Get into the mindset by explaining the ubergeek religion... Linux is godlike, Anything from Microsoft is the work of satan, and that Slashdot is their bible.
As a European who emigrated to the US, its very obvious how here in the US there is a damaging culture of PCness where it is unacceptable to speak ill or criticise anything or anyone else, no matter how bad they or it is. Consequently morbidly fat people get away with calling themselves 'large' and the bar for academic and other success is made so low that it doesn't represent any challenge just so that everyone can feel like they're a winner. In fact just because I'm suggesting the US isn't perfect I expect some American with mod points will exactly prove my point by modding this down as a troll, even though I'm trying to be observational and insightful.
As a Brit, I have to disagree here. Firstly, Americans don't speak English. They speak American. Big differnece. Secondly, most of he French companies I have had experience of working for wouldn't hire English or American speakers who can't speak French too.
>> If convicted, [David C.] Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release
Not that I support hacking, but isn't this a ridiculously heavy penalty? I'm only guessing here but it looks like he's only facing such a stiff sentence just because it was Sarah Palin, in which case the US legal system is F**'d up. I mean why should she or her personal email be treated by the law as any more inherently important than anyone else? I mean, being a politician is just another job after all.
Its OK to be a member of such things as Facebook as you can directly control/limit what you make available just by not putting it up ther ein the first place. But would not ever have my personal documents stored on some remote server for example. This is one reason why I for one will never be a customer for this whole "software as a service" model Microsoft et al are chasing.
The point is that if the record comapanies monopolistic control of the music industry gets busted, it will be nothing but good for both consumers and artists, and also largely irreversible.
Of course there will always be clueless morons that can't tell musical talent if it hit them between the eyes, so there will always be a market for shit like Britney (or whatever they're currently being told by marketing execs to think is cool).
But whatever business model comes along after the labels as we know it fail, it won't ever be able to achieve the stifling monopoly that the existing record companies have, because they were given a unique opportunity in the 50's and 60's of capitalising on what was a fledgling pop industry and inventing their own rules. That situation just doesn't exist now nor will it ever again.
Believe me, the labels as we know them are already dead. They're just such big dinosaurs that the message that the heart isn't working and the body isn't moving any more hasn't got to the corporate brain yet.
>> On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign their contract."
There is more going on here than is fair, or just them protecting the code you are writing for them. Have you considered that their real motivation might not an interest in the work you will do for them at all, but that they are trying to stifle/destroy the development of the opensource project because its in competition with one of their commercial projects, either real or planned? If so also consider once they have your signature to not work on it any more they have no motivation to actually employ you long term.
Even if this is not the case I agree that companies should be able to protect their investment, but it is not fair or right of them to expect to own your life either. As a European that moved to the US a few years ago I was amazed to see how much Americans allow their employers to mandate their whole lives, not just during the 40 hours you're paid for. You all beleive you're the land of the free etc but certianly don't act like it.
Comapnies will always push for more and not epxect to get everything. Consider negotiating distateful or unethical clauses out of your contract. Consider that you and your employer must be entering into a business agreement of two EQUAL parties. If their contract abuses that equality then go somewhere else as its only an indicator of what their whole mindset will be once you work for them. They may actually repect you more later if you get them to remove those clauses first. Also don't foget that they probably need you more than you need them, given your position and experience in that particular open source project.
Just because Y is newer than X doesn't mean Y is an upgrade to X. Whether something is an upgrade or a downgrade depends on the relative functionality, not the time difference.
Installing XP over Vista is definately an upgrade.
> The buyer immediately went to the police, who initially treated it as a joke; when they realised he was serious, they swooped on his home and seized his camera and PC.
So basically he got punished for doing the right thing. I bet that will make other people want to tell the police too *NOT*. Police = morons.
>> The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity
Its very dissapointing how even key decision-makers are at the top of big ISPs don't really understand (or are choosing to misinterpret) the whole notion of net neurtrality.
