If what was needed was a tool to allow an astronaut to take notes while in Space, then the end result in both cases was that the problem was solved, altough the pen approach was clearly the LEAST efficient use of the available resources (time and money).
On the other hand, if what was needed was a system to deposite a fine layer of an ARBITRARY liquid or soluble substance (for example special inks), then the pen approach was the only one to solve that problem.
Yep, you remembered me of what i wanted to do for some time now...
The software is Cacheman a proper memory manager for Windows from Outer Technologies.
Anyways, the thing is very usefull software, and saved me lots of headaches by keeping my Windows 95 running without mandatory twice a day reboots.
You know what? - It's free for private used!!! Anybody wanting support can pay 10$ to get it.
So? I just paid those 10$, not because i want/need support, but because i want to support good software.
After all this self congratulation where am i trying to get???
In this day and age of crapy commercial software, with periodic crashes, lousy support, EULAs, lock-in features (like non-standart data formats), DMCA, and in which decieving, coercing and denying costumer rights has become the standart way of working of most of the industry (and not only IT), i believe each one of us should make and extra effort to reward quality (yes, even non-Open Source quality - people need money in order to eat) and shun the typical stuff that is poured down our throats every day by faceless, emotionless, greedy companies.
Corporations are like economic animals (in more ways than one), and as such, their behaviours and even their survival depends on their environment. Let's do a bit of artificial selection and create an environment where companies that rely on quality products and quality costumer service survive and prosper, while the one that do not starve and die!!!
FBI Agent: You are being detained for questioning.
Detainee: But i didn't do anything wrong.
FBI Agent: Acording to the data from our tracking systems, your toilet paper consumption rates, the number of gardening books you buy per year and the number of bad jokes about CmdrTaco that you post on Slashdot per week match those in our profile for "Higly Dangerous - Possible Megalomaniac Persons". To prevent any crimes from your part we are hereby detaining you for psychiatric treatment.
Last values i had (about 2 years ago) for the cost of manufacturing a CD was 20 pesetas (from a Spanish manufacturer) per CD, minimum order 1000, cd-case included. That's about 8-10 (US$) cents.
You can always find any music you want available online, even if in practice you have to get it as a (physical, delivered to you) CD instead of a binary download?
or
Specialized engines will appear that allow you to find the music you want in electronic format, be it in one of those Big Record Company web stores or in some independent record company/band web site/store?
If we take this last idea further, such sites could actually end up as The Music Portals for most people. After all, they could aggregate information about content (you can find anything from one site), reorganize that information (create all sorts of searches) and add value to it (such as independent reviews instead of the "independent" ones, pointers to (real deal, not company promoted) fan clubs, information about the artist).
Hey, to have a viable business model they could even act as a sales point for Independent Artists (instead of relying on advertising).
This is basically what MP3.com could've turned itself into if it hadn't sold itself out (correct me if i'm wrong)
On the other hand, i bet the Big Record Companies will buy laws (at least in the US) to forbid the embebing in web pages of pointers to their web stores...
Joe VB: I was debugging an problem in the system, and i ended up stepping into your C++ code, where i found the bug. Apparently you derived your class from two different classes, both of which implemented the same function - void doStupidThing( void ) - and the wrong one was being called during runtime. You have to be carefull when using multiple inheritance. I've just patched it and it's working ok now.
Me: *amazed silence*
The reason corporations put profit before ...
on
J#
·
· Score: 2
Is because corporations are runned by people...
... and said people have stock options...
... and the higher the value of a companies stocks the more those people can make by cashing said stock options...
Actually profits does NOT come before everything else - market valuation comes first...
Inteligence has several components, and one of them is Memory. This doesn't mean that Memory is the most important component, or that anybody with a perfect memory is considered a super-genious. Also there are several kinds of memory (whose proper scientific names i don't rememeber now - damn, there goes 10% of my IQ), which are more or less usefull depending on the context.
An example:
When trying to solve a problem (any problem in any area), after you gather information about the situation you will either:
Find previous situations that you either solved or saw someone solve, or heard about, that are similar and from which you can derive a solution for the problem (that's called experience kids)
Find a previous situation which seems somewhat related and try to derive a solution from there
Ask somebody how to solve it
Divide your problem into component parts and try to find a solution for each part (by applying this whole process to each part)
For each part you don't have a solution to, try the options that seem more logical
If some part is still not solved, then insult the thing, plus it's ancestors, plus everything and everybody that relates to it (this will probably not solve it but it will make you feel slightly beter)
In all of these, you will need to use some ammount of memory (for example, when dividing the problem in component parts you will often partition it in a way similar to something you've done before).
