Some places I worked in the past had Employment Contracts that gave the company full rights to "... any intellectual property, inventions or creations made during the period of employment." [wording more or less.]
I often thought that if I really wanted to quit and didn't care about a good reference, I'd take my camera to the local zoo and shoot several rolls of, er..., animal droppings, then lay out a book of photos of these, er... products of nature. And, since the company has all IP rights, put them down as the author.
It'd all be worth it when HR got the pre-press of the glossy coffe table book of Products, by Joe's Software, with the big picture of a turd on the cover.
On 9/11 the Emergency Broadcast System here in the USA was not used AT ALL. WHY??
That's an easy question. Focus group, which of the following would you rather watch...
click A. "This.... Is CNN.... We continue our continual camera pointing at the burning building while people kerfuffle about not knowing what's going on. But watch that building Burn..."
click B. "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep This is the emergency broadcast system on a blue screen - Please stay home, more information will be available soon beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep"
jc42's argument is recursive: jc42 can't make reliable software because his foundation isn't reliable.
But the converse is not automatically true: If I had a reliable foundation, could I write reliable software? The answer is only if that
is important to you. And the probable truth is that for most people, it would only be important if it was required by law.
Given the current state of software, reliability is only really important to a few
companies. Oracle, because their customers demand it. IBM's mainframe o/s's are really reliable, because their customers demanded it. Telecom equipment manufacturers are usually held to laws that require for "maximum 3 seconds unexpected downtime per year."
If there were laws requiring software to be
reliable, could most people write "reliable"
software? Freed from the ability to blame the
os/middleware/hardware/whatever and the "Your program crashed because Windows Sucks" defence, what would you do?
Reliable and secure software can be written.
but doing so requires a certain level of professionalism among developers, and an honest acceptance of the value of those things traditionally considered un-fun, such as
designing for testibility
writing test cases
designing for failure and recovery
anticipating all possible failures instead of
only the "success path" and handling failures
later
considering all the edge cases
rigourous code inspections
development processes
doing real analysis and design
In "real life," most coders don't even do simple things like checking the return value of
close(2). Even fewer have any idea what
they would even do with a failure case
in close(2).
A huge company I used to work for (which shall remain nameless but be completly obvious to anyone who has ever worked there) implemented a strict naming policy in the years before they adopted DNS. Every night, a 500,000+ line/etc/hosts file would be pushed out to a network of NIS servers.
All hosts followed the convention (more or less) of company-or-function:1 +
location-code:3 + system-type:1 + hex-number:3.
So, for example, bcarhd4b was an H/P (h) workstation in Ottawa (car), nwdcc1e2 was a router (c) in Calgary (wdc), mmlvd1c3 was a PC (d) in France (mlv), zmpkh040 was an H/P server (z) in California (mpk), crchyaae was an embedded system (y) in Texas (rch), &c.
Worked reasonably well since the master hosts file was controlled in effectivly one place (ensured no hostname conflicts) and once you knew the code, you could tell a lot from just the name (great for sysadmins.) Of course, the company changed names several times and location codes changed with business fortunes, so you had to learn over time things like mer == sky and bpd == enc.
Why? Simple. It's a system for distributing information of questionable legal status.
If I wanted to put up pictures from my vacation, I'd use the web and HTTP protocol - everyone has it
and there is no content problem with my pictures. I wouldn't ask my friends to download (and compile!) a tool and pass around PGP keys.
Freenet et al come into their own only when you want to put up content that you expect that people will try to force you to take down.
Sometimes that content does have some redeeming features even if illegal; the Xenu texts help show how ridiculous Scientology is at the higher levels, yet they're illegal (copyright violation.) The documents spirited out of the tobacco companies that proved everything they'd ever said about "no harmful effects" were lies and led to the huge settlements to the government: All private, controlled documents that were effectivly stolen and illegally published by the whistle-blowers.
These are the things people "think" when they think of how freenet, &c. will save free speech. Yes, they're illegal, but they're important.
Of course, the report compares their system to Napster, not whistle-blowing. Argue as you may, Napster was just another system for distributing material of questionable legality (i.e., if you had the CD, you could have burnt that MP3 yourself!) The whole report has a feel of "here's how we're not gonna be shut down like Napster was." I don't know the exact history, but didn't freenet really only take off when Napster started having problems?
