The net used to be a forum for openness, sharing, and community. It still is, of course, but now it's also a den of thievery and darkness. It's too bad.
One thing about this article is that it makes it seems as though the guys at the top of the pyramid are the ones to blame. They are, of course, but the little guys at the bottom of the pyramid are just as bad. If it weren't for the guys at the bottom, there wouldn't be guys at the top.
If you engage in illegal file sharing, the first place to point your finger should be in the mirror.
This seems like just another step in Apple's "digital hub" strategy. In the past, they've made the computer on your desk the center of a digital lifestyle, and they've backed that up with the i-apps (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iSync, iChat). They're not just selling hardware or software, they're selling a way of life where your computer does a lot of truly useful stuff for you with a minimum of fuss.
But what happens when you've got resources to share, like the familiy photo album, your iTunes music collection, etc., but the computer at the center of your digital lifestyle is a laptop? And the center of your wife's digital lifestyle is her laptop? I can tell you from personal experience, things work less smoothly than they should. We'd like to have one music collection that we can both access at any time. We'd like to show friends some photos using TiVo's home media option without having to wake up the right laptop.
Apple's '.Mac' addresses part of the issue in that it at least gives us an always-on storage space on the network where we can keep things like our iCal calendars, address book data, and other files we want to share. It also gives us some (expensive) space to publish little web pages to share photos and such with friends and family. But what we really need is an Mac on our home network that's always available. Ideally, it should be relatively inexpensive to purchase and it should use as little power as possible.
I've been toying with the idea of buying a G5 iMac and hanging it on the wall somewhere in the house as a combination home server and digital picture frame. A cheaper, headless, G4-based iMac seems like a better solution, though. I hope that I'm part of the market that Apple is targetting with this machine.
(the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba had a yield of only 50 Megatons)
A big difference between meteors and nuclear weapons, I presume, is that a meteor strike probably won't involve tons of radioactive fallout that'll poison vast areas. It'll surely kick up lots of dust and debris, but at least survivors won't have to be afraid to breath.
In addition, if you have a dual G5 and your computer's hypervisor doesn't grant each OS a dedicated CPU, then a multithreaded image editor can apply a filter to one half of the image on one CPU and to the other half of the image on the other CPU.
I've got a dual processor G5, and my multithreaded image editor can already apply a filter to one half of the image on one CPU and to the other half on the other CPU. Or, completely different processes can run simultaneously on the two processors. And the beauty of it is that it all happens behind the scenes, without my being aware of any of that. That's the whole freakin' point of using a multitasking system.
Now, you start running different operating systems simultaneously on the one machine, and the OS that I'm actually dealing with will likely be limited to a single processor. I'm sure there are cases where this sort of thing would be useful, but I don't think single-user desktop machines is one of 'em.
You could make your machine an X11 application server, and have other users connect X11 terminals (computers running a dedicated X server) and use your machine that way. No, they won't be able to use Mac specific apps, but it at least gives them a GIMP to play with while you use Photoshop.
I could, but if they've already got a computer of their own, why do they need to use mine? Time sharing makes a lot of sense for systems that are too big or too expensive to give to everyone in an organization. Desktop machines are what they are because they're small and cheap enough to put one on every desktop. They're the antithesis of time sharing systems.
A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently.
That sounds cool and all, but I don't multitask nearly as well as even the current G5. One OS running a few applications is about all I need most of the time. Until Apple (or someone else) starts selling extra terminals that can connect to my machine, I can't really share the machine with other people (aside from providing various services, or letting them log into a command line environment). And no matter what, I don't want a copy of any version of Windows running on even a sliver of my machine, thanks very much.
What would be much more interesting, for developers at least, would be to run multiple copies of the same operating system. I could run my app in one copy of the OS and debug it "remotely" from a second copy... two machine debugging in one machine!
but I am really sick of hearing about lawsuits. Period.
Dude, don't tell us. Tell the guy who's sitting next to you holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read about the lawsuits.
