... that they can fit more chips on a wafer. Which means that the price per chip is reduced. That's the REAL reason for die shrinks and moving to processes with smaller feature sizes.
Not that cheaper PPC970s are a bad thing, mind you...
"So if the record companies aren't paying for advances and the artist foots the bill for everything then what does the record company do again? I understand the want of simplicity but if this situation comes to fruition where does the record company come in? Advertisement? Is that not considered an advance?"
The record company actually lends the artists the money for almost everything -- recording, promotion, tour support. It's called an "advance" because it's money up front -- an investment, if you will (although actually a loan) -- before sales start (hopefully) rolling in.
The concept is that your basic rock-band-in-a-van doesn't have the resources to spend $100K to record a major-label record, nor do they have the resources to pay off the "independent promoters" who get the music played on Clear Channel stations. And so forth.
So, rather than go to the bank and ask for a $500K loan to do all of the above, the record company is "the bank." Imagine what your local bank's respose would be if YOU asked them for 500 large, with no collateral, and a 95% chance of default!
Having said all of that, I can think of a dozen bands who have decided that the major label deal is just plain wrong:
Rather than spending $100K to record a record with a Big Name Producer at a Big Name Studio (and it's probably mixed by a different Big Name Mixer, and mastered by Yet Another Big Name), they do it at one of the hundred or so smaller studios for a tenth of the price -- with pretty much the same (or better!) results.
Since the upfront costs are so low, the band recoups them from sales fairly quickly, and selling 50K copies of an indie record actually makes more money for the artist than selling 500K on a major.
Rather than getting that big tour bus, they continue to tour in vans. Rather than hiring fifteen roadies, they hire a soundman who doubles as tour manager, and perhaps bring one backline person. This means that the band doesn't have to take tour support money from the label; they should be able to finance the tour from its proceeds. Yeah, nobody's getting rich, but nobody's going home in debt because of the tour support! The tour support money really goes into living the "rock star lifestyle," which means "spend spend spend," and you wonder why those royalty checks never arrive.
Anyways, the van-tour thing works well up until the point that a band is playing venues where they have to provide their own production, but at that point the money from ticket sales is there for all of that.
Go read some history, ( mainly look into the meaning of militia, and what 'well regulated' meant in the time of the framers), then my journal.. then you may ask a question.
OK, so why aren't all of you fucking gun nuts out here doing something about the government that is eroding your civil rights on an hourly basis?
In other words, when does the revolution start? Or all you all pussies?
My solution to the whole "discount" card problem is simple.
When I filled out the application, I simply used "George W. Bush" for my name, and "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, DC 20020" as my address. The store person didn't even look at the name and address on the form -- she just gave me the card. You can bet that she didn't even care -- and why should she?
It's somewhat funny when the cashier says, "Thanks for shopping at Supermarket, Mr. Bush. Especially after buying a case of beer and bottles of vodka and tequila!
"... justify this to the stockholders by pretending this is just all part of some long-term plan they have whereby the NEXT version of your media player..."
Ahhhh, so they're going to develop this for the old NeXT workstations? I thought Apple bought NeXT...
Have I tried Eagle? Yeah -- and hated it. The most important part of any schematic capture/PCB package is how it handles libraries, and Eagle's library mechanism really sucks. Plus, I didn't think much of its schematic capture.
I use Ultiboard and PCAD on a regular basis. PCAD is much better (it should be, 'cause it's 10x the price), but Ultiboard and the inexpensive schematic capture, Ulticap, actually work fine. For analog simulation, I use WinSpice3, so I have no need for PSpice, MultiSim, or any of that.
"His point is that business people need to run a business, but that most open source programmers are writing stuff for programmers."
Right! What's needed are high-quality engineering applications that run on Linux. In fact, I don't care if the software is free (as in beer) or not, nor do I care if I can get the sources. OK, so maybe that goes against the open-source orthodoxy, but I have work to do, and I'm really not against anyone making a living from their work.
