Now, I don't know how much books cost in the US, but US$20 in Aussie dollars is about A$40. And a 'normal' fiction book here costs about A$20.
Therefore, for all the extra graphics/audio/extra bits, you're effectively paying an extra A$20 for it.
Frankly, while I would pay a little bit extra.... I think double the price of a normal fiction book is a bit much to ask for a souped-up online version.
But hey, that's just me - I do actually hope the guy succeeds - it's great to see people trying new methods of distribution... I just think that charging a US$20 subscription is a bit overpriced.
You know, even here in Australia we heard about the IBM Linux advertising campaign and I'm sure it was reported in many many other countries. And it was reported not just in the IT section, but in the main news section.
For $18k, hundreds of thousands of people around the world heard about Linux and heard that the most recognised IT company in the world is backing it. So not only has the Linux 'brand' gained further publicity (and hence acceptance) around the world, but it's also gained legitimatecy (sp?) by having a blue chip IT company associated with it. That kind of publicity is worth millions and millions of dollars.
So stop thinking small, and think big picture and you will see that this $18k was a great investment in Linux.
I've learned a LOT about large-project management, design, and the like by working on my own projects for Half-Life
How can you say you have "large-project management" experience when you are working on your own projects? That's not what large project management is about.
IBM is not silly. They aren't going to let a simple matter like conflict of interest get in the way of good business.
Here in Australia, IBM GSA looks after both Telstra and Optus (the two major telecommunications companies). They have no conflict of interest because they physically and logically isolate each business unit. In situations like these, IBM doesn't get to use their past technical experience to assist the development of a competitor. What the client benefits from is IBM's accumulated experience in handling technical projects of this complexity/magnitude.
Re:Hang on - they're still developing HP-UX
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Actually, we have 300 G, K, N, T, L class HP servers and about 200 Sun servers (although I only look after the HP ones). Based on the hardware problem dockets that are generated between my group and theirs, I say that Sun are more unrealiable. Yes I was being trollish with my statement, but in my experience, Sun are more unstable.
Hang on - they're still developing HP-UX
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What makes you think that HP isn't developing HP-UX? I support HP-UX machines and they are still coming out with new versions. While HP-UX tends to lag the gee-wiz cutting edge stuff like SunOS, it is ten times more stable than SunOS.
We actually have never had a problem with power struggles in the ITC. We've always had a policy of 'if you want to do something cool, go for it'. Of course, there was the natural understanding that doing a 'rm -rf/' was not a cool thing:)
There were a couple of 'leaders' in the ITC but only through expertise - and they weren't so much 'leaders' as in authorative figures, but more subject matter experts.
Spyffe, this is an ongoing concern within the IT Committee at the College and with administration. In many ways, the ITC is more concerned about privacy that admin is!
We have a variety of servers within the College and the staff and student networks are segregated. While most ITC have access to the student servers that run the webserver, samba shares etc, the email server and staff servers are only accessible by two students in the ITC and they are students who have proven themselves to be trustworthy (ie first year students would definitely not have access).
The College was fortunate in having a 'progressive' Dean who could see the benefits to the students in having a student run operation. However, it went both ways. The IT Committee in College was always very receptive to any concerns the admin had an would quickly outline plans to allay their fears.
I think the greatest factor that helped this who operation succeed was communication - there was a frequent and constant communication between the IT Committee and the administration. This helped build the confidence of the administration that the IT Committee knew what it was doing (or at least was heading in the right direction:).
but who really cares about gaming on a phone? For that matter, who really cares about web surfing on a phone. A phone is phone because we want to talk to someone. If I want to play games/surf the web, that's what a PC is for. Why do we have this desire for every single piece of equipment to be able to do every single function under the sun?
Adding more complexity to our equipment makes it harder to use, harder to code, harder to service, more confusing, and more expensive.
While I'm definitely not enspousing that all equipment should be singular in purpose, I fail to see how gaming on a phone would be fun or entertaining (yeah squinting at a 2cm by 2cm screen is fun).
I would put phone gaming in the same category as WAP. Sure, it has it's pluses, but as a whole, it's not going to be a category killer.
