This only applies to the deposition gathering process.
Exactly. And heaven forbid Microsoft acts in it's own interests in complete accordance with the law. Next thing you know they will figure out how to cut development costs to increase their profits. It's as if they're trying run a business in the USA of all places!
In the Seattle, WA area Verizon Wireless has by far the best service. I used to be on Sprint PCS, and most of my friends have AT&T (the worst). So if their wireless data service is as good as their cell sevice, I'd be very interested.
I've encountered software with licenses of as much as $8000 per processor, which obviously places a very large premium on having the fastest possible processor running it.
We aren't comparing Xeons or even IBM's latest supercomputer. All these tests show is, "hey look, I have the fastest consumer level chip on the block regardless of cost". How does a $550 chip's speed have any relevance in a ~$175 chip market? It's like comparing a $2000 3D graphics board in a SGI workstation to a Geforce 3 ti500.
Many folks commented that the Xbox itself is a loss leader, MS needs revenue streams associated... the initail comments were that that would be the games... but if the infrastructure in the current XB or an upgraded version makes it a real competitor to TiVo with a subscription model attractive to the whole household (meaning mom and dad, not just the gamer kids) it becomes a success for MS
Although this has some long term value, the Xbox is more a loss leader for the games and accessories. I've heard rumors that the Xbox may be profitable as soon as Q1 2003.
Compatibility and quality come first.
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2
I'm not interested in some "super small" music file - disk space is cheap and MP3 is already small enough for transfering over the Internet. I'm more interested in audio quality and hardware compatibility. MP3 and WMA sound great (moreso the latter), and are both commonly supported by coolhardware. I don't see the point in all these other media formats. I like to listen to my music on something other then my computer.
Without equal hardware platforms, this will be hard to be more than just entertainment. It isn't much of a good benchmark of the programs involved.
This is true only to an extent (unless you're playing a blitz game). Speed is very important, but chess is way to complicated to "brute force" on any type of hardware that I'd suspect would be used at the compitition. Speed is better found with incredible move analysis algorithms that are smart enough to find the best move in a short amount of time. Take, for example, the Rebel chess engine. On an Athlon 1200 it is nearing a 2800elo rating. Of course, giving it an Athlon XP 2000+ may make a difference, but many good chess engines rely a lot less on hardware and much more on the software.
Of course, it would still be nice if they all had equal hardware. I'm just pointing out that once you get a fast enough machine the hardware becomes much less of a "speed" bottlneck.
You just demonstrated the very point Lindows is making. Microsoft is not attacking Lindows because of name similarity, they are attacking it because of the product. If Lindows ran on Windows, they would not be attacking it.
Yes, but they aren't Operating Systems. Lindows is a) an OS, b) an OS that's copying Windows functionality*, and c) was obviously named with the intent of infringing on their brand name.
* In order to run Win32 software they must be copying or emulating Win32 to a large degree. This has nothing to do with copying "ideas" (Win copied Mac copied Xerox argument is irrelevant). Very few ideas are "original" anyway. My point is they have reversed engineered and are mimicking the functionality of the OS in it's entirety.
Kudos for the apache team on 2.0 but until it's as easy to configure and add onto as IIS it will continue to be a battle with Microsoft.
It all depends. I'd say that for most situtions you are right - IIS is not only easier to set up, but it is a very fast web server (dynamic content). Apache, however, _can_ be easier to setup when you want to "script" say 500 small static sites. httpd.conf is not that difficult to learn, nor is it that hard to create a Perl or shell script to automate it. On the flipside, writing VBScript via ADSI to script IIS sites is a huge PITA (and performance hog). If MS would just move IIS's config out of the metabase and into some XML config file, then I think your statement would be correct accross the board.
