Re: system building *is* a pain, nowdays!
on
PC Prices to Rise?
·
· Score: 2
Conventional "wisdom" of the self-proclaimed PC gurus says "Oh, you need to use better quality parts!" Well, Adaptec SCSI controllers, Muskin memory and Asus motherboards haven't been the magic answer for me - so I'm not sure what they expect I should be buying instead?
Hey, I'm in the same boat. I built a completely new machine a few months ago, spared no cost and used the best components I could find. I wound up with a machine that was about as stable as something I could pick up at Best Buy and had only marginal performance gains. My theory is that QA in the component market no longer exists while the big name companies spend quite a few dollars making sure their machines can do 95% of what they expect the customers to want. If this trend continues, building your own computer will be a fool's endevour in just a few years.
Because making movies is so expensive, only two in 10 films ever retrieve their production and marketing investment from domestic theatrical exhibition. Distributors have to use other venues -- delivery systems such as cable, satellite, TV stations, videocassettes, DVDs, international markets.
This is a very interesting and relevant claim, if correct. Since theater going is still considered an activity in mainstream society, it really hasn't been threatened by anything offered in the home since people still want to get "out of the house". But this may be the only venue that pirate video doesn't threaten, even the foreign markets could be affected if people decide they don't want to wait a year for a theater release in their home country.
I disagree strongly with Mr. Valenti's proposal, as I do with any proposal that places such a burden on the consumers. At the same time I don't want to see the death of those big budget Hollywood blockbuster extravaganzas, cut down because piracy has made them less profitable. There is probably an equitable way out of this potential mess, I have a feeling that the studios will only find it if their hand is forced.
A few weeks ago when the Nielsen people called at an inconvenient time and hounded me about doing a survey, I agreed to it. For those that have never done a media survey before, they are an annoyance. The burden is on you to keep a log and mail it out, every once in a while you'll get a phone call to make sure you're keeping up on it. It's a real intrusion into your life with no immediate benefits other than the few dollars they send to guilt you into doing your journal.
I felt it important to do because my tastes are not mainstream and if I don't make my interests known no one will cater to me. I did watch Futurama on Sunday night and it did go in my little log. I bring this up because I wonder how many Slashdotters watch Futurama, enjoy Futurama, but blew off a similiar caller because they didn't want to deal with the hassle or privacy issues.
Microsoft understands this, and that's why the XBox has a hard drive. The console is going to be able to surf and do email and IM and, eventually, do word-processing (USB/ethernet printers!), TiVO-like functionality, etc. etc. That's convergence, baby. And at that point it's replaced the home computer, and PC's are something you only see at the office or at a hobbyist's house. PC games will stop being ported to the console and start being ported from it, if at all (this part is well under way).
As I understand it, that was their original plan, but the PC manufacuers balked. They made it clear to Microsoft that it was in it's best interest to keep to operating systems and stay away from the complete package. Perhaps eventually Microsoft will be up for a war on that front but at least as far as the XBox is concerned, they gave in.
The result, it would seem to me, is that Microsoft will continue to encroach further into the home market but won't come out with the "total solution" unless they can guarantee it will be successful. If they were to leap too soon, they would effectively be declaring war on the whole rest of the computer and home electronics industry.
to a government that gets out its chequebook and spreads its ass cheeks
Us Americans spell it as checkbook. Other than that, quite a good forgery of Amerispeak; it's difficult to tell that you typed all that while stroking a fluffy white cat.
Why not use a Dual Mode [megarail.com] concept where people have personal vehicles that can operate either on or off the tracks, and transition smoothly between the two? It's the best of both worlds, at least until people get used to the concept of riding single cars on a track instead of driving themselves.
I see a potential problem where if the users are responsible for purchasing and maintaining their own vehicles, the system as a whole will only run as well as the worst maintained vehicle. Especially with the design you linked to, where the vehicles travel along a single lane structure, if one car breaks down it could shut things down for miles. If the vehicles are publicly owned this is less of an issue, you simply create an authority that is responsible for maintaining a high reliability. But it is a rare day that I don't see some car abandoned on the side of the road on my way to work, this is obviously an issue that would have to be dealt with up front.
