For those who don't know, the Maunder Minimum was a period of unusually low solar output which occurred several hundred years ago and correlated with low global temperatures. Whole carnivals were held in the middle of the Thames river because it froze over hard, Louis XIV had warmer floors installed in Versailles, and the canals froze in Amsterdam.
My understanding from my astrophycist friends is that we're not actually presently in another Maunder Minimum period, but that present sunspot activity seems awfully similar to the activity the sun exhibited immediately before the Maunder Minimum. It also seems similar to activity exhibited by other stars shortly before what are believed to be their reduced activity periods. (One of my close friends is big in hunting down other stars similar to our sun, but there isn't enough information to draw conclusions yet.)
In other words, folks, we might possibly be in for a minor ice-age soon. Also, since solar activity continues to correlate with global temperature, either global warming we are presently observing is caused by the sun, or our use of aerosol cans here is somehow turning up the temperature on the surface of the sun.
Now, please excuse me while I climb into an asbestos suit, and while you're aiming your flamethrowers at me please remember that I'm actually a radical liberal and believe strongly in living in an unpolluted environment, I just want some factual reality involved.
Computer assisted artworks lack these qualities. On top of the fact that they can be easily duplicated (which lowers their value considerably),
How does computer art, in this respect, differ from photography? As both a computer artist and a photographer, I've never felt there was a difference. Indeed, I now carry three cameras with me - one takes digital shots, another takes APS film, and a third takes 35mm stereograms. The digital shots go directly into the computer. The APS film goes to Kodak, which returns to me a CD of JPEG files of the images, which go into the computer. The 35mm film goes to shutterfly.com, which returns to me negatives, which I scan into the computer. I use the computer to perform touchups and color corrections as desired, and have my photos printed by shutterfly.
So, is what I do photography, which could be fine art, or is it computer generated, which you claim can't?
they are also confined by their lack of texture
Again, I'll bring up photography. If I shoot photos with a very fine grain film and have them printed by an excellent photo finisher on glossy paper, do they have texture? Do they have any more texture than prints of images I created digitally and had printed on the same glossy paper?
and limitations in resolution.
Really? Come visit my house and look at my living room wall and tell me which of my photos were created on film and which were created with my digital camera. Tell me which could qualify as "fine art" and which couldn't (pretending for a moment they're all good).
I'm pretty sure you won't be able to tell the difference between the photos taken with my mid-range consumer-quality digital camera and the photos taken on film. With one exception that I enlarged up too much, I don't think you'll be able to point out any pics with visible pixels, either.
They are cold creations, etched onto screens or printed onto paper. They simply are not deserving of the term 'fine art'.
And again, photography differs how?
Here's my litmus test for you. Pretend, for a moment, that I am Monet, transported alive to the year 2001 and taught to use computers. I create four works on identical pieces of paper:
I paint something, scan it into the computer, print out the image, burn the original painting, and delete the computer file, leaving only a printout.
I create something in the computer, print it, and paint over all the ink so you can't see that there's computer printing anywhere, but I slavishly paint exactly the same thing as was on the printout in the first place.
I paint something, and photograph it and have 10,000 prints made.
I create something in the computer and print it out.
Now: I show you these four things without explanation. Tell me: which of these things are "fine art", and which aren't? And more importantly, how can you tell?
Yes. The project is interesting, if overhyped. Pay attention to it now.
End of line.
Majel's involvement is...
on
Andromeda
·
· Score: 2
Majel is co-producing several shows based on concepts Gene created but never got around to actually doing, such as Earth Final Conflict and, of course, Andromeda.
Her involvement with EFC has been variable over the lifetime of the show, and I don't know what her current involvement level is with Andromeda, but my understanding in general is that she wants to ensure that the shows stay true to Gene's vision.
What makes TiVo fabulous isn't the hardware. The hardware is clearly pretty basic. What makes it fabulous is the service. Because you have two weeks of program guide data in the machine, you can do really cool things with it like pick out all the things you want recorded for the next few weeks and schedule them, find out what conflicts, and conveniently work around conflicts by recording other showings. Or pick out all the shows with your favorite actor, or whatever.
Sure, you can easily build similar hardware for yourself. I suppose even creating the software wouldn't be too painful, given a small group of dedicated people.
But where are you going to get the detailed programming data for free?
What I've been wondering is, what happens if Russia issues charges against the FBI agents for illegal use of the computer(s) in Russia that the agents broke into? Can they apply pressure on the US to extradite the FBI agents to face charges under Russian law?
Of course, this begs the question of whether Russia has any laws that would be applicable...
