Now, back to the point. I work for a major US retailer, and people do try to return games and software titles several times a week, saying "It didn't work; I want a refund." That always raises suspicion since our software return policy is clearly visible at our registers and on the back of the purchase receipt. If you offer a replacement copy and they refuse, you know they are probably just trying to rip off the company.
Why assume they're trying to rip off the company, and not assume that the game is a buggy piece of crap (like many PC titles these days)? Worse, companies are encouraged to release before all the bugs are fixed because they know that users can't return the software.
That won't change as long as publishers care about preventing piracy.
Next you're going to tell us that airline tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable to prevent terrorism, right?
Here's a quick question for you.. What's easier: downloading the cracked version of a game over the internet without getting up and going to the store, or going out, buying a game, ripping the CD, breaking the copy protection, and returning the game. Or better, going to blockbuster and renting the game, copying it, and dropping it in the night return?
The return policies won't change as long as the publishers care about maintaining revenue without the burden or cost of increasing quality. The only effect that the current return policies have on piracy is to increase it because people feel justified in pirating a game to make sure it doesn't suck before dropping $50 on it.
All it would take to change the policy is for EB and Wal-Mart to get together and tell the game publishers they won't stock games the publisher won't take returns on anymore, just like the way it works in the book publishing industry. That would have the added bonus of increasing the selection at game stores and removing the need for preorders. Since the value for the publishers is in the sale, not the box, they should realize that the game in the box only costs the few dollars it takes to manufacture, and it's better for them to print up a ton and take returns (which they can destroy or whatever) than to operate as if their product had some scarcity... It would signifigantly improve the shelf life of games, it would make game stores worth going to again, and it would increase profits. It would also blow the myth that every copy in existance costs them the full royalty they would have charged.
If you are convinced the brightness diminishes by 5% after the first few hundred hours, and then decays slowly, then what's the big deal?
The big deal is that there isn't any data available that says where the big initial drop stops. I want to know it doesn't drop to 51% brightness right away, and then stay there for a while. (No, I don't believe this is likely, but why don't they show the curve?)
Please, somebody show me the data, and I'll shut up, but the only things I've seen are measurements of the first few weeks, and the given "half-life." It's hard to take people's word for how bright theirs still is too, buecause it's rare to find a person who wouldn't rather convince themselves that the item they spent a ton of money on isn't the best thing out there than to be objective about it.
Take your current TV or monitor, and turn it up to 95% brightness. Isn't that over-bright? It is on my monitor, and on my plasma. I think I run my plasma screen at about 65% brightness, so I don't care if I've lost 5% of the potential brightness.
That's not the same thing. Turning up the brightness control on a TV also increases the saturation, which reduces the displayable color range, the detail level, etc... If your display dims, turing up the brightness will make the screen emit more light, but it won't produce the same quality picture it used to. Believe me, I've tried this. I have a CRT that has dimmed over the last 8 years, and I can only turn the brightness up so far before it's unwatchable. Sure it gets really bright, but who cares if you can't make out what's on the screen?
Oh, and if you want more information from people more knowledagable then I, I suggest you visit the avsforum.com forums. These people are insnane...for any piece of audio or video equipment imaginable there's some guy on there who's bought 18 different models and run them through 26 different tests to find out the 'best' one.
I do read the avsforum.com forums regularly. I'm not biased against plasma or anything. LCDs and CRTs have this same problem (LCD is the worst for initial decline in brightness actually, but everybody claims it's no big deal because you can supposedly replace the backlight... Supposedly). I just want the manufacturers to be honest in their marketing and share all the data. They must have done these tests if they know the half life, and the only reasons I can think of that they wouldn't show the rest of the data is that it either looks bad, or they think we're all too dumb to understand it.
It's a half-life decay thing, so no, it's not linear. So, after 60,000 hours it'll be 1/2 as bright, and after 120,000 hours it'll be 1/4 as bright as it was originally.
Please show me any facts or evidence to back this up. I know that's what it sounds like from the claim, but it's not what the few available statistics I've seen show. Everything I've seen shows a steep initial decline, a period of slow, steady linear decline, and then who knows because the technology hasn't been around long enough yet.
I have another post in this thread that links to a plasma TV manufacturer's propoganda paper, which shows more than 5% brightness loss in less than 2% of the TV's advertised life. Clearly that's not sustainable to meet the 50% brightness at 100% advertised lifespan requirement. That curve doesn't fit the half-life decay curve either. The fact of the matter is that the majority of time you're watching your expensive plasma TV, it's at signifigantly reduced brightness from what the advertisement lead you to believe. What we don't know is how reduced it is.
This paper that appears to be propaganda by plasma TV manufactureres designed to "break the myth" that plasmas get unacceptably dim over time shows that their TV lost 5.5% of it's brightness in the first 1.6% of it's advertised life. And those are the numbers that are supposed to make plasma look good.
