To be fair, there's no reason why/. couldn't implement an edit feature and keep the edit history available as well. Hell, even just append the post with the edited post and show the original as scored out text just above it, or hidden under a "show original" button that's quite obvious. That way nobody can abuse it to make it look like they said something else without making themselves look like an idiot. And if you're really concerned about the "reward" system, have the system ignore any post that's been edited for any reason, which would also encourage people not to abuse it and those that do won't get any benefit for it.
Of course, that would probably require some effort from the slashdot web monkeys.
I'd just like to point out that in my original post, I wasn't so much debating the Irony in the situation, but rather asking for clarification as to why it was Ironic. The summary implies that a lot more has went on with Apache and Java than stated and since I'm not clued up on it, I was curious for more information. I was half-expecting someone to say that Apache invested into Java in some way, before decrying it to be sour.
Once again, why does that make it Ironic? Apache had good reason to warn everyone, they got shafted by Oracle. In that instance, it seems highly appropriate that Apache warned the community.
an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
Why would it be unexpected of Apache to warn the community after they resigned from the Java Community Process committee? Surely that's the exact opposite, surely it's expected that Apache would warn the community since they resigned for a reason.
...but why is it Ironic that the Apache foundation were the first to warn the community? From reading the summary, it seems highly appropriate that Apache were the first ones to warn the community, not Ironic at all. Unless, of course, I'm missing something (which I suspect I am).
I suspect you might be on to something there, that certainly does seem to be a very out of place link (to the point where it took me a while to find it, knowing that it was there).
Exactly, a lot of work for what people are dismissing as a cheap laugh. Maybe they were just being thorough, but I suspect that they put the effort in for a reason.
Well played, whoever did this. Sure, a lot of/.ers are no doubt going to play the "I suspected it was fraudulent from the second I heard of it!" card, but they essentially trolled the entire internet and caught out enough big news agencies (from slashdot to the BBC) to make their efforts worthwhile. I just wonder why, though? Was it as simple as trolling the internet, or was there some other purpose to it? Can anyone think of a legitimate reason for this, other than a cheap laugh?
I'm not so sure, it all depends on moore's law and how well we can keep up with it. Essentially, SSDs should go the way processors have - doubling in capacity every 18months or so. For the sake of argument, let's say that a 120Gb SSD is $200, the same $200 in 18months time should, theoretically, get you 240Gb. In 3 years time, it should be 480Gb, 4.5 years would be nearly 1TB and in 6 years, 2TB SSDs shouldn't be that unthinkable, for the same $200 you'd spend today. It was only couple of years ago that a 2TB Mechanical HDD cost about that and I believe it's a lot harder to increase the capacity of HDDs than it is to perform die shrinks. Then when you factor in that the value of Mechanical drives is going to plummet as the capacity difference between them and SSDs narrows, there'll probably be a lot less investment in them in future. Of course I could be just making this all up, it's just my own observation.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, the MAC address is actually something different entirely than the "unique ID" they're speaking of (although the MAC is supposed to be unique in itself). If they are talking about the MAC address, it sure as hell isn't "sometimes" called a MAC address, it IS called a MAC address. That's like saying "This site is sometimes called slashdot".
From TFA: The technology uses a series of base stations within that radius, so it isn't actually one central router like everyone seems to think. In fact, I'm struggling to figure out what makes it so different, other than the frequencies used.
I'm not saying its acceptable, what I'm saying is that the issue has cropped up about 6 or 7 times so far and most of those have been out of virgins control. Virgin may have stepped on the rake twice, but Blizzard have done a side show Bob.
I probably missed more than a few, but I figured the post was long enough as it was. Honestly, aside from the technology in use (and by that, I mean using a cable network, not the actual implementation of that network), Virgin has very few saving graces.
Indeed, I may have glanced over that point a bit too much - where there's a will, there's a way, but Virgin doesn't in any way endorse or support what you've done there. If average joe calls in and says "this new hub is shit, can I use my old router?" they get told no and IF the agent tells them yes, the agent will be reprimanded for it because the next time average joe calls in and gets someone who doesn't know how it, he'll get pissed off and say "Last time I was told I can do it, now you're saying I can't?".
