Passengers are to be kept temporarily in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and biscuits are being served every year, after which passengers are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience. Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay.
Oh. Well -- I'm keeping my VHS for the same reason I still have all of my vinyl -- I don't see why I should keep paying for something I've already paid for. We have a universal VCR that allows us to play foreign tapes (to the earlier post which mentioned that). And all of the region coding arguments run a close second to why we prefer old school. I'd use reel to reel for recording original music if it weren't so scarce... The "medium of the month" is not always the best.
Yes, that is a problem, but I don't see that it's one that is easily mitigated, especially in a work environment that generally requires that you keep tabs on everything, even work several years old. Given that, I think that adding Spotlight into the mix is a definite plus.
I do agree with you that it is a plus -- and better to have both than one alone. The thing that makes me seem oppositional (if I did) is the threat of eradicating the filesystem in favor of using only Spotlight. Another post in this discussion linked to Steve Jackson's assessment of Tiger (including Spotlight) and it sounds pretty dreadful -- especially if it were your only choice, I mean.
Otherwise -- several other posts had mentioned "hundreds of thousands" of files on a user's computer. I'm sorry I mixed that in to this reply; I should have been more careful. I can picture hundreds of thousands of files for an entire organization. And with your example, of hundreds (even thousands) of files I can imagine sorting through those once in a while to prune and maintain them. Even though most users (myself included) don't do that as often as they should.
But if the others who mention hundreds of thousands of files are accurate and an indication of what people are doing with their computers -- their personal, desktop systems -- I can't for the life of me imagine what is in all of those files. I am one of those packrat users, and I do keep old work files around (I can even find them when I need them;) But even I don't have "hundreds of thousands" of files. That's just mind-boggling.
but on non-broken operating systems you can already do this: you can 'find' documents from "about two weeks ago," you can 'grep' documents which mention nintendo, and you can 'find' documents written by james.
or you can just pick up the phone (or pop into his office) and ask james yourself.
it sounds like a larger problem here is average users having "hundreds of thousands" of files sitting around.
Re:Dealing with 1 file in multiple folders (Figure
on
The Death of Folders?
·
· Score: 1
But the same thing would happen if you remove the original file in a real filing cabinet without updating/removing the note in the duplicate location. The key is better management by humans and users who have a clue. Cluttering 80 folders (views, or whatever they shall be called once folders disappear) with "copies" of the same "file" is a bad solution.
Tagging is good: there's nothing wrong with it. But that too is an old problem with many good solutions. Library card catalogs are an excellent example of metadata done right -- they even refer you to related "searches" (subjects) at the bottom. But it doesn't mean that the library shelves are removed and all 10,000 books are lying in a heap in the middle.
Re:Dealing with 1 file in multiple folders (Figure
on
The Death of Folders?
·
· Score: 1
This is the second comment I've seen in this discussion so far that discusses symlinks as a hack. What is "hacky" about a symlink? Methinks that you may never have had experience with real files in real folders in real filing cabinets, back when that was the industry standard. For a real file that needs to be in two real places at once in a real file cabinet (or system of file cabinets), there are two ways to do it: One, duplicate the entire contents of the file and place it in the second location: label it as a duplicate and put notes in both places (with the original, that the duplicate exists and where it lives, with the original, that there is a duplicate and where). This is a bit of a pain because then you have to keep two things up to date. Two: Do not duplicate the file. Instead, put a note in at the second location which points to the file's existence at the first location. Sounds a lot like a soft link to me. Also sounds like perhaps the most reasonable solution.
Oh, good! I was wondering how Microsoft was going to weasel out of the EU requirements that they open their data formats. I think what you're describing is just the ticket: Adding a lot of crufty metadata to every file will complicate things very nicely, and may provide just the opportunity for MS to make their metadata incompatible with everyone else's metadata. I also love the idea of everyone sitting down to decide which attributes are important and what they'll mean. If we play our cards right, we can do to files what has already been done to XML: which is now so top-heavy that they are proposing a
Binary XML standard. It's creative thinking like that will sell next year's bigger processors and larger storage media, now that games have moved to consoles and aren't driving sales of bleeding-edge machinery to home users.
