Back in the NT days I found a great solution to this problem. I don't know if it will still work on XP and Vista or not, might need a little tweaking.
1. Get a copy of the ubiquitous "Hello World" program, in any language for which you have a compiler. 2. Compile it. 3. Rename the resulting file "iexplore.exe". 4. Copy it to the directory where the real iexplore.exe resides, thus nullifying any calls to Internut Exploder from anywhere. 5. Copy the file to your boss's computer, thereby forcing him to use Firefox.
Why spend all that money? Buy the "Rebate Special" at Office Depot or wherever, then install Linux - Fedora, Ubuntu, whatever - good chance you'll match the performance of the other two, and at a MUCH LOWER price.
I remember what it was like way back when. What they had in RECORD stores was very different. The section for classical music was much larger. You bought LP's for classical, show and movie music, old "standards", and albums of a few of the top performers. All the "pop" music (relatively ephemeral stuff) was on 45's (hit singles with whatever on the B side).
Go back ANOTHER 10-20 years, and there was NOTHING BUT SINGLES (on 78's). An "album" was two or more 78's with a cover. The original Broadway cast album of Brigadoon was TEN songs, it HAD to be releasable as an album of 5 78's.
The music industry was alive and well back then when most people bought singles. The single was the mainstay of the industry. It was a perfectly workable business model. Maybe not as lucrative as forcing people to buy everything on albums, but workable. The music industry needs to figure out what they used to do 50-60-70 years ago, and go back to it. Obviously that is what customers want, because as soon as it became technically feasible again there has been a stampede to it.
Or maybe the music industry has its head too firmly planted where the sun don't shine, and won't see this, and won't get on the ball, and it WILL DIE.
Why in hell is this going to be Windows SEVEN?? I can remember Windows 3 (well, 3.1 anyway) and there have been a LOT more than three versions (4, 5, and 6) since then... 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista... seems like this next one should be Windows TWELVE, shouldn't it?
Oh, well, we know M$ can't write software, I guess they can't count either.
A couple years ago a new Worst Buy was opening, and I thought I'd apply - looking for a mostly back-room techie job. Went to their on-line application site, answered 2 or 3 questions about my technical expertise, then spent some FORTY FIVE MINUTES on psychological profile crap - you know, "would you rather kiss your car or step on a snake?" questions. Went to their hiring office in the mall, girl looked me up and told me they would NOT be calling me for an interview.
Apparently, based on that test, I wasn't enough of a "cheerful Charlie" which FAR, FAR outweighed any tech skills I might have possessed.
Speaking of single model cars, I tried dozens of hobby shops and I couldn't find a single plastic model of a DeLorean! With OR without a Mr. Fusion on the back.
What if you are writing APL programs? The classic APL one-liner could easily require a screen width of 1000 characters or more. I can recall a class I was taking, the Prof put up an example which flowed across FIVE or SIX blackboards. If we're going to come up with a new standard, shouldn't we take this into consideration?
Oh, yeah, I forgot about "H.O.T.S." which was pretty good (a couple of sequels to it came up kind of short, though). I never saw those other two you mentioned.
I wouldn't mind "burn on demand" for obscure movies with a niche market (which might well describe the ones mentioned), it is far better than "unavailable." But it has one drawback that regularly published titles don't... no rental market, which means I can't get a look at "Bikini Drive-in" to decide if I want to buy it or not.
Here might be an actual legitimate application for DRM - a VERY CHEAP ($2-3) download that expired in a few days, and you can get the $2-3 applied as a credit on the price of the "burn-on-demand" copy of the same movie.
Hey, MPAA movie guys, listen up. Here's an idea that just might work. Go ahead, do it, I promise I won't sue you for using it! Really! I promise!
> DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog > of movies that could be released on the shiny discs?
Bull-f*ing-shit!!! There are hundreds -- thousands -- of movies out there that I simply cannot buy on DVD!!! Where can I buy a DVD of "Hamburger: the Motion Picture"? How about a copy of "Stewardess School"? These are a couple of the funniest movies ever made, and are in my personal top ten.
Want to talk about copyright reform? How about a provision that any commercial product (book, DVD, etc.) that is allowed to remain out-of-print for ten years (maybe even five) years be automatically dumped into the Public Domain. Sort of a "Use it or lose it" copyright.
