I concur; if anything, Trademarks can be used to enforce branding/quality. A company trademark is like a personal signature.
What I still don't understand is why people are talking only about openness in software, and ignoring how closed hardware is becoming... try writing an alternative to the Award-Phoenix BIOS and you're see what I mean (yes, I know they're some projects to do just that, but look at how hard it is an how many NDAs would be involved if you wanted to support most hardware)....
Most sales people went into that field because they are good at manipulating people on an emotional level; some actively hate any quantatative methods, and cannot do basic statistical analysis.
Can you blame them, though? How many people really buy based on scientific evidence and through research, rather than emotions? E.g. we all "know" that Linux is more secure than Windows...
Depends on the CS degree, and if they use short/medium or long term memory while studying, and if they can related theory to use cases (i.e. apply it) or not.
In my CS degree, it's painfully low-level. Although, I already know about rounding errors and so on, and did (part of) and Electronics degree first (taught partially be an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer who was very keen on us king things low-level, and partially by someone who was keen on the phrase "by first principles"), so I guess I'm an atypical example.
I'll have to see how the graduates with no prior experience fare. Speaking of which, I have an assignment to go prepare for...
Actually creating technical specs is worth a book in itself; check the article on Joel on Software.
You can learn the process... and the mockups are actually a good start. You just need to go further and develop the app. by thinking "what happens behind this fascade". Also, if you don't have any formal accounting qualifications yet, get your boss to pay for them, since that's the type of work you're doing... five years later you'll probally be glad you have then when you're... making more money than you can count, or whatever.
You said: "I wish I could pick the ear of a billionaire and make this a reality."; but maybe by making this a reality, you could become a billionaire... or, at least, a thousand-aire (not a word, but it should be) or millionaire.
DEC started as a "small company", and C was developed for their PDP-11 series, and we still use the stuff with minor modifications... by "small company", the article I read mentioned sales of only 5 million dollars a year. Possibly no-one at DEC made a million personally for several years after, but the potential was there since they were shipping products and generating revenues.
Since you have the idea and see the benefits, you could make a start at making it a reality and see how far you get.
> I'd pay 20% more for a computer that I knew would have new parts available in 5 years when it > starts to legitimately wear out.
The market has had the space for such a system for a long time, and now that everything is overpowered, there has never been a better time... but the microsoft monopoly and the groupthink that results has made it difficult, because no-one else has produced system software which appears to be that consistent over the same 5+ year period, from the user and also application levels, as microsoft has. This has been their strategy from the start, but no-one else has actually tried to create an image of consistency for the application developer or user level, asside from JAVA recently (application developer) or the PlayStation series of video game consoles (user level, and applications via hardware emulation).
The rewards are availabe for anyone who does it, but it would need to be a big effort backed by lots of marketing and there is certain to be resistance from the established players in the tech. space. Also, despite wider-spread education, in terms of actually getting financing and getting factories set up and so forth, they are still few people in the world that could bring products on this scale to reality.
Even if you do it, technically, "this site only works with Internet Explorer", "I miss having Quicken", and "I only know how to use Microsoft Outlook for my PIM" are going to be the complaints for the masses. For videogame systems, Sony has proved that you don't need mario... but they are Sony, nobody else can market a brand as well.
also, there hasn't been much talk up to now about how disruptive to trade the loss of the World Trade Cenres really was. It seems like the concept is that American lives are worth mourning, but everyone else is just fodder and what matters is how they affect business... notably, American business; this concept is so deeply engrained that it isn't even visible, and the justifications in the reply to the parent demonstrate that.
I thought the article was extremely insensitive to the loss of life which occured; if the same had been said about the attacks in NY, the author of the story would have been flamed to hell, and it would never have made the front page of any blog, much less Slashdot.
The linked article is part one of a three part series, but the other two parts haven't been written yet, so it leave me feeling that the story is a bit to premature to link to at this point.
But, then again, it could just be "duped" later, I suppose.
Ideally, this is true, but there's also the danger than a potential genius will never develop due to environmental defecits which (s)he is unable to overcome; perhaps because they believe that environment doesn't make much of a difference and their intrinsic abilities should be enough.
This article is good because it shows that environment, and more importantly, ability to cope with, adapt to, and benefit from, social connections and economic or other material support, is critical for realising one's full potential.
Genius is more than a frame of mind, it is a lifestyle.
This question probally betrays my ignorance, but where's the AMD Compiler? Its true that free compiler may support AMD, but it would seem that AMD should invest in creating an optomising compiler for itself... perhaps one that can work as a drop-in substitute for Microsoft's in Visual Studio?
