Slashdot Mirror
Information Overload Overblown, Says Gates
Aarthi writes "Microsoft's annual CEO meet-and-greet kicked off on Thursday with the company's Chairman, Bill Gates, countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information.'We still want a lot of information.' He also outlined plans for Office 12, the next version of its desktop software, which is due to arrive in the second half of next year." From the article: "There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important...That turns you into a filing clerk."
..."the thing that comes in the latest" is a warning of a gaping security hole in your browser?
"Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!"
~Harcourt Fenton Mudd
I think Gates has a point -- look at all those slashdot articles that I see posted and just ignore immediatly. Guess that didn't happen with this one though.
Yeah, well, thanks for giving me the latest scoop on what some plutocrat college dropout thinks about how the brain works. Tell ya what, if I ever need some solid info on "information overload", I think I will consult someone who actually knows something about it, like maybe a neuroscientist, or something.
Who gives a fuck what Bill Gates thinks about every little thing?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information"
I think he is countering the notion that workers areoverloaded with info
It appears that Bill Gates is not immune to this ego inflating weakness of the human condition.
I only know this, due to having read a bit of study a year or so back. So, my information could be wrong, out of date or otherwise inaccurate.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Claims that information overload is taking people's attentions away from what they are doing are
No such thing as too much information, just information which is badly organised.
I am connected to a web with a lot of gigabytes of data - the Internet. It's a lot of data, but with the right tools and knowledge, it's not useless.
It's when you factor in using the wrong tools, lack of knowledge and malicious attempts to attract your attention that you get information overload.
It's an overrated buzzword anyway. It seems to be most used for the same reason the previous generation complained about the pace of life being quicker these days.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
IIRC .. He has people to read/screen his email for him
Don't you get it? This is America. Where talking out of your ass is an art form.
We see this everyday. Some call it bullshit. Others call it spin. Regardless of what is actually is, it's destructive.
What is surprising is that more don't call this stuff out like you did. I wish that happened more.
Personally, I'd be happy with a car that had an extra 428 knobs, switches, and gauges so I can see exactly how it is operating at all times. And I'm waiting for a toaster oven that shows me all relevant cooking parameters with lights and gauges while it operates. Maybe we could get a couple of extra screens for the TV where we'd have to make realtime decisions while we watch or it'd give us a little shock.
We need a lot more information. This "information overload" nonsense is way overrated.
One of the things I find interesting about this is that Gates holds the exact opposite paradigm about work that Plato holds in the Republic. But this brings up an interesting question. Do workers need knowledge of the whole system or just what their portion of it is?
In many cases, things fall through the cracks when the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. However, is that a causal relationship or a correlative one? I think that a strong corporate heirarchy where managers *gasp* are well trained employees that have moved through the system and proved that they are capable of seeing a picture bigger than "insert part A in slot B," is much more likely to not have the same sort of issues that a less well managed company would (assuming of course that the actual workers have very little clue what is going on outside of their area). Again, to bring up Plato, I think he is correct to say that people are happier when they are able to specialize in a specific task and work toward the perfection of said task. This does not mean that they cannot move up, but that the base job is a platform to the next level.
However, Gates is in an itneresting position. Software problems can be directly attributed to having too many programmers working in too small of a scope. When they lack the information to understand exactly how their code is part of the whole, they make mistakes.
But well coded, well documented, libraries, functions, programs, etc. should provide enough information for those who utilize the code to understand exactly how it will work within their project. Again, I think a well informed management that actually does work is a much better structure than building a staff of well informed workers from the ground up.
It's a joke, right?
I only compile kernels when I want. My Linux distro gives them compiled and tested for me in my upgrade stream.
Command lines are just another way to do stuff. It's a very powerful tool, indeed. Unless I want it, I seldom have to use it (yet, I know how they make life easier and really like to use it)
Its your fault to venture into the undocumented parts. If you are uncomfortable, stick to Fedora Core until you get the hang of it.
What distro are you using, anyway?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Lese selbst:+ overblown/2100-1022_3-5713665.html
http://news.com.com/Gates+Information+overload+is
Gates mainly got rich because his family connections got him his first big contract. His family was Old Money, and his mom used her connections to get him in with IBM. And his family's old money got him educated at one of the best private schools in the country. And he has genetics on his side. Genetics and family connections aint gonna brush off from reading his latest self-indulgent musings.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
From TFA1:
"I'd say in all of these cases, we are really dealing with information underload," Gates said in his talk, which kicked off Microsoft's annual CEO Summit. "We still want a lot of information."
From TFA2:
Raikes noted studies that show that the average worker gets about 10 times as much e-mail now as in 1997. That's projected to increase another fivefold in the next four years, Raikes said.
Either Raikes and Gates don't know each other, or they use different definitions for "information". From Gates' point of view, information is probably what's left after his army of PAs has filtered the e-mail box and the income paper bin, leaving only neat reports and meaningful mails out of the whole damn mess. A typical grunt, however, will have to do the whole thing himself. Even the simple act of recognizing an e-mail as spam is an information gathering and processing system, and you have to do that for each spam that goes through the filter. And then there's the unavoidable corporate and friendly spam (don't tell me you don't have it), in the form of memos you don't care about, rules for using the printer and the latest joke your buddy across the hall has found on the Net.
These ARE harmful to your concentration, to your productivity and to the level of stress that you aquire at the end of the day. Information oveload? You bet. Every context shift you do sets you back at least 15 minutes in concentration (scientifically proven, ask any serious psychologist). More than half the job of a competent PA is to shield you from that. And there's no software out there that can replace a PA.
Just
- Turn off the TV (download your shows if you must). - Browse with ad / flash blocking tools or with an RSS feed reader. - Don't sign up for "reward programs", don't give away your permanent email to any service. - Don't multitask yourself to uselessness (i.e. watching tv while working on your project with music playing and a game minimized you go into every 15 minutes while your paper's in front of you and you're baking cookies). ...You can sign up for my information overload program for just 3 easy payments of $49.9..just kidding. :P
You poor guy!
:)
What you need is a chance to install Mandriva's newest. It answered those questions you listed nicely. You do not need to recompile if you use a Pentium or Amd K6 processor or newer.
Your welcome.
"There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important," Gates said. The result, he said, is that people either have to leave everything "in one big bucket" or they have to spend a lot of time creating lots of folders. "That turns you into a filing clerk."
