...the sales numbers for flash-in-the-pan games. Not saying this is one, but we've seen it with just about every game on Facebook. Mobile games may not be much different.
Having worked with Mike before, I'm going to guess this isn't the case. He's an incredibly talented software engineer and has a good head for business as well. More likely, he saw that the ship was sinking and decided to get off.
One major caveat to this: storing data on S3 is not compatible with many types of compliance standards (PCI, SOX, HIPAA, etc.) If your business is required to have any particular types of compliance, either because the government requires it of you or your partners do, make sure you are storing the data offline. That's about the only way to do it and still meet compliance measures.
I also love the idea of using S3 for storage; just keep in mind that depending on the type of data you are storing it may not be the appropriate choice.
And please no stupid "change ISP" comments, a lot of people aren't lucky enough to even have a choice of high-speed providers. It's either high-speed cable/DSL, or dial-up. Sometimes from the same ISP, even.
Keep in mind that the they aren't basing this off of your retail price for Vista; the $50 probably represents their wholesale price for the OS. They're simply passing the difference on to you.
BUT: to be fair, I think there are a few caveats for people to keep in mind.
#1) Do not take options in place of pay. Risk vs. Reward is the name of the game. True in general, but it really depends on just how many options. If you're offered 5% of the company's worth, it could work out great for you if it fits our current risk profile (side jobs, cash cushion, no mortage or kids, etc.). Of course, this isn't the level we're talking about for most people.
#2) Do not accept the 50% of your salary now and 50% based on a bonus when the company is profitable. See #1. But if somebody's offering you this, you should really be getting a fat options package with it to compensate you for the risk.
#3) Do not accept titles in place of raises. Titles are useless. True to a degree. A lot of companies will scan the titles in your resume and never get to reading the qualifications. But point taken - you can always make up the title of your choice on your resume to accurately reflect your job duties.
#4) Make sure the company has a business plan, funding, and a clear way to become profitable. I couldn't agree more - when evaluating whether or not #1 and #2 make sense for your personal position, this is the biggest factor in evaluating the risk/reward tradeoff.
And very importantly - an exit strategy does not equal a business plan! If the only path your company has to making your options worth something is to sell the company to Google or Yahoo before their financing runs out, look elsewhere. Any decent business should have a plan to profitability (i.e. making more cash than they pay out in expenditures); a good exit strategy is just gravy on top of that.
Note that what makes this really tricky for the online world is that in most cases defamation is a state matter, not a Federal one, making jurisdiction a tough issue. Different states have different qualifications for defamation, one of the most relevant being whether or not the defendant knowingly made false statements about the plaintiff.
As an example, note the qualifications for defamation in Minnesota
Given how much our tax dollars have subsidized the oil industry over the last several decades, I feel no compunction in asking them to pay up now to get us to cleaner energy sources sooner.
And as for oil companies "jumping ship" for another state? Pshaw - do you have any idea how much it costs to move the infrastructure of a behemoth of that size across state lines? It would take more than a puny tax to push them into doing that. They'll bark, but they won't bite.
And that's where your unintended truth comes from. Sure, they'll raise the prices of gas. Just like the market will be raising the price of things due to the emissions cap measure. As a lifelong resident of California, I'm glad for it - government isn't about getting everything at bargain-basement prices (although Walmart may have tricked you into believing so). It's about getting a fair price for the standard of living that makes your society liveable. If I've got to shell out a couple more bucks to live in a state with cleaner air and more sustainable practices, then I'll reach into my wallet with a smile.
Didn't read the product spec carefully enough - I didn't realize that the buyer is expected to output data from their tuner into the OSD. Still though, if the FCC is mandating that non-encrypted digital outputs be removed from tuner devices by 7/2007, it seems that the issue still exists. Sure, you could make it work with an over-the-air ATSC antenna, but most people will never have these (or even know what they are).
You are definitely correct about it killing off the whole CE industry, though - OSD is just one example among many.
It's nice to see this initiative, but it's going to be pretty worthless without digital support.
There's the FCC mandate (although the date keeps fluctuating) to replace all over-the-air signals with digital only. I don't know if this covers cable providers as well, but most of them are following suit regardless. Without support for ATSC, the digital format that replaces the analog NTSC here in the US, this device won't receive any signal, encrypted or not, within the next few years. Same thing with DVB support for those of you in Europe and the rest of the world.
