I'm not trying to debate how many years the guy has gotten. I'm saying that it's short-sighted to simply say "he sent annoying emails." Refer to my other replies for more details on how spam cost companies and people real money (not just in terms of time lost but resources spent fighting spam). You simply don't see it.
Just look at the resources companies (hotmail, yahoo, google) put aside to fight spam. There are real engineers being paid to spend their days in and out to fight spam. Not only that but the majority of email sent today are spam and the hardware needs to support that.
Last I checked, spam emails took over 50% of online traffic. The real number was actually up towards 60-80%. You just see 5 junk emails in your inbox but multiply that by millions of people who have emails and this is definitely costing people/companies real money. I'm not talking about lost productivity but real resources such as email servers, sys admins wasting time fighting spam, software packages PURCHASED just to fight spam, SMTP servers that are brought down when they are exploited, etc.
Let's put it this way. What if I stole $0.01 from a bank? Do I deserve 9 years in jail? Now let's say I did it 1,000,000x ($10,000). Now do I deserve 9 years in jail?
This guy did not send a couple emails. He sent 10,000,000 emails a DAY. Do you know how much that can cost companies? It translates into real money lost. Try talking to any sysadmin that's had to deal with this.
This is just the perspective from the average Joe consumer who uses hotmail or yahoo mail.
Think about this from the perspective of corporate companies. Everyday real money (significant amounts) are being spent to combat spam. Real resources must be hired, time is spent and hardware is acquired in order to accomodate spam. This translates into a real expenditure for enterprise-leve companies.
I'm not saying it's completely justified but I don't think you have the full picture.
Nintendo is actually immersing players in the game by innovating hardware...the only area left for innovation.
I'm not the world's most experienced gamer, but I'd have to respectfully disagree. From what I've seen a lot more innovation can go into the actual "storytelling" of the game. The article says it best towards the end:
Mr Armes warned that developers still had to learn how to tell stories effectively in the medium.
"In some ways we are trying to forget about the hardware, go in the opposite direction. We have been very bad at letting technology design our creativity.
"What we have to do as a company is start ignoring the technology and learning our craft in telling stories."
Mr Gardner agreed: "We can thrown more polygons around and have better AI but if it doesn't make for a better game then that's not very useful."
(Disclaimer: I skimmed most of the article except for the part on grad school.)
With all due respect for Joel, I found his remarks on grad school a bit discomforting. It's not that I don't like Joel and I think he has the occassional interesting word but I'd have to disagree with his remarks over why/when he chose NOT to go to grad school.
I went to Berkeley and worked in the research labs in their CS department. From what I saw the CS grad students did very interesting things. At the time some of them were doing high quality streaming media, using millions of robots the size of pennies, building the next generation peer-to-peer networks, etc. Sure there will be your handful of professors who want to prove that 1 = 1 but most others in tech are out there to do something cool (examples: Sun's RISK processor (berkeley), Google (Stanford), Inktomi (Berkeley), etc.)
I'm not an expert on this but from what I've heard it only pays off if you go to a GOOD grad school in CS while the mediocre ones are probably equivalent to going to a good undergrad school. I'd say that sounds about right.
I wouldn't say I hate my job nor would I say that I love it. An honest assessment would be that it has its ups and downs (at least for me).
The thing is is that in school you are there to learn. That's why you pay tuition. In the working world people pay YOU. But they don't pay you to learn b-trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, etc. A profitable company usually has a business plan around making money. That's the only way they can live and it's how business works.
That's why a good amount of tech work revolves around financial solution, upgrading existing solutions to today's technology, online marketing, etc. I think that most computer science majors would NOT find the previous list of things stimulating.
There's a small minority (how small I don't know since I'm hypothesizing here) of tech jobs that are fun. Funs jobs don't always mean stable or well-paying.
In short, other comments have talked about education versus mobility and how mobility directly relates to staying away from tedium. Those comments are right on. The better education you have, the more you can move up and do the cool stuff instead of the grunt stuff. The grunt stuff is what gets tedious.
