It also will result in the loss of at least 15,000 jobs out of a combined work force of 150,000 during the next two years.
Not that 165,000 jobs will be cut....
-Chris
well -- you assume that the company will remain standing. If it falls, all of the jobs will have effectively been cut.
And - Tru64 is one of the best OSs out there. HP/UX needs an S somewhere in it's name - you can guess where. All of the good stuff that Compaq has is stuff they picked up when they bought DEC and didn't know what to do with. The Alpha rules the processor world, but Compaq insists on pushing PCs and not real machines. Anybody remember altavista.digital.com, now known as altavista.com. It wasn't built as a search service, it was built to show off the Alpha. There used to be a bunch of pages about the hardware and software behind it. DEC research had some of the best stuff that they just didn't know how to market.
I guess I'll find out how the merger goes, but my gut tells me not to like it.
The big problem with companies is that there are nearly 0 advancement opportunities for technical people without going to the dark side. The pay for people who like to have their hands dirty tops out far lower than the pay for managers or executives. I think companies need to take this into account and have technical positions extend to the upper levels of management. Director of engineering is probably better staffed by an engineer who understands the problems rather than a buisness person. But the buisness people don't like that-- and they're in charge right now. Kinda like never seeing a politician vote for something that reduces his power.
Sanders praised Microsoft for helping to bring standardization to the computer industry. "Standardized platforms promote competition," he asserted. The absence of this standardization "would diminish overall competition as many software and hardware vendors would have to decide which particular operating system(s) to target as a development platform."
Isn't this choice the heart of competition? Isn't the goal standardized hardware that everybody can write to? I don't want to only have one option for my operating system or my development efforts. I want every hardware vendor to target as many operating systems as possible. Every software vendor should be able to write code that compiles on any platform I hand them. (POSIX is your friend)
It's a shame that other operating systems aren't available for AMD hardware. I must be imagining things when I see linux booting happily on my dual AthlonXP box.
Microsoft can have credit for breaking IBM's hold on the desktop computer standards, but once that was broken Microsoft has done little to encourage innovation (unless you count "lets develop this 'cool thing'(tm) so so Microsoft will buy us" as encouraging innovation).
AMD should just be cranking out procs and letting people decide what they want to run on them, not telling us that Microsoft is good for their buisness because there are no other options -- or maybe the fact that there are no other options is the point. Seems to be screaming "Microsoft has the monopoly" to me.
oh well... maybe somebody else will hear that message in the middle of his "microsoft is good for me" garbage.
but, that person would have the ability to transfer it to you. If the registrar thinks they're responsible for it, then they might as well be. Especially with something like verisign (network solutions) mail back authentication.
and the whois databases sync with the registrars twice a day. If the transfer occured without notifying a registrar, then it hasn't been transfered.
I've always operated like Ingrid Insightful - I just can't convince managers to agree with me. If I could I'd make mid-day trips down to the Art Institute, or just go for a stroll while thinking about anything but the problem (strangely, the answers always come to me as soon as I get my mind far enough away from the problem that I can see the big picture clearly... or maybe it's not so strange).
Unfortunatly, I'm doing consulting work and there's something about the client prefering to pay for time on site. Suggestions for beating these concepts into management?
Any of these sound like non-life threatening situations? And you did notice the questioner is specifically concerned with the third type of situation I mentioned, didn't you?
The third doesn't sound life threatening. Anybody in a boat should be competant to navigate without electronic devices (what happens when the batteries die or the generators are out of gas). Computers on ships (and anything else where they are assistive rather than required) should not be capable of causing life threatening situations.
Medical devices, fly-by-wire aircraft, etc. where the computer is in direct control of something that affects a human is a more serious condition. If there are no overrides and no way for a human to have enough control to operate without the system, then the risk is much greater. (Know any humans that can precisely control the radiation level in a cancer treatment device?)
The company also is preparing a broad attack on the case as being inspired by Microsoft competitors, such as AOL Time Warner Inc., Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems, as a means of crippling the software company.
Isn't that the entire point of an antitrust case? Or at least to give the non-monopolies a chance to compete? Or did Microsoft not put this definition into their version of english?
Seems that this article reveals many of the fundamental flaws in Microsoft's view of HTTP. The idea that HTTP is fundamentally a RPC protocol is somewhat out of line. Of course, that view is precisely why.NET services run on port 80 -- most firewalls don't block it so they can get around security.
In a very abstract view, HTTP could be a RPC protocol, but it isn't the same kind of RPC that Sun RPC or even java's RMI (Remote Method Invocation) cover. Sure you can send data back and forth and even cause the server to do some action, but that isn't the design of the protocol. Unlike RPC, HTTP provides no inherent mechanism for passing arbitrary objects -- only text. There is no marshaling of data types at the protocol level. The protocol isn't designed to be used by an application to do anything but retrieve data.
