I've been in a few unions in my time. I have to say, the only impression I was left with was "overpaid slackers". I worked at my pace, which was not tiring, and was told to slow down.
Unions exist primarily to protect slackers from getting canned. Any place I've worked where a union was involved, people would abuse the fact they were in a union. They would slack off on the job, take an extra 5 minutes every break, and even doddle around after they were done working so they can punch out 15 minutes later and accrue overtime for nothing!
Unions in the IT workplace would stagnate the industry. Sure, the rich get richer, but that's because they are often the elite visionaries in the first place! Sorry, but if you don't have the capabilities of someone else, you shouldn't be privy to their abilities just because you exist.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that it's the patent system that was the mistake.
No kidding. Imagine if new legislation was brought in to equalize legal disputes - something that madates equal representation of both the plaintiff and defedant. Perhaps something like when one side puts more wealth into their legal team, the other side gets a subsidized legal team with pretty much equal competance. I wonder how expensive this would end up being?
The official line is, "we don't know for sure and I want to be sure before I sign economically crippling policies to screw up everybody's lifestyle." That seems sensible to me.
Heh. I didn't know his concern for the economy was so great, considering his stance on the war(s). Frankly, I don't think that he needs to sign economically crippling policies, but he has to do something. We know that we are influencing the climate, we do not know to what degree. It's a grand experiment we are performing on ourselves, and the worse-case scenarios are pretty dramatic. That alone means we should do something to at least bring ourselves out of the equation as much as we can. If the climate continues to change dramatically, we can take solice in the fact that we at least tried to reduce out influence.
What is needed is a plan - something that will move us forward into a generation of highly efficient energy usage. For example, there could be a policy moving us towards battery-powered cars for city commutes, since battery technology is getting so good, and it's easier to manage emissions at the power-plant level than in the general population. It would potentially be better for the economy because it would create a new market, and since BOVs are typically simpler than ICEVs or Hybrids, they would become very cheap very rapidly in an economy of scale.
Aside from all that, I can tell you what else would be/is bad for the economy - dependence on foreign energy. We need a plan, or to know a plan is in the works, that will reduce these dependencies, and let us get the most out of our energy. We could and should make an effort to become as efficient as our technology and scale allows. We are currently enjoying an overabundance of available energy which is giving us bad habits - this is something we should be actively moving away from.
"Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy."
Wars could also damage a nations economy. Good thing he didn't... d'oh!
I've heard of this solar contribution, but from my understanding the variation has been too small to account for the level of warming we're seeing on earth.
The point is, we know we are warming up (or apparently we are - 2005 was the coldest year in a long time where I live...). We know that there are several factors contributing. We can infer that we are one of them, though we may not know to what degree. There mere fact that we *could* be contributing, and *could* be contributing either alot of a little means we should take this very seriously. We don't know, therefore we should be careful. If we aren't contributing much to global warming, we'll get the benefit of more efficient fuel use. If we are, we get the benefit of contributing less.
Sure, but we don't live on Mars. We live on Earth. Here on earth we have SUVs. MAYBE is the SUVs are causing the warming to some degree, MAYBE they aren't. The point is, we don't know, but all that extra CO2 we're putting out is going to have some kind of effect. It's better to safe than sorry. Besides, it's not like fuel is ever going to get cheaper.
In any event, people should ditch their SUVs - they're unsafe.
Just FYI - ethanol/methanol IS NOT a good fuel choice. Those alcohol fuels are lower energy density than gasoline, and need to be burned in larger amounts (by mass) to generate the same amount of power. They actually tend to produce MORE carbon than gasoline does. Not only that, but alcohols are harder on various components of your fuel system (such as the rubber hoses).
What we need to do is use gasoline as efficiently as possible. A car converts about 15% of the energy in gasoline to mechanical motion at the wheels. By moving to a full-electric drivetrain, with gasoline or diesel-powered generators/gensets/fuel cells and a rechargable energy storage device, far higher efficiencies can actually be achieved. The downside is that weight and cost for a vehicle will be higher.
There are interesting battery technologies being developed now, if the consumer would accept the fact that dedicated BOVs are actually an excellent choice for municipal commutes, we could see more BOVs like the EV come back into the market. I know that electricity is generated from fuel in many places in the US, however, it's far easier to manage emissions from a few power plants than it would be to manage them in a general population of automobiles.
From what I've heard, some ISPs are shaping P2P traffic on their paid-for MCI uplinks, but otherwise can't be bothered to install shapers everywhere in their network. The problem arises when no-one in your ISP (or their peers) has the content you're looking for, and you end up with a slow download via their uplink. Once a few people in a particular ISP have it, however, the performance should pick back up.
"Like it or not, in 10+ years from now most (if not all) applications will be written in either Java,.NET or a similar Framework/Language. C/C++ will only be used where bit-banging stuff is needed AND NO ONE will care about except a few grumpy old man..."
