Unfortunately that is an American bias. Apparently it is illegal in some contries to compare yourself against a competitor. For example: Ford cannot compare itself to Chevy for towing capacity, milege, etc.
I'm just parroting this information, since this article is a repeat, try looking up the original article for more information.
Re-reading the parent, I believe I misread his comments. The comments in the parent speach of "commercial free software". I missed it before and in light of this, find myself in agreement with your response.
He seems to be under the impression that a company can sell open source software and live off that income.
In some circumstances that might work, as long as the software needs upgrades. However, if you are selling software that is "complete" in the first place upgrades shouldn't be necessary. Charging for upgrades for fixing bugs in the system to me is dishonest. Games are definately a "complete" software package. Therefore if released as open source would quickly be posted several places on the internet and thus prevent the company from recouping it's development costs much less profiting.
So I think I understand your point now, thanks for restating your position.
My preference is to use systems that I can modify as I please... Rather than charging for the software it seems that most companies marketing open source solutions are making their money on the service side of the equation rather than software sales.
Games would probably need to be closed source in order to make a profit, unless there where some other means of generating income, ie subscriptions of some type or other.
I would like to have games put into a trust, so that a couple years down the line when a game is no longer available the source would be released, sadly though this is probably never going to happen. Instead I support companies that do release their source or properly speaking have done so in the past, ie Id.
As for that video card, at least it would give me accelerated OpenGL. I think it is to support up to v1.4 with some additional feature specified by OpenGL 2. This should be enough for me to play Tuxracer and work on Boson. As always, I will have to wait for the hardware to come out and then investigate whether or not it will suit my purposes.
Your mention of the Radeon drivers does suprise me though. I was unaware. The last time I looked the drivers were barely getting started. So I'll go do a little research and see what I can come up with.
Keeping windows around to play games was the only reason I kept windows around for several years.
Problems: Older games require specific drivers/DirectX/OS versions thus becoming obsolete
Few new games actually interest me. Several years ago it seemed like there were several good titles coming out each year, nowdays it seems all the games are rehashes of older games and poor rehashes at that.
New games also seem to be targeting new hardware platforms, yet my current systems can support my programming, administrative, and browsing needs. So that upgrading is only necessary to play games and would likely require the purchase of a new system, easily costing hundreds.
Of the games I am interested in, Blizzard will never get another dime from me since they sued the bnetd project. Halflife 2 might be interesting, but I have no real interest in playing a game that the company can decide to turn off at any time.
The Solution: Never in my life have I owned a console. It seemed pointless to me, especially considering that while games for the PC eventually came down in price console games always remained at the same price and were generally 10 dollars more than their PC versions.
However, since buying a new computer would cost hundreds and the only reason to do so would be for games... A console at 99-150 dollars starts to become interesting. With a lot of the newer games being release on console only, the selection is more diverse than on the PC. To top it all off, there are several stores now(EB, aka gamestop) that carry used games for under 20 dollars without that waiting for PC games to drop in price.
In the end, I feel there is more bang for my buck purchasing an Xbox or PS2 and getting 10-20 titles for the same price as a new computer. Also, it removes the hassle of upgrading/reinstalling windows every few months.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean about Netscape resting on their laurels... Netscape was innovating and adding features to their browser. I also think that while you could download a version of Netscape, the full communicator package was 29 dollars before Microsoft entered the market... At that point Microsoft gave the browser away for $0 cost and de facto made sure Netscape could not charge for their browser... Which did away with one profit path. I think their strategy was to provide a low-cost browser to drive sales of their server software.
While Netscape continued to innovate, Microsoft poured billions into Internet Exploder, probably far more than Netscape had in gross income and eventually by ie4 they had a technical edge over netscape... But that was a long time coming. The prodominate reason that ie gained users was the fact that it was packaged with Windows and did not have to be downloaded as a separate product taking 30-40 minutes on the modem which most people were using at that time. A couple of vendors did start packaging Netscape with their computer systems, at that point Microsoft used their operating system monopoly to stop oems from installing any other programs or changing the desktop in any way, effectively removing the installation of netscape.
I don't really see Netscape resting on their laurels, however perhaps you are meaning that during the anti-trust lawsuit Netscape wasn't doing anything, but by then Microsoft had forced it's way into being the market leader with some 80% of the browser market, Netscape didn't have the billions to compete with Microsoft.
As for resting on their laurels, after Netscape was forced out of the market, microsoft stopped dumping money on their browser and very little improvement has happened. Also, since they are the major browser, they have little incentive to implement standards which results in the necessity to create different web pages for different browsers. Which of course costs extra money so in order to cut costs many companies focus exclusively on ie.
Anyway, as for Google staying on top... For a while at least they will since Google has name recognition and good results. However Microsoft does have a monopoly on it's os and as ie is part of that os they have a great deal of leverage.
They don't have to do anything too drastic. Indeed if they have reasonable search results and if the search button on ie is only set to go to search.msn.com they will see a fair amount of traffic... Note, I don't know what ie's search button is like or if it has one, I don't use it.
But, you say, you don't have to use ie, you can use firefox/mozilla/opera/etc... The thing to remember is that Windows help files, error messages, etc are hardwired to ie, so it still will see a great deal of use.