Although the article wasn't worded elegantly, the point is well taken when understood rationally. The point is this certain level of safety is futile, and won't actually save any lives. It's not practical to build cars with huge aluminum safety cages (read: $60K "budget" cars for starters) to prevent the much more then five lives per day that are lost. So, because car accidents don't make the big news, and the USPS does, we are investing millions in some silly beam instead. This beam will probably become useless once a non-detectable bacteria is used or once special packaging is developed to effectively "hide" the bacteria. Trying to secure ourselves from specific acts of terrorism is like trying to secure audio on a CD so that it can't be copied.
I'm a disgrunted MCSE that didn't like the early retirement of the NT 4.0 certification.
I'm glad that they did this. Win2K (especially with Active Directory) is drastically different. Granted, I hire based on much more then a cert, but a cert does help assess a person.
How is the.NET framework (what this article is about) dangerous? This is like saying "J2EE" is dangerous. What you are saying, is regardless of Sun, IBM, or MS (.NET services), that Web Services are dangerous. A Web Service is an open standard that.NET, J2EE, and other platforms support. Unfortunatly the.NET marketing campaign has greatly confused the issue.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you. Regarding the DMCA, Slashdot may not have a financial interest, but it has a HUGE political interest. Let's talk about the parent company VA. Can they post it on/. but _NOT_ email their employees about it because their employees are paid by them?
I have a lot of friends who work for MS, and I can tell you that they really laugh at stuff like this. It makes/. look intellectually void when we have to whine about such trivial issues. Most don't even care about some ZDNet pole (even one of my MARKETING friends!!!). Based on the number of votes this was no where near a company wide thing - probably isolated to one team.
I agree that the "bottom line" is out of whack (ethics and legality come first). However, this is much more of a US corporate culture issue then a MS specific issue. This doesn't mean that we accept it (by no means!), but it should help change our outlook on how some of the people operate within these corporations. Maybe it really is just a bunch of excited people voting for their product, and a couple of over zealous ones writing scripts to stuff the ballet.
If a company sent you an email that said "Please remeber to Go Vote", an thats it, fine, got no problm with that, but if a company says "Go Vote For Gore" Now we have a problem. PIF, companies have gotten into trouble for encouraging employees to vote for a specific candidate.
A political issue is different. As long as the company dosen't say, "You HAVE to vote for our product", I don't have a problem with this. A company is _generally_ a group of like minded people who believe in their products, just as slashdot is a group who _generally_ like minded regarding issues such as the DMCA. So, would it be bad if/. pointed to a "Is the DMCA flawed?" type poll and encouraged voters to vote "yes"? No, because just as in MS, no one is MAKING you even take the poll, let alone vote a particular way.
News to Slashdot: Microsoft _believes_ in it's products, and so do the vast majority of their employees. Would you expect it to be any different?
It is precisely because their top level execs encourage this kind of ethically bankrupt thinking among the rank and file that Microsoft is in the anti-trust hot water it's in today, and precisely why they're such an evil company.
So, when the EFF posts a petition against the DMCA and/. posts a link to it trying to get people to sign it, that's ethically bankrupt? By no means! If I worked for MS and saw the poll, I sure as heck would mail my team about it. No one is being forced to do it. Now, if I was a manager and told my programmers to write a script to flood the ballet, then that's a different story. However, one or two over-zealous employees hacking some "vote script" together does not equal some anti-comptetive evil conspiracy.
Is this terribly different from what happens when slashdot has a post announcing some poll about linux?
This is exactly why online polls, and many other polls have to be taken with a grain of salt - all of the suddon you have 45,000 people voting for.NET.
A couple of over-zealous programmers decide to write some script and all of the suddon Microsoft is condoning "rigging a poll".
The reason things like gzip work well on c files (for instance) is because C code is far from random. How many times do you use void or int in a C file? a lot:)
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
Good question. Although my post made on my own time in my house while eating my breakfast and ignoring my clock should be compressed quite easily.
