DMCA passed the Senate with a vote of 99-0. Meaning, with the exception of one guy on vaction, everyone voted for it. Including flaming liberals such as Paul Wellstone (D-MN).
I would suggest asking your rep exactly what they were thinking when they passed this law. Orin Hatch, who sponcered the freak'n bill in the Senate puts on a nice dog and pony show about how he "never intended for the law to be used in the way it's being used." However, for all the smiles for PR, our legistrators don't actually seem to be doing anything to correct the situation. Instead, I've got a lousy $300 check that will come to me in about three months. Keep the money and fix the problems.
Alright, I've been looking for something like this for years. At the moment even a simple B&W LCD touch screen is $400-$500. According to their site they are developing Linux drivers. I'm sure with Linux Comunity help they oculd be brought to market quickly.
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If you like Anime, chances are you'll give FF a passing grade. If you're not a big Anime, I'd expect a so-so reaction. I say screw Katz, I want to know what Taco thinks of it.
This is one of the cases where using a small ISP is a problem. They don't have a team of lawyers to work these issues out. They really don't have any choice other than to roll over on the user.
John Doe 3 ass was saved because he posted on Yahoo. If he'd posted at a smaller site, or even a larger dot.com site that doesn't have money to burn at the moment, then s/he'd be tossed out like a redheaded stepchild.
I still have to put together my TivoNet, however, I'd suggest looking into the Broadcast Project for Linux. There are many tools and utils included, some specifically for straming in a format Windows will like.
Get off your high horse, I now have possession of two seperate distro's that do this. Neither are Tridges. It's not hard to pull the MPEG out of Tivo if you look at Playstream. In fact one group modified it in less than a day. *rolls eyes*
Here's what horks me off about this. I've read the DMCA front to back, I've read Sony Beta Max rulings, home recording act, EFF opinions, and everything I see pretty much says it's un-encrypted analog (in the case of my Tivo) I can copy it for my personal use, put it on a CD-R, lend it to a friend, blah, blah, blah, and I'm allowed to.
Tridges only PUBLIC comments on Tivo's objections to releasing the code were that they were "weak". Other than that, no ones posted any official or unoffical communications from Tivo about posting the code. Tridge certainly isn't talking, and the appointed mouth pieces for him come out Jihad style basically turning pissing off people who were generally nutral or supportive.
The problem is people who already had the working code on avs and irc, even if they didn't mean to, flaunted it in a fairly elist way. All that serves is to make technical geeks who were late getting onto the Tivo boat more determined to come up with a solution. And that's pretty much what happened.
If Tivo wants to get heavy handed about this, fine. Wall street already thinks the 9.99 a month fee is going to land Tivo in the Tech Dead Pool in a couple years.
At the moment though Tivo is playing this really well. AVS and #Tivo declairing Jihad so they don't even have to be heavy handed. Go work.
It's a tricky deal really. The question comes down to if this is illegal or not. Ad companies kiss ass to the powers that be all the time.
For example, Peta (even with very mild, and generally unoffensive ads) is routinely rejected from Broadcast and Print ads.
In some cases both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice recieve the same treatment. So, it's not new that the content of the message (even if it's not designed to offend) can be knocked off the air.
The question really comes down to state laws and agreements they have in the cities and states they are in.
I remember way back in the 80s seeing a news story on a keyboard Apple computer had made. Basically, the same idea. Bassically, a small number of keys, and pressing different combinations of said keys would produce the result you're looking for.
This looks a little more advanced of course, as the science of ergonomics has advanced. But I don't think this is going to be earth shattering beyond some specific markets.
I don't want to seem to be a troll here. But I've had experiences with the small company that has a patent trying to get money out of a large company that is producing a knock off.
Here's how it goes down. You serve them with papers. You meet and say "You're stealing my idea." They respond "We've looked at your finacial standing, you don't have the means to defend your patent. Good day."
Patents protect large companies, and pad lawyers pockets, they do nothing to protect the small inventor.
The interesting thing about trickle down economics is it's a two way street. The root of the problem is UGO isn't getting paid, so they aren't paying anyone else. You're basically between a rock and a hardplace on the issue. If they go belly up, which it sounds like they will anyway, game over. Even with the rewriting of the bankruptcy laws, it only ensures Large Companies can collect from Joe Public, not the other way around.
