Yes, T-Bird is supposed to be a slim program, but how much overhead would it be to include GPG/PGP integration? Not very much, I would think, and like all other "options" it could be disabled by default. I'd definately use GPG/PGP more if it came ready to use, OOB, and that's the big problem with getting people to adopt it. Making encryption seamless and transparent to the end user is what it's going to take to get users to use it regularly, and Thunderbird could certainly be the testbed to do it.
However, I'm almost willing to bet Apple will get it done (and done right) before anyone in the Linux/Mozilla (because not everyone who uses Moz uses Linux, right?) gets a clue.
If your router is out in the open, you're still fucked.
Personally, all of this makes it MORE COMPLEX than it has to be. Assume physical "control" of the device and ensure that only people with physical access can trigger the pinhole reset or whatever. Why? Because if someone has physical control of your router/box, you've got more serious problems at hand. The problem with the grandparent is that there's TOO MUCH FUCKING COMPLEXITY. You think tech support is hell now? Wait until you have to call support to get your temporary passcode, after being on hold for a couple hours and then explaining your problem to some outsourced tech whose accent is so strong you can't even understand them, having to call back when you fuck something else up unintentionally in the process, etc etc.
Again, if you're a coffee house, keep your damn routers in the back, out of customer's (and your) way. Maybe someone could do brisk business selling router "safes" that only have a couple holes for cabling in the back, but require a key to open up to access.
An interesting observation: While you mention how much time you spend teaching your child, notice the large number of posts bitching about people not wanting to work 60 hour weeks and what not. I imagine there's a lot of software programmers out there who would love to spend their time with their families and their children, but because "Joe Slashdot" sets the standard at their company and the 60 hour work week is expected, don't get to. Not only that, but they are derided by their peers as being lazy for wanting to put something like their family first.
This isn't a critique of your argument, just an observation I just made reading through the comments..:)
Computers are cheap. RAM is cheap. Developer time to optimize/tweak/etc is expensive and frequently non-productive, especially if you have a cross-platform product. Granted, with all the outsourcing going on...
My old vice-principal from High School (like, 13 years ago) is from Nigeria. He visits regularly. He lamented the fact that everyone seems to think everyone in Ethiopia is dying of starvation and suffers from famine. The reality is, yes, there are areas of Ethiopia that are hard hit with famine and starvation. However, the vast majority of the population lives in what we'd call "modern cities". They may not have the same living standards that Americans do (who does? We're the land of the obese), but they make do and some make better.
One of the primary functions of the RIAA is to "protect" the copyrighted works of its member labels. Now, if it weren't for them, each individual company would have to have a department of their own to fund and manage to seek out and find the copyright infringers, not to mention fund the litigation against the perpetrators. Instead of promoting their artists and signing/releasing music, they spend much more money on these expenditures.
The alternative is a centralized body where each member contributes money (like a subscription) according to their "need". It stands to reason that Sony has a much larger catalog than, say, Matador Records, and has that much more property to protect, so they pay the RIAA more. However, in the "perfect" world, copyright infringers infringing upon Matador's released works are pursued with the same vigor as those primarily dealing with Sony, so everyone gets to utilize the same resources without much duplication. And, if it's a centralized agency, there's plausible deniability. Witness the outcry about the RIAA's tactics. They are the scapegoat. No one seems to realize that the RIAA is just doing what it's paid to do. No one's going after the labels who write their paychecks. Anyway, it allows the labels to concentrate their firepower on the music (and the lawyers to write the shitty contracts their artists receive).
If I were a small label/artist and I had a CD out (and I do), I'd be pissed off if I found some guy in Hackensack, NJ (or Mumbai, India) selling copies of my work without my permission, for profit. Without the RIAA, I'd have to do all the investigative work, and then prosecute, etc. With the RIAA and my yearly check, they do all the hard work for me.
Not to nitpick, but you kinda have it backwards. My father is a "professional musician". In other words, he exists to get paid. In return for payment, he plays music.
Artists, on the other hand, seem to be somewhat included into that whole 'Starving artist' bit. They do things strictly for the art, the show, the songs, the fans. Most of them don't get "paid". Hell, I'm an "artist" in the sense that we've been paid twice in 8 shows.:P
A lot of folks think Britney sings just fine. Maybe they're uneducated trailer park trash, or just image-ridden adolescents, but they still *think* she's a great singer. Your mileage may vary.
I like the Black Lips more than the Flaming Lips. Much more interesting show.:)
Britney Spears _is_ crap music. She can't play a musical instrument. She can't sing (ever heard her warble without the voice machine to fix up all her vocal inadequacies). The lyrics and melodies are very lame, even for teenage pop music.
