...items where the copyright is owned by Disney (or by a coporation... or by anyone at all). If you feel that copyright is being abused, don't fill the coffers of the abusers.
The money that paid the Disney lawyers for this case came from the price of your movie tickets (seen anything from Buena Vista lately?), your tapes and DVDs (did you buy Beauty and the Beast for the kids, since it's going "back in the vault" soon?), your theme park admissions (been to Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Studios?), and so on. Disney has the money to buy legislators and file lawsuits because the public wants what they are selling.
I don't particularly like it (I don't knowingly buy Disney products), but I'm not under the illusion that the public shares my views.
Given that Verisign seems to charge 3x as much as other providers of the various services it offers, I wonder about their motivation here. Could this be an attempt to camouflage their image?
Why review a pocket reference (even a good one)?
on
CVS Pocket Reference
·
· Score: 3
Maybe I'm missing something, but this article just seems to lack significance. Except for the point about organizing by client/server, rather than user/administrator, the review says nothing non-obvious. "It's a good pocket reference, except that I think the material should be organized by client-side and server-side, rather than by user/administrator." That's it.
On the positive side, this may motivate me to investigate using CVS.
...Is key to the whole question. If you want to be this stingy with it, then television, PCs, and the Internet are actually incremental improvements on radio (effectively instantaneous distance communication), which would itself be an improvement on the telegraph. The Web browser is a collection of incremental improvements that brought about a revolution in information exchange.
There is a huge amount of innovation going on all around you. Most of it by people who do it for the sake of the creative process, rather than for the dollars involved.
Another factor is time delay. The really fundamental innovations had their biggest impact years or decades after the actual invention. And frequently in areas where the impact was not expected.
Handspring was started by some of the original Palm engineers. They license the PalmOS from Palm. I'm sure that they would not share the cost with us.:-)
Perhaps Palm recognized that competition is good for the marketplace.
If you're using IE (5+, I think) and a wheel mouse, you can change the font size by -scrolling with the wheel. Very nice trick for reading those minuscule fonts.
In the speech, he makes several references to CEA. This is the Consumer Electronics Association (formerly CEMA - VCR makers, among others, and among the backers of the Home Recording Act). Check this link (story dated 2/28/01). The actual story is brought up in a popup by javascript, and I don't know how to get the link. How obnoxious. Anyone?
In reference to your comment on the ability to write a clear paper or memo, this is very true. If you want to have any kind of upward mobility, this ability is essential. Every developer should have the ability to write a coherent functional specification, but they often do not.
When hiring developers, the resume is usually a pretty good clue to their verbal skills. Sometimes, though, there is too much intervention by a recruiter.
I can speak to several aspects of this discussion. My first degree was a BA in History, with an emphasis on East Asia. It was a very interesting course of study, but I wound up selling life insurance. To be fair, I was planning on law school, but decided against it in the course of my senior year. Nevertheless, getting a job can be a tough sell with just a liberal arts degree.
I went back to school. This time in engineering. The degree was a BSEE, with a major in Computer Engineering. In my experience, employers like engineering degrees because there is a cohesive discipline. There is a problem-solving orientation that is not always present in a Computer Science curriculum. Since I already had most of the distribution requirements from my first degree, I was able to pull in quite a few pure-software courses. With this degree, I got a job in a large technology company, in the defense systems group. I did mostly software engineering, but also a little hardware and some things at the HW/SW interface.
My third degree was a master's in Computer Science, paid for the company that hired me with the BSEE. This was the most fun so far, and is the most applicable to what I really wanted to do. The best thing about grad school is that you don't have to take courses outside your field.
I started on a doctorate, but I was never able to take the time that would have been required to prepare for and take the general exam and do a dissertation.
In general, I think that the approach that I ended up taking was probably about as good as you can do in terms of preparation for a software career. Not that it was intentional at the time. I was particularly fortunate in that I could go back to school for a second bachelor's degree, and that I was able to adapt the engineering curriculum (which focused more on hardware) to me interests.
The bottom line is that either route can get you where you want to go. It depends on how you take advantage of the opportunities that are available.
First of all, please understand that ideas, in and of themselves, are not protected by law in any way. There are two means by which intellectual property is protected: copyrights and patents.
A copyright protects the expression of an idea. Thus I am free to write a play or a movie script about two adolescents who fall in love and commit suicide without licensing from Shakespeare, and I am free to paint a portrait of an enigmatic smiling woman without offending the estate of Leonardo.
