Interesting you say that. My thoughts were more along the lines of Open Source is to the Native Americans as Nokia is to the U.S. Government. That is to say there's many Open Source organizations and no single collective leader over all of them, making it very difficult to negotiate a, to resume the metaphor, peace treaty.
The fortunate thing is that I don't believe there is anything to be the proverbial bison that can be killed off to, in turn, wipe out Open Source.
As a DBA, my heart sinks at the thought of amateurs pawing through my database.
AMEN! And I say that AS one of those "amateurs"... I had to work on live, production data on a daily basis. Sometimes it was a simple report, sometimes it was a VERY complex report and somtimes (more often than I'd like) I had to issue updates to the database.
We had a set of rules we were required to follow. It's been about half a year but here's many of them:
Query against a test environment (or yesterdays 'cached' database) first to get the query to be what you need and THEN run it against production
Send any queries that run longer than 10 seconds to a DBA to see if they can improve efficency
Queries taking longer than 3 seconds should be run on off-peak hours (11-1 and 4pm on)
WHERE clauses should use AT LEAST one primary key on each table queried.
I could go on, but you get the idea. My point is that you could say "Alright, but if we do that, EVERYONE who MIGHT query the database needs to send me an email stating that they agree to the following rules and I will reply with their login credentials. From there, create a script that can search through the log file for habitual rule breakers." It might be enough to get them to say, "You know what? forget it."
We also had 3 tools. One was just a standard SQL query tool (WinSQL... this is not an endorsement) and the other two provided access to otherwise inaccessible tables. The idea was that the tools enforced certain rules and restrictions on what information could be retrieved.
I went to a University with a rather small CS program in a liberal arts school. Unlike your liberal arts option, however, it was very fact oriented which is good for me because while I enjoy hearing about theory, I have no strong desire to go on and try to implement it. So, that was all to say that you should figure out for yourself how much theory vs. fact you, personally, want to do. Something to keep in mind is that if you have a desire to switch to a different school halfway through your education, you'll likely find yourself behind in languages when you get to your new school if all you done is theory.
You also need to figure out how many things you're interested in outside the realm of CS. This sounds like something you already know, but I'll say it because you don't gain a real appreciation for how true it is until you see it for yourself: Liberal arts schools have the advantage of stronger programs in other areas. My university's Tech. school rival, for example, had a band program that was downright pitiful which is something I wouldn't have been able to know, even with a visit to the school, until I entered the program, saxophone in hand. My liberal arts college also gave me the unwitting benefit of showing me that I've writing skills I didn't know I had, and as a result I found my minor in English.
In my personal experience, the type of school really isn't as important as its reputation. The school I went to turned out to be one of the biggest party schools just the year before my arrival. Thankfully, the school president, as undermining as she was in other ways, was able to turn that around using a variety of programs that attracted students interested in more than next week's kegger.
For myself and from the little bit you've told us, I'd pick the technical school out of the two. I like getting stuff done too much to sit around for a year or two being told about how stuff works. However, if I were in your college shoes, I'd probably never find that I was interested in writing and probably end up with a minor in Music from a school who didn't really have the program for it.
English minor aside, there's no time to proofread this morning. Grammar nazi's will be shot.
...uhm. not only is Xvid an "attempt" at an open codec, it's arguably a success. I use it for just about all of my encoding, andyway and it's certainly more of a success than Theora.
...or at least it is in Chicago. The majority of people here have what are called the "Chicago Card" which are RFID badges to get on the public transportation system. What's more, I've 3 just to get into work. One for the "L", one for lobby security and one for floor security. Heck, these days, my mom even carries one to get into the kitchen where she works. She calls it her magic name badge. I'm not even started on the credit cards that have them.
Back around the end of Bush's first term and the start of his second, I had (silent) concerns that the president was setting himself up to dissolve congress and the house to declare martial law. I knew that they were highly unlikely, but I wasn't going to dismiss it just because, "Oh, this is the USA. Stuff like that doesn't happen here." If it weren't for the fact that the next election is coming up fast, I'd be having concerns about this again. There is one thing I can certainly say with fact, though: The president certainly likes to do whatever the hell he wants to do and make rules or decisions that make it okay after the fact.
I freely admit that this is the slightly paranoid Art Bell side of me coming out, but Bush has a knack for making feel... disconcerted.
Yea, but in Wyoming, farmers with anti-aircraft guns are called "gun enthusiasts" and they're REALLY firing them off because they're bored. I mean, have you ever driven through Wyoming? I'll tell you, by the time you're to the other side of it, you want to fire off a gun or two just for the excitement.
