I'm actually studying a CS course abroad myself and i found it relativly easy to do so. I am european though (irish) which makes it easier as the EU have already put in place the ERASMUS program. A system which helps uni's, college's and students transfer and interact.
The college i study at is based in the south of france and is called the 'IUP of Avignon' www.iup.univ-avignon.fr. And is one of the fore fronters in voice recognition and natrual language research in the world
In regard to your slanderous comment (QUOTE 'I'm wondering: do people in other countries just not learn about computers?") Yes computers do actually exist in other countries and yes we do learn about them.
In france for example the level at my university is so high that in the SECOND year of the course the students are required to write their own MINI OS.(fork's,sig's,IPC,f-sys,buffer cache) and all topped off with a nice little shell.
If you want to travel abroad and find another uni to study (CS) at you will have to do a lot of communication work and a lot of HARD HARD ground work. Learning CS can be difficult enough at times but when it's through another language and nobody around you wants to talk one word of english the difficuilty factor is raised by another degree.
I think what some people here are missing is that hydrogen has energy in and of itself. When you burn hydrogen, you don't just get back the energy it took to electrolyze it, you get back the chemical energy in the hydrogen itself, which is usually much greater.
Ok, I pretty much read most of these replies and it was pretty tuff to decide where to stick a comment. I've spent a great many man hours reading about alternative fuel and I have to say that most of what is addressed here is not new.
Solar takes a long time to make very much useful electricty, uses up too many raw materials to manufacture collectors and the payback is long term with the collecting systems being expensive and large.
Electricity can indeed by produced in what is now a well thought out and large scale industry but increased demand would be hugely more than we can muster and what about the batteries? Think about the waste byproducts from batteries, spent acid, lots of used up zink. Where are we going to put all those spent battery components? Will it cost too much to recycle such large quantities of batteries? Aren't vehicle batteries already a big mess? Multiply that by at least 10.
Hydrogen from natural gas? Please, just burn the the gas as is.
And i have tons of other discrepencies with the other alt sources mentioned. But here is the #1 question I ask all of you since no one has seemed to think about it. Where is all that water going to come from? Fresh water is cheep yes, but will it be cheep after its demand is doubled or worse? Some areas already have rain deficits, low water reserves and its still cheep water but how long will it be if we burn it all? The exhaust water vapour will be more than the exaust liquid so most of it will be evaproated away...ok so are we counting on it to rain more after we start using water as a fuel? Is that enough?
Ok so what about using sea water? Pipe it in? Locate refineries and H2 plants on shores? Maybe... but at what expense? If we pipe it how much does that cost?
Fresh water we cant afford to burn, sea water we cant afford to pipe or even refine.
No sir. Hydrogen fuel is a long LONG way from being a useful alt fuel.
I have a Perl-related query that only you can solve (you'll understand once I explain, it's about a script you authored). In order to save this thread from something off-topic, I request your e-mail address so that I may further detail the extent of my plans.
Granted, when the economy gets tight it can be harder to find consulting gigs. It really all depends on how broad your skill set is and a lot of other factors. But, if you've worked a few years at $100 an hour you've probably been able to lay back enough to weather some hard times. Most consultants and freelancers of any type that are successful plan for hard times.
And the way I live isn't for everyone. Some people don't have the desire to wear multiple hats and hunt for work, they just want to let someone else do the planning and hope for the best. I wish them luck, but I don't have faith in that system for myself.
By the way, having a limited skill set is a sure way to find yourself flipping burgers. My father used to make a great living as a sign painter and "pinstriper" - painting designs on hot rod cars and such, and doing lettering and such on commercial trucks and vehicles. He had a great reputation and made around $35-$40 an hour when that was a lot of money...and got effectively put out of business when vinyl signs and such got popular. He still gets a little work here and there, but mostly he's scrambling for money and working a crappy full-time job with no security just to get by.
There are a lot of folks that read Slashdot that have the brains and skills to write their own ticket, though, if only they're willing to do so. Maybe you won't get rich overnight, but you can live well and enjoy what you do. If you don't enjoy what you do, why do it? You spend nearly a third of your waking hours working - if you're not doing something you enjoy and that you can be proud - then why bother?
Again, just my opinion. There's no one right way to live, but that's the right way for me.
