Look for a job in the monkey exhibit. Being able to ignore their constant screaming and dodge the excrement they throw at you will probably prepare you better for your career than a summer of making coffee and copies.
This is important for anyone splitting a CATV line that feeds a cable modem or a digital cable box. Those cheap $2.99 splitters from K-Mart won't cut it. Look for one that says it will work with satellite receivers.
Rem is probably the key switch. Wire it to +12 volts to keep the stereo on all the time. As for 10 amps of power, you can buy 12v supplies that size. Astron (http://www.astroncorp.com/ makes excellent ones. You could try local radio shops (ham or CB) or even Radio Shack to avoid shipping.
"Users... are improving their experience by providing information about their tastes without linking... to a name or address or other sensitive data that might endanger them (especially since they are exchanging pirated music)," wrote Parker in one exchange.
Napster's online promotional pitches from the early days (i.e. fall of '99) should also be of interest... and that "Napster virtually guarantees you'll find the music you want, when you want it and you can forget about wading through page after page of unknown artists."
I stand by my opinion that another generic file swapping service (or even a mp3 swapping service) would stand a better chance of surviving the legal challenges. The way Napster technically works is nearly perfect for this sort of defense, but it appears that they shot themselves in the foot with internal e-mail.
If gun manufacturers ever hand over e-mail between senior management discussing their campaign to increase crime, then they'll have the same liability problem.
The problem with claiming that Napster is a common carrier and it wasn't built just to support copyright infringement is that they did intend for it to be used to swap infringing works. They discussed this in e-mail and even gloated about how they would put the record companies out of business.
Those are the statutory limits on a Class A federal felony. Yes, it is possible for a judge to impose that sentence, but if he did it would almost certainly be overturned.
Federal felonies are sentenced according to some fairly strict guidelines. There's a tidy little table with the offense level vs. the criminal history. You get the offense level from another table (dollar amount of the theft) here. There's also a table for fines. It's almost like playing a role-playing game, isn't it?
For a $40,000 to $70,000 theft, you get a base offense level of 11, which is 8-14 months and a $2,000 to $20,000 fine. If you take the usual plea deal, you drop two offense levels (4-10 months, $1,000-$10,000 fine) and should get the low end of the range. That's 4 months with probably no fine. You'd also pay restitution to the victim for the full amount of the theft. So you could be paying Metallica full price for every MP3 someone downloaded from you. People better hope Napster doesn't keep usage records.
They're also doing a pretty good job with 1st and 2nd edition. They're scanning most of the "classic" material into PDF files for electronic download. Some are available free at http://wizards.com/dnd/DnDDownloads_classics.asp and others are sold for $3.49 each. Maybe there's a CD set somewhere down the road, similar to the Dragon magazine set.
...white wolf(being easily the second most popular gaming company)...
I think Steve Jackson Games might hold the #2 spot (or at least keep White Wolf from being easily #2. They certainly seem to occupy a lot of shelf space in local game shops and Illuminati: new World Order (their collectable card game) made them a pile of cash.
You could use a commercial wireless data provider. If nothing else has coverage, some of the satellite networks should be there.
You could run a Aironet (Cisco now) wireless bridge. My guess is that this would cost about $5,000 (USD) for the 2 bridges and antennas. These things are sweet though. They're even a cost-effective alternative to a wired connection across town.
There's always microwave, with the licensing hassles and cost.
For the low-speed route, you can do something close to what hams use. A number of companies (like Paccomm http://www.paccomm.com) sell commercial (non-amateur) wireless data modems. You can hang a pair of these on a VHF or UHF frequency and do at least 2400 bps.
After sleeping on this, I changed my mind. Count me in the "it's better to switch" camp instead of the "50-50" camp.
In the 8 cases I listed, you can drop the first two. When you select the correct door at first, it doesn't matter which door Monty opens.
He has two choices that are equivalent from your point of view (between two doors, each of which doesn't have a prize behind it).
His choice doesn't impact the probability of you finding the prize.
As a side note, at one time I heard an explanation of her world record IQ that makes me discount her as the world record holder.
Supposedly IQ scores depend on the sample size taking the test. If a relatively small number of people take the test, even scoring a perfect score can only rate an IQ a few points above the average.
