But I don't think that alone should belittle the success of Bill Gates, few people make it big without some help along the way. Bill Gates happened to know something about computers, happened to get his hands on a lucrative contract and most importantly, knew to throw everything into it, and how to milk it for all it was worth.
Professional and Server are slightly different. While yes, there's just a bunch of tweaking parameters in the registry, and some other parameters which control special licensing, at the simplest level there are packages which simply do not exist in Professional which exist in Server e.g. Active Directory, IIS, Message Queueing, stuff like that.
For the purpose of drivers and hardware support, yeah, they're identical.
BTW, some packages artificially impose licensing restrictions depending on whether you're running Server or Professional, e.g. Partition Magic. It won't touch a Win2k server partition unless you pay for their special Win2k server product... even though the filesystems are identical:-(
I have trouble believing the CDs are identical except for some product ID code. It would be a pain in the butt for Microsoft to code in all those stupid "if Server... " statements. They're running different packaging and printing different holograms on the CDs, they may as well put different data on them and not bother with all the development costs of a split install path.
I think as the Slashdot editors get lives, it gets more difficult for them to talk about computers.
BTW, Ecco makes good shoes without much break-in. I wear sneakers or even thick socks and sandals on aircraft. I don't do 1-2 day trips, so I don't worry about wearing a suit on an aircraft.
The physics of the two situations doesn't match up at all though. No two particles can occupy the same space at the same time, but every coin toss is independent of the previous one.
If you're flipping a million sided coin a million times and no two outcomes can be identical, then your results would diverge rather uniformily too.
It doesn't get wider, it shows all probable outcomes. Comparing the number of outcomes to the number of trials is akin to saying that since the width of the curve becomes absolutely "wider", representing an increasing number of outcomes, then the probability of a perfect result drops.
I think I see what you're saying, but it's rather obtuse. As N approaches infinity, the odds that there is not an infinitesimally small deviation from "perfection" drops to zero.
On the other hand, you could mathematically prove (convergence etc...) that an infinitesimally small deviation from perfection, is indeed a perfect result.
Looking for an integer value in a real number continuum is an irritating thing to do. All it really does is force you to pull out the annoying equations and deal with the mathematical proofs which lead to meaningful, although counterintuative results.
I agree with you that there are some engineering fruitcakes out there, but this may not be one of them.
A creative, educated, "non-expert" perspective in a field can sometimes be very valuable. For instance, journalists. In tech, we know they're often full of garbage, but they do say the odd thing, which when interpreted by somebody with a deeper technical understanding can be valuable.
Maybe a better example is the absurd blithering of a really bright first-year student.
You know, basic stats, binomial distribution, etc. Very simple stuff. Even with two coin tosses, you can immediately see that the odds of getting heads and tails is better than that of getting either both heads or both tails.... simply because there are two ways to get Heads and Tails, while only one way to get each of all heads or all tails.
Don't forget that it is also percieved as slow since just about any application anyone has seen for a desktop environment written in Java has a sluggish GUI.
Yeah, I know Java's strengths aren't in the Desktop arena, they're in development and the back-end.
They're still good high-quality audio recorders, but they're being quickly superceded by lossless digital solutions.
I've heard of radio stations using MDs to record phone conversations... I mean, if you're going to be interviewed on the phone, you'd receive a courier package with an MD recorder, you then conduct the interview on the phone, recording to the MD. You then return the MD, and the station has a high-quality audio of both sides of the conversation which they can play on the air.
Other applications I've heard of were bootlegging from rock concerts, stuff like that.
I'm not a pro sound engineer, and while I never believed what people have said about high bitrate MP3s in the past, listening to some very particular segments of guitar rifts a couple months ago, the artifacts are very, very evident. All the power gets sucked out, it just makes you think "wow, what's wrong with this guitar... oh wait, it's the recording..." A cassette tape, while hissy and noisy did a better job.
So I figure that anyone who does have a trained ear can probably not avoid hearing the difference between a high bitrate wav, a high bitrate badly recorded MP3, a properly recorded low bitrate MP3, a low bitrate wav, a high bitrate well recorded MP3 and so forth.
