I can see it now - just like alcohol, they'll up the legal age for buying Quake to 21 years old.
Now that would be the ultimate irony. You can die for your country at age 18, but you couldn't play violent video games! (Just like you can now die for your country at age 18, but you are not considered responsible enough to buy beer!)
A project I still work for had an overseas business partner (in the UK). It worked out very well - they worked on a couple of relatively self-contained parts.
The biggest problem was communication - the timezone difference meant that conference calling was limited to a fairly small window. Also, the size of our build products (this is a big project) meant that it took them a while to FTP the latest build. However, transatlantic bandwidth has increased quite a bit since then.
Overall, it was a positive experience. Our business partner was doing more than just "grunt work" too. (Importantly, they had prior experience in what we were doing). It is unlikely that it was any cheaper than hiring a boatload more of people to do the work here (maybe more expensive) but they had the right experience and good people, and that's what made the difference...and they didn't have a learning curve to ascend.
Ronfar wrote:
I just don't like the fact that a considerable number of Americans (people who have set enough roots down here to be considered such, people who've lived here for enough time that I don't consider them visitors) don't have the right to vote or affect the government in any way.
It's quite ironic. The U.S. originally got rid of the British for, amongst other things, taxation without representation. And now here are all the people like me, who are taxed...but have no representation!
Perhaps they should change immigration law so that if you are to be taxed, you're given the right to vote, too!
I said:
Friends back home - in fact, I used to say this myself - say that the US has no culture.
And w3woody replied:
And some of your best friends are black, too? (Meaning if you are going to complain about prejudice, don't participate, especially in the same damned post! For the terminally clueless, the phrase "some of my best friends are black" is often used by racist biggots trying to convince us they're not racist. Not that I'm calling the above poster racist--just prejudiced against Americans.)
I think you missed my point by about 2.5 AU. Perhaps my writing skills need to be better (especially when I go off half-cocked like that) My point was that people 'back home' were prejudiced because they didn't know any better. At one time I didn't know better - all I knew of the United States was what Hollywood pumps out (and Hollywood would have us believe the entire U.S. comprises of Los Angeles, and maybe on a good day, Chicago and New York).
My point was that the revelation I had was that there's a lot more to the U.S. than most believe - especially the French (who, in my personal experience are the ones most likely to say the U.S. has no culture, and yes, I tell them they are talking horsepucky if they say that). My point was that moving abroad was a huge, mind-broadening experience, even though it was to the United States and not some small, remote and unique country.
In summary, I am not prejudiced against Americans at all. The crack about multilingual/American thing was a joke, and I make jokes about everyone, including my own kind. Americans are fellow humans too. Well, most of them! [0]
I also agree that the INS needs 'fixing'. I will take your word for it about the web development company (after all, I work for a large and well respected firm who is careful to avoid that kind of thing). If you want to stop that kind of thing, as a U.S. Citizen, why not report that web development firm to the INS?
To quote the Giant, 'you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.'
alien adj. 1. foreign; strange 2. of aliens n. 1. a foreigner 2. a foreign-born resident who is not naturalized 3. a hypothetical being from outer space
It appears we have yet another victim of the Hollywoodization of US culture.
Yes I know what the dictionary definition of "alien" is for heaven's sake! I was just trying to add a little humor to my rant. I guess I failed, but then again no-one has ever accused me of being a comedian!
The point still stands: the INS process alienates us and makes us feel somewhat "worthless". Especially the "guilty until proven innocent" bits they put on the forms.
I find this debate sad and amusing at the same time.
Here you have Slashdotters who get all outraged about the DMCA et al. yet are quite happy to trample on us poor filthy stinkin' rotten furrriners (as they say around here). What an incredible double-standard.
Firstly, I'm in the gunsights of most of this group. Not only am I just a young puke, but I'm a foreign one at that, in the USA, on a visa (L-1 not H1-B, but that's not the point).
In the company I work for, I do not see any of the problems that everyone alludes to. Firstly, my company MUST, by law, pay me the going rate. They cannot pay me less than an equivalent US worker. (In fact, with my International Service Allowance, I am paid more that my immediate co-workers with the same experience). Where I work, I have seen no evidence that foreigners are treated any different to their US-born (not US-indigenous - we only have ONE so-called "native Indian" working here, and she's only half-native) counterparts.
