I love the 9/80 schedule that my employer has. The off Friday is really useful to get all those business hour things done that normally you'd need to take time off for, like having a repairman come or doctor's visits. And one less commute per two weeks is also great. Officially, my employer oddly does not allow flex time so everyone is supposed to work the same set hours, but I have never seen this enforced at all.
The extra hour per day makes for a longer day (so you have to go in earlier or stay at work later), and if you have an unproductive day for some reason, more time is wasted. I see my kids a bit less in the evening because of this, which is one big downside.
Coming here, I was skeptical that the "off friday" would really be a day off, and if I'd be expected to regularly work that day. But it is treated as a day off, and most people do not work it. On a crunch effort, people might work it, but that's rare, not "mandatory", and usually paid overtime would be available for that. And even if paid OT isn't available and you want to work a Friday, unpaid overtime is credited against any absent/sick time you take off.
Sony is more than the distributor here. They are not Walmart selling the rootkit DRM to customers. Sony *contracted* those guys to create the DRM to their specifications, which almost certainly included requirements along the lines of "prevent users from disabling or removing the DRM or working around it". Surest solution: rootkit. It was probably pitched to Sony as "security features being embedded in the Windows kernel to prevent user tampering".
And I sincerely doubt, based on Sony's comments at the time, that Sony would have cared at that point if they had been told it was a "rootkit" and some users would be offended. I'm guessing that if there wasn't also the exploitable hole that made it a real security breach and made the story explode, the story would have blown over and Sony might still be using the crap.
So Sony might not be suing because it's rootkit software, but because it's a rootkit that leaves Sony open to being sued by anyone that got hacked. IOW, not that it's sleazy software, but that it's poorly made sleazy software. Yeah, Sony, that'll really be a PR boost for you.
Yes, that's exactly what I said when I read that crud about a license. With that reasoning, libraries will all be shut down for massive copyright violations. Mainstream media either ignorantly or willfully promotes this crap.
Damn, we need to find some politicians who aren't clueless about this stuff or in the back pocket of the entertainment companies.
There used to be a great site called r3mix.net, which, IIRC, did some spectral analysis on some of the assorted compression algorithms (trying various different options for them). It was focused on the LAME mp3 encoder, but also looked at a few others.
They also had some great forums for info on music ripping/preferred encoding methods/CD burning/etc.
Now, that URL goes to some lame "sponsored mp3 links" site.
Anyone know why r3mix.net died and if there's any new site that makes a good replacement?
>How can it possibly be a bad thing if somebody makes the worst possible movie about an aasimov story....
Easy. It can be bad because the bad movie prevents the possibility of a GOOD movie being made out of the story... No one is going to do a (good) remake Judge Dredd anytime soon. JD fans had that *one* shot at having a good movie made and it failed. So now most likely there will never be a good JD movie.
And the same goes for I, Robot. If they botch it up into a "Wild, Wild West" jokey mess, fans of the book will never get to see a worthy version of it on film.
Not to mention the fact that a bad movie can turn an excellent book/comic/etc into a laughingstock.
In general, it's much worse for fans to have a bad movie made from their book than it is to have no movie made.
Despite the ads, they don't dare let him near the Priceline.com Supercomputer:
He might let slip one of his powerful logical paradox bombs and cause it to self destruct! (ie: "This statement is a lie", or "This is not my real hair".)
I don't see how mandatory undisclosed installation of spyware is tied to any of your three time/money/functionality (faster/cheaper/better) points.
I guess you can argue that the spyware subsidizes the costs in some marginal way, but I'd say that it is a direct negative against the functionality/better point, and note that plenty of other cable ISP's in general likely provide similar quality/cost service sans spyware.
I want cheap broadband. It should come in a convienent package and be installed this week. But it had better not have any spyware, had better work just the way I want, with my OS of choice, allow me to do whatever I want and have no limits.
