I find the "contact us" facility on some ISPs to be totally lacking, especially if you want to complain about one of their customers abusing their service. I had course to complain to swbell/AT and T about a venonomous message recently and not only did it take ages to find a complaint address, but I never got a reply back. (Also, the police and FBI have been useless too)....
I used to work for a small computer firm in Weybridge, England. Oh, damn it, since it collapsed ten years ago, I may as
well name it: MTA (Computer Consultants) Ltd. We had a project between 1997-9 to write a software demonstrator
for a radar resource manager for the Eurofighter project, for DERA Malvern. The project was divided into two parts,
of which phase 1 went through a successful factory acceptance task. However, a few bugs had been found in the
programme after this, one of them, due to me, was fairly serious. It was a small mathematical error but I produced
a bug in a few mninutes.
Now MTA had gone through a turbulent time, having to sack all of its staff because of the lack of money
and the rehiring them. MTA were annoyed that DERA decided to stall the programme while it did a full evaluation
of the software, rather than go to phase 2, which would have provided money for the coffers. At this point, the only thing keeping MTA afloat was hope for this project and a tiny project. MTA stalled on
delivering the software, saying they would only do so when the software went to phase 2. By the time MTA had backed
down and provided the patch, I had already left. DERA cancelled the project and MTA went bust within the year.
Moral? It doesn't pay to piss off those who pay you.
Although I truly want to see SCO pommelled into the ground, I have a niggling doubt that this may go in SCO's favour. Put it down to me having some distrust in the ability to juries, especially in complicated cases such as this. I hope I'm wrong.
I remember a book published c.1980 which had exposes of common fallacies in science, and things that make you go "Hmmmm!". One of the stories was "Neptune and Uranus are 17% crystallised diamonds." Alright, the story above talks about liquid diamonds, but the idea of their being precious materials in the outer solar systems isn't new!
The heading of this news story makes it sound as if the Jack Benny episodes were about to be disposed of, whereas this is not the case. They are being preserved and stored, albeit not "preserved" in a digital sense. The comments made by Film Preservationist are an important commentary on this case. As for other TV luminaries being unable to view their own creations, there are precedents on this side of the pond. Peter Cook, I read, wanted to see some of his earlier BBC series but wasn't allowed. Later he found out they had been wiped, and I get the feeling that this was after his request as he offered to pay for copies. The same applies to another celebrity (Sandy Shaw?) who wanted copies of her shows, which were wiped pretty damn quick after her request. I've been following the hunt for missing TV for some time, and a write-up is here.
...but I recall the excited, breathless publicity that occurred after a science team announced that they had captured spectroscopic
details of a planet's atmosphere and announced that it contained sufficient sodium to give it a yellowish tinge...then a second team, trying to verify the findings of the first, found nothing! We should wait and see....
The bean counters who manage Microsoft won't give two hoots that the technies within and without the company are disgruntled. Why should they? The article says that Microsoft's fortunes nearly tripled, and thats all they care about.
There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that CO exposure may affect the senses to such an extent that people experience
"spooky" or ghostly behaviour. Certainly, this occurred when one family was exposed, and their spooky hallucinations ceased when
CO poisoning was diagnosed, and the source removed. There a little more here
A friend of mine writes well-received books, but he gets a pittance from his publishers. For every 1000 sold, he gets £1000. Very generous when you consider that his books sell for about £16 a piece! I decided to write my own book, as an electronic version; this way I got 100% of the profits but sales were very slow; for a limited time I allowed a free download of my ebook. Then, thanks to the Espresso book machine, I was able to offer a paperback version of my book, but the cost per book was £9 to me, so I had to increase the cost to cover this and postage costs. It has sold more than the ebook version, but I don't know if the free download has affected sales. Unless you're famous, authors get a rough deal from publishing houses.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the "contact us" facility on some ISPs to be totally lacking, especially if you want to complain about one of their customers abusing their service. I had course to complain to swbell/AT and T about a venonomous message recently and not only did it take ages to find a complaint address, but I never got a reply back. (Also, the police and FBI have been useless too)....
