...and again in 2000 and again more recently. Americans too young to have lived through the Depression, World War II or the Korean War have consistently gone along with those who would sell them a smug sense of material comfort in exchange for their freedoms. Two quotes come to mind:
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George Santayana
What goes around may well come around, but that will be scant comfort to the multitude of generations who will have to fight their forefathers' battles all over again, courtesy of our self-centered laziness.
With the new, RIAA-approved, liquid-sodium-cooled BFG 33-1/3, the EMI executives can, without rising from the comfort of their Aeron chairs or even wrinkling their Savile Row suits, lay waste to the entire anatomy of battalions of roaches^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompeting industry execs with ease. This is, of course, in addition to the legions of customers whose faith in the free market, not to mention their pocketbooks, have been permanently damaged by the BFG 33-1/3.
At this point, all we can do is fervently hope that The Best Government Money Can Buy will screw up catastrophically and actually take remedial action in the public interest. Vast amounts of RIAA/MAFIAA money have been invested in "campaign contributions" to avert just such a calamity,
Memorability by people who don't live completely within the program.
That's not really too much to hope for in another 37 releases, is it?
Seriously... I used to call WordPerfect 4.2 the Control-Alt-Shift-Left Elbow-Q software for its obscure key combinations. I take back everything I ever said about WP; after more than ten years of intermittent usage, I can't sit here and actually recall any keystroke combinations for Emacs. This tells me that, if there is a sweet spot for software usability, then Emacs inhabits the single point in the omniverse which is most distant from that spot. Geekiness was kind of fun 30 years ago when I was a teenager; I've better things to do with my time now - and so do you.
By the figures in TFLA, Wal-Mart could get it below $10.50 if they cut out the middleman (the label), but they're not going to make it down to $10 without taking a (bigger) hit in their own profits. I can see them (or one of their big-box competitors) making a big(ger) push into online sales; no physical media, much lower production/distribution/overhead costs. Do they buy a chunk of ITMS or Amazon? Or go through the pain of setting up their own system? If they did that, with competitive pricing (relative to AMZN/AAPL) and without DRM, I think they'd definitely make a big splash. If nothing else, they'd convince the iPod Generation's parents and other technology trailing-edge folks (who largely overlap with the "typical Wal-Mart customer base") that digital music is "real" and "legitimate", opening up heretofore largely untapped (by digital music) markets.
In my day, we shot rubber bands at the switches on the front panel. Much later, I remember the joyous transition to the IBM 029 keypunch (which would actually print the characters at the top of the column in which they were encoded) from the 026 (which didn't have such modern convenience or frippery, depending on your viewpoint). That effectively ended the days of farking with someone by randomly rearranging parts of their card decks (with several thousand instructions in 360 Assembler).
I bet there are a couple of hundred of us under 50 worldwide who can say things like that.:-P
The CTO of one of the companies I used to work for had a sign on his wall:
There are five stages to a company's development:
Idea-driven
Engineering-driven
Sales-driven
Marketing-driven
Bankruptcy
He was leading the Army of Light trying to prevent the company's transformation into a sales-driven company. The company is now in the late stages of Phase IV.
What has this to do with Sony?
Sony are a fanatically engineering-driven company saddled in recent years (since the exit of the legendary Akio Morita) with late-marketing-stage management. The rending asunder within the company, and the utter confusion of actual and potential customers regarding the brand, is the inevitable outcome of the "Hollywood thinking" or "American mentality" that is killing the company. Morita-san would never have "paid millions" to buy Sony's way out of the Format Wars; that's a large part of the reason the world watched VHS for many years - and why every serious video professional used Betamax. The fact that the "paid millions" rumour is entirely credible to so many is a loud indictment both of how far Sony have fallen and of the unchartable depths of moral character and leadership inhabited by the leading denizens of the media industry (well-represented by the MAFIAA).
The only downgrade available from Vista is to CP/M-80. Anything else - even XP Toy (aka "Home") would be a *significant* upgrade, with major performance and usability improvements. And, in many circumstances, CP/M-80 will also deliver these, compared with Vista. See Mike Cox's MS rep for details.