I beg to differ on your notion of drugs becoming legal. Should marijuana be legal? Personally I think it should, but at the same time I think it would be a
bad idea for simple reasons. As it stands its an old law, but by changing this law what's to say that somewhere down the line heroin and cocaine addicts
won't start the same "Legalize It" tactics?
Are you seriously suggesting that marijuana should be banned in order to prevent citizens from choosing to exercise their constitutionally protected right to express their opinion that herion and cocaine shouldn't be banned?
Studies have shown, and I personally have seen effects of those studies, that a large portion of people who recreated with `weed' often graduated on
to harder drugs.
And I'm sure we all know that this has nothing to do with the fact that to get their marijuana they're coming into contact with illegal drug dealers, who have an interest in selling them onto more addictive (and more lucrative) stuff.
Now I don't smoke so it makes no difference to me, however it does make a difference when you play sides, which is unfair.
The whole point of that quote being important is not that someone said it, or that someone famous said it, but that someone famous for being in a position to greatly help or hinder privacy rights said it.
Well, you're right that many of the claims in that specific patent would apply to a tv studio, but my point was actually that the specific combination of claims seems pretty narrow and focused. For example, the parts about what specific features the device must perform, and what goes on the remote control, and the use of MPEG. These seem pretty well focused around having the patent apply to consumer products, not tv studios.
Of course, we'll have to see how TiVo tries to use their patents.
While generally I'm opposed to software patents, the TiVo is really a pretty novel invention and probably has some areas where it's genuinely unique, so my general thought is "this doesn't sound so bad."
The patent linked to on the article header here on/. may sound eggrigious from the title, but when I read it I thought it sounded fairly specific - it talks about that the stream is encoded with MPEG specifically, and that audio and video data is separated, and specific functions the unit must be able to perform with the data, and what controls are on the remote. I immediately saw other ways the same functionality could be achieved without infringing on the patent (such as licensing the Sorenson encoder, or not separating video and audio data) - I'm sure any good programmer would as well, and someone specializing in that industry can come up with much better methods to avoid infringement.
So what I want to know is, what are the other patents like, and what is TiVo going to do with the patents?
As a teen in school, my father used to demand that I get an A+ on every class. I once came home with a report card in which I got two A's, and the rest of my grades were A+'s, and he angrily demanded to know why the A's weren't A+'s. As a high school senior I got a D in calculus. My teacher called my father to explain to him that because it was an AP course I was being rushed to complete 9 months of course material in 6, and that the class was very advanced, that really I was doing as well as could be asked of me, and that me getting a D in that class was equivalent to an average student in an average class getting a B. My father threw a two hour screaming fit at me anyway and spit in my face and grounded me.
I didn't kill myself.
In no way do I want to imply that the kid in the story we're all discussing was or wasn't under terrible pressure, or should or shouldn't have killed himself. I am saddened by the story. What I want to point out is, people react to situations differently.
Maybe 999 out of 1000 people in his situation would have gone home and had a good cry and faced the music at school the next day and got over it. Maybe not. Yeah, I think telling a kid they're in for jail time, when you know they're not, is really deplorable, and so is pushing your child to excel or else. However, we have to recognize that lots of kids grow up with these lousy occurances in their life and go on to have a career and more or less forget about it.
So, I think laying this death at the feet of the parents, or the principal, is just wrong. There's no way anyone can really predict how people will react to what they say, whether it's rude and deplorable or warm and friendly. A high school principal is not a fortune teller. This may well not have been a preventable incident. We'll never know.
When you're dealing with a company that you bid to and they went with somebody else, anything you say is going to be a little bit suspect to them, because as far as they're concerned you're just trying to wheedle your way into doing business with them by elbowing away your competition.
The key thing you should remember is, they're right. You are trying to wheedile your way into doing business with them by elbowing away the competition.
So, if you're going to do this, do it with dignity and class. Be honest and up-front about it, and tell them bluntly "we noticed that the company you hired used X and Y technolgies and we have some concerns about those technologies. Here's a list of known problems with those technologies. We think you might have some of these bugs, and we'd like to talk to you about how we can help you fix the problems." Don't go into specifics of their implementation, let them figure that out. If they don't care to look, or to ask you for help, then they just don't care and the argument is futile.
Of course, if you're really running into this multiple times, you should consider making it part of your sales pitch. "We use technologies X and Q. We believe they're safer and more secure for your business needs. Here are some of the problems we've observed with sites implemented with the other technology, Technology N. A site one of our (unnamed) competitors recently did for the XYZ Company with Technology N seems to have these problems..."
