Your hobby store needs to realize what is really bring people into the store and charge a fair price for it.
My local store was a hot spot of gaming, we would have all chipped in $2-5 a night to game, all they had to do was start doing it. Instead, it went under and now there isn't a decent place to play outside of people's homes.
What GW is probably trying to do is protect their resellers' profit margins.
NO, what they're really trying to do is protect their customers (the resellers). Realize that most of GW's sales are to their resellers. Those resellers are under strict purchasing requirements (see thread elsewhere). The resellers ARE GWs customers, we end-users don't really interest GW (witness some of their lame customer service and poor book editing).
On the value-add side, most of the retailers in my area are pretty much cluesless on the games, unless you want to talk when the product will be available for sale. And they all sell at MSRP. I only support a local store if I feel like they are doing something, like providing gaming areas and that sort of thing.
I don't see a connection to Heinlein even though they DID call it "Starship Troopers". Gack. Too bad Heinlein didn't get to see it, he would have reamed Hollywood but good.
I use lm_sensors with my x86 systems (non-Compaq), with Nagios handling the monitoring. Nagios is incredibly easy to extend, creating a plugin for the health stuff shouldn't take more than a simple shell or perl script.
What really needed here is for Compaq to open the specs on their health monitoring interface. This is what limits me from running Gentoo on my Sun SPARCs as well; I need to know the temps and fans are all ok.
The article also goes on to say this could be an exploit of SQL Slammer proportions. And could cause birth defects in unborn children, destruction of family morals and the end of civilization.
The source is MSNBC, not exactly unbiased are they?
Not sure about the details yet, but it seems to me internal servers should be patched if there is any possibilty of them sending messages with ANY user inputted email addresses.
If all internal server only receive filtered data (CGI scripts, that sort of thing with limits on input fields) then I don't think they would have to be patched. I'm not 100% on this though. Bottom line is everything should eventually be patched.
You suffer from BINDism. BIND is bad, it takes several different name server roles and presents them one. The result: code bloat.
The proper way is represented by djbdns. Need something to cache queries on a desktop machine? Fine, you need a cache. Do you need that cache to ever serve authortative info? No. For that matter, should it answer anything other than localhost? Again, no. Do you need to install several megabytes of binaries to have a cache? Again, no.
Small programs that do exactly the minimum functions with easily understandable source, that is the way to secure, bug-free code.
Speaking as a person who works with Mac Users, the initial response was good. That is, if they noticed at all.
Then, over the months, the attitude changed as people needed to access info on floppies or use an older piece of hardware with only an Apple serial connection. Now that USB floppy drives, USB serial converters and ADB converters have been purchased and gotten to work, everyone is once again happy the floppies are gone.
If you like Glen Cook, you'd probably enjoy Steven Brust. His books are a little on the short side, but then they move so fast I don't think I could take it if they were much longer.:) He has that Black Company feel, IMHO.
You're mixing the what you're calling "value" compared to the poster. Value can be money, time or another unit. It boils down to this: Yes, it's worth the time to read; however it's not worth any money, from the poster's viewpoint.
Nothing is without value on some basis (time,money, whatever), but that does not mean everything has a monetary value. Google has NO monetary value UNTIL someone actually pays for it. I could put a million dollar price tag on a bag of garbage, but until someone actually buys it from me, it isn't worth a million dollars.
It isn't a question of "website subscription" versus "buy a CD". That presumes that the prices are equal. The appropriate question is whether a hundred website pages are worth a print magazin. Or a thousand.
This is what I responding to. Micropayments has nothing to do with relative worth, it's a means for paying that worth. The parent was talking about a website subscription (or any fee for content I suppose). Arguing about realitive values means nothing.
Now, your argument that valuing content differently based on its delivery mechanism (website vs newspaper) not making sense holds no water. Indeed, in your comparision, the content means nothing, the sole difference in worth to a person is the delivery mechanism. The parent basically said this: 'the content is worthless unless delivered in a format valuable to me'. I think that sums up the whole argument very well.
That doesn't make any sense unless you view the NYT as being primarily about paper, not about content
Evidently this is exactly how the parent values the NYT NEWSPAPER. I would have to agree, but then I don't read the NYT nor would I subscribe to it in any format, including free.
You're quibbling over the definition of "micropayment". Parent defines as subscription to a website, you define it as pay per page apparently. Who's correct? Neither of you.
The problem with micropayments has nothing to do with the thing being payed for; micropayment refers to paying for a thing, whatever that thing may be. So, consider the problems: per-transaction costs are way too high, no confidence from buyers, little support from retailers and huge logistics problems, not to mention security!
As to the parent poster, yes, creating content costs money. However, if no one is willing to pay anything for that content, it is worth NOTHING. Claiming high costs to create a product does nothing to increase its value nor increases the amount a reasonable person would pay for the product.
