To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands
programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two
months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these
"users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time
spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people
who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to
us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional
work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has
invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software
available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the
ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108.
Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software. Bill Gates General Partner, Micro-Soft
remember that 80's fad called 'Scratch 'N Sniff'? i remember some of those stickers smelling pretty damn real. The basic idea behind scratch and sniff is to take the aroma generating chemical and encapsulate it in gelatin or plastic spheres that are incredibly small, about a few microns in diameter. Scratching ruptures a few of these spheres generating the smell.
with this idea, couldn't you make a box containing millions and millions of spheres, with a few thousand different types of spheres for various aromatic genres?
sure, the government doesn't try to say this one doesn't exist, but where do you think all of our top secret aircraft is flight tested?
my ex-roommate provided flightline security for the F-117A stealth fighter there in the mid 80's. that's right, in a time when the fighter didn't exist.
most of the UFO's people see flying around the area are only never before seen test aircraft.
...and I've tried nearly every distro over the past 6 years.
this obviously means that he has been trying distros starting at six years ago and ending at now, not that he only tried them six years ago.
i realize that english as a second language for people must be tough, but i wouldn't recommend correcting someone on usage until you're really familiar with it, ok?
No public, common hard disk driver enforces DRM. You won't be able to play the files on multiple machines, granted,
know what? fuck that. plain and simple.
when i buy a book at the bookstore, i don't need some secret decoder eye-ring to read the damn thing. if i did, than this limits my being able to fairly use my purchased book in whatever manner i choose.
when i buy something, i buy the damn thing. when i rent, then i rent it. don't tell me that i'm buying something when i'm actually renting it.
more and more offshore mp3 websites with awesome collections are sprouting up offering songs for as little as 2 cents a song.
sure i can sit here and say that i'm cheating the artists by illegally purchasing music online, but let's get the facts straight: in most cases, artists don't benefit from CD sales other than making their contract look good. i'm tired of handing my money over to the RIAA everytime i buy a CD.
do away with the RIAA, let the artists benefit 100 percent from music sales, and i'll go back to legally purchasing music again.
I mean, once you lay the line, aren't your costs pretty much fixed, regardless of how much bandwidth you use?
in America, it appears that costs are pretty much fixed, but in Russia and eastern Europe, there are additional charges.
in Saint Petersburg, i set up apartment building networks (often stringing ethernet from building to building, across streets and everything else).
i typically will run my own fiber from various POP's throughout the city. my cost for bandwidth depends on my usage: in most cases, each megabyte will cost me about 2 cents. usually, down traffic is charged while up isn't.
i wrote a program that acts as a firewall and counts every byte of traffic from each customer. their plans usually are $25 a month and that includes 600MB. after 600, i charge them at 6 cents per MB.
i would love to offer unmetered access to my customers (and myself), but most of the physical wire running into Russia is owned by monopolistic big wigs that control everything (and i'm sure they're making a killing).
i always wonder what would happen if i had enough investment money to run my own fiber from Helsinki and then offer unlimited traffic...
not to be a correction nazi, but Thera is the name of a town on the island of Santorini.
if you get the chance, by all means check it out; beautiful sunsets, amazing beaches. less than a kilometer from the island is a another small island that is still smoking (and hot) from volcanic activity. jump in the ocean near the island for a jacuzzi experience, clothes optional.
the RIAA and MPAA has zero jurisdiction here in Russia. why do you think piracy is as bad here as in the Asian countries? i would not be surprised if allofmp3.com license is made up and bogus, as it is not needed.
every street corner has CD shops loaded with the latest games, apps and music.
they also package MP3 CD's which is loaded with albums, lyrics and CD art. each CD is 65 roubles, which is about $2
very strange to see this story; i am currently working on getting credit card functionality for my mp3 distribution engine. my site is at least a month before seeing production, but the site will be 100 percent in english, has a beyond amazing collection (just under a terrabyte) and offers each song for a penny.
the thing slowing me down is getting a merchant account here in Russia that will allow me to do credit card transfers.
