your first problem is that believing your 8M card is fine
It's fine for what I do, which is non-3D, non-video, non-graphic-intensive computer work. And I believe most secretaries, lawyers, small biz owners, marketting guy, salesmen... don't need anymore than that. For some people, architects, graphic artists,..., higher resolutions, good color definition and high-quality video signals may be needed, but hardly anything that requires the kind of calculating power todays video cards sport.
Would you tell me then what's wrong with my 8M card, apart the fact that it won't work in an AGP port?
is that normal ones, the cheapo ones witl 8M of ram and no 3D-XYZ and hyper-acme rendering, that work just dandy for word processing, spreadsheeting and other forms of work (oh the dirty word!), are disappearing.
Pricewise, that's not a problem in itself, I don't care if I have a super vidboard for dirt cheap and underuse it, but with all those bells and whistles that I won't use, manufacturers don't release their specs anymore, and so I have to install shitty binary drivers instead of using kernel-compiled ones.
In short, with my old Matrox Millenium, I could do 1600x1200x16 just like I do now, but I didn't have to fight with the nVidia drivers that belch on me each time I change something with libc, modutils or the kernel. And I suppose I could try out 2.6, while with the proprietary driver, I can't.
I reckon there should be a market for sub-$10 basic video cards with open specs, for those who care more about low-cost, driver support and not having headaches to do real work, than playing games.
England's police force is lobbying to get a remote-control to stop other cars; this could also be used to limit speeds
Yes, everybody knows UK thieves have enough morals to play nice with the cops and leave the speed limiter/engine killer module in their getaway cars. I mean, it's only fair that the police have a fighting chance...
Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States.
So basically, the good ads aren't broadcast, and I have to Tivo-triple-fast-forward all the ones I *do* get on TV because they're such a tripe.
Here's a suggestion for TV networks : instead of trying to sue DVR manufacturers because it lets customers skip your crap, why don't you replace the crap with good ads (and no, I'm not talking about Budweiser or Taco Bell ads)? Of course, you may have to leave good taste behind once in a while, but I bet good ads would being better brand recognition with less airtime, meaning less ads for viewers overall and less DVR zapping.
or more likely, something went wrong during whatever sequence of actions the probe was supposed to follow, and the only theory involved is Murphy's law.
It sounds to me like these guys are trying to shift the blame away from the probe, and therefore from them. But really, why should they not admit it's a cockup? there's nothing wrong in admitting a Mars probe failed, it's already quite an achievement to send man-made things there, and it's understood that there are risks involved, and that there's a very real probability that the mission will fail. There's no shame in that.
These guys tried their best and it didn't work. It's not like they tried to hide their failure of clipping their toenails or something...
The only market for this is some screwed up and corrupted country like Argentina or Nigeria, where they would get the software for free, use it in the government
In Nigeria, the government official in charge of IT is waiting for you to help him unlock those $20M from that deceased german businessman, in order to have funds to buy routers...
Are you kidding? what do you think they run, Windows?
Linux is great, but nowhere near the level of certification required for software that runs on space probes. The latter, as well as software running on airplane computers, space shuttles, etc... are so strictly checked that many parts of them are proven mathematically, with great care, at great expenses.
Just propose NASA or ESA to power their stuff with Linux and they'll probably look at you with a thin smile and the kind of condescending look one makes while shooing a slightly annoying retarded child.
Never underestimate the power of brainwashing. Just look at the hunt for Saddam Hussein : despite 25M offered for his capture, it took month to track down someone who was willing to betray him.
Likewise with Microsoft : you're not likely to find a current or former employee admitting outright that they've "borrowed" other people's technologies.
If a company hires someone to steal technology, if it's done carefully (i.e. no email records, no obvious plagiarism), the only way to prove it would be to crak open the guy's skull and download his memories. Since it's not possible, why would there be a need to erase the person's memory in the first place? As far as I know, the best proof it's possible is Microsoft: nobody there has been forcedly lobotomized, and the strong company culture ensures that employees think technology theft as survival of the fittest, fair game, corporate smartness or other brutal but honest reasons that won't conflict with employees' sense of morality.
it rides over phone lines, and therefore inherits the very high quality of service inherent to the telephone system, whereas email, phone-over-IP, and anything based on the internet is a best-effort solution. You'll never hear "I don't know, I didn't get a fax from you" whereas one can believably pretend to never have received an email, to justify a lack of response.
