Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users, but with available GUIs, that's yesterday's news.
This sounds a lot like (and is about as accurate as) Bush on the U.S.S. Lincoln claiming "Mission Accomplished."
Photocopiers can be used to copy sensitive data. Please dispose of all photocopiers in your company...
Okay, I did RTFA, but I'm not entirely sure "how" a digital camera is a threat other than being used to take snapshots of sensitive data. Sure, you can plug it into a USB slot, but for a lot of cameras, they're little more than thumbdrives when they're connected via USB, so a thumbdrive would certainly be less conspicuous, but then you have to ask how this is much different from say, floppy disks, which until recently, were pretty ubiquitous.
The article mistakenly states: "Hence, simply plugging it into a computer's USB can allow hackers to obtain sensitive data." How? Does plugging in a camera suddenyl disable all security in a computer? Suddenly all your encrypted data is decrypted? Suddenly the camera has access to everything? This is a completely unqualified statement that means nothing. It's a thumb drive and you have no more access to sensitive data than the person at the keyboard which is presumably the same person with the camera.
Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a pretty stupid article.
This is as much a free speech issue as Islamic extremist terrorism is a freedom of religion issue.
As others have stated already, freedom of speech does not mean being able to say whatever you want whenever you want without consequences. And if you're a member of any sort of private institution, school or otherwise, you may very well be subject to restrictions that the government doesn't place on you.
If you publicly insult people, there can be serious consequences. Some forms of speech are completely unprotected, hence laws against libel, defamation and slander. Technically, this student may be guilty of libel. I didn't read the specific contents and IANAL.
People are often quick to site their rights, but often fail to consider the rights of others. This is a non-story. This is simply another kid who said something he shoudldn't have and he's paying the price for it.
See, free oxygen (O2) doesn't occur anywhere in nature - except where it's created by life.
And you know this because you have witnessed the entirety of nature? Or this has been deduced and isn't actually a fact, but an assumption?
Actually, O2 does appear in places other than our planet (places assumed to be devoid of life), just not in abundance. But even an abundance is only a hint that life exists. There are inorganic processes that can create oxygen. These usually don't create abundant amounts, but we've only witnessed natural processes on a handful of planets and moons. There's always the possibility that some process we haven't witnessed in our own solar system could be creating abundant supplies of oxygen on a planet in another solar system.
Not that this is at all likely, but it's certainly possible.
This guy did a very poor job of it and it wasn't even long enough to even be considered a rant. He didn't make many points beyond what was summarized in the Slashdot post.
For myself, I could go on about a number of problems that seem to plague many open source projects. The focus for many seems to be on adding features at the expense of usability. There are exceptions, obviously. But many open source apps simply aren't that intuitive or easy to use.
As a simple example, several months back, I wanted to find out the temperature of the CPU on my Linux box. A trivial task on a Windows box, as there are a number of tools that provide this information. I installed an app that could supposedly provide this information. It, in turn, depended on me installing several other libraries. After 3 hours of trying and running into nothing but problems, I finally gave up. I mean, come on, why does a simple app to tell you the CPU temperature have to be more difficult than setting up iptables?
This all might not be so bad if the support on many of these projects weren't loaded with arrogant jerks whose response is usually a cacaphony of RTFM and basically treating you like an idiot if you don't have intimate knowledge of their particular software (the mencoder support mailing list comes to mind).
And this, in turn, wouldn't be so bad were the FMs not so poorly organized and written (in this case, mencoder doesn't come to mind as they have excellent documentation, but a very complex piece of software). Again, I'm not saying all projects have these problems, and oftentimes better support can be found from other users rather than the actual developers. For example, the help on LinuxForums.org tends to be quite helpful, though you tend to get less detail on the more obscure products.
All that said, there's been great progress in many areas of OSS and I suspect, with time, it will continue to improve.
Speaking of Ego and Arrogance, Roblimo confidently states, "In this essay I will tell you why they've failed to adapt, and what they must do if they want to survive..."
So, apparently he alone, has figured out the solution for all newspapers? Some of his comments are valid, but his whole idea of a comment and moderation system probably won't work for lots of smaller newspapers because they probably won't have enough online readers that such a system would be feasible. Consider the percentage of slashdot users that actually comment on stories? Most stories get several hundred comments, but probably tens to hundreds of thousands of views. That's not a very large percentage for participation. I simply don't think such a system would work for most newspapers.
