Fractint was the first piece of true open source software that I ever saw and investigated.
I remember reading the indepth tale about how the Stone Soup group formed, how all the residents of the village came together and brought the little scraps of food they had, and made a soup that was definately better than any individual piece.
The software itself was a magnificent gem with more knobs and whistles than even Microsoft would dare to put into a program.
Nervously opening the source files however revealed something far far worse....
Its a spagetti jungle!
I was shocked for sure, It forced me to change the way I code, and to this day, whenever I see poor source code, I am reminded of Fractint.
Seriously, there will always be less advanced areas of any country where folks will work for less than in the big cities. The worst part about all this outsourcing, especially for certain things, is that the new lower paid employees do not have the local knowledge required to handle clients. Sure, some things can be handled extremely well, but theres a great swath of things that simply don't work.
I'm not talking specifically about the language barrier, though that obviously is a part of it, I'm talking about people not understanding basic country specific details.
I think if a market stall appeared selling dodgy copies of movies and albums, then I would also do something about it.
I have always been totally two faced about things like this. If no money is exchanged and its not being used commercially, then I don't see a problem. However, once people actually begin using actual cash, it DOES start to divert money from the real content providers, whoever they may be.
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.htm l
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Thats from a posting I made deeper in the comments. I think it might help with your clarifications.
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.htm l
Over here in the UK, having something strapped to your back beeping constantly (theres LOTS of cameras over here) would probably just make everyone think your a terrorist.
The bootleg market is no bigger than it was previously, it just spreads faster nowadays.
All it takes is for word to spread about one decent rip, and its worldwide in a couple of hours.
I really like the idea of watermarking movies, random spots and blotches places in the movie appear to be usable, but I'm dubious about the audio aspect of it, audio quality is very fiddly to get right, and its easy to lose fidelity and clarity with just a minor tweak.
Compare this with changing the position of a cloud in the sky during a certain scene. No real degrigation to the movie, noone notices its wrong, and it will carry through to virtually every dodgy tape out there, almost without caring about the resolution.
All you need is 32 such irrelivant scene modifications per movie and you have 4billion digit ID to play with.
Justin Frankel made one of the best little out of the way bits of software ever.:)
Still use it, never had a problem with it, it just works.
Exactly how software should be.
Now, onto the serious stuff:
The dupe google story - its gone, whats happened to any moderation - do ppl get their points back, does karma get restored etc. I ask because my comment history still shows comments with scores, but no comment linked in background.
The problem is, you tell people to use quotes and pluses and cryptic search terms.
When google cannot find anything, it comes up and tells them the opposite:
Tip: Try removing quotes from your search to get more results.
People don't need to know the quoting syntax, or the inclusion format rules, they just need to click the "Advanced Search".:)
When you make an comparison regarding how much better your way is than everybody elses, make sure your facts are clear. I agree it was a mistake, and I agree with your sentiment, but most users don't even know how to type a quote character.
Search terms: oriental rice recipe asian spice Search Results: Results 1 - 10 of about 254,000 for oriental rice recipe asian spice . (0.40 seconds) Search Effectiveness: REASONABLE. good list of relivent items matched.
Search terms: recipe+"oriental rice"+spice Search Results: Your search - recipe+"oriental rice"+spice - did not match any documents. Search Effectiveness: UTTER SHITE
The user wants SIMPLICITY. If google cannot give decent results for simple search criteria, then people will go elsewhere.
gMail advert area is normally 2 halves. Top section are "Sponsored Links", the bottom is "Related Pages".
Where I would usually go and investigate a subject being spoken about in mail, in gMail, I don't need to, because they supply me with a couple of usually relivent links.
I actually find the google ads amusing, enlightening, and quite scarily, well targetted.
It works, and can often help a conversation along by giving either information about a subject, or even purchasing info. Why bother searching google, when they do it for you:)
I like getting mails sent with the "Send To/Mail recipient" menu in Windows. Normally, its just a file, or a link I found at work, but every time I get adverts for Virus protection and related info. It amuses me every time.
In other places, adverts are just noise. They simply pad out a page. Like car engine noise or computer hum, you just tune it out. I have disabled all flash and animations on my computer however, I just cant read the article with distractions flashing before my eyes. Its not even as if its clever advertising.
You, me and every one of our competent friends maybe.
But Mr and Mrs Jones who live down the road and who got broadband so they could talk to their son in Australia (for instance) will follow the installation instructions and stick the cd in with it and go with the flow.
Try talking them through setting up a mail account? "its telling me I need to POP, is that healthy?"
Whereas the ISP supplied disk (as you rightfully point out) is not required, it comes configured to setup such trivial things with minimal fuss, a side effect however is the dropin Explorer issue.
Slashdot Mirror
Fractint was the first piece of true open source software that I ever saw and investigated.
I remember reading the indepth tale about how the Stone Soup group formed, how all the residents of the village came together and brought the little scraps of food they had, and made a soup that was definately better than any individual piece.
The software itself was a magnificent gem with more knobs and whistles than even Microsoft would dare to put into a program.
Nervously opening the source files however revealed something far far worse....
Its a spagetti jungle!
I was shocked for sure, It forced me to change the way I code, and to this day, whenever I see poor source code, I am reminded of Fractint.
But I live in England you insensitive clod!
Seriously, there will always be less advanced areas of any country where folks will work for less than in the big cities.
The worst part about all this outsourcing, especially for certain things, is that the new lower paid employees do not have the local knowledge required to handle clients. Sure, some things can be handled extremely well, but theres a great swath of things that simply don't work.
I'm not talking specifically about the language barrier, though that obviously is a part of it, I'm talking about people not understanding basic country specific details.
Now I remember why I got my sig...
:$
The HTML page numbers got me
They go from 001.html to 029.html.