A patent protects a specific implementation of an idea. A patent cannot be obtained unless an idea is reduced to practice.
Despite the questionable patents (one-click ordering) and copyright laws (DMCA) that we have been seeing lately, it is important to recognize the essential tension between the property rights of the individual and the interests of society as a whole. Would it be a good thing for Western culture if Shakespeare's heirs still held copyright on his plays? This tension is recognized in the fair use doctrine and right to create derivative works for copyright, and the short time period for which a patent is effective.
Given that law does not recognize the concept of ideas as property, the notion of permanent copyright is particularly odd.
I was making a simplifying assumption about the costs for a given product; you make may point exactly - rising costs are being driven by increasing levels of graphics technology. We would be better off with more attention paid to quality of the product in the overall sense, not just how pretty it looks on the screen.
No one is trying to prove that the status quo remains (that's silly). In fact, change is following the path of least resistance. This is not necessarily the most effective path of advancement, or even the best for those of us who buy the products.
Are you comparing FSAA to the addition of voice to movies, or the move from EGA to VGA? In either case, the comparison is completely beside the point. Current graphics advances provide very little actual improvement in real terms; my point was that the money spent on improving graphics technology could be better spent on improving other aspects of a product.
Zodiac is very good. Maybe the most accessible of Stephenson's works.
If you read the article, though, the guy is looking for naturally occurring bacteria that will eat CO2, and a system that will let them live in power plant smokestacks. This is not talking about genetic mods.
Good points. I think that part of the reason that graphics tech is added to games is that it is something that is relatively easy to define. It's conceptually easier to add anti-aliasing than playability (also probably easier, and less expensive, to test).
Over time, the games that I have found most immersive have been Doom, TIE Fighter, SimCity (later 2000), and Baldur's Gate. The (relative to today) primitive graphics (even in Baldur's Gate) did not interfere with my suspension of disbelief or immersion into the game world. However, the qualities that enhance this immersion are a lot more difficult to quantify (and put into a business plan). And the only way to make sure that they are present is to do an extensive beta program.
Very interesting. What you're seeing would be interference pattern of the laser light, so the actual size of the dots would be right around the wavelength of the laser light. I'd be interested to hear from some with a knowledge of visual physiology, explaining how the eye resolves the spots.
Of course, if the resolution of the eye is 4000 by 4000 total (not per inch), then your distance from the monitor is also a factor. Based on these numbers, if the display area occupies about.12 of the area of your field of vision (.4 horizontal by.3 vertical), then a 1600x1200 display does display at the theoretical physiological maximum. A quick experiment suggests that this is about two and a half to three feet from the nineteen inch monitor that I am currently using.
Consider several areas: Games, CG effects for movies/video, impact on system cost.
In games: At some point, focus on technology detracts from the actual game. If it is assumed that the total cost (that amount that will be spent on development) is fixed, then money spent supporting this type of technology will not be spent on more levels, maps, characters, artwork, etc. The key remains suspension of disbelief.
Movies/video: This is interesting, because newer graphics hardware allows PC rendering to look much closer to dedicated CG effects systems. Yet there is a performance gap. Will we be able to make movies on our PCs? Yes. Does anyone care about the difference in rendering quality? Probably not, unless you're trying to get a studio to release your movie.
System Cost: The GeForce II MX that I put into the last system that I built cost about 60% of the price of the EGA card that I bought in 1988 (maybe 1987). Looks great; less filling (time).
Short answer: not much difference. We've definitely reached the point of dimishing returns in application of graphics technology.
First of all, what is privacy? The traditional concept is the protection of personal information from involuntary disclosure. This concept is slightly different - it deals with the relative amount of disclosure. I am not sure that this whole examination has really accounted for that difference. As a basic right (traditional concept), privacy should cut across all social/economic classes. As an economic commodity, the fundamental quality is the right to engage in unfettered, unsupervised transactions. Traditionally, we give up some measure of the autonomous nature of the transactions in exchange for some assurance that the transactions are safe and/or fair (i.e., the SEC oversight of financial markets).
One can make the same argument about a person's labor. The "rich" are free not to trade their time for wages. A market in privacy would give everyone another means by which they could pursue economic gain, if they so desired. I would not claim to be poor (or rich, for that matter), but I really don't have the luxury of quitting my job. Besides, I enjoy it (another factor - these are not solely economic transactions).
