No, your rationale only relates to compensatory damages -- money which compensates the employees for what the employees lost. However, the $5B includes punitive damages -- money which prevents the company from doing it again. Otherwise, companies would always do the wrong thing and hope that they don't get sued. Even if they do get sued, their payment is deferred for months, even years, which usually works out to their benefit. But I do agree that $5B is an absoultely ludicrous figure. I haven't seen the breakdown of how they get $5B, either.
Hey, this guy's review of the E10k isn't the first one that he duped. Although the articles are less plagiarized, entire sentences and paragraphs are stolen. He does have some nice pictures, though. I can't conclusively prove that they're different articles, but it does help AtariDatacenter's claim.
The latter article on RB seems as though it's being modified as I write this -- the META tag (which could mean anything) is stamped ten minutes ago. In fact, the article is no longer listed on their site! It was obviously there if I found it. Fortunately, I grabbed a snapshot of the articles and I have them posted here:
Though the Honda pictured is a small one, they're no longer the cars they used to be. They've taken an impressive turn toward innovation in car manufacturing techniques and marketing. Today's Hondas are among the largest and safest in their class (albeit more expensive, though TCO is arguably lower). Take a look at the 1998-2001 Accord or the 2001 Civic and they've come a long way. I wouldn't risk driving anything before 1992 or 1993, though -- they're just not the same breed.
The Navy doesn't use Windows to run its defense systems nor does the Air Force use it for guidance systems. As far as I know, they don't use off-the-shelf commercial products for critical systems. They do use it for support systems, however. Things that are critical for any kind of large organization or business to operate correctly, such as inventory tracking, messaging, accounting, etc. Of course, crippling a supply chain is just as devastating as taking out a critical weapon during a time of war, but it's like ships are going to run aground and planes fall out of the sky as a result.
This is true, but you have to remember three thing: 1) it's still beta. 2) this is only one data point. 3) 90% of his APPLICATIONS ran without a hitch, not 90% of his code or 90% of his features. For the 1 out of 10 programs, maybe it showed up with the wrong color fonts, maybe it crashed his machine -- we don't know.
Setting expectations is half of business. If you can't make accurate judgements about when you think something is going to be completed, you've pretty much failed at business -- and lots of other things. Shipping when something is complete might make for a better product, but it makes for a poor business.
When a project is going to be late, the company needs to make a judgement call on what blend of timeliness and feature completion they will go with. It differs in every situation. Since Linux isn't a company-funded project, it tends to go with feature complete. Most businesses lean toward timeliness while letting the shipping date slip a bit, especially when there are competitors and customers to worry about.
I've been in situations where a software vendor promises to have a certain version in production by a given date. Being an important customer, we had access to internal development versions so that we could do our own development using their APIs. Unfortunately, they let their ship date slip and their product came in several months late, meaning that our project was late, too. If we had known that they were going to be so late, we would have probably gone with another vendor. It would not have had as many features and it would have required more work, but it would have been delivered on time.
It's a very different thing to be called an accessory to a crime and to simply be called negligent. Also, there are so many things that need to be done to properly secure a machine that you can't simply draw a line with that and call it True. If a vendor tells you that you must change the root password before you go to production, you probably should. But if the vendor releases news on their website that there is a security flaw... how responsible are you for the update? I don't have a right answer, but I don't think a right answer exists for every situation.
From what I understand of civil law, the owner has to be proven to be negligent in a situation, not just proven that he could have prevented something. If I lock my car and walk away and someone steals my car and kills someone in the sidewalk, I'm not liable. You can't just say that I didn't "sufficiently" prevent my car from being locked.
The sysadmins did what was reasonable and prudent and they weren't negligent. I can see what you're saying, but it doesn't apply in this case.
If you're an exception, you're right: it doesn't matter much. Graduate from a shitty college and do well, you'll do well. Graduate from a good school but you're a fuck up, well, you'll face problems. BUT - 1) a good college degree will stay with you for the rest of your life. Getting a degree in CS from MIT opens lots of doors for you without even knowing it. 2) we're talking about not having a HIGH SCHOOL degree. Most respectable companies require a high school education for most jobs. Unless you're an absolute star, you'll never see the title of VP next to your name. If you are a star, then congratulations.
