Oh - and if I have USD4.7m to spend on a flat - what makes you think I have a one-car household; or will I get my own personal parking deck holding 3 or 4 cars)?
You don't have a one car household. You have an enormous house way out in the countryside with lots of cars - but you want the convenience of an apartment right near the centre of the city.
'Course, you didn't get that rich by buying property right at the time when it looked like house prices were going to collapse.
BA succeeded in royally pissing off a former colleague of mine by cancelling the last flight of the day at the last minute, leaving him stranded in the airport.
To add insult to injury, when he wrote to head office demanding a refund, the reply basically said "You're wrong; the flight did leave. However, owing to regulations regarding working hours, the plane left with no passengers on board. Under EU law that does count as 'flight did not happen', so here's your refund".
He thought their letter could have been a bit more graceful about the whole thing;)
The European low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet already do stuff like this - you pay for the privilege of being allowed to check in online, checking in baggage, being allocated a seat, being in a queue which gets priority to board the plane, being allowed into the fueselage rather than sticky-taped to a wing. (I made up that last one).
They solved the "bad publicity" problem in two ways:
1. Don't know how true this is elsewhere in Europe, but in the UK it's quite common to find that there's only one airline offering a convenient "from my nearest airport to where I want to go" route. So as far as most people are concerned, they have an effective monopoly on the particular route. 2. They're all as bad as each other so nobody expects using an alternate airline to gain them anything.
"The lawsuits, the absurd DRM, the crazy "the entire industry is going to collapse" rhetoric - we never believed any of this crap", said a spokesman. "What actually happened was someone suggested that perhaps we could somehow start announcing these ridiculous ideas, record the reaction then release it as a movie. Kind of like The Truman Show, only much much bigger." Has the MPAA finally gone too far? Will this lead to their ultimate collapse? Quiver with excitement. Tremble with fear. Eat peanuts with raisins.
IIRC, the conclusion was that when you account for the fact that not all combinations of notes are ever going to work musically, it is mathematically impossible to write a truly original piece of music.
Unfortunately I can't find a citation for that, so you'll have to either take my word for it, be better at searching than I am or conclude I'm speaking rubbish.
Microsoft controls upwards of 90% of the desktop market, and a substantial percentage of the server market.
Oh, but more than that.
I don't know if you're aware, but the last few incarnations of their server and desktop products are clearly aimed at increasing their server market share.
Example: Exchange 5.5 did what it did. I was never familiar enough with it to comment on how well it did, though.
Then Exchange 2000 required Active Directory - in which case, if you didn't already have one you might as well set up a Windows domain.
Had you not gone down the Exchange route, that's OK - if you want to run your own Windows update server for your XP desktops rather than have everything hit Microsoft's website and you have no control over it, that also requires an Active Directory domain.
Now with Vista, I'm given to understand that registration is also compulsory for business users - which it wasn't for XP. But if you don't want all your systems phoning home to Microsoft, that's perfectly OK - you just need a Windows 2003 server to do that job instead. (I don't know if you also need that Win2K3 server to be on an active directory domain, but I wouldn't bet against it).
Now you have a full-blown Windows infrastructure. Suddenly, the business argument for a non-Windows server becomes about 100x harder.
When I define on MY page the font in the stylesheet as Arial or whatever, Vista users will see the text as Arial.
Unless they've removed the Arial font, configured their browser to override fonts specified in the webpage or are using some strange browser which doesn't support any fonts other than its own internal monospaced/variable width fonts.
They can however wreck some havoc on medium sized projects with corporate backing. Then again if there is corporate backing already what stops those corporates from forking?
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. In many fields, there aren't a great many open source projects which are making any significant inroads, for whatever reason, and despite being open source the only people doing any significant work on the projects which are any good are employed by the organisation behind the project. This means that the chances of a successful fork are pretty slim - Nessus immediately springs to mind as an excellent example of this.
My prediction is that the kind of companies which get bought out will be those that are behind "the only half-decent open source project which solves problem X".
This is an absolutely textbook way of getting rid of competition - buy it and either assimilate their product into your own or simply close it down.
Microsoft aren't bothered about small projects which don't attract much attention. Nor are they particularly bothered about large projects, provided there isn't any serious commercial backing to them.
They're bothered about commercially backed projects where there is the potential to offer significant competition. Their spouting about how "you won't get any real support" (which is probably about their only reasonably sensible piece of FUD) only works when there aren't many commercially backed solutions based on open source software. If I worked for someone like KnowledgeTree or SugarCRM right now I'd be slightly nervous.
You have the choice of "ban executable attachments" or "increased risk of something making it through your antivirus scanning". Frankly, I think both options are pretty awful. But I would far rather deal with the occasional hacked off user than the aftermath of an executable containing something nasty. I've seen that before and it really isn't much fun, even in an otherwise reasonably well managed network.
Depending on where you are in the world, a lot of old churches were originally painted in bright colours and patterns inside. In many cases they've faded to the point of being almost invisible.
Bit of a shame really. You can still see the evidence in some churches if you look closely.
Crapification - re-releasing Star Wars on DVD, except there's all this CG crap in the background that wasn't there before.
