I remember having a LaserDisc with "24 Seconds of unreleased footage".. On the laserdisc, the extra footage was an introduction- auditions to find the right person to lead into the greatest story ever told, going through several people, and firing them before they get 10 seconds into their lines. My favorite was a Japanese take of the lines...
It wasn't too bad, but is probably more appropriate to be a trailer, I think. Maybe this movie will have a different 24 seconds of unreleased footage?
That is an inherently false statement, but it merits some real serious thought. The reason nobody cares about Microsoft is because they haven't seen what damage it's done, or is going to do. In fact, they're more prone to agree with Microsoft when they say open source is bad, mainly because they see the face of Microsoft (Windows and other easy to use GUI's) as making computers familiar. Then they see Linux -- overweight unshaven fanboys and their CLI's who flame newbies and call them "AOL-ers" if they ask the simplest question. It's not pretty. People distrust politics and wars between groups. KDE vs. Gnome? Perl vs. Python? SSH vs OpenSSH? I mean, the list of wars goes on and on...
Another analogy is that of cars. If cars were open source, we'd be fighting over whether or not to put the engine in the front or the back, the steering wheel on the left or the right, and whether or not to allow the user to have a gas pedal or to use pulleys and strings and levers to open and close the carburetor and have a good laugh at the people who don't understand why their car keeps on stalling...
So far, all we've done is let the government fight this war for us. Our politicians are mostly useless. Enough of them can be bought with those 2.46 billion dollars of lobbying money to effectively silence those politicians who are enlightened and rich enough to not be tempted by lucrative sources of income and those nice paybacks for taking a rich friend's side.
So, what's left for us? How do we convince people that Linux isn't bad?
First, we need to stop warring over competing standards. But that's as naive as saying that Palestinians and Israelis should just get along. It's not going to happen without a lot of pain and suffering on both sides. And frankly, most people like participating in wars. It gives us a sense of passion, but it alienates those who don't know anything about either side.
Secondly, let's stop flaming Microsoft every chance we get and openly acknowledge that they have both indirectly and directly helped our efforts. And, -this is not pretty-, that Microsoft does indeed have a place in this world setting and breaking standards in order to make computers easier.
We need a way to show people that Linux has it's advantages too, and show people that when Microsoft openly slanders Linux, that Microsoft is trying to shut down another source of competition under the ruse of unifying the world...
Most should be aware of candy stripers at most hospitals. They're volunteers who help visit people at the hospital when they're sick or help nurses with duties. And they give their services away for free. But you don't see hospitals ranting against candy stripers taking money away from nurses and doctors. Instead, they are seen as blessings to help relieve an extreme workload.
Why bother with the P4? because it's the latest technology. You are interested in the latest technology, aren't you?
GIMPS is the distributed project which searches for very large prime numbers. The software used, Prime95, has been widely hailed as the most efficient FFT program ever written for the x86 architecture. The writer, George Woltman, recently posted that latest timing for the P4 version of the FFT code:
1.4GHz P4, old code: 0.126 sec.
1.4GHz P4, new code: 0.048 sec.
1.2GHz Athlon, 133MHz DDR: 0.084 sec.
I have a few more optimizations up my sleeve. I think my goal
of 0.040 seconds is achievable.
Gee. Over 2.5 times faster. From what I can see, the deal with Intel is that they have the fastest mass-market processor on the planet, but it's going to take awhile for the software industry to catch up.
And what system have the patented? I have scripts that create a checksum, store it into a webpage, from which I can look to see when the last change was made.... It doesn't take much to make a system, and this seems to be a common knowledge sort of thing anyway!
Unfortunately, this headline does seem particularly apt...
You're right. nobody will use their software to encode MP3's. And the article states that it won't be able to prevent users from using 3rd party software to encode MP3's. This is no big deal, right? Musicmatch encodes MP3s natively!
If anything, we should be rejoicing, because once people figure out that they can't encode mp3's on Windows, but they CAN encode mp3's on Linux, guess which OS becomes more mainstream?
I don't see how anyone can justify any kind of copyright, patent, or any other IP protection after the author is dead.
No, this is wrong. Consider those authors or songwriters who have died early in their lives, but whose families still depend on those proceeds, especially when they're used for good causes?