If the client cares about the security (and stability) issues you can bring up in the sales pitch, great, this could help you make the sale. Also, by bringing concrete recommendations to the client in the sales pitch, you show them that you're serious about helping them and make them feel that you're already on their side, which is important in managing their perceptions of the working relationship. Sometimes the potential client can come away from a meeting like that feeling that you're already working for them, so when you hand them a contract to sign they feel like it's just a formality.
Again, if they don't care about this stuff when you bring it up, that's their problem, and if in the future they hire one of your competitors and you discover that the competitor did a lousy job... well, you warned them, and it just becomes another case study of what not to do.
Last year I worked for a multinational company. One of the things I became really aware of when we were founding the company was that the staff in our German offices would get something like twice the vacation time our American staff would, because German law mandated it.
Our American employees all got a minimum of three weeks of vacation, plus eight floating holidays.
My new employer gives me three weeks of vacation with no floating holidays.
Also, my old employer had unlimited sick days, so if I really felt sick and didn't have anything VITAL to do at work, I'd stay home and rest and get well. My new employer gives, I believe, 6 sick days, so when I wake up and feel sick I'm inclined to go to work anyway in case I get seriously sick later in the year. This means people come to work and spread their colds, and when you get one you tend to stay sick longer because you're not getting enough rest.
My old employer figured out that with vacation, holidays, personal days, training, sick time, and administrative overhead (timesheets, staff meetings, etc), if the average employee works a 40 hour week, we could expect to get about 60% efficiency from them. So, we strived to get that full 60%, and that was fine. My new employer wants 80%, and they're going to achieve it by making us do all administrative tasks as overtime.
How do you think that would go over in Germany?
Weekly hours are not the only measure of how hard we work.
This is an interesting comment. Nine times out of ten, you are the company that sold a piece of hardware/software to my mother/friend/relative and promised it was plug and play and 100% compatible (and inevitably leads to me trying to bail everything out).
Hey, I am sorry your life is tough dealing with people that aren't computer-savvy, but you chose that line of work.
I think the point is that customers who don't know what they're talking about inherently cause problems with the system.
One major problem is that whether or not there is a problem, customers tend to be unable to articulate what they're experiencing in an adequate way to the support representatives. This wastes a lot of time on the rep's part, because they need to ask a zillion little questions in order to slowly build up a picture of what's going on.
Another major problem is customers who try to diagnose the problem. Sure, you and I may be able to determine something like "the SMTP server is down" but most customers can't... but that won't stop them from saying it. I've encountered customers who describe every problem as "The printer is broken," because ultimately someday they would want to print the document they were working on so no matter where the entire computing process went awry along the way, it must be the printer's fauly. I encountered one customer who called and told me "The terminal is broken" and refused to give me any more detail. Every question I tried to ask was answer with increasingly angry responses of "The terminal is broken and I want you to fix it!" I couldn't tell what sort of machine they had, what they were seeing, what they thought was wrong, whether they were trying to get help with hardware or software, or if indeed anything was actually wrong.
As a customer support rep, one of the first things you learn is to discard anything the customer tells you about what they think is wrong (no matter how calm or logical they may sound) and diagnose entirely from specific solid facts (like what the DHCP control panel says). If you don't, you'll be able to help power user customers more quickly, but you'll spend eternities trying to make sense of what everybody else says. It's not inherently obvious to the rep whether you are a power user or not.
But all that said, I agree that tech support sucks, but for different reasons than stated here. What I have always hated about most tech support is that it seems designed not to help the customer, but rather to make the customer go away. If you call the application vendor they blame the problem on Microsoft. If you call Microsoft they blame the application vendor, or the hardware manufacturer. If you call the hardware manufacturer they blame Microsoft or the application vendor. Nobody will take responsibility. I once had a PDA from Sharp. One morning it wouldn't turn on. I called tech support, thinking they'd tell me how to get it repaired, and they told me it was a software problem and I'd have to call the OS company.
I don't call tech support any more. I keep my own computer running. (Easy enough, I use a Mac.) If I get any additional hardware or software that I can't make work with the help of the manual, I return it. My time is too valuable to waste in vague hopes that the tech support rep will be able to help me.
If you're on-call, you get hours for everything you do for the company, but not necessarily for waiting around for the beeper to go off. So, if during the night you get
called at 1:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m., and work a half an hour on each, you've worked 1 hour of overtime.
That may vary by venue. My understanding, from back when I was an hourly employee, is that in Massachusetts when an employer causes you to perform work (or you come into the office for regular hours) they must pay you for a minimum of three hours work, even if (for example) you come into the office and they discover they were mistaken and don't need you, or it's a 30 second support call.
I wonder if Microsoft will go after the owners of PC's sold without windows, and demand that they pay for licenses.
