Fast-Forward into Cyberpunk. Not the friendly Gibson kind, but one with intrusive neural interfaces. People showing clear signs of severe mental deseases but reporting from of the Network that they feel superb and can sense when the stockmarket is about to shift. They are so powerfull they're not even interested in money anymore and experience enjoyments mere mortals can't even dream of. They can slow down time and play WoW 12 live. Their bodies are bloated, drooling, twitching pieces of flesh, with eyeballs turned inward, watched by carebots. It's the better option than just occasionly jacking in and experiencing severe borderline like disorders by trying to cope with the real world when not logged in. Normal programmers are extinct, because these humans interfaced with machines do the jobs to get free acccess everywhere and they do them 10.000 times better than anybody else. The question: Would you get yourself a neural jack and hook up? I wouldn't.
What bedazzles me time and time again is that computer geeks and supposed experts get all worked up when it comes to "who controlls the internet" and "cutting of certain parts of the internet". Hello? Anybody at home? I got some bad news for you: You are all cut off! I've got the internet right here on my Linux box and I just took it offline. HA! Take that! I'll take an Euro from each of you before you're allowed back on.
Seriously, these discussions are so super pointless it hurts. The internet is a bunch of copper/glasfiber in the ground and some root servers somewhere connecting a large amount of computer users who've come to agree upon using the same TCP/IP Domain Space. Period. It's as regionalized as you want it to be, at any given time. Or do you mean if like china would suddenly sever all it's wires or - more elegantly - reconf it's root-servers, leave the mutual TLD Space and implement it's own. Or shut down all TCP/IP stuff and force it's citizens back to todays eqivalent of BBS Networks and FidoNet Variants? Well, then you'd have to connect to chinese online info via dialup. Untill someone sets up an effective gateway that pulls and pushed content to and from the non-internet(s) on a regular basis that is. Which would take something like 30 minutes for it to happen.
NOBODY controlls the internet. Not very effectively anyway. And nobody can be 'cut off'. Whatever that means. If anybody controls this mutual, unwritten agreement that lead to the net of networks, it's the corporations making bucketloads of cash from supplying the infrastructure for all this. And they shure as hell have no interest in forcing paying customers back into an updated version of the Fidonet or something like that, away from the big service providers into a more distributed, redundant and less error prone network. People might get used to it. Remember the signal-to-noise ratio on the Fido and MausNet? It was so good, people didn't even want anonymity back then. You don't even get that type of quality on ancient, well established hermetric community sites like slashdot these days. Give me super-strict unified document markup, standardized strong-encrypted private messaging and standardized sandboxed rich client technology (offline if you will) and I'd even welcome a more regionalized network rather then the sad and sorry mess we have to deal with nowadays! Ancient protocolls, additionally totally f*cked-up by de-facto standard crap-clients in the hands of the clueless, a gigantic corporation that has spoiled the whole expierience for years, maybe even decades to come by means of millions of PC users unable to grasp the crappines of Outlook, IE, Netscape 4 and the need for computer security, etc.,etc. Don't even get me started on Spam and the havoc clueless politicians are wrecking with new "internet laws". It makes me weep just thinking of it.... Gosh, I want 1993 back. With todays hardware that is.:-)
Linux/OSS isn't playing Microsofts game. Sue all you want. Open your war chest of patents and fire away, Have IBM join the fray and fire back with an army of lawyers and tons of prior art. Drag Donald E. Knuth to court and have him confess that he came up with large parts of the stuff everybody claims to have a patent on. Force people to join patent ammo interest groups and have 10-20 wisecracks come forward who've managed to pass "pattern-matching" and "bit-vectors" passt the patent office clerks, ready to sue MS to chunky kibbles - or step down for a mean xx million sum. Be it that in the end, 50% of Linux is actually 'illegal code'. 'Illegal' as in 'patent-thought crime'. Illegal as in 'may never use FAT' and 'may never use CF12xx encoding for characters.'. And so on. But never forget: Linux/OSS isn't playing Microsofts game. It's not about money. It's about nice computer stuff that's fun to lots of people. It's about software that does interesting things, not about making money. It's made to work without money. It's about PHP. Mozillla. Python. Blender. Not about Money. MS won't survive as a software-only company. They can sue, burn 5-10 billion and set back desktop Linux by a decade. And they have to if the shareholders demand it. But they can't win. Because OSS is not playing their game. OSS has more IT expert manpower than MS can even dream of. And it's machinery is fuled by passion, not money. That's what scares the piss out of MS. "... then they fight you. Then you win." QED.
German politicians are very much like every other politician or normal person not awar of the general principles of IT. They are blissfully ignorant of the actual consequences of todays IP laws they pass. The last draft of internet copyright protection law that made it into the real world was a haphazard and naive mess, littered with wrong vocablurary and barely made it not to be a classical 1984 "Thought Crime Law" as the US american DMCA is. This new law is a step closer to that though. Brigitte Zypries said it right there though: She can't be bothered bugging the decision boards with such minor details as seperating IP control and access/market control and thus doesn't care about the effects. Politicians have other things to worry about - like the deficit. When asked if it where a proactive DRM circumvention if copying a CD on PC Linux (where current DRM is unaffective) she said something like "Well, in that case I would say, sort of, that if DRM is unaffective it's not there so it's no circumvention in this case."... No word about that in the law.
