My issue with the French stems largely from WWII as well. To my mind, their reaction to the Nazis cost them all rights to any future griping. Any group of people who is sufficiently mentally defective to vote to allow the Nazis into your country so that they don't bomb your musems, is too mentally defective to be allowed a voice in any future decisions.
Sure, Mr. Hitler, come on in. Round up our Jews, our staunch Catholics, our Gypsies, and kill our people. Just, please, oh please don't bomb our musems.
I can't resist. They really tracked these boneheads for 211 miles before stopping them? Who's to say that the people in the car when they finally stopped were the people who were in the car when the crime happened? How about this for a scenario?
1: Commit crime 2: Drive to least favorite relative's house 2: Loan car to (for me anyway) sister-in-law, who borrows everything & returns nothing, for vacation trip 3: Laugh for a very long time while she tries to prove she's innocent.
First off, this isn't about your coffe pot or your fridge. It's about entire countries. It's not really a problem in North America and Europe. We have plenty of IPV4 address space. There is no real pressure for us to convert. Why fix it if it ain't broke? The problem is that it is not broken here. It's broken every where else, and broken rather badly. There is a significant "black market" in IP addresses. Blocks of IP space, Class B's and Class C's, sell for significant amounts of money. I haven't seen a Class A up for grabs in ages. This adds greatly to the cost for other countries to bring their users on line so that they too, can play in the digital marketplace. IPV4 is about haves and have nots. The IPV4 standard has unintentionally created huge groups of "have nots" simply because they have come to table a bit later than the rest of us.
Asia, Africa, Central & South America, as well as most of the Carribean and Pacific Islands are still not well represented on the Internet. Here in North America, the university that I work for holds more publically addressable IP space than the entire country of China. In answer your next question, no we are not willing to give it up, because we actually use it in ways that NAT, etc. would likely break. IPV6 is designed to address these issues and still leave us with plenty of room to grow.
In answer to your question, NAT'ing entire countries simply isn't technically feasable. Many of you who are asking "Why bother with IPV6?" are the same people who bash China for controlling what their citizens are able to view on line. Why place yet another tool (i.e. NAT) which can be used to restrict the flow of information in the hands of such a goverment?
Quoting from the webopedia - "Pronounced risk, acronym for reduced instruction set computer, a type of microprocessor that recognizes a relatively limited number of instructions".
Quoting from Answers.com - "RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer)"
Quoting from Wikipedia - "Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC"
Before you go correcting someone, you really ought to know what it is your speaking about. FYI, CISC means Complex Instrution Set Computer. Oh, and as another FYI, Intel used to make a RISC chip - the PentiumPro.
Here's the skinny. You have two basic types of CPU's in the world. RISC and CISC. "R" in RISC means reduced instruction set. It's great for crunching vast amounts of numbers, but less awesome for other tasks. The instruction set is basically the same for both chips for most end users. The only difference is if the instructions are coded into the chip or not. If the instructions aren't on the chip, then they often have to be run as extra lines of code for many applications. Where's you big performance gain then? Having the instructions on the chip is often perferable in many circumstances.
The game was cheap and the on-line pay-to-play fee was not unreasonable, which is why my gaming clan purchased it the first place. However, due to the "bugs" and some of the changes made to game, we soon got frustrated and have moved on to other games. Since we were "one of the violent mobs" he mentions, many of the changes were directed at us and others like us specifically. While we had been hoping for some serious "cops and robbers" kind of action between our mob of raiders and what ever passes for law enforcement, it never happened and we found that to be extremely frustrating and disappointing. We felt, given the presence of Tarkan raiders, bounty hunters, black marketeers, etc. in the original story lines, that we were not out of place in the on-line game. However the game was not particulary accomodating in this regard.
I say that we all add all the bots we can. Then form a chat room with the bots and let them respond to each other. If enough of us do this, perhaps we can suck up enough bandwidth to make AOL take notice and "Stop the Bots". Think of it as a digital "sit in".
High availability is another one of those marketing buzz words that really doesn't have a good, nailed down definition.
You can acheive this in three basic ways. Each has their own pros and cons. I recommend that you weigh them out and come to a decision you think you can live with.
