For-profit companies should be managed toward maximizing shareholder returns. This pursuit is a very tricky balancing act, and the companies that succeed will and should be the ones that survive.
Donations to such companies would inject cash without providing incentives to become more efficient and productive -- in fact, it could well be a disincentive. And donations in no way help a company measure results or understand how to build and market successful products. Those benefits come from offering a product and quantifying its value and demand by revenue.
I'm all for donating to Open Source projects and other non-profit enterprises, but once you start asking for donations to a for-profit company, you're advertising your imminent doom.
I'm afraid donations to Mandrake may be counterproductive to the company, the industry, and even the person who's donating, since one indirect result is eventually likely to be a Dead Company who cannot pursue the activities you chose to use your cash to promote.
As cool as huge storage for MP3s is, I hope manufacturers don't continue to ignore the analog parts of their MP3 players. Most portable players have sound that just sucks. The Intel Pocket Concert is the only exception I've ever heard, and even it could use some improvement.
The point is, MP3s can sound really nice when you use a good DAC and headphone amplifier. Even highly integrated versions of these components can add a few bucks to a player -- but why not offer customers an option to step up the sound quality of all their MP3s, no matter what the bitrate?
It won't take much work to produce a client better than the current Napster version.
Napster really looks thrown together in a rush. Bugs everywhere in the client. And of course their servers aren't scaling to meet the enormous demand. Why does this same story have to get repeated again and again and again?
My best free tip for the people working day and night on improving Napster: your software guarantees propagation of incomplete MP3s. Fix that by keeping partial downloads off to the side in a private directory until they finish.
...I do remember lying in bed in my friend's house in Barrington, RI and groggily coming to the realization it was exactly 12:34pm on May 6, 1978. (12:34, 5/6/78).
No! As I understand it, the goal of the SETI client isn't to prove a signal, only to attract attention to a slice of data.
Your own statement explains the flaw in your position that SETI shouldn't be opened. You said: Imagine if it is opened up and a signal is found. It will be processed, double checked and checked again. But when they announce it, there will be a large number of people (and scientists) who, for whatever reason, will refuse to believe it.
This is exactly why a faster (even possibly flawed) new algorithm might be helpful. The original data will always be preserved safely and re-examined with multiple algorithms once a signal is claimed to be found.
I can see two drawbacks to opening SETI:
1. The increased potential for a flood of malicious or honest-error false positives to overwhelm the process for reviewing the original data;
2. The possibility of false negatives, as discussed in another thread on this subject.
But false positives, at least in reasonable numbers, are hardly a reason not to open SETI.
While I applaud Jane's and any reporter's going far afield to collect as many facts and opinions as possible, there's a caveat to such methods. Reading audiences expect the reporter to organize and write up the information in a coherent and intelligible way. There's a fine line between being open to information regardless of its source, and on the other hand accepting everything uncritically. Paraphrasing the old chestnut, their minds shouldn't be so wide open that their brains fall out.
Perhaps Katz's insight is really that skills required of journalists are changing. What constitutes a well-researched and informative story remains relatively constant.
In this sense, journalism is a little like democracy as opposed to government by direct participation. Readers vote for journalists by buying (or clicking on) their output, and among their other duties, journalists function as proxies for their audiences.
Reading/. is always interesting and thought-provoking, but I can't afford the time to analyze every issue of the day in as much detail and depth as participants here offer. Once you're open to multiple points of view, most issues are multifaceted and chaotically complex. I will continue to seek media whose reporters and editors I can trust to be responsible and who offer a well-ordered, well-presented version of the truth.
I share the opinion that Bladeenc's sound quality is not up to par for my preferred bit rate (192K), so I installed notlame to replace bladeenc in grip. In a few weeks I've built myself a 1500-song archive with the benefits of both worlds: convenience with good sound quality.
Slashdot Mirror
For-profit companies should be managed toward maximizing shareholder returns. This pursuit is a very tricky balancing act, and the companies that succeed will and should be the ones that survive.
Donations to such companies would inject cash without providing incentives to become more efficient and productive -- in fact, it could well be a disincentive. And donations in no way help a company measure results or understand how to build and market successful products. Those benefits come from offering a product and quantifying its value and demand by revenue.
I'm all for donating to Open Source projects and other non-profit enterprises, but once you start asking for donations to a for-profit company, you're advertising your imminent doom.
