Like most developers, when I design a GUI or a web page, I look at examples from similar applications or web sites. If I see an interface I like it, I'll attempt to do something similar, throwing in a little bit of my own style.
Am I ripping something off? Maybe, in the technical sense. But if I know something works, why shouldn't I want to use it?
Now it seems like I cannot do this anymore. If I imitate a GUI feature I see in an application or web page, I might be infringing on a patent. How can I know what is patented and what is not? In the physical world I can turn over a widget and if it is patented it says "USA Patent #xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" on the bottom. I can't do that in a GUI. Oh, the About box might state that the application contains patents xxx and yyy, but that doesn't tell me much.
Aside: does Adobe's Photoshop list any patents in its About box?
The point is I now feel like my hands are tied. I haven't clue if the GUI I am currently working on infringes patents or not, and I see no practical why of finding out.
This is a fabulous find, but it doesn't really solve all the problems associated with Hydrogen.
(1) Problem #1: Getting the hydrogen. We don't *have* to mine hydrogen. We can get it from water. But this takes power, the practical generation of which has an impact on the environment. This could weigh equally with the environmental impact of mining it (as mentioned in the article).
(2) Distributing hydrogen. Hydrogen cannot be pumped or carted around like petroleum or natural gas. It is an extremely difficuly to handle gas, and contains much lower energy density than other fuels (read: you need more to get the same energy). Part of our dependency on petroleum is based on the current distribution network.
(3) Burning Hydrogen. Contrary to popular belief, burning hydrogen does not produce only water. Yes, hydrogen plus oxygen equal water, but we are not talking about burning hyrogen in oxygen. We are burning hyrdrogen in *air*, which is +70% nitrogen. When anything is burned in air, there is a reaction between the oxygen and the nitrogen to create those nitrous oxide pollutants which we generally associate with cars. These will be reduced but will not go away just because we are burning hydrogen.
Fortunately using fuel cell *does* produce only water. Hopefully many cases where we current burn fuels can use fuel cells instead.
OK, I should be more specific. Back in 1984, my Dad paid a reasonable monthly charge so I could access Compuserve. I didn't pay a cent, therefore it was reasonable:-)
Back in 1994 the Internet *was* new, from the general public perspective. Sure, it had been around for years, but but wasn't in the news that much. A better way of phrasing it would be to state that something new was happening *to* the Internet: the average person was climbing on board. For the first time in history a large number of average citizens were accessible via electronic means.
To most people, Compuserve *did* come before the Internet. Back in 1984 I paid a reasonable monthly charge to access Compuserve. I couldn't do the same with the Internet until 1993.
That said, I still find his smug "if we didn't do it somebody else would have" attitude annoying.
Didn't Morpheus recently post that the reports of a security hole in their product were false? Now apparently they are admitting to a security hole of massive proporations. I mean, having anybody on the Internet change the *registry* settings on my computer is a huge flaw. Doesn't this concern anyone?
You missed my example (1), which fingered lack of vision as a major source of office politics. In order for people to work together as a team there must be a concensus as to what the team should be working on. If there is not a concensus (which, as you point out is more-often-than-not in the real world) the actions of the team must still be controlled, even as they go off in different directions. I've witnessed teams vanish down a rathole persuing a interesting-yet-useless concept which provides no benefit to the company. I've also witnesses teams work endlessly on a brilliant concept, which again provides no benefit to the company because nobody in the company knows what they are doing. You point about good managers is in agreement with mine. There are (or should be) business reasons why a team should be doing what it is doing. The job of a manager is to guide the team because the team cannot always see these business reasons. A bad manager either does not guide the team, or guides it in a direction for personal, not business, reasons.
I've worked at my fair share of bad companies. I've determined that what makes a company a bad place to work is office politics. You probably say "Duh! Tell me something I don't know!", but the important thing in this statement is to define what office politics is. My definition:
Office Politics: Occurs when a portion of a company, be it a division, team, or single individual, competes actively against another portion of the same company instead of working for the good of the company.
Think about it. You and the people you work with are supposed to be on the same team, working towards the same goal. As long as this is the case (the situation with my currect job), work is great, exciting, and productive. When this is not the case (e.g., divisional infighting, backstabbing, etc...) things start to unravel. Why? Because now people have to waste their time defending themselves against the people they work with, efficiency drops and production shrinks to next to nothing.