Claims like that always bother me, because they imply a linear decrease in brightness over time. Whether that's the case or not doesn't seem all that obvious to me. How do we know it doesn't lose the first 25% of it's brigntness in the first 1,000 hours and then lose the next 25% over 59,000 hours? How do we know that once it's reached half brightness it doesn't fade out completely over the next few hundred hours? It doesn't seem implausable that there would be a steep spot on the brightness loss curve either at the beginning or at the end.
They should show a graph of brightness loss over time.
Most interviewers would be interested in hearing what you'd do differently. Expecting brilliance from someone's senior project is lame.
My experience has been that most interviewers are terrible. You have to sit through quite a few before you find a good place to work though. Some questions, the worst kind, reflect the interviewer's predetermined conclusions. Even if the rest of the interview hasn't sold you on the position, there's something uncomfortable about sitting across from a guy who's made up his mind about you in a bad way and knowing that you have to answer his questions for 20 minutes with no way to change his mind.
Other questions I've gotten: "Why aren't you maintaining this anymore?" "So, you believe in the GPL? Don't you like to make money from your software?" etc...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's all bad. I've interviewed places that have seen my old work and have called me with an offer before I met them. The interview in those cases was more me interviewing them to see if the job would be fun. But like I said... It cuts both ways.
I just realized I didn't answer the question in your subject. I probably should, since it helps make my point:
For my senior project I wrote a Linux device driver for the Emulex LP7000 based Fiber Channel HBAs. The project was paid for by Clariion (EMC for the last 3 months). The development we did was open source, but it became the basis for the closed emulex driver.
With that on my resume, I got a job writing linux device drivers a month before graduation, and have been hacking linux for cash ever since.
'Cool' and 'Open Source' are nice, but don't make them requirements. The ideal senior project is something you can both get an 'A' on and looks good on your resume. Make you senior project something that you would potentially do at a job you hope to have in the future. If possible, get corporate sponsorship for your project. This is easier than it sounds. Some professor in your school's CS department is probably already in good with some local tech company and has a project waiting to be done right now.
If you project can end up being open source, that's a nice bonus, but it can be a mixed blessing. Believe me, 5 years from now when you've learned how little you knew when you graduated it will be awfully uncomfortable to explain during a job interview why you implemented that code the way you did.
Above all though, don't work on something with no obvious practical applications unless your goal is to get into grad school. A practical project will make you desireable to hiring companies in the same way past job experience would.
Compatability mode was in Windows 2000, and the Terminal Services client was availble for Windows 2000 as well. Sharing was simple in Windows 2000 too, it was just a radio button instead of a check box, which I suppose could have been more confusing to some people.
There also aren't any XP only commercial games out there. None. Really. Go check on the shelf at your favorite game store. They all support Windows 2000 as well, and many still support Windows 98 and ME. This will continue to be true as long as Microsoft continues to release DirectX for those platforms... It's funny, because they've terminated support for 98, but they still release the latest DirectX for it. I guess on one hand they don't want to admit that a large percentage of their customer base sees no reason for upgrading from 98, and on the other hand they don't want any game developers to consider using somebody else's API because 98 isn't supported.
There has even been a linux equivalent to the windows terminal services client called 'rdesktop' for ages... It keeps us all from having to use windows as our primary desktop in a windows centric office environment. On the rare occation that you actually need windows for something, you can pop onto a windows box remotely for a moment, and then get back to a productive environment with a simple click.
I am most certainly not interested in paying $40 (Mercury)
Even if you find it used, I wouldn't recommend paying more then $15 for Mercury. I regret having paid $30 for it. The concept and the graphics are great, and the level design is terrible. They use up all their ideas in the first 30 minutes of gameplay, and the later levels are repeats of the initial levels with the tasks concatenated together. It's really too bad. The idea had a lot of potential. $40 for a two days of casual gameplay (assuming it can hold your interest all the way to the end levels) is not worth it in my opinion.
Is it morally acceptable not to undermine a system of law that forces laws on you that unduly restrict your freedom?
There is a thing called Civil Disobediance for a reason. The point of our society isn't for us to all fall into line and behave as we are supposed to. The point is for us to all be able to tolerate and mutually benefit from each other to some extent. The concepts of lawfulness and morality are completely disjoint, and it's a damned good thing too. If it weren't we couldn't have things like freedom of religion.
Are you trying to say that a 1" bigger hard drive would cause people not to buy the machine? I think that's rediculous.
Plus it still doesn't get around the fact that they're overcharging for the 2.5" drive. You can bet that Microsoft pays a lot less for the drives than some random computer shop in Ohio, and said random computer shop is turning a profit at the $50 price point.
When comparing value the 1" difference in physical size is indeed irrelevant. If presented with the option of having an 80GB drive for $70 and a 20GB drive for $100, and knowing that you were probably going to leave it under your TV until the end of time, which would you consider the better value?
A "decent" gaming rig today costs $2000+ if you want to stay current with games because PC games are constantly pushing the edge of systems.