Who knows how much money Sublime CD's would have raised for drug abuse awareness if they didn't hold a copyright - especially since they became a hit after Brad Nowell died of a overdose?
I believe that 70 years may seem excessive, but it keeps the people from whacking others just so they can use their music or books without having to pay licensing fees...
A friend of mine owns a store which specialized in selling Magic cards. One day she got a call from WotC marketing asking, for purely survey reasons, how many boxes she was selling. (Since she bought them through a 3rd party, they couldn't find out how much she was buying directly). She told them the truth, and one month later, right before Christmas, A WotC booth and game store popped up in the mall right before Christmas. My friend had a terrible Christmas because of this.
Yeah, it's legal, and it might even be a coincidence. I doubt it though. What we believe is that this was a calculated attempt by WotC to bolster it's bottom line. What a crappy way to learn that the company you sell wants to steal the customers you've gained.
Two things, the weather, and my critique of your hardware requirements:
Yeah, this would all be good in a controlled environment, but you ahve to take the weather into consideration. RAGBRAI is in the hottest part of the summer. In Iowa, that means 80% humidity and temperatures reaching over 100 degrees on the pavement. Truly miserable weather, especially when carrying heavy equipment. (and 10 lbs can be quite a load when biking for 500 miles)
So, you have to take heat into account. Most electronic equipment generate a lot of heat, and the humidity doesn't help either.
And speaking of humidity, we need to consider the freak weather. When it's hot and humid, thunderstorms develop very quickly, and downpours can hit you in a second. Waterproofing the stuff has to be a top priority. I'd suggest some sort of quick-release harness, and a water-proof zippered bag that hangs off the bike.
Finally, my 386 can handle high-res image conversion. it might take a minute to download each picture, but this isn't a real-time situation here. A cheap PDA will EASILY be able to handle the situation, regardless of the resolution. And the handspring Visor has both a Camera module *and* a cellular modem option. So, my idea is to make a harness on the front of the bike, and schedule a picture to be taken every 5 minutes or so. When the PDA gets full maybe after 3 hours or so, swap the Springboard modules, and download to the website.
Camera option #2.
Use a digital camera that stores pics onto a CompactFlash stick. Since you can get CF sticks that hold 32 or 64 MB, you can store quite a few pics between modem updates. Whenever you take a break (every couple of hours), go to your chase vehicle and swap memory sticks with them. They're going to be bored anyway, right?
And, we're not caring about the RAGBRAI, it's the crazy parties that are held every night after each day's race! That's what I want pictures of!
I do not agree. Napster needs something to say "Hey look, we're controlling the content! So stop suing us!" This appears to be what they're doing here.
Do you think Napster would allow you to actually *see* the MP3? My guess is it will be encoded into some sort of super-large cache. And you will have no control over it. And there will be a game where Napster keeps on hiding the songs better and better. And the energy expended in this "game" could be better spent on OpenNap.
And why you're wrong, PhatKat, is because of this:
1. Napster is not platform independent. You can only run Napster on their pre-approved platforms.
2. It would be a mistake to assume that Napster is being careless here. They want to be a viable business much more than you want your free music.
Anyway, that's my two cents, take what you want from it...
In my job, I *have* to code in the same language everybody else codes in. Why? Because EVERYBODY knows it! And I have no problems with that. I like the languages. If the union-appointed debugger has to fix my code, then it's a bit better if he knows the language, rather than having to decipher somebody else's C# that they learned on a lark. And, all petty differences aside, there are only 3-4 languages that people actually code in.
Larger software firms do have programmers who's job description *is* to test and debug code. It's a job I think I'd enjoy.
By the way, debugging your own code is not any different than the union carpenter who has to make sure all the nails are in the wood most the way, or the trucker who has to drive the loads safely from A to B, regardless of any mishaps along the way.
I'd like a job where I have to study code for 3 years. Some schools aren't very good at teaching programming. Anyway, this idea has worked for hundreds of years (apprenticeships), so why do we punish people who don't have 6 years of Java experience because their old job only required Perl? Let's bring back comprehensive on-the-job training.