Clustering - You have a group of servers (physical hardware) each running the same software and working to stay synched up with each other. Now clustering comes in two flavors active/active and active/passive. The active/active clusters share the requests between them. The active/passive clusters wait for a node to fail and then another node in cluster assumes the active role.
Master/Slave - This is similiar to clustering in that you have a group of servers (physical pieces of hardware) each running copies of the software. The master does not service requests directly and operates only as a central repository replicating all the data to the slaves. The slaves synch with the master. If one slave fails, there is normally some means for another slave to take over. Note: While this is old and largely deprecated, it is still quite functional and cost-effective under certain circumstances.
Load-Balancing - There are several physical pieces of hardware who each process transactions all the time. All updates/writes/commits are sent to all the servers, but reads are serviced only by one. Note: Again, this is deprecated, but can still be quite functional in specific circumstances.
My experience has been that typically all that is needed for clustering to work is some shared drive space for the various instances in the cluster to manage their own internal bookkeeping. In all honesty, there are several factors here that would make a big difference in what I would recommend for you. One - how much data are you talking about storing? Two - What are you using it for? If this is driving your web site, a second or two of latency while something fails over won't be noticable to the end user. If you're transmitting medical records to an EMT team, it might be fatal. Three - Why are you looking at HA? What need are you trying to fill?
PS: Yes, I like Postgres. It supports foreign key relationships out the box (ummm...*R*DMBS, anyone?) It also doesn't force me to put in unnecessary indexes to use fk's. I will say that MySQL has managed to address some of my previous complaints about not supporting views, stored procedures or triggers. I haven't had time to test their version 5 for now, so I'll be silent as I have no opinion on their implementation.
In all honesty, this sounds a lot like an internal "hatchet" job to me. I'd be all for getting rid of the handgrenade. As the previous poster noted, you will likely NOT be making any friends if you "get someone fired". The reality of the situation notwithstanding, I'd be very curious as to why they have such a new person tasked with such an important project "out of the chute". You have not even had time to get a feel for what is needed, much less be able to write an appropriate RFP or RFQ for the necessary services.
Have you asked your boss why they are considering outsourcing when this is going to be a permanent, on-going need? I'd also ask your boss rather pointedly, but in private, if there are issues with the person they have now. Keep in mind that "issues" can cover everything from technical ability to personality conflict with a politically powerful customer. What ever those issues are need to be addressed with the person in question, rather than going to an outside vendor. The person that the vendor sends you may not be any better, and could in fact be much worse than the person you have now.
I'd like to point out that you have less control and higher costs when you bring in contractors. Why not just hire a help desk grunt and a sys admin for day to day stuff? You can always bring in contractors on a per-project basis later for really complex, time consuming things like implementing back ups or massive network upgrades. If you have a $9.00/hour help desk monkey, you'll be paying the vendor $30/hour to have him there. Just hire the $9.00 monkey yourself. It's much easier.
Perhaps your boss doesn't feel qualified to conduct the technical part of the interview. For a fee, I'd be happy to vet the applicants technically:)
Item 1 - Crappy Buggy Software - How many of you have fixed PC's that were crashing due to the AOL superfriendly software??? As for Microsoft, enough said.
Item 2 - User base too stupid to realize that are better alternatives - Ok, maybe it's just me, but how dumb do you have to be to pay $24.95 a month for dial up? I pay $36.00 a month for a 7MB/sec fiber connection. Dial up from good reputable carriers fairly easy to come by at $9.95 a month. Furthermore, AOL is offering it's OWN services under the "Netscape" brand for $9.95 a month. They KNOW they're too high. Paying an extra $15/month for internet is a stupid waste of money. As for Microsoft, Apple, Linux, or Unix with the CodeWeaver's Plug In.
Item 3 - High Prices - see item 2. $189 for Windows XP retail.
Item 4 - Reliance on marketing instead of technical superiority - Hmmm...where to begin? The mind boggles. See item #1? How about all those f#@*&ing CD's AOL mails me every week? How about all the ads they run? Their reputation is legend in the industry and not in a good way. Same goes for Microsoft.
