Cool. So can we ban links to http://www.bostonteapartyship.com/ too? I'm pretty sure the British [at the time] regarded most of the early US independence movement as terrorism.
How about the CIA's site, The School Of The Americas, the USAF (creating deliberate firestorms in Dresden during WWII) and anything covering exploding cigars in cuba?
Oh, yeah, it's only terrorism when it doesn't suit the US. As Churchill said, the victors get to write the history books.
Note: I am not anti-American. I'm hugely for what America is supposed to stand for. It's just a shame its leaders aren't.
eventually engineers will be substituted by a bestselling software program Engineer-in-a-Box 2.0
If they acurately simulated a human engineer, can you picture any company that would be willing to take on the liability of all the times engineers screw up?
Either that, or can you picture anyone agreeing to the MSEngineer EULA?:
Microsoft shall not be held liable for: buildings falling down; bridges collapsing; unaligned railway tracks leading to derailing; subsidence; big spikes left sticking out or any other failings in design created by this product.
The user accepts that anything designed with MSEngineer 2.0 remains wholly the posession of the Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft retains the right to ammend the software or anything designed, tinkered or maintained by it at any time, and the rights pertaining to such products.
Should the user contest any of the above, or have any reason to challenge Microsoft in any way, they agree that all cases shall be heard in the state of Washington by Steve Ballmer dressed as a clown. Steve's decision shall be binding unless Bill tells him otherwise.
"You might be reminded of Microsoft's purchase of Bungie a few years ago."
When Microsoft bought Bungie, it was to buy a "killer app" for the X-Box and nerf it's simultaneous PC development for fear it would show up the X-Box.
Rare on the other hand has a whole one game announced and a legacy of Nintendo titles. Ultimately, it's just another shot fired in the console wars, rather than a loss to PC gaming, this time.
I would buy an X-Box, knowing Bill loses as much money as I spend on each one sold - but he has more money than me and so is going to win that war.
Consoles suit a particular style of game and so those games get developed there first and ported to the PC later if there's enough demand (GTA3, Tony Hawks etc.)
PCs suit a different style of game and so they get those games first and the consoles have to wait, if they get them at all, and then get a stripped down version. (Wolfenstein, Doom, Half Life, Morrowind).
The market has always been like that. Anyone who played PC games ten years ago will remember what it was like only having Commander Keen when the consoles had every other platform game out there, or waiting forever for a port of Golden Axe.
Now, about the only real difference is that Microsoft desperately needs killer apps for the X-Box and so is buying up PC titles, releasing them for the X-Box and then nerfing the PC development (Halo).
Otherwise, it's exactly the same situation it's always been - development on the most suited platform and occasional, all-too-rare, ports.
Still, never let that stop people who've not been in gaming long enough to realise it's the norm panicing and proclaiming the end of the world, every time they notice one example of it.
Postgres, on the other hand, is very full featured and a joy to work with.
Every time I see comments about girls and marriage, I worry that Slashdot may no longer be of the geeks and for the geeks. Fortunately, then someone comes along like you and describes a database system as "a joy".
It's not often/. leaves me with a huge grin anymore but the image of you jumping up, punching the air and yelling, "Woohoo! I get to work with Postgres!" left me with one.
God bless you. God bless your pure, innocent love of databases.
One of the big concerns about The Sims Online has been the way it seems designed, from the ground up, for griefers. Even the designers admit that they don't know how that aspect will play out on line. The one play journal that was on the website for quite a while was almost purely about how much fun it was to grief other players in imaginative ways - and that's just the design team.
So, in a game that's [potentially] going to be the very worst for abusive play, do you really want your brand getting associated with it? Imagine the joy of having "A Mac Attack" becoming the most hated concept on the net. Or maybe the next "A rape in cyberspace" story beginning, "It was under the pixelated golden arches of a virtual McDonalds..."
Money can't buy that kind of advertising. Probably for a very good reason.
"and how selling a quarter million albums can leave you owing your label $14,000"
I studied this one at university, they had a course all about it, called economics. I'll see if I can break it down.
If you make more than you spend, it's called a profit. If you spend more than you make, it's called a loss. Was that simple enough?