This is plainly bullshit. Saying a PC costs $2000 is like saying a Honda Civic costs $40k. My wife and I are buying each other gaming machines for our birthdays next month. The systems are going to cost about $750 and contain the following:
ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB (PCIe) AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice core, 512k cache) DFI Lanparty UT Nforce4 Ultra-D 1GB Mushkin PC3200 DDR (2x 512MB) Samsung SpinPoint P SP2400C 200Gb SATA2 Hard Drive Case, Power supply, etc...
There isn't a game anounced for the next 12 months that won't run *well* on that machine, and it will probably be more than sufficient for at least two years. After two years there will be simple and signifigant performance boosts for them in the $100 price range. (Given Microsoft's current track record in the console market, it's anybody's guess if the Xbox 360 will be obsolete in 2 years.)
I work with my computer for a living, and I'd be spending at least $500 for a work PC.. The difference in cost to make it suitable for high-end gaming is signifigantly less than the price of a console...
To top that off, my monitor runs at 1050P in a 16:9 aspect ratio for so much less money than you can get a similarly performing TV for that it's mind boggling. (The monitor was only $489... Still under $2k even if you count the display!)
It's hard to spend $2000 on a gaming PC unless you want water cooling, a window, a buffed finish and all sorts of other worthless expensive crap.
If you want to make some sort of point, here's a tip. You figure out the prices. You present the data. You give your sources.
I suggest you heed your own advice.
I'm convinced that consoles are worth buying. I'll be buying a PS3 and probably a Revolution... (No point in getting an Xbox... all the good games come out on PC a few months later anyway.. Even the "exclusives," and there isn't enough time in the day to play all the games I want to play right when they come out. Hell, I should be playing Psychonauts and the new Musashi Legends game right now instead of writing this. Christmas is coming and I haven't gotten through last years titles yet!) Most other people are convinced too... No reason to lie about the costs of PC gaming to make your point.
Nobody forced Microsoft to use 2.5" drives... Indeed, a 3.5" drive would work just as well. There's no need to artificially limit yourself on an irrelevant factor when doing a value comparison.
Most said they had no plans to buy any UMD movies.
Hint: Charge a lot less for them! Hell, sell them for $2 when you buy the full DVD as well.. They don't have the same utility as a DVD, so you can't charge the same price.
ony will be concerned that 50% of users admitted they had not touched their PSP in 'some time'.
Hint: Come out with some new games! We've all played the launch titles. While you're at it, put a $35 price cap on them. Handheld games aren't worth more than that.
25% of male users have updated their PSP for Internet use, with only 10% of female users doing same
Hint: Don't disable functionality with your updates if you want your users to apply them.
Hint 2: Don't ship your product before it's finished. Most people are too lazy to upgrade.
I love my PSP, but Sony needs to pull their heads out of their asses.
Disagree? How many cases can you cite where an individual inventor who drafted his own claims has actually collected a judgement against a well-financed corporation? Or even covered his expenses with royalties?
None, mostly because it's hard to tell wether the inventor listed as a plaintiff or defendant on a patent suit is being legally backed by a large corporation, and because I don't have the entirety of US patent case law in my head. It has happened, but I can't easily come up with statistics for you as to how often. Regardless...
You can always sell your patent for slightly less than what said well financed corporation would have to spend in legal fees.
It's clear that you have no faith whatsoever in the legal system. I think you're overly negative on a few of your points. For example:
Even without a lawyer, it's still 1,000s of dollars
Thousands of dollars isn't very much money in the context of starting a business.
the patent you get WILL be worthless against anyone who cares enough to try to break it. Claims drafting is an art more difficult than writing man pages in anapestic heptameter
It's really not that tough. If you're worried you can't learn how to do it on your own, you could always take a class in how to do it. I took a full semester patent law class that was taught by a Harvard law professor, and it cost $900. The classes were at night, so it wasn't so bad. Many tech. universities invite lawschool professors to guest teach IP law classes at their schools. Even if you never plan to file a patent, if you consider yourself an engineer I'd recommend taking one.
a spare few hundred thousand to pay your attorneys to prosecute EACH infringer
Not only is it unlikely to cost that much unless you're fighting a landmark case based on some interesting interpretation of the law, but once you win the first one, there's a good chance the proceeds will finance the later ones... At least they should if your idea is worth fighting for in financial terms. (If it isn't, why did you bother getting a patent?)
Then, even if you get a judgement in your favor (which you won't) if the defendant can simply reincorparate under a different name and force you to prosecute the whole thing over again.
I'd like to see you try that one. Good luck. (The same names and faces behind the new corporate entity would easily show the new corporation knowingly and intentionally infringed. That's triple damages.)
If you have enough money to use a patent, you're already rich enough to sue most potential competitors into the ground for no reason at all, anyway.
