I used to see a lot of popup ads before Mozilla could block them. Are the advertisers still using them?
Encryption isn't the problem or the solution.
on
2002 US Wiretap Report
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I tend to believe that the government is able to either break or circumvent levels of encryption at a much higher level than commonly thought.
If ``higher level'' means ``arrest the guy you sent the encrypted message to, and get him to decrypt it'', I'm sure you're right.
The gov't may be able to do a bit more than they say, but keeping/learning secrets isn't generally a technological problem; it's a social problem. Governments have been solving the learning secrets problem for thousands of years. If they know you have a secret, they can learn it. If they don't know, they'll never try.
Take a look here. You'll see that there have been very few wiretaps on pagers, fac's machines and computers (59 total in 2002). The two groups doing that sort of tap are the Feds (17 taps) and the NYC Special Narcotics Bureau (24 taps). What do you want to bet that most of the NYC taps are drug dealer's pagers? So, wire-tapping computers doesn't seem to be a wide-spread practice.
Another interesting table is this one. It gives $/tap. The average cost is over $50K. That suggests that a wiretap is going to take a big bite out of almost any agency's budget (average cost for the Feds is $75K). The cost may be the best protection of our privacy. Certainly it seems a better bet than the judiciary.
Finally, there is the table which shows arrests and convictions. Slightly over half of the arrests related to wiretaps result in convictions. Does anyone know how that compares to investigations without wiretaps? It suggests that more than half of the wiretaps were in response to some broken law. Hopefully they were good laws, rather than DMCA-style disasters.
In short, one could almost imagine that the folks in the tin-foil hats are crazy to worry about the cops tapping their computers.
However, I would love to see a good distro that:
1. Does not use RPM for package management (I've had RPM screw up way too many times in the past).
2. Has a decent GUI installer
3. Can configure all of my hardware without me tewaking it (I'll understand for some of the latest/greatest hardware, like my AIW 9700 Pro, but for instance, getting wireless setup on my laptop with both RedHat 8.0 and Slackware 9.0-pre was a pain)
4. Very configurable
Seriously, Knoppix seems to have everything but a ``push me to repartition the hard drive and install automagically'' button. That link makes it look as if getting that magic button wouldn't take much effort.
I think the word 'Windows' distributes over both 'OS' and 'functionality'. So the sentence equates to "For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and Windows functionality...'
That's what I thought, too, after I thought about it. If it had been clearly written, we wouldn't have had to think about the meaning. Thus, the feeble joke.
Whether that's better or worse than a Mac OS and Mac functionality, well, I won't comment.
Me, either.
As I recall, there is a Windows emulator for Macs, right? If so (and if not, there's always Wine!) Macs DO have some ``Windows functionality''.
As for the tech support issue, I have one comment: buy it on a decent credit card. You get the equivalent of Best Buy's protection plan (one year extension on the manufacturer's warranty) for free, as well as protection in the unlikely event that the thing doesn't show up.
Absolutely. This is a good idea, for all products and all vendors.
One of the few positives to buying Dell over VPR Matrix or a whitebox machine is Dell's protection plan... if the machine gets damaged in any way other than intentionally, they'll fix it.
I've had fairly good experiences with Dell's laptop warrenty. Of course, there was the time the floppy on my Inspiron died... the phone call to tech support went something like this:
A long, tedious interlude, in which the tech support guy read his script, and I told him what he would have seen if Windows had been installed. Finally, the script told him that the floppy was broken, and that I'd have to send the computer back for repair.
[tech support] Your floppy drive is broken. You'll have to send your machine in. We'll airfreight you a box in which to return it.
[me] Why don't you save your company a lot of money and send me another floppy by mail?
[tech support] You will need to remove all the parts from the machine before you return it.
[me] What parts?
[tech support] The RAM, the hard drive, the floppy drive...
[me] THE FLOPPY DRIVE IS THE ONLY THING THAT"S BROKEN! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FIX IT IF I DON'T SEND IT?
[tech support] I don't know. (Long silence)
[me] Maybe I should talk to your supervisor?
[tech support] (Obviously relieved) Yes!
The upshot, after quite a bit more time on hold, was that they airfreighted me another floppy, and we were all happy. If I hadn't known a bit more than his script, things wouldn't have turned out so well. I had two other, similar experiences. I think that if you don't know enough to fix the machine yourself, Dell's service may not be very smooth, though they seem to honestly try.
I picked up the low-end VPR Matrix laptop for $950 (plus a $150 rebate on top)...
Wow. My last laptop purchase was a 486 Latitude for $20 at a garage sale. That may seem high, but the guy threw in a working HP-65. That's cheap enough that I don't worry about carrying it around. I installed Woody, and it (the latitude) does email or some web browsing or text editing.
"For those wanting an Apple Powerbook feel with Windows OS and functionality, the 200A5 is about as close as you can get."
So, the Apple Powerbook doesn't have functionality? Windows OS does?
On a more serious note, this machine's main claim to fame seems to be an Apple-esque look and feel, including a slot loading DVD. Slot loading drives are cute, until you have a business-card-sized CD to read. Most slot loading drives don't handle them.
