Actually, you're exactly right. I wouldn't doubt that Adobe looked the other way when it came to private individuals pirating their software.
It is a matter of public record that Autodesk (when they were still Autodesk) honored very old (read: version 10, 11, 12) serial numbers in later generations of their AutoCAD software (read: Windows-based). The general consensus was that they wanted to get the knowledge of their software out there so that it would have a continued life cycle in the corporate world where site licenses cost much more.
In other words, they made piracy of their products by "regular people" almost TRIVIAL so that the software would have greater value in the long run. Who would buy a site license for software that nobody knows how to use?
The owner of a local ISP and collocation center that I'm friends with runs the whole operation out of his basement. He has a "rack" for all of his Cisco core routers and Sun Sparc systems (what you might call the infrastructure of the place), which he made by simply setting up two parallel 2x4 boards from the floor to the ceiling. They're secured to the floor with rivets (cement basement floor), and into the joists overhead with screws.
Probably not the flashy solution you're after, but it holds the equipment perfectly and securely.
It's actually quite funny to see that to your left, and to your right a full-on, professional, centrally-cooled Sun rack. His basement is geek heaven.
It's NetPlex, by the way. Yes, he hosts a WinZip mirror.
Are women in general insulted that these know-it-all women at Volvo think they are unable to understand the workings of, or maintain, an engine?
I'm a man, and I support women's equal rights and all of that, but it looks as though even women are rallying to perpetuate the same stereotypes the feminists are trying to abolish. I suppose women who know how to fix cars will buy cars with hoods that open.
The car shouldn't be marketed toward women, but instead toward anyone who either doesn't understand, or doesn't care to understand, how to fix anything under their hood. Men included.
Anyway, the grille and headlights look pretty badass. I commend Volvo for abandoning the "Borg ship" look.
I am fairly sure that a corporation (especially one like Dell) is required to provide the item at its listed price, even if it was a typo.
Now, IANAL, and probably they could get away with not giving it to you, but let me share with you my story about Dell and mis-quoting prices.
We have a Dell corporate account at the company I work for and we were looking into flat-panel LCD monitors for a couple of the machines in the office. Dell informed our tech. that there was a deal, "buy two, get one free." So, buy four, get two free. This sounded too good to be true, so we started an office pool to get a couple of extra displays that a couple of us could use at home, taking advantage of this amazing discount.
I was one of those people. It came out to about $425 for a display that retails for $700 (Sony branded, internal speakers, the whole nine yards). Now, we put the order through, we had paperwork, quotes, and an invoice. Then Dell called back to reneg.
They said, basically, "We're so sorry, what the deal means is that when you buy three, you're already only paying what two would have cost, so you're effectively getting the third one for free. You don't actually GET the third one for FREE."
Jerks. So we said fine, cancel the order, and we're going to start buying all of our computers from IBM. We had just dumped around $25 or $30 thousand dollars into server equipment from Dell, and the prospect of losing that business doesn't look good to any sales representative.
The next day, the Dell rep. called back and said that he spoke with his manager and the two of them were going to split the difference of the mistaken quote out of their own pockets so that we could have the displays at the agreed-upon cost, even though Corporate Dell wouldn't allow it.
Now, I don't know how this reflects on Dell's official policies, and I don't know how easily a company can back out of a deal that is very well documented on paper in the form of price quotes and completed invoices (isn't that a contract?), but I'm using this 18" flat-panel LCD right now, and damned if it isn't worth every penny of $425.
I'm surprised that nobody has even mentioned Victorinox (the original Swiss Army company). Maybe this is because all of their stuff costs a lot more than what it may actually be worth, but I carry my laptop in a Victorinox messenger bag and I am quite pleased with it. (It looks like they don't sell anything but knives and tools on their website anymore. I am "fortunate" to have a Victorinox store in the mall here in Connecticut.)
While dropping my laptop hasn't been a concern for me (I'm paranoid-careful), it is weatherproof (rain is no problem, just don't drop it in the lake), and it is very well manufactured. For $70, you get a messenger bag that will probably never fall apart, and a moderate insurance policy on the laptop, should it get stolen. The collection process on these claims is probably arduous, and doesn't cover the full price of a bleeding-edge laptop that you bought yesterday, but it's an added peace of mind.
Reading through the other suggestions here, it looks like there are plenty of other options that will give you more bang for your buck, but I do highly recommend Victorinox messenger bags (or laptop backpacks). You also get the "cool factor" of having the Victorinox Swiss Army logo emblazoned on it.
