The store employees are expected to know about the full line of products, and advise customers about options and configurations that might suit them. The store employees in effect are providing pre-sales technical support and should be paid appropriately. But then again Apple underpays their engineers also. Go figure.
It should be obvious that going to court to block one IP number at a time is probably the single most wasteful court activity in the history of man. Not only is the required maintenance orders of magnitude more trouble than rebinding the server to a new IP, a new technology is required for dealing with this kind of thing. As robust and self healing as the Internet was designed to be, Hollywood is on the wrong side of this equation. Because of the nature of the communication methods available to the people now. If one person discovers a new IP for TPB, they can post it on the Internet and it will go viral faster than the newest Bluray encryption key. People will be wearing it on their teeshirts. Someone will register it as a domain. I am not sure what the right solution is, but whackamole is not it.
It is true, but Mothra also has other emitted energies that have reconstituted Godzilla,
and also emits an energy that is used by the twin fairies as a transport beam.
I would think DARPA would want to spend some money researching that./s Doug
I agree that DARPA does more than build weapons. In my youth I was fortunate enough to be welcome at UCLA where the ARPA network was under development. Exposure to those people and those ideas energized my interest in machine communications and networking. I have never helped the US government build weapons, but rather have used my skills in the private sector to help raise the quality of life. It is true that DARPA does fund some projects that have military uses. But core technologies can be applied by people of all kinds. I believe that a great many of the DAPA projects have resulted in improvements to the quality of life, here and abroad. Take the ARPA Network for instance. It was funded to create a communication network that could survive an attack, but in fact has become one of the most important methods of human communication, used by most of the world to reach out and bring people together around the world.
Getting to the point, individuals have choices they make to put their energy into military directions or not. And they have the right to live and show by example what they believe. If an individual wants to make a statement by associating with, or not associating with a specific organization or group of people, more power to them. This fellow has beliefs and values, and is willing to show by example what he believes. More power to him.
"How many other industries let you sell something, and then still keep all rights to it?"
Well Microsoft for one has made a mountain of money selling windows. Windows is an amazing money maker in that there is no economy of scale. The CD that costs 25 cents to manufacture still gets sold for hundreds of dollars. It often makes me wonder how you can buy an eMachine with Windows on it for a few dollars more than Windows costs. But specifically, Microsoft doesn't believe you own it, or can resell it. And rather than recycle the machine by giving it to a student or something when you buy your next machine, they would rather it went into the landfill, with all the other gallium arsenide. In the old days, you used to be able to contact the software manufacturer and for a small fee, re-register a product when transferred to a new owner.
I guess it is the user facing aspect of computers that I am most disappointed with. For me, the text editor is the performance benchmark. I edit large programs, sometimes thousands of lines. Way back, I remember running Wordstar on a Wyse 50 terminal at 38400 with no handshaking required, and the code flew past. Later on in the Windows NT time, I had a code editor with what I would call a live scroll bar. You moved the scroll bar, and the text flew past, thousands of lines if that was what you were working on. I could really get around in the code. Soon afterwards, things slowed down a lot, and because the hardware and software could not keep up, Microsoft detached the scroll bar from the document, and when you stopped scrolling, the doc repainted. I could no longer scroll through my programs at top speed, looking for familiar shapes to tell me where I was in my large program. Then a while back I switched to the Mac, and regained that "live" sort of scrolling that I really want for my working tools. During my travels through professional programming, people gave me various guidelines about how long users should be made to wait for results, usually gauged in seconds. It seems like even though I have a modern machine with Windows 7, plenty of ram... It often makes me wait 30 seconds for a program to load. I used tons of different operating systems over the years, but it was the Unix based workstations that finally caught my interest. I am afraid just adding SCO failed to make a PC into a workstation, but Mac OS X on top of substantial Intel hardware assets makes what I consider a good workstation. I still have to use Windows for some things, but not by choice, and I don't enjoy the experience.
I feel like you are missing the point. I believe the critical point about what is going on right now is not about tablets but rather ARM based desktop machines. I am ready to accept that tablets are turnkey devices, appliances, that are pretty much what they are. I know some people want to hack them and I think they should be able to, but I want to get back to the desktop for a moment.