How does this happen? I've witnessed the following reasons, in no particular order (there may be other reasons I have not witnessed):
Lack of vision. This starts at the top. The company as a whole does not know or understand the business that they are in. Therefore the separate parts of the company (for example, Team A and Team B) go off in different directions (Direction A and Direction B). Since Direction A is incompatible with Direction B, infighting starts over the available company reasources. Lack of vision has affected almost every company I have worked for. Most govenment departments fall into this category. You can't really blame the managers because they cannot possible know what they should be doing.
Lack of Leadership. This starts in the middle, but the blame ultimately lies at the top. The company as a whole knows what it want to do. But the management of Team A decides to do their own thing. Maybe they head off in a different direction. Maybe they decide to do exactly what Team B is doing, because they think they can do it better. When this happens, the "powers that be" in the company should take notice and put a stop to it. Or maybe, if Team A is actually persuing a good idea, make it the work official. If Team A is not kept under control, however, then Team A management will eventually start what I call "Empire Building", essentially building a company within the company. You eventually end up with a situation like (1). This happened where I currently work. Team A decided that it would secretly create software exactly like what Team B (my team) was working on. They decided they could do it better. Team A got away with it for a few months (that's a few months of wasted resources), until the VP noticed and said "what the hell do you think you are doing?" Team A no longer works for the company. This also happened at my previous employer, except that Team A was not kept under control. The resulting conflict led to the mass resignation of most of the developers in Team B.
Incompetent Management. If you have an incompetent manager you (A) are not properly informed as to what you should be doing, and (B) have to put up with jerks, assholes, and incompetents who do and say and act like whatever they want. (A) is a variation of (1), but at a lower level. The lack of vision is coming from the manager, not the CEO. (B) is a variation of (2), also at a lower level. Jerks and assholes should be disciplined and/or fired. Incompetents should be trained or fired. Stupidities such as hiring incompetent friends and relatives also fall into this category.
These are all related. If left long enough (1) becomes (2), which will eventually lead to (3). I personally am lucky enough to work for a company which does not suffer from (2) or (3), and is taking steps to correct (1). OK, I've rambled for long enough. Thanks for reading this far.
So? What does that have to do with the question as to whether privacy is "good thing" or a "bad thing".
IMHO, Brin is being optimistic. If goverment surveilance went to the max today, I doubt any immediate problems would arise. Most democratic governments today do not, believe it or not, have any malicious intent towards their citizens as a whole. However, their is no guarantee that things will stay that way. If things changes, then it is too late to regret the powers we gave governemt.
Don't laugh. In Ottawa, the the police noticed that when the bars closed (at 2am), there were often fights that developed in the groups that were frequenting hot-dog vendors.
The city council came up with a solution: ban hot-dog vendors.
Not necessarily. I used to work on engineering simulations of engines in marine enviroments. While all the coding was done procedurally using FORTRAN, the actual application was very OO. The (gas turbine) engine was broken down into its individual components (compressor, combustion chamber, turbine, etc), and was connected to a power drive train to a propeller, and so forth. I think that OO would have done very nicely in this application.
IMHO, one of the main reasons that OO is not used often in engineering application is that mechanical engineers are not trained to use it. In fact most mechanical engineers have minimal programming training in Universoty. OO is a powerful way of implementing a solution, but there are many many pitfalls that can turn the code into a nightmare. Until you are taught what these pitfalls are, you will probably end up with an unmaintainable mass of spaghetti code.
There are three ways to learn OO properly. (1) Formally, in University, (2) On the job training by an experienced OO programmer, and (3) trial by fire on the job by yourself. In my experience (1) doesn't happen, most employers are not willing to invest in (2), and not willing to risk (3).
The first and last time I used UPS was when I bought a Dell and they shipped it UPS.
We weren't home when it arrived. Did they leave a note? No. Did try calling us and leaving a message. No.
They gave the $5K computer to my neighbours.
I don't agree with how the author flatly states that the Advertising model for web site income is a failure. I think web advertising has gotten a bum rap because of unrealistically high expectations (e.g., if a view does not equal a sale, then it must not work). Ads might be going through a bad spell, but it will pick up. Especially if more *non* web places start advertising.
This is not, by the way, an endorsement of pop up ads and other ad related annoyances. I don't like ads, but I think they can work. I don't like TV commercials either, but I still watch TV.
