What usually happens is there is a little cash over the table with some other promised cash materializing if the project hits some agreed-upon benchmarks.
Let's say they actually make $150 million this year, since the company is fishing for investors, they are burning through whatever they are making.
Today's lesson: Company seeks investor == Can't grow on it's own capital =~ disfunctional business model.
It will be interesting to watch the flame-out in a couple of years.
History is always very kind to guys like this. If there is one thing I grow weary of is it's old guys who were successful probably beyond their dreams casually forgetting the number of mediocre/bad games that were around then. Hell, he was probably responsible for many stinkers too.
History keeps notes on one or two titles younger people seem to have heard of, but probably haven't played. The rest, (and there were many) are forgotten.
It's time to hang it up and move onto something really new.
"If you are conducting a "click attack" and are not a legitimate, bona fide prospective client, your access to any page of our website is unauthorized."
Click attack indeed. Uh oh... I found another one.
In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.
You are the exception to the rule. Insults are not necessary.
you can use.doc as an online format 1. Maybe you can explain exactly how my browser renders a.doc? 2. Maybe you can tell me What happens when you view a Powerpoint (saved as html) in Firefox? 3. You mean like email or provide some kind of download link? Okay, but my costs of communication are much higher in Office than they are in OOo.
you implied that you are the owner of your business, but your posting history is always in the 9-5 range, implying you are using a company computer to surf the internet all day instead of work hard at an interesting job.
It's called moonlighting. Both jobs are interesting and I have a great boss at a very successful company during the day. I run a tight ship during the day so while I'm on call ~24/7, that call comes rarely.
So while my employer may buy and I implement Microsoft whatever, my customers are quite happy to lower their costs because every single penny typically counts for them. Thanks for asking!
(A sluggish one What's sluggish? I read this claim over and over again. In my experience, the only thing vaguely resembling sluggish is the nominally slower load. Please, provide more details.
that cloned the one I already have, at that) That you paid a ridiculous amount of money for or stole. Most small businesses I deal with are very pragmatic and operate legitimately. Therefore they thank me when they can spend less.
I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format. There's lots of small businesses who started their own successful businesses because they cut out that kind of political inaction. Or, maybe you should consider for a moment that I'm the boss.
It's common sense. Maybe to you. But many small businesses LOVE the fact that I show them how to do the same job they used to do for less money.
you probably won't be in that position for very long. Nope. Sorry. Turning away business because I maximize my customer's time/money.
It's like sending your files in Spanish. Don't get me started on the bugs in a.doc written in one default language, then opened in a different default language. ODF? Not so much..doc is the format of business. Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur. Wwwait... What just happened there? On the one hand you tell me use.doc, but then establish it is on it's way to extinction. ODF isn't on its way to extinction. I'll use that.
it should be online so you can easily collaborate So, a closed format that's more expensive to use and prevents collaboration is better because it's somehow on the web? ODF is cheaper and easier to communicate with.
That's funny because I had a presentation go horribly wrong when I opened the presentation in the customer's office and Office 2003 needed to download new features to open the presentation. Their IT man wasn't in the office that day. Killed a few trees with that presentation.
Lesson #1: Microsoft's Office suite has as many gotchas as OO.org.
Lesson #2: Don't ever trust your potential customer when they tell you, "Don't worry we've got all that.."
If I'm in the position of being able to return a.doc and call the shots, I return it as an ODF and tell them to get openoffice.org. I've made numerous switchers that way, all but one of whom thanked me for it.
You can't possibly call what the Democrats have a working majority.
To make matters more complex, historically, coordinating the democratic party faithful is the equivalent of herding cats. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the Democratic party, unlike the Republicans who coordinate much more effectively because they tended to operate as a minority for so long.
For every single post that is angry in some way shape or form about this kind of legislation, what are you going to do about it? The Republic needs you to do something right NOW.
I know it's not cool to have a political agenda and see it through, but dammit that's how this Republic gets back on track.
