... and usually, great expense unless you use FOSS databases in which case you are shit out of luck if the guy handling the integration work for your platform gets hit by a bus or just decides he wants to quit.
WTF is your problem? No really, what does that even mean? You've never heard of proprietary developers suffering bus errors or quitting, not to mention failing to document their work? How is any of your rant exclusive to FOSS? You met one once, and they failed to part the red sea for you? We've all met people who say they're wizards but aren't, and people like that are likely the majority in every line of endeavour.
Glossy brochures and slick salesmen locking credulous buyers (tech. ignorant managers) into non-standard, proprietary tools is a much bigger problem than mere "find a developer who doesn't suck" follies. Hiding behind all that to think about are the boatloads of cash involved. Is that cash going to get you where you want to go, or is it being pissed into a river? At least with FOSS, you have a chance to objectively test for performance and features without needing to first help somebody buy themselves an island paradise.
If a president allowed it to be created, a president almost certainly can order it dismantled.
Of course, there's also the possibility that he's little more than a figurehead. The last time any of your presidents went really loggerheads with the establishment was JFK.
No, I don't consider Kenneth Starre's campaign against presidential blowjobs to be in that league.
If you could follow the money, my bet is that you would find Skype is a NSA entity since Microsoft took over.
Were any technically inclined individuals not expecting this to be the case when it was announced that Microsoft was acquiring Skype? I thought it was fairly blatantly obvious at the time. Of course the vast majority of the population of the planet would not have made the connection (if they even learned of the acquisition) nor (apparently) much cared (seeing how events have unfolded).
I'm beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable as a member of this tiny minority. It's starting to feel like being forced to watch a slow-mo train wreck a la Clockwork Orange.
Anyone is perfectly willing to demonize and sacrifice anyone in society if it serves any need they perceive.
You've just described a predator. No, we're not all predators, and in fact most of us advance civilization as the best form of defence from predatory conduct, preferring a "live and let live" course.
However, it's good to know where you stand. Now we can watch out for you.
We'll call it "Slashdot's Rule of Business": No matter what the task, the only people to which it can be reasonably entrusted are the computer geeks.
That'd make a good.sig... there's just enough of a grain of truth in it to make it a plausible aphorism. To prove it, you just have to look around and see how average people do things. They don't analyse situations then determine what's the best way forward depending on all the related factors. They don't think twelve steps ahead like chess players. They certainly don't ordinarily have a scientific mindset. They're generally pragmatic ("Whatever works"), not idealists ("Things as they could, and should, be").
I'm sure someone must have come up with a name for this (rule by the scientifically inclined) before but I can't find it at the moment. Eugenics is related, I suppose.
Higher taxes. But that is evil toward muh gold, therefore evil toward muh freedoms.
No, you idiot. Warbonds and "deficit spending", or "cooking the books" as it was known back then. Those guys who raised the flag on Iwo Jima spent the rest of the war begging for war bonds sales.
but that old code had to fit into 80 columns and other really limits
Some of the variable names those farts chose would make a fair sized subroutine today. Back then, there was FORTRAN with one letter variable names, and COBOL in which you could fall asleep before reading to the end of one.
You're an ignorant fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.
The political terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution (1789–99), and referred to where politicians sat in the French parliament; those who sat to the right of the chair of the parliamentary president were broadly supportive of the institutions of the monarchist Ancien Régime.
None of that has anything to do with politics today. Ditto "conservative" vs. "liberal."
You talk about communism but I don't think the moment you start working together it's communism nor is it a bad thing.
I was being facetious, and I agree with you. There's nothing inherently evil in it, assuming no-one's forced into it (consenting adults, and all that). Community is generally a positive thing.
I was more marvelling at the phenomenon of people doling out king's ransoms for "stuff" while resenting whole heartedly the very idea of having to pay staff compensation. People are happily plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for Oracle licences while penny-pinching each and every cent paid to those who can manipulate the thing. I don't understand where this inherently "anti-labour" attitude comes from or why it persists. I also think a lot of those paying out for Oracle would be just as well served for a fraction of the cost by MySQL, and some even by SQLite. Yet they focus on the cost of labour instead. It's nonsensical.