With XML there is some standard mechanism for packaging arbitrary data types to be sent over HTTP, but this isn't an inherent part of the protocol. The unpacking and reconstructing of these is still at the application level (at best the interpreter of the call will do it so the programmer doesn't have to think about it), but the web server won't have it's primary purpose be marshaling of datatypes -- just executing the requested file (assuming it's a CGI type object) or returning the contents of the file for a normal web page.
There's more to RPC than just a request and a reply -- generally more than just a few functions are made available, HTTP only really has GET, POST, HEAD, and maybe CONNECT for proxy servers. How these are handled is up to the server author -- in the case of Microsoft, they want to think of it as RPC, are we suprised that they have so many security flaws in IIS?
Battle.net didn't provide any ``technical protection measure'' against copying games from Blizzard. The CD key only controlled access to their servers. Standalone play required a copy of the CD in the drive (or a cracked version of the game). And LAN play, via lame IPX crap protocol, allowed many to play as long as ONE person had the CD. I don't know if they ever implemented a mechanism for multiple people to play over IP with only one having a key, but that is the biggest feature they were lacking for the longest time.
None of these makes Battle.net look like a TPM. Where did the DMCA come in?
Well -- I've never pirated any T.V. shows myself, but I can see many reasons that it shouldn't be bad to download a copy of a show.
It's cheaper than buying a VCR, i.e. If I can't be home to watch a show when it's broadcast, downloading it seems like an appropriate option. (I don't care if I download the commercials or not, I'll just fast forward through them like I would with my VCR)
Poor reception, i.e. I get poor reception of broadcast signals becaus of the location of my residence and it isn't worth the $40/month or whatever it costs now for cable just so I get a clear picture on sunday night to watch ``The Simpsons''
Watching at work, while I know it's not appropriate at some jobs, sometimes there's some downtime at work and watching old episodes is a pleasant way to kill the time
It's broadcast originally, whats the difference to them whether I set up my own measures to make archives of the airwaves available to myself or save some resources and use the mechanisms that other people have supplied? (I understand being upset about premium content like HBO or PayPerView stuff, but the networks really shouldn't complain -- they don't have anything in place to prevent people from getting it off the air)
Nintendo of America Inc. (NOA) is providing this letter of notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, USC 17 1201(b) (DMCA) and the US Customs ruling dated December 20, 2001, regarding the import, distribution and sale of the Flash Advance Linker. US Customs confirmed the Flash Advance Linker violates the DMCA and is subject to confiscation.
I didn't know that US Customs was a body capable of ruling on whether a product violates the DMCA. Once something is determined to violate the DMCA, it would make sense that they could confiscate it but they are an enforcement organization.
From all descriptions I've read (not that many) the primary purpose of this device is to copy GBA roms to catridges that can be played on the GBA. All marketing I can find markets it as a development tool. I don't see how it meets the ``primarily designed for...'' requirements.
This is a DECstation after recieving a nice beating and causing the cops to be called on me and a friend. Hopefully having this in comments won't get it slashdoted -- it's no longer on a university network...
not that i usually pay much attention to brittish politics, but this just caught my attention:
itwales.com: What is your opinion on the government's involvement with Microsoft? Do you think that governments, as a rule, should use open source technology?
Alan: When the prime minister is appearing at product launches by a company twice found by courts to be abusing a monopoly, and facing billions of dollars in lawsuits you have to ask questions.
Not that similar things don't happen in the U.S., but i don't think Dubya has ever attended one of these.
I'd love an e-book, if i could buy it for the price of the royalty... no sense paying the printing and distribution costs if they are nearly non-existant. for example, if a book costs $12.95 and $10 of that is shipping (making up numbers) then I'd consider $3 a fair price for the electronic version.
of course, if it's in some proprietary format, i don't want it. give me straight PDF, PS, or txt.
based on the numbers in the gender bending section, most of the females in the game are highly likely to be male -- sucks for those players trying to get dates.
Sounds like what your boss really wants is something like SML or Lisp. Granted, these might take a while to get people up to speed on, but projects featured here in the past (sorry -- i'm lazy and this box is short on ram or i'd dig 'em up) seem to indicate that once the project is going development time is short and maintenance is easy.
And if they claim the languages aren't object oriented, point out that everything is a first order object -- including functions.
Think something wearable. Something that can be integrated with normal days without being too obtrusive. Simple interface (touch pad on the outside of the belt unit?) with capability of sending messages to others. Possibly integrated image caputure. Definitly HMD.