It's much more difficult than you seem to think to get far enough with a truly frivilous lawsuit to actually do much harm. For a large corporation to successfully pull that off the inventor would have to have a fairly small financial interest in their patent. (And again, if you only have very small financial interest, you shouldn't be getting a patent... Just publish and be done with it.) Usually frivilous lawsuits are the little guy suing the big guy. The big guys tend to threaten and intimidate instead.
something which is utilitarian and sinks into the background while you get on with stuff [...] something which has a passing familiarity with things they already know and are comfortable with
It's sad that those two things are considered one and the same, and that most people aren't willing to accept a learning curve, however steep, in order to gain productivity.
I'm not saying that E will provide a productivity gain, no matter how much effort you put into learning it, but there are good tools out there who's only fault keeping them from widespread adoption is that the don't look like Windows. This has been leading to the unfortunate situation that desktop environments have been imitating Windows to their detriment. FVWM95, Gnome, and KDE are all examples of this. Hopefully someday somebody will figure out the magic words to change the people for the better so we won't have to change our tools for the worse in order to gain market share.
The comprehension problem is on your end. Let's see if I can explain...
someone with a revenue of a million dollars is more LIKELY to be able to pay $5,000
Somebody with revenue of a million dollars may have made a million dollars in profit, or may have lost an unspecified amount of mone due to costs greater than a million dollars.
than someone who made zero dollars
Somebody who made zero dollars may or may not have had more or less than a million dollars in revenue.
Either of those two companies (both of whom are presumably developing a new product with Linux in the name) may have millions in investment cash around that they're using to build their product, even if they've never sold a single unit.
You seem to be completely neglecting in this argument that the fees are revenue based, or you don't understand the difference between revenue and profit or cash-on-hand.
Since we are discussing revenue, or in your case comparing revenue to profit, there is not enough information in your statement for it to be "obvious" which party is better able to afford a $5,000 fee. Your argument is like saying that if the two of us are traveling towards Cleveland and you're going 500mph and I'm going 35mph you're obiviously more likely to get there first. Insistance on being correct is neither trolling nor being obtuse.
Your lack of understanding has lead you to make a series of blatently incorrect arguments. You should learn to understand what you're arguning about before you tell the other guy to fuck off.
No, it has nothing to do with "subsidizing" costs for lower fee users. That may be an effect, but it's not the cause.
It has to do with being unable to determine revenue sufficient to offset costs because you don't know how many "users" the trademark will have.
Your argument makes no sense. You are no more able to determine if you will take in sufficient revenue to cover costs with a progressive pricing model than you are with a flat pricing model. I'll admit that I'm speculating when I assume the idea was to subsidize the costs for less financially capable licensees, but I can say for sure the reasoning can't be what you claim. It doesn't make any mathematical sense, and I'm fairly certain these guys are smarter than that.
Obviously someone with a revenue of a million dollars is more LIKELY to be able to pay $5,000 than someone who made zero dollars.
You'll have to explain to me how this is obvious. Though, again, you seem to be confusing revenue with profits when you say "made zero dollars" so perhaps I can see how it's obvious to you.
And being a pedant doesn't gain you any points. "Discrimination" has the dictionary definition you cite, but "discrimination" is illegal when you're a housing owner.
This is just plain wrong too. It's not illegal to discriminate as a housing owner, otherwise you could be arrested for choosing the yellow paint over the red when you change the color of your house, or choose the potential tenant to rent to based on their salary and employment status in oreder to ensure they will, you know, pay the rent. Racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, and in some cases age discrimination can be illegal, but in no case is there a blanket law against discrimination in general. There is a point to being pedantic. Words mean things, and you are flying off the handle because you are interpreting them to mean something that they don't.
No one is "discriminating" (notice I stopped before "against". I'm continuing to not make any judgements here)
In this case, preferential treatment (a lower fee) is being given to some licensees and not others. What the hell else would you call it?
Thus, non-profits pay $200 - and somebody making a million dollars or more off Linux pays 1/2-1% up to the $5,000 maximum. If IBM comes out with "Big Blue Linux" and makes a billion dollars from it, they still pay only $5,000 per year. Hardly "discrimination."
A few things here... For starters, having a million dollars in revenue doesn't mean you made a million dollars. You could easily have lost money.
Secondly:
Discrimination \Dis*crim`i*na"tion\, n. [L. discriminatio the
contrasting of opposite thoughts.]
1. The act of discriminating, distinguishing, or noting and
marking differences.
[1913 Webster]
The fees are based on distinguishment between companies with differing levels of revenue. Hence discrimination. (no judgement was made on wether this is a good or bad thing in the preceding comment)
It has nothing to do with the cost of processing a Sublicense from a given organization.
You're right. It probably has something to do with the idea that companies with higher cash flow are capable of subsidizing the costs for users of the trademark with zero or low cash flow.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, back to the point. I work for a major US retailer, and people do try to return games and software titles several times a week, saying "It didn't work; I want a refund." That always raises suspicion since our software return policy is clearly visible at our registers and on the back of the purchase receipt. If you offer a replacement copy and they refuse, you know they are probably just trying to rip off the company.
Why assume they're trying to rip off the company, and not assume that the game is a buggy piece of crap (like many PC titles these days)? Worse, companies are encouraged to release before all the bugs are fixed because they know that users can't return the software.
