Bill Gates has given $20,000,000,000 (yes, you read right, twenty billion dollars) of his personal fortune to his charitable foundation, which is currently mostly committed to providing vaccinations to those living in 3rd world poverty. To even suggest that he's a racist is absurd.
Rather than a few anecdotal stories, I'd like to see how Microsoft's employee racial makeup compares to the rest of the industry. My guess is that it is pretty much the same as anywhere else. The whole tech industry isn't "racist", blacks just don't seem to be too interested in computers.
If these guys are going to file a lawsuit, fine, they should at least ask for reasonable compensatory damages. I can believe that one or two guys got wrongly passed over for promotion, but out of 20,000 employees that hardly represents a trend.
I strongly disagree. It wasn't Mr. de Jager who caused the loonies to stockpile toilet paper, it was a bunch of other people who were in it to make money. There was a lunatic around Nashville here who ran the "y2kwomen.com" site (it's still there, check it out) who was one of the people who made money off others' fears. I think she really believed it, she was still in the bunker up to Feb. 29 last year since she was convinced that might be TEOTWAWKI, too.
de Jager did a good job, it was the other loonies who made him look bad.
I used to buy and sell lots of "vintage" games. You really don't want to use the old monitors, simply because the resolution is really low, maybe up to 400x300 max. Even most newer games aren't much higher than that.
Connecting an old monitor is pretty trivial, check the schematics of whatever game you have and you'll see that the monitor connection is very straightforward RGB, with the sync signals either broken out or part of a color channel (green usually). Just make sure your resolution is really low before you start.
That being said, it's easier (and makes more sense) to do the opposite, that is to use a multisync monitor to display the output of your vintage arcade game after its monitor fries. Real easy to hook up and works great. In that same vein, I'm one of the few people who's played Tempest and Battlezone on an oscilloscope.
weather.com had a really intrusive ad for pepcid ac a couple of days ago that included a little javascript chef guy who walks into the browser from the left edge, over the zipcode box and into the ad area. Clicking on him brings up a popup window.
I think it's going to get annoying, but less annoying than not having weather.com.
From the NYT article about the permatemp settlement:
With more than $20 billion in cash and cash-equivalents in its coffers, the payout was not expected to hit Microsoft's bottom line.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company, which makes the ubiquitous Windows operating system for personal computers, employs 42,000 people worldwide, and between 5,000 and 6,000 temporary workers on top of that, Pilla said.
Even if everybody averages $100K/year salary, that's under $5B/year in salaries. The bottom line is, even if they quit selling stuff, they have the cash to survive for more than 6 months. And does anyone here think that Bill Gates would hesitate to downsize the company if need be?
It's worth noting, too, that the company makes a lot of money in ways other than OS's on PC's.
I hate to say it, but I even if it's toned down, it's the same exaggeration that we're all accustomed to seeing from ESR.
I'm pretty impressed that the DOD was able to get basically unlimited access for 20,000 phones for $150/month each (this is less than Iridium had planned on charging). They're basically commanding a $5.5B system for $36M/year.
Pretty impressive in light of the $500 hammer stories.
(And I must ask, why are people so cheap, that they only give donations when it provides a partial reduction in their taxes, rather than a real donation? I actually find that pretty fake.)
Econ 101, Theo. It provides you with more money if people don't have to pay taxes on the money that they give. It's the same way that sales taxes are split between the store and the consumer simply because in the absence of sales taxes, the store could charge slightly more for a product.
Don't make me start drawing supply & demand curves.
Big businesses like accountability, someone they can point a finger at and say 'Make it work'. For Linux would you have to point to many people...
The irony is that Linux is probably the only system out there where you can actually get some accountability, all because we have the source.
I've worked with plenty of large software packages from large companies in the past (Ingres, Sybase, Oracle, VMS, various proprietary Unices) and I can say without doubt that the supposed accountability of large software companies is a bad joke. It doesn't exist. I've heard plenty of "that bug is fixed in the next version" out of big companies. I've had plenty of times that tech support very simply couldn't fix the problem. I've had times when they wouldn't admit there was a problem.
I was up all night with tech support from one major rdbms company on the phone trying to fix a problem, told them to go to bed at 6:00AM and fixed it myself in 4 hours. This isn't unusual. When I was using Ingres heavily years and years ago, I had access to a full support contract with the company, yet most of my "support" came from the newsgroup.