Using memory alone will usually not solve the problem - problems have small variations from one to the other, and even if you perfectly rememeber all the solutions for problems of that sort, you might not remember one that perfectly matches the problem at hand (thus you will need to be able to evaluate which is the best matching solution, and to adjust it so that it fits the current problem)
I live i Europe and i can tell you the whole.COM stuff is a major nuisance if i want to (e-)shop something.
If i go look for something in the.COM domain and end up buying it from a non-EC store (the great majority of them under.COM is non-EC), unless it's a purely digital product, i will have to:
Pay more for shipping
Wait a long time to get it
Pay local taxes (VAT) on top of the normal price (shipping costs is included when calculating VAT)
Go on purpose to pick it up from somewhere else than my mail box or local post-station
As things stand, i actually avoid shopping in stores in the.COM domain.
As i see it, it's actually useless for the local stores to be in the.COM domain (and being only in the.COM domain is probably a very bad business decision).
Was this was used to find the value for a bid for a contract to explore an oilfield in East-Asia.
I don't know if this was specifically with a French company or not, but i do see the huge business value of knowing beforehand the bids of your competitors in a closed biding contest.
They banned all use of cryptography, except for properly registered institutions, which had to provide their keys to the French government.
(This was done with the intention of allowing eavesdroping of all comunications in France by the French authorities)
Since then they totally reversed their positions, up to the point of actually promoting the use of Open Source products because they can be checked for the existence of backdoors.
Why?
Foreign companies started avoiding doing business in France (they rather have their head-quarters or european head-quarters where they can protect their trade secrets)
The French government sudenly discovered that the US Information Services were using electronic interception technologies (Echelon) to intercept business comunications of French companies. Any relevant business information so discovered was then provided to American companies thus giving them competitive advantage over French companies
Or puting things in a different way:
Any nation that adopts a ban on cryptography runs the risk of placing their own companies at a competitive disadvantage to companies in other countries (the US is not the only country doing electronic surveilance) and scaring off foreign companies. Even the mandatory use of back doors in cryptography products has the same risk (eventualy somebody will discover the key that opens the back door, and from there onwards it's the same as if the comunications are unencrypted).
Plus, even if the US adopted laws against the use of cryptograpy or mandating back doors in cryptography products, i doubt very much that the French government would adopt it (specially after having sufered the efects of such a decision in the past). If in such situation the US tried a Trade Embargo against France, it would have to do so against the whole of the EC. You DON'T do a Trade Embargo against the second largest world market (it would be as idiotic as a Trade Embargo against the US)
Re:It all seemed so clear the first time through..
on
Brian West Update
·
· Score: 2
The whole thing still smells fishy.
Imagine that Brian said to a friend:
"I got this files from the Poteau Daily News and Sun Web site. It's realy bad coded. I'm going to rewrite the whole thing in PHP and see if they will buy it."
This would be enough to get him acused of "intending to derive a financial benefit from the unauthorized access".
Everybody seems to be assuming that "intending to market the revised software program" means that he would sell the new version on the open market. Actually, if he wanted to try and sell the new version only to the Poteau Daily News and Sun he would still be "intending to market the revised software program". A clarification of this is nowhere to be found.
Another suspicious thing is that he actually warned them about the security flaw, just the day after he found it out. Now, assuming he wasn't stupid, there are only two good reasons to do so:
He actually had good intentions and wanted to warn them about the security flaw so as to avoid further instrusions.
He wanted to blackmail them
If the second case is true, then why:
Did he explain them the nature of the security flaw ?
There is no reference to him demanding money from the Poteau Daily News and Sun ?
Theories of Accounting is probably The Most Important Thing to learn for accounting.
Between 'Tips and Tricks for Excel' and 'Tips and Tricks to manually add more than 100 figures', i would expect that nowadays, the first is more important than the later.
I guess i didn't properly exposed my idea! Let's try again:
The NET is a tool that can be used to solve some real-life problems and students should learn how to use it for that.
The vast majority of problems doesn't require the use of the NET.
Many problems are best resolved using the NET.
Many problems are best resolved using other tools.
The importance of teaching how to use a tool depends on how likely it is that the student will use that tool in the future, and how usefull it will be for him/her to use it by comparisson to other available tools.