It would have interesting antitrust implications. "Look Mister Judge! See! Even Microsoft claims you can't possibly have a computer without paying them money..."
The box itself was never proof of a license, because Microsoft could always claim (correctly) that the box may have originally shipped with a different version of the OS than is currently installed on it.
Snapper has found it difficult to get Microsoft to recognize new systems as being part of that license, said Snapper CIO Howard Jones.
I guess he forgot that magic line "If you throw it all away.. things can only get better."
Perhaps we should all try to be friendly and helpful, and send a friendly email companies we know are suffering with problems with their proprietary software installations informing them, politely, about where to look for information on getting started with linux, such as http://www.redhat.com .
Your #1, "For Software, only the code that impliments the idea is protectable" is commonly known as "Copyright". We could do away completely with patent protection and code would still be eligible for copyright protection, and we'd have a lot less nonsense going on.
I speak, in this context, as someone who has worked in the advertising industry and still works as a professional web consultant.
I believe a big part of the problem with banner ads is the content. Ads are not being designed in a way that makes the user feel inclined to look at them or click them. Reasons include:
Banner ads are almost all the same shape. Because of this, people have become very accustomed to tuning out anything banner-shaped. It makes them essentially invisible.
Ads flicker. Animated GIFs can be attractive and interesting... or flickery and annoying. Unfortunately, the latter is true of most banner ads. Even as I write a flickering horror at the top of my window is trying to sell me a DVD player and movies. This doesn't positively attract the user's attention, it makes the user angry. If I saw a logo in the middle of that ad I'd be sure never to buy from that company again because it annoyed me.
Flash can't be stopped. Even if an animated GIF ad bothers me, I can press the "stop" button and the GIFs all stop. Flash doesn't. One of my favorite sites started using all animated Flash ads. I stopped using the site.
There are ways to design ads that are less offensive and may get better user interest. So some extent, my beliefs in this regard run counter to conventional banner-ad-wisdom (if there is such a thing), so I understand that these should be tested before widespread use, but:
Change the shapes of the ads, and put them in different places on the page. Having an ad that is not a 468x60 image at the top of the page may in itself get some attention, and may also put the ads better in line with where the user will be looking at the page. I tend to notice the large ad at the right side of zdnet.com and whether I like them or not I do tend to notice the middle-of-the-page ads at cnn.com.
If your business goal for the ad campaign is brand recognition, then for goodness sake don't put up a flickering horror, put up a simple static image of your logo... with a background color that blends in with the rest of the page. It's simple, it's classy, and it tells the viewer "this page is brought to you by us" in a way that creates positive feelings ("how nice, the XYZ company sponsors my favorite site") rather than negative feelings ("that damn XYZ company has such horrible flickery ads").
Try to make the background color of the banner ad match the background color of the page it's displayed on, and use this as an opportunity to make ads that don't look rectangular. Imagine the oval banner ad. Or the circular ad. Or the free-form ad. The user is much more likely to glance at it if it's not rectangular, because then it could be part of the page.
Frankly, I've always thought Chris Rock was racist and offensive, determined to portray the world as a contest of black versus white, and unable to see that some people just aren't interested in skin color. The idea of going to one of his films appeals to me about as much as the idea of going to a KKK film about a nice young white man forced to live out his life surrounded by horrible stereotypes of people of other colors.
I sincerely wish people would not go to his films or watch his shows so he could experience the career end he so richly deserves.
Congratulations on co-oping. It's a great idea, it will do you well when you go to college.
First of all, relax. Employers usually view co-ops as cheap labor. This is pretty normal and you don't need to worry about it too much. Do your best to have a "yes sir, can do sir!" attitude and maybe they'll ask you back and give you better work.
You're getting two very valuable things from this experience:
Something to put on a professional resume'. This is actually very valuable. When you go off to college and try to get a part-time job doing something more interesting than flipping burgers, you will be able to hand people a real resume showing a real job on it. Okay, so it's only one, but employers will be impressed that you have one when everybody else your age has zero. If you can leverage this to keep doing pseudo-professional jobs through college, not only will you be a better earner than most college students, but when you graduate you'll be able to tell potential employers "yes, I have a degree and five years of experience!", and believe me that can make the difference. For the rest of your life you'll be able to honestly tack years of experience on when you're telling people how long you've been in the business.
You'll have business experience. When you hold a professional job, part of what they pay you for is technical ability... and part is business ability. From your job, even from the grunt work, you will begin to learn about how busines works. You'll learn how to interact with people on a professional level, how to talk to them, how to deal with them. Believe it or not, this is actually immensely valuable. In 5 or 10 years you'll find yourself explaining to employers that they should pay you more because you have business experience... and they will, if you can articulate specific business skills you have. Two months ago I negotiated myself into a 40% raise by successfully explaining to my new employer why my business skills make me valuable.
