I first seriously got into Linux when I found out about XP's activation system back in 2001 or so. Until then, I had used it for home server applications (like a web server for PHP testing, and a cheap NAT/firewall router) and a development environment for college programming courses, but the news of the crazy activation scheme drove me to actually using it as my primary OS, with the intention of phasing out Windows 2000 at some point.
I still use Linux (Fedora Core 6) as my primary OS, and I'm pretty happy with it. It does all of the day to day productivity tasks that I need, and I like the flexibility it gives me in terms of technical capabilities - if I want to, SSH into work write a program in C++, test a web page, try out a new language, and so forth, I can do it with minimal hassle. I don't really see switching off of Linux as my own personal desktop OS.
However, I still have a Windows partition, and it's not going to go away any time soon. The Linux gaming scene is still pretty much dead (no offense meant to Michael Simms and the folks at LGP!), for one thing, and my console isn't a complete replacement for that yet. Outlook is still (unfortunately) the best local email client when it comes to remote-synchronized calendaring, email, and address books, especially when you toss smartphones and such into the mix, at least until I move to Google Apps. And when it comes to my own needs, Windows Media Center provides a better fit than MythTV. I'm waiting for 30 people to chime in that MythTV is everything to everyone - but that's just not true.:(
So, much as I hate to say it, Vista's probably in my future. But so is Linux.:)
Jimmy Wales shows us the qualities of a good Wikipedia administrator: 1. Doesn't know what he's talking about, yet talks anyways. 2. Soft on folks who deliberately falsify information.
You joke, but in high inflation economies, this is not uncommon.
I'd also point out that a one-day blip, even a big one, doesn't really mean very much. "Savers" win and lose in the stock market by long-term trends, not the short-term.
Yes, because Cingular paring down their profit margins on the summer's hottest phone seems ever so likely. If that rumor is true, I'd be absolutely shocked. Cingular is going to milk this for all it's worth, not provide price breaks. Besides, what other expensive smartphone have they ever given a plan break on?
As for stealing tons of Blackberry users: not going to happen. The iPhone does not have a hardware keyboard, and this is a deal-breaker for the heavy email use set. And, no, the software keyboard, multi-touch or not, is not good enough - it doesn't provide tactile feedback fast typing.
The iPhone is clearly aimed at the "I want an iPod in my phone" crowd, and I think it'll be pleasing to them, if we ignore the vendor lock-in and high price. The question in my mind is whether the US market will overlook the pricing or not.
You're referring to the HOPE scholarship program. I took that scholarship, but my GPA dropped too low to qualify for it after a year. I still got my CS degree, though, and managed to fulfill my obligations vis a vis working in the state. It was an excellent program, and one of the few things that Glendening actually got right.
I disagree; you need both, and I think this is actually mathematically provable (unless the cost of labor and/or technology is zero, which they aren't). In a classical output optimization problem, you've got two variables: physical labor and technology. At a certain point, it's inefficient to start substituting technology for labor, and vica versa. This is exactly why in Japan, where labor is getting comparatively more expensive/scarce than here, you see greater use of robotics/technology in output production. It's not that they're "better" than the US or Europe - they've just got a different set of variables to work with.
More technology is not always the best answer. I know that rankles some of the Slashdot crowd, but that's the way it happens.
Seems to me that the appropriate way of handling this issue would be for the US to encourage more students to take up CS as their degree, and do more to encourage smart, well-educated professionals to immigrate here - permanently. Temporary visas and the like seem to be band-aids rather than real solutions.
I don't care where they're from - this country can only do better to have more educated folks living in it.
I vaguely recall that GameStop has been doing this for a while now - it was just that none of the games were really worth caring about. From what I can tell of the Ars article, the writer is mostly sound and fury - there still aren't any blockbuster games that are GameStop only. He seems more pissed off that it's GameStop, which he apparently does not like very much.
I'm not a big fan of this trend, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either.
Clearly, they should have done a better job actually authenticating that the person who did the charge actually is the card owner. Good security doesn't involve just protecting credit card numbers from being stolen - it's trying to prevent those credit cards from being used fraudulently, too.
I was under the impression that addiction to pornography is a real, recognized psychological problem. He could very well be telling the truth, in a way.
