We have to keep in mind, we are (largely) techhies who could go work wherever we choose, and could easily jump from employer to employer should such a clear injustice occur to them...
but upon reading this story it looks like many of the people affected here were not technology people, who were perhaps in roles not so much in demand (the airline industry)..
...and much more easily victimized by this sort of behaviour. the corporate masters know damn well the employees can't do very much, it's not like there's 8 other airlines down the street they can run off to.
Perhaps the best way to help these folks is to call your friendly Northwest Airlines office and explain why you don't plan on flying with them anytime soon.
Of course you could also book a flight with them and take the oppurtunity to pass out pamphlets on the flight.
Why? The suit describes several clearly improper actions on the part of the RIAA, such as calling analysts of MP3.com's stock and more or less twisting their arms with nice not-so-subtle things like "what would happen to MP3.com's stock if we sued them?". That sort of thing is only a few slight notches above racketeering on the ethics totem pole, in my humble opinion.
I suspect that there are probably a lot of other fascinating tidbits that will come out of this trial, so I'll certainly be watching closely!
First, I like the idea of Andover and VA Linux marrying. Both companies seem to be to be of the rare breed that "get it", and seem to do the right thing in almost all circumstances.
I'm wondering how this would affect the potential for Slashdot in the future to on it's own, or in partnerships, expand into other subject areas with its brand of site design and format. Granted, with the emergence of the open source Slash engine and PHPSlash, dozens of Slashlings are sprouting up everywhere (my own site included).
I guess I was just thinking at some point down the road that a "portal" or "index" of Slash-based sites covering a wide array of subject areas would emerge, either under the direct auspices of SlashDot, or some other party...I'm not sure how this acquisition would affect that scenario, tho.
Either way, I'm not disaffected. I think it's a great merger and I can't wait to see the results of the open Slash engines on the 'net.
...as this may incur some wrath from the masses, but I think it's a comment needing (and thus far not) to appear in this discussion..
The topic is "Will PSX2 replace the PC?". Obviously, a relevant subtopic would be "Will the Slashdot audience support the PSX2 replacing the PC, or for that matter being a success?"
IF you agree this is a valid sub-topic, then I am amazed that noone has yet brought up the (now political/social) issue of DVD. Remember, the PSX2 is amoung other things, a DVD player. Not by an option, but by default. And a lot of people that I see drooling over the PSX2 in this convo are also very passionate in other fora about boycotting DVD, and all who back it, about boycotting the MEDIA companies in cahoots with the DVD CCA (of which, in THIS case, Sony is BOTH). So, regardless of whether you believe the DVD makers or the DVD content providers should feel the pressure from us, realize that Sony is in both camps and therefore, if you believe that we should resist funding the pockets of those who are trying to squash our freedoms, Sony, like it or not, should be a prime target.
I agree I'm as bummed as the next guy to admit that, the PSX2 looks like it will be one kick-ass machine, but on principle, I will not support it until the DVD issues are resolved in a manner acceptable to the principles and freedoms at stake.
And as such, at the moment, I as a Slashdot reader cannont in good conscience wish the PSX2 to "Replace the PC", or even have success.
I decided to post a poll on my site asking the obvious question:
Are YOU boycotting DVD?
I'm curious to see what percentage of people in the/. community are...please take a moment to jump over to The Swindle and register your vote. I promise to post a followup with the current tally tomorrow.
What I mean, really, is that AOL 5.0 seems to shamelessly install rogue system.dll's , and Windows 2000 is notorious for reverting those same system dll's upon attempt to replace them.
For my own amusement, I tried this experiment on a test machine on my network. Sure enough, AOL misbehaved, and within seconds of completing the install, Windows started telling me it was reverting files. Amusing, actually.
I'm actively working on figuring out exactly how W2K does that - file police. I'll let y'all know if I find some way to defeat it.
It sounds to me like the real fun is in speculating on what the Crusoe COULD do, or make possible, once various CPU instruction sets are implemented.
For example, a Motorola G4 instruction set software piece could pave the way for someone to sell a handheld/mobile Mac!
Amiga faithful could potentially see a handheld Amiga with a 68000 instruction set component!
Heck, now that I think of it, arcade games these days use various RISC processors, imagine going to an arcade, and renting the use of a handheld arcade game!
2) It's unfortunate that protecting one's trademark inevitably forces (per current law) the trademark holder to go to great lengths (read: expense) to protect the trademark. Personally, I can't see why the owner of a registered trademark shouldn't be allowed to selectively decide who may or may not use the trademark for their own pursuits. To force the owner to treat everyone equally seems kind of odd IMHO.
