Re:You guys don't know shareware on the Mac
on
Free Software Leadership
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Do I get to see the code? With some freeware programs, yes. Others, no. But then, my coding skills lie more toward Web programming and Java, so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that much with the code, and here's a nasty little truth: neither do most people in the Linux community.
The fact that you have a use or not for the source is secondary to availability. You might not have the skill to correct a bug in a software you use but somebody else probably does. If we take your image converter as an a exemple, what happen if the maintainer [die | loose interest | sellout | etc] ? The software is still useful as-is, but a new filter could not be added to the package. With OSS, as long as there is a user community big enough to carry a few developper, update and new feature can happen. Often it does not, but with binary software it NEVER does.
About the instinctiveness of the UI, this is a slippery slope but let me make a shot. Use of an UI is an acquired skill. There is no instinct involved. What you find instinctive the next guy may find confusing. I personnally find MacOS 8 (the only one I used) confusing. But again, if I would have used it for a couple a week it would have become second nature to me, like Windoze and most Linux WM are.
Rereading myself, there is nothing imaginative in this post. The code availability argument is one the pillar of OSS advocacy and the UI stuff had been beaten to death multiple time in the past. In fact, it is so old that quote of flamewar from the beginning of the 90's are part of my fortune file. Hope it won't start another one.
Well, it look like I am an exception but I had very good experience with Dell support. Two years back, I was a tech monkey for a school board. We had a lot of abused hardware under warranty. When I needed a replacement, I gaved them a call, gaved them my support code (a sticker on the back of the machine with a 5 character code) and request a replacement. They shipped me a replacement overnight and I shipped them back the defective part in the same packaging. That's all. Ho, I don't remember to have been on hold for more than 10 minutes, too.
I had similar experience with Compaq in a subsequent job, and with IBM in my current one.
Maybe it is because we where a big customer (a few dozens machine a year), or because we are in Canada. I don't know. But considering my experience I always recommend brand name (Dell/IBM/Compaq/HP) to business. I must not be the only one !
Jamie Love argument basically boil down to hardware and MS Office file format support. This have been beaten to death. Noting really new here, certainly not a "killer argument".
About aesthetics : have you used KDE 2.2, or Ximian, or Nautilus, or even just Enlightement in the past two years ? I personnally think they are much more graphically appealling than any MS product (including XP, wich is plain ugly, IMHO). I think you base your opinion here on Fvwm or twm. Revisite modern Linux GUI, you will be surprised.
Last nail in /. coffin
on
Slashdot Updates
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The change will be a different ad size on the article page. Currently we have the standard banner size on top of all pages, but soon the article pages will instead have those huge square things that you see on CNet or ZD.
One word : unacceptable. These make me sick. I can understand the need to make enough money to keep the site going, and that's fine, but nothing is gonna make me endure that. Sorry.
Maybe I will buy a subscription to disable the ads, but I wonder. The quality has gone down the toilet since Andover had been taken over by VA. Considering these "reorganisation", we can wonder how low/. is gonna go. Who would pay for another ZDNet ? Not me...
Again, by looking at the actual auctions you can easily detect this. Don't just look at the feedback of the seller, look at the feedback of those who left the seller's feedback, and the feedback of those who left the feedback of those who left feedback.
And, if your time is worth anything, it end up much cheaper to buy your part at CompUSA.
When copying files under Linux, original timestamps are replaced with the current date. So the "date last modified" file attribute becomes "date last copied". This becomes a nightmare for anyone dealing with many files - how can you keep track of when a file was last modified. You can force the original timestamps using cp -p., but this means not using the GUI file manager. Very poor Linux design feature!
Please somebody buy this guy "CVS Pocket Reference" !!!:)
Ars Technica OpenForum has, IMHO,the best tech forum around. In the Case and Cooling Fetichism forum, this question is being answered almost daily. In particuliar, this thread seem pretty good.
According to this site, you are wrong about SS10 being limited to two CPU. Using 2 Ross double-CPU module, you could get up to four CPU on a SS10. I don't have any first hand experience with SMP on SS10, I am just researching it for my own box.