What about good 8x8 MIDI patchbays? I have an old school "8Port/SE" that has incredible software with it (channel filtering, sysex filtering, port on/off (8in8out plus 1computerIN 1computerOut) etc. Unfortunatly the company is out of business and it only works on win98 and below (not to mention it's parellel port... yuck). So, I decided to go USB. The problem is, most USB patchbays I've tried for 2000 either A) don't work or B) have pathetic software. I've been told that there are much better options but they only work (or work well) on a MAC. As cool as the new MAC offerings seem, I have no desire to move all my music software to a MAC, spend money on an extra (and still more expensive) machine, and deal with an OS that I'm not particularly fond of (OSX is a huge improvement, but it's still no Windows).
Definitely go Firewire with a Powerbook G4 or a newer iBook (depending on funds). Although I'm a Windows guy, the multimedia laptops for the PC are still not as slick as the Apple offerings. If you must go PC, I would go with a Sony (w/Firewire, of course) and Win2K (as I personally have yet to test a lot of popular music software on XP).
I would personally recommend trying the MOTU 828, which has great sound quality. There are also many USB MIDI choices as well (from MOTU and others).
It really is a shame that PC laptop hardware is not quite up to par in this area.
1) I liken games to movies. We do NOT censor movies, rather, we rate them to aid parents who decide to censor the movie from thier child. One step further, R (and "worse") rated movies require proof of age (theoretically). This also aids the parents because no parent wants to put thier 14yr old on a leash, but they also don't want them to see some of the very disturbing content found in some R movies. Why is it, then, that a very violent game can go unrestricted where kids under 18 are playing? Is a parent to say, "Don't look or play that one game" and expect the kid to obey? Why not just put porn games (which arguably have less of an affect) in the arcade as well?
2) Disclaimer: I've been playing violent video games since I can remember (Wolf3D,Doom, etc.). I have always resolved conflicts with words not violence. This being said, violent media is still proven to have a VERY SERIOUS affect on many children and young teens. My mother is a behaviour specialist in the local school district and through her personal experiences has found most of these studies to be accurate. If I want to express violent and pornographic speech, I have every right to do so, just not in a public place with children around.
Personally, I wouldn't mind the arcade having an "18 and older section" (as silly as it may sound).
I don't think/. is responding unfairly. For example, we do something similar to validate email addresses of people who sign into our system. They get a specal "VCODE" in a "Private URL (PURL!)" (essentially a unique MD5 hash) which they click on to get validated. The entire project took maybe a few days (including meetings arguing about pointless implementation "issues"). The code is minimal. The amount invested is minimal. The concept is trivial. This is all obvious when you read the abstract:
A document delivery architecture dynamically generates a private Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to distribute information. Each private URL ("PURL") uniquely identifies an intended recipient of a document, the document or set of documents to be delivered, and (optionally) other parameters specific to the delivery process. The intended recipient of a document uses the PURL to retrieve the document. The server, upon retrieval of the document, customizes the behavior of the retrieval based upon attributes included in the PURL, as well as log information associated with the retrieval in a data base. This architecture and usage of PURLs enables secure document delivery and tracking of document receipt.
Although I would fire someone being so short sited that they insist on analyzing something that was typed in an extremely informal setting, in which was also type very quickly, on top of which yes, I only possess average spelling and grammar skills (... and way below average on/.!). I'm sorry that I "whip out" my/. postings at 90wpm, but I have better things to do with my life.
You are right about communication however. I believe that I am extremely well spoken, and that I make great use of MS's spell checker at work.
Plus, my code wouldn't compile unless I spelled it correctly! Unless of course, some DIVISIVE or INCOMPETENT person altered my code, which would have an IMMEDIATE consequence come debug time;-).
Slashdot Mirror
This only applies to the deposition gathering process.
Exactly. And heaven forbid Microsoft acts in it's own interests in complete accordance with the law. Next thing you know they will figure out how to cut development costs to increase their profits. It's as if they're trying run a business in the USA of all places!
