I don't know...most people actually PAY to watch video with advertisements interrupting them (on TV). If Google had, say, a television show, with ads in it, they'd actually be providing the same content you pay for, but FREE.
Sure they could simply put ads in EVERY video on youtube, but I think this would clearly lead to a mass exodus, and Google isn't stupid. I expect the content publisher will be able to decide whether or not they want ads in their content for a piece of the action.
Actually, Microsoft's yearly return as of this moment is just over 10%, plus a 1.4% dividend yield. Compare that with the Nasdaq, which MS and its main competitors trade on, and you would have about a -1% return from a year ago.
So if you count the Nasdaq as average, then MS has been doing quite well short term. Long term they are doing even better.
The Dow index funds return about 10% long term, so you could say that is average, but its not as easy as that when you're picking individual stocks, as you have to factor in the risk.
Basically what I'm saying is that even if you don't like MS or MS products, based on its past and current performance, its still a pretty attractive security to hold. The uncertainty in the future is what we call risk, but I wouldn't say that the risk is very scary, at least not short term, and the long term returns have been very good.
Before I worked in my current job, I had roughly the same view as you. But it's not just a matter of using a catchphrase to justify a crappy office environment, I actually do enjoy it much more.
Sure if we had offices, I could just walk down the hall to ask a question or something like that, but losing the walls brings much more than just being able to stay in your seat while you talk to a coworker. It's also brings about a feeling of equality, and yes, even teamwork.
At my current job, I feel comfortable talking to ANYONE, people who are 6 or 7 levels above me in the hierarchy sit in the same kind of desk as me, everyone is totally accessible. There are no secretaries acting as door guards, there aren't even any doors to guard. People ask me my opinion on technology, projects, even strategy.
Everyone in the office feels like we're in the same boat, and we all feel like a team. That's something that has never happened to me while I had my own office. It could just be my specific company, it's the first one I've worked at with an open concept, but I can tell you I prefer it to the ones where I never even saw the CEO, let alone was able to pick his brain.
Or people who don't have an office can use a meeting room (smaller than a conference room) when they need to talk to someone privately or need some quiet time. It's never that loud in the office anyways.
At my workplace, we have two offices - one shared by three finance people, one shared by two strategy people, and the rest of the 150 or so staff is dispersed on three floors. There are tons of meeting rooms of different sizes, and anyone can book them, so its actually a really good system.
Abysmal? Now who's not leaving room for individual variation? I work in a "pit" (I actually prefer the term bullpen) and I think it's a wonderful way to increase collaboration.
Of course I understand why you might like an office, but for the kind of projects I work on, collaboration is much more important. Don't generalize what people want based on what YOU want.
Actually, the US was historically an isolationist country. It was founded because people wanted to get away from Europe (and its taxes), it was very reluctant to enter either world war, and previous to WWII the US was very happy keeping its industries separated from the rest of the world.
For awhile after WWII, the US was opening up its borders (as a hegemony tends to do), but now you're starting to see that isolationist shift again.
People are angry that their jobs are going to third world countries, people are angry that their dollar is so weak, people are angry that people are coming into their country and blowing up buildings again.
So while it might not be in your best interest for the US to alienate itself from the rest of the world, many US citizens are starting to believe that it may indeed be in their best interests.
non-compete clauses are pretty standard for most companies in the tech field. I don't think people are going to stop going to microsoft just because of noncompete clauses. I guarantee Google has one in its standard contract as well
Lots of people have been jumping ship from MS to Google, why is MS suing this guy? Because he jumped from his position to almost exactly the same position at Google. He now has intimite knowledge of Google's main competitor's strategy and technology...THAT is why MS is suing.
I'm a software engineering student, and it seems like at the beginning of every class they tell us about all the huge software catastrophes, like the ones mentioned above.
I swear if I hear about Arianne-5 one more time I'm going to snap.
If you rip a movie onto an SD or CF card, you are going to get a low-quality video on expensive media and take a few hours to do it (according to the article). That sounds to me like it would ONLY be useful for someone who owned the actual DVD anyways.