In the real world, whether we're talking about a company LAN or the local DOCSIS system, 10% of users *always* use 90% of the bandwidth. As long as it's not the SAME ten percent all the time, Until (especially American) ISPs get past this limited "unlimited" fraud, nothing is really going to get better, though, because the abusers will always come back and say "it said it was unlimited, so..." and a (non-technical) judge and/or (proudly ignorant) jury will always see it that way - unless the law says they can't, and has real teeth in it so that the providers say exactly what they will and won't do or allow.
Then, of course, the next step is to get a reregulated environment so we can have real competition again.... but that's another Global War On Error.
Yes, read and know what they say - NOT what those who would manipulate us would have us believe they say. The fact that you claim to have "studied" "Islamofascism" speaks eloquently to that basic fact. The more people who put their moral blinkers on and check their brains with the ADL (or the Home Office), the closer we will be to the (well-deserved) fall of our own "civilisation".
The last time I was at LAX, I saw the TSA security theatrical workers doing that to an old guy in a wheelchair. When I asked, they said it was "policy" for wheelchairs. (Never mind that it was an AIRPORT courtesy wheelchair; that was obviously too subtle a point for the insecurity forces to deal with.)
One more proof, if any were needed, that the post-1989 definition of the "Free World" has changed to "territories not under sovereignty or control of what once was the United States of America".:(
I would have thought that the concepts of "sufficiently paranoid" and "on/." were, if not oxymorons on the level of "military intelligence", at least a Felix-and-Oscar-class odd couple. For the avid Slashdotter, paranoia is never sufficient.... reminds me of these folks; a good working definition of "minimal signal-to-noise ratio".
Redmond, WA, Feb 4 (BSIS) After numerous delays, the widely-expected Service Pack 1, or SP1, for Microsoft Vista was sent from the development team to the Microsoft organization responsible for manufacturing CDs and online bits for the use of customers. Many analysts have predicted that SP1 will be in the hands of "end users" by approximately April 1, a traditional Microsoft-related date.
Microsoft occasionally releases these "service packs" to minimize or obfuscate the more egregiously defective "features" in its software, which is known to infect hundreds of millions of "PCs"; computers that would have been classed as "supercomputers" a few short years ago. The company's "Vista" product, an aggressively-marketed degradation of its long-time "Windows" line, has been singled out for more-than-usual ridicule and loathing since its release over a year ago. Though admitting that sales of Vista have been slower than previously commanded, Microsoft has recently been forced to swallow embarrassment and 're-release" Windows XP to the retail and manufacturer channels. Millions of PCs have been upgraded from Vista to XP since then. SP1 had been touted as carrying Microsoft's hopes that its newest cash cow would finally be taken seriously by analysts and usees.
However, sources tell BSIS, immediate and severe problems have arisen around the "impending" public release of Windows Vista SP1. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity explained, "Manufacturing got the gold masters for SP1 a few hours ago, both for the "upgrade" and "new insallation" versions. Unfortunately, a low-level employee attempted to actually install the complete system (Vista and SP1 together) on one of their machines, and the entire Manufacturing network blue-screened." ("Blue-screened" is a term used to refer to the "Blue Screen of Death", an indication that Microsoft's software has encountered an impossible or unusual condition, such as disk or network data transfer.) "When we rebooted the systems, all they would do was display a video of SteveB (Steven A. Vallmer, CEO of Microsoft) throwing chairs at some poor girl. It was horrible. We had to put new (disk) drives into every single PC to get them working with XP again."
No official or independent confirmation of this chain of events was available by the time this story was filed. Microsoft continues to insist that all is well. A public-relations official, speaking off the record, quipped, "Hey, if Bush can get away with all the (stuff) he's pulled, why does everybody pick on us?"
In related news, Microsoft shares continue their long-term downward trend.
Of course it's high quality; it just doesn't meet your needs.
Vista is the first Windows infestation to officially, publicly acknowledge what serious MSFT-watchers have known for some time: the population of usees and customers are two entirely separate, non-overlapping groups.
The usees, of course, are the poor sheeple who bought a PC and naively expect Windows to "work" because it's the "market" "leader".
The customers are abviously the MPAA, RIAA and other "content" industry groups (collectively known as the MAFIAA (Media Authoritarian Fanatic Ass-farking of America) to friend and foe alike). Of course, "everyone" knows that all major media content these days is made using Macs or *nix boxen.
