the flow

Apple and lockdown

2011-01-21T08:17:00.001-08:00

Revisionist history (Score:5, Insightful)

by goombah99 (560566) on Wednesday April 07 2010, @12:26PM (#31763706)
posting this again, since something went wrong the first time:

this is a false dichotomy forged by suggesting that this Steve is good, ergo this steve is bad, then amplifying those traits by mapping them on to perceived standards of today.

I built and sold homebrew computers in the era when the apple II hit the market. At the time we all laughed at the apple as a "toy" because it was so locked down and not built from components. Back then, sonny, you built a computer like an Imsai, altair, cromenco, by starting with a metal box, putting in a non-switiching power supply, choosing the largest capacitors you could fit in the box, then an s-100 (altair) buss. then you picked a cpu board from one manufacturer, some memory cards from another, a keyboard uart decoder from another, a keybaord from another, a video card, and a TV screen modded with an RF converter on channel 4.

These apples were hideously locked down. Switching powersupplies with just wires coming out of a metal box, no way to ugrade the capacity and very little excess capacity. the keyboard was integrated into the case ! and wholly shit a mother board with soldered in chips, video, meomery, and CPU.

Even the address space of the cards you plugged in was decoded on the motherboad not the cards (which allowed the cards to be smaller than the ones for the S-100 bus). THe cards even got regulated voltages not raw rectified AC.

they sucked all the flexibility out of it.

the software was essential to the operation of the hardware not separate from it: a lot of the video management was done in software. the timing one the disk drives they put out used soft sectors not hardware determined sectors (only one hole punched in the floppy instead of 20, one for each sector). Even the memory refresh was handeled on the video updates which in turn were backsided on last half of the 6502's instruction cycle (when it would not be fetching). It was one of the very first systems to successfully use dynamic memory. (Only a fool would not use static memory in an altair, since you had to do all the refresh handling on the memory card).

You had to buy apple floppy disks, and apple plug-in cards for many things cause they were not standard cards or drives.

And of course the apple II in hind sight was one of the most geniuous machines ever built. it's lock downs let hobbiest's soar in other directions. plug in cards were small and the pre-decoded addresses and regulated voltages let you put all your effort into what they did rather than barely getting them to work. the dynamic memory allowed cheaper larger address spaces and the standardization of the video (all apples had to have the same video card) meant all games written would work on all apples. the same was not true of the others' since every s-100 bus machine had some different video card standard.

the use oif software decoding of keyboards and disks and so forth introiduced an era that eventually led to the apple desk top bus in the macintosh. What a brilliant simplication. Now we of course have USB instead of different ports for keyboards, parallel printers, scsi drives, tablets, mice.... But the only reasons we went down that track was Woz's apple paved the way. by making so much of the hardware immutable, the software could rely on standard configurations in every machine and thus software timing of other events became reliable for the very first time.

so this is BS revisionism to say that Woz was all about openness and Jobs all about lock down.

What it was both. lock downs of previously unlocked down things created growth to build on. you were not constantly re-inventing the wheel from scratch. In case you have not noticed it before the thing that makes apples great is they always are expensive: this is because they spec them out at high levels using fewer but a complete set of advanced components even on base models. This means software can always count on a feature being there and thus not shoot for the lowest common denominator. think back to pre-windows XP days about how hard it was to move a mouse or a printer from one PS computer to another but trivial on apples and macs. these days PCs are moving ahead precisely because of standard components. power supplies, USB, SATA. you don't mess around trying to home brew those do you?

Avid/MAudio sucks

2010-08-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/5697733-post21.html

I think it speaks to the lack of talent and vision of the engineers who designed this thing. A few years ago I was offered a job at M-Audio as an electrical engineer to help design their products. Not only did they design M-Audio's line, but Digidesign's product line as well. I ended up not taking the job for 2 reasons:
1) They cut corners where ever they could in their products to save money (and judging by Avid's latest offerings I'm guessing they still adhere to the same philosophy)
2) The engineer's there were pretty clueless. I think a big problem is that most of them are just engineers and don't have a musical background so It's hard for them to design something that sounds good.

So that's kind of turned me off to Avids products.

Erik

Tesla Studio
Vintage Instruments
Analog Outboard Gear
www.TeslaMusik.com

Re:Free =/= Fun

2010-05-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Re:Free =/= Fun (Score:5, Interesting)
by gman003 (1693318) writes: on Thursday May 06, @12:41PM (#32112602)

Too true. Game design is one of the things open source does not do well. Open-source clones are often superior, purely on technical grounds, but fully original open-source games tend to be less fun than commercial ones.

Why is this? Simple. Game design is an art, and a complex one at that. Open-source works well for technical tasks. The Linux kernel is one of the most stable ever, Apache is the best web server I know of, and Firefox is my preferred browser. Open-source fails at artistic tasks simply because the end result is designed by a committee, not a single vision.

I'm working on a game myself right now, and I fully plan to release the engine code as open-source. I will not, however, be making it an open-source project, because then, instead of one unified artistic direction, there will be dozens, pulling the game in different ways.

Game design is not, as most people imagine, a simple task. It takes experience and judgment, knowing not only what to add but what NOT to add. When making Wolfenstein 3D, they originally implemented things like dragging corpses into corners and searching through pockets. These were cut not because they were themselves bad, but because they conflicted with the other elements of the game. If you were to open-source a game without a strong player base with strict ideas of what belongs in the game and what does not, you will end up with a jumbled mess of ideas.

Perhaps, however, an MMO could be made to work. If you limit most contributors to only making new quests and dungeons, it might work. Large-scale balancing and other major changes should be limited to a few people, less than a hundred.

Linux is inherently anti-consumer, pro-business

2009-06-20T09:17:00.001-07:00

Linux is inherently anti-consumer, pro-business (Score:5, Interesting)
by tjstork (137384) on Saturday June 20, @10:39AM (#28401755)

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1275663&cid=28401755

The great mystery of computing is not that Linux is not in the consumer space, but that Windows is so entrenched in the enterprise space.

