in a bold departure from the OMFG S3xu4l h4rr4$$m3nt!!!1one posts, i would like to share an anecdote about a woman who exploited the typical male instincts of the North American IT Nerd.
i have worked with only a handful of women in IT in the past 10 years (thousand of female clients, less than half a dozen co-workers) and the weirdest situation i have seen was when i was on a team of contractors (typical geeky white guys) lead by this very attractive asian lady.
it made us a very productive team, as everyone tried their best to impress her with their ability to deliver results and dudes would stiff-arm eachother volunteering to come in on saturdays. it was pretty pathetic, but it got serious results.
does that mean there will be no more articles about how some freak ported netBSD to a new game console or waffle iron? can't they at least wait until the PS3 is out?
/sarcasm
most of my unix learning i got courtesty of BSD on public access systems like hobbiton.org and sdf.lonestar.org. hobbiton was openBSD, but is no longer public access, and SDF is netBSD on dec alphas (i believe). it was a great way to learn about unix without installing linux.
vendor lock in is not nearly as big an issue as vendor lock out.
the trouble with being locked in to a certain solution is the possibility of getting locked out of your own data. if you have a whole series of business processes that are built around an app, or series of apps, and that app becomes unavailable for any number of reasons, you end up in a situation where you will have to pay to keep using your data in one of the following options:
option 1) keep using your older computers and software and pay increasingly higher prices as parts and service become more and more rare
option 2) keep using unsupported software and pray that your new computers and OS's will still be able to run it
option 3) pay a consultant or other vendor to convert your data to a new application and change all of your business processes
you see this a lot in healthcare. for example, in the early 90's a hospital fielded a database system and clients based on a 16bit app and database. as the years go by, the vendor changes direction in order to "focus on it's core business" or gets bought by a competitor and has it's product line retired or just plain goes out of business, and you have hundreds of thousands of records tied up in a database that is no longer supported. first, the hospital resists upgrading (option 1), spending money to keep the replacement desktops replaced in 1998 alive until 2002. then, the company decides to move to more modern infrastructure to reduce support costs (option 2), and finds that the dos app does not run well on xp, and decides on 2000 professional. fast forward to 2007, with no more support for 2000 professional, the company decides to embrace vista and SQL server (option 3) and pay thru the nose to have the old proprietary database converted over to SQL (or SAP even) and have a new front end created. plus the retraining costs for the changed processes.
at least with FOSS the company could have gone straight to option 3 and saved money on licensing, not to mention having source code access to fix bugs and add new features should the need arrive.
many people will tell you that they can't get cell reception in their homes and so still use a land line for most of their calling rather than going "mobiles only". this is aimed sqarely at those people.
i have seen something similar in MMORPGs, where players run programs so they can grind their characters in their off time (called macroing) and save actual game time for more entertaining activities.
a lot of players say this is wrong (myself included) and from the host's perspective, this raises hosting and capacity concerns since a player who plays 2 hours a day pays the same fee as a player who plays 24hours a day. clearly, the less time a player spends in game, the more that players monthly fee actually pays. not to mention that macroers max out their characters and then complain that there aren't any new challenges, and in the case of games that are many years old, the player feedback leads to worlds that are very hostile to new players because the wandering monsters are intended for super high level characters.
for many games macroing is a code of conduct violation and will get your account banned, but in the case of online casinos, who get paid by the hand, and in an online age of goldfarming and macroing, i would totally see a casino of suspicious morals turning a blind eye to bots so long as they are paying up with real cash.
americans are raised from birth to believe we live in the greatest country ever. we win all the wars, we have the best sports, we invented everything, and god cares only about us.
we all believe that, even when we know it's not true.
when you disagree with our upbringing, we get touchy.
give us a break, we're only like 230 years old, we don't know any better.
step 1: bundle antivirus/antispam/encryption/and firewall into the platform
step 2: release a set of tools, serverside components, languages, samples, docs, and training courses leverage the platform among developers
step 3: actively sabotage the development of other platforms (re: netscape, citrix)
step 4: threaten others into complying with your platform desires (re: apple)
step 5: profit
step 6: antitrust lawsuit
i have never paid or played for online poker, so forgive me if i am missing something about the poker business.
real life poker rooms are paid by the rake, a percentage of the pot that gets taken by the dealer, don't online casinos work the same way?
if the online casino gets the rake on every hand, why do they care if bots play, as long as they use real money?