As for being able to search -- multiple files -- in multiple directories -- what's wrong with grep and (when necessary) find? What's wrong with expecting users to know how to keep their things organized?
i repeat: why? are these two trains on the same track?!
this really is my least favorite math problem setup of all time. particularly brilliant is that each train is travelling at a constant speed throughout the trip: no accelleration, decelleration, stops at stations along the way, slowing down to accommodate curves or mountain inclines.
next please let me calculate the rate at which the circumferance of a balloon inflates as it's being blown up -- again, not accommodating for any real-life factors (or any real-life explanation of why i care, or what machine is blowing it up at such a constant rate).
don't even get me started on the price of refrigerators
Have gone on to very lucrative positions in Advertising or Web Design. I don't know anybody who 'did' Art expecting to be hanging in the Met -- all of the ones I've known did it because they liked it...
Actually, Joachimstaler is the German name for it, but the town is in Bohemia (the Czech Republic) where it goes by the name of Jachymov. It's got a neat history -- first, they mined very pure silver here (which is why the 'thaler' or dollar got a reputation for being a really strong currency). Only, the miners kept dying mysteriously... Because the site also happened to be rich in uranium. It was from this site that Mme Curie got the pitchblende for her experiments. During the 1950s, the communists turned the site into a concentration camp for political prisoners, who were forced to mine the uranium for the Soviet nuclear program. Today it's a spa town well-known within the Czech Republic for its curative radioactive water (used to treat some forms of cancer).
If you read Mr Schwartz' weblog entry from Monday he goes into more detail about this (I'm sorry I didn't find that earlier, to also link it in my submission). In his blog, he calls the GPL a form of "IP colonialism" -- that sounds a lot more like an attack than a benign observation.
Weirdly, the CDDL that Schwartz (in the ZDNet article as well as the blog) says he prefers over GPL endorses the requirement that source of modifications be made available. It seems to differ mainly in someone else's ability to later "distribute executables under a different license." So, oddly, it seems that the CDDL he advocates would also force the poor, unwashed "developing nations" to "disgorge the source code of their IP" back to "the community" where someone else (like Sun) could incorporate those, and release the application as a binary under a different (closed) license.
Maybe he is dreaming of the olden days, when Sun incorporated Berkeley BSD code in SunOS and closed it up. But if so, what's wrong with the BSD license? Oh -- right -- that license wouldn't require anyone to disgorge the source of their modifications.
Finally, I'm not sure what you didn't like about my counterexample. If "the wealthiest nations" hadn't already put a lot of code under GPL then "the developing nations" wouldn't be facing this so-called problem. In other words, they are already "benefiting" from GPL code before they start "suffering" from having to follow the GPL
I don't think it's so rare for theories to get tossed out "lock, stock, and barrel" -- phlogiston, aether, spontaneous generation, "z" rays... That guy in France that was working on electricity before Franklin -- and "heat as a liquid" all come to mind immediately. I'm sure research would turn up lots more.
Isn't there also a dual-core PowerPC/G5 in the works? I think it hasn't been announced officially, but it seems to have been accidentally confirmed by
IBM and by Apple as well.
Extremely relevant point here, folks. Did Daimou include the license agreement with the derivitive work?
That *is* an extremely relevant and good point. See also the GNU page on Violations of the GPL, LGPL, and GFDL. The first question of all is "Does the distribution contain a copy of the License?"
I'd be curious to hear if Daimaou had been conscientiously attaching the GPL to each iteration of the code. It seems that he should have been. It doesn't change the fact that the company's behavior is a violation of the GPL, and -- from what it sounds like, it may be that the company would not have acted any differently even if he had. But it does seem to be worth keeping it in mind if one is ever in a similar situation.
The GNU page also lists an email for reporting possible violations -- if
the copyright holder is the FSF. In this case, it isn't (unless developerWorks and ActiveState turned their code over to the FSF =)
So Daimaou needs to contact those companies, and not the FSF.