3) As a small (hopefully not for long) business owner myself, I've just filed a few trademark applications and I must say, the process isn't so bad, but it's prohibitively expensive, especially the issue of trademark searches. As a free bonus, let me mention a site I found where you can do free searches of the US trademark and service mark databases - an INVALUABLE utility for those without deep pockets interested in this sort of thing: Marksonline
As I read all the valid questions wondering exactly how USEFUL per se a Linux port to the N64 hardware would be, and knowing the progress some N64 emulators have had, and knowing that dumps and disassemblies of N64 games abound in the geek underground these days, and knowing we all have at least 1 computing device with Linux installed already, I keep thinking to myself:
Wouldn't it be FAR cooler for someone to port (admiteddly very legally dubiously) N64 games to Linux?
I'd personally wet myself if I woke up one morning and saw that Mario 64 was a tarball
First, here is a link to the charity the proceeds are going to, per the ebay item description: http://nashville.citysearch.com/E/V/NASTN/0002/13/ 67/cs1.html Second, note that the current bid price is $2,100, versus the $500 bid at the time the Slashdot story was originally posted. Egads. The Slashdot effect on eBay auctions? I can just see the call now for Malda to make karma points transferrable. It would be the next eBay craze - karma auctions.
You all know how good Linux is, and that from a technical standpoint it's superior.
So, why is it that this little cult needs to stop the productive work it's doing to pat itself on the back every 5 minutes?
Think about it this way, and I realize right now this is COMPLETELY unscientific, for entertainment purposes only:
Figure that if 5,000 productive Linux contributors (code) read a typical "We rule!" story on Slashdot, spending, oh, 10 minutes on the self-congratulation, and read, oh, let's say, 3 such stories a week on here, that means on an average week the practice of Slashdot self-righteousness costs the Linux development effort 2,500 HOURS of time that could otherwise be spent on improving Linux! Now, let's be fair and not assume ALL of these coders would spend ANY time not reading Slashdot/sleeping/eating on developing for Linux. Let's be REAL conservative and say that only 10 PERCENT of that time would be spent otherwise on coding.
That's still 250 HOURS per month lost!
Just a thought (chuckles).
Design of Mozilla must address fears of business.
on
Mozilla Status Update
·
· Score: 4
What exactly am I getting at? Well, since we're on the topic of Mozilla design...
In my day job, I work for a company that helps to implement web sites for large banks and credit unions. One major concern of several of these institutions going forward is the issue of browser compatibility.
These institutions are VERY concerned about being able to continue filtering out browsers (primarily older browsers or those with known JavaScript problems) from their sites to keep support costs down.
With the advent of Mozilla and its inevitable widespread usage, fears of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different "flavours" of Mozilla, with unknown problems (potentially) with JavaScript or perhaps other features that could cause support nightmares abound.
Please, correct me if I haven't seen it yet, or I'm just plain ignorant to something, but what mechanism/process would an e-commerce site have to ensure that all those "Mozilla 5.0" User Agent strings are "clean" versions of Mozilla? Do you exclude these people from e-commerce sites for support reasons? Only allow people with "Netscape 5.0" User Agents? What if the popular "home brew" Mozilla distros decide to fake their user agent strings?
Perhaps the cybersquatter was hoping that an irate, menstruating Chyna would come to his door and beat the rights to the domain out of him? (Okay, that was just gross. I am so sorry. Really. Truly tasteless. I have no idea what I was thinking.)
Since we're chiming in with hosting service experiences, let me just say I use FutureQuest (www.futurequest.net) and have been delighted with them for the months I've been using them so far. They even support PHP3 and MySQL! (Which I use extensively on my site). Just my 2 cents.
Whenever a long dominant beast is finally bested by a larger beast, it will fight and fuss until it is silenced. The corporate beast which is (MPAA/RIAA/ABC/NBC/CBS/MTV/takeyourpick) is steeped in deep, deep denial of the future, of bandwidth and access to the media they have dominated so well for the last 30 years. Of course they will file frivolous, arrogant, amazingly void lawsuits against small, weak people (in the financial sense). The best way to make this quick and (relatively) painless is to expeditite the death of the behemoth. There are 2 ways to do this, and they must be done in tandem to be effective: 1) Openly defy their illegal assertions as much and in the most high-profile way possible. 2) Get the word out to anyone who will listen. The Swindle
IT seems that the once-mighty Slashdot has fallen to the inevitable forces of money and all the convenience that comes with it.
