Not a surprise-- major corporation takes great idea and releases their inferior spin on it, hoping that their marketing will let it triumph.
One reason that it's good to be Second to Market (not First) is that you can pick-and-choose on which features to compete with, and don't have to do as much work informing people.
First to Market: teach people what it is, and sell them on buying it
Second to Market: convince people to buy yours, not theirs.
I was a little ticked that, after entering in my exceeds_their_requirements specs + Linux as OS, their email reply rejected me with a message (given fully below) basically saying "You don't have Win98 SE/2000 SP1, so you need to _upgrade_".
Yeah, it's probably just a generic message, but since they _ask_ for Mac OS, etc, you'd think they'd recognize that "other OS" does not imply "must _upgrade_ to Windows". (Heck, to some, going from Linux to Windows is a downgrade!)
Grrr... my only hope is that they're actually collecting the stats to see how many Linux, Mac, etc users are interested.
Exact bit from email: "In order to run There you need: 800 MHz Pentium III CPU, 256 MB RAM, nVIDIA GeForce or nForce or ATI Radeon (except for VE or 7000), ATI Radeon Mobility 7500, DirectX compatible sound card, 56K modem, 400 MB free HD space, Windows 98 SE/2000 SP1.
For more information on how you can upgrade your system to be able to run There, contact us at help@there.com."
In Maryland, you _have_ to get Maryland plates within a year if you live in-state. And get a MD license. So Maryland could do this sort of wacko scheme.
He's built a huge, successful company. It's still doing well. He's always advanced the state of the art. His games are well designed. They get critical praise, and most sell in numbers that other companies would kill for. But, he didn't great GTA, so he sucks.
Try your local dollar store. Usually in 'toys' or in the party section (in which case they'll be in a bag of 4 or 6). Dollar stores are great for 'old style' toys. Bought some kazoos recently, too.
Another place is science museum shops; they have some nice ones for $3 or less that are tiny but have a big eyehole.
There's a job called 'systems analyst' that covers this. Back in the 80s I was one (later I became a programmer). The job was to act as liaison between the customer (user) and the computer people, and speak both their languages.
System analysts then make up the design documents (called a 'functional requirements') for the programming team and customers to serve as the 'treaty' (or battle plan, if you like).
It's a profession that may have fallen out of favor in rapid startups, I guess-- isn't edgy enough. It's essential for any good project, but too many people are in a hurry and do the usual "I'll write up the requirements while you start coding, go!"
> would be to simply overwhelm the spammer with false positives.
No good. Spammers usually work for other companies, and get paid per response plus extra per sale. So the Spammer will still make money from Company X for your false positives. Even if Company X goes under due to false positives, the Spammer is ahead of the game.
Spammers aren't selling 'stuff', anymore than telemarketers are. They're selling leads. They're more like a marketing and sales firm.
Is it possible to look at the universe with, say, lynx?
I know this was a joke, but that's actually a topic debated by webmasters at GSFC. In theory, all NASA web pages should be accessible, e.g. all browsers, readers for the blind, etc.
For images, this means descriptive image 'alt' tags. For links, it means including a link description. But what to do for data?
It's kinda subtle. The best answer is 'give data informative tags that can be domain-specific.' "Image 5b" is useless, saying "DI Peg data, X-ray wavelengths, reduced, FITS format" is good but tedious for whomever makes the page, giving a spec like 'ASCA dataset1, DI Peg, FITS, reduced' is something that could likely be automatically generated and fits the bill.
But the issue of folks using non-visual browsers is pretty real. Besides lynx and browsers for the blind, there's also data hunting scripts and programs that need to figure out what is on a page, and so it's a problem worth solving.
A lot of astronomy data is looked at by its principal investigator (PI) for something specific. Really, data has 5 'lives'.
1) The original proposal by the PI, e.g. 'looking for cornonal emissions from DI Peg, an Algol-type system'. Sort of the pass/fail of the research world.
2) Survey. Someone decides to do a survey study among existing data, e.g. "Light curves from all Algol-type systems".
3) Unexpected. Someone finds a new thing to look for, sometimes due to better theoretical understanding. "Coronal sources should be iron-enhanced, so let's reanalyze DI Peg, specifically looking for iron lines."
