Slashdot software failure? Seems to have posted nonsense before. Here is the correct version, edited from a previous comment to another story:
Internet-initiated regular telephone calls: Internet-initiated calls using Bigzoo.com's BigTalk,
which cast 3.6 cents per minute to call the U.S. from New Zealand, for example.
Free VOIP: An option if both sides of a call have internet
connections is Skype. At present it's free,
and provides better quality than normal telephone. Skype is a great way to try
VOIP without paying anything. Skype provides AES encryption of your calls,
too. Skype can use port 80 for connections, so it can get past any firewall.
(This shows the alarming lack of security of firewalls, and the need for a
software firewall like ZoneAlarm
that alert you when a program tries to connect.) Skype is brought to you by
the designers of the original KaZaa program.
3.5 cents per minute, but free to the U.S. caller: If you want someone
with only a normal telephone to call you in another country without paying, you
can put $10 into a BigZoo.com or OneSuite.com account, and give
them the PIN number. OneSuite only costs 3.5 cents per minute from the U.S. to
New Zealand, for example, if the U.S. caller calls from a local number. With OneSuite.com
or Bigzoo.com can have as many accounts as you have friends for whom you want
to provide free calling.
Other ideas? Are there any options like this that aren't mentioned here?
Internet-initiated calls: It may be interesting to compare this to
Internet-initiated calls using Bigzoo.com's BigTalk,
which cast 3.6 cents per minute to call the U.S. from New Zealand.
Free VOIP: An option if both sides of a call have internet
connections is Skype. At present it's free,
and provides better quality than normal telephone. Skype is a great way to try
VOIP without paying anything. Skype provides AES encryption of your calls,
too. Skype can use port 80 for connections, so it can get past any firewall.
(This shows the alarming lack of security of firewalls, and the need for a
software firewall like ZoneAlarm
that alert you when a program tries to connect.) Skype is brought to you by
the designers of the original KaZaa program.
3.5 cents per minute, but free to the U.S. caller: If you want someone
with only a normal telephone to call you in New Zealand without paying, you
can put $10 into a BigZoo.com or OneSuite.com account, and give
them the PIN number. OneSuite only costs 3.5 cents per minute from the U.S. to
New Zealand, if the U.S. caller calls from a local number. With OneSuite.com
or Bigzoo.com can have as many accounts as you have friends for whom you want
to provide free calling.
Other ideas? Are there any options like this that aren't mentioned here?
RFID for vehicles seems crazy to me. RFID only works when the tags are carried by cooperative people.
When RFID tags are carried by people who may not be cooperative, or in situations where they can be damaged or switched to another vehicle, there can be chaos. Remember the RF of RFID refers to "Radio Frequency". That means they can't be put in a steel box. They must be exposed.
The government of the state of Oregon in the U.S. proposed to tax people by the number of miles they drove in Oregon counties, using Global Positioning receivers and RFID tags. That would be easy for the government, but, of course, there would be people whose cars said that they drove 10,000 miles in the mountains of Peru last week.
Remember, DRM is keeping control of a product after it is sold. It's like signing a contract that the seller can change at any time in a way that is bad for you and "good" for the seller.
See Zealots Attack for an excellent explanation about why PlayFair should be allowed, from the man who wrote the library PlayFair uses:
Zealots attack
I've been getting some emails from angry Mac zealots. Many of them start out similar to this:
Sorry to say this but, unlike with DeCSS where you were allowing Linux users to view DVDs, this time you've gone too far.
None of them explain how this is different and why GNU/Linux users should not be allowed to play legally bought music. Instead they go on to rave about how great iTMS is and that the imposed DRM is a good compromise. If they hadn't been completely clueless about copyright law, they'd know that Fair Use is the compromise. Some of them claim that this will lead to the RIAA imposing stricter DRM. Did they suddenly realize that it's the RIAA, and not Apple, which determines the rules for the iTMS DRM? When they complain about Microsoft's DRM used by other music stores, why do they think that it's Microsoft, and not the RIAA, which determines the DRM rules?