Re:Some classic Christian D&D FUD
on
D&D Is 30
·
· Score: 1
i am thinking that many people didn't like the fact that D&D gave someone the opportunity to play an evil character.
they didn't want kids to get the impression that being evil is a choice they they are allowed to make.
my friends are always telling me how they've finally switched from IE to Mozilla or Firebird. it strikes me exactly the same way as if they said that they finally decided to stop walking in the bank and finally got an ATM card.
mozilla products passed IE in innovative features, speed and quality almost 2 years ago. back then, the only argument to keep using IE was all the MS only websites out there that only worked with IE.
that is no longer the case.
i spend most of everyday surfing the web using Firefox, and i have not run across a site that refuses to function in a long, long time.
standards really are a good thing, because if you create using a standard, then you maximize the availability of your work to customers.
there are many problems with IE in this day and age. the handling of CSS content is a joke. there is very limited PNG support. it lacks many innovative features that Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror have had for years.
the only reason why people still use IE is because it is readily available. most people don't know that they use IE, they just know they are using the web browser that came with the computer.
i was trying to get my dad to swtich from using IE for months, but he wouldn't have it. he's one of those types that completely freak out if you change anything on the computer. well, i finally convinced him to switch (he downloaded and installed it himself). he has been so happy with the speed and features of Mozilla, that he jokes about the 'old' days when he didn't know what he was missing. oh, and he listens to my recommendations now.
that's the great thing about being the system administrator in charge; you get to name the servers whatever you want.
as an example, at my old firm, our main ldap/smb, ypserv and nfs server i named 'MOTHER', from the main computer in the original Alien movie. how appropriate too, that IBM Netfinity system really took care of our developers. Mother had an uptime of 378 days when our company decided to move our office. the new office was 20 miles away, and we contemplated keeping the machine on during the move as to not lose the uptime (we had a decent UPS). in the end, we decided to shut her down during the transfer. as of today, she has 286 days. what a machine!
it appears that many sysadmins adopts some sort of naming theme, like calling each system after the name of a jet, or after southpark characters. i don't like this idea; each system really has it's own function and it should be aptly named in this regard.
boy, Mother sure was a good system. i really miss her.
i also tried Geeklog and it was quite functional and loaded with features. however, what i am really looking for is something more simple and with better date navigation.
i decided to roll my own. it's not complicated and it doesn't allow comments (yet), but i am able to add entries and add photos to entries. navigating the entry archives is a snap also.
well if that's the case, then you need to throw in a few 'move forwards' in there.
i deal with several companies in the states, and email from their CTO and CEO's are always peppered with 'moving forward' and 'move forward'.
it drives me insane! when Darl McBride kept telling open source folks shit like, 'yes, i know you're all concerned with weather or not our IP is in the kernel, but let's just move forward.'
who says that MySQL is better than Oracle? i've never read or seen that anywhere. it is two different products in two different classes. they can't be compared.
it's all about the right tool for the right job. coding up the next Ebay? use Oracle. wanna keep track of your DVD collection? use MySQL.
i've used Oracle and Postgres, and i've setup triggers and stored procedures and hard relationships.. sure it's useful, but it's rare when i'm doing a project that's out of scope of MySQL (and i can do all the trigger, stored procedure stuff within the application code, big deal).
MySQL also allows you to do rapid development of small to medium sized projects. what if one of my projects gets so big that i need to scale it up? well, if i am so unfortunate to have one of my projects go big time, then i'm sure i'll get big dollars and redesign the project for the big leagues.
here's another example: i was working for a small company that finally recieved it's funding (15 mil for 10 employees). well, the company started hiring corporate types left and right. well, these corporate folks had little to do except dress nice and figure out how to spend our funding. i was called into the CTO's office. he sat me down and explained to me that he wanted to setup a database to store employee information (address, phone number, normal stuff). at that point we had about 25 employees. i was like, no problem i'll setup a MySQL database with a PHP front end and have it done this afternoon. he told me to do nothing and wait for the Oracle people that were coming the next day to discuss licensing.
my jaw hit the floor.
but this is exactly the problem. people don't realize which tool they should use for what job.