Hey, would this be The Matt who would know who I am? Or is this another Matt? If it's the former, good to see you on Slashdot. If it's the latter, nevermind.
No, he got it exactly right. If after mixing the two liquids, each container contains the same amount of liquid, they must have the same purity. Essentially the logic is the same as if you took both liquids, mixed them together in a large container, and split the mixture back into two containers. So long as both containers have the same quantity of liquid, the will have the same purity level.
The brain frying part of the question is that most engineering students will have the tendancy to solve the problem mathematically. I haven't met anybody who successfully figured it out by doing it this way.
My friends that went through the process found it very intense. And while we all dislike the products that get sent out from Microsoft, I don't think anyone will disagree that they hire some of the best programmers out there.
Well, for me it was pretty much an all day interview lasting for ~12 hours. There were around 6 interviewers that I moved between throughout the day, each interview lasted between 1 and 2 hours. This pretty much eclipses any interviews I've had before and since, I felt pretty much drained at the end of the day.
The joke is that they ask a lot of brainteasers. For every question involving pseudo-code, there was another that had nothing to do with programming whatsoever. I presume this is to make sure they do hire the best and brightest, and my time there confirmed to me that they do indeed.
Anyway, to reward any poor souls who actually stumbled across this message, I'll give you my favorite of the Microsoft interview questions:
You have two containers, one contains a red liquid and the other contains a blue liquid, and they both contain an equal amount. Someone takes a scoop and moves 10% of the blue liquid into the red container. Then after stirring the red container, the same scoop is used move the same amount of liquid from the red container back into the blue.
Both containers now have an equal amount of liquid each, but they both contain red and blue liquids now. The question is: which is more pure, the red or blue container?
As someone who has been through the Microsoft interview process, I find it highly doubtful that some random terrorist programmers could make it though.
Unless, of course, Al Qaeda makes learning how to get 5 gallons of liquid using 3 and 7 gallon containers part of their training.
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What is the point of controlling it from your computer? Why not use WinAmp? If you're running ethernet to your stereo so you can use this little device, wouldn't it be cheaper to just run audio cable to the stereo? It's a cool product, I guess, but I just couldn't see shelling out that much money for a device that will give me zero extra functionality over a PC with a soundcard, especially when that device still requires the PC.
If your goal is to save money or you live in a single room abode, you certainly have a valid point. But if neither of those points apply to you, this product has some very cool potential.
The first issue is audio quality. The ideal is to have a digital amp and stream in your mp3s without any analog distortion. This box lacks a digital out so it isn't optimal, but it is still a lot nicer than running analog cables from another room.
The other issue is to provide a complete multiple room audio solution, this is where I suspect this device could really shine. The ideal is to have multiple audio devices in multiple rooms (computer room, living room, the garage perhaps) and be able to play seperate audio selections in each one from a central server. In addition to that, be able to "move" an audio stream from one room to another so the music relocates itself to where you are. There is a lot of cool potential with having an audio setup that works like this, playing music is only the beginning.
Of course, there really isn't any affordable audio solution that does all this. That's why this device is so intriguing, it can be hacked into doing some fairly sophisticated things. There's still a long ways to go, but these devices are very promising and very cool.
did you just make that up? Nothing on the site indicates that the box has WiFi built in.
It's on his News page. The 10/25/01 entry had the following:
The screen resolution on the display is limited to 640x480 so I've decided to drop the window manager. I'm going to use perl/Tk to roll my own UI. I put a few pictures at the bottom of the pictures page. I'm currently downloading the images (via 802.11) for weather and traffic before I leave the parking garage. By the time I get out of the parking garage, the system has booted, the network connection is live, and the system pulls the images off the web. In addition, the car uploads the latest GPS coordinates, so if the car ever disappears, the authorities can recover it. Since ricochet went down, I'll have to figure out another way to do the wireless connectivity. I'm thinking about cellular at this point, but I'm not sure just yet. The user interface is coming along nicely. I also added a radio card to the system. It was killing me not having talk radio on my way in to work. The Hauppauge cards have a coax connector which is why I chose it.
Sometimes, when I'm stopped at a red light, I can get an ethernet connection. I must be jumping on to someones 802.11 base unit. All your 802.11 base are belong to us.
