The problems with the "drunken syphilitic warthog" was that everyone had keys to the kingdom, and not everyone was being a good guest. As long as Apple and AT&T control the operating content, they can also guarantee a certain level of reliability and also support the thing. As soon as you load "Fred's iPhone superpackage" on to your shiny clean iPhone, you run the risk that Fred is doing something that will cause problems that Apple tech support cannot fix.
I am one of those who had their Time Warner franchise taken over by Comcast as part of the Adelphia deal. As far as hating Firefox, their first line tech support only knows how to configure Internet Explorer and Outlook express. As far as I am concerned, using Thunderbird should be a far bigger concern. I have had numerous issues with the POP3.comcast.net server and SMTP server (mail.comcast.net). The errors all point to a problem on their end. In one instance I told the chatroom support about how they should change one of their SMTP settings ( "soft bounce" and it should be set to "no" so that it reports: "550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy reasons)" instead of "450 Requested mail action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox busy)" ). I have not seen that problem since. For a number of months I experienced POP3 errors. I was told to turn off my Antivirus mail checking. I actually raised this issue through the escalation department. The problems seems to have trailed off lately.
Overall, I have been happy with the on site installer (who was a contractor) and with the high speed network service. I plugged my router in, configured the security and away I went with DHCP. I have used Firefox with no problem. I have used a number of different Linux and UNIX systems on my internal network with no problem. Just do not call them for support. As earlier posters have pointed out, Comcast contracts out to a national help desk located in Canada. The support folks are instructed to give minimal help. Their chat software has some canned instant responses like: "Our network appears to be working here." and "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
When slightly used will do? This is the mantra of a local exercise equipment dealer here. You save a lot of money that way.
In the computer world, the question is Why buy the operating system, when you can get a new capable computer?
Amazon is listing Windows Vista Home Premium for $218, slightly less than the US$239 retail. For another $300 you can get a fully capable PC with it with 1GB of RAM and a suitable video card to get a 3.0 on the performance scale.
This particular market is skewed at moving PCs, not selling operating systems.
A co-worker used to plug his electric pickup truck into an outlet in the parking ramp during the day. I am struggling to remember the company, although it said it right on the side. It was not one of the legendary Ford Ranger EVs. I believe it was a GM mini pickup.
This article How do I put YouTube Files on my Moto Razr? shows how to get them on one type of phone. Following the instructions, yeah I can view the videos. But really, how great is that? On the Motorola RAZR, the movies are 176x144 3GP files. Follow some of the steps in the article to turn the flash file from YouTube into a 176x144 video. The videos on YouTube are already lower res to conserve bandwidth. ESPN already made a similar play with their ill-fated Sports Heaven promotion. I took a YouTube snapshot of a CBS college basketball broadcast clip onto a RAZR and I cannot even see the ball, nor read the graphic scoreboard.
When it comes to open source, IT doesn't mind if the open source community is holier than thou if they can save them time, money, interoperability pain and more.
28% of surveyed agreed that major open source projects are run by sanctimonious elitists. Were the other 72% of the respondents the actual sanctimonious elitists?
Or are thanks in order for the 72% of major open source projects not run by sanctimonious elitists? I for one would like to thank the FileZilla team for building something better than the commercial competitor WS_FTP. And I would like to thank the sourceforge team for providing a repository of plenty of good software not sanctimoniously delivered.
One of the top theoretical benefits of open source is the "Many eyes" method of bug spotting. And Klocwork provides an "electronic" eye. (I am imagining the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect here.)
Sun lost 12000 desktops. That does not mean that "in a way" Microsoft lost them too. Apple did not lose them and neither did Red Hat. Obviously IBM and HP were closer than anyone to "losing" them with their competing UNIX RISC workstations. The availability of Xfree86 in the 1990s meant that Linux was ready for the desktop at any subsequent point to replace proprietary workstations and X terminals, particularly x86 based UNIX. A Linux desktop is cheaper than Windows and Hummingbird as an XTERM. Apple and MS had a big uphill battle in this scenario to gain enough ground to consider this "lost."
The company had commenced operations in April and hired about 30 people for its subsidiary
In Silicon Valley, a one cough by a hiring manager can cause 30 people to disappear overnight. Thirty people in India represented less than a million dollars worth of pocket change to Apple. The story in really, "What were they attempting to do in the first place?"
BSD vs GPL for contributions has been discussed repeatedly in the Slashdot forum. But, more important to me is the manner in which the software may used. mySQL AB puts restrictions on the redistribution of application, with a special exception for PHP based applications. Also, it appears that a for-profit company would be on the hook to purchase commerical licenses, unless they were willing to publish the source code to their mySQL powered application.