So you write shit code that doesn't fit the standards ("liberal" code), your shitty compiler doesn't notice and compiles it anyway, and then it's Microsoft's fault when their standards conforming compiler won't compile it?
well, isn't that the way bad html works with Internet Explorer?
Point is, even if Russia can't pull off the funding, it would be a nice thing to try.
America puts safety first in high risk operations these days. the 'flying by the seat of your pants' days of the space race are over. there is too much public pressure for NASA to make any mistakes, so anything with too much risk is out of the question. how in the world will America be able to accomplish such a risky operation like going to Mars with all this public pressure?
However, Russia is the perfect candidate (and always has been) for testing extremely high risk equipment and/or situations. why? because although Russia thinks about safety, it's not the number one concern; the number one concern is success.
when Russia loses a cosmonaut in some accident, they don't halt their space program for years at a time for a complete investigation. they theorize what the problem could be, make adjustments and press on.
If the world really wants to put a human on planet Mars in the next 20 years, the best idea would be for the world (including USA) to fund Russia to accomplish such a mission. I guarentee they will do it for the smallest amount of money and in the shortest amount of time.
Slashdot Mirror
and for the record, here it is:
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands
programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?
Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the initial work took only two
months, the three of us have spent most of the last year documenting, improving and adding features to BASIC. Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.
The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000.
The feedback we have gotten from the hundreds of people who say they are using BASIC has all been positive. Two surprising things are apparent, however, 1) Most of these
"users" never bought BASIC (less than 10% of all Altair owners have bought BASIC), and 2) The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time
spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.
Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people
who worked on it get paid?
Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to
us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional
work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has
invested a lot of money in hobby software. We have written 6800 BASIC, and are writing 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but there is very little incentive to make this software
available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
What about the guys who re-sell Altair BASIC, aren't they making money on hobby software? Yes, but those who have been reported to us may lose in the end. They are the
ones who give hobbyists a bad name, and should be kicked out of any club meeting they show up at.
I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment. Just write to me at 1180 Alvarado SE, #114, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87108.
Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software. Bill Gates General Partner, Micro-Soft
you can specify default comment length in your preferences. have a look.
remember that 80's fad called 'Scratch 'N Sniff'? i remember some of those stickers smelling pretty damn real.
The basic idea behind scratch and sniff is to take the aroma generating chemical and encapsulate it in gelatin or plastic spheres that are incredibly small, about a few microns in diameter. Scratching ruptures a few of these spheres generating the smell.
with this idea, couldn't you make a box containing millions and millions of spheres, with a few thousand different types of spheres for various aromatic genres?
maybe something with a USB interface?
...running just fine with Oracle 9i on Redhat 8 for a small intranet site (about 60 users)
wow! do you also drive to the corner store in a space shuttle?
...you have a real base some where else.
wow, you couldn't be further from the truth.
that's why they have Tonopah Test Range
sure, the government doesn't try to say this one doesn't exist, but where do you think all of our top secret aircraft is flight tested?
my ex-roommate provided flightline security for the F-117A stealth fighter there in the mid 80's. that's right, in a time when the fighter didn't exist.
most of the UFO's people see flying around the area are only never before seen test aircraft.
...and I've tried nearly every distro over the past 6 years.
this obviously means that he has been trying distros starting at six years ago and ending at now, not that he only tried them six years ago.
i realize that english as a second language for people must be tough, but i wouldn't recommend correcting someone on usage until you're really familiar with it, ok?
is a license actually needed anymore?
i was under the impression that talking on these frequencies without your callsign was just asking for trouble.
however, i notice that many people use HAM without licenses without any problems at all. just take a look at all the hangglider and paraglider folks.
No public, common hard disk driver enforces DRM. You won't be able to play the files on multiple machines, granted,
know what? fuck that. plain and simple.
when i buy a book at the bookstore, i don't need some secret decoder eye-ring to read the damn thing. if i did, than this limits my being able to fairly use my purchased book in whatever manner i choose.
when i buy something, i buy the damn thing. when i rent, then i rent it.
don't tell me that i'm buying something when i'm actually renting it.
more and more offshore mp3 websites with awesome collections are sprouting up offering songs for as little as 2 cents a song.
sure i can sit here and say that i'm cheating the artists by illegally purchasing music online, but let's get the facts straight: in most cases, artists don't benefit from CD sales other than making their contract look good. i'm tired of handing my money over to the RIAA everytime i buy a CD.
do away with the RIAA, let the artists benefit 100 percent from music sales, and i'll go back to legally purchasing music again.
