I can second this. The best I've ever gotten from any of these online job boards is a personally addressed, personally signed letter from Enterprise Rent-a-Car's HR director thanking me for my application but politely declining to hire me. I was quite excited, and I still have it somewhere (in fact, I got another one soon after).
The next thing I got was when I applied for a government job in Fredericton, where I was moving in a few weeks. Not only did I not get the job, the job was completely eliminated and the department the job would have been in got re-organized.
I tried not to take it personally, but I decided not to apply for any more jobs on Monster. The first two replies had been progressively more severe, and I didn't want to risk putting any companies out of business just by applying for temp jobs.
Sure, the server can fallback, but as soon as it does, you lose the entire point of having that extension. I've used GTK2 apps on Windows X servers as well, and yes, they work, but I lose pretty much everything that XFree offers - since GTK was designed with XFree in mind (not entirely, but in part), and XFree can code extensions for OSS problems (like antialiasing).
Then again, I used an X server that DID support the XRender extension - except the clients couldn't tell. I don't know whose bug that was, but it illustrates the point effectively.
We have all these extensions that make our life easier, but make coding harder, since they're exactly that - extensions to a protocol designed by people who had no idea what they were doing (which is why they created extensions). If these extensions are as usefulas they are, why not make them the new standard?
When Y windows is being created, it can incorporate all these things that we have been working on in XFree - alpha-blending, transparency, antialiasing, scaling and rotation, hot-swappable drivers, and so on. Once it is complete, it will be a finished protocol that people can support (and, hopefully, extend) to add things that we didn't think of (or that aren't practical) yet.
I'm not saying X doesn't work, but maybe something can be made that works better.
No you are wrong here. As a practical matter binary drivers lead to buggy unstable kernels.
The poster wasn't talking (necessarily) about closed-source drivers though. This applies equally well to open-source drivers. Every time the API changes, all the drivers that use that API (e.g. sound API) have to change as well. This is a lot of pointless work, and has lead to incompatibilities that are at the least frustrating, and at most perplexing.
The cs4232 drivers for my ISA sound card worked fine in 2.2.x, they worked great. I could compile them in or load them as modules. In 2.4, however, start to finish, they didn't work properly. Specifically, I could not insmod them until after I'd cat'ed/proc/isapnp. That was all I needed to do, seriously, and that doesn't make much sense to me at all. The weirdest part is that the driver worked 100% perfectly after that, with no troubles at all.
This is what happens when APIs get updated but drivers don't (or aren't tested). Linus' insistance on changing the API whenever he feels creates instability, and undoubtedly has lead to other problems like this. I'd be curious to see what other unusual bugs are out there because of this.
What's is interesting in Linux kernel, is that the driver API is always changing
In the programming world, this is called 'idiocy'. Breaking backwards compatibility should be considered a kludge, and be reserved for major revisions, and yet it just doesn't seem to work that way.
The change from 2.4 to 2.6 I can understand, and 2.2 to 2.4, and especially 2.0 to 2.2, but I've even ran into incompatibilities within major revisions (2.2.x drivers not working with 2.2.y kernels) with drivers included in the kernel.
Until some level of stability is achieved in the kernel (which I hope will happen with 2.6), Linux won't be ready for mainstream, because unless it's easy for companies to support their drivers (open or closed), most of them aren't going to bother.
Hence XRender and the introduction of a new visual type with an alpha channel done by FreeDesktop.org, both done in a non-crufty way, yet within the confines of the existing X protocol.
Which won't work on other X implementations, or older versions of XFree, or versions where that module isn't loaded (e.g. where an old configuration is used).
The problem is not that X can't be made useful - the XFree86 project proves that it can. The problem is that no two X implementations work the same. Running GTK apps on a Windows-based X server (any I've tried) is unreliable, and doesn't support the features I can get from XFree, but even XFree lacks some of the things that other X servers do, and so on and so forth.
The idea is to start new, from scratch, designed with all the things we expect from a windowing system in mind, AND with extensibility. Then, in fifteen years, when the system is so loaded down with cruft, extensions (proprietary and open), and has become a mess, we can do it over again right.
X (and XFree86) has become a hackish mess precisely because of how popular and how useful it is. The fact that it is extensible means that anyone can make it (more) useful for their purposes, and that has resulted in people doing so. The problem is that now XFree86 is unconscionably large for what it does, because it has had to undergo sectional rewrites, workarounds, extensions, and upgrades for I-don't-even-know-how-many years, and we need to start over with a clean slate and a modern design.
Just like Unix's 'ugw+rwx' file permissions were great in its day, so has X been, but just like they don't cut it in modern security paradigms, neither does X and its mess of extensions. It's time for something new to be the latest greatest thing.
Remember what happened when Microsoft tried to "embrace and extend" Java with Windows extentions
In fact I do. Here's a potentially amusing anecdote...
When I first arrived in my classroom for my first Computer Information Systems course, ready to learn C++ (which I quite like now), I noticed that the entire Visual Studio set was installed on the computers. Curious about Java, I decided to open Visual J++, to see if MS's version made any sense.
Not, of course, knowing the first blessed thing about Java or 'J++', I decided to play with the project wizard. Right off the bat, it gave me three options. I could target my product towards an IE-style CAB file (for distribution on the internet), compile it into a standalone.exe file (obviously Windows-only) or make it into a generic.class file. I, of course, chose the third option.