Shame they arent the actual page numbers, the real page 30 is on 016.html.
+1 Subtle, VERY subtle infact :)
I think you whooooooooshed right over the heads of everyone.
post the reply you got :D
I think if a market stall appeared selling dodgy copies of movies and albums, then I would also do something about it.
I have always been totally two faced about things like this. If no money is exchanged and its not being used commercially, then I don't see a problem. However, once people actually begin using actual cash, it DOES start to divert money from the real content providers, whoever they may be.
Firefox is also item 11 on a generic search for evil!!!
MS really don't like competition.
Well, I can manage to fit my head into the microwave (was a tight fit, my beany nearly fell off).
But I can't find any way to get it going to test it.
I will repost this here for completeness.
m l
1 07 87737
------
This system is NOT automatic.
Heres what I found:
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.ht
------
Thats from a posting I made deeper in the comments. I think it might help with your clarifications.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=129343&cid=
This system is NOT automatic.
m l
Heres what I found:
PirateEye's hidden cameras scan a movie audience, eight seats at a time, looking for things resembling a camcorder lens. It takes 15 to 20 minutes to scan a 1,000-seat audience. Images are sent to a technician watching a computer screen, who might be monitoring several theaters at a time from as far away as India, according to S&EA. Potential camcorder lenses are indicated on the computer screen with tiny red dots.
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000097.ht
Over here in the UK, having something strapped to your back beeping constantly (theres LOTS of cameras over here) would probably just make everyone think your a terrorist.
The bootleg market is no bigger than it was previously, it just spreads faster nowadays.
All it takes is for word to spread about one decent rip, and its worldwide in a couple of hours.
I really like the idea of watermarking movies, random spots and blotches places in the movie appear to be usable, but I'm dubious about the audio aspect of it, audio quality is very fiddly to get right, and its easy to lose fidelity and clarity with just a minor tweak.
Compare this with changing the position of a cloud in the sky during a certain scene.
No real degrigation to the movie, noone notices its wrong, and it will carry through to virtually every dodgy tape out there, almost without caring about the resolution.
All you need is 32 such irrelivant scene modifications per movie and you have 4billion digit ID to play with.
Justin Frankel made one of the best little out of the way bits of software ever. :)
;)
Still use it, never had a problem with it, it just works.
Exactly how software should be.
Now, onto the serious stuff:
The dupe google story - its gone, whats happened to any moderation - do ppl get their points back, does karma get restored etc. I ask because my comment history still shows comments with scores, but no comment linked in background.
I think we need to know
The dupe has been dropped :)
2x google is enough for anyone.
Do the moderation points given in that article get returned?
The problem is, you tell people to use quotes and pluses and cryptic search terms.
:)
When google cannot find anything, it comes up and tells them the opposite:
Tip: Try removing quotes from your search to get more results.
People don't need to know the quoting syntax, or the inclusion format rules, they just need to click the "Advanced Search".
When you make an comparison regarding how much better your way is than everybody elses, make sure your facts are clear. I agree it was a mistake, and I agree with your sentiment, but most users don't even know how to type a quote character.
I see the difference...
Search terms: oriental rice recipe asian spice
Search Results: Results 1 - 10 of about 254,000 for oriental rice recipe asian spice . (0.40 seconds)
Search Effectiveness: REASONABLE. good list of relivent items matched.
Search terms: recipe+"oriental rice"+spice
Search Results: Your search - recipe+"oriental rice"+spice - did not match any documents.
Search Effectiveness: UTTER SHITE
The user wants SIMPLICITY. If google cannot give decent results for simple search criteria, then people will go elsewhere.
Its the KISS principle in effect.
It got Linux into the heads of PHBs didn't it?
Bad publicity is still publicity.
In the words of GWB - Mission accomplished!
gMail advert area is normally 2 halves. Top section are "Sponsored Links", the bottom is "Related Pages".
Where I would usually go and investigate a subject being spoken about in mail, in gMail, I don't need to, because they supply me with a couple of usually relivent links.
Therefore to answer your question, yes.
I actually find the google ads amusing, enlightening, and quite scarily, well targetted.
:)
It works, and can often help a conversation along by giving either information about a subject, or even purchasing info. Why bother searching google, when they do it for you
I like getting mails sent with the "Send To/Mail recipient" menu in Windows.
Normally, its just a file, or a link I found at work, but every time I get adverts for Virus protection and related info. It amuses me every time.
In other places, adverts are just noise. They simply pad out a page. Like car engine noise or computer hum, you just tune it out.
I have disabled all flash and animations on my computer however, I just cant read the article with distractions flashing before my eyes. Its not even as if its clever advertising.
In 20 years will Jim Ward have an interview with Reuters up?
Unless you happen to be a 12year old girl with RIAA type choice in music...
You, me and every one of our competent friends maybe.
But Mr and Mrs Jones who live down the road and who got broadband so they could talk to their son in Australia (for instance) will follow the installation instructions and stick the cd in with it and go with the flow.
Try talking them through setting up a mail account?
"its telling me I need to POP, is that healthy?"
Whereas the ISP supplied disk (as you rightfully point out) is not required, it comes configured to setup such trivial things with minimal fuss, a side effect however is the dropin Explorer issue.
Even ADSL needs connection info.
99% of Joe public will use the CD to install, and most will come with bloatware OTT software installation and connection configuration.
99% of ISP software I've seen checks browser versions and installs latest IExploder - they dont check the Windows prefered browser setting.
MSN has been the default page on default computers for years.
Just having a search on a different page means nothing.
Innovation is the only way MS will win in the search arena.
Speak to the REAL boss.
I hope he never reads slash.
His super powers would drain away and his cape would turn that nasty dark shades, and probably start drinking heavily.
Happens to the best of us..