I find it hard to believe this edict will change anything in Egypt or any other Arab country. The copied audio casette is a way of life there. I find it hard to believe that the many people who make a living from peddling cassettes and CDs in open markets, street corners, train stations, bus stations and any other place with a crowd will turn to studying the Koran to put food on the table. I find it even harder to believe that the poor populace in Egypt is going to start coughing up more money for legitimite products. Most suprising of it all is that a Muslim cleric has taken a clearly pro-western stance about something. I wonder how long he will last.
Potential employers will give you more serious consideration if you have a degree. It doesn't really make a difference what you want to do, a degree in anything is better than no degree at all. Also, keep in mind that you might go sour on being a Sys Admin and then all your certifications are worthless. A degree will not be.
If you want more reasons: - your salary will be automagically higher with a degree. - a good college will give you a well rounded background in the field you study. This will allow you to acquire new skills easily in that field. Most people fail to understand this point and don't understand why they are learning calculus or discrete math when all they want to do is program.
Go to college, study something that interests you and then go be a Sys Admin.
What if the none of the creators of these services are interested in the services working? It is very plausible they plan to keep these sites running with the current set of ridiciulous limitations (200 songs, lose everything when subscription ends, etc.); have them fail and then go cry to the legislature that digital distribution on the internet is impossible and should be made illegal - after all, if they can't make it happen why should anyone else be allowed? Or they could settle for having the image of having "tried" digital distribution and "proven" that it doesn't work... The issue is that from their own perspective these companies have nothing to lose and everything to gain by the failure of their digital distribution ventures.
The easiest way to avoid most spam is to use disposable email addresses - open an account with Hotmail or Yahoo, etc. and use that as your "sign-up"/"service" email. Use your personal/work email just for that - work and personal correspondence. I rarely, if ever, get spam in my personal accounts.
The effect will hopefully be twofold: 1. You don't get spam where you don't want it. 2. Choke Hotmail & Yahoo with spam, turning it into a corporate nuisance. Then they might move to actually blocking it - say by blacklisting mail servers. After all, there's nothing like a little corporate sponsorship to get the job done in the U.S.
I'm 8th grade? Your spelling is horrific and your ideas are a muddled mess of America-bashing, feel good platitudes. 1. Ghana can and should "partipate" in the Internet. However, that does not turn it into a major player in the arena. Try as it may, it is not as important as the U.S.... Or Canada. To illustrate, if Ghana disconnects tomorrow, 99% of the internet's user's will not notice. If the U.S. pulls the plug, there is a good chance the internet will cease to exist. 2. Ghana's wisdom, values and other "cultural" feel-good stuff is of no import to ICANN and its proceedings. 3. I've spent most of my life outside North America so I do know about other parts of the world. I've noticed that most people hate America not because of the retarded culture and values it exports but out of envy. In a broad stroke I would say people love all things American but hate America. You seem to be one of this group. If not, may I suggest you disconnect your American designed computer, disconnect your American invented phone, be rid of your American pioneered cellphone, etc.
Your ideas are interesting and laudable but I do believe ICANN has other self-serving reasons to convene in Ghana. Namely, the exotic (by Western standards) location.
No, not myopic or jingoistic, just a cold realist in contrast to your new-age, mushy, self-righteous political correctness. Ghana is about as important to the Internet as fish are to bicycles and no matter how many meetings you convene there, the simple fact of Ghanian irrelevance will not change.
"It's all hackery, it's all ad-hoc and none of it is interoperable," he added.
Every protocol they have ever come up with is a hodge-podge of non-interoperable, often inoperable, ad-hoc junk.
Take a look at SMB (aka CIFS), for instance: it consists of at least 3 different incompatbile sub-protocols, breaks every network coding rule you could possibly learn in college (network stack abstraction is one, word alignment issues are another) and generally has more exceptions than rules.
So you see, the world will be much prettier if MS designs an inoperable protocol to replace the operable HTTP
I would have a hard time plunking down $400 for a piece of equipment that is instantly worthless if decided I don't want to pay for a monthly subscription.
Cable is nice for TV but your TV can still do a lot without it. Internet service is great but your computer is still very useful without it.
Re:A soldier is a soldier no matter what they driv
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 1
Merriam-Webster definition of Army (my italics):
A large organized body of armed personnel trained for war especially on land.
Claiming the Taliban are an organized entity is like claiming Mr. Reza is a well regulated militia.
