And to those of you thinking that I posted this response as an AC, I didn't. I only post logged in.
To my supportive, but angry "friend", I would say to chill out. It was off-topic, in a way. I have enough "venting karma" to last a while, but I would have liked to get some kind of response to my questions. Too bad you can't get modded UP even when you are off-topic.
I wanted the same thing, so here is what I did to solve it. The only thing I would like would be to have remote control support.
Dell PII machine (about $85 at the time)
decent sound card (about $25)
4MB video card w/TVout (cheap)
GNUMP3d serving up the MP3s over my network
(very cool and easy mp3 server, supports ogg. Can be set to stream or download files)
The Dell system came with a 2GB hard drive, which I installed Redhat7.3 on. I couldn't get Xwindows to work right with the TVout. So I installed Win98, it all worked fine. But I wasn't happy with it. Then I found Knoppix. This improved my system in two ways:
1. It is running Linux
2. It is near silent.
Because Knoppix boots off the CD, I didn't need the hard drive anymore. It plays all my MP3s over my network.
It could be a cooler setup, but it works for me. The interface is web based, so I do have to use a mouse/keyboard, but it is a small price to pay. I suppose you could get IR controls working, or get a wireless mouse/keyboard.
Since I am just about done reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar, I would also like to add that if you roll your own, it would probably be in your best interest to make the project Open Source once you have a working version. After all, you wouldn't be losing out on any revenue from it, it would probably benefit others, and you would greatly increase the number of devlopers working on it.
The company I work for has some deal with Rational, so we are tied into using their products.:(
In all seriousness, I am not just bitching because I submitted the story on the Paris display on MONDAY, I am just curious how long it takes for a story to get posted once it is submitted. I have submitted several stories, only to have them rejected and show up days later attributed to someone else. If there are that many stories being submitted that it takes 4 days to get through the queue, I am not even going to bother submitting anymore, because eventually someone else will either submit it, or everyone will see it anyway because the story will be a week old.
UD researchers develop revolutionary computer interface technology
Sept. 27, 2002--University of Delaware researchers have developed a revolutionary computer interface technology that promises to put the bite on the traditional mouse and mechanical keyboard.
"We have developed a technology that goes well beyond the mouse and mechanical keyboard," John Elias, UD professor of electrical and computer engineering, said.
Elias and Wayne Westerman, UD visiting assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, have been working on the new interface for about five years and are now marketing their iGesture product through a company called FingerWorks.
The project started as a doctoral thesis by Westerman, who was then a UD graduate student working with Elias.
The FingerWorks name fits because the technology uses a touch pad and a range of finger motions to communicate commands and keys to the computer. To open a file, you rotate your hand as if opening a jar; to zoom or de-zoom, you expand or contract your hand.
Elias said the communication power of their system is "thousands of times greater" than that of a mouse, which uses just a single moving point as the main input. Using this new technology, two human hands provide 10 points of contact, with a wide range of motion for each, thus providing thousands of different patterns, each of which can mean something different to the computer.
While much about the computer has changed over the last three decades-greater power, faster speeds, more memory-what has not changed is the user interface.
"For what it was invented for, the mouse does a good job," Elias said. "People accept the mouse and the mechanical keyboard because that's the way it is. But there are limitations in terms of information flow. There is so much power in the computer, and so much power in the human, but the present situation results in a communications bottleneck between the two."
Elias and Westerman have a better idea. "I believe we are on the verge of changing the way people interact with computers," Elias said. "Imagine trying to communicate with another human being using just a mouse and a keyboard. It works, but it is slow and tedious.
"This is not just a little step in improving the mouse, this is the first step in a new way of communicating with the computer through gestures and the movements of your hands. This is, after all, one of the ways humans interact."
Elias said he could envision in the next 10 years "a very complex gestural language between man and machine."
The system is a multi-touch, zero force technology, Elias said, meaning the gestures and movements use all the fingers in a light and subtle manner.
Because of that, the system has a second major advantage over the mouse and mechanical keyboard because it can greatly reduce stress injuries such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome attributed to traditional computer work.
The company markets both stand-alone touch pads and touch pads built into nonmechanical keyboards. In the keyboards, the keys overlap the touch pad so the operator does not have to move his hands when switching between typing and using the mouse. Rather, everything can be done in a smoother flow of hand motions.
