I don't think GP was trying to say the Imperial system makes sense today. I think he was saying it made sense at the time it was invented. Back then, the level of accuracy required was much lower (if only because higher levels of accuracy were unobtainable).
He was not saying the US should stick with Imperial. He was saying it had a certain sense behind it that was good for the time in which it was invented.
The way I dealt with this conflict (back when I was doing contracting work) was twofold: First, I would try to convince the client to work on a time and material basis, rather than fixed price. To do this, I would point out two things that should have been obvious, but are usually not:
Requirements change over time. With time and material, this is not a problem. With a fixed price project, every time this happens the entire project needs to be halted, percentage of execution calculated, payment for work already done given, and a new quote issued. This gives a very strong disincentive to trigger changes, which means the project stagnates for no good reason.
When writing a quote for a fixed price project, I take the full risk of the project being bigger than anticipated. To accommodate this risk, I over price the quote. If I think a certain project will take me 50 hours to complete, a fixed price quote will typically bill around 70. Those 20 hours are a premium the client pays for me taking the risk.
Often (not always) these were enough to convince the client that time and material was a better option for them. If not, however, I would define an acceptance test period. The quote would read something like:
The project will be ready on X. Once delivered, the client will have a one month acceptance test period. All bug reported during the acceptance test period, and which are within the original scope of the project, will be fixed with no further charge. Any bugs found after the acceptance testing is over will be charged at $Y/hr
This solves both problems. On the one hand, I take responsibility for my own bugs. On the other, I do not have an open ended commitment (which I cannot afford, as a small business) to solve bugs, free of charge, until the rest of eternity. As far as the client goes, it is unlikely that any really serious bugs will not be discovered within a month of testing (unless they order a project, and then never get around to test it once delivered, in which case, screw them).
Evidence suggests that the market did consolidate. You just didn't like the results.
I was under the impression that the consolidation was the good thing you attributed to MS. If that was, indeed, your point, claiming that it would happen without MS means they did not contribute to that end as much as you gave them credit, hence my point. If that was not your point, then I didn't get what was.
What? I guess I'm suppose to ignore the 800 lb gorillas named Apple and Google.
I refer you to what "Monopoly" means (hint - mono is Greek for "single"). I am fizzy with anticipation to see your explanation of how two and competing entities might be considered a monopoly.
Sorry the MS-DOS thing happened in the 80's and survived the first watershed event where the small home computers couldn't compete with the deluge of 8086 machines. I don't know why you feel that you need to remind me that it's 2013, you appear to be the one with the short-term selective memory.
Juvenile ad hominem insult aside, 2013 minus 1995 gives us almost two decades, while you were trying to claim that my "a decade" statement was too much. If anything, it was too little.
If anything, Microsoft's dominance in the personal computer market actually was a good thing in the beginning.
Which is precisely why I didn't say "two decades".
I'll also add that I believe that the consolidation would have happened on its own, and might have consolidated on a better platform. The smartphones industry sure seem to go this route without a monopolistic overlord to guide it.
Everything else you describe happened around 1995. This is 2013.
I think it is important (though, I would be the first to agree, not common) to read comments in the context in which they are given.
If you steal a billion dollars, and then proceed to do good things with them, then you should be applauded for the good you did, while going to jail for the billion you stole.
I loath a lot of what he's done, but I don't think divorcing "Bill Gate's money" from "Bill Gates" has any merit. I think this is response is just you trying to handle your cognitive dissonance.
The man was a ruthless copycat and a predator who set the computer world back at least a decade. For that he deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) scorn.
He is also a man who decided that his wealth should go to help make the world a better place for people whose trouble do not, usually, receive funds. For that the man deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) praise.
Learn to live with these two facts, contradicting though they may seem.
And, even when websites use country-specific domains, I see a lot them still using dot com with it -- for example "website.com.au"
That's just ignorance on your part, I'm afraid.
Some countries choose to have only a closed set of second level domain names under the country TLD. You see "com.au" because you cannot register "rudy.au" if you tried (yes, it's available:-). Same goes for "co.il" and "co.uk". Under others, the second level is free for all, such as ".fr" and ".tv". Each country decides for itself how it manages its own domain name.
So when you see "com.au", it's because the company really had no other choice.
