You complain about a four year old operating system, you list off a bunch of complaints, and then you say you will ignore Longhorn, which fixes all those complaints.
My
With Longhorn, you can even write your own XML-based installation scripts.
Ok. Well, I can do this on linux today. In fact, I already have done it (I use an XML-based install/update script for a large application I'm developing). But I can even accomplish it with a simple call to rsync. No hidden settings, no scattered dll files. If I want, an application installs all in one directory. rsync that directory, and thats it- applications are updated and/or installed automatically.
Of course, I could also wait 3 years for windows to get to this point.
I'm sorry, but you're an idiot if you don't think.NET, WinFS, Avalon, and the rest of the Longhorn technologies aren't better than crappy old 2k.
I didn't say that they aren't better than 2k. In fact, you even quoted me saying "not worth waiting for". I don't think they are. I'm not totally convinced on.NET, a lot of it is marketing fluff, and it's being controlled by a corperation that will change everything, if it meets their business needs at the time (it's hard to maintain an application when the API is not totally documented and will randomly change).
Avalon has been done (XUL), and is cross-platform. I don't see the point in waiting 3 years for a proprietary version that's less mature.
WinFS is about the most interesting development, but worth the headaches of windows? Probably not. There are similar concepts in development for other OS's anyways.
I am not a developer, so please help me out. I am interested in this from an interoperability angle: XML was to bring open standards support to M$ documents. But, I read on/., XML is only a framework that allows proprietary schema to be used, so there is really no progress there.
Well, XML was really mostly a buzzword that PHB's and marketing types threw around a couple years ago. Remember how XML was going to allow business to automatically place orders, any device to get any piece of information, your toaster to talk to your fridge, etc.? Well, I guess what they failed to mention was that it had to actually be implemented in everything.
XML is a nice format, for some things: it's human readable, it's extensable, it's based in plaintext, so easy to compress/transmit/whatever, and it's a good way of representing objects in lists or a hierarchy (or both). To make it actually do anything though, you have to specify a format. For two business to talk to each other, they have to use the same formats, and provide the interfaces.
Now we are talking about XAML. Is this just a name for one of those proprietary schema in XML, or is it a new proprientary markup type trying to score off XML's name, or...?
I've actually never heard of XAML before, but according to Webopedia, it sounds like the same old crap, once again.:)
Likely scoring off XML's name isn't too far off, either. PHB's eat this stuff up.
I still run 2k on my home system (mostly out of lazyness really, theres nothing windows-specific that I really rely on, save a couple games on occasion). I still run 2k on all the workstations at work (except mine, which is RH). My PDC is NT4 on a 500mhz box, as it has been for 3 years, and once I get time it will become Samba3 (it also runs Apache and BIND).
I do have a 2k server, which is running our accounting system (unfortunately, the low-cost (under $1k) linux-based stuff didn't meet our needs, linux mid-market ($5-20k) doesn't exist, and the rest is $90k+). We ended up going with a mid-market windows-only solution, but that system is ready to be a terminal server.
I have all the pieces in place, and my ultimate plan here is to switch all our desktops over, once I find something that isn't going to reduce the 'feature set' of our desktops. An upgrade isn't really viable if I have to tell everyone "oh sorry, you can't select printing options when you print anymore, they can only be set in the driver options - which you can't access".
I'm just totally giving up on windows. It's just not worth the hassle anymore. I can't do any sort of automatic app installation, which is one of the things that bothers me a lot. Our office is small - 8 workstations - but it's big enough that it takes a lot of time to go around doing windowsupdate, installing version x.y+1 of whatever, etc. I never found a nice solution that didn't cost a lot of money. (And yes, I know 2k can do it. I've used it at another company, and we had to turn it off because it made things more difficult). This is the sort of thing that I can use rsync and a couple shell scripts for, and have a working solution in half an hour. Flexibility is key: My job is not to be a sysadmin (we're not even a computer-related business), so the less time I spend sysadmin-ing, the better.
Anyway, that kind of turned into a rant, and i'm not looking to fight with any of you MSCE's that are going to try and counter everything I've just said - I've heard it a million times. I'm just trying to point out that if you're going to wait, wait for something worth waiting for. I personally don't see longhorn adding anything that justifies the expense.
Note that uptime != availability, and it's only availability that counts.
Good call. But downtime definately == no availability.
Perhaps you've only been 50% available in those 280 days due to all the time you've spent mucking about trying to work out which services need restarting.
Ah. Now your inexperience in the *nix world shines through. There IS no guessing. Upgrade apache, restart the apache service (httpd.. maybe slightly confusing..). Upgrade mysql, restart mysqld. There's no guessing of what "svchost.exe" is running or why you're not allowed to restart certain services. (though maybe my windows inexperience shines through now?)
But once people start using session vars, they start using them in all their user interfaces as well, including forms for collecting data.
This sounds like you're talking about inexperienced progarmmers misusing session variables..:p
but regardless, you're complaining about adding extra data? A 'small' query, for keeping user login information is ok, but anything else isn't?
* Using form posts doesn't kill "friendly URLs" (whatever those are)
Well, you were refering to using hidden fields to pass information. Not ALL page loads are POSTS.. which is what I was refering to. If you want to use a hyperlink to get to another page, and still maintain whatever information you're trying to maintain, you have to pass it in the url. What I meant by 'friendly url' was simply not having it full of variables. I think this is of particular importance on, let's say, a front-end catalog site (where you can browse around and have a shopping cart before you've logged in). If your URL is full of variables, then it (usually) can't be bookmarked, or sent to someone else.
* If you're using a session cookie, the back button won't log you back in, because you'll have killed it in your code, right? So it won't be there when the user goes "back"...
Well, no, I disagree. Now you're getting into what I meant by "security issues'. If your 'session' is controlled soley by the use of a cookie, sure, you can delete that cookie. But the user could also recreate that cookie (particularly easy using mozilla/firebird with the live headers extension). They could also modify it to do other things. perhaps change the userid and give themself access of another user.