Its way more than just about punishing a few (p2p implied) high bandwidth users. Its about the whole ntion that ISPs even thinking they have a right to limit bandwidth to certain services.
Anyway even if the guy neext door is a major bandwidth user, why should it be acceptable that the ISP's push their incapability to handle it onto everyone else's plate? I know in practice thats cable works, but as a consumer who paid for cable on the basis of the high bandwidth advertised, the weakness of their architecture to deliver because of its shared-bandwidth design shouldn't be made to be my or any other consumers problem.
It doesn't matter how good the game is, with the insultingly restrictive DRM and Securom malware it has, I won't be buying it.
I hope enough people comment loudly in every forum and vote with their $$$ so much that EA will HAVE to notice how much they are losing in sales because of DRM.
No matter what more politically-correct people like to think, all people are not born equal. The best software developers are born with a certain affinity for the mindset required. Education can build on it, but if you don't have it to start with you won't ever be good or as happy working as a software developer as whatever you're really cut out to be.
You need to make an analytical and honest decision with yourself as to whether this is a direction you want to be going in with your life and career. Unless you're absolutely sure you're the right person to be a software developer, then don't do it. The fact that you've apparently already been happy to do tech support rather than write software might itself be an indicator that this is not a good move for you.
OK now you've decided to go ahead anyway, the next stage is that you need to know what you are doing.
Contrary what most other posters here are suggesting, you're jnever going to be fully effective if you just try and learn on the job or learn from other software developers around you. There is a lot more to being a good software developer than being able to write a program that runs OK.
By limiting yourself to learmning on the job, at best you will only develop a tiny subset of very specific skills you need for your particular company/product/langauge/toolchain, and will not get a deeper understanding of some very important concepts. Also that approach will almost certainly start you off with some very bad programming habits (i.e. your colleagues).
Ask your company to allow you as much time as you can get to attend some Cumputer Science and Software Engineering courses at your local college or university.
If you need justification, tell them that your company will save way more than the time/money it costs them in terms of your increased knowledge, usefullness and code quality meaning much less rework required.
If they still say no, then make every effort yourself to at least do some evening courses and build points towards a Computer Science or other similar software related degree.
Assuming you don't want to work for the same company for ever, you need to understand that no matter how good you think you are, these days a Computer Science or other relevant degree is a basic requirement for many if not most software developer positions. You learn a lot of really useful fundamental concepts on a CS degree course that will be highly relevant, used and needed throughout your whole career. Ususally the only people who dont agree with the value of a CS degree for software engineers are those who don't have one, so don't know what they don't know.
I think its more than reasonable for people to assume that the law would protect them from a commercially available product that is designed to subversively hurt them.
If by design some software silently installs itself and modifies the operating system in any way purposely disadvantageous to the user without the users express permission, then it is absolutely the dictionary definition of malware, as in software with malicious intent.
Why should there be a distinction between big companies doing it for commercial reasons or individual hackers doing it? Writers of malware apps should always be punished for unauthorised damage to other people's computer systems. period. Actually big companies should be much more strongly punished as it generally a much larger-scale crime, given the sheer number of users they infect.
That British hacker who got into the pentagon to look for UFO evidence ended up facing extradition, jail time and enormous costs for supposed damage to a few systems, even though he didn't actually change anything. Why is it that EA who subversively plant malware on your PC that permanently occupies resources and damages your access rights can get away with it?
Its not a troll to say people should be responsible for finding out everything about a product before they buy it, but its highly unrealistic, especially where technical or expert knowledge is needed to even understand what to ask.
I think its more than reasonable for people to assume that the law would protect them from a commercially available product that is designed to subversively hurt them.
If by design some software silently modifies the operating system in any way purposely disadvantageous to the user without their express permission, then it is absolutely the dictionary definition of malware.