As for the "OMFG, rush them to the altar and see what kind of a two-headed freak baby they produce. It should be well worth it's weight in amusement value alone!" I think that kinda speaks for itself. Any kind of a hybrid between these two will be amusing at best and downright dangerous at worst. Given AOL's content and Microsoft's market penetration on the desktop, we may all be screwed...err...waiting for assimilation.
Keep in mind that any time an IBM-compatible motherboard and hard drive are sold together, be it in a PC or not, that Microsoft gets a royalty. They get this even if you don't install their OS. Just another way that the Borg Collective is out to assimilate you.
Campaign against any elected official who voted for the DMCA
Boycott any and all Sony products. This includes computers, movies, etc.
Class action law suit - hit them in the wallet AND make it a matter of public record for all time.
Urge others to follow you in the boycott
I have flatly refused to buy music for a rather extended period of time because I will not put a single dime in the RIAA's pockets. They routine rip-off the very musicans that they proclaim so loudly that they are protecting. Many musicians, even prominent ones, have been defrauded of vast sums of money by the music industry representatives (Little Richard and Elvis Presely to name two that come immediately to mind). Numerous articles have been publishes on this and Sony is currently being sued by a group of artists over this very thing. If they're ripping the artists off, how come they care if I download an MP3?
The Borg Collective (a.k.a. Microsoft) and AOL make a rather good match. Look at what they have in common:
1) Crappy, Buggy Software 2) A User base too stupid to realize that there are better alternatives 3) High Prices 4) They rely more heavily on maketing than technical superiority
OMFG, rush them to the altar and see what kind of a two-headed freak baby they produce. It should be well worth it's weight in amusement value alone!
Not true. Through a varieity of loopholes, they are almost infinitely renewable. My implication was that the period is NOT becoming shorter, but is instead becoming almost indefinite.
America has taken it in, made their own lesser versions, and crapped them out the other side
The whole reason you think this about us is because the Corporte poobahs can't do anything without their thrice-damned focus groups. Focus groups (or f^%&-up groups) just result in bland, lame, products that just bite. Anything that's sufficiently bland as to cause exactly 0 controversy in any given group of people simply CANNOT be worth having.
When the marketing wonks wake up and realize this, we'll all be orders of magnitude better off. As a fan of manga and anime myself, I'm sad to see it getting the full corporate marketing pre-processing. You're right, they'll ruin it because they are unable to do anything else.
Part of the problem is that patents have been expanded far beyond their original intention. They were originally set up to expire in 17 years with the option for one renewal. That means that knowledge would be locked down for a maximum of 34 years. At that point it was supposed to pass in to the public domain.
It was changed because large companies had the habit of offering a pittance for licensing someone's patent. If it wasn't accepted, they would simply wait until the patent expired and then use the technology for free. Many people don't realize that the relatively modern addition of variable speed windshield wipers were invented in the early part of the previous century. I forget the exact year. Now, however, that the patent has expired this is a standard feature on most automobiles.
This is simply the pendulum swinging back the other direction. Invention and innovation will be stifled to the point that the companies will start going out of business, strangled on their own patents. They'll be unable to bring new products to market because everything will infringe on someone else's patent. Companies are already buying other companies in order to obtain "the intellectual propery". If its to the point that you buy the whole company just to get their patents, things are desperate indeed.
Basically what you're saying is that this guy worked his a&& off for weeks or months coding this thing before he even brought it on line, and then worked his a&& off managing it for a year. If he's only made $13,000, assuming a 6 month development period, he's been working for a whopping $4.16 per hour.
Wal-Mart checkers and McDonald's burger flippers make better money.
I've worked in a couple of places where we had running Nerf battles any time the stress levels got to high. Unfortunately, one of them was in a secured facility, complete with "little green men" who carried M-16's. During one of our battles, we got carried away and spilled out into the hallway, thus alarming said man who had a real gun that shot bullets instead of Nerf balls. Other than that, I've always found that Nerf battles were exteremely theraputic and quite good for morale overall.
I've been modded down more than one for whinging about the Patriot Act and the sweeping police-state type powers that grants to law enforcement. The short version is that if you staying or passed through Las Vegas during their target time frame, you've been investigated by the FBI and the data they harvested about you is being permanently stored and shared with "private sector entities where appropriate".
