As I read the/. front page I noticed that the banner ad at the top of the screen was for TiVo, making a big deal about how it runs Linux. Clearly trying to appeal to some of the folks in this audience. Hah -- wait 'til they get a load of this thread.
I have a TiVo and I do have the lifetime sub, so this problem doesn't affect me personally, but I thought I remembered clearly that subscribing to the service was supposed to be optional. But here's wording from the TiVo Viewer's Guide that came with my unit:
Without the TiVo Service, your Recorder will have extremely limited functionality. The TiVo Service is required for proper operation of the Recorder. (page 70)
The TiVo Service Agreement itself reads:
TiVo may, at its discretion, from time to time change, add or remove features of the TiVo Service or change the terms and conditions of this agreement. (page 76)
So even people who subscribe can have features removed at TiVo's discretion. That doesn't strike me as a good sign. On the other hand, anyone who hasn't subscribed to the service wouldn't be bound by that agreement now, would they? So this doesn't really shed any light on whether what TiVo did for non-service users is legal. (It's certainly pretty unethical if you ask me.)
Displays are really used for two quite different things (even though they happen on the same screen): Displaying images and displaying text. For images it's arguable that current displays have sufficient pixel density for normal use, but this is definitely not the case for text.
Think about print. Early laser printers were 300-dpi resolution, which is pretty good -- good enough for entry-level, mass-market desktop publishing -- but is still quite low by traditional printing standards. The professional (print) graphics shop I used to work for used to run its phototypesetters ($100,000 behemoths) at 1,200 and 2,400 dpi. (And that's in both dimensions, so 1,200 dpi output has 16 times the information content of 300 dpi output.)
600 dpi print is pretty high-quality and acceptable to most applications, particularly with the availability of resolution enhancement, which is roughly the printer equivalent of anti-aliasing. And personally I couldn't tell any difference going past 1,200 dpi.
Anyway, my point is that even 200-300 dpi isn't as good as we might really hope for. Still, it's a vast improvement over the resolution of today's displays. I hope this will have an impact on the well-documented fact that people read (current) computer screens more slowly than printed material and find them more uncomfortable. There's actually a lot of subtle but very helpful detail contained in type that gets lost at lower resolutions such as those used by most displays today.
In a way, graphics are more forgiving than text, because the human eye-brain combination is pretty good at interpolating what's intended if there is sufficient resolution or sufficient color depth. Of course, artifacts can be pretty nasty too -- we've all seen bad cases of the jaggies. But the bottom line is, I think if you ever get a chance to actually see a display this good you won't doubt that the extra pixel density is wasted.
Pathetic compared to what it could easily be. Earth has way enough resources for every living being to live by much better standards
I challenge you to back up that assertion. Only a few percent of people on the planet can possibly be living at a $35K/year or better level. Where does the magic money to bring the standard of living of the other 5.8 billion people on the planet up to that level come from?
I'm also curious as to how you conclude that "Earth has way enough resources" and then a few paragraphs later say "they find a way to consume more than earth can give". Sounds like a contradiction to me.
Whose fault is it if high-school education is mediocre?
Did I attempt to place blame? No. All I pointed out was that $35K does not make for a bad living, especially considering that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to make that kind of money.
all those resources belong to 2% of the populace who will never use them
What, Gates and everyone else who is megarich has taken all his money out of circulation and stashed it underneath his mattress where it will do no good? Uh, don't think so. That money is paying taxes, helping fund new companies that can generate even more wealth, going to charity, etc. A $40 million house may be excessive, but then again, you can be sure that a lot of people were employed in building it...
I didn't say we couldn't possibly help or should be callous toward the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are starving, I said that throwing a bunch of money at the problem will not FIX THE PROBLEM.
Does anybody take this argument seriously any more? The world produces more than enough food to go around, but incompetence, graft, and outright nefariousness -- all of them largely attributable to the actions of local and regional governments -- are responsible for the vast majority of starvation these days. Take a look at this week's Economist for just one example. There's a survey on India where they discuss how India produces more than enough food to feed all its people adequately, but grain sits rotting in stockpiles undistributed, and the distribution system is so bad that between 20 and 40 percent of output spoils on the way to market. You're talking about a country of more than 1 billion people that is perfectly capable of solving its hunger problem from a production standpoint, if only it could overcome inertia and bureaucratic ineptitude. What on earth would confiscating the profits of the five largest American companies do to address the fundamental systemic problems that underlie hunger? (Probably its biggest practical effect would be to screw over all the retirees and other folks in the U.S. who were relying on dividends so they could pay for their own food, rent, and medicine.)
Pretty pathetic compared to what? The earnings of a college-educated techie with skills that are in demand? Come on, if you are a median American -- 100 IQ, mediocre high-school education, average level of motivation and no unusually valuable skills -- 35K is not that bad. It'll probably buy you a better lifestyle (at least in material terms) than your grandparents had, even if your grandparents were wealthy by the standards of the times. It'll certainly buy you a better lifestyle than enjoyed by the vast majority of people on the planet.