If someone wants a crappy version of a DVD, they definately dont want to pay a lot of money for it (although they'd actually be paying for the media card).
This sounds pretty fair to me, it's not a violation of the DMCA, it's just an useful invention that lets PDA owners take full advantage of their DVDs.
I agree that functional programming languages are quite useful, but speaking as a coder who learned functional programming just last year in class, I can say that functional languages are a lot more complicated than procedural languages.
Sure, once you get good at it you can bang out a functional program easily, and maintenance can be a breeze once you know how to write the code. However, reading and understanding code that ISN'T yours can be damn near impossible sometimes, especially when you're a newbie.
I'm not discounting the use of functional languages, I'm just saying they are harder to learn than procedural languages.
I agree that you do get instant gratification from programming in VB, but I don't agree that it would make the best learning language.
I think the problem I had with VB when I was starting out is that I just had a bunch of code samples and not much else. The code was documented and what not, but VB is so GUI-oriented that sometimes I wouldn't know what exactly I was doing wrong, and the code documentation couldn't help me one bit.
I moved onto Pascal with it's simple development environment and all of sudden I could learn the whole language through code snippets and the like. Although I didn't get instant gratification, I learned how to program, which is what I wanted anyways.
VB may be a good starter language if you have a teacher, but if all you have is a book or the internet, I would reccommend a simple procedural language like Basic or Pascal
Well then we'll need nanosoldiers with nanoguns and nanogrenades. And some nanotanks, nanoplanes and nanonukes too.
Come to think of it, if everything was nano, that would really cut down on over-population and food shortages and stuff.
But in all seriousness, I think explosives would work well against a swarm of tiny machines.
Well then, we could always head towards a Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) scenario where we have the genetically predispositioned intellectuals doing the thinking and mindless drones doing the grunt work.
About competetive-oriented environments, they may have done well in your examples, but as problems and solutions become more complex, they may become too much for a single person to solve. Eventually, problems may get so complex that it'll take the brain-power of a a few people working together to solve them. (Of course then we may have groups competing against each other instead of individuals)
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that usually we get farther when we work together rather than against each other, and that will probably become increasingly important in the future.
You have to admit that they do at least pique your interest.
I love reading Wired articles, because even though I know they aren't always as spot-on as some other sources, at least in my mind I am always thinking "Cool!" when I read an article.
They show me what COULD be possible with today's technology and a bit of work, and I think that they fill that job quite well.
How computers can work together better than humans.
Human nature makes us think of the individual before society as a whole. We could probably accomplish a whole lot more if we were all mindless drones, doing what had to be done to finish our jobs.
Of course there would be no fun in that, so luckily we have swarmbots.
I am interested to see the applications of these bad boys in the future.
I'm also pretty excited about the Xbox2. I was never really driven to buy an Xbox, mainly due to the cost, lack of software I liked and because of the bigass controller. However, it looks to me as if Microsoft is actively trying to fix the mistakes it made in the past.
no HD -> lower cost = good easy development -> better games = good
If they are indeed intending to go public, they might be waiting for the tech market to peak so they can make the same amount of capital while selling less shares.
This is good for the company, because not only do the private owners still totally control the company, but they:
a) can buy back the shares on the open market for less than they sold them if they want them back
b) can sell more shares later if they need more capital (since they didn't sell as many shares on the IPO to make the initial capital)
I wouldnt do that quite yet, especially for internal LAN use.
Network cables offer some sense of security, you cant look at the data on a network cable without physically hooking up to the cable. If you secure your cable, you secure your communication.
For wireless, you cant very well secure the sky, so it is a lot less secure.
Obviously there is encryption, but moving from wired to wireless gives the spy just one less thing to worry about.
It really doesn't matter to much in a home network, I suppose, but it's just something to think about.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know...most people actually PAY to watch video with advertisements interrupting them (on TV). If Google had, say, a television show, with ads in it, they'd actually be providing the same content you pay for, but FREE.
Sure they could simply put ads in EVERY video on youtube, but I think this would clearly lead to a mass exodus, and Google isn't stupid. I expect the content publisher will be able to decide whether or not they want ads in their content for a piece of the action.