even if no actual humans are playing anymore, the bots are still playing with some humans' money, and so online casinos are still getting the rake, right?
the problem with cheating at blackjack (from a casino's point of view) is that if you win you get paid by the house, but in poker, the house wins at every hand. wouldn't that mean that poker is pretty much pure profit (or at least cost recovery) for the casino? why would it matter to the casino that you are running a bot, or even multiple bots?
collusion might be another issue since it may affect membership, but even if online poker degrades into a virtual reality version of "battle bots", they are still making theirs from the rake, so what's the difference?
even if a team uses dozens of accounts, that should mean even more pots for them to rake, right?
i never know if i can trust wikipedia articles on stuff that borders on conspiracy theory, since they could be written by either tinfoil hat lunatics or by the conspirators themselves.
the thing that i found interesting, is that the article lists the largest ground stations that are believed to be monitoring centers, and many of them are US army bases that house significant military intelligence facilities. particularly those that specialize in collection and/or analysis. i had army friends in military intelligence and those were popular destinations for those guys.
particularly:
fort meade
buckley AFB
diego garcia
augsburg, germany
fort gordon
Re:Information Wants to be free and shifty
on
Convergence Culture
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
if you want to know how the PSP issue will shake out, turn to history.
before the PSP there was the iopener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOpener)
the company made the iopener for $300-$400 and sold it for $99 requiring 3 years commitment to dialup internet access from netpliance's preferred partners.
enthusiasts discovered that the machine could be hacked into a real PC, and so people began buying htem in drives and canceling the internet service. suffering losses, the company tried many things to curb modding, and ultimately stopped selling the devices.
the moral of the story: don't take a loss on the hardware in hopes of making your money back on over priced software. people aren't stupid, if they figure out you are using cool PC parts, they will turn your device into a cool PC. case in point: my chip modded original xbox that plays videos and music off of my file server, plays emulators for atari, nintendo 64, and mame, and even plays the occasional xbox game rented from the video store. i purchased two actual xbox games, used ones, from EB.
instead, turn a modest profit on the hardware, sell the software at reasonable prices, and embrace the mod community full force because they will give you a ton of R&D for free. once the community had given direction for the device, sell professionally made and "certified" mod kits for a decent profit.
a simple and semi-portable box that you can output to a TV.
i think that with itunes selling tv shows and stuff a box like that could put apple (and the microsoft equivalent) into the living room for good.
maybe even produce a little competition to real cable. not much, just a little.
the power company in my neighborhood is offering highspeed internet access and i am really looking for a way to dump cable TV for something IP based and more "on demand", so like my phone service, i pay for what i use per unit (2-3 cents per minute for phone service) instead of a higher flat monthly fee.
the only problem is i have 2 kids that love cartoons and a wife that loves the daily show and the colbert report. it seems wasteful to pay for basic cable service to watch 4 channels for only a couple of hours a day.
once that is accomplished, i just need to figure out how use the internet to get rid of my mobile phone and my car:-)
I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this:
"We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable."
the issue here is that they sell you a service labeled 3mbit/second, but they do no thav ehte capacity to provide that. now that consumers are actually using the 3mbit they are already paying for, the tecos are having to upgrade their capacity to deliver the service THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY SAID THEY ARE PROVIDING.
that means that they have to add more infrastructure, but can't raise prices.
if you ask me: it sucks to be them. they should have been honest about their service at the beginning, or made sure their infrasturcture was up to par before they started selling it. either way, i don't really see how that is my problem.
Slashdot Mirror
if they mirrored/cached traffic to improve speed, then they couldn't use the problem as an excuse to price gouge.
just like they could cut deals with game makers to host servers so they are only a couple of hops away in many markets.
it's totally possible, but just isn't going to happen.
in a bold departure from the OMFG S3xu4l h4rr4$$m3nt!!!1one posts, i would like to share an anecdote about a woman who exploited the typical male instincts of the North American IT Nerd.
i have worked with only a handful of women in IT in the past 10 years (thousand of female clients, less than half a dozen co-workers) and the weirdest situation i have seen was when i was on a team of contractors (typical geeky white guys) lead by this very attractive asian lady.
it made us a very productive team, as everyone tried their best to impress her with their ability to deliver results and dudes would stiff-arm eachother volunteering to come in on saturdays. it was pretty pathetic, but it got serious results.
what's the korean word for "easy"?
employed by crack dealers. give the first bit away for free to the kids and let them get all their friends hooked.
does that mean there will be no more articles about how some freak ported netBSD to a new game console or waffle iron? can't they at least wait until the PS3 is out?
most of my unix learning i got courtesty of BSD on public access systems like hobbiton.org and sdf.lonestar.org. hobbiton was openBSD, but is no longer public access, and SDF is netBSD on dec alphas (i believe). it was a great way to learn about unix without installing linux.