So far we haven't seen any major activity with ARM on the desktop, but the ARM cores have come a long way, and some day soon we may see a massive core desktop machines that is ARM, and then we will very much want the freedom to run Linux on it because it will be a powerful little HPC. A very serious desktop.
Whether you want it for gaming, or you just want a runs like lightening machine to program on... When that day comes, I really don't want to hear that I can only use it with Windows. Because if we have learned anything about Microsoft over the years, it is that they can write terribly sluggish operating systems that ALWAYS use up most of the computing power before the user gets to run anything.
I have said it before and I will say it again now. Computers are a thousand times faster than they were when Windows first came out. They also have a thousand times more memory, and a thousand times more hard disk. But they don't run all that much faster than Windows 3.1 did, and I think we are owed an explanation.
But getting back to the ARM on the desktop. The Microsoft certification guidelines for ARM based equipment specified that the SECURE BOOTING will run in STANDARD MODE ONLY and not CUSTOM MODE. EVER.
Unless Microsoft wants to pay for all the development going into these platforms, who are they to mandate that only their software can run on them?
The other point I want to make, is that their excuse for all this is keeping the systems secure, but it is their system (Windows) that has all the terrible problems with viruses. I am not saying Windows is the only platform that can be pwned, but it is easily a million times worse off than the OS's that they are trying to suppress.
As far as national productivity is concerned, if the US wants to get it's competitive edge back, a ten year plan, not for alternative energy, but rather a ten year plan to get us off Windows and onto ANYTHING ELSE, hopefully *nix based, would be a great start. IMHO
" His foundation has done more than enough to compensate for his sins as a hardcore capitalist."
I disagree. As a result of his actions, the once vibrant independent software marketplace is but a shadow of what it could have become. Also he has subjected the users of the world to the awful, sluggish, virus ridden, bug ridden, Windows experience. There were and are better alternatives, but his marketing lobbyists have wired the system past any hope of redemption any time soon. Then he left his company in the hands of a real asshole.
Personally, I have been enjoying computers more side I switched off of Windows. But here is my take about Steve... He ultimately ended up with plenty of money (WEALTH), He became extremely famous (FAME), and he had a great deal of influence in regards to the products made by Apple that are used by a lot of people (POWER). Despite all these things, he delighted in providing products that made people happy. He was definitely not "luke warm", and had strongly held opinions about many things. He wasn't a saint. I don't worship him, but I am fond of his company and most of their products.
"the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! "
Gee, and I thought the name referred to the fact that the OS had evolved. I wonder if they expect to use an operating system that sprung
up fully formed and was divine at version 1.0.
"Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. "
This is just too off the wall for me to comment on...
"Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent."
I was never sure about the logo, but it is not "clearly" anything, except colorful IMHO
"This OS -- and its Darwin offspring -- extensively use what are called "daemons" (which is how Pagans write "demon" -- they are notoriously poor spellers: magick, vampyre, etc.) "
The "daemons" are a joke which has been in Unix for decades, and has nothing to do with Apple.
"to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?"
You could just as easily use "chmod 777" which does not refer to the beast.
While on the face of it, it was an ego thing that they were smart enough to have this compatibility layer. Then when I looked deeper, it turned out they had a bridge between active directory and NIS. But looking even deeper, it only worked with AD as the master and NIS in slave mode. Why am I not surprised. So if you basically had a Unix shop, and was using NIS, you could still consolidate credentials for both the Unix world and the Windows world, but only by making Windows the big dog. Again why am I not surprised?
It is too obvious you have never used ssh. Working interactively is exactly what t does. I can't believe I have allowed a troll to drag me into this:-(
These days all supercomputers only stay viable until either someone with more money or someone with a higher power cpu comes along. So you pay a fortune to set all this up and you have a window of opportunity during which it is exciting and likely to draw some serious users it's way. If it is fast enough you might even get the NSA to just lease all the time. But (and this should be obvious) you have to hit the ground running. By the time the hardware is ready, you have to have all the software architecture well understood and the business structure that goes with it in place so that when you turn it on, there are customers lined up ready to go, otherwise you are pissing in the wind. IF you do everything right, you may even get enough clients to pay for the thing before some other nerd has one better and they don't ring your phone any more. If you are just now wondering about a distro, and not sure what GPU you are buying in bulk, then you are a rank amateur and bound to lose.
