It has nothing to do with how Microsoft does business. I'm just saying that your example of the Linux kernel hacker who patches a flaw and gets a whole free OS in return doesn't have to be diametrically opposed to what this individual has done, just that the benefits he will receive will differ. I agree with you, in that Microsoft should not receive the benefits of an open source environment without doing their part. Maybe Microsoft should give this guy a job...?
This guy (he may be reknowned in the security community, but I've never heard of him) was able to successfully bandage a Windows flaw before Microsoft, without access to the Windows source code or any backing from the writers of the program being patched. I doubt he'll need to look far for work for a long time, and if he does, 'Successfully wrote a patch for a Windows flaw independently' looks damn good on his resume. He still has to pay for Windows, sure, but it's not like he's going to be completely unrewarded for his work.
About 98% remains if using an average donation size (your $0.5 stamp for the $30 avg donation).
Wonderful statistic. But that still means 2% (one-fiftieth) is being wasted. For an organization trying to raise thousands of dollars, two cents on each of those dollars is a lot.
It's called building personal relations.
Um, Wikipedia is all about personal relations, with an enecyclopedia in there somewhere. Go to any random Talk page (with activity), go to Wikipedia's Village Pump, or the IRC channel on FreeNode. You'll see lots of personal relations in action. They don't need internationally mailed Christmas Cards to assist in the creation and maintenance of personal relations. The structure is already there.
The alternative would be to skip it altogether, and risk further decreasing donations the next fund drive. Would you be willing to take the risk?
Your assumption here is that a significant portion of repeat donators would cease to donate, or donate less, in the absence of expensive Christmas Cards. I don't know for sure if the WikiMedia foundation has done this every year (I hope not), but if they haven't, they were still able to get donations without them. They've been around a while now. I suppose it would take an expensive cost to benefit analysis to see if the 2% (our made up figure, could be more, could be less) of donated revenue used to send Christmas Cards actually results in a greater revenue than the 2% spent to get it. Such an analysis would cost enough to be an even larger waste of money, so I doubt we'll ever see any such results. The WikiMedia foundation has a huge amount of places to put appeals for donations, where they would cost much less than a postage stamp (say, at the top of every page on Wikipedia...how many pages will that one template reach?). Even if they felt personalization was needed, email has considerably less costs than postal mail, and some kind of [[Wikipedia_Donor]] template for use on personal Talk pages could also be a form of recognition, nearly devoid of costs.
Anyways, I digress. My point is, they don't need to spend this money in this way. As for how good businessmen behave, that would be inappropriate for a not-for-profit non-business, wouldn't it? The two are very different creatures, and things that work in the for-profit world often fail spectacularly in the not-for-profit world.
As for my final comment, that was a purely sarcastic joke. If you didn't find it funny, feel free to ignore it.:)
TFReadMe text on the patch states that it is suitable for 2000/XP/2003, but it says nothing about Windows 98 or prior. The vulnerability affects prior versions of Windows, including those outside of active product support by Microsoft. Has anyone tested the patch on Windows 98 or 95 for NT4? If so, what have been your results? I maintain a rather large number of legacy systems here (for regular people, not for a company) still running 98SE, and I'd like to be able to protect them without forcing them to switch to 2000 (XP has a heck of a time on a P233 with 64MB, which is often the best these people can afford). Even the workaround doesn't seem to work right in 98.....is there even a regsvr32 command in that?
Today I had received a letter from Wikimedia Foundation (yes, not an e-mail!) sent by international mail,
You mean, they wasted donated money on international postage. You already gave, so they can't really expect a pretty letter to garner increased donations from you. So it's money down a pit.
To illustrate, say (for example, all my figures here are guesses) postage from them to you costs fifty cents. Now, say they received 1000 donations which they'd like to reply to with holiday well-wishes. That's $500 wasted, a good chunk of the cost of a new server, or probably enough to cover bandwidth for an hour or two. Seems wasteful, to me.
I'm not personally in a position to donate anything (I survive because of the donations of others), but if I was, I'd be having second thoughts about supporting an organization that plans to waste the money given to them.