What does "accountability" really mean? Most of the time you buy software on that scale, you have to sign the license agreement (not a shrinkwrap joke license) that says the software isn't guaranteed to work, there are no warranties, and you agree to indemnify the software company in case of loss. Where in the hell is their "accountability" in that?
With open source/Free software, you can actually hire someone (like me) who is a "buck stops here" person. I'm confident that if there was a nasty show-stopper bug in Linux or any other piece of software that I use and support, I could either fix it myself or find someone who can. Ironically, the only time I've had trouble is when using older software versions.
I'm tired of people acting like we have to defend the use of Free software. It's high time that we turn that around and make the other side defend the use of costly proprietary software that comes with no source code, poor support, and a license that removes all accountability from the publisher.
The only thing 'suspicious' regarding the 'hundreds of new votes for Gore' may have something to do with the fact that a block of *400* votes FOR GORE never even made it into the initial count.
Take off your partisan blinders. Consider that your block of 400 votes suddenly appeared after the official count. Your assumption is that they were left out of the original count, I have no evidence that they existed when that count took place.
Not having voted with the metal poking object, I don't know for sure, but I'm not sure if you can check for chads after you vote or not. Anyone from a hanging-chad-county here to fill us in? And being in a hurry can also mean being considerate to the people who may be waiting in line behind you . . .
I grew up in an area that used the exact same system that's used in Palm Beach. It wasn't difficult, nor was it confusing. When you finish voting, you simply pull your card out, check the back side to make sure your punches were all complete (at least, I always did), and turn it in. When you're finished, you have a card with some random-looking holes punched in it. I grew up in a small town in south-central Indiana, plenty of rubes, nobody ever had trouble voting.
I find it really odd that most of the people who had trouble in Palm Beach also voted for Gore. Are his supporters down there a bunch of morons? I ask this honestly. Intuition says that problems with incomplete punches and hanging chads should be evenly spread across the spectrum (except for Buchanan supporters, but I digress), yet the hand count suspiciously digs up hundreds of new votes for Gore.
Very strange, statistically unlikely.
Michael
PS - I'm not a Bush supporter, don't bother. If you must know, I voted for the Tennessean in the election. If you're still confused, Al Gore is a native and resident of Washington, D.C.
At some point Slashdot, and Im talking to you guys in charge of approving the content, needs to wake up and remember that they are in control of a lumbering internet beast.
Last time I got slashdotted, roblimo called me a few hours before to warn me of the impending doom. I doubt everyone gets a call (especially in Japan), but don't assume that they are unaware of the impact that/. has.
I admit defeat. Nader did indeed cost Gore the election
Perhaps. Keep in mind that if it weren't for Ross Perot costing George Bush the 1992 election, we might not have Al Gore running in this election.
It's obvious that we need to use a different method of voting, and we need to cripple the two-party duopoly that the Dems and Repubs have put in place to keep themselves in power. I think we'd be well off using a Borda count (see the November 2000 issue of Discover Magazine for a discussion of alternative methods).
Like a large segment, possible most, of the population, I am tired of the president being either a guy that the Republicans want to be president or a guy that the Democrats want to be president. It's highly doubtful that a person who fits either of those descriptions will ever be someone that I want to be president. There are a lot of us who feel that way. At its worst, we end up choosing between the lesser of two evils. But, almost by definition, the person who wins isn't the person that most people would have wanted.
A Borda vote can change that. Until then, I did the smart thing and voted for Harry Browne.
Someone needs to quickly patent the idea of using the results of an RF read on such a package to look the product up in a "universally accessible" database.
Last I saw, Oracle has the same clauses in their license, too.
It's amusing, too, that Larry would be talking about someone else's product only performs well on benchmarks. A lot of people probably don't remember that Oracle fixed their DB server up to excel at the TPC-C benchmark when it came out, and did it in a way that was worthless in real world tests. To put it bluntly, they did what they are accusing Microsoft of doing.
The only thing worse than Bill Gates is the legion of people who want to emulate him, but at the same time are envious of his success. Larry Ellison is the defacto king of that group.
The vast majority of calls to tech support are from people too stupid to comprehend the fucking manual even if they bothered to read it.
