I actually think that my analogy would be that people with AK-47's couldn't ship them to Americans who tried to buy them. The guns would be stopped and seized at customs. End of story.
*ding ding* You can't stop ANYONE from doing ANYTHING in ANY other country than the USA. You can't stop me from sending you kiddie porn, guns, whatever - period. It will, as you mentioned, be stopped by customs. Customs is not the ISP. So, why not set up internet customs and be done with it? Filter all traffic into and out of the US, just like mail? That's the precdent this bill is setting up, and that should scare you shitless. Hence, why not just do that, and get the debate out of the way once and for all?
They're not trying to outlaw international gambling. They're just making US residents (consumers and business owners alike) abide by US laws. End of story.
Oh, no, they're not. They're trying to make ISP's spend lots of money to do their job, under threat of heavy fines and/or imprisonment.
They're not making blanket statements like that. They're saying "online gambling's illegal, so let's ban online casino's". It's a direct cause and effect sort of thing, like saying that "automatic weapons are illegal, so let's ban automatic weapons"... Restating the obvious.
American laws are null and void outside of your borders. It pisses me off when people forget that. This isn't about domistic online casinos, because those are subject to the laws of your country. This is about international sites. To carry your analogy forward, it's like congress banning AK-47's in South Africa. Do you think that will do anything?
There is no free speech issue associated with the barring of gambling sites and fining the operators of those sites if they accept wagers from Americans. If you don't like the laws here, just leave....
THIS ISN'T ABOUT AMERICAN SITES. You cannot legislate for other countries - your laws are null and void. Did you read the article? You, as an american, can do jack squat to stop me (in a country where my online site is legal) from taking money from you. If the legal age of consent and majority in a country is 14, there's nothing stopping me from selling you haRdc0r3 of a 14 year-old. Possessing that material in the US a completely different matter.
The difference is just that: you have to leave the country, or at least go to specific areas of the country where gambling is allowed in order to gamble. They're not going after Vegas, Atlantic City, or any of the Indian reservations. They're going after companies that operate outside of thsoe strict confines.
It would be an interesting legal precentent to see if surfing a web site of a foreign country allows you to be governed by their content laws. I don't think one exists currently. IANAL, either.
The government can no more keep a gambler away from an online casino than it can keep drugs out of the country.
This is the part that worries me. Why pass laws that aren't going to have an effect, or have little/no hope of serving there intended purpose? Laws for the sake of laws are BAD BAD BAD. More laws == less freedom. You don't need lots of laws. You need common sense and a willingness to apply existing law (I like the common law system better, but, we only really got a "constitution" here (Charter of Rights and Freedoms)- different systems.
The current attitude towards drugs, guns, "obscene" material, anything related to explosives and the internet, etc etc is to protect the people from themselves, which is not the concept upon which the american state was formed. (Individual freedom over the power of the state, or so I understand). It sounds like those congressmen need more history lessons! (In the case of "obscene" material, people forget that you can get most everything in the library of congress, but somehow that's different.)
The american people are extremely lucky they have a system of checks and balances in place given the effective choices you have in elections (2) and general political apathy. Otherwise, you'd all be going to church every night and smiling for the TV camera in your bedroom in the morning. That seems to be where current legislation is going, so why not propose and debate that?
FWIW, I'm not an American, I reside north of the border. But, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. What is it with the american psyche that demands everything be banned? Why go after the ISP? They didn't do anything. It's the guy that's actually doing the gaming that's breaking the laws, so go after him! It's laws like this that are dangerous because they don't go after the criminal, they attempt to change everyone's behaviour to _prevent_ something that you shouldn't be doing. "Speeding is illegal, so let's ban freeways!" "Armed robbery is illegal, so let's take everyone's guns!" (Big fight here in Canada about this now.. under new policy, the government will be allowed into any residence to check that a registered weapon is safely stored, by law, ack!)
It seems the answer to everything these days is to ban/censor/deem unfit whatever is unpaletable to a select minority in the congress. So, let's ban everything, give the police absolute arbitrary power (well, they almost have it now) and everything will be A-Ok!
In the day of state-sancioned casino gaming and lotteries, this seems ridiculous! What's next? Banning vacations to countries who make lots of money on gaming? Let's revoke those passports now! What's the difference between going to the carribean and blowing your dollars there, and blowing them via an online route? (Obviously, you're under the laws of the US in the latter case, but from a moral standpoint, is it any different?)
Since we're basing the proposed system on trust and not enforcement of payment under threat of death (noble, and novel idea), there's another technique that could work even better.
Rather than tweak the MP3 system, leave it the way it is. What you need is something like PayLars that allows you to send a quarter or a buck or whatever to a band, DIRECTLY. This doesn't have to be tied to a song, music, whatever. Just set up a page (on mp3.com, but why bother with THAT even, any site will do, even the band's official page - a band is much like a business, right?!?!!) where people can buy music, or t-shirts, or whatever.
You cut the evil record companies completely out of the loop, and you get your money. Some bands are already doing stuff like this, although, I'm not sure how much of the end profit they see. (See tbe Insane Clown Posse web site.
I would love to send some artists some money.. it might even be more than they get off the CD sale; Right now, I just make sure to go see bands I like in concert when they show up, because I know they get a good chunk of that money.
The RIAA are money-grubbing sons of bitches. The MPAA are evil, but different, since it's the studios putting up the big money for the projects (and I've NEVER had a problem buying a movie for $30, and they have a good distribution system via theaters now. Their tacticts with DVD are dispicable, but, this is Corporate America).