It boils down to the courtroom again, where it's up to the judge to introduce sanity into the process again. I understand there are some US judges that have ruled the DMCA as unapplicable in some cases, as it's against the american constitution.
Goes to show what we all should never forget: Laws are made by humans and should be subject to perpetual scrunity.
Ajax here, Ajax there, AJax everywhere! PHP and Ajax, Perl and Ajax, MS now supports Ajax, Ajax and RAILS! RUBY ON RAILS WITH FOAM AROUND MY MOUTH. Rails FIRST TO SUPPORT AJAX (which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML as opposed to sychronous JavaScipt! DON'T forget: YOU DON'T WANT Synchronous JavaScript Synchronous = bad, AJAX = GOOD!) Ajax will change everything - especially since we needn't use a word that people will confuse with JAVA for allways and ever.
My god the dumbness of people is truely astonishing. This is sooo exausting.
For the uninformed: JavaScript Browser Applications (now called Ajax since 12 months ago) for a restricted set of Browser have been around FOR AGES! I've been doing stuff that is called Ajax today in 1999 and I was late. It was a neat toying around back then with serious performance and cross browser issues that boged the whole thing down and it still is today. This isn't going to change just because some later day new economist coined the term Ajax. The DOM issues didn't go away over night either.
The old games are fun and competingly so. Try this for proof: Go here: http://www.zapthegame.com/ and download the demo. It's 25 years old in style. It just uses modern hardware for frictionless vector rendering. And it's serious fun.
MS is a company with buketfulls of cash. No news here. About 5 years ago the german company Wortmann was a prime quality vendor of Laptops with Linux preinstalled (service and all). In the end they where having full page adverts praising their Laptops and Hardware and how well it run's with SuSE Linux. They where making serious inroads in the market. MS just went there and removed all traces of Linux and turned them into what looks like a walking MS commercial. It literally happend overnight.
It goes something like this: ->MS marketing guy notices OSS Vendor that doesn't look like a kid in basement company - by seeing adds or getting intel from system houses reporting XYZ mopping up their area and market with OSS/Linux products. ->MS Marketeer calls alert. ->They either buy into the vendor by strawmen/companies or directly. ->New kid on the board has "real good cash heavy connections to some key MS people". ->MS officals move into meeting with super prime turbo MS gold partner offer as a freebee to warm up and add in a little "we've got serious work to do, we've got 5 customers who want serious MS Infrastructure, it's a high 7 digits all together. We need good people like you, you must help us to help you to get yourselves huge amounts of cash - the cash only MS people can make. But we need to move quick. You'd have to go all-out MS by tomorrow. You can get all the resources for free, just help us do this customer." ->CEO get's excited. Issues decree to remove all mentioning of Linux imediately. Admins and Service Personell can't believe what they're hearing. ->MS training rolls in + MS Gold Partner Release DVDs + Manuals and Gold Partner Hotlines for the bedazzled Unix Admins. ->Company gets rolling with their serious MS pitch to new customers. Does attraktive 180 turns for the ones they where pitching Linux to. "Yes, there's this new product and service, it's all much better, even our Unix Admins are impressed with the service and quick response, TCO is cheaper because this one has more options, You can try it and if you don't like it we move back for free, blah, blah, blah..." ->1 year later customers have enjoyed prime time MS funded services whilst staying with their good' ole Exchange and not having to go through the tedious switch. Unix Admins take the cash, shut up and OSS is pushed back into the basement and Linux Install Party crowd.
MS is a business. They don't care about software, they care about money. They have the monopoly edge and they use it. Like a sect. MS doesn't turn it's brain on when they do software. They are factually BRAINDEAD when it comes to being smart with software. They couldn't care less. They don't need to. MS goes alive when it's about CASH. And then your way can be a bazillion times better/more secure/easier - they just come and squish you. And you will love it and it doesn't even show a blip on their quarterly report. I know double and triple certified MS trainees who will second exactly that. If I were MS, I'd do it the same way btw.
That's a total no-brainer. Delicious Library. Period. No other Library programm or solution comes even close. It's the companies only product, sells for 40$ and it's a programm that justifies buying a Mac just for the purpose of running it. It's that good.
It has everything you could wish for and loads more. Among the most notable features are bot's that spider the web (amazon, etc.) for meta info on your books based on the barcode (including grabbing cover-pictures), option to use a webcam as barcode scanner and exports to data formats of your choice.
Really, looking any further is pointless. DL+Mac Mini+Barcode Reader or Webcam will take you farther than any other solution you could even dream of.
