Hmm. Interesting. Can we expect 'Google Beer' (beta) to be released? The benefits of beer implemented entirely in software...

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

Personally, I'm 27 and I don't read many magazines anymore; I use Google.

Maybe this is where information breaks down, and truth gets muddled up with 'popularity' in the omnipotent PageRank scheme of things. Personally, I'm quite suspect of Google, and other information-delivery schemes that just keep pooping out a very 'unnatural' bend on the selection of information. I read an interesting article titled 'How Google is Making us Dumb'. It had some interesting points. The crux of it being 'how' people are going to learn to find information in the present and future. The problem is we're rapidly junking very 'trusted' sources and opting for the ease and speed of Fast sources, who's agendas aren't known, and are fairly impossible to find out.

Link2006 wrote:

Are they smarter than us?

There is definite evidence for this being true, because they have Never made contact with us.

John Cardinal wrote:

It's not about the value of the product it's about the fact that people say "it's too expensive so it's fair for me to just download it for free" when we all know it is *not* in fact too expensive for that market.

I agree here. It's always the rich who say they can't afford something. The difference with current times is that it's just too-damn-easy to copy/steal music/movies, etc. And most people who do it like to justify their actions however they can. It was a LOT harder to copy a book 30 years ago (with a photocopier), which is probably why book culture has lasted as long as it has. Juts stand back and see what happens to current music-culture without it being protected. Wake up sometime, say in tens years time, and remember how there used to be REALLY GOOD music once.

John Cardinal wrote:

A lot of people here seem to think that's a silly antiquated notion, clearly those people are not making a living writing software and selling it.

I think that's the main divide here. I'm also in the camp where my living, my child's welfare, my healthcare, my bills, all stack up against whether I can make a living selling software that I design and implement. I did some studies for a product that has no copy protection mechanism, just a 'please pay for this'. And similar software that utilizes 'weak' copy protection (which can obviously be broken). The 'weak' copy protected software causes purchases to the order of x20 (compared to unprotected software). Relying on the world's good will, dear punters, is simply not a way to make a living today. What the Sony's want to do is have 'unbreakable' copy protection, maybe to the extent of policing-the-hell out of everything. I dunno. I'm not a Sony, so I don't know what's called for. I just know that you HAVE to protect your rights. Everyone out there, who ISN'T a provider/writer/artist, seems to have the mindset that they can do whatever the hell they like with your creation.

danmorin wrote:

For instance, writing code is more than an idea; it is some actual work. If someone copies your CPP files and re-compiles the executable without your permission, he/she is stealing your work (intellectual property).

Copying an idea, a design, is no different to copying the bytes contained in a CPP file, or an MP3 file. I have been involved in ventures which harnessed ALL of my years of experience, everything I've learned, every lesson I had to go through, to come up with some NEW way of doing something, only for that idea to be copied by a company with more resources behind it, who can take it further, faster, bigger. And they didn't have to go through the years of learning and practise to get to the point I had to. So, is that fair?

Pathak, There is probably much to be gained, but the unavoidable thing about accepting a post in the US is that you will be surrounded by Americans. Maybe wear a baseball cap continuously, even in the shower, and maybe you'll blend in and they won't notice you have real culture showing.

Yeah, DOS was fun. You could totally short-circuit anything in it if you wanted. A colleague of mine once called DOS 'a non-reentrant, single-tasking interrupt handler' :-)

Personally, as our 'business' becomes a totally globalized free-for-all, I think we simply can't afford to choose just a skill -or- a domain. I think you have to pick ONE subset of skills/tools and ONE domain and stick to it like a bloody terrier. Otherwise some shmuck in India, or somewhere else where they'll work for breadcrumbs, will do what you do for nothing, and do it just as well as you can.