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Windows, Linux 25 Year Old "Clunkers"?

Phil817 writes to tell us that Bob Metcalfe recently gave a TV interview in which he stated that current operating systems (Windows and Linux) are outdated clunkers that wont be able to adequately handle the coming of "video internet" and suggests that new operating systems need to be developed to take hold in a few years. Also, when asked if current deals in the works like eBay's purchase of Skype were an indication of more investment hype he replied with "I'm looking forward to the next Internet bubble. I don't know what everyone's so negative about. The last bubble was lots of fun.". Let us at least hope we learned a few things from the last bubble.

50 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Wait, who said by zegebbers · · Score: 5, Funny

    I couldn't watch video ?

    1. Re:Wait, who said by xs650 · · Score: 3, Funny

      "I couldn't watch video ?"

      That's because you're using a clunker operating system.

    2. Re:Wait, who said by tigersha · · Score: 3, Funny

      And for once there will be a woman you can literally read like a book!

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  2. Where are the links? by Werrismys · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To say that the post was lacking substance would be an understatement.

    --
    'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
    1. Re:Where are the links? by CortoMaltese · · Score: 5, Funny
      To say that the post was lacking substance would be an understatement.
      You see, Bob said all this and more in a TV interview, which, according to the interview, can't be viewed because your favourite OS is an outdated clunker that won't be able to adequately handle the coming of "video internet".

      Maybe the interview is available for download in a few years when the new video oriented operating systems he mentions have taken hold.

    2. Re:Where are the links? by Mr.+Moose · · Score: 4, Funny

      Take it easy, hopefully the /. editors will include a link, next time they post the story.

    3. Re:Where are the links? by Karma+Farmer · · Score: 5, Funny
      Well, just check the "related links" section. That's where the editors put the links related to the story that don't belong in the body text itself. There's plenty for this story:
      • Download Apache Geronimo Software
      • Compare Prices on Windows Software
      • Compare Prices on Linux Software
      • Compare Prices
      • HP Sponsered Solutions
      • IBM Sponsored Solutions
      That box is there for a reason. If you study those links, you'll know everything you need to know about this story, including why Slashdot chose to post it.
    4. Re:Where are the links? by PapaZit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe the interview is available for download in a few years when the new video oriented operating systems he mentions have taken hold.

      Operating systems like... BeOS?

      On the OS front, we have a situation where "good" is the enemy of "great". Windows has succeeded because it's good enough and it's a stable, constant platform. For people who care (i.e. many slashdot readers), it's not quite good enough, so they turn to a unix variant. More stable, but less of a consistent platform (Do you write for Linux or Solaris or AIX or NetBSD or...?). Fortunately, the variants are close enough that, so long as you have the source, you can probably port your app (or find somebody else who has already ported the app) to your OS.

      There have been (and still are) some really great alternative operating systems out there (AtheOS, Archy, Plan 9, Inferno, 2K... the list goes on and on), but nobody uses 'em because they don't have all of the essential apps. We use applications, not operating systems. The "right" OS is the one that runs the programs that you want to run. Until a killer app comes out that ONLY runs on a Video-based OS, nobody'll switch.

      --
      Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
    5. Re:Where are the links? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      Until a killer app comes out that ONLY runs on a Video-based OS, nobody'll switch. One word: pr0n.

    6. Re:Where are the links? by Sax+Maniac · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nah, the editors have just realized that since we don't read the linked articles anyway, they can just omit them. After all, we prefer to talk about stuff we don't know about here.

      --
      I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
    7. Re:Where are the links? by prichardson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Last time I checked, porn didn't require a special OS, or even a computer. Have you forgotten DVDs? Magazines?

      Even so, any OS worth anything can play video. It's not hard. There's nothing special about OSes that do.

      --
      Help I'm a rock.
  3. I find the lack of hosts to /. by Polarism · · Score: 3, Funny

    disturbing...

    --
    All your base are belong to Google.
  4. The coming of "video internet?" by Phariom · · Score: 4, Funny

    So...this article is basically stating is that we need to build an entirely new O/S to streamline our viewing of pr0n?