Unless official sides officially support Windows for Mac this will stay a niche product with variants for installation but the same instability and insecurity as with component x86 systems. OS X is to much of a good consitent appliance for Windows to break serious ground here. It's the integration of hardware and software what Mac is about.
I'd say it's about time nurses get paid top dollar.
And I don't do IT because I want to get rich, I do IT because I like it. Getting rich is about doing the stuff you don't like if your the type to be passionate about a craftmanship or something simular.
I'm in the process of founding a Ltd. in order to do some financial tricks and generate turnover. Hopefully with the sideeffect of making some 'backstockable' revenue (read: make money, get rich). It's an entirely different game. Infact it involves actively RESTRICTING your time in which you do the stuff you love: programming. And putting the time into stuff people usually hate doing: Paperwork and throwing out the stuff that isn't cost effective - which sometimes means throwing out the fun stuff.
1) The Website sucks. Redoo with a professional Webdesigner. Sleek grafics, fonts and all. Gentoo sort of points in the right direction but only sort of. Check out csszengarden.com to see what people mean when they say "Professional Webdesign."
2) Put the Shop up front. With Webshop functionality. Design the shop together with the site.
I have a Headphone I bought exclusively for gaming. Sony CD470. It's closed, stable, has a long cord and the best sound quality I've ever had on a headphone. This line of headphones has something like a subscription to audio rewards and gets top rankings every season.
There is but one thing I'd do better for gaming: Anti-Sweat. Closed is good but when your ears get warm after hours of UT 2003 you want some air on your ears.
My perfect gaming headphone would have the sound quality of the Sony CD line, the cord of the Sony CD470, would be as sturdy as the Beyerdynamic Monitor Headphone line (high end studio headphones, start at aprox. 300$) and some sort of nifty air circulation system to keep the ears from going sweaty whilst keeping external noise out. And it would have a line of spare parts for things that break on them and go fatigue. Like the cushions and the lining.
All of this doesn't seem to be part of these bizarly priced headphones. Ergo: Crap or maybe some ok closed headphones. But gaming headphones "by gamers for gamers"? That's Rubbish. Save your money.
Ogg Vorbis uses the most power, FLAC the least
on
DRM Reduces Battery Life
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ogg Vorbis, due to it being a superior compression format needs quite some CPU power to decode. That's the reason not all players support it - because not all have the electronics to do it. FLAC is easiest - for obvious resons. The others are all spread somewhere inbetween. However I'd kinda expect Sonys ATRAC, the MiniDisk Compression format, to be the most power saving.
So you got modded insightfull? Fine. May I add some insight?...
I got WoW and installed it. I've never ever played an MMORPG before. It took me aprox. 30 seconds to get going with the game. The people I know that play MMORPGs have been buying GuildWars just to get away from WoW and give other games a chance and yet they come back to WoW. It's hardware specs aren't insane, a n00b can play it and if I log on after 4 weeks I don't feel like I need another 2 days to get into it again. Remember StarCraft? It had a max resolution that was allready considered pointless back then. Yet it literally crushed the market and it is still considered one of the best RTS games ever. Why is that? Blizzards playtests. It's that simple. Playtesting is a core component of development with blizzard. SC was playtested for two years!. How else do you think they could balance 3 factions so well? Something NOBODY has achieved again since then. And the same goes for WoW. A year and more is allways part of their developement. That's the reason WoW rules todays MMORPG scene. They get the medium to higher specs of todays PCs, and develop for those for a few years, allways counting that extra year of playtesting and balancing and tweaking. Thus Blizzard gives you games that A) Are finished. B) Don't suck. C) Run on normal PCs. D) Run stable. (Updates on Blizzard games allmost exclusively cover balacing, rules and game mechanic issues) E) Stay very fun for an allmost indefinite time. Ergo: Blizzard rules.
I recently checked out EQ2 (sucked royally) and talked to a MMORPG fan that has his share of GuildWars and other accounts. His comment went like this: >>WoW is the ticket. It currently doesn't get any better so don't waste your time if your not a fulltime gamer. Given Blizzards track record I'm inclined to believe that.
What PostgreSQL - however the hell you say that - really needs is a new name. Forget features, forget marketing, forget RDBMS death match performance comparisons. Nobody cares. MySQL lacked tons of features for years, and we all used it then and continue to use it now. Why? You can pronounce it. Simple.
Allthough your post is somewhat funny there is a large amount of truth in that. I'm glad that the Postgres people at least managed to update their website design. That's one of the reasons Postgres is finally taking on.
X Configuration. Yeah, those were the days. Setting Color, V-Frequency and Resolution to a non-sucking condition on Suse 6.4. Getting the newest NVidia drivers to run on Suse 7.2 only to watch Sax wreck havoc on the XF86Config. Sweating bulltets while trying to recover X into runable condition. Finding the right setting on Debian to run Loki's Tribes 2 in hardware mode. Nothing like hand-cofigging your XF86Config. All you miss is the dirt, heat and steam and having to shovel coals into a hatch below your PSU every 10 minutes.