...but for now, Google is someone to work for, and iPod is something to scoff at (and then buy) and a Eee is the mobility lappy to get instead of the Air. Basically I'm saying we've a bit to go before we hate either company. For the relitivly short time that I've paid attention, I think we'll see a CEO change in these companies who will make policy that will drive us to hate them.
Because people just want to bitch at the poor guy, I thought I might suggest something that's actually USEFUL.
Put the lappy in a computer case. Many of them (the couple of Thermaltake cases I've used recently have options like this) provide places to put a little pad-lock on. Heck, if memory serves, the Thermaltake Matrix actually has a lock built right onto the side of the case. If you wanted, you could even swap out the case's fans for some USB fans and get some real airflow going. Beyond this, however, I think you're talking about something custom made.
Something that hasn't been pointed out yet that I'd like to bring up is the fact that ANY kind of locked box is really a bit of a joke. Yes, it'll keep out ex-con Janitor Joe from just picking something up off your desk, but it won't keep him from coming in late at night and walking off with the whole box. Let's face it, thieves steal the family safe and crack it open later at their leisure.
My solution back in the days when I was issued a laptop, was to slap the lappy into the docking station locked by the company issued security cable and then run wires through a gap in the filing cabinet for all my personal goodies.
Not to mirror you, but I mostly agree with your argument.
My problem with reviews (and I'll spare you the history and details of it all) boils down to, "Opinions are like butt holes. Everyone has one." For the really rather small education I have on Cinema, I still find most reviews miss the mark on what I care about.
One of my points in my argument that maybe wasn't clear and your example misses, is that these are films I never would have seen otherwise. But I did see them only because of piracy and liked them enough to buy them.
My turn for an example (I was going to use Adaptation, but I thought of a better one): Requiem for a Dream. I saw it it off a burned DVD in one of my college buddy's apartment. I never would have seen this film on my own as it wasn't the type of thing even close to anywhere on my radar at the time. He put it on, we watched and, having just finished a film course, I was in awe at the genius use of split screens and montage. As soon as I saw it for sale at the local rental store, I bought it, not to watch it again, but to make sure I was supporting the creative forces and people who made it. Did I miss out because I didn't see it in the theater? Absolutely! Would I have watched this otherwise? No way! In fact, my college buddy and I live in different towns. He's always telling me to watch one movie or another and I just keep putting it off. Will I EVER watch this movie again? HELL NO! It's WAY too morbid to watch twice. Am I glad I bought the movie? Yes! If I can ever put the fact that it's a very morbid movie aside, I'll be very glad to seeing all the directing and editing tricks again and, hopefully, share it with someone else who will go out and buy it as well.
I don't loan DVDs and I don't take them out of the house (or at least try not to). If I want to take a DVD to a friend's place to watch it, I rip it, burn it (note that I haven't trans-coded, so I still have the exact same quality) and bring that with me. This way I don't have to worry about forgetting it, losing it or risk getting it damaged.
Do people also use these tools for piracy? Yes. Do I? Yes, and I'm not afraid to admit that online because I've actually BOUGHT MORE movies because I saw it pirated and felt it was actually worth my money. These are movies I would have never even bothered to rent, let alone watch, were it not for the fact that I could check it out in it's entirety for free, first.
Absolutely. There is one caveat, however: Do you think your 4head VHS recorded copy of a BlueRay disk is going to look all that good?
Even if you record in another digital format you're going to lose quality and at the same time run into possible signal loss problems (depending on your setup) while the picture is on the wire.
I'm no expert, but I have done some TV capture and video encoding stuff with VirtualDub and if I were going to do this, I would want to use some kind of digital signal out (HDMI, DVI) of one computer DIRECTLY into a digital video input of another and capture all the images in some kind of raw format (I'd want to do similar with the audio). Now, keep in mind that you're losing a lot of resolution that's available on the disk that your graphics card likely isn't capable of spitting out, so, if you're lucky, the result would look almost as good as the original disk and, assuming it is, the resulting file would be HUGE (like, I-don't-know-if-NTFS-can-handle-that-big-of-a-file kind of huge). This is all assuming that you didn't get IM'd or have a system tray balloon pop up while you're in the middle of this process.
Technical details aside, there's still one practical problem: You'd have to play the movie at normal speed to record it to another format/device anyway, so you might as well just watch it where you're at and forget about trying to capture it.
Between the plethora of classes and variations, one can't really "know" C++. Well, not like one can "know" C, anyway. My "next" languages have been wxWidgets and ncurses. Eventually I'll make it to Ruby... someday, and I must also admit an idle curiosity about the D programming language (but that isn't very serious).
