As a quick note, that only protects you from people you're firing. In this case, the guy had been working on the logic bomb for four months [article quoted november->february], made a complaint about salaries, and quit.
Not much you can do in a case like this, apart from deleting all your stuff and starting afresh, especially if he's built it into another app.
Could someone clarify the use of put options? The guy in the article bought $21,000 of put options, which tells me either that he didn't do it for the money - in which case, why even buy any put options, as it makes you easier to trace and accuse? - or that $21,000 of put options can translate to vastly more than that in money terms.
I'm always impressed when relatively 'public' offerings such as Red Hat can turn a profit, really showing how important the business sector is. They may want free software, but they're more interested in low-cost software with some guarantee of support and an upgrade path.
What I also found interesting was that those sale on advanced Server aren't actually sales - they're actually a subscription charge. 800-900 dollars for a year, product launched in May, and 1200 buyers (subscriptors?) by the third quarter - so that comes to just over $10,000,000 *if* they all pay a year's charges in advance. Not bad, and a revenue stream which will keep going year-over-year. Not bad at all.
And I thought it was mainly online games charging subscriptions...
Personally, I live in a bedsit-type thing, so my living-room is also my computer room; easy to watch computery stuff from my sofa.
However, in your average house [hahaha], the computer tends to be in a different room from the sofa, sound system, and/or TV. Whereas the PS2 will be in the right spot. I know several people who have an old PC hidden in their living room for DVDs and divxs... but if there's a playstation 2 there, seems a lot less hassle to just install something nice like this.
Not sure it does mean 40,000x denser, as the few bits of information I could find on that site talk about a 100nm wire, or 0.1 micron process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't current chips use 0.13 micron processes, going down to 0.09 or 90nm soon? And if so, I can't see it being 40k times denser.
On the other hand, I'm very impressed by the fact you can have wires to carry magnetic domain walls. Hate to think how sensitive it would be to outside interference such as speakers, but hey... that's what shielding is for...
At last... I was wondering when someone would mention Larry Niven. That's a good universe, and stuck together through all his series and characters... I grew up on him and Heinlein as my authors of choice. The most enduring is Niven - maybe especially some of his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, which produced some of the best scifi I've ever read. The Mote in God's Eye? Brilliant.
I've heard somewhere before that Science Fiction is not just about the technology - technology is the setting, space is the setting, but it should only remain a background to the actual characters. There are far too many crappy scifi books I've read that are simply about the tech - that so-and-so-device or so-and-so psychic power suddenly fixes it. IMHO, it should all just remain a backing to the characters themselves... Niven has been one of the best authors for just taking technology for granted, and focussing more on the problems it causes as well as those it fixes.
As for more modern [recent] series, people have already mentioned Iaian M. Banks' books - I read my first couple recently, and was suitably impressed. Go get. Also impressed by the sheer exuberance and characterisation of Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan series, starting with A Warrior's Apprentice [yes, I would start there and not the prequels]. Her more recent books in the series have turned into far more serious SciFi... I'm not sure which I prefer, but it's all good!
But is there anyone else who is generally embaressed by SciFi covers these days? Ugh... and don't even mention Fantasy. Ugh.
I quote, from my original post, The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. I understood that. I even agree with it, in most cases. However, spaceflight is rather more difficult than just being innovative; with the exception of true high-tech, we need a brute-force approach to even get into space. There isn't much you can do to brute-force. Better propellants, nuclear propulsion, are possibilities, but difficult ones. And think back... when you look at informative websites on such topics, haven't most of them been at nasa.gov?
Then there are the alternative methods to spaceflight; either totally different propulsion methods or antigrav, which while they would fall under the heading of innovative also fall under the heading of 'not yet'. Then there's different techniques of launching. Railguns and such are possible, but not practical due to the massive cost. Skyhooks and beanstalks equally so, as well as being very limited by technology. But despite the problems, they still work on these things as well. NASA isn't just the rocket-launcher; it's also the researcher. Legislated monopoly, possibly; but not because of anti-competitive practices, just because they're the only real thing around.
The point I'm trying to make is that the 'essay' (not sure if it deserves that, but I just don't like the style) neglects what innovation NASA does. It's not just the failure to get to the stars - it's also success in trying to get to the stars, whether it's in contained habitation, new materials, or trying to work with new technologies. In many ways NASA would be a lot bigger if it was actually succeeding - if there was a base on mars, would NASA get less funding? If they're a successful space department, do they get junked because the colonists are building their own? I'd say that an established launch site would do rather well out of it.