Their customers are happy as the proverbial clams with Vista. Especially since they never have to actually touch it!
They earn it. You've always got alternatives to any product or service Apple does - usually not as good in one way or another, but that's a large part of the point. And it's not just the cash on hand - if you'd bought 1,000 shares of MSFT and 1,000 shares of AAPL three years ago, which would be worth hanging on to now? Markets aren't *always* rigged....
Mined metaphors - what would/. be without them? He means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill of course, Bunky... and Yahoo buying Red Hat wouldn't work if HRC or another Republican winds up in the White House come January.
A mulligan is a perfectly respectable tactic performed a limited number of times by reasonably respectable sportsmen sufficiently proficient at their avocation not to trip over their putter and tear the green to shreds. Which of those adjectives possibly would be applicable to the purveyors of the hype that is Windows 7?
Seriously, Lance is a fanboi from way back, working for a "news" organization that have been incurably overexuberant cheerleaders for all things Microsoft since well before they fired Will Zachmann for telling the truth. They should stop calling themselves "The Independent Anything" and just stick a big red "Microsoft-Approved Propaganda" stamp on every cover. I started reading them way back with Volume 1 Number 1 - which I still have - but I haven't bothered for at least the last four or five years. It's not that I'm implacably anti-Microsoft; I've been developing for and using Microsoft software since the days of BASIC on casette tapes...but my clients pay me to do things right, and being constantly deafened by the Microsoft echo chamber is a sure way to lose clients when things don't work as expected on schedule.
Australia still having a good government for the most part that apparently sincerely tries to do its citizens' bidding (as the continuing success of Prime Minister Howard instructs us), whereas American representative democracy has been replaced by a kleptocratic oligarchy - just like the old Taster's Choice commercials, only with far greater impact.
Part of the problem in the States is that our form of government became fatally flawed the day corporations attained legal personhood since a) there's so little flexibility in the system and b) the people who benefit most from the status quo get to write the rules that keep them there. A Westminster system, on the other hand, has to be more responsive - your PM is still an MP representing real constituents, and the formalization of the "shadow" Government helps keep everybody honest while still providing leadership opportunities and publicity for the parties presently out of power. We Americans have been much too smug about the 'superiority' of our form of government for the last 50 years or so, even as it has been steadily, visibly and openly removed from our influence.
If what is desired is the training of hordes of marginally useful, low level hacks who can be easily replaced by the Bots from Bangalore, we're on the right track. Someone obviously noticed that their "bachelor's" degrees are 2-3 years and "master's" is a year on top of that. It's not politically or economically acceptable (to the schools) to do the same thing, yet they're under pressure to produce drones who can be easily replaced. Hence the insectlike specialization inherent in a lot of "IT" "education" for the past decade or so.
Back in the day, "computer science" apparently had a strong liberal-arts component, with topics such as logic that are traditionally taught by philosophy departments. By gaining a solid grounding in theory, compiler design, and different languages, a CS graduate could reasonably be expected to fit into a wide variety of roles. By the late '70s and early '80s, that had been folded into the engineering schools in many universities; CS was seen as a subset of EE, and CS underclassmen generally had the same requirements as any "other" engineering underclassmen, getting precious little specialization until their junior year. We all know how well that turned out; it's what led to the "industry-focused" "curricula" of the late '80s and '90s. Education became a byword for vocational training, with an ever-shrinking set of currently topical skills being taught; shrinking largely because the American (and, to a lesser degree, Canadian and British) lower public educational systems were being systematically raped and dismantled by the political trends of the day. Johnny can't program? Well, that's to be expected; he can't read or write past what for half a century was deemed a third-grade level by the time he hit university.
Rather than solve that problem by re-broadening (all levels of) education, industry "solved" it post-1990 by offshoring everything that didn't involve a well-paid management position, and bringing indentured labor (via H1B visas in the US, for instance) for positions that were deemed "too difficult" to offshore. Everybody dranks the purple Kool-Aid for a decade and more, paying little attention to the fact that failed projects where becoming more and more common, and more and more costly. Instead, approaches like XP were introduced and sold, not on their very real merits, but on the idea that "this will help failing projects fail faster, earlier and cheaper".