Sad that the parent got modded up to (+5, Informative) given the profound misinformation it contains.
First of all, you are not really valuing your options at $0 unless you literally would be willing to give them away for no compensation whatsoever. If I walked up to you and gave you a dollar, would you be willing to sign over all your options (if such a thing were legal)? I didn't think so. The options have some potential future value -- maybe not a lot given the circumstances, but it's certainly more than $0.
As for the restrictions of ISOs: I've had ISOs with a few different companies and my experience is this (YMMV):
1. You don't have to have cash on hand; you can do a "same-day sale" where you sell enough stock to cover the cost of the exercise. To use the original poster's example, you exercise all 500,000 options then sell 5,000 of them for $100 apiece to cover the $500,000 exercise cost. (Actually you'd sell a little more to cover the overhead and commissions etc.)
2. No, you don't have to pay short-term capital gains if you don't sell. You may have to pay AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax), though.
3. True that ISO shares are not necessarily honored in case of sale or liquidation (in the latter case you're kind of screwed anyway); then again, I've worked for publicly-traded companies where ISOs vest fully in the case of a sale, and that can be a sweet deal.
Lots of people are posting here saying "Options are worthless, take the cold hard cash." While it's certainly smart not to bank on the potentially fleeting value of your options, I think it's unreasonable to claim that "take the cash and run" is always a superior strategy. A lot of it depends on where you are in your life and how much risk you're willing to take.
For example, in 1995 I went to work for a small startup company that hadn't yet gotten its second round of financing. They gave me two compensation choices: Big raise over what I was already making, plus a lot of stock options, or an even bigger raise ($10,000/year more than the first choice) plus a handful of stock options.
I chose to take the smaller raise and the boatload of options. Why? Because I was single, healthy, and making more than enough in base salary to live well, so the options were just the frosting on the cake. I figured the extra $10,000 a year would be nice, but not enough to be a major lifestyle change (besides, I was working 80 hours/week, so my life didn't have a lot of "style" anyway). But the options, if they panned out, could be worth a lot (the number was large and the strike price was insignificant). My oversimplified mental math was broadly like this: Reasonable value of options if the company has a moderately successful IPO = $100,000 when vested in 3 years. Chance of that happening: 25%. Total value of the options given that probability: $25,000. Or about what I would've made in salary. But I liked the upside potential, so I went for it.
I ended up leaving the company before I vested, so I got nothing. But that's OK; I'm still confident I made the right decision. And in fact, the company enjoyed a successful IPO and is still doing well, so had I stayed, that initial grant would've been worth high-6 to low-7 figures.
Even if the company had tanked, though, I'd probably still make the same decision again. I know how much actual cash compensation I need to live a lifestyle that I'm comfortable with. Once I've got that much coming in, what good is more salary? At that point I'd rather have options so I can have a more direct financial interest in the company. Also, I know that by taking some compensation in options I'm helping reduce the company's burn rate and marginally improve its chances for success. I wouldn't take that loyalty argument to the extreme, because we all know that companies can and do screw people over at the drop of a hat, but at the same time I didn't mind having a little bit of skin in the game; it was good for both of us.
I might well answer differently if my life were different -- if I were 50 and trying to put two kids through college, I could easily imagine wanting the cash instead of the stock. But at this point I'll take the extra risk for the potentially larger return, just as I invest the bulk of my savings in more aggressive places like growth stocks rather than conservative vehicles like bonds.
Also, one general caveat for anyone who has stock options (at least in the U.S.): Learn about tax implications before you do anything. It's very easy to get screwed if you're not careful with the timing of your exercise and sale. Be particularly careful of the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax), which can be assessed on the paper gain that you "earn" when you exercise the options, even if their value drops later. Also, even if you are fortunate to have lots of in-the-money options, I strongly recommend not living large until you've converted them into cash in your bank accounts. I know folks who have gotten close to overextending on the basis of their paper wealth, then got hammered by the AMT and/or the decline in the market. Don't let it happen to you!
Bone deterioration tends to occur in the absence of significant gravity. So one approach to reducing bone deterioration is creating a spacecraft that provides simulated gravity. Conceptually, the easiest way to do this is to impart a spin on the spacecraft; as you get further away from the axis of spin, you get more "gravity". One challenge with this approach, however, is that for a smallish spacecraft the differential gravity between your feet and your head could be significant and perhaps cause undesirable side effects. So another approach would be to have two spacecraft modules -- maybe one in-flight crew module, and one landing module that's not inhabited during the journey -- attached by a long, strong tether, and to spin the entire thing around the center of mass. A sufficiently long tether would allow you to get the modules far enough away from the center of mass that the differential forces within the individual module shouldn't be terribly large. Once you get to the surface of Mars, of course, there's sufficient gravity that the bone deterioration probably wouldn't be a major concern. (Other factors, like the lack of cosmic-ray protection, would likely become an issue.)