I understand the need to protect brand equity, and can even see the justification for protecting your "IP," but honestly. When will these companies stop with the lawsuits!
But honestly what? Do you expect Apple or any other company to say to itself "You know, there are a lot of lawsuits out there right now... maybe we should just let this thing slide..."? And when you say "When will these companies stop with the lawsuits" which lawsuits are you referring to, exactly? Any lawsuits? Or just the high profile ones that the guy with the gun is making you read? The legal system is there to be used. Yes, it sucks when someone abuses the system. But not every lawsuit, or even every lawsuit that you read about, is an abuse of the system.
. They have very strict rules for anyone working with Apple.
The main one being that you have to sign an NDA, i.e. a Non-Disclosure Agreement. If you've never seen one of these, you may be interested to know that it's a legal document that you sign which basically says that you promise not to tell any of the secrets with which you're about to be entrusted, and if you do, the other party (Apple, in this case) has the legal right to kick your ass.
All that's happened here is that someone told Apple's secrets after signing an NDA, and that person is now about to get the ass-kicking that he has invited upon himself.
Before anyone makes fun of this guy for not just using PowerPoint or something else
If I were going to make fun of this guy, it sure wouldn't be for not using PowerPoint. It'd be for being so damn full of himself. Basically, this guy builds a little platform to hold a sheet of glass and a PowerBook and calls it a teleprompter. Big deal. Give me a tripod, two square feet of MDF, a sheet of glass, and a couple hinges, and big piece of black felt and I'll build you a version of this guy's teleprompter that fits in your laptop bag, is easier to read, and doesn't reflect light from above into the camera.
You're right that controlling the scrolling rate of a teleprompter can be a delicate matter. Thirty seconds on Google would find half a dozen Mac-compatible apps which are for the most part pretty inexpensive and which do exactly the sorts of things you need from a teleprompter. They'll give you big white letters on a dark background, reverse the text, scroll manually or automatically, and so on. Instead, Mr. Lawler uses some PDF tricks to come up with a manual-only, page-by-page scrolling system. Creative maybe, but it sounds less than effective.
I'd say that TFA is more about Brian P. Lawler and his lackluster screen reflector than about building an effective teleprompter. And that's too bad, because it wouldn't have taken any more effort to design a more useful device incorporating off-the-shelf software.
Perhaps, but he did radically change the direction the country was moving in with respect to Kyoto. Had Bush wanted to get Kyoto ratified, he surely could have done so.
He also gutted the Clean Air Act with his dishonestly named "Clear Skies" initiative. Clear Skies weakens the emissions controls of the Clean Air Act, and nearly eliminates New Source Review.
Don' t try to paint this like Bush is a friend of the environment. You can't make that case.
'Mr. Schleicher said that students in countries that emphasized theorems and rote learning tended not to do as well as those that emphasized the more practical aspects of mathematics.'
So it seems that it's important after all for teachers to be able to answer the eternal question in math classes: What's this good for? Why do we need to know this?
It's a tough question to answer, and most teachers I ever had would dismiss it with "You just do" or something equally meaningless. The truth is that much of what we learn and practice in math classes is important to know mainly because you need a good foundation before you can understand the more advanced material. But almost any mathematical concept has real-world uses, and it sounds like emphasizing those more could be helpful.
I have a big problem with the word "purposely." Evolution does not do anything "purposely," or with intention. Natural selection is a process that applies to all things that reproduce, whether it's an ape or a computer virus, just as gravity applies to all things that have mass.
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?
If European television is anything like American television, TV's problem may not be so much that the internet is good, but that TV is bad. The number of commercials per hour has increased over the years, and the quality of the programming has often decreased, at least on the networks. It may be that we're reaching a point where viewers are no longer willing to put up with all the commercials and crappy programming, and they're looking for alternatives. HBO and other cable channels have been providing alternatives for some time now, and broadband internet connections may be just one more.
In the old days, there were lots of open source games, with moria and nethack (still is) being a couple of very famous ones.
