Being 'Better' would imply that they (IE) followed W3C standards at the time,
No. Being "better" in the context of the marketplace would mean being seen as better by more people. Your average user doesn't even know what W3C standards are. They don't care. From what I remember, the version of IE that was around at the same time as the final version of Netscape Navigator was pretty much the same feature wise, but was a little bit more responsive, and slightly more stable. A lot of people genuinely preferred it. It was also available without a long winded download, which wasn't exactly fair, but it did offer a definite competitive advantage.
It's not just nerds who read Slashdot. This was reported all over the place.
It's also not just the US population.
And at least some people have decided not to purchase Sony equipment. I decided not to get myself a PSP. Maybe on its own, this sort of thing isn't going to be noticable on their balance sheet, but if they keep pulling this kind of stunt, more ethical companies will have that small advantage that may give them the lead.
Because they didn't violate the DMCA. They have a reasonable argument for the legitimacy of their software that doesn't involve circumvention of a device to control access to a protected work. It does circumvent the device, it is true, but this is simply a side effect of remviong software that degrade's the computer's security.
Does this mean that MS has the right to ignore perfectly legitimate laws within a jusristiction in which it operates? If they have such high moral scruples, then they should simply stay out of such a corrupt jurisdiction.
I dunno. All I remember is a poster. And I wasn;t all that impressed with it. Maybe it would have been a good idea to mention it was a sci-fi movie or something.
Ada Lovelace was a complete fruitloop. She had a highly overinflated opinion of herself, and didn't create nearly as much as she was given credit for. Read The Cogwheel Brain by Doron Swade. It has exceprts from letters where she gushes about her on genius.
If you want a proper early female geek I'd suggest Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper. The "inventor" of the software bug. There were probably a decent number working in Blethcley park during the Second World War.
Most users interfaces are essentially 2 dimensional. Even a car is topologically a flat surface. It's just curved around the interior of the car.
The only exceptions I can think of are a yoke on a plane, and a theremin. I don't know about how hard it is to fly a plane, but a theremin is exremely tricky to play. 3D UIs are not easy to use.
We don't use 3D much anywhere. The third dimension is just used for layering. Looking around my room - I have a bookshelf effectively I search for a book using a 2D set of spines, I have books - made up of several hundred 2D sheets. I have various odds and ends on my desk, mostly not on top of each other. My stereo is crolled by a 2D front panel, or by a 2D grid of buttons on the remote. If I walk somewhere, most of my journey is going to be at ground level. There are bridges, tunnels and multi-story buildings, but once agian, that's layers of 2D floors.
Percentage of income doesn't really tell us anything. He could give away 99% of his salary, and still have more money than he could ever need. Not many of us could say live off that small a pproportion of our income. Even giving 5% would hurt the income of a lot of families.
If it was just a tax dodge, then surely all the other millionaires would also give comparable amounts to charity. Larry Ellison is about as rich as Bill Gates, but only contributes a fraction as much to charity.
You do know they trashed a Dodge Charger for pretty much every one of those jumps, don't you? The TV show had them landing with a small thump, but a stunt driver would aim the nose at the ground.
Doesn't matter. You still have to lift the car those 3 inches. This still consumes energy. Maybe difficult to measure, but once you've generated 100Kilojoules, you've taken at least 100Kilojoules of energy away from the cars that has to be regenerated by inefficient internal combustion engines.
hose that hate SUVs like this, heavier vehicles will press hardest on the plates and will be slowed the most.
Most people who hate SUVs hate them for their inefficiency. This will make them even less efficient. They'll start measuring the efficieny in gallons to the mile.
It's hard to determine how good 70% is without knowing how many big budget films actually make Blackbuster levels of money. The fact is, they have some idea as soon as the idea is pitched. If the pitch for my film is a big budget movie directed bny Stephen Spielberg, and starring Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise, then it will be marketted haevily and expected to get somethwere between $50 million and $200 million, before they've even got a complete script. If it's a low budget cult horror starring some up and coming actors, it will be marketted less heavily, less money will be spent on it, and while it may make a few million it isn't that likely to be a blockbuster. This is obvious.
