Having worked on a few such projects... in order to take advantage of more ram, you often cross memory limits that your previous 32bit system did not.
I worked in memory imaging for example. When dealing with huge datasets, we converted to 64bit... and started dealing with 7 gig datasets. Suddenly, the performance starts to be a factor. You often need to revisit that.
Not to mention much code assumed 32 bit its, especially some older networking code...
Let's not even get into Microsoft's directory/registry structure for 32 vs 64 bit programs.
"The only thing wrong with ethanol is that big corporate farms are subsidized" really means... GOVERNMENT is the problem for subsidizing "If the U.S. just allowed the importation of sugar cane "... really means GOVERNMENT is the problem for preventing free trade.
Yet somehow you manage to make your point without using the name of the entity to blame.
That's not the real issue. Data.gov and other measures of transparency are really a double edged sword.
On the one hand, they *try* to get government to seem more accountable and transparent. Supposedly, when the government wants to say... bailout a bank, you will have the ability to see that money is going.
On the other hand, it might actually lead to more centralized government in the false belief that we can keep checks on things via this 'transparency'.
Unfortunately, a lot of people... who have never ran anything, seem to have this idea that with the right rules and regulations, you can make any system honest. They always forget those in the centralized body will work for their own benefit as in every society that tried central planning.
So while I welcome any and all transparency in government, including data.gov, I have big reservations about the philosophy of those in government who are pushing for it.
I still don't see the *need* to split up MS or even to pursue antitrust arguments against MS.
I'll list the main arguments below.
1. The market seems to have provided better protection. Compared to so many other industries, the software world is remarkably open with such a low barrier to entry. I see absolutely nothing wrong with MS even using hidden APIs for its own benefit. All is fair as far as I am concerned. MS slacked on the web, Google popped up. MS's strategy of providing the software while others fought for low margins on hardware worked for a while, until people craved a tight integrated hardware solution like Apple. It's not just Microsoft. Remember how MS stuck it to those old players who tried to bundle the OS and hardware? MS changed the game by breaking that monopoly. I worked for telecoms before and everyone knew the game. Our customers would play one vendor against another. They knew not to put themselves in a position to be subservient to a monopoly.
2. Good jobs in engineering are almost always back by 'anti competitive practices'. Like it or not, that is the field we're in. We work hard on IP, that is then copied very quickly. Among the only tools we have to ensure a stable cash flow are things that many would deem 'anti-competitive', such as exclusive sales channels, vendor lockin... I've worked for companies big and small, and they all do it to the best of their ability. To those that wish for the 'good ole' days' before MS, just review your history. The big telecoms were able to be a bit open in terms of software because they had huge monopolies which could then fund some R&D. Various hardware companies killed you on on hardware costs. Let's not even get started on Asia. Japan is just one giant anti-competitive system:P I don't know about you, but I like to have a company with loads of cash flow behind me so they are stable. Why do engineers want to commit suicide as a profession... I just don't know.
Yes, I don't think 'competition' or 'benefiting society' are reasons to step into anti-trust. For one thing, what you think is good for society might not be what I think is good. I think having strong champions in industry is very important... even at the cost of a little 'anti-competitive' behavior. The free market provides plenty of competition and the barrier to entry in this industry is EXTREMELY low. This is not a government mandated monopoly like the telecom industry or anything like that.
This would only work if 'coders' gain the professional standing like doctors and lawyers. I would welcome the chance to have better qualified people in the field as well as bigger bucks.
On the other hand, all of software is design. It's hard to fault someone for breaking breaking standard protocol, when each piece of software is essentially designing something new. I heart surgeon doesn't invent a new heart procedure with each patient... By definition in software, everything is new as the compiler and CPU handle ALL the repetitive work.
Similarly, all products have a limited use. A company manufactures locks. Well with some kind of equipment, virtually all locks are breakable. IF a thief breaks into a my house can I sue the lock company? Well... only if the lock was defective I suppose... but what does defective mean? It means, it violated what a lock could reasonably stop. Normally by some specification (can withstand X amount of force, tension...). So what is it going to be with software?