The graph you linked to shows 10% growth from last year at this time...are you sure YOU'RE reading it right?
Actually, Microsoft's yearly return as of this moment is just over 10%, plus a 1.4% dividend yield. Compare that with the Nasdaq, which MS and its main competitors trade on, and you would have about a -1% return from a year ago.
So if you count the Nasdaq as average, then MS has been doing quite well short term. Long term they are doing even better.
The Dow index funds return about 10% long term, so you could say that is average, but its not as easy as that when you're picking individual stocks, as you have to factor in the risk.
Basically what I'm saying is that even if you don't like MS or MS products, based on its past and current performance, its still a pretty attractive security to hold. The uncertainty in the future is what we call risk, but I wouldn't say that the risk is very scary, at least not short term, and the long term returns have been very good.
Before I worked in my current job, I had roughly the same view as you. But it's not just a matter of using a catchphrase to justify a crappy office environment, I actually do enjoy it much more.
Sure if we had offices, I could just walk down the hall to ask a question or something like that, but losing the walls brings much more than just being able to stay in your seat while you talk to a coworker. It's also brings about a feeling of equality, and yes, even teamwork.
At my current job, I feel comfortable talking to ANYONE, people who are 6 or 7 levels above me in the hierarchy sit in the same kind of desk as me, everyone is totally accessible. There are no secretaries acting as door guards, there aren't even any doors to guard. People ask me my opinion on technology, projects, even strategy.
Everyone in the office feels like we're in the same boat, and we all feel like a team. That's something that has never happened to me while I had my own office. It could just be my specific company, it's the first one I've worked at with an open concept, but I can tell you I prefer it to the ones where I never even saw the CEO, let alone was able to pick his brain.
Or people who don't have an office can use a meeting room (smaller than a conference room) when they need to talk to someone privately or need some quiet time. It's never that loud in the office anyways.
At my workplace, we have two offices - one shared by three finance people, one shared by two strategy people, and the rest of the 150 or so staff is dispersed on three floors. There are tons of meeting rooms of different sizes, and anyone can book them, so its actually a really good system.
Abysmal? Now who's not leaving room for individual variation? I work in a "pit" (I actually prefer the term bullpen) and I think it's a wonderful way to increase collaboration.
Of course I understand why you might like an office, but for the kind of projects I work on, collaboration is much more important. Don't generalize what people want based on what YOU want.
Actually, the US was historically an isolationist country. It was founded because people wanted to get away from Europe (and its taxes), it was very reluctant to enter either world war, and previous to WWII the US was very happy keeping its industries separated from the rest of the world. For awhile after WWII, the US was opening up its borders (as a hegemony tends to do), but now you're starting to see that isolationist shift again. People are angry that their jobs are going to third world countries, people are angry that their dollar is so weak, people are angry that people are coming into their country and blowing up buildings again. So while it might not be in your best interest for the US to alienate itself from the rest of the world, many US citizens are starting to believe that it may indeed be in their best interests.
non-compete clauses are pretty standard for most companies in the tech field. I don't think people are going to stop going to microsoft just because of noncompete clauses. I guarantee Google has one in its standard contract as well
Lots of people have been jumping ship from MS to Google, why is MS suing this guy? Because he jumped from his position to almost exactly the same position at Google. He now has intimite knowledge of Google's main competitor's strategy and technology...THAT is why MS is suing.
I think he means MORE difficult to obtain than copyrights.
A copyright is almost automatic. A patent requires a process and a significant amount of money
ever watch Baby Blue on friday/saturday nights on City TV? It's softcore porn on basic cable! *wipes away a tear* ooooooh Caaaanadaaaa
mango17@hotmail.com thanks, any help is much appreciated
Hey this isn't really a reply to your comment, but I was wondering if you have any good resources on how to make an NES emulator.
I'd like to make one for my next personal project, any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
I'm a software engineering student, and it seems like at the beginning of every class they tell us about all the huge software catastrophes, like the ones mentioned above. I swear if I hear about Arianne-5 one more time I'm going to snap.