The larger issue at hand is the total collapse of Banner Marketing. Click Through is too low, too many Dot Coms are going under and not paying the ad companies. Good sites get screwed over. The use of banner ads were a neat way for a grass roots site to start and actually break ever (or make a profit.) Until that point you had to depend on a getting venture capital and a marketing department.
I feel bad for all parties concerned, but UGO is a dead end street. I doubt any lawyer would take it on contingency.
The best route to go is to replace the ad revenue and quick. In house, a different network, co-op deals with online retailers.
Okay, I'm missing one key thing here. I thought the election of At Large Members was supposed to take care of these issues with crap business deals, poor management? What are the At Large memebers doing?
Having done a lot of international travel back in the day, I have to say before you just go ahead and start sending out resumes you have to think about what companies are looking for. Most companies will send you over as an ex-patroit. You basically still work for the american company but are on loan. Experiences companies will take care of everything. Car, flat, taxes, shipping your ass over.
And unlike one of the previous posters stated, getting a two year stay is pretty typical in Europe.
Large companies are driven by many things. First off, Speaking a forign language is a big time plus. American companies like to have people onsite who speak both english and the host nation language well. They want someone they can talk to about technical issues. But thye also want that person to be able to relay that to the rest of the office.
Second, they want a commitment. They want you there for YEARS not MONTHS. There are a lot of costs, and they expect to make them up.
Finally, selection of a company. To many people are suggesting straight up Tech companies. In this age of cut backs in Tech you may find that US Tech companies aren't as likely to send a new hire over seas.
However, I would suggest other industries that use IT. Ag sector (i.e. Food) is huge, and not matter what the economy is doing, people still have to eat. I'd suggest ADM, or Cargill. And out of those two, I'd preference Cargill since they are a private company (in fact the largest Private firm in the US.)
First off, you're not tied to using Qwest as the ISP service. You can choose any DSL compatible ISP with Qwest DSL. So if you really dislike Qwest then check for a local ISP and switch. If they tell you switching ISPs is going to cost you then go to your local Public Utilities Commision. Get enough people going there and you won't have to worry. Qwest was sued and settled out of court with most ISPs over marketing and lead time practices for DSL. The ILEC is supposed to give all unregulated companies an equal standing and oppertunity. Generally speaking Qwest does an Fair (C+ work at best) job at it.
Where Qwest does have to worry is combined billing. The Mercury news reports indicated they could be putting the MSN bill in the phone bill. For those who don't follow these things, U S West before the merger told all the ISPs and Web Hosting Companies that they had 30 days to get their customers off combined billing. By letting MSN do this they now are offering an exclusive unbundled service to someone. My guess is they will get sued over this.
Basically, it's not that every one of these DLECs and CLECs were dumb, but they didn't see see the dot com downturn. It's natural for there to be some weeding out of the sick and the lame in this type of venture. However, investors are scared off from these ventures at the moment. For various reasons, some good, some bad. Given a couple more years of a good stock market two or three DSL provides would have emerged.
The plus side of all of this is it hits MSN right were it hurts. Those who have seen MSNs latest deal with QWEST for residential DSL can see they are scambling for a good broad band solution. And with QWEST they only get 14 solid states.
The down side is it gives AOL a natural advantage being relating to Time Warner. Really I don't want to see either company do well because my opinion is they both just plain suck.
Now, in defense of Northpoints, Covads, etc, they burned huge ammounts of money up by co-locating in the ILEC's CO. I've worked for an ILEC, let me tell you, the ILEC screws up all the time. It's nothing devious, it's not like they are trying to screw NorthPoint or Covad. There are just too many issues: training, facilities, moral, etc, that play into things not getting to test and turn up when the CLEC asked for it.
And basically, because the CLEC is the one talking to the customer, they are the ones having to pay $$$ for customer satisfaction.
So, shame on the ILEC for being a dumb ass, but shame on the CLEC for not managing expantion better.
As someone who has done a lot of college recruiting and interviewing I will say that the statement of a one year contract is not typical of most large companies. "At Will" contracts are the standard for companies that recruit out of colleges, and in general really.
GB sells so well for three reasons. One) Pokemon. Two) Pokemon Three) Pokemon.
Sony's PSX has been stomping everyone elses consoles since it came out. If you want to gage how well a company is doing just go out to your local retailer and look at the ammount of space that Sony PSXx gets compared to other vendors. In your average Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. the Sony Section is bigger than Nintendo and Sega put together. The money is always in the games.
