Macs are compatible with an incredible range of presentation systems. Their BSD base seems to make them incredibly hard to external attack. Microsoft Powerpoint on a Mac has superior presentation tools to those found on the Windows' version. You can run Windows in a full-screen, out to the presentation system.
Mac laptops are ideal for business travelers making presentations using Powerpoint and demonstrating their companies' Windows-based software products, secure from attack in a hotel. (I've been hit with attacks in my hotel 4 out of 5 times. When traveling with business partners carrying PCs, I'm the one calling them to warn them of the threat.) If you travel to Japan, use a Mac modem in those rare but existent hotels without broadband, you hear at the breakfast bar all that the Windows users suffer through trying to get their modems to negotiate the foreign phone system, while your Mac just works.
Business travelers are not a small market segment.
Accepting superior security and superior presentations, there is no Mac tax. Far from it, it's a dividend.
I was always convinced of the Mac tax on their laptops.
Then I owned one. I didn't want it at first. I didn't lust after it.
Now I am convinced that there is no Mac tax. I happen to know that I'm immune to the idea that I'm a fanboi suffering from post-purchase justification. I just know that once you own one, if you had the Mac tax issue, you lose it. Quickly. Completely. Forever.
Then your next laptop will be a Mac. And you'll recommend them. And you'll probably try to explain something in a post that might not be easily explained.
The last three Mac laptops I've owned have had a DVI connector on the side and they come with a DVI-VGA adapter - included, no charge. I've given presentations at a LOT of companies in the last four years - I did it traveling an average of 6 months out of the year - so a LOT of presentations exclusively with hosted projected systems. I pop on the VGA connector, connect it to the facilities' presentation system, the Mac system (hardware/firmware/software) negotiates with the system and matches the presentation resolution. On older presentation systems where negotiation doesn't occur, it defaults to 768x1024 and has always worked. Powerpoint automatically goes into a mode where the laptop screen has slide notes and navigation, the presentation system goes to full slide only, with no mouse on the presentation system when I navigate slides.
In each and every presentation I've given, the audience comments always include - "Wait for our go-to guy before you plug it in." "OK, plug it in if you want, but we have enough trouble getting Windows machines to work and this is designed for Windows." "You're just going to make matters worse for our go-to guy." "How the fuck did you get that working so quickly?" "Is that a special Mac or is it really a Mac?" "Cancel the call to the go-to guy." OR - "Nice. I remember how easy this was last time you were here. Stop fooling around you guys, this guy is going to present in about one second."
The adapter is not fragile. If you find it more easily losable than your laser pointer, miniature bluetooth mouse, cell phone, bluetooth headset, iPod, earbuds, USB mini-hub, power adapter, spare AAA batteries for your mouse, your ink pen, your international power adapter, your AC trim strip/surge protector, or your business card case, you're a total idiot. While I hate the term, they call guys like us road warriors. We put ALL of our presentation hardware into a ziplock - when on-site, we extract our laptop, power adapter, and ziplock (as stated, containing exactly what's needed every time - no more, no less) and when packing up, the ziplock is re-filled as before. (Trim strip/surge suppressor attached to international power adapter and packed separately in a totecase pocket reserved for that and the ziplock and nothing else.) If you're not a (shudder) road warrior, you keep the VGA adapter in the box your laptop came in, that you will save, because you're aware of the high resale value of your Mac laptop, and return the VGA adapter only so-occasionally used to the box so as to not lose it.
I won't even dignify the remark that the keyboard-adjustable-for-brightness (going to very bright) LCD display suffers from too much glare or is too dark to use in other than a darkened room. If you do have such a room that I've not encountered, the Apple Store has an anti-glare screen for $35, aftermarket unquestionably less. (My company always insisted on buying them, I always insisted on never needing them.)
In short, your comments are based on Macs not in a world I'm familiar with.
BTW - I just checked my 7+ year old Mac icebook - it came with the funny-to-VGA adapter, only did 768x1024 or 600x800 out of the external port, so far as I've ever known. I still have that adapter. Haven't presented anywhere where those two resolutions are excluded by the presentation system; haven't tried, and have done plenty at 1024x1280 with newer Macs.