The program politely informed me that it was not possible to make this project into that type of executable.
Keep in mind that I had only made one choice in this wizard before that question had arisen, and I tried over with both options. It was pretty funny, I have to say. But it's not them being dicks to enforce their monopoly. No no. Couldn't be.
The only thing I wish they'd do is ditch the Firefox name and keep it Mozilla.
It is Mozilla. And Firefox is Firefox (more specifically, 'Mozilla Firefox'). They're two different projects.
Mozilla is the 'everything and the kitchen sink' version - the 'Netscape Communicator' of the Mozilla family. Firefox is the browser-only nothin'-but-net redux which uses the Gecko engine and blah blah.
Just like Mozilla Thunderbird is the mail-only app, Mozilla Firefox is the web-only app.
I second this post, it is exactly what you should do. At the risk of sounding as over-dramatic as I usually do, chargebacks can put the fear of god into merchants. They don't just lose the money that they charged to your card, they also get charged by the bank as well. Rates vary, but at one credit card processing company I worked for, it was $20 per chargeback.
What are your chances of getting it done in your favour? A story someone told on Slashdot about a DVD player comes to mind. The person bought the DVD player because there was a hidden menu for changing the DVD region - essentially a region-free player. After a short while, it kicked off, and he took it back to have it fixed. The company, while fixing it, also 'upgraded' the firmware, removing the DVD region changing ability.
When he discovered this, he went to the company to have them undo their damage, and they refused. He then called Visa, explained the situation, and suggested that he had not recieved the product he had paid for. They agreed, and charged it back. He then went to another store and bought the same DVD player again. The first store lost a sale, lost the repair cost, AND got fined. Hardcore.
I find Visa is well reputed to be excellent in this department, but I've had a few customers telling me Mastercard is the same way. Give it a go, it'll probably work.
Just a nitpick, it wasn't Rainbow Six that was released last year, it was Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, as I recall (which sold absurdly well).
The reason Ubisoft did badly (and compared to what it could have done, it did very badly) is because it released all of its phenominal games all at once, at the same time as everyone else released all of their phenominal games (as you mention).
They let out Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil, Rainbow Six 3, and a selection of other titles all at once, at the same time, and didn't market them well enough (despite what the article blurb says). Most people I talk to at EB have never heard of Beyond Good and Evil, or haven't tried it at all. I knew it was going to be good, bought it the first day, and loved it. I was surprised at the time that it was only $49.99 (CDN), but now it's down to $29.99, and it's still not selling. If it had been released this summer, or stretched out to a dry period, it would have been a phenominal hit.
I tallied it up one day when I was bored. Going through EB's new release list from the start of October to the end of January, there were over a thousand dollars worth of games I wanted for the Gamecube alone. Now that I have a PS2 as well, and am thinking about getting a cheap XBox, I'm sure I could spend my entire paycheque every month and still not catch up to the new releases. The industry needs to understand that we just don't have that kind of money, and we're going to pick the hot titles of the time. Go up against Final Fantasy X-2, the GTA double pack, and Prince of Persia, and you literally don't stand a chance.
When the game industry learns this, we'll all be better off, them especially.
The hard drive issue is a big one, but not as big as one might thing. For example, they could ship their XBox Live kits with HDs, which wouldn't increase the price too much (if Microsoft soaked the first year costs), but would serve well enough for downloadable content. Alternately, they could sell it separately, bundled with a game (or offer 3-6 months of online service free with it, etc).
The HD in the xbox is sorely underused. Saving games is great, you can save fast and save as much data as you want, pretty much. That being said, it's not taken advantage of beyond that, really. Think about caching. You could pre-cache the next level in Halo off the disc, or the next cutscene worth of dialogue, and basically eliminate load times altogether. As it is, you get some good post-game/pre-game chat time in while it loads, if playing co-op, but that's about it. Potential unused.
The custom soundtrack feature and MP3 (or whatever) jukebox feature is a great addition, but it's really not enough to justify another $50 on the price tag (or to justify Microsoft losing $50 more on every XBox Next). Build in 15 megs of flash memory for saving games and provide the HD as an option for consumers to purchase later. That way, they can charge extra for it and make it up instead of losing it, or, as you can with the PS2, let custom hardware hackers put in whatever size HD they want, make the XBox format it when it detects it, and let them void their warantee for that extra 200 gigs of space.
Use an expensive disc format (like blu-ray) so that people can't easily burn off copies, and so that they can't rip them easily either without a few hundred extra dollars in hardware. Voila.
Piracy will never be cured, but this will make it a pain in the ass, and still allow Microsoft to make up the loss on the HDs instead of soaking it.
I know from experience working in a video game store that the HD makes a lot of people interested. They buy the XBox now and get their games, and that's all they need. Sure, the DVD remote is another $50, but they can either buy that later or not at all. With the PS2, on the other hand, they NEED the memory card (if they ever want to safe), and that's all there is to it. Ripping MP3s, downloadable content, it's all more enticing. When you look at the PS2 in comparison, it looks closer to the gamecube than the XBox, despite the fact that you can add everything the XBox does to the PS2. It's a sales thing.