It is unclear how anyone can criticize Apple for admitting they have more to learn about providing Internet services. The Internet is constantly evolving and anyone who says they know everything about the Internet are blowhards. I have been using.mac and later mobile me for about five years now and overall I have been very satisfied and happy for the service provided at the price.
In fact, Vivek Wadhwa believes that colleges should tell computer science and engineering students that "between age 40 and 45 you'll hit your peak, so plan for it."
It happens that I hit that peak in 2000 when outsourcing took it's toll on domestic software contracting. Between the loss of my hard saved retirement when the tech stocks dumped, and the subsequent difficulty competing with disposable H1B pseudo engineers from India... The time and money I invested in equipment, software development tools, and reference materials, in addition to the time and effort invested in my own engineering skills, I was unprepared to see all that come to naught. It is difficult not to be bitter, especially when I hear people talk about how Bill Gates invented the personal computer and made computers easy to use. I want to vomit.
It was Novell that began the bequeathing of "Engineer" titles to people who could simply pass a test. The Certified Network Engineer title was granted to people who knew how to administer Novell Netware, and I was very unimpressed with the scope of the information needed to pass the test. I have spoken with people that don't want to hear you are any kind of engineer if you don't have at least a PE.
The value in software development is in why thing are done certain ways. Developers gain experience as they create software when things don't work. As a result, they remember that if things are certain ways, there are problems. Then in the future, while writing code, they do things a certain way knowing that results will be better, As they go from employer to employer, the products the write are consistently reliable and efficient and maintainable. As time went on, these kinds of folks were know as software engineers. The developers of this kind are different than the outsourced programmers because they remember "why" things are done in certain ways. These days, employers don't realize or value the difference and select employees strictly on the basis of specific skills and pay rate. These new age programmers write code that has the appearance of functionality, but any small variation in the application platform results in unreliability that is difficult to explain or fix. Beyond that, the majority of new schools don't bother to read the "why's", but just the specific techniques, and nothing more. The results of this kind of thinking is that contemporary software suffers from a variety of problems, and no amount of attention from the same people that wrote the code can fix problems that are the result of programming done without an appreciation for the underlying issues. The contemporary method of "manufacturing" focuses on the bottom line. How cheaply can you manufacture the product? How little can you pay the workers? How few benefits can you provide? If the only criteria in manufacturing is bottom line costs, then there is very little difference between domestic product and that product manufactured in foreign countries where minimum wage is set in terms of poverty level pay. You get what you pay for. The "Silicon Valley Effect" was about engineers in the valley leaving their employers when they had a better idea for a product, and their companies weren't interested in selling a better product. In general, these people left their old companies not because they had an idea how to build a better product, not how to build the same product with workers paid fewer dollars per hour. This is not what is being taught to MBA's these days, but rather how to keep the stockholders happy, not by building better rodents, but rather by squeezing the product out for fewer dollars, profit being the only criteria. Often, they don't consider long term support costs. I believe if companies were to understand these facts and begin hiring those better trained engineers who remember why things are done certain ways, (usually to enhance reliability), the bottom lines would improve, and the stockholders would be happy.
This thread digressed into a discussion about the US military budget. What we should be worrying about is whether the alien's are coming here to exterminate us. For far less than our yearly defense budget, we should be able to initiate a program of alien education, where we teach the aliens that we neither want to blow them up, or eat them, or steal their petroleum reserves. Well, two out of three isn't bad.:-)
If I understood what you said, that is because micros of manages to use up all the extra horsepower each time the hardware advances.
I am not surprised the customers saw very little gain.
Slashdot Mirror
The store employees are expected to know about the full line of products, and advise customers about options and configurations that might suit them. The store employees in effect are providing pre-sales technical support and should be paid appropriately. But then again Apple underpays their engineers also. Go figure.