Most broadband services arguably provide exactly that, or something close to it. The *only* issue is the sneaky spyware installation. As I see it, your analogy just doesn't apply here. The spyware is not a trade off; it has almost no merit to be considered on the faster/better/cheaper spectrum.
MS hires a LOT of Waterloo grads. It's almost like a farm system for new hires for them.
Getting the school to teach MS products is a logical step to better prep them to work at MS.
This is nothing new... DEC donated TONS of cash and computers to my school (UMass Amherst) and was instrumental in getting the Computer Systems Engineering degree program started in the late 70's, because they wanted to have a good source of engineers to hire. (Of course, by the time I graduated, DEC was in the crapper and wasn't hiring anyone!)
I agree. For a lot of women, they've wanted and dreamed of a nice engagement ring since they were kids. Getting that diamond ring is a sort of validation for some women.
Is this misplaced desire, partly formed by marketing hype and peer pressure? Yes. But so is my lust for say, a new BMW 5-series, or even the latest 2.6 GHz Pentium.
I spent a bunch on my wife's rock, which felt to me like 'wasted' money, but I have to say it's made her happy. Before you say she's all about the money though... she really isn't very materialistic at all, but getting that nice diamond really meant something to her. When the time came to spend money of other things, such as our wedding plans, or even when I ask her what she wants for a birthday gift, she is quite economical.
Beyond that, though, I also guess that over the course of our marriage, I'll probably spend ten times more on computer upgrades and other "toys" for myself (that she could care less about) as I will on jewelry for her (that I could care less about), so I guess I can't really complain! Probably it'd be the same for many other people here...I think that's something most of the techno-geeks here should keep in mind.
We consumers think of Sony as a consumer electronics company, but Sony's number one priority is use its consumer electronics division to protect its movie and music division's profits. Sony will be at the forefront of any scheme to enforce DRM in your stereos and dvd players.
Off topic aside: Heya PK! Cool seeing you here! What's new?
I'm not quite as cynical about cops in general as that, but I did have a similar experience:
My apartment had been robbed by the previous (scumbag) tennant, which I know because 1) my door was locked when I got home, so the thief had a key, 2) the apt manager had just informed me the day before that they were going to change my locks becasue they never changed them when I moved in, and 3) my neighbor's kids SAW the previous tennant outside my apartment that day.
My whole apartment had been rooted through, so I know there were fingerprints everywhere, and I *KNEW* who the thief was, and the cop assigned couldn't be bothered to take fingerprints or track the thief down. I called the cop a few times, and he said they got daily logs from the local pawn shops so they'd spot it if any of my stuff showed up. That's all he was interested in doing.
For those who haven't read PA's early stuff, I'll have to second the comment that prior to the Xanth stuff he could have been considered a serious SF writer.
It's been a long time since I read them, but Battle Circle, Macroscope and the Orn/Omnivore/0X stuff have some interesting notions and are much less juvenile in appeal than much of his later works.
In reference to the comparisons with Heinlein, here's another one: In Heinlein's final works, he had crossed over and become a Dirty Old Man, with things like "cross-time incest". Starting probably at the time of "Firefly", PA has been following in Heinlein's footsteps with things like pedophilia.
I'm using the Linux version of the AGSattelite [audiogalaxy.com] and have no spyware whatsoever. Sheesh. When will people learn?
Did you even read the articles? First of all, there's nothing that would have prevented the linux version of AG from camoflaging a nasty VX2-equivalent spyware addon for mozilla inside the install of a relatively innocent bundled companion program (such as onflow), if someone had bothered to write those programs for linux.
And nothing in AG's EULA says anything at install time about VX2 monitoring browser info or your hard disks' files - how is even a semi-competent user to know what potential harm it could do?
This isn't an issue about "open source vs windoze" or even "stupid users never learn", *yawn*. The big story here that Michael seems to have totally missed is that unlike other spyware that is mostly just a mild concern because it just tracks URL's, this spyware sucks personal info out of submitted form data and off your hard disk, using your web browser to transmit it, thus bypassing security measures like a firewall.