Companies have the right to not allow people using drugs into their workplace. Rightly, they realize that it can be disruptive. If everyone would be honest and upfront about using drugs, they wouldn't have to bother -- but this isn't an ideal world.
BULLSHIT. Thinking like this is WRONG. If I show up drunk, stoned, or high, you have every right to fire me ON THE SPOT. Why should it matter to you what the hell I do on my own time, in my own house? What's next? Testing to see if I have multiple sex partners? How about a AIDS test? I mean, that's something YOU did, right? If everyone was up front about having AIDS, then there wouldn't be a problem?
If you really don't like it, you can go somewhere else, of course. But don't go yelling about your 'rights' just because a company wants to keep its workplace safe.
So, we'll test everyone for AIDS, because what if someone gets cut, right? THIS IS STUPID. If you want to pay me for 24/7 availability, then sure, you can drug test me. But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.
If you're concerned enough about soft drugs, then you should test for alcohol too, and fire anyone who does not comply - because we can't have people drinking, either, even if it's off company time. It might affect their preformance! And cigarette smokers. Those things are deadly! The workplace is much safer if there isn't anyone who craves a smoke at an inappropriate time. Never mind all those smoke breaks you can get rid of!
How about police agencies! They don't have scheduled drug testing - it in fact, is done at the time of hire and RARELY after. Why? Because the police unions are dead-set against it. Let's test all those FBI, DEA and BATF agents _monthly_. I wonder what would happen then.. sure it might cost a little, but they have to do something with all the money they gather from drug dealers! Why not "purify" their ranks?
This arguement pisses me off. If I'm not preforming, or am presenting a danger to others, FIRE ME FOR THAT. If I'm a happy little worker, it's none of your business what, or who, I do on my own time.
And yes, I take my skills elsewhere. Drug laws scare me not because I'm a user (I'm not) but because I see my freedom going down the toilet - because I look at what happened south of the border. I just get a kick out of companies that test in their US offices and not in Canadian ones. What, are Canadian offices more dangerous? YEESH.
Something else you can do is to absolutely, 100%, without exception, refuse any employment drug testing on moral grounds. Did you know that the Canadian counterparts of many US corporations DO NOT require pre-employment drug testing because people are much less likely to accept it here?
No job is worth my liberty. Mind you, I'm skilled enough so that finding employment isn't hard, even if I'm picky, and I've told people no before. You'd be suprised how many people haven't even thought about the implications of such testing. Ask WHY! It's like when a cop asks you if he can look in your trunk. Ask him if you can look in his. This usually gets a most suprised look - although, mind you, cops up here don't draw weapons as part of standard operating procedure, either - there's forms to fill out if the RCMP even unholster their weapon.
The reason to do this is that if you don't refuse HORRIBLY intrusive testing (Would you ask a stranger off the street to piss in a cup for you?) then the wonderful DNA test happens next. The tools to give the state supreme power over a ignorant populace are happening, and when everybody wakes up, you won't have any way to fight back.
An old history professor of mine used to have a quote in BIG letters above the blackboard: "Power: It's ain't for the givin', it's for the takin'" (unknown). Words to live by.
Easy solution - ban DNA cross referencing
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Walk-By DNA Testing
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· Score: 5
You americans have an opportunity to make a real stand here, and it will solve the problem of people spying on your DNA - simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info, like for instance, your social security number. If your DNA cannot be used to identify you, this won't be a problem from the standpoint of raw information collection for marketting purposes (although might be valid statistically, for instance, all the caffiene molecules being secreted through the pores of coders in the development building.. heh heh)
As for explosives testing.. the american people need to vote on what they want more: Freedom or safety. You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state. But, this is something the country will decide, personally, I'd rather live in a rural setting where the man doesn't have as many rights to get on my land.
The drug issue is worse though, and it's why I'll never move to the US. What if I toss a couple grams of an illicit substance in your car and then call the cops? What if I sprinkle you with coke in an elevator? The shit will hit the fan, and with the way the US drug laws work currently, your life is over and you very well might lose your car, if I phrase my "anonymous tip" correctly.
I'm 23 and my experience pretty much mirrors the others here, I got ahead of the game a little with that modem when I could get access to machines that would compile C, but, anyhow:). Your arguements are exactly why I didn't bother with a CS degree (bah, they still learn COBOL, YUCK) and I went for an electrical engineering degree - because I wanted to know more about the guts, I wanted to know how the IC's worked and what they were made of, I wanted to know how the power supply worked - and I just didn't want to know how to follow a schematic, I wanted to understand the basic principles involved.
I learned all that and a lot more, and the advanced math has actually proven to be a good investment more than once! Plus, having a professional certification (a few years off still) is another good career move that you just can't get any other way. Having all those computer skills got me A's in my programming and digital design classes, enough to balance out the sometimes horrible marks in advanced calculus:).
A good example was my embedded micro design class. The prof tossed us some RAM, ROM, a 8088XL CPU, some UARTS, a DAC and ADC, a book of technical specs, wire wrap tool (!!) and a prototype board. We did the rest - and I learned a lot from that course. To say nothing of the exposure to data structures (something I never would have looked at) and other aspects of analog design and power systems.
CS, No. Engineering, hell yes! We get the "learn by doing thing", at least in Canada:). So think about post-high-school studies, and from the sounds of it, think EE or Computer Engineering!