I notice that a lot of the posts are pure anti-MS rubbish.
For the record, I live and work in Australia and the points that MS raised are absolutely and utterly correct to the very last point.
Looking at some of the posts on/., who cares if MS has a vested interest, who cares if the timing is suspect, who cares that a corporation is critising a government, the fact of the matter is that MS has raised perfectly valid points with what needs to be improved to help grow the Australian IT industry.
We should be applauding that someone has brought these issues to the attention of our bonehead government - not critising them. Sheesh.
Assuming redir is (one of) the editors of reviewboard.com and the AC who posted the final explanation then.....
This whole thread really has highlighted how objectiveness, respect, and honesty are essential qualities in life and especially in running a business.
It is admirable that redir will stand up in a public forum and try to defend his friends and he is obviously passionate and cares about his work (based on the intensity of his replies). These are all good qualities. I personally believe that redir/editor made a couple of silly mistakes at the start and from then on slid down a very slippery slope.
But that reinforces the lesson. Once you get on that slope, it's very difficult (and much more embarrassing) to get off. Redir/editor had a chance right from the start to fully disclose his relation with reviewboard.com. He had a chance to give Ataridatacenter respect and investigate AD's claim. If reviewboard.com had pulled the article from the start and maybe provided a link to epinions, I would have had the highest respect for reviewboard since they would have acted ethically.
Unfortunately, we know this is not what happened. And by trying to defend his friend, but not being polite, redir caused a lot of people to be upset with him. Worse and ironically, he has damaged the very reputation of reviewboard.com that he was trying to protect.
I know I probably sound a bit pompous in this post with a 'holier than thou' attitude and I apologise for this. However, situation/mistakes like this one are one of my pet peeves. Why? Because one of my team members was fired for doing something similar to redir. In my case, we support the national telco and his actions caused a major outage. As team leader, I tried to stop him getting him fired, but management and the client kept highlighting how he was deceitful, pig headed, did not confirm facts and was not willing to acknowledge that he had made a mistake (sound familiar to this situation?).
I honestly hope that redir learns from this experience and doesn't end up in a situation like my ex-team member.
that all of redir's posts about talking to the editor via email was all made up. Or, if redir is telling the truth, then the people at reviewboard.com are a bunch of lying cowards.
Either way, this whole thread has shown two things:
For someone who didn't know the whole story and was arguing based on assumptions, redir whole attitude and language show him to be an uncouth barbarian - I hate making personal attacks on people but redir, if you're going to bad mouth people, try and do it when you know the facts.
the credibility of reviewboard.com is questionable. The article was credited to Chris Chabot - if it was a user submission, why wasn't the user credited? And if you don't check your articles when they are submitted, how do you know the authenticity of the information? And to damn the whole site, the editors went to the effort of adjusting the date mentioned within the article to cover-up their theft. So how much would anyone trust their reviews now? Where is their credibility? And if redir was telling the truth and did speak with the editors, then the editors are a bunch of lying snivelling cowards for making up stories about submission dates. While editors making up stories about submission dates seems far fetched, let us not forget that they adjusted the date within the article to coverup the whole mess. Either way, I wouldn't touch reviewboard.com with a 10 foot barge pole.
Damn Tim, you beat me to the post - I too did a search on Chris Chabot's name and came to the same conclusion.
In addition to your statement, the following circumstantial evidence has been mentioned in the mess of posts in this thread. These include:
the fact that the administrative contact of the reviewboard.com domain is likely to be redir (by L McKenzie).
a date in the article mysteriously changed from 12/29/2000 to 03/29/2000 (Tim confirmed change after viewing cached copy).
my observation that the writing styles are different between the three Sun server articles despite the fact that the 'author' is the same.
the fact that the author had access to a E10000 server many many months before it became available. Sure, some sites get advance equipment for review, but I find it highly unlikely that reviewboard would get a $1 million server to review.
redir rather strident defence of an article that he casually wandered across and submitted to Slashdot. This in itself could be ignored except if you remember that redir is the administrative contact of the reviewboard.com domain....