I'll still don't know what half of those options mean and I'll probably never know:-)
function checkOutCheapAndSmallComp() {
if (newMiniITXLine.notablyCheaperThan(MacMini))
{
return interesting = true;
} else {
return pointless = utterly;
} }
Since the MacMini all the small component, low power PC solutions have missed out. Only if MiniITX board and CPU+casing+powersupply+drive+ram+hdd is cheaper than the MacMini, only then will it stand a chance.
By now there is tons of comments detailing the programming habit downsides of VB. Most of them are very true so I won't go into them again.
VB is some crazy shit. No doupt. Simular to Perl or PHP in it's quirkiness. If you turn your brains on, you can be productive. VB can dumb you down though and last time I used it it didn't teach me the right lingua, so I didn't really know what a type was when I stopped using VB. Strict OOP and the big polymorphic picture on the other hand can be a PITA and nothing more than ego stroking, so don't take everything OOP advocates say for granted (comparen EJB with Ruby on Rails to see what I mean).
Yet I say there is one absolute no-go for beginners and veterans alike when it comes to doing stuff with VB: It's microsoft lockin. If you plan to do only MS and MS GUI stuff until you die - hook, line and sinker included - then VB may be your ticket. I spent two years doing Flash stuff - allthough lockin isn't that strong there. We've got OSS compilers by now and some neat other stuff coming up.
Think of VB as the MS equivalent to Perl. Only that it locks you to MS systems and will cost you four-digit sums (IDEs, updates, various MS operating systems) each year to stay in the game.
Bottom line: I strongly discourage you to do VB. Learn Python - it's the language that will take your farthest without learning anything else and it teaches good habits without being a prick. It's FOSS, fast enough for most things, used in all industries for real-world productivity and the Python Boss Guido van Rossum isn't to tight-assed to change the language specs it he runs into an earlyer design mistake. Which keeps Pyhton on top of things as opposed to, let's say, Java. And you can spare yourself the C tourturing and still will be accepted with older generation geeks. Which wouldn't happen if you used VB. Check the comments to see what I mean.
If you need to do GUI stuff you'll have to do QT bindings or learn to deploy hassle-free wxPyhton apps - which is a downside. But it get you used to the "real-world". VB would turn you into something of a sissy in that area.
Having started of in Basic (for Sharp Pocket Computers) in the mid-80s I've lived with that quote for 20 years now. Having wrapped my head around OOP and all that I have to say that this Dijkstra guy is a total dickhead.
If you've learned Basic (produral programming) you will only be unable to learn OOP if you run into people who aren't capable of teaching it the right way. Which - sadly enough - are most of the OOP advocates.
That, and only that, is the real problem in moving from Basic to OOP.
Oracle is buying out OSS companies because they want to smooth the inevitable transition to a mostly service oriented revenue model. If there is any software CEO that has gotten what OSS is all about it's Larry Ellison. Getting OSS all lined up is all about standards in Data and Clients. That's why Oracle is extendending their DB (MySQL) and Client Technology (XUL/Mozilla) base.
How this is supposed to be grim for OSS is beyond me.
There where other, better and cheaper portable cassette players before the walkman. All along the early eighties Sanyo kicked the living crap out of Sony when it came to features, performance and battery time. So how did the Walkman get the mindshare? Just the way Apples iPod did. By wrapping it in flashy colors and design (Walkman 2 anyone?) and make it a fashion statement rather than a boring intimidating tech device.
Unless you've got sales in the making allready (large custom projects, vendor bundling your stuff, etc.) don't release as OSS. OSS only makes sense if you've got a clear vision on how to capitalize of that in your business. OSS can be a good marketing tool - but you've got to know what you are doing. Curiously enough, OSS makes best sense when you've got a product on your hands that would go as closed source aswell. Get a handfull of clients that want your product + some customization and warm up to your target market. Then you can still GPL once you've got a feel for things. Marketing is key to success - OSS or not. OSS won't compensate for crappy marketing. Do your homework.
I GPLd a commercial product of mine - but that was after carefull consideration and after my partners and clients agreed to join the OSS game. Now we're all partners in bringing the product into mainstream with various other revenue models. And the initial projects payed my rent during maturing phase. I'd do it again - but only that way.
Who needs silicon valley? Can't a skilled worker in Saigon do just a good a job? And isn't it about work? OOAD is nothing less than a must for even the most minor tasks nowadays. Code generators and high profile IDEs come for free a dime a dozen - it only takes people who know how to use them. There isn't even a need for PhDs! Computer stuff is more and more becoming a craftmanship rather than science. Most people aren't competeing on innovation anymore, they're competing on price, performance, speed, speciality, availability and quality of service. The hype is over folks. We are slowly leaving the steam age of IT. Finally.