They will have to list such specifications too which will basically amount to: this software will work as intended as long as you use it as we instruct. Take your care for example, if you are driving at 100 kph and put the car in reverse, which u can, you will blow up your engine. Yet in software, it is expected to take care of cases where the user pressed the wrong button at the wrong time... It should not crash. In most respects, software is remarkably reliable if you compare it to the rest of the world.
It's kind of pointless.
I think this is just more pointless European regulation. A body that has decided it doesn't want to do anything and just create an economy out of regulation and finance. Just my view anyways...
I say let the market handle reliability. I mean... amazing how Toyota does so well in the free market non? The market is the best structure to determine the trade off between price and reliability.
I agree it is so blatantly obvious. It is the one lesson you thought the Western world learned... but apparently not. You CANNOT bring accountability to a system without any choice and risk of failure.
When you centralize everything, you automatically hand over the system to the groups that run it. You can add 1 million layers of regulator and bureaucrats, it just builds into the system. Without choice, you automatically ruin the system.
A teacher not happy with their school's policies, cannot go out there and start their own school with better policies. A student with a bad school cannot just pick up and leave and go to another school.'...
This is not about socialism or capitalism... you can have choice in socialism (as sweden has school vouchers...). It is just the way life works. It's the way it has always worked, and how it always will work. It just so happens that 9 times out of 10, the socialists are also into big central government. Not that conservatives are much better these days.
Would you pay for 90% of the 'ad supported content'? Most likely not. Unfortunately, so many engineers and computer scientists have developed this complex that as long as they develop content and drive traffic to their site, they somehow deserve money. That sounds nice when times are good and companies have money to throw around. You can hope to be bought out. Hint... not happening so much anymore.
There's a few ways to pay for such things. - Through the public purse. Not the greatest idea due to government control, censorship... but that is how we deal with public parks, public libraries... Why not public funding for social networking (facebook), video sharing.... - Create deals with ISPs. Traffic drives up user needs. Users then purchase higher cost internet plans...
- Charge content providers to host the content. - Change users a subscription fee - Change users for premium content - Micro payments.
Actually, your example is the perfect example of what NOT to do.
95% of people have no idea how long division work, yet they can do it. It's just a process they follow. I taught high school... trust me when I say, they have NO IDEA of the math behind long division... neither do most adults. Multiplication by hand is a bit more intuitive, but even there... not everyone knows the math behind it.
Similarly, I know quite a few programmers who know how to regurgitate a sort algorithm, yet they don't quite understand how things work.
Actually the problem is our institutionalization of education. Somewhere along the line, the educational systems became gate keepers to jobs so to speak.
Can't be a doctor without first doing well in school, getting accepted into a medical school......
So grades are of prime importance as that is how the educational system ranks people. Otherwise, we could ALL be doctors and earn big bucks, we could ALL be lawyers and earn big bucks, we could all be X and earn big bucks (of course we could not ALL earn big bucks as supply would exceed demand:P ).
This stems primarily from the centralization of the economy. When the economy is centralized, there is no competition and things are not allowed to 'fail' so how are people hired? They are hired by what some regulator (the education system) decides. In a decentralized economy, anyone can practice and people are 'hired' by people choosing to purchase their services. If you don't have a product/service that people wish to have, no one gives you money and you are 'fired' so to speak.
Without the ability to freely choose what services you want, who gets the 'jobs' becomes a centralized activity where the main differentiator becomes some rating agency (that being the education system). Hence the overemphasis on grading and credentials. Students seeing the reality realize it and thus focus on how do i get good grades or pass some test as that is what leads to a job. I do not blame students one bit for gaming the system. They'll forever play this back and forth game with educations as long as the educators remain the gatekeepers in a centralized economy. Just like you cannot blame lobbyists for lobbying Washington for money... when the real problem is that Washington puts itself in a position to hand out money.
What is Washington's purpose? To hand out money... so lobbyists play that game. What is the purpose of the education system? To be a gatekeeper for jobs... so students play that game.
Plagiarism has always been a problem. Education has never been 'pure' so to speak. However, it is at some of its highest levels today as mass numbers of people enter the educational system for the requirements of getting a job. This attitude is only getting worse and worse...
