So you are under the assumption that the crappy, poorly compressed captures that float around the internet are what would be projected? Just an FYI - digital video doesn't have to be compressed so that it will only look good at 640x480 resolution.
I guess you also never watched a DVD? That video is compressed with a lossy compression scheme, yet it still looks good. Why? Variable compression. Someone just didn't pop a tape into a tape player, hit play, then click the record button on a computer. There are actually people that go through and master these things over a period of weeks or months to make the video stream as small as possible while trying to make it as quality as possible. There are also all sorts of measurement and analysis tools applied to it along the way to remove scratches from the film transfer, and to make multiple streams of audio (for foreign languages, commentary tracks, and I've even seen some DVDs that not only support the AC3 digital surround, but will have a Dolby Prologic encoded stream.)
You are correct. If someone found a security flaw in an old version of the Linux kernel, would it be fixed? No, the machine would have to be upgraded to get the fix in the later release. It just so happens to be a lot cheaper to upgrade a Linux machine, so there probably aren't that many machines running 7+ year old kernels.
Actually, the bugs are coming out because use of the software is increasing. The more the software is used, the more the different code paths are traveled in varying ways. When a particular code path or set of input data is invalid, then you can find the bug. You can peer-review all you want, but no one can find 100% of all bugs. You can only fix bugs you know about.
If anyone has ever written a piece of software, they should be able to tell you that they always found bugs while the software was in production. Commercial software houses often try to recreate random environments by having a variety of computers configured in a variety of ways so that these types of unknown issues might get caught. This is fairly random, but it can work to some extent. Does this mean that all in-production software systems should or will be defect free? Not at all.
There will be people out there that will argue that in-depth analysis of all algorithms and code paths should be done before software is written. This is not very practical since much of a problem domain is unknown when the software to solve the problem is written. Like if you ever interview for Microsoft, they always throw that proof question at you as if it is going to reflect in any way on your skills. I've thought that this is why they have so many problems. They hire the people who can solve a problem when the entire domain of the problem is known, as when the information in these proof questions is presented. The problem here, however, is that the problem domain for software changes as the software is being implemented. You also miss out on people who think outside of the problem domain to see if there are certain situations that can invalidate the facts of the given problem domain.
I agree with the need for the added statements. The initial statement was a generalization that was obviously wrong. But he also seems to be skirting the question of how the statistics were compiled. He says:
Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development.
And then goes on to say:
Statistics are reliable as long as you collect them properly. To the best of my knowledge, these were collected properly.
It appears they were collected properly, as long as you wanted to prove that "People who use Linux" == "People who use Linux"
Hey, can they help me run for U.S. President? I'm sure with their statistic-manipulating prowess, we can convince the population of the U.S. that I need to be elected.
10000 random testers, who are willing to find bugs for free.
But the real trick is to get these testers to not only submit bug reports, but to be intelligent enough to describe the steps taken to recreate the bug in detail. They probably use 10000 testers because they know that about 99% of them will be useless for finding bugs. Thats quite a bit of effort to wade through the influx of information to sort the good reports from the bad reports. Of course, the aspect of the randomness obtained by so many people messing with the product is appealing too.
This sounds pretty sensational. Do you have anywhere you can point us to that shows this particular weapon or discusses its use? I'm pretty ignorant in military affairs as it is, but I've never heard of this one. It would seem a bit difficult to target a power line with a bomb such as this.
I suppose you don't find it odd that a consulting company, who has some of the biggest names in commercial software development as clients, finds that the very threat to the people that pay them is of a higher quality? While I don't doubt there are cases where open source software is of better quality, I also believe the converse that there are cases where commercial software is of higher quality. So one little scan on a sub-system of Linux vs. "commercial software" means that open source is the best hands down? I doubt it.
Also, why is it that they won't name the commercial software they scanned on their home page? Why is it that I have to provide contact information to view their report? Since everyone here is so critical of BS moves MS makes, why are they not asking the same questions of this for-profit entity?