If you want to do something new and refreshing learn the fine arts - don't expect silicon valley to be a substitute for dolce vita anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Fast-Forward into Cyberpunk. Not the friendly Gibson kind, but one with intrusive neural interfaces. People showing clear signs of severe mental deseases but reporting from of the Network that they feel superb and can sense when the stockmarket is about to shift. They are so powerfull they're not even interested in money anymore and experience enjoyments mere mortals can't even dream of. They can slow down time and play WoW 12 live. Their bodies are bloated, drooling, twitching pieces of flesh, with eyeballs turned inward, watched by carebots. It's the better option than just occasionly jacking in and experiencing severe borderline like disorders by trying to cope with the real world when not logged in. Normal programmers are extinct, because these humans interfaced with machines do the jobs to get free acccess everywhere and they do them 10.000 times better than anybody else.
The question:
Would you get yourself a neural jack and hook up?
I wouldn't.
Is this some kind of trick question or something?
... Gosh, I want 1993 back. With todays hardware that is. :-)
What bedazzles me time and time again is that computer geeks and supposed experts get all worked up when it comes to "who controlls the internet" and "cutting of certain parts of the internet". Hello? Anybody at home? I got some bad news for you: You are all cut off! I've got the internet right here on my Linux box and I just took it offline. HA! Take that! I'll take an Euro from each of you before you're allowed back on.
Seriously, these discussions are so super pointless it hurts. The internet is a bunch of copper/glasfiber in the ground and some root servers somewhere connecting a large amount of computer users who've come to agree upon using the same TCP/IP Domain Space. Period. It's as regionalized as you want it to be, at any given time. Or do you mean if like china would suddenly sever all it's wires or - more elegantly - reconf it's root-servers, leave the mutual TLD Space and implement it's own. Or shut down all TCP/IP stuff and force it's citizens back to todays eqivalent of BBS Networks and FidoNet Variants? Well, then you'd have to connect to chinese online info via dialup. Untill someone sets up an effective gateway that pulls and pushed content to and from the non-internet(s) on a regular basis that is. Which would take something like 30 minutes for it to happen.
NOBODY controlls the internet. Not very effectively anyway. And nobody can be 'cut off'. Whatever that means. If anybody controls this mutual, unwritten agreement that lead to the net of networks, it's the corporations making bucketloads of cash from supplying the infrastructure for all this. And they shure as hell have no interest in forcing paying customers back into an updated version of the Fidonet or something like that, away from the big service providers into a more distributed, redundant and less error prone network. People might get used to it. Remember the signal-to-noise ratio on the Fido and MausNet? It was so good, people didn't even want anonymity back then. You don't even get that type of quality on ancient, well established hermetric community sites like slashdot these days. Give me super-strict unified document markup, standardized strong-encrypted private messaging and standardized sandboxed rich client technology (offline if you will) and I'd even welcome a more regionalized network rather then the sad and sorry mess we have to deal with nowadays! Ancient protocolls, additionally totally f*cked-up by de-facto standard crap-clients in the hands of the clueless, a gigantic corporation that has spoiled the whole expierience for years, maybe even decades to come by means of millions of PC users unable to grasp the crappines of Outlook, IE, Netscape 4 and the need for computer security, etc.,etc. Don't even get me started on Spam and the havoc clueless politicians are wrecking with new "internet laws". It makes me weep just thinking of it.
Linux/OSS isn't playing Microsofts game.
Sue all you want. Open your war chest of patents and fire away, Have IBM join the fray and fire back with an army of lawyers and tons of prior art. Drag Donald E. Knuth to court and have him confess that he came up with large parts of the stuff everybody claims to have a patent on. Force people to join patent ammo interest groups and have 10-20 wisecracks come forward who've managed to pass "pattern-matching" and "bit-vectors" passt the patent office clerks, ready to sue MS to chunky kibbles - or step down for a mean xx million sum.
Be it that in the end, 50% of Linux is actually 'illegal code'. 'Illegal' as in 'patent-thought crime'. Illegal as in 'may never use FAT' and 'may never use CF12xx encoding for characters.'. And so on. But never forget:
Linux/OSS isn't playing Microsofts game. It's not about money. It's about nice computer stuff that's fun to lots of people. It's about software that does interesting things, not about making money. It's made to work without money. It's about PHP. Mozillla. Python. Blender. Not about Money.
MS won't survive as a software-only company. They can sue, burn 5-10 billion and set back desktop Linux by a decade. And they have to if the shareholders demand it. But they can't win. Because OSS is not playing their game. OSS has more IT expert manpower than MS can even dream of. And it's machinery is fuled by passion, not money. That's what scares the piss out of MS.
"... then they fight you. Then you win." QED.
German politicians are very much like every other politician or normal person not awar of the general principles of IT. They are blissfully ignorant of the actual consequences of todays IP laws they pass. The last draft of internet copyright protection law that made it into the real world was a haphazard and naive mess, littered with wrong vocablurary and barely made it not to be a classical 1984 "Thought Crime Law" as the US american DMCA is. This new law is a step closer to that though. ... No word about that in the law.