Finally, to put it all together, I find my job fun when I'm learning something new. Jobs aren't always like that. Companies are usually more interested in teaching you a skill and then having you do it over and over (unless you're a researcher, CTO, or, for some other reason, your position calls for it). I think a good number of companies ignore (or don't do enough) continuing education for their employees.
Man.. someone likes shutting down the party. Party pooper!;)
You have a good point. Personally, I used it for mp3s but it's an easy way for me to explore new forms of music (you can respond with all the legal ways but don't bother as I'd like not to go down this apth) and when I find something I like I often buy the CD and support the artist.
Personally, I like checking out all the tracks on a CD before I pay the $15 given that many CDs these days feature 2 or 3 good tracks and the rest is crap.
I read an interesting comment below which referenced older technologies that have been shutdown and it gave me an interesting idea: could this just be a part of technological evolution?
First there was IRC (which still lives) and then there was FTP and then Napster and then other file-sharing mechanisms (edonkey, bearshare, mostly on similar/same networks) and the bittorrent to accomodate large files. One could make the argument that with each following technology there was an improvement and an evolution.
Where there's a will there's a way. I imagine that if bittorrents do face a large blowback from sites getting shutdown that techie's will find a way to adapt.
Here's a thought: being able to serve web pages in a distributed fashion (or at least a user-friendly index). I imagine you could build it on top of the existing bittorrent technology. This way the pages could be hosted on everybody's machine instead of one webserver that can easily get shutdown.
If population size and growth are an indication of fertility and penis size, then the Chinese must be some fertile, hung people.
Trolling aside, birth rate in western societies are much lower because of birth control, and a conciousness to have FEWER babies. In western societies, the cost of raising a child is extremely high (food, clothing, education, housing, etc).
However, if the real reason that Google cares is (2) then they deserve nothing.
That's a little harsh, isn't it? So if a company tries to maximize its profits it basically "deserves nothing"? My bet is that you'll never be a business person yourself.
From what I've read, one of the main motivations behind pay-per-click is to provide links that are most relevant. It's actually a service provided to users AND companies. This way the most relevant ad links will appear with a specific search based on the virtue that other people have found that ad link to be relevant when they've searched the same or similar keywords. Accordingly, irrelevant ad links never get clicked and thus get dropped.
So, as far as I see it, it's their way of providing good search results. I see NOTHING wrong with that.
I've noticed that I, personally, go in phases of music listening. When music is readily available on the internet that are full songs and good quality I am more likely to buy CDs. The more music I can sample, the more likely I will buy a CD. I prefer a CD over mp3s downloaded for multiple reasons: support the artist, better quality, can burn mp3 at desired rates, plays in my car CD player, have a hard copy, etc.
During periods where it has been harder to find mp3s, I've been less likely to buy CDs. I'm not the type of person who will just buy a CD if I have a vague interest in someone (unless I have other CDs from that artists that I have really, really enjoyed). I usually need to know what I'm getting before I drop that kind of money on a CD.
I rarely buy a CD based on the crappy samples provided on the internet. That's just my take.
Illegal detainments in Iraq and Cuba.
Vast expansion of secret police powers via "Patriot Act".
World's biggest Military budget (thats a guess) and a military commander chosen in hail of controversy.
Actually the above 3 are advocated by the Republican party while they are being fought against by the Democratic party. So I don't see how it exactly follows your statement about the far right and further right parties (although I would agree, in general, that the statement is true relative to Europe).
FYI, I believe China has the largest standing Army. US is probably, no doubt, the strongest. But what else can we compare to? A USSR that no longer exists? A Europe that demilitarized after WW2 in which all money went into rebuilding?
I don't want to be a fear monger but China will definitely be a concern in the next couple decades.
1) Funding fusion research and building more nuclear power plants are not exactly the same issue. Not all "nuclear" is the same.
2) It's ironic how you took one link (and also noted the 12 seconds it took to find it) for you to be convinced that what was modded-up was simply "propaganda". Did you bother even reading the whole article before you responded? Do you even know the broader environmental and energy (nuclear) policies the Bush administration has taken?
This post isn't for or against Bush but it simply says that you don't have much ground to stand on in casting the other person's post as simply propaganda.
True, Engineering courses at school help you learn how to solve problems better, but those were only 5 really helpful courses and then there is the rest of liberal arts easy A stuff:-).