I think that if appearances mattered that much to me, I might shell out the few extra bucks to get an Apple. Here's another reason to prefer Apple (again from the review, which seems to be/.'ed):
While VPR Matrix is in itself a brand, chances are that your laptop may at one point get serviced through Best Buy should something go wrong with it. Our experience with Best Buy was very poor and we recommend that you call VPR Matrix tech support directly and have them deal with any problems. Turn around time on a serviced laptop using Best Buy is about 4-6 weeks. If you call VPR Matrix directly, they will most likely overnight you a box to ship your laptop back to them with. VPR Matrix turnaround is about 5-7 business days much better than Best Buy's. All VPR Matrix notebookscome with a one year parts and labor warranty. There is no warranty upgrade option either like most notebook manufacturers offer and we feel Best Buy's protection plan is not worth the $250 dollar cost.
They'll stop sending you that check when you don't look for a job.
I've run down my UI benefits several times, over the years. The trick is to have two or three friendly small business owners who can be counted on to remember you, and to NOT have a job for you. Drop by and visit your business-owning buddies every week, and have them tell you ``still no openings''. You have fulfilled your employment search requirements.
Or when you miss out on 2 interviews with the unemployment officers.
Time to go through detox and get a job, if that happens.
When the job market gets tight and the weeks turn into months turn into years, it's time to go back to school. Not because more paper qualifications will help, but because being unemployed isn't respectable. Being a student is very respectable. Full-time study is the lowest-cost way to be a bum and still look employable.
If you have enough money to buy and outfit a boat, you could go sail around the world for several years, and have a good story to explain the gap in your resume, but for most of us, that's just not feasible. It also has the disadvantage that you'll miss out on whatever opportunities there might be while you're gone. School is far easier for most of us to manage, and far less risk of drowning.
In the US, full time students are not eligible for UI benefits. Part time students may be, if they are available for full-time work. Look for night-shift work, or take evening classes, and there shouldn't be any problem. This will only be a consideration for the first year, at most, as UI benefits don't last long in the US.
Other posts have mentioned difficulties with health care. If you are in the US, you can get decent health care VERY cheaply by signing up for one class at your friendly neighborhood university. In-state tuition for one class and insurance for the year will cost around $1000. That may sound like a lot, but you can get student loans, and grants which will help, and the school will help you spread out the payments. You get access to really cheap health care at the campus health center. You can also wind up with an education, if you don't watch out.
The Salvation Army can also help out with medical problems. They coordinate for dentists and doctors who want to give charity services.
The important point is to be able to work the system. This skill will help you be comfortable while unemployed, help you get a job and help you keep it. If you're good at it, you can get by with very few, very brief periods of employment.
... Windows 1.0 was released on November 10, 1983 [microsoft.com], making windows just 6.5 months short of being 20 years old.
By that standard, Linux is about 10 years old.
Ballmer seems to have been saying that Linux is a clone of 20 year-old Unix. Balmer's standard is a very different one.
DOS was a CPM clone, and NT was a VMS clone. By Balmer's standard, Windows and NT are both clones of 25+ year-old OS's. We could be charitable, and say that it's the GUI that matters in Windows (goodness knows there's nothing else there!). In that case, it's a clone of the Mac. Or a clone of the GUI which ran on the C64. Or that research project at Xerox Park. We're talking a clone of something 30+ years old now.
... among the technically competent, there is usually a mutual respect that overides the impulse for a jerk to be a jerk.
Your comment about mutual respect could indicate respect for competence, or respect for viciousness. Throughout all this, I've assumed technical competence; that's a given.
... conceit and self assurance are exclusive of one another.
I disagree. One can be self assured without conceit, but conceit ALWAYS leads to (at least the appearance of) self assurance. Someone who is technically competent is going to have results to back up his self assurance. Someone who is conceited will know that his results are intrinsically superior to your results, even if you haven't figured it out yet, even if those results are only just as good as yours.
If you and a conceited jerk are trying to convince others, the jerk is going to know he's right, and that since your idea is different, he's wrong. That gives him an advantage over you when talking to non-technical management, since you are honest enough to admit that he's competent, and his idea has some good points. The jerk may be honest, but his conceit will never let him see that you are equally competent, and your idea is also good.
Egotistical swine usually reside in Marketing.
I wonder if you perceive that because the Marketing folks usually aren't technically competent in your field? You probably aren't technically competent in their field; I wonder how they'd describe you and your collegues?
The point I wanted to make with my first question is that the culture being described leads to a company full of ``jerks'', in your words. People who are ready to listen, understand and either explain themselves or change their minds will soon find better places to work.
This matters because people who are ready to listen and understand can cooperate. They can tell you why you're right, and why you need to do it their way anyway. Or, they can tell you why you're wrong, or how you can do it better, or.... They can help you to understand. They have a lot of options in addition to being right and winning the argument.
... results dont lie, do they?
Well said. MS has turned out products which have made the shareholders a lot of money, and that much at least is a good thing. The products are certainly good enough to sell to the computer-illiterate, though I think that Apple has done a better job of marketing to the brilliant-but-clueless. What a pity that's such a tiny market.
I said above that MS products are good enough to sell. I'm not sure that they'd be good enough to give away. Could they have gotten their market share if their wares were free, but there was no marketing? I'm not sure that they could compete strictly on technical merits. I think that though their products are often technically good, they are never as good as they could be, and rarely better than the competition[1].
This technical weakness may be marketing-driven, or it may be because of the difficulty of getting a bunch of jerks to cooperate. I don't know which, but MS Bob gives me reason to say that bad cooperation is plausible.
