The big deal is lawyers see a chance to make money. Soon we'll be seeing TV infomercials that say "Was your wifi scanned by Google? If you believe so, you may be entitled to compensation. Please call the law offices of>!"
Our primary product is GPLv3. We hire developers to write code on the project and do customizations for clients. But when it goes out into production, the environment gets more complex. Often times the problem is in a network configuration error, not the software. And sorry, most of my programmers frankly don't understand systems as a whole.
The role of support is to understand the entire system and quickly resolve any problems customers have or at least be able to identify if it's a hardware problem, a database problem, a network problem, 3rd party vendor problem, or a software problem and get the right person on the line to get it fixed. And if the customer is having a problem, I guarantee you they are losing money. Support is critical. We don't provide it, they will go elsewhere. Plus they have to be good with customer interaction and careful not to talk down to non-techies. It's a rather rare combo to find.
Bottom line: if you don't get the BRIC nations to sign on to any type of comprehensive deal and they actually abide by it, Cap and Trade in the US isn't going to amount to much on a global scale.
Technically it's had the ability for a while now. I used to tether with my iPhone over bluetooth with my MBP for a short while when version 3.0 was released and before they required signed IPPC files from the carriers. I know a number of people in Europe who are able to tether because their provider allows for it. Here in the US, it's all square on AT&T for the reason tethering is not allowed.
I have a 3G card from the company (actually we have 5 of them) with a contract up in July. Those are $60 a pop for 5GB of download. We've already replaced three with iPad 3G's for me and President of the company and one roving for whomever is on helpdesk that night. Most people in the company already have an iPhone. Hell even if it was $20 a mont extra to allow tethering, we'd give the employees an extra $20 every month to pay for it. Much better than the 3G cards.
Actually, the default rate for online card not present rates is $.25 + 2.4%. Usually you can get that down to $.15 + 1.85% if you are willing to pay the sales game. And with some of these games, they'd qualify for Interchange pricing and could probably get that knocked down to $.10 + 1.5% per transaction if they are processing more than $50k per month.
Customer wants a pony, a unicorn, and about a dozen flying monkeys. Oh, and for nothing. If you ask them. Already we're about 10% cheaper than our competitor. Sometimes even more when we're going in and installing on existing hardware. But we also offer merchant accounts (Credit Card Processing) and will discount our "on-premise implementation consulting" fees if needed to land a deal. However, those costs are on par with our competition and if a client doesn't object, we don't discount. Again, why leave money on the table.
A game I pulled off the shelf and played the other day when I redid the XP Bootcamp partition was Star Trek: Bridge Commander. Turns out after all these years, new models and patches are still being made and maintained. Well going through the documentation, the designers developed and distributed a SDK that was largely Python based scripting. With the added mods, the game is still interesting and even more fun that it was years ago when I bought it.
Look at Falcon 4: Allied Force. I bought the original Falcon 4 in 1998 for $15. Graphics were cool for its day, but it is the definitive modern combat flight simulator however, it's dynamic campaign engine was so buggy it was broken. Well, the mod community stepped in, formed a company, got a license from Atari and produced Falcon 4: Allied Force which fixed the campaign bugs and turned it into a playable and really interesting combat simulator. (This was the last game I purchased)
The mod community has kept those titles going strong.
Funny, because originally that goal was to create a stripped down version of Mozilla/Netscape that was lightweight and fast. They seem to have forgotten that it wasn't supposed to be a wholesale replacement for Netscape/Mozilla with all the bells and whistles.
According to the V8 tests, 1st on my machine is Opera 10.53 getting a score of 109. Just behind it is Safari 4.0.5 at 105, then Firefox 3.6.3 is a distant third at 64.9.
This is on a 6 year old 12.1" PowerBook G4 (1.5Ghz, 1.25GB Ram) running OS 10.5. So no Google Chrome.
The only reason I have FF is because there are two websites I have to use that only work in FF or IE. They don't run correctly in Opera or Safari.
Why leave money on the table? If you can charge more for those features, do so. If they really are just a configuration change, then you can offer those modules "free" or at a "substantial discount" if you need to make the sale else never take less than what the customer is willing to give you.
Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 919,012 tested so far.
It's not 1 in 900k, it's the fact that it's the only one like it in 900k tests meaning that if I went to various sites they could figure out I am the same person time and time again.
As far as that goes, we now can tell which customer is on our website and when they are about to make an online purchase.
