The cool thing about open systems is that you can do something with it that you find interesting, even if it is not marketable.
If the capability is in the hardware (not saying it is, but IF it is), then its quite relevant to the open software question. Marketability is irrelevant if you can add the feature you want to your own camera.
The problem is that Canon (or whoever) think they have something really special in their software, even though the software is useless without their hardware device. Hardware (including optics) is what (really*) differentiates one camera from another. The firmware is what makes it all work together, but it isn't part of my purchase decision (since most price-comparable cameras have pretty comparable features).
Once they realize that, opening the source (or at least some of it, with APIs to access any proprietary hardware-access libraries (ala their proprietary CCD filtering that makes the images look like they came from a Canon camera, or whatever) shouldn't really be an issue.
* - granted there are some software-only differences. Canon's G2 and G3 have virtually identical specs, but the G3 has newer software. My friend who bought a G2 a few months before the G3 was announced was kind of pissed that there wasn't an upgrade since the hardware was the same (based on specs and the identical cases, though I believe we later discovered there are some internal differences). I can't imagine any G2 owners upgraded to a G3, so Canon's software enhancements wouldn't have earned them much money than if they had stayed with the G2; the same people that bought a G3 would have bought the G2, since the cameras are identical to the consumer. In fact, they might have bought G2s on closeout, so Canon loses the G3 premium.
IANAL... Especially for "free" TV, I don't see anything wrong with it. And as for supporting advertisers, if I don't watch the show live, I don't watch the ads. Once the show has aired, those advertisers have already missed their opportunity to reach me, or rather they had their slot, and I missed them. If I later watch on tape or ReplayTV or Tivo, I'll skip of FF through the ads, and won't watch them (and that practice has been legal since Sony was making Betamax). There's no lost revenue to advertisers, because I wasn't there to see the ad when it aired. If I download the show instead of watching it on my ReplayTV, its practically the same thing.
I know SciFi isn't free TV, but I have cable and I pay my bills so they're getting the same amount of my money whether I watch or not. I can just as easily record the show on my ReplayTV as download it off the internet, but the download is far better quality. Its a win-win situation as far as watching first-run shows goes.
I consider this drastically different than a DVD rip or theater bootleg, where someone else has payed for the media and is letting others download for $free. In that case the downloaders are getting something for free that isn't otherwise available to them without paying for the disc. I don't download movies or DVD content, as I can follow the "its stealing" logic pretty easily for DVD-rip downloads. I'm not saying its right or wrong, but I don't think its worth the risk vs. the price of DVDs. (I also think the MPAA could battle "piracy" with more aggressive pricing, but I'm sure they're doing the S&D curves and figuring out which lawsuits work best).
As for first-run TV shows (whether broadcast, or on cable/sat channels I subscribe) the content is 100% legally available to me, and I am paying for it through whatever billing process the content providers have made available, ie. my cable/sat bill. I can get a better looking picture by downloading off the internet than watching the recordings on my ReplayTV. Its almost as good as the signals already being legally sent to me (over the air, or over pay-TV), and I don't have to spend the money on a high-priced first generation HD recorder.
I know the MPAA and cable co's, etc, must be looking at downloads as an additional revenue stream; another way to get you to pay more for something you already get. In fact, its their way to get you to pay more for even less than you already get, when you consider the DRM restrictions.
Some cable (or sat?) DVRs will record shows and only save them for a short period of time (1-2 weeks, based on a flag in the show data). They charge an additional monthly fee for their DVRs, even though there is no value add once you've purchased the box: there is already a program guide on digital cable and satellite, so its nothing new for them to develop. The shows are already being broadcast, so there's nothing extra they need to send over the wire. The hardware has the capability to record shows whether or not you pay an extra $5/month (though if you don't pay, I imagine they disable it in software). The monthly fee is either to rent the box (is that it?) or just some bullshit pure profit move.
Oh yeah... and they want to make sure you can only watch shows on approved devices, so you can't catch up on your shows with your laptop on an airplane.
This guy's beef is that he bought 3 radio stations and now (after 10 years) satellite radio is starting to affect his aging business model.
He's complaining about something that hasn't even happened. I recently got Sirius (so I'll be ready to hear Howard Stern in a year;). So far all I've heard is music. No cursing, no obscenity, no COMMERCIALS. That last one is the key.
