Us Canucks do owe Cowpland something for helping kickstart tech in Ottawa; He's been there a long time. That, and who can miss his enhancement of the landscape with plastic mates *cough* and italian cars..:)
I have to wonder though - what's corel doing now, anyhow? It seems like they haven't done anything interesting in a long time, and the more I think about it, they haven't done anything new in an even longer time! They drew a lot of attention to Linux, but if the company goes under, that could backfire too - "Linux can't compete" FUD.
Corel Draw and Wordperfect are dead horses. Photoshop who? Office? Now the Gnome Foundation effort looks a lot more promising. Lots of people don't know the Wordperfect for Linux is a REALLY
bad port of Wordperfect that has been around on Slowaris for a long time; My school had it on the sun boxes, right down to the horrible fonts. Gnome really needs a font manager like windows.
Corel has some nice vector drawing packages, and I think they still do Ventura, but that's been old school for some time now. It's a pale shadow of what they used to be (I think Photoshop might have done them in; Adobe has always been a bigger threat to them than Microsoft ever was).
There's more than enough Linux distributions already. From what I can tell, none of the for profit ones are making any money, either, but I could be wrong. Hardly a good thing to base a company model on. They did great work on Wine, but they're planning on use it to sell already obsolete non-native software.
I don't really know what corel is going to do now, though. Support old software? Ick. I bet there's money to be made in selling their stock short though!:)
I stand corrected. Have to put the C1 on my list of replacements for the 505 to watch for next year, I guess. Their tech support still sucks donkey --- though.:) Most people would just be happy if they'd acknowledge when stuff is busted and not make you reinstall the crappy-OS it came with to prove the point. There was a time when Sony customer service kicked ass, but not anymore. At least not their computing division..
A quick search on the web will bring up some information on how you can get a couple more bad pixels on the screen / dead pixels and then you can get a new screen. Those things cost so much there is no reason you should have to deal with a stuck pixel.
Of course, I'm not encouraging fraud, or anything. *grin*
Linus for working at Transmeta and signing NDA's should be feeling pretty silly if he managed to bring Linux on to Sony notebooks..
Obviously you have never dealt with Sony. For the world: If you're running anything but the CD that came with your notebook Sony will not talk to you. Hey world: Sony's technical support SUCKS.
I run a oldschool P233 Sony Vaio 505 I picked up for a good deal online; It runs linux like a charm, it has a real modem, and one of these days I'll get the extended battery for it so I can get a 3-4 hour life (get about 1h 25m now, in linux. Would do better if I got the HD spinning down).
It's ironic that a company with such HORRIBLE technical support makes one of the most linux-compatible notebooks (at least this particular model). Thank god it hasn't broken (although it really needs that extended battery and more memory:).
All you people that are drooling over the C1: Yeah, it runs linux, and yes, Linus has one, but the almighty himself couldn't get the specs on writing code for that little camera it comes with. Or the winmodem that's in it. Hopefully the transmeta version will have a Penguin on the side, but I doubt it.
I'll believe these will make good linux notebooks when I see it. Sony is very entrenched in the consumer electronics mentality, and in the consumer electronics world, you don't fuck with it, and likely, you don't even bother to get it fixed.
There's my rant for the day. To their credit: My 505 is the only piece of computer hardware I have ever had a female tell me was "Sexy". Cool.:)
Whoohoo! This is what Linux needs to get on the desktop bigtime, some big players with some dollars to get some of the nastier pieces of code written. Perhaps they can work to write a standardized multimedia system for GNOME (Yes, I know there are standards and everything works from a technical level, I'm talking DirectX-write-games-for-me level). Stuff like putting a little joystick/HID icon in the gnome settings menu and having a little API so I can use that input in anything.:)
Linux rocks hard where it's (at least tried) to follow POSIX, Berkeley Sockets, and other standard APIs. (And gnome, with corba!) Carrying this through to the multimedia side will be a huge step. Then I can remove that nasty fat32 partition once and for all:).
I'd really like to see some of the big heavies come down and set up some sort of board to work with companies to a) show them the market and b) release drives and/or API information to allow drivers to be developed. It'd be sweet to walk into Future Shop / Fry's whatever and be able to buy (insert nifty gadget here) and know that there's linux drivers in the box.:)
This isn't rocket science.. these articles are stupid because they paint linux in a bad light without really looking at the underlying issues, that people like Carmack, Redhat, et al. should be working on instead of useless installers that don't really do anything new.
USB support. Yeah, it's there, it works OK, but it's a sweet fuggin pain in the ass to get working. In windows; I plug my rio/joystick whatever in, it's detected, the driver prompted or in most cases automatically set up, and then through the magics of DirectX, all games see it. Linux doesn't have anything even CLOSE right now. Although - the underlying USB stuff is slick - the intergration into the desktop (Gnome, etc) isn't there yet.