Sega put way too much faith in people buying into their online service. Nintendo is more conservitive, however it wouldn't take a lot of bad quarters to put them in the same place as sega.
The basic problem here is Nintendo wasn't doing all that much better than Sega. If it wasn't for all the royalties they get from Pioneer for Pokemon I'm sure they be in deep water.
The problem is Sony is a marketing Giant. They know how to put together a campain, they have an in at every retailer on the planet, and they can play "unfair" (but not illegal) when the chips are down. I worked at Circuit City, it wasn't a random thing that they dropped all the other video game systems and only had play station for several years. (They sell most of the systems currently however.)
Nintendo is a pain in the ass company to work with. They have been nailed before for price fixing. Compared to Sony, it's a harder platform to write for. With Sony a lot of the low level stuff is already functionalized for you in the SDK. This is really key for fast game porting. This is not to say it will be an ultra optimized port. I wouldn't suggest it if you're trying to push the GFX to the extreme, but if you want to make "Who wants to be a gazillionare" for the PSX it's easier than start from scratch on Nintendo.
I can see where is comes from, the Former CEO of Nintendo in a recent interview talked about how thye liked to have unique titles. He doesn't like Rayman, or title of it's ilk that have been ported everywhere. But this puts you into a business model where you need a killer game in the channel each quarter if you want to keep profitable. In some cases Nintendo has done well at this. Let's look at Gameboy. By all rights that thing should have been put to pasture six years ago. But some games keep it going. But you don't have a killer hit Pokemon game each quarter.
Sony on the other has a lot of crap games ported to the platform. Hell the first year there were tons of crap 3DO games ported. But that's okay, Sony has a model that makes it easy for everyone to jump in the pool. And with a royalty for every game sold to a retailer they don't have to depend on a Pokemon.
Summary, I hope this does well, but Nintendo needs to realize that a couple unique games isn't going to cut it for sales. Some people really do want to play Rayman and Pokemon on the same system.
I got the hear an interest interview the other day on Minnneasota Public Radio with a PhD. who specializes in genetic tests. Basically, the main problems with the BN case is this.
THE TEST THEY ADMINISTERED WAS NOT FOR CT! It tests for other genetic problems and in some circles is believed to provide a link to it. Problem is, there has been no clinical studies with peer review to confirm this link. And the studies that have been done are up for debate in science circles.
Two, the test was not optional. Refusing to take the test would result in disipline action.
Three, AT NOT POINT DID THE COMPANY DISCLOSE TO THE EMPLOYEES THAT A GENETIC TEST WAS TAKING PLACE. There were mearly told they required six viles of blood. And if they didn't give the blood they could expect disapline actions.
For those who say a company has the "right" to do this I got some sad news. In MN mandatory genetic testing is not allowed. However, the way the law was worded it only applied to health insurence companies. It created a loophole for companies that self insure. That's currently being corrected.
For all BN's woes, they did seem to learn a lesson and are now campaining against genetic testing. So go figure.
John Dvorak's blanket statement that Personal Video Recorders are "...a way to steal programming" lacks understanding of the technology, laws and court presidents that have prevailed in the country for two decades. Personal Video Recorders makers state very clearly that these are "time shifting devices." This is an important term to use. Technically speaking all VCRs and PVRs violate the letter of the law when it comes to recording shows. However, courts have consistently found that individuals are indemnified from liability for personal use recording because consumer rights outweigh studio content control. I suggest John does some research into the Sony Betamax cases.
So, that leaves the commercial skipping feature for him to berate. First off, it's not like the PVRs skip commercials automatically. The viewer has to do it. This is where I get confused. At one point John makes the operation seem incredibly, the viewer "...can skip commercials by pushing a button." However, later in the article he goes on to berate the remote control. Now it appears there is a degree of "complexity" and "the remote control for PVRs has more buttons than a TV control room." Well, which is it?
Furthermore, for someone who's apparently interacted with PVRs he just doesn't seem to get that if you're watching live TV you can't skip ahead of the commercials. This isn't a time travel device. If you want to skip the commercials you'll have to start watching after the program has started. For a hour long program that's 20 minutes into it.