Sure, none of it is definitive evidence, but the amount of circumstantial evidence sure is beginning to lend credibility to Ataridatacenters claim... and conversely starts raising questions about redirs credibility....
I am not discounting the fact that sites get advance hardware and I will agree that your explanation is possible. However, AMD giving out $500 processors is very different to $1 million servers being handed out.
As I am saying before, I would not say that AD is telling the truth, however, nor would I say that he is lying. There is enough evidence both ways to say that either could be telling the truth.
In which case, one should keep an open mind and see where AD's enquiries lead him.
Having read AD Epinions article, read the Reivewboard article, and read the other two articles that Chris Chabot has written for that site, I tentatively believe that AD may be telling the truth.
At the moment, I would not categorically say that I fully believe him, but until I hear further or learn more, I would not dismiss AD's claim just yet. Here's why:
the style of the article is very first person and based on personal opinion. There is a lot of 'I' and 'personally' in the article. Magazine articles tend to be written in an objective tense, while 'hobby journals' like epinions or everything2.com are more in a 'this is my personal opinion' style.
if you read the other two articles by Chris Chabot (also about Sun servers), you will find that they are both written in an objective style with no personal opinion. While not impossible, I find it suspicious that Chris' writting style changed between articles about similar topics. It may be that he is more familiar with the E10k than the other servers and hence the change in style...
Finally, what possible benefit does AD have in raising this as an issue? If AD was trying to hide the fact that he plagarised most people would have kept quiet and waited for the whole thing to blow over - to my way of thinking it goes completely against logic to draw attention to the fact that you may have plagarised as redir suggested in an earlier post.
What makes me suspicious about AD story however, is that he posted the story on Dec 29th 2000. It is entirely possible that the explanation that the editor gave is legit (ie the article has been on their site for some time and was brought forward for a promotion) although I believe AD had a possible explanation why this was not feasable - the CPU speed mentioned in the article was not available at the time the editor said they received the article.
Anyway, as I said before, I would not place money either way... but I wouldn't discount AD story just yet either.
Hey AD, if you are pursuing reviewboard for plagarism, how about updating Slashdot on the results?
... showed that using tones for status information was a very effective method for important (but non-critical) information.
The emphasis is on 'non-critical'. I recall that an investigation into the Chernobly nuclear disaster pointed to audible alarms as one of the contributing factors. Basically, when the reactor started malfunctioning, so many alarms were going off that the techs were unable to identify which was the most important alarm and hence they didn't respond appropriately to the situation.
Perhaps some of you 'young' people who have grown up with computers and the Internet all your lives don't understand how valuable or influential a five minute exposure to something cool can be.
My very first exposure to a computer was in 1986 when I saw a friend's dad use Printshop on his PC to print out a birthday card. That totally blew me away! From that day on, I longed for the day when I could afford my own PC to do exactly the same thing.
My friends dad had only demonstrated the PC for 5 minutes, but that was enough to set me on my career path of IT. So while I can understand how people may think that PD is being funny, his comment actually is insightful and it is five minute exposures like the one PD described that do launch a lot of people's careers!
Just to clarify the point, the cable that has been cut has resulted in a 60% loss in capacity for Telstra. Telstra happens to be the biggest provider of Internet access for Australia, but it is not the only provider, there are others, eg Optus. So while Telstra customers are experiencing slow Internet access, us people on Optus are experiencing no such delays.
And a couple of additional bits of information:
Telstra doesn't have any connection to the new fat pipe to the US - Optus does.
Telstra has restored capacity to approximately 75% by rerouting traffic through satellites
Or as Homer would say ...
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Mir goes up, Mir goes down, Mir goes up, Mir goes down...
Slashdot Mirror
Therefore, for all the extra graphics/audio/extra bits, you're effectively paying an extra A$20 for it.
Frankly, while I would pay a little bit extra .... I think double the price of a normal fiction book is a bit much to ask for a souped-up online version.
But hey, that's just me - I do actually hope the guy succeeds - it's great to see people trying new methods of distribution ... I just think that charging a US$20 subscription is a bit overpriced.
