For instance, the article mentioned how Britons were notoriously miserly tippers. We have a certain ethnic group here in America that is also notoriously miserly towards tipping (we've had whole talk TV shows discussing the topic, and their attitude is that they shouldn't have to tip).
i don't like tipping. actualy, i somewhat hate it. first, i like precise conditions. if i come into a place to eat, i want to take a look at the menu, decide how hungry i am and how much money i want to spend - and not to think about "how much would be a good and a polite thing to leave ?"
second, this implies that politeness should be bought.
third, this results in lower base wages, relaying on customers to pay directly to the personnel. so fake politeness prevails, and no tipping can get a rude response.
One of my friends calls me every other day begging me to put XP on his computer because nothing works in Vista
hmm. so why did he purchase one anyway ? as it seems wou are providing technical support for free (which is kinda weird on it's own), i would gess he did ask for your opinion before making the purchase, right ?
Because businesses are interested in the real results of improved productivity and profitability, rather than the typically nebulous feel-good advantages of "open standards".
note that i commented on the quote "Incompatible technology has become an increasing problem" from a major information source. i didn't just pull out open standards from nowhere, instead pointing out that an this "increasing" problem hasn't appeared out of blue, but has been bloated up by the businesses themselves. if incompatibility is hurting productivity and profitability (which would be hard to deny), there's hardly anyone else to blame than the decisionmakers who have went down this path, especially lately.
closed source does not imply closed standards (even though they are much more common in there). even though we are seeing attempts to demand open formats from all vendors (like odf initiatives lately), there are many more areas where closed or half-closed communications and data exchange protocols are used. it would be perfectly fine for customers to request complete documentation on data formats that the product they are purchasing is using (to store/transmit their data !).
if they are not doing this, then what about this "increasing problem" ? my guess is it just hasn't been visible enough. as computing matures and data has both to be kept and accessed for longer and longer periods, and as more and more devices/programs have to access it, compatibility and open standards will become a more important buying decision. at least i hope so:)
The WSJ reports: 'Incompatible technology has become an increasing problem for businesses
if so, why don't we seen businesses demanding open standards used when they make the buying decisions ? is this uninformed people being in charge or what ? incompatibilities are biting businesses for awfully long time, but we still have.doc floating around, proprietary communications protocols (like for syncing) and whatnot...
i've got a suggestion. any word can become rude. there are words in most languages that were perfectly fine (for example, race or nationality names) that were either used in an offensive way for some time, or correlated to offensive words in other languages and thus became unacceptable, "politically incorrect".
start using "senator" as a rude word. use ot whenever you would say "shit" or "fuck". yeah, it's a much longer word, but hey, for a good cause !;)
that bit about "#" was funny, thanks:) as for 'section', maybe you mean "paragraph" symbol ? if so, indeed, i haven't seen it used for 10 or more years, except in some legalese or books.
...which has already been done. leeches of the society are getting fees for most of the blank media, portable music players and whatnot in a lot of countries. that's true for all of the media, and that includes those blank cds that you are writing your logfiles on. of course, artists get very little out of this, and that's only few selected ones. most of the income is used for the "administering" of these fees.
i somehow did not ask this question right away, but hey, i hope it's ok:)
Horrible codebase: If you are at least a decent programmer, please have a look at MySQL code: monolithic, one main file with succession of countless if blocks for parsing, optimizing and running queries; features such as triggers, stored procedures, and replication visibly hacked in to the existing "bad" design.
being no programmer at all, i wanted to ask - is this all of the codebase or parts of it ?
for example, is this limited to the shared code or storage engines ? if the engines, which ones are worst, which are better ? what about first versions of falcon, is that an improvement from code organisational point of view ?
if "main" part is also badly organised, approximately how much of mysql functionality is in there, and how much is in the engine ?
what i meant - if the "main" stuff is acceptable, messy engines (like myisam/innodb) wouldn't be the biggest problem, as falcon, being designed from the scratch, should resolve these problems. if that's the main part, and it is a large part from mysql, that's probably worse.