This bill continues to shift the burden back to the parties with the least interest in the whole mess, the victims and the criminal.
As your example clearly points out, a credit reporting agency customer is one that pays for the data, not the individuals that comprise their product.
I am continually amazed as to why more Americans utterly fail to comprehend why it's okay for the various companies (some with deep ties back to the banking industry) to sell the data to begin with. That's my data to sell, not yours.
What puts the brakes on ID theft is implementing EMV. Most of the laws like this one simply protect the card association bank fraud revenues.
The cost of a fraudulent transaction is shifted to the merchant -plus- penalties. The association banks generate good (but not too much) fraud and "credit protection services" revenue. That's how they can afford gigantic advertising budgets. http://www.mind-advertising.com/us/visa_us.htm
The EMV standard practically eliminates fraud and is in use in many industrialized nations on a massive scale. Someone should ask the U.S. banks why they won't implement it.
1. Your premise is wrong. The banks DO NOT assume the costs of fraud. Merchants absorb all of the cost of fraud and pay the bank a penalty too. The costs are shifted to consumers through higher prices. Bottom line: The Association banks benefit greatly from fraud.
2. The bill in question is the wrong way to address the issue. The card associations have a solution to the problem except they won't implement it because it cuts into their fraud revenue and the costs are much higher per-card than dumb plastic/mag-stripe. The standard is called EMV. It solves 98% of fraud issues. Today. The other 2% I'll blame on bad coding.
Generally, a very informative post that generally conforms with my experience.
the govt organizations themselves are too cheap to do security right in the first place, Most of the orgs comply on paper, but operationally its pretty bad.
and many contractors are too greedy to include proper security measures in their govt projects since those will cut into their profits.
The blame goes both ways. I've been in situations where good security was seen as not necessary by the agency. There is also the nasty problem of politics winning the bid instead of specs/price/service. And yes, the contractors cut corners.
They already have IIS, and it takes 5 minutes to set it up. The cost of time alone on setting up a new box to run something else...
For your customers IIS is great. Really. Except they probably bought one of those low-end crippleware Windows Server versions. They'll probably never need the features on these low-end versions. You're successful, so everyone wins.
But, when the win32 consulting cash starts running dry, you'll could add Linux or possibly BSD to your business. So, start now by grabbing Debian and get a feel for it. That way you'll be prepared for what's coming and the more experienced Linux admins like me won't eat your lunch.
Zerox doesn't need _that_ much accuracy. Remember who the customer is with this kind of product. Mostly major-league litigation mills who get boxes upon boxes of documents and mass-storage devices that need to be read and searched quickly. Now redaction can be automated to some degree.
I can easily see this being a very successful product in litigation circles.
I think they were talking about how you do not have to pay for the patch. I don't have to pay for my Linux patches. Where is that going on? I'd like to see that scam in action.
Microsoft has a company to run. They offer the least possible features that the market allows for the highest possible price they can fetch. Indeed, Microsoft is a Marketing company that employs a legion of developers. The product, for the most part, is testament to that. No innovation to speak of and more license restrictions in the next product.
Let's unwind the propaganda a bit.
1. The average useful OSS project is not a headless zombie with a bunch of peace-loving anarchists running around it. There's somebody that has FULL control of the project. In fact they all have better organization than all of the big companies I've ever worked for.
I know that Microsoft in particular has quite a bit invested in spreading the headless-zombie-anarchy idea around but it's just not true.
You are paying too much for what Microsoft offers and have been for over a decade. Please take a step back and examine the situation with a little more rationality. You'll be much better off without Microsoft.
A couple of things are dead-on about the parent post.
Dell is a retailer more than anything else. As a retailer, Dell relies on Linux to bring them in the door where they get an opportunity on the up-sell to Microsoft. As the parent post points out, they are Dell's negotiating weapon of choice.