Dose of reality: If anything actually useful does make it into the FreeNet (and ugh, couldn't they have picked a name that doesn't mean "Free Network BBS access" to anyone who'se been online > 10 years?), it'll never be found, expired away to make room for all the goat and child movies.
Ballmer complained that it would be too expensive to build a version of the Java
programming language to package with Windows, as requested by the states. The
states clarified that Microsoft wouldn't have to bear those costs.
Build?
Something wrong with just licensing the one that Sun already provides for free? That provides cross-platform portability (more or less) right out of the box?
Oh wait, sorry, I forgot I was talking about Microsoft.
Funny the article mentions Calgary, Alberta as the
lowest cost place to do business... I moved from there a year-or-so ago to Silicon Valley when I realized that I was sick of working for Nortel and that there weren't any other high-tech companies in Calgary to change to...
Plenty of Oil & Gas work, though - Programmers even get their own office at most of them... Of course this is offset by the fact your whole life is spent trying to figure out new ways to interprit seismic data... booo-ring...
I hear that they've had some problems the past few years recruiting people into the military. This may have to do with the fact that all those people in 97-99 who would otherwise join the army instead became web developers, but I digress...
So this is probably a recruiting pitch. Can you see it now?
Join the Army!
Eat Macaroni & Cheese!
Definatly inspires me to want to join and get shot at in some foreign country...
Oh, you mean something like
Plan 9 from Bell Labs?
I predict that there will never be a revolutionary new operating system until we break
free of the chains imposed by Posix compliance.
Until then, we're stuck with files that have to be streams of bytes, ugo-style permissions, non-wandering processes, incompatable RPC calls, &c.
And the real pain is there have been OS'es that
have had simple & elegant solutions to problems that are hard under unix (Aegis, Multics, VMS,
TOPS,...) that were pushed aside by the steamroller that is Unix.
But to be fair, many of the forgotten O/S's are now forgotten because they weren't as general purpose as Unix. Unix is the great compromise. But it's hard to strive for the best when you've
already accepted compromise.
Meanwhile, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is giving extraordinary sums of money to real nuts
and bolts making the world a better place kinds of causes. Gates could literally turn out to be the most significant philanthropist in the history of the world. They're giving so much money that you can almost see a chunk of what you spend on MS going to a good cause.
According to the Bill Gates Wealth Clock,
Gates has about 67.5 billion dollars right now.
According to Newsweek, the Gates Foundation is spending 24 billion on world health.
Assuming (which may be wrong,) that Gates put up all that money himself, that still leaves him
with 43.5 billion dollars. You'd have to work for almost half a million years to earn that much (probably a million years after taxes.)
In other words, he's not going to miss that money. It's not going to require any change to his lifestyle such like any of us "normal" people would have to face to donate 35% of our money to charity.
The best "geeky" magazine about cooking is
Cook's Illustrated - Every issue is filled with articles similar to the following (except serious and useful):
I always wondered what the best way to BBQ a steak was, so I bought 50 Kg. of steak,
marinated some with oils, some with non-oils, put seasoning on some, and all possible combinations of the above, then grilled each one at 300,325,350,375,400,425 and 450 degrees for 3-19 minutes per side, either turning once, twice, or 2*N times.
The results are presented in the following handy table and graph, with results from our 50 food tasters in 54 categories...
BTW, the magazines are much better than the books that they also publish... The books mostly contain only the final recipe, not the experimental log book that led to it.
The best "general" cookbook I've found is
How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Each chapter starts up with several pages of "how to" and "How to do this right" information (such as how to dice tomatoes without making a mushy mess,) then follows up with tons of recipes.
No pictures but lots of drawings of techniques such as which part of the cow that steak came from... (IIRC, there's also some info on butchering that steak yourself.)
But JVC has said it hopes to sell 100,000 D-VHS players,which currently cost $1,995 (£1,400) each, during 2002.
I can't see exactly who their target market is:
Videophiles who already have DVD (and perhaps even LD) might buy it if they're spendy people, but would they copy their DVD or LD onto D-VHS and suffer "degredation?"
Joe Six-Pack is not going to pay $2k when he can get a normal VHS and DVD and still have enough left over to buy 600 sixes of Bud.