The bozo who sits next to me wears a golf cap because he thinks it's a beret and listens to boy bands. He gets paid as much as I do.
MSCE certified people *do* get some extra attention, because it's a certificate. It's a standard level of competence that proves you're worth more money. And count me in on that 30k/year raise!!!
All the other points are moot, because I'm still making $30,000/year +salary with my MSCE, and isn't that what it's all about?
Now think about this. Imagine not having to search through endless job offers having to find an offer that won't screw you in the butt when you're not looking. Imagine having some real job security, and that you're not going to be on the street when Wall Street is being silly. Imagine all the people, working for today-ay ay, ooooohhhhh.. (My apologies to John Lennon fans)
I have thought about it. I know a colleague who recently spent the better part of a week finding a better paying job so she could get a raise at her current job. Why did she have to do that, instead of doing her job?
Yeah, it's a mixed bag. Not all good but not all bad either. You will lose some freedom, which is part of the fun of working in yesterday's economy, but you will also get a lot of things working in your favor. In my job, seniority counts above all, and I am a peon in my job because somebody worked there 2 years longer than I have.
In a class I recently took, I learned that the demand for qualified IT workers was so high, that people should be starting in 6 digits. At least, that's what companies would be paying in any other industry. Instead, we're barely making 40,000 out of college for the world's most intellectually demanding jobs.
Finally, go watch Office Space again, and tell me why it's funny and OK for Michael and Samir to steal $300,000 from their company's clients before they lose their jobs. And tell me if they would be driven to these criminal acts if they were working union jobs.
So, let me get this straight. He works his butt off, 1) writing code and 2) improving his "toolkit". He quits or gets laid off or even dies.
Depending on the IP agreement, John could own all his software he wrote at the place, *and* force the company to pay royalties to use the code. This would just about assure 100% job security, and a hefty paycheck to make sure you don't think about quitting...
In short, this little IP spat prevents a programmer from being paid what he's worth, based on his contribution to the company. What benefit does a company offer that offsets the stress of having to worry about intellectual property laws? And why does a programmer have to fight a legal battle alone?
I know this isn't a new topic, but why don't we have a Software Engineer union? We practice a trade that borders on art, where skill is a highly desirable attribute, but where skilled programmers are chased out by unskilled college graduates and foreigners willing to work for much less money. In any other market, this is unthinkable (think about scabs being beat up by striking truckers), so why do we allow it?
(besides the actual physical labor of having to hit somebody repeatedly, which would undoubtedly kill half of us)
Someone needs to write a perl script to take this story, and s/x/y/g the names and technologies, and then feed every company and technology into it.
I found this last night on BBSpot. It's a Random Slashdot story generator. Good for about 10 good laughs, about 3 deja-vu experiences, and for fooling that gullible newbie about 4 times...
I've got a 3 tray JVC XV-M567 ($299) which has optical out and proprietary "compu-link" to my JVC RS-6008V which came in the DS-TP330 Home Theater package ($350). The speakers are not as small as the Bose system (read less quality), but what they lack in size and sound range, the 100 watt 12" powered sub woofer more than makes up for.
The compulink cord connecting the DVD to the receiver will surprise you, and it eliminates 3 of my remote controls with the DVD remote. Mine controls my Toshiba TV, my JVC DVD player, and most of the functions on my JVC amp (everything but "off", ironic..).
Anyway, I love the system. It's simple, the 3 DVD trays are more handy than you can imagine, and the sound is great for the price.
The DVD player has composite video out, S-Video, and normal video jacks, and fiber-optic audio, PCM (read one rca cable for dolby surround), and normal phono (rca) plugs for your regular everyday sound.
The receiver can control 5 video sources (two of which are VCR), it has plenty of sound switches, and it's got built in Dolby Digital and DTS surround decoding (which are two competing surround sound systems), so it works with every DVD that's out there, and then some.
It even looks cool. The DVD has a cool chrome finish, which got an ooh from some friends when they were visiting from out of town...
Save your money and get these two components. It's really worth it. Use the extra money and get yourself a Duron system for an MP3 player...