For $18k, hundreds of thousands of people around the world heard about Linux and heard that the most recognised IT company in the world is backing it. So not only has the Linux 'brand' gained further publicity (and hence acceptance) around the world, but it's also gained legitimatecy (sp?) by having a blue chip IT company associated with it. That kind of publicity is worth millions and millions of dollars.
So stop thinking small, and think big picture and you will see that this $18k was a great investment in Linux.
How can you say you have "large-project management" experience when you are working on your own projects? That's not what large project management is about.
(Just in an argumentative mood :-)
And then he'll have all the spawn to himself without having to worry about PKers - lucky bastard!
Here in Australia, IBM GSA looks after both Telstra and Optus (the two major telecommunications companies). They have no conflict of interest because they physically and logically isolate each business unit. In situations like these, IBM doesn't get to use their past technical experience to assist the development of a competitor. What the client benefits from is IBM's accumulated experience in handling technical projects of this complexity/magnitude.
Actually, we have 300 G, K, N, T, L class HP servers and about 200 Sun servers (although I only look after the HP ones). Based on the hardware problem dockets that are generated between my group and theirs, I say that Sun are more unrealiable. Yes I was being trollish with my statement, but in my experience, Sun are more unstable.
What makes you think that HP isn't developing HP-UX? I support HP-UX machines and they are still coming out with new versions. While HP-UX tends to lag the gee-wiz cutting edge stuff like SunOS, it is ten times more stable than SunOS.
Not a chance that UC will beat Whitley in chicks footy. We will run you into the ground! ;-)
Ben Fon
There were a couple of 'leaders' in the ITC but only through expertise - and they weren't so much 'leaders' as in authorative figures, but more subject matter experts.
All in all, we had a very good team of students.
We have a variety of servers within the College and the staff and student networks are segregated. While most ITC have access to the student servers that run the webserver, samba shares etc, the email server and staff servers are only accessible by two students in the ITC and they are students who have proven themselves to be trustworthy (ie first year students would definitely not have access).
The College was fortunate in having a 'progressive' Dean who could see the benefits to the students in having a student run operation. However, it went both ways. The IT Committee in College was always very receptive to any concerns the admin had an would quickly outline plans to allay their fears.
I think the greatest factor that helped this who operation succeed was communication - there was a frequent and constant communication between the IT Committee and the administration. This helped build the confidence of the administration that the IT Committee knew what it was doing (or at least was heading in the right direction :).
Adding more complexity to our equipment makes it harder to use, harder to code, harder to service, more confusing, and more expensive.
While I'm definitely not enspousing that all equipment should be singular in purpose, I fail to see how gaming on a phone would be fun or entertaining (yeah squinting at a 2cm by 2cm screen is fun).
I would put phone gaming in the same category as WAP. Sure, it has it's pluses, but as a whole, it's not going to be a category killer.
For the record, I live and work in Australia and the points that MS raised are absolutely and utterly correct to the very last point.
Looking at some of the posts on /., who cares if MS has a vested interest, who cares if the timing is suspect, who cares that a corporation is critising a government, the fact of the matter is that MS has raised perfectly valid points with what needs to be improved to help grow the Australian IT industry.
We should be applauding that someone has brought these issues to the attention of our bonehead government - not critising them. Sheesh.
This whole thread really has highlighted how objectiveness, respect, and honesty are essential qualities in life and especially in running a business.
It is admirable that redir will stand up in a public forum and try to defend his friends and he is obviously passionate and cares about his work (based on the intensity of his replies). These are all good qualities. I personally believe that redir/editor made a couple of silly mistakes at the start and from then on slid down a very slippery slope.
But that reinforces the lesson. Once you get on that slope, it's very difficult (and much more embarrassing) to get off. Redir/editor had a chance right from the start to fully disclose his relation with reviewboard.com. He had a chance to give Ataridatacenter respect and investigate AD's claim. If reviewboard.com had pulled the article from the start and maybe provided a link to epinions, I would have had the highest respect for reviewboard since they would have acted ethically.
Unfortunately, we know this is not what happened. And by trying to defend his friend, but not being polite, redir caused a lot of people to be upset with him. Worse and ironically, he has damaged the very reputation of reviewboard.com that he was trying to protect.
