Capitolism is the problem here. If those fools at the capitol would just leave these decisions to capitalists we'd all be a lot better off. Capitalists can admit their mistakes and try new things as quickly as consumers can walk away from their bad ideas. But with legislators and legislation it doesn't work that way.
The 120-day trial version has been around forever, it's only the contest that's new. The CE dev tools cost around $1k/seat. No slashdotter is going to fork over that kind of cash to do OS development on the weekends. And what would develop against? Most phones and PDAs are locked up tight.
On the other hand, Linux is free and there's stuff like the WRT54g to run it on. So who is the target audience for this contest? Do they just want to get professional set-top-box developers exposed to their DVR stuff?
This would actually make sense if they were targeting existing customers. But who do they expect (or hope) will spend 4 months coding furionsly on some cool project, only to lose access to the development tools when it's all over?
Napster selling downloads is like Netscape selling web browsers. Hard to do when your leading competitor can give away the same thing because they make their money selling something else (Apple: iPods, Microsoft: Windows).
There's your answer... It takes a while to realize that your manager really is that bad, that it's not just an isolated incident or a couple of mistakes. And it takes a while to make up your mind that it's bad enough to quit.
But in his case, his management churned so quickly that he was working for someone else before he was ready to leave. I've been there myself - by the time I realized my lead was so bad I wouldn't work for him, I was already reporting to someone else. When he says he would leave right away, that's his hindsight speaking. If your bad manager had been replaced after six months, and been replaced with someone you enjoyed working for, you'd be in the exact same position: saying (sincerely) that you'd quit if you had to work for him again.
Negroponte's words have connotations of which he is undoubtedly aware.
For example, try telling your mother (or his) that she 'uses most of her energy to move fat.' Would you expect this to be received well?
It's true that Linux has evolved into something not suitable for his project, and that everybody knows this, and that most people are quite happy with the fact that Linux does nice things on modern hardware. But his reaction to this state of affairs is not a mere description of "what the challenges of the software side of his project are," it's an insult that he hopes will persuade someone to turn Linux into something that IS suitable. This demonstrates a remarkable lack of social skills on his part.
This does not bode well, coming as it does from the leader of a project whose success depends on hundreds of millions of dollars of charitable donations. And regarding an area that depends on a loosely knit organization of people who write code for the fun of it.
For example, you could give your partner the GUI and you do all the back end stuff (which may be much more complex).
If you follow that path - each working on different areas - you are no longer practicing pair programming. You are just teammates working on different portions of the product.
OK, so I don't really know that for a fact, but I have a really hard time believing that the Mythbusters team woke up one day and decided to investigate a myth about the quality of Vex robotics kits.
In the late 90s a friend of mine bought a couple dozen copies of Windows NT (licensed, boxed, shrink-wrapped, fully legit) from a shrinking dotcom, cheap. Then he put them on eBay and sold a few. Then Microsoft had eBay yank his auctions. He put more up, they took more down, and this repeated a few times. He got legal threats to which he responded "fuck you, these are legit" (paraphrased - he's a polite guy). More auctions, more auctions taken down, etc, etc. IIRC he sold about half of his inventory before giving up.
Legitimate ownership is not a defense against accusations of piracy.
the project is very ambitious and $100 price tag seems to be unreachable.
That's not unreachable, it's inevitable. Radio shack is already selling $200 PCs. (http://www.presidianpic.com/) Between Moore's Law and economics of scale, the $100 price point is probably a couple years away at most.
In fact I'm pretty sure that the free market will bring $100 PCs to market before MIT does.
I am not optimistic about a network infrastructure that relies on persons A and B turning cranks to route packets for person C.
I guess if you're the sort of person who thinks that people can be depended upon to be altruistic and generous it sounds like a good idea. And clearly Negroponte is such a person - I mean his whole OLPC program is predicated on donations of $100M or so to produce and distribute these things.
Wow, not only are you wrong, but you're also an asshole!
First of all, welcome to slashdot!
Second, I regret to inform you that wrongness and assholeness are the Siamese twins of the slashdot psyche. You will rarely, if ever, see one without the other.
It's a feature that companies are going to be giving away to lure people to their real businesses. It's just a bullet point for an instant messaging client, a cable service package, an internet service package, a residential phone service package, etc, etc.
Vonage already can't afford the marketing expenses required to recruit and retain customers, and that problem is only going to get worse.
Something tells me that there will always be a demand for higher resolution sensors. Now that 13x19 is do-able, people are going to look for cameras that can capture images that look good when blown up to 3 foot x 4 foot posters.
Heck, I'd like to put a 4'x12' panorama over my fireplace...
Yeah, this just proves that MS doesn't get it when it comes to consumer electronics. Consumer electronics are used in the real world. That means they get used on carpet, the get crammed into cramped stereo cabinets, etc. You have to know how the product will be used and design it for that use, not try to design the use to your product. People just don't work that way.
People need to learn. Some of those lessons will be learned the hard way, which is unfortunate. But it's a pretty simple lesson when you buy a powerful computer, you are buying something that generates a shitload of heat. Them's the facts. Ignore them at their peril.
They could have made the power supply as big as the unit itself, but then people would complain. They could have scaled back the computing power, but then people would complain. So instead they gave people a hot power suppy. People complain, but at least it's a problem that they can do something about. Forcing users to understand new concepts is always hard, but it seems to me that MS took the least bad option available.
