Most people see the word investment and immediately think of it in terms of economics: an investment is property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit. On the other hand, this situation seems to invite another definition of investment: commitment, as of time or support.
If I were to buy into Mandrake in this way (not necessarily saying that I would), my reason for investment wouldn't be for financial gain. My investment would be to offer support to the company so that they can survive the current unstable market and continue to provide services to the open source community in the future. The more people we have working full time on open source software, the better it is going to get. As open source software continues to improve, it begins to look like a much more valid solution to companies interested in any sort of software investments.
Most likely, I won't make a dime from such a purchase, but I can be assured of one thing in this situation: my investment would help support the open source movement in general by supporting a company whose direction and business model I agree with. I find this much more satisfactory than investing in a company with a business model and business practices that directly oppose what I believe in, in the name of turning a quick buck.
The sorceress in particular needs to have special attention paid to her skill tree. Her abilities are really unbalanced; focusing on just a few of them makes her much better than balancing out the points across several skills.
Although I wish it were not the case, an open platform is destined to fail in the console gaming market, especially an open platform from a new entrant in the market.
The key to this market is quality software. People will roundly dump systems that fail to have some critical mass of quality software. An example of this is the dumping of the Atari systems in 1984 due to a lack of quality third party software.
An open system is going to have lots of software, perhaps lots of good software. Unfortunately, it is going to have piles of garbage from every Joe Farmer who wants to toss out a game and hopefully make a few bucks.
Unless Nokia's got a superb business plan behind this that involves developing their own games and entertainments to run on this system, promoting them so that the entertainments shout out to consumers above the fray of garbage, and is still able to turn a profit, this is going to fail. I really wish that an open system could succeed, but I fear that it won't happen.
Centrifugal force will keep the elevator up. Placing a large weight (say, an asteroid) at the top of the cable will keep it in place, then the speed of the earth rotating will create a centrifugal effect, keeping the rock up and thus keeping the cable up.
Magic became popular during my high school days. I went to a very small high school in the Midwest, and the Magic bug struck there just before the release of The Dark.
Overnight, everyone had a deck, it seemed. Study halls were cluttered with tables full of people playing Magic. Many a Saturday afternoon was spent in the basement of someone's house, tapping Prodigal Sorcerers, summoning Serra Angels, and casting Drain Lifes.
It stayed pretty strong until the release of Homelands. The expansion set was really awful and didn't add anything interesting to the game, and after that no new expansions were released for a while. That time frame is about when the "bad things" in this article happened at Wizards of the Coast.
After that, it was never the same. I went to college and played some Magic there, but most people I found playing Magic were obsessive about playing in tournaments and using strict rules.
Once in a while now, I'll pick up a pack or two and play with my significant other, mostly for the memories. She played Magic back in those halcyon days as well.
Reading this article made me think about those days long past... and made me see them from a different angle. It makes me dread the thought of joining such a soul-less corporate world.
It also makes me want to cast a huge Fireball on the Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro of today.
... they literally started off with First Contact. Have the series begin with Zephram Cochrane and his cronies meeting the Vulcans and the Next Generation folks blasting off. Make the "Enterprise" be one of the first rust buckets they shoot into space. Show the actual first contacts between humans and Vulcans, humans and Klingons, humans and Romulans. Have the Time Ship Aeon occasionally pop up. Throw the bank at James Cromwell and make Cochrane a regular character. Lots of "engineering on the fly," birth of the Federation, the development of the Prime Directive, and so on. Have them shoot themselves in the foot a time or two by making erroneous first contacts with other races (getting off on the wrong foot).
THAT would make a series I would watch. Of course, a 29th century one on the Time Ship Aeon would also be cool.
I voted for Ralph Nader at my kitchen table. I have voted absentee for the past four and a half years so I can vote on elections affecting my hometown.
Anyway, I'm just disturbed that somewhere around 90% of Americans going to the ballot box today are going to vote for one of two highly similar candidates. Each of them has each taken over $50 million in campaign donations from private companies. How can they expect such blatantly purchased candidates to reflect the will of the people?