Did I hit some buttons, or something? Maybe you don't work with enough people, or something, but all the non-geeks I introduce to linux, even the ones that want to learn, get blown away by the difference. Right now, linux isn't for everyone. To say otherwise is WOEFULLY ignorant.
Bringing linux to the masses as we know it isn't going to happen. Redhat is way to hard for for the average schmuck to keep running. SURE there are exceptions, but in my personal experience, when I try to get people using it, they get put off by the command line, sure you don't need it for everything, but linux just isn't there yet for the average joe, and I have no desire in making it more friendly for the average joe. I develop to make my life as a programmer and unix user easier.
"If I don't want Linux to be mainstream, why am I doing this?"
Did you even read my post? I am doing this because I am sick of an operating system that is unstable and fundamentially is no longer meant for myself as a market target. (Specifically, windows. DOS was a good OS!)
I don't tell everyone it's the best model. Hell, I pay my bills and stay off the street developing embedded propietrary code for a telecommunications company. In short, I do what is good for my target market - ME - technically oriented programmers.
RE Helixcode, Grandma can't even handle the windows update web page. Don't fool yourself. Linux will be ready for the mainstream eventually, but it won't be the linux I use, because to make a mainstream version you need to remove the power I have over the machine - the power to fubar it beyond repair.
One of the reasons linux is insanely popular with it's users is that it is an operating system developed for, and by, the developer mindset. I love linux because I can do absolutely whatever I want with it, to it, and for it, without anyone telling me "no you can't". Mac and Windows are operating systems for "Everyone" and their dog.. so of course, they're not designed for the hard-core segment of the market that founded this industry - the geeks!
The crux of this is that do we really want linux to be mainstream? I don't really think that people are working to make linux mainstream - sure, the installers are getting better. Sure, we have gnome, kde, berlin - but these are still made for and by developers and the hard-core, just those that want it to look prettier. People are working to make linux better, and that's what makes it great.
This article misses that very key point that in many cases, the users are the programmers. There's no great divide between the two like in the Mac world - I would hazard a guess that the majority of Mac users have never compiled a program. I would hazard a guess that the majority of linux users HAVE compiled a program before, and in many cases, I'd guess they've even compiled the kernel - the OS itself!
Windows is fine for some people, it's not fine for me. I don't develop in Linux for the windows sheep. I use linux because I want a powerful OS that lets me do what I want. There just happen to be a lot more people like that than Bill Gates things, and because a lot of those people are developers, the end result is a whole shebang of software and "nifty stuff".
The french have it right: To each their own. Those that want linux, will come. I don't plan on ramming linux down anyone's throat (although it might be fun to ram up another orfice of one or two CEOs.. *grin*)
Sony isn't pushing firewire because it's cheaper.. Ethernet is dirt cheap right now, and alot more widespread. Firewire is attractive to sony because the PSX2 is a way to get digital sony-branded storage into the home; All of their higher-end digital toys support it, from the sony vaio (mmm, my baby), their digital camcorders, and IIRC most of their products have firewire plans.
I suspect this is the reason the PSX will support hard drives - they want a way to monopolize your digital entertainment, as the kids they weaned on the PSX are now starting to make some money, and might want a camcorder for the pr0n/kids whatever. The PSX would be a good place to store all that, now, eh?
Sony isn't much better than MS, but they don't claim otherwise, either. Ever try getting vaio tech support out of 'em? And I don't want to know what kinda trade you'd have to make for the programming specs on the vaio C1 embedded camera.:)
I think they all stole the GUI (and a lot of other innovations) from Xerox PARC, back in the 70's.. Xerox did signifigant piles of cool stuff (tm) they don't really get credit for.
Nowhere does he talk about what this means for our little pet operating system(s), and what the possible implications are. If it's running a custom architecture, it's quite likely possible that it might not be portable to the degree we'd like - for instance, to get a linux kernel on one of these fabled boxes. While I'm personally not the target market for one of these machines - I'd much rather learn all the intimate details of a nice open API like OpenGL, rather than waste my life on a propietrary piece of hardware that will be junk-ola in 5 years - This would have been most nice. And I don't think the generation has come (yet) never to see a Dot Matrix printer.. still have some of those in service around here, excellent for firewall log reporting:). (albeit in a sound dampened enclosure..)
So, we've got another microsoft product where you can bow down to BillyG or get the schlong. Anyone know which half of the micro-bells will be getting this particular evil-empire to be? Or how microsoft gets another leg up on us wanting open APIs - you think this thing is going to run OpenGL? Forget that, and forget ports to linux, too. But there will be a greeeaaat path to get stuff running on Windows 200x!:)
Anyhow, some observations. It would have been nice to hear the man himself talk about the APIs a little more, and maybe throw some weight around for us little people.
There is a way to make money off GPL'd code, and it's been used by at least one product already, FFTW. FFTW is a high-speed fast fourier transform library, "Fastest FFT in the West", and it is distributed under the GPL. This means that it is available to anyone that wants to use it in their own GPL products.
So, I'm working on a project that uses this fourier transform to calculate derivatives of shoreline for calculating boundaries. I need FFT code; I go looking, boss man says write your own. I do, preformance sucks, no suprise. This stuff is at least one order of magnitude faster! But, boss man doesn't want anything to do with that communist open source code business.
Hence the magic. The author of the code can put whatever liscence he wants on it - or as many liscence as he wants. In this case, if you want to use it in a closed source commercial project, you can get a liscence for $5000 smackers, which is what the company ponied up - of course, they still made (much) more than that back.