They have failed to understand that by buying into DRM they have given the seller complete control over the product after it's been sold. The RIAA can at any time change the DRM rules, and considering their history it's likely that they will when the majority of consumers have embraced DRM and non-DRM products have been phased out. Some DVDs today include commercials which can't be skipped using "sanctioned" players. If the RIAA forces Apple to include commercials, what excuses will the Mac zealots come up with? "It's a good compromise"?
Here's how one of the emails, from a guy in the UK who's working on his Ph.D, ends:
You may think you're doing the right thing "liberating music for one and all" but you really aren't. Thanks for fucking it up for all of us, asshole. I hope Apple, the RIAA and the BPI come down hard on your ass now that the EUCD and DMCA are in place.
Funny stuff. I just hope I have enough room in/dev/null.
This comment discusses some of the issues of sending work to another country:
It is successful? Is it successful over 20 years? Those who outsource to another country should not assume that the laws of another country are the same as the home country, as the PlayFair author demonstrates.
I agree with the PlayFair author: "I want to be able to play the music I buy wherever I want to play it without quality loss, since I PAID FOR that quality."
Treating everyone as dishonest because some people are dishonest is abusive.
Nevertheless, moving PlayFair to another country to escape the domination of the rich, government-corrupting interests in this country shows one of the issues of outsourcing.
My experience has been the opposite. I don't call unless I have a problem that I can't solve myself, of course. Because I have a lot of technical knowledge and experience, when I call it is almost always a very difficult problem. I need technical support for one new product or another we are evaluating several times a month.
I've found Indian tech support people to be far less valuable. Part of the problem is that they have even less support from the American company than the American tech support people did. Part of the problem is that the Indians to whom I have spoken are far more likely to lie about problems they can't solve. Often Americans will say they cannot help me and apologize.
Definitely ask many, many questions designed to determine whether outsourcing
is truly successful. All the situations of which I have personal experience
are not.
I've seen managers use outsourcing as a way of distancing themselves from
issues. It is utterly traditional to treat their people in the technical
support department as inferior. Sending technical support to India or China is
just a continuation of this tradition. I've never seen a technical support
department get enough support from top management. A department 10 time zones
away in a completely different culture certainly doesn't. The company then
doesn't get messy feedback about how and why its products are not working;
using outsourcing the managers further insulate themselves from hearing about
negative issues.
Why do U.S. companies outsource technical support when it isn't successful?
Because it looks like a success in the first three years, and after that the
top manager who made the decision will have moved to a different company. The
fact that his former company eventually suffered a downturn or went out of
business will not be connected to the former manager's decision.
Also, ask a lot of questions to determine what will happen over the next ten
or twenty years. To me, it's obvious. Companies in the U.S. outsource their
software. Eventually all their software will be available to Indian companies.
The Indian companies will then compete directly against the U.S. companies,
and the U.S. companies will have put them into a position that they can
compete effectively.
Investigate whether contracts between U.S. and Indian or Chinese companies
have any effective meaning. Sure, the contracts say that Indian companies
can't sell software owned by U.S. companies to Indian entrepreneurs. Sure, you
can go to court in India. Certainly, the Indian courts will give you a good
pretense of doing something. But, I think, if you believe you can prevent
Indian companies from using your software to compete against you, you don't
know India. They think, "We're poor. We're justified in taking from U.S.
companies because the U.S. is rich." It's extremely easy to change software a
little so that it seems to be separate intellectual property. It's extremely
easy for an Indian company to discover problems that indicate that software
made for a U.S. company needs to be re-designed and re-written, and to do that
re-writing for themselves, while giving the U.S. company the original design.
Of course, the Indian programmers don't have printers or diskette drives or
CD writers attached to their computers. But Sanjit is one of the system
administrators. He makes daily backups. He can give a backup tape to his
uncle. Actually, Sanjit is searched when he leaves the company. So, he puts the backup tape in the trash, to be picked up by his cousin, the cleaning lady.
Ask the outsourcing companies many questions designed to determine if they understand the Indian or Chinese cultures. Do they have the slightest understanding of those cultures, and how that affects their business?
Why Python? by Eric Raymond, who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I also like this article because I think Perl is a mess and I am glad to see someone else saying that.
