If you take the language too far, as you're doing, and say that it actually introduces a dependency
Yeah--seriously.
What if they had said "A well regulated library being the necessity to the literacy of an educated state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed"?
Would anyone seriously think they weren't talking about normal everyday joe sixpack or susie hockeymom having access to books and that the government couldn't restrict access to them?
The moment you use the word 'guns' and 'militia', you get retards thinking it means that only special military groups are supposed to have guns.
Someone comes in with their own laptop and spends their days downloading something naughty all day long, or sends threatening or libellous emails to someone.... No, we don't keep any records".
You're making a rather large assumption there that we don't keep records, and ignoring that we block SMTP. It's not too difficult to get around blocked SMTP--I do it all the time by connecting to my own personal mail server on port 465--but then it's not our problem, it's the other mail server.
And it's pretty easy with tools like arpwatch to fire off a script to nmap a newly connected machine and log the IP, MAC, date, time, open ports, and anything else the newly connected machine reports.
We also try to block a few other things like p2p--which sucks for downloading Linux ISOs, and use a decent black list of totally inappropriate sites.
It's not an infailable system--but it's good enough. And hey--Starbucks provides free wifi. Can they tell you anything about the people using it? They don't seem to have been sued into oblivion.
On December 21, 1995, the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin signed the decree that disbanded the KGB, which was then substituted by the FSB, the current domestic state security agency of the Russian Federation.
Sure...whatever...that's what the man wants you to believe.
We need more people like you, who solve technical problems by technical means, instead of "HR methods".
A lot of people in IT don't realize it's our job to make people's lives easier and to enable them to work faster, better, or whatever marketspeak you want to attach to it.
It's one thing to have an IT staff that doesn't know any better--for example not knowing about a particular OS and therefore not having the best support for employees using it. It another thing entirely to have IT policies that forbid or try to block users.
One personal example: I haven't touched a Mac since high school about 10 years ago. I haven't USED a used a mac in probably 15 years...whenever the LCII was popular. There are people in my company who purchase IT products and services that flat-out won't work with Macs. They know this, and don't care because there are probably 100 PCs for every Mac....yet cheaper and better IT solutions exist and they refuse to purchase them.
I hate it when roadblocks like that get put up.
The IT staff are not there for the sake of the technology. They are there to make the technology work for the users.
I try to keep that in mind every day while working. Sometimes I forget and start thinking that Sonicwalls are pretty cool--then I remember that pfSense is much better. Meh. I should drink more.
no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it.
We're not assholes about IT like you are apparently. We tell them "sure, bring in your personal laptops". The switches run 802.1x. If your computer hasn't been issued a certificate, you get an internet-only connection which blocks outbound SMTP, and monitors your traffic with SNORT. If it appears you have a virus or are passing bad traffic, you get blocked.
I agree. Communication technology becoming common to every day living. It's about time we turn it into something that governments service like the sewers, plumbing, and roads
I don't care if the government handles the 'data' going through my plumbing, or the 'data' going through the highway. I *do* care about my communications privacy though.
Call me old fashioned, but I still use Unix with the command line interface. Much cleaner and faster to me.
Heck yeah. X is simply a tool for using the higher resolutions your monitor supports to fit more 80x24 terminals on the screen and position them in your preferred order.
It's evil to buy electricity that costs $1 and sell it to the producers competitors for a discounted rate when the only reason you're getting it under cost is because someone signed a piece of paper they shouldn't have. When you bring no value, but you get reward off someone elses labour, you're an evil, anti-social leech. It's pretty cut and dried.
Awesome liberal response man.
I'm glad you think it's ok to break contracts.
you're getting it under cost is because someone signed a piece of paper they shouldn't have.
Man--I shouldn't have purchased a car at an interest rate of 25%. I really shouldn't have done that...so by your logic, the loan officer is evil and I have no responsibility for my action of taking that loan out?
Because all Linux config files make perfect sense... Seriously though, XML may be verbose, but at least the format is clear. In contrast, ever.conf file has its own peculiar formatting that makes editing an adventure.
When he refers to XML Magic, he's not referring to how you edit an XML file, he is referring to the 'magic' that goes on behind the scenes that no one know about because Windows is closed-source.
Had Windows been open sourced, there's a better chance that someone would have looked at the XML code and decided it was stupid.
Then they would have rewritten it so it looks vaguely like erlang.
It seems to me that Windows and Office are far too often the culprits of accidental leaks.
