I wonder... did s/he compile the lastest custom kernel for their hardware? Did they tune ATA I/O performance with hdparm? Did he disable non-essential daemons running in the background? I doubt it.
Yep, thats all stuff I did in my first few weeks with Linux, you bet. Give me a break. The point is clear : on a lesser machine, the default installation of XP blows away the default installation of Mandrake.
Whenever I hear crap like this, I apply my own brand of Occams razor. I ask what my father - a highly effective business owner and salesman in the financial industry, would think. The answers are pretty easy.
Expecting a user to tune hdparm themselves is absurd. My father would say : If it's that important, why isn't it done at install? Recompile the Kernel for the hardware? Ditto.
Your post that loses sight of the main point for a desktop user like my father : they want to use a computer to get stuff done, not to tinker with a computer. I might like to play with the internals of my computer, but I am a geek, that stuff is fun to me . My dad sees the same operation as a waste of his fucking time.
Say what you will about XP and the MS security model - you will undoubtedly be correct. They may have got that wrong, but the thing they got right without a shadow of a doubt is that the operating system is supposed to abstract you from the underlying hardware.
Most desktop users don't even know what Video Card they have installed, much less what a kernel is. On a properly designed system, it shouldn't be important.
Yes - it is a good thing to know a little about how the underlying system operates. But I have been driving for 17 years now, and I still couldn't tell you what an exhaust manifold is. I don't want to know, and I don't need to know to be an effective driver.
Thats what a "desktop user" is. Linux is fantastic stuff, it power and flexibility never cease to amaze me. Linux is also designed, created and maintained by lovers of computers, for lovers of computers.
"The local language?" Thats the dumbest thing I have ever seen anyone post. No wonder you are a coward.
Americans don't have a local language. The proper term is actually 'dialect'. Your version of the english language has become corrupted, and it may eventually become a new language.
If you decide to misspell colour without the "u" that's your problem. Thank you for providing yet another example of the kind of moron that has given the United States of America it stellar reputation in the world.
I think perhaps you just failed to understand your law classes.
IIRC, Diplomatic immunity is almost implemented as a local convention, and not under the authority of a overseeing world government. So diplomatic immunity cannot be considered to be an aspect of international law. Its more an aspect of how diplomatic relations operate.
The Geneva convention is just that, a convention. Signatories agree to stand by the rules laid down in the convention for various reasons. But there is no direct result disciplinary action that acrues from breaking the convention. By this I mena I will likely go to jail if I commit murder, but if I break the geneva convention the penalty may be as little as frostier relations with other countries, to outright embargoes or war.
So the geneva convention is not a form of international law either.
There are forms of international court for trade, and in some cases even war crimes....I am less sure of the status of these. Most of the people prosecuted via these means are prosecuted by the winners of a war against them (milosovic springs to mind).
I plead ignorance on the minutia of international law, but I am pretty sure that Geneva and Diplomatic immunity are not aspects of international law.
Prosecuting people has never been a deterent to the crime.
Are you sure about that? Have you:
Ever killed someone? Beaten them so badly they need medium term hospitilization? Broken the windshield of a car, doused the interior with gasoline, and lit it on fire?
I watched my peers do that (and more) and I watched them get prosecuted. Forget 'right and wrong'. When I get really really (really) mad, the thing that stops me from lighting you on fire isn't the idea that its wrong to do it, but the near certainty that it will f*ck up the rest of my life.
Call me selfish.
I think punishment does work as a deterrent, provided the punishment is consistently applied, and there are no exceptions. The problem with punishment for non-violent crimes is consistency. If I steal your car stereo, I can get 5 years in prison for that. But I can steal your life savings, and often escape prosecution altogether, provided I use the right approach (investments).
I'm not sure why Reservoir Dogs would be a good candidate for an English class, though I could certainly see it in a film class.
An internally consistent, well told story with characterizations that you remember and a plot that wasn't produced using some sort of multiple choice questionare for screenwriters is ALWAYS welcome in an English class.
A high school english class is about communications and storytelling even more so than it is about literature and the classics.
Game developers? Game developers don't care about copy prevention. Publishers don't develop it either. Third parties sell it to publishers under false pretenses and nonsense that breaks down to "every time someone copies your discs, you lose money."
Nothing cvould be further from the truth. Indeed, everytime my software is copied and used illegally, the customers who actually paid for my software lose money (not just me).
