If Bill Gates and Co. started spending their research billions on the development of space technologies, rather than on selling the next pathetic version of Windows, we'll have a permament moon base in five years.
Obligatory comparison of Microsoft MoonBase (tm) to Microsoft Windows (tm).
If Microsoft funded the research, yeah we'd have a permanent moon base in 5 years. But we'd have to keep patching the dome to keep the air from leaking out. We'd also have to continuously move everyone out of the base and then back inside it, for inexplicable reasons. Everytime someone built a new house or installed some new piece of hardware, we'd have to evacuate everyone again. Every 3 years after that we'd have to completely rebuild the Moon Base or Microsoft would....
Until it's cheaper to move a ton of steel from the moon than it is to dig deeper into Canada, no moon mines, not to mention asteroid mines.
Whose going to make it cheaper to do what you have proposed? Wasteful governments (The US government is usually cited as the biggest player in space, and the most wasteful in the world)? You can sit around and wait for it to magically be cheaper to build shit on the moon and send it back. In the meantime, those that can, will make it happen. The only thing your argument supports is sitting around waiting for other people to do kick-ass things.
Plus, if you're willing to excuse that the last Smithsonian flight worked fine, except for some damage during launch that made it list to the left so much that it was only "controlled" in the sense that they could control how big a counterclockwise circle to make, the Smithsonian actually beat the Wrights by a week or so.
That's exactly the same as saying that NASA's quality control policies and procedures don't need to be examined because we excuse a damage made during launch. That plane flew into the potomac instead of being completely controlled.
I should point out that the guy that built the plane that you're referring to worked collaboratively with the Wright Brothers, and the two groups were actually testing different designs of the same application of theory. I will concede that if the Wright Brothers had failed at Kitty Hawk that year, then the Smithsonian would have beat them the next year (or the same year). But the Wright Brothers' contribution to flight wasn't engineering or scientific. It was education. They took concepts that were originally laid down 100 years before and combined them all into a design, and then instructed pilots for years! They didn't make their money building airplanes (after the bicycle shop, that is). They made it training. THAT was their contribution.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
WOO SATAN!
At this time, I just don't see how a non-Windows desktop is a viable solution for many enterprises. For certain users (developers, DBAs, admins, etc.), yes, is is a good idea. But, the users in Accounting, Legal, HR, etc. may be locked in.
Actually, if security is the *only* factor, consider switching to CD-based distributions, or using very lightweight distributions. Using RDesktop, you could run a Windows Terminal Server to provide the applications that the fools have to use. Also, keep in mind that stupidity is a company's #1 largest expense, and it's in every company's best interests to eliminate stupidity from their workforce. Once you've done that, you can eliminate the Windows expense quite easily.;)
Even when those multiple articles prove with undisputable, acknowledged football statistics that what Rush said was right.
First off, I don't like Rush. Rush Limbaugh:Republicans::Enderle:Microsoft. So it comes as a great pain in my ass to say...
Right or wrong, Rush got fucked for no good reason. He criticized the PRESS for being RACIST, by making more out of a quarterback than he's worth. Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant here. What *is* relevant is that he wasn't attacking the quarterback in question (who expectedly was upset that Rush didn't think he was the star the press makes him out to be) for being black, and he wasn't attacking black people at all. I don't recall Rush every being racist, but I could be wrong about that. What I do know is that he was offering a perfectly valid criticism of the sports press, which has gotten a lot of similar criticisms from other people in the past without the corresponding uprising.
Rush Limbaugh was just a victim of our not-free press. I think they only made a big deal about it because he's white, so I guess that makes me a racist, eh?
That said, the GNU build tools work with it all, it's just a matter of using an IDE. Personally, I don't give a shit about IDEs, and think they're angels polluting my system. I prefer to use the command line for compiling (and the GNU build tools, of course) and debugging. I use small, syntax highlighting text editors (KWrite on Linux, Programmer's Notepad in windows) that load FAST. I use an explorer window to navigate my source tree (Konqueror on Linux, of course), and I right-click on source files and choose "Open with..." and my text editor. On most files, I have the extension already associated with the app so I only have to single-click it (double-clicking causes seizures;) ). Class navigator? Who needs that shit? You have your header file and it's corresponding cpp file, each containing only one class and named appropriately. You can use (if you *need* to) your "Find" function that exists in every text editor in the world. Need to look at the api? Open the header in another window. IDEs are overrated, and in my experience, actually reduce productivity. I spend too much time fighting with the IDE to get it to do what I need it to and not enough time actually coding.