All Mac display-output-to-nearly-anything adapters all carry the same price from the Apple Store if you lose one - $19.
I disagree with your major points, that a spec comparison is asinine and that the point of PCs is to not be limited to the options Apple gives you.
I think the point of PCs is to primarily run Windows and insert-your-favorite Windows software - or - to run Linux.
A 1-1 spec comparison isn't asinine if one's point is to run OS X and wants to know if the hardware is a ripoff.
I do think that you've understated a major point - one has fewer configuration options for an OS X box than a Windows or Linux box. Ultimately, as a data point of one, I'm ok personally with the fewer options, and ok, goodie for me (no sarcasm intended, just might as well say it - the shoe fits, etc.).
But fewer options, while making the purchase possibly easier for many new to OS X, might very well be limiting entry to the OS X world. At the same time, having locked options - and lots of them - adds to sustainability and longer-term support. I have two very functional 7+ year old Macs running Tiger and I'm typing this on one of them. For whatever anecdotal reason, that's longer service than I've gotten from PC boxes - maybe because I'm always saving a buck or two when I buy one of those. No proof implied or believed, just putting it out there.
I for one am glad that you bring up the issue of Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. However, your assertion:
But addressing that question is probably too much trouble for to take for the two or three people that will read this post.
Leads me to ask, what's the question?
FWIW, I think the Commerce Claus (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution) is far from dormant, and in short gives the feds the right to regulate interstate commerce. If you didn't grab a Wikipedia paragraph heading for the assertion of dormancy, please elucidate.
The time will come when the evil of gambling will be prohibited world-wide in a centralized manner, but right now the attempts to fight internet gambling on the scale of Kentukky look heroic, but naive at best.
I re-read your post substituting porn for gambling and snickered. Make the terms gambling and Kentucky variables and you can use this as a dead-on reply for a vast number of issues.
I'm not sure if I agree with the moderation that what you wrote is troll is not - but if it is, I have to give props to really, really good trolls. Usenet was built on them.
As an NMSR member, I feel that it's incumbent on me to point out that the case of Alabama legislating pi as 3 was a famous April Fool's hoax that still seems to live. The Indiana case was, as you point out, unfortunately real.
The law of the state of Kentucky, like the laws of any nation or locality, is applicable only where the authorities of that nation or locality can send people with guns, or convince the locals to point guns on their behalf.
Really. How droll. Mind saying what it was you were installing that included iTunes surreptitiously? Or how you managed to complete an iTunes install without having the separate iTunes dialog pop up for the EULA? How invisible is a popup dialog that locks the entire installation process until satisfied?
You're a piece of work. I suspect you finagled your login and modded yourself up.
If everyone would have been like me,
I'd have blow my fucking brains out many years ago.
It's not as easy as popping open the sliding compartment with a dime or fingernail like most devices, but the overall design is good enough to support this sort of after-market effort.
My kingdom for a/. day where an iPhone/iPod article doesn't lead to ZOMG PWNIES!!!! Please.
I assume that you're referring to XP SP2 - my buddies and I had a lot of various USB problems prior to that. Sorry if that's obvious beyond all recognition, just covering bases.
This is another me-too-I-love-my-Buffalos-over-all-other-brands post.
I think a lot of us, me most definitely, want to share the goodness that is Buffalo for those unfamiliar.
It would be nice to have non-front-page polls for this sort of thing - so others could see how many of us speak from experience and highly recommend Buffalo products.
Nothing wrong with slagging a product that sucks or proselytizing for one that cures common woes. I value/. opinions more than I can say.
Others have answered this well, but your interesting conjecture sent me off on one of my own.
The value c isn't just a velocity, it's a conversion factor, much like 1 inch/2.54 cm is a conversion factor. Calculations for time dilation - and 2-d spacetime maps - rely on the equivalence of 2.9979e8 (I usually wing it with 3e8, this approximation is because I'm too lazy to look it up) meters space is 1 sec time.
There was a Sci channel show - incredibly freaking bad - on a physicist named Jose de Majeiro who postulated that maybe some of our cosmological calculations aren't making sense because the value for c has changed over time.
