No, I'm just saying that price affects the point at which people will stop trying to even bother justifying copyright infringement. At $1/song, many songs are copied. At $0.10 a song, there'd be a lot fewer. At $0.01, who'd even bother to go looking for illicit copies?
I can't imagine needing 2 monitors stacked vertically to effectively edit something.
You can have them logically arranged vertically, while maintaining them physically side-by-side. This way, when you page down, you get new stuff on both monitors. Of course, it's hell for image editing, but that's another story:-)
I ran into yet another IE7 css bug. Doesn't support table-row and table-cell attributes, so I had to switch to inline-block.
However, css doesn't yet support specifying more than 1 column or row for any particular cell - it really is time to start moving client-server apps away from their dependence on browsers. It's one of the reasons I've been boning up on (*gasp*) java.
Dr. Classen's claims are neither "tied to a particular machine or apparatus" nor do they "transform a particular article into a different state or thing." Bilski, 545 F.3d at 954.
Hey, since that is a transformative act, why not patent it? Then you can prevent anyone else from trying to "punish jews."
While you're at it, why not extend the patent to *ALL* hate crimes? And WAR? Be nice if hate crimes and war were impractical because of potential patent violations.
And you could patent stupidity. We could all use an outbreak of common sense.
In general, if something is priced right, I don't mind paying for it. What this means is that I'm a bit of a sucker for sales. The idea behind sales is - "sell to the general public at the retail price, then sell what's left at a sale price to maximize profits." It means that those who ae willing to pay a "premium" to have it right away buy it, and those who aren't in a rush can still become customers at the sale price.
So yes, I agree that high prices don't justify copyright infringement. Then again, how much is there out there that's even worth the cost of a blank dvd?
As to games or songs, I simply can't be bothered. I don't have time to play games (I'd rather read a book, and guess what - I buy them, I don't pirate them) and I got sick of listening to mp3s a long time ago. I want *QUIET*. That's why I prefer my laptop to my desktop - no fan noise.
Software? gnu/linux distros do everything I need it to do, both at work and at home.
As for the people who claim that all pirated game are lost sales, they are wrong. Many of those "lost sales" would never have been made, just as Microsoft can't count me as a lost sale since I use a different OS. I'm simply not their customer, just as many of those "lost sales" would never have taken place if piracy prevention were 100% effective. This is similar to their problem with people selling used games. People sell their used games mostly so that they can buy new games, so it's not like the money doesn't get to them anyway, and the used games "grow the market", same as selling a used car.
The industry is finally seeing the light in a few, rare, instances, and switching to different revenue models - in-game ads, online content, subscription models, etc. In other words, there are solutions that bypass the whole "piracy" problem, rather than treating the customer like a thief.
When developers ask for a new monitor or dual monitors, let them have 'em but mandate that the monitors be in a vertical orientation [about.com]as opposed to the typical horizontal orientation. That way, they'll have to use the monitors for efficient viewing of code rather than watching movies all day long. It's such a simple idea that I'm surprised that more businesses and coders haven't caught on to it.
Who will be the first to post "ICodeInJavaWithClassesWithReallyReallyReallyLongNames.youIgnorantClod();" ?
There should always be someone who says "should we be doing this" - whether it's adding a feature, or even the whole project. I've always maintained that the most bug-free code is the code that never gets written because the [ feature | idea | whatever ] is dropped. Part of the problem is that the people involved in "conceptualizing" what they think is a "really good feature" have terrible math or other instincts.
Then there's the whole "web apps" thing. People confuse "web apps" with "web pages." The two require completely different skill sets.
Then there's the problem with "the browser as application platform" model. Eventually, we're going to have to realize that it's better to eliminate the browser and let our apps communicate directly with servers, if we want to have better security and performance.
... and buzzwords - "we'll just use xml - that should make it fast." -wtf???
... and developers who spend 10 minutes clicking around to do something that can be done in seconds with a text editor... because their platform of choice doesn't have a proper shell, the most basic tools, and trying to find where the files are on their latest system so you can back everything up is a real pain.
... or worse, can't read source code because their tool "hides all that" from them.
Natalie Portman can't act for shit and she has the tits of an 11-year old girl. Grits are bland and best served to the inbred, down-syndrome-afflicted inhabitants of the Southern United States. Get off it already.
that's the point - they DO get off on it!
As for the rest, if you REALLY want to improve productivity:
HARDWARE
Dual monitors. They pay for themselves within weeks. This is a real no-brainer.
Dual monitors. They pay for themselves within weeks. This is a real no-brainer.