As a sysadmin for both win32 and Linux, the conversations with dedicated Microsoft admins, typically display a remarkable depth of knowledge and long discussions about the intricate workings of the license and how to appropriately use the software they paid too much for. An extraordinary amount of time and money wasted shackled to these limitations and they gladly accept the abuse and bizarre restrictions.
The story itself is right on too. If you are in a growing business, the costs of going with Microsoft start out okay, but ramp up dramatically. Very dramatically now more than ever. The cost is finally beginning to be too much for the average PHB.
Read the following statements through many times until you and the people who modded you insightful understand these simple facts.
As a member of the WTO, you are supposed to trade within the WTO guidelines. That's part of the deal of being in the WTO.
WTO stands for World Trade Organizaton. That means they promote all manner of trade. Gambling, prostitution and weapons manufacturing are all forms of trade sanctioned by the WTO.
Please, review the history and mission of the WTO before spouting self-soothing Americanisms.
This kind of thing didn't get published. I'm sure Microsoft talking heads have gotten an ear full from others over the years and they ignored it then. They should totally ignore this incident too. Write it off as a PR event that didn't go well or a "nut case slipped through the cracks" and further isolate Microsoft execs from people who aren't part of their current social circle.
I want all of Microsoft doing many more of the same kind of decisions that went into Vista. In fact, give the Vista managers total oversight over even more Microsoft products. Put a shiny star on each of their reviews.
... they insisted on being exclusively Windows... I think Linux vendors just need to do a better job of marketing themselves
This is the equivalent of the Photoshop/GIMP discussion that's endlessly recycled on/. "If only GIMP had feature X...." Well bad news, even when GIMP gets feature X, they'll have a new reason for not switching.
In both cases they are so single-minded they happily accept all of the limitations/expenses they bring upon themselves. Trying to convince them otherwise is a steep, nasty, uphill battle that probably can't be won.
Pick your battles very carefully and figure out what the school needs and is ready to pay for then provide it for free. An excellent start is the domain controller. An even simpler start is a dumb file server.
Parent is right on only the percentage is closer to 90. Most acquisitions are destroyed by the "not invented here" mentality and soul-sucking turf battles.
Ars is abusing their publishing privilege by whining about something that didn't go their way. Hardly news.
There's still no "print selection" option in the printer gui interface. This leads me to believe that there will be more of the same gotchas littered all over koffice. Noble effort though. Keep up the good work.
And while you are at it, please work on the print selection thingy sometime eh?
That said, is swapping out your NetWare servers with "Nu-NetWare" running on top of a Linux kernel really less risky than just switching to Linux
Yes it is. I can test and deploy this easier than starting fresh with anything else.
couldn't you have spent some of that time constructively I did spend that time more constructively. The boss said "I've got other things for you to do that will actually make me money. Don't worry about something that basically works."
hese arguments usually seem to hinge on some specific minor capability It works in Netware and I can't do it as easily on any other platform. Don't denigrate something you know nothing about.
One of the fundamental premises behind your opinion is the "constant upgrade cycle" mentality. Is IT's job making work for itself by breaking things that work or making users/systems more productive? My boss and I both choose the latter. That's why I'm happy and work lots of very regular hours.
How bad this is. The claims they used to make Vonage pay them are nebulous at best and could have been dreamed up by the average/.'er on a lazy afternoon.
The SIP protocol offers many novel ways to communicate. The least of which is a simple phone call. In one way, it is vonage's fault for choosing to stick to dumb phone call only because there were many neat possibilities awaiting consumers in SIP.
I fear for all of the smaller business voip/ISP outfits now that the first domino has fallen.
Slashdot Mirror
What usually happens is there is a little cash over the table with some other promised cash materializing if the project hits some agreed-upon benchmarks.
Let's say they actually make $150 million this year, since the company is fishing for investors, they are burning through whatever they are making.
Today's lesson: Company seeks investor == Can't grow on it's own capital =~ disfunctional business model.
It will be interesting to watch the flame-out in a couple of years.