Windows is inherently a consumer operating system. It has a developer mythology that the dream Windows development is to make that one product that you can sell and make millions with. It's got a rich set of services developers can use to build consumer products, and it treats a product like a product, a property that can be bought, traded, and rented. You've got a well documented set of graphics and sound APIs, a halfway decent networking stack, and a bunch of tools that are frankly geared towards producing consumer products and these things support a healthy consumer market. Consumers, to some degree, actually like to spend money, so that Windows is non-free actually enhances its perceived value in the consumer space. If you receive something or buy something that doesn't work in Windows, its not something that you try and sort out and fix, its time to move on to another product. Everything is a black box good that you pay for, it either works or it doesn't, and that's what people on the consumer level want.

On the other hand, Linux is a total corporate and government system. It has a developer mythology that "welcome to the basement of megacorp, I've got a jar skittles.. we're both cogs.. here's your cube." Thus, the economic prospect that in the Linux world, your work product is worthless in the market sense, but, your boss gets to use the economic benefit of it over and over again, and, if you can get to keep working on it for a bit, that's pretty interesting and you get a paycheck for it. If you want to get rich with Linux, it won't be by making an application. You'd have to make a consumer black box out of it by hosting a web site using it. But all the development and other tools of Linux have a certain corporate basement feel. Nothing is really a consumer level product, but, everything has all sorts of rich nooks and crannies to do a bunch of different corporate tasks. Consumers don't need to replace social security numbers in a giant database with some new form of proprietary identifier, but Linux developers do, and that's where the strength of Linux tools lie.

Do you really want Linux to be a consumer system anyway? To some extent, that means getting rid of an awful lot that is lovable about Linux. It means polishing out (getting rid of), that barely documented switch to a command where an author left a note saying "uh, this piece of code I put in and got to work for this one thing that I was doing but I'm not really maintaining it", or, to not have that feature at all, or, even worse, have the feature, but not the warning. In any case, there's nothing about Windows that reminds me of the guy in the basement offering some skittles in the basement of the power company, but Linux has that in spades, and I like skittles.

For Linux to be a consumer system, we have to have a world where we take art seriously. That means no copying of images, or songs, worrying about who owns what, and, in a corporate world, all of that is a pain in the rear. If we made Linux into a consumer system and had a consumer culture with it, there's no way you could, from your basement, tell the next bit of bits in your desk to get in line, just like all the other bits. We're all just corporate cogs, hey, here's some skittles.

Me thinks that rather than charging to get consumers to adopt Linux, it should be to drive Windows out of the corporation.

console market

2009-06-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1269431&cid=28340327

Horse Shit (Score:5, Interesting)
by sexconker (1179573) on Monday June 15, @04:37PM (#28340327)

With Ubisoft putting out such fantastic titles such as "Imagine: Horsez" by the bucketload, they'll need to show me their full financials before I buy into the $60 million argument.

Developers had no problem jumping ship to the current gen and making money. Games went up $10 on average if you own a 360 or a PS3. They charge you for updates that used to be free, and they charge you to download unlock codes for maps, levels, game modes, costumes, and fucking furniture for your virtual corporate tool. Developers will work out plenty of ways to make morons pay through the nose to cover increasing costs.

OnLive as competition?
Yeah, and I hear that Apple is going to be seriously entering the game market aaaaaaaaaaaany second now.

This is a fucking joke.
The next generation will come around when the current players decide that it's strategically viable.

Let's look at the charts, shall we?

Nintendo has won. They want the current generation to last for as long as they are making buckets and buckets of money.
Nintendo will be the last of the three to go to the next generation (in terms of hard announcements). The ONLY possible scenario that would cause Nintendo to be the first to announce would be the motion controllers from MS or Sony taking away from Nintendo's profits. Nintendo would then make an announcement merely to fuck with the competitors' time tables. (Hint: Natal and Sony's tech will NOT save the 360 or PS3.)

Nintendo will be the last to announce.

MS is in second place, and will likely be the first to announce their next console. MS really want to push Natal to try and steal Nintendo's thunder, but despite their lines about Natal being the next generation XBOX, the fact is the only way MS can capitalize on it is if it's bundled with ALL systems. MS will push this generation as long as it can sell Natal units or Natal + 360 bundles. They need to recoup major cash from their warranty fiasco. MS likely wants Natal to get an extra 18 months to 2 years out of the 360. I don't think it'll be the hot shit they want it to be, but who knows.

MS will announce their next-gen hardware first.

Sony is fucked. I own a PS3 myself and enjoy it, but there's no denying that it simply didn't have the success of the PS2. I think five hundred and ninety-nine US dollars may have had a part to play with that. And with the 360 a year ahead, no one wanted to learn how to develop for the Cell. The bottom line is that Sony will announce the slim PS3 this fall and try to get some momentum, especially in Japan. Sony can capitalize on the release of Final Fantasy XIII along with the slim PS3 in Japan at the end of this year. I don't know if they can do the same thing in the US, especially since FFXIII is on the 360 as well. I expect Sony to keep trying for the "year of the PS3" until someone else makes an announcement. Sony has lost so much cash with the PS3 that they need to get as much mileage out of it as they can and can't risk jumping ship too early. Once MS reveals their hand, Sony will be free to show theirs without much risk of cutting off the PS3 before it's prime, or being one-upped tech wise or timewise for the next gen.

Sony will be second to announce.

The timeline as I see it is basically:

MS releases Natal and Natal + 360 bundles in 2010.
Sales aren't great.
MS announces E3 2011.
Details about the PS4 "leak" in the fall of 2011.
Sony announces E3 2012.
Nintendo teases E3 2012, in response to Sony's announcement. Nintendo won't have a full reveal until E3 2013.

Late 2013 MS launches.
Early 2014 Sony launches.
Fall 2014 Nintendo launches.