What ever happened to the idea that the project shouldn't fail at all? Or, more heretical still, that software shouldn't fail at all? We put our lives at the mercy of software whenever we get onto a modern elevator, a recent-model airliner, or an automobile with electronic fuel injection. We put our wealth and comfort in the hands of software much more regularly. I recall one day back in early 2002 when I walked into the local branch of my bank, to be greeted by the sight of every "terminal", including at the teller windows, displaying the Windows "blue screen of death". I walked out, came back the next day, closed my account and took my money to a different bank. I was, according to the local newspaper, far from the only one to do so.
Our society is and will remain completely dependent on the correct functioning of computer software for its continued health and growth, if not survival. We, as a society, are being extremely shortsighted and apathetic by tolerating the status quo without examination or serious discussion. Which of these "sensible" "reforms" of the last 20 years will be the equivalent of the Romans' engineering decision to use lead as the lining of their water pipes?
With significant additional penalties for possession with intent to distribute. And crossing state lines while in possession counts as an automatic two strikes on either state's "three strikes" law.
It's not simple, but it's straightforward. 1. SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC. Go to concerts/pubs/etc., buy self-produced CDs. 2. Buy from non-label-affiliated, artist-friendly Web sites, not fronted by megacorps. Google is your friend here, even if you're not buying from them. 3. When permitted by the artist or by "fair use" in your jurisdiction, share samples with friends or play a few tracks you're partial to for them. Word of mouth has been the greatest aid to supporting musicians since music was invented. 4. Write to your local radio station (in the US, undoubtedly ClearChannel, alas), as well as to their advertisers. Tell them that you support independent music, and won't be buying overpriced Big Label CDs any more. ClearChannel might not notice, but chances are much better that your local grocery chain or even some non-music-industry large advertisers *will* make adjustments if they've got a couple of thousand unique letters and emails coming in every week. 5. Listen to and support independent Internet radio stations. Their costs are going up way beyond orbital, thanks to the megacorps and the Bush-league "Copyright Royalty Board". While you're at it,
Yes, it means we, the fans (customers), have to put in some effort. We're going to have to break old buying habits, and actually pay attention. That's the price of living in a world where you're a customer, not just a consumer. Remember the famous quote by Jerry Michalski: a consumer is "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." We can do better than that. If we're going to move beyond being told what to listen to, what to think, by the megacorps, we HAVE to do better than that. visit http://www.savenetradio.org/ and stay informed. Fellow Americans, write (not email) your Senators and Congressperson to remind them that you care about this - and when they vote for bills like the Internet Radio Equality Act, write them thank-you notes. Congressional staff *notice* when a few hundred (or thousand) non-fill-in-the-blank letters come in on an issue... that's votes talking.
Remember, the megacorps are counting on the likelihood that you won't do anything, that you'll just continue to "crap cash" on schedule - THEIR schedule. They're counting on the "I'm too busy" or "I'm only one person" naysayers to tamp down enthusiasm, and let them carry the day.
You are personally, individually, solely responsible for the world around you. If you don't like the way things are being done, get involved. This is one relatively easy, open, effective way to start.
Having worked at Microsoft before.... there is an amazing amount of wonderful stuff that gets generated, internally, but never sees the light of day outside the company. This is another indication of how jaw-droppingly bad the mismanagement situation has been for the last decade (at least). There's no political gain in it for the legions of "managers" at any of an amazing number of levels. The innovation and general lack of productive control (i.e., harnessing and utilizing creative energy and ideas to create kick-ass products) and the tension between the (low-level) folks who come up with the cool stuff on the one hand, and the business/internal political chosen realities on the other, make for a fatally dysfunctional company. Part of why Vista sucks with absolute zero partial pressure and took a dog's lifespan to finally get out the door is because all the "neat stuff" got put in, taken out, put in, taken out, and then the whole crap sandwich got taken apart and made with a different loaf (Server 2003). The higher you go in the organization, with very few exceptions (mostly people like Ozzie who've been brought in from outside within the last ten years), the lower the quality gets, until it reaches absolute zero a couple of levels below SteveB - and keeps right on going.