This is not a dream system, and they aren't marketing it as such. It is designed for people who want a broadband connection, but don't live in an area that supports it. It is an unavoidable fact that the latency is horrible, compared to any other type of connection, but when I can download stuff at 1400 kb/s (almost a freakin' T-1 to my computer, at a fraction of the cost!), I can easily forgive any latency and timeout issues that can arise from time to time.
The article states that it reaches 100 GHz, not 750. The bit transfer rate can reach speeds of 750 gigabits/second, still an awesome transfer rate, by any means...
Now here's an idea.. What if a manufacturer, after going through a batch of bad memory, found a certain percentage of the group was bad. Then, conceivably, he could sell it at a lower price in some sort of clearance bin, and still make some money on the whole deal, as opposed to throwing it away and taking a loss on the deal.
On the contrary, this is an awesome idea.. Imagine buying a game that didn't depend on a specific OS or even platform!
I'm not a Linux Developer, but these problems seem kinda moot. All you have to do is create a tiny game partition that contains all specific drivers that a game could possibly use... Configuring would be a cinch, as long as it's open sourced properly and internet capable, updating with the latest drivers should be as easy as running WindowsUpdate (which is incredibly handy)...
It would also contain all the networking information that would be necessary for online/LAN play. You pop in the CD, it reads information off the partition, loads the drivers and boom, I have a enhanced game system running independent of the OS i'm using... when I am done and want to save a game, all I have to do is write to that partition.
When I'm in the middle of a Q3 game, the last thing on my mind is email.
Many systems now support a sleep mode. Get all the hardware and software people together... Create a system state saver for your OS. When you double click on the game, your system state would be saved, and your system would be quickly rebooted into your new game mode. When you exit, your system state is restored back to the way you left it.
Now this is at the least naive and at the most visionary. The actual implementation would be horribly long and complicated, and it would definitely be a pain to get this working right, but as long as it's all standardized (find a way to discourage competing "standards" a la M$), I think this idea would work, and would allow for easy porting from console systems to PC, and allow the PC game industry to work the way it does with the console systems...
I wouldn't care if Slashdot posted an article on basket weaving. My life would still be the same as it now. Thankfully, they don't, because it's not what they do. The job that they chose was to be a central point for relevant information for technologically minded fellows. They do an awesome job of wading through the mountains of crap they get every day, and providing plenty of good material to pleasantly waste my day away.
I wasn't trying to flame the slashdot crew, so I would like to thank you for responding calmly.
Personally, I haven't yet experienced the "joys of capitalism", since I'm a college student just barely making enough to pay all my bills. You can understand my frustration at some guy making $125k per year thinking he's been screwed. Let me clarify: He was screwed, as well as many Slashdot readers. I'm confident that a class-action lawsuit will be in the works soon, if not already.)
Yes, many geeks are now in a position of making money, that is true. I did not foresee it's relevance to many other readers, and for that I apologize. It shows that Rob and the gang are much more informed than I was, and proves why I'm not much more than a troll...:)
(P.S. For those of you who've remapped the Enter key on their keyboards to "FLAME", I hate smilies. I only added to show I'm not bitter or sarcastic)
Watching the trailer, I kept on waiting to see that amazing special effect that is impossible to do live. Something in the same veins as Star Wars or Jurassic Park, where technology enables new art and allows it to transcends the plot, no matter how pointless it may be. A movie, IMO, that is worth watching in a theatre...
This trailer's major effects shots are CGI renderings of computer graphics, and a single impressive shot of Dr. Roth(?) looking over an alien landscape that almost looks painted. Amazing if it was in a game (FF9?) but not in a theater. And I saw the hair thing in FF8 on my playstation.
Not to be a troll, but FF seems to be nothing that hasn't been done before. I was disappointed by Titan:AE. That had big names voices too.
"Maybe this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."
I'm a big fan of Neal Stephenson, but a bigger fan of Sir Arthur C Clarke. He should get some credit for predicting that we are entering (have entered?) a "Carbon Age". Diamond-based materials are going to be a minor material of the future, and will not be as important as the major advances in other carbon-based materials. We've already seen buckyballs and carbon-fiber... I don't think anybody will disagree that we're on the verge of some exciting times as far as Carbon is concerned...