People won't pay for a service they don't like. The government doesn't need to control "decency" on Sat radio because if people don't like it, they'll drop their subscription. They'll stop supporting it if it offends them, and Sat will have to change to keep their revenue. Its in the Sat companies' best interest to provide programming that people want to hear, because the listeners are the ones paying them.
Broadcast radio stations get money from advertisers and music labels, not the listeners. This guy is just the first one to realize the downside.
I haven't been able to load any of the songs yet, so I don't know how these songs are, but several (uhh... 12?) years ago I did a neural network-based music composer as a final project for an AI class. It was lame.
After the very early training, it would just play up the scale. Boring. After further training, it could play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with 1 wrong note. After further training with some basic blues measures, it could "improvise" (or so I wrote;) simple melodies.
I got an A on the project, though really I don't think I accomplished anything other than fooling the Prof. The music really is in the eyes (ears?) of the beholder.
Plus the idea that you can optimize out the various styles of music is just silly. The real test would be to compare this music to other Eigenradio music and see if it feels more Christmas-y than the regular random beeps.;)
If MS gets screwed by this, and if if prompts them lobby for change to the patent system, ultimately putting an end to frivolous software patents, then there will be reason to be happy.
Somehow I doubt it.
Eolas doesn't deserve to win. Somehow prior art is not being allowed in this case. Is the justice department clouded by their prior MS cases?
The patent system is broken. It needs to be fixed. As much as I hate defending Microsoft, I want to see them get busted when they are gaming the system, not when someone else is.
I didn't say it was frivolous. I excluded the nipple slip (as do most FCC and press reportings of counts so far this year) because it was certainly not the sort of thing that should be on broadcast TV, and everyone pretty much blames it all on Janet (and Justin) and I honestly believe that the... CBS or Fox or whoever it was... parties had no idea they were going to do that.
That is the sort of action that I would expect to generate hundreds of thousands of complaints, as it did: about 500,000 complaints. Those aren't frivolous, but that sort of "Perfect Storm" doesn't happen very often.
Oddly enough there have been about 1,000,000 or so total complaints, so excluding NippleGate (accounted for above) there have been about 500,000 or so other complaints.
Of those, 99.9% are from the PTC, complaining about their top targetted shows, admittedly mostly from people who hadn't even seen the show (so how can they possibly have been offended?), and none leading to any fines.
Those are the frivolous ones. The ones that are false, and overload the FCC employees chasing down lies.
Poor Mikey Powell had to go before Congress and ask for more money, because his team just couldn't handle it anymore.
My guess is that Dell has decided it wants a larger Linux customer base, and their small business customers are balking at the Redhat price. Dell is merely saying that they could sell more computers if Redhat was cheaper. (Maybe Dell should shop around and offer more than one Linux option... I hear you can get it for free some places*;)
And Steve Ballmer wants a $100 PC so people can afford to spend $200 on Windows.
And I want a pony.
* - free linux doesn't come with the Redhat enterprise support, but presumably a small business doesn't need as much support as a large company. I haven't looked to see if they do this, but perhaps a less expensive support options for smaller installations?
Someone should have proofread your post ("...assessment of [HOW] good..." ?). Imagine the simple and easily overlooked mistakes you might have on your unchecked CV?;)
People make mistakes. Unless you are applying for a very solitary job, you'll probably have the opportunity for a coworker to proofread your work. Proofreading will help catch the simple mistakes, but can only do so much for chronic bad writing (fixing that is called rewriting, not proofreading).
A bad CV with no gramatical mistakes is still a bad CV.
I suppose if you don't like the shows, nobody should watch them? Please let me know your approved viewing list so I can change my bad habits immediately....
I enjoy CSI, but I don't watch it for its scientific accuracy. (CSI Miami and NY, on the other hand, are just trash: bad science and worse writing...). Its scientific fantasy. Prime time TV shows are exaggerations of real life. They are fiction.
Ever read Tolkein? That guy was a lunatic. Hobbits and trolls and dragons and magical rings... what a bunch of bullcrap. And they made movies out of it. Where's the scientific accuracy?
If you don't like a show, change the channel, or even turn your TV off. Millions of people like those shows, even if they are trash. Sometimes its nice to take a break and watch some mindless fun.
But the shows aside, look at the numbers. The FCC was receiving about 350 complaints per year until the PTC... made their website available, if you'd prefer me to say it that way.
Now the FCC has hundreds of thousands (~500,000 for this year excluding the superbowl nipple) of frivolous complaints to deal with. The PTC rep quoted in the article all but admitted to that.
