The pressure from corporate bigwigs is definitely on. Earlier, the CEO of Philips claimed that not adopting software patentability would result in the loss of "billions of euros and tens of thousands of jobs". Yeah, right. This is another one of those "protect my interests or Satan will come and eat your babies" threat. The sad thing is that the opinions, however uninformed, carry a lot of weight with politicians.
Thankfully Poland is one of the countries where politicians have seen the light, and realise that software patents will be detrimental to their own burgeoning software industry.
Re:It might if you keep advertizing it ever y day
on
Can Microsoft Beat Google?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
They just aren't adding enough new value to make it worth breaking a 5 year long habit of typing google.com
That's the key point, I think. I just read about a study that showed most people are loyal to their current search engine to an almost unreasonable degree. Bear in mind that 'most people' does not mean technofreaks like the regular Slashdot reader, but just your average computer user. And even I (technofreak) took a long long time to switch from Altavista to Google, even when Google's advantages became apparent.
Microsofts engine will have to be phenominally good in order to get people to switch. Google (and Altavista in an earlier stage) could beat the competition by having a really simple and quick-loading interface, along with a good, attractive format to display results in. They could have beaten the competition even if their search results were on par with competing systems (they were better). It will be quite hard to beat Google on either the user experience or search engine.
Here's one of those nice little features of Google: try searching for "5 cc to cubic inches". Google gives you the answer right away... and it also works for converting, say, furlongs to lightyears.
But if you can create something that has meaning - even if that meaning is not immediately obvious) -, or that grabs the audience's attention (and you intended doing that), you create art.
Well, your monkey with a brush may grab an audience's attention as well. I don't see how the intention matters. Even some stuff that wasn't created with the intention of capturing an audience, instill meaning, or even just be art, is still considered art.
If you think something's art, it is. That's as good a definition as any.
The article makes a few good points, but they're hardly insightful stuff. Come on... most of us could have come up with these things. The article defines what a good product should be, but as we all know, a good product does not a succesful product make. And conversely, a bad product may still become market leader. Ever seen the user interface to SAP, Cognos, Agresso/Unit4? These are all popular packages around here... despite their many shortcomings.
If you want a truly insightful essay, not on what makes a good product, but how to bring a technical product into the mainstream market, I can heartily recommend Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.
You're not gonna be the next Microsoft
With this kind of thinking, Microsoft wasn't going to be the next Microsoft, way back when. Don't set up and run your company as if you're going to be a major league company, but be ready for it when it happens unexpectedly anyway. As they say: "Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet".
All that said, I'm not sure if "wasting time" is so bad. Young children should be encouraged to play freely, not subjected 100% to a rigorous schedule of pre-planned activities. Not sure how much that can or should carry over into teenage years.
Graham is advocating exploration of that which interests you
Graham also advocates exploration of what things might interest you. Good parents and good teachers expose children to everything (well, nearly everything) the world has to offer. To become interested in something, first you have to learn of its existence, secondly you have to learn more about its nature. Encourage exploration, but offer some direction and suggestions, and help them.
I wish I had more encouragements in some fields in preschool and high school. Free play is good, but it doesn't satisfy the need for encouragement and the
A good example is art class such as we had it in high school. The method of teaching was as follows: the paints and pencils are over there, now go and draw something. At times we were given a specific assignment, but that was it. No art history was taught, and neither did we learn about techniques of using paints, perspective, how to do live drawings etc. Very free, but we weren't learning anything. In Grahams words: we weren't challenged, and it was one of the most boring classes I had to sit through.
Later I taught myself these techniques, and I actually became rather interested in painting. To my utter surprise I found that I could actually draw a decent portrait of someone by using these techniques, whereas previously I considered myself utterly devoid of talent. I really, really wish I had learned this earlier in that high school art class, instead of all the freedom we enjoyed there.
In contrast, I've been interested in things like poetry and physics since high school, because the teachers in those subjects went out of their way (and outside the official curriculum) to interest us in these matters, by showing us around as it were. I wish that people would have told me earlier to get off the beaten track and explore the unknown... but those teachers have taught me that kids need encouragement as well as guidance for that to work.
I know the software folks here on/. always want to make excuses about 'its hard' and 'its to complicated', but, it's actually not hard, and not to complicated.
[...]
We do deploy equipment into life critical situations, so, for our work, 'shit happens' and 'i forgot' just dont exist in the vocabulary. We use checklists to ensure that all testing covers all forseeable abnormal conditions, up to and including partial failure of various hardware.