Says you (and indirectly, I agree). But, have you listened to Metallica's early (and current) lyrics? Here we go:
No life till leather We are gonna kick some ass tonight We got the metal madness When our fans start screaming It's right well alright When we start to rock We never want to stop again
Now, you bring up how Metallica is one of those bands that "toured clubs" and built their fanbase one by one (until they smelled the money and shit on that same fanbase years later). Now, just how socially redeemable is that song compared to anything Britney has "performed"? Other than the fact that Britney has songwriters and Metallica writes their own stuff (or did, anyway), there's really none.
If you took away the video clips and the posters and the magazines and the _idolism_, how long do you think Britney would last? My guess is, she would never have had any attention in the first place.
My guess is, who fucking cares? You don't like her music. Do like I do. Don't buy it. Change the channel if you see her on TV. Whatever. The fact is, the modern music "industry" doesn't give a shit about things such as "musicianship" or "songwriting". It's concerned with IMAGE. Again, face the fucking facts. You're in the minority.
You've lumped in RATM with those other two bands.
Yes, I have. I've lumped them into the "I don't like them" category. I made no other insinuation other than the fact 1) I find the "music" of all of those bands to be completely.. boring. 2) They are all on major labels and are "pushed" as being the cool/hip bands. and 3) I don't like them. Dig?
But RATM is different. They had a huge fanbase well before they ever got their first MTV music clip. People turned up to their gigs because of their lyrics, their stage presence, and to hear the music. Because let's face it, not even a mother could love those faces. They're ugly bastards.
Irrelevant. They sucked before their major label debut. They still suck now. I don't say that just because they "sold out" and went to a major, but because, frankly, angry rap-rock sucks. Millions of records sold states that I, too, am in a minority. The point is, for every person complaining about a "crappy band" putting out "crappy music", there's another person happy that that "great band" is putting out a "great album" (same band we're talking about). I find RATM's lyrics to be trite, pretentious, and pretty fucking stupid, in that order.
Riddle me this. How many pubs, clubs or dance halls did Britney play in before she became an overnight sensation? My measure of a band is, if they had a paying audience before they were famous then they're probably worth hearing. If the band members never met each other until the marketting machine began then I smell a rat.
Well, she spent a lot of time on the Disney channel as a Mouseketeer. She sang quite a few auditoriums and what not developing her "talent". Are you going to say that unless you're poor and destitute or face daily living struggles you can't be an artist? If you want to argue that Britney isn't an artist or a musician, that's fine, I don't disagree. But obviously, the music buying PUBLIC doesn't care what you want out of music.
To quickly finish this off, I get mightily tired of the "music is all subjective" argument. I know you weaseled out of that with "tastes in music" but I'm going to rant towards empty space. Music is both subjective and objective. An untalented person who sings off-key is objectively a poor singer. It doesn't matter if you like or dislike the genre or the song or the person's face; you can still measure the quality of their singing.
I really hate it when people say "When you start putting out decent stuff, then maybe I'll buy it." Face it, bub. You (and me) are in the minority. See, while *you* may think shit like Britney Spears and Metallica suck ass, the millions of albums they continue to sell firmly says otherwise to the millions of fans they continue to cater to. And think about the classic rock from the 50's and 60's. The Beatles were nothing more than a boy band for their era (ditto for the Monkees), and the more "obscure" Mo-Town stuff was driven by the same profit-chasing motivation that drives the industry today. Tastes in music is subjective, get that through your head. I think bands like Incubus, Limp Bizkit, and Rage Against the Machine are horrible, but I'm willing to to bet they have a sizeable audience here on/. as well. And judging by the fact that the music industry is still continuing to rake in cash hand over fist, obviously the $16.99 isn't a barrier for many, either.
The music industry may have just decided that there is more profit to be made at $2.99 rather than.99.
See, one thing I've noticed is that whenever/. jumps up and down and collectively (mostly) cries about something, it's a sure win for the other side. See iPod-mini, Howard Dean, and PATRIOT act.:P
Just curious, but how *do* you replace these LED's? Is it a removable strip? Do you have to replace individual LED's as they go bad? Pardon me for the ignorance, btw.
I see a TON of Cadillac's with the LED strip on the back for brake lights where 50% or more of the LED's are out. Same with some of the newer SUV LED brake lights and the amber turn signals. Are they just using cheap/shoddy LED's? Or is there a wiring problem? Or do LED's also fail?
I'll go along with this ONLY if a spotlight also illuminates the offending car and it becomes legal to exit your own vehicle and pummel the offending driver for fucking up traffic for the rest of us.
Isn't this supposed to be covered by, I dunno, speeding tickets and cops? If speeding tickets aren't the proper deterrent, maybe we should stiffen the penalties if we wish to reduce speeding. Or maybe we should raise the speed limits.