Thus, this allows the two worlds to live together - if you want to get support, etc etc, pay the big money for the commericialized version. Or get the free version, with no warranty, as outlined in big letters in the GPL.
How to build rockets might be a good thing for that rosetta stone.. If nothing else, it could tell people (?) to go look for the little monument we left on the moon:). Rockets (stable rockets, that is) are a pretty big engineering feat, one I believe that took almost a decade to make reliable enough to do useful work (unfortunately this "useful work" was to launch nuclear warheads.. maybe we could leave that part off the stone:).
When I used to build rockets I think I had about a 60% failure rate on or near the launching pad.. when you think about it, those nasa rockets need to hang at near-perfect balance for a significant period of time before they get any degree of aerodynamic stability. The control systems for 'em are something else *flashbacks to industrial controls* nooooo..
It seems that the music industry is hell-bent on preventing people from ever listening to the music (in short, preventing them from consuming the product they produce!). The problem comes from the fact we all hear the same thing - audio pressure waves - and there's absolutely nothing (short of a digital-in jack in the back of everyone's head, yeah, ok, sure) that they can do about it.
Encrypt it all you want. Put all the OS-specific protections on it you want. It doesn't change the fact that on your sound card, there's a DAC chip. Any electrical engineering student, given the specifications on the DAC being used come up with something to do a pretty good re-sampling at the chip, before filters are applied, and get a good copy out - or hell, just resample the audio out. As another poster indicated, doing this many times helps to isolate random noise that can be processed out, and mp3 is lossy, anyhow (another debate).
What the music industry is deglecting is that they thing that the millions of consumers out there are willing to throw away a multi-hundred dollar investment in a CD player - which does a damn good job of playing back music as is, even crappy ones. This is what kills the music industry - in their greed, they've made the de facto standard for music a perfect unencrypted copy. Any attempt to change this will result in legislation out the wha-hoo, because for all the RIAA's lobbying dollars, they're SOL.
Encryption is useless for an application like this because at some level, we all need to hear the same pressure waves.
Only problem with Vancouver is you're competing with a few thousand PhD people who ran over here from Hong Kong for the exact same reason - so it might be harder to find a job than you think. The bare minimum for good employment there is a post-grad degree (although, if you've got a BSc. Eng or CS, or a MCS you should have no problem). Our immigration laws are a lot more sane, although nobody wants to move to Saskatchewan, hehe.
Come on over to the east coast and get some non-americanized Canadian culture:).
For those of you looking for a change of pace, try Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - great beer, unlimited DSL for $40 bucks a month, good tech sector, low, low, low cost of living, it's actually possible to buy a house, and you're only three or four hours from some of the most beautiful scenery (and some of the best roads to race on) on the east cost, the Highlands of Cape Breton.. Plus, the women aren't bad either.
If you want > $70k CDN/year, you'll have to poke around, but the jobs are there if you're as good as you think you are. I can't overstate the cost and quality of life on the east coast. People are _nice_ to you.:)
Avoid tech towns with a low/medium ratio of universities/students to jobs. Salaries will be signifigantly deflated below norms because of the college students that are desperate for a quick buck, and don't care/don't know what the going rates for their skills are elsewhere.
This isn't an issue with major centers, but most people know that SF is a good tech center, I'm assuming that the article is looking for worldwide/smaller/non-obvious places.
On the up side, university towns have lots of "real" women and quality bars, so, YMMV. I'd rather have more $ to buy car toys with:).
This is especially important when you look at the trend towards massively interactive online games like Everquest. If you invest massive amounts of time learning a game and developing a character, it might be most annoying to have to start over in a new universe when the existing one could be expanded. This is the model that games like Hack followed, albeit with much crummier graphics (although some would argue better gameplay.. I played Moria for days at a time..)
Another arena I see this taking over is sims.. Flight simulators and driving simulators are great, but some of them require the same investments in time to learn all the tricks. It would be nice to be able to tweak the physics engines, upgrade graphics and network code, etc etc etc over a course of years to develop a mean, lean, kick butt environment. Right now you throw the games away when you're done.
The obstacle to this is the big investment you need to make a truely refined product - look at the effort that goes into games like Red Alert or Starcraft - the graphics have to be just so, the sound effects need to be engineered, etc etc etc. I don't know of many open source projects that put the emphasis on the polished look - some do, but most are just there to get the mean job done.
There are lots of open-source successes though. Look at the MAME and console emulators - mind you, that genre is a bad example, since I would imagine you'd get your ass sued if you even tried to make money:)
Well, if you examine the product sheet, there's on-board (on-card?) RAM.. this would lead me to believe the typical application would involve writing a program and then uploading it to the card's memory space - and then having the card only send back the results from the process that was sent.
Their drivers seem to tie the card's memory - apparently up to 512MB with the linux memory space, so that you don't need to jump through lots of hoops to make it work. Again, I assume there is logic on-card to make sure that the system memory bus isn't being used, just the local memory bus on the card (which would be no big deal).
This is much like the much-proclaimed clustering technology, excecpt that the bus is PCI, and it's mackin' in comparison to ethernet:). It would be nice to see an rc5 client written for this bad boy.. it would also be a real bonus for those of us that play around with neural network simulation and 3D graphics work. I'd love to have a card like this for a render slave.. hehe
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I actually think that my analogy would be that people with AK-47's couldn't ship them to Americans who tried to buy them. The guns would be stopped and seized at customs. End of story.