You can in some countries, and cannot in others. co.il is open, AFAIK, to everyone. Some countries ("tv" and "to", for example) are explicitly open to everyone, so much so that hardly anyone in that domain is from that country. Effectively, these are as generic as "biz" and "info", possibly even more so.
On the other hand, both "net" and "com" used to require presence in the USA for the critical first years of the Internet. Back in 1996, a company I worked for had to create a POB in the US just to register a domain name. There were brokers who took a hefty commission above the (quite pricy) NSI rates just to do this for you.
IIRC, to this day, EDU and GOV are only open for US based registrants, and are in no way "generic".
I am well aware that Americans, as a rule, have trouble seeing past the end of their noses, but just to answer your question, I go to.co.il sites all the time. I operate a couple of.org.il sites. My own site (which is mostly used for personal email) operates at biz (check out my email address to verify it's not spam).
I also, fairly commonly, browse to country sites outside of my own. co.uk is not unheard of in my browser's history.
Yes, the "generic" TLDs are the most sought after, and I highly doubt the new custom TLDs are a great idea (I bought my biz domain because I honestly though it might take off as a legitimate TLD, in addition to the fact that the corresponding com was taken). Still, the internet is somewhat wider than the US of A.
Abstract: In the 1996 Olympic games bombing the FBI was quick to release information about a "person of interest", which several reputable news sources were quick to publish. Not only was he not the bomber, he was the one who found the bomb and helped evacuate the building. It took two years to clear his name, and an apology has never been issued. The man carried the punishment of doing a good deed to his last day.
Assuming use of LiveU or similar technology to pass the feed from the camera man to the network, the typical end to end delay for "max quality" video is 20 seconds. You can set it lower, but video quality tends to suffer. Assume another second to get the video back out to your set. All in all, that might seem like minutes, but is not.
If things were literally minutes behind, then something else was causing delay. At this point I'm only speculating, but sometimes the networks do that in order to prevent showing you mangled heads on national TV. If there is a chance that the camera man stumble upon the suspect after having shot his own brains out, the networks might introduce a delay on purpose to allow the director time to kill the feed.
Audio streaming introduces its own delay too, of course, but due to lower bandwidths involved, these are considerably smaller (a couple of seconds or so is typical).
You are assuming people actually listen to what is being played to them on the recording.
What will actually happen will be: Machine (as heard by caller): Welcome to the Apple Shop. phase out press 1. For any other enqueries... User: press 2
It being up side down was less of an issue than the fact I kept losing my place on the page, because the problem does not have an at-a-glance orientation. I solved that by drawing a couple (four, actually) of arrows.
Quite a bit of Israel's water consumption is already either from desalination (domestic) or recycled (agriculture) water. It created quite a spike in the water prices, but otherwise greatly increased Israel's water reserves (the Kineret, as well as a couple of big underground reservoirs, one of them shared with the Palestinians).
I think that's only telling part of the story, and the wrong part, at it.
If all those companies were doing was setting up most of their profit areas in low tax countries, I, personally, would find that legitimate. Ireland has low taxes, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many others have huge development centers there. That's just called a "tax plan", and is legitimate.
The point at which, IMHO, this crosses the line is where all of those companies want to show profits for their publicly traded, US based, parent companies. "Google Ireland Inc" (or whatever) is not traded in wall street. Nobody gives a rat's !@%!@# how much profit it made. It's the US based GOOG that is traded, and in order for its stock price to rise, they would really want its balance to show a huge profit.
That's the part I don't understand. How do you get the American company to show profit, and yet claim that the taxes for those profits need to be paid in Ireland. That's the part I suspect is breaking some laws.
Good art, but more importantly, amazing stories. Suspense from comics to comics on one hand, but with story lines with a beginning, middle and an end. Whenever a story line ends, there is a pause, after which a new story begins.
The site is down right now (gocomics getting slashdotted?), but I would recommend reading from the beginning.
This is actually not a private bill, but a governmental bill. Meaning it is not being presented by any specific member of Knesset, but by the government itself.
I am not 100% sure about this, but I believe you are wrong. "Governmental bill" means that the MP who signed off on this atrocity is a member of the government. There is still someone specific to blame.
When I get a chance, I'll go through Knesset site and search for the specific proposal.
The only good news is that I think (hope?) that this proposal has little chance of passing. Past experience with fighting such stupid proposals tells me that we (voice of reason) can usually garner enough support within the parliament to block such stupid law proposals.