Anyway, I'm no expert in this area, but if you're interested in practical tips for exploring Mars without spending NASA-sized sums of money, you should check out The Case for Mars, which puts forth what appears to be a very well-researched and thoughtful plan.
U.S. English does indeed specify "color" rather than "colour", but no copy editor would let "nite" get printed in a respectable publication. Unfortunately businesspeople are known for taking normal words and bastardizing them, as in Kwik Kleen and the like. Blech.
Anyway, I agree with your points, I just didn't want you to think that our USAian language skills had degenerated *that* far:-)
I've read Blind Man's Bluff, and while it's quite informative and enjoyable -- there is a particularly chilling account of a barely-averted meltdown on board a nuclear-powered submarine -- my recollection of the incident it recounts does not sound like the same one described in this article. The cable tapped in Blind Man's Bluff was, I believe, a regular old copper cable that provided a dedicated phone connection betewen two Soviet military facilities. It ran across the Black Sea, or something like that. The thing that made me laugh was how they figured out WHERE the cable ran across the bottom -- basically they tooled around the shore of the sea and looked for a sign that said the Russian equivalent of "underwater cable, no mooring here."
Seriously, though, this is a great book: Like a non-fiction version of some of the early Clancy stories such as The Hunt for Red October. Fun stuff.
I understand the point you were trying to make, but to argue that "art is better" than capitalism is frighteningly misguiged. Not because art isn't important, but because there's no reason it needs to stand in conflict with capitalism. Let's step back for a moment and consider how much of history's great art was produced under oppressive monarchial or dictatorial governments by people who were treated (by today's standards) little better than slaves, even if they were revered for their artistic talents. Is that a good thing? I'd argue that democracy and capitalism are, for the most part, fantastic drivers of artistic creativity. The average individual in the developed world today has a quality of life that allows him to engage in, and enjoy, artistic activities to an unprecedented level. (Turn the clock back a few hundred years and most folks were expending all their time and energy just to subsist at a marginal level; enjoyment of art was a pursuit of the elite.)
Additionally, TV and (perhaps to a lesser extent) film wouldn't exist as artistic media if it weren't for capitalism. Were it not for the virtues of mass production and advertising, few people would be able to afford TVs in the first place. Of course, like anything, capitalism can be taken too far, and I agree with you that it would be a travesty to mar classic films with product placements. But to turn that into a blanket indictment of capitalism is just foolish -- it's like saying that the botched election count last November is a sign that we should abandon democracy and reinstate a monarchy.
Great idea, and in fact there's a cheesy boy band with a ready-made name that just begs for such educational enrichment. I mean, just imagine how much kids would learn about math if 98 Degrees were instead known as 1.7104 Radians!
Oh, I read the article, I just dispute the conclusion. As you said, it argues that the game industry is shooting itself in the foot by acting this way. But is the game industry failing to attract female users because of its marketing technique, or is it using the marketing techniques it does because it's discovered that its users mostly tend to be adolescent males, so it makes sense to market to the audience it has?
Certainly there's an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy here: If you market to guys, you'll probably sell to more guys, which makes it more effective to market to guys, and so on. And I'm sure the sex-drenched marketing techniques do turn off plenty of women (as well as plenty of mature men). But I somehow don't buy that if the marketing departments cleaned up their acts, the world would suddenly witness a vast growth in the number of female gamers. There aren't a lot of female software engineers, either, and I don't think it's because HP and Sun have been turning off potential female recruits with their sex-centered marketing campaigns. There's a much deeper gender difference (perhaps having to do with societal conditioning; I don't know) underlying this whole thing.
Hey, why is it assumed that sex is somehow dirty and amoral rather than "good clean fun". I say consensual sex *is* good clean (well, sometimes a little sticky) fun! In fact my ex-girlfriend used to call her boobs "funbags", which always made me laugh. But I can assure you there was indeed plenty of fun to be had!
Admittedly, the use of hired booth bimbos smacks of tawdriness, but hey, if you can't get attention for your lame-o game you can probably get some by making a sexual connection. This is hardly unique to the gaming industry, or even to men. Just walk into your local supermarket and take a look at the covers of the magazines by the checkout aisle. It's all "Revive Your Sex Life" and "10 Things Men Wish You Would Do In Bed".
Sex sells. Wow, news flash. Sex sells to horny teenage gamer boys who are not the kind of alpha males who go to prom with the cheerleader on their arms. Geez, I'm so shocked.
There's a much better story, IMHO, in asking why so many videogames rely on explicit violence. Not that I think videogame violence turns our kids into monsters, but I do find it ironic that Americans are so puritanical about sex when we're so forgiving of graphic violence.
...they just want to USE the computer. It's like with cars: The vast majority of people don't give a rat's ass how the engine works, they just want to get in and drive to the store. Filling up the gas tank is the most complicated maintenance they'll ever perform. (My informal polls lead me to believe the vast majority of drivers don't even bother to check easy stuff like tire pressure or oil quantity.)