Most of those guys are just trying to get you to go away in 10 minutes or less so they can make their call stats for the week.
In what moronic universe is that metric what anyone wants from a Helldesk call center? It's supposed to facilitate problem solving communications between the company and its customers leading to customer satisfaction and retention. Instead, it's penny-pinching Helldesk costs and aggravating relations with customers, for what? Saving a few bucks on Helldesk salaries to the exclusion of the reason why the Helldesk exists in the first place? Management that comes up with ideas like that should be defenestrated.
There's another option that open source gives you that proprietary software doesn't: You can pay someone else to fix it.
That would cut into shareholder dividends and BoD bonuses, and for what? A fixed bug? Improved functionality? Whoopee. You're talkin' commynism.
I've given up trying to understand those people. They appear to think money paid out in salaries, regardless of how well spent, is just one degree away from being flushed down the drain. Capitalists, my ass.
There were Germans in the '30s who weren't comfortable with the Nazis. I imagine there's Iranians too who aren't too cozy with the current regime. They've already executed a few who've been caught.
Well, for one thing Snowden didn't provide any hard evidence and lacking a literal smoking gun intelligence agencies basically have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want to do.
Including lying to Congressional oversight, by the way.
Pretty darned good PR, and cheap at the price. A few NSA sharpies come up with something like that and get it out to thair alternates in the community, and it makes the whole of the NSA look like thay're all super elite security wizards, and they can all go back to playing Angry Birds; pats on backs all around, bonuses for the sharpies. Smoke & mirrors.
If you have access to things, you probably know other people who have access to other things. Perhaps these people talk to one another. Snowden could know these things the same way we know them: someone else spilled the beans.
It doesn't even need to be that, if unconsciously. Think about how ordinary users work. Do they studiously lock their desktop every time they step away from it? Hardly. I've been on contracts where I had to use my supervisor's login creds for the first month until they got around to building my own accounts.
Users run across stuff in their day to day they find interesting and copy it to their home dir. That thingy that was only available to someone with their specific access privs may now be available to anyone who can access the copy.
Snowden's a knowledgable tech. He's been reading the same geeky newssites we read (see Ars for that story). He probably is familiar with all the dopey crap that's gone on since Captain Crunch was using a cereal box prize whistle to steal long distance phone calls from a too confident AT&T. That he was able to pull any of this off would only be a surprise to your average tech ignorant user, assuming the NSA's been as lax at internal security as all outward indications (Bradley Manning) indicate.
I cannot believe they managed to re-route a plane belonging to a president of an independent country!
Yeah, after all the crazy shit the TLAs pulled off during the Cold War (Chuck Yeager breaking the Sound Barrier, Nazi rocket scientists, Glomar Explorer, Allende's Chile, The Missile Crisis, The Tonkin Incident), you'd think they ought to be able to come up with better than that. The US must have lost its mojo somewhere.
I guess petty tyrants aren't what they used to be.
The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange.
Ha ha, very funny. Please explain why the UK HAD TO dump money down that well. I suspect there's a bully "across the pond" that's threatening them to do so based on some under the table "special relationship" handshake which neither would like to openly admit to, because it would confirm for ALL to see that one party is a pawn and the other is a bully. That would make them both look pathetic should it ever manage to make it onto the nightly news.
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
The measures taken by the government to take Snowden into custody only confirm that he is wanted for a serious violation of the law.
The measures taken so far confirm only that he seriously pissed off an embarassed administration, and why would that be?
This is par for the course in this century. Somehow they've come to believe that the world is their playground and they've every right to change any rules on a whim, in theory "for our protection."
Snowden's not the story. He's just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger.
Slashdot Mirror
... and usually, great expense unless you use FOSS databases in which case you are shit out of luck if the guy handling the integration work for your platform gets hit by a bus or just decides he wants to quit.
WTF is your problem? No really, what does that even mean? You've never heard of proprietary developers suffering bus errors or quitting, not to mention failing to document their work? How is any of your rant exclusive to FOSS? You met one once, and they failed to part the red sea for you? We've all met people who say they're wizards but aren't, and people like that are likely the majority in every line of endeavour.