That could potentially be fixed with a softmod up the road, though. The big killer is the lack of CableCard support. CableCard is the technology used so that you can plug an encrypted digital broadcast signal via cable into your home media device. Today these mostly just plug directly into CableCard-enabled TV's, but the idea is that you could plug it into a DVR as well. While technically you could receive ATSC transmissions that are unecrypted, do you think any cable provider in their right mind is going to leave their content unencrypted when the possibility exists to scramble it?
Unfortunately, you need to be "certified" by CableLabs in order to use CableCard - and recent trends indicate that there's a snowball's chance in hell of anybody running a linux platform getting buyoff from CableLabs.
And in case you felt like getting creative and plugging this into the firewire output of your cable company's receiver, think again - yet another FCC mandate requires them to disable these ports after July 2007.
Upshot: Without some major tweaking, the only thing this will be good for in a couple years is possibly getting over-the-air signals, and even then only if they provide decoding for ATSC. If not, it's a doorstop.
I'm not really sure how to respond to this - there is so much mouth-foaming going on in regards to people's dietary choices that the point is rather lost along the way.
Best as I can parse it, the point seems to be that "any statements that amount to a general repudiation of violence, whether against animals or humans, is absurd due to the fact that violence is part of human existence." In other words, because violence is inherent to the human condition, we shouldn't bother trying to lessen it. For some reason, the poster seems to believe that if somebody can't live by their beliefs 100% of the time, then those beliefs become invalid.
So we should throw out the Ten Commandments part about "thou shalt not kill" because it doesn't make specific exception for the case where somebody has broken into your house and is threatening your family, right? Are you paying attention, Christians? Apparently you're all deluded.
Let's take the patently absurd "bambi" example above. Would a vegan let their family starve if the only choice they had was to eat meat? Doubtlessly not. But the fact of the matter is, how many starving vegans do you know? As a practical, everyday matter, a commitment to veganism is as good a dietary choice as any other in an ideological sense. The above reasoning is a straw man argument at best.
So putting aside oversimplified, black-and-white views of human ideology, let's see what the intent of the GPL modification was. The creators' intent was to say, "as creators of this software, we don't allow you, the licensee, to use it for millitary purposes." Unless you make some truly wild-ass assumptions about the authors' mental condition, we can surmise that they mean war as a general vehicle is misused and they want no part of it. This does NOT mean that they would rather have let Hitler kill the Jews, or the terrorist bomb the World Trade Center, or any other of the world's clear atrocities; rather, they most likely believe (and rightfully so) that the VAST MAJORITY of millitary actions are started under false pretenses in order to sacrifice the ignorant and innocent for the benefit of the chosen few.
The above examples are obvious exceptions - I'm willing to bet that if the millitary were to have found itself in the position of requiring software issued under the modified license for the purpose of stopping a 9/11-type event, the authors would have gladly given it to them under a modified license for that purpose. But we're talking extremes in that case, not everyday usage. In practical, usual usage, however, the license means "if you don't like our terms, fine - just don't use the software".
Just because we can't meet our ideals 100% of the time doesn't render those ideals worthless.
Your post seems to indicate that political idealogy is trumped by network security ideology. That strikes me as patently false.
In this instance, the most important thing, IMHO, is allowing uncensored internet access to the 1 billion Chinese citizens of this planet. By obscurity, proxies, hacking, whatever - that is far more important than a consistent opinion on whether or not to expose security flaws.
Different situations call for different measures.
Re:I saw this last night, some interesting points.
on
The Way the Music Died
·
· Score: 1
They used Brittney Spears as a prime example--nice to look at but can't sing her way out of a paper bag.
Or more succinctly, in the title of one recently-seen album review of hers:
While this is partly true, it is missing the broader point: certainly you like the current top 40 hit you are hearing, but what if there is something you would like *far more* that you simply have no access to due to the current corporate-dominated music industry? While you aren't necessarily holding your nose to listen to what's readily available, that doesn't mean you're getting the best for your money, either.
How wonderfully defeatist of you. By the same logic, we should still engage in slavery. And why not? The ancient Roman would have said, "there has always been slavery, so I'm just excercising my natural right by being a slaveowner. I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but that's the way it is." Still totally relevant, right?
This so-called "realist" attitude, especially applied to international relations, is repugnant. By the same token you can use it to justify sweatshops, deforestation, and famine in a world where we produce far more food than necessary for the number of individuals on the planet.
Instead of conveniently shrugging your shoulders as a member of the priveledged class, why not get angry and speak out against this sort of behavior? Or, god forbid, even do something about it?
And by the way, social Darwinism was tossed out as a valid theory almost a century ago.
Umm, you do realize that your argument is based on comparing a large, rural area to dense, compacted ones that have ten times the population?