I thought that was funny. Rephrasing: "We have no other option but to accept people who are not completely trustworthy, but, of course, I choose the most trustworthy server software."
We are seeing software companies be so abusive that their business is becoming largely abuse, rather than software. It's extraordinary in business to have a business partner that can change a contract at any time unilaterally.
A Slashdot comment is not a full-length essay. It doesn't say everything the author thinks. A Slashdot comment must be interpreted in the best possible fashion. Try to derive some positive meaning from each comment.
I'm not saying ALL computer companies have become abusive. But many, many have. Look at the situation with hardware. Dell often heads the list of hardware companies for abusive behavior in Ed Foster's Reader Advocate column. Dell is number 1 on Foster's Gripelog
Hall of Shame Pain Index.
We are witnessing an extremely serious social breakdown. Consider Enron, Worldcom and Tyco.
It's a sad phenomenon that, when someone tries to talk about abuse, the abused begin fighting among themselves. That only assures the abuse will continue.
From the Slashdot story: "Can we really trust closed-source vendors, such
as Cisco, to develop secure products that are free of backdoors?"
This should be shortened to: "Can we trust closed-source vendors?"
History has shown that we cannot.
Take Microsoft for example. LUGOD maintains a list of stories about Microsoft
abusiveness: Reasons to Avoid
Microsoft. I counted more than 200 in 2002, and things have gotten worse
since then.
(This seems to be one of the few times that Open Source advocates have
invented an interesting name: Linux User GOD. Sounds like a new religion.)
Part of the problem seems to be that, eventually, closed-source vendors begin
to be controlled by managers who have no technical experience. Such managers
can help the company make more money only by abusing the customer, because
they don't know enough to contribute to technical improvements.
Why has Google risen to prominence so quickly? Partly because they know what
they are doing technically. But largely because they have a policy of "do no
harm". It's a simple policy, but most managers are not able to come to the
conclusion they should follow it.
Most managers seem to have received their training by mimicing the abusive,
ignorant PHB in Dilbert cartoons. Think what a terrible world we live in that
Dilbert is considered funny!
I know most Open Source developers are uncomfortable with this description,
but they approach their work as an act of love. Whatever the reason, history
has shown that they are far more trustworthy.
For a period of maybe two years, I often watched the old Arsenio Hall show on TV. During that time, I noticed I spent less than $8 on things that I saw advertised.
I think the pool of poorly educated people who would buy something because they saw an ad is diminishing.
Froogle is great for people like me who buy things after doing research.
Another thought: What we really need is an open source version of Skype.
Also, note that Skype works over heavily firewalled systems. It communicates over the browser port 80, if necessary. Skype is an excellent demonstration that firewalling does not necessarily create real security. ZoneAlarm's outgoing firewalling is good in this case, however.
Skype seems fine to me. It has much better sound quality than regular telephones. I use it to talk to a friend in France. Neither of us have ever seen any bad behavior in Skype, in several months of use.
For those who want to use the traditional communication device, BigZoo and OneSuite are excellent. OneSuite is 2.9 cents per minute from the U.S. to France. BigZoo is 2.8 cents per minute.
I'd like to have a USB sound card so that I could isolate the audio from the electromagnetically noisy computer, however. Any ideas?
The result of all of this job upheaval is that things don't work any more. Companies have tech support departments, but they don't really offer tech support. Wang and Sanjay can't support a product unless they are supported by the company for which they work, and they aren't.
We are seeing amazing product failures of a kind we never saw before. Products have problems, and the companies don't fix them. They simply aren't maintaining the level of expertise necessary to staying in a highly technical business.
The full name is "Windows Registry Copy Protection and OS Degradation Scheme". It's part of the "Treat all customers like criminals because some are criminals" Initiative.
Caffeine, like all alkaloids, is bug poison.
on
Death by Coffee?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Caffeine, like all alkaloids, is bug poison. Alkaloids were invented by tropical plants to discourage bugs from eating.
Alkaloids are people poison, too, of course, but a bigger dose is required.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, one reason why people didn't get the joke is that Jaguars have black spots. He meant to say black.
Jaguars have white spots. OS X is called Jaguar.
The story certainly reduces my confidence in VIA. What a mess they are making of things.