Marketing, vender lock-in and virtually unlimited funding are the means by which Microsoft marginalized Netscape and though I don't see the specific means that Microsoft will use, definately see them using their position to maginalizing Google as well.
Whether they will succeed or not, that is the question.
Note he's saying freedom not free as in no cost. I have no problem with paying for games under Linux. As a matter of fact I have several titles that Loki converted.
I run Linux because I want to have a operating system that lets me control what is going on. I like to have the ability to turn off services and to install new services that I find useful, not just the ones that companies believe they can market and make money on.
That being said, I have no problem paying for software, it's more a matter of control, ie I prefer to control my computer not some external company. As long as the copy protection isn't messing with my system, I don't see a major problem... As a matter of face, I can create a user account specifically for a game in order to make sure it isn't modifying any of my other files. Looking at Windows though and some of the games that current gaming software are playing with the registry and such just goes to emphasising why I haven't touched windows in years.
Hopefully I haven't wandered too far from the subject. My main point is that freedom is not about cost, it's about control. Windows and software produced for the windows platform frequently feel that they should be in control of my system, I do not agree and hence do not use that software.
PS, I do not have a decent 3D video card because of my philosophy, ATI drivers are said to suck and NVidia's drivers are closed source and thus not acceptable. America's Army has been suggested as a good game, unfortunately it requires a Nvidia card... Neverwinters night, a game I would definately buy, if I had a choice also requires a Nvidia card... I'm looking forward to the community created video card, July 2005 I guess is the release date, but until then I really don't see a solution to my video card woes.
Thanks for the response. I do agree completely. I was trying to point out that starting your own business is a very serious change from being an employee which is what this person seems to be requesting advice on.
Not that starting a business shouldn't be suggested, but the people suggesting it need to explain how this will help the original poster achieve his goals or why his goals are unrealistic and why he should consider starting a business.
Perhaps it's my own prejudice showing through, but I understood starting your own business as being more than a contract programmer...
In my opinion being a contract programmer is not a business, you are an outside contracted employee. To be a business I would expect to be paid by W2 from the business you start, not be a 1099. In fact, the major income that I expect to have as a business owner is not 1099 or even W2 income... Instead my expectation as a business owner is to make money off of company dividends. As a business owner I expect the wage cut and startup capital as an investment that eventually allow me to pursue my own goals while still making a decent income.
That said, there are advantages to working as a contract programmer... You generally get paid a higher wage and you have more flexibility with working hours, job location, etc. Also there are a number of management companies that will take over the work of seeking out new contracts and managing your taxes, insurance and other benefits for a small fee of about 5-10% of your income.
However, as related to the initial post, the person wants to work with a common set of people... As a contractor, it is to be expected that you are going to be moving and working with different companies, thus more than likely you are not going to develop a relationship with your fellow employees. Which pretty much rules out contract programming, however it is of interest and so is worth stating.
As an aside response to your comment about spending 80-90% of your time coding and having someone else manage the business aspects for you, while this may work as a contractor, by my definition of a business time must be spent tracking and managing the company. Even if the people doing the work are completely honest you still need to make sure that your interests are being protected.
As for job security, I feel you have a bit more security working for a large company with steady income rather than working for a small business which is just trying to get off the ground. I understand that as a contract programmer you can be fairly steadily employed, but I didn't consider being a contract employee equivalent to starting a small business.
I am interested in more information about 1099 job sites as I am working on re-entering the job market, could you please post a few urls?
Starting your own business sounds great for someone that has never started their own business... However starting your own business is a pretty big gamble... Sure people succeed in creating their own businesses, but look at the statistics...
Most entrepreneurs fair starting at least 3 times before starting a successful business. A new business also costs money. It is typically recommended that you have enough money to support the business completely for the first 6 months without making a dime, and again there is no guarentee of success.
I mention it because it seems that people are flippently responding to start a business... It's a long hard road to start a business.
Furthermore, look at his requirements as I see them at least.
Work 9-5 programming Steady work/job security
Working your own business, programming becomes the least of your skills. For example off the top of my head here are some of the requirements you need to run your own business.
Contract law - Always nice to know what your are agreeing to when you start a job.
Financing - Most people cannot afford to start their own businesses without outside help.. At the least you need to borrow from friends and family (something I actually recommend against since if the business fails your depleting their nestegg as well as yours) to borrowing from banks.
Business Management - Always good and probably the skill I recognised as the most needed during my own attempts to run a small business. You need to know the basics of business how to incorporate, how to manage employee's, how to determine what to charge...
Need to work more than 40 hours a week, small business owners in general tend to work a lot more than 40 hours a week, especially when they are first trying to get the company off the ground... This may very with proper financing, but still you'll likely end up working for more than 40 a week.
And though not really a knowledge requirement as a small business you must constantly seek work. Try to get customers paying a service fee so that you have regular income from month to month rather than requiring new contracts as each finishes...
These requirements are for a computer oriented business, if he were to go into another type of business he would have to learn about that type of business...
So lets review his requirements...