4) Data-mining. Searching an archive for a given property. "Looking for all sources with X-ray emission above a given threshold... hey, DI Peg matched!"
5) Grad students. Doing their thesis on a topic, use archival data to support. "Dissertation on coronal systems, using data from DI Peg and others".
So data is often used beyond its initial acquisition!
Most/all astronomical data is in FITS format. That which isn't, often gets FITSized when put into archives.
All you really need to know about FITS is: it is well specified, there are lots of tools for it, and it has an ASCII (human-readable) header describing the data, followed by specifically formatted binary data.
Also, since most data archives are large, single location repositories (e.g. CHANDRA data), and many data archives are already combined with other sets (e.g. HEASARC.gsfc.nasa.gov), there's a relatively small number of sites providing data (relative to, say, the number of sourceforge projects).
The astronomy community has been providing its data via the web for years now, usually localized by wavelength (e.g. radio archive in 1 place, X-ray data in another). The Virtual Observatory is just a layer on top to simplify access.
And for NASA data, it always goes public 1 year after the observation, so this isn't a new concept, just a better way to get at the data.
Selling is hard-- most folks want the 'valuable' issues in your collection so, after lots of sales work, you'll be stuck with, oh, 95% of your comics and all the really good stuff missing. That's the worth of both worlds, really-- still stuck with boxes laying around but no good stuff hidden in it.
In "Comics Retailer" a few months back, there was a great bit from a comic book shop owner on how he buys comic collections-- by the pound, $1/pound. "But I have X-Men 128! What's that worth?" '$1/pound'.
Rather than cherry pick collections, evaluate quality, etc, he just made the simple business case-- take it all at a fair price. I wish he was in this area. It'd be nice to regain storage space.
Mycomicshop.com and WizardWorld.com both profess to be comic-specific sales sites, you might want to try those. I plan to, once I get organized enough to sell my back stuff.
They're cool, but... the Hummingbird is only 90 meters, i.e. just under 100 yards, or the size of a football field. And they don't use ultratech to mow the lawn of that.
There's always this strange image that 'primitive civilizations can't do what we can do today because they lack machines'. They also lack 16-hour workdays and email sucking up their night hours; they have free time. And a good basic grounding of basic engineering-- surveying and laying out straight lines isn't that difficult.
Will archaeologists from the far future someday look at, oh, the Luxor at Las Vegas and think "the beacon on top must have been to religiously signal the gods!"
Will they look at the hundreds of regular 100-yard (football) fields, neatly hewn with strange and different sets of letters carved into each of the long ends, just after the Y-shaped ritual mark, and think "obviously a place of worship".
Related to this misinterpretation, at the Smithonian they have a set of ancient potware, cutlery, china, etc. And it's marked "ritual cookware". Again, an attempt to mark as religious or mystical, something that could just has easily been mundane. Such as 'the nice china for when the relatives visit'.
So really, if two bored farmers can create crop circles for years just for a lark, the idea of a civilization saying "Let's make some water pointers and, gosh darn it, let's make them artistic and fun as weel" isn't too weird.
Nasca/Palpa Lines: the case-modders of the BC era!
Buy an Audrey. That's what they're perfect for. Small form factor, fits in nice with the decor, networkable (so you can keep your main recipe db on your main computer and access it from the kitchen), wireless keyboard, touch screen with stylus, etc.
Durable, too-- my 3-year old hasn't broken ours yet!
And cheap. Also very important. Hunt around with liquidators or on ebay, should be well under $100 including the USB ethernet (unless the built-in modem suffices... modem-modem maybe, if you want to score extra geek points)
First, go to your local cable access and do a show on there. This will:
* get you familiar with producing a TV show * give you useful contacts in terms of staff and crew that you'll need for your venture * give you 'street cred' in launching your web venture-- or at least teach you the lingo so you can work with folks who produce things.
Only after that would I suggest you launch your web thing. That way, you make all your mistakes while learning.
Yeah, I know a station owner/executive technically doesn't have to know anything about actually producing a show... but you will need contacts with that experience to produce your actual content, and this is a good way to hook into it.