No shit. Just because someone can use a bunch of filters and come up with something that might be nifty, doesn't mean they know jack shit about the software. I'm a photoshop novice, and am not afraid to admit it. I have no desire to go beyond the plugin stage (Kai's Power Tools, mainly, to generate procedural textures, which I then modify for use in 3D modelling/tile generation). I also do not claim to be some sort of uber-guru, which I suppose is better than 99% of the so-called "hacks" I see running around thinking they know what the hell they're doing.
/* What can anyone do with $10K these days? That would hardly be enough money to purchase one high-end workstation with Maya and other requisite software tools. You see, people are EXPECTING highly polished graphics and gameplay out of each new video game. */
I have to disagree with that. Ever heard of a tiny little platform called the Gameboy Advance? There are some *amazing* games for this little device (which, btw, from what recall, has sold more than the PS2, the GameCube, the XBox, etc) with amazing gameplay that still rely upon 2D sprites to get the job done. See Castlevania (any) or Final Fantasy Tactics, etc etc.
Then there's the oddity of PopCap games. They're doing really well, and they don't have earth-shattering graphics, either.
The problem is a choice of SCALE. Everyone seems to think all the games developers want the next DOOM or QUAKE or GTA in terms of success. Which, of course, every developer probably wouldn't MIND having success along those lines, but many are content with being successful enough to keep producing games for a living (and putting a little aside for retirement).
The problem is, right now Linux on the Desktop is facing a monumental task in trying to take market/mindshare away from Windows. For the past how many years has Linux struggled to keep pace or achieve parity with 6 year old MS (or even Apple) offerings? LoTD is possible, but maybe its time for someone to look at the entire paradigm of computing and come up with something NEW. You know, innovation, that very thing most people accuse Linux of lacking. Here is an opportunity to Sun to create something that may (or may not) fail miserably, but at the same time, they are in a position to control it: To enforce interface guidelines, to achieve application compliance, etc, something also a problem between the GNOME/KDE/other WM camps. Linux will never succeed on the home desktop until someone does something to deal with the disparity and inherent "unfriendliness" of the various desktop environments. Maybe it's time to do a "BeOS", so to speak, and throw out the desktop as we know it and create something new.
Then again, it might just crash and burn and burn and burn.
Now, explain to me why I would want to pay a highly trained, skilled individual (with a background in SCIENCE) to develop a simple GUI application that any "moron" from ITT can vomit out for less than a tenth of the price? Wouldn't it be more prudent to have those highly trained, skilled individuals doing something more worthwhile with their time? To use a bad car analogy, why would I hire an automotive engineer with a PhD and then stick him down in the maintainence shop changing oil? Frankly, the average programmer does not NEED the theoretical or rigorous training a CS major gets in school. And even if they get that training, there's no guarantee that they still won't suck. I've seen CompSci graduates that still couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack, and yet I'm supposed to think that just because they graduated with a CompSci degree that they're better than the ITT "moron" that knows his limitations and cranks out simple GUI applications for his company day in and out?
Yes, "good" programmers are hard to find. They don't grow on trees. But many times, you just need something that works, not something that's mathematically proven to be correct. Who's going to spend the money to have a bunch of PhD's writing VB scripts to hook in with an excel spreadsheet? Because that's what a lot of "paid" programming is today.
Coding for a large part IS a factory job. And for that reason, there's a large market for things like Java that help "idiot" proof the programming so people don't have to worry about memory leaks, garbage collection, etc etc.
The biggest problem is, there's a bell curve involved. Even in a company full of Computer Science PhD's, you're going to have a pecking order. For every brilliant programmer you're going to have 10 sub-par ones. (hey, half the population has a below average IQ, right?).
You've got the typical "management" think going on in that post. "Can we sell it? Can we market it?" is not always the best answer to a problem or a potential new idea.
How many man-hours did the creation of C and UNIX save by eliminating large code rewrites, or custom OS writing for each different architecture that came out? Imagine, prior to C and UNIX, everything was written from scratch, for the most part. Each machine architecture had it's own custom OS, from my understanding. How much money did Bell Labs save AT&T by providing tools to keep their developers developing and not reinventing the same wheel over and over? From the transistor, I don't know if Bell Labs made money directly off the sales of WIDGETS, but how many widgets were developed using the transistor that would not have been possible without it and then sold? And those widgets, were they sold or were they used to provide services you could charge for? These are all intangible benefits of pure R&D. Those ideas that you can't directly market yourself (or don't see a use for, then someone else figures out a use.. see your Xerox PARC example), could potentially be used in other areas of your company that might result in the direct savings.
Yes, very few companies do pure R&D it seems (biotech seems to be an exception right now), and it's a shame. And it's a shame that many traditional R&D Labs are being destroyed from short-sighted managers concerned about their budgets (so they can get bonuses), or share prices.