"Why does it matter how the complaints come?" Mahaney said. "If the networks haven't done anything illegal, if they haven't done anything indecent, why do they care what we say?"
I have a better idea: If the networks haven't done anything illegal, if they haven't done anything indecent, why send 240,000 requests to a government agency, wasting the agency's time and money; why waste taxpayer's money on nothing?
A 1000-fold increase in traffic, where all that new traffic comes from a single source is flooding in my book.
That would be why he said it was "probably a good business decision."
But if you're talking marketshare, comparing all version of Windows and all versions of Solaris with just one version of Linux is not very honest. Solaris will look better by comparing itself with a fraction of the linux marketshare. Heck, if they were to compare "Sun's Solaris" with "Microsoft's Windows XP Professional SP2", they'd probably look even better.
There's a difference between what they say and what they actuall do.
Look at the numbers. They are flooding a government agency with 500 times the normal workload in order to further their own political agenda at taxpayers' expense. 400 other voices are lost in the fray.
That is not how the system should work. It is an abuse of the system, and the FCC is doubly shameful for playing along.
Are you kidding? The FCC loves it. Why else would they hide that fact, rather than exposing the PTC as the resource-wasting whiners they are?
For decades, the FCC has had pretty much nothing to do on the "decency" front. Now there's all these complaints. More work means more jobs. They can get a bigger budget, have better parties, Mikey Powell can go meet lots of celebrities. Its awesome for them.
A small group of people is flooding the FCC with complaints. Instead of accusing the PTC of a "DDoS attack", the FCC is turning it around to empower themselves. Its shamefully corrupt.
The floppy example was to demonstrate that a kernel fits in well under 1.5MB, given that an entire operating system, including userland, can fit on a disk.
[pure speculation follows, as i haven't read any of the cell processor articles;) ]
If you have, say, a 64-cell graphics workstation, you probably have it loaded with Gigs of memory, "sacrificing" a meg or two per processor for the kernels is pretty negligible.
If 2 meg/kernel (on the high side) is a significant chunk of the overall system memory, the system is probably misconfigured. Is there a practical use for a 1024-CPU computer with only 4G of RAM? Does it even make any sense (financial, technical... any?) to have such an arrangement?
Re:Strategic offshoring
on
Offshoring IT
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· Score: 1
You don't need hundreds of great programmers for outsourcing, just capable ones. Any IIT CS graduate will be more than qualified. Any trade-school CS graduate is probably qualified. The cheap jobs aren't the high-level designers, its the coders writing exactly what they are told to do (even when what they are told is wrong).
The corporation can hire a few great programmers at the US (for example) headquarters to design and specify the projects, then send the spec to a "software factory" in India or China. The US company doesn't have to interview each programmer, like they would if they were hiring them; they just have to find a provider that suits them. The provider worries about hiring 100 people a day (and firing those who don't generate enough bug-free code each day).
That said 100 hired per day does sound pretty extreme. Obviously that's not happening everywhere, and probably isn't sustainable long-term, but given the 6X outsourcing bonus, it is on the edge of believability.
Anonymity does not reduce security on the internet. Don't confuse the two. There should be no need to identify yourself in order to get on the internet.
...companies that make software whose primary purpose is helping folk to rip off copyright holders...
I'm so tired of this.
The labels in the UK just announced they've had their best earnings ever. US music labels have increased revenue even while decreasing the quantity (and quality) of releases. If anyone is getting ripped off, its the consumers NOT the music companies.
Downloads are an excellent way to preview music before you buy, so you can spend your $15 on music you know you will enjoy instead of being disappointed. Happy consumers will likely purchase more than those who get repeatedly burned buying 1-hit wonders.
Not all p2p software is backed by unethical companies, and a lack of ethics isn't unique to that industry by any stretch of the imagination. The RIAA has hardly been ethical with their scare tactics.
I do agree with your comment about the government.
Re:TV piracy is next?
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 3, Informative
BBC did it (or are in the process of doing it). It should be interesting to see how it plays out for them, and to see if anyone else follows suit.
Re:Common knowledge?
on
Hacking Vodka
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
If you strap a brita on the end of your, uh, self, how's your chick gonna deep throat you?
Yes. That's what I said in a subsequent paragraph. But they didn't release an unrated Shrek. The Aliens DVD, which has extra footage, is the "Director's Cut". "Van Wilder", a raunchy comedy, had an "Unrated" release.