Let's look at slightly broader definitions of results. MS is widely perceived as a company with which it is dangerous to do business. That might be attributed to envy of their success; after all, this perception seemed to arise after they got big. It might also be that they couldn't screw their partners and customers safely until after they got big.
In the long run, you can be second-best and still get along. In the long run, if you're hated and feared, people will crap all over you as soon as they think it's safe.
Arthur Anderson and Enron both seem to have been run by jerks, though the culture wasn't identical to MS's culture. In the short run, they were successful, Enron for years and AA
Combative Individualism is a very accurate term for what goes on at MS.
So, a hypothetical question about this: say I'm a technically competent, egotistical swine. Further, say that I have a loud mouth, and my colossal conceit and self assurance give me a big edge in arguments. Given that I have enough social skills to suck up when appropriate, would I be likely to do well at MS?
More hypothetical questions:
If the answer were ``Yes'', would you want to work there?
What sort of person would want to?
How would you expect a company to fare, in the long run, with a crew like that?
How about teaming up with some local ISP for the internet-part?
How about teaming up with a BUNCH of local ISPs?
I think that the obvious answer here is to separate the ``own and operate transmission lines'' function from the ``provide services over the transmission lines'' function.
The transmission lines are a natural monopoly. There isn't going to be any competition there, no matter what (That's the standard answer, anyway), so might as well let the gov't maintain ownership and control. You could still contract out maintenance work, if you're worried about inefficiency. You could keep it in-house if you're worried about getting public employee union support. If you let ownership go to a private company, you run the considerable risk of setting the wrong incentives and getting a nasty mess.
Providing billing, internet access and/or cable programming over the fiber is clearly NOT a natural monopoly. The city could make the fiber open to any provider of any service. It would be a bit like the Telcos opening their lines to competition, except that there would be no incentive for the city to backstab the providers. It would be a lot like what you're suggesting, except that you wouldn't be giving a monopoly to any one business. Why not give out the monopoly? Think of the telephone company: ``We don't care... we don't have to. We're the phone company.''
To summarize, what I'm suggesting is that the city could operate fiber lines, and lease them to private businesses. There would be no billing from city to individuals. Private enterprise could use those lines to offer any service that folks would pay for, just as privately owned trucks, busses and cars run on publicly owned and operated roads. Private business would bill individuals for services rendered. Since no business would have a monopoly, all businesses would have to give individuals their money's worth, or see their customers take a hike.
You could have the reliable infrastructure that comes from a monopoly provider, and the attentive service and product innovations which come from fierce competition.
... it is much superior to a PC as a
dedicated appliance, providing a network service, because
it occupies less space and consumes less power.
Good idea. I use old laptops that I get at garage sales for $20 to $100. They typically have power supplies which deliver less than 20W, so they're hard to beat for cheap.
The one bad feature is that they don't stack well. And NICs are a bit spendy.
Ok, the two bad features are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy. And installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models.
Ok, the THREE bad things are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy and installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models. And the harddrives tend to be a bit on the small side.
Ok, the FOUR bad things...
Well, the problem for Microsoft is that pretty soon XBox owners are going to figure out a) it really is just a PC and b) it's a lot slower than a PC, has outdated hardware, and doesn't run as many games.
Yes. I thought that was the gist of my post.
I figure that MS doesn't WANT to sell this to the guy who wants a PC. I'm guessing they aim to sell to the guy who wants a game console, to play games, and has no interest in performance as a general purpose computer.
MS is (or should be) happy: they made a cheap game console using PC hardware, without making something which is usable as a cheap PC. Whether that was a good idea remains to be seen, but it was probably their aim.
[cheapshot]Of course, MS's software has been making cheap hardware unusable since Win3.1.[/cheapshot]
Is the graphics card doing GOOD floating point, or is it doing fast floating point? It is possible to take short cuts which won't screw up many applications (probably including graphics), but which can be absolutely unacceptable if your answer has to be right. Here is a link to a paper which should expand on that idea.
I seem to recall that when compiling BLAS for an AMD chip, one of the./configure options was to use the 3DNow! extensions. There was a warning against doing that, since the speedup came at the expense of accuracy, in some situations. See here .
Looks as if MS has succeded.
on
Xbox Linux Cluster
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· Score: 4, Insightful
From the article's conclusion:
In conclusion, the XBOX functions well due to the work done by the XBOX Linux project. However the same or greater computing power could be obtained for an equal price, without the complications of modifying the XBOX. This makes the XBOX an unfit solution as a replacement for a personal computer or a cluster node.
MS has made a machine which it isn't practical to use for cheap computing power. It's possible to use the Xbox as a PC, and a few folks will do it, but it isn't practical, and I'm sure that's just what MS was aiming for.
Whether they actually lose money on every machine or not (and it surely doesn't sound as if marginal cost is greater than the price), they don't want their low margin hardware being snapped up by the thousands by pc-clustering scientists who will never buy a high margin game.
Software doesn't compare to literature, it compares better to trade secrets.
I think that the original point in the great-grandparent post was that execution is everything.
Why should Colonel Sanders tell you what his 'secret blend of herbs and spices' are... [sic]
There is no reason why he should, and not much reason for me to want it. If I had his recipe, I would still have to cook it. There are days when I'm willing to pay a restaraunt more money than it would cost me to buy and cook a T-bone dinner, for food that's worse than I would cook. Not having to deal with cooking and cleaning can be a big deal.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, if everyone is sharing the same technology (same opensource bios code), then the company which can do the best job of supporting it will make the most revenue. Execution is everything.