Just because an album sells 250,000 copies, doesn't mean it is automatically profitable. They may have spent vastly more than they made, in advertising it, to get those 250,000 sales.
Micheal Jackson's latest was a great example: He complained not enough had been done to promote it. Sony's counter was that they spent $50million advertising and producing a record that sold 2 million copies - that's $25 costs/record. How much more should they have done?
The bug allows a web site to track where you're going when leaving the site whether you use a link, a bookmark or type a URL into the address field.
It always bemuses me that people seem to think these things are new. Tracking exits is relatively simple and as for how people access your site, just check HTTP_REFERER. Typed URLs and bookmarks show no referer, links show you who sent them to your site. Granted, it's not 100% infalible, but it works on any browser. I'd rather trade 80% accuracy 100% of the time than 100% accuracy on 5-10% of hits.
From time to time, it still amuses me to be watching the logs while I'm chatting to a visitor via Messenger and tell them what system they're running, what their screen res is, color depth, what enabled/disable features they have and the path they've taken through the site. If you're really that bothered, JavaScript even lets you track their mouse's movement around and how they scroll up/down the page and then play it back on your own PC, telling you things like how fast they read and what they paid attention to.
Rambus has publicly hailed the news, stating, "We hope to work together with HP, creating an industry standards group, to ensure the full potential of this exciting new technology is met."
In unrelated news, Rambus' lawyers have filed a series of initial patents, intending to amend them later as more details become available. Ivanna Bendemover, Rambus' CEO reassured everyone at the standards group that this has nothing to do with the new technology, stating, "You can trust Rambus to only have the industry's very best interests at heart."
A profiling engine running in the set-top box determines which ads are played in a particular household. The box is given an initial profile and it then gathers information based on the household's television viewing habits. Anderson emphasized that this information never leaves the set-top box.
"If you've just bought a car, you might see an ad that reinforces your decision and that ad might reference the vehicle's warranty or anti-lock breaking system," explained Downey. "On the other hand, if a viewer is in the 34th month of a 36-month lease, they will see ads that will highlight favorable interest rates and rebate programs."
So, by noting that you're watching episode 6 of season 3 of ER, it can tell you're in the 34th month of a 36 month lease? Sure it can.
You'll notice they were careful emphasise the privacy only on the viewing habits section. The rest of it they're actually planning to abuse your privacy (buying habits, loan details, medical insurance?, etc.) as much as it takes. But, by that point, they're hoping to have misdirected you with all the smoke and mirrors of intentional [mis]emphasis.
If they were any more intentionally dishonest about privacy issues, they'd be forced to run for congress.
While, short term, it can work, it sounds as if the owner thinks this is the way to simply work from now on, regardless. That being the case, he really is demonstrating massive failings as a workforce manager. Even if you guys ship the next product or two early, and keep the company afloat for a few more months, in time the moral effect, the exhaustion and all the rest will kick in and he'll be getting worse, not better, productivity. If he's really making those kinds of shortsighted decisions, and he's the owner, the company is going to sink one way or another anyway - it just might eek out a few more months at the expense of a bunch of burnt out programmers.
My advice would be to use those seven extra hours in front of a PC to tidy up your resume and get it out there. You are going to be looking for a job soon enough, you might as well get the headstart.
Ask yourself, how many dotcom tales of people agreeing to work without pay for a while; work long hours; all the rest of it, you've heard. Now, how many of those companies actually survived by doing that? Next to none?
"most of the 200 people included in the file have been from... high-crime neighborhoods."
What, you mean there's a correllation between high-crime neighbourhoods and a likelihood of more crime being committed there. This is an outrage. I demand that zero-crime neighbourhoods get equal representation as places likely to have crime in the future.
Yes, it is very unfortunate that minorities in this, and most, countries tend to be in poorer neighbourhoods and that those neighbourhoods are consequently more likely to suffer from crime. However, as far as I'm aware, the list contains those individuals for reasons other than race. Playing the race card simply serves to add an association that wasn't being made before. Haven't we learned yet that the over-the-top-PC brigade do more harm than good?
There is no rule that says it has to be a diamond. The first engagement ring I bought, several years ago, was a created sapphire.