40 hours week --- Nope note likely programming --- Not likely, running the business will take a majority of his time Steady work --- Not likely, small business has to constantly seek work and anytime there is a fluctuation in the economy you may face a slowdown in work. Job Security --- See steady work...
So as I see it, starting his own business requires none of his requirements.
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Well, as I explained the meaning of the word epidemic has a different definition in medical terms than what we as normal people would think it was... So really you need to look at the number of cases reported to get some idea of what is truely going on...
As far as news reporting goes, most people get their information from television... Most news stories on television are limited by time to around 30 minutes. And actually if you take out the time for sports, 5 minutes, weather, 5 minutes, and the human interest story another 5 minutes and commercials another 5 minutes you are left with about 10 minutes to impart the news of the day... Hardly enough time to cover even one subject. Also television news has to compete for ratings in order to sell advertising time, thus television news generally tries to cover the most shocking events to be as interesting as possible. Think of it like a soap opera, the writers create the script with as many shocking events and plot twists as possible to lure viewers and this is what the television news format seems to be as well. Consider when the promo for the evening news comes on and they say "What you don't know about car repairs could kill you... See our report on the 10 o'clock news..." And then the story is near the end of the news show... It's all designed to get viewers... As such I think that television news can give you a flavor about what is going on... But for the most part has to be viewed as entertainment.
Personally, CNN's webpage is not much better than CNN's news itself since their main focus is on television news.
Newspapers are a lot better since there is no time limit... They still are limited by the number of reporters they employ and so they have to focus their reporting as well. The problem you have with small local newspapers is that they generally don't have the manpower to do intensive, in depth reporting... Most of the articles are going to be associated press articles and reuters articles... With some local stories thrown in... I should mention that the cost of newspapers is largely paid for by advertisers... The cost of the newspaper 25 cents daily 50 cents on Sundays is mainly used to recoup the cost of distribution.
Keep in mind also that newspapers all generally tend to have a slant and you need to read objectively. Each newspaper tends to be run by a fairly small number of people, no matter how many reporters they may have. Generally the newspaper is owned by a family or one or two major stockholders, and their opinions are usually reflected in the newspaper. Most try to be objective, but personal bias tends to creep in. It's not necessarily their fault... The editors of the paper are the ones that decide which articles to include in the paper and what stories are assigned to be covered... Since the top editors are generally chosen by the owners, natural selection tends to favor those editors with opinions that match the owners. This in turn causes the stories that are included in a paper to reflect the editors position. So in the end all papers generally tend to have a certain slant to their stories if only by the exclusion of stories that don't reflect the view of the paper.
So where does this leave us? To begin with, news should not be accepted as truth no matter who is presenting the material. Since all reporters are human a lot of the time their personal opinions will leak through to the story they are writing. That doesn't mean that the stories themselves are useless, just that all news should be read with a certain amount of sceptisism not accepted passively as truth. That in mind, you probably need to focus on what type of news you are interested in. For general news the New York Times website is fairly broad and gives a lot of general information. Beyond that your local news will tell you about the important events in your area. For financial news, the Wallstreet Journal is pretty good... For interesting technical stories slashdot tends to be good.
If you define what t
Re:Statistical Lies...
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The way the word "epidemic" is used in medical terminology is different than the lay-mans term. An epidemic is an exponential increase of a disease. So the flu which normally kills 10k people per year does so every year on average and is not increasing. Malaria kills at least hundreds of thousands if not millions each year, again these numbers are normal and not considered an epidemic. By comparison there are typically 5-15 cases of bubonic plague in the united states each year, if for some reason 50 people contracted the disease this would be an epidemic.. And 1 case of smallpox probably wouldn't be an epidemic, but 3 or more probably would...
Anyway, SARS, being a "new" disease is growing rapidly... 0 deaths/year - 850 deaths/year... thus it's growth is exponential and therefore it gets labeled as an epidemic.
I would think that if they then raised prices there would be more of and outcry and class-action suits.
Based on WHAT exactly? The right of a retailer to price however he wants to vs what? I'm sorry- but there's nothing actionable to file a class action lawsuit on. Any retailer with the money to back can use loss leaders to put others out of business and then raise their prices.
In many states(24) there are laws against preditary pricing. Furthermore the Sherman Anti-trust act (Federal Law) has been used in anti-competitive/preditary pricing cases. Therefore if preditary pricing were used to for competition out of business and then raising prices to compensate for selling at below cost/market values there would be criminal charges filed. From a criminal conviction a class-action lawsuit is a short step. Either way lawsuits will eat up a lot of money which means that prices are going to have to be all that much higher.
While researching for this reply I noted a large number of articles by economists both practicing and university professors that debunk predatory pricing as a means of eliminating rivals.
An interesting point about the majority of the predatory pricing laws is that the states where they are enforced prices are generally higher than states without/non-enforced laws. This in turn has lead to the general understanding that these laws do have a dampening effect on competition and result in higher prices for consumers.
Use of a loss-leader is generally used to draw new business, expand marketshare, etc. Also there needs to be a distinction between loss-leader on a few items drawing people into your store and making a profit on other items and predatory pricing which would suggest the sale below cost of all items that the competitor sells.