It should be obvious that going to court to block one IP number at a time is probably the single most wasteful court activity in the history of man. Not only is the required maintenance orders of magnitude more trouble than rebinding the server to a new IP, a new technology is required for dealing with this kind of thing. As robust and self healing as the Internet was designed to be, Hollywood is on the wrong side of this equation. Because of the nature of the communication methods available to the people now. If one person discovers a new IP for TPB, they can post it on the Internet and it will go viral faster than the newest Bluray encryption key. People will be wearing it on their teeshirts. Someone will register it as a domain. I am not sure what the right solution is, but whackamole is not it.
Yes you never know when those script kitties will get cracking.
It is true, but Mothra also has other emitted energies that have reconstituted Godzilla, and also emits an energy that is used by the twin fairies as a transport beam. I would think DARPA would want to spend some money researching that. /s Doug
I agree that DARPA does more than build weapons. In my youth I was fortunate enough to be welcome at UCLA where the ARPA network was under development. Exposure to those people and those ideas energized my interest in machine communications and networking. I have never helped the US government build weapons, but rather have used my skills in the private sector to help raise the quality of life. It is true that DARPA does fund some projects that have military uses. But core technologies can be applied by people of all kinds. I believe that a great many of the DAPA projects have resulted in improvements to the quality of life, here and abroad. Take the ARPA Network for instance. It was funded to create a communication network that could survive an attack, but in fact has become one of the most important methods of human communication, used by most of the world to reach out and bring people together around the world. Getting to the point, individuals have choices they make to put their energy into military directions or not. And they have the right to live and show by example what they believe. If an individual wants to make a statement by associating with, or not associating with a specific organization or group of people, more power to them. This fellow has beliefs and values, and is willing to show by example what he believes. More power to him.
"How many other industries let you sell something, and then still keep all rights to it?" Well Microsoft for one has made a mountain of money selling windows. Windows is an amazing money maker in that there is no economy of scale. The CD that costs 25 cents to manufacture still gets sold for hundreds of dollars. It often makes me wonder how you can buy an eMachine with Windows on it for a few dollars more than Windows costs. But specifically, Microsoft doesn't believe you own it, or can resell it. And rather than recycle the machine by giving it to a student or something when you buy your next machine, they would rather it went into the landfill, with all the other gallium arsenide. In the old days, you used to be able to contact the software manufacturer and for a small fee, re-register a product when transferred to a new owner.
I guess it is the user facing aspect of computers that I am most disappointed with. For me, the text editor is the performance benchmark. I edit large programs, sometimes thousands of lines. Way back, I remember running Wordstar on a Wyse 50 terminal at 38400 with no handshaking required, and the code flew past. Later on in the Windows NT time, I had a code editor with what I would call a live scroll bar. You moved the scroll bar, and the text flew past, thousands of lines if that was what you were working on. I could really get around in the code. Soon afterwards, things slowed down a lot, and because the hardware and software could not keep up, Microsoft detached the scroll bar from the document, and when you stopped scrolling, the doc repainted. I could no longer scroll through my programs at top speed, looking for familiar shapes to tell me where I was in my large program. Then a while back I switched to the Mac, and regained that "live" sort of scrolling that I really want for my working tools. During my travels through professional programming, people gave me various guidelines about how long users should be made to wait for results, usually gauged in seconds. It seems like even though I have a modern machine with Windows 7, plenty of ram... It often makes me wait 30 seconds for a program to load. I used tons of different operating systems over the years, but it was the Unix based workstations that finally caught my interest. I am afraid just adding SCO failed to make a PC into a workstation, but Mac OS X on top of substantial Intel hardware assets makes what I consider a good workstation. I still have to use Windows for some things, but not by choice, and I don't enjoy the experience.