Pre-arranged employment is a good idea anyway - since you're most likely to find professional ('skiled') IT employment via the internet or by networking anyway, it's probably just as easy to find a job programming in Canada from outside of Canada than it is from inside.
What I can never understand is how so many people cross borders so easily, when it really seems quite difficult to do so. When I was visiting Israel, I was quoted a statistic from the newspapers by someone I was staying with: there was a minor exodus from Israel at the time, a significant number of families moving out of the country just to be safe, and over 75% of those people leaving the country in that period were moving to Canada. I was kind of proud, but at the same time, I wondered how hard it really is to do, and how hard it really is to move elsewhere.
Can anyone suggest a country that's easy to move to and worth moving to at the same time? I don't mind learning a new language or working simple jobs just to pay rent, I'd just like to get out and explore. Anyone?
Canada requires more than US$30,000 in cash and you must be highly qualified in a professional field to move.
This has either changed, or you've been misinformed - since there are several different ways to immigrate to Canada, and they're all quite complex (fucking bureaucrats), I thought I'd give a breakdown of the easiest way - Permanant Resident status. You wouldn't be a Canadian citizen, but you'd be well on your way to becoming one. Permanant Resident status grants you priviliges to live, work, and study in Canada as any Canadian would, and is the easiest way to go about doing it.
Let's assume you're a 'skilled worker' (the category most slashdotters are likely to fall under). You need several things before you can be given a work permit.
Number one, you need to have at least one year of paid work experience in your field. Sorry guys, kernel programming doesn't hack it (hahaha) unless you were on someone's payroll. If, as a programmer (let's assume you were a programmer), your job description matches what the government has on file for a 'computer programmer', then bravo, you're a skilled worker for a qualifying profession. If you had a different job description, you may find it at the bottom of that website. If you're not a programmer at all, then check the NOC list (now I feel like a secret agent) for your profession and put the four digit code for your profession into the search box on the programmer description page.
That's a lot of typing for something that's pretty simple.
Now, we have to make sure you can support yourself in Canada, on your own, for six months. The government says you'll need about $9400 Canadian dollars to support yourself for six months. If you have a family, it may be more. In comparison, the student loan fuckers gave me $7400 to last me an entire year (minus my $4000 tuition). I hope they all die.
If you have secured work in Canada before coming, you do not have to have this money. However, you'd be stupid not to have a few grand in cash in the bank, or it'll be a bitch to rent an apartment without first/last month's rent.
Oh, and if you're bringing more than $10,000 in negotiables (cash, stocks, bonds, treasury bills, traveller's cheques, cashier's cheques, money orders, etc), for the love of god declare them at customs. You do not want to spend your first few weeks in prison or have to pay a chunk of change in fines. Just don't.
Also, while we're on the subject, don't bring marijuana. Seriously, people do this, as if we don't grow our own. You can get it here, and it's cheaper than what you paid, trust me.
Now, you have to be able to speak the language. If you've gotten this far, you probably qualify for moerate or high English lanuguage proficiency, but you may, at your option, choose to use French as your primary official language instead. Keep in mind, however, that unless you move to Quebec, you will more than likely need functioning English to get around. Whichever you choose, you will have to prove it, either by taking a test of your (e.g.) English, or by providing proof from another qualified organization. If English or French is your first language, just take the test. It'll be trivial. Some people who immigrate to Canada are pretty much functionally incompetant in English and still get in (and that's fine), so if you can understand what I'm saying, you'll be fine.
Exceptions are in the larger cities, for e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Israeli, Arabic, Sihk, etc. immigrants, as there are already large communities of these persons in the larger areas, and they will be able to help you get acclimated to your new home, and still give you a comfortable anchor, if you desire one.
For an idea of how easy or hard it is to really get into Canada, take a look at
Enh, you can pick up an FM radio for $5 on the impulse wall at the Wal-Mart checkout when you're buying your pillows. I certainly wouldn't say boo to an iPod because it didn't have functionality they give away with cereal boxes (seriously, I've seen it).
I know the original post was intended as funny, but this was a handy hack that I found for OS X that made life a lot easier. All you did was hit Cmd-Space and a little text box (not a window or a menu or anything, just a textbox with IE/Firebird-style autocomplete) would pop down. You'd start typing the name of the program to run, and it would pop up a list of programs matching that name, autocompleting as you went. The names were taken from the name of the application bundle itself and the list was always up-to-date, so there was no Win-R, 'winword.exe' crap. It was Cmd-Space, 'Micr' (the autocomplete list was sorted by popularity).
Something like this would be nice for Windows, except there's all that shit about paths, and stupid fucking program names (it's easier to remember 'Half-Life' or 'Call of' than 'hl.exe' or 'cldty' or whatever it is). Stupid windows.
I have an idea for this. Would it be possible to use the Dual Shock controller as a mouse, and have a button show an onscreen keyboard in X, so we can at least login via *DM and use our favorite desktops?
Theoretically, yes. However, it would make a lot more sense to plug a USB keyboard and mouse into the front USB ports and use them instead.;)
--Dan
Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?
on
Build Your Own PVR
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is offtopic, but...
I'm a seasoned unix user
Am I the only one who thinks of the phrase 'the kernel's secret blend of herbs and spices' when they hear this phrase?
Basically, if you patent-sue (or counter-patent-sue) anyone because e.g. Apache is violating one of your patents, then you're not allowed to use any patents being used in Apache.