So the story I heard is that the test she set the record on was one of the most widely given standardized IQ tests. I believe she is solidly in the "baby boomer" set and I think this was a school test given years and years ago.
Since no test since then has been given to more people, even a perfect score on every IQ test since then wouldn't result in breaking her record.
Of course, that's just the information I heard. It could be wrong, but it does sound plausable.
Let's look at a simplified version of the possibilities. We'll only consider the case where the prize is behind door #1.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 2, you stay, you win.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 2, you switch to door 3, you lose.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 3, you stay, you win.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 3, you switch to door 2, you lose.
You pick door 2, Monty opens door 3, you stay, you lose.
You pick door 2, Monty opens door 3, you switch to door 1, you win.
You pick door 3, Monty opens door 2, you stay, you lose.
You pick door 3, Monty opens door 2, you switch to door 1, you win.
(Note that there are 4 additional cases where Monty would open door 1, but he can't since the prize is there. I suspect that this is where some people make their mistake.)
Now, out of those 8 cases, you win 4 times or 50%. In the cases you stay with your original door, you win 2 out of 4 (50%). If you always switch, you win 2 out of 4 (50%).
If you expanded this to all 3 prize locations, you would get 12 out of 24, 6 out 12, and 6 out of 12, or 50% chance no matter what your strategy was.
I think most people make the mistake of not fully considering the case where you pick the prize door in the first place. There are two possible branches from there since Monty can open either incorrect door. If you don't take that into account, then you end up thinking that you only win 1 of 3 by staying but win 2 of 3 by switching.
Like we said, the first door choice really doesn't count for anything. The only choice that matters is the final door you chose. Since you're picking between 2 doors and 1 has the prize, that leads to a simple 50% probability.
Yeah, I could see raising a family there, but even as teenagers they'd want to get away.
Even staying there for a week I felt like I was living out The Shining. Cabin fever sets in real quick, even if you're staying in a hotel and working during the day.
...I was very dissappointed in the variety of cuisine, nightlife and people here in Bangor, Maine when I first arrived. It seems that the melting pot is producing a terrible monoculture here in America!
Bangor, Maine is not representative of the entire U.S. Far from it. I spent a lot of time in Augusta, Maine and it's a different world. The nightlife seemed to consist of one hotel bar and a biker bar outside of town. The only place I could find to eat after 11pm (late flights) was a Domino's or a Dunkin Donuts. I imagine Bangor's not much different.
You need to get out of Bangor. Go visit Boston for a week.
This is exactly how this sort of thing would have worked with my old team:
"I'm almost finished with the new module, but I need to pad the lines-of-code so I can get my bonus."
"Oh, I would fix that bug, but it's only a 1-line fix."
Instead, focus on projects that went well. Ask peers and team leads who should get a bigger bonus -- they'll know and they'll be right.
Also, pay everyone a bonus that you don't want to leave.
It really doesn't matter that much. You shouldn't stay at this company for more than about a year and a half. Leaving will be the only way to move your salary up once you have experience.
Look for something that can look good on your resume. Take a job coding over one doing support or QA even if it means a pay cut. You'll make that money back within 2 years and the longer you spend working in a non-coding job, the harder it is to make the leap back to coding.
If you're young and don't mind doing it, a job that requires 50% travel can be a good thing. You get a lot of different experiences and get to work with pretty senior people. There's usually a lot of opportunity there, since you often travel to a customer site to resolve a situation that's pretty messed up.
Other than that, try to find a place that looks fun. It's hard to tell from the little tour, but if you can, watch the cube dwellers as you get the tour. If they duck down and get silent as you and their manager walk by, that's probably not a good sign. If there's a pool table and video games in the break room, make of note of whether anyone is using them. If not, that's probably worse than not having these toys. Do people have Nerf guns and other toys scattered around? Or does it look like they need permission to have a plastic plant on their desk?
That is how the human race advances; by building on previous work.
It took me several years of grad school to realize this. Almost every research project is focused on making an incremental improvement on someone else's work. The best of these works seem to come from applying an idea from an unrelated field.
There are still the very rare work that does actually break new ground. These often come from someone that knows very little about the existing work in the field, so they have a whole new point of view. If enough people reinvent the wheel, once in a while someone invents a better one.