About the only market I can see is people who want to tape off their satellite dish and keep it all digital, instead of having to have programs littering their Tivo.
But the price is gonna have to come way down (est. 3 years) before the mass market does that. And what do you want to bet by that time there will be some sort of "copy protection" on satellite signals to prevent it?
wakka wakka wakka doesn't run Linux wakka wakka wakka doesn't play games wakka wakka wakka Bill Gates has nothing to do with this story but I have to bash micro$oft wakka wakka wakka
We now return you to hopefully more useful discussion...
Crack the code, go to Lethbridge? Are you sure this isn't some secret police sting?
Why would smart people want to go somewhere where the wind are so strong it regularly blows over the cows? Where a trip to the Hutterite
community is considered a "grand weekend out?"
OBDisclaimer: I guess Lethbridge isn't that bad really. After all, it's not Regina.
[...] developed and implemented a "cheating detector"; that is, a program
which compares students' coding assignments to each other and detects
exact matches.
Oh, so they've developed "diff -s" now.
Watch out for the patent application any day now...
By opening this package, you agree to be bound indefinatly to the terms of this license.
1. Restrictions on Use: This software
may only be used on seconds which are prime
1b. By our watch
2. Reasonable ChecksYou agree to allow
employees of Viking Software or their designates
to enter your home at any time of day or night,
whether you are home or not, to verify complience
with the terms of this EULA. They will show proper identification in the form of a helmet with horns and arrival in a large ship.
2a. If you do not live on the water, you agree to provide transportation compensation to employees of Viking Software or their designates equal to travel distance double the distance to the nearest ocean.
3. Rape Waiver If during compiance checks (#2), any female members of your household
end up having sexual intercourse, consentual or
not, with employees of Viking Software or their
designates, you waive the right to seek compensation or restitution for those actions.
4. Pillage Waiver
If you are found in violation of the terms of this EULA, you hereby waive any right to compensation
or restitution if employees of Viking Software or their designates decide to gather and take your
household possessions as pillage.
5. Burn Waiver If
during the course of an authorized investigation
by Viking Software employees or their designates,
your house or place of residence happens to burn
down, you waive all rights to restitution from Viking Software or your personal homeowner's
policy.
6. Indemnification If any part of this EULA is found to be illegal in your juristiction, you waive all rights to the law and agree to double the restitution to Viking software (In other words: You should start having more daughters, buying more expensive stuff and build a bigger house now.)
Signature: Kill 'em all & let God sort it out later...
I hope god uses quicksort or something faster (god's probably the one who can make those NP sorting algorithms work.)
I'd hate to be trapped in purgatory waiting for the bubble sort to complete...
Just to give you an idea, some crackers during the BB era in southern california were stealing credit cards to
buy commercial software, then sold cracked versions to the largest BB in southern CA.
And what did a Bed & Breakfast need with all that cracked software? Perhaps they were trying to attract more geeks and offered special "theme" rooms where all the doilies and stuffed animals were replaced with CD-ROM's and stuffed penguins.
Slashdot Mirror
I often thought that if I really wanted to quit and didn't care about a good reference, I'd take my camera to the local zoo and shoot several rolls of, er..., animal droppings, then lay out a book of photos of these, er... products of nature. And, since the company has all IP rights, put them down as the author.
It'd all be worth it when HR got the pre-press of the glossy coffe table book of Products, by Joe's Software, with the big picture of a turd on the cover.
That's an easy question. Focus group, which of the following would you rather watch...
click A. "This.... Is CNN.... We continue our continual camera pointing at the burning building while people kerfuffle about not knowing what's going on. But watch that building Burn..."
click B. "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep This is the emergency broadcast system on a blue screen - Please stay home, more information will be available soon beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep"
jc42's argument is recursive: jc42 can't make reliable software because his foundation isn't reliable.
But the converse is not automatically true: If I had a reliable foundation, could I write reliable software? The answer is only if that is important to you. And the probable truth is that for most people, it would only be important if it was required by law.
Given the current state of software, reliability is only really important to a few companies. Oracle, because their customers demand it. IBM's mainframe o/s's are really reliable, because their customers demanded it. Telecom equipment manufacturers are usually held to laws that require for "maximum 3 seconds unexpected downtime per year."