I would prefer buy a legal copy of something I want, but somehow I would feel ZERO GUILT at downloading a P2P copy of something a studio is sitting on in their vaults and just REFUSES to sell me.
I had to do some extraction of text from HTML, so I wrote a program for it. It may or may not be useful in this case, and it doesn't always do 100% of the job (but I've found the 98% it does do to be very useful). It is (OF COURSE!) open source so you are free to tinker and improve it for your own use. Download from:
They Need to Look at it Backwards
on
The Expert Mind
·
· Score: 1
They need to look at this thing from exactly the opposite direction. Arguing about whether someone is good because of innate talent or hard work doesn't really help. The real point is that there are people out there who will never be good in a particular field no matter how much work they put into it!
I have taught some Computer Programming classes, and I have encountered students who simply could not learn to program! Their brains were just missing something that was needed for that particular skill. I personally have always found programming easy... when I first took a class in it, everything was obvious.
On the other hand, look at music. I like music, I listen to it all the time, but I have no musical talent! I can't carry a tune in a bucket. As far as perfect pitch, mine is "perfectly awful." Had I started music lessons back in grade school (50-odd years ago), I would still not be qualified to sing or play an instrument professionally. My brain is just missing something in that particular area.
I think it is pretty obvious that if you can have untalented people in a given field who no amount of work is going to help, you are also going to have the opposite end of the spectrum -- talented people who are going to be good with no (or at least minimal) work.
Excuse me??? Isn't the "current" Flash player for Linux exactly the same version as it was 5 years ago? They seem to have skipped one or two releases for Linux and are promising a new one "real soon now."
Sure looks to me like the only choice I have is "my daddy's Flash." What's to check out?
What SHOULD have happened as a result of the anti-trust action against M$ was a ten-year moratorium prohibiting M% from merging with or acquiring ANY OTHER COMPANIES! They should have been limited by the court to whatever they could accomplish internally, without swallowing other companies and reducing competition further. Total purchases of products from other companies should also have been forbidden, as well as exclusive licensing (I guess a non-exclusive license might be OK).
But of course the Bushwimps would never think of such a thing so they settled for the traditional 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
True as far as it goes, although I think even the cost of digitizing from original films is small compared to production and marketing costs for commercial DVDs.
BUT if the movie was ever released on VHS, or ever shown on TV, going to DVD is almost free. After all, I can buy a $200 gadget that will copy my old VHS tapes to DVDs - use a more professional version of this gadget and start with a really clean copy and you should get a very good DVD (far better than I could get with a $200 burner and a 20 year old taped-off-Cinemax copy).
What they need to do is put someone who understands this in charge of the project... not a pointy-haired boss, not a marketing droid. Someone who can figure out how these kiosks can do something for the customer that is not provided elsewhere.
The benefit to this is having movies that are not currently available on DVD! All those great old "B" movies that are not economic to release, because the costs of production, warehouseing, sending to hundreds of stores each of which may sell one copy, all eat up far more than the potential profit. On the other hand, the cost of making and storing a DVD image file is negligible, sell a hundred copies and you make a profit, sell a thousand and it's pure gravy.
I for one would jump at the chance to replace my 20 year old VHS taped-off-Cinemax copies of "Hamburger: the Motion Picture" and "Stewardess School" with nice clean DVD copies, even if it cost the same as a commercial copy of a more popular movie (well, Wal-Mart prices, not some inflated "list" price.)
Of course if they display their usual business acumen and stock these kiosks with exactly the same titles that are on the shelf the idea is going to go NOWHERE!
No, the license continues. Further hits by the same bug get you nothing, but hit a DIFFERENT bug in the same software and you get your $199 (or whatever) refunded AGAIN. Corporate IT department has bought 1000 seats, 500 users data is corrupted by the bug, they get back 500x$199. 700 of those users get hit by a different bug, that's a refund of another 700x$199. I guess if the vendor wanted to cancel the license and refund the purchase price they could do that, but ONLY while there are NO OUTSTANDING BUG PAYMENTS - they must pay off on all reported bugs before cancelling.
You know, two years ago I would probably have agreed with you. But I have spent Jamuary to April of the past two years doing Taxes (for one of the large companies in the field). I have been finding "People Skills" and "Customer Skills" I never knew I had. And this year I found myself helping the new 1st year preparers, especially one who would come to me rather than to the more experienced people because I would help without yelling, insults, and put-downs.