Those return policies apply to console games too.
That won't change as long as publishers care about preventing piracy.
Next you're going to tell us that airline tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable to prevent terrorism, right?
Here's a quick question for you.. What's easier: downloading the cracked version of a game over the internet without getting up and going to the store, or going out, buying a game, ripping the CD, breaking the copy protection, and returning the game. Or better, going to blockbuster and renting the game, copying it, and dropping it in the night return?
The return policies won't change as long as the publishers care about maintaining revenue without the burden or cost of increasing quality. The only effect that the current return policies have on piracy is to increase it because people feel justified in pirating a game to make sure it doesn't suck before dropping $50 on it.
All it would take to change the policy is for EB and Wal-Mart to get together and tell the game publishers they won't stock games the publisher won't take returns on anymore, just like the way it works in the book publishing industry. That would have the added bonus of increasing the selection at game stores and removing the need for preorders. Since the value for the publishers is in the sale, not the box, they should realize that the game in the box only costs the few dollars it takes to manufacture, and it's better for them to print up a ton and take returns (which they can destroy or whatever) than to operate as if their product had some scarcity... It would signifigantly improve the shelf life of games, it would make game stores worth going to again, and it would increase profits. It would also blow the myth that every copy in existance costs them the full royalty they would have charged.
If you are convinced the brightness diminishes by 5% after the first few hundred hours, and then decays slowly, then what's the big deal?
The big deal is that there isn't any data available that says where the big initial drop stops. I want to know it doesn't drop to 51% brightness right away, and then stay there for a while. (No, I don't believe this is likely, but why don't they show the curve?)
Please, somebody show me the data, and I'll shut up, but the only things I've seen are measurements of the first few weeks, and the given "half-life." It's hard to take people's word for how bright theirs still is too, buecause it's rare to find a person who wouldn't rather convince themselves that the item they spent a ton of money on isn't the best thing out there than to be objective about it.
Take your current TV or monitor, and turn it up to 95% brightness. Isn't that over-bright? It is on my monitor, and on my plasma. I think I run my plasma screen at about 65% brightness, so I don't care if I've lost 5% of the potential brightness.
That's not the same thing. Turning up the brightness control on a TV also increases the saturation, which reduces the displayable color range, the detail level, etc... If your display dims, turing up the brightness will make the screen emit more light, but it won't produce the same quality picture it used to. Believe me, I've tried this. I have a CRT that has dimmed over the last 8 years, and I can only turn the brightness up so far before it's unwatchable. Sure it gets really bright, but who cares if you can't make out what's on the screen?
Oh, and if you want more information from people more knowledagable then I, I suggest you visit the avsforum.com forums. These people are insnane...for any piece of audio or video equipment imaginable there's some guy on there who's bought 18 different models and run them through 26 different tests to find out the 'best' one.
I do read the avsforum.com forums regularly. I'm not biased against plasma or anything. LCDs and CRTs have this same problem (LCD is the worst for initial decline in brightness actually, but everybody claims it's no big deal because you can supposedly replace the backlight... Supposedly). I just want the manufacturers to be honest in their marketing and share all the data. They must have done these tests if they know the half life, and the only reasons I can think of that they wouldn't show the rest of the data is that it either looks bad, or they think we're all too dumb to understand it.
It's a half-life decay thing, so no, it's not linear. So, after 60,000 hours it'll be 1/2 as bright, and after 120,000 hours it'll be 1/4 as bright as it was originally.
Please show me any facts or evidence to back this up. I know that's what it sounds like from the claim, but it's not what the few available statistics I've seen show. Everything I've seen shows a steep initial decline, a period of slow, steady linear decline, and then who knows because the technology hasn't been around long enough yet.
I have another post in this thread that links to a plasma TV manufacturer's propoganda paper, which shows more than 5% brightness loss in less than 2% of the TV's advertised life. Clearly that's not sustainable to meet the 50% brightness at 100% advertised lifespan requirement. That curve doesn't fit the half-life decay curve either. The fact of the matter is that the majority of time you're watching your expensive plasma TV, it's at signifigantly reduced brightness from what the advertisement lead you to believe. What we don't know is how reduced it is.
This paper that appears to be propaganda by plasma TV manufactureres designed to "break the myth" that plasmas get unacceptably dim over time shows that their TV lost 5.5% of it's brightness in the first 1.6% of it's advertised life. And those are the numbers that are supposed to make plasma look good.
Claims like that always bother me, because they imply a linear decrease in brightness over time. Whether that's the case or not doesn't seem all that obvious to me. How do we know it doesn't lose the first 25% of it's brigntness in the first 1,000 hours and then lose the next 25% over 59,000 hours? How do we know that once it's reached half brightness it doesn't fade out completely over the next few hundred hours? It doesn't seem implausable that there would be a steep spot on the brightness loss curve either at the beginning or at the end.
They should show a graph of brightness loss over time.