Brigitte Zypries said it right there though: She can't be bothered bugging the decision boards with such minor details as seperating IP control and access/market control and thus doesn't care about the effects. Politicians have other things to worry about - like the deficit. When asked if it where a proactive DRM circumvention if copying a CD on PC Linux (where current DRM is unaffective) she said something like "Well, in that case I would say, sort of, that if DRM is unaffective it's not there so it's no circumvention in this case."
It boils down to the courtroom again, where it's up to the judge to introduce sanity into the process again. I understand there are some US judges that have ruled the DMCA as unapplicable in some cases, as it's against the american constitution.
Goes to show what we all should never forget: Laws are made by humans and should be subject to perpetual scrunity.
Ajax here, Ajax there, AJax everywhere! PHP and Ajax, Perl and Ajax, MS now supports Ajax, Ajax and RAILS! RUBY ON RAILS WITH FOAM AROUND MY MOUTH. Rails FIRST TO SUPPORT AJAX (which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML as opposed to sychronous JavaScipt! DON'T forget: YOU DON'T WANT Synchronous JavaScript Synchronous = bad, AJAX = GOOD!) Ajax will change everything - especially since we needn't use a word that people will confuse with JAVA for allways and ever.
My god the dumbness of people is truely astonishing. This is sooo exausting.
For the uninformed: JavaScript Browser Applications (now called Ajax since 12 months ago) for a restricted set of Browser have been around FOR AGES! I've been doing stuff that is called Ajax today in 1999 and I was late. It was a neat toying around back then with serious performance and cross browser issues that boged the whole thing down and it still is today. This isn't going to change just because some later day new economist coined the term Ajax. The DOM issues didn't go away over night either.
The old games are fun and competingly so. Try this for proof:
Go here: http://www.zapthegame.com/ and download the demo. It's 25 years old in style. It just uses modern hardware for frictionless vector rendering. And it's serious fun.
MS is a company with buketfulls of cash. No news here.
..."
About 5 years ago the german company Wortmann was a prime quality vendor of Laptops with Linux preinstalled (service and all). In the end they where having full page adverts praising their Laptops and Hardware and how well it run's with SuSE Linux. They where making serious inroads in the market. MS just went there and removed all traces of Linux and turned them into what looks like a walking MS commercial. It literally happend overnight.
It goes something like this:
->MS marketing guy notices OSS Vendor that doesn't look like a kid in basement company - by seeing adds or getting intel from system houses reporting XYZ mopping up their area and market with OSS/Linux products.
->MS Marketeer calls alert.
->They either buy into the vendor by strawmen/companies or directly.
->New kid on the board has "real good cash heavy connections to some key MS people".
->MS officals move into meeting with super prime turbo MS gold partner offer as a freebee to warm up and add in a little "we've got serious work to do, we've got 5 customers who want serious MS Infrastructure, it's a high 7 digits all together. We need good people like you, you must help us to help you to get yourselves huge amounts of cash - the cash only MS people can make. But we need to move quick. You'd have to go all-out MS by tomorrow. You can get all the resources for free, just help us do this customer."
->CEO get's excited. Issues decree to remove all mentioning of Linux imediately. Admins and Service Personell can't believe what they're hearing.
->MS training rolls in + MS Gold Partner Release DVDs + Manuals and Gold Partner Hotlines for the bedazzled Unix Admins.
->Company gets rolling with their serious MS pitch to new customers. Does attraktive 180 turns for the ones they where pitching Linux to. "Yes, there's this new product and service, it's all much better, even our Unix Admins are impressed with the service and quick response, TCO is cheaper because this one has more options, You can try it and if you don't like it we move back for free, blah, blah, blah
->1 year later customers have enjoyed prime time MS funded services whilst staying with their good' ole Exchange and not having to go through the tedious switch. Unix Admins take the cash, shut up and OSS is pushed back into the basement and Linux Install Party crowd.
MS is a business. They don't care about software, they care about money. They have the monopoly edge and they use it. Like a sect. MS doesn't turn it's brain on when they do software. They are factually BRAINDEAD when it comes to being smart with software. They couldn't care less. They don't need to. MS goes alive when it's about CASH. And then your way can be a bazillion times better/more secure/easier - they just come and squish you. And you will love it and it doesn't even show a blip on their quarterly report. I know double and triple certified MS trainees who will second exactly that.
If I were MS, I'd do it the same way btw.
That's a total no-brainer.
Delicious Library. Period. No other Library programm or solution comes even close. It's the companies only product, sells for 40$ and it's a programm that justifies buying a Mac just for the purpose of running it. It's that good.
It has everything you could wish for and loads more. Among the most notable features are bot's that spider the web (amazon, etc.) for meta info on your books based on the barcode (including grabbing cover-pictures), option to use a webcam as barcode scanner and exports to data formats of your choice.
Really, looking any further is pointless. DL+Mac Mini+Barcode Reader or Webcam will take you farther than any other solution you could even dream of.