I didn't get to read the actual article at the time, it was/.d. However, I did read a copy someone posted, so no excuse.
Rereading today, the article mentions DNA testing was requested on the sample from the tampon, nothing about any results nor whether they have or requested a DNA sample from Hoesly. So the question remains proper and unanswered, as chialea pointed out.
Suppose they do get the DNA results back, are the police allowed to demand a sample from Hoesly for comparision? If asked, would she be obligated to provide a sample?
You're right. Any company that can't justify "using the source" to fix a problem should be looking at paid support. I won't call foul on your poor pick of numbers or overestimating the time a "fix" would take, suffice to say some cost will be involved and it will probably be more than paying Consultants XYZ, Inc. to fix it.
But here's the rub: WITHOUT the source, that whole choice is not an option. You can't ask XYZ, Inc. to fix it for you, you have to coordinate with the vendor to get something fixed and are completely at their mercy (read schedule and resource limits) to get a fix. And they can always claim non-issue, must be a problem specific with your setup.
Of course, companies with the foresight to keep inhouse talent strong will easily make that fix from source with a minimum of fuss.
So, what to do about support:
1. Pay for it. 2. Participate in the community and realize free support is worth what you put in (read that carefully). 3. Develop inhouse talent.
Did you sit down with a blind fold and a screen reader and try to use your own site?
Being Bobby compliant does not instantly mean a site is accessible to the blind. Specifically, certain uses of tables can render pages completely unusable from what I've heard (IANABP).
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever dude. Maybe GW really believes that, in which case I say "WAKE UP!! YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE PISSED!".
Microsoft can be a monopoly all they want, as long as their product isn't CRAP. Make a good product and the world will come to you and it's all good.
Now, becoming number one by shifty business practices and gouging your customers, that is certainly not right.
Your hobby store needs to realize what is really bring people into the store and charge a fair price for it.
My local store was a hot spot of gaming, we would have all chipped in $2-5 a night to game, all they had to do was start doing it. Instead, it went under and now there isn't a decent place to play outside of people's homes.
Selling at MSRP is not what the market wants.
NO, what they're really trying to do is protect their customers (the resellers). Realize that most of GW's sales are to their resellers. Those resellers are under strict purchasing requirements (see thread elsewhere). The resellers ARE GWs customers, we end-users don't really interest GW (witness some of their lame customer service and poor book editing).
On the value-add side, most of the retailers in my area are pretty much cluesless on the games, unless you want to talk when the product will be available for sale. And they all sell at MSRP. I only support a local store if I feel like they are doing something, like providing gaming areas and that sort of thing.
That's because it isn't in there.
Now, the TOURNAMENT rules for Games Workshop tournaments do say that.
Heh.
I don't see a connection to Heinlein even though they DID call it "Starship Troopers". Gack. Too bad Heinlein didn't get to see it, he would have reamed Hollywood but good.
I use lm_sensors with my x86 systems (non-Compaq), with Nagios handling the monitoring. Nagios is incredibly easy to extend, creating a plugin for the health stuff shouldn't take more than a simple shell or perl script.
What really needed here is for Compaq to open the specs on their health monitoring interface. This is what limits me from running Gentoo on my Sun SPARCs as well; I need to know the temps and fans are all ok.
The article also goes on to say this could be an exploit of SQL Slammer proportions. And could cause birth defects in unborn children, destruction of family morals and the end of civilization.
The source is MSNBC, not exactly unbiased are they?
Troll in the highest sense you are. Fool as well.
What the hell, I'll give you a tidbit:
What do the following Internet Incidents have in common?
Melissa
Code Red
Nimda
SQL Slammer
Bonus points: How many millions of dollars of damage have those same incidents caused?
Not sure about the details yet, but it seems to me internal servers should be patched if there is any possibilty of them sending messages with ANY user inputted email addresses.
If all internal server only receive filtered data (CGI scripts, that sort of thing with limits on input fields) then I don't think they would have to be patched. I'm not 100% on this though. Bottom line is everything should eventually be patched.
You suffer from BINDism. BIND is bad, it takes several different name server roles and presents them one. The result: code bloat.
The proper way is represented by djbdns. Need something to cache queries on a desktop machine? Fine, you need a cache. Do you need that cache to ever serve authortative info? No. For that matter, should it answer anything other than localhost? Again, no. Do you need to install several megabytes of binaries to have a cache? Again, no.
Small programs that do exactly the minimum functions with easily understandable source, that is the way to secure, bug-free code.
Now, post your findings to mail list somewhere, so the next poor soul can benefit from your pain.
Speaking as a person who works with Mac Users, the initial response was good. That is, if they noticed at all.