Now I wonder if there are no violations to the mechanics of various equations within the the event horizon - but rather, physical "constants" as we know them are becoming modified.
Sadly, I cannot help but think that if I've thought of this, someone doing it for a living has also thought of it and their papers are over my head - presuming falsely that I'd know where to look in the first place.
The Lorentz transform causes a breakdown for E in E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where v=c. And when you have enough gravity to bend space such that it folds in on itself - light cannot escape, despite being massless but gaining momentum from the gravity well - you have a singularity.
One can't just say that equations break down, but physics do not. The equations are the language used to express the known physics.
So, there is a singularity, there needs to be, and it isn't magical - unless you mean magical in the sense of wonderful.
This is a pre-planned reply to my own post because it's a footnote.
To clarify what I mean by live delivery and DRM requirements being unknown:
My wife worked in the video (content) distribution industry before, during and after the DVD release to market. One of her girlfriends at a major manufacturer showed up with a before-market player and another one showed up with before-market porn (that one worked for a major studio, but the porn wasn't from her studio). In addition to great porn, and much better picture quality, it had all of the new features happenin' - especially view angles. For the first time, we saw the same fucking scene from 4 different points of view. We were sold. We didn't tell people how view angles would make all of the difference or how we knew, but we were sold.
First DVD I owned was Lost In Space.
But - I cannot remember seeing view angles since then. I remember looking, not finding it, eventually giving up.
That's how a lot of consumer products are marketed: 'We "think!" this is a feature, let's require it of the format so long as if the feature-gamble fails, it won't cost us in the long run.'
BD DRM and live and etc are already at this sorry state of affairs: 'We "magically know!" this is a requirement, let's work out feature delivery later.'
Every BD article has plenty of posts about early adopters and waiting. And posts about how BD isn't worth it.
This article, however, really clarifies the issues. I think in the backs of our minds we've all seen them - but I've recently learned by contemplating my navel that differences in computer marketing vs. all-other marketing is prolly making us all schizophrenic - or quadraphrenic - and burying obvious things we know or making us discuss them obtusely.
1. By the time BD could come down in price - volume shakeout in manufacturing, etc. - there should be new video codecs (normal (whatever that means) evolutionary time assumed) and faster processors. It seems more and more obvious that this adds up to better lossless compression. And that for me implies full HD content on normal DVD media. (Anecdotal proof - BD is so old, AFAIR, Apple was pre-Intel when first supporting it. Whack away if I'm mis-remembering. Not to say that we should use Apple calendars, just saying, most remember that, and can think of the many tech changes since then.)
2. By the time BD has its approach to consumers with respect to live content figured out (repeat - approach to consumers, not technical issues) - there will have been another revolution in internetworking and web designs and web threats.
BD is beyond a non-starter as of right now.
Compare DVD: 0. Develop 1. Only game in town (practically, um-k?, let's overlook laser discs from two generations earlier) 2. Format figured out by the time players hit 3. No change to format 4. Price comes down due to usual market and manufacturing processes 5. Early adopters may more for privilege (nothing wrong with that!!!!), overall, consumers win
Compare BD: 0. Develop 1. HD-DVD comes out as a fuck-you-me-too 2. BD rushed to market to combat HD-DVD, well before intended release 3. Design not finished 4. Format and delivery options vague or driven by too-soon-to-market 5. Some early adopters report already being fucked 6. BD providers scrambling to fix live content delivery problems, DRM woes - minimize fuck-you to early adopters and protect BD reputation 7. Rushed development to market - were live delivery or protection requirements really known???
There was no incentive for DVD changes other than price from day one. It just worked.
There is a lot of incentive for BD change from day one. It does not just work.
BD madness must end. Continued consumption of BD products is support for a format that either might not survive, or will cause BD to survive in a fit of corporate face-saving when better solutions could have existed, or are known to exist by some researchers, but become buried.
Summary: The development and beta cycles for BD are out of whack because of the HD-DVD war. Money and time lost. More money and time will be - or should be - spent to recover. No proof that proper recover with newer technology won't achieve same results with DVD media, different DVD content layout. Feel free to substitute XXX for DVD in above argument, where XXX is better solution following DVD-to-market model.