Dual monitors. They pay for themselves within weeks. This is a real no-brainer.
Did I mention dual monitors? They really make a difference...
PEOPLE
Learn to manage people. The biggest time-waster is bad management.
Learn some communications skills. This applies to everyone. Management, programmers, get your "people skills" in order.
Give people the time they need to better self-organize. Unrealistic deadlines waste time as corners are cut.
Learn to manage projects. This includes cutting features right at the beginning, instead of the usual "we have this checklist of features", and then the inevitable "feature creep", followed by the "what can we cut so we can ship the *^&@&%&^% thing?"
The real productivity killers are poor morale, poor management, poor communications, poor specifications, poor research, lack of time for testing, lack of time for documenting, lack of time for "passing on knowledge" to other people, etc. Not hardware.
Yes, hardware IS cheap. Poor management is the killer - in every field. Just ask anyone who has been on a death march project. Or bought GM stock a year ago. Or who supported John McCain, then watched Sarah Palin become his "bimbo eruption." They all have one thing in common - people who thought they knew better, didn't do their research properly, and then screwed the pooch.
An alternative scenario that would work for her is one laptop, an external LCD for the home, one at the office, and one in the car, and pocket the other $2k.
Now, if she's that dependent on her Thunderbird data, she should be backing it up on a regular basis anyway. The loss of the data (drive failure, theft, etc) is more of a hassle than backing it up, right?
"
Of course now I get to hear about the crappy Alps touchpad driver and the general suckitude of Dell products, so it doesn't help ME any.
"
So buy her an external usb mouse, external keyboard, and external LCD, and you not only won't hear any complaints, but she'll really enjoy using two screens.
There was a study in the '70s that predicted the collapse of much of the southern US in the early part of this century due to it becoming too hot to live in, and too dry to farm. The US absolutely *has* to get a handle on its' population growth, and reverse it. The alternative is really ugly - a 3rd-world standard of living for most of the population.
The prediction was for 50 to 150 million Americans to be displaced, out of a total population of 450 to 665 million. That's pretty grim.
Definitely not worth it. 17" and 10"? Why not buy a 17" and another 17" or larger LCD? All laptops today support secondary displays. For the price of this laptop, you can buy 3 17" laptops, that weights a lot less, 3 separate LCDs, and a 16 gig usb drive to transfer files, One lappy for home, one for the office, and one for the car when you go to see customers, friends, or whatever.
Since it will actually INCREASE the greenhouse effect (after all, it takes a LOT of energy to spray a half-inch of water into the air), you won't have to worry about tropical storms - they'll no longer be confined just to the tropics.
So programmers signed away their rights and now they want unions to give them back? NDAs don't stop you from working for a competitor or for a company that isn't a competitor. You just can't reveal trade secrets.
NDAs can and do prevent you from working for a competitor. Have you ever signed one? I've signed a few. I've even drafted some.
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge in New York ordered a newly hired Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) executive to stop work immediately because he might be violating an agreement with his former employer, IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains ordered that Mark Papermaster "immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc until further order of this court."
BTW, non-disclosures and non-competes often go hand in hand for programming jobs. They're usually combined into one document.
GM makes crap cars nobody wants - THAT is the problem with GM
The problem with GM is that they didn't automate enough.
I don't think we share a common definition for the word "the".
Then let me connect the dots for you...
GM's cars are crap because of poor quality control. The poor quality control is due to their not automating sufficiently. Not enough robots. Of course, that also means they have higher labour costs, which means higher prices for less value, and higher warranty claims, which furthers the whole "GM makes crap cars" thing. So they end up with crappy overpriced cars that nobody wants, which is why they went from more than 50% market share to less than 20%, and dropping.
You don't think that scrabble meets the criteria of innovation? I see absolutely no prior art that comes close to it and the restricted use and valuation of tiles for letter use is entirely inventive.
So go and be the first to patent it - Hasbro didn't. (of course, there's a reason they didn't - it's not patentable:-).
If unions drive up the cost of semi-skilled labour, therefore increasing the cost of public transport, then they're not a good thing.
The higher cost of labour forced the bus commission to make the service more appealing to riders so as to be able to generate more revenue. This meant, among other things, more attention to making sure buses run on time - to the minute if possible. It meant dynamically changing the number of buses on routes when needed. It meant expanding service, both in frequency and in destinations. This strategy was working even before the skyrocketing fuel prices of last summer.
It would be the same for GM (if they had had competent management) investing in more robots, so as to make their worker-hours per vehicle produced lower, and the final quality of the product higher. Instead, they pissed away the opportunity, then hit the government up for $25 billion in funding to "help retool to be more competitive."