3D support. See above. You can "get it working", but it's a sweet pain in the ass. Hopefully XF4.0 will fix this. The support isn't out of the box, like it is for windows. This is a major impediment to most people who just tinker with linux.
Retailers. They don't stock the linux versions, and most of the time, you can just get a free upgrade and get the linux binaries to play the game (Quake).
Windows is everywhere. Like it or not, Windows does a much much better job with games and multimedia right now than linux. TV tuners, video codecs.. you name it. They have linux counterparts, but they all work better and the new stuff always comes out on windows first. As a result of this - most people will dual boot or have windows available for playing games, which is what I do. As a result, the hobby developers don't waste time on the gaming / multimedia aspects of linux, or they have patent and other issues to deal with, and can't do anything. Redhat, ID, or SOMEONE should -fund- yes -fund- some development to get a standardized system like DirectX in place, and act as a standards board so we can get things like video codecs available in linux - even in binary format. A lot of that is patented by companies that aren't ever going to give up those rights, unfortunately.
Linux has a long way to come in the multimedia/gaming/video arena, and I don't see anyone offering any real leadership. I'm still pissed that RedHat can't use that billion dollar market cap to grab NVidia and the other 3D manufacturers by the balls and get drivers released. Oh well.
Onlynews kicks BUTT if you're on a high speed connection; They don't throttle connections; over thirty thousand groups; And they're reliable and anonymous. I don't work for them, so no benefit here, but they're a great provider. I've tried a few but the download speeds all sucked. Napster, shmapster. Try Usenet:).
For the record, dejanews is handy but it's overrated. Anyone who has a couple gigs of free space and a decent spam filter can run an archive of the good stuff for their own personal use, or HELL, even share it with a few friends. Check out some of the usenet software available.
Screw the web, Usenet got me hooked when Gopher was hot, and screw all the people who think it's dead. Get your filters on and there's still lots of intelligent converstation:). A wise man once said that the Internet's greatest resource is the people on it and Usenet is a great example! It's too bad there aren't more web interfaces being made that use NNTP (*cough* Malda, there's a awesome project to spend some VC buxxx on if you haven't already! I'd love to get the comments to the stories in a slashdot.todays.date.here format, trolls and all!)
I'd refuse to agree to those terms; You could effectively be making yourself an indentured servant if the contract held up in court (read on). People forget that in many cases the company needs you if you're qualified a lot more than you need them - and they're willing to bend over backwards in a lot of cases - and if they're not, then I'd be asking myself long and hard do I want to be working there. Remember, pay is money you get in exchange for trading in your life!
Another option is to refuse the training and tell them you'll expense books and training materials to the company, which they can then have. Most things can be picked up like this, unless it's specialized equipment, and might be a reasonable compromise (personally I find training courses over priced, and worthless, I'd rather spend a week on it myself, same way I got through university).
All you people thinking training isn't expensive probably live in a major center. Sending me on a training course to California for a week could turn out to be a several kilobuck adventure - I don't have that kinda money lying around.
First off: Many of the clauses in employment contracts are scare value only. We did an analysis of some of them in my professional law course in my final year of EE; The lawyer teaching the class said she was shocked at some of the things she's seen. It varies depending on where you are, and my (Canadian) experience is not applicable. Go see a lawyer, and if you're an engineer, you might even be able to get some free help through your association. If not, try the local employer's protection agencies or even a union office to have them look at the contract (or pony up some bucks for a lawyer of your own).
I worked at a place that had the most horrible contract you could possibly imagine. It didn't apply because I was a part time contractor going through school, but there's no way that it could possibly be held up in a court of law.
Another thing to remember is that in most cases, non-competition clauses (don't work for a competitor) are flat out illegal. If you're an optical fiber communications engineer, there's only a couple companies you could possibly work for, and they're all competitors.
But; seek profession (read: paid for by somebody) legal advice in all things involving the man.
I remember seeing a interesting documentary on A&E about Las Vegas slot machines. There's an industry where the software that runs the machines quite likely could be (and as the documentary pointed out, has been) tampered with in favor of the issuing party. This is extremely serious, because if people don't believe the machines are giving them fair odds, they won't play, and Vegas would be finished (the machines run the town).
To prevent this, the ROMs that the machines run are *tightly* monitored by a government review board, who, I would assume, employ assembly language gurus and the like to make sure nothing fishy is up - and this board can randomly inspect any machine, at and time, for any reason, and god help you if your rom doesn't match the one on file.