Stick with it, grin and bear it (yes really, I do know it sucks, I got an internship at 16 too), and know that you're doing the right thing to get the job experience. We're rooting for you.
I've had several employers give me various types of agreements I didn't want to sign - intellectual property agreements that gave them ownership of everything I created while employed by them (as a programmer, I don't want my employer claiming ownership of the quilts I sew at home), noncompete agreements that essentially would have put me out of work for a year after leaving the company, and more of that ilk.
I found a useful tactic was to just put the agreement in the filing cabinet, carefully remember exactly where it is, and then never do anything about it. About 50% of the time, the company just assumes you must have signed it and turned it in to someone else in HR and they never follow up. The other 50% or so of the time, they come ask you to please sign it, you apologize profusely, pull it out of the filing cabinet so they can see you're not blowing them off, and tell them you haven't had a chance to review it yet and you'll do so and get it back to them as soon as possible. Usually after that they go away smiling and forget about it.
Once the HR person came back and demanded I should sign it immediately, even though I said I hadn't read it yet. I acted shocked and horrified that they would try to "bully me into signing a contract unread," and they immediately backed off and never came back. Only once did the company ever persist far enough to require me to tell them I wanted my lawyer to look over it, then that I hadn't had time to go see my lawyer with it yet, and then finally that I really wasn't happy with the agreement and would like it changed please. They started making noises that they didn't want me around if I wouldn't sign, but as it happened I was already looking for other work anyway and was out before they could make an issue of it.
I don't know that I agree with the authors' tactic of agreeing not to disclose his private contact information in exchange for an interview. It strikes me slightly as blackmail, and I hope it was just an unfortunate choice of wording to describe an innocent agreement, but...
I think the interview revealed some fascinating hints about the creative processes of one of the great humorists of our time, and I think that in itself is of immense historical value. Frankly, it blew me away to hear that he found his humor hard to come by, his deadlines painful, and that he can't be happy about the quality of his previous work.
It gives me some measure of assurance that I shouldn't feel so bad about my own work process, when I have to agonize over a bit of art when others' work seems so effortless.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. McNobody uses McNames to make products McPopular. It wouldn't make any McMoney.
For those who don't know, the Maunder Minimum was a period of unusually low solar output which occurred several hundred years ago and correlated with low global temperatures. Whole carnivals were held in the middle of the Thames river because it froze over hard, Louis XIV had warmer floors installed in Versailles, and the canals froze in Amsterdam.
My understanding from my astrophycist friends is that we're not actually presently in another Maunder Minimum period, but that present sunspot activity seems awfully similar to the activity the sun exhibited immediately before the Maunder Minimum. It also seems similar to activity exhibited by other stars shortly before what are believed to be their reduced activity periods. (One of my close friends is big in hunting down other stars similar to our sun, but there isn't enough information to draw conclusions yet.)
In other words, folks, we might possibly be in for a minor ice-age soon. Also, since solar activity continues to correlate with global temperature, either global warming we are presently observing is caused by the sun, or our use of aerosol cans here is somehow turning up the temperature on the surface of the sun.
Now, please excuse me while I climb into an asbestos suit, and while you're aiming your flamethrowers at me please remember that I'm actually a radical liberal and believe strongly in living in an unpolluted environment, I just want some factual reality involved.
How does computer art, in this respect, differ from photography? As both a computer artist and a photographer, I've never felt there was a difference. Indeed, I now carry three cameras with me - one takes digital shots, another takes APS film, and a third takes 35mm stereograms. The digital shots go directly into the computer. The APS film goes to Kodak, which returns to me a CD of JPEG files of the images, which go into the computer. The 35mm film goes to shutterfly.com, which returns to me negatives, which I scan into the computer. I use the computer to perform touchups and color corrections as desired, and have my photos printed by shutterfly.
So, is what I do photography, which could be fine art, or is it computer generated, which you claim can't?
Again, I'll bring up photography. If I shoot photos with a very fine grain film and have them printed by an excellent photo finisher on glossy paper, do they have texture? Do they have any more texture than prints of images I created digitally and had printed on the same glossy paper?
Really? Come visit my house and look at my living room wall and tell me which of my photos were created on film and which were created with my digital camera. Tell me which could qualify as "fine art" and which couldn't (pretending for a moment they're all good).
I'm pretty sure you won't be able to tell the difference between the photos taken with my mid-range consumer-quality digital camera and the photos taken on film. With one exception that I enlarged up too much, I don't think you'll be able to point out any pics with visible pixels, either.
