Is it me or does anyone else think the idea of embedding an entire office suite into an Email client seem a bit like putting a fullsize kitchen into a lunchbox? I guess with Notes users nobody will notice an extra few minutes of load time to compose a message, but...
Holy cow, you're right - I just checked the rental company's website and their rate for JFK airport is $115 a day!!! My business trips are to Denver, where I get the $11 rate; even the rate for Los Angeles is $17/day.
I wonder why such a huge discrepancy? It must be some kind of idiot tax for people who want to rent a car in a city with a great public transportation infrastructure...
If there are no people in the loop, why is it still so expensive? I rent cars frequently when I travel for business and I generally pay about $11/day for an economy model (this is without coupons, specials, or any sort of membership, just the normal rate at one of the big-name chains). $60/day - even for a nicer car, even with gas included - is a pretty hefty premium to pay just for not having to talk to the person behind the counter...
You're right as far as you go; I could've been more specific. We want to use the attorney as little as possible - there's a very limited and specific market for my software, and my employer is a nonprofit which gets much of its project-specific funding from taxpayer dollars, so there is strong motivation to minimize spending. If, for example, there are ready-written licenses we can adapt to at least be a jumping-off point, that could potentially save us money. There are various other concerns including IP protection issues that we may or may not be able partially to handle ourselves, too. Just knowing what to ask for (and about) when we walk into the office would be a big help.
Ideally I hope to contact another programmer who's gone through something similar, and maybe buy him/her a few pizzas while I pick his/her brain about stuff. But it's been years since I socialized with technically-oriented types so it may take a bit of networking to track him/her down...
I'm facing a similar situation myself right now and read with interest the comments to this post - I saw lots of issues raised and opinions debated, but very few concrete responses. Obviously, contacting a software licensing attorney at some stage of the process is pretty much unavoidable, but does that mean that we can't have a substantive exchange of ideas on a public forum?
I'm a contractor who's been developing customized versions of a simple application for an agency who uses it with client after client. We're at the point where we've decided to create a more generalized, user-configurable version, so I can move on to other things and they can simply sell the shrinkwrapped app to their future clients, splitting the proceeds with me. My employer and I are on the same page with respect to all main points of the arrangement, but have no idea how to even begin to put stuff on paper. We do plan to retain legal services eventually, but I'd really appreciate any pointers to some broad-based overviews of the process, information about some of the issues to consider and/or pitfalls to avoid, etc. We don't even know the legal difference between 'licensing' and 'selling' software, just that there is one, for example, and the more we look into this the more confusing it seems to get.
Morgan Freeman was part of an effort to bring "Rendezvous with Rama" to theaters, some years back. Guess it's stalled?
I always thought "Redshift Rendezvous" would make a very cool film - I think the author once told me he'd sold the film rights, but at the time it would have been incredibly expensive to make. F/X and CGI being what they are now, it should be far more practical these days (look at "Son of the Mask", an obvious welfare program for unemployed computer animators...)
Hopefully someone realizes that there are stories out there more original than "musclemen with big guns (or magical chicks in tight leather) go after evil, mutant radioactive bad guys in a dank dungeon/urban slum/space colony" and consider making a film about it.
(Sorry, I should have put up a spoiler alert - I just gave away the plots of the next 10 "sci-fi" movies...)
> They don't need to know about firewalls or slashdot. They just need > to stop the "oh it's too hard so I'll just ignore it" BS, stop being afraid of the damned thing,
Couldn't agree with you more (I've done plenty of time in the trenches too). But it's not going to happen.
Computers are way more complicated to use than they ought to be. They sell 'em because the benefits for most people outweigh the drawbacks. But to put people like us out of business, the way to go is to make computers simpler, not try to make people smarter...
Remember how the phone company didn't even let you dial your own numbers for about the first 50 years. Now there's an example of a well-planned, calmly paced technology rollout.
>how the hell do so many people get spyware on their computers? > > Is it lack of caring, just not keeping their computer up to date, not knowing
Yeah! And I don't understand how the hell people ever encounter dead batteries in their flashlights - I mean, do they just not care about flashlight maintenance?