Then, over the months, the attitude changed as people needed to access info on floppies or use an older piece of hardware with only an Apple serial connection. Now that USB floppy drives, USB serial converters and ADB converters have been purchased and gotten to work, everyone is once again happy the floppies are gone.
$.02
Perhaps you should look into the vulnerability history of BIND before holding it up as a golden child of the Internet.
Diversity in software is the key, properly administered by those with a clue.
If you enjoyed Glen Cook's Black Company series, give Steven Brust a spin, you won't regret it.
Fan Site
A couple classics:
John Steakley, Armor. Felix!!
Hugh Cook, Wizard War. Sadly, the rest of the series...well, sucks.
If you like Glen Cook, you'd probably enjoy Steven Brust. His books are a little on the short side, but then they move so fast I don't think I could take it if they were much longer. :) He has that Black Company feel, IMHO.
Uh, Al Yanes of IBM is the President of the Board. Interesting tack to take against your own employee.
Who says it doesn't infringe? Maybe Xerox is preparing to sue right now....
You're mixing the what you're calling "value" compared to the poster. Value can be money, time or another unit. It boils down to this: Yes, it's worth the time to read; however it's not worth any money, from the poster's viewpoint.
Nothing is without value on some basis (time,money, whatever), but that does not mean everything has a monetary value. Google has NO monetary value UNTIL someone actually pays for it. I could put a million dollar price tag on a bag of garbage, but until someone actually buys it from me, it isn't worth a million dollars.
It isn't a question of "website subscription" versus "buy a CD". That presumes that the prices are equal. The appropriate question is whether a hundred website pages are worth a print magazin. Or a thousand.
This is what I responding to. Micropayments has nothing to do with relative worth, it's a means for paying that worth. The parent was talking about a website subscription (or any fee for content I suppose). Arguing about realitive values means nothing.
Now, your argument that valuing content differently based on its delivery mechanism (website vs newspaper) not making sense holds no water. Indeed, in your comparision, the content means nothing, the sole difference in worth to a person is the delivery mechanism. The parent basically said this: 'the content is worthless unless delivered in a format valuable to me'. I think that sums up the whole argument very well.
That doesn't make any sense unless you view the NYT as being primarily about paper, not about content
Evidently this is exactly how the parent values the NYT NEWSPAPER. I would have to agree, but then I don't read the NYT nor would I subscribe to it in any format, including free.
You're quibbling over the definition of "micropayment". Parent defines as subscription to a website, you define it as pay per page apparently. Who's correct? Neither of you.
The problem with micropayments has nothing to do with the thing being payed for; micropayment refers to paying for a thing, whatever that thing may be. So, consider the problems: per-transaction costs are way too high, no confidence from buyers, little support from retailers and huge logistics problems, not to mention security!
Agreed! Mod up!
As to the parent poster, yes, creating content costs money. However, if no one is willing to pay anything for that content, it is worth NOTHING. Claiming high costs to create a product does nothing to increase its value nor increases the amount a reasonable person would pay for the product.
I didn't get to read the actual article at the time, it was /.d. However, I did read a copy someone posted, so no excuse.
Rereading today, the article mentions DNA testing was requested on the sample from the tampon, nothing about any results nor whether they have or requested a DNA sample from Hoesly. So the question remains proper and unanswered, as chialea pointed out.
Suppose they do get the DNA results back, are the police allowed to demand a sample from Hoesly for comparision? If asked, would she be obligated to provide a sample?
All kinds of nasty possiblities here.
Important questions that were missed:
How do they know it was her tampon? Could have been a guests who used the bathroom.
Can they prove it was her garbage? Do they need to for court purposes?
Anyone can drop a bag of garbage on someone's lawn.
All in all, very very disturbing.
You're right. Any company that can't justify "using the source" to fix a problem should be looking at paid support. I won't call foul on your poor pick of numbers or overestimating the time a "fix" would take, suffice to say some cost will be involved and it will probably be more than paying Consultants XYZ, Inc. to fix it.
But here's the rub: WITHOUT the source, that whole choice is not an option. You can't ask XYZ, Inc. to fix it for you, you have to coordinate with the vendor to get something fixed and are completely at their mercy (read schedule and resource limits) to get a fix. And they can always claim non-issue, must be a problem specific with your setup.
Of course, companies with the foresight to keep inhouse talent strong will easily make that fix from source with a minimum of fuss.
So, what to do about support:
1. Pay for it.
2. Participate in the community and realize free support is worth what you put in (read that carefully).
3. Develop inhouse talent.
Did you sit down with a blind fold and a screen reader and try to use your own site?
Being Bobby compliant does not instantly mean a site is accessible to the blind. Specifically, certain uses of tables can render pages completely unusable from what I've heard (IANABP).