Please. That's like saying Greenland has lower crime than New York because they eat more fish. All you've shown is that urban areas have higher crime rates than rural ones, which isn't going to come as much of a surprise to people on either side of the gun-control fence, and demonstrates zero in terms of how availability of guns reduces crime.
Absolutely correct. While not a lawyer, I am a part-owner of an LLC. While most of our business revolves around a constant flow of revenue, and hence little need for permanent assets, that doesn't mean we have no need whatsoever for permanent assets. There are always going to be small fees involved in running a business that you don't think about (business meals, transportation, etc.), and you should always have some money socked away against the possibility of needing legal council for unforseen events anyway.
Even if we didn't need money for those things, however, we would still have a constant pool of capital in place representing permanent assets to the business. All LLCs *must* have some amount of capital that belongs to the business itself rather than to the owners of the business; otherwise, they really are just shells used to protect the individuals from legal liability. And while the point of an LLC is to make a clear separation between the individuals owning the business and the business itself, if the business really does do something of value then it makes sense that it would have assets of some kind.
Having said that, this small business model is exactly the type of situation that an LLC is designed for. You don't need tons of assets socked away in order to be a valid business; you just need some. Check with your local neighborhood lawyer to determine just how much cash you need to exist as a valid entity, but a good estimate is probably below ten percent of what you expect the company to take in that year. That amount certainly won't break the bank, and trust me, you'll find a need for that capital in the company anyway.
There is one important difference between these situations that you have not acknowledged, however. Gangs are suspected of having broken the law. As of right now, most spammers are suspected only of being annoying. In most US jurisdictions their actions are still completely legal.
Until such time as spamming is legally outlawed, I don't think there is any reason to broaden government surveillance powers to include them. You might not like how spammers operate, but dislike isn't sufficient justification for this sort of action.
The point of these various items is not to serve as justification for an action movie's existence. The action movie is doing just fine by itself, thankyou.
The point is to take a serious look at the ramifications of the idea of being inside a simulation world, and whether or not this is an actual possibility. If you've read the referenced articles (which, based on your post, I'm assuming you haven't), then you would see that the ideas presented are not dreamy scenarios composed at 2am under the influence of copious amounts of illegal herbage; they are rigorously presented proofs of the given concepts. You may agree or disagree with them as you choose, but I think in all cases it is clear that the authors' points were not to sell more Matrix Reloaded tickets. Give them some credit for their work, huh?
Everything's got its modus ponens, even if it's a Keanu Reeves movie with a scientific basis that's about as solid as swiss cheese.
Slashdot Mirror
...the sales numbers for flash-in-the-pan games. Not saying this is one, but we've seen it with just about every game on Facebook. Mobile games may not be much different.
Because Grandpa has no idea what VLC is.
Having worked with Mike before, I'm going to guess this isn't the case. He's an incredibly talented software engineer and has a good head for business as well. More likely, he saw that the ship was sinking and decided to get off.
I also love the idea of using S3 for storage; just keep in mind that depending on the type of data you are storing it may not be the appropriate choice.
And please no stupid "change ISP" comments, a lot of people aren't lucky enough to even have a choice of high-speed providers. It's either high-speed cable/DSL, or dial-up. Sometimes from the same ISP, even.
You should just change ISPs.
Keep in mind that the they aren't basing this off of your retail price for Vista; the $50 probably represents their wholesale price for the OS. They're simply passing the difference on to you.
BUT: to be fair, I think there are a few caveats for people to keep in mind.
#1) Do not take options in place of pay. Risk vs. Reward is the name of the game. True in general, but it really depends on just how many options. If you're offered 5% of the company's worth, it could work out great for you if it fits our current risk profile (side jobs, cash cushion, no mortage or kids, etc.). Of course, this isn't the level we're talking about for most people.
#2) Do not accept the 50% of your salary now and 50% based on a bonus when the company is profitable. See #1. But if somebody's offering you this, you should really be getting a fat options package with it to compensate you for the risk.
#3) Do not accept titles in place of raises. Titles are useless. True to a degree. A lot of companies will scan the titles in your resume and never get to reading the qualifications. But point taken - you can always make up the title of your choice on your resume to accurately reflect your job duties.
#4) Make sure the company has a business plan, funding, and a clear way to become profitable. I couldn't agree more - when evaluating whether or not #1 and #2 make sense for your personal position, this is the biggest factor in evaluating the risk/reward tradeoff.
