Something to consider: Open-source your product and transition your company to be a consulting firm that specializes in working with your software.
When will such an approach be valuable? If the value of your software is incredibly low, but the value of the effort that goes into modifying it is high. You then make money by being the expert in a nitche field of modifying your software.
The risk is that your customers could hire your employees away, thus destroying your company, but providing employment for its employees.
I should state that I have very little knowledge of your product and its value.
When it comes to home (as opposed to office, dorm, high-performence) networking, cheap & easy is what'll win. I can forsee that the typical domestic home will choose networking over their powerlines. A "professional" installation might entail replacing the breaker box, with no need to run any wire at all.
Granted, home networking might use a bit of ethernet in places where it's desirable to have a high speed connection, but let's face it... The internet-enabled rice-cooker doesn't need to plug into two ports!
I'm just starting to learn how to vote on ballot measures. I actually have to thank an Oregon radio show for telling me how to handle these. (A few weeks ago I was in Portland for OOPSLA.) The host said, "When in doubt, vote *NO*". It was the most helpful bit of advice for handling my local ballot initiatives, which were pretty much BS.
What really helps is that I recieve the voter pamphlet in the mail. When I was in college, (and I didn't live at home,) I really didn't get an oppertunity to study the ballot measures.
You can always get a domestic job for a big multinational corporation. Once you're inside the corporation, work towards getting transfered overseas. It'll take a little longer, but someone else will pay all of your moving expenses.
When I'm uninformed, I do some of the following strategies:
Show up to vote, but only vote on the candidates / questions that I am familar with. For example, 4 years ago I only voted for 1 candidate and left the rest of the ballot blank. Today I left about 1/3rd of the ballot blank.
Vote for people who can't win, but support issues that you agree with. For example, when I first started voting I'd give a lot of votes to 3rd parties. Also, if I don't care about an election I'll vote for the guy who'll legalize pot. (The 3rd party vote ends up swaying major parties.)
Spend 30 minutes watching a debate! Sometimes you'll find that one of the candidates is such a looser that you HAVE to vote against him/her.
Read the high-level description of ballot initiatives; if they're confusing, vote no. Chances are, some dirty politicion is trying to pull a fast one.
Don't be afraid to give a party your entire ballot, if you think the other party has too much power.
Maybe your problem is you don't really understand security yourself, so you can't explain it properly. Telling people to log off their own computer in their own household really adds no security from viruses, worms, etc. If you try to make this argument to your parents, you're just going to sound like you're (as another poster put it) "batshit insane". This destroys any credibility you have, and any sane advice like keeping up on updates, installing hardware firewalls, etc goes out the window.
I've only encouraged domestic use of passwords in two situations, as follows:
Childproofing: I suggested to my father that he use a simple screensaver password like 123 to prevent my 4-year-old nephew from screwing up the computer. Heck, I told him to write it on a yellow sticky so that my mother would know the password.
Drunkproofing: Back in college we used to put a password on the DJ's computer at parties so drunks wouldn't screw up the playlist.
Can a little kid read the KJ version of the Bible at 4 years old, as was done in days of yore?
Quite frankly, if a 4-year-old was able to read the entire Bible, I'd consider him to be pretty damn smart! (I'd also hope that he/she could tell the difference between fact and fiction.)
Right now on my work PC I have 9 windows open. My browser has 2 tabs open, and Visual Studio has 1 tab. Typically, I'll have 1-3 browser open with about 5 tabs each, 7-18 tabs in Visual Studio, and 2-5 Explorer (file system) windows open.
I try to close Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets when I no longer need them so I can save memory.
On my personal PCs I keep much less open. This is because I primarily use them for email. When I do serious computing at home, my personal environment reflects my work environment.
The aftermarket car stereo industry primarily sells products that offer features not found in stock car radios. For example, MP3-CD players, DVD players, and Navigation were in aftermarket first. For Firefox to survive, it must continue to implement "must-have" features like tabbed browsing.
What new features in Firefox, like tabbed browsing, improve the internet browsing experience? How will Firefox motivate me to replace the "good enough" browser that's pre-installed on my computer?