IME the big problem that's introduced with the CGI isn't so much "I don't like it because I saw the original". It's where you see the original with a set which wobbles when a character sits down too fast and the spaceship is obviously a model, cutting to visually stunning shots which look really shiny and polished. It's just such a jar that the willing suspension of disbelief crumbles.
From personal experience, most people pay so little attention to email you send them that it wouldn't matter too much if you were able to send an email that magically turned their computer into a dancing ferret wearing top hat and tails, they wouldn't open it anyway.
Not unless the subject line was britney_spears_naked, anyway.
we got SCREWED because the asshole client changed several things silently in their favor.
It's reasonably common in business to propose alterations to contracts as part of negotiations - though perhaps not terribly sporting to do so without making clear that you're sending a modified version back.
If your salesman signed the contract that came back without checking it over first, then the salesman screwed you over through his own incompetence.
What's the point in a "technically superior" format which doesn't play on the iPod (oh, only about 70% of the MP3 player market then) and isn't used as the storage format of choice by the great majority of folk?
If I place a call like that, I WANT the SWAT team to kick in my door, I want 20 heavily armed people coming to save me.
Let me get this straight.
In a situation where a drugged up person with a gun (and probably a rather tenuous grip on reality) is pointing the gun straight at you and holding you hostage, you want a lot of noise and commotion?
I think there are possibly more subtle ways to defuse the situation which are much less likely to involve said madman pulling the trigger.
I suspect that would fall under impersonating a police officer? Not sure what the concequences are, but I'm certain it's illegal.
I wouldn't imagine the consequences are any worse than the consequences for kicking someones door down in the middle of the night, barging in with 3 or 4 heavily armed men and stealing all the family's valuables WITHOUT shouting "Police"
Slashdot Mirror
Oh - and if I have USD4.7m to spend on a flat - what makes you think I have a one-car household; or will I get my own personal parking deck holding 3 or 4 cars)?
You don't have a one car household. You have an enormous house way out in the countryside with lots of cars - but you want the convenience of an apartment right near the centre of the city.
'Course, you didn't get that rich by buying property right at the time when it looked like house prices were going to collapse.
BA succeeded in royally pissing off a former colleague of mine by cancelling the last flight of the day at the last minute, leaving him stranded in the airport.
;)
To add insult to injury, when he wrote to head office demanding a refund, the reply basically said "You're wrong; the flight did leave. However, owing to regulations regarding working hours, the plane left with no passengers on board. Under EU law that does count as 'flight did not happen', so here's your refund".
He thought their letter could have been a bit more graceful about the whole thing
The European low-cost airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet already do stuff like this - you pay for the privilege of being allowed to check in online, checking in baggage, being allocated a seat, being in a queue which gets priority to board the plane, being allowed into the fueselage rather than sticky-taped to a wing. (I made up that last one).
They solved the "bad publicity" problem in two ways:
1. Don't know how true this is elsewhere in Europe, but in the UK it's quite common to find that there's only one airline offering a convenient "from my nearest airport to where I want to go" route. So as far as most people are concerned, they have an effective monopoly on the particular route.
2. They're all as bad as each other so nobody expects using an alternate airline to gain them anything.
One day, maybe in the not too distant future, there will be an article on /.
It will read like this:
Your Rights Online: MPAA admit that everything they have said for the last 5 years has been a practical joke
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday Cantrembember 75th @ 27:00
from the i-knew-it department
Anonymous Coward writes: The MPAA has finally admitted what a lot of people on Slashdot have suspected for a while. Everything they've done for the last 5 years was all part of a practical joke.
"The lawsuits, the absurd DRM, the crazy "the entire industry is going to collapse" rhetoric - we never believed any of this crap", said a spokesman. "What actually happened was someone suggested that perhaps we could somehow start announcing these ridiculous ideas, record the reaction then release it as a movie. Kind of like The Truman Show, only much much bigger." Has the MPAA finally gone too far? Will this lead to their ultimate collapse? Quiver with excitement. Tremble with fear. Eat peanuts with raisins.
This has already been discussed elsewhere.
IIRC, the conclusion was that when you account for the fact that not all combinations of notes are ever going to work musically, it is mathematically impossible to write a truly original piece of music.
Unfortunately I can't find a citation for that, so you'll have to either take my word for it, be better at searching than I am or conclude I'm speaking rubbish.
So you want a girl that's only interested in you when she's hungry, leaves hair everywhere and licks her own backside in polite company?
Wow.
Takes all sorts, I s'pose.
True, but given the current state of the US patent office, it seems to me this could be a case of IBM patenting it before someone else does.
Microsoft controls upwards of 90% of the desktop market, and a substantial percentage of the server market.
Oh, but more than that.
I don't know if you're aware, but the last few incarnations of their server and desktop products are clearly aimed at increasing their server market share.
Example: Exchange 5.5 did what it did. I was never familiar enough with it to comment on how well it did, though.
Then Exchange 2000 required Active Directory - in which case, if you didn't already have one you might as well set up a Windows domain.
Had you not gone down the Exchange route, that's OK - if you want to run your own Windows update server for your XP desktops rather than have everything hit Microsoft's website and you have no control over it, that also requires an Active Directory domain.