In any case, Intel clearly was under-handed here... but its just another case of them being bigger and more popular, but not better.
There was a sound card company once that decided that the PC speaker was just not enough, and decided to add multi-voice synth capabilties to PCs. You might remeber that company for its "Ad Lib" line of cards. They were simple and easy to reverse engineer, so Creative Labs did just that, and also expanded on the concept. For whatever reason, Ad Lib went out of business rather than sue or counter-innovate.
A few years later, Creative sued another sound card company - I think it was Essoniq, but I am not sure, it might have been Aureal or somebody else - and lost the court case (their case was flimsy from the outset), but the legal battle so weakened the target company that Creative bought them out, then basically axed their technology (or maybe the good engineers left and no-one knew how to duplicate it).
The moral of that long rant is that perhaps hardware companies are a bit paranoid about these things. They have reason to be, unless they have a really spanking legal team.
The oldest hardware I have is a Commodore 64, which is (should still be?) in working condition, although due to space and time considerations, I haven't used it in a few months.
The 13-inch Goldstar monitor that I used with it doubles as a TV (when connected to a VCR acting as a tuner), the picture on that is crisper than any TV in the house, even though it is 14+ years old.
The Open Source movement and its spiritual cousin, the Free Software movement, were started based on the principle of empowerment of the end-user.
Even if she wasn't able to themselves alter software to their liking, the source would give the ability of a trained professional who they hired (perhaps for free, if said professional was "the neighbourhood geek").
However, this plan is thwarted if the specifications to the hardware upon which the software is meant to run is closed. This situation actually occured back in the origins of, I think, the FS movement, involving a printer which had closed software. However, instead of focusing on the pivotal point of open hardware specification (from which any amount of open source drivers and utilities can be made), the movement somehow focused on the second-order problem of access to source code.
Actually, even source code is probally less important than man pages (proper documentation). Did UNIX really thrive on plaintext C code along, or was it "man" that won the day as well?
The problem with the PCI device list, and the Sun CPU, and various video cards and sound cards without Open Source drivers is a problem of closed hardware.
The patent system was actually invented to protect hardware inventions... it should be used, rather than obscurity, to protect hardware. Software, on the other hand, could be a trade secret. Or open. Or whatever. The current situation, however, is that Microsoft Tax is based on their software - drivers, OS, Application Layer, being closed... and they're successful because their API ("man" on steriods in the form of MSDN) is Open!
Why doesn't the Geek community see this, already? Open Source doesn't matter... it will always be a personal choice anyhow... Open Hardware, however, could be made a legal imperative. Which will have numerous benefits:
-Any platform could have driver support, which is the reall barrier to Linux winning on the desktop -The same embrace and extend techniques which Creative Labs used on Ad Lib could be used on Creative Labs! -Emulators would be intrinsically legal, and actually, jobs would be created to emulate competitor's projects -Companies would not go out of business so easily. Be had the specs for the BeBox online, but did not go out of business because they were cloned -Open Hardware ultimately gave us PCs. And PCs ultimately gave us Linux, Windows, and i386 *BSD ports. -and PCs also gave us 3Dfx, or realtime rendering on the desktop.
Once Again: Open Hardware is good. Open software, a passing curiousity at best, and irrelevant in the face of closed hardware and the legal, political, and financial weight that backs it.
How can you call Lemmings non-violent? Lemmings are blown up, squashed, spalt into the ground and discentegrate... and sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice little cute lemmings to win levels.
Not saying this is a bad thing, the game is fun and I enjoyed every second playing it (well, any game in the series).
Just want to mention that violence isn't really that objective a criteria.
PC-133 support is important, but the AGP 4x currently is not.[snip]
Although there may not me much of a techical advantage in having 4x AGP, the fact that some graphics cards (Ultra TNT2, I belive) already support may encourage a lot of gamers to get them. Remember that some PC gamers stay at the top of the technology curve, at great expense.
It might nto have much of an impact on the market, but 4x AGP is a very marketable point, after all, it sounds a twice as fast as 2x AGP, and besides, it's the latest, greatest thing. (said in an entusiastic marketing droid voice)
Slashdot Mirror
Yea,
and I secure my car by having a bicycle, instead.
Sure, I get wet when it rains, but I'm a so much safer.
God, is there an internet rule that states that for any reasonably technical topic that there will be an xkcd comic for it? =)
140. XKCD can explain everything. explain it or it goes.
http://rulesoftheinternet.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
You might be able to do the job, but you lack confidence...