Actually, I'd be weary of jumping to the "because it's open-source, it's malware-free!" conclusion. A couple of years ago I downloaded a bundled installer from doom9.net, a reputable source. It turns out someone had slipped some malware into the installer. (I don't think it's there anymore.) It's really not the source code of the program that will tell you if there's malware; it's the source code of the installer that will tell you if there's malware. For example, the bad guys can make their own installers for of XViD that come chock full of malware.
I find the camera in my phone extremely useful as an alternative to "writing things down." I picked up the habit when I saw a couple "shopping" by taking pictures with a digital camera. For example, instead of writing down the model number of my printer, I just take a quick snapshot and use that to remember the proper type of cartridge.
Another point, not for you, but for some of your parent posts - think about a soundcard with a digital out. That means, the bits get decoded and sent to the amp - if the amp (or whatever you plug the digital line into) can capture the bits, you've got a perfect/lossless rip - no DAC was involved.
Actually, that's usually not true. In order to allow multiple programs to play back sounds simutaniously, sound cards internally convert everything to 48000khz before playback. They also allow for digital manipulation of the volume. Thus, all CDs, (and other formats that are ripped from CD) are upsampled from 44100khz to 48000khz before playback. They might also have their volume modified.
The upsampling causes problems when playing back a DTS-CD on a computer because DTS-CDs require an unmodified digital connection to the reciever. The upsampling breaks DTS-CDs.
Now, it is possible for a program to avoid this issue by directly controling the SPDIF. This is what happens with programs that can output Dolby Digital / DTS from a DVD or AVI. They bypass the soundcard's resampling (and volume control logic) to directly control the device. As a consequence, only one program can access the SPDIF at a time.
Theoretically, it's possible to write a program that could play back non-upsampled 44100khz material. (Heck, you could even do it from a Winamp plugin.) At this time, I don't know of any programs that do it.
Even if you can playback at non-upsampled 44100 through an SPDIF, there's no garuntee that resampling won't occur on a soundcard that records the SPDIF. Some of them upsample everything to 48000khz so they can mix all of the inputs; even if you're recording at 44100khz.
Filmmaking inherently borrows many aspects of open source. For example, there are generic plots, generic characters, and re-use of music. How many different times has "The Seven Samurai" been reworked into a different movie? How often is a song used as a cliche to describe a character, time, or experience? How often is the same charachter type re-used as a means of avoiding exposition?
I am often surprised at how many of my co-workers buy games used.
I'm a professional programmer too, (although I work in factory automation.) Let's face it, the product that our industry produces is, when you get down to the bits and bytes, information. Ultimatly, information has value and a shelf life. I get bothered when my peer information workers, wether they are programers, writers, musicians, screenwriters, actors, ect, insist that the general public pays inflated values for information.
Not every kid can afford to pay big bucks for every game he owns. With the exception of rich children, most gamers have a relativly limited amount of funds that they can afford to spend on games. Without the used game market, kids would either buy less games, or get board and not buy games at all.
When it comes to games, albums, and movies on consumable media, the information is significantly less valuable then the physical media. It also looses value as time passes. You might see a child scrimping his allowance to buy a used version of your game as a theif, but I see him as a consumer trying to get the best value. If you want to recover money from used games, it is up to you to seek new ways of distribution and monetization that place a larger percentage of a kid's limited allowance in your pocket. Currently, the trend is towards subscription services.
While HGH is a recent example, one only needs to look at modern dentistry to see examples of people modifying themselves. Many teenagers wear braces to straighten their teeth. Due to genetics, my grandather, mother, and I are missing lots of teeth. We've all used various technologies to replace them. Frankly, I anticipate the day when it's cheaper to selectivly choose which chomosones I pass on then to pay for expensive orthodonics and oral surgery.
What has surprised me is that no one responded to my comment about populating distant stars. I've always wondered if we will genetically engineer ourselves to be better at long distance space travel, or to better habitate distant environments.
What I don't understand is that I thought GPUs were made to offload a lot of graphics computations from the CPU. So why are we merging them again? Isn't a GPU supposed to be an auxillary CPU only for graphics? I'm so confused.
A couple of reasons. The primary reason is that it's cheaper to build a computer with less chips. In addition, a single chip design might be more power efficent and allow for a smaller computer.