Very few unions allow each employee to negotiate his own wage based on his own ability. A talented newcomer will not be paid more than a thirty-year veteran with cob-webs on him.
That's true whether there's a union or not. A newcomer has to prove that they actually have that talent. Also, the "30-year veteran with cobwebs" probably knows enough of what works and doesn't, not just in the code, but in the overall business sense, to save serious money. Ditto for finding bugs, etc.
Then again, the newcomer probably hasn't learned that people skills are more important to the success of a project than any extra "technical flourish." Projects don't fail because of poor programming skills - they fail because of poor communications skills, poor goal-setting skills, and poor overall management.
Besides, who says that people with a few decades in have to be all cob-webby? Once you've learned a dozen programming languages, picking up a new one becomes second nature.
The initial price is lower, and you can get competitive quotes instead of single-sourcing;
There's no fee for upgrading to the next point release, unlike Apple, which also adds to the cost;
So, unlike having to ask graduating students for a "nominal fee" to purchase what is, 6 years later, a piece of crap, you can just give it to them, and still be ahead financially. You also don't get stuck with the recycling fees if they say "o thanks" because there's no opportunity to say "No thanks."
Unions aren't just about money. They're also about working conditions, unpaid overtime, getting the "death march" mentality under control, holding managements' feet to the fire when a project fails because of bad communications or mismanagement, etc., rather than blaming the coders who did the best they could to polish a turd.
So? There's already superior solutions to those problems that don't require unions. People leave when the work environment sours. If a company wants to remain competitive they need either to keep people. Maybe the janitors can't hop to another company, but your programmers certainly can.
Maybe those programmers, because they have been concentrating the field their employer, you know, pays them to work on, can't just pack up and go work for a competitor because of, you know, NDAs?
Oh, wait - turns out janitors *DO* have more job mobility than programmers. If janitors can belong to a union, so can programmers.
Even $50 is too much for a beat-up, obsolete, 6-year-old laptop. Would you pay $50 for a laptop that ran Apple's OS from 6 years ago (wrong cpu, wrong architecture, piss-poor performance?)
Get linux laptops instead, and use the money saved in both the initial price and by not having to pay to upgrade the OS in a couple of years to make the "nominal fee" zero, and STILL cost less.
Since it didn't go to court, we don't have a decision as to whether "linking to" is a copyright violation. The RIAA and certai media believe it is. The rest of the world doesn't.
Since it was Hasbro's own servers that were generating the rules pages, it's dubious that there was an actual copyright violation. More likely, it would be misrepresentation or "trade dress", which could be avoided by clearly identifying the source as belonging to Hasbro.
I think you can set the password and prevent booting to an external disk or the CD drive, which would prevent booting the installer. The password reset thing isn't on the install disk btw.
Internal laptop drives are incredibly cheap and easy to swap nowadays.
Install new hard drive with linux
Run the original OS in a VM.
Charge other students for same unlocked setup - PROFIT!
In my career (since 1982), there have only been two places I've worked where the computers were "locked down", and these restrictions were trivially bypassed. There were policies in effect at these companies, including one where you supposedly had to apply to your manager for permission to access each indivdual web site. In practice, it took about two or three days before any new employee or contractor was told the IP number of the unrestricted proxy.
Today it's even easier - there's always at least one unsecured WAP somewhere within range of most offices now that 802.11n is cheap and widespread.
Locking down the OS is so '90s, which is the last time I had that happen to me, and on both occasions it was done to everyone for just one morning while "things were sorted out" because of a management change, not any problem with IT personnel.
I've locked down users' computers, but only from a hardware perspective - removed the optical drives and installed linux, so I wouldn't be wasting time re-installing after some idiots' cracked malware-infested game cd screwed things up.
As for blocking sites, better to just log every request through a proxy server. Provides interesting material should you ever have to go all BOfH on someone.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm just saying that price affects the point at which people will stop trying to even bother justifying copyright infringement. At $1/song, many songs are copied. At $0.10 a song, there'd be a lot fewer. At $0.01, who'd even bother to go looking for illicit copies?
You can have them logically arranged vertically, while maintaining them physically side-by-side. This way, when you page down, you get new stuff on both monitors. Of course, it's hell for image editing, but that's another story :-)
I ran into yet another IE7 css bug. Doesn't support table-row and table-cell attributes, so I had to switch to inline-block.
However, css doesn't yet support specifying more than 1 column or row for any particular cell - it really is time to start moving client-server apps away from their dependence on browsers. It's one of the reasons I've been boning up on (*gasp*) java.
