I fear that we are unlikely to "capture" anyone. War has casualties. It seems most probable to me that the parties deemed responsible for this act (whether they really are or not) will wind up among the dead. I can certainly hope otherwise.
Yeah, this is getting off topic, but I found your quote about the new Pocket PC's reminding you about the ST data pads really funny.
Have you ever noticed that the data pads get handed out with the information already in them? Crew members are not assigned a pad which has new information or instructions beamed to it. Don't they have the technology?
If that is what Microsoft has in mind, Palm has very little to worry about. Actually, that's probably not true. History has shown that people will take a product with less features and lower quality if the marketing dept does a good enough job (Beta V. VHS, LaserDisc V. VCR, MiniDisc v. CD, Windows v. OS/2, etc).
Re:On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1
I certainly didn't mean to sound as if I was claiming that this was a "no brainer". Quite the opposite. I am impressed as hell.
I'm also impressed with those who have the skills and knowledge needed to survive without the economic infrastructure that I take for granted. =o)
Re:On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 2
I know where you are coming from, but it's a bigger issue than just "2+2 on a calculator"... Can you make shelter in the forest without tools? Hunt your own game, again with nothing but what you find? Identify poisonous flora verses ones that are safe to eat, much less nutritious?
As technology progresses we focus more on the higher levels of what is capable, versus the lower levels of survival training. Yes it's possible to live off the land, just as it's possible to write programs (even a whole OS) in asm.
Personally, I'll stick to visiting the supermarket for food, and C, perl, PHP, etc for programming.
Re:USB 2.0 is already here...
on
USB 2.0 For Linux
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· Score: 3, Informative
The nice thing about the transition from USB to USB2 is that devices are compatable. You can run USB2 devices through a USB interface (albeit at lower speeds). I don't think that the incubation period is going to be as long this time.
USB2 is FINNALY catching up to IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink, whatever) in terms of speed. Have you heard of 1394b? Coming to devices near you starting at 800mbps, ramping up to over 3.2gbps by 2003.
Not only is the UI supposed to look good, but the software is supposed to function well. It is very dificult to draw an analogy between physical objects and ethereal ones (such as cconnell and the bridge or you and the house/car). How do you correlate a really nasty bit of code that is completely unreadable but executes fast-as-hell? A turbo maybe?
Sure I want my house's walls to look pretty, but I also want the behind the walls stuff to be well thought out and implemented. If the waste from the toilet has to travel up the wall, over the BR ceiling and then down to the sewer, I am going to be displeased with the results.
By the same respects, if your car's engine is "covered in grease" it takes about 5 minutes with a degreasing spray to clean it up. So there are "all kinds of crap is sticking every which way" and "it doesn't make sense to the non-initiated". I am certainly not going to make much sense of even a well writen C program. But my programmer friend will (if the code is well writen, and he knows the language). Just the same way that my mechanic can make sense of the engine (if the engine is standard, and he is familiar with the tech i.e. fuel injection, diesel, etc).
Just because the back end of a program is hidden from view, and/or would make little sense to the masses, does not justify discarding sensible software aesthetics. Just ask the Saab mechanic that has to pull the engine to replace the oil pan gasket. He'll tell you that function is not more important than form.
Why should this case be treated differently because it deals with bits instead of physical objects. It's EXACTLY the same as the Xerox example.
For the exact same reason that the actual copying and distribution of digital material should be treated differently than that of physical material. They are very distinct beasts. It's not exactly the same as the Xerox example. With a Xerox, I can't make a perfectly bound soft cover (much less a hard cover) book. With e-books, copying the material is both trivial, and EXACT.
Don't get me wrong. I am all against the current practices of hassling the makers of software that enable the unauthorized copying of proprietary information (commonly known as "pirating"). If it's main purpose is "pirating", it's bad. If it allows "pirating" as a side effect, then those who use it to pirate are bad.
I just don't feel comfortable with people claiming that digital music should be "sold" with a different business model (because it is different than physical media) while stating that digital tools are the same as physical tools.
e-book encryption is not designed to stop dedicated "cracking" attempts. It's not even designed to slow it down. Think about it for a minute. These weak protections are there in conjuction with the DMCA to facilitate the licensingmuch cheaper to produce and distribute.
e-book encryption exists for the sole purpose of proping up an otherwise impossible business case. With physical media (i.e. a soft cover book) if I were to reproduce and distribute the books, I would not be able to sell them for less than the publisher, and still make any kind of a profit. The same is not true with el
How many of those are going to care about (or understand) dual tuners?
That's what is so great about Tivo. It is far easier to program (no blinking 12:00), and operate than a VCR. People are not going to NEED to care about (or understand) dual tuners, unless they don't have one. If said grandma wants to record two (or more!) show that are on at the same time, on different channels, she is currently SOL.