I can believe that. But when I call and say "Your router with ip address 24.2.7.2 is down", I shouldn't get someone asking me what version of the browser I'm running, trying to ping my box, etc. There needs to be on what to do when people call who know what they're talking about.
I spent over an hour on the phone one evening arguing with a moron named "Andy" (I have his email address, don't tempt me to post it) and his dimwitted supervisor about one of their misconfigured routers. When they finally turned it in to the NOC, it was fixed within minutes. They are amazing in their stupidity...
This means in essence that unless you are using a 'TNEF Aware' server -- like, say, hmm, MS Exchange -- you may not be able to read your mail.
Actually, it means that you won't be able to read the TNEF part of the message, you'll still get plain text.
I would also point out that any mail server which strips MIME attachments in a standard format is broken. Don't bother saying but "TNEF isn't a standard format." It's not, but it is encapsulated as a MIME attachment in the standard MIME way.
This whole article explains why I've had people send me attachments and all I see is "winmail.dat" attached. This sucks, but it's to be expected...
Why is it that "my" community is always there when it comes to ruining legitimate businesses? As soon as some company comes up with a neat device and accompanying businessmodel (I-Opener, Cuecat), there's a whole bunch of geeks that are ready to ruin the company by finding all kinds of little loopholes in some law.
I think as a businessman I have a good perspective on this. First, nobody is out to ruin the I-Opener people. Rather, they were offering a cheap piece of hardware that meant anyone with under $200 could have a decent Linux machine. It's a natural that some people would snap them up just for that purpose. Netpliance saw that their business model wasn't working quite well, and decided to change it dramatically.
The CueCat case, and Digital Convergence, is a lot different. They started giving out a piece of hardware that is also useful for purposes other than those which DC had intended. When people started using them in other ways, DC sent out phony "legal" letters claiming that they had to protect their Intellectual Property, etc. They harrassed people. Their own semi-literate CEO wrote a letter to Slashdot about it where he rambled on about protecting their IP.
It doesn't help their case that their business model is essentially about collecting & selling peoples' private information, even if it is with their permission. It also doesn't help their case that they've made many false claims (we're actually loaning you the device, etc.) that have absolutely no legal basis. This doesn't just apply to those who received one through the mail; I got mine at Radio Shack and it is mine free and clear. I have a receipt for a $0 purchase, and there was no agreement signed, nor did the salesman mention any further stipulations.
The point is that DC has to learn to play by the rules. If you give out a piece of hardware, some people will use it for other purposes. That's reality, that's perfectly legal. If it's going to cause them financial harm, then it's something that they should have thought about beforehand, and it should be clearly stated in their business plan.
I really doubt that the Linux users are going to make a dent of any kind in DC's revenue with their simple use of the device. Let's face it, if people aren't running Windows, DC couldn't have made money from them in the first place. There's nothing to lose.
but imagine Amazon finding some loophole in some law that enables them to ruin other people's businesses, would you agree with Amazon?
Amazon did find a loophole: dumb patent office personnel. And they did use it to harm B&N. You might want to come up with a better example.
but an effort should be made to see if a CueCat can actually detect CRT or LCD barcodes
LCD yes, CRT no. Remember that barcode scanners work by identifying areas of differing reflectivity. Your CRT actually gives off light, the reflectivity doesn't change.
On the other hand, an LCD works by changing transparency, with a semi-reflective surface behind it. It would be possible to make a scannable LCD, but there's no guarantee that any particular LCD will be scannable.
Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates has given $20,000,000,000 (yes, you read right, twenty billion dollars) of his personal fortune to his charitable foundation, which is currently mostly committed to providing vaccinations to those living in 3rd world poverty. To even suggest that he's a racist is absurd.
Rather than a few anecdotal stories, I'd like to see how Microsoft's employee racial makeup compares to the rest of the industry. My guess is that it is pretty much the same as anywhere else. The whole tech industry isn't "racist", blacks just don't seem to be too interested in computers.
If these guys are going to file a lawsuit, fine, they should at least ask for reasonable compensatory damages. I can believe that one or two guys got wrongly passed over for promotion, but out of 20,000 employees that hardly represents a trend.