No, the culprits are usually idiots. Microsoft can't help it if the majority of idiots out there happen to use their software.
I'm sure there's a handful of people out there who went out to buy a computer yesterday and had to decide between Windows and Mac--and the reason they walked away with a pre-loaded Vista machine was because they remember that funny ad with Seinfield and that rich dude shaking his ass.
I understand you are not interested in knowing if the person you're replying to is using multiple accounts to game the comment system. I get that. If I ever see you having a conversation with five different "people" who you think are actually five different people, I promise I won't post to warn you.
If you find this troublesome or offensive in any way, Slashdot has a very useful friend/foe system, which you can use to make my posts go away and never see them again. Unfortunately, people who would like to do the same to twitter find it a bit hard to keep track of all his accounts.
Ok--I'm morbidly curious. I'm vaguely aware of the whole 'twitter' situation. But how the hell do you figure out that an account is his? Does he end up putting in his website, or email address or something? Do you just go after the guy who is MS-bashing?
Where's the integrity in the system? Should I just blindly trust you and foe the account?
Doesn't much matter whether they try or not. I don't know of any even remotely common OSS licences that can be retroactively rescinded. They can certainly stop releasing under an OSS licence, and they could, if they felt like it, pull all the mirrors they control quite suddenly; but if somebody else has a copy that has been released under an OSS licence, they can't do much of anything about it.
But how can you 'buy the rights' to a program and then close source it? Did they find each and every developer that contributed to Jabber and get him/her/them to allow Cisco to have their 'share' in the ownership?
If I release a cool product under Open Source, and then 50 other developers contribute to it--how can I sell the license to use their work and close source it?
Actually, you're the second person I see in here so far bringing up the price of exchange as a compelling reason to use an alternative (indirectly).
My point is more along the lines of this:
Some company makes a 'killer app' for linux, but it costs almost as much as the Windows alternative. Then when their sales are slow, they decide to 'open source' their application. They release an article (like this one) to Slashdot announcing their product is 'open source'. Everyone goes crazy, starts downloading, etc... Finally they either see the Fine Print or run into the limitation while playing around with the software--they are limited.
The company 'Open Sourced' 99.5% of their product--they just didn't open source that.5% that actually makes their product worth downloading, and to top it off, they put some stupid arbitrary limit on it. 3 users? Common.
That's not enough enough for me to perform tests at my smallest client. Maybe if they gave you 10 or 25--then they could hook the small businesses and then charge as the businesses grow.
But whatever--it's their code, they can do what they want with it. I'm just sick of the lying articles about how the software has been open sourced when it really hasn't. The article should be titled "Drop-In Replacement For Exchange Now (Mostly) Open Source (But Not Usable For Any Production Work)"
That's right, Microsoft: open source software can gun for you too, motherfuckers!
I'm sure Microsoft is trembling.
The site is so hammered I it took about 4 minutes to load, and the first thing I noticed? Two colums for downloading. The first one says "AGPL3 Only" and the second says "incl. 3 users Outlook support".
Common--you know that that means. "We open sourced part of our software to try and suck you in--but you'll really find it limited until you fork over slightly less that you would have with Microsoft Exchange."
... I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed. Give me "Larry Sanders" any day over that.
All I have to say about Seinfield is that if he were such a great comedian, why the f*ck would he need a laugh track on his comedy show? Are you so unfunny that I need to be reminded when to laugh like a drone?
Also; amoral != immoral. Immoral means your doing evil, amoral means your not trying to be moral or immoral, or the term doesn't apply. You can make a profit both morally, or immorally. Hence the idea of profit itself is AMORAL.
You are correct. Profit is neither good nor bad--it simply is or is not. People can chose to do moral, immoral, or amoral things with it.
Make no mistake, I am not against business, profits, or any such thing. I actually run my own business. However, when shareholders enter the picture, things change. Appeasing shareholders become the end-all of the company, instead of profits flowing back the employees that make it (essentially, a pyramid scheme). Add to that the massive size and power, these large corporations have the potential, in a heartbeat, to either uplift or drag down humanity.
So how is it the *responsibility* of a company to take care of an employee? It's not. It sucks. But deal with it.
A previous employer of mine didn't offer healthcare. I found out a few months later that everyone else was covered--just not me. I talked with the boss about it and he said that he wasn't going to cover me. So I started digging through the job listings and a few weeks later started with a company that paid a few cents-per-hour more and had healthcare.