Anyway, all of this is useless information because it looks like they don't even make the kind of bag I bought some years ago, but I'm sure their current line of laptop bags are manufactured with the same level of quality.
I am not a dietician, or a nutrition scientist, but I do have a lot of first-hand experience in the area of food, diet, weight loss, and all of this business.
First of all, there is no such thing as a fad diet that works. "Fad" diet means some set of wacky rules about what you are allowed to eat and what you aren't. They don't work. None of them.
You will see results with the Atkins diet, and then you will gain all of the weight back. Most people do. It's great if you want to lose weight really fast for that senior prom in two weeks, or to fit back into your favorite snazzy dress for some dinner party, but don't think for a moment that the Atkins diet is a life-altering experience.
Here is an article, written by a doctor no less, which should shed some light on the way Atkins works and why it should be taken with a grain of salt.
In the words of none other than Ozzy Osbourne's doctor (as seen on his ridiculous reality show), the only diet that works is to "eat what you want to satisfaction". Don't overeat. Eat until you're satisfied, and then stop. Eat five smaller meals a day instead of three (or, for a lot of people, two) huge ones.
Exercise. USE your body. Go outside and throw a ball around, it doesn't have to be three solid hours of hardcore treadmill jogging, or cycling seven miles in a row. If you find enjoyment in that, great, if not, don't do it!
When you get hungry, eat something. When you're done, stop. If you want a cookie, have one. Nothing good can come from denying yourself food of any kind. If you force yourself not to have those "forbidden" foods, you WILL crave them more and more until you snap and eat too much. There are studies to support this. This is another good reason why "fad" diets do not work.
Try to maintain a varied diet. Eat different things, experiment, don't force yourself into a routine of foods that you have decided are "safe." There is no such thing as bad food, only bad quantities of food. Surely, saturated fats and "trans fats" and these other types of chemicals aren't great for you, but they aren't going to turn you into a whale if you eat a little.
Snack. Have a few healthy snacks each day, it helps to keep you satisfied. A healthy snack might be fruit, it might be a granola bar, it could be a candy bar, it all depends on what you want, how many calories you burn in a day, and what your goals are. I think yogurt is a good snack. Don't worry about what's in it. Stop reading labels.
You can LOSE WEIGHT by following these basic instructions. You can also KEEP IT OFF if you make this your lifestyle. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say that fitness is a lifestyle (I think he got it from someone else). So is nutrition.
Dr. Atkins is another person who found a way for people to lose weight quickly, probably at the cost of their long-term health. Why? Because he made a few million dollars doing it. Americans spend approximately $33 billion a year on weight-loss programs. Find a way to shave a few pounds off someone and you can tap that cash cow. No pun intended.
I don't want to get into the psychology of our culture and the unneccesary pressures we put on [especially] women to lose weight, but if you want to take off a few pounds, don't do it by giving more of your money to some quack. A dead quack, I might add.
This is a pretty weak attempt, but the oldest hardware I have that is still *doing something* is my generic Pentium 233MMX (48 megs of matched-pair SIMM RAM, baby), which is acting as my edge router/firewall running Debian Woody. First computer I ever built from parts *tear*.
The processor and RAM in this old box have been turning up at computer shows, though! As keychains! No joke!
Piracy IS good, and the nice people at Autodesk (now a child company of Discreet), creators of the (at least, in my day) industry standard CADD software AutoCAD, know this.
You can use a serial number from AutoCAD 2.0 to register and use AutoCAD 13. Why? Because the more kids that copy and learn their software, the more demand for site-licenses there will be in the future.
The same philosophy works in the favor of Microsoft who will sell you their MSDN library for $2,000 that includes easily $50,000 to $100,000 worth of software (depending on which level you choose) for use in development. They know that this seeds the growth of companies that then require production licenses for expensive software such as Windows 2000 Server or SQL Server.
Everyone in this thread seems to be agreed that illicit distribution of resources can, in the long run, increase exposure, increase desire, and stir up future business. You can't sell something that nobody knows about.
I think I speak for everyone when I say I'd like to see this Linux cluster Google is running. Just a Matrix-esque shot of the wall(s) of rackmount servers would be enough to make me happy.
I totally agree. The lack of parenting in this country is akin to gross negligence on a massive scale. Parents that leave their children home with the television as a babysitter, or who don't properly teach their children the difference between what is right and what is wrong are to blame for everything evil in this country.