History is always very kind to guys like this. If there is one thing I grow weary of is it's old guys who were successful probably beyond their dreams casually forgetting the number of mediocre/bad games that were around then. Hell, he was probably responsible for many stinkers too.
History keeps notes on one or two titles younger people seem to have heard of, but probably haven't played. The rest, (and there were many) are forgotten.
It's time to hang it up and move onto something really new.
Except that appears to be forbidden too.
"If you are conducting a "click attack" and are not a legitimate, bona fide prospective client, your access to any page of our website is unauthorized."
Click attack indeed. Uh oh... I found another one.
In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.
It belongs to http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/ Is that enough to qualify as fair use? Maybe you should go on over and find out.
I didn't steal software, knucklehead.
.doc as an online format .doc?
You are the exception to the rule. Insults are not necessary.
you can use
1. Maybe you can explain exactly how my browser renders a
2. Maybe you can tell me What happens when you view a Powerpoint (saved as html) in Firefox?
3. You mean like email or provide some kind of download link? Okay, but my costs of communication are much higher in Office than they are in OOo.
you implied that you are the owner of your business, but your posting history is always in the 9-5 range, implying you are using a company computer to surf the internet all day instead of work hard at an interesting job.
It's called moonlighting. Both jobs are interesting and I have a great boss at a very successful company during the day. I run a tight ship during the day so while I'm on call ~24/7, that call comes rarely.
So while my employer may buy and I implement Microsoft whatever, my customers are quite happy to lower their costs because every single penny typically counts for them. Thanks for asking!
One at a time:
.doc written in one default language, then opened in a different default language. ODF? Not so much. .doc is the format of business. Microsoft has a stranglehold, but it's on a dinosaur. .doc, but then establish it is on it's way to extinction. ODF isn't on its way to extinction. I'll use that.
(A sluggish one
What's sluggish? I read this claim over and over again. In my experience, the only thing vaguely resembling sluggish is the nominally slower load. Please, provide more details.
that cloned the one I already have, at that)
That you paid a ridiculous amount of money for or stole. Most small businesses I deal with are very pragmatic and operate legitimately. Therefore they thank me when they can spend less.
I would email his boss and ask for the correct file format.
There's lots of small businesses who started their own successful businesses because they cut out that kind of political inaction. Or, maybe you should consider for a moment that I'm the boss.
It's common sense.
Maybe to you. But many small businesses LOVE the fact that I show them how to do the same job they used to do for less money.
you probably won't be in that position for very long.
Nope. Sorry. Turning away business because I maximize my customer's time/money.
It's like sending your files in Spanish.
Don't get me started on the bugs in a
Wwwait... What just happened there? On the one hand you tell me use
it should be online so you can easily collaborate
So, a closed format that's more expensive to use and prevents collaboration is better because it's somehow on the web? ODF is cheaper and easier to communicate with.
That's funny because I had a presentation go horribly wrong when I opened the presentation in the customer's office and Office 2003 needed to download new features to open the presentation. Their IT man wasn't in the office that day. Killed a few trees with that presentation.
Lesson #1: Microsoft's Office suite has as many gotchas as OO.org.
Lesson #2: Don't ever trust your potential customer when they tell you, "Don't worry we've got all that.."
I stick to OOo's default format no matter what.
.doc and call the shots, I return it as an ODF and tell them to get openoffice.org. I've made numerous switchers that way, all but one of whom thanked me for it.
If I'm in the position of being able to return a
All the people can do is vote at elections
No. That cynical attitude gets you exactly this kind of outcome.
You and the moderators need to get a political agenda and do what it takes to see it through. That's how the Republic is supposed to work.
You can't possibly call what the Democrats have a working majority.
To make matters more complex, historically, coordinating the democratic party faithful is the equivalent of herding cats. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the Democratic party, unlike the Republicans who coordinate much more effectively because they tended to operate as a minority for so long.