If someone copies my software, and uses it as it was intended to be used, they have not only stolen the use of that (non-free) software, they have diluted the value of the investment my legitimate clients have made.
In other words, If I allow easy, blatant copying of our software, then the value of my tool actually decreases, because my legitimate clients will find themselves competing against people who didn't pay the price, and in order to compete they will find themselves needing to steal the software instead.
Our software costs 5,000 US (and its worth it) - and you can be damned sure that client's who paid that price deserve my undivided attention in ensuring that people who didn't pay can't use my software without having to crack it first.
In other words, the protection is there to make sure that anyone who runs my software without a legitimate license MUST be doing so intentionally, and maliciously.
We don't write software for charity, monkey boys. We do it because there is a tool (or game, or application) that needs to be made, and we were the ones to do it. That took time, and if I plan to feed my family, I need re-imbursement for that time.
If you want free alternatives to the tools (games, applications) we make, then make your own. I applaud the many open source and free software initiatives that do so. Thats competition, and competition is healthy.
If the price I charge for my software is way way out of line with it's value, then you won't buy it, and I will have to lower my price, improve my product, or go out of business. If you can't find a cheaper tool to do the required task from another source, then the price I charge for my software is probably fair.
The world does not exist where we could remove copy protection and still expect to make sales. Don't try to pretend that it does - that position is clearly naive.
That the copy protection is easily broken is irrelevant - the fact that it exists at all is an indication that we did not intend to let this software be copied in any trivial fashion.
Only a little. In Canada, recording a conversation is entirely legal, as long as one of the active participants in the conversation is aware of the recording. What is illegal is if a third party records the conversation without the knowledge of the active participants.
Thats how it was explained to me by our lawyer when I was a journalist in Northern Ontario - obviously I am not a lawyer.
I didn't realize it was different in Maryland. I am always suprised at how dramatically law can vary from state to state.
In the place where I was trapped telemarketing during my poverty days, you would not have been hung up on. We would have passed the phone around the office, had a good laugh. Then we would have retrieved the recording for future enjoyment.
For the next couple of days we would try your number repeatedly, looking for your answering machine. When we got it we would leave the sound of you having sex as a message.
Suprisingly our entire team got fired en masse one day.
That was before the automated call center / sweatshop environments today. Most current telemarketing clones have no idea what number they even called.
The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation.
I think what I find particularily frightening about that sentence from the article is the implication that this was initiated by what appears to be routine cellphone monitoring.
After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.
This may not really be the trend watchers. Its always worth remembering that 'corporate media drones' would employ the same wording if the real problem was that 'It was total trash and we killed it before this embarassment cost us any more money.'
I am not saying the game was trash - just pointing out that a press release is generally not a source of facts, just spin.
nevertheless I agree with you entirely. It is always a good time to release a good game. It is never a good time to release Deer Hunter 9.
Yes indeed. Why all that technology we invented for the past 2000 years - its all used to control us by THE MAN.
I blame those damn pheonicians for inventing a writing system. Once it was possible to keep records man, it was all down hill. I know my kids wont use no fancy technology.
I say we get rid of all technology! I know your with me, brother. You pick out a cave, and I will go sharpen some pointy sticks.
Make sure that cave has an outlet, so I can still post on slashdot. That way we can tell everyone how well we are avoiding technology, and THE MAN. -----------
If they are tracking my private moments they will get a lot of lying on the couch after dinner with the top button of my jeans undone, watching television.
I am basically jamming the signals with massive waves of mediocrity.
Why can't we ask the same for spammers? Because they face absolutely no punishment or cost for their actions.
Thats exactly the point. You don't drive people off the road because the percieved cost (going to jail, severe fines, scratches on the lexus) is higher than the payoff from your action.
Human decency has very little to do with it. Without restraints, a good percentage of the population often does things without "controlling themselves for the greater good".
Pixar's not gone. Long, long way from gone. With three movies still under contract to Disney they won't be going anywhere soon.
I think I can safely say the that the degree of expertise and knowledge they have come up with will easily allow them to continue working long past the end of the Disney contract.
Pixar wasn't created to be some Disney vassal, and you can be assured they have projects of thier own in mind.
As long as the bank / vendors like to charge me for using my money, I will keep using cash. I like the convenience of interac / debit systems as much as anyone, but I am in awe of how the banks manage to 'take a dollar here, and another here' with little service fees. Withdrawing cash? Thats a dollar. Using someone elses bank machine? Thats an additional dollar.
