You can blow all kinds of holes in these arguments by clearly defining what "tangible" really means. To say that because you cannot touch, smell or taste software it is intangible is incredibly flawed logic.
The code behind software can be printed. It is stored physically on a disk. These two things are good enough for the patent office and copyright law. They should be good enough arguments that software is indeed tangible. Another, somewhat easier, way to look at it is this: "Once you pay for it, it's yours forever."
You could also look at it this way:
If you are contracted to write a specific piece of software for a company you are performing the role of the manufacturer, and they are the customer. The price is variable, but once the project is complete the price becomes fixed. The company has a tangible product and does not need to contact you further. (Support contracts and the like really are separate products entirely, which most certainly qualify for the "service" mindset.)
Likewise, when a company employs an IT staff to maintain it's internal systems it really is a service role.
You can play all kinds of accounting tricks when you're supporting software. Does the cost of support add to the cost of the software? Not technically, the real cost comes from the hiring of support staff who likely service a wide range of internal systems. You can assign additional VALUE to the software though, since you have an established knowledge base with it.
The web complicates things a little. You subscribe to access to a web-based service. It is not tangible to YOU. It is tangible to the company you are subscribing to. These services fit both the manufacturing and service mindsets:
- The service provider contracted or hired the talent to build the software in the first place. This is manufacturing. Major upgrades and additions to the software are also manufacturing.
- The service provider contracts / hires the services of programmers to maintain their environment.
- The customer is purchasing a service from the provider.
I'm not sure if this even answers the questions asked. But it's 5:30am and it looks pretty good to me.
I'm using RackSpace and the only way I can get PHP 4.3 and Postgresql 7.4 is if I use RedHat ES 3.0.
That's funny, we're using Rackspace and have a variety of 7.3, AS and ES servers. We can install whatever software we want on them. It's really not that hard.
The only other option is to use PHP 4.1 and Postgresql 7.1. Stupid RackSpace.
No, your other option is to install them yourself. That's why they give you root access to your servers. You really shouldn't blame Rackspace for your own shortcomings as a unix admin.
Java is a very strict OO language. You cannot get anything done in Java without a myrid of class extensions and "implementations." This has the great benefit of allowing lots of developers to work on very specific parts of a project and not run into eachother very often. This has the very negative effect of discouraging creativity in the individual programmers work since so much is set in stone.
Most Java programmers end up as class monkeys, taking very specific directions from a select few who determined the entire arcitecture of the system. This is not programming as an art. This is monkey work. Put them in a position where they need to use Java (or any language) to solve a real problem and they will fail.
Java has had the misfortune of a gigantic hype machine pushing it. Because it could not live up to the hype in some areas a lot of people have dismissed it. This is probably less Java's fault and more the fault of those who consider it "dead." For they should look at the language and realize where it's strengths are.
Java in the browser - DOA. It sucked. Still sucks. And nobody uses it anymore (or nobody SHOULD...)
Java as an App - So it turns out that the whole "corss-platform" thing was a joke. Multiple JVMs across multiple OSes made for far too many variables. Write-once, run-anywhere it most certainly is not. And these days you have multiple GUI implementations and their VM/OS-specific quirks.
Java on the Server - Ok, this has a future. Cross platform doesn't matter. Speed isn't an issue nearly as much. And there are a slew of components already available (J2EE) that do the hard part for you....Yes, that was two rants in one. It's twofor day here on/.
You obviously grew up in the cold war. You know what it's like to have a vast array of global-killer weapons pointed in your general direction.
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens." Today's youth read about Fat Boy and think "Wow, that's a cool bomb." But they should really be thinking "Wow, we did that? Could that happen to us?"
I'm frightened to see what happens when my generation doubles in age, and qualifies for positions of power over these kinds of weapons. They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years.
The same thing goes for those countries just now joining the nuclear family. Some of these countries are lead by people who do know better and think that's all the more reason to use them.
May you live in interesting times? We're well beyond that now.
I agree, where I live the customers just aren't there. I suspect that in larger and more dense cities there probably are smaller shops that do carry the cutting edge, since the customer base is large.
On the other hand you can get some good deals with the rebates...i>
That's a good point. Personally, I shy away from the rebates, or at least I don't count on them. The mail-in type typically take months to get back if at all.
I had a girlfriend who worked at CompUSA for a while. This was back when you mailed the rebates to the store you purchased the item in (has that changed?) They had huge problems because none of the employees wanted to process the rebates (it's pretty boring as you can imagine) so LOTS of customers never got their money. I think this has probably changed by now, most of the big retailers have national centers for processing now. But it still takes forever.