He does have some valid ideas, but I suspect his comments won't save the newspaper industry, even if they were to follow it.
Back in the old days when I had my Atari 800XL, I upgraded it to 256K of RAM. The extra power draw was enough to cause the power supply to overheat and fail. The power supply was encased in hard plastic and had no ventilation. My solution was to place the power supply in a zip-lock baggie that was obviously open at the top to allow the cables to go out, but then the lower half was submerged in a pot of water. Worked perfectly until I finally came across a power supply that was ventilated.
Granted, it's unproven at this point, but Occam's Razor and all, I vote for the theory that makes sense with matter and energy as-is and doesn't require some exotic matter/energy that exists only as speculation to fill an unknown.
No, I'm not necessarily talking about the analog hole. I'm talking about digital as well. As long as something can play it, someone's going to be able to break it. There's always going to be someone out there who's smarter than their smartest DRM developer. So far, history has shown this to be the case and I don't see any reason this is going to change anytime in the forseeable future.
Gartner believes that it will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players.
As long as it must be playable in a standalone CD Player? As long as media must be visible or audible, DRM will never work. It might for a while, but people are always going to figure a way around it. I've argued this over and over. The software industry which, let's face it, has been at this copy protection thing a lot longer than the music industry and has quite a bit more specialization in it, still hasn't come up with a solution that works for software. What makes the music industry think it will succeed where this industry has repeatedly failed?
The software industry has managed to survive, despite rampant piracy. M$ has become enormous, despite the rampant piracy of Windows and every app they produce. The music industry just has to bite the bullet, accept that piracy is going to happen, but for God's sake, stop treating all your customers like criminals. All that will achieve is alienation and it will eventually lead to their demise when someone comes along and offers a competing product without treating the customers like criminals.
Who the fuck are you to judge me as someone "afraid to do well?" I've lived in the D.C. area for almost 20 years. The D.C. area IS great, if you don't mind living in a high stress environment and dealing with traffic nightmares. I got sick of it and left. I'm much happier where I am and I have a MUCH better quality of life, for me. I'm not saying it's right for you, but who are you to tell me what's right for me. You don't even know me!
I've been quite successful in my career. I've had dozens of magazine articles and a book published in the field. I lived for 3 years, quite happily, on the beach in Southern Mexico, something a lot of people would give their right arm to do. So don't tell me I'm "afraid to do well." I have the balls to do what I want!
I moved to Arkansas from the Washington D.C. area several years ago. My plan was to find a job as a software developer here but after looking for quite a while, I couldn't find anything that really interested me. I ended up moving to Mexico where I knew I could find some work (and also the slow paced lifestyle I was looking for). I did some work for various companies for a while and after then was contacted by some old co-workers about some contract work. The only catch was I had to move back to the U.S. The good news was I didn't have to move back to the D.C. area, where they were based.
So, I moved back to Arkansas and for 2 years I've been contracting out to one the largest software companies in the country. My rates are very competitive because my cost of living is far lower than what it would be in the D.C. area. I'm paying less for a large 3 bedroom house with a fenced in yard than I was paying for a small 2-bedroom apartment there. I get to have the slow-paced lifestyle that I was looking for and despite making less than I was in D.C., I'm saving quite a bit more.
Our group is also outsourcing to a company India and I'm under the impression that my rates are actually fairly competitive with theirs. I suspect there are a large number of people in this area that would work for rates that would be impossible to find in the D.C. area or other larger cities.
Nothing wrong with usenet...
on
Requiem for Usenet
·
· Score: 2, Informative
that hasn't been wrong with it for years.
I use usenet on an almost daily basis. For programming related help, it's about the best source. In various newsgroups I can post questions and often get answers within an hour. That's far better than customer support with most software vendors, and I get it for a very low fixed monthly cost.
I know there are lots of newsgroups infested with junk, but there are also a great number of very useful groups. It doesn't take a lot of effort to separate the wheat from the chaffe and the value of the content, at least for what I'm looking for, is far above the price I pay.
Granted, not everyone will find what they want in usenet, but for some things, it's about the best source on the net.
The real issue of cost is probably going to be closely tied to bandwidth. Movies (at least of any sort of decent qualtiy), tend to run about 500mb an hour for decent quality. Now, surely $5 will more than cover the cost of the transfer, but still, it's a lot of bandwidth compared with a song which is just a few megs.