No, I don't think that's a gross overstatement; all the problems in this country are caused by people, and I'll bet that most of those people are the products of negligent parenting. In this age of Prozac and Ritalin, we need to stop trying to foist the blame onto "ADD" and "Media Violence" for the lack of sensitivity in today's youth and focus on the real problems, those which start in the home.
I'm waiting for the day I can write an OpenGL screensaver that connects to the internet and creates a splendidly chaotic display of dots, each one representing one person in my town as they drive around and go about their business. It could even be interactive! Link their coordinates through a mapquest style system and float little tags over each of their heads on mouseover, displaying where they're shopping or what adult video store they're in.
Then, I would use this data to fuel an immensely complex encryption system, using the to's and fro's of my community as seed values, to encrypt all of the software I stole from CompUSA with my iPod.
If anyone thinks Microsoft is an unholy empire, what about DoCoMo? They're probably selling their data out to the Japanese Army by now. Huge dividends!
--"Dispelling Disillusion Since 2002"
--The Sensorium
Good points made by all on the virtues of simplicity, searchability, aesthetic pleasure, and such.
Additionally, conformity to W3C HTML recommendations (at least HTML 4.0 Transitional) is always a plus.
Try my website, The Sensorium in IE 5+ and/or Mozilla 0.9.5+, and notice that it looks the same. This site conforms to the proper recommendations. It's based on PHP Nuke for the back end scripting, but the page design itself was created from scratch.
Cross browser compatibility used to be one of the most daunting challenges for a web designer to overcome, but since the birth of the new releases of Mozilla, it has become easier and easier to create pages that satisfy the Windows crowd, Linux crowd, AND the W3C.
"It seems that AT&T users have been limited to 1.5 megabits of bandwidth."
Yeah, that's really funny. Limited to? No, no, AT&T increased our bandwidth to 1.5 megabits, according to them. Here is an excerpt from the e-mail everyone on my network was sent when the service came back online:
Additionally, your AT&T Broadband Internet connection has been optimized for all users through a maximum network setting of 1.5Mbps downstream. This speed setting is part of our
continuous effort to provide you with the fastest, most consistent broadband service at the lowest possible price.
This was apparently an "upgrade" in network throughput, despite the fact that they continue to enforce the 128kbps upload cap. I originally had cable access through TCI (TeleCommunications, Inc.), and was granted about 3Mbps down and 480kbps up; as soon as AT&T bought TCI they capped our upload.
I can usually max out the 1.5Mbit download, but I might be coaxed to give some of it away for a slightly more speedy upload. It seems that all they've done is set their network throughput limitations slightly above comparably priced DSL offers in this area, thereby not losing any current customers to their competitors, and saving network resources.
I literally have no choice for other service providers unless I want to pay as much as $150 a month. Very clever.
I think a lot of people are confused into thinking that quality software makes successful software. This could not be further from the truth.
True, successful software should *work*, but that doesn't mean there isn't a less commercially successful software package out there that just works better.
Case in point: BulletProof FTP for Windows is a highly acclaimed and highly successful FTP client. Their marketing strategies are right on the mark, and thanks to this, they have raised the revenue required to maintain their code, their website, and even acquire G6 FTP Server from Gene6 Software.
BulletProof FTP is commercially successful.
I, personally, use LeechFTP, it's distributed as freeware, and isn't even supported anymore. Sure, it has it's quirks, but it didn't cost me anything. Commercially successful? No. Quality programming? Yes. LeechFTP is the only FTP client I know of to implement a multithreaded design for uploads and downloads, a feature that I use daily to transfer entire website directory trees (having three simultaneous logins to the FTP helps drastically).
LeechFTP was never marketed to produce a profit, and if it were, it would fail. BulletProof Software undoubtedly followed all of the cut-throat and low brow schemes that Joel outlined to maintain their market share and draw a revenue. That doesn't mean their product is no good, but to some extent the goals of producing quality software and producing PROFITABLE software have to be separated.
Microsoft has built themselves up to a point where they can spend enough money to retain enough programmers to keep their products working as well as Mr. Joe Average requires for his needs. That is a luxury for them. Without those resources (or the help of many dedicated programmers that will work for free), other companies will have a very hard time balancing those two goals.
Another good reason that Microsoft has not produced as many physical consoles at release than Nintendo is that Microsoft is not outfitted to manufacture anything.
Sure, they [Microsoft] could probably print money, what with the technology they flaunt in their Certificates of Authenticity, but they do not have the resources to manufacture electronics. This is where Microsoft brings in a subcontractor to make the XBoxes for them.