Michael
I strongly disagree. It wasn't Mr. de Jager who caused the loonies to stockpile toilet paper, it was a bunch of other people who were in it to make money. There was a lunatic around Nashville here who ran the "y2kwomen.com" site (it's still there, check it out) who was one of the people who made money off others' fears. I think she really believed it, she was still in the bunker up to Feb. 29 last year since she was convinced that might be TEOTWAWKI, too.
de Jager did a good job, it was the other loonies who made him look bad.
Michael
I used to buy and sell lots of "vintage" games. You really don't want to use the old monitors, simply because the resolution is really low, maybe up to 400x300 max. Even most newer games aren't much higher than that.
Connecting an old monitor is pretty trivial, check the schematics of whatever game you have and you'll see that the monitor connection is very straightforward RGB, with the sync signals either broken out or part of a color channel (green usually). Just make sure your resolution is really low before you start.
That being said, it's easier (and makes more sense) to do the opposite, that is to use a multisync monitor to display the output of your vintage arcade game after its monitor fries. Real easy to hook up and works great. In that same vein, I'm one of the few people who's played Tempest and Battlezone on an oscilloscope.
Michael
weather.com had a really intrusive ad for pepcid ac a couple of days ago that included a little javascript chef guy who walks into the browser from the left edge, over the zipcode box and into the ad area. Clicking on him brings up a popup window.
I think it's going to get annoying, but less annoying than not having weather.com.
Michael
And then, you can turn the RBL off. Victims of Censorware can't turn it off because they aren't allowed to do so.
You might want to let the folks over at Peacefire know how they can turn the RBL off. Think about it.
MC
From the NYT article about the permatemp settlement:
With more than $20 billion in cash and cash-equivalents in its coffers, the payout was not expected to hit Microsoft's bottom line.
The Redmond, Wash.-based company, which makes the ubiquitous Windows operating system for personal computers, employs 42,000 people worldwide, and between 5,000 and 6,000 temporary workers on top of that, Pilla said.
Even if everybody averages $100K/year salary, that's under $5B/year in salaries. The bottom line is, even if they quit selling stuff, they have the cash to survive for more than 6 months. And does anyone here think that Bill Gates would hesitate to downsize the company if need be?
It's worth noting, too, that the company makes a lot of money in ways other than OS's on PC's.
I hate to say it, but I even if it's toned down, it's the same exaggeration that we're all accustomed to seeing from ESR.
MCI'm pretty impressed that the DOD was able to get basically unlimited access for 20,000 phones for $150/month each (this is less than Iridium had planned on charging). They're basically commanding a $5.5B system for $36M/year.
Pretty impressive in light of the $500 hammer stories.
Michael
(And I must ask, why are people so cheap, that they only give donations when it provides a partial reduction in their taxes, rather than a real donation? I actually find that pretty fake.)
Econ 101, Theo. It provides you with more money if people don't have to pay taxes on the money that they give. It's the same way that sales taxes are split between the store and the consumer simply because in the absence of sales taxes, the store could charge slightly more for a product.
Don't make me start drawing supply & demand curves.
Michael
Big businesses like accountability, someone they can point a finger at and say 'Make it work'. For Linux would you have to point to many people...
The irony is that Linux is probably the only system out there where you can actually get some accountability, all because we have the source.
I've worked with plenty of large software packages from large companies in the past (Ingres, Sybase, Oracle, VMS, various proprietary Unices) and I can say without doubt that the supposed accountability of large software companies is a bad joke. It doesn't exist. I've heard plenty of "that bug is fixed in the next version" out of big companies. I've had plenty of times that tech support very simply couldn't fix the problem. I've had times when they wouldn't admit there was a problem.
I was up all night with tech support from one major rdbms company on the phone trying to fix a problem, told them to go to bed at 6:00AM and fixed it myself in 4 hours. This isn't unusual. When I was using Ingres heavily years and years ago, I had access to a full support contract with the company, yet most of my "support" came from the newsgroup.
What does "accountability" really mean? Most of the time you buy software on that scale, you have to sign the license agreement (not a shrinkwrap joke license) that says the software isn't guaranteed to work, there are no warranties, and you agree to indemnify the software company in case of loss. Where in the hell is their "accountability" in that?