I also want to second the post, a bit further down on this page (at the time of this writing, anyway), titled
The contract may not be enforcable. Faced with a similar "we own your brain" contract several years ago, I declined to accept those terms. But I was so incensed by it that I talked about it with many people. And was told by some/many of them that these contracts are generally considered to be unenforceable in "most states." With the caveat, though, that things like that are very much subject to change depending on court cases establishing new precedents.
I'm not sure if I agree. It would seem that only 25% of the US population have at least a bachelor's degree. And (to be US-centric -- apologies about that, but I don't know statistics for other countries) it would be reasonable to assume that "some" percentage of them aren't doing well for whatever reason. So then I guess the rest boils down to how does one define "success" (and what percent of people in the US have attained it? And does it correlate at all w/ the higher-ed-grad figures?) Which would be a longer discussion for another time. But my reason for posting was to mention the numbers -- until recently, I really had had no idea that only a quarter of the population held a degree at all. So I sort of wonder how many people who're successful (however it's defined) are telling tales about their qualifications (which isn't even to mention the tales job seekers tell).
I wasn't clear from your post whether you would be leaving a current, stable employer to take the contracting position or not. If you're not working now, but looking for work, I'd say by all means take the contract work -- you can always keep looking while you are there. Just as you could if you were a regular employee -- it's true there is very little loyalty between companies and employees (or contractors =) these days, so I don't think you should feel that it would be disloyal to keep looking even after signing on -- especially if you feel it's less of a commitment on their part to not offer you full time employment.
I'm a contractor by choice -- recently turned down an offer of employment from the company I'm currently working for to preserve that contractor status. I've been contracting for -- maybe four years now? Or five? Starting out can be worrisome, but I like the added control over things like health insurance. Other benefits to contracting include things like that they're not really allowed, by law, to make you come into the office and work a certain number of hours at a certain desk -- you are supposed to be free to structure your time in such a way that you get the work done your way, and on your own time. Like -- well, like a contractor. I got a great book from Nolo on this when I was starting out. In addition to the accountant that other people have mentioned (definitely a good idea) I'd also recommend one of their titles.
Working for yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & consultants looks to be their current title on this subject. It's not not the one I got, but that was several years ago. I've never heard anything but good reviews about their books.
Other favorite is the pseudoscience behind marketing industry equations like opportunities to see (OTS). I can never remember these offhand because they are so meaningless, but it is fascinating to think of the millions of dollars spent on ie outdoor billboards, where the advert is sold on the basis of these "opportunities to see." See also A Test of the Direct/Indirect BBD and Other Exposure Distribution Models.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh. Well -- I'm keeping my VHS for the same reason I still have all of my vinyl -- I don't see why I should keep paying for something I've already paid for. We have a universal VCR that allows us to play foreign tapes (to the earlier post which mentioned that). And all of the region coding arguments run a close second to why we prefer old school. I'd use reel to reel for recording original music if it weren't so scarce... The "medium of the month" is not always the best.
I do agree with you that it is a plus -- and better to have both than one alone. The thing that makes me seem oppositional (if I did) is the threat of eradicating the filesystem in favor of using only Spotlight. Another post in this discussion linked to Steve Jackson's assessment of Tiger (including Spotlight) and it sounds pretty dreadful -- especially if it were your only choice, I mean.
Otherwise -- several other posts had mentioned "hundreds of thousands" of files on a user's computer. I'm sorry I mixed that in to this reply; I should have been more careful. I can picture hundreds of thousands of files for an entire organization. And with your example, of hundreds (even thousands) of files I can imagine sorting through those once in a while to prune and maintain them. Even though most users (myself included) don't do that as often as they should.