In this case, Microsoft has hired a company who specialize in manufacturing electronics for other people. These are the same folks that manufacture some routers for Cisco and some cellphones designed by Eriksson. For the North American XBox release, they utilized a couple of factories they have in Mexico. I am not even joking.
Microsoft sat down at a big mahogany table somewhere, slapped together components made by NVidia, Intel, et al, and then tossed the plans to this company (whose name escapes me) to manufacture it for them.
They had a very specific number of consoles they wanted at release, and gave the guys a mere several months to churn them out. With supply trucks coming and going from the factories daily, they were putting out as many consoles as they possibly could. And that's their job.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is a veteran of the video gaming console market and are perfectly well outfitted to manufacture these beasts for themselves. Also judging by how underpowered the GC is in strict technical comparison to its competitors (namely the XBox), it appears as though they solidified the specifications and design plans for this console LONG before Microsoft came into the picture, and they've probably been planning the release schedule more rigorously as well.
Naturally Nintendo would have you believe that their console is selling bigger, it's the hot ticket, everyone wants one, etc., etc. I think the fact of the matter is that Microsoft is getting into an area (hard-core supply/demand hardware manufacturing) that they are not as familiar with as Nintendo, and this is probably the reason why Nintendo was able to churn out more consoles.
I'm pretty sure that the XBox release was a very last minute rush to beat the Christmas season, and to beat Nintendo after they announced the GC release date. I read stories about MS's manufacturing company trying to overcome some last minute overheating issues (we've all seen the XBox GSOD (as in green screen of death)) due to the PC parts being jammed into a small box they were not made to operate inside of. I think that the GameCube has the potential to be a better planned out console, if not a superior one, but I'll leave the criticisms of the consoles to someone else, like Gord, that knows what he's talking about.
Personally, I bought a PS2, and I'm EXTREMELY pleased with it; I doubt I will buy either of the new consoles.
XBox could have that Market, but Microsoft won't play their cards right (I don't think).
Not exactly. The reason Microsoft has created the XBox from standard PC components (nVidia graphics, Intel processor, etc.) is exactly the OPPOSITE reason why Sony would want to have Linux running on their PS2.
The home PC market has just about reached saturation. Everyone who doesn't have a PC now is very unlikely to have one in the near future. This is not good for Microsoft who can't hope to shove a new version of Windows down everyone's throat every year. I'm perfectly happy with Windows 2000, and probably will be for some time to come. Their only hope is to create the NEED for a new Windows. The only way to create a need for a new Windows is to create new hardware which has a compatibility requirement of Windows.
More specifically, what hardware is upgraded or replaced most frequently by avid home computer owners? Other than the petty RAM upgrade, probably the most frequent hardware change is the video card. You need the latest greatest video card to play the latest greatest games. People who use Windows to make spreadsheets aren't going to need to upgrade for a long long time, if ever. Gamers upgrade every year, or sometimes more frequently than that.
Microsoft hopes that by urging hardcore console game developers to develop under a Windows platform with Windows libraries and standard PC hardware, they will drum up a better group of ported PC games which will, naturally, cause the PC gamers to upgrade their hardware more frequently, producing a market for Microsoft on the desktop. The XBox may seem like a way for Microsoft to get into your living room, and this is also one of their goals, but the main thrust of the XBox is to save Microsoft's proverbial ass in the PC market.
By running Linux on the Playstation 2, Sony is not going to defeat Microsoft's main goal of proliferating new, hardware demanding games. However, they may succeed where Microsoft has failed, and that will be in allowing people to use things for (*gasp*) free. A concept that is completely foreign to Microsoft.
Hopefully, by creating the ability to run Linux apps on the PS2, Sony will drum up a new subculture of PS2 hackers that will release new and interesting products and applications which will outshine Microsoft's XBox merely by being innovative.
I do make cool content. I do give it away. I will continue to do so. I spend hours and hours creating digital art works, and I intend to remove my disclaimer of non-distribution and replace it with a modified GNU public license so that everyone can share and even modify my work. Let free information live on!
There are only so many minutes a cell phone company can provide in a month. After a while you hit limits, and gradually the costs erode to practically nothing (similar to water and electricity, communication will eventually become publically-owned).
Hopefully before I die:) Last month I think I paid somewhere in the area of $60 for my regular 300 daytime minutes of not-all-that-great quality cell phone use. I look forward to a nation with TRUE national-plan competition, not just Sprint, VoiceStream and Verizon, but many choices that drive each other's prices down and features and offerings up.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you're exactly right. I wouldn't doubt that Adobe looked the other way when it came to private individuals pirating their software.