And very importantly - an exit strategy does not equal a business plan! If the only path your company has to making your options worth something is to sell the company to Google or Yahoo before their financing runs out, look elsewhere. Any decent business should have a plan to profitability (i.e. making more cash than they pay out in expenditures); a good exit strategy is just gravy on top of that.
The answer is none.
None more black.
This is from the EFF, giving good guidelines on what constitutes defamation.
Note that what makes this really tricky for the online world is that in most cases defamation is a state matter, not a Federal one, making jurisdiction a tough issue. Different states have different qualifications for defamation, one of the most relevant being whether or not the defendant knowingly made false statements about the plaintiff.
As an example, note the qualifications for defamation in Minnesota
Given how much our tax dollars have subsidized the oil industry over the last several decades, I feel no compunction in asking them to pay up now to get us to cleaner energy sources sooner.
And as for oil companies "jumping ship" for another state? Pshaw - do you have any idea how much it costs to move the infrastructure of a behemoth of that size across state lines? It would take more than a puny tax to push them into doing that. They'll bark, but they won't bite.
And that's where your unintended truth comes from. Sure, they'll raise the prices of gas. Just like the market will be raising the price of things due to the emissions cap measure. As a lifelong resident of California, I'm glad for it - government isn't about getting everything at bargain-basement prices (although Walmart may have tricked you into believing so). It's about getting a fair price for the standard of living that makes your society liveable. If I've got to shell out a couple more bucks to live in a state with cleaner air and more sustainable practices, then I'll reach into my wallet with a smile.
Didn't read the product spec carefully enough - I didn't realize that the buyer is expected to output data from their tuner into the OSD. Still though, if the FCC is mandating that non-encrypted digital outputs be removed from tuner devices by 7/2007, it seems that the issue still exists. Sure, you could make it work with an over-the-air ATSC antenna, but most people will never have these (or even know what they are).
You are definitely correct about it killing off the whole CE industry, though - OSD is just one example among many.
It's nice to see this initiative, but it's going to be pretty worthless without digital support.
There's the FCC mandate (although the date keeps fluctuating) to replace all over-the-air signals with digital only. I don't know if this covers cable providers as well, but most of them are following suit regardless. Without support for ATSC, the digital format that replaces the analog NTSC here in the US, this device won't receive any signal, encrypted or not, within the next few years. Same thing with DVB support for those of you in Europe and the rest of the world.
That could potentially be fixed with a softmod up the road, though. The big killer is the lack of CableCard support. CableCard is the technology used so that you can plug an encrypted digital broadcast signal via cable into your home media device. Today these mostly just plug directly into CableCard-enabled TV's, but the idea is that you could plug it into a DVR as well. While technically you could receive ATSC transmissions that are unecrypted, do you think any cable provider in their right mind is going to leave their content unencrypted when the possibility exists to scramble it?
Unfortunately, you need to be "certified" by CableLabs in order to use CableCard - and recent trends indicate that there's a snowball's chance in hell of anybody running a linux platform getting buyoff from CableLabs.
And in case you felt like getting creative and plugging this into the firewire output of your cable company's receiver, think again - yet another FCC mandate requires them to disable these ports after July 2007.
Upshot: Without some major tweaking, the only thing this will be good for in a couple years is possibly getting over-the-air signals, and even then only if they provide decoding for ATSC. If not, it's a doorstop.
Lasers on a mothafuckin' chip!
And there ain't a got-damn thing you can do about it!
Why must we have these ridiculous laws?
I see you are here representing the Executive Branch of our government. Welcome to Slashdot!
Once slaves agree to a set of minimum behavioral norms that define a civil society, then they'll have rights.
Point being, we as human beings are curiously elitist when it comes to deciding who should and should not have rights.
I'm not really sure how to respond to this - there is so much mouth-foaming going on in regards to people's dietary choices that the point is rather lost along the way.
Best as I can parse it, the point seems to be that "any statements that amount to a general repudiation of violence, whether against animals or humans, is absurd due to the fact that violence is part of human existence." In other words, because violence is inherent to the human condition, we shouldn't bother trying to lessen it. For some reason, the poster seems to believe that if somebody can't live by their beliefs 100% of the time, then those beliefs become invalid.
So we should throw out the Ten Commandments part about "thou shalt not kill" because it doesn't make specific exception for the case where somebody has broken into your house and is threatening your family, right? Are you paying attention, Christians? Apparently you're all deluded.
Let's take the patently absurd "bambi" example above. Would a vegan let their family starve if the only choice they had was to eat meat? Doubtlessly not. But the fact of the matter is, how many starving vegans do you know? As a practical, everyday matter, a commitment to veganism is as good a dietary choice as any other in an ideological sense. The above reasoning is a straw man argument at best.