Quite a few people have commented saying that it's no surprise that people are leaving BT - they're more expensive, utterly useless and switching DSL providers isn't as much hassle, whereas Virgin is a different case since their technology is actually better - why would people want to leave? The reasons are numerous, let me just give a few examples:
*Call centre staff are outsourced. 80% (if not more) of the call centre staff are outsourced to Indian call centres. This immediately creates a language barrier, particularly with anyone from Scotland as the outsourced staff can't understand the accent.
*ALL Call centre staff are severely undertrained The offshore agents are barely trained at all, as they're trained by people who have been trained by people who have been trained by someone from IBM (whom Virgin contracts to do all their support) who hasn't actually done the job. The net result is that it takes agents months to get even remotely familliar with the tools and equipment Virgin uses and that's assuming they last that long. Onshore isn't a great deal better. They have a dedicated training team, however the training period is 4 weeks. That's for EVERYTHING the job entails, from fixing modems, to wireless, to email and Virgin security. Years ago before wireless and the value added services were a factor, the training period was 6 weeks. Additionally, the training material is GROSSLY out of date. It dictates that 2 days are spent learning how to adjust the frequency of a modem that is no longer used by Virgin. If a customer still has one of these modems, it is meant to be replaced immediately because it's well over 3 years old (more like 6). However, the training material is controlled by Virgin, who refuse to let the training team touch it. This means trainers are forced to train out old, outdated material and try to squeeze in the "real" material when and where they can. The hiring process is even worse. No consideration is given to how technically minded you are, or how much you know about computers. I've seen people show up for customer services roles and been told they're going to do Technical support - despite barely knowing how to use a computer themselves.
*The VM Hub and Superhub BT have a "home hub", whereas Virgin have relied on dedicated modems and separate routers for years. This meant that customers had to have 2 separate devices to get wireless and the wireless routers weren't Virgin specific (unlike the modems), meaning that customers could say they were broke, get new ones and sell them on ebay. So Virgin decided to do an all-in-one soultion, much like BT's home hub. There were two models - the VM hub and the "superhub". The VM Hub is a DOCSIS 2 device, the super hub is DOCSIS 3. The problem? Both hubs have issues, serious issues. The wireless range on the regular hub is ABYSMAL, you can literally lose the signal from being in the same room. The Superhub is SLIGHTLY better, but still nothing on a dedicated router. But can you still plug in your own router? Nope, VM deliberately disabled the DHCP options within the HUB, meaning you have to rely on it (although a patch is coming that will enable "gateway" mode). Other issues include the firewall causing connections to drop randomly, the hub would occasionally and for no reason decide to stop leasing IPs from the network, forcing the customer offline and so on. The list goes on and on and it still isn't fixed - most customers that went from a dedicated modem to a SHUB or HUB have regretted it and wanted their old modems back, but Virgin won't let support staff issue modems any more, so you're screwed.
*Sheer incompetence The hubs are just one example of how useless Virgin are at implementing ANYTHING - they recently changed their website to "make it better" and give customers more control of their accounts, but instead it locked many customers out of their accounts entirely. It caused emails to get orphaned from accounts, meaning support staff wouldn't even attempt to reset a password or fix it because they
Because 80% of their call centre staff are outsourced to India. The training they receive is abysmal, they're rude and regularly just hang up on people. If you are with virgin and don't have an issue, you're fine, but if you have ever had an issue, it's a nightmare to get it sorted.
Actually, the only happened twice. All of the recent issues have been caused by Blizzard's host in france, a couple of ISPs in Europe have been affected by it.
...but shouldn't the real story be about how much information your gadgets are just leaking all over the place? Google didn't break into people's homes and write down the MAC addresses of every piece of tech they could find, they just recorded what was already being blasted through the airwaves. Now, I'm not saying this makes it all ok, but at least we KNOW Google is doing it - what's to stop other companies/groups/individuals from doing the same? The real issue is that the information is out there, not that someone decided to collect it.
If your Bank decided to put a list of all bank accounts that have recently been accessed on its home page, would you blame the identity thieves for stealing all your money, or would you blame the bank for broadcasting your information?
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, there's no reason why /. couldn't implement an edit feature and keep the edit history available as well. Hell, even just append the post with the edited post and show the original as scored out text just above it, or hidden under a "show original" button that's quite obvious. That way nobody can abuse it to make it look like they said something else without making themselves look like an idiot. And if you're really concerned about the "reward" system, have the system ignore any post that's been edited for any reason, which would also encourage people not to abuse it and those that do won't get any benefit for it.
