Yeah, right. I live in the metro area of Boston, MA. The heart of Verizon-land. And while at home, I get a crap signal from them on every verizon phone I've used.
Happily, AT&T gives me a much better signal - never a drop or a fade-out. So I dropped Verizon (after they dropped my calls dozens of times), and picked up AT&T.
Drive around the country all you want. But if you can't service one of your biggest metro areas well, then get out of the business.
Plus they changed their off peak from 8pm to 9pm. Who need their crap. AT&T rocks for me.
I still find it curious that the west really doesn't depend on public transportation.
I live in Boston, and there is no doubt in my mind that today, tomorrow, and next week I'll be taking the train to work. It's about 10x cheaper than driving & parking in the city. And lots easier too.
I drive into work about once a month. That's plenty.
But I guess each to his own. If you love to be seen in your car, well, then I guess then that settles the issue!
1. Upgrade to Mac OS X. It's so cool. 2. People use W2k on the internet? Is that safe???
And you get a cut of the savings!
on
e-Denounce
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· Score: 2
Obviously no one would use this unless there is a real incentive.
I'd suppose the reward would be something like "10% of the money that would have been lost by the software industry if the site wasn't shut down".
Just think! The site has a pirated version of MS-Office? Well, if it was downloaded 1000 times over the last week, but then you "F"d 'em, you'd get something like $100,000!
This, my friends, is the wave of the future. The software companies quickly curb piracy, recover huge losses, and for a very very low cost!
And you, the investigator, make lots of money in the process!
Geez, some of these patents are crazy. Instead of patenting REAL innovation, many folk are misusing the patent and legal system to try to gain a monopoly on obvious extentions to existing technologies.
I think it's high time we asked Congress to pass a law which results in high damages to those who are caught attempting to patenting inventions that don't require innovation.
Let's see. Drug companies spend millions on research. OK, perhaps they do merit a reward. Maybe a patent is the right thing.
Online retailer creates software so advertisements appear based on user input. Hum, no, I don't think this is a notable innovation that merits a 20 year monopoly.
I think the interesting part is this just shows with enough big dollar corporate investment, even sophisticated security schemes can be cracked.
If cracking security helps your competition out of business, well, that could be worth several billion dollars. Investing $100 million would be money well spent.
In my community, the hacker community, a goal is to IMPROVE security by revealing it's flaws. But these guys broke security to make billions off of someone else's huge investment. That's very different.
Of course, like Enron, corporate executives should pay the price for much of the resulting destruction. It'd say that a good "20 years to life" sentence would be appropriate for all of those in this management chain. And if the worker-bees knew what they were up to, same thing: jail.
zoom back to the Kmart cd, it said I cannot open it and return. What's the difference here folks?
The difference is that I can sell that CD to the used CD store or through a classified ad or on Ebay. Maybe KMart won't buy it back, but that's OK - there are other channels.
Software EULAs don't allow that. I have loads of somewhat current, unused software that my company could sell... except that the EULAs attempt to prohibit it.
It isn't theft, as you claim. It's a product that I bought which I don't need. A I wish to recover some of the $$$ I paid for it. And in the process, someone can get a bargain.
It isn't funny that the manufacturers try to prevent this legitimate flow of goods.
I've bought at least 3 PCs that came with Microsoft Windows ME - an OS that I never ever used. Is this considered "installed" software? Although I never used it (Linux boxes all the way!) , it sure did come installed on the PC I purchased. And I sure didn't buy the Microsoft software on a CD... It was just preloaded on there.
Andersen cannot be held responsible (even though they will) for the illegal acts of a few.
Why the hell not? What happened to self auditing? What happened to rules in regulations that they are to follow to prevent this kind of major scandal?
Let me tell you - if company employees break the law for the company, it's still the company that's breaking the law. Heads should roll - and gross mismanagement should result in long, long prison terms for Andersen management.
Why hire Andersen if they don't even have a handle on how well their working with one of their biggest clients???
Retailers just can't sell at a lost. Their is a lot of competition. In addition, product manufacturers can't sell items at a loss.
But when the market is in flux, all rules are off. Retailers may sell at a loss, and manufacturers might "dump" product onto the marketplace (in lieu of sending it to a landfill, as they often do).
With the Internet economy what it is, retailers aren't willing to sell at a loss for market share, and the tech economy is in a somewhat conservative state (for now).
So no agressive price cuts, but no outrageous prices.
From my vantage point as an IT application manager, a merger between HP and Compaq sits well.
I'm not really interested in either company these days. Compaq basically destroyed itself and the companies it purchased. HP is doing the same to itself.