Even more terrifying, there are some banks/plans that charge you for using a human teller too, so you areeffed if you do, and effed if you don't. Nice.
Cash is way cheaper to use, particularily if you take out enough to last you for a week. Its faster to use in line ups, and its easier to tell how much money I have left at a glance (look in your wallet).
On the average bank account fees have grown to the point where they dwarf any possible gain from interest. There is no doubt in my mind that a digital money system would only provide the larger banks another opportunity to rake me over the coals for more money.
(I live in Canada, but I suspect things are no different in the US)
Show me a link to a law that says I have to keep a lame resume on file. I am Canadian, but feel free to send American details anyway.
If your resume is useless, or I never plan to hire you, I am not bothering to store it. Unless its so bad I pass it around the office for general mocking.
True. And you can have the best management in the world, and development might still produce crap, and the company will fail. To keep this on topic, I will point out that the management of the company in the article is not composed of people whohave typically failed at thier past endeavours.
Consistently good product comes from a healthy mixture of decent management and decent development. When a company consitently delivers product that people want, markets it to people who want it, and consistently sells it at a profit, only the naive point to that company and say "They suceeded because development created a product so good it overrode the naturally bad management."
I was reacting to a percieved assumption in the original post. The assumption that good products and good hardware and good service arise despite management.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, well it doesn't cost a cent to download or use.
Are you sure you have a clue?
I wonder... did s/he compile the lastest custom kernel for their hardware? Did they tune ATA I/O performance with hdparm? Did he disable non-essential daemons running in the background? I doubt it.
Yep, thats all stuff I did in my first few weeks with Linux, you bet. Give me a break. The point is clear : on a lesser machine, the default installation of XP blows away the default installation of Mandrake.
Whenever I hear crap like this, I apply my own brand of Occams razor. I ask what my father - a highly effective business owner and salesman in the financial industry, would think. The answers are pretty easy.
Expecting a user to tune hdparm themselves is absurd. My father would say : If it's that important, why isn't it done at install? Recompile the Kernel for the hardware? Ditto.
Your post that loses sight of the main point for a desktop user like my father : they want to use a computer to get stuff done, not to tinker with a computer. I might like to play with the internals of my computer, but I am a geek, that stuff is fun to me . My dad sees the same operation as a waste of his fucking time.
Say what you will about XP and the MS security model - you will undoubtedly be correct. They may have got that wrong, but the thing they got right without a shadow of a doubt is that the operating system is supposed to abstract you from the underlying hardware.
Most desktop users don't even know what Video Card they have installed, much less what a kernel is. On a properly designed system, it shouldn't be important.
Yes - it is a good thing to know a little about how the underlying system operates. But I have been driving for 17 years now, and I still couldn't tell you what an exhaust manifold is. I don't want to know, and I don't need to know to be an effective driver.
Thats what a "desktop user" is. Linux is fantastic stuff, it power and flexibility never cease to amaze me. Linux is also designed, created and maintained by lovers of computers, for lovers of computers.
Rambling now. Must stop and get back to work.
[ Feeding the trolls ]
"The local language?" Thats the dumbest thing I have ever seen anyone post. No wonder you are a coward.
Americans don't have a local language. The proper term is actually 'dialect'. Your version of the english language has become corrupted, and it may eventually become a new language.
If you decide to misspell colour without the "u" that's your problem. Thank you for providing yet another example of the kind of moron that has given the United States of America it stellar reputation in the world.
Coward.
I think perhaps you just failed to understand your law classes.
IIRC, Diplomatic immunity is almost implemented as a local convention, and not under the authority of a overseeing world government. So diplomatic immunity cannot be considered to be an aspect of international law. Its more an aspect of how diplomatic relations operate.
The Geneva convention is just that, a convention. Signatories agree to stand by the rules laid down in the convention for various reasons. But there is no direct result disciplinary action that acrues from breaking the convention. By this I mena I will likely go to jail if I commit murder, but if I break the geneva convention the penalty may be as little as frostier relations with other countries, to outright embargoes or war.
So the geneva convention is not a form of international law either.
There are forms of international court for trade, and in some cases even war crimes....I am less sure of the status of these. Most of the people prosecuted via these means are prosecuted by the winners of a war against them (milosovic springs to mind).