It is a matter of public record that Autodesk (when they were still Autodesk) honored very old (read: version 10, 11, 12) serial numbers in later generations of their AutoCAD software (read: Windows-based). The general consensus was that they wanted to get the knowledge of their software out there so that it would have a continued life cycle in the corporate world where site licenses cost much more.
In other words, they made piracy of their products by "regular people" almost TRIVIAL so that the software would have greater value in the long run. Who would buy a site license for software that nobody knows how to use?
Your sig is a quote from Octagynocologist. I love you for that.
The owner of a local ISP and collocation center that I'm friends with runs the whole operation out of his basement. He has a "rack" for all of his Cisco core routers and Sun Sparc systems (what you might call the infrastructure of the place), which he made by simply setting up two parallel 2x4 boards from the floor to the ceiling. They're secured to the floor with rivets (cement basement floor), and into the joists overhead with screws.
Probably not the flashy solution you're after, but it holds the equipment perfectly and securely.
It's actually quite funny to see that to your left, and to your right a full-on, professional, centrally-cooled Sun rack. His basement is geek heaven.
It's NetPlex, by the way. Yes, he hosts a WinZip mirror.
Pants to help with mobility problems??
"It's the wrong trousers, Gromit!"
We all know how that turned out.
Are women in general insulted that these know-it-all women at Volvo think they are unable to understand the workings of, or maintain, an engine?
I'm a man, and I support women's equal rights and all of that, but it looks as though even women are rallying to perpetuate the same stereotypes the feminists are trying to abolish. I suppose women who know how to fix cars will buy cars with hoods that open.
The car shouldn't be marketed toward women, but instead toward anyone who either doesn't understand, or doesn't care to understand, how to fix anything under their hood. Men included.
Anyway, the grille and headlights look pretty badass. I commend Volvo for abandoning the "Borg ship" look.
I am fairly sure that a corporation (especially one like Dell) is required to provide the item at its listed price, even if it was a typo.
Now, IANAL, and probably they could get away with not giving it to you, but let me share with you my story about Dell and mis-quoting prices.
We have a Dell corporate account at the company I work for and we were looking into flat-panel LCD monitors for a couple of the machines in the office. Dell informed our tech. that there was a deal, "buy two, get one free." So, buy four, get two free. This sounded too good to be true, so we started an office pool to get a couple of extra displays that a couple of us could use at home, taking advantage of this amazing discount.
I was one of those people. It came out to about $425 for a display that retails for $700 (Sony branded, internal speakers, the whole nine yards). Now, we put the order through, we had paperwork, quotes, and an invoice. Then Dell called back to reneg.
They said, basically, "We're so sorry, what the deal means is that when you buy three, you're already only paying what two would have cost, so you're effectively getting the third one for free. You don't actually GET the third one for FREE."
Jerks. So we said fine, cancel the order, and we're going to start buying all of our computers from IBM. We had just dumped around $25 or $30 thousand dollars into server equipment from Dell, and the prospect of losing that business doesn't look good to any sales representative.
The next day, the Dell rep. called back and said that he spoke with his manager and the two of them were going to split the difference of the mistaken quote out of their own pockets so that we could have the displays at the agreed-upon cost, even though Corporate Dell wouldn't allow it.
Now, I don't know how this reflects on Dell's official policies, and I don't know how easily a company can back out of a deal that is very well documented on paper in the form of price quotes and completed invoices (isn't that a contract?), but I'm using this 18" flat-panel LCD right now, and damned if it isn't worth every penny of $425.
That's my seventeen cents.
drop 'em off at my house.
I'm surprised that nobody has even mentioned Victorinox (the original Swiss Army company). Maybe this is because all of their stuff costs a lot more than what it may actually be worth, but I carry my laptop in a Victorinox messenger bag and I am quite pleased with it. (It looks like they don't sell anything but knives and tools on their website anymore. I am "fortunate" to have a Victorinox store in the mall here in Connecticut.)
While dropping my laptop hasn't been a concern for me (I'm paranoid-careful), it is weatherproof (rain is no problem, just don't drop it in the lake), and it is very well manufactured. For $70, you get a messenger bag that will probably never fall apart, and a moderate insurance policy on the laptop, should it get stolen. The collection process on these claims is probably arduous, and doesn't cover the full price of a bleeding-edge laptop that you bought yesterday, but it's an added peace of mind.