*ding ding* You can't stop ANYONE from doing ANYTHING in ANY other country than the USA. You can't stop me from sending you kiddie porn, guns, whatever - period. It will, as you mentioned, be stopped by customs. Customs is not the ISP. So, why not set up internet customs and be done with it? Filter all traffic into and out of the US, just like mail? That's the precdent this bill is setting up, and that should scare you shitless. Hence, why not just do that, and get the debate out of the way once and for all?
They're not trying to outlaw international gambling. They're just making US residents (consumers and business owners alike) abide by US laws. End of story.
Oh, no, they're not. They're trying to make ISP's spend lots of money to do their job, under threat of heavy fines and/or imprisonment.
They're not making blanket statements like that. They're saying "online gambling's illegal, so let's ban online casino's". It's a direct cause and effect sort of thing, like saying that "automatic weapons are illegal, so let's ban automatic weapons"... Restating the obvious.
American laws are null and void outside of your borders. It pisses me off when people forget that. This isn't about domistic online casinos, because those are subject to the laws of your country. This is about international sites. To carry your analogy forward, it's like congress banning AK-47's in South Africa. Do you think that will do anything?
There is no free speech issue associated with the barring of gambling sites and fining the operators of those sites if they accept wagers from Americans. If you don't like the laws here, just leave....
THIS ISN'T ABOUT AMERICAN SITES. You cannot legislate for other countries - your laws are null and void. Did you read the article? You, as an american, can do jack squat to stop me (in a country where my online site is legal) from taking money from you. If the legal age of consent and majority in a country is 14, there's nothing stopping me from selling you haRdc0r3 of a 14 year-old. Possessing that material in the US a completely different matter.
The difference is just that: you have to leave the country, or at least go to specific areas of the country where gambling is allowed in order to gamble. They're not going after Vegas, Atlantic City, or any of the Indian reservations. They're going after companies that operate outside of thsoe strict confines.
It would be an interesting legal precentent to see if surfing a web site of a foreign country allows you to be governed by their content laws. I don't think one exists currently. IANAL, either.
The government can no more keep a gambler away from an online casino than it can keep drugs out of the country.
This is the part that worries me. Why pass laws that aren't going to have an effect, or have little/no hope of serving there intended purpose? Laws for the sake of laws are BAD BAD BAD. More laws == less freedom. You don't need lots of laws. You need common sense and a willingness to apply existing law (I like the common law system better, but, we only really got a "constitution" here (Charter of Rights and Freedoms)- different systems.
The current attitude towards drugs, guns, "obscene" material, anything related to explosives and the internet, etc etc is to protect the people from themselves, which is not the concept upon which the american state was formed. (Individual freedom over the power of the state, or so I understand). It sounds like those congressmen need more history lessons! (In the case of "obscene" material, people forget that you can get most everything in the library of congress, but somehow that's different.)
The american people are extremely lucky they have a system of checks and balances in place given the effective choices you have in elections (2) and general political apathy. Otherwise, you'd all be going to church every night and smiling for the TV camera in your bedroom in the morning. That seems to be where current legislation is going, so why not propose and debate that?
FWIW, I'm not an American, I reside north of the border. But, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. What is it with the american psyche that demands everything be banned? Why go after the ISP? They didn't do anything. It's the guy that's actually doing the gaming that's breaking the laws, so go after him! It's laws like this that are dangerous because they don't go after the criminal, they attempt to change everyone's behaviour to _prevent_ something that you shouldn't be doing. "Speeding is illegal, so let's ban freeways!" "Armed robbery is illegal, so let's take everyone's guns!" (Big fight here in Canada about this now.. under new policy, the government will be allowed into any residence to check that a registered weapon is safely stored, by law, ack!)
It seems the answer to everything these days is to ban/censor/deem unfit whatever is unpaletable to a select minority in the congress. So, let's ban everything, give the police absolute arbitrary power (well, they almost have it now) and everything will be A-Ok!
In the day of state-sancioned casino gaming and lotteries, this seems ridiculous! What's next? Banning vacations to countries who make lots of money on gaming? Let's revoke those passports now! What's the difference between going to the carribean and blowing your dollars there, and blowing them via an online route? (Obviously, you're under the laws of the US in the latter case, but from a moral standpoint, is it any different?)
Yeeeesh
Since we're basing the proposed system on trust and not enforcement of payment under threat of death (noble, and novel idea), there's another technique that could work even better.
Rather than tweak the MP3 system, leave it the way it is. What you need is something like PayLars that allows you to send a quarter or a buck or whatever to a band, DIRECTLY. This doesn't have to be tied to a song, music, whatever. Just set up a page (on mp3.com, but why bother with THAT even, any site will do, even the band's official page - a band is much like a business, right?!?!!) where people can buy music, or t-shirts, or whatever.
You cut the evil record companies completely out of the loop, and you get your money. Some bands are already doing stuff like this, although, I'm not sure how much of the end profit they see. (See tbe Insane Clown Posse web site.
I would love to send some artists some money.. it might even be more than they get off the CD sale; Right now, I just make sure to go see bands I like in concert when they show up, because I know they get a good chunk of that money.
The RIAA are money-grubbing sons of bitches. The MPAA are evil, but different, since it's the studios putting up the big money for the projects (and I've NEVER had a problem buying a movie for $30, and they have a good distribution system via theaters now. Their tacticts with DVD are dispicable, but, this is Corporate America).
Thou shalt not spend more on patent lawyers than thou hast spent on R&D.. *grin*
I think that sums up it nicely!