If they could manage some sort of P2P style service while retaining their DRM, this could probably help lower the prices a bit.
The thing to keep in mind is that this is almost all, cash in the bank for them, particularly if they go with a P2P model. There's no packaging, no hard media, nothing, except bits. The price should reflect that. I wouldn't pay $5 for a movie unless it's new and high demand. Otherwise I'll wait for it to show up in the bargain bin and get the DVD with all the DVD extras.
As with anything in economics, the trick is to find the sweet spot, which I'm sure they'll research plenty. But the price is probably going to need to be done on a per movie basis. I mean, if you can buy the disc out of the bargain bin at Wal Mart for $5, it's a pretty sure bet that not that many people will pay $5 for it online. On the other hand, if it's $30 for the disc, then $5 for the online version may be more reasonable.
And with more and more people reading us and commenting about our posts, blogging sometimes became a duty;
Only in your own friggin' heads.
I have a blog that's fairly popular (not the link here and I'm not posting it). Sometimes, if I go a while without posting, I get comments, some quite nasty, asking why (or just complaining that) I haven't posted recently.
My thought is, "Pay my rent and then we can talk about my responsibility to write this damn thing." I write when I'm in the mood and I don't write when I'm not in the mood. If people can't deal with that for free, then they can go find another blog.
Any responsibility these guys feel to doing this daily is of their own making. If they're not getting paid for doing it when they don't want to do it, then they're morons. If they ARE getting paid, then they need to stop whining.
Of course science is suffering in the U.S. In 1991, 9% of the U.S. population believed in Naturalistic Evolution. That went up to a whopping 10% in 1997 with 44% believing in creationism and 39% believing in Theistic evolution (evolution, but God-guided). Now, if you ask scientists (which pretty much includes anyone with a higher degree in science, but presumably people of intelligence and education), the percentage that believe in Naturalistic Evolution goes up to 55%, with only 5% believing in creationism and 40% in Theistic evolution. So 95% of scientists believe in Evolution in one form or another. Why? Because it's a friggin' fact!
The 44% of the US population that don't believe in evolution of any form believe there's a God who's idea of a good time is toss dinosaur bones around the world making them look millions of years older than our 4000 or 5000 year old Earth. As if his time couldn't be better spent smiting creationists or something.
But really, if you have such a large population that simply can't believe facts, then how on Earth can science advance in that kind of environment.
Damn man, sorry you can't enjoy your work anymore. Maybe you ought to try a new field or get a job doing *nix programming.
Are you aware there's a command-line compiler? Are you aware that forms are dynamically generated as code and thus you can just as dynamically generate your own forms from your own code instead of the designer?
I frequently dismember the default code generated by VS.NET. When I create a new VS.NET Windows Forms project, it puts my Main() and an initial Form derived class in Form1.cs. The first thing I'll do is create an Application class that has the Main() because I'll probably want to add some application level static methods (for reading config-files, access to the plugin management which I add to almost every major.NET app I write), and so forth. Then I rename Form1.cs to MainForm.cs (assuming I have a main form) and get to work.
I use the form designer for some form stuff but sometimes I'll add stuff outside the designer. Whatever makes me most productive. VS.NET doesn't FORCE me to do anything. And if you feel FORCED to do anything then it's from a lack of understanding. If anything, moving to VS.NET and C# has made me abotu 10 times more productive than I was doing C++ programming with all the redundant function prototypes in the headers and the jumping through hoops to do anything with a string, especially all that BS conversion back and forth between unicode and non-unicode and what have you just so you could call a method that only accepted one or the other. What a mess.
Personally, I'm very happy with the state of things. Now instead of spending 90% of time dealing with minutia and details that had little to do with the actual solution I was trying to provide, I spend a 90% of my time producing the solutions and only about 10% or so on minutia.
What's the issue? Remember: GPL sez: "If I give you binaries, I have to give you code..."
And if you RTFA, you'll see that's PRECISELY the issue. Not only are they not releasing the source code with the FreeDOS binaries they've included, they're not even mentioning that they're GPLed.
In my post from the last article, I already stated the many reasons why blaming the developer is simply ridiculous.
But the fact that software, in general, has so many flaws is a simple matter of economics. As I said, in a different way, in my last post, people are willing to pay the current price for software with the types of flaws they have now. People simply wouldn't be willing to pay what software WOULD cost if it had few or no flaws.
