Are all these "innovations" a sign that iPod is in need of a breakthrough? There are more portable players out there with more functions, and I wonder how long will Apple fans stick to it?
For example, the new Creative's Zen Micro has FM, is someone going to pre-record some radio talk shows and put it into iPod pretending that it's doing radio too?
One DNF in hand is better than two pre-ordered
on
Employee Stock Options?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Call me old fashion, but I believe the old saying "One bird in hand is better than two in the bush".
My preferred compensation is profit-based bonus. So if a company is making profit, employees share the pie, it's like dividends to shareholders except you hold your "shares" in the form of employment/position.
My company's doing an incremental performance bonus, so if this month's profit is up compared to previous month, you get some money added in the bonus pot, and the size of bonus depends on the % increase. This is ideal for employers because it ensures growth, but employees could be working just as good for 5 years in a row, but with the last 4 years without bonus.
I wonder how a cross-country move to find job will actually get you a job, if the IT job shortage is nation wide. I hope a person doesn't need to move to another state to find job because another person decided to move to the first person's state and found a job that could have been given to the first person.
The article mentions this Mr Packman and his family are staying in a $58-a-night motel, so basically you work just enough to breath until the next morning?
Later in the article, there's a discussion of "Sacrificing salary for stability". So if local workers have decided to lower their salary expectation to match or better those of overseas workers, will company do in-sourcing instead?
Apparently the lower income isn't going to cover the expensive food and accommodation, so maybe these low income workers will stop buying from over-priced products? Will this in turn force supermarkets et al to drop prices?
This new finding is based on the optimal temperature range for honeybees and their food source - nectar-rich flowering plants (which share the same optimal temperature range), to survive.
However if your living environment has just been destroyed by a meteor, wouldn't these creatures just "make-do" with less-ideal conditions, maybe in a smaller population?
Honeybees are so much smaller than dinosaurs, I don't think we can really compare their adapting speed, ability and mobility.
I almost jumped out of my body when I read "Weirdness", "Dreams", "Optically", "Anomaly" and "Votes".
I thought voters who optically identified themselves via retina scanners have been fed subliminal messages which voted for candidate opposite of their registered party, and have had weird dreams since then.
But ain't those October Surprises like Bin Laden, same-sex marriage sort of swung the votes? Although the percentage changes in E-Touch Voting and Op-Scan are too irregular.
I guess the main question is whether or not these differences are enough to change the outcome. Even Kerry admitted those 150,000 provisional ballots wouldn't help.
Are there reports done on the financial benefits (eg in medical bills) of Kyoto Treaty?
And why must reducing gas emission equate to job loss? Couldn't companies be more efficient instead?
In IT outsourcing, which costs a lot of jobs to foreigner countries, there are suggestions that with the increased exports to other countries, outsourcing probably isn't so bad after all.
I wonder if we are able to observe this interplanetary tortoise from earth? If it passes the bright side in full moon, we should have quite a clear view of it since it's going so slowly.
Eco-friendly disc is nice, but how many people are going to throw away Blu-ray disc?
25GB is serios amount of data, I (maybe just me) would try to keep it even if it contains very unimportant data, since it's so easy to store a disc, it's not like you need one 5x5 room to store it.
I was initially excited about this tom-cruise rock climbing robot until I saw the photo, it is not only book sized, but book shaped too.
Anyhow, the article mentioned "tornado in a cup" technology - "Two vortexes swirl simultaneously, one in a spiral and the other in a toroidal path, like a donut. The forces generated hold the vehicle to the wall and yet allow free movement because the cup never touches the surface." Like a hovercraft that sucks?
However, later in the article, there was mention of magnets - "We tried a wheelie bar to keep the rear end of the robot flat against the wall and prevent the front from lifting up. Unfortunately, the results were disappointing. Time was running out so we had to add magnets and take advantage of the metal."
This makes me wonder if it's the magnets that hold the robot, or the new "tornado in a cup"?
I don't know if this is called smart or stupid marketing campaign.
On one hand, it's good to create (even an illusional) high demand on DS, but on the other, it might have missed the golden opportunity to lock consumers in before other rivals starting coming up with new consoles/games.
