I think the way to make a business partnership work is to have one person that's actually in control, the other partners are "minor" partners, or hire a non-partner to do the management work.
The most successful independent IT folk I know are working solo under the guise of a company, the employees of which are all independent contractors. Hire the people you need to do the things you either can't/won't do yourself, pass along the cost to the client and take a small cut off the top.
Besides the self-discipline required, the hardest part is that you have to become your own salesperson. Being your own boss is definitely not for everyone. If you aren't good at self-promotion, hate lunch meetings, or are terrible interacting with strangers, then you're probably not going to do too well and might want to reconsider leaving the cube farm.
Upgrading hardware or optimizing software will both meet the customers needs only the hardware upgrade is $2,000 and the software optimization costs $20,000.
There's no guarantee where the source of any particular system's inefficiencies lie. Sometimes you can throw more iron at the problem. But let me tell you as a software developer, it's trivial to accidentally write something that will bring a server/connection pool/database to its knees--such to the extent that no amount of extra hardware will save your ass.
In those sorts of situations, your choices are either pay $20,000 for a software solution, or pay $22,000 for a fruitless hardware solution which then convinces management to get a software solution.
It's been recommended on several OC forums to disabled clip recording in-game--apparently this is offers a substantial performance increase... YMMV, but it's free to try. Unlike this new NVIDIA beast.
Perhaps not for you, but SSDs do offer enormous benefits for some of us. For instance, I use an IDE that dynamically performs hundreds of inspections at any given time. For large projects, file I/O became the limiting factor. SSDs essentially remove file I/O from the equation. Seek times go from milliseconds to nanoseconds. For all intents and purposes, anything your system requests will be available immediately.
Another area this could be helpful is with databases--you're basically moving the entire database into memory. You could instantly generate multi-GB table indexes. You could take backup snapshots of production systems with no additional latency. That's insane.
SSDs essentially remove an entire category of performance restriction. It's like... imagine if car makers didn't have to think about aerodynamic drag any more in their car designs. That'd be pretty freakin' insane, right? That's SSDs. (/dumb car analogy)
I thought the quasi-web standard for other languages was a little flag in the corner. Not a solitary link buried in the mix that just says "Welcome" without any context.
Completely off-topic, I just wanted to say that I've been a big fan of your work on the ARM platform since your Quake port all those years ago (that and DEXplorer) and really appreciate your efforts.
"Ah Clinton! Is there nothing we can't blame you for?"
Seriously. The latest trend has Republicans blaming the current financial crisis on parts of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (enacted under Clinton's watch). They figure they can just pull some legislative needle out of history's haystack and sell it to the American people as The Reason because it involves the words Banks and Insurance.
One thing you can continue to bank on is the stupidity and inherent gullibility of the American public.
You mean PFS Professional Write? You can download version 3.0 here (first Google search--might want to look around for other versions). You'll probably have to run it in some kind of compatibility mode or VM if the option is available.
PFS Professional Write had built-in conversion to other file formats like WordStar and WordPerfect. Those should be importable into modern-day Microsoft Word.
Alternately, you can use one of the plethora of file conversion utilities available on the 'net. Here's one that claims it can handle PFS files.
The primary reason I'll pirate is because the cracking groups strip out all the protection--thus I can install and run the software wherever I like (hard drive? USB drive? no problem!) without having to jump through hoops. And I know the software will still work five years from now when I've lost my authorization key or PGP-encrypted email containing the registration information or your central servers that verify keys have vanished from the planet.
That means no air-breathing fuel cells or combustion systems. Thus gasoline + O2 is out, as is hydrogen+02. additionally it means any reactions that produce gas (e.g. c02) are not allowed either.
I'm curious (though not enough to click on the links) what the charging requirements are. I mean, twenty pounds is a lot of weight. Do they expect it to contain the charging system as well, or is it assumed that there will be access to AC?