With a dual tuner box (or even beter one that can tune X channels at once... That would really be cool) all one would have to do is pick which shows to record, and worry about storage space. Time would really cease to have any meaning (as far as TV scheduling is concerned).
Eh. It's a press release. I wouldn't get too worked up by it.
...nearly one out of two consumers surveyed downloaded in the past month and nearly 70 percent burned the music they downloaded...
So, 35% of the people they surveyed (tech savy people by their own admittion, and that limits the scope of the problem much further) downloaded music and burned it to CD-R. Woohoo. Yeah, I know that incrimental infringment is the most insidious variety. Yes, this PR is worded in a way that makes it look really scary. Over all, though, I don't see this as being that great a threat. If they were to take this data to court (along with the fact that they lost sales by charging more - do the math!) or the legislature then I would have a problem.
...the dollar value of all music product shipments decreased from $6.2 billion at mid-year 2000 to $5.9 billion at mid-year 2001?a 4.4 percent decrease. Unit shipments dropped from 488.7 million at mid-year 2000 to 442.7 million units at mid-year 2001?a 9.4 percent decrease, according to figures released today by the RIAA.
Check my math, but this means that at ~$12.69* per "unit" they sold more units (and made more money) than they have by charging ~$13.96** per unit.
Imagine that. Charge more per unit, and you sell fewer units.
* $6,200,000,000/488,700,000 units ~ $12.6867/unit
** $5,900,000,000/442,700,000 units ~ $13.9578/unit
Is it not the "manufacturing" of mp3.com (i.e. how it was set up) that allowed people to download (and hence distribute) the MP3s? My analogy is that the plaintiff (is that even the correct term?) in this case could be claiming that due to the "faulty manufacturing" of the mp3.com site, they have lost "property" (money).
Again, I'm not saying that this is right. I'm just trying to reconcile how litigation like this occurs.
OTOH, car makers are taken to court quite often if their vehicles have defects that contribute to the loose of life or property. Perhaps that is the angle being taken here. In other words, since mp3.com allowed the download of unrestricted MP3s (not that there is any other kind), mp3.com is liable for that music ending up on Napster, et. al.
I don't agree with it, but I think that it is certainly possible.
An unemployed man goes to apply for a job with Microsoft as a janitor. The manager there arranges for him to take an aptitude test -- (Floors, sweeping and cleaning).
After the test, the manager says, "You will be employed at minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address, so that I can send you a form to complete and tell you where to report for work on your first day.
Taken aback, the man protests that he has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. To this the MS manager replies, "Well, then, that means that you virtually don't exist and can therefore hardly expect to be employed.
Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having only $10 in his wallet, he decides to buy a 25 lb. flat of tomatoes at the supermarket.
Within less than 2 hours, he sells all the tomatoes individually at 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 before going to sleep that night. And thus it dawns on him that he could quite easily make a living selling tomatoes. Getting up early every day and going to bed late, he multiplies his profits quickly.
After a short time he acquires a cart to transport several dozen boxes of tomatoes, only to have to trade it in again so that he can buy a pickup truck to support his expanding business. By the end of the second year, he is the owner of a fleet of pickup trucks and manages a staff of a hundred former unemployed people, all selling tomatoes.
Planning for the future of his wife and children, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. At the end of the telephone conversation, the adviser asks him for his e-mail address to send the final documents electronically.
When the man replies that he has no e-mail, the adviser is stunned, "What, you don't have e-mail? How on earth have you managed to amass such wealth without the Internet, e-mail and e-commerce? Just imagine where you would be now, if you had been connected to the internet from the very start!"
After a moment of thought, the tomato millionaire replied, "Why, of course! I would be a floor cleaner at Microsoft!"
Moral of this story:
1. The Internet, e-mail and e-commerce do not need to rule your life.
2. If you don't have e-mail, but work hard, you can still become a millionaire.
3. Since you got this story via e-mail, you're probably closer to becoming a janitor than you are to becoming a millionaire.
4. If you do have a computer and e-mail, you probably have already been taken to the cleaners by Microsoft.
Not true in the details, but true enough in concept. Plus, it throws in a little MS bashing. Everyone loves that...
Personally, I plan on retiring before I hit 55. There is this neat strategy called "not living beyond your needs", and an other called "taking advantage of your companies 401k plan". I don't mean to sound harsh, but talk to a financial advisor. Take control of your own future.
What happens when a 55 yo programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? If he is smart, and has planned well, he bids his currrent employer a tearful goodbye, and spends the rest of his days in the carribean.
Sluggy has had amazing story lines, and amazing use of space. Start here (sorry Pete) and check out the next two days. There is no way this would work in a syndicated format.