Oh, and if you'd like to 'donate' to me, I'll send you a Christmas Card too, if you like. $500 minimum recommended.
Re:Proof that free stuff 4 download works
on
Linux Troubleshooting
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
No. There's a lot more iPods out there than eBook readers (well, I suppose you could put Linux on your iPod and use it to read eBooks, but the vast majority of iPod owners wouldn't even consider doing that). Since reading on a screen often isn't as comfortable as reading a dead-tree book, even with the availability of a free downloadable version, many people will choose the physical version. The same could be said for CDs, but (as of now, and in my opinion) mp3's are still more convenient, when compared to CDs, than eBooks are when compared to dead-tree. If there was a perfect eBook format and reader that was convenient and ubiquitous, then your comparison might have more weight.
I don't know if they had any to begin with (they certainly aren't what I would consider a primary source of information), but they certainly have none now. The article, which was very simply proved false by roblimo's phone call, should have been checked before THEY posted it. They have a tiny update at the bottom now that basically says 'This is all bullshit. Thanks for playing.' which does not excuse their posting of it as a fait accompli in the first place. Yet another bullshit rumour website to cross off my list of sites worth looking at.
Bear in mind, if you donate 'nice' foods, as in anything nicer than cheap canned stuff and pasta, it usually will not make it's way to the poor served by the food bank, but will most likely go home with whomever works at the food bank. Not to impugne the services food banks offer, but if you want to help a hungry person or family, do it directly. Find a low-income/subsidized housing area, take some food with you, and give it away to those who need it. Or else, buy gift certificates for grocery stores, and give those away directly.
Having worked at a food bank in the past, the volunteers (who are not always poor or in need of food) get first pick on what is donated.
You can open a so-called 'private' torrent file in Notepad, change one character near the end, and suddenly it's a public torrent in any DHT-capable client. I don't see how banning BC will stop that.
Between this and the rootkit, it's obvious Sony doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone's rights. Not the rights of the owners of the property they are vandalising, not the rights of the owners of the computers they rootkitted, and not their customers. They just don't care. At this point, if all the prepaid PS3 orders come in as boxes filled with paper mache, it wouldn't completely surprise me. No ethics at all.
"This is the Centre For Disease Control. Our information lists you as having potentially been exposed to a highly dangerous pathogen. Before we can release this information to you and your doctor regarding treatment of this often fatal condition, we'll need to verify your personal information. Please send your credit card number to the following link."
They shouldn't be asking for email addresses; rather, they should be helping to make it clear that no essential communications will ever occur via email.
This will cost me karma, but I'll try to explain. The article was not about Slashdot, so, as a result, pointing out in the commentary a problem with Slashdot itself (that being, a duplicated story) has nothing to do with the topic of the story. Your point may indeed have merit, but it isn't related to the story, and thus is off-topic (as is this comment, but I thought I'd answer your question).
I was never a teenage girl (and I don't play one on TV), but you might consider something by Marion Zimmer Bradley. In particular, I was thinking of The Firebrand. It's a heavily fictionalized (can a myth be fictionalized?) retelling the story of Troy, from the perspective of a young Kassandra. Might be too long for a preteen, but an older child would probably enjoy it. The novel has some great strong female characters.
Only opens a popup and a script error in Firefox with IETab. No calc (although Internet Explorer itself, on the same machine does invoke calc). I wonder why this is...?
Oh, and my front page has had articles regularly, with no gap larger than four hours between. Go to Preferences, and set the front page to display all the articles, not just the "best". There were articles posted, you just didn't bother to look.
Slashdot Mirror
So the Xserve RAID disk arrays flatter the linear tape setup with words of admiration? (I think they meant to say "complemented").
I'm not so sure. Apple's are supposed to be user-friendly, right?
It has nothing to do with how Microsoft does business. I'm just saying that your example of the Linux kernel hacker who patches a flaw and gets a whole free OS in return doesn't have to be diametrically opposed to what this individual has done, just that the benefits he will receive will differ. I agree with you, in that Microsoft should not receive the benefits of an open source environment without doing their part. Maybe Microsoft should give this guy a job...?
