Posted by Doug
Fri, 13 Dec 2002 15:23:00 GMT
I can still remember walking out of the theater after seeing “Jurasic Park”. I was a third year electrical engineering student at the time. As most of the other electrical engineering students I knew, we were pretty smug in how we felt about our chosen major. We felt like the best jobs were ours for the taking. When I saw “Jurasic Park” I knew I had chosen the wrong major. I thought, “I should have chosen computer graphics.”
Wired.com has an article titled
“Digital Actors in Rings Can Think”. Yet more evidence that there are programming jobs out there
“massively” cooler than anything I could hope to get. Stephen Regelous is combining state of the art artificial intelligence, fuzzy-logic, and 3D to create the battle scenes for the up-coming
“The Two Towers”. I think I may try to get my master’s in AI. Maybe that will make up for it.
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Posted by Doug
Thu, 12 Dec 2002 17:29:00 GMT
The whole music/movie “piracy” issue frustrates me. Current copyright laws allow copyright holders (in most cases of the music industry, the record labels) to set the bounds by which you are allowed to use thier content. The
RIAA has made it clear they don’t want their customers to trade music. As a
NewTestamentChristian, I respect the laws of the land… even the ones I don’t agree with.
On the other hand, I love music. What frustrates me is the cost of enjoying music. New CDs are roughly $15. The content the major labels are pushing is campy. I’ve found even the CDs I’m willing to pay for only have a few songs that are worthwhile. Often that means I end up paying $5 per song. At those prices, who can afford to experiment with new music? What I want is a source of “eclectic intelligent” music (to steal the catch phrase from
Radioparadise) that doesn’t cost me and arm and a leg.
Once again,
Tim O’Reilly has shown he “gets it”. He’s written an
article from the perspective of a book author and a highly successfull book publisher entitled, “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution.” Well worth the read.
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Posted by Doug
Thu, 12 Dec 2002 16:31:00 GMT
David Minor pointed me to an article about a “Mac Addict” being defrauded on eBay. He’s out at least $2300 (realistically more, though he doesn’t say how much) and knows of others taken in the same scam for much, much more. I personally was sold a stolen ThinkPad that the FBI confiscated. I would have been out $1500, but the FBI agent took pity on me an managed to sign the notebook out of evidence to me.
The moral of all these stories is that eBay is a breeding ground for criminals. You have no insurance against fraud. Your only safety net is the $200
fraud protection program that ebay provides. So:
Never expose more than $200 of your own money in an ebay transaction
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