What kind of data are they harvesting you ask? To quote the Washington Post article, "it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work."
Who are they collecting data on? Take Las Vegas, NV as an example. Quoting the Post's article again, "The Department of Homeland Security declared an orange alert on Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that hinted at a New Year's Eve attack in Las Vegas. The identities of the plotters were unknown. The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known Proactive Data Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to assemble a real-time census of every visitor in the nation's most-visited city. An average of about 300,000 tourists a day stayed an average of four days each, presenting Grigg's team with close to a million potential suspects in the ensuing two weeks. An interagency task force began pulling together the records of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in the city."
Yes, Kansas is a laughing stock. I know I'm quite amused. I'm thinking that there are a lot of houses with wheels in Kansas. I suppose we'll have to start telling jokes about people from Kansas instead of Arkansas. And they call Texas "the buckle on the bible belt." Hmmm...now that I've been ordained (on line of course), I think I might have to set up a church there. I wonder if I get them to give me money and sacrifice cattle. That might go a long way toward furthering my plans for world domination.
Perhaps if we all sit back and point and giggle, they'll realize that what they're doing is incredibly stooopid.
Slashdot Mirror
And how much of your soul will you have to sign away in order to use this?
2 cents,
Queen B
My issue with the French stems largely from WWII as well. To my mind, their reaction to the Nazis cost them all rights to any future griping. Any group of people who is sufficiently mentally defective to vote to allow the Nazis into your country so that they don't bomb your musems, is too mentally defective to be allowed a voice in any future decisions.
Sure, Mr. Hitler, come on in. Round up our Jews, our staunch Catholics, our Gypsies, and kill our people. Just, please, oh please don't bomb our musems.
What a bunch of logic that was!
2 cents,
Queen B
I can't resist. They really tracked these boneheads for 211 miles before stopping them? Who's to say that the people in the car when they finally stopped were the people who were in the car when the crime happened? How about this for a scenario?
1: Commit crime
2: Drive to least favorite relative's house
2: Loan car to (for me anyway) sister-in-law, who borrows everything & returns nothing, for vacation trip
3: Laugh for a very long time while she tries to prove she's innocent.
2 cents,
Queen B
Couldn't have said it better myself....
2 cents,
Queen B
PS: Mods, please mod the parent up!
First off, this isn't about your coffe pot or your fridge. It's about entire countries. It's not really a problem in North America and Europe. We have plenty of IPV4 address space. There is no real pressure for us to convert. Why fix it if it ain't broke? The problem is that it is not broken here. It's broken every where else, and broken rather badly. There is a significant "black market" in IP addresses. Blocks of IP space, Class B's and Class C's, sell for significant amounts of money. I haven't seen a Class A up for grabs in ages. This adds greatly to the cost for other countries to bring their users on line so that they too, can play in the digital marketplace. IPV4 is about haves and have nots. The IPV4 standard has unintentionally created huge groups of "have nots" simply because they have come to table a bit later than the rest of us.
Asia, Africa, Central & South America, as well as most of the Carribean and Pacific Islands are still not well represented on the Internet. Here in North America, the university that I work for holds more publically addressable IP space than the entire country of China. In answer your next question, no we are not willing to give it up, because we actually use it in ways that NAT, etc. would likely break. IPV6 is designed to address these issues and still leave us with plenty of room to grow.
In answer to your question, NAT'ing entire countries simply isn't technically feasable. Many of you who are asking "Why bother with IPV6?" are the same people who bash China for controlling what their citizens are able to view on line. Why place yet another tool (i.e. NAT) which can be used to restrict the flow of information in the hands of such a goverment?
2 cents,
Queen B
Coming from you, Anonymous Coward, I'll take that as a compliment. Perhaps you work, err..have been assimilated by the Borg Collective.
2 cents,
Queen B
Quoting from the webopedia - "Pronounced risk, acronym for reduced instruction set computer, a type of microprocessor that recognizes a relatively limited number of instructions".