Alienware comes to mind. Their machines are pretty cool. Lots of high-end equipment that is pretty to look at, but the prices are a touch high.
If you really want the uber game machine you probably want to build it yourself. Maximum performance doesn't ALWAYS have to cost you stability if you buy the right parts from the right vendors.
You're right about local stores, at least in my area, they are very delayed. I can usually order the latest online and get it in the mail before any local chains get it in stock. As far as I can tell, the local mom n' pop stores are always the most cautious to get the latest hardware. Try the gamer franchises, like EB Games. Best Buy, Circuit City, CrapUSA never have a good enough selection of products. (They might only sell PNY Nvidia cards, when you really want the Hercules.)
Can you get a meaningful edge just from playing by the rules or is counting possible with online casinos?
Not sure on the shoe size (Ha ha) but I never heard of someone geting caught card counting when I worked there. It was always the auto-players. The house is supposed to take you on BJ but if you can play the by book it seems like you'll take them. Or you could 4 years ago (when I worked there.)
This stuff is on a Need to Know basis in taht industry and I was not in a position to Need to Know. So most of what I know is second-hand, FWIW. My point was more that people do cheat in online casinos.:)
Can some of you l33t h4x0rz put some effort into cheating in online casinos
Having worked for said online casinos I can tell you that some of them do and nearly all of them get caught.
The other posters are correct, in that the client software really does nothing, but some of the leading casinos out there have stacked the odds only slightly in their favor in some games - mainly blackjack.
The only kinds of cheats you will find for casinos are auto-players. They play BJ 100% by the book and often come out winning big. Then they get a call from the casino and all those winnings disappear.
Of course, none of the cheat detection methods are 100% accurate for these kinds of attacks. Is it possible for someone to play 18 hands in a minute? Technically, I suppose. But to do that over 4 hours? Technically, I suppose. That's when the "offshore" aspect of casinos comes into play - they don't give you your money anyway and there's nothing you can do about it.
I've heard of freezing a drive and I know people that have recovered data off an overheating drive by constantly spraying some kind of cooling gel on it.
But in this case, it sounds like drive mechanics. I'd be happy to be wrong - but I don't think you can recover a mecanical failure by just making it really cold. In fact, you'd think this would really screw with the electronics.
Project: Space Station was an excellent game. But it doesn't seem too similar to this one. The C64 game focused a lot of it's time on the ground managing all kinds of NASA resources, financial, human and equipment. Also launching satellites and manually launching and landing the space shuttle.
This game seems more like a sandbox environment. Still very cool looking and probably much more fun but not like the NASA-sim. (That's what they should have called it, instead of Operation: Space Station.)
They are basically taking all credit for what AMD has done so they don't look like they lost a battle (which they DID).
The battle is not yet over. It hasn't even started yet. x86-64/AMD64's target market is consumer and small/medium business.
The consumer market has not embraced it. The major OEMs do not ship it probably because their is no [non-Beta] version of Windows yet and the hardware drivers are not there.
The corporate sector is far more picky than the consumer market. I highly doubt it's seen a lot of penetration yet:
The corporate desktop won't see 64 bit until the consumer desktop is saturated with it.
Existing server deployments will be VERY slow to adopt the Opteron. (You do not upgrade a production environment unless you actually need to. Most of them really don't need to.) New deployments may see Opteron though. Of course, without a stable version of Windows to run on it a lot of companies won't even touch it. And even with Linux, you want to wait a while for the hardware and software to mature.
So maybe some uber-leet IT managers have decided to go Opteron already, but it's still very early. Intel has a very good chance to win IMO.
The market for 64-bit processors is not yet established,
That is incorrect. The 64bit processor market is well established in the medium to large enterprise. The 64bit consumer market is not established and it may very well be that there is none.
LaCie recently announced that terrabyte 'affordable' drive for I think it was under a grand. Yet you could buy ten 100gig drives for about that price... What's the big deal?
A few big deals:
Failure probability goes down when you decrease the number of drives in the array.
Heat issues.
Size - you cannot stuff ten drives in a tivo. (Think 10 years from now.)
OTOH, the 10-drive raid array would operate faster in some situations.
The x86 architecture was not designed for 4+ CPUs on board. Itanium may not work well in a small-mid range environment but compare a 16-way Itanium to a 16-way Xeon and see what you get.