This guy (he may be reknowned in the security community, but I've never heard of him) was able to successfully bandage a Windows flaw before Microsoft, without access to the Windows source code or any backing from the writers of the program being patched. I doubt he'll need to look far for work for a long time, and if he does, 'Successfully wrote a patch for a Windows flaw independently' looks damn good on his resume. He still has to pay for Windows, sure, but it's not like he's going to be completely unrewarded for his work.
About 98% remains if using an average donation size (your $0.5 stamp for the $30 avg donation).
:)
Wonderful statistic. But that still means 2% (one-fiftieth) is being wasted. For an organization trying to raise thousands of dollars, two cents on each of those dollars is a lot.
It's called building personal relations.
Um, Wikipedia is all about personal relations, with an enecyclopedia in there somewhere. Go to any random Talk page (with activity), go to Wikipedia's Village Pump, or the IRC channel on FreeNode. You'll see lots of personal relations in action. They don't need internationally mailed Christmas Cards to assist in the creation and maintenance of personal relations. The structure is already there.
The alternative would be to skip it altogether, and risk further decreasing donations the next fund drive. Would you be willing to take the risk?
Your assumption here is that a significant portion of repeat donators would cease to donate, or donate less, in the absence of expensive Christmas Cards. I don't know for sure if the WikiMedia foundation has done this every year (I hope not), but if they haven't, they were still able to get donations without them. They've been around a while now. I suppose it would take an expensive cost to benefit analysis to see if the 2% (our made up figure, could be more, could be less) of donated revenue used to send Christmas Cards actually results in a greater revenue than the 2% spent to get it. Such an analysis would cost enough to be an even larger waste of money, so I doubt we'll ever see any such results. The WikiMedia foundation has a huge amount of places to put appeals for donations, where they would cost much less than a postage stamp (say, at the top of every page on Wikipedia...how many pages will that one template reach?). Even if they felt personalization was needed, email has considerably less costs than postal mail, and some kind of [[Wikipedia_Donor]] template for use on personal Talk pages could also be a form of recognition, nearly devoid of costs.
Anyways, I digress. My point is, they don't need to spend this money in this way. As for how good businessmen behave, that would be inappropriate for a not-for-profit non-business, wouldn't it? The two are very different creatures, and things that work in the for-profit world often fail spectacularly in the not-for-profit world.
As for my final comment, that was a purely sarcastic joke. If you didn't find it funny, feel free to ignore it.
TFReadMe text on the patch states that it is suitable for 2000/XP/2003, but it says nothing about Windows 98 or prior. The vulnerability affects prior versions of Windows, including those outside of active product support by Microsoft. Has anyone tested the patch on Windows 98 or 95 for NT4? If so, what have been your results? I maintain a rather large number of legacy systems here (for regular people, not for a company) still running 98SE, and I'd like to be able to protect them without forcing them to switch to 2000 (XP has a heck of a time on a P233 with 64MB, which is often the best these people can afford). Even the workaround doesn't seem to work right in 98.....is there even a regsvr32 command in that?
Today I had received a letter from Wikimedia Foundation (yes, not an e-mail!) sent by international mail,
You mean, they wasted donated money on international postage. You already gave, so they can't really expect a pretty letter to garner increased donations from you. So it's money down a pit.
To illustrate, say (for example, all my figures here are guesses) postage from them to you costs fifty cents. Now, say they received 1000 donations which they'd like to reply to with holiday well-wishes. That's $500 wasted, a good chunk of the cost of a new server, or probably enough to cover bandwidth for an hour or two. Seems wasteful, to me.
I'm not personally in a position to donate anything (I survive because of the donations of others), but if I was, I'd be having second thoughts about supporting an organization that plans to waste the money given to them.
Oh, and if you'd like to 'donate' to me, I'll send you a Christmas Card too, if you like. $500 minimum recommended.
The title 'Hulk Smash' doesn't come off as being all that subtle.
An insightful, well-written, original op-ed. On Slashdot. Full of interesting and entertaining links, which add richness and depth to the story. Wow.
Thanks roblimo...you make me want to subscribe.