Combine this with the fact the software can auto-install updates to itself or even other third-party software, and the fact that the company behind VX2 is extremely shady and mysterious and apparently the founder is mixed up in credit card fraud, and it's apparent that this is no longer just an issue of marketers tracking your browsing. This has trasncended to the next level and is a major fraud threat to anyone unfortunate enough to have been infected. *That* is why I pestered slashdot to cover this story.
Up until know, I thought of spyware as annoying and something to be avoided, but had never seen it as a real threat of any sort, and never really paid all that much attention to privacy issues, but VX2 has gone far beyond that. I'm a sophisticated Windows/Linux/Solaris user, have read/. for years, and still had never imagined that spyware bundled by a fairly-legitimate software company would ever dare go to such lengths to steal your data or be tied to such shady operators. People need to be made aware of the enormous potential for abuse here.
Feel free to turn your nose up and sniff that linux doesn't have these problems, but does that mean that we should stand by a let the less informed users get screwed? I'm disappointed by the self-righteousness of some people here (including Michael) and hope that Slashdot wakes about about what is newsworthy. (Consider that I submitted this on Monday, and it languished until Saturday, while news about some anime movie releases showed up on Thursday and an article on game maker Bioware on Friday. What seems more newsworthy?) We have to nip this stuff while it's still in the bud, whether it's linux based or not.
> Personally, I'm glad to see application-specific enhancements. This whole thing is wildly overblown.
Unfortunately, the "enhancement" the hack adds to frame rate will be unnoticeable for almost all players (can you really tell between 107 and 125 FPS?), but the cost to image quality IS noticable. This is no benefit to Quake players - almost everyone would rather have 105 FPS with a sharp picture over 120 FPS with a blurry one. So who benefits? Only ATI does, because everyone uses the Q3 numbers as a benchmark against other video cards.
To reiterate:
If a Q3 player wants to sacrifice image quality for a higher frame rate, *they can use in-game controls to do that themselves*. There is absolutely no benefit to the user to override and reduce the user's image quality selection in order to provide a frame rate increase in that game.
Was reducing image quality to increase performance in select apps discussed as part of the name checking discussion? (See the firingsquad article for good details on this).
What do you think of the ATI press release that says that in fact ATI's driver -DOES- do application-specific optimizations (after previous denials it does not? (See press relase at Hard|OCP). Should that make us lean towards the "management insanity" choice?
ATI's "enhancement" actually does increase the games frame rate, as stated, but 18% or so. Is that noticable when you get over 100FPS anyway? Not really, in terms of actually playing Quake 3. But it's very important if you're using the frame rate as a benchamark against competing cards, and that's a big reason why people are dubious about ATI's intentions in doing the hack. Running the benchmarks on a low-power CPU would reduce the framrates, but most likely would have the CPU as a bottleneck so you'd see very little performance difference.
Re:Matrox is Catching Up In The Driver Idiocy Wars
on
ATi Radeon 8500
·
· Score: 1
I gotta agree. Stay away from Matrox.
Here's how Matrox screwed me:
A few years back I bought a top-of-the-line, just-unveiled Matrox card (I'm talking a $450 card here). 10 months later, they had stopped all new driver support for it. They had never bothered getting MS Windows cerification for their final relase of the driver, so it didn't work right with DirectX or any newly released games, so the card was obsolete less than a year after I bought it due to Matrox's lack of support for their products. I'll never buy anything from them again.
A lot of people here seem to think nvidia is the evil mega-corp, but I gotta say that the card I replaced the above card with was a (relatively far cheaper) Riva TNT, and now, almost 3-4 years (and 3-5 product generations) later, the latest nVidia drivers *STILL* support my card. Now that's standing behind your product.
"I love it when a hardware company decides to lift their embargo and all the "independent" reviewers dutifully follow the herd."
