The only way to break into (normal-people) desktop computing is to go where the users are. That means swallowing our pride and working with Microsoft for the foreseeable future.
Almost nobody manages to work with Microsoft and come out intact. Remember embrace/extend/extinguish? There's only two reasons Microsoft would work with open source developers -- one, to gain some sort of trust which they could then betray. Or two, to gain some sort of advantage over another competitor, in which case as soon as that advantage was attained they'd drop the open source thing like a hot rock.
So they issued a takedown notice. If we want to change these draconian procedures, now is the time for the organization to challenge it in court. That's really the only way it's going to change and takedown notices will cease. Otherwise, if they cave in like so many other people and organizations, then the "Tolkien" people will continue to issue takedown notices.
Even if the buttonmaker could challenge the Tolkien estate in court (he can't, because there's no suit and they sent a C&D to Zazzle, not him. He could try a suit for tortious interference, I suppose), if he won the only consequence is he'd be able to make buttons. There would be no punishment to the estate for their abuses. So they'd continue issuing these C&Ds.
What the offended buttoneer should have done is to contact a lawyer of appropriate skill and jurisdiction and obtained a reasoned judgment as to their options. Babbling on the Internet, while cathartic, isn't terribly useful.
Nor is contacting a lawyer. Because the answer would be along the lines of "You're in the right, but it'll cost you more to prove it than you're likely willing to pay, and the outcome is never guaranteed". The legal system is simply broken, as it is not a practical way of such disputes. The Tolkien estate, with money to burn, depends on it; they can make Zazzle (and anyone else) stop making the buttons simply by threatening to bring them into the legal system, not by actually having a case.
No one in NYC pays $300k a year for an entry/junior level slot.
I've heard some ridiculous salaries (for programmers) from the investment banking firms, but not $300k. But an entry level suburban home in the area (not in the city) doesn't cost $600K either. Closer to $300K, with a lot of variance depending on how close to the train, how bad a neighborhood, and what shape the house is in.
They are not. The guy can go get his buttons printed anywhere he wants.
And each place he goes to, the Tolkien Estate will be right behind him sending cease and desists. And since fighting the Tolkien Estate Lawyers costs more than telling such a small customer to go away, they'll all tell him to go away. Which makes it pretty disingenuous to claim they aren't going after him, just after Zazzle.
That's the whole thing about trademark law is enforced: You have to demonstrate that you're vigorously protecting your trademarks.
Only against _actual_ offenses, not imaginary ones.
like interference generated by electric ballasts in florescent lighting or the definition of a plenum space versus non-plenum
I worked one place where the main thing to know about plenums is that if you did something which required knowledge of them, the union guys would break your kneecaps -- or worse, file some sort of labor complaint. (and it cost hundreds of dollars to get a single cable run put in, as a result). That's valuable knowledge you won't get in most universities.
90-95% of candidates can't do it (including people with CS degrees, and many people with >10 years experience working in programming positions). And by can't do it, I mean they just can't - they can't come up with a proper approach, and often they can't execute a proper approach when I tell them how to do it. I hope I'm just in a tight job market and I'm not seeing the best candidates.
Do you have anyone in front of you screening the resumes, or are you doing it yourself? Because I have this theory that the people in most companies who are supposed to be screening the resumes are doing it very badly. Possibly even counterproductively.
As long as you are not too busy, tell COBOL the Palaeozoic Era is still waiting at the restaurant, and is pretty drunk on wine from being stood up for their date, and needs someone to come help her into a cab.
Hey, that's not the Paleozoic Era or his date, that's his MOTHER. Come along, Admiral, we'll get you home. I'm sure COBOL still loves you, but you KNOW he hasn't been all that reliable about appointments since the whole Y2K thing.
And let me throw something else into the mix. This guy seems to be reacting like the vast, evil Tolkien estate is bringing the hammer down on one hapless individual who made a few buttons.
Because they are.
What he doesn't seem to grok is that the Tolkien estate isn't going after one guy, it is going after Zazzle, which, if it were allowed to print Tolkien-related products with impunity, could do the Tolkien estate a lot more damage than one guy with some buttons ever could.
Zazzle is just the printer. By going after Zazzle, they are going after someone who has no real incentive to fight them (because it's more trouble than it's worth for one low-volume customer). It's actually worse than if they were to go after the button designer personally.
Case in point: Zazzle drafted policy long ago that it is not willing to fight the issue.
That's not a "case in point". That's a demonstration of how the law invites abuse and invention of restrictions through legal intimidation.
We just went through a little hiring process looking for a new bench monkey.
WTF is a bench monkey? If you weren't talking about the IT, I'd expect you to mean an entry-level electronics tech. Or a guy who spends way too much time at the gym.