Consider Obama's plan to pay teachers with master's degrees more. Do you think teacher's are suddenly going to get better after getting their master's degree? Do you think the educational system is so good at grading that it can really bring prestige to a master's degree? Nope, more likely all it will mean is teacher's will just get their master's degree credentials in order to get more pay. They won't be one bit more qualified or better at their jobs. All it will means is teachers will push to get their master's degree which will mean they will plagiarize and do whatever they can do get that credential.
The same scam happened in Florida a few years back where teacher's were paid more if they took additional 'courses.' Of course, they just ended up taking bogus courses. I think a few were even busted for creating fake certificates...
Actually, I do and fully condone Microsoft's 'anti-competitive' behavior. I don't find them doing anything illegal from my own moral standpoint. They can and should bundle whatever they can and whatever they wish. They can and should try and use some kind of programming lock in.
I find it good for our industry as it's an effective way to have a stable source of revenue over a long period of time. The alternative is to create something, and then have it ruthlessly copied and made into a dirt cheap commodity.
Who else do you expect to fund the development and maintenance of software over the long haul? Do you think government will? It's about time engineers and programmers snapped out of their fantasy world and tried operating in the world as it exists. Every profession tries to make sure it gets paid over the long haul instead of cannibalizing itself.
And I think the free market approach has worked quite well. Microsoft has not been humbled by the regulators, but by industry itself. Google rose on its own and is pushing more open standards. Linux rose on its own and has been picked up by other big companies who don't want money to go to MS (IBM...)
So absolutely, I see no reason for this kind of regulation of Microsoft.
Of course it is in the customer's interest to determine their own need for open standards... One of the things i look for when buying a car for example is the use of standard DIN slots for stereos. This way I can swap things in and out easily. You see car analogies are always relevant:P
umm, where do you get this idea that sweden is more socialist than the United States?
It's as if words have no meaning anymore. If you were to take much of Sweden's policies they'd seem as if they are coming from the mouths of those evil free-marketters.
School vouchers? check. Individual pensions? check....
It is the biggest myth that the United States is a free market country while Europe is more 'socialist'. Just look at this telco situation. Which is the more free-market approach (neither is actually free market).
USA... we will grant local monopolies to various companies and occasionally shell out hundreds of billions to try and get them to upgrade their networks?
Sweden... we will lay the fibre and leave it to the free market to compete on an even level for their services?
Yeah, I'm going with Sweden taking the more free-market approach here.
Property tax is the worst kind of tax. It is tax just to have shelter. Quite frankly, you should not have to pay property tax on any land that is in use. Imagine that... business would not leave city centers as they would not need to pay property taxes. Suburban sprawl would be reduced too. You should only pay it on land not in use, so that you don't horde land for no reason.
But that's my fantasy world. New Hampshire traded freedom for death a long time ago:P
It was very easy to say "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." when you don't have to give them shit. Yay, you get grateful hardworking people for free in your country! What a deal!
Contrast that with today where positive rights occur. Suddenly there are costs in health care, welfare... Now suddenly there are costs to bringing in new immigrants. Hence our attitude today.
There's also a very colonial attitude that America has developed... similar to the old Britain (well new Britain too:) ) We're too good to sew our own clothes, farm on our own farms, make our own widgets. Those jobs aren't for 'Americans'. They're for the Latins and Asians. So now again you a barrier to proper immigration. If a low-skilled worker comes to America, what job are they going to get? In old times, instead of outsourcing our widget makers to China, we would get Chinese people seeking freedom to be in America making 10 bucks a day.
But anywhose. It's a whole different ball game. Yes, I can say first hand a lot of them are heading back. I can't count the number of people on my team that have gone back. Why would they not go back? They get to be closer to their friends and family, lower cost of living, no threat of visa being revoked...
There's a very simple solution. People spend their own money very carefully.
The government should setup health account for people. If you want to make sure the poor get adequate health care, then you put money in their account. A health care voucher so to speak.