Odd, how sysadmins frequently barely fit into that category.
Even odder is how frequently they barely fit into anything.
Except MCSEs. THose guys are usually running around the building so much putting out fires that it's not possible for them to keep weight on.
Note to self: Make sure any MCSEs you hire are ADHD, so they can handle running around the building fixing half a dozen broken computers before breakfast.
guess I am the only one to see the humor in it? one customer.. singular
Yep, you were the only one apparently to see the humor. Haven't gotten a moderation email on it, yet, though, so maybe it got modded as funny? Heh. Thanks for playing!
I'm all over this. Just think, if Microsoft made the patent laws, there'd be so many holes in them it wouldn't even be possible to litigate patents any more!
Now, having them taken out and shot, or having their kneecaps broken, would probably be better way to deal with spammers than throwing them in jail, but we have this "cruel and unusual" clause here in the US, so jail it is.
Why don't we just repeal that, too? Why the hell not? The so-called Bill of Rights looks more like swiss cheese than any protective layer over our rights.
Actually, no.:) I said "pretty-girls" just like I would say "pretty-boys" about, say, the Dallas Cowboys, or 'N Sync, or what-have-you. My wife was the not-vain one. Also, my wife was the smart one, rather than the vain, "I'm so pretty", girls celebrating their stupidity and lack of resourcefulness. "Do math? What's that? Oh yeah! That's what they teach you in schools! That stuff's not useful in the real world."
The US government has governmental powers. That's why it is a problem when the US government acts based on what you think. The GNU project has no special legal powers, they are just putting up their opinion on a web site. What they are criticizing is a powerful, multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry composed of PR people, marketing people, and lobbyists. The primary purpose of that industry is to manipulate language in order to get people to do things they would otherwise not do in a million years.
Publishing a list of words and phrases that are considered unacceptable to a specific belief, opinion, or legal system very closely resembles censorship. The only tangible difference here is that, as you pointed out, GNU can't actually enforce it. They can, however, influence those who can enforce it. This is one of my problems with GNU as an organization. I whole-heartedly share their motives and philosophy, mostly, but I strongly disagree with some of their methods. Is this wrong?
But, hey, attacking people for speaking out rationally and freely by calling them "the thought police" and "politically correct" is just another strategy by people who don't like free speech to begin with. The only question is whether you know what you are doing or whether you have merely been taken in like millions of others.
Obviously, you think it is wrong. No need to be defensive, dude. I was not attacking, I was merely noting an observation I have made over the years.
GNU is seriously resembling less an operating system and more a religion. Your reaction to my observation smacks of fanaticism commonly associated with religion, and *never* associated with software development. What is GNU, then? Are they a group of developers making Free Software, or are they a group of believers more concerned with telling the world the right way to think? Our lovely president has been spending a lot of time telling us what patriotic, free-thinking Americans are supposed to think. GNU is doing it too. Is that fitting with your definition of freedom? It's not fitting with mine. Therefore, I make observations when I notice that someone I *do* care about (GNU) resembles my enemy (the thought police).
I decided to go to the SCO "City to City Tour" (%s/City to City/Farewell/g) out of morbid curiosity - what did SCO say about itself? I was especially interested to see if the time allotted to "roadmap" would even mention shippable product (o; It was interesting - not exactly as I expected, but interesting nonetheless. Highly recommended. And apparently easy to attend. 64 seats, less than 20 attendees. Considering that when I applied I went to a waiting list, I was expecting a higher turnout... it may be worth putting yourself on the list for future stops of the show...
