... I used to regularly score 'above average', or in MSFT stack rankings, a 3.5 or 4.0 (the latter was hard to achieve if you weren't the golden-boy - required to balance the team score). This meant I would get a performance based bonus, which was great.
I made the mistake of pushing for a promotion. I felt that because I was consistently out-performing my role, that I should be promoted. Eventually they promoted me and a few other guys. We got a 'Senior' title. Now comes the problem.
The promotion only came with a 2% pay rise. The following annual performance review, it was now deemed that I was not exceeding my role (due to the new title), so I only scored a 3.0. This score means 'you met all your objectives'. Unfortunately, at the time, the policy was bonuses were only awarded to those exceeding their job description. I got no bonus. That year, or the following year. It probably left me on average $5k/year out of pocket.
So it's the mid 80's. You've got your innovative home computer, a Commodore 64, a Sinclar Spectrum, a Toshiba MSX, and others.. A lot of these platforms (and starting with the NES and Sega Master System, used/could_use cartridges for their software/games. Actually, even with using tape or disc it makes no difference. I don't remember _ever_ seeing an 'update' or a 'fix' for a game or piece of software you purchased over the counter.
Sure, with utility software, you'd get new major versions. Games? No. It had to work right out of the box as there was no going back. You were manufacturing a boxed product which simply had to work.
I appreciate it was a lot simpler back then. Less to go wrong. Less demand. Less requirement to always be on the edge of everything. At least that's my perception of how it differed back then to now. Maybe i'm wrong, I don't want to discount any of the great work from the 8 and 16 bit days.
Perhaps the modern internet day creates too much of a challenge. It's easy to knock up some code and distribute it. Same as posting any old crap comment/opinion on a forum, you can just as easily publich some code. 'Back in the old days' you actually had to make the effort and commitment to put something into production, which wouldn't have been taken lightly. Nowadays it seems to be a case of get something new out there before the next guy and worry about fixing it after. Of course, the internet facilitates this nicely.
I just ordered mine from www.amazon.co.uk. If you're in the UK, by far the cheapest I found in the first few results pages on Google. £71 including delivery.
Some similar bullshit happened to me once. Two police officers came to my place of work because someone had called "CrimeWatch" (UK show about crimes) to say I looked like the photo-fit for a particular case (Rape, nice). So after a few preliminary questions they insisted I undertake a DNA swabbing, either there at my workplace or back at the station. I chose the easy route and had it done there.
So, first of all its quite annoying to think someone who knows me that well to report me to the cops as a suspect, but then having them turn up at the workplace, swabs in-hand, takes the biscuit!
8 MONTHS LATER, I finally get a letter from the police saying "Thanks for helping us with our enquiries, you have been removed as a suspect". No mention about destroying my DNA evidence, nothing. I bet its still on computer somewhere. Corrupt.
Maybe I should form a small ISP called AOL (assholes online) and see if I can gain more business in the same way as these guys.... either that or get ripped apart in court.
I suggested something similar to this to some friends a while back.
How hard could it be to setup a few servers (just like the current DNS Root Servers, which seem to run just fine) to handle keys/certs to validate emails.
It wouldn't be rocket science to get something like this running:-
- User sends email - Client looks up keyservers, requests a new message ID, keyserver logs user key with new message id - mail gets sent, with key and id info
And upon receiving, the client does the same in return. This is a very basic way of detailing it, but i'm sure you all know where i'm coming from. I'm suprised nothing like this already exists in the open sauce community (it probably does, i've just not checked).
This is quite cool.. I wonder if you could hook up a drill to a normal flatbed plotter.. You can find old Roland plotters quite cheap on ebay and places now..
When you buy (yes, pay for), your morning newspaper, do you bitch about the advertising in it? Hm, no.
When the magazine slip inside drops out, do you bitch about it? Hm, no.
These two things could be compared to banner ads and popup ads (the latter of which do annoy me). Banner ads don't bother me, you don't have to look at them, they're not too big. Popups and lingering popups should die a painful death - I wouldn't object to them being made illegal.
Banner ads aren't effective. Even on high traffic sites, it's unlikely to make you rich.
But, you have to get things into perspective. Banners don't really spoil your viewing, it's the other dirty tactics of the affiliation monkeys that cause the problems.
It's true that other advertising-based-isp's have failed. Not sure why, it was more than likely the service that sucked due to over-subscription than the actual ads making people move away from it. I remember trying one in the UK when this kinda stuff first came out - it sucked, mainly because it kept on dropping me offline all the time. The little ad bar (a bit like the AllAdvantage one) wasn't a big issue (although it did crash sometimes, crap code).