If some companies would start producing really slick, well polished, 2D Adventure, RPG, and Strategy games, they would probably meet with a lot of success without much outlay.
While I agree with you in spirit, the evidence points to the contrary. I mean, 2D game engines are available for the taking. Text adventures? Quake? Sierra? It's all either available or easily coded, yet I see no dearth of great games coming out. Is that simply because there's no golden carrot being waved in front of their faces? If that were the case, you'd expect open-source to come to the rescue. Yet it's three years until we make contact, there's no personal rocket-packs, and open-source developers have seemingly failed to take advantage of the old skool market. Personally, I think they're all too busy playing their Nintendos and MAME systems.
The question is how much difference is there for Composite, since composite (RCA) is what this box supports now.
There's been an HD breakout box for the original XBOX since its inception. You can get a convincing knock-off of the original (probably made in Taiwan or Korea) that works just as well for $10.00 (USD) on eBay (the real McCoy's from Microsoft go for more than $100 in some places). That gives you HD output. Plug one of these (~$20 depending where you go) in the HD pack connector and you have optical 5.1 DD output.
Good luck getting the 700 Mhz. processor to handle 1080i. I've gotten XBMC to boot, but we're talking video rates in the single digits for most HD content. Most I've gotten is 720p, and that's full xvid encoding (or Matroska, or just about anything else you can think of). Not bad for such old hardware.
The other thing I like about the XBOX/XBMC as a multimedia solution is that you really don't need a lot of crap in your living room. One box should do it all--movies, music... whatever. I always hated the whole "television + reciever + dvd player + xbox + pre-amp + speakers" look where half your living room looks like an alter to the gods of Home Audio.
The XBMC guys are clever coders (I recall an attempt to use the GPU to try and aid in decoding video streams). The problem is that they are die-hard, attached-to-the-hip classic XBOX fanatics. You can't even start to talk to them about porting to another system. They won't do it. End of story. Which means no "true" open HD media box for the foreseeable future (MythTV the sole, sad exception).
If someone would just work out a relatively easy way to upgrade the CPU/memory of the Xbox, I doubt that anyone would be able to do much better for quite some time.
FriendTech used to have an X-BOX with more RAM and a faster processor. If memory serves, it was a 1.4 Ghz. Celeron (twice as fast as the stock box). It didn't take off because at the time people were just interested in gaming performance, but some games were hard-coded to expect a certain (slower) processor speed, thus games were sped-up and unplayable.
They made a conversion kit for the CPU upgrade after their systems didn't sell, but I haven't been able to get to their site in quite some time. I even tried sending emails out to anyone and everyone involved in the project, but no luck.
If anyone has a FriendTech 1.4 XBOX they'd like to sell, please send me an email.:)
he uses manipulative tactics too often, I imagine intended to elicit sympathy through emotional appeals of pity or indignation, but for me it is simply distracting and wearying
If you haven't seen SiCKO! yet, I won't spoil the ending for you. But suffice to say, he does something very similar in this latest release. There's a point that is just so ludicrously exploitative that you realize even Moore knows he's crossed a line, but then it changes around in a pretty beautiful way.
I'd say this is actually one of the most even-handed and (dare I say) optimistic of Michael Moore's films, as well as appealing to both sides of the political spectrum. Hell, he even digs pretty hard into Hillary. What astounded me throughout the film was the look of incredulity from the citizens and doctors of other first-world nations that we would not feel it a fundamental part of democracy. I loved when he asked out-going patients of other countries' hospitals how much it cost them and they just look at him funny and say, "sorry, mate, it doesn't cost you anything, here."
Ah, civilization. We'll hopefully get it figured out here... eventually.
One big way: they'll actually license the damned technology, unlike Foveon who only release their damned super-sensors to crappy second-rate Lens manufacturers.
The legal concept of Ignorantia juris non excusat is that you should be not be able to escape liability for a law that you should have reasonably known.
And in this case, since neither the plaintiff, defendant, or police officer(!) knew he was breaking the law, it cannot be reasonable that the offense should have been recognized in the first place.
