It's a thought, but one would need to read the terms on the SDK veeeery carefully.
Also, is there support presently for signing an app in such a way as to make it specific to an individual PSP? (I suppose one could add a stub to the beginning of submitted binaries forcing that, so long as the systems have a unique identifier of some sort).
You're forgetting the context. The challenge was thus: Find some mechanism that will permit Sony to allow homebrew gamees without likewise allowing piracy. I think I designed a system within those constraints. If you don't like those constraints... well, that's a different issue.
And frankly, you're wrong. As much as you and I might wish it to be otherwise, consumers' grip over their own hardware is fading, with both legislation and low-level (ie. not easily circumvented) technological measures reinforcing that loss. You and I may continue buying hardware we can control (I don't own a PSP) -- but we're the minority. Do you actually expect to have the right or technological ability to read 99.5% of copyrighted, commercially-produced content 20 years down the road without DRM regulating the process?
So how can we help Sony design a way to authenticate that homebrew apps aren't in fact pirated games?
Provide a mechanism by which folks can either:
- Send a homebrew game in for automated signing (after basic automated validation using some straightforward heuristics that the game doesn't look pirated -- say, validate that there are no consecutive 1K blocks that match those from any commercially published game after some basic normalization like removing NOPs) for use on ONE PSP, for free, with minimal turnaround time, with a limit on how many requests an individual can make per day (so crackers can't repeatedly attempt to break the automated system or, once they've broken it, churn out copies signed for tons of PSPs).
- Send a homebrew game for manual validation that it isn't a ripoff of a commercial game. If it passes manual validation (which would of course require automated validation as a prerequisite), it gets signed for use on *all* PSPs. The individual who sends it in is charged some token amount ($5-$10) to discourage folks from generating excessive workload for Sony's staff.
Hmm -- that's a mostly-valid point, and a good reason to consider dual-heading. Many WMs will let you set decorations on a per-window basis, though, and GTK widgets (inside the right kind of packbox) try to resize themselves as appropriate to fit the window size they're in -- but you're still generally right that they don't do as much as they could to minimize screen-area usage.
That particular issue depends on your WM and usage thereof. If you can trivially set your toolbox to be always-on-top, then it's something of a moot point.
If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit
To give a more concrete example of what the other folks are saying:
If you're designing graphics for a print brocure or (as in my case recently) wedding invitation, and you're not trying to do photographs, a vector graphics program is just the thing: You can edit your work easily, and the final result can be rendered at whatever resolution it's going to be printed at. Many effects which are a PITA if possible at all via raster software (such as shaped text) are standard features in good vector editors.
If you're retouching a photo, you need a raster editor. Period. So really, you can't replace one with the other. They both have their place, and both are necessary.
Stock-based compensation is just a way for a company to hold something over you.
Take out the "just", and that's true.
You are encouraged to continue working for the company because you can't actually get the money you've already earned.
I'm every bit as able to access my lieu-of-pay options now as I would be if I went elsewhere; they're good for a 8 years or so from the paycheck where they're earned. On the other hand, my departure could have an impact on the future value of those options -- so I stay, and put in effort to build the infrastructure we need to fill our contracts, such that the future value of those options is maximized.
If you could change your compensation to cash, you would be better off (less risk).
Less potential upside, too. Risk isn't the only factor to be considered in determining whether to take a given course of action, no?
FYI, I appreciate your input; being where I am, what I hear tends to be substantially weighted. Getting a feel for the extent and direction of such weighting (via comparing it to outside input) is quite interesting.
Of course the enitre book is copyrighted. But the rhymes themselves are obviously public domain. Could I just take the text of those rhymes from the copyrighted book and publish my own book?
So long as the publishers of the book didn't change the rhymes at all (ie. modernizing the spelling), sure.
It's not exactly an install-and-forget situation -- not remotely. The hardware is expensive, the support is labor-intensive (and most often involves sending people on-site to fix things that don't belong to us), and the set of 3rd-party software we need to write integrations for is massive.
Oh -- and from what I hear, this particular system is much despised by most of the MDs who use it. Certainly, the ones we have on staff have little but contempt (granted, we're a competitor) and one of my coworkers who's spent some time as a VA patient has repeatedly heard similar sentiments.
Given that OSHA has stated that it isn't an employer's responsibility to inspect employees' home offices, I don't see much need for this to be an issue of concern.