It depends. Bell Labs has been, historically, one of the premier research centers in the WORLD. The kind of prestige that brings by constantly pushing envelopes, by constantly being published, by constantly attracting the best and brightest in the industry to your research facilities is almost priceless. These best and brightest also create the foundations of your future product lines, patent licensing income, etc etc. Without products and constant innovation, it could be argued that you no longer become viable (or as viable). Dell is a huge exception to this, as they indirectly benefit from the huge R&D Intel and others invest into their own product lines. But imagine if Intel and the others just sat back and waited for someone else to innovate so they could roll those new ideas into their product line. Dell would quickly stagnate, as would the others. (To be fair, Dell does spend quite a bit on R&D, but overall it's just a tiny fraction of their total income, unlike folks like IBM or Apple, who rely upon their R&D to provide innovative ideas to push the envelope, to use the parlance of our times). (As an aside, I wonder if their R&D expenses also include their packaging/distribution innovations? Dell certainly has "revolutionized" the "Just In Time" manufacturing techniques that everyone indirectly benefits from). What I'm getting at, is if everyone were to do things the Dell (or even Walmart) way, then the world would quickly become stagnated and..bland.
I'd think that R&D might take a hit, but you don't get rid of your best minds or make conditions unbearable for them just to save on salaries. They provide the long term product line that your future profits will rely upon.
And it's precisely this attitude of yours towards your "common man" that really makes computing suck, in general. Your entire post reeks of "elitism", harkening to a time where computer programmers were some sort of elite bunch that people "just depended upon" to make the magic database "go". Now that computing has been reduced to the masses, for better or for worse, you feel that you and your 4-8 years of education in the computing field are threatened by a bunch of ITT graduates who don't have the theoretical knowledge that is absolutely not required to generate a simple GUI that queries a database and presents them to the user.
Frankly, programming as a profession bores me, which is why I no longer do it. I don't mind programming, on projects that *I* want to work on, but I no longer want to work on databases that aren't mine or are applicable to anything I'm remotely interested in. I'd rather use the computer as a TOOL, you know, a means to an end. It seems a lot of programmers are programming because it IS the end. They have no interests outside of computing.
The fact that many ITT Tech students may not "understand" Knuth is irrelevant because many ITT Tech students don't give a flying fuck about Knuth. I know who Knuth is, I've owned/used his "Art of Programming" or whatever it was called, and I don't consider myself a better person.
I dunno about the latest greatest, but I play Everquest quite a bit, and each successive "expansion" seems to tax my system more and more. I'm running a dual PIII 750mhz machine on a server mobo (PC100 ECC Registered RAM), AGP 2x, (PCI 2.0x non-compliant, however. No 32-bit cardbus adaptors for me.. Have to use a 16bit ISA PCMCIA adaptor for my wifi) and a more "modern" graphics card: nVidia Ti4200 128megs DDR that I can't fully take advantage of (AGP 8x). However, despite this, EQ still plays pretty good with the expected slowdowns in heavy traffic areas. Also tried with Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind with great results. Hell, I'm also able to use Maya rather well. Anyway, just stating that every game I've thrown at my machine run just fine, as well. Now if they'd just update some of the older games to run on WinXP/2k and I'd be happy.
I might consider it excessive because I know how to fix my own shit. However, what if I didn't know hot to fix my shit, didn't have time (or inclination) to learn, but did have a lot of disposable income?
$300 sounds pretty damn cheap.
To use the oft-stated car analogy:
I know how to change the oil in my car. Doing so would cost about $10-12 in materials (filter, oil), but it would also require going to Autozone/Walmart/wherever and picking out the oil, the filter, standing in a line, waiting to get checked out, coming home, finding time to actually do the oil change, then changing the oil, and then *responsibly* disposing of the waste oil (it's against the law to just dump it in the sewers). So, in the end, I may have saved $10 on the raw material cost, but I had to spend about 2-3 hours in related time to get it done. My time bills for $20/hour according to my last paycheck stub. The cost of an oil change is about $20. You do the math there. And lets not forget the cost of the TOOLS involved (special filter wrench, socket set), stuff I do not have handy.
I don't charge an exhorbitant amount for my services to fix some friends PC's (if I charge at all, but then again, I don't fix all my friend's PC's as a matter of principle). One of my friends, however, insists on buying me "all-you-can-eat" sushi buffet (about $30 all said and done), so I don't mind it at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, T-Bird is supposed to be a slim program, but how much overhead would it be to include GPG/PGP integration? Not very much, I would think, and like all other "options" it could be disabled by default. I'd definately use GPG/PGP more if it came ready to use, OOB, and that's the big problem with getting people to adopt it. Making encryption seamless and transparent to the end user is what it's going to take to get users to use it regularly, and Thunderbird could certainly be the testbed to do it.