So putting aside oversimplified, black-and-white views of human ideology, let's see what the intent of the GPL modification was. The creators' intent was to say, "as creators of this software, we don't allow you, the licensee, to use it for millitary purposes." Unless you make some truly wild-ass assumptions about the authors' mental condition, we can surmise that they mean war as a general vehicle is misused and they want no part of it. This does NOT mean that they would rather have let Hitler kill the Jews, or the terrorist bomb the World Trade Center, or any other of the world's clear atrocities; rather, they most likely believe (and rightfully so) that the VAST MAJORITY of millitary actions are started under false pretenses in order to sacrifice the ignorant and innocent for the benefit of the chosen few.
The above examples are obvious exceptions - I'm willing to bet that if the millitary were to have found itself in the position of requiring software issued under the modified license for the purpose of stopping a 9/11-type event, the authors would have gladly given it to them under a modified license for that purpose. But we're talking extremes in that case, not everyday usage. In practical, usual usage, however, the license means "if you don't like our terms, fine - just don't use the software".
Just because we can't meet our ideals 100% of the time doesn't render those ideals worthless.
Your post seems to indicate that political idealogy is trumped by network security ideology. That strikes me as patently false.
In this instance, the most important thing, IMHO, is allowing uncensored internet access to the 1 billion Chinese citizens of this planet. By obscurity, proxies, hacking, whatever - that is far more important than a consistent opinion on whether or not to expose security flaws.
Different situations call for different measures.
Or more succinctly, in the title of one recently-seen album review of hers:
"Stupid Songs, Nice Ass"
While this is partly true, it is missing the broader point: certainly you like the current top 40 hit you are hearing, but what if there is something you would like *far more* that you simply have no access to due to the current corporate-dominated music industry? While you aren't necessarily holding your nose to listen to what's readily available, that doesn't mean you're getting the best for your money, either.
This so-called "realist" attitude, especially applied to international relations, is repugnant. By the same token you can use it to justify sweatshops, deforestation, and famine in a world where we produce far more food than necessary for the number of individuals on the planet.
Instead of conveniently shrugging your shoulders as a member of the priveledged class, why not get angry and speak out against this sort of behavior? Or, god forbid, even do something about it?
And by the way, social Darwinism was tossed out as a valid theory almost a century ago.
Please. That's like saying Greenland has lower crime than New York because they eat more fish. All you've shown is that urban areas have higher crime rates than rural ones, which isn't going to come as much of a surprise to people on either side of the gun-control fence, and demonstrates zero in terms of how availability of guns reduces crime.
Since they were going to need all the space for the other stuff anyway, I'm glad they opted to tack on the massive 16x9 inch screen.
(I know, I know. RTFA.)
Even if we didn't need money for those things, however, we would still have a constant pool of capital in place representing permanent assets to the business. All LLCs *must* have some amount of capital that belongs to the business itself rather than to the owners of the business; otherwise, they really are just shells used to protect the individuals from legal liability. And while the point of an LLC is to make a clear separation between the individuals owning the business and the business itself, if the business really does do something of value then it makes sense that it would have assets of some kind.
Having said that, this small business model is exactly the type of situation that an LLC is designed for. You don't need tons of assets socked away in order to be a valid business; you just need some. Check with your local neighborhood lawyer to determine just how much cash you need to exist as a valid entity, but a good estimate is probably below ten percent of what you expect the company to take in that year. That amount certainly won't break the bank, and trust me, you'll find a need for that capital in the company anyway.
Until such time as spamming is legally outlawed, I don't think there is any reason to broaden government surveillance powers to include them. You might not like how spammers operate, but dislike isn't sufficient justification for this sort of action.
The point of these various items is not to serve as justification for an action movie's existence. The action movie is doing just fine by itself, thankyou.
The point is to take a serious look at the ramifications of the idea of being inside a simulation world, and whether or not this is an actual possibility. If you've read the referenced articles (which, based on your post, I'm assuming you haven't), then you would see that the ideas presented are not dreamy scenarios composed at 2am under the influence of copious amounts of illegal herbage; they are rigorously presented proofs of the given concepts. You may agree or disagree with them as you choose, but I think in all cases it is clear that the authors' points were not to sell more Matrix Reloaded tickets. Give them some credit for their work, huh?
Everything's got its modus ponens, even if it's a Keanu Reeves movie with a scientific basis that's about as solid as swiss cheese.