How about both? The entertainment industry will not fall to Tivo, or just about any other technology.
Of course that statement is true, but let's not dilute ourselves. The truth of the matter is that without entertainment to record, the PVR is useless, not the other way around.
The point I was trying to make is that AOL/TW shooting themselves in the foot over a PVR isn't even CLOSE to shooting themselves in the foot over their entertainment business to protect the PVR business. If it came down to it, it would be an easy decision.
That AOL/TW exec simply has his priorities straight, whether we agree with him or not.
That Time Warner executive should have been fired... for directly going against (and possibly reducing value) of the parent company.
Let's be rhetorical for a minute:
What's more valuable to AOL/Time Warner and its shareholders? A billion dollar entertainment industry or a million dollar PVR industry that may be dead in a few years?
Go Linus! I always knew he rocked, that's why I named my cockatiel after him! I also named my fish after Alan Cox...
Good thing it wasn't the other way around. Even though naming your cockatiel after Alan has a certain aliteratory appeal, you don't want to be chasing after him when he runs away in the neighborhood yelling "Here, cox! Get over here, cox!! Com'ere boy!! That's a good cox!".
... and the RIAA doesn't seem to care they've lost my business of about 25 CDs a year. The MPAA also isn't wondering why I haven't bought a DVD since 2000. So don't organise a huge boycott or they'll notice!! Then I'd have to start paying for music and movies again, damnit.
Oh and if you're the RIAA or MPAA -- just kidding!
To be fair, I suppose these guys see *thousands* of submissions per week and easily forget what's been posted and what hasn't.
There are thousands of submissions, but much much much fewer make it as stories. Surely people that get paid to do this can keep track of just the stories.
Let's say I offered to pay you $500,000 to shoot someone in the head, and you knew that if you didn't do it, I'd go to someone who you know doesn't really care about having blood on his/her hands and would do it if you wouldn't. Is it then okay to shoot our poor captive in the head?
How about if I were going to go shoot someone in the head, and asked you to sell me the gun. Would you really sell me the gun and ammo and defend yourself by saying that you had done nothing wrong, and were just engaging in commerce?
You are confusing law and ethics. If murder were legal, you might have a point.
"It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions."
I really don't like this comment. These companies have nothing to do with China's policies, they are merely selling them a means to enforce those policies.
These companies are conforming to a Capitolist society (ours) which dictates that if they don't help China, their competitors will profit instead. How about blaming Capitolist ideals for this? It holds more water than your ethics reasoning.
Reuters (AP), Redmond WA - Microsoft has slashed prices on Windows XP for consumers from $299 to one dollar. Microsoft headmaster Bill Gates said in a prepared statement "we make bucketloads off our corporate customers anyway, we thought we'd just give it away to everyone else".
I believe the saying goes "with enough eyes, all bugs become shallow", not "with an arbitrary number of eyes..."
If an auditing process like this is used, people might take a function for granted as "working" just because it's been checked by three different people, two of which are "experts". Even experts make mistakes.
A far more reliable solution is to have unit tests (like with JUnit or xUnit). An expert at writing good unit tests is far more useful to a team than someone that just scans code.
The unit tests also become important regression tests, so bugs introduced indirectly are found immediately. For more info, googlize yourself on "test driven design".
We rely on the courts and antitrust laws to keep Microsoft from abusing its enormous power. We need Microsoft itself to be the universal stepladder that lets us climb out of our hole and smell the roses.
So everything will be grand if only we put Microsoft between us and our hardware? Please. Making a Microsoft operating system into a 'universal stepladder' will only tempt them to abuse this power further. Let's not turn this guy's vision into an us-against-them issue. This vision (and its implementation) is long overdue.
It's interesting that this guy is flag-waving for Microsoft in the first place. After all, he is competing against Microsoft's own 'window manager', which will become moot if his vision comes to fruition. If what he says is true, in two years he will then compete directly with Longhorn's UI.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch?
What is really needed is a nice OS layer that gives support to these new user interfaces (that replace windows managers). Linux is a nice open solution to this problem. What happens to this guy when Microsoft comes out with their own new-and-improved GUI for Longhorn? Microsoft closes their OS (not window manager) API and its game over.
Who knows, maybe he's just trying to get a job on the Longhorn project. But if he's going to try to compete directly against Microsoft, I don't see how he can possibly win. He'll find out first hand how powerful Microsoft really is. He would be wiser to develop for an open platform, and beat Microsoft from the side instead of from the top.
