I would expect an interesting time at the next shareholder's meeting though (and hopefully a huge fine to spur the conversation along).
And I would expect it to go something like "Holy shit, that ad campaign got more attention that we ever DREAMED it would! The resulting increased receipts from the ATHF movie more than cover the cost of the fines we had to pay, so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
when the server goes down or we have power problems, my computer becomes a paperweight
Do you have power outages frequently at your workplace? I only recall two times in my career where the building I was working in went black, and both times we all had better things to think than "If I had a battery-powered notebook, I could still be editing that Powerpoint presentation right now!"
If you're expected to work by candlelight, I'd say your company has bigger problems than a poor terminal implementation.
the added security of dumb terminals - no vector for USB thumbdrives, floppys, or CD burners
How do you think the keyboard and mouse are going to be attached to the terminal? Hardwired?
USB ports on terminals is a given. It will be up to access policies at the operating system level whether to allow removable storage devices to be mounted on these ports, and the CTO will be hearing a lot of compelling arguments as to why it should be allowed. Once one user has a storage device mounted, it could be all over.
The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls.
Why wouldn't we? When someone places a call to me from a land line or another carrier, my carrier doesn't get money from the call's originator, yet their cellular infrastructure is used. It makes more sense for customers to be billed for what they actually use, rather than blindly mimic the old POTS billing scheme.
Of course, given the way price plans are typically structured here, we never even notice. Calls to people with the same carrier are free, and/or calls made during off-peak hours are free, and/or calls to the five numbers we call the most are free, and/or the calling plan has more minutes than we would use in a month anyway...
If there's anything messed up about North American mobile phone pricing plans, it's that many carriers are still charging 10 cents or more to send or receive a single SMS text message.
If this is true, it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone, given the size of the cell-phone market outside the US."
That's one way of interpreting the news.
Another, possibly more likely, way is to take it to mean that the iPhone simply will not be available for service with ANY carrier outside the US. At least not during the initial launch window.
There will probably be downloadable sources and such that also use the same thing, but "any video and audio" is typical Slashdot anti-MS bull.
"Any A/V container format that can support ICT tokens" is probably the most accurate way to state it. Those MPEG files you downloaded five years ago can never be degraded, but content distributed today in "Windows Media Format v12" or whatever could be.
Saying "Content is King" in the same sentence as Myspace et. al. is like saying an overflowing ashtray is a sign of productivity.
If MySpace is successful (and there's no denying it is), then it MUST be because Content is King, because it sure as hell ain't Design that's reigning supreme there.
The short explanation is that, after the dot.com bubble, companies have gone with the "many hats/renaissance man" approach of the early 90s as opposed to the super-specialized approach of the bubble.
Interesting. I would argue that the "Webmaster" title actually better embodies the "renaissance man" approach than what the staffing situation has evolved into.
A classical Webmaster had to possess, to some degree, the skills of: a programmer, a sysadmin, a DBA, a graphical designer, a producer, an editor, and a project manager. In a small company, this made a lot of sense (and still does), but in medium-to-huge companies, there were probably already other people performing some of those duties, and they got reassigned as appropriate.
Today, it's more likely for a company to have some shared services between the web division and other divisions, like system and database administration, and the staff for the web division will tend to be more specialized: one person dedicated to backend programming, perhaps, and one to frontend design (or however the divisions logically fall for that business).
I had a job recently where my duties were JUST integration of frontend and backend components: take the HTML page design provided by the HTML Coder and turn it into functional JSP that accesses objects provided by the Java Developers. That was it. That kind of super-specialized role could not have existed five to ten years ago, in the heyday of the "Webmaster" title.
If you want to grab my attention, promise to recind every invasive executive order from the Bush presidency. Promise to avoid signing statements. Promise to institute executive orders that prohibit you and future presidents and their respective executive branches from taking the same liberties with our liberties as this one has.
Telling, isn't it, that we would get excited over a candidate that pledged nothing more than basic competence in executing the duties of the office of President? We should be expecting EVERY candidate to promise to avoid "signing statements"!
Data states that television, as the form of popular entertainment as we know it, did not last much beyond 2040... could this turn out to be remarkably accurate?
Depends on if he was referring to the appliance, or to the distribution model.
