Actually, if Linux becomes illegal, and is in the same league as warez, mp3s, and pr0n on Kazaa, it would bode very ill for the future of Linux. Where Linux has been making tremendous headway is in the corporate server space. If it becomes illegal, it would no longer be deployed in this niche. In other words, the only market segment that Linux is gaining legitimacy.
Sure, this is Slashdot and many people run Linux here, but the vast majority of people in the real world do not run Linux, and there is still a fair ways to go before people do, and if the OS becomes illegal in the mean time, the game is pretty much over.
Considering that Chinese (and many Asian languages) is traditionally written from top to bottom and left to right, it is probably in any software vendor's best interest to design their software allow text input in multiple directions. After all, Asia is a huge market.
Didn't Microsoft really embarrassed themselves awhile back when they demonstrated Windows/Office using traditional Chinese characters in China (which uses simplified characters)? I think that demonstrates that Microsoft needs to be much more detail oriented when localizing their software (or at least their presentations).
I have a first generation iPod (it's about two years old now), and I actually listen to it until it tells me that it's out of battery/power before I recharge it. I have been doing this since day one, and it's been holding its charge fine. In fact, I don't even notice much battery degradation.
At least in Canada, it is legal to download music (thanks to the MP3 tax), but illegal to upload music. So I guess if you want to keep your immune from legal issues, you wouldn't share.
I would love to be able to get access to old and out of print "cult" films. Like old and forgotten slasher films from the late 70's and early 80's. Most are no longer available on VHS, much less DVD!
Same thing with music download. There are so many out of print remixes of songs that I wish I can get access to. Unfortunately, I've only seen them available on P2P networks and not on legal download sources like iTunes.
I would assume that the lobbyists (or MPAA) wanted to make sure that people who pirate movies using a camcorder would receive a legal penalty rather than just being (probably politely) asked to leave an establishment.
I don't think pirating from US theaters are so rampant that a law would actually need to be passed, but then again, I don't have the statistics. Besides, if you're sitting next to someone obviously recording what's on the screen (and assuming the camcorder is annoying you/distracting you from the film), wouldn't you just go and inform the usher/manager/whoever?
Just wondering, how much does your net connection cost? Although I can see DVD price being a factor, is bandwidth where you are so cheap that downloading large movie files are a non-issue? If not the cost of the connection, how about the cost in time?
This isn't a flame, but I am just wondering how much are you saving overall in regards to bandwidth cost and/or time cost.
I would love to see a Dragonlance adaptation. I think a lot Weis/Hickman works would translate well onto the big screen - like the Death Gate Cycle and others.
I'd also love to see David Edding's works getting adapted too.
I agree. I am not a Christian, but I also enjoyed these books and LOTR. When I was in Uni, I decided to learn more about stories from the bible, so I took a bible as literature course and I really enjoyed it. I thought most of the stories were quite interesting.
The truth is, so many books in the sci-fi/fantasy genre are inspired by biblical stories - especially the classic ones. This may be a reflection of the authors growing up at a time in the West where Christianity filtered through more throughly into everyday life. It is also arguable that themes in the bible mirror creation myths and legends from different cultures (I am thinking mostly of Old Testament). But ultimately, the theme of good versus evil transcends religion, as it is a reflection of humanity and an indication of an individual's ability to choose how to conduct their own actions.
I think the development of Christian fundamentalism in the past few decades have really given Christianity a bad name. Although I am not a Christian, I do respect people who are, for the bottom-line of the religion is to do good for society and helping each other. But some people have really perverted those ideals and started using them to justify their own bigotry and intolerance.
Some of the other books/novels translations recently or will be released include:
Holes (2003) I Am David (2003) Around the World in Eighty Days (2004) - starring Jackie Chan Journey to the Center of the Earth (2004) - not really a translation, but based on Jules Verne's work(s)
The usage of Java for online animation has really dropped with the growth in Flash. In fact, for a long while I uninstalled the Flash plugin from my browsers because I was so sick of the ads.
