Besides, people like you who aren't interested in doing something geeky simply because it's possible really need not bother commenting on stories like this. It would make everyone's life a little more pleasant.
If you dont work in finished goods (ie, somthing that you can hold or touch) then why are you getting paid? By your own value system you dont produce anything.
Many people, perhaps even most people, actually make a living performing services. Perhaps you should consider that what you're doing should be a service, not a product.
Intellectual property used to be a very very tiny segment of the economy, comprised mostly of authors. Even musicians used to provide a service, not a product.
Nowadays, there's intellectual property. So no longer do you have to perform services, you just have to perform the service once, record it, and voila! Free money forever! It comes as no surprise to me that this oppressive legal concept is starting to chafe on consumers and the economy.
It's not sustainable. There was a world for you before intellectual property, and there will be a world for you afterwards.
Speaking as someone who works in the oil and gas industry, I can say without hesitation that this is untrue. Peak oil has been looming for the last 10 years at least, yet it keeps being pushed ahead by improvements in recovery technology. This trend does not show any sign of slowing, at the moment. Remember, an average oil reservoir still has 85% of its original oil still there. Recovery factors these days have grown from 10-15% to 20-25% and rising. Yes, it is more costly to get more than 10-15% out of an oil reservoir, and prices will continue to go up as the cost of production goes up. But peak production? Only if people stop buying gasoline due to the prices. Good luck on that.
I'm just curious, do you have any idea how much data 1 Terabyte is? Are you suggesting that he PRINT it?
Let's say for the sake of argument that all 256 bytes can be printed as a visibly distinguishable character, or that he's got 1TB of plaintext. Also assume you can fit 10,000 characters on a 8 1/2 by 11 page.
You can fit 10^4 bytes per page, and you need to print 10^12 bytes (I know, it's actually 2^120, but that needlessly complicates the math, so shush)
That means you will need 10^12 bytes / 10^4 bytes/page = 10^8 pages.
One hundred million pages. Assuming he has a good laser printer with infinite toner, let's say he can print 60 ppm or one page per second. It would take one hundred million seconds to print the data, which is 1157 days, or a little over 3 years.
Given that he generates 1TB per month, I think this backup plan would probably become the top agenda item of most of the anti-deforestation groups out there.
disguising a coke can that looks just like the innocent 'outgoing call only + gps' with a 'bi-directional + gps + other nasty goodies' can
"Uh, sir. Your coke can is ringing."
"Hello? Oh, hi Osama. No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you any of our secret plans. Thanks for calling, though."... I think you meant a phone that can connect to numbers other than Coke's prize center, not bi-directional.
A sharp, blind corner in a heavily populated area that one or two people a day speed around is a LOT more dangerous than a 55 to 35 transition coming off a major highway, but guess where the police will set up their speed traps and speed cameras?
Likewise, History will look back upon the conflict in Iraq as what happens now, and in the future. Will it actually become a successful democracy? If so, the war will look like a great thing 20 years from now.
The ends do not justify the means. Not now, not in 20 years. Falsely accusing a country of various crimes in order to invade and then rebuild them in your own image is abhorrent.
It may well be that Iraq is better off with a democracy and free-market economy, but aside from the Iraqis themselves, it's not anyone's right to make such a decision. It doesn't matter how you slice it, the world's most powerful military superpower unilaterally invading and occupying a soverign nation outside the scope of major international agreements is an extremely dangerous precedent, it drastically increases instability in the region, and it goes against everything the USA claims to stand for.
If by reliable components you mean reliable powersupplies, there are a few brands which are well known to be high quality and reliable.
Antec is considered to be the top end for reliability and performance. They contain seperate transformers for the different voltage rails. I have 3 Antec powersupplies in my computers. All have worked great.
Enermax is another maker of very beefy powersupplies. I've got one and haven't had a problem with it.
There's bad news, though. 50% premium? No. Try 200%, if you're used to those shitty $30 powersupplies. A 380W Antec will set you back somewhere in the region of $90. It's worth it, though. Cooler powersupply, cooler system, increased stability due to lower temperature and solid voltage.