So if Apache is using patented protocol X, and you sue them because you think they're infringing on your patented file format Y, then you are no longer granted use of patented protocol X anymore. You could still use Apache, as long as you don't use patented protocol X.
I believe the GPL is an astonishingly robust answer to the question of how to share creative works without subsidising commercial interests that inevitably seek to quash the independent creative spirit.
I dunno. The way I look at it is that I write software for the purposes of writing software. I write it for fun, or because I want it. If some corporation I share my code with wants to turn around and sell my software, then more power to them. If they think my software is better than what they can write, then I'm glad to help make software better. It's not going to happen, but hypothetically, if it did, then hey, bonus.
As for improvements - if I have the right to dictate what people do with my code, why don't they have the right to do what they want with theirs? They have competitors, I don't (or don't care).
Basically, it comes down to 'if you can help someone, help them', the philosophy I prefer. The GPL seems to be more along the lines of 'freedom on my terms or not at all'.
She thinks nothing of the employers/users/shareholder of HP.
I'm willing to bet you're two thirds right, but keep one thing in mind: in the case of a public corporation, if the shareholders decide that the CEO was doing something against the best interests of the company (and thus, the shareholders), they can sue. You'd better believe that she's keeping the company in mind.
That being said, I don't think she really understands what needs to be done towards that end.
such a large country, with such low population density.
The problem with that argument is that where there is population - the cities - the density is quite high. Canada's low population density is because of endless stretches of barren wasteland in the Northwest Territories, fields of rock and lake in Manitoba and Northern Ontario, and hundreds of kilometers of farm and ranch land in the praries, dotted occasionaly by cities of two hundred thousand or more people.
To put it another way: Imagine if everyone in the US suddenly disappeared, except for those in the state of California. If Los Angeles, San Fancisco, and the other cities in Cali all stayed the same, then the US would have a similar population density to Canada - but people would still be crammed in like sardines.
From http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/WorldGeography/Canad a/Canada.htm comes a quote that I've been hearing all my life in some form or other: "Most of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the border with the United States. About 75% of the population lives in major cities or towns." There isn't a problem with population density, because once you cover about 20 cities, you've already covered most of the population, and then you can start to expand from there, if it's feasible.
In Abbotsford, I went with Shaw Cable. I don't know what they're like now, but my pings to a server hosted in Harbour Centre were about 7-11ms 6 hops (no joke) and I was getting 300-550kbyte/s (again, unbelievable) from another server there.
The cost was $40/month minus discounts for our package deal, and we got 512k up, 2.5mbit down (though it was actually unmetered), unlimited upload/download, email, webhosting if you wanted it (good for hosting tarballs and kernel compiles for people). Not to mention my routes around the world were astronomical. I applied my Linux box to several IRC networks to see what the dilly-o, and I got better pings and routes than most of their colocated servers did. Pretty amazing, I found.
When I move back to Vancouver, I'm definitely going to give them a try again.
We also only have 1/10th the population, so our population density is waaay lower than the US
Actually, while this is true nationally, it's not technically correct for the purposes of comparison.
There are less Canadians per square kilometre than Americans per square km, but the ones that there are are far more concentrated - and yet, are not concentrated in groups as large. To explain:
Canadians generally crowd in or around large cities (Vancouver, Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton), which makes it easier to provide large amounts of people with access at once as compared to if they were spread out more evenly across the country.
That being said, even the densest clusters pale in comparison. Toronto, Canada's largest city, weighs in at about 4.5 million people, give or take. In contrast, New York, the largest American city, has almost twice that, at 8 million, give or take, and there are very many cities whose populations are also larger than Toronto.
In these areas, it can be troublesome to upgrade existing infrastructure, because of the density and the need to have a solid system working all the time. More equipment needs to be purchased, because there's just more equipment to be replaced, which can be prohibitively expensive if costs aren't raised.
Outside of the large centers, the population of the US is spread out considerably in the central plains area, though not dissimilarly to Canada's prarie provinces, which also have cheap broadband.
I think what it really comes down to is that Americans are just getting fucked by greedy companies, as seems to always be the case. There is no reason that in Calgary, Alberta several years ago, you could get 640k down and 128k up DSL for $40 CDN per month, but in Seattle, Washington, the closest you could get was 512 down, 96k up for $225 USD, other than to screw the early adopters in the hopes that they'd make more money. Since telcos are pretty much unregulated in the US, they seem to have this attitude of 'let's fuck the customer, because there's nowhere to run'. In Canada, however, even the giants of telecom are deathly afraid of the CRTC, and while I believe they are generally not customer-hostile, even if they wanted to be, they wouldn't get away with it long enough to enjoy it.
I'd like to see GTA: Tehran. When the cops pull you over, which they will do even if you're driving safely and responsibly and following all traffic laws, they'll take all your money, beat the living shit out of you, or both. If you try to run away, they'll blow your ass up with a shoulder-mounted RPG.
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I can second this. The best I've ever gotten from any of these online job boards is a personally addressed, personally signed letter from Enterprise Rent-a-Car's HR director thanking me for my application but politely declining to hire me. I was quite excited, and I still have it somewhere (in fact, I got another one soon after).