How about hiring people that understand how to prioritize their own work? If someone can't figure out whether to run a report for their boss or send on a chain letter, I don't think a new version of Office is going to fix the problem.
The typical Web search takes 11 minutes these days. Gates acknowledged that that is a big improvement over search times and capabilities of a few years ago, when half of the searches didn't yield the needed information. He added, however, that a Web search is still a "treasure hunt" in which one hopes that the top few links contain the desired information.
Who the hell is taking 11 minutes to find what they want on the web. I timed myself just now, and I was looking at "hot teen lesbians" within 13 seconds. If that doesn't count for what people want on the web, I don't know what does. In 11 minutes, I could build my own website for it.
If I were to file this release into folders, it would probably go into my Marketing/Propaganda one.
/. ++
If you give a user two computers with Office 2003 and Office 2000, then I estimate 98% of the users in my company will never see the difference. Heck, if MS were to drop Office for Mac today, the current version would remain "good enough" for at least 5 years, plenty of time for StarOffice/Openoffice to take over. Now I can see 10 years from now real AI entering Office software, bringing help to users. But I shure like hell can't imagine how they will keep on milking that cow until then. What new feature do YOU want in Office 12?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
It's nice to see everyone bashing our rich neighbor in Redmond.
The article, though, is a sales pitch. Uncle Bill is talking to a bunch of CEOs, and he's trying to do two things:
A) Trash Google and Yahoo and anyone else's desktop search program
B) Promote the windows environment and Microsoft's desktop search stuff.
Ultimately, the most annoying part of the whole article is the explicit point that Microsoft is primarily interested in developing software for the corporate world. So the ultimate bottom line for any development is how the new, human power elite accepts it. Sure the slaves in the trenches or in non-corporate fields suffer from information overload, increased stress and lack of concentration -- my life has become an anchorless drift across continents and task panes since Windows XP came out -- where was I? oh yeah -- but as long as the guy making decisions (who, as well all know, is always the worst informed. Hell he's buying microsoft products ain't he?) can yell at some slob and say "give me all my correspondence with Ballmer, except that april-fools yamauchi thing", and that slob can choke it up in the next 15 minutes, nobody suffers .
I mean, if this wasn't true, people wouldn't spend (read "waste") so much of their time browsing the WWW, now, would they?
Whoops - I have work I should be doing. Bye now.
He's just preparing us so we won't be surprised when the next version of Office is loaded up with even more crap all over the place that we don't need.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
kee kee kee kee!! ^_^
>>That turns you into a filing clerk
>So what the fuck is wrong with that Mr. High Almighty Billionair.
Yeah, I bet he doesn't mind when it's some guy rubber stamping his company's ridiculous patent applications!
Why does the media keep reporting Microsoft marketing ploys as news? Make 'em buy advertising which is what all this nonsense is. Bill Gates having constipation or Bill Gates having diarrhea isn't news. Bill Gates coming clean and admitting that the direction of Windows(tm) has been wrong all along and that he apoligizes for all the drek they've pushed off on people would be. An apology for releasing service packs that break compatibility forcing upgrades is rather a criminal matter and should be dealt with in the courts. That would be news fit to print.
Too lazy to create a sig...
If office doesn't cause information overload, then why does M$ have to hide all the extranious menu options by default. I tire of telling users to click on such and such a menu and they come back with "I don't have that."
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
From your post it sounds like you can't find your way out of a paper bag without a <right-click><properties> at your disposal.
I recompile the kernel all the time because of either kernel updates or because I need an additional feature without breaking any apps. This statement is crap.
Man pages do their job perfectly. They are for reference, not for reading like a manual. You should already be familiar with the program and you use the man pages for remembering what a command line argument does. It is like the dos help program, only much much better. If you are looking for a manual that reads like a book you are looking for info pages.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
We are overloaded with data not information.
Nothing is wrong with it today, because we need filing clerks. Doing work that can't be done any other way is honorable. But it's one of the goals of technology to lift the burden of less intellectual tasks from humanity so it is free to do more creative things. Bill is just echoing that ideal, he believes in the computing revolution's promise of making life better and more interesting for everyone. Of course, he believes he should be rewarded for helping make that change.
Sorry if that sounds like a troll or something, but seriously, Bill is not driven only by money. Otherwise he wouldn't have given up the CEO position to be Chief Tech Officer.
1) Make tasks easier to manage. Make it easier to enter task dates and improve the ability to link tasks to email messages. The ability to have super-tasks be made up of sub-tasks would be a great feature.
2) The idea of server-based Excel spreadsheets is intriguing. Unfortunately, the article does not go into any details about this. Excel could benefit from improved multi-user editing. The granularity of locking and editing needs to be increased. When more than one user works on a spreadsheet, instead of locking the whole thing, Excel should only lock smaller pieces. Built in version control, with formalized checkout, check-in, and merging of individual spreadsheet pieces, would make multi-user editing much easier to keep under control.
After listening to Bill Gates forcast the death of one of the most popular electronic devices of all time (the IPOD) and then listen yesterday to Young Frankenstein lookalike, Steve Ballmer, forcast the death of Google, it's hard to take anything seriously that comes from a MS exec's mouth.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
The old adage "Know thy enemy" applies here. As well was my old favorite adage - "Get close enough to the enemy to piss in their corn flakes while they are not looking"
That depends on how fast they're falling.
ewwwwhhh. i use msoft office and i am a glorified file clerk....watch me file this document in the recycle bin...oh, i mean trash.
I think he is countering the notion that workers are overloaded with info
I think he's trying to get everybody all worried about overloading each other with information so that they'll think it's necessary to upgrade to Office 12. I mean, how many more new features are really necessary by most humans who work in an office environment?
Instead of adding a bunch of complicated features that solve contrived problems for a thin slice of Office users, I'd like to see them put some serious effort into making Word documents fully readable by any other version of Word. Imagine... you could send a document to another person without concern that it would be unreadable on their end... now that would be something to get excited about.
So anyway, yeah, the point of Gates' comments is less about substance and more about manipulating the market. He does this all the time, most recently with the "iPod will go away" comments. Ballmer is now doing it with "Google will be gone in 5 years". These guys know they are getting hammered by Apple and Google in specific market spaces, and rather than respond with better product offerings, they respond with subtle slander.
