AdMuncher is way more than just blocking though - its ruleset is both huge and excellent, and will actually correctly rewrite pages so that ads are gone but overall page layout remains solid, without javascript errors or odd text flows.
I once emailed a funny video clip on a website to my wife - it had a mildly risque title, but wasn't NSFW at all, so I even mentioned that in the email. Little did I know that the clip was literally bracketed with loud, auto-playing flash-based porn ads (seriously). She was, to put it mildly, unthrilled.
Actually, for IE (in fact for anything on Windows) there's AdMuncher - its the one piece of software I've yet to find a good replacement for on the Mac, and I still miss it. Since it taps in at the network layer, it even filters things like MSN messenger just fine. Its also excellent at knowing which ads to just delete, which to replace with blank space, &c, in order to keep the page looking good.
Not only that, but Apple pretty recently (within the last few months) reduced the size of their "larger" (still not that large) high-watt power adapters (for things like the 17" MBP) down to the same size as their low-power 13" MacBooks. So if that's not "Shrink[ing] the size of those dang power bricks" I don't know what is.
Now these are people who were screened for a TV gameshow. They should be smarter than the average bear. A third got it wrong.
What -- exactly -- do you think that they were screening for? I'd be willing to bet it wasn't intelligence. People who make for a fun[ny] game show audience, now, that'd be a pretty good guess.
What do you think they care about more? What do you think they spend more time exposing themselves to, politics or OJ and Britney?
While I appreciate the sentiment, you should be a little fair here as well. I mean, how many slashdot readers know (sans google) what the third-highest ranked Senate official is... compared to the number who would happily go on for hours about the differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3?
So why didn't you just send him a PDF of the chart, created through OpenProj? That would have given him the information in a useful format, and allowed you to use the tool of your choice to create it, without needlessly antagonizing your boss...
The only question I have, is... what about the thousands (or more) of Excel spreadsheets that the department created that didn't evolve into a multi-user database application? The hardest thing is identifying the tipping point reliably. I don't think that anyone really differs with the correct way to handle things clearly on either side of that point.
Side-note: you cannot make a copy of a DVD without decrypting it.
Actually, this is incorrect. You can absolutely copy one DVD onto another DVD (or even onto disk) without decrypting it. What you cannot do is copy it so that the destination "copy" is in a useful, playable format for most systems. You also can't change the filesize without decrypting it. Most "copying" programs do both of those two things, but its absolutely not necessary.
I registered herald.net back in July of 1996 (currently idling if anyone has an interesting project, but that's another story) for my first company, a web-host. One of the first, actually, and a ton of fun writing things like patches to WU-FTPd to handle ftp@yourdomain.com logins... ah, yes. If I'd had a tenth the business savvy back then than a small potato has now... water under the bridge. But anyway, I remember having to fill out the justification form as well to get the.net registered, especially since I wasn't planning on doing dial-up (maybe in the back of my mind, but not my primary focus and it never actually happened).
Even more ironic was the fact that I was annoyed that it took me 10 minutes to find a domain I liked that wasn't taken, and that I had to "settle" for herald.net... Of course, research was through whois before submitting the form through (IIRC) email...
Well, seriously, that's what I said when I (also 6' tall) had lost 40 lbs to put me at around 200 with a 35" waist. Now at 175 lbs with a 32" waist, I have to admit that I was wrong. Maybe you're not, but 6'/180 is far from bean-pole.
As for competing, 6'/195 considered pretty heavy. After all, just picking a random (local to me) race, the Austin Marathon, anyone over 190 is eligable for the Clydesdale division - indicating (to me at least) that most competitive runners weigh in under that point.
Its funny. Over here in the 'States, 6'/200 is pretty normal. Heck, it can be hard to find pants in some stores smaller than 34". In Europe, for example, popular stores carry jeans starting at a 28" waist and 6'/170 would be much closer to the norm. Its all what you're used to.
That's an interesting idea - kind of like a visual cat of sorts? Create a viewport window that outputs whatever its overlayed on as an RSS feed, for example. I'm not sure how workable it would be in practice, but its fascinating to consider. Maybe decryption, a la the matrix? Show encrypted video (or whatever), toss on a decryption filter (obviously it would receive more than just the visual representation beneath) by holding it over the window, and you'd get your intended output.