There's a lot of good advice being bandied about here, but it misses the bigger picture - depending on a large corporation for your living is a sketchy proposition at best. They have no interest in you, or your well-being. The bottom line is all-important - look how many companies are cutting staff not because they're unprofitable, but because they're just not profitable ENOUGH. The message is loud and clear - you are expendable. It's not about getting a job with a "reliable" company over a dot-com, because when times get tough you'll still be out of a job. Look at Intel, Cisco and the other companies that are ditching their employees right now.
Right now I work for myself, doing freelance writing and contract work. My goal is to find five to ten other folks who do the same kind of work that I do and form a company that works in the best interest of everyone in the "company" and shares the wealth. I think that in the "new" economy the people who are happy with their lives and careers are going to be the ones who stick with small companies that actually have an interest in taking care of their employees and don't have a desire to become the next Microsoft or Sun.
I think this is how a lot of Linux companies got started - but they got away from that model and are now paying the price. You hear a lot about how nervous people are about VA Linux or Red Hat, but no one is talking about how Slackware is struggling. Why not? I'd bet they still have a decent share of the market and the folks who work on Slackware are making a decent living. There's plenty of work in the Open Source space and Web consulting space for dozens or hundreds of small companies to make good livings - but I doubt that there's any room for a huge company that tries to be the next juggernaut corporation.
HERE,HERE
I agree with you whole heartedly, I'm in the tax bracket if I had 2 kids I'd get all the FUCKING money back I gave the government. I could care less if a someone gets a million back, they might buy somemore gold plated geegaws for their corporate aircraft, which gives me and 300 more people money where I work at. And those communist rich bastards that say they dont want tax cut, if it werent for inheirtance and capitalism they'd be flipping burgers too. If they really believe thier tax money helps then they should request to get all of it back and give it to charity, the trickle down from government programs is only 30 cents on the dollar. Sure some private charity might take some off the top but they aint taking 70%!
well i wouldnt go anywhere that has no guns....im sure they passed the word on to the criminals not to posses guns too. recent reports from australia is that murder has went up 300%! since guns were turned in. most people out there live far away from anyone and thus have no police protection.
Radio stations typically use a hand-held "bulk eraser" that's basically a big magnet to wipe clean tapes and such. We had a used hard drive in the station that I bulk-erased and it certainly seemed to get rid of all the information - and it still worked. Had to reformat it, but it worked.
You can probably purchase a bulk eraser for around $100 or so.
I couldn't hold out until the game "vow" after reading the "vow" for directors. What a load of crap. I can't imagine what kind of films that would produce, but I picture completely unwatchable art-house tripe that would bore anyone to tears who wasn't stoned out of their skull or high on their own self-importance. If a director is not an artist, what's the point?
Sure, there are plenty of movies that would benefit enormously by toning down some of the "forbidden" elements (or by not being made at all...) but I defy anyone to name any "classic" film that doesn't contains some of these elements. Under these guidelines, "The Godfather," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Star Wars," "Pulp Fiction," "Schindler's List" and countless other films would never have been made.
Glad to see this hasn't caught on in films. Let's hope that kind of thinking doesn't catch on in games either.
It's not as though the Russians have been very consistent up to date with MIR as it is. Maybe it will land in the middle of China. Maybe even my backyard (that would be cool).
My guess is:
xerox parc is not even close to what we have today.... today's GUIs are solely pioneered by Apple.
what jobs saw at xerox parc was basically just a terminal with random menus and buttons everywhere correlating to specfic commands.
its closer to most commandline interfaces than windows is to mac os or kde or gnome or eazel or be.
Finally, do you really want the US government telling those Japanese-wannabe traitors in Taiwan that, "Hey, defy and provoke China all you want.
japanese wannabe traitors.. wtf... CHINA is traitor to itself... it kills its own culture under cultural revolution. if you want to find chinese culture, go to taiwan, not china... and what the fuck.. we dont fucking care about China... its a different place.. just because we came from then hundreds of years ago doesnt me we are them..... whens the last time someone said that humans are apes... we have a different language, different culture, and under the principle of self determination, we expect political sovereignty... unfortunately the traitor chinese people believe otherwise and they intimidate us so we have to fuck them up with our underground nuclear missiles... hahhahah beijing... you will die..... u atttack us.. your whole fucking country will be nuked.