Some reviews at Tech-report and AnandTech should give you some baselines to look at.
I only know of one or two dedicated hardware players capable of playing Ogg files.
Not trying to shoot down the rest of your post, but:
All of iRiver's iHP series hard-disk players, and many of their iFP series flash players support Vorbis. I have an iHP-120 and it works flawlessly and transparently with my Ogg Vorbis files. The Neuros line also supports Vorbis. The Rio Karma supports Ogg Vorbis as well. There are plenty of smaller manufacturers out there also creating Vorbis-capable players, but I won't bore you with that list. The three aformentioned makers are the big ones. Even with those 3 companies, that's quite a bit more than just one or two players.
Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice.
That's not the answer to that one at all. The reason Linux can get away with this and Microsoft can't is because Microsoft is legally considered a monopoly, and Linux isn't. A monopolist has to live up to much higher standards than the average company. One of those standards is giving fair opportunity to your competitors products. If that means you get in trouble for bundling your own products with your operating system, tough. "With great power comes great responsibility."
No, actually. Microscopes (in the traditional sense of the word) are optical devices. As hard as it is to believe in this day and age, most prisms and lenses don't require electricity.
It is a new bug in 0.9. I have both versions. I'm using 0.8 now. I don't know what people were babbling about 0.9 being more stable and solid, I found it to be buggy and broken.
I keep all my versions of Firewhatever around, since most of them are broken in one way or another. Although admittedly 0.8 is one of the most stable versions so far.
Re:You changed formats and didn't bother to test i
on
eFax Hell?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That may be your optimal world, but it's not realistic.
Garbage-in, Garbage-out. The software cannot think of every possible error condition or mistake. Trying to do so like all the shitty Microsoft products do and lulling people into a false sense of security will turn out much worse than keeping them on their toes, never entirely trusting the software.
The engineers at my company always test their results. Always. No matter how advanced the software becomes, they will always test their results. Because it's very damn important that they're right. Important enough that they will always check. Period.
It is not the responsibility of the software to do your job for you.
Now, one could argue that it *IS* still the responsibility of eFax, if you had some sort of agreement with them. Any sort of SLA or contract, such that you were outsourcing this to them. In that case, eFax should be vetting every fax they receive by an actual human being. It would be trivial to glance at the phone numbers being sent to, the first few pages of a fax to make sure they aren't spewing garbage, and various other simple checks.
Trusting the software to do it is absolutely not the right way to do it. It will never be as accurate as a human. Humans have reasoning and logic. Software only has logic. No amount of logic will make something foolproof. Until someone invents a decent artificial intelligence that does bring some reasoning into the equation, that is the way it will remain.
Monitor manufacturers seem to have abolished this ridiculous and pointless practice around the time of SVGA.
LCD and laptop manufacturers, on the other hand, seem completely enamoured with the confusing and impossible-to-compare names. Now, they seem to be testing the waters with calling it by 'megapixels' instead. This makes sense with digital cameras, as they all share a common aspect ratio. It does not make sense with displays. Not that that will stop them.
What application requires that kind of pixel density, by the way?
Congratulations on following the link:
...it is aimed at the professional imaging market where analysis of high-resolution imagery is key. You know the stuff. Satellite reconnaissance, space exploration, CAD, GIS, medical/science imaging, and so on.
Rental companies figured out several solutions to that problem many decades ago. a) Demand a deposit. b) Collect information on the renter so that you may ruin their credit at will.
And yes, even video rental stores run by people like this guy are considered quite authoritative sources by credit companies.
You changed formats and didn't bother to test it
on
eFax Hell?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
That's why businesses have policies, procedures, rules, and those sorts of things. I realize they're no fun, but they prevent shit like that from happening.
Was your switch to eFax just a whim too? I certainly hope not. Was the first thing you sent through it a full-scale mailing to all your clients? I certainly hope not.
Blaming and dumping eFax is not the solution here. You should've tested your change in procedure. They worked fine with the old procedure. If your your office building burned down, would you move all 50 people back to your company's old 4-person office because it never had that problem?