I've only noticed the problem in the high end though. If your hearing is shot, you might not pick it up. I can still hear the sync of a North American T.V., some people say they can't, so if that's any benchmark of high-frequency hearing, it may provide some explanation as to why some people can't hear the difference.
If you work with this stuff professionally, you should check out what those sites are saying: "Once the monies are received, AARC distributes the royalties to each artist and sound recording copyright owner it represents based on the participant's sales during the royalty year. So if a given artist's sales account for 3% of the total records sold that year by all claimants in its particular royalty subfund, they will get 3% of the royalties."
Yeah, it's a blurb about what they do, as opposed to what they actually may or may not do, but if you know otherwise, you should probably feed back on their site.
Here's some more text on it from the AHRA:
Section 1004, Subsection 3b : Digital Audio Recording Media
The royalty payment due under section 1003 for each digital audio recording medium imported into and distributed in the United States, or manufactured and distributed in the United States, shall be 3 percent of the transfer price. Only the first person to manufacture and distribute or import and distribute such medium shall be required to pay the royalty with respect to such medium.
I read "3 percent of the transfer price" as 3% of wholesale... which even for "data" CDs, is probably unnoticably low. Except for fancy packaging and a jewel case for prominent display where tapes used to occupy the shelves, I don't personally know of any difference between an "audio" CDR and a "data" CDR.
From their FAQ, they agree with what you're saying about analog media and computers. An inline D/A A/D convertor would probably make for a levy-immune copying machine.
In the end, I suppose you're right, the Canadian Act appears far more powerful... I think it was to be applied retroactively at retail... which is fiendish. The proposed levies were so high too that they would have crushed the CDR industry and closed a lot of businesses if they went through (retroactive!?).
Regarding the legitimacy of the tarrifs as applied in the U.S., it's all suspicious to me, but I don't know enough to have an opinion about it.
The Happy Birthday thing is still a little weird to me, even if the words are copyrighted, so are the words to any given song.
Oh I agree, it's a great movie, very good acting all around and a neat premise.
I've heard it dismissed as a an "Orwellian knock-off", but really, it is as original as it will get, Orwell got his ideas from somewhere didn't he?. If you haven't read 1984 or Brave New World, you'd probably walk out thinking that the movie is sheer genius, despite the cheezy gun kata and big-boss ending:-)
This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.
First, it's not a tax. It's a levy, tarrif or royalty, depending on who you talk to.
AHRA requires manufacturers of digital audio recorders and blank digital discs and tapes to pay royalties to the United States Copyright Office ("Copyright Office") for the benefit of eligible artists and sound recording copyright owners. This is to compensate artists and copyright owners for lost revenues because of the displaced sales caused by home taping.
I don't really understand this stuff myself, but just check out the websites. They have lots of info up there about what they're doing and why.
One thing I really don't understand, is why "Happy Birthday" can demand royalties direct through AOL/Time Warner, when systems like this are in place. Urban legend?
The company's "real" experts write the scripts which the support people execute. If you bottom out of the script, then the support goes freeform.
If you fight with the support person and they haven't executed their script, then their ass is on the line if you get to senior support people... who write the scripts... and it turns out you didn't have it plugged in.
When I did tech support I used to gauge people's knowledge by telling them what I'm going to have them do, before I tell them how to do it.
e.g. "Now we're going to check the event viewer... click Start..."
There are two typical responses:
"Yeah yeah, it's open."
"O.k., I've clicked Start"
Sometimes you get a twit who just gets confused, but then you know never to say anything technical again.
I personally hate tech support people who do this:
"O.k. Click Start"
"But what are we doing?"
"Are you going to listen to me or not!? Click Start"
"O.k. I've clicked Start"
"Click Settings"
"O.k. I've clicked Settings"
"..."
For technical end-users, it is irritating as hell to get treated like this. Helpdesk people should know better and listen to the frustration on the part of their customers rather than telling them to shut up.
I was fortunately in a position where I could do a lot of freeform technical support. I was the guy who got the call after the scripts failed and the technican screwed everything up by troubleshooting out of their scope. It wasn't out of the question for me to listen carefully to the customer's opinion, and I did it often. I also wrote or contributed to a lot of scripts.