From tfa "the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to" That reduces you to being a filing clerk. Or worse. At least a file clerk can prove that he gets his job done.
0 60 06.adp
The problem with the info glut is how we respond to it. If you let yourself get distracted by every little thing then your performance will suffer.
Recently there was a story that using email decreased your IQ worse than marijuana. That's true if you insist on answering every email the minute it comes in.
www.infoconomy.com/pages/news-and-gossip/group1
Bill
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
But if you want to know how many calories there are in sperm, you'll have to ask Uncle Cecil.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."--Feynman
...if I have a serious problem. I spend my whole day filtering information, code, tech manuals, slashdot etc. and only taking in the bits that I think are useful/interesting/funny. If I miss something I figure I can always go back and read it again.
The problem is I can't switch it off. I skim everything, and now the problem is spreading: it's affecting my listening too! I have to really focus on someone to take in everything they tell me, especially people I listen too a lot, like my girlfriend. If she is talking to me about something 'really important', like shopping, holidays, TV or hair and my brain doesn't agree how important it is I simply don't hear what she's saying. What worse is that she has a typical female ability to multiplex two or more streams of information, one of which might actually be important. This has lead to all sorts of arguments.
Does this affect anyone else?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Such as "How do I get Windows to the point where I'm not having to continually force quit stalled applications" or "Why on God's green Earth would Windows go out and waste my time trying to access a server pointed to by a shortcut I am telling it to delete, and then it bogs down because it can't find the server and does not realize that, well, that's why I want to DELETE THE FUCKING SHORTCUT!!!!" or "Why are most Cancel buttons in Windows cruel hoaxes?"
You know... little factoids like that.
William H Gates III wipes his nose on his sleeve.
Write an article about it!
Bill Gates speaks for the working man. Now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one... sure did!
[Bill Gates - Working Man] Fur Sure!
I think if Bill were a little more honest he would realize that much of the problem with information isn't overload but in fact the tools we use to create and manage it. *cough-ffice*
Hey didn't this very same guy say that by 2000 we'd all be talking to our computers like Star Trek.. hell his OS has barely learned to doodle on a tablet let alone talk to us!
Bill... reduce your meds. Get some real fresh air and for god's sake get your head out of Steve's ass because, based on his recent comments, its obviously irrating the hell out of him!
""We really want to get to the point where you are getting direct answers," Gates said. The company's MSN Search already has that for a few areas, he said, demonstrating queries on "Which country has the second-largest GDP?" and "How many calories are there in spinach?" (The answers: "Japan" and "7 calories for 1 cup.")"
:)
Too bad Google's already making money off of answering direct questions: http://answers.google.com./ (Or, uh, acquiring money, anyway, I don't know whether it's profitable or not.)
Information overload is a very real problem that I've been experiencing at work -- however, I've always found a lot of resistance to change. For example, my software team discusses every little problem through the same mailing list we use for everything else. Never mind that this results in three to four hundred emails on a good week, ninety-nine percent of which I have no interest in or care about. That's the problem with email -- it doesn't know that you don't care about it, and it has no quick way to tell it you don't care about it. (Or about the fifty threaded discussion emails that come after it.)
Ultimately the short-term solution to information overload is those already-designed Web solutions which consolidate and display information in a useful manner, directed by humans -- bulletin boards and Wikis. Yet I find few businesses, even in the leading edge of the tech sector, using these simple and free tools to help manage their business.
I think the long-term solution must be humans dedicated to the task of shaping the information presented to us. A software team of fifty programmers should have one or two managers, and five or ten dedicated "communicators" (not programmers, probably paid less) who would do this direct answering for us, who would go and find the information you need when you need it. That's all that it seems most tech workers do -- find information, whether it be from a co-worker in the same row, a co-worker on another floor, from a company you license software from, from a company you sell software to, from managers, QA testers, etc. etc. etc. But most of the time WE either have to find the information or ask the managers to do it.
As I said in another post, though, this is good -- it's a natural fit for the "library science" degree, and previously there was in fact no job that was a natural fit for that degree, even librarian.
The first is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia. But only slightly less well-known: Never use a non sequitur, when Death is on the line!
"...workers today are not overloaded with information." and "We still want a lot of information."
Hello? Can you say "Unrelated statements"? The fact that we want "a lot" of information does not preclude information overload.
The useful bit of information we want is (usually) a nugget that has to be carefully sifted from the deluge of meaningless noise that constantly flows through our every-day lives. These days, I'm finding that filtering out the noise now takes almost as long as accomplishing the task that I'm looking for information to complete.
How many of us waste a good deal of time each day dealing with spam? I'm not talking about "spam" in the classic sense; I get a lot of what I call "internal spam" where someone thinks it's important to tell me about things that have zero impact on my particular work... Or what about your organization's Intranet? Is it well-organized? Can you find the information you need without sifting through piles of marketing drek?
In any event, this is one of those situations where failing to acknowledge the problem could quite well be one of its symptoms. There's so much noise that the you think you're getting 100% of the signal.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Any time I have to use a GUI to make a particular change, you as a developer have failed. Try to script configuration changes which require a GUI. Try to make those changes while logged in to a headless server using ssh.
Thomas
..then I say Windows is overbloated.
"...workers today are not overloaded with information. 'We still want a lot of information.'"
I think he's referring to anybody who tries to use MS software help. After looking for and seeing the obvious being restated, I do find myself looking for a lot more information.
But I agree with this. I think we do want more information, we just need it in managable chunks.
Maybe MS is starting to think that Google will be a real threat soon?
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
I guess there's just so much proof that overload is a problem that he either didn't bother to read it, or tried but couldn't absorb it well. Since the evidence of overloading was so overwhelming to become unconvincing, he chooses to ignore it.
Funny, three out of four of my home machines (including my primary workstation) -- and my laptop -- run Linux exclusively, and have for many, many years.
*I've* never found a problem with it as a desktop replacement. Of course, I'm not an idiot, that needs the Windows interface to know where to click, either.
You should already be familiar with the program and you use the man pages for remembering what a command line argument does.
This is just the same kind of arrogant nincompoopery "Fanboy" means you TR()LL. What is blazes do you mean "you should already be familiar with the program!?!" You could have saved your argument by shilling the O'Reilly books. Without the ubiquitous animal woodcut books, AWK, SED, and PERL (to name three commands) are not intuitive by their precious MAN pages.