Their products aren't attractive to me (although both offer a couple cool products), and I have no reason to trust any service offerings offered by HP, Compaq, or a combination of both.
I particularly have to laugh at their consumer line of PCs, with the clear colored plastic which is supposed to make them "cute" like an iMac. Not even close.
So as far as I care, it's up to the shareholders. I guess the choice is to have one big sucky company, or two big sucky companies.
why couldn't you say:
"My image file is variation #5432234534234223234432223443322 with hash value of 34334fa3de3ade33. Just for good measure, it's also 1200x1800 pixels, 24bits/pixel."
You could say that. But there are (exactly) 2^51840000 variations of a 1200x1800x24bit picture.
That means it's very likely that your index number will be very very large - typically as large as the image itself. Sometimes you'll be able to send a very small file (rare). Most times you'll have to send a very large message. For the vast majority of useful messages, you'll have zero compression plus protocol overhead.
That's right. I'm not a big fan of dumping large amounts of dollars into lookin' around for asteroids.
Why? It's simple. I don't want to divert money allocated to other basic research projects... projects that can significantly help this effort. If we increase funding for basic science research, we'll have two longer term positives:
1. Basic science money can have immediate benefits today.
- There are lots of critical problems on earth now, above and beyond asteroid impacts. Many of these problems need research dollars now.
- Asking for a billion now to watch for something that may or may not happen any time soon isn't going to please a lot of people, especially where there are more immediate issues on the table.
2. The money dedicated to basic research can effectively accomplish the goal of watching for and (hopefully) averting a long-term disaster.
- Money spent on science research today can help build more effective, lower cost, and more technically able solutions to the problem.
Spend a dumb billion today, or a smarter million tomorrow. That's the choice.
The article talks mostly about commercial web sights that sell services that are illegal in some places - like on-line gambling and drugs.
To me, I want to know where I'm spending my money. Many on-line services do hide behind the web, trying to mask their true identity (and legitimacy and legality).
Clearly it is good for consumers to know with who they are dealing with.
It is, however, disconcerting that this same technology can prevent legitimate news, views, and opinions from easily making it to one location or another.
I have a similar problem. I'm only 22, but I'm as smart as a whip. Perhaps even smarter.
My boss, who is 41, isn't that smart. I mean he started in the industry doing COBOL. Come on, even I'm smarter than that.
My colleagues are all older than me. They always talk about the old days, like C++ and VMS. They just like to worry what management likes to hear. Not me, I'm a PHP god, and I'm sure we can save millions if they'd let me.
There is this one older guy that I work with who LOVES to use databases! I said "just put it all in XML"! Saves thousands of dollars just in database licensing fees! But he won, because the management likes older guys and that old database crap.
I spoke my mind, and my boss shut me down. I said to him "what happened to free speech???". Then he demoted me to the mail room.
They're all old guys down there too. They're concerned about delivering junk mail. I said "Let's just chuck it, no one reads it anyway". It could save thousnads a year, but they don't listen to younger people who are smarter then they are.
My friend Timmy is in law school - he's helping me document all this so we can sue them and then I'll own my boss!
Unfortuantely for you, there are few laws regarding age discrimination for people under 40. In other words, it's probably not easy to win such a "reverse discrimination" suit. However, there are some cases in some states where reverse age discrimination law suits have been permitted. New Jersey is one - the Bergen Commercial Bank suit. Look it up.
But in any case, you don't want to get involved in any lawsuits with your employer. It's not good for you in your current position, and it certainly isn't good if you're looking for a new job ("Why did I leave? I decided that I couldn't work there after I sued them. So how are your benefits?").
Your best bet is to get your resume together and get out.
"DRAM Manufactureres are losing money on every chip they sell".
Well THAT'S a load of bullshit. Then why are they selling?
"We'll sell you a million of them. That'll cost us a $1,000,000, but let's do it anyway."
It's NOT true.
Chip manufacturers MAKE money each time they sell a chip. And if they sold enough chips, they'd walk away with a tidy profit. And - SURPRISE - they do!
The problem is that they've expended lots of money building new fabrication facilities, and then, whoops!, the PC economy takes a hit. It isn't that DRAM prices got more expensive - it's that they over-invested in fabrication. And let me tell you - the plants themselves aren't the most expensive part - it's the people and managers that run them.
What's the answer? To sell off the facilities to those who won't be competitors. Heck, why sell something good to a competetor? Therefore, the entry into "vertical markets" by the likes of Toshiba, selling off the facilities to Micron. As long as there is no competition between partners, they're happy.