Certainly the model of a small number of content providers broadcasting programming on a fixed schedule is giving way to a large number of content providers, narrowcasting programming whenever the viewer wants it. But the basic design of the TV set, that being a box with a screen that people arrange chairs around to view, is still much the same as it was fifty years ago, and I have not yet seen any hints of the revolutionary technology that will replace it.
The facility was absolutely beautiful. When going between two buildings on an overhead walkway I saw the Golden Gate bridge with a nice orange sunset behind it.
What's the point of building a data center with a beautiful scenic view? Computers can't see, and even if they could they wouldn't appreciate it.
Same reasons, as for not wanting one.... 1) Too expensive 2) Don't need/want a Blu-Ray player 3) No games 4) Too expensive
Which is why, if Sony can get the price down under $300 in a couple years, everything could change. Two of your reasons for not wanting a PS3 would be instantly invalidated, and depending on how many PS3 games and movies are released in the meantime, the other two might be as well.
I don't expect Sony to give up on the PS3 before 2009, either; they're some stubborn bastards. How long did it take after the adoption of MPEG Layer 3 as THE ad-hoc standard for digital music for Sony to abandon their ATRAC as the format for their portable players? Hell, I think they're STILL pushing it even though they support MP3 as well now.
That way, you wouldn't have to rerun wires if you changed the seating configuration.
And how often is a commercial passenger jet's seating re-configured? Once every 5-10 years maybe?
Whatever wireless standard they would have chosen to serve the cabin would have been obsolete by the time they could have taken advantage of it anyway.
Re:Not so much that you need an iPod to listen
on
Norway Outlaws iTunes
·
· Score: 1
If you buy many albums from the iTunes sture you can enjoy them and all is rosy. Then two years later the battery on your iPod has died, so you look at what's available. You think there are some nice offerings from creative or sandisk but, trouble is, you can't listen to any of your existing purchases. Your locked to Apple.
There's still nothing illegal or unethical about that.
Let's say I have a computer with Windows on it. I buy many commercial Windows software packages and enjoy them and all is rosy. Then five years later my CPU dies, so I look at what else is available. There are some nice computers from Apple, but, trouble is, I can't run any of my Windows programs on them! My locked to Windows!!!
(And nobody bring up Wine or Bootcamp or VirtualPC... that's not the point.)
I'm surprised that you're even getting a choice as to which graphing calculator you get to use. In my own high school math classes, the teacher basically told us all "Go out and buy a TI-83, because the week of lessons on How To Use A Graphing Calculator are all going to be based on that model."
Another thing I'm surprised about is that it's more than a decade since then, and the TI-83 STILL sells for roughly $100, with the only new feature as far as I can tell being the proprietary serial connection has been replaced with a standard USB one. What gives? Shouldn't technological progress have priced these things down to $20 by now?
The reason I copy is [...] to watch stuff I would never be purchasing anyway. Nor would I rent them.
And yet, you're more than willing to devote 2 hours of your life to watching something that you attribute so little value to that you wouldn't spend a dime on it. You gladly waste your time consuming a product you don't even like.
You're the MPAA's bitch and you don't even realize it.
There were probably a dozen titles in all that had Zapper support, but even though the device was packed in with some versions of the console, that most people can't remember any of them beyond Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley shows that it really was a failure.
They simply need to make a remote to match their systems and Nintendo will be off the board
If either Microsoft or Sony attempts to make a motion-sensitive, remote-control-style input device for their game console, Nintendo is going to be rich. Either from patent licensing fees, or from damages awarded for patent violations.
Slashdot Mirror
If you were a terrorist, you'd want to make your explosive device INCONSPICUOUS. Glowy blue LEDs are not inconspicuous.
And no, I don't think "hiding in the open" is a likely strategy.
I would expect an interesting time at the next shareholder's meeting though (and hopefully a huge fine to spur the conversation along).
And I would expect it to go something like "Holy shit, that ad campaign got more attention that we ever DREAMED it would! The resulting increased receipts from the ATHF movie more than cover the cost of the fines we had to pay, so free hookers and blow for everybody!"
To shutdown properly you have to select the option from a tiny menu.
What the hell?