Labels

2009-04-10T15:13:00.001-07:00

Fact is, your are going to get bent over by a Record Company..... its just how far, how long and if you let them decide to use vaseline or not." -Unknown

qotd

2009-04-09T05:07:00.001-07:00

"Destruction is not negative. you must destroy to build" - Blixa Bargeld

near future

2009-03-16T04:04:00.000-07:00

Open Manufacturing

generation too-fast

2009-03-16T03:31:00.001-07:00

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/15/1846236

Re:Yo mama is so fat... (Score:5, Funny)

2009-03-06T06:07:00.000-08:00

by thomasdz (178114) on Friday March 06, @08:08AM (#27090171)

Yo mama is so fat...Illinois declared her a planet
Yo mama is so ugly, astronomers who look at her think they're looking at Jupiter's moon IO
Yo mama is so old, her boyfriends CARBON-date her
Yo mama is so old and fat, her stomach is actually fusing helium with neon to produce magnesium just before she turns into a neutron star!
Yo mama is so ugly, that when computer scientists look at her, they are immediately reminded of Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" because they don't want to "Go To" her.

Ok, that last one got me severely beaten up on the playground when I was a kid, but the rest are funny and hardly trollish.

Interview with Roger Linn

2009-03-02T16:12:00.001-08:00

http://remixmag.com/more_stuff/roger_linn/

Why I Hate Frameworks

2009-02-26T09:16:00.000-08:00

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.219431.12

I'm currently in the planning stages of building a hosted Java web application (yes, it has to be Java, for a variety of reasons that I don't feel like going into right now). In the process, I'm evaluating a bunch of J2EE portlet-enabled JSR-compliant MVC role-based CMS web service application container frameworks.

And after spending dozens of hours reading through feature lists and documentation, I'm ready to gouge out my eyes.

Let's pretend I've decided to build a spice rack.

I've done small woodworking projects before, and I think I have a pretty good idea of what I need: some wood and a few basic tools: a tape measure, a saw, a level, and a hammer.

If I were going to build a whole house, rather than just a spice rack, I'd still need a tape measure, a saw, a level, and a hammer (among other things).

So I go to the hardware store to buy the tools, and I ask the sales clerk where I can find a hammer.

"A hammer?" he asks. "Nobody really buys hammers anymore. They're kind of old fashioned."

Surprised at this development, I ask him why.

"Well, the problem with hammers is that there are so many different kinds. Sledge hammers, claw hammers, ball-peen hammers. What if you bought one kind of hammer and then realized that you needed a different kind of hammer later? You'd have to buy a separate hammer for your next task. As it turns out, most people really want a single hammer that can handle all of the different kinds of hammering tasks you might encounter in your life."

"Hmmmmmm. Well, I suppose that sounds all right. Can you show me where to find a Universal Hammer."

"No, we don't sell those anymore. They're pretty obsolete."

"Really? I thought you just said that the Universal Hammer was the wave of the future."

"As it turns out, if you make only one kind of hammer, capable of performing all the same tasks as all those different kinds of hammers, then it isn't very good at any of them. Driving a nail with a sledgehammer isn't very effective. And, if you want to kill your ex-girlfriend, there's really no substitute for a ball-peen hammer."

"That's true. So, if nobody buys Universal Hammers anymore, and if you're no longer selling all those old-fashioned kinds of hammers, what kinds of hammers do you sell?"

"Actually, we don't sell hammers at all."

"So..."

"According to our research, what people really needed wasn't a Universal Hammer after all. It's always better to have the right kind of hammer for the job. So, we started selling hammer factories, capable of producing whatever kind of hammers you might be interested in using. All you need to do is staff the hammer factory with workers, activate the machinery, buy the raw materials, pay the utility bills, and PRESTO...you'll have *exactly* the kind of hammer you need in no time flat."

"But I don't really want to buy a hammer factory..."

"That's good. Because we don't sell them anymore."

"But I thought you just said..."

"We discovered that most people don't actually need an entire hammer factory. Some people, for example, will never need a ball-peen hammer. (Maybe they've never had ex-girlfriends. Or maybe they killed them with icepicks instead.) So there's no point in someone buying a hammer factory that can produce every kind of hammer under the sun."

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

"So, instead, we started selling schematic diagrams for hammer factories, enabling our clients to build their own hammer factories, custom engineered to manufacture only the kinds of hammers that they would actually need."

"Let me guess. You don't sell those anymore."

"Nope. Sure don't. As it turns out, people don't want to build an entire factory just to manufacture a couple of hammers. Leave the factory-building up to the factory-building experts, that's what I always say!!"

"And I would agree with you there."

"Yup. So we stopped selling those schematics and started selling hammer-factory-building factories. Each hammer factory factory is built for you by the top experts in the hammer factory factory business, so you don't need to worry about all the details that go into building a factory. Yet you still get all the benefits of having your own customized hammer factory, churning out your own customized hammers, according to your own specific hammer designs."

"Well, that doesn't really..."

"I know what you're going to say!! ...and we don't sell those anymore either. For some reason, not many people were buying the hammer factory factories, so we came up with a new solution to address the problem."

"Uh huh."

"When we stepped back and looked at the global tool infrastructure, we determined that people were frustrated with having to manage and operate a hammer factory factory, as well as the hammer factory that it produced. That kind of overhead can get pretty cumbersome when you deal with the likely scenario of also operating a tape measure factory factory, a saw factory factory, and a level factory factory, not to mention a lumber manufacturing conglomerate holding company. When we really looked at the situation, we determined that that's just too complex for someone who really just wants to build a spice rack."

"Yeah, no kidding."

"So this week, we're introducing a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory, so that all of your different tool factory factories can be produced by a single, unified factory. The factory factory factory will produce only the tool factory factories that you actually need, and each of those factory factories will produce a single factory based on your custom tool specifications. The final set of tools that emerge from this process will be the ideal tools for your particular project. You'll have *exactly* the hammer you need, and exactly the right tape measure for your task, all at the press of a button (though you may also have to deploy a few *configuration files* to make it all work according to your expectations)."

"So you don't have any hammers? None at all?"