Grandest cheese at the presentation was VP of Marketing, Jeff Hunsaker. He started out with an hour the company's report card & backgrounder. Here's the view of SCO painted: 330 employees, 2+ million deployed units (no mention of OS breakdown - would be interesting to see what % of that is Caldera Linux), target market is small-ish business. Reference accounts seem to be franchised fast food & drug oriented. Think Pizza Hut & Wallgreens (Arnold Clarke & Argos were UK references, Shoppers Drug thrown in for us Canuks). Nothing IT-intensive. Avaya & Lucent were mentioned on the laundry list, however no detail was given, and I cannot imagine descendants of AT&T paying too much to some guys in Utah for hideous product (searches on their sites for SCO only brings mention of their "Special Customer Operations" group).
Oddly enough, market cap & stock price were mentioned extensively (who'd have thought?). Reference was made to using their capitalization as a means of acquisition; however no details were given (assuming there were any details to give). The fabled '2 quarters of profitability' was also mentioned. The name Caldera was dragged through the dirt, as they were never profitable. From the slides you'd think SCO had roots much, much deeper than the MS Xenix junk they spawned from. In fact, the analogy they whip out is that of Harley-Davidson (HD was purchased by AMF, went to hell, then arose re-branded as the mega-label you know today). I refrained from pointing out that pre/post-AMF Harley produced respected product, and did not send threatening letters to Yamaha owners...
Mention of the legal battle? Nothing technical. Representatives were up-front about their lack of legal knowledge, and inability to comment. It never got past the mud-slinging stage. Same old, same old. Their interest is in protecting their IP. This is about a breach of contract. Linux 2.4 code review shows Monterrey-esqe code relating to memory-access that must have come from AIX 5L. Caldera Linux customers are indemnified against legal action. Blah blah blah.
Interesting bits?
Their definition of IP (I've never seen a formal definition, and so some of the things on the list amused mildly): Copyright, Contracts, Methods, Trade Secrets, and Know-how (Know-how? How about "stuff we have" - can that be a IP subject too?). Their mention of McBride making some soon-to-be-published "top 5 influential executives list" (that'll be a keeper of an article). And heavy mention of HP's support. Reference was made to their web site removing their logo, however they emphatically associate SCOs current operations and HP's approval. Nothing to substantiate, however.
Really interesting bits?
The crowd. I was expecting Linux zealots. It was mostly a room full of SCO resellers. And they were not too big on having a love in. Nothing hostile, however not one positive comment for the morning's session. During the "we be so profitable" section of the spiel, one reseller in the crowd asked "where does the money come from?" The response was largely a pointer to the SCO source initiative. The response? "What you are profitable in will not make me profitable.". Wow. That was good. One raised the points that this quibble is hurting his business. SCO's stance is that they'd love to settle this tomorrow (har har). Stance not bought by aforementioned reseller - the paraphrase
Cash registers are where the money comes into a retail corporation. If they're broken because the designer figured that 80% reliability was good enough, then you don't take in money that day, or you use a notepad, pen, and manual credit card imprinter. A lot of your customers will walk out your door and down the street to someone who bought a better system.
Heh, when my wife was working for a certian anti-competitive coffee chain based in Seattle she went in one day to find the POS stuff (and the Windows servers running them in back) down, and the other employees and management were just GIVING AWAY COFFEE. Just because they couldn't look at a fucking menu, get a fucking calculator, and figure out the price! Idiots. My wife straightened them out. I can just imagine all those pretty-girls saying "Oh, what's this? You mean this is what they call a calculator? I always thought that calculators were big machines that made loud whirring noises and smelled funny."
Man, when I was working at Sonic in Texas a long time ago, the computer went out one day, and I immediately picked up paper to take the orders and pass them back to the kitchen, and I could do the fucking math in my head! Inconvenient as hell, but no lost sales.
But you're absolutely right about POS systems needing to be reliable. For some businesses (think 24-hour gas stations) they need to be more reliable than DNS servers. Building a good POS system is about making sure that it's not a POS. Er. I've got my acronyms ambiguous. Cool.
The page was originally part of a frame - I took out the other cr@p to reduce/. effect. Oops on not restoring the other stuff...