AMD believes that hyper-transport will solve this problem. We shall see. Where are my 8-way Opterons? Wern't they supposed to come out at the end of last year? I'm still bitter about the Athlon MP - which was supposed to allow for 4-way Athlons.
That is not a tragety at all. It's proof that computers are serving their role well. As tools.
Just as you could probably care less about the thickness of the heating wire inside your toaster, most other people on this planet could care less about what browser they use. They just want to get their pr0n|warez|stock info|etc.
Can you blame them? NO. They have more important things to be doing.
Something tells me that the communications aren't encrypted or authenticated.
Your last paragraph should tell you otherwise.
If someone did manage to DoS or somehow log in to the rover and damage the software it could be the most damaging single-target attack (dollar wise - at over $400 million per rover) of all time. I think that's kind of scary.
Cheats are still very prevelant in CS. Dunno about other games.
I like America's Army. The price is great. The grahpics are really good. The maps are very detailed but I think it's a bit overkill for a beginner FPS. It's just a bit too realistic for beginners.
Don't get me wrong, there is a line you cannot cross, regardless of where you work.
If I hire you and tell you to do something and do it "this" way you had best do it and do it the way I told you to. But if you think your way is better there is nothing wrong with pointing that out on the side. Everywhere I've worked, in all ranges of positions, this kind of input is appreciated.
To publicly challenge the plan is a mistake though. This is not seen as constructive. It is seen as disruptive. Bring up the ideas in private with those who made the decision in the first place. If you're right you may get praise. If you're wrong, they'll likely point out why. Either way, you're better for it.
If that gets your labeled as a boat-rocker then go find another job ASAP. Your talent is not being appreciated. Contrary to popular belief, there are jobs out there.
That really depends on the position. Contributing to the project, by voicing thoughts and ideas is part of that whole "works well in a team" requirement on the job description. If you just do what you are told your career will go nowhere.
That being said, there is a line you must not cross.
Slashdot Mirror
You can blow all kinds of holes in these arguments by clearly defining what "tangible" really means. To say that because you cannot touch, smell or taste software it is intangible is incredibly flawed logic.
The code behind software can be printed. It is stored physically on a disk. These two things are good enough for the patent office and copyright law. They should be good enough arguments that software is indeed tangible. Another, somewhat easier, way to look at it is this: "Once you pay for it, it's yours forever."
You could also look at it this way:
If you are contracted to write a specific piece of software for a company you are performing the role of the manufacturer, and they are the customer. The price is variable, but once the project is complete the price becomes fixed. The company has a tangible product and does not need to contact you further. (Support contracts and the like really are separate products entirely, which most certainly qualify for the "service" mindset.)
Likewise, when a company employs an IT staff to maintain it's internal systems it really is a service role.
You can play all kinds of accounting tricks when you're supporting software. Does the cost of support add to the cost of the software? Not technically, the real cost comes from the hiring of support staff who likely service a wide range of internal systems. You can assign additional VALUE to the software though, since you have an established knowledge base with it.
The web complicates things a little. You subscribe to access to a web-based service. It is not tangible to YOU. It is tangible to the company you are subscribing to. These services fit both the manufacturing and service mindsets:
- The service provider contracted or hired the talent to build the software in the first place. This is manufacturing. Major upgrades and additions to the software are also manufacturing.
- The service provider contracts / hires the services of programmers to maintain their environment.
- The customer is purchasing a service from the provider.
I'm not sure if this even answers the questions asked. But it's 5:30am and it looks pretty good to me.
I'm using RackSpace and the only way I can get PHP 4.3 and Postgresql 7.4 is if I use RedHat ES 3.0.
That's funny, we're using Rackspace and have a variety of 7.3, AS and ES servers. We can install whatever software we want on them. It's really not that hard.
The only other option is to use PHP 4.1 and Postgresql 7.1. Stupid RackSpace.
No, your other option is to install them yourself. That's why they give you root access to your servers. You really shouldn't blame Rackspace for your own shortcomings as a unix admin.
Java is a very strict OO language. You cannot get anything done in Java without a myrid of class extensions and "implementations." This has the great benefit of allowing lots of developers to work on very specific parts of a project and not run into eachother very often. This has the very negative effect of discouraging creativity in the individual programmers work since so much is set in stone.
...Yes, that was two rants in one. It's twofor day here on /.
Most Java programmers end up as class monkeys, taking very specific directions from a select few who determined the entire arcitecture of the system. This is not programming as an art. This is monkey work. Put them in a position where they need to use Java (or any language) to solve a real problem and they will fail.