Opera, afaik, is an inferior product. That makes it illogical. StarOffice, Applixware, and Koffice are all inferior products even though they're free. The fact that it's free is compensation for the fact that it's less featured than the big competitor, MS Word.
For many people, the free stuff is good enough for them and the trade off of feature is worth it. But no matter what anyone insists about free software, for the time being, MS Office is a better all-around product. It may be beat in certain categories here and there, but for most people, with a feature-by-feature comparison, Word dominates. Many of these features may never be used by some people, so the fact that it's free gets it the win.
How is Google not a portal as well? Try http://directory.google.com/. The only difference that I see is that AV's portal links are displayed on the http://www.av.com page.
Even with the grammar and spelling errors, even with the repeat stories, even with the poorly checked links, this website is much more than I'm paying for it.
yes, slashdot is a very good service. at the same time, putting out information in the context that it would be accurate is a disservice and hurts in the internet and the readership.
If you think you have a better idea for making these companies profitable, you can make millions. Licensing technology is only a viable solution if the licensee has a way of making the money back on that! Since banner ads support search engines and licensed search engine sites only make money through banner ads, too,... hmmm. Banner ads seem to be the only way to make money... still.
As for PPoE, use the Linksys DSL/Cable router. It is PPoE capable and does the log-in for you, automatically, on-demand. Then use it for DHCP, plug in your machine, and you're ready to go. This is excellent for notebooks. I always insist on setting up DHCP wherever I go with my notebook so I don't have to do anything for configuration. The last thing I want to do is to set up PPoE to use a network that I only use on occassion. With the Linksys box, it's really easy to do. Also, you get the benefit of a firewall, which is a must-have these days.
Scalability is VERY DIFFERENT from performance. You can have a slow system that is highly scalable and a very fast system that is poorly scalable.
With that said, you'll definitely have to do a first-round thinking planning out performance, but implementing performance is something entirely different. That means that you plan to have caching and use efficient mechanisms to store complex data, such as implementing a good tree or hash strucutre. However, when you do your first round, you should not use caching and use a dumb array to get it done.
I can see what you're saying, but you're not quite distinguishing between the two.
So let's say they bust a 5 person company with 5 computers. That's not exactly going to make Slashdot headlines, or any other headlines, and in terms of setting a court precedent and sending a warning out to everyone else out there to stop the piracy, that company isn't going to cut it. You have to target the big ones to make a point to the little guys.
You really believe that there won't be a enterprise-management console for this stuff? MS has been very good at putting out unattended-install programs/scripts and maintenance packages for many of their enterprise-related applications and this one won't be an exception.
Sure, the lifetime cost *might* be greater, but how long is the lifetime? Are you a company/person that has to live with the latest and greatest versions of MS Office? Or are you one of those users that still has Office 95 running on their desktop because it works for them? The subscription licensing model works for the former, not the latter.
You're right -- you and I can dislike the licensing model, but when it comes down to it, the aggregate market will decide what's right and MS will respond. It will take time.
I can understand your frustration with software that doesn't work, but I'd hardly think that it would be a feasible or reasonable thing to do: very few companies are ever held liable for their product not working. In the past, companies have been indemnified of faulty software (incidental damages), although there have been cases where the courts have ruled against them, citing that software companies can't simply hide behind it as lack of support.
Very few other industries allow for incidental damages to be awarded. If my car breaks down, I can't sue for lost time; only the warranty kicks in. The lemon law exists, but it has to break a lot before it kicks in.
... and commit financial suicide? No company would ever do that, because the industry backlash would be so great that they would rapidly lose marketshare for the next version.
As another poster pointed out, any other program out there has the same risk.
Why is this post insightful? Clearly, the subscription rate will cost a lot less than the full package. You make it sound like the two prices (subs. vs. purchase) will be almost exactly the same. While no figures are final, I'm sure that the subscription rate will be much lower.
You also assume that MS has committed to a subscription model with no turning back. MS has demonstrated that they can quickly turn on their heels and abandon a product line if it doesn't work out well for them. If the subscription model doesn't work out well, they simply won't do it for the next version.