Some complaints about foreign workers are somewhat valid - I wish some of my fellow foreigners spoke better English - but I'm willing to give and take, work with them, and understand them. For someone who can understand C++, Perl, Java, Linux, and the Windoze NT GINA module, it really *isn't* that hard to do. I don't complain about it. After all: how many Americans speak foreign languages that well? I have met very few US citizens who can speak any foreign language (and Spanish would be useful down here). It's like the old joke:
What do you call someone who speaks many languages? Multilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language? American!
What I see here is mainly thinly veiled prejudice. I dare any one of you people whineing about foreigners/young people (and even worse!) young foreigners to actually say all this to my face. In the anonymity of a Slashdot comment, it's easy to slag off your fellow HUMANS.
That's right -- the immigration process *is* dehumanizing. Here I am, being called an "alien". I don't in fact come from somewhere in the vicinity of Alioth, I come from planet Earth. Strip off the skin - whether it's white, yellow, black or brown - and we are all exactly the same underneath.
Can't people understand that the United States is *built* on immigration? The cultural mix is what made America what she is today. Friends back home - in fact, I used to say this myself - say that the US has no culture. In the time I've been here I have learned that the US has an incredibly rich culture. Most of the world is represented here!
I don't intend to stay in the US forever but it's certainly given me a new (and much more positive) opinion of people who immigrated to MY home country.
I think it's undoubted that the history of computing will be a class sooner or later.
At high school, I was (forced) to learn the Industrial Revolution in history classes. I think what's happening with the Net is every bit as dramatic and important as the Industrial Revolution was.
In 100 years time, teenagers will be being bored by the Information Revolution in history class, just like I was bored by the Industrial Revolution!
It's equals it is.
It's does not show possession.
Risking a loss of a Karma point, what _is_ your point? "It's basic manners" expands as "It is basic manners" which is precisely what I meant. I do know the difference between its and it's (and it's one of my pet grammar peeves too!)
When someone takes the time to come up with a neat layout - regardless of copyright issues of look and feel - it's simply good manners to ask the original creator for permission (the exception being if the original creator says something to the effect "Feel free to use my layout" as this is I guess explicit permission).
If people forget good manners, all we're going to end up with is more rabid lawyers sueing over issues like this. As a community, we should at least try and get this one right, and establish a system of good manners that does not require lawyers.
Finally, layout is really only a small issue. The real issue I think (diverging slightly) of many websites is lack of content. Some webmasters go to particular trouble to have a nice flashy (literally - with Flash and Shockwave stuff) layout but absolutely nothing in the way of content. A website with a simple but easily navigable layout, but lots of good content is far better. Never sacrifice content for layout!
Intel have always been seen as the market leader (in an economic/business sense amongst the general populace). I think Intel probably believe they are still the market leader. Steps like this - effectively redefining standards - are something that a market leader can do (by definition) because everyone will follow.
However, I have the feeling that Intel might not be the strong market leader any more. It wasn't long ago when few people had a non-Intel CPU in their PC...but amongst people I know, an increasing number are turning to the Athlon rather than the Pentium. It could be that the P4 design might actually set Intel back quite a bit if PC manufacturers decide it'd be easier/cheaper to supply AMD chips instead.
To quote Douglas Adams, I think Intel are just about to be first against the wall when the revolution came.
This whole P4 heat thing reminds me of a comment made in a magazine back when the Pentium 60 was new. A magazine reviewer made a simple remark:
"It overheats and it's crap".
A nice, eloquent and to-the-point description of the original P60 from those who usually feel they need to waffle! And it looks like history is repeating itself...
The trouble with the MPAA is that they are slightly delusional. People who want DeCSS will always be able to get it; trying to shut down sites serving it is like playing a worldwide game of whack-a-mole.
The MPAA shut one site down, and so someone else starts a new site. They shut that site down, and the next one comes along, ad infinitum. Anyone with any sense will use a free (Xoom, Geocities etc.) server and use false personal details when registering.
Quite why they are getting their panties in such a wad about casual use of DeCSS is a little beyond me anyway. How long will it be until DVD writers become affordable, and some hacker figures how to make straight bitwise copies of a DVD? CSS or no CSS it doesn't matter when you make a bitwise copy!