No longer under ANY tangible pressure to make the Slashdot content even vaguely synonymous with the word "quality", the past few months (quite coincidentally starting with the injection of well over a million dollars into the pockets of the Slashdot founders / main (only?) fulltime employees, with the promise of more millions to come) Malda, Hemos and co. have more or less abandoned any pretense of being a provider of "quality content". It seems that every other "story" posted to Slashdot in the last few weeks is based on at least a serious misunderstanding and quite possibly, (although this is only my humble opinion as an observer and not meant to be stated as fact, but speculation) gratuitous flamebait.
Reading the Andover.net prospectus on openipo.com (which I strongly recommend y'all read...very telling stuff!) we learn that the dynamic duo that brought us the once uber-cool Slashdot are effectively (on paper at least) millionaires today (or darn close to it) as a result of the Andover acquistion. Further reading of the prospectus tells us that the Slashdot founders can look to realize more millions in income based on their statying onboard, and the future "performance" of Slashdot.
But sadly, as we all know in the world of corporate internet media, "quality reporting", "journalistic integrity", and "objective editorial presentation" mean zero to "performance" of a web site owned by a corporation. As indicated in the Andover prospectus, 95 PERCENT of the revenue of Andover in the past year (I believe it was stated for last year, please correct me if I have the timeframe wrong) was AD REVENUE. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that AD REVENUE is most easily derived by getting a group of people in some common demographic (in this case, technology) to view your pages. A lot. And rather than take the high road, Slashsot appears quite comfortable with letting an ever-increasing mob correct the gross inaccuracies in its "reporting" , and realizes the inherent human instinct to participate as a spectator and a player in these flame-fests that are all too often the heart of Slashdot discussions these days, get the all-important PAGE VIEWS. In great quantities. Admit it. How often do you read a "story" on the Slashdot front page that seems so clearly wrong, or so destined to invoke a passionate (hostile) repsonse that you're just hooked, and you HAVE to continue reading the discussion. In the process generating many, MANY more PAGE VIEWS for Slashdot, more $$$ in the pockets of whom I submit, in my humble opinion are corrupted by said $$$, and , I also suggest, in my humble opinion, will be less and less motivated to improve the quality of the Slashdot experience the more we inevitably line their pockets supporting the all-to-typical Slashdot flame/correct-the-editors-fest.
Don't even get me started on the sad lack of interest in maintaining a healthy relationship with the developer community exhibited by Rob Malda with regards to the "open" Slash engine. Check out the "code" page. Note that the current "production" Slashdot uses code almost, what, a year older than what is posted on the "code" page? To take the stance that you're opening the code you've written that drives the Slashdot site, and then turn around and refuse to update the page for many many months at a time is NOT the way to look genuine, like you truly have some skin in the open source game. Granted, it may be a VERY busy life running Slashdot, but the occasional half-hour of posting the current code with warnings to how dangerous it may be to use in its current state is NOT too much to ask. If you don't feel you should be imposed on to do that, REMOVE the Slash code from the public domain, open-source, or whatever category it's currently in. But don't just try to "look" like an open-source player. Walk the walk AND talk the talk.
Okay, I'm done ranting for now, and probably just earned myself a lifetime ban on Slashdot. But boy, was it worth it, and boy, do I feel a LOT better now.
Yes, yes, your old pal the DougMan has in fact secured the currently-unreleased transcript of the Bill Gates interview conducted by our good friend Mr. Paxman. And it seems likely to THIS secret agent that some of this interview will never see the light of day...so to whet everyone's appetite, here is what will probably be a lost snippet from the interview, never meant to see the light of day... (lights please)...
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is innovating in many ways.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is an innovator in baby seal technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft has made the lives of many baby seals easier with its technological innovations.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (long pause, no answer)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Windows 2000 will enable baby seals everywhere to enjoy the benefits of Active Directory technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: In the future, baby seals will be able to talk to their PCs , and the PCs will talk back.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Eventually, all baby seals will be replaced.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (nervous twitch, long pause)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (violent shaking, Gates, falls to the floor and suffers a grand mal seizure. After being tended to by medics he gets back up and sits down.)
Paxman: I'll take that as a yes. Have you ever kidnapped babies and sold them on eBay?
There it is folks, a world exclusive. Don't share this with anyone!
For the reading pleasure of the Slashdot community, I have decided to take the English-to-Hungarian-to-English Madonna interview and run it through 2 more layers of translation.
Without further ado, here is the world premiere of the English-to-Hungarian-to-Puff Daddy-to-English-to-Linux Zealot translation of the Madonna interview. (lifts curtain)
Blikk: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the biggest fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.
Madonna: Thank you for saying these fresh compliments [holds up Red Hat CD]. Please stop with taking whack ass photographs until I have open sourced my body for all to see [crosses arms]. This is a joke I have made, muthafucka.
Blikk: Madonna, let's cut toward the hunt: Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?