For whatever it's worth, Walmart has an extremely effective distribution system coupled with their huge sales market which gives them a lot of pull with suppliers, they are still making a profit on item sales and that by current definition in the Federal system means that they are not preditory pricing.
Of course, as I eluded to before this does not mean that Walmart could not be brought up under preditory pricing laws in several states... They have been in the past and no they don't win all their cases.
Only by comparing their local newspaper day-of-welfare-check advertisements between towns; New Wal*Mart stores ALWAYS have lower prices than well-established ones.
Prices may be lowered in new stores, I don't know personally. However, their "normal" prices seem to stay at a level below what other retailers were charging before Walmart entered the market. Thus it is a net gain for the consumer. If they do lower items I would expect that the prices are on loss leader items and are there to gain marketshare.
Anyway... I understand the loss of small-businesses that are not as efficent as Walmart. I generally don't shop at Walmart myself, but looking at the markets Walmart is in and how they handle their pricing, I still see lots of competitors that are still around even after Walmart has been in the market for over a decade. So the arguement that they practice preditory pricing needs facts/references that can be checked.
That, I think, is up to the lawyers. I just wanted to point out that click-throughs have been considered to be valid agreements for some time now. They have been held up in court as well. Check out wiggles comment further down in the comments.
Thanks for the clarification. As I read your previous comment I assumed that the insurance was for merely one person. I can definately see insurance pushing into the millions for the support of a staff.
I was under the impression any license agreement was not valid anyway without a notary present for a signature. Clicking a botton can not be interpetted as signing a document. Especially if no lawyer or notary is present.
Actually, as of October 2000, in the US clicking a button can legally be acknowledged as accepting a contract. The little thing that makes this possible is called the Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act. President Clinton signed it into law on June 30th, 2000.
It was at that point commonly accepted that click through eulas were valid agreements. Questions about the validity of eulas have primarily focused on whether the wording of the eula itself invalidated the contract not the legal binding of the click through.
I'm not so sure about this. Although Wal-mart does have low prices and indeed forces other businesses out of business. I would think that if they then raised prices there would be more of and outcry and class-action suits.
Can you provide any references to where they increase prices after forcing other businesses out?
Hmmm, The numbers you quote for liability insurance seemed a little off to me and thus I went a looking.
A typical general surgeon in Wyoming paid on average $94k/annually for liability insurance. Wyoming has no cap on non-economic damages and as such is considered as a medical liability crisis state.
Montana on the other hand has a cap of $250K on non-economic damages and while it is not as low as states such as California generally premiums do not exceed $30k/annually. The highest reported premium that I could find for a montana general surgeon was $54K/annually.
I therefore think that you will have to provide some proof to your assertion that her insurance liability was over a million dollars a year.
PS. I remember using your software back in '94, looking at your website looks like a lot of improvement has happened to what at the time I thought was a great product. It's nice to see that as the software paid for itself you lowered prices. Nice to see you still in business as well. I'm originally from Montana and it's nice to see a great software company running in my home state.
You question why V-chip has not be standardized, however the V-chip has been required in all television systems sold(new) in the United States since January 1st, 2000.
Personally, I think that the term should be 20 to maybe 23 years. That way the cultural foundation that a person grows up with is available for them to start expanding once they reach their age of maturity.
If I remember correctly, others were found guilty for the entire $80K+ bill. If I remember correctly the 2 others were sentenced to multi-year convictions. However Neidorf because his lawyer called and got a copy of the document from Ma Bell for 14.98 was able to escape conviction once it was shown how ridiculous the original claim by Ma Bell was. The other convictions stood though.
I remember the original Castle Wolfenstein, but it came out on the Apple IIe I beleive not IBM clones. Perhaps you meant Wolfenstein 3D? Grin
Not really trying to be a pain here, just clearing the record.
My opinion also is that Carmack has/should be on the list. He has inspired at least 2 generations of programmers with his games. Not just game programmers either, but a range of programmers.
So it is my opinion that his contributions should not be overlooked.
Not really the same thing they are talking about. The units in Dark Reign did not automatically do things other than trying to run from being underfire and shooting at things that came into their range.
However, that said, Dark Reign had one of the best opposing AI's in any game that I have seen so far. It tracked where enemy forces were and allocated it's defense based on that information.
It was also highly configurable. Easy to write scripts and change variables for each unit. Unfortunately Activision didn't market the game well, I think from the numbers I saw they only sold 35K units of the game.
Pet Peeve: I hate the way new strategy games are 3D, Total Annihlation, C&C, Dune 2000, Dark Reign were all 2D games and worked well. Now it seems that unless you buy a $200 3D video card your screwed as to what type of games you can get... Sigh
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I don't see whats unethical about this practice.
Unfortunately that is an American bias. Apparently it is illegal in some contries to compare yourself against a competitor. For example: Ford cannot compare itself to Chevy for towing capacity, milege, etc.
I'm just parroting this information, since this article is a repeat, try looking up the original article for more information.
Re-reading the parent, I believe I misread his comments. The comments in the parent speach of "commercial free software". I missed it before and in light of this, find myself in agreement with your response.
He seems to be under the impression that a company can sell open source software and live off that income.