What I hated to do was to go over the scripts and feed back on the technician who screwed up... You can't contact the technican directly because you don't want them to know who you are... the vengeful assholes out there have made life more difficult for everyone. So I'd have to call their pit bosses or team leaders. If their boss was good they'd see it as an opportunity to correct a problem. If their boss was bad, they'd see it as a bullet point for review time:-(
I've seen the movie, and while I'm not a martial artist, I used to do a bit.
Kata are used in the martial arts to build reflexes. The only practical point I could ever discern about them beyond that was that in a sparring match (or fight, if you're so-minded), you'll have it well-ingrained in your mind particular collections of patterns of attack, countermoves etc. I mean, they'll be in your muscle-memory, you won't have to think about it, just react. The downside of course being that if you're slow or not well practiced, you'll become predictable and poor execution will make you vulnerable
I was laughing at the gun kata because in the movie, they said they applied some statistics about gun fights and created a martial art around it. In my mind, it's not implausible, but what it really boils down to is something like:
"Ok, shoot here, then bend, twist, roll left and target his ankle."
"But master, he's open if I roll right"
"That's right, but the strength, precision and radius of the average shoulderblade will give you a 60% lower chance of being hit by rolling left. It may decrease your odds to hit him, but it is a statistically prudent manuver. Do not question the sacred gun kata."
"So you mean that the sound of my previous gunshot will just barely be registering with his nervous system, and he'll either jump or fall. If he falls, I'll be able to strike a lethal blow because I'm targeting the path of his fall... which will be where my mind sees his anlke?"
"No foolish student, it is a statistical fact, we trouble ourselves not with the matter of 'Why?'. A casino plays these games and will always win. Why should gun fights be any different?"
On the other hand, what's with the police gun training for stances, yells and steps?
The best thing I remember about BBSes was being able to get out and meet people, there was even the odd adult BBS (one without porn... and open enough that couples would hang around on.), people would be able to get together for dinner, picnics, all sorts of stuff.
The Internet killed those BBSes, so now for the mostpart, I can't meet the people I chat with or game with. That social scene died.
I rather hope that wireless networking can do something to replace it. Free high speed connectivity to your neighbours could make for some cool little communities. And by that I don't mean high-speed internet connectivity, just local stuff... like the camera some guy set up two houses over, or the communal MP3 collection, or the chat room. That'd be cool.
I've been toying with the idea of setting up one of these, a modern BBS-type thing. E.g. any connect attempt through port 80 is redirected to the BBS. Kind of a wireless community bulletin board. The "web" site could then hold all the info as to what the site is about, how to get into chats, online games, etc.
All sources of information are biased, you can't get away from it. All you can do is pick from multiple sources and decide for yourself what it all means.
I'd like a Western "global", secular, academiclly-slanted viewpoint on the modern history of the Middle East.
Hey, do you have a summary of this stuff with references? Even a good book? Something for us boobs who know nothing about the Middle East? Most of what I hear is from heavily biased sources, so I go to great lengths to ignore it... that practice, well, by definition makes me ignorant.
It would be nice if somebody put something together which explored the history, various biases and lies surrounding the issues (on all sides).
I know... nothing is devoid of bias, but even a 20-year old book would tell current events more accurately than the newspapers.
I am an environmentalist who does not believe in recycling (it is a complex, time consuming, inefficient and expensive process generally ignored by those in waste management. It will only become viable when we run so low on resources that it is cheaper to recycle old material than to use new material. In the short term, a much more efficient plan to make resources last as long as possible is to reduce overall waste through reuse, composting, and burning whatever can be burnt for fuel).
On that note, did anyone notice that "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" *in that order* changed when Coca Cola began exclusively using plastic bottles?
Slashdot Mirror
"...IBM's president John Opel, and Bill Gates' mother both served on the board of the United Way."
Random internet search on the subject:
http://ieee.cincinnati.fuse.net/reiman/01_1999.htm l
But I don't think that alone should belittle the success of Bill Gates, few people make it big without some help along the way. Bill Gates happened to know something about computers, happened to get his hands on a lucrative contract and most importantly, knew to throw everything into it, and how to milk it for all it was worth.
So you're saying that you wanted your robot to win the confrontation?