Hey, since that is a transformative act, why not patent it? Then you can prevent anyone else from trying to "punish jews."
While you're at it, why not extend the patent to *ALL* hate crimes? And WAR? Be nice if hate crimes and war were impractical because of potential patent violations.
And you could patent stupidity. We could all use an outbreak of common sense.
In general, if something is priced right, I don't mind paying for it. What this means is that I'm a bit of a sucker for sales. The idea behind sales is - "sell to the general public at the retail price, then sell what's left at a sale price to maximize profits." It means that those who ae willing to pay a "premium" to have it right away buy it, and those who aren't in a rush can still become customers at the sale price.
So yes, I agree that high prices don't justify copyright infringement. Then again, how much is there out there that's even worth the cost of a blank dvd?
As to games or songs, I simply can't be bothered. I don't have time to play games (I'd rather read a book, and guess what - I buy them, I don't pirate them) and I got sick of listening to mp3s a long time ago. I want *QUIET*. That's why I prefer my laptop to my desktop - no fan noise.
Software? gnu/linux distros do everything I need it to do, both at work and at home.
As for the people who claim that all pirated game are lost sales, they are wrong. Many of those "lost sales" would never have been made, just as Microsoft can't count me as a lost sale since I use a different OS. I'm simply not their customer, just as many of those "lost sales" would never have taken place if piracy prevention were 100% effective. This is similar to their problem with people selling used games. People sell their used games mostly so that they can buy new games, so it's not like the money doesn't get to them anyway, and the used games "grow the market", same as selling a used car.
The industry is finally seeing the light in a few, rare, instances, and switching to different revenue models - in-game ads, online content, subscription models, etc. In other words, there are solutions that bypass the whole "piracy" problem, rather than treating the customer like a thief.
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
Who will be the first to post "ICodeInJavaWithClassesWithReallyReallyReallyLongNames.youIgnorantClod();" ?
There should always be someone who says "should we be doing this" - whether it's adding a feature, or even the whole project. I've always maintained that the most bug-free code is the code that never gets written because the [ feature | idea | whatever ] is dropped. Part of the problem is that the people involved in "conceptualizing" what they think is a "really good feature" have terrible math or other instincts.
Then there's the whole "web apps" thing. People confuse "web apps" with "web pages." The two require completely different skill sets.
Then there's the problem with "the browser as application platform" model. Eventually, we're going to have to realize that it's better to eliminate the browser and let our apps communicate directly with servers, if we want to have better security and performance.
... or worse, can't read source code because their tool "hides all that" from them.
that's the point - they DO get off on it!
As for the rest, if you REALLY want to improve productivity:
The real productivity killers are poor morale, poor management, poor communications, poor specifications, poor research, lack of time for testing, lack of time for documenting, lack of time for "passing on knowledge" to other people, etc. Not hardware.
Yes, hardware IS cheap. Poor management is the killer - in every field. Just ask anyone who has been on a death march project. Or bought GM stock a year ago. Or who supported John McCain, then watched Sarah Palin become his "bimbo eruption." They all have one thing in common - people who thought they knew better, didn't do their research properly, and then screwed the pooch.
An alternative scenario that would work for her is one laptop, an external LCD for the home, one at the office, and one in the car, and pocket the other $2k.
Now, if she's that dependent on her Thunderbird data, she should be backing it up on a regular basis anyway. The loss of the data (drive failure, theft, etc) is more of a hassle than backing it up, right?
" Of course now I get to hear about the crappy Alps touchpad driver and the general suckitude of Dell products, so it doesn't help ME any. "
So buy her an external usb mouse, external keyboard, and external LCD, and you not only won't hear any complaints, but she'll really enjoy using two screens.
There was a study in the '70s that predicted the collapse of much of the southern US in the early part of this century due to it becoming too hot to live in, and too dry to farm. The US absolutely *has* to get a handle on its' population growth, and reverse it. The alternative is really ugly - a 3rd-world standard of living for most of the population.
The prediction was for 50 to 150 million Americans to be displaced, out of a total population of 450 to 665 million. That's pretty grim.
Definitely not worth it. 17" and 10"? Why not buy a 17" and another 17" or larger LCD? All laptops today support secondary displays. For the price of this laptop, you can buy 3 17" laptops, that weights a lot less, 3 separate LCDs, and a 16 gig usb drive to transfer files, One lappy for home, one for the office, and one for the car when you go to see customers, friends, or whatever.
8 inch and 12 inch, sure ... but 7 inch???