Such a system would work very well to control the carnivore system, I think. Of course, my country isn't proposing to do anything this insane, yet.. When I think about it, sweet jesus, it's scary - they want to be able to tap any email or internet connection (packets are packets, right) at any time!
There's got to be a mecahnism put into some of the popular mail readers (mozilla?) to allow for hard encryption during transit happen real soon like. I mean, who gives a @#$@ how crappy the passwords are stored (put them in a.conf file) just so long as they're being *used* for email, ideally, transparently. Then carnivore is effectively useless. Too bad Microsoft wouldn't implement something like that - would be sweet. Or even if ICQ supported it (there is a ICQ client for secure comm now, Linux only..)
I'm not talking about "modern" food crop farming. Try working at a tree farm where you have to hand-weed, or try working at a Chistmas Tree farm wielding a machete. You'll understand why we value high technology so in a real hurry.
Academe had been one of the last holdouts. Scientific and other kinds of research was always thought to be governed by values other than simple profit, beholden to nothing but the principles of science. No more.
Ok, I have some issues with this. I do love how Katz makes wide, encompassing statements without a smidgin of research, numbers, or anything more complicated than a quote or to from Dr. Big Ass Degree who wants to whore himself for more research money.
What's open source? The VAST majority of the software available on Freshmeat has been done by people who love the art, love technology, or just like doing cool shit. I like when someone uses a libary I've written. I'm not driven by any more profit than that given by feeding my ego!:) Open Source software, open source artistic tools like The Gimp, and lots more through some sand in the eyes of that "creeping corporatism", no?
As far as non-profit driven research, we've come to a point where just about any technological advancement has profit potential. You think a cure for cancer wouldn't bring profit? How about real nanotech? How about the ability to control gravity like electromagnetism (the real prize of a GUT in physics nobody talks about). How about the abilty to make customized drugs based on your DNA profile?
Get with the program, good stuff comes out of Katz sometimes, but this is just alarmist drivel.
Go spend a summer on a real farm with no computers Katz, then write about the evils of technology.
Wasn't aware there wasn't better porting for GCC. Borland Turbo C++ ran just fine on the 'lil guy.
Now, your suggestion for coding on the Palm V is intriguing. What C++ compiler works on the Palm V?
I don't need a compiler to code.:) There's lots of good text editors available. I'm working on a small program to let me design C++ objects on the fly. Then, I can take the code and debug it at a later time.. I did play around with a nifty little program called PocketC for the Palm. Nice, but restricted..
I wonder if GCC might run in the DOS emulator that's available for WinCE machines.. although, that's why I have a vaio, it's a real computer, runs linux 100%, and isn't a lot bigger than those WinCE machines (and it wasn't even that much more expensive, if you shop around for one of the older ones w/o winmodems..)
I had one of these little guys for the longest time (Actually, it's younger brother, the 100LX). I loved it, sold it when I started using my pilot more though - I didn't have the money to get any more PCMCIA space for it, and it's built in memory was limitied at 1 meg (I belive there are people with 8 meg 200LX's, and the pcmcia card lets you expand that as big as you want!). This little gem had a wonderful keyboard - nice HP keys - and a seperate notepad. It ran DOS; I had a old version of Tubro C++ for it, although I'm sure it could run the DOS versions of gcc just fine.
Unfortunately, HP didn't continue developing this technology, so it's stuck with an 8088 series processor (IIRC) and while snappy, it won't run linux (it did run minix, though!). The Windows CE crap devices took over.. if HP put a clocked down 486 in one of these packages, it would be an incredible piece of hardware.
However, if you want some free advice, don't try to get an all in one unit, get a Palm V and a folding keyboard to write code on whereever, and then pick up a old Sony Vaio 505 for your breifcase and run Linux on it. This combination (although I use a Pro, not a V) has proven to work the best for me.. you get the best of both worlds.
One might also argue that the advertising and distribution might not be necessary but for the big name labels and their promotion of crap like the Spice Girls. How many ads have you seen on TV for Johnny Welfare Garage Band? Not to many. You might have seen them in your local pub though - and the RIAA didn't have diddly to do with that.
I can't quote you what a recording session at a studio costs, but I would hazard a guess you can get reasonable work done for less than 100 kilobucks - maybe 25? That's not a justification for record prices as I see them. Especially given most artists only see a few dollars at most - and all those promotions, ads, and radio play are taken off THEIR cut - because that money was an advance from the label. Hole had a pretty good rant about that (linked of some/. article last time we all debated this).
The industry is a crock of shit and screws over a lot of people that care about their music. Don't think otherwise. They're scared shitless the internet is going to take away their "distribution model" aka "gravy train", and all the power to them.
