"Me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds."
Many years ago, comedian Franklyn Ajaye did a pretty funny bit about the losers in Olympic events, in particular, the guy that finishes last in track events: "Damn, I'm last. Years and years of training, and I'm last. Hell, I could have not trained AT ALL and still come in last!"
And then there was Ajaye's bit about Vinko Bogataj, the skier who is famous for the "agony of defeat" clip in ABC's Wide World of Sports, as he returns home to his native Slovenia. Townsperson: "Hey Mr. Agony, you can't really ski at all, can you?"
You're right, however. The fact is that Olympic success is fleeting at best, often political, and they're frankly not interested in anyone that doesn't win the gold, and thus bring in the marketing dollars. Look at Surya Bonaly for instance - probably the most amazing female skater ever to compete from a purely athletic perspective, but how many people even know who she is now?
And not just sports gear. In the years that I spent working for two different laser companies, all of the goggles we had were made by Uvex. They're a *huge* name in industrial safety eyewear.
I have a pair of ST31000340NS drives with HP firmware in my box, and they've been totally solid. I don't anticipate encountering any of the firmware issues that plagued the AS version of the drive, but the whole experience really soured me on Seagate - they had an opportunity to fix things the first time, and they chose to try to evade responsibility and even denied there was a problem until they could no longer control the situation.
I appreciate that Seagate did eventually issue a firmware fix for the buggy drives, but it's going to be very difficult for me to take them seriously as a quality drive vendor again.
I would agree with this - all the major drive manufacturers make solid products for the most part. My particular beef with Seagate regarding the 7200.11 problem (which wasn't even a mechanical/electrical quality issue at all) was the fact that they lied about it, then tried to cover it up, and at no time did they make it appear that they gave the first damn about their customers.
You can do it with a decent motor drive system, but you can't really view it visually - you're much better off using a video camera and pulling individual frames, like this guy does, although he goes one step further and keeps the telescope stationary while recording.
Also note that refractor scopes are generally slightly better at planet spotting than reflector scopes of the same primary lens/mirror size
Well, that's somewhat arguable. If you've got a really nice Takahashi, Tele Vue, or other comparable apochromatic refractor with a good fluorite lens, you're right - you'll get a great image. Most refractors are made with fairly cheap glass though, and are going to give you some degree of color fringing on bright objects. As a personal preference, I'd rather deal with the diffraction spikes on a reflector.
You say that as if the shareholders had any real way to influence those contracts. It seems with most public companies, the shareholders are expected to write checks, sit down, shut up, and passively accept everything the senior management team does.
If a professor writes a text book, a university will still need him to teach it. If a mechanic writes a manual for an engine, someone will still pay him to do the work for them. Physical goods and services aren't going away.
So how do you propose that larger works (movies, large software projects, etc.) recoup the substantial expense involved with their creation if the creators are not able to sell them?
With certain software packages (operating systems, large DBMSs, etc.), you can say, "we can make money on support/services", but not all software is amenable to that model. When was the last time you needed a support contract for Photoshop?
And then of course, when a purchase is deemed "too expensive" even by you, you will jump on the "publishers are ezploiting the masses" bandwagon, you hypocrite.
I believe the GP was referring to "1984", the Apple commercial that ran during the Super Bowl that year, and the message it conveyed as opposed to the introduction of the Mac itself. Feel free to stay on the yard as long as you'd like.:-)
The roms had various subroutines in them that were useful, but undocumented. People had to disassemble the roms in order to figure out how to access those routines, but if you wrote software that called address 02fc, you knew it was going to break when the next model came out.
Apple provided commented source for their ROM, and IBM made it available for an extra cost ending with the AT machines. I don't think Commodore actually released the ROM source for the 64, but their programmer's reference manual (extra cost) gave all the information needed to effectively interact directly with the hardware.
When people complain about how Apple used to have a culture that was more open to tinkering, I have to wonder how long they've been using Apple products. OS X is BY FAR the most tinkering-friendly product they have ever produced.