Of course, the number of inadvertent uses would probably far outweigh the intended results. Which could be fun, too.
Tivoization breaks rule 1. The rule clearly differentiates between the source code and the program (binary) and says that the program (binary) must be adaptable to your needs. On a device like Tivo, source code is available, you can even generate a program from it but you CANNOT adapt the program; you can only create a new program that is unusable as an adaption of the original program as the system does not allow you to use it in place of the original program.
Actually, it is (the binary is adaptable to your needs) and you can (adapt the program). You can take that program, take the source rather, modify it, and create a really great new program. You can then distribute the fsck out of it to millions of people.
All legally and in compliance with the license.
That's what the GPL was designed to let you do and, in this case, it has succeeded admirably.
From a hardware standpoint, Tivo is willing to sell you subsidized hardware with a restriction that you only run their certified software on it. If you want to run their software without buying their hardware, you can (see previous comments above). This helps them keep their network happy and makes sure that their warranty program can work without having to do software verification for every single issue (a dramatic expense when it comes to phone support, an already expensive to run returns program, etc).
From an intent standpoint, what if they had stripped the fsck out of everything and calculated the maximum memory use, then burned out any excess RAM (a gross simplification)? You still wouldn't be able to add a new feature into their software - would this also be something that people would complain about?
Yeah, it probably would be. Oh, well...
Until then, if you want to play around with hacked Tivo software, you can always do it on your choice of commodity hardware...
When you absolutely love what you do, it is nearly impossible to turn it off when you leave the office.... I have the opportunity to influence the direction my company takes (in regards to technology). I also mentor and train other engineers. These things require a bit more than 40-hours/week.
When told that your excuse sucked, you replied with, "I was observing a trade-off."
Not really. Your original post said, "If I am expected to allow work to invade my personal life, then my personal life will have to invade work from time to time. Fair is fair."
From everything you've said since, it sounds like you are choosing to allow work to invade your personal life. You may have very good reasons (to you) for allowing that to happen, but they're still your reasons. That decision - that you made, and could also unmake (possibly with tradeoffs, but its still your decision) - does not then somehow force your company to allow you to spend business hours on personal time.
I feel that a reasonable company will indeed do so, but nothing that you choose to do - however beneficial for the company - forces them to do any such thing. So yeah, I have to agree with the GPP when he said, "Your excuse sucks."
Those people should be smart and experienced enough to send a detailed cover letter explaining how, regardless of the fact that they don't know the language (no big deal), the libraries (much harder to grasp) and the "right way" of doing things (the biggie), their operational and business domain experience is still enough of a good fit for the company to have them come in for a chat. The fact that they don't (apparently) leads me to believe that their business skills won't, indeed, make up for their lack of language knowledge.
One point here is that cel phone conversations are pretty much the same whether or not they're being monitored. I know (and yes, this is personal anecdote time) plenty of people who, while driving, will do things like turn to face the person they're talking to. Drives me batty to see that - when you're behind the wheel you should be driving first, chatting second. But anyway, I would suspect that those people would not keep their behavior the same while being monitored.
Using the touchpad, tapping with a single finger gives you a left-click. Tapping with two fingers together gives you a right-click. This is easier, to most people I've talked to (including myself), than a dedicated hardware right-click button and, for developers, removed that significant barrier to entry.
Combined with the two-finger-swipe to scroll in all directions, the Mac trackpad really trashes the competition.
Oracle does charge by the socket, its one of their competitive advantages. And paying a single CPU license fee for a nice quad Xeon is pretty damn sweet. It also means that you can put together a "2 CPU" cluster using Oracle Standard Edition (max 4 CPUs) with 8 cores of powerful goodness and the ability to scale up 100% with another two boxes without hitting licensing issues.
And yes, a cluster of 2 boxes is often the smallest deployment you can consider from a failover standpoint.
Actually, I'd argue the flaws surrounding the Windows OS actually created a support and repair market to the likes humanity has never seen.
This is actually a good thing for an industry, I believe. Look at Oracle (I'm thinking specifically of the DBMS). In many ways it was far inferior to its competitors, like DB2 and (especially) Informix. Hell, it didn't even come with a hot backup program for many years, and it still needs a ton of nursemaiding (comparitively). However, those flaws created a consultant pool, and those consultants, when asked, didn't hesitate to recommend Oracle to everyone. Fast-forward, and most people in the Enterprise space use Oracle. Go figure.