Elias explained the touch pad acts like a video camera, recording the objects touching its surface. An embedded microprocessor then applies an algorithmic process to convert those touches into commands understood by the computer.
"To observers watching somebody use multi-touch, it looks a little like magic," Elias said, illustrating his point on a computer in Evans Hall. "People see lots of things happening on the computer screen but very little hand motion is observed."
He said the system has been designed so the gestures used make sense for the operation being performed. For instance, you cut text with a pinch and paste it with a flick.
Eventually, he said, the computer password could be a gesture known only to the user.
Elias said people often think that speech recognition systems will become the ultimate user interface. "Voice commands are good for many things but terrible for other things," Elias said, adding he believes there are inherent problems with a speech-only interface.
"If you want to test this claim, you can do so with a perfect speech recognition system-another human being," Elias said. "Put somebody in front of your computer and try to do your work by issuing voice commands to him. You'll quickly find that many common tasks are difficult to do using speech, even though your 'computer interface' understands you perfectly."
Using hand and finger motion to input commands is, for many tasks, much more effective than trying to explain what you want to do in words, he said.
The system is being used at several work stations in Evans Hall and the reaction is largely favorable. It is something of a challenge for some workers, Elias said, because it is like learning a new language.
Susan Foster, UD vice president of information technologies, said she is impressed with the interface and plans to adopt it for use at several computer sites around campus.
"The device is the result of new thinking about the 'bandwidth' that constrains the physical interaction between operator and computer," Foster said. "It capitalizes on human gestures, which are easy to understand and execute. Once learned, like other motor skills, they are readily retained. The assistive qualities of the device also make it quite useful for those with limitations on upper extremity use."
The plug-and-play device, which requires no special software, should be of particular interest to programmers, graphic designers and editors, Foster said, and she is recommending they consider making use of a new technology that was "born and bred at UD and under continuing development here."
The University of Delaware is an equity partner in FingerWorks.
For more on FingerWorks, see the web site at [www.fingerworks.com].
I'll bet tons of unscrupulous bots traverse slashdot every day looking for email addresses. Too bad that they will get this one now (or pet@petswarehouse as was posted in the main story). Yeah, damn shame. I sure hope none of these bots are for NAMBLA magazine, or some weird goatse-like mailing list. Or I hope that none of you weird slashdotters sign him up for magazine subscriptions or for various email lists. Or give his work phone number to some telemarketing group.That would just be wrong. So don't do it. He doesn't deserve it.
*beeeeeeeeeeeeep*
Oops, my sarcasm detector just went off, gotta go.
``This would not authorize someone taking their digital content and sharing it with a million of their best friends,'' Lofgren said in an interview Tuesday. Instead of creating new rights for consumers, she said, her bill would ensure that ``the rights they have in the analog world, they have in digital.''
Jack Valenti sees this as:
``If this bill were to pass, it would render ineffective, worthless and useless any protection measure we would have in place to protect a $100 million movie,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the Lofgren bill. ``You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it.''
I think it is still illegal to distribute copyrighted works. The difference is, the DMCA makes fair-use illegal. This bill is to make fair-use legal (which should be legal anyway, but the DMCA is so vague it disallows it). The purpose of this bill is not to address the illegal uses of digital media, but to ensure the legal uses remain legal. The problem with Jack Valenti is that he has sold his soul and cannot see these things clearly. He does not want the public to have any fair-use, he and the big companies want to abolish fair-use.
Nobody is really saying "people should be able to illegally distribute media" they are saying "don't deny us our legal rights just to enforce these laws". If there was some magic technology that would allow me fair-use to my digital media yet not allow me to illegally distribute it, I would be all for it. I don't have a problem paying for things, I have a problem with companies making me pay for things when I shouldn't have to, or preventing me from using things I have already paid for.
Even though Bill and his wife have donated a lot of money to, and have set up their own charities, that doesn't mean that he is a humanitarian. That just means he has too much friggin money. He is a businessman, period. Don't tell me he is a techie either - he might have started as one, but he is only a businessman now. And a ruthless one at that. Even though this may have been a very good project for humanity *in concept*, knowing that he had his hand in it leads me to believe that it would be best if it never happened.