You're right... up to a point. The amount of robust coding, testing, and many other things like security, are always subject to a balance of costs and benefits. Rigorous testing is expensive, and in many software applications it might be wise to, say, not do a complete regression test on a minor release since the cost of that test outweighs the risk of a bug slipping through.
In your field of business, I imagine you cannot easily deploy quick fixes (to embedded systems), and major bugs in life critical situations are obviously not acceptable. So you do rigorous tests and code reviews. In my line of business however, bugs are acceptable. Sometimes a bug makes it into production... users will moan, and we'll have to spend a bit extra on writing and deploying the fix, but the cost is lower than doing a full test on every release.
I agree with you that software developers should realise the importance of testing, and take a critical look at their own testing and coding procedures... often it isn't that hard or expensive to make real improvements.
If they claim they don't make money off region coding cartridges, why are they doing it?
If the dollar drops against the euro, and we buy cartridges for the same euro amount, then HP gets more dollars. However, we can just buy cartridges in the US ourselves to take advantage of the strong euro, screwing HP out of their extra profit. Region coding takes care of that little loophole. Conversely, if the dollar becomes rather strong, we will not win out like HP claims. In that case, I suspect they raise the euro price of cartridges... they'll have to, since not doing so will eat directly into their normal profit margins.
So it's very simple: they want to pass off any disadvantages of the exchange rate to us customers, while pocketing the advantages. The first is only natural, but they can only get away with the second if they can prevent us from buying in the US.
The aren't exempt from the law; they have negotiated with the publishers for permission to make copies.
Technically they may still be breaking the law by cracking the DRM, but since they're doing so with the permission of the publishers, it'd be silly to call them to task for it.
Ever heard that song "My my my" by Arnand van Helden, which is currently festering on a couple of Euro dance charts? I'm not sure if it's generated, by I think it proves that the public is definitely ready for generated music. It's an (admittedly catchy) basic beat with some 'lyrics', consisting of 4 short sentences repeated over and over and over again; there's no bridge, no refrain, no variation except that the lyrics are sometimes sung in a slightly different rythm or note, and of course the currently so ubiqutous Q-filter (I think that's the name), which makes the music sound 'pinched off' to a greater or lesser degree.
If songs like these are indicative of the tastes of today's youth, I weep for the future.
Last year we had a show like this (can't remember if it was broadcast or just Webcast)... a family lived in a 'glass house' with a bunch of cameras, and people could give them commands on what to do via the Internet. It only ran for a week; I think it was not really intended as a serious soap, but more an art experiment. It generated quite a bit of publicity when it was announced, but I've not heard anyone talk about the show when it was actually on.
And yes, the orders where screened before they were passed down to the family.
In other words it is completely your employers fault, not yours.
No, that's not what it says. As another poster said, you can put up with a lot of pressure and long days if you genuinely like your work. In contrast, if you hate your job, the smallest tasks like picking up a ringing phone can become a chore.
If a job exceeds your capabilities, ask for help. I'm still surprised at how often people don't do that. If you cannot possibly complete all the tasks handed to you in the time you have, tell your manager (or try the methods in this book to see if you can get more done in the same amount of time). If you dislike the job, find something better within the company (our even outside it). All of this takes two things: an employee who is honest and realistic about his capabilities, and a manager who understands that the points in the quoted definition are key to employee satisfaction, and thus to production also.
Been there done that. The Dutch government encouraged a 32-hour week a few decades ago, and these days I know very few people who are not on a 32-hour week (excepting myself and most others in the IT industry; we still do 40 hours). It hasn't generated any extra work, we currently have a rather high unemployment ratio compared to the rest of Europe, and that's not even counting the people on Workman's Comp, (almost 1 million on a 16 million population! And no, most of these people aren't sick)
The idea was indeed for employers to hire extra people, but they haven't done so. I suppose that they just made everyone do the same amount of work, in 32 hours or with some extra unpaid overtime if need be. This generates more stress, not less, I think.
And that's just one of the reasons to go. I think that, when the opportunity arrives, many people will be lining up to colonise Mars. Sure it's a wasteland, but people have given up their comfy homes for the unknown before, to get away from oppressive governments or to carve out a brighter future for them or their kids.
It's nice to see such an impressive setup for such a low price, but to "start your own telco" for real, you'd need a bit more I think:
- Billing and invoicing software
- Provisions for wiretaps (if mandated by your local gov't)
- Customer service (unless you're not going to provide any)
etc.