Reading through the other suggestions here, it looks like there are plenty of other options that will give you more bang for your buck, but I do highly recommend Victorinox messenger bags (or laptop backpacks). You also get the "cool factor" of having the Victorinox Swiss Army logo emblazoned on it.
Anyway, all of this is useless information because it looks like they don't even make the kind of bag I bought some years ago, but I'm sure their current line of laptop bags are manufactured with the same level of quality.
That's all I've got.
I am not a dietician, or a nutrition scientist, but I do have a lot of first-hand experience in the area of food, diet, weight loss, and all of this business.
First of all, there is no such thing as a fad diet that works. "Fad" diet means some set of wacky rules about what you are allowed to eat and what you aren't. They don't work. None of them.
You will see results with the Atkins diet, and then you will gain all of the weight back. Most people do. It's great if you want to lose weight really fast for that senior prom in two weeks, or to fit back into your favorite snazzy dress for some dinner party, but don't think for a moment that the Atkins diet is a life-altering experience.
Here is an article, written by a doctor no less, which should shed some light on the way Atkins works and why it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Dr. Atkins, Not A Wellness Promoter.
In the words of none other than Ozzy Osbourne's doctor (as seen on his ridiculous reality show), the only diet that works is to "eat what you want to satisfaction". Don't overeat. Eat until you're satisfied, and then stop. Eat five smaller meals a day instead of three (or, for a lot of people, two) huge ones.
Exercise. USE your body. Go outside and throw a ball around, it doesn't have to be three solid hours of hardcore treadmill jogging, or cycling seven miles in a row. If you find enjoyment in that, great, if not, don't do it!
When you get hungry, eat something. When you're done, stop. If you want a cookie, have one. Nothing good can come from denying yourself food of any kind. If you force yourself not to have those "forbidden" foods, you WILL crave them more and more until you snap and eat too much. There are studies to support this. This is another good reason why "fad" diets do not work.
Try to maintain a varied diet. Eat different things, experiment, don't force yourself into a routine of foods that you have decided are "safe." There is no such thing as bad food, only bad quantities of food. Surely, saturated fats and "trans fats" and these other types of chemicals aren't great for you, but they aren't going to turn you into a whale if you eat a little.
Snack. Have a few healthy snacks each day, it helps to keep you satisfied. A healthy snack might be fruit, it might be a granola bar, it could be a candy bar, it all depends on what you want, how many calories you burn in a day, and what your goals are. I think yogurt is a good snack. Don't worry about what's in it. Stop reading labels.
You can LOSE WEIGHT by following these basic instructions. You can also KEEP IT OFF if you make this your lifestyle. Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say that fitness is a lifestyle (I think he got it from someone else). So is nutrition.
Dr. Atkins is another person who found a way for people to lose weight quickly, probably at the cost of their long-term health. Why? Because he made a few million dollars doing it. Americans spend approximately $33 billion a year on weight-loss programs. Find a way to shave a few pounds off someone and you can tap that cash cow. No pun intended.
I don't want to get into the psychology of our culture and the unneccesary pressures we put on [especially] women to lose weight, but if you want to take off a few pounds, don't do it by giving more of your money to some quack. A dead quack, I might add.
This is a pretty weak attempt, but the oldest hardware I have that is still *doing something* is my generic Pentium 233MMX (48 megs of matched-pair SIMM RAM, baby), which is acting as my edge router/firewall running Debian Woody. First computer I ever built from parts *tear*.
The processor and RAM in this old box have been turning up at computer shows, though! As keychains! No joke!
It's like, as if you were to open the doors to worldwide development and collaboration... How about "open" source? Nah, that's too vague.
I wonder if Egyptians can search for "Buddhism" on Google
Piracy IS good, and the nice people at Autodesk (now a child company of Discreet), creators of the (at least, in my day) industry standard CADD software AutoCAD, know this.
You can use a serial number from AutoCAD 2.0 to register and use AutoCAD 13. Why? Because the more kids that copy and learn their software, the more demand for site-licenses there will be in the future.
The same philosophy works in the favor of Microsoft who will sell you their MSDN library for $2,000 that includes easily $50,000 to $100,000 worth of software (depending on which level you choose) for use in development. They know that this seeds the growth of companies that then require production licenses for expensive software such as Windows 2000 Server or SQL Server.
Everyone in this thread seems to be agreed that illicit distribution of resources can, in the long run, increase exposure, increase desire, and stir up future business. You can't sell something that nobody knows about.