Yes, I think that if everyone had internet access it would help humanity, but there are more pressing issues, like the original poster stated. But being a humanitarian will not make you more money, or give you more power. So Mr Bill will not be interested in things like that.
When the economics were first calculated in the mid-1980s, nobody envisaged a ubiquitious cell phone service and global roaming. (Nor did they imagine that cell phone services would price their minutes at $0.20 or less.) The key demographic of Iridium users - i.e. travelling businessmen - already had cell phones, and weren't prepared to swap them for larger devices, with lower quality sound, and which cost 30x as much per minute.
Your statments may be true, but I think the REAL problem lies within them:
The economics were calculated in the mid-80s, yet the damn thing never got anywhere until the 90s. It took way too long to get implemented. Granted, it was ambitious, but I think a lot of the delay had to do with the way Moto did things.
Nobody did any re-calculations in 10 years?
Motorola wasn't able to foresee the cellphone use explosion. This is very ironic, don't you think, considering that they pretty much had the market cornered at that point in time.
I think the whole thing was a huge failure for very good reasons, and they probably could have been avoided. I worked at Moto in the early to mid 90s, and the way things worked there, I am not surprised at the outcome of Iridium. Well, I am surprised that they finally bailed on it instead of riding it out to a very slow death.
Thanks for the descriptions, they were pretty good. But I have done all three of these jobs - SCM and system testing at Motorola (you can't get much more anal than that, unless you talk military or gov), a combo QA/Testing role at a small company, and now a testing/QA role leaning more towards QA. I am aware of the differences. I am also aware that a lot of people at companies consider "the test group" to be a stepping stone where you can "teach people the ropes" of your product. I have seen many people come and go, where they "start out" in QA to get a good idea of how things work, then move UP to development.
My problem with that is that people consider it a move up to leave QA. I am going off of my own experiences here, and may have read too much into the original poster's comments. But I have seen it many times over the years.
And you are right, we can be extremely picky bastards, and can make life a living hell.:-)
LOL!
You're a fucking idiot. This is a sarcastic paraphrasing from the book, knucklehead. He was being funny.
Gee, you think so? That was my point. That was WHY the post was lame.
Let me try to explain - the original poster said that it is just a movie trailer, that you shouldn't get all excited about it. Only die-hard LOTR dorks would. Then some dufus replies with a paraphrase from the book. (acting as a pseudo-flame, the same way reniassance fair people do. They think they are being clever, but the rest of the world laughs at them because they are so friggin stupid) You ever see the episode of Jackass where they go to the ren fair, and that one dumbass gets in their face talking about smiting them and all that gibberish? You probably thought that was cool, didn't you?
I DID get the idea of the response, and I stand by my assertion that it was totally lame and stupid, not funny. Wow, the moderators modded it up as funny - big surprise. But you aren't in your little world where you can talk like raving idiots and get pats on the backs because you have l337 70lk13n 5k1lz.
Go ahead, flame me some more, and by all means, quote LOTR (or any of the Star Trek movies, or some anime movie, or a video game). You can pretend all you want that I don't get it, but I do in fact get it, I just see it for what it is - stupid, weak, pseudo-social delusions.
QA / SCM is Quality Assurance (e.g. Testing) and Software Configuration Management. Being a Sr. QA person is a real good way to move into either Toolsmith or Application Programmer, since you gain a whole lot of knowledge about how things work (otherwise, how are you to test it correctly?), and get good at automating test stuff. SCM is often a gateway to SysAdmin, but is different, in that it really is concerned with change management, deployments, and usually builds. Both positions require a good smattering of script language knowledge
*ahem*
I started out in '93 when I got out of college as an SCM for a large company. I inherited their build-management tools, which were all in ksh. I learned it really quickly, and still those skills to this day (although more for personal use). After 1.5 years, they wanted me to move into a position with more potential. After all, SCM is SCM, once you get it running smoothly, there isn't much else to do.
This is where my *ahem* comes in. I moved into testing from SCM, and have been in QA ever since. Want to insult a good QA person? Refer to QA as an entry level position where you can move up to programmer. Part of the problem is that people see QA as entry level, and farm people off to other parts of the business. Gee, I wonder why our QA department has so much turnover and bugs get through? There are entry level positions in QA, but they aren't all like that. Many of the QA people I have worked with have been sharper and better programmers than some of the programmers I have worked with. If you are lucky, maybe you can move up from programmer to QA.