As for the excellent Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond - everybody, go buy, it's *good*), I took it more as a theory on how human society was shaped by its environemt. In fact, I seem to remember that early on it focusses on settling in one place - an innovation - actually allows a power structure:) But it also allowed more specialisation - such as thinkers and priests. Researchers. Innovators. Although yes, later change was resisted because great changes in technology tend to lead to great changes in society, and thus affect the ruling order.
So if you're arguing against monopolies, I'm with you. If you see NASA as a monopoly just cos it's the only thing out there, I'm afraid I respectfully disagree; NASA will try to help you, and won't be anti-competitive (see armadilloaerospace.com and when they refer to NASA - it's usually citing them as a reference, and sometimes going ooh because someone from NASA visited them).
They're trying, space is just a little hard. Kudos to smaller efforts - but when they spring a leak and die out there, it'll only lead to people urging more caution, more safety, and they'll up up at roughly the same stage as NASA. NASA's noly problem is that they're also hampered by a lot of red tape and beurocracy due to being governemt-run... but then which large company doing something physical isn't...
The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. It goes on to bewail the fact that third parties with better solutions have been stopped from succeeding, for funding reasons.
Now if the government truly has been witholding monies from really good projects, sure, that's bad. But in my amateur interested following of the space progression, there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding. There's a plethora of interesting designs and ideas out there, but no guarantee they'll work - and the big, bad, beast - NASA itself - does work on the 'crazy' ideas itself.
Small companies and hoobyists are working on alternate designs, such as the X-Plane prize efforts, but they do have a ways to go (Armadillo's latest launch, anyone?). For all it's sins, NASA did a good job early on - not the best, but who can do that? - although I'd agree it needs to start doing some proper advancement now. Less of the old tech, more of the ISS, and a lot more work on actually getting their next-gen designs out there!
But where space is concerned, I'm happy to play the waiting game. Impatient, but happy. The longer we wait, the safer and cheaper the eventual solution will be.
Amazing article, it goes in real depth into the thinking of both Will Wright - the game's creator - and The Sims Online.
The original point of the game was for popularity - you get money based on how many visitors you get to your house, and to this end can start gameshows and the like. This was reflected in the Top 10 list, basically the "high-scorers". But... people, unsurprisingly, figured out the money-making tactics [read the article], opened the appropriate house, and everyone visited to make money. So they split the list into several top 10s... most popular, most romantic, etc.
This alone provides a never-ending goal to the game, which is what you really need in an online environment. It's like a variant of the Red Queen theory - you're not just up against the game, you're up against everyone else. You have to work to stay at the top... but unlike a levelling game, The Sims Online is far more capricious in that popularity doesn't need a vast amount of experience behind it. Start a fad, and poom - you've got people hearing about it from teir friends, visitng... much like the slashdot effect, but in a game. You're at the top of a list for a week.
In that way it could be far more rewarding than some other online games, and less hard-to-get-into for late starters. Add to that possible features like electing mayors and the like... wow.
I never was that interested in the Sims myself, but this is fascinating to me. Most online games atm survive because of their community... the Sims Online makes the community the goal as well as the tool. It's gonna be big, folks.
As for those calling it sad and to try the real world instead... yeah. That's why you're reading slashdot, right? *ducks*:)
Time Flows By
>Here's new twist on the time-honored hourglass egg timer.
>The Bubble Timer is a polished two-inch acrylic cube that
>reckons the minutes by the lazy ascent of a bubble through
>a tube. Depending on the face the cube is set on, the
>tube has three inclinations--and hence counts out three
>different times: ten seconds, one minute or five minutes.
>Invert the cube to repeat the measurement.
>bubbletimer.com/
First thought: ooh! Clever!
Second thought: My kitchen table/desk ain't flat.
Seriously, I do wonder how accurate these can be. The fact the cube is only a couple of inches per side must mean the slope is accurate to within a tiny percentage to get times of five minutes, however viscous the liquid. A couple of degrees out would be enough to really influence the time period.
I can't see this getting kudos from slashdot readers. It starts off by saying that Mozilla is a failed project and that the thousands of developers who worked on it should take their cues from the content developers for the sims and the communities building up in the sims online.
Yah.
Technology reporting at it's best, this.
Slashdot Mirror
That Miss Romero? I thought they'd split up?
As a quick note, that only protects you from people you're firing. In this case, the guy had been working on the logic bomb for four months [article quoted november->february], made a complaint about salaries, and quit.
Not much you can do in a case like this, apart from deleting all your stuff and starting afresh, especially if he's built it into another app.
