Sure, since any moron can just go pick up a "Learn LanguageX in 24 Hours" book and learn how to program...
But you miss the point. The purpose of most CS curriculums is not to teach a particular language. Languages change all the time, so specific syntaxes are useless in the long run (ask any former Fortran programmer). Colleges teach underlying theory: how compilers work, why cache helps, garbage collection, network theory, which problems can never be solved, how to find shortest-paths, etc. Not to mention the exposure you get to people who've been in the computer industry.
And along the way, I have picked up Perl, C++, several assemblers, scheme, matlab, prolog, BASIC (VB/QB), Java, pascal, and python.
I agree that these organizations should go after piracy rather than the technology. I feel, however, that this can be accomplished economically.
New VHS movies typically cost between $10 and $20, while DVDs average between $15 to $30. The average consumer will only buy a few movies a year. If I'm gonna drop $25 on a movie, it'd better be one I want to see several times, and not many movies meet that criteria. (I am "stocking" my new DVD library, but I can still only afford so many)
Now imagine that the industry cut their prices down to five bucks per movie, reducing their margins to an absolute minimum. At $5ish, I'd buy every movie I saw in a theater and remotely liked: easily ten or more videos a year.
If the industry's profit were only $2 per movie and sales increased fivefold, they'd still net roughly the same profit -- and they'd curb piracy since it would be easier just to buy the movie.
Now consider the rental market. If movies cost as much to buy as to rent, nobody given the choice would rent. Rental stores represent a major source of revenue for the film industry, so the moneymakers definitely wouldn't like this, right? Except that video rentals probably won't be around for much longer anyway: on-demand viewing appears to be the wave of the future.
The video people need to suck all of the profit out of their media while they can, and stop nit-picking about copy protection before it all becomes moot anyway.
He hasn't posted much lately, but he old posts were always good. A lot better than some of the karma-hungry manifesto posters we see these days. Quick, sensible responses -- gotta love it.
Anyway, unless the actual total really is 100%, people would leave 99% to indicate that there still are a few others out there.
It's like scoring on standardized tests where they tell you you've beaten a certain percentage of other students taking the test. Their policy is never report 100%, even if you alone had the highest score in the nation.
Why 12:58pm? It's like a conspiracy to make the post only look real-time, and emmett spilled the beans by scheduling his posts for uncommonly neat times.
I replied to the article just to see if anybody notices. r
I'm not pro-Microsoft, but I also oppose busting the MS monopoly.
Microsoft has used evil monopolistic tactics in the past -- but they haven't succeeded. If Win98 were the only competitive PC OS allowed on the market, a breakup would certainly be warranted. However, Linux is getting more press than ever, MacOS X promises to rejuvinate the PowerPC processor, and we have yet to see the release of Netscape 5.0.
A company isn't a monopoly simply because it dominates a market. If it were, our economy would break down because companies would fear success. If Windows 2000 is a fine product, more power to Bill; if it isn't, I think you'll see more people than ever shift to alternatives like Linux.
I do think that Microsoft should be punished for their practices -- but not distroyed. John McCain obviously understands the necessity for relatively unimpeded commerce (as demonstrated by his proposed tax moratorium), and the breakup of Microsoft would definitely contradict his position.
In the northern hemisphere, daylight savings time is only observed during the spring, summer, and part of fall (roughly from March until October). Is it the opposite in the southern hemisphere?
Most of the laws listed are forgotten relics of an older age, and I seriously doubt that any court would bother with them.
However, they do give us a sense of what people used to be afraid of, how thoughtless politicians can be, and how deep a beurocracy we must have to still have these laws around. Very funny stuff.
It's more like 10^12. The first four generally identify the merchant, and the rest are customer specific. Of course, there are expections.
For Discover/Novus Cards, the first four digits are always 6011. Visa cards start with 4, but can begin with one of a number of 4-digit codes. Amex cards feature only 15 digits, but I believe that only the first digit (3) isn't user-specific.
Funny, because I read most of The Onion last night, and it was certainly not today's issue (yes, I did reload my browser). I've seen this trend before.
The issue dates also suggest that they are published every Wednesday. I see no reason for the web version to appear two days before the print model.
You guys should really get out more, maybe read more informed and diverse views than those that are being peddled here.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
"News in the Slashdot Age" has a tendency to be either A.) repackaged, or B.) uninformed. If you read the primary sources more you will come to understand this.
In general, yes. But stories are also more interesting on Slashdot, because of the semi-informed discussion threads. You evidently agree, or you wouldn't have read my comment in the first place.