You are then free to buy insurance, save it up for that one big surgery... Then government can then operate a non-profit health insurance plan... it receives no tax payer money, aside from the people who voluntarily give this agency it's voucher. Be default, everyone is enrolled in this.
If you want to see a doctor, you can see a doctor. If you want to see the lower cost nurse practitioner... more power to you.
I am always amazed at people who don't like vouchers. They are the fairest way of ensuring those in power cannot abuse it. It is the best way to empower individuals to get the choice they want.
Before we draw a school parallel here. School vouchers are not the devil's creation. They are in many places in the world (in Canada, we have them in BC and Alberta) along with strong public boards... the voucher option keeps thin in check.
My bank called me a few months bank and said I had to come in and change my card and password because it had been compromised. I had used my card as some store that had a malicious debit card scanner. I tried to press to find out which store it was, so I would not shop there again. They avoided answering that like the plague.
I just hope we get this smart-chip cards soon so at least they cannot be copied. Bloody hell, here's something that could use some stimulus and regulation. Mandate the upgrade to these cards and give us the names. We need a name. Give us a name.
So I know which company and store I will never shop at again.
You keep looking at this from a consumer point of view.
I'm not looking at it that way. I'm looking at it from the view of a worker bee in the industry.
Yes, forcing competition on industry is great for consumers. It is great for consumers that the a day after we release a great product, 20 other competitors have copied us and turn our work into a commodity. Wonderful for you.
It is not so great for those of us who work in the industry.
Yes, us little cogs in the machine that produce all this value.
Every point you make about economics, I agree fully. But anyways, we tire of working ours asses off in this industry producing and innovating, meanwhile those in protected industries get to relax and take comfort in their government sanctions protections. As an economist Microsoft should be at the BOTTOM of your list of concerns.
The monopolies of teachers, doctors, lawyers, public service... should be much higher than that on your list of concerns for innovation. Quite frankly, with health care and education being the number one issues in the nation, methinks you should be pressing hard for those industries to innovate to lower costs, instead of languishing in their protected job status.
What little protection 'lockin' provides is easily defeated in the long term. Microsoft is not short of competition from Google, RIM, Apple...
If you view innovation as the prime motivation of society, perhaps you might also want to look at the people entering the field of innovation. Without some reward for us talented people, we won't enter the field, and you won't get that innovation you so prize. Might want to think about that... if every intelligent person leaps into protected jobs, the innovation sector will be filled with incompetent people and is that optimal for innovation? heck, I've had engineers leave to become bus drivers because it is a government protected job with good pay. Is that an optimal use of their skills to better society?
Sadly, any real innovation requires a significant investment in education. I'm not talking web 2.0 make a webpage innovation here. Ever wonder why most universities have foreign grad students? It's not because western kids are retarded. It's because there is no reward to work that hard for a 1 in a million shot at making it.
But anyways, most of us have learned a lesson. We'll be advising our kids to enter protected fields. Keep up the good work doc. If they have an interest in math and science, they can do it as a hobby and make shallow web 2.0 webpages.
Psssst. We don't have a free market system in the US or the rest of the world and haven't had one in a very long time. Pretty sure that was the point of the entire post. Why do you want to expose our industry to complete brutal free market capitalism, when no one else is playing by those rules. Regulating bundling is questionable in a complete free market system anyways... The market can and does regulate itself in these cases, but I'll ignore that for now.
I don't know if you're young or old. I don't know if you have job or not. I don't know if you're just a naive young person in school. I don't know if you're even an engineer/scientist. One day when you might wake up and realize it would be nice to be able to make a steady living in this world... because having a decent income is a little more important than FULLY optimizing the free market for innovation. If having a little a steady income in our industry reduces the speed of innovation by 10%... that's a nice tradeoff if you ask me.
Microsoft doesn't force you to buy their products. Can't say the same for public schools. Microsoft doesn't restrict who can program. Can't say the same for doctors and lawyers. Microsoft doesn't have taxation powers. Can't say the same for government workers. Heck, Microsoft generally doesn't even abuse the patent system by suing competitors. They tend to only file patents to protect themselves....
I think it's time you looked at the real world and how it operates. It is certainly not a free market system.
