1.5 person (1 full, 1 part time) for some 15 people from which 1/3 doesn't even use computers, and another 1/3 admin their computers by themselves, it would have been the most boring/loose admin job I ever had if we weren't often "borrowed out" to troubleshoot some 5 other depts completely without their own admins.
Well, in my company managers ARE a part of the staff. The teams are small, so there's not much managing to do, but managers, beside managing, do the job of any average team member. They get extra money, but they must work more than everyone - simply, with promotion new responsiblities are added, but old ones aren't removed. My boss handles just as many user support requests as me. If you look for the boss of the production folks, you're most likely to find him operating one of the machines, the head of the graphicians team actually does most of the actual work in the team, sales manager actually sits behind the counter doing the sales to bulk customers, etc. Usually they are supposed to cover up for any employee on holidays, so the work goes on uninterrupted, but even if there's full staff, you usually find them just doing normal work...
I wonder... Google.com profit is just ads and selling search tech to others. GMail is mainly "search your mail" (Free POP3!), secondary profit - ads. Now Google Talk - most likely monitoring/aggregating IM conversations. I wonder if they will be able to aggregate/search voice conversations the same.
Spawn 5000 tiny legal presences, each holding 10 patents and existing with solemn purpose to license them out to "mother corporation", problem solved.
I see a different solution: Increasing cost of keeping a patent (say, pay twice as much as the previous year to keep the patent for another year) plus "implied value" of the patent, from which the basic cost of keeping the patent is being derived, and cost at which you are forced to license out the patent is being derived too.
Example: I patent a method of quadruple clicking on a widget to access extra functionality. I don't think it's very valuable, so I give the patent value of $1000, and anyone willing to use it in their programs should pay me $1000. I pay $1 for the first year, $2 for the second, $4 for third and so on. After 8 years I decide nobody is interested in quad-clicking for $1000, so instead of paying $256 for another year, I release the patent to public domain. I patent a new revolutionary jet engine. I assume value of the patent for me is $10mln. So I pay $10000 to have it patented, and whoever wants to buy the patent, has to pay me $10mln. In 5 years I either pay $160,000 (and the revenue from keeping the patent covers it), or lower the bar, pay $16000, but competitors can have it for $1mln. Or the idea appears to be a huge success, so to protect it harder I increase the value, so I pay 160mln dollars, but nobody can have it under $10bln. Anyway, sooner or later cost of keeping the patent will be too high and I will have to release it into public domain, or lower the cost so much that it's easily affordable for everyone. I can keep as big patent portfolio as I want, but only for limited time - and they won't be as costly for competition to obtain. The best strategy for a company would be to keep inventing and patenting new things, and keeping a small portfolio of most valuable patents for a longer time, while releasing/selling cheap the less valuable ones quite soon.
Torvalds explained that a company could decide not to sublicense and call their product "anything MyLinux but the downside is that you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send you a cease-and-desist letter."
Company or not, if you use something that is a trademark, owner of the trademark can send you C&D. That means, if some asshole pays $200 to LMI for sublicensing "Tiny Linux Router", then they take my code (it's GPL, they can), register the domain name, start selling my distro (still everything legal and okay, GPL.), and then send me a C&D letter stating I'm to stop using that name for my distro because it's their trademark and they own the license, so they get rid of the free competition. I still can rename it, and keep releasing under the new name (after removing 500 or so references to the name in the sources and docs), but then I'd better register the trademark of the new name or they license it again and continue litigation until I completely give up development of the distro, and they can continue selling it for a fee undisturbed.
IMHO, LMI should give licenses for quality non-commercial distros for free.
What about things like Damn Small Linux, Linux On A Floppy, Polish Linux Distribution and all those non-commercial Linux distros? If I made a Tiny Linux Router distro for my own firewall, and make it available on my FTP, do I have to rename it, or shell out $200 to continue using the name?
One single method that would reliably allow a site to track its users would be that each user needs to log in, and then needs the "session cookie" on each page they visit, and if they delete it, hard luck, log in again. This method is just a step away from another one: Make the pages password-protected and give the password to nobody. Users tracked: 0. Pages visit: 0. Tracking reliablity: 100%.
So, I created this site, podcast, forums, submit your own horror story. Spare bandwidth of my company, not much, maybe 1000 hits a day, server working at leisure, no problem. And then some moron submitted the URL to Slashdot...
First, the corporate site went down. Then I got a call from the ISP that we're taking up 99% of their bandwidth and their customers are complaining. Manager called and told me to stop it at once or I get fired. So I shut the server down, but it didn't help, hordes requesting documents, storm of retry packets. The router began overheating and entered thermal shutdown mode, cutting off most of the LANs of the company. Boss showed up, just nodded watching as a glass of coffee I left on a tiny hub connecting the router with the main modem starts boiling, took his phone, called the CEO and said "Give them all a day off. We're slashdotted." and then looked at me and in terribly calm voice announced: "You. Fix that."