Red Hat has shiny gui tools to do its configuration and slackware lets you edit the config files by hand.
that's why i love redhat (fedora) the most.
it does have graphical tools to configure.
however, you can also edit all the conf files by hand if you wish.
choice.. i like that
too bad his shop class teacher didn't tell him to "quit screwin' around'
I mean, once you lay the line, aren't your costs pretty much fixed, regardless of how much bandwidth you use?
in America, it appears that costs are pretty much fixed, but in Russia and eastern Europe, there are additional charges.
in Saint Petersburg, i set up apartment building networks (often stringing ethernet from building to building, across streets and everything else).
i typically will run my own fiber from various POP's throughout the city. my cost for bandwidth depends on my usage: in most cases, each megabyte will cost me about 2 cents. usually, down traffic is charged while up isn't.
i wrote a program that acts as a firewall and counts every byte of traffic from each customer. their plans usually are $25 a month and that includes 600MB. after 600, i charge them at 6 cents per MB.
i would love to offer unmetered access to my customers (and myself), but most of the physical wire running into Russia is owned by monopolistic big wigs that control everything (and i'm sure they're making a killing).
i always wonder what would happen if i had enough investment money to run my own fiber from Helsinki and then offer unlimited traffic...
What, your car, local transit system and beach...
hey, don't forget the poo room!
The island in question is Thera (Santorini),
not to be a correction nazi, but Thera is the name of a town on the island of Santorini.
if you get the chance, by all means check it out; beautiful sunsets, amazing beaches. less than a kilometer from the island is a another small island that is still smoking (and hot) from volcanic activity. jump in the ocean near the island for a jacuzzi experience, clothes optional.
IANAL, but it sounds like the RIAA would definitely fine me for DLing music from here.
but the best part is, how could the RIAA ever find out? impossible, they cannot find out. you are 100 percent safe.
the RIAA and MPAA has zero jurisdiction here in Russia. why do you think piracy is as bad here as in the Asian countries? i would not be surprised if allofmp3.com license is made up and bogus, as it is not needed.
every street corner has CD shops loaded with the latest games, apps and music.
they also package MP3 CD's which is loaded with albums, lyrics and CD art. each CD is 65 roubles, which is about $2
very strange to see this story; i am currently working on getting credit card functionality for my mp3 distribution engine. my site is at least a month before seeing production, but the site will be 100 percent in english, has a beyond amazing collection (just under a terrabyte) and offers each song for a penny.
the thing slowing me down is getting a merchant account here in Russia that will allow me to do credit card transfers.
i am thinking that many people didn't like the fact that D&D gave someone the opportunity to play an evil character.
they didn't want kids to get the impression that being evil is a choice they they are allowed to make.
my friends are always telling me how they've finally switched from IE to Mozilla or Firebird.
it strikes me exactly the same way as if they said that they finally decided to stop walking in the bank and finally got an ATM card.
mozilla products passed IE in innovative features, speed and quality almost 2 years ago. back then, the only argument to keep using IE was all the MS only websites out there that only worked with IE.
that is no longer the case.
i spend most of everyday surfing the web using Firefox, and i have not run across a site that refuses to function in a long, long time.
standards really are a good thing, because if you create using a standard, then you maximize the availability of your work to customers.
there are many problems with IE in this day and age. the handling of CSS content is a joke. there is very limited PNG support. it lacks many innovative features that Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror have had for years.
the only reason why people still use IE is because it is readily available. most people don't know that they use IE, they just know they are using the web browser that came with the computer.
i was trying to get my dad to swtich from using IE for months, but he wouldn't have it. he's one of those types that completely freak out if you change anything on the computer. well, i finally convinced him to switch (he downloaded and installed it himself).
he has been so happy with the speed and features of Mozilla, that he jokes about the 'old' days when he didn't know what he was missing. oh, and he listens to my recommendations now.