Seriously. I'm amazed at the excitement generated by an advertisement. Hey Look! Nike has a new commercial out, it is SO awesome!
Deserves excitment! I daresay this trailer does. Many that are geeks deserve excitement. And some that are sarcastic deserve being treated as a naysayer. Can you not give it a rest? Do not be too eager to deal out sarcasm in judgment. For even the very wise sometimes cannot "get it."
OMFG, this was the absolute lamest attempt at a flame I have ever seen, and only proved the original comment 10 fold. I am sure there are some lame-ass die-hard LOTR dorks thinking that you really showed him, but believe me, the rest of the planet is laughing at you. Dumbass.
As someone who has interviewed 50+ people...
on
Resume Tips For Jobs
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Over the years I have interviewed at least 50 people for jobs. I have been working in QA for the last 8 years, and usually the companies have had a policy where people from different groups (development, QA, management, etc) interview someone, and then put their heads together to see if they are worth hiring. After all, you usually have to work with all kinds of different people, and although technical skills are a must, if you can't get along with the people you work with, you aren't worth much.
Avoid spelling mistakes and typos. Come on folks, this is a resume. If you misspell something, then your chances just got cut in half. Once we were interviewing for a documentation person, and she misspelled 3 words on her resume. She had no chance after that.
A good tip about experience with different things is to rate your experience. I know on mine, I broke up technical experience into three categories: experienced, some knowledge, familiar. That way when you say "familiar with dbase" you can expand on that in the interview to tell them exactly what "familiar" means.
Know what you say you know. We were hiring someone into our QA group, and we were testing on Unix servers. We had to have someone with Unix experience. One guy had the word "unix" in several places on his resume, but when we got him in the interview, he couldn't even answer my basic questions. (what is your favorite shell in Unix?) He asked me what I meant. He didn't know what shell scripting was, but he thought he could learn it. Then came the blunt questions "how well do you know Unix?" He said "pretty well". Guess what, for proclaiming to know Unix and not knowing a damn thing about it, he got to see the door.
Don't put the standard, tired, canned crap on your resume (Objective, hobbies, etc). Believe me, they all start to look the same. What you say in your objective really doesn't help at all, it can only really hurt you. If your objective isn't worded for the position you are interviewing for, then HR may not even pass your resume on. And if I want to know your hobbies, I'll ask you about them in the interview. And printing your picture on it is dumb. Being "clever" for the sake of being clever probably won't help.
Show that you know how to use your experience, put down some quick details about projects that you have worked on (# of people on the project, the type of project, etc) Don't go into too much detail, but don't just say "coded in C". Be specific, but not boring. If you read what you wrote, would some questions about it come to mind? (and not - what the hell does that mean?) Pretend to have been interested in past projects, even if you weren't. Nobody wants to hire someone who is just there to get a paycheck and doesn't care about what they are doing.
Be honest. Really, that is about it. Don't blow smoke up anyone's butt, don't interview as someone you are not. Be yourself, that is who they should be hiring. If you aren't right for the job, then it is because you aren't right for the job, not that you didn't put on the right game face.
Looks like she is on par with CmdrTaco as far as grammer and spelling is concerned. Yup, that's a quality review alright.
I thought that too, at first. I thought that some of the mistakes she made sounded like English wasn't her native language. So instead of choosing to be a smart ass and make some "clever" comment about it, I chose to educate myself. I looked up the info on the author (by simply clicking on her name at the top of the article). She is Greek, so English isn't her first language. While it isn't perfect English by far, it got the point across. In the author's own words: I am Greek and english is not my native language. We do OSNews for fun (however, OSNews takes most of my time every day), so if you have a problem with my spelling and grammar either a) do not come back (spare us and save your time too) b) send me a proofread version of the article in question.
Whining about something I can't radically improve overnight, is not an option.
Re:Pushing Linux desktop evolution
on
Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The author wrote: One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place?
Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license?
I think your point is a little off, by targeting "developers in the free software community". This is RedHat's distribution of GNU/Linux, and it sounds like the author's gripes would need to be addressed by RedHat. It doesn't really sounds like a programmers view of the UI, but the distributor's. I am not disagreeing with the author's point, just that the comments should be directed appropriately. If RedHat wants to put the same menu in 15 times in 15 different places, you can' fault the person who coded the menu.