Far as I can tell, gamers wanted a game console that crunches lots of numbers fast. In parallel even. And they got what they wanted. Now they're learning what that entails: heat. The power supply needs good ventilation.
Is it really so bad? How many gamers really didn't see this coming? The power supply looks like, well, a heat sink. Whodathunk it would, you know, get hot?
It'll be interesting to see what Sony gets away with - in terms of heat dissipation and customer awareness. Maybe with Microsoft setting the predent and educating the users, Sony will up the CPU power (and thus the power supply heat) by 25% or so. And get only the same number of complaints.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe they use roller bearings?
Capitolism is the problem here. If those fools at the capitol would just leave these decisions to capitalists we'd all be a lot better off. Capitalists can admit their mistakes and try new things as quickly as consumers can walk away from their bad ideas. But with legislators and legislation it doesn't work that way.
On the other hand, Linux is free and there's stuff like the WRT54g to run it on. So who is the target audience for this contest? Do they just want to get professional set-top-box developers exposed to their DVR stuff?
This would actually make sense if they were targeting existing customers. But who do they expect (or hope) will spend 4 months coding furionsly on some cool project, only to lose access to the development tools when it's all over?
Napster selling downloads is like Netscape selling web browsers. Hard to do when your leading competitor can give away the same thing because they make their money selling something else (Apple: iPods, Microsoft: Windows).
But in his case, his management churned so quickly that he was working for someone else before he was ready to leave. I've been there myself - by the time I realized my lead was so bad I wouldn't work for him, I was already reporting to someone else. When he says he would leave right away, that's his hindsight speaking. If your bad manager had been replaced after six months, and been replaced with someone you enjoyed working for, you'd be in the exact same position: saying (sincerely) that you'd quit if you had to work for him again.
For example, try telling your mother (or his) that she 'uses most of her energy to move fat.' Would you expect this to be received well?
It's true that Linux has evolved into something not suitable for his project, and that everybody knows this, and that most people are quite happy with the fact that Linux does nice things on modern hardware. But his reaction to this state of affairs is not a mere description of "what the challenges of the software side of his project are," it's an insult that he hopes will persuade someone to turn Linux into something that IS suitable. This demonstrates a remarkable lack of social skills on his part.
This does not bode well, coming as it does from the leader of a project whose success depends on hundreds of millions of dollars of charitable donations. And regarding an area that depends on a loosely knit organization of people who write code for the fun of it.
If you follow that path - each working on different areas - you are no longer practicing pair programming. You are just teammates working on different portions of the product.
I wonder what they plan to do with the helium.
OK, so I don't really know that for a fact, but I have a really hard time believing that the Mythbusters team woke up one day and decided to investigate a myth about the quality of Vex robotics kits.
I do not think that it does what you think it does.
Legitimate ownership is not a defense against accusations of piracy.
That's not unreachable, it's inevitable. Radio shack is already selling $200 PCs. (http://www.presidianpic.com/) Between Moore's Law and economics of scale, the $100 price point is probably a couple years away at most.
In fact I'm pretty sure that the free market will bring $100 PCs to market before MIT does.
I guess if you're the sort of person who thinks that people can be depended upon to be altruistic and generous it sounds like a good idea. And clearly Negroponte is such a person - I mean his whole OLPC program is predicated on donations of $100M or so to produce and distribute these things.
First of all, welcome to slashdot!
Second, I regret to inform you that wrongness and assholeness are the Siamese twins of the slashdot psyche. You will rarely, if ever, see one without the other.
It might be a hacky way to do metadata but it works. Any music software worth using will import those files intelligently.
Ah, now I get the 'uncomfortable' issue. I ride parks and pipes, where the discomfort is less of an issue and the crashes are more of an issue.
Lawyers screw people for money.
Prostitutes screw people for money.
If this keeps up, Take-Two is going to be sued by politicians next.
I personally like my skin intact, however.
You know, pads might help with that. I find them much less uncomfortable than road rash.
The good news: the feds are sniffing all of your packets.
(This is the oldest joke on the net, by the way.)
Though that is a common mistake.
Vonage already can't afford the marketing expenses required to recruit and retain customers, and that problem is only going to get worse.
Heck, I'd like to put a 4'x12' panorama over my fireplace...
The article sounds an awful lot like it was lifted from this press release, dated March '04.
TFA is DoS'ed, so I have to ask... have there been new developments in the last couple years, or is this just a dupe from two years ago?
People need to learn. Some of those lessons will be learned the hard way, which is unfortunate. But it's a pretty simple lesson when you buy a powerful computer, you are buying something that generates a shitload of heat. Them's the facts. Ignore them at their peril.
They could have made the power supply as big as the unit itself, but then people would complain. They could have scaled back the computing power, but then people would complain. So instead they gave people a hot power suppy. People complain, but at least it's a problem that they can do something about. Forcing users to understand new concepts is always hard, but it seems to me that MS took the least bad option available.
Far as I can tell, gamers wanted a game console that crunches lots of numbers fast. In parallel even. And they got what they wanted. Now they're learning what that entails: heat. The power supply needs good ventilation.
Is it really so bad? How many gamers really didn't see this coming? The power supply looks like, well, a heat sink. Whodathunk it would, you know, get hot?
It'll be interesting to see what Sony gets away with - in terms of heat dissipation and customer awareness. Maybe with Microsoft setting the predent and educating the users, Sony will up the CPU power (and thus the power supply heat) by 25% or so. And get only the same number of complaints.
Harsh realms, dude.