Also, SS10 CPU module start at 33 Mhz (that is what I have in mine right now).
I think you are wrong about the SCA drive on SS10. Mine use standard SCSI-2 drive and I can't see SCA connector anywhere. The SCSI cable are Sun-branded; I suppose they are the original.
I can't comment on the relative merit of other cities vs. Montreal since I had never stayed outside of Montreal for an extended period of time, but here are some good point for my city :
LOTS of ethnic restaurant (something lacking in Ottawa)
Cheapest electricity in North America. Granted, you need a lot to heat in the winter:)
Very low cost of rent. My appartement (5 rooms) cost me 485 CDN$ (1 CDN$ ==.65 US$)
Nightlife extraordinaire (not quite NYC, but close)
Lots of taxes break for new business. See the Cité du Multimédia in particular.
Low crime rate, althrough it tend to worsen IMHO.
Broadband available (both cable and DSL)
Downside include :
Low wage, high taxes
Weather
Sluggish economy
No high tech spearhead, like Nortel in Ottawa.
Anyway, Montreal is not the no. 1 high-tech mecca in North-America, but a nice place to live with a good tech foundation.
If you are around Montreal, Canada, I would come pick up the Atari ST. A 512 ST was my first computer ever... fond memory of hours lost to Dungeon Master !
Paying the shipping ain't worth it, but if you are around Montreal, mail me at egoyer at praeneste dot com. I'll be pleased to help you get rid of it...:)
Don't know about Verizon (I'm with Sympatico HSE), but I suspect your "special software" is a PPPoE client (Point-To-Point Protocol over Ethernet).
A year ago, free PPPoE where quite bleeding edge. I was pretty much stuck with the crappy Windoze client my ISP provide. Now, a PPPoE client is integrated standard in OpenBSD and Debian (my choices of free OS). If it is not in your, check out Roaring Penguin (www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe). I used it with RedHat 6.2 for Sparc and must say it's a fantastic and easy to use piece of software.
As of the clueless telco tech not being able to make it work with NT Server 4.0, point him to RASPPPoE at http://www.accis.de/specials/raspppoe/raspppoe.htm . Lightweigth, straightforward, stable and featurefull PPPoE for Win32 : need I say more ???
Providing top-quality customer support will create more business for a company, and, therefore, they will make more money. Good support is not a money-losing proposition, and there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be free, for that reason.
In the end , somebody or something need to pay for support. It might included in the retail price of the software or sold separately, but its cost must be taken into account. Recouping cost by the volume is not an option since support cost will grow (near) linearly with sales. If you spend 150$/average to support each user (it add quickly!) and you sell your software for 100$, you're losing 50$ per sales, no matter how many you sell (aka the Amazon principle). There is two solution : sell your software for 250$ (the right price) or sell a support option for 150$. The former is not an option since the competition will probably undercut your price while providing lower quality technical support and win in the market. The latter is quite viable, but customer must first realize the value of good support...
I had worked in many tech support position, and I can assure you that tech support cost a lot of money to provide (salary, training, phone line, traveling cost, overhead, ad nauseum). Product quality is definitely a factor but they are cost associated with it too.
From my personal experience, and that of others, some companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard stand out. They answer e-mail queries and complaints promptly, and provide instant and knowledgeable support.
There is a reason why some big name manfacturer have such a great support (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc). They are mostly catering to corporate account and most of their unit are sold to organisation with solid internal tech support. When I call Dell, it usually goes along the line of "I need a RMA for a failed drive...". Five minute and the call is closed, the shipping cost is low and they don't spend a dime on workmanship. Thus, their tech support cost per unit is much lower than that of the typical consumer product. That way, they can afford to offer good support.
Anyway just my 0.07 CDN$ (including US exchange, custom and GST)
Tech support quality is dependent on margin. You can't expect a manufacturer to provide top-notch tech support for basement bargain software. If they have to hand-hold over the phone for an hour and half every customer that bought an 30$ encyclopedia on CD-ROM, they'll go bankrupt.