If you want to say all immigrants of Chinese descent are traitors, why don't you come out and say it directly? Then maybe the people in the forum will see you for the rascist bastard you are.
he's not a racist bastard.. you are. calling taiwanese japanese wannabe traitors... wtf.... ive talked with lost of chinese commie fucks and they all come from china and i have come to the conclusion that they are all fuckheads... its true.. like y ou.. robert li what kind of fucking name is it... u are supposed to spell ß? LEE, not LI.. fuck you... you are so dickless... china is shit.. you are cocky.. taiiwan isnt china.. never has been.. never will... we will first befriend the US to fuck you up,... then we will fuck up the US.
maybe now we can find out what is wrong with those guys that put coffee can exaust pipes, big spoilers and yellows stickers on thier honda civics and think they can beat a mustang
I've never had cause to regret the First Amendment or the advances that computers have made in my lifetime...now I do.
It's possible that the Supreme Court could rule that this material appeals to "prurient interests" and has no artistic value and therefore allow it to be banned. However, this is unlikely because it opens up the possibility of banning books like "Lolita" which are considered classic works. (I think the book sucks, but many people think it's a brilliant work.)
However, if that is the case, special laws do not need be put on the books - existant laws concerning child porn and obscenity should do. This is similar to the acts that try to make porn on the Internet illegal - if something is truly obscene it does not matter what medium it is distributed in, special circumstances don't apply to something stored in electronic format rather than on paper.
Frankly, I think we've become too civilized if this sort of thing is allowed to exist. Another poster made the comment that people who sell such things should be shot and I have a hard time arguing. There are some things that a society should have no tolerance for, and this is one of them.
It's an odd dichotomy, though. Our societal advancements have had both positive and negative effects -- things that once weren't acceptable, homosexuality for example, have become accepted in our society and that's (at least in my opinion) a Good Thing. The same laws and movements that have made homosexuality acceptable have inadvertantly opened the doors to loopholes for child porn and the KKK. (Although I believe the KKK should be allowed to voice their opinion, repugnant though it is. If it's voiced then people know it's out there and can react...) Also, we've only developed our modern concept of childhood in the last couple of hundred years. 200 years ago it was not uncommon for 10 year olds to work more than 40 hours a week and sleep in the same common room (possibly the same bed) that their parents had sex in. 14-year-old girls were married to 30-year-old men all of the time and no one blinked an eye. Today a 30-year-old who tried to date a 14-year-old would be strung up. (Which is also a Good Thing in my opinion.)
Frankly, I don't think legal means are the answer. I the only answer is to ostracize - or outright execute - people who perpetuate child porn. I know it sounds extreme, but any society that isn't capable of enforcing its values will not keep them. If the punishment is severe enough it will prevent people from doing it and to seek counciling.
Yeah, I have strong opinions about this...oh well.
I really think that this guy needs to either suck it up and use the right license or re-write the code that he needs. Most developers use the GPL so that other folks have to use the GPL if they utilize code from the GPL'ed program. If you don't like the GPL that's cool -- but you shouldn't benefit from the work of people who contributed to Free Software.
BSD Licenses do allow what he's talking about, so if there's code available under that license then fine.
I'll probably get flamed into eternity for this but oh well...no one argues that I should be able to co-opt proprietary code from Windows and GPL it. If you want to write proprietary code, then you shouldn't be able to draw on Free Software.
Something I'm not clear on -- are you wanting to make money at this project? Amazon isn't peculiar in wanting 55%, because large publishers still make money when they sell a book at 45% of the cover price. How is this possible? Economics of scale -- in most retail your costs for an item (as a manufacturer) should be in the neighborhood of 10% of the retail price. So, a $50.00 book should cost no more than $5.00 to produce. When you sell that book to Amazon (or whoever) you'll charge them $22.50 and make about $17.50 on that, out of which an author should get about $1.75 for each book...if you sell enough, you'll make money.
The odious thing about Amazon isn't their margin (or as Tony Soprano would have it, their vig) on the books, it's the time they take to pay. I've heard (rumor) that their standard is something like 90 days.
