Not a chance. I don't want someone at Oracle to find out someone (me) wants to use this software and start charging a fortune for it. Let it sit in obscurity. A link from Slashdot would probably get some attention.
I wanted to play with a particular technology from a company that was acquired by a company that was acquired by Oracle. I called Oracle and got passed from department to department. Nobody had ever even heard of this technology or the company they had acquired years ago. One rep was willing to sell me a license to use the technology for many thousands of dollars even though he himself couldn't find any mention of it inside Oracle, with the caveat that I would have to FIND IT myself because he didn't have any idea where it might be. After being transferred back to the same person the fourth or fifth time I gave up with the phone and started googling for the technology. I found a web page deep inside Oracle's website that had the entire thing, source code and all, available. There were no disclaimers, there was no license, just instructions on how to download it, compile it, install it, and use it.
So I did.
I suspect Oracle is run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
>> People never choose randomly... Which icon is prettier or which name sounds the friendliest? > Or the coolest. > I don't think I'd even know Firefox had it been called Dulltuna or Slowduck.
> If the title seems overly negative, I apologize - I'm no native speaker and might have chosen the wrong words.
Yes, "WOES" may not have been as optimistic as you were thinking. Perhaps "TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS" would have put a more positive spin on it? Or "UNMITIGATED DISASTER", I always like that phrase for a boost in my mood.
> Reading the same book for two or three hours in a single session is certainly not rare, and that can cause considerable eye strain on a normal screen.
And how long you have been sitting at the computer screen RIGHT NOW? I have been here for 5 hours reading email, slashdot, doing work, etc. Staring at a computer screen the whole time.
> the luxury of taking up entire chapters to describe background, settings, and conversations
Luxury? I tried several times to get past the four page description of how Hobbits grow tobacco for their pipes. After falling asleep and leaving pools of drool on the pages I finally gave up and just skipped to the next chapter.
Comic: "I just flew in from LA, and boy are my arms tired. heh heh hah hah." Wisnoskij: "Based on the morphological and kinematic data you would need significantly more lift than your arms could provide in order to fly."
1mm phillips screws? How about needing a 'spudger'?! Who the hell has a spudger, or has ever heard of a spudger?! Oh, and Apple will NOT sell you a spudger if you aren't an approved repair company.
I have a pack of tiny plastic swords for mixing fruity cocktails on tropical cruises that work great as 'spudgers'.
So, top 2%, what are you doing now? I also place myself in the top 2% and did very well as a freelance programmer for many years. Then I started competing with offshore programmers. Now I'm not a programmer any more. I miss it, but I need to make a living.
"hacking" doesn't necessarily imply a lack of skill, experience and knowledge on the hackers part. You'd be amazed at the connections people make and the experience that can be brought to bear on a problem. If I'm only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, and you, then I am also six degrees away from the world's top medical hearing prosthetic expert.
I think if people gifted only with enthusiasm and persistence keep the project going they may be able to find the right people to handle each part, including sophisticated quality control and testing.
I'm not that expert, but even as a layman I can see we would need to set up an automated testing rig that exposes the device to a range of frequencies and volumes and compares the output to an established device before going near someone's ear.
So you heard it everyone. Geekmux has issues a challenge!
First someone start a wiki to organize the project. Someone make the hardware specs. Some A/D, D/A converters, some processing. Someone write the software. How small can an Arduino be made? Someone contact Bre Pettis about cheap fabbing of the housing body.
It doesn't have to be commercially viable. It just has to work and be easy enough to make that the local hackerspace can make them for their friends and loved ones. The threat of competition alone will drive down prices enormously. Don't worry about patents and trademarks. We aren't going to be selling these, we're going to give the plans out FREE in so many places any hacker can make one.
This is the new world Cory Doctorow has been writing about. GO!
They can stick wired in their arms and interface with a computer. Their spines glow during sex. And yet we had to ask Baltar to develop a 'Cyclon detector', which apparently was a difficult thing to do. Hint: if you have anything in you that can interface with WIRES you're a Cyclon.