    Cool.

    I, for one, welcome our new video internet overvixens.

  5. fun? by LiquidMind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The last bubble was lots of fun"

    tell that to the people that have lost their jobs.

    --
    This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
    1. Re:fun? by Ceribia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "tell that to the people that have lost their jobs." Jobs that wouldn't have exsisted with out the bubble. Welcome to the boom bust market.

      --
      It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - )
    2. Re:fun? by kfg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, not the people who lost their jobs, but the people who lost their investments. The people who payed for all the fun the jobs were and got nothing back out of it.

      KFG

  6. And Sara McDonald didn't like DOS either by gtoomey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Talk about a story with no content.

  7. An OS is an OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apart from the "no link" stuff, I don't see what the fuss is all about. An OS is an OS, its role is to provide user applications with an access to the underlying hardware.

    In that sense, I don't see anywhere that Linux/Windows/*BSD/whatever will not be up to the task.

  8. Wrong end of stick by ishmaelflood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Video internet, whatever that is, is bandwidth limited. The OS of the systems on each end of the cable makes virtually no difference to the deliverable bandwidth.

  9. OS - Video - WTF? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If Linux and WIndows are "old clunkers" then presumably the *BSDs are not just dead, but rotting in hell with all those demons!

    What does this guy know? If you want an OS to stream video, then what does it better than a *BSD? If you want to watch streaming video then surely that is an application issue?

    I'd rather serve or recieve anything using an OS with 20 years debugging than an untried untested product of an Internet bubble.

    However, if anyone wants to buy shares in my new dot-com, then email me at "mailto:investments@pop.rip-off.scam"

    --
    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    1. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

      The main problem is that today's mainstream operating systems are not 'stream' OSes ;). They don't think of data as a stream with certain properties. They just have input and output devices, and what happens inbetween is just a matter of how to couple them together.

      Networks like ATM and TENET have special layers to define the properties of a data stream independently from the source and the sink. There is no equivalence in Windows or UNIX for those. There are some tacked on QoS-parameters for certain network devices (to handle the QoS of the networks connected), but this is not a design principle for all the not networked devices.

      Current OSes thus have a simple solution to QoS: Throw enough resources at the problem, and it will work for the lower bandwidths. For higher bandwidths just wait for the next generation. But in theory the hardware today should handle the higher bandwidths today fine, if the schedulers and the definitions of what has to be scheduled were better supported inside the operating systems. So you can have at maximum one data stream with QoS-warranties on your computer at any given moment.

      Computers used for data stream switching often have a subsystem that runs at highest priority on the host operating system and provides those streaming facilities without the host OS getting in the way too much. Futural operating systems should be able to handle the scheduling problems of several datastreams at the same time natively.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    2. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by tacocat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes, this is a picture of what you are doing with streaming data and a possible approach to handling the stream, by reprioritizing everything on the system to deal with it. But I don't necessarily agree that this is the best approach or the realistic approach.

      If we have to address the video streaming capabilities of a high bandwidth internet then that's fine. I'm really not worried about the current OSes. As a benchmark I have routinely watched full screen (21-inch) video over NFS mounted hard drives across my fast ethernet home network. This has proved to be good enough bandwidth that the movies are clean and the network can still do other functions (macromedia flash gaming is one high bandwidth example). Granted this is pretty much one user, but it's a benchmark.

      Now it is arguable that NFS is not the best solution to video streaming, but it's one that I have readily available.

      I would have assumed the best approach would be a two part application; the first part caching the stream and buffering the data so that latency interruptions can be handled more gracefully, and the second part to read off the buffer (memory or disk) and present the video.

      I don't know of any one who believes that even a terabit network can do realtime streaming of hi definition video with zero risk of latency interruptions so I just can imagine anything with that model in mind as being anything less than marketing hype.

    3. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by TallMatthew · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Networks like ATM and TENET have special layers to define the properties of a data stream independently from the source and the sink. There is no equivalence in Windows or UNIX for those. There are some tacked on QoS-parameters for certain network devices (to handle the QoS of the networks connected), but this is not a design principle for all the not networked devices.