So far as I know, no company has a monopoly on bios code right now. A motherboard manufacturer can choose who they will buy from based on existing relationships, on the bios manufacturer's experience, on the manufacturer's perceived ability to engineer a working product on time and whatever else matters. Since there is no monopoly, the Linux bios project isn't such a threat to AMI as Linux is to Microsoft.
Having an open source bios platform might be a good thing for engineers who wanted to freelance, since it would obviously lower tha barriers to entry. On the other hand, most garage businesses aren't going to be able to convince a motherboard manufacturer that they are a lower-risk option than AMI. I suspect that AMI realizes that freelancers using the Linuxbios project aren't going to be a threat to their core market of high-volume motherboard manufacturers like ASUS and ABIT.
If we didn't have any thing like Palladium or TCPA in the offing, ASUS could take the Linuxbios and have their engineers use it to boot Windows, and cut out AMI entirely. So I suspect that AMI is very happy to be able to offer something that Linuxbios apparently can't do, such as TCPA.
Question: What are the limits of trademark rights?
Answer: There are many limits, including:
Non-commercial Use
If no income is solicited or earned by using someone else's mark, this use is not normally infringement. Trademark rights protect consumers from purchasing inferior goods because of false labeling. If no goods or services are offered, there is no commercial use.
Product Comparison and News Reporting
Even in a commercial use, you can refer to someone else's goods by their trademarked name when comparing them to other products. News reporting is also exempt.
His list might have been construed as news reporting (Here is the device number of this new device... ), and definitely seems to have been non-commercial.
Of course, he's quite understandably mad that after he's spent his own money to help them all these years, they have chosen to rudely crap on him. I do hope that he'll continue to make his list available to the libre software developers, but I'll certainly understand if he doesn't want to support the bus-standard-which-must-not-be-named.
... the "rich world" will eventually give away so much work that they will be poor.
Wow. Let's play this one out a little closer to home. Chicago should never have sent all those highpaying meatpacking jobs out to Omaha. That's why Chicago is poor. Even closer to home: are you letting your wife wash the dishes? Don't you realize that's taking away work that you could be doing? She's impoverishing you!
If we carry the argument against international trade to its ultimate, we conclude that everyone should produce everything for himself, and never trade with anyone. Obviously that's goofy.
There's something wrong with your argument; let me help you identify the problem. When we send those coding jobs overseas, we make it possible for the Indians to buy goods and services from us. The reason that makes us all better off is that we only send them the work that they have a comparitive advantage in. That means that we can do something more profitable here. More free trade (NOT subsidised trade, such as Japan practiced for many years) enriches the entire world.
The classic old example is that England COULD make wine, and Spain COULD make wool, but each country has a natural advantage at making the other, and both are better off trading. This is absolute advantage, and is easy to understand.
Here's an example of comparitive advantage. There is a lawyer who can type 100 words per minute, and prepare a case in one hour. He hires, to do the typing, a legal secretary who can type 50 wpm, but would need 10 hours to prepare a case. Why? Because the secretary has a comparitive advantage in typing, even though he is only half as fast at typing. This is comparitive advantage, and is a bit more subtle.
The secretary faces this trade off: in a 10 hour day, he can type 30,000 characters, or can prep one case. The lawyer's trade off is: type 60,000 characters (only twice as much as the secretary), or prep 10 cases (10 times more than the secretary!). They're both better off to trade services this way, even though the secretary has no absolute advantage in anything.
The situation with international trade is similar. We can give the Indians work that we are better off letting them do, even if they aren't as good at it as we are. Both we and they are better off. There will always be something for us to do, even if we are worse at everything than the Indians. We will always be better off trading freely, even if we are in the position of the slow secretary rather than the fast lawyer.
I realize that this is hard on the people with little education and inflexible minds whose jobs dry up here. They won't enjoy being retrained, but I don't see why my children should live in relative poverty so they can keep on slacking. I don't see why Indian children should live in real poverty to make things easier for them, either.
What a lot of programmers fail to realize is that programming is the 21st century equivalent of ditch digging. No, it's worse than that, because you don't even have to be fully grown. A preteen can do most coding. There's a reason that we call them code monkeys.
If your job doesn't require a graduate degree and a track record of proven creative ability, you are probably a commodity, and you should expect to see foreign competition, and quite possibly loose your career to it.
Good spelling, properly formatted pages, sentences that make sense, tables of contents and indexes that are correct, covers that look good, footnotes in proper order and together, uniform citation styles, diagrams referred to properly and in the right locations, and I could keep going.
Spelling will always be hard to automate, but most of the rest of that list is covered, flawlessly and (almost entirely) automatically, by LaTeX and BibTeX. Cover art is the only area that LaTeX doesn't address.
For example, making a USEFUL index takes some doing. The author must remember to mark useful words to be indexed by LaTeX. Once the words are marked, the actual creation of a correct index is fully automatic.
The one service which a publisher can provide to an author is editing. That, and that alone, the author can't do for himself and cannot automate. The one service which the publishers can provide to readers is filtering. I suspect that both of these could be provided without a publishing industry, but as long as the publishing industry provides both, it can earn its keep.
There is also marketing. That is probably a service to the author, and may be (but probably isn't ) a service to the reader. I wouldn't be surprised to find that we would all be better off if editing and filtering were divorced from marketing.