I think I speak for everyone when I say I'd like to see this Linux cluster Google is running. Just a Matrix-esque shot of the wall(s) of rackmount servers would be enough to make me happy.
I totally agree. The lack of parenting in this country is akin to gross negligence on a massive scale. Parents that leave their children home with the television as a babysitter, or who don't properly teach their children the difference between what is right and what is wrong are to blame for everything evil in this country.
No, I don't think that's a gross overstatement; all the problems in this country are caused by people, and I'll bet that most of those people are the products of negligent parenting. In this age of Prozac and Ritalin, we need to stop trying to foist the blame onto "ADD" and "Media Violence" for the lack of sensitivity in today's youth and focus on the real problems, those which start in the home.
Just my two cents.
Did you ever see the Kevin Nealon Subliminal News sketches he used to do? This reminds me of that, I had a good laugh, thanks ;-)
I'm waiting for the day I can write an OpenGL screensaver that connects to the internet and creates a splendidly chaotic display of dots, each one representing one person in my town as they drive around and go about their business. It could even be interactive! Link their coordinates through a mapquest style system and float little tags over each of their heads on mouseover, displaying where they're shopping or what adult video store they're in.
Then, I would use this data to fuel an immensely complex encryption system, using the to's and fro's of my community as seed values, to encrypt all of the software I stole from CompUSA with my iPod.
If anyone thinks Microsoft is an unholy empire, what about DoCoMo? They're probably selling their data out to the Japanese Army by now. Huge dividends!
--"Dispelling Disillusion Since 2002"
--The Sensorium
Good points made by all on the virtues of simplicity, searchability, aesthetic pleasure, and such.
:)
Additionally, conformity to W3C HTML recommendations (at least HTML 4.0 Transitional) is always a plus.
Try my website, The Sensorium in IE 5+ and/or Mozilla 0.9.5+, and notice that it looks the same. This site conforms to the proper recommendations. It's based on PHP Nuke for the back end scripting, but the page design itself was created from scratch.
Cross browser compatibility used to be one of the most daunting challenges for a web designer to overcome, but since the birth of the new releases of Mozilla, it has become easier and easier to create pages that satisfy the Windows crowd, Linux crowd, AND the W3C.
Good luck
"It seems that AT&T users have been limited to 1.5 megabits of bandwidth."
Yeah, that's really funny. Limited to? No, no, AT&T increased our bandwidth to 1.5 megabits, according to them. Here is an excerpt from the e-mail everyone on my network was sent when the service came back online:
Additionally, your AT&T Broadband Internet connection has been optimized for all users through a maximum network setting of 1.5Mbps downstream. This speed setting is part of our continuous effort to provide you with the fastest, most consistent broadband service at the lowest possible price.
This was apparently an "upgrade" in network throughput, despite the fact that they continue to enforce the 128kbps upload cap. I originally had cable access through TCI (TeleCommunications, Inc.), and was granted about 3Mbps down and 480kbps up; as soon as AT&T bought TCI they capped our upload.
I can usually max out the 1.5Mbit download, but I might be coaxed to give some of it away for a slightly more speedy upload. It seems that all they've done is set their network throughput limitations slightly above comparably priced DSL offers in this area, thereby not losing any current customers to their competitors, and saving network resources.
I literally have no choice for other service providers unless I want to pay as much as $150 a month. Very clever.
I think a lot of people are confused into thinking that quality software makes successful software. This could not be further from the truth.
True, successful software should *work*, but that doesn't mean there isn't a less commercially successful software package out there that just works better.
Case in point: BulletProof FTP for Windows is a highly acclaimed and highly successful FTP client. Their marketing strategies are right on the mark, and thanks to this, they have raised the revenue required to maintain their code, their website, and even acquire G6 FTP Server from Gene6 Software.
BulletProof FTP is commercially successful.
I, personally, use LeechFTP, it's distributed as freeware, and isn't even supported anymore. Sure, it has it's quirks, but it didn't cost me anything. Commercially successful? No. Quality programming? Yes. LeechFTP is the only FTP client I know of to implement a multithreaded design for uploads and downloads, a feature that I use daily to transfer entire website directory trees (having three simultaneous logins to the FTP helps drastically).
LeechFTP was never marketed to produce a profit, and if it were, it would fail. BulletProof Software undoubtedly followed all of the cut-throat and low brow schemes that Joel outlined to maintain their market share and draw a revenue. That doesn't mean their product is no good, but to some extent the goals of producing quality software and producing PROFITABLE software have to be separated.