However, I'm almost willing to bet Apple will get it done (and done right) before anyone in the Linux/Mozilla (because not everyone who uses Moz uses Linux, right?) gets a clue.
If your router is out in the open, you're still fucked.
Personally, all of this makes it MORE COMPLEX than it has to be. Assume physical "control" of the device and ensure that only people with physical access can trigger the pinhole reset or whatever. Why? Because if someone has physical control of your router/box, you've got more serious problems at hand. The problem with the grandparent is that there's TOO MUCH FUCKING COMPLEXITY. You think tech support is hell now? Wait until you have to call support to get your temporary passcode, after being on hold for a couple hours and then explaining your problem to some outsourced tech whose accent is so strong you can't even understand them, having to call back when you fuck something else up unintentionally in the process, etc etc.
Again, if you're a coffee house, keep your damn routers in the back, out of customer's (and your) way. Maybe someone could do brisk business selling router "safes" that only have a couple holes for cabling in the back, but require a key to open up to access.
Jesus.. There's should be a fucking "Horrifying" moderation option.
An interesting observation:
:)
While you mention how much time you spend teaching your child, notice the large number of posts bitching about people not wanting to work 60 hour weeks and what not. I imagine there's a lot of software programmers out there who would love to spend their time with their families and their children, but because "Joe Slashdot" sets the standard at their company and the 60 hour work week is expected, don't get to. Not only that, but they are derided by their peers as being lazy for wanting to put something like their family first.
This isn't a critique of your argument, just an observation I just made reading through the comments..
Computers are cheap. RAM is cheap. Developer time to optimize/tweak/etc is expensive and frequently non-productive, especially if you have a cross-platform product. Granted, with all the outsourcing going on...
Combine IT with the sex trade!
Imagine, your PHB who can't get laid without paying for it, can't possibly outsource this (unless he's into phone sex.. or maybe cam-sex..).
"Hey, Bob, the server's down.. and speaking of going down..."
My question would be, would I still be non-exempt?
Then there's the possibility of being flooded with more H1-B visa requests from "professionally trained" sex workers from Thailand...
My old vice-principal from High School (like, 13 years ago) is from Nigeria. He visits regularly. He lamented the fact that everyone seems to think everyone in Ethiopia is dying of starvation and suffers from famine. The reality is, yes, there are areas of Ethiopia that are hard hit with famine and starvation. However, the vast majority of the population lives in what we'd call "modern cities". They may not have the same living standards that Americans do (who does? We're the land of the obese), but they make do and some make better.
One of the primary functions of the RIAA is to "protect" the copyrighted works of its member labels. Now, if it weren't for them, each individual company would have to have a department of their own to fund and manage to seek out and find the copyright infringers, not to mention fund the litigation against the perpetrators. Instead of promoting their artists and signing/releasing music, they spend much more money on these expenditures.
The alternative is a centralized body where each member contributes money (like a subscription) according to their "need". It stands to reason that Sony has a much larger catalog than, say, Matador Records, and has that much more property to protect, so they pay the RIAA more. However, in the "perfect" world, copyright infringers infringing upon Matador's released works are pursued with the same vigor as those primarily dealing with Sony, so everyone gets to utilize the same resources without much duplication. And, if it's a centralized agency, there's plausible deniability. Witness the outcry about the RIAA's tactics. They are the scapegoat. No one seems to realize that the RIAA is just doing what it's paid to do. No one's going after the labels who write their paychecks. Anyway, it allows the labels to concentrate their firepower on the music (and the lawyers to write the shitty contracts their artists receive).
If I were a small label/artist and I had a CD out (and I do), I'd be pissed off if I found some guy in Hackensack, NJ (or Mumbai, India) selling copies of my work without my permission, for profit. Without the RIAA, I'd have to do all the investigative work, and then prosecute, etc. With the RIAA and my yearly check, they do all the hard work for me.
Not to nitpick, but you kinda have it backwards. My father is a "professional musician". In other words, he exists to get paid. In return for payment, he plays music.
:P
Artists, on the other hand, seem to be somewhat included into that whole 'Starving artist' bit. They do things strictly for the art, the show, the songs, the fans. Most of them don't get "paid". Hell, I'm an "artist" in the sense that we've been paid twice in 8 shows.
A lot of folks think Britney sings just fine. Maybe they're uneducated trailer park trash, or just image-ridden adolescents, but they still *think* she's a great singer. Your mileage may vary.
:)
I like the Black Lips more than the Flaming Lips. Much more interesting show.
Britney Spears _is_ crap music. She can't play a musical instrument. She can't sing (ever heard her warble without the voice machine to fix up all her vocal inadequacies). The lyrics and melodies are very lame, even for teenage pop music.
