Being a web developer and seeing this on
slashdot and the Tim Berners-Lee connection
I decided to download and preview.
Here's what I think:
1. Animated Tea Pot/graphics type demos -
seen those before (flash,java applets),
not very impressive.
2. Plug in requirement is major roadblock.
Tell someone that a plug-in required to view
your site and they are headed out the door.
3. And the most absurd thing is the licensing
agreement. What kinda KoolAide have these
folks been drinking that they think sites are
going to pay them money based on transmission
volumes. The monthly minimum is also a big
joke. Have these people read a newspaper lately?
Web shops aren't exactly swimming in cash.
Okay end of rant.
This thing is Dead on Arrival.
I hear ya! I once had a huge back end C++ app that would crash about every 17 hours due to
humongous memory leaks. Solution? - well
I could have run purify and tracked down
the leaks, tried to fix them, so and so forth.
Naaah, I just slapped together a few lines of
ksh that checked for a core file every 10 minutes
and then re-start the app if one existed. Problem
solved.
If you are saying that the company is compensating
the average programmer enough to afford a Ferrari
and a Cape house then there is no argument that
working 70+ hours/week has its benefits.
If you are talking about the *company* owned Ferrari and Cape house, then I think most people capable of programming a computer can figure out the dollar cost of these benefits (e.g rent a Ferrari and book a week at the Cape) and decide if adding these amounts to their take home pay equates to fair compensation for working 70+ hours
per week.
I also think stock options are a big motivator
for the average person that doesn't already have
millions in the bank. If they weren't, they would have long ago been replaced with gift certificates good for free pizza and beer.
Early in my 10+ year as a programmer I did the
70+ hour routine. That experience is what drove
me to becoming a contractor where I am paid for
every hour I work. I resent Greenspun's pathetic
paternalistic attitude that leads him to make statements like "Most people have a TV at home but they don't have friends with whom to watch it."
What a load of unsubstantiated crap. I have worked as a programmer in several dot com startups and I can tell you that most of the hard working people do have friends,family, and a social life that extends beyond their monitors! Greenspun's ideas are a recipe for BURNOUT. Why do dotcomers work insane hours? Because they had to back a uhaul up to carry home the stock options they hope will make them millionaires - not because of the free pizza and fun toys in the break room.
(PS I wonder how many times Greenspun has had to hire reeeally expensive contrators to bail out his projects after he burned his full time employees out!)
moderate this one up....
Greenspun (who does have some interesting
things to say, but has a God complex IMHO)
should make sure his site(s) can handle the
slashdot effect before spouting off!
This article is mainly publicity - no
realbreakthrough - which is okay if you want to
inform the public about P vs. NP problems.
Unfortunately, to the average reader of the
article it would appear that there has been
a new development just because someone has shown
minesweeper to be equivalent to other known NP problems.
The key to proving P=NP or P!=NP does not
lie in the game minesweeper anymore than
it lies in any of the many other known
NP problems.
The only real news here is that a problem
stated in terms familiar to minesweeper
players is an NP problem. Ho hum.
Why doesn't ebay just sue the guy? Would seem to be the quickest and most cost effective way to send a message. On the other hand, maybe this was dreamed by some PR firm as a way to cozy up to the government to avoid regulation that they fear may some day result from the negative publicity(in my opinion unfare) that ebay seems to receive regularly (e.g kidneys,babys for sale)
I love McDonalds. No matter where in the world I am, I am never more than 10 feet away from a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke. Who does Jose think he is to disturb this? I think he is just another discontented Frenchman who is secretly envious of the American way.
I started out with BASIC on an apple iie. I quickly moved to pascal. I think it depends on how into it the kids get. If they just want to start understanding simple things like what is a variable, loops, etc then BASIC would do. I say just find a good introductory book that is short and gets to the point quickly and use whatever language the book uses. In my opinion the best approach is to kindle their interest and let natural enthusiam take over and then they can decide what languages and problems they want to solve.