Right, but those are perfect examples of the kind of products you get from open source efforts. Not that there's anything wrong with moria or nethack... they're classic games, fun to play, and addictive enough that people still get stuck on them. But the current games market demands fantastic graphics, great sound, etc., all of which require expensive resources, including labor. Most games today are also written for a particular platform. That's true partly because the platform owners use exclusivity as an important marketing tool, and partly because some games have deep ties to hardware and platform features.
None of that is likely to change anytime soon. I don't see today's teenage boys suddenly deciding that ANSI graphics and zero sound is super retro chic and cool enough to ditch their PlayStation.
But games are only one example. Although the FOSS community has made several attempts at productivity software over the years, it's never been a real threat to proprietary packages like MS Office. Yes, I know about OpenOffice, and I wish it nothing but the best. But the truth is that developing great productivity applications requires huge effort and organization beyond just developing code, and proprietary developers will at least have a significant advantage in this domain for the foreseeable future.
By the same token, there's no inherent reason that proprietary developers can't build a great OS or a great web server or something like that. It's happened, and plenty of times. But the FOSS community has an advantage in these domains, and it'll continue to threaten proprietary developers who seek to maintain huge market share there.
The simple solution to this problem/debate, and really the only solution, is to let the market decide in each case. There are many markets where a proprietary solution may in fact be the best solution, and there are others where open source, communally developed software is more likely to succeed.
A good example is the games market. Developing compelling games is a lot of work (just ask the poor schlubs over at EA). Some games are written as a labor of love and may be released as open source projects. Far more often, though, games are produced like movies, using expensive resources and labor. And they often have to be produced on a tight schedule for marketing reasons, so that their release coincides with the release of some movie or holiday buying season or whatever. For these reasons, there are few if any open source games out there, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Obviously, there are also many areas in which open source products are kicking the proprietary competition's collective ass. These are usually products which work best if they can run on multiple platforms, meet the needs of lots of different people in different situations, and provide enough value that smart people are willing to spend their time improving and customizing them. Linux, Apache, PHP, etc.
So lets stop worrying about whether open source software is better than proprietary software in all cases or vice versa. It's pretty clear that both bring value to our society and to our economy. Lets instead keep improving the ways we develop products under both systems, and make sure that we maintain an infrastructure that works for both. Software patents are a dumb and harmful idea, but copyright is important and should be respected and protected. Open standards are essential to vibrant markets and useful tools, and we should insist on vendor-neutral bodies to develop and maintain them.
It's not news that EA is concerned about its reputation and is trying to find a way to clean up its image.
It'll be news if and when EA actually does something to correct its atrocious labor practices. It'll be news if and when EA decides to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the rest of the industry to clean up its act by instituting truly fair compensation for its employees. It'll be news if EA decides to adopt software development methodologies that promote the timely development of high quality products without requiring employees to work insane hours.
But the idea that EA is staring slack-jawed as its reputation (and, I hope, it's profitability) vanishes down the toilet is not news. It's not even interesting.
You'll notice a lot of pro photographers have devices to move the flash further from the lens: either tall stalks with the flash at the end, handheld flash units on wires (to be held arm-outstretched in the non-camera hand), or even RC flash units on tripods several metres from the camera.
Sure, and they usually also have some sort of diffuser or umbrella with their flash. Or they'll bounce their flash off the ceiling for the same effect. Or multiple flashes are set up so that each one fills in the shadows from the other units. At the macrophotography extreme, you use a ring flash that surrounds the lens to provide flash from every direction and eliminate shadows (that the camera can see) altogether. These are all just ways to reduce the harsh, distracting shadow that comes from a single, direct flash in a low light situation.
But with a little consumer point-and-shoot, where you've got a tiny flash offset just a bit from the lens, you tend to get a dark shadow line around the edge of your subject that's pretty unattractive. The brilliant thing here is that these guys realized that the same effect can be put to use in a really simple and interesting way. They turned something most people see as a problem into a great solution for a different problem.