Ever ask yourself why you can't walk into Sam's with a Rio, download a song for $0.50, and walk out?
If you're comparing the III series to the Visor, they have roughly the same BF - e.g. how stupid you look wearing them on your belt. So, all other things equal, I'd have to say hands down the visor whoops the pants off the IIIseries, especially since you can get nifties like modules to do I/O, hopefully bluetooth, maybe even 802.11 someday.
Now, the Palm V series are the pinnacle of handheld engineering right now IMHO due to the incredibly low batman factor. The belt clip-on case doesn't make you look like a tool, and it's actually light enough that you can just put it in your pocket. The WinCE devices and other's just can't win due to the high BF: You can't carry them EVERYWHERE. Which, I think is the point of a handheld device..
Batman factor is especially important if you've already got one or two things on your belt; I usually have my startac and a leatherman, so my BF is pretty high.:)
For the record; I own a Palm Pro, 1 Meg, use it every day, and don't wear it on my belt. I can't decide between a visor and a Palm V, but since I have a vaio already for I/O, I'll probably end up with a V. They're sweeeet. I can't seem to kill my old US Robotics Pro though, despite not bothering to put it in a case, not bothering with screen protectors, etc etc, it won't die. Damnit.:)
I was sure someone would mention this.. the number one thing I love about my HP48 (and my former HP100LX) was the wonderful tactile response of the keys. It made up for not being able to have large keys, and you knew when you pressed something - you got a nice *thuck* sound.
The 49 IIRC doens't have the nice keys, and I hope this one does (although, what I'd like even more is a clip on keyboard for my palm that has the tactile keys in a 5 x 5 matrix or something. (Anyone want to manufacture that? I'll buy one now)
I just home the engineers strangled whoever made the descision not to use the nice keys! Let's make it in pretty "blueberry", but we'll through away a primary usability factor because it'll save $4/unit. Not to mention axing IR (like anyone ever used it to talk in an exam; You got like 2 feet max unless you heavily modified it and/or designed an amplifier/repeater box..)
You don't need a monitor with some of the cards. I'm using a Asus TNT2 card with TV out and it even shows you the bios startups, not using linux (Mame32 runs faster, and has a nicer gui, from what I can tell), so I can't speak of X support, but you can definately completely do away with the monitor with one of these cards..
Re:A solution for me (In New Brunswick)
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In my optinon the ATI card is extremely high quality, both in terms of codecs and the display. I've seen lots of TV tuners, but the quality of the ATI blows them all away. I don't own stock in ATI, either. (good thing, too:). In terms of what it does for the money, it can't be beat. Not too sure about space per second, never measured.
Games, pr0n, and mp3s drive the industry
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Using two monitors is a bitch because you're going to make yourself ill trying to target something in the middle of the screen (where the monitors merge).
Now, if you had three - maybe a 19" in the center and two 17"s for left and right 45 degrees, that would rock pretty hard. Or, I suppose, getting a widescreen view (it would be more useful IMHO to have the 45 degree views).
If I remember right, you could do this via network controls on DOOM in c. 1994? (the center screen one 486, and the two 45 degree displays powered by 2 more 486s).
For a coupla hundred bucks get yourself a 25" or 27" television set (like the originals use) and then get a good quality TV out card like a Matrox G400 or an ATI Card -> these games aren't that hard on video cards - and then you have a MONSTER display for the cost of a good quality 17", and since the games were designed to run at these resolutions, you don't lose anything.
One day the schools will finally stop teaching chemistry, physics, and general mathematics. You'll go to public school for 12 years and learn nothing but altered histories and the words to the Star Strangled Banter.
*cough* 1984 *cough*
Teach your kids at home or make sure they at least get encouragement to think for themselves.
I'm waiting for people to start dissing Organic Chem in school because you could make drugs using the reactions and techniques you learn. We won't go near learning anything about fractional distilling!:)
Damn straight. It's not every nation that can brag about having a part in burning the white house to the ground, eh? But I won't debate history.:) A lot of the tech that telcos use in the USA gets developed and tested here in Canada, either by Aliant (The company I work for is partially owned by Aliant, so, I'm biased, of course) or Nortel. (Formerly Northern Telecom and Bell Northern Research). Companies love it here because engineers are dirt cheap compared to their southern counterparts.
Kinda interesting the article is about the USA losing it's tech edge, though. *grin*
that's fine, but it seems a ridiculous jump to run screaming to "taxpayers" before talking to the teachers themselves -- who are probably just well meaning, underinformed people who will do the right thing if educated and asked. I'm just suggesting that you might want to give them a chance to figure it out before running to your senator, which would be a tedious, entrenched process at best.