There is likely also to be a wide variation in the value of personal information. The value of information to an advertising clearinghouse would likely vary with the disposable income of the subject. Personal information of celebrities would be quite valuable.
Where do you draw the line between "rich" and "poor"? In terms of this argument, I think that a good case could be made for the idea that there are no poor people in the United States. Anyone who is eligible for government assistance is a potential consumer.
Fact is, you are "rich" enough to choose to spend time Slashdotting. You are in this position because of good choices made by yourself, and possibly your parents and grandparents (really ironic sig, by the way, for this post).
Ultimately, the dichotomy behind your argument is false - class structure is continuous, not discrete, and dynamic. It is a statistical phenomenon, not an absolute. Your conclusions are politically correct but immaterial.
If you want to talk about economic exploitation of the poor and economic class structure, how do counter the argument that statist/Democratic social welfare policies have been the biggest single factor in creating (attempted creation of) a permanent economic underclass in the United States? (Note: not necessarily true in all Western industrialized nations) The fundamental assumptions of this argument match yours.
A concrete example is useful. Most of the grocery stores in our area have "Plus" or "Reward" cards. Nearly everything that is on sale at those stores requires the shopper to use one of these cards. To get one, you have to give your name and address/etc. Basically, you are selling your demographic information and your purchasing patterns for something like 5% off your grocery bill (on the average). If a poor person is buying food with food stamps, the only motivation is slightly better buying power. The not-poor, not-rich are the ones that have a strong motivation to sell personal data. Personally, I don't have a card. I shop at a store that does not use them. Slightly farther away, but I'm trading some time and convenience for privacy. Infrequently, I shop at a store that requires a card - trading some money for privacy. One buys the things that one thinks are important - this is the fundamental advantage of a free society.
I liked your previous sig better. Iain Banks is a prodigious talent.
A simple method of trisecting any angle has been developed by an amateur mathematician working in Los Angeles, following quickly on his patent for a perpetual motion machine.
Slashdot Mirror
...and sales go down. Did these people take basic economics? The soft economy no doubt helped. Of course, the industry blames piracy...
...items where the copyright is owned by Disney (or by a coporation... or by anyone at all). If you feel that copyright is being abused, don't fill the coffers of the abusers.
The money that paid the Disney lawyers for this case came from the price of your movie tickets (seen anything from Buena Vista lately?), your tapes and DVDs (did you buy Beauty and the Beast for the kids, since it's going "back in the vault" soon?), your theme park admissions (been to Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Studios?), and so on. Disney has the money to buy legislators and file lawsuits because the public wants what they are selling.
I don't particularly like it (I don't knowingly buy Disney products), but I'm not under the illusion that the public shares my views.
The prototype for this type of work is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles MacKay. On Amazon, here.
Given that Verisign seems to charge 3x as much as other providers of the various services it offers, I wonder about their motivation here. Could this be an attempt to camouflage their image?
Maybe I'm missing something, but this article just seems to lack significance. Except for the point about organizing by client/server, rather than user/administrator, the review says nothing non-obvious. "It's a good pocket reference, except that I think the material should be organized by client-side and server-side, rather than by user/administrator." That's it.
On the positive side, this may motivate me to investigate using CVS.
...Is key to the whole question. If you want to be this stingy with it, then television, PCs, and the Internet are actually incremental improvements on radio (effectively instantaneous distance communication), which would itself be an improvement on the telegraph. The Web browser is a collection of incremental improvements that brought about a revolution in information exchange.
There is a huge amount of innovation going on all around you. Most of it by people who do it for the sake of the creative process, rather than for the dollars involved.
Another factor is time delay. The really fundamental innovations had their biggest impact years or decades after the actual invention. And frequently in areas where the impact was not expected.
Handspring was started by some of the original Palm engineers. They license the PalmOS from Palm. I'm sure that they would not share the cost with us. :-)
Perhaps Palm recognized that competition is good for the marketplace.
Shhh! Harlan would .
That is, control-scrolling with the wheel. Oops.
If you're using IE (5+, I think) and a wheel mouse, you can change the font size by -scrolling with the wheel. Very nice trick for reading those minuscule fonts.
In the speech, he makes several references to CEA. This is the Consumer Electronics Association (formerly CEMA - VCR makers, among others, and among the backers of the Home Recording Act). Check this link (story dated 2/28/01). The actual story is brought up in a popup by javascript, and I don't know how to get the link. How obnoxious. Anyone?