If the algorithm can tell us that Catwoman was going to be a disaster, or Blair Witch project was going to be a success, then it would be useful. Otherwise, I suspect that it emulates the ad-hoc rules that have developed in the industry anyway. The article pretty much says as much.
General high level language skill are transferrable to Perl and python. The problem with those is that most of the people using them aren't doing anything too clever with them, so a younger cheaper programmer would probably be preferable. Still - C is still used in embedded systems, and should be easy to learn for a Fortran programmer. Programming languages are not an important part of software development. They can be learned easily.
Absolutely. There are some things that you can't farm out to the cheapest codemonkey. Most of the guys who studied CompSci with me were just in it because they saw they could make good money in a comfortable job. The trouble is - they're not that good at their job. They can be easily replaced by a graduate. They find their jobs are being sent to India (then the Indian developers find they're being replaced by Vietnamese, but I digress) and think that this happens to everyone.
These guys just don't realise that there are whole industries that will not outsource - not overseas, not even to a local subcontractor - because they lose any control over quality. I know people who have worked on compilers, mobile phone technology, satellite guidance systems, and all sorts of other things because they have wide experience in genuine development jobs rather than just writing code to fit a spec.
Like I said - I'm not too sure about the details. I never use checks - regular of cashiers - so I don't really understand the details. However, It's still quite feasable that the bid was from someone attempting one of the scams of the type in the link.
Slashdot Mirror
Being 'Better' would imply that they (IE) followed W3C standards at the time,
No. Being "better" in the context of the marketplace would mean being seen as better by more people. Your average user doesn't even know what W3C standards are. They don't care. From what I remember, the version of IE that was around at the same time as the final version of Netscape Navigator was pretty much the same feature wise, but was a little bit more responsive, and slightly more stable. A lot of people genuinely preferred it. It was also available without a long winded download, which wasn't exactly fair, but it did offer a definite competitive advantage.
I'm not sure I see your point. How does a totally contrived, but more complicated situation help?
It's not just nerds who read Slashdot. This was reported all over the place.
It's also not just the US population.
And at least some people have decided not to purchase Sony equipment. I decided not to get myself a PSP. Maybe on its own, this sort of thing isn't going to be noticable on their balance sheet, but if they keep pulling this kind of stunt, more ethical companies will have that small advantage that may give them the lead.
Because they didn't violate the DMCA. They have a reasonable argument for the legitimacy of their software that doesn't involve circumvention of a device to control access to a protected work. It does circumvent the device, it is true, but this is simply a side effect of remviong software that degrade's the computer's security.
True, but so what?
Does this mean that MS has the right to ignore perfectly legitimate laws within a jusristiction in which it operates? If they have such high moral scruples, then they should simply stay out of such a corrupt jurisdiction.
Is it file formats? Kernel interfaces? Network protocols? Or are we looking a lot more low level?
We reached the Frankenstein world over 50 years ago with the first Kidney transplant. Why is this so much worse?
I dunno. All I remember is a poster. And I wasn;t all that impressed with it. Maybe it would have been a good idea to mention it was a sci-fi movie or something.
Really, ID should be quite easy to prove. All one needs to prove is spontaneous creation of a creature.
Ada Lovelace was a complete fruitloop. She had a highly overinflated opinion of herself, and didn't create nearly as much as she was given credit for. Read The Cogwheel Brain by Doron Swade. It has exceprts from letters where she gushes about her on genius.
If you want a proper early female geek I'd suggest Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper. The "inventor" of the software bug. There were probably a decent number working in Blethcley park during the Second World War.
I already came up with the concept, a good 5 minutes after I read this, so now I'm going to sue yu for copyright infringement.