We might be able to do the job, but we lack details and motivation.
So, hire a more experienced consultant to help you out.
Or just think some more about it, and enjoy learning by doing.
I concur; if anything, Trademarks can be used to enforce branding/quality. A company trademark is like a personal signature.
What I still don't understand is why people are talking only about openness in software, and ignoring how closed hardware is becoming... try writing an alternative to the Award-Phoenix BIOS and you're see what I mean (yes, I know they're some projects to do just that, but look at how hard it is an how many NDAs would be involved if you wanted to support most hardware)....
Most sales people went into that field because they are good at manipulating people on an emotional level; some actively hate any quantatative methods, and cannot do basic statistical analysis.
Can you blame them, though? How many people really buy based on scientific evidence and through research, rather than emotions? E.g. we all "know" that Linux is more secure than Windows...
Depends on the CS degree, and if they use short/medium or long term memory while studying, and if they can related theory to use cases (i.e. apply it) or not.
In my CS degree, it's painfully low-level. Although, I already know about rounding errors and so on, and did (part of) and Electronics degree first (taught partially be an Electrical and Mechanical Engineer who was very keen on us king things low-level, and partially by someone who was keen on the phrase "by first principles"), so I guess I'm an atypical example.
I'll have to see how the graduates with no prior experience fare. Speaking of which, I have an assignment to go prepare for...
won't he get sued immediately for something like this?
Not in a free country...
Actually creating technical specs is worth a book in itself; check the article on Joel on Software.
You can learn the process... and the mockups are actually a good start. You just need to go further and develop the app. by thinking "what happens behind this fascade". Also, if you don't have any formal accounting qualifications yet, get your boss to pay for them, since that's the type of work you're doing... five years later you'll probally be glad you have then when you're... making more money than you can count, or whatever.
I'm sure they were bribed... perhaps they were told that the servers run on Linux...
See The Messenger,
Kill The Messenger.
Btw, all of this talk started with a quote from Office Space...
You said: "I wish I could pick the ear of a billionaire and make this a reality."; but maybe by making this a reality, you could become a billionaire... or, at least, a thousand-aire (not a word, but it should be) or millionaire.
DEC started as a "small company", and C was developed for their PDP-11 series, and we still use the stuff with minor modifications... by "small company", the article I read mentioned sales of only 5 million dollars a year. Possibly no-one at DEC made a million personally for several years after, but the potential was there since they were shipping products and generating revenues.
Since you have the idea and see the benefits, you could make a start at making it a reality and see how far you get.
> I'd pay 20% more for a computer that I knew would have new parts available in 5 years when it
> starts to legitimately wear out.
The market has had the space for such a system for a long time, and now that everything is overpowered, there has never been a better time... but the microsoft monopoly and the groupthink that results has made it difficult, because no-one else has produced system software which appears to be that consistent over the same 5+ year period, from the user and also application levels, as microsoft has. This has been their strategy from the start, but no-one else has actually tried to create an image of consistency for the application developer or user level, asside from JAVA recently (application developer) or the PlayStation series of video game consoles (user level, and applications via hardware emulation).
The rewards are availabe for anyone who does it, but it would need to be a big effort backed by lots of marketing and there is certain to be resistance from the established players in the tech. space. Also, despite wider-spread education, in terms of actually getting financing and getting factories set up and so forth, they are still few people in the world that could bring products on this scale to reality.
Even if you do it, technically, "this site only works with Internet Explorer", "I miss having Quicken", and "I only know how to use Microsoft Outlook for my PIM" are going to be the complaints for the masses. For videogame systems, Sony has proved that you don't need mario... but they are Sony, nobody else can market a brand as well.
also, there hasn't been much talk up to now about how disruptive to trade the loss of the World Trade Cenres really was. It seems like the concept is that American lives are worth mourning, but everyone else is just fodder and what matters is how they affect business... notably, American business; this concept is so deeply engrained that it isn't even visible, and the justifications in the reply to the parent demonstrate that.
I thought the article was extremely insensitive to the loss of life which occured; if the same had been said about the attacks in NY, the author of the story would have been flamed to hell, and it would never have made the front page of any blog, much less Slashdot.
The linked article is part one of a three part series, but the other two parts haven't been written yet, so it leave me feeling that the story is a bit to premature to link to at this point.
But, then again, it could just be "duped" later, I suppose.
Ideally, this is true, but there's also the danger than a potential genius will never develop due to environmental defecits which (s)he is unable to overcome; perhaps because they believe that environment doesn't make much of a difference and their intrinsic abilities should be enough.