There should be a counter-rule in place to protect the plaintiff. Something along the lines of Ignorantia technologis non culpus. In this case, the shop that set up the wireless connection didn't bother to RTFM and secure their wireless connection. That means that, by design and default, the router was set up to accept all packets, whether they came from within the establishment or not. The router even dished out an IP address for his network card via DHCP. Ignorance of technology is not a reasonable cause for offense.
I thought the nearest star (after Sol, of course) was Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years?
Actually, the article is incorrect. Pioneer 11 will get within 1.65 light-years of the red dwarf AC+79 3888. That will happen sometime around 42,400 AD. Currently, it's about 16.6 light-years away from the sun.
Interestingly, by the time Pioneer 11 reaches AC+79 3888, the red dwarf will only be about 3 light-years away from us (as it's hurtling through space in our general direction).
suffers from stupidities like not having its basic types (eg int) be objects.
What crack are you smoking? All java primitives have Object versions.
Objects are heavy. Primitives are fast. If you want an integer object, you use Integer instead of int. Or Char instead of char. Or Boolean instead of boolean. Etc. You have the choice with Java to pick the right tool for the job. If you don't need any of the object's methods and just want to do some fast arithmetic, use the primitives, otherwise use the object. Pretty friggin' simple. They're even named the same so you won't get confused.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the way to make a business partnership work is to have one person that's actually in control, the other partners are "minor" partners, or hire a non-partner to do the management work.
The most successful independent IT folk I know are working solo under the guise of a company, the employees of which are all independent contractors. Hire the people you need to do the things you either can't/won't do yourself, pass along the cost to the client and take a small cut off the top.
Besides the self-discipline required, the hardest part is that you have to become your own salesperson. Being your own boss is definitely not for everyone. If you aren't good at self-promotion, hate lunch meetings, or are terrible interacting with strangers, then you're probably not going to do too well and might want to reconsider leaving the cube farm.
Upgrading hardware or optimizing software will both meet the customers needs only the hardware upgrade is $2,000 and the software optimization costs $20,000.
There's no guarantee where the source of any particular system's inefficiencies lie. Sometimes you can throw more iron at the problem. But let me tell you as a software developer, it's trivial to accidentally write something that will bring a server/connection pool/database to its knees--such to the extent that no amount of extra hardware will save your ass.
In those sorts of situations, your choices are either pay $20,000 for a software solution, or pay $22,000 for a fruitless hardware solution which then convinces management to get a software solution.
I say, "Just look for the Chinese restaurants."
In China, they just call them restaurants.
It's been recommended on several OC forums to disabled clip recording in-game--apparently this is offers a substantial performance increase... YMMV, but it's free to try. Unlike this new NVIDIA beast.
Perhaps this is because Microsoft so tightly binds IE to the operating system
Not perhaps.
I believe the engineering term is "reap what you sow, bitches."
SSDs do not solve a problem
Perhaps not for you, but SSDs do offer enormous benefits for some of us. For instance, I use an IDE that dynamically performs hundreds of inspections at any given time. For large projects, file I/O became the limiting factor. SSDs essentially remove file I/O from the equation. Seek times go from milliseconds to nanoseconds. For all intents and purposes, anything your system requests will be available immediately.
Another area this could be helpful is with databases--you're basically moving the entire database into memory. You could instantly generate multi-GB table indexes. You could take backup snapshots of production systems with no additional latency. That's insane.
SSDs essentially remove an entire category of performance restriction. It's like... imagine if car makers didn't have to think about aerodynamic drag any more in their car designs. That'd be pretty freakin' insane, right? That's SSDs. (/dumb car analogy)
I thought the quasi-web standard for other languages was a little flag in the corner. Not a solitary link buried in the mix that just says "Welcome" without any context.
Here's the English version: http://www.ilesansfil.org/welcome/
Except it also comes with a debugger.