Both terms are marketing labels. Both pretty much mean the same thing: its a different version than what the MPAA rated. But there are implied meanings that go along with them, based on how the terms are marketed. "Director's Cut" means you get the movie that the director sent to the editors.
Unrated was established as the "raunchy" version, by careful selection of the first set of movies chosen to have "unrated" versions. The consumer was led to associate "unrated" with more sex/violence/gore. It was a great marketing tool.
They did say it is profit, which could mean that the $9 is what they get above expenses, including the movie production costs (and perhaps even covering the costs of flops). Or maybe not. Its unclear.
Either way they're making more money than ever, and they're spending a lot of effort trying to criminalize something that has yet to prove detrimental to their bottom line. In fact many studies done on music downloads have shown that file sharing has a positive effect on sales.
Why alienate the customers who are buying more product than ever?
I know it costs a lot to make a movie. I'm curious if that $9 "profit" is just on the DVD process, or if some of that goes towards recouping production costs. I guess it depends on the movie. Some break even (or better) at the box office, some don't. Some (not all) manipulate the numbers to claim s loss so they don't have to pay the actors on the proceeds. Maybe its not really 150% profit, maybe it is. I don't know for sure.
Software is different. Its much more straightforward. You don't develop software for a "theatrical release", then sell it again later on DVD. You make a product and sell it to cover development costs and profit.
And then there are some movies that go straight to DVD, but those don't tend to have $100 million production budgets. Even Gigli was in the theaters for a few days.
As for your last question, I don't decide when someone is making too much money. I just decide when they're making too much money off me and act accordingly.
When an industry is seeing record earnings and pulling off huge margins on commodity items, while at the same time treating their customers like criminals, I don't like it. They won't get my business, and I'll express my opinion to anyone who wants to hear it. If they change their mind, fine. If not, fine.
I don't download or pirate (Yarrrr!) movies or music. I buy DVDs and I own LOTS of them. I'm a good customer. I only want to be treated like one, even if i tend to adopt new technologies faster than the big media houses do.
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The cool thing about open systems is that you can do something with it that you find interesting, even if it is not marketable.
If the capability is in the hardware (not saying it is, but IF it is), then its quite relevant to the open software question. Marketability is irrelevant if you can add the feature you want to your own camera.
The problem is that Canon (or whoever) think they have something really special in their software, even though the software is useless without their hardware device. Hardware (including optics) is what (really*) differentiates one camera from another. The firmware is what makes it all work together, but it isn't part of my purchase decision (since most price-comparable cameras have pretty comparable features).
Once they realize that, opening the source (or at least some of it, with APIs to access any proprietary hardware-access libraries (ala their proprietary CCD filtering that makes the images look like they came from a Canon camera, or whatever) shouldn't really be an issue.
* - granted there are some software-only differences. Canon's G2 and G3 have virtually identical specs, but the G3 has newer software. My friend who bought a G2 a few months before the G3 was announced was kind of pissed that there wasn't an upgrade since the hardware was the same (based on specs and the identical cases, though I believe we later discovered there are some internal differences). I can't imagine any G2 owners upgraded to a G3, so Canon's software enhancements wouldn't have earned them much money than if they had stayed with the G2; the same people that bought a G3 would have bought the G2, since the cameras are identical to the consumer. In fact, they might have bought G2s on closeout, so Canon loses the G3 premium.
IANAL... Especially for "free" TV, I don't see anything wrong with it. And as for supporting advertisers, if I don't watch the show live, I don't watch the ads. Once the show has aired, those advertisers have already missed their opportunity to reach me, or rather they had their slot, and I missed them. If I later watch on tape or ReplayTV or Tivo, I'll skip of FF through the ads, and won't watch them (and that practice has been legal since Sony was making Betamax). There's no lost revenue to advertisers, because I wasn't there to see the ad when it aired. If I download the show instead of watching it on my ReplayTV, its practically the same thing.
I know SciFi isn't free TV, but I have cable and I pay my bills so they're getting the same amount of my money whether I watch or not. I can just as easily record the show on my ReplayTV as download it off the internet, but the download is far better quality. Its a win-win situation as far as watching first-run shows goes.