The question, to me, is why a geek would use a vanity press when they could simply write the book using DocBook, output to PostScript and zap that file to a local printer who could whip up 250 to 1,000 copies of the book and they could sell it off their own site. What other services (proofing, tech editing, typesetting, promotion) would you offer that they'd find useful?
Publishing is extremely expensive, you should probably at least talk to a few people who work in publishing to find out what you'd be getting into. It sounds like a nice idea, but you could easily lose a lot of money that you'd never recoup.
As a final thought, too, consider this -- what geek is willing and able to write a good book that can't find a publisher? Acquisition editors are climbing all over themselves trying to find geeks who can write because there's a serious shortage of technical writers -- at least in the Open Source fields... if you can't find a publisher for your book, it may be that your writing skills aren't up to par, or that the topic you're writing on is not popular or it's overpublished.
Well, hope that helps. Sorry to be negative, but I'd hate to see someone lose serious money on a whim...
Yeah, like LinuxMall and Ebiz - whoops, no more LinuxMall staff...
Sometimes, when a business starts to fail, it should just be allowed to fail. Ever heard of a Pyhrric (sp?) victory? The employees that built a company deserve to enjoy the success of a company -- if the management of a company can only make money by selling their staff down the river they should go down with the ship too.
Re:Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac?
on
Macs In Space II
·
· Score: 1
Posted by Nr9:
i have seen memory leaks, but never a crash due to out of memory errors. out of memory errors are very rare and dont exist when u allocate enough memory to your applications.
Re:Windows too Crash Prone? What about the Mac?
on
Macs In Space II
·
· Score: 1
Posted by Nr9:
why would it crash when it runs out of memory
Re:Mac OS9? Running a satelite? Hope it's osX
on
Macs In Space II
·
· Score: 1
Posted by Nr9:
since when is the OS "responsible" for that. its good to have protected memory, but OSes rarely crash on their own. if the application is coded correctly, the box won't crash. its ultimately the applciations responsibility in not crashing.
Slashdot Mirror
Posted by ReVeL8:
I'm actually studying a CS course abroad myself and i found it relativly easy to do so. I am european though (irish) which makes it easier as the EU have already put in place the ERASMUS program. A system which helps uni's, college's and students transfer and interact.
The college i study at is based in the south of france and is called the 'IUP of Avignon' www.iup.univ-avignon.fr. And is one of the fore fronters in voice recognition and natrual language research in the world
In regard to your slanderous comment (QUOTE 'I'm wondering: do people in other countries just not learn about computers?") Yes computers do actually exist in other countries and yes we do learn about them.
In france for example the level at my university is so high that in the SECOND year of the course the students are required to write their own MINI OS.(fork's,sig's,IPC,f-sys,buffer cache) and all topped off with a nice little shell.
If you want to travel abroad and find another uni to study (CS) at you will have to do a lot of communication work and a lot of HARD HARD ground work. Learning CS can be difficult enough at times but when it's through another language and nobody around you wants to talk one word of english the difficuilty factor is raised by another degree.
Posted by damiam:
I think what some people here are missing is that hydrogen has energy in and of itself. When you burn hydrogen, you don't just get back the energy it took to electrolyze it, you get back the chemical energy in the hydrogen itself, which is usually much greater.
Posted by mcarp:
Ok, I pretty much read most of these replies and it was pretty tuff to decide where to stick a comment. I've spent a great many man hours reading about alternative fuel and I have to say that most of what is addressed here is not new. Solar takes a long time to make very much useful electricty, uses up too many raw materials to manufacture collectors and the payback is long term with the collecting systems being expensive and large. Electricity can indeed by produced in what is now a well thought out and large scale industry but increased demand would be hugely more than we can muster and what about the batteries? Think about the waste byproducts from batteries, spent acid, lots of used up zink. Where are we going to put all those spent battery components? Will it cost too much to recycle such large quantities of batteries? Aren't vehicle batteries already a big mess? Multiply that by at least 10. Hydrogen from natural gas? Please, just burn the the gas as is. And i have tons of other discrepencies with the other alt sources mentioned. But here is the #1 question I ask all of you since no one has seemed to think about it. Where is all that water going to come from? Fresh water is cheep yes, but will it be cheep after its demand is doubled or worse? Some areas already have rain deficits, low water reserves and its still cheep water but how long will it be if we burn it all? The exhaust water vapour will be more than the exaust liquid so most of it will be evaproated away...ok so are we counting on it to rain more after we start using water as a fuel? Is that enough? Ok so what about using sea water? Pipe it in? Locate refineries and H2 plants on shores? Maybe... but at what expense? If we pipe it how much does that cost? Fresh water we cant afford to burn, sea water we cant afford to pipe or even refine. No sir. Hydrogen fuel is a long LONG way from being a useful alt fuel.