Who were the 40 people who made THAT decision???
when the server goes down or we have power problems, my computer becomes a paperweight
Do you have power outages frequently at your workplace? I only recall two times in my career where the building I was working in went black, and both times we all had better things to think than "If I had a battery-powered notebook, I could still be editing that Powerpoint presentation right now!"
If you're expected to work by candlelight, I'd say your company has bigger problems than a poor terminal implementation.
the added security of dumb terminals - no vector for USB thumbdrives, floppys, or CD burners
How do you think the keyboard and mouse are going to be attached to the terminal? Hardwired?
USB ports on terminals is a given. It will be up to access policies at the operating system level whether to allow removable storage devices to be mounted on these ports, and the CTO will be hearing a lot of compelling arguments as to why it should be allowed. Once one user has a storage device mounted, it could be all over.
"PC" stands for "Personal Computer" which could be running Windows, Linux, *BSD, MSDOS, FreeDOS, etc. etc.
I'm pretty sure Apple was aware of this when they named their first flagship product "Apple II Personal Computer", thus popularizing the term.
If IBM had had its druthers we'd probably all be calling our boxen "x/5250 zDesktop Smart Terminals." For short.
Is there anything anyone here can actually do to help rescue Jim Gray?
Create a btree index over the area where he went missing. It'll be faster to search than doing a sequential scan.
The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls.
Why wouldn't we? When someone places a call to me from a land line or another carrier, my carrier doesn't get money from the call's originator, yet their cellular infrastructure is used. It makes more sense for customers to be billed for what they actually use, rather than blindly mimic the old POTS billing scheme.
Of course, given the way price plans are typically structured here, we never even notice. Calls to people with the same carrier are free, and/or calls made during off-peak hours are free, and/or calls to the five numbers we call the most are free, and/or the calling plan has more minutes than we would use in a month anyway...
If there's anything messed up about North American mobile phone pricing plans, it's that many carriers are still charging 10 cents or more to send or receive a single SMS text message.
If this is true, it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone, given the size of the cell-phone market outside the US."
That's one way of interpreting the news.
Another, possibly more likely, way is to take it to mean that the iPhone simply will not be available for service with ANY carrier outside the US. At least not during the initial launch window.
There will probably be downloadable sources and such that also use the same thing, but "any video and audio" is typical Slashdot anti-MS bull.
"Any A/V container format that can support ICT tokens" is probably the most accurate way to state it. Those MPEG files you downloaded five years ago can never be degraded, but content distributed today in "Windows Media Format v12" or whatever could be.
Saying "Content is King" in the same sentence as Myspace et. al. is like saying an overflowing ashtray is a sign of productivity.
If MySpace is successful (and there's no denying it is), then it MUST be because Content is King, because it sure as hell ain't Design that's reigning supreme there.
The short explanation is that, after the dot.com bubble, companies have gone with the "many hats/renaissance man" approach of the early 90s as opposed to the super-specialized approach of the bubble.
Interesting. I would argue that the "Webmaster" title actually better embodies the "renaissance man" approach than what the staffing situation has evolved into.
A classical Webmaster had to possess, to some degree, the skills of: a programmer, a sysadmin, a DBA, a graphical designer, a producer, an editor, and a project manager. In a small company, this made a lot of sense (and still does), but in medium-to-huge companies, there were probably already other people performing some of those duties, and they got reassigned as appropriate.
Today, it's more likely for a company to have some shared services between the web division and other divisions, like system and database administration, and the staff for the web division will tend to be more specialized: one person dedicated to backend programming, perhaps, and one to frontend design (or however the divisions logically fall for that business).
I had a job recently where my duties were JUST integration of frontend and backend components: take the HTML page design provided by the HTML Coder and turn it into functional JSP that accesses objects provided by the Java Developers. That was it. That kind of super-specialized role could not have existed five to ten years ago, in the heyday of the "Webmaster" title.
If you want to grab my attention, promise to recind every invasive executive order from the Bush presidency. Promise to avoid signing statements. Promise to institute executive orders that prohibit you and future presidents and their respective executive branches from taking the same liberties with our liberties as this one has.
Telling, isn't it, that we would get excited over a candidate that pledged nothing more than basic competence in executing the duties of the office of President? We should be expecting EVERY candidate to promise to avoid "signing statements"!