The "replacement" Go logo was obviously thrown together in a very short amount of time. Was Disney so sure of victory that they didn't even consider working on a backup logo?
This is what happens when a company has too much faith a justice system that often yields to money and power, but not every time...
The issue here is consumer confusion. I doubt anyone will confuse stop and go, but Go and GoTo.com, both with similar traffic light logos, are another thing....
I think Sony is totally mismarketing the things. They're really targetting little kids ("share behaviors with friends")... but seriously, even if a child could obtain an AIBO, how many of their friends would have similar luck? And besides, at $2500, I wouldn't want my 5-year-old kid taking the dog out of the house!
Sony *should* target serious enthuisiests with $$$, and cut the cutesy crap.
Why do the dogs communicate only via beeps? Voice-recognition technology is getting quite reasonable, and besides, how good does it need to be for a dog? My stupid furby at least used words (even if they weren't English). r
Imagine you're a CEO of an electronics company. You're given two facts:
1) Digital cameras have to do some pretty quick thinking. They capture a million+ pixels in a split second, shuttle them around memory, encode the images (via presumably complex algorithms), and communicate them to a PC.
2) Inexpensive, fast, multipurpose processors are readily available.
As a company, you have two options: spend millions developing a hardware brain for the camera that can do nothing but what it's intended to do because it doesn't have an underlying programming language. Should you find a bug, you'll be rewiring the whole damn thing. Competition making faster cameras? You'll have to reinvent your underlying thinking in order to speed up your own chip. You'll also need to interface your chip with 3rd-party memory (or spend another million developing your own) and USB protocols.
OR, just go buy a ready-made processor for a fraction of the cost and hire a couple software engineers. When faster chips become available, just use them instead. A JPEG-compression algorithm is a helluva lot easier to put together if it's not hard-wired.
Slashdot Mirror
By opening and using this software, you agree to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and saviour...
That's a heck of a EULA. Microsoft must be jealous.
u dont need 4 years of college to program
Sure, since any moron can just go pick up a "Learn LanguageX in 24 Hours" book and learn how to program...
But you miss the point. The purpose of most CS curriculums is not to teach a particular language. Languages change all the time, so specific syntaxes are useless in the long run (ask any former Fortran programmer). Colleges teach underlying theory: how compilers work, why cache helps, garbage collection, network theory, which problems can never be solved, how to find shortest-paths, etc. Not to mention the exposure you get to people who've been in the computer industry.
And along the way, I have picked up Perl, C++, several assemblers, scheme, matlab, prolog, BASIC (VB/QB), Java, pascal, and python.
Not that bad a deal, eh?
I agree that these organizations should go after piracy rather than the technology. I feel, however, that this can be accomplished economically.
New VHS movies typically cost between $10 and $20, while DVDs average between $15 to $30. The average consumer will only buy a few movies a year. If I'm gonna drop $25 on a movie, it'd better be one I want to see several times, and not many movies meet that criteria. (I am "stocking" my new DVD library, but I can still only afford so many)
Now imagine that the industry cut their prices down to five bucks per movie, reducing their margins to an absolute minimum. At $5ish, I'd buy every movie I saw in a theater and remotely liked: easily ten or more videos a year.
If the industry's profit were only $2 per movie and sales increased fivefold, they'd still net roughly the same profit -- and they'd curb piracy since it would be easier just to buy the movie.
Now consider the rental market. If movies cost as much to buy as to rent, nobody given the choice would rent. Rental stores represent a major source of revenue for the film industry, so the moneymakers definitely wouldn't like this, right? Except that video rentals probably won't be around for much longer anyway: on-demand viewing appears to be the wave of the future.
The video people need to suck all of the profit out of their media while they can, and stop nit-picking about copy protection before it all becomes moot anyway.
I mean "HIS old posts". I wish they'd flip the submit and preview buttons.
He hasn't posted much lately, but he old posts were always good. A lot better than some of the karma-hungry manifesto posters we see these days. Quick, sensible responses -- gotta love it.
Rounding to the nearest integer would do it:
59.6% --> 60%
39.6% --> 40%
-------------
99.2% --> 99%
Anyway, unless the actual total really is 100%, people would leave 99% to indicate that there still are a few others out there.
It's like scoring on standardized tests where they tell you you've beaten a certain percentage of other students taking the test. Their policy is never report 100%, even if you alone had the highest score in the nation.
That looks an aweful lot like a VNC window...
If it's a joke, I haven't gotten it. They sell real visualizations of klein bottles.
Why 12:58pm? It's like a conspiracy to make the post only look real-time, and emmett spilled the beans by scheduling his posts for uncommonly neat times.