Unless official sides officially support Windows for Mac this will stay a niche product with variants for installation but the same instability and insecurity as with component x86 systems. OS X is to much of a good consitent appliance for Windows to break serious ground here.
It's the integration of hardware and software what Mac is about.
I'd say it's about time nurses get paid top dollar.
And I don't do IT because I want to get rich, I do IT because I like it. Getting rich is about doing the stuff you don't like if your the type to be passionate about a craftmanship or something simular.
I'm in the process of founding a Ltd. in order to do some financial tricks and generate turnover. Hopefully with the sideeffect of making some 'backstockable' revenue (read: make money, get rich). It's an entirely different game. Infact it involves actively RESTRICTING your time in which you do the stuff you love: programming. And putting the time into stuff people usually hate doing: Paperwork and throwing out the stuff that isn't cost effective - which sometimes means throwing out the fun stuff.
1) The Website sucks. Redoo with a professional Webdesigner. Sleek grafics, fonts and all. Gentoo sort of points in the right direction but only sort of. Check out csszengarden.com to see what people mean when they say "Professional Webdesign."
2) Put the Shop up front. With Webshop functionality. Design the shop together with the site.
I have a Headphone I bought exclusively for gaming. Sony CD470. It's closed, stable, has a long cord and the best sound quality I've ever had on a headphone. This line of headphones has something like a subscription to audio rewards and gets top rankings every season.
There is but one thing I'd do better for gaming: Anti-Sweat. Closed is good but when your ears get warm after hours of UT 2003 you want some air on your ears.
My perfect gaming headphone would have the sound quality of the Sony CD line, the cord of the Sony CD470, would be as sturdy as the Beyerdynamic Monitor Headphone line (high end studio headphones, start at aprox. 300$) and some sort of nifty air circulation system to keep the ears from going sweaty whilst keeping external noise out. And it would have a line of spare parts for things that break on them and go fatigue. Like the cushions and the lining.
All of this doesn't seem to be part of these bizarly priced headphones. Ergo: Crap or maybe some ok closed headphones. But gaming headphones "by gamers for gamers"?
That's Rubbish. Save your money.
Ogg Vorbis, due to it being a superior compression format needs quite some CPU power to decode. That's the reason not all players support it - because not all have the electronics to do it. FLAC is easiest - for obvious resons. The others are all spread somewhere inbetween.
However I'd kinda expect Sonys ATRAC, the MiniDisk Compression format, to be the most power saving.
So you got modded insightfull? Fine. May I add some insight? ...
I got WoW and installed it. I've never ever played an MMORPG before. It took me aprox. 30 seconds to get going with the game. The people I know that play MMORPGs have been buying GuildWars just to get away from WoW and give other games a chance and yet they come back to WoW.
It's hardware specs aren't insane, a n00b can play it and if I log on after 4 weeks I don't feel like I need another 2 days to get into it again.
Remember StarCraft? It had a max resolution that was allready considered pointless back then. Yet it literally crushed the market and it is still considered one of the best RTS games ever.
Why is that?
Blizzards playtests.
It's that simple.
Playtesting is a core component of development with blizzard. SC was playtested for two years!. How else do you think they could balance 3 factions so well? Something NOBODY has achieved again since then. And the same goes for WoW. A year and more is allways part of their developement. That's the reason WoW rules todays MMORPG scene. They get the medium to higher specs of todays PCs, and develop for those for a few years, allways counting that extra year of playtesting and balancing and tweaking. Thus Blizzard gives you games that A) Are finished. B) Don't suck. C) Run on normal PCs. D) Run stable. (Updates on Blizzard games allmost exclusively cover balacing, rules and game mechanic issues) E) Stay very fun for an allmost indefinite time. Ergo: Blizzard rules.
I recently checked out EQ2 (sucked royally) and talked to a MMORPG fan that has his share of GuildWars and other accounts. His comment went like this: >>WoW is the ticket. It currently doesn't get any better so don't waste your time if your not a fulltime gamer.
Given Blizzards track record I'm inclined to believe that.
... that reality is for those who can't face science fiction.
The Mudjaihidin are gonna pee their pants laughing at this.
Either it's battery will run dry in the middle of an operation.
Or simple fallpits filled with water will become real fun again.
Or some mix of old chains, barbed wire and metal scrap will be used to stop it dead in it's tracks. Literally.
Or some simple contraption containing sprayable graphite powder and chaff will show how fast a device like this can go haywire.
And, btw., this is not a robot but a remote controlled vehicle with a rc gun welded to it.
What PostgreSQL - however the hell you say that - really needs is a new name. Forget features, forget marketing, forget RDBMS death match performance comparisons. Nobody cares. MySQL lacked tons of features for years, and we all used it then and continue to use it now. Why? You can pronounce it. Simple.
Allthough your post is somewhat funny there is a large amount of truth in that. I'm glad that the Postgres people at least managed to update their website design. That's one of the reasons Postgres is finally taking on.
X Configuration. Yeah, those were the days.
