The WineShopper.com gang was a great group of guys/gals. I never knew there was so much to inter-state wine regulation and shipping before they came along. There was an older gentleman with a white beard (I think he wrote product descriptions), who always had something insightful to say on the subject. His name alludes me.
You did conveniently forget to mention Stargate SG-1, which started on Showtime, and has not been ruined, cancelled, or changed much at all for that matter. The ignorance of one sided Puritanism shows its ugly head again on the dot.
I like Battlestar. I like the direction they've taken it in; dark, sexy, mysterious, it's good tv any way you cut it. I would like to see more.
Hmmm.... simple rumor presented. Yet proof of an interview there is not. Instead link to another site, which links somewhere else it does. Amazed that made it by Slashdot sensors this did.
Good point, but there were a lot of good companies with business plans that got sucked down too. WineShopper.com comes to mind. The only thing that kept Ebay and Amazon in business was great management, and a little luck. Few were that lucky.
The way I see it outsourcing is the best thing that ever happened to guys like me. A cheap app gets developed over seas, then the company gets a cheap app back, when they never wanted a cheap app in the first place. The app then gets redeveloped, and it usually ends up on my desk at some point. I've done quite a few of projects like that over the last few years.
"So who suffers? The criminals and terrorists? Hell no- they'll just route around it. That leaves only one other class...the vast, vast majority of people who are neither terrorists nor criminals."
Who suffers? Do you? Do I?
So there's yet another unwanted database or three with my personal information in it. So what? If you have that much of a problem with it, why not go after some of the incredibly invasive databases, public and private that already exist? Last I heard there were hundreds of them.
Damn those sky miles! And let's not forget about Wal-Mart, who has a database system so all encompassing, the guys who manage it have named it Orwell.
Then there are the multitude of homeland security databases they've had commissioned over the last four years or so, which keep multiplying yet aren't organized well enough to pull up complex queries.
There is this tendency on Slashdot to go overboard with the conspiracy theories. It's fun... don't get me wrong, but with a government and private sector as completely and utterly inept as ours, I'll believe it when I see it.
The Inclusive Namespace (claims to be the first.biz registry, and appears to have an alternate root server as described in the parent post.)
They all seem to have failed.
AOL has an interesting service happening with keywords, however it's not exactly an open system. Keywords are either owned by AOL or rented out to sponsors (as detailed in their media kit).
I've wanted a.pro domain since I heard they were going to be made available. Shortly afterward, I was told that it would only be for medical professionals and people involved in legal practices, both of which have no interest in anything but.com domains.
So I wrote a letter to ICANN and the register I was trying to work with at the time and I heard nothing. Although, looking at third level domains, I see an interesting addition, ".eng.pro." It's nice to know someone at ICANN was listening, or that other software engineers were complaining too. Either way, it works.
Now, speaking of this registrar, some fun facts:.pro domains cost less than.whatever.pro domains. Their shopping cart is broken, and will not add items.
There don't seem to be any breaks on multi-year registrations as there would be with other registrars.
I wonder how difficult it would be to transfer a.pro domain if I was unhappy with this registrar's service. To date, I think I've only seen three or four other regis doing it. Not that it matters, I'm sure that there are more.
Fascinating. I wasn't aware of this new toolkit. Sorry for being so presumptuous. Maybe the thing I'm confused about is how something like this differentiates itself (or would differentiate itself) from the existing tools and applications out there for working with the Mozilla application framework. Or are we talking about something else entriely?
It's not sad, just poorly organized. Mitch, if you're reading this, give me a call. I'm almost certain I can fix this little foundation situation thingy.
The toolkit already exists, and has for at least a couple of years. I've seen it refered to as Gecko Run Time, and XPCOM (which I believe is one of it's core componants). They're documented well, but may be out of date. I haven't checked on it in awhile. About a year ago, we were talking about porting Shorthand over to XPCOM and GRE because it already had the complete API set (shut up I know) we needed. There aren't many apps that I know of that are written for the Moz tool kit, but there are a few. It's not marketed well. You might want to check sourceforge and freshmeat.net for a list of the known oss apps that use it.
I'm not trying to disagree with anyone here, but the fact of the matter is that we really don't have enough data to make any kind of assumption about the current or future sales of Windows. Microsoft has been anything but helpful to this end, and this particular information does not seem to be filed with the SEC.