Then I must be an outlier -- I've never once worked at a tech company without a VPN and an intranet accessible by SSL. My guess would, thus, be dramatically different from yours.
Perhaps it would be better if someone actually collected some data?
For support, maybe...and that's exactly what they're getting here.
Novell are pretty nice people to work with in a business context -- they understand taking care of their customers, and are big enough to have someone local pretty much wherever you are, have influence with vendors who need influencing, and so forth. They certainly understand the customer-centric thing better than Red Hat does, though I've never dealt with Canonical comercially so I can't comment on them in a business context.
(Not relevant for the school district necesarily, but being one of the 2 linux distros Oracle will actually officially support is a pretty darned big selling point too).
In terms of innovation in interactivity... they've had years to try interactive ads on the web, and apparently the best way to get the user involved in their ad is to ask you to Punch the Monkey. (no thanks)
There's good reason to think that having a dedicated thumbs up/down button would be more effective than the attempts at making web ads interactive:
"Punch the Monkey" and its kin are uninteresting to the sophisticated user because... well, they're uninteresting. They're not asking for your opinion, and if did and you gave it, your reward would be... more ads! OTOH, being able to push a thumbs up/down button which lets them know you're watching enough to form an opinion, but doesn't show you more ads for your trouble, has an entirely separate and much more interesting value proposition.
So all they care about is a button that says "I paid attention to this advertisement". Which is basically the fast-forward button
Not really. The FF button can say "I didn't pay attention to this ad", but it's only a negatitve indicator -- you could have walked into the kitchen or run to the bathroom or done any number of things while not pushing the FF button (though admittedly you could have pushed pause as well) -- and it doesn't by its existance encourage you to pay more attention. Ad-rating buttons, on the other hand, would both act as a positive indicator and, at least as importantly, encourage the viewer to pay more atttention.
Yes, but if you're rating the ad for goodness, you're also paying some attention to it, thus getting their product's name further embedded in your head.
It's a nifty idea -- by making ad-watching more interactive, they increase the number of people who will do it voluntarily.
The only company worth working for and "sharing the vision" is the one you own.
Well, that's what stock-based compensation does. I own (or have options to buy at negligible cost) a sufficiently large chunk of my employer as to give me a quite substantial interest in its success.
Hey -- I'm making lousy money and being paid mostly in lottery tickets, and I didn't make any attempt to hide that. Thing is, I'm happy/motivated -- and getting employees into that mental state without excessive outlay is kind of the whole point of this article, no?
Oh, ya. I've contracted to a few startups (the ones w/funding) and that "dipshit CEO" is routinely a sociopath who doesn't give two hoots about you as long as he gets his way.
Yah, my last startup was like that, though I didn't find out 'till well after I left. (They're still in business over 3 years later, btw, and it was an exceedingly kickass place to work in the engineering department -- and our engineering manager did a great job of insulating us from the politics, so we didn't find out how messed up things were 'till the various ex-employees compared notes on representations made to us by the mgmt).
On this one, though, I've got coworkers who actually came back to this CEO's second startup after his first one went bust. If the CEO were the sort to piss everyone off and disappear, such would presumably not be the case.
Not all options take time to vest. I've got retention options, which take time to vest and go away 30 days after my employment terminates -- but then I've got compensation options, which are vested the moment I get them and stick around even if I leave the company.
And yes, I'm one of those people who's doing the insane thing and taking options in lieu of compensation at a tech company. There's a pretty decent chance I'll come out of it well, though -- and if not, the existant-though-small paycheck was enough to see me through the local economy's rough patch, and give me time to find contacts so that my next job search will be shorter than my last one.
Back towards topic, briefly -- the options are motivating, certainly: At their current rate I have enough to pay off more than half my mortgage, though selling the shares while we're privately held is difficult. If we do well... well, that'll be good, very good. The other part of my motivation, though, is ego: Having a chance to be in an organization where I, personally, can and do make a difference is what makes the difference to me (yaaay startups!) -- and this is the point where management's actions (and the respect or lack thereof implicit in said actions) comes into play. If we don't have money for perks, I understand -- it's a startup, after all, and we don't even have money for equipment or new personnel or proper paychecks for the folks currently on staff -- but its people (and the product we've developed) are what the company does have, and that needs to be understood.