Yeah. Pretty amazing how a website for engineer and computer scientists don't like to pay their own salaries.
Do you remember the 'good ole' days of software. Do you remember how much of it was funded? It was funded by the old telephone monopolies which used their guaranteed monopoly over phone lines to fund such ventures as the invention of C++ at ATT/Bell labs. Wait a minute... do you remember what happened to these great labs once they were forced to breakup from their monopoly? Oh yeah... they sucked and they have no money to fund anything useful.
I mean seriously, there is a reason Microsoft employs 100 000 people and treats its employees better than 99% of other companies... they have some money.
Microsoft is not a natural monopoly (like cable, electricity, water) where there is only going to be one infrastructure going to your house. Microsoft should not be regulated with these 'anti-competitive' behaviors. It's amazing to see all these engineers and computer scientists act like we need to always reduce cost and we need maximum competition.
Let me know when the rest of society operates like that. When anyone can practice medicine. When lawyers don't make needless laws so complex you need them to navigate the system. When teachers give you a voucher and you can choose the best deal in town to send your kid for an education. When bankers don't get massive bailouts when they screw up. Tell me when we get that world...
Until that time, let us people who produce goods that we need to sell in the brutally competitive free market have a few tools to have a steady income. If that means proprietary file formats, exclusive deals with distributors, making funny protocols... so be it. The free market will determine when that is too annoying to bother dealing it and get with the competition.
The market provides plenty of ways to kill the 'monopoly'. MS, in trying to defend the desktop OS market, let the web float away... and the market produced Google. MS missed the mark on the smart phone, along comes RIM and Apple.
Would the world be better if everything was free as in freedom? YES...and I won't argue with that. But we don't live in that world... and I don't feel like making my industry a martyr.
Please... no broken window philosophy. I know about it. I agree with it. But as I said... get the rest of society to agree with it. I'm not living in a world where my neighbor who makes windows break my window every morning, so I have to pay him to fix the window. Meanwhile, he won't even let me bundle a browser with the operating system I sell him:P//I don't work for Microsoft. I Actually work for their smart-phone competitor.
No that is not the premise of stimulus. The premise of stimulus is quite simple.
People aren't spending money. Let's spend money on their behalf. That's basically it. If stimulus could actually generate a return on investment, we'd never have to worry about the economy... ever. If for every trillion we dumped in, we got a trillion and a half back... well then we'd have invented the perpetual economy machine.
I'm not suggesting the stimulus is right or wrong (at least not in this post:P ).
What it really comes down to is generating a 'need'. This is why open source should not be part of the stimulus package. It doesn't generate perpetual need. It becomes hard to justify paying for more open source code if the say you're happy with the current software. The Microsoft tax... that $100 every few years is a good thing as far as stimulating the economy is concerned. It keeps the developers at Microsoft employed and the industry churning. It keeps you buying products from the software industry every few years.
Why do you think countries like Germany are offering rebates for people to trade in their old cars for new cars? They might make the excuse it is 'green.' In reality, it is there to generate demand for new cars. Japan does similar things when it with efficiency requirements often requiring older products to be replaced...
Now, before some smart ass comes in talking about the broken window fallacy... on how if we didn't have to spend money on the microsoft tax, we'd spend it on other means... yes that is all true. In my fantasy world, the government wouldn't be involved in these things. I'm just explaining the rational behind those that believe in a managed economy where the government 'stimulates' things by keeping demand high.
Why do you think governments love healthcare and education and law? They are all perpetual 'need' machines that can be easily justified to the public. When you're mandated by 'right' to have healthcare and education and law, then by definition the money must flow.
Now if only we could all be employed in industries that the government spent money on:P That is the hump certain countries are struggling with now.
When you leave it up to a central government to determine who gets money and who does not. What the priorities are... you might as well just guarantee everyone a job and basically have communism (not even saying its a bad thing here). Some form of communism is the natural result of socialism in the long term. Again... I'm not making a judgment here... but if you want socialism... it has to apply to everyone in society. You cannot have this modern socialism, which is basically well paid socialism for some, poverty for most... and they get cheap goods via capitalism. Take a look at pensions for example. The UK is part of this well-paid socialism country where the private sector pensions have been decimated by the reality of capitalism... while government pensions in debt the entire country. Sweden took a better approach and made everyone have an equal individual pension account.
