Genetic Racing sounds great in theory, but wait until the first inbred cars come out. You know, they start all scientific with that Formula 1, but when it works its way deep inside the country with NASCAR... oh, my hominy grits... those Republicans are gonna want to force us to race whatever comes out of the oven.
Considering how IE is "integrated with the operating system," a new version of IE that suppresses pop-up ads could mean that Longhorn is genetically determined to be born with a passive-aggressive personality complex.
I keep telling my mom that my room is classified and off-limits. Now with my Stealth-fighter wallpaper, I'll be able to call the Feds any time she breaches the perimeter.
Man months will always be mythical. Unfortunately, it's frequently in the interest of technical workers to provide their clients (internal or external) overly optimistic assessments of project feasibility. That's apart from the naturally rosy estimates of one's one programming/system admin abilities, versus a sober understanding of the full complexity of a project.
It's also hard convincing "novice" customers that will buy into the experience-proven truth that small feasibility projects make the bigger projects cheaper, more productive and more deadline-friendly. The instant gratification complex of customers is at much at fault as the hunger to get and keep jobs among the IT workers.
Also, programmers usually get into programming through hacking, pleasure programming, or other forms of "undisciplined" programming. Often, the impulsive "go at it" style is the only one they know and enjoy. That causes problems too. As anyone who has ever tried project-managing programmers tends to find out, managing programmers (especially newer ones) is a bit like herding cats.
The one ugly truth nobody likes to talk about is that buggy/complicated systems help ensure jobs. Let's face it... the fact that Microsoft software crashes a lot creates good opportunities for consultants and IT staffs to justify their jobs. And does anyone think that Oracle would have grown into a multi-billion company if there weren't so many highly trained DBAs/High Priests running around promoting its mysterious wonders?
Who knows how quickly this foul fruit will sour when all of this rot is billed by the hour?
Terrible waste of money
on
WiFi Gone Wild
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can understand how wonderful it would be to have these hotspots available for "free."
However, taxpayer dollars are coerced from citizens for any government project. This one is a short-sighted waste of those dollars.
If there is a compelling demand for this kind of service, then Texas should have stopped at a trial of 4 spots (if even that) and let private industry take over.
The "1.5% of fatalities are caused by fatigue" argument is a red herring meant to justify this wasteful expenditure. I am sure the hundreds of thousands (million? two million?) of dollars spent on this "sexy" bureaucratic project could have been far better spent in other forms of more relevant traffic safety measures -- like carving those "wake-up" notches into road sides, or more money into re-inforcing messages not to drive drunk, or more money for training to reduce recidivism in previous DUI convicts.
OR HOW ABOUT THIS? How about putting some stalls on the bathroom doors in the rest stops at El Paso? No joke... they had open stalls last time I was there a year ago. Aren't there are more basic steps along the road of highway culture than going from the outhouse straight to Wi-Fi?
As it stands, this is a luxury expenditure that will let a small number of travelers with laptops get mail while otherwise subsidizing porn-surfing. Come on... if it's late at night and someone is tired, precisely how does an hour spent surfing web sites and expending ones mental resources in that kind of concentration improve one's alertness? It's an unsubstantiated bureaucracy-boosting statement that pushes the taxpayer just a few steps further down the road of permanent government debt, and ultimately, a form of bondage to pay back old expenses that should never have been incurred in the first place.
Next time I drive through Texas, I'll drive friendly, I won't mess with Texas, and I'll surf the web for free. Three nice thoughts. But only two of them are good ideas. It would be nice for the Slashdot crowd of harder-than-average thinkers to look past our love of technology to identify bigger-picture issues before slapping on the seal of approval for this kind of government excess.
Except for the proprietary ATRAC format killing of your poor MP3 world.
Ever notice that if you choose Sony, everything seems to work really well with if it is also from Sony? In their hardwary kind of way, they are getting as hegemonous as the big M.