The John talks about how the major networks are poised to put the smack down on PVRs. I don't know where he gets this. TIVO for instance get contributions for it's on box magazine from many broadcast networks. NBC actually encodes special TIVO data into their program commercials so that people can simply press the "Thumbs Up" button to record ER, West Wing, Ed, etc. The networks have accepted VCRs and PVRs and are looking at ways of increasing marketing.
Finally, just to show how little research John does for a given article he insinuates that PVRs may have "bootlegging issues." This brings up two points of logic that seem to have escapes him. One, PVRs do not use removable media. It's a hard drive. It's a property format. If you want to show your programs at someone else's house you have to bring the whole thing over, or record the content on videotape. Both of which are perfectly legal. Two, who the hell bootlegs over the air broadcasts. And why wouldn't they just use a VCR?
What does it matter if the WIPO creates some rules. We already have rules, and laws that are ignored in arbitration. Give me a call when the get a system that actually enforces the rules fairly. Then I might care.
Okay, first off, DJ's make shit, so 300% more gets them up to what? $15 bucks and hour? Gimm'e a break, with the exception of a few heavy hitting on air personalities, no one makes huge cash.
Salon.com did an article on the radio biz, and to be honested, it made microsoft seem nice compared to clear channel.
Basically salon said this:
Top 40 stations in major markets get about 100K annually in marketing co-op (read money to play songs). The people who do the co-op with the station collect from the studio. The studio passes the cost of this co-op to the artist. This is basically how someone who sells 1M CD's ends up will a bill from the label when it's all said and done. Clear channel has bought the middle man out, and basically running a fine line between creative marketing, and outright extortion.
They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station."
So, sorry to break someones bubble, but in my opinion Clear Channel is part of the problem, not the solution.
I'm going to preface this by stating I've worked in AG before, with Monsanto, in the seed division.
The whole seed industy is all about making round up ready seed. If you're not making genetically altered seed, then you're not going to be in business much longer.
So where did Monsanto come from? Well, they are a former Chemical Company. They made many products, including PCB's. Dateline NBC has portraited Monstanto as a company that has contaminated water supplies, covered up said contaimination, and been directly responcible for Deaths, birth defects, and cancer of hundreds of people.
Now if a case like this were held in the US some interesting things might come about. First, and most damning for Monsanto is that seed companies have been held responcible for cross seeding. The makers of Star Link corn face some pretty hefty fines for contaiminating the corn supply. This might play out well because everyone in the industy is testifing that the source seed was all good. It was the cross breeding that created the wide spread contamination.
In the end, we need some laws specifically protecting famrers. They already get the shaft 9 times out of 10 anyways.
$3000 dollars? You're on crack. The HDTV module for my Dishnetwork 6000 DBS system cost $99 dollars, it will down convert to a standard TV. Or output compoent or VGA. Down converted OTA looks like a really good DVD. And that's from a pair of rabit ears.
I have plenty of MySQL databases connected via an access front end using ODBC. It's a good way of giving end users a way to update data without make new front end. If your Access front end needs more than the MySQL ODBC driver requires then don't do it. However, if it doesn't then go for it.
Basically we've found the following when it comes to stability:
OS:
BSD
Sun (SunOS Solaris)
Linux
NT
DB:
Oracle
DB2
MySQL
MsSQL
These are general stats collects from several groups at large midwestern telco over a period of three years. Generally speaking NT bases systems like the trouble Ticketing and some minor ordering front ends that are MS based all had tracked down time of at least 3-4 times as great as the Unix systems.
That being said, MySQL can be used fine for production, but it's qualified. Although ROW LOCKING is now possible with MySQL we'd like a little shake down first. We've found MySQL works great when you have a lot of similar SQL queries. Storing stats for instance works very well on several gigs of data a day. On the other hand, I wouldn't count on it if you had a lot of interactive queries. Oracle and DB2 does this better. That being said a lot of performence issues can be taken care of with good programming. Creating temp tables, and good use of unions and joins. Recently I saw an perl programming write some statics programs that had queries that took 5 minutes to run per data set. After going through his code the same data could be ran in less than 20 seconds with better queries.
I think it's importent to note that dispite Oracle, DB2, and MsSQL scaling better, we have never had a MySQL fail for software reasons. Only hardware. And even with those hardware fails, if the HD was still there, the data was too. That's more than can be said with Oracle, DB2, or MsSQL.
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DMCA passed the Senate with a vote of 99-0. Meaning, with the exception of one guy on vaction, everyone voted for it. Including flaming liberals such as Paul Wellstone (D-MN).