I feel like you are missing the point. I believe the critical point about what is going on right now is not about tablets but rather ARM based desktop machines. I am ready to accept that tablets are turnkey devices, appliances, that are pretty much what they are. I know some people want to hack them and I think they should be able to, but I want to get back to the desktop for a moment. So far we haven't seen any major activity with ARM on the desktop, but the ARM cores have come a long way, and some day soon we may see a massive core desktop machines that is ARM, and then we will very much want the freedom to run Linux on it because it will be a powerful little HPC. A very serious desktop. Whether you want it for gaming, or you just want a runs like lightening machine to program on... When that day comes, I really don't want to hear that I can only use it with Windows. Because if we have learned anything about Microsoft over the years, it is that they can write terribly sluggish operating systems that ALWAYS use up most of the computing power before the user gets to run anything. I have said it before and I will say it again now. Computers are a thousand times faster than they were when Windows first came out. They also have a thousand times more memory, and a thousand times more hard disk. But they don't run all that much faster than Windows 3.1 did, and I think we are owed an explanation. But getting back to the ARM on the desktop. The Microsoft certification guidelines for ARM based equipment specified that the SECURE BOOTING will run in STANDARD MODE ONLY and not CUSTOM MODE. EVER. Unless Microsoft wants to pay for all the development going into these platforms, who are they to mandate that only their software can run on them? The other point I want to make, is that their excuse for all this is keeping the systems secure, but it is their system (Windows) that has all the terrible problems with viruses. I am not saying Windows is the only platform that can be pwned, but it is easily a million times worse off than the OS's that they are trying to suppress. As far as national productivity is concerned, if the US wants to get it's competitive edge back, a ten year plan, not for alternative energy, but rather a ten year plan to get us off Windows and onto ANYTHING ELSE, hopefully *nix based, would be a great start. IMHO
I disagree. As a result of his actions, the once vibrant independent software marketplace is but a shadow of what it could have become. Also he has subjected the users of the world to the awful, sluggish, virus ridden, bug ridden, Windows experience. There were and are better alternatives, but his marketing lobbyists have wired the system past any hope of redemption any time soon. Then he left his company in the hands of a real asshole.
Personally, I have been enjoying computers more side I switched off of Windows. But here is my take about Steve... He ultimately ended up with plenty of money (WEALTH), He became extremely famous (FAME), and he had a great deal of influence in regards to the products made by Apple that are used by a lot of people (POWER). Despite all these things, he delighted in providing products that made people happy. He was definitely not "luke warm", and had strongly held opinions about many things. He wasn't a saint. I don't worship him, but I am fond of his company and most of their products.
"the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called... Darwin! That's right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! " Gee, and I thought the name referred to the fact that the OS had evolved. I wonder if they expect to use an operating system that sprung up fully formed and was divine at version 1.0. "Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an "Open Source" license, which is just another name for Communism. " This is just too off the wall for me to comment on... "Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent." I was never sure about the logo, but it is not "clearly" anything, except colorful IMHO "This OS -- and its Darwin offspring -- extensively use what are called "daemons" (which is how Pagans write "demon" -- they are notoriously poor spellers: magick, vampyre, etc.) " The "daemons" are a joke which has been in Unix for decades, and has nothing to do with Apple. "to open up certain locked files one has to run a program much like the DOS prompt in Microsoft Windows and type in a secret code: "chmod 666". What other horrors lurk in this thing?" You could just as easily use "chmod 777" which does not refer to the beast.
I sincerely hope they are using Microsoft Windows so they can experience those things without any effort on the part of hackers.
For a moment I confused barratry with brigandage. My bad :-)
While on the face of it, it was an ego thing that they were smart enough to have this compatibility layer. Then when I looked deeper, it turned out they had a bridge between active directory and NIS. But looking even deeper, it only worked with AD as the master and NIS in slave mode. Why am I not surprised. So if you basically had a Unix shop, and was using NIS, you could still consolidate credentials for both the Unix world and the Windows world, but only by making Windows the big dog. Again why am I not surprised?
beuges doesn't really exist, he(it) is just a powerscript running on a windows box.