So now, as an application developer for a commercial enterprise, one starts looking at all freely available alternatives, including those published by the top database vendors. If you could live within the size or license restrictions imposed by the no-cost commercial versions, PostGreSQL and mySQL become just two of many choices.
Rackable declined to comment for this story because it is in a stock exchange quiet period, after announcing a plan to sell 3.3 million shares in a secondary offering to raise new financing.
So then... Slashdot exposure during the quiet period is all OK then right? Shankland watches this particular market segment pretty closely. I wonder if he has any options? *cough* *just a theory* *cough*
IMHO, looking at the text of the documents mentioned above, it appears that a stock header and footer was constructed and then the presentation script itself was done in a text editor.
I apologize for my unintentionally misleading statement. Parrot Does not have a XUL document. The intro to PUGS and HASKELL slides are XUL documents. They are both referenced from the PERL6 site. In my quest to find out more about PUGS and HASKELL I was thrown off course and had to learn about XUL first. There is no good purpose for that. A user should not be surprised by a new document format while on a quest for other information. And a fair question would be, where is the POD Perl 6 documentation? It is not on the site, nor is it on CPAN. I have not followed the project closely and as a casually interested user, the doc locations are not intutively obvious.
Here is the Wikipedia article on XUL. I could have used this link on the PERL 6 web site since the documentation on PARROT and PUGS are composed in XUL. This was my first introduction to the format. The documents opened in Mozilla, but not in IE. While the arguement has been made here that you should only use Mozilla, why alienate a huge chunk of users without helping them along? Also, if you are going to publish in XUL, do not assume the casual user knows what the format and reader is. The Filext.com site did not yet have a listing or recommended reader for the XUL files.
"When playing, gamers are undergoing a complex process of 'work related learning' - learning how to cope with work scenarios -..."
Much like school itself, online community games are social situations. And many of us conduct business through electronic communications such as phones, chats, and e-mail. I could see how being able to resolve conflicts and forge alliances remotely could be an advantage in the real world work environment.
However, playing first person shooting games 3 hours a day with your eventual career being a postal employee working in a sorting facility may not be constructive "work related learning".
In regard to
* * Beatles-Beatles, it would seem that there is a certain amount of jealousy that such a highly numbered member could have so many stories accepted. There is so much envy, that his last two comments were nailed with double -1 moderations. The metamoderation system should level it out. It looks like all his stories are valid. Yea, his web page is meaningless to most, but aren't all of them? This is just a minor blip.
If Beatles Beatles were to submit an article titled: "Windows Vista Source Code released, Microsoft to convert all code to GPL", you could hardly expect that any discussion of the submitter would take place. Perhaps, in fact, Beatles Beatles, really does submit marginal articles in an attempt for personal gain. As the editor, you certainly could spread the wealth to one of the other 30-40 submitters. Maybe you just need to save up some of the daily submissions to round out the evening, or have fewer evening stories to accurately reflect the lack of articles.
...so everyone gets roasted. If the offtopic posts about an author are getting modded up, and the metamoderators are not nipping that in the bud, then that is how the site works currently. The next step is probably to have periodic meta moderation audits to make sure that the site is going in the direction you want.
As a regular metamoderator I can tell you that I rarely quibble with +1 insightful or +1 interesting. A +1 informative needs to at least have a cross reference or impart real knowledge. But +1 insightful on a post that contains an unemotional plain response always works. The -1 moderations get examined with the hot lights. Half of the -1 trolls usually are not. But the unfortunate part about being a metamoderator is that you are exposed to the more disgusting real trolls (*YUK*). Probably 2/3 of the -1 offtopic posts really are. But, Troll, Offtopic, and redundant are way overused to attempt to shut someone up with a valid contribution that does not agree with the majority. I look at underrated and overrated posts and make a judgement call. It does not seem to be a commonly used mod. +1 Funny, well, if the rumor is true that Funny does not count towards your karma, then it is probably for the best...
So just now
+1 funny - unfair (judgement call, but hey, you would have stared at anyone who said this out loud. Shameful waste of a mod point in my opinion.)
-1 offtopic - unfair (I won't name the subject, but it is one of the hot buttons on the site. It was a topical post within a +5 thread)
+1 insightful - fair
-1 offtopic - fair
+1 funny - fair
-1 redundant - fair (but probably should have been -1 offtopic)
+1 insightful - fair
+1 informative - fair
+1 insightful - fair
+1 insightful - fair
8 fairs to 2 unfairs is a pretty typical session. Also, 7 upmods to 3 downmods is pretty typical.