You're obviously an engineer and think that only a few people are required to run an effective company. While I disagree with the size of many larger companies today with all their red tape, it's very difficult for a few people to run a company like that.
OSHA doesn't really care -- it's the company that you work for that's gonna get its ass sued if you come down with an injury. If the guy was incompetent, that's one thing, but at least your company has itself covered and intends on doing the Right thing.
Slashdot Mirror
... and the Windows 2000 release last February didn't even make an article.
No, your rationale only relates to compensatory damages -- money which compensates the employees for what the employees lost. However, the $5B includes punitive damages -- money which prevents the company from doing it again. Otherwise, companies would always do the wrong thing and hope that they don't get sued. Even if they do get sued, their payment is deferred for months, even years, which usually works out to their benefit. But I do agree that $5B is an absoultely ludicrous figure. I haven't seen the breakdown of how they get $5B, either.
Sun Enterprise 450 Server:
Epinions.com
ReviewBoard.com
Sun Enterprise 4500 Server:
Epinions.com
ReviewBoard.com
The latter article on RB seems as though it's being modified as I write this -- the META tag (which could mean anything) is stamped ten minutes ago. In fact, the article is no longer listed on their site! It was obviously there if I found it. Fortunately, I grabbed a snapshot of the articles and I have them posted here:
Saved review of the E450 Saved review of the E4500. Please don't Slashdot my poor cable modem!Though the Honda pictured is a small one, they're no longer the cars they used to be. They've taken an impressive turn toward innovation in car manufacturing techniques and marketing. Today's Hondas are among the largest and safest in their class (albeit more expensive, though TCO is arguably lower). Take a look at the 1998-2001 Accord or the 2001 Civic and they've come a long way. I wouldn't risk driving anything before 1992 or 1993, though -- they're just not the same breed.
The Navy doesn't use Windows to run its defense systems nor does the Air Force use it for guidance systems. As far as I know, they don't use off-the-shelf commercial products for critical systems. They do use it for support systems, however. Things that are critical for any kind of large organization or business to operate correctly, such as inventory tracking, messaging, accounting, etc. Of course, crippling a supply chain is just as devastating as taking out a critical weapon during a time of war, but it's like ships are going to run aground and planes fall out of the sky as a result.
This is true, but you have to remember three thing: 1) it's still beta. 2) this is only one data point. 3) 90% of his APPLICATIONS ran without a hitch, not 90% of his code or 90% of his features. For the 1 out of 10 programs, maybe it showed up with the wrong color fonts, maybe it crashed his machine -- we don't know.
Setting expectations is half of business. If you can't make accurate judgements about when you think something is going to be completed, you've pretty much failed at business -- and lots of other things. Shipping when something is complete might make for a better product, but it makes for a poor business.
When a project is going to be late, the company needs to make a judgement call on what blend of timeliness and feature completion they will go with. It differs in every situation. Since Linux isn't a company-funded project, it tends to go with feature complete. Most businesses lean toward timeliness while letting the shipping date slip a bit, especially when there are competitors and customers to worry about.
I've been in situations where a software vendor promises to have a certain version in production by a given date. Being an important customer, we had access to internal development versions so that we could do our own development using their APIs. Unfortunately, they let their ship date slip and their product came in several months late, meaning that our project was late, too. If we had known that they were going to be so late, we would have probably gone with another vendor. It would not have had as many features and it would have required more work, but it would have been delivered on time.
It's a damn good thing that I know who the Director of Athletics is because them hackers can sure use some jump 'n jacks!
It's a very different thing to be called an accessory to a crime and to simply be called negligent. Also, there are so many things that need to be done to properly secure a machine that you can't simply draw a line with that and call it True. If a vendor tells you that you must change the root password before you go to production, you probably should. But if the vendor releases news on their website that there is a security flaw ... how responsible are you for the update? I don't have a right answer, but I don't think a right answer exists for every situation.
From what I understand of civil law, the owner has to be proven to be negligent in a situation, not just proven that he could have prevented something. If I lock my car and walk away and someone steals my car and kills someone in the sidewalk, I'm not liable. You can't just say that I didn't "sufficiently" prevent my car from being locked.