Once again, the timestream moves to protect itself. If they continue attempting to create Higgs-Boson particles at the LHC, we will find ourselves inhabiting an increasingly unlikely reality. Construction accidents, birds dropping baguettes into the particle beam, anything can happen to prevent this.
Mark my word, something improbable will happen to the LHC near the end of this repair work.
We should harness this power to direct the future time stream and create a drive that uses these disturbed probabilities. We can call it the 'improbability drive'.
He isn't proposing 'enumerating goodness' from an "official". He is saying the USER should have to approve any new software installation. If I am installing a new package and it asks me for approval, I say yes. If I visit SexyMidgetsAndTheWomenWhoLoveThem.com and it asks me for approval to install software I say no.
We won't have a choice. Monsanto or something like it will be selling gene selection services without regard for it's long term consequences. They will bribe enough of congress to make any objection ineffective.
Contract programming is gone, and has been for at least 10 years. After you took that gander at RentACoder and Guru and saw that $2,000 jobs were going for $100, what did you do about it? Did you decide life is unfair and lower your prices to match guys in India and Russia?
Ten years ago I stopped doing contract programming work and switched to a specialty that is more lucrative and can't be outsourced. I'm doing fine.
Find a specialty and stop trying to compete in a field that is not viable anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a chance. I don't want someone at Oracle to find out someone (me) wants to use this software and start charging a fortune for it.
Let it sit in obscurity. A link from Slashdot would probably get some attention.
You are suffering from an induced fallacy.
The story of bottled water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0&feature=player_embedded
Who the hell would pay for porn when it's everywhere for free?
That would be like paying for drinking water for... wait a minute... bad example...
I wanted to play with a particular technology from a company that was acquired by a company that was acquired by Oracle. I called Oracle and got passed from department to department. Nobody had ever even heard of this technology or the company they had acquired years ago. One rep was willing to sell me a license to use the technology for many thousands of dollars even though he himself couldn't find any mention of it inside Oracle, with the caveat that I would have to FIND IT myself because he didn't have any idea where it might be. After being transferred back to the same person the fourth or fifth time I gave up with the phone and started googling for the technology. I found a web page deep inside Oracle's website that had the entire thing, source code and all, available. There were no disclaimers, there was no license, just instructions on how to download it, compile it, install it, and use it.
So I did.
I suspect Oracle is run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Your posts have inspired me to put on my Culottes of Confusion.
>> People never choose randomly... Which icon is prettier or which name sounds the friendliest?
> Or the coolest.
> I don't think I'd even know Firefox had it been called Dulltuna or Slowduck.
Introducing my new browser, "Gates Of Eternity". (my thanks to the Heavy Metal band name generator http://b10m.swal.org/cgi-bin/bandname.cgi)
> If the title seems overly negative, I apologize - I'm no native speaker and might have chosen the wrong words.
Yes, "WOES" may not have been as optimistic as you were thinking. Perhaps "TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS" would have put a more positive spin on it?
Or "UNMITIGATED DISASTER", I always like that phrase for a boost in my mood.
> Reading the same book for two or three hours in a single session is certainly not rare, and that can cause considerable eye strain on a normal screen.
And how long you have been sitting at the computer screen RIGHT NOW?
I have been here for 5 hours reading email, slashdot, doing work, etc. Staring at a computer screen the whole time.
> Moondust
> pure lunacy!
I see what you did there.
> In all due reverence to Tolkien, there are other authors on this planet who have done well with fantasy works.
I hope they get the writer who wrote the screenplay for "Mansquito". That was awesome.
> the luxury of taking up entire chapters to describe background, settings, and conversations
Luxury? I tried several times to get past the four page description of how Hobbits grow tobacco for their pipes. After falling asleep and leaving pools of drool on the pages I finally gave up and just skipped to the next chapter.