What does Office 12 release have to do with prioritizing the massive influx of data that we recieve everyday?
It's You and I against the World... When do we attack?
Yes, please! Hit me with 120x40 start button and with all sorts of [insertname]-bars. It's ok if it decreases readability but that's why I have my 19 inch LCD for, eh?
Oh, oh! Let's not forget the IE4 Channels feature, THAT is what I use regularly!
No more I say.
We do all want just the right information at just the right time. Often, the problem is exactly like finding a needle in a hay stack.
How much signal gets through is determined entirely by the signal to noise ratio. The more noise (information glut) we have to cope with, the less real information we can get. Shannon's law applies.
I believe we cannot say we are overloaded by information, only maybe with data.
AFAIK, information is that piece of data that is actually useful. Therefore I think we only have SPAM overload. At least I do.
This post is identical in informational content to some 10.000.000 other pieces of English text everywhere on the net; it says nothing new.
This goes to show that people generally like to talk, but don't like to listen. Just go to any elementary school (or Slashdot article..) and you'll see what I mean.
SO true. Everybody knows that a desktop completely cluttered with retarded paperclips is the way to go!
By the way, if you switch the paperclip for the wizard, the messages become even more helpfull!!
Back to unix now, just to see what MAN remove_troll says...
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
MS Office was feature complete 5 years ago. Mr Gates is imagining more is needed, not because his customers are telling him they need more features, but because his financial people are telling him Microsoft needs to project more revenue. Bill man, the glory days of customers regularly justifying the continual re-purchase of your products is past.
Quick! Go, before it's too late!!!
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
That dashboard feature looks neat. Would that help with the information overload?
When will Linux be getting this feature?
Or however you want to distinguish the two.
Data is facts.
Information is what you have when you process data.
It is possible to have too much data and not enough information. And that is the point we have hit. We can capture just about any amount of data on a subject, but we aren't getting any better information on that subject.
If you have enough data points, you will start to see patterns even when there aren't any.
That is data overload.
It means you don't read reference manuals to learn something new as that would be useless. Reference manuals are to refresh your memory. To learn something from scratch you read the info pages, as was mentioned in the next sentence, which you would've seen if you weren't too lazy to read it.
There's a fair bit of command line work required on Windows XP too. Try setting ACLs on the Home version without opening a command prompt for example.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Shall we get into another pointless discussion about how MS cannot innovate but can only copy the ideas of others?
- I have several e-mail accounts to deal with
- I chat on IRC daily
- I follow several USENET news groups
- I routinely post on a variety of message boards
- I subscribe to Mental Floss, SysAdmin Magazine and Columbus Monthly
- I read
/. and technocrat and fark and El Reg and Something Awful and Google News and Groklaw and The Onion and Maddox and Ars Technica and USA Today and NewsForge every single day
- I use Stumble Upon to find random, new and interesting web sites
...AND I CAN'T GET ENOUGH!!!
See, no problem at all!Did someone misread that "Information Overlord Overthrown" Says Gates?
I, for one, welcome... Nah, you get the picture
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
C hasn't "given way" to C++, or to anything. There is plenty of C programming going on today. The same is true for C++ vs. C#, there is a lot more C++ in use than C#.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
TFA stated a confusing idea right: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Thursday countered the popular notion that workers are universally overloaded with too much information.
TFAS, OTOH, garbled it: "Microsoft's . . . meet-and-greet kicked off on Thursday with . . . Gates . . . countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information.
Welcome to slashdot, I guess.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
'What if
For Bill Gates, it makes sense to have huge security vulnerabilities. Most people who have a huge amount of spyware and viruses notice that their computer is slow and buy another computer, thus making more money for Gates, because he then sells another copy of Windows. So, for Gates, there is hidden logic in selling the most vulnerable commonly used program in history, Internet Explorer. This vicious, hostile trick only works if most people are ignorant about what is causing their computer to be slow.
Your sig is interesting. Another seemingly wildly illogical issue:
On 9/11, 15 of the 18 attackers were Saudis. However, the U.S. invaded Iraq.
When Saudis attack, invade Iraq? Actually, that's not illogical, it is just that the logic is hidden. People in the U.S. now get some of the profit from Iraqi oil. Before they didn't.
For a president who comes from an oil family and a vice-president who worked for an oil company, it makes sense to use the attack by Saudis, angry at U.S. government influence on their country, to justify an attack on an oil-rich country.
This only works, of course, if most citizens in the U.S. are unaware of the largely secret U.S. government meddling, for private profit, in the affairs of other countries.
This phenominom is also known as the information "signal to noise ratio".... which has been steadily worsening over the years.
There are much more sources of information and that can be very distracting, especially because it takes so much time to evaluate new sources.
I find it instinctive to be an information packrat, collecting bits and pieces, and marveling at the relationships between a current situation and some idea observed long ago. However, there is so much information that is difficult to really organize since it is encapsulated in some vague relationship to dozens of subjects.
In spite of all the information free for the taking, the big problem remaining is to obtain the relevant in-depth knowledge useful for reaching a major goal.
According to information theory, information aids us by telling us what is true or believable, as opposed to the randomness akin to ignorance (example - the ignorance of the next lottery winning numbers as illustrated by the fact that even winners check their tickets).
A snapshot of thought is information leading from unsolved goal to solved goal. Deduction is so delicate that every step must be completed in order for the ultimate conclusion to deserve confidence.
It is likely that in the years to come the Internet will contain, freely available, information requisite for most problem solutions. It would be helpful for us to collect information and compile it into the form of knowledge that can be easily used. It's very expensive to search for information and separating the so called wheat from the chaff. Computers and the Internet are tools that will decrease the cost of obtaining relevant information, and organizing it would only help in problem solving.
Another aspect of information overload is handling it. Information triggers ideas and may sway beliefs. I say, live and let live. It would be nice to foster a tendency towards achieving new and unique goals and the belief that the information for attaining these goals is readily available. This comes down to the producers and providers of information to output quality while keeping in mind utility.
Right now I see so much information available but so difficult to organize into verifiable deductions. We've come quite a long way though.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Why they always masturbate themselves with vapourware instead of actually doing something? Who cares that in year something will do something. We have real problems to solve now.
awk, perl, and sed are programming languages.