Having made that statement, there's a lot of us that have to wonder how long *you've* been using Apple products. Go back to the Apple II days (i.e. the late 70's/early 80's), back when Apple's products came with a manual that included a full set of schematics, a fully commented listing of the machine's ROM, and detailed information regarding the hardware's theory of operation. You could drop right into the machine's monitor (who else here has "CALL -151" burned into their memory?) and directly enter assembly language opcodes from the command line and end up with a working program, no compiler required. Additionally, the Apple II had an expansion bus that was extremely easy to design hardware for - designing something for the modern PCI bus (or even USB) is a vastly more complex endeavour, requiring company-provided software development kits and libraries just to get anything running.
IBM's original PC Technical Manual contained similar information when their machine was introduced in 1981 (and the PC offered similar functionality to Apple's monitor via DEBUG.COM), but the Apple II had already been available for more than four years by that time.
No, the Burris scope uses the laser diode to find range, and then lets you set a "drop number" that applies a specific offset to the calculated distance. They have drop numbers for several hundred different commercial cartridges, but those cartridges will perform differently in different guns (due to barrel length, etc.), and there's lots of guys that load their own that will have to determine things by trial and error.
For the same price I think I'd rather have a nice Leupold scope with better optics.
More critical weaknesses - no accounting for muzzle velocity. At 500 yards, a bullet traveling at 4000 fps will not hit the same spot as one traveling at 3000 fps as it's not had time to fall as far. And of course, with any scope there are still the issues of wind and drift incurred by the barrel warming up over repeated shots.
Years of experience aren't valuable on their own, they are valuable to the extent that you've leveraged them to gain broader or deeper knowledge and skills that are themselves valuable in the position for which you are being considered
Very true - it's been said that it's possible to have not had 20 years of experience, but rather the same 5 years repeated 4 times.
The underlying principles haven't changed a bit, and they're as fascinating and challenging as ever.
I'll agree with that, but what *has* changed is the overriding desire to save a buck at most companies, along with a continuing loss of perceived value for the years of experience a senior person brings to the table. I've only got about 25 years of experience (20 of it professional), but even I am starting to run into the situation where experience just isn't considered something valuable anymore - "why should we pay you X thousands of dollars more than this kid right out of college? You both know C++, right?"
I don't think the issue is so much dealing with HP and Dell as it is the lack of marketing. Sun's Startup Essentials program offers some decent pricing on the lower-end gear for smaller companies, but seems to be almost totally unknown. I've been totally happy with the low-end Sun gear I've bought, but with the discontinuation of the X2100 line it seems that they're abandoning the low-end market that they could probably have completely taken from SuperMicro, had anyone actually known they were available.
One of my biggest complaints with most shows (American in particular) is that they're never produced to be complete in themselves.
This is something that I really liked about the two BBC shows "The Office" and "Extras". Both ran for two seasons of six episodes each, followed by an extended series finale. Both are completely self-contained, and were intended to run for exactly as long as they did even though they were quite popular and the creators likely would have benefited financially from a longer run.
Same thing here - there's a difference between agreeing with Psystar's position and believing they'll be able to pull it off. I personally don't see an issue with what Psystar was doing, and believe that Apple's (and any other shrinkwrap) EULA is a bunch of crap. However, I also know Congress and the courts have totally screwed up the original intent of copyright in the United States, and I have no faith that the courts would issue a ruling that would be in keeping with that original intent in the Psystar case. Right or wrong, Psystar was doomed from the beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
"Me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds."
Many years ago, comedian Franklyn Ajaye did a pretty funny bit about the losers in Olympic events, in particular, the guy that finishes last in track events: "Damn, I'm last. Years and years of training, and I'm last. Hell, I could have not trained AT ALL and still come in last!"