The sysadmins did what was reasonable and prudent and they weren't negligent. I can see what you're saying, but it doesn't apply in this case.
If you're an exception, you're right: it doesn't matter much. Graduate from a shitty college and do well, you'll do well. Graduate from a good school but you're a fuck up, well, you'll face problems. BUT - 1) a good college degree will stay with you for the rest of your life. Getting a degree in CS from MIT opens lots of doors for you without even knowing it. 2) we're talking about not having a HIGH SCHOOL degree. Most respectable companies require a high school education for most jobs. Unless you're an absolute star, you'll never see the title of VP next to your name. If you are a star, then congratulations.
Opera, afaik, is an inferior product. That makes it illogical. StarOffice, Applixware, and Koffice are all inferior products even though they're free. The fact that it's free is compensation for the fact that it's less featured than the big competitor, MS Word.
For many people, the free stuff is good enough for them and the trade off of feature is worth it. But no matter what anyone insists about free software, for the time being, MS Office is a better all-around product. It may be beat in certain categories here and there, but for most people, with a feature-by-feature comparison, Word dominates. Many of these features may never be used by some people, so the fact that it's free gets it the win.
How is Google not a portal as well? Try http://directory.google.com/. The only difference that I see is that AV's portal links are displayed on the http://www.av.com page.
Even with the grammar and spelling errors, even with the repeat stories, even with the poorly checked links, this website is much more than I'm paying for it. yes, slashdot is a very good service. at the same time, putting out information in the context that it would be accurate is a disservice and hurts in the internet and the readership.
If you think you have a better idea for making these companies profitable, you can make millions. Licensing technology is only a viable solution if the licensee has a way of making the money back on that! Since banner ads support search engines and licensed search engine sites only make money through banner ads, too, ... hmmm. Banner ads seem to be the only way to make money ... still.
As for PPoE, use the Linksys DSL/Cable router. It is PPoE capable and does the log-in for you, automatically, on-demand. Then use it for DHCP, plug in your machine, and you're ready to go. This is excellent for notebooks. I always insist on setting up DHCP wherever I go with my notebook so I don't have to do anything for configuration. The last thing I want to do is to set up PPoE to use a network that I only use on occassion. With the Linksys box, it's really easy to do. Also, you get the benefit of a firewall, which is a must-have these days.
With that said, you'll definitely have to do a first-round thinking planning out performance, but implementing performance is something entirely different. That means that you plan to have caching and use efficient mechanisms to store complex data, such as implementing a good tree or hash strucutre. However, when you do your first round, you should not use caching and use a dumb array to get it done.
I can see what you're saying, but you're not quite distinguishing between the two.
So let's say they bust a 5 person company with 5 computers. That's not exactly going to make Slashdot headlines, or any other headlines, and in terms of setting a court precedent and sending a warning out to everyone else out there to stop the piracy, that company isn't going to cut it. You have to target the big ones to make a point to the little guys.
You really believe that there won't be a enterprise-management console for this stuff? MS has been very good at putting out unattended-install programs/scripts and maintenance packages for many of their enterprise-related applications and this one won't be an exception.
You're right -- you and I can dislike the licensing model, but when it comes down to it, the aggregate market will decide what's right and MS will respond. It will take time.
Very few other industries allow for incidental damages to be awarded. If my car breaks down, I can't sue for lost time; only the warranty kicks in. The lemon law exists, but it has to break a lot before it kicks in.
As another poster pointed out, any other program out there has the same risk.
You also assume that MS has committed to a subscription model with no turning back. MS has demonstrated that they can quickly turn on their heels and abandon a product line if it doesn't work out well for them. If the subscription model doesn't work out well, they simply won't do it for the next version.
You're obviously an engineer and think that only a few people are required to run an effective company. While I disagree with the size of many larger companies today with all their red tape, it's very difficult for a few people to run a company like that.
OSHA doesn't really care -- it's the company that you work for that's gonna get its ass sued if you come down with an injury. If the guy was incompetent, that's one thing, but at least your company has itself covered and intends on doing the Right thing.