"which discusses the lack of minority heroes in games"
".A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths."
At least in the college dorms I used to live in, every African American male was playing some form of EA sports game (sans NHL). I'd say that the "characters" in these games tend to be African American more often than not. Just because 98% of games portray caucasians as the character does not mean that those 98% are the games that are being played by minorities.
I certainly don't wish to break any laws and my suggestion was in good faith without knowledge of the possible fact that what I suggested was illegal. However, I skimmed through the DMCA and did not read any provisions speaking directly of this activity. I may have missed it, but I certainly didn't see one. I, of course, do not have a copy of a VS EULA so I can't speak to what is contained in that.
Also if you produce any code for production using your education version you are comitting a crime.
I'm curious what is meant here by production. It was my understanding with most educational licenses permitted you to create any works as long as those works were not distributed for or commercial profit or in conjunction or for use by a commercial organizational. Does this prevent me from doing something like writing/publishing my own personal dynamic website in.NET or writing an app in.NET and giving it away for free?
Visual Studio is embarrasingly cheap with an educational discount if you compare it to its retail price. Have a family member or a friend in school purchase it for you and just pay them back.
Virtually all universities have a campus directory of students online that contains at least names and email address, albeit university issued email address. This is public information and really wouldn't be hard for any third party to obtain. In UT's case, http://www.utexas.edu/directory/ is directly linked to from the home page. You can find the email address of any student there that you want.
I third that. Anyone who knows a little bit of python can work on these riddles. And if you don't know python but are very proficient in other languages, then python isn't hard to pick up. On top of that, they are really fun and make you use built-in libraries that you wouldn't ordinarily use but may find useful someday.
Big deal. As an investor, MSFT is much more attractive, as it's trading at 23 times earnings and is paying a decent dividend.
The speculation on Google's stock right now is pretty asinine at the moment. You would have thought "investors" would have learned after the late 90's bubble that no company has unlimited potential. With Google trading at 87.66 times earnings, I'm waiting for the bubble to burst on it too.
I hope you are joking. The design clearly imitates http://www.google.com/ig and it's not far from being an exact replica, sans coloring and placement modifcations. Why should an experimental site be limited to the generic style of previous sites produced by the same entity (in this case, Microsoft)? To say that its design sucks for that reason is hardly convincing.
Second, one of the few major differences is that there is no MS equivalent banner or other flashing indication that it is an MS site.
That's because the marketing crew hasn't gotten ahold of this service yet. Wait till it gets filtered through the entire MS camp and then we will see where that current minimalistic approach goes.
Pardon my ignorance here, as I'm a very junior developer who's only written small time apps using.NET and has dabbled in Java, but what exactly is so hard about deploying a.NET app compared to one developed for J2EE.
A vice-versa question could be asked of the grandparent as well, since neither of you provided any factual evidence either way.
The problem with the system is I can't own a damn thing anymore. There was a time if I wanted to tape something off TV, I would have used a VCR. Now people are paying a monthly fee for TiVo.\
No one is keeping you from using a VCR still. You still have the right to choose with your dollar. Just because Tivo charges a monthly description and cable charges an inordinate amount of money for their service does not mean you have to buy it. If VCR's are a bit archaic for you, there are DVD recorders that can record straight from TV
And it is not good enough to have a phone in the house, now everyone needs a cell phone. I had one employer ask me to update my file with my second phone number, a cell phone number. I did not have one. My boss gave me one hell of a look.
I feel your pain. I work at a university and sometimes I think I'm the only person under the age of 30 without a cell phone. I like the idea of being able to call someone from wherever I'm at and have one in case of an emergency, but not for $40 a month.
And take operating systems for example. There was a time that when I purchased a operating system, I could put it on any computer I owned. Now Microsoft wants me to call in and ask for permission to install Windows.
I agree, but that is Microsoft's EULA which is legally binding when you buy their software. Again, you can speak with your dollars.
It is not bad enough that they want $10 to see a movie, after half an hour of commericals (what is the point of paying $10 if they will force people to watch commercials anyways, isn't that just like TV?). In addition to the $10 ticket and forced viewing of commercials,
To be honest, virtually everyone I know actually enjoys the commercials before a movie. It's been my experience the movies will show one generic commercial (like Coke or something) and then show oodles of movie previews. People in love with movies always want to see the trailer for what is coming out so they know what they want to watch 3-9 months out from now.
And about the music industry.
The music industry is a bastion of poor business practices and I refuse to support them. My radio dial stays on NPR and my music at home always comes from http://www.digitallyimported.com/.
So, no, sharing is not theft. What is theft is what the corporations are doing to people.