To be fair, those are really all program design issues, and you did mention checking all user data. In my design, I never trust user data, and it's always checked. A good goal is being unhackable, even when you have the source and know all the values (this really goes without saying though.. so i shouldn't have bothered saying it really:) ). My solution to that problem is typically storing sensitive data on the server-side, using sessions. It's impossible for the user to modify them without using the interface, and the interface doesn't trust user data to begin with, so it makes it impossible to modify sensitive data in a way that's harmful. Perhaps there's a better solution, but I'm unaware of it.
You also complain about putting 'too much' in session variables, then chastize me for mentioning bandwith issues with storing data on the client-side. Bandwidth of the private 100mbit (or faster) network between the web and database server is precious, but the smaller pipe between the client and server, where you pay based on traffic, isn't?
Granted, it also adds overhead of requiring more RAM, resources, etc. But for the last few years, I've had the opinion that hardware is cheaper than programming time. I'd rather use the solution that is best suited to the job, than sarifice security or robustness just to save buying a stick of RAM. Of course, that can be taken to the extreme - You can put thousands of layers of abstraction and require huge arrays of computers to run it, and consider it 'good' design - but you have to rationalize where the line falls. And it usually follows the money. If you can make this great solution that reduces the load on the database server by storing things on client side (ignoring the fact that it costs more in bandwidth), but requires that you add in tons of extra security checks (programming time), instead of just using server-side variables and adding a bit more power to your db server (maybe you won't even need to do that initially), I don't think it's a good solution, since it ended up costing more money.
As far as putting sessions in a database, boy oh boy, I don't like that idea much at all. Calling out to a database (on a different server, since we're talking about cross-server sessions) every time you load a page and have to check the session adds in a nice little speed bump -- no thanks.
One query that returns one row. Total of maybe 2k transferred. Any page that uses sessions and is setup on clustered servers probably makes a bunch of other database calls already anyways. What's one more for a proper pattern-friendly solution?
If I really must have sessions and load balancing at the same time, I'll use one of the servers you mentioned, Websphere or Weblogic. But I can't really envision being too stubborn about wanting both.
I've never used either of these myself, but I would imagine that an entire server architecture (as basically a fancy abstraction layer) adds more overhead than makine one database call.
I'd rather use hidden form elements, myself. I know it's old fashioned, but it takes up fewer resources, causes fewer headaches, doesn't require app servers or databases (cheaper!), and is easier to debug.
Ok, let me make up a list of why NOT to use hidden form elements:
Takes up bandwidth (sending the form elements with data, and the user sending the results back)
Requires that every page be submitted as a form, which in turn means you have no "friendly" URLs, or all your pages are POSTs and the back button is uselss
The back button, for that matter, will log you back in, or restore an old state
Tons of possibly sensitive data could be cached
The user has access and can change values, this can sometimes be a major security problem
Perhaps the database point is ok - but on modern computers, mysql doesn't really add that much overhead. If you're at the point where the server is loaded up, then it should justify the cost of buying a second server (or cluster of them) anyways. Espessially when we're talking about free servers like mysql or postgres, which have both proven they hold ground against the big 3 in most situations.
I'm not even sure I agree it's easier to debug. I usually just dump out values at the bottom of the page when debugging; don't even have to click View Source and wade through a bunch of html.
Also, I do not feel that home theatre audio is anywhere near the quality of actual theatres. True, the encoding (dts, dolby digital) is the same, but the effect is not. Rarely are home theatres balanced properly, and even if that is the case, rarely are the room's acoustics proper. The effect that the loudspeakers have in the large theatre is completely different than the effect smaller speakers have in a home setup.
I have a Dolby digital reciever, and just some modest speakers. (Actually, all of that belongs to my roommate. I have some very good tower speakers, but they're not shielded (so screw up the tv) and his reciever doesn't do them justice anyways - the bass output on the front speakers is pretty low. it's desgined to be used with a sub).
Regardless of that, my living room is setup with the TV in the corner, and two couches in an L shape across from that. The sound system is setup for listening only across one wall really, so the rear speakers are to the side of it, and the front speakers are directly on either side of the TV, with the center on top of it. This is far from an ideal setup, but it was a tradeoff of being able to fit in all the furniture and not get major problems with glare from the window. (I should also mention this is in an apartment).
Even despite this, watching a movie that takes full use of surround sounds really good. With a proper setup (the TV in the center of a wall, with the room set up in a rectangular shape), it would sound even better. If it was in a regular house (so loudness doesn't result in superintendents banging on the door), with a properly designed room, I have no doubt I could get the same quality as a movie theater.
It's not too difficult to make a "properly designed room", either. In a house, ideally a basement room (no windows to rattle), carpet and perhaps acoustic tiles (eliminate sound bouncing around as much as possible), size the sub a bit bigger since concrete doesn't let vibrations travel as well as a wood floor, make sure there's proper lighting (central overhead lights = bad, small lights and reflecting off walls = good). It's just a few extra steps that make a big difference.
I probably do have a bit more experience with these things than most people, as I've done lots of work with theatrical and concert lighting design, tuning sound systems and working as a DJ. But it's definately not unreasonable to get a good quality system in a house, equal to that of a theater.
I guess my provider didn't use verisign in the first place?
No, everyone "uses" verisign. They control the database for the gTLDs.com and.net, so all nameservers everywhere on the internet listen to them. When a nameserver tries to resolve a name, it first goes to the root nameservers (A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, etc. There's 13 of them. I believe verisign runs two of those, ISC (people that make BIND) run one, I'm not sure who else does). Verisign basically controls what those servers do. They added a wildcard entry for *.com - anything that's not specifically picked up by a registered domain will be connected to their sitefinder server.
We are an Educational Institution though, so that could be the reason.
The quality and sound are equal or better than the theater
Either you're going to some shitty movie theatres, or some amazing home setups.
Consider:
Most of the time in a theater, you can see scratches and dust and such on the film, which you don't see on a DVD. (Some theaters are better, and this typically gets worse the longer the movie has been out. I've never been to a digital theater, but they wouldn't have this problem)
A theater's sound system is the same as a home theater dolby digital setup. As long as you have decent speakers and not-too-close neighbours, the sound is at the least, as good.
As far as shitty theaters - yes, I went to one of the old-style ones where the seats are only on a low angle not too recently. My house kicks ass compared to those - my couch is more comfortable, and if someone (for some strange reason) sits so their head is in my way, I have no problems throwing things at them until they move:)
They should invest, partner, encourage more theatres like the IMAX franchise. As I understand the Matrix has done very well in those venues and cannot be duplicated in any other environment.