So what does this mean to DRAM prices? They might fluctuate a little, but the trend will continue downwards as real manufacturing costs are lowered and the technology improves.
The real problem is that space junk leads to more space junk.
Space junk by itself isn't too bad. It's just some stuff that's floating around Earth's orbit.
The problem is that this space junk will collide with other space junk, leading to smaller, faster moving pieces of junk. This small, undetectable junk will smack into good equipment, leading to even more space junk. Before you know it, there's a chain reaction, and near earth orbit becomes an unsuitable wasteland of high velocity particles.
Just what we don't need.
And trust me, it's one thing to get and send down a spent rocket. It's a bit harder to remove a few thousand small shards of aluminum, paint and ceramic.
There is an immediate need to de-orbit as much space junk as possbile.
It's hard to predict what you'll want to run between your walls in the future. Technology changes every few years - but house ownership can last for decades.
The key is to install conduit between key locations in your house. It usually isn't that hard to run cables between the basement and the first floor, or from the attic to the second floor. But it can be a big effort to run a wire from the basement to the 2nd floor. Or to get a cable to a location where it isn't accessible from the attic or the basement.
When I had my house built, I installed a conduit from the wiring panel in the basement all the way up to the attic, with access points on the first and second floors. I also installed a conduit behind two bedroom walls on the second floor - walls which are diffcult to get behind without a lot of demolition.
Now if I want to bring in a new fiber or CATV or doorbell, it's very easy to draw the cable from the basement to the attic, and it's easy to cleanly distribute the cable to any room in the house.
My only mistake was a lack of a conduit between my house and detached garage.
Many dedicated people spent their years developing OS/2. It'd be a shame to completely dispose of it, so it's nice that someone is continuing to put love into the product.
Of course, it'll never make a dime, but still, I'm happy. It's better than the fate of so many other software products, whose source code ends up in a warehouse on an obsolete format of tape.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it ain't worth moving for fucking cell phone service, loser.
Yeah, right. I live in the metro area of Boston, MA. The heart of Verizon-land. And while at home, I get a crap signal from them on every verizon phone I've used.
Happily, AT&T gives me a much better signal - never a drop or a fade-out. So I dropped Verizon (after they dropped my calls dozens of times), and picked up AT&T.
Drive around the country all you want. But if you can't service one of your biggest metro areas well, then get out of the business.
Plus they changed their off peak from 8pm to 9pm. Who need their crap. AT&T rocks for me.
I still find it curious that the west really doesn't depend on public transportation.
I live in Boston, and there is no doubt in my mind that today, tomorrow, and next week I'll be taking the train to work. It's about 10x cheaper than driving & parking in the city. And lots easier too.
I drive into work about once a month. That's plenty.
But I guess each to his own. If you love to be seen in your car, well, then I guess then that settles the issue!
At the time, it was pretty darn cool. But soon we laughed hard at the people who bought one.
See Osborne History
Here's the solution:
1. Upgrade to Mac OS X. It's so cool.
2. People use W2k on the internet? Is that safe???
Obviously no one would use this unless there is a real incentive.
I'd suppose the reward would be something like "10% of the money that would have been lost by the software industry if the site wasn't shut down".
Just think! The site has a pirated version of MS-Office? Well, if it was downloaded 1000 times over the last week, but then you "F"d 'em, you'd get something like $100,000!
This, my friends, is the wave of the future. The software companies quickly curb piracy, recover huge losses, and for a very very low cost!
And you, the investigator, make lots of money in the process!
This is the free market at it's best!
Does the plug-in work with Mozilla?
Geez, some of these patents are crazy. Instead of patenting REAL innovation, many folk are misusing the patent and legal system to try to gain a monopoly on obvious extentions to existing technologies.
I think it's high time we asked Congress to pass a law which results in high damages to those who are caught attempting to patenting inventions that don't require innovation.
Let's see. Drug companies spend millions on research. OK, perhaps they do merit a reward. Maybe a patent is the right thing.
Online retailer creates software so advertisements appear based on user input. Hum, no, I don't think this is a notable innovation that merits a 20 year monopoly.
Or that I just work there.
I think the interesting part is this just shows with enough big dollar corporate investment, even sophisticated security schemes can be cracked.
If cracking security helps your competition out of business, well, that could be worth several billion dollars. Investing $100 million would be money well spent.
In my community, the hacker community, a goal is to IMPROVE security by revealing it's flaws. But these guys broke security to make billions off of someone else's huge investment. That's very different.