If you're ever feeling much more silly than that, though, you can always check out the whitespace language or even LOLCODE.
Being a native of Montana, I'd have to say that my favorite monster would be the one in Flathead Lake. I mean, who wants to argue about a monster who has their own line of soda? Giant sturgeon? plesiosaurus? Who cares. Just shut up, sit back, take a sip and enjoy the lake.
I fell victim to an FTP security issue in January of last year. The hosting provider for my website allows for anonymous FTP by default and an organization of hackers was able to use this to upload files which somehow enabled them to edit content on my Drupal powered website (I've seen Wordpress sites fall victim to the same hack). All they did was a meta-redirect, but I had about a week of downtime as I restored from dated backups and got technical questions answered on the Drupal.org forums.
As it turns out, my hosting provider doesn't offer any real real capacity to disable anonymous FTP and I had to set the maximum allowed data transfer amount to 0KB for anyone except myself.
Finally. A way to get content driven advertising all the time, everywhere I go. I don't have to sit around online to get pelted with banner ads, anymore.
You read the label for a lot of Anti-depressants out there and a number of them will warn you that their particular anti-depressant may not work for you and, in fact, may have the opposite effect. I want to see the standard deviation of the two groups, and before/after numbers. My guess would be that the plecebo group has a low standard deviation and rated their depression very much the same as before, while the group who actually took the anti-depressant had a higher standard deviation and a significant number of people rated their depression very differently.
Not to mention that both myself and one of my college buddies took anti-deperssants while at college and the fact of the matter is that they helped us both. I wouldn't say they made me happy, but they certainly helped me cope which gave me the opportunity to do the rest.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the only thing that the RIAA has ended up doing is driving me toward indie labels who either don't care about p2p downloads or want the extra publicity that results from file sharing. Without the RIAA I likely would never have discovered the likes of Spoon, The Books, or Andrew Bird and the level of quality from those artists outstrips anything I've heard on the radio in a long time.
So, RIAA, thank you. Thank you for being dumb-asses, and showing me how much your music really kinda sucks.
I jump into a GUI is for email and JavaScript supporting web browser... I think I'll be the Grandma. Babies aren't allowed the opportunity to mix up the gas and break pedals in the car.
Slashdot Mirror
D'OH! You're absolutely right.
Interesting you say that. My thoughts were more along the lines of Open Source is to the Native Americans as Nokia is to the U.S. Government. That is to say there's many Open Source organizations and no single collective leader over all of them, making it very difficult to negotiate a, to resume the metaphor, peace treaty.
The fortunate thing is that I don't believe there is anything to be the proverbial bison that can be killed off to, in turn, wipe out Open Source.
Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 Screenshot on some forum. Here is a Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1 Screenshot direct link.
AMEN! And I say that AS one of those "amateurs" ... I had to work on live, production data on a daily basis. Sometimes it was a simple report, sometimes it was a VERY complex report and somtimes (more often than I'd like) I had to issue updates to the database.
We had a set of rules we were required to follow. It's been about half a year but here's many of them:
I could go on, but you get the idea. My point is that you could say "Alright, but if we do that, EVERYONE who MIGHT query the database needs to send me an email stating that they agree to the following rules and I will reply with their login credentials. From there, create a script that can search through the log file for habitual rule breakers." It might be enough to get them to say, "You know what? forget it."
We also had 3 tools. One was just a standard SQL query tool (WinSQL ... this is not an endorsement) and the other two provided access to otherwise inaccessible tables. The idea was that the tools enforced certain rules and restrictions on what information could be retrieved.
No, but I do think its some stuff that has yet to be proven to be true mixed with some stuff that is true.
I went to a University with a rather small CS program in a liberal arts school. Unlike your liberal arts option, however, it was very fact oriented which is good for me because while I enjoy hearing about theory, I have no strong desire to go on and try to implement it. So, that was all to say that you should figure out for yourself how much theory vs. fact you, personally, want to do. Something to keep in mind is that if you have a desire to switch to a different school halfway through your education, you'll likely find yourself behind in languages when you get to your new school if all you done is theory.
You also need to figure out how many things you're interested in outside the realm of CS. This sounds like something you already know, but I'll say it because you don't gain a real appreciation for how true it is until you see it for yourself: Liberal arts schools have the advantage of stronger programs in other areas. My university's Tech. school rival, for example, had a band program that was downright pitiful which is something I wouldn't have been able to know, even with a visit to the school, until I entered the program, saxophone in hand. My liberal arts college also gave me the unwitting benefit of showing me that I've writing skills I didn't know I had, and as a result I found my minor in English.