The assumption here is that all schools and all CS degrees are equal. I'd say that is a false assumption.
Not to mention that that is only talking about quantity and disregards quality.
The fact is that many countries still send their best and brightest to America to study (which, in itself, is decreasing due to "homeland security" concerns).
Actually my Toshiba I got about 1.5 years ago, while not the most serious gaming laptop, sports a 15" monitor and GeForce 4 MX (which at the time was pretty decent). And the thign si that it's quite durable. The only thing is that you'd probably not want to travel much with it because of the weight (which the article duly points out). THe plastic is not weak nor is the "silicon". Yes, the LCD does cost half of the entire system, but couldn't the same argument be made for LCDs of similar quality for desktop machines? I doubt there's much different between the LCDs you buy for your desk versus the one in the laptop.
Anytway, I've had no problems with mine while traveling. It's still in tip-top condition. I reall think, though, it depends more ont he manufacturer than some FUD you're throwing out jsut because it's a gaming laptop.
This week's Newsweek has an op-ed article called Afflictions of Affluence that speaks on this very topic. According to it, there are 3 consequences of our rich society: obesity, time crunch and buyer's remorse.
In short the article goes on to say that because we're so rich and food is so cheap our portion sizes have been getting bigger. And that's why we're becoming fat.
We're facing a constant time crunch because we constantly view our time as more and more valuable (time is money in our capitalistic culture) ergo there's this need to cram all our activities into shorter time periods.
Lastly, ther'es buyer's remorse simply because we havfe so many choices out there. You buy one mp3 player but have time to research all 100. You're likely to find a feature in another mp3 player you wish you had.
"I live in a very conservative, Republican (and largely rural) area and even here the high school is all caught up with social issues. I once mentioned religious thought in the context of historical trends and what caused mass mirgrations of people (like the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Mormons in Utah, Mennonites in Pennsylvania, etc.) and got a major ass chewing by some students and teachers for teaching religion. "
Interesting. What part of America do you live in?
I think talking about anything religious is always going to involve walking on egg shells. I can't say that you or they were in the wrong because I simply wasn't there to hear how you spoke about religious but I can imagine a case where you're in the right and I can imagine a case where they are. It's simply ludicrous to avoid religion altogether since that's an integral part of how America was formed but the extend to which you talk about those religious, themselves, should be limited.
"What you describe as a "sign of the times" is driven in part by faculty and what they percieve as the current issues. Social issues are issues in part because some activist wants to push them onto the front pages of newspapers and leading stories on the evening TV news. That traditionally liberals have also been more successful at identifying these issues tends to make them more liberal in nature."
Sorry, but maybe you can give an example to me because I really just don't buy it. I don't see social issues as belonging to one part or another. As I said in my last post, the only difference between left and right is the approach. Both liberals and conservatives recognize the same social issues. Now if the schools are spreading propaganda about welfare then I could see it having a liberal bent. But, otherwise, social issues belong to all of America, not just the left. In fact, the southeast is full of poor white conservative Americans who actually benefit from these "liberal social issues".
Either I'm out of touch with today's social system or you've got some real issues with some sort of "liberal conspiracy".
I did all public schooling in a southern california suburb and we never spent all our time ot "liberal social issues" or talking about "gay marriage". I imagine, though, that gay marriage might have been brought up in some social science classes today, but I think that's more of the sign of the times than some sort of liberal bent. It probably is brought up in the same classes that bring up The Passion by Mel Gibson because that, too, is a big issue in today's society. We might as well throw in the addition (or removal) of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Anyway, if you really think about it, social issues don't belong to any party or belief system. A social issue isn't liberal or conservative. That simply doesn't make sense. The only different in ideology is how their approach at social issues. (I.e. liberals tend to want things like unemployment and welfare while conservatives would rather have a less lax system. Liberals want a certain kind of medicare, conservatives recently passed a drug benefit. Liberal want gay marriage; conservatives want an amendment saying a marriage is strictly between a man and a woman).
Anyway, if you lived in San Francisco or some other major urban, liberal city then I could understand. Otherwise I'd say you're just being paranoid.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, he'll probably get out in half the time with good behavior. Plus, they're just probably using him as an example.
