I understand your frustration with moderation abuse. But it certainly seems to me that a reasonable moderator could, in a story about the N-Prize, consider a question about the rules on topic and a rant about the Federal reserve offtopic.
If they do understand it, it scares them. I once killed a job interview by noting that my last project had been going so well, that we had operatd for six months without a manager, and shipped ahead of schedule. The developer in the room nodded and smiled. But the Jr. V.P. got icy. She had been quite friendly up to that point. And I knew I had popped the ego of the person who was going to decide whether to hire me.
IIRC, one of the collections of "Great Books" Ii saw, justified leaving out the bible on the premise that nearly every American hous would have one. 'Course this was a set from the 50s, I believe. It probably wasn't terribly correct then.
True. Mormons, although they believe in Jesus, believe they can become Gods. This is completely against Christianity and Judaism, as it is in fact the original sin. The original sin was man going against God thinking, somewhat foolishly, that his own way was better than anything the Creator could do. Believing that one could become a god is one way of saying to God "I want to do things my own way".
Not exactly, We (speaking as a Latter Day Saint) believe that we can become Gods by conforming so closely to God's will that we become indestingushable from him.
Not that I want to argue with you about what "Christianity" is . You seem to have a much narower view than most. I tend to lump anyone who professes a belief in Jesus as Chritian, whether I agree with them in all theological particulars or not.
I haven't seen any reduction of the strong central govornment in the last six years.
I'd say both sides are about equaly guilty in that regard. with minor variations in flavor.
I've always thought that someone could leverage that fact against Microsoft. And probably make lots of money. The need to beat someone else is so ingrained in both Gates and Balmer, that if you had a strategy based on that flaw, they wouldn't be able to change enough to stop you.
Sorry, the state does this to me all the time. Takes my taxes and gives them to schools, the army, poor people, big corporations that need tax breaks and subsidies. Happens all the time.
Though I doubt that the EU will fund free software with the money (I'm sure they'll find some other need for it). It wouldn't be that different than the recent tobacco setlements, If the states had done what they were supposed to, that is.
>>global mega...blah, blah is a strawman
There are people on slashdot that think that corporations running their lives is even worse than governments running their lives. The grandparent seems to be one of those.
I feel for you. You seem to be, so far, an honest company trying to do business in a field dominated by dishonesty. I applaud you for chasing down people who are illegaly selling stolen software (yes, I said stolen, on Slashdot, and I do have my flame retardant underpants on) It has to be incredibly frustrating to know that your competition is undercutting you because they are dishonestly taking advantage of something they have no legal or ethical right to.
Now a bit of advice: Don't do this. From the tone of your letter, you are trying to do with the name M.A.M.E. the same thing that your dishonest competitors are doing with ROMs. Specificaly, taking something that doesn't belong to you to support your business. Don't go down this path!
I could be wrong. you guys could be the people who wrote MAME, and then it got out of control. But I don't think so. I think you see M.A.M.E. as the facilitator of your dishonest competition and it would be incredibly convinient to declare ownership to stop it.
I'm not saying this because I'm some h4x0r who is upset that you are taking away my cool free stuff. Frankly, if I was, copyrighting the name would mean nothing to me. I'd be just as likely to break a copyright for one word as for a thousand games.
I'm saying this because you don't want to be a crook. You really dont. For your own sake. Look. You didn't write MAME, you didn't come up with the name, or the logo. It doesn't belong to you! Getting some lawyer to tell otherwise doesn't make it any different. You're just doing with lawyers what the ROM traders are doing with email, or ftp, or whatever they are using these days. Taking something that doesn't belong to you because it is to inconvinient to do it otherwise. It's dishonest. If you really have to be dishonest to stay in business, I suggest you get out of this business. Because sooner or later, if you go down that road, even if you get away with it for quite a while, it's going to bite you in the butt.
I don't want to discourage your business, I wouldn't mind an Ultracade myself. And it does make a difference to me that it's legal. I think you ought to keep up pressure on the ROM sellers, and the people who falsely advertise. Even the ones who "advetise" aginst your business by telling hobyists with a nudge and a wink, how they got their illegal roms. I hope you can actualy get some damages from them. Though I know it's hard. That your lawyer bills are probably higher than what you're ever likeley to receive. But then yoe are taking the legal and moral high road. And. please, keep putting out the message that you offer a legal way to get what your competitors are only offering illegaly. I'm all for that.
But if you are going to take something which the copyright legitemately belongs to someone else, you might as well ship a full set of pirated ROMS with the Ultracade. If I'm going to do business with theives, I at least want get the bennifit of it.