The alternative is a group of well connected public sector unions and big business with the rest treated as slaves (I forsee massive civil unrest... especially in Europe where this is the case) When the government has no competition, what really determines your fate that someone had the right connections to be a a civil servant or the right connections to fund the right industry... well... why can't you get those jobs? Why isn't the government funding my company? It becomes a matter of fairness then that the government just guarantee everyone who is willing to work a job. Then of course, who gets how much money? Once again, the government will dictate how much and I mean who is to say how much a teacher vs police officer vs scientists is supposed to earn? We might as well pay them all the same at some level.
Maybe that is what some people want. What is unsustainable however is the well-paid socialism that is prevalent in the western world. That is going to end period.
I think this would be great at work. Let's face it, when the network goes down at work, you're already pretty much screwed. It rarely happens.
Right now, on my work computer, I have the following IDEs installed to handle different projects: Eclipse VC++ 6 Visual studio 2005 Visual studio 2008 Lotus Applications.
VMs might be a good idea here:P But so would web based versions. All updates, library versions, configurations... are handled by a central web based app reducing IT support... (maybe)... unless the web based version generates more issues. But of course, it would have to be flexible enough to accomodate all the tools we use.
I personally use cygwin even with all the IDEs to do file manipulation stuff (searching, copying...). It never hurts to have a terminal running in your development dir.
But of course, my using cygwin dictates that I am a windows user and such my opinion is invalid.
First Canadian to post we have had this in Ontario for years now... called the 407.
It's not a bad technology. However here, there is a crazy charge for the photo portion that basically makes it impractical not to have a transponder. Each time you don't have a transponder and get photoed... the charge is like 6 dollars or something. A monthly transponder is 2 dollars. So I just keep a transponder even though I don't use regularly.
The only advice I would give is to make sure the 'toll' period is reasonable. In the 90s recessions, our government signed the highway away to a private company for a 99 year lease. Most other places in the world, it is common to see 10-20 year lease.
Of course isn't this what the gas tax supposed to be for:) Oh the joys of non-dedicated government taxation.
I worked for Ciscc and I felt the same thing. It's a great company that basically cannot keep growing. At some point, some group of shareholders becomes the loser. That's just how it seems with these big companies. Dividends might also be a good idea...
I'm with you on using the money for share buybacks. Relieve some of these shareholders of stagnant growth and in return get them to stop pressuring for impossible growth on the backs of workers. Just have to be careful who is left with all the shares:P Perhaps a good idea would be to create an entity (composed of Microsoft employees...CEO included... )who would take ownership of the stocks bought. Thus slowly transforming the company into an employee owned company... Yeah I can dream.
yeah... a government body whose goal is public service. There is no such thing as public service when money is involved.
As far as service is concerned. Private company benefits shareholders. Government network benefits public sector employees.
The public always gets screwed. The only good thing about going the private way is at least the money is not stolen from me via taxes and I have the choice to opt out.
Slashdot Mirror
ideally...
Having worked on a few such projects... in order to take advantage of more ram, you often cross memory limits that your previous 32bit system did not.
I worked in memory imaging for example. When dealing with huge datasets, we converted to 64bit... and started dealing with 7 gig datasets. Suddenly, the performance starts to be a factor. You often need to revisit that.
Not to mention much code assumed 32 bit its, especially some older networking code...
Let's not even get into Microsoft's directory/registry structure for 32 vs 64 bit programs.
I just find your wording quite fascinating.
"The only thing wrong with ethanol is that big corporate farms are subsidized" really means... GOVERNMENT is the problem for subsidizing
"If the U.S. just allowed the importation of sugar cane "... really means GOVERNMENT is the problem for preventing free trade.
Yet somehow you manage to make your point without using the name of the entity to blame.
That's not the real issue. Data.gov and other measures of transparency are really a double edged sword.