Companies have the right to not allow people using drugs into their workplace. Rightly, they realize that it can be disruptive. If everyone would be honest and upfront about using drugs, they wouldn't have to bother -- but this isn't an ideal world.
BULLSHIT. Thinking like this is WRONG. If I show up drunk, stoned, or high, you have every right to fire me ON THE SPOT. Why should it matter to you what the hell I do on my own time, in my own house? What's next? Testing to see if I have multiple sex partners? How about a AIDS test? I mean, that's something YOU did, right? If everyone was up front about having AIDS, then there wouldn't be a problem?
If you really don't like it, you can go somewhere else, of course. But don't go yelling about your 'rights' just because a company wants to keep its workplace safe.
So, we'll test everyone for AIDS, because what if someone gets cut, right? THIS IS STUPID. If you want to pay me for 24/7 availability, then sure, you can drug test me. But when I'm off company time - what I do is none of the company's business, period.
If you're concerned enough about soft drugs, then you should test for alcohol too, and fire anyone who does not comply - because we can't have people drinking, either, even if it's off company time. It might affect their preformance! And cigarette smokers. Those things are deadly! The workplace is much safer if there isn't anyone who craves a smoke at an inappropriate time. Never mind all those smoke breaks you can get rid of!
How about police agencies! They don't have scheduled drug testing - it in fact, is done at the time of hire and RARELY after. Why? Because the police unions are dead-set against it. Let's test all those FBI, DEA and BATF agents _monthly_. I wonder what would happen then.. sure it might cost a little, but they have to do something with all the money they gather from drug dealers! Why not "purify" their ranks?
This arguement pisses me off. If I'm not preforming, or am presenting a danger to others, FIRE ME FOR THAT. If I'm a happy little worker, it's none of your business what, or who, I do on my own time.
And yes, I take my skills elsewhere. Drug laws scare me not because I'm a user (I'm not) but because I see my freedom going down the toilet - because I look at what happened south of the border. I just get a kick out of companies that test in their US offices and not in Canadian ones. What, are Canadian offices more dangerous? YEESH.
Something else you can do is to absolutely, 100%, without exception, refuse any employment drug testing on moral grounds. Did you know that the Canadian counterparts of many US corporations DO NOT require pre-employment drug testing because people are much less likely to accept it here?
No job is worth my liberty. Mind you, I'm skilled enough so that finding employment isn't hard, even if I'm picky, and I've told people no before. You'd be suprised how many people haven't even thought about the implications of such testing. Ask WHY! It's like when a cop asks you if he can look in your trunk. Ask him if you can look in his. This usually gets a most suprised look - although, mind you, cops up here don't draw weapons as part of standard operating procedure, either - there's forms to fill out if the RCMP even unholster their weapon.
The reason to do this is that if you don't refuse HORRIBLY intrusive testing (Would you ask a stranger off the street to piss in a cup for you?) then the wonderful DNA test happens next. The tools to give the state supreme power over a ignorant populace are happening, and when everybody wakes up, you won't have any way to fight back.
An old history professor of mine used to have a quote in BIG letters above the blackboard: "Power: It's ain't for the givin', it's for the takin'" (unknown). Words to live by.
You americans have an opportunity to make a real stand here, and it will solve the problem of people spying on your DNA - simply BAN the cross referencing of a DNA database with public info, like for instance, your social security number. If your DNA cannot be used to identify you, this won't be a problem from the standpoint of raw information collection for marketting purposes (although might be valid statistically, for instance, all the caffiene molecules being secreted through the pores of coders in the development building.. heh heh)
As for explosives testing.. the american people need to vote on what they want more: Freedom or safety. You can be perfectly safe, more or less, but you'll be living in a police state. But, this is something the country will decide, personally, I'd rather live in a rural setting where the man doesn't have as many rights to get on my land.
The drug issue is worse though, and it's why I'll never move to the US. What if I toss a couple grams of an illicit substance in your car and then call the cops? What if I sprinkle you with coke in an elevator? The shit will hit the fan, and with the way the US drug laws work currently, your life is over and you very well might lose your car, if I phrase my "anonymous tip" correctly.
Something to think about..
I'm 23 and my experience pretty much mirrors the others here, I got ahead of the game a little with that modem when I could get access to machines that would compile C, but, anyhow :). Your arguements are exactly why I didn't bother with a CS degree (bah, they still learn COBOL, YUCK) and I went for an electrical engineering degree - because I wanted to know more about the guts, I wanted to know how the IC's worked and what they were made of, I wanted to know how the power supply worked - and I just didn't want to know how to follow a schematic, I wanted to understand the basic principles involved.
I learned all that and a lot more, and the advanced math has actually proven to be a good investment more than once! Plus, having a professional certification (a few years off still) is another good career move that you just can't get any other way. Having all those computer skills got me A's in my programming and digital design classes, enough to balance out the sometimes horrible marks in advanced calculus :).
A good example was my embedded micro design class. The prof tossed us some RAM, ROM, a 8088XL CPU, some UARTS, a DAC and ADC, a book of technical specs, wire wrap tool (!!) and a prototype board. We did the rest - and I learned a lot from that course. To say nothing of the exposure to data structures (something I never would have looked at) and other aspects of analog design and power systems.
CS, No. Engineering, hell yes! We get the "learn by doing thing", at least in Canada :). So think about post-high-school studies, and from the sounds of it, think EE or Computer Engineering!
by slipping it your calling card
Maybe I'm just some kind of perv, but, uh, I'm going to go "slip it" to my notebook with a pcmcia card...