Who out there buys their computer and thinks "gee I sure hope I can run the new OS coming out in a few years!"
i do. and now 9 years old computer is running latest slackware quite fine, thank you. though f*&%# you, nvidia, for fixing a problem in your drivers latest version that doesn't support my video adapter anymore;> (for the record, video adapter was upgraded some 3 or 4 years ago from ati to nvidia, as nvidia still had better drivers than ati for linux).
in ussr, milk and a lot of other substances were sold in glass bottles. most of the bottles were succesfully reused. of course, now we have carton packaging (with some plastic applied, which makes me very reluctant to burning them), which is not recycled, of course, thus contributing to the waste fields.
and training to sort the garbage _is_ a good thing. as to for what happens after that... for example, a container, which has a bottle painted on it. wow, i thought, it's probably for plastic bottles, that's for glass and so on (i hope you agree that recycling plastic is a good thing:) ). turns out, it's basically for everything except food waste... which i don't place in containers anyway, as i don't live in an apartment. so, out current system of garbage collection and recycling sucks a lot.
good point. it also has been mentioned before, that even things which seem obvious to them in their base business, are hard to grasp when it comes to other field, but it seems to be an exceptionally bad area.
recently i saw a fresh computer network, which supposdly was made by somebody "with a great reputation in the field". cables were running directly from a switch (which was loosely attached to the wall in a corner) to computers, they were not labeled, server was sitting in a corner without any ups, and so on. the weird thing is, there were no limitations on the budget.
so maybe complaints about bad websites should go to webmasters first, to company management second, if the problem is not resolved...
And counting lost customers isn't easy -- most people won't take the time to complain, they'll just move on. The company has no way to tell how many users they're turning away simply because of the browser issue, and the problem flies under their radar.
i have a suggestion. take the amount of people visiting the site with alternative browsers, multiply it by 0,9 and you can count those as lost customers. i don't have internet explorer, so i just go to the other sites. even if that costs a bit more. ignorant attitude in one area usually indicates overall ignorance, so why would i want to experience that in case of inquiries or warranty returns ?
Please link to these "discussions" about lawsuits against people accessing web servers. I do not believe you.
i'm too lazy to search, but the idea was setting up an open webserver, putting up some documents, and then complaining that those were accessed by somebody, because "hey, it was for internal use only !!"
As I have said now several times, it is impossible to set up a web server and DNS entries "accidentally." So you can safely assume that web resources are meant to be there. However, wireless access points sadly come open out of the box. It would be great if you had to set up WPA before it would even work...but this is not the case.
so let those bastards sue the vendor... i hate tales about clueless morons suing companies because they can (and companies have more money), but if that's the only way to make sure they sell only stuff that is more or less secured out of the box...
So when you consider accessing wifi that is not explicitly meant to be free (as in, named after the coffee shop you're in), you might either mooch a resource someone else paid for, or you might move on and miss out on that free bandwidth. Which error do you prefer to choose?
i know several people who had left completely open wifi access points. when i explained to them all the consequences, you know what ? they did not care. as long as others using the aps did not disrupt their service (and that had not happened), they were completely ok with others using the service. on a similar note, i read just this morning about our countrymen who (coincidentally) were telling about living in london. the story was like "then you go over the street, see a computer. and, you know, it's a working computer, so you can just take that and use, if you are low on resources - quite unlikely as here, where everybody is trying to sell even non-working stuff". aiming for the bad analogy award;), this is a similar case. somebody has upgraded or for some other reson decides to get rid of his gear. now, should we arrest the people taking these old computers because, you know, maybe original owner decided to leave his computer on the street for some days ?
in this case analogy goes the other way it is used concerning piracy - here, very, very rarely a person would be deprived from anything or suffer any loss.
so, in summary : open service should be considered deliberately open, apply pressure to manufacturers if you feel this is a problem (or feel bad if somebody has access to internet through your access point:) )
yeah. and now, let's everybody set up web servers and sue everybody who vists them ! there were discussions some years ago about clueless companies who tried to sue people visiting their servers, that had web service open to the outside world.
this seems somehow very, very similar. if a service is open, it should be considered public. with "open" we understand no encryption or other measures applied that require intervention (like cracking an encryption, faking mac address and so on - but not ssid changing, of course).
i have set up a couple of wireless routers with open access myself, and i plan to create more in future there are free services worldwide. now some overprotective jackasses and some dumbasses in the court are trying to tell that they will prosecute everybody who would use those services ?
i'm wondering, why not just dump all the artists that are dump enough to let somebody like that govern their work ? no sane artist would ever try to limit public appearance of his works, if he wants to promote them. getting tracks on the radio, any radio, is the best they can get - that improves their share of the "market" (meaning music that is listened to), which in turn increases other turnaround (concerts, merchandise, albums - in that order;) ).
so, if a part of the radio space dumps those artists, other, better artists get more chance to capitalise on this dumb decision. or i should have attempted to follow this more closely and they are imposing royalties independent of the content ?
actually, i don't know anybody who would have bough into ms because of their support. i might be in a not-large-enough-league, but that defines most of their customers.
the usual questions apply here - "when did you last call ms for technical support ?", "how fast did you receive the fix ?". note the word "technical". help with their activation/licensing and other things that greatly imrpove customer experience does not count here.
as for support with linux distros - i think you can get that for most of them, and for some you can get decent support from several vendors. and there are few that offer support and don't ship with oo.org/mozilla family.