Actually, NASA satellite ops often uses generalized environments (was it called MOPS?) and mix contractor-produced customerware with in-house software or scripting. Then, use Perl to create stuff after launch that was needed, or to make stuff web-accessible (internal network only, sorry).
Perl and Tcl/Tk are still popular (Tk for GUIs, Tcl or Perl for scripting).
It's not GPLed open source but, within NASA, it is open source.
Many missions are trying to move away from the 'custom designed only-works-for-us' software because it becomes rapidly dated.
There's systems like blackboard.com for handling courses in a traditional lecture manner (one-to-many) covering a single topic.
We rolled our own for ThePhotoCourse.com using a combination of subforums and a way of doing lessons with integrated quizzes. This was a few-to-many approach: several instructors, each handling a small 'classroom' of similarly inclined students.
One professor has worked out integrated quizzes as an online component to his real-world course (which is where we got our approach for thephotocourse). The method is that you read the material and get quizzed, and if you don't pass the quiz you get hints or more material until you do have it 'mastered'. Still automated, but useful.
Ultimately, your course s/w is going to be based on:
a) your format: lecture/regurgative material, lab/hands-on, other
b) your teacher/student ratio
c) relevance of assignments and quizzes to the course
d) whether pass/fail (or grading) is required
Tools like slashcode are useful for _talking_ about something, but _teaching_ requires more than just two-way talking. You also need application, review, and testing.
The cheapest/easiest method would be: snag some old 486 or Pentium systems, install 4 IDE devices per, add an ISA ethernet card, and put linux on it with the few services needed (networking, yp). Probably cost you, oh, free, since a lot of folks just are tossing old 486s/Pentiums. Or buy a bunch at your local gov't auction (NASA centers have these frequently, etc).
Actually, we had a housemate who registered for the grocery card, and of course gave the house phone number. He's long since moved out, but since you can just type the phone number (rather than swipe the card), well, that's what I do. It is my house, after all...
So for a while, things like diapers and formula no doubt were showing up in his single-guy profile.
"My Mom *does* run linux....cause I set it up for her."
Do you prefer:
"My Mom runs Windows... because the manufacturer set it up for her."
I mean, that's the only real difference here, that one OS comes pre-installed by the manufacturers, and one OS comes pre-installed by the kin.
To Mom, it's the same. It's not like Mom sat there flawlessly installing Windows XP or what have you.
So if you're willing to put in Linux, go for it.
(My Mom ran Windows, and had to reinstall, and just accepted that, after the reinstall, her printer and modem wouldn't work right. So I don't see "had to install" as a good step for any beginner!)
My first reaction is "so? Sounds fair". I mean, it's going at the source of pirating and illegal sharing, not a problem.
The article raised the issue of false positives. It had this chilling bit on it:
"Of all the letters we have sent out, we only had 2 other people who corresponded back who said we were mistaken," Jacobsen said. "And we didn't think we were."
Oh, wait-- the folks doing the automated search get to decide whether its infringement. This is kinda backwards.
I mean, someone thinks you stole a coke from 7-11, the cops come and listen and maybe a judge makes a verdict-- not the 7-11 clerk.
But here, the person making the allegation gets to decide if it's true or not-- and when has any person ever been really psyched to say "Oh, wait, sorry, I was totally wrong, wasted your time, and opened myself up to legal risk by making a false accusation."
So, neat idea, but the implementation needs some better due process.
latency, spam, lifestyle, queues
on
DVDs By Mail?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I like Netflix-- under the '3 movies out' plan it means we always have 1 in transit, 1 for the kiddies, 1 for me and my spouse. And the fact that we never have to worry about late fees is great.
I just ran the numbers, we averaged just under $3.50 per DVD rented. Given that some we watched the day they arrived (then returned), others we didn't get to for a week, this is pretty great.
You can actually calculate your min cost, based on latency. Assuming a 5-day turnaround (i.e. from when you drop it in your box, to when they receive it and process it [typically within 24 hrs] and mail it back. We have around 2 day's travel each way), it's easy to figure out the min and most likely price.
Each 'slot' can cycle at most 30/turnaround_time, so for a 5-day turnaround that's 6 rentals a month. So the 2-DVD program at $15 is $1.25/CD (assuming you're rabid and watch each movie instantly!). 3-DVD at $21 is $1.66.