What is more interesting in this case is the fact that they are going after CEO for damages. If that is upheld, then the RIAA could, in theory, go after any body working on such clients. Anyone who had contributed code to the frostwire project would end up being liable for what the users of Frostwire download with it.
I know when we formed our company, (S-Corp) we were required to have 2 or more officers to even get it registered in Illinois. But if you have a C or S Corp then there are a bunch of procedures you have to do, like quarterly board meetings plus an annual BOD meeting, etc..
A lot of non-tech people who don't understand he difference between Bit Torrent let alone what Bit Torrent even is. Although, usually when I see Windows machines infected or doing strange things at the local coffee shop, the person has lime wire installed.
My understanding was there were more virus and other malware infected stuff on limewire than just about any other source. Granted that was a few years ago.
This weekend was a bust due to weather. I was board and cleaning out the applications folder on my mac of any apps I had downloaded and no longer use when I saw I had Halo CE still installed. I probably haven't played it in a couple years. So I fired it up, played enough single player to get a feel back for the controls and then went online and was shocked to see about 100 servers. (most of them modded apparently). I figured I'd try to connect online and find "This game is no longer supported".
I know a couple now former Motorola VP's (Left the sinking ship) and basically they stated that the future were in services, not the devices, at least if they wanted to make money. But Motorola won't enter the services game because they don't want to damage relationships with their existing customers (telecos) by offering any type of competing services.
Google makes money by getting eyeballs to serve ads too. They are in the service business and make that money whether or not an Android phone is made by Motorola or HTC or whomever.
The telecos have realized this as well. They look at what Apple's done with the iPhone and it won't be long before the carriers move to lock down Android to only their marketplace. It's already happening in Australia according my friends down there. Want to buy an app, they block the google marketplace and you can only buy apps from their store.
The carriers look at being about to take a 30% cut in every app sold to their customers as a way to maximize revenue per customer (Their holy metric). And they look at what happened to AT&T and how they pretty much got turned into the dumb pipe for the iPhone.
Only if your time is worth nothing. Having used Mac's for 8 years now, they've paid for themselves many times over in the time I've saved not having to deal with virus issues. Hell, when I used to go home to visit my Dad, it was always 3 - 4 hours of sitting in front of his PC fixing crap. Usually that involved a format and reinstall of Windows. Three years ago I bought him an iMac. I've spent about 2 hours in those three years and that was last christmas upgrading his system to OS 10.6. I went from doing roughly 15 - 20 hours a year to less than an hour a year.
Same thing at the office. We make money producing software and selling it to clients. We run a Mac shop. If we need to test in Windows, most of the machines have Parallels and either XP Pro or Windows 7 Professional. Yes they cost more up front, but guess how many lost day's we've had because someone downloaded a virus in the past 2 years? Nil. Computers are tools that should stay in the background and do their jobs not getting in the way.
If the macs save us just 1 day of downtime vs a PC over the course of the 3 years we keep them, they've paid for themselves twice over.
I wouldn't be so sure. My prediction is that/. will turn against google and we'll the same type of Loathing of Google as people like to post about Apple now and Microsoft before them. How do I know? Because 10 years ago Apple was the great white knight of/. that could do no harm. They based OSX on BSD (okay wasn't Linux but at least it was opensource, which was seen as a victory by many around here at the time), then they took over CUPS and brought a decent printing system to *IUX, then they took KHTML and turned into the Browser engine of choice. That all began to change around 2005/2006 with the success of the ITMS and then the iPhone and Google began to rise in the eyes of slashdot.
Well, we're starting to see the trend change against Google because of "Google Evil Privacy invasion". I don't know who exactly is going to replace Google as the "Great White Knight of Slashdot". Maybe Canonical and Ubuntu. But only until they become "too successful"
More and more I find my self in the "everyone else" category. Sorry, but I no longer have a desire to build a machine and spend all weekend hacking something together. I want something that just works. Apple's products do that for me. After I bought my Dad an iMac, I've spent exactly 2 hours in 3 years upgrading his computer to OS 10.6 last christmas. Before when I went to visit, it was 3 - 4 hours of me fixing his PC. Which usually meant formatting and reinstalling everything.
Honestly, I look to replace the iMac with an iPad 3G for my Dad next year. All he does is check email, track his stocks, read the newspaper online and that's it. Maybe a video from Youtube from time to time.
Slashdot Mirror
The big deal is lawyers see a chance to make money. Soon we'll be seeing TV infomercials that say "Was your wifi scanned by Google? If you believe so, you may be entitled to compensation. Please call the law offices of>!"