Since it will actually INCREASE the greenhouse effect (after all, it takes a LOT of energy to spray a half-inch of water into the air), you won't have to worry about tropical storms - they'll no longer be confined just to the tropics.
NDAs can and do prevent you from working for a competitor. Have you ever signed one? I've signed a few. I've even drafted some.
Check this out: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0743124420081108
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. District Court judge in New York ordered a newly hired Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) executive to stop work immediately because he might be violating an agreement with his former employer, IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Federal District Judge Kenneth Karas in White Plains ordered that Mark Papermaster "immediately cease his employment with Apple Inc until further order of this court."
BTW, non-disclosures and non-competes often go hand in hand for programming jobs. They're usually combined into one document.
Then let me connect the dots for you ...
GM's cars are crap because of poor quality control. The poor quality control is due to their not automating sufficiently. Not enough robots. Of course, that also means they have higher labour costs, which means higher prices for less value, and higher warranty claims, which furthers the whole "GM makes crap cars" thing. So they end up with crappy overpriced cars that nobody wants, which is why they went from more than 50% market share to less than 20%, and dropping.
So go and be the first to patent it - Hasbro didn't. (of course, there's a reason they didn't - it's not patentable :-).
In Soviet Amerika, the IRS doesn't audit itself, it audits YOU!
If you're not compliant, no excuses. If they're not compliant, don't complain comrade - they WILL auduit you!
The higher cost of labour forced the bus commission to make the service more appealing to riders so as to be able to generate more revenue. This meant, among other things, more attention to making sure buses run on time - to the minute if possible. It meant dynamically changing the number of buses on routes when needed. It meant expanding service, both in frequency and in destinations. This strategy was working even before the skyrocketing fuel prices of last summer.
It would be the same for GM (if they had had competent management) investing in more robots, so as to make their worker-hours per vehicle produced lower, and the final quality of the product higher. Instead, they pissed away the opportunity, then hit the government up for $25 billion in funding to "help retool to be more competitive."
That's true whether there's a union or not. A newcomer has to prove that they actually have that talent. Also, the "30-year veteran with cobwebs" probably knows enough of what works and doesn't, not just in the code, but in the overall business sense, to save serious money. Ditto for finding bugs, etc.
Then again, the newcomer probably hasn't learned that people skills are more important to the success of a project than any extra "technical flourish." Projects don't fail because of poor programming skills - they fail because of poor communications skills, poor goal-setting skills, and poor overall management.
Besides, who says that people with a few decades in have to be all cob-webby? Once you've learned a dozen programming languages, picking up a new one becomes second nature.
It doesn't - but it means you're saving money:
So, unlike having to ask graduating students for a "nominal fee" to purchase what is, 6 years later, a piece of crap, you can just give it to them, and still be ahead financially. You also don't get stuck with the recycling fees if they say "o thanks" because there's no opportunity to say "No thanks."
Maybe those programmers, because they have been concentrating the field their employer, you know, pays them to work on, can't just pack up and go work for a competitor because of, you know, NDAs?
Oh, wait - turns out janitors *DO* have more job mobility than programmers. If janitors can belong to a union, so can programmers.
Even $50 is too much for a beat-up, obsolete, 6-year-old laptop. Would you pay $50 for a laptop that ran Apple's OS from 6 years ago (wrong cpu, wrong architecture, piss-poor performance?)
Get linux laptops instead, and use the money saved in both the initial price and by not having to pay to upgrade the OS in a couple of years to make the "nominal fee" zero, and STILL cost less.
Since it didn't go to court, we don't have a decision as to whether "linking to" is a copyright violation. The RIAA and certai media believe it is. The rest of the world doesn't.
Since it was Hasbro's own servers that were generating the rules pages, it's dubious that there was an actual copyright violation. More likely, it would be misrepresentation or "trade dress", which could be avoided by clearly identifying the source as belonging to Hasbro.
Internal laptop drives are incredibly cheap and easy to swap nowadays.
Today it's even easier - there's always at least one unsecured WAP somewhere within range of most offices now that 802.11n is cheap and widespread.
Locking down the OS is so '90s, which is the last time I had that happen to me, and on both occasions it was done to everyone for just one morning while "things were sorted out" because of a management change, not any problem with IT personnel.
I've locked down users' computers, but only from a hardware perspective - removed the optical drives and installed linux, so I wouldn't be wasting time re-installing after some idiots' cracked malware-infested game cd screwed things up.
As for blocking sites, better to just log every request through a proxy server. Provides interesting material should you ever have to go all BOfH on someone.