Says you (and indirectly, I agree). But, have you listened to Metallica's early (and current) lyrics? Here we go:
No life till leather
We are gonna kick some ass tonight
We got the metal madness
When our fans start screaming
It's right well alright
When we start to rock
We never want to stop again
Now, you bring up how Metallica is one of those bands that "toured clubs" and built their fanbase one by one (until they smelled the money and shit on that same fanbase years later). Now, just how socially redeemable is that song compared to anything Britney has "performed"? Other than the fact that Britney has songwriters and Metallica writes their own stuff (or did, anyway), there's really none.
If you took away the video clips and the posters and the magazines and the _idolism_, how long do you think Britney would last? My guess is, she would never have had any attention in the first place.
My guess is, who fucking cares? You don't like her music. Do like I do. Don't buy it. Change the channel if you see her on TV. Whatever. The fact is, the modern music "industry" doesn't give a shit about things such as "musicianship" or "songwriting". It's concerned with IMAGE. Again, face the fucking facts. You're in the minority.
You've lumped in RATM with those other two bands.
Yes, I have. I've lumped them into the "I don't like them" category. I made no other insinuation other than the fact 1) I find the "music" of all of those bands to be completely.. boring. 2) They are all on major labels and are "pushed" as being the cool/hip bands. and 3) I don't like them. Dig?
But RATM is different. They had a huge fanbase well before they ever got their first MTV music clip. People turned up to their gigs because of their lyrics, their stage presence, and to hear the music. Because let's face it, not even a mother could love those faces. They're ugly bastards.
Irrelevant. They sucked before their major label debut. They still suck now. I don't say that just because they "sold out" and went to a major, but because, frankly, angry rap-rock sucks. Millions of records sold states that I, too, am in a minority. The point is, for every person complaining about a "crappy band" putting out "crappy music", there's another person happy that that "great band" is putting out a "great album" (same band we're talking about). I find RATM's lyrics to be trite, pretentious, and pretty fucking stupid, in that order.
Riddle me this. How many pubs, clubs or dance halls did Britney play in before she became an overnight sensation? My measure of a band is, if they had a paying audience before they were famous then they're probably worth hearing. If the band members never met each other until the marketting machine began then I smell a rat.
Well, she spent a lot of time on the Disney channel as a Mouseketeer. She sang quite a few auditoriums and what not developing her "talent". Are you going to say that unless you're poor and destitute or face daily living struggles you can't be an artist? If you want to argue that Britney isn't an artist or a musician, that's fine, I don't disagree. But obviously, the music buying PUBLIC doesn't care what you want out of music.
To quickly finish this off, I get mightily tired of the "music is all subjective" argument. I know you weaseled out of that with "tastes in music" but I'm going to rant towards empty space. Music is both subjective and objective. An untalented person who sings off-key is objectively a poor singer. It doesn't matter if you like or dislike the genre or the song or the person's face; you can still measure the quality of their singing.
A
I really hate it when people say "When you start putting out decent stuff, then maybe I'll buy it." Face it, bub. You (and me) are in the minority. See, while *you* may think shit like Britney Spears and Metallica suck ass, the millions of albums they continue to sell firmly says otherwise to the millions of fans they continue to cater to. And think about the classic rock from the 50's and 60's. The Beatles were nothing more than a boy band for their era (ditto for the Monkees), and the more "obscure" Mo-Town stuff was driven by the same profit-chasing motivation that drives the industry today. Tastes in music is subjective, get that through your head. I think bands like Incubus, Limp Bizkit, and Rage Against the Machine are horrible, but I'm willing to to bet they have a sizeable audience here on /. as well. And judging by the fact that the music industry is still continuing to rake in cash hand over fist, obviously the $16.99 isn't a barrier for many, either.
.99.
/. jumps up and down and collectively (mostly) cries about something, it's a sure win for the other side. See iPod-mini, Howard Dean, and PATRIOT act. :P
The music industry may have just decided that there is more profit to be made at $2.99 rather than
See, one thing I've noticed is that whenever
Just curious, but how *do* you replace these LED's? Is it a removable strip? Do you have to replace individual LED's as they go bad? Pardon me for the ignorance, btw.
I see a TON of Cadillac's with the LED strip on the back for brake lights where 50% or more of the LED's are out. Same with some of the newer SUV LED brake lights and the amber turn signals. Are they just using cheap/shoddy LED's? Or is there a wiring problem? Or do LED's also fail?
I'll go along with this ONLY if a spotlight also illuminates the offending car and it becomes legal to exit your own vehicle and pummel the offending driver for fucking up traffic for the rest of us.
Isn't this supposed to be covered by, I dunno, speeding tickets and cops? If speeding tickets aren't the proper deterrent, maybe we should stiffen the penalties if we wish to reduce speeding. Or maybe we should raise the speed limits.