I got my interest in pursuing a CS degree when Tron came out. I wanted to make the MCP so it could kick everyone's ass.
I still can't figure out why no one likes the glow-in-the-dark frisbee I wear on my back every day. Its an icon of personal expression! I would be nothing more than a simple VB programmer without it!
OK, next question....if the MCP and HAL went head to head, who would win?
My employer did a background check on me, and I was nervous about the credit check. It had nothing to do with mis-handling of finances. If you ever go into business for yourself, you put your ass on the line. Sometimes an industry's opportunities all dry up, and you're left holding the bag. It like getting laid off, and taking the company's debts with you. It happened, and I dealt with it. I agree it was not something that an employer should have been asking about.
It turns out they just did a criminal background check, which I can totally understand. I guess the difference here is that my employer told me about the check up-front before I made the move. It is fairly underhanded of them to get you in the door, then pull this on you. It also makes you look bad to the company because you don't want to offer this stuff up when everyone else has.
I guess the trick here is to not let them do it and still keep your job without everyone having meetings about you behind closed doors. Yes, consulting a lawyer is a good thing, just don't let them know you have one. I'm sure they would look at that as treacherous. You could appeal to them and let them know your "policy" is to keep your home affairs private and work affairs at work. Also pointing out that they didn't tell you of this requirement before offering you a job puts you in a really bad position. This would especially be true if you left another employer for the job, thinking you had passed all the requirements for the position.
Personally, if I had a way out, I'd walk. The thought process that an employee with bad credit is a suspect employee is somewhat anal. Execs at many companies probably have really bad credit....the only thing is that they do everything as a corporation so their personal credit isn't touched. Even filthy rich execs (like the ones at Enron) finance houses. Considering all the shady stuff these guys are into, how do you think they get past the strict credit requirements for mortgages? (For those of you that point out that they probably pay cash for the houses....no, they don't in most cases. It makes more sense to finance it because they can make more money with the cash in hand than they can having it tied up into a house. Paying cash for a house is something that benefits a retiree more than a rich exec.)
It would have been better to say, "I am Duranos, feel my kick macro."
I never frequented IRC much myself because my excitement of typing to a bunch of people wore-off in the multi-line DLX BBS days. When I would go, it seemed that it was all about becoming a channel op so you could kick people for the hell of it. Type in all upper case, KICK FOR SHOUTING! Slap someone with a fish, kick for using the default macro!
The funniest thing I remember about IRC is the day a lame channel op on a Macintosh through dialup kicked me. I guess her Mac froze when I send 3 65k ping packets from the university's server. I know, I'm bad....but she was *so* pissed after she had to reboot her Mac. Serves the bitch right.
Re:Scapegoat Sweepstakes?
on
Ask Kevin Mitnick
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...and do you think the charges were unfair even though you're a multiple repeat offender?
Do you hold ill will towards the friend you had in the early days that you bullied into giving you mainframe access at his work? I read in the book Hackers that you not only bullied him into letting you into his workplace after-hours, but you would make him drive you around and buy you Fatburgers. How much of this account is true?
My, you are full of yourself to call someone dense when you obviously have never gone through the process yourself.
To add to the previous respondents that also said you're wrong, I can give an example of what happens in small claims. My brother went through this and it took him a year to collect his money.
An established nursery business with several locations in a particular city in Oklahoma let one of their unlicensed, illegal immigrant workers drive one of their spare cars. This guy came barreling down the road, over the hill, and realized he was going too fast to avoid hitting the car that had stopped at the light in front of him. He swerved into oncoming traffic and nailed my brother head on as he was waiting in the oncoming turn lane. Police came, arrested illegal immigrant for no license and no insurance. My brothers car needed major work, and he only had liability as he had just paid it off a month before.