I'd like PCAD (or even Electronics Workbench) for Linux, so I can do real schematic capture and PCB layout. (All of the open-source schematic/PCB tools just suck, IMNSHO.) I'd like Xilinx, Altera, Lattice and QuickLogic to release Linux versions of their FPGA place-and-route tools.
Todd, "Like we were in the mid-to-late 80s, when dongles and copy-protection schemes abounded? Oh, I forgot, legitimate customers refused to buy the protected software because the copy-protection measures were more hassle than the software was worth, and those measures died out.:)"
Except in the area of electronic design automation software.
All of it -- FPGA synthesis, Verilog/VHDL simulation, high-end PCB layout, signal integrity tools, you name it -- is "protected" by FlexLM.
And it's a goddamn nightmare. A new version of the synthesis tool is available, so I download and install it. Unfortunately, it ALSO requires a new version of the fucking license daemon.
Sometimes I think I spend more time dealing with license files and FlexLM than I do actually designing electronics.:(
Also, a.pif is that goofy file Microsoft created so you could give DOS programs running under Windows 3.1 their own environment.
Seems to me that pretty much any.pif file remaining these days is bad and oughta be deleted. Maybe MS will remove.pif support at some point in the future? I mean, who's still running 16-bit DOS apps? and why?
"If there has been no infringement then logically there would be no need for this fund as, again logically, it could be demonstrated in every court that Linux doesn't contain any SCO material."
You still need $$$ to pay the lawyers so you can "demonstrate in every court."
OK, sure, it's just a movie. But how many of you stood up in the theatre and yelled BULLSHIT! at the beginning of Armageddon, that excreble Bruce Willis vehicle about the comet-that-would-destroy-Earth?
You remember the scene: the astronaut was doing a spacewalk from the Space Shuttle to a satellite, and the satellite had a CPU card on an extender (looked like VME to me), and the dude was swapping out a CPU that was installed in a goddamn ZIF socket! This was so wrong in so many ways that I lost count.
And the movie went downhill from there.
I'll admit that Deep Impact had similar, but not as bad, problems with reality. Like the scene at the observatory, which was obviously meant to be Kitt Peak outside Tucson. Let's see: for starters, the observers -- and their computers and other stuff -- are not out in the main floor as the telescope, they're in the control room. Second, nobody delivers pizza to the top of the mountain at night, because the access road is closed. (Plus, I asked the folks at Brooklyn Pizza here in Tucson, and they said, "uh, no.")
Another fault with that scene was with the delivery truck driving up the mountain? First of all, the only vehicles driving up the mountain at that time of night are Kitt Peak vehicles, and not some janitor service or whatever -- the truck would be going up there for a specific reason, and the driver wouldn't be falling asleep. Also, the truck's lights would be OFF.
The fact is, the movies stunk without these faults. These faults just made things worse!
Someone please do Roger Zelazny's "Creatures Of Light And Darkness". Now that would be a trippy miniseries, although the religious types would not be very pleased with the ending.
Anything you can do to piss off the Religious Right is a Good Thing.
All this will do is destroy the car dealerships in and around Portland, since everyone will just cross the river to Vancouver to buy cars that don't have these idiotic devices on them.
Jeez -- you need to learn how to think things through! The state would require the box to be installed as a condition of registering the car.
And, of course your response to that is, "Well, I'll just register the car in Washington State."
All well and good, assuming can you do so, but remember that every state has laws about cars that are registered out-of-state but garaged in-state. Basically, you're fscked no matter what you do.
Not really. I have a shelf-full of indie/punk 7" 45rpm singles at home. Some of 'em cost about a buck, but many were actually more: $2.50 to $4.00 wasn't uncommon.
I might point out that a few of them are worth $25 a piece.
This only proves that downloadable music is going to destroy the record-collector-scum market.
This presupposes that the IRS actually understands the tax code. The US tax code is far too complicated for programmers on a government scale to understand.
What the hell makes you think that private companies like Intuit have any better insight into the tax codes than the IRS?