Quoting from Answers.com - "RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer)"
Quoting from Wikipedia - "Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC"
Before you go correcting someone, you really ought to know what it is your speaking about. FYI, CISC means Complex Instrution Set Computer. Oh, and as another FYI, Intel used to make a RISC chip - the PentiumPro.
2 cents,
Queen B
ROFL. It seems that we have brought the giant to it's knees!
2 cents,
Queen B
Ok,
Here's the skinny. You have two basic types of CPU's in the world. RISC and CISC. "R" in RISC means reduced instruction set. It's great for crunching vast amounts of numbers, but less awesome for other tasks. The instruction set is basically the same for both chips for most end users. The only difference is if the instructions are coded into the chip or not. If the instructions aren't on the chip, then they often have to be run as extra lines of code for many applications. Where's you big performance gain then? Having the instructions on the chip is often perferable in many circumstances.
2 cents,
Queen B
Sony BMG - Well, they don't think much about ripping off artists, so why should they be concerned about ripping off consumers?
OpenDocument - Why would Microsoft support anything that threatens their monopoly? DUH!
Linux and Communication Devices - Astersik anyone? Your own PBX http://www.asterisk.org/
2 cents,
Queen B
The game was cheap and the on-line pay-to-play fee was not unreasonable, which is why my gaming clan purchased it the first place. However, due to the "bugs" and some of the changes made to game, we soon got frustrated and have moved on to other games. Since we were "one of the violent mobs" he mentions, many of the changes were directed at us and others like us specifically. While we had been hoping for some serious "cops and robbers" kind of action between our mob of raiders and what ever passes for law enforcement, it never happened and we found that to be extremely frustrating and disappointing. We felt, given the presence of Tarkan raiders, bounty hunters, black marketeers, etc. in the original story lines, that we were not out of place in the on-line game. However the game was not particulary accomodating in this regard.
2 cents,
Queen B
I say that we all add all the bots we can. Then form a chat room with the bots and let them respond to each other. If enough of us do this, perhaps we can suck up enough bandwidth to make AOL take notice and "Stop the Bots". Think of it as a digital "sit in".
2 cents,
Queen B
High availability is another one of those marketing buzz words that really doesn't have a good, nailed down definition.
t ions/databases/postgresql.htm
You can acheive this in three basic ways. Each has their own pros and cons. I recommend that you weigh them out and come to a decision you think you can live with.
Clustering - You have a group of servers (physical hardware) each running the same software and working to stay synched up with each other. Now clustering comes in two flavors active/active and active/passive. The active/active clusters share the requests between them. The active/passive clusters wait for a node to fail and then another node in cluster assumes the active role.
Master/Slave - This is similiar to clustering in that you have a group of servers (physical pieces of hardware) each running copies of the software. The master does not service requests directly and operates only as a central repository replicating all the data to the slaves. The slaves synch with the master. If one slave fails, there is normally some means for another slave to take over. Note: While this is old and largely deprecated, it is still quite functional and cost-effective under certain circumstances.
Load-Balancing - There are several physical pieces of hardware who each process transactions all the time. All updates/writes/commits are sent to all the servers, but reads are serviced only by one. Note: Again, this is deprecated, but can still be quite functional in specific circumstances.
My experience has been that typically all that is needed for clustering to work is some shared drive space for the various instances in the cluster to manage their own internal bookkeeping. In all honesty, there are several factors here that would make a big difference in what I would recommend for you. One - how much data are you talking about storing? Two - What are you using it for? If this is driving your web site, a second or two of latency while something fails over won't be noticable to the end user. If you're transmitting medical records to an EMT team, it might be fatal. Three - Why are you looking at HA? What need are you trying to fill?
2 cents,
Queen B.
Links for you to consider -
http://www.linuxlabs.com/clusgres.html
http://www.openminds.co.uk/high_availability_solu
PS: Yes, I like Postgres. It supports foreign key relationships out the box (ummm...*R*DMBS, anyone?) It also doesn't force me to put in unnecessary indexes to use fk's. I will say that MySQL has managed to address some of my previous complaints about not supporting views, stored procedures or triggers. I haven't had time to test their version 5 for now, so I'll be silent as I have no opinion on their implementation.
