I'm not sure H1-Bs are something to get too angry about, they at least have to pay the same rent we do. But the rest I sympathize with.
There are many critical industries and professions that are suffering from the offshoring craze, if enough people could organize a walkout, something would get fixed. It's not just IT, but software engineers, electricical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. all over the country are pissed off. We can't be replaced quickly, and companies will suffer incredible losses.
I hate unions, I don't advocate forming one, but they do have one tactic that gets the attention of the rich: turning off the money machine.
Actually this would be great for the US. Let European corporations figure out how to effectively switch away from MS, and then we can just swoop in and adopt the finished product.
No, not hopeless. You just need a lot of time and money. Intelligence can actually hurt you, unless you really know how each subsystem works. I would argue it's almost impossible to know that, unless you designed it and spent a lot of time playing with DirectX.
If resolution effects performance, then you know you are fill rate limited. In theory, with modern games, your CPU should not be involved with the fill rate. Your CPU would only be involved in that if it was using the software rasterizer, or the game is rendering bitmaps and transferring them to the graphics device each frame (I/O bottleneck). It may do that if your video card does not support some shader feature, if the game is doing some effect that can't be implemented in hardware or there is a driver bug. You can't tell which of those it is without trying different drivers (upgrade OR downgrade), and/or different cards/cpu's. CPUs OUGHT to only be doing scene management, collision detection, picking & interface management. Their biggest bottleneck is usually memory bus bandwidth (unless you're paging, in which case your HD, but just add memory). That said, there are a lot of neat effects which make even that assumption untrue, some of the time.
It's one thing if something is not performing and you want to figure out the one component that was screwing you up. That you can figure out with a little thinking and a small amount of swapping. It's quite another to find the best set of CPU, Memory, MB Chipset & Video Card(s). I think that is maybe not hopeless, but a frustratingly large amount of work even if you're a really smart guy. -
No one has invested the time yet. They said FlexLM couldn't be cracked at one point, but many applications have been and most of those are CAD type things that very few people work on. If StarForce becomes popular, it'll get beaten down, and worse, because it is so obnoxious, someone could make a business out of cracking it and supporting "legit owners" who want it off their system.
Unless directx is emulating a missing feature from the video card in software. It will do that on occasion, and it won't be obvious just from reading performance monitor outputs what is going on.
I don't think this quest for global bottleneck optimization is likely to be successful unless you have a lot of time and a lot of money to buy hardware. The only good way to do it is brute force, mixing and matching every likely combination. If you think about it too much and try to read the tea leaves of performance numbers, you'll go crazy.
It's a whole lot of frustration for something that is always in flux. One driver release could change your results. I guess that would infuriate me enough to give up computing forever.
Given that MS has complained to the government about the shortage of technical workers, it is news, kind of. If there were a real shortage, you would expect to see salaries of its tech workers shooting through the roof due to their inability to hire, and desire to keep what they have.
This article, subtley, calls bullshit on them. And, as you say, it's the whole rest of the industry. There must be a great lie going on.
You can't read the article and not wonder who paid for it, although it does say so at the bottom. It is propoganda intended to divide, not a reasoned argument on a controversial topic.
His article compares all open source to some extremist cult, and holds Stallman out as the leader of the next inquisition against common sense, with even such revolutionaries as Torvald's saying "he's gone too far". There is no argument, very few facts, and a whole lot of bizarre analogy. Who he works for is perhaps more important than what he says. Clearly he's having a problem and wishes to divide and conquer. Knowing that, we can now realize that there is no war between the GPLv2 and GPLv3.
I think Linus himself said while the GPLv3 isn't for him, and isn't for his kernel, it has value on other applications (he gave examples, I don't recall what). That's actually a rational position for anyone who wants to write software and keep it free. Licenses are tools, choose the best tool for your job.
Then Google will be compelled to explain differences between stated expectations and results. They expect 500% growth, get 450%, people bitch and moan about "falling short", even though it's still stunning growth. You think I exaggerate but I work at a company that has had steady growth for years, almost a decade except for one hiccup around 2000/2001, but if it's one cent off it's stated growth mark, people panic! The company is solid, well run, and generally managed with as much of a clue as can be had in a very competitive market.
If Google wants to do things different, I'm all for it. Shareholders aren't owed anything except an honest reporting of company status and a vote. Otherwise buying stock continues to be a high risk investment. There are no guarantees, there should be no guarantees.
Not doing any deep investigation into our genome, I can point to the increasing number of politicians and lawyers and a decreasing number of scientists and engineers. Leading to my fear not that evolution has stopped, but that it is in fact unstoppable and BAD.
Still not interesting unless they've identified the exact function of each of those 30k genes already. I'm much more interested in engineering than history.