Whatever, how often does anything change in plumbing? Almost never. Don't even try to tell me it does.
Shit flows downhill and payday's on friday, that never changes. But actually a lot of stuff changes in plumbing, though at a slower rate. You've now got PVC waste lines rather than cast iron, copper, or galvanized, also a new version of cast iron with a different fitting system. You've got cPVC and PEX supply (and polybutylene has been in and out) in addition to copper. Hot water recirculation systems have become more common, tankless water heaters also. All sorts of little changes too, in how the pipes have to be hung (particularly in earthquake-prone areas), expansion tanks, water hammer preventers, sizing, etc.
I disagree. The requirements for "PHP, RoR, Python, MySQL, Oracle, Apache, Cisco, JavaScript, jQuery, UI/UX, Photoshop, and Flash" is pretty reasonable. It simply describes a Joomla CMS installation with an incoming feed from an Oracle database somewhere, with a one-off Ruby site somewhere. It's actually almost exactly what we have where I work, and I expect all of my hires to be able to work with those technologies.
You need Cisco, Photoshop, and Flash to do a Joomla installation?
To use the car analogy, it would be like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies, "must have real experience with Breaks, Transmission, Steering, Engines, Air Filters, Air Conditioning, Fuel Filters, Suspension, Radiators, Stereos, and Upholstery."
A better analogy than you think. Most mechanics will have no experience with upholstery besides sitting on it. Transmissions are also typically done by people who specialize in them. A mechanic's experience with stereos will likely be limited to removing and reinstalling them to get at something else. And they may not do air conditioning, though that's less common nowadays.
IT managers need to get real. The chances that they'll actually find a candidate with real expertise in PHP, RoR, Python, MySQL, Oracle, Apache, Cisco, JavaScript, jQuery, UI/UX, Photoshop, and Flash is pretty slim (yes, I saw that just the other day).
Nonsense, they've got 15 resumes for consultants at Wipro and Infosys with exactly that...
Some of the skills they are asking for are reasonable:
77% want schools to provide programming skills
OK, fair enough. A CS program from which you can graduate without knowing programming in some language is pretty useless.
Some are less reasonable:
76% would like schools to provide analysis and architectural skills
Sorry guys, while a graduate should have some basics in this area, you really need real world experience to develop these skills to a useful extent. Or possibly an advanced degree in which the student studied real systems.
And some are just too vague to figure out what they want:
82% seek database skills 80% seek problem solving and technical skills
Database skills? You want them to know how to design a database using nth normal form? The basics of SQL syntax? How ISAM works? How to use Oracle Forms? It's not enough to say "database skills". The other one is even more vague.
The list of "hard to fill" positions is pretty useless, too. Love the one about the security clearance... of course it's hard to fill, the only people with active clearances are those who are working or very recently were working on a job which required one. You want an employee with a security clearance, stop being cheap bastards and hire someone you can get cleared. New grads are probably easier here; less time for them to accumulate skeletons in their closet.
Am I the only one appalled by this part "Consumers are holding onto new cars for a record 63.9 months"?
Cars don't really go obsolete that quickly. What sense is there in buying new cars all the time?
Most people don't buy things strictly on need or based on a short or long term economic payoff. And there's nothing wrong with that; what's the point of making more than a survival wage if you don't spend it on things you want?
Also, if people didn't get rid of perfectly adequate cars, there wouldn't BE a used car market, and that would be bad for almost everyone concerned. People who could only afford a used car now would have no car at all. People who prefer to buy used cars would have to buy new instead. Fewer new cars would be sold. The only people better off economically would be the people who used to buy new cars even when their old car was adequate, and they prefer it the other way
Eight year.. . old? A friend of mine works for an insurance company. He told me that they run IBM software and hardware mainframes, that were developed, "While he was swimming in his father's balls."
If they really are, they probably shouldn't be. The operating and maintenance costs of those water-cooled monstrosities probably dwarf the costs of replacing them with something modern. No need to change the software.
If you simply keep your money in a bank account, that doesn't do anybody much good - it can help the banks make a larger profit, but it will not increase the amount of money that banks lend. In a depressed economy, the lending of banks is constrained by the number of creditworthy borrowers. In a lively economy, the lending of banks is constrained by their capital and regulatory capital requirements. From the bank's point of view, money in bank accounts is a liability that does not count towards capital.
The current economy is depressed, but lending is constrained by capital requirements. A lot of banks would probably be well below their requirements if their foreclosed real estate was valued at its market price. If they were to actually try to get rid of this real estate (by selling it at market price), that would trigger a re-evaluation and put them into receivership. They're like Wile E. Coyote after he's gone off a cliff, and doesn't fall until he looks down.
