
Flying Boat?
StreetCarver?
Since when does strapping an engine on something make it a great invention?
I attached a tokomak reactor to my mousepad, where can I pick up my trophy?
I don't have any friends here either ;)
Do I know you? Job's not as cushy as you think, pal.
A real career-killer.