For every single post that is angry in some way shape or form about this kind of legislation, what are you going to do about it? The Republic needs you to do something right NOW.
I know it's not cool to have a political agenda and see it through, but dammit that's how this Republic gets back on track.
This bill continues to shift the burden back to the parties with the least interest in the whole mess, the victims and the criminal.
As your example clearly points out, a credit reporting agency customer is one that pays for the data, not the individuals that comprise their product.
I am continually amazed as to why more Americans utterly fail to comprehend why it's okay for the various companies (some with deep ties back to the banking industry) to sell the data to begin with. That's my data to sell, not yours.
The grandparent wrongly assumes that banks assume the costs of fraud. To which I replied with some educational facts about transaction fraud.
What puts the brakes on ID theft is implementing EMV. Most of the laws like this one simply protect the card association bank fraud revenues.
The cost of a fraudulent transaction is shifted to the merchant -plus- penalties. The association banks generate good (but not too much) fraud and "credit protection services" revenue. That's how they can afford gigantic advertising budgets. http://www.mind-advertising.com/us/visa_us.htm
The EMV standard practically eliminates fraud and is in use in many industrialized nations on a massive scale. Someone should ask the U.S. banks why they won't implement it.
Instead, we get ridiculous bills like this.
These issues have been plaguing Credit companies
1. Your premise is wrong. The banks DO NOT assume the costs of fraud. Merchants absorb all of the cost of fraud and pay the bank a penalty too. The costs are shifted to consumers through higher prices. Bottom line: The Association banks benefit greatly from fraud.
2. The bill in question is the wrong way to address the issue. The card associations have a solution to the problem except they won't implement it because it cuts into their fraud revenue and the costs are much higher per-card than dumb plastic/mag-stripe. The standard is called EMV. It solves 98% of fraud issues. Today. The other 2% I'll blame on bad coding.
Generally, a very informative post that generally conforms with my experience.
the govt organizations themselves are too cheap to do security right in the first place,
Most of the orgs comply on paper, but operationally its pretty bad.
and many contractors are too greedy to include proper security measures in their govt projects since those will cut into their profits.
The blame goes both ways. I've been in situations where good security was seen as not necessary by the agency. There is also the nasty problem of politics winning the bid instead of specs/price/service. And yes, the contractors cut corners.
They already have IIS, and it takes 5 minutes to set it up. The cost of time alone on setting up a new box to run something else...
For your customers IIS is great. Really. Except they probably bought one of those low-end crippleware Windows Server versions. They'll probably never need the features on these low-end versions. You're successful, so everyone wins.
But, when the win32 consulting cash starts running dry, you'll could add Linux or possibly BSD to your business. So, start now by grabbing Debian and get a feel for it. That way you'll be prepared for what's coming and the more experienced Linux admins like me won't eat your lunch.
Zerox doesn't need _that_ much accuracy. Remember who the customer is with this kind of product. Mostly major-league litigation mills who get boxes upon boxes of documents and mass-storage devices that need to be read and searched quickly. Now redaction can be automated to some degree.
I can easily see this being a very successful product in litigation circles.
I think they were talking about how you do not have to pay for the patch.
I don't have to pay for my Linux patches. Where is that going on? I'd like to see that scam in action.
Microsoft has a company to run.
They offer the least possible features that the market allows for the highest possible price they can fetch. Indeed, Microsoft is a Marketing company that employs a legion of developers. The product, for the most part, is testament to that. No innovation to speak of and more license restrictions in the next product.
Let's unwind the propaganda a bit.
1. The average useful OSS project is not a headless zombie with a bunch of peace-loving anarchists running around it. There's somebody that has FULL control of the project. In fact they all have better organization than all of the big companies I've ever worked for.
I know that Microsoft in particular has quite a bit invested in spreading the headless-zombie-anarchy idea around but it's just not true.
You are paying too much for what Microsoft offers and have been for over a decade. Please take a step back and examine the situation with a little more rationality. You'll be much better off without Microsoft.