With open source/Free software, you can actually hire someone (like me) who is a "buck stops here" person. I'm confident that if there was a nasty show-stopper bug in Linux or any other piece of software that I use and support, I could either fix it myself or find someone who can. Ironically, the only time I've had trouble is when using older software versions.
I'm tired of people acting like we have to defend the use of Free software. It's high time that we turn that around and make the other side defend the use of costly proprietary software that comes with no source code, poor support, and a license that removes all accountability from the publisher.
Michael
The next step for Microsoft is to check the http_referer and deny traffic coming from BugTraq. If they do, you heard it here first.
Michael
From the article:
More recently, the plan has been attacked by Richard Stallman, a pioneer in the "open-source" movement to develop free software in collaboration...
Someone just hit a bees' nest with a stick...
Throwing heads or tails 256 million times is bound to show up a bigger difference:-)
This isn't about throwing coins, it's about counting marks on pieces of paper, marks that haven't changed from one count to the next.
Heh? Last time I looked TV he looked pretty much like a whiteboy to me? Native American? Cool.
Brush up on your English, visit "dictionary.com" and look up "native". Al Gore was raised in DC.
Michael
The only thing 'suspicious' regarding the 'hundreds of new votes for Gore' may have something to do with the fact that a block of *400* votes FOR GORE never even made it into the initial count.
Take off your partisan blinders. Consider that your block of 400 votes suddenly appeared after the official count. Your assumption is that they were left out of the original count, I have no evidence that they existed when that count took place.
Michael
Not having voted with the metal poking object, I don't know for sure, but I'm not sure if you can check for chads after you vote or not. Anyone from a hanging-chad-county here to fill us in? And being in a hurry can also mean being considerate to the people who may be waiting in line behind you . . .
I grew up in an area that used the exact same system that's used in Palm Beach. It wasn't difficult, nor was it confusing. When you finish voting, you simply pull your card out, check the back side to make sure your punches were all complete (at least, I always did), and turn it in. When you're finished, you have a card with some random-looking holes punched in it. I grew up in a small town in south-central Indiana, plenty of rubes, nobody ever had trouble voting.
I find it really odd that most of the people who had trouble in Palm Beach also voted for Gore. Are his supporters down there a bunch of morons? I ask this honestly. Intuition says that problems with incomplete punches and hanging chads should be evenly spread across the spectrum (except for Buchanan supporters, but I digress), yet the hand count suspiciously digs up hundreds of new votes for Gore.
Very strange, statistically unlikely.
Michael
PS - I'm not a Bush supporter, don't bother. If you must know, I voted for the Tennessean in the election. If you're still confused, Al Gore is a native and resident of Washington, D.C.
Just FYI, I downloaded both source and binary, and both .tgz. They are straight, uncompressed tar files, so just use "tar xf" to extract.
Michael
At some point Slashdot, and Im talking to you guys in charge of approving the content, needs to wake up and remember that they are in control of a lumbering internet beast.
Last time I got slashdotted, roblimo called me a few hours before to warn me of the impending doom. I doubt everyone gets a call (especially in Japan), but don't assume that they are unaware of the impact that /. has.
I pity the lego-man.
Michael
I admit defeat. Nader did indeed cost Gore the election
Perhaps. Keep in mind that if it weren't for Ross Perot costing George Bush the 1992 election, we might not have Al Gore running in this election.
It's obvious that we need to use a different method of voting, and we need to cripple the two-party duopoly that the Dems and Repubs have put in place to keep themselves in power. I think we'd be well off using a Borda count (see the November 2000 issue of Discover Magazine for a discussion of alternative methods).
Like a large segment, possible most, of the population, I am tired of the president being either a guy that the Republicans want to be president or a guy that the Democrats want to be president. It's highly doubtful that a person who fits either of those descriptions will ever be someone that I want to be president. There are a lot of us who feel that way. At its worst, we end up choosing between the lesser of two evils. But, almost by definition, the person who wins isn't the person that most people would have wanted.
A Borda vote can change that. Until then, I did the smart thing and voted for Harry Browne.
Michael
Someone needs to quickly patent the idea of using the results of an RF read on such a package to look the product up in a "universally accessible" database.
-MC
Last I saw, Oracle has the same clauses in their license, too.
