We have offices, but we also have project rooms where we can work together or hang out on the couches and design on the whiteboards, etc...
The privacy and quiet of an office can be great sometimes, and it's needed for normal things like calling your kid's teacher (or surfing).:)
On the other hand, when communication is critical, lump everyone together and watch the productivity. Why choose one over the other when both have distinct advantages?
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
Nothing prevents the broadband vendors from providing enhanced services for MORE than $50.
It's a question of a basic level of access at a fair price. Actually, the article has more to do with dial-up service being essential.
And although regulation does mess up supply and demand, the tradeoff may be worth it. At least, as far as health care is concerned. I'd rather guarantee everyone adequate health care than to have people refused because they can't pay.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
The current problems with the Canadian health care system stems from extremely large federal transfer payment cuts. Essentially, the federal government decided to stop paying huge amounts of money to the provinces. Health care and education are the top money sinks in the provinces, so it was hack and slash.
Not that the health care system was a model of efficiency before, but with bugdet cuts it has definitely become worse.
It has nothing to do with the socialist aspects of it. I don't have a problem with 2-tier health care (where you can pay for service) but I thikn everyone is entitiled to adequate health care, regardless of how much they make.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
You are right - cable is a monopoly. Providing internet to the masses is not, however. I don't deny that my choice of cable TV provider is Rogers or Rogers:) but I do have a choice in ISP. Even for high speed internet.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
OK, I switched from ADSL to @Home last Xmas, and I haven't had anything but a few minor outages, mostly the mail server. I'm not saying the service is great, just that I've never had to try to get support because my connection is up and always fast. (Well, sometimes it's faster than others, but it's no slower than my ADSL connection was.)
I live in Canada, and I have @Home through Rogers where there have been issues in certain areas. But I actually had a way better year under @Home than I did with Bell's ADSL. Is it a generalization to say that there are major problems? Or am I just really lucky?!?!
As far as the publishing of internal documents, I think that it's just wrong to do it. Corporate property is not owned by the public, regardless if their support or service sucks or not. Any company would strive to keep internal documents from being published on the web, especially when they are in such a competitive industry.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
That's not quite true. The Sikh religion includes wearing or carrying several things, including a knife that was illegal in size. Over 6 inches I think... Anyway, they changed the law to allow the knife for religious reasons.
You can't run around carrying a sword in Canada, no matter what religion you are.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going
to be when you kill them."
Comparing Cable to xDSL is not so simple. There are many different cable and DSL line speeds offered and the impact of bottlenecks varies from place to place.
I had 2.2 Mbit ADSL for years, and I routinely got about 1.5 Mbs. However, cable was about half the price, so I either switched to the current ADSL offering which is 1 Mbit, or switched to cable.
I ordered the cable without cancelling the ADSL and tested them side by side for a week. The ADSL was more consistent, but the cable had a much higher speed. I saw download speeds of over 450Kbytes/s and once hit over 700 with the cable. The ADSL usually sat between 80 and 100 Kbytes/s.
Do I see an impact becasue of bottlenecks during peak hours? Well, somewhat. I can still get great speed at 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Not as fast as 2:00 am, though. However, I saw that with ADSL as well. Even though my link is dedicated, the sites I'm connecting to are handling more traffic, as is the net in general.
Overall, I think the average user would be happy with either... Well, at least compared to a 56K modem.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I like to actually work, not track what I am doing every hour. I worked for hourly wages before and it was a hassle. Timesheets, billable hours, all tha crap. You can keep it.
Now I'm a salaried employee and I have a good amount of autonomy. Nobody asks me how many hours I work, or tracks my vacation time. If I'm sick, I don't go in to work. It is refreshing to be treated with respect instead of being 'nickle and dimed' on every turn.
However, I think it's a corporate attitude that dictates these things. I also have no problem getting new hardware, working from home, or having people do my travel for me. Anything that enables me to perform my job more efficiently is fair game. In that same light, the salary seems much more attractive to me.
And I don't think I would switch even if it meant a pay raise...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I have ADSL, but have never noticed any degredation. However, there are several AM towers in the area, and I can get AM radio stations to play over just about any electrical device with a speaker. My old answering machine plays oldies, my old phone picks up interference, etc.
Is this because of the wiring in the house or the wiring going to my house? I would think it's the in-house wiring or the devices themselves because the phone lines are underground around here.
My ADSL wire runs only 15 feet or so to the splitter in my basement. Maybe I should really test my bandwith - very few things on the web give you an accurate idea of the speed. I'm supposed to get 2.2 Mb/s...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
If you make race the issue then it becomes the focal point of the discussion. It seems to me that the issue is really one of economics - people that do not have the income available to them to purchase a computer and internet service. Those people could be white, black, hispanic, tall, short, fat, hairy or blue.
A specific demographic may have a larger number of economically depressed people per capita, but that doesn't mean that a poor person of European descent doesn't deserve the same access as some poor person of African descent.
I don't think access to a computer or the internet is a right of individuals, but it would be nice to make sure that we, as a society, help as many people get access as we can. (And free software matched with cheap hardware can really bring us a long way towards that...)
