I'd say that my inkjets have more than 10x the paper jamming incidents as my lasers, despite my lasers being used more Actually, I wouldn't say "despite" there, I would say "because" instead.
I've noticed that the lack of use--not heavy use--is precisely what causes the most problems with ink jets (and perhaps all printers, although to a much lesser extent). Ink clogs seem to tend to form whenever ink is not routinely flowing through the nozzles. Even the ink jet printers that (annoyingly so) perform self-cleaning cycles every day seem somewhat less prone to clogs than those that don't. The biggest factor by far in my experience is how often the ink jets are exercised.
Manufacturers often include a specification for maximum prints per month, but I think there's really a latent minimum you have to achieve before you'll get anything approaching a long life out of the printer. Like you, the only printers I've ever seen "wear out" due to heavy use were laser printers; ink jets are typically replaced (often due to clogs) long before that ever happens.
I just wonder how prone this will be to clogs, and how expensive it will be to replace when (not if) it inevitably occurs. I'm sure that's not how "disruptive" was meant this context, but that's all I can imagine.
You can buy servers from Dell with no pre-installed operating system.
So what Dell client machines connect to these servers? Do those need Windows? See www.dell.com/nseries. No, they don't need Windows.
I'm not sure why this always comes up; Dell has been selling these for years.
Now if you took responsibility for your decisions and there was no external liability I guess I'd be all for everyone acting as their own doctor and eliminating the whole medical oversight system that is in place.
Yes, as I said, I'm more than willing to take full responsibility. If things go bad, only I'm to blame. I'm not at all suggesting getting rid of all doctors; far from it, in fact. I want to have lots of doctors from whom to solicit facts and opinions. And I'd certainly prefer that they not be totally paranoid about potential lawsuits along the way (you don't get unbiased information that way, you get stock "safe" answers that are not necessarily in your best interest).
You could just go and pick up whatever you wanted at probably 1/10th the price.
Again, I'm not at all advocating getting rid of pharmaceutical companies or doctors. I simply want doctors to act in the capacity of a consultant, rather than a dictator, and allow me to decide how much risk is acceptable. Let them go on record as advising against it, but then let me make the final decisions. I realize the reality is that this cannot happen in our current litigious society, but I also believe that freedom of health care decisions should be one of those precious "inalienable rights" we're supposed to have and protect.
but even with a waiver and discussion of risk and all that, should something bad happen, a large portion of the population would still turn right back around, sue for malpractice, and either (a) win, or (b) get a settlement just to avoid the trouble of a lawsuit.
True, our legal system has degenerated, and that's exactly where we should focus our attention. These frivolous high-dollar lawsuits are all part of this very same problem.
People are dumb, and we've seen too many cases of frivolous or otherwise stupid lawsuits not only going to court, but winning.
Agreed. But I'm simply not willing to give up my health care rights just because of a bunch of dumb people, whether they're making bad medical decisions for themselves, or they're in court making bad legal decisions.
If you take a medication whose serious and likely interaction may cause you to develop, say, a condition where you may faint at any moment, and you decide to drive a car and you faint and someone gets killed, it isn't just you who has been impacted.
Yes, it was my decision, and I should be held fully responsible for the outcome, not the doctor. Society already has well-established rules and penalty systems in place to handle this. Don't protect me from myself, thank you very much. We're far too quick to place all blame on others ("yes, but the doctor gave me the medicine; sue or jail the doctor, not me").
how fair is it that your condition [...] is taking resources in this already crowded emergency room?
Are you serious? Do you notice how, if I remove the part about following a doctor's advice, this argument falls completely apart? Look, this has nothing to do with doing the right thing, it has to do with being allowed to disagree. Certainly you must admit that somewhere along the line there has been a doctor who gave bad advice, which was dutifully followed, which turned out to have made the situation tremendously worse than if the advice had not been followed. Humans make mistakes. I'd suggest that this happens far more often than you've ever considered.
How about even if YOU die and it's only you. Now your family and loved ones have to endure the consequences of your actions.
So, my family would prefer that I be forced to trust such important decisions on a third-party? I don't think so. I suspect you've never known anybody with a so-called "terminal" or degenerative affliction. Once you have experienced this first or second hand, you'll probably find that patients' rights are really quite limited in practice.
My body, my decision? Sounds pretty selfish to me.
You must be trolling. I suppose you prefer "my body, your decision" instead? Even if I get what I'm asking, you can still live your totally protected "make decisions for me please" way and blindly (or perhaps on faith) obey every doctor or other professional. So please just live and let live, without forcing your ideals upon me.
as some people might become convinced they need a particular medication and insist on getting it, rather than leaving the decision to trained medical professionals.
Calling this a "problem" is entirely indicative of our totally flawed and failing (if not failed) health care system. The pure arrogance is astounding.