Give the movie goer a REASON to see the movie in a theatre, make us CHOOSE the theatre instead of our living room/computer monitor/etc.
This is a good point. In the past, going to the theater was an experience, because they had a huge screen, and a great sound system, and you couldn't see a movie like that anywhere else.
Today, lots of people have big TV',s, dvd players, and dolby digital surround systems. The quality and sound are equal or better than the theater, and the perceived size of the screen is pretty close to the same (since you typically sit closer than in a theater, unless you're one of those weirdos that loves the first row..).
It'll be quite a few years before we start getting IMAX systems in our homes. They should be using that to their advantage, and making and showing movies that just aren't the same if you don't see them in IMAX.
Meanwhile, cable companies like Cox have already implemented a total blackhole on *outgoing* SMTP. Not only is this annoying for people who run servers, but it also sucks for those of us with POP/IMAP accounts... if I'm connected from home I have to set my outgoing SMTP to Cox, and when I come in to work I have to flip it back to my company's mail server.
I've always thought that ISPs should add a default "smtp" zone for their customers that resolves to their mail server. That way, you can set your progarm up to use "smtp" and no matter where you are, it will resolve properly.
Now, as far as blocking port 25, I've always thought that was a great idea as well, until last week. Our office has used BellZinc's DSL for connectivity. A few months ago, our smtp suddenly stopped working, and after calling tech support, they told me they had accidentally left port 25 on one of their racks unblocked (and I happened to be on that rack) so they had fixed the situation. (Actually, I had to call twice to find that out, the first guy had no clue whatsoever).
So I switched the smtp server in the office to resolve to Bell's, and all was good. But we've had a few interruptions, espessially over the last couple weeks, where we couldn't send mail at all. After talking to tech, it turns out their mail server is being hammered by whatever virus-of-the-week was hitting windows, and was unusable. I was blown away by their lack of willing to help me: they wouldn't unblock port 25 for me (even to one specific IP), and they has no answers to "Well, what am I supposted to tell everyone in the office? No email for... an unknown amount of time?"
Of course, I could have just set up my server to accept mail on another port, but that would have been a pain for me - local change on every client, instead of one SMTP fix. Anyways, as of Monday, we have a new ISP. (I won't get into how Bell tried to tell us we had a 1-year contract and wanted to charge us 4 extra months for breaking. They couldn't send us any proof, but apparently it was a "verbal" contract. Wow.)
Anyways, I'm a little mixed on blocking port 25. I don't know what a better solution would be. Perhaps not allowing a computer running Windows to directly connect to the internet. Or maybe monitoring the email sent, and setting either a limit on the number per day, or just watching for patterns of mass mailings.
pray, what might be the reasons for admins to have spam moving? To increase their job security?
The same reasons that top-teir backbone providers are totally unwilling to help block spam. If a spammer buys some bandwidth from some ISP, and starts sending GB's of spam, that ISP gets lots of money. For the top-teirs, they get to charge for the spam coming across their pipes (both the people sending and the people reciving). They get to charge more when half of the emails bounce.
An admin of an individual server/company wouldn't necessiarily want spam moving, but the tertiary people (ie, the bandwidth providers and ISPs), in addition to the spammers or the people they're spamming for, are making money.
All we need to do is start sending out.sxw and.sxc attachments.
You know, this has always irritated me. Why is some specialized document format used for sending documents back and forth? With Word, it spreads problems like macro viruses. Yes, at least an open format is nicer because you don't require a $600 office suite to read it.
But shouldn't we really be using PDF or something similar? Then there are no issues with document formatting - it looks exactly like it would when you print it. There are no issues with having office suite x and/or y. There are tons of free converters - in fact, OOo 1.1 has a button to do it in one click - and free viewers.
We've been using PDF at my office for at least a couple years now (though the primary wordprocessor here is WordPerfect.. I'm trying to migrate to OOo right now). But basically any attachment is sent out with PDF. It makes things easier for our staff (who aren't great with computers) because all they have to do is print to PDF, save, and then send the email.
For collaboration, use text files, or just plain email, then one person can sit down and format the document. I don't understand why sending.doc files is so widely used.
In advertising, where costly post-production of commercials can take longer than the production itself, the potential savings are vast. "To edit a 30-second spot can take half a day," said Ms. Gaines of Prime Image, but takes just minutes with the company's technology.
I fail to see how this could be true. The commercial is still the same length, it's just played back faster (ie, a 30second spot is played back in 20 seconds). That means there's still 30 seconds of footage to edit.
Sure, you can use fast playback to go through the different takes and find the best one, but you still have to do the same number of cuts, and the same amount of work producing titles and logos. I've done a lot of post-production editing, am I missing something?
I used to work for a dot bomb, and I signed an NDA while I was working there. It was a bit of an interesting situation, because there was me and a graphic designer working there at the time. We were basically doing regular website-type work, and eventually created a CMS framework that started to get decent enough that some VC's got interested. At that point, we hired some more people and they created NDAs for them to sign.
We actually said no to the first NDA they came up with, which had some pretty rediculus clauses (I can't remember the exact terms, but I think it said something like not being allowed to work at another "computer company" for 2 years or something, and a few other stupid things). Anyways, the real guts of the NDA were to protect the company from people leaving and going to other companies, which I don't think is unreasonable.
Basically, it was the standard sort of "don't tell our competitors what/how we're doing". It also said that employees were not allowed to go work for other companies doing the exact same thing for 6 months (something like that). I'm sure a lot of programmers on/. will cry out at that.. but really, it makes sense.
If I were to get a better job offer from a competitor, it could be damaging to the company I was at, as well as giving the competitor an advantage. I would have inside knowledge of what's implemented, how (a particularly good one), and what's planned. If they were trying to catch up with features, I'd have some insight into how to do it since I'd done it before at the other company (ie, I know what not to do, what customers thought (if there was feedback), etc). Basically, the competitor would get a version 2 of everything, without going through any problems that might have been found with version 1.