No shit. Just because someone can use a bunch of filters and come up with something that might be nifty, doesn't mean they know jack shit about the software. I'm a photoshop novice, and am not afraid to admit it. I have no desire to go beyond the plugin stage (Kai's Power Tools, mainly, to generate procedural textures, which I then modify for use in 3D modelling/tile generation). I also do not claim to be some sort of uber-guru, which I suppose is better than 99% of the so-called "hacks" I see running around thinking they know what the hell they're doing.
/* What can anyone do with $10K these days? That would hardly be enough money to purchase one high-end workstation with Maya and other requisite software tools. You see, people are EXPECTING highly polished graphics and gameplay out of each new video game. */
I have to disagree with that. Ever heard of a tiny little platform called the Gameboy Advance? There are some *amazing* games for this little device (which, btw, from what recall, has sold more than the PS2, the GameCube, the XBox, etc) with amazing gameplay that still rely upon 2D sprites to get the job done. See Castlevania (any) or Final Fantasy Tactics, etc etc.
Then there's the oddity of PopCap games. They're doing really well, and they don't have earth-shattering graphics, either.
The problem is a choice of SCALE. Everyone seems to think all the games developers want the next DOOM or QUAKE or GTA in terms of success. Which, of course, every developer probably wouldn't MIND having success along those lines, but many are content with being successful enough to keep producing games for a living (and putting a little aside for retirement).
The problem is, right now Linux on the Desktop is facing a monumental task in trying to take market/mindshare away from Windows. For the past how many years has Linux struggled to keep pace or achieve parity with 6 year old MS (or even Apple) offerings? LoTD is possible, but maybe its time for someone to look at the entire paradigm of computing and come up with something NEW. You know, innovation, that very thing most people accuse Linux of lacking. Here is an opportunity to Sun to create something that may (or may not) fail miserably, but at the same time, they are in a position to control it: To enforce interface guidelines, to achieve application compliance, etc, something also a problem between the GNOME/KDE/other WM camps. Linux will never succeed on the home desktop until someone does something to deal with the disparity and inherent "unfriendliness" of the various desktop environments. Maybe it's time to do a "BeOS", so to speak, and throw out the desktop as we know it and create something new.
Then again, it might just crash and burn and burn and burn.
They could always open source the game and sell support.
That'd go over real swell.
(actually, with something like Everquest, with monthly subscription, it might be okay until the freeloaders started their free servers...)
Now, explain to me why I would want to pay a highly trained, skilled individual (with a background in SCIENCE) to develop a simple GUI application that any "moron" from ITT can vomit out for less than a tenth of the price? Wouldn't it be more prudent to have those highly trained, skilled individuals doing something more worthwhile with their time? To use a bad car analogy, why would I hire an automotive engineer with a PhD and then stick him down in the maintainence shop changing oil? Frankly, the average programmer does not NEED the theoretical or rigorous training a CS major gets in school. And even if they get that training, there's no guarantee that they still won't suck. I've seen CompSci graduates that still couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack, and yet I'm supposed to think that just because they graduated with a CompSci degree that they're better than the ITT "moron" that knows his limitations and cranks out simple GUI applications for his company day in and out?
Yes, "good" programmers are hard to find. They don't grow on trees. But many times, you just need something that works, not something that's mathematically proven to be correct. Who's going to spend the money to have a bunch of PhD's writing VB scripts to hook in with an excel spreadsheet? Because that's what a lot of "paid" programming is today.
Coding for a large part IS a factory job. And for that reason, there's a large market for things like Java that help "idiot" proof the programming so people don't have to worry about memory leaks, garbage collection, etc etc.
The biggest problem is, there's a bell curve involved. Even in a company full of Computer Science PhD's, you're going to have a pecking order. For every brilliant programmer you're going to have 10 sub-par ones. (hey, half the population has a below average IQ, right?).
You've got the typical "management" think going on in that post. "Can we sell it? Can we market it?" is not always the best answer to a problem or a potential new idea.
How many man-hours did the creation of C and UNIX save by eliminating large code rewrites, or custom OS writing for each different architecture that came out? Imagine, prior to C and UNIX, everything was written from scratch, for the most part. Each machine architecture had it's own custom OS, from my understanding. How much money did Bell Labs save AT&T by providing tools to keep their developers developing and not reinventing the same wheel over and over? From the transistor, I don't know if Bell Labs made money directly off the sales of WIDGETS, but how many widgets were developed using the transistor that would not have been possible without it and then sold? And those widgets, were they sold or were they used to provide services you could charge for? These are all intangible benefits of pure R&D. Those ideas that you can't directly market yourself (or don't see a use for, then someone else figures out a use.. see your Xerox PARC example), could potentially be used in other areas of your company that might result in the direct savings.