You make a few good points, but on the whole you have not convinced me.
This statement has never been prohibited in the Netherlands, even in the days before the blasphemy articles you are referring to (147-147a, Title 5 WvS) officially fell into desuetude.
The law itself does prohibit it. Perhaps not a statement as succinct as "god sucks", but anything along those lines is punishable if it hurts religious feelings. It is true that no one has recently managed to get a conviction on grounds of this article (to my knowledge), but it is still relevant especially since minister of justice Donner is considering to resurrect and perhaps extend the article.
Article 1 of the Netherlands constitution states that the governments treats all inhabitants of the kingdom equally. You do not understand what it says. Criminal discrimation provisions are found in Title 5 WvS.
That's not all Art. 1 states. It also states that "Discrimination [on a number of specific criteria] is not allowed". The article is often referred to in relation with discriminatory speech, and the article does not specify what it means by discrimination (whether it includes speech or not).
Article 7 is much clearer about what 'freedom of expression' means than the first amendment in the US Constitution.
It is clear on how freedom of speech works in the Netherlands. It does not, however, prevent the government to create a law to criminalise any opinion they see fit. They can create a law to punish me for saying that the sky is blue. I may be 'free' to say it since I am not prevented from publishing this statement, but how free am I really if publishing this statement means 3 months of jail?
In contrast, the 1st amendment states: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech". It does not define free speech very well, but it does say that the state cannot just outlaw impopular opinion.
Is that why the Netherlands customarily scores very high on press freedom rankings (shared 1st place) and the US scores low (31st place)?
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of press (though it's closely related). The RSF (rightly) measures the practice of press freedom, including (unlawful) violence against journalists, both by government officials and by '3rd party' pressure groups or gangs. Freedom of press may stink in the US in practice (and likely due to any number of unlawful actions), but at least they got the principles right. In the Netherlands, freedom of speech is restricted by law, something that I find rather reprehensible.
Even countries that are supposedly as free as the USA are actually not. incorrect things like "tribe A is stupider than tribe B" will get you put in jail.
Indeed, we're a good example of that. We in the Netherlands have laws against saying "God sucks", and a prohibition on discrimination is actually set down in our constitution!. In fact, it's in Article 1. In contrast, the constitution does not grant freedom of speech even in limited terms, contrary to what many people think is in art. 7. That article only states that prior permission is not required to publish something, whoopidoo. But once it's published, you can be persecuted for anything that crosses the law (like the ones against discrimination or blasphemy). It's sad, really.
You can (rightly) point out a lot of bad things about the USA, but at least they got the free speech thing right.
... and would uncover what appeared at a distance to be a defensiveness on parent's part.
To a degree, yes.
I'm not contesting that social skills are useful, and sometimes necessary for advancing a career.
This doesn't make sense unless you meant "aren't useful,"
Contesting: [...] To call into question.
eg. "I am not [calling into question] that social skills are useful". Yes, that is what I meant.
Jesus. All he said was "I think it's sad that so many people are proud of being shut-ins." Overreact much?
Jesus... all I said was that people should try to go out a bit more but not force it upon themselves only because society says so, and in response I get this verbal diarrhea where you psychoanalyse me, my co-workers, hermits in general, read all sorts of things that I did not write, tell me what I am not, guess my profession (getting it wrong), correct my text (managing to get it wrong too)... and then you top it off by accusing me of overreacting?.
It seems that because of the ambiguity of the word "hard", some designers can't tell the difference between the two things, and which is good and which is bad.
I have always thought that MMORPG levelling should take a *long* time but cost little effort, so that the system slows down powergamers to prevent them from maxing out their levels overnight, while at the same time not making those higher levels impossible to attain for casual players, and still granting an edge to those who choose to grind. Ultima's Guaranteed Gain System was a step in the right direction: if you worked on a skill, you'd get a 'free' gain right off. After a number of hours (or days, depending on your current level)), you'd be eligible for another free gain. In the meantime, you could grind it out and earn extra gains. If I was in charge, I'd have capped the extra gains at some maximum per time period though.
This way you can accommodate both playstyles (powergamer and casual player), and both can spend more time on enjoying the game rather than mindless drudgery.
I agree with your point whole heartedly, but would like to stress that social skills are essential to a whole lot more than the business environment. I find it somewhat disheartening that so many "geeks" are actually proud of the basement dwelling stereotype they've acquired. We have been social animals for our whole evolution, after all.