Perhaps there is a rule, alluded to by your statement.
Just as gravity was still there before Newton discovered it, there may still be a rule regarding engagements and diamonds - you just simply haven't discovered it yet.
It ultimately comes down to one of those "What kind of person are you marrying?" questions. If your value system tells you that a "princess" is the most desirable wife in the world, you're stuck with a princess' maintenance.
I was lucky. I married someone for whom funky stuff like integrity, thought, consideration, selflessness, originality were priorities. To her, the traditional goal of "it must be so big I can't lift my hand" was tacky, ostentatious, gaudy, all the hallmarks of a wannabe who needed validation from outside, rather than someone looking for something that had significance simply for what it was.
The end result for us was a third of a carat rub over setting on a really unique band. For her, it's perfect as it comes across as stylish, vastly more sophisticated and, her highest priority, she doesn't spend the rest of her life being scared of knocking a large rock out of a cheap setting.
I still managed to spend a fair bit of money, but that was on: getting it engraved (without her knowing) on the inside; on getting it rush ordered so I could still suprise her, even though we'd chosen it together; on finding the perfect time and place to do the proposing; on getting matching earings made to go with it. Those are all the subtle things that allowed me to put vastly more value in to it for her without buying in to a deliberate, tacky, hype.
So, like I said, it depends a lot on who you're marrying. If the biggest, gaudiest rock is simply the only way to feel she's valued, that's what you should get her - you chose that type of person. If style and the suble touches are what're important, congratulations, you've found someone who's going to appreciate everything you do for her, regardless of how well off you are at the time. That is the kind of woman I wanted to marry.:)
OK, now lets get back to bitching about Microsoft. This is getting sappy!
It'll be just like the music industry. Back in the 90s, synths, drum machines, computer multi-trackers, the works got so good you could do without musicians. Now in the new millenium we live entirely in a world without live musicians.
Don't we?
Besides, there's a line from the movie Rockstar - something along the lines of, "Girls want you because you're larger than life. That makes the guys want to be you. And the guys buy the records. Your job is to live the dream so other people don't have to." Without the appeal of the glamorous moviestar lives and everything off screen, there's only a fraction of the appeal. 1s and 0s just aren't that sexy.
For me, part of the appeal of the internet is that it's always been so global that no one group controls it (though, of course, that's degenerated down to some countries try to force their will via laws while others refuse to abide by any laws, letting their people do whatever). Still, if we're considering how to stop people screwing up the internet by wanting their countries' laws to apply but no one elses...
It's almost a shame that the notion of country specific domains was optional and everyone went in to a.com frenzy. Were all UK sites.uk, all US sites.us etc., then the notion of conflicting laws, national firewalls and all the rest would be solved.
Each country's content could then abide by its own laws and only those laws. If a country didn't like the laws of another country, all they'd have to do is make it an offence for their own ISPs to serve information from those countries to their national users.
So, if Yahoo US wants to have Nazi auctions to the distaste of Yahoo France, France can either: accept it's not their jurisdiction; ask the US to legislate against it; or block those nasty English speakers. Dimitri wants to enable blind users to run text-to-speech on E-books in Russia? Well then Adobe can either: deal with it; petition the Russian government to change their laws; or petition the US government to block Russia.
Once that's in place, the issue of doing what's perfectly legal in your country, in your country, is solved.
I realise that goes against the international, free of boundaries notion of the net that we all love, but then is it really free at the moment anyway? Or do we just have lawyers trying to apply the laws of their country to everyone else and then those people who know their country won't do anything flauting it all anyway? If anything, the notion of blocking entire countries would probably create such an outcry in those nations that claim freedom of speech that it may well end up being less of a problem than the current mess.
It's pretty simple but it works for the rest of us who bought regular DVD players...
Just go to the chapter menu and start watching from Chapter 1. The FBI warning's usually fixed between the main menu's play option and the first chapter. Skipping direct to the chapter usually skips the warning.
I develop code myself, and having a bunch of morons flaming me because they're too lazy to research my license and credits could very well encourage me to take the closed source proprietory route...I wouldn't blame these guys if they did just that.
Except then they wouldn't have a product.