Nursery came and bailed the guy out of jail. The nursery claimed they had sold the car to the guy, and "We're not responsible." My brother went to the DMV and had to pay to get the ownership records himself, as proof that they were the registered owners. He had to pay to file the claim in small claims court. He had to pay to have them served with a summons. They didn't show up to court, so he won. He sent them several letters, never got an acknowledgement or a dime from them.
He went back to court a few months later with delivery receipts of the letters he had sent. He had to buy something from the nursery with a check so that he could figure out where their bank account was and what the number was. Once he had this information, he ask the court for a garnishment. It was granted, he went to the bank, and got about half of what he was owed because they didn't have enough in the account to cover the full amount. Another round of registered letters, another trip back to court, another garnishment, and he finally got to their bank account at a time when they had enough money to cover what he was owed and all the additional costs he had accrued trying to collect the money.
This is the same wherever you go, and it even will work in your favor if you get sued. Just don't pay, and it can take months or years for them to get the money out of you, if they ever get it. Now, there is of course no guarentee you won't eventually piss some judge off and have a warrant issued for you.
A set of hearty do-gooders get this warm, tingly feeling when a bunch of savages want a grand piano of their very own in the middle of the Amazon. These heros set out with visions of a next renaissance in music as these villagers are left with a musical instrument and a desire to learn. Documenting their great struggle in taking this behemoth from the civilzed world to the uncivilized world. Overcoming obstacles like raging rivers and dense tropical jungles, they finally deliver this prize. They leave, intending to come back a few years later. In this time, they expect the musical capabilities of these primitives to mature beyond belief - much like leaving a batch of wine to ferment to perfection in an old oak barrel.
So our intrepid travelers return and are greeted be the villagers that have apparently just been shopping at Target. Flip-flops, shorts, and even the occasional T-Shirt that has the phrase, "I'm a lion hunter. If you see me running, try to keep up," on the back.
The cheap-clothing aside, the veteran piano-tuning-commando-squad makes the exhausting 8-mile trek through the jungle to finally visit the prize instrument and to taste the sweetness of the evolved musical talent that should have developed over these past years.
What they found is that the piano that was donated has almost cracked in half due to the fact the generous donation turned out to be little more than someone deciding not to sell the thing for $5 at a garage sale. (They must have decided they didn't want to move the thing out the front door every Saturday for a month while trying to get rid of it.) The instrument itself was infested with insects and their eggs, probably due to the fact that they generally kept the piano in a storage shed until visitors with cameras decided to show up. This explains all the Target type clothes since it appears that they are really cannibals that would eat visitors without cameras and take their clothes.
In the end, the savages did learn how to belt out a few Bach and Beetles tunes, but then just wanted a fricking Korg keyboard, "Like we asked for in the first place." I don't see why they didn't just ask for a PC and a net connection so they could just use Kazaa and download all the Bach and Beetles MP3s they wanted!
I totally agree with you. I would also point out that there have been bugs found in open-source projects as well, and those are supposedly peer reviewed to the nth degree due to the nature of the development environment.
As far as requiring people to release source code, this may just end up being nearly a reality in the future if the.NET/Mono architecture takes off.
I would also point out that the fact that others can review and criticize proprietary code has a few problems:
1. Sometimes software is developed in incremental steps. Because something was not implemented or an algorithm was not optimized may just be a placeholder for future work. I couldn't imagine opening up my company's development process to the scrutiny of the outside world because engineers generally have a less than eloquent way of expressing their opinion of others work for some reason. There are many ways to do a particular operation, but many people do not have the ability to see the evolution of a software's architecture in the long term view.
2. I've found than many C++ "experts" in the public are not much more than hobbyists that read a few books. I can't imagine trying to figure out the true credentials and abilities of customers that turn a critical eye to the code. Also, what do you tell a customer that obviously doesn't know jack shit about anything other than syntax of a language? "Sorry, sir, you're full of shit."