I think I speak for most of us software professionals when I say that Microsoft pwning the world the way they do really wouldn't be so bad if their cash-cow products didn't give shit a bad name. I'm positive I speak for a large number of small shareholders when I say I wish that the Board would take a broom to the top several layers of management, cauterize the middle 20 or so out of existence, tar and feather SteveB and run him out of town tied to one of the chairs he likes to throw around, and get Microsoft into the business of creating great software. We know it can be done; we're just tired of seeing everybody else doing it instead.
Slashdot Mirror
...and again in 2000 and again more recently. Americans too young to have lived through the Depression, World War II or the Korean War have consistently gone along with those who would sell them a smug sense of material comfort in exchange for their freedoms. Two quotes come to mind:
What goes around may well come around, but that will be scant comfort to the multitude of generations who will have to fight their forefathers' battles all over again, courtesy of our self-centered laziness.
...it's already been proven technically impossible to build a dumber version of Clippy. Microsoft Boob^H^H^H^HBob was a fluke.
With the new, RIAA-approved, liquid-sodium-cooled BFG 33-1/3, the EMI executives can, without rising from the comfort of their Aeron chairs or even wrinkling their Savile Row suits, lay waste to the entire anatomy of battalions of roaches^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompeting industry execs with ease. This is, of course, in addition to the legions of customers whose faith in the free market, not to mention their pocketbooks, have been permanently damaged by the BFG 33-1/3.
At this point, all we can do is fervently hope that The Best Government Money Can Buy will screw up catastrophically and actually take remedial action in the public interest. Vast amounts of RIAA/MAFIAA money have been invested in "campaign contributions" to avert just such a calamity,
That's not really too much to hope for in another 37 releases, is it? Seriously... I used to call WordPerfect 4.2 the Control-Alt-Shift-Left Elbow-Q software for its obscure key combinations. I take back everything I ever said about WP; after more than ten years of intermittent usage, I can't sit here and actually recall any keystroke combinations for Emacs. This tells me that, if there is a sweet spot for software usability, then Emacs inhabits the single point in the omniverse which is most distant from that spot. Geekiness was kind of fun 30 years ago when I was a teenager; I've better things to do with my time now - and so do you.
By the figures in TFLA, Wal-Mart could get it below $10.50 if they cut out the middleman (the label), but they're not going to make it down to $10 without taking a (bigger) hit in their own profits. I can see them (or one of their big-box competitors) making a big(ger) push into online sales; no physical media, much lower production/distribution/overhead costs. Do they buy a chunk of ITMS or Amazon? Or go through the pain of setting up their own system? If they did that, with competitive pricing (relative to AMZN/AAPL) and without DRM, I think they'd definitely make a big splash. If nothing else, they'd convince the iPod Generation's parents and other technology trailing-edge folks (who largely overlap with the "typical Wal-Mart customer base") that digital music is "real" and "legitimate", opening up heretofore largely untapped (by digital music) markets.
(NT)
In my day, we shot rubber bands at the switches on the front panel. Much later, I remember the joyous transition to the IBM 029 keypunch (which would actually print the characters at the top of the column in which they were encoded) from the 026 (which didn't have such modern convenience or frippery, depending on your viewpoint). That effectively ended the days of farking with someone by randomly rearranging parts of their card decks (with several thousand instructions in 360 Assembler).
I bet there are a couple of hundred of us under 50 worldwide who can say things like that. :-P
...it's infested by Randomly Puking Garbage II, III, IV, or MCMLXVII for that matter....
(spine shivers at memory of days spent doing what could even then be accomplished in a morning of COBOL, ALGOL or PL/I)
The CTO of one of the companies I used to work for had a sign on his wall:
The only downgrade available from Vista is to CP/M-80. Anything else - even XP Toy (aka "Home") would be a *significant* upgrade, with major performance and usability improvements. And, in many circumstances, CP/M-80 will also deliver these, compared with Vista. See Mike Cox's MS rep for details.
In the real world, whether we're talking about a company LAN or the local DOCSIS system, 10% of users *always* use 90% of the bandwidth. As long as it's not the SAME ten percent all the time, Until (especially American) ISPs get past this limited "unlimited" fraud, nothing is really going to get better, though, because the abusers will always come back and say "it said it was unlimited, so..." and a (non-technical) judge and/or (proudly ignorant) jury will always see it that way - unless the law says they can't, and has real teeth in it so that the providers say exactly what they will and won't do or allow.