I consider this drastically different than a DVD rip or theater bootleg, where someone else has payed for the media and is letting others download for $free. In that case the downloaders are getting something for free that isn't otherwise available to them without paying for the disc. I don't download movies or DVD content, as I can follow the "its stealing" logic pretty easily for DVD-rip downloads. I'm not saying its right or wrong, but I don't think its worth the risk vs. the price of DVDs. (I also think the MPAA could battle "piracy" with more aggressive pricing, but I'm sure they're doing the S&D curves and figuring out which lawsuits work best).
As for first-run TV shows (whether broadcast, or on cable/sat channels I subscribe) the content is 100% legally available to me, and I am paying for it through whatever billing process the content providers have made available, ie. my cable/sat bill. I can get a better looking picture by downloading off the internet than watching the recordings on my ReplayTV. Its almost as good as the signals already being legally sent to me (over the air, or over pay-TV), and I don't have to spend the money on a high-priced first generation HD recorder.
I know the MPAA and cable co's, etc, must be looking at downloads as an additional revenue stream; another way to get you to pay more for something you already get. In fact, its their way to get you to pay more for even less than you already get, when you consider the DRM restrictions.
Some cable (or sat?) DVRs will record shows and only save them for a short period of time (1-2 weeks, based on a flag in the show data). They charge an additional monthly fee for their DVRs, even though there is no value add once you've purchased the box: there is already a program guide on digital cable and satellite, so its nothing new for them to develop. The shows are already being broadcast, so there's nothing extra they need to send over the wire. The hardware has the capability to record shows whether or not you pay an extra $5/month (though if you don't pay, I imagine they disable it in software). The monthly fee is either to rent the box (is that it?) or just some bullshit pure profit move.
Oh yeah... and they want to make sure you can only watch shows on approved devices, so you can't catch up on your shows with your laptop on an airplane.
This guy's beef is that he bought 3 radio stations and now (after 10 years) satellite radio is starting to affect his aging business model.
;). So far all I've heard is music. No cursing, no obscenity, no COMMERCIALS. That last one is the key.
He's complaining about something that hasn't even happened. I recently got Sirius (so I'll be ready to hear Howard Stern in a year
People won't pay for a service they don't like. The government doesn't need to control "decency" on Sat radio because if people don't like it, they'll drop their subscription. They'll stop supporting it if it offends them, and Sat will have to change to keep their revenue. Its in the Sat companies' best interest to provide programming that people want to hear, because the listeners are the ones paying them.
Broadcast radio stations get money from advertisers and music labels, not the listeners. This guy is just the first one to realize the downside.
I haven't been able to load any of the songs yet, so I don't know how these songs are, but several (uhh... 12?) years ago I did a neural network-based music composer as a final project for an AI class. It was lame.
;) simple melodies.
;)
After the very early training, it would just play up the scale. Boring. After further training, it could play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with 1 wrong note. After further training with some basic blues measures, it could "improvise" (or so I wrote
I got an A on the project, though really I don't think I accomplished anything other than fooling the Prof. The music really is in the eyes (ears?) of the beholder.
Plus the idea that you can optimize out the various styles of music is just silly. The real test would be to compare this music to other Eigenradio music and see if it feels more Christmas-y than the regular random beeps.
Perhaps, but not in this case.
If MS gets screwed by this, and if if prompts them lobby for change to the patent system, ultimately putting an end to frivolous software patents, then there will be reason to be happy.
Somehow I doubt it.
Eolas doesn't deserve to win. Somehow prior art is not being allowed in this case. Is the justice department clouded by their prior MS cases?
The patent system is broken. It needs to be fixed. As much as I hate defending Microsoft, I want to see them get busted when they are gaming the system, not when someone else is.
Fair application of a bad law is not justice.
I didn't say it was frivolous. I excluded the nipple slip (as do most FCC and press reportings of counts so far this year) because it was certainly not the sort of thing that should be on broadcast TV, and everyone pretty much blames it all on Janet (and Justin) and I honestly believe that the ... CBS or Fox or whoever it was... parties had no idea they were going to do that.
That is the sort of action that I would expect to generate hundreds of thousands of complaints, as it did: about 500,000 complaints. Those aren't frivolous, but that sort of "Perfect Storm" doesn't happen very often.
Oddly enough there have been about 1,000,000 or so total complaints, so excluding NippleGate (accounted for above) there have been about 500,000 or so other complaints.
Of those, 99.9% are from the PTC, complaining about their top targetted shows, admittedly mostly from people who hadn't even seen the show (so how can they possibly have been offended?), and none leading to any fines.