Most interviewers would be interested in hearing what you'd do differently. Expecting brilliance from someone's senior project is lame.
My experience has been that most interviewers are terrible. You have to sit through quite a few before you find a good place to work though. Some questions, the worst kind, reflect the interviewer's predetermined conclusions. Even if the rest of the interview hasn't sold you on the position, there's something uncomfortable about sitting across from a guy who's made up his mind about you in a bad way and knowing that you have to answer his questions for 20 minutes with no way to change his mind.
Other questions I've gotten: "Why aren't you maintaining this anymore?" "So, you believe in the GPL? Don't you like to make money from your software?" etc...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's all bad. I've interviewed places that have seen my old work and have called me with an offer before I met them. The interview in those cases was more me interviewing them to see if the job would be fun. But like I said... It cuts both ways.
I just realized I didn't answer the question in your subject. I probably should, since it helps make my point:
For my senior project I wrote a Linux device driver for the Emulex LP7000 based Fiber Channel HBAs. The project was paid for by Clariion (EMC for the last 3 months). The development we did was open source, but it became the basis for the closed emulex driver.
With that on my resume, I got a job writing linux device drivers a month before graduation, and have been hacking linux for cash ever since.
'Cool' and 'Open Source' are nice, but don't make them requirements. The ideal senior project is something you can both get an 'A' on and looks good on your resume. Make you senior project something that you would potentially do at a job you hope to have in the future. If possible, get corporate sponsorship for your project. This is easier than it sounds. Some professor in your school's CS department is probably already in good with some local tech company and has a project waiting to be done right now.
If you project can end up being open source, that's a nice bonus, but it can be a mixed blessing. Believe me, 5 years from now when you've learned how little you knew when you graduated it will be awfully uncomfortable to explain during a job interview why you implemented that code the way you did.
Above all though, don't work on something with no obvious practical applications unless your goal is to get into grad school. A practical project will make you desireable to hiring companies in the same way past job experience would.
Compatability mode was in Windows 2000, and the Terminal Services client was availble for Windows 2000 as well. Sharing was simple in Windows 2000 too, it was just a radio button instead of a check box, which I suppose could have been more confusing to some people.
There also aren't any XP only commercial games out there. None. Really. Go check on the shelf at your favorite game store. They all support Windows 2000 as well, and many still support Windows 98 and ME. This will continue to be true as long as Microsoft continues to release DirectX for those platforms... It's funny, because they've terminated support for 98, but they still release the latest DirectX for it. I guess on one hand they don't want to admit that a large percentage of their customer base sees no reason for upgrading from 98, and on the other hand they don't want any game developers to consider using somebody else's API because 98 isn't supported.
There has even been a linux equivalent to the windows terminal services client called 'rdesktop' for ages... It keeps us all from having to use windows as our primary desktop in a windows centric office environment. On the rare occation that you actually need windows for something, you can pop onto a windows box remotely for a moment, and then get back to a productive environment with a simple click.
I am most certainly not interested in paying $40 (Mercury)
Even if you find it used, I wouldn't recommend paying more then $15 for Mercury. I regret having paid $30 for it. The concept and the graphics are great, and the level design is terrible. They use up all their ideas in the first 30 minutes of gameplay, and the later levels are repeats of the initial levels with the tasks concatenated together. It's really too bad. The idea had a lot of potential. $40 for a two days of casual gameplay (assuming it can hold your interest all the way to the end levels) is not worth it in my opinion.
Is it morally acceptable not to undermine a system of law that forces laws on you that unduly restrict your freedom?
There is a thing called Civil Disobediance for a reason. The point of our society isn't for us to all fall into line and behave as we are supposed to. The point is for us to all be able to tolerate and mutually benefit from each other to some extent. The concepts of lawfulness and morality are completely disjoint, and it's a damned good thing too. If it weren't we couldn't have things like freedom of religion.
Are you trying to say that a 1" bigger hard drive would cause people not to buy the machine? I think that's rediculous.
Plus it still doesn't get around the fact that they're overcharging for the 2.5" drive. You can bet that Microsoft pays a lot less for the drives than some random computer shop in Ohio, and said random computer shop is turning a profit at the $50 price point.
When comparing value the 1" difference in physical size is indeed irrelevant. If presented with the option of having an 80GB drive for $70 and a 20GB drive for $100, and knowing that you were probably going to leave it under your TV until the end of time, which would you consider the better value?
That's even before you consider that $100 for a 20GB drive is a rip-off at any form factor. Here's a 2.5" 20GB external USB 2.0 drive for $47 ($54 shipped!).
So, in summary... $100 for a 20GB external drive that doesn't need to be particularly portable isn't a very good deal.
A "decent" gaming rig today costs $2000+ if you want to stay current with games because PC games are constantly pushing the edge of systems.