Never used that method to sign up for the feed
on
The Podjacker Threat
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
From TFA the problem was similar to search engine content hijacking, which I have experienced. I have never directly subscribed to a feed in this way. I have always navigated to the home page first and then clicked on the RSS/ATOM/XML link to add to my feed.
Which is my way of saying that search engines are good, but <dons jounalism professor hat> you have to check your sources.
<doffs jounalism professor hat>
It has already started at work. As the resident geek in the department, I already have explained many times about the Sony DRM and the XCP rootkit. With Thanksgiving holidays coming up and get-togethers with the relatives, I figure I should just hand out a little pamphlet. I would like to be a fly on the wall inside the Sony corporate offices as they look for some mid-level managers to can over this. I would also like to read some of their heated and panicked internal correspondence as they try to do damage control. Someone is going to get torched publicly for this by Sony's legal team. I have looked to see if any class-action lawsuits have been filed, but I am now aware of any, yet.
A raised floor with holes under the system racks is one way to get the coolest air where it is needed most. But, thermodynamically speaking, it all comes down to how many joules of heat need to be exchanged. If enough heat flows to a cooler area to keep the operating temperature of the systems within recommended specifications, then it does not really matter if it is done through a raised floor.
In terms of efficiency, a raised floor may not be as good as direct ducting and feeding past the hottest components in the systems. But it may be the most reasonable and cost effective way to set up an environment.
Personally, I find that an environment that is good for computers is uncomfortable for humans. Blowing fans and cool air seem to contribute to every cold I get. Coincidence? Probably not since the fans are very good at distributing particulate matter. When liquid cooling comes along, or computers can run at low voltage and amperage, we will be better off.
Those good old days to which you seem to be thinking back were when computers did not come in boxes. They came in crates and they were assembled by a team of factory reps.;-)
Even then, there was a cost associated with the compiler.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that within an hour there was a workaround posted on the same forum.
The problems with the "drunken syphilitic warthog" was that everyone had keys to the kingdom, and not everyone was being a good guest. As long as Apple and AT&T control the operating content, they can also guarantee a certain level of reliability and also support the thing. As soon as you load "Fred's iPhone superpackage" on to your shiny clean iPhone, you run the risk that Fred is doing something that will cause problems that Apple tech support cannot fix.
I am one of those who had their Time Warner franchise taken over by Comcast as part of the Adelphia deal. As far as hating Firefox, their first line tech support only knows how to configure Internet Explorer and Outlook express. As far as I am concerned, using Thunderbird should be a far bigger concern. I have had numerous issues with the POP3.comcast.net server and SMTP server (mail.comcast.net). The errors all point to a problem on their end. In one instance I told the chatroom support about how they should change one of their SMTP settings ( "soft bounce" and it should be set to "no" so that it reports: "550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox not found, no access, or command rejected for policy reasons)" instead of "450 Requested mail action not taken: mailbox unavailable (e.g., mailbox busy)" ). I have not seen that problem since. For a number of months I experienced POP3 errors. I was told to turn off my Antivirus mail checking. I actually raised this issue through the escalation department. The problems seems to have trailed off lately.
Overall, I have been happy with the on site installer (who was a contractor) and with the high speed network service. I plugged my router in, configured the security and away I went with DHCP. I have used Firefox with no problem. I have used a number of different Linux and UNIX systems on my internal network with no problem. Just do not call them for support. As earlier posters have pointed out, Comcast contracts out to a national help desk located in Canada. The support folks are instructed to give minimal help. Their chat software has some canned instant responses like: "Our network appears to be working here." and "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
When slightly used will do? This is the mantra of a local exercise equipment dealer here. You save a lot of money that way.
In the computer world, the question is Why buy the operating system, when you can get a new capable computer?
Amazon is listing Windows Vista Home Premium for $218, slightly less than the US$239 retail. For another $300 you can get a fully capable PC with it with 1GB of RAM and a suitable video card to get a 3.0 on the performance scale.
This particular market is skewed at moving PCs, not selling operating systems.
A co-worker used to plug his electric pickup truck into an outlet in the parking ramp during the day. I am struggling to remember the company, although it said it right on the side. It was not one of the legendary Ford Ranger EVs. I believe it was a GM mini pickup.