I disagree with your last statement. I live outside of Quebec, and the service Bell Canada gives me borders on awesome. We have had one down day in our first year of service. Bell Canada also answers their phone in a timely manner.
I, until recently, also had a Roger cable modem (yes, that's one house, two broadband connections). Rogers went through a about 4 weeks last year during which their service bordered on non-existent. Since then they have improved considerably, but not nearly as reliable as Bell (which is why we dropped them). Rogers also has this tendancy to leave you on hold for long long periods of time.
I for one could never gp back to 56K. When I visit my parent's house and use their computer with their modem it is soooo painful.
Can't afford your broadband? Get rid of your TV. Did that years ago. Why spend all that money to receive crap that you never want to watch?
For years now Seiko has had their Kinetic Quartz watches. Like a auto-winding watch, but instead of winding a spring your body movement charges a little capacitor which powers the watch.
Take it off and it lasts about a week before running out of juice.
The reason "to be or not to be, that is the question" doesn't return anything relevant is because most of the words are dropped from the search because they are "common".
But you can use the same semantics as AltaVista: the '+' character. Try:
"+to +be +or +not +to +be, +that +is +the +question"
This will return relevant sites. The only problem is that it is as annoying as hell to type.
Most of the e-commerce applications of haptics envisioned border on useless.
"People don't buy online because they want to feel the fabric or squeeze the Charmin." A simulated feel or squeeze is not going help. To me, this looks like a technology that has little pratical application.
Granted, there are niche applications as described in the medical fields or for the blind, but mainstream applications such as haptic enabled mice do not offer much value to the average person.
It should be noted that Taco's example of windows that can snap to a position or size demonstrate exactly how interfaces can be improved without using haptic technology. Tacos examples utilize visual feedback, are available today, and are very effective. Why invent a technology to solve a problem when an effective solution already exists?
People have always been arguing that the post-Napster world will reign supreme over leviathans like RIAA and MPAA, because with systems like Gnutella they would have to go after every single user instead of just the central server.
Well, it looks like the MPAA has turned the tables on that argument. They are doing exactly that!
Screw the old Y2K bug. This could be big. in the year 12,000,000,000 all const variables are going to change!!! If we don't start programming against the Y12G bug today, civilization will collapse.
But was Wolf 3D multi-player? I never played it multi-player, but I couldn't say it was not possible.
People are getting hung up on the misleading headline. This article is not about FPS games, it is about multi-player 3D graphics games.
That said, this article does read like a Grade 8 essay. I suspect that English is not the author's first language.
Re:Paul Festa -- not MSNBC
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
I don't agree with your premise. The early version of IE were laughable, but laughable IE is not what allowed Netscape to assemble an overwhelming lead. It was because Netscape, being the first serious Win32 based web browser, had over a year head start. It is easy to lead when there are no real competitors.
The race didn't start until the release of IE 2.0 in 1995.
Everybody at my company has one of these chairs. That's about 1,000 chairs. I, personally, dont like them all that much. They are good, but not great.
My biggest peeve about these chairs is that the mesh support acts like a big sounding board for farts. What gets swallowed up by a regular foam cushioned chair gets amplified tenfold. No secrets at my office:-\
My favourite chair is the kind my wife and I bought for home. A third the price, way more comfortable.
Slashdot Mirror
Like most developers, when I design a GUI or a web page, I look at examples from similar applications or web sites. If I see an interface I like it, I'll attempt to do something similar, throwing in a little bit of my own style.
Am I ripping something off? Maybe, in the technical sense. But if I know something works, why shouldn't I want to use it?
Now it seems like I cannot do this anymore. If I imitate a GUI feature I see in an application or web page, I might be infringing on a patent. How can I know what is patented and what is not? In the physical world I can turn over a widget and if it is patented it says "USA Patent #xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" on the bottom. I can't do that in a GUI. Oh, the About box might state that the application contains patents xxx and yyy, but that doesn't tell me much.
Aside: does Adobe's Photoshop list any patents in its About box?
The point is I now feel like my hands are tied. I haven't clue if the GUI I am currently working on infringes patents or not, and I see no practical why of finding out.
Doh! Can't spell "good" :-\
(1) Problem #1: Getting the hydrogen. We don't *have* to mine hydrogen. We can get it from water. But this takes power, the practical generation of which has an impact on the environment. This could weigh equally with the environmental impact of mining it (as mentioned in the article).