Then, of course, the next step is to get a reregulated environment so we can have real competition again.... but that's another Global War On Error.
Yes, read and know what they say - NOT what those who would manipulate us would have us believe they say. The fact that you claim to have "studied" "Islamofascism" speaks eloquently to that basic fact. The more people who put their moral blinkers on and check their brains with the ADL (or the Home Office), the closer we will be to the (well-deserved) fall of our own "civilisation".
The last time I was at LAX, I saw the TSA security theatrical workers doing that to an old guy in a wheelchair. When I asked, they said it was "policy" for wheelchairs. (Never mind that it was an AIRPORT courtesy wheelchair; that was obviously too subtle a point for the insecurity forces to deal with.) One more proof, if any were needed, that the post-1989 definition of the "Free World" has changed to "territories not under sovereignty or control of what once was the United States of America". :(
I would have thought that the concepts of "sufficiently paranoid" and "on /." were, if not oxymorons on the level of "military intelligence", at least a Felix-and-Oscar-class odd couple. For the avid Slashdotter, paranoia is never sufficient.... reminds me of these folks; a good working definition of "minimal signal-to-noise ratio".
Redmond, WA, Feb 4 (BSIS) After numerous delays, the widely-expected Service Pack 1, or SP1, for Microsoft Vista was sent from the development team to the Microsoft organization responsible for manufacturing CDs and online bits for the use of customers. Many analysts have predicted that SP1 will be in the hands of "end users" by approximately April 1, a traditional Microsoft-related date.
Microsoft occasionally releases these "service packs" to minimize or obfuscate the more egregiously defective "features" in its software, which is known to infect hundreds of millions of "PCs"; computers that would have been classed as "supercomputers" a few short years ago. The company's "Vista" product, an aggressively-marketed degradation of its long-time "Windows" line, has been singled out for more-than-usual ridicule and loathing since its release over a year ago. Though admitting that sales of Vista have been slower than previously commanded, Microsoft has recently been forced to swallow embarrassment and 're-release" Windows XP to the retail and manufacturer channels. Millions of PCs have been upgraded from Vista to XP since then. SP1 had been touted as carrying Microsoft's hopes that its newest cash cow would finally be taken seriously by analysts and usees.
However, sources tell BSIS, immediate and severe problems have arisen around the "impending" public release of Windows Vista SP1. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity explained, "Manufacturing got the gold masters for SP1 a few hours ago, both for the "upgrade" and "new insallation" versions. Unfortunately, a low-level employee attempted to actually install the complete system (Vista and SP1 together) on one of their machines, and the entire Manufacturing network blue-screened." ("Blue-screened" is a term used to refer to the "Blue Screen of Death", an indication that Microsoft's software has encountered an impossible or unusual condition, such as disk or network data transfer.) "When we rebooted the systems, all they would do was display a video of SteveB (Steven A. Vallmer, CEO of Microsoft) throwing chairs at some poor girl. It was horrible. We had to put new (disk) drives into every single PC to get them working with XP again."
No official or independent confirmation of this chain of events was available by the time this story was filed. Microsoft continues to insist that all is well. A public-relations official, speaking off the record, quipped, "Hey, if Bush can get away with all the (stuff) he's pulled, why does everybody pick on us?"
In related news, Microsoft shares continue their long-term downward trend.
Of course it's high quality; it just doesn't meet your needs.
Vista is the first Windows infestation to officially, publicly acknowledge what serious MSFT-watchers have known for some time: the population of usees and customers are two entirely separate, non-overlapping groups.
The usees, of course, are the poor sheeple who bought a PC and naively expect Windows to "work" because it's the "market" "leader".
The customers are abviously the MPAA, RIAA and other "content" industry groups (collectively known as the MAFIAA (Media Authoritarian Fanatic Ass-farking of America) to friend and foe alike). Of course, "everyone" knows that all major media content these days is made using Macs or *nix boxen.
Their customers are happy as the proverbial clams with Vista. Especially since they never have to actually touch it!
They earn it. You've always got alternatives to any product or service Apple does - usually not as good in one way or another, but that's a large part of the point. And it's not just the cash on hand - if you'd bought 1,000 shares of MSFT and 1,000 shares of AAPL three years ago, which would be worth hanging on to now? Markets aren't *always* rigged....