Typesetting, distribution and printing are all do-able by the author today (or by the reader!).
Is it just me or doues [sic] this sound like the definition of business for it's own sake?
I'm pretty sure that it's just you.
... that statement make it sound as if the law is a secondary concern, an inconvinience that need be followed only if you're in a good mood.
``That statement'' says that a smart business does not claim to be harmed by, and seek legal redress against, persons who are helping them to profit. Think about it: if copyright-infringing fanzines keep fans buying your product, do you sue and shut down the fanzines, or do you smile all the way to the bank? That's the point you missed. Lessig isn't saying that business should violate the law, but rather that business should not persecute their customers.
The point that I think Lessig missed is that this is a classic example of how bureaucracies can go wrong. The lawyers who work for the business see an opportunity to prove their worth by suing as many people as possible. Never mind that these suits may be driving away customers, and harming the business. Any business big enough to hire a stable of lawyers is big enough to show these bureaucratic tendencies.
And of course the law is a rough edged tool when viewed upon from a purely business stand point. That's because most laws aren't designed with only business in mind. There are these things called "people" too...
I'm surprised to hear you say that. It seems to be commonly accepted here on Slashdot that laws are purchased by business, for their own consumption. Ergo, laws ARE ``designed with only business in mind.''. Or else our legal system is basically sound. Take your pick.
... one really bad cold snap when it got to -72 F.
You must have lived in the Interior. On the Arctic coast, it usually ran about -30F and a 30knot wind. I can remember walking home from the BIA school in Unalakleet in a whiteout, looking up at the power lines to find my way. There was a road, with a ditch, but it was so drifted over that I couldn't tell where it went by feel. The snow was blowing along the ground, so I couldn't see anything horizontally, but I could see the sky, sort of.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to see a lot of popup ads before Mozilla could block them. Are the advertisers still using them?
If ``higher level'' means ``arrest the guy you sent the encrypted message to, and get him to decrypt it'', I'm sure you're right.
The gov't may be able to do a bit more than they say, but keeping/learning secrets isn't generally a technological problem; it's a social problem. Governments have been solving the learning secrets problem for thousands of years. If they know you have a secret, they can learn it. If they don't know, they'll never try.
Another interesting table is this one. It gives $/tap. The average cost is over $50K. That suggests that a wiretap is going to take a big bite out of almost any agency's budget (average cost for the Feds is $75K). The cost may be the best protection of our privacy. Certainly it seems a better bet than the judiciary.
Finally, there is the table which shows arrests and convictions. Slightly over half of the arrests related to wiretaps result in convictions. Does anyone know how that compares to investigations without wiretaps? It suggests that more than half of the wiretaps were in response to some broken law. Hopefully they were good laws, rather than DMCA-style disasters.
In short, one could almost imagine that the folks in the tin-foil hats are crazy to worry about the cops tapping their computers.
1. Does not use RPM for package management (I've had RPM screw up way too many times in the past).
2. Has a decent GUI installer
3. Can configure all of my hardware without me tewaking it (I'll understand for some of the latest/greatest hardware, like my AIW 9700 Pro, but for instance, getting wireless setup on my laptop with both RedHat 8.0 and Slackware 9.0-pre was a pain)
4. Very configurable
Knoppix?
Seriously, Knoppix seems to have everything but a ``push me to repartition the hard drive and install automagically'' button. That link makes it look as if getting that magic button wouldn't take much effort.
That's what I thought, too, after I thought about it. If it had been clearly written, we wouldn't have had to think about the meaning. Thus, the feeble joke.
Whether that's better or worse than a Mac OS and Mac functionality, well, I won't comment.
Me, either.
As I recall, there is a Windows emulator for Macs, right? If so (and if not, there's always Wine!) Macs DO have some ``Windows functionality''.
As for the tech support issue, I have one comment: buy it on a decent credit card. You get the equivalent of Best Buy's protection plan (one year extension on the manufacturer's warranty) for free, as well as protection in the unlikely event that the thing doesn't show up.
Absolutely. This is a good idea, for all products and all vendors.
One of the few positives to buying Dell over VPR Matrix or a whitebox machine is Dell's protection plan ... if the machine gets damaged in any way other than intentionally, they'll fix it.
I've had fairly good experiences with Dell's laptop warrenty. Of course, there was the time the floppy on my Inspiron died ... the phone call to tech support went something like this:
A long, tedious interlude, in which the tech support guy read his script, and I told him what he would have seen if Windows had been installed. Finally, the script told him that the floppy was broken, and that I'd have to send the computer back for repair.
[tech support] Your floppy drive is broken. You'll have to send your machine in. We'll airfreight you a box in which to return it. ...
[me] Why don't you save your company a lot of money and send me another floppy by mail?
[tech support] You will need to remove all the parts from the machine before you return it.
[me] What parts?
[tech support] The RAM, the hard drive, the floppy drive
[me] THE FLOPPY DRIVE IS THE ONLY THING THAT"S BROKEN! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FIX IT IF I DON'T SEND IT?
[tech support] I don't know. (Long silence)
[me] Maybe I should talk to your supervisor?
[tech support] (Obviously relieved) Yes!
The upshot, after quite a bit more time on hold, was that they airfreighted me another floppy, and we were all happy. If I hadn't known a bit more than his script, things wouldn't have turned out so well. I had two other, similar experiences. I think that if you don't know enough to fix the machine yourself, Dell's service may not be very smooth, though they seem to honestly try.