I read no mention of increased production before the release, they just promised to ship 4 million units by end of March 2005. This could be a good thing, as rushed products are usually bad ideas.
I think "Microsoft has also agreed to carry out £40m of research and development to provide guidelines and toolkits that will allow ISVs to deliver an NHS-specific user interface" is the candy here.
MS probably knows it can still compete in customised applications with its almost unlimited resources.
It seems almost inevitable that Japanese is going to have a Felica after Toyota's Celica and Mitsubishi's Delica:) Where's Google when you need a Gelica (Girly Car)?
The article mentioned "i-mode FeliCa will make your wallet more slim. It can be your cash, credit card, membership ID, and even your house key." Given that many people have mobile phones stolen/lost, or worse, broken in the most unexpected moment, is relying too heavily on one device too much a risk?
I think it's equally annoying to have your cash stolen, house broken into, and not being able to enter your house (and you can't call for help without a mobile phone or cash for payphone!)
Prosecutors did ask the jury to impose a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for Jaynes, and to consider an unspecified prison term for his sister.
However like the article already mentioned, jurors who convicted Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, later sentenced Jaynes to a nine-year prison term and fined DeGroot $7,500 for three convictions each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.
Now it's a matter of protecting/preserving those sentences because the defending lawyer claims the prison term is an excessive punishment, given that this is the first prosecution under the Virginia law. He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law. If they dare to appeal, prosecutors should appeal to increase the prison term to the maximum too!
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like. Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into. Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
iCLOD Virtual City is based (remotely) on a real city. It is turn-based and time-based so that players won't be affected by different time zones and there are enough objectives to keep everybody occupied.
But like the article stated, it's pretty hard to keep everyone happy because they all want something in the virtual world to suit their abilities to win.
Additionally, newbies are always lost in the first instance they arrive in the city, so it requires a lot of tutorials and guides to get them settle in in order to introduce the real depth of the game to them.
It all begins with this? And now everybody wants his/her life found by others?
These photoblogs with no text are especially good because they don't impose a subjective opinion on a subject, and readers are free to interprete those photos.
I think in long run, anti-badthings services are going to be influenced by the bottom line. Spyware/spammers can make enough to feed themselves and pay for these services to 'certify' them.
As end-users, we need to be educated to prevent these installations in the first place.
Have lawyers finally realized "why sue (and win) for others if we can do the same thing for ourselves"?
Now the middlemen are selling direct! You own a patent, you file a lawsuit, and you take all the profits^H^H^H^H^H^H^H compensation.
The article has mentioned enough "common sense" and "ridiculous" so I guess we have get the point.
What's interesting is why/how did a law firm get this patent? Did it 'invent' 3D on monitor, or did it purchased the patent from a third party? The patent's inventor is "Waller, William G. (Portland, OR)" but McKool Smith is claiming these 12 companies infringed on their (not their client's) patent.
Either way, it's going to get ugly because this is a law firm, it probably has all the resources and knowledge to do well in court, and we all know owner-operators usually work harder.
It's not that first time such 'backup' tool is available, and it's also not the first time Apple found ways to neutralize such tool by way of a new version.
Additionally, it's relatively easy (compared to ripping CDs) to do it on iPod because Apple basically owns the device and its content, and they can do a lot to force users to comply. iPod doesn't need to follow a standard format (like CDs must play in all CD players), they can set/change the format to suit.
The article is quick to point out that "We're also hopeful Apple might consider not spending engineering time and lawyer fees on chasing after applications and developers who just want to give folks an obvious feature that's being left out only to appease the RIAA. At the end of the day, Apple needs to know that we're their customers, too."
However I think the BoingBoing article sums it up nicely - " Apple didn't have any choice. If they don't play nice with the suicidally stupid record industry, the industry will stop supplying music for the iPod."
When/If these online music distributors have gained enough market shares (maybe 30% of all music album buyers?), they might able to turn around and force the record industry to make changes, because it's not nice to lose 30% sales overnight.
If this can be applied to cars when coming out of factory, it'll save a lot of 'disagreement' with supermarket trollies.
There's no mention of price, and more importantly, the ease of removal if this protective coating is somehow scratched. I find the current PDA sheet very difficult to remove (as if you're about to pull the LCD out).