That's saying that man pages didn't explain C++ to you.
You expect man pages to be a whole book on how to program in perl?
Besides, it's trivial to learn sed from the info page, I did it. I actually learned most things I know about *nix from man pages, especially at the beginning.
In case you didn't hear, Saddam is best mates with Bin Laden. They hang out, and smoke dope, get drunk, chase ladies together, and draw up 9-11/Mk2 plans.
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I'd like to respond to this but there's a newer post in Slashdot that I have to read first...
If you subscribe to the ideas laid out in "The Human Interface" the idea that people love to have a random information dumped onto them is not humane. People may want a ton of information but they don't want to spend time "ordering" it. Beyond this humans just can't handle giant lists disperate information well at all.
Consider your an audio ripping program. If a user were required to fully detail each file before they could listen to them in a player, one would spend all of their time typing information into each file instead of listening to the data. Filling out metadata seems to be a machine task not a user one. It is good to know what files where written by what artists. It is not good to force people to enter it. That would be tedious and prone to error: these are things machines actually excell at accomplishing so why make users do it?
Apple and Google have been putting tons of effort into making machines fill out the metadata instead of making users do it because it is really a task for the machine. If Gates expect users to fill out all of this stuff he is bonkers.
Isn't it ironic when whilst talking about information overload we are also discussing Microsoft Office. Not to sound funny, but we're talking about a majorly bloated application now, and I bet you any money that they will add several new options to the menu bars.
Forget about legacy support, we need user support, and if that means dropping a few features from the standard package then do it- and allow those who need it to add it to the apps via external plugins.
In honesty, I would love to see an office suite that goes for minimalism, and allows you to build it up using widely available plugins. This could also be an ideal way of marketing an office suite (rather than "100 new whizz-bang features that will never use!" and "your staff will only require three weeks new training to use the ten new features, of which only one of them will become commonly used in your office" sales pitch, how about: buy a strong body, pack it with the guts you need, run it forever).
I can, however, see what the fuss about information overload (I get far to many emails from people who simply want me to be aware of the conversation), but this isn't going to be solved through better applications, but rather by different applications. G-mail has a nice conversation structure that makes sense, this could be integrated into a sound customer/personnel database management system that would allow you to track conversations and comments meaningfully. The further irony of this is is that the best people to provide this apps probably are service providers (like Google) who could manage comms online and allow you to pick up conversations anywhere, rather than through a particular desktop/app.
And one further point- Gates is allowed to comment on IT information overload just as much as the next person- he probably suffers from Outlook Email Bloat (the OEB condition?) worse than many: he works in the IT sector, is involved in application development and uses email- that's a good enough qualification for me to allow him to comment (if not actually pass major judgement!).
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency (Eugene McCarthy)
This isn't insightful, it's just plain wrong. 'Old Money' in the computer industry is a self-contradiction.
My little site.
I believe the original poster was engaging in sarcasm. You failed to mention his reversal of the ownership of Java and C#.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you're working at a company that's given you a separate container in which you put your recycling, try the following experiment: Next time you're working late, watch and see what the cleaning people do with the contents of your recycling can and your trash can.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Uh, maybe if you'd read his post you'd realize that he's not talking about servers. Linux as it is right now is nearly perfect for serving anything and everything, but anyone who wants to see Linux become a good desktop operating system knows that he's right. Linux will never get anywhere as a desktop OS unless someone creates a distro which specifically adresses these issues.
...Try to make those changes while logged in to a headless server using ssh...
I thought this article was about Linux desktop systems for the ordinary non-geek users. The command line is like an old truck with a non-sychro transmission. I order to shift gears the driver has to double clutch it. It works fine once you get the hang of it. The GUI is a modern 5 speed automatic transmission. This is what most people want -- namely to do their work instead of futzing with the inner workings of the machine. Until Linux gets to the place where you never or seldom have to deal with the computer itself, Windows or better yet the Mac is the way to go. The ordinary driver just wants to get into the car and use it to get to the destination as safely and economically as possible. If the vehicle does that, many people would not care if it was powered by a squirrel running in a cage. The Mac OSX is the one that give geeks all the power they normally want, including a command line, and at the same time ordinary users get a machine that lets them do what they want with a minimum of fuss over the computer itself. Freedom from malware is icing on the cake.
All theory is gray
Expert:
Derives from Ex - meaning, has been and
Spurt - meaning, drip under pressure
How is using the command line a failure of the developer? How are command lines "idiocy that needs to be exorcised from the OS?" Command lines are very powerful tools; they're not the easiest for beginners to learn, but once they are learned, they are very powerful. Try replacing the occurance of a certain word with another word in 100 files with a GUI. Get back to me when you're done.
Besides, the command line is a central part of Unix--that's how Unix works. Commands can be piped and stored into shell scripts as well. If you're really "a fairly technical user," then you should understand *nix fairly quickly. Unless you meant "fairly technical luser," as your post seems to read.
Oh, and about the manual pages. Manual pages are just references, not full-fledged tutorials. If you're looking for that, try searching for TLDP (The Linux Documentation Project). You also might want to try FreeBSD; their documentation is pretty nice and very readable and their manual pages, while not tutorials, are very informative.
Finally, what does FOSS have to do with having to learn all of these technical details? Have you tried Firefox? OpenOffice? They're fine pieces of software that are very usable, no "bizarre, arcane, and technical" details that you have to face.
Where is the life we have lost in living
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge
Where is the knowledge we have list in information
T.S. Eliot The Rock
Your point is well taken -- Gates doesn't and hasn't worked in a modern office like a normal employee, how can he possibly know what it would be like or what would be worthwhile? Between his army of yes-men, personal assistants and other hangers on he knows what real life is like about as well I know what it's like to live in Sudan.
Man pages do their job perfectly. They are for reference, not for reading like a manual. You should already be familiar with the program and you use the man pages for remembering what a command line argument does.
Then why are they called "Man(ual)" pages and not "Ref(erence)" pages?
When I first saw Dashboard, I thought "great, finally something that Does Right(tm) the windowmaker dock apps..."