I had a conversation with my gf this morning that made me realize how geeks and "normal" users are different in this regard. I've been learning to fly a Cessna and I mentioned how when I first got into the cockpit I was sort of overwhelmed by all the dials and gauges and buttons and knobs but simultaneously thought "wow, this is *cool*, I can't wait to learn how it all works." She said "Ugh, I hate that stuff -- I can barely stand all the instruments in a car." And she's not tech-averse in general -- she just looks at technology as a tool she can use to get something done, rather than being enamored of it for its own sake.
I really believe this is one of the reasons that it's so hard to build software that satisfies both geek and non-geek users. The geeks (and I include myself) want control, they want to get under the hood, they actually enjoy achieving competence and understanding why things work or don't work. The non-geeks want it to DWIM, to steal a term that's often used in the perl world: Do What I Mean. A truly effective computer for the masses would be so transparent that a user would never have to hear the term "device driver" or "operating system", let alone actually install one or, god forbid, understand what it's there for. Remember that most people can't be bothered to figure out how to eradicate the flashing 12:00 on their VCR. Telling them to read a manual or go to a newsgroup for help isn't going to cut it: They want someone they can call and say "It doesn't work, fix it."
By the way, although I find this attitude alien to me personally, I don't think it does any good to dismiss such users as stupid or unmotivated. Most people have things they want to accomplish so they can get on with living their lives, and computers are only interesting to them insofar as they make it faster and easier to accomplish those goals. It's not a question of motivation or intelligence, it's a question of priorities. You and I may happen to value tackling challenges and achieving understanding, but lots of people just want to, say, pay the bills as quickly as possible so they can spend time hanging out with their kids. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Your concern is interesting to me. I had a similar problem as a child -- legally blind in one eye -- but some fairly aggressive action (including a full-time eye patch over the good eye) at an early age corrected me to a point where both eyes are functional, although my bad one still needs a fairly high prescription in order to approach normalcy.
Anyway, I studied a lot of perception and cognition stuff while in college, including some examination of 3-D imaging. The thing is, to get true binocular vision you *must* have two functional eyes, plus the correct circuitry in your brain to integrate the views from both. If you have only one working eye you will never achieve true binocular vision.
Still, it's estimated that something like 5 percent of the population (if I remember correctly) has some degree of problems with binocular vision; nevertheless many of these people are able to compensate, and maintain some depth perception even with a single functioning eye. The reason this is possible is that binocular vision (literally, seeing with two eyes) is not the only cue that can convey depth information: So can parallax with a single eye as you shift your head, for example. Things like relative motion help, too. It's not that people like this live in a completely flat, 2-D world -- but some of the depth information that folks with true binocular vision have is definitely absent.
In particular, lots of the 3-D tricks that rely on binocular vision won't work, because those techniques rely on simulating depth by sending differential (but actually 2-D) images to each eye. (Projecting a true holograph does get around this problem, because it creates a reproduction that is actually three-dimensional, rather than using two differential 2-D objects to fake 3-D.)
As an analogy, think of stereo sound through headphones: If you only have one ear, playback of a stereo recording is not going to have the desired effect. That doesn't mean you're completely incapable of doing some localization of normal sounds with that single ear -- there's a lot that the peculiar shape of the external ear does to reflect signals in a way that sets up phase differences and so on that your brain uses to help perform localization. (This is similar to how you can still get some depth perception with one eye.) However, someone with a single ear is not going to be able to perceive a sound stage artifically created with stereo inputs the way people with two functional ears can -- because what stereo does is essentially cheat and take two differential one-dimensional sequences and let your brain do the two-dimensional integration. If you only hear one of those one-dimensional sequences (which don't individually contain any of the original spatial information because they're effectively point sources on playback) you're out of luck.
On a personal level, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Nobody is suggesting these displays are going to completely displace 2-D monitors anytime soon. (Cost aside, think how much actual business work -- not games -- is done in 2-D vs. 3-D.) In any case, it seems likely that 3-D displays would have a 2-D fallback mode, as this one does. And OSes and business apps (to say nothing of dev tools) that actually require true 3-D imaging are a long, long way off (thank god).
The waves would be directed so that it bathes a small target on the ground (less than 10 feet in diameter).
Actually, the story says the target would be "a ground-based receiving antenna 4 kilometers in diameter". Why isn't made clear, but I expect the intention is to have a big target area and thus spread the microwaves fairly thinly over that area.
It strikes me that diffusing the beam might be a good idea for a couple other reasons. One being that even if the beam control is perfect, there's still the possibility that things would fly through the beam and get fried. Birds being one, unwary airplane pilots being another.
Incidentally, my first reaction was that a 4-km-diameter *anything* would be insanely expensive to build, but then again, it probably isn't that expensive in comparison with, say, a new nuclear plant.
Anyway, I'm nit-picking -- I think your analysis of the safety-system engineering is right on the money. Thanks.
Here is a link to the mission plan for STS-99, for example.