Make all the available information public, and let us decide. If we want your opinion, o great and revered medical professional, we'll ask. But we don't need or want this profession's nanny-style tactics to dictate--against our better judgment--what we can and can't use in an attempt to make and/or keep ourselves healthy.
If I want to act a certain way in a business dealing, I may ask a lawyer for advice. That lawyer is obligated to give me the best possible legal advice, but I'm not obligated to follow it, and I'm certainly not forced to do so. Consider an analogy between computer professionals and medical professionals for a moment. There certainly exist such professionals in both fields that are ignorant, incompetent, insensitive, immoral, etc. Now if any computer professionals refuse to, say, reformat my hard drive because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want it reformatted. If any medical professionals refuse to, say, perform a procedure or give me some medication because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want the medicine/procedure.
We express outrage routinely here, if anybody dares dictate how and when we're allowed to use digital content, for crying out loud. I'd say that deciding where I can play a song is far less important than deciding how I'm allowed to care for my health and well being.
(since everyone is limited to the same 5 tags or so)
For what it's worth, you can tag things any way you like. You're not limited to just the tags you see. I personally don't have the time or inclination, but try to click the little triangle next to the existing tags, and you'll see you can attach any arbitrary tags you wish to any article, and use your own "tags" page to see the various articles grouped by your personally-applied tags. In the main page, you're only seeing the most common tags. While it obviously needs some work (and apparently a lot better instructions for use) and I admittedly haven't bothered myself, I can see the potential, even if others decide to abuse it with the ever-present "yes" "no" and "maybe" tags.
I'm no apologist, but indeed it was covered two days ago, and even before it started six months ago. If you're going to complain, you might want to focus on the fact that--if anything--it's a dupe, and in no way is it a piece of ignored old news as you suggest.
Let me explain what was happening before. The Republicans owned all three branches of the government--House, Senate & Presidential seat.
And let me stop you right there; those are not the three branches of the government. You might want to go take a remedial civics class (or wikipedia) before continuing to "explain" anything.
They've always wanted reports printed out from systems that I've built, even though it would be easier to have them get their reports by email or directly from the system online. Then they can filter, correct, annotate, etc. right in the same place that everyone else is looking, or keep it secure if it's that type of information.
I think it has something to do with their process of dealing with tasks.
I'm with you about the email, but I'm not so sure I agree when the option is getting the report from the system online. Let's say I get a phone call and need to discuss a report. Let's even assume I already have a browser launched, and it's in the foreground of the current desktop already. Ok, I just need to Ctrl-N a new window, find and click a bookmark, and wait for the login page. I need to enter my username and strong password first, then I have perhaps 4 or 5 clicks just to generate the default report. Now I need to select the date range, set my filtering and sorting options back to how I like it, and then I can scroll one screen at a time. Now, that all wastes a lot of time, and I still have a very limited viewport on my data. Humans are good at scanning for patterns and discrepancies; scrolling necessarily makes this unintuitive, and until filters can read our minds, this is going to be important in real-world decision-making.
If I had a folder of printouts near my desk, I just need to grab the folder, flip through until I find the exact report, and pull it out. I can layout the pages on my desk and scan several hundreds of lines; far more than could possibly fit on the screen at a legible resolution.
One large problem here is that most systems don't allow you to readily bookmark or save one or more reports, with arbitrary settings, where they are quickly retrievable. Further, I still have to login and wait for the report to be generated, even if I could just select a bookmark. And, perhaps worst of all, I can't exactly take these down the hall to the conference room, as I can with a folder of paper reports. Even if there is a machine there, it's almost definitely off, so I need to boot, login, launch the browser, and then proceed with the steps outlined above. This can easily take 10 minutes or more, and typically falls into the "not worth it" bucket. Sure, you might have a laptop, but I would argue the convenience factor is still working against you.
So, I just don't think you're necessarily correct that the underlying reason is that a pile of papers will help motivate some people more than an inbox full of urgent or unread messages. I It certainly might, and I absolutely don't mean to accuse you of anything, but if I were you I'd take some time to reflect on the systems I'd designed, and question whether there might be some reason that your system doesn't make it quite as user-friendly as you expect. Complex system navigation without shortcuts, combined with the inherent need for portable ubiquitous connectivity to said system, may well make a compelling case for the convenience of paper reports.
The President is tasked in a time of war to protect the country as he/she sees fit, and guess what we are at war. Our enemy has said that they are at war with us.
Oh, I see. So I guess Congress no longer needs to declare war, what with all the bureacratic trivialities of debate and voting; as long as our "enemy" says we're at war, we are. Ah, that should be a real time-saver. I sure hope that's a troll, but I fear you were serious (albeit terribly misguided).
Yes, Congress grants special power to the President in a time of declared war, but only when Congress agrees indeed there is a war. The "war" on terror, the "war" on drugs, and the "war" on child pornography are all marketing campaigns at best, not actual legally-declared wars.
What part of "How do You Manage a Product Based on Linux?" do you not understand?