If it was done cleanly with minimal system interference, I can see this being viable, clearly.
This is how it works. There aren't that many record pressing plants in the UK. 99% of them require copyright approval before they will scribe their ID onto the trailer on a piece of vinyl. If this database get's used, i'd say 75% of material that gets submitted for approval will get refused now, compared to maybe 15-20% that gets rejected nowadays.
In your typical UK record shop, 50-60% of vinyl's hanging on the wall are white labels made by new up-and-coming producers (bedroom dj's usually).. They whack a tune together, do an old remix, and knock it out. They never sell more than 500 copies. I know this, from experience. Even some of the larger (self) labels don't sell more than 1,000 presses. Why do they get so shitty about this? It costs approx £500 to manufacture 500 vinyls, single-sided, white label, including mastering/metalwork costs. They sell them for £3 sale-or-return to record shops. Wow, if they sell all 500, they may earn themselves a grand. Is that really worth all this copyright shit? Any decent record label (that would be capable of selling large quantities) would never let bad material go out the door anyway, so it shouldn't matter.
This is just another sign of how petty the industry is going, like internet broadcasting. If all pressing plants start doing this, the underground music scene will suffer and only 'commercial' music on large labels will continue to exist.
You bolt on a GPS unit, GPRS capabilities, and some clever microprocessor workings..
And what do you get?
Your own little robot slave.
It's exceptionally possible. You could have a 'helipad' bolted to your window-ledge, you program it as home (by GPS), and it uses GPRS communication to find out other destinations, guided by GPS.
It could go do your shopping for you, pick up your weed, whatever you want. Larger versions could be made for heavier loads.
And all the time, you can watch the view from the built-in camera via GPRS. That would rule.
Simple dopplar radar (inexpensive) can detect buildings and objects, to avoid them. It could use GPRS to transmit location (as GPS is mainly one-way), to a 'air traffic control' type scenario - to stop them hitting eachother. Set a flight-height, of say 200ft above ground and they wouldn't be a problem - it's about time we started using the air space between 100ft and 36,000 ft for something other than nothing.
Getting these things to fly themselves isn't a huge feat, they already have the majority of the code in the gyroscope control computer - getting it to follow coordinates and avoid stuff isn't such a task.
So who will build one? Obviousely the military have similar things, guided missiles and so forth, but this is consumer, and is possible..
I'm not actually aware of any 'protection' system, on CD, Video or DVD that is un-hackable.
Why do they continue to bang their heads against the wall? Surely by now they should have realized that paying some mathametics guru to sit in a room for 12 months to devise some wonderful algorithm is _not_ the answer. Narrow minded ideas, it's getting them nowhere and it's sure as hell costing them (and us) a lot of money.
This whole 'capping' deal has been evident in Australia for a long time, so it seems.
Have any of these ISP's ever provided any form of actual report displaying how running an un-capped service could have a detrimental effect on their service and availability? I've not seen one.
As fas as I know, other countries like Canada don't run caps. I think most Broadband ISP's in the US don't, and I know they don't here in the UK.
Ironically, with BT being one of the tightest Telco's going, they don't cap and have no plans to do so. It's also fairly cheap these days, probably cheaper than in Aus. Why are they being so tight?
Well, I don't think MS are in the wrong with this. If you make a product, and produce a license scheme, you should be able to make it however you want.
If MS want licensee's and online gaming providers to use Microsoft platforms with their Microsoft product, I think that's fair enough.
It's about time people realized that if a company (or an individual) writes a piece of software, they're allowed to pretty much do what they want with it. I know for sure that if I made a particular product to use a particular O/S, if I had a license scheme I wouldn't want other O/S's getting involved.
It doesn't look a whole lot different from the first one. I hope they just don't take the fighting sections from the first and make a full length feature from it. It _has_ to be a great sequel.
... that it just won't "be the same" as the originals..
I mean, you have to look at what exactly the originals were made from:
- A good guy (or two) - A bad guy (or two) - A chick - A cheeky romance - A fight in space
That was pretty much it. EP4 was pretty slow moving for the most part, but was awesome. I don't think anyway can accurately say *why* it was awesome, you'd need to back 24 years and be that kid again to really appreciate it.
Also, EP4, 5 and 6 were very much similar. Timeline, I mean. You could watch all three and it would certainly seem like they were all filmed in the same year (plot-wise). There is so much variation in cast, ages etc between EP1-3 which will make EP4-6 like an extended length movie if glued together.