This is not entirely clear but it is important. Are the lawyers here talking about a service that you will be charged for regardless of whether or not you can actually buy a domain? Verisign is in the position to run a simple waiting list program, because they control the root servers. But this lawsuit seems to imply that you will be charged just for the "right" to purchase, not based on whether or not a purchase actually goes through (in this case, depending on whether the original registrant renews ahead of time or not).
What I want to know is why Verisign can hold domains for a few days after they "expire" to let someone renew them. Other registrars will lose them right away (in some cases, to Verisign).
The UK has always been a relatively marginal member of the EU, what with all of their constant whining about NATIONAL SOVEREIGNITY. Now giving Bill the BIG DUB kind of miffed them. So they got pissed. They said to themselves, how can I express my anger without going back to THE BOMB. Cause now they are friends and lovers and they quarrel instead of really fight. But they are too inhibited to even have a COLD WAR among themselves so they have a LUKEWARM war and so they says to themselves, looky here, if Queenie E wants to call Billy G a big K daddy, then we will say BUGGAR OFF YE OLDE ENGLIGH FLIBBERTIGIBBETS! And so they are going to fine Microsoft instead of overtly expressing their repressed rage and jealousy that those damned lucky English royals can still confer such an obviously silly but oooooh-I-want-one-tooooooo-oooh-come-on-Queen-I-am -worthy-tooooo-pleeassse-oh-I-am-not-going-to-lowe r-myself-to-actually-ask-damn-damn-dammit-grommit kind of HONOR.
>Hopefully, this will stop the attacks on the
> coalition troops, and the US can pull out
>and let He didn't fire a shot or fight back at
>all, according to the news. That's the best
>part. According to a report on NPR, that's going
>to decimate his standing among the populace
>who used to fear him. Now he's just seen
>(according to the Al Hayat reporter on NPR)
>as a coward.
No, actually the brand dilution of showing up in a beard instead of a mustache is what's really gonna kill him.
This is a smart move by Microsoft that will wind up screwing Phoenix. Once Microsoft invents the soft-bios industry, it will produce its own firmware (give it 3 years) and SCREW PHOENIX like it screws every other company that ever had the honor of being a Microsoft "partner."
The "DEFAULT GATEWAY" under one of the ethernet adapters could be unique "enough" to identify this computer out of many others -- especially if AOL is being accessed outside of that subnet. That may be a powerful enough clue by itself, especially if you know what you are looking for.
This evil program is the first step towards sick hackers abusing Billy for deviant sexual purposes. Imagine Billy's big lips opening and closing on demand. It's enough to make me sick.
This is the gateway to teledildonic virtual beastiality.
Best use of AOL disks: coasters for your chilly ice drinks.
Sometimes during power outages, I take some ice cubes out of my dark freezer, use them to chill a glass of apple juice from my dark refrigerator, and I sip it all very slowly and comfortably knowing that until the power comes back on, I can have a few moments of freedom from my internet addiction. The sure knowledge that the AOL disk below my glass is protecting my computer desk from certain water damage goes a long way towards calming my frayed nerves. Sometimes I even get contemplative and philosophical in those quiet times before the lights come back on and I'm dragged back into the matrix.
Insight Research is the company that produced the $44 billion/44% annual growth/$163 billion 5-yr forecast mentioned... Here are some of their other predictions on total worldwide spending by $2008:
Add-Drop Multiplexers (read: "routers for telecoms that don't already have billions of dollars of debt they are going bankrupt trying to pay off"): $64 billion
Grid Computing (read: "that complicated and annoying parallel programming thing I have to figure out enough about so I can tell the CEO how it's a great idea but not a good fit for our environment"): unspecified "billion$"
OSS - Operations Support Systems (read: "yet more technology and services for those telecom administrative functions that we have been trying to rightsize given the 25% drop in worldwide telecom revenue over the past three years"): 12.5% annual growth to $27 billion
THE BEST ONE OF ALL:
DCS - Digital Cross Connects: (read: "high-end devices for telecom carriers that facilitate the transmission of digital information from one place to another, that we choose to call something other than routers"): 51% growth from $4.8 billion to $35 billion in 2005. This report is from 2000. They are still selling it for $999.