      Beh. ATM was a dog. It was supposed to be this voice/data/video panacea but all it ended up being was an incredibly inefficient way to pass data around. Defining class of service on a cell/packet is one of those ideas that makes sense, but is ultimately meaningless based on the nature of data transmission.

      QOS prioritizes packets, that's it. It has no effect except during congestion. It will not "create" bandwidth. If you're a carrier and your backbone is clogged, QOS isn't going to help you very much because the buffers on your routers can only store so much. You're going to start dropping packets all over the place and your customers will be most displeased. That's why carriers overprovision backbones.

      If you're a customer and you don't have enough pipe to your house to really support a video stream (which with modern-day streaming technology isn't very much), Linux/Windows won't be the problem. You won't be able to prevent your downloads from interrupting your video stream with prioritization, as that would have to occur at the carrier side before the packets crossed the wire. And why would the carrier do that for you? Buy a fat pipe, they'll suggest. After all that's what they had to do.

      Cable companies and telecoms have been grappling with this for years. Ultimately they've found the only tenable solution is capacity.

    4. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your argumentation holds very well as long as it is only one datastream we are talking about, or only one pipe it can go through. As soon as you have several of them, starting and ending at different times and going different ways, you should be able to schedule streaming resources: Postpone one that doesn't fit into the sum of all bandwith you get for instance, or reroute it through different pipes that are not fully used.

      Currently we still use benchmarks to tell us, how much bandwidth we can really muster for different tasks on a computer. A streaming OS would have to have an operating system function, where you can actually ask it, how much bandwidth you get if you want to pipe a data stream from point A to point B at a predefined time, and then you should be able to reserve the bandwidth, so no other application starting later can eat into this bandwidth, the same way today it can't write into the memory an other application is using.

      Currently you can separate application only in a way that they don't use the same resources at the same time, which is a very discrete schedule. For actually switching data streams (which is different from having one datastream uninterupted), you should also schedule the access continously. Imagine it like a big railway station. Today's operating systems are able to make sure that every single track and railswitch is protected and can only be used by a single train at a time. For actual operation of the railway station you need the full way from the starting rail across the station to the leaving rail protected (and freed after the train went through). With todays operating systems you just hold all trains and have only a single one moving. With actuall streaming operating systems you should be able to let several trains run at the same time as long as their ways don't cross. (The analogy doesn't hold completely, because on a railway only one train can use one rail at a time. Streaming data of different streams could use the same path through the operating system at the same time as long as they don't exceed the bandwidth limit).

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    5. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by bhmit1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And beyond that, the interface in both is terrible. Is the data I'm looking for in /usr/bin/run? C:/documents and settings/Default User/Application Data/? Or one of a million other places? Is my dependency tree resolved properly?

      First off, you seem upset with user interfaces, lack of video standards, and lack of quality applications, not the OS itself. We could build a new OS and still have all these problems. Fixing the OS we have would seem to be a more efficient solution. Also, just because something is complex doesn't mean it won't stick around. I don't think people consider Tivo complicated because the UI hides everything under the covers.

      And on the flip side, you don't hear a lot of people complaining about what a PITA it was to change the water pump in their car, because they get a mechanic to do that. And yet cars are still around despite the fact that you need to learn how to drive and get a license before you're allowed to use one. There's probably more than one thing the computer industry could learn from the automotive industry, they've been doing it for longer. OS's are still a ways away from needing to make our own gas to electric conversion.

    6. Re:OS - Video - WTF? by Sique · · Score: 3, Informative

      The issue is not, as you are all somehow seem to believe, that there are limits of bandwidth. The issue is that the operating system can't tell you what they are. A streaming capable operating system should tell you when starting a certain stream would be unwise because the bandwidth is not there to serve it, as a file system is telling you that you can't save any more data because the disk is full. Currently you either have hard limits with some PC based DVRs or similar equipment, which are found out by benchmarking and testing, or you just start the streams and hope they will run rather smoothly.