Why didn't you just submit the whole text to slashdot as the article, to be read on slashdot? Or did you try that and it got rejected? Seems like the logical thing to do if you're worried about being slashdotted...
Why is it that technical fields are intimidating to women? There is no biological reason for them to be inherently adverse to such work. So the root of the problem must be social.
Because from birth to death women are told they are too stupid to understand technology. When a woman lifts up the hood on her car, 5 men show up to (look at her tits) tell her they'll take care of her. There are few women in IT because computers require math, logic, and problem solving skills to administer, program, and, and, well, whatever else it is we do with them! Women are discouraged in schools to pursue math, and logic and problem solving skills are disdained by all (remember all the pricks complaining about "word problems" in algebra classes?). Social conditioning is the #1 reason women are still being kept out of highly technical fields (despite the fact that women scientists regularly contribute to the vast depth of human knowledge).
How do we solve this problem? Well, I think the problem is being solved over time. With each new generation, women seem to be more free-thinking and individual than they were before. It could just be my imagination.
Personally, I had posters of Samantha Fox and Apollonia Kotero on my walls when I was a teen, but I bet none of you know who they were.;-)
Samantha Fox was *hot*, dude. I remember her being really sweet, so we concluded she was probably bitchy as hell when there wasn't a camera pointed at her.
Slashdot Mirror
Normally I ignore spelling errors, but I wanted to point this one out because I found it particularly entertaining.
God forbid that a company would actually want to recooperate some of the money the spend on bandwidth and development!
So, they would cooperate again some of the money? ;) I think you were looking for recuperate.
If Bill Gates and Co. started spending their research billions on the development of space technologies, rather than on selling the next pathetic version of Windows, we'll have a permament moon base in five years.
Obligatory comparison of Microsoft MoonBase (tm) to Microsoft Windows (tm).
If Microsoft funded the research, yeah we'd have a permanent moon base in 5 years. But we'd have to keep patching the dome to keep the air from leaking out. We'd also have to continuously move everyone out of the base and then back inside it, for inexplicable reasons. Everytime someone built a new house or installed some new piece of hardware, we'd have to evacuate everyone again. Every 3 years after that we'd have to completely rebuild the Moon Base or Microsoft would....
Ok, even I am getting sick of this joke.
Until it's cheaper to move a ton of steel from the moon than it is to dig deeper into Canada, no moon mines, not to mention asteroid mines.
Whose going to make it cheaper to do what you have proposed? Wasteful governments (The US government is usually cited as the biggest player in space, and the most wasteful in the world)? You can sit around and wait for it to magically be cheaper to build shit on the moon and send it back. In the meantime, those that can, will make it happen. The only thing your argument supports is sitting around waiting for other people to do kick-ass things.
Which came first, dude? The chicken or the egg?
Plus, if you're willing to excuse that the last Smithsonian flight worked fine, except for some damage during launch that made it list to the left so much that it was only "controlled" in the sense that they could control how big a counterclockwise circle to make, the Smithsonian actually beat the Wrights by a week or so.
That's exactly the same as saying that NASA's quality control policies and procedures don't need to be examined because we excuse a damage made during launch. That plane flew into the potomac instead of being completely controlled.
I should point out that the guy that built the plane that you're referring to worked collaboratively with the Wright Brothers, and the two groups were actually testing different designs of the same application of theory. I will concede that if the Wright Brothers had failed at Kitty Hawk that year, then the Smithsonian would have beat them the next year (or the same year). But the Wright Brothers' contribution to flight wasn't engineering or scientific. It was education. They took concepts that were originally laid down 100 years before and combined them all into a design, and then instructed pilots for years! They didn't make their money building airplanes (after the bicycle shop, that is). They made it training. THAT was their contribution.
"It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." - A. S. LaVey
WOO SATAN!
At this time, I just don't see how a non-Windows desktop is a viable solution for many enterprises. For certain users (developers, DBAs, admins, etc.), yes, is is a good idea. But, the users in Accounting, Legal, HR, etc. may be locked in.