It is too obvious you have never used ssh. Working interactively is exactly what t does. I can't believe I have allowed a troll to drag me into this :-(
These days all supercomputers only stay viable until either someone with more money or someone with a higher power cpu comes along. So you pay a fortune to set all this up and you have a window of opportunity during which it is exciting and likely to draw some serious users it's way. If it is fast enough you might even get the NSA to just lease all the time. But (and this should be obvious) you have to hit the ground running. By the time the hardware is ready, you have to have all the software architecture well understood and the business structure that goes with it in place so that when you turn it on, there are customers lined up ready to go, otherwise you are pissing in the wind. IF you do everything right, you may even get enough clients to pay for the thing before some other nerd has one better and they don't ring your phone any more. If you are just now wondering about a distro, and not sure what GPU you are buying in bulk, then you are a rank amateur and bound to lose.
But they kept the wood for two years without bringing charges, what's with that?
It is unclear how anyone can criticize Apple for admitting they have more to learn about providing Internet services. The Internet is constantly evolving and anyone who says they know everything about the Internet are blowhards. I have been using .mac and later mobile me for about five years now and overall I have been very satisfied and happy for the service provided at the price.
In fact, Vivek Wadhwa believes that colleges should tell computer science and engineering students that "between age 40 and 45 you'll hit your peak, so plan for it." It happens that I hit that peak in 2000 when outsourcing took it's toll on domestic software contracting. Between the loss of my hard saved retirement when the tech stocks dumped, and the subsequent difficulty competing with disposable H1B pseudo engineers from India... The time and money I invested in equipment, software development tools, and reference materials, in addition to the time and effort invested in my own engineering skills, I was unprepared to see all that come to naught. It is difficult not to be bitter, especially when I hear people talk about how Bill Gates invented the personal computer and made computers easy to use. I want to vomit.
It was Novell that began the bequeathing of "Engineer" titles to people who could simply pass a test. The Certified Network Engineer title was granted to people who knew how to administer Novell Netware, and I was very unimpressed with the scope of the information needed to pass the test. I have spoken with people that don't want to hear you are any kind of engineer if you don't have at least a PE.
The value in software development is in why thing are done certain ways. Developers gain experience as they create software when things don't work. As a result, they remember that if things are certain ways, there are problems. Then in the future, while writing code, they do things a certain way knowing that results will be better, As they go from employer to employer, the products the write are consistently reliable and efficient and maintainable. As time went on, these kinds of folks were know as software engineers. The developers of this kind are different than the outsourced programmers because they remember "why" things are done in certain ways. These days, employers don't realize or value the difference and select employees strictly on the basis of specific skills and pay rate. These new age programmers write code that has the appearance of functionality, but any small variation in the application platform results in unreliability that is difficult to explain or fix. Beyond that, the majority of new schools don't bother to read the "why's", but just the specific techniques, and nothing more. The results of this kind of thinking is that contemporary software suffers from a variety of problems, and no amount of attention from the same people that wrote the code can fix problems that are the result of programming done without an appreciation for the underlying issues. The contemporary method of "manufacturing" focuses on the bottom line. How cheaply can you manufacture the product? How little can you pay the workers? How few benefits can you provide? If the only criteria in manufacturing is bottom line costs, then there is very little difference between domestic product and that product manufactured in foreign countries where minimum wage is set in terms of poverty level pay. You get what you pay for. The "Silicon Valley Effect" was about engineers in the valley leaving their employers when they had a better idea for a product, and their companies weren't interested in selling a better product. In general, these people left their old companies not because they had an idea how to build a better product, not how to build the same product with workers paid fewer dollars per hour. This is not what is being taught to MBA's these days, but rather how to keep the stockholders happy, not by building better rodents, but rather by squeezing the product out for fewer dollars, profit being the only criteria. Often, they don't consider long term support costs. I believe if companies were to understand these facts and begin hiring those better trained engineers who remember why things are done certain ways, (usually to enhance reliability), the bottom lines would improve, and the stockholders would be happy.
This thread digressed into a discussion about the US military budget. What we should be worrying about is whether the alien's are coming here to exterminate us. For far less than our yearly defense budget, we should be able to initiate a program of alien education, where we teach the aliens that we neither want to blow them up, or eat them, or steal their petroleum reserves. Well, two out of three isn't bad. :-)
Now you have me sweating. When that day comes I will have to reluctantly switch to Linux.
If I understood what you said, that is because micros of manages to use up all the extra horsepower each time the hardware advances. I am not surprised the customers saw very little gain.