And will record companies do more to prevent "backup" copies now that you simply can't scratch your CDs anymore??
I wonder if the author left out some "secret methods" he used in the field, since his now owns a company that specializes in solving leading edge computer and network security issues, those methods can be valuable trade secrets.
And high-tech criminals can also learn from others' mistakes and be more careful next time if the author detailed enough of how he traced a criminal.
So do slashdotters have any of these "secrets" to share?
I think babies learn everything better than adults. I will stick to my 'brain is still empty' theory:) As we grow, we have more spyware/adware installed, and things tend to go more slowly.
With these new findings, maybe a super computer can be built with these analytical and statistical skills, then this computer can learn to speak like HAL.
nature.com is pretty slow now, given that it's using cgi-taf on a Dynapage.taf, obviously didn't read the Do-Not-Slashdot ACT 1996, so here's a coral link.
This whole control of space thing is approaching the thin line between annoyed and pissed.
While USAF claims this "ground-based jammer uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components", it will only take one mistake (and it's not that unusual) to fry someone's $500mil baby.
If other countries even dare to think about developing a similar jammer to "neutralize" US's satellite communication and its space-based capabilities, it's likely that US will simply launch another pre-emptive attack to destroy those jammers in these countries.
DoubleClick hired a financial adviser to study options including a sale of part or all of its businesses, a recapitalization, an extraordinary dividend, a share repurchase or a spinoff, pretty much the same thing any company will do, especially when its earnings are better than expected.
Its 3rd-quarter earnings was $15million, up from $6.3million last year, and fourth-quarter forecast is $72 million. So I don't think DoubleClick is going through a rough patch.
Slashdot Mirror
Are all these "innovations" a sign that iPod is in need of a breakthrough? There are more portable players out there with more functions, and I wonder how long will Apple fans stick to it?
For example, the new Creative's Zen Micro has FM, is someone going to pre-record some radio talk shows and put it into iPod pretending that it's doing radio too?
Call me old fashion, but I believe the old saying "One bird in hand is better than two in the bush".
My preferred compensation is profit-based bonus. So if a company is making profit, employees share the pie, it's like dividends to shareholders except you hold your "shares" in the form of employment/position.
My company's doing an incremental performance bonus, so if this month's profit is up compared to previous month, you get some money added in the bonus pot, and the size of bonus depends on the % increase. This is ideal for employers because it ensures growth, but employees could be working just as good for 5 years in a row, but with the last 4 years without bonus.
I wonder how a cross-country move to find job will actually get you a job, if the IT job shortage is nation wide. I hope a person doesn't need to move to another state to find job because another person decided to move to the first person's state and found a job that could have been given to the first person.
The article mentions this Mr Packman and his family are staying in a $58-a-night motel, so basically you work just enough to breath until the next morning?
Later in the article, there's a discussion of "Sacrificing salary for stability". So if local workers have decided to lower their salary expectation to match or better those of overseas workers, will company do in-sourcing instead?
Apparently the lower income isn't going to cover the expensive food and accommodation, so maybe these low income workers will stop buying from over-priced products? Will this in turn force supermarkets et al to drop prices?
This new finding is based on the optimal temperature range for honeybees and their food source - nectar-rich flowering plants (which share the same optimal temperature range), to survive.
However if your living environment has just been destroyed by a meteor, wouldn't these creatures just "make-do" with less-ideal conditions, maybe in a smaller population?
Honeybees are so much smaller than dinosaurs, I don't think we can really compare their adapting speed, ability and mobility.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
I almost jumped out of my body when I read "Weirdness", "Dreams", "Optically", "Anomaly" and "Votes".
I thought voters who optically identified themselves via retina scanners have been fed subliminal messages which voted for candidate opposite of their registered party, and have had weird dreams since then.
But ain't those October Surprises like Bin Laden, same-sex marriage sort of swung the votes? Although the percentage changes in E-Touch Voting and Op-Scan are too irregular.
I guess the main question is whether or not these differences are enough to change the outcome. Even Kerry admitted those 150,000 provisional ballots wouldn't help.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
Are there reports done on the financial benefits (eg in medical bills) of Kyoto Treaty?