A year later, that former employer went out of business because they couldn't keep competent employees around.
That is how the market regulates itself. Google treats it employees very well--and look how well they are doing. My former employer treated employees like shit--and now the business is gone. (And 10 years later I work for their competitor who treats their employees much better.)
If a business treats their employees bad, or is harming the environment, or whatever--speak with your pocketbook. Don't purchase products or services from them. They'll go away.
You are correct. However, you must acknowledge that business must have limits.
If I want to create a business that nukes small villages, is it still legitimate simply because it makes money and there is a need/demand for it?
That's extreme, but simply put, a business shouldn't be allowed to be a business simply because it makes money and there is demand. There must be some level of responsibility involved, or else abuses are inevitable as every avenue of profit-increase is pursued (or perhaps you like how China employs children as young as 8 to do extremely dangerous work, etc, etc...).
Right--as long as a business isn't doing anything illegal, it's ok. I don't think businesses should be nuking small villages or dumping poison into town water supplies--but I don't think in any way that a business needs a social conscience or any other bit of wishful thinking.
If you can create a business, and while running your business identify a way to help the environment without impacting your bottom line (think Burger King and their new corn-paper straws or Starbucks and their new eco coffee cups), then good for you. But no one should expect a business to spend thousands, millions, or billions of dollars to fix something because someone thinks their product is 'bad' or the business doesn't have a social conscience. A business is there to make money--a side effect of that is usually gainful employment for other people. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we have available.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever needed to use a firearm to solve any of your problems? Or do you have it just to feel secure?
The point of having a firearm isn't to 'feel' secure. It's the ability to defend yourself, your family, or your country when the need arises.
It's usually not an everyday occurrence for one man, but it does occur daily.
If you take the language too far, as you're doing, and say that it actually introduces a dependency
Yeah--seriously.
What if they had said "A well regulated library being the necessity to the literacy of an educated state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed"?
Would anyone seriously think they weren't talking about normal everyday joe sixpack or susie hockeymom having access to books and that the government couldn't restrict access to them?
The moment you use the word 'guns' and 'militia', you get retards thinking it means that only special military groups are supposed to have guns.
Someone comes in with their own laptop and spends their days downloading something naughty all day long, or sends threatening or libellous emails to someone. ... No, we don't keep any records".
You're making a rather large assumption there that we don't keep records, and ignoring that we block SMTP. It's not too difficult to get around blocked SMTP--I do it all the time by connecting to my own personal mail server on port 465--but then it's not our problem, it's the other mail server.
And it's pretty easy with tools like arpwatch to fire off a script to nmap a newly connected machine and log the IP, MAC, date, time, open ports, and anything else the newly connected machine reports.
We also try to block a few other things like p2p--which sucks for downloading Linux ISOs, and use a decent black list of totally inappropriate sites.
It's not an infailable system--but it's good enough. And hey--Starbucks provides free wifi. Can they tell you anything about the people using it? They don't seem to have been sued into oblivion.
So yo have a duopoly, great!
What? More proof. Shit. Uh...so you have an octopoly, great!.
;)
Oh...uh, even more proof, huh...er...so you have a quintopoly, great!
Quit moving the goal posts back, pansy!
The white paper is embedded at the link using Scribd; for a PDF version you'll have to give up an email address.
Meh. No one actually reads the articles anyways.
Sorry to interupt you but :
On December 21, 1995, the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin signed the decree that disbanded the KGB, which was then substituted by the FSB, the current domestic state security agency of the Russian Federation.
Sure...whatever...that's what the man wants you to believe.
Thanks.
We need more people like you, who solve technical problems by technical means, instead of "HR methods".
A lot of people in IT don't realize it's our job to make people's lives easier and to enable them to work faster, better, or whatever marketspeak you want to attach to it.
...yet cheaper and better IT solutions exist and they refuse to purchase them.
It's one thing to have an IT staff that doesn't know any better--for example not knowing about a particular OS and therefore not having the best support for employees using it. It another thing entirely to have IT policies that forbid or try to block users.
One personal example: I haven't touched a Mac since high school about 10 years ago. I haven't USED a used a mac in probably 15 years...whenever the LCII was popular. There are people in my company who purchase IT products and services that flat-out won't work with Macs. They know this, and don't care because there are probably 100 PCs for every Mac.
I hate it when roadblocks like that get put up.
The IT staff are not there for the sake of the technology. They are there to make the technology work for the users.