Funny that you should mention A-ha, because "ah ha!" is pretty much what I said to myself when I read TFA. The offset flash on most cameras is usually viewed as a liability that screws up your photos, but these guys have turned around and taken advantage of the effect.
...as if colleges and universities didn't already compete openly and directly with each other. As if there weren't already more college ranking organizations out there. Heck, there's even overt competition between all the different rankings out there. And as if the federal government has done such a good job with the (insufficiently funded) No Child Left Behind Act that it's got extra resources lying around just waiting to be applied to higher education.
One strategy for maintaining your writing skills is to continue to read good writing. When life gets busy, one of the first things people stop doing is reading. And when we do read, it's likely to be some geeky manual like "Gain Fame and Fortune with PHP in 24 Hours" or "Cocoa Programming Yet Again." Those might even be written well, but they're not likely to expand your imagination or your vocabulary. Try to read something substantial and non-technical each week.
Another strategy is to write less. Choose to spend your writing time on pieces which are really important, and skip the gratuitous stuff that doesn't matter to you (he says, while posting on Slashdot). I know that writing instructors always seem to counsel students to hone their craft by writing as often as possible, but I don't think jotting off 100 emails a day counts as "writing" unless you decide to actually think of it as writing. And you likely don't have time to polish 100 pieces a day, even if they're short.
You know, writing decent email is an art form, something we used to take pride in. But these days, with these kids texting ungrammatical half-phrases all over the place, it's becoming something of a lost art. I tell you, kids today can't write a complete sentence, and they barely even know how to use an emoticon properly.:-\ It won't be long before people forget how to type. Oh, the inhumanity!
Re:So now I can't open my passport safely?
on
Tin Foil Passports?
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· Score: 1
But most of the people pushing things like this are just plain stupid, not out to get you.
Of course, but these stupid people control the passport that I must carry when I leave the country. Their stupidity therefore exposes me to significant potential harm.
The idea that random bad guys might be likely to have an RFID reader may seem far-fetched, but that's only because RFID is relatively new technology. In just a few years it'll be commonplace, and any yahoo will be able to buy a reader and use it for whatever they like. At that point, we'll all be talking about exactly how much information all these RFID tags expose, and wondering about the best way to disable them.
So now I can't open my passport safely?
on
Tin Foil Passports?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
However, both they and the New York Times have published articles reporting vendors' low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.'
Well that's just a fantastic idea. Now I don't have to worry about someone surrepticiously snagging my personal data as long as my passport is closed. Of course, my passport isn't actually useful if I can't let someone open it.
RFID is an interesting technology with a lot of potential, but passports are a stupid, stupid application for RFID. There are much better technologies for passports. Magnetic stripes and bar codes both do the same thing RFID does, but only at close range and with the permission of the document's holder. There are some 2D bar code symbologies out there that store more than enough data for this application and which are highly redundant, therefore resistant to dirt, wear, etc. Bar codes can be read very quickly and require no contact, which means less wear on both the documents and the readers.
The main thing that RFID gives you over bar codes is the ability to read them without the document holder's knowledge, and that makes me very suspicious of anyone who insists that we must have RFID in passports, drivers licenses, etc.
Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem
From the NY Times article, it sounds like EA uses coercive techniques and naive young employees. My own response is that I won't buy another game from EA until they reform the way they treat their employees, and I encourage others to adopt the same policy.
My attitude on this isn't just sympathy for EA employees. It's enlightened self-interest. At 35, I'm apparently too old to get a job with EA at any salary, let alone a fair one working under fair conditions. I choose not to support such companies.
Slashdot Mirror
The net used to be a forum for openness, sharing, and community. It still is, of course, but now it's also a den of thievery and darkness. It's too bad.
One thing about this article is that it makes it seems as though the guys at the top of the pyramid are the ones to blame. They are, of course, but the little guys at the bottom of the pyramid are just as bad. If it weren't for the guys at the bottom, there wouldn't be guys at the top.