Left to its own devices, an economy can generally regulate such things on its own. When you start trying to legislate this kind of stuff, it generally screws with the economy and everyone loses.
The simple question for a business to ask is, "Are we better off with the flawed software we have or would we be better off without any software?" That's really what it comes down to, because again, the economics of it would take make the cost of software beyond reach for most businesses, if it were flawless or close to it.
With time, all of this stuff will impove. I suspect at some point (quite a bit in the future), software will become self-correcting or programming languages will arrive at a point where code can be mathematically prove to be correct or not (though I suspect the latter will be more difficult). Regardless, I suspect that over the years, code quality will improve, not because developers will improve, but the underlying technologies will improve in finding and correcting code problems.
After all, we developers are merely human and what we're often asked to do is stretch our abilities and the technologies to their limits. We'd lose our jobs if we refused, so how could we possibly be held responsible?
Wouldn't this law be regulating interstate commerce and thus unconstitutional?
No, it's not regulating interstate commerce. The law is regulating in-state businesses. Keep in mind, this is for people who operate business selling OTHER PEOPLE'S things on consignment. This isn't for people operating a business selling stuff they've bought from wholesalers on e-bay or even individuals selling their stuff on e-bay.
In fact, it's not a particularly onerous thing to ask. Having recently had to get insured to operate my own business as a consultant (a requirement of the company I work for). Getting bonded and licensed isn't very costly. And in the end, the idea is to protect the consumer which isn't a bad thing.
Why can't Microsoft ever take the Google approach and do stuff simply? Notice it's not just tabs, but tabs with all sorts of other crap thrown in on the tab bar.
Why does EVERYTHING have to be so feature-bloated with them? Firefox, without any extensions or plugins, has The address bar, 5 navigation buttons, and the search bar an "Go" button (And the bookmarks toolbar folder, but that's easily hidden.
IE6 has Address Bar, 5 navigation buttons, Search, Favorites, History, Mail, Print, Edit with Word, Discuss, Research, Real, and Messenger on mine (and I did nothing to add most of those others, they just added themselves) on the Standard Buttons button bar. I mean, WTF? I've never used anything from Search to the right on that. They just occupy space and they're a distraction.
I'm a big believer in making it simple and allow plugins. Then the user can add whatever crap they want that's not standard. For those of us that like things uncluttered, we get it uncluttered. And that, is one of the big reasons I chose Firefox and will stick with Firefox after IE7 comes out.
First of all, at most, the companies that produce the software should be held liable, not the individual developer. You just can't hold employees liable for company products unless you give them ownership of it. Additionally, many companies still develop software without source control and few have strict security policies on the source control. So it's easy for developers to deny culpability for a specific piece of code. "Hey, someone else must have checked it in with my ID. I didn't write that."
Software, as a field, isn't engineering. It's very much a combination of science and art, with a bit of engineering thrown in. But you can't mathematically prove code to be faultless. Some of the most bug free code written, is done by the group that does the shuttle onboard computer software. Few companies could afford the kind of process they go through to develop their code, for every commercial app. And the shuttle team still has bugs that get through from time to time. The cost of software would have to skyrocket to cover the expense of this sort of process, along with the liability insurance (which would also go through the roof) companies would have to carry to cover lawsuits.
When you build a bridge, there's math that can insure, assuming the materials are within spec (and the manufacturers of the materials have their own processes and math to ensure this), that the bridge will hold through certain stresses. You simply cannot do that with software for a number of reasons which I'm sure many people here are familiar with.
The result of this kind of change to the industry would basically kill it. Few companies would actually be able to afford much software, few companies could afford to develop software, and few programmers would be able to deal with such a stringent development process.
I'm surprised nobody has tried to follow up on Gerald Bull's idea of a Super Gun to launch things into orbit.
It would be relatively cheap and I have to think it's going to be a bit simpler than building a rocket.
You do run into the problem of being limited on what you can launch. Not only is size limited, but whatever you're firing into orbit is going to have to deal with some pretty serious acceleration issues.
Still, it would be cool to see someone follow up on his work to see if it's doable.
Slashdot Mirror
Historically, the lack of friendly interfaces has been an obstacle to making Linux® a commercially viable product for end users, but with available GUIs, that's yesterday's news.