Slashdot software failure? Seems to have posted nonsense before. Here is the correct version, edited from a previous comment to another story:
Internet-initiated regular telephone calls: Internet-initiated calls using Bigzoo.com's BigTalk, which cast 3.6 cents per minute to call the U.S. from New Zealand, for example.
Free VOIP: An option if both sides of a call have internet connections is Skype. At present it's free, and provides better quality than normal telephone. Skype is a great way to try VOIP without paying anything. Skype provides AES encryption of your calls, too. Skype can use port 80 for connections, so it can get past any firewall. (This shows the alarming lack of security of firewalls, and the need for a software firewall like ZoneAlarm that alert you when a program tries to connect.) Skype is brought to you by the designers of the original KaZaa program.
3.5 cents per minute, but free to the U.S. caller: If you want someone with only a normal telephone to call you in another country without paying, you can put $10 into a BigZoo.com or OneSuite.com account, and give them the PIN number. OneSuite only costs 3.5 cents per minute from the U.S. to New Zealand, for example, if the U.S. caller calls from a local number. With OneSuite.com or Bigzoo.com can have as many accounts as you have friends for whom you want to provide free calling.
Other ideas? Are there any options like this that aren't mentioned here?
Internet-initiated calls: It may be interesting to compare this to Internet-initiated calls using Bigzoo.com's BigTalk, which cast 3.6 cents per minute to call the U.S. from New Zealand.
Free VOIP: An option if both sides of a call have internet connections is Skype. At present it's free, and provides better quality than normal telephone. Skype is a great way to try VOIP without paying anything. Skype provides AES encryption of your calls, too. Skype can use port 80 for connections, so it can get past any firewall. (This shows the alarming lack of security of firewalls, and the need for a software firewall like ZoneAlarm that alert you when a program tries to connect.) Skype is brought to you by the designers of the original KaZaa program.
3.5 cents per minute, but free to the U.S. caller: If you want someone with only a normal telephone to call you in New Zealand without paying, you can put $10 into a BigZoo.com or OneSuite.com account, and give them the PIN number. OneSuite only costs 3.5 cents per minute from the U.S. to New Zealand, if the U.S. caller calls from a local number. With OneSuite.com or Bigzoo.com can have as many accounts as you have friends for whom you want to provide free calling.
Other ideas? Are there any options like this that aren't mentioned here?
RFID for vehicles seems crazy to me. RFID only works when the tags are carried by cooperative people.
When RFID tags are carried by people who may not be cooperative, or in situations where they can be damaged or switched to another vehicle, there can be chaos. Remember the RF of RFID refers to "Radio Frequency". That means they can't be put in a steel box. They must be exposed.
The government of the state of Oregon in the U.S. proposed to tax people by the number of miles they drove in Oregon counties, using Global Positioning receivers and RFID tags. That would be easy for the government, but, of course, there would be people whose cars said that they drove 10,000 miles in the mountains of Peru last week.
Remember, DRM is keeping control of a product after it is sold. It's like signing a contract that the seller can change at any time in a way that is bad for you and "good" for the seller.
See Zealots Attack for an excellent explanation about why PlayFair should be allowed, from the man who wrote the library PlayFair uses:
Zealots attack
I've been getting some emails from angry Mac zealots. Many of them start out similar to this: None of them explain how this is different and why GNU/Linux users should not be allowed to play legally bought music. Instead they go on to rave about how great iTMS is and that the imposed DRM is a good compromise. If they hadn't been completely clueless about copyright law, they'd know that Fair Use is the compromise. Some of them claim that this will lead to the RIAA imposing stricter DRM. Did they suddenly realize that it's the RIAA, and not Apple, which determines the rules for the iTMS DRM? When they complain about Microsoft's DRM used by other music stores, why do they think that it's Microsoft, and not the RIAA, which determines the DRM rules?
They have failed to understand that by buying into DRM they have given the seller complete control over the product after it's been sold. The RIAA can at any time change the DRM rules, and considering their history it's likely that they will when the majority of consumers have embraced DRM and non-DRM products have been phased out. Some DVDs today include commercials which can't be skipped using "sanctioned" players. If the RIAA forces Apple to include commercials, what excuses will the Mac zealots come up with? "It's a good compromise"?