Actually, if security is the *only* factor, consider switching to CD-based distributions, or using very lightweight distributions. Using RDesktop, you could run a Windows Terminal Server to provide the applications that the fools have to use. Also, keep in mind that stupidity is a company's #1 largest expense, and it's in every company's best interests to eliminate stupidity from their workforce. Once you've done that, you can eliminate the Windows expense quite easily. ;)
Even when those multiple articles prove with undisputable, acknowledged football statistics that what Rush said was right.
First off, I don't like Rush. Rush Limbaugh:Republicans::Enderle:Microsoft. So it comes as a great pain in my ass to say...
Right or wrong, Rush got fucked for no good reason. He criticized the PRESS for being RACIST, by making more out of a quarterback than he's worth. Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant here. What *is* relevant is that he wasn't attacking the quarterback in question (who expectedly was upset that Rush didn't think he was the star the press makes him out to be) for being black, and he wasn't attacking black people at all. I don't recall Rush every being racist, but I could be wrong about that. What I do know is that he was offering a perfectly valid criticism of the sports press, which has gotten a lot of similar criticisms from other people in the past without the corresponding uprising.
Rush Limbaugh was just a victim of our not-free press. I think they only made a big deal about it because he's white, so I guess that makes me a racist, eh?
Eclipse
That said, the GNU build tools work with it all, it's just a matter of using an IDE. Personally, I don't give a shit about IDEs, and think they're angels polluting my system. I prefer to use the command line for compiling (and the GNU build tools, of course) and debugging. I use small, syntax highlighting text editors (KWrite on Linux, Programmer's Notepad in windows) that load FAST. I use an explorer window to navigate my source tree (Konqueror on Linux, of course), and I right-click on source files and choose "Open with..." and my text editor. On most files, I have the extension already associated with the app so I only have to single-click it (double-clicking causes seizures ;) ). Class navigator? Who needs that shit? You have your header file and it's corresponding cpp file, each containing only one class and named appropriately. You can use (if you *need* to) your "Find" function that exists in every text editor in the world. Need to look at the api? Open the header in another window. IDEs are overrated, and in my experience, actually reduce productivity. I spend too much time fighting with the IDE to get it to do what I need it to and not enough time actually coding.
Odd, how sysadmins frequently barely fit into that category.
Even odder is how frequently they barely fit into anything.
Except MCSEs. THose guys are usually running around the building so much putting out fires that it's not possible for them to keep weight on.
Note to self: Make sure any MCSEs you hire are ADHD, so they can handle running around the building fixing half a dozen broken computers before breakfast.
guess I am the only one to see the humor in it? one customer.. singular
Yep, you were the only one apparently to see the humor. Haven't gotten a moderation email on it, yet, though, so maybe it got modded as funny? Heh. Thanks for playing!
"New Patent Laws, By Microsoft."
Somehow this doesn't make me feel any better.
I'm all over this. Just think, if Microsoft made the patent laws, there'd be so many holes in them it wouldn't even be possible to litigate patents any more!
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
I'm not a vain man, and even *I* would never admit to getting my ass kicked by a smelf.
sco cant explain...sco cant sell in oz... simple :-)
I wonder how badly it will hurt them to lose their customer in Australia, anyway...
Now, having them taken out and shot, or having their kneecaps broken, would probably be better way to deal with spammers than throwing them in jail, but we have this "cruel and unusual" clause here in the US, so jail it is.
Why don't we just repeal that, too? Why the hell not? The so-called Bill of Rights looks more like swiss cheese than any protective layer over our rights.
Your wife was the ugly one, right?
*chuckle*
Actually, no. :) I said "pretty-girls" just like I would say "pretty-boys" about, say, the Dallas Cowboys, or 'N Sync, or what-have-you. My wife was the not-vain one. Also, my wife was the smart one, rather than the vain, "I'm so pretty", girls celebrating their stupidity and lack of resourcefulness. "Do math? What's that? Oh yeah! That's what they teach you in schools! That stuff's not useful in the real world."
The US government has governmental powers. That's why it is a problem when the US government acts based on what you think. The GNU project has no special legal powers, they are just putting up their opinion on a web site. What they are criticizing is a powerful, multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry composed of PR people, marketing people, and lobbyists. The primary purpose of that industry is to manipulate language in order to get people to do things they would otherwise not do in a million years.