What's wrong with being a basement dweller? I find it very disheartening that being sociable or extroverted is perceived to be superior to being introverted. It's understandable... after all, you will get more fun out of another person if that person is sociable, and most leaders and other public, influential people are (necessarily) sociable. Good social skills are associated with success to the point where people will say "he will go far!" of someone with very good social skills but no other skills to speak of. And sadly, they are sometimes right.
I'm not contesting that social skills are useful, and sometimes necessary for advancing a career. But many basement dwelling nerds are perfectly happy and functional members of our society (even if they prefer to spend as little time in it as they can). Isn't that what's important? I know a few people who are a bit anti-social: they often spend time with one or two friends at a time, but they simply do not function well in larger groups. They hate being in larger groups. And yet they make themselves go to parties and company functions, because that is what society expects of them (and your comment reflects that), even though the experience makes them thoroughly miserable. They would be perfectly happy individuals except for the fact that society makes them feel bad about their anti-social behaviour.
My point is: social skills are often important to advance your career, and one would do well to take note of that fact. It's also very good to give being sociable a try... it never hurts to expand one's horizon in whatever direction, and you may find that you like the company of others after all! But don't let people like the parent poster make you leave your basement, if it makes you miserable and unhappy.
I agree this is rather predictable, and the same goes for the movie industrie. However, I predict that 2005 will see a big crackdown by the movie industry on bootlegging and file trading, worldwide. We have seen some things already such as them going after BitTorrent sites and end users. In 2005, I think there will be a crackdown that you will notice personally rather than just read about on Slashdot. They will continue to sue or scare operators of BitTorrent sites and trackers out of commission, and work more closely with national IP organisations of various countries to go after individual users where possible.
In other words, I think that you'll find it harder rather than easier to find movies for download on the public Internet.
I also predict that the above will not happen for music.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsofts engine will have to be phenominally good in order to get people to switch. Google (and Altavista in an earlier stage) could beat the competition by having a really simple and quick-loading interface, along with a good, attractive format to display results in. They could have beaten the competition even if their search results were on par with competing systems (they were better). It will be quite hard to beat Google on either the user experience or search engine.
Here's one of those nice little features of Google: try searching for "5 cc to cubic inches". Google gives you the answer right away... and it also works for converting, say, furlongs to lightyears.
If you think something's art, it is. That's as good a definition as any.
If you want a truly insightful essay, not on what makes a good product, but how to bring a technical product into the mainstream market, I can heartily recommend Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. With this kind of thinking, Microsoft wasn't going to be the next Microsoft, way back when. Don't set up and run your company as if you're going to be a major league company, but be ready for it when it happens unexpectedly anyway. As they say: "Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet".
I wish I had more encouragements in some fields in preschool and high school. Free play is good, but it doesn't satisfy the need for encouragement and the
A good example is art class such as we had it in high school. The method of teaching was as follows: the paints and pencils are over there, now go and draw something. At times we were given a specific assignment, but that was it. No art history was taught, and neither did we learn about techniques of using paints, perspective, how to do live drawings etc. Very free, but we weren't learning anything. In Grahams words: we weren't challenged, and it was one of the most boring classes I had to sit through.
Later I taught myself these techniques, and I actually became rather interested in painting. To my utter surprise I found that I could actually draw a decent portrait of someone by using these techniques, whereas previously I considered myself utterly devoid of talent. I really, really wish I had learned this earlier in that high school art class, instead of all the freedom we enjoyed there.
In contrast, I've been interested in things like poetry and physics since high school, because the teachers in those subjects went out of their way (and outside the official curriculum) to interest us in these matters, by showing us around as it were. I wish that people would have told me earlier to get off the beaten track and explore the unknown... but those teachers have taught me that kids need encouragement as well as guidance for that to work.
In your field of business, I imagine you cannot easily deploy quick fixes (to embedded systems), and major bugs in life critical situations are obviously not acceptable. So you do rigorous tests and code reviews. In my line of business however, bugs are acceptable. Sometimes a bug makes it into production... users will moan, and we'll have to spend a bit extra on writing and deploying the fix, but the cost is lower than doing a full test on every release.
I agree with you that software developers should realise the importance of testing, and take a critical look at their own testing and coding procedures... often it isn't that hard or expensive to make real improvements.
So it's very simple: they want to pass off any disadvantages of the exchange rate to us customers, while pocketing the advantages. The first is only natural, but they can only get away with the second if they can prevent us from buying in the US.
Technically they may still be breaking the law by cracking the DRM, but since they're doing so with the permission of the publishers, it'd be silly to call them to task for it.