Here's how one of the emails, from a guy in the UK who's working on his Ph.D, ends: Funny stuff. I just hope I have enough room in
This comment discusses some of the issues of sending work to another country: It is successful? Is it successful over 20 years? Those who outsource to another country should not assume that the laws of another country are the same as the home country, as the PlayFair author demonstrates.
I agree with the PlayFair author: "I want to be able to play the music I buy wherever I want to play it without quality loss, since I PAID FOR that quality."
Treating everyone as dishonest because some people are dishonest is abusive.
Nevertheless, moving PlayFair to another country to escape the domination of the rich, government-corrupting interests in this country shows one of the issues of outsourcing.
My experience has been the opposite. I don't call unless I have a problem that I can't solve myself, of course. Because I have a lot of technical knowledge and experience, when I call it is almost always a very difficult problem. I need technical support for one new product or another we are evaluating several times a month.
I've found Indian tech support people to be far less valuable. Part of the problem is that they have even less support from the American company than the American tech support people did. Part of the problem is that the Indians to whom I have spoken are far more likely to lie about problems they can't solve. Often Americans will say they cannot help me and apologize.
Definitely ask many, many questions designed to determine whether outsourcing is truly successful. All the situations of which I have personal experience are not.
I've seen managers use outsourcing as a way of distancing themselves from issues. It is utterly traditional to treat their people in the technical support department as inferior. Sending technical support to India or China is just a continuation of this tradition. I've never seen a technical support department get enough support from top management. A department 10 time zones away in a completely different culture certainly doesn't. The company then doesn't get messy feedback about how and why its products are not working; using outsourcing the managers further insulate themselves from hearing about negative issues.
Why do U.S. companies outsource technical support when it isn't successful? Because it looks like a success in the first three years, and after that the top manager who made the decision will have moved to a different company. The fact that his former company eventually suffered a downturn or went out of business will not be connected to the former manager's decision.
Also, ask a lot of questions to determine what will happen over the next ten or twenty years. To me, it's obvious. Companies in the U.S. outsource their software. Eventually all their software will be available to Indian companies. The Indian companies will then compete directly against the U.S. companies, and the U.S. companies will have put them into a position that they can compete effectively.
Investigate whether contracts between U.S. and Indian or Chinese companies have any effective meaning. Sure, the contracts say that Indian companies can't sell software owned by U.S. companies to Indian entrepreneurs. Sure, you can go to court in India. Certainly, the Indian courts will give you a good pretense of doing something. But, I think, if you believe you can prevent Indian companies from using your software to compete against you, you don't know India. They think, "We're poor. We're justified in taking from U.S. companies because the U.S. is rich." It's extremely easy to change software a little so that it seems to be separate intellectual property. It's extremely easy for an Indian company to discover problems that indicate that software made for a U.S. company needs to be re-designed and re-written, and to do that re-writing for themselves, while giving the U.S. company the original design.
Of course, the Indian programmers don't have printers or diskette drives or CD writers attached to their computers. But Sanjit is one of the system administrators. He makes daily backups. He can give a backup tape to his uncle. Actually, Sanjit is searched when he leaves the company. So, he puts the backup tape in the trash, to be picked up by his cousin, the cleaning lady.
Ask the outsourcing companies many questions designed to determine if they understand the Indian or Chinese cultures. Do they have the slightest understanding of those cultures, and how that affects their business?
More:
Python Resources
Why Plone?
Good, because compatibility is everything.
Thanks for the download copy. It's much faster to view, obviously.
Also see the comment below: Python is great. Zope is well-written and badly documented.
From another comment below: PHP is horrible -- Experiences of Using PHP in Large Websites
Eleven more reasons why Python is wonderful, from a comment below.
From a comment below: Major problems with Zope and Plone.
Correct link to Nuxeo's Collaborative Portal Server. Also, in French: CPS.
No active Zope development community?
Those are great articles. Thanks.
Python as a first language
Why Python? by Eric Raymond, who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I also like this article because I think Perl is a mess and I am glad to see someone else saying that.