"No. If you really want a high-quality, industrially engineered spice rack, you desperately need something more advanced than a simple hammer from a rinky-dink hardware store."

"And this is the way everyone is doing it now? Everyone is using a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory now, whenever they need a hammer?"

"Yes."

"Well…All right. I guess that's what I'll have to do. If this is the way things are done now, I guess I'd better learn how to do it."

"Good for you!!"

"This thing comes with documentation, right?"

BenjiSmith
Friday, September 30, 2005

----
From the discussion:

Well, good morning everyone. I wrote that little one-act play last night out of a frustrated need for catharsis (and in the midst of a bout of insomnia), and it definitely provided me with some catharsis.

But now that I'm a little more awake, I'd like to address the notion of using a framework vs. rolling your own framework.

I think it's a false dichotomy; I don't want to use any framework at all.

I know what several of you are thinking. I'd be out of my mind not to use some sort of framework. Am I honestly thinking of writing every single line of code that I'll need all on my own?

No, of course not.

What I'd really like to find are some appropriate *libraries* that I can use to provide several kinds of functionality for my project. Here's what I need:

* A library to use as a templating system for the presentation tier of my application. This API should be dirt simple.

* A library to use as a content repository (articles, essays, etc).

* A library providing a user-management API, for creating, editing, and deleting users, and assigning them different privileges.

* A library providing a threaded discussion forum API. This code should have *no* front-end gui. It should just provide an API of forum-related services that I'll need in building my webapp. I'll build my own JSP GUI on top of it.

* A library providing multi-user blogging capabilities.

Why is it so difficult to find simple libraries that provide these kinds of services?

The distinction between a library and a framework is subtle, but I think critical. A library is a collection of code that I don't have to write myself. It provides me with a set of objects and methods that I can use to build me application. If the library doesn't do quite what I want, I can make some small modifications or throw it away and use a different library.

A framework, on the other hand, always attempts to redefine the entire applilcation architecture. And, if the framework ends up not meeting my needs, I need to throw away my entire application, because everything I've written is defined in terms of the framework's methodology.

A library is something *contained* within my code.

A framework is a *container* for my application.

So, now that the working hours are in effect again, I'd like to actually *solve* my problem, rather than just complain about it. So I'm asking the JOS community whether they know of any *libraries* for building web applications. Libraries for forums, blogs, content management, user management.

No frameworks please.

BenjiSmith
Friday, September 30, 2005

Why layoff?

2009-01-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

by gillbates (106458) on Monday January 05, @11:44AM (#26331185) Homepage Journal

culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.

If someone isn't doing a satisfactory job, they can be fired.

But no matter how many people you lay off, you'll always have someone in the lower 10 to 20 percentile. That's just the way statistics works.

There are a variety of reasons why culling the bottom performers seldom improves the performance of the company as a whole:

Employees typically retain undocumented product knowledge in their heads. Someone with intimate knowledge of the codebase, who wrote the original code and debugged it, can typically turn defects around ten times faster than someone who was not involved in the original product.
Engineers with the lowest rated performance usually get that rating because they are thorough, methodical and diligent. In other words, they keep the poor code the other engineers write from making it into the shipping version. These are not the kind of people you want to fire.
The best performers typically sacrifice aspects of the job which aren't rated in order to achieve that rating. For example, they might write unmaintainable or difficult-to-understand code; may reinvent the wheel; might write code which is far more complicated than needed. While they meet their rated goals, their long term costs may exceed the benefit.
Problems inevitably crop up that require novel solutions. Having a staff with a diversity of skill sets creates an environment where the best tool is used for the job, rather than having to use a single tool for every job, no matter how poorly suited, because the company laid off all employees with "unneeded" skill sets.
There will always be employees in the lower X% no matter how many people are laid off. Typically, there is a 10 to 1 performance ratio between the best and the worst performers. Instead of simply laying off the lowest performing employees, the question should be, "Why such a large discrepancy?" The answers are often illuminating: A.) Office politics; B.) Personality conflicts; C.) Equipment/resource shortages; D.) Problems with the development process; etc... Ignoring the reasons and simply laying off employees often exacerbates the underlying problem.

I've seen management buy into the "layoff the lowest performers" myth far too often to let it go. It is almost always the harbinger of deeper, structural problems within the company, which if left unaddressed, result in the financial collapse of the company. Laying off people - even the worst performers - almost never results in a more efficient company. If you can't fire them for cause, they're more than likely adding value, even if that value isn't being measured by a performance metric. Take that away, and you take away your ability to do business.

Firewire ports have been brutally removed from MacBook.

2008-10-20T00:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is to differentiate between new MacBook and MacBook Pro.
Moreover, IMHO, this is an indication that Firewire is dead within a few years.
Reading on this issue, I found some rumors that many notebook manufacturers will soon remove firewire ports from their products.
It's only rumors now, but having Intel actively pushing USB 3.0 (with CPU-usage and bandwidth-reservation issues addressed) and the disappearing of FW-enabled products (other than audio interfaces) let me believe this becoming be a reality soon.
Bad news: USB3 is not here yet.

Funny thing is that Apple itself killed the Firewire with its licensing terms.

P.S. I'd like to thank RME for releasing ExpressCard HDSP adapter. I think Multiface II was on of my most forward-looking purchases. As of now future looks good for PCI Express.

P.P.S. Even if FW will be removed from many notebooks I'm sure they will still have ExpressCard slot, where you may insert a FW controller. I know many do this already since not every internal FW controller is good for audio work.

Success.

2008-09-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

To do a common thing uncommonly well, brings success.

Piracy serves corporations

2008-09-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

by Moraelin (679338) on Wednesday September 03, @04:58PM (#24865031) Journal

<...>

I've been saying it for a long time: piracy isn't some grand revenge against the big foreign corporations. Piracy only serves to kill the cheaper, but good enough, alternatives. If the choice were "do I buy AutoCAD for the equivalent of 6 years of Chinese average wage, or get a local alternative for 1% of that" (or even a F/OSS one) the choice might be very different than when both are free (as in stolen beer;) The big foreign corporation, regardless of what BSA tells you, hasn't actually lost anything there. That Chinese kid making some graphics for a mod wouldn't have paid thousands of dollars on AutoCAD, because he doesn't have those thousands of dollars anyway. But he might have been more interested in some alternatives which may have less features, but are cheap and local, or outright free. Piracy only serves to kill those possible alternatives.