In some circumstances that might work, as long as the software needs upgrades. However, if you are selling software that is "complete" in the first place upgrades shouldn't be necessary. Charging for upgrades for fixing bugs in the system to me is dishonest. Games are definately a "complete" software package. Therefore if released as open source would quickly be posted several places on the internet and thus prevent the company from recouping it's development costs much less profiting.
So I think I understand your point now, thanks for restating your position.
My preference is to use systems that I can modify as I please... Rather than charging for the software it seems that most companies marketing open source solutions are making their money on the service side of the equation rather than software sales.
Games would probably need to be closed source in order to make a profit, unless there where some other means of generating income, ie subscriptions of some type or other.
I would like to have games put into a trust, so that a couple years down the line when a game is no longer available the source would be released, sadly though this is probably never going to happen. Instead I support companies that do release their source or properly speaking have done so in the past, ie Id.
As for that video card, at least it would give me accelerated OpenGL. I think it is to support up to v1.4 with some additional feature specified by OpenGL 2. This should be enough for me to play Tuxracer and work on Boson. As always, I will have to wait for the hardware to come out and then investigate whether or not it will suit my purposes.
Your mention of the Radeon drivers does suprise me though. I was unaware. The last time I looked the drivers were barely getting started. So I'll go do a little research and see what I can come up with.
Keeping windows around to play games was the only reason I kept windows around for several years.
Problems:
Older games require specific drivers/DirectX/OS versions thus becoming obsolete
Few new games actually interest me. Several years ago it seemed like there were several good titles coming out each year, nowdays it seems all the games are rehashes of older games and poor rehashes at that.
New games also seem to be targeting new hardware platforms, yet my current systems can support my programming, administrative, and browsing needs. So that upgrading is only necessary to play games and would likely require the purchase of a new system, easily costing hundreds.
Of the games I am interested in, Blizzard will never get another dime from me since they sued the bnetd project. Halflife 2 might be interesting, but I have no real interest in playing a game that the company can decide to turn off at any time.
The Solution:
Never in my life have I owned a console. It seemed pointless to me, especially considering that while games for the PC eventually came down in price console games always remained at the same price and were generally 10 dollars more than their PC versions.
However, since buying a new computer would cost hundreds and the only reason to do so would be for games... A console at 99-150 dollars starts to become interesting. With a lot of the newer games being release on console only, the selection is more diverse than on the PC. To top it all off, there are several stores now(EB, aka gamestop) that carry used games for under 20 dollars without that waiting for PC games to drop in price.
In the end, I feel there is more bang for my buck purchasing an Xbox or PS2 and getting 10-20 titles for the same price as a new computer. Also, it removes the hassle of upgrading/reinstalling windows every few months.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean about Netscape resting on their laurels... Netscape was innovating and adding features to their browser. I also think that while you could download a version of Netscape, the full communicator package was 29 dollars before Microsoft entered the market... At that point Microsoft gave the browser away for $0 cost and de facto made sure Netscape could not charge for their browser... Which did away with one profit path. I think their strategy was to provide a low-cost browser to drive sales of their server software.
While Netscape continued to innovate, Microsoft poured billions into Internet Exploder, probably far more than Netscape had in gross income and eventually by ie4 they had a technical edge over netscape... But that was a long time coming. The prodominate reason that ie gained users was the fact that it was packaged with Windows and did not have to be downloaded as a separate product taking 30-40 minutes on the modem which most people were using at that time. A couple of vendors did start packaging Netscape with their computer systems, at that point Microsoft used their operating system monopoly to stop oems from installing any other programs or changing the desktop in any way, effectively removing the installation of netscape.
I don't really see Netscape resting on their laurels, however perhaps you are meaning that during the anti-trust lawsuit Netscape wasn't doing anything, but by then Microsoft had forced it's way into being the market leader with some 80% of the browser market, Netscape didn't have the billions to compete with Microsoft.
As for resting on their laurels, after Netscape was forced out of the market, microsoft stopped dumping money on their browser and very little improvement has happened. Also, since they are the major browser, they have little incentive to implement standards which results in the necessity to create different web pages for different browsers. Which of course costs extra money so in order to cut costs many companies focus exclusively on ie.
Anyway, as for Google staying on top... For a while at least they will since Google has name recognition and good results. However Microsoft does have a monopoly on it's os and as ie is part of that os they have a great deal of leverage.
They don't have to do anything too drastic. Indeed if they have reasonable search results and if the search button on ie is only set to go to search.msn.com they will see a fair amount of traffic... Note, I don't know what ie's search button is like or if it has one, I don't use it.
But, you say, you don't have to use ie, you can use firefox/mozilla/opera/etc... The thing to remember is that Windows help files, error messages, etc are hardwired to ie, so it still will see a great deal of use.
Marketing, vender lock-in and virtually unlimited funding are the means by which Microsoft marginalized Netscape and though I don't see the specific means that Microsoft will use, definately see them using their position to maginalizing Google as well.
Whether they will succeed or not, that is the question.
Note he's saying freedom not free as in no cost. I have no problem with paying for games under Linux. As a matter of fact I have several titles that Loki converted.