If you haven't voted yet today, walk into the ballot box and think, "Can I trust a candidate that repeatedly lies to me? Can I trust a candidate who has taken more money than I will have in my lifetime from corporations to become their president?" And then think about casting your vote for a change in the system.
You're forgetting something. There are a lot of web developers out there that simply don't hand-write their code. They usually have one or two guys in house that actually have enough skills to debug their garbage WYSIWYG output. Perl, in these situations, isn't going to be used because the one or two people capable of writing decent Perl stuff are too busy debugging the garbage output of other so-called "web developers."
I'm 22 and I'm getting back into Legos! They're really nice for helping you see things in different ways and polishing logical and visualization skills.
Plus, the Destroyer Droid Technic model looks really cool.
Is it fair for an individual or group with clear political ties to a system to give that system a review?
In other words, how can you be unbiased while still being politically tied to the situation?
Such a tutoring system would have obvious positive aspects. Yet, in the world of lazy and short-sighted humans, there exists a clear danger. It seem obvious that such a system, no matter how well implemented, would pale in comparison to a good fleshy-type teacher. But once we have "The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer," how many real teachers would remain? They aren't portable, they are expensive, and the pay just isn't there. And for that matter, why would anyone ever go and pay to see a movie again when they have the joy of television in their own house? Just because a new technological development comes along does not mean that prior technologies are thus outdated and discarded. Human teachers will always have value.
That's the question that kept running through my head as I read this article. If I already have the source in hand, and the bug report states that removal from the menu is just that - removal from the menu, and that the actual code will remain in the codebase, why is it an issue?Seems to me that this only applies as an issue to John & Jane Public, who don't know or care how to edit code and just want to unpack a browser. Of course, it's this same group that is likely to just live with banner ads anyway, and it's this group that banner ads target.If AOL/Netscape wants to remain a player in the future of web browsing, they're going to have to be supported by the commercial interests that are slowly taking over the web. Leaving the code in is simply a gift for those of us willing to edit our source and build a browser capable of ignoring banner ads.
The largest problem with current user interfaces is that they are stuck firmly with the WIMP or S&M (scripting and macros) paradigms. The next step forward in interface design will happen when an appropriate successor to the WIMP is developed.What will an appropriate successor need to have? My thoughts....
It will have to have an interface simple enough so that any user can manipulate the input in some fashion.
It will have to be able to be scripted and modified to provide options for the power user / hacker communities.
It will have to provide a vital function that makes it superior or at least equal to the standard WIMP and S&M interfaces.
I personally feel that laser pointing devices, eye recognition, and a focus on document production are interesting avenues to be looked at.
Mandrake, I believe, refers to the name of the foreign exchange officer second in command to General Jack D. Ripper in the film Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. Really good movie,.
I'm impressed. Reiser is a very nice journaling file system; it doesn't need more space than ext2fs and runs measurably faster. Check out ReiserFS at http://devlinux.com/projects/reiserfs/
What potential use would this domain have outside of the obvious corporate use? I can't imagine that any group besides a unix-related company will win the bid.
Here are a few ideas that I've come across in my years of coding for the web.
Design your external site to be as code-light as possible. Resist the urge to make a table within a table within a table, especially if each table has complicated formatting. Resist large images that take a long time to render. You're much better off going for a simple layout that may not look as nice, but loads a lot faster, because in many cases it's the client that causes the slowdown in delivery, not the server.
Use an open web server where you can build the binary yourself, and build the interpreters into httpd. On the number of servers I administer, the ones with specially-built httpd's run light years faster than the ones with generic httpd's. Put in the effort of learning how to build your httpd with support for your scripting languages built in, and things will run much faster.
Experiment with your data storage. For a number of problems, I've found out that grepping and/or parsing a preformatted text file is the fastest storage route (as compared to MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.), especially on slower machines.
These are just a few things I have observed that may help.
Slashdot Mirror
MegaHAL is the algorithm I used to create this post. Natalie Portman. Hot grits.