None, actually; I understand it quite well, thank you.
He's not asking for help.. he's interested in the ways/.'ers are maintaining their linux-based products...
Agreed. And I put it to you (and Ryan) that this is a fundamentally flawed approach.
... perhaps (naively) hoping that the peanut gallery might provide an interesting result.
It might indeed be interesting, but it's almost certainly not going to solve his company's underlying problem.
This does not necessarily mean he wants help with his lame system; read closely, and you might realize that Ryan seems quite happy with his approach so far
The AC posting, and my reply, in no way assumed he wanted help with his system; he needs help with a process going forward. This doesn't sound like some hobby he's taken up in his basement; it's an actual product line his employer is attempting to develop and market. He's the one to recommend Linux, but he hadn't at the time thought through how to even begin to manage the complexity of this endeavor. He's happy enough with the results, but not the process, and his company may soon decide that Ryan's approach comes with a great deal of latent overhead.
but this is still an interesting topic worth objective attention.
I fully concur. That doesn't mean that Ryan will get what he wants here; I maintain that he doesn't yet realize how very much there is involved, and the best response to his original question is to enlighten him as to the magnitude of the complexity he's asking.
Its not a screaming/crying/spoiled-brat cry for help that some of the similarly inclined responses have implied, anyway..
You're absolutely right; I think he asked his question very professionally, which is why he deserved the AC's (equally professional) response. From reading between the lines it's fairly clear he hasn't realized the scope of the problem, and I think it merits a response (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered posting, or reading any further, in the first place). In fact I really only wanted to highlight a well-written AC response, since it would otherwise have gotten lost in the noise of the other (less professional) replies. As I said, with no mod points today, this was the best I could do.
All analogies are flawed when examined to sufficient depth.
Agreed, but this one was materially inadequate, even on its surface.
I was merely pointing out that the sender of spam at no point makes use of your property - it is your mail service that does this, which you have installed and commissioned.
It's not directly, but indirectly. Through intentional actions, the sender causes your property to be used against your wishes, and the sender has every reason to believe this to happen. Nothing is consumed, perhaps, but it is made unavailable for legitimate purposes. CPU cycles and bandwidth are finite (and expensive) resources. If you use them without consent, you indeed deprive me of my rightful use of them.
A somewhat better analogy would be to suppose that I call your mobile phone, for which you've pre-paid for a finite number of minutes each month. Suppose further that I spoof the caller ID, so it appears to you that I'm one of your family members or associates. Now you answer the call, because to you would like to talk to that person, only to find it's just me trying to sell you something. You obviously hang up, but that's a 1-minute deduction from your pre-paid minutes.
I haven't taken your phone, nor have I damaged it in any way, nor did I deprive you of its use. After all, you were the one who "installed and commissioned" (according to your terms) the phone and its service. I didn't even "use" your property directly according to you; I only used my phone to dial yours.
But now consider what if hundreds or even thousands of people started doing this to you, you'd have a problem. In fact, have you ever wondered why the first incoming minute of most mobile phone plans does not count against your plan minutes? Well, this is why. Otherwise every wrong number call you recieve could potentially be considered as trespass.
Now, please go read a nice summary of what the term Trespass to Chattles means, and maybe it will clarify the situation for you.
No points today, and I loathe "mod parent up" postings, but that's the perfect response.
Nobody is going to be able to provide any reasonable advice, other than perhaps for the submitter to hire a consultant (or employee) that has proven experience in large scale software development projects.
To submitter Ryan: This is highly non-trivial; you don't seem to have any idea how very much you're missing. If you don't know what you don't know, you need outside help. And because you've already started down the path without a plan, you need help fast. Very fast.
For those who do own their mail servers - corporations, freelancers or other particularly tooled-up individuals - it's like dumping a shit-load of mail on their doorstep - again, through the postal service, which is an impartial, autonomous service that we deeply value!!
Joke? Troll? This is a terribly misguided analogy, as I shall demostrate by haiku:
We pay for bandwidth
consumed by inbound e-mail
but don't pay postage
Big difference. This is why junk faxes are illegal; they use toner, paper, and they tie up the phone line. There are actual real expenses involved with receiving spam. we need more bandwidth and bigger servers. And yes, in cases where end customers are involved, the expenses are passed on to them as well, even though it's not their servers or bandwidth.
It's easy to be purely theoretical about how an OS should never "allow" software to cause a crash, but in doing that you hand-wave the the necessity of giving certain types of software direct access to hardware via drivers.
If you'll examine my posting again, you'll notice I emphasized the word "software" rather than the word "drivers" when quoting the GP. And you'll also notice I never remotely suggested this was supposed to be easy.
Exactly what is it you think the OS should be doing to prevent badly written software from asking a potentially badly written driver to do with the hardware?