However, Java has become more relevant in the past 3 to 4 years as a server-side language. J2EE is an excellent web application platform, and tremendous growth has occurred in that arena. Also, J2ME is also becoming more relevant with the growth in cellphones and PDAs that supports it.
My main concern with the whole H1B visa situation is that it has fostered a corporate mindset which prefers and/or advocates giving jobs to foreign workers because of lower wages. In other words, I believe that H1B visas legitimized outsourcing. After all, to many corporations, they hired foreign workers before, why shouldn't they do it again - even if they have to relocate the job to another country. In many ways, I think the damage has been done.
I think the main problem is that most people in management still doesn't understand what most of their IT staffs do - they can't fully gauge their staff's quality. They often think the end result is the same, so they simply concentrate on the bottom line, even if the internals of their software/technology are hacked together.
The ending of all H1B visas in effect might give a short term stimulus, but I think in the long term it would have little effect. And to be quite honest, I can't say that the government can do much. I think the fact that the government have come out to say that they will not off-source government jobs is a positive step (and they certainly shouldn't anyway), but to ensure the private sector to also not off-source would require some sort of tariff/protectionist legislation, which I don't fully support (I like the concept, but I think it would end up being a nightmare to enforce). One thing that would help is if the government state that they would not grant IT contracts to companies that outsource, nor to companies that subcontract out to companies that do outsource. The government is a big customer in the IT world, so that would have some clout.
Ultimately I believe the loss of IT jobs overseas is a corporate cultural issue. Perhaps we need to bring back those "Buy American" campaigns from the 80's but with an IT slant. After all, I think most Americans aren't even aware of the issue, and the only way to steer/change corporate cultures is to target companies' bottom lines.
P.S. That's pretty cool that you met President Bush. I think it's obvious that I am not a big fan of his, but I do think meeting the man would be an interesting event.
That is incorrect. Bush came into power in 2000/2001. The H1B visa cap remained at 195,000 from 2001 to 2002. In fact, the H1B cap fell to 65,000 on October 1st, 2003, because of the legislation's sunset clause.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/993054/posts
In other words, Bush had about 3 years to drop the cap, but he did not. He is wise not to renew the raising of the cap, because it would've been a very bad political move only an year before re-election. But the truth is that he kept the cap high even when the US was still "officially" in a recession.
From what I understood, the RIAA mainly goes after people who upload music - not download them. In other words, they are going after people who share, and not leechers.
After the MP3 levy was passed in Canada, it is now legal to download MP3s online, but you are not allowed to upload them. So instead of cutting off demand, they are simply cutting off supply.
The need for technology does not increase for the next 12 years. The fact is that IT is still a developing and expanding field and innovations are still being introduced at a rapid pace. Who would've foreseen the growth of the Internet 10 years ago? Or the WiFi? Or the pace of PC game development? Or PDAs? Or MP3s? Or any of the numerous technologies that are available to us today that we take for granted? When these new technologies are introduced, they require a supporting infrastructure and software development is generally a large part of that infrastructure.
2 years worth of data might be enough for stock brokers and investment bankers, because these days, the stock market is more about short term gains than long term prospects. However, 2 years worth of data is not enough to make accurate predictions for social/cultural changes, which would include career opportunities.
Even though IT moves at a rapid pace, innovations still take years to filter into the general population's landscape. Even though Internet became immensely popular in a relatively short time, its acceptance into everyday life still took more than 2 years. So predictions on labor needs to support or develop any technology would require more data than 2 years. Furthermore, once an innovation is filtered down, the infrastructure needed to support it also grows, and that also takes more than a couple years of data to predict. Think WiFi for example. Although it was on the radar more than two years ago (AirPort, etc.), few had believed that companies would have poured so much money and resources in creating the infrastructure we have today (think number of hot spots, and the fact that Intel would integrate it into its chip-set for example).
I take all predictions regarding IT with a grain of salt - few have gotten it right in the past.
One point that was never raised was the fact that the tech industry were clamoring for raising the number of H1B visa that could be issued. And given the track record the Republicans and the Bush administration in particular's willingness to kowtowing to big industries, they are just as likely to raise the number of H1B visas issued.