This article is good because it shows that environment, and more importantly, ability to cope with, adapt to, and benefit from, social connections and economic or other material support, is critical for realising one's full potential.
Genius is more than a frame of mind, it is a lifestyle.
This question probally betrays my ignorance, but where's the AMD Compiler? Its true that free compiler may support AMD, but it would seem that AMD should invest in creating an optomising compiler for itself... perhaps one that can work as a drop-in substitute for Microsoft's in Visual Studio?
In any case, Intel clearly was under-handed here... but its just another case of them being bigger and more popular, but not better.
There was a sound card company once that decided that the PC speaker was just not enough, and decided to add multi-voice synth capabilties to PCs. You might remeber that company for its "Ad Lib" line of cards. They were simple and easy to reverse engineer, so Creative Labs did just that, and also expanded on the concept. For whatever reason, Ad Lib went out of business rather than sue or counter-innovate.
A few years later, Creative sued another sound card company - I think it was Essoniq, but I am not sure, it might have been Aureal or somebody else - and lost the court case (their case was flimsy from the outset), but the legal battle so weakened the target company that Creative bought them out, then basically axed their technology (or maybe the good engineers left and no-one knew how to duplicate it).
The moral of that long rant is that perhaps hardware companies are a bit paranoid about these things. They have reason to be, unless they have a really spanking legal team.
The oldest hardware I have is a Commodore 64, which is (should still be?) in working condition, although due to space and time considerations, I haven't used it in a few months.
The 13-inch Goldstar monitor that I used with it doubles as a TV (when connected to a VCR acting as a tuner), the picture on that is crisper than any TV in the house, even though it is 14+ years old.
The Open Source movement and its spiritual cousin, the Free Software movement, were started based on the principle of empowerment of the end-user.
Even if she wasn't able to themselves alter software to their liking, the source would give the ability of a trained professional who they hired (perhaps for free, if said professional was "the neighbourhood geek").
However, this plan is thwarted if the specifications to the hardware upon which the software is meant to run is closed. This situation actually occured back in the origins of, I think, the FS movement, involving a printer which had closed software. However, instead of focusing on the pivotal point of open hardware specification (from which any amount of open source drivers and utilities can be made), the movement somehow focused on the second-order problem of access to source code.
Actually, even source code is probally less important than man pages (proper documentation). Did UNIX really thrive on plaintext C code along, or was it "man" that won the day as well?
The problem with the PCI device list, and the Sun CPU, and various video cards and sound cards without Open Source drivers is a problem of closed hardware.
The patent system was actually invented to protect hardware inventions... it should be used, rather than obscurity, to protect hardware. Software, on the other hand, could be a trade secret. Or open. Or whatever. The current situation, however, is that Microsoft Tax is based on their software - drivers, OS, Application Layer, being closed... and they're successful because their API ("man" on steriods in the form of MSDN) is Open!
Why doesn't the Geek community see this, already? Open Source doesn't matter... it will always be a personal choice anyhow... Open Hardware, however, could be made a legal imperative. Which will have numerous benefits:
-Any platform could have driver support, which is the reall barrier to Linux winning on the desktop
-The same embrace and extend techniques which Creative Labs used on Ad Lib could be used on Creative Labs!
-Emulators would be intrinsically legal, and actually, jobs would be created to emulate competitor's projects
-Companies would not go out of business so easily. Be had the specs for the BeBox online, but did not go out of business because they were cloned
-Open Hardware ultimately gave us PCs. And PCs ultimately gave us Linux, Windows, and i386 *BSD ports.
-and PCs also gave us 3Dfx, or realtime rendering on the desktop.
Once Again: Open Hardware is good. Open software, a passing curiousity at best, and irrelevant in the face of closed hardware and the legal, political, and financial weight that backs it.
How can you call Lemmings non-violent? Lemmings are blown up, squashed, spalt into the ground and discentegrate... and sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice little cute lemmings to win levels.
Not saying this is a bad thing, the game is fun and I enjoyed every second playing it (well, any game in the series).
Just want to mention that violence isn't really that objective a criteria.
PC-133 support is important, but the AGP 4x currently is not.[snip]
Although there may not me much of a techical advantage in having 4x AGP, the fact that some graphics cards (Ultra TNT2, I belive) already support may encourage a lot of gamers to get them. Remember that some PC gamers stay at the top of the technology curve, at great expense.
It might nto have much of an impact on the market, but 4x AGP is a very marketable point, after all, it sounds a twice as fast as 2x AGP, and besides, it's the latest, greatest thing. (said in an entusiastic marketing droid voice)