I agree, read that article, and then read this rebuttal in two parts: SciAm rebuttal Part I [scienceaga...lution.org], and SciAm rebuttal, Part II [scienceaga...lution.org].
Then perhaps you'll be prepared to make a judgement about the validity of both positions. FWIW, I think the SciAm article in question did as much damage to the evolutionist position (through wrecking even the pretense of objectivity of the evolutionist community) as some of the loonier creationist writings have done to undermine that position.
OK, so my original post got modded as flamebait. Phbbbt. Whatever. They are just Slashdot moderators afterall, I wouldn't really expect them to READ the article I referenced, and see that was the title and it was in a scientific magazine. But I digress.
I think creationists realized that their positions wouldn't be taken seriously because of religious dogma, and decided to coin a new term and add a derivative of the word "science" to it. Poof, Creationist Scientists are born. It seems like nowadays you can just morph the word science into your title and receive instant credibility. Bottom line is, their arguements haven't changed, just their name. Creationism is no more true now than when I was in Catholic grade-school, and the rebuttals in these articles are pretty weak IMO.
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
on
Ready, Steady, Evolve
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Everyone, please read this article at Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense . It states 15 common statements/questions that creationists pose to try and discount evolution, and answers them all quite nicely.
Prefences->Homepage->Exclude Stories from Homepage->Topics: Microsoft. Theres also a filter for JonKatz if anyone out there doesn't already have it checked.
Of course, this made me go double-check and make sure I had filtered out Katz's stories - I didn't. Then I realized that I haven't had a good bout of blinding rage in a while. Has anyone else noticed that he hasn't posted anything for several months? Wonder what's up with that? Not that I want him back, good riddance. I just wonder if someone finally told him to hit the road.
Slashdot Mirror
To my supportive, but angry "friend", I would say to chill out. It was off-topic, in a way. I have enough "venting karma" to last a while, but I would have liked to get some kind of response to my questions. Too bad you can't get modded UP even when you are off-topic.
Dell PII machine (about $85 at the time)
decent sound card (about $25)
4MB video card w/TVout (cheap)
GNUMP3d serving up the MP3s over my network (very cool and easy mp3 server, supports ogg. Can be set to stream or download files)
The Dell system came with a 2GB hard drive, which I installed Redhat7.3 on. I couldn't get Xwindows to work right with the TVout. So I installed Win98, it all worked fine. But I wasn't happy with it. Then I found Knoppix. This improved my system in two ways:
1. It is running Linux
2. It is near silent.
Because Knoppix boots off the CD, I didn't need the hard drive anymore. It plays all my MP3s over my network.
It could be a cooler setup, but it works for me. The interface is web based, so I do have to use a mouse/keyboard, but it is a small price to pay. I suppose you could get IR controls working, or get a wireless mouse/keyboard.
The company I work for has some deal with Rational, so we are tied into using their products. :(
In all seriousness, I am not just bitching because I submitted the story on the Paris display on MONDAY, I am just curious how long it takes for a story to get posted once it is submitted. I have submitted several stories, only to have them rejected and show up days later attributed to someone else. If there are that many stories being submitted that it takes 4 days to get through the queue, I am not even going to bother submitting anymore, because eventually someone else will either submit it, or everyone will see it anyway because the story will be a week old.
Microsoft Issues Windows Security Warning
gotta love it
This would be great for browsers...
making a fist and moving the hand in an up-and-down motion will go to www.persiankitty.com
extending only the middle finger on the left hand will go to www.riaa.com
extending only the middle finger on the right hand will go to www.mpaa.com
extending both middle fingers will send you to www.microsoft.com
UD researchers develop revolutionary computer interface technology
Sept. 27, 2002--University of Delaware researchers have developed a revolutionary computer interface technology that promises to put the bite on the traditional mouse and mechanical keyboard.
"We have developed a technology that goes well beyond the mouse and mechanical keyboard," John Elias, UD professor of electrical and computer engineering, said.
Elias and Wayne Westerman, UD visiting assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, have been working on the new interface for about five years and are now marketing their iGesture product through a company called FingerWorks.
The project started as a doctoral thesis by Westerman, who was then a UD graduate student working with Elias.