And again, photography differs how?
Here's my litmus test for you. Pretend, for a moment, that I am Monet, transported alive to the year 2001 and taught to use computers. I create four works on identical pieces of paper:
- I paint something, scan it into the computer, print out the image, burn the original painting, and delete the computer file, leaving only a printout.
- I create something in the computer, print it, and paint over all the ink so you can't see that there's computer printing anywhere, but I slavishly paint exactly the same thing as was on the printout in the first place.
- I paint something, and photograph it and have 10,000 prints made.
- I create something in the computer and print it out.
Now: I show you these four things without explanation. Tell me: which of these things are "fine art", and which aren't? And more importantly, how can you tell?Tom
Yes. The project is interesting, if overhyped. Pay attention to it now.
End of line.
Her involvement with EFC has been variable over the lifetime of the show, and I don't know what her current involvement level is with Andromeda, but my understanding in general is that she wants to ensure that the shows stay true to Gene's vision.
...the service.
What makes TiVo fabulous isn't the hardware. The hardware is clearly pretty basic. What makes it fabulous is the service. Because you have two weeks of program guide data in the machine, you can do really cool things with it like pick out all the things you want recorded for the next few weeks and schedule them, find out what conflicts, and conveniently work around conflicts by recording other showings. Or pick out all the shows with your favorite actor, or whatever.
Sure, you can easily build similar hardware for yourself. I suppose even creating the software wouldn't be too painful, given a small group of dedicated people.
But where are you going to get the detailed programming data for free?
What I've been wondering is, what happens if Russia issues charges against the FBI agents for illegal use of the computer(s) in Russia that the agents broke into? Can they apply pressure on the US to extradite the FBI agents to face charges under Russian law?
Of course, this begs the question of whether Russia has any laws that would be applicable...
And I'm sure we all know that this has nothing to do with the fact that to get their marijuana they're coming into contact with illegal drug dealers, who have an interest in selling them onto more addictive (and more lucrative) stuff.
Life isn't fair. Get over it.
The whole point of that quote being important is not that someone said it, or that someone famous said it, but that someone famous for being in a position to greatly help or hinder privacy rights said it.
Well, you're right that many of the claims in that specific patent would apply to a tv studio, but my point was actually that the specific combination of claims seems pretty narrow and focused. For example, the parts about what specific features the device must perform, and what goes on the remote control, and the use of MPEG. These seem pretty well focused around having the patent apply to consumer products, not tv studios.
Of course, we'll have to see how TiVo tries to use their patents.
While generally I'm opposed to software patents, the TiVo is really a pretty novel invention and probably has some areas where it's genuinely unique, so my general thought is "this doesn't sound so bad."
/. may sound eggrigious from the title, but when I read it I thought it sounded fairly specific - it talks about that the stream is encoded with MPEG specifically, and that audio and video data is separated, and specific functions the unit must be able to perform with the data, and what controls are on the remote. I immediately saw other ways the same functionality could be achieved without infringing on the patent (such as licensing the Sorenson encoder, or not separating video and audio data) - I'm sure any good programmer would as well, and someone specializing in that industry can come up with much better methods to avoid infringement.
The patent linked to on the article header here on
So what I want to know is, what are the other patents like, and what is TiVo going to do with the patents?
As a teen in school, my father used to demand that I get an A+ on every class. I once came home with a report card in which I got two A's, and the rest of my grades were A+'s, and he angrily demanded to know why the A's weren't A+'s. As a high school senior I got a D in calculus. My teacher called my father to explain to him that because it was an AP course I was being rushed to complete 9 months of course material in 6, and that the class was very advanced, that really I was doing as well as could be asked of me, and that me getting a D in that class was equivalent to an average student in an average class getting a B. My father threw a two hour screaming fit at me anyway and spit in my face and grounded me.
I didn't kill myself.
In no way do I want to imply that the kid in the story we're all discussing was or wasn't under terrible pressure, or should or shouldn't have killed himself. I am saddened by the story. What I want to point out is, people react to situations differently.
Maybe 999 out of 1000 people in his situation would have gone home and had a good cry and faced the music at school the next day and got over it. Maybe not. Yeah, I think telling a kid they're in for jail time, when you know they're not, is really deplorable, and so is pushing your child to excel or else. However, we have to recognize that lots of kids grow up with these lousy occurances in their life and go on to have a career and more or less forget about it.
So, I think laying this death at the feet of the parents, or the principal, is just wrong. There's no way anyone can really predict how people will react to what they say, whether it's rude and deplorable or warm and friendly. A high school principal is not a fortune teller. This may well not have been a preventable incident. We'll never know.