In all honesty, this sounds a lot like an internal "hatchet" job to me. I'd be all for getting rid of the handgrenade. As the previous poster noted, you will likely NOT be making any friends if you "get someone fired". The reality of the situation notwithstanding, I'd be very curious as to why they have such a new person tasked with such an important project "out of the chute". You have not even had time to get a feel for what is needed, much less be able to write an appropriate RFP or RFQ for the necessary services.
:)
Have you asked your boss why they are considering outsourcing when this is going to be a permanent, on-going need? I'd also ask your boss rather pointedly, but in private, if there are issues with the person they have now. Keep in mind that "issues" can cover everything from technical ability to personality conflict with a politically powerful customer. What ever those issues are need to be addressed with the person in question, rather than going to an outside vendor. The person that the vendor sends you may not be any better, and could in fact be much worse than the person you have now.
I'd like to point out that you have less control and higher costs when you bring in contractors. Why not just hire a help desk grunt and a sys admin for day to day stuff? You can always bring in contractors on a per-project basis later for really complex, time consuming things like implementing back ups or massive network upgrades. If you have a $9.00/hour help desk monkey, you'll be paying the vendor $30/hour to have him there. Just hire the $9.00 monkey yourself. It's much easier.
Perhaps your boss doesn't feel qualified to conduct the technical part of the interview. For a fee, I'd be happy to vet the applicants technically
2 cents,
Queen B
Modded as "Flamebait"?????
Item 1 - Crappy Buggy Software - How many of you have fixed PC's that were crashing due to the AOL superfriendly software??? As for Microsoft, enough said.
Item 2 - User base too stupid to realize that are better alternatives - Ok, maybe it's just me, but how dumb do you have to be to pay $24.95 a month for dial up? I pay $36.00 a month for a 7MB/sec fiber connection. Dial up from good reputable carriers fairly easy to come by at $9.95 a month. Furthermore, AOL is offering it's OWN services under the "Netscape" brand for $9.95 a month. They KNOW they're too high. Paying an extra $15/month for internet is a stupid waste of money. As for Microsoft, Apple, Linux, or Unix with the CodeWeaver's Plug In.
Item 3 - High Prices - see item 2. $189 for Windows XP retail.
Item 4 - Reliance on marketing instead of technical superiority - Hmmm...where to begin? The mind boggles. See item #1? How about all those f#@*&ing CD's AOL mails me every week? How about all the ads they run? Their reputation is legend in the industry and not in a good way. Same goes for Microsoft.
As for the "OMFG, rush them to the altar and see what kind of a two-headed freak baby they produce. It should be well worth it's weight in amusement value alone!" I think that kinda speaks for itself. Any kind of a hybrid between these two will be amusing at best and downright dangerous at worst. Given AOL's content and Microsoft's market penetration on the desktop, we may all be screwed...err...waiting for assimilation.
Another 2 cents,
Queen B
Keep in mind that any time an IBM-compatible motherboard and hard drive are sold together, be it in a PC or not, that Microsoft gets a royalty. They get this even if you don't install their OS. Just another way that the Borg Collective is out to assimilate you.
2 cents,
Queen B
If you want Sony to behave better, you must starve the beast in order to bring it to heel. How do you starve the beast you ask?
I have flatly refused to buy music for a rather extended period of time because I will not put a single dime in the RIAA's pockets. They routine rip-off the very musicans that they proclaim so loudly that they are protecting. Many musicians, even prominent ones, have been defrauded of vast sums of money by the music industry representatives (Little Richard and Elvis Presely to name two that come immediately to mind). Numerous articles have been publishes on this and Sony is currently being sued by a group of artists over this very thing. If they're ripping the artists off, how come they care if I download an MP3?
2 cents,
Queen B
The Borg Collective (a.k.a. Microsoft) and AOL make a rather good match. Look at what they have in common:
1) Crappy, Buggy Software
2) A User base too stupid to realize that there are better alternatives
3) High Prices
4) They rely more heavily on maketing than technical superiority
OMFG, rush them to the altar and see what kind of a two-headed freak baby they produce. It should be well worth it's weight in amusement value alone!