This article How do I put YouTube Files on my Moto Razr? shows how to get them on one type of phone. Following the instructions, yeah I can view the videos. But really, how great is that? On the Motorola RAZR, the movies are 176x144 3GP files. Follow some of the steps in the article to turn the flash file from YouTube into a 176x144 video. The videos on YouTube are already lower res to conserve bandwidth. ESPN already made a similar play with their ill-fated Sports Heaven promotion. I took a YouTube snapshot of a CBS college basketball broadcast clip onto a RAZR and I cannot even see the ball, nor read the graphic scoreboard.
From the slide show:
When it comes to open source, IT doesn't mind if the open source community is holier than thou if they can save them time, money, interoperability pain and more.
28% of surveyed agreed that major open source projects are run by sanctimonious elitists. Were the other 72% of the respondents the actual sanctimonious elitists?
Or are thanks in order for the 72% of major open source projects not run by sanctimonious elitists? I for one would like to thank the FileZilla team for building something better than the commercial competitor WS_FTP. And I would like to thank the sourceforge team for providing a repository of plenty of good software not sanctimoniously delivered.
One of the top theoretical benefits of open source is the "Many eyes" method of bug spotting. And Klocwork provides an "electronic" eye. (I am imagining the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect here.)
Sun lost 12000 desktops. That does not mean that "in a way" Microsoft lost them too. Apple did not lose them and neither did Red Hat. Obviously IBM and HP were closer than anyone to "losing" them with their competing UNIX RISC workstations. The availability of Xfree86 in the 1990s meant that Linux was ready for the desktop at any subsequent point to replace proprietary workstations and X terminals, particularly x86 based UNIX. A Linux desktop is cheaper than Windows and Hummingbird as an XTERM. Apple and MS had a big uphill battle in this scenario to gain enough ground to consider this "lost."
The company had commenced operations in April and hired about 30 people for its subsidiary
In Silicon Valley, a one cough by a hiring manager can cause 30 people to disappear overnight. Thirty people in India represented less than a million dollars worth of pocket change to Apple. The story in really, "What were they attempting to do in the first place?"
BSD vs GPL for contributions has been discussed repeatedly in the Slashdot forum. But, more important to me is the manner in which the software may used. mySQL AB puts restrictions on the redistribution of application, with a special exception for PHP based applications. Also, it appears that a for-profit company would be on the hook to purchase commerical licenses, unless they were willing to publish the source code to their mySQL powered application.
s ource-license.html
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/open
So now, as an application developer for a commercial enterprise, one starts looking at all freely available alternatives, including those published by the top database vendors. If you could live within the size or license restrictions imposed by the no-cost commercial versions, PostGreSQL and mySQL become just two of many choices.
Rackable declined to comment for this story because it is in a stock exchange quiet period, after announcing a plan to sell 3.3 million shares in a secondary offering to raise new financing.
So then... Slashdot exposure during the quiet period is all OK then right? Shankland watches this particular market segment pretty closely. I wonder if he has any options? *cough* *just a theory* *cough*
IMHO, looking at the text of the documents mentioned above, it appears that a stock header and footer was constructed and then the presentation script itself was done in a text editor.
ChrisDolan,
I apologize for my unintentionally misleading statement. Parrot Does not have a XUL document. The intro to PUGS and HASKELL slides are XUL documents. They are both referenced from the PERL6 site. In my quest to find out more about PUGS and HASKELL I was thrown off course and had to learn about XUL first. There is no good purpose for that. A user should not be surprised by a new document format while on a quest for other information. And a fair question would be, where is the POD Perl 6 documentation? It is not on the site, nor is it on CPAN. I have not followed the project closely and as a casually interested user, the doc locations are not intutively obvious.
Thanks, E.
Here is the Wikipedia article on XUL. I could have used this link on the PERL 6 web site since the documentation on PARROT and PUGS are composed in XUL. This was my first introduction to the format. The documents opened in Mozilla, but not in IE. While the arguement has been made here that you should only use Mozilla, why alienate a huge chunk of users without helping them along? Also, if you are going to publish in XUL, do not assume the casual user knows what the format and reader is. The Filext.com site did not yet have a listing or recommended reader for the XUL files.
eComstation is keeping the flame alive for those that are interested.
ObjectRexx is also available for many platforms as noted above.
"When playing, gamers are undergoing a complex process of 'work related learning' - learning how to cope with work scenarios -..."
Much like school itself, online community games are social situations. And many of us conduct business through electronic communications such as phones, chats, and e-mail. I could see how being able to resolve conflicts and forge alliances remotely could be an advantage in the real world work environment.
However, playing first person shooting games 3 hours a day with your eventual career being a postal employee working in a sorting facility may not be constructive "work related learning".