Why on earth does anyone ever experience dropped calls on their cellphones - it's almost as though people haven't memorized the map of coverage areas, and inexplicably neglected to check the blueprints for the buildings they're planning to enter on a given day to ensure they won't block signals on the frequencies they intend to use.
(OK I could go on but I'll shut up... my point, if I have one, is that yeah, I recognize how easy it can be to avoid spyware - but the fact that one or two people in the world who have had more going on in their lives than Slashdot-reading haven't heard about NAT firewalls and Mozilla vs. Outlook is no excuse for a catty, arrogant comment like parent...)
> because the biggest thing going against nuclear > really is only inertia and ignorance
While I agree with many of your points, I still have a problem with the execution of fission power systems, if not the theory. It's one thing if a failure may cause a localized fire or power outage as with coal/gas/whatever, but it'll always be a bigger deal with nuclear. Any "inherently safe" design can be made moot by cheap, lowest-bidder construction and/or incompetence, to say nothing of sabotage. It CAN be done right, but it's also fundamentally less mistake-tolerant.
Be a dear and find us an uncontroversial place to put the waste, too, would you? Then we'll talk.
Besides, for about the same price as a few large reactors, we might just have a shot at getting the hang of fusion by the time those reactors could go online (they take like 10 years to build if I'm not mistaken?) That's your "safe" atomic power, and we should have had it already.
I remember the day I took my SAT tests; I'd arrived at a nearby high school with a friend of mine and neither of us were sure which room to go to, having ambiguous directions and being unfamiliar with the building. As we wandered around, we began to realize we weren't the only ones who were unclear; more and more people began following us - did we somehow appear to know where we were going?
Eventually we began to feel like parents of ducklings, and just started to have fun with it... I especially remember walking up a flight of steps which ended with locked doors, turning around and walking back down the steps, with over a dozen people trailing us - the dirty looks we got on our way down from people still on their way up were hilarious.
And I don't know if it constitutes an "exam" story, but I only ever had to write one paper for my entire 4 years in high school... I researched and wrote up a good research paper on SDI ("Star Wars") during my freshman year, and was able to get by for the next 4 years simply by redrafting it each time - sometimes even for the same teachers. (I was probably the only student who had a computer with a printer in the mid-80s, which made it even easier)
As for cheating stories, the best crib sheets I made (Spanish vocab - grammar was easy, but I was crap at memorizing the words...) were laminated on paper which would fold out from underneath my watch.
And as for instructor stories, the English teacher who would misspell her comments on my papers is - too short a story to make more than one sentence, apparently.
Somehow this experiment plugs into my long-held views about the inherent flaws of democracy - it really is merely "better than whatever's in second place", and this is an example of why. Everyone gets a vote, given a vague notion of the mutual goal, and the result is chaos.
Give people a halfway-decent picture of the goal - or metaphorically, give voters a competent and honest media which reports objectively on the issues - and I bet you'll find that far fewer steps are required for a convergence on the picture of the bucket.
Or maybe it's just late and I'm sleep deprived. And this site is just a clever hack which probably has interesting implications of its own for those who are more focused.
I dunno what your pref settings are, but here's what I see - both via my account, and with a default view (not logged in, different browser):
---- Ask Slashdot: Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips? Posted by Cliff on Sunday November 27, @07:32PM ---- Developers: Ubuntu Certified for IBM DB2 Posted by Hemos on Sunday November 27, @03:44PM ----
Less than 4 hours. Try some decaf? Or if you really want to suck away your free time (and this is not a plug; I'm very careful with my use of this site... it's dangerous unless you really have nothing useful to accomplish) try Metafilter.com.
But I suspect your prefs simply locked out a bunch of stories this afternoon, and you didn't bother to check the real front page while logged out.
I see a lot of people offering some moderatly technical advice, but perhaps a simpler answer to the question is - there's no one easy, foolproof, turnkey way to reliably determine whether your Windows machine is infected.
There are too many different types of malware around - virii, spyware, rootkits, trojans, and so on - each of which has new twists coming up almost daily. No single development team or company can keep up, and there are too many out there trying for there even to be a dominant player (and if there were, malware would promptly be rewritten to undermine the anti-malware utility in question...).