Glossy brochures and slick salesmen locking credulous buyers (tech. ignorant managers) into non-standard, proprietary tools is a much bigger problem than mere "find a developer who doesn't suck" follies. Hiding behind all that to think about are the boatloads of cash involved. Is that cash going to get you where you want to go, or is it being pissed into a river? At least with FOSS, you have a chance to objectively test for performance and features without needing to first help somebody buy themselves an island paradise.
If a president allowed it to be created, a president almost certainly can order it dismantled.
Of course, there's also the possibility that he's little more than a figurehead. The last time any of your presidents went really loggerheads with the establishment was JFK.
No, I don't consider Kenneth Starre's campaign against presidential blowjobs to be in that league.
If you could follow the money, my bet is that you would find Skype is a NSA entity since Microsoft took over.
Were any technically inclined individuals not expecting this to be the case when it was announced that Microsoft was acquiring Skype? I thought it was fairly blatantly obvious at the time. Of course the vast majority of the population of the planet would not have made the connection (if they even learned of the acquisition) nor (apparently) much cared (seeing how events have unfolded).
I'm beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable as a member of this tiny minority. It's starting to feel like being forced to watch a slow-mo train wreck a la Clockwork Orange.
Does anyone believe that being once removed by virtue of a private company makes you any less part of the police state?
Ask Ed Snowden.
Anyone is perfectly willing to demonize and sacrifice anyone in society if it serves any need they perceive.
You've just described a predator. No, we're not all predators, and in fact most of us advance civilization as the best form of defence from predatory conduct, preferring a "live and let live" course.
However, it's good to know where you stand. Now we can watch out for you.
We'll call it "Slashdot's Rule of Business": No matter what the task, the only people to which it can be reasonably entrusted are the computer geeks.
That'd make a good .sig ... there's just enough of a grain of truth in it to make it a plausible aphorism. To prove it, you just have to look around and see how average people do things. They don't analyse situations then determine what's the best way forward depending on all the related factors. They don't think twelve steps ahead like chess players. They certainly don't ordinarily have a scientific mindset. They're generally pragmatic ("Whatever works"), not idealists ("Things as they could, and should, be").
I'm sure someone must have come up with a name for this (rule by the scientifically inclined) before but I can't find it at the moment. Eugenics is related, I suppose.
Why I wrote all that bored.
Next time, find something else to do.
Higher taxes. But that is evil toward muh gold, therefore evil toward muh freedoms.
No, you idiot. Warbonds and "deficit spending", or "cooking the books" as it was known back then. Those guys who raised the flag on Iwo Jima spent the rest of the war begging for war bonds sales.
but that old code had to fit into 80 columns and other really limits
Some of the variable names those farts chose would make a fair sized subroutine today. Back then, there was FORTRAN with one letter variable names, and COBOL in which you could fall asleep before reading to the end of one.
You're an ignorant fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.
The political terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution (1789–99), and referred to where politicians sat in the French parliament; those who sat to the right of the chair of the parliamentary president were broadly supportive of the institutions of the monarchist Ancien Régime.
None of that has anything to do with politics today. Ditto "conservative" vs. "liberal."
What the industry needs to do instead of this sort of bullshit, is to contract with the fansubbers, and pay them for their work.
Or, do their jobs producing timely translations of their own works. Then there'd be no need/call/market for fansubbers in the first place.
You talk about communism but I don't think the moment you start working together it's communism nor is it a bad thing.
I was being facetious, and I agree with you. There's nothing inherently evil in it, assuming no-one's forced into it (consenting adults, and all that). Community is generally a positive thing.
I was more marvelling at the phenomenon of people doling out king's ransoms for "stuff" while resenting whole heartedly the very idea of having to pay staff compensation. People are happily plunking down tens of thousands of dollars for Oracle licences while penny-pinching each and every cent paid to those who can manipulate the thing. I don't understand where this inherently "anti-labour" attitude comes from or why it persists. I also think a lot of those paying out for Oracle would be just as well served for a fraction of the cost by MySQL, and some even by SQLite. Yet they focus on the cost of labour instead. It's nonsensical.
Most of those guys are just trying to get you to go away in 10 minutes or less so they can make their call stats for the week.