Did I hit some buttons, or something? Maybe you don't work with enough people, or something, but all the non-geeks I introduce to linux, even the ones that want to learn, get blown away by the difference. Right now, linux isn't for everyone. To say otherwise is WOEFULLY ignorant.
Bringing linux to the masses as we know it isn't going to happen. Redhat is way to hard for for the average schmuck to keep running. SURE there are exceptions, but in my personal experience, when I try to get people using it, they get put off by the command line, sure you don't need it for everything, but linux just isn't there yet for the average joe, and I have no desire in making it more friendly for the average joe. I develop to make my life as a programmer and unix user easier.
"If I don't want Linux to be mainstream, why am I doing this?"
Did you even read my post? I am doing this because I am sick of an operating system that is unstable and fundamentially is no longer meant for myself as a market target. (Specifically, windows. DOS was a good OS!)
I don't tell everyone it's the best model. Hell, I pay my bills and stay off the street developing embedded propietrary code for a telecommunications company. In short, I do what is good for my target market - ME - technically oriented programmers.
RE Helixcode, Grandma can't even handle the windows update web page. Don't fool yourself. Linux will be ready for the mainstream eventually, but it won't be the linux I use, because to make a mainstream version you need to remove the power I have over the machine - the power to fubar it beyond repair.
One of the reasons linux is insanely popular with it's users is that it is an operating system developed for, and by, the developer mindset. I love linux because I can do absolutely whatever I want with it, to it, and for it, without anyone telling me "no you can't". Mac and Windows are operating systems for "Everyone" and their dog.. so of course, they're not designed for the hard-core segment of the market that founded this industry - the geeks!
The crux of this is that do we really want linux to be mainstream? I don't really think that people are working to make linux mainstream - sure, the installers are getting better. Sure, we have gnome, kde, berlin - but these are still made for and by developers and the hard-core, just those that want it to look prettier. People are working to make linux better, and that's what makes it great.
This article misses that very key point that in many cases, the users are the programmers. There's no great divide between the two like in the Mac world - I would hazard a guess that the majority of Mac users have never compiled a program. I would hazard a guess that the majority of linux users HAVE compiled a program before, and in many cases, I'd guess they've even compiled the kernel - the OS itself!
Windows is fine for some people, it's not fine for me. I don't develop in Linux for the windows sheep. I use linux because I want a powerful OS that lets me do what I want. There just happen to be a lot more people like that than Bill Gates things, and because a lot of those people are developers, the end result is a whole shebang of software and "nifty stuff".
The french have it right: To each their own. Those that want linux, will come. I don't plan on ramming linux down anyone's throat (although it might be fun to ram up another orfice of one or two CEOs.. *grin*)
Mod this up.. might be an interesting way for Rob to play with all that hardware they talk about on Geeks in Space!
Sony isn't pushing firewire because it's cheaper.. Ethernet is dirt cheap right now, and alot more widespread. Firewire is attractive to sony because the PSX2 is a way to get digital sony-branded storage into the home; All of their higher-end digital toys support it, from the sony vaio (mmm, my baby), their digital camcorders, and IIRC most of their products have firewire plans.
I suspect this is the reason the PSX will support hard drives - they want a way to monopolize your digital entertainment, as the kids they weaned on the PSX are now starting to make some money, and might want a camcorder for the pr0n/kids whatever. The PSX would be a good place to store all that, now, eh?
Sony isn't much better than MS, but they don't claim otherwise, either. Ever try getting vaio tech support out of 'em? And I don't want to know what kinda trade you'd have to make for the programming specs on the vaio C1 embedded camera. :)
I think they all stole the GUI (and a lot of other innovations) from Xerox PARC, back in the 70's.. Xerox did signifigant piles of cool stuff (tm) they don't really get credit for.
Nowhere does he talk about what this means for our little pet operating system(s), and what the possible implications are. If it's running a custom architecture, it's quite likely possible that it might not be portable to the degree we'd like - for instance, to get a linux kernel on one of these fabled boxes. While I'm personally not the target market for one of these machines - I'd much rather learn all the intimate details of a nice open API like OpenGL, rather than waste my life on a propietrary piece of hardware that will be junk-ola in 5 years - This would have been most nice. And I don't think the generation has come (yet) never to see a Dot Matrix printer.. still have some of those in service around here, excellent for firewall log reporting :). (albeit in a sound dampened enclosure..)
So, we've got another microsoft product where you can bow down to BillyG or get the schlong. Anyone know which half of the micro-bells will be getting this particular evil-empire to be? Or how microsoft gets another leg up on us wanting open APIs - you think this thing is going to run OpenGL? Forget that, and forget ports to linux, too. But there will be a greeeaaat path to get stuff running on Windows 200x! :)
Anyhow, some observations. It would have been nice to hear the man himself talk about the APIs a little more, and maybe throw some weight around for us little people.
kudos
There is a way to make money off GPL'd code, and it's been used by at least one product already, FFTW. FFTW is a high-speed fast fourier transform library, "Fastest FFT in the West", and it is distributed under the GPL. This means that it is available to anyone that wants to use it in their own GPL products.
So, I'm working on a project that uses this fourier transform to calculate derivatives of shoreline for calculating boundaries. I need FFT code; I go looking, boss man says write your own. I do, preformance sucks, no suprise. This stuff is at least one order of magnitude faster! But, boss man doesn't want anything to do with that communist open source code business.
Hence the magic. The author of the code can put whatever liscence he wants on it - or as many liscence as he wants. In this case, if you want to use it in a closed source commercial project, you can get a liscence for $5000 smackers, which is what the company ponied up - of course, they still made (much) more than that back.