Madonna: Yes, yes, this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be smack when a woman flashes that sweet booty in a phat joint with whack Tanqueray present. And there is a more normal attitude toward GPL'd software that also makes my day.
Blikk: Is this how you met Carlos, your love-servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other people in your bed at the same time?
Madonna: No, he was the only distro I was using in my crib then, so it is a scientific fact that the gnome desktop environment was made in my hootchie using him. But check yoself before you wreck yoself! I am a fly ho and not a closed-source solution! Carlos is an everyday distro who is in the orbit of a star who is being recompiled by him, not a playa.
Blikk: May we talk about your other "baby," your movie, then? Please do not be denying that the similarities between you and the real Evita are grounded in basis. Power, money, tasty food, Grammys--all these elements are afoot.
Madonna: What's your problem, G? Evita never ran on a Sparc station, you better recognize!
Blikk: Perhaps not. But as to your film, in trying to bring your reputation along a rocky road, can you make people forget the bad explosions of Who's That Girl? and Shanghai Surprise?
Madonna: I am a phat entertainer. That's my joint that I am paid (and share with the free software foundation) to do.
Blikk: O.K., here's a question from left space: What was your book Slut about?
Madonna: It was called Penguin, fool.
Blikk: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish? Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making suggestive literature to fast-selling CDs?
Madonna: I'm a pimp, I can do it all. I am preferring only to become respected all over the map as a 100% open source artist.
Blikk: There is much interest in you from this geographic region, so I must ask this final questions: How many Hungarian men have you dated in bed? Are they No. 1? How are they comparing to Argentine men, who are famous for being tip-top as well?
Madonna: Well, to avoid laying the global smack down, I would say microsoft sucks [crosses arms]. No, no, I am serious now. Give me props, I am working like a Beowulf cluster all the way around the clock! I have been too busy even to try the fine mary jane that makes your country one for the record books.
Blikk: Thank you for your candid chitchat.
Madonna: No problem, dope friend of open source who is a girl.
Let me step back just a bit and acknowledge that maybe I skewered Poulsen just a bit too much.
I have read his stuff and I am quite familiar with his story. I guess I just find it a bit annoying that he feels the need to weave in anecdotes about his "big bad hacker days" into every story he writes, regardless of whether there is one shred of direct relevance to the actual story itself. "You don't need to keep reminding us how cool and elite you feel you once were, Kevin!", that's all I'm saying.
Ok, this is a rare thing for me, posting 2 sharp-tounged comments on Slashdot in ONE morning, but here goes:
The person who really, truly cares about what the Gartner Group says about X piece of technology is also the person who probably considers his grandest technological decision of the year the large order of CD-ROM labelling devices he made at PC EXPO ("I saved 50 cents a unit by buying 1,000! And they gave me this COOL T-Shirt and stuffed animal!") and steadfastly believes wrestling is real.
Memo to the ignorant: Money = Favourable Gartner Group blurb. Duh.
Not to be a negative nancy this early in the morning (EST for me) but of all the journalists who have covered "Computer Security" Mr. Poulsen is one of the last ones I'm going to have interest in. Please recall the obnoxious pile-on, pretentious, self-serving "journalism" served up by this gentleman , not to mention his history of trying to be part of the news, not just a reporter of it.
Ok, I'm being really unfair / vicious. Time for some caffeine.
Hmm. (Putting concerned hat on and going to chalkboard)
IF this theory is valid, and the male ejaculate would in fact become a dangerous projectile should said ejaculate be discharged into the AIR, and given the variables present making it dangerous, wouldn't that mean that ejaculation into a standard issue female be akin to inserting an UZI into her most private and personal of areas and pulling the trigger?
(Now set to spend the rest of the day drawing things on whiteboard that will probably draw the curiousity of ALL passers-by to his office...)
You know, it seems to me that these days ANY attempt to be humourous on the all-holy Slashdot is met with negativity (and downward moderation). This isn't just my posts; I'm seeing it all around. It's really a shame. I don't think it's the flaming kiddies that are taking away from Slashdot; it's the egomaniacal, something stuffed-very-far-up-their-asses pious better-than-everyone-else folks with moderation access these days. And I wonder why some of my favourite posters aren't posting nearly as much anymore. I don't think I'll be posting again for awhile.
Slashdot Mirror
We have to keep in mind, we are (largely) techhies who could go work wherever we choose, and could easily jump from employer to employer should such a clear injustice occur to them...
but upon reading this story it looks like many of the people affected here were not technology people, who were perhaps in roles not so much in demand (the airline industry)..
...and much more easily victimized by this sort of behaviour. the corporate masters know damn well the employees can't do very much, it's not like there's 8 other airlines down the street they can run off to.