If you engage in illegal file sharing, the first place to point your finger should be in the mirror.
This seems like just another step in Apple's "digital hub" strategy. In the past, they've made the computer on your desk the center of a digital lifestyle, and they've backed that up with the i-apps (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iCal, iSync, iChat). They're not just selling hardware or software, they're selling a way of life where your computer does a lot of truly useful stuff for you with a minimum of fuss.
But what happens when you've got resources to share, like the familiy photo album, your iTunes music collection, etc., but the computer at the center of your digital lifestyle is a laptop? And the center of your wife's digital lifestyle is her laptop? I can tell you from personal experience, things work less smoothly than they should. We'd like to have one music collection that we can both access at any time. We'd like to show friends some photos using TiVo's home media option without having to wake up the right laptop.
Apple's '.Mac' addresses part of the issue in that it at least gives us an always-on storage space on the network where we can keep things like our iCal calendars, address book data, and other files we want to share. It also gives us some (expensive) space to publish little web pages to share photos and such with friends and family. But what we really need is an Mac on our home network that's always available. Ideally, it should be relatively inexpensive to purchase and it should use as little power as possible.
I've been toying with the idea of buying a G5 iMac and hanging it on the wall somewhere in the house as a combination home server and digital picture frame. A cheaper, headless, G4-based iMac seems like a better solution, though. I hope that I'm part of the market that Apple is targetting with this machine.
(the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba had a yield of only 50 Megatons)
A big difference between meteors and nuclear weapons, I presume, is that a meteor strike probably won't involve tons of radioactive fallout that'll poison vast areas. It'll surely kick up lots of dust and debris, but at least survivors won't have to be afraid to breath.
In addition, if you have a dual G5 and your computer's hypervisor doesn't grant each OS a dedicated CPU, then a multithreaded image editor can apply a filter to one half of the image on one CPU and to the other half of the image on the other CPU.
I've got a dual processor G5, and my multithreaded image editor can already apply a filter to one half of the image on one CPU and to the other half on the other CPU. Or, completely different processes can run simultaneously on the two processors. And the beauty of it is that it all happens behind the scenes, without my being aware of any of that. That's the whole freakin' point of using a multitasking system.
Now, you start running different operating systems simultaneously on the one machine, and the OS that I'm actually dealing with will likely be limited to a single processor. I'm sure there are cases where this sort of thing would be useful, but I don't think single-user desktop machines is one of 'em.
You could make your machine an X11 application server, and have other users connect X11 terminals (computers running a dedicated X server) and use your machine that way. No, they won't be able to use Mac specific apps, but it at least gives them a GIMP to play with while you use Photoshop.
I could, but if they've already got a computer of their own, why do they need to use mine? Time sharing makes a lot of sense for systems that are too big or too expensive to give to everyone in an organization. Desktop machines are what they are because they're small and cheap enough to put one on every desktop. They're the antithesis of time sharing systems.
A Mac built around this chip could theoretically run OS X, GNU/Linux, Mac OS 9, and the PowerPC version of Windows NT, all simultaneously and independently.
That sounds cool and all, but I don't multitask nearly as well as even the current G5. One OS running a few applications is about all I need most of the time. Until Apple (or someone else) starts selling extra terminals that can connect to my machine, I can't really share the machine with other people (aside from providing various services, or letting them log into a command line environment). And no matter what, I don't want a copy of any version of Windows running on even a sliver of my machine, thanks very much.
What would be much more interesting, for developers at least, would be to run multiple copies of the same operating system. I could run my app in one copy of the OS and debug it "remotely" from a second copy... two machine debugging in one machine!
but I am really sick of hearing about lawsuits. Period.
Dude, don't tell us. Tell the guy who's sitting next to you holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read about the lawsuits.
I understand the need to protect brand equity, and can even see the justification for protecting your "IP," but honestly. When will these companies stop with the lawsuits!