Timeshare was a concept from the 1970's.
Our primary product is GPLv3. We hire developers to write code on the project and do customizations for clients. But when it goes out into production, the environment gets more complex. Often times the problem is in a network configuration error, not the software. And sorry, most of my programmers frankly don't understand systems as a whole.
The role of support is to understand the entire system and quickly resolve any problems customers have or at least be able to identify if it's a hardware problem, a database problem, a network problem, 3rd party vendor problem, or a software problem and get the right person on the line to get it fixed. And if the customer is having a problem, I guarantee you they are losing money. Support is critical. We don't provide it, they will go elsewhere. Plus they have to be good with customer interaction and careful not to talk down to non-techies. It's a rather rare combo to find.
In our business Support > Developers
Bottom line: if you don't get the BRIC nations to sign on to any type of comprehensive deal and they actually abide by it, Cap and Trade in the US isn't going to amount to much on a global scale.
Yeah, but the question is how much damage are they going to cause before they get to an Islamic Enlightenment.
Technically it's had the ability for a while now. I used to tether with my iPhone over bluetooth with my MBP for a short while when version 3.0 was released and before they required signed IPPC files from the carriers. I know a number of people in Europe who are able to tether because their provider allows for it. Here in the US, it's all square on AT&T for the reason tethering is not allowed.
I have a 3G card from the company (actually we have 5 of them) with a contract up in July. Those are $60 a pop for 5GB of download. We've already replaced three with iPad 3G's for me and President of the company and one roving for whomever is on helpdesk that night. Most people in the company already have an iPhone. Hell even if it was $20 a mont extra to allow tethering, we'd give the employees an extra $20 every month to pay for it. Much better than the 3G cards.
Actually, the default rate for online card not present rates is $.25 + 2.4%. Usually you can get that down to $.15 + 1.85% if you are willing to pay the sales game. And with some of these games, they'd qualify for Interchange pricing and could probably get that knocked down to $.10 + 1.5% per transaction if they are processing more than $50k per month.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_detection_and_correction#Error-correcting_code
Apparently V1 and V2 got the beta version of ECC.
Customer wants a pony, a unicorn, and about a dozen flying monkeys. Oh, and for nothing. If you ask them. Already we're about 10% cheaper than our competitor. Sometimes even more when we're going in and installing on existing hardware. But we also offer merchant accounts (Credit Card Processing) and will discount our "on-premise implementation consulting" fees if needed to land a deal. However, those costs are on par with our competition and if a client doesn't object, we don't discount. Again, why leave money on the table.
A game I pulled off the shelf and played the other day when I redid the XP Bootcamp partition was Star Trek: Bridge Commander. Turns out after all these years, new models and patches are still being made and maintained. Well going through the documentation, the designers developed and distributed a SDK that was largely Python based scripting. With the added mods, the game is still interesting and even more fun that it was years ago when I bought it.
Look at Falcon 4: Allied Force. I bought the original Falcon 4 in 1998 for $15. Graphics were cool for its day, but it is the definitive modern combat flight simulator however, it's dynamic campaign engine was so buggy it was broken. Well, the mod community stepped in, formed a company, got a license from Atari and produced Falcon 4: Allied Force which fixed the campaign bugs and turned it into a playable and really interesting combat simulator. (This was the last game I purchased)
The mod community has kept those titles going strong.
Funny, because originally that goal was to create a stripped down version of Mozilla/Netscape that was lightweight and fast. They seem to have forgotten that it wasn't supposed to be a wholesale replacement for Netscape/Mozilla with all the bells and whistles.
According to the V8 tests, 1st on my machine is Opera 10.53 getting a score of 109. Just behind it is Safari 4.0.5 at 105, then Firefox 3.6.3 is a distant third at 64.9.
This is on a 6 year old 12.1" PowerBook G4 (1.5Ghz, 1.25GB Ram) running OS 10.5. So no Google Chrome.
The only reason I have FF is because there are two websites I have to use that only work in FF or IE. They don't run correctly in Opera or Safari.
Why leave money on the table? If you can charge more for those features, do so. If they really are just a configuration change, then you can offer those modules "free" or at a "substantial discount" if you need to make the sale else never take less than what the customer is willing to give you.
Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 919,012 tested so far.
It's not 1 in 900k, it's the fact that it's the only one like it in 900k tests meaning that if I went to various sites they could figure out I am the same person time and time again.
As far as that goes, we now can tell which customer is on our website and when they are about to make an online purchase.