But that misses the point-- you're going for convenience and lifestyle. The main selling point isn't cost. It's a) no late fees, watch when you want and b) the Queue.
The Queue rules. You can list any movie you're interested in, and they just ship 'em in order. You can change the order at any time. Interested in Farscape episodes? Add 'em to your queue and you'll get them in order. Never got around to seeing "The Godfather"? Toss it in the queue. I'm up to 124 items in my queue, and anytime someone recommend a movie, I can add it (and prioritize it).
So I like Netflix. Alas, they do have aggressive email marketing-- not quite SPAM, but darn close. They partner with a lot of other sites so you sometimes get Netflix junk for unrelated reasons. This I hate, and it's the one thing that makes me feel guilty about using them. [If they started spoofing headers or such, I'd drop them in an instant. Right now, they're just being pushy.]
Yeah, a friend of mine was top stud among some game programmers. All of them had worked for game companies, but two of his games had actually gotten to market! Ooh, ahh. It's a pretty harsh industry. Seriously.
Unfortunately, there are usually 2 orthogonal stages to being hired. First, your resume has to get past HR (Human Resources). They typically know nothing about the job beyond the half-page writeup.
So if it says "wants 5 yr experience with C", well, if you don't have '5 years experience with C' listed on your resume, you won't get forwarded on. Even if your name is Richie and you list '10 yrs C++' becuas you wanted to focus on recent accomplishments.
It's only after getting past HR (and perhaps a PHB:) that you can actually talk to someone about what is really involved, and sell yourself.
Certs are only useful for the HR stage, but that's a killer cutoff. I've recommended folks for jobs I wrote the spec for, only to have HR bump them because they were missing a buzzword.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a surprise-- major corporation takes great idea and releases their inferior spin on it, hoping that their marketing will let it triumph.
One reason that it's good to be Second to Market (not First) is that you can pick-and-choose on which features to compete with, and don't have to do as much work informing people.
First to Market: teach people what it is, and sell them on buying it
Second to Market: convince people to buy yours, not theirs.
I was a little ticked that, after entering in my exceeds_their_requirements specs + Linux as OS, their email reply rejected me with a message (given fully below) basically saying "You don't have Win98 SE/2000 SP1, so you need to _upgrade_".
Yeah, it's probably just a generic message, but since they _ask_ for Mac OS, etc, you'd think they'd recognize that "other OS" does not imply "must _upgrade_ to Windows". (Heck, to some, going from Linux to Windows is a downgrade!)
Grrr... my only hope is that they're actually collecting the stats to see how many Linux, Mac, etc users are interested.
Exact bit from email:
"In order to run There you need:
800 MHz Pentium III CPU, 256 MB RAM, nVIDIA GeForce or nForce or ATI Radeon (except for VE or 7000), ATI Radeon Mobility 7500, DirectX compatible sound card, 56K modem, 400 MB free HD space, Windows 98 SE/2000 SP1.
For more information on how you can upgrade your system to be able to run There, contact us at help@there.com."
The poster wrote:
:)
I don't understand Pawlo's art argument, although I love gaming. I agree with Paul Szynol.
This bugs me. There's more than 2 sides to most issues. You don't have to agree with _either_ of the folks debating.
It's not like the choice is "they are art, or they should be regulated". Try 'none of the above'.
Short of the hackneyed "for the children" argument, the concept that any issue is Yes/No, Win/Lose when discussed really is seductively evil.
Otherwise you get things like "DRM: evil, or not?". "Liberal or Conservative?" "Christian or Doomed to Hell?" "Vi or emacs?"
Of course, you can either agree with me, or not
In Maryland, you _have_ to get Maryland plates within a year if you live in-state. And get a MD license. So Maryland could do this sort of wacko scheme.
Article summary:
He's built a huge, successful company. It's still doing well. He's always advanced the state of the art. His games are well designed. They get critical praise, and most sell in numbers that other companies would kill for. But, he didn't great GTA, so he sucks.
Try your local dollar store. Usually in 'toys' or in the party section (in which case they'll be in a bag of 4 or 6). Dollar stores are great for 'old style' toys. Bought some kazoos recently, too.