Those are the frivolous ones. The ones that are false, and overload the FCC employees chasing down lies.
Poor Mikey Powell had to go before Congress and ask for more money, because his team just couldn't handle it anymore.
Open source authors still own their IP. Read the license next time you download free software.
My guess is that Dell has decided it wants a larger Linux customer base, and their small business customers are balking at the Redhat price. Dell is merely saying that they could sell more computers if Redhat was cheaper. (Maybe Dell should shop around and offer more than one Linux option... I hear you can get it for free some places* ;)
And Steve Ballmer wants a $100 PC so people can afford to spend $200 on Windows.
And I want a pony.
* - free linux doesn't come with the Redhat enterprise support, but presumably a small business doesn't need as much support as a large company. I haven't looked to see if they do this, but perhaps a less expensive support options for smaller installations?
No way! Econ 101 supply and demand curves work for MS software, too?
I guess to complete the trifecta...
You could use the same argument for Sun's Solaris, and Jon Schwartz would still be a FUD-spewing assmunch. I mean you'd still be correct. sorry.
Someone should have proofread your post ("...assessment of [HOW] good..." ?). Imagine the simple and easily overlooked mistakes you might have on your unchecked CV? ;)
People make mistakes. Unless you are applying for a very solitary job, you'll probably have the opportunity for a coworker to proofread your work. Proofreading will help catch the simple mistakes, but can only do so much for chronic bad writing (fixing that is called rewriting, not proofreading).
A bad CV with no gramatical mistakes is still a bad CV.
I enjoy CSI, but I don't watch it for its scientific accuracy. (CSI Miami and NY, on the other hand, are just trash: bad science and worse writing...). Its scientific fantasy. Prime time TV shows are exaggerations of real life. They are fiction.
Ever read Tolkein? That guy was a lunatic. Hobbits and trolls and dragons and magical rings... what a bunch of bullcrap. And they made movies out of it. Where's the scientific accuracy?
If you don't like a show, change the channel, or even turn your TV off. Millions of people like those shows, even if they are trash. Sometimes its nice to take a break and watch some mindless fun.
But the shows aside, look at the numbers. The FCC was receiving about 350 complaints per year until the PTC... made their website available, if you'd prefer me to say it that way.
Now the FCC has hundreds of thousands (~500,000 for this year excluding the superbowl nipple) of frivolous complaints to deal with. The PTC rep quoted in the article all but admitted to that.
I have a better idea: If the networks haven't done anything illegal, if they haven't done anything indecent, why send 240,000 requests to a government agency, wasting the agency's time and money; why waste taxpayer's money on nothing?
A 1000-fold increase in traffic, where all that new traffic comes from a single source is flooding in my book.
That would be why he said it was "probably a good business decision."
But if you're talking marketshare, comparing all version of Windows and all versions of Solaris with just one version of Linux is not very honest. Solaris will look better by comparing itself with a fraction of the linux marketshare. Heck, if they were to compare "Sun's Solaris" with "Microsoft's Windows XP Professional SP2", they'd probably look even better.
Its all about manipulating statistics.
There's a difference between what they say and what they actuall do.
Look at the numbers. They are flooding a government agency with 500 times the normal workload in order to further their own political agenda at taxpayers' expense. 400 other voices are lost in the fray.
That is not how the system should work. It is an abuse of the system, and the FCC is doubly shameful for playing along.
Are you kidding? The FCC loves it. Why else would they hide that fact, rather than exposing the PTC as the resource-wasting whiners they are?
For decades, the FCC has had pretty much nothing to do on the "decency" front. Now there's all these complaints. More work means more jobs. They can get a bigger budget, have better parties, Mikey Powell can go meet lots of celebrities. Its awesome for them.
A small group of people is flooding the FCC with complaints. Instead of accusing the PTC of a "DDoS attack", the FCC is turning it around to empower themselves. Its shamefully corrupt.
The floppy example was to demonstrate that a kernel fits in well under 1.5MB, given that an entire operating system, including userland, can fit on a disk.
;) ]
[pure speculation follows, as i haven't read any of the cell processor articles
If you have, say, a 64-cell graphics workstation, you probably have it loaded with Gigs of memory, "sacrificing" a meg or two per processor for the kernels is pretty negligible.