      Stream aware operating systems should always KNOW where the limits are, and if certain streams with certain properties still fit into the bandwidth limits, whatever causes the limitations.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  10. It's true! by MaestroSartori · · Score: 3, Funny

    My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Linux and Windows pass out at 31 Flavors last night! So I guess it must be pretty serious...

  11. Netcraft confirms it...er... by Polarism · · Score: 4, Informative
    --
    All your base are belong to Google.
  12. A link, for those who read articles. by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Obviously, the editors don't care, but for those of us who actually try to read the article, I found the following, so others don't have to waste their time, as well:
    http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=86 214&WT.svl=news2_1
    (and it's probably redundant by now, but this would be the creator of Ethernet, for those who didn't know who Bob Metcalfe is)
    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    1. Re:A link, for those who read articles. by PhilHibbs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're calling this guy out because something he designed THIRTY YEARS AGO - a computing technology that is STILL IN USE TODAY - wasn't optimised for streaming video?

    2. Re:A link, for those who read articles. by Bogtha · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this would be the creator of Ethernet, for those who didn't know who Bob Metcalfe is

      This would also be one of the people childish enough to popularise the term Open Sores Software. Sure, he developed Ethernet, but what has he done in the last thirty years, except devolve into a troll?

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  13. Weird, they work for me... by KingSkippus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Weird, Windows and Linux seem to handle pretty much any task I need handled. Not bad for a couple of clunkers.

    Who knows? Maybe he's right. Personally, I think the concept of television networks is a clunker of an idea waaay past its time. I suggest that in this age of the Internet, we should all be watching on-demand content provided directly by the content makers that's financed by micropayments paid by the consumers, and we receive our "signal" via high-speed Internet connections to the content providers.

    Boy, it sure is easy for me to sit back and say that. But where the rubber meets the road—actually making these brave new ideas come to pass... Well, that's the challenge, isn't it? Until someone can cough up the resources to invest into creating, distributing, and marketing BobOS and my IP television studios, I guess we'll just have to keep talking about how nice it would be, and make the best of the clunkers that I suppose are working well enough for now.

    But seriously, if you want to invest in my IP television studio, let me know...

    1. Re:Weird, they work for me... by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Weird, Windows and Linux seem to handle pretty much any task I need handled. Not bad for a couple of clunkers.


      While this may be true, not to long ago there was an article about load times. It seems the time it takes to load a particular class of program (say a word process, spreadsheet,etc) has stayed the same for the last 20 or so years. It actually takes longer to load the OS now than it did 20 years ago. Yet, look at the increase in processesing power between then and now.

      Why is it that the capabilities of the machine have increased by 4 (or more) orders of magnitude, yet the software still takes as long to load and doesn't really do more except look pretty? And, no I am not talking about the high end 3D games. I am talking about the average business programs.
      --
      There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
  14. Below the threshold by jandersen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There really should be a threshold to what kind of articles one could see, like there is for replies.

    So here we have yet another article about somebody's narrowminded concept of what the future is going to be like. Who bloody cares about 'video internet'? Yes, the big Hollywood factories that produce entertainment on assembly lines are keen to have all that on the internet so they can roll out their anal-retentive DRM and pay=per-view schemes, and that's all. We on the consumer side will get no real benefits from this 'video internet', on the contrary.

  15. I don't get it by demon_2k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's wrong with the internet as it is now?
    Video, for what reqason? Do they mean more like flash?
    With interactive animations, or something different?

    What i can see happening is animated or even worse, video adds.
    And I'll tell all of you, i'm not looking foreward to that.
    I think that's a reason enough to be negative.
    Wasting bandwidth for damn stupids adds.

    I guess it wouldn't bother me so much if we still had unlimited cable. This "unlimited" cable shits me, all because internet service providers want to promote their own content delivery.

  16. Re:Sorry? by kfg · · Score: 4, Funny

    What exactly does he mean by video internet?

    "Give me free money."

    KFG

  17. Will someone think of the kittens?!?!? by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 3, Funny

    Everytime someone talks about video internet, God kills a kitten.
    See?!?! You made me make God kill a kitten just now by talking about video interne... damn!