In the Seattle, WA area Verizon Wireless has by far the best service. I used to be on Sprint PCS, and most of my friends have AT&T (the worst). So if their wireless data service is as good as their cell sevice, I'd be very interested.
I've encountered software with licenses of as much as $8000 per processor, which obviously places a very large premium on having the fastest possible processor running it.
We aren't comparing Xeons or even IBM's latest supercomputer. All these tests show is, "hey look, I have the fastest consumer level chip on the block regardless of cost". How does a $550 chip's speed have any relevance in a ~$175 chip market? It's like comparing a $2000 3D graphics board in a SGI workstation to a Geforce 3 ti500.
Many folks commented that the Xbox itself is a loss leader, MS needs revenue streams associated ... the initail comments were that that would be the games ... but if the infrastructure in the current XB or an upgraded version makes it a real competitor to TiVo with a subscription model attractive to the whole household (meaning mom and dad, not just the gamer kids) it becomes a success for MS
Although this has some long term value, the Xbox is more a loss leader for the games and accessories. I've heard rumors that the Xbox may be profitable as soon as Q1 2003.
I'm not interested in some "super small" music file - disk space is cheap and MP3 is already small enough for transfering over the Internet. I'm more interested in audio quality and hardware compatibility. MP3 and WMA sound great (moreso the latter), and are both commonly supported by cool hardware. I don't see the point in all these other media formats. I like to listen to my music on something other then my computer.
Without equal hardware platforms, this will be hard to be more than just entertainment. It isn't much of a good benchmark of the programs involved.
This is true only to an extent (unless you're playing a blitz game). Speed is very important, but chess is way to complicated to "brute force" on any type of hardware that I'd suspect would be used at the compitition. Speed is better found with incredible move analysis algorithms that are smart enough to find the best move in a short amount of time. Take, for example, the Rebel chess engine. On an Athlon 1200 it is nearing a 2800elo rating. Of course, giving it an Athlon XP 2000+ may make a difference, but many good chess engines rely a lot less on hardware and much more on the software.
Of course, it would still be nice if they all had equal hardware. I'm just pointing out that once you get a fast enough machine the hardware becomes much less of a "speed" bottlneck.
You just demonstrated the very point Lindows is making. Microsoft is not attacking Lindows because of name similarity, they are attacking it because of the product. If Lindows ran on Windows, they would not be attacking it.
Yes, but they aren't Operating Systems. Lindows is a) an OS, b) an OS that's copying Windows functionality*, and c) was obviously named with the intent of infringing on their brand name.
* In order to run Win32 software they must be copying or emulating Win32 to a large degree. This has nothing to do with copying "ideas" (Win copied Mac copied Xerox argument is irrelevant). Very few ideas are "original" anyway. My point is they have reversed engineered and are mimicking the functionality of the OS in it's entirety.
Kudos for the apache team on 2.0 but until it's as easy to configure and add onto as IIS it will continue to be a battle with Microsoft.
It all depends. I'd say that for most situtions you are right - IIS is not only easier to set up, but it is a very fast web server (dynamic content). Apache, however, _can_ be easier to setup when you want to "script" say 500 small static sites. httpd.conf is not that difficult to learn, nor is it that hard to create a Perl or shell script to automate it. On the flipside, writing VBScript via ADSI to script IIS sites is a huge PITA (and performance hog). If MS would just move IIS's config out of the metabase and into some XML config file, then I think your statement would be correct accross the board.
Your pissed because the beam might kill some electronics.
Not necessarily, but what's the point of mail if it ruins our packages?
Although the article wasn't worded elegantly, the point is well taken when understood rationally. The point is this certain level of safety is futile, and won't actually save any lives. It's not practical to build cars with huge aluminum safety cages (read: $60K "budget" cars for starters) to prevent the much more then five lives per day that are lost. So, because car accidents don't make the big news, and the USPS does, we are investing millions in some silly beam instead. This beam will probably become useless once a non-detectable bacteria is used or once special packaging is developed to effectively "hide" the bacteria.