Personally, I use Yahoo! Companion to do this. It's a Windows only browser helper object. (But it does claim to do Netscape.) They have a limit of 1000 bookmarks (which I discovered about a week after I hit the limit). It's not perfect (ok, it isn't even very good) but it meets 90% of my needs with very little effort. I've had my bookmarks on there for well over a year without any problems (except when I hit the 1000 limit). You can also get to the bookmarks through your "My Yahoo!" pages if you feel the desire or are on a browser that doesn't have the software installed. That's damn handy for when I happen to be at someone else's place and need to find a site I bookmarked on my work desktop three weeks ago.
Anyone looking to do this sort of wireless mesh should definately take a look at how ham radio operators implement APRS. A lot of the same issues would have to be addressed. You don't want every station relaying traffic, just the ones with good, high antennas. In APRS, stations with better coverage are designated as "relays" or "wides".
It's actually pretty amazing when enough stations are in an area for it to work, even though it's usually 1200-bps with huge latency. Hams also do odd-ball things like routing packets to and from the internet.
When I was there (late 80s), the Beta Theta Pi house (right behind the main computer building) seemed to always have a scheme going involving running ethernet to their house.
Over in the dorms, we were happy to have 9600kbps dialup using data-over-voice (call it a very early DSL). Though the top floor of Armstrong had a loop of 300-ohm twinlead that got used for various purposes like a movie feed from a VCR (in the pre-CATV days) and some oddball LAN.
Also, "private financial gain" has apparently been held to include receiving (or expecting to receive) other infringing works in exchange, so 506(a)(1) may apply to a casual Napster user.
...is the market over saturated with roleplaying games, or under?
I think it is oversaturated. Steve Jackson seems to have the view that most people will try D&D (or maybe Star Wars) first and when/if they get sick of that, they'll try GURPS. White Wolf seems to be in a similar position. I honestly don't see any reason why TSR/WotC won't continue to own the beginner's market, especially with the recent D&D movie.
If I were to go into the game publishing business today, my first focus would be d20/D&D compatable supplements (adventures and campaign settings).
That's getting to be a crowded market though, but I think there is always room for good content.
I would start with some free electronic downloads (PDF) from a web site (and newsgroups). I would also send playtest copies (photocopies or cheap printing) to local gaming groups and see if any local shops would carry them.
If you're serious about a new RPG system and have the money to back it, I would try very hard to get it into the big chain bookstores (Borders, B&N, Waldenbooks). Their current selections are very sparse and you could really stand out.
Alice grabs Asok (the intern), tells him it's an emergency and brings him to an airduct.
She tells him "You must crawl through the Jeffries Tube and shut down the furnace before it fries us all!"
Asok gets stuck, ass out, in the duct. Alice, holding a "spank the intern, 50 cents" sign, tells Dilbert "Today young Asok learns that life is not like Star Trek."
My first intern-style job was at a defense electronics company. I spent entire days counting resistors.
Believe me, some day you will look back fondly on days like that.
Yes, there are a number of civil penalties for copyright infingement, but I personally don't care about those. Even though they provide for the recovery of legal fees, I doubt a record company would bother most individual Napster users. I wouldn't be suprised to see them go after a big offender.
My concern is who is going to be the first U.S. criminal prosecution of a Napster user. I predict that we'll see one before the year is over.
From my reading of it, the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement was done with the 1997 "No Electronic Theft Act". This was driven by the failure of the current law to address a case where a student maintained an ftp site of warez. Since he received no financial gain from it, the current law did not criminalize his act.
I have read references to the definition of "financial gain" that state that just the expectation of receiving other infringing works in exchange consitutes financial gain. So "trading" mp3 files could end up classified as financial gain, which doesn't have a $1,000 threshold for a criminal offense.
Trading one mp3 for another could be held to be a federal misdemeanor. I don't even know what the federal guidelines are for misdemeanors, but I would guess you would receive no jail time, up to (or beyond) 1 year of probation, possibly a fine (roughly $500) and restitution to the victim.
Allowing people to download 10 or more copies of an mp3 file with a total retail value of over $2,500 could be held as a federal felony. The likely punishment for this under the sentencing guidelines is 2-3 years probation, 0-6 months imprisonment, and restitution to the victims. Plus you have a federal felony conviction.