This is plainly bullshit. Saying a PC costs $2000 is like saying a Honda Civic costs $40k. My wife and I are buying each other gaming machines for our birthdays next month. The systems are going to cost about $750 and contain the following:
ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB (PCIe)
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice core, 512k cache)
DFI Lanparty UT Nforce4 Ultra-D
1GB Mushkin PC3200 DDR (2x 512MB)
Samsung SpinPoint P SP2400C 200Gb SATA2 Hard Drive
Case, Power supply, etc...
There isn't a game anounced for the next 12 months that won't run *well* on that machine, and it will probably be more than sufficient for at least two years. After two years there will be simple and signifigant performance boosts for them in the $100 price range. (Given Microsoft's current track record in the console market, it's anybody's guess if the Xbox 360 will be obsolete in 2 years.)
I work with my computer for a living, and I'd be spending at least $500 for a work PC.. The difference in cost to make it suitable for high-end gaming is signifigantly less than the price of a console...
To top that off, my monitor runs at 1050P in a 16:9 aspect ratio for so much less money than you can get a similarly performing TV for that it's mind boggling. (The monitor was only $489... Still under $2k even if you count the display!)
It's hard to spend $2000 on a gaming PC unless you want water cooling, a window, a buffed finish and all sorts of other worthless expensive crap.
If you want to make some sort of point, here's a tip. You figure out the prices. You present the data. You give your sources.
I suggest you heed your own advice.
I'm convinced that consoles are worth buying. I'll be buying a PS3 and probably a Revolution... (No point in getting an Xbox... all the good games come out on PC a few months later anyway.. Even the "exclusives," and there isn't enough time in the day to play all the games I want to play right when they come out. Hell, I should be playing Psychonauts and the new Musashi Legends game right now instead of writing this. Christmas is coming and I haven't gotten through last years titles yet!) Most other people are convinced too... No reason to lie about the costs of PC gaming to make your point.
Nobody forced Microsoft to use 2.5" drives... Indeed, a 3.5" drive would work just as well. There's no need to artificially limit yourself on an irrelevant factor when doing a value comparison.
Most said they had no plans to buy any UMD movies.
Hint: Charge a lot less for them! Hell, sell them for $2 when you buy the full DVD as well.. They don't have the same utility as a DVD, so you can't charge the same price.
ony will be concerned that 50% of users admitted they had not touched their PSP in 'some time'.
Hint: Come out with some new games! We've all played the launch titles. While you're at it, put a $35 price cap on them. Handheld games aren't worth more than that.
25% of male users have updated their PSP for Internet use, with only 10% of female users doing same
Hint: Don't disable functionality with your updates if you want your users to apply them.
Hint 2: Don't ship your product before it's finished. Most people are too lazy to upgrade.
I love my PSP, but Sony needs to pull their heads out of their asses.
Disagree? How many cases can you cite where an individual inventor who drafted his own claims has actually collected a judgement against a well-financed corporation? Or even covered his expenses with royalties?
None, mostly because it's hard to tell wether the inventor listed as a plaintiff or defendant on a patent suit is being legally backed by a large corporation, and because I don't have the entirety of US patent case law in my head. It has happened, but I can't easily come up with statistics for you as to how often. Regardless...
You can always sell your patent for slightly less than what said well financed corporation would have to spend in legal fees.
It's clear that you have no faith whatsoever in the legal system. I think you're overly negative on a few of your points. For example:
Even without a lawyer, it's still 1,000s of dollars
Thousands of dollars isn't very much money in the context of starting a business.
the patent you get WILL be worthless against anyone who cares enough to try to break it. Claims drafting is an art more difficult than writing man pages in anapestic heptameter
It's really not that tough. If you're worried you can't learn how to do it on your own, you could always take a class in how to do it. I took a full semester patent law class that was taught by a Harvard law professor, and it cost $900. The classes were at night, so it wasn't so bad. Many tech. universities invite lawschool professors to guest teach IP law classes at their schools. Even if you never plan to file a patent, if you consider yourself an engineer I'd recommend taking one.
a spare few hundred thousand to pay your attorneys to prosecute EACH infringer
Not only is it unlikely to cost that much unless you're fighting a landmark case based on some interesting interpretation of the law, but once you win the first one, there's a good chance the proceeds will finance the later ones... At least they should if your idea is worth fighting for in financial terms. (If it isn't, why did you bother getting a patent?)
Then, even if you get a judgement in your favor (which you won't) if the defendant can simply reincorparate under a different name and force you to prosecute the whole thing over again.
I'd like to see you try that one. Good luck. (The same names and faces behind the new corporate entity would easily show the new corporation knowingly and intentionally infringed. That's triple damages.)
If you have enough money to use a patent, you're already rich enough to sue most potential competitors into the ground for no reason at all, anyway.
It's much more difficult than you seem to think to get far enough with a truly frivilous lawsuit to actually do much harm. For a large corporation to successfully pull that off the inventor would have to have a fairly small financial interest in their patent. (And again, if you only have very small financial interest, you shouldn't be getting a patent... Just publish and be done with it.) Usually frivilous lawsuits are the little guy suing the big guy. The big guys tend to threaten and intimidate instead.
something which is utilitarian and sinks into the background while you get on with stuff [...] something which has a passing familiarity with things they already know and are comfortable with
It's sad that those two things are considered one and the same, and that most people aren't willing to accept a learning curve, however steep, in order to gain productivity.
