A mechanic, an engineer and a programmer are driving down the road in a car when suddenly it stalls out. The mechanic gets out, checks out the engine and comes back into the car to report that it's going to be a few hours of work to fix it. The engineer leaves the car to check out the problem and comes back to report that he can design a fix that should only take about an hour. Upon hearing that, the programmer says, "Hey, let's first all get out of the car, get back into it and just see if it works then."
Considering relatively affluent people in the US pay money to play these games for hours on end, I don't think you could describe paying third-world citizens money to play the games as a "sweatshop" work environment.
Where's the signup sheet for this "sweatshop"? I'm sure there's plenty of Slashdot readers that would gleefully sign up.
With this affordable video phone, now all I need is a practical hover car and society's promises of things I would have by the year 2000 will be complete.
Is NASA putting the cart before the horse here? Don't we need a coherent goal to shoot for before designing a vehicle? The goal as stated on NASA's site is:
"The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program."
Could they be any more vague? Whatever happened to the days of "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." You know, goals that people actually knew what the heck you were talking about?
I keep hearing stories about how they've finally launched their search engine. What does this mean exactly? More specifically, why is it that the search results on:
Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office as opposed to the various flavors of OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc. Not speaking of its fairness, this is a very effective strategy from Microsoft and not at all surprising.
It's a blatant abuse of their virtual monopoly, but there hasn't really been an effective incentive for them to stop taking such actions in the past. Why would they refrain from continuing such behavior?
Tivo's popular because of non-technical people.
on
TiVo to Offer SDK
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Every technical person knows how great Tivo is, and further how open and extensible it is, etc. But that isn't what makes Tivo popular or successful. It's the average non-technical person that discovered Tivo and was willing to pay a fee per month to digitally record their shows. Now that cable and satellite is giving such a service away with no extra monthly fee, I'm afraid there's nothing Tivo can do to keep their customer base long-term.
The SDK and the gizmos that will come out of it will attract a small set of the user base... But that won't sustain the company unfortunately.
What Gates doesn't appear to get is that my "single-purpose device" called a VCR works accurately and precisely like a VCR every time that I attempt to use it. Same thing for my DVD player. Same thing for my TV. Turning all these things into a multi-function device running on Microsoft Windows wouldn't be my idea of an ideal future.
Especially once the adware/spyware starts to appear on my kid's DVD player. "Daddy, there's boobies on the TV and they want me to click on them."
I can understand how an umbrella or general liability policy could protect you from this. Such policies have been around a long time and are heavily regulated by various state agencies.
I don't think you have any such assurance (no pun intended) with IP specific policies. I'd wait until the market matures a bit before considering such a policy or you might witness your insurance company disappearing once it comes time to file a claim.
This product will never become popular until the authors implement some solid digital rights management. Several studies funded by the RIAA and MPAA conclusively prove that users want DRM in every piece of software and hardware that is made today.
I'm afraid without such restrictions on them, users just won't want to use such software because nobody wants free and unfettered access to equipment and software they purchase.
Seriously, it's about time that someone knocked Fortran programmers down a peg or two. It seems impossible to get any type of programming job if you don't know Fortran.
Every job classified ad section is filled to the brim with Fortran positions while less relevant languages like Java, C# and Visual Basic are almost completely neglected.
I for one welcome news like this if it help Fortran programmers acquire just a little humility.
I noticed this recently when I downloaded the iso.torrent of Silence of the Lambs and burned it to a DVD with DVDShrink. I'm outraged that they would rip me off like this!
I'm going to contact them immediately and ask for them to make restitution.
This will make it much easier to label the 42 DVD+Rs it takes to back up the home MiniDV digital camcorder videos I store on my computer.
Now if only they'd do something silly, like agree on future DVD standards that actually might make a removable media device that keeps up with today's hard drive sizes, we'd be set. In the meantime, we now have been spared the torture of printing DVD labels on a separate device. That's something.
This may be obvious to most people (I sure have missed obvious things in the past), but some background as to why you're thinking of moving to China might put your question into proper context.
I especially dislike their Encrypted File System (EFS). One of its highlights is that the first administrator account set up in a domain is designated an "Encrypted Data Recovery Agent". What does this mean? If you use your domain login at work to encrypt your data, the administrator has immediate ability to decrypt it anytime they want.
How is this done? Every file that is written to an encrypted folder by User A has a private encryption key generated for it. That private encryption key is then encrypted with User A's public key and every designed Encrypted Data Recovery Agent's public key. Then either User A or any such recovery agent's private key can then decrypt the file.
Of course, MS just lets lay users assume their "encrypted" files are private.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux developers need more spooning.
Wow, that was a quick dupe!
/ 1835240&tid=123&tid=10
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/05
Reminds me of a joke...
A mechanic, an engineer and a programmer are driving down the road in a car when suddenly it stalls out. The mechanic gets out, checks out the engine and comes back into the car to report that it's going to be a few hours of work to fix it. The engineer leaves the car to check out the problem and comes back to report that he can design a fix that should only take about an hour. Upon hearing that, the programmer says, "Hey, let's first all get out of the car, get back into it and just see if it works then."
Considering relatively affluent people in the US pay money to play these games for hours on end, I don't think you could describe paying third-world citizens money to play the games as a "sweatshop" work environment.