Tech support cost a lot of money, thus it is not profitable for low-margin consummer software. I am working as a tech support. Here, people pay a few thousands $$$ per year, or 150$/hour (CDN$) for tech support. Even with such outrageous rate, tech support is barely profitable.
Competent and timely tech support is within the reach of everybody : give a call to any of your neighboring mom-and-dad computer shop and they'll gladly help you setup MS Office for 60$/hour. However, don't expect to have a dedicated account manager because you bought a 300$ software.
Also, this might just be a coincidence, but tech support competence is usually proportionnal to the the level of their audience. This is unfortunately true : most user can be really boneheaded. A few week in tech support usually destroy any illusion you can have concerning the average computer user skill. So there is no value in paying a seasonned network admin to hand hold Joe Luser through Outlook configuration ("Click Start... Go to Program... Yes, use the left mouse button..."). However, when I call BellNexxia (our commercial ISP), the guys with whom I speak is knowledgeable and responsive. His service are targeted toward net admin and other professionnal : they can 't just have any freshly-trained monkey answering the phone because people serviced are above that level (should I note : we pay the service dearly).
My conclusion : you can't expect top-notch support for a 30$ game or your 10$/month unlimited dial-up because of simple economic. However, if you are ready to lay some cash, you can buy service of quality proportionnal to his price.
Is'nt this kind of situation why you should regulary backup...? Granted, reinstalling from tape to recover from a config problem is frustating, but you should have this option. You *do* backup, right ???
A friend of mine work in a plastic recycling shop. He told me they recently received a whole shipment of CD, including wrapping and jewel case, to be recycled. Apparently, the plastic is mecanically shredded to fine piece and then separated from the metal through decantation (plastic float, metal sink). The heat from the melting took care of the paper insert.
Beside bad burn, Linux itself is great waster of CD ! Right here, I have a few CD of Red hat 6.0 and 6.1 that are going to the garbage pretty soon... MSFT, not resting on his laurel, is also a great waster of CD, considering the amount they send to MSDN subscriber. At work, we have a few crate of obsolete MS software on CD, like Windows 3.1 Croat version, VC++ v4.0 kanji Japanese edition or Direct X 2.0 from august 1996. A year worth of coaster for a busy pub !
I used to work in academic, and they served us well. A bit expensive (you can get cheaper through classified ads), but their stuff are clean and working. Oh, BTW, it's a canadian business.
Also, I read something I vaguely remember on/. before about the ability to make an exact replica of a disk image of a Macintosh over a network, very very easily. Anyone have any pointers?
I am not a guru, so feel free to correct me if wrong, but here is what I would do...
Boot your PPC with a Linux install floppy with network support (I'll investigate single-floppy distros). From then on, mount your HFS partition read-only (no man nearby, don't remember the syntax). Mount an NFS share on a nearby Linux box read-write. Try something like :
You might need to enter a bs=somesize. Investigate and read the man page for dd.
My question to the guru : will it work ??? I wanted to try that for a time, but never get enough time on my hand for it. Could restore be as easy as dd if=/mount/point/to/nfs/share/disk-clone of=/dev/sda1 ? If yes, we have something here that render Norton Ghost useless...
Telco are being deregulated; you can force minimum service level in a monopoly, but how do you do that with a free market ? I understand that in practice, telco are still monopoly, but they have a rock-solid excuse why not to deserve unprofitable area : "Why can't the competition take care of it... ? Why shall we absorb the cost ? "
Don't get me wrong : coming from rural Quebec, where broadband mean 64 kb/s single-channel ISDN at 200 CDN$/month, I am all for this resolution. I just think that even the almighty CRTC can't enforce such a policie.
These reports will be available for anyone to view, to reduce the misuse of the Internet connection at work as well as usage stats.
As far as I am concerned, it is not any worst than the usual FTP banner "All connection are logged. If you don't like that, please disconnect now." Once told, it's people's choice to surf or not to surf...