Actually it was the title bar of the article that turned me off. The PhD with the vacant yet slightly joyful expression said "No content here". I could be wrong, but first impressions are everything.
I don't think we need the original paper, I learned this in high school biology. Evolution never stops, there is no perfectly evolved thing. The question is whether our current evolution pattern is actually in our best interest, or if the dumb are outbreeding the smart (and on the side, are such things genetics based, or social).
Some people feel that "forward" evolution has stopped. It's messy to define "forward", and messier to figure out if it has stopped.
I agree 100%, except that they COULD try to pull that, and it'll end up costing him some money to defend. I'd bet he wins, but it might be more hassle than he's willing to endure.
So first off, anyone who "asks slashdot" about legal issues is asking for public opinion, not legal fact. I did not need to preface this with "IANAL", but I did so to call attention to the fact that slashdot is the wrong forum. You can't get legal advice from anyone but a lawyer you have arragements with. It's stupid even to go to somewhere like groklaw and ask for advice. Pay a lawyer or take your chances.
Second, reverse engineering IS legal. Your cynicism is masking that fact. Yes, it is dangerous, but the question sounded like some frustrated guy who figured out a file format all by himself. There are dozens of things he could have done to make his particular reverse illegal, but I suspect he did so honestly or he wouldn't be asking. Lawyers could clarify the subject, all us geeks are going to say is "if you didn't cheat, it's OK".
Third, the DMCA makes reverse engineering copy protection methods illegal. This particular part of the DMCA has not been tested, ever, on purpose. It probably would get thrown out. It is unlikely that someone would crack copy protection on purpose, without intent to enable piracy. But it has been done, and no charges filed on that issue. That is why I made the statement about "being willing to get drug through the mud".
Fourth, you don't need to be a lawyer to make statements about what is right. Most of law is what society thinks is right vs. wrong turned in to words that can then be applied equally and fairly. Very often the written law is well behind public opinion, and one way that changes is by forcing it.
Finally, Engineering 101. When in doubt, shout it out.
IANAL, don't do anything based on slashdot. But if you determined all that stuff without access to any proprietary documents, then you are free to do release it. Reverse engineering is still legal. If you had access to someones proprietary information, however, then you'd better not or talk to a real live lawyer who can give you legal advice.
I think the only sticky part may revolve around the DMCA if by releasing this info you are enabling piracy. It doesn't look like it, but someone may try to wrap it that way. The law probably says this is always wrong. If you aren't afraid to get drug through the mud, and if your intentions are truly honest, that law could be knocked down as illegal. It's untested and unfair, hence it's not likely to stay. But if your intentions aren't pure they'll fry you on other counts and you'll wish you stayed quiet.
I've said it before, but be very careful about estimating the price of components sold in consumer systems. Volumes speak volumes. A component we may buy in small quantities (1000) can cost 1/2 to 1/4 if sold in high volumes with a volume commitment (usually 100k/year is where it starts). Designs of mine have been estimated at costs of "$400" by marketing, but the actual COGS was closer to $100-$150 after negotiations.
People assume there is some discount on goods costs with volumes, I don't think many people realize how high it really is. I don't think they're losing money on XBox 360 hardware, nor do I think Sony will lose on the PS3. If money is lost it's warranty/returns.
Nothing has fundamentally changed except perhaps long distance service, there is some actual competition there, sometimes.
Cell's compete against each other. To some degree cell voice service is good competition against wireline voice service. But data? No way. Cell service will always cost more for less bandwidth, it's just signal to noise ratios.
If they could separate the bandwidth provider from the service provider for both phone & cable, that would go a long way to finding real competition. Voice, video...it's all data. The technology exists to ensure that what real time issues arise can be dealt with. All we need is someone to pry the cold dead fingers of monopoly exec's from the access networks.
People who enjoyed games as kids play as adults with their kids. Shock, dismay.
People who enjoyed playing football as kids, watch football as adults and live vicariously through their kids playing football.
The only people who wouldn't expect this are people who didn't play games as kids. They also happen to be the social types with lots of misconceptions about what 'normal' is.
In a city you'd have ordinances and "CC&Rs" preventing you from building any structure over 6'. They're called ordinances in cities, and home owners associations in suburbs. In both cases they're pwn3d by local monopolies which feel their overpriced service adequately suits your needs. The flock of old ladies who think the towers are "eye sores" are their weapons.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure H1-Bs are something to get too angry about, they at least have to pay the same rent we do. But the rest I sympathize with.
There are many critical industries and professions that are suffering from the offshoring craze, if enough people could organize a walkout, something would get fixed. It's not just IT, but software engineers, electricical engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. all over the country are pissed off. We can't be replaced quickly, and companies will suffer incredible losses.