Stop turning Slashdot into a parody of itself. There have already been too many fucking April Fools "jokes". Stop it. Stop it NOW.
I used to work for a small computer firm in Weybridge, England. Oh, damn it, since it collapsed ten years ago, I may as well name it: MTA (Computer Consultants) Ltd. We had a project between 1997-9 to write a software demonstrator for a radar resource manager for the Eurofighter project, for DERA Malvern. The project was divided into two parts, of which phase 1 went through a successful factory acceptance task. However, a few bugs had been found in the programme after this, one of them, due to me, was fairly serious. It was a small mathematical error but I produced a bug in a few mninutes.
Now MTA had gone through a turbulent time, having to sack all of its staff because of the lack of money and the rehiring them. MTA were annoyed that DERA decided to stall the programme while it did a full evaluation of the software, rather than go to phase 2, which would have provided money for the coffers. At this point, the only thing keeping MTA afloat was hope for this project and a tiny project. MTA stalled on delivering the software, saying they would only do so when the software went to phase 2. By the time MTA had backed down and provided the patch, I had already left. DERA cancelled the project and MTA went bust within the year.
Moral? It doesn't pay to piss off those who pay you.
Although I truly want to see SCO pommelled into the ground, I have a niggling doubt that this may go in SCO's favour. Put it down to me having some distrust in the ability to juries, especially in complicated cases such as this. I hope I'm wrong.
"No shit, sherlock"
Now theres a surprise! Does this story qualify for a "No shit, Sherlock" prize?
Thats a crap euphemism for collision!
The shuttle was allowed to land despite the threat of bad weather? Whats the new motto at NASA; "Safety last"?
I remember a book published c.1980 which had exposes of common fallacies in science, and things that make you go "Hmmmm!". One of the stories was "Neptune and Uranus are 17% crystallised diamonds." Alright, the story above talks about liquid diamonds, but the idea of their being precious materials in the outer solar systems isn't new!
The heading of this news story makes it sound as if the Jack Benny episodes were about to be disposed of, whereas this is not the case. They are being preserved and stored, albeit not "preserved" in a digital sense. The comments made by Film Preservationist are an important commentary on this case. As for other TV luminaries being unable to view their own creations, there are precedents on this side of the pond. Peter Cook, I read, wanted to see some of his earlier BBC series but wasn't allowed. Later he found out they had been wiped, and I get the feeling that this was after his request as he offered to pay for copies. The same applies to another celebrity (Sandy Shaw?) who wanted copies of her shows, which were wiped pretty damn quick after her request. I've been following the hunt for missing TV for some time, and a write-up is here.
...but I recall the excited, breathless publicity that occurred after a science team announced that they had captured spectroscopic details of a planet's atmosphere and announced that it contained sufficient sodium to give it a yellowish tinge...then a second team, trying to verify the findings of the first, found nothing! We should wait and see....
...I made a few comments about this End of an Era on my blog a few days ago. Follow the link in my signature.
...I updated my own stats a week ago
I used to work for a company that didn't believe in commenting code...took ages to reverse engineer the code...
"they is"??
...but it sure is cathartic - have a look at the blog in my sig line!
They're displayed here
..my name and shame blog will have the same effect - follow the link in my signature line...
The bean counters who manage Microsoft won't give two hoots that the technies within and without the company are disgruntled. Why should they? The article says that Microsoft's fortunes nearly tripled, and thats all they care about.
......and even hassled a benefactor in Australia to take down his mirror
For goodness sake, don't let the Discovery Channel read this thread. There'll be weeks of interminable documentaries if they do....
There seems to be some anecdotal evidence that CO exposure may affect the senses to such an extent that people experience "spooky" or ghostly behaviour. Certainly, this occurred when one family was exposed, and their spooky hallucinations ceased when CO poisoning was diagnosed, and the source removed. There a little more here
It'll send a message back through time and stop itself!
Oh yes, and my book is still available :-)
The nincompoops who campaigned against the LHC because of its mythical ability to create black holes will be out in force!