The thing I found most interesting is that they have the Duke university logo engraved on the back of it.
Imagine the branding possibilities here -- beyond the obvious BMW tie-in, what if the various colleges and universities licensed the use of their name/logo for use on the back of the iPod? The university wins, as it gets a cut of the fee and some publicity. The alumni are happy because now they have a personalized iPod they can show off to their friends. And Apple will likely take a cut too, so Steve is happy.
What about corporate branding? A Pepsi iPod, perhaps?
Instead of using outdated terms such as socialism to describe this new cooperative economy, they should be coining a new word, such as "karma-ocracy", where your reputation is your wealth.
Molly Ringwald plays a grubby orphan on a planet run by disease-ridden overlords. There's also something involving three nubile women captured by the overlords, but they're just a plot device -- pay no attention to them.
Michael Ironside (as usual) plays the villain.
I saw it in 3-D, where you had to wear the polarized glasses. Got the biggest headache of the year that afternoon from those damned things.
Back when video games were ultra-cool (watch movies like Tron to see the hype), there would be students showing up for comp-sci, and getting thoroughly disappointed when the professors went on about optimizing your sort strategies when you only have three 9-track tape drives to use...
There were a lot of drop-outs and changes of major after the 1st semester of comp-sci when they found out the universities didn't teach how to write the next Pac-Man.
Those that lasted were those who were really into computers, either the technology or the industry. I liked both, I guess. The industry was always interesting -- something new every week. The technology was fun too.
Say that I specialize in middle-tier code. But if I'm working against a poorly designed database, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. If the front-end coder doesn't know what they're doing, again, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. The same with the documentation writers, the installer writer, the support staff, etc.
The probability of failure in software is multiplicative, meaning that if any one person in the chain is a "zero" at their job, the result is a zero.
What this proposal (software as a mass-produced item) does is put the burden of responsibilty of delivering a timely & quality product on the heads of technical management (where it ought to be). They have to select people with the right skills and skill level to form a team that is able to deliver the product on-time and on-budget.
However, my personal experiences to date are that technical managers got there via the Peter Principle and the chance of this idea actually working is about nil.
There are 64-bit ports of Java already available (from IBM, and I understand Sun is working on one). Porting your application will take some work, but it is possible.
Also -- The.NET framework CLR will be on 64-bits soon. Since the IL already has support for 64-bit datatypes, and no fuzzy "Is an int 16-bits, 32-bits or 64-bits on this platform?" problems, this should be pretty easy for MS to release, and there won't be any porting effort for.NET users.
RTFA.
The buyback is at the strike price, not at market prices.
Which means that the holders will get *something* for their options. Remember, until you're able to exercise & then sell them, they're just promises. And promises sometimes get broken
"Outer space is a province of all mankind," says Sylvia Ospina, a member of the board of directors at the International Institute of Space Law. "There is not, and should not be, any privatization of outer space. It is a common thing that should belong to all."
Fine. I'll take whatever space Sylvia is in. It belongs to us all, right? So I've got just as much right to set up my house there as she does.
Actually, part of the problem is that we're thinking of property as a two-dimensional piece of real estate. What we're doing is applying last-century's solutions to today's problems: "Self-propelled vehicles on public roads in Britain must be proceeded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn"
In space, property could be something non-physical, like an orbit, or something three-dimensional, like the interior of an asteroid, as well as the traditional two-D view of property (the surface of the asteroid). The laws of ownership need to reflect the different reality that is space travel. These folks are not helping.
You need to buy a copy of the Pragmatic Programmer's starter kit
The third book in the series is about project automation, where they teach you how to repeat in a controlled manner all the stuff you learned in the first two books. The basics:
1) Write unit tests before writing your methods
2) Your unit tests should follow the inheritance tree of the classes under test to avoid duplicate test code.
3) Write a vertical "slice" of your application first (all the layers, none of the functionality). This will prove out communications and give the QA people something to work with while you flesh out the app.
4) Build & unit test nightly. Any build or unit-test errors need to be fixed the next day, and no later.
5) Release to QA as often as things get semi-stable, and when they have time to test.
6) Try not to ship with any known bugs. How do you know if you've got bugs? Your unit tests, integration tests, QA tools, and end-users tell you via a bug-tracking tool like BugZilla or FogBugz
Do we do all this at my current employer? No. But we're working towards it.