Posted by CommodoreKackner:
To C. Thomas,
I have a Perl-related query that only you can solve (you'll understand once I explain, it's about a script you authored). In order to save this thread from something off-topic, I request your e-mail address so that I may further detail the extent of my plans.
Posted by polar_bear:
Granted, when the economy gets tight it can be harder to find consulting gigs. It really all depends on how broad your skill set is and a lot of other factors. But, if you've worked a few years at $100 an hour you've probably been able to lay back enough to weather some hard times. Most consultants and freelancers of any type that are successful plan for hard times.
And the way I live isn't for everyone. Some people don't have the desire to wear multiple hats and hunt for work, they just want to let someone else do the planning and hope for the best. I wish them luck, but I don't have faith in that system for myself.
By the way, having a limited skill set is a sure way to find yourself flipping burgers. My father used to make a great living as a sign painter and "pinstriper" - painting designs on hot rod cars and such, and doing lettering and such on commercial trucks and vehicles. He had a great reputation and made around $35-$40 an hour when that was a lot of money...and got effectively put out of business when vinyl signs and such got popular. He still gets a little work here and there, but mostly he's scrambling for money and working a crappy full-time job with no security just to get by.
There are a lot of folks that read Slashdot that have the brains and skills to write their own ticket, though, if only they're willing to do so. Maybe you won't get rich overnight, but you can live well and enjoy what you do. If you don't enjoy what you do, why do it? You spend nearly a third of your waking hours working - if you're not doing something you enjoy and that you can be proud - then why bother?
Again, just my opinion. There's no one right way to live, but that's the right way for me.
Posted by polar_bear:
There's a lot of good advice being bandied about here, but it misses the bigger picture - depending on a large corporation for your living is a sketchy proposition at best. They have no interest in you, or your well-being. The bottom line is all-important - look how many companies are cutting staff not because they're unprofitable, but because they're just not profitable ENOUGH. The message is loud and clear - you are expendable. It's not about getting a job with a "reliable" company over a dot-com, because when times get tough you'll still be out of a job. Look at Intel, Cisco and the other companies that are ditching their employees right now.
Right now I work for myself, doing freelance writing and contract work. My goal is to find five to ten other folks who do the same kind of work that I do and form a company that works in the best interest of everyone in the "company" and shares the wealth. I think that in the "new" economy the people who are happy with their lives and careers are going to be the ones who stick with small companies that actually have an interest in taking care of their employees and don't have a desire to become the next Microsoft or Sun.
I think this is how a lot of Linux companies got started - but they got away from that model and are now paying the price. You hear a lot about how nervous people are about VA Linux or Red Hat, but no one is talking about how Slackware is struggling. Why not? I'd bet they still have a decent share of the market and the folks who work on Slackware are making a decent living. There's plenty of work in the Open Source space and Web consulting space for dozens or hundreds of small companies to make good livings - but I doubt that there's any room for a huge company that tries to be the next juggernaut corporation.
Just my 2 cents, though.
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
HERE,HERE I agree with you whole heartedly, I'm in the tax bracket if I had 2 kids I'd get all the FUCKING money back I gave the government. I could care less if a someone gets a million back, they might buy somemore gold plated geegaws for their corporate aircraft, which gives me and 300 more people money where I work at. And those communist rich bastards that say they dont want tax cut, if it werent for inheirtance and capitalism they'd be flipping burgers too. If they really believe thier tax money helps then they should request to get all of it back and give it to charity, the trickle down from government programs is only 30 cents on the dollar. Sure some private charity might take some off the top but they aint taking 70%!
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
One thing Utah does need more of is non-Chilis/TGIFridays/Bennigans/Whatever restaurants. man all states could live without that lol
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
well i wouldnt go anywhere that has no guns....im sure they passed the word on to the criminals not to posses guns too. recent reports from australia is that murder has went up 300%! since guns were turned in. most people out there live far away from anyone and thus have no police protection.