Just because you get in to a huff doesn't give you any right to close the source on a project that's 90% other people's open source, 10% your own spyware.
It is always wise to consider your own understanding before calling others morons.
So, the difficulty in finding a job in IT is because of 20,000 H1B visas. Well, I'm glad we sorted that one out.
The reality is, two years ago, you couldn't get enough US workers at even remotely sensible salaries, so H1Bs became a way to make US businesses viable in a global market. Now the recession's hit and companies can find US employees, the number of H1Bs are down 75% (160k-40k from the article). Those figures alone indicate that while there are some abuses (there will be in any system), by and large, H1Bs have worked as intended - to provide extra labour when labour is short.
The main problem with the IT industry is that a million and one idiots joined the industry on the promise of massive salaries. They didn't care about what they were doing, put relatively little effort in to getting more than the basic skills and just came for the money.
Once the economy tanked and layoffs started, some of them remained, filling the positions the "good" engineers should be taking. End result, a lot of "good" engineers can't find work because a lot of "bad" ones are still in the remaining jobs. This is settling out over time, but it's still an issue.
The same happens in whatever the boom industry is right before a recession. Look what happened to accountants and stock brokers at the end of the 80s. In time, it rights itself as the gold diggers leave in search of the next boom and the "good" people filter back in to the roles.
So, perhaps rather than go for the ultranationalistic, easy knee-jerk of "damn them immigrants!", which, granted, most societies tend to do during hard times, maybe looking closer to home makes more sense.
We still have MicroSkills and Laptop Training Solutions advertising all over the radio here (CA) about how IT is a growth industry and if you just do a six month course, you're entitled to a $60k job at the end of it. I'd imagine they're dumping vastly more than 20,000 extra workers in to an industry that they shouldn't be in.
And going back to the whole industries people shouldn't be in... It's been said by almost every expert on the dot.com economy that the recession was the best thing that could have happened as it's driving out those who shouldn't be in it. Yes, it's painful while those of us who should be in it wait for them to go and can't find work ourselves. Ultimately, though, the lean period's strengthening the industry, not harming it.
And, yes, I have been through it. Ten months out of work with a near dream resume behind me. Yet even after that, I still stand by the fact that the problems we're facing are a good thing. We were a bloated industry that needed to be forced to justify its existence. Blaming those sneaky foreigners really doesn't help things.
One final thought: Which would you prefer, "Half my office are foreigners on H1Bs rather than Americans" or "My office shut down and moved to India because we couldn't compete without a few H1Bs"?
I can't believe I'm going to do a "back in the day" post, but anyway... Circa '95 mudder's diet:
Ingredients:
1 box, Lucky Charms
[Many] bottles, Jolt cola
Recipe:
Eat Lucky charms
Drink Jolt cola
Of course, that's just for the lazy. When a real craving hit us, we'd ask an American player who had the then luxury of both a connection from home and a second phoneline to call transatlantic and get us a pizza delivered to the uni computer lab. Oh, and the guy who sat in the corner with his monitor turned in to the wall was <HEAVILY EMPHASISED>not</HEAVILY EMPHASISED> allowed to touch any of the pizza until we were all done.
Best books: O'Reilly. Did you really need to ask? If you've not come across O'Reilly books yet, it's simple.
Go to book store.
Find computer section.
Find white book with nice sketch of animal (ignoring the weird photo ones) on the cover.
Find one that matches whatever you want to learn.
Buy it.
If you want, you can buy other books by O'Reilly on other subjects you're curious about. They always seem to end up being worth the money.
As for PHP, the best resource for that is the plain and simple php.net. Not only is the entire language documented, every function definition contains examples and discussion on it. What more could you ask for?
Back in the 80s an 90s, Microsoft destroyed the OS competition by pretty much giving away their OS. It may not have been so good but it came with your PC and seemed to be free, so most people stuck with it. Then in the 90s they did the same with web browsers.
Now we have TW's PVR. It's not actually as useful as Tivo or ReplayTV but it comes with your cable service, it'll no doubt be marketted as a nice and cheap add on, so most people'll go with it rather than Tivo or ReplayTV. It also won't actually allow commercial skipping, or file sharing, or anything else Time Warner didn't like before hand.