Besides, if you're building a cheapo computer to act as a Jetson's-style picture phone running Skype, wouldn't it make more sense to use a combo CPU/GPU?
What if you want an UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC) in your pocket to play games? Why try and cram two chips into it? (I think the original GameBoy had a combined CPU/GPU.)
The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species. It's arrogant to suppose that humans are immune! Hopefully, we can stick together as one species long enough to populate distant solar systems, and thus let geographic boundaries be the cause of our branches.
Some ideas: Take a survey during an open house to see if having a web content filter would be something that would make the students avoid a school. You could also take a survey of the students where you ask, "Does the content filter make you consider changing schools?"
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Something to consider: Open-source your product and transition your company to be a consulting firm that specializes in working with your software.
When will such an approach be valuable? If the value of your software is incredibly low, but the value of the effort that goes into modifying it is high. You then make money by being the expert in a nitche field of modifying your software.
The risk is that your customers could hire your employees away, thus destroying your company, but providing employment for its employees.
I should state that I have very little knowledge of your product and its value.
When it comes to home (as opposed to office, dorm, high-performence) networking, cheap & easy is what'll win. I can forsee that the typical domestic home will choose networking over their powerlines. A "professional" installation might entail replacing the breaker box, with no need to run any wire at all.
Granted, home networking might use a bit of ethernet in places where it's desirable to have a high speed connection, but let's face it... The internet-enabled rice-cooker doesn't need to plug into two ports!
Remember, IBM leased and maintained punchcard systems to that were used to run the holocaust. (Granted, I'm typing this post on an IBM-branded Thinkpad with an IBM-branded keyboard.)
I totally agree with you!
I'm just starting to learn how to vote on ballot measures. I actually have to thank an Oregon radio show for telling me how to handle these. (A few weeks ago I was in Portland for OOPSLA.) The host said, "When in doubt, vote *NO*". It was the most helpful bit of advice for handling my local ballot initiatives, which were pretty much BS.
What really helps is that I recieve the voter pamphlet in the mail. When I was in college, (and I didn't live at home,) I really didn't get an oppertunity to study the ballot measures.
You can always get a domestic job for a big multinational corporation. Once you're inside the corporation, work towards getting transfered overseas. It'll take a little longer, but someone else will pay all of your moving expenses.
When I'm uninformed, I do some of the following strategies:
I hope this helps!
I've only encouraged domestic use of passwords in two situations, as follows:
I'm sure we can just start eating Soylent Green, made from plankton!
Will it sound good? Napster's quality was so bad that it gave me a headache!
Wouldn't it be easier to pay starving children in [???] $0.01 / hour to tag images?
I rushed out to buy a car MP3-CD player when they first came on the market... I never bought Ford's version of an MP3-CD player.
I pay poor children in [???] $0.01 / hour to filter my mail for me. It's cheaper then buying SPAM filtering software.
Quite frankly, if a 4-year-old was able to read the entire Bible, I'd consider him to be pretty damn smart! (I'd also hope that he/she could tell the difference between fact and fiction.)
Right now on my work PC I have 9 windows open. My browser has 2 tabs open, and Visual Studio has 1 tab. Typically, I'll have 1-3 browser open with about 5 tabs each, 7-18 tabs in Visual Studio, and 2-5 Explorer (file system) windows open.
I try to close Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets when I no longer need them so I can save memory.
On my personal PCs I keep much less open. This is because I primarily use them for email. When I do serious computing at home, my personal environment reflects my work environment.
The aftermarket car stereo industry primarily sells products that offer features not found in stock car radios. For example, MP3-CD players, DVD players, and Navigation were in aftermarket first. For Firefox to survive, it must continue to implement "must-have" features like tabbed browsing.
What new features in Firefox, like tabbed browsing, improve the internet browsing experience? How will Firefox motivate me to replace the "good enough" browser that's pre-installed on my computer?
Actually, I'd be weary of jumping to the "because it's open-source, it's malware-free!" conclusion. A couple of years ago I downloaded a bundled installer from doom9.net, a reputable source. It turns out someone had slipped some malware into the installer. (I don't think it's there anymore.) It's really not the source code of the program that will tell you if there's malware; it's the source code of the installer that will tell you if there's malware. For example, the bad guys can make their own installers for of XViD that come chock full of malware.