If you rip a movie onto an SD or CF card, you are going to get a low-quality video on expensive media and take a few hours to do it (according to the article). That sounds to me like it would ONLY be useful for someone who owned the actual DVD anyways.
If someone wants a crappy version of a DVD, they definately dont want to pay a lot of money for it (although they'd actually be paying for the media card).
This sounds pretty fair to me, it's not a violation of the DMCA, it's just an useful invention that lets PDA owners take full advantage of their DVDs.
Are you serious?
I agree that functional programming languages are quite useful, but speaking as a coder who learned functional programming just last year in class, I can say that functional languages are a lot more complicated than procedural languages.
Sure, once you get good at it you can bang out a functional program easily, and maintenance can be a breeze once you know how to write the code. However, reading and understanding code that ISN'T yours can be damn near impossible sometimes, especially when you're a newbie.
I'm not discounting the use of functional languages, I'm just saying they are harder to learn than procedural languages.
I agree. In fact I have noticed that the so-called "situational humour" has shown up less and less in the past few seasons
I agree. Great game, and some of the roles (i.e. medic, engineer) are easy to pick up and let you get a good amount of points andhave some fun.
I agree that you do get instant gratification from programming in VB, but I don't agree that it would make the best learning language.
I think the problem I had with VB when I was starting out is that I just had a bunch of code samples and not much else. The code was documented and what not, but VB is so GUI-oriented that sometimes I wouldn't know what exactly I was doing wrong, and the code documentation couldn't help me one bit.
I moved onto Pascal with it's simple development environment and all of sudden I could learn the whole language through code snippets and the like. Although I didn't get instant gratification, I learned how to program, which is what I wanted anyways.
VB may be a good starter language if you have a teacher, but if all you have is a book or the internet, I would reccommend a simple procedural language like Basic or Pascal
Well then we'll need nanosoldiers with nanoguns and nanogrenades. And some nanotanks, nanoplanes and nanonukes too. Come to think of it, if everything was nano, that would really cut down on over-population and food shortages and stuff. But in all seriousness, I think explosives would work well against a swarm of tiny machines.
Well then, we could always head towards a Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) scenario where we have the genetically predispositioned intellectuals doing the thinking and mindless drones doing the grunt work.
About competetive-oriented environments, they may have done well in your examples, but as problems and solutions become more complex, they may become too much for a single person to solve. Eventually, problems may get so complex that it'll take the brain-power of a a few people working together to solve them. (Of course then we may have groups competing against each other instead of individuals)
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that usually we get farther when we work together rather than against each other, and that will probably become increasingly important in the future.
You have to admit that they do at least pique your interest. I love reading Wired articles, because even though I know they aren't always as spot-on as some other sources, at least in my mind I am always thinking "Cool!" when I read an article. They show me what COULD be possible with today's technology and a bit of work, and I think that they fill that job quite well.
How computers can work together better than humans.
Human nature makes us think of the individual before society as a whole. We could probably accomplish a whole lot more if we were all mindless drones, doing what had to be done to finish our jobs.
Of course there would be no fun in that, so luckily we have swarmbots.
I am interested to see the applications of these bad boys in the future.
I'm also pretty excited about the Xbox2. I was never really driven to buy an Xbox, mainly due to the cost, lack of software I liked and because of the bigass controller. However, it looks to me as if Microsoft is actively trying to fix the mistakes it made in the past.
no HD -> lower cost = good
easy development -> better games = good
If they are indeed intending to go public, they might be waiting for the tech market to peak so they can make the same amount of capital while selling less shares.
This is good for the company, because not only do the private owners still totally control the company, but they:
a) can buy back the shares on the open market for less than they sold them if they want them back
b) can sell more shares later if they need more capital (since they didn't sell as many shares on the IPO to make the initial capital)
I wouldnt do that quite yet, especially for internal LAN use.
Network cables offer some sense of security, you cant look at the data on a network cable without physically hooking up to the cable. If you secure your cable, you secure your communication.
For wireless, you cant very well secure the sky, so it is a lot less secure.
Obviously there is encryption, but moving from wired to wireless gives the spy just one less thing to worry about.
It really doesn't matter to much in a home network, I suppose, but it's just something to think about.