Well, you can fast forward through the damn Sixth Sense ads -- you just can't hit Menu and skip the dang things entirely. I end up hitting the "Next Chapter" button a lot to start up Sixth Sense.
In high school I took Driver's Education, the closest we got to driving in that class was navigating the halls to get to the room. Sure, I learned lots of driving theories, and about how to park with out breaking any laws.
I learned that I had to keep looking up, in case a plane lands on the highway in front of me.
Needless to say, I still have doubts about that DE course.
My point is that people don't realize how bad Pan&Scan can be until they actually compare scenes directly to the Widescreen version.
The example of this that I use is the otherwise forgettable French Kiss. There's one scene where Kevin Kline and Meg Ryan argue over some money, throw it to the ground and both stalk off in different directions. In widescreen, you see both characters stop, hestitate, go back for the cash, and then finally only Ryan goes back for it. In the P&S, you only see Meg Ryan, which to my mind ruins one of the intents of the scene.
Intriguingly enough, the last time that film was shown on TV, it had the following disclaimer: "This film has been edited for length and content and formatted to fit your screen. Director Lawrence Kasdan opposes all such modifications as a violation of the original intent."
Definitely. I was briefly in Germany about a month ago, and stood there drooling at the amazing number of widescreen TVs on sale. It's amazing that the manufacturers actually produce widescreen TVs at reasonable sizes that could fit in my existing TV cabinet, but they're nowhere to be seen on this side of the pond.
Sigh. If only they were NTSC and not PAL, I'd have carted one up and shipped it here.
Illegal means? I don't think so, but only because I don't believe the laws, as they currently stand, forbid the sort of behavior I've been reading about. Now if you were to ask me about "unfair means" or "nasty means" or "less than admirable means" then my answers would differ.
Ah, but isn't there the rub? The entire point of the antitrust laws is that the rules are different for monopolies. If Microsoft holds a monopoly in a market, then some behavior that might normally be considered merely "nasty" or "unfair" suddenly gets pushed into the realm of "illegal".
Well, maybe. Viruses need an environment in which to thrive as well as the organism itself. The question is whether MS should have recognized the danger in the environment that they created.
When we discuss the Internet Worm, for example, the blame doesn't fall totally on RTM. A sizable segment of blame goes to the authors of the finger and sendmail daemons that the Worm used to thrive and propogate. Their careless programming caused the environment, and they should have been able to recognize the danger well before RTM started to code.
So yes, I think MS does have a certain amount of responsibility. Complete responsibility? No; of course not. But let's not overlook MS for creating the environment and ignoring the danger.
This is actually why I like the comparison in this story -- both companies have responsibilities for the mistakes they made, but the intriguing bit really is the difference in handling and accepting responsibilities.
Yeah, I've been thinking Michael's a good choice for a CTO. I used to work for him a few years ago at Cygnus, and always respected his ability to understand the technology and its implications. Better than most any other manager I've seen.
(Leaving aside that the point of science is that gender and race don't matter as much as the ideas, so the idea of lauding someone as a "female scientist" is to me less impressive than lauding them as a "scientist".)
I disagree. Just because you interpreted one question as designed to make you feel guilty, doesn't mean that that's the main purpose of the test. Frankly, I found it interesting, since the entire list of questions all follow the pattern of stating a basic human desire, and asking how technology can fulfill it. The idea of question 11 is to take some of the most basic human desires of all, and ask whether information technology could help at all.
Re:Pick this book up at Amazon?
on
The Big U
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· Score: 1
No kidding. I've had my name in at Amazon for months waiting for this title in case they trip over a copy somewhere.
If you want this book, I suggest a steady regimen of crossed fingers, mixed with wishes on stars.
As at MIT, there are no production Windows NT Servers in the Gates building.
Well, to be fair, that's because at MIT there is not yet a Gates building. Currently the new Stata Center (of which the Gates building will be a part) is a large hole in the ground.
However (and this may be controversial -- I'm not sure I believe it 100% myself), I think it's worth noting that when content becomes very complex, an RDBMS is no longer the most optimal solution. For even moderately hierarchichal content, XML may be a better answer.
I think that's probably incorrect. The more I read about XML, the more I realize that although it's trying to be an organization solution, it poses major problems in those areas that RDBMSs solve well -- fast indexed retrieval of records and speedy record updates -- even when the records are of variable length.
Probably the best thing, for the forseeable future, is to use RDBMS to get the record lookups you need, and store XML in the DB for records that have pose strange layout problems. I've been helping a friend of mine create a rather large DB with that setup -- for the most part everything is indexed, but data that doesn't need to be accessed quickly by the overall system is stored in XML and used to interpret the data as required.
Agreed. Upgrading my Win95 to Win98 was a nightmare -- three times the installation got partway in, then crashed leaving me to pick up the pieces using Scandisk. The third time it trashed the.sys files so Win95 would no longer boot to anything but DOS mode. I finally solved the problem by booting into another OS (thank you, Linux), copying all the CD-ROM's files onto a spare partition, and then booting back to DOS mode to start the installation from the local copies. Finally worked, but that stopped me from believing that Linux was a difficult install process.