I plead ignorance on the minutia of international law, but I am pretty sure that Geneva and Diplomatic immunity are not aspects of international law.
Right.
Now go back in time to when NT Alpha first came out. Where is your magic Linux-based rescue disk now? I remember when the first of those came out.
Just because its trivial now does not mean it was trivial then.
Prosecuting people has never been a deterent to the crime.
:
Are you sure about that? Have you
Ever killed someone? Beaten them so badly they need medium term hospitilization? Broken the windshield of a car, doused the interior with gasoline, and lit it on fire?
I watched my peers do that (and more) and I watched them get prosecuted. Forget 'right and wrong'. When I get really really (really) mad, the thing that stops me from lighting you on fire isn't the idea that its wrong to do it, but the near certainty that it will f*ck up the rest of my life.
Call me selfish.
I think punishment does work as a deterrent, provided the punishment is consistently applied, and there are no exceptions. The problem with punishment for non-violent crimes is consistency. If I steal your car stereo, I can get 5 years in prison for that. But I can steal your life savings, and often escape prosecution altogether, provided I use the right approach (investments).
I'm not sure why Reservoir Dogs would be a good candidate for an English class, though I could certainly see it in a film class.
An internally consistent, well told story with characterizations that you remember and a plot that wasn't produced using some sort of multiple choice questionare for screenwriters is ALWAYS welcome in an English class.
A high school english class is about communications and storytelling even more so than it is about literature and the classics.
Just my thought on the subject.
God. Sometimes people piss me off.
Game developers? Game developers don't care about copy prevention. Publishers don't develop it either. Third parties sell it to publishers under false pretenses and nonsense that breaks down to "every time someone copies your discs, you lose money."
Nothing cvould be further from the truth. Indeed, everytime my software is copied and used illegally, the customers who actually paid for my software lose money (not just me).
If someone copies my software, and uses it as it was intended to be used, they have not only stolen the use of that (non-free) software, they have diluted the value of the investment my legitimate clients have made.
In other words, If I allow easy, blatant copying of our software, then the value of my tool actually decreases, because my legitimate clients will find themselves competing against people who didn't pay the price, and in order to compete they will find themselves needing to steal the software instead.
Our software costs 5,000 US (and its worth it) - and you can be damned sure that client's who paid that price deserve my undivided attention in ensuring that people who didn't pay can't use my software without having to crack it first.
In other words, the protection is there to make sure that anyone who runs my software without a legitimate license MUST be doing so intentionally, and maliciously.
We don't write software for charity, monkey boys. We do it because there is a tool (or game, or application) that needs to be made, and we were the ones to do it. That took time, and if I plan to feed my family, I need re-imbursement for that time.
If you want free alternatives to the tools (games, applications) we make, then make your own. I applaud the many open source and free software initiatives that do so. Thats competition, and competition is healthy.
If the price I charge for my software is way way out of line with it's value, then you won't buy it, and I will have to lower my price, improve my product, or go out of business. If you can't find a cheaper tool to do the required task from another source, then the price I charge for my software is probably fair.
The world does not exist where we could remove copy protection and still expect to make sales. Don't try to pretend that it does - that position is clearly naive.
That the copy protection is easily broken is irrelevant - the fact that it exists at all is an indication that we did not intend to let this software be copied in any trivial fashion.
Because you are sitting in your car, and CAT5E in lengths of several hundred kilometers is prohibitively expensive?
I want to know what the traffic is when I am driving. That generally happens in my car, not at my desk.
Pauly Shore stars as young Anakin Sywalker, with appearances by Whoopi Goldberg as a Jedi night, and Paul Hogan as Jenga Fett.
Be very careful what you wish for.
If these are Britney CD's, then I think the original poster was probably correct .... coasters.
I know you're joking..
Only a little. In Canada, recording a conversation is entirely legal, as long as one of the active participants in the conversation is aware of the recording. What is illegal is if a third party records the conversation without the knowledge of the active participants.
Thats how it was explained to me by our lawyer when I was a journalist in Northern Ontario - obviously I am not a lawyer.
I didn't realize it was different in Maryland. I am always suprised at how dramatically law can vary from state to state.
In the place where I was trapped telemarketing during my poverty days, you would not have been hung up on. We would have passed the phone around the office, had a good laugh. Then we would have retrieved the recording for future enjoyment.