I'm not saying that E will provide a productivity gain, no matter how much effort you put into learning it, but there are good tools out there who's only fault keeping them from widespread adoption is that the don't look like Windows. This has been leading to the unfortunate situation that desktop environments have been imitating Windows to their detriment. FVWM95, Gnome, and KDE are all examples of this. Hopefully someday somebody will figure out the magic words to change the people for the better so we won't have to change our tools for the worse in order to gain market share.
Hell, I've seen captchas that I could not read before, and I'm a human!
It's not inconcievable that an algorithm to defeat a particular type of captcha would be better at reading it than a human.
Just to drive my point home I'd like to pull one more quore from you earlier in the thread:
Thus, non-profits pay $200 - and somebody making a million dollars or more off Linux pays 1/2-1% up to the $5,000 maximum.
There is no reason a non-profit couldn't end up paying the $5,000. Non-profit doesn't mean you have zero cash flow.
The comprehension problem is on your end. Let's see if I can explain...
someone with a revenue of a million dollars is more LIKELY to be able to pay $5,000
Somebody with revenue of a million dollars may have made a million dollars in profit, or may have lost an unspecified amount of mone due to costs greater than a million dollars.
than someone who made zero dollars
Somebody who made zero dollars may or may not have had more or less than a million dollars in revenue.
Either of those two companies (both of whom are presumably developing a new product with Linux in the name) may have millions in investment cash around that they're using to build their product, even if they've never sold a single unit.
You seem to be completely neglecting in this argument that the fees are revenue based, or you don't understand the difference between revenue and profit or cash-on-hand.
Since we are discussing revenue, or in your case comparing revenue to profit, there is not enough information in your statement for it to be "obvious" which party is better able to afford a $5,000 fee. Your argument is like saying that if the two of us are traveling towards Cleveland and you're going 500mph and I'm going 35mph you're obiviously more likely to get there first. Insistance on being correct is neither trolling nor being obtuse.
Your lack of understanding has lead you to make a series of blatently incorrect arguments. You should learn to understand what you're arguning about before you tell the other guy to fuck off.
No, it has nothing to do with "subsidizing" costs for lower fee users. That may be an effect, but it's not the cause.
It has to do with being unable to determine revenue sufficient to offset costs because you don't know how many "users" the trademark will have.
Your argument makes no sense. You are no more able to determine if you will take in sufficient revenue to cover costs with a progressive pricing model than you are with a flat pricing model. I'll admit that I'm speculating when I assume the idea was to subsidize the costs for less financially capable licensees, but I can say for sure the reasoning can't be what you claim. It doesn't make any mathematical sense, and I'm fairly certain these guys are smarter than that.
Obviously someone with a revenue of a million dollars is more LIKELY to be able to pay $5,000 than someone who made zero dollars.
You'll have to explain to me how this is obvious. Though, again, you seem to be confusing revenue with profits when you say "made zero dollars" so perhaps I can see how it's obvious to you.
And being a pedant doesn't gain you any points. "Discrimination" has the dictionary definition you cite, but "discrimination" is illegal when you're a housing owner.
This is just plain wrong too. It's not illegal to discriminate as a housing owner, otherwise you could be arrested for choosing the yellow paint over the red when you change the color of your house, or choose the potential tenant to rent to based on their salary and employment status in oreder to ensure they will, you know, pay the rent. Racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, and in some cases age discrimination can be illegal, but in no case is there a blanket law against discrimination in general. There is a point to being pedantic. Words mean things, and you are flying off the handle because you are interpreting them to mean something that they don't.
No one is "discriminating" (notice I stopped before "against". I'm continuing to not make any judgements here)
In this case, preferential treatment (a lower fee) is being given to some licensees and not others. What the hell else would you call it?
Thus, non-profits pay $200 - and somebody making a million dollars or more off Linux pays 1/2-1% up to the $5,000 maximum. If IBM comes out with "Big Blue Linux" and makes a billion dollars from it, they still pay only $5,000 per year. Hardly "discrimination."
A few things here... For starters, having a million dollars in revenue doesn't mean you made a million dollars. You could easily have lost money.
Secondly:
Discrimination \Dis*crim`i*na"tion\, n. [L. discriminatio the
contrasting of opposite thoughts.]
1. The act of discriminating, distinguishing, or noting and
marking differences.
[1913 Webster]
The fees are based on distinguishment between companies with differing levels of revenue. Hence discrimination. (no judgement was made on wether this is a good or bad thing in the preceding comment)
It has nothing to do with the cost of processing a Sublicense from a given organization.
You're right. It probably has something to do with the idea that companies with higher cash flow are capable of subsidizing the costs for users of the trademark with zero or low cash flow.