With this Wi-Fi, it is gonna cost: 10x (24x30)= $7200 a month!
Not counting the price of the sleeping bag you'll have to install under the table, the sandwiches and cappucinos at $10 a slice and $6 a cup, and 50c to the toilet lady each time you need to go, to be able to stay at the cybercafe 24/7...
Nobody has found a right business model for Wi-Fi today.
Somebody imagined Sputnik some years ago, where volunteers/partners would run a self-contained router on their 802.11b-equipped computer, allowing access to roaming paying Sputnik customers, and receiving a share of the price of the connection time.
It was a brilliant idea : anybody and their dogs could run the Sputnik CD and make some money when Sputnik customers connected, and the Sputnik company could cover the country with wifi in no time thanks to people effectively "lending" their hardware to them. Only trouble was, for people who wanted to become Sputnik access points, it was akin to reselling some of their internet bandwidth to third parties, which is forbidden by most ISPs. I guess that's why today's Sputnik, Inc. seems to have abandoned the idea and reverted to being another boring AP manufacturer.
Too bad people don't have the right to do whatever they choose with the bandwidth they pay for, or that Sputnik didn't try to sweet-talk major ISPs into allowing this in return for a cut of the pie, we'd have fantastic wifi coverage with this today otherwise.
Those of us who know Erik Andersen know his personality, and how he loves to rant and proselytise about anything opensource and Debian, with that ever-so-annoying patronizing holier-than-thou tone, and that he loves to find himself enemies that don't believe him or don't take him as seriously as he'd like.
The people/companies he lists on his hall of shame page may very well have violated the GPL, or otherwise not have played nice with the community, but only Erik Andersen would make a page to denounce them all, then astroturf Slashfot to show it to the world (oh the humanity!)
Trust people in Utah who have worked for a shitty Caldera dot-com to behave a little differently from the rest of us..
Re:Software Company vs Restaurant
on
Make More Mistakes
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I don't know, I started a restaurant for people with anorexia : the amount of investment is limited, I can do the cooking myself, and I don't need much base products. That allows me to offer the cheapest price in town for a full 4-course meal.
what's important for geeks to know when starting a software company
Easy that one:
- You can be 99.999% sure you won't become the richest, most hated guy in the world, or create the ROMs of an icon computer with a fruity name and end up teaching smalltalk to children.
- Out of the remaining 0.001%, you can be 75% sure you company will fail miserably, just because your products don't stand out, or because your services won't be different, or because your prices won't be attractive.
- Out of the remaining 0.00025%, you can be 99% sure your beginning of a success will attract shitty venture capitalists who'll try their best to make a fat pile of cash on your back by telling you to "go public" and "grab marketshare", ruining your chances of being profitable in the long run like you originally planned by growing organically.
- If you're part of the remaining 0.0000025% who'll manage to make an honest, sustainable, sane affair in the software industry despite the odds, you damn well deserve a medal.
Aah yes, the inevitable "kbps" versus "KBps" versus "KB/s" confusion. Nevertheless, a factor of 8 is only a matter of time, at least for broadband in certain areas (like inner cities). Perhaps 18 months is a little optimistic, but ~16 megabits broadband can't be too far off.
According to Moore's law, if you assume it applies to networks as well as computers, that should happen in 54 months (4 1/2 years) so it's not exactly tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron
Which industry is that? scamming and defrauding people?
your first problem is that believing your 8M card is fine
... don't need anymore than that. For some people, architects, graphic artists, ..., higher resolutions, good color definition and high-quality video signals may be needed, but hardly anything that requires the kind of calculating power todays video cards sport.
It's fine for what I do, which is non-3D, non-video, non-graphic-intensive computer work. And I believe most secretaries, lawyers, small biz owners, marketting guy, salesmen
Would you tell me then what's wrong with my 8M card, apart the fact that it won't work in an AGP port?