What you are looking for is speed, not multihoming.
I'm looking for redundancy and I can't think of a better way to get this than using two completely different ISPs.
However, this is not what this person wants.
Perhaps, but the what the submitter wants is very difficult to achieve. Using dual IPs is less than ideal, but it allows outgoing traffic and incoming email to continue to flow without interruption.
What I most like about this solution is that you're not overly dependant on a single ISP for anything. Not only are you protected in case of a temporary failure, but you can dump an ISP overnight if they make some policy changes you don't like. While I realize this idea might not appeal to a monoolithic corporation, a smaller one might want to consider this level of control and redundancy.
An idea that I had been toying with was to buy 2 internet connections, say DSL and cable modem, then use NAT to use them both simultaniously. In a simple scenario, seems like it could be accomplished by picking up 2 of those cheap home gateways and setting up a non routeable network. Internally the machines would be set to use one of the gateways by default, if that connection went down you could switch to the other one. Externally multiple DNS records could be used to distribute the traffic among multiple ips, all of which point back at the non routable network.
Even though I concieved this idea for a low end home network, the basic idea should be applicable to a business that really wants a redundant connection. Just buy multiple connections from multiple sources, keep your machines in a non routeable network, then use some fancy equipment (a Cisco PIX for example) to make everything work. Bit of a kludge, but I think it's a viable solution.
I dunno - I quite like OpenGL, but for realistic rendering, raytracing is pretty cool... Imagine having HW capable of raytrace-rendering 100s of renderman frames per second, and using that to animate in real time.
The odd bit is that we're probably at the point where people could start using realtime raytracing engines. I suspect the reality is that if you were to drudge up some old ratracing engine from years ago and rig it to run in realtime, it still wouldn't look as impressive as as the next generation engines running on a GForce3. Raytracing initially had an edge over rendering the facets directly because it provided lighting effects, shadows, and reflections. The current engines are already capable of doing this stuff, why would you use raytracing?
At one point I assumed that eventually computers would be so powerful that raytraced VR was inevitable. The achievments that have been accomplished with other rendering technologies make that future doubtful.
Easy raid means never backing up, ever again. Never losing files to a crashed HD.
Careful there. RAID is very nice, but it's only protecting you from media failure. Continual, timely backups is still the best solution since it will help you restore from even the most worst case scenarios - don't discount it.
I gather that you're setting up a server for home use and aren't concerned with having a bullet proof recovery solution. That's fine, but don't let a RAID give you a false sense of security. You're still keeping all your eggs in one basket, albeit a sturdy basket.
For example who? Microsoft would be the most successful, they don't have a lot of open source...
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that while Microsoft is certainly not an open source company in the sense that we think if, they achieved a lot of their success by being more open than their competition. If you think back to Microsoft's original competitors in the desktop market, such as IBM and Apple, it was Microsoft's general willingness to work with any nutjob with a software idea that got them as far as it did. They made their APIs open and available and tried to make their software backwards compatible with the competition. We may decry Microsoft's "embrace and extend" approach as the ultimate evil today, but 10 years ago it was an evolutionary concept.
My point is that while Microsoft is not a particularly open company today, they achieved much of their success by being more "open" than their predecessors. It may be that the next software giant will gain dominance by bringing their "openness" to the next level.
I think Microsoft does believe in empowering the user. They may be a bit off-course, though. I still believe Microsoft's development tools are second-to-none, and their API documentation, for the most part is excellent.
Credit where credit is due, Visual Studio is one of the best development environments around. Their online documentation for MFC and the API is also very good. If only this were enough.
The main area I have a problem with is the Windows registry. It's become a source of misery in general, but it also contains thousands of critical keys that Microsoft hasn't documented and has no intention of ever documenting. If you want to write a program that intergrates itself into the OS, you're going to have to spend a lot of time exploring the registry.
Sure, Microsoft makes it easy enough to develop applications for their operating systems. But Microsoft also keeps enough stuff undocumented so that you'll never be able to integrate applications into the OS as closely as they do. This creates an environment where you're free to write all the cool software you want, but Microsoft can at any point write the a similiar app and latch it into their OS. This is why I would love Microsoft to document ALL of their operating system, it would help to level this area of the playing field.