Regardless of whether they are big companies doing it for commercial reasons or individual hackers doing it for glory, Writers of malware-installing apps should be punished for unauthorised damage to other people's computer systems. period. Actually big companies should be much more strongly punished as it generally a much larger-scale crime, given the sheer number of users they infect.
There are milions of excellent bands trying to make it out there. Most can't get airtime because the RIAA also have control over radio stations and their playlists, so will only allow their own manufactured poptastic crap to get any airtime.
If I was an internet radio station I'd tell the RIAA to go screw themselves and that _they_ should be paying _me_ for airing (read: advertising) their music. I would only play music from independent bands and musicians who haven't signed up with RIAA-linked labels so the RIAA have no legal recourse to do anything.
The bands themselves would probably more than welcome the opportunity to get some free airtime/plugs for their music and maybe sell a few CDs or downloads through the site.
If they made Blu-Ray movies as cheap as buying DVD versions then it would be a viable choice.I have a blu-ray burner in my PC, but pack of 3 blank dual-layer BDRW discs is still about $120!!! That HAS to be as a result of the MPAA fixing ludicrous pricing on media to discourage movie piracy, rather than actually justifiable as disc production costs. If so its particularly unfair as you still have to pay the MPAA tax even if you just want the discs to store your own data on.
Most people actually don't care about the higher res. of blu-ray for 3 reasons: 1) The price difference between the same movie on BD and DVD is a total rip=off. 2) They are not releasing that many new BDs when compared to DVDs, and are also trying to maximse sales of less popular movies on BD by holding back releasing even older blockbuster movies on BD such as Star Wars adnd Lord of the Rings. iThe point they don't get is that no-one wants to buy crap movies no matter how high resolution they are.
4)) The majority of people still dont even have the hardware to see the difference, even if they think they have bought a high def setup. THis is for two reasons: There's lots of non-technical consumers who still connect up even their HD equipment such as blu-ray players with RGB or SVGA cables, and because they see some kind of picture they think that it must be working properly.
Also significant extra confusion was caused by purposely misleading marketing of HDTV by tv manufacturers: There are still new digital TVs being sold that actually have native screen resolutions (pixel counts) so low that are phyiscally incapable of displaying a 720p (broadcast res HD) picture in full definition, let alone a 1080p (blu-ray res HD) one. Yet those same TVs are being sold with criminally misleading "HD-Ready" stickers all over them.
As far as I can make out, "HD-Ready" just means the TV will display some kind of a downscaled picture when plugged into an HD signal. It certainly doesn;t mean what you would reasonably think, that if given an HD signal it will actually display an HD picture. Unfortunately lots of buyers make the wrong assumption about those weasel words and of course the kid at Best Buy who gets paid based on sales performance isn't going to make any effort to correct them.
Consequently you can't blame people when they incorrectly conclude there's actually no difference between DVD quality and Blu-Ray quality, because in many cases they're not actually seeing any difference.
>> In seven months of testing, a small group of servers ran for seven months without failures...so I guess they must have had a small control group that were running Linux instead of windows:-)
>> 'I would like to see other internet service providers follow suit to reinforce our message that violence will not be tolerated either on the internet or in the real world,' she said."
Sure lets ruin the whole notion of free speech and an uncensored internet just because of a few kids with knives. Why is it these crazy liberal do-gooders have no notion of perspective?
Now if you REALLY want to address violence, then punish the biggest perpitrators of violence (by far) in the world, namely the US government.
Slashdot Mirror
Get into the mindset by explaining the ubergeek religion...
Linux is godlike, Anything from Microsoft is the work of satan, and that Slashdot is their bible.
As a European who emigrated to the US, its very obvious how here in the US there is a damaging culture of PCness where it is unacceptable to speak ill or criticise anything or anyone else, no matter how bad they or it is. Consequently morbidly fat people get away with calling themselves 'large' and the bar for academic and other success is made so low that it doesn't represent any challenge just so that everyone can feel like they're a winner.