Non-ditto on proving that the comment was by definition a troll. Lots of people drink the employer Kool Aide without noticing it and becoming contaminated. We all have to eat and all too often have little training in ethics.
The need for ethics is like a thirst - that's why Kool Aide is pernicious and works in the first place.
So I substitute your troll with just-plain-incredibly-fucking-wrong.
Admittedly, I'm being generous. It could be wrong-to-the-point-of-being-stupid. Or it could be that you nailed it in the first place - a fucking troll.
I empathize with your confusion. I see two issues where you see one. Decomposing the problem further might make the solution more apparent.
Here's the emotional one:
On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community.
The career-oriented one is direct, and as you've stated it.
Life in this society is a constant mixed and confusing message - you're supposed to be a tough guy and Oprah at the same time. Screw Oprah, emotional issues are not the be-all and end-all. Screw the inner tough-guy, emotional issues do too matter. And the emotional issue surely does seem very, very large. If you're a fuck the world kind of guy, they're giving you a chance to be in hog heaven. If you're the kind of guy that's tired of having life push you around and The Man removing your Self, then this is the deal breaker - alienation is nothing to sneeze at.
Not all confusing issues have an emotional issue and a technical one - it just decomposes this way in your case. My (very) graybeard experience is to always look for further problem decomposition whenever you're confused. This has served me well.
I ramble on thusly because I think a big issue being mentioned once, with fewest words, in the middle of a lot of words about the other issue, raised a big red flag for me - hope it does for you as well.
I think you're probably ready to decide.
In any case, here's a few cents on the other issue.
It's apparent that your non-compete extends to ongoing open source work. Personally, this would be the deal-breaker for me. There's nothing wrong with a non-compete contract. Companies should expect ethical behavior from employees even after they leave; these sort of contracts arose in part because former employees haven't always proven to be ethical. OTOH, these sort of agreements have also arisen because some companies aren't ethical. Unbelievably, in the Reagan era with its big tech spending, there were companies expecting aerospace engineers to work on limited government contracts with an expectation that the employee never work for another aerospace firm as long as they live. If this agreement is taking advantage of your ethics, while the company has none - fuck 'em. Unless you're getting multi-million dollar fuck you money - and enough to write me a check for the same (sorry, if you can go from free to fee and I'm a part of that, then you owe me) - fuck 'em.
My bias is apparent. The fact remains, this isn't a non-compete agreement - it's a take-you-out-of-the-game agreement.
If you have the same bias as me, agree that both issues make this a non-starter, don't say no - negotiate. Maybe they're not evil, maybe they have an idiot for a corporate attorney and don't know it. Don't negotiate over the non-compete or for money. First negotiate to find out if they're evil or if they've fucked up. Bring these issues up like you would to a pal who fucked up. Trust your instincts and if your instincts tell you that they're responding as evil or responding as fuck ups too proud to correct themselves, then you probably won't want to work there at any price and under any agreement. Hit them between the eyes - ask them if they're aware of what they're asking you to sign.
Hope this helps.
(PS - didn't sleep well last night, have previewed this repeatedly finding grammar mistakes I usually never make, and now just giving up with apologies for any rilly bad grammar remaining)
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Macs are compatible with an incredible range of presentation systems. Their BSD base seems to make them incredibly hard to external attack. Microsoft Powerpoint on a Mac has superior presentation tools to those found on the Windows' version. You can run Windows in a full-screen, out to the presentation system.
Mac laptops are ideal for business travelers making presentations using Powerpoint and demonstrating their companies' Windows-based software products, secure from attack in a hotel. (I've been hit with attacks in my hotel 4 out of 5 times. When traveling with business partners carrying PCs, I'm the one calling them to warn them of the threat.) If you travel to Japan, use a Mac modem in those rare but existent hotels without broadband, you hear at the breakfast bar all that the Windows users suffer through trying to get their modems to negotiate the foreign phone system, while your Mac just works.
Business travelers are not a small market segment.