3. I've been at companies where the development staff and the management are total slaves to the customer's desires. While it is good to get feature/usability feedback from customers, small subsets of customers will always demand vertical solution specific features. Some of these features will directly conflict with the use of software in other general situations. What ends up happening is that the company ends up second-guessing its entire effort. The software ends up with a bunch of special little features that step all over each other and cause more bugs than are possible to maintain.
Its really easy to form the opinion that all source should be released when the product is not responsible for millions in sales and needs to be viable in the long-term. Un-regulated custom mods to the software can make support for the original authors a nightmare since everyone should know that the customer isn't going to care who messed their system up, they just want to blame the people they paid to obtain it. I can also imagine the many lawsuits that would come of this if one company's opinion of how the software was implemented was that it was wrong, when it could be an acceptable implementation in another company's opinion. So someone gets sued for using a bubble sort to sort 1 million records when they could have chosed a more efficient method; another company never notices because they don't ever sort more than 1000 records. Who decides the standard practices here?
The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.
They forgot to add free as the smell of dog-shit, annoying joggers, muggers, pick-pockets, mumbling homeless people, ranting homeless people, hari-krishnas, and I'm sure the occasional "hey, wanna buy a watch" guy.
Well, one thing might be obvious....the more hops away you are from the original source of the stream, the more out of sync you are going to be with that source. Probably not an issue though since no one much cares that a commercial started a second sooner 100 miles away. You have this same problem with regualr analog receipt of the radio station (the signal has to propagate through the atmosphere to you.) People who call in would probably have to turn their radios off because they would hear themselves talking with a really noticeable delay (but some radio stations already run on a 1-5 second bleep delay so people can't call in and swear while they are broadcasting.)
The only problem here is that it is totally voluntary, which could also be a positive thing in some cases. The positive is that the airplay will probably not follow some corporate agenda that needs to follow the middle of the road to maintain advertiser dollars (few companies want to be associated with the Gothic-Death-Rock station, so not much ad revenue there is most markets). The bad thing is that you will inevitably get the broadcaster that doesn't totally agree with what is playing, and will circumvent your stream with their own. This would be bad if ad revenue paid for the loose amateur network (assuming it made some money that was spent to encourage people to set up these broadcast sources.) It might also be bad because the broadcaster might want to push their own agenda, which would reflect badly on the other amateur broadcasters and so on. Overall, the idea is not bad, but you have to get the right group of people, and these would be very dedicated people. A lot of footwork, so good luck.
Sorry attempt at FUD. It is Microsoft and other companies. The story relates something to the effect that the objection was over not only software licensing, but tax issues. Whenever a big public corporation sells part or all of itself, there is always someone who objects. The story just stated that Microsoft opposed it because KMart hadn't made clear what licenses were to be transferred to the buyer. Its just a bunch of companies looking to make some money off the transaction, and it just happens to include Microsoft.
Yes, its it just sucks when there are assholes out there that ask too many questions and don't automatically follow your ideals. And, yes, we should all start calling people morons that don't automatically sign on to a Utopian agenda since, well, a Utopian society will obviously work. Hell, it worked in Russia!
My father-in-law spent 7 years in a prison camp in one of these Utopian societies. He was sent there just in case he had the idea to tell anyone that the Utopian government wasn't l33t. The amazing thing is that he is not a bitter man, but very thankful he got his family out of there. My original post was not to accuse this project of being a bunch of religious wackos, but more as a statement of what had happened historically. Perhaps when you are a bit older you will not make such off-the-cuff remarks about things you do not understand.
On that note, I have one thought for the people that are going to attempt this:
Remember Waco, TX
Now that the cult members weren't crazy and everything, but it just shows that people who want to not be under the control of the US government in the US may end up looking down the business end of a government issue sub machine gun.
Well, shame on the women that stole this patented gene and implanted it in themselves. They should have known the consequences of stealing intellectual property. They should feel lucky that the US government doesn't break down their front door and haul them out of their homes and throw them in prison for the theft.