Saying that though, it's not just the kid aspect that makes it all different now. The new movies (EP1 and most likely EP2) are absolutely jam packed with features and effects. I personally hated the pod racing scene in EP1, and I believe there's something similar in EP2. No thanks.
I'm still going to see it in the movies on Friday, it just has to be done.
There are options though; Use some form of smart/flash-media to store games. However, storing a 32k game on a (min.) 2mb media is a waste.
Even if you did do that, people would release a cartridge with every game on it - just like they did with the GameGear and GameBoy, you just can't stop it.
Then.. you could make use of better hardware and storage and maybe improve the games - kinda same thing they did to the 2600 when the 7800 came out (more colours, same games etc.). That would be cool.
It'd be cool if someone brought out a colour, handheld Atari system. It wouldn't cost much, I mean, compared to something like the NeoGeo handheld or gameboy.
Just imagine it, sitting on the train, and people start hearing the classic Asteroids noises coming from your handheld.
Within minutes everyone will want a go. Nostalgia at it's best!
Cat: *meiow* Owner: Aw, you want some food? Cat: *meiow* Owner: Ahh yes you do! Cat: *meiow* Owner: Would you like some chicken honeybunny? Cat: *meiow* Owner: Here you go then. Cat: *gobble*
I don't see the intelligence in that, especially in the owners corner;)
Slashdot Mirror
... I used to regularly score 'above average', or in MSFT stack rankings, a 3.5 or 4.0 (the latter was hard to achieve if you weren't the golden-boy - required to balance the team score). This meant I would get a performance based bonus, which was great.
I made the mistake of pushing for a promotion. I felt that because I was consistently out-performing my role, that I should be promoted. Eventually they promoted me and a few other guys. We got a 'Senior' title. Now comes the problem.
The promotion only came with a 2% pay rise. The following annual performance review, it was now deemed that I was not exceeding my role (due to the new title), so I only scored a 3.0. This score means 'you met all your objectives'. Unfortunately, at the time, the policy was bonuses were only awarded to those exceeding their job description. I got no bonus. That year, or the following year. It probably left me on average $5k/year out of pocket.
Moral to the story? Don't be an employee :-)
So it's the mid 80's. You've got your innovative home computer, a Commodore 64, a Sinclar Spectrum, a Toshiba MSX, and others.. A lot of these platforms (and starting with the NES and Sega Master System, used/could_use cartridges for their software/games. Actually, even with using tape or disc it makes no difference. I don't remember _ever_ seeing an 'update' or a 'fix' for a game or piece of software you purchased over the counter.
Sure, with utility software, you'd get new major versions. Games? No. It had to work right out of the box as there was no going back. You were manufacturing a boxed product which simply had to work.
I appreciate it was a lot simpler back then. Less to go wrong. Less demand. Less requirement to always be on the edge of everything. At least that's my perception of how it differed back then to now. Maybe i'm wrong, I don't want to discount any of the great work from the 8 and 16 bit days.
Perhaps the modern internet day creates too much of a challenge. It's easy to knock up some code and distribute it. Same as posting any old crap comment/opinion on a forum, you can just as easily publich some code. 'Back in the old days' you actually had to make the effort and commitment to put something into production, which wouldn't have been taken lightly. Nowadays it seems to be a case of get something new out there before the next guy and worry about fixing it after. Of course, the internet facilitates this nicely.
Maybe the nostalgia bug is just biting again.
There are animals in the Ocean that make noises as loud as this..
Take the Pistol Shrimp for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheidae
That makes 200db's just by snapping it's big claw.. (albeit at a much shorter range)
Interestingly the 'explosion' caused by the snapping reaches temperatures close to that of the suns surface!
I just ordered mine from www.amazon.co.uk. If you're in the UK, by far the cheapest I found in the first few results pages on Google. £71 including delivery.
Some similar bullshit happened to me once. Two police officers came to my place of work because someone had called "CrimeWatch" (UK show about crimes) to say I looked like the photo-fit for a particular case (Rape, nice). So after a few preliminary questions they insisted I undertake a DNA swabbing, either there at my workplace or back at the station. I chose the easy route and had it done there.
So, first of all its quite annoying to think someone who knows me that well to report me to the cops as a suspect, but then having them turn up at the workplace, swabs in-hand, takes the biscuit!
8 MONTHS LATER, I finally get a letter from the police saying "Thanks for helping us with our enquiries, you have been removed as a suspect". No mention about destroying my DNA evidence, nothing. I bet its still on computer somewhere. Corrupt.