I'm afraid donations to Mandrake may be counterproductive to the company, the industry, and even the person who's donating, since one indirect result is eventually likely to be a Dead Company who cannot pursue the activities you chose to use your cash to promote.
-Standfast.
Right on!
Junky digital camera lenses are precisely analogous to MP3 player analog circuits. Nice insight.
-David.
As cool as huge storage for MP3s is, I hope manufacturers don't continue to ignore the analog parts of their MP3 players. Most portable players have sound that just sucks. The Intel Pocket Concert is the only exception I've ever heard, and even it could use some improvement.
The point is, MP3s can sound really nice when you use a good DAC and headphone amplifier. Even highly integrated versions of these components can add a few bucks to a player -- but why not offer customers an option to step up the sound quality of all their MP3s, no matter what the bitrate?
-David.
I've run Apache successfully on Win2K, and indeed I know quite a few people who do.
But remember Solaris isn't a free OS either, and who knows how many thousands of Apache servers are running on Solaris???
Keep in mind: Microsoft isn't the only non-free OS company!!!
-David.
Another memorable character in Madeline Kahn's pantheon was Miss Trixie Delight, in Paper Moon (1973).
It won't take much work to produce a client better than the current Napster version.
Napster really looks thrown together in a rush. Bugs everywhere in the client. And of course their servers aren't scaling to meet the enormous demand. Why does this same story have to get repeated again and again and again?
My best free tip for the people working day and night on improving Napster: your software guarantees propagation of incomplete MP3s. Fix that by keeping partial downloads off to the side in a private directory until they finish.
Thanks.
...I do remember lying in bed in my friend's house in Barrington, RI and groggily coming to the realization it was exactly 12:34pm on May 6, 1978. (12:34, 5/6/78).
As if it mattered to anyone but me!
-David.
The SETI client isn't mission critical. Its job is only to attract attention to certain slices of the raw data.
-David.
I was planning to make this point. Thank you! Whether or not it is open-sourced, SETI should not be a contest.
-David.
No! As I understand it, the goal of the SETI client isn't to prove a signal, only to attract attention to a slice of data.
Your own statement explains the flaw in your position that SETI shouldn't be opened. You said: Imagine if it is opened up and a signal is found. It will be processed, double checked and checked again. But when they announce it, there will be a large number of people (and scientists) who, for whatever reason, will refuse to believe it.
This is exactly why a faster (even possibly flawed) new algorithm might be helpful. The original data will always be preserved safely and re-examined with multiple algorithms once a signal is claimed to be found.
I can see two drawbacks to opening SETI:
1. The increased potential for a flood of malicious or honest-error false positives to overwhelm the process for reviewing the original data;
2. The possibility of false negatives, as discussed in another thread on this subject.
But false positives, at least in reasonable numbers, are hardly a reason not to open SETI.
-David.
While I applaud Jane's and any reporter's going far afield to collect as many facts and opinions as possible, there's a caveat to such methods. Reading audiences expect the reporter to organize and write up the information in a coherent and intelligible way. There's a fine line between being open to information regardless of its source, and on the other hand accepting everything uncritically. Paraphrasing the old chestnut, their minds shouldn't be so wide open that their brains fall out.
/. is always interesting and thought-provoking, but I can't afford the time to analyze every issue of the day in as much detail and depth as participants here offer. Once you're open to multiple points of view, most issues are multifaceted and chaotically complex. I will continue to seek media whose reporters and editors I can trust to be responsible and who offer a well-ordered, well-presented version of the truth.
Perhaps Katz's insight is really that skills required of journalists are changing. What constitutes a well-researched and informative story remains relatively constant.
In this sense, journalism is a little like democracy as opposed to government by direct participation. Readers vote for journalists by buying (or clicking on) their output, and among their other duties, journalists function as proxies for their audiences.
Reading
-Standfast.
I share the opinion that Bladeenc's sound quality is not up to par for my preferred bit rate (192K), so I installed notlame to replace bladeenc in grip. In a few weeks I've built myself a 1500-song archive with the benefits of both worlds: convenience with good sound quality.
But cdparanoia is too slow!!
-Standfast
Are you saying "You'll have the 'baby batter' on the brain"? "It's like going out with a loaded gun!!"