So, what we're really seeing is them using their market position to force the suppliers of a product that they don't like out of the market. What are the odds that TW's real plan is that, in another five years, TiVo and ReplayTV will have all but pulled out of the market and the Time Warner PVR will force you to keep watching those ads. Even better, as you have to watch your TV through it, they'll be able to stop you channel surfing too.
Forgive me if I don't see this as an amazing U-turn from Time Warner, nor the beginning of their acceptance of PVRs (as we currently know them).
Has nobody told them that since the end of the dotcom boom, there's been a mandatory death sentence on anyone coining Silicon[Exciting Geographic Term]?! Their poor children will now have to grow up alone, knowing Daddy was too stupid to avoid buzzword Silicon- prefixes.
Have you noticed how every state seemed have a SiliconSomewhere two years ago that was going to push that state forward and now no one remembers them except for the poor fools who thought moving from SiliconValley to SiliconCornPlanes really was a good career move?
Still, at least he can go to SiliconJail before being executed at SiliconGallows, his body taken along SiliconRoad to SiliconGraveyard and dumped in SiliconHoleintheground.
Of course, whoever came up with this also probably still calls themselves an E-Consultant and still works for an i-deas firm.
"37% faster in Quake 3 at 1600x1200x32 on a Pentium4 2.4ghz."
Does anyone else get the feeling there's a director of marketing at the GPU companies who just pulls a Dr. Evil inspired number out of the air and declares to the engineers that that's the FPS for Q3 they need for the next card?
"I want our next card to not just give me a frame per second but TEN frames per second in Quake. We'll see how they like that, huh?!"
"Uh, Sir? We already do one hundred and ninety two frames per second at maximum resolution."
"I see. Then I want..." finger curls against his bottom lip, "....One Beeeeeeeellion frames per second."
"But Sir, that's insane! No one can tell after about 50fps anyway!"
"Mini-Marketing-Me, keeeeeell him!"
Slashdot Mirror
How about the CIA's site, The School Of The Americas, the USAF (creating deliberate firestorms in Dresden during WWII) and anything covering exploding cigars in cuba?
Oh, yeah, it's only terrorism when it doesn't suit the US. As Churchill said, the victors get to write the history books.
Note: I am not anti-American. I'm hugely for what America is supposed to stand for. It's just a shame its leaders aren't.
If they acurately simulated a human engineer, can you picture any company that would be willing to take on the liability of all the times engineers screw up?
Either that, or can you picture anyone agreeing to the MSEngineer EULA?:
Microsoft shall not be held liable for: buildings falling down; bridges collapsing; unaligned railway tracks leading to derailing; subsidence; big spikes left sticking out or any other failings in design created by this product.
The user accepts that anything designed with MSEngineer 2.0 remains wholly the posession of the Microsoft Corporation.
Microsoft retains the right to ammend the software or anything designed, tinkered or maintained by it at any time, and the rights pertaining to such products.
Should the user contest any of the above, or have any reason to challenge Microsoft in any way, they agree that all cases shall be heard in the state of Washington by Steve Ballmer dressed as a clown. Steve's decision shall be binding unless Bill tells him otherwise.
When Microsoft bought Bungie, it was to buy a "killer app" for the X-Box and nerf it's simultaneous PC development for fear it would show up the X-Box.
Rare on the other hand has a whole one game announced and a legacy of Nintendo titles. Ultimately, it's just another shot fired in the console wars, rather than a loss to PC gaming, this time.
I would buy an X-Box, knowing Bill loses as much money as I spend on each one sold - but he has more money than me and so is going to win that war.
Consoles suit a particular style of game and so those games get developed there first and ported to the PC later if there's enough demand (GTA3, Tony Hawks etc.)
PCs suit a different style of game and so they get those games first and the consoles have to wait, if they get them at all, and then get a stripped down version. (Wolfenstein, Doom, Half Life, Morrowind).
The market has always been like that. Anyone who played PC games ten years ago will remember what it was like only having Commander Keen when the consoles had every other platform game out there, or waiting forever for a port of Golden Axe.
Now, about the only real difference is that Microsoft desperately needs killer apps for the X-Box and so is buying up PC titles, releasing them for the X-Box and then nerfing the PC development (Halo).