'cause you still need to write the programs for it. I had exams like that. Deadly time limit, deadly difficulty of the tasks when it comes to "manual solution", the only way to pass is to have the programs ready on your calcualtor/pocketPC/palmtop/whatever, enter the data, write down the answer. Definitely no time for manual solving. If you had the programs, it was a milk run, just typing data, writing down answers (rather hurriedly though). If you didn't have a program for a given task, hard luck. With 15 tasks and real hurry you had a chance to save enough time to solve one manually. Lack of official standard was highly desired by the staff, as it prevented sharing the programs.
Well, the progress can go in 2 distinct directions. The calculators could be 50 times faster while eating up batteries in 5 minutes. Or to remain at the same speed, but have the batteries hold 50 times longer. Or have the progress ballanced, and be 5 times faster, with 130% of the original battery life. It seems nothing of this is happening though. I use accumulators so I don't really care about the battery life that much (as long as it's >1week) but when you write a program to draw fractals and wait 6 hours for the result to display, or struggle to get below 3FPS while writing a game, or brute force some solution of some algorithm, or draw a graph of a second integral of a function (1px=5sec), speed becomes an important factor.
...as well as an interface to control my room. With the joystick, it was possible to play games like moonlanding where the printer would be the screen.
Ok, so how hard is it to land your room on the Moon? And didn't it get damaged if you crashed?
but they don't have the marketing forces to make it happen...all engagded on the printer front.
But they're slipping on this last point; thankfully they know it. Hopefully are doing something about it
Yeah. They DRM the printer cartridges. And increase ink efficiency while decreasing ink capacity, so instead of printing 500 pages with one 48ml cartridge you can print 100 with a 5ml one (and pay the same per cartridge). And yes, they are doing something about it. "Cut the dead branches".
The problem with TI is that it doesn't use RS232C, but more like abuses the serial port - the data lines go unused and all the transmission goes over the hardware flow control lines (DTR/RTS) using a proprietary protocol not compatibile with RS232. So if you plan on interfacing a TI to a custom hardware, prepare for lots of trouble.
No. They are pretty, shiny, bright, low-power and promising-to-be-inexpensive, but they are not any more rollable than LCD. OTOH "video paper" IS rollable.
You're missing the point. The experiment is FLASHING a series of ARBITRARY images. One of them is shocking. You miss out a few normal ones following it. Just try the flash.
Slashdot Mirror
1.5 person (1 full, 1 part time) for some 15 people from which 1/3 doesn't even use computers, and another 1/3 admin their computers by themselves, it would have been the most boring/loose admin job I ever had if we weren't often "borrowed out" to troubleshoot some 5 other depts completely without their own admins.
Well, in my company managers ARE a part of the staff. The teams are small, so there's not much managing to do, but managers, beside managing, do the job of any average team member. They get extra money, but they must work more than everyone - simply, with promotion new responsiblities are added, but old ones aren't removed. My boss handles just as many user support requests as me. If you look for the boss of the production folks, you're most likely to find him operating one of the machines, the head of the graphicians team actually does most of the actual work in the team, sales manager actually sits behind the counter doing the sales to bulk customers, etc. Usually they are supposed to cover up for any employee on holidays, so the work goes on uninterrupted, but even if there's full staff, you usually find them just doing normal work...
I wonder... Google.com profit is just ads and selling search tech to others. GMail is mainly "search your mail" (Free POP3!), secondary profit - ads. Now Google Talk - most likely monitoring/aggregating IM conversations. I wonder if they will be able to aggregate/search voice conversations the same.
Sounds cool. I'm in. .torm...err, .torrent please.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings. html
Google does not do horoscopes
They won't buy Oracle.
They will purhase Slashdot. That one is for sure.
Well, they are a company of a GOOD Evil Genius! ;)
Spawn 5000 tiny legal presences, each holding 10 patents and existing with solemn purpose to license them out to "mother corporation", problem solved.
I see a different solution: Increasing cost of keeping a patent (say, pay twice as much as the previous year to keep the patent for another year) plus "implied value" of the patent, from which the basic cost of keeping the patent is being derived, and cost at which you are forced to license out the patent is being derived too.
Example: I patent a method of quadruple clicking on a widget to access extra functionality. I don't think it's very valuable, so I give the patent value of $1000, and anyone willing to use it in their programs should pay me $1000. I pay $1 for the first year, $2 for the second, $4 for third and so on. After 8 years I decide nobody is interested in quad-clicking for $1000, so instead of paying $256 for another year, I release the patent to public domain.
I patent a new revolutionary jet engine. I assume value of the patent for me is $10mln. So I pay $10000 to have it patented, and whoever wants to buy the patent, has to pay me $10mln. In 5 years I either pay $160,000 (and the revenue from keeping the patent covers it), or lower the bar, pay $16000, but competitors can have it for $1mln. Or the idea appears to be a huge success, so to protect it harder I increase the value, so I pay 160mln dollars, but nobody can have it under $10bln.
Anyway, sooner or later cost of keeping the patent will be too high and I will have to release it into public domain, or lower the cost so much that it's easily affordable for everyone. I can keep as big patent portfolio as I want, but only for limited time - and they won't be as costly for competition to obtain. The best strategy for a company would be to keep inventing and patenting new things, and keeping a small portfolio of most valuable patents for a longer time, while releasing/selling cheap the less valuable ones quite soon.