Trying to secure ourselves from specific acts of terrorism is like trying to secure audio on a CD so that it can't be copied.
I'm a disgrunted MCSE that didn't like the early retirement of the NT 4.0 certification.
I'm glad that they did this. Win2K (especially with Active Directory) is drastically different. Granted, I hire based on much more then a cert, but a cert does help assess a person.
I like to associate myself with the /. crowd but these unsubstantiated musings are making us look intellectually void.
How is the .NET framework (what this article is about) dangerous? This is like saying "J2EE" is dangerous. What you are saying, is regardless of Sun, IBM, or MS (.NET services), that Web Services are dangerous. A Web Service is an open standard that .NET, J2EE, and other platforms support. Unfortunatly the .NET marketing campaign has greatly confused the issue.
I'm afraid that I must disagree with you. Regarding the DMCA, Slashdot may not have a financial interest, but it has a HUGE political interest. Let's talk about the parent company VA. Can they post it on /. but _NOT_ email their employees about it because their employees are paid by them?
/. look intellectually void when we have to whine about such trivial issues. Most don't even care about some ZDNet pole (even one of my MARKETING friends!!!). Based on the number of votes this was no where near a company wide thing - probably isolated to one team.
I have a lot of friends who work for MS, and I can tell you that they really laugh at stuff like this. It makes
I agree that the "bottom line" is out of whack (ethics and legality come first). However, this is much more of a US corporate culture issue then a MS specific issue. This doesn't mean that we accept it (by no means!), but it should help change our outlook on how some of the people operate within these corporations. Maybe it really is just a bunch of excited people voting for their product, and a couple of over zealous ones writing scripts to stuff the ballet.
If a company sent you an email that said "Please remeber to Go Vote", an thats it, fine, got no problm with that, but if a company says "Go Vote For Gore" Now we have a problem. PIF, companies have gotten into trouble for encouraging employees to vote for a specific candidate.
/. pointed to a "Is the DMCA flawed?" type poll and encouraged voters to vote "yes"? No, because just as in MS, no one is MAKING you even take the poll, let alone vote a particular way.
A political issue is different. As long as the company dosen't say, "You HAVE to vote for our product", I don't have a problem with this. A company is _generally_ a group of like minded people who believe in their products, just as slashdot is a group who _generally_ like minded regarding issues such as the DMCA. So, would it be bad if
News to Slashdot: Microsoft _believes_ in it's products, and so do the vast majority of their employees. Would you expect it to be any different?
It is precisely because their top level execs encourage this kind of ethically bankrupt thinking among the rank and file that Microsoft is in the anti-trust hot water it's in today, and precisely why they're such an evil company.
/. posts a link to it trying to get people to sign it, that's ethically bankrupt? By no means! If I worked for MS and saw the poll, I sure as heck would mail my team about it. No one is being forced to do it. Now, if I was a manager and told my programmers to write a script to flood the ballet, then that's a different story. However, one or two over-zealous employees hacking some "vote script" together does not equal some anti-comptetive evil conspiracy.
So, when the EFF posts a petition against the DMCA and
Is this terribly different from what happens when slashdot has a post announcing some poll about linux?
.NET.
This is exactly why online polls, and many other polls have to be taken with a grain of salt - all of the suddon you have 45,000 people voting for
A couple of over-zealous programmers decide to write some script and all of the suddon Microsoft is condoning "rigging a poll".
The reason things like gzip work well on c files (for instance) is because C code is far from random. How many times do you use void or int in a C file? a lot :)
So a perl programm can't be compressed?
Good question. Although my post made on my own time in my house while eating my breakfast and ignoring my clock should be compressed quite easily.