My guess is that they're delaying the release in order to get the manufacturers to release more x86-64 drivers. Microsoft has always understood this to be important for their success (unlike OS/2).
Whenever I shop for new hardware, I look at the drivers first -- having good drivers is more important than the hardware itself.
It does not contain item prices or consumer behavior. Its an ID for crying out loud. the actual ID number is fixed and not changeable
But if I can change the ID number of a $2500 Rolex to that of a $2200 Rolex, I've just stolen $300 worth of value from the store (as well as buggered up their inventory).
I agree, however, that the retail version of these tags ought to be write-once devices.
BEA is telling us we need dual-processor Opteron or Xeon machines with 2gb RAM and striped hard drives. The boss is choking over the $4000-$5000 pricetag (and that price doesn't include buying monitor(s)!)
The average Duke student's family probably makes well over $100,000/year. Many students' parents hold jobs where they interact with other wealthy people.
That's true for a large number of the students, but many of them are on grants, loans, and scholarships.
Now if we can get them to use all that technolgy to broadcast the shooting sports. I'm getting a little tired of watching hours of Curling or rhythmic gymnastics.
Still boots & runs (except for hit-or-miss floppy drive and the missing Insert key on fold-down keyboard). Windows for Workgroups v 3.11 is still loaded on it, connectivity is via your choice of a 10mb/s 3com microchannel ethernet card, or a half-length IBM 2400 bps modem.
Slashdot Mirror
The schools around here have received bottles of Potassium Iodide pills in case the local reactor blows up. You can buy some at www.ki4u.com
Chip H.
Dude, I think you're onto something there...
Mel will have to find a replacement for John Candy. That'll be tough.
Chip H.
I knew the airport security system was doomed when they started searching 86 year old Medal of Honor recipients
Chip H.
The thing I found most interesting is that they have the Duke university logo engraved on the back of it.
Imagine the branding possibilities here -- beyond the obvious BMW tie-in, what if the various colleges and universities licensed the use of their name/logo for use on the back of the iPod? The university wins, as it gets a cut of the fee and some publicity. The alumni are happy because now they have a personalized iPod they can show off to their friends. And Apple will likely take a cut too, so Steve is happy.
What about corporate branding? A Pepsi iPod, perhaps?
Chip H.
Instead of using outdated terms such as socialism to describe this new cooperative economy, they should be coining a new word, such as "karma-ocracy", where your reputation is your wealth.
Chip H.
You mean, changeable colors on your case, like a Wurlitzer Jukebox from 1934?
With this new program, families will be able to buy their bread, milk & USDA cheese, as well as an upgrade to a BFG-9000.
Molly Ringwald plays a grubby orphan on a planet run by disease-ridden overlords. There's also something involving three nubile women captured by the overlords, but they're just a plot device -- pay no attention to them.
Michael Ironside (as usual) plays the villain.
I saw it in 3-D, where you had to wear the polarized glasses. Got the biggest headache of the year that afternoon from those damned things.
Chip H.
Back when video games were ultra-cool (watch movies like Tron to see the hype), there would be students showing up for comp-sci, and getting thoroughly disappointed when the professors went on about optimizing your sort strategies when you only have three 9-track tape drives to use...
There were a lot of drop-outs and changes of major after the 1st semester of comp-sci when they found out the universities didn't teach how to write the next Pac-Man.
Those that lasted were those who were really into computers, either the technology or the industry. I liked both, I guess. The industry was always interesting -- something new every week. The technology was fun too.
Chip H.
Say that I specialize in middle-tier code. But if I'm working against a poorly designed database, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. If the front-end coder doesn't know what they're doing, again, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. The same with the documentation writers, the installer writer, the support staff, etc.
The probability of failure in software is multiplicative, meaning that if any one person in the chain is a "zero" at their job, the result is a zero.
What this proposal (software as a mass-produced item) does is put the burden of responsibilty of delivering a timely & quality product on the heads of technical management (where it ought to be). They have to select people with the right skills and skill level to form a team that is able to deliver the product on-time and on-budget.
However, my personal experiences to date are that technical managers got there via the Peter Principle and the chance of this idea actually working is about nil.
Chip H.
There are 64-bit ports of Java already available (from IBM, and I understand Sun is working on one). Porting your application will take some work, but it is possible.