And why must reducing gas emission equate to job loss? Couldn't companies be more efficient instead?
In IT outsourcing, which costs a lot of jobs to foreigner countries, there are suggestions that with the increased exports to other countries, outsourcing probably isn't so bad after all.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
I wonder if we are able to observe this interplanetary tortoise from earth? If it passes the bright side in full moon, we should have quite a clear view of it since it's going so slowly.
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
Eco-friendly disc is nice, but how many people are going to throw away Blu-ray disc?
25GB is serios amount of data, I (maybe just me) would try to keep it even if it contains very unimportant data, since it's so easy to store a disc, it's not like you need one 5x5 room to store it.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
I was initially excited about this tom-cruise rock climbing robot until I saw the photo, it is not only book sized, but book shaped too.
Anyhow, the article mentioned "tornado in a cup" technology - "Two vortexes swirl simultaneously, one in a spiral and the other in a toroidal path, like a donut. The forces generated hold the vehicle to the wall and yet allow free movement because the cup never touches the surface." Like a hovercraft that sucks?
However, later in the article, there was mention of magnets - "We tried a wheelie bar to keep the rear end of the robot flat against the wall and prevent the front from lifting up. Unfortunately, the results were disappointing. Time was running out so we had to add magnets and take advantage of the metal."
This makes me wonder if it's the magnets that hold the robot, or the new "tornado in a cup"?
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
I don't know if this is called smart or stupid marketing campaign.
On one hand, it's good to create (even an illusional) high demand on DS, but on the other, it might have missed the golden opportunity to lock consumers in before other rivals starting coming up with new consoles/games.
I read no mention of increased production before the release, they just promised to ship 4 million units by end of March 2005. This could be a good thing, as rushed products are usually bad ideas.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
I think "Microsoft has also agreed to carry out £40m of research and development to provide guidelines and toolkits that will allow ISVs to deliver an NHS-specific user interface" is the candy here.
MS probably knows it can still compete in customised applications with its almost unlimited resources.
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer [iclod.com] and win Half-Life 2
It seems almost inevitable that Japanese is going to have a Felica after Toyota's Celica and Mitsubishi's Delica :) Where's Google when you need a Gelica (Girly Car)?
The article mentioned "i-mode FeliCa will make your wallet more slim. It can be your cash, credit card, membership ID, and even your house key." Given that many people have mobile phones stolen/lost, or worse, broken in the most unexpected moment, is relying too heavily on one device too much a risk?
I think it's equally annoying to have your cash stolen, house broken into, and not being able to enter your house (and you can't call for help without a mobile phone or cash for payphone!)
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer [iclod.com] and win Half-Life 2
Prosecutors did ask the jury to impose a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for Jaynes, and to consider an unspecified prison term for his sister.
However like the article already mentioned, jurors who convicted Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, later sentenced Jaynes to a nine-year prison term and fined DeGroot $7,500 for three convictions each of sending e-mails with fraudulent and untraceable routing information.
Now it's a matter of protecting/preserving those sentences because the defending lawyer claims the prison term is an excessive punishment, given that this is the first prosecution under the Virginia law. He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law. If they dare to appeal, prosecutors should appeal to increase the prison term to the maximum too!
--
Play iCLOD Virtual City Explorer and win Half-Life 2
The article has a summary:
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies
Point #2: Newbies won't play a virtual world that has a major feature they don't like.
Point #3: Players judge all virtual worlds as a reflection of the one they first got into.
Point #4: Many players will think some poor design choices are good.
iCLOD Virtual City is based (remotely) on a real city. It is turn-based and time-based so that players won't be affected by different time zones and there are enough objectives to keep everybody occupied.
But like the article stated, it's pretty hard to keep everyone happy because they all want something in the virtual world to suit their abilities to win.
Additionally, newbies are always lost in the first instance they arrive in the city, so it requires a lot of tutorials and guides to get them settle in in order to introduce the real depth of the game to them.
It all begins with this? And now everybody wants his/her life found by others?
These photoblogs with no text are especially good because they don't impose a subjective opinion on a subject, and readers are free to interprete those photos.