You will either need to learn how to use some of the tools others in this thread mention (it's not as hard as it may seem at first - try running them on a system you can be confident is clean, and become familiar with what "safe" traffic looks like, then try yours), or be prepared to pay hefty $ for expert help, or switch to another OS.
FWIW, I've run un-patched Windows2k for years without trouble, largely because I use a hardware NAT (firewall) and avoid Outlook. Even so, I am careful to avoid clicking on the wrong things online, and I am working towards moving to Linux ASAP.
I'm not sure, but isn't Onstar a fee-based system? If you don't pay, it goes away?
However scary a feature-set might be, so long as there's a reliable opt-out I'm not going to be critical. My satellite TV receiver could report what I watch, if I ever hooked it up to my phone line - but it keeps working even if I don't.
Asking why one can't get a useful safety feature *without* agreeing to a lot of intrusive fine print at the same time, is perhaps what we should be asking.
It's a cheap way to attract attention to the project - NASA can't really advertise in the conventional sense, but it depends on public support to maintain congressional interest and funding. So they do wacky things like this to get the word out; there are probably dozens of other mini-projects with the same goal.
> So what is the point of getting IT > Certifications? To have a piece of paper?"
Duh! What in life ISN'T about that? Does a driver's license mean you're a good driver? Does a beauty school diploma mean I'll get a good haircut from you?
Dang, you can't even get a life insurance payout from a loved one's policy unless someone gives you a piece of paper saying the guy's dead...
> While I will admit that going to the moon is an AMAZING feat > for humanity to marvel at for a long time into the future, > the actual scientific value of such a mission when compared > to its cost is greatly diminished.
What about its financial value? I may be remembering wrong, but I thought the Apollo program paid for itself when you count revenue from inventions like velcro, Tang, and the myriad other materials and gadgetry (not to mention stimulting the nascent computer industry). IIRC the whole Apollo program budget worked out to be about $25 billion, and I can easily imagine the benefits to our overall economy far exceeding that amount over time.
I'm sure NASA research is paying off every day, if not directly to the government coffers then certainly to industries all over the country - strong and lightweight materials make almost everything cheaper and better. And as you said later in your post, the real longterm payoff is getting a self-sufficient offworld colony so that we'll have someplace to retire to when this world finally and inevitably becomes one giant pollution-soaked gated community...
Nobody wants to publish failure rates - even if they're low, it still sounds bad. Try looking for "success" or "satisfaction" rates instead! Remember, marketing people just don't think like we do...
(back when I worked in the repair depot, I remember Packard Bells were approaching a 50% failure rate. Then they merged with NEC - still not sure who got the worst of that deal, given the crap PCs NEC used to ship...)
Depending on how pricey the cameras you're using are, I doubt you'll find a tapeless system that will give you cheaper and more flexible results than simply buying a second camera and mounting it next to the first one. You can switch tapes indefinitely without missing a beat, and if you're at the back of the room the shift in angle should be imperceptible. What's more, you'll always have a backup camera in case of hardware problems - that could save your hiney.
A tapeless system using a hard drive or whatever has its uses but I don't think you'd be solving quite the problem you are facing here.
He didn't research the song; he's owned computers for many years. A buddy of mine knows him pretty well - he's a very bright guy, unsurprisingly. It's a pity only his mainstream parodies ever get airplay, when his original stuff is often far more impressive.
The Pentiums song used to have a website where you could see the (hilarious) video, but I guess 6 years is a long time to expect it to still be around...
"You're using a 286? Don't make me laugh - your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?"
My middle and last names are "Montgomery Scott". I got to show him my driver's license once, oddly enough at an auto show, where he and Shatner were appearing (though only he was signing autographs - Shatner was just waving to the line of people)
Scotty (and MacGyver) may just be TV characters, but the world is richer for the legions of people they inspired to get a technical education. (And in Scotty's case, to learn how to drink Scotch...)
It's very weird for me to see "The Mighty Boosh" mentioned here. Rich Fulcher lives near me and now I have to figure out how to explain Slashdot to him... worlds are colliding here, people!
Slashdot Mirror
Is it me or does anyone else think the idea of embedding an entire office suite into an Email client seem a bit like putting a fullsize kitchen into a lunchbox? I guess with Notes users nobody will notice an extra few minutes of load time to compose a message, but...