Posted by polar_bear:
I didn't see this in any other comments...
Radio stations typically use a hand-held "bulk eraser" that's basically a big magnet to wipe clean tapes and such. We had a used hard drive in the station that I bulk-erased and it certainly seemed to get rid of all the information - and it still worked. Had to reformat it, but it worked.
You can probably purchase a bulk eraser for around $100 or so.
Posted by polar_bear:
I couldn't hold out until the game "vow" after reading the "vow" for directors. What a load of crap. I can't imagine what kind of films that would produce, but I picture completely unwatchable art-house tripe that would bore anyone to tears who wasn't stoned out of their skull or high on their own self-importance. If a director is not an artist, what's the point?
Sure, there are plenty of movies that would benefit enormously by toning down some of the "forbidden" elements (or by not being made at all...) but I defy anyone to name any "classic" film that doesn't contains some of these elements. Under these guidelines, "The Godfather," "It's a Wonderful Life," "Star Wars," "Pulp Fiction," "Schindler's List" and countless other films would never have been made.
Glad to see this hasn't caught on in films. Let's hope that kind of thinking doesn't catch on in games either.
Posted by serpens:
It's not as though the Russians have been very consistent up to date with MIR as it is. Maybe it will land in the middle of China. Maybe even my backyard (that would be cool).
My guess is:
2001-03-22 14:38:22
Posted by polar_bear:
It probably isn't complete FUD, but if it's FUD then the people propigating it are likely the record companies -- not Napster.
Posted by Nr9:
apple pioneered the gui as we know it today.
Posted by Nr9:
xerox parc is not even close to what we have today.... today's GUIs are solely pioneered by Apple.
what jobs saw at xerox parc was basically just a terminal with random menus and buttons everywhere correlating to specfic commands.
its closer to most commandline interfaces than windows is to mac os or kde or gnome or eazel or be.
japanese wannabe traitors.. wtf... CHINA is traitor to itself... it kills its own culture under cultural revolution. if you want to find chinese culture, go to taiwan, not china... and what the fuck.. we dont fucking care about China... its a different place.. just because we came from then hundreds of years ago doesnt me we are them..... whens the last time someone said that humans are apes... we have a different language, different culture, and under the principle of self determination, we expect political sovereignty... unfortunately the traitor chinese people believe otherwise and they intimidate us so we have to fuck them up with our underground nuclear missiles... hahhahah beijing... you will die..... u atttack us.. your whole fucking country will be nuked. he's not a racist bastard.. you are. calling taiwanese japanese wannabe traitors... wtf.... ive talked with lost of chinese commie fucks and they all come from china and i have come to the conclusion that they are all fuckheads... its true.. like y ou.. robert li what kind of fucking name is it... u are supposed to spell ß? LEE, not LI.. fuck you... you are so dickless... china is shit.. you are cocky.. taiiwan isnt china.. never has been.. never will... we will first befriend the US to fuck you up,... then we will fuck up the US.
Posted by Kewlhandtek:
maybe now we can find out what is wrong with those guys that put coffee can exaust pipes, big spoilers and yellows stickers on thier honda civics and think they can beat a mustang
Posted by polar_bear:
I've never had cause to regret the First Amendment or the advances that computers have made in my lifetime...now I do.
It's possible that the Supreme Court could rule that this material appeals to "prurient interests" and has no artistic value and therefore allow it to be banned. However, this is unlikely because it opens up the possibility of banning books like "Lolita" which are considered classic works. (I think the book sucks, but many people think it's a brilliant work.)
However, if that is the case, special laws do not need be put on the books - existant laws concerning child porn and obscenity should do. This is similar to the acts that try to make porn on the Internet illegal - if something is truly obscene it does not matter what medium it is distributed in, special circumstances don't apply to something stored in electronic format rather than on paper.
Frankly, I think we've become too civilized if this sort of thing is allowed to exist. Another poster made the comment that people who sell such things should be shot and I have a hard time arguing. There are some things that a society should have no tolerance for, and this is one of them.