If you think this wouldn't have been the case, keep in mind that as soon as Bush came into power, the anti-trust effort against Microsoft instantly changed from breaking up a monopoly to a weak slap on the wrist. Another example of Republican's willingness to cave in to industry is the recent passage of the weak Spam bill which pre-empted stronger bills passed by the States. Not to mention the Republican's effort in removing any sort of cost control for spiraling medicine costs in the new Medicare package because the pharmaceutical industry doesn't like it.
In other words, if big business wants something, the Republicans delivers. So don't delude yourself into thinking if Dole was in office the H1B visa cap would've stayed low. The industry wanted it. If you want someone to blame, blame the proper people responsible - the tech industry.
If you look through the Slashdot archive, you'll see that they are way more articles on case modding for x86 machines than Macs. Also, most of the case modding equipments you can buy online and in tech-centric hobby shops are for x86 case modding. So I doubt Mac users are really that much more addicted to the look of their computers.
Maybe it's just because Apples are well designed in the first place, so that more of its users are satisfied with its default look and feel compared to PC users. Let's face it, most of us prefer to have things in our environment that attractive rather than ugly.
When I was in Uni I got a job selling computers at CompUSA. This was way before they had dedicated Apple sales people on staff. Everyone on the sales team, sans me and another guy disliked Macs. The truth is, they knew nothing about Macs. So whenever people come in to buy a computer, they are always steered towards buying a PC, because the sales people knew about them! Only two of us on the sales team ever suggests to the customer looking at Macs.
I think a lot of time sales people steer customers away from Macs or make up excuses for people not to buy them because they have little knowledge about them. It doesn't make them look very good if they can't answer simple questions from perspective buyers - after all, they are there to close the deal so to speak. Furthermore, it can be pretty daunting to suggest to someone that they should be on a platform that has >10% of the market-share. I always suggested the customers looking at Macs, but I also let them knew the market-share is low. You don't want irate customers charging back into the store accusing you of misleading them.
Because of these issues, I am happy there are Apple Stores now and that Apple placed their own employees in the CompUSA Apple sections.
I agree. I find it amusing that people are screaming bloody murder because the media companies are "suddenly" releasing music with DRM. The truth is DRM has pretty much been around all the time. The only difference is that technology to copy the content from media companies' products are so affordable and accessible now than ever before.
Non-DRMed CDs were essentially DRMed by the fact that CD recorders were prohibitively expensive in the past. Encoding to MP3s using older computers took much longer than most people were willing to wait, and distribution of MP3s were difficult when bandwidth was expensive and limited. CDs could always be recorded onto tapes in the past, but there is a degradation of quality. That is essentially what we have no again. You can get a DRMed version of a song (in case of iTunes, AAC), and you can get a copy - if you are willing to get a degraded copy (AAC -> CD -> MP3). So, the truth is, nothing has really changed. The truth is that we never really had more rights than we have now - we just have better technology.
I seriously doubt the digital music revolution will cause the RIAA to go belly up in the end. The RIAA represents corporations with net worth in the tens of billions of dollars. An industry with that much money and talent (like it or not, the RIAA controls probably 98+% of music people buy) do not go away. More than likely, they will adopt, and ultimately it will be business as usual. The music industry has undergone transitions from older to newer technologies many times, and they will no doubt do so once again. Like it or not, the RIAA will be around for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Earth arrives on time for the 6th year in a role, he might be right! ;-)
1 /0 1/202208&mode=thread&tid=134
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0
-B
Actually, if Linux becomes illegal, and is in the same league as warez, mp3s, and pr0n on Kazaa, it would bode very ill for the future of Linux. Where Linux has been making tremendous headway is in the corporate server space. If it becomes illegal, it would no longer be deployed in this niche. In other words, the only market segment that Linux is gaining legitimacy.
Sure, this is Slashdot and many people run Linux here, but the vast majority of people in the real world do not run Linux, and there is still a fair ways to go before people do, and if the OS becomes illegal in the mean time, the game is pretty much over.