Tedious? All it takes to get a politician to listen to you is a polite, educated, well thought out letter delievered by Registered Mail. I have done this on 3 occasions and each time I've gotten a personal reply back, and on at least one of those occassions, had some effect. If you get your whole class, or even 10 of them to do it, then I guarantee results. (tm)
Having spent 12 wasted years of my life in a school system that sucked, and 6 in post secondary education that wasn't a whole lot better, any teacher with the attitude of not letting kids use the computers won't listen to a rational arguement. YMMV, of course. Definately try talking to your teacher, but it sounds like the individual has tried that. My point is that you're not powerless to act, even if you're living every day in a state-sanctionied training school.
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Us Canucks do owe Cowpland something for helping kickstart tech in Ottawa; He's been there a long time. That, and who can miss his enhancement of the landscape with plastic mates *cough* and italian cars.. :)
I have to wonder though - what's corel doing now, anyhow? It seems like they haven't done anything interesting in a long time, and the more I think about it, they haven't done anything new in an even longer time! They drew a lot of attention to Linux, but if the company goes under, that could backfire too - "Linux can't compete" FUD.
Corel Draw and Wordperfect are dead horses. Photoshop who? Office? Now the Gnome Foundation effort looks a lot more promising. Lots of people don't know the Wordperfect for Linux is a REALLY bad port of Wordperfect that has been around on Slowaris for a long time; My school had it on the sun boxes, right down to the horrible fonts. Gnome really needs a font manager like windows.
Corel has some nice vector drawing packages, and I think they still do Ventura, but that's been old school for some time now. It's a pale shadow of what they used to be (I think Photoshop might have done them in; Adobe has always been a bigger threat to them than Microsoft ever was).
There's more than enough Linux distributions already. From what I can tell, none of the for profit ones are making any money, either, but I could be wrong. Hardly a good thing to base a company model on. They did great work on Wine, but they're planning on use it to sell already obsolete non-native software.
I don't really know what corel is going to do now, though. Support old software? Ick. I bet there's money to be made in selling their stock short though! :)
I stand corrected. Have to put the C1 on my list of replacements for the 505 to watch for next year, I guess. Their tech support still sucks donkey --- though. :) Most people would just be happy if they'd acknowledge when stuff is busted and not make you reinstall the crappy-OS it came with to prove the point. There was a time when Sony customer service kicked ass, but not anymore. At least not their computing division..
I'm lucky, my vaio is screen flawless.
A quick search on the web will bring up some information on how you can get a couple more bad pixels on the screen / dead pixels and then you can get a new screen. Those things cost so much there is no reason you should have to deal with a stuck pixel.
Of course, I'm not encouraging fraud, or anything. *grin*
Linus for working at Transmeta and signing NDA's should be feeling pretty silly if he managed to bring Linux on to Sony notebooks..
Obviously you have never dealt with Sony. For the world: If you're running anything but the CD that came with your notebook Sony will not talk to you. Hey world: Sony's technical support SUCKS.
I run a oldschool P233 Sony Vaio 505 I picked up for a good deal online; It runs linux like a charm, it has a real modem, and one of these days I'll get the extended battery for it so I can get a 3-4 hour life (get about 1h 25m now, in linux. Would do better if I got the HD spinning down). It's ironic that a company with such HORRIBLE technical support makes one of the most linux-compatible notebooks (at least this particular model). Thank god it hasn't broken (although it really needs that extended battery and more memory :).
All you people that are drooling over the C1: Yeah, it runs linux, and yes, Linus has one, but the almighty himself couldn't get the specs on writing code for that little camera it comes with. Or the winmodem that's in it. Hopefully the transmeta version will have a Penguin on the side, but I doubt it.
I'll believe these will make good linux notebooks when I see it. Sony is very entrenched in the consumer electronics mentality, and in the consumer electronics world, you don't fuck with it, and likely, you don't even bother to get it fixed.
There's my rant for the day. To their credit: My 505 is the only piece of computer hardware I have ever had a female tell me was "Sexy". Cool. :)
Whoohoo! This is what Linux needs to get on the desktop bigtime, some big players with some dollars to get some of the nastier pieces of code written. Perhaps they can work to write a standardized multimedia system for GNOME (Yes, I know there are standards and everything works from a technical level, I'm talking DirectX-write-games-for-me level). Stuff like putting a little joystick/HID icon in the gnome settings menu and having a little API so I can use that input in anything. :)
Linux rocks hard where it's (at least tried) to follow POSIX, Berkeley Sockets, and other standard APIs. (And gnome, with corba!) Carrying this through to the multimedia side will be a huge step. Then I can remove that nasty fat32 partition once and for all :).