I try to keep that in mind every day while working. Sometimes I forget and start thinking that Sonicwalls are pretty cool--then I remember that pfSense is much better. Meh. I should drink more.
no matter how many times we told users they weren't allowed to install ICQ, or to connect their personal laptops to the corporate network, they insisted on doing it.
We're not assholes about IT like you are apparently. We tell them "sure, bring in your personal laptops". The switches run 802.1x. If your computer hasn't been issued a certificate, you get an internet-only connection which blocks outbound SMTP, and monitors your traffic with SNORT. If it appears you have a virus or are passing bad traffic, you get blocked.
I agree. Communication technology becoming common to every day living. It's about time we turn it into something that governments service like the sewers, plumbing, and roads
I don't care if the government handles the 'data' going through my plumbing, or the 'data' going through the highway. I *do* care about my communications privacy though.
I don't understand this obsession with making things smaller and smaller - I want my stuff to be bigger and bigger.
I've got some pills you might be interested in...only $19.95 + S&H
if you need a mail client with good IMAP support for Windows you know where to find it.
Yes, I do. Use putty to connect to my linux box and fire up mutt
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555851
If Office 2003 worked, then Evolution would work.
Nice KB Microsoft: "The eliminate of the creation of Public Folder store and the connection from this Public Folder store to the mailbox store."
Apparently working with Exchange 2007 also causes brain damage...
Call me old fashioned, but I still use Unix with the command line interface. Much cleaner and faster to me.
Heck yeah. X is simply a tool for using the higher resolutions your monitor supports to fit more 80x24 terminals on the screen and position them in your preferred order.
It's evil to buy electricity that costs $1 and sell it to the producers competitors for a discounted rate when the only reason you're getting it under cost is because someone signed a piece of paper they shouldn't have. When you bring no value, but you get reward off someone elses labour, you're an evil, anti-social leech. It's pretty cut and dried.
Awesome liberal response man.
I'm glad you think it's ok to break contracts.
you're getting it under cost is because someone signed a piece of paper they shouldn't have.
Man--I shouldn't have purchased a car at an interest rate of 25%. I really shouldn't have done that...so by your logic, the loan officer is evil and I have no responsibility for my action of taking that loan out?
Wee! No personal responsibility!
Because all Linux config files make perfect sense... Seriously though, XML may be verbose, but at least the format is clear. In contrast, ever .conf file has its own peculiar formatting that makes editing an adventure.
When he refers to XML Magic, he's not referring to how you edit an XML file, he is referring to the 'magic' that goes on behind the scenes that no one know about because Windows is closed-source.
Had Windows been open sourced, there's a better chance that someone would have looked at the XML code and decided it was stupid.
Then they would have rewritten it so it looks vaguely like erlang.
It seems to me that Windows and Office are far too often the culprits of accidental leaks.
No, the culprits are usually idiots. Microsoft can't help it if the majority of idiots out there happen to use their software.
...you think I'm joking.
I'm sure there's a handful of people out there who went out to buy a computer yesterday and had to decide between Windows and Mac--and the reason they walked away with a pre-loaded Vista machine was because they remember that funny ad with Seinfield and that rich dude shaking his ass.
I understand you are not interested in knowing if the person you're replying to is using multiple accounts to game the comment system. I get that. If I ever see you having a conversation with five different "people" who you think are actually five different people, I promise I won't post to warn you.
If you find this troublesome or offensive in any way, Slashdot has a very useful friend/foe system, which you can use to make my posts go away and never see them again. Unfortunately, people who would like to do the same to twitter find it a bit hard to keep track of all his accounts.
Ok--I'm morbidly curious. I'm vaguely aware of the whole 'twitter' situation. But how the hell do you figure out that an account is his? Does he end up putting in his website, or email address or something? Do you just go after the guy who is MS-bashing?
Where's the integrity in the system? Should I just blindly trust you and foe the account?
Doesn't much matter whether they try or not. I don't know of any even remotely common OSS licences that can be retroactively rescinded. They can certainly stop releasing under an OSS licence, and they could, if they felt like it, pull all the mirrors they control quite suddenly; but if somebody else has a copy that has been released under an OSS licence, they can't do much of anything about it.
But how can you 'buy the rights' to a program and then close source it? Did they find each and every developer that contributed to Jabber and get him/her/them to allow Cisco to have their 'share' in the ownership?