But honestly what? Do you expect Apple or any other company to say to itself "You know, there are a lot of lawsuits out there right now... maybe we should just let this thing slide..."? And when you say "When will these companies stop with the lawsuits" which lawsuits are you referring to, exactly? Any lawsuits? Or just the high profile ones that the guy with the gun is making you read? The legal system is there to be used. Yes, it sucks when someone abuses the system. But not every lawsuit, or even every lawsuit that you read about, is an abuse of the system.
. They have very strict rules for anyone working with Apple.
The main one being that you have to sign an NDA, i.e. a Non-Disclosure Agreement. If you've never seen one of these, you may be interested to know that it's a legal document that you sign which basically says that you promise not to tell any of the secrets with which you're about to be entrusted, and if you do, the other party (Apple, in this case) has the legal right to kick your ass.
All that's happened here is that someone told Apple's secrets after signing an NDA, and that person is now about to get the ass-kicking that he has invited upon himself.
Chalk up a win for continued freedom on subscription services.
Well isn't that just wonderful! Perhaps next we'll get to pay to read what we like. Or maybe we'll get to pay to vote.
If you have to pay for freedom, you're not free.
Before anyone makes fun of this guy for not just using PowerPoint or something else
If I were going to make fun of this guy, it sure wouldn't be for not using PowerPoint. It'd be for being so damn full of himself. Basically, this guy builds a little platform to hold a sheet of glass and a PowerBook and calls it a teleprompter. Big deal. Give me a tripod, two square feet of MDF, a sheet of glass, and a couple hinges, and big piece of black felt and I'll build you a version of this guy's teleprompter that fits in your laptop bag, is easier to read, and doesn't reflect light from above into the camera.
You're right that controlling the scrolling rate of a teleprompter can be a delicate matter. Thirty seconds on Google would find half a dozen Mac-compatible apps which are for the most part pretty inexpensive and which do exactly the sorts of things you need from a teleprompter. They'll give you big white letters on a dark background, reverse the text, scroll manually or automatically, and so on. Instead, Mr. Lawler uses some PDF tricks to come up with a manual-only, page-by-page scrolling system. Creative maybe, but it sounds less than effective.
I'd say that TFA is more about Brian P. Lawler and his lackluster screen reflector than about building an effective teleprompter. And that's too bad, because it wouldn't have taken any more effort to design a more useful device incorporating off-the-shelf software.
Bush didn't "pull out of" anything.
Perhaps, but he did radically change the direction the country was moving in with respect to Kyoto. Had Bush wanted to get Kyoto ratified, he surely could have done so.
He also gutted the Clean Air Act with his dishonestly named "Clear Skies" initiative. Clear Skies weakens the emissions controls of the Clean Air Act, and nearly eliminates New Source Review.
Don' t try to paint this like Bush is a friend of the environment. You can't make that case.
'Mr. Schleicher said that students in countries that emphasized theorems and rote learning tended not to do as well as those that emphasized the more practical aspects of mathematics.'
So it seems that it's important after all for teachers to be able to answer the eternal question in math classes: What's this good for? Why do we need to know this?
It's a tough question to answer, and most teachers I ever had would dismiss it with "You just do" or something equally meaningless. The truth is that much of what we learn and practice in math classes is important to know mainly because you need a good foundation before you can understand the more advanced material. But almost any mathematical concept has real-world uses, and it sounds like emphasizing those more could be helpful.
And evolution has purposely kept them.
I have a big problem with the word "purposely." Evolution does not do anything "purposely," or with intention. Natural selection is a process that applies to all things that reproduce, whether it's an ape or a computer virus, just as gravity applies to all things that have mass.
Is it possible that the usefulness of TV has decreased with the internet so expansive these days?
If European television is anything like American television, TV's problem may not be so much that the internet is good, but that TV is bad. The number of commercials per hour has increased over the years, and the quality of the programming has often decreased, at least on the networks. It may be that we're reaching a point where viewers are no longer willing to put up with all the commercials and crappy programming, and they're looking for alternatives. HBO and other cable channels have been providing alternatives for some time now, and broadband internet connections may be just one more.