2 cents,
Queen B
Not true. Through a varieity of loopholes, they are almost infinitely renewable. My implication was that the period is NOT becoming shorter, but is instead becoming almost indefinite.
2 cents,
Queen B
America has taken it in, made their own lesser versions, and crapped them out the other side
The whole reason you think this about us is because the Corporte poobahs can't do anything without their thrice-damned focus groups. Focus groups (or f^%&-up groups) just result in bland, lame, products that just bite. Anything that's sufficiently bland as to cause exactly 0 controversy in any given group of people simply CANNOT be worth having.
When the marketing wonks wake up and realize this, we'll all be orders of magnitude better off. As a fan of manga and anime myself, I'm sad to see it getting the full corporate marketing pre-processing. You're right, they'll ruin it because they are unable to do anything else.
2 cents,
Queen B
Part of the problem is that patents have been expanded far beyond their original intention. They were originally set up to expire in 17 years with the option for one renewal. That means that knowledge would be locked down for a maximum of 34 years. At that point it was supposed to pass in to the public domain.
It was changed because large companies had the habit of offering a pittance for licensing someone's patent. If it wasn't accepted, they would simply wait until the patent expired and then use the technology for free. Many people don't realize that the relatively modern addition of variable speed windshield wipers were invented in the early part of the previous century. I forget the exact year.
Now, however, that the patent has expired this is a standard feature on most automobiles.
This is simply the pendulum swinging back the other direction. Invention and innovation will be stifled to the point that the companies will start going out of business, strangled on their own patents. They'll be unable to bring new products to market because everything will infringe on someone else's patent. Companies are already buying other companies in order to obtain "the intellectual propery". If its to the point that you buy the whole company just to get their patents, things are desperate indeed.
2 cents,
Queen B
Basically what you're saying is that this guy worked his a&& off for weeks or months coding this thing before he even brought it on line, and then worked his a&& off managing it for a year. If he's only made $13,000, assuming a 6 month development period, he's been working for a whopping $4.16 per hour.
Wal-Mart checkers and McDonald's burger flippers make better money.
2 cents,
Queen B
I've worked in a couple of places where we had running Nerf battles any time the stress levels got to high. Unfortunately, one of them was in a secured facility, complete with "little green men" who carried M-16's. During one of our battles, we got carried away and spilled out into the hallway, thus alarming said man who had a real gun that shot bullets instead of Nerf balls. Other than that, I've always found that Nerf battles were exteremely theraputic and quite good for morale overall.
2 cents,
Queen B
I've been modded down more than one for whinging about the Patriot Act and the sweeping police-state type powers that grants to law enforcement. The short version is that if you staying or passed through Las Vegas during their target time frame, you've been investigated by the FBI and the data they harvested about you is being permanently stored and shared with "private sector entities where appropriate".
What kind of data are they harvesting you ask? To quote the Washington Post article, "it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work."
Who are they collecting data on? Take Las Vegas, NV as an example. Quoting the Post's article again, "The Department of Homeland Security declared an orange alert on Dec. 21 of that year, in part because of intelligence that hinted at a New Year's Eve attack in Las Vegas. The identities of the plotters were unknown. The FBI sent Gurvais Grigg, chief of the bureau's little-known Proactive Data Exploitation Unit, in an audacious effort to assemble a real-time census of every visitor in the nation's most-visited city. An average of about 300,000 tourists a day stayed an average of four days each, presenting Grigg's team with close to a million potential suspects in the ensuing two weeks. An interagency task force began pulling together the records of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in the city."
3 cents,
Queen B
Yes, Kansas is a laughing stock. I know I'm quite amused. I'm thinking that there are a lot of houses with wheels in Kansas. I suppose we'll have to start telling jokes about people from Kansas instead of Arkansas. And they call Texas "the buckle on the bible belt." Hmmm...now that I've been ordained (on line of course), I think I might have to set up a church there. I wonder if I get them to give me money and sacrifice cattle. That might go a long way toward furthering my plans for world domination.
Perhaps if we all sit back and point and giggle, they'll realize that what they're doing is incredibly stooopid.
2 cents,
Queen B