None of us FULLY understands every aspect of computing and networking. We have faith that it all works most of the time. When we know what is wrong we fix it, but there is always some unknown factors. Refreshing isn't it?:)
Not exactly. I have faith that I can understand, and probably fix any problem concerning computer and networking, given enough time and ressource. Every thing in computing is logic and can be understood, and I trust my capacity to learn and understand. This has nothing to do with religion; I guess we should call that confidence and self-esteem.
Slashdot Mirror
Do I get to see the code? With some freeware programs, yes. Others, no. But then, my coding skills lie more toward Web programming and Java, so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that much with the code, and here's a nasty little truth: neither do most people in the Linux community.
The fact that you have a use or not for the source is secondary to availability. You might not have the skill to correct a bug in a software you use but somebody else probably does. If we take your image converter as an a exemple, what happen if the maintainer [die | loose interest | sellout | etc] ? The software is still useful as-is, but a new filter could not be added to the package. With OSS, as long as there is a user community big enough to carry a few developper, update and new feature can happen. Often it does not, but with binary software it NEVER does.
About the instinctiveness of the UI, this is a slippery slope but let me make a shot. Use of an UI is an acquired skill. There is no instinct involved. What you find instinctive the next guy may find confusing. I personnally find MacOS 8 (the only one I used) confusing. But again, if I would have used it for a couple a week it would have become second nature to me, like Windoze and most Linux WM are.
Rereading myself, there is nothing imaginative in this post. The code availability argument is one the pillar of OSS advocacy and the UI stuff had been beaten to death multiple time in the past. In fact, it is so old that quote of flamewar from the beginning of the 90's are part of my fortune file. Hope it won't start another one.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# The closest thing I found to real CPU usage
my $pcpu;
for (`ps axo \%C`) {
next if m/\%CPU/;
$pcpu += $_;
}
print $pcpu;
Well, it look like I am an exception but I had very good experience with Dell support. Two years back, I was a tech monkey for a school board. We had a lot of abused hardware under warranty. When I needed a replacement, I gaved them a call, gaved them my support code (a sticker on the back of the machine with a 5 character code) and request a replacement. They shipped me a replacement overnight and I shipped them back the defective part in the same packaging. That's all. Ho, I don't remember to have been on hold for more than 10 minutes, too.
I had similar experience with Compaq in a subsequent job, and with IBM in my current one.
Maybe it is because we where a big customer (a few dozens machine a year), or because we are in Canada. I don't know. But considering my experience I always recommend brand name (Dell/IBM/Compaq/HP) to business. I must not be the only one !
Jamie Love argument basically boil down to hardware and MS Office file format support. This have been beaten to death. Noting really new here, certainly not a "killer argument".
About aesthetics : have you used KDE 2.2, or Ximian, or Nautilus, or even just Enlightement in the past two years ? I personnally think they are much more graphically appealling than any MS product (including XP, wich is plain ugly, IMHO). I think you base your opinion here on Fvwm or twm. Revisite modern Linux GUI, you will be surprised.
One word : unacceptable. These make me sick. I can understand the need to make enough money to keep the site going, and that's fine, but nothing is gonna make me endure that. Sorry.
Maybe I will buy a subscription to disable the ads, but I wonder. The quality has gone down the toilet since Andover had been taken over by VA. Considering these "reorganisation", we can wonder how low /. is gonna go. Who would pay for another ZDNet ? Not me ...
Now about the replacement :
Unfortunately, none of these can give me EVERYTHING I want to read at the same place (like /. used to do). I will miss that.
And, if your time is worth anything, it end up much cheaper to buy your part at CompUSA.
When copying files under Linux, original timestamps are replaced with the current date. So the "date last modified" file attribute becomes "date last copied". This becomes a nightmare for anyone dealing with many files - how can you keep track of when a file was last modified. You can force the original timestamps using cp -p., but this means not using the GUI file manager. Very poor Linux design feature!
Please somebody buy this guy "CVS Pocket Reference" !!! :)
Ars Technica OpenForum has, IMHO,the best tech forum around. In the Case and Cooling Fetichism forum, this question is being answered almost daily. In particuliar, this thread seem pretty good.