And yet to a certain extent that is true. Let's look at a book that contains content that's in the public domain, such as a copy of Hamlet. I cannot simply photocopy that book and sell the copies. If I do that, I'm profiting from the added value of typesetting, additional content, et cetera. I can, however, take the content from that book and re-release it myself. If C-SPAN adds value to the feed, even by just adding graphics that identify the speakers, that makes it a different product than the one that is publicly accessible.
This would allow the person who controls the source, even if that source is in the Public Domain, to have a perpetual copyright, because they could license their broadcasts under terms that would require you to delete or destroy them before they expired (or use DRM that enforced this, which it would be a crime to circumvent)
But that's not what's happening here. You have one company taking a publicly available feed that they do not hold copyright on, adding (small, but measurable) value to it by doing visual modifications, and passing it along. There's nothing whatsoever limiting you from going to the source, just as they did. Nothing at all. The original material still exists.
In that case they're obviously adding value, and should -- in my opinion -- be able to regain copyright and control over that data. Especially since an unencumbered feed is available, if difficult to access.
After all, taking data that's difficult to use/access and transforming/relocating it into a format that's signficantly more usable for the general public -- especially since they don't "use up" the available free feed -- is almost exactly the "services-based" profit model for open-source software and, IMO, a very legitimate way for them to make a living.
In C-SPAN's case, what they broadcast can be divided loosely into two categories: footage shot by the government and footage shot by them. The House and Senate floor coverage is shot by crews and equipment owned by the Congress; C-SPAN merely takes a feed and retransmits it with their graphics. Thus, the floor sessions are public domain.
For other C-SPAN programs, the network sends its own equipment and crews to the hearing or event. Therefore, they own the copyright.
I would say that its all C-SPAN content in that case. If you want to make public domain copies of the floor recordings, why get them from C-SPAN in the first place? Go to the source and pick up the same feed that they're using.
Unless C-SPAN adds value over and above what that feed provides (storage, cleanup, whatever). In which case, I'm afraid, they're obviously adding value and its no longer the same public domain feed.
Motorolla should get an F for interface design (Whoever thought that having separate entries for each of 4 phone/fax numbers for a single person was a good idea should have to navigate phones using that system for the rest of their lives)
It sounds as if your phone is set up to store entries on the SIM card, which does indeed have this limitation. Change it over to store entries in the phone memory itself, and you can put as many phone numbers (or email addresses, whatever) against a single name as you like. When navigating through them, up and down arrows iterate through the names while left and right arrows flip through the numbers associated with that name.
Good software (well, not that bad at any rate), bad default setting on where to store your data.
Makes sense. And I'd be interested (but too lazy to find out) to hear how many people ever replaced the batteries in their phones too. I know that mine is dying (RAZR, needs to be charged every day and a half or so these days) but I'm not going to replace it -- even though I can -- because I'm looking to replace the whole phone shortly. Either way, the fact that replacing an iBattery requires cracking the case shouldn't be a huge negative when it comes time to move on.
And unlike many phones, even current smartPhones, there's probably a reasonable secondary market for the iPhone. Even older iPods retain some value, unlike older mobile phones. That's a pure guess at this point of course.
No way in hell am I going to pay $500 for something I'll have to replace in 2 years because the battery (which is already underpowered when you consider this is a phone, not just a music player) won't last longer than a couple of hours, and I have a feeling that such a thing could hurt the iPhone more than it did the iPod, as one expects a phone to always be one so one can always be reached, even in an emergency situation.
I'd submit that the vast majority of people keep their mobiles for no more than 2 years. And contrary to the post I'd expect the willingness to upgrade to increase with the price of the phone, within reason. Someone who paid $19 for their phone will upgrade at the drop of a hat. Someone who can afford to pay $500 will probably do the same - its a toy, or a status symbol. Someone who paid $200-250 is probably the least likely to upgrade ahead of schedule, all things considered.
Slashdot Mirror
AdMuncher is way more than just blocking though - its ruleset is both huge and excellent, and will actually correctly rewrite pages so that ads are gone but overall page layout remains solid, without javascript errors or odd text flows.