Indeed: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/webmd-mobile/id295076329?mt=8
Ain't fun. Ain't sexy. Needs to be done.
What is more interesting in this case is the fact that they are going after CEO for damages. If that is upheld, then the RIAA could, in theory, go after any body working on such clients. Anyone who had contributed code to the frostwire project would end up being liable for what the users of Frostwire download with it.
I know when we formed our company, (S-Corp) we were required to have 2 or more officers to even get it registered in Illinois. But if you have a C or S Corp then there are a bunch of procedures you have to do, like quarterly board meetings plus an annual BOD meeting, etc..
A lot of non-tech people who don't understand he difference between Bit Torrent let alone what Bit Torrent even is. Although, usually when I see Windows machines infected or doing strange things at the local coffee shop, the person has lime wire installed.
My understanding was there were more virus and other malware infected stuff on limewire than just about any other source. Granted that was a few years ago.
This weekend was a bust due to weather. I was board and cleaning out the applications folder on my mac of any apps I had downloaded and no longer use when I saw I had Halo CE still installed. I probably haven't played it in a couple years. So I fired it up, played enough single player to get a feel back for the controls and then went online and was shocked to see about 100 servers. (most of them modded apparently). I figured I'd try to connect online and find "This game is no longer supported".
I know a couple now former Motorola VP's (Left the sinking ship) and basically they stated that the future were in services, not the devices, at least if they wanted to make money. But Motorola won't enter the services game because they don't want to damage relationships with their existing customers (telecos) by offering any type of competing services.
Google makes money by getting eyeballs to serve ads too. They are in the service business and make that money whether or not an Android phone is made by Motorola or HTC or whomever.
The telecos have realized this as well. They look at what Apple's done with the iPhone and it won't be long before the carriers move to lock down Android to only their marketplace. It's already happening in Australia according my friends down there. Want to buy an app, they block the google marketplace and you can only buy apps from their store.
The carriers look at being about to take a 30% cut in every app sold to their customers as a way to maximize revenue per customer (Their holy metric). And they look at what happened to AT&T and how they pretty much got turned into the dumb pipe for the iPhone.
Only if your time is worth nothing. Having used Mac's for 8 years now, they've paid for themselves many times over in the time I've saved not having to deal with virus issues. Hell, when I used to go home to visit my Dad, it was always 3 - 4 hours of sitting in front of his PC fixing crap. Usually that involved a format and reinstall of Windows. Three years ago I bought him an iMac. I've spent about 2 hours in those three years and that was last christmas upgrading his system to OS 10.6. I went from doing roughly 15 - 20 hours a year to less than an hour a year.
Same thing at the office. We make money producing software and selling it to clients. We run a Mac shop. If we need to test in Windows, most of the machines have Parallels and either XP Pro or Windows 7 Professional. Yes they cost more up front, but guess how many lost day's we've had because someone downloaded a virus in the past 2 years? Nil. Computers are tools that should stay in the background and do their jobs not getting in the way.
If the macs save us just 1 day of downtime vs a PC over the course of the 3 years we keep them, they've paid for themselves twice over.
I wouldn't be so sure. My prediction is that /. will turn against google and we'll the same type of Loathing of Google as people like to post about Apple now and Microsoft before them. How do I know? Because 10 years ago Apple was the great white knight of /. that could do no harm. They based OSX on BSD (okay wasn't Linux but at least it was opensource, which was seen as a victory by many around here at the time), then they took over CUPS and brought a decent printing system to *IUX, then they took KHTML and turned into the Browser engine of choice. That all began to change around 2005/2006 with the success of the ITMS and then the iPhone and Google began to rise in the eyes of slashdot.
Well, we're starting to see the trend change against Google because of "Google Evil Privacy invasion". I don't know who exactly is going to replace Google as the "Great White Knight of Slashdot". Maybe Canonical and Ubuntu. But only until they become "too successful"
Or you can run FreeBSD 8, which has ZFS and has had DTrace for a while now.
More and more I find my self in the "everyone else" category. Sorry, but I no longer have a desire to build a machine and spend all weekend hacking something together. I want something that just works. Apple's products do that for me. After I bought my Dad an iMac, I've spent exactly 2 hours in 3 years upgrading his computer to OS 10.6 last christmas. Before when I went to visit, it was 3 - 4 hours of me fixing his PC. Which usually meant formatting and reinstalling everything.
Honestly, I look to replace the iMac with an iPad 3G for my Dad next year. All he does is check email, track his stocks, read the newspaper online and that's it. Maybe a video from Youtube from time to time.