I run Linux because I want to have a operating system that lets me control what is going on. I like to have the ability to turn off services and to install new services that I find useful, not just the ones that companies believe they can market and make money on.
That being said, I have no problem paying for software, it's more a matter of control, ie I prefer to control my computer not some external company. As long as the copy protection isn't messing with my system, I don't see a major problem... As a matter of face, I can create a user account specifically for a game in order to make sure it isn't modifying any of my other files. Looking at Windows though and some of the games that current gaming software are playing with the registry and such just goes to emphasising why I haven't touched windows in years.
Hopefully I haven't wandered too far from the subject. My main point is that freedom is not about cost, it's about control. Windows and software produced for the windows platform frequently feel that they should be in control of my system, I do not agree and hence do not use that software.
PS, I do not have a decent 3D video card because of my philosophy, ATI drivers are said to suck and NVidia's drivers are closed source and thus not acceptable. America's Army has been suggested as a good game, unfortunately it requires a Nvidia card... Neverwinters night, a game I would definately buy, if I had a choice also requires a Nvidia card... I'm looking forward to the community created video card, July 2005 I guess is the release date, but until then I really don't see a solution to my video card woes.
Thanks for the response. I do agree completely. I was trying to point out that starting your own business is a very serious change from being an employee which is what this person seems to be requesting advice on.
Not that starting a business shouldn't be suggested, but the people suggesting it need to explain how this will help the original poster achieve his goals or why his goals are unrealistic and why he should consider starting a business.
Perhaps it's my own prejudice showing through, but I understood starting your own business as being more than a contract programmer...
In my opinion being a contract programmer is not a business, you are an outside contracted employee. To be a business I would expect to be paid by W2 from the business you start, not be a 1099. In fact, the major income that I expect to have as a business owner is not 1099 or even W2 income... Instead my expectation as a business owner is to make money off of company dividends. As a business owner I expect the wage cut and startup capital as an investment that eventually allow me to pursue my own goals while still making a decent income.
That said, there are advantages to working as a contract programmer... You generally get paid a higher wage and you have more flexibility with working hours, job location, etc. Also there are a number of management companies that will take over the work of seeking out new contracts and managing your taxes, insurance and other benefits for a small fee of about 5-10% of your income.
However, as related to the initial post, the person wants to work with a common set of people... As a contractor, it is to be expected that you are going to be moving and working with different companies, thus more than likely you are not going to develop a relationship with your fellow employees. Which pretty much rules out contract programming, however it is of interest and so is worth stating.
As an aside response to your comment about spending 80-90% of your time coding and having someone else manage the business aspects for you, while this may work as a contractor, by my definition of a business time must be spent tracking and managing the company. Even if the people doing the work are completely honest you still need to make sure that your interests are being protected.
As for job security, I feel you have a bit more security working for a large company with steady income rather than working for a small business which is just trying to get off the ground. I understand that as a contract programmer you can be fairly steadily employed, but I didn't consider being a contract employee equivalent to starting a small business.
I am interested in more information about 1099 job sites as I am working on re-entering the job market, could you please post a few urls?
Starting your own business sounds great for someone that has never started their own business... However starting your own business is a pretty big gamble... Sure people succeed in creating their own businesses, but look at the statistics...
Most entrepreneurs fair starting at least 3 times before starting a successful business. A new business also costs money. It is typically recommended that you have enough money to support the business completely for the first 6 months without making a dime, and again there is no guarentee of success.
I mention it because it seems that people are flippently responding to start a business... It's a long hard road to start a business.
Furthermore, look at his requirements as I see them at least.
Work 9-5 programming
Steady work/job security
Working your own business, programming becomes the least of your skills. For example off the top of my head here are some of the requirements you need to run your own business.
Contract law - Always nice to know what your are agreeing to when you start a job.
Financing - Most people cannot afford to start their own businesses without outside help.. At the least you need to borrow from friends and family (something I actually recommend against since if the business fails your depleting their nestegg as well as yours) to borrowing from banks.
Business Management - Always good and probably the skill I recognised as the most needed during my own attempts to run a small business. You need to know the basics of business how to incorporate, how to manage employee's, how to determine what to charge...
Need to work more than 40 hours a week, small business owners in general tend to work a lot more than 40 hours a week, especially when they are first trying to get the company off the ground... This may very with proper financing, but still you'll likely end up working for more than 40 a week.
And though not really a knowledge requirement as a small business you must constantly seek work. Try to get customers paying a service fee so that you have regular income from month to month rather than requiring new contracts as each finishes...
These requirements are for a computer oriented business, if he were to go into another type of business he would have to learn about that type of business...
So lets review his requirements...
40 hours week --- Nope note likely
programming --- Not likely, running the business will take a majority of his time
Steady work --- Not likely, small business has to constantly seek work and anytime there is a fluctuation in the economy you may face a slowdown in work.
Job Security --- See steady work...
So as I see it, starting his own business requires none of his requirements.
Well, as I explained the meaning of the word epidemic has a different definition in medical terms than what we as normal people would think it was... So really you need to look at the number of cases reported to get some idea of what is truely going on...