I'd really like to see some of the big heavies come down and set up some sort of board to work with companies to a) show them the market and b) release drives and/or API information to allow drivers to be developed. It'd be sweet to walk into Future Shop / Fry's whatever and be able to buy (insert nifty gadget here) and know that there's linux drivers in the box. :)
Definately great news though!
This isn't rocket science.. these articles are stupid because they paint linux in a bad light without really looking at the underlying issues, that people like Carmack, Redhat, et al. should be working on instead of useless installers that don't really do anything new.
Linux has a long way to come in the multimedia/gaming/video arena, and I don't see anyone offering any real leadership. I'm still pissed that RedHat can't use that billion dollar market cap to grab NVidia and the other 3D manufacturers by the balls and get drivers released. Oh well.
Onlynews kicks BUTT if you're on a high speed connection; They don't throttle connections; over thirty thousand groups; And they're reliable and anonymous. I don't work for them, so no benefit here, but they're a great provider. I've tried a few but the download speeds all sucked. Napster, shmapster. Try Usenet :).
For the record, dejanews is handy but it's overrated. Anyone who has a couple gigs of free space and a decent spam filter can run an archive of the good stuff for their own personal use, or HELL, even share it with a few friends. Check out some of the usenet software available.
Screw the web, Usenet got me hooked when Gopher was hot, and screw all the people who think it's dead. Get your filters on and there's still lots of intelligent converstation :). A wise man once said that the Internet's greatest resource is the people on it and Usenet is a great example! It's too bad there aren't more web interfaces being made that use NNTP (*cough* Malda, there's a awesome project to spend some VC buxxx on if you haven't already! I'd love to get the comments to the stories in a slashdot.todays.date.here format, trolls and all!)
I'd refuse to agree to those terms; You could effectively be making yourself an indentured servant if the contract held up in court (read on). People forget that in many cases the company needs you if you're qualified a lot more than you need them - and they're willing to bend over backwards in a lot of cases - and if they're not, then I'd be asking myself long and hard do I want to be working there. Remember, pay is money you get in exchange for trading in your life!
Another option is to refuse the training and tell them you'll expense books and training materials to the company, which they can then have. Most things can be picked up like this, unless it's specialized equipment, and might be a reasonable compromise (personally I find training courses over priced, and worthless, I'd rather spend a week on it myself, same way I got through university).
All you people thinking training isn't expensive probably live in a major center. Sending me on a training course to California for a week could turn out to be a several kilobuck adventure - I don't have that kinda money lying around.
First off: Many of the clauses in employment contracts are scare value only. We did an analysis of some of them in my professional law course in my final year of EE; The lawyer teaching the class said she was shocked at some of the things she's seen. It varies depending on where you are, and my (Canadian) experience is not applicable. Go see a lawyer, and if you're an engineer, you might even be able to get some free help through your association. If not, try the local employer's protection agencies or even a union office to have them look at the contract (or pony up some bucks for a lawyer of your own).
I worked at a place that had the most horrible contract you could possibly imagine. It didn't apply because I was a part time contractor going through school, but there's no way that it could possibly be held up in a court of law.
Another thing to remember is that in most cases, non-competition clauses (don't work for a competitor) are flat out illegal. If you're an optical fiber communications engineer, there's only a couple companies you could possibly work for, and they're all competitors.
But; seek profession (read: paid for by somebody) legal advice in all things involving the man.
I remember seeing a interesting documentary on A&E about Las Vegas slot machines. There's an industry where the software that runs the machines quite likely could be (and as the documentary pointed out, has been) tampered with in favor of the issuing party. This is extremely serious, because if people don't believe the machines are giving them fair odds, they won't play, and Vegas would be finished (the machines run the town).
To prevent this, the ROMs that the machines run are *tightly* monitored by a government review board, who, I would assume, employ assembly language gurus and the like to make sure nothing fishy is up - and this board can randomly inspect any machine, at and time, for any reason, and god help you if your rom doesn't match the one on file.
Such a system would work very well to control the carnivore system, I think. Of course, my country isn't proposing to do anything this insane, yet.. When I think about it, sweet jesus, it's scary - they want to be able to tap any email or internet connection (packets are packets, right) at any time!
There's got to be a mecahnism put into some of the popular mail readers (mozilla?) to allow for hard encryption during transit happen real soon like. I mean, who gives a @#$@ how crappy the passwords are stored (put them in a .conf file) just so long as they're being *used* for email, ideally, transparently. Then carnivore is effectively useless. Too bad Microsoft wouldn't implement something like that - would be sweet. Or even if ICQ supported it (there is a ICQ client for secure comm now, Linux only..)
Just some thoughts.
Real farms have computers dammit.