i reported case changes not being recorded as changes for openoffice.org a long time ago. guess what was the main reason to keep it like that... yeah. "because word does that, too". monopoly is stiffling innovation and even bug fixing mostly because it is a monopoly. using that to leverage position of other products or destroy competition is a conscious decision, but just being there is also bad for everybody, including customers of the monopoly.
but, but... amd implements drm. they have ati, which has crappy drivers in linux. but they donate servers to groklaw. now, how should i politically motivate my buying decisions ? i shoud run around frantically now...
and i have another chance to note that "vista" in latvian means chicken/hen. you are free to draw your own conclusions regarding succession of t-rex and some companies;)
Slashdot Mirror
i don't like tipping. actualy, i somewhat hate it.
first, i like precise conditions. if i come into a place to eat, i want to take a look at the menu, decide how hungry i am and how much money i want to spend - and not to think about "how much would be a good and a polite thing to leave ?"
second, this implies that politeness should be bought.
third, this results in lower base wages, relaying on customers to pay directly to the personnel. so fake politeness prevails, and no tipping can get a rude response.
overall, this system sucks bigtime
shit. just spent all modpoints. :)
thanks for the link anyway
hmm. so why did he purchase one anyway ? as it seems wou are providing technical support for free (which is kinda weird on it's own), i would gess he did ask for your opinion before making the purchase, right ?
note that i commented on the quote "Incompatible technology has become an increasing problem" from a major information source.
i didn't just pull out open standards from nowhere, instead pointing out that an this "increasing" problem hasn't appeared out of blue, but has been bloated up by the businesses themselves.
if incompatibility is hurting productivity and profitability (which would be hard to deny), there's hardly anyone else to blame than the decisionmakers who have went down this path, especially lately.
closed source does not imply closed standards (even though they are much more common in there).
:)
even though we are seeing attempts to demand open formats from all vendors (like odf initiatives lately), there are many more areas where closed or half-closed communications and data exchange protocols are used. it would be perfectly fine for customers to request complete documentation on data formats that the product they are purchasing is using (to store/transmit their data !).
if they are not doing this, then what about this "increasing problem" ?
my guess is it just hasn't been visible enough. as computing matures and data has both to be kept and accessed for longer and longer periods, and as more and more devices/programs have to access it, compatibility and open standards will become a more important buying decision. at least i hope so
if so, why don't we seen businesses demanding open standards used when they make the buying decisions ? is this uninformed people being in charge or what ?
incompatibilities are biting businesses for awfully long time, but we still have
i've got a suggestion.
;)
any word can become rude. there are words in most languages that were perfectly fine (for example, race or nationality names) that were either used in an offensive way for some time, or correlated to offensive words in other languages and thus became unacceptable, "politically incorrect".
start using "senator" as a rude word. use ot whenever you would say "shit" or "fuck". yeah, it's a much longer word, but hey, for a good cause !
that bit about "#" was funny, thanks :)
as for 'section', maybe you mean "paragraph" symbol ? if so, indeed, i haven't seen it used for 10 or more years, except in some legalese or books.
this has been the best explanation of what git really is for people who have no clue :)
thanks.
...which has already been done.
leeches of the society are getting fees for most of the blank media, portable music players and whatnot in a lot of countries.
that's true for all of the media, and that includes those blank cds that you are writing your logfiles on.
of course, artists get very little out of this, and that's only few selected ones. most of the income is used for the "administering" of these fees.
i would define that as lucrative, legal stealing.
being no programmer at all, i wanted to ask - is this all of the codebase or parts of it ?
for example, is this limited to the shared code or storage engines ? if the engines, which ones are worst, which are better ?
what about first versions of falcon, is that an improvement from code organisational point of view ?
if "main" part is also badly organised, approximately how much of mysql functionality is in there, and how much is in the engine ?
what i meant - if the "main" stuff is acceptable, messy engines (like myisam/innodb) wouldn't be the biggest problem, as falcon, being designed from the scratch, should resolve these problems.
if that's the main part, and it is a large part from mysql, that's probably worse.
i do. and now 9 years old computer is running latest slackware quite fine, thank you.
though f*&%# you, nvidia, for fixing a problem in your drivers latest version that doesn't support my video adapter anymore
i was reading that more as "no, that was not linux users clicking the link for fun". i mean, i would click on such a link ;)
no offence in any way, but the fact it seemed to be a joke to you proves his point, made in the very first sentence ;)
after you've done what the other poster suggested, hit 'g' ;)
or use menus, i think it is in "view" menu.
in ussr, milk and a lot of other substances were sold in glass bottles. most of the bottles were succesfully reused.