Professional and Server are slightly different. While yes, there's just a bunch of tweaking parameters in the registry, and some other parameters which control special licensing, at the simplest level there are packages which simply do not exist in Professional which exist in Server e.g. Active Directory, IIS, Message Queueing, stuff like that.
For the purpose of drivers and hardware support, yeah, they're identical.
BTW, some packages artificially impose licensing restrictions depending on whether you're running Server or Professional, e.g. Partition Magic. It won't touch a Win2k server partition unless you pay for their special Win2k server product... even though the filesystems are identical :-(
I have trouble believing the CDs are identical except for some product ID code. It would be a pain in the butt for Microsoft to code in all those stupid "if Server... " statements. They're running different packaging and printing different holograms on the CDs, they may as well put different data on them and not bother with all the development costs of a split install path.
I think as the Slashdot editors get lives, it gets more difficult for them to talk about computers.
BTW, Ecco makes good shoes without much break-in. I wear sneakers or even thick socks and sandals on aircraft. I don't do 1-2 day trips, so I don't worry about wearing a suit on an aircraft.
It's o.k. if you read it in a William Shatner voice.
The physics of the two situations doesn't match up at all though. No two particles can occupy the same space at the same time, but every coin toss is independent of the previous one.
If you're flipping a million sided coin a million times and no two outcomes can be identical, then your results would diverge rather uniformily too.
I'm leaning back towards math troll :-)
It doesn't get wider, it shows all probable outcomes. Comparing the number of outcomes to the number of trials is akin to saying that since the width of the curve becomes absolutely "wider", representing an increasing number of outcomes, then the probability of a perfect result drops.
I think I see what you're saying, but it's rather obtuse. As N approaches infinity, the odds that there is not an infinitesimally small deviation from "perfection" drops to zero.
On the other hand, you could mathematically prove (convergence etc...) that an infinitesimally small deviation from perfection, is indeed a perfect result.
Looking for an integer value in a real number continuum is an irritating thing to do. All it really does is force you to pull out the annoying equations and deal with the mathematical proofs which lead to meaningful, although counterintuative results.
In short, you're one sick puppy.
Did he misrepresent himself?
Did his joke go unnoticed?
I agree with you that there are some engineering fruitcakes out there, but this may not be one of them.
A creative, educated, "non-expert" perspective in a field can sometimes be very valuable. For instance, journalists. In tech, we know they're often full of garbage, but they do say the odd thing, which when interpreted by somebody with a deeper technical understanding can be valuable.
Maybe a better example is the absurd blithering of a really bright first-year student.
Ugh, step back from the equations and think about the basic principles.
Count, coutcomes (H=heads, T=tails)
N=1, {H}, {T}
N=2, {H,H}, {H,T}, {T,H}, {T,T}
Notice that for the sum of the outcomes, the probability of 50/50 is .5, a lopsided outcome (all heads/all tails) is .25.
N=3, {H,H,H}, {H,H,T}, {H,T,H}, {T,H,H}, {T,T,H}, {T,H,T}, {H,T,T}, {T,T,T}
You know, basic stats, binomial distribution, etc. Very simple stuff. Even with two coin tosses, you can immediately see that the odds of getting heads and tails is better than that of getting either both heads or both tails.... simply because there are two ways to get Heads and Tails, while only one way to get each of all heads or all tails.
1
1, 2, 1
1, 3, 3, 1
1, 4, 6, 4, 1
Hey, there's a demo: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/binom_demo. html
Don't forget that it is also percieved as slow since just about any application anyone has seen for a desktop environment written in Java has a sluggish GUI.
Yeah, I know Java's strengths aren't in the Desktop arena, they're in development and the back-end.
They're still good high-quality audio recorders, but they're being quickly superceded by lossless digital solutions.
I've heard of radio stations using MDs to record phone conversations... I mean, if you're going to be interviewed on the phone, you'd receive a courier package with an MD recorder, you then conduct the interview on the phone, recording to the MD. You then return the MD, and the station has a high-quality audio of both sides of the conversation which they can play on the air.
Other applications I've heard of were bootlegging from rock concerts, stuff like that.
There's filemon too, http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.s html
Sysinternals is cool.
Bah, there are an infinate number of unlucky sods who never existed, and you don't hear them complaining.