-B
Oops! Typo...
> traditionally written from top to bottom and left to right
I meant right to left.
-B
Considering that Chinese (and many Asian languages) is traditionally written from top to bottom and left to right, it is probably in any software vendor's best interest to design their software allow text input in multiple directions. After all, Asia is a huge market.
Didn't Microsoft really embarrassed themselves awhile back when they demonstrated Windows/Office using traditional Chinese characters in China (which uses simplified characters)? I think that demonstrates that Microsoft needs to be much more detail oriented when localizing their software (or at least their presentations).
-B
I have a first generation iPod (it's about two years old now), and I actually listen to it until it tells me that it's out of battery/power before I recharge it. I have been doing this since day one, and it's been holding its charge fine. In fact, I don't even notice much battery degradation.
-B
At least in Canada, it is legal to download music (thanks to the MP3 tax), but illegal to upload music. So I guess if you want to keep your immune from legal issues, you wouldn't share.
Sucks I know, but so are law suits.
-B
I would love to be able to get access to old and out of print "cult" films. Like old and forgotten slasher films from the late 70's and early 80's. Most are no longer available on VHS, much less DVD!
Same thing with music download. There are so many out of print remixes of songs that I wish I can get access to. Unfortunately, I've only seen them available on P2P networks and not on legal download sources like iTunes.
-B
I would assume that the lobbyists (or MPAA) wanted to make sure that people who pirate movies using a camcorder would receive a legal penalty rather than just being (probably politely) asked to leave an establishment.
I don't think pirating from US theaters are so rampant that a law would actually need to be passed, but then again, I don't have the statistics. Besides, if you're sitting next to someone obviously recording what's on the screen (and assuming the camcorder is annoying you/distracting you from the film), wouldn't you just go and inform the usher/manager/whoever?
-B
Just wondering, how much does your net connection cost? Although I can see DVD price being a factor, is bandwidth where you are so cheap that downloading large movie files are a non-issue? If not the cost of the connection, how about the cost in time?
This isn't a flame, but I am just wondering how much are you saving overall in regards to bandwidth cost and/or time cost.
-B
All is fine here too!
TiBook 667MHz (DVI) with 768MB RAM. Updated from 10.3.2 and all is well so far.
-B
I would love to see a Dragonlance adaptation. I think a lot Weis/Hickman works would translate well onto the big screen - like the Death Gate Cycle and others.
I'd also love to see David Edding's works getting adapted too.
-B
I agree. I am not a Christian, but I also enjoyed these books and LOTR. When I was in Uni, I decided to learn more about stories from the bible, so I took a bible as literature course and I really enjoyed it. I thought most of the stories were quite interesting.
The truth is, so many books in the sci-fi/fantasy genre are inspired by biblical stories - especially the classic ones. This may be a reflection of the authors growing up at a time in the West where Christianity filtered through more throughly into everyday life. It is also arguable that themes in the bible mirror creation myths and legends from different cultures (I am thinking mostly of Old Testament). But ultimately, the theme of good versus evil transcends religion, as it is a reflection of humanity and an indication of an individual's ability to choose how to conduct their own actions.
I think the development of Christian fundamentalism in the past few decades have really given Christianity a bad name. Although I am not a Christian, I do respect people who are, for the bottom-line of the religion is to do good for society and helping each other. But some people have really perverted those ideals and started using them to justify their own bigotry and intolerance.
-B
Sorry if this is posted elsewhere, but here is the official site...
http://www.narnia.com/
Enjoy!
-B
Seems to be quite focused on getting books and novels translated to the big screen.
a ld en%20Media%20%5Bus%5D&&tv=on&&heading=18;produced+ by;Walden%20Media%20%5Bus%5D
http://www.imdb.com/List?production-companies=W
Some of the other books/novels translations recently or will be released include:
Holes (2003)
I Am David (2003)
Around the World in Eighty Days (2004) - starring Jackie Chan
Journey to the Center of the Earth (2004) - not really a translation, but based on Jules Verne's work(s)
-B
The usage of Java for online animation has really dropped with the growth in Flash. In fact, for a long while I uninstalled the Flash plugin from my browsers because I was so sick of the ads.