:) ). turns out, it's basically for everything except food waste... which i don't place in containers anyway, as i don't live in an apartment. so, out current system of garbage collection and recycling sucks a lot.
of course, now we have carton packaging (with some plastic applied, which makes me very reluctant to burning them), which is not recycled, of course, thus contributing to the waste fields.
and training to sort the garbage _is_ a good thing. as to for what happens after that...
for example, a container, which has a bottle painted on it. wow, i thought, it's probably for plastic bottles, that's for glass and so on (i hope you agree that recycling plastic is a good thing
good point. it also has been mentioned before, that even things which seem obvious to them in their base business, are hard to grasp when it comes to other field, but it seems to be an exceptionally bad area.
recently i saw a fresh computer network, which supposdly was made by somebody "with a great reputation in the field". cables were running directly from a switch (which was loosely attached to the wall in a corner) to computers, they were not labeled, server was sitting in a corner without any ups, and so on. the weird thing is, there were no limitations on the budget.
so maybe complaints about bad websites should go to webmasters first, to company management second, if the problem is not resolved...
i have a suggestion. take the amount of people visiting the site with alternative browsers, multiply it by 0,9 and you can count those as lost customers.
i don't have internet explorer, so i just go to the other sites. even if that costs a bit more. ignorant attitude in one area usually indicates overall ignorance, so why would i want to experience that in case of inquiries or warranty returns ?
i'm too lazy to search, but the idea was setting up an open webserver, putting up some documents, and then complaining that those were accessed by somebody, because "hey, it was for internal use only !!"
so let those bastards sue the vendor... i hate tales about clueless morons suing companies because they can (and companies have more money), but if that's the only way to make sure they sell only stuff that is more or less secured out of the box...
i know several people who had left completely open wifi access points. when i explained to them all the consequences, you know what ? they did not care. as long as others using the aps did not disrupt their service (and that had not happened), they were completely ok with others using the service.
on a similar note, i read just this morning about our countrymen who (coincidentally) were telling about living in london. the story was like "then you go over the street, see a computer. and, you know, it's a working computer, so you can just take that and use, if you are low on resources - quite unlikely as here, where everybody is trying to sell even non-working stuff".
aiming for the bad analogy award
in this case analogy goes the other way it is used concerning piracy - here, very, very rarely a person would be deprived from anything or suffer any loss.
so, in summary : open service should be considered deliberately open, apply pressure to manufacturers if you feel this is a problem (or feel bad if somebody has access to internet through your access point
yeah. and now, let's everybody set up web servers and sue everybody who vists them !
there were discussions some years ago about clueless companies who tried to sue people visiting their servers, that had web service open to the outside world.
this seems somehow very, very similar.
if a service is open, it should be considered public. with "open" we understand no encryption or other measures applied that require intervention (like cracking an encryption, faking mac address and so on - but not ssid changing, of course).
i have set up a couple of wireless routers with open access myself, and i plan to create more in future there are free services worldwide. now some overprotective jackasses and some dumbasses in the court are trying to tell that they will prosecute everybody who would use those services ?
i'm wondering, why not just dump all the artists that are dump enough to let somebody like that govern their work ? ;) ).
no sane artist would ever try to limit public appearance of his works, if he wants to promote them. getting tracks on the radio, any radio, is the best they can get - that improves their share of the "market" (meaning music that is listened to), which in turn increases other turnaround (concerts, merchandise, albums - in that order
so, if a part of the radio space dumps those artists, other, better artists get more chance to capitalise on this dumb decision.
or i should have attempted to follow this more closely and they are imposing royalties independent of the content ?
actually, i don't know anybody who would have bough into ms because of their support. i might be in a not-large-enough-league, but that defines most of their customers.
the usual questions apply here - "when did you last call ms for technical support ?", "how fast did you receive the fix ?". note the word "technical". help with their activation/licensing and other things that greatly imrpove customer experience does not count here.
as for support with linux distros - i think you can get that for most of them, and for some you can get decent support from several vendors. and there are few that offer support and don't ship with oo.org/mozilla family.
i reported case changes not being recorded as changes for openoffice.org a long time ago.
guess what was the main reason to keep it like that...
yeah. "because word does that, too".
monopoly is stiffling innovation and even bug fixing mostly because it is a monopoly. using that to leverage position of other products or destroy competition is a conscious decision, but just being there is also bad for everybody, including customers of the monopoly.
but, but... amd implements drm. they have ati, which has crappy drivers in linux. but they donate servers to groklaw.
now, how should i politically motivate my buying decisions ? i shoud run around frantically now...
and i have another chance to note that "vista" in latvian means chicken/hen. ;)
you are free to draw your own conclusions regarding succession of t-rex and some companies