I once emailed a funny video clip on a website to my wife - it had a mildly risque title, but wasn't NSFW at all, so I even mentioned that in the email. Little did I know that the clip was literally bracketed with loud, auto-playing flash-based porn ads (seriously). She was, to put it mildly, unthrilled.
And no, I don't know the URL any more.
Actually, for IE (in fact for anything on Windows) there's AdMuncher - its the one piece of software I've yet to find a good replacement for on the Mac, and I still miss it. Since it taps in at the network layer, it even filters things like MSN messenger just fine. Its also excellent at knowing which ads to just delete, which to replace with blank space, &c, in order to keep the page looking good.
Not only that, but Apple pretty recently (within the last few months) reduced the size of their "larger" (still not that large) high-watt power adapters (for things like the 17" MBP) down to the same size as their low-power 13" MacBooks. So if that's not "Shrink[ing] the size of those dang power bricks" I don't know what is.
Wish granted.
So why didn't you just send him a PDF of the chart, created through OpenProj? That would have given him the information in a useful format, and allowed you to use the tool of your choice to create it, without needlessly antagonizing your boss...
The only question I have, is... what about the thousands (or more) of Excel spreadsheets that the department created that didn't evolve into a multi-user database application? The hardest thing is identifying the tipping point reliably. I don't think that anyone really differs with the correct way to handle things clearly on either side of that point.
Actually, this is incorrect. You can absolutely copy one DVD onto another DVD (or even onto disk) without decrypting it. What you cannot do is copy it so that the destination "copy" is in a useful, playable format for most systems. You also can't change the filesize without decrypting it. Most "copying" programs do both of those two things, but its absolutely not necessary.
I registered herald.net back in July of 1996 (currently idling if anyone has an interesting project, but that's another story) for my first company, a web-host. One of the first, actually, and a ton of fun writing things like patches to WU-FTPd to handle ftp@yourdomain.com logins... ah, yes. If I'd had a tenth the business savvy back then than a small potato has now... water under the bridge. But anyway, I remember having to fill out the justification form as well to get the .net registered, especially since I wasn't planning on doing dial-up (maybe in the back of my mind, but not my primary focus and it never actually happened).
Even more ironic was the fact that I was annoyed that it took me 10 minutes to find a domain I liked that wasn't taken, and that I had to "settle" for herald.net... Of course, research was through whois before submitting the form through (IIRC) email...
Well, seriously, that's what I said when I (also 6' tall) had lost 40 lbs to put me at around 200 with a 35" waist. Now at 175 lbs with a 32" waist, I have to admit that I was wrong. Maybe you're not, but 6'/180 is far from bean-pole.
As for competing, 6'/195 considered pretty heavy. After all, just picking a random (local to me) race, the Austin Marathon, anyone over 190 is eligable for the Clydesdale division - indicating (to me at least) that most competitive runners weigh in under that point.
Its funny. Over here in the 'States, 6'/200 is pretty normal. Heck, it can be hard to find pants in some stores smaller than 34". In Europe, for example, popular stores carry jeans starting at a 28" waist and 6'/170 would be much closer to the norm. Its all what you're used to.
That's an interesting idea - kind of like a visual cat of sorts? Create a viewport window that outputs whatever its overlayed on as an RSS feed, for example. I'm not sure how workable it would be in practice, but its fascinating to consider. Maybe decryption, a la the matrix? Show encrypted video (or whatever), toss on a decryption filter (obviously it would receive more than just the visual representation beneath) by holding it over the window, and you'd get your intended output.
Of course, the number of inadvertent uses would probably far outweigh the intended results. Which could be fun, too.
Actually, it is (the binary is adaptable to your needs) and you can (adapt the program). You can take that program, take the source rather, modify it, and create a really great new program. You can then distribute the fsck out of it to millions of people.
All legally and in compliance with the license.
That's what the GPL was designed to let you do and, in this case, it has succeeded admirably.
From a hardware standpoint, Tivo is willing to sell you subsidized hardware with a restriction that you only run their certified software on it. If you want to run their software without buying their hardware, you can (see previous comments above). This helps them keep their network happy and makes sure that their warranty program can work without having to do software verification for every single issue (a dramatic expense when it comes to phone support, an already expensive to run returns program, etc).