This sounds a lot like (and is about as accurate as) Bush on the U.S.S. Lincoln claiming "Mission Accomplished."
Photocopiers can be used to copy sensitive data. Please dispose of all photocopiers in your company...
Okay, I did RTFA, but I'm not entirely sure "how" a digital camera is a threat other than being used to take snapshots of sensitive data. Sure, you can plug it into a USB slot, but for a lot of cameras, they're little more than thumbdrives when they're connected via USB, so a thumbdrive would certainly be less conspicuous, but then you have to ask how this is much different from say, floppy disks, which until recently, were pretty ubiquitous.
The article mistakenly states: "Hence, simply plugging it into a computer's USB can allow hackers to obtain sensitive data." How? Does plugging in a camera suddenyl disable all security in a computer? Suddenly all your encrypted data is decrypted? Suddenly the camera has access to everything? This is a completely unqualified statement that means nothing. It's a thumb drive and you have no more access to sensitive data than the person at the keyboard which is presumably the same person with the camera.
Sorry, maybe I'm missing something, but this seems like a pretty stupid article.
This is as much a free speech issue as Islamic extremist terrorism is a freedom of religion issue.
As others have stated already, freedom of speech does not mean being able to say whatever you want whenever you want without consequences. And if you're a member of any sort of private institution, school or otherwise, you may very well be subject to restrictions that the government doesn't place on you.
If you publicly insult people, there can be serious consequences. Some forms of speech are completely unprotected, hence laws against libel, defamation and slander. Technically, this student may be guilty of libel. I didn't read the specific contents and IANAL.
People are often quick to site their rights, but often fail to consider the rights of others. This is a non-story. This is simply another kid who said something he shoudldn't have and he's paying the price for it.
See, free oxygen (O2) doesn't occur anywhere in nature - except where it's created by life.
And you know this because you have witnessed the entirety of nature? Or this has been deduced and isn't actually a fact, but an assumption?
Actually, O2 does appear in places other than our planet (places assumed to be devoid of life), just not in abundance. But even an abundance is only a hint that life exists. There are inorganic processes that can create oxygen. These usually don't create abundant amounts, but we've only witnessed natural processes on a handful of planets and moons. There's always the possibility that some process we haven't witnessed in our own solar system could be creating abundant supplies of oxygen on a planet in another solar system.
Not that this is at all likely, but it's certainly possible.
there are some valid points to be made.
This guy did a very poor job of it and it wasn't even long enough to even be considered a rant. He didn't make many points beyond what was summarized in the Slashdot post.
For myself, I could go on about a number of problems that seem to plague many open source projects. The focus for many seems to be on adding features at the expense of usability. There are exceptions, obviously. But many open source apps simply aren't that intuitive or easy to use.
As a simple example, several months back, I wanted to find out the temperature of the CPU on my Linux box. A trivial task on a Windows box, as there are a number of tools that provide this information. I installed an app that could supposedly provide this information. It, in turn, depended on me installing several other libraries. After 3 hours of trying and running into nothing but problems, I finally gave up. I mean, come on, why does a simple app to tell you the CPU temperature have to be more difficult than setting up iptables?
This all might not be so bad if the support on many of these projects weren't loaded with arrogant jerks whose response is usually a cacaphony of RTFM and basically treating you like an idiot if you don't have intimate knowledge of their particular software (the mencoder support mailing list comes to mind).
And this, in turn, wouldn't be so bad were the FMs not so poorly organized and written (in this case, mencoder doesn't come to mind as they have excellent documentation, but a very complex piece of software). Again, I'm not saying all projects have these problems, and oftentimes better support can be found from other users rather than the actual developers. For example, the help on LinuxForums.org tends to be quite helpful, though you tend to get less detail on the more obscure products.
All that said, there's been great progress in many areas of OSS and I suspect, with time, it will continue to improve.
Speaking of Ego and Arrogance, Roblimo confidently states, "In this essay I will tell you why they've failed to adapt, and what they must do if they want to survive..."
So, apparently he alone, has figured out the solution for all newspapers? Some of his comments are valid, but his whole idea of a comment and moderation system probably won't work for lots of smaller newspapers because they probably won't have enough online readers that such a system would be feasible. Consider the percentage of slashdot users that actually comment on stories? Most stories get several hundred comments, but probably tens to hundreds of thousands of views. That's not a very large percentage for participation. I simply don't think such a system would work for most newspapers.