Yours is an excuse used by below-average developers who never truly learnt their craft AND do not have enough self-esteem to stand up to unreasonable requests
It only takes the latter. The former is pretty much irrelevant in this case. If you're being asked to do much in too little time (high-priority, near-deadline) but can't lessen the requirements, then good programmer or shitty programmer, you're going to end up with numerous shitty products and that's all there is to it.
It's intentional. They aren't interested in creating a community. They want you stuck on their teat (provided you're paying them $$$ for the priviledge). This is pretty clear if you've ever heard them talk about their Shared Source license.
The primary purpose of the shared source program is to let big companies like Compaq, Dell, Sony, et al. have the source code so they can integrate their user-friendly-ware more tightly. It is also to generate a limited sense of goodwill in governments and regulatory bodies who see this sort of thing and are more likely to believe Microsoft when they say they are open to competition and all those other things they love so much.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I program for a living. Myself and everyone in my office (more than 30 other people) write code in a white-on-black IDE. For a reason. Staring at a bright white screen causes serious eyestain during the course of a day.
Black-on-white is a ridiculous Windows invention designed to make your screen look like paper. Reassuring for the casual user, horrendous for anyone who looks at a screen for long periods of time.
All user-friendly websites are white-on-black. In fact, I prefer gray-on-black, as it is even easier on the eyes. Blinding white is the last thing I want to see.
Re:How does this differ from other efforts?
on
Linux in Iraq
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
I think the OP is objecting to the belief that a) the bidding process was unfair and unlikely to result in a good price. b) the companies receiving the money for reconstruction are not Iraqi companies and c) the money is coming out of Iraq and going into the liberating nations.
If you don't understand why bombing and occupying a country, then taking all their money back to your homeland and leaving them billions in debt is so crippling, I suggest you take some economics classes. And if leaving Iraq with a crippling debt doesn't bother you, then take some 20th century history classes too.
Slashdot Mirror
perhaps he already has a USB drive.
Besides, people like you who aren't interested in doing something geeky simply because it's possible really need not bother commenting on stories like this. It would make everyone's life a little more pleasant.
If you dont work in finished goods (ie, somthing that you can hold or touch) then why are you getting paid? By your own value system you dont produce anything.
Many people, perhaps even most people, actually make a living performing services. Perhaps you should consider that what you're doing should be a service, not a product.
Intellectual property used to be a very very tiny segment of the economy, comprised mostly of authors. Even musicians used to provide a service, not a product.
Nowadays, there's intellectual property. So no longer do you have to perform services, you just have to perform the service once, record it, and voila! Free money forever! It comes as no surprise to me that this oppressive legal concept is starting to chafe on consumers and the economy.
It's not sustainable. There was a world for you before intellectual property, and there will be a world for you afterwards.
We have passed the peak of oil production
Speaking as someone who works in the oil and gas industry, I can say without hesitation that this is untrue. Peak oil has been looming for the last 10 years at least, yet it keeps being pushed ahead by improvements in recovery technology. This trend does not show any sign of slowing, at the moment. Remember, an average oil reservoir still has 85% of its original oil still there. Recovery factors these days have grown from 10-15% to 20-25% and rising. Yes, it is more costly to get more than 10-15% out of an oil reservoir, and prices will continue to go up as the cost of production goes up. But peak production? Only if people stop buying gasoline due to the prices. Good luck on that.
I'm just curious, do you have any idea how much data 1 Terabyte is? Are you suggesting that he PRINT it?
Let's say for the sake of argument that all 256 bytes can be printed as a visibly distinguishable character, or that he's got 1TB of plaintext. Also assume you can fit 10,000 characters on a 8 1/2 by 11 page.
You can fit 10^4 bytes per page, and you need to print 10^12 bytes (I know, it's actually 2^120, but that needlessly complicates the math, so shush)
That means you will need 10^12 bytes / 10^4 bytes/page = 10^8 pages.
One hundred million pages. Assuming he has a good laser printer with infinite toner, let's say he can print 60 ppm or one page per second. It would take one hundred million seconds to print the data, which is 1157 days, or a little over 3 years.
