I'd rather have something government controlled than something controlled by a company with monopoly on communication infrastructure.
I'm not sure there would be a major difference between this being controlled by a "monopoly" or the "government". Both are entrenched organizations with no responsiveness to their customers. Where I am, government currently has responsibility for transportation, educating kids, fighting crime, and distributing help to those needing it. None of these seem to be happening without congestion, poor performance, cost overruns, and insiders gaining profit. Much like my ISP.
I'd be more in favor of community Co-ops or small region solutions to last mile and ISP support, then somebody (maybe the government) just provides backbone services like NSF used to.
Now there's alot of people saying "use a palmpilot" but they don't know what they're talking about. The palmpilot and the like's IR transmitter simply isn't powerful enough to work as remote control. Think about it. If it says it can send files from up to a meter away, what makes you think that it's going to be able to control your television at 4 meters?
While this might have been true of some models, many of the Palm OS models are pushing 30 feet or more (see OmniRemote page for details). And, as mentioned earlier, there are hardware plug ins for increasing the range, as well as the usual IR repeaters etc. that can be installed. My Visor Pro (not listed in link) is easily pushing more than 20 feet.
I'm not against the Pronto products, as they obviously have a different form factor and other advantages. But, PDA based solutions can do macros, learn codes, allow custom layouts, and have the range for those that want to use them.
If you spend time with engineers, you'll see how many "guesstimates" are used in the design of bridges, chemical plants, and electronic products. Programming, as any user of commercial products can attest to, often creates "near enough" code.
Software development can be done by engineers or programmers. And its a very different approach.
They could also sell two versions of the chips -- one with warranty and overclock protection, and one without warranty and no limits. A number of later posts compare to hot-rodding a car, which is a good analogy except its usually obvious when a car has been substantially altered.
I like the fuse idea. I wonder if it could be something viewable or audible?
Yes, LOTR:The Rise of Mordor. At the end of the third movie we watch Gollum dropped into a volcano, and we think he was destroyed forever. Well, it turns out that there is another Gollum sent back from the future after the point where this movie ends. He picks up the chase to kill Frodo, thinking this will change the future from this point on so that evil wins.
Peter Jackson probably thinks he can continue this indefinately, until the actor who plays Gollum ages to the point where he is unbelievable in the role (and he is depanding outrageous amounts of money for each movie, even as the interest in the series wanes). They can keep going on by placing a fake, computer generated character in the movie in place of a real person!
That would probably be preferred. But, when Microsoft is out there offering tons of free hardware, software, and services to any college that signs up, eventually they are going to hit on someone that wants the money or someone that thinks getting in bed with Microsoft would be good for their reputation.
With colleges constantly trolling for money for funding, there's all kinds of ethical challenges out there. And I'm sure some money finds things that are worthy.
I guess MS Project is not a good choice because of these dependencies. Although in the original article, the author may not have know about these technical details when selecting this example.
The selection of MS Project probably makes a lot of sense for some reasons:
1) Its often one of those "I wish I had" applications, where many people have a need every once in a while to define a project or something, but can't justify the $400+ cost.
2) MS Project is SCREAMING for some fairly obvious enhancements. You can't cut and paste from any of the "report" functions, for example -- they're all "print preview" images.
3) Related to above, there's been few new features to this application over the years. The only major one of note is the "Project Central" intranet function, which has some claring holes in its data structure which prevent companies with multiple project managers from using this.
So, "open sourcing" would allow others to jump in and fill these functional holes with little cost to Microsoft if the increased functionality and lower cost helped fill the gap from free copies being distributed (minus, of course, some of the other analysis in this topic from others). But, as you point out, probably not technically possible with this product.
Maybe something new should be their experiment? Some "tablet PC" think that is open sourced right out of the box?
Seriously, if there's anyone on the planet that you would want to have the best IT people it's your government...so they provide better services to the constituent.