Now with Vista, I'm given to understand that registration is also compulsory for business users - which it wasn't for XP. But if you don't want all your systems phoning home to Microsoft, that's perfectly OK - you just need a Windows 2003 server to do that job instead. (I don't know if you also need that Win2K3 server to be on an active directory domain, but I wouldn't bet against it).
Now you have a full-blown Windows infrastructure. Suddenly, the business argument for a non-Windows server becomes about 100x harder.
90+% of Apache updates have been for modules - and the RH9 servers are serving static pages which probably don't need many modules installed.
When I define on MY page the font in the stylesheet as Arial or whatever, Vista users will see the text as Arial.
Unless they've removed the Arial font, configured their browser to override fonts specified in the webpage or are using some strange browser which doesn't support any fonts other than its own internal monospaced/variable width fonts.
A technical defense is to block RST packets. Probably not hard to do under Linux, and likely trivial.
Also probably very silly to do. And won't work unless both ends of the communication are doing it.
They can however wreck some havoc on medium sized projects with corporate backing. Then again if there is corporate backing already what stops those corporates from forking?
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. In many fields, there aren't a great many open source projects which are making any significant inroads, for whatever reason, and despite being open source the only people doing any significant work on the projects which are any good are employed by the organisation behind the project. This means that the chances of a successful fork are pretty slim - Nessus immediately springs to mind as an excellent example of this.
My prediction is that the kind of companies which get bought out will be those that are behind "the only half-decent open source project which solves problem X".
This is an absolutely textbook way of getting rid of competition - buy it and either assimilate their product into your own or simply close it down.
Microsoft aren't bothered about small projects which don't attract much attention. Nor are they particularly bothered about large projects, provided there isn't any serious commercial backing to them.
They're bothered about commercially backed projects where there is the potential to offer significant competition. Their spouting about how "you won't get any real support" (which is probably about their only reasonably sensible piece of FUD) only works when there aren't many commercially backed solutions based on open source software. If I worked for someone like KnowledgeTree or SugarCRM right now I'd be slightly nervous.
The reason you might do that is if something gets onto the system through some other vector and you want to prevent it from spreading.
More of a risk in an environment where people are using ordinary email clients rather than web-based ones, though.
It's a tough call for a mail admin.
You have the choice of "ban executable attachments" or "increased risk of something making it through your antivirus scanning". Frankly, I think both options are pretty awful. But I would far rather deal with the occasional hacked off user than the aftermath of an executable containing something nasty. I've seen that before and it really isn't much fun, even in an otherwise reasonably well managed network.
Cleaning is fine -- 'restoring' is not.
This is an age-old problem.
Nothing lasts forever. Yet at the same time, nobody wants to lose a great masterpiece. What do you do?
Depending on where you are in the world, a lot of old churches were originally painted in bright colours and patterns inside. In many cases they've faded to the point of being almost invisible.
Bit of a shame really. You can still see the evidence in some churches if you look closely.
Crapification - re-releasing Star Wars on DVD, except there's all this CG crap in the background that wasn't there before.
IME the big problem that's introduced with the CGI isn't so much "I don't like it because I saw the original". It's where you see the original with a set which wobbles when a character sits down too fast and the spaceship is obviously a model, cutting to visually stunning shots which look really shiny and polished. It's just such a jar that the willing suspension of disbelief crumbles.
how does one get permision to scan somthing like this?
Well, at a rough guess you could try approaching the gallery first...
From personal experience, most people pay so little attention to email you send them that it wouldn't matter too much if you were able to send an email that magically turned their computer into a dancing ferret wearing top hat and tails, they wouldn't open it anyway.
Not unless the subject line was britney_spears_naked, anyway.
we got SCREWED because the asshole client changed several things silently in their favor.
It's reasonably common in business to propose alterations to contracts as part of negotiations - though perhaps not terribly sporting to do so without making clear that you're sending a modified version back.
If your salesman signed the contract that came back without checking it over first, then the salesman screwed you over through his own incompetence.
That's exactly my point.
What's the point in a "technically superior" format which doesn't play on the iPod (oh, only about 70% of the MP3 player market then) and isn't used as the storage format of choice by the great majority of folk?
Lucky for you, there is Ogg Vorbis, which is technically superior to MP3 anyway, in terms of quality per byte.
Betamax was technically superior to VHS. How much good did that do the people who bought Betamax VCRs?
If I place a call like that, I WANT the SWAT team to kick in my door, I want 20 heavily armed people coming to save me.
Let me get this straight.
In a situation where a drugged up person with a gun (and probably a rather tenuous grip on reality) is pointing the gun straight at you and holding you hostage, you want a lot of noise and commotion?
I think there are possibly more subtle ways to defuse the situation which are much less likely to involve said madman pulling the trigger.
I suspect that would fall under impersonating a police officer? Not sure what the concequences are, but I'm certain it's illegal.
I wouldn't imagine the consequences are any worse than the consequences for kicking someones door down in the middle of the night, barging in with 3 or 4 heavily armed men and stealing all the family's valuables WITHOUT shouting "Police"