I noticed there were about three cards that produced 0fps in a number of the games tested. Isn't that just a little bit low-quality?
...
You can view gorgeous hi-res truecolor high-quality tiffs at 0 fps
is that normal ones, the cheapo ones witl 8M of ram and no 3D-XYZ and hyper-acme rendering, that work just dandy for word processing, spreadsheeting and other forms of work (oh the dirty word!), are disappearing.
Pricewise, that's not a problem in itself, I don't care if I have a super vidboard for dirt cheap and underuse it, but with all those bells and whistles that I won't use, manufacturers don't release their specs anymore, and so I have to install shitty binary drivers instead of using kernel-compiled ones.
In short, with my old Matrox Millenium, I could do 1600x1200x16 just like I do now, but I didn't have to fight with the nVidia drivers that belch on me each time I change something with libc, modutils or the kernel. And I suppose I could try out 2.6, while with the proprietary driver, I can't.
I reckon there should be a market for sub-$10 basic video cards with open specs, for those who care more about low-cost, driver support and not having headaches to do real work, than playing games.
Seriously, UK police have practically no training (worth speaking of) for high speed persuits
...
Yes, and they have to do high speed pursuits on the wrong side of the road, driving in the passenger seat. Scary country if you ask me
Most cruisers in the US already have repulsor beams, called a ramming bumper.
England's police force is lobbying to get a remote-control to stop other cars; this could also be used to limit speeds
...
Yes, everybody knows UK thieves have enough morals to play nice with the cops and leave the speed limiter/engine killer module in their getaway cars. I mean, it's only fair that the police have a fighting chance
Some ads made by world's leading advertising agencies for well-known brands will never be seen in the United States.
So basically, the good ads aren't broadcast, and I have to Tivo-triple-fast-forward all the ones I *do* get on TV because they're such a tripe.
Here's a suggestion for TV networks : instead of trying to sue DVR manufacturers because it lets customers skip your crap, why don't you replace the crap with good ads (and no, I'm not talking about Budweiser or Taco Bell ads)? Of course, you may have to leave good taste behind once in a while, but I bet good ads would being better brand recognition with less airtime, meaning less ads for viewers overall and less DVR zapping.
who would benefit from those soil samples and so on?
For soil samples, I suggest collecting them on the flight director's chair, as soon as he stops staring widly at the screen and goes take a break.
or more likely, something went wrong during whatever sequence of actions the probe was supposed to follow, and the only theory involved is Murphy's law.
...
It sounds to me like these guys are trying to shift the blame away from the probe, and therefore from them. But really, why should they not admit it's a cockup? there's nothing wrong in admitting a Mars probe failed, it's already quite an achievement to send man-made things there, and it's understood that there are risks involved, and that there's a very real probability that the mission will fail. There's no shame in that.
These guys tried their best and it didn't work. It's not like they tried to hide their failure of clipping their toenails or something
Oh ok, nevermind then, I didn't see it in their main list.
Thanks.
The only market for this is some screwed up and corrupted country like Argentina or Nigeria, where they would get the software for free, use it in the government
...
In Nigeria, the government official in charge of IT is waiting for you to help him unlock those $20M from that deceased german businessman, in order to have funds to buy routers
Where's PPTP? for a VPN router, it's kind of desirable ...
probes sent to mars should've been run by linux
... are so strictly checked that many parts of them are proven mathematically, with great care, at great expenses.
Are you kidding? what do you think they run, Windows?
Linux is great, but nowhere near the level of certification required for software that runs on space probes. The latter, as well as software running on airplane computers, space shuttles, etc
Just propose NASA or ESA to power their stuff with Linux and they'll probably look at you with a thin smile and the kind of condescending look one makes while shooing a slightly annoying retarded child.
What runs the Jane robot? FreeBSD?
And Cheetah? Unixware?
Never underestimate the power of brainwashing. Just look at the hunt for Saddam Hussein : despite 25M offered for his capture, it took month to track down someone who was willing to betray him.
Likewise with Microsoft : you're not likely to find a current or former employee admitting outright that they've "borrowed" other people's technologies.