<...>

you can.

2008-09-02T04:19:00.001-07:00

I worked on a project like this. . . sort of. . . (Score:4, Interesting)

by Fantastic Lad (198284) on Monday September 01, @05:50PM (#24835143)

Totally different industry, and we didn't follow through because we were teen-agers with half-assed ideas but, the research turned up some amazing knowledge which cleared the way to many awesome skills for navigating the world. We went on and did something completely different, but we used a lot of what we learned during this first process.

--One of the first places we visited was a spring manufacturer. We told the plant manager what we were trying to do. Turns out it would have cost a hundred bucks or so to get a machine cranking out little springs to our specifications, and after that you bought the springs by weight; pennies per pound. --Same with all the other parts. We discovered that you can make pretty much whatever you want out of metal and plastic; any shape imaginable and. . , well, this is basic engineering/business 101 and I imagine not terribly surprising to anybody who reads this, but it was a real education for a couple of teenagers at the time.

The world opened up! We realized, "Hey, we can make any darned thing we want. Industry is set up precisely to make this possible. It's just a matter of coming up with a good design and then making some phone calls and working out a sales route, assembling the thing, packaging and shipping. Heck, if you can get advanced orders from enough retail chains you can pretty much know before you start how much money you need and what your profit margins will be, and with that information you can put a plan together for a bank and get a loan to start cranking products out. If you plan carefully, it's like printing money! Ah. . . So THIS is where millionaires come from. Dang! This isn't hard at all. It just takes smarts and effort. Wow! We can do ANYTHING!"

Or something like that. It feels good to know that goods don't just magically appear on shop shelves, but that you can put them there yourself; you can shape the world. You barely even need seed capital before the business loan, unless you need to hire engineers and programmers and such for the prototype, and even that can be worked into a more advanced business plan to take to a bank. You can start the whole thing with bus fare and a clean shirt and slacks!

One bank manager took an interest and gave me a half-hour lecture and several pieces of really awesome advice which I still use today. One of which was that banks don't care much for small loans, but that thinking REALLY big is more likely to procure a willing investment. (I don't know if that is still true today in the current economic climate, but back then it was apparently so). And second, I met a couple of professionals, (one of whom was a lawyer who did a few hundred dollars worth of paper work for me for free), who lived by that rule from the movie, "Pay it Forward" --but a decade and a half before that movie was even a twinkle in some script-writer's eye. "I'm going to do this for you for free, but one day when you are successful, a young, bright-eyed kid is going to come to you for help. You must promise to help that kid the way I'm helping you now. Will you do this?"

My god, yes! I almost hugged the man. --And that came from a lawyer, no less. Dang! People can be SO awesome.

So I think this tablet project is totally boss. If nobody is making what you want and you want it enough, then darn straight, go make one yourself! Chances are there are a bunch of somebodies out there also trying to wish the thing into existence, and that's your market right there. So why not do it? --It will fill your life with a purpose you created within yourself, it will give you a fascinating obstacle course of scalable challenges to work through and that sort of thing brings real joy. And at the end of it, if your aims are right and you put in the work and you don't allow yourself to fall into wishful thinking, then you'll succeed and have made the world a better place in the process. So these guys completely rock, and Open Source is definitely a cool way to go! I can see their business plan evolving thusly. . .

Produce working prototype, put a price tag on the thing in terms of cost per 100 units or whatever, and start taking order promises. You tell people that their promise will not be called in unless a certain target is met, so nobody is going to get hit with a huge price tag, so the risk there is zero, and the major plus is that for every order above the threshold, the cheaper it gets for everybody to have one. --And with the project working like that, you don't have to worry about giving a retailer and distributor a 60 - 70% discount, so you're miles ahead of the normal business world. So when you hit the numbers you want, you jump in and hit the 'On' button, and Voila! Everybody has a rocking tablet. Open Source in the physical world. And it's not even an unproven model; it's totally doable! Co-op mountaineering gear and bikes and camping supplies have been produced using a similar method, so yes, it definitely works. --And this way you get the best gear to specs which have nothing to do with trying to satisfy the lowest common denominator and the ego of some ignorant and over-paid executives.

With the right intent, a project like this one could absolutely change the world!

-FL

Heaven/Hell

2008-09-01T04:15:00.000-07:00

Heaven is where the Police are British, the Chefs are French, the Mechanics are German, the Lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss.

Hell is where the Chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the Police are German and it's all organised by the Italians.

Some regimes require criminals

2008-08-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

Some regimes require criminals. If there aren't enough, they keep making laws until there are.

by mcmonkey (96054) on Thursday August 28, @06:48PM (#24786695) Homepage

vim clippy

2008-08-20T10:15:00.001-07:00

mutual respect

2008-08-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Sunday August 10, @01:04PM (#24546613) Homepage Journal

Look, I don't want to pirate stuff. I'll happily pay to go see a movie, and I'll happily pay to buy a good game (without even downloading it first to try it!). But here's what I demand in return: treat me with respect.