The FingerWorks name fits because the technology uses a touch pad and a range of finger motions to communicate commands and keys to the computer. To open a file, you rotate your hand as if opening a jar; to zoom or de-zoom, you expand or contract your hand.
Elias said the communication power of their system is "thousands of times greater" than that of a mouse, which uses just a single moving point as the main input. Using this new technology, two human hands provide 10 points of contact, with a wide range of motion for each, thus providing thousands of different patterns, each of which can mean something different to the computer.
While much about the computer has changed over the last three decades-greater power, faster speeds, more memory-what has not changed is the user interface.
"For what it was invented for, the mouse does a good job," Elias said. "People accept the mouse and the mechanical keyboard because that's the way it is. But there are limitations in terms of information flow. There is so much power in the computer, and so much power in the human, but the present situation results in a communications bottleneck between the two."
Elias and Westerman have a better idea. "I believe we are on the verge of changing the way people interact with computers," Elias said. "Imagine trying to communicate with another human being using just a mouse and a keyboard. It works, but it is slow and tedious.
"This is not just a little step in improving the mouse, this is the first step in a new way of communicating with the computer through gestures and the movements of your hands. This is, after all, one of the ways humans interact."
Elias said he could envision in the next 10 years "a very complex gestural language between man and machine."
The system is a multi-touch, zero force technology, Elias said, meaning the gestures and movements use all the fingers in a light and subtle manner.
Because of that, the system has a second major advantage over the mouse and mechanical keyboard because it can greatly reduce stress injuries such as tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome attributed to traditional computer work.
The company markets both stand-alone touch pads and touch pads built into
nonmechanical keyboards. In the keyboards, the keys overlap the touch pad so the operator does not have to move his hands when switching between typing and using the mouse. Rather, everything can be done in a smoother flow of hand motions.
Elias explained the touch pad acts like a video camera, recording the objects touching its surface. An embedded microprocessor then applies an algorithmic process to convert those touches into commands understood by the computer.
"To observers watching somebody use multi-touch, it looks a little like magic,"
Elias said, illustrating his point on a computer in Evans Hall. "People see lots of things happening on the computer screen but very little hand motion is observed."
He said the system has been designed so the gestures used make sense for the operation being performed. For instance, you cut text with a pinch and paste it with a flick.
Eventually, he said, the computer password could be a gesture known only to the user.
Elias said people often think that speech recognition systems will become the ultimate user interface. "Voice commands are good for many things but terrible for other things," Elias said, adding he believes there are inherent problems with a speech-only interface.
"If you want to test this claim, you can do so with a perfect speech recognition system-another human being," Elias said. "Put somebody in front of your computer and try to do your work by issuing voice commands to him. You'll quickly find that many common tasks are difficult to do using speech, even though your 'computer interface' understands you perfectly."
Using hand and finger motion to input commands is, for many tasks, much more effective than trying to explain what you want to do in words, he said.
The system is being used at several work stations in Evans Hall and the reaction is largely favorable. It is something of a challenge for some workers, Elias said, because it is like learning a new language.
Susan Foster, UD vice president of information technologies, said she is impressed with the interface and plans to adopt it for use at several computer sites around campus.
"The device is the result of new thinking about the 'bandwidth' that constrains the physical interaction between operator and computer," Foster said. "It capitalizes on human gestures, which are easy to understand and execute. Once learned, like other motor skills, they are readily retained. The assistive qualities of the device also make it quite useful for those with limitations on upper extremity use."
The plug-and-play device, which requires no special software, should be of particular interest to programmers, graphic designers and editors, Foster said, and she is recommending they consider making use of a new technology that was "born and bred at UD and under continuing development here."
The University of Delaware is an equity partner in FingerWorks.
For more on FingerWorks, see the web site at [www.fingerworks.com].
*beeeeeeeeeeeeep*
Oops, my sarcasm detector just went off, gotta go.
Jack Valenti sees this as:
``If this bill were to pass, it would render ineffective, worthless and useless any protection measure we would have in place to protect a $100 million movie,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the Lofgren bill. ``You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it.''