    And you know what? By the time this thread is done with, tens of thousands of kittens will have died. How many at the hands of "In Soviet Russia" jokes alone, I do not know, but I shudder to think.

    Frankly, I am saddend at the massive loss of furry lifeforms about to take place, all for the sake of a mental circlejerk about "all porn all the time all online". You're all just sick.

  18. "In the year 2000... In the year 2000!" by croddy · · Score: 3, Funny
    And how!

    My future-viewing terminal informs me that that the Video Internet will be deployed just a few years after the widespread availablility of wall-mounted Video Telephones, but just before Honda release their premiere Flying Automobile.

    I can only hope that our spinlock model is flexible enough for these paradigm-shattering technological earthquakes!

  19. Misleading summary by oneandoneis2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The actual quote is Windows and Linux, are 25 years old -- they're going to need updating to adequately carry video - so he's not really implying "They're dinosaurs and need to die out & be replaced", more "They're not yet ready for future demands" - which is pretty much a given: How can you create functionality for something that doesn't exist yet?

    --
    So.. it has come to this
  20. Video Internet? by The+NPS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I thought we already had video internet, and it was called TV. Honestly, video content is worthless. Sure, it'd be kind of fun to watch the numa numa kid in high definition with no buffering, but does it really matter? No. Is there any substance to that? Hell no. If TV is even a tiny implication of what more video content would mean, then the last thing I want is more video content in the net.

  21. In january 1995 Bob Metcalfe predicted by lord_rob+the+only+on · · Score: 5, Informative

    "The internet will soon go spectaculary supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse"
    He promised to "eat his words" if he was wrong
    So, in early 1997, at a technical conference he ate
    (from "Computer Networks" by Tanenbaum)

  22. Re:fun? .. Video Internet = Mandatory DRM by Savage650 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ... commiserating with The people who payed for all the fun the jobs were and got nothing back out of it.

    No Sympathy here. Whoever buys into a scheme that is supposed to double/tripe/quadruple their money overnight deserves the "Experience" they get. Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.

    And by the way: this wonderful "Video Internet" Mr. Metcalfe is fantasizing about ... Who needs it? the consumers? Or could it be ... Who else would be interested in a broad roll-out of DRM-locked viewers?

    Expect a flurry of new, draconian laws protecting "Content Ownership" to be written and enacted during the boom phase. And we'll be stuck with these laws, even after this particular bubble bursts.

  23. Clunkers. by SoupIsGood+Food · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, he's right. Windows is based, more or less, on the old VAX/VMS model. Linux is a modern OS kernel, but it's designed to run a variant of the Unix operating system, which was shiny and new before the Star Trek with Captain Kirk went into syndication.

    The same can be said for MacOS X and the BSD's... hell, for pretty much every OS under the sun. BeOS and Plan 9 were the last attempts at someone trying something new with any technical success, and their lessons were largely lost on the industry.

    Innovation in operating systems is pretty much at a standstill outside the academic environment. Current operating systems cannot leverage parralelism very well for anything but hyper-specialized applications. Current operating systems have user environments that are crummy at managing massive amounts of data crammed into cavernous storage systems. Current operating systems are rotten at deploying your data across networked devices like cell phones and MP3 players and DVRs without a crapload of work.

    There are acres of room for improvement, but the current paradigms aren't keeping up. Part of the problem is the PC architecture... it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited. It's shackling the industry to a very limiting hardware model, trading innovation in effciency and effectiveness for better benchmarks at the same old stuff.

    Someone's going to need to design and market a new platform... OS and Hardware, that manages your data better with less effort across more devices, before we can get things moving again.

    Otherwise I foresee more of the same... computers completing benchmarks faster, but not doing anything new and innovative.

    Linux is a very nice unix, perhaps the pinnacle of achievement for the Unix Way, but the Unix Way isn't all that special anymore, and is really showing its age. Windows is an order of magnitude in worse shape. It's just that no-one with an industry presence is willing to try anything new anymore, and companies like SGI and HP are going broke sticking to the old model long after it's stopped working for them.