I would suggest asking your rep exactly what they were thinking when they passed this law. Orin Hatch, who sponcered the freak'n bill in the Senate puts on a nice dog and pony show about how he "never intended for the law to be used in the way it's being used." However, for all the smiles for PR, our legistrators don't actually seem to be doing anything to correct the situation. Instead, I've got a lousy $300 check that will come to me in about three months. Keep the money and fix the problems.
Alright, I've been looking for something like this for years. At the moment even a simple B&W LCD touch screen is $400-$500. According to their site they are developing Linux drivers. I'm sure with Linux Comunity help they oculd be brought to market quickly.
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If you like Anime, chances are you'll give FF a passing grade. If you're not a big Anime, I'd expect a so-so reaction. I say screw Katz, I want to know what Taco thinks of it.
This is one of the cases where using a small ISP is a problem. They don't have a team of lawyers to work these issues out. They really don't have any choice other than to roll over on the user.
John Doe 3 ass was saved because he posted on Yahoo. If he'd posted at a smaller site, or even a larger dot.com site that doesn't have money to burn at the moment, then s/he'd be tossed out like a redheaded stepchild.
I still have to put together my TivoNet, however, I'd suggest looking into the Broadcast Project for Linux. There are many tools and utils included, some specifically for straming in a format Windows will like.
Get off your high horse, I now have possession of two seperate distro's that do this. Neither are Tridges. It's not hard to pull the MPEG out of Tivo if you look at Playstream. In fact one group modified it in less than a day. *rolls eyes*
Here's what horks me off about this. I've read the DMCA front to back, I've read Sony Beta Max rulings, home recording act, EFF opinions, and everything I see pretty much says it's un-encrypted analog (in the case of my Tivo) I can copy it for my personal use, put it on a CD-R, lend it to a friend, blah, blah, blah, and I'm allowed to.
Tridges only PUBLIC comments on Tivo's objections to releasing the code were that they were "weak". Other than that, no ones posted any official or unoffical communications from Tivo about posting the code. Tridge certainly isn't talking, and the appointed mouth pieces for him come out Jihad style basically turning pissing off people who were generally nutral or supportive.
The problem is people who already had the working code on avs and irc, even if they didn't mean to, flaunted it in a fairly elist way. All that serves is to make technical geeks who were late getting onto the Tivo boat more determined to come up with a solution. And that's pretty much what happened.
If Tivo wants to get heavy handed about this, fine. Wall street already thinks the 9.99 a month fee is going to land Tivo in the Tech Dead Pool in a couple years.
At the moment though Tivo is playing this really well. AVS and #Tivo declairing Jihad so they don't even have to be heavy handed. Go work.
It's a tricky deal really. The question comes down to if this is illegal or not. Ad companies kiss ass to the powers that be all the time.
For example, Peta (even with very mild, and generally unoffensive ads) is routinely rejected from Broadcast and Print ads.
In some cases both Pro-Life and Pro-Choice recieve the same treatment. So, it's not new that the content of the message (even if it's not designed to offend) can be knocked off the air.
The question really comes down to state laws and agreements they have in the cities and states they are in.
I remember way back in the 80s seeing a news story on a keyboard Apple computer had made. Basically, the same idea. Bassically, a small number of keys, and pressing different combinations of said keys would produce the result you're looking for.
This looks a little more advanced of course, as the science of ergonomics has advanced. But I don't think this is going to be earth shattering beyond some specific markets.
I don't want to seem to be a troll here. But I've had experiences with the small company that has a patent trying to get money out of a large company that is producing a knock off.
Here's how it goes down. You serve them with papers. You meet and say "You're stealing my idea." They respond "We've looked at your finacial standing, you don't have the means to defend your patent. Good day."
Patents protect large companies, and pad lawyers pockets, they do nothing to protect the small inventor.
The interesting thing about trickle down economics is it's a two way street. The root of the problem is UGO isn't getting paid, so they aren't paying anyone else. You're basically between a rock and a hardplace on the issue. If they go belly up, which it sounds like they will anyway, game over. Even with the rewriting of the bankruptcy laws, it only ensures Large Companies can collect from Joe Public, not the other way around.
The larger issue at hand is the total collapse of Banner Marketing. Click Through is too low, too many Dot Coms are going under and not paying the ad companies. Good sites get screwed over. The use of banner ads were a neat way for a grass roots site to start and actually break ever (or make a profit.) Until that point you had to depend on a getting venture capital and a marketing department.