Corporations and businesses have one job - to create profits for shareholders. They are obligated to do nothing else, as long as what they do is within the confines of the law. With that said, the only way corporations and other businesses can make money is by meeting the demand of the consumer. The consumer is the one demanding these products. As such, business will sell/license their goods or services at the price that believe will return the highest margin. If the consumers don't want the service or don't agree with the way a product is licensed or sold, then they will stop buying it and the product or service will cease to exist or will be sold/license difference.
Wild shot in the dark here - but my best guess is that most of the MS camp hasn't seen Firefox until very recently and the UI you are seeing is their first crack at actually trying a slim user interface (read: using someone else's idea in their own products).
Also, as someone else who replied to the original post stated, beta software can contain lots of work that is not GUI related and is definitely not apparent from one screenshot.
I think the point the grandparent is trying to make is that IE7 is a beta product. We can discuss firefox's superiority to any UI shortcomings in a beta product of IE all we want, but it will become moot if the production release of IE7's UI is imporoved. Ditto for any feature of the IE7 beta. I'm speaking in general here, but I can't see any software project along the magnitude of IE7 making it to production without the developers and UI designers recieving tons of disgruntled feedback like you've already described.
[Disclaimer: I am a former collegiate football player and currently a system administrator]
I find objection to a few of your points regarding football:
1. If by gang mentality you mean several men attempting to act as one to accomplish a goal, then you are correct. Football is one of the better sports at teaching team concepts and dependence on others to do their jobs so that the whole can be successful. While you can learn this in other activities, it really shines in football where the slack cannot be picked up quite as easily by more talented members of a team.
2. I agree and it is part of the game. But it isn't completely without merit - I'll be more equipped to defend myself from someone trying to harm me or my family or property because skills learned in football. Many geeks advocate learning a martial art discipline and the ability to defend oneself - viewing football in this particular light is no different.
3. This comment is pretty generic of someone who doesn't have a deep understanding of football. One of the reasons the game is so attractive to me now as a spectator and no longer a player is that it is one huge chess match with live pieces. The amount of strategy and split second decision making in football is without comparison in other sports. Just for example, I've had playbooks that have rivaled API manuals in terms of their content and complexity.
4. This is a pretty exaggerated description of tackling. No one is beating another person up until they say uncle. The whole goal is to get the ball carrier to the ground, and a large percentage of the time this is a team effort. You make it sound as if the ball carrier is a prisoner in Abu Ghraib.
5. I'll concede this point. However, my approach is this, if faced with the option of being a sedentary human being or playing football at the risk of my joints, I'll take football.
Finally to assert that contact sports should be abolished from public school programs is a bit over the top. Believe it or not, when played in an organized fashion, team contact sports are a mentally stimulating activity. They also promote teamwork and getting along with others who you wouldn't ordinarily get along with to accomplish a goal (as other posters have commented). And also realize that sports are a contributor to the funds of schools, although it normally takes a very prestigious sports program for this to happen. And if I may personally attest, if it was not for football, I and other teammates of mine would not have been afforded the opportunity to attend college without our parents shelling out tons of cash or taking out a huge loan.
I had the pleasure of going to J's concert before they retired last year. It was truly awesome. My roomate has met them before as well after a couple of shows.
They just had a reunion tour as well, which I was not able to go see.
The great thing about the J's is that their song topics are very geek'ish but musically they have great rhythm, great flow, creative lyrics, and a truly wonderful fun sound.
"Also, if Bill Gates would dissapear tomorrow, would the balls necessary to defy the US Government, other larger organizations go as well? I often think that perhaps the rest of the company doesn't have the nerve to go toe to toe like their head does..."
I think Steve Ballmer has the balls to do it. Why?
Because he has legions upon legions of DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!
"They also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by refusing to disclose their encryption keys."
Note, this makes it only illegal to disclose encryption keys or provide access to encrypted files if you are a suspect. I don't know if I agree with this or not and I believe this is very intrusive. But the way the poster submitted this article leads one to believe that the British Police want the overarching ability to access anyone's encrypted files on demand.
Turn off all sound notification and minimize your email at all times, and if possible sent it to the system tray (Outlook 2003 has this capability). Only check email 3-4 times a day. If something is so important, a co-worker or client will find another method of contacting you. I used to never get work done because all day was spent reading and replying to email which I finally discovered was completely menial and unnecessary task for me to actually get work done. Once I started purposefully ignoring my email, I became much more productive, probably by 2x as much.
I was about to forward this news to a friend of mine who is very big into astronomy and space travel. Good thing I checked zooming all the way in first to discover what they would have really found if they went exploring.