Given that he generates 1TB per month, I think this backup plan would probably become the top agenda item of most of the anti-deforestation groups out there.
disguising a coke can that looks just like the innocent 'outgoing call only + gps' with a 'bi-directional + gps + other nasty goodies' can
... I think you meant a phone that can connect to numbers other than Coke's prize center, not bi-directional.
"Uh, sir. Your coke can is ringing."
"Hello? Oh, hi Osama. No, I'm sorry, I can't tell you any of our secret plans. Thanks for calling, though."
A sharp, blind corner in a heavily populated area that one or two people a day speed around is a LOT more dangerous than a 55 to 35 transition coming off a major highway, but guess where the police will set up their speed traps and speed cameras?
Quantity and quality are not the same thing.
I get my prices from Canada. Sorry, I guess I should've mentioned that.
There's a nifty feature in Windows. It's called changing the icon and name of shortcuts.
As long as it has a blue E for an icon, they'll see Firefox as a faster, less annoying version of IE. Install an IE skin if you're really worried.
Likewise, History will look back upon the conflict in Iraq as what happens now, and in the future. Will it actually become a successful democracy? If so, the war will look like a great thing 20 years from now.
The ends do not justify the means. Not now, not in 20 years. Falsely accusing a country of various crimes in order to invade and then rebuild them in your own image is abhorrent.
It may well be that Iraq is better off with a democracy and free-market economy, but aside from the Iraqis themselves, it's not anyone's right to make such a decision. It doesn't matter how you slice it, the world's most powerful military superpower unilaterally invading and occupying a soverign nation outside the scope of major international agreements is an extremely dangerous precedent, it drastically increases instability in the region, and it goes against everything the USA claims to stand for.
If by reliable components you mean reliable powersupplies, there are a few brands which are well known to be high quality and reliable.
Antec is considered to be the top end for reliability and performance. They contain seperate transformers for the different voltage rails. I have 3 Antec powersupplies in my computers. All have worked great.
Enermax is another maker of very beefy powersupplies. I've got one and haven't had a problem with it.
There's bad news, though. 50% premium? No. Try 200%, if you're used to those shitty $30 powersupplies. A 380W Antec will set you back somewhere in the region of $90. It's worth it, though. Cooler powersupply, cooler system, increased stability due to lower temperature and solid voltage.
Some reviews at Tech-report and AnandTech should give you some baselines to look at.
I only know of one or two dedicated hardware players capable of playing Ogg files.
Not trying to shoot down the rest of your post, but:
All of iRiver's iHP series hard-disk players, and many of their iFP series flash players support Vorbis. I have an iHP-120 and it works flawlessly and transparently with my Ogg Vorbis files. The Neuros line also supports Vorbis. The Rio Karma supports Ogg Vorbis as well. There are plenty of smaller manufacturers out there also creating Vorbis-capable players, but I won't bore you with that list. The three aformentioned makers are the big ones. Even with those 3 companies, that's quite a bit more than just one or two players.
Microsoft reps sometimes point to Linux distributions and ask why they can get away with shipping stacks and stacks of applications without getting in trouble. The answer to that one, of course, is that the Linux distributions give you a choice.
That's not the answer to that one at all. The reason Linux can get away with this and Microsoft can't is because Microsoft is legally considered a monopoly, and Linux isn't. A monopolist has to live up to much higher standards than the average company. One of those standards is giving fair opportunity to your competitors products. If that means you get in trouble for bundling your own products with your operating system, tough. "With great power comes great responsibility."
No, actually. Microscopes (in the traditional sense of the word) are optical devices. As hard as it is to believe in this day and age, most prisms and lenses don't require electricity.
It is a new bug in 0.9. I have both versions. I'm using 0.8 now. I don't know what people were babbling about 0.9 being more stable and solid, I found it to be buggy and broken.
I keep all my versions of Firewhatever around, since most of them are broken in one way or another. Although admittedly 0.8 is one of the most stable versions so far.
That may be your optimal world, but it's not realistic.
Garbage-in, Garbage-out. The software cannot think of every possible error condition or mistake. Trying to do so like all the shitty Microsoft products do and lulling people into a false sense of security will turn out much worse than keeping them on their toes, never entirely trusting the software.