Do not require me to leave the CD in. I have a bunch of games and don't want to dig around for the installation media every time I want to play it.
Skip the copy protection. We both know that I can download a cracked version off the Internet, so why penalize me for buying a real copy? Yes, I very well may install it on more than one of my computers, such as by putting a copy on my laptop so I can play it while I'm out and around. I can do that with my MP3s and movies, and I'm going to do it with my games. These are copies for my own personal use and I'll make them to my convenience. But here's my end of the bargain: I'm going to tell my mooch friends to buy their own copy.
That crap Blizzard pulled with Glider? Don't even think about it. People will grudgingly put up with it from them, but you won't be able to pull it off. This is my computer and I very well might break your program in new and interesting ways. I bought it. I can do that.
Skip the EULA. When I hand over my cash, I own that copy of the game. It's not licensed to me. It's not rented or leased to me. I own it. Don't attempt to throw extra restrictions on my use of it after the fact. Again, I'm not going to distribute your work, but you need to understand that I owe you nothing else.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but the above are my non-negotiable requirements for buying software in general. I'm not out to share copies or take anything away from you, but in return I want acknowledgment that I don't owe you any extra favors just because I bought your stuff. I'm your customer and want to have a good relationship with you, so don't treat my like an asshole just because other people ripped you off.

copy protection

2008-08-10T12:33:00.001-07:00

by Maxo-Texas (864189) on Sunday August 10, @12:59PM (#24546569)

it's a question of which pirate channel you want to stop.

1) the "hey chris, want a copy of this new game I got? It's great and there is no protection"

2) the "Arrrr, we've stripped out all the protection so you can now put a copy of this on yer hard disk and make easy backups"

All games should have *some* method of trivial protection to stop case 1 because it destroys sales. Most people are immoral when they are anonymous.

The most effective protection I've ever seen is new content created by the developer on their web site that the game must phone home for. It must sign in with a unique id and after a couple successful downloads, that id is locked until the next content release. The protection is on the server side.

I would recommend the following model.

1) Create content on the web site that must be downloaded with an ID that updates the program as well. Tightly integrate the downloaded data with the multiple gigabytes of data that already exists. Don't be an idiot and make it a stand alone 2mb file.

2) Set an arbitrary date when the content will stop (12-24 months) and the game will be unlocked due to an expectation that sales will drop to a level that support for problems is impossible. At that point, make the game unprotected and get good will and trust from your customers. And even then, you'll still get new sales- but the main wave of "hey chris" copies has passed.

perception of money

2008-08-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

by Original Replica (908688) on Sunday August 10, @01:07PM (#24546643) Journal

you often just don't buy either... I know I never did. It was all about the money... I could get it for free so why pay for it?

It is about money, and about a person's perception of their money. If money is just "what you use to get stuff" then there is little reason to buy. However if money is "a tool to effect the world around you" then there is a solid reason to pay for a game that you enjoy, regardless of if that money goes to a big corp, an indy developer, or shareware donation. Now I don't have a good study to point to but I imagine that thinking of money as a tool of influence is more a trait of the wealthy, as the acquisition of material goods reaches saturation but there is still money to be spent. Conversely, when material needs can't be met money isn't likely to be spent on idealogical matters. I wonder if there is a relationship between disposable income and piracy?

копроэкономика

2008-08-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Пишет Два Капитана (2k)
@ 2008-04-11 06:22:00

копроэкономика
Краткое введение в экономику говна

Наверное, любой разумный человек хоть раз в жизни спрашивает себя, откуда вокруг столько говна, почему он должен делать это говно и кому это говно вообще может понадобиться.

Эта краткая памятка отвечает на все актуальные вопросы современности, связанные с говном, то есть на все актуальные вопросы современности вообще. По прочтению вы также поймете, как устроен круговорот говна в природе, почему говно оказалось самым популярным товаром в истории человечества и почему переход от пост-индустриальной экономики к экономике говна был стремителен и неизбежен. Надеюсь, что многие из вас также избавятся от комплексов, связанных с говном, потому что это ― первейшее условие для выживания в нашем сложном и подчас жестоком мире. Первую версию этого текста я написал для внутреннего использования, но поскольку она ни хрена мне не помогает, я расширил теоретическую часть, добавил примеров, нарисовал одну картинку и выложил получившееся в сеть. Кроме того, текст сурово обогащен врезкой «Часто задаваемые вопросы о говне» и приложением «Техника безопасности при работе с говном для работников умственного труда», хотя, мне кажется, что и оно бесполезно, бессмысленно и безнадежно.

Краткая предыстория экономики говна

Сначала никакой экономики не было, а было одно говно и ягоды.
А потом прошло несколько тысяч лет.

Говно как продукт

В середине XX века человечество столкнулось с множеством проблем. Во-первых, на горизонте замаячили перенаселение, нехватка ресурсов и третья мировая война. Во-вторых, рыбалка стала ни к черту. Кроме того, производственные мощности наращивались слишком быстро. Если вы производите сто автомобилей в минуту, и они не ломаются еще десять лет, то уже через год вы со своим заводом идете нахуй, и вам обидно.

История не сохранила имени человека, которому впервые в голову пришла светлая мысль производить не автомобили, а говно. Но мы, конечно, можем представить, что поначалу его идеи воспринимались в штыки.

― Дык ведь покупать не будут, ― мотал головой слесарь. Тупой, упрямый.

― Что б вы понимали! ― волновался молодой специалист, потрясая перед чумазым лицом слесаря пачкой графиков. ― У меня за плечами Итон! Это не у меня говно, а вы значете что! Вы сами! Вы!

― Ну и что я? ― спрашивал слесарь, разворачиваясь. Его уже начинал интересовать этот молодой человек.

Молодой человек не отвечал, но его все равно били. Однако упорству сильных поем мы песню, и через несколько лет бессмысленных блужданий по цехам и корпоративным лабиринтам в производство запустили первую экспериментальную партию говна. Акционеры наверняка переживали. Директор завода ― сам старый мастеровой ― с тревогой смотрел на конвейер, с которого сходили автомобили, слепленные из настоящего говна. Это был волнующий момент, все было ново и, если можно так выразиться, свежо.

И вопреки всем ожиданиям молодой специалист оказался прав. Покупатели полюбили говно пуще всего остального и даже обнаружили в нем неожиданные для конструкторов достоинства. Говно поставили на поток.

Очень скоро производители автомобилей поняли, что в производстве говна есть три важных элемента: реклама, дизайн и цена.

Благодаря рекламе любое говно можно продать. Благодаря дизайну можно продать говно чуть дороже. А правильно выбранная цена ― не слишком дорого, но и не слишком дешево ― не дает покупателю признаться, что он купил говно.