If I release a cool product under Open Source, and then 50 other developers contribute to it--how can I sell the license to use their work and close source it?
Actually, you're the second person I see in here so far bringing up the price of exchange as a compelling reason to use an alternative (indirectly).
My point is more along the lines of this:
.5% that actually makes their product worth downloading, and to top it off, they put some stupid arbitrary limit on it. 3 users? Common.
Some company makes a 'killer app' for linux, but it costs almost as much as the Windows alternative. Then when their sales are slow, they decide to 'open source' their application. They release an article (like this one) to Slashdot announcing their product is 'open source'. Everyone goes crazy, starts downloading, etc... Finally they either see the Fine Print or run into the limitation while playing around with the software--they are limited.
The company 'Open Sourced' 99.5% of their product--they just didn't open source that
That's not enough enough for me to perform tests at my smallest client. Maybe if they gave you 10 or 25--then they could hook the small businesses and then charge as the businesses grow.
But whatever--it's their code, they can do what they want with it. I'm just sick of the lying articles about how the software has been open sourced when it really hasn't. The article should be titled "Drop-In Replacement For Exchange Now (Mostly) Open Source (But Not Usable For Any Production Work)"
If they released the full source code, just wait for any enterprise distro to fork it and integrate it into their next release.
And the problem would be...?
That's right, Microsoft: open source software can gun for you too, motherfuckers!
I'm sure Microsoft is trembling.
The site is so hammered I it took about 4 minutes to load, and the first thing I noticed? Two colums for downloading. The first one says "AGPL3 Only" and the second says "incl. 3 users Outlook support".
Common--you know that that means. "We open sourced part of our software to try and suck you in--but you'll really find it limited until you fork over slightly less that you would have with Microsoft Exchange."
... I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed. Give me "Larry Sanders" any day over that.
All I have to say about Seinfield is that if he were such a great comedian, why the f*ck would he need a laugh track on his comedy show? Are you so unfunny that I need to be reminded when to laugh like a drone?
Also; amoral != immoral. Immoral means your doing evil, amoral means your not trying to be moral or immoral, or the term doesn't apply. You can make a profit both morally, or immorally. Hence the idea of profit itself is AMORAL.
You are correct. Profit is neither good nor bad--it simply is or is not. People can chose to do moral, immoral, or amoral things with it.
Make no mistake, I am not against business, profits, or any such thing. I actually run my own business. However, when shareholders enter the picture, things change. Appeasing shareholders become the end-all of the company, instead of profits flowing back the employees that make it (essentially, a pyramid scheme). Add to that the massive size and power, these large corporations have the potential, in a heartbeat, to either uplift or drag down humanity.
So how is it the *responsibility* of a company to take care of an employee? It's not. It sucks. But deal with it.
A previous employer of mine didn't offer healthcare. I found out a few months later that everyone else was covered--just not me. I talked with the boss about it and he said that he wasn't going to cover me. So I started digging through the job listings and a few weeks later started with a company that paid a few cents-per-hour more and had healthcare.
A year later, that former employer went out of business because they couldn't keep competent employees around.
That is how the market regulates itself. Google treats it employees very well--and look how well they are doing. My former employer treated employees like shit--and now the business is gone. (And 10 years later I work for their competitor who treats their employees much better.)
If a business treats their employees bad, or is harming the environment, or whatever--speak with your pocketbook. Don't purchase products or services from them. They'll go away.
You are correct. However, you must acknowledge that business must have limits. If I want to create a business that nukes small villages, is it still legitimate simply because it makes money and there is a need/demand for it? That's extreme, but simply put, a business shouldn't be allowed to be a business simply because it makes money and there is demand. There must be some level of responsibility involved, or else abuses are inevitable as every avenue of profit-increase is pursued (or perhaps you like how China employs children as young as 8 to do extremely dangerous work, etc, etc...).
Right--as long as a business isn't doing anything illegal, it's ok. I don't think businesses should be nuking small villages or dumping poison into town water supplies--but I don't think in any way that a business needs a social conscience or any other bit of wishful thinking.
If you can create a business, and while running your business identify a way to help the environment without impacting your bottom line (think Burger King and their new corn-paper straws or Starbucks and their new eco coffee cups), then good for you. But no one should expect a business to spend thousands, millions, or billions of dollars to fix something because someone thinks their product is 'bad' or the business doesn't have a social conscience. A business is there to make money--a side effect of that is usually gainful employment for other people. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we have available.