Perhaps the best way to help these folks is to call your friendly Northwest Airlines office and explain why you don't plan on flying with them anytime soon.
Of course you could also book a flight with them and take the oppurtunity to pass out pamphlets on the flight.
Why? The suit describes several clearly improper actions on the part of the RIAA, such as calling analysts of MP3.com's stock and more or less twisting their arms with nice not-so-subtle things like "what would happen to MP3.com's stock if we sued them?". That sort of thing is only a few slight notches above racketeering on the ethics totem pole, in my humble opinion.
I suspect that there are probably a lot of other fascinating tidbits that will come out of this trial, so I'll certainly be watching closely!
swindles? Huh? You missed one:
http://www.theswindle.com
First, I like the idea of Andover and VA Linux marrying. Both companies seem to be to be of the rare breed that "get it", and seem to do the right thing in almost all circumstances.
I'm wondering how this would affect the potential for Slashdot in the future to on it's own, or in partnerships, expand into other subject areas with its brand of site design and format. Granted, with the emergence of the open source Slash engine and PHPSlash, dozens of Slashlings are sprouting up everywhere (my own site included).
I guess I was just thinking at some point down the road that a "portal" or "index" of Slash-based sites covering a wide array of subject areas would emerge, either under the direct auspices of SlashDot, or some other party...I'm not sure how this acquisition would affect that scenario, tho.
Either way, I'm not disaffected. I think it's a great merger and I can't wait to see the results of the open Slash engines on the 'net.
...as this may incur some wrath from the masses, but I think it's a comment needing (and thus far not) to appear in this discussion..
The topic is "Will PSX2 replace the PC?". Obviously, a relevant subtopic would be "Will the Slashdot audience support the PSX2 replacing the PC, or for that matter being a success?"
IF you agree this is a valid sub-topic, then I am amazed that noone has yet brought up the (now political/social) issue of DVD. Remember, the PSX2 is amoung other things, a DVD player. Not by an option, but by default. And a lot of people that I see drooling over the PSX2 in this convo are also very passionate in other fora about boycotting DVD, and all who back it, about boycotting the MEDIA companies in cahoots with the DVD CCA (of which, in THIS case, Sony is BOTH). So, regardless of whether you believe the DVD makers or the DVD content providers should feel the pressure from us, realize that Sony is in both camps and therefore, if you believe that we should resist funding the pockets of those who are trying to squash our freedoms, Sony, like it or not, should be a prime target.
I agree I'm as bummed as the next guy to admit that, the PSX2 looks like it will be one kick-ass machine, but on principle, I will not support it until the DVD issues are resolved in a manner acceptable to the principles and freedoms at stake.
And as such, at the moment, I as a Slashdot reader cannont in good conscience wish the PSX2 to "Replace the PC", or even have success.
Just my 2 cents.
I decided to post a poll on my site asking the obvious question:
/. community are...please take a moment to jump over to The Swindle and register your vote. I promise to post a followup with the current tally tomorrow.
Are YOU boycotting DVD?
I'm curious to see what percentage of people in the
Or something like that....
.dll's , and Windows 2000 is notorious for reverting those same system dll's upon attempt to replace them.
What I mean, really, is that AOL 5.0 seems to shamelessly install rogue system
For my own amusement, I tried this experiment on a test machine on my network. Sure enough, AOL misbehaved, and within seconds of completing the install, Windows started telling me it was reverting files. Amusing, actually.
I'm actively working on figuring out exactly how W2K does that - file police. I'll let y'all know if I find some way to defeat it.
It sounds to me like the real fun is in speculating on what the Crusoe COULD do, or make possible, once various CPU instruction sets are implemented.
For example, a Motorola G4 instruction set software piece could pave the way for someone to sell a handheld/mobile Mac!
Amiga faithful could potentially see a handheld Amiga with a 68000 instruction set component!
Heck, now that I think of it, arcade games these days use various RISC processors, imagine going to an arcade, and renting the use of a handheld arcade game!
Fascinating stuff, I have to say. Fascinating.
1) In general, I agree with Linus' statements.
2) It's unfortunate that protecting one's trademark inevitably forces (per current law) the trademark holder to go to great lengths (read: expense) to protect the trademark. Personally, I can't see why the owner of a registered trademark shouldn't be allowed to selectively decide who may or may not use the trademark for their own pursuits. To force the owner to treat everyone equally seems kind of odd IMHO.
