From the article (by CmdrTaco): "We were looking for a company that would guarantee us complete and total creative control...Andover is good for that."
Also in the article: "So they are happy to guarantee (it's even in the contract!) that Hemos and I would retain full control of the site."
Hemos: "Our contract is inviolate-whether they sell or not, we've got all rights. So, even if they sold to MS, we'd still have control."
I think that about sums it up. All we have to worry about is Rob and Jeff selling themselves to Microsoft.
[The link on the comment doesn't seem to work, but you can search for "#113"]
I found the section of "What Cannot be Patented" where it mentions perpetual motion machines.
A friend's father works for Canada's National Research Council--part of his duties include helping people who want to apply for patents.
He says a significant amount of the time, people come in with something that boils down to a perpetual motion machine. They are hoping that a little more lubricant just here will make their mockup work correctly.
Okay, I don't know much about hardware, but I'll try to get the ball rolling.
Try opening up the laptop and have a look at where the display connects to the motherboard. It will probably be some kind of ribbon connector.
Have a look and see if it is labelled in any way. If you're lucky, it will have each connector labelled with what it carries. Then, pick up a VGA connector--perhaps by getting an extension cable and beheading it.
If the LCD connector doesn't have pinout listings, see if there is a number on it anywhere. Do a web search for that and see if anyone else has figured it out.
When you're selecting a grad school don't just put a bunch of school names on a dartboard and throw a dart to choose. Figure out what interests you in CS. Which subfield makes you cream your jeans? AI? Parallel Processing? Computer Graphics? You need to have a semi-narrow choice.
Once you've figured that part out, then start looking at grad schools. Don't go pick a school and then figure out what you want to study. That's a recipe for unhappiness.
I agree, but would suggest a further step--find a good supervisor. I'm a CS grad student now and can assure you that your supervisor makes or breaks your experience.
Go to the school and talk to some of the people in your area and find someone you can work well with.
Don't be sucked in by a big name researcher either. You're going to be working with this person closely and the shine of having a well known supervisor will wear off quickly.
A lot of people have been talking about the problem of too much volume in an open publishing system. The sad truth is that this is already a problem with print.
The academic publishing industry has ballooned under the weight of faculty and students "needing" to publish a certain volume for appointment/tenure/merit pay/etc. The pressures have created a treadmill of more and more journals to fill ever the increasing number of pages necessary for everyone to get out n papers per year. Being unable to keep up with everything published in one's own field is a common complaint.
As it is, "moderation" is done individually by selecting the best know journals and papers mentioned by collegues.
Maybe the idea of an open, Slashdot-style moderation acting in the place of peer-review would actually help this. Obviously, there would be no prestige in having a paper ranked 0 or 1 (on the/. scale). To get a high ranking a paper would simply have to be good. Perhaps reality would set in and the academic community would realize that most grad students (myself included) simply don't have several good papers in them.
Don't we see the obvious possibility here? Port Linux to the 6502 processor! That would cover the Apple II series, Commodore 64 series, and countless others.
There's no protected mode, so it would have to be an ELKS-like beast.
Heck, I could even provide archive space--how big could a distro for 64K RAM and 140K disks be?
Speaking of the fine line between code and data...
I remember a computer prof telling me that, back in the day, there was a tariff on data--when crossing the border with "data", you had to pay. At one point, he was crossing the Canada-U.S. border with a big old removable hard drive and was asked "Is there any data on that?" and with a straight face, replied "No, just programs." "But no data?" "Just programs." "Go ahead, then."
I think we were learning about the whole Von Neumann concept when he told us this.
When was the last time you went out and looked specifically for "Cola" brand cola? "Automobile" brand cars?
What these domain hoarders haven't realized is that generic brands are not valuable. What's valuable is a business who builds a reputation on a specific name.
How often do people visit bookstore.com, auctions.com or geeknews.com? amazon.com, ebay.com and slashdot.org? The reason is simple: these people have done an excellent job of building their brand name. (do those on the first list even exist?)
To pick an extreme example, JewlersMallOfAmerica.com for two million? Anybody with that kind of money would know enough to spend $70 on (something they like the sound of).com and the rest on a slick ad campain.
I think I came into Wired a little late, only catching the tail end of the cool era.
As I understand it, though, it looked a lot like Shift does now. Shift has all of the examinations of pop-tech culture and edgy stuff that people are lamenting not finding in Wired.
Just my two cents, but I wait with baited breath for the new Shift to appear in my mailbox.