If there were laws requiring software to be reliable, could most people write "reliable" software? Freed from the ability to blame the os/middleware/hardware/whatever and the "Your program crashed because Windows Sucks" defence, what would you do?
Reliable and secure software can be written. but doing so requires a certain level of professionalism among developers, and an honest acceptance of the value of those things traditionally considered un-fun, such as
designing for testibility
writing test cases
designing for failure and recovery
anticipating all possible failures instead of only the "success path" and handling failures later
considering all the edge cases
rigourous code inspections
development processes
doing real analysis and design
In "real life," most coders don't even do simple things like checking the return value of close(2). Even fewer have any idea what they would even do with a failure case in close(2).
All hosts followed the convention (more or less) of company-or-function:1 + location-code:3 + system-type:1 + hex-number:3.
So, for example, bcarhd4b was an H/P (h) workstation in Ottawa (car), nwdcc1e2 was a router (c) in Calgary (wdc), mmlvd1c3 was a PC (d) in France (mlv), zmpkh040 was an H/P server (z) in California (mpk), crchyaae was an embedded system (y) in Texas (rch), &c.
Worked reasonably well since the master hosts file was controlled in effectivly one place (ensured no hostname conflicts) and once you knew the code, you could tell a lot from just the name (great for sysadmins.) Of course, the company changed names several times and location codes changed with business fortunes, so you had to learn over time things like mer == sky and bpd == enc.
If I wanted to put up pictures from my vacation, I'd use the web and HTTP protocol - everyone has it and there is no content problem with my pictures. I wouldn't ask my friends to download (and compile!) a tool and pass around PGP keys.
Freenet et al come into their own only when you want to put up content that you expect that people will try to force you to take down.
Sometimes that content does have some redeeming features even if illegal; the Xenu texts help show how ridiculous Scientology is at the higher levels, yet they're illegal (copyright violation.) The documents spirited out of the tobacco companies that proved everything they'd ever said about "no harmful effects" were lies and led to the huge settlements to the government: All private, controlled documents that were effectivly stolen and illegally published by the whistle-blowers.
These are the things people "think" when they think of how freenet, &c. will save free speech. Yes, they're illegal, but they're important.
Of course, the report compares their system to Napster, not whistle-blowing. Argue as you may, Napster was just another system for distributing material of questionable legality (i.e., if you had the CD, you could have burnt that MP3 yourself!) The whole report has a feel of "here's how we're not gonna be shut down like Napster was." I don't know the exact history, but didn't freenet really only take off when Napster started having problems?
Dose of reality: If anything actually useful does make it into the FreeNet (and ugh, couldn't they have picked a name that doesn't mean "Free Network BBS access" to anyone who'se been online > 10 years?), it'll never be found, expired away to make room for all the goat and child movies.
Build?
Something wrong with just licensing the one that Sun already provides for free? That provides cross-platform portability (more or less) right out of the box?
Oh wait, sorry, I forgot I was talking about Microsoft.
Plenty of Oil & Gas work, though - Programmers even get their own office at most of them... Of course this is offset by the fact your whole life is spent trying to figure out new ways to interprit seismic data... booo-ring...
So this is probably a recruiting pitch. Can you see it now?
Definatly inspires me to want to join and get shot at in some foreign country...
We're the ones paying full social security taxes but not eligable for social security.
We're the ones paying full unemployment insurance premiums but not able to collect unemployment if we get laid off.
We're the ones keeping your so-called social system afloat!
I predict that there will never be a revolutionary new operating system until we break free of the chains imposed by Posix compliance. Until then, we're stuck with files that have to be streams of bytes, ugo-style permissions, non-wandering processes, incompatable RPC calls, &c.
And the real pain is there have been OS'es that have had simple & elegant solutions to problems that are hard under unix (Aegis, Multics, VMS, TOPS, ...) that were pushed aside by the steamroller that is Unix.
But to be fair, many of the forgotten O/S's are now forgotten because they weren't as general purpose as Unix. Unix is the great compromise. But it's hard to strive for the best when you've already accepted compromise.
Assuming (which may be wrong,) that Gates put up all that money himself, that still leaves him with 43.5 billion dollars. You'd have to work for almost half a million years to earn that much (probably a million years after taxes.)
In other words, he's not going to miss that money. It's not going to require any change to his lifestyle such like any of us "normal" people would have to face to donate 35% of our money to charity.