I'm not trying to debate how many years the guy has gotten. I'm saying that it's short-sighted to simply say "he sent annoying emails." Refer to my other replies for more details on how spam cost companies and people real money (not just in terms of time lost but resources spent fighting spam). You simply don't see it.
Just look at the resources companies (hotmail, yahoo, google) put aside to fight spam. There are real engineers being paid to spend their days in and out to fight spam. Not only that but the majority of email sent today are spam and the hardware needs to support that.
Exactly.
Last I checked, spam emails took over 50% of online traffic. The real number was actually up towards 60-80%. You just see 5 junk emails in your inbox but multiply that by millions of people who have emails and this is definitely costing people/companies real money. I'm not talking about lost productivity but real resources such as email servers, sys admins wasting time fighting spam, software packages PURCHASED just to fight spam, SMTP servers that are brought down when they are exploited, etc.
Let's put it this way. What if I stole $0.01 from a bank? Do I deserve 9 years in jail? Now let's say I did it 1,000,000x ($10,000). Now do I deserve 9 years in jail?
This guy did not send a couple emails. He sent 10,000,000 emails a DAY. Do you know how much that can cost companies? It translates into real money lost. Try talking to any sysadmin that's had to deal with this.
This is just the perspective from the average Joe consumer who uses hotmail or yahoo mail.
Think about this from the perspective of corporate companies. Everyday real money (significant amounts) are being spent to combat spam. Real resources must be hired, time is spent and hardware is acquired in order to accomodate spam. This translates into a real expenditure for enterprise-leve companies.
I'm not saying it's completely justified but I don't think you have the full picture.
I'm not the world's most experienced gamer, but I'd have to respectfully disagree. From what I've seen a lot more innovation can go into the actual "storytelling" of the game. The article says it best towards the end:
They're making an example out of him by giving him a really harsh sentence to deter anyone else from even THINKING about it. C'mon. This is America. ;]
(In reality, they did this to make the headlines but he'll probably get a couple months in jail AT MOST.)
(Disclaimer: I skimmed most of the article except for the part on grad school.)
With all due respect for Joel, I found his remarks on grad school a bit discomforting. It's not that I don't like Joel and I think he has the occassional interesting word but I'd have to disagree with his remarks over why/when he chose NOT to go to grad school.
I went to Berkeley and worked in the research labs in their CS department. From what I saw the CS grad students did very interesting things. At the time some of them were doing high quality streaming media, using millions of robots the size of pennies, building the next generation peer-to-peer networks, etc. Sure there will be your handful of professors who want to prove that 1 = 1 but most others in tech are out there to do something cool (examples: Sun's RISK processor (berkeley), Google (Stanford), Inktomi (Berkeley), etc.)
I'm not an expert on this but from what I've heard it only pays off if you go to a GOOD grad school in CS while the mediocre ones are probably equivalent to going to a good undergrad school. I'd say that sounds about right.
I wouldn't say I hate my job nor would I say that I love it. An honest assessment would be that it has its ups and downs (at least for me).
The thing is is that in school you are there to learn. That's why you pay tuition. In the working world people pay YOU. But they don't pay you to learn b-trees, Dijkstra's algorithm, etc. A profitable company usually has a business plan around making money. That's the only way they can live and it's how business works.
That's why a good amount of tech work revolves around financial solution, upgrading existing solutions to today's technology, online marketing, etc. I think that most computer science majors would NOT find the previous list of things stimulating.
There's a small minority (how small I don't know since I'm hypothesizing here) of tech jobs that are fun. Funs jobs don't always mean stable or well-paying.
In short, other comments have talked about education versus mobility and how mobility directly relates to staying away from tedium. Those comments are right on. The better education you have, the more you can move up and do the cool stuff instead of the grunt stuff. The grunt stuff is what gets tedious.
Finally, to put it all together, I find my job fun when I'm learning something new. Jobs aren't always like that. Companies are usually more interested in teaching you a skill and then having you do it over and over (unless you're a researcher, CTO, or, for some other reason, your position calls for it). I think a good number of companies ignore (or don't do enough) continuing education for their employees.