If this is the same bloated government that still has an army of clerks shuffling papers and being surley to me, then this is where I would prefer to have the best IT people:
R&D for Medicine
CAD/CAM for airplanes
Operating Systems Developers
Automation for traffic
Internet Reliability
The Phone Company
Anyone involved in reducing the costs of consumer items
I'm willing to carve out military and intellegence related government branches for special consideration to be bumped to the top. The rest of the government can continue to shuffle papers.
The problem is not so much that a single, unique identifier exists. The problem is that so many organizations will blindly take that number and extend credit to anyone, with very little verification that the number belongs to them.
Then, when fraud has been committed, they use that number to shut down the true number's owner and assign numerous penalties to them, when in many cases the incompetence is with the organization that extended the credit in the first place.
We've set up a system where a handful of low level, poorly compensated clerks can destroy years of good credit history, either on purpose or by accident. The cost to clean up the mess is horrendous to the individual who most likely did nothing wrong. Authorities do little to catch those during this as it is often written off as the cost of doing business.
1) Hot Fudge Sundae Tastemaster 2) Rock Star 3) Condom Tester 4) Photographer for major pornography studio 5) QA for Demolition Supplies 6) "Joe Millionaire" 7) Security Guard behind one-way mirror in Victoria's Secret, Beverly Hills store 8) Industrial Spy, Exotic Sports Car Market
I guess anything's crappy when someone else is making you do it.
I think "The Event" in the context of a discussion on manned space flight is pretty specific. Probably the reason some people try to be sensitive about it is because there were real people on board who died. They left behind friends, family, and co-workers who are a little emotional on the topic.
It probably is a little difficult to say for those with a direct connection to the people or the project.
I think War Games and TRON were pretty good depictions of what programmers are like. But I've never met a programmer that looked like the girl in The Net.
My first cell phone was a digital PCS phone in good 'ole Washington DC. Sprint Spectrum was the first commercial PCS based services in USA, using GSM equipment. I believe they got a jump on other PCS based services because the technology was well proven in Europe at that point. Within 2 years I could use it anywhere I traveled on business. Generally good reception everywhere I went.
About two years after that Sprint "upgraded" me to CDMA based equipment as part of the Sprint PCS service. I was told that CDMA was superior to GSM and that everyone was going this way except Europe. Sprint actually sold the GSM network to Voice Stream (or something that eventually became Voice Stream) where I assume it still exists.
And I was moved to the overcrowded CDMA network that was built on leased network towers and equipment, not the owned equipment of Sprint Spectrum. My experience was many more dropped calls between cells, poorer customer service, and "signal lost" messages on my phone.
If coverage is "spotty", it probably represents a reduction of the GSM networks as opposed to a "not build yet" of the networks.
I didn't hate it -- but "best picture"? Seems weak. If it wasn't for editing, the lead actresses would look like they were standing still. The ending was completely lame. It was well filmed, however, and mostly well-connected people in it. It probably has a chance if Richard Gere could keep his mouth shut for a few weeks.
Unfortunately, his performance defied conventional categorization.
I think "special effects" defines this category. The performance is analogous to Jim Henson with Kermit the Frog -- the character and performance could not exist without him, but they aren't an actor appearing in front of the audience.
What I don't understand is that the computer generation actually adds little to the movie, outside of meeting the producers image of what Gollum looks like. I think they could have come up with a way of just costuming him in makeup and acheiving the same result, since the performance is actually quite brilliant. In some ways the split personality of Smeagol/Gollum came alive for me better than in the book. The CG effects added little except to provide a technicality as to why this wasn't "acting".
I don't know if I'd compare crawling into a coal mine with sitting in an office while reading and posting to Slashdot.
Mom and Dad seem to work 80 hours a week because they want Brittany and Junior to have 200 dollar sneakers and trade in their Volvo and Minivan every 3 years. You can't complain about people that put job before family and envy their lifestyle at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure there would be a major difference between this being controlled by a "monopoly" or the "government". Both are entrenched organizations with no responsiveness to their customers. Where I am, government currently has responsibility for transportation, educating kids, fighting crime, and distributing help to those needing it. None of these seem to be happening without congestion, poor performance, cost overruns, and insiders gaining profit. Much like my ISP.