(That was sarcasm, in case you mods out there were even thinking about modding this as flamebait.)
I believe it was limited to Universal DVDs. I'm thinking that the buttons being disabled may also depend on the player. My player was a closeout at Costco, and maybe this is one reason why.
I seem to remember the trailer was a montage of various films, starting with The Grinch, which was basically shots from the movies set to some background music. I believe some ex-rentals do show a few trailers in the beginning. I do know the first few times I did this, I was madly pressing all the buttons on the remote to get it to stop.
I don't know about you, but the last few DVDs I bought have this 5 minute mandatory intro on them that plays before it gets to the main menu. The skip buttons are disabled during this thing, so you have to basically stop the DVD and then press play to get past the damn thing. I'm sure that this will be where trailers and teasers will be placed next.
And to add to whatever list is building, I'm kind of getting tired of the damn teenage kids running into the theater and screaming to their friends from the wings and then running out. WTF is with this? I never did this when I hung out at the theater as a kid, and I don't remember any other fellow-annoying teenagers doing this either.
Another point to add to the negative theater experience is that it is impossible for parents with babies to go to the movies. While there are ways of going without the baby, sometimes those options just aren't available. We decided for the price of a movie, we could go out and buy two thick steaks and a new DVD and just barbecue at home. Nice dinner, a movie, and we don't need a sitter and we can watch the movie again if we like.
Yeah, I can see it now.....corporations throwing out all their Windows PCs to replace them with 64-bit Macs. They they figure out that they don't need an IT department because the can just run simple phone cable with RJ-11 connectors on them between each office for their network. Then 3 years from now, when Apple discontinues support for this platform, they do it all over again!
I'm not sure which one makes sense - Microsoft's draconian licensing scheme or Apple's "periodic, unforseen obsolecense". They probably cost about the same.
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I guess you also never watched a DVD? That video is compressed with a lossy compression scheme, yet it still looks good. Why? Variable compression. Someone just didn't pop a tape into a tape player, hit play, then click the record button on a computer. There are actually people that go through and master these things over a period of weeks or months to make the video stream as small as possible while trying to make it as quality as possible. There are also all sorts of measurement and analysis tools applied to it along the way to remove scratches from the film transfer, and to make multiple streams of audio (for foreign languages, commentary tracks, and I've even seen some DVDs that not only support the AC3 digital surround, but will have a Dolby Prologic encoded stream.)
You are correct. If someone found a security flaw in an old version of the Linux kernel, would it be fixed? No, the machine would have to be upgraded to get the fix in the later release. It just so happens to be a lot cheaper to upgrade a Linux machine, so there probably aren't that many machines running 7+ year old kernels.
If anyone has ever written a piece of software, they should be able to tell you that they always found bugs while the software was in production. Commercial software houses often try to recreate random environments by having a variety of computers configured in a variety of ways so that these types of unknown issues might get caught. This is fairly random, but it can work to some extent. Does this mean that all in-production software systems should or will be defect free? Not at all.
There will be people out there that will argue that in-depth analysis of all algorithms and code paths should be done before software is written. This is not very practical since much of a problem domain is unknown when the software to solve the problem is written. Like if you ever interview for Microsoft, they always throw that proof question at you as if it is going to reflect in any way on your skills. I've thought that this is why they have so many problems. They hire the people who can solve a problem when the entire domain of the problem is known, as when the information in these proof questions is presented. The problem here, however, is that the problem domain for software changes as the software is being implemented. You also miss out on people who think outside of the problem domain to see if there are certain situations that can invalidate the facts of the given problem domain.
Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development.
And then goes on to say:
Statistics are reliable as long as you collect them properly. To the best of my knowledge, these were collected properly.
It appears they were collected properly, as long as you wanted to prove that "People who use Linux" == "People who use Linux"
Hey, can they help me run for U.S. President? I'm sure with their statistic-manipulating prowess, we can convince the population of the U.S. that I need to be elected.