It's not the language or the interperter that makes application development in Java, C#/.NET/mono, Python, or whatever fast, it's the framework. In 10 years, there will be C/C++ frameworks that will be just as "complete", albeit bloated, as the Java or.NET ones. The language and compiler method if far less relevent to software development than the quality of the framework.
BTW, in 10 years, the whole idea of a VM will be perposterous, as hardware support for secure process space will be commonplace.
"how many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they've taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?"
Who amoung the general public equates a CD full of music to software? I'm thinking no-one. So when a music CD acts like software and starts changing the functioning of your PC, it gets you by surprise. People don't expect CDs to be software, so of course it's a big deal when not only do they act as software, but they create serious security problems... People already expect this of software, but not of content.
Suppose you have a driver API for linux that is stable. Perhaps will will actually encourage companies (like nVidia) to release Forceware-type packages for linux. Perhaps it will make driver maintenance easier to the point where they can just build an abstraction layer in-house for the Linux, Windows, and OS-X driver API's, then code their "good stuff" on top of it, without having to worry so much about changing the underlying driver API abstraction code to work with the latest Kernel...
Guess what will happen? You'll see more linux releases - probably just as fast as the Windows releases. Though they may not be officially supported, you WILL have a chance to get more updates, more often.
Without drivers, no OS can truely take advantage of it's devices and perform. I have 3 linux workstations, and 1 windows one. I work on the windows one, and access the linux ones with putty (telnet). Would I want a linux workstation? No. My entails everything from coding to video encoding, and linux performance is just not as good as windows for everything I do (great for some things, inferior for a bit more). Some things I just can't do at all. I blame it on drivers (and a little bit on microsoft).
The hardware support is great when it uses basic BIOS interfaces, but it takes work to get linux to use anything that's advanced. It takes work to get Linux to be as snappy as windows on new hardware. For those that want to see linux take over the world, this is an extremely bad thing. Until drivers can be implemented and deployed easily by hardware vendors, there is simply no incentive to support Linux as an OS. Without that support, Linux will never become as snappy as Windows. Open Source is not mainstream yet, so for Linux to take off now would mean it would have to tolerate some closed-source thinking.
Yup! I was going to hold off on this whole linux revolution, but I guess MS has forced my hand. I will find any relatives or friends who are running illicit copies of windows and replace their installation with Ubuntu.
Ya you heard me.
Once all the non-computer saavy are running linux, there will be no place for MS. We'll be back to the "guy-who-knows-computers-has-to-come-fix-the-probl em" like back in the good old DOS/Win3.11 days... Or maybe not.
Make the linux desktop good, and over time it will break in on its own merits. Most (normal, non-geek) people don't need to do any more with their computers than use an office app, browse the web, and chat... oh and solitaire. I've heard of some miscreants playing this game that involves finding mines but I'm sure they are a minority...
Will longhorn also detect that the camcorder that happens to be pointed at my monitor doesn't have any DRM support?
I wonder how much we're going to have to pay for all this great technography that helps the cause of "others".
I wouldn't be surprized if AMD had a code sample that, if compiled with the Intel compiler and run on an AMD CPU, would terminate unexpectedly (crash).
We won't know until they show the evidence in court.
I wonder why they are demanding a jury? Are they afraid the judge is going to be bought out?
I'd surmise that those foolish (*ahem* balanced) individuals who watch OTA probably also only have 1 set in their homes, since I'd wager that T.V. is just not that important in their lives.
Those watching digital TV probably have at least 2.
I'd be more interested in a statistic that revealed number of homes watching T.V. OTA instead of total devices.
When I buy a game, do I buy it because it has a more advanced AI than another? Do I buy it because it has "Virtual 3D Camera Shake Technology(tm)!!1"? No. I buy it for the content. I want a Star Wars game, I want Shrek game.
The gaming industry is in the entertainment business. Their actual competitors (besides each other) are 1 - the movie industry and 2 - the music industry. Games are about their content, their technology is pretty much a nicety. Granted, there is some cool technology in games in terms of rendering engines and AI's, but it's still the game itself - the content - that sells it. Content is protected by copyright laws.
Imagine if id patented the FPS style of game, or Westwood patented the RTS (actually, it would have been technosoft with Herzog Zwei back in the '80s). We would have a smaller chance of having a "Half Life", or a "Total Annihilation" due to the patent process.
No doubt, the lawyers involved here are simply trying to pad their own pockets, and don't really care about the industry.
Fortunately, I think the gaming industry knows itself better than these lawyers do.
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I've been in a few unions in my time. I have to say, the only impression I was left with was "overpaid slackers". I worked at my pace, which was not tiring, and was told to slow down.