The next thing I got was when I applied for a government job in Fredericton, where I was moving in a few weeks. Not only did I not get the job, the job was completely eliminated and the department the job would have been in got re-organized.
I tried not to take it personally, but I decided not to apply for any more jobs on Monster. The first two replies had been progressively more severe, and I didn't want to risk putting any companies out of business just by applying for temp jobs.
--Dan
Sure, the server can fallback, but as soon as it does, you lose the entire point of having that extension. I've used GTK2 apps on Windows X servers as well, and yes, they work, but I lose pretty much everything that XFree offers - since GTK was designed with XFree in mind (not entirely, but in part), and XFree can code extensions for OSS problems (like antialiasing).
Then again, I used an X server that DID support the XRender extension - except the clients couldn't tell. I don't know whose bug that was, but it illustrates the point effectively.
We have all these extensions that make our life easier, but make coding harder, since they're exactly that - extensions to a protocol designed by people who had no idea what they were doing (which is why they created extensions). If these extensions are as usefulas they are, why not make them the new standard?
When Y windows is being created, it can incorporate all these things that we have been working on in XFree - alpha-blending, transparency, antialiasing, scaling and rotation, hot-swappable drivers, and so on. Once it is complete, it will be a finished protocol that people can support (and, hopefully, extend) to add things that we didn't think of (or that aren't practical) yet.
I'm not saying X doesn't work, but maybe something can be made that works better.
--Dan
No you are wrong here. As a practical matter binary drivers lead to buggy unstable kernels.
/proc/isapnp. That was all I needed to do, seriously, and that doesn't make much sense to me at all. The weirdest part is that the driver worked 100% perfectly after that, with no troubles at all.
The poster wasn't talking (necessarily) about closed-source drivers though. This applies equally well to open-source drivers. Every time the API changes, all the drivers that use that API (e.g. sound API) have to change as well. This is a lot of pointless work, and has lead to incompatibilities that are at the least frustrating, and at most perplexing.
The cs4232 drivers for my ISA sound card worked fine in 2.2.x, they worked great. I could compile them in or load them as modules. In 2.4, however, start to finish, they didn't work properly. Specifically, I could not insmod them until after I'd cat'ed
This is what happens when APIs get updated but drivers don't (or aren't tested). Linus' insistance on changing the API whenever he feels creates instability, and undoubtedly has lead to other problems like this. I'd be curious to see what other unusual bugs are out there because of this.
--Dan
What's is interesting in Linux kernel, is that the driver API is always changing
In the programming world, this is called 'idiocy'. Breaking backwards compatibility should be considered a kludge, and be reserved for major revisions, and yet it just doesn't seem to work that way.
The change from 2.4 to 2.6 I can understand, and 2.2 to 2.4, and especially 2.0 to 2.2, but I've even ran into incompatibilities within major revisions (2.2.x drivers not working with 2.2.y kernels) with drivers included in the kernel.
Until some level of stability is achieved in the kernel (which I hope will happen with 2.6), Linux won't be ready for mainstream, because unless it's easy for companies to support their drivers (open or closed), most of them aren't going to bother.
--Dan
Hence XRender and the introduction of a new visual type with an alpha channel done by FreeDesktop.org, both done in a non-crufty way, yet within the confines of the existing X protocol.
Which won't work on other X implementations, or older versions of XFree, or versions where that module isn't loaded (e.g. where an old configuration is used).
The problem is not that X can't be made useful - the XFree86 project proves that it can. The problem is that no two X implementations work the same. Running GTK apps on a Windows-based X server (any I've tried) is unreliable, and doesn't support the features I can get from XFree, but even XFree lacks some of the things that other X servers do, and so on and so forth.
The idea is to start new, from scratch, designed with all the things we expect from a windowing system in mind, AND with extensibility. Then, in fifteen years, when the system is so loaded down with cruft, extensions (proprietary and open), and has become a mess, we can do it over again right.
X (and XFree86) has become a hackish mess precisely because of how popular and how useful it is. The fact that it is extensible means that anyone can make it (more) useful for their purposes, and that has resulted in people doing so. The problem is that now XFree86 is unconscionably large for what it does, because it has had to undergo sectional rewrites, workarounds, extensions, and upgrades for I-don't-even-know-how-many years, and we need to start over with a clean slate and a modern design.
Just like Unix's 'ugw+rwx' file permissions were great in its day, so has X been, but just like they don't cut it in modern security paradigms, neither does X and its mess of extensions. It's time for something new to be the latest greatest thing.
--Dan
Remember what happened when Microsoft tried to "embrace and extend" Java with Windows extentions
.exe file (obviously Windows-only) or make it into a generic .class file. I, of course, chose the third option.
In fact I do. Here's a potentially amusing anecdote...
When I first arrived in my classroom for my first Computer Information Systems course, ready to learn C++ (which I quite like now), I noticed that the entire Visual Studio set was installed on the computers. Curious about Java, I decided to open Visual J++, to see if MS's version made any sense.
Not, of course, knowing the first blessed thing about Java or 'J++', I decided to play with the project wizard. Right off the bat, it gave me three options. I could target my product towards an IE-style CAB file (for distribution on the internet), compile it into a standalone
The program politely informed me that it was not possible to make this project into that type of executable.
Keep in mind that I had only made one choice in this wizard before that question had arisen, and I tried over with both options. It was pretty funny, I have to say. But it's not them being dicks to enforce their monopoly. No no. Couldn't be.