Linux has had Dashboard-like functionality for LONG time, if you also include swallowed applications to this equation - for all eternity you have been able to stick small applications to your desktop launch bars or whatever. There's also now applications that replicate desktop integration - though I presume Apple wouldn't release something as buggy as gdesklets seem right now =)
Much of what gets shoved in our faces isn't information; it is noise. Things we don't want to know are not helpful. Meanwhile it is often hard to get the information that we *do* want. User interfaces distract us with data we don't care about and features we don't use, but we have to dig and dig and dig for hints about how the useful bits work.
Clippy, for example, was almost always noise. I would estimate that about 50% of the words in the Windows Resource Kits are noise. Rah-rah, let's-all-get-on-the-bandwagon stuff sent to technical workers is noise. Innovation without improvement is noise.
To help prevent information overload, the new version of Outlook will randomly delete 50% of all incoming email. That'll really help you focus on the other stuff.
Many young people may be tempted to think that their brains are indestructible, that they can work for as many hours as they want, sleep as less as possible, and constantly overload their minds with stuff to process. They tend to find out the hard way (namely with burnouts) that reality is quite different. If you doubt this, do yourself a favor and have a chat with someone who has been through the problem.
You will therefore excuse me, Mr. Gates, but information overload is definitely not overblown.
Here is some of Gate's Bio. Incomplete of-course.
'Old Money' has nothing to do with computer industry. Gate's great-grandfather was J.W. Maxwell - founder of Seattle's National City Bank (1906). Gate's grandfather was James Willard Maxwell - banker, who established a million dollar trust for William (Bill) Henry Gates III.
From the article:
William Henry Gates, Jr. and Mary Maxwell were among Seattle's social and financial elite. Bill Gates, Jr. was a prominent corporate lawyer while Mary Maxwell was a board member of First Interstate Bank and Pacific Northwest Bell. She was also on the national board of United Way, along with John Opel, the chief executive officer of IBM who approved the inclusion of MS/DOS with the original IBM PC.
Remind your parents not to send you to public school. Bill Gates went to Lakeside, Seattle's most exclusive prep school where tuition in 1967 was $5,000 (Harvard tuition that year was $1760). Typical classmates included the McCaw brothers, who sold the cellular phone licenses they obtained from the U.S. Government to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994. When the kids there wanted to use a computer, they got their moms to hold a rummage sale and raise $3,000 to buy time on a DEC PDP-10, the same machine used by computer science researchers at Stanford and MIT.
and so on. Does this answer your question?
You can't handle the truth.
Having started a company with the tagline "Information overload solutions", I have a bit to say about this.
Full entry on my blog -m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
but, the thing is Bill, some of us don't have an office in Redmond containing 20 people whose sole job is to read our e-mail for us!
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
> What is blazes do you mean "you should already be familiar with the program!?!"
Exactly what was said in the OP:
>> ou should already be familiar with the program and you use the man pages for remembering what a command line argument does.
I'm impressed you have enough schooling to read, maybe you need some more so you can COMPREHEND.
Gates will change his tune once his search-enabled OS comes out. A few months ago he was crowing about desktop search, and how we couldn't find anything on our PCs anymore. I'm sure that talk will come back once he can sell us something to remedy it.
Gates got rich because he was smart and did the right things at the right times. You may not like him, but your thoughts about him just magicially becoming rich because he "got lucky" via his family/genetics/whathaveyou is a complete bunch of bullshit. It really pisses me off when people think that there must have been some magic bullet that made X person successful, rather then simply smart, hard work on that person's part. Anyone can become successful if you think and do the right things. But it's easier to say that someone else pulled their success out of an alien's ass, instead of figuring out what they did and doing it yourself so you become successful too.
This isn't insightful, it's just plain wrong.
There are plenty of sources. Revenge of the Nerds is a good one to start with.
'Old Money' in the computer industry is a self-contradiction.
How old do you think IBM is? Guess what, it's from well before real computers even existed.
To that end, MS's software is built to create, manage and make accessible piles of information.
This should read, "....built to create....piles of information...". Think "signal-to-noise".
> I'm an advanced user
No. You are not. I see absolutely nothing in you comments to indicate you nothing more than the average peecee user. You have gotten proficient in said environment and expect (what passes for) the logic there to be what is done in every other one.
The reason for an Iraq invasion is actually quite clever. It was not really about Iraqi oil. The reason the terrorists used mainly Saudis in 9/11, was an attempt to turn America against its closest ally in the Middle East, that fat oil tit, Saudi Arabia. The fundamentalist Islamic movement in the Middle East really wanted the region in chaos in an attempt to gain hold. Attacking the US in a spectacular way guaranteed our play on the field. We have no intention of carrying on a conflict on our own soil. Instead of making the move they hoped to provoke, we attacked Afghanistan. They wanted war in the Middle East, we gave it to them. The Taliban weren't making many friends in the international community at the time. Had we left it alone as only an invasion of Afghanistan we would have likely incurred another attack on US soil, in further attempt to provoke an attack on Saudi Arabia. In order to keep the war in the Middle East and not destroy our alliance with Saudi Arabia, we invaded Iraq. This allowed for some exercise of back pocket agenda to oust Saddam, but really directed all attention of the terrorists off US soil and into the Middle East. The fact that Iraq has oil, is really just gravy in the whole scheme of things. If war in the middle east was only about taking oil for the US, Kuwait would be the 51st state in the union.
I'll agree with TFA that he's richer than he should be. By a long shot. However, being willing to take risks because you have a million dollars laying around and being a successful entrepreneur are two completely different things. Having a parent who wishes he was a great entrepreneur who had all the advantages of Mr. Gates, I can definitely say that Gates must have done SOMETHING right.
It's not complete dumb luck, although it's partially there.
My little site.
Well, even Bill Gate's father disagrees with you.
Quote: "The father of Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates told Indian reporters he attributes much of his billionaire son's success to luck."
You can't handle the truth.
Answering your issues.
.... then you would rarely need to use the command line. What can you do graphically under MS Windows that Linix can't?
1) Why are you compiling a new Linux kernel? You only do this when you put a new kernel on or you need to enable some specialised drivers, and in the majority of cases you just get the installer to do it for you
2) Dropping to the command line to compleat a task. Well if you want something that is so bloated that will do everything that you or anyone else can dream up then make one and sell it to the highest bidder, I think alot of companies are trying to do that and so far have failed. Me I think I will stick to the command line for those jobs that require it. In any case if you wish to have Linux running KDE or GNOME or FVWM or
3) Man pages - would you like it if I put a little help icon on your desktop or your window header (not difficult if you read the manual). How about xman or if you still have problems how about Google.