I think it is still illegal to distribute copyrighted works. The difference is, the DMCA makes fair-use illegal. This bill is to make fair-use legal (which should be legal anyway, but the DMCA is so vague it disallows it). The purpose of this bill is not to address the illegal uses of digital media, but to ensure the legal uses remain legal. The problem with Jack Valenti is that he has sold his soul and cannot see these things clearly. He does not want the public to have any fair-use, he and the big companies want to abolish fair-use.
Nobody is really saying "people should be able to illegally distribute media" they are saying "don't deny us our legal rights just to enforce these laws". If there was some magic technology that would allow me fair-use to my digital media yet not allow me to illegally distribute it, I would be all for it. I don't have a problem paying for things, I have a problem with companies making me pay for things when I shouldn't have to, or preventing me from using things I have already paid for.
Yes, I think that if everyone had internet access it would help humanity, but there are more pressing issues, like the original poster stated. But being a humanitarian will not make you more money, or give you more power. So Mr Bill will not be interested in things like that.
Your statments may be true, but I think the REAL problem lies within them:
The economics were calculated in the mid-80s, yet the damn thing never got anywhere until the 90s. It took way too long to get implemented. Granted, it was ambitious, but I think a lot of the delay had to do with the way Moto did things.
Nobody did any re-calculations in 10 years?
Motorola wasn't able to foresee the cellphone use explosion. This is very ironic, don't you think, considering that they pretty much had the market cornered at that point in time.
I think the whole thing was a huge failure for very good reasons, and they probably could have been avoided. I worked at Moto in the early to mid 90s, and the way things worked there, I am not surprised at the outcome of Iridium. Well, I am surprised that they finally bailed on it instead of riding it out to a very slow death.
My problem with that is that people consider it a move up to leave QA. I am going off of my own experiences here, and may have read too much into the original poster's comments. But I have seen it many times over the years.
And you are right, we can be extremely picky bastards, and can make life a living hell. :-)
Don't you mean "ad nauseam"?
*ducks*
Gee, you think so? That was my point. That was WHY the post was lame.
Let me try to explain - the original poster said that it is just a movie trailer, that you shouldn't get all excited about it. Only die-hard LOTR dorks would. Then some dufus replies with a paraphrase from the book. (acting as a pseudo-flame, the same way reniassance fair people do. They think they are being clever, but the rest of the world laughs at them because they are so friggin stupid) You ever see the episode of Jackass where they go to the ren fair, and that one dumbass gets in their face talking about smiting them and all that gibberish? You probably thought that was cool, didn't you?
I DID get the idea of the response, and I stand by my assertion that it was totally lame and stupid, not funny. Wow, the moderators modded it up as funny - big surprise. But you aren't in your little world where you can talk like raving idiots and get pats on the backs because you have l337 70lk13n 5k1lz.
Go ahead, flame me some more, and by all means, quote LOTR (or any of the Star Trek movies, or some anime movie, or a video game). You can pretend all you want that I don't get it, but I do in fact get it, I just see it for what it is - stupid, weak, pseudo-social delusions.
OK, so the RIAA owes me. They can subtract all the music I have "pirated" from the bill. I bet they still owe me money.
*ahem*
I started out in '93 when I got out of college as an SCM for a large company. I inherited their build-management tools, which were all in ksh. I learned it really quickly, and still those skills to this day (although more for personal use). After 1.5 years, they wanted me to move into a position with more potential. After all, SCM is SCM, once you get it running smoothly, there isn't much else to do.
This is where my *ahem* comes in. I moved into testing from SCM, and have been in QA ever since. Want to insult a good QA person? Refer to QA as an entry level position where you can move up to programmer. Part of the problem is that people see QA as entry level, and farm people off to other parts of the business. Gee, I wonder why our QA department has so much turnover and bugs get through? There are entry level positions in QA, but they aren't all like that. Many of the QA people I have worked with have been sharper and better programmers than some of the programmers I have worked with. If you are lucky, maybe you can move up from programmer to QA.
Deserves excitment! I daresay this trailer does. Many that are geeks deserve excitement. And some that are sarcastic deserve being treated as a naysayer. Can you not give it a rest? Do not be too eager to deal out sarcasm in judgment. For even the very wise sometimes cannot "get it."
OMFG, this was the absolute lamest attempt at a flame I have ever seen, and only proved the original comment 10 fold. I am sure there are some lame-ass die-hard LOTR dorks thinking that you really showed him, but believe me, the rest of the planet is laughing at you. Dumbass.