Check out this on-board experiment:
ON-ORBIT DETAILED TEST OBJECTIVES (DTOs)
URINE COLLECTION DEVICE (DTO 690)
The purpose of this DTO is to evaluate the fit of several sizes/types of manual
Urine Collection Devices (UCDs) and their adapters (anatomical interface) in
microgravity; evaluate the capability of the adapter and valve design to
accommodate urine flow with minimal leakage; and evaluate hygienic aspects
of the UCD design with respect to minimizing urine remaining in or around the
adapter which could potentially get loose into the cabin. This accomplishment
will also increase the accuracy of science measurements of total urine volume
within the bag. This DTO will also evaluate the user-friendliness of urine
collection operations, and (Lower Priority) evaluate techniques for returning
urine to the Waste Collection System (WCS).
A dual citizen may be subject to all the laws of the other country that considers that person its citizen while in its jurisdiction. This includes conscription for military service.
Yeah, I remember just fine that pressure affects boiling point -- but I sort of took for granted that water coming out of a faucet would be entering a sink where the ambient pressure is (more or less) at 1 atmosphere. Wouldn't the superheated water, even if under pressure before being delivered from the faucet, flash into steam immediately when the pressure was relieved? Or does that boiling process take a lot longer than I'm imagining? I'll admit it's been many years since I studied this sort of stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if the cruft has developed.
I had a similar initial reaction, but then I get my head around it by thinking of $*ARGS as an object rather than a "plain" variable. Then what you're basically saying is:
$*ARGS->chomped(1);
and any further calls to $*ARGS "accessor methods" behave appropriately.
Of course, I'm no OO guru, so if this mental model has some fundamental flaw I'd appreciate feedback.
It's all well and good to say that if you're an individual power user, but if you're an IT director responsible for 10,000 machines in your organization, you probably don't want new patches to deal with every few days. The potential for trouble and for users' systems to get out of sync and cause support nightmares.
That said, I do think it's impressive that Apple is making an effort to get fixes out quickly. But the release early, release often mantra is not appropriate for everyone -- some environments really demand more stability.
There's much more truth to this prediction than you might think. It's hard to comprehend these days, but in 1950, coal was the most common fuel for household heating in the U.S. (Source)
And many types of pollution are a crime. Witness the automobile emissions laws in California, a state that has even discussed outlawing barbecues because of their emissions. (I'm not sure whether that ever actually came to pass or not.) The air is certainly vastly cleaner there than it was 20 or 30 years ago (though I'm not sure about 50).
Electric heating and cooking is obviously pretty common too, at least in some places. Here in Seattle, where power is comparatively cheap, I have both electric heating and an electric stove.
Slashdot Mirror
As I read the /. front page I noticed that the banner ad at the top of the screen was for TiVo, making a big deal about how it runs Linux. Clearly trying to appeal to some of the folks in this audience. Hah -- wait 'til they get a load of this thread.
Without the TiVo Service, your Recorder will have extremely limited functionality. The TiVo Service is required for proper operation of the Recorder. (page 70)
The TiVo Service Agreement itself reads:
TiVo may, at its discretion, from time to time change, add or remove features of the TiVo Service or change the terms and conditions of this agreement. (page 76)
So even people who subscribe can have features removed at TiVo's discretion. That doesn't strike me as a good sign. On the other hand, anyone who hasn't subscribed to the service wouldn't be bound by that agreement now, would they? So this doesn't really shed any light on whether what TiVo did for non-service users is legal. (It's certainly pretty unethical if you ask me.)
Think about print. Early laser printers were 300-dpi resolution, which is pretty good -- good enough for entry-level, mass-market desktop publishing -- but is still quite low by traditional printing standards. The professional (print) graphics shop I used to work for used to run its phototypesetters ($100,000 behemoths) at 1,200 and 2,400 dpi. (And that's in both dimensions, so 1,200 dpi output has 16 times the information content of 300 dpi output.)
600 dpi print is pretty high-quality and acceptable to most applications, particularly with the availability of resolution enhancement, which is roughly the printer equivalent of anti-aliasing. And personally I couldn't tell any difference going past 1,200 dpi.
Anyway, my point is that even 200-300 dpi isn't as good as we might really hope for. Still, it's a vast improvement over the resolution of today's displays. I hope this will have an impact on the well-documented fact that people read (current) computer screens more slowly than printed material and find them more uncomfortable. There's actually a lot of subtle but very helpful detail contained in type that gets lost at lower resolutions such as those used by most displays today.
In a way, graphics are more forgiving than text, because the human eye-brain combination is pretty good at interpolating what's intended if there is sufficient resolution or sufficient color depth. Of course, artifacts can be pretty nasty too -- we've all seen bad cases of the jaggies. But the bottom line is, I think if you ever get a chance to actually see a display this good you won't doubt that the extra pixel density is wasted.
I challenge you to back up that assertion. Only a few percent of people on the planet can possibly be living at a $35K/year or better level. Where does the magic money to bring the standard of living of the other 5.8 billion people on the planet up to that level come from?