Accepting superior security and superior presentations, there is no Mac tax. Far from it, it's a dividend.
Touche. Namaste. LMAOe.
Many thanks for the clarification and education on this.
I was always convinced of the Mac tax on their laptops.
Then I owned one. I didn't want it at first. I didn't lust after it.
Now I am convinced that there is no Mac tax. I happen to know that I'm immune to the idea that I'm a fanboi suffering from post-purchase justification. I just know that once you own one, if you had the Mac tax issue, you lose it. Quickly. Completely. Forever.
Then your next laptop will be a Mac. And you'll recommend them. And you'll probably try to explain something in a post that might not be easily explained.
Whoa.
The last three Mac laptops I've owned have had a DVI connector on the side and they come with a DVI-VGA adapter - included, no charge. I've given presentations at a LOT of companies in the last four years - I did it traveling an average of 6 months out of the year - so a LOT of presentations exclusively with hosted projected systems. I pop on the VGA connector, connect it to the facilities' presentation system, the Mac system (hardware/firmware/software) negotiates with the system and matches the presentation resolution. On older presentation systems where negotiation doesn't occur, it defaults to 768x1024 and has always worked. Powerpoint automatically goes into a mode where the laptop screen has slide notes and navigation, the presentation system goes to full slide only, with no mouse on the presentation system when I navigate slides.
In each and every presentation I've given, the audience comments always include - "Wait for our go-to guy before you plug it in." "OK, plug it in if you want, but we have enough trouble getting Windows machines to work and this is designed for Windows." "You're just going to make matters worse for our go-to guy." "How the fuck did you get that working so quickly?" "Is that a special Mac or is it really a Mac?" "Cancel the call to the go-to guy." OR - "Nice. I remember how easy this was last time you were here. Stop fooling around you guys, this guy is going to present in about one second."
The adapter is not fragile. If you find it more easily losable than your laser pointer, miniature bluetooth mouse, cell phone, bluetooth headset, iPod, earbuds, USB mini-hub, power adapter, spare AAA batteries for your mouse, your ink pen, your international power adapter, your AC trim strip/surge protector, or your business card case, you're a total idiot. While I hate the term, they call guys like us road warriors. We put ALL of our presentation hardware into a ziplock - when on-site, we extract our laptop, power adapter, and ziplock (as stated, containing exactly what's needed every time - no more, no less) and when packing up, the ziplock is re-filled as before. (Trim strip/surge suppressor attached to international power adapter and packed separately in a totecase pocket reserved for that and the ziplock and nothing else.) If you're not a (shudder) road warrior, you keep the VGA adapter in the box your laptop came in, that you will save, because you're aware of the high resale value of your Mac laptop, and return the VGA adapter only so-occasionally used to the box so as to not lose it.
I won't even dignify the remark that the keyboard-adjustable-for-brightness (going to very bright) LCD display suffers from too much glare or is too dark to use in other than a darkened room. If you do have such a room that I've not encountered, the Apple Store has an anti-glare screen for $35, aftermarket unquestionably less. (My company always insisted on buying them, I always insisted on never needing them.)
In short, your comments are based on Macs not in a world I'm familiar with.
BTW - I just checked my 7+ year old Mac icebook - it came with the funny-to-VGA adapter, only did 768x1024 or 600x800 out of the external port, so far as I've ever known. I still have that adapter. Haven't presented anywhere where those two resolutions are excluded by the presentation system; haven't tried, and have done plenty at 1024x1280 with newer Macs.
All Mac display-output-to-nearly-anything adapters all carry the same price from the Apple Store if you lose one - $19.
I disagree with your major points, that a spec comparison is asinine and that the point of PCs is to not be limited to the options Apple gives you.
I think the point of PCs is to primarily run Windows and insert-your-favorite Windows software - or - to run Linux.
A 1-1 spec comparison isn't asinine if one's point is to run OS X and wants to know if the hardware is a ripoff.
I do think that you've understated a major point - one has fewer configuration options for an OS X box than a Windows or Linux box. Ultimately, as a data point of one, I'm ok personally with the fewer options, and ok, goodie for me (no sarcasm intended, just might as well say it - the shoe fits, etc.).