According to this site, you are wrong about SS10 being limited to two CPU. Using 2 Ross double-CPU module, you could get up to four CPU on a SS10. I don't have any first hand experience with SMP on SS10, I am just researching it for my own box.
Also, SS10 CPU module start at 33 Mhz (that is what I have in mine right now).
I think you are wrong about the SCA drive on SS10. Mine use standard SCSI-2 drive and I can't see SCA connector anywhere. The SCSI cable are Sun-branded; I suppose they are the original.
I can't comment on the relative merit of other cities vs. Montreal since I had never stayed outside of Montreal for an extended period of time, but here are some good point for my city :
Downside include :
Anyway, Montreal is not the no. 1 high-tech mecca in North-America, but a nice place to live with a good tech foundation.
Also leases that start on some synchronized date (Sept. 1 for Boston or June 1 for Montreal) are anathama.
That's July 1st in Quebec (Montreal included), for the record.
If you are around Montreal, Canada, I would come pick up the Atari ST. A 512 ST was my first computer ever ... fond memory of hours lost to Dungeon Master !
Paying the shipping ain't worth it, but if you are around Montreal, mail me at egoyer at praeneste dot com. I'll be pleased to help you get rid of it ... :)
Don't know about Verizon (I'm with Sympatico HSE), but I suspect your "special software" is a PPPoE client (Point-To-Point Protocol over Ethernet).
m . Lightweigth, straightforward, stable and featurefull PPPoE for Win32 : need I say more ???
A year ago, free PPPoE where quite bleeding edge. I was pretty much stuck with the crappy Windoze client my ISP provide. Now, a PPPoE client is integrated standard in OpenBSD and Debian (my choices of free OS). If it is not in your, check out Roaring Penguin (www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe). I used it with RedHat 6.2 for Sparc and must say it's a fantastic and easy to use piece of software.
As of the clueless telco tech not being able to make it work with NT Server 4.0, point him to RASPPPoE at http://www.accis.de/specials/raspppoe/raspppoe.ht
Providing top-quality customer support will create more business for a company, and, therefore, they will make more money. Good support is not a money-losing proposition, and there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be free, for that reason.
In the end , somebody or something need to pay for support. It might included in the retail price of the software or sold separately, but its cost must be taken into account. Recouping cost by the volume is not an option since support cost will grow (near) linearly with sales. If you spend 150$/average to support each user (it add quickly!) and you sell your software for 100$, you're losing 50$ per sales, no matter how many you sell (aka the Amazon principle). There is two solution : sell your software for 250$ (the right price) or sell a support option for 150$. The former is not an option since the competition will probably undercut your price while providing lower quality technical support and win in the market. The latter is quite viable, but customer must first realize the value of good support ...
I had worked in many tech support position, and I can assure you that tech support cost a lot of money to provide (salary, training, phone line, traveling cost, overhead, ad nauseum). Product quality is definitely a factor but they are cost associated with it too.
From my personal experience, and that of others, some companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard stand out. They answer e-mail queries and complaints promptly, and provide instant and knowledgeable support.
There is a reason why some big name manfacturer have such a great support (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc). They are mostly catering to corporate account and most of their unit are sold to organisation with solid internal tech support. When I call Dell, it usually goes along the line of "I need a RMA for a failed drive...". Five minute and the call is closed, the shipping cost is low and they don't spend a dime on workmanship. Thus, their tech support cost per unit is much lower than that of the typical consumer product. That way, they can afford to offer good support.
Anyway just my 0.07 CDN$ (including US exchange, custom and GST)
Tech support quality is dependent on margin. You can't expect a manufacturer to provide top-notch tech support for basement bargain software. If they have to hand-hold over the phone for an hour and half every customer that bought an 30$ encyclopedia on CD-ROM, they'll go bankrupt.
... Go to Program ... Yes, use the left mouse button ..."). However, when I call BellNexxia (our commercial ISP), the guys with whom I speak is knowledgeable and responsive. His service are targeted toward net admin and other professionnal : they can 't just have any freshly-trained monkey answering the phone because people serviced are above that level (should I note : we pay the service dearly).