For example:
Paper and pencil accounting is now a little used tool for most accountants.
Currently it's much faster and easier to do it using software.
The principles of accounting are still valid. Writting down big columns of numbers in a piece of paper and adding them up by hand is not very usefull anymore.
Should the teaching of accounting concentrate more on "Tips and Tricks for Excel" or in "Tips and Tricks to manually add more than 100 figures"?
To close this up:
This sub-thread started as "Does any class *require* NET access in the classroom?".
Yes - if you want to teach students how to use this tool.
No - if you don't want to teach students how to use this tool (and this includes not teaching some technical subjects that actually require NET access)
Should classes teach you how to solve real life problems using real life tools, or should they be an exercise in memorization of facts and information?
Having NET access in classrooms is the equivalent of having a huge library in each classroom (and much more, but let's concentrate on information gathering).
Do you need a huge library in each classroom?
Nope. If the type of teaching practiced in that class boils down to making students memorize how much is 7x7 or the name of all rivers in [insert country here] or the name of all presidents/prime-ministers/emperors in [insert country here] since the dawn of times then having a teacher write it down in the black/white board and making you write it down and recite it until you puke is enough - no need for NET access.
I've lived both in Holland and in Portugal. Altought both countries have similarily strong employer protection laws (actually Holland has tighter laws), the difference in results is like between night and day:
Holland has lower unemployment (4% to 7% last time i saw)
Salaries are more than 2 times as high (in average) in Holland
There are many more big companies in Holland than in Portugal (the biggest portuguese company is punny compared with the biggest dutch company)
As i see it, labour laws have a very small impact in a country's success compared to things like a good judiciary system (and believe me, the courts in Portugal are slow and mostly incompetent) or freedom of press (Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship until 1974).
Maybe this is a prejudice from my part, but i would expect that Italy suffers from similar problems as Portugal.
You have a very American point of view
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I live in Europe and around here we have serious employement laws. In most european countries, people can't simply be fired without compensation - a (quite hefty) severance payment must be payed when firing someone.
You know what? When doing restructuring or cost trimming, companies around here actually make a strong effort not to fire anyone - they cut costs with equipment and maintenance, they re-train employees, they shift people from one place to another in the structure instead of firing in one side and hiring on the other side.
For most companies it all boils down to a question of "What is cheaper?", and when the firing of someone is a very expensive option, things like re-training sudenly seem very attractive.
It's not a question of technology, it's a question of society.
(Interestingly enough, in the US the only persons that do get big severance payments seem to be incompetent CEOs and the likes - the ones that put big companies close to bankrupcy usually get the biggest severance payments)
I haven't yet bought a DVD-ROM drive for exactly the same reasons as you stated above.
Still, a couple of months ago i searched for a Region Free DVD-ROM drive, and what i found was the Asus DVD E612 (which i don't even know if it's still manufactured).
Apparently the drive comes with Region Code active. You just change a jumper and "voilá" - a Region Free drive. Anyways, i never bought the thing, so this is all hearsay.
Oh yes, in most of the world (except the US), there is (yet) no DMCA, so changing that jumper doesn't break any law.
If you have Win98 + or WinNT 4.xx + then you have at least until the end of June 2002 to make any migration while still having standart support from Microsoft for the not-yet-migrated systems.
Slashdot Mirror
It all depends on the Requirements:
If what was needed was a tool to allow an astronaut to take notes while in Space, then the end result in both cases was that the problem was solved, altough the pen approach was clearly the LEAST efficient use of the available resources (time and money).
On the other hand, if what was needed was a system to deposite a fine layer of an ARBITRARY liquid or soluble substance (for example special inks), then the pen approach was the only one to solve that problem.
The software is Cacheman a proper memory manager for Windows from Outer Technologies.
Anyways, the thing is very usefull software, and saved me lots of headaches by keeping my Windows 95 running without mandatory twice a day reboots.
You know what? - It's free for private used!!! Anybody wanting support can pay 10$ to get it.
So? I just paid those 10$, not because i want/need support, but because i want to support good software.
After all this self congratulation where am i trying to get???
In this day and age of crapy commercial software, with periodic crashes, lousy support, EULAs, lock-in features (like non-standart data formats), DMCA, and in which decieving, coercing and denying costumer rights has become the standart way of working of most of the industry (and not only IT), i believe each one of us should make and extra effort to reward quality (yes, even non-Open Source quality - people need money in order to eat) and shun the typical stuff that is poured down our throats every day by faceless, emotionless, greedy companies.