Most of the patents we care about are of the type that make you scratch your head and say "How could they patent that?" (examples abound). So, it seems to me that to make this work, we'd pretty much have to anti-patent _everything_, no matter how crazy and dumb it sounds. By the end of this idea, we'd have so many anti-patents.
If I had a real patentable idea, I wouldn't even bother with the anti-patent. I'd get the real patent.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't too bad, but is probably more appropriate to be a trailer, I think. Maybe this movie will have a different 24 seconds of unreleased footage?
"Customers are clueless"
That is an inherently false statement, but it merits some real serious thought. The reason nobody cares about Microsoft is because they haven't seen what damage it's done, or is going to do. In fact, they're more prone to agree with Microsoft when they say open source is bad, mainly because they see the face of Microsoft (Windows and other easy to use GUI's) as making computers familiar. Then they see Linux -- overweight unshaven fanboys and their CLI's who flame newbies and call them "AOL-ers" if they ask the simplest question. It's not pretty. People distrust politics and wars between groups. KDE vs. Gnome? Perl vs. Python? SSH vs OpenSSH? I mean, the list of wars goes on and on...
Another analogy is that of cars. If cars were open source, we'd be fighting over whether or not to put the engine in the front or the back, the steering wheel on the left or the right, and whether or not to allow the user to have a gas pedal or to use pulleys and strings and levers to open and close the carburetor and have a good laugh at the people who don't understand why their car keeps on stalling...
So far, all we've done is let the government fight this war for us. Our politicians are mostly useless. Enough of them can be bought with those 2.46 billion dollars of lobbying money to effectively silence those politicians who are enlightened and rich enough to not be tempted by lucrative sources of income and those nice paybacks for taking a rich friend's side.
So, what's left for us? How do we convince people that Linux isn't bad?
First, we need to stop warring over competing standards. But that's as naive as saying that Palestinians and Israelis should just get along. It's not going to happen without a lot of pain and suffering on both sides. And frankly, most people like participating in wars. It gives us a sense of passion, but it alienates those who don't know anything about either side.
Secondly, let's stop flaming Microsoft every chance we get and openly acknowledge that they have both indirectly and directly helped our efforts. And, -this is not pretty-, that Microsoft does indeed have a place in this world setting and breaking standards in order to make computers easier.
We need a way to show people that Linux has it's advantages too, and show people that when Microsoft openly slanders Linux, that Microsoft is trying to shut down another source of competition under the ruse of unifying the world...
Most should be aware of candy stripers at most hospitals. They're volunteers who help visit people at the hospital when they're sick or help nurses with duties. And they give their services away for free. But you don't see hospitals ranting against candy stripers taking money away from nurses and doctors. Instead, they are seen as blessings to help relieve an extreme workload.
Thanks for letting me get this load off...
GIMPS is the distributed project which searches for very large prime numbers. The software used, Prime95, has been widely hailed as the most efficient FFT program ever written for the x86 architecture. The writer, George Woltman, recently posted that latest timing for the P4 version of the FFT code:
Gee. Over 2.5 times faster. From what I can see, the deal with Intel is that they have the fastest mass-market processor on the planet, but it's going to take awhile for the software industry to catch up.
And what system have the patented? I have scripts that create a checksum, store it into a webpage, from which I can look to see when the last change was made.... It doesn't take much to make a system, and this seems to be a common knowledge sort of thing anyway!
Unfortunately, this headline does seem particularly apt...
You're right. nobody will use their software to encode MP3's. And the article states that it won't be able to prevent users from using 3rd party software to encode MP3's. This is no big deal, right? Musicmatch encodes MP3s natively!
If anything, we should be rejoicing, because once people figure out that they can't encode mp3's on Windows, but they CAN encode mp3's on Linux, guess which OS becomes more mainstream?
No, this is wrong. Consider those authors or songwriters who have died early in their lives, but whose families still depend on those proceeds, especially when they're used for good causes?
Who knows how much money Sublime CD's would have raised for drug abuse awareness if they didn't hold a copyright - especially since they became a hit after Brad Nowell died of a overdose?
I believe that 70 years may seem excessive, but it keeps the people from whacking others just so they can use their music or books without having to pay licensing fees...