I'm also curious as to how you conclude that "Earth has way enough resources" and then a few paragraphs later say "they find a way to consume more than earth can give". Sounds like a contradiction to me.
Whose fault is it if high-school education is mediocre?
Did I attempt to place blame? No. All I pointed out was that $35K does not make for a bad living, especially considering that you don't have to be a rocket scientist to make that kind of money.
all those resources belong to 2% of the populace who will never use them
What, Gates and everyone else who is megarich has taken all his money out of circulation and stashed it underneath his mattress where it will do no good? Uh, don't think so. That money is paying taxes, helping fund new companies that can generate even more wealth, going to charity, etc. A $40 million house may be excessive, but then again, you can be sure that a lot of people were employed in building it...
I didn't say we couldn't possibly help or should be callous toward the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are starving, I said that throwing a bunch of money at the problem will not FIX THE PROBLEM.
Does anybody take this argument seriously any more? The world produces more than enough food to go around, but incompetence, graft, and outright nefariousness -- all of them largely attributable to the actions of local and regional governments -- are responsible for the vast majority of starvation these days. Take a look at this week's Economist for just one example. There's a survey on India where they discuss how India produces more than enough food to feed all its people adequately, but grain sits rotting in stockpiles undistributed, and the distribution system is so bad that between 20 and 40 percent of output spoils on the way to market. You're talking about a country of more than 1 billion people that is perfectly capable of solving its hunger problem from a production standpoint, if only it could overcome inertia and bureaucratic ineptitude. What on earth would confiscating the profits of the five largest American companies do to address the fundamental systemic problems that underlie hunger? (Probably its biggest practical effect would be to screw over all the retirees and other folks in the U.S. who were relying on dividends so they could pay for their own food, rent, and medicine.)
Pretty pathetic compared to what? The earnings of a college-educated techie with skills that are in demand? Come on, if you are a median American -- 100 IQ, mediocre high-school education, average level of motivation and no unusually valuable skills -- 35K is not that bad. It'll probably buy you a better lifestyle (at least in material terms) than your grandparents had, even if your grandparents were wealthy by the standards of the times. It'll certainly buy you a better lifestyle than enjoyed by the vast majority of people on the planet.
First of all, you are not really valuing your options at $0 unless you literally would be willing to give them away for no compensation whatsoever. If I walked up to you and gave you a dollar, would you be willing to sign over all your options (if such a thing were legal)? I didn't think so. The options have some potential future value -- maybe not a lot given the circumstances, but it's certainly more than $0.
As for the restrictions of ISOs: I've had ISOs with a few different companies and my experience is this (YMMV):
1. You don't have to have cash on hand; you can do a "same-day sale" where you sell enough stock to cover the cost of the exercise. To use the original poster's example, you exercise all 500,000 options then sell 5,000 of them for $100 apiece to cover the $500,000 exercise cost. (Actually you'd sell a little more to cover the overhead and commissions etc.)
2. No, you don't have to pay short-term capital gains if you don't sell. You may have to pay AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax), though.
3. True that ISO shares are not necessarily honored in case of sale or liquidation (in the latter case you're kind of screwed anyway); then again, I've worked for publicly-traded companies where ISOs vest fully in the case of a sale, and that can be a sweet deal.
For example, in 1995 I went to work for a small startup company that hadn't yet gotten its second round of financing. They gave me two compensation choices: Big raise over what I was already making, plus a lot of stock options, or an even bigger raise ($10,000/year more than the first choice) plus a handful of stock options.
I chose to take the smaller raise and the boatload of options. Why? Because I was single, healthy, and making more than enough in base salary to live well, so the options were just the frosting on the cake. I figured the extra $10,000 a year would be nice, but not enough to be a major lifestyle change (besides, I was working 80 hours/week, so my life didn't have a lot of "style" anyway). But the options, if they panned out, could be worth a lot (the number was large and the strike price was insignificant). My oversimplified mental math was broadly like this: Reasonable value of options if the company has a moderately successful IPO = $100,000 when vested in 3 years. Chance of that happening: 25%. Total value of the options given that probability: $25,000. Or about what I would've made in salary. But I liked the upside potential, so I went for it.
I ended up leaving the company before I vested, so I got nothing. But that's OK; I'm still confident I made the right decision. And in fact, the company enjoyed a successful IPO and is still doing well, so had I stayed, that initial grant would've been worth high-6 to low-7 figures.
Even if the company had tanked, though, I'd probably still make the same decision again. I know how much actual cash compensation I need to live a lifestyle that I'm comfortable with. Once I've got that much coming in, what good is more salary? At that point I'd rather have options so I can have a more direct financial interest in the company. Also, I know that by taking some compensation in options I'm helping reduce the company's burn rate and marginally improve its chances for success. I wouldn't take that loyalty argument to the extreme, because we all know that companies can and do screw people over at the drop of a hat, but at the same time I didn't mind having a little bit of skin in the game; it was good for both of us.