The current company would also have to find someone to replace me, and then train them about any specifics of the product. Obviously, whoever they hire won't know the codebase as well as I did, so they'll set back the project timeframes a bit while they get up to speed. That alone could make ir worth it to steal staff from other companies.
While I agree with some of the points in the article about ideas (which/.ers have already talked about quite a bit), they are necessary for some things.
Why don't you focus that animosity towards something more damaging like the fricken flyers on every lamp post saying "10K+ a month, part time, work from home"???
How is that "more damaging" ? While yes, it's perhaps ugly to see flyers stuck up all over the place, they're just visual - you can easily ignore them by not looking at them.
It's like banner ads on webpages. It doesn't take much to become conditioned to ignoring them. When ads first started appearing in the middle of article text, they were very obtrusive and annoying. Now people are used to them, and it's easy to skip right past. Your brain just instantly says 'thats an ad, no interest to me' with perhaps the slight few that get your attention somehow. (And note to banner desingers/PHB's/whatever: that doesn't mean flashing graphics! That actually makes it worse, your brain just treats it as 'white noise' and totally blocks it out).
I can notice this effect personally (and I'm sure many others can too) when I start reading an article that has an image for a headline (instead of using HTML). I'll be reading, and thinking 'what the hell is this about?' because to me, it just seemed to dive right into whatever it is talking about.. I'll have to sit back and take an overview of the page, then suddenly I realize that the headline is in giant letters right at the top. The problem was, my brain filtered it out just like it would for an ad or any other crap they stick in.
Back to the flyers-vs-spam issue: while flyers are something you can look past and ignore, spam is something that you have to directly deal with. Perhaps it's pressing delete, perhaps it's setting up a filter (and hoping it doesn't catch anything legitimate). To take it to the real world, spam is less like flyers on lampposts, and more like a door-to-door salesman. Forces you to answer the door, and deal with him (slamming the door, to telling him what hole to put whatever he's selling in).
I'd much rather have to ignore 40 flyers (by turning my eyes to another direction) than deal with even a couple salesman every day.
Plug your TV into a switched outlet on the back of the reciever. At this point you never use your tv remote again. The TV is basically a monitor and it turns on and off with the reciver.
Too bad this doesn't work with most moden TV's. If it even turns on when the power comes back, a lot of TV's try to force you to do an auto-setup before you can even watch anything.. and a lot default to channel 2 or something, and not A/V input.
Pressing the button on the remote to switch the input to the DVD should also switch the remote mode.
I have a Kenwood reciever that has a learning remote (with a small LCD display at the top) that does this. It's quite handy. I would love to get a Palm or something and program it as a touchscreen remote. I know a couple remotes actually exist using a touch-screen LCD, but I've never used them . It's an expensive solution, but it's really the best there is right now, I think. Buttons are always labelled properly, you can totally change the layout depending on what mode you're in..
10. SOLE REMEDY
Your use of the verisign services is at your own risk. If you are dissatisfied with any of the materials, results or other contents of the verisign services or with these terms and conditions, our privacy statement, or other policies, your sole remedy is to discontinue use of the verisign services or our site.
Translation: If you don't like what we did, stop using DNS.
(btw,/. wouldn't let me post that as it was, in all caps. Why do lawyers do that? It is a proven fact that people often skip past sections of text like that, since it seems like noise and the brain just filters it out.. Is that just another tactic by lawyers (besides making licence agreements inane, long, and boring in the first place) to make you skip over certain sections? Make you think you read it all and agree anyways, even though your brain just filtered out the part removing them of all liablity..
Check out point 14. If you spell a domain incorrectly, your accept the terms:
14. AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND.
By using the service(s) provided by VeriSign under these Terms of Use, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by all terms and conditions here in and documents incorporated by reference.
IANAL, but is there any legal precidence about this type of licence? Isn't this the same sort of thing as having to open a sealed box to be able to read the licence, which then states that by unsealing the box you've agreed to the licence?
I have a feeling that their licence would totally fall over in court - since there is no consent - which means that nothing in the licence would be enforcable, and despite what section 12 says (they're not liable for damages/whatever resulting from their 'service'), you could probably do something like.. sue them for any spam (provided your jurisdiction has laws against spam) that got past your spam filters because it failed the valid domain name check.
- Highlight text with the left mouse button
- Paste selected text with the middle mouse button
Yeah, this is great. Until you're, say, pasting a url into a browser. You have to either manually delete the old url using Del/Backspace, paste the new url and then delete the old one, or highlight the old url with the mouse, delete it, use Klippy or whatever (or switch back to the application and copy it again) to get the new url again, and finally paste it.
I've been using a linux desktop at work for months now, but that's still a constant source of irritation.
Does anyone know what happened to WordPerfect support? From the whitepapers on Sun's site, it's supposted to have support for WP6 (or 7? It doesn't really matter, as the format as been the same since then).
I have thousands of documents in WPD format, so it's one of the problems with migrating to either Star or OpenOffice.org.
Think of the backlash if the RIAA is 'successful' in their current endavours to end illegal copying and filesharing. Here I define 'successful' as having such a strong effect in stopping people from downloading music, that sales of CD burners go down (no one is copying and/or burning their own CD's), sales of MP3 players go down (no one wants to even rip CD's to mp3 for fear of being sued). (and yeah, I know that won't happen because there's many legitimate uses, but bear with me for a second).
Now, suddenly, the $500billion electronics industry that makes CD burners and MP3 players is going to be seeing declining sales. And the $50 billion record industry sales went up a couple billion. Which industry do you think has more power?
The whole situation is pretty strange. Consider that Sony Electronics makes something like $40 billion a year. And Sony Entertainment makes around $4 billion. Sony Entertainment is a record company, and part of the RIAA. Sony Electronics makes CD burners, MP3 players, Car CD players that can play MP3's, Computers, and various other electronics used in these 'illegal' copying pratices. Do you think AOL-TW makes more money from their record company division, or their ISP division (that allows people to download using p2p)?
Maybe someone can shed some light on who's making these decisions in the RIAA and why these companies are allowing it to do what it's doing.
Making and promoting an album only costs a million dollars because the industry wants it to cost a million dollars because that keeps out competition
I definately don't agree with this. While yeah, they may inflate the price artifically a little bit, it's still expensive to produce a high-quality album.