I'm not talking about "modern" food crop farming. Try working at a tree farm where you have to hand-weed, or try working at a Chistmas Tree farm wielding a machete. You'll understand why we value high technology so in a real hurry.
Academe had been one of the last holdouts. Scientific and other kinds of research was always thought to be governed by values other than simple profit, beholden to nothing but the principles of science. No more.
Ok, I have some issues with this. I do love how Katz makes wide, encompassing statements without a smidgin of research, numbers, or anything more complicated than a quote or to from Dr. Big Ass Degree who wants to whore himself for more research money.
What's open source? The VAST majority of the software available on Freshmeat has been done by people who love the art, love technology, or just like doing cool shit. I like when someone uses a libary I've written. I'm not driven by any more profit than that given by feeding my ego! :) Open Source software, open source artistic tools like The Gimp, and lots more through some sand in the eyes of that "creeping corporatism", no?
As far as non-profit driven research, we've come to a point where just about any technological advancement has profit potential. You think a cure for cancer wouldn't bring profit? How about real nanotech? How about the ability to control gravity like electromagnetism (the real prize of a GUT in physics nobody talks about). How about the abilty to make customized drugs based on your DNA profile?
Get with the program, good stuff comes out of Katz sometimes, but this is just alarmist drivel. Go spend a summer on a real farm with no computers Katz, then write about the evils of technology.
Wasn't aware there wasn't better porting for GCC. Borland Turbo C++ ran just fine on the 'lil guy.
Now, your suggestion for coding on the Palm V is intriguing. What C++ compiler works on the Palm V?
I don't need a compiler to code. :) There's lots of good text editors available. I'm working on a small program to let me design C++ objects on the fly. Then, I can take the code and debug it at a later time.. I did play around with a nifty little program called PocketC for the Palm. Nice, but restricted..
I wonder if GCC might run in the DOS emulator that's available for WinCE machines.. although, that's why I have a vaio, it's a real computer, runs linux 100%, and isn't a lot bigger than those WinCE machines (and it wasn't even that much more expensive, if you shop around for one of the older ones w/o winmodems..)
I had one of these little guys for the longest time (Actually, it's younger brother, the 100LX). I loved it, sold it when I started using my pilot more though - I didn't have the money to get any more PCMCIA space for it, and it's built in memory was limitied at 1 meg (I belive there are people with 8 meg 200LX's, and the pcmcia card lets you expand that as big as you want!). This little gem had a wonderful keyboard - nice HP keys - and a seperate notepad. It ran DOS; I had a old version of Tubro C++ for it, although I'm sure it could run the DOS versions of gcc just fine.
Unfortunately, HP didn't continue developing this technology, so it's stuck with an 8088 series processor (IIRC) and while snappy, it won't run linux (it did run minix, though!). The Windows CE crap devices took over.. if HP put a clocked down 486 in one of these packages, it would be an incredible piece of hardware.
However, if you want some free advice, don't try to get an all in one unit, get a Palm V and a folding keyboard to write code on whereever, and then pick up a old Sony Vaio 505 for your breifcase and run Linux on it. This combination (although I use a Pro, not a V) has proven to work the best for me.. you get the best of both worlds.
Shit, I guess I'll have to run out and get a patent/trademark/trade secret/flotilla of lawyers and goons named 'Rocco' now :)
One might also argue that the advertising and distribution might not be necessary but for the big name labels and their promotion of crap like the Spice Girls. How many ads have you seen on TV for Johnny Welfare Garage Band? Not to many. You might have seen them in your local pub though - and the RIAA didn't have diddly to do with that.
I can't quote you what a recording session at a studio costs, but I would hazard a guess you can get reasonable work done for less than 100 kilobucks - maybe 25? That's not a justification for record prices as I see them. Especially given most artists only see a few dollars at most - and all those promotions, ads, and radio play are taken off THEIR cut - because that money was an advance from the label. Hole had a pretty good rant about that (linked of some /. article last time we all debated this).
The industry is a crock of shit and screws over a lot of people that care about their music. Don't think otherwise. They're scared shitless the internet is going to take away their "distribution model" aka "gravy train", and all the power to them.
Ever ask yourself why you can't walk into Sam's with a Rio, download a song for $0.50, and walk out?
If you're comparing the III series to the Visor, they have roughly the same BF - e.g. how stupid you look wearing them on your belt. So, all other things equal, I'd have to say hands down the visor whoops the pants off the IIIseries, especially since you can get nifties like modules to do I/O, hopefully bluetooth, maybe even 802.11 someday.
Now, the Palm V series are the pinnacle of handheld engineering right now IMHO due to the incredibly low batman factor. The belt clip-on case doesn't make you look like a tool, and it's actually light enough that you can just put it in your pocket. The WinCE devices and other's just can't win due to the high BF: You can't carry them EVERYWHERE. Which, I think is the point of a handheld device..