But fewer options, while making the purchase possibly easier for many new to OS X, might very well be limiting entry to the OS X world. At the same time, having locked options - and lots of them - adds to sustainability and longer-term support. I have two very functional 7+ year old Macs running Tiger and I'm typing this on one of them. For whatever anecdotal reason, that's longer service than I've gotten from PC boxes - maybe because I'm always saving a buck or two when I buy one of those. No proof implied or believed, just putting it out there.
I for one am glad that you bring up the issue of Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution. However, your assertion:
But addressing that question is probably too much trouble for to take for the two or three people that will read this post.
Leads me to ask, what's the question?
FWIW, I think the Commerce Claus (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution) is far from dormant, and in short gives the feds the right to regulate interstate commerce. If you didn't grab a Wikipedia paragraph heading for the assertion of dormancy, please elucidate.
Failing either, please try to have a better day.
The time will come when the evil of gambling will be prohibited world-wide in a centralized manner, but right now the attempts to fight internet gambling on the scale of Kentukky look heroic, but naive at best.
I re-read your post substituting porn for gambling and snickered. Make the terms gambling and Kentucky variables and you can use this as a dead-on reply for a vast number of issues.
I'm not sure if I agree with the moderation that what you wrote is troll is not - but if it is, I have to give props to really, really good trolls. Usenet was built on them.
Dude. This post is brilliant.
As an NMSR member, I feel that it's incumbent on me to point out that the case of Alabama legislating pi as 3 was a famous April Fool's hoax that still seems to live. The Indiana case was, as you point out, unfortunately real.
http://www.nmsr.org/alabama.htm
The law of the state of Kentucky, like the laws of any nation or locality, is applicable only where the authorities of that nation or locality can send people with guns, or convince the locals to point guns on their behalf.
Naturally, in addition to the conditions you state, there is also the equally real possibility put forth in the movie Next of Kin - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097967/plotsummary
I am not serious.
Really. How droll. Mind saying what it was you were installing that included iTunes surreptitiously? Or how you managed to complete an iTunes install without having the separate iTunes dialog pop up for the EULA? How invisible is a popup dialog that locks the entire installation process until satisfied?
You're a piece of work. I suspect you finagled your login and modded yourself up.
If everyone would have been like me,
I'd have blow my fucking brains out many years ago.
Disagree does not equal -1, Flamebait. Support Apple over Linux does not equal -1, Flamebait.
I find the parent post to be quite insightful - would've been braver had it not be AC'd.
Taking offense with a final sentence in an otherwise well-thought-out post and flexing mod points is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The first post was flamebait, no one modded that, choose this instead. Shame.
Here's where to go if you have an iPod - you drill down by model, they include video instructions.
http://www.ipodbatterydepot.com/
It's not as easy as popping open the sliding compartment with a dime or fingernail like most devices, but the overall design is good enough to support this sort of after-market effort.
My kingdom for a /. day where an iPhone/iPod article doesn't lead to ZOMG PWNIES!!!! Please.
Not sure of your time frame, but just in case you still have it, maybe their website is better now:
http://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/
If it's a discontinued model:
http://site2.buffalotech.com/support/downloads2.php
I assume that you're referring to XP SP2 - my buddies and I had a lot of various USB problems prior to that. Sorry if that's obvious beyond all recognition, just covering bases.
This is another me-too-I-love-my-Buffalos-over-all-other-brands post.
I think a lot of us, me most definitely, want to share the goodness that is Buffalo for those unfamiliar.
It would be nice to have non-front-page polls for this sort of thing - so others could see how many of us speak from experience and highly recommend Buffalo products.
Nothing wrong with slagging a product that sucks or proselytizing for one that cures common woes. I value /. opinions more than I can say.
No, but it's all really taking me back. It got me thinking about Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray - I watched those as a kid in the '60s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarionation
I'm trying to remember if those included flying subs.
Anything to avoid my latest Sarah Palin spam email.
Who needs to imagine anything?
Please mod parent way up - not only remembered it, found pictures for it.