Data states that television, as the form of popular entertainment as we know it, did not last much beyond 2040... could this turn out to be remarkably accurate?
Depends on if he was referring to the appliance, or to the distribution model.
Certainly the model of a small number of content providers broadcasting programming on a fixed schedule is giving way to a large number of content providers, narrowcasting programming whenever the viewer wants it. But the basic design of the TV set, that being a box with a screen that people arrange chairs around to view, is still much the same as it was fifty years ago, and I have not yet seen any hints of the revolutionary technology that will replace it.
The facility was absolutely beautiful. When going between two buildings on an overhead walkway I saw the Golden Gate bridge with a nice orange sunset behind it.
What's the point of building a data center with a beautiful scenic view? Computers can't see, and even if they could they wouldn't appreciate it.
Same reasons, as for not wanting one....
1) Too expensive
2) Don't need/want a Blu-Ray player
3) No games
4) Too expensive
Which is why, if Sony can get the price down under $300 in a couple years, everything could change. Two of your reasons for not wanting a PS3 would be instantly invalidated, and depending on how many PS3 games and movies are released in the meantime, the other two might be as well.
I don't expect Sony to give up on the PS3 before 2009, either; they're some stubborn bastards. How long did it take after the adoption of MPEG Layer 3 as THE ad-hoc standard for digital music for Sony to abandon their ATRAC as the format for their portable players? Hell, I think they're STILL pushing it even though they support MP3 as well now.
That way, you wouldn't have to rerun wires if you changed the seating configuration.
And how often is a commercial passenger jet's seating re-configured? Once every 5-10 years maybe?
Whatever wireless standard they would have chosen to serve the cabin would have been obsolete by the time they could have taken advantage of it anyway.
If you buy many albums from the iTunes sture you can enjoy them and all is rosy. Then two years later the battery on your iPod has died, so you look at what's available. You think there are some nice offerings from creative or sandisk but, trouble is, you can't listen to any of your existing purchases. Your locked to Apple.
There's still nothing illegal or unethical about that.
Let's say I have a computer with Windows on it. I buy many commercial Windows software packages and enjoy them and all is rosy. Then five years later my CPU dies, so I look at what else is available. There are some nice computers from Apple, but, trouble is, I can't run any of my Windows programs on them! My locked to Windows!!!
(And nobody bring up Wine or Bootcamp or VirtualPC... that's not the point.)
I'm surprised that you're even getting a choice as to which graphing calculator you get to use. In my own high school math classes, the teacher basically told us all "Go out and buy a TI-83, because the week of lessons on How To Use A Graphing Calculator are all going to be based on that model."
Another thing I'm surprised about is that it's more than a decade since then, and the TI-83 STILL sells for roughly $100, with the only new feature as far as I can tell being the proprietary serial connection has been replaced with a standard USB one. What gives? Shouldn't technological progress have priced these things down to $20 by now?
The reason I copy is [...] to watch stuff I would never be purchasing anyway. Nor would I rent them.
And yet, you're more than willing to devote 2 hours of your life to watching something that you attribute so little value to that you wouldn't spend a dime on it. You gladly waste your time consuming a product you don't even like.
You're the MPAA's bitch and you don't even realize it.
Just make the first runs available for download and guaranteed the piracy problem will be minimized.
True, but the Empty Theater and Sluggish DVD Sales problems will increase correspondingly.
HD-DVD is winning the "format war"
HD-DVD players sold: 270,000
Blu-Ray players sold: 425,000
DVD players sold: ~180 million.
I don't think it's HD-DVD that's winning the format war, there.
Nintendo currently has about 2% market penetration. Not too shabby for a brand new console.
And all that in only 2 months of sales!
If they continue this trend of averaging a gain of 1% every month, by this time in 2016 they will control 110% of the market!!!
There were probably a dozen titles in all that had Zapper support, but even though the device was packed in with some versions of the console, that most people can't remember any of them beyond Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley shows that it really was a failure.
They simply need to make a remote to match their systems and Nintendo will be off the board
If either Microsoft or Sony attempts to make a motion-sensitive, remote-control-style input device for their game console, Nintendo is going to be rich. Either from patent licensing fees, or from damages awarded for patent violations.