The only problem with building wearable gear now is that the parts (specifically HMDs) are too expensive to buy one of, but in bulk are probably far cheaper. Make them commonplace and they will be cheap.
Because when you start using transparent mods to your PC, you're blowing away any kind of FCC rating it has. When the radio starts getting static and the cell phone drops connections and the portable phone/802.11b/x10 camera quits working, put the metal back around the case.
and when your balls fry...
maybe it's time for lead aprons to be made available to computer users!
seems that every TiVo owner I talk to can't say enough good stuff about it. Some not for the features that it ships with, but more for the features that can be hacked in.
Since I don't watch much T.V. in general, I find no use for one, but if I felt the need to record my television for later review, I'd go buy one.
True, but to the people who recieve the computers, it is almost as useless -- at least it will be when they factor in maintenance costs that were not part of the donation. But, you're right, it is far worse than Carnegie.
Slashdot Mirror
well -- you assume that the company will remain standing. If it falls, all of the jobs will have effectively been cut.
And - Tru64 is one of the best OSs out there. HP/UX needs an S somewhere in it's name - you can guess where. All of the good stuff that Compaq has is stuff they picked up when they bought DEC and didn't know what to do with. The Alpha rules the processor world, but Compaq insists on pushing PCs and not real machines. Anybody remember altavista.digital.com, now known as altavista.com. It wasn't built as a search service, it was built to show off the Alpha. There used to be a bunch of pages about the hardware and software behind it. DEC research had some of the best stuff that they just didn't know how to market.
I guess I'll find out how the merger goes, but my gut tells me not to like it.
The big problem with companies is that there are nearly 0 advancement opportunities for technical people without going to the dark side. The pay for people who like to have their hands dirty tops out far lower than the pay for managers or executives. I think companies need to take this into account and have technical positions extend to the upper levels of management. Director of engineering is probably better staffed by an engineer who understands the problems rather than a buisness person. But the buisness people don't like that-- and they're in charge right now. Kinda like never seeing a politician vote for something that reduces his power.
Isn't this choice the heart of competition? Isn't the goal standardized hardware that everybody can write to? I don't want to only have one option for my operating system or my development efforts. I want every hardware vendor to target as many operating systems as possible. Every software vendor should be able to write code that compiles on any platform I hand them. (POSIX is your friend)
It's a shame that other operating systems aren't available for AMD hardware. I must be imagining things when I see linux booting happily on my dual AthlonXP box.
Microsoft can have credit for breaking IBM's hold on the desktop computer standards, but once that was broken Microsoft has done little to encourage innovation (unless you count "lets develop this 'cool thing'(tm) so so Microsoft will buy us" as encouraging innovation).
AMD should just be cranking out procs and letting people decide what they want to run on them, not telling us that Microsoft is good for their buisness because there are no other options -- or maybe the fact that there are no other options is the point. Seems to be screaming "Microsoft has the monopoly" to me.
oh well... maybe somebody else will hear that message in the middle of his "microsoft is good for me" garbage.
but, that person would have the ability to transfer it to you. If the registrar thinks they're responsible for it, then they might as well be. Especially with something like verisign (network solutions) mail back authentication.
and the whois databases sync with the registrars twice a day. If the transfer occured without notifying a registrar, then it hasn't been transfered.
I've always operated like Ingrid Insightful - I just can't convince managers to agree with me. If I could I'd make mid-day trips down to the Art Institute, or just go for a stroll while thinking about anything but the problem (strangely, the answers always come to me as soon as I get my mind far enough away from the problem that I can see the big picture clearly ... or maybe it's not so strange).
Unfortunatly, I'm doing consulting work and there's something about the client prefering to pay for time on site. Suggestions for beating these concepts into management?
The third doesn't sound life threatening. Anybody in a boat should be competant to navigate without electronic devices (what happens when the batteries die or the generators are out of gas). Computers on ships (and anything else where they are assistive rather than required) should not be capable of causing life threatening situations.
Medical devices, fly-by-wire aircraft, etc. where the computer is in direct control of something that affects a human is a more serious condition. If there are no overrides and no way for a human to have enough control to operate without the system, then the risk is much greater. (Know any humans that can precisely control the radiation level in a cancer treatment device?)
Isn't that the entire point of an antitrust case? Or at least to give the non-monopolies a chance to compete? Or did Microsoft not put this definition into their version of english?
Seems that this article reveals many of the fundamental flaws in Microsoft's view of HTTP. The idea that HTTP is fundamentally a RPC protocol is somewhat out of line. Of course, that view is precisely why .NET services run on port 80 -- most firewalls don't block it so they can get around security.