From the Slashdot story: "Unfortunately, that's kind of the nature of software... you may never find the problem."
What the parent poster said sounds right. The GE spokesperson is just trying to fix with bullshit what should be fixed with engineering.
I completely agree.
I thought that was funny. Rephrasing: "We have no other option but to accept people who are not completely trustworthy, but, of course, I choose the most trustworthy server software."
We are seeing software companies be so abusive that their business is becoming largely abuse, rather than software. It's extraordinary in business to have a business partner that can change a contract at any time unilaterally.
A Slashdot comment is not a full-length essay. It doesn't say everything the author thinks. A Slashdot comment must be interpreted in the best possible fashion. Try to derive some positive meaning from each comment.
I'm not saying ALL computer companies have become abusive. But many, many have. Look at the situation with hardware. Dell often heads the list of hardware companies for abusive behavior in Ed Foster's Reader Advocate column. Dell is number 1 on Foster's Gripelog Hall of Shame Pain Index.
We are witnessing an extremely serious social breakdown. Consider Enron, Worldcom and Tyco.
It's a sad phenomenon that, when someone tries to talk about abuse, the abused begin fighting among themselves. That only assures the abuse will continue.
From the Slashdot story: "Can we really trust closed-source vendors, such as Cisco, to develop secure products that are free of backdoors?"
This should be shortened to: "Can we trust closed-source vendors?"
History has shown that we cannot.
Take Microsoft for example. LUGOD maintains a list of stories about Microsoft abusiveness: Reasons to Avoid Microsoft. I counted more than 200 in 2002, and things have gotten worse since then.
(This seems to be one of the few times that Open Source advocates have invented an interesting name: Linux User GOD. Sounds like a new religion.)
Part of the problem seems to be that, eventually, closed-source vendors begin to be controlled by managers who have no technical experience. Such managers can help the company make more money only by abusing the customer, because they don't know enough to contribute to technical improvements.
Why has Google risen to prominence so quickly? Partly because they know what they are doing technically. But largely because they have a policy of "do no harm". It's a simple policy, but most managers are not able to come to the conclusion they should follow it.
Most managers seem to have received their training by mimicing the abusive, ignorant PHB in Dilbert cartoons. Think what a terrible world we live in that Dilbert is considered funny!
I know most Open Source developers are uncomfortable with this description, but they approach their work as an act of love. Whatever the reason, history has shown that they are far more trustworthy.
For a period of maybe two years, I often watched the old Arsenio Hall show on TV. During that time, I noticed I spent less than $8 on things that I saw advertised.
I think the pool of poorly educated people who would buy something because they saw an ad is diminishing.
Froogle is great for people like me who buy things after doing research.
Another thought: What we really need is an open source version of Skype.
Also, note that Skype works over heavily firewalled systems. It communicates over the browser port 80, if necessary. Skype is an excellent demonstration that firewalling does not necessarily create real security. ZoneAlarm's outgoing firewalling is good in this case, however.
Skype seems fine to me. It has much better sound quality than regular telephones. I use it to talk to a friend in France. Neither of us have ever seen any bad behavior in Skype, in several months of use.
For those who want to use the traditional communication device, BigZoo and OneSuite are excellent. OneSuite is 2.9 cents per minute from the U.S. to France. BigZoo is 2.8 cents per minute.
I'd like to have a USB sound card so that I could isolate the audio from the electromagnetically noisy computer, however. Any ideas?
I don't see anyone else mentioning this:
The result of all of this job upheaval is that things don't work any more. Companies have tech support departments, but they don't really offer tech support. Wang and Sanjay can't support a product unless they are supported by the company for which they work, and they aren't.
We are seeing amazing product failures of a kind we never saw before. Products have problems, and the companies don't fix them. They simply aren't maintaining the level of expertise necessary to staying in a highly technical business.
The full name is "Windows Registry Copy Protection and OS Degradation Scheme". It's part of the "Treat all customers like criminals because some are criminals" Initiative.
Caffeine, like all alkaloids, is bug poison. Alkaloids were invented by tropical plants to discourage bugs from eating.
Alkaloids are people poison, too, of course, but a bigger dose is required.