So when Microsoft claims that XP is the hottest selling operating system in the world, who are we supposed to believe? Microsoft? Really? I'm not doubting that XP has the lion's share of the OS market right now. (Actually, I was talking about longhorn, and pointing out that I didn't think everyone in their mother would upgrade if they had to activate by phone, but hey, stranger things have happened. I also pointed out that I thought this was probably not as secure as doing it online, but again, the software commeth, and I really don't care. Now, back to numbers.)
If Microsoft holds it's sales numbers close to it's chest, and then comes along and says, "we have 75% of the market with this product" great! But they could say anything they wanted to. Yet another case of the inmates running the asylum I guess.
On the other hand, with word of this out there: It seems to me that fewer people will upgrade than before. Every generation of Windows has fewer upgrades than the last one. XP for example did very poorly over all because they just couldn't find a reason to force people into upgrading. People using Windows 2000 for example are still happy with it. Why would they really even want XP? Prettier animation? Fat chance. How do you sell something new to a market you have already saturated, that realistically isn't that far off from what is already out there? Seriously, I would like to know. Maybe if anyone knows, I could start a Microsoft rival, and take over the world again. Yes... that would be fun and evil. Let me ponder it.
I could be wrong, but I believe DOOM 3 is available for Linux. I think you'll also find that these very same computer cup holder destroying people who ask these sorts of questions are going to ask them of Windows as well. Difference is that Windows is almost completely unsupported unless you have the right kind of mass licensing deals required to get a support package. So you're probably going to hear them more, because there is a support system there. Weather or not anyone will pay attention to them, or they can go back to being ignored is a whole nother issue. I would still pay to see it, but I won't hold my breath.
Amazing how that works, isn't it. I could see it being worth it if everyone loved Windows. But the only reason people even use it in the first place is because it's easy. Something idiotic like this makes it a LOT less so. Linux on the other hand, making pretty big inroads. No pointless activation sequences where you have to call anyone. Probably never will be, except with Xandros (but I doubt it). Hey, there's a selling point right there. Buy linux, and don't have to call anyone who will make you answer stupid pointless questions. Woo hoo! I'm sold. This is exactly the kind of thing they want to do just before they release Expidition. Although, I wonder how much more secure it's actually going to be.
Just when it was getting good.
Speaking of Sci-Fi, maybe they should take it over. They've done it before. Shows used to go to sci-fi to die, but the last few have been doing pretty well.
Open source communists? I was under the distinct impression that communists believed in centralized control and secrecy (you know, like Microsoft). Calling the open source guys communists is like calling George Washington a communist. It's non sense.
I've worked on government projects before. Some agencies are better than others. State agencies are weirder than the Feds (especially Indiana, which has become very odd of late), and some Feds are much more efficient than others.
Think of a spectrum of efficiency. On the one side of the spectrum you have say, the USPS (which is actually among the better run IT areas in US gov) and on the other extreme you have agencies like the FBI, which people have been complaining about for easily the last five years. Everyone else is generally somewhere in between.
That said, I think all governmental agencies would be a lot more productive if they stopped thinking about being efficient as a bad thing. The mind set kind of works like this:
Being efficient means that you get more work done more quickly with fewer resources. Fewer resources means less unneeded funding. Less funding means a smaller head count. Smaller head count means you're going to be stuck with hundreds of people who aren't doing anything (probably not doing much anyway) that you are stuck with, and can't fire... unless they're merit based, but let's not get into that.
And that is why this Gormanghaust we call a government moves so incredibly slowly, and never seems to improve.
The FBI especially; an agency that you would think would benefit considerably from any improvements in efficiency will only do so kicking and screaming. If not for the September 11th Commission, they never would have gotten around to doing anything!
And now people find it surprising when a program they're mandated to have developed is completely inadequate, and out of date before it's even deployed? I don't think the problem is in the software vendor. It's the system itself.
Until the mind set at governmental agencies facing these sorts of problems changes soon, we'll continue to hear about millions and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on nothing. And if voters don't begin lobbying their politicians to end this... it's never going to change.
Just a thought. I'm an idiot. See? Beat you to it!
Slashdot Mirror
The WineShopper.com gang was a great group of guys/gals. I never knew there was so much to inter-state wine regulation and shipping before they came along. There was an older gentleman with a white beard (I think he wrote product descriptions), who always had something insightful to say on the subject. His name alludes me.
Spoken like a true fuddy duddy. Great job.
You did conveniently forget to mention Stargate SG-1, which started on Showtime, and has not been ruined, cancelled, or changed much at all for that matter. The ignorance of one sided Puritanism shows its ugly head again on the dot.