In a very abstract view, HTTP could be a RPC protocol, but it isn't the same kind of RPC that Sun RPC or even java's RMI (Remote Method Invocation) cover. Sure you can send data back and forth and even cause the server to do some action, but that isn't the design of the protocol. Unlike RPC, HTTP provides no inherent mechanism for passing arbitrary objects -- only text. There is no marshaling of data types at the protocol level. The protocol isn't designed to be used by an application to do anything but retrieve data.
With XML there is some standard mechanism for packaging arbitrary data types to be sent over HTTP, but this isn't an inherent part of the protocol. The unpacking and reconstructing of these is still at the application level (at best the interpreter of the call will do it so the programmer doesn't have to think about it), but the web server won't have it's primary purpose be marshaling of datatypes -- just executing the requested file (assuming it's a CGI type object) or returning the contents of the file for a normal web page.
There's more to RPC than just a request and a reply -- generally more than just a few functions are made available, HTTP only really has GET, POST, HEAD, and maybe CONNECT for proxy servers. How these are handled is up to the server author -- in the case of Microsoft, they want to think of it as RPC, are we suprised that they have so many security flaws in IIS?
Battle.net didn't provide any ``technical protection measure'' against copying games from Blizzard. The CD key only controlled access to their servers. Standalone play required a copy of the CD in the drive (or a cracked version of the game). And LAN play, via lame IPX crap protocol, allowed many to play as long as ONE person had the CD. I don't know if they ever implemented a mechanism for multiple people to play over IP with only one having a key, but that is the biggest feature they were lacking for the longest time.
None of these makes Battle.net look like a TPM. Where did the DMCA come in?
I didn't know that US Customs was a body capable of ruling on whether a product violates the DMCA. Once something is determined to violate the DMCA, it would make sense that they could confiscate it but they are an enforcement organization.
From all descriptions I've read (not that many) the primary purpose of this device is to copy GBA roms to catridges that can be played on the GBA. All marketing I can find markets it as a development tool. I don't see how it meets the ``primarily designed for...'' requirements.
Then again, IANAL
yeah... sorry 'bout that -- i was having the same thought, especially given that it's a score:1 comment at this time...
This is a DECstation after recieving a nice beating and causing the cops to be called on me and a friend. Hopefully having this in comments won't get it slashdoted -- it's no longer on a university network...
Not that similar things don't happen in the U.S., but i don't think Dubya has ever attended one of these.
I'd love an e-book, if i could buy it for the price of the royalty... no sense paying the printing and distribution costs if they are nearly non-existant. for example, if a book costs $12.95 and $10 of that is shipping (making up numbers) then I'd consider $3 a fair price for the electronic version.
of course, if it's in some proprietary format, i don't want it. give me straight PDF, PS, or txt.
based on the numbers in the gender bending section, most of the females in the game are highly likely to be male -- sucks for those players trying to get dates.
Sounds like what your boss really wants is something like SML or Lisp. Granted, these might take a while to get people up to speed on, but projects featured here in the past (sorry -- i'm lazy and this box is short on ram or i'd dig 'em up) seem to indicate that once the project is going development time is short and maintenance is easy.
And if they claim the languages aren't object oriented, point out that everything is a first order object -- including functions.
Think something wearable. Something that can be integrated with normal days without being too obtrusive. Simple interface (touch pad on the outside of the belt unit?) with capability of sending messages to others. Possibly integrated image caputure. Definitly HMD.
The only problem with building wearable gear now is that the parts (specifically HMDs) are too expensive to buy one of, but in bulk are probably far cheaper. Make them commonplace and they will be cheap.
and when your balls fry...
maybe it's time for lead aprons to be made available to computer users!
seems that every TiVo owner I talk to can't say enough good stuff about it. Some not for the features that it ships with, but more for the features that can be hacked in.
Since I don't watch much T.V. in general, I find no use for one, but if I felt the need to record my television for later review, I'd go buy one.
I don't know about you, but when I hear something like "sorcerer" or "wizard" my first thought is "expert."
Even CDs of ancient recordings are wonderfully clear -- and clearly better than vinyl.
I disagree -- not to mention the fact that some music has never made it to CD (think techno - good white label techno)
Just a minor warning here -- be careful not to confuse "available to the public" with "public domain"
sorry, it just jumped out at me...
True, but to the people who recieve the computers, it is almost as useless -- at least it will be when they factor in maintenance costs that were not part of the donation. But, you're right, it is far worse than Carnegie.
Sounds like Andrew Carnegie's big thing with libraries -- donate lots of money to build libraries without any money to fill them with books.