I'm not a pro sound engineer, and while I never believed what people have said about high bitrate MP3s in the past, listening to some very particular segments of guitar rifts a couple months ago, the artifacts are very, very evident. All the power gets sucked out, it just makes you think "wow, what's wrong with this guitar... oh wait, it's the recording..." A cassette tape, while hissy and noisy did a better job.
So I figure that anyone who does have a trained ear can probably not avoid hearing the difference between a high bitrate wav, a high bitrate badly recorded MP3, a properly recorded low bitrate MP3, a low bitrate wav, a high bitrate well recorded MP3 and so forth.
I've only noticed the problem in the high end though. If your hearing is shot, you might not pick it up. I can still hear the sync of a North American T.V., some people say they can't, so if that's any benchmark of high-frequency hearing, it may provide some explanation as to why some people can't hear the difference.
If you work with this stuff professionally, you should check out what those sites are saying: "Once the monies are received, AARC distributes the royalties to each artist and sound recording copyright owner it represents based on the participant's sales during the royalty year. So if a given artist's sales account for 3% of the total records sold that year by all claimants in its particular royalty subfund, they will get 3% of the royalties."
Yeah, it's a blurb about what they do, as opposed to what they actually may or may not do, but if you know otherwise, you should probably feed back on their site.
Here's some more text on it from the AHRA:
Section 1004, Subsection 3b : Digital Audio Recording Media
The royalty payment due under section 1003 for each digital audio recording medium imported into and distributed in the United States, or manufactured and distributed in the United States, shall be 3 percent of the transfer price. Only the first person to manufacture and distribute or import and distribute such medium shall be required to pay the royalty with respect to such medium.
I read "3 percent of the transfer price" as 3% of wholesale... which even for "data" CDs, is probably unnoticably low. Except for fancy packaging and a jewel case for prominent display where tapes used to occupy the shelves, I don't personally know of any difference between an "audio" CDR and a "data" CDR.
From their FAQ, they agree with what you're saying about analog media and computers. An inline D/A A/D convertor would probably make for a levy-immune copying machine.
In the end, I suppose you're right, the Canadian Act appears far more powerful... I think it was to be applied retroactively at retail... which is fiendish. The proposed levies were so high too that they would have crushed the CDR industry and closed a lot of businesses if they went through (retroactive!?).
Regarding the legitimacy of the tarrifs as applied in the U.S., it's all suspicious to me, but I don't know enough to have an opinion about it.
The Happy Birthday thing is still a little weird to me, even if the words are copyrighted, so are the words to any given song.
As for Perl, I agree wholeheartedly :-)
Oh I agree, it's a great movie, very good acting all around and a neat premise.
I've heard it dismissed as a an "Orwellian knock-off", but really, it is as original as it will get, Orwell got his ideas from somewhere didn't he?. If you haven't read 1984 or Brave New World, you'd probably walk out thinking that the movie is sheer genius, despite the cheezy gun kata and big-boss ending :-)
This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.
First, it's not a tax. It's a levy, tarrif or royalty, depending on who you talk to.
Second, it is imposed by international convention just about anywhere you would like to live. http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/resources/around_world. jsp. It is infact well-distributed around the world.
Third, they succeeded in imposing a very similar system in the U.S., it happened twelve years ago. The RIAA http://www.riaa.com/issues/licensing/default.asp is a member of the AARC, who admisters the royalties in the U.S. http://www.aarcroyalties.com/.
I don't really understand this stuff myself, but just check out the websites. They have lots of info up there about what they're doing and why.
One thing I really don't understand, is why "Happy Birthday" can demand royalties direct through AOL/Time Warner, when systems like this are in place. Urban legend?
The company's "real" experts write the scripts which the support people execute. If you bottom out of the script, then the support goes freeform.
If you fight with the support person and they haven't executed their script, then their ass is on the line if you get to senior support people... who write the scripts... and it turns out you didn't have it plugged in.
When I did tech support I used to gauge people's knowledge by telling them what I'm going to have them do, before I tell them how to do it.
e.g. "Now we're going to check the event viewer... click Start..."
There are two typical responses:
Sometimes you get a twit who just gets confused, but then you know never to say anything technical again.
I personally hate tech support people who do this:
"O.k. Click Start"
"But what are we doing?"