Otherwise, it's exactly the same situation it's always been - development on the most suited platform and occasional, all-too-rare, ports.
Still, never let that stop people who've not been in gaming long enough to realise it's the norm panicing and proclaiming the end of the world, every time they notice one example of it.
Every time I see comments about girls and marriage, I worry that Slashdot may no longer be of the geeks and for the geeks. Fortunately, then someone comes along like you and describes a database system as "a joy".
It's not often /. leaves me with a huge grin anymore but the image of you jumping up, punching the air and yelling, "Woohoo! I get to work with Postgres!" left me with one.
God bless you. God bless your pure, innocent love of databases.
So, in a game that's [potentially] going to be the very worst for abusive play, do you really want your brand getting associated with it? Imagine the joy of having "A Mac Attack" becoming the most hated concept on the net. Or maybe the next "A rape in cyberspace" story beginning, "It was under the pixelated golden arches of a virtual McDonalds..."
Money can't buy that kind of advertising. Probably for a very good reason.
I studied this one at university, they had a course all about it, called economics. I'll see if I can break it down.
If you make more than you spend, it's called a profit. If you spend more than you make, it's called a loss. Was that simple enough?
Just because an album sells 250,000 copies, doesn't mean it is automatically profitable. They may have spent vastly more than they made, in advertising it, to get those 250,000 sales. Micheal Jackson's latest was a great example: He complained not enough had been done to promote it. Sony's counter was that they spent $50million advertising and producing a record that sold 2 million copies - that's $25 costs/record. How much more should they have done?
So, in summary:
Volume != Profit
It always bemuses me that people seem to think these things are new. Tracking exits is relatively simple and as for how people access your site, just check HTTP_REFERER. Typed URLs and bookmarks show no referer, links show you who sent them to your site. Granted, it's not 100% infalible, but it works on any browser. I'd rather trade 80% accuracy 100% of the time than 100% accuracy on 5-10% of hits.
From time to time, it still amuses me to be watching the logs while I'm chatting to a visitor via Messenger and tell them what system they're running, what their screen res is, color depth, what enabled/disable features they have and the path they've taken through the site. If you're really that bothered, JavaScript even lets you track their mouse's movement around and how they scroll up/down the page and then play it back on your own PC, telling you things like how fast they read and what they paid attention to.
In unrelated news, Rambus' lawyers have filed a series of initial patents, intending to amend them later as more details become available. Ivanna Bendemover, Rambus' CEO reassured everyone at the standards group that this has nothing to do with the new technology, stating, "You can trust Rambus to only have the industry's very best interests at heart."
So, by noting that you're watching episode 6 of season 3 of ER, it can tell you're in the 34th month of a 36 month lease? Sure it can.
You'll notice they were careful emphasise the privacy only on the viewing habits section. The rest of it they're actually planning to abuse your privacy (buying habits, loan details, medical insurance?, etc.) as much as it takes. But, by that point, they're hoping to have misdirected you with all the smoke and mirrors of intentional [mis]emphasis.
If they were any more intentionally dishonest about privacy issues, they'd be forced to run for congress.
My advice would be to use those seven extra hours in front of a PC to tidy up your resume and get it out there. You are going to be looking for a job soon enough, you might as well get the headstart.
Ask yourself, how many dotcom tales of people agreeing to work without pay for a while; work long hours; all the rest of it, you've heard. Now, how many of those companies actually survived by doing that? Next to none?
What, you mean there's a correllation between high-crime neighbourhoods and a likelihood of more crime being committed there. This is an outrage. I demand that zero-crime neighbourhoods get equal representation as places likely to have crime in the future.
Yes, it is very unfortunate that minorities in this, and most, countries tend to be in poorer neighbourhoods and that those neighbourhoods are consequently more likely to suffer from crime. However, as far as I'm aware, the list contains those individuals for reasons other than race. Playing the race card simply serves to add an association that wasn't being made before. Haven't we learned yet that the over-the-top-PC brigade do more harm than good?
Perhaps there is a rule, alluded to by your statement.
Just as gravity was still there before Newton discovered it, there may still be a rule regarding engagements and diamonds - you just simply haven't discovered it yet.