At this point, then, it's not really about the immediate income, or extras, or such: It's about the pontential upside later, and the fun and respect inherent in the job now. And that works for me. (That said, we do have a company-stocked break room -- though two buildings ago, I and the other employees bought food out of our personal funds. Now, when something along those lines is done it's departmental-level -- we've grown to the point where instead of being one tribe we're split into groups, but there's still a reasonable level of comeraderie).
Oh, and that "dipshit CEO" issue you mention is the other nice thing about startups: We're small enough that we know where the CEO lives -- the folks who were around a month or so longer than me remember when the company was based in his house. We know where his office is (and his door's open), we know his wife, we know his kids, we go to his parties. We aren't nameless, faceless employees to him -- and if he were to screw us over, he'd hear about it.
There's a distinction between winning a battle and winning a war, you know. One can win on a small(er) scale, without achieving one's ultimate, strategic goals.
Showing any substantial amount of societal-level reaction in response to an attack which generates only a tiny number of casualties (compared to, say, automobile accidents or heart attacks) is arguably demonstrating that such actions are capable of causing a disproportionate response -- supporting the conclusion that perhaps, in the future, a large response in line with strategic goals such as those you mentioned might be feasible.
Let's say, for the sake of an argument, that you were right -- that the chance of being harmed by a 3rd party while playing this game on account of being mistaken for engagement in terrorist activities were a substantial one.
Let's say that this risk were 3x the ambient risk level of folks spending time outside in the city (muggings, automobile accidents, etc). I think this is an outrageously exaggerated number, but I'll grant it to you for the sake of this argument.
Now: Do you consider it worthwhile to walk around outside? I do -- indeed, I used to spend time going for long walks in the supposedly "bad parts" of San Jose, CA at night, and presently go for walks at night near my home in Austin, TX (which, while not in a particularly bad part of town itself, happens to be rather near some relatively high-crime-rate areas -- certainly, onesuch is within the range I walk in). Of course, this is a personal assessment: How much are the exercise and mental-health benefits worth? Certainly, you may not consider such worthwhile -- but would you say that walking around outside in an urban area at night violates common sense?
Now, if it's not inherently unreasonable for me to walk around town three nights after dark, is it somehow more unreasonable for me to spend one day playing a game with other members? Certainly, this game would have substantial benefits -- as an opportunity to meet people (thus, mental health and socialization benefis), an opportunity to become better acquainted with my city's public transit system, and also a chance to get some exercise. Is it untenable to evaluate these benefits as on-par with those of three of my evening strolls?
About why I believe 3x (or even.1% of) the ambient risk to be a huge strech, btw: Remember, the things we hear about in the media are extreme outliers. They happen only to very small numbers of people -- and there are a lot of people in the world (even just the areas covered by 1st-world media), such that incidents which one hears about in the media even with substantial regularity still will quite frequently have a almost-nil probability of happening to you or I as individuals. Consequently, I find it much better (and healthier) to live a life without such fears.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a thought, but one would need to read the terms on the SDK veeeery carefully.
Also, is there support presently for signing an app in such a way as to make it specific to an individual PSP? (I suppose one could add a stub to the beginning of submitted binaries forcing that, so long as the systems have a unique identifier of some sort).
You're forgetting the context. The challenge was thus: Find some mechanism that will permit Sony to allow homebrew gamees without likewise allowing piracy. I think I designed a system within those constraints. If you don't like those constraints... well, that's a different issue.
And frankly, you're wrong. As much as you and I might wish it to be otherwise, consumers' grip over their own hardware is fading, with both legislation and low-level (ie. not easily circumvented) technological measures reinforcing that loss. You and I may continue buying hardware we can control (I don't own a PSP) -- but we're the minority. Do you actually expect to have the right or technological ability to read 99.5% of copyrighted, commercially-produced content 20 years down the road without DRM regulating the process?
Optimist.
So how can we help Sony design a way to authenticate that homebrew apps aren't in fact pirated games?
Provide a mechanism by which folks can either:
- Send a homebrew game in for automated signing (after basic automated validation using some straightforward heuristics that the game doesn't look pirated -- say, validate that there are no consecutive 1K blocks that match those from any commercially published game after some basic normalization like removing NOPs) for use on ONE PSP, for free, with minimal turnaround time, with a limit on how many requests an individual can make per day (so crackers can't repeatedly attempt to break the automated system or, once they've broken it, churn out copies signed for tons of PSPs).