If you can't do what you love, then you might as well work doing something you're good at. If you're still a good programmer you might as well keep at it, really you're not going to find too much better in the way of a job. Programming is still one of the better paid professions out there.
What you may have to do is give up on the idea that what you want to do, what you have to do, and what you are good at are all the same thing. The vast majority of people don't have the luxury of doing what they love and getting paid for it; they grow up, get a job, and learn to deal. After all, the purpose of a job is to provide you with a means to do what you want, not and end in itself.
Why do people think I was trolling with this comment.
Didn't think you were trolling, I had just noticed that the only response you got was from a troll. So I answered your question to the best of my knowledge: that there are no available domestic players available that don't support the DVDCCA.
I also threw in a few words on why I didn't think it was hypocritical to buy one, since a number of Slashdotters seem to believe that to live a normal life is working with The Man... or something like that.
I'll put in a real answer, if only to get the bad taste of troll out of your mouth.
Does anyone outh there know of any set top DVD players out there that use DeCSS instead of licensing CSS from the DVDCCA?
Nope, all domestic players use bought keys from the DVDCCA. You may be able to buy one of those hackable players from overseas, but I wouldn't recommend it for your mother. The manufacturers aren't just buying decryption keys from the DVDCCA, they're also buying a guarantee that DVDs will work with their players. You don't want to give your mother a DVD player that might stop working next time some company comes up with a new funky protection system.
Anyway, I don't consider it that much of a contradiction to be for open CSS software and also buy a commercial player. I buy movies, I own a nice player, but I also donate to the EFF so they can fight the DMCA. Disliking some business practices should not automatically force you to cut off modern conveniences and live in a cave.
So is there ANY way for them to do that, statewide, with a live internet link? Or do we have to assume that doesn't exist and cache the data until signal is available?
I doubt there will be an ideal wireless solution for you in Colorado anytime soon. Especially if you're talking about the whole state and not just Denver area, you're not going to find a wireless connection that will function everywhere.
You're best bet is probably to go with one of the cellular services that also handle data. I use a Sprint PCS phone that can also act as a modem, it can either dial a specific modem number of connect to the internet directly. It officially runs at 14.4bps, though that's really best case. Note that Sprint's cellular service around Denver is actually one of the worst, so it's almost assured that you won't be able to get a connection everywhere.
I can't speak of the other cellular solutions, but I bet this would be your best option. You would need to queue the data and your connection would be slow. This system would have to be classified as a hack rather than a solid business solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, I'm in the same boat. I built a completely new machine a few months ago, spared no cost and used the best components I could find. I wound up with a machine that was about as stable as something I could pick up at Best Buy and had only marginal performance gains. My theory is that QA in the component market no longer exists while the big name companies spend quite a few dollars making sure their machines can do 95% of what they expect the customers to want. If this trend continues, building your own computer will be a fool's endevour in just a few years.
Cosmic Osmo rocked. Even the voices.
Because making movies is so expensive, only two in 10 films ever retrieve their production and marketing investment from domestic theatrical exhibition. Distributors have to use other venues -- delivery systems such as cable, satellite, TV stations, videocassettes, DVDs, international markets.
This is a very interesting and relevant claim, if correct. Since theater going is still considered an activity in mainstream society, it really hasn't been threatened by anything offered in the home since people still want to get "out of the house". But this may be the only venue that pirate video doesn't threaten, even the foreign markets could be affected if people decide they don't want to wait a year for a theater release in their home country.
I disagree strongly with Mr. Valenti's proposal, as I do with any proposal that places such a burden on the consumers. At the same time I don't want to see the death of those big budget Hollywood blockbuster extravaganzas, cut down because piracy has made them less profitable. There is probably an equitable way out of this potential mess, I have a feeling that the studios will only find it if their hand is forced.
I felt it important to do because my tastes are not mainstream and if I don't make my interests known no one will cater to me. I did watch Futurama on Sunday night and it did go in my little log. I bring this up because I wonder how many Slashdotters watch Futurama, enjoy Futurama, but blew off a similiar caller because they didn't want to deal with the hassle or privacy issues.