Unions exist primarily to protect slackers from getting canned. Any place I've worked where a union was involved, people would abuse the fact they were in a union. They would slack off on the job, take an extra 5 minutes every break, and even doddle around after they were done working so they can punch out 15 minutes later and accrue overtime for nothing!
Unions in the IT workplace would stagnate the industry. Sure, the rich get richer, but that's because they are often the elite visionaries in the first place! Sorry, but if you don't have the capabilities of someone else, you shouldn't be privy to their abilities just because you exist.
I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that it's the patent system that was the mistake.
No kidding. Imagine if new legislation was brought in to equalize legal disputes - something that madates equal representation of both the plaintiff and defedant. Perhaps something like when one side puts more wealth into their legal team, the other side gets a subsidized legal team with pretty much equal competance. I wonder how expensive this would end up being?
The official line is, "we don't know for sure and I want to be sure before I sign economically crippling policies to screw up everybody's lifestyle." That seems sensible to me.
Heh. I didn't know his concern for the economy was so great, considering his stance on the war(s). Frankly, I don't think that he needs to sign economically crippling policies, but he has to do something. We know that we are influencing the climate, we do not know to what degree. It's a grand experiment we are performing on ourselves, and the worse-case scenarios are pretty dramatic. That alone means we should do something to at least bring ourselves out of the equation as much as we can. If the climate continues to change dramatically, we can take solice in the fact that we at least tried to reduce out influence.
What is needed is a plan - something that will move us forward into a generation of highly efficient energy usage. For example, there could be a policy moving us towards battery-powered cars for city commutes, since battery technology is getting so good, and it's easier to manage emissions at the power-plant level than in the general population. It would potentially be better for the economy because it would create a new market, and since BOVs are typically simpler than ICEVs or Hybrids, they would become very cheap very rapidly in an economy of scale.
Aside from all that, I can tell you what else would be/is bad for the economy - dependence on foreign energy. We need a plan, or to know a plan is in the works, that will reduce these dependencies, and let us get the most out of our energy. We could and should make an effort to become as efficient as our technology and scale allows. We are currently enjoying an overabundance of available energy which is giving us bad habits - this is something we should be actively moving away from.
See, Heisenberg applies to climate science too!
"Although Bush and his top advisers have said that Earth is warming and human activity has contributed to this, they have questioned some predictions and caution that mandatory limits on carbon dioxide could damage the nation's economy."
Wars could also damage a nations economy. Good thing he didn't... d'oh!
I've heard of this solar contribution, but from my understanding the variation has been too small to account for the level of warming we're seeing on earth.
The point is, we know we are warming up (or apparently we are - 2005 was the coldest year in a long time where I live...). We know that there are several factors contributing. We can infer that we are one of them, though we may not know to what degree. There mere fact that we *could* be contributing, and *could* be contributing either alot of a little means we should take this very seriously. We don't know, therefore we should be careful. If we aren't contributing much to global warming, we'll get the benefit of more efficient fuel use. If we are, we get the benefit of contributing less.
Sure, but we don't live on Mars. We live on Earth. Here on earth we have SUVs. MAYBE is the SUVs are causing the warming to some degree, MAYBE they aren't. The point is, we don't know, but all that extra CO2 we're putting out is going to have some kind of effect. It's better to safe than sorry. Besides, it's not like fuel is ever going to get cheaper.
In any event, people should ditch their SUVs - they're unsafe.
Just FYI - ethanol/methanol IS NOT a good fuel choice. Those alcohol fuels are lower energy density than gasoline, and need to be burned in larger amounts (by mass) to generate the same amount of power. They actually tend to produce MORE carbon than gasoline does. Not only that, but alcohols are harder on various components of your fuel system (such as the rubber hoses).
What we need to do is use gasoline as efficiently as possible. A car converts about 15% of the energy in gasoline to mechanical motion at the wheels. By moving to a full-electric drivetrain, with gasoline or diesel-powered generators/gensets/fuel cells and a rechargable energy storage device, far higher efficiencies can actually be achieved. The downside is that weight and cost for a vehicle will be higher.
There are interesting battery technologies being developed now, if the consumer would accept the fact that dedicated BOVs are actually an excellent choice for municipal commutes, we could see more BOVs like the EV come back into the market. I know that electricity is generated from fuel in many places in the US, however, it's far easier to manage emissions from a few power plants than it would be to manage them in a general population of automobiles.
From what I've heard, some ISPs are shaping P2P traffic on their paid-for MCI uplinks, but otherwise can't be bothered to install shapers everywhere in their network. The problem arises when no-one in your ISP (or their peers) has the content you're looking for, and you end up with a slow download via their uplink. Once a few people in a particular ISP have it, however, the performance should pick back up.
"Like it or not, in 10+ years from now most (if not all) applications will be written in either Java, .NET or a similar Framework/Language. C/C++ will only be used where bit-banging stuff is needed AND NO ONE will care about except a few grumpy old man..."