In my personal experience, the type of school really isn't as important as its reputation. The school I went to turned out to be one of the biggest party schools just the year before my arrival. Thankfully, the school president, as undermining as she was in other ways, was able to turn that around using a variety of programs that attracted students interested in more than next week's kegger.
For myself and from the little bit you've told us, I'd pick the technical school out of the two. I like getting stuff done too much to sit around for a year or two being told about how stuff works. However, if I were in your college shoes, I'd probably never find that I was interested in writing and probably end up with a minor in Music from a school who didn't really have the program for it.
English minor aside, there's no time to proofread this morning. Grammar nazi's will be shot.
...uhm. not only is Xvid an "attempt" at an open codec, it's arguably a success. I use it for just about all of my encoding, andyway and it's certainly more of a success than Theora.
...or at least it is in Chicago. The majority of people here have what are called the "Chicago Card" which are RFID badges to get on the public transportation system. What's more, I've 3 just to get into work. One for the "L", one for lobby security and one for floor security. Heck, these days, my mom even carries one to get into the kitchen where she works. She calls it her magic name badge. I'm not even started on the credit cards that have them.
Back around the end of Bush's first term and the start of his second, I had (silent) concerns that the president was setting himself up to dissolve congress and the house to declare martial law. I knew that they were highly unlikely, but I wasn't going to dismiss it just because, "Oh, this is the USA. Stuff like that doesn't happen here." If it weren't for the fact that the next election is coming up fast, I'd be having concerns about this again. There is one thing I can certainly say with fact, though: The president certainly likes to do whatever the hell he wants to do and make rules or decisions that make it okay after the fact.
I freely admit that this is the slightly paranoid Art Bell side of me coming out, but Bush has a knack for making feel ... disconcerted.
Yea, but in Wyoming, farmers with anti-aircraft guns are called "gun enthusiasts" and they're REALLY firing them off because they're bored. I mean, have you ever driven through Wyoming? I'll tell you, by the time you're to the other side of it, you want to fire off a gun or two just for the excitement.
Uhm. No duh.
...but for now, Google is someone to work for, and iPod is something to scoff at (and then buy) and a Eee is the mobility lappy to get instead of the Air. Basically I'm saying we've a bit to go before we hate either company. For the relitivly short time that I've paid attention, I think we'll see a CEO change in these companies who will make policy that will drive us to hate them.
Because people just want to bitch at the poor guy, I thought I might suggest something that's actually USEFUL.
Put the lappy in a computer case. Many of them (the couple of Thermaltake cases I've used recently have options like this) provide places to put a little pad-lock on. Heck, if memory serves, the Thermaltake Matrix actually has a lock built right onto the side of the case. If you wanted, you could even swap out the case's fans for some USB fans and get some real airflow going. Beyond this, however, I think you're talking about something custom made.
Something that hasn't been pointed out yet that I'd like to bring up is the fact that ANY kind of locked box is really a bit of a joke. Yes, it'll keep out ex-con Janitor Joe from just picking something up off your desk, but it won't keep him from coming in late at night and walking off with the whole box. Let's face it, thieves steal the family safe and crack it open later at their leisure.
My solution back in the days when I was issued a laptop, was to slap the lappy into the docking station locked by the company issued security cable and then run wires through a gap in the filing cabinet for all my personal goodies.
Not to mirror you, but I mostly agree with your argument.
My problem with reviews (and I'll spare you the history and details of it all) boils down to, "Opinions are like butt holes. Everyone has one." For the really rather small education I have on Cinema, I still find most reviews miss the mark on what I care about.
One of my points in my argument that maybe wasn't clear and your example misses, is that these are films I never would have seen otherwise. But I did see them only because of piracy and liked them enough to buy them.
My turn for an example (I was going to use Adaptation , but I thought of a better one): Requiem for a Dream . I saw it it off a burned DVD in one of my college buddy's apartment. I never would have seen this film on my own as it wasn't the type of thing even close to anywhere on my radar at the time. He put it on, we watched and, having just finished a film course, I was in awe at the genius use of split screens and montage. As soon as I saw it for sale at the local rental store, I bought it, not to watch it again, but to make sure I was supporting the creative forces and people who made it. Did I miss out because I didn't see it in the theater? Absolutely! Would I have watched this otherwise? No way! In fact, my college buddy and I live in different towns. He's always telling me to watch one movie or another and I just keep putting it off. Will I EVER watch this movie again? HELL NO! It's WAY too morbid to watch twice. Am I glad I bought the movie? Yes! If I can ever put the fact that it's a very morbid movie aside, I'll be very glad to seeing all the directing and editing tricks again and, hopefully, share it with someone else who will go out and buy it as well.