I'll answer that (hopefully rhetorical) question with a counter: How should I know, and why should I care? I only stated that the job of the OS is to prevent such problems. It's not easy, as you mentioned, and obviously I don't have the solution ready to post here. If you're suggesting it's intractible, I'll simply disagree and leave it at that. But even if that's true, it just means that an ideally "solid" OS is an impossible goal; yet it's a goal nonetheless.
You want full abstraction? Meticulous bounds checking?
Well, yes, actually. Both of those would be reasonable expectations of a "solid" operating system. And many more checks and balances to ensure the OS doesn't allow applications to crash it. Of course this may impact performance, perhaps significantly, but so be it; I for one would have many uses for such a stable OS despite the performance hit.
There's unfortunately no easy way to mitigate bad software occasionally kicking the hardware in the crotch without incurring a significant performance penalty.
There you go again, talking about how it's not easy. An OS is a complex piece of code; I don't expect a "solid" OS to be thrown together by a couple of amateurs in a a few months. I have no idea why you think I've suggested it should be easy.
When the OS depends on that hardware for basic function (e.g. video card), there's generally no adequate recourse but a core dump and reboot.
I wholeheartedly agree. Hardware-related problems obviously trump the OS. Generally speaking, the hardware is the platform for the OS, and the OS is the platform for the software. If the OS fails, the software will be unstable; if the hardware fails, the OS will be unstable.
Actually, I'm not even sure what the point is of your reply, other than to proclaim that it's not easy to create a "solid" OS (which I certainly never disputed).
It not hard to build a solid system, just keep away from buggy drivers and software.
Think about that for a moment. Consider exactly how software should ever be capable of crashing the operating system, the very platform on which it is running. If poorly-written (or malicious) applications can crash the entire operating system, the operating system is quite simply not doing its job.
The American company practically *always* only replies to the first point in the email. [...] Is this a widespread practice? And if so......why?
Yes.
Ok, fine, I'll bite on the "why" part. Actually it's been my experience that these problems are due to a combination of short attention spans and generally poor reading comprehension skills. I've experienced it globally, for what it's worth, but it certainly may be more prevalent in countries with pathetic mandatory schooling.
Of those people on the border, how many have *not* become a violent felon because they can get their violent fix through photos? Could not these pictures and videos be a sort of tranquilizer for the violent? [...] Now suppose one of these violent felons *don't* have violent pictures and videos. Wouldn't that *increase* the number of assaunts?
Yes. And oddly enough, this is also exactly why these censorship laws are passed. The government wants the populace to have some such outlets, within a narrow range of politically and socially "acceptable" ideals, but certainly not too much. Otherwise, we the populace wouldn't need the government to protect us from those who get pushed over the edge, because they were not provided any non-violent outlets for their "unacceptable" aggressions. Ultimately it's just the pathetic self-preservation of a nanny state.
...the way I think it will play out is that the libraries will close about a year before all of the content is available online, and when it is available online, it will just seem like there are fewer articles than there were before, but nobody will be able to prove it since noone actually counts these things, and the library will be long gone, its contents buried in some archive (aka landfill) somewhere.
I agree completely. Even if they don't censor any information this time, they're certainly setting a very nice precedent to do exactly this for any other library any future government finds "too expensive" to maintain. Note that omission is not the worst problem; consider the subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) manipulation of facts while scanning historical documents of record. Don't forget that there's perfectly plausible deniability if they're ever caught; the populace will easily buy the excuse that it was merely a clerical error or yet another technology foul-up. Plus further changes can be made easily, at any time in the future; swift or slowly to suit the needs at the time, with little or no accountability.
Burning books is far too extreme to be palatable any more, but there are many inventive ways to achieve the same gaols. Total control of the information, especially in electronic form, serves the same purpose with much greater efficiency and impact.
If you're not trolling (and I suspect you aren't) then I truly feel sorry for you.
Firstly everyone needs to label their group: Political Party, Religion, Sex, Prolife/choice and all the things that divide us.
No, actually we don't. That would be a horrendous idea, as it would only act to prejudice anybody reading our words, which are reflections of our thoughts. Forcing us all to rigidly choose polar-opposite sides on contentious matters is fundamentally wrong. I may associate myself with a certain political party or religion or whatever, but that doesn't mean I'm a prototypical example, who agrees on every count with the center of mass of that group. These lines aren't as clear as you'd like them to be. Even for gender, you've got to realize that there are (for example) males who would prefer to "associate" themselves with females, or who would at least not be on the same "side" as other males in many issues.
Secondly the moderation system similar to Slashdot be used, but with no cap on the high or low the piece to be moderated.
Ok, that's fine on the surface, but let's examine why you want this.
Now when you browse the moderated forum, you can see the highs for your demographic, instead of the general populace!
Oh, now that's just great. I can only assume this would be optional, rather than enforced, but the mere presence of such a feature would disturb me greatly. Allowing people to read only messages written by people very much like themselves is nothing less than closing your mind to opinions that you don't already hold. Why bother having an open forum in the first place. What you describe is a closed, almost members-only community of interest.