Holy cow, you're right - I just checked the rental company's website and their rate for JFK airport is $115 a day!!! My business trips are to Denver, where I get the $11 rate; even the rate for Los Angeles is $17/day.
I wonder why such a huge discrepancy? It must be some kind of idiot tax for people who want to rent a car in a city with a great public transportation infrastructure...
If there are no people in the loop, why is it still so expensive? I rent cars frequently when I travel for business and I generally pay about $11/day for an economy model (this is without coupons, specials, or any sort of membership, just the normal rate at one of the big-name chains). $60/day - even for a nicer car, even with gas included - is a pretty hefty premium to pay just for not having to talk to the person behind the counter...
> Don't you read your own words?
No, I have people for that.
You're right as far as you go; I could've been more specific. We want to use the attorney as little as possible - there's a very limited and specific market for my software, and my employer is a nonprofit which gets much of its project-specific funding from taxpayer dollars, so there is strong motivation to minimize spending. If, for example, there are ready-written licenses we can adapt to at least be a jumping-off point, that could potentially save us money. There are various other concerns including IP protection issues that we may or may not be able partially to handle ourselves, too. Just knowing what to ask for (and about) when we walk into the office would be a big help.
Ideally I hope to contact another programmer who's gone through something similar, and maybe buy him/her a few pizzas while I pick his/her brain about stuff. But it's been years since I socialized with technically-oriented types so it may take a bit of networking to track him/her down...
I'm facing a similar situation myself right now and read with interest the comments to this post - I saw lots of issues raised and opinions debated, but very few concrete responses. Obviously, contacting a software licensing attorney at some stage of the process is pretty much unavoidable, but does that mean that we can't have a substantive exchange of ideas on a public forum?
I'm a contractor who's been developing customized versions of a simple application for an agency who uses it with client after client. We're at the point where we've decided to create a more generalized, user-configurable version, so I can move on to other things and they can simply sell the shrinkwrapped app to their future clients, splitting the proceeds with me. My employer and I are on the same page with respect to all main points of the arrangement, but have no idea how to even begin to put stuff on paper. We do plan to retain legal services eventually, but I'd really appreciate any pointers to some broad-based overviews of the process, information about some of the issues to consider and/or pitfalls to avoid, etc. We don't even know the legal difference between 'licensing' and 'selling' software, just that there is one, for example, and the more we look into this the more confusing it seems to get.
Morgan Freeman was part of an effort to bring "Rendezvous with Rama" to theaters, some years back. Guess it's stalled?
I always thought "Redshift Rendezvous" would make a very cool film - I think the author once told me he'd sold the film rights, but at the time it would have been incredibly expensive to make. F/X and CGI being what they are now, it should be far more practical these days (look at "Son of the Mask", an obvious welfare program for unemployed computer animators...)
Hopefully someone realizes that there are stories out there more original than "musclemen with big guns (or magical chicks in tight leather) go after evil, mutant radioactive bad guys in a dank dungeon/urban slum/space colony" and consider making a film about it.
(Sorry, I should have put up a spoiler alert - I just gave away the plots of the next 10 "sci-fi" movies...)
> They don't need to know about firewalls or slashdot. They just need
> to stop the "oh it's too hard so I'll just ignore it" BS, stop being afraid of the damned thing,
Couldn't agree with you more (I've done plenty of time in the trenches too). But it's not going to happen.
Computers are way more complicated to use than they ought to be. They sell 'em because the benefits for most people outweigh the drawbacks. But to put people like us out of business, the way to go is to make computers simpler, not try to make people smarter...
Remember how the phone company didn't even let you dial your own numbers for about the first 50 years. Now there's an example of a well-planned, calmly paced technology rollout.
>how the hell do so many people get spyware on their computers?
>
> Is it lack of caring, just not keeping their computer up to date, not knowing
Yeah! And I don't understand how the hell people ever encounter dead batteries in their flashlights - I mean, do they just not care about flashlight maintenance?
Why on earth does anyone ever experience dropped calls on their cellphones - it's almost as though people haven't memorized the map of coverage areas, and inexplicably neglected to check the blueprints for the buildings they're planning to enter on a given day to ensure they won't block signals on the frequencies they intend to use.