Tech support cost a lot of money, thus it is not profitable for low-margin consummer software. I am working as a tech support. Here, people pay a few thousands $$$ per year, or 150$/hour (CDN$) for tech support. Even with such outrageous rate, tech support is barely profitable.
Competent and timely tech support is within the reach of everybody : give a call to any of your neighboring mom-and-dad computer shop and they'll gladly help you setup MS Office for 60$/hour. However, don't expect to have a dedicated account manager because you bought a 300$ software.
Also, this might just be a coincidence, but tech support competence is usually proportionnal to the the level of their audience. This is unfortunately true : most user can be really boneheaded. A few week in tech support usually destroy any illusion you can have concerning the average computer user skill. So there is no value in paying a seasonned network admin to hand hold Joe Luser through Outlook configuration ("Click Start
My conclusion : you can't expect top-notch support for a 30$ game or your 10$/month unlimited dial-up because of simple economic. However, if you are ready to lay some cash, you can buy service of quality proportionnal to his price.
Is'nt this kind of situation why you should regulary backup ...? Granted, reinstalling from tape to recover from a config problem is frustating, but you should have this option. You *do* backup, right ???
A friend of mine work in a plastic recycling shop. He told me they recently received a whole shipment of CD, including wrapping and jewel case, to be recycled. Apparently, the plastic is mecanically shredded to fine piece and then separated from the metal through decantation (plastic float, metal sink). The heat from the melting took care of the paper insert.
Beside bad burn, Linux itself is great waster of CD ! Right here, I have a few CD of Red hat 6.0 and 6.1 that are going to the garbage pretty soon ... MSFT, not resting on his laurel, is also a great waster of CD, considering the amount they send to MSDN subscriber. At work, we have a few crate of obsolete MS software on CD, like Windows 3.1 Croat version, VC++ v4.0 kanji Japanese edition or Direct X 2.0 from august 1996. A year worth of coaster for a busy pub !
I used to work in academic, and they served us well. A bit expensive (you can get cheaper through classified ads), but their stuff are clean and working. Oh, BTW, it's a canadian business.
And no, I don't work for them !
Also, I read something I vaguely remember on /. before about the ability to make an exact replica of a disk image of a Macintosh over a network, very very easily. Anyone have any pointers?
I am not a guru, so feel free to correct me if wrong, but here is what I would do ...
Boot your PPC with a Linux install floppy with network support (I'll investigate single-floppy distros). From then on, mount your HFS partition read-only (no man nearby, don't remember the syntax). Mount an NFS share on a nearby Linux box read-write. Try something like :
You might need to enter a bs=somesize. Investigate and read the man page for dd.
My question to the guru : will it work ??? I wanted to try that for a time, but never get enough time on my hand for it. Could restore be as easy as dd if=/mount/point/to/nfs/share/disk-clone of=/dev/sda1 ? If yes, we have something here that render Norton Ghost useless ...
I, for one, have sent mail a few time to the /. team suggesting an interview with M. Wall. This man is incredible in interview : look at http://www2.linuxjourna l.c om/lj-issues/issue61/3394.html for a good example.
Telco are being deregulated; you can force minimum service level in a monopoly, but how do you do that with a free market ? I understand that in practice, telco are still monopoly, but they have a rock-solid excuse why not to deserve unprofitable area : "Why can't the competition take care of it ... ? Why shall we absorb the cost ? "
Don't get me wrong : coming from rural Quebec, where broadband mean 64 kb/s single-channel ISDN at 200 CDN$/month, I am all for this resolution. I just think that even the almighty CRTC can't enforce such a policie.
From the poster :
These reports will be available for anyone to view, to reduce the misuse of the Internet connection at work as well as usage stats.
As far as I am concerned, it is not any worst than the usual FTP banner "All connection are logged. If you don't like that, please disconnect now." Once told, it's people's choice to surf or not to surf ...
Not exactly. I have faith that I can understand, and probably fix any problem concerning computer and networking, given enough time and ressource. Every thing in computing is logic and can be understood, and I trust my capacity to learn and understand. This has nothing to do with religion; I guess we should call that confidence and self-esteem.