Reality: Total market size for high end carrier switches in 2003: less than $1 billion. Total annual router market: about $6 billion.
http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2003/0815carriro ute.html
Now if you just look at the market for the high-end carrier routers/switches, then that market size should be around $20 billion already, so Insight Research's figures are off by a factor of 20 three years down the road.
Boy... I just wish I was smart enough to figure out why smart people who sell research reports for thousands of dollars seem to consistently overestimate the size of the markets they analyze by... a whole lot.
$44 billion/44% growth? These numbers mean there will be a tremendous market for Wi-Fi goods and services.
Incidentally, one of those services includes selling research reports telling you about how great the Wi-Fi market is going to be.
Prices from Insight Research's web site:
Hard Copy Price $3995
Electronic Copy Price (PDF License Descriptions)
$ 4695 Single-User Printable PDF
$ 6995 6-Seat Printable PDF
$ 10000 Unlimited Corporate-Wide Distribution
TIP: before investing four thousand dollars into a report telling you all about a miraculous new $44 billion dollar market, head to the corporate kitchen, find a salt packet in the old condiment drawer, open it, pour a few grains into your hand, and take one.
Didn't anyone learn anything about "conflicts of interest" during the bubble years?
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine trying to close the pop-up windows on that thing. They got Opera for that?
IBM's new supercomputer will calculate "42" before the Japanese. America can feel good again.
Next thing you know, Orrin Hatch will be introducing a bill to blow up your television every time you watch some bootleg show.
Except for the fact that I'll need to keep my television on 24 hours a day to seed.
Genetic Racing sounds great in theory, but wait until the first inbred cars come out. You know, they start all scientific with that Formula 1, but when it works its way deep inside the country with NASCAR... oh, my hominy grits... those Republicans are gonna want to force us to race whatever comes out of the oven.
See... that's the problem. All those people running Windows with Keyboards and Networks and Unlocked Rooms attached.
Q: How do you know your Windows PC is lying?
A: It's plugged in.
First wardialing, then wardriving, now... warduracelling.
Considering how IE is "integrated with the operating system," a new version of IE that suppresses pop-up ads could mean that Longhorn is genetically determined to be born with a passive-aggressive personality complex.
I keep telling my mom that my room is classified and off-limits. Now with my Stealth-fighter wallpaper, I'll be able to call the Feds any time she breaches the perimeter.
Man months will always be mythical. Unfortunately, it's frequently in the interest of technical workers to provide their clients (internal or external) overly optimistic assessments of project feasibility. That's apart from the naturally rosy estimates of one's one programming/system admin abilities, versus a sober understanding of the full complexity of a project.
It's also hard convincing "novice" customers that will buy into the experience-proven truth that small feasibility projects make the bigger projects cheaper, more productive and more deadline-friendly. The instant gratification complex of customers is at much at fault as the hunger to get and keep jobs among the IT workers.
Also, programmers usually get into programming through hacking, pleasure programming, or other forms of "undisciplined" programming. Often, the impulsive "go at it" style is the only one they know and enjoy. That causes problems too. As anyone who has ever tried project-managing programmers tends to find out, managing programmers (especially newer ones) is a bit like herding cats.
The one ugly truth nobody likes to talk about is that buggy/complicated systems help ensure jobs. Let's face it... the fact that Microsoft software crashes a lot creates good opportunities for consultants and IT staffs to justify their jobs. And does anyone think that Oracle would have grown into a multi-billion company if there weren't so many highly trained DBAs/High Priests running around promoting its mysterious wonders? Who knows how quickly this foul fruit will sour when all of this rot is billed by the hour?