Consider that studio time in a professional studio is expensive, and it takes a while to record an album. Plus you have to pay a sound engineer, plus time for mastering. Then you have to produce CD's, including artwork, and pay for all the copies you initially print. Although it's possible to do a lot of this very cheaply with modest computer hardware nowadays, it's not the same quality. Studio's are not cheap to build. And I think pitch correctors are expensive, too, and come on, half the people on the radio now couldn't be there without one;)
There's also a lot of other expenses. A music video can easily cost $500k to produce. There may also be other advertising. You also have to pay the band, manager, promoters, etc (and record company exec's..).
and they get to deduct all the costs from the artists' shares.
Well, this is the paying-back part of the 'loan' ('advance', in industryspeak). They put up the money and help you make the album, then your album sales pay back that investment, and eventually you start actually making money off it. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with this system, in theory. Do you think as a band, if you failed, and had gotten the loan from a bank, they're going to say "oh, well, your music didn't catch on, don't worry about paying back that $1 million we lent you"?
The problem I have with the US media tax is that the money goes to the RIAA members, not the artists, not smaller music labels.
In Canada, the tax goes to a non-profit organization called the Canadian Private Copying Collective. They distribute royalties based on radio airplay and retail sales data, which is pretty fair, since it should at least somewhat closely reflect what's being copied.
SOCAN is the non-profit agency that distributes royalties based on public performance (radio, tv, bars, clubs, malls, etc), similar to ASCAP I guess.
I'm not as familliar with the situation in the US, but it seems like it's controlled by the wrong people (who have a direct interest in paying themselves more and screwing over the consumer) as opposed to an independent agency. Of course, the RIAA, who has the most say over the situation (holding the contracts of many, many artists, and the chequebook in the face of the politician's campaigns) will have no desire to change it.
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My With Longhorn, you can even write your own XML-based installation scripts.
Ok. Well, I can do this on linux today. In fact, I already have done it (I use an XML-based install/update script for a large application I'm developing). But I can even accomplish it with a simple call to rsync. No hidden settings, no scattered dll files. If I want, an application installs all in one directory. rsync that directory, and thats it- applications are updated and/or installed automatically.
Of course, I could also wait 3 years for windows to get to this point.
I'm sorry, but you're an idiot if you don't think .NET, WinFS, Avalon, and the rest of the Longhorn technologies aren't better than crappy old 2k.
I didn't say that they aren't better than 2k. In fact, you even quoted me saying "not worth waiting for". I don't think they are. I'm not totally convinced on .NET, a lot of it is marketing fluff, and it's being controlled by a corperation that will change everything, if it meets their business needs at the time (it's hard to maintain an application when the API is not totally documented and will randomly change).
Avalon has been done (XUL), and is cross-platform. I don't see the point in waiting 3 years for a proprietary version that's less mature.
WinFS is about the most interesting development, but worth the headaches of windows? Probably not. There are similar concepts in development for other OS's anyways.
Well, XML was really mostly a buzzword that PHB's and marketing types threw around a couple years ago. Remember how XML was going to allow business to automatically place orders, any device to get any piece of information, your toaster to talk to your fridge, etc.? Well, I guess what they failed to mention was that it had to actually be implemented in everything.
XML is a nice format, for some things: it's human readable, it's extensable, it's based in plaintext, so easy to compress/transmit/whatever, and it's a good way of representing objects in lists or a hierarchy (or both). To make it actually do anything though, you have to specify a format. For two business to talk to each other, they have to use the same formats, and provide the interfaces.
Now we are talking about XAML. Is this just a name for one of those proprietary schema in XML, or is it a new proprientary markup type trying to score off XML's name, or...?
I've actually never heard of XAML before, but according to Webopedia, it sounds like the same old crap, once again. :)
Likely scoring off XML's name isn't too far off, either. PHB's eat this stuff up.
You know, that's exactly how I feel.
I still run 2k on my home system (mostly out of lazyness really, theres nothing windows-specific that I really rely on, save a couple games on occasion). I still run 2k on all the workstations at work (except mine, which is RH). My PDC is NT4 on a 500mhz box, as it has been for 3 years, and once I get time it will become Samba3 (it also runs Apache and BIND).
I do have a 2k server, which is running our accounting system (unfortunately, the low-cost (under $1k) linux-based stuff didn't meet our needs, linux mid-market ($5-20k) doesn't exist, and the rest is $90k+). We ended up going with a mid-market windows-only solution, but that system is ready to be a terminal server.
I have all the pieces in place, and my ultimate plan here is to switch all our desktops over, once I find something that isn't going to reduce the 'feature set' of our desktops. An upgrade isn't really viable if I have to tell everyone "oh sorry, you can't select printing options when you print anymore, they can only be set in the driver options - which you can't access".
I'm just totally giving up on windows. It's just not worth the hassle anymore. I can't do any sort of automatic app installation, which is one of the things that bothers me a lot. Our office is small - 8 workstations - but it's big enough that it takes a lot of time to go around doing windowsupdate, installing version x.y+1 of whatever, etc. I never found a nice solution that didn't cost a lot of money. (And yes, I know 2k can do it. I've used it at another company, and we had to turn it off because it made things more difficult). This is the sort of thing that I can use rsync and a couple shell scripts for, and have a working solution in half an hour. Flexibility is key: My job is not to be a sysadmin (we're not even a computer-related business), so the less time I spend sysadmin-ing, the better.
Anyway, that kind of turned into a rant, and i'm not looking to fight with any of you MSCE's that are going to try and counter everything I've just said - I've heard it a million times. I'm just trying to point out that if you're going to wait, wait for something worth waiting for. I personally don't see longhorn adding anything that justifies the expense.
Good call. But downtime definately == no availability.
Perhaps you've only been 50% available in those 280 days due to all the time you've spent mucking about trying to work out which services need restarting.
Ah. Now your inexperience in the *nix world shines through. There IS no guessing. Upgrade apache, restart the apache service (httpd .. maybe slightly confusing..). Upgrade mysql, restart mysqld. There's no guessing of what "svchost.exe" is running or why you're not allowed to restart certain services. (though maybe my windows inexperience shines through now?)