Yup, I'd give it -1 Flamebait.
Kudos to the Gates Foundation for what they contribute to the world.
Likewise, Kudos to the OS community for what they contribute to the world.
IANAT, but I'm maried to a teacher.
Private school teachers are pretty much always paid worse than public school teachers. And often worse than McDonalds clerks.
I've seen a few public school teachers take the cut in pay, and the reasons were eiter that in private schools, you get a lot more parent buy-in (litteraly and figuratively) and that makes it much easier to teach, or (in a similar grain) problem students can actualy be kicked out of school, again loweirng teacher stress. I also met one teacher who was a strong believer in a teaching philosophy that had fallen out of favor in the local public schools, and went to a private school that agreed with her philosophy.
I'm going to propose a different idea why teachers get paid less: It's hard for an individual teacher to quantify their financial contribution. Not that they don't make one, but it's hard to put together a peice of paper that shows how much it is. When you think of overpaid professions, you see ones where a person CAN easily demonstrate what they bring in. Tom Cruise, can show haw many more tickets are going to be sold just because his name is on a marquee, so can Bitney Spears and Shaquilie ONeal. CEOs justify their salaries by saying "the company brings in X billion dollars under my leadership, It would be foolish not to give me X/n billion to keep that coming in"
The guy I took my first UNIX class from worked at NASA as a computer operator when he was 15. To hear his side of the story, *he* is the reason why NASA doesn't hire teenagers.
from the dasher site http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/djw30/dasher/ :
With version 3, as with version 1.6, every language requires a text file full of natural writing (about 300K or more); a specification of the alphabet of the language is also required.
It wouldn't be hard at all to make it work for English, as opposed to Americanese, all you have to do is train it on text written with your own preferred idiosyncrasies
My first lan party, if you want to call it that, was playing MIDI Maze on the Atari ST. It was something like what Castle Wolfenstein would look like if it were made for the atari 2600, and instead of an actual lan, the MIDI ports on the computers were daisychained.
I had a good friend at school remark to me that ALL his best programming ideas came to him in the bathroom.
Mine generaly don't. But you couldn't tell that from looking at some of the stuff I've churned out.
I had a friend who was a cop who said that when he went in somewhwere scary and dark he held the flashlight at arms length so that if anyone did shoot they would be a couple of feet off to the right.
In my experience being honest about your mistakes and having the willingness to learn from them always pays off.
Amen, Brother!
Actualy, mine was for $6.8 million. My first year programming I reversed the flag on a particular discount on a billing program. I got to talk on the phone with several vice presidents and then the CEO of a large multinational corporation. That wasn't as much fun as it would have otherwise been.
There is really nothing else to do but admit that you screwed up and do your best to make things better. I wrote the script to pull out the list of people who'd been mischarged as fast as anything I've ever written.
I actualy offered to resign. I think my candor was what kept me on the job. I know I would have immediately fired anyone I caught trying to cover that up.
Sometime later, I got to watch a co-worker even less comfortable than I was explain to similar bigwigs why the phrase "This is bullshit!" whas showing up on their screens. I was happy to learn that lesson secondhand.
As well as the guy, recently hired from the aerospace industry (he quit) who went through 10 million lines of code changing the name every variable that represented a measurement to include the units. "This is the kind of bullshit that flies spacecraft into planets." was all he he had to tell us.
I've never seen anyone fired for an honest mistake that they owned up to. I have seen people get in loads of trouble for covering up stupid stuff, though.
In my experience being honest about your mistakes and having the willingness to learn from them always pays off.
actualy, mine was for $6.8 million. My first year programming I reversed the flag on a particular discount on a billing program. I got to talk on the phone with several vice presidents and then the CEO of a large multinational corporation. That wasn't as much fun as it would have otherwise been. There is really nothing else to do but admit that you screwed up and do your best to make things better. I wrote the script to pull out the list of people who'd been mischarged as fast as anything I've ever written.
I actualy offered to resign. I think my candor was what kept me on the job. I know I would have immediately fired anyone I caught trying to cover that up.
Sometime later, I got to watch a co-worker even less comfortable than I was explain to similar bigwigs why the phrase "This is bullshit!" whas showing up on their screens. I was happy to learn that lesson secondhand. I don't even put curse words in comments or test data.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your frustration with moderation abuse. But it certainly seems to me that a reasonable moderator could, in a story about the N-Prize, consider a question about the rules on topic and a rant about the Federal reserve offtopic.