Another place is science museum shops; they have some nice ones for $3 or less that are tiny but have a big eyehole.
There's a job called 'systems analyst' that covers this. Back in the 80s I was one (later I became a programmer). The job was to act as liaison between the customer (user) and the computer people, and speak both their languages.
System analysts then make up the design documents (called a 'functional requirements') for the programming team and customers to serve as the 'treaty' (or battle plan, if you like).
It's a profession that may have fallen out of favor in rapid startups, I guess-- isn't edgy enough. It's essential for any good project, but too many people are in a hurry and do the usual "I'll write up the requirements while you start coding, go!"
> would be to simply overwhelm the spammer with false positives.
No good. Spammers usually work for other companies, and get paid per response plus extra per sale. So the Spammer will still make money from Company X for your false positives. Even if Company X goes under due to false positives, the Spammer is ahead of the game.
Spammers aren't selling 'stuff', anymore than telemarketers are. They're selling leads. They're more like a marketing and sales firm.
Is it possible to look at the universe with, say, lynx?
I know this was a joke, but that's actually a topic debated by webmasters at GSFC. In theory, all NASA web pages should be accessible, e.g. all browsers, readers for the blind, etc.
For images, this means descriptive image 'alt' tags. For links, it means including a link description. But what to do for data?
It's kinda subtle. The best answer is 'give data informative tags that can be domain-specific.' "Image 5b" is useless, saying "DI Peg data, X-ray wavelengths, reduced, FITS format" is good but tedious for whomever makes the page, giving a spec like 'ASCA dataset1, DI Peg, FITS, reduced' is something that could likely be automatically generated and fits the bill.
But the issue of folks using non-visual browsers is pretty real. Besides lynx and browsers for the blind, there's also data hunting scripts and programs that need to figure out what is on a page, and so it's a problem worth solving.
A lot of astronomy data is looked at by its principal investigator (PI) for something specific. Really, data has 5 'lives'.
1) The original proposal by the PI, e.g. 'looking for cornonal emissions from DI Peg, an Algol-type system'. Sort of the pass/fail of the research world.
2) Survey. Someone decides to do a survey study among existing data, e.g. "Light curves from all Algol-type systems".
3) Unexpected. Someone finds a new thing to look for, sometimes due to better theoretical understanding. "Coronal sources should be iron-enhanced, so let's reanalyze DI Peg, specifically looking for iron lines."
4) Data-mining. Searching an archive for a given property. "Looking for all sources with X-ray emission above a given threshold... hey, DI Peg matched!"
5) Grad students. Doing their thesis on a topic, use archival data to support. "Dissertation on coronal systems, using data from DI Peg and others".
So data is often used beyond its initial acquisition!
Most/all astronomical data is in FITS format. That which isn't, often gets FITSized when put into archives.
All you really need to know about FITS is: it is well specified, there are lots of tools for it, and it has an ASCII (human-readable) header describing the data, followed by specifically formatted binary data.
Also, since most data archives are large, single location repositories (e.g. CHANDRA data), and many data archives are already combined with other sets (e.g. HEASARC.gsfc.nasa.gov), there's a relatively small number of sites providing data (relative to, say, the number of sourceforge projects).
The astronomy community has been providing its data via the web for years now, usually localized by wavelength (e.g. radio archive in 1 place, X-ray data in another). The Virtual Observatory is just a layer on top to simplify access.
And for NASA data, it always goes public 1 year after the observation, so this isn't a new concept, just a better way to get at the data.
Hi,
Selling is hard-- most folks want the 'valuable' issues in your collection so, after lots of sales work, you'll be stuck with, oh, 95% of your comics and all the really good stuff missing. That's the worth of both worlds, really-- still stuck with boxes laying around but no good stuff hidden in it.
In "Comics Retailer" a few months back, there was a great bit from a comic book shop owner on how he buys comic collections-- by the pound, $1/pound. "But I have X-Men 128! What's that worth?" '$1/pound'.
Rather than cherry pick collections, evaluate quality, etc, he just made the simple business case-- take it all at a fair price. I wish he was in this area. It'd be nice to regain storage space.
Mycomicshop.com and WizardWorld.com both profess to be comic-specific sales sites, you might want to try those. I plan to, once I get organized enough to sell my back stuff.