Of course, either way, this guy is screwed: it's not illegal discrimination to fire someone for mental issues, especially when they affect work performance or atmosphere. The whole point of anti-discrimination laws is to stop people from firing others for stuff that doesn't affect those things.
Second Life campaign team says Second Life is important to campaign. Who could have predicted such an outcome?
This sounds remarkably like a Second Lifer who's gotten an inflated idea of how important their alternate reality is, asked the campaign team for permission, and then made something. The fact that the campaign itself doesn't seem to be investing money in this is telling as to how much _they_ think this is going to help. That's not to say an Internet presence isn't important, of course - but this is just a little too niche to matter.
From what I've read, AllOfMP3 isn't actually compensating anyone for much of anything. Claiming that it's a fair price is a bit disingenuous - I'm sure consumers love it, but no one actually consulted the artists or publishers about it. Fair typically connotes some sort of "agreement", which is not really what happened.
As for "we will probably see an exponential growth in sophisticated works of art available for a fair price.", that seems rather unlikely. If everything's just totally free and legal to trade around, who's going to pay for anything? What's my incentive to produce these works, period, let alone something that's going to cost a million bucks? Ego only goes so far, and ego-driven art doesn't usually produce great results (seen Rocky Balboa?).
I'm not a big DRM fan, to say the least, but these giant industries didn't come into being because no one wanted them. Clearly, there was and is demand for these huge blockbusters and big musical artists. I'm not sure how we're advancing the arts when it seems like we're regressing in renumeration and funding.
Try selling your unrated game in GameStop sometime, and let me know how it goes.
In fact, try selling it anywhere. No major retailer will sell unrated games. And if your game isn't in a major retailer, it's probably not going to sell all that well.
Exactly. Like it or not, war to protect economic interests is something that's happened time and time again in the past, and will probably happen in the future, too. And it's not just an American concept, either - remember how Europe reacted when the Egyptians nationalized the Suez Canal? "Sit back and take it" is a sure way to just keep getting taken advantage of - that's why you have a military in the first place.
Playing this off as some sort of "OMG the US is so awful and war-mongering!" is foolish and naive. If someone pulled a stunt that brought down the Internet for a European country (say, France) and caused billions of dollars of damage, you'd better believe a limited military resolution would be on the table - with the citizenry supporting it, too.
And you know you are getting into the gaming field how? You know you won't burn out in five years how?
There is no such thing as useless knowledge. You never know what you're going to do. Keep your ears open, and don't think yourself above the subject matter.
I graduated a couple years ago with a degree in CS. I didn't get my dream job. But you know what? All those "useless" courses I took back in college turned out to be damned useful, and even as someone who did, honestly, pretty badly in college, I'm doing better professionally than I ever dreamed. Why? Attitude - I have a willingness to learn new things.
I suggest you change your attitude from "I don't need to know this" to "I might need to know this" - it'll serve you well.
And you think ethics is useless? That's sad. There's more to life than the command line, believe it or not.
You're somewhat inaccurate at the end. Both Coke and Pepsi, at least in the US, are kosher year-round. You can't use corn syrup on Passover because it's a corn-derivative. So, nicely enough, the companies allow a run with real sugar.
So, it's not really "kosher" coke that's the issue - it's that "chametz-free" coke is what's needed at Passover.
I worked in a research lab at NASA with about five employees. We used Mantis to do our issue tracking.
I can say from anecdotal experience that you could not be more totally wrong, at least for some cases. Mantis provided a way for us to keep track of what was needed to be done, who needed to do it, and how important it was to do it - without crawling through our email folders and manually trying to compute what our priorities should be. It was even better for when we needed to deal with outside collaborators. We'd just hand them enough permissions to Mantis to submit and edit tickets, and then as feature requests and bugs came in, we'd do the assignments to ourselves.
Finally, it provides a great audit source. Want to keep track of what you were doing in a week? If you were fastidious about writing your progress in the isue ticket, you could just query all the tickets you edited and use that information to compile a status report. If other people wanted to know, they could do the same thing.
However, I would agree that some of the larger ticket systems would be inappropriate (Remedy?), due to high complexity and setup time. You want to get something simple, like Mantis or Bugzilla.