I hope that the issues get resolved or if necessary an active fork is made and it lives on.
:-)
it did, it's called OpenBSD
vendor lock in is not nearly as big an issue as vendor lock out.
the trouble with being locked in to a certain solution is the possibility of getting locked out of your own data. if you have a whole series of business processes that are built around an app, or series of apps, and that app becomes unavailable for any number of reasons, you end up in a situation where you will have to pay to keep using your data in one of the following options:
option 1) keep using your older computers and software and pay increasingly higher prices as parts and service become more and more rare
option 2) keep using unsupported software and pray that your new computers and OS's will still be able to run it
option 3) pay a consultant or other vendor to convert your data to a new application and change all of your business processes
you see this a lot in healthcare. for example, in the early 90's a hospital fielded a database system and clients based on a 16bit app and database. as the years go by, the vendor changes direction in order to "focus on it's core business" or gets bought by a competitor and has it's product line retired or just plain goes out of business, and you have hundreds of thousands of records tied up in a database that is no longer supported. first, the hospital resists upgrading (option 1), spending money to keep the replacement desktops replaced in 1998 alive until 2002. then, the company decides to move to more modern infrastructure to reduce support costs (option 2), and finds that the dos app does not run well on xp, and decides on 2000 professional. fast forward to 2007, with no more support for 2000 professional, the company decides to embrace vista and SQL server (option 3) and pay thru the nose to have the old proprietary database converted over to SQL (or SAP even) and have a new front end created. plus the retraining costs for the changed processes.
at least with FOSS the company could have gone straight to option 3 and saved money on licensing, not to mention having source code access to fix bugs and add new features should the need arrive.
it's expensive as hell, but here is a SIP wifi phone: http://www.thinkbright.net/product_info.php?cPath= 1&products_id=38&osCsid=a56c47a99ca7b094d241f3e66a 0ba7e0
no one says it will be cheaper for YOU.
many people will tell you that they can't get cell reception in their homes and so still use a land line for most of their calling rather than going "mobiles only". this is aimed sqarely at those people.
nothing. pirated stuff has no DRM on it.
i have seen something similar in MMORPGs, where players run programs so they can grind their characters in their off time (called macroing) and save actual game time for more entertaining activities.
a lot of players say this is wrong (myself included) and from the host's perspective, this raises hosting and capacity concerns since a player who plays 2 hours a day pays the same fee as a player who plays 24hours a day. clearly, the less time a player spends in game, the more that players monthly fee actually pays. not to mention that macroers max out their characters and then complain that there aren't any new challenges, and in the case of games that are many years old, the player feedback leads to worlds that are very hostile to new players because the wandering monsters are intended for super high level characters.
for many games macroing is a code of conduct violation and will get your account banned, but in the case of online casinos, who get paid by the hand, and in an online age of goldfarming and macroing, i would totally see a casino of suspicious morals turning a blind eye to bots so long as they are paying up with real cash.
[sarcasm type=bitter]
the UK and europe don't have all the cool race riots that the US has, clearly you are lacking in diversity.
all of your riots are started by soccer fans and students in paris.
[/sarcasm]
americans are raised from birth to believe we live in the greatest country ever. we win all the wars, we have the best sports, we invented everything, and god cares only about us.
we all believe that, even when we know it's not true.
when you disagree with our upbringing, we get touchy.
give us a break, we're only like 230 years old, we don't know any better.
step 1: bundle antivirus/antispam/encryption/and firewall into the platform
step 2: release a set of tools, serverside components, languages, samples, docs, and training courses leverage the platform among developers
step 3: actively sabotage the development of other platforms (re: netscape, citrix)
step 4: threaten others into complying with your platform desires (re: apple)
step 5: profit
step 6: antitrust lawsuit
i have never paid or played for online poker, so forgive me if i am missing something about the poker business.
