I haven't played a lot of videogames in a long time, but the summary made me think of something that could be pretty cool in a horror game, if any game designers are out there.
You, as the player, control a character who is seen in a third-person view like what's described in the summary. This character is actually moving ahead of "you," though. The POV of the game is actually that of another character that walks behind the character that you control. That other character is basically defenseless, however -- think screaming chick from a horror movie. It's the job of the character you control to protect the POV character. So you fight the zombies and what-not with the character from a third-person POV, but every so often the zombies are trying to reach over the shoulder of the character you control, to claw at the POV. Cue all sorts of nasty death scenes where you get to watch your protector be overrun and killed, even as your own POV camera flips sideways to the floor...
Saying "Don't buy it" is about as productive as vegitarians boycotting McDonald's because they serve meat.
And here I thought a vegetarian was someone who doesn't want to eat meat. I'd say boycotting McDonald's goes a long way to achieving that goal. On the other hand, you seem to be assuming that a vegetarian is necessarily someone who doesn't want anyone in the world to eat meat, and who therefore necessarily wants to undermine McDonald's. Since when has every issue had to be reduced to this kind of extremism? Plenty of people are capable of making individual choices without forcing their will on other people.
There's nothing wrong with using encryption to keep other people from accessing my data, but there is something gravely wrong with using encryption (or any other technology) to keep me from accessing my data.
Let's assume for the moment that by "your data" you mean a song you have downloaded from a music site. Now, you did not record this music. You did not write it. You did not commission it to be written or recorded by other people. So what makes it "your" data? I seriously want an answer to this question, because I hear over and over people complaining about someone exerting control over "their" data. Simply put, if it's "your data" that you wanted, then you probably shouldn't have paid for data that someone else owns and controls completely.
Or, to put it in layman's terms -- know what you're buying and don't buy something that doesn't give you what you want. I just don't buy the idea that someone inventing a kind of software data compression will radically transform the way artists, writers and thinkers engage the public. There will always be countless artists who choose to work outside the system of the major copyright holders and media conglomerates. Cory Doctorow, whose speech you paraphrase above, chooses to do this. Countless bands do it. Nothing will stop them from doing it in the future.
Restraining the development of science and technology because of ideology is bad. I thought most of us agreed on that? So why is DRM the exception?
Should the government step in to enforce mandatory DRM on media? No. But what does that have to do with the technology itself? Nothing.
I figure this thread is good and dead at this point, but after the fact I wanted to let you know that I read your comments and I think they're reasonable concerns. In turn, I appreciate you listening to what I had to say.
My point, mainly, is that I'm trying and I know a lot of other InfoWorld staffers are, also. There are a lot of pressures in this business that steer you one way or another and it can sometimes be difficult to balance them all. To say we're all just stooges is a little unfair.
That said, Slashdot still links a lot of InfoWorld stories, which means it's always possible to pick out the stuff we publish that you're interested in and ignore (or openly criticize) the rest. I think a lot of this "revolutionary world of new media" stuff is a bunch of hype, myself, but this is one way in which the readers surely come out ahead.
As you've described it, most Americans are socialists. There are very few Americans who would strip all socialist programs from our country (examples: public schooling, fire departments, depts of transportation, farm subsidies, libraries, anti-pollution laws, car safety laws, etc).
And ironically, you will find many of them on Slashdot. We call them libertarians, and they believe that government inevitably slides into lethargy and corruption and therefore cannot be entrusted to run such institutions; that competition in the open market is what makes such things viable in the long term.
I am not one of these people, but I just wanted to point out that it's a fallacy that the only people who are against socialism are red-faced, fanatical Christian Republicans.
Er, no. DRM is a consumer device preventing its owner from accessing or using some information stored inside it, in order to enforce corporate policy (or laws, contracts, etc.).
The fact that DRM systems use encryption is just an implementation detail, and opposition to DRM does not imply opposition to encryption.
So you're not opposed to encryption per se, but you are opposed to software that enforces rules about when you're allowed to decrypt the ciphertext? If so, and anyone is allowed to decrypt anytime they feel like it, then why support the encryption in the first place?
Encrypting files for personal use has almost nothing to do with DRM. If an RIAA exec wants to encrypt his music, good for him, but he has no business encrypting music I PAID FOR. If I've bought the music, no one has any right to restrict how/where/when I use it, especially if it's well within my fair use rights.
OK... now for "RIAA exec," substitute "health insurance customer." For "music," substitute "medical records."
I only care about the country I was born in. The rest of the world can die in nuclear fire as far as I care.
Wow... I mean... wow.
Like... why???
How far does this philosophy of yours zoom down to? "I only care about the city block I live on. The rest of the city can die of bubonic plague for all I care..."
I may be unusual in this, but the last thing I'd ever identify with is some country... and I'm not even in the U.S. by accident of birth. I'm here by accident of my parents moving here when I was about five. But that's all it is -- some dumb coincidence. What on earth would make anybody think they have any more entitlement than that?? Especially somebody who calls themselves a Marxist...
But you'll notice that all the articles on InfoWorld reference the Programmers' Guild.
I'm really not trolling like the other guy suggests. Any time I see a single organization chiming in on an issue every. Single. Time. It's. Brought. Up... I get suspicious. I don't doubt that outsourcing, H-1B and related issues are a problem for American workers. I just wonder what the Programmers Guild's deal is. Are you a member? Is anyone you know?
Oh and BTW -- full disclosure, I am a senior editor at InfoWorld.
InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. There's a special report on H-1B visas set up on the site.
Personally, one point that makes me skeptical is that I hear about this from the Programmer's Guild again and again. I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas. Not that this is, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
I'm shocked that NPR aired this. I understand giving airing sides of an argument, but this is nothing but lies.
And now you're on Slashdot discussing it with other people, all of whom seem to understand that. What's the problem?
Morning Edition is a news program. It's job isn't to inject its own editorial opinion into a subject (though that's what it gets accused of a lot). If it lets two people speak on an issue and leaves it there, then it's done the job of informing you, the public.
Before this morning, did you realize that the opponents of net neutrality were using these kinds of baldfaced lies to support their position? That these were the things they were telling your legislators? Well now you know. And you have NPR to thank for informing you.
T-Mobile policy was that I was responsible for paying for the calls I never got. After a VERY LONG time discussing this with them, they finally issued a "courtesy" refund of the charges. They were admitting no error, and this was a "one time" deal. They finally realized that by keeping me as a customer they would make much more than the $300 they would have gotten as a final payment at account closing.
So they didn't hang up on you, I guess?
Re:That's UNencumbered to you
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Now, the only reason these codecs arent supported is because of patents, right? How is that not encumbered? I'm sure everyone can agree they would be included by default had they been open codecs.
That's right. The codecs are patent encumbered. Therefore Ubuntu, which does not include those codecs, is not.
You seem to be a little confused about Free Software and what it means. Think about it. The fact that the software bundled with Ubuntu is not patent encumbered is what makes Ubuntu 100 percent Free Software.
The fact that this guy/gal is saying the T-Mobile reps hung up is what makes me skeptical of this whole story.
I know you almost never hear a statement like this about any company -- which is why I'm going to come out and say it -- but I've actually been nothing but satisfied with the customer service at T-Mobile. I've had to call numerous times, for various reasons, and the rep on the phone has invariably been extremely courteous.
I think I can count one occasion where the person I spoke to didn't really seem to understand what was going on and I ended the call without getting much satisfaction. I called back later with the same problem, spoke to someone else, and got the problem resolved. All the other times I was escalated to the level of support that could help me with my problem with no fuss, quickly and politely. I've even been handed off for second-level support to RIM for my Blackberry when it was necessary; nobody even gave me the slightest hard time. And they always, always thank me for my business -- sometimes the dumb little things count.
Another time I noticed an instant messaging charge on my bill that seemed out of place (I get unlimited SMS). Instead of getting mad, I just wrote up a quick e-mail on their Web site stating plainly that I thought the charge was erroneous and I'd like it reversed (please). A few days later I got an e-mail back saying, sure enough, they decided it was a mistaken charge, were reversing it, and were giving me 20 free anytime minutes also. No problem.
So I'm extremely skeptical about this whole story. T-Mobile hasn't been winning J.D. Power customer support awards for nothing. For two different reps to actually hang up on somebody tells me that either A.) somebody called up, screaming and yelling irrationally and refusing to take any kind of due process to address the issue; or B.) somebody's making up a story for some reason.
(Of course, it could be possible that the submitter is talking about T-Mobile in Europe, which I can't speak to.)
Re:That's UNencumbered to you
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Ubuntu IS encumbered by patent restrictions, unless you are trying to say ubuntu supports those formats out of the box?
It doesn't support them out of the box. In fact, it doesn't support them at all. Therefore it is not encumbered by the patents covering those formats. As it stands, the Ubuntu developers don't have to worry in the slightest about what the holders of those patents want. It's not an issue.
On the other hand, if Ubuntu did support those formats out of the box, then it would be encumbered by the patents.
Perhaps the word you're looking for is hindered? But that presupposes that you believe not supporting those formats is a minus. Some people aren't hindered by that lack at all; they just use OGG, or whatever.
That's UNencumbered to you
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Ubuntu like other main stream GNU/Linux distributions is encumbered by the patent restrictions related to various popular multimedia file formats.
Actually, what you mean to say is that Ubuntu is not encumbered by the patent restrictions on certain multimedia formats, because it does not include support for those formats.
This article is pretty frustrating, as it still gives no answers why Oracle is not a member of ODSL and why they should be? As far as I know Oracle makes database and middleware tools, wich is pretty distinct from operating system kernels. Maybe they require some specific kernel modules to get some better performance in some instances, but does that require them to be a memberof ODSL?
I talked to Wim Coekaerts the other day and he said that one of the things that frustrates him is the level to which Oracle is involved in Linux kernel development and promoting Linux in general, and yet they don't seem to get credit for it. Yes, Oracle is a database and applications vendor -- but Oracle is a pretty resource-intensive application, and a lot of people use it for some very heavy lifting, and as such it can demand a lot from the OS kernel it runs on. Oracle has put a lot of energy into making its database run better on Linux, and making Linux more stable in general.
It may kill some of what's left, but in doing so it breeds resistance because no bactericide is 100% effective, and triclosan does not kill "on contact" so is therefore even less effective in typical use of anti-bacterial soap.
I'm not a microbiologist and I do not know how triclosan kills bacteria exactly, but somebody once explained to me that this theory that anti-bacterial soaps breeds sturdier bacteria is bogus. They compared it to the idea that if you fed an entire population of people gasoline every day, eventually a small number of people would develop an immunity to the poisonous effects of gasoline, would pass on that immunity to their offspring, and you'd eventually breed a race of people who cannot be poisoned by drinking gasoline. It just ain't so.
According to Wikipedia, at least seven independent studies have shown that there's no significant relationship between triclosan use and bacterial resistance.
Antibiotics, though -- the kind you take orally when you're sick -- work differently, and the theories about breeding immune strains do apply.
Doesn't quite work as reliably as you think. My wife has bad allergies to cat dander, but grew up surrounded by pets and helped work her mother's pet store.
As a kid, one of my sister's favorite food was shrimp -- shrimp salad a particular favorite. I remember this because she'd constantly be asking my mom to make it, when I found it to be totally gross. Fast forward to her mid-twenties and she suddenly developed an allergy to all forms of shellfish so severe that it would almost close her throat, sending her to the hospital. Yes, she found out about the allergy after a night out at a restaurant. She now keeps an allergy kit that contains a syringe of epinephrine in case of an emergency. And I don't have to eat shrimp salad when I go home to mom's house anymore (though, ironically, I grew up to like shrimp).
The point is, allergies can develop at any stage of life, not just because you were molly-coddled as a kid. If you look at any bottle of hair dye, for example, they all say to test it on a small area of your head before you do the whole thing, in case of allergies. That really does happen; you really can dye your hair and be fine, then dye it again with the same product a month later and have an allergic reaction.
Most pubs run case studies and quotes of actual users, but those are carefully vetted by the company they are speaking for beforehand. What tradeoffs did these users get in exchange for speaking to the press? Why is there is no disclosure here?
Well, usually there are no "tradeoffs" other than, like you say, the quotes are vetted by corporate PR before we are allowed to print them. And the result is that, inevitably, the case studies end up being a little lame. The PR flacks are there to serve their companies' marketing departments and if something starts to look curiously like it might not actually be marketing, they get nervous. Veer too close to asking "the hard questions," as the grandparent suggested earlier, and you're pretty likely to have the case study participant pull the plug at the last minute, leaving you with 2-3 pages of printed matter to fill. The only real exceptions are government agencies, where often you have people who, despite being anonymous civil servants 364 days out of the year, really do view their jobs as providing a service for the American people and they want to get the word out about what they're doing. (I sort of know how they feel.)
At their worst, these pubs see their readers as little more than consumers. Too many stories are low-key sales pitches, their intent obscured by the pub's spin of "providing value to the reader." Companies are quoted first, then analyst and, way at the bottom, actual users.
Unfortunately, some of this is due to the habits of news reporters. As you probably know if you work in journalism yourself, news guys write in what is known as an "inverted pyramid" style -- big facts up top leading down to the smaller details at the bottom. If you're writing your news story about a new version of IBM WebSphere that's supposed to ship this week, then that is the big fact. You have to put it first. Only then can you move it along to customer or analyst quotes. The trick to making a story not sounds like a sales pitch is to find the right ones. And I tend to agree that trade pubs tend to rely too heavily on analysts -- often they really don't have anything particularly insightful to say, and occasionally they're in the vendors' pockets anyway -- but readers do expect those quotes to be there, analysts in theory are aware of the representative opinions of customers and, more importantly, analysts will actually pick up the phone and give you a quote to put into print without a lot of runaround (unlike, as I mentioned before, most customers).
InfoWorld is actually better than most pubs in both getting writers with technical expertise, as well as tracking down actual users, but it is still susceptible to hype (Its coverage of SOA, I thought, crossed the line from journalism to advocacy). Covering the industry != covering the chief companies of that industry.
I hear you and I appreciate the feedback. Between you and me, I agree on the SOA coverage but we do have some folks on staff who are strong advocates of it. I'm not typically all that involved there.
Hmm - let's see. So you're saying that Microsoft, IBM, Forrester, Gartner, and BEA repeat things to you over and over again until you believe them (white papers and PR / church services), then you attempt to convert others to your beliefs (editorial articles / laws, evangelism, and public proclamations)?
haha only serious.
Now you're talking about a different topic. The grandparent was saying that computer journals write what they write because they need to woo advertisers. I'm saying that's false; that's not the way it works. You, however, are saying that tech journalists write what they write because they are ignorant. That might be true, but it's a different argument.
Treat with extreme skepticism any politician who hasn't been in the situation in question, or any editorialist who doesn't build what he writes about. Common sense has only a moderate track record in general, and is miserable in relatively new scientific fields like information science. While it is true that tech magazines attempt - perhaps even go to great lengths - to know and profess truth, how well can one understand a fish while standing on dry land? How well when most of the information one receives comes from commercial fishermen?
Are you really asking a question? If so, are you willing to listen to me if I answer it?
As an editor at InfoWorld, I commission a great deal of work from a broad variety of resources (writers). Like you, the tools I use depend on the job at hand.
If I need somebody to go out and conduct a bunch of interviews (like TFA, but let me reiterate that TFA is not an InfoWorld article, it was published by eWeek) then I hire somebody who is fundamentally a reporter. I need somebody who knows how to reach somebody on the phone, ask some questions, and transcribe the results. A lot of people with deeper technical background won't do that. Believe it or not, they talk tough (like the grandparent) but when the chips are down and they have the floor they not only fail to ask "the tough questions," in fact they often stare at their shoes, fiddle with a pen, and say nothing. I do not exaggerate; some of my writers, though they are highly competent and intelligent people, would need threat of guerilla dental surgery in order to actually call somebody on the phone and get a quote. So I don't use them for those types of articles.
On the other hand, if I want to commission an article about next-generation SAN systems, I want somebody who knows something about storage. If I need an article about server virtualization, I want a writer who knows something about that topic. I draw upon the resources at my disposal.
I personally have a technology background. I'm not a hotshot systems guy by any means, but I have administered Unix and Linux systems, have managed development teams, and have programmed in at least a half-dozen languages -- including Forth and assembly language, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not a DBA but I've worked with relational databases. I've written public domain software that's lost to the sands of MS-DOS and I've made my own minor contributions to open source projects. Believe it or not, when I was about 17 I even wrote a couple early computer viruses.
I admit that I am atypical of the computing press. There are not many people working full-time in this field who have credentials similar to mine -- I know this just based on the resumes I've seen. However, that's not to say that there aren't sharp people out there. You may be familiar with Jon Udell, who is a tremendous resource for InfoWorld. I work with a guy named Mario Apicella, who knows more about storage than anyone I've met. Oliver Rist writes regularly for InfoWorld about Windows, yet his writing i
You must be hiding the good articles, because you're not publishing them. This interview is nothing more than a puff piece.
You may notice that this interview was not published by InfoWorld but by our competition -- eWeek, a Ziff-Davis publication.
That said, just because it's an article about Microsoft doesn't make it a "puff piece." To my eye the interviewer asks some legitimate questions and ran the answers Mundie gave. I'm willing to bet there's not a single name on eWeek's subscriber list who works at a company that uses zero Microsoft software. Not one. So this interview, while it's not going to win any Pullitzers, is certainly timely and relevant.
Looks it's a computer journal. The job of a computer journal is not to ask hard hitting questions. It's to suck up to your advertisers and to make sure you get their press releases published as articles and to generally act as their publicity agents.
I hear this all the time, and I've come to the resignation that it's just a fact of life that people want to think this way, but frankly it's bullshit.
I am a senior editor at InfoWorld. I can tell you unequivocably that the editorial staff at InfoWorld is not in the business of sucking up to advertisers; indeed, we are not involved in the business of procuring advertisements in any way. Any reputable publication has a "church and state" policy with regard to sales and editorial. InfoWorld does, and I have no reason to believe our distinguished competition at eWeek is any different. (Of course, they're not as good at their jobs as we are, but they're not crooks.)
At InfoWorld we are also not in the business of repurposing press releases, nor do we accept any so-called bylined articles contributed by vendors. Any "advertorial" is clearly marked as such -- it's the rules.
Editorial staff at computer journals do nurture relationships with major technology vendors but that's because it's necessary to what we do -- which is report on IT. We may not print answers to the "hard-hitting questions" as often as you might like. In many cases, however, the reason you don't see answers to those questions in print is because the person we ask refuses to answer them.
You don't have to believe me, of course. But come on -- do I walk around saying programmers don't do anything but eat Cheet-Os, drink Mountain Dew, and add bugs to software?
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't played a lot of videogames in a long time, but the summary made me think of something that could be pretty cool in a horror game, if any game designers are out there.
You, as the player, control a character who is seen in a third-person view like what's described in the summary. This character is actually moving ahead of "you," though. The POV of the game is actually that of another character that walks behind the character that you control. That other character is basically defenseless, however -- think screaming chick from a horror movie. It's the job of the character you control to protect the POV character. So you fight the zombies and what-not with the character from a third-person POV, but every so often the zombies are trying to reach over the shoulder of the character you control, to claw at the POV. Cue all sorts of nasty death scenes where you get to watch your protector be overrun and killed, even as your own POV camera flips sideways to the floor...
And here I thought a vegetarian was someone who doesn't want to eat meat. I'd say boycotting McDonald's goes a long way to achieving that goal. On the other hand, you seem to be assuming that a vegetarian is necessarily someone who doesn't want anyone in the world to eat meat, and who therefore necessarily wants to undermine McDonald's. Since when has every issue had to be reduced to this kind of extremism? Plenty of people are capable of making individual choices without forcing their will on other people.
Why? This assumption doesn't make a lick of sense.
Let's assume for the moment that by "your data" you mean a song you have downloaded from a music site. Now, you did not record this music. You did not write it. You did not commission it to be written or recorded by other people. So what makes it "your" data? I seriously want an answer to this question, because I hear over and over people complaining about someone exerting control over "their" data. Simply put, if it's "your data" that you wanted, then you probably shouldn't have paid for data that someone else owns and controls completely.
Or, to put it in layman's terms -- know what you're buying and don't buy something that doesn't give you what you want. I just don't buy the idea that someone inventing a kind of software data compression will radically transform the way artists, writers and thinkers engage the public. There will always be countless artists who choose to work outside the system of the major copyright holders and media conglomerates. Cory Doctorow, whose speech you paraphrase above, chooses to do this. Countless bands do it. Nothing will stop them from doing it in the future.
Restraining the development of science and technology because of ideology is bad. I thought most of us agreed on that? So why is DRM the exception?
Should the government step in to enforce mandatory DRM on media? No. But what does that have to do with the technology itself? Nothing.
I figure this thread is good and dead at this point, but after the fact I wanted to let you know that I read your comments and I think they're reasonable concerns. In turn, I appreciate you listening to what I had to say.
My point, mainly, is that I'm trying and I know a lot of other InfoWorld staffers are, also. There are a lot of pressures in this business that steer you one way or another and it can sometimes be difficult to balance them all. To say we're all just stooges is a little unfair.
That said, Slashdot still links a lot of InfoWorld stories, which means it's always possible to pick out the stuff we publish that you're interested in and ignore (or openly criticize) the rest. I think a lot of this "revolutionary world of new media" stuff is a bunch of hype, myself, but this is one way in which the readers surely come out ahead.
Best, Neil
And ironically, you will find many of them on Slashdot. We call them libertarians, and they believe that government inevitably slides into lethargy and corruption and therefore cannot be entrusted to run such institutions; that competition in the open market is what makes such things viable in the long term.
I am not one of these people, but I just wanted to point out that it's a fallacy that the only people who are against socialism are red-faced, fanatical Christian Republicans.
So you're not opposed to encryption per se, but you are opposed to software that enforces rules about when you're allowed to decrypt the ciphertext? If so, and anyone is allowed to decrypt anytime they feel like it, then why support the encryption in the first place?
OK... now for "RIAA exec," substitute "health insurance customer." For "music," substitute "medical records."
Wow... I mean ... wow.
Like ... why???
How far does this philosophy of yours zoom down to? "I only care about the city block I live on. The rest of the city can die of bubonic plague for all I care..."
I may be unusual in this, but the last thing I'd ever identify with is some country ... and I'm not even in the U.S. by accident of birth. I'm here by accident of my parents moving here when I was about five. But that's all it is -- some dumb coincidence. What on earth would make anybody think they have any more entitlement than that?? Especially somebody who calls themselves a Marxist...
But you'll notice that all the articles on InfoWorld reference the Programmers' Guild.
I'm really not trolling like the other guy suggests. Any time I see a single organization chiming in on an issue every. Single. Time. It's. Brought. Up ... I get suspicious. I don't doubt that outsourcing, H-1B and related issues are a problem for American workers. I just wonder what the Programmers Guild's deal is. Are you a member? Is anyone you know?
Oh and BTW -- full disclosure, I am a senior editor at InfoWorld.
InfoWorld has been running articles on this H-1B situation for a while. There's a special report on H-1B visas set up on the site.
Personally, one point that makes me skeptical is that I hear about this from the Programmer's Guild again and again. I'm not sure what the Programmer's Guild does, other than make a big stink about H-1B visas. Not that this is, in and of itself, necessarily a bad thing -- but if the H-1B situation was really as cut and dried, criminal and downright treasonous as the Programmer's Guild says, wouldn't there be some other parties chiming in on the issue?
And now you're on Slashdot discussing it with other people, all of whom seem to understand that. What's the problem?
Morning Edition is a news program. It's job isn't to inject its own editorial opinion into a subject (though that's what it gets accused of a lot). If it lets two people speak on an issue and leaves it there, then it's done the job of informing you, the public.
Before this morning, did you realize that the opponents of net neutrality were using these kinds of baldfaced lies to support their position? That these were the things they were telling your legislators? Well now you know. And you have NPR to thank for informing you.
So they didn't hang up on you, I guess?
That's right. The codecs are patent encumbered. Therefore Ubuntu, which does not include those codecs, is not.
You seem to be a little confused about Free Software and what it means. Think about it. The fact that the software bundled with Ubuntu is not patent encumbered is what makes Ubuntu 100 percent Free Software.
The fact that this guy/gal is saying the T-Mobile reps hung up is what makes me skeptical of this whole story.
I know you almost never hear a statement like this about any company -- which is why I'm going to come out and say it -- but I've actually been nothing but satisfied with the customer service at T-Mobile. I've had to call numerous times, for various reasons, and the rep on the phone has invariably been extremely courteous.
I think I can count one occasion where the person I spoke to didn't really seem to understand what was going on and I ended the call without getting much satisfaction. I called back later with the same problem, spoke to someone else, and got the problem resolved. All the other times I was escalated to the level of support that could help me with my problem with no fuss, quickly and politely. I've even been handed off for second-level support to RIM for my Blackberry when it was necessary; nobody even gave me the slightest hard time. And they always, always thank me for my business -- sometimes the dumb little things count.
Another time I noticed an instant messaging charge on my bill that seemed out of place (I get unlimited SMS). Instead of getting mad, I just wrote up a quick e-mail on their Web site stating plainly that I thought the charge was erroneous and I'd like it reversed (please). A few days later I got an e-mail back saying, sure enough, they decided it was a mistaken charge, were reversing it, and were giving me 20 free anytime minutes also. No problem.
So I'm extremely skeptical about this whole story. T-Mobile hasn't been winning J.D. Power customer support awards for nothing. For two different reps to actually hang up on somebody tells me that either A.) somebody called up, screaming and yelling irrationally and refusing to take any kind of due process to address the issue; or B.) somebody's making up a story for some reason.
(Of course, it could be possible that the submitter is talking about T-Mobile in Europe, which I can't speak to.)
It doesn't support them out of the box. In fact, it doesn't support them at all. Therefore it is not encumbered by the patents covering those formats. As it stands, the Ubuntu developers don't have to worry in the slightest about what the holders of those patents want. It's not an issue.
On the other hand, if Ubuntu did support those formats out of the box, then it would be encumbered by the patents.
Perhaps the word you're looking for is hindered? But that presupposes that you believe not supporting those formats is a minus. Some people aren't hindered by that lack at all; they just use OGG, or whatever.
Actually, what you mean to say is that Ubuntu is not encumbered by the patent restrictions on certain multimedia formats, because it does not include support for those formats.
I talked to Wim Coekaerts the other day and he said that one of the things that frustrates him is the level to which Oracle is involved in Linux kernel development and promoting Linux in general, and yet they don't seem to get credit for it. Yes, Oracle is a database and applications vendor -- but Oracle is a pretty resource-intensive application, and a lot of people use it for some very heavy lifting, and as such it can demand a lot from the OS kernel it runs on. Oracle has put a lot of energy into making its database run better on Linux, and making Linux more stable in general.
For more info, check out the column I wrote about it -- Oracle: the biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of
I'm not a microbiologist and I do not know how triclosan kills bacteria exactly, but somebody once explained to me that this theory that anti-bacterial soaps breeds sturdier bacteria is bogus. They compared it to the idea that if you fed an entire population of people gasoline every day, eventually a small number of people would develop an immunity to the poisonous effects of gasoline, would pass on that immunity to their offspring, and you'd eventually breed a race of people who cannot be poisoned by drinking gasoline. It just ain't so.
According to Wikipedia, at least seven independent studies have shown that there's no significant relationship between triclosan use and bacterial resistance.
Antibiotics, though -- the kind you take orally when you're sick -- work differently, and the theories about breeding immune strains do apply.
As a kid, one of my sister's favorite food was shrimp -- shrimp salad a particular favorite. I remember this because she'd constantly be asking my mom to make it, when I found it to be totally gross. Fast forward to her mid-twenties and she suddenly developed an allergy to all forms of shellfish so severe that it would almost close her throat, sending her to the hospital. Yes, she found out about the allergy after a night out at a restaurant. She now keeps an allergy kit that contains a syringe of epinephrine in case of an emergency. And I don't have to eat shrimp salad when I go home to mom's house anymore (though, ironically, I grew up to like shrimp).
The point is, allergies can develop at any stage of life, not just because you were molly-coddled as a kid. If you look at any bottle of hair dye, for example, they all say to test it on a small area of your head before you do the whole thing, in case of allergies. That really does happen; you really can dye your hair and be fine, then dye it again with the same product a month later and have an allergic reaction.
Well, usually there are no "tradeoffs" other than, like you say, the quotes are vetted by corporate PR before we are allowed to print them. And the result is that, inevitably, the case studies end up being a little lame. The PR flacks are there to serve their companies' marketing departments and if something starts to look curiously like it might not actually be marketing, they get nervous. Veer too close to asking "the hard questions," as the grandparent suggested earlier, and you're pretty likely to have the case study participant pull the plug at the last minute, leaving you with 2-3 pages of printed matter to fill. The only real exceptions are government agencies, where often you have people who, despite being anonymous civil servants 364 days out of the year, really do view their jobs as providing a service for the American people and they want to get the word out about what they're doing. (I sort of know how they feel.)
Unfortunately, some of this is due to the habits of news reporters. As you probably know if you work in journalism yourself, news guys write in what is known as an "inverted pyramid" style -- big facts up top leading down to the smaller details at the bottom. If you're writing your news story about a new version of IBM WebSphere that's supposed to ship this week, then that is the big fact. You have to put it first. Only then can you move it along to customer or analyst quotes. The trick to making a story not sounds like a sales pitch is to find the right ones. And I tend to agree that trade pubs tend to rely too heavily on analysts -- often they really don't have anything particularly insightful to say, and occasionally they're in the vendors' pockets anyway -- but readers do expect those quotes to be there, analysts in theory are aware of the representative opinions of customers and, more importantly, analysts will actually pick up the phone and give you a quote to put into print without a lot of runaround (unlike, as I mentioned before, most customers).
I hear you and I appreciate the feedback. Between you and me, I agree on the SOA coverage but we do have some folks on staff who are strong advocates of it. I'm not typically all that involved there.Now you're talking about a different topic. The grandparent was saying that computer journals write what they write because they need to woo advertisers. I'm saying that's false; that's not the way it works. You, however, are saying that tech journalists write what they write because they are ignorant. That might be true, but it's a different argument.
Are you really asking a question? If so, are you willing to listen to me if I answer it?
As an editor at InfoWorld, I commission a great deal of work from a broad variety of resources (writers). Like you, the tools I use depend on the job at hand.
If I need somebody to go out and conduct a bunch of interviews (like TFA, but let me reiterate that TFA is not an InfoWorld article, it was published by eWeek) then I hire somebody who is fundamentally a reporter. I need somebody who knows how to reach somebody on the phone, ask some questions, and transcribe the results. A lot of people with deeper technical background won't do that. Believe it or not, they talk tough (like the grandparent) but when the chips are down and they have the floor they not only fail to ask "the tough questions," in fact they often stare at their shoes, fiddle with a pen, and say nothing. I do not exaggerate; some of my writers, though they are highly competent and intelligent people, would need threat of guerilla dental surgery in order to actually call somebody on the phone and get a quote. So I don't use them for those types of articles.
On the other hand, if I want to commission an article about next-generation SAN systems, I want somebody who knows something about storage. If I need an article about server virtualization, I want a writer who knows something about that topic. I draw upon the resources at my disposal.
I personally have a technology background. I'm not a hotshot systems guy by any means, but I have administered Unix and Linux systems, have managed development teams, and have programmed in at least a half-dozen languages -- including Forth and assembly language, just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not a DBA but I've worked with relational databases. I've written public domain software that's lost to the sands of MS-DOS and I've made my own minor contributions to open source projects. Believe it or not, when I was about 17 I even wrote a couple early computer viruses.
I admit that I am atypical of the computing press. There are not many people working full-time in this field who have credentials similar to mine -- I know this just based on the resumes I've seen. However, that's not to say that there aren't sharp people out there. You may be familiar with Jon Udell, who is a tremendous resource for InfoWorld. I work with a guy named Mario Apicella, who knows more about storage than anyone I've met. Oliver Rist writes regularly for InfoWorld about Windows, yet his writing i
You may notice that this interview was not published by InfoWorld but by our competition -- eWeek, a Ziff-Davis publication.
That said, just because it's an article about Microsoft doesn't make it a "puff piece." To my eye the interviewer asks some legitimate questions and ran the answers Mundie gave. I'm willing to bet there's not a single name on eWeek's subscriber list who works at a company that uses zero Microsoft software. Not one. So this interview, while it's not going to win any Pullitzers, is certainly timely and relevant.
I hear this all the time, and I've come to the resignation that it's just a fact of life that people want to think this way, but frankly it's bullshit.
I am a senior editor at InfoWorld. I can tell you unequivocably that the editorial staff at InfoWorld is not in the business of sucking up to advertisers; indeed, we are not involved in the business of procuring advertisements in any way. Any reputable publication has a "church and state" policy with regard to sales and editorial. InfoWorld does, and I have no reason to believe our distinguished competition at eWeek is any different. (Of course, they're not as good at their jobs as we are, but they're not crooks.)
At InfoWorld we are also not in the business of repurposing press releases, nor do we accept any so-called bylined articles contributed by vendors. Any "advertorial" is clearly marked as such -- it's the rules.
Editorial staff at computer journals do nurture relationships with major technology vendors but that's because it's necessary to what we do -- which is report on IT. We may not print answers to the "hard-hitting questions" as often as you might like. In many cases, however, the reason you don't see answers to those questions in print is because the person we ask refuses to answer them.
You don't have to believe me, of course. But come on -- do I walk around saying programmers don't do anything but eat Cheet-Os, drink Mountain Dew, and add bugs to software?
Pure sales gold.