I've read some pretty bad books on penetration testing; till now, nobody seemed to get this fun subject right!
What about Kama Sutra?
Seriously though, this book is written by three Microsoft security researchers, I guess that said enough.
Is this a case of do as we say, not as we do.
Wasn't it not long ago we had this story about Yahoo Anti-Spy Favors Yahoo's Adware Partners?
I think in long run, anti-badthings services are going to be influenced by the bottom line. Spyware/spammers can make enough to feed themselves and pay for these services to 'certify' them.
As end-users, we need to be educated to prevent these installations in the first place.
Due to pending lawsuit.
Have lawyers finally realized "why sue (and win) for others if we can do the same thing for ourselves"?
Now the middlemen are selling direct! You own a patent, you file a lawsuit, and you take all the profits^H^H^H^H^H^H^H compensation.
The article has mentioned enough "common sense" and "ridiculous" so I guess we have get the point.
What's interesting is why/how did a law firm get this patent? Did it 'invent' 3D on monitor, or did it purchased the patent from a third party? The patent's inventor is "Waller, William G. (Portland, OR)" but McKool Smith is claiming these 12 companies infringed on their (not their client's) patent.
Either way, it's going to get ugly because this is a law firm, it probably has all the resources and knowledge to do well in court, and we all know owner-operators usually work harder.
It's not that first time such 'backup' tool is available, and it's also not the first time Apple found ways to neutralize such tool by way of a new version.
Additionally, it's relatively easy (compared to ripping CDs) to do it on iPod because Apple basically owns the device and its content, and they can do a lot to force users to comply. iPod doesn't need to follow a standard format (like CDs must play in all CD players), they can set/change the format to suit.
The article is quick to point out that "We're also hopeful Apple might consider not spending engineering time and lawyer fees on chasing after applications and developers who just want to give folks an obvious feature that's being left out only to appease the RIAA. At the end of the day, Apple needs to know that we're their customers, too."
However I think the BoingBoing article sums it up nicely - " Apple didn't have any choice. If they don't play nice with the suicidally stupid record industry, the industry will stop supplying music for the iPod."
When/If these online music distributors have gained enough market shares (maybe 30% of all music album buyers?), they might able to turn around and force the record industry to make changes, because it's not nice to lose 30% sales overnight.
If this can be applied to cars when coming out of factory, it'll save a lot of 'disagreement' with supermarket trollies.
There's no mention of price, and more importantly, the ease of removal if this protective coating is somehow scratched. I find the current PDA sheet very difficult to remove (as if you're about to pull the LCD out).
And will record companies do more to prevent "backup" copies now that you simply can't scratch your CDs anymore??
I wonder if the author left out some "secret methods" he used in the field, since his now owns a company that specializes in solving leading edge computer and network security issues, those methods can be valuable trade secrets.
And high-tech criminals can also learn from others' mistakes and be more careful next time if the author detailed enough of how he traced a criminal.
So do slashdotters have any of these "secrets" to share?
I think babies learn everything better than adults. I will stick to my 'brain is still empty' theory :) As we grow, we have more spyware/adware installed, and things tend to go more slowly.
With these new findings, maybe a super computer can be built with these analytical and statistical skills, then this computer can learn to speak like HAL.
nature.com is pretty slow now, given that it's using cgi-taf on a Dynapage.taf, obviously didn't read the Do-Not-Slashdot ACT 1996, so here's a coral link.
This whole control of space thing is approaching the thin line between annoyed and pissed.
While USAF claims this "ground-based jammer uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components", it will only take one mistake (and it's not that unusual) to fry someone's $500mil baby.
If other countries even dare to think about developing a similar jammer to "neutralize" US's satellite communication and its space-based capabilities, it's likely that US will simply launch another pre-emptive attack to destroy those jammers in these countries.
DoubleClick hired a financial adviser to study options including a sale of part or all of its businesses, a recapitalization, an extraordinary dividend, a share repurchase or a spinoff, pretty much the same thing any company will do, especially when its earnings are better than expected.
Its 3rd-quarter earnings was $15million, up from $6.3million last year, and fourth-quarter forecast is $72 million. So I don't think DoubleClick is going through a rough patch.