real life poker rooms are paid by the rake, a percentage of the pot that gets taken by the dealer, don't online casinos work the same way?
if the online casino gets the rake on every hand, why do they care if bots play, as long as they use real money?
even if no actual humans are playing anymore, the bots are still playing with some humans' money, and so online casinos are still getting the rake, right?
the problem with cheating at blackjack (from a casino's point of view) is that if you win you get paid by the house, but in poker, the house wins at every hand. wouldn't that mean that poker is pretty much pure profit (or at least cost recovery) for the casino? why would it matter to the casino that you are running a bot, or even multiple bots?
collusion might be another issue since it may affect membership, but even if online poker degrades into a virtual reality version of "battle bots", they are still making theirs from the rake, so what's the difference?
even if a team uses dozens of accounts, that should mean even more pots for them to rake, right?
MS did this in the mid to late 90's, even though it sucked and no one used it.
i never know if i can trust wikipedia articles on stuff that borders on conspiracy theory, since they could be written by either tinfoil hat lunatics or by the conspirators themselves. the thing that i found interesting, is that the article lists the largest ground stations that are believed to be monitoring centers, and many of them are US army bases that house significant military intelligence facilities. particularly those that specialize in collection and/or analysis. i had army friends in military intelligence and those were popular destinations for those guys. particularly: fort meade buckley AFB diego garcia augsburg, germany fort gordon
he hates god too. don't forget to mention that.
if you want to know how the PSP issue will shake out, turn to history. before the PSP there was the iopener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOpener) the company made the iopener for $300-$400 and sold it for $99 requiring 3 years commitment to dialup internet access from netpliance's preferred partners. enthusiasts discovered that the machine could be hacked into a real PC, and so people began buying htem in drives and canceling the internet service. suffering losses, the company tried many things to curb modding, and ultimately stopped selling the devices. the moral of the story: don't take a loss on the hardware in hopes of making your money back on over priced software. people aren't stupid, if they figure out you are using cool PC parts, they will turn your device into a cool PC. case in point: my chip modded original xbox that plays videos and music off of my file server, plays emulators for atari, nintendo 64, and mame, and even plays the occasional xbox game rented from the video store. i purchased two actual xbox games, used ones, from EB. instead, turn a modest profit on the hardware, sell the software at reasonable prices, and embrace the mod community full force because they will give you a ton of R&D for free. once the community had given direction for the device, sell professionally made and "certified" mod kits for a decent profit.
no, you can use VMWare server fairly easily on ubuntu and load pretty much any distro you want.
boys kissing seems to fire up a lot of people.
a simple and semi-portable box that you can output to a TV. i think that with itunes selling tv shows and stuff a box like that could put apple (and the microsoft equivalent) into the living room for good. maybe even produce a little competition to real cable. not much, just a little. the power company in my neighborhood is offering highspeed internet access and i am really looking for a way to dump cable TV for something IP based and more "on demand", so like my phone service, i pay for what i use per unit (2-3 cents per minute for phone service) instead of a higher flat monthly fee. the only problem is i have 2 kids that love cartoons and a wife that loves the daily show and the colbert report. it seems wasteful to pay for basic cable service to watch 4 channels for only a couple of hours a day. once that is accomplished, i just need to figure out how use the internet to get rid of my mobile phone and my car :-)
I was listening to (I believe) NPR the other day and an advocate of the telecoms explained the situation to make it sound like the new multimedia applications (YouTube, Google Video, etc) were the bad guys. But, behind his explanation was this: "We've traditionally used bandwidth as a marketing stat. The average Joe never uses the full extent of their available bandwidth. But now, new applications are popping up and changing this at our expense. We also believe that the providers (google, youtube, etc) are serving these applications at no cost so, instead of charging more for bandwidth, we'd like to do something entirely more profitable." the issue here is that they sell you a service labeled 3mbit/second, but they do no thav ehte capacity to provide that. now that consumers are actually using the 3mbit they are already paying for, the tecos are having to upgrade their capacity to deliver the service THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY SAID THEY ARE PROVIDING. that means that they have to add more infrastructure, but can't raise prices. if you ask me: it sucks to be them. they should have been honest about their service at the beginning, or made sure their infrasturcture was up to par before they started selling it. either way, i don't really see how that is my problem.
trustix is a pre-fedora redhat knockoff. version 2.x used the old RHL config and package loader screens from the RH7.x days.