Corporations are like economic animals (in more ways than one), and as such, their behaviours and even their survival depends on their environment. Let's do a bit of artificial selection and create an environment where companies that rely on quality products and quality costumer service survive and prosper, while the one that do not starve and die!!!
I once implemented a Neural Network for a school project (from the bottom up in C++).
...
The thing was trained to recognize numbers, but we never got a success ratio bigger than 85%.
Suposedly we should've manage to get more than 90%, but there was a programming error in the code for the NN implementation.
The interesting thing is that the Neural Network actually adjusted to compensate for a bug in itself and achieved an 85% success ratio
Now that's error handling
Error messages should also show the relevant parts of the EULA and have button saying "I Agree" instead of "OK".
Detainee: But i didn't do anything wrong.
FBI Agent: Acording to the data from our tracking systems, your toilet paper consumption rates, the number of gardening books you buy per year and the number of bad jokes about CmdrTaco that you post on Slashdot per week match those in our profile for "Higly Dangerous - Possible Megalomaniac Persons". To prevent any crimes from your part we are hereby detaining you for psychiatric treatment.
Last values i had (about 2 years ago) for the cost of manufacturing a CD was 20 pesetas (from a Spanish manufacturer) per CD, minimum order 1000, cd-case included. That's about 8-10 (US$) cents.
Is have only one standard format ... and change it every couple of years!!!
They've made millions out of people that bought CDs when they already had the same in LP.
GE-Honeywell merger
You can always find any music you want available online, even if in practice you have to get it as a (physical, delivered to you) CD instead of a binary download?
or
Specialized engines will appear that allow you to find the music you want in electronic format, be it in one of those Big Record Company web stores or in some independent record company/band web site/store?
If we take this last idea further, such sites could actually end up as The Music Portals for most people. After all, they could aggregate information about content (you can find anything from one site), reorganize that information (create all sorts of searches) and add value to it (such as independent reviews instead of the "independent" ones, pointers to (real deal, not company promoted) fan clubs, information about the artist).
Hey, to have a viable business model they could even act as a sales point for Independent Artists (instead of relying on advertising).
This is basically what MP3.com could've turned itself into if it hadn't sold itself out (correct me if i'm wrong)
On the other hand, i bet the Big Record Companies will buy laws (at least in the US) to forbid the embebing in web pages of pointers to their web stores ...
Joe VB: I was debugging an problem in the system, and i ended up stepping into your C++ code, where i found the bug. Apparently you derived your class from two different classes, both of which implemented the same function - void doStupidThing( void ) - and the wrong one was being called during runtime. You have to be carefull when using multiple inheritance. I've just patched it and it's working ok now.
Me: *amazed silence*
Actually profits does NOT come before everything else - market valuation comes first ...
An example:
When trying to solve a problem (any problem in any area), after you gather information about the situation you will either:
- Find previous situations that you either solved or saw someone solve, or heard about, that are similar and from which you can derive a solution for the problem (that's called experience kids)
- Find a previous situation which seems somewhat related and try to derive a solution from there
- Ask somebody how to solve it
- Divide your problem into component parts and try to find a solution for each part (by applying this whole process to each part)
- For each part you don't have a solution to, try the options that seem more logical
- If some part is still not solved, then insult the thing, plus it's ancestors, plus everything and everybody that relates to it (this will probably not solve it but it will make you feel slightly beter)
In all of these, you will need to use some ammount of memory (for example, when dividing the problem in component parts you will often partition it in a way similar to something you've done before).Using memory alone will usually not solve the problem - problems have small variations from one to the other, and even if you perfectly rememeber all the solutions for problems of that sort, you might not remember one that perfectly matches the problem at hand (thus you will need to be able to evaluate which is the best matching solution, and to adjust it so that it fits the current problem)
I live i Europe and i can tell you the whole
If i go look for something in the
As things stand, i actually avoid shopping in stores in the
As i see it, it's actually useless for the local stores to be in the
I don't know if this was specifically with a French company or not, but i do see the huge business value of knowing beforehand the bids of your competitors in a closed biding contest.
(This was done with the intention of allowing eavesdroping of all comunications in France by the French authorities)
Since then they totally reversed their positions, up to the point of actually promoting the use of Open Source products because they can be checked for the existence of backdoors.
Why?