An army becomes one when it is well organized and disciplined. The correct term for the Taliban is mob
This is not a war. This is a dismantling of a band of thugs by an organized modern military. Calling the Afghan side an army is ridiculous - they're a bunch of primitive, tribal, feudal, bearded men riding in Toyota pickups brandishing Kalashinkovs.
Despite this fact, there still are friendly casualties galore. Let's not forget, the U.S. army has been sending in Northern Alliance troops ahead of American troops to suffer the casualties you blissfully believe are non-existant. Indeed, Northern Alliance troops are playing the part of your cherished "remote controlled" drones. There is "substantial human sacrifice" on our side - just not American life.
Yes, America is winning this "war", thankfully, but it is not nearly as clean and antiseptic as you pretend it is.
Seriously, Jon, you seem to believe too much of what you are fed on TV and in the press. The media is so frighteningly sycophantic and uncritical I wouldn't believe anything they say.
Your knowledege of Windows is evidently that of an end user and not someone who has dealt with the innards of it.
As someone who has programmed in Windows and deals daily with Microsoft network clients and servers at the protocol level - I can very confidently assert that Windows is one of the most horribly written pieces of software out there. You have no idea of the inefficiencies in its network behavior or about its sensitivity to variations in peer behavior. It's trivial to freeze up a Windows (2000, XP, take your pick) machine through its file sharing protocol - I do it daily.
It is truly a piece of crap.
The writer forgets to mention that this would happen only in the U.S.
The rest of the world would happily chug along without these wild restrictions on what people can do with their computers.
The irony of it is that innovation is a product of the freedom to think and do whatever you want with the means at your disposal. Today, the U.S. is the best place for it.
The minute these limitations are put into place, the U.S. can kiss its technological supremacy goodbye. The bleeding edge will move elsewhere.
Alot of good the Turing Award will do you, I'm sure.
Why not write a simple web page advertising your ability to factor any number for the princely sum of $1m.
That would get you somewhere...
you have it all wrong.
The best way to backup mp3s is to give them to ALL your friends. it even has a technical term - Massively Distributed Backup. It is simple, effective, lawyer-proof and probably even nuke-proof (depending on the spacial distribution of your friends).
Maybe the problem stems more from your arrogance - moral and otherwise.
The U.S. military is not dropping food to alleviate suffering in Afghanistan. It is dropping food to shut up pampered self-righteous idiots in the West.
The U.S. is fighting a war it wishes to win quickly in Afghanistan. If the Taliban can hold out one hour longer because of food they might be pilfering from the Red Cross - bomb the food. This is a war and things are uncertain, better safe than sorry.
People are dying every day on the ground, on both sides, and too many will die because of the war prolonging "good" intentions of people like you.
Wake up....
Thomas Freidman, a NYTimes columnist, gives a pretty good explanation of globalization in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
I'm just about to finish reading the book and can attest that he has neatly defined everything I had hunches about regarding where the world is headed and what globalization means. He has a complete world view which neatly explains all the things Jon Katz mentioned and more.
To give you an idea of the credibility of the book, he essentially predicted the 9/11 attacks in the book as a product of globalization.
He might be a tad optimistic for me and I sometimes take issue with his writing style but he seems to be mostly right on and writes very very clearly.
A recommended read!
P.S. I do not have any vested interest in the book, nor am I a relative of Thomas Freidman
Behind most commercial successes you will find a QA team. Unfortunately, the larger the QA team, the crappier the underlying code.
Commercial vendors can hide crappy code because they have large and organized QA teams to uncover bugs.
The OSS community might have a lot of testers but they are not nearly as efficient as a dedicated QA team.
I toyed with the idea too. I remember reading a webpage complete with pictures and schematics on exactly how to do it, using a chip from Crystal Audio that you could get free as a sampler. It was a long time ago (about when Awe64 Gold was top of the line) and I don't remember where I read it. I also had the idea of getting a friend to make me a custom ISA or PCI board to output the electrical S/PDIF signals while the actual sample -> S/PDIF bit encoding would be done in software...
Neither came to fruition.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it hard to believe this edict will change anything in Egypt or any other Arab country. The copied audio casette is a way of life there. I find it hard to believe that the many people who make a living from peddling cassettes and CDs in open markets, street corners, train stations, bus stations and any other place with a crowd will turn to studying the Koran to put food on the table.
I find it even harder to believe that the poor populace in Egypt is going to start coughing up more money for legitimite products.