3) As a small (hopefully not for long) business owner myself, I've just filed a few trademark applications and I must say, the process isn't so bad, but it's prohibitively expensive, especially the issue of trademark searches. As a free bonus, let me mention a site I found where you can do free searches of the US trademark and service mark databases - an INVALUABLE utility for those without deep pockets interested in this sort of thing: Marksonline
As I read all the valid questions wondering exactly how USEFUL per se a Linux port to the N64 hardware would be, and knowing the progress some N64 emulators have had, and knowing that dumps and disassemblies of N64 games abound in the geek underground these days, and knowing we all have at least 1 computing device with Linux installed already, I keep thinking to myself:
Wouldn't it be FAR cooler for someone to port (admiteddly very legally dubiously) N64 games to Linux?
I'd personally wet myself if I woke up one morning and saw that Mario 64 was a tarball
Just A Thought.
First, here is a link to the charity the proceeds are going to, per the ebay item description: http://nashville.citysearch.com/E/V/NASTN/0002/13/ 67/cs1.html Second, note that the current bid price is $2,100, versus the $500 bid at the time the Slashdot story was originally posted. Egads. The Slashdot effect on eBay auctions? I can just see the call now for Malda to make karma points transferrable. It would be the next eBay craze - karma auctions.
C'mon, gang. You all know how good you are.
You all know how good Linux is, and that from a technical standpoint it's superior.
So, why is it that this little cult needs to stop the productive work it's doing to pat itself on the back every 5 minutes?
Think about it this way, and I realize right now this is COMPLETELY unscientific, for entertainment purposes only:
Figure that if 5,000 productive Linux contributors (code) read a typical "We rule!" story on Slashdot, spending, oh, 10 minutes on the self-congratulation, and read, oh, let's say, 3 such stories a week on here, that means on an average week the practice of Slashdot self-righteousness costs the Linux development effort 2,500 HOURS of time that could otherwise be spent on improving Linux! Now, let's be fair and not assume ALL of these coders would spend ANY time not reading Slashdot/sleeping/eating on developing for Linux. Let's be REAL conservative and say that only 10 PERCENT of that time would be spent otherwise on coding.
That's still 250 HOURS per month lost!
Just a thought (chuckles).
In my day job, I work for a company that helps to implement web sites for large banks and credit unions. One major concern of several of these institutions going forward is the issue of browser compatibility.
These institutions are VERY concerned about being able to continue filtering out browsers (primarily older browsers or those with known JavaScript problems) from their sites to keep support costs down.
With the advent of Mozilla and its inevitable widespread usage, fears of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of different "flavours" of Mozilla, with unknown problems (potentially) with JavaScript or perhaps other features that could cause support nightmares abound.
Please, correct me if I haven't seen it yet, or I'm just plain ignorant to something, but what mechanism/process would an e-commerce site have to ensure that all those "Mozilla 5.0" User Agent strings are "clean" versions of Mozilla? Do you exclude these people from e-commerce sites for support reasons? Only allow people with "Netscape 5.0" User Agents? What if the popular "home brew" Mozilla distros decide to fake their user agent strings?
Just a thought or three. Any ideas?
Perhaps the cybersquatter was hoping that an irate, menstruating Chyna would come to his door and beat the rights to the domain out of him? (Okay, that was just gross. I am so sorry. Really. Truly tasteless. I have no idea what I was thinking.)
Since we're chiming in with hosting service experiences, let me just say I use FutureQuest (www.futurequest.net) and have been delighted with them for the months I've been using them so far. They even support PHP3 and MySQL! (Which I use extensively on my site). Just my 2 cents.
Whenever a long dominant beast is finally bested by a larger beast, it will fight and fuss until it is silenced. The corporate beast which is (MPAA/RIAA/ABC/NBC/CBS/MTV/takeyourpick) is steeped in deep, deep denial of the future, of bandwidth and access to the media they have dominated so well for the last 30 years. Of course they will file frivolous, arrogant, amazingly void lawsuits against small, weak people (in the financial sense). The best way to make this quick and (relatively) painless is to expeditite the death of the behemoth. There are 2 ways to do this, and they must be done in tandem to be effective: 1) Openly defy their illegal assertions as much and in the most high-profile way possible. 2) Get the word out to anyone who will listen. The Swindle
IT seems that the once-mighty Slashdot has fallen to the inevitable forces of money and all the convenience that comes with it.
No longer under ANY tangible pressure to make the Slashdot content even vaguely synonymous with the word "quality", the past few months (quite coincidentally starting with the injection of well over a million dollars into the pockets of the Slashdot founders / main (only?) fulltime employees, with the promise of more millions to come) Malda, Hemos and co. have more or less abandoned any pretense of being a provider of "quality content". It seems that every other "story" posted to Slashdot in the last few weeks is based on at least a serious misunderstanding and quite possibly, (although this is only my humble opinion as an observer and not meant to be stated as fact, but speculation) gratuitous flamebait.