(OK I could go on but I'll shut up... my point, if I have one, is that yeah, I recognize how easy it can be to avoid spyware - but the fact that one or two people in the world who have had more going on in their lives than Slashdot-reading haven't heard about NAT firewalls and Mozilla vs. Outlook is no excuse for a catty, arrogant comment like parent...)
> because the biggest thing going against nuclear
> really is only inertia and ignorance
While I agree with many of your points, I still have a problem with the execution of fission power systems, if not the theory. It's one thing if a failure may cause a localized fire or power outage as with coal/gas/whatever, but it'll always be a bigger deal with nuclear. Any "inherently safe" design can be made moot by cheap, lowest-bidder construction and/or incompetence, to say nothing of sabotage. It CAN be done right, but it's also fundamentally less mistake-tolerant.
Be a dear and find us an uncontroversial place to put the waste, too, would you? Then we'll talk.
Besides, for about the same price as a few large reactors, we might just have a shot at getting the hang of fusion by the time those reactors could go online (they take like 10 years to build if I'm not mistaken?) That's your "safe" atomic power, and we should have had it already.
I remember the day I took my SAT tests; I'd arrived at a nearby high school with a friend of mine and neither of us were sure which room to go to, having ambiguous directions and being unfamiliar with the building. As we wandered around, we began to realize we weren't the only ones who were unclear; more and more people began following us - did we somehow appear to know where we were going?
Eventually we began to feel like parents of ducklings, and just started to have fun with it... I especially remember walking up a flight of steps which ended with locked doors, turning around and walking back down the steps, with over a dozen people trailing us - the dirty looks we got on our way down from people still on their way up were hilarious.
And I don't know if it constitutes an "exam" story, but I only ever had to write one paper for my entire 4 years in high school... I researched and wrote up a good research paper on SDI ("Star Wars") during my freshman year, and was able to get by for the next 4 years simply by redrafting it each time - sometimes even for the same teachers. (I was probably the only student who had a computer with a printer in the mid-80s, which made it even easier)
As for cheating stories, the best crib sheets I made (Spanish vocab - grammar was easy, but I was crap at memorizing the words...) were laminated on paper which would fold out from underneath my watch.
And as for instructor stories, the English teacher who would misspell her comments on my papers is - too short a story to make more than one sentence, apparently.
User: (some question you don't have time for)
Me: No hablo ingles.
(note - this works better during the dotcom-boom era when it was impossible to be fired)
> Is ZigBee going to succeed ...and while you're at it, what are the winning numbers for this weekend's Powerball?
Somehow this experiment plugs into my long-held views about the inherent flaws of democracy - it really is merely "better than whatever's in second place", and this is an example of why. Everyone gets a vote, given a vague notion of the mutual goal, and the result is chaos.
Give people a halfway-decent picture of the goal - or metaphorically, give voters a competent and honest media which reports objectively on the issues - and I bet you'll find that far fewer steps are required for a convergence on the picture of the bucket.
Or maybe it's just late and I'm sleep deprived. And this site is just a clever hack which probably has interesting implications of its own for those who are more focused.
I dunno what your pref settings are, but here's what I see - both via my account, and with a default view (not logged in, different browser):
----
Ask Slashdot: Time Saving Linux Desktop Tips?
Posted by Cliff on Sunday November 27, @07:32PM
----
Developers: Ubuntu Certified for IBM DB2
Posted by Hemos on Sunday November 27, @03:44PM
----
Less than 4 hours. Try some decaf? Or if you really want to suck away your free time (and this is not a plug; I'm very careful with my use of this site... it's dangerous unless you really have nothing useful to accomplish) try Metafilter.com.
But I suspect your prefs simply locked out a bunch of stories this afternoon, and you didn't bother to check the real front page while logged out.
I see a lot of people offering some moderatly technical advice, but perhaps a simpler answer to the question is - there's no one easy, foolproof, turnkey way to reliably determine whether your Windows machine is infected.
There are too many different types of malware around - virii, spyware, rootkits, trojans, and so on - each of which has new twists coming up almost daily. No single development team or company can keep up, and there are too many out there trying for there even to be a dominant player (and if there were, malware would promptly be rewritten to undermine the anti-malware utility in question...).