I feel bad for all parties concerned, but UGO is a dead end street. I doubt any lawyer would take it on contingency.
The best route to go is to replace the ad revenue and quick. In house, a different network, co-op deals with online retailers.
Okay, I'm missing one key thing here. I thought the election of At Large Members was supposed to take care of these issues with crap business deals, poor management? What are the At Large memebers doing?
Having done a lot of international travel back in the day, I have to say before you just go ahead and start sending out resumes you have to think about what companies are looking for. Most companies will send you over as an ex-patroit. You basically still work for the american company but are on loan. Experiences companies will take care of everything. Car, flat, taxes, shipping your ass over.
And unlike one of the previous posters stated, getting a two year stay is pretty typical in Europe.
Large companies are driven by many things. First off, Speaking a forign language is a big time plus. American companies like to have people onsite who speak both english and the host nation language well. They want someone they can talk to about technical issues. But thye also want that person to be able to relay that to the rest of the office.
Second, they want a commitment. They want you there for YEARS not MONTHS. There are a lot of costs, and they expect to make them up.
Finally, selection of a company. To many people are suggesting straight up Tech companies. In this age of cut backs in Tech you may find that US Tech companies aren't as likely to send a new hire over seas.
However, I would suggest other industries that use IT. Ag sector (i.e. Food) is huge, and not matter what the economy is doing, people still have to eat. I'd suggest ADM, or Cargill. And out of those two, I'd preference Cargill since they are a private company (in fact the largest Private firm in the US.)
No, not the Napster Microsoft story it self, Timmy's comments showing he took the time and energy to read and analyize the story that was submitted.
First off, you're not tied to using Qwest as the ISP service. You can choose any DSL compatible ISP with Qwest DSL. So if you really dislike Qwest then check for a local ISP and switch. If they tell you switching ISPs is going to cost you then go to your local Public Utilities Commision. Get enough people going there and you won't have to worry. Qwest was sued and settled out of court with most ISPs over marketing and lead time practices for DSL. The ILEC is supposed to give all unregulated companies an equal standing and oppertunity. Generally speaking Qwest does an Fair (C+ work at best) job at it.
Where Qwest does have to worry is combined billing. The Mercury news reports indicated they could be putting the MSN bill in the phone bill. For those who don't follow these things, U S West before the merger told all the ISPs and Web Hosting Companies that they had 30 days to get their customers off combined billing. By letting MSN do this they now are offering an exclusive unbundled service to someone. My guess is they will get sued over this.
Basically, it's not that every one of these DLECs and CLECs were dumb, but they didn't see see the dot com downturn. It's natural for there to be some weeding out of the sick and the lame in this type of venture. However, investors are scared off from these ventures at the moment. For various reasons, some good, some bad. Given a couple more years of a good stock market two or three DSL provides would have emerged.
The plus side of all of this is it hits MSN right were it hurts. Those who have seen MSNs latest deal with QWEST for residential DSL can see they are scambling for a good broad band solution. And with QWEST they only get 14 solid states.
The down side is it gives AOL a natural advantage being relating to Time Warner. Really I don't want to see either company do well because my opinion is they both just plain suck.
Now, in defense of Northpoints, Covads, etc, they burned huge ammounts of money up by co-locating in the ILEC's CO. I've worked for an ILEC, let me tell you, the ILEC screws up all the time. It's nothing devious, it's not like they are trying to screw NorthPoint or Covad. There are just too many issues: training, facilities, moral, etc, that play into things not getting to test and turn up when the CLEC asked for it.
And basically, because the CLEC is the one talking to the customer, they are the ones having to pay $$$ for customer satisfaction.
So, shame on the ILEC for being a dumb ass, but shame on the CLEC for not managing expantion better.
As someone who has done a lot of college recruiting and interviewing I will say that the statement of a one year contract is not typical of most large companies. "At Will" contracts are the standard for companies that recruit out of colleges, and in general really.
I'm talking consoles, not portibles.
GB sells so well for three reasons. One) Pokemon. Two) Pokemon Three) Pokemon.
Sony's PSX has been stomping everyone elses consoles since it came out. If you want to gage how well a company is doing just go out to your local retailer and look at the ammount of space that Sony PSXx gets compared to other vendors. In your average Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. the Sony Section is bigger than Nintendo and Sega put together. The money is always in the games.