As I understand it, that was their original plan, but the PC manufacuers balked. They made it clear to Microsoft that it was in it's best interest to keep to operating systems and stay away from the complete package. Perhaps eventually Microsoft will be up for a war on that front but at least as far as the XBox is concerned, they gave in.
The result, it would seem to me, is that Microsoft will continue to encroach further into the home market but won't come out with the "total solution" unless they can guarantee it will be successful. If they were to leap too soon, they would effectively be declaring war on the whole rest of the computer and home electronics industry.
Us Americans spell it as checkbook. Other than that, quite a good forgery of Amerispeak; it's difficult to tell that you typed all that while stroking a fluffy white cat.
Why not use a Dual Mode [megarail.com] concept where people have personal vehicles that can operate either on or off the tracks, and transition smoothly between the two? It's the best of both worlds, at least until people get used to the concept of riding single cars on a track instead of driving themselves.
I see a potential problem where if the users are responsible for purchasing and maintaining their own vehicles, the system as a whole will only run as well as the worst maintained vehicle. Especially with the design you linked to, where the vehicles travel along a single lane structure, if one car breaks down it could shut things down for miles. If the vehicles are publicly owned this is less of an issue, you simply create an authority that is responsible for maintaining a high reliability. But it is a rare day that I don't see some car abandoned on the side of the road on my way to work, this is obviously an issue that would have to be dealt with up front.
Hey, would this be The Matt who would know who I am? Or is this another Matt? If it's the former, good to see you on Slashdot. If it's the latter, nevermind.
Boy did you flunk this!
No, he got it exactly right. If after mixing the two liquids, each container contains the same amount of liquid, they must have the same purity. Essentially the logic is the same as if you took both liquids, mixed them together in a large container, and split the mixture back into two containers. So long as both containers have the same quantity of liquid, the will have the same purity level.
The brain frying part of the question is that most engineering students will have the tendancy to solve the problem mathematically. I haven't met anybody who successfully figured it out by doing it this way.
My friends that went through the process found it very intense. And while we all dislike the products that get sent out from Microsoft, I don't think anyone will disagree that they hire some of the best programmers out there.
Well, for me it was pretty much an all day interview lasting for ~12 hours. There were around 6 interviewers that I moved between throughout the day, each interview lasted between 1 and 2 hours. This pretty much eclipses any interviews I've had before and since, I felt pretty much drained at the end of the day.
The joke is that they ask a lot of brainteasers. For every question involving pseudo-code, there was another that had nothing to do with programming whatsoever. I presume this is to make sure they do hire the best and brightest, and my time there confirmed to me that they do indeed.
Anyway, to reward any poor souls who actually stumbled across this message, I'll give you my favorite of the Microsoft interview questions:
You have two containers, one contains a red liquid and the other contains a blue liquid, and they both contain an equal amount. Someone takes a scoop and moves 10% of the blue liquid into the red container. Then after stirring the red container, the same scoop is used move the same amount of liquid from the red container back into the blue.
Both containers now have an equal amount of liquid each, but they both contain red and blue liquids now. The question is: which is more pure, the red or blue container?
As someone who has been through the Microsoft interview process, I find it highly doubtful that some random terrorist programmers could make it though.
Unless, of course, Al Qaeda makes learning how to get 5 gallons of liquid using 3 and 7 gallon containers part of their training.
What is the point of controlling it from your computer? Why not use WinAmp? If you're running ethernet to your stereo so you can use this little device, wouldn't it be cheaper to just run audio cable to the stereo? It's a cool product, I guess, but I just couldn't see shelling out that much money for a device that will give me zero extra functionality over a PC with a soundcard, especially when that device still requires the PC.
If your goal is to save money or you live in a single room abode, you certainly have a valid point. But if neither of those points apply to you, this product has some very cool potential.
The first issue is audio quality. The ideal is to have a digital amp and stream in your mp3s without any analog distortion. This box lacks a digital out so it isn't optimal, but it is still a lot nicer than running analog cables from another room.
The other issue is to provide a complete multiple room audio solution, this is where I suspect this device could really shine. The ideal is to have multiple audio devices in multiple rooms (computer room, living room, the garage perhaps) and be able to play seperate audio selections in each one from a central server. In addition to that, be able to "move" an audio stream from one room to another so the music relocates itself to where you are. There is a lot of cool potential with having an audio setup that works like this, playing music is only the beginning.