Why CSS was bothered with in the first instance, I don't know. It's a bit like I always wondered why copy protection schemes were always tried on the Amiga (they were always cracked).
The other thing about the movie industry that really gets my goat is region coding. It's just another shoddy attempt at distorting the free market and preventing competition, something they only had by accident (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM) in the past.
The thing about this 70,000 application number is it's totally meaningless unless you know how they define an application.
As other posters have said, "Is the hello world program an application"?
The number also depends on what you count. If you look at in-house applications as well as anything sold in the shops, or on internet sites as freeware/shareware, then 70,000 might be incredibly low. There may in fact be hundreds of thousands of applications if you include everything.
If you include only shrink-wrap boxes on shelves, and only add one per app (not per version of the app), you're probably talking a few thousand.
What's my point? The thing is - few people in the general populace have any skepticism any more. People just lap up the tabloid journalism that Fox News at Nine pump out every evening, being wowed by the sensationalism then believe it without question. This means the kind of spin such as "70,000 applications" works with the general population because they don't even think to question it.
And this lack of skepticism is why Microsoft's marketing is so successful. Most of the population aren't people any more, they are sheeple who blindly follow the marketing man.
The thing is about all these wonderful computer animations in movies is that you can tell they are computer animations.
Although I never saw the original Star Wars in the theatres (I was probably a bit too young then), when I did get to see them, I really enjoyed them. The Millennium Falcon looked real, even if it was really a model.
Looking at Episode 1, although the special effects were supposedly "better", they did appear rather fake. This so far appears true of many movies where computer animation is used: it's like there's not quite the attention to detail that was put in with the old models.
For instance - compare 2001: A Space Odyssey which was out in 1968, before we'd landed someone on the moon with any space movie from the last couple of years. 2001 seemed real. The newer movies seem to lack the attention to detail that 2001 got.
Computer animation is going to be the future - but it still has a long way to go before it will catch up with even 2001. George Lucas shouldn't kill Kenny just yet...
This latest little faux-pas by Intel reminds me of the good ol' FDIV days. There was a joke that ran like this:
Q. Intel's Pentium supposedly complies to IEEE floating point standards. If the Pentium is part of an airplane's fly-by-wire system, and you're on that plane, how is IEEE pronounced?
As a 19 year old who loved UNIX and C, I was forced to learn COBOL on one of these things running VAX/VMS. We nicknamed VMS "Vomit Making System". For all I know, the college I went to is still forcing first years to do COBOL on the Vax.
Still, I have fond memories of doing all-nighters on these things after drinking a boatload of beer;-)
Slashdot Mirror
I can see it now - just like alcohol, they'll up the legal age for buying Quake to 21 years old.
Now that would be the ultimate irony. You can die for your country at age 18, but you couldn't play violent video games! (Just like you can now die for your country at age 18, but you are not considered responsible enough to buy beer!)
A project I still work for had an overseas business partner (in the UK). It worked out very well - they worked on a couple of relatively self-contained parts.
The biggest problem was communication - the timezone difference meant that conference calling was limited to a fairly small window. Also, the size of our build products (this is a big project) meant that it took them a while to FTP the latest build. However, transatlantic bandwidth has increased quite a bit since then.
Overall, it was a positive experience. Our business partner was doing more than just "grunt work" too. (Importantly, they had prior experience in what we were doing). It is unlikely that it was any cheaper than hiring a boatload more of people to do the work here (maybe more expensive) but they had the right experience and good people, and that's what made the difference...and they didn't have a learning curve to ascend.
I just don't like the fact that a considerable number of Americans (people who have set enough roots down here to be considered such, people who've lived here for enough time that I don't consider them visitors) don't have the right to vote or affect the government in any way.
It's quite ironic. The U.S. originally got rid of the British for, amongst other things, taxation without representation. And now here are all the people like me, who are taxed...but have no representation!
Perhaps they should change immigration law so that if you are to be taxed, you're given the right to vote, too!
Friends back home - in fact, I used to say this myself - say that the US has no culture.
And w3woody replied:
And some of your best friends are black, too? (Meaning if you are going to complain about prejudice, don't participate, especially in the same damned post! For the terminally clueless, the phrase "some of my best friends are black" is often used by racist biggots trying to convince us they're not racist. Not that I'm calling the above poster racist--just prejudiced against Americans.)