--Dan
The only thing I wish they'd do is ditch the Firefox name and keep it Mozilla.
It is Mozilla. And Firefox is Firefox (more specifically, 'Mozilla Firefox'). They're two different projects.
Mozilla is the 'everything and the kitchen sink' version - the 'Netscape Communicator' of the Mozilla family. Firefox is the browser-only nothin'-but-net redux which uses the Gecko engine and blah blah.
Just like Mozilla Thunderbird is the mail-only app, Mozilla Firefox is the web-only app.
--Dan
As posted elsewhere in this article:
The Mozilla ActiveX Control
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll embed Mozilla in an IE window.
--Dan
I second this post, it is exactly what you should do. At the risk of sounding as over-dramatic as I usually do, chargebacks can put the fear of god into merchants. They don't just lose the money that they charged to your card, they also get charged by the bank as well. Rates vary, but at one credit card processing company I worked for, it was $20 per chargeback.
What are your chances of getting it done in your favour? A story someone told on Slashdot about a DVD player comes to mind. The person bought the DVD player because there was a hidden menu for changing the DVD region - essentially a region-free player. After a short while, it kicked off, and he took it back to have it fixed. The company, while fixing it, also 'upgraded' the firmware, removing the DVD region changing ability.
When he discovered this, he went to the company to have them undo their damage, and they refused. He then called Visa, explained the situation, and suggested that he had not recieved the product he had paid for. They agreed, and charged it back. He then went to another store and bought the same DVD player again. The first store lost a sale, lost the repair cost, AND got fined. Hardcore.
I find Visa is well reputed to be excellent in this department, but I've had a few customers telling me Mastercard is the same way. Give it a go, it'll probably work.
--Dan
Now I feel stupid.
I'm still in 2003 mode. 'Last Year' was Rainbow Six, but I thought you were referring to 2002. My bad.
--Dan
Just a nitpick, it wasn't Rainbow Six that was released last year, it was Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, as I recall (which sold absurdly well).
The reason Ubisoft did badly (and compared to what it could have done, it did very badly) is because it released all of its phenominal games all at once, at the same time as everyone else released all of their phenominal games (as you mention).
They let out Prince of Persia, Beyond Good and Evil, Rainbow Six 3, and a selection of other titles all at once, at the same time, and didn't market them well enough (despite what the article blurb says). Most people I talk to at EB have never heard of Beyond Good and Evil, or haven't tried it at all. I knew it was going to be good, bought it the first day, and loved it. I was surprised at the time that it was only $49.99 (CDN), but now it's down to $29.99, and it's still not selling. If it had been released this summer, or stretched out to a dry period, it would have been a phenominal hit.
I tallied it up one day when I was bored. Going through EB's new release list from the start of October to the end of January, there were over a thousand dollars worth of games I wanted for the Gamecube alone. Now that I have a PS2 as well, and am thinking about getting a cheap XBox, I'm sure I could spend my entire paycheque every month and still not catch up to the new releases. The industry needs to understand that we just don't have that kind of money, and we're going to pick the hot titles of the time. Go up against Final Fantasy X-2, the GTA double pack, and Prince of Persia, and you literally don't stand a chance.
When the game industry learns this, we'll all be better off, them especially.
--Dan
The hard drive issue is a big one, but not as big as one might thing. For example, they could ship their XBox Live kits with HDs, which wouldn't increase the price too much (if Microsoft soaked the first year costs), but would serve well enough for downloadable content. Alternately, they could sell it separately, bundled with a game (or offer 3-6 months of online service free with it, etc).
The HD in the xbox is sorely underused. Saving games is great, you can save fast and save as much data as you want, pretty much. That being said, it's not taken advantage of beyond that, really. Think about caching. You could pre-cache the next level in Halo off the disc, or the next cutscene worth of dialogue, and basically eliminate load times altogether. As it is, you get some good post-game/pre-game chat time in while it loads, if playing co-op, but that's about it. Potential unused.
The custom soundtrack feature and MP3 (or whatever) jukebox feature is a great addition, but it's really not enough to justify another $50 on the price tag (or to justify Microsoft losing $50 more on every XBox Next). Build in 15 megs of flash memory for saving games and provide the HD as an option for consumers to purchase later. That way, they can charge extra for it and make it up instead of losing it, or, as you can with the PS2, let custom hardware hackers put in whatever size HD they want, make the XBox format it when it detects it, and let them void their warantee for that extra 200 gigs of space.
Use an expensive disc format (like blu-ray) so that people can't easily burn off copies, and so that they can't rip them easily either without a few hundred extra dollars in hardware. Voila.
Piracy will never be cured, but this will make it a pain in the ass, and still allow Microsoft to make up the loss on the HDs instead of soaking it.
I know from experience working in a video game store that the HD makes a lot of people interested. They buy the XBox now and get their games, and that's all they need. Sure, the DVD remote is another $50, but they can either buy that later or not at all. With the PS2, on the other hand, they NEED the memory card (if they ever want to safe), and that's all there is to it. Ripping MP3s, downloadable content, it's all more enticing. When you look at the PS2 in comparison, it looks closer to the gamecube than the XBox, despite the fact that you can add everything the XBox does to the PS2. It's a sales thing.