Others have answered this well, but your interesting conjecture sent me off on one of my own.
The value c isn't just a velocity, it's a conversion factor, much like 1 inch/2.54 cm is a conversion factor. Calculations for time dilation - and 2-d spacetime maps - rely on the equivalence of 2.9979e8 (I usually wing it with 3e8, this approximation is because I'm too lazy to look it up) meters space is 1 sec time.
There was a Sci channel show - incredibly freaking bad - on a physicist named Jose de Majeiro who postulated that maybe some of our cosmological calculations aren't making sense because the value for c has changed over time.
Now I wonder if there are no violations to the mechanics of various equations within the the event horizon - but rather, physical "constants" as we know them are becoming modified.
Sadly, I cannot help but think that if I've thought of this, someone doing it for a living has also thought of it and their papers are over my head - presuming falsely that I'd know where to look in the first place.
The short answer to this is to read Hawking's work, beginning with A Short History of Time.
Photons have no mass but do have momentum.
The Lorentz transform causes a breakdown for E in E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where v=c. And when you have enough gravity to bend space such that it folds in on itself - light cannot escape, despite being massless but gaining momentum from the gravity well - you have a singularity.
One can't just say that equations break down, but physics do not. The equations are the language used to express the known physics.
So, there is a singularity, there needs to be, and it isn't magical - unless you mean magical in the sense of wonderful.
This is a pre-planned reply to my own post because it's a footnote.
To clarify what I mean by live delivery and DRM requirements being unknown:
My wife worked in the video (content) distribution industry before, during and after the DVD release to market. One of her girlfriends at a major manufacturer showed up with a before-market player and another one showed up with before-market porn (that one worked for a major studio, but the porn wasn't from her studio). In addition to great porn, and much better picture quality, it had all of the new features happenin' - especially view angles. For the first time, we saw the same fucking scene from 4 different points of view. We were sold. We didn't tell people how view angles would make all of the difference or how we knew, but we were sold.
First DVD I owned was Lost In Space.
But - I cannot remember seeing view angles since then. I remember looking, not finding it, eventually giving up.
That's how a lot of consumer products are marketed: 'We "think!" this is a feature, let's require it of the format so long as if the feature-gamble fails, it won't cost us in the long run.'
BD DRM and live and etc are already at this sorry state of affairs: 'We "magically know!" this is a requirement, let's work out feature delivery later.'
Totally ass fucking backwards.
5. Early adopters may more for privilege
5. Early adopters PAY more for privilege
I even used Preview - honest.
Every BD article has plenty of posts about early adopters and waiting. And posts about how BD isn't worth it.
This article, however, really clarifies the issues. I think in the backs of our minds we've all seen them - but I've recently learned by contemplating my navel that differences in computer marketing vs. all-other marketing is prolly making us all schizophrenic - or quadraphrenic - and burying obvious things we know or making us discuss them obtusely.
1. By the time BD could come down in price - volume shakeout in manufacturing, etc. - there should be new video codecs (normal (whatever that means) evolutionary time assumed) and faster processors. It seems more and more obvious that this adds up to better lossless compression. And that for me implies full HD content on normal DVD media. (Anecdotal proof - BD is so old, AFAIR, Apple was pre-Intel when first supporting it. Whack away if I'm mis-remembering. Not to say that we should use Apple calendars, just saying, most remember that, and can think of the many tech changes since then.)
2. By the time BD has its approach to consumers with respect to live content figured out (repeat - approach to consumers, not technical issues) - there will have been another revolution in internetworking and web designs and web threats.
BD is beyond a non-starter as of right now.
Compare DVD:
0. Develop
1. Only game in town (practically, um-k?, let's overlook laser discs from two generations earlier)
2. Format figured out by the time players hit
3. No change to format
4. Price comes down due to usual market and manufacturing processes
5. Early adopters may more for privilege (nothing wrong with that!!!!), overall, consumers win
Compare BD:
0. Develop
1. HD-DVD comes out as a fuck-you-me-too
2. BD rushed to market to combat HD-DVD, well before intended release
3. Design not finished
4. Format and delivery options vague or driven by too-soon-to-market
5. Some early adopters report already being fucked
6. BD providers scrambling to fix live content delivery problems, DRM woes - minimize fuck-you to early adopters and protect BD reputation
7. Rushed development to market - were live delivery or protection requirements really known???
There was no incentive for DVD changes other than price from day one. It just worked.