A friend of mine owns a store which specialized in selling Magic cards. One day she got a call from WotC marketing asking, for purely survey reasons, how many boxes she was selling. (Since she bought them through a 3rd party, they couldn't find out how much she was buying directly). She told them the truth, and one month later, right before Christmas, A WotC booth and game store popped up in the mall right before Christmas. My friend had a terrible Christmas because of this.
Yeah, it's legal, and it might even be a coincidence. I doubt it though. What we believe is that this was a calculated attempt by WotC to bolster it's bottom line. What a crappy way to learn that the company you sell wants to steal the customers you've gained.
Two things, the weather, and my critique of your hardware requirements:
Yeah, this would all be good in a controlled environment, but you ahve to take the weather into consideration. RAGBRAI is in the hottest part of the summer. In Iowa, that means 80% humidity and temperatures reaching over 100 degrees on the pavement. Truly miserable weather, especially when carrying heavy equipment. (and 10 lbs can be quite a load when biking for 500 miles)
So, you have to take heat into account. Most electronic equipment generate a lot of heat, and the humidity doesn't help either.
And speaking of humidity, we need to consider the freak weather. When it's hot and humid, thunderstorms develop very quickly, and downpours can hit you in a second. Waterproofing the stuff has to be a top priority. I'd suggest some sort of quick-release harness, and a water-proof zippered bag that hangs off the bike.
Finally, my 386 can handle high-res image conversion. it might take a minute to download each picture, but this isn't a real-time situation here. A cheap PDA will EASILY be able to handle the situation, regardless of the resolution. And the handspring Visor has both a Camera module *and* a cellular modem option. So, my idea is to make a harness on the front of the bike, and schedule a picture to be taken every 5 minutes or so. When the PDA gets full maybe after 3 hours or so, swap the Springboard modules, and download to the website.
Camera option #2.
Use a digital camera that stores pics onto a CompactFlash stick. Since you can get CF sticks that hold 32 or 64 MB, you can store quite a few pics between modem updates. Whenever you take a break (every couple of hours), go to your chase vehicle and swap memory sticks with them. They're going to be bored anyway, right?
And, we're not caring about the RAGBRAI, it's the crazy parties that are held every night after each day's race! That's what I want pictures of!
I do not agree. Napster needs something to say "Hey look, we're controlling the content! So stop suing us!" This appears to be what they're doing here.
Do you think Napster would allow you to actually *see* the MP3? My guess is it will be encoded into some sort of super-large cache. And you will have no control over it. And there will be a game where Napster keeps on hiding the songs better and better. And the energy expended in this "game" could be better spent on OpenNap.
And why you're wrong, PhatKat, is because of this:
1. Napster is not platform independent. You can only run Napster on their pre-approved platforms.
2. It would be a mistake to assume that Napster is being careless here. They want to be a viable business much more than you want your free music.
Anyway, that's my two cents, take what you want from it...
Yeah, except 90% of the posts would be trolls saying "Katz sucks." And the retard moderators would give them +3 Funny.
Where the heck do you work?
In my job, I *have* to code in the same language everybody else codes in. Why? Because EVERYBODY knows it! And I have no problems with that. I like the languages. If the union-appointed debugger has to fix my code, then it's a bit better if he knows the language, rather than having to decipher somebody else's C# that they learned on a lark. And, all petty differences aside, there are only 3-4 languages that people actually code in.
Larger software firms do have programmers who's job description *is* to test and debug code. It's a job I think I'd enjoy.
By the way, debugging your own code is not any different than the union carpenter who has to make sure all the nails are in the wood most the way, or the trucker who has to drive the loads safely from A to B, regardless of any mishaps along the way.
I'd like a job where I have to study code for 3 years. Some schools aren't very good at teaching programming. Anyway, this idea has worked for hundreds of years (apprenticeships), so why do we punish people who don't have 6 years of Java experience because their old job only required Perl? Let's bring back comprehensive on-the-job training.
The bozo who sits next to me wears a golf cap because he thinks it's a beret and listens to boy bands. He gets paid as much as I do.
MSCE certified people *do* get some extra attention, because it's a certificate. It's a standard level of competence that proves you're worth more money. And count me in on that 30k/year raise!!!