Reading the Andover.net prospectus on openipo.com (which I strongly recommend y'all read...very telling stuff!) we learn that the dynamic duo that brought us the once uber-cool Slashdot are effectively (on paper at least) millionaires today (or darn close to it) as a result of the Andover acquistion. Further reading of the prospectus tells us that the Slashdot founders can look to realize more millions in income based on their statying onboard, and the future "performance" of Slashdot.
But sadly, as we all know in the world of corporate internet media, "quality reporting", "journalistic integrity", and "objective editorial presentation" mean zero to "performance" of a web site owned by a corporation. As indicated in the Andover prospectus, 95 PERCENT of the revenue of Andover in the past year (I believe it was stated for last year, please correct me if I have the timeframe wrong) was AD REVENUE. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that AD REVENUE is most easily derived by getting a group of people in some common demographic (in this case, technology) to view your pages. A lot. And rather than take the high road, Slashsot appears quite comfortable with letting an ever-increasing mob correct the gross inaccuracies in its "reporting" , and realizes the inherent human instinct to participate as a spectator and a player in these flame-fests that are all too often the heart of Slashdot discussions these days, get the all-important PAGE VIEWS. In great quantities. Admit it. How often do you read a "story" on the Slashdot front page that seems so clearly wrong, or so destined to invoke a passionate (hostile) repsonse that you're just hooked, and you HAVE to continue reading the discussion. In the process generating many, MANY more PAGE VIEWS for Slashdot, more $$$ in the pockets of whom I submit, in my humble opinion are corrupted by said $$$, and , I also suggest, in my humble opinion, will be less and less motivated to improve the quality of the Slashdot experience the more we inevitably line their pockets supporting the all-to-typical Slashdot flame/correct-the-editors-fest.
Don't even get me started on the sad lack of interest in maintaining a healthy relationship with the developer community exhibited by Rob Malda with regards to the "open" Slash engine. Check out the "code" page. Note that the current "production" Slashdot uses code almost, what, a year older than what is posted on the "code" page?
To take the stance that you're opening the code you've written that drives the Slashdot site, and then turn around and refuse to update the page for many many months at a time is NOT the way to look genuine, like you truly have some skin in the open source game. Granted, it may be a VERY busy life running Slashdot, but the occasional half-hour of posting the current code with warnings to how dangerous it may be to use in its current state is NOT too much to ask. If you don't feel you should be imposed on to do that, REMOVE the Slash code from the public domain, open-source, or whatever category it's currently in. But don't just try to "look" like an open-source player. Walk the walk AND talk the talk.
Okay, I'm done ranting for now, and probably just earned myself a lifetime ban on Slashdot. But boy, was it worth it, and boy, do I feel a LOT better now.
-el Dougo
Yes, yes, your old pal the DougMan has in fact secured the currently-unreleased transcript of the Bill Gates interview conducted by our good friend Mr. Paxman. And it seems likely to THIS secret agent that some of this interview will never see the light of day...so to whet everyone's appetite, here is what will probably be a lost snippet from the interview, never meant to see the light of day... (lights please)...
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is innovating in many ways.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft is an innovator in baby seal technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Microsoft has made the lives of many baby seals easier with its technological innovations.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (long pause, no answer)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Windows 2000 will enable baby seals everywhere to enjoy the benefits of Active Directory technology.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: In the future, baby seals will be able to talk to their PCs , and the PCs will talk back.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: Eventually, all baby seals will be replaced.
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (nervous twitch, long pause)
Paxman: Have you ever clubbed a baby seal?
Gates: (violent shaking, Gates, falls to the floor and suffers a grand mal seizure. After being tended to by medics he gets back up and sits down.)
Paxman: I'll take that as a yes. Have you ever kidnapped babies and sold them on eBay?
There it is folks, a world exclusive. Don't share this with anyone!
For the reading pleasure of the Slashdot community, I have decided to take the English-to-Hungarian-to-English Madonna interview and run it through 2 more layers of translation.
Without further ado, here is the world premiere of the English-to-Hungarian-to-Puff Daddy-to-English-to-Linux Zealot translation of the Madonna interview. (lifts curtain)
Blikk: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the biggest
fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.
Madonna: Thank you for saying these fresh compliments [holds up Red Hat CD]. Please stop with taking whack ass photographs until I have open sourced my body for all to
see [crosses arms]. This is a joke I have made, muthafucka.
Blikk: Madonna, let's cut toward the hunt: Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?
Madonna: Yes, yes, this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be smack when a woman flashes that sweet booty in a phat joint with whack Tanqueray present. And there is a more normal attitude toward GPL'd software that also makes my day.