You know, news like this is really depressing. I got on the internet in college before the web. Back then, (listen up you young whipersnappers!) if you tried to sell something on the internet you were spammed into oblivion. These days with $$$$,Lawyers, and Uncle Sam's long arm, the internet is fast becoming an environment owned by corporations that control how and what you can do. Pretty soon it will be easier to start a radio station than launch a web site.
How about a blackboard expert system that provides personalization services for web sites. You could post objects to a blackboard that represents events and objects from the web site's domain. Then multiple knowledge sources could use those objects to post other objects on the blackboard that could then be used to deliver personalized content. for example, say a user visits several pages on your site, each page visit being "posted" to the blackboard. A knowledge source(s) could have rules that fire on these events to determine that, for example, this user is a good candidate for some product. The next time the user requests a page a link or whatever is served up. You could use jsp/servlets that interact with the blackboard to serve up the content. The key benefit of using a blackboard and expert system technology being that the rules can be dynamically changed and new rules added without re-coding a zillion lines of code. that's my 2 cents worth - maybe that's all its worth.
Some days I am 19 and have a high school education. Some days I am 50-60, female, with a Phd. Some days I like reading about monster truck races, on others I enjoy the ballet. Don't even ask in how many cities and states I have lived in over the past year. Who am I? I'm the guy pissed off about the erosion of privacy filling out forms on the web.
This company suing sounds really ridiculous. I really wish that judges would hand down huge penalties to companies/people like this when it is determined they were just trying to get revenge or intimidate people. Having said that... I was wondering.. 1. Did any of the code have copyright notices? 2. Did the ad agency ever tell you there could be copyright/ownership issues? Sounds to me that the Ad agency should review its contracts! Every company I have ever dealt with basically requires that you sign away your life with regards to rights to your work product. Anyway the company suing is really stupid. When word gets around (and it always does!) no one will want to hire them.
I am in my late 30s (youch!) and my interest in pop music had declined to the point that I probably purchase about 5 CDs a year (you know, the new Sting album or something). But along came napster - Being able to download and try out new music fired up my interest in new music. It has made me much more open to purchasing CDs by artists that I would never have even been aware of without Napster. Heck, tommorrow my MP3 player is being delivered. The point of all this is that the music industry seems to be clueless to the fact that MP3 is probably the most exciting thing to happen from a distribution standpoint in 20 years. So why is the RIAA pursuing an expensive legal strategy? On the face of it, it would appear to be about copyright issues - however I think the RIAA realizes that the really big issue is that they stand to lose everything if they no longer can controll not only how music is distributed, but, more importantly, WHAT music is distributed. I can tell you that armed with my newly kindled interest in music and my MP3 player I am definately going to start listening to independent artists distributing MP3s. Remember every big name artist was unknown until a recording company spent the money to market and distribute their music. With MP3 and the internet the member companies start looking a like buggy whip manufacturers.
Distributing music via the internet is a huge profit stream the Music Industry could easily exploit. The RIAA should help MP3.com become the Blockbuster of music distribution. I have discussed the Napster issue with several friends and we all agreed we would be willing to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-20 per month to have available on line whatever music we desired. I can tell you that 120-240 per year is more than my current budget for music. I simply can't afford to go out and buy every CD that has a single song on it. Even if I could afford it, it is a royal pain trying to assemble those songs into a format that is convenient to play at work, on my walkman, in my car, in my home, etc. As for copying music and distributing it to my friends..well some people do that, but for most people that is just too much trouble.
This is yet another example of the growing tendency of the state to trample our basic rights. Kevin has served his time and should be able to earn a living any way he sees fit. We have to ask ourselves why Kevin's punishment is so extreme relative to his crimes? For example, how many people convicted of DUI are ordered to never drive a car? This insanity needs to stop.
Jeesh, this country has trillions of dollars to spend on things like sending Chelsea Clinton around the world and this poor place calling itself a university can't afford to wire its students. To add insult to injury they prosecute these kids for taking initiative and bypassing the BS so they can check their email and hey maybe even spend some time on napster..... Damn shame.