But if the others who mention hundreds of thousands of files are accurate and an indication of what people are doing with their computers -- their personal, desktop systems -- I can't for the life of me imagine what is in all of those files. I am one of those packrat users, and I do keep old work files around (I can even find them when I need them ;) But even I don't have "hundreds of thousands" of files. That's just mind-boggling.
but on non-broken operating systems you can already do this: you can 'find' documents from "about two weeks ago," you can 'grep' documents which mention nintendo, and you can 'find' documents written by james.
or you can just pick up the phone (or pop into his office) and ask james yourself.
it sounds like a larger problem here is average users having "hundreds of thousands" of files sitting around.
Tagging is good: there's nothing wrong with it. But that too is an old problem with many good solutions. Library card catalogs are an excellent example of metadata done right -- they even refer you to related "searches" (subjects) at the bottom. But it doesn't mean that the library shelves are removed and all 10,000 books are lying in a heap in the middle.
This is the second comment I've seen in this discussion so far that discusses symlinks as a hack. What is "hacky" about a symlink? Methinks that you may never have had experience with real files in real folders in real filing cabinets, back when that was the industry standard. For a real file that needs to be in two real places at once in a real file cabinet (or system of file cabinets), there are two ways to do it: One, duplicate the entire contents of the file and place it in the second location: label it as a duplicate and put notes in both places (with the original, that the duplicate exists and where it lives, with the original, that there is a duplicate and where). This is a bit of a pain because then you have to keep two things up to date. Two: Do not duplicate the file. Instead, put a note in at the second location which points to the file's existence at the first location. Sounds a lot like a soft link to me. Also sounds like perhaps the most reasonable solution.
As for being able to search -- multiple files -- in multiple directories -- what's wrong with grep and (when necessary) find? What's wrong with expecting users to know how to keep their things organized?
this really is my least favorite math problem setup of all time. particularly brilliant is that each train is travelling at a constant speed throughout the trip: no accelleration, decelleration, stops at stations along the way, slowing down to accommodate curves or mountain inclines.
next please let me calculate the rate at which the circumferance of a balloon inflates as it's being blown up -- again, not accommodating for any real-life factors (or any real-life explanation of why i care, or what machine is blowing it up at such a constant rate).
don't even get me started on the price of refrigerators
Have gone on to very lucrative positions in Advertising or Web Design. I don't know anybody who 'did' Art expecting to be hanging in the Met -- all of the ones I've known did it because they liked it...
Actually, Joachimstaler is the German name for it, but the town is in Bohemia (the Czech Republic) where it goes by the name of Jachymov. It's got a neat history -- first, they mined very pure silver here (which is why the 'thaler' or dollar got a reputation for being a really strong currency). Only, the miners kept dying mysteriously... Because the site also happened to be rich in uranium. It was from this site that Mme Curie got the pitchblende for her experiments.
During the 1950s, the communists turned the site into a concentration camp for political prisoners, who were forced to mine the uranium for the Soviet nuclear program. Today it's a spa town well-known within the Czech Republic for its curative radioactive water (used to treat some forms of cancer).
Urgh! Sorry, the URL for Mr Schwartz's blog should be4 .
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/2005040
If you read Mr Schwartz' weblog entry from Monday he goes into more detail about this (I'm sorry I didn't find that earlier, to also link it in my submission). In his blog, he calls the GPL a form of "IP colonialism" -- that sounds a lot more like an attack than a benign observation.
Weirdly, the CDDL that Schwartz (in the ZDNet article as well as the blog) says he prefers over GPL endorses the
requirement that source of modifications be made available. It seems to differ mainly in someone else's ability to later
"distribute executables under a different license." So, oddly, it seems that the CDDL he advocates would also force the poor, unwashed "developing nations" to "disgorge the source code of their IP" back to "the community" where someone else (like Sun) could incorporate those, and release the application as a binary under a different (closed) license.
Maybe he is dreaming of the olden days, when Sun incorporated Berkeley BSD code in SunOS and closed it up. But if so, what's wrong with the BSD license? Oh -- right -- that license wouldn't require anyone to disgorge the source of their modifications.