.NET ones. The language and compiler method if far less relevent to software development than the quality of the framework.
It's not the language or the interperter that makes application development in Java, C#/.NET/mono, Python, or whatever fast, it's the framework. In 10 years, there will be C/C++ frameworks that will be just as "complete", albeit bloated, as the Java or
BTW, in 10 years, the whole idea of a VM will be perposterous, as hardware support for secure process space will be commonplace.
"how many times that software applications created the same problem? Lots. I wonder whether they've taken as aggressive steps as SonyBMG has when those vulnerabilities were discovered, or did they just post a patch on the Internet?"
Who amoung the general public equates a CD full of music to software? I'm thinking no-one. So when a music CD acts like software and starts changing the functioning of your PC, it gets you by surprise. People don't expect CDs to be software, so of course it's a big deal when not only do they act as software, but they create serious security problems... People already expect this of software, but not of content.
Suppose you have a driver API for linux that is stable. Perhaps will will actually encourage companies (like nVidia) to release Forceware-type packages for linux. Perhaps it will make driver maintenance easier to the point where they can just build an abstraction layer in-house for the Linux, Windows, and OS-X driver API's, then code their "good stuff" on top of it, without having to worry so much about changing the underlying driver API abstraction code to work with the latest Kernel... Guess what will happen? You'll see more linux releases - probably just as fast as the Windows releases. Though they may not be officially supported, you WILL have a chance to get more updates, more often. Without drivers, no OS can truely take advantage of it's devices and perform. I have 3 linux workstations, and 1 windows one. I work on the windows one, and access the linux ones with putty (telnet). Would I want a linux workstation? No. My entails everything from coding to video encoding, and linux performance is just not as good as windows for everything I do (great for some things, inferior for a bit more). Some things I just can't do at all. I blame it on drivers (and a little bit on microsoft). The hardware support is great when it uses basic BIOS interfaces, but it takes work to get linux to use anything that's advanced. It takes work to get Linux to be as snappy as windows on new hardware. For those that want to see linux take over the world, this is an extremely bad thing. Until drivers can be implemented and deployed easily by hardware vendors, there is simply no incentive to support Linux as an OS. Without that support, Linux will never become as snappy as Windows. Open Source is not mainstream yet, so for Linux to take off now would mean it would have to tolerate some closed-source thinking.
Arrr! Ye be handin' o'er those mp3 cds ye scurvy swag!
Yup! I was going to hold off on this whole linux revolution, but I guess MS has forced my hand. I will find any relatives or friends who are running illicit copies of windows and replace their installation with Ubuntu. Ya you heard me. Once all the non-computer saavy are running linux, there will be no place for MS. We'll be back to the "guy-who-knows-computers-has-to-come-fix-the-probl em" like back in the good old DOS/Win3.11 days... Or maybe not.
Make the linux desktop good, and over time it will break in on its own merits. Most (normal, non-geek) people don't need to do any more with their computers than use an office app, browse the web, and chat... oh and solitaire. I've heard of some miscreants playing this game that involves finding mines but I'm sure they are a minority...
Will longhorn also detect that the camcorder that happens to be pointed at my monitor doesn't have any DRM support? I wonder how much we're going to have to pay for all this great technography that helps the cause of "others".
I wouldn't be surprized if AMD had a code sample that, if compiled with the Intel compiler and run on an AMD CPU, would terminate unexpectedly (crash). We won't know until they show the evidence in court. I wonder why they are demanding a jury? Are they afraid the judge is going to be bought out?
She's been saving up to open that hotel for a long time, damn you for making her pay all her life's savings for a can of soda!
I'd surmise that those foolish (*ahem* balanced) individuals who watch OTA probably also only have 1 set in their homes, since I'd wager that T.V. is just not that important in their lives. Those watching digital TV probably have at least 2. I'd be more interested in a statistic that revealed number of homes watching T.V. OTA instead of total devices.
When I buy a game, do I buy it because it has a more advanced AI than another? Do I buy it because it has "Virtual 3D Camera Shake Technology(tm)!!1"? No. I buy it for the content. I want a Star Wars game, I want Shrek game.
The gaming industry is in the entertainment business. Their actual competitors (besides each other) are 1 - the movie industry and 2 - the music industry. Games are about their content, their technology is pretty much a nicety. Granted, there is some cool technology in games in terms of rendering engines and AI's, but it's still the game itself - the content - that sells it. Content is protected by copyright laws.
Imagine if id patented the FPS style of game, or Westwood patented the RTS (actually, it would have been technosoft with Herzog Zwei back in the '80s). We would have a smaller chance of having a "Half Life", or a "Total Annihilation" due to the patent process.
No doubt, the lawyers involved here are simply trying to pad their own pockets, and don't really care about the industry.
Fortunately, I think the gaming industry knows itself better than these lawyers do.