Sega put way too much faith in people buying into their online service. Nintendo is more conservitive, however it wouldn't take a lot of bad quarters to put them in the same place as sega.
The basic problem here is Nintendo wasn't doing all that much better than Sega. If it wasn't for all the royalties they get from Pioneer for Pokemon I'm sure they be in deep water.
The problem is Sony is a marketing Giant. They know how to put together a campain, they have an in at every retailer on the planet, and they can play "unfair" (but not illegal) when the chips are down. I worked at Circuit City, it wasn't a random thing that they dropped all the other video game systems and only had play station for several years. (They sell most of the systems currently however.)
Nintendo is a pain in the ass company to work with. They have been nailed before for price fixing. Compared to Sony, it's a harder platform to write for. With Sony a lot of the low level stuff is already functionalized for you in the SDK. This is really key for fast game porting. This is not to say it will be an ultra optimized port. I wouldn't suggest it if you're trying to push the GFX to the extreme, but if you want to make "Who wants to be a gazillionare" for the PSX it's easier than start from scratch on Nintendo.
I can see where is comes from, the Former CEO of Nintendo in a recent interview talked about how thye liked to have unique titles. He doesn't like Rayman, or title of it's ilk that have been ported everywhere. But this puts you into a business model where you need a killer game in the channel each quarter if you want to keep profitable. In some cases Nintendo has done well at this. Let's look at Gameboy. By all rights that thing should have been put to pasture six years ago. But some games keep it going. But you don't have a killer hit Pokemon game each quarter.
Sony on the other has a lot of crap games ported to the platform. Hell the first year there were tons of crap 3DO games ported. But that's okay, Sony has a model that makes it easy for everyone to jump in the pool. And with a royalty for every game sold to a retailer they don't have to depend on a Pokemon.
Summary, I hope this does well, but Nintendo needs to realize that a couple unique games isn't going to cut it for sales. Some people really do want to play Rayman and Pokemon on the same system.
I got the hear an interest interview the other day on Minnneasota Public Radio with a PhD. who specializes in genetic tests. Basically, the main problems with the BN case is this.
THE TEST THEY ADMINISTERED WAS NOT FOR CT! It tests for other genetic problems and in some circles is believed to provide a link to it. Problem is, there has been no clinical studies with peer review to confirm this link. And the studies that have been done are up for debate in science circles.
Two, the test was not optional. Refusing to take the test would result in disipline action.
Three, AT NOT POINT DID THE COMPANY DISCLOSE TO THE EMPLOYEES THAT A GENETIC TEST WAS TAKING PLACE. There were mearly told they required six viles of blood. And if they didn't give the blood they could expect disapline actions.
For those who say a company has the "right" to do this I got some sad news. In MN mandatory genetic testing is not allowed. However, the way the law was worded it only applied to health insurence companies. It created a loophole for companies that self insure. That's currently being corrected.
For all BN's woes, they did seem to learn a lesson and are now campaining against genetic testing. So go figure.
Re: John Dvorak's 4.16.01 article:
John Dvorak's blanket statement that Personal Video Recorders are "...a way to steal programming" lacks understanding of the technology, laws and court presidents that have prevailed in the country for two decades. Personal Video Recorders makers state very clearly that these are "time shifting devices." This is an important term to use. Technically speaking all VCRs and PVRs violate the letter of the law when it comes to recording shows. However, courts have consistently found that individuals are indemnified from liability for personal use recording because consumer rights outweigh studio content control. I suggest John does some research into the Sony Betamax cases.
So, that leaves the commercial skipping feature for him to berate. First off, it's not like the PVRs skip commercials automatically. The viewer has to do it. This is where I get confused. At one point John makes the operation seem incredibly, the viewer "...can skip commercials by pushing a button." However, later in the article he goes on to berate the remote control. Now it appears there is a degree of "complexity" and "the remote control for PVRs has more buttons than a TV control room." Well, which is it?
Furthermore, for someone who's apparently interacted with PVRs he just doesn't seem to get that if you're watching live TV you can't skip ahead of the commercials. This isn't a time travel device. If you want to skip the commercials you'll have to start watching after the program has started. For a hour long program that's 20 minutes into it.