In what moronic universe is that metric what anyone wants from a Helldesk call center? It's supposed to facilitate problem solving communications between the company and its customers leading to customer satisfaction and retention. Instead, it's penny-pinching Helldesk costs and aggravating relations with customers, for what? Saving a few bucks on Helldesk salaries to the exclusion of the reason why the Helldesk exists in the first place? Management that comes up with ideas like that should be defenestrated.
There's another option that open source gives you that proprietary software doesn't: You can pay someone else to fix it.
That would cut into shareholder dividends and BoD bonuses, and for what? A fixed bug? Improved functionality? Whoopee. You're talkin' commynism.
I've given up trying to understand those people. They appear to think money paid out in salaries, regardless of how well spent, is just one degree away from being flushed down the drain. Capitalists, my ass.
There were Germans in the '30s who weren't comfortable with the Nazis. I imagine there's Iranians too who aren't too cozy with the current regime. They've already executed a few who've been caught.
So what about a person who reflexively asserts wrongdoing by the government? Perhaps it is... paranoia?
No, that's either a libertarian or someone who's studied history.
Well, for one thing Snowden didn't provide any hard evidence and lacking a literal smoking gun intelligence agencies basically have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they want to do.
Including lying to Congressional oversight, by the way.
So rather than examining the evidence, you resort to attacking the messenger. Bill_the_stooge?
Bill the Social Engineer.
If you are so sure of that then what is this? http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/
Pretty darned good PR, and cheap at the price. A few NSA sharpies come up with something like that and get it out to thair alternates in the community, and it makes the whole of the NSA look like thay're all super elite security wizards, and they can all go back to playing Angry Birds; pats on backs all around, bonuses for the sharpies. Smoke & mirrors.
If you have access to things, you probably know other people who have access to other things. Perhaps these people talk to one another. Snowden could know these things the same way we know them: someone else spilled the beans.
It doesn't even need to be that, if unconsciously. Think about how ordinary users work. Do they studiously lock their desktop every time they step away from it? Hardly. I've been on contracts where I had to use my supervisor's login creds for the first month until they got around to building my own accounts.
Users run across stuff in their day to day they find interesting and copy it to their home dir. That thingy that was only available to someone with their specific access privs may now be available to anyone who can access the copy.
Snowden's a knowledgable tech. He's been reading the same geeky newssites we read (see Ars for that story). He probably is familiar with all the dopey crap that's gone on since Captain Crunch was using a cereal box prize whistle to steal long distance phone calls from a too confident AT&T. That he was able to pull any of this off would only be a surprise to your average tech ignorant user, assuming the NSA's been as lax at internal security as all outward indications (Bradley Manning) indicate.
How would a low level employee dealing with email surveillance know anything about stuxnet?
find / -type f | xargs grep -i stuxnet
But for him to have access across all areas and departments. There is a serious problem with NSA internal security.
If they're designing security for their military compadres down the hall, that pretty much explains the Bradley Manning debacle, yes?
I cannot believe they managed to re-route a plane belonging to a president of an independent country!
Yeah, after all the crazy shit the TLAs pulled off during the Cold War (Chuck Yeager breaking the Sound Barrier, Nazi rocket scientists, Glomar Explorer, Allende's Chile, The Missile Crisis, The Tonkin Incident), you'd think they ought to be able to come up with better than that. The US must have lost its mojo somewhere.
I guess petty tyrants aren't what they used to be.
The UK has no interest in dumping money down the well like they've had to with Assange.
Ha ha, very funny. Please explain why the UK HAD TO dump money down that well. I suspect there's a bully "across the pond" that's threatening them to do so based on some under the table "special relationship" handshake which neither would like to openly admit to, because it would confirm for ALL to see that one party is a pawn and the other is a bully. That would make them both look pathetic should it ever manage to make it onto the nightly news.
The measures taken so far pretty much confirms that everything Snowden has said is true.
The measures taken by the government to take Snowden into custody only confirm that he is wanted for a serious violation of the law.
The measures taken so far confirm only that he seriously pissed off an embarassed administration, and why would that be?
This is par for the course in this century. Somehow they've come to believe that the world is their playground and they've every right to change any rules on a whim, in theory "for our protection."
Snowden's not the story. He's just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger.