they're not porting because it's not taken seriously. Linux is an extremely robust platform; but unfortunately the vocal minority have chosen to take it to a level that's so extreme that it makes it nearly impossible for a corporation to participate. Citing acroread is completely absurd as it's a piece of crap in every environment. There's a lot of crap in the linux world as well. You can claim they can't compete, but I haven't seen any real proof. Much of the open source applications have been incomplete, poorly documented and focused on a small minority interest. That's the beauty of open source and any real community. People work on what's important to them. Commercial ventures tend to work on what's going to generate profit. Nothing's wrong with either, but trying to compare them is like comparing apples to squirrels. Why should I as a company finance the man hours for R&D to put a driver or application into the open source world to have it bastardized by developers that weren't part of the original R&D effort, used on competing hardware that by chance uses the same chipset as mine, and ultimately be vilified because I *am* a commercial venture and I might have chose not to use the license of the day? Ultimately it becomes a political, public relations and legal quagmire that most company's decide to avoid.
If you are trying to sell workgroup servers you have to take into account the fact that a large number of your potential clients will use Windows desktop computers. If your servers cannot offer the same functionality as Microsoft servers (without modifying all clients) you have a competitive disadvantage, no matter how good your servers are.
Then you develop a Windows based client interface, or build a workstation operating system that works best with your server. Novell did it for Netware; others have as well. I agree, that it's difficult to build interoperability into a competing product, but honestly there's no business reason why Microsoft should have made it easy anyhow. Company's do it all the time. Try using non-Nortel equipment on a Meridian phone system. That's just one example.
how are they abusing a monopoly that was generated by the successful marketting of their product? For the sake of arguement here, if I were to develop a very successful product and some company wanted to build a competing product that worked just like mine; I wouldn't want to be forced to provide the designs to that other company and reduce THEIR R&D costs. I already paid mine. There's nothing out there that says interoperability with Windows is a requirement. If their product is so great, it should be able to shine on it's own. When did we start calling "momentum" a monopoly? Yes I realize the courts have justified all this; I still don't have to agree with it. MS is bad enough on it's own without our having to help them out.
Um, except for a brand new, clone, optical mouse that SuSE Could. Not. Figure. Out. (as in, it turned off the led so hard, I had to power cycle the box).
I'll bet it was one of those cheap $10 Micro Innovations optical mice. I just recently ran across that with three different distributions. I haven't found a solution other than "use a different mouse."
Wait.. I can't use linux because it is the best choice for the task at hand? I can only use linux if I demand source code and know what to do with it? Come on, I agree that source code for a drive can't hurt, but it's not like my life will end if it's only released as a binary or needs to be used with ndiswrapper.
I use linux because of it's technology, not the political ideology.
If you aren't willing to rewrite huge chunks of your application to make it work well in a Linux/X11 environment, do us all a favor and don't bother porting it to Linux at all.
I'd say a fair majority of commercial developers have already taken your advise. Hey, thanks!
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's preferable to actually do it. Unlike/. most people don't care to recompile a module to make things work. Compiling software is what computer geeks do. Using software is what *users* do. I'm not saying that in a derogatory manner either because I consider myself one of the geeks and I enjoy my time with a compiler.
I never completely understood this concept that if a minor revision happened to the kernel, I now have to recompile a handful of modules because the checks have decided they're not compatible. It worked before, it should still work. If the kernel is *that* far away from the prior version, it's most certainly *NOT* a minor revision, and a simple recompile of the modules shouldn't be of any value at all. If it's merely because somebody decided that it's better to call this function with a boolean value rather than it's representative numeric value, well that's just silly and pedantic. (I had a friend that used to run through 15 or 20 builds adusting the indents in code so it was 'pretty.') That individual or group of individuals really need to look into just exactly what has been put into their pizza.
*NO* operating system avoids API or function call changes over the long haul. I don't expect a driver or module to remain the same for years on end. I would like a module to make it to the next rev level though.
When has a UID been considered an indication of knowledge? Last I was aware, a low UID simply meant they'd held an account on this website longer than most. I know some pretty dumb people that have been around for a long time; course I also know some pretty dumb people that seem to appear every time there's a dissenting opinion.
You mention that kids entering a porn shop should be shown the door. That's 100% correct. However, kids entering a website. How is the owner to know that it's a kid? What if the kid lies and says "Sure, I'm 18!" There's nothing anyone can do about that, and I don't care how great your programming skills are.
The truth of the matter is that porn is going to be on the internet, the mail, the TV and video etc because there are a lot of legal adults that are interested enough in it to make it profitable, so it's not going to go away. What needs to be done is place the responsibility of supervision firmly where it belongs... the parents or guardians. If little billy-joe-bob is wandering the llama sex sites, why should the llama sex site owner be sued? (ignoring the obvious llama activity) billy-joe-bob's parents should be supervising his internet usage and controlling his access.
There also needs to be reasonable limits set on accesibility. Sure an 11 or 12 yr old kid shouldn't have access to porn, although I know a few that would actively look for it if they could. Hell damn near every 13 yr old (or older) boy on the planet is most likely actively looking for porn. I personally feel that if a child is able to decide to go looking for the stuff, and his or her parents aren't monitoring that connection, the website owner shouldn't be penalized. If the website owner is spamming porn or placing links in google that are deceptive that's another story. Luring people of ANY age to your porn site should be illegal period. However if a 13 yr old clicks on a link "RED HOT TEEN PUSSY THAT WANTS YOU!" well.. that 13 yr old certainly isn't looking for pictures of burning felines waiting to be adopted.
It is, of course, not currently illegal to criticize government. And if it ever gets that way, I don't know a single person who would rest until it is fixed (left or right wing).
I believe his point is that by the time it ever gets that way, *not* resting and *trying* to fix it will be illegal. Bitching about not being able to criticize your government is oddly enough performing the act itself.
I still don't get it. The company made a decision and implemented it. The users didn't like the decision and the masses flocked elsewhere. The company said "oh shit." and reversed the decision.
So again... why is this important? Near as I can figure, this is how it's supposed to work.
Too bad I can't moderate in topics I'm discussing. I'd give you mine. Thank you for a lucid response to an (originally) tongue in cheek type hopefully humorous post. None the less yes, most of us that are technically astute do check out our ISP's troubleshooting pages before a problem exists.
Many of the other suggestions defending such a facility (as if I was seriously deriding it) lack the forthought to understand that most of the internet population is *not* technically astute and wouldn't think to check it out ahead... nor admit to a friend they don't know etc and so on. Finally the concept of running off to a friends, work or library doesn't exactly hold water because part of troubleshooting is trying a potential solution and checking the results. For those of us that handle customer repairs, the value of an on-site visit jumps immediately to mind. Being away from the device in trouble makes it much more difficult to troubleshoot. This is why many cable company's won't offer you technical support for a connectivity issue unless you're actually sitting at the computer (with the modem nearby) when you call in. Sure they'll try and offer you some suggestions. They'll even give you an incident number, but the gist of it is to call back with that number when you're at the computer and possibly have tried the general solutions they've offered.
A better solution might be a simple photocopied or laser printed troubleshooting guide that the customer gets when they pick up their new customer package. For the companies that want to go hog-wild, maybe even copy those troubleshooting web pages to the new customer CD that the customer can go through from a nice "What? It doesn't work?" type link.
In the end though guys, it was mean to be a funny... a poor one yes, but still a funny. Don't get your panties in such a knot. (toddestan this isn't directed at you--you're only a convenient Reply to This link)
Re:Books for web browsers?
on
Firefox Secrets
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Is that anything like the small local ISP putting a special "troubleshooting" section on their webpage detailing information about troubleshooting a modem connection problem, and what to do if they can't get connected to the internet?
Yes, that was actually done around here. They've since taken it down, no doubt due to the ridicule from even the most basic customer.
I have to agree with you there. I'm reading through this thread and saying to myself "Ok, so this is cool; but how is this going to help me in my day to day life?"
If I were a Slashdot editor, you can believe that I'd put my ass up for sale.
Is it hairy or no? I've not been very happy with my ass recently and have been considering a replacement. With all the cheap Korean models on the market today it's hard to make a good decision.
they could also delete pretty much all the facts and replace it with gibblefinch a few thousand times. In that case, if there were absolutely no facts whatsoever, would it be considered 100% factual because there was a 0% error rate?
and this particular thread is about wikipedia, therefore the topic of conversation is about wikipedia. nowhere in my discourse did I claim it was exclusive to wikipedia. It's obvious you're one of the wikifiddlers I refer to, and having even a normal discussion with you will be impossible, therefore I'm done.
is it really transparent? Sure I can see what the proposed process is, and yes they've got backups etc; however how can I find a reference on wikipedia, and get an honest, complete and accurate answer to "Who wrote that?"
and no, I don't mean an answer with somebody's "screen name" or alias.
additionally if somebody writes something unsavory *AND* untrue about me or the company I represent, my club, my neighborhood etc.. how do I represent myself as a person with actual knowledge of the situation's *TRUTH* and get it changed--permanently. That's the downfall as far as I can see. Yes, I can change it, but some lackluster pimpletard with no real life can come right behind me and undo all the changes and I'm back where it started. If the admin decides that pimpletard has a better wiki-rep than me? I'm screwed.
And now people are trying to use slander and legal tactics to damage them, a non-profit, free online resource, made up of volunteers. Humanity doesn't get any lower than that.
I think the real issue here is that people are getting slandered and libelled[?] by some of the lower elements of wiki editors and volunteers. If you're not popular with the wiki-fiddlers you're in deep shit on the wiki. Plain and simple. They can write anything they like about you or your organization and you have absolutely *no* recourse whatsoever to get it changed. There's nobody to go to as evidenced by the news of late.
I'm not a fan of wikipedia as a source of reference although I do use it from time to time. I do so with trepedation though because if I'm there doing some basic research on something, I'm already at a disadvantage because I don't know about it (if I did I wouldn't be there). Now I have to wonder if the information I'm reading is valid or merely placed there by somebody with an axe to grind? So I click on links and follow through like a good little researcher. Honestly though? I could have done that from google, yahoo or whatever mainstream search engine I choose at the moment.
Sorry for the rant, people who are so bent on controlling other people just really piss me off.
My take on this isn't so much that people want to control others. They want to maintain damage control. Ok, fine if I'm a bad person and the things written about me are true, that's one thing; but if I disagree with some whacked out wiki-fiddler my information (if there is any) could very easily be altered to harm my chances for success in the REAL world.
birds of a feather. Actually I like The Register. Not because I rely on it for news or even objective reporting. They don't claim to be objective.. ever.. well there was that one time but I believe there was a tongue planted firmly in a cheek. Most likely an ass cheek but hey.
Slashdot Mirror
They should be paid no more (or less) than the amount reported on the prior years tax return as income.
A person should not benefit from being elected, and this might just slow down the number of folks that are in it for the money, perks, or both.
*snap!* oh--hey! Wow, that was a wierd dream.
they're not porting because it's not taken seriously. Linux is an extremely robust platform; but unfortunately the vocal minority have chosen to take it to a level that's so extreme that it makes it nearly impossible for a corporation to participate. Citing acroread is completely absurd as it's a piece of crap in every environment. There's a lot of crap in the linux world as well. You can claim they can't compete, but I haven't seen any real proof. Much of the open source applications have been incomplete, poorly documented and focused on a small minority interest. That's the beauty of open source and any real community. People work on what's important to them. Commercial ventures tend to work on what's going to generate profit. Nothing's wrong with either, but trying to compare them is like comparing apples to squirrels. Why should I as a company finance the man hours for R&D to put a driver or application into the open source world to have it bastardized by developers that weren't part of the original R&D effort, used on competing hardware that by chance uses the same chipset as mine, and ultimately be vilified because I *am* a commercial venture and I might have chose not to use the license of the day? Ultimately it becomes a political, public relations and legal quagmire that most company's decide to avoid.
This will also spell the end of those pesky public libraries. Better bolt 'em up boys!
If you are trying to sell workgroup servers you have to take into account the fact that a large number of your potential clients will use Windows desktop computers. If your servers cannot offer the same functionality as Microsoft servers (without modifying all clients) you have a competitive disadvantage, no matter how good your servers are.
Then you develop a Windows based client interface, or build a workstation operating system that works best with your server. Novell did it for Netware; others have as well. I agree, that it's difficult to build interoperability into a competing product, but honestly there's no business reason why Microsoft should have made it easy anyhow. Company's do it all the time. Try using non-Nortel equipment on a Meridian phone system. That's just one example.
How is this offtopic? Come on mods, is that the best you can do to kill off a dissenting opinion? This is /. You gotta to better than this!