I find the camera in my phone extremely useful as an alternative to "writing things down." I picked up the habit when I saw a couple "shopping" by taking pictures with a digital camera. For example, instead of writing down the model number of my printer, I just take a quick snapshot and use that to remember the proper type of cartridge.
Actually, that's usually not true. In order to allow multiple programs to play back sounds simutaniously, sound cards internally convert everything to 48000khz before playback. They also allow for digital manipulation of the volume. Thus, all CDs, (and other formats that are ripped from CD) are upsampled from 44100khz to 48000khz before playback. They might also have their volume modified.
The upsampling causes problems when playing back a DTS-CD on a computer because DTS-CDs require an unmodified digital connection to the reciever. The upsampling breaks DTS-CDs.
Now, it is possible for a program to avoid this issue by directly controling the SPDIF. This is what happens with programs that can output Dolby Digital / DTS from a DVD or AVI. They bypass the soundcard's resampling (and volume control logic) to directly control the device. As a consequence, only one program can access the SPDIF at a time.
Theoretically, it's possible to write a program that could play back non-upsampled 44100khz material. (Heck, you could even do it from a Winamp plugin.) At this time, I don't know of any programs that do it.
Even if you can playback at non-upsampled 44100 through an SPDIF, there's no garuntee that resampling won't occur on a soundcard that records the SPDIF. Some of them upsample everything to 48000khz so they can mix all of the inputs; even if you're recording at 44100khz.
Filmmaking inherently borrows many aspects of open source. For example, there are generic plots, generic characters, and re-use of music. How many different times has "The Seven Samurai" been reworked into a different movie? How often is a song used as a cliche to describe a character, time, or experience? How often is the same charachter type re-used as a means of avoiding exposition?
I'm a professional programmer too, (although I work in factory automation.) Let's face it, the product that our industry produces is, when you get down to the bits and bytes, information. Ultimatly, information has value and a shelf life. I get bothered when my peer information workers, wether they are programers, writers, musicians, screenwriters, actors, ect, insist that the general public pays inflated values for information.
Not every kid can afford to pay big bucks for every game he owns. With the exception of rich children, most gamers have a relativly limited amount of funds that they can afford to spend on games. Without the used game market, kids would either buy less games, or get board and not buy games at all.
When it comes to games, albums, and movies on consumable media, the information is significantly less valuable then the physical media. It also looses value as time passes. You might see a child scrimping his allowance to buy a used version of your game as a theif, but I see him as a consumer trying to get the best value. If you want to recover money from used games, it is up to you to seek new ways of distribution and monetization that place a larger percentage of a kid's limited allowance in your pocket. Currently, the trend is towards subscription services.
While HGH is a recent example, one only needs to look at modern dentistry to see examples of people modifying themselves. Many teenagers wear braces to straighten their teeth. Due to genetics, my grandather, mother, and I are missing lots of teeth. We've all used various technologies to replace them. Frankly, I anticipate the day when it's cheaper to selectivly choose which chomosones I pass on then to pay for expensive orthodonics and oral surgery.
What has surprised me is that no one responded to my comment about populating distant stars. I've always wondered if we will genetically engineer ourselves to be better at long distance space travel, or to better habitate distant environments.
A couple of reasons. The primary reason is that it's cheaper to build a computer with less chips. In addition, a single chip design might be more power efficent and allow for a smaller computer.
Besides, if you're building a cheapo computer to act as a Jetson's-style picture phone running Skype, wouldn't it make more sense to use a combo CPU/GPU?
What if you want an UMPC (Ultra-mobile PC) in your pocket to play games? Why try and cram two chips into it? (I think the original GameBoy had a combined CPU/GPU.)
The rules of evolution (from Darwin) are such that all species eventually split into seperate species. It's arrogant to suppose that humans are immune! Hopefully, we can stick together as one species long enough to populate distant solar systems, and thus let geographic boundaries be the cause of our branches.
Could someone please explain why all the little robots appear to have glass bongs shooting out of their tops?
Some ideas: Take a survey during an open house to see if having a web content filter would be something that would make the students avoid a school. You could also take a survey of the students where you ask, "Does the content filter make you consider changing schools?"