Completely off-topic, I just wanted to say that I've been a big fan of your work on the ARM platform since your Quake port all those years ago (that and DEXplorer) and really appreciate your efforts.
Beatles music is not very intricate, elegant, or difficult to play (even LH bass).
You need to put on your historical relativity goggles. Their music was vastly more sophisticated than 90%* of the rest of popular music of the time.
And I'd love to see you play the sitar.
* ~10% for Stax/Atlantic
"Ah Clinton! Is there nothing we can't blame you for?"
Seriously. The latest trend has Republicans blaming the current financial crisis on parts of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (enacted under Clinton's watch). They figure they can just pull some legislative needle out of history's haystack and sell it to the American people as The Reason because it involves the words Banks and Insurance.
One thing you can continue to bank on is the stupidity and inherent gullibility of the American public.
You mean PFS Professional Write? You can download version 3.0 here (first Google search--might want to look around for other versions). You'll probably have to run it in some kind of compatibility mode or VM if the option is available.
PFS Professional Write had built-in conversion to other file formats like WordStar and WordPerfect. Those should be importable into modern-day Microsoft Word.
Alternately, you can use one of the plethora of file conversion utilities available on the 'net. Here's one that claims it can handle PFS files.
100% what he said.
The primary reason I'll pirate is because the cracking groups strip out all the protection--thus I can install and run the software wherever I like (hard drive? USB drive? no problem!) without having to jump through hoops. And I know the software will still work five years from now when I've lost my authorization key or PGP-encrypted email containing the registration information or your central servers that verify keys have vanished from the planet.
That means no air-breathing fuel cells or combustion systems. Thus gasoline + O2 is out, as is hydrogen+02. additionally it means any reactions that produce gas (e.g. c02) are not allowed either.
If they're looking at a 20 lb. system they can do it right now with absorption glass mat (AGM) batteries like the kind originally developed for the F-16 (and also used in some automobiles, notably the Mazda Miata). They even offer decent life in the kinds of extreme temperature conditions you might see in combat.
I'm curious (though not enough to click on the links) what the charging requirements are. I mean, twenty pounds is a lot of weight. Do they expect it to contain the charging system as well, or is it assumed that there will be access to AC?
If some companies would start producing really slick, well polished, 2D Adventure, RPG, and Strategy games, they would probably meet with a lot of success without much outlay.
While I agree with you in spirit, the evidence points to the contrary. I mean, 2D game engines are available for the taking. Text adventures? Quake? Sierra? It's all either available or easily coded, yet I see no dearth of great games coming out. Is that simply because there's no golden carrot being waved in front of their faces? If that were the case, you'd expect open-source to come to the rescue. Yet it's three years until we make contact, there's no personal rocket-packs, and open-source developers have seemingly failed to take advantage of the old skool market. Personally, I think they're all too busy playing their Nintendos and MAME systems.
Yeah, you know who else Wikimedia hired? That's right.
The question is how much difference is there for Composite, since composite (RCA) is what this box supports now.
There's been an HD breakout box for the original XBOX since its inception. You can get a convincing knock-off of the original (probably made in Taiwan or Korea) that works just as well for $10.00 (USD) on eBay (the real McCoy's from Microsoft go for more than $100 in some places). That gives you HD output. Plug one of these (~$20 depending where you go) in the HD pack connector and you have optical 5.1 DD output.
Good luck getting the 700 Mhz. processor to handle 1080i. I've gotten XBMC to boot, but we're talking video rates in the single digits for most HD content. Most I've gotten is 720p, and that's full xvid encoding (or Matroska, or just about anything else you can think of). Not bad for such old hardware.
The other thing I like about the XBOX/XBMC as a multimedia solution is that you really don't need a lot of crap in your living room. One box should do it all--movies, music... whatever. I always hated the whole "television + reciever + dvd player + xbox + pre-amp + speakers" look where half your living room looks like an alter to the gods of Home Audio.