I was lucky. I married someone for whom funky stuff like integrity, thought, consideration, selflessness, originality were priorities. To her, the traditional goal of "it must be so big I can't lift my hand" was tacky, ostentatious, gaudy, all the hallmarks of a wannabe who needed validation from outside, rather than someone looking for something that had significance simply for what it was.
The end result for us was a third of a carat rub over setting on a really unique band. For her, it's perfect as it comes across as stylish, vastly more sophisticated and, her highest priority, she doesn't spend the rest of her life being scared of knocking a large rock out of a cheap setting.
I still managed to spend a fair bit of money, but that was on: getting it engraved (without her knowing) on the inside; on getting it rush ordered so I could still suprise her, even though we'd chosen it together; on finding the perfect time and place to do the proposing; on getting matching earings made to go with it. Those are all the subtle things that allowed me to put vastly more value in to it for her without buying in to a deliberate, tacky, hype.
So, like I said, it depends a lot on who you're marrying. If the biggest, gaudiest rock is simply the only way to feel she's valued, that's what you should get her - you chose that type of person. If style and the suble touches are what're important, congratulations, you've found someone who's going to appreciate everything you do for her, regardless of how well off you are at the time. That is the kind of woman I wanted to marry. :)
OK, now lets get back to bitching about Microsoft. This is getting sappy!
Don't we?
Besides, there's a line from the movie Rockstar - something along the lines of, "Girls want you because you're larger than life. That makes the guys want to be you. And the guys buy the records. Your job is to live the dream so other people don't have to." Without the appeal of the glamorous moviestar lives and everything off screen, there's only a fraction of the appeal. 1s and 0s just aren't that sexy.
It's almost a shame that the notion of country specific domains was optional and everyone went in to a .com frenzy. Were all UK sites .uk, all US sites .us etc., then the notion of conflicting laws, national firewalls and all the rest would be solved.
Each country's content could then abide by its own laws and only those laws. If a country didn't like the laws of another country, all they'd have to do is make it an offence for their own ISPs to serve information from those countries to their national users.
So, if Yahoo US wants to have Nazi auctions to the distaste of Yahoo France, France can either: accept it's not their jurisdiction; ask the US to legislate against it; or block those nasty English speakers. Dimitri wants to enable blind users to run text-to-speech on E-books in Russia? Well then Adobe can either: deal with it; petition the Russian government to change their laws; or petition the US government to block Russia.
Once that's in place, the issue of doing what's perfectly legal in your country, in your country, is solved.
I realise that goes against the international, free of boundaries notion of the net that we all love, but then is it really free at the moment anyway? Or do we just have lawyers trying to apply the laws of their country to everyone else and then those people who know their country won't do anything flauting it all anyway? If anything, the notion of blocking entire countries would probably create such an outcry in those nations that claim freedom of speech that it may well end up being less of a problem than the current mess.
Just go to the chapter menu and start watching from Chapter 1. The FBI warning's usually fixed between the main menu's play option and the first chapter. Skipping direct to the chapter usually skips the warning.
Except then they wouldn't have a product.
Just because you get in to a huff doesn't give you any right to close the source on a project that's 90% other people's open source, 10% your own spyware.
It is always wise to consider your own understanding before calling others morons.
The reality is, two years ago, you couldn't get enough US workers at even remotely sensible salaries, so H1Bs became a way to make US businesses viable in a global market. Now the recession's hit and companies can find US employees, the number of H1Bs are down 75% (160k-40k from the article). Those figures alone indicate that while there are some abuses (there will be in any system), by and large, H1Bs have worked as intended - to provide extra labour when labour is short.
The main problem with the IT industry is that a million and one idiots joined the industry on the promise of massive salaries. They didn't care about what they were doing, put relatively little effort in to getting more than the basic skills and just came for the money.
Once the economy tanked and layoffs started, some of them remained, filling the positions the "good" engineers should be taking. End result, a lot of "good" engineers can't find work because a lot of "bad" ones are still in the remaining jobs. This is settling out over time, but it's still an issue.
The same happens in whatever the boom industry is right before a recession. Look what happened to accountants and stock brokers at the end of the 80s. In time, it rights itself as the gold diggers leave in search of the next boom and the "good" people filter back in to the roles.