I replied to the article just to see if anybody notices.
r
Is there any practical value in these things? They're zero-volume, but so's a moebius strip...
Ironically, MS has contributed about the same amount to every candidate's campaign.
His favors free commerce in general, and not Microsoft.
Microsoft has used evil monopolistic tactics in the past -- but they haven't succeeded. If Win98 were the only competitive PC OS allowed on the market, a breakup would certainly be warranted. However, Linux is getting more press than ever, MacOS X promises to rejuvinate the PowerPC processor, and we have yet to see the release of Netscape 5.0.
A company isn't a monopoly simply because it dominates a market. If it were, our economy would break down because companies would fear success. If Windows 2000 is a fine product, more power to Bill; if it isn't, I think you'll see more people than ever shift to alternatives like Linux.
I do think that Microsoft should be punished for their practices -- but not distroyed. John McCain obviously understands the necessity for relatively unimpeded commerce (as demonstrated by his proposed tax moratorium), and the breakup of Microsoft would definitely contradict his position.
Now CDA is a whole other issue...
In the northern hemisphere, daylight savings time is only observed during the spring, summer, and part of fall (roughly from March until October). Is it the opposite in the southern hemisphere?
Most of the laws listed are forgotten relics of an older age, and I seriously doubt that any court would bother with them.
However, they do give us a sense of what people used to be afraid of, how thoughtless politicians can be, and how deep a beurocracy we must have to still have these laws around. Very funny stuff.
It's more like 10^12. The first four generally identify the merchant, and the rest are customer specific. Of course, there are expections.
For Discover/Novus Cards, the first four digits are always 6011. Visa cards start with 4, but can begin with one of a number of 4-digit codes. Amex cards feature only 15 digits, but I believe that only the first digit (3) isn't user-specific.
Interesting, I read it Monday.
Funny, because I read most of The Onion last night, and it was certainly not today's issue (yes, I did reload my browser). I've seen this trend before.
The issue dates also suggest that they are published every Wednesday. I see no reason for the web version to appear two days before the print model.
You guys should really get out more, maybe read more informed and diverse views than those that are being peddled here.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
"News in the Slashdot Age" has a tendency to be either A.) repackaged, or B.) uninformed. If you read the primary sources more you will come to understand this.
In general, yes. But stories are also more interesting on Slashdot, because of the semi-informed discussion threads. You evidently agree, or you wouldn't have read my comment in the first place.
Try refreshing your DNS. Go.com has more bandwidth than Slashdot.
The "replacement" Go logo was obviously thrown together in a very short amount of time. Was Disney so sure of victory that they didn't even consider working on a backup logo?
This is what happens when a company has too much faith a justice system that often yields to money and power, but not every time...
The issue here is consumer confusion. I doubt anyone will confuse stop and go, but Go and GoTo.com, both with similar traffic light logos, are another thing....
... posts their issues every Wednesday, usually in the early morning hours.
Given that today *is* Wednesday, I'm not sure what the hell your gripe is.
Yeah, 22nd birthday on the 19th. Cool.
Organizations usually protect their patents from expiration by securing similar/dependent patents that expire at different times.
enthuisiests
;)
Yeah, yeah... it's late
I think Sony is totally mismarketing the things. They're really targetting little kids ("share behaviors with friends")... but seriously, even if a child could obtain an AIBO, how many of their friends would have similar luck? And besides, at $2500, I wouldn't want my 5-year-old kid taking the dog out of the house!
Sony *should* target serious enthuisiests with $$$, and cut the cutesy crap.
Why do the dogs communicate only via beeps? Voice-recognition technology is getting quite reasonable, and besides, how good does it need to be for a dog? My stupid furby at least used words (even if they weren't English).
r
Imagine you're a CEO of an electronics company. You're given two facts:
1) Digital cameras have to do some pretty quick thinking. They capture a million+ pixels in a split second, shuttle them around memory, encode the images (via presumably complex algorithms), and communicate them to a PC.
2) Inexpensive, fast, multipurpose processors are readily available.
As a company, you have two options: spend millions developing a hardware brain for the camera that can do nothing but what it's intended to do because it doesn't have an underlying programming language. Should you find a bug, you'll be rewiring the whole damn thing. Competition making faster cameras? You'll have to reinvent your underlying thinking in order to speed up your own chip. You'll also need to interface your chip with 3rd-party memory (or spend another million developing your own) and USB protocols.
OR, just go buy a ready-made processor for a fraction of the cost and hire a couple software engineers. When faster chips become available, just use them instead. A JPEG-compression algorithm is a helluva lot easier to put together if it's not hard-wired.