Of course, that would probably require some effort from the slashdot web monkeys.
Since when Have you been able to resale pc games?
I don't see anything here that permits Google to track you any more than they already do.
I'd just like to point out that in my original post, I wasn't so much debating the Irony in the situation, but rather asking for clarification as to why it was Ironic. The summary implies that a lot more has went on with Apache and Java than stated and since I'm not clued up on it, I was curious for more information. I was half-expecting someone to say that Apache invested into Java in some way, before decrying it to be sour.
Once again, why does that make it Ironic? Apache had good reason to warn everyone, they got shafted by Oracle. In that instance, it seems highly appropriate that Apache warned the community.
Irony, as defined by http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Irony
an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
Why would it be unexpected of Apache to warn the community after they resigned from the Java Community Process committee? Surely that's the exact opposite, surely it's expected that Apache would warn the community since they resigned for a reason.
That wont work because Oracle will still sue you for patent infringement (See Oracle v. Android).
...but why is it Ironic that the Apache foundation were the first to warn the community? From reading the summary, it seems highly appropriate that Apache were the first ones to warn the community, not Ironic at all. Unless, of course, I'm missing something (which I suspect I am).
What makes you so sure they bother to differentiate between the two?
I suspect you might be on to something there, that certainly does seem to be a very out of place link (to the point where it took me a while to find it, knowing that it was there).
Exactly, a lot of work for what people are dismissing as a cheap laugh. Maybe they were just being thorough, but I suspect that they put the effort in for a reason.
Well played, whoever did this. Sure, a lot of /.ers are no doubt going to play the "I suspected it was fraudulent from the second I heard of it!" card, but they essentially trolled the entire internet and caught out enough big news agencies (from slashdot to the BBC) to make their efforts worthwhile.
I just wonder why, though? Was it as simple as trolling the internet, or was there some other purpose to it? Can anyone think of a legitimate reason for this, other than a cheap laugh?
I'm not so sure, it all depends on moore's law and how well we can keep up with it. Essentially, SSDs should go the way processors have - doubling in capacity every 18months or so.
For the sake of argument, let's say that a 120Gb SSD is $200, the same $200 in 18months time should, theoretically, get you 240Gb. In 3 years time, it should be 480Gb, 4.5 years would be nearly 1TB and in 6 years, 2TB SSDs shouldn't be that unthinkable, for the same $200 you'd spend today. It was only couple of years ago that a 2TB Mechanical HDD cost about that and I believe it's a lot harder to increase the capacity of HDDs than it is to perform die shrinks. Then when you factor in that the value of Mechanical drives is going to plummet as the capacity difference between them and SSDs narrows, there'll probably be a lot less investment in them in future. Of course I could be just making this all up, it's just my own observation.
x10?
Don't your average, bog-standard windows programs run in an infinite loop? Does this account for that?
Also, if I'm not mistaken, the MAC address is actually something different entirely than the "unique ID" they're speaking of (although the MAC is supposed to be unique in itself). If they are talking about the MAC address, it sure as hell isn't "sometimes" called a MAC address, it IS called a MAC address. That's like saying "This site is sometimes called slashdot".
From TFA: The technology uses a series of base stations within that radius, so it isn't actually one central router like everyone seems to think. In fact, I'm struggling to figure out what makes it so different, other than the frequencies used.
Shit, boys, I think they got to this one!
I'm not saying its acceptable, what I'm saying is that the issue has cropped up about 6 or 7 times so far and most of those have been out of virgins control. Virgin may have stepped on the rake twice, but Blizzard have done a side show Bob.
I probably missed more than a few, but I figured the post was long enough as it was. Honestly, aside from the technology in use (and by that, I mean using a cable network, not the actual implementation of that network), Virgin has very few saving graces.
Indeed, I may have glanced over that point a bit too much - where there's a will, there's a way, but Virgin doesn't in any way endorse or support what you've done there. If average joe calls in and says "this new hub is shit, can I use my old router?" they get told no and IF the agent tells them yes, the agent will be reprimanded for it because the next time average joe calls in and gets someone who doesn't know how it, he'll get pissed off and say "Last time I was told I can do it, now you're saying I can't?".