When you're dealing with a company that you bid to and they went with somebody else, anything you say is going to be a little bit suspect to them, because as far as they're concerned you're just trying to wheedle your way into doing business with them by elbowing away your competition.
The key thing you should remember is, they're right. You are trying to wheedile your way into doing business with them by elbowing away the competition.
So, if you're going to do this, do it with dignity and class. Be honest and up-front about it, and tell them bluntly "we noticed that the company you hired used X and Y technolgies and we have some concerns about those technologies. Here's a list of known problems with those technologies. We think you might have some of these bugs, and we'd like to talk to you about how we can help you fix the problems." Don't go into specifics of their implementation, let them figure that out. If they don't care to look, or to ask you for help, then they just don't care and the argument is futile.
Of course, if you're really running into this multiple times, you should consider making it part of your sales pitch. "We use technologies X and Q. We believe they're safer and more secure for your business needs. Here are some of the problems we've observed with sites implemented with the other technology, Technology N. A site one of our (unnamed) competitors recently did for the XYZ Company with Technology N seems to have these problems..."
If the client cares about the security (and stability) issues you can bring up in the sales pitch, great, this could help you make the sale. Also, by bringing concrete recommendations to the client in the sales pitch, you show them that you're serious about helping them and make them feel that you're already on their side, which is important in managing their perceptions of the working relationship. Sometimes the potential client can come away from a meeting like that feeling that you're already working for them, so when you hand them a contract to sign they feel like it's just a formality.
Again, if they don't care about this stuff when you bring it up, that's their problem, and if in the future they hire one of your competitors and you discover that the competitor did a lousy job... well, you warned them, and it just becomes another case study of what not to do.
Last year I worked for a multinational company. One of the things I became really aware of when we were founding the company was that the staff in our German offices would get something like twice the vacation time our American staff would, because German law mandated it.
Our American employees all got a minimum of three weeks of vacation, plus eight floating holidays.
My new employer gives me three weeks of vacation with no floating holidays.
Also, my old employer had unlimited sick days, so if I really felt sick and didn't have anything VITAL to do at work, I'd stay home and rest and get well. My new employer gives, I believe, 6 sick days, so when I wake up and feel sick I'm inclined to go to work anyway in case I get seriously sick later in the year. This means people come to work and spread their colds, and when you get one you tend to stay sick longer because you're not getting enough rest.
My old employer figured out that with vacation, holidays, personal days, training, sick time, and administrative overhead (timesheets, staff meetings, etc), if the average employee works a 40 hour week, we could expect to get about 60% efficiency from them. So, we strived to get that full 60%, and that was fine. My new employer wants 80%, and they're going to achieve it by making us do all administrative tasks as overtime.
How do you think that would go over in Germany?
Weekly hours are not the only measure of how hard we work.
One major problem is that whether or not there is a problem, customers tend to be unable to articulate what they're experiencing in an adequate way to the support representatives. This wastes a lot of time on the rep's part, because they need to ask a zillion little questions in order to slowly build up a picture of what's going on.
Another major problem is customers who try to diagnose the problem. Sure, you and I may be able to determine something like "the SMTP server is down" but most customers can't... but that won't stop them from saying it. I've encountered customers who describe every problem as "The printer is broken," because ultimately someday they would want to print the document they were working on so no matter where the entire computing process went awry along the way, it must be the printer's fauly. I encountered one customer who called and told me "The terminal is broken" and refused to give me any more detail. Every question I tried to ask was answer with increasingly angry responses of "The terminal is broken and I want you to fix it!" I couldn't tell what sort of machine they had, what they were seeing, what they thought was wrong, whether they were trying to get help with hardware or software, or if indeed anything was actually wrong.
As a customer support rep, one of the first things you learn is to discard anything the customer tells you about what they think is wrong (no matter how calm or logical they may sound) and diagnose entirely from specific solid facts (like what the DHCP control panel says). If you don't, you'll be able to help power user customers more quickly, but you'll spend eternities trying to make sense of what everybody else says. It's not inherently obvious to the rep whether you are a power user or not.
But all that said, I agree that tech support sucks, but for different reasons than stated here. What I have always hated about most tech support is that it seems designed not to help the customer, but rather to make the customer go away. If you call the application vendor they blame the problem on Microsoft. If you call Microsoft they blame the application vendor, or the hardware manufacturer. If you call the hardware manufacturer they blame Microsoft or the application vendor. Nobody will take responsibility. I once had a PDA from Sharp. One morning it wouldn't turn on. I called tech support, thinking they'd tell me how to get it repaired, and they told me it was a software problem and I'd have to call the OS company.