As far as news reporting goes, most people get their information from television... Most news stories on television are limited by time to around 30 minutes. And actually if you take out the time for sports, 5 minutes, weather, 5 minutes, and the human interest story another 5 minutes and commercials another 5 minutes you are left with about 10 minutes to impart the news of the day... Hardly enough time to cover even one subject. Also television news has to compete for ratings in order to sell advertising time, thus television news generally tries to cover the most shocking events to be as interesting as possible. Think of it like a soap opera, the writers create the script with as many shocking events and plot twists as possible to lure viewers and this is what the television news format seems to be as well. Consider when the promo for the evening news comes on and they say "What you don't know about car repairs could kill you... See our report on the 10 o'clock news..." And then the story is near the end of the news show... It's all designed to get viewers... As such I think that television news can give you a flavor about what is going on... But for the most part has to be viewed as entertainment.
Personally, CNN's webpage is not much better than CNN's news itself since their main focus is on television news.
Newspapers are a lot better since there is no time limit... They still are limited by the number of reporters they employ and so they have to focus their reporting as well. The problem you have with small local newspapers is that they generally don't have the manpower to do intensive, in depth reporting... Most of the articles are going to be associated press articles and reuters articles... With some local stories thrown in... I should mention that the cost of newspapers is largely paid for by advertisers... The cost of the newspaper 25 cents daily 50 cents on Sundays is mainly used to recoup the cost of distribution.
Keep in mind also that newspapers all generally tend to have a slant and you need to read objectively. Each newspaper tends to be run by a fairly small number of people, no matter how many reporters they may have. Generally the newspaper is owned by a family or one or two major stockholders, and their opinions are usually reflected in the newspaper. Most try to be objective, but personal bias tends to creep in. It's not necessarily their fault... The editors of the paper are the ones that decide which articles to include in the paper and what stories are assigned to be covered... Since the top editors are generally chosen by the owners, natural selection tends to favor those editors with opinions that match the owners. This in turn causes the stories that are included in a paper to reflect the editors position. So in the end all papers generally tend to have a certain slant to their stories if only by the exclusion of stories that don't reflect the view of the paper.
So where does this leave us? To begin with, news should not be accepted as truth no matter who is presenting the material. Since all reporters are human a lot of the time their personal opinions will leak through to the story they are writing. That doesn't mean that the stories themselves are useless, just that all news should be read with a certain amount of sceptisism not accepted passively as truth. That in mind, you probably need to focus on what type of news you are interested in. For general news the New York Times website is fairly broad and gives a lot of general information. Beyond that your local news will tell you about the important events in your area. For financial news, the Wallstreet Journal is pretty good... For interesting technical stories slashdot tends to be good.
If you define what t
The way the word "epidemic" is used in medical terminology is different than the lay-mans term. An epidemic is an exponential increase of a disease. So the flu which normally kills 10k people per year does so every year on average and is not increasing. Malaria kills at least hundreds of thousands if not millions each year, again these numbers are normal and not considered an epidemic. By comparison there are typically 5-15 cases of bubonic plague in the united states each year, if for some reason 50 people contracted the disease this would be an epidemic.. And 1 case of smallpox probably wouldn't be an epidemic, but 3 or more probably would...
Anyway, SARS, being a "new" disease is growing rapidly... 0 deaths/year - 850 deaths/year... thus it's growth is exponential and therefore it gets labeled as an epidemic.
See the entry for epidemic on this page
I would think that if they then raised prices there would be more of and outcry and class-action suits.
. nsf/en/ct01491e.html
Based on WHAT exactly? The right of a retailer to price however he wants to vs what? I'm sorry- but there's nothing actionable to file a class action lawsuit on. Any retailer with the money to back can use loss leaders to put others out of business and then raise their prices.
In many states(24) there are laws against preditary pricing. Furthermore the Sherman Anti-trust act (Federal Law) has been used in anti-competitive/preditary pricing cases. Therefore if preditary pricing were used to for competition out of business and then raising prices to compensate for selling at below cost/market values there would be criminal charges filed. From a criminal conviction a class-action lawsuit is a short step. Either way lawsuits will eat up a lot of money which means that prices are going to have to be all that much higher.
While researching for this reply I noted a large number of articles by economists both practicing and university professors that debunk predatory pricing as a means of eliminating rivals.
Examples:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-169.html
http://competition.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/incb-bc
An interesting point about the majority of the predatory pricing laws is that the states where they are enforced prices are generally higher than states without/non-enforced laws. This in turn has lead to the general understanding that these laws do have a dampening effect on competition and result in higher prices for consumers.
Use of a loss-leader is generally used to draw new business, expand marketshare, etc. Also there needs to be a distinction between loss-leader on a few items drawing people into your store and making a profit on other items and predatory pricing which would suggest the sale below cost of all items that the competitor sells.
For whatever it's worth, Walmart has an extremely effective distribution system coupled with their huge sales market which gives them a lot of pull with suppliers, they are still making a profit on item sales and that by current definition in the Federal system means that they are not preditory pricing.
Of course, as I eluded to before this does not mean that Walmart could not be brought up under preditory pricing laws in several states... They have been in the past and no they don't win all their cases.