Re:Definition of Developer
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Its really interesting (in a good way) that ESR makes no mental distinction between a user and someone who can contribute, whereas for MS they are totally different categories.
ESR is confusing the issue and I agree with you, probably mistaken. "Anbody with a technical clue" could have a many many levels. Half of the pimply-faced college students that comment on slashdot have a technical clue (ie. maybe use free software in some capacity), but that doesn't mean they hack OSS or even care about code at all.
Microsoft is obviously looking at the 'people who write software's opinion, as they are the ones directly affected by SharedSource. The other people with a clue are only indirectly affected by work done by the code writers.
"... the biggest trade off for your end users is that your application will never fully conform to the native user interface of the operating system it is run on."
For the life of me I can't understand why people can't handle remembering/using more than one user interface. Are software developers going to have to make everything plain vanilla just so brain-dead web surfers can use their product?
Turn on your brains while you use your computers, folks and take the 5 minutes to learn a new user interface. Maybe you'll see something you like better (like tabbed browsing) that's not available on your interface. Maybe you'll appreciate your "primary" interface more. If anything, it keeps your brain moving and the progressive evolution to better software going!
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone else see the irony in 32-bit colour ASCII? Geez ...
Linus Torvalds, the original creator of the operating system and still its top authority.
You know Slashdot is going "mainstream" when people have to explain who Linus is.
Just call up Tank and ask him to download it into your brain. Presto-chango! .. oh wait, you aren't in the Matrix. .... or ARE you?
How about both? The entertainment industry will not fall to Tivo, or just about any other technology.
Of course that statement is true, but let's not dilute ourselves. The truth of the matter is that without entertainment to record, the PVR is useless, not the other way around.
The point I was trying to make is that AOL/TW shooting themselves in the foot over a PVR isn't even CLOSE to shooting themselves in the foot over their entertainment business to protect the PVR business. If it came down to it, it would be an easy decision.
That AOL/TW exec simply has his priorities straight, whether we agree with him or not.
That Time Warner executive should have been fired ... for directly going against (and possibly reducing value) of the parent company.
Let's be rhetorical for a minute:
What's more valuable to AOL/Time Warner and its shareholders? A billion dollar entertainment industry or a million dollar PVR industry that may be dead in a few years?
Don't steal music. Its wrong and it hurts musicians and people in the industry.
Just because he asked about guns doesn't mean he's going to go out and shoot people.
Go Linus! I always knew he rocked, that's why I named my cockatiel after him! I also named my fish after Alan Cox ...
Good thing it wasn't the other way around. Even though naming your cockatiel after Alan has a certain aliteratory appeal, you don't want to be chasing after him when he runs away in the neighborhood yelling "Here, cox! Get over here, cox!! Com'ere boy!! That's a good cox!".
... and the RIAA doesn't seem to care they've lost my business of about 25 CDs a year. The MPAA also isn't wondering why I haven't bought a DVD since 2000. So don't organise a huge boycott or they'll notice!! Then I'd have to start paying for music and movies again, damnit.
Oh and if you're the RIAA or MPAA -- just kidding!
The strain's attack and mortality rates were highest among people aged between 20 years and 50 years. Are you scared already?
Actually no, I'm 51.
Excellent! Where can I pre order Visual Pascal?
Don't you mean Delphi?
No wonder my laptop only gets about a hour of runtime on its battery. :-) ... and burns your groin area? Yeah, that's why.
To be fair, I suppose these guys see *thousands* of submissions per week and easily forget what's been posted and what hasn't.
There are thousands of submissions, but much much much fewer make it as stories. Surely people that get paid to do this can keep track of just the stories.
I'm saying neither.
Lawful is not necessarily ethical.
Ethical is not necessarily lawful.
So contrasting ethics and law is not appropriate.
Let's say I offered to pay you $500,000 to shoot someone in the head, and you knew that if you didn't do it, I'd go to someone who you know doesn't really care about having blood on his/her hands and would do it if you wouldn't. Is it then okay to shoot our poor captive in the head?
How about if I were going to go shoot someone in the head, and asked you to sell me the gun. Would you really sell me the gun and ammo and defend yourself by saying that you had done nothing wrong, and were just engaging in commerce?
You are confusing law and ethics. If murder were legal, you might have a point.
"It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions."
I really don't like this comment. These companies have nothing to do with China's policies, they are merely selling them a means to enforce those policies.