- Send a homebrew game for manual validation that it isn't a ripoff of a commercial game. If it passes manual validation (which would of course require automated validation as a prerequisite), it gets signed for use on *all* PSPs. The individual who sends it in is charged some token amount ($5-$10) to discourage folks from generating excessive workload for Sony's staff.
As a first attempt, how's that sound?
Hmm -- that's a mostly-valid point, and a good reason to consider dual-heading. Many WMs will let you set decorations on a per-window basis, though, and GTK widgets (inside the right kind of packbox) try to resize themselves as appropriate to fit the window size they're in -- but you're still generally right that they don't do as much as they could to minimize screen-area usage.
'play hide and seek with your toolbox'
That particular issue depends on your WM and usage thereof. If you can trivially set your toolbox to be always-on-top, then it's something of a moot point.
If all the linux distros get rid of GIMP in the next release in favor of Inkscape, this thing is gonna be a hit
To give a more concrete example of what the other folks are saying:
If you're designing graphics for a print brocure or (as in my case recently) wedding invitation, and you're not trying to do photographs, a vector graphics program is just the thing: You can edit your work easily, and the final result can be rendered at whatever resolution it's going to be printed at. Many effects which are a PITA if possible at all via raster software (such as shaped text) are standard features in good vector editors.
If you're retouching a photo, you need a raster editor. Period. So really, you can't replace one with the other. They both have their place, and both are necessary.
One person, out of hundreds of thousands. I'll take those chances.
FYI, I appreciate your input; being where I am, what I hear tends to be substantially weighted. Getting a feel for the extent and direction of such weighting (via comparing it to outside input) is quite interesting.
You don't.
Of course the enitre book is copyrighted. But the rhymes themselves are obviously public domain. Could I just take the text of those rhymes from the copyrighted book and publish my own book?
So long as the publishers of the book didn't change the rhymes at all (ie. modernizing the spelling), sure.
This is public domain software -- it's not under any license, because nobody owns it, but anyone who has a copy can do whatever they want with it.
I'm working in this field.
It's not exactly an install-and-forget situation -- not remotely. The hardware is expensive, the support is labor-intensive (and most often involves sending people on-site to fix things that don't belong to us), and the set of 3rd-party software we need to write integrations for is massive.
Oh -- and from what I hear, this particular system is much despised by most of the MDs who use it. Certainly, the ones we have on staff have little but contempt (granted, we're a competitor) and one of my coworkers who's spent some time as a VA patient has repeatedly heard similar sentiments.
Given that OSHA has stated that it isn't an employer's responsibility to inspect employees' home offices, I don't see much need for this to be an issue of concern.
I'm guessing a single digit percentage at most.
Then I must be an outlier -- I've never once worked at a tech company without a VPN and an intranet accessible by SSL. My guess would, thus, be dramatically different from yours.
Perhaps it would be better if someone actually collected some data?
For support, maybe ...and that's exactly what they're getting here.
Novell are pretty nice people to work with in a business context -- they understand taking care of their customers, and are big enough to have someone local pretty much wherever you are, have influence with vendors who need influencing, and so forth. They certainly understand the customer-centric thing better than Red Hat does, though I've never dealt with Canonical comercially so I can't comment on them in a business context.
(Not relevant for the school district necesarily, but being one of the 2 linux distros Oracle will actually officially support is a pretty darned big selling point too).
In terms of innovation in interactivity... they've had years to try interactive ads on the web, and apparently the best way to get the user involved in their ad is to ask you to Punch the Monkey. (no thanks)
There's good reason to think that having a dedicated thumbs up/down button would be more effective than the attempts at making web ads interactive:
"Punch the Monkey" and its kin are uninteresting to the sophisticated user because... well, they're uninteresting. They're not asking for your opinion, and if did and you gave it, your reward would be... more ads! OTOH, being able to push a thumbs up/down button which lets them know you're watching enough to form an opinion, but doesn't show you more ads for your trouble, has an entirely separate and much more interesting value proposition.
Yes, but if you're rating the ad for goodness, you're also paying some attention to it, thus getting their product's name further embedded in your head.
It's a nifty idea -- by making ad-watching more interactive, they increase the number of people who will do it voluntarily.
The only company worth working for and "sharing the vision" is the one you own.