Same for me. Family support was crucial. I pulled 18 or 19 credits for four semesters and two summer sessions. It was a very busy two years.
In reference to your comment on the ability to write a clear paper or memo, this is very true. If you want to have any kind of upward mobility, this ability is essential. Every developer should have the ability to write a coherent functional specification, but they often do not.
When hiring developers, the resume is usually a pretty good clue to their verbal skills. Sometimes, though, there is too much intervention by a recruiter.
I can speak to several aspects of this discussion. My first degree was a BA in History, with an emphasis on East Asia. It was a very interesting course of study, but I wound up selling life insurance. To be fair, I was planning on law school, but decided against it in the course of my senior year. Nevertheless, getting a job can be a tough sell with just a liberal arts degree.
I went back to school. This time in engineering. The degree was a BSEE, with a major in Computer Engineering. In my experience, employers like engineering degrees because there is a cohesive discipline. There is a problem-solving orientation that is not always present in a Computer Science curriculum. Since I already had most of the distribution requirements from my first degree, I was able to pull in quite a few pure-software courses. With this degree, I got a job in a large technology company, in the defense systems group. I did mostly software engineering, but also a little hardware and some things at the HW/SW interface.
My third degree was a master's in Computer Science, paid for the company that hired me with the BSEE. This was the most fun so far, and is the most applicable to what I really wanted to do. The best thing about grad school is that you don't have to take courses outside your field.
I started on a doctorate, but I was never able to take the time that would have been required to prepare for and take the general exam and do a dissertation.
In general, I think that the approach that I ended up taking was probably about as good as you can do in terms of preparation for a software career. Not that it was intentional at the time. I was particularly fortunate in that I could go back to school for a second bachelor's degree, and that I was able to adapt the engineering curriculum (which focused more on hardware) to me interests.
The bottom line is that either route can get you where you want to go. It depends on how you take advantage of the opportunities that are available.
Wonka's lieutenant was Mr. Wilkinson, IIRC.
Assuming that you're not just trolling...
First of all, please understand that ideas, in and of themselves, are not protected by law in any way. There are two means by which intellectual property is protected: copyrights and patents.
A copyright protects the expression of an idea. Thus I am free to write a play or a movie script about two adolescents who fall in love and commit suicide without licensing from Shakespeare, and I am free to paint a portrait of an enigmatic smiling woman without offending the estate of Leonardo.
A patent protects a specific implementation of an idea. A patent cannot be obtained unless an idea is reduced to practice.
Despite the questionable patents (one-click ordering) and copyright laws (DMCA) that we have been seeing lately, it is important to recognize the essential tension between the property rights of the individual and the interests of society as a whole. Would it be a good thing for Western culture if Shakespeare's heirs still held copyright on his plays? This tension is recognized in the fair use doctrine and right to create derivative works for copyright, and the short time period for which a patent is effective.
Given that law does not recognize the concept of ideas as property, the notion of permanent copyright is particularly odd.
I was making a simplifying assumption about the costs for a given product; you make may point exactly - rising costs are being driven by increasing levels of graphics technology. We would be better off with more attention paid to quality of the product in the overall sense, not just how pretty it looks on the screen.
No one is trying to prove that the status quo remains (that's silly). In fact, change is following the path of least resistance. This is not necessarily the most effective path of advancement, or even the best for those of us who buy the products.
Are you comparing FSAA to the addition of voice to movies, or the move from EGA to VGA? In either case, the comparison is completely beside the point. Current graphics advances provide very little actual improvement in real terms; my point was that the money spent on improving graphics technology could be better spent on improving other aspects of a product.
Please read the article. It talks about implementing a system with naturally occurring bacteria inside power plant smokestacks .
Zodiac is very good. Maybe the most accessible of Stephenson's works.
If you read the article, though, the guy is looking for naturally occurring bacteria that will eat CO2, and a system that will let them live in power plant smokestacks. This is not talking about genetic mods.
Good points. I think that part of the reason that graphics tech is added to games is that it is something that is relatively easy to define. It's conceptually easier to add anti-aliasing than playability (also probably easier, and less expensive, to test).
Over time, the games that I have found most immersive have been Doom, TIE Fighter, SimCity (later 2000), and Baldur's Gate. The (relative to today) primitive graphics (even in Baldur's Gate) did not interfere with my suspension of disbelief or immersion into the game world. However, the qualities that enhance this immersion are a lot more difficult to quantify (and put into a business plan). And the only way to make sure that they are present is to do an extensive beta program.