In the old days, there were lots of open source games, with moria and nethack (still is) being a couple of very famous ones.
Right, but those are perfect examples of the kind of products you get from open source efforts. Not that there's anything wrong with moria or nethack... they're classic games, fun to play, and addictive enough that people still get stuck on them. But the current games market demands fantastic graphics, great sound, etc., all of which require expensive resources, including labor. Most games today are also written for a particular platform. That's true partly because the platform owners use exclusivity as an important marketing tool, and partly because some games have deep ties to hardware and platform features.
None of that is likely to change anytime soon. I don't see today's teenage boys suddenly deciding that ANSI graphics and zero sound is super retro chic and cool enough to ditch their PlayStation.
But games are only one example. Although the FOSS community has made several attempts at productivity software over the years, it's never been a real threat to proprietary packages like MS Office. Yes, I know about OpenOffice, and I wish it nothing but the best. But the truth is that developing great productivity applications requires huge effort and organization beyond just developing code, and proprietary developers will at least have a significant advantage in this domain for the foreseeable future.
By the same token, there's no inherent reason that proprietary developers can't build a great OS or a great web server or something like that. It's happened, and plenty of times. But the FOSS community has an advantage in these domains, and it'll continue to threaten proprietary developers who seek to maintain huge market share there.
The simple solution to this problem/debate, and really the only solution, is to let the market decide in each case. There are many markets where a proprietary solution may in fact be the best solution, and there are others where open source, communally developed software is more likely to succeed.
A good example is the games market. Developing compelling games is a lot of work (just ask the poor schlubs over at EA). Some games are written as a labor of love and may be released as open source projects. Far more often, though, games are produced like movies, using expensive resources and labor. And they often have to be produced on a tight schedule for marketing reasons, so that their release coincides with the release of some movie or holiday buying season or whatever. For these reasons, there are few if any open source games out there, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Obviously, there are also many areas in which open source products are kicking the proprietary competition's collective ass. These are usually products which work best if they can run on multiple platforms, meet the needs of lots of different people in different situations, and provide enough value that smart people are willing to spend their time improving and customizing them. Linux, Apache, PHP, etc.
So lets stop worrying about whether open source software is better than proprietary software in all cases or vice versa. It's pretty clear that both bring value to our society and to our economy. Lets instead keep improving the ways we develop products under both systems, and make sure that we maintain an infrastructure that works for both. Software patents are a dumb and harmful idea, but copyright is important and should be respected and protected. Open standards are essential to vibrant markets and useful tools, and we should insist on vendor-neutral bodies to develop and maintain them.
It's not news that EA is concerned about its reputation and is trying to find a way to clean up its image.
It'll be news if and when EA actually does something to correct its atrocious labor practices. It'll be news if and when EA decides to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the rest of the industry to clean up its act by instituting truly fair compensation for its employees. It'll be news if EA decides to adopt software development methodologies that promote the timely development of high quality products without requiring employees to work insane hours.
But the idea that EA is staring slack-jawed as its reputation (and, I hope, it's profitability) vanishes down the toilet is not news. It's not even interesting.
You'll notice a lot of pro photographers have devices to move the flash further from the lens: either tall stalks with the flash at the end, handheld flash units on wires (to be held arm-outstretched in the non-camera hand), or even RC flash units on tripods several metres from the camera.
Sure, and they usually also have some sort of diffuser or umbrella with their flash. Or they'll bounce their flash off the ceiling for the same effect. Or multiple flashes are set up so that each one fills in the shadows from the other units. At the macrophotography extreme, you use a ring flash that surrounds the lens to provide flash from every direction and eliminate shadows (that the camera can see) altogether. These are all just ways to reduce the harsh, distracting shadow that comes from a single, direct flash in a low light situation.