I don't get why this is a problem... If a hw company wants to orchestrate its product announcement by giving out pre-release review boards on the condition of NDA until the announcement date, I think that's totally legit. Shouldn't hw review sites cover new hw announcements? How does that make them sheep?
Slashdot Mirror
I love the 9/80 schedule that my employer has. The off Friday is really useful to get all those business hour things done that normally you'd need to take time off for, like having a repairman come or doctor's visits. And one less commute per two weeks is also great. Officially, my employer oddly does not allow flex time so everyone is supposed to work the same set hours, but I have never seen this enforced at all.
The extra hour per day makes for a longer day (so you have to go in earlier or stay at work later), and if you have an unproductive day for some reason, more time is wasted. I see my kids a bit less in the evening because of this, which is one big downside.
Coming here, I was skeptical that the "off friday" would really be a day off, and if I'd be expected to regularly work that day. But it is treated as a day off, and most people do not work it. On a crunch effort, people might work it, but that's rare, not "mandatory", and usually paid overtime would be available for that. And even if paid OT isn't available and you want to work a Friday, unpaid overtime is credited against any absent/sick time you take off.
Sony is more than the distributor here. They are not Walmart selling the rootkit DRM to customers. Sony *contracted* those guys to create the DRM to their specifications, which almost certainly included requirements along the lines of "prevent users from disabling or removing the DRM or working around it". Surest solution: rootkit. It was probably pitched to Sony as "security features being embedded in the Windows kernel to prevent user tampering".
And I sincerely doubt, based on Sony's comments at the time, that Sony would have cared at that point if they had been told it was a "rootkit" and some users would be offended. I'm guessing that if there wasn't also the exploitable hole that made it a real security breach and made the story explode, the story would have blown over and Sony might still be using the crap.
So Sony might not be suing because it's rootkit software, but because it's a rootkit that leaves Sony open to being sued by anyone that got hacked. IOW, not that it's sleazy software, but that it's poorly made sleazy software. Yeah, Sony, that'll really be a PR boost for you.
B5 has my vote for best SF series.
Yes, that's exactly what I said when I read that crud about a license. With that reasoning, libraries will all be shut down for massive copyright violations. Mainstream media either ignorantly or willfully promotes this crap.
Damn, we need to find some politicians who aren't clueless about this stuff or in the back pocket of the entertainment companies.
There used to be a great site called r3mix.net, which, IIRC, did some spectral analysis on some of the assorted compression algorithms (trying various different options for them). It was focused on the LAME mp3 encoder, but also looked at a few others.
They also had some great forums for info on music ripping/preferred encoding methods/CD burning/etc.
Now, that URL goes to some lame "sponsored mp3 links" site.
Anyone know why r3mix.net died and if there's any new site that makes a good replacement?
>How can it possibly be a bad thing if somebody makes the worst possible movie about an aasimov story....
Easy. It can be bad because the bad movie prevents the possibility of a GOOD movie being made out of the story... No one is going to do a (good) remake Judge Dredd anytime soon. JD fans had that *one* shot at having a good movie made and it failed. So now most likely there will never be a good JD movie.
And the same goes for I, Robot. If they botch it up into a "Wild, Wild West" jokey mess, fans of the book will never get to see a worthy version of it on film.
Not to mention the fact that a bad movie can turn an excellent book/comic/etc into a laughingstock.
In general, it's much worse for fans to have a bad movie made from their book than it is to have no movie made.
If Roddenberry was gay, he sure had a funny way of showing it, being married to Majel Barrett and all...
Despite the ads, they don't dare let him near the Priceline.com Supercomputer:
He might let slip one of his powerful logical paradox bombs and cause it to self destruct! (ie: "This statement is a lie", or "This is not my real hair".)
I guess you can argue that the spyware subsidizes the costs in some marginal way, but I'd say that it is a direct negative against the functionality/better point, and note that plenty of other cable ISP's in general likely provide similar quality/cost service sans spyware.