All the other points are moot, because I'm still making $30,000/year +salary with my MSCE, and isn't that what it's all about?
Now think about this. Imagine not having to search through endless job offers having to find an offer that won't screw you in the butt when you're not looking. Imagine having some real job security, and that you're not going to be on the street when Wall Street is being silly. Imagine all the people, working for today-ay ay, ooooohhhhh.. (My apologies to John Lennon fans)
I have thought about it. I know a colleague who recently spent the better part of a week finding a better paying job so she could get a raise at her current job. Why did she have to do that, instead of doing her job?
Yeah, it's a mixed bag. Not all good but not all bad either. You will lose some freedom, which is part of the fun of working in yesterday's economy, but you will also get a lot of things working in your favor. In my job, seniority counts above all, and I am a peon in my job because somebody worked there 2 years longer than I have.
In a class I recently took, I learned that the demand for qualified IT workers was so high, that people should be starting in 6 digits. At least, that's what companies would be paying in any other industry. Instead, we're barely making 40,000 out of college for the world's most intellectually demanding jobs.
Finally, go watch Office Space again, and tell me why it's funny and OK for Michael and Samir to steal $300,000 from their company's clients before they lose their jobs. And tell me if they would be driven to these criminal acts if they were working union jobs.
So, let me get this straight. He works his butt off, 1) writing code and 2) improving his "toolkit". He quits or gets laid off or even dies.
Depending on the IP agreement, John could own all his software he wrote at the place, *and* force the company to pay royalties to use the code. This would just about assure 100% job security, and a hefty paycheck to make sure you don't think about quitting...
In short, this little IP spat prevents a programmer from being paid what he's worth, based on his contribution to the company. What benefit does a company offer that offsets the stress of having to worry about intellectual property laws? And why does a programmer have to fight a legal battle alone?
I know this isn't a new topic, but why don't we have a Software Engineer union? We practice a trade that borders on art, where skill is a highly desirable attribute, but where skilled programmers are chased out by unskilled college graduates and foreigners willing to work for much less money. In any other market, this is unthinkable (think about scabs being beat up by striking truckers), so why do we allow it?
(besides the actual physical labor of having to hit somebody repeatedly, which would undoubtedly kill half of us)
I found this last night on BBSpot. It's a Random Slashdot story generator. Good for about 10 good laughs, about 3 deja-vu experiences, and for fooling that gullible newbie about 4 times...
I've got a 3 tray JVC XV-M567 ($299) which has optical out and proprietary "compu-link" to my JVC RS-6008V which came in the DS-TP330 Home Theater package ($350). The speakers are not as small as the Bose system (read less quality), but what they lack in size and sound range, the 100 watt 12" powered sub woofer more than makes up for.
The compulink cord connecting the DVD to the receiver will surprise you, and it eliminates 3 of my remote controls with the DVD remote. Mine controls my Toshiba TV, my JVC DVD player, and most of the functions on my JVC amp (everything but "off", ironic..).
Anyway, I love the system. It's simple, the 3 DVD trays are more handy than you can imagine, and the sound is great for the price.
The DVD player has composite video out, S-Video, and normal video jacks, and fiber-optic audio, PCM (read one rca cable for dolby surround), and normal phono (rca) plugs for your regular everyday sound.
The receiver can control 5 video sources (two of which are VCR), it has plenty of sound switches, and it's got built in Dolby Digital and DTS surround decoding (which are two competing surround sound systems), so it works with every DVD that's out there, and then some.
It even looks cool. The DVD has a cool chrome finish, which got an ooh from some friends when they were visiting from out of town...
Save your money and get these two components. It's really worth it. Use the extra money and get yourself a Duron system for an MP3 player...
Well, technically it's considered an "investment", but for M$, it's probably more of a down payment on the Microsoft layaway plan...
This is not a dream system, and they aren't marketing it as such. It is designed for people who want a broadband connection, but don't live in an area that supports it. It is an unavoidable fact that the latency is horrible, compared to any other type of connection, but when I can download stuff at 1400 kb/s (almost a freakin' T-1 to my computer, at a fraction of the cost!), I can easily forgive any latency and timeout issues that can arise from time to time.