"In case you hadn't noticed, XBox360, while a good system, has jack and shit in the way of Japanese RPGs. These are the types of games that are most popular over there. No, there isn't some grand conspiricy to lock Microsoft out of the market."
Except that this isn't true. They've got Phantasy Star Universe. They've got Blue Dragon. They've got Enchanted Arms. And there's more. Right now, the Xbox 360 apparently has _more_ JRPGs than the PS3 or the Wii. That's what makes this so baffling. Microsoft really isn't doing that bad of a job in terms of library, and, certainly, their pricing is at least competitive. Maybe the Idolm@ker will drive sales. Who knows?
I would theorize that perhaps _video games_ in Japan might show more nationalized buying habits. Most Americans don't think twice about where their shoes come from, yet a good bit of them are damned picky about their cars coming from an American company.
I'm kind of confused. You see, the laptop I bought a couple years ago, which apparently has no support for HDCP or any of those other copy-protection measures, actually runs Vista _just fine_. In fact, my desktop, which is a relatively old AthlonXP 2500+ machine, ALSO doesn't need to be upgraded, beyond maybe getting a little more memory.
Look, DRM sucks. But DRM is no excuse to just start making up FUD. Vista is a hog, but blaming it all on DRM seems pretty inaccurate. Saying that everyone is going to start filling landfills just because their video card doesn't support HDCP seems like it's crossing over into "deliberately lying".
"There is no other vehicle around that can dock with or, more accurately, "grab" the Hubble, so without a dedicated shuttle mission, a repair is impossible."
Not true. I was directly involved with the plans to send a robot up to service the Hubble. It was definitely feasible - we even worked on various orbit scenarios to make it happen. The fact that it was decided to use a shuttle does _not_ mean there were no other alternatives. (I used to be a contractor at NASA GSFC.)
Slashdot Mirror
I first seriously got into Linux when I found out about XP's activation system back in 2001 or so. Until then, I had used it for home server applications (like a web server for PHP testing, and a cheap NAT/firewall router) and a development environment for college programming courses, but the news of the crazy activation scheme drove me to actually using it as my primary OS, with the intention of phasing out Windows 2000 at some point.
:(
:)
I still use Linux (Fedora Core 6) as my primary OS, and I'm pretty happy with it. It does all of the day to day productivity tasks that I need, and I like the flexibility it gives me in terms of technical capabilities - if I want to, SSH into work write a program in C++, test a web page, try out a new language, and so forth, I can do it with minimal hassle. I don't really see switching off of Linux as my own personal desktop OS.
However, I still have a Windows partition, and it's not going to go away any time soon. The Linux gaming scene is still pretty much dead (no offense meant to Michael Simms and the folks at LGP!), for one thing, and my console isn't a complete replacement for that yet. Outlook is still (unfortunately) the best local email client when it comes to remote-synchronized calendaring, email, and address books, especially when you toss smartphones and such into the mix, at least until I move to Google Apps. And when it comes to my own needs, Windows Media Center provides a better fit than MythTV. I'm waiting for 30 people to chime in that MythTV is everything to everyone - but that's just not true.
So, much as I hate to say it, Vista's probably in my future. But so is Linux.
Jimmy Wales shows us the qualities of a good Wikipedia administrator:
1. Doesn't know what he's talking about, yet talks anyways.
2. Soft on folks who deliberately falsify information.
What more could you ask for? Er, wait...
You joke, but in high inflation economies, this is not uncommon.
I'd also point out that a one-day blip, even a big one, doesn't really mean very much. "Savers" win and lose in the stock market by long-term trends, not the short-term.
It would nuke the battery, and then throw off your typing. :)
I think tactile feedback on certain areas of the screen will be possible in the future - but it's not going to be on the iPhone, as far as I can tell.
Yes, because Cingular paring down their profit margins on the summer's hottest phone seems ever so likely. If that rumor is true, I'd be absolutely shocked. Cingular is going to milk this for all it's worth, not provide price breaks. Besides, what other expensive smartphone have they ever given a plan break on?
As for stealing tons of Blackberry users: not going to happen. The iPhone does not have a hardware keyboard, and this is a deal-breaker for the heavy email use set. And, no, the software keyboard, multi-touch or not, is not good enough - it doesn't provide tactile feedback fast typing.