Quite a few people have commented saying that it's no surprise that people are leaving BT - they're more expensive, utterly useless and switching DSL providers isn't as much hassle, whereas Virgin is a different case since their technology is actually better - why would people want to leave? The reasons are numerous, let me just give a few examples:
*Call centre staff are outsourced.
80% (if not more) of the call centre staff are outsourced to Indian call centres. This immediately creates a language barrier, particularly with anyone from Scotland as the outsourced staff can't understand the accent.
*ALL Call centre staff are severely undertrained
The offshore agents are barely trained at all, as they're trained by people who have been trained by people who have been trained by someone from IBM (whom Virgin contracts to do all their support) who hasn't actually done the job. The net result is that it takes agents months to get even remotely familliar with the tools and equipment Virgin uses and that's assuming they last that long.
Onshore isn't a great deal better. They have a dedicated training team, however the training period is 4 weeks. That's for EVERYTHING the job entails, from fixing modems, to wireless, to email and Virgin security. Years ago before wireless and the value added services were a factor, the training period was 6 weeks.
Additionally, the training material is GROSSLY out of date. It dictates that 2 days are spent learning how to adjust the frequency of a modem that is no longer used by Virgin. If a customer still has one of these modems, it is meant to be replaced immediately because it's well over 3 years old (more like 6). However, the training material is controlled by Virgin, who refuse to let the training team touch it. This means trainers are forced to train out old, outdated material and try to squeeze in the "real" material when and where they can.
The hiring process is even worse. No consideration is given to how technically minded you are, or how much you know about computers. I've seen people show up for customer services roles and been told they're going to do Technical support - despite barely knowing how to use a computer themselves.
*The VM Hub and Superhub
BT have a "home hub", whereas Virgin have relied on dedicated modems and separate routers for years. This meant that customers had to have 2 separate devices to get wireless and the wireless routers weren't Virgin specific (unlike the modems), meaning that customers could say they were broke, get new ones and sell them on ebay. So Virgin decided to do an all-in-one soultion, much like BT's home hub. There were two models - the VM hub and the "superhub". The VM Hub is a DOCSIS 2 device, the super hub is DOCSIS 3. The problem? Both hubs have issues, serious issues. The wireless range on the regular hub is ABYSMAL, you can literally lose the signal from being in the same room. The Superhub is SLIGHTLY better, but still nothing on a dedicated router. But can you still plug in your own router? Nope, VM deliberately disabled the DHCP options within the HUB, meaning you have to rely on it (although a patch is coming that will enable "gateway" mode). Other issues include the firewall causing connections to drop randomly, the hub would occasionally and for no reason decide to stop leasing IPs from the network, forcing the customer offline and so on. The list goes on and on and it still isn't fixed - most customers that went from a dedicated modem to a SHUB or HUB have regretted it and wanted their old modems back, but Virgin won't let support staff issue modems any more, so you're screwed.
*Sheer incompetence
The hubs are just one example of how useless Virgin are at implementing ANYTHING - they recently changed their website to "make it better" and give customers more control of their accounts, but instead it locked many customers out of their accounts entirely. It caused emails to get orphaned from accounts, meaning support staff wouldn't even attempt to reset a password or fix it because they
Because 80% of their call centre staff are outsourced to India. The training they receive is abysmal, they're rude and regularly just hang up on people. If you are with virgin and don't have an issue, you're fine, but if you have ever had an issue, it's a nightmare to get it sorted.
Actually, the only happened twice. All of the recent issues have been caused by Blizzard's host in france, a couple of ISPs in Europe have been affected by it.
Because people are outraged at Google and nobody seems to be asking why their devices were generating all this data in the first place.
...but shouldn't the real story be about how much information your gadgets are just leaking all over the place? Google didn't break into people's homes and write down the MAC addresses of every piece of tech they could find, they just recorded what was already being blasted through the airwaves. Now, I'm not saying this makes it all ok, but at least we KNOW Google is doing it - what's to stop other companies/groups/individuals from doing the same? The real issue is that the information is out there, not that someone decided to collect it.
If your Bank decided to put a list of all bank accounts that have recently been accessed on its home page, would you blame the identity thieves for stealing all your money, or would you blame the bank for broadcasting your information?