From an intent standpoint, what if they had stripped the fsck out of everything and calculated the maximum memory use, then burned out any excess RAM (a gross simplification)? You still wouldn't be able to add a new feature into their software - would this also be something that people would complain about?
Yeah, it probably would be. Oh, well...
Until then, if you want to play around with hacked Tivo software, you can always do it on your choice of commodity hardware...
When told that your excuse sucked, you replied with, "I was observing a trade-off."
Not really. Your original post said, "If I am expected to allow work to invade my personal life, then my personal life will have to invade work from time to time. Fair is fair."
From everything you've said since, it sounds like you are choosing to allow work to invade your personal life. You may have very good reasons (to you) for allowing that to happen, but they're still your reasons. That decision - that you made, and could also unmake (possibly with tradeoffs, but its still your decision) - does not then somehow force your company to allow you to spend business hours on personal time.
I feel that a reasonable company will indeed do so, but nothing that you choose to do - however beneficial for the company - forces them to do any such thing. So yeah, I have to agree with the GPP when he said, "Your excuse sucks."
Those people should be smart and experienced enough to send a detailed cover letter explaining how, regardless of the fact that they don't know the language (no big deal), the libraries (much harder to grasp) and the "right way" of doing things (the biggie), their operational and business domain experience is still enough of a good fit for the company to have them come in for a chat. The fact that they don't (apparently) leads me to believe that their business skills won't, indeed, make up for their lack of language knowledge.
One point here is that cel phone conversations are pretty much the same whether or not they're being monitored. I know (and yes, this is personal anecdote time) plenty of people who, while driving, will do things like turn to face the person they're talking to. Drives me batty to see that - when you're behind the wheel you should be driving first, chatting second. But anyway, I would suspect that those people would not keep their behavior the same while being monitored.
The single button mouse no longer exists...
Using the touchpad, tapping with a single finger gives you a left-click. Tapping with two fingers together gives you a right-click. This is easier, to most people I've talked to (including myself), than a dedicated hardware right-click button and, for developers, removed that significant barrier to entry.
Combined with the two-finger-swipe to scroll in all directions, the Mac trackpad really trashes the competition.
Badly stated, perhaps - you can get away with one box if your failover requirements don't exist, which is more common than you might think.
Oracle does charge by the socket, its one of their competitive advantages. And paying a single CPU license fee for a nice quad Xeon is pretty damn sweet. It also means that you can put together a "2 CPU" cluster using Oracle Standard Edition (max 4 CPUs) with 8 cores of powerful goodness and the ability to scale up 100% with another two boxes without hitting licensing issues.
And yes, a cluster of 2 boxes is often the smallest deployment you can consider from a failover standpoint.
But that's not what's happening here. You have one company taking a publicly available feed that they do not hold copyright on, adding (small, but measurable) value to it by doing visual modifications, and passing it along. There's nothing whatsoever limiting you from going to the source, just as they did. Nothing at all. The original material still exists.
In that case they're obviously adding value, and should -- in my opinion -- be able to regain copyright and control over that data. Especially since an unencumbered feed is available, if difficult to access.
After all, taking data that's difficult to use/access and transforming/relocating it into a format that's signficantly more usable for the general public -- especially since they don't "use up" the available free feed -- is almost exactly the "services-based" profit model for open-source software and, IMO, a very legitimate way for them to make a living.
Unless C-SPAN adds value over and above what that feed provides (storage, cleanup, whatever). In which case, I'm afraid, they're obviously adding value and its no longer the same public domain feed.
Seriously - why go through C-SPAN?
Good software (well, not that bad at any rate), bad default setting on where to store your data.
Makes sense. And I'd be interested (but too lazy to find out) to hear how many people ever replaced the batteries in their phones too. I know that mine is dying (RAZR, needs to be charged every day and a half or so these days) but I'm not going to replace it -- even though I can -- because I'm looking to replace the whole phone shortly. Either way, the fact that replacing an iBattery requires cracking the case shouldn't be a huge negative when it comes time to move on.
And unlike many phones, even current smartPhones, there's probably a reasonable secondary market for the iPhone. Even older iPods retain some value, unlike older mobile phones. That's a pure guess at this point of course.