Could someone clarify the use of put options? The guy in the article bought $21,000 of put options, which tells me either that he didn't do it for the money - in which case, why even buy any put options, as it makes you easier to trace and accuse? - or that $21,000 of put options can translate to vastly more than that in money terms.
I'm always impressed when relatively 'public' offerings such as Red Hat can turn a profit, really showing how important the business sector is. They may want free software, but they're more interested in low-cost software with some guarantee of support and an upgrade path. What I also found interesting was that those sale on advanced Server aren't actually sales - they're actually a subscription charge. 800-900 dollars for a year, product launched in May, and 1200 buyers (subscriptors?) by the third quarter - so that comes to just over $10,000,000 *if* they all pay a year's charges in advance. Not bad, and a revenue stream which will keep going year-over-year. Not bad at all. And I thought it was mainly online games charging subscriptions...
Oi, some of my best friends are primitive.
On the other hand, location matters as well.
Personally, I live in a bedsit-type thing, so my living-room is also my computer room; easy to watch computery stuff from my sofa.
However, in your average house [hahaha], the computer tends to be in a different room from the sofa, sound system, and/or TV. Whereas the PS2 will be in the right spot. I know several people who have an old PC hidden in their living room for DVDs and divxs... but if there's a playstation 2 there, seems a lot less hassle to just install something nice like this.
Not sure it does mean 40,000x denser, as the few bits of information I could find on that site talk about a 100nm wire, or 0.1 micron process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't current chips use 0.13 micron processes, going down to 0.09 or 90nm soon? And if so, I can't see it being 40k times denser.
On the other hand, I'm very impressed by the fact you can have wires to carry magnetic domain walls. Hate to think how sensitive it would be to outside interference such as speakers, but hey... that's what shielding is for...
Linux marketing through Slashdot? Hehehe... next we'll have microsoft and intel buying banner space... Oh...
At last... I was wondering when someone would mention Larry Niven. That's a good universe, and stuck together through all his series and characters... I grew up on him and Heinlein as my authors of choice. The most enduring is Niven - maybe especially some of his collaboration with Jerry Pournelle, which produced some of the best scifi I've ever read. The Mote in God's Eye? Brilliant.
I've heard somewhere before that Science Fiction is not just about the technology - technology is the setting, space is the setting, but it should only remain a background to the actual characters. There are far too many crappy scifi books I've read that are simply about the tech - that so-and-so-device or so-and-so psychic power suddenly fixes it. IMHO, it should all just remain a backing to the characters themselves... Niven has been one of the best authors for just taking technology for granted, and focussing more on the problems it causes as well as those it fixes.
As for more modern [recent] series, people have already mentioned Iaian M. Banks' books - I read my first couple recently, and was suitably impressed. Go get. Also impressed by the sheer exuberance and characterisation of Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan series, starting with A Warrior's Apprentice [yes, I would start there and not the prequels]. Her more recent books in the series have turned into far more serious SciFi... I'm not sure which I prefer, but it's all good!
But is there anyone else who is generally embaressed by SciFi covers these days? Ugh... and don't even mention Fantasy. Ugh.
I quote, from my original post, The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. I understood that. I even agree with it, in most cases. However, spaceflight is rather more difficult than just being innovative; with the exception of true high-tech, we need a brute-force approach to even get into space. There isn't much you can do to brute-force. Better propellants, nuclear propulsion, are possibilities, but difficult ones. And think back... when you look at informative websites on such topics, haven't most of them been at nasa.gov?
:) But it also allowed more specialisation - such as thinkers and priests. Researchers. Innovators. Although yes, later change was resisted because great changes in technology tend to lead to great changes in society, and thus affect the ruling order.
Then there are the alternative methods to spaceflight; either totally different propulsion methods or antigrav, which while they would fall under the heading of innovative also fall under the heading of 'not yet'. Then there's different techniques of launching. Railguns and such are possible, but not practical due to the massive cost. Skyhooks and beanstalks equally so, as well as being very limited by technology. But despite the problems, they still work on these things as well. NASA isn't just the rocket-launcher; it's also the researcher. Legislated monopoly, possibly; but not because of anti-competitive practices, just because they're the only real thing around.
The point I'm trying to make is that the 'essay' (not sure if it deserves that, but I just don't like the style) neglects what innovation NASA does. It's not just the failure to get to the stars - it's also success in trying to get to the stars, whether it's in contained habitation, new materials, or trying to work with new technologies. In many ways NASA would be a lot bigger if it was actually succeeding - if there was a base on mars, would NASA get less funding? If they're a successful space department, do they get junked because the colonists are building their own? I'd say that an established launch site would do rather well out of it.