I like Battlestar. I like the direction they've taken it in; dark, sexy, mysterious, it's good tv any way you cut it. I would like to see more.
Hmmm.... simple rumor presented. Yet proof of an interview there is not. Instead link to another site, which links somewhere else it does. Amazed that made it by Slashdot sensors this did.
Good point, but there were a lot of good companies with business plans that got sucked down too. WineShopper.com comes to mind. The only thing that kept Ebay and Amazon in business was great management, and a little luck. Few were that lucky.
Yes, and his poor turtles are homeless.
I think he's referring to the blurry spotty picture on the first link. It's on, so clearly it runs Windows.
Johnny's pissed off. He's leaving the industry and starting a web site to sell women's panties. He'll show them.
Only on Mondays.
The rest of the week it's fine.
The way I see it outsourcing is the best thing that ever happened to guys like me. A cheap app gets developed over seas, then the company gets a cheap app back, when they never wanted a cheap app in the first place. The app then gets redeveloped, and it usually ends up on my desk at some point. I've done quite a few of projects like that over the last few years.
"So who suffers? The criminals and terrorists? Hell no- they'll just route around it. That leaves only one other class...the vast, vast majority of people who are neither terrorists nor criminals."
Who suffers?
Do you?
Do I?
So there's yet another unwanted database or three with my personal information in it. So what? If you have that much of a problem with it, why not go after some of the incredibly invasive databases, public and private that already exist? Last I heard there were hundreds of them.
Damn those sky miles! And let's not forget about Wal-Mart, who has a database system so all encompassing, the guys who manage it have named it Orwell.
Then there are the multitude of homeland security databases they've had commissioned over the last four years or so, which keep multiplying yet aren't organized well enough to pull up complex queries.
There is this tendency on Slashdot to go overboard with the conspiracy theories. It's fun... don't get me wrong, but with a government and private sector as completely and utterly inept as ours, I'll believe it when I see it.
Till then,
I'm not holding my breath.
A side note:
.web domains
.biz registry, and appears to have an alternate root server as described in the parent post.)
People have tried variations on this.
new.net (through spyware)
The Inclusive Namespace (claims to be the first
They all seem to have failed.
AOL has an interesting service happening with keywords, however it's not exactly an open system. Keywords are either owned by AOL or rented out to sponsors (as detailed in their media kit).
I do.
.pro domain since I heard they were going to be made available. Shortly afterward, I was told that it would only be for medical professionals and people involved in legal practices, both of which have no interest in anything but .com domains.
.pro domains cost less than .whatever.pro domains.
.pro domain if I was unhappy with this registrar's service. To date, I think I've only seen three or four other regis doing it. Not that it matters, I'm sure that there are more.
I've wanted a
So I wrote a letter to ICANN and the register I was trying to work with at the time and I heard nothing. Although, looking at third level domains, I see an interesting addition, ".eng.pro." It's nice to know someone at ICANN was listening, or that other software engineers were complaining too. Either way, it works.
Now, speaking of this registrar, some fun facts:
Their shopping cart is broken, and will not add items.
There don't seem to be any breaks on multi-year registrations as there would be with other registrars.
I wonder how difficult it would be to transfer a
Hey now, stop violating my trademarks. There are no BSD style licenses here (TM).
I think MS could learn a lot from Apple, as they always have, and should look into utilizing something like BSD to start over.
You mean like borrowing pieces of BSD, popular libraries... perhaps?Fascinating. I wasn't aware of this new toolkit. Sorry for being so presumptuous. Maybe the thing I'm confused about is how something like this differentiates itself (or would differentiate itself) from the existing tools and applications out there for working with the Mozilla application framework. Or are we talking about something else entriely?
It's not sad, just poorly organized. Mitch, if you're reading this, give me a call. I'm almost certain I can fix this little foundation situation thingy.
"I can't help but feel as though people are just trying to run a smear campaign against the Mozilla Corporation. "
They're not a corporation. They're a foundation. Basically means that the way they can get and use money is a little more limited than a NFPC.The toolkit already exists, and has for at least a couple of years. I've seen it refered to as Gecko Run Time, and XPCOM (which I believe is one of it's core componants). They're documented well, but may be out of date. I haven't checked on it in awhile. About a year ago, we were talking about porting Shorthand over to XPCOM and GRE because it already had the complete API set (shut up I know) we needed. There aren't many apps that I know of that are written for the Moz tool kit, but there are a few. It's not marketed well. You might want to check sourceforge and freshmeat.net for a list of the known oss apps that use it.