The article states that it reaches 100 GHz, not 750. The bit transfer rate can reach speeds of 750 gigabits/second, still an awesome transfer rate, by any means...
Of course, I read the webpage *after* I post. He's already thought of this idea. There goes my patentable idea...
Now here's an idea.. What if a manufacturer, after going through a batch of bad memory, found a certain percentage of the group was bad. Then, conceivably, he could sell it at a lower price in some sort of clearance bin, and still make some money on the whole deal, as opposed to throwing it away and taking a loss on the deal.
On the contrary, this is an awesome idea.. Imagine buying a game that didn't depend on a specific OS or even platform!
I'm not a Linux Developer, but these problems seem kinda moot. All you have to do is create a tiny game partition that contains all specific drivers that a game could possibly use... Configuring would be a cinch, as long as it's open sourced properly and internet capable, updating with the latest drivers should be as easy as running WindowsUpdate (which is incredibly handy)...
It would also contain all the networking information that would be necessary for online/LAN play. You pop in the CD, it reads information off the partition, loads the drivers and boom, I have a enhanced game system running independent of the OS i'm using... when I am done and want to save a game, all I have to do is write to that partition.
When I'm in the middle of a Q3 game, the last thing on my mind is email.
Many systems now support a sleep mode. Get all the hardware and software people together... Create a system state saver for your OS. When you double click on the game, your system state would be saved, and your system would be quickly rebooted into your new game mode. When you exit, your system state is restored back to the way you left it.
Now this is at the least naive and at the most visionary. The actual implementation would be horribly long and complicated, and it would definitely be a pain to get this working right, but as long as it's all standardized (find a way to discourage competing "standards" a la M$), I think this idea would work, and would allow for easy porting from console systems to PC, and allow the PC game industry to work the way it does with the console systems...
I wouldn't care if Slashdot posted an article on basket weaving. My life would still be the same as it now. Thankfully, they don't, because it's not what they do. The job that they chose was to be a central point for relevant information for technologically minded fellows. They do an awesome job of wading through the mountains of crap they get every day, and providing plenty of good material to pleasantly waste my day away.
:)
I wasn't trying to flame the slashdot crew, so I would like to thank you for responding calmly.
Personally, I haven't yet experienced the "joys of capitalism", since I'm a college student just barely making enough to pay all my bills. You can understand my frustration at some guy making $125k per year thinking he's been screwed. Let me clarify: He was screwed, as well as many Slashdot readers. I'm confident that a class-action lawsuit will be in the works soon, if not already.)
Yes, many geeks are now in a position of making money, that is true. I did not foresee it's relevance to many other readers, and for that I apologize. It shows that Rob and the gang are much more informed than I was, and proves why I'm not much more than a troll...
(P.S. For those of you who've remapped the Enter key on their keyboards to "FLAME", I hate smilies. I only added to show I'm not bitter or sarcastic)
This trailer's major effects shots are CGI renderings of computer graphics, and a single impressive shot of Dr. Roth(?) looking over an alien landscape that almost looks painted. Amazing if it was in a game (FF9?) but not in a theater. And I saw the hair thing in FF8 on my playstation.
Not to be a troll, but FF seems to be nothing that hasn't been done before. I was disappointed by Titan:AE. That had big names voices too.
"Dimers" are fragmented buckyballs. 'nuff said.
I'm a big fan of Neal Stephenson, but a bigger fan of Sir Arthur C Clarke. He should get some credit for predicting that we are entering (have entered?) a "Carbon Age". Diamond-based materials are going to be a minor material of the future, and will not be as important as the major advances in other carbon-based materials. We've already seen buckyballs and carbon-fiber... I don't think anybody will disagree that we're on the verge of some exciting times as far as Carbon is concerned...
Most of the patents we care about are of the type that make you scratch your head and say "How could they patent that?" (examples abound). So, it seems to me that to make this work, we'd pretty much have to anti-patent _everything_, no matter how crazy and dumb it sounds. By the end of this idea, we'd have so many anti-patents.
If I had a real patentable idea, I wouldn't even bother with the anti-patent. I'd get the real patent.
Well, my two cents worth anyway...