The engineers at my company always test their results. Always. No matter how advanced the software becomes, they will always test their results. Because it's very damn important that they're right. Important enough that they will always check. Period.
It is not the responsibility of the software to do your job for you.
Now, one could argue that it *IS* still the responsibility of eFax, if you had some sort of agreement with them. Any sort of SLA or contract, such that you were outsourcing this to them. In that case, eFax should be vetting every fax they receive by an actual human being. It would be trivial to glance at the phone numbers being sent to, the first few pages of a fax to make sure they aren't spewing garbage, and various other simple checks.
Trusting the software to do it is absolutely not the right way to do it. It will never be as accurate as a human. Humans have reasoning and logic. Software only has logic. No amount of logic will make something foolproof. Until someone invents a decent artificial intelligence that does bring some reasoning into the equation, that is the way it will remain.
Thank you.
Monitor manufacturers seem to have abolished this ridiculous and pointless practice around the time of SVGA.
LCD and laptop manufacturers, on the other hand, seem completely enamoured with the confusing and impossible-to-compare names. Now, they seem to be testing the waters with calling it by 'megapixels' instead. This makes sense with digital cameras, as they all share a common aspect ratio. It does not make sense with displays. Not that that will stop them.
Congratulations on following the link:
Rental companies figured out several solutions to that problem many decades ago. a) Demand a deposit. b) Collect information on the renter so that you may ruin their credit at will.
And yes, even video rental stores run by people like this guy are considered quite authoritative sources by credit companies.
That's why businesses have policies, procedures, rules, and those sorts of things. I realize they're no fun, but they prevent shit like that from happening.
Was your switch to eFax just a whim too? I certainly hope not. Was the first thing you sent through it a full-scale mailing to all your clients? I certainly hope not.
Blaming and dumping eFax is not the solution here. You should've tested your change in procedure. They worked fine with the old procedure. If your your office building burned down, would you move all 50 people back to your company's old 4-person office because it never had that problem?
Yours is an excuse used by below-average developers who never truly learnt their craft AND do not have enough self-esteem to stand up to unreasonable requests
It only takes the latter. The former is pretty much irrelevant in this case. If you're being asked to do much in too little time (high-priority, near-deadline) but can't lessen the requirements, then good programmer or shitty programmer, you're going to end up with numerous shitty products and that's all there is to it.
Oh look! A co-worker! How's it going?
It's intentional. They aren't interested in creating a community. They want you stuck on their teat (provided you're paying them $$$ for the priviledge). This is pretty clear if you've ever heard them talk about their Shared Source license.
The primary purpose of the shared source program is to let big companies like Compaq, Dell, Sony, et al. have the source code so they can integrate their user-friendly-ware more tightly. It is also to generate a limited sense of goodwill in governments and regulatory bodies who see this sort of thing and are more likely to believe Microsoft when they say they are open to competition and all those other things they love so much.
I've gotta say, I've listened to all the actor's commentary on the Firefly DVD series, and I'll be damned if that's not Alan Tudyk ("Wash").
"Space-torture-plex-thingy"? "If Nathan Fillion was any more charming he could turn a straight man gay. I'm just sayin' is all."?
Who else could it be?
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I program for a living. Myself and everyone in my office (more than 30 other people) write code in a white-on-black IDE. For a reason. Staring at a bright white screen causes serious eyestain during the course of a day.
Black-on-white is a ridiculous Windows invention designed to make your screen look like paper. Reassuring for the casual user, horrendous for anyone who looks at a screen for long periods of time.
All user-friendly websites are white-on-black. In fact, I prefer gray-on-black, as it is even easier on the eyes. Blinding white is the last thing I want to see.
I think the OP is objecting to the belief that a) the bidding process was unfair and unlikely to result in a good price. b) the companies receiving the money for reconstruction are not Iraqi companies and c) the money is coming out of Iraq and going into the liberating nations.
If you don't understand why bombing and occupying a country, then taking all their money back to your homeland and leaving them billions in debt is so crippling, I suggest you take some economics classes. And if leaving Iraq with a crippling debt doesn't bother you, then take some 20th century history classes too.