There is a lot of incentive for BD change from day one. It does not just work.
BD madness must end. Continued consumption of BD products is support for a format that either might not survive, or will cause BD to survive in a fit of corporate face-saving when better solutions could have existed, or are known to exist by some researchers, but become buried.
Summary:
The development and beta cycles for BD are out of whack because of the HD-DVD war. Money and time lost. More money and time will be - or should be - spent to recover. No proof that proper recover with newer technology won't achieve same results with DVD media, different DVD content layout. Feel free to substitute XXX for DVD in above argument, where XXX is better solution following DVD-to-market model.
Ditto on the BSD license not encouraging that.
Non-ditto on proving that the comment was by definition a troll. Lots of people drink the employer Kool Aide without noticing it and becoming contaminated. We all have to eat and all too often have little training in ethics.
The need for ethics is like a thirst - that's why Kool Aide is pernicious and works in the first place.
So I substitute your troll with just-plain-incredibly-fucking-wrong.
Admittedly, I'm being generous. It could be wrong-to-the-point-of-being-stupid. Or it could be that you nailed it in the first place - a fucking troll.
I empathize with your confusion. I see two issues where you see one. Decomposing the problem further might make the solution more apparent.
Here's the emotional one:
On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community.
The career-oriented one is direct, and as you've stated it.
Life in this society is a constant mixed and confusing message - you're supposed to be a tough guy and Oprah at the same time. Screw Oprah, emotional issues are not the be-all and end-all. Screw the inner tough-guy, emotional issues do too matter. And the emotional issue surely does seem very, very large. If you're a fuck the world kind of guy, they're giving you a chance to be in hog heaven. If you're the kind of guy that's tired of having life push you around and The Man removing your Self, then this is the deal breaker - alienation is nothing to sneeze at.
Not all confusing issues have an emotional issue and a technical one - it just decomposes this way in your case. My (very) graybeard experience is to always look for further problem decomposition whenever you're confused. This has served me well.
I ramble on thusly because I think a big issue being mentioned once, with fewest words, in the middle of a lot of words about the other issue, raised a big red flag for me - hope it does for you as well.
I think you're probably ready to decide.
In any case, here's a few cents on the other issue.
It's apparent that your non-compete extends to ongoing open source work. Personally, this would be the deal-breaker for me. There's nothing wrong with a non-compete contract. Companies should expect ethical behavior from employees even after they leave; these sort of contracts arose in part because former employees haven't always proven to be ethical. OTOH, these sort of agreements have also arisen because some companies aren't ethical. Unbelievably, in the Reagan era with its big tech spending, there were companies expecting aerospace engineers to work on limited government contracts with an expectation that the employee never work for another aerospace firm as long as they live. If this agreement is taking advantage of your ethics, while the company has none - fuck 'em. Unless you're getting multi-million dollar fuck you money - and enough to write me a check for the same (sorry, if you can go from free to fee and I'm a part of that, then you owe me) - fuck 'em.
My bias is apparent. The fact remains, this isn't a non-compete agreement - it's a take-you-out-of-the-game agreement.
If you have the same bias as me, agree that both issues make this a non-starter, don't say no - negotiate. Maybe they're not evil, maybe they have an idiot for a corporate attorney and don't know it. Don't negotiate over the non-compete or for money. First negotiate to find out if they're evil or if they've fucked up. Bring these issues up like you would to a pal who fucked up. Trust your instincts and if your instincts tell you that they're responding as evil or responding as fuck ups too proud to correct themselves, then you probably won't want to work there at any price and under any agreement. Hit them between the eyes - ask them if they're aware of what they're asking you to sign.
Hope this helps.
(PS - didn't sleep well last night, have previewed this repeatedly finding grammar mistakes I usually never make, and now just giving up with apologies for any rilly bad grammar remaining)