"Are you going to listen to me or not!? Click Start"
"O.k. I've clicked Start"
"Click Settings"
"O.k. I've clicked Settings"
"..."
For technical end-users, it is irritating as hell to get treated like this. Helpdesk people should know better and listen to the frustration on the part of their customers rather than telling them to shut up.
I was fortunately in a position where I could do a lot of freeform technical support. I was the guy who got the call after the scripts failed and the technican screwed everything up by troubleshooting out of their scope. It wasn't out of the question for me to listen carefully to the customer's opinion, and I did it often. I also wrote or contributed to a lot of scripts.
What I hated to do was to go over the scripts and feed back on the technician who screwed up... You can't contact the technican directly because you don't want them to know who you are... the vengeful assholes out there have made life more difficult for everyone. So I'd have to call their pit bosses or team leaders. If their boss was good they'd see it as an opportunity to correct a problem. If their boss was bad, they'd see it as a bullet point for review time :-(
I've seen the movie, and while I'm not a martial artist, I used to do a bit.
Kata are used in the martial arts to build reflexes. The only practical point I could ever discern about them beyond that was that in a sparring match (or fight, if you're so-minded), you'll have it well-ingrained in your mind particular collections of patterns of attack, countermoves etc. I mean, they'll be in your muscle-memory, you won't have to think about it, just react. The downside of course being that if you're slow or not well practiced, you'll become predictable and poor execution will make you vulnerable
I was laughing at the gun kata because in the movie, they said they applied some statistics about gun fights and created a martial art around it. In my mind, it's not implausible, but what it really boils down to is something like:
"Ok, shoot here, then bend, twist, roll left and target his ankle."
"But master, he's open if I roll right"
"That's right, but the strength, precision and radius of the average shoulderblade will give you a 60% lower chance of being hit by rolling left. It may decrease your odds to hit him, but it is a statistically prudent manuver. Do not question the sacred gun kata."
"So you mean that the sound of my previous gunshot will just barely be registering with his nervous system, and he'll either jump or fall. If he falls, I'll be able to strike a lethal blow because I'm targeting the path of his fall... which will be where my mind sees his anlke?"
"No foolish student, it is a statistical fact, we trouble ourselves not with the matter of 'Why?'. A casino plays these games and will always win. Why should gun fights be any different?"
On the other hand, what's with the police gun training for stances, yells and steps?
That reach doesn't replace the BBS.
The best thing I remember about BBSes was being able to get out and meet people, there was even the odd adult BBS (one without porn... and open enough that couples would hang around on.), people would be able to get together for dinner, picnics, all sorts of stuff.
The Internet killed those BBSes, so now for the mostpart, I can't meet the people I chat with or game with. That social scene died.
I rather hope that wireless networking can do something to replace it. Free high speed connectivity to your neighbours could make for some cool little communities. And by that I don't mean high-speed internet connectivity, just local stuff... like the camera some guy set up two houses over, or the communal MP3 collection, or the chat room. That'd be cool.
I've been toying with the idea of setting up one of these, a modern BBS-type thing. E.g. any connect attempt through port 80 is redirected to the BBS. Kind of a wireless community bulletin board. The "web" site could then hold all the info as to what the site is about, how to get into chats, online games, etc.
"I can't see a larger hazard than a fully opened newspaper in the passenger seat."
That's either a horrible overstatement, or a slight pun on the word "see"
All sources of information are biased, you can't get away from it. All you can do is pick from multiple sources and decide for yourself what it all means.
I'd like a Western "global", secular, academiclly-slanted viewpoint on the modern history of the Middle East.
Shudder...
Hey, do you have a summary of this stuff with references? Even a good book? Something for us boobs who know nothing about the Middle East? Most of what I hear is from heavily biased sources, so I go to great lengths to ignore it... that practice, well, by definition makes me ignorant.
It would be nice if somebody put something together which explored the history, various biases and lies surrounding the issues (on all sides).
I know... nothing is devoid of bias, but even a 20-year old book would tell current events more accurately than the newspapers.
On that note, did anyone notice that "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" *in that order* changed when Coca Cola began exclusively using plastic bottles?
Now it's "Recycle, Reduce, Reuse".