:-)
Setting Color, V-Frequency and Resolution to a non-sucking condition on Suse 6.4. Getting the newest NVidia drivers to run on Suse 7.2 only to watch Sax wreck havoc on the XF86Config. Sweating bulltets while trying to recover X into runable condition. Finding the right setting on Debian to run Loki's Tribes 2 in hardware mode.
Nothing like hand-cofigging your XF86Config. All you miss is the dirt, heat and steam and having to shovel coals into a hatch below your PSU every 10 minutes.
I'll still don't know what half of those options mean and I'll probably never know
*patts his iBook w. OS X Tiger*
By now there is tons of comments detailing the programming habit downsides of VB. Most of them are very true so I won't go into them again.
VB is some crazy shit. No doupt. Simular to Perl or PHP in it's quirkiness. If you turn your brains on, you can be productive. VB can dumb you down though and last time I used it it didn't teach me the right lingua, so I didn't really know what a type was when I stopped using VB.
Strict OOP and the big polymorphic picture on the other hand can be a PITA and nothing more than ego stroking, so don't take everything OOP advocates say for granted (comparen EJB with Ruby on Rails to see what I mean).
Yet I say there is one absolute no-go for beginners and veterans alike when it comes to doing stuff with VB: It's microsoft lockin. If you plan to do only MS and MS GUI stuff until you die - hook, line and sinker included - then VB may be your ticket. I spent two years doing Flash stuff - allthough lockin isn't that strong there. We've got OSS compilers by now and some neat other stuff coming up.
Think of VB as the MS equivalent to Perl. Only that it locks you to MS systems and will cost you four-digit sums (IDEs, updates, various MS operating systems) each year to stay in the game.
Bottom line: I strongly discourage you to do VB.
Learn Python - it's the language that will take your farthest without learning anything else and it teaches good habits without being a prick. It's FOSS, fast enough for most things, used in all industries for real-world productivity and the Python Boss Guido van Rossum isn't to tight-assed to change the language specs it he runs into an earlyer design mistake. Which keeps Pyhton on top of things as opposed to, let's say, Java. And you can spare yourself the C tourturing and still will be accepted with older generation geeks. Which wouldn't happen if you used VB. Check the comments to see what I mean.
If you need to do GUI stuff you'll have to do QT bindings or learn to deploy hassle-free wxPyhton apps - which is a downside. But it get you used to the "real-world". VB would turn you into something of a sissy in that area.
Having started of in Basic (for Sharp Pocket Computers) in the mid-80s I've lived with that quote for 20 years now. Having wrapped my head around OOP and all that I have to say that this Dijkstra guy is a total dickhead.
If you've learned Basic (produral programming) you will only be unable to learn OOP if you run into people who aren't capable of teaching it the right way. Which - sadly enough - are most of the OOP advocates.
That, and only that, is the real problem in moving from Basic to OOP.
Oracle is buying out OSS companies because they want to smooth the inevitable transition to a mostly service oriented revenue model. If there is any software CEO that has gotten what OSS is all about it's Larry Ellison. Getting OSS all lined up is all about standards in Data and Clients. That's why Oracle is extendending their DB (MySQL) and Client Technology (XUL/Mozilla) base.
How this is supposed to be grim for OSS is beyond me.
There where other, better and cheaper portable cassette players before the walkman. All along the early eighties Sanyo kicked the living crap out of Sony when it came to features, performance and battery time.
So how did the Walkman get the mindshare? Just the way Apples iPod did. By wrapping it in flashy colors and design (Walkman 2 anyone?) and make it a fashion statement rather than a boring intimidating tech device.
Unless you've got sales in the making allready (large custom projects, vendor bundling your stuff, etc.) don't release as OSS. OSS only makes sense if you've got a clear vision on how to capitalize of that in your business. OSS can be a good marketing tool - but you've got to know what you are doing. Curiously enough, OSS makes best sense when you've got a product on your hands that would go as closed source aswell.
Get a handfull of clients that want your product + some customization and warm up to your target market. Then you can still GPL once you've got a feel for things. Marketing is key to success - OSS or not. OSS won't compensate for crappy marketing. Do your homework.
I GPLd a commercial product of mine - but that was after carefull consideration and after my partners and clients agreed to join the OSS game. Now we're all partners in bringing the product into mainstream with various other revenue models. And the initial projects payed my rent during maturing phase. I'd do it again - but only that way.
Who needs silicon valley? Can't a skilled worker in Saigon do just a good a job? And isn't it about work? OOAD is nothing less than a must for even the most minor tasks nowadays. Code generators and high profile IDEs come for free a dime a dozen - it only takes people who know how to use them. There isn't even a need for PhDs!
Computer stuff is more and more becoming a craftmanship rather than science. Most people aren't competeing on innovation anymore, they're competing on price, performance, speed, speciality, availability and quality of service.
The hype is over folks. We are slowly leaving the steam age of IT. Finally.
If you want to do something new and refreshing learn the fine arts - don't expect silicon valley to be a substitute for dolce vita anymore.