I might well answer differently if my life were different -- if I were 50 and trying to put two kids through college, I could easily imagine wanting the cash instead of the stock. But at this point I'll take the extra risk for the potentially larger return, just as I invest the bulk of my savings in more aggressive places like growth stocks rather than conservative vehicles like bonds.
Also, one general caveat for anyone who has stock options (at least in the U.S.): Learn about tax implications before you do anything. It's very easy to get screwed if you're not careful with the timing of your exercise and sale. Be particularly careful of the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax), which can be assessed on the paper gain that you "earn" when you exercise the options, even if their value drops later. Also, even if you are fortunate to have lots of in-the-money options, I strongly recommend not living large until you've converted them into cash in your bank accounts. I know folks who have gotten close to overextending on the basis of their paper wealth, then got hammered by the AMT and/or the decline in the market. Don't let it happen to you!
Anyway, I'm no expert in this area, but if you're interested in practical tips for exploring Mars without spending NASA-sized sums of money, you should check out The Case for Mars, which puts forth what appears to be a very well-researched and thoughtful plan.
Anyway, I agree with your points, I just didn't want you to think that our USAian language skills had degenerated *that* far :-)
Seriously, though, this is a great book: Like a non-fiction version of some of the early Clancy stories such as The Hunt for Red October. Fun stuff.
Additionally, TV and (perhaps to a lesser extent) film wouldn't exist as artistic media if it weren't for capitalism. Were it not for the virtues of mass production and advertising, few people would be able to afford TVs in the first place. Of course, like anything, capitalism can be taken too far, and I agree with you that it would be a travesty to mar classic films with product placements. But to turn that into a blanket indictment of capitalism is just foolish -- it's like saying that the botched election count last November is a sign that we should abandon democracy and reinstate a monarchy.
Great idea, and in fact there's a cheesy boy band with a ready-made name that just begs for such educational enrichment. I mean, just imagine how much kids would learn about math if 98 Degrees were instead known as 1.7104 Radians!
Certainly there's an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy here: If you market to guys, you'll probably sell to more guys, which makes it more effective to market to guys, and so on. And I'm sure the sex-drenched marketing techniques do turn off plenty of women (as well as plenty of mature men). But I somehow don't buy that if the marketing departments cleaned up their acts, the world would suddenly witness a vast growth in the number of female gamers. There aren't a lot of female software engineers, either, and I don't think it's because HP and Sun have been turning off potential female recruits with their sex-centered marketing campaigns. There's a much deeper gender difference (perhaps having to do with societal conditioning; I don't know) underlying this whole thing.
Admittedly, the use of hired booth bimbos smacks of tawdriness, but hey, if you can't get attention for your lame-o game you can probably get some by making a sexual connection. This is hardly unique to the gaming industry, or even to men. Just walk into your local supermarket and take a look at the covers of the magazines by the checkout aisle. It's all "Revive Your Sex Life" and "10 Things Men Wish You Would Do In Bed".
Sex sells. Wow, news flash. Sex sells to horny teenage gamer boys who are not the kind of alpha males who go to prom with the cheerleader on their arms. Geez, I'm so shocked.
There's a much better story, IMHO, in asking why so many videogames rely on explicit violence. Not that I think videogame violence turns our kids into monsters, but I do find it ironic that Americans are so puritanical about sex when we're so forgiving of graphic violence.
I had a conversation with my gf this morning that made me realize how geeks and "normal" users are different in this regard. I've been learning to fly a Cessna and I mentioned how when I first got into the cockpit I was sort of overwhelmed by all the dials and gauges and buttons and knobs but simultaneously thought "wow, this is *cool*, I can't wait to learn how it all works." She said "Ugh, I hate that stuff -- I can barely stand all the instruments in a car." And she's not tech-averse in general -- she just looks at technology as a tool she can use to get something done, rather than being enamored of it for its own sake.
I really believe this is one of the reasons that it's so hard to build software that satisfies both geek and non-geek users. The geeks (and I include myself) want control, they want to get under the hood, they actually enjoy achieving competence and understanding why things work or don't work. The non-geeks want it to DWIM, to steal a term that's often used in the perl world: Do What I Mean. A truly effective computer for the masses would be so transparent that a user would never have to hear the term "device driver" or "operating system", let alone actually install one or, god forbid, understand what it's there for. Remember that most people can't be bothered to figure out how to eradicate the flashing 12:00 on their VCR. Telling them to read a manual or go to a newsgroup for help isn't going to cut it: They want someone they can call and say "It doesn't work, fix it."
By the way, although I find this attitude alien to me personally, I don't think it does any good to dismiss such users as stupid or unmotivated. Most people have things they want to accomplish so they can get on with living their lives, and computers are only interesting to them insofar as they make it faster and easier to accomplish those goals. It's not a question of motivation or intelligence, it's a question of priorities. You and I may happen to value tackling challenges and achieving understanding, but lots of people just want to, say, pay the bills as quickly as possible so they can spend time hanging out with their kids. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Anyway, I studied a lot of perception and cognition stuff while in college, including some examination of 3-D imaging. The thing is, to get true binocular vision you *must* have two functional eyes, plus the correct circuitry in your brain to integrate the views from both. If you have only one working eye you will never achieve true binocular vision.