He does have some valid ideas, but I suspect his comments won't save the newspaper industry, even if they were to follow it.
Back in the old days when I had my Atari 800XL, I upgraded it to 256K of RAM. The extra power draw was enough to cause the power supply to overheat and fail. The power supply was encased in hard plastic and had no ventilation. My solution was to place the power supply in a zip-lock baggie that was obviously open at the top to allow the cables to go out, but then the lower half was submerged in a pot of water. Worked perfectly until I finally came across a power supply that was ventilated.
dark matter anymore as per this past story.
Granted, it's unproven at this point, but Occam's Razor and all, I vote for the theory that makes sense with matter and energy as-is and doesn't require some exotic matter/energy that exists only as speculation to fill an unknown.
You're talking about the analog hole...
No, I'm not necessarily talking about the analog hole. I'm talking about digital as well. As long as something can play it, someone's going to be able to break it. There's always going to be someone out there who's smarter than their smartest DRM developer. So far, history has shown this to be the case and I don't see any reason this is going to change anytime in the forseeable future.
Gartner believes that it will never achieve this goal as long as CDs must be playable by stand-alone CD players.
As long as it must be playable in a standalone CD Player? As long as media must be visible or audible, DRM will never work. It might for a while, but people are always going to figure a way around it. I've argued this over and over. The software industry which, let's face it, has been at this copy protection thing a lot longer than the music industry and has quite a bit more specialization in it, still hasn't come up with a solution that works for software. What makes the music industry think it will succeed where this industry has repeatedly failed?
The software industry has managed to survive, despite rampant piracy. M$ has become enormous, despite the rampant piracy of Windows and every app they produce. The music industry just has to bite the bullet, accept that piracy is going to happen, but for God's sake, stop treating all your customers like criminals. All that will achieve is alienation and it will eventually lead to their demise when someone comes along and offers a competing product without treating the customers like criminals.
You must be right. Clearly you know me intimately.
Who the fuck are you to judge me as someone "afraid to do well?" I've lived in the D.C. area for almost 20 years. The D.C. area IS great, if you don't mind living in a high stress environment and dealing with traffic nightmares. I got sick of it and left. I'm much happier where I am and I have a MUCH better quality of life, for me. I'm not saying it's right for you, but who are you to tell me what's right for me. You don't even know me!
I've been quite successful in my career. I've had dozens of magazine articles and a book published in the field. I lived for 3 years, quite happily, on the beach in Southern Mexico, something a lot of people would give their right arm to do. So don't tell me I'm "afraid to do well." I have the balls to do what I want!
I moved to Arkansas from the Washington D.C. area several years ago. My plan was to find a job as a software developer here but after looking for quite a while, I couldn't find anything that really interested me. I ended up moving to Mexico where I knew I could find some work (and also the slow paced lifestyle I was looking for). I did some work for various companies for a while and after then was contacted by some old co-workers about some contract work. The only catch was I had to move back to the U.S. The good news was I didn't have to move back to the D.C. area, where they were based.
So, I moved back to Arkansas and for 2 years I've been contracting out to one the largest software companies in the country. My rates are very competitive because my cost of living is far lower than what it would be in the D.C. area. I'm paying less for a large 3 bedroom house with a fenced in yard than I was paying for a small 2-bedroom apartment there. I get to have the slow-paced lifestyle that I was looking for and despite making less than I was in D.C., I'm saving quite a bit more.
Our group is also outsourcing to a company India and I'm under the impression that my rates are actually fairly competitive with theirs. I suspect there are a large number of people in this area that would work for rates that would be impossible to find in the D.C. area or other larger cities.
that hasn't been wrong with it for years.
I use usenet on an almost daily basis. For programming related help, it's about the best source. In various newsgroups I can post questions and often get answers within an hour. That's far better than customer support with most software vendors, and I get it for a very low fixed monthly cost.
I know there are lots of newsgroups infested with junk, but there are also a great number of very useful groups. It doesn't take a lot of effort to separate the wheat from the chaffe and the value of the content, at least for what I'm looking for, is far above the price I pay.
Granted, not everyone will find what they want in usenet, but for some things, it's about the best source on the net.
The real issue of cost is probably going to be closely tied to bandwidth. Movies (at least of any sort of decent qualtiy), tend to run about 500mb an hour for decent quality. Now, surely $5 will more than cover the cost of the transfer, but still, it's a lot of bandwidth compared with a song which is just a few megs.