Or puting things in a different way:
Any nation that adopts a ban on cryptography runs the risk of placing their own companies at a competitive disadvantage to companies in other countries (the US is not the only country doing electronic surveilance) and scaring off foreign companies. Even the mandatory use of back doors in cryptography products has the same risk (eventualy somebody will discover the key that opens the back door, and from there onwards it's the same as if the comunications are unencrypted).
Plus, even if the US adopted laws against the use of cryptograpy or mandating back doors in cryptography products, i doubt very much that the French government would adopt it (specially after having sufered the efects of such a decision in the past). If in such situation the US tried a Trade Embargo against France, it would have to do so against the whole of the EC. You DON'T do a Trade Embargo against the second largest world market (it would be as idiotic as a Trade Embargo against the US)
Imagine that Brian said to a friend:
"I got this files from the Poteau Daily News and Sun Web site. It's realy bad coded. I'm going to rewrite the whole thing in PHP and see if they will buy it."
This would be enough to get him acused of "intending to derive a financial benefit from the unauthorized access".
Everybody seems to be assuming that "intending to market the revised software program" means that he would sell the new version on the open market. Actually, if he wanted to try and sell the new version only to the Poteau Daily News and Sun he would still be "intending to market the revised software program". A clarification of this is nowhere to be found.
Another suspicious thing is that he actually warned them about the security flaw, just the day after he found it out. Now, assuming he wasn't stupid, there are only two good reasons to do so:
- He actually had good intentions and wanted to warn them about the security flaw so as to avoid further instrusions.
- He wanted to blackmail them
If the second case is true, then why:- Did he explain them the nature of the security flaw ?
- There is no reference to him demanding money from the Poteau Daily News and Sun ?
I would say the waters are still muddedI totally agree with you.
Theories of Accounting is probably The Most Important Thing to learn for accounting.
Between 'Tips and Tricks for Excel' and 'Tips and Tricks to manually add more than 100 figures', i would expect that nowadays, the first is more important than the later.
It's almost unbelieveable. Specially for the big church ones.
The NET is a tool that can be used to solve some real-life problems and students should learn how to use it for that.
The vast majority of problems doesn't require the use of the NET.
Many problems are best resolved using the NET.
Many problems are best resolved using other tools.
The importance of teaching how to use a tool depends on how likely it is that the student will use that tool in the future, and how usefull it will be for him/her to use it by comparisson to other available tools.
For example:
To close this up:
This sub-thread started as "Does any class *require* NET access in the classroom?".
Having NET access in classrooms is the equivalent of having a huge library in each classroom (and much more, but let's concentrate on information gathering).
Do you need a huge library in each classroom?
Nope. If the type of teaching practiced in that class boils down to making students memorize how much is 7x7 or the name of all rivers in [insert country here] or the name of all presidents/prime-ministers/emperors in [insert country here] since the dawn of times then having a teacher write it down in the black/white board and making you write it down and recite it until you puke is enough - no need for NET access.
... i tought this had something to do with the Darwin Awards
As i see it, labour laws have a very small impact in a country's success compared to things like a good judiciary system (and believe me, the courts in Portugal are slow and mostly incompetent) or freedom of press (Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship until 1974).
Maybe this is a prejudice from my part, but i would expect that Italy suffers from similar problems as Portugal.
You know what? When doing restructuring or cost trimming, companies around here actually make a strong effort not to fire anyone - they cut costs with equipment and maintenance, they re-train employees, they shift people from one place to another in the structure instead of firing in one side and hiring on the other side.
For most companies it all boils down to a question of "What is cheaper?", and when the firing of someone is a very expensive option, things like re-training sudenly seem very attractive.
It's not a question of technology, it's a question of society.
(Interestingly enough, in the US the only persons that do get big severance payments seem to be incompetent CEOs and the likes - the ones that put big companies close to bankrupcy usually get the biggest severance payments)
Still, a couple of months ago i searched for a Region Free DVD-ROM drive, and what i found was the Asus DVD E612 (which i don't even know if it's still manufactured).
Apparently the drive comes with Region Code active. You just change a jumper and "voilá" - a Region Free drive. Anyways, i never bought the thing, so this is all hearsay.
Oh yes, in most of the world (except the US), there is (yet) no DMCA, so changing that jumper doesn't break any law.
If you have Win98 + or WinNT 4.xx + then you have at least until the end of June 2002 to make any migration while still having standart support from Microsoft for the not-yet-migrated systems.