Personally, I don't read the comics section of the newspaper any more. Tools like
comics.pl just make it unnecessary.
Re:Gather up some angry villagers...
on
Mob Software
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· Score: 2
I guess this means that you are part of the "get-the-torches dept." that produced this news article...;o)
This is a great idea, and would work in an ideological world. But then again, if this was an ideological world, we wouldn't need solutions like this.
What am I talking about? Have you ever heard of an "old boy's network"? What would stop the "split off company" from giving preferential treatment to one customer?
"Oh. Sorry, we have no record of that request. Please submit it again, and we'll get right on it. You say that you have submitted this request three times this month? Huh. We've changed our data entry format. Didn't you get the memo?"*
Somedays I just feel jaded.
*This is a fictitious conversation based on real experiences with working for a CLEC.
Rather than license its technologies to semiconductor vendors that would wind up as competitors in the marketplace, Nixon said Intrinsity will focus on getting its initial processor design finished over the next 18 months. Going from the test chip to a full-blown embedded processor will consume the energies of the small company.
1) This is just a prototype.
2) They seem aimed at the embedded market. I don't think that you will likely see "meaninful" benchmarks.
Here's what makes this announcment interesting to me:
The company's test chips are fast. In an embedded market where the speediest MPUs push 500 MHz, Intrinsity's bare-bones test chip operates at 2.2 GHz in a 0.18-micron process with aluminum interconnects.
No copper interconnects. No.13-micron process. These are things that I (as a non-chip engineer) can understand. Is this going to improve my life? Only time will tell. But I for one like technology for the sake of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
And Jamie rocks twice as much.
My thanks to the lot of you. The Slashteam, and the
I fear that we are unlikely to "capture" anyone. War has casualties. It seems most probable to me that the parties deemed responsible for this act (whether they really are or not) will wind up among the dead. I can certainly hope otherwise.
Yeah, this is getting off topic, but I found your quote about the new Pocket PC's reminding you about the ST data pads really funny.
Have you ever noticed that the data pads get handed out with the information already in them? Crew members are not assigned a pad which has new information or instructions beamed to it. Don't they have the technology?
If that is what Microsoft has in mind, Palm has very little to worry about. Actually, that's probably not true. History has shown that people will take a product with less features and lower quality if the marketing dept does a good enough job (Beta V. VHS, LaserDisc V. VCR, MiniDisc v. CD, Windows v. OS/2, etc).
I certainly didn't mean to sound as if I was claiming that this was a "no brainer". Quite the opposite. I am impressed as hell.
I'm also impressed with those who have the skills and knowledge needed to survive without the economic infrastructure that I take for granted. =o)
I know where you are coming from, but it's a bigger issue than just "2+2 on a calculator"... Can you make shelter in the forest without tools? Hunt your own game, again with nothing but what you find? Identify poisonous flora verses ones that are safe to eat, much less nutritious?
As technology progresses we focus more on the higher levels of what is capable, versus the lower levels of survival training. Yes it's possible to live off the land, just as it's possible to write programs (even a whole OS) in asm.
Personally, I'll stick to visiting the supermarket for food, and C, perl, PHP, etc for programming.
The nice thing about the transition from USB to USB2 is that devices are compatable. You can run USB2 devices through a USB interface (albeit at lower speeds). I don't think that the incubation period is going to be as long this time.
Then again, what the hell do I know? =o)
USB2 is FINNALY catching up to IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink, whatever) in terms of speed. Have you heard of 1394b? Coming to devices near you starting at 800mbps, ramping up to over 3.2gbps by 2003.
Ain't technology grand?
Not only is the UI supposed to look good, but the software is supposed to function well. It is very dificult to draw an analogy between physical objects and ethereal ones (such as cconnell and the bridge or you and the house/car). How do you correlate a really nasty bit of code that is completely unreadable but executes fast-as-hell? A turbo maybe?
Sure I want my house's walls to look pretty, but I also want the behind the walls stuff to be well thought out and implemented. If the waste from the toilet has to travel up the wall, over the BR ceiling and then down to the sewer, I am going to be displeased with the results.
By the same respects, if your car's engine is "covered in grease" it takes about 5 minutes with a degreasing spray to clean it up. So there are "all kinds of crap is sticking every which way" and "it doesn't make sense to the non-initiated". I am certainly not going to make much sense of even a well writen C program. But my programmer friend will (if the code is well writen, and he knows the language). Just the same way that my mechanic can make sense of the engine (if the engine is standard, and he is familiar with the tech i.e. fuel injection, diesel, etc).
Just because the back end of a program is hidden from view, and/or would make little sense to the masses, does not justify discarding sensible software aesthetics. Just ask the Saab mechanic that has to pull the engine to replace the oil pan gasket. He'll tell you that function is not more important than form.