Man.. someone likes shutting down the party. Party pooper! ;)
You have a good point. Personally, I used it for mp3s but it's an easy way for me to explore new forms of music (you can respond with all the legal ways but don't bother as I'd like not to go down this apth) and when I find something I like I often buy the CD and support the artist.
Personally, I like checking out all the tracks on a CD before I pay the $15 given that many CDs these days feature 2 or 3 good tracks and the rest is crap.
I read an interesting comment below which referenced older technologies that have been shutdown and it gave me an interesting idea: could this just be a part of technological evolution?
First there was IRC (which still lives) and then there was FTP and then Napster and then other file-sharing mechanisms (edonkey, bearshare, mostly on similar/same networks) and the bittorrent to accomodate large files. One could make the argument that with each following technology there was an improvement and an evolution.
Where there's a will there's a way. I imagine that if bittorrents do face a large blowback from sites getting shutdown that techie's will find a way to adapt.
Here's a thought: being able to serve web pages in a distributed fashion (or at least a user-friendly index). I imagine you could build it on top of the existing bittorrent technology. This way the pages could be hosted on everybody's machine instead of one webserver that can easily get shutdown.
If population size and growth are an indication of fertility and penis size, then the Chinese must be some fertile, hung people.
Trolling aside, birth rate in western societies are much lower because of birth control, and a conciousness to have FEWER babies. In western societies, the cost of raising a child is extremely high (food, clothing, education, housing, etc).
The troubles of infertility are pointless when nerds have problems getting "some" in the first place. ;)
However, if the real reason that Google cares is (2) then they deserve nothing.
That's a little harsh, isn't it? So if a company tries to maximize its profits it basically "deserves nothing"? My bet is that you'll never be a business person yourself.
From what I've read, one of the main motivations behind pay-per-click is to provide links that are most relevant. It's actually a service provided to users AND companies. This way the most relevant ad links will appear with a specific search based on the virtue that other people have found that ad link to be relevant when they've searched the same or similar keywords. Accordingly, irrelevant ad links never get clicked and thus get dropped.
So, as far as I see it, it's their way of providing good search results. I see NOTHING wrong with that.
I've noticed that I, personally, go in phases of music listening. When music is readily available on the internet that are full songs and good quality I am more likely to buy CDs. The more music I can sample, the more likely I will buy a CD. I prefer a CD over mp3s downloaded for multiple reasons: support the artist, better quality, can burn mp3 at desired rates, plays in my car CD player, have a hard copy, etc.
During periods where it has been harder to find mp3s, I've been less likely to buy CDs. I'm not the type of person who will just buy a CD if I have a vague interest in someone (unless I have other CDs from that artists that I have really, really enjoyed). I usually need to know what I'm getting before I drop that kind of money on a CD.
I rarely buy a CD based on the crappy samples provided on the internet. That's just my take.
Actually the above 3 are advocated by the Republican party while they are being fought against by the Democratic party. So I don't see how it exactly follows your statement about the far right and further right parties (although I would agree, in general, that the statement is true relative to Europe).
FYI, I believe China has the largest standing Army. US is probably, no doubt, the strongest. But what else can we compare to? A USSR that no longer exists? A Europe that demilitarized after WW2 in which all money went into rebuilding?
I don't want to be a fear monger but China will definitely be a concern in the next couple decades.
Several issues:
1) Funding fusion research and building more nuclear power plants are not exactly the same issue. Not all "nuclear" is the same.
2) It's ironic how you took one link (and also noted the 12 seconds it took to find it) for you to be convinced that what was modded-up was simply "propaganda". Did you bother even reading the whole article before you responded? Do you even know the broader environmental and energy (nuclear) policies the Bush administration has taken?
This post isn't for or against Bush but it simply says that you don't have much ground to stand on in casting the other person's post as simply propaganda.
Actually Google makes money hand-over-fist on their search servers they sell to other companies.
True, Engineering courses at school help you learn how to solve problems better, but those were only 5 really helpful courses and then there is the rest of liberal arts easy A stuff :-).
The assumption here is that all schools and all CS degrees are equal. I'd say that is a false assumption.
When you hit the real world, that ends. It becomes the same old shit everyday. Yes, you can learn on your own, but that isn't your job.