The XBMC guys are clever coders (I recall an attempt to use the GPU to try and aid in decoding video streams). The problem is that they are die-hard, attached-to-the-hip classic XBOX fanatics. You can't even start to talk to them about porting to another system. They won't do it. End of story. Which means no "true" open HD media box for the foreseeable future (MythTV the sole, sad exception).
If someone would just work out a relatively easy way to upgrade the CPU/memory of the Xbox, I doubt that anyone would be able to do much better for quite some time.
:)
FriendTech used to have an X-BOX with more RAM and a faster processor. If memory serves, it was a 1.4 Ghz. Celeron (twice as fast as the stock box). It didn't take off because at the time people were just interested in gaming performance, but some games were hard-coded to expect a certain (slower) processor speed, thus games were sped-up and unplayable.
They made a conversion kit for the CPU upgrade after their systems didn't sell, but I haven't been able to get to their site in quite some time. I even tried sending emails out to anyone and everyone involved in the project, but no luck.
If anyone has a FriendTech 1.4 XBOX they'd like to sell, please send me an email.
he uses manipulative tactics too often, I imagine intended to elicit sympathy through emotional appeals of pity or indignation, but for me it is simply distracting and wearying
If you haven't seen SiCKO! yet, I won't spoil the ending for you. But suffice to say, he does something very similar in this latest release. There's a point that is just so ludicrously exploitative that you realize even Moore knows he's crossed a line, but then it changes around in a pretty beautiful way.
I'd say this is actually one of the most even-handed and (dare I say) optimistic of Michael Moore's films, as well as appealing to both sides of the political spectrum. Hell, he even digs pretty hard into Hillary. What astounded me throughout the film was the look of incredulity from the citizens and doctors of other first-world nations that we would not feel it a fundamental part of democracy. I loved when he asked out-going patients of other countries' hospitals how much it cost them and they just look at him funny and say, "sorry, mate, it doesn't cost you anything, here."
Ah, civilization. We'll hopefully get it figured out here... eventually.
One big way: they'll actually license the damned technology, unlike Foveon who only release their damned super-sensors to crappy second-rate Lens manufacturers.
No credit card starts with 88, so that's half as much work right there.
The legal concept of Ignorantia juris non excusat is that you should be not be able to escape liability for a law that you should have reasonably known.
And in this case, since neither the plaintiff, defendant, or police officer(!) knew he was breaking the law, it cannot be reasonable that the offense should have been recognized in the first place.
There should be a counter-rule in place to protect the plaintiff. Something along the lines of Ignorantia technologis non culpus. In this case, the shop that set up the wireless connection didn't bother to RTFM and secure their wireless connection. That means that, by design and default, the router was set up to accept all packets, whether they came from within the establishment or not. The router even dished out an IP address for his network card via DHCP. Ignorance of technology is not a reasonable cause for offense.
I thought the nearest star (after Sol, of course) was Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light years?
Actually, the article is incorrect. Pioneer 11 will get within 1.65 light-years of the red dwarf AC+79 3888. That will happen sometime around 42,400 AD. Currently, it's about 16.6 light-years away from the sun.
Interestingly, by the time Pioneer 11 reaches AC+79 3888, the red dwarf will only be about 3 light-years away from us (as it's hurtling through space in our general direction).
suffers from stupidities like not having its basic types (eg int) be objects.
What crack are you smoking? All java primitives have Object versions.
Objects are heavy. Primitives are fast. If you want an integer object, you use Integer instead of int. Or Char instead of char. Or Boolean instead of boolean. Etc. You have the choice with Java to pick the right tool for the job. If you don't need any of the object's methods and just want to do some fast arithmetic, use the primitives, otherwise use the object. Pretty friggin' simple. They're even named the same so you won't get confused.
This is Java Fundamentals 101, and you failed.
Howard Marks.
A non-US citizen, extradited to the US by Spain for allegedly committing crimes, none of which occurred in Spain.