But the real trick is to get these testers to not only submit bug reports, but to be intelligent enough to describe the steps taken to recreate the bug in detail. They probably use 10000 testers because they know that about 99% of them will be useless for finding bugs. Thats quite a bit of effort to wade through the influx of information to sort the good reports from the bad reports. Of course, the aspect of the randomness obtained by so many people messing with the product is appealing too.
This sounds pretty sensational. Do you have anywhere you can point us to that shows this particular weapon or discusses its use? I'm pretty ignorant in military affairs as it is, but I've never heard of this one. It would seem a bit difficult to target a power line with a bomb such as this.
Also, why is it that they won't name the commercial software they scanned on their home page? Why is it that I have to provide contact information to view their report? Since everyone here is so critical of BS moves MS makes, why are they not asking the same questions of this for-profit entity?
I got my interest in pursuing a CS degree when Tron came out. I wanted to make the MCP so it could kick everyone's ass.
I still can't figure out why no one likes the glow-in-the-dark frisbee I wear on my back every day. Its an icon of personal expression! I would be nothing more than a simple VB programmer without it!
OK, next question....if the MCP and HAL went head to head, who would win?
Who cares if she is really having an orgasm? I just want to be sure its not a fricking guy on the other end of the phone.
It turns out they just did a criminal background check, which I can totally understand. I guess the difference here is that my employer told me about the check up-front before I made the move. It is fairly underhanded of them to get you in the door, then pull this on you. It also makes you look bad to the company because you don't want to offer this stuff up when everyone else has.
I guess the trick here is to not let them do it and still keep your job without everyone having meetings about you behind closed doors. Yes, consulting a lawyer is a good thing, just don't let them know you have one. I'm sure they would look at that as treacherous. You could appeal to them and let them know your "policy" is to keep your home affairs private and work affairs at work. Also pointing out that they didn't tell you of this requirement before offering you a job puts you in a really bad position. This would especially be true if you left another employer for the job, thinking you had passed all the requirements for the position.
Personally, if I had a way out, I'd walk. The thought process that an employee with bad credit is a suspect employee is somewhat anal. Execs at many companies probably have really bad credit....the only thing is that they do everything as a corporation so their personal credit isn't touched. Even filthy rich execs (like the ones at Enron) finance houses. Considering all the shady stuff these guys are into, how do you think they get past the strict credit requirements for mortgages? (For those of you that point out that they probably pay cash for the houses....no, they don't in most cases. It makes more sense to finance it because they can make more money with the cash in hand than they can having it tied up into a house. Paying cash for a house is something that benefits a retiree more than a rich exec.)
It would have been better to say, "I am Duranos, feel my kick macro."
I never frequented IRC much myself because my excitement of typing to a bunch of people wore-off in the multi-line DLX BBS days. When I would go, it seemed that it was all about becoming a channel op so you could kick people for the hell of it. Type in all upper case, KICK FOR SHOUTING! Slap someone with a fish, kick for using the default macro!
The funniest thing I remember about IRC is the day a lame channel op on a Macintosh through dialup kicked me. I guess her Mac froze when I send 3 65k ping packets from the university's server. I know, I'm bad....but she was *so* pissed after she had to reboot her Mac. Serves the bitch right.
Do you hold ill will towards the friend you had in the early days that you bullied into giving you mainframe access at his work? I read in the book Hackers that you not only bullied him into letting you into his workplace after-hours, but you would make him drive you around and buy you Fatburgers. How much of this account is true?
To add to the previous respondents that also said you're wrong, I can give an example of what happens in small claims. My brother went through this and it took him a year to collect his money.
An established nursery business with several locations in a particular city in Oklahoma let one of their unlicensed, illegal immigrant workers drive one of their spare cars. This guy came barreling down the road, over the hill, and realized he was going too fast to avoid hitting the car that had stopped at the light in front of him. He swerved into oncoming traffic and nailed my brother head on as he was waiting in the oncoming turn lane. Police came, arrested illegal immigrant for no license and no insurance. My brothers car needed major work, and he only had liability as he had just paid it off a month before.