This sounds like you're talking about inexperienced progarmmers misusing session variables.. :p
but regardless, you're complaining about adding extra data? A 'small' query, for keeping user login information is ok, but anything else isn't?
* Using form posts doesn't kill "friendly URLs" (whatever those are)
Well, you were refering to using hidden fields to pass information. Not ALL page loads are POSTS.. which is what I was refering to. If you want to use a hyperlink to get to another page, and still maintain whatever information you're trying to maintain, you have to pass it in the url. What I meant by 'friendly url' was simply not having it full of variables. I think this is of particular importance on, let's say, a front-end catalog site (where you can browse around and have a shopping cart before you've logged in). If your URL is full of variables, then it (usually) can't be bookmarked, or sent to someone else.
* If you're using a session cookie, the back button won't log you back in, because you'll have killed it in your code, right? So it won't be there when the user goes "back"...
Well, no, I disagree. Now you're getting into what I meant by "security issues'. If your 'session' is controlled soley by the use of a cookie, sure, you can delete that cookie. But the user could also recreate that cookie (particularly easy using mozilla/firebird with the live headers extension). They could also modify it to do other things. perhaps change the userid and give themself access of another user.
To be fair, those are really all program design issues, and you did mention checking all user data. In my design, I never trust user data, and it's always checked. A good goal is being unhackable, even when you have the source and know all the values (this really goes without saying though.. so i shouldn't have bothered saying it really :) ). My solution to that problem is typically storing sensitive data on the server-side, using sessions. It's impossible for the user to modify them without using the interface, and the interface doesn't trust user data to begin with, so it makes it impossible to modify sensitive data in a way that's harmful. Perhaps there's a better solution, but I'm unaware of it.
You also complain about putting 'too much' in session variables, then chastize me for mentioning bandwith issues with storing data on the client-side. Bandwidth of the private 100mbit (or faster) network between the web and database server is precious, but the smaller pipe between the client and server, where you pay based on traffic, isn't?
Granted, it also adds overhead of requiring more RAM, resources, etc. But for the last few years, I've had the opinion that hardware is cheaper than programming time. I'd rather use the solution that is best suited to the job, than sarifice security or robustness just to save buying a stick of RAM. Of course, that can be taken to the extreme - You can put thousands of layers of abstraction and require huge arrays of computers to run it, and consider it 'good' design - but you have to rationalize where the line falls. And it usually follows the money. If you can make this great solution that reduces the load on the database server by storing things on client side (ignoring the fact that it costs more in bandwidth), but requires that you add in tons of extra security checks (programming time), instead of just using server-side variables and adding a bit more power to your db server (maybe you won't even need to do that initially), I don't think it's a good solution, since it ended up costing more money.
One query that returns one row. Total of maybe 2k transferred. Any page that uses sessions and is setup on clustered servers probably makes a bunch of other database calls already anyways. What's one more for a proper pattern-friendly solution?
If I really must have sessions and load balancing at the same time, I'll use one of the servers you mentioned, Websphere or Weblogic. But I can't really envision being too stubborn about wanting both.
I've never used either of these myself, but I would imagine that an entire server architecture (as basically a fancy abstraction layer) adds more overhead than makine one database call.
I'd rather use hidden form elements, myself. I know it's old fashioned, but it takes up fewer resources, causes fewer headaches, doesn't require app servers or databases (cheaper!), and is easier to debug.
Ok, let me make up a list of why NOT to use hidden form elements:
- Takes up bandwidth (sending the form elements with data, and the user sending the results back)
- Requires that every page be submitted as a form, which in turn means you have no "friendly" URLs, or all your pages are POSTs and the back button is uselss
- The back button, for that matter, will log you back in, or restore an old state
- Tons of possibly sensitive data could be cached
- The user has access and can change values, this can sometimes be a major security problem
Perhaps the database point is ok - but on modern computers, mysql doesn't really add that much overhead. If you're at the point where the server is loaded up, then it should justify the cost of buying a second server (or cluster of them) anyways. Espessially when we're talking about free servers like mysql or postgres, which have both proven they hold ground against the big 3 in most situations.I'm not even sure I agree it's easier to debug. I usually just dump out values at the bottom of the page when debugging; don't even have to click View Source and wade through a bunch of html.
I have a Dolby digital reciever, and just some modest speakers. (Actually, all of that belongs to my roommate. I have some very good tower speakers, but they're not shielded (so screw up the tv) and his reciever doesn't do them justice anyways - the bass output on the front speakers is pretty low. it's desgined to be used with a sub).
Regardless of that, my living room is setup with the TV in the corner, and two couches in an L shape across from that. The sound system is setup for listening only across one wall really, so the rear speakers are to the side of it, and the front speakers are directly on either side of the TV, with the center on top of it. This is far from an ideal setup, but it was a tradeoff of being able to fit in all the furniture and not get major problems with glare from the window. (I should also mention this is in an apartment).
Even despite this, watching a movie that takes full use of surround sounds really good. With a proper setup (the TV in the center of a wall, with the room set up in a rectangular shape), it would sound even better. If it was in a regular house (so loudness doesn't result in superintendents banging on the door), with a properly designed room, I have no doubt I could get the same quality as a movie theater.
It's not too difficult to make a "properly designed room", either. In a house, ideally a basement room (no windows to rattle), carpet and perhaps acoustic tiles (eliminate sound bouncing around as much as possible), size the sub a bit bigger since concrete doesn't let vibrations travel as well as a wood floor, make sure there's proper lighting (central overhead lights = bad, small lights and reflecting off walls = good). It's just a few extra steps that make a big difference.
I probably do have a bit more experience with these things than most people, as I've done lots of work with theatrical and concert lighting design, tuning sound systems and working as a DJ. But it's definately not unreasonable to get a good quality system in a house, equal to that of a theater.
No, everyone "uses" verisign. They control the database for the gTLDs .com and .net, so all nameservers everywhere on the internet listen to them. When a nameserver tries to resolve a name, it first goes to the root nameservers (A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET, etc. There's 13 of them. I believe verisign runs two of those, ISC (people that make BIND) run one, I'm not sure who else does). Verisign basically controls what those servers do. They added a wildcard entry for *.com - anything that's not specifically picked up by a registered domain will be connected to their sitefinder server.