I've been at University (in Canada) for five years now and had some contact with first-years students every year. You can pick out the ones who had been sheltered by their parents like they had a stamp on their forehead. They are the ones who either:
Can't interact socially because they have no idea what to make of people who drink, swear or dod any of they other myriad of things done by first-year students.
Had no idea how to deal with becoming one of those people and got themselves into trouble.
On the other hand, if I had kids, I wouldn't take them to the South Park movie. You have to draw a line somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of the nice (informed sounding) quotes from the lyrics:
It ain't a movie, but it's decent usage of tech-stuff in pop culture. I get the impression we have to take it where we can get it.
Greg
I think that about sums it up. All we have to worry about is Rob and Jeff selling themselves to Microsoft.
[The link on the comment doesn't seem to work, but you can search for "#113"]
A friend's father works for Canada's National Research Council--part of his duties include helping people who want to apply for patents.
He says a significant amount of the time, people come in with something that boils down to a perpetual motion machine. They are hoping that a little more lubricant just here will make their mockup work correctly.
Some us like that.
Try opening up the laptop and have a look at where the display connects to the motherboard. It will probably be some kind of ribbon connector.
Have a look and see if it is labelled in any way. If you're lucky, it will have each connector labelled with what it carries. Then, pick up a VGA connector--perhaps by getting an extension cable and beheading it.
Finally, make the connections. The pinouts for a VGA connector can be found at: http:/ /www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/1236/pincon vid_vga_vesa_ddc.htm
If the LCD connector doesn't have pinout listings, see if there is a number on it anywhere. Do a web search for that and see if anyone else has figured it out.
I agree, but would suggest a further step--find a good supervisor. I'm a CS grad student now and can assure you that your supervisor makes or breaks your experience.
Go to the school and talk to some of the people in your area and find someone you can work well with.
Don't be sucked in by a big name researcher either. You're going to be working with this person closely and the shine of having a well known supervisor will wear off quickly.
I don't have anything against Sun, but that is funny.
Okay, I just noticed pointers to Llama Communications and HE.net above. Others?
Anything I've seen adveritised locally is at least CDN$20 per month to host a domain name. MassLinux had packages starting at US$5 and I liked that.
Greg
The academic publishing industry has ballooned under the weight of faculty and students "needing" to publish a certain volume for appointment/tenure/merit pay/etc. The pressures have created a treadmill of more and more journals to fill ever the increasing number of pages necessary for everyone to get out n papers per year. Being unable to keep up with everything published in one's own field is a common complaint.
As it is, "moderation" is done individually by selecting the best know journals and papers mentioned by collegues.
Maybe the idea of an open, Slashdot-style moderation acting in the place of peer-review would actually help this. Obviously, there would be no prestige in having a paper ranked 0 or 1 (on the /. scale). To get a high ranking a paper would simply have to be good. Perhaps reality would set in and the academic community would realize that most grad students (myself included) simply don't have several good papers in them.
Or maybe not, what do I know?
Greg
There's no protected mode, so it would have to be an ELKS-like beast.
Heck, I could even provide archive space--how big could a distro for 64K RAM and 140K disks be?
Greg
Speaking of the fine line between code and data...
I remember a computer prof telling me that, back in the day, there was a tariff on data--when crossing the border with "data", you had to pay. At one point, he was crossing the Canada-U.S. border with a big old removable hard drive and was asked "Is there any data on that?" and with a straight face, replied "No, just programs." "But no data?" "Just programs." "Go ahead, then."
I think we were learning about the whole Von Neumann concept when he told us this.
What these domain hoarders haven't realized is that generic brands are not valuable. What's valuable is a business who builds a reputation on a specific name.
How often do people visit bookstore.com, auctions.com or geeknews.com? amazon.com, ebay.com and slashdot.org? The reason is simple: these people have done an excellent job of building their brand name. (do those on the first list even exist?)
To pick an extreme example, JewlersMallOfAmerica.com for two million? Anybody with that kind of money would know enough to spend $70 on (something they like the sound of).com and the rest on a slick ad campain.
As I understand it, though, it looked a lot like Shift does now. Shift has all of the examinations of pop-tech culture and edgy stuff that people are lamenting not finding in Wired.
Just my two cents, but I wait with baited breath for the new Shift to appear in my mailbox.
Greg
I've been at University (in Canada) for five years now and had some contact with first-years students every year. You can pick out the ones who had been sheltered by their parents like they had a stamp on their forehead. They are the ones who either:
On the other hand, if I had kids, I wouldn't take them to the South Park movie. You have to draw a line somewhere.