Most suprising of it all is that a Muslim cleric has taken a clearly pro-western stance about something. I wonder how long he will last.
If for only one reason - it opens doors.
Potential employers will give you more serious consideration if you have a degree. It doesn't really make a difference what you want to do, a degree in anything is better than no degree at all.
Also, keep in mind that you might go sour on being a Sys Admin and then all your certifications are worthless. A degree will not be.
If you want more reasons:
- your salary will be automagically higher with a degree.
- a good college will give you a well rounded background in the field you study. This will allow you to acquire new skills easily in that field. Most people fail to understand this point and don't understand why they are learning calculus or discrete math when all they want to do is program.
Go to college, study something that interests you and then go be a Sys Admin.
I wasn't clear enough. They would claim that "legal" digital distribution is unworkable. The press will just repeat what it's told.
What if the none of the creators of these services are interested in the services working?
It is very plausible they plan to keep these sites running with the current set of ridiciulous limitations (200 songs, lose everything when subscription ends, etc.); have them fail and then go cry to the legislature that digital distribution on the internet is impossible and should be made illegal - after all, if they can't make it happen why should anyone else be allowed?
Or they could settle for having the image of having "tried" digital distribution and "proven" that it doesn't work...
The issue is that from their own perspective these companies have nothing to lose and everything to gain by the failure of their digital distribution ventures.
except, you would need to package the hash with the DVD in order to experience the effect properly
The easiest way to avoid most spam is to use disposable email addresses - open an account with Hotmail or Yahoo, etc. and use that as your "sign-up"/"service" email. Use your personal/work email just for that - work and personal correspondence. I rarely, if ever, get spam in my personal accounts.
The effect will hopefully be twofold:
1. You don't get spam where you don't want it.
2. Choke Hotmail & Yahoo with spam, turning it into a corporate nuisance. Then they might move to actually blocking it - say by blacklisting mail servers. After all, there's nothing like a little corporate sponsorship to get the job done in the U.S.
You're trying to define quality - quality of code. Just be certain you don't go insane trying.
"Oh no! Windows XP just inserted a random letter in my document! I better call tech support. Something is horribly WRONG!"
Same person a couple minutes later...
"Oh shit! Windows/Word/Excel/Power Point/Outlook/Project/IE crashed, I just lost an hour's work! I guess I have to reboot..."
Does this make sense?
I'm 8th grade? Your spelling is horrific and your ideas are a muddled mess of America-bashing, feel good platitudes. ... Or Canada. To illustrate, if Ghana disconnects tomorrow, 99% of the internet's user's will not notice. If the U.S. pulls the plug, there is a good chance the internet will cease to exist.
1. Ghana can and should "partipate" in the Internet. However, that does not turn it into a major player in the arena. Try as it may, it is not as important as the U.S.
2. Ghana's wisdom, values and other "cultural" feel-good stuff is of no import to ICANN and its proceedings.
3. I've spent most of my life outside North America so I do know about other parts of the world. I've noticed that most people hate America not because of the retarded culture and values it exports but out of envy. In a broad stroke I would say people love all things American but hate America. You seem to be one of this group. If not, may I suggest you disconnect your American designed computer, disconnect your American invented phone, be rid of your American pioneered cellphone, etc.
Your ideas are interesting and laudable but I do believe ICANN has other self-serving reasons to convene in Ghana. Namely, the exotic (by Western standards) location.
"myopic and jingoistic"
No, not myopic or jingoistic, just a cold realist in contrast to your new-age, mushy, self-righteous political correctness. Ghana is about as important to the Internet as fish are to bicycles and no matter how many meetings you convene there, the simple fact of Ghanian irrelevance will not change.
And this is because Ghana is a world Internet power, right?
For kripe's sake, just look at their "meeting" calendar - it looks like a travel agency billboard.
What additional proof do you need that ICANN is into frittering other people's money for their own entertainment?
"It's all hackery, it's all ad-hoc and none of it is interoperable," he added.
Every protocol they have ever come up with is a hodge-podge of non-interoperable, often inoperable, ad-hoc junk.
Take a look at SMB (aka CIFS), for instance: it consists of at least 3 different incompatbile sub-protocols, breaks every network coding rule you could possibly learn in college (network stack abstraction is one, word alignment issues are another) and generally has more exceptions than rules.
So you see, the world will be much prettier if MS designs an inoperable protocol to replace the operable HTTP
I would have a hard time plunking down $400 for a piece of equipment that is instantly worthless if decided I don't want to pay for a monthly subscription.