The iPhone is clearly aimed at the "I want an iPod in my phone" crowd, and I think it'll be pleasing to them, if we ignore the vendor lock-in and high price. The question in my mind is whether the US market will overlook the pricing or not.
You're referring to the HOPE scholarship program. I took that scholarship, but my GPA dropped too low to qualify for it after a year. I still got my CS degree, though, and managed to fulfill my obligations vis a vis working in the state. It was an excellent program, and one of the few things that Glendening actually got right.
I disagree; you need both, and I think this is actually mathematically provable (unless the cost of labor and/or technology is zero, which they aren't). In a classical output optimization problem, you've got two variables: physical labor and technology. At a certain point, it's inefficient to start substituting technology for labor, and vica versa. This is exactly why in Japan, where labor is getting comparatively more expensive/scarce than here, you see greater use of robotics/technology in output production. It's not that they're "better" than the US or Europe - they've just got a different set of variables to work with.
More technology is not always the best answer. I know that rankles some of the Slashdot crowd, but that's the way it happens.
Seems to me that the appropriate way of handling this issue would be for the US to encourage more students to take up CS as their degree, and do more to encourage smart, well-educated professionals to immigrate here - permanently. Temporary visas and the like seem to be band-aids rather than real solutions.
I don't care where they're from - this country can only do better to have more educated folks living in it.
I vaguely recall that GameStop has been doing this for a while now - it was just that none of the games were really worth caring about. From what I can tell of the Ars article, the writer is mostly sound and fury - there still aren't any blockbuster games that are GameStop only. He seems more pissed off that it's GameStop, which he apparently does not like very much.
I'm not a big fan of this trend, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, either.
Clearly, they should have done a better job actually authenticating that the person who did the charge actually is the card owner. Good security doesn't involve just protecting credit card numbers from being stolen - it's trying to prevent those credit cards from being used fraudulently, too.
I was under the impression that addiction to pornography is a real, recognized psychological problem. He could very well be telling the truth, in a way.
Of course, either way, this guy is screwed: it's not illegal discrimination to fire someone for mental issues, especially when they affect work performance or atmosphere. The whole point of anti-discrimination laws is to stop people from firing others for stuff that doesn't affect those things.
Why should I waste my bandwidth on distributing Apple's movies and music for them?
Second Life campaign team says Second Life is important to campaign. Who could have predicted such an outcome?
This sounds remarkably like a Second Lifer who's gotten an inflated idea of how important their alternate reality is, asked the campaign team for permission, and then made something. The fact that the campaign itself doesn't seem to be investing money in this is telling as to how much _they_ think this is going to help. That's not to say an Internet presence isn't important, of course - but this is just a little too niche to matter.
From what I've read, AllOfMP3 isn't actually compensating anyone for much of anything. Claiming that it's a fair price is a bit disingenuous - I'm sure consumers love it, but no one actually consulted the artists or publishers about it. Fair typically connotes some sort of "agreement", which is not really what happened.
As for "we will probably see an exponential growth in sophisticated works of art available for a fair price.", that seems rather unlikely. If everything's just totally free and legal to trade around, who's going to pay for anything? What's my incentive to produce these works, period, let alone something that's going to cost a million bucks? Ego only goes so far, and ego-driven art doesn't usually produce great results (seen Rocky Balboa?).
I'm not a big DRM fan, to say the least, but these giant industries didn't come into being because no one wanted them. Clearly, there was and is demand for these huge blockbusters and big musical artists. I'm not sure how we're advancing the arts when it seems like we're regressing in renumeration and funding.
Try selling your unrated game in GameStop sometime, and let me know how it goes.
In fact, try selling it anywhere. No major retailer will sell unrated games. And if your game isn't in a major retailer, it's probably not going to sell all that well.
Exactly. Like it or not, war to protect economic interests is something that's happened time and time again in the past, and will probably happen in the future, too. And it's not just an American concept, either - remember how Europe reacted when the Egyptians nationalized the Suez Canal? "Sit back and take it" is a sure way to just keep getting taken advantage of - that's why you have a military in the first place.