Batman factor is especially important if you've already got one or two things on your belt; I usually have my startac and a leatherman, so my BF is pretty high. :)
For the record; I own a Palm Pro, 1 Meg, use it every day, and don't wear it on my belt. I can't decide between a visor and a Palm V, but since I have a vaio already for I/O, I'll probably end up with a V. They're sweeeet. I can't seem to kill my old US Robotics Pro though, despite not bothering to put it in a case, not bothering with screen protectors, etc etc, it won't die. Damnit. :)
I was sure someone would mention this.. the number one thing I love about my HP48 (and my former HP100LX) was the wonderful tactile response of the keys. It made up for not being able to have large keys, and you knew when you pressed something - you got a nice *thuck* sound.
The 49 IIRC doens't have the nice keys, and I hope this one does (although, what I'd like even more is a clip on keyboard for my palm that has the tactile keys in a 5 x 5 matrix or something. (Anyone want to manufacture that? I'll buy one now)
I just home the engineers strangled whoever made the descision not to use the nice keys! Let's make it in pretty "blueberry", but we'll through away a primary usability factor because it'll save $4/unit. Not to mention axing IR (like anyone ever used it to talk in an exam; You got like 2 feet max unless you heavily modified it and/or designed an amplifier/repeater box..)
You don't need a monitor with some of the cards. I'm using a Asus TNT2 card with TV out and it even shows you the bios startups, not using linux (Mame32 runs faster, and has a nicer gui, from what I can tell), so I can't speak of X support, but you can definately completely do away with the monitor with one of these cards..
In my optinon the ATI card is extremely high quality, both in terms of codecs and the display. I've seen lots of TV tuners, but the quality of the ATI blows them all away. I don't own stock in ATI, either. (good thing, too :). In terms of what it does for the money, it can't be beat. Not too sure about space per second, never measured.
'nuff said.
Using two monitors is a bitch because you're going to make yourself ill trying to target something in the middle of the screen (where the monitors merge).
Now, if you had three - maybe a 19" in the center and two 17"s for left and right 45 degrees, that would rock pretty hard. Or, I suppose, getting a widescreen view (it would be more useful IMHO to have the 45 degree views).
If I remember right, you could do this via network controls on DOOM in c. 1994? (the center screen one 486, and the two 45 degree displays powered by 2 more 486s).
Very cool, though. :)
For a coupla hundred bucks get yourself a 25" or 27" television set (like the originals use) and then get a good quality TV out card like a Matrox G400 or an ATI Card -> these games aren't that hard on video cards - and then you have a MONSTER display for the cost of a good quality 17", and since the games were designed to run at these resolutions, you don't lose anything.
One day the schools will finally stop teaching chemistry, physics, and general mathematics. You'll go to public school for 12 years and learn nothing but altered histories and the words to the Star Strangled Banter.
*cough* 1984 *cough*
Teach your kids at home or make sure they at least get encouragement to think for themselves. I'm waiting for people to start dissing Organic Chem in school because you could make drugs using the reactions and techniques you learn. We won't go near learning anything about fractional distilling! :)
Damn straight. It's not every nation that can brag about having a part in burning the white house to the ground, eh? But I won't debate history. :) A lot of the tech that telcos use in the USA gets developed and tested here in Canada, either by Aliant (The company I work for is partially owned by Aliant, so, I'm biased, of course) or Nortel. (Formerly Northern Telecom and Bell Northern Research). Companies love it here because engineers are dirt cheap compared to their southern counterparts.
Kinda interesting the article is about the USA losing it's tech edge, though. *grin*
that's fine, but it seems a ridiculous jump to run screaming to "taxpayers" before talking to the teachers themselves -- who are probably just well meaning, underinformed people who will do the right thing if educated and asked. I'm just suggesting that you might want to give them a chance to figure it out before running to your senator, which would be a tedious, entrenched process at best.
Tedious? All it takes to get a politician to listen to you is a polite, educated, well thought out letter delievered by Registered Mail. I have done this on 3 occasions and each time I've gotten a personal reply back, and on at least one of those occassions, had some effect. If you get your whole class, or even 10 of them to do it, then I guarantee results. (tm)
Having spent 12 wasted years of my life in a school system that sucked, and 6 in post secondary education that wasn't a whole lot better, any teacher with the attitude of not letting kids use the computers won't listen to a rational arguement. YMMV, of course. Definately try talking to your teacher, but it sounds like the individual has tried that. My point is that you're not powerless to act, even if you're living every day in a state-sanctionied training school.