Not quite.
how are they abusing a monopoly that was generated by the successful marketting of their product? For the sake of arguement here, if I were to develop a very successful product and some company wanted to build a competing product that worked just like mine; I wouldn't want to be forced to provide the designs to that other company and reduce THEIR R&D costs. I already paid mine. There's nothing out there that says interoperability with Windows is a requirement. If their product is so great, it should be able to shine on it's own. When did we start calling "momentum" a monopoly? Yes I realize the courts have justified all this; I still don't have to agree with it. MS is bad enough on it's own without our having to help them out.
Um, except for a brand new, clone, optical mouse that SuSE Could. Not. Figure. Out. (as in, it turned off the led so hard, I had to power cycle the box).
I'll bet it was one of those cheap $10 Micro Innovations optical mice. I just recently ran across that with three different distributions. I haven't found a solution other than "use a different mouse."
Wait.. I can't use linux because it is the best choice for the task at hand? I can only use linux if I demand source code and know what to do with it? Come on, I agree that source code for a drive can't hurt, but it's not like my life will end if it's only released as a binary or needs to be used with ndiswrapper.
I use linux because of it's technology, not the political ideology.
I'd say a fair majority of commercial developers have already taken your advise. Hey, thanks!
Just because something is possible doesn't mean it's preferable to actually do it. Unlike /. most people don't care to recompile a module to make things work. Compiling software is what computer geeks do. Using software is what *users* do. I'm not saying that in a derogatory manner either because I consider myself one of the geeks and I enjoy my time with a compiler.
I never completely understood this concept that if a minor revision happened to the kernel, I now have to recompile a handful of modules because the checks have decided they're not compatible. It worked before, it should still work. If the kernel is *that* far away from the prior version, it's most certainly *NOT* a minor revision, and a simple recompile of the modules shouldn't be of any value at all. If it's merely because somebody decided that it's better to call this function with a boolean value rather than it's representative numeric value, well that's just silly and pedantic. (I had a friend that used to run through 15 or 20 builds adusting the indents in code so it was 'pretty.') That individual or group of individuals really need to look into just exactly what has been put into their pizza.
*NO* operating system avoids API or function call changes over the long haul. I don't expect a driver or module to remain the same for years on end. I would like a module to make it to the next rev level though.
When has a UID been considered an indication of knowledge? Last I was aware, a low UID simply meant they'd held an account on this website longer than most. I know some pretty dumb people that have been around for a long time; course I also know some pretty dumb people that seem to appear every time there's a dissenting opinion.
Karma be damned, here I go.
You mention that kids entering a porn shop should be shown the door. That's 100% correct. However, kids entering a website. How is the owner to know that it's a kid? What if the kid lies and says "Sure, I'm 18!" There's nothing anyone can do about that, and I don't care how great your programming skills are.
The truth of the matter is that porn is going to be on the internet, the mail, the TV and video etc because there are a lot of legal adults that are interested enough in it to make it profitable, so it's not going to go away. What needs to be done is place the responsibility of supervision firmly where it belongs... the parents or guardians. If little billy-joe-bob is wandering the llama sex sites, why should the llama sex site owner be sued? (ignoring the obvious llama activity) billy-joe-bob's parents should be supervising his internet usage and controlling his access.
There also needs to be reasonable limits set on accesibility. Sure an 11 or 12 yr old kid shouldn't have access to porn, although I know a few that would actively look for it if they could. Hell damn near every 13 yr old (or older) boy on the planet is most likely actively looking for porn. I personally feel that if a child is able to decide to go looking for the stuff, and his or her parents aren't monitoring that connection, the website owner shouldn't be penalized. If the website owner is spamming porn or placing links in google that are deceptive that's another story. Luring people of ANY age to your porn site should be illegal period. However if a 13 yr old clicks on a link "RED HOT TEEN PUSSY THAT WANTS YOU!" well.. that 13 yr old certainly isn't looking for pictures of burning felines waiting to be adopted.
I believe his point is that by the time it ever gets that way, *not* resting and *trying* to fix it will be illegal. Bitching about not being able to criticize your government is oddly enough performing the act itself.
I still don't get it. The company made a decision and implemented it. The users didn't like the decision and the masses flocked elsewhere. The company said "oh shit." and reversed the decision.
So again... why is this important? Near as I can figure, this is how it's supposed to work.
"And last but not least, you're cheating yourself out of the movie experiance!"