I hate unions, I don't advocate forming one, but they do have one tactic that gets the attention of the rich: turning off the money machine.
Actually this would be great for the US. Let European corporations figure out how to effectively switch away from MS, and then we can just swoop in and adopt the finished product.
No, not hopeless. You just need a lot of time and money. Intelligence can actually hurt you, unless you really know how each subsystem works. I would argue it's almost impossible to know that, unless you designed it and spent a lot of time playing with DirectX.
If resolution effects performance, then you know you are fill rate limited. In theory, with modern games, your CPU should not be involved with the fill rate. Your CPU would only be involved in that if it was using the software rasterizer, or the game is rendering bitmaps and transferring them to the graphics device each frame (I/O bottleneck). It may do that if your video card does not support some shader feature, if the game is doing some effect that can't be implemented in hardware or there is a driver bug. You can't tell which of those it is without trying different drivers (upgrade OR downgrade), and/or different cards/cpu's. CPUs OUGHT to only be doing scene management, collision detection, picking & interface management. Their biggest bottleneck is usually memory bus bandwidth (unless you're paging, in which case your HD, but just add memory). That said, there are a lot of neat effects which make even that assumption untrue, some of the time.
It's one thing if something is not performing and you want to figure out the one component that was screwing you up. That you can figure out with a little thinking and a small amount of swapping. It's quite another to find the best set of CPU, Memory, MB Chipset & Video Card(s). I think that is maybe not hopeless, but a frustratingly large amount of work even if you're a really smart guy. -
No one has invested the time yet. They said FlexLM couldn't be cracked at one point, but many applications have been and most of those are CAD type things that very few people work on. If StarForce becomes popular, it'll get beaten down, and worse, because it is so obnoxious, someone could make a business out of cracking it and supporting "legit owners" who want it off their system.
Unless directx is emulating a missing feature from the video card in software. It will do that on occasion, and it won't be obvious just from reading performance monitor outputs what is going on.
I don't think this quest for global bottleneck optimization is likely to be successful unless you have a lot of time and a lot of money to buy hardware. The only good way to do it is brute force, mixing and matching every likely combination. If you think about it too much and try to read the tea leaves of performance numbers, you'll go crazy.
It's a whole lot of frustration for something that is always in flux. One driver release could change your results. I guess that would infuriate me enough to give up computing forever.
That isn't evidenced by the graphics of the games being shown at my local target on their fancy HDTV. It looks like a PC game with detail turned down.
Given that MS has complained to the government about the shortage of technical workers, it is news, kind of. If there were a real shortage, you would expect to see salaries of its tech workers shooting through the roof due to their inability to hire, and desire to keep what they have.
This article, subtley, calls bullshit on them. And, as you say, it's the whole rest of the industry. There must be a great lie going on.
You can't read the article and not wonder who paid for it, although it does say so at the bottom. It is propoganda intended to divide, not a reasoned argument on a controversial topic. His article compares all open source to some extremist cult, and holds Stallman out as the leader of the next inquisition against common sense, with even such revolutionaries as Torvald's saying "he's gone too far". There is no argument, very few facts, and a whole lot of bizarre analogy. Who he works for is perhaps more important than what he says. Clearly he's having a problem and wishes to divide and conquer. Knowing that, we can now realize that there is no war between the GPLv2 and GPLv3. I think Linus himself said while the GPLv3 isn't for him, and isn't for his kernel, it has value on other applications (he gave examples, I don't recall what). That's actually a rational position for anyone who wants to write software and keep it free. Licenses are tools, choose the best tool for your job.
Then Google will be compelled to explain differences between stated expectations and results. They expect 500% growth, get 450%, people bitch and moan about "falling short", even though it's still stunning growth. You think I exaggerate but I work at a company that has had steady growth for years, almost a decade except for one hiccup around 2000/2001, but if it's one cent off it's stated growth mark, people panic! The company is solid, well run, and generally managed with as much of a clue as can be had in a very competitive market. If Google wants to do things different, I'm all for it. Shareholders aren't owed anything except an honest reporting of company status and a vote. Otherwise buying stock continues to be a high risk investment. There are no guarantees, there should be no guarantees.
PCs have had better graphics than the XBox 360 for several years. Consoles always lag.
But around here electricity is more expensive.
Forward is clearly evolution to becoming beings of pure energy and omnipotence. See Q: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(Star_Trek)
n ion.jpg
Backwards is evolution into beings of pure density and apotence, see politicians: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:State_of_the_U
Not doing any deep investigation into our genome, I can point to the increasing number of politicians and lawyers and a decreasing number of scientists and engineers. Leading to my fear not that evolution has stopped, but that it is in fact unstoppable and BAD.