Let's look a little closer. I notice you conveniently ignored race, for example, in your group profile, although that is a tremendously contentious factor. So you're suggesting that it would be good for, say, a republican christian white male to read only those messages written by other republican christian white males, each reinforcing the others' beliefs, without bothering to consider other viewpoints. Do you not see any potential side-effects of such a system?
In fact, you'll be able to find popular authors as they'll be modded up often.
Popularity does not equate to insightful, interesting, thought-provoking, or mind-expanding. It's indeed most often the antithesis of these things.
I went over next generation forums very briefly here, I hope I don't confuse too many people.
I for one am appalled, not confused.
The reason I don't think you're trolling is that you seem to (at least partially) practice what you preach. Your journal here links to your website, which gives a brief profile of you, from which these are the first and last lines:
I know God is real because he spoke and acted for my salvation.
The meaning of life is simple: Worship God because of the good gifts he gives us.
Ok, now here's a prime example of why your proposed forum system is faulty. In at least this demographic dimension, we are quite dissimilar. If I looked only at opinions like my own, your words would never reach me. Although I may strongly disagree, I may still value your opinions in general, and realize that you may have other very insightful ideas I'd still like to read. Likewise, you'd likely never even bother to consider my input, as an outsider of your demographic; you'd ignorantly assume that there are no substantial arguments against your idea, and I can ideally presume that you'll value all feedback (whether you agree or disagree).
If this is indeed the future of forums, I will certainly decline to use this wonderful "feature" you've described. Further, I will never voluntarily box myself into an artificial set of demographic ideals, ignoring and being ignored by others.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed that the lack of use--not heavy use--is precisely what causes the most problems with ink jets (and perhaps all printers, although to a much lesser extent). Ink clogs seem to tend to form whenever ink is not routinely flowing through the nozzles. Even the ink jet printers that (annoyingly so) perform self-cleaning cycles every day seem somewhat less prone to clogs than those that don't. The biggest factor by far in my experience is how often the ink jets are exercised.
Manufacturers often include a specification for maximum prints per month, but I think there's really a latent minimum you have to achieve before you'll get anything approaching a long life out of the printer. Like you, the only printers I've ever seen "wear out" due to heavy use were laser printers; ink jets are typically replaced (often due to clogs) long before that ever happens.
I just wonder how prone this will be to clogs, and how expensive it will be to replace when (not if) it inevitably occurs. I'm sure that's not how "disruptive" was meant this context, but that's all I can imagine.
So what Dell client machines connect to these servers? Do those need Windows? See www.dell.com/nseries. No, they don't need Windows.
I'm not sure why this always comes up; Dell has been selling these for years.
It's usually a glitch; it happens when they change something.
Make all the available information public, and let us decide. If we want your opinion, o great and revered medical professional, we'll ask. But we don't need or want this profession's nanny-style tactics to dictate--against our better judgment--what we can and can't use in an attempt to make and/or keep ourselves healthy.
If I want to act a certain way in a business dealing, I may ask a lawyer for advice. That lawyer is obligated to give me the best possible legal advice, but I'm not obligated to follow it, and I'm certainly not forced to do so. Consider an analogy between computer professionals and medical professionals for a moment. There certainly exist such professionals in both fields that are ignorant, incompetent, insensitive, immoral, etc. Now if any computer professionals refuse to, say, reformat my hard drive because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want it reformatted. If any medical professionals refuse to, say, perform a procedure or give me some medication because they feel it is not in my best interest, well, screw them--give me all the relevant information about the risks and let me decide--I may still want the medicine/procedure.
We express outrage routinely here, if anybody dares dictate how and when we're allowed to use digital content, for crying out loud. I'd say that deciding where I can play a song is far less important than deciding how I'm allowed to care for my health and well being.
(since everyone is limited to the same 5 tags or so)
For what it's worth, you can tag things any way you like. You're not limited to just the tags you see. I personally don't have the time or inclination, but try to click the little triangle next to the existing tags, and you'll see you can attach any arbitrary tags you wish to any article, and use your own "tags" page to see the various articles grouped by your personally-applied tags. In the main page, you're only seeing the most common tags. While it obviously needs some work (and apparently a lot better instructions for use) and I admittedly haven't bothered myself, I can see the potential, even if others decide to abuse it with the ever-present "yes" "no" and "maybe" tags.
I'm no apologist, but indeed it was covered two days ago, and even before it started six months ago. If you're going to complain, you might want to focus on the fact that--if anything--it's a dupe, and in no way is it a piece of ignored old news as you suggest.
Here's a much better description.
I guess it doesn't quite count as a dupe, but this is the same concept as monitoring a network by music.
Let me explain what was happening before. The Republicans owned all three branches of the government--House, Senate & Presidential seat.