Watching american sitcoms works pretty well too.
If a company hires someone to steal technology, if it's done carefully (i.e. no email records, no obvious plagiarism), the only way to prove it would be to crak open the guy's skull and download his memories. Since it's not possible, why would there be a need to erase the person's memory in the first place? As far as I know, the best proof it's possible is Microsoft: nobody there has been forcedly lobotomized, and the strong company culture ensures that employees think technology theft as survival of the fittest, fair game, corporate smartness or other brutal but honest reasons that won't conflict with employees' sense of morality.
it rides over phone lines, and therefore inherits the very high quality of service inherent to the telephone system, whereas email, phone-over-IP, and anything based on the internet is a best-effort solution. You'll never hear "I don't know, I didn't get a fax from you" whereas one can believably pretend to never have received an email, to justify a lack of response.
With this Wi-Fi, it is gonna cost:
...
10x (24x30)= $7200 a month!
Not counting the price of the sleeping bag you'll have to install under the table, the sandwiches and cappucinos at $10 a slice and $6 a cup, and 50c to the toilet lady each time you need to go, to be able to stay at the cybercafe 24/7
Nobody has found a right business model for Wi-Fi today.
Somebody imagined Sputnik some years ago, where volunteers/partners would run a self-contained router on their 802.11b-equipped computer, allowing access to roaming paying Sputnik customers, and receiving a share of the price of the connection time.
It was a brilliant idea : anybody and their dogs could run the Sputnik CD and make some money when Sputnik customers connected, and the Sputnik company could cover the country with wifi in no time thanks to people effectively "lending" their hardware to them. Only trouble was, for people who wanted to become Sputnik access points, it was akin to reselling some of their internet bandwidth to third parties, which is forbidden by most ISPs. I guess that's why today's Sputnik, Inc. seems to have abandoned the idea and reverted to being another boring AP manufacturer.
Too bad people don't have the right to do whatever they choose with the bandwidth they pay for, or that Sputnik didn't try to sweet-talk major ISPs into allowing this in return for a cut of the pie, we'd have fantastic wifi coverage with this today otherwise.
Those of us who know Erik Andersen know his personality, and how he loves to rant and proselytise about anything opensource and Debian, with that ever-so-annoying patronizing holier-than-thou tone, and that he loves to find himself enemies that don't believe him or don't take him as seriously as he'd like.
..
The people/companies he lists on his hall of shame page may very well have violated the GPL, or otherwise not have played nice with the community, but only Erik Andersen would make a page to denounce them all, then astroturf Slashfot to show it to the world (oh the humanity!)
Trust people in Utah who have worked for a shitty Caldera dot-com to behave a little differently from the rest of us
I don't know, I started a restaurant for people with anorexia : the amount of investment is limited, I can do the cooking myself, and I don't need much base products. That allows me to offer the cheapest price in town for a full 4-course meal.
what's important for geeks to know when starting a software company
Easy that one:
- You can be 99.999% sure you won't become the richest, most hated guy in the world, or create the ROMs of an icon computer with a fruity name and end up teaching smalltalk to children.
- Out of the remaining 0.001%, you can be 75% sure you company will fail miserably, just because your products don't stand out, or because your services won't be different, or because your prices won't be attractive.
- Out of the remaining 0.00025%, you can be 99% sure your beginning of a success will attract shitty venture capitalists who'll try their best to make a fat pile of cash on your back by telling you to "go public" and "grab marketshare", ruining your chances of being profitable in the long run like you originally planned by growing organically.
- If you're part of the remaining 0.0000025% who'll manage to make an honest, sustainable, sane affair in the software industry despite the odds, you damn well deserve a medal.
Aah yes, the inevitable "kbps" versus "KBps" versus "KB/s" confusion. Nevertheless, a factor of 8 is only a matter of time, at least for broadband in certain areas (like inner cities). Perhaps 18 months is a little optimistic, but ~16 megabits broadband can't be too far off.
According to Moore's law, if you assume it applies to networks as well as computers, that should happen in 54 months (4 1/2 years) so it's not exactly tomorrow.