I picked up the low-end VPR Matrix laptop for $950 (plus a $150 rebate on top)...
Wow. My last laptop purchase was a 486 Latitude for $20 at a garage sale. That may seem high, but the guy threw in a working HP-65. That's cheap enough that I don't worry about carrying it around. I installed Woody, and it (the latitude) does email or some web browsing or text editing.
So, the Apple Powerbook doesn't have functionality? Windows OS does?
On a more serious note, this machine's main claim to fame seems to be an Apple-esque look and feel, including a slot loading DVD. Slot loading drives are cute, until you have a business-card-sized CD to read. Most slot loading drives don't handle them.
I think that if appearances mattered that much to me, I might shell out the few extra bucks to get an Apple. Here's another reason to prefer Apple (again from the review, which seems to be /.'ed):
Is Apple really going to be worse that that?I've run down my UI benefits several times, over the years. The trick is to have two or three friendly small business owners who can be counted on to remember you, and to NOT have a job for you. Drop by and visit your business-owning buddies every week, and have them tell you ``still no openings''. You have fulfilled your employment search requirements.
Or when you miss out on 2 interviews with the unemployment officers.
Time to go through detox and get a job, if that happens.
When the job market gets tight and the weeks turn into months turn into years, it's time to go back to school. Not because more paper qualifications will help, but because being unemployed isn't respectable. Being a student is very respectable. Full-time study is the lowest-cost way to be a bum and still look employable.
If you have enough money to buy and outfit a boat, you could go sail around the world for several years, and have a good story to explain the gap in your resume, but for most of us, that's just not feasible. It also has the disadvantage that you'll miss out on whatever opportunities there might be while you're gone. School is far easier for most of us to manage, and far less risk of drowning.
In the US, full time students are not eligible for UI benefits. Part time students may be, if they are available for full-time work. Look for night-shift work, or take evening classes, and there shouldn't be any problem. This will only be a consideration for the first year, at most, as UI benefits don't last long in the US.
Other posts have mentioned difficulties with health care. If you are in the US, you can get decent health care VERY cheaply by signing up for one class at your friendly neighborhood university. In-state tuition for one class and insurance for the year will cost around $1000. That may sound like a lot, but you can get student loans, and grants which will help, and the school will help you spread out the payments. You get access to really cheap health care at the campus health center. You can also wind up with an education, if you don't watch out.
The Salvation Army can also help out with medical problems. They coordinate for dentists and doctors who want to give charity services.
The important point is to be able to work the system. This skill will help you be comfortable while unemployed, help you get a job and help you keep it. If you're good at it, you can get by with very few, very brief periods of employment.
By that standard, Linux is about 10 years old.
Ballmer seems to have been saying that Linux is a clone of 20 year-old Unix. Balmer's standard is a very different one.
DOS was a CPM clone, and NT was a VMS clone. By Balmer's standard, Windows and NT are both clones of 25+ year-old OS's. We could be charitable, and say that it's the GUI that matters in Windows (goodness knows there's nothing else there!). In that case, it's a clone of the Mac. Or a clone of the GUI which ran on the C64. Or that research project at Xerox Park. We're talking a clone of something 30+ years old now.
Maybe Balmer better just drop this one.
Your comment about mutual respect could indicate respect for competence, or respect for viciousness. Throughout all this, I've assumed technical competence; that's a given.
I disagree. One can be self assured without conceit, but conceit ALWAYS leads to (at least the appearance of) self assurance. Someone who is technically competent is going to have results to back up his self assurance. Someone who is conceited will know that his results are intrinsically superior to your results, even if you haven't figured it out yet, even if those results are only just as good as yours.
If you and a conceited jerk are trying to convince others, the jerk is going to know he's right, and that since your idea is different, he's wrong. That gives him an advantage over you when talking to non-technical management, since you are honest enough to admit that he's competent, and his idea has some good points. The jerk may be honest, but his conceit will never let him see that you are equally competent, and your idea is also good.
Egotistical swine usually reside in Marketing.
I wonder if you perceive that because the Marketing folks usually aren't technically competent in your field? You probably aren't technically competent in their field; I wonder how they'd describe you and your collegues?
The point I wanted to make with my first question is that the culture being described leads to a company full of ``jerks'', in your words. People who are ready to listen, understand and either explain themselves or change their minds will soon find better places to work.
This matters because people who are ready to listen and understand can cooperate. They can tell you why you're right, and why you need to do it their way anyway. Or, they can tell you why you're wrong, or how you can do it better, or .... They can help you to understand. They have a lot of options in addition to being right and winning the argument.
Well said. MS has turned out products which have made the shareholders a lot of money, and that much at least is a good thing. The products are certainly good enough to sell to the computer-illiterate, though I think that Apple has done a better job of marketing to the brilliant-but-clueless. What a pity that's such a tiny market.
I said above that MS products are good enough to sell. I'm not sure that they'd be good enough to give away. Could they have gotten their market share if their wares were free, but there was no marketing? I'm not sure that they could compete strictly on technical merits. I think that though their products are often technically good, they are never as good as they could be, and rarely better than the competition[1].
This technical weakness may be marketing-driven, or it may be because of the difficulty of getting a bunch of jerks to cooperate. I don't know which, but MS Bob gives me reason to say that bad cooperation is plausible.