In fact just because I'm suggesting the US isn't perfect I expect some American with mod points will exactly prove my point by modding this down as a troll, even though I'm trying to be observational and insightful.
Turn off the DRM server but also offer free non-DRM'd replacements for download from their website for all DRM'd files a user has purchased.
As a Brit, I have to disagree here.
Firstly, Americans don't speak English. They speak American. Big differnece.
Secondly, most of he French companies I have had experience of working for wouldn't hire English or American speakers who can't speak French too.
They probably can't even run vista. Vista's hardware requirements are too high.
>> If convicted, [David C.] Kernell faces a maximum of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a three-year term of supervised release
Not that I support hacking, but isn't this a ridiculously heavy penalty?
I'm only guessing here but it looks like he's only facing such a stiff sentence just because it was Sarah Palin, in which case the US legal system is F**'d up.
I mean why should she or her personal email be treated by the law as any more inherently important than anyone else? I mean, being a politician is just another job after all.
Its OK to be a member of such things as Facebook as you can directly control/limit what you make available just by not putting it up ther ein the first place.
But would not ever have my personal documents stored on some remote server for example. This is one reason why I for one will never be a customer for this whole "software as a service" model Microsoft et al are chasing.
The point is that if the record comapanies monopolistic control of the music industry gets busted, it will be nothing but good for both consumers and artists, and also largely irreversible.
Of course there will always be clueless morons that can't tell musical talent if it hit them between the eyes, so there will always be a market for shit like Britney (or whatever they're currently being told by marketing execs to think is cool).
But whatever business model comes along after the labels as we know it fail, it won't ever be able to achieve the stifling monopoly that the existing record companies have, because they were given a unique opportunity in the 50's and 60's of capitalising on what was a fledgling pop industry and inventing their own rules. That situation just doesn't exist now nor will it ever again.
Believe me, the labels as we know them are already dead. They're just such big dinosaurs that the message that the heart isn't working and the body isn't moving any more hasn't got to the corporate brain yet.
>> On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign their contract."
There is more going on here than is fair, or just them protecting the code you are writing for them. Have you considered that their real motivation might not an interest in the work you will do for them at all, but that they are trying to stifle/destroy the development of the opensource project because its in competition with one of their commercial projects, either real or planned? If so also consider once they have your signature to not work on it any more they have no motivation to actually employ you long term.
Even if this is not the case I agree that companies should be able to protect their investment, but it is not fair or right of them to expect to own your life either. As a European that moved to the US a few years ago I was amazed to see how much Americans allow their employers to mandate their whole lives, not just during the 40 hours you're paid for. You all beleive you're the land of the free etc but certianly don't act like it.
Comapnies will always push for more and not epxect to get everything. Consider negotiating distateful or unethical clauses out of your contract. Consider that you and your employer must be entering into a business agreement of two EQUAL parties. If their contract abuses that equality then go somewhere else as its only an indicator of what their whole mindset will be once you work for them. They may actually repect you more later if you get them to remove those clauses first. Also don't foget that they probably need you more than you need them, given your position and experience in that particular open source project.
Just because Y is newer than X doesn't mean Y is an upgrade to X.
Whether something is an upgrade or a downgrade depends on the relative functionality, not the time difference.
Installing XP over Vista is definately an upgrade.
http://www.tothepc.com/archives/windows-xp-features-missing-in-vista/
> The buyer immediately went to the police, who initially treated it as a joke; when they realised he was serious, they swooped on his home and seized his camera and PC.
So basically he got punished for doing the right thing. I bet that will make other people want to tell the police too *NOT*.
Police = morons.
>> The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity
Its very dissapointing how even key decision-makers are at the top of big ISPs don't really understand (or are choosing to misinterpret) the whole notion of net neurtrality.
Its way more than just about punishing a few (p2p implied) high bandwidth users. Its about the whole ntion that ISPs even thinking they have a right to limit bandwidth to certain services.