If 2 meg/kernel (on the high side) is a significant chunk of the overall system memory, the system is probably misconfigured. Is there a practical use for a 1024-CPU computer with only 4G of RAM? Does it even make any sense (financial, technical... any?) to have such an arrangement?
You don't need hundreds of great programmers for outsourcing, just capable ones. Any IIT CS graduate will be more than qualified. Any trade-school CS graduate is probably qualified. The cheap jobs aren't the high-level designers, its the coders writing exactly what they are told to do (even when what they are told is wrong).
The corporation can hire a few great programmers at the US (for example) headquarters to design and specify the projects, then send the spec to a "software factory" in India or China. The US company doesn't have to interview each programmer, like they would if they were hiring them; they just have to find a provider that suits them. The provider worries about hiring 100 people a day (and firing those who don't generate enough bug-free code each day).
That said 100 hired per day does sound pretty extreme. Obviously that's not happening everywhere, and probably isn't sustainable long-term, but given the 6X outsourcing bonus, it is on the edge of believability.
Anonymity does not reduce security on the internet. Don't confuse the two. There should be no need to identify yourself in order to get on the internet.
Yes, a real geek would have done exactly that.
5 years ago.
Just because it runs Linux, that doesn't mean it can't still suck.
...companies that make software whose primary purpose is helping folk to rip off copyright holders ...
I'm so tired of this.
The labels in the UK just announced they've had their best earnings ever. US music labels have increased revenue even while decreasing the quantity (and quality) of releases. If anyone is getting ripped off, its the consumers NOT the music companies.
Downloads are an excellent way to preview music before you buy, so you can spend your $15 on music you know you will enjoy instead of being disappointed. Happy consumers will likely purchase more than those who get repeatedly burned buying 1-hit wonders.
Not all p2p software is backed by unethical companies, and a lack of ethics isn't unique to that industry by any stretch of the imagination. The RIAA has hardly been ethical with their scare tactics.
I do agree with your comment about the government.
BBC did it (or are in the process of doing it). It should be interesting to see how it plays out for them, and to see if anyone else follows suit.
If you strap a brita on the end of your, uh, self, how's your chick gonna deep throat you?
(there goes my karma...)
Yes. That's what I said in a subsequent paragraph. But they didn't release an unrated Shrek. The Aliens DVD, which has extra footage, is the "Director's Cut". "Van Wilder", a raunchy comedy, had an "Unrated" release.
Both terms are marketing labels. Both pretty much mean the same thing: its a different version than what the MPAA rated. But there are implied meanings that go along with them, based on how the terms are marketed. "Director's Cut" means you get the movie that the director sent to the editors.
Unrated was established as the "raunchy" version, by careful selection of the first set of movies chosen to have "unrated" versions. The consumer was led to associate "unrated" with more sex/violence/gore. It was a great marketing tool.
Then they sold us out.
Agreed, and I thought I explained my reasoning.
They did say it is profit, which could mean that the $9 is what they get above expenses, including the movie production costs (and perhaps even covering the costs of flops). Or maybe not. Its unclear.
Either way they're making more money than ever, and they're spending a lot of effort trying to criminalize something that has yet to prove detrimental to their bottom line. In fact many studies done on music downloads have shown that file sharing has a positive effect on sales.
Why alienate the customers who are buying more product than ever?
I know it costs a lot to make a movie. I'm curious if that $9 "profit" is just on the DVD process, or if some of that goes towards recouping production costs. I guess it depends on the movie. Some break even (or better) at the box office, some don't. Some (not all) manipulate the numbers to claim s loss so they don't have to pay the actors on the proceeds. Maybe its not really 150% profit, maybe it is. I don't know for sure.
Software is different. Its much more straightforward. You don't develop software for a "theatrical release", then sell it again later on DVD. You make a product and sell it to cover development costs and profit.
And then there are some movies that go straight to DVD, but those don't tend to have $100 million production budgets. Even Gigli was in the theaters for a few days.
As for your last question, I don't decide when someone is making too much money. I just decide when they're making too much money off me and act accordingly.
When an industry is seeing record earnings and pulling off huge margins on commodity items, while at the same time treating their customers like criminals, I don't like it. They won't get my business, and I'll express my opinion to anyone who wants to hear it. If they change their mind, fine. If not, fine.
I don't download or pirate (Yarrrr!) movies or music. I buy DVDs and I own LOTS of them. I'm a good customer. I only want to be treated like one, even if i tend to adopt new technologies faster than the big media houses do.