Yes they have, and last time, Microsoft slaughtered them.
if I could only get number one down....
sounds about ight to me.
If they do understand it, it scares them. I once killed a job interview by noting that my last project had been going so well, that we had operatd for six months without a manager, and shipped ahead of schedule. The developer in the room nodded and smiled. But the Jr. V.P. got icy. She had been quite friendly up to that point. And I knew I had popped the ego of the person who was going to decide whether to hire me.
IIRC, one of the collections of "Great Books" Ii saw, justified leaving out the bible on the premise that nearly every American hous would have one. 'Course this was a set from the 50s, I believe. It probably wasn't terribly correct then.
Indeed it is! I'm going to give it a couple hours to get printed and then google for it.
Not exactly, We (speaking as a Latter Day Saint) believe that we can become Gods by conforming so closely to God's will that we become indestingushable from him. Not that I want to argue with you about what "Christianity" is . You seem to have a much narower view than most. I tend to lump anyone who professes a belief in Jesus as Chritian, whether I agree with them in all theological particulars or not.
but how did you cut it in half?
+1 Double entendre
I haven't seen any reduction of the strong central govornment in the last six years. I'd say both sides are about equaly guilty in that regard. with minor variations in flavor.
I've always thought that someone could leverage that fact against Microsoft. And probably make lots of money. The need to beat someone else is so ingrained in both Gates and Balmer, that if you had a strategy based on that flaw, they wouldn't be able to change enough to stop you.
Sorry, the state does this to me all the time. Takes my taxes and gives them to schools, the army, poor people, big corporations that need tax breaks and subsidies. Happens all the time.
Though I doubt that the EU will fund free software with the money (I'm sure they'll find some other need for it). It wouldn't be that different than the recent tobacco setlements, If the states had done what they were supposed to, that is.
>>global mega...blah, blah is a strawman
There are people on slashdot that think that corporations running their lives is even worse than governments running their lives. The grandparent seems to be one of those.
I feel for you. You seem to be, so far, an honest company trying to do business in a field dominated by dishonesty. I applaud you for chasing down people who are illegaly selling stolen software (yes, I said stolen, on Slashdot, and I do have my flame retardant underpants on) It has to be incredibly frustrating to know that your competition is undercutting you because they are dishonestly taking advantage of something they have no legal or ethical right to.
Now a bit of advice: Don't do this.
From the tone of your letter, you are trying to do with the name M.A.M.E. the same thing that your dishonest competitors are doing with ROMs. Specificaly, taking something that doesn't belong to you to support your business. Don't go down this path!
I could be wrong. you guys could be the people who wrote MAME, and then it got out of control. But I don't think so. I think you see M.A.M.E. as the facilitator of your dishonest competition and it would be incredibly convinient to declare ownership to stop it.
I'm not saying this because I'm some h4x0r who is upset that you are taking away my cool free stuff. Frankly, if I was, copyrighting the name would mean nothing to me. I'd be just as likely to break a copyright for one word as for a thousand games.
I'm saying this because you don't want to be a crook. You really dont. For your own sake. Look. You didn't write MAME, you didn't come up with the name, or the logo. It doesn't belong to you! Getting some lawyer to tell otherwise doesn't make it any different. You're just doing with lawyers what the ROM traders are doing with email, or ftp, or whatever they are using these days. Taking something that doesn't belong to you because it is to inconvinient to do it otherwise. It's dishonest. If you really have to be dishonest to stay in business, I suggest you get out of this business. Because sooner or later, if you go down that road, even if you get away with it for quite a while, it's going to bite you in the butt.
I don't want to discourage your business, I wouldn't mind an Ultracade myself. And it does make a difference to me that it's legal. I think you ought to keep up pressure on the ROM sellers, and the people who falsely advertise. Even the ones who "advetise" aginst your business by telling hobyists with a nudge and a wink, how they got their illegal roms. I hope you can actualy get some damages from them. Though I know it's hard. That your lawyer bills are probably higher than what you're ever likeley to receive. But then yoe are taking the legal and moral high road. And. please, keep putting out the message that you offer a legal way to get what your competitors are only offering illegaly. I'm all for that.
But if you are going to take something which the copyright legitemately belongs to someone else, you might as well ship a full set of pirated ROMS with the Ultracade. If I'm going to do business with theives, I at least want get the bennifit of it.
Yup, I'd give it -1 Flamebait.
Kudos to the Gates Foundation for what they contribute to the world.
Likewise, Kudos to the OS community for what they contribute to the world.