In regard to * * Beatles-Beatles, it would seem that there is a certain amount of jealousy that such a highly numbered member could have so many stories accepted. There is so much envy, that his last two comments were nailed with double -1 moderations. The metamoderation system should level it out. It looks like all his stories are valid. Yea, his web page is meaningless to most, but aren't all of them? This is just a minor blip.
CmdrTaco,
If Beatles Beatles were to submit an article titled: "Windows Vista Source Code released, Microsoft to convert all code to GPL", you could hardly expect that any discussion of the submitter would take place. Perhaps, in fact, Beatles Beatles, really does submit marginal articles in an attempt for personal gain. As the editor, you certainly could spread the wealth to one of the other 30-40 submitters. Maybe you just need to save up some of the daily submissions to round out the evening, or have fewer evening stories to accurately reflect the lack of articles.
eltoyoboyo
...so everyone gets roasted. If the offtopic posts about an author are getting modded up, and the metamoderators are not nipping that in the bud, then that is how the site works currently. The next step is probably to have periodic meta moderation audits to make sure that the site is going in the direction you want.
As a regular metamoderator I can tell you that I rarely quibble with +1 insightful or +1 interesting. A +1 informative needs to at least have a cross reference or impart real knowledge. But +1 insightful on a post that contains an unemotional plain response always works. The -1 moderations get examined with the hot lights. Half of the -1 trolls usually are not. But the unfortunate part about being a metamoderator is that you are exposed to the more disgusting real trolls (*YUK*). Probably 2/3 of the -1 offtopic posts really are. But, Troll, Offtopic, and redundant are way overused to attempt to shut someone up with a valid contribution that does not agree with the majority. I look at underrated and overrated posts and make a judgement call. It does not seem to be a commonly used mod. +1 Funny, well, if the rumor is true that Funny does not count towards your karma, then it is probably for the best...
So just now
+1 funny - unfair (judgement call, but hey, you would have stared at anyone who said this out loud. Shameful waste of a mod point in my opinion.)
-1 offtopic - unfair (I won't name the subject, but it is one of the hot buttons on the site. It was a topical post within a +5 thread)
+1 insightful - fair
-1 offtopic - fair
+1 funny - fair
-1 redundant - fair (but probably should have been -1 offtopic)
+1 insightful - fair
+1 informative - fair
+1 insightful - fair
+1 insightful - fair
8 fairs to 2 unfairs is a pretty typical session. Also, 7 upmods to 3 downmods is pretty typical.
TFA is remarkably uninformative. Do not bother with it, if it becomes slashdotted.
This article (PC or people--who's the boss?) has an interview with him today.
Bill Addresses his Microsoft transition on his home page: http://www.billbuxton.com/
He is cited in the Wikipedia article about Human-computer interaction.
From TFA the problem was similar to search engine content hijacking, which I have experienced. I have never directly subscribed to a feed in this way. I have always navigated to the home page first and then clicked on the RSS/ATOM/XML link to add to my feed.
Which is my way of saying that search engines are good, but
<dons jounalism professor hat>
you have to check your sources.
<doffs jounalism professor hat>
It has already started at work. As the resident geek in the department, I already have explained many times about the Sony DRM and the XCP rootkit. With Thanksgiving holidays coming up and get-togethers with the relatives, I figure I should just hand out a little pamphlet. I would like to be a fly on the wall inside the Sony corporate offices as they look for some mid-level managers to can over this. I would also like to read some of their heated and panicked internal correspondence as they try to do damage control. Someone is going to get torched publicly for this by Sony's legal team. I have looked to see if any class-action lawsuits have been filed, but I am now aware of any, yet.
A raised floor with holes under the system racks is one way to get the coolest air where it is needed most. But, thermodynamically speaking, it all comes down to how many joules of heat need to be exchanged. If enough heat flows to a cooler area to keep the operating temperature of the systems within recommended specifications, then it does not really matter if it is done through a raised floor.
In terms of efficiency, a raised floor may not be as good as direct ducting and feeding past the hottest components in the systems. But it may be the most reasonable and cost effective way to set up an environment.
Personally, I find that an environment that is good for computers is uncomfortable for humans. Blowing fans and cool air seem to contribute to every cold I get. Coincidence? Probably not since the fans are very good at distributing particulate matter. When liquid cooling comes along, or computers can run at low voltage and amperage, we will be better off.
Those good old days to which you seem to be thinking back were when computers did not come in boxes. They came in crates and they were assembled by a team of factory reps. ;-)
Even then, there was a cost associated with the compiler.