Well, I don't think much of their patented algorithm. It seems to think that my local people are in America, Iceland and South Africa.
Unfortuately, i'm in London UK. Great.
Like this?
Line 1: Sssh, I can hear something.
Line 2: Hey bob, we got something.
Line 1: It's them!
Line 2: They can hear us!! Quick, drop the hardline.
Line 1: They've gone, call downtown!
Downtown: Oops sorry, we forgot to update the IOS.
nb: laugh
Maybe I should form a small ISP called AOL (assholes online) and see if I can gain more business in the same way as these guys. ... either that or get ripped apart in court.
Either way, quite amusing.
nb: i don't care.
I suggested something similar to this to some friends a while back.
:-
How hard could it be to setup a few servers (just like the current DNS Root Servers, which seem to run just fine) to handle keys/certs to validate emails.
It wouldn't be rocket science to get something like this running
- User sends email
- Client looks up keyservers, requests a new message ID, keyserver logs user key with new message id
- mail gets sent, with key and id info
And upon receiving, the client does the same in return. This is a very basic way of detailing it, but i'm sure you all know where i'm coming from. I'm suprised nothing like this already exists in the open sauce community (it probably does, i've just not checked).
Hoorah.
nb: if it's flawed, i don't care.
... there aren't any epileptics watching.
... you never want a three letter hotmail address like me...
200+ spams a day...
.. thought of being gzipped is quite disturbing.
Mad Scientist: "Fire up the GZip Continueum Transfunctioner!"
Operator: "Okay, Boss"
*Bizzzttt*
This is quite cool.. I wonder if you could hook up a drill to a normal flatbed plotter.. You can find old Roland plotters quite cheap on ebay and places now..
When you buy (yes, pay for), your morning newspaper, do you bitch about the advertising in it? Hm, no.
When the magazine slip inside drops out, do you bitch about it? Hm, no.
These two things could be compared to banner ads and popup ads (the latter of which do annoy me). Banner ads don't bother me, you don't have to look at them, they're not too big. Popups and lingering popups should die a painful death - I wouldn't object to them being made illegal.
Banner ads aren't effective. Even on high traffic sites, it's unlikely to make you rich.
But, you have to get things into perspective. Banners don't really spoil your viewing, it's the other dirty tactics of the affiliation monkeys that cause the problems.
It's true that other advertising-based-isp's have failed. Not sure why, it was more than likely the service that sucked due to over-subscription than the actual ads making people move away from it. I remember trying one in the UK when this kinda stuff first came out - it sucked, mainly because it kept on dropping me offline all the time. The little ad bar (a bit like the AllAdvantage one) wasn't a big issue (although it did crash sometimes, crap code).
If it was done cleanly with minimal system interference, I can see this being viable, clearly.
.. the white label industry in the UK..
This is how it works. There aren't that many record pressing plants in the UK. 99% of them require copyright approval before they will scribe their ID onto the trailer on a piece of vinyl. If this database get's used, i'd say 75% of material that gets submitted for approval will get refused now, compared to maybe 15-20% that gets rejected nowadays.
In your typical UK record shop, 50-60% of vinyl's hanging on the wall are white labels made by new up-and-coming producers (bedroom dj's usually).. They whack a tune together, do an old remix, and knock it out. They never sell more than 500 copies. I know this, from experience. Even some of the larger (self) labels don't sell more than 1,000 presses. Why do they get so shitty about this? It costs approx £500 to manufacture 500 vinyls, single-sided, white label, including mastering/metalwork costs. They sell them for £3 sale-or-return to record shops. Wow, if they sell all 500, they may earn themselves a grand. Is that really worth all this copyright shit? Any decent record label (that would be capable of selling large quantities) would never let bad material go out the door anyway, so it shouldn't matter.
This is just another sign of how petty the industry is going, like internet broadcasting. If all pressing plants start doing this, the underground music scene will suffer and only 'commercial' music on large labels will continue to exist.
Imagine this..
You bolt on a GPS unit, GPRS capabilities, and some clever microprocessor workings..
And what do you get?
Your own little robot slave.
It's exceptionally possible. You could have a 'helipad' bolted to your window-ledge, you program it as home (by GPS), and it uses GPRS communication to find out other destinations, guided by GPS.
It could go do your shopping for you, pick up your weed, whatever you want. Larger versions could be made for heavier loads.
And all the time, you can watch the view from the built-in camera via GPRS. That would rule.