As far as the desktop goes what does the average clerk use in say MS office?
Answer! Normally they use email, a wordprocessor and rarely a spreadsheet or presentation software. It is rare they go to the trouble of learning macros or visual basic. If they access a database it is normally via web or client server and in some cases a tty terminal is still used. All the *nix's from the early 1980's could do this and with a GUI as well.
You talk about Illustrator and Photoshop, they run under Linix, the downside you have to pay for them. I commonly hear "oh! it's not like Windows" and I just walk away because you really cannot win with people who don't want to think.
When you can buy and sell small countries, and influence the economy of the world at your whim, people tend to pay attention.
Even when you are dead wrong.
Its fun to be in control of the worlds largest monopoly..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sorry, it's you who is wrong. Gates' family had a large fortune long before he built a giant fortune.
'Old Money' in the computer industry is a self-contradiction.
The Gates fortune came from banking, not computers, so I'm not arguing with this statement. They had money long before little Billy made his own pile. That's why he could afford to drop out of Harvard and start a business: he had mommy and daddy and a million dollar trust fund to back him up. If he hadn't had that, he would have ended up like these successful MIT graduates: a poor stiff.
See what I've been reading.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Fortune favors the brave and the bold. Gates' enormous level of success is the result of luck, even a moderate amount of success requires quite a bit of luck. One could even say that his future was sealed as soon as he got the contract for IBM's personal computer OS. But there were any number of places along the line at the beginning, middle, and end wherein he could have failed miserably. He didn't. I'm not saying he's a genius. I'm saying that he's competent, to say the least. Presenting him as either an idiot or the complete epitomy of business acumen is a misrepresentation.
My little site.
I, for one, welcome our new information overloads!
(this had to be said)
... is not more computer programs. What is needed is ways of either:
(A) Modeling and mapping a person's existing brain (the way they think right now) so that the tool acts as a natural extension of their existing habits and patterns of being.
(B) A systematic way of training people to build habits (preferably using accellerated learning techniques) to use the program in a way which will be effective and benificial for them.
The problem with modern computer programs is they offer features, but the way they get people to USE those features is extremely poor. Solution 1: read a long and tedious manual. Solution 2: read a long a tedious online help guide. Solution 3: "guess" what the program can do and go on a web forum to ask questions for stuff that doesn't work as you expect it to.
And all of these strategies fail. How many people use 2% of Office's feature set? How many people use the entire feature set of ANY program they bought?
And this is why software companies can keep selling new versions with new features. People are ALL READY not effective with the software version they have right in front of them, so they buy because they think the new features will become the effective person they know they could be.
I guess my key point out of all of this is software companies should STOP selling programs simply with MORE FEATURES! Create systems which help people USE the features in the program the most effecive way, which is 1000X better and more valuable.
I need more evidence before I believe. For all I know, Gates is like George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Arnold, who have or had a team of people making all important decisions for them.
It's really the most likely scenario if you think about it. If you have the money, you do not leave the prospect of success to chance. Why would you if you can afford not to.
Try this time-tested strategy to protect your brain against information overload.
Turn all that electronic shit off. Make a nice cup of tea or coffee, sit down on a couch and read a good book for 30 minutes.
It works wonders.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Teams of people suck at decision making. Bad. Gates and Ballmer have teams and teams and teams of people to give them information. But in the end they make decisions. CEO's aren't all-powerful, but they are focal points for information.
My little site.
> workers today are not overloaded with
> information.'We still want a lot of
> information.'
We do not want any more information from Bill Gates though.
What would be useful is some kind of filter that can filter out the inforrmation that I want and drop other information. The big problem is when information is dropped - was it something there that I could have used anyway...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Then that sure as hell doesn't account for George W. Bush.
Or try adding and manipulating more than two IPs in a Windows machine. What the #@$% is with that damned TEENY interface to work with IPs in Windows? (You see a whopping 3.5 IPs in the 'IP Settings' tab.) Is that thing yanked straight from the book of 'What Can I Do As a Developer to Make Life Crappy for the User?" God forbid you actually need to *add* a dozen IPs. You're typing the same crap a dozen times. Yeesh.
When moving something from one Windows machine to another and having to move the IP in the process, makes me cry every time.
Give me a good ol' anytime.
There are too many things like this in Windows where the UI to something is utter horror to deal with but where CLI makes the admin task a snap.
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
He's a politician, not a CEO. There are three types of CEO's (in general, and for heavy simplification) - those who built their company from the ground up and know everything going on around them because they've been there and in on hiring half to three quarters of the people involved with their core business, those who have been trained to be as close a mirror of this as possible, and those who are simply clueless simpletons with the right degree. There are other types, but these are the central types I have worked around...
Bush, to me, seems, well... Yeah. Politician = third type most of the time. Crowd pleaser.
My little site.
Well said.
Teams of people suck at decision making. Bad. Gates and Ballmer have teams and teams and teams of people to give them information. But in the end they make decisions.
I would argue that it depends on the team structure. And these guys have the best team structures that money can buy. In the end, though, whether I believe these guys simply hire smart people and then take the credit or not is unimportant. I grow weary of talking about these people.
He also outlined plans for Office 12, the next version of its desktop software, which is due to arrive in the second half of next year." From the article: "There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important...That turns you into a filing clerk."
Sorry, I'm distracted by the announcement of the latest version of Office. Let me do some involuntary beta-testing of it after it's released and then I'll file it away.
I agree with most of what you said. But George and family's ties to business blur the lines between worlds like when the animals started looking and acting human in Animal Farm.
This may be news to you but the masses don't read Slashdot.
Honest.
They're only interesting from a 'how do I mimic the methods they have for manipulating social structures around them to benefit my personal goals' standpoint. One might look at Gates as an 'evil force' but if you look at him that way you lose out on the much more interesting information of the fact that he has managed to manipulate the world around him to the point where it is required to listen to what he says, because he can essentially purchase anything he wants badly enough.... ~10-20 presidential elections, for example. How does this kind of power get centralized, and - more importantly to me - how do I push with what weight I can muster for a redesigning our society so that there is a: incentive for each member of said society to achieve to their highest level, b: effective organization so that individuals' achievement does not crush others' achievement, c: a modicum of fairness, d: freedom of thought and action to the greatest level possible, and e: free beer once in a while for people that need it. A large balancing act happens around these people, and it is absolutely amazing to me that it doesn't collapse ALL the time instead of the rather large number of times it does... Being a successful person / leader / whatever is the result of quite a large number of factors, yes, but being the center of these factors and not collapsing under the pressure or focusing stupidly on one point is quite tough.