I don't call tech support any more. I keep my own computer running. (Easy enough, I use a Mac.) If I get any additional hardware or software that I can't make work with the help of the manual, I return it. My time is too valuable to waste in vague hopes that the tech support rep will be able to help me.
That may vary by venue. My understanding, from back when I was an hourly employee, is that in Massachusetts when an employer causes you to perform work (or you come into the office for regular hours) they must pay you for a minimum of three hours work, even if (for example) you come into the office and they discover they were mistaken and don't need you, or it's a 30 second support call.
I wonder if Microsoft will go after the owners of PC's sold without windows, and demand that they pay for licenses.
It would have interesting antitrust implications. "Look Mister Judge! See! Even Microsoft claims you can't possibly have a computer without paying them money..."
The box itself was never proof of a license, because Microsoft could always claim (correctly) that the box may have originally shipped with a different version of the OS than is currently installed on it.
Your #1, "For Software, only the code that impliments the idea is protectable" is commonly known as "Copyright". We could do away completely with patent protection and code would still be eligible for copyright protection, and we'd have a lot less nonsense going on.
I believe a big part of the problem with banner ads is the content. Ads are not being designed in a way that makes the user feel inclined to look at them or click them. Reasons include:
There are ways to design ads that are less offensive and may get better user interest. So some extent, my beliefs in this regard run counter to conventional banner-ad-wisdom (if there is such a thing), so I understand that these should be tested before widespread use, but:
I sincerely wish people would not go to his films or watch his shows so he could experience the career end he so richly deserves.
First of all, relax. Employers usually view co-ops as cheap labor. This is pretty normal and you don't need to worry about it too much. Do your best to have a "yes sir, can do sir!" attitude and maybe they'll ask you back and give you better work.
You're getting two very valuable things from this experience:
- Something to put on a professional resume'. This is actually very valuable. When you go off to college and try to get a part-time job doing something more interesting than flipping burgers, you will be able to hand people a real resume showing a real job on it. Okay, so it's only one, but employers will be impressed that you have one when everybody else your age has zero. If you can leverage this to keep doing pseudo-professional jobs through college, not only will you be a better earner than most college students, but when you graduate you'll be able to tell potential employers "yes, I have a degree and five years of experience!", and believe me that can make the difference. For the rest of your life you'll be able to honestly tack years of experience on when you're telling people how long you've been in the business.
- You'll have business experience. When you hold a professional job, part of what they pay you for is technical ability... and part is business ability. From your job, even from the grunt work, you will begin to learn about how busines works. You'll learn how to interact with people on a professional level, how to talk to them, how to deal with them. Believe it or not, this is actually immensely valuable. In 5 or 10 years you'll find yourself explaining to employers that they should pay you more because you have business experience... and they will, if you can articulate specific business skills you have. Two months ago I negotiated myself into a 40% raise by successfully explaining to my new employer why my business skills make me valuable.
Stick with it, grin and bear it (yes really, I do know it sucks, I got an internship at 16 too), and know that you're doing the right thing to get the job experience. We're rooting for you.I found a useful tactic was to just put the agreement in the filing cabinet, carefully remember exactly where it is, and then never do anything about it. About 50% of the time, the company just assumes you must have signed it and turned it in to someone else in HR and they never follow up. The other 50% or so of the time, they come ask you to please sign it, you apologize profusely, pull it out of the filing cabinet so they can see you're not blowing them off, and tell them you haven't had a chance to review it yet and you'll do so and get it back to them as soon as possible. Usually after that they go away smiling and forget about it.
Once the HR person came back and demanded I should sign it immediately, even though I said I hadn't read it yet. I acted shocked and horrified that they would try to "bully me into signing a contract unread," and they immediately backed off and never came back. Only once did the company ever persist far enough to require me to tell them I wanted my lawyer to look over it, then that I hadn't had time to go see my lawyer with it yet, and then finally that I really wasn't happy with the agreement and would like it changed please. They started making noises that they didn't want me around if I wouldn't sign, but as it happened I was already looking for other work anyway and was out before they could make an issue of it.
I don't know that I agree with the authors' tactic of agreeing not to disclose his private contact information in exchange for an interview. It strikes me slightly as blackmail, and I hope it was just an unfortunate choice of wording to describe an innocent agreement, but...
I think the interview revealed some fascinating hints about the creative processes of one of the great humorists of our time, and I think that in itself is of immense historical value. Frankly, it blew me away to hear that he found his humor hard to come by, his deadlines painful, and that he can't be happy about the quality of his previous work.
It gives me some measure of assurance that I shouldn't feel so bad about my own work process, when I have to agonize over a bit of art when others' work seems so effortless.