And let me stop you right there; those are not the three branches of the government. You might want to go take a remedial civics class (or wikipedia) before continuing to "explain" anything.
They've always wanted reports printed out from systems that I've built, even though it would be easier to have them get their reports by email or directly from the system online. Then they can filter, correct, annotate, etc. right in the same place that everyone else is looking, or keep it secure if it's that type of information.
I think it has something to do with their process of dealing with tasks.
I'm with you about the email, but I'm not so sure I agree when the option is getting the report from the system online. Let's say I get a phone call and need to discuss a report. Let's even assume I already have a browser launched, and it's in the foreground of the current desktop already. Ok, I just need to Ctrl-N a new window, find and click a bookmark, and wait for the login page. I need to enter my username and strong password first, then I have perhaps 4 or 5 clicks just to generate the default report. Now I need to select the date range, set my filtering and sorting options back to how I like it, and then I can scroll one screen at a time. Now, that all wastes a lot of time, and I still have a very limited viewport on my data. Humans are good at scanning for patterns and discrepancies; scrolling necessarily makes this unintuitive, and until filters can read our minds, this is going to be important in real-world decision-making.
If I had a folder of printouts near my desk, I just need to grab the folder, flip through until I find the exact report, and pull it out. I can layout the pages on my desk and scan several hundreds of lines; far more than could possibly fit on the screen at a legible resolution.
One large problem here is that most systems don't allow you to readily bookmark or save one or more reports, with arbitrary settings, where they are quickly retrievable. Further, I still have to login and wait for the report to be generated, even if I could just select a bookmark. And, perhaps worst of all, I can't exactly take these down the hall to the conference room, as I can with a folder of paper reports. Even if there is a machine there, it's almost definitely off, so I need to boot, login, launch the browser, and then proceed with the steps outlined above. This can easily take 10 minutes or more, and typically falls into the "not worth it" bucket. Sure, you might have a laptop, but I would argue the convenience factor is still working against you.
So, I just don't think you're necessarily correct that the underlying reason is that a pile of papers will help motivate some people more than an inbox full of urgent or unread messages. I It certainly might, and I absolutely don't mean to accuse you of anything, but if I were you I'd take some time to reflect on the systems I'd designed, and question whether there might be some reason that your system doesn't make it quite as user-friendly as you expect. Complex system navigation without shortcuts, combined with the inherent need for portable ubiquitous connectivity to said system, may well make a compelling case for the convenience of paper reports.
The President is tasked in a time of war to protect the country as he/she sees fit, and guess what we are at war. Our enemy has said that they are at war with us.
Oh, I see. So I guess Congress no longer needs to declare war, what with all the bureacratic trivialities of debate and voting; as long as our "enemy" says we're at war, we are. Ah, that should be a real time-saver. I sure hope that's a troll, but I fear you were serious (albeit terribly misguided).
Yes, Congress grants special power to the President in a time of declared war, but only when Congress agrees indeed there is a war. The "war" on terror, the "war" on drugs, and the "war" on child pornography are all marketing campaigns at best, not actual legally-declared wars.
What part of "How do You Manage a Product Based on Linux?" do you not understand?
.. he's interested in the ways /.'ers are maintaining their linux-based products ...
... perhaps (naively) hoping that the peanut gallery might provide an interesting result.
..
None, actually; I understand it quite well, thank you.
He's not asking for help
Agreed. And I put it to you (and Ryan) that this is a fundamentally flawed approach.
It might indeed be interesting, but it's almost certainly not going to solve his company's underlying problem.
This does not necessarily mean he wants help with his lame system; read closely, and you might realize that Ryan seems quite happy with his approach so far
The AC posting, and my reply, in no way assumed he wanted help with his system; he needs help with a process going forward. This doesn't sound like some hobby he's taken up in his basement; it's an actual product line his employer is attempting to develop and market. He's the one to recommend Linux, but he hadn't at the time thought through how to even begin to manage the complexity of this endeavor. He's happy enough with the results, but not the process, and his company may soon decide that Ryan's approach comes with a great deal of latent overhead.
but this is still an interesting topic worth objective attention.
I fully concur. That doesn't mean that Ryan will get what he wants here; I maintain that he doesn't yet realize how very much there is involved, and the best response to his original question is to enlighten him as to the magnitude of the complexity he's asking.
Its not a screaming/crying/spoiled-brat cry for help that some of the similarly inclined responses have implied, anyway
You're absolutely right; I think he asked his question very professionally, which is why he deserved the AC's (equally professional) response. From reading between the lines it's fairly clear he hasn't realized the scope of the problem, and I think it merits a response (otherwise I wouldn't have bothered posting, or reading any further, in the first place). In fact I really only wanted to highlight a well-written AC response, since it would otherwise have gotten lost in the noise of the other (less professional) replies. As I said, with no mod points today, this was the best I could do.
It still isn't trespass, is it?
Yes, I think quite clearly it is.