(2) Distributing hydrogen. Hydrogen cannot be pumped or carted around like petroleum or natural gas. It is an extremely difficuly to handle gas, and contains much lower energy density than other fuels (read: you need more to get the same energy). Part of our dependency on petroleum is based on the current distribution network.
(3) Burning Hydrogen. Contrary to popular belief, burning hydrogen does not produce only water. Yes, hydrogen plus oxygen equal water, but we are not talking about burning hyrogen in oxygen. We are burning hyrdrogen in *air*, which is +70% nitrogen. When anything is burned in air, there is a reaction between the oxygen and the nitrogen to create those nitrous oxide pollutants which we generally associate with cars. These will be reduced but will not go away just because we are burning hydrogen.
Fortunately using fuel cell *does* produce only water. Hopefully many cases where we current burn fuels can use fuel cells instead.
OK, I should be more specific. Back in 1984, my Dad paid a reasonable monthly charge so I could access Compuserve. I didn't pay a cent, therefore it was reasonable :-)
I'd actually have to let that one slide.
Back in 1994 the Internet *was* new, from the general public perspective. Sure, it had been around for years, but but wasn't in the news that much. A better way of phrasing it would be to state that something new was happening *to* the Internet: the average person was climbing on board. For the first time in history a large number of average citizens were accessible via electronic means.
To most people, Compuserve *did* come before the Internet. Back in 1984 I paid a reasonable monthly charge to access Compuserve. I couldn't do the same with the Internet until 1993.
That said, I still find his smug "if we didn't do it somebody else would have" attitude annoying.
That's Verisign's motto. I guess honesty and integrity don't aren't part of trust.
Didn't Morpheus recently post that the reports of a security hole in their product were false? Now apparently they are admitting to a security hole of massive proporations. I mean, having anybody on the Internet change the *registry* settings on my computer is a huge flaw. Doesn't this concern anyone?
You missed my example (1), which fingered lack of vision as a major source of office politics. In order for people to work together as a team there must be a concensus as to what the team should be working on. If there is not a concensus (which, as you point out is more-often-than-not in the real world) the actions of the team must still be controlled, even as they go off in different directions.
I've witnessed teams vanish down a rathole persuing a interesting-yet-useless concept which provides no benefit to the company. I've also witnesses teams work endlessly on a brilliant concept, which again provides no benefit to the company because nobody in the company knows what they are doing.
You point about good managers is in agreement with mine. There are (or should be) business reasons why a team should be doing what it is doing. The job of a manager is to guide the team because the team cannot always see these business reasons. A bad manager either does not guide the team, or guides it in a direction for personal, not business, reasons.
You probably say "Duh! Tell me something I don't know!", but the important thing in this statement is to define what office politics is. My definition:
Office Politics: Occurs when a portion of a company, be it a division, team, or single individual, competes actively against another portion of the same company instead of working for the good of the company.
Think about it. You and the people you work with are supposed to be on the same team, working towards the same goal. As long as this is the case (the situation with my currect job), work is great, exciting, and productive. When this is not the case (e.g., divisional infighting, backstabbing, etc...) things start to unravel. Why? Because now people have to waste their time defending themselves against the people they work with, efficiency drops and production shrinks to next to nothing.
How does this happen? I've witnessed the following reasons, in no particular order (there may be other reasons I have not witnessed):
This happened where I currently work. Team A decided that it would secretly create software exactly like what Team B (my team) was working on. They decided they could do it better. Team A got away with it for a few months (that's a few months of wasted resources), until the VP noticed and said "what the hell do you think you are doing?" Team A no longer works for the company. This also happened at my previous employer, except that Team A was not kept under control. The resulting conflict led to the mass resignation of most of the developers in Team B.
These are all related. If left long enough (1) becomes (2), which will eventually lead to (3). I personally am lucky enough to work for a company which does not suffer from (2) or (3), and is taking steps to correct (1).
OK, I've rambled for long enough. Thanks for reading this far.
So? What does that have to do with the question as to whether privacy is "good thing" or a "bad thing".
IMHO, Brin is being optimistic. If goverment surveilance went to the max today, I doubt any immediate problems would arise. Most democratic governments today do not, believe it or not, have any malicious intent towards their citizens as a whole. However, their is no guarantee that things will stay that way. If things changes, then it is too late to regret the powers we gave governemt.