It's an odd dichotomy, though. Our societal advancements have had both positive and negative effects -- things that once weren't acceptable, homosexuality for example, have become accepted in our society and that's (at least in my opinion) a Good Thing. The same laws and movements that have made homosexuality acceptable have inadvertantly opened the doors to loopholes for child porn and the KKK. (Although I believe the KKK should be allowed to voice their opinion, repugnant though it is. If it's voiced then people know it's out there and can react...) Also, we've only developed our modern concept of childhood in the last couple of hundred years. 200 years ago it was not uncommon for 10 year olds to work more than 40 hours a week and sleep in the same common room (possibly the same bed) that their parents had sex in. 14-year-old girls were married to 30-year-old men all of the time and no one blinked an eye. Today a 30-year-old who tried to date a 14-year-old would be strung up. (Which is also a Good Thing in my opinion.)
Frankly, I don't think legal means are the answer. I the only answer is to ostracize - or outright execute - people who perpetuate child porn. I know it sounds extreme, but any society that isn't capable of enforcing its values will not keep them. If the punishment is severe enough it will prevent people from doing it and to seek counciling.
Yeah, I have strong opinions about this...oh well.
Posted by polar_bear:
Actually, it'd be frightfully easy -- just as easy as Pixar showing the wireframes and such for Woody and Buzz.
Posted by polar_bear:
I really think that this guy needs to either suck it up and use the right license or re-write the code that he needs. Most developers use the GPL so that other folks have to use the GPL if they utilize code from the GPL'ed program. If you don't like the GPL that's cool -- but you shouldn't benefit from the work of people who contributed to Free Software.
BSD Licenses do allow what he's talking about, so if there's code available under that license then fine.
I'll probably get flamed into eternity for this but oh well...no one argues that I should be able to co-opt proprietary code from Windows and GPL it. If you want to write proprietary code, then you shouldn't be able to draw on Free Software.
Posted by polar_bear:
Something I'm not clear on -- are you wanting to make money at this project? Amazon isn't peculiar in wanting 55%, because large publishers still make money when they sell a book at 45% of the cover price. How is this possible? Economics of scale -- in most retail your costs for an item (as a manufacturer) should be in the neighborhood of 10% of the retail price. So, a $50.00 book should cost no more than $5.00 to produce. When you sell that book to Amazon (or whoever) you'll charge them $22.50 and make about $17.50 on that, out of which an author should get about $1.75 for each book...if you sell enough, you'll make money.
The odious thing about Amazon isn't their margin (or as Tony Soprano would have it, their vig) on the books, it's the time they take to pay. I've heard (rumor) that their standard is something like 90 days.
The question, to me, is why a geek would use a vanity press when they could simply write the book using DocBook, output to PostScript and zap that file to a local printer who could whip up 250 to 1,000 copies of the book and they could sell it off their own site. What other services (proofing, tech editing, typesetting, promotion) would you offer that they'd find useful?
Publishing is extremely expensive, you should probably at least talk to a few people who work in publishing to find out what you'd be getting into. It sounds like a nice idea, but you could easily lose a lot of money that you'd never recoup.
As a final thought, too, consider this -- what geek is willing and able to write a good book that can't find a publisher? Acquisition editors are climbing all over themselves trying to find geeks who can write because there's a serious shortage of technical writers -- at least in the Open Source fields... if you can't find a publisher for your book, it may be that your writing skills aren't up to par, or that the topic you're writing on is not popular or it's overpublished.
Well, hope that helps. Sorry to be negative, but I'd hate to see someone lose serious money on a whim...
Posted by polar_bear:
Yeah, like LinuxMall and Ebiz - whoops, no more LinuxMall staff...
Sometimes, when a business starts to fail, it should just be allowed to fail. Ever heard of a Pyhrric (sp?) victory? The employees that built a company deserve to enjoy the success of a company -- if the management of a company can only make money by selling their staff down the river they should go down with the ship too.
Posted by Nr9:
i have seen memory leaks, but never a crash due to out of memory errors. out of memory errors are very rare and dont exist when u allocate enough memory to your applications.
Posted by Nr9:
why would it crash when it runs out of memory
Posted by Nr9:
since when is the OS "responsible" for that. its good to have protected memory, but OSes rarely crash on their own. if the application is coded correctly, the box won't crash. its ultimately the applciations responsibility in not crashing.