Mined metaphors - what would /. be without them? He means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_pill of course, Bunky... and Yahoo buying Red Hat wouldn't work if HRC or another Republican winds up in the White House come January.
A mulligan is a perfectly respectable tactic performed a limited number of times by reasonably respectable sportsmen sufficiently proficient at their avocation not to trip over their putter and tear the green to shreds. Which of those adjectives possibly would be applicable to the purveyors of the hype that is Windows 7?
Seriously, Lance is a fanboi from way back, working for a "news" organization that have been incurably overexuberant cheerleaders for all things Microsoft since well before they fired Will Zachmann for telling the truth. They should stop calling themselves "The Independent Anything" and just stick a big red "Microsoft-Approved Propaganda" stamp on every cover. I started reading them way back with Volume 1 Number 1 - which I still have - but I haven't bothered for at least the last four or five years. It's not that I'm implacably anti-Microsoft; I've been developing for and using Microsoft software since the days of BASIC on casette tapes...but my clients pay me to do things right, and being constantly deafened by the Microsoft echo chamber is a sure way to lose clients when things don't work as expected on schedule.
Pity.
Australia still having a good government for the most part that apparently sincerely tries to do its citizens' bidding (as the continuing success of Prime Minister Howard instructs us), whereas American representative democracy has been replaced by a kleptocratic oligarchy - just like the old Taster's Choice commercials, only with far greater impact.
Part of the problem in the States is that our form of government became fatally flawed the day corporations attained legal personhood since a) there's so little flexibility in the system and b) the people who benefit most from the status quo get to write the rules that keep them there. A Westminster system, on the other hand, has to be more responsive - your PM is still an MP representing real constituents, and the formalization of the "shadow" Government helps keep everybody honest while still providing leadership opportunities and publicity for the parties presently out of power. We Americans have been much too smug about the 'superiority' of our form of government for the last 50 years or so, even as it has been steadily, visibly and openly removed from our influence.
You of all people should own stock in cheap-office-furniture companies.
If what is desired is the training of hordes of marginally useful, low level hacks who can be easily replaced by the Bots from Bangalore, we're on the right track. Someone obviously noticed that their "bachelor's" degrees are 2-3 years and "master's" is a year on top of that. It's not politically or economically acceptable (to the schools) to do the same thing, yet they're under pressure to produce drones who can be easily replaced. Hence the insectlike specialization inherent in a lot of "IT" "education" for the past decade or so.
Back in the day, "computer science" apparently had a strong liberal-arts component, with topics such as logic that are traditionally taught by philosophy departments. By gaining a solid grounding in theory, compiler design, and different languages, a CS graduate could reasonably be expected to fit into a wide variety of roles. By the late '70s and early '80s, that had been folded into the engineering schools in many universities; CS was seen as a subset of EE, and CS underclassmen generally had the same requirements as any "other" engineering underclassmen, getting precious little specialization until their junior year. We all know how well that turned out; it's what led to the "industry-focused" "curricula" of the late '80s and '90s. Education became a byword for vocational training, with an ever-shrinking set of currently topical skills being taught; shrinking largely because the American (and, to a lesser degree, Canadian and British) lower public educational systems were being systematically raped and dismantled by the political trends of the day. Johnny can't program? Well, that's to be expected; he can't read or write past what for half a century was deemed a third-grade level by the time he hit university.
Rather than solve that problem by re-broadening (all levels of) education, industry "solved" it post-1990 by offshoring everything that didn't involve a well-paid management position, and bringing indentured labor (via H1B visas in the US, for instance) for positions that were deemed "too difficult" to offshore. Everybody dranks the purple Kool-Aid for a decade and more, paying little attention to the fact that failed projects where becoming more and more common, and more and more costly. Instead, approaches like XP were introduced and sold, not on their very real merits, but on the idea that "this will help failing projects fail faster, earlier and cheaper".
What ever happened to the idea that the project shouldn't fail at all? Or, more heretical still, that software shouldn't fail at all? We put our lives at the mercy of software whenever we get onto a modern elevator, a recent-model airliner, or an automobile with electronic fuel injection. We put our wealth and comfort in the hands of software much more regularly. I recall one day back in early 2002 when I walked into the local branch of my bank, to be greeted by the sight of every "terminal", including at the teller windows, displaying the Windows "blue screen of death". I walked out, came back the next day, closed my account and took my money to a different bank. I was, according to the local newspaper, far from the only one to do so.