Most broadband services arguably provide exactly that, or something close to it. The *only* issue is the sneaky spyware installation. As I see it, your analogy just doesn't apply here. The spyware is not a trade off; it has almost no merit to be considered on the faster/better/cheaper spectrum.
There's another angle to this for MS...
MS hires a LOT of Waterloo grads. It's almost like a farm system for new hires for them.
Getting the school to teach MS products is a logical step to better prep them to work at MS.
This is nothing new... DEC donated TONS of cash and computers to my school (UMass Amherst) and was instrumental in getting the Computer Systems Engineering degree program started in the late 70's, because they wanted to have a good source of engineers to hire. (Of course, by the time I graduated, DEC was in the crapper and wasn't hiring anyone!)
I agree. For a lot of women, they've wanted and dreamed of a nice engagement ring since they were kids. Getting that diamond ring is a sort of validation for some women.
Is this misplaced desire, partly formed by marketing hype and peer pressure? Yes. But so is my lust for say, a new BMW 5-series, or even the latest 2.6 GHz Pentium.
I spent a bunch on my wife's rock, which felt to me like 'wasted' money, but I have to say it's made her happy. Before you say she's all about the money though... she really isn't very materialistic at all, but getting that nice diamond really meant something to her. When the time came to spend money of other things, such as our wedding plans, or even when I ask her what she wants for a birthday gift, she is quite economical.
Beyond that, though, I also guess that over the course of our marriage, I'll probably spend ten times more on computer upgrades and other "toys" for myself (that she could care less about) as I will on jewelry for her (that I could care less about), so I guess I can't really complain! Probably it'd be the same for many other people here...I think that's something most of the techno-geeks here should keep in mind.
We consumers think of Sony as a consumer electronics company, but Sony's number one priority is use its consumer electronics division to protect its movie and music division's profits. Sony will be at the forefront of any scheme to enforce DRM in your stereos and dvd players.
Off topic aside: Heya PK! Cool seeing you here! What's new?
Take an 80 ounce cup, fill it halfway (or more) with ice, and viola! A 40 oz cold drink. I can easily drink that much in one go.
Honestly, though - Is a story whining about the disappearance of 8 oz coffee cups really worthy of Slashdot? Why am I even posting here?
I'm not quite as cynical about cops in general as that, but I did have a similar experience:
My apartment had been robbed by the previous (scumbag) tennant, which I know because 1) my door was locked when I got home, so the thief had a key, 2) the apt manager had just informed me the day before that they were going to change my locks becasue they never changed them when I moved in, and 3) my neighbor's kids SAW the previous tennant outside my apartment that day.
My whole apartment had been rooted through, so I know there were fingerprints everywhere, and I *KNEW* who the thief was, and the cop assigned couldn't be bothered to take fingerprints or track the thief down. I called the cop a few times, and he said they got daily logs from the local pawn shops so they'd spot it if any of my stuff showed up. That's all he was interested in doing.
While it's $14/month, if you look on the actual io site, it's $140 per year (bulk discount, I guess), so he's correct.
It's been a long time since I read them, but Battle Circle, Macroscope and the Orn/Omnivore/0X stuff have some interesting notions and are much less juvenile in appeal than much of his later works.
In reference to the comparisons with Heinlein, here's another one:
In Heinlein's final works, he had crossed over and become a Dirty Old Man, with things like "cross-time incest". Starting probably at the time of "Firefly", PA has been following in Heinlein's footsteps with things like pedophilia.
This isn't an issue about "open source vs windoze" or even "stupid users never learn", *yawn*. The big story here that Michael seems to have totally missed is that unlike other spyware that is mostly just a mild concern because it just tracks URL's, this spyware sucks personal info out of submitted form data and off your hard disk, using your web browser to transmit it, thus bypassing security measures like a firewall.