Playing this off as some sort of "OMG the US is so awful and war-mongering!" is foolish and naive. If someone pulled a stunt that brought down the Internet for a European country (say, France) and caused billions of dollars of damage, you'd better believe a limited military resolution would be on the table - with the citizenry supporting it, too.
And you know you are getting into the gaming field how? You know you won't burn out in five years how?
There is no such thing as useless knowledge. You never know what you're going to do. Keep your ears open, and don't think yourself above the subject matter.
I graduated a couple years ago with a degree in CS. I didn't get my dream job. But you know what? All those "useless" courses I took back in college turned out to be damned useful, and even as someone who did, honestly, pretty badly in college, I'm doing better professionally than I ever dreamed. Why? Attitude - I have a willingness to learn new things.
I suggest you change your attitude from "I don't need to know this" to "I might need to know this" - it'll serve you well.
And you think ethics is useless? That's sad. There's more to life than the command line, believe it or not.
You're somewhat inaccurate at the end. Both Coke and Pepsi, at least in the US, are kosher year-round. You can't use corn syrup on Passover because it's a corn-derivative. So, nicely enough, the companies allow a run with real sugar.
So, it's not really "kosher" coke that's the issue - it's that "chametz-free" coke is what's needed at Passover.
PSU is popular in Japan, and did MUCH better in terms of reviews.
Enchanted Arms is good, not mediocre. It didn't advance the genre, but do you really think all those JRPGs that made the PS2 popular did?
I worked in a research lab at NASA with about five employees. We used Mantis to do our issue tracking.
I can say from anecdotal experience that you could not be more totally wrong, at least for some cases. Mantis provided a way for us to keep track of what was needed to be done, who needed to do it, and how important it was to do it - without crawling through our email folders and manually trying to compute what our priorities should be. It was even better for when we needed to deal with outside collaborators. We'd just hand them enough permissions to Mantis to submit and edit tickets, and then as feature requests and bugs came in, we'd do the assignments to ourselves.
Finally, it provides a great audit source. Want to keep track of what you were doing in a week? If you were fastidious about writing your progress in the isue ticket, you could just query all the tickets you edited and use that information to compile a status report. If other people wanted to know, they could do the same thing.
However, I would agree that some of the larger ticket systems would be inappropriate (Remedy?), due to high complexity and setup time. You want to get something simple, like Mantis or Bugzilla.
"In case you hadn't noticed, XBox360, while a good system, has jack and shit in the way of Japanese RPGs. These are the types of games that are most popular over there. No, there isn't some grand conspiricy to lock Microsoft out of the market."
Except that this isn't true. They've got Phantasy Star Universe. They've got Blue Dragon. They've got Enchanted Arms. And there's more. Right now, the Xbox 360 apparently has _more_ JRPGs than the PS3 or the Wii. That's what makes this so baffling. Microsoft really isn't doing that bad of a job in terms of library, and, certainly, their pricing is at least competitive. Maybe the Idolm@ker will drive sales. Who knows?
I would theorize that perhaps _video games_ in Japan might show more nationalized buying habits. Most Americans don't think twice about where their shoes come from, yet a good bit of them are damned picky about their cars coming from an American company.
So, the issue is with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, not Vista. I can play back 720p video just fine from unprotected sources.
I'm kind of confused. You see, the laptop I bought a couple years ago, which apparently has no support for HDCP or any of those other copy-protection measures, actually runs Vista _just fine_. In fact, my desktop, which is a relatively old AthlonXP 2500+ machine, ALSO doesn't need to be upgraded, beyond maybe getting a little more memory.
Look, DRM sucks. But DRM is no excuse to just start making up FUD. Vista is a hog, but blaming it all on DRM seems pretty inaccurate. Saying that everyone is going to start filling landfills just because their video card doesn't support HDCP seems like it's crossing over into "deliberately lying".
"There is no other vehicle around that can dock with or, more accurately, "grab" the Hubble, so without a dedicated shuttle mission, a repair is impossible."
Not true. I was directly involved with the plans to send a robot up to service the Hubble. It was definitely feasible - we even worked on various orbit scenarios to make it happen. The fact that it was decided to use a shuttle does _not_ mean there were no other alternatives. (I used to be a contractor at NASA GSFC.)
I'm reasonably sure I heard that a third-party was making an adapter to do exactly that.