Only by comparing their local newspaper day-of-welfare-check advertisements between towns; New Wal*Mart stores ALWAYS have lower prices than well-established ones.
Prices may be lowered in new stores, I don't know personally. However, their "normal" prices seem to stay at a level below what other retailers were charging before Walmart entered the market. Thus it is a net gain for the consumer. If they do lower items I would expect that the prices are on loss leader items and are there to gain marketshare.
Anyway... I understand the loss of small-businesses that are not as efficent as Walmart. I generally don't shop at Walmart myself, but looking at the markets Walmart is in and how they handle their pricing, I still see lots of competitors that are still around even after Walmart has been in the market for over a decade. So the arguement that they practice preditory pricing needs facts/references that can be checked.
Sarcasm on:
It's nice to note though that the hockey players have found other ways to suppliment their incomes
Sarcasm off:
That, I think, is up to the lawyers. I just wanted to point out that click-throughs have been considered to be valid agreements for some time now. They have been held up in court as well. Check out wiggles comment further down in the comments.
Thanks for the clarification. As I read your previous comment I assumed that the insurance was for merely one person. I can definately see insurance pushing into the millions for the support of a staff.
I was under the impression any license agreement was not valid anyway without a notary present for a signature. Clicking a botton can not be interpetted as signing a document. Especially if no lawyer or notary is present.
Actually, as of October 2000, in the US clicking a button can legally be acknowledged as accepting a contract. The little thing that makes this possible is called the Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act. President Clinton signed it into law on June 30th, 2000.
It was at that point commonly accepted that click through eulas were valid agreements. Questions about the validity of eulas have primarily focused on whether the wording of the eula itself invalidated the contract not the legal binding of the click through.
A short little article on the acthttp://www.cio.com/archive/011501/fine.html didn't see an entry on wikipedia on the act itself.
I'm not so sure about this. Although Wal-mart does have low prices and indeed forces other businesses out of business. I would think that if they then raised prices there would be more of and outcry and class-action suits.
Can you provide any references to where they increase prices after forcing other businesses out?
Hmmm,
The numbers you quote for liability insurance seemed a little off to me and thus I went a looking.
A typical general surgeon in Wyoming paid on average $94k/annually for liability insurance. Wyoming has no cap on non-economic damages and as such is considered as a medical liability crisis state.
Montana on the other hand has a cap of $250K on non-economic damages and while it is not as low as states such as California generally premiums do not exceed $30k/annually. The highest reported premium that I could find for a montana general surgeon was $54K/annually.
I therefore think that you will have to provide some proof to your assertion that her insurance liability was over a million dollars a year.
PS. I remember using your software back in '94, looking at your website looks like a lot of improvement has happened to what at the time I thought was a great product. It's nice to see that as the software paid for itself you lowered prices. Nice to see you still in business as well. I'm originally from Montana and it's nice to see a great software company running in my home state.
Definately offtopic, but I didn't see any way of reaching you except by replying to an older posting.
I'm interested in getting into electronic/chip design and would like to get a few pointers. Please drop me a line.
You question why V-chip has not be standardized, however the V-chip has been required in all television systems sold(new) in the United States since January 1st, 2000.
Obligory wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip
Very unlikely since Torrentbits.org was not participating in the new program.
Also, the new program is/was windows only... not much good for Linux users.
Oh well, plenty of other places to get "legal" torrents, though I will miss the ability to look up TV shows that I miss...
Personally, I think that the term should be 20 to maybe 23 years. That way the cultural foundation that a person grows up with is available for them to start expanding once they reach their age of maturity.
One other article worth viewing is an article by the EFF.
If I remember correctly, others were found guilty for the entire $80K+ bill. If I remember correctly the 2 others were sentenced to multi-year convictions. However Neidorf because his lawyer called and got a copy of the document from Ma Bell for 14.98 was able to escape conviction once it was shown how ridiculous the original claim by Ma Bell was. The other convictions stood though.
Not sure it's been a while. For better information check out The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling
The operation by the government that resulted in the case was called operation Sundevil.
Wikipedia Links
Operation Sundevil
Legion of Doom
Ha...
I remember the original Castle Wolfenstein, but it came out on the Apple IIe I beleive not IBM clones. Perhaps you meant Wolfenstein 3D? Grin
Not really trying to be a pain here, just clearing the record.
My opinion also is that Carmack has/should be on the list. He has inspired at least 2 generations of programmers with his games. Not just game programmers either, but a range of programmers.
So it is my opinion that his contributions should not be overlooked.
Not really the same thing they are talking about. The units in Dark Reign did not automatically do things other than trying to run from being underfire and shooting at things that came into their range.
However, that said, Dark Reign had one of the best opposing AI's in any game that I have seen so far. It tracked where enemy forces were and allocated it's defense based on that information.
It was also highly configurable. Easy to write scripts and change variables for each unit. Unfortunately Activision didn't market the game well, I think from the numbers I saw they only sold 35K units of the game.
Pet Peeve: I hate the way new strategy games are 3D, Total Annihlation, C&C, Dune 2000, Dark Reign were all 2D games and worked well. Now it seems that unless you buy a $200 3D video card your screwed as to what type of games you can get... Sigh