If they could manage some sort of P2P style service while retaining their DRM, this could probably help lower the prices a bit.
The thing to keep in mind is that this is almost all, cash in the bank for them, particularly if they go with a P2P model. There's no packaging, no hard media, nothing, except bits. The price should reflect that. I wouldn't pay $5 for a movie unless it's new and high demand. Otherwise I'll wait for it to show up in the bargain bin and get the DVD with all the DVD extras.
As with anything in economics, the trick is to find the sweet spot, which I'm sure they'll research plenty. But the price is probably going to need to be done on a per movie basis. I mean, if you can buy the disc out of the bargain bin at Wal Mart for $5, it's a pretty sure bet that not that many people will pay $5 for it online. On the other hand, if it's $30 for the disc, then $5 for the online version may be more reasonable.
US, EU and Canada (or in Québec)
The poster must be Quebecois. Because if you ask anyone else, Quebec is actually PART of Canada, not a separate country.
And with more and more people reading us and commenting about our posts, blogging sometimes became a duty;
Only in your own friggin' heads.
I have a blog that's fairly popular (not the link here and I'm not posting it). Sometimes, if I go a while without posting, I get comments, some quite nasty, asking why (or just complaining that) I haven't posted recently.
My thought is, "Pay my rent and then we can talk about my responsibility to write this damn thing." I write when I'm in the mood and I don't write when I'm not in the mood. If people can't deal with that for free, then they can go find another blog.
Any responsibility these guys feel to doing this daily is of their own making. If they're not getting paid for doing it when they don't want to do it, then they're morons. If they ARE getting paid, then they need to stop whining.
Of course science is suffering in the U.S. In 1991, 9% of the U.S. population believed in Naturalistic Evolution. That went up to a whopping 10% in 1997 with 44% believing in creationism and 39% believing in Theistic evolution (evolution, but God-guided). Now, if you ask scientists (which pretty much includes anyone with a higher degree in science, but presumably people of intelligence and education), the percentage that believe in Naturalistic Evolution goes up to 55%, with only 5% believing in creationism and 40% in Theistic evolution. So 95% of scientists believe in Evolution in one form or another. Why? Because it's a friggin' fact!
The 44% of the US population that don't believe in evolution of any form believe there's a God who's idea of a good time is toss dinosaur bones around the world making them look millions of years older than our 4000 or 5000 year old Earth. As if his time couldn't be better spent smiting creationists or something.
But really, if you have such a large population that simply can't believe facts, then how on Earth can science advance in that kind of environment.
Damn man, sorry you can't enjoy your work anymore. Maybe you ought to try a new field or get a job doing *nix programming.
.NET app I write), and so forth. Then I rename Form1.cs to MainForm.cs (assuming I have a main form) and get to work.
Are you aware there's a command-line compiler? Are you aware that forms are dynamically generated as code and thus you can just as dynamically generate your own forms from your own code instead of the designer?
I frequently dismember the default code generated by VS.NET. When I create a new VS.NET Windows Forms project, it puts my Main() and an initial Form derived class in Form1.cs. The first thing I'll do is create an Application class that has the Main() because I'll probably want to add some application level static methods (for reading config-files, access to the plugin management which I add to almost every major
I use the form designer for some form stuff but sometimes I'll add stuff outside the designer. Whatever makes me most productive. VS.NET doesn't FORCE me to do anything. And if you feel FORCED to do anything then it's from a lack of understanding. If anything, moving to VS.NET and C# has made me abotu 10 times more productive than I was doing C++ programming with all the redundant function prototypes in the headers and the jumping through hoops to do anything with a string, especially all that BS conversion back and forth between unicode and non-unicode and what have you just so you could call a method that only accepted one or the other. What a mess.
Personally, I'm very happy with the state of things. Now instead of spending 90% of time dealing with minutia and details that had little to do with the actual solution I was trying to provide, I spend a 90% of my time producing the solutions and only about 10% or so on minutia.
What's the issue? Remember: GPL sez: "If I give you binaries, I have to give you code..."
And if you RTFA, you'll see that's PRECISELY the issue. Not only are they not releasing the source code with the FreeDOS binaries they've included, they're not even mentioning that they're GPLed.
In my post from the last article, I already stated the many reasons why blaming the developer is simply ridiculous.