I'd be more in favor of community Co-ops or small region solutions to last mile and ISP support, then somebody (maybe the government) just provides backbone services like NSF used to.
While this might have been true of some models, many of the Palm OS models are pushing 30 feet or more (see OmniRemote page for details). And, as mentioned earlier, there are hardware plug ins for increasing the range, as well as the usual IR repeaters etc. that can be installed. My Visor Pro (not listed in link) is easily pushing more than 20 feet.
I'm not against the Pronto products, as they obviously have a different form factor and other advantages. But, PDA based solutions can do macros, learn codes, allow custom layouts, and have the range for those that want to use them.
Wow. The complete opposite.
If you spend time with engineers, you'll see how many "guesstimates" are used in the design of bridges, chemical plants, and electronic products. Programming, as any user of commercial products can attest to, often creates "near enough" code.
Software development can be done by engineers or programmers. And its a very different approach.
They could also sell two versions of the chips -- one with warranty and overclock protection, and one without warranty and no limits. A number of later posts compare to hot-rodding a car, which is a good analogy except its usually obvious when a car has been substantially altered.
I like the fuse idea. I wonder if it could be something viewable or audible?
Yes, LOTR:The Rise of Mordor. At the end of the third movie we watch Gollum dropped into a volcano, and we think he was destroyed forever. Well, it turns out that there is another Gollum sent back from the future after the point where this movie ends. He picks up the chase to kill Frodo, thinking this will change the future from this point on so that evil wins.
Peter Jackson probably thinks he can continue this indefinately, until the actor who plays Gollum ages to the point where he is unbelievable in the role (and he is depanding outrageous amounts of money for each movie, even as the interest in the series wanes). They can keep going on by placing a fake, computer generated character in the movie in place of a real person!
Seems like "off topic" is closer. Maybe trolling for a big discussion about "fastmail" vs. others? Which, is not really on topic...
Maybe there should be a moderation class for "shameless product plug"?
That would probably be preferred. But, when Microsoft is out there offering tons of free hardware, software, and services to any college that signs up, eventually they are going to hit on someone that wants the money or someone that thinks getting in bed with Microsoft would be good for their reputation.
With colleges constantly trolling for money for funding, there's all kinds of ethical challenges out there. And I'm sure some money finds things that are worthy.
I guess MS Project is not a good choice because of these dependencies. Although in the original article, the author may not have know about these technical details when selecting this example.
The selection of MS Project probably makes a lot of sense for some reasons:
1) Its often one of those "I wish I had" applications, where many people have a need every once in a while to define a project or something, but can't justify the $400+ cost.
2) MS Project is SCREAMING for some fairly obvious enhancements. You can't cut and paste from any of the "report" functions, for example -- they're all "print preview" images.
3) Related to above, there's been few new features to this application over the years. The only major one of note is the "Project Central" intranet function, which has some claring holes in its data structure which prevent companies with multiple project managers from using this.
So, "open sourcing" would allow others to jump in and fill these functional holes with little cost to Microsoft if the increased functionality and lower cost helped fill the gap from free copies being distributed (minus, of course, some of the other analysis in this topic from others). But, as you point out, probably not technically possible with this product.
Maybe something new should be their experiment? Some "tablet PC" think that is open sourced right out of the box?
Now there's a callous!
9 not voting? I'd love to know why they think they can't vote on an issue like this.
Developed in 60's -- still going strong. [Link]
Anime topics seem to be posted frequently. Could someone post some quality links that explains what Anime is and how it differs from a cartoon?
Big deal. Presidents in the US never get a majority of the vote if you're going to count the no shows who don't care or don't want any of them.
If you like your leaders to get 100% of the vote Iraq seems to accomplish this.
If this is the same bloated government that still has an army of clerks shuffling papers and being surley to me, then this is where I would prefer to have the best IT people:
R&D for Medicine
CAD/CAM for airplanes
Operating Systems Developers
Automation for traffic
Internet Reliability
The Phone Company
Anyone involved in reducing the costs of consumer items
I'm willing to carve out military and intellegence related government branches for special consideration to be bumped to the top. The rest of the government can continue to shuffle papers.