Yes, very few companies do pure R&D it seems (biotech seems to be an exception right now), and it's a shame. And it's a shame that many traditional R&D Labs are being destroyed from short-sighted managers concerned about their budgets (so they can get bonuses), or share prices.
It depends. Bell Labs has been, historically, one of the premier research centers in the WORLD. The kind of prestige that brings by constantly pushing envelopes, by constantly being published, by constantly attracting the best and brightest in the industry to your research facilities is almost priceless. These best and brightest also create the foundations of your future product lines, patent licensing income, etc etc. Without products and constant innovation, it could be argued that you no longer become viable (or as viable). Dell is a huge exception to this, as they indirectly benefit from the huge R&D Intel and others invest into their own product lines. But imagine if Intel and the others just sat back and waited for someone else to innovate so they could roll those new ideas into their product line. Dell would quickly stagnate, as would the others. (To be fair, Dell does spend quite a bit on R&D, but overall it's just a tiny fraction of their total income, unlike folks like IBM or Apple, who rely upon their R&D to provide innovative ideas to push the envelope, to use the parlance of our times). (As an aside, I wonder if their R&D expenses also include their packaging/distribution innovations? Dell certainly has "revolutionized" the "Just In Time" manufacturing techniques that everyone indirectly benefits from). What I'm getting at, is if everyone were to do things the Dell (or even Walmart) way, then the world would quickly become stagnated and..bland.
I'd think that R&D might take a hit, but you don't get rid of your best minds or make conditions unbearable for them just to save on salaries. They provide the long term product line that your future profits will rely upon.
And it's precisely this attitude of yours towards your "common man" that really makes computing suck, in general. Your entire post reeks of "elitism", harkening to a time where computer programmers were some sort of elite bunch that people "just depended upon" to make the magic database "go". Now that computing has been reduced to the masses, for better or for worse, you feel that you and your 4-8 years of education in the computing field are threatened by a bunch of ITT graduates who don't have the theoretical knowledge that is absolutely not required to generate a simple GUI that queries a database and presents them to the user.
Frankly, programming as a profession bores me, which is why I no longer do it. I don't mind programming, on projects that *I* want to work on, but I no longer want to work on databases that aren't mine or are applicable to anything I'm remotely interested in. I'd rather use the computer as a TOOL, you know, a means to an end. It seems a lot of programmers are programming because it IS the end. They have no interests outside of computing.
The fact that many ITT Tech students may not "understand" Knuth is irrelevant because many ITT Tech students don't give a flying fuck about Knuth. I know who Knuth is, I've owned/used his "Art of Programming" or whatever it was called, and I don't consider myself a better person.
All - ATX
Evil - Extended
Fucking - Flex
Women - WATX
Make - Mini
Men - Micro
Nuts - Nano
I dunno about the latest greatest, but I play Everquest quite a bit, and each successive "expansion" seems to tax my system more and more. I'm running a dual PIII 750mhz machine on a server mobo (PC100 ECC Registered RAM), AGP 2x, (PCI 2.0x non-compliant, however. No 32-bit cardbus adaptors for me.. Have to use a 16bit ISA PCMCIA adaptor for my wifi) and a more "modern" graphics card: nVidia Ti4200 128megs DDR that I can't fully take advantage of (AGP 8x). However, despite this, EQ still plays pretty good with the expected slowdowns in heavy traffic areas. Also tried with Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind with great results. Hell, I'm also able to use Maya rather well. Anyway, just stating that every game I've thrown at my machine run just fine, as well. Now if they'd just update some of the older games to run on WinXP/2k and I'd be happy.
I might consider it excessive because I know how to fix my own shit. However, what if I didn't know hot to fix my shit, didn't have time (or inclination) to learn, but did have a lot of disposable income?
$300 sounds pretty damn cheap.
To use the oft-stated car analogy:
I know how to change the oil in my car. Doing so would cost about $10-12 in materials (filter, oil), but it would also require going to Autozone/Walmart/wherever and picking out the oil, the filter, standing in a line, waiting to get checked out, coming home, finding time to actually do the oil change, then changing the oil, and then *responsibly* disposing of the waste oil (it's against the law to just dump it in the sewers). So, in the end, I may have saved $10 on the raw material cost, but I had to spend about 2-3 hours in related time to get it done. My time bills for $20/hour according to my last paycheck stub. The cost of an oil change is about $20. You do the math there. And lets not forget the cost of the TOOLS involved (special filter wrench, socket set), stuff I do not have handy.
I don't charge an exhorbitant amount for my services to fix some friends PC's (if I charge at all, but then again, I don't fix all my friend's PC's as a matter of principle). One of my friends, however, insists on buying me "all-you-can-eat" sushi buffet (about $30 all said and done), so I don't mind it at all.
YMMV.