But the fact that software, in general, has so many flaws is a simple matter of economics. As I said, in a different way, in my last post, people are willing to pay the current price for software with the types of flaws they have now. People simply wouldn't be willing to pay what software WOULD cost if it had few or no flaws.
Left to its own devices, an economy can generally regulate such things on its own. When you start trying to legislate this kind of stuff, it generally screws with the economy and everyone loses.
The simple question for a business to ask is, "Are we better off with the flawed software we have or would we be better off without any software?" That's really what it comes down to, because again, the economics of it would take make the cost of software beyond reach for most businesses, if it were flawless or close to it.
With time, all of this stuff will impove. I suspect at some point (quite a bit in the future), software will become self-correcting or programming languages will arrive at a point where code can be mathematically prove to be correct or not (though I suspect the latter will be more difficult). Regardless, I suspect that over the years, code quality will improve, not because developers will improve, but the underlying technologies will improve in finding and correcting code problems.
After all, we developers are merely human and what we're often asked to do is stretch our abilities and the technologies to their limits. We'd lose our jobs if we refused, so how could we possibly be held responsible?
Wouldn't this law be regulating interstate commerce and thus unconstitutional?
No, it's not regulating interstate commerce. The law is regulating in-state businesses. Keep in mind, this is for people who operate business selling OTHER PEOPLE'S things on consignment. This isn't for people operating a business selling stuff they've bought from wholesalers on e-bay or even individuals selling their stuff on e-bay.
In fact, it's not a particularly onerous thing to ask. Having recently had to get insured to operate my own business as a consultant (a requirement of the company I work for). Getting bonded and licensed isn't very costly. And in the end, the idea is to protect the consumer which isn't a bad thing.
Why can't Microsoft ever take the Google approach and do stuff simply? Notice it's not just tabs, but tabs with all sorts of other crap thrown in on the tab bar.
Why does EVERYTHING have to be so feature-bloated with them? Firefox, without any extensions or plugins, has The address bar, 5 navigation buttons, and the search bar an "Go" button (And the bookmarks toolbar folder, but that's easily hidden.
IE6 has Address Bar, 5 navigation buttons, Search, Favorites, History, Mail, Print, Edit with Word, Discuss, Research, Real, and Messenger on mine (and I did nothing to add most of those others, they just added themselves) on the Standard Buttons button bar. I mean, WTF? I've never used anything from Search to the right on that. They just occupy space and they're a distraction.
I'm a big believer in making it simple and allow plugins. Then the user can add whatever crap they want that's not standard. For those of us that like things uncluttered, we get it uncluttered. And that, is one of the big reasons I chose Firefox and will stick with Firefox after IE7 comes out.
First of all, at most, the companies that produce the software should be held liable, not the individual developer. You just can't hold employees liable for company products unless you give them ownership of it. Additionally, many companies still develop software without source control and few have strict security policies on the source control. So it's easy for developers to deny culpability for a specific piece of code. "Hey, someone else must have checked it in with my ID. I didn't write that."
Software, as a field, isn't engineering. It's very much a combination of science and art, with a bit of engineering thrown in. But you can't mathematically prove code to be faultless. Some of the most bug free code written, is done by the group that does the shuttle onboard computer software. Few companies could afford the kind of process they go through to develop their code, for every commercial app. And the shuttle team still has bugs that get through from time to time. The cost of software would have to skyrocket to cover the expense of this sort of process, along with the liability insurance (which would also go through the roof) companies would have to carry to cover lawsuits.
When you build a bridge, there's math that can insure, assuming the materials are within spec (and the manufacturers of the materials have their own processes and math to ensure this), that the bridge will hold through certain stresses. You simply cannot do that with software for a number of reasons which I'm sure many people here are familiar with.
The result of this kind of change to the industry would basically kill it. Few companies would actually be able to afford much software, few companies could afford to develop software, and few programmers would be able to deal with such a stringent development process.
I'm surprised nobody has tried to follow up on Gerald Bull's idea of a Super Gun to launch things into orbit.
It would be relatively cheap and I have to think it's going to be a bit simpler than building a rocket.
You do run into the problem of being limited on what you can launch. Not only is size limited, but whatever you're firing into orbit is going to have to deal with some pretty serious acceleration issues.
Still, it would be cool to see someone follow up on his work to see if it's doable.