I got karma to burn, and this one was worth it.
Information Superhighway
Cyberspace
Avoid spelling mistakes and typos. Come on folks, this is a resume. If you misspell something, then your chances just got cut in half. Once we were interviewing for a documentation person, and she misspelled 3 words on her resume. She had no chance after that.
A good tip about experience with different things is to rate your experience. I know on mine, I broke up technical experience into three categories: experienced, some knowledge, familiar. That way when you say "familiar with dbase" you can expand on that in the interview to tell them exactly what "familiar" means.
Know what you say you know. We were hiring someone into our QA group, and we were testing on Unix servers. We had to have someone with Unix experience. One guy had the word "unix" in several places on his resume, but when we got him in the interview, he couldn't even answer my basic questions. (what is your favorite shell in Unix?) He asked me what I meant. He didn't know what shell scripting was, but he thought he could learn it. Then came the blunt questions "how well do you know Unix?" He said "pretty well". Guess what, for proclaiming to know Unix and not knowing a damn thing about it, he got to see the door.
Don't put the standard, tired, canned crap on your resume (Objective, hobbies, etc). Believe me, they all start to look the same. What you say in your objective really doesn't help at all, it can only really hurt you. If your objective isn't worded for the position you are interviewing for, then HR may not even pass your resume on. And if I want to know your hobbies, I'll ask you about them in the interview. And printing your picture on it is dumb. Being "clever" for the sake of being clever probably won't help.
Show that you know how to use your experience, put down some quick details about projects that you have worked on (# of people on the project, the type of project, etc) Don't go into too much detail, but don't just say "coded in C". Be specific, but not boring. If you read what you wrote, would some questions about it come to mind? (and not - what the hell does that mean?) Pretend to have been interested in past projects, even if you weren't. Nobody wants to hire someone who is just there to get a paycheck and doesn't care about what they are doing.
Be honest. Really, that is about it. Don't blow smoke up anyone's butt, don't interview as someone you are not. Be yourself, that is who they should be hiring. If you aren't right for the job, then it is because you aren't right for the job, not that you didn't put on the right game face.
I thought that too, at first. I thought that some of the mistakes she made sounded like English wasn't her native language. So instead of choosing to be a smart ass and make some "clever" comment about it, I chose to educate myself. I looked up the info on the author (by simply clicking on her name at the top of the article). She is Greek, so English isn't her first language. While it isn't perfect English by far, it got the point across. In the author's own words:
I am Greek and english is not my native language. We do OSNews for fun (however, OSNews takes most of my time every day), so if you have a problem with my spelling and grammar either a) do not come back (spare us and save your time too) b) send me a proofread version of the article in question. Whining about something I can't radically improve overnight, is not an option.
One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place?
Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license?
I think your point is a little off, by targeting "developers in the free software community". This is RedHat's distribution of GNU/Linux, and it sounds like the author's gripes would need to be addressed by RedHat. It doesn't really sounds like a programmers view of the UI, but the distributor's. I am not disagreeing with the author's point, just that the comments should be directed appropriately. If RedHat wants to put the same menu in 15 times in 15 different places, you can' fault the person who coded the menu.
OK, so my original post got modded as flamebait. Phbbbt. Whatever. They are just Slashdot moderators afterall, I wouldn't really expect them to READ the article I referenced, and see that was the title and it was in a scientific magazine. But I digress.
I think creationists realized that their positions wouldn't be taken seriously because of religious dogma, and decided to coin a new term and add a derivative of the word "science" to it. Poof, Creationist Scientists are born. It seems like nowadays you can just morph the word science into your title and receive instant credibility. Bottom line is, their arguements haven't changed, just their name. Creationism is no more true now than when I was in Catholic grade-school, and the rebuttals in these articles are pretty weak IMO.
Everyone, please read this article at Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense . It states 15 common statements/questions that creationists pose to try and discount evolution, and answers them all quite nicely.
Of course, this made me go double-check and make sure I had filtered out Katz's stories - I didn't. Then I realized that I haven't had a good bout of blinding rage in a while. Has anyone else noticed that he hasn't posted anything for several months? Wonder what's up with that? Not that I want him back, good riddance. I just wonder if someone finally told him to hit the road.
Doesn't this guy read Slashdot!?