Psystar's bet - Apple didn't want to see laid on the table. Psystar is betting they can win a court case where the issue is: now that Apple sells their OS separately, the EULA requirement to install only on Apple hardware is illegal product bundling. This is the same legal principle that Microsoft search in a default setup is bundling - and MS doesn't do that anymore. If Psystar has done their legal homework and has enough funding for extended appeals, Apple will not be pleased to take this to court. Otherwise, Psystar is toast, but why would they do that?
I used the HeadFirst HTML book a couple years ago, and found it very helpful. I think and learn visually, so the pictures etc., helped me learn and retain the concepts. However, the index was a big problem, and O'Reilly's disclaimer about the index and references should be taken with a grain of salt. Well learned concepts don't write much functioning code. A good index is necessary to get back to that concept page and look at the syntax, etc. The HTML book caused me to waste a lot of time (leafing through pages 1 by 1) as I tried to get functioning code on new projects (not in the book), even though I have another HTML reference book. Very recently, O'Reilly emailed out an expanded index section to the HTML book. It seems that others have encountered the same problem. Before I buy HeadFirst JavaScript (which I may), I will give the index section a thorough checkout. I don't want to waste time again.
In my experience (managed a 300+ person team producing millions of lines of code each year), best practices don't come from bottom up. Better practices, like code standards, documentation, etc. can come from the bottom up, but best practices take lots of man-hours, otherwise known as money, invested over years. This will only happen if executive management sees value, invests steadily for years, "encourages" sales and marketing types to play nice while some investment money goes into strange sounding software practices rather than into new products or advertising, and development managers spend their time creating a culture that supports a much higher level of engineering teamwork. Executives have to have the long view via the need to retain large demanding customers, support complex products for long periods, sustain a monopoly, etc. Your run of the mill web site, widget, or IT wonk support sees little value in truly best practices for software. A little better - OK, but it better be quick (says the CEO) - but not best. So if you truly want to experience best practices - and someday maybe push the envelop into uncharted territory for team results, go find a different company, and select them based on their industry reputation for software development. If you ask, you can find them. Otherwise, learn to love better practices.
It is remarkable to see hundreds of response comments where the author takes no personal responsibility for their own unhealthy life choices and expects all the rest of us to pay for the long term damage they cause to their own body. Rather, we get nit picking about BMI 30 vs 32, weight lifting (for Christ's sakes!), and rejection of the known facts that fat people, after a few years delay, get lots and lots of chronic, expensive diseases. So pick a measure of "being fat", go for it, and revise it with new facts.
Wake up. Take responsibility for your own heavy eating and lack of exercise.
Xerox PARC had personal computers connected with Ethernet in the laboratory in 1976. Yes, these were not commercially available, but the technology was pretty much the same as seen later when commercial products were introduced (by others). About then (maybe 1977), a researcher installed some software on one PC to do an experiment in load sharing among PCs. The software replicated across the entire lab and generated a storm of traffic that shut everything down. The first PC virus was an denial of service attack.
This is the wrong set of questions for reasons that many people have laid out - no way to define "illegal copying", no hardware to support, no architecture, no mass appeal - DRM appeals mostly to media companies, yada yada.
A better set of questions would be: Have art creators, e.g.,musicians, movie actors, writers, been seriously harmed by the lack of DRM? If they have been harmed to some extent, can they take actions, other than using DRM, to compensate, or even come out ahead? I specifically leave out media corporations in the issue of being harmed because they are businesses and like any other business they need to deal with technological change. Risk is the nature of business, and businesses must change operations, and not legislate their way out of difficulties.
Concentrate on getting into the best college you can get into. In addition to math and science grades, that means good grades in English, etc. too, because top performers have to think in large terms and communicate. In the summer, volunteer at a local museum, historical society, etc. to help them with IT tasks. You'll get a more challenging assignment than you can get at most businesses - at this stage in your development. But be prepared to do it without much technical help from them. Work hard, and good luck.
Xerox has an amazing history of inventing cool, new technology and not making it a business success. The book, Fumbling the Future, documents many of these technology fizzles, but the list is much, much longer. Xerox continues to have very bright inventors, but no way to sell anything other than printers and copiers. Transient paper sounds cool, but Xerox will not succeed in creating the business "eco-system" (like the things mentioned in above postings), and their sales force can meet their sales targets by selling something they already know, so why bother with something low margin and complicated like weird paper. And like someone said, paper is dying - especially in the office.