that's the great thing about being the system administrator in charge; you get to name the servers whatever you want.
as an example, at my old firm, our main ldap/smb, ypserv and nfs server i named 'MOTHER', from the main computer in the original Alien movie. how appropriate too, that IBM Netfinity system really took care of our developers. Mother had an uptime of 378 days when our company decided to move our office. the new office was 20 miles away, and we contemplated keeping the machine on during the move as to not lose the uptime (we had a decent UPS).
in the end, we decided to shut her down during the transfer. as of today, she has 286 days. what a machine!
it appears that many sysadmins adopts some sort of naming theme, like calling each system after the name of a jet, or after southpark characters. i don't like this idea; each system really has it's own function and it should be aptly named in this regard.
boy, Mother sure was a good system. i really miss her.
You need a new gym to try! Plenty of "scenery" at mine!
ya, but what if you're not gay?
i also tried Geeklog and it was quite functional and loaded with features.
however, what i am really looking for is something more simple and with better date navigation.
i decided to roll my own. it's not complicated and it doesn't allow comments (yet), but i am able to add entries and add photos to entries.
navigating the entry archives is a snap also.
you can check it out here
well if that's the case, then you need to throw in a few 'move forwards' in there.
i deal with several companies in the states, and email from their CTO and CEO's are always peppered with 'moving forward' and 'move forward'.
it drives me insane! when Darl McBride kept telling open source folks shit like, 'yes, i know you're all concerned with weather or not our IP is in the kernel, but let's just move forward.'
how freakin assinine is that?
who says that MySQL is better than Oracle? i've never read or seen that anywhere. it is two different products in two different classes. they can't be compared.
it's all about the right tool for the right job.
coding up the next Ebay? use Oracle.
wanna keep track of your DVD collection? use MySQL.
i've used Oracle and Postgres, and i've setup triggers and stored procedures and hard relationships.. sure it's useful,
but it's rare when i'm doing a project that's out of scope of MySQL (and i can do all the trigger, stored procedure stuff within the application code, big deal).
MySQL also allows you to do rapid development of small to medium sized projects. what if one of my projects gets so big that i need to scale it up? well, if i am so unfortunate to have one of my projects go big time, then i'm sure i'll get big dollars and redesign the project for the big leagues.
here's another example:
i was working for a small company that finally recieved it's funding (15 mil for 10 employees). well, the company started hiring corporate types left and right.
well, these corporate folks had little to do except dress nice and figure out how to spend our funding.
i was called into the CTO's office. he sat me down and explained to me that he wanted to setup a database to store employee information (address, phone number, normal stuff). at that point we had about 25 employees. i was like, no problem i'll setup a MySQL database with a PHP front end and have it done this afternoon.
he told me to do nothing and wait for the Oracle people that were coming the next day to discuss licensing.
my jaw hit the floor.
but this is exactly the problem. people don't realize which tool they should use for what job.
So you write shit code that doesn't fit the standards ("liberal" code), your shitty compiler doesn't notice and compiles it anyway, and then it's Microsoft's fault when their standards conforming compiler won't compile it?
well, isn't that the way bad html works with Internet Explorer?
M. O. O. N.
/me ducks!
that spells toolkit!
Point is, even if Russia can't pull off the funding, it would be a nice thing to try.
America puts safety first in high risk operations these days. the 'flying by the seat of your pants' days of the space race are over. there is too much public pressure for NASA to make any mistakes, so anything with too much risk is out of the question. how in the world will America be able to accomplish such a risky operation like going to Mars with all this public pressure?
However, Russia is the perfect candidate (and always has been) for testing extremely high risk equipment and/or situations. why? because although Russia thinks about safety, it's not the number one concern; the number one concern is success.
when Russia loses a cosmonaut in some accident, they don't halt their space program for years at a time for a complete investigation. they theorize what the problem could be, make adjustments and press on.
If the world really wants to put a human on planet Mars in the next 20 years, the best idea would be for the world (including USA) to fund Russia to accomplish such a mission. I guarentee they will do it for the smallest amount of money and in the shortest amount of time.