Of course, there really isn't any affordable audio solution that does all this. That's why this device is so intriguing, it can be hacked into doing some fairly sophisticated things. There's still a long ways to go, but these devices are very promising and very cool.
did you just make that up? Nothing on the site indicates that the box has WiFi built in.
It's on his News page. The 10/25/01 entry had the following:
The screen resolution on the display is limited to 640x480 so I've decided to drop the window manager. I'm going to use perl/Tk to roll my own UI. I put a few pictures at the bottom of the pictures page. I'm currently downloading the images (via 802.11) for weather and traffic before I leave the parking garage. By the time I get out of the parking garage, the system has booted, the network connection is live, and the system pulls the images off the web. In addition, the car uploads the latest GPS coordinates, so if the car ever disappears, the authorities can recover it. Since ricochet went down, I'll have to figure out another way to do the wireless connectivity. I'm thinking about cellular at this point, but I'm not sure just yet. The user interface is coming along nicely. I also added a radio card to the system. It was killing me not having talk radio on my way in to work. The Hauppauge cards have a coax connector which is why I chose it.
Sometimes, when I'm stopped at a red light, I can get an ethernet connection. I must be jumping on to someones 802.11 base unit. All your 802.11 base are belong to us.
What you are looking for is speed, not multihoming.
I'm looking for redundancy and I can't think of a better way to get this than using two completely different ISPs.
However, this is not what this person wants.
Perhaps, but the what the submitter wants is very difficult to achieve. Using dual IPs is less than ideal, but it allows outgoing traffic and incoming email to continue to flow without interruption.
What I most like about this solution is that you're not overly dependant on a single ISP for anything. Not only are you protected in case of a temporary failure, but you can dump an ISP overnight if they make some policy changes you don't like. While I realize this idea might not appeal to a monoolithic corporation, a smaller one might want to consider this level of control and redundancy.
An idea that I had been toying with was to buy 2 internet connections, say DSL and cable modem, then use NAT to use them both simultaniously. In a simple scenario, seems like it could be accomplished by picking up 2 of those cheap home gateways and setting up a non routeable network. Internally the machines would be set to use one of the gateways by default, if that connection went down you could switch to the other one. Externally multiple DNS records could be used to distribute the traffic among multiple ips, all of which point back at the non routable network.
Even though I concieved this idea for a low end home network, the basic idea should be applicable to a business that really wants a redundant connection. Just buy multiple connections from multiple sources, keep your machines in a non routeable network, then use some fancy equipment (a Cisco PIX for example) to make everything work. Bit of a kludge, but I think it's a viable solution.
I dunno - I quite like OpenGL, but for realistic rendering, raytracing is pretty cool... Imagine having HW capable of raytrace-rendering 100s of renderman frames per second, and using that to animate in real time.
The odd bit is that we're probably at the point where people could start using realtime raytracing engines. I suspect the reality is that if you were to drudge up some old ratracing engine from years ago and rig it to run in realtime, it still wouldn't look as impressive as as the next generation engines running on a GForce3. Raytracing initially had an edge over rendering the facets directly because it provided lighting effects, shadows, and reflections. The current engines are already capable of doing this stuff, why would you use raytracing?
At one point I assumed that eventually computers would be so powerful that raytraced VR was inevitable. The achievments that have been accomplished with other rendering technologies make that future doubtful.
Microsoft is a business. They want to make money. I think this is a smart business decision...
I'm a consumer. I want to save money. I agree that it's a smart business decision but that doesn't endear me to it.
Easy raid means never backing up, ever again. Never losing files to a crashed HD.
Careful there. RAID is very nice, but it's only protecting you from media failure. Continual, timely backups is still the best solution since it will help you restore from even the most worst case scenarios - don't discount it.
I gather that you're setting up a server for home use and aren't concerned with having a bullet proof recovery solution. That's fine, but don't let a RAID give you a false sense of security. You're still keeping all your eggs in one basket, albeit a sturdy basket.
For example who? Microsoft would be the most successful, they don't have a lot of open source...