Finally, I'm not sure what you didn't like about my counterexample. If "the wealthiest nations" hadn't already put a lot of code under GPL then "the developing nations" wouldn't be facing this so-called problem. In other words, they are already "benefiting" from GPL code before they start "suffering" from having to follow the GPL
I don't think it's so rare for theories to get tossed out "lock, stock, and barrel" -- phlogiston, aether, spontaneous generation, "z" rays... That guy in France that was working on electricity before Franklin -- and "heat as a liquid" all come to mind immediately. I'm sure research would turn up lots more.
Isn't there also a dual-core PowerPC/G5 in the works? I think it hasn't been announced officially, but it seems to have been accidentally confirmed by IBM and by Apple as well.
Extremely relevant point here, folks. Did Daimou include the license agreement with the derivitive work?
That *is* an extremely relevant and good point. See also the GNU page on Violations of the GPL, LGPL, and GFDL. The first question of all is "Does the distribution contain a copy of the License?" I'd be curious to hear if Daimaou had been conscientiously attaching the GPL to each iteration of the code. It seems that he should have been. It doesn't change the fact that the company's behavior is a violation of the GPL, and -- from what it sounds like, it may be that the company would not have acted any differently even if he had. But it does seem to be worth keeping it in mind if one is ever in a similar situation.
The GNU page also lists an email for reporting possible violations -- if the copyright holder is the FSF. In this case, it isn't (unless developerWorks and ActiveState turned their code over to the FSF =)
So Daimaou needs to contact those companies, and not the FSF.
I also want to second the post, a bit further down on this page (at the time of this writing, anyway), titled The contract may not be enforcable. Faced with a similar "we own your brain" contract several years ago, I declined to accept those terms. But I was so incensed by it that I talked about it with many people. And was told by some/many of them that these contracts are generally considered to be unenforceable in "most states." With the caveat, though, that things like that are very much subject to change depending on court cases establishing new precedents.
I'm not sure if I agree. It would seem that
only 25% of the US population have at least a bachelor's degree. And (to be US-centric -- apologies about that, but I don't know statistics for other countries) it would be reasonable to assume that "some" percentage of them aren't doing well for whatever reason. So then I guess the rest boils down to how does one define "success" (and what percent of people in the US have attained it? And does it correlate at all w/ the higher-ed-grad figures?) Which would be a longer discussion for another time. But my reason for posting was to mention the numbers -- until recently, I really had had no idea that only a quarter of the population held a degree at all. So I sort of wonder how many people who're successful (however it's defined) are telling tales about their qualifications (which isn't even to mention the tales job seekers tell).
I wasn't clear from your post whether you would be leaving a current, stable employer to take the contracting position or not. If you're not working now, but looking for work, I'd say by all means take the contract work -- you can always keep looking while you are there. Just as you could if you were a regular employee -- it's true there is very little loyalty between companies and employees (or contractors =) these days, so I don't think you should feel that it would be disloyal to keep looking even after signing on -- especially if you feel it's less of a commitment on their part to not offer you full time employment.
I'm a contractor by choice -- recently turned down an offer of employment from the company I'm currently working for to preserve that contractor status. I've been contracting for -- maybe four years now? Or five? Starting out can be worrisome, but I like the added control over things like health insurance. Other benefits to contracting include things like that they're not really allowed, by law, to make you come into the office and work a certain number of hours at a certain desk -- you are supposed to be free to structure your time in such a way that you get the work done your way, and on your own time. Like -- well, like a contractor. I got a great book from Nolo on this when I was starting out. In addition to the accountant that other people have mentioned (definitely a good idea) I'd also recommend one of their titles. Working for yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & consultants looks to be their current title on this subject. It's not not the one I got, but that was several years ago. I've never heard anything but good reviews about their books.
The costs incurred to run the contest are much much greater than any benefit real or imagined that IBM might get out of students' solutions.
Other favorite is the pseudoscience behind marketing industry equations like
opportunities to see (OTS). I can never remember these offhand because they are so meaningless, but it is fascinating to think of the millions of dollars spent on ie outdoor billboards, where the advert is sold on the basis of these "opportunities to see." See also A Test of the Direct/Indirect BBD and Other Exposure Distribution Models.