It would be great if everyone could afford a computer. It would also be great if everyone could afford a house, a car, and a nice cruise one a year...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I think the hotly debated issue was the _cost_ of the ADSL that Sympatico/Bell provides, not the service itself. You can get it from a bunch of ISPs, but it'll cost a lot more...
Somebody also mentioned the CRTC stepping in and limiting the services that could be offered... I thought that the reduction from 2.2Mbs to 1Mbs was due to the 'splitterless' Nortel ADSL modem. It saved on installation because they don't have to send a phone guy to your house to install the splitter. And therefore it was more marketable, even with less bandwidth. The average user wouldn't notice the difference when surfing, anyway. Of course, big downloads would be much better on the old service, but that depends on all of the other net issues, not the least of which is the bandwidth of the machine serving you.
Luckily, I got in before they reduced the speed (and price, Doh!), so I get the 2.2Mbs rate for $65/month. And it seems to be a lot faster than my any of the cable modems that my friends have. (I've never actually tested it, but we have downloaded the same files simultaneously and mine was WAY faster...)
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
The VM has to be written for each platform, in order for the Java to run. In a simple marketing speech that's all that would need to be done. However, writing a virtual machine is not a walk in the park, especially when the platforms have extremely different chararteristics.
The next step is to get the IDE and windowing stuff working. This is the area that you were talking about. It's sort of platform independant, but not really. There's a lot of work that goes into making sure an IDE works, and often the existing code has to be modified and made more platform independant.
Smalltalk is a VM language that has been platform independant for years, but the same problems exist. You can develop on NT, 95, whatever, and run it on AIX, for example. However, the socket code on AIX is implemented differently by the OS than in Windows (for example). So you end up with platform specific code.
The trick is to make the platform specific code exist in the IDE so that the users are not exposed to it. Of course, that's never completely true...
I'm positive that the big commercial Java IDE's will be available on Linux in the very near future. It will be sweet having VisualAge Java for Linux...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I pay for my email and bandwidth. I don't pay for the junk mail that arrives at my house.
I agree that I don't see it as a big inconvenience right now -- it has become a fact of life. However, I wouldn't mind it being outlawed. But because that will never happen, we could at least levy a tax on the people doing it. Or maybe the ISP providing the spammers account would have a different kind of account that charged an email tax...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Slashdot Mirror
We have offices, but we also have project rooms where we can work together or hang out on the couches and design on the whiteboards, etc...
:)
The privacy and quiet of an office can be great sometimes, and it's needed for normal things like calling your kid's teacher (or surfing).
On the other hand, when communication is critical, lump everyone together and watch the productivity. Why choose one over the other when both have distinct advantages?
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Nothing prevents the broadband vendors from providing enhanced services for MORE than $50.
It's a question of a basic level of access at a fair price. Actually, the article has more to do with dial-up service being essential.
And although regulation does mess up supply and demand, the tradeoff may be worth it. At least, as far as health care is concerned. I'd rather guarantee everyone adequate health care than to have people refused because they can't pay.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
The current problems with the Canadian health care system stems from extremely large federal transfer payment cuts. Essentially, the federal government decided to stop paying huge amounts of money to the provinces. Health care and education are the top money sinks in the provinces, so it was hack and slash. Not that the health care system was a model of efficiency before, but with bugdet cuts it has definitely become worse. It has nothing to do with the socialist aspects of it. I don't have a problem with 2-tier health care (where you can pay for service) but I thikn everyone is entitiled to adequate health care, regardless of how much they make.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
You are right - cable is a monopoly. Providing internet to the masses is not, however. I don't deny that my choice of cable TV provider is Rogers or Rogers :) but I do have a choice in ISP. Even for high speed internet.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
OK, I switched from ADSL to @Home last Xmas, and I haven't had anything but a few minor outages, mostly the mail server. I'm not saying the service is great, just that I've never had to try to get support because my connection is up and always fast. (Well, sometimes it's faster than others, but it's no slower than my ADSL connection was.)
I live in Canada, and I have @Home through Rogers where there have been issues in certain areas. But I actually had a way better year under @Home than I did with Bell's ADSL. Is it a generalization to say that there are major problems? Or am I just really lucky?!?!
As far as the publishing of internal documents, I think that it's just wrong to do it. Corporate property is not owned by the public, regardless if their support or service sucks or not. Any company would strive to keep internal documents from being published on the web, especially when they are in such a competitive industry.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
That's not quite true. The Sikh religion includes wearing or carrying several things, including a knife that was illegal in size. Over 6 inches I think... Anyway, they changed the law to allow the knife for religious reasons.
You can't run around carrying a sword in Canada, no matter what religion you are.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
The reviews of the GeForce2 Ultra from Sharky Extreme benchmarks Q3 at 1600x1200 around 90 fps.
i a_geforce2_ultra/7.shtml
Check out http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/guides/nvid
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Comparing Cable to xDSL is not so simple. There are many different cable and DSL line speeds offered and the impact of bottlenecks varies from place to place.