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Look for a job in the monkey exhibit. Being able to ignore their constant screaming and dodge the excrement they throw at you will probably prepare you better for your career than a summer of making coffee and copies.
Check the Band Width of the Splitter.
This is important for anyone splitting a CATV line that feeds a cable modem or a digital cable box. Those cheap $2.99 splitters from K-Mart won't cut it. Look for one that says it will work with satellite receivers.
Rem is probably the key switch. Wire it to +12 volts to keep the stereo on all the time. As for 10 amps of power, you can buy 12v supplies that size. Astron (http://www.astroncorp.com/ makes excellent ones. You could try local radio shops (ham or CB) or even Radio Shack to avoid shipping.
Just hotwire it and never turn it off. Most of mine are that way, but then I have a 18 month old who loves to push buttons.
Either you have lots of inside information, or your choc full of BS. Hmm. Not hard to tell this one.
Maybe it's neither, AC.
As reported on Salon (and other outlets):
... are improving their experience by providing information about their tastes without linking ... to a name or address or other sensitive data that might endanger them (especially since they are exchanging pirated music)," wrote Parker in one exchange.
... and that "Napster virtually guarantees you'll find the music you want, when you want it and you can forget about wading through page after page of unknown artists."
"Users
Napster's online promotional pitches from the early days (i.e. fall of '99) should also be of interest
I stand by my opinion that another generic file swapping service (or even a mp3 swapping service) would stand a better chance of surviving the legal challenges. The way Napster technically works is nearly perfect for this sort of defense, but it appears that they shot themselves in the foot with internal e-mail.
If gun manufacturers ever hand over e-mail between senior management discussing their campaign to increase crime, then they'll have the same liability problem.
The problem with claiming that Napster is a common carrier and it wasn't built just to support copyright infringement is that they did intend for it to be used to swap infringing works. They discussed this in e-mail and even gloated about how they would put the record companies out of business.
Those are the statutory limits on a Class A federal felony. Yes, it is possible for a judge to impose that sentence, but if he did it would almost certainly be overturned.
Federal felonies are sentenced according to some fairly strict guidelines. There's a tidy little table with the offense level vs. the criminal history. You get the offense level from another table (dollar amount of the theft) here. There's also a table for fines. It's almost like playing a role-playing game, isn't it?
For a $40,000 to $70,000 theft, you get a base offense level of 11, which is 8-14 months and a $2,000 to $20,000 fine. If you take the usual plea deal, you drop two offense levels (4-10 months, $1,000-$10,000 fine) and should get the low end of the range. That's 4 months with probably no fine. You'd also pay restitution to the victim for the full amount of the theft. So you could be paying Metallica full price for every MP3 someone downloaded from you. People better hope Napster doesn't keep usage records.
WotC has done a wonderfull job with 3rd ed D&D.
They're also doing a pretty good job with 1st and 2nd edition. They're scanning most of the "classic" material into PDF files for electronic download. Some are available free at http://wizards.com/dnd/DnDDownloads_classics.asp and others are sold for $3.49 each. Maybe there's a CD set somewhere down the road, similar to the Dragon magazine set.
I think Steve Jackson Games might hold the #2 spot (or at least keep White Wolf from being easily #2. They certainly seem to occupy a lot of shelf space in local game shops and Illuminati: new World Order (their collectable card game) made them a pile of cash.
You could use a commercial wireless data provider. If nothing else has coverage, some of the satellite networks should be there.
You could run a Aironet (Cisco now) wireless bridge. My guess is that this would cost about $5,000 (USD) for the 2 bridges and antennas. These things are sweet though. They're even a cost-effective alternative to a wired connection across town.
There's always microwave, with the licensing hassles and cost.
For the low-speed route, you can do something close to what hams use. A number of companies (like Paccomm http://www.paccomm.com) sell commercial (non-amateur) wireless data modems. You can hang a pair of these on a VHF or UHF frequency and do at least 2400 bps.
After sleeping on this, I changed my mind. Count me in the "it's better to switch" camp instead of the "50-50" camp.