Besides, the programmers (whether gov't or private industry) simply implement what they're told to do by the architects, whose job it is to design the software. The programmers really don't need to understand the tax codes -- they DO need to understand the specs they're given.
Studies show that the people on the IRS help lines get a good percentage of questions wrong.
Not my experience at all. Every time I've called the IRS with small-business tax questions, the questions were answered immediately and correctly. Yes, I had my accountant check my work.
( $money - $tax_bracket_cutoff_amount) * $tax_percentage = $tax
Subtract the amount you paid from the amount you owe. But somewhere in there you need to subtract the taxes you paid to your state, etc. Its really quite simple.
I'm glad you can file a 1040-EZ, where what you say is entirely true.
But in many cases, "the amount you owe" is not a simple calculation. Depending on your situation, you may be able to deduct your mortgage interest, various other expenses relating to business activities, and other things.
Then, of course, if you are 1099ed, you have to add that income to your gross, and you'll may to pay additional Social Security and Medicare because of the 1099ed income.
One story earlier this year was that they had sold something like 5 million copies of their software but something like 8 million people used it to file online - that kinda sorta warrants better DRM on the 1:1 license side, but sounds like they're stepping on their disks when it comes to managing that part of it...
I thought that you could do as many tax returns as you wished with your copy of TurboTax, as long as it was installed on one computer. I can easily imagine someone doing his tax returns, the returns for his kids and the return for his mother. All of this is kosher.
At least, this was the case when last I used TurboTax, which was a couple of years ago. I've had to have an accountant do my returns.
Slashdot Mirror
Does your sig:
void main()
{
printf "Jorkapp is a Programmer";
main();
}
actually compile???
... that they can fit more chips on a wafer. Which means that the price per chip is reduced. That's the REAL reason for die shrinks and moving to processes with smaller feature sizes.
Not that cheaper PPC970s are a bad thing, mind you...
"So if the record companies aren't paying for advances and the artist foots the bill for everything then what does the record company do again? I understand the want of simplicity but if this situation comes to fruition where does the record company come in? Advertisement? Is that not considered an advance?"
The record company actually lends the artists the money for almost everything -- recording, promotion, tour support. It's called an "advance" because it's money up front -- an investment, if you will (although actually a loan) -- before sales start (hopefully) rolling in.
The concept is that your basic rock-band-in-a-van doesn't have the resources to spend $100K to record a major-label record, nor do they have the resources to pay off the "independent promoters" who get the music played on Clear Channel stations. And so forth.
So, rather than go to the bank and ask for a $500K loan to do all of the above, the record company is "the bank." Imagine what your local bank's respose would be if YOU asked them for 500 large, with no collateral, and a 95% chance of default!
Having said all of that, I can think of a dozen bands who have decided that the major label deal is just plain wrong:
Rather than spending $100K to record a record with a Big Name Producer at a Big Name Studio (and it's probably mixed by a different Big Name Mixer, and mastered by Yet Another Big Name), they do it at one of the hundred or so smaller studios for a tenth of the price -- with pretty much the same (or better!) results.
Since the upfront costs are so low, the band recoups them from sales fairly quickly, and selling 50K copies of an indie record actually makes more money for the artist than selling 500K on a major.
Rather than getting that big tour bus, they continue to tour in vans. Rather than hiring fifteen roadies, they hire a soundman who doubles as tour manager, and perhaps bring one backline person. This means that the band doesn't have to take tour support money from the label; they should be able to finance the tour from its proceeds. Yeah, nobody's getting rich, but nobody's going home in debt because of the tour support! The tour support money really goes into living the "rock star lifestyle," which means "spend spend spend," and you wonder why those royalty checks never arrive.
Anyways, the van-tour thing works well up until the point that a band is playing venues where they have to provide their own production, but at that point the money from ticket sales is there for all of that.
Go read some history, ( mainly look into the meaning of militia, and what 'well regulated' meant in the time of the framers), then my journal.. then you may ask a question.
OK, so why aren't all of you fucking gun nuts out here doing something about the government that is eroding your civil rights on an hourly basis?