If songs like these are indicative of the tastes of today's youth, I weep for the future.
An article about one of the greatest scientists of antiquity, yet most comments here seem to be about Atlas' schlong.
Last year we had a show like this (can't remember if it was broadcast or just Webcast)... a family lived in a 'glass house' with a bunch of cameras, and people could give them commands on what to do via the Internet. It only ran for a week; I think it was not really intended as a serious soap, but more an art experiment. It generated quite a bit of publicity when it was announced, but I've not heard anyone talk about the show when it was actually on.
And yes, the orders where screened before they were passed down to the family.
If a job exceeds your capabilities, ask for help. I'm still surprised at how often people don't do that. If you cannot possibly complete all the tasks handed to you in the time you have, tell your manager (or try the methods in this book to see if you can get more done in the same amount of time). If you dislike the job, find something better within the company (our even outside it). All of this takes two things: an employee who is honest and realistic about his capabilities, and a manager who understands that the points in the quoted definition are key to employee satisfaction, and thus to production also.
Been there done that. The Dutch government encouraged a 32-hour week a few decades ago, and these days I know very few people who are not on a 32-hour week (excepting myself and most others in the IT industry; we still do 40 hours). It hasn't generated any extra work, we currently have a rather high unemployment ratio compared to the rest of Europe, and that's not even counting the people on Workman's Comp, (almost 1 million on a 16 million population! And no, most of these people aren't sick)
The idea was indeed for employers to hire extra people, but they haven't done so. I suppose that they just made everyone do the same amount of work, in 32 hours or with some extra unpaid overtime if need be. This generates more stress, not less, I think.
Minable asteroids.
And that's just one of the reasons to go. I think that, when the opportunity arrives, many people will be lining up to colonise Mars. Sure it's a wasteland, but people have given up their comfy homes for the unknown before, to get away from oppressive governments or to carve out a brighter future for them or their kids.
Only one way... by disecting its brain! Enough chitchat, restrain the specimen
[/Prof. H. Farnsworth]
It's nice to see such an impressive setup for such a low price, but to "start your own telco" for real, you'd need a bit more I think:
- Billing and invoicing software
- Provisions for wiretaps (if mandated by your local gov't)
- Customer service (unless you're not going to provide any)
etc.
In contrast, the 1st amendment states: "Congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech". It does not define free speech very well, but it does say that the state cannot just outlaw impopular opinion. Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom of press (though it's closely related). The RSF (rightly) measures the practice of press freedom, including (unlawful) violence against journalists, both by government officials and by '3rd party' pressure groups or gangs. Freedom of press may stink in the US in practice (and likely due to any number of unlawful actions), but at least they got the principles right. In the Netherlands, freedom of speech is restricted by law, something that I find rather reprehensible.
You can (rightly) point out a lot of bad things about the USA, but at least they got the free speech thing right.
eg. "I am not [calling into question] that social skills are useful". Yes, that is what I meant.
Jesus... all I said was that people should try to go out a bit more but not force it upon themselves only because society says so, and in response I get this verbal diarrhea where you psychoanalyse me, my co-workers, hermits in general, read all sorts of things that I did not write, tell me what I am not, guess my profession (getting it wrong), correct my text (managing to get it wrong too)... and then you top it off by accusing me of overreacting?.
This way you can accommodate both playstyles (powergamer and casual player), and both can spend more time on enjoying the game rather than mindless drudgery.
I'm not contesting that social skills are useful, and sometimes necessary for advancing a career. But many basement dwelling nerds are perfectly happy and functional members of our society (even if they prefer to spend as little time in it as they can). Isn't that what's important? I know a few people who are a bit anti-social: they often spend time with one or two friends at a time, but they simply do not function well in larger groups. They hate being in larger groups. And yet they make themselves go to parties and company functions, because that is what society expects of them (and your comment reflects that), even though the experience makes them thoroughly miserable. They would be perfectly happy individuals except for the fact that society makes them feel bad about their anti-social behaviour.
My point is: social skills are often important to advance your career, and one would do well to take note of that fact. It's also very good to give being sociable a try... it never hurts to expand one's horizon in whatever direction, and you may find that you like the company of others after all! But don't let people like the parent poster make you leave your basement, if it makes you miserable and unhappy.
In other words, I think that you'll find it harder rather than easier to find movies for download on the public Internet.
I also predict that the above will not happen for music.
... you lot just slashdotted NASA.
"The page cannot be displayed. There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time."