--Dan
Pre-arranged employment is a good idea anyway - since you're most likely to find professional ('skiled') IT employment via the internet or by networking anyway, it's probably just as easy to find a job programming in Canada from outside of Canada than it is from inside.
What I can never understand is how so many people cross borders so easily, when it really seems quite difficult to do so. When I was visiting Israel, I was quoted a statistic from the newspapers by someone I was staying with: there was a minor exodus from Israel at the time, a significant number of families moving out of the country just to be safe, and over 75% of those people leaving the country in that period were moving to Canada. I was kind of proud, but at the same time, I wondered how hard it really is to do, and how hard it really is to move elsewhere.
Can anyone suggest a country that's easy to move to and worth moving to at the same time? I don't mind learning a new language or working simple jobs just to pay rent, I'd just like to get out and explore. Anyone?
--Dan
Canada requires more than US$30,000 in cash and you must be highly qualified in a professional field to move.
This has either changed, or you've been misinformed - since there are several different ways to immigrate to Canada, and they're all quite complex (fucking bureaucrats), I thought I'd give a breakdown of the easiest way - Permanant Resident status. You wouldn't be a Canadian citizen, but you'd be well on your way to becoming one. Permanant Resident status grants you priviliges to live, work, and study in Canada as any Canadian would, and is the easiest way to go about doing it.
Let's assume you're a 'skilled worker' (the category most slashdotters are likely to fall under). You need several things before you can be given a work permit.
Number one, you need to have at least one year of paid work experience in your field. Sorry guys, kernel programming doesn't hack it (hahaha) unless you were on someone's payroll. If, as a programmer (let's assume you were a programmer), your job description matches what the government has on file for a 'computer programmer', then bravo, you're a skilled worker for a qualifying profession. If you had a different job description, you may find it at the bottom of that website. If you're not a programmer at all, then check the NOC list (now I feel like a secret agent) for your profession and put the four digit code for your profession into the search box on the programmer description page.
That's a lot of typing for something that's pretty simple.
Now, we have to make sure you can support yourself in Canada, on your own, for six months. The government says you'll need about $9400 Canadian dollars to support yourself for six months. If you have a family, it may be more. In comparison, the student loan fuckers gave me $7400 to last me an entire year (minus my $4000 tuition). I hope they all die.
If you have secured work in Canada before coming, you do not have to have this money. However, you'd be stupid not to have a few grand in cash in the bank, or it'll be a bitch to rent an apartment without first/last month's rent.
Oh, and if you're bringing more than $10,000 in negotiables (cash, stocks, bonds, treasury bills, traveller's cheques, cashier's cheques, money orders, etc), for the love of god declare them at customs. You do not want to spend your first few weeks in prison or have to pay a chunk of change in fines. Just don't.
Also, while we're on the subject, don't bring marijuana. Seriously, people do this, as if we don't grow our own. You can get it here, and it's cheaper than what you paid, trust me.
Now, you have to be able to speak the language. If you've gotten this far, you probably qualify for moerate or high English lanuguage proficiency, but you may, at your option, choose to use French as your primary official language instead. Keep in mind, however, that unless you move to Quebec, you will more than likely need functioning English to get around. Whichever you choose, you will have to prove it, either by taking a test of your (e.g.) English, or by providing proof from another qualified organization. If English or French is your first language, just take the test. It'll be trivial. Some people who immigrate to Canada are pretty much functionally incompetant in English and still get in (and that's fine), so if you can understand what I'm saying, you'll be fine.
Exceptions are in the larger cities, for e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Israeli, Arabic, Sihk, etc. immigrants, as there are already large communities of these persons in the larger areas, and they will be able to help you get acclimated to your new home, and still give you a comfortable anchor, if you desire one.
For an idea of how easy or hard it is to really get into Canada, take a look at
Enh, you can pick up an FM radio for $5 on the impulse wall at the Wal-Mart checkout when you're buying your pillows. I certainly wouldn't say boo to an iPod because it didn't have functionality they give away with cereal boxes (seriously, I've seen it).
--Dan
I know the original post was intended as funny, but this was a handy hack that I found for OS X that made life a lot easier. All you did was hit Cmd-Space and a little text box (not a window or a menu or anything, just a textbox with IE/Firebird-style autocomplete) would pop down. You'd start typing the name of the program to run, and it would pop up a list of programs matching that name, autocompleting as you went. The names were taken from the name of the application bundle itself and the list was always up-to-date, so there was no Win-R, 'winword.exe' crap. It was Cmd-Space, 'Micr' (the autocomplete list was sorted by popularity).
Something like this would be nice for Windows, except there's all that shit about paths, and stupid fucking program names (it's easier to remember 'Half-Life' or 'Call of' than 'hl.exe' or 'cldty' or whatever it is). Stupid windows.
--Dan
I have an idea for this. Would it be possible to use the Dual Shock controller as a mouse, and have a button show an onscreen keyboard in X, so we can at least login via *DM and use our favorite desktops?
;)
Theoretically, yes. However, it would make a lot more sense to plug a USB keyboard and mouse into the front USB ports and use them instead.
--Dan
This is offtopic, but...
I'm a seasoned unix user
Am I the only one who thinks of the phrase 'the kernel's secret blend of herbs and spices' when they hear this phrase?