We are an Educational Institution though, so that could be the reason.
Likely they just blocked it very quickly.
Consider:
- Most of the time in a theater, you can see scratches and dust and such on the film, which you don't see on a DVD. (Some theaters are better, and this typically gets worse the longer the movie has been out. I've never been to a digital theater, but they wouldn't have this problem)
- A theater's sound system is the same as a home theater dolby digital setup. As long as you have decent speakers and not-too-close neighbours, the sound is at the least, as good.
As far as shitty theaters - yes, I went to one of the old-style ones where the seats are only on a low angle not too recently. My house kicks ass compared to those - my couch is more comfortable, and if someone (for some strange reason) sits so their head is in my way, I have no problems throwing things at them until they moveGive the movie goer a REASON to see the movie in a theatre, make us CHOOSE the theatre instead of our living room/computer monitor/etc.
This is a good point. In the past, going to the theater was an experience, because they had a huge screen, and a great sound system, and you couldn't see a movie like that anywhere else.
Today, lots of people have big TV',s, dvd players, and dolby digital surround systems. The quality and sound are equal or better than the theater, and the perceived size of the screen is pretty close to the same (since you typically sit closer than in a theater, unless you're one of those weirdos that loves the first row..).
It'll be quite a few years before we start getting IMAX systems in our homes. They should be using that to their advantage, and making and showing movies that just aren't the same if you don't see them in IMAX.
I've always thought that ISPs should add a default "smtp" zone for their customers that resolves to their mail server. That way, you can set your progarm up to use "smtp" and no matter where you are, it will resolve properly.
Now, as far as blocking port 25, I've always thought that was a great idea as well, until last week. Our office has used BellZinc's DSL for connectivity. A few months ago, our smtp suddenly stopped working, and after calling tech support, they told me they had accidentally left port 25 on one of their racks unblocked (and I happened to be on that rack) so they had fixed the situation. (Actually, I had to call twice to find that out, the first guy had no clue whatsoever).
So I switched the smtp server in the office to resolve to Bell's, and all was good. But we've had a few interruptions, espessially over the last couple weeks, where we couldn't send mail at all. After talking to tech, it turns out their mail server is being hammered by whatever virus-of-the-week was hitting windows, and was unusable. I was blown away by their lack of willing to help me: they wouldn't unblock port 25 for me (even to one specific IP), and they has no answers to "Well, what am I supposted to tell everyone in the office? No email for ... an unknown amount of time?"
Of course, I could have just set up my server to accept mail on another port, but that would have been a pain for me - local change on every client, instead of one SMTP fix. Anyways, as of Monday, we have a new ISP. (I won't get into how Bell tried to tell us we had a 1-year contract and wanted to charge us 4 extra months for breaking. They couldn't send us any proof, but apparently it was a "verbal" contract. Wow.)
Anyways, I'm a little mixed on blocking port 25. I don't know what a better solution would be. Perhaps not allowing a computer running Windows to directly connect to the internet. Or maybe monitoring the email sent, and setting either a limit on the number per day, or just watching for patterns of mass mailings.
The same reasons that top-teir backbone providers are totally unwilling to help block spam. If a spammer buys some bandwidth from some ISP, and starts sending GB's of spam, that ISP gets lots of money. For the top-teirs, they get to charge for the spam coming across their pipes (both the people sending and the people reciving). They get to charge more when half of the emails bounce.
An admin of an individual server/company wouldn't necessiarily want spam moving, but the tertiary people (ie, the bandwidth providers and ISPs), in addition to the spammers or the people they're spamming for, are making money.
Right. If it's not a windows box, you MUST be up to no good!
You know, this has always irritated me. Why is some specialized document format used for sending documents back and forth? With Word, it spreads problems like macro viruses. Yes, at least an open format is nicer because you don't require a $600 office suite to read it.
But shouldn't we really be using PDF or something similar? Then there are no issues with document formatting - it looks exactly like it would when you print it. There are no issues with having office suite x and/or y. There are tons of free converters - in fact, OOo 1.1 has a button to do it in one click - and free viewers.
We've been using PDF at my office for at least a couple years now (though the primary wordprocessor here is WordPerfect .. I'm trying to migrate to OOo right now). But basically any attachment is sent out with PDF. It makes things easier for our staff (who aren't great with computers) because all they have to do is print to PDF, save, and then send the email.
For collaboration, use text files, or just plain email, then one person can sit down and format the document. I don't understand why sending .doc files is so widely used.
Sure, you can use fast playback to go through the different takes and find the best one, but you still have to do the same number of cuts, and the same amount of work producing titles and logos. I've done a lot of post-production editing, am I missing something?
We actually said no to the first NDA they came up with, which had some pretty rediculus clauses (I can't remember the exact terms, but I think it said something like not being allowed to work at another "computer company" for 2 years or something, and a few other stupid things). Anyways, the real guts of the NDA were to protect the company from people leaving and going to other companies, which I don't think is unreasonable.
Basically, it was the standard sort of "don't tell our competitors what/how we're doing". It also said that employees were not allowed to go work for other companies doing the exact same thing for 6 months (something like that). I'm sure a lot of programmers on /. will cry out at that.. but really, it makes sense.
If I were to get a better job offer from a competitor, it could be damaging to the company I was at, as well as giving the competitor an advantage. I would have inside knowledge of what's implemented, how (a particularly good one), and what's planned. If they were trying to catch up with features, I'd have some insight into how to do it since I'd done it before at the other company (ie, I know what not to do, what customers thought (if there was feedback), etc). Basically, the competitor would get a version 2 of everything, without going through any problems that might have been found with version 1.
The current company would also have to find someone to replace me, and then train them about any specifics of the product. Obviously, whoever they hire won't know the codebase as well as I did, so they'll set back the project timeframes a bit while they get up to speed. That alone could make ir worth it to steal staff from other companies.
While I agree with some of the points in the article about ideas (which /.ers have already talked about quite a bit), they are necessary for some things.
How is that "more damaging" ? While yes, it's perhaps ugly to see flyers stuck up all over the place, they're just visual - you can easily ignore them by not looking at them.