And how is this different from any other white collar job out there? (given the same amount of experience and level of education)
Not to mention that that is only talking about quantity and disregards quality.
The fact is that many countries still send their best and brightest to America to study (which, in itself, is decreasing due to "homeland security" concerns).
Actually my Toshiba I got about 1.5 years ago, while not the most serious gaming laptop, sports a 15" monitor and GeForce 4 MX (which at the time was pretty decent). And the thign si that it's quite durable. The only thing is that you'd probably not want to travel much with it because of the weight (which the article duly points out). THe plastic is not weak nor is the "silicon". Yes, the LCD does cost half of the entire system, but couldn't the same argument be made for LCDs of similar quality for desktop machines? I doubt there's much different between the LCDs you buy for your desk versus the one in the laptop.
Anytway, I've had no problems with mine while traveling. It's still in tip-top condition. I reall think, though, it depends more ont he manufacturer than some FUD you're throwing out jsut because it's a gaming laptop.
This week's Newsweek has an op-ed article called Afflictions of Affluence that speaks on this very topic. According to it, there are 3 consequences of our rich society: obesity, time crunch and buyer's remorse.
In short the article goes on to say that because we're so rich and food is so cheap our portion sizes have been getting bigger. And that's why we're becoming fat.
We're facing a constant time crunch because we constantly view our time as more and more valuable (time is money in our capitalistic culture) ergo there's this need to cram all our activities into shorter time periods.
Lastly, ther'es buyer's remorse simply because we havfe so many choices out there. You buy one mp3 player but have time to research all 100. You're likely to find a feature in another mp3 player you wish you had.
"I live in a very conservative, Republican (and largely rural) area and even here the high school is all caught up with social issues. I once mentioned religious thought in the context of historical trends and what caused mass mirgrations of people (like the Pilgrims in Massachusetts, Mormons in Utah, Mennonites in Pennsylvania, etc.) and got a major ass chewing by some students and teachers for teaching religion. "
Interesting. What part of America do you live in?
I think talking about anything religious is always going to involve walking on egg shells. I can't say that you or they were in the wrong because I simply wasn't there to hear how you spoke about religious but I can imagine a case where you're in the right and I can imagine a case where they are. It's simply ludicrous to avoid religion altogether since that's an integral part of how America was formed but the extend to which you talk about those religious, themselves, should be limited.
"What you describe as a "sign of the times" is driven in part by faculty and what they percieve as the current issues. Social issues are issues in part because some activist wants to push them onto the front pages of newspapers and leading stories on the evening TV news. That traditionally liberals have also been more successful at identifying these issues tends to make them more liberal in nature."
Sorry, but maybe you can give an example to me because I really just don't buy it. I don't see social issues as belonging to one part or another. As I said in my last post, the only difference between left and right is the approach. Both liberals and conservatives recognize the same social issues. Now if the schools are spreading propaganda about welfare then I could see it having a liberal bent. But, otherwise, social issues belong to all of America, not just the left. In fact, the southeast is full of poor white conservative Americans who actually benefit from these "liberal social issues".
Either I'm out of touch with today's social system or you've got some real issues with some sort of "liberal conspiracy".
I did all public schooling in a southern california suburb and we never spent all our time ot "liberal social issues" or talking about "gay marriage". I imagine, though, that gay marriage might have been brought up in some social science classes today, but I think that's more of the sign of the times than some sort of liberal bent. It probably is brought up in the same classes that bring up The Passion by Mel Gibson because that, too, is a big issue in today's society. We might as well throw in the addition (or removal) of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Anyway, if you really think about it, social issues don't belong to any party or belief system. A social issue isn't liberal or conservative. That simply doesn't make sense. The only different in ideology is how their approach at social issues. (I.e. liberals tend to want things like unemployment and welfare while conservatives would rather have a less lax system. Liberals want a certain kind of medicare, conservatives recently passed a drug benefit. Liberal want gay marriage; conservatives want an amendment saying a marriage is strictly between a man and a woman).
Anyway, if you lived in San Francisco or some other major urban, liberal city then I could understand. Otherwise I'd say you're just being paranoid.