It's amusing, too, that Larry would be talking about someone else's product only performs well on benchmarks. A lot of people probably don't remember that Oracle fixed their DB server up to excel at the TPC-C benchmark when it came out, and did it in a way that was worthless in real world tests. To put it bluntly, they did what they are accusing Microsoft of doing.
The only thing worse than Bill Gates is the legion of people who want to emulate him, but at the same time are envious of his success. Larry Ellison is the defacto king of that group.
The vast majority of calls to tech support are from people too stupid to comprehend the fucking manual even if they bothered to read it.
I can believe that. But when I call and say "Your router with ip address 24.2.7.2 is down", I shouldn't get someone asking me what version of the browser I'm running, trying to ping my box, etc. There needs to be on what to do when people call who know what they're talking about.
I spent over an hour on the phone one evening arguing with a moron named "Andy" (I have his email address, don't tempt me to post it) and his dimwitted supervisor about one of their misconfigured routers. When they finally turned it in to the NOC, it was fixed within minutes. They are amazing in their stupidity...
Michael
Here's his page: http://www.keny on. com/virtual.cfm?FullName=James%20E%2E%20Rosini
They wiped the thick coat of slime off him before taking the picture.
His email is jrosini@kenyon.com.
I wonder if they based their program on the widely available "ILOVEYOU" virus.
This means in essence that unless you are using a 'TNEF Aware' server -- like, say, hmm, MS Exchange -- you may not be able to read your mail.
Actually, it means that you won't be able to read the TNEF part of the message, you'll still get plain text.
I would also point out that any mail server which strips MIME attachments in a standard format is broken. Don't bother saying but "TNEF isn't a standard format." It's not, but it is encapsulated as a MIME attachment in the standard MIME way.
This whole article explains why I've had people send me attachments and all I see is "winmail.dat" attached. This sucks, but it's to be expected...
Michael
Why is it that "my" community is always there when it comes to ruining legitimate businesses? As soon as some company comes up with a neat device and accompanying businessmodel (I-Opener, Cuecat), there's a whole bunch of geeks that are ready to ruin the company by finding all kinds of little loopholes in some law.
I think as a businessman I have a good perspective on this. First, nobody is out to ruin the I-Opener people. Rather, they were offering a cheap piece of hardware that meant anyone with under $200 could have a decent Linux machine. It's a natural that some people would snap them up just for that purpose. Netpliance saw that their business model wasn't working quite well, and decided to change it dramatically.
The CueCat case, and Digital Convergence, is a lot different. They started giving out a piece of hardware that is also useful for purposes other than those which DC had intended. When people started using them in other ways, DC sent out phony "legal" letters claiming that they had to protect their Intellectual Property, etc. They harrassed people. Their own semi-literate CEO wrote a letter to Slashdot about it where he rambled on about protecting their IP.
It doesn't help their case that their business model is essentially about collecting & selling peoples' private information, even if it is with their permission. It also doesn't help their case that they've made many false claims (we're actually loaning you the device, etc.) that have absolutely no legal basis. This doesn't just apply to those who received one through the mail; I got mine at Radio Shack and it is mine free and clear. I have a receipt for a $0 purchase, and there was no agreement signed, nor did the salesman mention any further stipulations.
The point is that DC has to learn to play by the rules. If you give out a piece of hardware, some people will use it for other purposes. That's reality, that's perfectly legal. If it's going to cause them financial harm, then it's something that they should have thought about beforehand, and it should be clearly stated in their business plan.
I really doubt that the Linux users are going to make a dent of any kind in DC's revenue with their simple use of the device. Let's face it, if people aren't running Windows, DC couldn't have made money from them in the first place. There's nothing to lose.
but imagine Amazon finding some loophole in some law that enables them to ruin other people's businesses, would you agree with Amazon?
Amazon did find a loophole: dumb patent office personnel. And they did use it to harm B&N. You might want to come up with a better example.
Michael
but an effort should be made to see if a CueCat can actually detect CRT or LCD barcodes
LCD yes, CRT no. Remember that barcode scanners work by identifying areas of differing reflectivity. Your CRT actually gives off light, the reflectivity doesn't change.
On the other hand, an LCD works by changing transparency, with a semi-reflective surface behind it. It would be possible to make a scannable LCD, but there's no guarantee that any particular LCD will be scannable.
That's your Mr. Science lesson for the day.
Michael