Var'aq: Like Windows With Weapons...
BTW, the magazines are much better than the books that they also publish... The books mostly contain only the final recipe, not the experimental log book that led to it.
The best "general" cookbook I've found is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Each chapter starts up with several pages of "how to" and "How to do this right" information (such as how to dice tomatoes without making a mushy mess,) then follows up with tons of recipes.
No pictures but lots of drawings of techniques such as which part of the cow that steak came from... (IIRC, there's also some info on butchering that steak yourself.)
perhaps that's why they went out of business..
I can't see exactly who their target market is:
Videophiles who already have DVD (and perhaps even LD) might buy it if they're spendy people, but would they copy their DVD or LD onto D-VHS and suffer "degredation?"
Joe Six-Pack is not going to pay $2k when he can get a normal VHS and DVD and still have enough left over to buy 600 sixes of Bud.
About the only market I can see is people who want to tape off their satellite dish and keep it all digital, instead of having to have programs littering their Tivo.
But the price is gonna have to come way down (est. 3 years) before the mass market does that. And what do you want to bet by that time there will be some sort of "copy protection" on satellite signals to prevent it?
We now return you to hopefully more useful discussion...
I really don't care about offending others... as long as I get the job
I really don't care about causing traffic delays by cutting people off... as long as I can get there faster
I really don't care about causing pollution... as long as I can make more money
I really don't care about trampling the rights of the innocent... as long as we can punish the guilty
The funniest thing is how loud people complain about others being selfish...
OBFun: Go to local grocery store. Cut in front of line. When someone complains say "Why can we do it on the freeway but not here?" Watch them fizzle.
Crack the code, go to Lethbridge? Are you sure this isn't some secret police sting?
Why would smart people want to go somewhere where the wind are so strong it regularly blows over the cows? Where a trip to the Hutterite community is considered a "grand weekend out?"
OBDisclaimer: I guess Lethbridge isn't that bad really. After all, it's not Regina.
Oh, so they've developed "diff -s" now. Watch out for the patent application any day now...
By opening this package, you agree to be bound indefinatly to the terms of this license.
1. Restrictions on Use: This software may only be used on seconds which are prime
1b. By our watch
2. Reasonable ChecksYou agree to allow employees of Viking Software or their designates to enter your home at any time of day or night, whether you are home or not, to verify complience with the terms of this EULA. They will show proper identification in the form of a helmet with horns and arrival in a large ship.
2a. If you do not live on the water, you agree to provide transportation compensation to employees of Viking Software or their designates equal to travel distance double the distance to the nearest ocean.
3. Rape Waiver If during compiance checks (#2), any female members of your household end up having sexual intercourse, consentual or not, with employees of Viking Software or their designates, you waive the right to seek compensation or restitution for those actions.
4. Pillage Waiver If you are found in violation of the terms of this EULA, you hereby waive any right to compensation or restitution if employees of Viking Software or their designates decide to gather and take your household possessions as pillage.
5. Burn Waiver If during the course of an authorized investigation by Viking Software employees or their designates, your house or place of residence happens to burn down, you waive all rights to restitution from Viking Software or your personal homeowner's policy.
6. Indemnification If any part of this EULA is found to be illegal in your juristiction, you waive all rights to the law and agree to double the restitution to Viking software (In other words: You should start having more daughters, buying more expensive stuff and build a bigger house now.)
We hope you enjoy
I hope god uses quicksort or something faster (god's probably the one who can make those NP sorting algorithms work.) I'd hate to be trapped in purgatory waiting for the bubble sort to complete...
My gosh, the people are naked!
Somebody call the FCC they're planning to broadcast a program with full frontal nudity!
Since he's immortalized in the Net Legends FAQ, it's a shame there are few examples of his jokes, other than in our memories.
And now, the Minas'ized version of this post:
Friend says to me, "See Google because they have many funny posts." I search for my name and find out I am being a kook. Friend says "Legendary!"
And what did a Bed & Breakfast need with all that cracked software? Perhaps they were trying to attract more geeks and offered special "theme" rooms where all the doilies and stuffed animals were replaced with CD-ROM's and stuffed penguins.
Moral: Define your abbreviations.
On second thought, it would definatly not be cool...