You will either need to learn how to use some of the tools others in this thread mention (it's not as hard as it may seem at first - try running them on a system you can be confident is clean, and become familiar with what "safe" traffic looks like, then try yours), or be prepared to pay hefty $ for expert help, or switch to another OS.
FWIW, I've run un-patched Windows2k for years without trouble, largely because I use a hardware NAT (firewall) and avoid Outlook. Even so, I am careful to avoid clicking on the wrong things online, and I am working towards moving to Linux ASAP.
Where is EA's old "Deluxe Paint III" (Amiga version) when you need it?
Sometimes the march of progress plows under the simple-but-useful.
I'm not sure, but isn't Onstar a fee-based system? If you don't pay, it goes away?
However scary a feature-set might be, so long as there's a reliable opt-out I'm not going to be critical. My satellite TV receiver could report what I watch, if I ever hooked it up to my phone line - but it keeps working even if I don't.
Asking why one can't get a useful safety feature *without* agreeing to a lot of intrusive fine print at the same time, is perhaps what we should be asking.
It's a cheap way to attract attention to the project - NASA can't really advertise in the conventional sense, but it depends on public support to maintain congressional interest and funding. So they do wacky things like this to get the word out; there are probably dozens of other mini-projects with the same goal.
> So what is the point of getting IT
> Certifications? To have a piece of paper?"
Duh! What in life ISN'T about that? Does a driver's license mean you're a good driver? Does a beauty school diploma mean I'll get a good haircut from you?
Dang, you can't even get a life insurance payout from a loved one's policy unless someone gives you a piece of paper saying the guy's dead...
> While I will admit that going to the moon is an AMAZING feat
> for humanity to marvel at for a long time into the future,
> the actual scientific value of such a mission when compared
> to its cost is greatly diminished.
What about its financial value? I may be remembering wrong, but I thought the Apollo program paid for itself when you count revenue from inventions like velcro, Tang, and the myriad other materials and gadgetry (not to mention stimulting the nascent computer industry). IIRC the whole Apollo program budget worked out to be about $25 billion, and I can easily imagine the benefits to our overall economy far exceeding that amount over time.
I'm sure NASA research is paying off every day, if not directly to the government coffers then certainly to industries all over the country - strong and lightweight materials make almost everything cheaper and better. And as you said later in your post, the real longterm payoff is getting a self-sufficient offworld colony so that we'll have someplace to retire to when this world finally and inevitably becomes one giant pollution-soaked gated community...
Nobody wants to publish failure rates - even if they're low, it still sounds bad. Try looking for "success" or "satisfaction" rates instead! Remember, marketing people just don't think like we do...
(back when I worked in the repair depot, I remember Packard Bells were approaching a 50% failure rate. Then they merged with NEC - still not sure who got the worst of that deal, given the crap PCs NEC used to ship...)
Depending on how pricey the cameras you're using are, I doubt you'll find a tapeless system that will give you cheaper and more flexible results than simply buying a second camera and mounting it next to the first one. You can switch tapes indefinitely without missing a beat, and if you're at the back of the room the shift in angle should be imperceptible. What's more, you'll always have a backup camera in case of hardware problems - that could save your hiney.
A tapeless system using a hard drive or whatever has its uses but I don't think you'd be solving quite the problem you are facing here.
He didn't research the song; he's owned computers for many years. A buddy of mine knows him pretty well - he's a very bright guy, unsurprisingly. It's a pity only his mainstream parodies ever get airplay, when his original stuff is often far more impressive.
The Pentiums song used to have a website where you could see the (hilarious) video, but I guess 6 years is a long time to expect it to still be around...
"You're using a 286? Don't make me laugh -
your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?"
My middle and last names are "Montgomery Scott". I got to show him my driver's license once, oddly enough at an auto show, where he and Shatner were appearing (though only he was signing autographs - Shatner was just waving to the line of people)
Scotty (and MacGyver) may just be TV characters, but the world is richer for the legions of people they inspired to get a technical education.
(And in Scotty's case, to learn how to drink Scotch...)
It's very weird for me to see "The Mighty Boosh" mentioned here. Rich Fulcher lives near me and now I have to figure out how to explain Slashdot to him... worlds are colliding here, people!