Slashdot Mirror
Being a web developer and seeing this on slashdot and the Tim Berners-Lee connection I decided to download and preview. Here's what I think: 1. Animated Tea Pot/graphics type demos - seen those before (flash,java applets), not very impressive. 2. Plug in requirement is major roadblock. Tell someone that a plug-in required to view your site and they are headed out the door. 3. And the most absurd thing is the licensing agreement. What kinda KoolAide have these folks been drinking that they think sites are going to pay them money based on transmission volumes. The monthly minimum is also a big joke. Have these people read a newspaper lately? Web shops aren't exactly swimming in cash. Okay end of rant. This thing is Dead on Arrival.
I hear ya! I once had a huge back end C++ app that would crash about every 17 hours due to humongous memory leaks. Solution? - well I could have run purify and tracked down the leaks, tried to fix them, so and so forth. Naaah, I just slapped together a few lines of ksh that checked for a core file every 10 minutes and then re-start the app if one existed. Problem solved.
If you are saying that the company is compensating the average programmer enough to afford a Ferrari and a Cape house then there is no argument that working 70+ hours/week has its benefits. If you are talking about the *company* owned Ferrari and Cape house, then I think most people capable of programming a computer can figure out the dollar cost of these benefits (e.g rent a Ferrari and book a week at the Cape) and decide if adding these amounts to their take home pay equates to fair compensation for working 70+ hours per week. I also think stock options are a big motivator for the average person that doesn't already have millions in the bank. If they weren't, they would have long ago been replaced with gift certificates good for free pizza and beer.
Early in my 10+ year as a programmer I did the 70+ hour routine. That experience is what drove me to becoming a contractor where I am paid for every hour I work. I resent Greenspun's pathetic paternalistic attitude that leads him to make statements like "Most people have a TV at home but they don't have friends with whom to watch it." What a load of unsubstantiated crap. I have worked as a programmer in several dot com startups and I can tell you that most of the hard working people do have friends,family, and a social life that extends beyond their monitors! Greenspun's ideas are a recipe for BURNOUT. Why do dotcomers work insane hours? Because they had to back a uhaul up to carry home the stock options they hope will make them millionaires - not because of the free pizza and fun toys in the break room. (PS I wonder how many times Greenspun has had to hire reeeally expensive contrators to bail out his projects after he burned his full time employees out!)
moderate this one up.... Greenspun (who does have some interesting things to say, but has a God complex IMHO) should make sure his site(s) can handle the slashdot effect before spouting off!
This article is mainly publicity - no realbreakthrough - which is okay if you want to inform the public about P vs. NP problems. Unfortunately, to the average reader of the article it would appear that there has been a new development just because someone has shown minesweeper to be equivalent to other known NP problems. The key to proving P=NP or P!=NP does not lie in the game minesweeper anymore than it lies in any of the many other known NP problems. The only real news here is that a problem stated in terms familiar to minesweeper players is an NP problem. Ho hum.
Why doesn't ebay just sue the guy? Would seem to be the quickest and most cost effective way to send a message. On the other hand, maybe this was dreamed by some PR firm as a way to cozy up to the government to avoid regulation that they fear may some day result from the negative publicity(in my opinion unfare) that ebay seems to receive regularly (e.g kidneys,babys for sale)
I love McDonalds. No matter where in the world I am, I am never more than 10 feet away from a cheeseburger, fries, and a coke. Who does Jose think he is to disturb this? I think he is just another discontented Frenchman who is secretly envious of the American way.
I started out with BASIC on an apple iie. I quickly moved to pascal. I think it depends on how into it the kids get. If they just want to start understanding simple things like what is a variable, loops, etc then BASIC would do. I say just find a good introductory book that is short and gets to the point quickly and use whatever language the book uses. In my opinion the best approach is to kindle their interest and let natural enthusiam take over and then they can decide what languages and problems they want to solve.