Go do a search of the laptop forums for "Dell Inspiron," a horrendously flawed design, and see the hate. Then go look at the customer satisfaction ratings for Macs.
The parts falling off my Inspiron were of the very highest quality.
Are the lumens the same at a given color temperature for halogens?
If they were, it would be by accident.
Re:That is a battle which was lost 20 years ago
on
Got (Buffer) Bloat?
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A lot of our problems today would not be here if. OSI stack instead of TCP/IP. DCE & DFS instead of passwd/whatever + the bastard abomination which is NFS.
Meh. People are lazy and cheap. Free with the network effect always wins. The Lowest Common Denominator. It's going to take another 15 years before we are near where we were 15 years ago. But this time it will be in Java!
Did you ever use those things? I've never used the OSI stack (though I have had the misfortune of looking at some of the specs), but DCE and DFS had terrible perfomance 15 years ago, and were a bear to set up. Having never worked with the originals (Kerberos and Andrew File System), I don't know if this was a problem added in the "standardization" or if it came with the territory.
I would never want a halogen bulb in my bedside table lamp for the same reason that I can't deal with any of the CFLs I've tried there: the spectrum wakes me up, which is the last thing I want when I'm relaxing and reading a book or watching TV before I crash for the night.
Halogen is a blackbody spectrum at 3000K. Ordinary incandescent is normally around 2700K. However, if you dim either bulb, you not only reduce the brightness, but the color temperature. So stick a dimmer on your lamp and use a higher-output bulb and you can simulate the effect. This will reduce the life of the bulb (by reducing the efficiency of the halogen cycle), but should get the job done.
If the capsule is actually HIR rather than regular halogen, it's not quite a blackbody spectrum, but it's still lots closer than fluorescent.
If you can see the 100khz flicker I bet you could get that $1 million woo-woo prize James Randi is giving out.
It'd be nice if they actually did flicker at 100khz. But in fact many of them have visible flicker; probably the 60Hz from the power line leaking through and effectively modulating the ballast output.
They make the plastic bits out of that biodegradable shit. And then they fall apart before the bulb burns out. Literally, they just crumble when I touch them after less than two years.
That's heat embrittlement of the plastic, and has nothing to do with it being "biodegradable" (which it likely isn't).
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Yeah, screw engineers. They get all the credit as it is. Hell, you'd think they invented the Nobel prize or something.
Almost nobody manages to work with Microsoft and come out intact. Remember embrace/extend/extinguish? There's only two reasons Microsoft would work with open source developers -- one, to gain some sort of trust which they could then betray. Or two, to gain some sort of advantage over another competitor, in which case as soon as that advantage was attained they'd drop the open source thing like a hot rock.
Even if the buttonmaker could challenge the Tolkien estate in court (he can't, because there's no suit and they sent a C&D to Zazzle, not him. He could try a suit for tortious interference, I suppose), if he won the only consequence is he'd be able to make buttons. There would be no punishment to the estate for their abuses. So they'd continue issuing these C&Ds.
Nor is contacting a lawyer. Because the answer would be along the lines of "You're in the right, but it'll cost you more to prove it than you're likely willing to pay, and the outcome is never guaranteed". The legal system is simply broken, as it is not a practical way of such disputes. The Tolkien estate, with money to burn, depends on it; they can make Zazzle (and anyone else) stop making the buttons simply by threatening to bring them into the legal system, not by actually having a case.
I've heard some ridiculous salaries (for programmers) from the investment banking firms, but not $300k. But an entry level suburban home in the area (not in the city) doesn't cost $600K either. Closer to $300K, with a lot of variance depending on how close to the train, how bad a neighborhood, and what shape the house is in.
And each place he goes to, the Tolkien Estate will be right behind him sending cease and desists. And since fighting the Tolkien Estate Lawyers costs more than telling such a small customer to go away, they'll all tell him to go away. Which makes it pretty disingenuous to claim they aren't going after him, just after Zazzle.
Only against _actual_ offenses, not imaginary ones.
I worked one place where the main thing to know about plenums is that if you did something which required knowledge of them, the union guys would break your kneecaps -- or worse, file some sort of labor complaint. (and it cost hundreds of dollars to get a single cable run put in, as a result). That's valuable knowledge you won't get in most universities.
Do you have anyone in front of you screening the resumes, or are you doing it yourself? Because I have this theory that the people in most companies who are supposed to be screening the resumes are doing it very badly. Possibly even counterproductively.
Hey, that's not the Paleozoic Era or his date, that's his MOTHER. Come along, Admiral, we'll get you home. I'm sure COBOL still loves you, but you KNOW he hasn't been all that reliable about appointments since the whole Y2K thing.