Please remember that proposing such laws only require one member of Knesset. Passing them, well, that requires a little more.
Yes, this is one phrase that people use that might mean something to a particular group of people, but sounds absolutely stupid to anyone else. I do not subscribe to that form of English.
Forget subscribing. If you understand what it means, do share.
I was under the impression that the fact that I'm not a native English speaker was irrelevant to how I understand basic algebra. Guess I was wrong...
So, if a drive was priced at $100, and its price dropped by 300%, how much would it go for now (assuming -$200 isn't the right answer)?
I have no idea what is the situation in Lebanon. I do know that Lebanon only has two land bordering countries: Israel, with which I am fairly certain no Internet peering takes place, and Syria. They do have other options, as Syria dropped off the Internet while Lebanon didn't, but, as I said, I don't know what those are.
My information about Israel's infrastructure might be a little outdated.
Israel has four major ISPs, with a few minor ones as well. Israel's unique geo-political situation means that no traffic to the outside world passes through its immediate neighbors. Almost all of the ISPs are connected through one of two undersea cables to Europe, both operated by the same company (Med1). Since Med1's activity is under regulation (or so they told me when they tried to sell me their hosting services: that they built the underground bunker because that was a government requirement for providing the undersea cables), presumably, the government can also shut them down. Even if they disobey, the points at which the optic fibers go to sea are not dug particularly deeply, and should the Israeli government really choose to do so, I suspect they could bomb those two points and cut the entire communication lines off (but that would also include phones).
At least in the past, at least some of the ISPs also had satellite connections. These are only used as last resort options, as those are extremely high latency connections. Also, I'm not sure which satellite they are taken from. For all I know, this might be the Amos satellites, which are operated by.... the Israeli government.
Then again, and this, to me, seems more important than the question asked, I do not see the Israeli government being able to pull off the Syria Internet shutoff scheme. In that regard, the Internet in Israel is extremely resistant, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think GP was trying to say the Imperial system makes sense today. I think he was saying it made sense at the time it was invented. Back then, the level of accuracy required was much lower (if only because higher levels of accuracy were unobtainable).
He was not saying the US should stick with Imperial. He was saying it had a certain sense behind it that was good for the time in which it was invented.
Shachar
Grandparent is right, and so are you.
The way I dealt with this conflict (back when I was doing contracting work) was twofold:
First, I would try to convince the client to work on a time and material basis, rather than fixed price. To do this, I would point out two things that should have been obvious, but are usually not:
Often (not always) these were enough to convince the client that time and material was a better option for them. If not, however, I would define an acceptance test period. The quote would read something like:
The project will be ready on X. Once delivered, the client will have a one month acceptance test period. All bug reported during the acceptance test period, and which are within the original scope of the project, will be fixed with no further charge. Any bugs found after the acceptance testing is over will be charged at $Y/hr
This solves both problems. On the one hand, I take responsibility for my own bugs. On the other, I do not have an open ended commitment (which I cannot afford, as a small business) to solve bugs, free of charge, until the rest of eternity. As far as the client goes, it is unlikely that any really serious bugs will not be discovered within a month of testing (unless they order a project, and then never get around to test it once delivered, in which case, screw them).
Shachar
Evidence suggests that the market did consolidate. You just didn't like the results.
I was under the impression that the consolidation was the good thing you attributed to MS. If that was, indeed, your point, claiming that it would happen without MS means they did not contribute to that end as much as you gave them credit, hence my point. If that was not your point, then I didn't get what was.
What? I guess I'm suppose to ignore the 800 lb gorillas named Apple and Google.
I refer you to what "Monopoly" means (hint - mono is Greek for "single"). I am fizzy with anticipation to see your explanation of how two and competing entities might be considered a monopoly.
Sorry the MS-DOS thing happened in the 80's and survived the first watershed event where the small home computers couldn't compete with the deluge of 8086 machines. I don't know why you feel that you need to remind me that it's 2013, you appear to be the one with the short-term selective memory.
Juvenile ad hominem insult aside, 2013 minus 1995 gives us almost two decades, while you were trying to claim that my "a decade" statement was too much. If anything, it was too little.
Shachar
If anything, Microsoft's dominance in the personal computer market actually was a good thing in the beginning.