The city council came up with a solution: ban hot-dog vendors.
To say "Google search term blah blah" is not that different.
Of course, this doesn't address the fluidity of Google. "blah blah" might work today, but not tomorrow.
Not necessarily. I used to work on engineering simulations of engines in marine enviroments. While all the coding was done procedurally using FORTRAN, the actual application was very OO. The (gas turbine) engine was broken down into its individual components (compressor, combustion chamber, turbine, etc), and was connected to a power drive train to a propeller, and so forth. I think that OO would have done very nicely in this application.
IMHO, one of the main reasons that OO is not used often in engineering application is that mechanical engineers are not trained to use it. In fact most mechanical engineers have minimal programming training in Universoty. OO is a powerful way of implementing a solution, but there are many many pitfalls that can turn the code into a nightmare. Until you are taught what these pitfalls are, you will probably end up with an unmaintainable mass of spaghetti code.
There are three ways to learn OO properly. (1) Formally, in University, (2) On the job training by an experienced OO programmer, and (3) trial by fire on the job by yourself. In my experience (1) doesn't happen, most employers are not willing to invest in (2), and not willing to risk (3).
It's mentioned in the article, but I haven't seen a post yet that recommends reading the following short story:
"The Mickey Mouse Olympics", but Thomas Sullivan (I think).
A web search shows that it appears in The Best of Omni Science Fiction, No. 2, ed. Ben Bova & Don Myrus, Omni, 1981.
It's quite funny, yet evidently prophetic.
The first and last time I used UPS was when I bought a Dell and they shipped it UPS.
We weren't home when it arrived. Did they leave a note? No. Did try calling us and leaving a message. No.
They gave the $5K computer to my neighbours.
I don't agree with how the author flatly states that the Advertising model for web site income is a failure. I think web advertising has gotten a bum rap because of unrealistically high expectations (e.g., if a view does not equal a sale, then it must not work). Ads might be going through a bad spell, but it will pick up. Especially if more *non* web places start advertising.
This is not, by the way, an endorsement of pop up ads and other ad related annoyances. I don't like ads, but I think they can work. I don't like TV commercials either, but I still watch TV.
I disagree with your last statement. I live outside of Quebec, and the service Bell Canada gives me borders on awesome. We have had one down day in our first year of service. Bell Canada also answers their phone in a timely manner.
I, until recently, also had a Roger cable modem (yes, that's one house, two broadband connections). Rogers went through a about 4 weeks last year during which their service bordered on non-existent. Since then they have improved considerably, but not nearly as reliable as Bell (which is why we dropped them). Rogers also has this tendancy to leave you on hold for long long periods of time.
I for one could never gp back to 56K. When I visit my parent's house and use their computer with their modem it is soooo painful.
Can't afford your broadband? Get rid of your TV. Did that years ago. Why spend all that money to receive crap that you never want to watch?
Take it off and it lasts about a week before running out of juice.
But you can use the same semantics as AltaVista: the '+' character. Try:
"+to +be +or +not +to +be, +that +is +the +question"
This will return relevant sites. The only problem is that it is as annoying as hell to type.
"People don't buy online because they want to feel the fabric or squeeze the Charmin." A simulated feel or squeeze is not going help. To me, this looks like a technology that has little pratical application.
Granted, there are niche applications as described in the medical fields or for the blind, but mainstream applications such as haptic enabled mice do not offer much value to the average person.
It should be noted that Taco's example of windows that can snap to a position or size demonstrate exactly how interfaces can be improved without using haptic technology. Tacos examples utilize visual feedback, are available today, and are very effective. Why invent a technology to solve a problem when an effective solution already exists?
People have always been arguing that the post-Napster world will reign supreme over leviathans like RIAA and MPAA, because with systems like Gnutella they would have to go after every single user instead of just the central server.
Well, it looks like the MPAA has turned the tables on that argument. They are doing exactly that!
People are getting hung up on the misleading headline. This article is not about FPS games, it is about multi-player 3D graphics games.
That said, this article does read like a Grade 8 essay. I suspect that English is not the author's first language.
The race didn't start until the release of IE 2.0 in 1995.
My biggest peeve about these chairs is that the mesh support acts like a big sounding board for farts. What gets swallowed up by a regular foam cushioned chair gets amplified tenfold. No secrets at my office :-\
My favourite chair is the kind my wife and I bought for home. A third the price, way more comfortable.