I know I probably sound a bit pompous in this post with a 'holier than thou' attitude and I apologise for this. However, situation/mistakes like this one are one of my pet peeves. Why? Because one of my team members was fired for doing something similar to redir. In my case, we support the national telco and his actions caused a major outage. As team leader, I tried to stop him getting him fired, but management and the client kept highlighting how he was deceitful, pig headed, did not confirm facts and was not willing to acknowledge that he had made a mistake (sound familiar to this situation?).
I honestly hope that redir learns from this experience and doesn't end up in a situation like my ex-team member.
Either way, this whole thread has shown two things:
In addition to your statement, the following circumstantial evidence has been mentioned in the mess of posts in this thread. These include:
- the fact that the administrative contact of the reviewboard.com domain is likely to be redir (by L McKenzie).
- a date in the article mysteriously changed from 12/29/2000 to 03/29/2000 (Tim confirmed change after viewing cached copy).
- my observation that the writing styles are different between the three Sun server articles despite the fact that the 'author' is the same.
- the fact that the author had access to a E10000 server many many months before it became available. Sure, some sites get advance equipment for review, but I find it highly unlikely that reviewboard would get a $1 million server to review.
- redir rather strident defence of an article that he casually wandered across and submitted to Slashdot. This in itself could be ignored except if you remember that redir is the administrative contact of the reviewboard.com domain
....
Sure, none of it is definitive evidence, but the amount of circumstantial evidence sure is beginning to lend credibility to Ataridatacenters claimAs I am saying before, I would not say that AD is telling the truth, however, nor would I say that he is lying. There is enough evidence both ways to say that either could be telling the truth.
In which case, one should keep an open mind and see where AD's enquiries lead him.
At the moment, I would not categorically say that I fully believe him, but until I hear further or learn more, I would not dismiss AD's claim just yet. Here's why:
- the style of the article is very first person and based on personal opinion. There is a lot of 'I' and 'personally' in the article. Magazine articles tend to be written in an objective tense, while 'hobby journals' like epinions or everything2.com are more in a 'this is my personal opinion' style.
- if you read the other two articles by Chris Chabot (also about Sun servers), you will find that they are both written in an objective style with no personal opinion. While not impossible, I find it suspicious that Chris' writting style changed between articles about similar topics. It may be that he is more familiar with the E10k than the other servers and hence the change in style
...
- Finally, what possible benefit does AD have in raising this as an issue? If AD was trying to hide the fact that he plagarised most people would have kept quiet and waited for the whole thing to blow over - to my way of thinking it goes completely against logic to draw attention to the fact that you may have plagarised as redir suggested in an earlier post.
What makes me suspicious about AD story however, is that he posted the story on Dec 29th 2000. It is entirely possible that the explanation that the editor gave is legit (ie the article has been on their site for some time and was brought forward for a promotion) although I believe AD had a possible explanation why this was not feasable - the CPU speed mentioned in the article was not available at the time the editor said they received the article.Anyway, as I said before, I would not place money either way ... but I wouldn't discount AD story just yet either.
Hey AD, if you are pursuing reviewboard for plagarism, how about updating Slashdot on the results?
The emphasis is on 'non-critical'. I recall that an investigation into the Chernobly nuclear disaster pointed to audible alarms as one of the contributing factors. Basically, when the reactor started malfunctioning, so many alarms were going off that the techs were unable to identify which was the most important alarm and hence they didn't respond appropriately to the situation.
My very first exposure to a computer was in 1986 when I saw a friend's dad use Printshop on his PC to print out a birthday card. That totally blew me away! From that day on, I longed for the day when I could afford my own PC to do exactly the same thing.
My friends dad had only demonstrated the PC for 5 minutes, but that was enough to set me on my career path of IT. So while I can understand how people may think that PD is being funny, his comment actually is insightful and it is five minute exposures like the one PD described that do launch a lot of people's careers!
And a couple of additional bits of information:
Mir goes up, Mir goes down, Mir goes up, Mir goes down ...
Well, I'm sure we could produce some sort of Doom/Quake clone ... ;-)
Come to think of it ... I'd love to play the Camel Racer game :)