Of course, like Enron, corporate executives should pay the price for much of the resulting destruction. It'd say that a good "20 years to life" sentence would be appropriate for all of those in this management chain. And if the worker-bees knew what they were up to, same thing: jail.
zoom back to the Kmart cd, it said I cannot open it and return. What's the difference here folks?
The difference is that I can sell that CD to the used CD store or through a classified ad or on Ebay. Maybe KMart won't buy it back, but that's OK - there are other channels.
Software EULAs don't allow that. I have loads of somewhat current, unused software that my company could sell... except that the EULAs attempt to prohibit it.
It isn't theft, as you claim. It's a product that I bought which I don't need. A I wish to recover some of the $$$ I paid for it. And in the process, someone can get a bargain.
It isn't funny that the manufacturers try to prevent this legitimate flow of goods.
I've bought at least 3 PCs that came with Microsoft Windows ME - an OS that I never ever used. Is this considered "installed" software? Although I never used it (Linux boxes all the way!) , it sure did come installed on the PC I purchased. And I sure didn't buy the Microsoft software on a CD... It was just preloaded on there.
Alas, this decision may only be a first step.
You have to be an idiot to not save your email, at least somewhere.
Yeah, but then you get fired for not conforming to the company's "document destruction policy"!
Bring your CD archive up in court, and next thing you know, you stole company property and violated company policy. Loose cannon!
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Andersen cannot be held responsible (even though they will) for the illegal acts of a few.
Why the hell not? What happened to self auditing? What happened to rules in regulations that they are to follow to prevent this kind of major scandal?
Let me tell you - if company employees break the law for the company, it's still the company that's breaking the law. Heads should roll - and gross mismanagement should result in long, long prison terms for Andersen management.
Why hire Andersen if they don't even have a handle on how well their working with one of their biggest clients???
Retailers just can't sell at a lost. Their is a lot of competition. In addition, product manufacturers can't sell items at a loss.
But when the market is in flux, all rules are off. Retailers may sell at a loss, and manufacturers might "dump" product onto the marketplace (in lieu of sending it to a landfill, as they often do).
With the Internet economy what it is, retailers aren't willing to sell at a loss for market share, and the tech economy is in a somewhat conservative state (for now).
So no agressive price cuts, but no outrageous prices.
Except for MS Office, of course.
From my vantage point as an IT application manager, a merger between HP and Compaq sits well.
I'm not really interested in either company these days. Compaq basically destroyed itself and the companies it purchased. HP is doing the same to itself.
Their products aren't attractive to me (although both offer a couple cool products), and I have no reason to trust any service offerings offered by HP, Compaq, or a combination of both.
I particularly have to laugh at their consumer line of PCs, with the clear colored plastic which is supposed to make them "cute" like an iMac. Not even close.
So as far as I care, it's up to the shareholders. I guess the choice is to have one big sucky company, or two big sucky companies.
why couldn't you say:
"My image file is variation #5432234534234223234432223443322 with hash value of 34334fa3de3ade33. Just for good measure, it's also 1200x1800 pixels, 24bits/pixel."
You could say that. But there are (exactly) 2^51840000 variations of a 1200x1800x24bit picture.
That means it's very likely that your index number will be very very large - typically as large as the image itself. Sometimes you'll be able to send a very small file (rare). Most times you'll have to send a very large message. For the vast majority of useful messages, you'll have zero compression plus protocol overhead.
That's not very good compression.
That's right. I'm not a big fan of dumping large amounts of dollars into lookin' around for asteroids.
Why? It's simple. I don't want to divert money allocated to other basic research projects... projects that can significantly help this effort. If we increase funding for basic science research, we'll have two longer term positives:
1. Basic science money can have immediate benefits today.
- There are lots of critical problems on earth now, above and beyond asteroid impacts. Many of these problems need research dollars now.
- Asking for a billion now to watch for something that may or may not happen any time soon isn't going to please a lot of people, especially where there are more immediate issues on the table.
2. The money dedicated to basic research can effectively accomplish the goal of watching for and (hopefully) averting a long-term disaster.
- Money spent on science research today can help build more effective, lower cost, and more technically able solutions to the problem.
Spend a dumb billion today, or a smarter million tomorrow. That's the choice.
The article talks mostly about commercial web sights that sell services that are illegal in some places - like on-line gambling and drugs.
To me, I want to know where I'm spending my money. Many on-line services do hide behind the web, trying to mask their true identity (and legitimacy and legality).
Clearly it is good for consumers to know with who they are dealing with.