In other words, when does the revolution start? Or all you all pussies?
nurb: "What part of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" do you not understand ----
What part of "well-regulated militia" do you not understand?
My solution to the whole "discount" card problem is simple.
When I filled out the application, I simply used "George W. Bush" for my name, and "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, DC 20020" as my address. The store person didn't even look at the name and address on the form -- she just gave me the card. You can bet that she didn't even care -- and why should she?
It's somewhat funny when the cashier says, "Thanks for shopping at Supermarket, Mr. Bush. Especially after buying a case of beer and bottles of vodka and tequila!
"... justify this to the stockholders by pretending this is just all part of some long-term plan they have whereby the NEXT version of your media player..."
Ahhhh, so they're going to develop this for the old NeXT workstations? I thought Apple bought NeXT...
A better way to end the Oil Age is not for government to promote alternatives, but for government to stop promoting oil.
Like that will happen, what with the current administration full of people -- from Dubya himself on down -- from the oil industry.
Have I tried Eagle? Yeah -- and hated it. The most important part of any schematic capture/PCB package is how it handles libraries, and Eagle's library mechanism really sucks. Plus, I didn't think much of its schematic capture.
I use Ultiboard and PCAD on a regular basis. PCAD is much better (it should be, 'cause it's 10x the price), but Ultiboard and the inexpensive schematic capture, Ulticap, actually work fine. For analog simulation, I use WinSpice3, so I have no need for PSpice, MultiSim, or any of that.
Hey, I *do* support the Free Software Movement. And I'm still waiting for open-source EDA tools that don't suck.
"His point is that business people need to run a business, but that most open source programmers are writing stuff for programmers."
Right! What's needed are high-quality engineering applications that run on Linux. In fact, I don't care if the software is free (as in beer) or not, nor do I care if I can get the sources. OK, so maybe that goes against the open-source orthodoxy, but I have work to do, and I'm really not against anyone making a living from their work.
I'd like PCAD (or even Electronics Workbench) for Linux, so I can do real schematic capture and PCB layout. (All of the open-source schematic/PCB tools just suck, IMNSHO.) I'd like Xilinx, Altera, Lattice and QuickLogic to release Linux versions of their FPGA place-and-route tools.
Todd, "Like we were in the mid-to-late 80s, when dongles and copy-protection schemes abounded? Oh, I forgot, legitimate customers refused to buy the protected software because the copy-protection measures were more hassle than the software was worth, and those measures died out. :)"
Except in the area of electronic design automation software.
All of it -- FPGA synthesis, Verilog/VHDL simulation, high-end PCB layout, signal integrity tools, you name it -- is "protected" by FlexLM.
And it's a goddamn nightmare. A new version of the synthesis tool is available, so I download and install it. Unfortunately, it ALSO requires a new version of the fucking license daemon.
Sometimes I think I spend more time dealing with license files and FlexLM than I do actually designing electronics. :(
Also, a .pif is that goofy file Microsoft created so you could give DOS programs running under Windows 3.1 their own environment.
Seems to me that pretty much any .pif file remaining these days is bad and oughta be deleted. Maybe MS will remove .pif support at some point in the future? I mean, who's still running 16-bit DOS apps? and why?
"If there has been no infringement then logically there would be no need for this fund as, again logically, it could be demonstrated in every court that Linux doesn't contain any SCO material."
You still need $$$ to pay the lawyers so you can "demonstrate in every court."
OK, sure, it's just a movie. But how many of you stood up in the theatre and yelled BULLSHIT! at the beginning of Armageddon, that excreble Bruce Willis vehicle about the comet-that-would-destroy-Earth?
You remember the scene: the astronaut was doing a spacewalk from the Space Shuttle to a satellite, and the satellite had a CPU card on an extender (looked like VME to me), and the dude was swapping out a CPU that was installed in a goddamn ZIF socket! This was so wrong in so many ways that I lost count.
And the movie went downhill from there.