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that while Microsoft is certainly not an open source company in the sense that we think if, they achieved a lot of their success by being more open than their competition. If you think back to Microsoft's original competitors in the desktop market, such as IBM and Apple, it was Microsoft's general willingness to work with any nutjob with a software idea that got them as far as it did. They made their APIs open and available and tried to make their software backwards compatible with the competition. We may decry Microsoft's "embrace and extend" approach as the ultimate evil today, but 10 years ago it was an evolutionary concept.
My point is that while Microsoft is not a particularly open company today, they achieved much of their success by being more "open" than their predecessors. It may be that the next software giant will gain dominance by bringing their "openness" to the next level.
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform
But it still won't help you learn about Caractacus's uniform. You've got to keep these things in perspective.
I think Microsoft does believe in empowering the user. They may be a bit off-course, though. I still believe Microsoft's development tools are second-to-none, and their API documentation, for the most part is excellent.
Credit where credit is due, Visual Studio is one of the best development environments around. Their online documentation for MFC and the API is also very good. If only this were enough.
The main area I have a problem with is the Windows registry. It's become a source of misery in general, but it also contains thousands of critical keys that Microsoft hasn't documented and has no intention of ever documenting. If you want to write a program that intergrates itself into the OS, you're going to have to spend a lot of time exploring the registry.
Sure, Microsoft makes it easy enough to develop applications for their operating systems. But Microsoft also keeps enough stuff undocumented so that you'll never be able to integrate applications into the OS as closely as they do. This creates an environment where you're free to write all the cool software you want, but Microsoft can at any point write the a similiar app and latch it into their OS. This is why I would love Microsoft to document ALL of their operating system, it would help to level this area of the playing field.
If you can't do what you love, then you might as well work doing something you're good at. If you're still a good programmer you might as well keep at it, really you're not going to find too much better in the way of a job. Programming is still one of the better paid professions out there.
What you may have to do is give up on the idea that what you want to do, what you have to do, and what you are good at are all the same thing. The vast majority of people don't have the luxury of doing what they love and getting paid for it; they grow up, get a job, and learn to deal. After all, the purpose of a job is to provide you with a means to do what you want, not and end in itself.
Why do people think I was trolling with this comment.
Didn't think you were trolling, I had just noticed that the only response you got was from a troll. So I answered your question to the best of my knowledge: that there are no available domestic players available that don't support the DVDCCA.
I also threw in a few words on why I didn't think it was hypocritical to buy one, since a number of Slashdotters seem to believe that to live a normal life is working with The Man... or something like that.
Anyway, didn't mean to offend.
I'll put in a real answer, if only to get the bad taste of troll out of your mouth.
Does anyone outh there know of any set top DVD players out there that use DeCSS instead of licensing CSS from the DVDCCA?
Nope, all domestic players use bought keys from the DVDCCA. You may be able to buy one of those hackable players from overseas, but I wouldn't recommend it for your mother. The manufacturers aren't just buying decryption keys from the DVDCCA, they're also buying a guarantee that DVDs will work with their players. You don't want to give your mother a DVD player that might stop working next time some company comes up with a new funky protection system.
Anyway, I don't consider it that much of a contradiction to be for open CSS software and also buy a commercial player. I buy movies, I own a nice player, but I also donate to the EFF so they can fight the DMCA. Disliking some business practices should not automatically force you to cut off modern conveniences and live in a cave.
So is there ANY way for them to do that, statewide, with a live internet link? Or do we have to assume that doesn't exist and cache the data until signal is available?
I doubt there will be an ideal wireless solution for you in Colorado anytime soon. Especially if you're talking about the whole state and not just Denver area, you're not going to find a wireless connection that will function everywhere.
You're best bet is probably to go with one of the cellular services that also handle data. I use a Sprint PCS phone that can also act as a modem, it can either dial a specific modem number of connect to the internet directly. It officially runs at 14.4bps, though that's really best case. Note that Sprint's cellular service around Denver is actually one of the worst, so it's almost assured that you won't be able to get a connection everywhere.
I can't speak of the other cellular solutions, but I bet this would be your best option. You would need to queue the data and your connection would be slow. This system would have to be classified as a hack rather than a solid business solution.