Combine this with the fact the software can auto-install updates to itself or even other third-party software, and the fact that the company behind VX2 is extremely shady and mysterious and apparently the founder is mixed up in credit card fraud, and it's apparent that this is no longer just an issue of marketers tracking your browsing. This has trasncended to the next level and is a major fraud threat to anyone unfortunate enough to have been infected. *That* is why I pestered slashdot to cover this story.
Up until know, I thought of spyware as annoying and something to be avoided, but had never seen it as a real threat of any sort, and never really paid all that much attention to privacy issues, but VX2 has gone far beyond that. I'm a sophisticated Windows/Linux/Solaris user, have read /. for years, and still had never imagined that spyware bundled by a fairly-legitimate software company would ever dare go to such lengths to steal your data or be tied to such shady operators. People need to be made aware of the enormous potential for abuse here.
Feel free to turn your nose up and sniff that linux doesn't have these problems, but does that mean that we should stand by a let the less informed users get screwed? I'm disappointed by the self-righteousness of some people here (including Michael) and hope that Slashdot wakes about about what is newsworthy. (Consider that I submitted this on Monday, and it languished until Saturday, while news about some anime movie releases showed up on Thursday and an article on game maker Bioware on Friday. What seems more newsworthy?) We have to nip this stuff while it's still in the bud, whether it's linux based or not.
> Personally, I'm glad to see application-specific enhancements. This whole thing is wildly overblown.
Unfortunately, the "enhancement" the hack adds to frame rate will be unnoticeable for almost all players (can you really tell between 107 and 125 FPS?), but the cost to image quality IS noticable. This is no benefit to Quake players - almost everyone would rather have 105 FPS with a sharp picture over 120 FPS with a blurry one. So who benefits? Only ATI does, because everyone uses the Q3 numbers as a benchmark against other video cards.
To reiterate:
If a Q3 player wants to sacrifice image quality for a higher frame rate, *they can use in-game controls to do that themselves*. There is absolutely no benefit to the user to override and reduce the user's image quality selection in order to provide a frame rate increase in that game.
Galahad, this is very interesting...
Was reducing image quality to increase performance in select apps discussed as part of the name checking discussion? (See the firingsquad article for good details on this).
What do you think of the ATI press release that says that in fact ATI's driver -DOES- do application-specific optimizations (after previous denials it does not? (See press relase at Hard|OCP). Should that make us lean towards the "management insanity" choice?
Did you read the whole article?
ATI's "enhancement" actually does increase the games frame rate, as stated, but 18% or so. Is that noticable when you get over 100FPS anyway? Not really, in terms of actually playing Quake 3. But it's very important if you're using the frame rate as a benchamark against competing cards, and that's a big reason why people are dubious about ATI's intentions in doing the hack. Running the benchmarks on a low-power CPU would reduce the framrates, but most likely would have the CPU as a bottleneck so you'd see very little performance difference.
I gotta agree. Stay away from Matrox.
Here's how Matrox screwed me:
A few years back I bought a top-of-the-line, just-unveiled Matrox card (I'm talking a $450 card here). 10 months later, they had stopped all new driver support for it. They had never bothered getting MS Windows cerification for their final relase of the driver, so it didn't work right with DirectX or any newly released games, so the card was obsolete less than a year after I bought it due to Matrox's lack of support for their products. I'll never buy anything from them again.
A lot of people here seem to think nvidia is the evil mega-corp, but I gotta say that the card I replaced the above card with was a (relatively far cheaper) Riva TNT, and now, almost 3-4 years (and 3-5 product generations) later, the latest nVidia drivers *STILL* support my card. Now that's standing behind your product.
"I love it when a hardware company decides to lift their embargo and all the "independent" reviewers dutifully follow the herd."
I don't get why this is a problem... If a hw company wants to orchestrate its product announcement by giving out pre-release review boards on the condition of NDA until the announcement date, I think that's totally legit. Shouldn't hw review sites cover new hw announcements? How does that make them sheep?