Whenever a posting about the "$100 laptop" goes up, there is a flood of techno-elitist criticism on this board - like the CPU can't be overclocked. Who cares? The culture of these comments is elitism and xenophobia at its worst. Who cares if there is some waste / inefficiency / lack of elegance in the program. If it changes the lives of a few thousand kids, it is worth it. Take a look at programs where governments (pick your favorite, or not so favorite one) spend billions of dollars a day and have little chance of positive impact on poor kids in remote locations.
Get up out of your server log, or your WOW game and take a look at real life in remote places. If you don't like what you see in the "$100 laptop" program, stop whining and start doing something about it. They have a website. Go contact them to help.
The EU has recently floated comments that Microsoft might not be allowed to launch Vista at all, if it comes "out of the box" with a default preference for Microsoft search. It is interesting that within days, MS has softened their position about search. My own interpretation of this and other EU events is that MS has no respect for the USDOJ, but a billion dollars later in fines, they are starting to get the message that the EU means business in changing Microsoft's business.
Manufacturing errors can cause a lithium ion battery to explode. Reputable manufacturers do tests to screen out defectives, but on rare occasions, test errors occur and a bad battery can sneak through.
Did Kevin Turner's comment "can't take food off our plate" just make some anti-trust lawyer perk up his ears? I wonder. Seems that competing for customers is OK, but actions directed at competitors just for the sake of competitive share have often been viewed as illegal - gasp. Is this what Kevin has in mind? He may some day regret saying that phrase.
The idea to use AJAX to construct popular versions of business applications is a great one, but this implementation plan won't create meaningful change in user behavior. The application has to work on several browsers, has to maintain WYSIWYG appearance and format, needs spell check, etc. in order to be adopted by mainstream business users. At the moment, only geeks (who can spell!) need apply. Rather than a new application every week, spend your resources to make this one a mass market winner by updating with improvements every week. That would be value.
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Psystar's bet - Apple didn't want to see laid on the table. Psystar is betting they can win a court case where the issue is: now that Apple sells their OS separately, the EULA requirement to install only on Apple hardware is illegal product bundling. This is the same legal principle that Microsoft search in a default setup is bundling - and MS doesn't do that anymore. If Psystar has done their legal homework and has enough funding for extended appeals, Apple will not be pleased to take this to court. Otherwise, Psystar is toast, but why would they do that?
I used the HeadFirst HTML book a couple years ago, and found it very helpful. I think and learn visually, so the pictures etc., helped me learn and retain the concepts. However, the index was a big problem, and O'Reilly's disclaimer about the index and references should be taken with a grain of salt. Well learned concepts don't write much functioning code. A good index is necessary to get back to that concept page and look at the syntax, etc. The HTML book caused me to waste a lot of time (leafing through pages 1 by 1) as I tried to get functioning code on new projects (not in the book), even though I have another HTML reference book. Very recently, O'Reilly emailed out an expanded index section to the HTML book. It seems that others have encountered the same problem. Before I buy HeadFirst JavaScript (which I may), I will give the index section a thorough checkout. I don't want to waste time again.
In my experience (managed a 300+ person team producing millions of lines of code each year), best practices don't come from bottom up. Better practices, like code standards, documentation, etc. can come from the bottom up, but best practices take lots of man-hours, otherwise known as money, invested over years. This will only happen if executive management sees value, invests steadily for years, "encourages" sales and marketing types to play nice while some investment money goes into strange sounding software practices rather than into new products or advertising, and development managers spend their time creating a culture that supports a much higher level of engineering teamwork. Executives have to have the long view via the need to retain large demanding customers, support complex products for long periods, sustain a monopoly, etc. Your run of the mill web site, widget, or IT wonk support sees little value in truly best practices for software. A little better - OK, but it better be quick (says the CEO) - but not best. So if you truly want to experience best practices - and someday maybe push the envelop into uncharted territory for team results, go find a different company, and select them based on their industry reputation for software development. If you ask, you can find them. Otherwise, learn to love better practices.