Still not interesting unless they've identified the exact function of each of those 30k genes already. I'm much more interested in engineering than history. Actually it was the title bar of the article that turned me off. The PhD with the vacant yet slightly joyful expression said "No content here". I could be wrong, but first impressions are everything.
I don't think we need the original paper, I learned this in high school biology. Evolution never stops, there is no perfectly evolved thing. The question is whether our current evolution pattern is actually in our best interest, or if the dumb are outbreeding the smart (and on the side, are such things genetics based, or social).
Some people feel that "forward" evolution has stopped. It's messy to define "forward", and messier to figure out if it has stopped.
Given that they all eat things that had to die for them to survive, I call hypocrisy.
Quake 2 did this.
I agree 100%, except that they COULD try to pull that, and it'll end up costing him some money to defend. I'd bet he wins, but it might be more hassle than he's willing to endure.
So first off, anyone who "asks slashdot" about legal issues is asking for public opinion, not legal fact. I did not need to preface this with "IANAL", but I did so to call attention to the fact that slashdot is the wrong forum. You can't get legal advice from anyone but a lawyer you have arragements with. It's stupid even to go to somewhere like groklaw and ask for advice. Pay a lawyer or take your chances.
Second, reverse engineering IS legal. Your cynicism is masking that fact. Yes, it is dangerous, but the question sounded like some frustrated guy who figured out a file format all by himself. There are dozens of things he could have done to make his particular reverse illegal, but I suspect he did so honestly or he wouldn't be asking. Lawyers could clarify the subject, all us geeks are going to say is "if you didn't cheat, it's OK".
Third, the DMCA makes reverse engineering copy protection methods illegal. This particular part of the DMCA has not been tested, ever, on purpose. It probably would get thrown out. It is unlikely that someone would crack copy protection on purpose, without intent to enable piracy. But it has been done, and no charges filed on that issue. That is why I made the statement about "being willing to get drug through the mud".
Fourth, you don't need to be a lawyer to make statements about what is right. Most of law is what society thinks is right vs. wrong turned in to words that can then be applied equally and fairly. Very often the written law is well behind public opinion, and one way that changes is by forcing it.
Finally, Engineering 101. When in doubt, shout it out.
IANAL, don't do anything based on slashdot. But if you determined all that stuff without access to any proprietary documents, then you are free to do release it. Reverse engineering is still legal. If you had access to someones proprietary information, however, then you'd better not or talk to a real live lawyer who can give you legal advice.
I think the only sticky part may revolve around the DMCA if by releasing this info you are enabling piracy. It doesn't look like it, but someone may try to wrap it that way. The law probably says this is always wrong. If you aren't afraid to get drug through the mud, and if your intentions are truly honest, that law could be knocked down as illegal. It's untested and unfair, hence it's not likely to stay. But if your intentions aren't pure they'll fry you on other counts and you'll wish you stayed quiet.
I've said it before, but be very careful about estimating the price of components sold in consumer systems. Volumes speak volumes. A component we may buy in small quantities (1000) can cost 1/2 to 1/4 if sold in high volumes with a volume commitment (usually 100k/year is where it starts). Designs of mine have been estimated at costs of "$400" by marketing, but the actual COGS was closer to $100-$150 after negotiations.
People assume there is some discount on goods costs with volumes, I don't think many people realize how high it really is. I don't think they're losing money on XBox 360 hardware, nor do I think Sony will lose on the PS3. If money is lost it's warranty/returns.
Nothing has fundamentally changed except perhaps long distance service, there is some actual competition there, sometimes.
Cell's compete against each other. To some degree cell voice service is good competition against wireline voice service. But data? No way. Cell service will always cost more for less bandwidth, it's just signal to noise ratios.
If they could separate the bandwidth provider from the service provider for both phone & cable, that would go a long way to finding real competition. Voice, video...it's all data. The technology exists to ensure that what real time issues arise can be dealt with. All we need is someone to pry the cold dead fingers of monopoly exec's from the access networks.
Funny, the original death star (see the AT&T logo) was destroyed nearly 22 years ago. Now, a new one is being built, right in front of our faces.
s/FunPhone/CellPhone/g
s/Goofy/The Boss/g
Pretty much the more things change, the more they stay the same.
People who enjoyed games as kids play as adults with their kids. Shock, dismay.
People who enjoyed playing football as kids, watch football as adults and live vicariously through their kids playing football.
The only people who wouldn't expect this are people who didn't play games as kids. They also happen to be the social types with lots of misconceptions about what 'normal' is.
There's nothing to see here, move along.
In a city you'd have ordinances and "CC&Rs" preventing you from building any structure over 6'. They're called ordinances in cities, and home owners associations in suburbs. In both cases they're pwn3d by local monopolies which feel their overpriced service adequately suits your needs. The flock of old ladies who think the towers are "eye sores" are their weapons.