Blikk: Is this how you met Carlos, your love-servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other people
in your bed at the same time?
Madonna: No, he was the only distro I was using in my crib then, so it is a scientific fact that the gnome desktop environment was made in my hootchie using him. But check yoself before you wreck yoself! I am a fly ho and not a closed-source solution! Carlos is an everyday distro who is in the orbit of a star who is being recompiled by him, not a playa.
Blikk: May we talk about your other "baby," your movie, then? Please do not be denying that the similarities between you and the real Evita are grounded in basis.
Power, money, tasty food, Grammys--all these elements are afoot.
Madonna: What's your problem, G? Evita never ran on a Sparc station, you better recognize!
Blikk: Perhaps not. But as to your film, in trying to bring your reputation along a rocky road, can you make people forget the bad explosions of Who's That Girl?
and Shanghai Surprise?
Madonna: I am a phat entertainer. That's my joint that I am paid (and share with the free software foundation) to do.
Blikk: O.K., here's a question from left space: What was your book Slut about?
Madonna: It was called Penguin, fool.
Blikk: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish? Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making
suggestive literature to fast-selling CDs?
Madonna: I'm a pimp, I can do it all. I am preferring only to become respected all over the map as a 100% open source artist.
Blikk: There is much interest in you from this geographic region, so I must ask this final questions: How many Hungarian men have you dated in bed? Are they No.
1? How are they comparing to Argentine men, who are famous for being tip-top as well?
Madonna: Well, to avoid laying the global smack down, I would say microsoft sucks [crosses arms]. No, no, I am serious now. Give me props, I am working like a Beowulf cluster all the way
around the clock! I have been too busy even to try the fine mary jane that makes your country one for the record books.
Blikk: Thank you for your candid chitchat.
Madonna: No problem, dope friend of open source who is a girl.
Let me step back just a bit and acknowledge that maybe I skewered Poulsen just a bit too much.
I have read his stuff and I am quite familiar with his story. I guess I just find it a bit annoying that he feels the need to weave in anecdotes about his "big bad hacker days" into every story he writes, regardless of whether there is one shred of direct relevance to the actual story itself.
"You don't need to keep reminding us how cool and elite you feel you once were, Kevin!", that's all I'm saying.
Feeling better now,
Ok, this is a rare thing for me, posting 2 sharp-tounged comments on Slashdot in ONE morning, but here goes:
The person who really, truly cares about what the Gartner Group says about X piece of technology is also the person who probably considers his grandest technological decision of the year the large order of CD-ROM labelling devices he made at PC EXPO ("I saved 50 cents a unit by buying 1,000! And they gave me this COOL T-Shirt and stuffed animal!") and steadfastly believes wrestling is real.
Memo to the ignorant: Money = Favourable Gartner Group blurb. Duh.
Not to be a negative nancy this early in the morning (EST for me) but of all the journalists who have covered "Computer Security" Mr. Poulsen is one of the last ones I'm going to have interest in. Please recall the obnoxious pile-on, pretentious, self-serving "journalism" served up by this gentleman , not to mention his history of trying to be part of the news, not just a reporter of it.
Ok, I'm being really unfair / vicious. Time for some caffeine.
So,
(warning to the humour impaired: Slashdot cliche ahead)
I'm a 26 year old male. If I someday decide to have kids with my honeybunny might the doctor potentially be able to say to her:
"Congratulations! The genetic engineering was a success. Instead of twins you're going to have a Beowulf cluster!"
(running quickly from mass of groaning people)
I'll be here all week, try the veal.
(Cymbal crash)
Hmm. (Putting concerned hat on and going to chalkboard)
IF this theory is valid, and the male ejaculate would in fact become a dangerous projectile should said ejaculate be discharged into the AIR, and given the variables present making it dangerous, wouldn't that mean that ejaculation into a standard issue female be akin to inserting an UZI into her most private and personal of areas and pulling the trigger?
(Now set to spend the rest of the day drawing things on whiteboard that will probably draw the curiousity of ALL passers-by to his office...)
Blinded with science,
DougMan
(slightly annoyed hat on)
You know, it seems to me that these days ANY attempt to be humourous on the all-holy Slashdot is met with negativity (and downward moderation). This isn't just my posts; I'm seeing it all around. It's really a shame. I don't think it's the flaming kiddies that are taking away from Slashdot; it's the egomaniacal, something stuffed-very-far-up-their-asses pious better-than-everyone-else folks with moderation access these days. And I wonder why some of my favourite posters aren't posting nearly as much anymore. I don't think I'll be posting again for awhile.