Very interesting. What you're seeing would be interference pattern of the laser light, so the actual size of the dots would be right around the wavelength of the laser light. I'd be interested to hear from some with a knowledge of visual physiology, explaining how the eye resolves the spots.
.12 of the area of your field of vision (.4 horizontal by .3 vertical), then a 1600x1200 display does display at the theoretical physiological maximum. A quick experiment suggests that this is about two and a half to three feet from the nineteen inch monitor that I am currently using.
Of course, if the resolution of the eye is 4000 by 4000 total (not per inch), then your distance from the monitor is also a factor. Based on these numbers, if the display area occupies about
Consider several areas: Games, CG effects for movies/video, impact on system cost.
In games: At some point, focus on technology detracts from the actual game. If it is assumed that the total cost (that amount that will be spent on development) is fixed, then money spent supporting this type of technology will not be spent on more levels, maps, characters, artwork, etc. The key remains suspension of disbelief.
Movies/video: This is interesting, because newer graphics hardware allows PC rendering to look much closer to dedicated CG effects systems. Yet there is a performance gap. Will we be able to make movies on our PCs? Yes. Does anyone care about the difference in rendering quality? Probably not, unless you're trying to get a studio to release your movie.
System Cost: The GeForce II MX that I put into the last system that I built cost about 60% of the price of the EGA card that I bought in 1988 (maybe 1987). Looks great; less filling (time).
Short answer: not much difference. We've definitely reached the point of dimishing returns in application of graphics technology.
It's an obscure reference to "Calvinball", from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Calvinball is a game with constantly changing rules.
First of all, what is privacy? The traditional concept is the protection of personal information from involuntary disclosure. This concept is slightly different - it deals with the relative amount of disclosure. I am not sure that this whole examination has really accounted for that difference. As a basic right (traditional concept), privacy should cut across all social/economic classes. As an economic commodity, the fundamental quality is the right to engage in unfettered, unsupervised transactions. Traditionally, we give up some measure of the autonomous nature of the transactions in exchange for some assurance that the transactions are safe and/or fair (i.e., the SEC oversight of financial markets).
One can make the same argument about a person's labor. The "rich" are free not to trade their time for wages. A market in privacy would give everyone another means by which they could pursue economic gain, if they so desired. I would not claim to be poor (or rich, for that matter), but I really don't have the luxury of quitting my job. Besides, I enjoy it (another factor - these are not solely economic transactions).
There is likely also to be a wide variation in the value of personal information. The value of information to an advertising clearinghouse would likely vary with the disposable income of the subject. Personal information of celebrities would be quite valuable.
Where do you draw the line between "rich" and "poor"? In terms of this argument, I think that a good case could be made for the idea that there are no poor people in the United States. Anyone who is eligible for government assistance is a potential consumer.
Fact is, you are "rich" enough to choose to spend time Slashdotting. You are in this position because of good choices made by yourself, and possibly your parents and grandparents (really ironic sig, by the way, for this post).
Ultimately, the dichotomy behind your argument is false - class structure is continuous, not discrete, and dynamic. It is a statistical phenomenon, not an absolute. Your conclusions are politically correct but immaterial.
If you want to talk about economic exploitation of the poor and economic class structure, how do counter the argument that statist/Democratic social welfare policies have been the biggest single factor in creating (attempted creation of) a permanent economic underclass in the United States? (Note: not necessarily true in all Western industrialized nations) The fundamental assumptions of this argument match yours.
A concrete example is useful. Most of the grocery stores in our area have "Plus" or "Reward" cards. Nearly everything that is on sale at those stores requires the shopper to use one of these cards. To get one, you have to give your name and address/etc. Basically, you are selling your demographic information and your purchasing patterns for something like 5% off your grocery bill (on the average). If a poor person is buying food with food stamps, the only motivation is slightly better buying power. The not-poor, not-rich are the ones that have a strong motivation to sell personal data. Personally, I don't have a card. I shop at a store that does not use them. Slightly farther away, but I'm trading some time and convenience for privacy. Infrequently, I shop at a store that requires a card - trading some money for privacy. One buys the things that one thinks are important - this is the fundamental advantage of a free society.
I liked your previous sig better. Iain Banks is a prodigious talent.
A simple method of trisecting any angle has been developed by an amateur mathematician working in Los Angeles, following quickly on his patent for a perpetual motion machine.
Stories by credulous journalists everywhere.