However, Java has become more relevant in the past 3 to 4 years as a server-side language. J2EE is an excellent web application platform, and tremendous growth has occurred in that arena. Also, J2ME is also becoming more relevant with the growth in cellphones and PDAs that supports it.
-B
My main concern with the whole H1B visa situation is that it has fostered a corporate mindset which prefers and/or advocates giving jobs to foreign workers because of lower wages. In other words, I believe that H1B visas legitimized outsourcing. After all, to many corporations, they hired foreign workers before, why shouldn't they do it again - even if they have to relocate the job to another country. In many ways, I think the damage has been done.
I think the main problem is that most people in management still doesn't understand what most of their IT staffs do - they can't fully gauge their staff's quality. They often think the end result is the same, so they simply concentrate on the bottom line, even if the internals of their software/technology are hacked together.
The ending of all H1B visas in effect might give a short term stimulus, but I think in the long term it would have little effect. And to be quite honest, I can't say that the government can do much. I think the fact that the government have come out to say that they will not off-source government jobs is a positive step (and they certainly shouldn't anyway), but to ensure the private sector to also not off-source would require some sort of tariff/protectionist legislation, which I don't fully support (I like the concept, but I think it would end up being a nightmare to enforce). One thing that would help is if the government state that they would not grant IT contracts to companies that outsource, nor to companies that subcontract out to companies that do outsource. The government is a big customer in the IT world, so that would have some clout.
Ultimately I believe the loss of IT jobs overseas is a corporate cultural issue. Perhaps we need to bring back those "Buy American" campaigns from the 80's but with an IT slant. After all, I think most Americans aren't even aware of the issue, and the only way to steer/change corporate cultures is to target companies' bottom lines.
P.S. That's pretty cool that you met President Bush. I think it's obvious that I am not a big fan of his, but I do think meeting the man would be an interesting event.
-B
"As soon as Bush came into power..."
That is incorrect. Bush came into power in 2000/2001. The H1B visa cap remained at 195,000 from 2001 to 2002. In fact, the H1B cap fell to 65,000 on October 1st, 2003, because of the legislation's sunset clause.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/993054/posts
In other words, Bush had about 3 years to drop the cap, but he did not. He is wise not to renew the raising of the cap, because it would've been a very bad political move only an year before re-election. But the truth is that he kept the cap high even when the US was still "officially" in a recession.
-B
From what I understood, the RIAA mainly goes after people who upload music - not download them. In other words, they are going after people who share, and not leechers.
After the MP3 levy was passed in Canada, it is now legal to download MP3s online, but you are not allowed to upload them. So instead of cutting off demand, they are simply cutting off supply.
-B
The need for technology does not increase for the next 12 years. The fact is that IT is still a developing and expanding field and innovations are still being introduced at a rapid pace. Who would've foreseen the growth of the Internet 10 years ago? Or the WiFi? Or the pace of PC game development? Or PDAs? Or MP3s? Or any of the numerous technologies that are available to us today that we take for granted? When these new technologies are introduced, they require a supporting infrastructure and software development is generally a large part of that infrastructure.
-B
2 years worth of data might be enough for stock brokers and investment bankers, because these days, the stock market is more about short term gains than long term prospects. However, 2 years worth of data is not enough to make accurate predictions for social/cultural changes, which would include career opportunities.
Even though IT moves at a rapid pace, innovations still take years to filter into the general population's landscape. Even though Internet became immensely popular in a relatively short time, its acceptance into everyday life still took more than 2 years. So predictions on labor needs to support or develop any technology would require more data than 2 years. Furthermore, once an innovation is filtered down, the infrastructure needed to support it also grows, and that also takes more than a couple years of data to predict. Think WiFi for example. Although it was on the radar more than two years ago (AirPort, etc.), few had believed that companies would have poured so much money and resources in creating the infrastructure we have today (think number of hot spots, and the fact that Intel would integrate it into its chip-set for example).