Did they *really* spell it experiance??? That might explain a lot!
Too bad I can't moderate in topics I'm discussing. I'd give you mine. Thank you for a lucid response to an (originally) tongue in cheek type hopefully humorous post. None the less yes, most of us that are technically astute do check out our ISP's troubleshooting pages before a problem exists.
Many of the other suggestions defending such a facility (as if I was seriously deriding it) lack the forthought to understand that most of the internet population is *not* technically astute and wouldn't think to check it out ahead... nor admit to a friend they don't know etc and so on. Finally the concept of running off to a friends, work or library doesn't exactly hold water because part of troubleshooting is trying a potential solution and checking the results. For those of us that handle customer repairs, the value of an on-site visit jumps immediately to mind. Being away from the device in trouble makes it much more difficult to troubleshoot. This is why many cable company's won't offer you technical support for a connectivity issue unless you're actually sitting at the computer (with the modem nearby) when you call in. Sure they'll try and offer you some suggestions. They'll even give you an incident number, but the gist of it is to call back with that number when you're at the computer and possibly have tried the general solutions they've offered.
A better solution might be a simple photocopied or laser printed troubleshooting guide that the customer gets when they pick up their new customer package. For the companies that want to go hog-wild, maybe even copy those troubleshooting web pages to the new customer CD that the customer can go through from a nice "What? It doesn't work?" type link.
In the end though guys, it was mean to be a funny... a poor one yes, but still a funny. Don't get your panties in such a knot. (toddestan this isn't directed at you--you're only a convenient Reply to This link)
Is that anything like the small local ISP putting a special "troubleshooting" section on their webpage detailing information about troubleshooting a modem connection problem, and what to do if they can't get connected to the internet?
Yes, that was actually done around here. They've since taken it down, no doubt due to the ridicule from even the most basic customer.
I have to agree with you there. I'm reading through this thread and saying to myself "Ok, so this is cool; but how is this going to help me in my day to day life?"
they could also delete pretty much all the facts and replace it with gibblefinch a few thousand times. In that case, if there were absolutely no facts whatsoever, would it be considered 100% factual because there was a 0% error rate?
and this particular thread is about wikipedia, therefore the topic of conversation is about wikipedia. nowhere in my discourse did I claim it was exclusive to wikipedia. It's obvious you're one of the wikifiddlers I refer to, and having even a normal discussion with you will be impossible, therefore I'm done.
is it really transparent? Sure I can see what the proposed process is, and yes they've got backups etc; however how can I find a reference on wikipedia, and get an honest, complete and accurate answer to "Who wrote that?"
and no, I don't mean an answer with somebody's "screen name" or alias.
additionally if somebody writes something unsavory *AND* untrue about me or the company I represent, my club, my neighborhood etc.. how do I represent myself as a person with actual knowledge of the situation's *TRUTH* and get it changed--permanently. That's the downfall as far as I can see. Yes, I can change it, but some lackluster pimpletard with no real life can come right behind me and undo all the changes and I'm back where it started. If the admin decides that pimpletard has a better wiki-rep than me? I'm screwed.
I think the real issue here is that people are getting slandered and libelled[?] by some of the lower elements of wiki editors and volunteers. If you're not popular with the wiki-fiddlers you're in deep shit on the wiki. Plain and simple. They can write anything they like about you or your organization and you have absolutely *no* recourse whatsoever to get it changed. There's nobody to go to as evidenced by the news of late.
I'm not a fan of wikipedia as a source of reference although I do use it from time to time. I do so with trepedation though because if I'm there doing some basic research on something, I'm already at a disadvantage because I don't know about it (if I did I wouldn't be there). Now I have to wonder if the information I'm reading is valid or merely placed there by somebody with an axe to grind? So I click on links and follow through like a good little researcher. Honestly though? I could have done that from google, yahoo or whatever mainstream search engine I choose at the moment.
My take on this isn't so much that people want to control others. They want to maintain damage control. Ok, fine if I'm a bad person and the things written about me are true, that's one thing; but if I disagree with some whacked out wiki-fiddler my information (if there is any) could very easily be altered to harm my chances for success in the REAL world.
birds of a feather. Actually I like The Register. Not because I rely on it for news or even objective reporting. They don't claim to be objective.. ever.. well there was that one time but I believe there was a tongue planted firmly in a cheek. Most likely an ass cheek but hey.