I stand behind my original statement - if tech skills are needed, select for those skills, take a chance you may have to get rid of a few horrible misfits. Picking for personality will get you a company full of compatible mediocrities.
Ran into this when they opened a new Best Buy near us, and I thought I might pick up a little extra money as a computer tech (mostly back-room work, minimal customer contact). They asked a few (very few) questions to establish tech skills, 90% of this on-line application was this behavioral crap, which I answered more or less honestly. I could see where the thing was aiming, though, looked like they wanted everyone in the store to be "Cheerful Charlies" to fit in.
When I went over to their interview site in a nearby mall and inquired, I was told that I had not been selected for an interview. If I wanted I could try again in thirty days (by which time the roster for the new store would be filled up, of course). I didn't bother.
I no longer shop at Worst Buy, certainly not for anything like a computer, since it is obvious they are NOT selecting their PC techs for technical skills, just their beaming and radiant personalities.
I don't think you are really disagreeing, since Ada is based on Pascal. Ada is a pretty good choice, except that it is a "Kitchen Sink" language (it contains everything EXCEPT...), which makes it troublesome for beginners. I would still start with Pascal, the transition to Ada as a second, more advanced language would be easy.
For a language to teach beginning programming, you can't beat Pascal. Yeah, I know it is not fashionable at the moment, but it is hard to beat as an introductory language. And there exist extended versions of Pascal (like Delphi) that do a great job on OO programmimg (beginners should worry about OO AFTER they learn the fundamentals)
I have seen nothing to top the old "Phantasy Star" games and "Shining in the Darkness" for the Sega Genesis. I still have the Sega box (packed away, I never got it out after the move to Florida) and some of the Phantasy Star cartridges (alas, somebody ripped off my copy of Shining). But seeing this discussion, I may just dig the stuff out and go it again.
And then of course there are the REAL classics like Original Adventure, and Zork and other Infocom games...
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the NT days I found a great solution to this problem. I don't know if it will still work on XP and Vista or not, might need a little tweaking.
1. Get a copy of the ubiquitous "Hello World" program, in any language for which you have a compiler.
2. Compile it.
3. Rename the resulting file "iexplore.exe".
4. Copy it to the directory where the real iexplore.exe resides, thus nullifying any calls to Internut Exploder from anywhere.
5. Copy the file to your boss's computer, thereby forcing him to use Firefox.
Simple, isn't it?
Why spend all that money? Buy the "Rebate Special" at Office Depot or wherever, then install Linux - Fedora, Ubuntu, whatever - good chance you'll match the performance of the other two, and at a MUCH LOWER price.
I remember what it was like way back when. What they had in RECORD stores was very different. The section for classical music was much larger. You bought LP's for classical, show and movie music, old "standards", and albums of a few of the top performers. All the "pop" music (relatively ephemeral stuff) was on 45's (hit singles with whatever on the B side).
Go back ANOTHER 10-20 years, and there was NOTHING BUT SINGLES (on 78's). An "album" was two or more 78's with a cover. The original Broadway cast album of Brigadoon was TEN songs, it HAD to be releasable as an album of 5 78's.
The music industry was alive and well back then when most people bought singles. The single was the mainstay of the industry. It was a perfectly workable business model. Maybe not as lucrative as forcing people to buy everything on albums, but workable. The music industry needs to figure out what they used to do 50-60-70 years ago, and go back to it. Obviously that is what customers want, because as soon as it became technically feasible again there has been a stampede to it.
Or maybe the music industry has its head too firmly planted where the sun don't shine, and won't see this, and won't get on the ball, and it WILL DIE.
Why in hell is this going to be Windows SEVEN?? I can remember Windows 3 (well, 3.1 anyway) and there have been a LOT more than three versions (4, 5, and 6) since then ... 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista ... seems like this next one should be Windows TWELVE, shouldn't it?
Oh, well, we know M$ can't write software, I guess they can't count either.
"Have you seen who works in Best Buy these days?"
Do you know how their hiring process works?
A couple years ago a new Worst Buy was opening, and I thought I'd apply - looking for a mostly back-room techie job. Went to their on-line application site, answered 2 or 3 questions about my technical expertise, then spent some FORTY FIVE MINUTES on psychological profile crap - you know, "would you rather kiss your car or step on a snake?" questions. Went to their hiring office in the mall, girl looked me up and told me they would NOT be calling me for an interview.