They're cool, but... the Hummingbird is only 90 meters, i.e. just under 100 yards, or the size of a football field. And they don't use ultratech to mow the lawn of that.
There's always this strange image that 'primitive civilizations can't do what we can do today because they lack machines'. They also lack 16-hour workdays and email sucking up their night hours; they have free time. And a good basic grounding of basic engineering-- surveying and laying out straight lines isn't that difficult.
Will archaeologists from the far future someday look at, oh, the Luxor at Las Vegas and think "the beacon on top must have been to religiously signal the gods!"
Will they look at the hundreds of regular 100-yard (football) fields, neatly hewn with strange and different sets of letters carved into each of the long ends, just after the Y-shaped ritual mark, and think "obviously a place of worship".
Related to this misinterpretation, at the Smithonian they have a set of ancient potware, cutlery, china, etc. And it's marked "ritual cookware". Again, an attempt to mark as religious or mystical, something that could just has easily been mundane. Such as 'the nice china for when the relatives visit'.
So really, if two bored farmers can create crop circles for years just for a lark, the idea of a civilization saying "Let's make some water pointers and, gosh darn it, let's make them artistic and fun as weel" isn't too weird.
Nasca/Palpa Lines: the case-modders of the BC era!
Buy an Audrey. That's what they're perfect for. Small form factor, fits in nice with the decor, networkable (so you can keep your main recipe db on your main computer and access it from the kitchen), wireless keyboard, touch screen with stylus, etc.
Durable, too-- my 3-year old hasn't broken ours yet!
And cheap. Also very important. Hunt around with liquidators or on ebay, should be well under $100 including the USB ethernet (unless the built-in modem suffices... modem-modem maybe, if you want to score extra geek points)
First, go to your local cable access and do a show on there. This will:
* get you familiar with producing a TV show
* give you useful contacts in terms of staff and crew that you'll need for your venture
* give you 'street cred' in launching your web venture-- or at least teach you the lingo so you can work with folks who produce things.
Only after that would I suggest you launch your web thing. That way, you make all your mistakes while learning.
Yeah, I know a station owner/executive technically doesn't have to know anything about actually producing a show... but you will need contacts with that experience to produce your actual content, and this is a good way to hook into it.
Good luck!
Actually, NASA satellite ops often uses generalized environments (was it called MOPS?) and mix contractor-produced customerware with in-house software or scripting. Then, use Perl to create stuff after launch that was needed, or to make stuff web-accessible (internal network only, sorry).
Perl and Tcl/Tk are still popular (Tk for GUIs, Tcl or Perl for scripting).
It's not GPLed open source but, within NASA, it is open source.
Many missions are trying to move away from the 'custom designed only-works-for-us' software because it becomes rapidly dated.
There's systems like blackboard.com for handling courses in a traditional lecture manner (one-to-many) covering a single topic.
We rolled our own for ThePhotoCourse.com using a combination of subforums and a way of doing lessons with integrated quizzes. This was a few-to-many approach: several instructors, each handling a small 'classroom' of similarly inclined students.
One professor has worked out integrated quizzes as an online component to his real-world course (which is where we got our approach for thephotocourse). The method is that you read the material and get quizzed, and if you don't pass the quiz you get hints or more material until you do have it 'mastered'. Still automated, but useful.
Ultimately, your course s/w is going to be based on:
a) your format: lecture/regurgative material, lab/hands-on, other
b) your teacher/student ratio
c) relevance of assignments and quizzes to the course
d) whether pass/fail (or grading) is required
Tools like slashcode are useful for _talking_ about something, but _teaching_ requires more than just two-way talking. You also need application, review, and testing.
Good luck!
The cheapest/easiest method would be: snag some old 486 or Pentium systems, install 4 IDE devices per, add an ISA ethernet card, and put linux on it with the few services needed (networking, yp). Probably cost you, oh, free, since a lot of folks just are tossing old 486s/Pentiums. Or buy a bunch at your local gov't auction (NASA centers have these frequently, etc).
Actually, we had a housemate who registered for the grocery card, and of course gave the house phone number. He's long since moved out, but since you can just type the phone number (rather than swipe the card), well, that's what I do. It is my house, after all...