You know, news like this is really depressing. I got on the internet in college before the web. Back then, (listen up you young whipersnappers!) if you tried to sell something on the internet you were spammed into oblivion. These days with $$$$,Lawyers, and Uncle Sam's long arm, the internet is fast becoming an environment owned by corporations that control how and what you can do. Pretty soon it will be easier to start a radio station than launch a web site.
How about a blackboard expert system that provides personalization services for web sites. You could post objects to a blackboard that represents events and objects from the web site's domain. Then multiple knowledge sources could use those objects to post other objects on the blackboard that could then be used to deliver personalized content. for example, say a user visits several pages on your site, each page visit being "posted" to the blackboard. A knowledge source(s) could have rules that fire on these events to determine that, for example, this user is a good candidate for some product. The next time the user requests a page a link or whatever is served up. You could use jsp/servlets that interact with the blackboard to serve up the content. The key benefit of using a blackboard and expert system technology being that the rules can be dynamically changed and new rules added without re-coding a zillion lines of code. that's my 2 cents worth - maybe that's all its worth.
Some days I am 19 and have a high school education. Some days I am 50-60, female, with a Phd. Some days I like reading about monster truck races, on others I enjoy the ballet. Don't even ask in how many cities and states I have lived in over the past year. Who am I? I'm the guy pissed off about the erosion of privacy filling out forms on the web.
This company suing sounds really ridiculous. I really wish that judges would hand down huge penalties to companies/people like this when it is determined they were just trying to get revenge or intimidate people. Having said that... I was wondering.. 1. Did any of the code have copyright notices? 2. Did the ad agency ever tell you there could be copyright/ownership issues? Sounds to me that the Ad agency should review its contracts! Every company I have ever dealt with basically requires that you sign away your life with regards to rights to your work product. Anyway the company suing is really stupid. When word gets around (and it always does!) no one will want to hire them.
I am in my late 30s (youch!) and my interest in pop music had declined to the point that I probably purchase about 5 CDs a year (you know, the new Sting album or something). But along came napster - Being able to download and try out new music fired up my interest in new music. It has made me much more open to purchasing CDs by artists that I would never have even been aware of without Napster. Heck, tommorrow my MP3 player is being delivered. The point of all this is that the music industry seems to be clueless to the fact that MP3 is probably the most exciting thing to happen from a distribution standpoint in 20 years. So why is the RIAA pursuing an expensive legal strategy? On the face of it, it would appear to be about copyright issues - however I think the RIAA realizes that the really big issue is that they stand to lose everything if they no longer can controll not only how music is distributed, but, more importantly, WHAT music is distributed. I can tell you that armed with my newly kindled interest in music and my MP3 player I am definately going to start listening to independent artists distributing MP3s. Remember every big name artist was unknown until a recording company spent the money to market and distribute their music. With MP3 and the internet the member companies start looking a like buggy whip manufacturers.
Distributing music via the internet is a huge profit stream the Music Industry could easily exploit. The RIAA should help MP3.com become the Blockbuster of music distribution. I have discussed the Napster issue with several friends and we all agreed we would be willing to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-20 per month to have available on line whatever music we desired. I can tell you that 120-240 per year is more than my current budget for music. I simply can't afford to go out and buy every CD that has a single song on it. Even if I could afford it, it is a royal pain trying to assemble those songs into a format that is convenient to play at work, on my walkman, in my car, in my home, etc. As for copying music and distributing it to my friends..well some people do that, but for most people that is just too much trouble.
This is yet another example of the growing tendency of the state to trample our basic rights. Kevin has served his time and should be able to earn a living any way he sees fit. We have to ask ourselves why Kevin's punishment is so extreme relative to his crimes? For example, how many people convicted of DUI are ordered to never drive a car? This insanity needs to stop.
Jeesh, this country has trillions of dollars to spend on things like sending Chelsea Clinton around the world and this poor place calling itself a university can't afford to wire its students. To add insult to injury they prosecute these kids for taking initiative and bypassing the BS so they can check their email and hey maybe even spend some time on napster..... Damn shame.