It is, however, disconcerting that this same technology can prevent legitimate news, views, and opinions from easily making it to one location or another.
I just wanted to emphasize what I've seen before ... people (both young and old) who are intellegent, but who don't quite understand the workplace.
I have a similar problem. I'm only 22, but I'm as smart as a whip. Perhaps even smarter.
My boss, who is 41, isn't that smart. I mean he started in the industry doing COBOL. Come on, even I'm smarter than that.
My colleagues are all older than me. They always talk about the old days, like C++ and VMS. They just like to worry what management likes to hear. Not me, I'm a PHP god, and I'm sure we can save millions if they'd let me.
There is this one older guy that I work with who LOVES to use databases! I said "just put it all in XML"! Saves thousands of dollars just in database licensing fees! But he won, because the management likes older guys and that old database crap.
I spoke my mind, and my boss shut me down. I said to him "what happened to free speech???". Then he demoted me to the mail room.
They're all old guys down there too. They're concerned about delivering junk mail. I said "Let's just chuck it, no one reads it anyway". It could save thousnads a year, but they don't listen to younger people who are smarter then they are.
My friend Timmy is in law school - he's helping me document all this so we can sue them and then I'll own my boss!
Unfortuantely for you, there are few laws regarding age discrimination for people under 40. In other words, it's probably not easy to win such a "reverse discrimination" suit. However, there are some cases in some states where reverse age discrimination law suits have been permitted. New Jersey is one - the Bergen Commercial Bank suit. Look it up.
But in any case, you don't want to get involved in any lawsuits with your employer. It's not good for you in your current position, and it certainly isn't good if you're looking for a new job ("Why did I leave? I decided that I couldn't work there after I sued them. So how are your benefits?").
Your best bet is to get your resume together and get out.
"DRAM Manufactureres are losing money on every chip they sell".
Well THAT'S a load of bullshit. Then why are they selling?
"We'll sell you a million of them. That'll cost us a $1,000,000, but let's do it anyway."
It's NOT true.
Chip manufacturers MAKE money each time they sell a chip. And if they sold enough chips, they'd walk away with a tidy profit. And - SURPRISE - they do!
The problem is that they've expended lots of money building new fabrication facilities, and then, whoops!, the PC economy takes a hit. It isn't that DRAM prices got more expensive - it's that they over-invested in fabrication. And let me tell you - the plants themselves aren't the most expensive part - it's the people and managers that run them.
What's the answer? To sell off the facilities to those who won't be competitors. Heck, why sell something good to a competetor? Therefore, the entry into "vertical markets" by the likes of Toshiba, selling off the facilities to Micron. As long as there is no competition between partners, they're happy.
So what does this mean to DRAM prices? They might fluctuate a little, but the trend will continue downwards as real manufacturing costs are lowered and the technology improves.
The real problem is that space junk leads to more space junk.
Space junk by itself isn't too bad. It's just some stuff that's floating around Earth's orbit.
The problem is that this space junk will collide with other space junk, leading to smaller, faster moving pieces of junk. This small, undetectable junk will smack into good equipment, leading to even more space junk. Before you know it, there's a chain reaction, and near earth orbit becomes an unsuitable wasteland of high velocity particles.
Just what we don't need.
And trust me, it's one thing to get and send down a spent rocket. It's a bit harder to remove a few thousand small shards of aluminum, paint and ceramic.
There is an immediate need to de-orbit as much space junk as possbile.
It's hard to predict what you'll want to run between your walls in the future. Technology changes every few years - but house ownership can last for decades.
The key is to install conduit between key locations in your house. It usually isn't that hard to run cables between the basement and the first floor, or from the attic to the second floor. But it can be a big effort to run a wire from the basement to the 2nd floor. Or to get a cable to a location where it isn't accessible from the attic or the basement.
When I had my house built, I installed a conduit from the wiring panel in the basement all the way up to the attic, with access points on the first and second floors. I also installed a conduit behind two bedroom walls on the second floor - walls which are diffcult to get behind without a lot of demolition.
Now if I want to bring in a new fiber or CATV or doorbell, it's very easy to draw the cable from the basement to the attic, and it's easy to cleanly distribute the cable to any room in the house.
My only mistake was a lack of a conduit between my house and detached garage.
It's nice that this product still has a life.
Many dedicated people spent their years developing OS/2. It'd be a shame to completely dispose of it, so it's nice that someone is continuing to put love into the product.
Of course, it'll never make a dime, but still, I'm happy. It's better than the fate of so many other software products, whose source code ends up in a warehouse on an obsolete format of tape.