Apparently, based on that test, I wasn't enough of a "cheerful Charlie" which FAR, FAR outweighed any tech skills I might have possessed.
Haven't bought a thing from Worst Buy since them.
What's next? Perhaps the newspaper will sue you if you hold a copy so somebody can read over your shoulder?
Speaking of single model cars, I tried dozens of hobby shops and I couldn't find a single plastic model of a DeLorean! With OR without a Mr. Fusion on the back.
What if you are writing APL programs? The classic APL one-liner could easily require a screen width of 1000 characters or more. I can recall a class I was taking, the Prof put up an example which flowed across FIVE or SIX blackboards. If we're going to come up with a new standard, shouldn't we take this into consideration?
Oh, yeah, I forgot about "H.O.T.S." which was pretty good (a couple of sequels to it came up kind of short, though). I never saw those other two you mentioned.
... no rental market, which means I can't get a look at "Bikini Drive-in" to decide if I want to buy it or not.
I wouldn't mind "burn on demand" for obscure movies with a niche market (which might well describe the ones mentioned), it is far better than "unavailable." But it has one drawback that regularly published titles don't
Here might be an actual legitimate application for DRM - a VERY CHEAP ($2-3) download that expired in a few days, and you can get the $2-3 applied as a credit on the price of the "burn-on-demand" copy of the same movie.
Hey, MPAA movie guys, listen up. Here's an idea that just might work. Go ahead, do it, I promise I won't sue you for using it! Really! I promise!
> DVD sales began to stagnate because studios had finally plowed through their entire backlog
> of movies that could be released on the shiny discs?
Bull-f*ing-shit!!! There are hundreds -- thousands -- of movies out there that I simply cannot buy on DVD!!! Where can I buy a DVD of "Hamburger: the Motion Picture"? How about a copy of "Stewardess School"? These are a couple of the funniest movies ever made, and are in my personal top ten.
Want to talk about copyright reform? How about a provision that any commercial product (book, DVD, etc.) that is allowed to remain out-of-print for ten years (maybe even five) years be automatically dumped into the Public Domain. Sort of a "Use it or lose it" copyright.
I would prefer buy a legal copy of something I want, but somehow I would feel ZERO GUILT at downloading a P2P copy of something a studio is sitting on in their vaults and just REFUSES to sell me.
The article title should read "MPAA (and spokesman Dan Glickman) should ***BE COMMITED*** "
"The boss wants to cut costs and doesn't see the choice driving away clients."
..."???? Come ON!
And then you say "Nobody here is dumb
I had to do some extraction of text from HTML, so I wrote a program for it. It may or may not be useful in this case, and it doesn't always do 100% of the job (but I've found the 98% it does do to be very useful). It is (OF COURSE!) open source so you are free to tinker and improve it for your own use. Download from:
http://jsoftco.8m.com/download.html
They need to look at this thing from exactly the opposite direction. Arguing about whether someone is good because of innate talent or hard work doesn't really help. The real point is that there are people out there who will never be good in a particular field no matter how much work they put into it!
... when I first took a class in it, everything was obvious.
I have taught some Computer Programming classes, and I have encountered students who simply could not learn to program! Their brains were just missing something that was needed for that particular skill. I personally have always found programming easy
On the other hand, look at music. I like music, I listen to it all the time, but I have no musical talent! I can't carry a tune in a bucket. As far as perfect pitch, mine is "perfectly awful." Had I started music lessons back in grade school (50-odd years ago), I would still not be qualified to sing or play an instrument professionally. My brain is just missing something in that particular area.
I think it is pretty obvious that if you can have untalented people in a given field who no amount of work is going to help, you are also going to have the opposite end of the spectrum -- talented people who are going to be good with no (or at least minimal) work.
It's a shame we can't Mod the original article the way we can Mod the comments.
This one deserves a score of "+5 Funny".
Excuse me??? Isn't the "current" Flash player for Linux exactly the same version as it was 5 years ago? They seem to have skipped one or two releases for Linux and are promising a new one "real soon now."
Sure looks to me like the only choice I have is "my daddy's Flash." What's to check out?
What SHOULD have happened as a result of the anti-trust action against M$ was a ten-year moratorium prohibiting M% from merging with or acquiring ANY OTHER COMPANIES! They should have been limited by the court to whatever they could accomplish internally, without swallowing other companies and reducing competition further. Total purchases of products from other companies should also have been forbidden, as well as exclusive licensing (I guess a non-exclusive license might be OK).