All analogies are flawed when examined to sufficient depth.
Agreed, but this one was materially inadequate, even on its surface.
I was merely pointing out that the sender of spam at no point makes use of your property - it is your mail service that does this, which you have installed and commissioned.
It's not directly, but indirectly. Through intentional actions, the sender causes your property to be used against your wishes, and the sender has every reason to believe this to happen. Nothing is consumed, perhaps, but it is made unavailable for legitimate purposes. CPU cycles and bandwidth are finite (and expensive) resources. If you use them without consent, you indeed deprive me of my rightful use of them.
A somewhat better analogy would be to suppose that I call your mobile phone, for which you've pre-paid for a finite number of minutes each month. Suppose further that I spoof the caller ID, so it appears to you that I'm one of your family members or associates. Now you answer the call, because to you would like to talk to that person, only to find it's just me trying to sell you something. You obviously hang up, but that's a 1-minute deduction from your pre-paid minutes.
I haven't taken your phone, nor have I damaged it in any way, nor did I deprive you of its use. After all, you were the one who "installed and commissioned" (according to your terms) the phone and its service. I didn't even "use" your property directly according to you; I only used my phone to dial yours.
But now consider what if hundreds or even thousands of people started doing this to you, you'd have a problem. In fact, have you ever wondered why the first incoming minute of most mobile phone plans does not count against your plan minutes? Well, this is why. Otherwise every wrong number call you recieve could potentially be considered as trespass.
Now, please go read a nice summary of what the term Trespass to Chattles means, and maybe it will clarify the situation for you.
No points today, and I loathe "mod parent up" postings, but that's the perfect response.
Nobody is going to be able to provide any reasonable advice, other than perhaps for the submitter to hire a consultant (or employee) that has proven experience in large scale software development projects.
To submitter Ryan: This is highly non-trivial; you don't seem to have any idea how very much you're missing. If you don't know what you don't know, you need outside help. And because you've already started down the path without a plan, you need help fast. Very fast.
For those who do own their mail servers - corporations, freelancers or other particularly tooled-up individuals - it's like dumping a shit-load of mail on their doorstep - again, through the postal service, which is an impartial, autonomous service that we deeply value!!
Joke? Troll? This is a terribly misguided analogy, as I shall demostrate by haiku:
We pay for bandwidth
consumed by inbound e-mail
but don't pay postage
Big difference. This is why junk faxes are illegal; they use toner, paper, and they tie up the phone line. There are actual real expenses involved with receiving spam. we need more bandwidth and bigger servers. And yes, in cases where end customers are involved, the expenses are passed on to them as well, even though it's not their servers or bandwidth.
It's easy to be purely theoretical about how an OS should never "allow" software to cause a crash, but in doing that you hand-wave the the necessity of giving certain types of software direct access to hardware via drivers.
If you'll examine my posting again, you'll notice I emphasized the word "software" rather than the word "drivers" when quoting the GP. And you'll also notice I never remotely suggested this was supposed to be easy.
Exactly what is it you think the OS should be doing to prevent badly written software from asking a potentially badly written driver to do with the hardware?
I'll answer that (hopefully rhetorical) question with a counter: How should I know, and why should I care? I only stated that the job of the OS is to prevent such problems. It's not easy, as you mentioned, and obviously I don't have the solution ready to post here. If you're suggesting it's intractible, I'll simply disagree and leave it at that. But even if that's true, it just means that an ideally "solid" OS is an impossible goal; yet it's a goal nonetheless.
You want full abstraction? Meticulous bounds checking?
Well, yes, actually. Both of those would be reasonable expectations of a "solid" operating system. And many more checks and balances to ensure the OS doesn't allow applications to crash it. Of course this may impact performance, perhaps significantly, but so be it; I for one would have many uses for such a stable OS despite the performance hit.
There's unfortunately no easy way to mitigate bad software occasionally kicking the hardware in the crotch without incurring a significant performance penalty.
There you go again, talking about how it's not easy. An OS is a complex piece of code; I don't expect a "solid" OS to be thrown together by a couple of amateurs in a a few months. I have no idea why you think I've suggested it should be easy.
When the OS depends on that hardware for basic function (e.g. video card), there's generally no adequate recourse but a core dump and reboot.
I wholeheartedly agree. Hardware-related problems obviously trump the OS. Generally speaking, the hardware is the platform for the OS, and the OS is the platform for the software. If the OS fails, the software will be unstable; if the hardware fails, the OS will be unstable.
Actually, I'm not even sure what the point is of your reply, other than to proclaim that it's not easy to create a "solid" OS (which I certainly never disputed).
It not hard to build a solid system, just keep away from buggy drivers and software.
Think about that for a moment. Consider exactly how software should ever be capable of crashing the operating system, the very platform on which it is running. If poorly-written (or malicious) applications can crash the entire operating system, the operating system is quite simply not doing its job.