Well, that's what stock-based compensation does. I own (or have options to buy at negligible cost) a sufficiently large chunk of my employer as to give me a quite substantial interest in its success.
On this one, though, I've got coworkers who actually came back to this CEO's second startup after his first one went bust. If the CEO were the sort to piss everyone off and disappear, such would presumably not be the case.
Not all options take time to vest. I've got retention options, which take time to vest and go away 30 days after my employment terminates -- but then I've got compensation options, which are vested the moment I get them and stick around even if I leave the company.
And yes, I'm one of those people who's doing the insane thing and taking options in lieu of compensation at a tech company. There's a pretty decent chance I'll come out of it well, though -- and if not, the existant-though-small paycheck was enough to see me through the local economy's rough patch, and give me time to find contacts so that my next job search will be shorter than my last one.
Back towards topic, briefly -- the options are motivating, certainly: At their current rate I have enough to pay off more than half my mortgage, though selling the shares while we're privately held is difficult. If we do well... well, that'll be good, very good. The other part of my motivation, though, is ego: Having a chance to be in an organization where I, personally, can and do make a difference is what makes the difference to me (yaaay startups!) -- and this is the point where management's actions (and the respect or lack thereof implicit in said actions) comes into play. If we don't have money for perks, I understand -- it's a startup, after all, and we don't even have money for equipment or new personnel or proper paychecks for the folks currently on staff -- but its people (and the product we've developed) are what the company does have, and that needs to be understood.
At this point, then, it's not really about the immediate income, or extras, or such: It's about the pontential upside later, and the fun and respect inherent in the job now. And that works for me. (That said, we do have a company-stocked break room -- though two buildings ago, I and the other employees bought food out of our personal funds. Now, when something along those lines is done it's departmental-level -- we've grown to the point where instead of being one tribe we're split into groups, but there's still a reasonable level of comeraderie).
Oh, and that "dipshit CEO" issue you mention is the other nice thing about startups: We're small enough that we know where the CEO lives -- the folks who were around a month or so longer than me remember when the company was based in his house. We know where his office is (and his door's open), we know his wife, we know his kids, we go to his parties. We aren't nameless, faceless employees to him -- and if he were to screw us over, he'd hear about it.
There's a distinction between winning a battle and winning a war, you know. One can win on a small(er) scale, without achieving one's ultimate, strategic goals.
Showing any substantial amount of societal-level reaction in response to an attack which generates only a tiny number of casualties (compared to, say, automobile accidents or heart attacks) is arguably demonstrating that such actions are capable of causing a disproportionate response -- supporting the conclusion that perhaps, in the future, a large response in line with strategic goals such as those you mentioned might be feasible.
Let's say, for the sake of an argument, that you were right -- that the chance of being harmed by a 3rd party while playing this game on account of being mistaken for engagement in terrorist activities were a substantial one.
.1% of) the ambient risk to be a huge strech, btw: Remember, the things we hear about in the media are extreme outliers. They happen only to very small numbers of people -- and there are a lot of people in the world (even just the areas covered by 1st-world media), such that incidents which one hears about in the media even with substantial regularity still will quite frequently have a almost-nil probability of happening to you or I as individuals. Consequently, I find it much better (and healthier) to live a life without such fears.
Let's say that this risk were 3x the ambient risk level of folks spending time outside in the city (muggings, automobile accidents, etc). I think this is an outrageously exaggerated number, but I'll grant it to you for the sake of this argument.
Now: Do you consider it worthwhile to walk around outside? I do -- indeed, I used to spend time going for long walks in the supposedly "bad parts" of San Jose, CA at night, and presently go for walks at night near my home in Austin, TX (which, while not in a particularly bad part of town itself, happens to be rather near some relatively high-crime-rate areas -- certainly, onesuch is within the range I walk in). Of course, this is a personal assessment: How much are the exercise and mental-health benefits worth? Certainly, you may not consider such worthwhile -- but would you say that walking around outside in an urban area at night violates common sense?
Now, if it's not inherently unreasonable for me to walk around town three nights after dark, is it somehow more unreasonable for me to spend one day playing a game with other members? Certainly, this game would have substantial benefits -- as an opportunity to meet people (thus, mental health and socialization benefis), an opportunity to become better acquainted with my city's public transit system, and also a chance to get some exercise. Is it untenable to evaluate these benefits as on-par with those of three of my evening strolls?
About why I believe 3x (or even