So, perhaps rather than go for the ultranationalistic, easy knee-jerk of "damn them immigrants!", which, granted, most societies tend to do during hard times, maybe looking closer to home makes more sense.
We still have MicroSkills and Laptop Training Solutions advertising all over the radio here (CA) about how IT is a growth industry and if you just do a six month course, you're entitled to a $60k job at the end of it. I'd imagine they're dumping vastly more than 20,000 extra workers in to an industry that they shouldn't be in.
And going back to the whole industries people shouldn't be in... It's been said by almost every expert on the dot.com economy that the recession was the best thing that could have happened as it's driving out those who shouldn't be in it. Yes, it's painful while those of us who should be in it wait for them to go and can't find work ourselves. Ultimately, though, the lean period's strengthening the industry, not harming it.
And, yes, I have been through it. Ten months out of work with a near dream resume behind me. Yet even after that, I still stand by the fact that the problems we're facing are a good thing. We were a bloated industry that needed to be forced to justify its existence. Blaming those sneaky foreigners really doesn't help things.
One final thought: Which would you prefer, "Half my office are foreigners on H1Bs rather than Americans" or "My office shut down and moved to India because we couldn't compete without a few H1Bs"?
Ingredients:
- 1 box, Lucky Charms
- [Many] bottles, Jolt cola
Recipe:- Eat Lucky charms
- Drink Jolt cola
Of course, that's just for the lazy. When a real craving hit us, we'd ask an American player who had the then luxury of both a connection from home and a second phoneline to call transatlantic and get us a pizza delivered to the uni computer lab. Oh, and the guy who sat in the corner with his monitor turned in to the wall was <HEAVILY EMPHASISED> not </HEAVILY EMPHASISED> allowed to touch any of the pizza until we were all done.- Go to book store.
- Find computer section.
- Find white book with nice sketch of animal (ignoring the weird photo ones) on the cover.
- Find one that matches whatever you want to learn.
- Buy it.
If you want, you can buy other books by O'Reilly on other subjects you're curious about. They always seem to end up being worth the money.As for PHP, the best resource for that is the plain and simple php.net. Not only is the entire language documented, every function definition contains examples and discussion on it. What more could you ask for?
Now we have TW's PVR. It's not actually as useful as Tivo or ReplayTV but it comes with your cable service, it'll no doubt be marketted as a nice and cheap add on, so most people'll go with it rather than Tivo or ReplayTV. It also won't actually allow commercial skipping, or file sharing, or anything else Time Warner didn't like before hand.
So, what we're really seeing is them using their market position to force the suppliers of a product that they don't like out of the market. What are the odds that TW's real plan is that, in another five years, TiVo and ReplayTV will have all but pulled out of the market and the Time Warner PVR will force you to keep watching those ads. Even better, as you have to watch your TV through it, they'll be able to stop you channel surfing too.
Forgive me if I don't see this as an amazing U-turn from Time Warner, nor the beginning of their acceptance of PVRs (as we currently know them).
Have you noticed how every state seemed have a SiliconSomewhere two years ago that was going to push that state forward and now no one remembers them except for the poor fools who thought moving from SiliconValley to SiliconCornPlanes really was a good career move?
Still, at least he can go to SiliconJail before being executed at SiliconGallows, his body taken along SiliconRoad to SiliconGraveyard and dumped in SiliconHoleintheground.
Of course, whoever came up with this also probably still calls themselves an E-Consultant and still works for an i-deas firm.
Does anyone else get the feeling there's a director of marketing at the GPU companies who just pulls a Dr. Evil inspired number out of the air and declares to the engineers that that's the FPS for Q3 they need for the next card?
"I want our next card to not just give me a frame per second but TEN frames per second in Quake. We'll see how they like that, huh?!"
"Uh, Sir? We already do one hundred and ninety two frames per second at maximum resolution."
"I see. Then I want..." finger curls against his bottom lip, "....One Beeeeeeeellion frames per second."
"But Sir, that's insane! No one can tell after about 50fps anyway!"
"Mini-Marketing-Me, keeeeeell him!"