    SoupIsGood Food

    1. Re:Clunkers. by joshv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Innovation in operating systems is pretty much at a standstill outside the academic environment. Current operating systems cannot leverage parralelism very well for anything but hyper-specialized applications. Current operating systems have user environments that are crummy at managing massive amounts of data crammed into cavernous storage systems. Current operating systems are rotten at deploying your data across networked devices like cell phones and MP3 players and DVRs without a crapload of work.

      You going into marketing? You seem to have the lingo down. That being said, you freaking don't know what you are talking about. Windows and Linux are both multi-threaded operating systems. My copy of Windows XP 'leverages' paralellism just fine, as my CPU is dual core. The OS gets both CPUs working, all the time. You want to see some real improvements, talk to the application coders and try to get them to 'leverage paralellism' in their applications by making them multi-threaded.


      There are acres of room for improvement, but the current paradigms aren't keeping up. Part of the problem is the PC architecture... it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited. It's shackling the industry to a very limiting hardware model, trading innovation in effciency and effectiveness for better benchmarks at the same old stuff.


      What the hell are you talking about? Care to offer some specifics? "it's not well suited for anything but a workstation or server, and even then, it's not all that well suited" - what exactly does that little gem mean? My latest motherboard has an extremely high bandwidth I/O architecture, built in from the ground up. I have memory bandwidth that was unheard of just 3 years ago. The damned thing burns through just about every task I throw at it.

      Someone's going to need to design and market a new platform... OS and Hardware, that manages your data better with less effort across more devices, before we can get things moving again.

      Wait, I thought the problem was with the PC architecture - now it's data management? Moving data between various devices is the job of applications. If the applications aren't written to interoperate and share data intelligently, there's nothing the OS can do to fix that.

  24. -1 Troll by obender · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think we should be allowed to mod the stories as well as the comments. This way we could get rid of both the dupes and the trolls like the current story.

  25. Re:fun? .. Video Internet = Mandatory DRM by cnelzie · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.


        I do not believe that I have seen such a completely misleading and or misinformed statement in a very long time. If you have no idea what you are doing, yeah, you could get burned. If you are smart, do your research and invest wisely, such as by diversifying, you can come out pretty darn well.

    --
    If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
  26. Re:The last bubble squandered a fortune by tverbeek · · Score: 3, Insightful
    What an idiot. Look at the carnage afterwards. Nevermind the few people that lost their jobs, tragic as that is, the real damage is the money from pension and investment funds that was squandered. That is people having their entire retirement thrown away.

    That's just how The Market works. It runs in cycles of boom and bust. It uses the irrational activity of the investment market to tear down old economic structures so that they can be replaced with more efficient ones.

    Which is of course why those who hold The Market up as if were the sacrosanct invisible hand of God ought to be taken out and shot. It demotes human society to barbarism, with no regard for the better aspects of human nature: the capacity for compassion, cooperation, and reason. I'm not advocating communism, because that has its own problems, but deifying The Market to justify whatever it does is definitely not the answer.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  27. Umm, mod parent up. Mod grandparent hilarious. by Corngood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's hard to take seriously a sob story involving stock options and Hummers. Anyone who makes a few bucks and decides that the first thing they need is a military vehicle for the commute to work can go fuck themselves.

  28. Fools! Hurd is the Kernel of the Future! by porkchop_d_clown · · Score: 3, Funny

    And it always will be...

  29. Re:fun? .. Video Internet = Mandatory DRM by dubl-u · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Playing the stock market is like every other form of gambling: The house always wins. You lose.
    I do not believe that I have seen such a completely misleading and or misinformed statement in a very long time. If you have no idea what you are doing, yeah, you could get burned. If you are smart, do your research and invest wisely, such as by diversifying, you can come out pretty darn well.

    Investing is entirely different than "playing the stock market". You guys are both right. You can use your brokerage account to invest or to gamble. During the internet boom, most of the tech investors and day traders were gambling, not investing.