If you pick the point randomly, you still need a random number generator.
An MBA means that you'll likely be promoted into a management position; remember, the BA stands for Business Administration.
If management sounds interesting, go for it; if management doesn't sound interesting, then don't go for it. It's mostly about what you want.
In terms of a techie with an MBA and a techie without one, the one with the MBA will generally get better pay, but will work with tech less.
Hope the advice helps!
Most people see the word investment and immediately think of it in terms of economics: an investment is property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit. On the other hand, this situation seems to invite another definition of investment: commitment, as of time or support.
If I were to buy into Mandrake in this way (not necessarily saying that I would), my reason for investment wouldn't be for financial gain. My investment would be to offer support to the company so that they can survive the current unstable market and continue to provide services to the open source community in the future. The more people we have working full time on open source software, the better it is going to get. As open source software continues to improve, it begins to look like a much more valid solution to companies interested in any sort of software investments.
Most likely, I won't make a dime from such a purchase, but I can be assured of one thing in this situation: my investment would help support the open source movement in general by supporting a company whose direction and business model I agree with. I find this much more satisfactory than investing in a company with a business model and business practices that directly oppose what I believe in, in the name of turning a quick buck.
DevolverThe sorceress in particular needs to have special attention paid to her skill tree. Her abilities are really unbalanced; focusing on just a few of them makes her much better than balancing out the points across several skills.
Devolver
Although I wish it were not the case, an open platform is destined to fail in the console gaming market, especially an open platform from a new entrant in the market.
The key to this market is quality software. People will roundly dump systems that fail to have some critical mass of quality software. An example of this is the dumping of the Atari systems in 1984 due to a lack of quality third party software.
An open system is going to have lots of software, perhaps lots of good software. Unfortunately, it is going to have piles of garbage from every Joe Farmer who wants to toss out a game and hopefully make a few bucks.
Unless Nokia's got a superb business plan behind this that involves developing their own games and entertainments to run on this system, promoting them so that the entertainments shout out to consumers above the fray of garbage, and is still able to turn a profit, this is going to fail. I really wish that an open system could succeed, but I fear that it won't happen.
DevolverCentrifugal force will keep the elevator up. Placing a large weight (say, an asteroid) at the top of the cable will keep it in place, then the speed of the earth rotating will create a centrifugal effect, keeping the rock up and thus keeping the cable up.
I felt that the first book in the series, Red Mars, had more fruitful discussion of the role of space elevators in a changing economic system.
This page is a worthwhile discussion page on the issues raised in Red Mars, for those interested.
Magic became popular during my high school days. I went to a very small high school in the Midwest, and the Magic bug struck there just before the release of The Dark. Overnight, everyone had a deck, it seemed. Study halls were cluttered with tables full of people playing Magic. Many a Saturday afternoon was spent in the basement of someone's house, tapping Prodigal Sorcerers, summoning Serra Angels, and casting Drain Lifes. It stayed pretty strong until the release of Homelands. The expansion set was really awful and didn't add anything interesting to the game, and after that no new expansions were released for a while. That time frame is about when the "bad things" in this article happened at Wizards of the Coast. After that, it was never the same. I went to college and played some Magic there, but most people I found playing Magic were obsessive about playing in tournaments and using strict rules. Once in a while now, I'll pick up a pack or two and play with my significant other, mostly for the memories. She played Magic back in those halcyon days as well. Reading this article made me think about those days long past... and made me see them from a different angle. It makes me dread the thought of joining such a soul-less corporate world. It also makes me want to cast a huge Fireball on the Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro of today.
... they literally started off with First Contact. Have the series begin with Zephram Cochrane and his cronies meeting the Vulcans and the Next Generation folks blasting off. Make the "Enterprise" be one of the first rust buckets they shoot into space. Show the actual first contacts between humans and Vulcans, humans and Klingons, humans and Romulans. Have the Time Ship Aeon occasionally pop up. Throw the bank at James Cromwell and make Cochrane a regular character. Lots of "engineering on the fly," birth of the Federation, the development of the Prime Directive, and so on. Have them shoot themselves in the foot a time or two by making erroneous first contacts with other races (getting off on the wrong foot). THAT would make a series I would watch. Of course, a 29th century one on the Time Ship Aeon would also be cool.