Torvalds explained that a company could decide not to sublicense and call their product "anything MyLinux but the downside is that you may have somebody else who _did_ protect himself come along and send you a cease-and-desist letter."
Company or not, if you use something that is a trademark, owner of the trademark can send you C&D. That means, if some asshole pays $200 to LMI for sublicensing "Tiny Linux Router", then they take my code (it's GPL, they can), register the domain name, start selling my distro (still everything legal and okay, GPL.), and then send me a C&D letter stating I'm to stop using that name for my distro because it's their trademark and they own the license, so they get rid of the free competition. I still can rename it, and keep releasing under the new name (after removing 500 or so references to the name in the sources and docs), but then I'd better register the trademark of the new name or they license it again and continue litigation until I completely give up development of the distro, and they can continue selling it for a fee undisturbed.
IMHO, LMI should give licenses for quality non-commercial distros for free.
What about things like Damn Small Linux, Linux On A Floppy, Polish Linux Distribution and all those non-commercial Linux distros? If I made a Tiny Linux Router distro for my own firewall, and make it available on my FTP, do I have to rename it, or shell out $200 to continue using the name?
But I've already paid $699! How can they charge me again for the same thing?!
They still don't beat MIR in the designed:working life ratio :)
I'm jealous. Can you imagine how much fun it is to drive an RC car that is some 2AU away? ;)
One single method that would reliably allow a site to track its users would be that each user needs to log in, and then needs the "session cookie" on each page they visit, and if they delete it, hard luck, log in again. This method is just a step away from another one: Make the pages password-protected and give the password to nobody. Users tracked: 0. Pages visit: 0. Tracking reliablity: 100%.
Where can I download WinNT4.0 (iso) from? Seriously. I need it.
Mods, feel free to mod down into oblivion AFTER it's answered.
Okay, completely offtopic. Where can I get WinNT4.0 ISO images from?
So, I created this site, podcast, forums, submit your own horror story. Spare bandwidth of my company, not much, maybe 1000 hits a day, server working at leisure, no problem. And then some moron submitted the URL to Slashdot...
First, the corporate site went down. Then I got a call from the ISP that we're taking up 99% of their bandwidth and their customers are complaining. Manager called and told me to stop it at once or I get fired. So I shut the server down, but it didn't help, hordes requesting documents, storm of retry packets. The router began overheating and entered thermal shutdown mode, cutting off most of the LANs of the company. Boss showed up, just nodded watching as a glass of coffee I left on a tiny hub connecting the router with the main modem starts boiling, took his phone, called the CEO and said "Give them all a day off. We're slashdotted." and then looked at me and in terribly calm voice announced: "You. Fix that."
'cause you still need to write the programs for it.
I had exams like that. Deadly time limit, deadly difficulty of the tasks when it comes to "manual solution", the only way to pass is to have the programs ready on your calcualtor/pocketPC/palmtop/whatever, enter the data, write down the answer. Definitely no time for manual solving. If you had the programs, it was a milk run, just typing data, writing down answers (rather hurriedly though). If you didn't have a program for a given task, hard luck. With 15 tasks and real hurry you had a chance to save enough time to solve one manually.
Lack of official standard was highly desired by the staff, as it prevented sharing the programs.
Did you try overclocking your TI? :)
Well, the progress can go in 2 distinct directions. The calculators could be 50 times faster while eating up batteries in 5 minutes. Or to remain at the same speed, but have the batteries hold 50 times longer. Or have the progress ballanced, and be 5 times faster, with 130% of the original battery life.
It seems nothing of this is happening though.
I use accumulators so I don't really care about the battery life that much (as long as it's >1week) but when you write a program to draw fractals and wait 6 hours for the result to display, or struggle to get below 3FPS while writing a game, or brute force some solution of some algorithm, or draw a graph of a second integral of a function (1px=5sec), speed becomes an important factor.
...as well as an interface to control my room. With the joystick, it was possible to play games like moonlanding where the printer would be the screen.
Ok, so how hard is it to land your room on the Moon? And didn't it get damaged if you crashed?
but they don't have the marketing forces to make it happen ...all engagded on the printer front.
But they're slipping on this last point; thankfully they know it. Hopefully are doing something about it
Yeah. They DRM the printer cartridges. And increase ink efficiency while decreasing ink capacity, so instead of printing 500 pages with one 48ml cartridge you can print 100 with a 5ml one (and pay the same per cartridge). And yes, they are doing something about it. "Cut the dead branches".
The problem with TI is that it doesn't use RS232C, but more like abuses the serial port - the data lines go unused and all the transmission goes over the hardware flow control lines (DTR/RTS) using a proprietary protocol not compatibile with RS232. So if you plan on interfacing a TI to a custom hardware, prepare for lots of trouble.
No. They are pretty, shiny, bright, low-power and promising-to-be-inexpensive, but they are not any more rollable than LCD. OTOH "video paper" IS rollable.
:))))) is a smiling fat bastard with quadruple chin.
You're missing the point. The experiment is FLASHING a series of ARBITRARY images. One of them is shocking. You miss out a few normal ones following it. Just try the flash.