I can understand how wonderful it would be to have these hotspots available for "free."
However, taxpayer dollars are coerced from citizens for any government project. This one is a short-sighted waste of those dollars.
If there is a compelling demand for this kind of service, then Texas should have stopped at a trial of 4 spots (if even that) and let private industry take over.
The "1.5% of fatalities are caused by fatigue" argument is a red herring meant to justify this wasteful expenditure. I am sure the hundreds of thousands (million? two million?) of dollars spent on this "sexy" bureaucratic project could have been far better spent in other forms of more relevant traffic safety measures -- like carving those "wake-up" notches into road sides, or more money into re-inforcing messages not to drive drunk, or more money for training to reduce recidivism in previous DUI convicts.
OR HOW ABOUT THIS? How about putting some stalls on the bathroom doors in the rest stops at El Paso? No joke... they had open stalls last time I was there a year ago. Aren't there are more basic steps along the road of highway culture than going from the outhouse straight to Wi-Fi?
As it stands, this is a luxury expenditure that will let a small number of travelers with laptops get mail while otherwise subsidizing porn-surfing. Come on... if it's late at night and someone is tired, precisely how does an hour spent surfing web sites and expending ones mental resources in that kind of concentration improve one's alertness? It's an unsubstantiated bureaucracy-boosting statement that pushes the taxpayer just a few steps further down the road of permanent government debt, and ultimately, a form of bondage to pay back old expenses that should never have been incurred in the first place.
Next time I drive through Texas, I'll drive friendly, I won't mess with Texas, and I'll surf the web for free. Three nice thoughts. But only two of them are good ideas. It would be nice for the Slashdot crowd of harder-than-average thinkers to look past our love of technology to identify bigger-picture issues before slapping on the seal of approval for this kind of government excess.
All your twisty little passages are belong to us.
If I were a cow farmer, I'd pay money for this shit.
Except for the proprietary ATRAC format killing of your poor MP3 world.
Ever notice that if you choose Sony, everything seems to work really well with if it is also from Sony? In their hardwary kind of way, they are getting as hegemonous as the big M.
Geeks tend to get along with their own better than warrior-king types.
This is not entirely clear but it is important. Are the lawyers here talking about a service that you will be charged for regardless of whether or not you can actually buy a domain? Verisign is in the position to run a simple waiting list program, because they control the root servers. But this lawsuit seems to imply that you will be charged just for the "right" to purchase, not based on whether or not a purchase actually goes through (in this case, depending on whether the original registrant renews ahead of time or not).
What I want to know is why Verisign can hold domains for a few days after they "expire" to let someone renew them. Other registrars will lose them right away (in some cases, to Verisign).
The UK has always been a relatively marginal member of the EU, what with all of their constant whining about NATIONAL SOVEREIGNITY. Now giving Bill the BIG DUB kind of miffed them. So they got pissed. They said to themselves, how can I express my anger without going back to THE BOMB. Cause now they are friends and lovers and they quarrel instead of really fight. But they are too inhibited to even have a COLD WAR among themselves so they have a LUKEWARM war and so they says to themselves, looky here, if Queenie E wants to call Billy G a big K daddy, then we will say BUGGAR OFF YE OLDE ENGLIGH FLIBBERTIGIBBETS! And so they are going to fine Microsoft instead of overtly expressing their repressed rage and jealousy that those damned lucky English royals can still confer such an obviously silly but oooooh-I-want-one-tooooooo-oooh-come-on-Queen-I-am -worthy-tooooo-pleeassse-oh-I-am-not-going-to-lowe r-myself-to-actually-ask-damn-damn-dammit-grommit kind of HONOR.
You are dead on with the Final Fantasy II parse-reaction! ROTFLMAO.