Of course, this same friend is also a cheese lover, so maybe I will still send it to her:)
Actually, what they're doing is betting that the majority of people still won't have HD in 3 years when the console will be obsolete anyway.
And I think their bet will pay off. What percentage of your friends own a HDTV? I only know one friend personally (I'm college aged, so most of my friends are poor, however). So it seems to me that having HD capability in new consoles will not be one of the huge selling points. With that said, Nintendo's strategy seems to be that they want to remain the low cost leader in this market and offer their system at much lower prices than Microsoft or Sony. If this is their goal, why would Nintendo want to add a feature at extra cost that is going to benefit a small minority of the public?
Note that I said "investor"... not "trader" or "speculator". I'm speaking of investing in a company's stock, not betting on its day-to-day performance.
And yes, not all investors buy stock on upswings... I certainly don't. But there's a difference in buying the stock of a healthy company that's cheap because it's being unappreciated by the market, therefore making it a bargain, and buying a stock at a historically low price because that low price is indicative how poorly that company is performing. In SCO's case, would you really buy a stock that hasn't made a profit in five out of the last six years and also isn't paying a dividend?
I'm with the parent. Keep in mind that the person making this claim is a developer. This developer is most likely at the mercy of his superordinate managers and decision makers as to what this file format is really going to be like. Until the file format has been implemented into the production product that we will receive and use, there's too great of a chance for Microsoft management to change their mind on this one and dictate the file format not be completely open.
The hump in the middle is pretty much indicative of speculative traders reckoning that SCO may have had an outside shot in winning the lawsuit vs. IBM. Of course, since that stock price has come back down to earth it shows that those traders have actually gained a little bit of common sense. Although in reality, $4.10 is way overpriced for this company, considering they turned a profit in exactly one out of six years since being traded publicly: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.as p?Country=USA&Symbol=SCOX&stocktab=finance
No investor in their right mind would touch this company.
With the exception of commercials, I don't see how this would differ from radio in anyway. Instead of being confined to listen to whatever is playing over the FM radio waves from the local tower you now have the ability to listen to the EXACT SAME MUSIC coming from other peoples mp3 players. Tuning through 100 casts of 50cent and Toby Keith to find someone else casting something I'm interested in is not my idea of a productive way of finding good music. I'll stick to my own collection instead while driving.
Slashdot Mirror
"which discusses the lack of minority heroes in games"
".A March study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day -- almost 30 minutes more than white youths."
At least in the college dorms I used to live in, every African American male was playing some form of EA sports game (sans NHL). I'd say that the "characters" in these games tend to be African American more often than not. Just because 98% of games portray caucasians as the character does not mean that those 98% are the games that are being played by minorities.
Also if you produce any code for production using your education version you are comitting a crime.
I'm curious what is meant here by production. It was my understanding with most educational licenses permitted you to create any works as long as those works were not distributed for or commercial profit or in conjunction or for use by a commercial organizational. Does this prevent me from doing something like writing/publishing my own personal dynamic website in .NET or writing an app in .NET and giving it away for free?
Visual Studio is embarrasingly cheap with an educational discount if you compare it to its retail price. Have a family member or a friend in school purchase it for you and just pay them back.
For example, see the following:t ID=5522
http://www.gradware.com/ProductDetailT.asp?Produc
Virtually all universities have a campus directory of students online that contains at least names and email address, albeit university issued email address. This is public information and really wouldn't be hard for any third party to obtain. In UT's case, http://www.utexas.edu/directory/ is directly linked to from the home page. You can find the email address of any student there that you want.
I third that. Anyone who knows a little bit of python can work on these riddles. And if you don't know python but are very proficient in other languages, then python isn't hard to pick up. On top of that, they are really fun and make you use built-in libraries that you wouldn't ordinarily use but may find useful someday.
Big deal. As an investor, MSFT is much more attractive, as it's trading at 23 times earnings and is paying a decent dividend.
The speculation on Google's stock right now is pretty asinine at the moment. You would have thought "investors" would have learned after the late 90's bubble that no company has unlimited potential. With Google trading at 87.66 times earnings, I'm waiting for the bubble to burst on it too.
I hope you are joking. The design clearly imitates http://www.google.com/ig and it's not far from being an exact replica, sans coloring and placement modifcations. Why should an experimental site be limited to the generic style of previous sites produced by the same entity (in this case, Microsoft)? To say that its design sucks for that reason is hardly convincing.
That's because the marketing crew hasn't gotten ahold of this service yet. Wait till it gets filtered through the entire MS camp and then we will see where that current minimalistic approach goes.