Most users interfaces are essentially 2 dimensional. Even a car is topologically a flat surface. It's just curved around the interior of the car.
The only exceptions I can think of are a yoke on a plane, and a theremin. I don't know about how hard it is to fly a plane, but a theremin is exremely tricky to play. 3D UIs are not easy to use.
We don't use 3D much anywhere. The third dimension is just used for layering. Looking around my room - I have a bookshelf effectively I search for a book using a 2D set of spines, I have books - made up of several hundred 2D sheets. I have various odds and ends on my desk, mostly not on top of each other. My stereo is crolled by a 2D front panel, or by a 2D grid of buttons on the remote. If I walk somewhere, most of my journey is going to be at ground level. There are bridges, tunnels and multi-story buildings, but once agian, that's layers of 2D floors.
Percentage of income doesn't really tell us anything. He could give away 99% of his salary, and still have more money than he could ever need. Not many of us could say live off that small a pproportion of our income. Even giving 5% would hurt the income of a lot of families.
If it was just a tax dodge, then surely all the other millionaires would also give comparable amounts to charity. Larry Ellison is about as rich as Bill Gates, but only contributes a fraction as much to charity.
I remember being as arrogant as you.
Not sure that's a good idea...
You do know they trashed a Dodge Charger for pretty much every one of those jumps, don't you? The TV show had them landing with a small thump, but a stunt driver would aim the nose at the ground.
Doesn't matter. You still have to lift the car those 3 inches. This still consumes energy. Maybe difficult to measure, but once you've generated 100Kilojoules, you've taken at least 100Kilojoules of energy away from the cars that has to be regenerated by inefficient internal combustion engines.
hose that hate SUVs like this, heavier vehicles will press hardest on the plates and will be slowed the most.
Most people who hate SUVs hate them for their inefficiency. This will make them even less efficient. They'll start measuring the efficieny in gallons to the mile.
It's hard to determine how good 70% is without knowing how many big budget films actually make Blackbuster levels of money. The fact is, they have some idea as soon as the idea is pitched. If the pitch for my film is a big budget movie directed bny Stephen Spielberg, and starring Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise, then it will be marketted haevily and expected to get somethwere between $50 million and $200 million, before they've even got a complete script. If it's a low budget cult horror starring some up and coming actors, it will be marketted less heavily, less money will be spent on it, and while it may make a few million it isn't that likely to be a blockbuster. This is obvious.
If the algorithm can tell us that Catwoman was going to be a disaster, or Blair Witch project was going to be a success, then it would be useful. Otherwise, I suspect that it emulates the ad-hoc rules that have developed in the industry anyway. The article pretty much says as much.
Well, it worked for Scott Adams. It should work for you.
General high level language skill are transferrable to Perl and python. The problem with those is that most of the people using them aren't doing anything too clever with them, so a younger cheaper programmer would probably be preferable. Still - C is still used in embedded systems, and should be easy to learn for a Fortran programmer. Programming languages are not an important part of software development. They can be learned easily.
I think most of the people who get that joke are probably in the same position as the poster.
Absolutely. There are some things that you can't farm out to the cheapest codemonkey. Most of the guys who studied CompSci with me were just in it because they saw they could make good money in a comfortable job. The trouble is - they're not that good at their job. They can be easily replaced by a graduate. They find their jobs are being sent to India (then the Indian developers find they're being replaced by Vietnamese, but I digress) and think that this happens to everyone.
These guys just don't realise that there are whole industries that will not outsource - not overseas, not even to a local subcontractor - because they lose any control over quality. I know people who have worked on compilers, mobile phone technology, satellite guidance systems, and all sorts of other things because they have wide experience in genuine development jobs rather than just writing code to fit a spec.
Like I said - I'm not too sure about the details. I never use checks - regular of cashiers - so I don't really understand the details. However, It's still quite feasable that the bid was from someone attempting one of the scams of the type in the link.