Java has had the misfortune of a gigantic hype machine pushing it. Because it could not live up to the hype in some areas a lot of people have dismissed it. This is probably less Java's fault and more the fault of those who consider it "dead." For they should look at the language and realize where it's strengths are.
Java in the browser - DOA. It sucked. Still sucks. And nobody uses it anymore (or nobody SHOULD...)
Java as an App - So it turns out that the whole "corss-platform" thing was a joke. Multiple JVMs across multiple OSes made for far too many variables. Write-once, run-anywhere it most certainly is not. And these days you have multiple GUI implementations and their VM/OS-specific quirks.
Java on the Server - Ok, this has a future. Cross platform doesn't matter. Speed isn't an issue nearly as much. And there are a slew of components already available (J2EE) that do the hard part for you.
You obviously grew up in the cold war. You know what it's like to have a vast array of global-killer weapons pointed in your general direction.
Today's youth takes this fore granted. I saw a comment on here a few days back along the lines of "Well, let's throw a few nukes at one spot on Mars and see what happens." Today's youth read about Fat Boy and think "Wow, that's a cool bomb." But they should really be thinking "Wow, we did that? Could that happen to us?"
I'm frightened to see what happens when my generation doubles in age, and qualifies for positions of power over these kinds of weapons. They do not know better and unless something horrific happens, I doubt they will within the next 25 years.
The same thing goes for those countries just now joining the nuclear family. Some of these countries are lead by people who do know better and think that's all the more reason to use them.
May you live in interesting times? We're well beyond that now.
It'll be a butt with a checkmark over it.
I agree, where I live the customers just aren't there. I suspect that in larger and more dense cities there probably are smaller shops that do carry the cutting edge, since the customer base is large.
On the other hand you can get some good deals with the rebates...i>
That's a good point. Personally, I shy away from the rebates, or at least I don't count on them. The mail-in type typically take months to get back if at all.
I had a girlfriend who worked at CompUSA for a while. This was back when you mailed the rebates to the store you purchased the item in (has that changed?) They had huge problems because none of the employees wanted to process the rebates (it's pretty boring as you can imagine) so LOTS of customers never got their money. I think this has probably changed by now, most of the big retailers have national centers for processing now. But it still takes forever.
Alienware comes to mind. Their machines are pretty cool. Lots of high-end equipment that is pretty to look at, but the prices are a touch high.
If you really want the uber game machine you probably want to build it yourself. Maximum performance doesn't ALWAYS have to cost you stability if you buy the right parts from the right vendors.
You're right about local stores, at least in my area, they are very delayed. I can usually order the latest online and get it in the mail before any local chains get it in stock. As far as I can tell, the local mom n' pop stores are always the most cautious to get the latest hardware. Try the gamer franchises, like EB Games. Best Buy, Circuit City, CrapUSA never have a good enough selection of products. (They might only sell PNY Nvidia cards, when you really want the Hercules.)
SLOW DOWN. Write slowly. It helps a ton.
And ease up on the grip. I noticed I usually hold the pen entirely too stiff. So much so that my fingers cramp after 15 minutes of writing.
Easing up, slowing down, and thinking about the letter and it's oritnetation with it's neighbors have made my chicken scratch legible.
The poster specified that they are a graphics design studio. Chances are they're using high-end CRTs for the color quality / contrast ratio.
Most LCDs are lacking in this area and those that are not cost significantly more than a similarly capable CRT.
Can you get a meaningful edge just from playing by the rules or is counting possible with online casinos?
:)
Not sure on the shoe size (Ha ha) but I never heard of someone geting caught card counting when I worked there. It was always the auto-players. The house is supposed to take you on BJ but if you can play the by book it seems like you'll take them. Or you could 4 years ago (when I worked there.)
This stuff is on a Need to Know basis in taht industry and I was not in a position to Need to Know. So most of what I know is second-hand, FWIW. My point was more that people do cheat in online casinos.
Can some of you l33t h4x0rz put some effort into cheating in online casinos
Having worked for said online casinos I can tell you that some of them do and nearly all of them get caught.
The other posters are correct, in that the client software really does nothing, but some of the leading casinos out there have stacked the odds only slightly in their favor in some games - mainly blackjack.
The only kinds of cheats you will find for casinos are auto-players. They play BJ 100% by the book and often come out winning big. Then they get a call from the casino and all those winnings disappear.