Успех говна на рынке оказался столь ошеломляющим, что очень скоро подобные практики стали общепринятыми, и не только в автомобильной индустрии.

Конечно, малину всем слегка подпортили японцы, которые плохо знали английский язык и ничего не слышали о теории успешного говна, но и они, в конце концов, включились в общую гонку.

Продажи говна породили индустрию сервисов (которая чинила говно), рекламную индустрию (которая придумывала новые названия для говна) и сеть магазинов Wal-Mart.

Перепозиционирование говна

В 90-х казалось бы безупречная концепция говна начала давать сбои. Мощности становились все мощнее, и хотя население росло, люди не успевали потреблять все производимое говно. Над развитым миром нависла, как писали в советской прессе, угроза безработицы. Выйти из кризиса удалось благодаря трем экономическим концепциям, которые в той или иной степени были реализованы в последнем десятилетии ушедшего века.

Во-первых, слегка опасаясь собственной смелости, производители постепенно перешли к выпуску полного говна. К сожалению, это не вполне сняло угрозу безработицы, так как производство пришлось перенести в Китай и Индонезию ― только там можно было найти достаточно неквалифицированную рабочую силу.

Впрочем, вывод на рынки полного говна ускорил цикл потребления, так что какой-то положительный эффект от этого все же был.

Во-вторых, увеличились расходы на рекламу. Рекламировались уже не товары, а образ жизни, основанный на бесконечном потреблении. Именно резко увеличившиеся рекламные поступления позволили скромному ежеквартальному журналу Govno Quarterly превратиться в лоснящийся ежемесячник GQ.

Но настоящим спасением оказался Интернет, потому что именно здесь можно было заниматься производством говна практически бесконечно. Если раньше властям предержащим приходилось ломать голову, чем занять того или иного долбоеба, то с изобретением Интернета и особенно веб-дизайна за 500 долларов эта проблема оказалась решена.

К концу XX века процесс в целом был завершен. Пост-индустриальная экономика, не успев родиться, превратилась в экономику говна. Сотни миллионов людей занимались неизвестно чем только потому, что им было страшно остановиться и принюхаться.

Часто задаваемые вопросы о говне

Почему говно выгодно?
Оно дешево в производстве и быстро выходит из строя, провоцируя этим новые продажи.

Почему полное говно выгоднее обычного говна?
Оно лучше продается. Частично из-за того, что оно дешевле говна, но важную роль играет и человеческий фактор: поставленные перед выбором потребители зачастую отдают предпочтение полному говну. Этот психологический эффект объясняется контрастностью нашего мышления. Представьте себе черную и белую костяшки домино. На черной костяшке вам бросаются в глаза белые точки. На белой костяшке ― черные. Так и с товарами народного потребления. Если потребитель купил полное говно, он обязательно найдет в нем что-то хорошее. Если же потребитель купил обычное говно, он может почувствовать себя обманутым.

(если кто не понял, это была обещанная картинка; поверьте в текстовом виде она лучше, чем в графическом)

В общем, если вы хотите, чтобы ваше говно хорошо продавалось, не жалейте говна. Жиденькое говнецо никому не нужно!

Почему же тогда обычное говно до сих пор не сняли с производства?
Оно позиционируется как элитный продукт. У потребителя должен быть выбор между несколькими сортами говна, ведь он хозяин своей жизни.

Охватывает ли индустрия говна только материальную сферу?
Конечно, нет. Включите телевизор. Посмотрите десятку самых популярных книг. Послушайте радио. Почитайте газету «Твой день». Производство духовных объектов работает по тем же законам, что и производство объектов материальных. Только вони больше.

Но кто-то все еще недоволен?
Да.

Недовольное говно

Жизнь автомобильного слесаря безмятежна. В детстве он хотел стать пожарным, но вырос в автомобильного слесаря. Разрыв, не в обиду пожарным, не велик. Слесарь ассоциирует себя с результатом своего труда не больше, чем пожарный ассоциирует себя с пожаром.

Творческие люди устроены иначе. В детстве это чучело хотело стать Северяниным, а теперь работает в газете «Железнодорожник». Конечно, все ему враги. И даже работая в газете «Железнодорожник», он то и дело пытается закончить заметку словами «я ― гений». Это самое «я ― гений» ни к селу ни к городу он в силу недостатка образования полагает творческой свободой.

Если у чучела нет творческой свободы, у него опускаются руки. Кто-нибудь может представить себе слесаря, у которого не собирается автомобиль или пожарного, у которого не тушится пожар.

― Мне сегодня не пишется.

И смотрит жалобно.

Именно эти дохляки и стоят на пути окончательной победы говна над злом. Им, видите ли, стыдно делать такое говно. В конечном счете, они все равно дадут стране говна, но крови перед этим высосут немерено.

Поскольку научить слесарей и пожарных производить в нужных количествах духовное говно не представляется возможным (они не выебываются, и им обычно, есть о чем рассказать, так что на выходе получается не говно, а черти что), приходится обходиться тем, что есть. Для обработки дохляков имеет смысл применять следующие формулы: «Ведь ты же профессионал», «Ты работаешь не для людей, а на целевую аудиторию», «А потребителям нравится!», «Я тебя понимаю», «На тебе же кредит висит», «В качестве личного одолжения» и «Сам ты говно». Комбинируйте угрозы и лесть, это работает. Не жалейте примеров.

Отрицательные примеры: журнал «Новый очевидец», «Радио Станция», старый Men’s Health, Тарковский, Франц Кафка.
Положительные примеры: журнал GQ, «Радио Шансон», новый Men’s Health, Уве Болл, Дарья Донцова.
Корифеи: Ксения Собчак, Сергей Зверев и русский MTV.

Техника безопасности при работе с говном
Для работников умственного труда

1. Не называйте говно говном, это портит статистику продаж. К тому же, вы отбираете работу у сотрудников из отдела маркетинга, а они вам еще пригодятся.