.NET framework CLR will be on 64-bits soon. Since the IL already has support for 64-bit datatypes, and no fuzzy "Is an int 16-bits, 32-bits or 64-bits on this platform?" problems, this should be pretty easy for MS to release, and there won't be any porting effort for .NET users.
Also -- The
Chip H.
RTFA.
The buyback is at the strike price, not at market prices.
Which means that the holders will get *something* for their options. Remember, until you're able to exercise & then sell them, they're just promises. And promises sometimes get broken
Chip H.
"Outer space is a province of all mankind," says Sylvia Ospina, a member of the board of directors at the International Institute of Space Law. "There is not, and should not be, any privatization of outer space. It is a common thing that should belong to all."
Fine. I'll take whatever space Sylvia is in. It belongs to us all, right? So I've got just as much right to set up my house there as she does.
Actually, part of the problem is that we're thinking of property as a two-dimensional piece of real estate. What we're doing is applying last-century's solutions to today's problems: "Self-propelled vehicles on public roads in Britain must be proceeded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn"
In space, property could be something non-physical, like an orbit, or something three-dimensional, like the interior of an asteroid, as well as the traditional two-D view of property (the surface of the asteroid). The laws of ownership need to reflect the different reality that is space travel. These folks are not helping.
Chip H.
I think they want to hold onto the trademarked name "Cloudscape".
Look for another product under that name in about 4-5 years.
Chip H.
Someone should call up Sun and let them know they can download the sourcecode for Linux --- For FREE!
They probably have all that Microsoft money burning a hole in their pocket...
Chip H.
You need to buy a copy of the Pragmatic Programmer's starter kit
The third book in the series is about project automation, where they teach you how to repeat in a controlled manner all the stuff you learned in the first two books. The basics:
1) Write unit tests before writing your methods
2) Your unit tests should follow the inheritance tree of the classes under test to avoid duplicate test code.
3) Write a vertical "slice" of your application first (all the layers, none of the functionality). This will prove out communications and give the QA people something to work with while you flesh out the app.
4) Build & unit test nightly. Any build or unit-test errors need to be fixed the next day, and no later.
5) Release to QA as often as things get semi-stable, and when they have time to test.
6) Try not to ship with any known bugs. How do you know if you've got bugs? Your unit tests, integration tests, QA tools, and end-users tell you via a bug-tracking tool like BugZilla or FogBugz
Do we do all this at my current employer? No. But we're working towards it.
Chip H.
My guess is that they're delaying the release in order to get the manufacturers to release more x86-64 drivers. Microsoft has always understood this to be important for their success (unlike OS/2).
Whenever I shop for new hardware, I look at the drivers first -- having good drivers is more important than the hardware itself.
Chip H.
It does not contain item prices or consumer behavior. Its an ID for crying out loud. the actual ID number is fixed and not changeable
But if I can change the ID number of a $2500 Rolex to that of a $2200 Rolex, I've just stolen $300 worth of value from the store (as well as buggered up their inventory).
I agree, however, that the retail version of these tags ought to be write-once devices.
Chip H.
Like others have said, it's not just limited to MS technologies.
That being said, in the VB forums I visit, about once a week some genius tells someone to "just double up the quotes and then it'll work". Arrrg!
Chip H.
BEA is telling us we need dual-processor Opteron or Xeon machines with 2gb RAM and striped hard drives. The boss is choking over the $4000-$5000 pricetag (and that price doesn't include buying monitor(s)!)
Chip H.
The average Duke student's family probably makes well over $100,000/year. Many students' parents hold jobs where they interact with other wealthy people.
That's true for a large number of the students, but many of them are on grants, loans, and scholarships.
Chip H.
Now if we can get them to use all that technolgy to broadcast the shooting sports. I'm getting a little tired of watching hours of Curling or rhythmic gymnastics.
Chip H.
Charge Reduced For N.C. Student Who Hid Box Cutters On Plane
Short summary -- student hit boxcutters on a flight in order to demonstrate the weak airport security. The cops were not amused.
Chip H.
So, if he walks through the scanner at one of those "supermarkets of the future", how much does it ring up for him?
And, does it know to use Pesos?
Chip H.
Still boots & runs (except for hit-or-miss floppy drive and the missing Insert key on fold-down keyboard). Windows for Workgroups v 3.11 is still loaded on it, connectivity is via your choice of a 10mb/s 3com microchannel ethernet card, or a half-length IBM 2400 bps modem.
Chip H.