Publishing a list of words and phrases that are considered unacceptable to a specific belief, opinion, or legal system very closely resembles censorship. The only tangible difference here is that, as you pointed out, GNU can't actually enforce it. They can, however, influence those who can enforce it. This is one of my problems with GNU as an organization. I whole-heartedly share their motives and philosophy, mostly, but I strongly disagree with some of their methods. Is this wrong?
But, hey, attacking people for speaking out rationally and freely by calling them "the thought police" and "politically correct" is just another strategy by people who don't like free speech to begin with. The only question is whether you know what you are doing or whether you have merely been taken in like millions of others.
Obviously, you think it is wrong. No need to be defensive, dude. I was not attacking, I was merely noting an observation I have made over the years.
GNU is seriously resembling less an operating system and more a religion. Your reaction to my observation smacks of fanaticism commonly associated with religion, and *never* associated with software development. What is GNU, then? Are they a group of developers making Free Software, or are they a group of believers more concerned with telling the world the right way to think? Our lovely president has been spending a lot of time telling us what patriotic, free-thinking Americans are supposed to think. GNU is doing it too. Is that fitting with your definition of freedom? It's not fitting with mine. Therefore, I make observations when I notice that someone I *do* care about (GNU) resembles my enemy (the thought police).
I decided to go to the SCO "City to City Tour" (%s/City to City/Farewell/g) out of morbid curiosity - what did SCO say about itself? I was especially interested to see if the time allotted to "roadmap" would even mention shippable product (o; It was interesting - not exactly as I expected, but interesting nonetheless. Highly recommended. ... it may be worth putting yourself on the list for future stops of the show ...
...
And apparently easy to attend. 64 seats, less than 20 attendees. Considering that when I applied I went to a waiting list, I was expecting a higher turnout
Grandest cheese at the presentation was VP of Marketing, Jeff Hunsaker. He started out with an hour the company's report card & backgrounder. Here's the view of SCO painted: 330 employees, 2+ million deployed units (no mention of OS breakdown - would be interesting to see what % of that is Caldera Linux), target market is small-ish business. Reference accounts seem to be franchised fast food & drug oriented. Think Pizza Hut & Wallgreens (Arnold Clarke & Argos were UK references, Shoppers Drug thrown in for us Canuks). Nothing IT-intensive. Avaya & Lucent were mentioned on the laundry list, however no detail was given, and I cannot imagine descendants of AT&T paying too much to some guys in Utah for hideous product (searches on their sites for SCO only brings mention of their "Special Customer Operations" group).
Oddly enough, market cap & stock price were mentioned extensively (who'd have thought?). Reference was made to using their capitalization as a means of acquisition; however no details were given (assuming there were any details to give). The fabled '2 quarters of profitability' was also mentioned. The name Caldera was dragged through the dirt, as they were never profitable. From the slides you'd think SCO had roots much, much deeper than the MS Xenix junk they spawned from. In fact, the analogy they whip out is that of Harley-Davidson (HD was purchased by AMF, went to hell, then arose re-branded as the mega-label you know today). I refrained from pointing out that pre/post-AMF Harley produced respected product, and did not send threatening letters to Yamaha owners
Mention of the legal battle? Nothing technical. Representatives were up-front about their lack of legal knowledge, and inability to comment. It never got past the mud-slinging stage. Same old, same old. Their interest is in protecting their IP. This is about a breach of contract. Linux 2.4 code review shows Monterrey-esqe code relating to memory-access that must have come from AIX 5L. Caldera Linux customers are indemnified against legal action. Blah blah blah.
Interesting bits?
Their definition of IP (I've never seen a formal definition, and so some of the things on the list amused mildly): Copyright, Contracts, Methods, Trade Secrets, and Know-how (Know-how? How about "stuff we have" - can that be a IP subject too?). Their mention of McBride making some soon-to-be-published "top 5 influential executives list" (that'll be a keeper of an article). And heavy mention of HP's support. Reference was made to their web site removing their logo, however they emphatically associate SCOs current operations and HP's approval. Nothing to substantiate, however.