But of course the Bushwimps would never think of such a thing so they settled for the traditional 40 lashes with a wet noodle.
True as far as it goes, although I think even the cost of digitizing from original films is small compared to production and marketing costs for commercial DVDs.
... not a pointy-haired boss, not a marketing droid. Someone who can figure out how these kiosks can do something for the customer that is not provided elsewhere.
BUT if the movie was ever released on VHS, or ever shown on TV, going to DVD is almost free. After all, I can buy a $200 gadget that will copy my old VHS tapes to DVDs - use a more professional version of this gadget and start with a really clean copy and you should get a very good DVD (far better than I could get with a $200 burner and a 20 year old taped-off-Cinemax copy).
What they need to do is put someone who understands this in charge of the project
The benefit to this is having movies that are not currently available on DVD! All those great old "B" movies that are not economic to release, because the costs of production, warehouseing, sending to hundreds of stores each of which may sell one copy, all eat up far more than the potential profit. On the other hand, the cost of making and storing a DVD image file is negligible, sell a hundred copies and you make a profit, sell a thousand and it's pure gravy.
I for one would jump at the chance to replace my 20 year old VHS taped-off-Cinemax copies of "Hamburger: the Motion Picture" and "Stewardess School" with nice clean DVD copies, even if it cost the same as a commercial copy of a more popular movie (well, Wal-Mart prices, not some inflated "list" price.)
Of course if they display their usual business acumen and stock these kiosks with exactly the same titles that are on the shelf the idea is going to go NOWHERE!
No, the license continues. Further hits by the same bug get you nothing, but hit a DIFFERENT bug in the same software and you get your $199 (or whatever) refunded AGAIN. Corporate IT department has bought 1000 seats, 500 users data is corrupted by the bug, they get back 500x$199. 700 of those users get hit by a different bug, that's a refund of another 700x$199. I guess if the vendor wanted to cancel the license and refund the purchase price they could do that, but ONLY while there are NO OUTSTANDING BUG PAYMENTS - they must pay off on all reported bugs before cancelling.
You know, two years ago I would probably have agreed with you. But I have spent Jamuary to April of the past two years doing Taxes (for one of the large companies in the field). I have been finding "People Skills" and "Customer Skills" I never knew I had. And this year I found myself helping the new 1st year preparers, especially one who would come to me rather than to the more experienced people because I would help without yelling, insults, and put-downs.
I stand behind my original statement - if tech skills are needed, select for those skills, take a chance you may have to get rid of a few horrible misfits. Picking for personality will get you a company full of compatible mediocrities.
Ran into this when they opened a new Best Buy near us, and I thought I might pick up a little extra money as a computer tech (mostly back-room work, minimal customer contact). They asked a few (very few) questions to establish tech skills, 90% of this on-line application was this behavioral crap, which I answered more or less honestly. I could see where the thing was aiming, though, looked like they wanted everyone in the store to be "Cheerful Charlies" to fit in.
When I went over to their interview site in a nearby mall and inquired, I was told that I had not been selected for an interview. If I wanted I could try again in thirty days (by which time the roster for the new store would be filled up, of course). I didn't bother.
I no longer shop at Worst Buy, certainly not for anything like a computer, since it is obvious they are NOT selecting their PC techs for technical skills, just their beaming and radiant personalities.
I don't think you are really disagreeing, since Ada is based on Pascal. Ada is a pretty good choice, except that it is a "Kitchen Sink" language (it contains everything EXCEPT ...), which makes it troublesome for beginners. I would still start with Pascal, the transition to Ada as a second, more advanced language would be easy.
For a language to teach beginning programming, you can't beat Pascal. Yeah, I know it is not fashionable at the moment, but it is hard to beat as an introductory language. And there exist extended versions of Pascal (like Delphi) that do a great job on OO programmimg (beginners should worry about OO AFTER they learn the fundamentals)
I have seen nothing to top the old "Phantasy Star" games and "Shining in the Darkness" for the Sega Genesis. I still have the Sega box (packed away, I never got it out after the move to Florida) and some of the Phantasy Star cartridges (alas, somebody ripped off my copy of Shining). But seeing this discussion, I may just dig the stuff out and go it again.
...
And then of course there are the REAL classics like Original Adventure, and Zork and other Infocom games