My little site.
You read slashdot, somethingawful, and theonion? That's great. I'm pretty sure that Bill was referring to people who use their information productively.
This was made up by bank lobbyists, to argue that requiring the credit card companies to honestly and accurately disclose the terms and rates to which customers were agreeing was only going to confuse the customers.
It was first used in comments to Congressional committee and federal bank regulatory agencies during debate on credit card law, specifically the Truth in Lending law and regulation
Agreed. Politics in the US is now very much just a business where PR is more stressed.
My little site.
"If you have enough data points, you will start to see patterns even when there aren't any."
Like seeing the face of the virgin Mary in a cheese sandwich or a the face of a demon in the WTC explosion?
At least making pictures from clouds is (mostly) harmless.
: D
Kong isn't balding otherwise they're identical twins.
too much inf...ooh, shiny!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Automatically you assume the basis of the points made by the OP was jealousy? It is not that by far from any rational interpretation. The OP presented primarily that Gates' situation as the son of a family with extensive banking connections and large reserves of money contributed to his success; this paired with the other comments on genetics, etc. says exactly what you have without its pointlessly argumentative elements. Read it again and understand it this time. For my own position, Gates indeed was able to and did become rich from his own efforts from an early age-however, that he was capable of beginning those efforts at such age rather than desperately seeing work was due to his family's extensive monetary reserves.
If your wife is analyzing apache and sendmail logs, she is not doing the "normal user experiance" thing.
You need to realize that most people in the real world have a hard time with the fucking start button in windows, let alone starting up a terminal and editing config files or grepping logs or trying to get the sound to work.
I completely disagree with Gates's assertion wrt information overload.
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
To my understanding, MS Office is a fairly good product... to be honest, it's better than OpenOffice, no one can't deny it.
MS Office 97 is the pinnacle of office suites, it was almost perfect. It has all the features you may ever need from a office suite. And the shinny diamont of this jewel is Excel.
Every other version that came after it just added bloat and eye candy... Office 97 is so perfect that it doens't really need any new features!
But Perfection is the worst nightmare of a company Microsoft... they need bugs to fix, and features to add!! How else they can push the next version to their customers!?!
I predict Microsoft will became so desesperate to find reasons to make people upgrade MSOffice that they're going to offer free usb-voodoo dolls of Clippy for free! Every time it appears you punch the usb-voodoo doll, and them it magically vanishes from the screem with a terrible cry of pain!!!
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Why the hell do you think I am working my ass off and investing wisely? To give my kids the best advantage over yours in life I can so they get the good job, home, etc...Why do you think I was attracted to my wife? Smart and came from a great family. That's the whole point!!!
Once the game started after the big bang some got a head start.
Why does anyone pay attention to this guy?
Is is almost always eventually proven WRONG when he speaks about the future, computers...
I think it was Tufte who said that we're not experiencing an information explosion, we're experiencing a non-information explosion.
Retard is being an apologist for Gates.
Too lazy to create a sig...
When was the last time Bill Gates was faced with a moron boss with his hair on fire on Friday afternoon waving a stack of papers and saying "XXX (where XXX is somebody of gravitas far above him in the food chain) needs an answer about this issue by 5pm tonight or we're all going to turn into toads..."
Whether Gates thinks so or not, sometimes the newest thing in the data stream (whether its phone, f-2-f or email) is the most important. He should take a hummer from Melinda, give away a couple more billion via his foundation, and then have nice big cup of shut the fuck up. He has no more a clue about the life of the people using his products than I have about the life within an anthill.
Hey, I like some of the replies to this (Off) topic but should we all take some notes here. Everyone seems to think that Bush invaded Iraq to line his pockets. He is from an Oil Family, true. But the Oil Business, just like any other business, will pass the cost of oil and gas on to the rest of us. His family will make money off of oil no matter what the price, and what Mr. Moore says. What may be said about this war is, it is a fight for your oil. Take some reposiblity here next time you go to a war protest driving your big SUV loaded with protest signs. Lets not be hipocrits. Stablity in the Middle East means stable oil prices, which means a stable economy. If you look at the price of oil since the 60s and do come inflation calcs, oil costs the same today as it did then. If the cost of oil goes up too fast then we are looking at some serious problems. Like the cost of food? What do you think a loaf of bread would cost if fuel went up to $10 a gallon over night? Would your paycheck change fast enough to cover this? What about the rest of the world? We feed many nations. How does that food get there? OIL! What do you think would happen to the stability of the world if everyone was starving? What kind of wars would we have then? How many would die? China is also comming online as a big energy consumer and they have 4.5 times more people than the U.S. What will happen when the average chinese citizen uses as much energy as the average U.S. citizen? Some serious problems are on the horizon. The war in Iraq is just a temporary fix that gives us a little more time. Protesting Bush's actions is kind of like a spoiled child protesting cavities and then getting upset when their parents take away their candy. We all have a hand in it. Lets not give in the emotional play made by Mr. Moores movies because they do nothing for the problem. Lets see what we can do to take resposiblity.
"Stablity in the Middle East means stable oil prices, which means a stable economy.
The result of the Iraq invasion? We don't have stability in Iraq, there are more people against us than ever before, and the price of oil is higher than ever before.
Sounds to me like you need to
a) Get a Life
b) Get a S/O
c) Take some evening classes
d) All of the above
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
I, for one, welcome our new overloads. Wait...
Uh, maybe if you and the original poster actually tried a Linux distro from this century you'd discover that there are such distros.
Good points. Let me continue one process you started:
Information != Knowledge
Knowledge != Wisdom
Wisdom != Life.
If you spend too much of your time processing input/output at any of the higher steps, you never get to the ultimate conclusion.
For definitions, I'll say (weakly, since I don't know anyone else has tried this):
*Information is dead but Knowledge is alive
*Knowledge is fact-oriented/external but Wisdom is life-process-oriented and internal
*Wisdom is passive, Life is active.
8-PP