The John talks about how the major networks are poised to put the smack down on PVRs. I don't know where he gets this. TIVO for instance get contributions for it's on box magazine from many broadcast networks. NBC actually encodes special TIVO data into their program commercials so that people can simply press the "Thumbs Up" button to record ER, West Wing, Ed, etc. The networks have accepted VCRs and PVRs and are looking at ways of increasing marketing.
Finally, just to show how little research John does for a given article he insinuates that PVRs may have "bootlegging issues." This brings up two points of logic that seem to have escapes him. One, PVRs do not use removable media. It's a hard drive. It's a property format. If you want to show your programs at someone else's house you have to bring the whole thing over, or record the content on videotape. Both of which are perfectly legal. Two, who the hell bootlegs over the air broadcasts. And why wouldn't they just use a VCR?
Sincerely,
Tom Harty
Golden Valley, MN
What does it matter if the WIPO creates some rules. We already have rules, and laws that are ignored in arbitration. Give me a call when the get a system that actually enforces the rules fairly. Then I might care.
Okay, first off, DJ's make shit, so 300% more gets them up to what? $15 bucks and hour? Gimm'e a break, with the exception of a few heavy hitting on air personalities, no one makes huge cash.
Salon.com did an article on the radio biz, and to be honested, it made microsoft seem nice compared to clear channel.
Basically salon said this:
Top 40 stations in major markets get about 100K annually in marketing co-op (read money to play songs). The people who do the co-op with the station collect from the studio. The studio passes the cost of this co-op to the artist. This is basically how someone who sells 1M CD's ends up will a bill from the label when it's all said and done. Clear channel has bought the middle man out, and basically running a fine line between creative marketing, and outright extortion.
They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station."
So, sorry to break someones bubble, but in my opinion Clear Channel is part of the problem, not the solution.
I'm going to preface this by stating I've worked in AG before, with Monsanto, in the seed division.
The whole seed industy is all about making round up ready seed. If you're not making genetically altered seed, then you're not going to be in business much longer.
So where did Monsanto come from? Well, they are a former Chemical Company. They made many products, including PCB's. Dateline NBC has portraited Monstanto as a company that has contaminated water supplies, covered up said contaimination, and been directly responcible for Deaths, birth defects, and cancer of hundreds of people.
Now if a case like this were held in the US some interesting things might come about. First, and most damning for Monsanto is that seed companies have been held responcible for cross seeding. The makers of Star Link corn face some pretty hefty fines for contaiminating the corn supply. This might play out well because everyone in the industy is testifing that the source seed was all good. It was the cross breeding that created the wide spread contamination.
In the end, we need some laws specifically protecting famrers. They already get the shaft 9 times out of 10 anyways.
$3000 dollars? You're on crack. The HDTV module for my Dishnetwork 6000 DBS system cost $99 dollars, it will down convert to a standard TV. Or output compoent or VGA. Down converted OTA looks like a really good DVD. And that's from a pair of rabit ears.
I have plenty of MySQL databases connected via an access front end using ODBC. It's a good way of giving end users a way to update data without make new front end. If your Access front end needs more than the MySQL ODBC driver requires then don't do it. However, if it doesn't then go for it.
Basically we've found the following when it comes to stability:
OS:
BSD
Sun (SunOS Solaris)
Linux
NT
DB:
Oracle
DB2
MySQL
MsSQL
These are general stats collects from several groups at large midwestern telco over a period of three years. Generally speaking NT bases systems like the trouble Ticketing and some minor ordering front ends that are MS based all had tracked down time of at least 3-4 times as great as the Unix systems.
That being said, MySQL can be used fine for production, but it's qualified. Although ROW LOCKING is now possible with MySQL we'd like a little shake down first. We've found MySQL works great when you have a lot of similar SQL queries. Storing stats for instance works very well on several gigs of data a day. On the other hand, I wouldn't count on it if you had a lot of interactive queries. Oracle and DB2 does this better. That being said a lot of performence issues can be taken care of with good programming. Creating temp tables, and good use of unions and joins. Recently I saw an perl programming write some statics programs that had queries that took 5 minutes to run per data set. After going through his code the same data could be ran in less than 20 seconds with better queries.
I think it's importent to note that dispite Oracle, DB2, and MsSQL scaling better, we have never had a MySQL fail for software reasons. Only hardware. And even with those hardware fails, if the HD was still there, the data was too. That's more than can be said with Oracle, DB2, or MsSQL.