Because they are.
Zazzle is just the printer. By going after Zazzle, they are going after someone who has no real incentive to fight them (because it's more trouble than it's worth for one low-volume customer). It's actually worse than if they were to go after the button designer personally.
That's not a "case in point". That's a demonstration of how the law invites abuse and invention of restrictions through legal intimidation.
WTF is a bench monkey? If you weren't talking about the IT, I'd expect you to mean an entry-level electronics tech. Or a guy who spends way too much time at the gym.
Shit flows downhill and payday's on friday, that never changes. But actually a lot of stuff changes in plumbing, though at a slower rate. You've now got PVC waste lines rather than cast iron, copper, or galvanized, also a new version of cast iron with a different fitting system. You've got cPVC and PEX supply (and polybutylene has been in and out) in addition to copper. Hot water recirculation systems have become more common, tankless water heaters also. All sorts of little changes too, in how the pipes have to be hung (particularly in earthquake-prone areas), expansion tanks, water hammer preventers, sizing, etc.
You need Cisco, Photoshop, and Flash to do a Joomla installation?
A better analogy than you think. Most mechanics will have no experience with upholstery besides sitting on it. Transmissions are also typically done by people who specialize in them. A mechanic's experience with stereos will likely be limited to removing and reinstalling them to get at something else. And they may not do air conditioning, though that's less common nowadays.
Nonsense, they've got 15 resumes for consultants at Wipro and Infosys with exactly that...
Some of the skills they are asking for are reasonable:
OK, fair enough. A CS program from which you can graduate without knowing programming in some language is pretty useless.
Some are less reasonable:
Sorry guys, while a graduate should have some basics in this area, you really need real world experience to develop these skills to a useful extent. Or possibly an advanced degree in which the student studied real systems.
And some are just too vague to figure out what they want:
Database skills? You want them to know how to design a database using nth normal form? The basics of SQL syntax? How ISAM works? How to use Oracle Forms? It's not enough to say "database skills". The other one is even more vague.
The list of "hard to fill" positions is pretty useless, too. Love the one about the security clearance... of course it's hard to fill, the only people with active clearances are those who are working or very recently were working on a job which required one. You want an employee with a security clearance, stop being cheap bastards and hire someone you can get cleared. New grads are probably easier here; less time for them to accumulate skeletons in their closet.
Most people don't buy things strictly on need or based on a short or long term economic payoff. And there's nothing wrong with that; what's the point of making more than a survival wage if you don't spend it on things you want?
Also, if people didn't get rid of perfectly adequate cars, there wouldn't BE a used car market, and that would be bad for almost everyone concerned. People who could only afford a used car now would have no car at all. People who prefer to buy used cars would have to buy new instead. Fewer new cars would be sold. The only people better off economically would be the people who used to buy new cars even when their old car was adequate, and they prefer it the other way
If they really are, they probably shouldn't be. The operating and maintenance costs of those water-cooled monstrosities probably dwarf the costs of replacing them with something modern. No need to change the software.
The current economy is depressed, but lending is constrained by capital requirements. A lot of banks would probably be well below their requirements if their foreclosed real estate was valued at its market price. If they were to actually try to get rid of this real estate (by selling it at market price), that would trigger a re-evaluation and put them into receivership. They're like Wile E. Coyote after he's gone off a cliff, and doesn't fall until he looks down.
The parts falling off my Inspiron were of the very highest quality.
If they were, it would be by accident.
Did you ever use those things? I've never used the OSI stack (though I have had the misfortune of looking at some of the specs), but DCE and DFS had terrible perfomance 15 years ago, and were a bear to set up. Having never worked with the originals (Kerberos and Andrew File System), I don't know if this was a problem added in the "standardization" or if it came with the territory.
Halogen is a blackbody spectrum at 3000K. Ordinary incandescent is normally around 2700K. However, if you dim either bulb, you not only reduce the brightness, but the color temperature. So stick a dimmer on your lamp and use a higher-output bulb and you can simulate the effect. This will reduce the life of the bulb (by reducing the efficiency of the halogen cycle), but should get the job done.
If the capsule is actually HIR rather than regular halogen, it's not quite a blackbody spectrum, but it's still lots closer than fluorescent.
It'd be nice if they actually did flicker at 100khz. But in fact many of them have visible flicker; probably the 60Hz from the power line leaking through and effectively modulating the ballast output.
That's heat embrittlement of the plastic, and has nothing to do with it being "biodegradable" (which it likely isn't).
You're saying Sony has ownership of a set of random numbers, to the point where they have the right to forbid people from talking about them?
To confuse people. Looks like it worked.