I'm not trying to disagree with anyone here, but the fact of the matter is that we really don't have enough data to make any kind of assumption about the current or future sales of Windows. Microsoft has been anything but helpful to this end, and this particular information does not seem to be filed with the SEC.
So when Microsoft claims that XP is the hottest selling operating system in the world, who are we supposed to believe? Microsoft? Really? I'm not doubting that XP has the lion's share of the OS market right now. (Actually, I was talking about longhorn, and pointing out that I didn't think everyone in their mother would upgrade if they had to activate by phone, but hey, stranger things have happened. I also pointed out that I thought this was probably not as secure as doing it online, but again, the software commeth, and I really don't care. Now, back to numbers.)
If Microsoft holds it's sales numbers close to it's chest, and then comes along and says, "we have 75% of the market with this product" great! But they could say anything they wanted to. Yet another case of the inmates running the asylum I guess.
On the other hand, with word of this out there: It seems to me that fewer people will upgrade than before. Every generation of Windows has fewer upgrades than the last one. XP for example did very poorly over all because they just couldn't find a reason to force people into upgrading. People using Windows 2000 for example are still happy with it. Why would they really even want XP? Prettier animation? Fat chance. How do you sell something new to a market you have already saturated, that realistically isn't that far off from what is already out there? Seriously, I would like to know. Maybe if anyone knows, I could start a Microsoft rival, and take over the world again. Yes... that would be fun and evil. Let me ponder it.
I could be wrong, but I believe DOOM 3 is available for Linux. I think you'll also find that these very same computer cup holder destroying people who ask these sorts of questions are going to ask them of Windows as well. Difference is that Windows is almost completely unsupported unless you have the right kind of mass licensing deals required to get a support package. So you're probably going to hear them more, because there is a support system there. Weather or not anyone will pay attention to them, or they can go back to being ignored is a whole nother issue. I would still pay to see it, but I won't hold my breath.
Amazing how that works, isn't it. I could see it being worth it if everyone loved Windows. But the only reason people even use it in the first place is because it's easy. Something idiotic like this makes it a LOT less so. Linux on the other hand, making pretty big inroads. No pointless activation sequences where you have to call anyone. Probably never will be, except with Xandros (but I doubt it). Hey, there's a selling point right there. Buy linux, and don't have to call anyone who will make you answer stupid pointless questions. Woo hoo! I'm sold. This is exactly the kind of thing they want to do just before they release Expidition. Although, I wonder how much more secure it's actually going to be.
I say, let them have their cell phones. I drive like I'm drunk most of the time anyway. :-P
Just when it was getting good. Speaking of Sci-Fi, maybe they should take it over. They've done it before. Shows used to go to sci-fi to die, but the last few have been doing pretty well.
Open source communists? I was under the distinct impression that communists believed in centralized control and secrecy (you know, like Microsoft). Calling the open source guys communists is like calling George Washington a communist. It's non sense.
I've worked on government projects before. Some agencies are better than others. State agencies are weirder than the Feds (especially Indiana, which has become very odd of late), and some Feds are much more efficient than others.
Think of a spectrum of efficiency. On the one side of the spectrum you have say, the USPS (which is actually among the better run IT areas in US gov) and on the other extreme you have agencies like the FBI, which people have been complaining about for easily the last five years. Everyone else is generally somewhere in between.
That said, I think all governmental agencies would be a lot more productive if they stopped thinking about being efficient as a bad thing. The mind set kind of works like this:
Being efficient means that you get more work done more quickly with fewer resources. Fewer resources means less unneeded funding. Less funding means a smaller head count. Smaller head count means you're going to be stuck with hundreds of people who aren't doing anything (probably not doing much anyway) that you are stuck with, and can't fire... unless they're merit based, but let's not get into that.
And that is why this Gormanghaust we call a government moves so incredibly slowly, and never seems to improve.
The FBI especially; an agency that you would think would benefit considerably from any improvements in efficiency will only do so kicking and screaming. If not for the September 11th Commission, they never would have gotten around to doing anything!
And now people find it surprising when a program they're mandated to have developed is completely inadequate, and out of date before it's even deployed? I don't think the problem is in the software vendor. It's the system itself.
Until the mind set at governmental agencies facing these sorts of problems changes soon, we'll continue to hear about millions and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on nothing. And if voters don't begin lobbying their politicians to end this... it's never going to change.
Just a thought.
I'm an idiot. See? Beat you to it!