I guess so.
--Dan
Basically, if you patent-sue (or counter-patent-sue) anyone because e.g. Apache is violating one of your patents, then you're not allowed to use any patents being used in Apache.
So if Apache is using patented protocol X, and you sue them because you think they're infringing on your patented file format Y, then you are no longer granted use of patented protocol X anymore. You could still use Apache, as long as you don't use patented protocol X.
I think.
--Dan
I believe the GPL is an astonishingly robust answer to the question of how to share creative works without subsidising commercial interests that inevitably seek to quash the independent creative spirit.
I dunno. The way I look at it is that I write software for the purposes of writing software. I write it for fun, or because I want it. If some corporation I share my code with wants to turn around and sell my software, then more power to them. If they think my software is better than what they can write, then I'm glad to help make software better. It's not going to happen, but hypothetically, if it did, then hey, bonus.
As for improvements - if I have the right to dictate what people do with my code, why don't they have the right to do what they want with theirs? They have competitors, I don't (or don't care).
Basically, it comes down to 'if you can help someone, help them', the philosophy I prefer. The GPL seems to be more along the lines of 'freedom on my terms or not at all'.
--Dan
She thinks nothing of the employers/users/shareholder of HP.
I'm willing to bet you're two thirds right, but keep one thing in mind: in the case of a public corporation, if the shareholders decide that the CEO was doing something against the best interests of the company (and thus, the shareholders), they can sue. You'd better believe that she's keeping the company in mind.
That being said, I don't think she really understands what needs to be done towards that end.
--Dan
such a large country, with such low population density.
d a/Canada.htm comes a quote that I've been hearing all my life in some form or other: "Most of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the border with the United States. About 75% of the population lives in major cities or towns." There isn't a problem with population density, because once you cover about 20 cities, you've already covered most of the population, and then you can start to expand from there, if it's feasible.
The problem with that argument is that where there is population - the cities - the density is quite high. Canada's low population density is because of endless stretches of barren wasteland in the Northwest Territories, fields of rock and lake in Manitoba and Northern Ontario, and hundreds of kilometers of farm and ranch land in the praries, dotted occasionaly by cities of two hundred thousand or more people.
To put it another way: Imagine if everyone in the US suddenly disappeared, except for those in the state of California. If Los Angeles, San Fancisco, and the other cities in Cali all stayed the same, then the US would have a similar population density to Canada - but people would still be crammed in like sardines.
From http://www.kidport.com/RefLib/WorldGeography/Cana
--Dan
In Abbotsford, I went with Shaw Cable. I don't know what they're like now, but my pings to a server hosted in Harbour Centre were about 7-11ms 6 hops (no joke) and I was getting 300-550kbyte/s (again, unbelievable) from another server there.
The cost was $40/month minus discounts for our package deal, and we got 512k up, 2.5mbit down (though it was actually unmetered), unlimited upload/download, email, webhosting if you wanted it (good for hosting tarballs and kernel compiles for people). Not to mention my routes around the world were astronomical. I applied my Linux box to several IRC networks to see what the dilly-o, and I got better pings and routes than most of their colocated servers did. Pretty amazing, I found.
When I move back to Vancouver, I'm definitely going to give them a try again.
--Dan
We also only have 1/10th the population, so our population density is waaay lower than the US
Actually, while this is true nationally, it's not technically correct for the purposes of comparison.
There are less Canadians per square kilometre than Americans per square km, but the ones that there are are far more concentrated - and yet, are not concentrated in groups as large. To explain:
Canadians generally crowd in or around large cities (Vancouver, Toronto, Saskatoon, Edmonton), which makes it easier to provide large amounts of people with access at once as compared to if they were spread out more evenly across the country.
That being said, even the densest clusters pale in comparison. Toronto, Canada's largest city, weighs in at about 4.5 million people, give or take. In contrast, New York, the largest American city, has almost twice that, at 8 million, give or take, and there are very many cities whose populations are also larger than Toronto.
In these areas, it can be troublesome to upgrade existing infrastructure, because of the density and the need to have a solid system working all the time. More equipment needs to be purchased, because there's just more equipment to be replaced, which can be prohibitively expensive if costs aren't raised.
Outside of the large centers, the population of the US is spread out considerably in the central plains area, though not dissimilarly to Canada's prarie provinces, which also have cheap broadband.
I think what it really comes down to is that Americans are just getting fucked by greedy companies, as seems to always be the case. There is no reason that in Calgary, Alberta several years ago, you could get 640k down and 128k up DSL for $40 CDN per month, but in Seattle, Washington, the closest you could get was 512 down, 96k up for $225 USD, other than to screw the early adopters in the hopes that they'd make more money. Since telcos are pretty much unregulated in the US, they seem to have this attitude of 'let's fuck the customer, because there's nowhere to run'. In Canada, however, even the giants of telecom are deathly afraid of the CRTC, and while I believe they are generally not customer-hostile, even if they wanted to be, they wouldn't get away with it long enough to enjoy it.
--Dan
I'd like to see GTA: Tehran. When the cops pull you over, which they will do even if you're driving safely and responsibly and following all traffic laws, they'll take all your money, beat the living shit out of you, or both. If you try to run away, they'll blow your ass up with a shoulder-mounted RPG.
Actually, that sounds familiar...
--Dan