These companies are conforming to a Capitolist society (ours) which dictates that if they don't help China, their competitors will profit instead. How about blaming Capitolist ideals for this? It holds more water than your ethics reasoning.
Don't ask me to do the math as to how much better Windows 2000 is.
:P
According to the good ole MS Calculator (coincidently in Windows 2000), it is 769.23076923076923076923076923077 times better.
Reuters (AP), Redmond WA - Microsoft has slashed prices on Windows XP for consumers from $299 to one dollar. Microsoft headmaster Bill Gates said in a prepared statement "we make bucketloads off our corporate customers anyway, we thought we'd just give it away to everyone else".
I believe the saying goes "with enough eyes, all bugs become shallow", not "with an arbitrary number of eyes ..."
If an auditing process like this is used, people might take a function for granted as "working" just because it's been checked by three different people, two of which are "experts". Even experts make mistakes.
A far more reliable solution is to have unit tests (like with JUnit or xUnit). An expert at writing good unit tests is far more useful to a team than someone that just scans code.
The unit tests also become important regression tests, so bugs introduced indirectly are found immediately. For more info, googlize yourself on "test driven design".
Lame replying to my own post I know but I just had an idea. Follow my progress ...
...*cough*
Explorer Killer
Explorer Killa
Exilla
Xilla
Zilla
So you end up with Zilla. If Zilla's not enough browser for you, get Mo'Zilla.
Hmmm ... Mozilla is short for Mosaic Killer, right? What would Internet Explorer Killer be?
x plorilla(*)
Exiller
Exilla
Expilla
Explilla
Explolla
E
*possible Trademark infringement (ie. they may be catching on at this point)
We rely on the courts and antitrust laws to keep Microsoft from abusing its enormous power. We need Microsoft itself to be the universal stepladder that lets us climb out of our hole and smell the roses.
So everything will be grand if only we put Microsoft between us and our hardware? Please. Making a Microsoft operating system into a 'universal stepladder' will only tempt them to abuse this power further. Let's not turn this guy's vision into an us-against-them issue. This vision (and its implementation) is long overdue.
It's interesting that this guy is flag-waving for Microsoft in the first place. After all, he is competing against Microsoft's own 'window manager', which will become moot if his vision comes to fruition. If what he says is true, in two years he will then compete directly with Longhorn's UI.
Each is nonetheless still solid enough to be a good, steady platform for the next step in software. But Windows is the marketplace victor and has now won a decisive legal imprimatur. There is no technical reason for us to move to Linux; why should we switch?
What is really needed is a nice OS layer that gives support to these new user interfaces (that replace windows managers). Linux is a nice open solution to this problem. What happens to this guy when Microsoft comes out with their own new-and-improved GUI for Longhorn? Microsoft closes their OS (not window manager) API and its game over.
Who knows, maybe he's just trying to get a job on the Longhorn project. But if he's going to try to compete directly against Microsoft, I don't see how he can possibly win. He'll find out first hand how powerful Microsoft really is. He would be wiser to develop for an open platform, and beat Microsoft from the side instead of from the top.
Its really interesting (in a good way) that ESR makes no mental distinction between a user and someone who can contribute, whereas for MS they are totally different categories.
ESR is confusing the issue and I agree with you, probably mistaken. "Anbody with a technical clue" could have a many many levels. Half of the pimply-faced college students that comment on slashdot have a technical clue (ie. maybe use free software in some capacity), but that doesn't mean they hack OSS or even care about code at all.
Microsoft is obviously looking at the 'people who write software's opinion, as they are the ones directly affected by SharedSource. The other people with a clue are only indirectly affected by work done by the code writers.
FYI, the FreeBSD port was done by some folks at Corel.
What happens if you get a power surge? Rips your dick off and faxes it to Canada?
... if you catch my drift.
Just to let you reassure you, it would be among the friendliest people in the world!
"... the biggest trade off for your end users is that your application will never fully conform to the native user interface of the operating system it is run on."
For the life of me I can't understand why people can't handle remembering/using more than one user interface. Are software developers going to have to make everything plain vanilla just so brain-dead web surfers can use their product?
Turn on your brains while you use your computers, folks and take the 5 minutes to learn a new user interface. Maybe you'll see something you like better (like tabbed browsing) that's not available on your interface. Maybe you'll appreciate your "primary" interface more. If anything, it keeps your brain moving and the progressive evolution to better software going!
Ryan