For the next couple of days we would try your number repeatedly, looking for your answering machine. When we got it we would leave the sound of you having sex as a message.
Suprisingly our entire team got fired en masse one day.
That was before the automated call center / sweatshop environments today. Most current telemarketing clones have no idea what number they even called.
Yep. A re-read clarified that. Its what I get for skimming the article.
/me sheepishly folds tinfoil hat and places in pocket until next time *
They were clearly monitoring phone numbers they considered at risk, and no doubt monitoring at this scale requires the usual wiretap warrants.
*
The terrorism investigation code-named Mont Blanc began almost by accident in April 2002, when authorities intercepted a cellphone call that lasted less than a minute and involved not a single word of conversation.
I think what I find particularily frightening about that sentence from the article is the implication that this was initiated by what appears to be routine cellphone monitoring.
Is this kind of thing routine?
After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.
This may not really be the trend watchers. Its always worth remembering that 'corporate media drones' would employ the same wording if the real problem was that 'It was total trash and we killed it before this embarassment cost us any more money.'
I am not saying the game was trash - just pointing out that a press release is generally not a source of facts, just spin.
nevertheless I agree with you entirely. It is always a good time to release a good game. It is never a good time to release Deer Hunter 9.
How will I know my neighbour isn't one of them? His tinfoil might just be a trap.
Yes indeed. Why all that technology we invented for the past 2000 years - its all used to control us by THE MAN.
I blame those damn pheonicians for inventing a writing system. Once it was possible to keep records man, it was all down hill. I know my kids wont use no fancy technology.
I say we get rid of all technology! I know your with me, brother. You pick out a cave, and I will go sharpen some pointy sticks.
Make sure that cave has an outlet, so I can still post on slashdot. That way we can tell everyone how well we are avoiding technology, and THE MAN.
-----------
Huh. When did you get out of the Pod?
If they are tracking my private moments they will get a lot of lying on the couch after dinner with the top button of my jeans undone, watching television.
I am basically jamming the signals with massive waves of mediocrity.
Why can't we ask the same for spammers? Because they face absolutely no punishment or cost for their actions.
Thats exactly the point. You don't drive people off the road because the percieved cost (going to jail, severe fines, scratches on the lexus) is higher than the payoff from your action.
Human decency has very little to do with it. Without restraints, a good percentage of the population often does things without "controlling themselves for the greater good".
Pixar's not gone. Long, long way from gone. With three movies still under contract to Disney they won't be going anywhere soon.
I think I can safely say the that the degree of expertise and knowledge they have come up with will easily allow them to continue working long past the end of the Disney contract.
Pixar wasn't created to be some Disney vassal, and you can be assured they have projects of thier own in mind.
As long as the bank / vendors like to charge me for using my money, I will keep using cash. I like the convenience of interac / debit systems as much as anyone, but I am in awe of how the banks manage to 'take a dollar here, and another here' with little service fees. Withdrawing cash? Thats a dollar. Using someone elses bank machine? Thats an additional dollar.
Even more terrifying, there are some banks/plans that charge you for using a human teller too, so you areeffed if you do, and effed if you don't. Nice.
Cash is way cheaper to use, particularily if you take out enough to last you for a week. Its faster to use in line ups, and its easier to tell how much money I have left at a glance (look in your wallet).
On the average bank account fees have grown to the point where they dwarf any possible gain from interest. There is no doubt in my mind that a digital money system would only provide the larger banks another opportunity to rake me over the coals for more money.
(I live in Canada, but I suspect things are no different in the US)
Ah, thanks for the clarification - that makes a lot more sense.
Show me a link to a law that says I have to keep a lame resume on file. I am Canadian, but feel free to send American details anyway.
If your resume is useless, or I never plan to hire you, I am not bothering to store it. Unless its so bad I pass it around the office for general mocking.
True. And you can have the best management in the world, and development might still produce crap, and the company will fail. To keep this on topic, I will point out that the management of the company in the article is not composed of people whohave typically failed at thier past endeavours.
Consistently good product comes from a healthy mixture of decent management and decent development. When a company consitently delivers product that people want, markets it to people who want it, and consistently sells it at a profit, only the naive point to that company and say "They suceeded because development created a product so good it overrode the naturally bad management."
I was reacting to a percieved assumption in the original post. The assumption that good products and good hardware and good service arise despite management.