I think you missed my point by about 2.5 AU. Perhaps my writing skills need to be better (especially when I go off half-cocked like that) My point was that people 'back home' were prejudiced because they didn't know any better. At one time I didn't know better - all I knew of the United States was what Hollywood pumps out (and Hollywood would have us believe the entire U.S. comprises of Los Angeles, and maybe on a good day, Chicago and New York).
My point was that the revelation I had was that there's a lot more to the U.S. than most believe - especially the French (who, in my personal experience are the ones most likely to say the U.S. has no culture, and yes, I tell them they are talking horsepucky if they say that). My point was that moving abroad was a huge, mind-broadening experience, even though it was to the United States and not some small, remote and unique country.
In summary, I am not prejudiced against Americans at all. The crack about multilingual/American thing was a joke, and I make jokes about everyone, including my own kind. Americans are fellow humans too. Well, most of them! [0]
I also agree that the INS needs 'fixing'. I will take your word for it about the web development company (after all, I work for a large and well respected firm who is careful to avoid that kind of thing). If you want to stop that kind of thing, as a U.S. Citizen, why not report that web development firm to the INS?
[0] That was a JOKE okay!
To quote the Giant, 'you keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.'
alien adj. 1. foreign; strange 2. of aliens n. 1. a foreigner 2. a foreign-born resident who is not naturalized 3. a hypothetical being from outer space It appears we have yet another victim of the Hollywoodization of US culture.
Yes I know what the dictionary definition of "alien" is for heaven's sake! I was just trying to add a little humor to my rant. I guess I failed, but then again no-one has ever accused me of being a comedian!
The point still stands: the INS process alienates us and makes us feel somewhat "worthless". Especially the "guilty until proven innocent" bits they put on the forms.
Here you have Slashdotters who get all outraged about the DMCA et al. yet are quite happy to trample on us poor filthy stinkin' rotten furrriners (as they say around here). What an incredible double-standard.
Firstly, I'm in the gunsights of most of this group. Not only am I just a young puke, but I'm a foreign one at that, in the USA, on a visa (L-1 not H1-B, but that's not the point).
In the company I work for, I do not see any of the problems that everyone alludes to. Firstly, my company MUST, by law, pay me the going rate. They cannot pay me less than an equivalent US worker. (In fact, with my International Service Allowance, I am paid more that my immediate co-workers with the same experience). Where I work, I have seen no evidence that foreigners are treated any different to their US-born (not US-indigenous - we only have ONE so-called "native Indian" working here, and she's only half-native) counterparts.
Some complaints about foreign workers are somewhat valid - I wish some of my fellow foreigners spoke better English - but I'm willing to give and take, work with them, and understand them. For someone who can understand C++, Perl, Java, Linux, and the Windoze NT GINA module, it really *isn't* that hard to do. I don't complain about it. After all: how many Americans speak foreign languages that well? I have met very few US citizens who can speak any foreign language (and Spanish would be useful down here). It's like the old joke:
What do you call someone who speaks many languages? Multilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks only one language? American!
What I see here is mainly thinly veiled prejudice. I dare any one of you people whineing about foreigners/young people (and even worse!) young foreigners to actually say all this to my face. In the anonymity of a Slashdot comment, it's easy to slag off your fellow HUMANS.
That's right -- the immigration process *is* dehumanizing. Here I am, being called an "alien". I don't in fact come from somewhere in the vicinity of Alioth, I come from planet Earth. Strip off the skin - whether it's white, yellow, black or brown - and we are all exactly the same underneath.
Can't people understand that the United States is *built* on immigration? The cultural mix is what made America what she is today. Friends back home - in fact, I used to say this myself - say that the US has no culture. In the time I've been here I have learned that the US has an incredibly rich culture. Most of the world is represented here!
I don't intend to stay in the US forever but it's certainly given me a new (and much more positive) opinion of people who immigrated to MY home country.
At high school, I was (forced) to learn the Industrial Revolution in history classes. I think what's happening with the Net is every bit as dramatic and important as the Industrial Revolution was.
In 100 years time, teenagers will be being bored by the Information Revolution in history class, just like I was bored by the Industrial Revolution!
It's equals it is.