2001-07-22 14:33:52 I think it'll be up there for a while yet.
I voted for Ralph Nader at my kitchen table. I have voted absentee for the past four and a half years so I can vote on elections affecting my hometown. Anyway, I'm just disturbed that somewhere around 90% of Americans going to the ballot box today are going to vote for one of two highly similar candidates. Each of them has each taken over $50 million in campaign donations from private companies. How can they expect such blatantly purchased candidates to reflect the will of the people? If you haven't voted yet today, walk into the ballot box and think, "Can I trust a candidate that repeatedly lies to me? Can I trust a candidate who has taken more money than I will have in my lifetime from corporations to become their president?" And then think about casting your vote for a change in the system.
Remember, Homer Simpson believes in Jebus Chrisp.
You're forgetting something. There are a lot of web developers out there that simply don't hand-write their code. They usually have one or two guys in house that actually have enough skills to debug their garbage WYSIWYG output. Perl, in these situations, isn't going to be used because the one or two people capable of writing decent Perl stuff are too busy debugging the garbage output of other so-called "web developers."
I'm 22 and I'm getting back into Legos! They're really nice for helping you see things in different ways and polishing logical and visualization skills. Plus, the Destroyer Droid Technic model looks really cool.
For those of you unfamiliar with Final Fantasy, here are a few resources to get you up to speed.
A great Final Fantasy summary article is available at videogames.com
ffonline.com: the best place to find out details about the console game series
On usenet, the newsgroup alt.games.final-fantasy is useful for getting your FF-related queries answered.
Is it fair for an individual or group with clear political ties to a system to give that system a review? In other words, how can you be unbiased while still being politically tied to the situation?
Such a tutoring system would have obvious positive aspects. Yet, in the world of lazy and short-sighted humans, there exists a clear danger. It seem obvious that such a system, no matter how well implemented, would pale in comparison to a good fleshy-type teacher. But once we have "The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer," how many real teachers would remain? They aren't portable, they are expensive, and the pay just isn't there. And for that matter, why would anyone ever go and pay to see a movie again when they have the joy of television in their own house? Just because a new technological development comes along does not mean that prior technologies are thus outdated and discarded. Human teachers will always have value.
That's the question that kept running through my head as I read this article. If I already have the source in hand, and the bug report states that removal from the menu is just that - removal from the menu, and that the actual code will remain in the codebase, why is it an issue?Seems to me that this only applies as an issue to John & Jane Public, who don't know or care how to edit code and just want to unpack a browser. Of course, it's this same group that is likely to just live with banner ads anyway, and it's this group that banner ads target.If AOL/Netscape wants to remain a player in the future of web browsing, they're going to have to be supported by the commercial interests that are slowly taking over the web. Leaving the code in is simply a gift for those of us willing to edit our source and build a browser capable of ignoring banner ads.
- It will have to have an interface simple enough so that any user can manipulate the input in some fashion.
- It will have to be able to be scripted and modified to provide options for the power user / hacker communities.
- It will have to provide a vital function that makes it superior or at least equal to the standard WIMP and S&M interfaces.
I personally feel that laser pointing devices, eye recognition, and a focus on document production are interesting avenues to be looked at.Mandrake, I believe, refers to the name of the foreign exchange officer second in command to General Jack D. Ripper in the film Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. Really good movie, .
Mandrake is virtually identical to Redhat. They seem to be targeting the desktop, though, as their target audience is beginning Linux users.
I'm impressed. Reiser is a very nice journaling file system; it doesn't need more space than ext2fs and runs measurably faster. Check out ReiserFS at http://devlinux.com/projects/reiserfs/
What potential use would this domain have outside of the obvious corporate use? I can't imagine that any group besides a unix-related company will win the bid.
These are just a few things I have observed that may help.