What about good 8x8 MIDI patchbays? I have an old school "8Port/SE" that has incredible software with it (channel filtering, sysex filtering, port on/off (8in8out plus 1computerIN 1computerOut) etc. Unfortunatly the company is out of business and it only works on win98 and below (not to mention it's parellel port... yuck). So, I decided to go USB. The problem is, most USB patchbays I've tried for 2000 either A) don't work or B) have pathetic software. I've been told that there are much better options but they only work (or work well) on a MAC. As cool as the new MAC offerings seem, I have no desire to move all my music software to a MAC, spend money on an extra (and still more expensive) machine, and deal with an OS that I'm not particularly fond of (OSX is a huge improvement, but it's still no Windows).
Definitely go Firewire with a Powerbook G4 or a newer iBook (depending on funds). Although I'm a Windows guy, the multimedia laptops for the PC are still not as slick as the Apple offerings. If you must go PC, I would go with a Sony (w/Firewire, of course) and Win2K (as I personally have yet to test a lot of popular music software on XP).
I would personally recommend trying the MOTU 828, which has great sound quality. There are also many USB MIDI choices as well (from MOTU and others).
It really is a shame that PC laptop hardware is not quite up to par in this area.
So why didn't we freak out when MP3 players started supporting WMA in thier flash upgrades? Big Deal(tm).
I have two points to make regarding this issue:
1) I liken games to movies. We do NOT censor movies, rather, we rate them to aid parents who decide to censor the movie from thier child. One step further, R (and "worse") rated movies require proof of age (theoretically). This also aids the parents because no parent wants to put thier 14yr old on a leash, but they also don't want them to see some of the very disturbing content found in some R movies. Why is it, then, that a very violent game can go unrestricted where kids under 18 are playing? Is a parent to say, "Don't look or play that one game" and expect the kid to obey? Why not just put porn games (which arguably have less of an affect) in the arcade as well?
2) Disclaimer: I've been playing violent video games since I can remember (Wolf3D,Doom, etc.). I have always resolved conflicts with words not violence. This being said, violent media is still proven to have a VERY SERIOUS affect on many children and young teens. My mother is a behaviour specialist in the local school district and through her personal experiences has found most of these studies to be accurate. If I want to express violent and pornographic speech, I have every right to do so, just not in a public place with children around.
Personally, I wouldn't mind the arcade having an "18 and older section" (as silly as it may sound).
I don't think /. is responding unfairly. For example, we do something similar to validate email addresses of people who sign into our system. They get a specal "VCODE" in a "Private URL (PURL!)" (essentially a unique MD5 hash) which they click on to get validated. The entire project took maybe a few days (including meetings arguing about pointless implementation "issues"). The code is minimal. The amount invested is minimal. The concept is trivial. This is all obvious when you read the abstract:
A document delivery architecture dynamically generates a private Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to distribute information. Each private URL ("PURL") uniquely identifies an intended recipient of a document, the document or set of documents to be delivered, and (optionally) other parameters specific to the delivery process. The intended recipient of a document uses the PURL to retrieve the document. The server, upon retrieval of the document, customizes the behavior of the retrieval based upon attributes included in the PURL, as well as log information associated with the retrieval in a data base. This architecture and usage of PURLs enables secure document delivery and tracking of document receipt.
Looks almost verbatim to our design docs!
Besides being an obvious troll, you sound like a Christian, so I'll take a chance on that assumption, friend.
Actually, he sounds like a religious zealot, which is arguably the antithesis of Christianity.
Although I would fire someone being so short sited that they insist on analyzing something that was typed in an extremely informal setting, in which was also type very quickly, on top of which yes, I only possess average spelling and grammar skills (... and way below average on /.!). I'm sorry that I "whip out" my /. postings at 90wpm, but I have better things to do with my life.
;-).
You are right about communication however. I believe that I am extremely well spoken, and that I make great use of MS's spell checker at work.
Plus, my code wouldn't compile unless I spelled it correctly! Unless of course, some DIVISIVE or INCOMPETENT person altered my code, which would have an IMMEDIATE consequence come debug time