It is remarkable to see hundreds of response comments where the author takes no personal responsibility for their own unhealthy life choices and expects all the rest of us to pay for the long term damage they cause to their own body. Rather, we get nit picking about BMI 30 vs 32, weight lifting (for Christ's sakes!), and rejection of the known facts that fat people, after a few years delay, get lots and lots of chronic, expensive diseases. So pick a measure of "being fat", go for it, and revise it with new facts.
Wake up. Take responsibility for your own heavy eating and lack of exercise.
Xerox PARC had personal computers connected with Ethernet in the laboratory in 1976. Yes, these were not commercially available, but the technology was pretty much the same as seen later when commercial products were introduced (by others). About then (maybe 1977), a researcher installed some software on one PC to do an experiment in load sharing among PCs. The software replicated across the entire lab and generated a storm of traffic that shut everything down. The first PC virus was an denial of service attack.
If Canada doesn't want our streaming video, then the US can stop using Canadian newsprint paper supply. Is that a fair trade, eh?
This is the wrong set of questions for reasons that many people have laid out - no way to define "illegal copying", no hardware to support, no architecture, no mass appeal - DRM appeals mostly to media companies, yada yada.
A better set of questions would be: Have art creators, e.g.,musicians, movie actors, writers, been seriously harmed by the lack of DRM? If they have been harmed to some extent, can they take actions, other than using DRM, to compensate, or even come out ahead? I specifically leave out media corporations in the issue of being harmed because they are businesses and like any other business they need to deal with technological change. Risk is the nature of business, and businesses must change operations, and not legislate their way out of difficulties.
Concentrate on getting into the best college you can get into. In addition to math and science grades, that means good grades in English, etc. too, because top performers have to think in large terms and communicate. In the summer, volunteer at a local museum, historical society, etc. to help them with IT tasks. You'll get a more challenging assignment than you can get at most businesses - at this stage in your development. But be prepared to do it without much technical help from them. Work hard, and good luck.
Xerox has an amazing history of inventing cool, new technology and not making it a business success. The book, Fumbling the Future, documents many of these technology fizzles, but the list is much, much longer. Xerox continues to have very bright inventors, but no way to sell anything other than printers and copiers. Transient paper sounds cool, but Xerox will not succeed in creating the business "eco-system" (like the things mentioned in above postings), and their sales force can meet their sales targets by selling something they already know, so why bother with something low margin and complicated like weird paper. And like someone said, paper is dying - especially in the office.
Put your bets and your dreams on something else.
Whenever a posting about the "$100 laptop" goes up, there is a flood of techno-elitist criticism on this board - like the CPU can't be overclocked. Who cares? The culture of these comments is elitism and xenophobia at its worst. Who cares if there is some waste / inefficiency / lack of elegance in the program. If it changes the lives of a few thousand kids, it is worth it. Take a look at programs where governments (pick your favorite, or not so favorite one) spend billions of dollars a day and have little chance of positive impact on poor kids in remote locations.
Get up out of your server log, or your WOW game and take a look at real life in remote places. If you don't like what you see in the "$100 laptop" program, stop whining and start doing something about it. They have a website. Go contact them to help.
Goldfish are also smarter than Paul Manger of Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand.
The EU has recently floated comments that Microsoft might not be allowed to launch Vista at all, if it comes "out of the box" with a default preference for Microsoft search. It is interesting that within days, MS has softened their position about search. My own interpretation of this and other EU events is that MS has no respect for the USDOJ, but a billion dollars later in fines, they are starting to get the message that the EU means business in changing Microsoft's business.
Manufacturing errors can cause a lithium ion battery to explode. Reputable manufacturers do tests to screen out defectives, but on rare occasions, test errors occur and a bad battery can sneak through.
Did Kevin Turner's comment "can't take food off our plate" just make some anti-trust lawyer perk up his ears? I wonder. Seems that competing for customers is OK, but actions directed at competitors just for the sake of competitive share have often been viewed as illegal - gasp. Is this what Kevin has in mind? He may some day regret saying that phrase.
The idea to use AJAX to construct popular versions of business applications is a great one, but this implementation plan won't create meaningful change in user behavior. The application has to work on several browsers, has to maintain WYSIWYG appearance and format, needs spell check, etc. in order to be adopted by mainstream business users. At the moment, only geeks (who can spell!) need apply. Rather than a new application every week, spend your resources to make this one a mass market winner by updating with improvements every week. That would be value.