Cable is nice for TV but your TV can still do a lot without it. Internet service is great but your computer is still very useful without it.
Merriam-Webster definition of Army (my italics): A large organized body of armed personnel trained for war especially on land.
Claiming the Taliban are an organized entity is like claiming Mr. Reza is a well regulated militia.
An army becomes one when it is well organized and disciplined. The correct term for the Taliban is mob
This is not a war. This is a dismantling of a band of thugs by an organized modern military. Calling the Afghan side an army is ridiculous - they're a bunch of primitive, tribal, feudal, bearded men riding in Toyota pickups brandishing Kalashinkovs.
Despite this fact, there still are friendly casualties galore. Let's not forget, the U.S. army has been sending in Northern Alliance troops ahead of American troops to suffer the casualties you blissfully believe are non-existant. Indeed, Northern Alliance troops are playing the part of your cherished "remote controlled" drones. There is "substantial human sacrifice" on our side - just not American life.
Yes, America is winning this "war", thankfully, but it is not nearly as clean and antiseptic as you pretend it is.
Seriously, Jon, you seem to believe too much of what you are fed on TV and in the press. The media is so frighteningly sycophantic and uncritical I wouldn't believe anything they say.
Hey, at least they stopped pretending they would ever release Prey...
Your knowledege of Windows is evidently that of an end user and not someone who has dealt with the innards of it.
As someone who has programmed in Windows and deals daily with Microsoft network clients and servers at the protocol level - I can very confidently assert that Windows is one of the most horribly written pieces of software out there. You have no idea of the inefficiencies in its network behavior or about its sensitivity to variations in peer behavior. It's trivial to freeze up a Windows (2000, XP, take your pick) machine through its file sharing protocol - I do it daily.
It is truly a piece of crap.
The writer forgets to mention that this would happen only in the U.S.
The rest of the world would happily chug along without these wild restrictions on what people can do with their computers.
The irony of it is that innovation is a product of the freedom to think and do whatever you want with the means at your disposal. Today, the U.S. is the best place for it.
The minute these limitations are put into place, the U.S. can kiss its technological supremacy goodbye. The bleeding edge will move elsewhere.
Alot of good the Turing Award will do you, I'm sure.
Why not write a simple web page advertising your ability to factor any number for the princely sum of $1m.
That would get you somewhere...
you have it all wrong.
The best way to backup mp3s is to give them to ALL your friends. it even has a technical term - Massively Distributed Backup. It is simple, effective, lawyer-proof and probably even nuke-proof (depending on the spacial distribution of your friends).
Maybe the problem stems more from your arrogance - moral and otherwise.
The U.S. military is not dropping food to alleviate suffering in Afghanistan. It is dropping food to shut up pampered self-righteous idiots in the West.
The U.S. is fighting a war it wishes to win quickly in Afghanistan. If the Taliban can hold out one hour longer because of food they might be pilfering from the Red Cross - bomb the food. This is a war and things are uncertain, better safe than sorry.
People are dying every day on the ground, on both sides, and too many will die because of the war prolonging "good" intentions of people like you.
Wake up....
Thomas Freidman, a NYTimes columnist, gives a pretty good explanation of globalization in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree.
I'm just about to finish reading the book and can attest that he has neatly defined everything I had hunches about regarding where the world is headed and what globalization means. He has a complete world view which neatly explains all the things Jon Katz mentioned and more.
To give you an idea of the credibility of the book, he essentially predicted the 9/11 attacks in the book as a product of globalization.
He might be a tad optimistic for me and I sometimes take issue with his writing style but he seems to be mostly right on and writes very very clearly.
A recommended read!
P.S. I do not have any vested interest in the book, nor am I a relative of Thomas Freidman
Behind most commercial successes you will find a QA team. Unfortunately, the larger the QA team, the crappier the underlying code.
Commercial vendors can hide crappy code because they have large and organized QA teams to uncover bugs.
The OSS community might have a lot of testers but they are not nearly as efficient as a dedicated QA team.
I toyed with the idea too. I remember reading a webpage complete with pictures and schematics on exactly how to do it, using a chip from Crystal Audio that you could get free as a sampler. It was a long time ago (about when Awe64 Gold was top of the line) and I don't remember where I read it. I also had the idea of getting a friend to make me a custom ISA or PCI board to output the electrical S/PDIF signals while the actual sample -> S/PDIF bit encoding would be done in software...
Neither came to fruition.