Install slashcode and let everyone post as Anonymous Coward.
Pardon my ignorance here, as I'm a very junior developer who's only written small time apps using .NET and has dabbled in Java, but what exactly is so hard about deploying a .NET app compared to one developed for J2EE.
A vice-versa question could be asked of the grandparent as well, since neither of you provided any factual evidence either way.
No one is keeping you from using a VCR still. You still have the right to choose with your dollar. Just because Tivo charges a monthly description and cable charges an inordinate amount of money for their service does not mean you have to buy it. If VCR's are a bit archaic for you, there are DVD recorders that can record straight from TV
And it is not good enough to have a phone in the house, now everyone needs a cell phone. I had one employer ask me to update my file with my second phone number, a cell phone number. I did not have one. My boss gave me one hell of a look.
I feel your pain. I work at a university and sometimes I think I'm the only person under the age of 30 without a cell phone. I like the idea of being able to call someone from wherever I'm at and have one in case of an emergency, but not for $40 a month.
And take operating systems for example. There was a time that when I purchased a operating system, I could put it on any computer I owned. Now Microsoft wants me to call in and ask for permission to install Windows.
I agree, but that is Microsoft's EULA which is legally binding when you buy their software. Again, you can speak with your dollars.
It is not bad enough that they want $10 to see a movie, after half an hour of commericals (what is the point of paying $10 if they will force people to watch commercials anyways, isn't that just like TV?). In addition to the $10 ticket and forced viewing of commercials,
To be honest, virtually everyone I know actually enjoys the commercials before a movie. It's been my experience the movies will show one generic commercial (like Coke or something) and then show oodles of movie previews. People in love with movies always want to see the trailer for what is coming out so they know what they want to watch 3-9 months out from now.
And about the music industry.
The music industry is a bastion of poor business practices and I refuse to support them. My radio dial stays on NPR and my music at home always comes from http://www.digitallyimported.com/.
So, no, sharing is not theft. What is theft is what the corporations are doing to people.
Corporations and businesses have one job - to create profits for shareholders. They are obligated to do nothing else, as long as what they do is within the confines of the law. With that said, the only way corporations and other businesses can make money is by meeting the demand of the consumer. The consumer is the one demanding these products. As such, business will sell/license their goods or services at the price that believe will return the highest margin. If the consumers don't want the service or don't agree with the way a product is licensed or sold, then they will stop buying it and the product or service will cease to exist or will be sold/license difference.
Wild shot in the dark here - but my best guess is that most of the MS camp hasn't seen Firefox until very recently and the UI you are seeing is their first crack at actually trying a slim user interface (read: using someone else's idea in their own products).
Also, as someone else who replied to the original post stated, beta software can contain lots of work that is not GUI related and is definitely not apparent from one screenshot.
I think the point the grandparent is trying to make is that IE7 is a beta product. We can discuss firefox's superiority to any UI shortcomings in a beta product of IE all we want, but it will become moot if the production release of IE7's UI is imporoved. Ditto for any feature of the IE7 beta. I'm speaking in general here, but I can't see any software project along the magnitude of IE7 making it to production without the developers and UI designers recieving tons of disgruntled feedback like you've already described.
[Disclaimer: I am a former collegiate football player and currently a system administrator]
I find objection to a few of your points regarding football:
1. If by gang mentality you mean several men attempting to act as one to accomplish a goal, then you are correct. Football is one of the better sports at teaching team concepts and dependence on others to do their jobs so that the whole can be successful. While you can learn this in other activities, it really shines in football where the slack cannot be picked up quite as easily by more talented members of a team.
2. I agree and it is part of the game. But it isn't completely without merit - I'll be more equipped to defend myself from someone trying to harm me or my family or property because skills learned in football. Many geeks advocate learning a martial art discipline and the ability to defend oneself - viewing football in this particular light is no different.
3. This comment is pretty generic of someone who doesn't have a deep understanding of football. One of the reasons the game is so attractive to me now as a spectator and no longer a player is that it is one huge chess match with live pieces. The amount of strategy and split second decision making in football is without comparison in other sports. Just for example, I've had playbooks that have rivaled API manuals in terms of their content and complexity.
4. This is a pretty exaggerated description of tackling. No one is beating another person up until they say uncle. The whole goal is to get the ball carrier to the ground, and a large percentage of the time this is a team effort. You make it sound as if the ball carrier is a prisoner in Abu Ghraib.
5. I'll concede this point. However, my approach is this, if faced with the option of being a sedentary human being or playing football at the risk of my joints, I'll take football.