In the 8 cases I listed, you can drop the first two. When you select the correct door at first, it doesn't matter which door Monty opens. He has two choices that are equivalent from your point of view (between two doors, each of which doesn't have a prize behind it). His choice doesn't impact the probability of you finding the prize.
As a side note, at one time I heard an explanation of her world record IQ that makes me discount her as the world record holder.
Supposedly IQ scores depend on the sample size taking the test. If a relatively small number of people take the test, even scoring a perfect score can only rate an IQ a few points above the average.
So the story I heard is that the test she set the record on was one of the most widely given standardized IQ tests. I believe she is solidly in the "baby boomer" set and I think this was a school test given years and years ago.
Since no test since then has been given to more people, even a perfect score on every IQ test since then wouldn't result in breaking her record.
Of course, that's just the information I heard. It could be wrong, but it does sound plausable.
Let's look at a simplified version of the possibilities. We'll only consider the case where the prize is behind door #1.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 2, you stay, you win.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 2, you switch to door 3, you lose.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 3, you stay, you win.
You pick door 1, Monty opens door 3, you switch to door 2, you lose.
You pick door 2, Monty opens door 3, you stay, you lose.
You pick door 2, Monty opens door 3, you switch to door 1, you win.
You pick door 3, Monty opens door 2, you stay, you lose.
You pick door 3, Monty opens door 2, you switch to door 1, you win.
(Note that there are 4 additional cases where Monty would open door 1, but he can't since the prize is there. I suspect that this is where some people make their mistake.)
Now, out of those 8 cases, you win 4 times or 50%. In the cases you stay with your original door, you win 2 out of 4 (50%). If you always switch, you win 2 out of 4 (50%).
If you expanded this to all 3 prize locations, you would get 12 out of 24, 6 out 12, and 6 out of 12, or 50% chance no matter what your strategy was.
I think most people make the mistake of not fully considering the case where you pick the prize door in the first place. There are two possible branches from there since Monty can open either incorrect door. If you don't take that into account, then you end up thinking that you only win 1 of 3 by staying but win 2 of 3 by switching.
Like we said, the first door choice really doesn't count for anything. The only choice that matters is the final door you chose. Since you're picking between 2 doors and 1 has the prize, that leads to a simple 50% probability.
Yeah, I could see raising a family there, but even as teenagers they'd want to get away.
Even staying there for a week I felt like I was living out The Shining. Cabin fever sets in real quick, even if you're staying in a hotel and working during the day.
Bangor, Maine is not representative of the entire U.S. Far from it. I spent a lot of time in Augusta, Maine and it's a different world. The nightlife seemed to consist of one hotel bar and a biker bar outside of town. The only place I could find to eat after 11pm (late flights) was a Domino's or a Dunkin Donuts. I imagine Bangor's not much different.
You need to get out of Bangor. Go visit Boston for a week.
This is exactly how this sort of thing would have worked with my old team:
"I'm almost finished with the new module, but I need to pad the lines-of-code so I can get my bonus."
"Oh, I would fix that bug, but it's only a 1-line fix."
Instead, focus on projects that went well. Ask peers and team leads who should get a bigger bonus -- they'll know and they'll be right.
Also, pay everyone a bonus that you don't want to leave.
It really doesn't matter that much. You shouldn't stay at this company for more than about a year and a half. Leaving will be the only way to move your salary up once you have experience.
Look for something that can look good on your resume. Take a job coding over one doing support or QA even if it means a pay cut. You'll make that money back within 2 years and the longer you spend working in a non-coding job, the harder it is to make the leap back to coding.
If you're young and don't mind doing it, a job that requires 50% travel can be a good thing. You get a lot of different experiences and get to work with pretty senior people. There's usually a lot of opportunity there, since you often travel to a customer site to resolve a situation that's pretty messed up.
Other than that, try to find a place that looks fun. It's hard to tell from the little tour, but if you can, watch the cube dwellers as you get the tour. If they duck down and get silent as you and their manager walk by, that's probably not a good sign. If there's a pool table and video games in the break room, make of note of whether anyone is using them. If not, that's probably worse than not having these toys. Do people have Nerf guns and other toys scattered around? Or does it look like they need permission to have a plastic plant on their desk?
That is how the human race advances; by building on previous work.