Let's look at slightly broader definitions of results. MS is widely perceived as a company with which it is dangerous to do business. That might be attributed to envy of their success; after all, this perception seemed to arise after they got big. It might also be that they couldn't screw their partners and customers safely until after they got big.
In the long run, you can be second-best and still get along. In the long run, if you're hated and feared, people will crap all over you as soon as they think it's safe.
Arthur Anderson and Enron both seem to have been run by jerks, though the culture wasn't identical to MS's culture. In the short run, they were successful, Enron for years and AA
So, a hypothetical question about this: say I'm a technically competent, egotistical swine. Further, say that I have a loud mouth, and my colossal conceit and self assurance give me a big edge in arguments. Given that I have enough social skills to suck up when appropriate, would I be likely to do well at MS?
More hypothetical questions:
If the answer were ``Yes'', would you want to work there?
What sort of person would want to?
How would you expect a company to fare, in the long run, with a crew like that?
How about teaming up with a BUNCH of local ISPs?
I think that the obvious answer here is to separate the ``own and operate transmission lines'' function from the ``provide services over the transmission lines'' function.
The transmission lines are a natural monopoly. There isn't going to be any competition there, no matter what (That's the standard answer, anyway), so might as well let the gov't maintain ownership and control. You could still contract out maintenance work, if you're worried about inefficiency. You could keep it in-house if you're worried about getting public employee union support. If you let ownership go to a private company, you run the considerable risk of setting the wrong incentives and getting a nasty mess.
Providing billing, internet access and/or cable programming over the fiber is clearly NOT a natural monopoly. The city could make the fiber open to any provider of any service. It would be a bit like the Telcos opening their lines to competition, except that there would be no incentive for the city to backstab the providers. It would be a lot like what you're suggesting, except that you wouldn't be giving a monopoly to any one business. Why not give out the monopoly? Think of the telephone company: ``We don't care ... we don't have to. We're the phone company.''
To summarize, what I'm suggesting is that the city could operate fiber lines, and lease them to private businesses. There would be no billing from city to individuals. Private enterprise could use those lines to offer any service that folks would pay for, just as privately owned trucks, busses and cars run on publicly owned and operated roads. Private business would bill individuals for services rendered. Since no business would have a monopoly, all businesses would have to give individuals their money's worth, or see their customers take a hike.
You could have the reliable infrastructure that comes from a monopoly provider, and the attentive service and product innovations which come from fierce competition.
Good idea. I use old laptops that I get at garage sales for $20 to $100. They typically have power supplies which deliver less than 20W, so they're hard to beat for cheap.
The one bad feature is that they don't stack well. And NICs are a bit spendy. ...
Ok, the two bad features are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy. And installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models.
Ok, the THREE bad things are that they don't stack well and NICs are a bit spendy and installing Linux can be a bit of a pain on the older models. And the harddrives tend to be a bit on the small side.
Ok, the FOUR bad things
Yes. I thought that was the gist of my post.
I figure that MS doesn't WANT to sell this to the guy who wants a PC. I'm guessing they aim to sell to the guy who wants a game console, to play games, and has no interest in performance as a general purpose computer.
MS is (or should be) happy: they made a cheap game console using PC hardware, without making something which is usable as a cheap PC. Whether that was a good idea remains to be seen, but it was probably their aim.
[cheapshot]Of course, MS's software has been making cheap hardware unusable since Win3.1.[/cheapshot]
I seem to recall that when compiling BLAS for an AMD chip, one of the ./configure options was to use the 3DNow! extensions. There was a warning against doing that, since the speedup came at the expense of accuracy, in some situations. See here .
Whether they actually lose money on every machine or not (and it surely doesn't sound as if marginal cost is greater than the price), they don't want their low margin hardware being snapped up by the thousands by pc-clustering scientists who will never buy a high margin game.
I've always said that Windows isn't quite ready for the desktop. It's painful to install, unintuitive, a terrible resource hog and inflexible.
I think that the original point in the great-grandparent post was that execution is everything.
Why should Colonel Sanders tell you what his 'secret blend of herbs and spices' are ... [sic]
There is no reason why he should, and not much reason for me to want it. If I had his recipe, I would still have to cook it. There are days when I'm willing to pay a restaraunt more money than it would cost me to buy and cook a T-bone dinner, for food that's worse than I would cook. Not having to deal with cooking and cleaning can be a big deal.
Getting back to the topic of the thread, if everyone is sharing the same technology (same opensource bios code), then the company which can do the best job of supporting it will make the most revenue. Execution is everything.
So far as I know, no company has a monopoly on bios code right now. A motherboard manufacturer can choose who they will buy from based on existing relationships, on the bios manufacturer's experience, on the manufacturer's perceived ability to engineer a working product on time and whatever else matters. Since there is no monopoly, the Linux bios project isn't such a threat to AMI as Linux is to Microsoft.
Having an open source bios platform might be a good thing for engineers who wanted to freelance, since it would obviously lower tha barriers to entry. On the other hand, most garage businesses aren't going to be able to convince a motherboard manufacturer that they are a lower-risk option than AMI. I suspect that AMI realizes that freelancers using the Linuxbios project aren't going to be a threat to their core market of high-volume motherboard manufacturers like ASUS and ABIT.