What about Ford and the Explorer? Same vein, but I think that MS has the longer running product here...
For the exact same reason that the actual copying and distribution of digital material should be treated differently than that of physical material. They are very distinct beasts. It's not exactly the same as the Xerox example. With a Xerox, I can't make a perfectly bound soft cover (much less a hard cover) book. With e-books, copying the material is both trivial, and EXACT.
Don't get me wrong. I am all against the current practices of hassling the makers of software that enable the unauthorized copying of proprietary information (commonly known as "pirating"). If it's main purpose is "pirating", it's bad. If it allows "pirating" as a side effect, then those who use it to pirate are bad.
I just don't feel comfortable with people claiming that digital music should be "sold" with a different business model (because it is different than physical media) while stating that digital tools are the same as physical tools.
Q: Why does anyone bother with e-book encryption?
A: Profit
e-book encryption is not designed to stop dedicated "cracking" attempts. It's not even designed to slow it down. Think about it for a minute. These weak protections are there in conjuction with the DMCA to facilitate the licensingmuch cheaper to produce and distribute.
e-book encryption exists for the sole purpose of proping up an otherwise impossible business case. With physical media (i.e. a soft cover book) if I were to reproduce and distribute the books, I would not be able to sell them for less than the publisher, and still make any kind of a profit. The same is not true with el
That's what is so great about Tivo. It is far easier to program (no blinking 12:00), and operate than a VCR. People are not going to NEED to care about (or understand) dual tuners, unless they don't have one. If said grandma wants to record two (or more!) show that are on at the same time, on different channels, she is currently SOL.
With a dual tuner box (or even beter one that can tune X channels at once... That would really be cool) all one would have to do is pick which shows to record, and worry about storage space. Time would really cease to have any meaning (as far as TV scheduling is concerned).
I don't have anything intelegent to state in response to this.
I just wished to commend you on one of the most intellegent and insightful comments I have seen in quite a while.
FWIW, you have my congratulations.
It's okay to love your LCD monitor, just don't looooove your LCD monitor...
So, 35% of the people they surveyed (tech savy people by their own admittion, and that limits the scope of the problem much further) downloaded music and burned it to CD-R. Woohoo. Yeah, I know that incrimental infringment is the most insidious variety. Yes, this PR is worded in a way that makes it look really scary. Over all, though, I don't see this as being that great a threat. If they were to take this data to court (along with the fact that they lost sales by charging more - do the math!) or the legislature then I would have a problem.
Check my math, but this means that at ~$12.69* per "unit" they sold more units (and made more money) than they have by charging ~$13.96** per unit.
Imagine that. Charge more per unit, and you sell fewer units.
* $6,200,000,000/488,700,000 units ~ $12.6867/unit
** $5,900,000,000/442,700,000 units ~ $13.9578/unit
Is it not the "manufacturing" of mp3.com (i.e. how it was set up) that allowed people to download (and hence distribute) the MP3s? My analogy is that the plaintiff (is that even the correct term?) in this case could be claiming that due to the "faulty manufacturing" of the mp3.com site, they have lost "property" (money).
Again, I'm not saying that this is right. I'm just trying to reconcile how litigation like this occurs.
OTOH, car makers are taken to court quite often if their vehicles have defects that contribute to the loose of life or property. Perhaps that is the angle being taken here. In other words, since mp3.com allowed the download of unrestricted MP3s (not that there is any other kind), mp3.com is liable for that music ending up on Napster, et. al.
I don't agree with it, but I think that it is certainly possible.
Not true in the details, but true enough in concept. Plus, it throws in a little MS bashing. Everyone loves that...
What happens when a 55 yo programmer has carpel tunnel or arthritis? If he is smart, and has planned well, he bids his currrent employer a tearful goodbye, and spends the rest of his days in the carribean.
Just my take on the matter.
Personally, I don't read the comics section of the newspaper any more. Tools like comics.pl just make it unnecessary.
I guess this means that you are part of the "get-the-torches dept." that produced this news article... ;o)
What am I talking about? Have you ever heard of an "old boy's network"? What would stop the "split off company" from giving preferential treatment to one customer?
"Oh. Sorry, we have no record of that request. Please submit it again, and we'll get right on it. You say that you have submitted this request three times this month? Huh. We've changed our data entry format. Didn't you get the memo?"*
Somedays I just feel jaded.
*This is a fictitious conversation based on real experiences with working for a CLEC.
2) They seem aimed at the embedded market. I don't think that you will likely see "meaninful" benchmarks.
This quote is from the eetimes article.
No copper interconnects. No .13-micron process. These are things that I (as a non-chip engineer) can understand. Is this going to improve my life? Only time will tell. But I for one like technology for the sake of technology.
Quotes taken from the eetimes article.