What you talkin' about, Willis? my first exposure to the term was about 1982 (5th grade), and I was a pretty sheltered kid.
Of course, it was much more explicit (in every sense of the word) exactly WHAT it sucked.
IANAT, but I'm maried to a teacher. Private school teachers are pretty much always paid worse than public school teachers. And often worse than McDonalds clerks. I've seen a few public school teachers take the cut in pay, and the reasons were eiter that in private schools, you get a lot more parent buy-in (litteraly and figuratively) and that makes it much easier to teach, or (in a similar grain) problem students can actualy be kicked out of school, again loweirng teacher stress. I also met one teacher who was a strong believer in a teaching philosophy that had fallen out of favor in the local public schools, and went to a private school that agreed with her philosophy. I'm going to propose a different idea why teachers get paid less: It's hard for an individual teacher to quantify their financial contribution. Not that they don't make one, but it's hard to put together a peice of paper that shows how much it is. When you think of overpaid professions, you see ones where a person CAN easily demonstrate what they bring in. Tom Cruise, can show haw many more tickets are going to be sold just because his name is on a marquee, so can Bitney Spears and Shaquilie ONeal. CEOs justify their salaries by saying "the company brings in X billion dollars under my leadership, It would be foolish not to give me X/n billion to keep that coming in"
http://www.hubert.com/store/catalog/c/139/s/1306/s rc/searchmopp/srchid/780827/srchlnk/7/page.htm
they had them for between $115 and $200 U.S.
The guy I took my first UNIX class from worked at NASA as a computer operator when he was 15. To hear his side of the story, *he* is the reason why NASA doesn't hire teenagers.
from the dasher site http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/djw30/dasher/ :
With version 3, as with version 1.6, every language requires a text file full of natural writing (about 300K or more); a specification of the alphabet of the language is also required.
It wouldn't be hard at all to make it work for English, as opposed to Americanese, all you have to do is train it on text written with your own preferred idiosyncrasies
My first lan party, if you want to call it that, was playing MIDI Maze on the Atari ST. It was something like what Castle Wolfenstein would look like if it were made for the atari 2600, and instead of an actual lan, the MIDI ports on the computers were daisychained.
I lost badly.
I had a good friend at school remark to me that ALL his best programming ideas came to him in the bathroom. Mine generaly don't. But you couldn't tell that from looking at some of the stuff I've churned out.
I had a friend who was a cop who said that when he went in somewhwere scary and dark he held the flashlight at arms length so that if anyone did shoot they would be a couple of feet off to the right.
In my experience being honest about your mistakes and having the willingness to learn from them always pays off.
Amen, Brother!
Actualy, mine was for $6.8 million. My first year programming I reversed the flag on a particular discount on a billing program. I got to talk on the phone with several vice presidents and then the CEO of a large multinational corporation. That wasn't as much fun as it would have otherwise been.
There is really nothing else to do but admit that you screwed up and do your best to make things better. I wrote the script to pull out the list of people who'd been mischarged as fast as anything I've ever written.
I actualy offered to resign. I think my candor was what kept me on the job. I know I would have immediately fired anyone I caught trying to cover that up.
Sometime later, I got to watch a co-worker even less comfortable than I was explain to similar bigwigs why the phrase "This is bullshit!" whas showing up on their screens. I was happy to learn that lesson secondhand.
As well as the guy, recently hired from the aerospace industry (he quit) who went through 10 million lines of code changing the name every variable that represented a measurement to include the units. "This is the kind of bullshit that flies spacecraft into planets." was all he he had to tell us.
I've never seen anyone fired for an honest mistake that they owned up to. I have seen people get in loads of trouble for covering up stupid stuff, though.
In my experience being honest about your mistakes and having the willingness to learn from them always pays off. actualy, mine was for $6.8 million. My first year programming I reversed the flag on a particular discount on a billing program. I got to talk on the phone with several vice presidents and then the CEO of a large multinational corporation. That wasn't as much fun as it would have otherwise been. There is really nothing else to do but admit that you screwed up and do your best to make things better. I wrote the script to pull out the list of people who'd been mischarged as fast as anything I've ever written. I actualy offered to resign. I think my candor was what kept me on the job. I know I would have immediately fired anyone I caught trying to cover that up. Sometime later, I got to watch a co-worker even less comfortable than I was explain to similar bigwigs why the phrase "This is bullshit!" whas showing up on their screens. I was happy to learn that lesson secondhand. I don't even put curse words in comments or test data.