The problem is not so much that a single, unique identifier exists. The problem is that so many organizations will blindly take that number and extend credit to anyone, with very little verification that the number belongs to them.
Then, when fraud has been committed, they use that number to shut down the true number's owner and assign numerous penalties to them, when in many cases the incompetence is with the organization that extended the credit in the first place.
We've set up a system where a handful of low level, poorly compensated clerks can destroy years of good credit history, either on purpose or by accident. The cost to clean up the mess is horrendous to the individual who most likely did nothing wrong. Authorities do little to catch those during this as it is often written off as the cost of doing business.
Not a complete list:
1) Hot Fudge Sundae Tastemaster
2) Rock Star
3) Condom Tester
4) Photographer for major pornography studio
5) QA for Demolition Supplies
6) "Joe Millionaire"
7) Security Guard behind one-way mirror in Victoria's Secret, Beverly Hills store
8) Industrial Spy, Exotic Sports Car Market
I guess anything's crappy when someone else is making you do it.
I think "The Event" in the context of a discussion on manned space flight is pretty specific. Probably the reason some people try to be sensitive about it is because there were real people on board who died. They left behind friends, family, and co-workers who are a little emotional on the topic.
It probably is a little difficult to say for those with a direct connection to the people or the project.
Agreed. Let's get back to the more serious topics of Anime, Star Wars, LOTR, Star Trek, and comparisons to Soviet Russia...
Or a puppet, a la Kermit the Frog.
This topic is turning into the "In Soviet Russia" of Oscar discussions here.
I think War Games and TRON were pretty good depictions of what programmers are like. But I've never met a programmer that looked like the girl in The Net.
My first cell phone was a digital PCS phone in good 'ole Washington DC. Sprint Spectrum was the first commercial PCS based services in USA, using GSM equipment. I believe they got a jump on other PCS based services because the technology was well proven in Europe at that point. Within 2 years I could use it anywhere I traveled on business. Generally good reception everywhere I went.
About two years after that Sprint "upgraded" me to CDMA based equipment as part of the Sprint PCS service. I was told that CDMA was superior to GSM and that everyone was going this way except Europe. Sprint actually sold the GSM network to Voice Stream (or something that eventually became Voice Stream) where I assume it still exists.
And I was moved to the overcrowded CDMA network that was built on leased network towers and equipment, not the owned equipment of Sprint Spectrum. My experience was many more dropped calls between cells, poorer customer service, and "signal lost" messages on my phone.
If coverage is "spotty", it probably represents a reduction of the GSM networks as opposed to a "not build yet" of the networks.
No Google search I can think of has come across this. Maybe the poster is confused with the GIF patent that Unisys holds?
I didn't hate it -- but "best picture"? Seems weak. If it wasn't for editing, the lead actresses would look like they were standing still. The ending was completely lame. It was well filmed, however, and mostly well-connected people in it. It probably has a chance if Richard Gere could keep his mouth shut for a few weeks.
I think "special effects" defines this category. The performance is analogous to Jim Henson with Kermit the Frog -- the character and performance could not exist without him, but they aren't an actor appearing in front of the audience.
What I don't understand is that the computer generation actually adds little to the movie, outside of meeting the producers image of what Gollum looks like. I think they could have come up with a way of just costuming him in makeup and acheiving the same result, since the performance is actually quite brilliant. In some ways the split personality of Smeagol/Gollum came alive for me better than in the book. The CG effects added little except to provide a technicality as to why this wasn't "acting".
I don't know if I'd compare crawling into a coal mine with sitting in an office while reading and posting to Slashdot.
Mom and Dad seem to work 80 hours a week because they want Brittany and Junior to have 200 dollar sneakers and trade in their Volvo and Minivan every 3 years. You can't complain about people that put job before family and envy their lifestyle at the same time.