Microsoft has built themselves up to a point where they can spend enough money to retain enough programmers to keep their products working as well as Mr. Joe Average requires for his needs. That is a luxury for them. Without those resources (or the help of many dedicated programmers that will work for free), other companies will have a very hard time balancing those two goals.
Another good reason that Microsoft has not produced as many physical consoles at release than Nintendo is that Microsoft is not outfitted to manufacture anything.
Sure, they [Microsoft] could probably print money, what with the technology they flaunt in their Certificates of Authenticity, but they do not have the resources to manufacture electronics. This is where Microsoft brings in a subcontractor to make the XBoxes for them.
In this case, Microsoft has hired a company who specialize in manufacturing electronics for other people. These are the same folks that manufacture some routers for Cisco and some cellphones designed by Eriksson. For the North American XBox release, they utilized a couple of factories they have in Mexico. I am not even joking.
Microsoft sat down at a big mahogany table somewhere, slapped together components made by NVidia, Intel, et al, and then tossed the plans to this company (whose name escapes me) to manufacture it for them.
They had a very specific number of consoles they wanted at release, and gave the guys a mere several months to churn them out. With supply trucks coming and going from the factories daily, they were putting out as many consoles as they possibly could. And that's their job.
Nintendo, on the other hand, is a veteran of the video gaming console market and are perfectly well outfitted to manufacture these beasts for themselves. Also judging by how underpowered the GC is in strict technical comparison to its competitors (namely the XBox), it appears as though they solidified the specifications and design plans for this console LONG before Microsoft came into the picture, and they've probably been planning the release schedule more rigorously as well.
Naturally Nintendo would have you believe that their console is selling bigger, it's the hot ticket, everyone wants one, etc., etc. I think the fact of the matter is that Microsoft is getting into an area (hard-core supply/demand hardware manufacturing) that they are not as familiar with as Nintendo, and this is probably the reason why Nintendo was able to churn out more consoles.
I'm pretty sure that the XBox release was a very last minute rush to beat the Christmas season, and to beat Nintendo after they announced the GC release date. I read stories about MS's manufacturing company trying to overcome some last minute overheating issues (we've all seen the XBox GSOD (as in green screen of death)) due to the PC parts being jammed into a small box they were not made to operate inside of. I think that the GameCube has the potential to be a better planned out console, if not a superior one, but I'll leave the criticisms of the consoles to someone else, like Gord, that knows what he's talking about.
Personally, I bought a PS2, and I'm EXTREMELY pleased with it; I doubt I will buy either of the new consoles.
The home PC market has just about reached saturation. Everyone who doesn't have a PC now is very unlikely to have one in the near future. This is not good for Microsoft who can't hope to shove a new version of Windows down everyone's throat every year. I'm perfectly happy with Windows 2000, and probably will be for some time to come. Their only hope is to create the NEED for a new Windows. The only way to create a need for a new Windows is to create new hardware which has a compatibility requirement of Windows.
More specifically, what hardware is upgraded or replaced most frequently by avid home computer owners? Other than the petty RAM upgrade, probably the most frequent hardware change is the video card. You need the latest greatest video card to play the latest greatest games. People who use Windows to make spreadsheets aren't going to need to upgrade for a long long time, if ever. Gamers upgrade every year, or sometimes more frequently than that.
Microsoft hopes that by urging hardcore console game developers to develop under a Windows platform with Windows libraries and standard PC hardware, they will drum up a better group of ported PC games which will, naturally, cause the PC gamers to upgrade their hardware more frequently, producing a market for Microsoft on the desktop. The XBox may seem like a way for Microsoft to get into your living room, and this is also one of their goals, but the main thrust of the XBox is to save Microsoft's proverbial ass in the PC market.
By running Linux on the Playstation 2, Sony is not going to defeat Microsoft's main goal of proliferating new, hardware demanding games. However, they may succeed where Microsoft has failed, and that will be in allowing people to use things for (*gasp*) free. A concept that is completely foreign to Microsoft.
Hopefully, by creating the ability to run Linux apps on the PS2, Sony will drum up a new subculture of PS2 hackers that will release new and interesting products and applications which will outshine Microsoft's XBox merely by being innovative.
They already have a "copyright scan service," it's called the default installation of IIS.
I do make cool content. I do give it away. I will continue to do so. I spend hours and hours creating digital art works, and I intend to remove my disclaimer of non-distribution and replace it with a modified GNU public license so that everyone can share and even modify my work. Let free information live on!