A couple of things are dead-on about the parent post.
Dell is a retailer more than anything else. As a retailer, Dell relies on Linux to bring them in the door where they get an opportunity on the up-sell to Microsoft. As the parent post points out, they are Dell's negotiating weapon of choice.
As a sysadmin for both win32 and Linux, the conversations with dedicated Microsoft admins, typically display a remarkable depth of knowledge and long discussions about the intricate workings of the license and how to appropriately use the software they paid too much for. An extraordinary amount of time and money wasted shackled to these limitations and they gladly accept the abuse and bizarre restrictions.
The story itself is right on too. If you are in a growing business, the costs of going with Microsoft start out okay, but ramp up dramatically. Very dramatically now more than ever. The cost is finally beginning to be too much for the average PHB.
Read the following statements through many times until you and the people who modded you insightful understand these simple facts.
As a member of the WTO, you are supposed to trade within the WTO guidelines. That's part of the deal of being in the WTO.
WTO stands for World Trade Organizaton. That means they promote all manner of trade. Gambling, prostitution and weapons manufacturing are all forms of trade sanctioned by the WTO.
Please, review the history and mission of the WTO before spouting self-soothing Americanisms.
This kind of thing didn't get published. I'm sure Microsoft talking heads have gotten an ear full from others over the years and they ignored it then. They should totally ignore this incident too. Write it off as a PR event that didn't go well or a "nut case slipped through the cracks" and further isolate Microsoft execs from people who aren't part of their current social circle.
I want all of Microsoft doing many more of the same kind of decisions that went into Vista. In fact, give the Vista managers total oversight over even more Microsoft products. Put a shiny star on each of their reviews.
... they insisted on being exclusively Windows... I think Linux vendors just need to do a better job of marketing themselves
/. "If only GIMP had feature X...." Well bad news, even when GIMP gets feature X, they'll have a new reason for not switching.
This is the equivalent of the Photoshop/GIMP discussion that's endlessly recycled on
In both cases they are so single-minded they happily accept all of the limitations/expenses they bring upon themselves. Trying to convince them otherwise is a steep, nasty, uphill battle that probably can't be won.
Pick your battles very carefully and figure out what the school needs and is ready to pay for then provide it for free. An excellent start is the domain controller. An even simpler start is a dumb file server.
Parent is right on only the percentage is closer to 90. Most acquisitions are destroyed by the "not invented here" mentality and soul-sucking turf battles.
Ars is abusing their publishing privilege by whining about something that didn't go their way. Hardly news.
There's still no "print selection" option in the printer gui interface. This leads me to believe that there will be more of the same gotchas littered all over koffice. Noble effort though. Keep up the good work.
And while you are at it, please work on the print selection thingy sometime eh?
That said, is swapping out your NetWare servers with "Nu-NetWare" running on top of a Linux kernel really less risky than just switching to Linux
Yes it is. I can test and deploy this easier than starting fresh with anything else.
couldn't you have spent some of that time constructively
I did spend that time more constructively. The boss said "I've got other things for you to do that will actually make me money. Don't worry about something that basically works."
hese arguments usually seem to hinge on some specific minor capability
It works in Netware and I can't do it as easily on any other platform. Don't denigrate something you know nothing about.
One of the fundamental premises behind your opinion is the "constant upgrade cycle" mentality.
Is IT's job making work for itself by breaking things that work or making users/systems more productive? My boss and I both choose the latter. That's why I'm happy and work lots of very regular hours.
How bad this is. The claims they used to make Vonage pay them are nebulous at best and could have been dreamed up by the average /.'er on a lazy afternoon.
The SIP protocol offers many novel ways to communicate. The least of which is a simple phone call. In one way, it is vonage's fault for choosing to stick to dumb phone call only because there were many neat possibilities awaiting consumers in SIP.
I fear for all of the smaller business voip/ISP outfits now that the first domino has fallen.