(Read: Overtly The Friggin Lawyers Munch Amazon's Orifice)
>Hopefully, this will stop the attacks on the
> coalition troops, and the US can pull out
>and let He didn't fire a shot or fight back at
>all, according to the news. That's the best
>part. According to a report on NPR, that's going
>to decimate his standing among the populace
>who used to fear him. Now he's just seen
>(according to the Al Hayat reporter on NPR)
>as a coward.
No, actually the brand dilution of showing up in a beard instead of a mustache is what's really gonna kill him.
This is a smart move by Microsoft that will wind up screwing Phoenix. Once Microsoft invents the soft-bios industry, it will produce its own firmware (give it 3 years) and SCREW PHOENIX like it screws every other company that ever had the honor of being a Microsoft "partner."
The "DEFAULT GATEWAY" under one of the ethernet adapters could be unique "enough" to identify this computer out of many others -- especially if AOL is being accessed outside of that subnet. That may be a powerful enough clue by itself, especially if you know what you are looking for.
This evil program is the first step towards sick hackers abusing Billy for deviant sexual purposes. Imagine Billy's big lips opening and closing on demand. It's enough to make me sick.
This is the gateway to teledildonic virtual beastiality.
Apres Billy, le deluge!
Best use of AOL disks: coasters for your chilly ice drinks. Sometimes during power outages, I take some ice cubes out of my dark freezer, use them to chill a glass of apple juice from my dark refrigerator, and I sip it all very slowly and comfortably knowing that until the power comes back on, I can have a few moments of freedom from my internet addiction. The sure knowledge that the AOL disk below my glass is protecting my computer desk from certain water damage goes a long way towards calming my frayed nerves. Sometimes I even get contemplative and philosophical in those quiet times before the lights come back on and I'm dragged back into the matrix.
Insight Research is the company that produced the $44 billion/44% annual growth/$163 billion 5-yr forecast mentioned... Here are some of their other predictions on total worldwide spending by $2008:
o ute.html
Add-Drop Multiplexers (read: "routers for telecoms that don't already have billions of dollars of debt they are going bankrupt trying to pay off"): $64 billion
Grid Computing (read: "that complicated and annoying parallel programming thing I have to figure out enough about so I can tell the CEO how it's a great idea but not a good fit for our environment"): unspecified "billion$"
OSS - Operations Support Systems (read: "yet more technology and services for those telecom administrative functions that we have been trying to rightsize given the 25% drop in worldwide telecom revenue over the past three years"): 12.5% annual growth to $27 billion
THE BEST ONE OF ALL:
DCS - Digital Cross Connects: (read: "high-end devices for telecom carriers that facilitate the transmission of digital information from one place to another, that we choose to call something other than routers"): 51% growth from $4.8 billion to $35 billion in 2005. This report is from 2000. They are still selling it for $999.
Reality: Total market size for high end carrier switches in 2003: less than $1 billion. Total annual router market: about $6 billion.
http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2003/0815carrir
Now if you just look at the market for the high-end carrier routers/switches, then that market size should be around $20 billion already, so Insight Research's figures are off by a factor of 20 three years down the road.
Boy... I just wish I was smart enough to figure out why smart people who sell research reports for thousands of dollars seem to consistently overestimate the size of the markets they analyze by... a whole lot.
$44 billion/44% growth? These numbers mean there will be a tremendous market for Wi-Fi goods and services.
Incidentally, one of those services includes selling research reports telling you about how great the Wi-Fi market is going to be.
Prices from Insight Research's web site:
Hard Copy Price $3995
Electronic Copy Price (PDF License Descriptions) $ 4695 Single-User Printable PDF
$ 6995 6-Seat Printable PDF
$ 10000 Unlimited Corporate-Wide Distribution
TIP: before investing four thousand dollars into a report telling you all about a miraculous new $44 billion dollar market, head to the corporate kitchen, find a salt packet in the old condiment drawer, open it, pour a few grains into your hand, and take one.
Didn't anyone learn anything about "conflicts of interest" during the bubble years?