It's does not show possession. Risking a loss of a Karma point, what _is_ your point? "It's basic manners" expands as "It is basic manners" which is precisely what I meant. I do know the difference between its and it's (and it's one of my pet grammar peeves too!)
If people forget good manners, all we're going to end up with is more rabid lawyers sueing over issues like this. As a community, we should at least try and get this one right, and establish a system of good manners that does not require lawyers.
Finally, layout is really only a small issue. The real issue I think (diverging slightly) of many websites is lack of content. Some webmasters go to particular trouble to have a nice flashy (literally - with Flash and Shockwave stuff) layout but absolutely nothing in the way of content. A website with a simple but easily navigable layout, but lots of good content is far better. Never sacrifice content for layout!
However, I have the feeling that Intel might not be the strong market leader any more. It wasn't long ago when few people had a non-Intel CPU in their PC...but amongst people I know, an increasing number are turning to the Athlon rather than the Pentium. It could be that the P4 design might actually set Intel back quite a bit if PC manufacturers decide it'd be easier/cheaper to supply AMD chips instead.
To quote Douglas Adams, I think Intel are just about to be first against the wall when the revolution came.
This whole P4 heat thing reminds me of a comment made in a magazine back when the Pentium 60 was new. A magazine reviewer made a simple remark:
"It overheats and it's crap".
A nice, eloquent and to-the-point description of the original P60 from those who usually feel they need to waffle! And it looks like history is repeating itself...
The MPAA shut one site down, and so someone else starts a new site. They shut that site down, and the next one comes along, ad infinitum. Anyone with any sense will use a free (Xoom, Geocities etc.) server and use false personal details when registering.
Quite why they are getting their panties in such a wad about casual use of DeCSS is a little beyond me anyway. How long will it be until DVD writers become affordable, and some hacker figures how to make straight bitwise copies of a DVD? CSS or no CSS it doesn't matter when you make a bitwise copy!
Why CSS was bothered with in the first instance, I don't know. It's a bit like I always wondered why copy protection schemes were always tried on the Amiga (they were always cracked).
The other thing about the movie industry that really gets my goat is region coding. It's just another shoddy attempt at distorting the free market and preventing competition, something they only had by accident (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM) in the past.
Anyway, I wear my "Got DeCSS?" shirt with pride!
As other posters have said, "Is the hello world program an application"?
The number also depends on what you count. If you look at in-house applications as well as anything sold in the shops, or on internet sites as freeware/shareware, then 70,000 might be incredibly low. There may in fact be hundreds of thousands of applications if you include everything.
If you include only shrink-wrap boxes on shelves, and only add one per app (not per version of the app), you're probably talking a few thousand.
What's my point? The thing is - few people in the general populace have any skepticism any more. People just lap up the tabloid journalism that Fox News at Nine pump out every evening, being wowed by the sensationalism then believe it without question. This means the kind of spin such as "70,000 applications" works with the general population because they don't even think to question it.
And this lack of skepticism is why Microsoft's marketing is so successful. Most of the population aren't people any more, they are sheeple who blindly follow the marketing man.
Although I never saw the original Star Wars in the theatres (I was probably a bit too young then), when I did get to see them, I really enjoyed them. The Millennium Falcon looked real, even if it was really a model.
Looking at Episode 1, although the special effects were supposedly "better", they did appear rather fake. This so far appears true of many movies where computer animation is used: it's like there's not quite the attention to detail that was put in with the old models.
For instance - compare 2001: A Space Odyssey which was out in 1968, before we'd landed someone on the moon with any space movie from the last couple of years. 2001 seemed real. The newer movies seem to lack the attention to detail that 2001 got.
Computer animation is going to be the future - but it still has a long way to go before it will catch up with even 2001. George Lucas shouldn't kill Kenny just yet...
Q. Intel's Pentium supposedly complies to IEEE floating point standards. If the Pentium is part of an airplane's fly-by-wire system, and you're on that plane, how is IEEE pronounced?
A. Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!
As a 19 year old who loved UNIX and C, I was forced to learn COBOL on one of these things running VAX/VMS. We nicknamed VMS "Vomit Making System". For all I know, the college I went to is still forcing first years to do COBOL on the Vax. Still, I have fond memories of doing all-nighters on these things after drinking a boatload of beer ;-)