Finally to assert that contact sports should be abolished from public school programs is a bit over the top. Believe it or not, when played in an organized fashion, team contact sports are a mentally stimulating activity. They also promote teamwork and getting along with others who you wouldn't ordinarily get along with to accomplish a goal (as other posters have commented). And also realize that sports are a contributor to the funds of schools, although it normally takes a very prestigious sports program for this to happen. And if I may personally attest, if it was not for football, I and other teammates of mine would not have been afforded the opportunity to attend college without our parents shelling out tons of cash or taking out a huge loan.
I had the pleasure of going to J's concert before they retired last year. It was truly awesome. My roomate has met them before as well after a couple of shows.
They just had a reunion tour as well, which I was not able to go see.
The great thing about the J's is that their song topics are very geek'ish but musically they have great rhythm, great flow, creative lyrics, and a truly wonderful fun sound.
Check out http://www.2sj.com/downloads/mp3s.html for a sample of their music. Star wars fans should like the live version of Irresistable Force.
If we are going to have an article on nerdcore rap, I'm going to pimp the best nerdcore rap group alive: The 2 Skinnee J's.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Skinnee_J's
Home page: http://www.2sj.com/home.html.
"Also, if Bill Gates would dissapear tomorrow, would the balls necessary to defy the US Government, other larger organizations go as well? I often think that perhaps the rest of the company doesn't have the nerve to go toe to toe like their head does..."
I think Steve Ballmer has the balls to do it. Why?
Because he has legions upon legions of DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!
"They also want to make it a criminal offence for suspects to refuse to cooperate in giving the police full access to computer files by refusing to disclose their encryption keys."
Note, this makes it only illegal to disclose encryption keys or provide access to encrypted files if you are a suspect. I don't know if I agree with this or not and I believe this is very intrusive. But the way the poster submitted this article leads one to believe that the British Police want the overarching ability to access anyone's encrypted files on demand.
Even better for email:
Turn off all sound notification and minimize your email at all times, and if possible sent it to the system tray (Outlook 2003 has this capability). Only check email 3-4 times a day. If something is so important, a co-worker or client will find another method of contacting you. I used to never get work done because all day was spent reading and replying to email which I finally discovered was completely menial and unnecessary task for me to actually get work done. Once I started purposefully ignoring my email, I became much more productive, probably by 2x as much.
I was about to forward this news to a friend of mine who is very big into astronomy and space travel. Good thing I checked zooming all the way in first to discover what they would have really found if they went exploring.
:)
Of course, this same friend is also a cheese lover, so maybe I will still send it to her
And I think their bet will pay off. What percentage of your friends own a HDTV? I only know one friend personally (I'm college aged, so most of my friends are poor, however). So it seems to me that having HD capability in new consoles will not be one of the huge selling points. With that said, Nintendo's strategy seems to be that they want to remain the low cost leader in this market and offer their system at much lower prices than Microsoft or Sony. If this is their goal, why would Nintendo want to add a feature at extra cost that is going to benefit a small minority of the public?
And yes, not all investors buy stock on upswings... I certainly don't. But there's a difference in buying the stock of a healthy company that's cheap because it's being unappreciated by the market, therefore making it a bargain, and buying a stock at a historically low price because that low price is indicative how poorly that company is performing. In SCO's case, would you really buy a stock that hasn't made a profit in five out of the last six years and also isn't paying a dividend?
I'm with the parent. Keep in mind that the person making this claim is a developer. This developer is most likely at the mercy of his superordinate managers and decision makers as to what this file format is really going to be like. Until the file format has been implemented into the production product that we will receive and use, there's too great of a chance for Microsoft management to change their mind on this one and dictate the file format not be completely open.
Just look at their three year stock price: http://quote.morningstar.com/Quote.html?Ticker=SCO X&TimeFrame=Y3#PriceGraph
The hump in the middle is pretty much indicative of speculative traders reckoning that SCO may have had an outside shot in winning the lawsuit vs. IBM. Of course, since that stock price has come back down to earth it shows that those traders have actually gained a little bit of common sense. Although in reality, $4.10 is way overpriced for this company, considering they turned a profit in exactly one out of six years since being traded publicly: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.as p?Country=USA&Symbol=SCOX&stocktab=finance
No investor in their right mind would touch this company.
With the exception of commercials, I don't see how this would differ from radio in anyway. Instead of being confined to listen to whatever is playing over the FM radio waves from the local tower you now have the ability to listen to the EXACT SAME MUSIC coming from other peoples mp3 players. Tuning through 100 casts of 50cent and Toby Keith to find someone else casting something I'm interested in is not my idea of a productive way of finding good music. I'll stick to my own collection instead while driving.