Comic: "I just flew in from LA, and boy are my arms tired. heh heh hah hah."
Wisnoskij: "Based on the morphological and kinematic data you would need significantly more lift than your arms could provide in order to fly."
Where are mod points when I need them?!
1mm phillips screws? How about needing a 'spudger'?! Who the hell has a spudger, or has ever heard of a spudger?!
Oh, and Apple will NOT sell you a spudger if you aren't an approved repair company.
I have a pack of tiny plastic swords for mixing fruity cocktails on tropical cruises that work great as 'spudgers'.
So, top 2%, what are you doing now?
I also place myself in the top 2% and did very well as a freelance programmer for many years. Then I started competing with offshore programmers.
Now I'm not a programmer any more. I miss it, but I need to make a living.
Those were the good old days.
I could make beautiful music on my Apple II.
No, really, I made music. Like this:
10 POKE -16336,0
20 REM TOGGLE SPEAKER
30 FOR I=0 TO PDL(0)
35 REM DELAY BASED ON POSITION OF GAME PADDLE
40 J=J+1
50 NEXT I
60 GOTO 10
Man... I was so productive back then...
"hacking" doesn't necessarily imply a lack of skill, experience and knowledge on the hackers part.
You'd be amazed at the connections people make and the experience that can be brought to bear on a problem.
If I'm only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, and you, then I am also six degrees away from the world's top medical hearing prosthetic expert.
I think if people gifted only with enthusiasm and persistence keep the project going they may be able to find the right people to handle each part, including sophisticated quality control and testing.
I'm not that expert, but even as a layman I can see we would need to set up an automated testing rig that exposes the device to a range of frequencies and volumes and compares the output to an established device before going near someone's ear.
So you heard it everyone. Geekmux has issues a challenge!
First someone start a wiki to organize the project.
Someone make the hardware specs. Some A/D, D/A converters, some processing. Someone write the software. How small can an Arduino be made? Someone contact Bre Pettis about cheap fabbing of the housing body.
It doesn't have to be commercially viable. It just has to work and be easy enough to make that the local hackerspace can make them for their friends and loved ones. The threat of competition alone will drive down prices enormously. Don't worry about patents and trademarks. We aren't going to be selling these, we're going to give the plans out FREE in so many places any hacker can make one.
This is the new world Cory Doctorow has been writing about.
GO!
72 seconds, mouth-breather.
They can stick wired in their arms and interface with a computer. Their spines glow during sex. And yet we had to ask Baltar to develop a 'Cyclon detector', which apparently was a difficult thing to do. Hint: if you have anything in you that can interface with WIRES you're a Cyclon.
Once again, the timestream moves to protect itself. If they continue attempting to create Higgs-Boson particles at the LHC, we will find ourselves inhabiting an increasingly unlikely reality. Construction accidents, birds dropping baguettes into the particle beam, anything can happen to prevent this.
Mark my word, something improbable will happen to the LHC near the end of this repair work.
We should harness this power to direct the future time stream and create a drive that uses these disturbed probabilities. We can call it the 'improbability drive'.
He isn't proposing 'enumerating goodness' from an "official". He is saying the USER should have to approve any new software installation. If I am installing a new package and it asks me for approval, I say yes. If I visit SexyMidgetsAndTheWomenWhoLoveThem.com and it asks me for approval to install software I say no.
We won't have a choice. Monsanto or something like it will be selling gene selection services without regard for it's long term consequences. They will bribe enough of congress to make any objection ineffective.
No, sorry that's pirates you're thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiratesVsTemp_English.jpg
Contract programming is gone, and has been for at least 10 years. After you took that gander at RentACoder and Guru and saw that $2,000 jobs were going for $100, what did you do about it? Did you decide life is unfair and lower your prices to match guys in India and Russia?
Ten years ago I stopped doing contract programming work and switched to a specialty that is more lucrative and can't be outsourced. I'm doing fine.
Find a specialty and stop trying to compete in a field that is not viable anymore.