And then there was Ajaye's bit about Vinko Bogataj, the skier who is famous for the "agony of defeat" clip in ABC's Wide World of Sports, as he returns home to his native Slovenia. Townsperson: "Hey Mr. Agony, you can't really ski at all, can you?"
You're right, however. The fact is that Olympic success is fleeting at best, often political, and they're frankly not interested in anyone that doesn't win the gold, and thus bring in the marketing dollars. Look at Surya Bonaly for instance - probably the most amazing female skater ever to compete from a purely athletic perspective, but how many people even know who she is now?
And not just sports gear. In the years that I spent working for two different laser companies, all of the goggles we had were made by Uvex. They're a *huge* name in industrial safety eyewear.
Mine's been black for years. I laugh at you, Sandman....
I have a pair of ST31000340NS drives with HP firmware in my box, and they've been totally solid. I don't anticipate encountering any of the firmware issues that plagued the AS version of the drive, but the whole experience really soured me on Seagate - they had an opportunity to fix things the first time, and they chose to try to evade responsibility and even denied there was a problem until they could no longer control the situation.
I appreciate that Seagate did eventually issue a firmware fix for the buggy drives, but it's going to be very difficult for me to take them seriously as a quality drive vendor again.
I would agree with this - all the major drive manufacturers make solid products for the most part. My particular beef with Seagate regarding the 7200.11 problem (which wasn't even a mechanical/electrical quality issue at all) was the fact that they lied about it, then tried to cover it up, and at no time did they make it appear that they gave the first damn about their customers.
Google "ST31000340AS" and see what kind of quality went into that, and then also see how Seagate tried like hell to keep things quiet about it.
You can do it with a decent motor drive system, but you can't really view it visually - you're much better off using a video camera and pulling individual frames, like this guy does, although he goes one step further and keeps the telescope stationary while recording.
Also note that refractor scopes are generally slightly better at planet spotting than reflector scopes of the same primary lens/mirror size
Well, that's somewhat arguable. If you've got a really nice Takahashi, Tele Vue, or other comparable apochromatic refractor with a good fluorite lens, you're right - you'll get a great image. Most refractors are made with fairly cheap glass though, and are going to give you some degree of color fringing on bright objects. As a personal preference, I'd rather deal with the diffraction spikes on a reflector.
You say that as if the shareholders had any real way to influence those contracts. It seems with most public companies, the shareholders are expected to write checks, sit down, shut up, and passively accept everything the senior management team does.
If a professor writes a text book, a university will still need him to teach it. If a mechanic writes a manual for an engine, someone will still pay him to do the work for them. Physical goods and services aren't going away.
So how do you propose that larger works (movies, large software projects, etc.) recoup the substantial expense involved with their creation if the creators are not able to sell them?
With certain software packages (operating systems, large DBMSs, etc.), you can say, "we can make money on support/services", but not all software is amenable to that model. When was the last time you needed a support contract for Photoshop?
And then of course, when a purchase is deemed "too expensive" even by you, you will jump on the "publishers are ezploiting the masses" bandwagon, you hypocrite.
I suspect he/she just won't buy the book.
The whole point of copyright is to maintain profits above free market levels.
I hadn't really thought of it in those terms, but that's a pretty profound summation, and a useful thing to keep in mind.
I believe the GP was referring to "1984", the Apple commercial that ran during the Super Bowl that year, and the message it conveyed as opposed to the introduction of the Mac itself. Feel free to stay on the yard as long as you'd like. :-)
The roms had various subroutines in them that were useful, but undocumented. People had to disassemble the roms in order to figure out how to access those routines, but if you wrote software that called address 02fc, you knew it was going to break when the next model came out.
Apple provided commented source for their ROM, and IBM made it available for an extra cost ending with the AT machines. I don't think Commodore actually released the ROM source for the 64, but their programmer's reference manual (extra cost) gave all the information needed to effectively interact directly with the hardware.