Thus, this allows the two worlds to live together - if you want to get support, etc etc, pay the big money for the commericialized version. Or get the free version, with no warranty, as outlined in big letters in the GPL.
kudos!
How to build rockets might be a good thing for that rosetta stone.. If nothing else, it could tell people (?) to go look for the little monument we left on the moon :). Rockets (stable rockets, that is) are a pretty big engineering feat, one I believe that took almost a decade to make reliable enough to do useful work (unfortunately this "useful work" was to launch nuclear warheads.. maybe we could leave that part off the stone :).
When I used to build rockets I think I had about a 60% failure rate on or near the launching pad.. when you think about it, those nasa rockets need to hang at near-perfect balance for a significant period of time before they get any degree of aerodynamic stability. The control systems for 'em are something else *flashbacks to industrial controls* nooooo..
kudos
It seems that the music industry is hell-bent on preventing people from ever listening to the music (in short, preventing them from consuming the product they produce!). The problem comes from the fact we all hear the same thing - audio pressure waves - and there's absolutely nothing (short of a digital-in jack in the back of everyone's head, yeah, ok, sure) that they can do about it.
Encrypt it all you want. Put all the OS-specific protections on it you want. It doesn't change the fact that on your sound card, there's a DAC chip. Any electrical engineering student, given the specifications on the DAC being used come up with something to do a pretty good re-sampling at the chip, before filters are applied, and get a good copy out - or hell, just resample the audio out. As another poster indicated, doing this many times helps to isolate random noise that can be processed out, and mp3 is lossy, anyhow (another debate).
What the music industry is deglecting is that they thing that the millions of consumers out there are willing to throw away a multi-hundred dollar investment in a CD player - which does a damn good job of playing back music as is, even crappy ones. This is what kills the music industry - in their greed, they've made the de facto standard for music a perfect unencrypted copy. Any attempt to change this will result in legislation out the wha-hoo, because for all the RIAA's lobbying dollars, they're SOL.
Encryption is useless for an application like this because at some level, we all need to hear the same pressure waves.
kudos
Only problem with Vancouver is you're competing with a few thousand PhD people who ran over here from Hong Kong for the exact same reason - so it might be harder to find a job than you think. The bare minimum for good employment there is a post-grad degree (although, if you've got a BSc. Eng or CS, or a MCS you should have no problem). Our immigration laws are a lot more sane, although nobody wants to move to Saskatchewan, hehe.
Come on over to the east coast and get some non-americanized Canadian culture :).
Kudos!
For those of you looking for a change of pace, try Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada - great beer, unlimited DSL for $40 bucks a month, good tech sector, low, low, low cost of living, it's actually possible to buy a house, and you're only three or four hours from some of the most beautiful scenery (and some of the best roads to race on) on the east cost, the Highlands of Cape Breton.. Plus, the women aren't bad either.
If you want > $70k CDN/year, you'll have to poke around, but the jobs are there if you're as good as you think you are. I can't overstate the cost and quality of life on the east coast. People are _nice_ to you. :)
Kudos
Avoid tech towns with a low/medium ratio of universities/students to jobs. Salaries will be signifigantly deflated below norms because of the college students that are desperate for a quick buck, and don't care/don't know what the going rates for their skills are elsewhere.
This isn't an issue with major centers, but most people know that SF is a good tech center, I'm assuming that the article is looking for worldwide/smaller/non-obvious places.
On the up side, university towns have lots of "real" women and quality bars, so, YMMV. I'd rather have more $ to buy car toys with :).
Kudos
This is especially important when you look at the trend towards massively interactive online games like Everquest. If you invest massive amounts of time learning a game and developing a character, it might be most annoying to have to start over in a new universe when the existing one could be expanded. This is the model that games like Hack followed, albeit with much crummier graphics (although some would argue better gameplay.. I played Moria for days at a time..)
Another arena I see this taking over is sims.. Flight simulators and driving simulators are great, but some of them require the same investments in time to learn all the tricks. It would be nice to be able to tweak the physics engines, upgrade graphics and network code, etc etc etc over a course of years to develop a mean, lean, kick butt environment. Right now you throw the games away when you're done.
The obstacle to this is the big investment you need to make a truely refined product - look at the effort that goes into games like Red Alert or Starcraft - the graphics have to be just so, the sound effects need to be engineered, etc etc etc. I don't know of many open source projects that put the emphasis on the polished look - some do, but most are just there to get the mean job done.
There are lots of open-source successes though. Look at the MAME and console emulators - mind you, that genre is a bad example, since I would imagine you'd get your ass sued if you even tried to make money :)
Kudos!
Well, if you examine the product sheet, there's on-board (on-card?) RAM.. this would lead me to believe the typical application would involve writing a program and then uploading it to the card's memory space - and then having the card only send back the results from the process that was sent.
Their drivers seem to tie the card's memory - apparently up to 512MB with the linux memory space, so that you don't need to jump through lots of hoops to make it work. Again, I assume there is logic on-card to make sure that the system memory bus isn't being used, just the local memory bus on the card (which would be no big deal).
This is much like the much-proclaimed clustering technology, excecpt that the bus is PCI, and it's mackin' in comparison to ethernet :). It would be nice to see an rc5 client written for this bad boy.. it would also be a real bonus for those of us that play around with neural network simulation and 3D graphics work. I'd love to have a card like this for a render slave.. hehe
Kudos!