The American company practically *always* only replies to the first point in the email. [...] Is this a widespread practice? And if so......why?
Yes.
Ok, fine, I'll bite on the "why" part. Actually it's been my experience that these problems are due to a combination of short attention spans and generally poor reading comprehension skills. I've experienced it globally, for what it's worth, but it certainly may be more prevalent in countries with pathetic mandatory schooling.
Of those people on the border, how many have *not* become a violent felon because they can get their violent fix through photos? Could not these pictures and videos be a sort of tranquilizer for the violent? [...] Now suppose one of these violent felons *don't* have violent pictures and videos. Wouldn't that *increase* the number of assaunts?
Yes. And oddly enough, this is also exactly why these censorship laws are passed. The government wants the populace to have some such outlets, within a narrow range of politically and socially "acceptable" ideals, but certainly not too much. Otherwise, we the populace wouldn't need the government to protect us from those who get pushed over the edge, because they were not provided any non-violent outlets for their "unacceptable" aggressions. Ultimately it's just the pathetic self-preservation of a nanny state.
...the way I think it will play out is that the libraries will close about a year before all of the content is available online, and when it is available online, it will just seem like there are fewer articles than there were before, but nobody will be able to prove it since noone actually counts these things, and the library will be long gone, its contents buried in some archive (aka landfill) somewhere.
I agree completely. Even if they don't censor any information this time, they're certainly setting a very nice precedent to do exactly this for any other library any future government finds "too expensive" to maintain. Note that omission is not the worst problem; consider the subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) manipulation of facts while scanning historical documents of record. Don't forget that there's perfectly plausible deniability if they're ever caught; the populace will easily buy the excuse that it was merely a clerical error or yet another technology foul-up. Plus further changes can be made easily, at any time in the future; swift or slowly to suit the needs at the time, with little or no accountability.
Burning books is far too extreme to be palatable any more, but there are many inventive ways to achieve the same gaols. Total control of the information, especially in electronic form, serves the same purpose with much greater efficiency and impact.
If you're not trolling (and I suspect you aren't) then I truly feel sorry for you.
Firstly everyone needs to label their group: Political Party, Religion, Sex, Prolife/choice and all the things that divide us.
No, actually we don't. That would be a horrendous idea, as it would only act to prejudice anybody reading our words, which are reflections of our thoughts. Forcing us all to rigidly choose polar-opposite sides on contentious matters is fundamentally wrong. I may associate myself with a certain political party or religion or whatever, but that doesn't mean I'm a prototypical example, who agrees on every count with the center of mass of that group. These lines aren't as clear as you'd like them to be. Even for gender, you've got to realize that there are (for example) males who would prefer to "associate" themselves with females, or who would at least not be on the same "side" as other males in many issues.
Secondly the moderation system similar to Slashdot be used, but with no cap on the high or low the piece to be moderated.
Ok, that's fine on the surface, but let's examine why you want this.
Now when you browse the moderated forum, you can see the highs for your demographic, instead of the general populace!
Oh, now that's just great. I can only assume this would be optional, rather than enforced, but the mere presence of such a feature would disturb me greatly. Allowing people to read only messages written by people very much like themselves is nothing less than closing your mind to opinions that you don't already hold. Why bother having an open forum in the first place. What you describe is a closed, almost members-only community of interest.
Let's look a little closer. I notice you conveniently ignored race, for example, in your group profile, although that is a tremendously contentious factor. So you're suggesting that it would be good for, say, a republican christian white male to read only those messages written by other republican christian white males, each reinforcing the others' beliefs, without bothering to consider other viewpoints. Do you not see any potential side-effects of such a system?
In fact, you'll be able to find popular authors as they'll be modded up often.
Popularity does not equate to insightful, interesting, thought-provoking, or mind-expanding. It's indeed most often the antithesis of these things.
I went over next generation forums very briefly here, I hope I don't confuse too many people.
I for one am appalled, not confused.
The reason I don't think you're trolling is that you seem to (at least partially) practice what you preach. Your journal here links to your website, which gives a brief profile of you, from which these are the first and last lines:
I know God is real because he spoke and acted for my salvation.
The meaning of life is simple: Worship God because of the good gifts he gives us.
Ok, now here's a prime example of why your proposed forum system is faulty. In at least this demographic dimension, we are quite dissimilar. If I looked only at opinions like my own, your words would never reach me. Although I may strongly disagree, I may still value your opinions in general, and realize that you may have other very insightful ideas I'd still like to read. Likewise, you'd likely never even bother to consider my input, as an outsider of your demographic; you'd ignorantly assume that there are no substantial arguments against your idea, and I can ideally presume that you'll value all feedback (whether you agree or disagree).
If this is indeed the future of forums, I will certainly decline to use this wonderful "feature" you've described. Further, I will never voluntarily box myself into an artificial set of demographic ideals, ignoring and being ignored by others.