2. Не думайте о говне, как о говне. Настройтесь на позитив. Наверняка у говна, которым вы занимаетесь, есть положительные качества, которых нет у продукции конкурентов. Или у продукции конкурентов есть отрицательные качества, которых нет у вашего говна (это, честно говоря, вернее). Если вы не можете найти ни того, ни другого, проконсультируйтесь у сотрудников из отдела маркетинга (вот они и пригодились).

3. Не думайте, что вы говно. Вы и то, что вы делаете, это не одно и то же. Конечно, живи вы семьсот-восемьсот лет назад, вам бы не поздоровилось: Никита Кузнец, Илья Лапотник, Иван Говно. Как-то не звучит. Но суть цивилизации в том и заключается, что у людей появляются фамилии, и теперь люди могут беспрепятственно возиться с говном.

4. Не обманывайте себя. Распространенная ошибка начинающих работников индустрии говна заключается в том, что они посвящают говну не все рабочее время, а химичат втихаря какую-то нетленку да еще и гордятся этим. Оставьте. Конечно, вам эти уловки помогают мнить себя новым Микеланджело, Антониони или кем-то там еще, но в глазах коллег и руководства вы просто заносчивая тварь, которая считает себя умнее всех.

5. Не старайтесь. Еще одна распространенная ошибка. Из говна при желании можно сложить даже икебану, но потребителям говна нужны не икебаны, а говно. Проще говоря, выпендриваясь, вы уменьшаете свою выработку, а на выходе все равно получается не икебана, а говно на палочке.

6. Не унывайте.

7. Не стыдитесь. Не переоценивайте свое говно. Вы и оглянуться не успеете, как о нем забудут и потребуют следующей порции. На вас лично вообще всем наплевать.

8. Не тушуйтесь. Если потребителю не нравится ваше говно, то он сам говно. Клиент всегда говно. Если вы уверенно назовете кучку говна инсталляцией (калькулятором, книжкой, чем угодно), два человека из сотни вам поверят. Ориентируйтесь на них, на остальных говна тоже хватит, но его продадите не вы.

9. Не презирайте говно. Это еще не высший пилотаж, но этой техникой мало кто владеет в совершенстве. Наверное, это звучит странно, но вы должны постараться полюбить говно, которое вы делаете, как любят его те, кто это говно покупает. Ведь вы ничем не лучше своих клиентов, просто вы покупаете говно у других производителей.

10. Полюбите говно всем сердцем. Конечно, не каждому дано превратиться в Николая Ускова, но каждый может стать лучше, пытаясь им стать.

Если ничего не помогает, вспомните о тех, кому все еще приходится работать, чтобы покупать ваше говно.
Вы ведь, на самом деле, не хотите оказаться на их месте.

Наверное, глупо писать, что я никого не хотел обидеть, но это действительно так. Я очень давно не брал в руки журнал GQ, так что не могу объективно судить о его качестве (и, кстати, не сужу), и с интересом отношусь к Николаю Ускову, дай бог здоровья его кумкватам.
Текст написан в психотерапевтических целях.
Не помогло.
Но см. правило #6!

p.s. тщеславие победило здравый смысл. вытащил из-под замка.

Rules for dealing with government are simple.

2008-08-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

Re:no encryption that YOU didn't write is safe (Score:5, Insightful)

by DaedalusHKX (660194) on Sunday August 03, @11:59AM (#24456619) Journal

Rules for dealing with government are simple. Do not get involved in their business, do not play their games, do not volunteer anything, do not agree to anything, do not play with them, or for them. Once you do, your ass is theirs. They own you, with your consent at that.

By the same principle, don't fuck around, don't trespass, don't steal, and don't be a crook. Learn the law VERY carefully, keep a copy of Black's Law Dictionary (I think 6th edition is out now) in several different versions. Look up innocent looking terms and verbs in forms. DO NOT consent to anything period. Sign nothing. Be sure you know what is "your name" and what is what someone may call you. Practice your rights. Yes... all of them. A right practiced doesn't need to be infringed, because you already don't have it.

Be very suspicious not of your neighbors but of men in "special" uniforms or funny hats that supposedly give them power over you. Don't let strangers into the house. Homeschool your kids and do a god job, history, law and the local mythology are especially important subjects. Several languages and a good grasp of self defense, tactics and strategy are also quite important. Those with kids who choose to be politically active are extra vulnerable, since kids are the ultimate Achilles Heel.

Never ever trust strangers. Trust people in uniforms even less. Never ever get into a stranger's car, despite what you see in the movies. If they want to talk to you, they can get into yours. If you are confronted by a "friend from high school" and like most average people you can't remember who you met yesterday, nevermind back then, look behind you, you're probably about to get cattle prodded in the back and shoved into a van.

These were simple coping strategies for those who were not average plebeians and who survived the cullings of communism. I lost relatives who were educated, men I could've learned much from. I never met them because they were taught that self defense was for cops and soldiers. And when the king's men were gone, and the cops were coopted to communism... there was nobody to protect the smart, educated, "civilized" (i.e. willingly helpless) men from the cleansings. The ones who weren't "lifted" and sent off to Siberia, were enrolled into a front line regiment and given crap gear and no real training. Very few returned, most scarred for life. All I saw of them while growing up were pictures over mantelpieces. Grandmothers mourning long lost brothers or maimed cousins. That is the fate of the helpless of those who depend on others for their protection...

And what governments are preparing today, the police states being built now, they are so much more insidious, in that they're so much better concealed behind "feel good" intentions and bullshit propaganda about "the good of man". Oh well, fools get what they deserve. There's no stopping it at this point, fools gave up that chance a long time ago. All one can do now is get out of the way and let the Leviathan leap off the cliff with all the fools aboard. Watch the splatter and feel not sorry... they laid their own beds. Trying to save the stupid from their stupidity is what got the world into its sorry state in the first place. The stupid should have been permitted to perish, and Darwin should've been allowed to have his laugh. Instead the stupid were forced to live against their best attempts, so they outbred those who merited survival and to thrive.