I'll admit that Deep Impact had similar, but not as bad, problems with reality. Like the scene at the observatory, which was obviously meant to be Kitt Peak outside Tucson. Let's see: for starters, the observers -- and their computers and other stuff -- are not out in the main floor as the telescope, they're in the control room. Second, nobody delivers pizza to the top of the mountain at night, because the access road is closed. (Plus, I asked the folks at Brooklyn Pizza here in Tucson, and they said, "uh, no.")
Another fault with that scene was with the delivery truck driving up the mountain? First of all, the only vehicles driving up the mountain at that time of night are Kitt Peak vehicles, and not some janitor service or whatever -- the truck would be going up there for a specific reason, and the driver wouldn't be falling asleep. Also, the truck's lights would be OFF.
The fact is, the movies stunk without these faults. These faults just made things worse!
his is just one more step down the road, and if you think Bush is at the lead you are wrong. Just as in Nazi Germany, the mob ruled.
Listen, fuckhead: the mob was incited. That's Bush's job, ably supported by the right-wing media cabal.
Someone please do Roger Zelazny's "Creatures Of Light And Darkness". Now that would be a trippy miniseries, although the religious types would not be very pleased with the ending.
Anything you can do to piss off the Religious Right is a Good Thing.
pclminion:
All this will do is destroy the car dealerships in and around Portland, since everyone will just cross the river to Vancouver to buy cars that don't have these idiotic devices on them.
Jeez -- you need to learn how to think things through! The state would require the box to be installed as a condition of registering the car.
And, of course your response to that is, "Well, I'll just register the car in Washington State."
All well and good, assuming can you do so, but remember that every state has laws about cars that are registered out-of-state but garaged in-state. Basically, you're fscked no matter what you do.
Jeeziz, you fuckwit, didn't you read any of the grammar posts?
"... many Senators privately concede that Rome's reach has now exceeded it's grasp.
"exceeded it is grasp?" Watch those damnable apostrophes!
... opiate of the masses. 'nuff said.
I'm sorry, 99 cents a song is absurd.
Not really. I have a shelf-full of indie/punk 7" 45rpm singles at home. Some of 'em cost about a buck, but many were actually more: $2.50 to $4.00 wasn't uncommon.
I might point out that a few of them are worth $25 a piece.
This only proves that downloadable music is going to destroy the record-collector-scum market.
...and, of course, 100% of people who eat cheese will die.
Milo:
This presupposes that the IRS actually understands the tax code. The US tax code is far too complicated for programmers on a government scale to understand.
What the hell makes you think that private companies like Intuit have any better insight into the tax codes than the IRS?
Besides, the programmers (whether gov't or private industry) simply implement what they're told to do by the architects, whose job it is to design the software. The programmers really don't need to understand the tax codes -- they DO need to understand the specs they're given.
Studies show that the people on the IRS help lines get a good percentage of questions wrong.
Not my experience at all. Every time I've called the IRS with small-business tax questions, the questions were answered immediately and correctly. Yes, I had my accountant check my work.
Cyno,
( $money - $tax_bracket_cutoff_amount) * $tax_percentage = $tax Subtract the amount you paid from the amount you owe. But somewhere in there you need to subtract the taxes you paid to your state, etc. Its really quite simple.
I'm glad you can file a 1040-EZ, where what you say is entirely true.
But in many cases, "the amount you owe" is not a simple calculation. Depending on your situation, you may be able to deduct your mortgage interest, various other expenses relating to business activities, and other things.
Then, of course, if you are 1099ed, you have to add that income to your gross, and you'll may to pay additional Social Security and Medicare because of the 1099ed income.
One story earlier this year was that they had sold something like 5 million copies of their software but something like 8 million people used it to file online - that kinda sorta warrants better DRM on the 1:1 license side, but sounds like they're stepping on their disks when it comes to managing that part of it...
I thought that you could do as many tax returns as you wished with your copy of TurboTax, as long as it was installed on one computer. I can easily imagine someone doing his tax returns, the returns for his kids and the return for his mother. All of this is kosher.
At least, this was the case when last I used TurboTax, which was a couple of years ago. I've had to have an accountant do my returns.