So for a while, things like diapers and formula no doubt were showing up in his single-guy profile.
Yeah, it's all bad data, mostly.
Hi,
"My Mom *does* run linux....cause I set it up for her."
Do you prefer:
"My Mom runs Windows... because the manufacturer set it up for her."
I mean, that's the only real difference here, that one OS comes pre-installed by the manufacturers, and one OS comes pre-installed by the kin.
To Mom, it's the same. It's not like Mom sat there flawlessly installing Windows XP or what have you.
So if you're willing to put in Linux, go for it.
(My Mom ran Windows, and had to reinstall, and just accepted that, after the reinstall, her printer and modem wouldn't work right. So I don't see "had to install" as a good step for any beginner!)
My first reaction is "so? Sounds fair". I mean, it's going at the source of pirating and illegal sharing, not a problem.
The article raised the issue of false positives. It had this chilling bit on it:
"Of all the letters we have sent out, we only had 2 other people who corresponded back who said we were mistaken," Jacobsen said. "And we didn't think we were."
Oh, wait-- the folks doing the automated search get to decide whether its infringement. This is kinda backwards.
I mean, someone thinks you stole a coke from 7-11, the cops come and listen and maybe a judge makes a verdict-- not the 7-11 clerk.
But here, the person making the allegation gets to decide if it's true or not-- and when has any person ever been really psyched to say "Oh, wait, sorry, I was totally wrong, wasted your time, and opened myself up to legal risk by making a false accusation."
So, neat idea, but the implementation needs some better due process.
I like Netflix-- under the '3 movies out' plan it means we always have 1 in transit, 1 for the kiddies, 1 for me and my spouse. And the fact that we never have to worry about late fees is great.
I just ran the numbers, we averaged just under $3.50 per DVD rented. Given that some we watched the day they arrived (then returned), others we didn't get to for a week, this is pretty great.
You can actually calculate your min cost, based on latency. Assuming a 5-day turnaround (i.e. from when you drop it in your box, to when they receive it and process it [typically within 24 hrs] and mail it back. We have around 2 day's travel each way), it's easy to figure out the min and most likely price.
Each 'slot' can cycle at most 30/turnaround_time, so for a 5-day turnaround that's 6 rentals a month. So the 2-DVD program at $15 is $1.25/CD (assuming you're rabid and watch each movie instantly!). 3-DVD at $21 is $1.66.
But that misses the point-- you're going for convenience and lifestyle. The main selling point isn't cost. It's a) no late fees, watch when you want and b) the Queue.
The Queue rules. You can list any movie you're interested in, and they just ship 'em in order. You can change the order at any time. Interested in Farscape episodes? Add 'em to your queue and you'll get them in order. Never got around to seeing "The Godfather"? Toss it in the queue. I'm up to 124 items in my queue, and anytime someone recommend a movie, I can add it (and prioritize it).
So I like Netflix. Alas, they do have aggressive email marketing-- not quite SPAM, but darn close. They partner with a lot of other sites so you sometimes get Netflix junk for unrelated reasons. This I hate, and it's the one thing that makes me feel guilty about using them. [If they started spoofing headers or such, I'd drop them in an instant. Right now, they're just being pushy.]
Yeah, a friend of mine was top stud among some game programmers. All of them had worked for game companies, but two of his games had actually gotten to market! Ooh, ahh. It's a pretty harsh industry. Seriously.
That? I rooted it 5 years ago. You should check on it sometime :)
Unfortunately, there are usually 2 orthogonal stages to being hired. First, your resume has to get past HR (Human Resources). They typically know nothing about the job beyond the half-page writeup.
:) that you can actually talk to someone about what is really involved, and sell yourself.
:)
So if it says "wants 5 yr experience with C", well, if you don't have '5 years experience with C' listed on your resume, you won't get forwarded on. Even if your name is Richie and you list '10 yrs C++' becuas you wanted to focus on recent accomplishments.
It's only after getting past HR (and perhaps a PHB
Certs are only useful for the HR stage, but that's a killer cutoff. I've recommended folks for jobs I wrote the spec for, only to have HR bump them because they were missing a buzzword.
Good luck! List everything, be concise