Simple dopplar radar (inexpensive) can detect buildings and objects, to avoid them. It could use GPRS to transmit location (as GPS is mainly one-way), to a 'air traffic control' type scenario - to stop them hitting eachother. Set a flight-height, of say 200ft above ground and they wouldn't be a problem - it's about time we started using the air space between 100ft and 36,000 ft for something other than nothing.
Getting these things to fly themselves isn't a huge feat, they already have the majority of the code in the gyroscope control computer - getting it to follow coordinates and avoid stuff isn't such a task.
So who will build one? Obviousely the military have similar things, guided missiles and so forth, but this is consumer, and is possible..
Bring it on!
..Engineering..
I'm not actually aware of any 'protection' system, on CD, Video or DVD that is un-hackable.
Why do they continue to bang their heads against the wall? Surely by now they should have realized that paying some mathametics guru to sit in a room for 12 months to devise some wonderful algorithm is _not_ the answer. Narrow minded ideas, it's getting them nowhere and it's sure as hell costing them (and us) a lot of money.
Daughter: Wow mother, you look fantastic!
Mother: Really honey? Thankyou!
Daughter: You haven't been and had Collagen injections now, have you mother?
Mother: *shock* No! I just got off the super-fast-twisty-shocker rollercoaster!
The End.
This whole 'capping' deal has been evident in Australia for a long time, so it seems.
Have any of these ISP's ever provided any form of actual report displaying how running an un-capped service could have a detrimental effect on their service and availability? I've not seen one.
As fas as I know, other countries like Canada don't run caps. I think most Broadband ISP's in the US don't, and I know they don't here in the UK.
Ironically, with BT being one of the tightest Telco's going, they don't cap and have no plans to do so. It's also fairly cheap these days, probably cheaper than in Aus. Why are they being so tight?
Well, I don't think MS are in the wrong with this. If you make a product, and produce a license scheme, you should be able to make it however you want.
If MS want licensee's and online gaming providers to use Microsoft platforms with their Microsoft product, I think that's fair enough.
It's about time people realized that if a company (or an individual) writes a piece of software, they're allowed to pretty much do what they want with it. I know for sure that if I made a particular product to use a particular O/S, if I had a license scheme I wouldn't want other O/S's getting involved.
My 2c.
It looks pretty cool.
It doesn't look a whole lot different from the first one. I hope they just don't take the fighting sections from the first and make a full length feature from it. It _has_ to be a great sequel.
The slash has you.
... that it just won't "be the same" as the originals..
I mean, you have to look at what exactly the originals were made from:
- A good guy (or two)
- A bad guy (or two)
- A chick
- A cheeky romance
- A fight in space
That was pretty much it. EP4 was pretty slow moving for the most part, but was awesome. I don't think anyway can accurately say *why* it was awesome, you'd need to back 24 years and be that kid again to really appreciate it.
Also, EP4, 5 and 6 were very much similar. Timeline, I mean. You could watch all three and it would certainly seem like they were all filmed in the same year (plot-wise). There is so much variation in cast, ages etc between EP1-3 which will make EP4-6 like an extended length movie if glued together.
Saying that though, it's not just the kid aspect that makes it all different now. The new movies (EP1 and most likely EP2) are absolutely jam packed with features and effects. I personally hated the pod racing scene in EP1, and I believe there's something similar in EP2. No thanks.
I'm still going to see it in the movies on Friday, it just has to be done.
Yeah, that's true.
There are options though; Use some form of smart/flash-media to store games. However, storing a 32k game on a (min.) 2mb media is a waste.
Even if you did do that, people would release a cartridge with every game on it - just like they did with the GameGear and GameBoy, you just can't stop it.
Then.. you could make use of better hardware and storage and maybe improve the games - kinda same thing they did to the 2600 when the 7800 came out (more colours, same games etc.). That would be cool.
It'd be cool if someone brought out a colour, handheld Atari system. It wouldn't cost much, I mean, compared to something like the NeoGeo handheld or gameboy.
Just imagine it, sitting on the train, and people start hearing the classic Asteroids noises coming from your handheld.
Within minutes everyone will want a go. Nostalgia at it's best!
Cat: *meiow*
;)
Owner: Aw, you want some food?
Cat: *meiow*
Owner: Ahh yes you do!
Cat: *meiow*
Owner: Would you like some chicken honeybunny?
Cat: *meiow*
Owner: Here you go then.
Cat: *gobble*
I don't see the intelligence in that, especially in the owners corner