Which is precisely why I didn't say "two decades".
I'll also add that I believe that the consolidation would have happened on its own, and might have consolidated on a better platform. The smartphones industry sure seem to go this route without a monopolistic overlord to guide it.
Everything else you describe happened around 1995. This is 2013.
Shachar
I think it is important (though, I would be the first to agree, not common) to read comments in the context in which they are given.
If you steal a billion dollars, and then proceed to do good things with them, then you should be applauded for the good you did, while going to jail for the billion you stole.
Shahcar
I loath a lot of what he's done, but I don't think divorcing "Bill Gate's money" from "Bill Gates" has any merit. I think this is response is just you trying to handle your cognitive dissonance.
The man was a ruthless copycat and a predator who set the computer world back at least a decade. For that he deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) scorn.
He is also a man who decided that his wealth should go to help make the world a better place for people whose trouble do not, usually, receive funds. For that the man deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) praise.
Learn to live with these two facts, contradicting though they may seem.
Shachar
To be fair, had I been in his position, I wouldn't want to sing those parts of the song too.
He had other lyrics, about his mission being close to over, which I believe were written specifically for him.
Shachar
That's just ignorance on your part, I'm afraid.
Some countries choose to have only a closed set of second level domain names under the country TLD. You see "com.au" because you cannot register "rudy.au" if you tried (yes, it's available :-). Same goes for "co.il" and "co.uk". Under others, the second level is free for all, such as ".fr" and ".tv". Each country decides for itself how it manages its own domain name.
So when you see "com.au", it's because the company really had no other choice.
Shachar
Will it be wide enough to land a plane on it?
Shachar
You can in some countries, and cannot in others. co.il is open, AFAIK, to everyone. Some countries ("tv" and "to", for example) are explicitly open to everyone, so much so that hardly anyone in that domain is from that country. Effectively, these are as generic as "biz" and "info", possibly even more so.
On the other hand, both "net" and "com" used to require presence in the USA for the critical first years of the Internet. Back in 1996, a company I worked for had to create a POB in the US just to register a domain name. There were brokers who took a hefty commission above the (quite pricy) NSI rates just to do this for you.
IIRC, to this day, EDU and GOV are only open for US based registrants, and are in no way "generic".
Shachar
Obligatory XKCD.
I am well aware that Americans, as a rule, have trouble seeing past the end of their noses, but just to answer your question, I go to .co.il sites all the time. I operate a couple of .org.il sites. My own site (which is mostly used for personal email) operates at biz (check out my email address to verify it's not spam).
I also, fairly commonly, browse to country sites outside of my own. co.uk is not unheard of in my browser's history.
Yes, the "generic" TLDs are the most sought after, and I highly doubt the new custom TLDs are a great idea (I bought my biz domain because I honestly though it might take off as a legitimate TLD, in addition to the fact that the corresponding com was taken). Still, the internet is somewhat wider than the US of A.
Shachar
How about this, instead?
Abstract: In the 1996 Olympic games bombing the FBI was quick to release information about a "person of interest", which several reputable news sources were quick to publish. Not only was he not the bomber, he was the one who found the bomb and helped evacuate the building. It took two years to clear his name, and an apology has never been issued. The man carried the punishment of doing a good deed to his last day.
Assuming use of LiveU or similar technology to pass the feed from the camera man to the network, the typical end to end delay for "max quality" video is 20 seconds. You can set it lower, but video quality tends to suffer. Assume another second to get the video back out to your set. All in all, that might seem like minutes, but is not.
If things were literally minutes behind, then something else was causing delay. At this point I'm only speculating, but sometimes the networks do that in order to prevent showing you mangled heads on national TV. If there is a chance that the camera man stumble upon the suspect after having shot his own brains out, the networks might introduce a delay on purpose to allow the director time to kill the feed.
Audio streaming introduces its own delay too, of course, but due to lower bandwidths involved, these are considerably smaller (a couple of seconds or so is typical).
Shachar
It's a dirty job, but somebody said we had to do it.
Windows 2000 was also a win.
As were Windows 98, Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. Then again, Windows ME was such a big flop, that you really can't count it as just one flop.
The pre-Windows 3 versions were also total flops. Windows 3 was not a flop, but I'm not sure it was a hit, either.