I had 2.2 Mbit ADSL for years, and I routinely got about 1.5 Mbs. However, cable was about half the price, so I either switched to the current ADSL offering which is 1 Mbit, or switched to cable.
I ordered the cable without cancelling the ADSL and tested them side by side for a week. The ADSL was more consistent, but the cable had a much higher speed. I saw download speeds of over 450Kbytes/s and once hit over 700 with the cable. The ADSL usually sat between 80 and 100 Kbytes/s.
Do I see an impact becasue of bottlenecks during peak hours? Well, somewhat. I can still get great speed at 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Not as fast as 2:00 am, though. However, I saw that with ADSL as well. Even though my link is dedicated, the sites I'm connecting to are handling more traffic, as is the net in general.
Overall, I think the average user would be happy with either... Well, at least compared to a 56K modem.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I like to actually work, not track what I am doing every hour. I worked for hourly wages before and it was a hassle. Timesheets, billable hours, all tha crap. You can keep it.
Now I'm a salaried employee and I have a good amount of autonomy. Nobody asks me how many hours I work, or tracks my vacation time. If I'm sick, I don't go in to work. It is refreshing to be treated with respect instead of being 'nickle and dimed' on every turn.
However, I think it's a corporate attitude that dictates these things. I also have no problem getting new hardware, working from home, or having people do my travel for me. Anything that enables me to perform my job more efficiently is fair game. In that same light, the salary seems much more attractive to me.
And I don't think I would switch even if it meant a pay raise...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Wasn't this how ID software originally marketed DOOM? I heard that they posted to newsgroups generate interest in their new (at the time) game.
I understand it's not quite the same, but it is interesting if it's true.
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I have ADSL, but have never noticed any degredation. However, there are several AM towers in the area, and I can get AM radio stations to play over just about any electrical device with a speaker. My old answering machine plays oldies, my old phone picks up interference, etc.
Is this because of the wiring in the house or the wiring going to my house? I would think it's the in-house wiring or the devices themselves because the phone lines are underground around here.
My ADSL wire runs only 15 feet or so to the splitter in my basement. Maybe I should really test my bandwith - very few things on the web give you an accurate idea of the speed. I'm supposed to get 2.2 Mb/s...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
If you make race the issue then it becomes the focal point of the discussion. It seems to me that the issue is really one of economics - people that do not have the income available to them to purchase a computer and internet service. Those people could be white, black, hispanic, tall, short, fat, hairy or blue.
A specific demographic may have a larger number of economically depressed people per capita, but that doesn't mean that a poor person of European descent doesn't deserve the same access as some poor person of African descent.
I don't think access to a computer or the internet is a right of individuals, but it would be nice to make sure that we, as a society, help as many people get access as we can. (And free software matched with cheap hardware can really bring us a long way towards that...)
It would be great if everyone could afford a computer. It would also be great if everyone could afford a house, a car, and a nice cruise one a year...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I think the hotly debated issue was the _cost_ of the ADSL that Sympatico/Bell provides, not the service itself. You can get it from a bunch of ISPs, but it'll cost a lot more...
Somebody also mentioned the CRTC stepping in and limiting the services that could be offered... I thought that the reduction from 2.2Mbs to 1Mbs was due to the 'splitterless' Nortel ADSL modem. It saved on installation because they don't have to send a phone guy to your house to install the splitter. And therefore it was more marketable, even with less bandwidth. The average user wouldn't notice the difference when surfing, anyway. Of course, big downloads would be much better on the old service, but that depends on all of the other net issues, not the least of which is the bandwidth of the machine serving you.
Luckily, I got in before they reduced the speed (and price, Doh!), so I get the 2.2Mbs rate for $65/month. And it seems to be a lot faster than my any of the cable modems that my friends have.
(I've never actually tested it, but we have downloaded the same files simultaneously and mine was WAY faster...)
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Well, true and not true....
The VM has to be written for each platform, in order for the Java to run. In a simple marketing speech that's all that would need to be done. However, writing a virtual machine is not a walk in the park, especially when the platforms have extremely different chararteristics.
The next step is to get the IDE and windowing stuff working. This is the area that you were talking about. It's sort of platform independant, but not really. There's a lot of work that goes into making sure an IDE works, and often the existing code has to be modified and made more platform independant.
Smalltalk is a VM language that has been platform independant for years, but the same problems exist. You can develop on NT, 95, whatever, and run it on AIX, for example. However, the socket code on AIX is implemented differently by the OS than in Windows (for example). So you end up with platform specific code.
The trick is to make the platform specific code exist in the IDE so that the users are not exposed to it. Of course, that's never completely true...
I'm positive that the big commercial Java IDE's will be available on Linux in the very near future. It will be sweet having VisualAge Java for Linux...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
I pay for my email and bandwidth. I don't pay for the junk mail that arrives at my house.
I agree that I don't see it as a big inconvenience right now -- it has become a fact of life. However, I wouldn't mind it being outlawed. But because that will never happen, we could at least levy a tax on the people doing it. Or maybe the ISP providing the spammers account would have a different kind of account that charged an email tax...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."