Still, it's estimated that something like 5 percent of the population (if I remember correctly) has some degree of problems with binocular vision; nevertheless many of these people are able to compensate, and maintain some depth perception even with a single functioning eye. The reason this is possible is that binocular vision (literally, seeing with two eyes) is not the only cue that can convey depth information: So can parallax with a single eye as you shift your head, for example. Things like relative motion help, too. It's not that people like this live in a completely flat, 2-D world -- but some of the depth information that folks with true binocular vision have is definitely absent.
In particular, lots of the 3-D tricks that rely on binocular vision won't work, because those techniques rely on simulating depth by sending differential (but actually 2-D) images to each eye. (Projecting a true holograph does get around this problem, because it creates a reproduction that is actually three-dimensional, rather than using two differential 2-D objects to fake 3-D.)
As an analogy, think of stereo sound through headphones: If you only have one ear, playback of a stereo recording is not going to have the desired effect. That doesn't mean you're completely incapable of doing some localization of normal sounds with that single ear -- there's a lot that the peculiar shape of the external ear does to reflect signals in a way that sets up phase differences and so on that your brain uses to help perform localization. (This is similar to how you can still get some depth perception with one eye.) However, someone with a single ear is not going to be able to perceive a sound stage artifically created with stereo inputs the way people with two functional ears can -- because what stereo does is essentially cheat and take two differential one-dimensional sequences and let your brain do the two-dimensional integration. If you only hear one of those one-dimensional sequences (which don't individually contain any of the original spatial information because they're effectively point sources on playback) you're out of luck.
On a personal level, I wouldn't worry too much about this. Nobody is suggesting these displays are going to completely displace 2-D monitors anytime soon. (Cost aside, think how much actual business work -- not games -- is done in 2-D vs. 3-D.) In any case, it seems likely that 3-D displays would have a 2-D fallback mode, as this one does. And OSes and business apps (to say nothing of dev tools) that actually require true 3-D imaging are a long, long way off (thank god).
Actually, the story says the target would be "a ground-based receiving antenna 4 kilometers in diameter". Why isn't made clear, but I expect the intention is to have a big target area and thus spread the microwaves fairly thinly over that area.
It strikes me that diffusing the beam might be a good idea for a couple other reasons. One being that even if the beam control is perfect, there's still the possibility that things would fly through the beam and get fried. Birds being one, unwary airplane pilots being another.
Incidentally, my first reaction was that a 4-km-diameter *anything* would be insanely expensive to build, but then again, it probably isn't that expensive in comparison with, say, a new nuclear plant.
Anyway, I'm nit-picking -- I think your analysis of the safety-system engineering is right on the money. Thanks.
Here is a link to the mission plan for STS-99, for example.
Check out this on-board experiment:
ON-ORBIT DETAILED TEST OBJECTIVES (DTOs)
URINE COLLECTION DEVICE (DTO 690)
The purpose of this DTO is to evaluate the fit of several sizes/types of manual Urine Collection Devices (UCDs) and their adapters (anatomical interface) in microgravity; evaluate the capability of the adapter and valve design to accommodate urine flow with minimal leakage; and evaluate hygienic aspects of the UCD design with respect to minimizing urine remaining in or around the adapter which could potentially get loose into the cabin. This accomplishment will also increase the accuracy of science measurements of total urine volume within the bag. This DTO will also evaluate the user-friendliness of urine collection operations, and (Lower Priority) evaluate techniques for returning urine to the Waste Collection System (WCS).
A dual citizen may be subject to all the laws of the other country that considers that person its citizen while in its jurisdiction. This includes conscription for military service.
Yeah, I remember just fine that pressure affects boiling point -- but I sort of took for granted that water coming out of a faucet would be entering a sink where the ambient pressure is (more or less) at 1 atmosphere. Wouldn't the superheated water, even if under pressure before being delivered from the faucet, flash into steam immediately when the pressure was relieved? Or does that boiling process take a lot longer than I'm imagining? I'll admit it's been many years since I studied this sort of stuff, so I wouldn't be surprised if the cruft has developed.
$*ARGS->chomped(1);
and any further calls to $*ARGS "accessor methods" behave appropriately.
Of course, I'm no OO guru, so if this mental model has some fundamental flaw I'd appreciate feedback.
That said, I do think it's impressive that Apple is making an effort to get fixes out quickly. But the release early, release often mantra is not appropriate for everyone -- some environments really demand more stability.
And many types of pollution are a crime. Witness the automobile emissions laws in California, a state that has even discussed outlawing barbecues because of their emissions. (I'm not sure whether that ever actually came to pass or not.) The air is certainly vastly cleaner there than it was 20 or 30 years ago (though I'm not sure about 50).
Electric heating and cooking is obviously pretty common too, at least in some places. Here in Seattle, where power is comparatively cheap, I have both electric heating and an electric stove.