It's like banner ads on webpages. It doesn't take much to become conditioned to ignoring them. When ads first started appearing in the middle of article text, they were very obtrusive and annoying. Now people are used to them, and it's easy to skip right past. Your brain just instantly says 'thats an ad, no interest to me' with perhaps the slight few that get your attention somehow. (And note to banner desingers/PHB's/whatever: that doesn't mean flashing graphics! That actually makes it worse, your brain just treats it as 'white noise' and totally blocks it out).
I can notice this effect personally (and I'm sure many others can too) when I start reading an article that has an image for a headline (instead of using HTML). I'll be reading, and thinking 'what the hell is this about?' because to me, it just seemed to dive right into whatever it is talking about.. I'll have to sit back and take an overview of the page, then suddenly I realize that the headline is in giant letters right at the top. The problem was, my brain filtered it out just like it would for an ad or any other crap they stick in.
Back to the flyers-vs-spam issue: while flyers are something you can look past and ignore, spam is something that you have to directly deal with. Perhaps it's pressing delete, perhaps it's setting up a filter (and hoping it doesn't catch anything legitimate). To take it to the real world, spam is less like flyers on lampposts, and more like a door-to-door salesman. Forces you to answer the door, and deal with him (slamming the door, to telling him what hole to put whatever he's selling in).
I'd much rather have to ignore 40 flyers (by turning my eyes to another direction) than deal with even a couple salesman every day.
Too bad this doesn't work with most moden TV's. If it even turns on when the power comes back, a lot of TV's try to force you to do an auto-setup before you can even watch anything.. and a lot default to channel 2 or something, and not A/V input.
Pressing the button on the remote to switch the input to the DVD should also switch the remote mode.
I have a Kenwood reciever that has a learning remote (with a small LCD display at the top) that does this. It's quite handy. I would love to get a Palm or something and program it as a touchscreen remote. I know a couple remotes actually exist using a touch-screen LCD, but I've never used them . It's an expensive solution, but it's really the best there is right now, I think. Buttons are always labelled properly, you can totally change the layout depending on what mode you're in..
(btw, /. wouldn't let me post that as it was, in all caps. Why do lawyers do that? It is a proven fact that people often skip past sections of text like that, since it seems like noise and the brain just filters it out.. Is that just another tactic by lawyers (besides making licence agreements inane, long, and boring in the first place) to make you skip over certain sections? Make you think you read it all and agree anyways, even though your brain just filtered out the part removing them of all liablity..
14. AGREEMENT TO BE BOUND.
By using the service(s) provided by VeriSign under these Terms of Use, you acknowledge that you have read and agree to be bound by all terms and conditions here in and documents incorporated by reference.
IANAL, but is there any legal precidence about this type of licence? Isn't this the same sort of thing as having to open a sealed box to be able to read the licence, which then states that by unsealing the box you've agreed to the licence?
I have a feeling that their licence would totally fall over in court - since there is no consent - which means that nothing in the licence would be enforcable, and despite what section 12 says (they're not liable for damages/whatever resulting from their 'service'), you could probably do something like.. sue them for any spam (provided your jurisdiction has laws against spam) that got past your spam filters because it failed the valid domain name check.
- Paste selected text with the middle mouse button
Yeah, this is great. Until you're, say, pasting a url into a browser. You have to either manually delete the old url using Del/Backspace, paste the new url and then delete the old one, or highlight the old url with the mouse, delete it, use Klippy or whatever (or switch back to the application and copy it again) to get the new url again, and finally paste it.
I've been using a linux desktop at work for months now, but that's still a constant source of irritation.
I have thousands of documents in WPD format, so it's one of the problems with migrating to either Star or OpenOffice.org.
well, it is a joke...
Now, suddenly, the $500billion electronics industry that makes CD burners and MP3 players is going to be seeing declining sales. And the $50 billion record industry sales went up a couple billion. Which industry do you think has more power?
The whole situation is pretty strange. Consider that Sony Electronics makes something like $40 billion a year. And Sony Entertainment makes around $4 billion. Sony Entertainment is a record company, and part of the RIAA. Sony Electronics makes CD burners, MP3 players, Car CD players that can play MP3's, Computers, and various other electronics used in these 'illegal' copying pratices. Do you think AOL-TW makes more money from their record company division, or their ISP division (that allows people to download using p2p)?
Maybe someone can shed some light on who's making these decisions in the RIAA and why these companies are allowing it to do what it's doing.
I definately don't agree with this. While yeah, they may inflate the price artifically a little bit, it's still expensive to produce a high-quality album.
Consider that studio time in a professional studio is expensive, and it takes a while to record an album. Plus you have to pay a sound engineer, plus time for mastering. Then you have to produce CD's, including artwork, and pay for all the copies you initially print. Although it's possible to do a lot of this very cheaply with modest computer hardware nowadays, it's not the same quality. Studio's are not cheap to build. And I think pitch correctors are expensive, too, and come on, half the people on the radio now couldn't be there without one ;)
There's also a lot of other expenses. A music video can easily cost $500k to produce. There may also be other advertising. You also have to pay the band, manager, promoters, etc (and record company exec's..).
and they get to deduct all the costs from the artists' shares.
Well, this is the paying-back part of the 'loan' ('advance', in industryspeak). They put up the money and help you make the album, then your album sales pay back that investment, and eventually you start actually making money off it. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with this system, in theory. Do you think as a band, if you failed, and had gotten the loan from a bank, they're going to say "oh, well, your music didn't catch on, don't worry about paying back that $1 million we lent you"?
The problem I have with the US media tax is that the money goes to the RIAA members, not the artists, not smaller music labels.
In Canada, the tax goes to a non-profit organization called the Canadian Private Copying Collective. They distribute royalties based on radio airplay and retail sales data, which is pretty fair, since it should at least somewhat closely reflect what's being copied.
SOCAN is the non-profit agency that distributes royalties based on public performance (radio, tv, bars, clubs, malls, etc), similar to ASCAP I guess.
I'm not as familliar with the situation in the US, but it seems like it's controlled by the wrong people (who have a direct interest in paying themselves more and screwing over the consumer) as opposed to an independent agency. Of course, the RIAA, who has the most say over the situation (holding the contracts of many, many artists, and the chequebook in the face of the politician's campaigns) will have no desire to change it.