I don't know about you, but I can defiantly tell the difference between a DVD and 2pass XviD file.
Well, SOMEONE is about to be hired by google... ...you suppose it's too late to learn Russian, and become his friend?
I don't loan DVDs and I don't take them out of the house (or at least try not to). If I want to take a DVD to a friend's place to watch it, I rip it, burn it (note that I haven't trans-coded, so I still have the exact same quality) and bring that with me. This way I don't have to worry about forgetting it, losing it or risk getting it damaged.
Do people also use these tools for piracy? Yes. Do I? Yes, and I'm not afraid to admit that online because I've actually BOUGHT MORE movies because I saw it pirated and felt it was actually worth my money. These are movies I would have never even bothered to rent, let alone watch, were it not for the fact that I could check it out in it's entirety for free, first.
Absolutely. There is one caveat, however: Do you think your 4head VHS recorded copy of a BlueRay disk is going to look all that good?
Even if you record in another digital format you're going to lose quality and at the same time run into possible signal loss problems (depending on your setup) while the picture is on the wire.
I'm no expert, but I have done some TV capture and video encoding stuff with VirtualDub and if I were going to do this, I would want to use some kind of digital signal out (HDMI, DVI) of one computer DIRECTLY into a digital video input of another and capture all the images in some kind of raw format (I'd want to do similar with the audio). Now, keep in mind that you're losing a lot of resolution that's available on the disk that your graphics card likely isn't capable of spitting out, so, if you're lucky, the result would look almost as good as the original disk and, assuming it is, the resulting file would be HUGE (like, I-don't-know-if-NTFS-can-handle-that-big-of-a-file kind of huge). This is all assuming that you didn't get IM'd or have a system tray balloon pop up while you're in the middle of this process.
Technical details aside, there's still one practical problem: You'd have to play the movie at normal speed to record it to another format/device anyway, so you might as well just watch it where you're at and forget about trying to capture it.
Between the plethora of classes and variations, one can't really "know" C++. Well, not like one can "know" C, anyway. My "next" languages have been wxWidgets and ncurses. Eventually I'll make it to Ruby ... someday, and I must also admit an idle curiosity about the D programming language (but that isn't very serious).
If you're ever feeling much more silly than that, though, you can always check out the whitespace language or even LOLCODE.
Being a native of Montana, I'd have to say that my favorite monster would be the one in Flathead Lake. I mean, who wants to argue about a monster who has their own line of soda? Giant sturgeon? plesiosaurus? Who cares. Just shut up, sit back, take a sip and enjoy the lake.
I fell victim to an FTP security issue in January of last year. The hosting provider for my website allows for anonymous FTP by default and an organization of hackers was able to use this to upload files which somehow enabled them to edit content on my Drupal powered website (I've seen Wordpress sites fall victim to the same hack). All they did was a meta-redirect, but I had about a week of downtime as I restored from dated backups and got technical questions answered on the Drupal.org forums.
As it turns out, my hosting provider doesn't offer any real real capacity to disable anonymous FTP and I had to set the maximum allowed data transfer amount to 0KB for anyone except myself.
Finally. A way to get content driven advertising all the time, everywhere I go. I don't have to sit around online to get pelted with banner ads, anymore.
You read the label for a lot of Anti-depressants out there and a number of them will warn you that their particular anti-depressant may not work for you and, in fact, may have the opposite effect. I want to see the standard deviation of the two groups, and before/after numbers. My guess would be that the plecebo group has a low standard deviation and rated their depression very much the same as before, while the group who actually took the anti-depressant had a higher standard deviation and a significant number of people rated their depression very differently.
Not to mention that both myself and one of my college buddies took anti-deperssants while at college and the fact of the matter is that they helped us both. I wouldn't say they made me happy, but they certainly helped me cope which gave me the opportunity to do the rest.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the only thing that the RIAA has ended up doing is driving me toward indie labels who either don't care about p2p downloads or want the extra publicity that results from file sharing. Without the RIAA I likely would never have discovered the likes of Spoon, The Books, or Andrew Bird and the level of quality from those artists outstrips anything I've heard on the radio in a long time.
So, RIAA, thank you. Thank you for being dumb-asses, and showing me how much your music really kinda sucks.
You must work for State Farm.
HERE HERE! Bravo.
... I think I'll be the Grandma. Babies aren't allowed the opportunity to mix up the gas and break pedals in the car.
I jump into a GUI is for email and JavaScript supporting web browser