It took me several years of grad school to realize this. Almost every research project is focused on making an incremental improvement on someone else's work. The best of these works seem to come from applying an idea from an unrelated field.
There are still the very rare work that does actually break new ground. These often come from someone that knows very little about the existing work in the field, so they have a whole new point of view. If enough people reinvent the wheel, once in a while someone invents a better one.
Personally, I use Yahoo! Companion to do this. It's a Windows only browser helper object. (But it does claim to do Netscape.) They have a limit of 1000 bookmarks (which I discovered about a week after I hit the limit). It's not perfect (ok, it isn't even very good) but it meets 90% of my needs with very little effort. I've had my bookmarks on there for well over a year without any problems (except when I hit the 1000 limit). You can also get to the bookmarks through your "My Yahoo!" pages if you feel the desire or are on a browser that doesn't have the software installed. That's damn handy for when I happen to be at someone else's place and need to find a site I bookmarked on my work desktop three weeks ago.
Anyone looking to do this sort of wireless mesh should definately take a look at how ham radio operators implement APRS. A lot of the same issues would have to be addressed. You don't want every station relaying traffic, just the ones with good, high antennas. In APRS, stations with better coverage are designated as "relays" or "wides".
It's actually pretty amazing when enough stations are in an area for it to work, even though it's usually 1200-bps with huge latency. Hams also do odd-ball things like routing packets to and from the internet.
When I was there (late 80s), the Beta Theta Pi house (right behind the main computer building) seemed to always have a scheme going involving running ethernet to their house.
Over in the dorms, we were happy to have 9600kbps dialup using data-over-voice (call it a very early DSL). Though the top floor of Armstrong had a loop of 300-ohm twinlead that got used for various purposes like a movie feed from a VCR (in the pre-CATV days) and some oddball LAN.
Also, "private financial gain" has apparently been held to include receiving (or expecting to receive) other infringing works in exchange, so 506(a)(1) may apply to a casual Napster user.
I think it is oversaturated. Steve Jackson seems to have the view that most people will try D&D (or maybe Star Wars) first and when/if they get sick of that, they'll try GURPS. White Wolf seems to be in a similar position. I honestly don't see any reason why TSR/WotC won't continue to own the beginner's market, especially with the recent D&D movie.
If I were to go into the game publishing business today, my first focus would be d20/D&D compatable supplements (adventures and campaign settings). That's getting to be a crowded market though, but I think there is always room for good content.
I would start with some free electronic downloads (PDF) from a web site (and newsgroups). I would also send playtest copies (photocopies or cheap printing) to local gaming groups and see if any local shops would carry them.
If you're serious about a new RPG system and have the money to back it, I would try very hard to get it into the big chain bookstores (Borders, B&N, Waldenbooks). Their current selections are very sparse and you could really stand out.
There's a perfect Dilbert for this:
My first intern-style job was at a defense electronics company. I spent entire days counting resistors.
Believe me, some day you will look back fondly on days like that.
I am not a lawyer.
Yes, there are a number of civil penalties for copyright infingement, but I personally don't care about those. Even though they provide for the recovery of legal fees, I doubt a record company would bother most individual Napster users. I wouldn't be suprised to see them go after a big offender.
My concern is who is going to be the first U.S. criminal prosecution of a Napster user. I predict that we'll see one before the year is over.
From my reading of it, the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement was done with the 1997 "No Electronic Theft Act". This was driven by the failure of the current law to address a case where a student maintained an ftp site of warez. Since he received no financial gain from it, the current law did not criminalize his act.
I have read references to the definition of "financial gain" that state that just the expectation of receiving other infringing works in exchange consitutes financial gain. So "trading" mp3 files could end up classified as financial gain, which doesn't have a $1,000 threshold for a criminal offense.
Trading one mp3 for another could be held to be a federal misdemeanor. I don't even know what the federal guidelines are for misdemeanors, but I would guess you would receive no jail time, up to (or beyond) 1 year of probation, possibly a fine (roughly $500) and restitution to the victim.
Allowing people to download 10 or more copies of an mp3 file with a total retail value of over $2,500 could be held as a federal felony. The likely punishment for this under the sentencing guidelines is 2-3 years probation, 0-6 months imprisonment, and restitution to the victims. Plus you have a federal felony conviction.