Really interesting bits?
The crowd. I was expecting Linux zealots. It was mostly a room full of SCO resellers. And they were not too big on having a love in. Nothing hostile, however not one positive comment for the morning's session. During the "we be so profitable" section of the spiel, one reseller in the crowd asked "where does the money come from?" The response was largely a pointer to the SCO source initiative. The response? "What you are profitable in will not make me profitable.". Wow. That was good. One raised the points that this quibble is hurting his business. SCO's stance is that they'd love to settle this tomorrow (har har). Stance not bought by aforementioned reseller - the paraphrase
I am still wondering why we are not boycoting SCO's Unix customers like McDonalds and Poppa John's Pizza?
I don't eat that shit anyway, so I'll be happy to boycott them. It's not like I ordered from those people in the first place...
Cash registers are where the money comes into a retail corporation. If they're broken because the designer figured that 80% reliability was good enough, then you don't take in money that day, or you use a notepad, pen, and manual credit card imprinter. A lot of your customers will walk out your door and down the street to someone who bought a better system.
Heh, when my wife was working for a certian anti-competitive coffee chain based in Seattle she went in one day to find the POS stuff (and the Windows servers running them in back) down, and the other employees and management were just GIVING AWAY COFFEE. Just because they couldn't look at a fucking menu, get a fucking calculator, and figure out the price! Idiots. My wife straightened them out. I can just imagine all those pretty-girls saying "Oh, what's this? You mean this is what they call a calculator? I always thought that calculators were big machines that made loud whirring noises and smelled funny."
Man, when I was working at Sonic in Texas a long time ago, the computer went out one day, and I immediately picked up paper to take the orders and pass them back to the kitchen, and I could do the fucking math in my head! Inconvenient as hell, but no lost sales.
But you're absolutely right about POS systems needing to be reliable. For some businesses (think 24-hour gas stations) they need to be more reliable than DNS servers. Building a good POS system is about making sure that it's not a POS. Er. I've got my acronyms ambiguous. Cool.
The page was originally part of a frame - I took out the other cr@p to reduce /. effect. Oops on not restoring the other stuff...
Why didn't you just submit the whole text to slashdot as the article, to be read on slashdot? Or did you try that and it got rejected? Seems like the logical thing to do if you're worried about being slashdotted...
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html# IntellectualProperty.
I love GNU, don't get me wrong, but they are as close, if not closer, to being the mind police as the US Government.
But they didn't get full coverage, so Harley's sound like poh-tah-toh-poh-tah-toh and the japanese bikes sound like poh-tay-toh-poh-tay-toh...
You guys are on crack. Everyone knows that rice bikes sound like the manufacturer's name. For example:
Su - zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu - kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
WOOOOOOOOOOOOO SATAN!!!!!!!
There is a devil mustache and horns on Bill, of course.
But isn't Bill the bad guy? /me doesn't understand.
Why is it that technical fields are intimidating to women? There is no biological reason for them to be inherently adverse to such work. So the root of the problem must be social.
Because from birth to death women are told they are too stupid to understand technology. When a woman lifts up the hood on her car, 5 men show up to (look at her tits) tell her they'll take care of her. There are few women in IT because computers require math, logic, and problem solving skills to administer, program, and, and, well, whatever else it is we do with them! Women are discouraged in schools to pursue math, and logic and problem solving skills are disdained by all (remember all the pricks complaining about "word problems" in algebra classes?). Social conditioning is the #1 reason women are still being kept out of highly technical fields (despite the fact that women scientists regularly contribute to the vast depth of human knowledge).
How do we solve this problem? Well, I think the problem is being solved over time. With each new generation, women seem to be more free-thinking and individual than they were before. It could just be my imagination.
Personally, I had posters of Samantha Fox and Apollonia Kotero on my walls when I was a teen, but I bet none of you know who they were. ;-)
Samantha Fox was *hot*, dude. I remember her being really sweet, so we concluded she was probably bitchy as hell when there wasn't a camera pointed at her.