Nursery came and bailed the guy out of jail. The nursery claimed they had sold the car to the guy, and "We're not responsible." My brother went to the DMV and had to pay to get the ownership records himself, as proof that they were the registered owners. He had to pay to file the claim in small claims court. He had to pay to have them served with a summons. They didn't show up to court, so he won. He sent them several letters, never got an acknowledgement or a dime from them.
He went back to court a few months later with delivery receipts of the letters he had sent. He had to buy something from the nursery with a check so that he could figure out where their bank account was and what the number was. Once he had this information, he ask the court for a garnishment. It was granted, he went to the bank, and got about half of what he was owed because they didn't have enough in the account to cover the full amount. Another round of registered letters, another trip back to court, another garnishment, and he finally got to their bank account at a time when they had enough money to cover what he was owed and all the additional costs he had accrued trying to collect the money.
This is the same wherever you go, and it even will work in your favor if you get sued. Just don't pay, and it can take months or years for them to get the money out of you, if they ever get it. Now, there is of course no guarentee you won't eventually piss some judge off and have a warrant issued for you.
So our intrepid travelers return and are greeted be the villagers that have apparently just been shopping at Target. Flip-flops, shorts, and even the occasional T-Shirt that has the phrase, "I'm a lion hunter. If you see me running, try to keep up," on the back.
The cheap-clothing aside, the veteran piano-tuning-commando-squad makes the exhausting 8-mile trek through the jungle to finally visit the prize instrument and to taste the sweetness of the evolved musical talent that should have developed over these past years.
What they found is that the piano that was donated has almost cracked in half due to the fact the generous donation turned out to be little more than someone deciding not to sell the thing for $5 at a garage sale. (They must have decided they didn't want to move the thing out the front door every Saturday for a month while trying to get rid of it.) The instrument itself was infested with insects and their eggs, probably due to the fact that they generally kept the piano in a storage shed until visitors with cameras decided to show up. This explains all the Target type clothes since it appears that they are really cannibals that would eat visitors without cameras and take their clothes.
In the end, the savages did learn how to belt out a few Bach and Beetles tunes, but then just wanted a fricking Korg keyboard, "Like we asked for in the first place." I don't see why they didn't just ask for a PC and a net connection so they could just use Kazaa and download all the Bach and Beetles MP3s they wanted!
As far as requiring people to release source code, this may just end up being nearly a reality in the future if the .NET/Mono architecture takes off.
I would also point out that the fact that others can review and criticize proprietary code has a few problems:
1. Sometimes software is developed in incremental steps. Because something was not implemented or an algorithm was not optimized may just be a placeholder for future work. I couldn't imagine opening up my company's development process to the scrutiny of the outside world because engineers generally have a less than eloquent way of expressing their opinion of others work for some reason. There are many ways to do a particular operation, but many people do not have the ability to see the evolution of a software's architecture in the long term view.
2. I've found than many C++ "experts" in the public are not much more than hobbyists that read a few books. I can't imagine trying to figure out the true credentials and abilities of customers that turn a critical eye to the code. Also, what do you tell a customer that obviously doesn't know jack shit about anything other than syntax of a language? "Sorry, sir, you're full of shit."
3. I've been at companies where the development staff and the management are total slaves to the customer's desires. While it is good to get feature/usability feedback from customers, small subsets of customers will always demand vertical solution specific features. Some of these features will directly conflict with the use of software in other general situations. What ends up happening is that the company ends up second-guessing its entire effort. The software ends up with a bunch of special little features that step all over each other and cause more bugs than are possible to maintain.