Flight risk mostly pertains to gangsters and such who could easily skip the country even if passports were confiscated, hard to see Mitnick fitting this bill
Um, we are talking about the guy who went into hiding when a federal warrant was issued for him in 1992, right? The guy who then evaded Federal authorities for two years? That's practically the definition of a flight risk.
Ellison has been touting that idea for several months now, and I've always thought it a highly intriguing notion. Basically it gives all the computer sellers better leverage for renegotiating the operating system contracts in the near term -- a nice outcome.
The problem in my mind is that the company that gets the "Microsoft" name may end up with an advantage due to brand-name recognition. Maybe the solution is to let one company get Bill, and the other get the name.
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Well, you can fast forward through the damn Sixth Sense ads -- you just can't hit Menu and skip the dang things entirely. I end up hitting the "Next Chapter" button a lot to start up Sixth Sense.
Needless to say, I still have doubts about that DE course.
How about: it kept a lot of special effects hackers employed for over a year.
Intriguingly enough, the last time that film was shown on TV, it had the following disclaimer: "This film has been edited for length and content and formatted to fit your screen. Director Lawrence Kasdan opposes all such modifications as a violation of the original intent."
Sigh. If only they were NTSC and not PAL, I'd have carted one up and shipped it here.
Of course, that's by the director's choice, and at least I'm not missing half the film...
When we discuss the Internet Worm, for example, the blame doesn't fall totally on RTM. A sizable segment of blame goes to the authors of the finger and sendmail daemons that the Worm used to thrive and propogate. Their careless programming caused the environment, and they should have been able to recognize the danger well before RTM started to code.
So yes, I think MS does have a certain amount of responsibility. Complete responsibility? No; of course not. But let's not overlook MS for creating the environment and ignoring the danger.
This is actually why I like the comparison in this story -- both companies have responsibilities for the mistakes they made, but the intriguing bit really is the difference in handling and accepting responsibilities.
Yeah, I've been thinking Michael's a good choice for a CTO. I used to work for him a few years ago at Cygnus, and always respected his ability to understand the technology and its implications. Better than most any other manager I've seen.
You can't name any specific female nerds?
:-)
Marie Curie?
Ada Lovelace?
Grace Hopper?
Any of these ring a bell?
(Leaving aside that the point of science is that gender and race don't matter as much as the ideas, so the idea of lauding someone as a "female scientist" is to me less impressive than lauding them as a "scientist".)
I disagree. Just because you interpreted one question as designed to make you feel guilty, doesn't mean that that's the main purpose of the test. Frankly, I found it interesting, since the entire list of questions all follow the pattern of stating a basic human desire, and asking how technology can fulfill it. The idea of question 11 is to take some of the most basic human desires of all, and ask whether information technology could help at all.
No kidding. I've had my name in at Amazon for months waiting for this title in case they trip over a copy somewhere.
If you want this book, I suggest a steady regimen of crossed fingers, mixed with wishes on stars.
As at MIT, there are no production Windows NT Servers in the Gates building.
Well, to be fair, that's because at MIT there is not yet a Gates building. Currently the new Stata Center (of which the Gates building will be a part) is a large hole in the ground.
Probably the best thing, for the forseeable future, is to use RDBMS to get the record lookups you need, and store XML in the DB for records that have pose strange layout problems. I've been helping a friend of mine create a rather large DB with that setup -- for the most part everything is indexed, but data that doesn't need to be accessed quickly by the overall system is stored in XML and used to interpret the data as required.
Agreed. Upgrading my Win95 to Win98 was a nightmare -- three times the installation got partway in, then crashed leaving me to pick up the pieces using Scandisk. The third time it trashed the .sys files so Win95 would no longer boot to anything but DOS mode. I finally solved the problem by booting into another OS (thank you, Linux), copying all the CD-ROM's files onto a spare partition, and then booting back to DOS mode to start the installation from the local copies. Finally worked, but that stopped me from believing that Linux was a difficult install process.
I can believe it. If we assume it takes 5 minutes for an NT box to reboot, then you have 99.9% uptime if it reboots every few days, right?
Personally, I think 99.9% uptime is pretty abysmal.
Flight risk mostly pertains to gangsters and such who could easily skip the country even if passports were confiscated, hard to see Mitnick fitting this bill
Um, we are talking about the guy who went into hiding when a federal warrant was issued for him in 1992, right? The guy who then evaded Federal authorities for two years? That's practically the definition of a flight risk.
Ellison has been touting that idea for several months now, and I've always thought it a highly intriguing notion. Basically it gives all the computer sellers better leverage for renegotiating the operating system contracts in the near term -- a nice outcome.
The problem in my mind is that the company that gets the "Microsoft" name may end up with an advantage due to brand-name recognition. Maybe the solution is to let one company get Bill, and the other get the name.