Our society is and will remain completely dependent on the correct functioning of computer software for its continued health and growth, if not survival. We, as a society, are being extremely shortsighted and apathetic by tolerating the status quo without examination or serious discussion. Which of these "sensible" "reforms" of the last 20 years will be the equivalent of the Romans' engineering decision to use lead as the lining of their water pipes?
With significant additional penalties for possession with intent to distribute. And crossing state lines while in possession counts as an automatic two strikes on either state's "three strikes" law.
It's not simple, but it's straightforward.
1. SUPPORT LOCAL MUSIC. Go to concerts/pubs/etc., buy self-produced CDs.
2. Buy from non-label-affiliated, artist-friendly Web sites, not fronted by megacorps. Google is your friend here, even if you're not buying from them.
3. When permitted by the artist or by "fair use" in your jurisdiction, share samples with friends or play a few tracks you're partial to for them. Word of mouth has been the greatest aid to supporting musicians since music was invented.
4. Write to your local radio station (in the US, undoubtedly ClearChannel, alas), as well as to their advertisers. Tell them that you support independent music, and won't be buying overpriced Big Label CDs any more. ClearChannel might not notice, but chances are much better that your local grocery chain or even some non-music-industry large advertisers *will* make adjustments if they've got a couple of thousand unique letters and emails coming in every week.
5. Listen to and support independent Internet radio stations. Their costs are going up way beyond orbital, thanks to the megacorps and the Bush-league "Copyright Royalty Board". While you're at it,
Yes, it means we, the fans (customers), have to put in some effort. We're going to have to break old buying habits, and actually pay attention. That's the price of living in a world where you're a customer, not just a consumer. Remember the famous quote by Jerry Michalski: a consumer is "a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash." We can do better than that. If we're going to move beyond being told what to listen to, what to think, by the megacorps, we HAVE to do better than that. visit http://www.savenetradio.org/ and stay informed. Fellow Americans, write (not email) your Senators and Congressperson to remind them that you care about this - and when they vote for bills like the Internet Radio Equality Act, write them thank-you notes. Congressional staff *notice* when a few hundred (or thousand) non-fill-in-the-blank letters come in on an issue... that's votes talking.
Remember, the megacorps are counting on the likelihood that you won't do anything, that you'll just continue to "crap cash" on schedule - THEIR schedule. They're counting on the "I'm too busy" or "I'm only one person" naysayers to tamp down enthusiasm, and let them carry the day.
You are personally, individually, solely responsible for the world around you. If you don't like the way things are being done, get involved. This is one relatively easy, open, effective way to start.
Having worked at Microsoft before.... there is an amazing amount of wonderful stuff that gets generated, internally, but never sees the light of day outside the company. This is another indication of how jaw-droppingly bad the mismanagement situation has been for the last decade (at least). There's no political gain in it for the legions of "managers" at any of an amazing number of levels. The innovation and general lack of productive control (i.e., harnessing and utilizing creative energy and ideas to create kick-ass products) and the tension between the (low-level) folks who come up with the cool stuff on the one hand, and the business/internal political chosen realities on the other, make for a fatally dysfunctional company. Part of why Vista sucks with absolute zero partial pressure and took a dog's lifespan to finally get out the door is because all the "neat stuff" got put in, taken out, put in, taken out, and then the whole crap sandwich got taken apart and made with a different loaf (Server 2003). The higher you go in the organization, with very few exceptions (mostly people like Ozzie who've been brought in from outside within the last ten years), the lower the quality gets, until it reaches absolute zero a couple of levels below SteveB - and keeps right on going.
I think I speak for most of us software professionals when I say that Microsoft pwning the world the way they do really wouldn't be so bad if their cash-cow products didn't give shit a bad name. I'm positive I speak for a large number of small shareholders when I say I wish that the Board would take a broom to the top several layers of management, cauterize the middle 20 or so out of existence, tar and feather SteveB and run him out of town tied to one of the chairs he likes to throw around, and get Microsoft into the business of creating great software. We know it can be done; we're just tired of seeing everybody else doing it instead.