Its really easy to form the opinion that all source should be released when the product is not responsible for millions in sales and needs to be viable in the long-term. Un-regulated custom mods to the software can make support for the original authors a nightmare since everyone should know that the customer isn't going to care who messed their system up, they just want to blame the people they paid to obtain it. I can also imagine the many lawsuits that would come of this if one company's opinion of how the software was implemented was that it was wrong, when it could be an acceptable implementation in another company's opinion. So someone gets sued for using a bubble sort to sort 1 million records when they could have chosed a more efficient method; another company never notices because they don't ever sort more than 1000 records. Who decides the standard practices here?
They forgot to add free as the smell of dog-shit, annoying joggers, muggers, pick-pockets, mumbling homeless people, ranting homeless people, hari-krishnas, and I'm sure the occasional "hey, wanna buy a watch" guy.
Sorry, never been there, I'm sure its nice.
Toupee or Wig?
The only problem here is that it is totally voluntary, which could also be a positive thing in some cases. The positive is that the airplay will probably not follow some corporate agenda that needs to follow the middle of the road to maintain advertiser dollars (few companies want to be associated with the Gothic-Death-Rock station, so not much ad revenue there is most markets). The bad thing is that you will inevitably get the broadcaster that doesn't totally agree with what is playing, and will circumvent your stream with their own. This would be bad if ad revenue paid for the loose amateur network (assuming it made some money that was spent to encourage people to set up these broadcast sources.) It might also be bad because the broadcaster might want to push their own agenda, which would reflect badly on the other amateur broadcasters and so on. Overall, the idea is not bad, but you have to get the right group of people, and these would be very dedicated people. A lot of footwork, so good luck.
Sorry attempt at FUD. It is Microsoft and other companies. The story relates something to the effect that the objection was over not only software licensing, but tax issues. Whenever a big public corporation sells part or all of itself, there is always someone who objects. The story just stated that Microsoft opposed it because KMart hadn't made clear what licenses were to be transferred to the buyer. Its just a bunch of companies looking to make some money off the transaction, and it just happens to include Microsoft.
My father-in-law spent 7 years in a prison camp in one of these Utopian societies. He was sent there just in case he had the idea to tell anyone that the Utopian government wasn't l33t. The amazing thing is that he is not a bitter man, but very thankful he got his family out of there. My original post was not to accuse this project of being a bunch of religious wackos, but more as a statement of what had happened historically. Perhaps when you are a bit older you will not make such off-the-cuff remarks about things you do not understand.
Remember Waco, TX
Now that the cult members weren't crazy and everything, but it just shows that people who want to not be under the control of the US government in the US may end up looking down the business end of a government issue sub machine gun.
(That was sarcasm, in case you mods out there were even thinking about modding this as flamebait.)
I seem to remember the trailer was a montage of various films, starting with The Grinch, which was basically shots from the movies set to some background music. I believe some ex-rentals do show a few trailers in the beginning. I do know the first few times I did this, I was madly pressing all the buttons on the remote to get it to stop.
I don't know about you, but the last few DVDs I bought have this 5 minute mandatory intro on them that plays before it gets to the main menu. The skip buttons are disabled during this thing, so you have to basically stop the DVD and then press play to get past the damn thing. I'm sure that this will be where trailers and teasers will be placed next.
And to add to whatever list is building, I'm kind of getting tired of the damn teenage kids running into the theater and screaming to their friends from the wings and then running out. WTF is with this? I never did this when I hung out at the theater as a kid, and I don't remember any other fellow-annoying teenagers doing this either.
Another point to add to the negative theater experience is that it is impossible for parents with babies to go to the movies. While there are ways of going without the baby, sometimes those options just aren't available. We decided for the price of a movie, we could go out and buy two thick steaks and a new DVD and just barbecue at home. Nice dinner, a movie, and we don't need a sitter and we can watch the movie again if we like.
I'm not sure which one makes sense - Microsoft's draconian licensing scheme or Apple's "periodic, unforseen obsolecense". They probably cost about the same.