Anyway even if the guy neext door is a major bandwidth user, why should it be acceptable that the ISP's push their incapability to handle it onto everyone else's plate? I know in practice thats cable works, but as a consumer who paid for cable on the basis of the high bandwidth advertised, the weakness of their architecture to deliver because of its shared-bandwidth design shouldn't be made to be my or any other consumers problem.
It doesn't matter how good the game is, with the insultingly restrictive DRM and Securom malware it has, I won't be buying it.
I hope enough people comment loudly in every forum and vote with their $$$ so much that EA will HAVE to notice how much they are losing in sales because of DRM.
>> The technical part is easy
Not true. to hack some crappy code together is easy. To do an excellent job isn't.
Databases were certainly covered in my British CS degree. Maybe its a US thing.
No matter what more politically-correct people like to think, all people are not born equal. The best software developers are born with a certain affinity for the mindset required. Education can build on it, but if you don't have it to start with you won't ever be good or as happy working as a software developer as whatever you're really cut out to be.
You need to make an analytical and honest decision with yourself as to whether this is a direction you want to be going in with your life and career. Unless you're absolutely sure you're the right person to be a software developer, then don't do it. The fact that you've apparently already been happy to do tech support rather than write software might itself be an indicator that this is not a good move for you.
OK now you've decided to go ahead anyway, the next stage is that you need to know what you are doing.
Contrary what most other posters here are suggesting, you're jnever going to be fully effective if you just try and learn on the job or learn from other software developers around you. There is a lot more to being a good software developer than being able to write a program that runs OK.
By limiting yourself to learmning on the job, at best you will only develop a tiny subset of very specific skills you need for your particular company/product/langauge/toolchain, and will not get a deeper understanding of some very important concepts. Also that approach will almost certainly start you off with some very bad programming habits (i.e. your colleagues).
Ask your company to allow you as much time as you can get to attend some Cumputer Science and Software Engineering courses at your local college or university.
If you need justification, tell them that your company will save way more than the time/money it costs them in terms of your increased knowledge, usefullness and code quality meaning much less rework required.
If they still say no, then make every effort yourself to at least do some evening courses and build points towards a Computer Science or other similar software related degree.
Assuming you don't want to work for the same company for ever, you need to understand that no matter how good you think you are, these days a Computer Science or other relevant degree is a basic requirement for many if not most software developer positions. You learn a lot of really useful fundamental concepts on a CS degree course that will be highly relevant, used and needed throughout your whole career. Ususally the only people who dont agree with the value of a CS degree for software engineers are those who don't have one, so don't know what they don't know.
Admission to the bar is the term commonly used in the United States to indicate that a person is licensed to practice law as an attorney at law.
Being disbarred is a gramatically correct term referring to the act of revocation of a licence to practice law.
Basically this decision means Jack Thompson is unable to earn his living as an attorney (at least in Florida) any more.
I think its more than reasonable for people to assume that the law would protect them from a commercially available product that is designed to subversively hurt them.
If by design some software silently installs itself and modifies the operating system in any way purposely disadvantageous to the user without the users express permission, then it is absolutely the dictionary definition of malware, as in software with malicious intent.
Why should there be a distinction between big companies doing it for commercial reasons or individual hackers doing it? Writers of malware apps should always be punished for unauthorised damage to other people's computer systems. period. Actually big companies should be much more strongly punished as it generally a much larger-scale crime, given the sheer number of users they infect.
That British hacker who got into the pentagon to look for UFO evidence ended up facing extradition, jail time and enormous costs for supposed damage to a few systems, even though he didn't actually change anything. Why is it that EA who subversively plant malware on your PC that permanently occupies resources and damages your access rights can get away with it?
Its not a troll to say people should be responsible for finding out everything about a product before they buy it, but its highly unrealistic, especially where technical or expert knowledge is needed to even understand what to ask.