But with a little consumer point-and-shoot, where you've got a tiny flash offset just a bit from the lens, you tend to get a dark shadow line around the edge of your subject that's pretty unattractive. The brilliant thing here is that these guys realized that the same effect can be put to use in a really simple and interesting way. They turned something most people see as a problem into a great solution for a different problem.
Funny that you should mention A-ha, because "ah ha!" is pretty much what I said to myself when I read TFA. The offset flash on most cameras is usually viewed as a liability that screws up your photos, but these guys have turned around and taken advantage of the effect.
Simple idea, well executed. Ah ha!
...as if colleges and universities didn't already compete openly and directly with each other. As if there weren't already more college ranking organizations out there. Heck, there's even overt competition between all the different rankings out there. And as if the federal government has done such a good job with the (insufficiently funded) No Child Left Behind Act that it's got extra resources lying around just waiting to be applied to higher education.
You make good points.
One strategy for maintaining your writing skills is to continue to read good writing. When life gets busy, one of the first things people stop doing is reading. And when we do read, it's likely to be some geeky manual like "Gain Fame and Fortune with PHP in 24 Hours" or "Cocoa Programming Yet Again." Those might even be written well, but they're not likely to expand your imagination or your vocabulary. Try to read something substantial and non-technical each week.
Another strategy is to write less. Choose to spend your writing time on pieces which are really important, and skip the gratuitous stuff that doesn't matter to you (he says, while posting on Slashdot). I know that writing instructors always seem to counsel students to hone their craft by writing as often as possible, but I don't think jotting off 100 emails a day counts as "writing" unless you decide to actually think of it as writing. And you likely don't have time to polish 100 pieces a day, even if they're short.
You know, writing decent email is an art form, something we used to take pride in. But these days, with these kids texting ungrammatical half-phrases all over the place, it's becoming something of a lost art. I tell you, kids today can't write a complete sentence, and they barely even know how to use an emoticon properly. :-\ It won't be long before people forget how to type. Oh, the inhumanity!
But most of the people pushing things like this are just plain stupid, not out to get you.
Of course, but these stupid people control the passport that I must carry when I leave the country. Their stupidity therefore exposes me to significant potential harm.
The idea that random bad guys might be likely to have an RFID reader may seem far-fetched, but that's only because RFID is relatively new technology. In just a few years it'll be commonplace, and any yahoo will be able to buy a reader and use it for whatever they like. At that point, we'll all be talking about exactly how much information all these RFID tags expose, and wondering about the best way to disable them.
However, both they and the New York Times have published articles reporting vendors' low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.'
Well that's just a fantastic idea. Now I don't have to worry about someone surrepticiously snagging my personal data as long as my passport is closed. Of course, my passport isn't actually useful if I can't let someone open it.
RFID is an interesting technology with a lot of potential, but passports are a stupid, stupid application for RFID. There are much better technologies for passports. Magnetic stripes and bar codes both do the same thing RFID does, but only at close range and with the permission of the document's holder. There are some 2D bar code symbologies out there that store more than enough data for this application and which are highly redundant, therefore resistant to dirt, wear, etc. Bar codes can be read very quickly and require no contact, which means less wear on both the documents and the readers.
The main thing that RFID gives you over bar codes is the ability to read them without the document holder's knowledge, and that makes me very suspicious of anyone who insists that we must have RFID in passports, drivers licenses, etc.
The downside? The process that produces the hydrogen uses a component in short supply.
Let me guess: that component is a renewable, non-polluting source of energy?
Guess I'd better go RTFA.
Does EA sprinkle magic pixie dust on their serfs to get around this problem
From the NY Times article, it sounds like EA uses coercive techniques and naive young employees. My own response is that I won't buy another game from EA until they reform the way they treat their employees, and I encourage others to adopt the same policy.
My attitude on this isn't just sympathy for EA employees. It's enlightened self-interest. At 35, I'm apparently too old to get a job with EA at any salary, let alone a fair one working under fair conditions. I choose not to support such companies.