I take all predictions regarding IT with a grain of salt - few have gotten it right in the past.
-B
One point that was never raised was the fact that the tech industry were clamoring for raising the number of H1B visa that could be issued. And given the track record the Republicans and the Bush administration in particular's willingness to kowtowing to big industries, they are just as likely to raise the number of H1B visas issued.
If you think this wouldn't have been the case, keep in mind that as soon as Bush came into power, the anti-trust effort against Microsoft instantly changed from breaking up a monopoly to a weak slap on the wrist. Another example of Republican's willingness to cave in to industry is the recent passage of the weak Spam bill which pre-empted stronger bills passed by the States. Not to mention the Republican's effort in removing any sort of cost control for spiraling medicine costs in the new Medicare package because the pharmaceutical industry doesn't like it.
In other words, if big business wants something, the Republicans delivers. So don't delude yourself into thinking if Dole was in office the H1B visa cap would've stayed low. The industry wanted it. If you want someone to blame, blame the proper people responsible - the tech industry.
-B
If you look through the Slashdot archive, you'll see that they are way more articles on case modding for x86 machines than Macs. Also, most of the case modding equipments you can buy online and in tech-centric hobby shops are for x86 case modding. So I doubt Mac users are really that much more addicted to the look of their computers.
Maybe it's just because Apples are well designed in the first place, so that more of its users are satisfied with its default look and feel compared to PC users. Let's face it, most of us prefer to have things in our environment that attractive rather than ugly.
-B
When I was in Uni I got a job selling computers at CompUSA. This was way before they had dedicated Apple sales people on staff. Everyone on the sales team, sans me and another guy disliked Macs. The truth is, they knew nothing about Macs. So whenever people come in to buy a computer, they are always steered towards buying a PC, because the sales people knew about them! Only two of us on the sales team ever suggests to the customer looking at Macs.
I think a lot of time sales people steer customers away from Macs or make up excuses for people not to buy them because they have little knowledge about them. It doesn't make them look very good if they can't answer simple questions from perspective buyers - after all, they are there to close the deal so to speak. Furthermore, it can be pretty daunting to suggest to someone that they should be on a platform that has >10% of the market-share. I always suggested the customers looking at Macs, but I also let them knew the market-share is low. You don't want irate customers charging back into the store accusing you of misleading them.
Because of these issues, I am happy there are Apple Stores now and that Apple placed their own employees in the CompUSA Apple sections.
-B
I agree. I find it amusing that people are screaming bloody murder because the media companies are "suddenly" releasing music with DRM. The truth is DRM has pretty much been around all the time. The only difference is that technology to copy the content from media companies' products are so affordable and accessible now than ever before.
Non-DRMed CDs were essentially DRMed by the fact that CD recorders were prohibitively expensive in the past. Encoding to MP3s using older computers took much longer than most people were willing to wait, and distribution of MP3s were difficult when bandwidth was expensive and limited. CDs could always be recorded onto tapes in the past, but there is a degradation of quality. That is essentially what we have no again. You can get a DRMed version of a song (in case of iTunes, AAC), and you can get a copy - if you are willing to get a degraded copy (AAC -> CD -> MP3). So, the truth is, nothing has really changed. The truth is that we never really had more rights than we have now - we just have better technology.
I seriously doubt the digital music revolution will cause the RIAA to go belly up in the end. The RIAA represents corporations with net worth in the tens of billions of dollars. An industry with that much money and talent (like it or not, the RIAA controls probably 98+% of music people buy) do not go away. More than likely, they will adopt, and ultimately it will be business as usual. The music industry has undergone transitions from older to newer technologies many times, and they will no doubt do so once again. Like it or not, the RIAA will be around for a long time.
-B
I think the point was that Apple offers the least restrictive DRM for music by popular artists that 98+% of the population listens to.
EMusic offerings may be free of DRM, but if 98+% of the populations are not interested in their catalogue, then it really is rather pointless.
-B