No. There's a lot more iPods out there than eBook readers (well, I suppose you could put Linux on your iPod and use it to read eBooks, but the vast majority of iPod owners wouldn't even consider doing that). Since reading on a screen often isn't as comfortable as reading a dead-tree book, even with the availability of a free downloadable version, many people will choose the physical version. The same could be said for CDs, but (as of now, and in my opinion) mp3's are still more convenient, when compared to CDs, than eBooks are when compared to dead-tree. If there was a perfect eBook format and reader that was convenient and ubiquitous, then your comparison might have more weight.
Mac IIci? Has it finished compressing files since you bought it?
Corporate voice-mail routing systems (if you know the code of the department you wish to contact, please enter it now...).
They're robots that constantly screw me over.
I don't know if they had any to begin with (they certainly aren't what I would consider a primary source of information), but they certainly have none now. The article, which was very simply proved false by roblimo's phone call, should have been checked before THEY posted it. They have a tiny update at the bottom now that basically says 'This is all bullshit. Thanks for playing.' which does not excuse their posting of it as a fait accompli in the first place. Yet another bullshit rumour website to cross off my list of sites worth looking at.
Move to Canada. I hear they still have a few remaining civil liberties here.
That's because there's a federal election campaign right now, and they're lying to us so we'll vote for them.
Bear in mind, if you donate 'nice' foods, as in anything nicer than cheap canned stuff and pasta, it usually will not make it's way to the poor served by the food bank, but will most likely go home with whomever works at the food bank. Not to impugne the services food banks offer, but if you want to help a hungry person or family, do it directly. Find a low-income/subsidized housing area, take some food with you, and give it away to those who need it. Or else, buy gift certificates for grocery stores, and give those away directly.
Having worked at a food bank in the past, the volunteers (who are not always poor or in need of food) get first pick on what is donated.
You can open a so-called 'private' torrent file in Notepad, change one character near the end, and suddenly it's a public torrent in any DHT-capable client. I don't see how banning BC will stop that.
Define an agile browser, please.
An agile browser is one that can perform complex gymnastic manoevres while simultanously rendering web pages.
Between this and the rootkit, it's obvious Sony doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone's rights. Not the rights of the owners of the property they are vandalising, not the rights of the owners of the computers they rootkitted, and not their customers. They just don't care. At this point, if all the prepaid PS3 orders come in as boxes filled with paper mache, it wouldn't completely surprise me. No ethics at all.
"And the gold medal for kernel hacking goes to...."
I can dream, can't i?
"This is the Centre For Disease Control. Our information lists you as having potentially been exposed to a highly dangerous pathogen. Before we can release this information to you and your doctor regarding treatment of this often fatal condition, we'll need to verify your personal information. Please send your credit card number to the following link."
They shouldn't be asking for email addresses; rather, they should be helping to make it clear that no essential communications will ever occur via email.
This will cost me karma, but I'll try to explain. The article was not about Slashdot, so, as a result, pointing out in the commentary a problem with Slashdot itself (that being, a duplicated story) has nothing to do with the topic of the story. Your point may indeed have merit, but it isn't related to the story, and thus is off-topic (as is this comment, but I thought I'd answer your question).
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm1600 strongly implies that meta-commentary about the site itself within an article comment is considered a "bad" comment.
I was never a teenage girl (and I don't play one on TV), but you might consider something by Marion Zimmer Bradley. In particular, I was thinking of The Firebrand. It's a heavily fictionalized (can a myth be fictionalized?) retelling the story of Troy, from the perspective of a young Kassandra. Might be too long for a preteen, but an older child would probably enjoy it. The novel has some great strong female characters.
Only opens a popup and a script error in Firefox with IETab. No calc (although Internet Explorer itself, on the same machine does invoke calc). I wonder why this is...?
For some encodings this extension will translate the text back into English
Wow. What a blow it will be to Firefox if you drop active development of that. Christ.
You don't have kids, right?
it's just that it could be much better, without (seemingly) much effort
Can't wait to see your patch. When will you be done writing it?
Oh, and my front page has had articles regularly, with no gap larger than four hours between. Go to Preferences, and set the front page to display all the articles, not just the "best". There were articles posted, you just didn't bother to look.