I think its more than reasonable for people to assume that the law would protect them from a commercially available product that is designed to subversively hurt them.
If by design some software silently modifies the operating system in any way purposely disadvantageous to the user without their express permission, then it is absolutely the dictionary definition of malware.
Regardless of whether they are big companies doing it for commercial reasons or individual hackers doing it for glory, Writers of malware-installing apps should be punished for unauthorised damage to other people's computer systems. period. Actually big companies should be much more strongly punished as it generally a much larger-scale crime, given the sheer number of users they infect.
Unless it was "world don't go to work day", I can't see how finding out in the afternoon about world days would make any actual difference.
There are milions of excellent bands trying to make it out there. Most can't get airtime because the RIAA also have control over radio stations and their playlists, so will only allow their own manufactured poptastic crap to get any airtime.
If I was an internet radio station I'd tell the RIAA to go screw themselves and that _they_ should be paying _me_ for airing (read: advertising) their music. I would only play music from independent bands and musicians who haven't signed up with RIAA-linked labels so the RIAA have no legal recourse to do anything.
The bands themselves would probably more than welcome the opportunity to get some free airtime/plugs for their music and maybe sell a few CDs or downloads through the site.
If they made Blu-Ray movies as cheap as buying DVD versions then it would be a viable choice.I have a blu-ray burner in my PC, but pack of 3 blank dual-layer BDRW discs is still about $120!!! That HAS to be as a result of the MPAA fixing ludicrous pricing on media to discourage movie piracy, rather than actually justifiable as disc production costs. If so its particularly unfair as you still have to pay the MPAA tax even if you just want the discs to store your own data on.
Most people actually don't care about the higher res. of blu-ray for 3 reasons:
1) The price difference between the same movie on BD and DVD is a total rip=off.
2) They are not releasing that many new BDs when compared to DVDs, and are also trying to maximse sales of less popular movies on BD by holding back releasing even older blockbuster movies on BD such as Star Wars adnd Lord of the Rings. iThe point they don't get is that no-one wants to buy crap movies no matter how high resolution they are.
4)) The majority of people still dont even have the hardware to see the difference, even if they think they have bought a high def setup. THis is for two reasons: There's lots of non-technical consumers who still connect up even their HD equipment such as blu-ray players with RGB or SVGA cables, and because they see some kind of picture they think that it must be working properly.
Also significant extra confusion was caused by purposely misleading marketing of HDTV by tv manufacturers: There are still new digital TVs being sold that actually have native screen resolutions (pixel counts) so low that are phyiscally incapable of displaying a 720p (broadcast res HD) picture in full definition, let alone a 1080p (blu-ray res HD) one. Yet those same TVs are being sold with criminally misleading "HD-Ready" stickers all over them.
As far as I can make out, "HD-Ready" just means the TV will display some kind of a downscaled picture when plugged into an HD signal. It certainly doesn;t mean what you would reasonably think, that if given an HD signal it will actually display an HD picture. Unfortunately lots of buyers make the wrong assumption about those weasel words and of course the kid at Best Buy who gets paid based on sales performance isn't going to make any effort to correct them.
Consequently you can't blame people when they incorrectly conclude there's actually no difference between DVD quality and Blu-Ray quality, because in many cases they're not actually seeing any difference.
>> In seven months of testing, a small group of servers ran for seven months without failures ...so I guess they must have had a small control group that were running Linux instead of windows :-)
>> 'I would like to see other internet service providers follow suit to reinforce our message that violence will not be tolerated either on the internet or in the real world,' she said."
Sure lets ruin the whole notion of free speech and an uncensored internet just because of a few kids with knives. Why is it these crazy liberal do-gooders have no notion of perspective?
Now if you REALLY want to address violence, then punish the biggest perpitrators of violence (by far) in the world, namely the US government.
What moron would buy a computer with linux then pay extra to run CE on it instead?
Thats almost as stupid as 'upgrading' to vista.