When people complain about how Apple used to have a culture that was more open to tinkering, I have to wonder how long they've been using Apple products. OS X is BY FAR the most tinkering-friendly product they have ever produced.
Having made that statement, there's a lot of us that have to wonder how long *you've* been using Apple products. Go back to the Apple II days (i.e. the late 70's/early 80's), back when Apple's products came with a manual that included a full set of schematics, a fully commented listing of the machine's ROM, and detailed information regarding the hardware's theory of operation. You could drop right into the machine's monitor (who else here has "CALL -151" burned into their memory?) and directly enter assembly language opcodes from the command line and end up with a working program, no compiler required. Additionally, the Apple II had an expansion bus that was extremely easy to design hardware for - designing something for the modern PCI bus (or even USB) is a vastly more complex endeavour, requiring company-provided software development kits and libraries just to get anything running.
IBM's original PC Technical Manual contained similar information when their machine was introduced in 1981 (and the PC offered similar functionality to Apple's monitor via DEBUG.COM), but the Apple II had already been available for more than four years by that time.
No, the Burris scope uses the laser diode to find range, and then lets you set a "drop number" that applies a specific offset to the calculated distance. They have drop numbers for several hundred different commercial cartridges, but those cartridges will perform differently in different guns (due to barrel length, etc.), and there's lots of guys that load their own that will have to determine things by trial and error.
For the same price I think I'd rather have a nice Leupold scope with better optics.
More critical weaknesses - no accounting for muzzle velocity. At 500 yards, a bullet traveling at 4000 fps will not hit the same spot as one traveling at 3000 fps as it's not had time to fall as far. And of course, with any scope there are still the issues of wind and drift incurred by the barrel warming up over repeated shots.
Years of experience aren't valuable on their own, they are valuable to the extent that you've leveraged them to gain broader or deeper knowledge and skills that are themselves valuable in the position for which you are being considered
Very true - it's been said that it's possible to have not had 20 years of experience, but rather the same 5 years repeated 4 times.
The underlying principles haven't changed a bit, and they're as fascinating and challenging as ever.
I'll agree with that, but what *has* changed is the overriding desire to save a buck at most companies, along with a continuing loss of perceived value for the years of experience a senior person brings to the table. I've only got about 25 years of experience (20 of it professional), but even I am starting to run into the situation where experience just isn't considered something valuable anymore - "why should we pay you X thousands of dollars more than this kid right out of college? You both know C++, right?"
I don't think the issue is so much dealing with HP and Dell as it is the lack of marketing. Sun's Startup Essentials program offers some decent pricing on the lower-end gear for smaller companies, but seems to be almost totally unknown. I've been totally happy with the low-end Sun gear I've bought, but with the discontinuation of the X2100 line it seems that they're abandoning the low-end market that they could probably have completely taken from SuperMicro, had anyone actually known they were available.
Okay, correcting myself - the GPS constellation isn't in geosynchronous orbit, but it's a damn sight higher up than LEO. :-)
It's difficult to shoot down satellites, but not impossible [washingtonpost.com].
Note that was a satellite in low-Earth orbit. It's a *lot* harder to shoot down something in geosynchronous orbit like a GPS satellite.
One of my biggest complaints with most shows (American in particular) is that they're never produced to be complete in themselves.
This is something that I really liked about the two BBC shows "The Office" and "Extras". Both ran for two seasons of six episodes each, followed by an extended series finale. Both are completely self-contained, and were intended to run for exactly as long as they did even though they were quite popular and the creators likely would have benefited financially from a longer run.
Same thing here - there's a difference between agreeing with Psystar's position and believing they'll be able to pull it off. I personally don't see an issue with what Psystar was doing, and believe that Apple's (and any other shrinkwrap) EULA is a bunch of crap. However, I also know Congress and the courts have totally screwed up the original intent of copyright in the United States, and I have no faith that the courts would issue a ruling that would be in keeping with that original intent in the Psystar case. Right or wrong, Psystar was doomed from the beginning.