Where's the signup sheet for this "sweatshop"? I'm sure there's plenty of Slashdot readers that would gleefully sign up.
With this affordable video phone, now all I need is a practical hover car and society's promises of things I would have by the year 2000 will be complete.
Better late than never, I guess!
What's next!? Cigarette companies are going to claim that they aren't harmful to your health?
She's also reported to have voted in the last presidential election in OH.
What ISP isn't going to notice thousands if not millions of rapid-fire connections to its SMTP server?
How the design principles used on a web page that is basically a textbox and a submit button is news is beyond me.
This is a standard Microsoft tactic. It shouldn't surprise anyone.
1. Launch a web site in a particular genre but don't actually have any real functionality
2. Distribute a press release
3. PROFIT!!
Is NASA putting the cart before the horse here? Don't we need a coherent goal to shoot for before designing a vehicle? The goal as stated on NASA's site is:
"The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security, and economic interests through a robust space exploration program."
Could they be any more vague? Whatever happened to the days of "land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth." You know, goals that people actually knew what the heck you were talking about?
It shouldn't be long before the RIAA attorneys start swarming all over this product like angry yellow-jackets that are being squirt with a hose.
I keep hearing stories about how they've finally launched their search engine. What does this mean exactly? More specifically, why is it that the search results on:
my.msn.com
Differ from the results on:
search.msn.com
Seems like a really inconsistent launch.
Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office as opposed to the various flavors of OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc. Not speaking of its fairness, this is a very effective strategy from Microsoft and not at all surprising.
It's a blatant abuse of their virtual monopoly, but there hasn't really been an effective incentive for them to stop taking such actions in the past. Why would they refrain from continuing such behavior?
Every technical person knows how great Tivo is, and further how open and extensible it is, etc. But that isn't what makes Tivo popular or successful. It's the average non-technical person that discovered Tivo and was willing to pay a fee per month to digitally record their shows. Now that cable and satellite is giving such a service away with no extra monthly fee, I'm afraid there's nothing Tivo can do to keep their customer base long-term.
The SDK and the gizmos that will come out of it will attract a small set of the user base... But that won't sustain the company unfortunately.
What Gates doesn't appear to get is that my "single-purpose device" called a VCR works accurately and precisely like a VCR every time that I attempt to use it. Same thing for my DVD player. Same thing for my TV. Turning all these things into a multi-function device running on Microsoft Windows wouldn't be my idea of an ideal future.
Especially once the adware/spyware starts to appear on my kid's DVD player. "Daddy, there's boobies on the TV and they want me to click on them."
I can understand how an umbrella or general liability policy could protect you from this. Such policies have been around a long time and are heavily regulated by various state agencies.
I don't think you have any such assurance (no pun intended) with IP specific policies. I'd wait until the market matures a bit before considering such a policy or you might witness your insurance company disappearing once it comes time to file a claim.
This product will never become popular until the authors implement some solid digital rights management. Several studies funded by the RIAA and MPAA conclusively prove that users want DRM in every piece of software and hardware that is made today.
I'm afraid without such restrictions on them, users just won't want to use such software because nobody wants free and unfettered access to equipment and software they purchase.
Take it from someone who's attempted to shave with their IPod. It is neither razor or blade.
Seriously, it's about time that someone knocked Fortran programmers down a peg or two. It seems impossible to get any type of programming job if you don't know Fortran.
Every job classified ad section is filled to the brim with Fortran positions while less relevant languages like Java, C# and Visual Basic are almost completely neglected.
I for one welcome news like this if it help Fortran programmers acquire just a little humility.
I noticed this recently when I downloaded the iso .torrent of Silence of the Lambs and burned it to a DVD with DVDShrink. I'm outraged that they would rip me off like this!
I'm going to contact them immediately and ask for them to make restitution.
This will make it much easier to label the 42 DVD+Rs it takes to back up the home MiniDV digital camcorder videos I store on my computer.
Now if only they'd do something silly, like agree on future DVD standards that actually might make a removable media device that keeps up with today's hard drive sizes, we'd be set. In the meantime, we now have been spared the torture of printing DVD labels on a separate device. That's something.
This may be obvious to most people (I sure have missed obvious things in the past), but some background as to why you're thinking of moving to China might put your question into proper context.
I especially dislike their Encrypted File System (EFS). One of its highlights is that the first administrator account set up in a domain is designated an "Encrypted Data Recovery Agent". What does this mean? If you use your domain login at work to encrypt your data, the administrator has immediate ability to decrypt it anytime they want.
How is this done? Every file that is written to an encrypted folder by User A has a private encryption key generated for it. That private encryption key is then encrypted with User A's public key and every designed Encrypted Data Recovery Agent's public key. Then either User A or any such recovery agent's private key can then decrypt the file.
Of course, MS just lets lay users assume their "encrypted" files are private.
As far as I'm concerned, the state of artificial intelligence could advance no more after the development of Microsoft Office's PaperClip helper.
:
That bendy little guy always knows exactly what I'm trying to do and provides timely, topical help on the subject. I mean, every time I type:
Dear
That little artificial lifeform knows I'm getting ready to type a letter and offers to give me a hand. What a wondrous age we live in.