Shachar
You are assuming people actually listen to what is being played to them on the recording.
What will actually happen will be:
Machine (as heard by caller): Welcome to the Apple Shop. phase out press 1. For any other enqueries...
User: press 2
Shachar
It being up side down was less of an issue than the fact I kept losing my place on the page, because the problem does not have an at-a-glance orientation. I solved that by drawing a couple (four, actually) of arrows.
Shachar
Quite a bit of Israel's water consumption is already either from desalination (domestic) or recycled (agriculture) water. It created quite a spike in the water prices, but otherwise greatly increased Israel's water reserves (the Kineret, as well as a couple of big underground reservoirs, one of them shared with the Palestinians).
Shachar
I think that's only telling part of the story, and the wrong part, at it.
If all those companies were doing was setting up most of their profit areas in low tax countries, I, personally, would find that legitimate. Ireland has low taxes, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many others have huge development centers there. That's just called a "tax plan", and is legitimate.
The point at which, IMHO, this crosses the line is where all of those companies want to show profits for their publicly traded, US based, parent companies. "Google Ireland Inc" (or whatever) is not traded in wall street. Nobody gives a rat's !@%!@# how much profit it made. It's the US based GOOG that is traded, and in order for its stock price to rise, they would really want its balance to show a huge profit.
That's the part I don't understand. How do you get the American company to show profit, and yet claim that the taxes for those profits need to be paid in Ireland. That's the part I suspect is breaking some laws.
Shachar
http://www.gocomics.com/lostsideofsuburbia/
Good art, but more importantly, amazing stories. Suspense from comics to comics on one hand, but with story lines with a beginning, middle and an end. Whenever a story line ends, there is a pause, after which a new story begins.
The site is down right now (gocomics getting slashdotted?), but I would recommend reading from the beginning.
Shachar
This is actually not a private bill, but a governmental bill. Meaning it is not being presented by any specific member of Knesset, but by the government itself.
I am not 100% sure about this, but I believe you are wrong. "Governmental bill" means that the MP who signed off on this atrocity is a member of the government. There is still someone specific to blame.
When I get a chance, I'll go through Knesset site and search for the specific proposal.
Shachar
The only good news is that I think (hope?) that this proposal has little chance of passing. Past experience with fighting such stupid proposals tells me that we (voice of reason) can usually garner enough support within the parliament to block such stupid law proposals.
Please remember that proposing such laws only require one member of Knesset. Passing them, well, that requires a little more.
Shachar
Yes, this is one phrase that people use that might mean something to a particular group of people, but sounds absolutely stupid to anyone else. I do not subscribe to that form of English.
Forget subscribing. If you understand what it means, do share.
I was under the impression that the fact that I'm not a native English speaker was irrelevant to how I understand basic algebra. Guess I was wrong...
So, if a drive was priced at $100, and its price dropped by 300%, how much would it go for now (assuming -$200 isn't the right answer)?
Shachar
I have no idea what is the situation in Lebanon. I do know that Lebanon only has two land bordering countries: Israel, with which I am fairly certain no Internet peering takes place, and Syria. They do have other options, as Syria dropped off the Internet while Lebanon didn't, but, as I said, I don't know what those are.
My information about Israel's infrastructure might be a little outdated.
Israel has four major ISPs, with a few minor ones as well. Israel's unique geo-political situation means that no traffic to the outside world passes through its immediate neighbors. Almost all of the ISPs are connected through one of two undersea cables to Europe, both operated by the same company (Med1). Since Med1's activity is under regulation (or so they told me when they tried to sell me their hosting services: that they built the underground bunker because that was a government requirement for providing the undersea cables), presumably, the government can also shut them down. Even if they disobey, the points at which the optic fibers go to sea are not dug particularly deeply, and should the Israeli government really choose to do so, I suspect they could bomb those two points and cut the entire communication lines off (but that would also include phones).
At least in the past, at least some of the ISPs also had satellite connections. These are only used as last resort options, as those are extremely high latency connections. Also, I'm not sure which satellite they are taken from. For all I know, this might be the Amos satellites, which are operated by.... the Israeli government.
Then again, and this, to me, seems more important than the question asked, I do not see the Israeli government being able to pull off the Syria Internet shutoff scheme. In that regard, the Internet in Israel is extremely resistant, IMHO.
Shachar