Of course, none of the cheat detection methods are 100% accurate for these kinds of attacks. Is it possible for someone to play 18 hands in a minute? Technically, I suppose. But to do that over 4 hours? Technically, I suppose. That's when the "offshore" aspect of casinos comes into play - they don't give you your money anyway and there's nothing you can do about it.
You have to compile it first - only takes a few weeks.
I've heard of freezing a drive and I know people that have recovered data off an overheating drive by constantly spraying some kind of cooling gel on it.
But in this case, it sounds like drive mechanics. I'd be happy to be wrong - but I don't think you can recover a mecanical failure by just making it really cold. In fact, you'd think this would really screw with the electronics.
Project: Space Station was an excellent game. But it doesn't seem too similar to this one. The C64 game focused a lot of it's time on the ground managing all kinds of NASA resources, financial, human and equipment. Also launching satellites and manually launching and landing the space shuttle.
This game seems more like a sandbox environment. Still very cool looking and probably much more fun but not like the NASA-sim. (That's what they should have called it, instead of Operation: Space Station.)
They are basically taking all credit for what AMD has done so they don't look like they lost a battle (which they DID).
The battle is not yet over. It hasn't even started yet. x86-64/AMD64's target market is consumer and small/medium business.
The consumer market has not embraced it. The major OEMs do not ship it probably because their is no [non-Beta] version of Windows yet and the hardware drivers are not there.
The corporate sector is far more picky than the consumer market. I highly doubt it's seen a lot of penetration yet:
The corporate desktop won't see 64 bit until the consumer desktop is saturated with it.
Existing server deployments will be VERY slow to adopt the Opteron. (You do not upgrade a production environment unless you actually need to. Most of them really don't need to.) New deployments may see Opteron though. Of course, without a stable version of Windows to run on it a lot of companies won't even touch it. And even with Linux, you want to wait a while for the hardware and software to mature.
So maybe some uber-leet IT managers have decided to go Opteron already, but it's still very early. Intel has a very good chance to win IMO.
The market for 64-bit processors is not yet established,
That is incorrect. The 64bit processor market is well established in the medium to large enterprise. The 64bit consumer market is not established and it may very well be that there is none.
A few big deals:
OTOH, the 10-drive raid array would operate faster in some situations.
I say the exact same thing about Windows, but no one listens to me.
Because...
You do not get a PS/2 with every TV you buy / have bought for the last 10 years.
The XBox has more console marketshare than Linux has on the desktop.
OTOH,
Windows does not require a license from Microsoft to distribute software for it.
The x86 architecture was not designed for 4+ CPUs on board. Itanium may not work well in a small-mid range environment but compare a 16-way Itanium to a 16-way Xeon and see what you get.
AMD believes that hyper-transport will solve this problem. We shall see. Where are my 8-way Opterons? Wern't they supposed to come out at the end of last year? I'm still bitter about the Athlon MP - which was supposed to allow for 4-way Athlons.
That is not a tragety at all. It's proof that computers are serving their role well. As tools.
Just as you could probably care less about the thickness of the heating wire inside your toaster, most other people on this planet could care less about what browser they use. They just want to get their pr0n|warez|stock info|etc.
Can you blame them? NO. They have more important things to be doing.
Something tells me that the communications aren't encrypted or authenticated.
Your last paragraph should tell you otherwise.
If someone did manage to DoS or somehow log in to the rover and damage the software it could be the most damaging single-target attack (dollar wise - at over $400 million per rover) of all time. I think that's kind of scary.
Cheats are still very prevelant in CS. Dunno about other games.
I like America's Army. The price is great. The grahpics are really good. The maps are very detailed but I think it's a bit overkill for a beginner FPS. It's just a bit too realistic for beginners.
Don't get me wrong, there is a line you cannot cross, regardless of where you work.
If I hire you and tell you to do something and do it "this" way you had best do it and do it the way I told you to. But if you think your way is better there is nothing wrong with pointing that out on the side. Everywhere I've worked, in all ranges of positions, this kind of input is appreciated.
To publicly challenge the plan is a mistake though. This is not seen as constructive. It is seen as disruptive. Bring up the ideas in private with those who made the decision in the first place. If you're right you may get praise. If you're wrong, they'll likely point out why. Either way, you're better for it.
If that gets your labeled as a boat-rocker then go find another job ASAP. Your talent is not being appreciated. Contrary to popular belief, there are jobs out there.
That really depends on the position. Contributing to the project, by voicing thoughts and ideas is part of that whole "works well in a team" requirement on the job description. If you just do what you are told your career will go nowhere.
That being said, there is a line you must not cross.