As for the excellent Guns, Germs and Steel (by Jared Diamond - everybody, go buy, it's *good*), I took it more as a theory on how human society was shaped by its environemt. In fact, I seem to remember that early on it focusses on settling in one place - an innovation - actually allows a power structure
So if you're arguing against monopolies, I'm with you. If you see NASA as a monopoly just cos it's the only thing out there, I'm afraid I respectfully disagree; NASA will try to help you, and won't be anti-competitive (see armadilloaerospace.com and when they refer to NASA - it's usually citing them as a reference, and sometimes going ooh because someone from NASA visited them).
They're trying, space is just a little hard. Kudos to smaller efforts - but when they spring a leak and die out there, it'll only lead to people urging more caution, more safety, and they'll up up at roughly the same stage as NASA. NASA's noly problem is that they're also hampered by a lot of red tape and beurocracy due to being governemt-run... but then which large company doing something physical isn't...
The article criticises 'the government-started monopoly' due to the fact such an organisation wants to keep itself alive and thus will never get the job done. It goes on to bewail the fact that third parties with better solutions have been stopped from succeeding, for funding reasons.
Now if the government truly has been witholding monies from really good projects, sure, that's bad. But in my amateur interested following of the space progression, there hasn't been any 'wow' project which has simply been unable to get funding. There's a plethora of interesting designs and ideas out there, but no guarantee they'll work - and the big, bad, beast - NASA itself - does work on the 'crazy' ideas itself.
Small companies and hoobyists are working on alternate designs, such as the X-Plane prize efforts, but they do have a ways to go (Armadillo's latest launch, anyone?). For all it's sins, NASA did a good job early on - not the best, but who can do that? - although I'd agree it needs to start doing some proper advancement now. Less of the old tech, more of the ISS, and a lot more work on actually getting their next-gen designs out there!
But where space is concerned, I'm happy to play the waiting game. Impatient, but happy. The longer we wait, the safer and cheaper the eventual solution will be.
Amazing article, it goes in real depth into the thinking of both Will Wright - the game's creator - and The Sims Online.
:)
The original point of the game was for popularity - you get money based on how many visitors you get to your house, and to this end can start gameshows and the like. This was reflected in the Top 10 list, basically the "high-scorers". But... people, unsurprisingly, figured out the money-making tactics [read the article], opened the appropriate house, and everyone visited to make money. So they split the list into several top 10s... most popular, most romantic, etc.
This alone provides a never-ending goal to the game, which is what you really need in an online environment. It's like a variant of the Red Queen theory - you're not just up against the game, you're up against everyone else. You have to work to stay at the top... but unlike a levelling game, The Sims Online is far more capricious in that popularity doesn't need a vast amount of experience behind it. Start a fad, and poom - you've got people hearing about it from teir friends, visitng... much like the slashdot effect, but in a game. You're at the top of a list for a week.
In that way it could be far more rewarding than some other online games, and less hard-to-get-into for late starters. Add to that possible features like electing mayors and the like... wow.
I never was that interested in the Sims myself, but this is fascinating to me. Most online games atm survive because of their community... the Sims Online makes the community the goal as well as the tool. It's gonna be big, folks.
As for those calling it sad and to try the real world instead... yeah. That's why you're reading slashdot, right? *ducks*
Time Flows By
>Here's new twist on the time-honored hourglass egg timer.
>The Bubble Timer is a polished two-inch acrylic cube that
>reckons the minutes by the lazy ascent of a bubble through
>a tube. Depending on the face the cube is set on, the
>tube has three inclinations--and hence counts out three
>different times: ten seconds, one minute or five minutes.
>Invert the cube to repeat the measurement.
>bubbletimer.com/
First thought: ooh! Clever!
Second thought: My kitchen table/desk ain't flat.
Seriously, I do wonder how accurate these can be. The fact the cube is only a couple of inches per side must mean the slope is accurate to within a tiny percentage to get times of five minutes, however viscous the liquid. A couple of degrees out would be enough to really influence the time period.
Bah, I burn enough stuff already. Maybe not.
Oh ha ha, very phoeni.
The Machine that goes "Ping!"
I can't see this getting kudos from slashdot readers. It starts off by saying that Mozilla is a failed project and that the thousands of developers who worked on it should take their cues from the content developers for the sims and the communities building up in the sims online. Yah. Technology reporting at it's best, this.
Hey, that's nothing. My *girlfriend* thought I was straight. Ah well.