If we didn't have any thing like Palladium or TCPA in the offing, ASUS could take the Linuxbios and have their engineers use it to boot Windows, and cut out AMI entirely. So I suspect that AMI is very happy to be able to offer something that Linuxbios apparently can't do, such as TCPA.
one, two (looks interesting), three (looks interesting and authoritative).
Of course, he's quite understandably mad that after he's spent his own money to help them all these years, they have chosen to rudely crap on him. I do hope that he'll continue to make his list available to the libre software developers, but I'll certainly understand if he doesn't want to support the bus-standard-which-must-not-be-named.
Wow. Let's play this one out a little closer to home. Chicago should never have sent all those highpaying meatpacking jobs out to Omaha. That's why Chicago is poor. Even closer to home: are you letting your wife wash the dishes? Don't you realize that's taking away work that you could be doing? She's impoverishing you!
If we carry the argument against international trade to its ultimate, we conclude that everyone should produce everything for himself, and never trade with anyone. Obviously that's goofy.
There's something wrong with your argument; let me help you identify the problem. When we send those coding jobs overseas, we make it possible for the Indians to buy goods and services from us. The reason that makes us all better off is that we only send them the work that they have a comparitive advantage in. That means that we can do something more profitable here. More free trade (NOT subsidised trade, such as Japan practiced for many years) enriches the entire world.
The classic old example is that England COULD make wine, and Spain COULD make wool, but each country has a natural advantage at making the other, and both are better off trading. This is absolute advantage, and is easy to understand.
Here's an example of comparitive advantage. There is a lawyer who can type 100 words per minute, and prepare a case in one hour. He hires, to do the typing, a legal secretary who can type 50 wpm, but would need 10 hours to prepare a case. Why? Because the secretary has a comparitive advantage in typing, even though he is only half as fast at typing. This is comparitive advantage, and is a bit more subtle.
The secretary faces this trade off: in a 10 hour day, he can type 30,000 characters, or can prep one case. The lawyer's trade off is: type 60,000 characters (only twice as much as the secretary), or prep 10 cases (10 times more than the secretary!). They're both better off to trade services this way, even though the secretary has no absolute advantage in anything.
The situation with international trade is similar. We can give the Indians work that we are better off letting them do, even if they aren't as good at it as we are. Both we and they are better off. There will always be something for us to do, even if we are worse at everything than the Indians. We will always be better off trading freely, even if we are in the position of the slow secretary rather than the fast lawyer.
I realize that this is hard on the people with little education and inflexible minds whose jobs dry up here. They won't enjoy being retrained, but I don't see why my children should live in relative poverty so they can keep on slacking. I don't see why Indian children should live in real poverty to make things easier for them, either.
What a lot of programmers fail to realize is that programming is the 21st century equivalent of ditch digging. No, it's worse than that, because you don't even have to be fully grown. A preteen can do most coding. There's a reason that we call them code monkeys.
If your job doesn't require a graduate degree and a track record of proven creative ability, you are probably a commodity, and you should expect to see foreign competition, and quite possibly loose your career to it.
>What's the margin of error on that figure?
How about (-0.0,+0.1)?
Spelling will always be hard to automate, but most of the rest of that list is covered, flawlessly and (almost entirely) automatically, by LaTeX and BibTeX. Cover art is the only area that LaTeX doesn't address.
For example, making a USEFUL index takes some doing. The author must remember to mark useful words to be indexed by LaTeX. Once the words are marked, the actual creation of a correct index is fully automatic.
The one service which a publisher can provide to an author is editing. That, and that alone, the author can't do for himself and cannot automate. The one service which the publishers can provide to readers is filtering. I suspect that both of these could be provided without a publishing industry, but as long as the publishing industry provides both, it can earn its keep.
There is also marketing. That is probably a service to the author, and may be (but probably isn't ) a service to the reader. I wouldn't be surprised to find that we would all be better off if editing and filtering were divorced from marketing.
Typesetting, distribution and printing are all do-able by the author today (or by the reader!).
I'm pretty sure that it's just you.
``That statement'' says that a smart business does not claim to be harmed by, and seek legal redress against, persons who are helping them to profit. Think about it: if copyright-infringing fanzines keep fans buying your product, do you sue and shut down the fanzines, or do you smile all the way to the bank? That's the point you missed. Lessig isn't saying that business should violate the law, but rather that business should not persecute their customers.
The point that I think Lessig missed is that this is a classic example of how bureaucracies can go wrong. The lawyers who work for the business see an opportunity to prove their worth by suing as many people as possible. Never mind that these suits may be driving away customers, and harming the business. Any business big enough to hire a stable of lawyers is big enough to show these bureaucratic tendencies.
And of course the law is a rough edged tool when viewed upon from a purely business stand point. That's because most laws aren't designed with only business in mind. There are these things called "people" too...
I'm surprised to hear you say that. It seems to be commonly accepted here on Slashdot that laws are purchased by business, for their own consumption. Ergo, laws ARE ``designed with only business in mind.''. Or else our legal system is basically sound. Take your pick.
Let's see ... ``Free Willy'' ... wasn't that a movie about a guy who wanted to be a nudist?
You must have lived in the Interior. On the Arctic coast, it usually ran about -30F and a 30knot wind. I can remember walking home from the BIA school in Unalakleet in a whiteout, looking up at the power lines to find my way. There was a road, with a ditch, but it was so drifted over that I couldn't tell where it went by feel. The snow was blowing along the ground, so I couldn't see anything horizontally, but I could see the sky, sort of.