On the one hand, they *try* to get government to seem more accountable and transparent. Supposedly, when the government wants to say... bailout a bank, you will have the ability to see that money is going.
On the other hand, it might actually lead to more centralized government in the false belief that we can keep checks on things via this 'transparency'.
Unfortunately, a lot of people... who have never ran anything, seem to have this idea that with the right rules and regulations, you can make any system honest. They always forget those in the centralized body will work for their own benefit as in every society that tried central planning.
So while I welcome any and all transparency in government, including data.gov, I have big reservations about the philosophy of those in government who are pushing for it.
I still don't see the *need* to split up MS or even to pursue antitrust arguments against MS.
I'll list the main arguments below.
1. The market seems to have provided better protection.
Compared to so many other industries, the software world is remarkably open with such a low barrier to entry. I see absolutely nothing wrong with MS even using hidden APIs for its own benefit. All is fair as far as I am concerned. MS slacked on the web, Google popped up. MS's strategy of providing the software while others fought for low margins on hardware worked for a while, until people craved a tight integrated hardware solution like Apple. It's not just Microsoft. Remember how MS stuck it to those old players who tried to bundle the OS and hardware? MS changed the game by breaking that monopoly. I worked for telecoms before and everyone knew the game. Our customers would play one vendor against another. They knew not to put themselves in a position to be subservient to a monopoly.
2. Good jobs in engineering are almost always back by 'anti competitive practices'. Like it or not, that is the field we're in. We work hard on IP, that is then copied very quickly. Among the only tools we have to ensure a stable cash flow are things that many would deem 'anti-competitive', such as exclusive sales channels, vendor lockin... I've worked for companies big and small, and they all do it to the best of their ability. To those that wish for the 'good ole' days' before MS, just review your history. The big telecoms were able to be a bit open in terms of software because they had huge monopolies which could then fund some R&D. Various hardware companies killed you on on hardware costs. Let's not even get started on Asia. Japan is just one giant anti-competitive system :P I don't know about you, but I like to have a company with loads of cash flow behind me so they are stable. Why do engineers want to commit suicide as a profession... I just don't know.
Yes, I don't think 'competition' or 'benefiting society' are reasons to step into anti-trust. For one thing, what you think is good for society might not be what I think is good. I think having strong champions in industry is very important... even at the cost of a little 'anti-competitive' behavior. The free market provides plenty of competition and the barrier to entry in this industry is EXTREMELY low. This is not a government mandated monopoly like the telecom industry or anything like that.
I have mixed feelings on this.
This would only work if 'coders' gain the professional standing like doctors and lawyers. I would welcome the chance to have better qualified people in the field as well as bigger bucks.
On the other hand, all of software is design. It's hard to fault someone for breaking breaking standard protocol, when each piece of software is essentially designing something new. I heart surgeon doesn't invent a new heart procedure with each patient... By definition in software, everything is new as the compiler and CPU handle ALL the repetitive work.
Similarly, all products have a limited use. A company manufactures locks. Well with some kind of equipment, virtually all locks are breakable. IF a thief breaks into a my house can I sue the lock company? Well... only if the lock was defective I suppose... but what does defective mean? It means, it violated what a lock could reasonably stop. Normally by some specification (can withstand X amount of force, tension...). So what is it going to be with software?
They will have to list such specifications too which will basically amount to: this software will work as intended as long as you use it as we instruct. Take your care for example, if you are driving at 100 kph and put the car in reverse, which u can, you will blow up your engine. Yet in software, it is expected to take care of cases where the user pressed the wrong button at the wrong time... It should not crash. In most respects, software is remarkably reliable if you compare it to the rest of the world.
It's kind of pointless.
I think this is just more pointless European regulation. A body that has decided it doesn't want to do anything and just create an economy out of regulation and finance. Just my view anyways...
I say let the market handle reliability. I mean... amazing how Toyota does so well in the free market non? The market is the best structure to determine the trade off between price and reliability.
how on earth is this a troll?
I agree it is so blatantly obvious. It is the one lesson you thought the Western world learned... but apparently not.
You CANNOT bring accountability to a system without any choice and risk of failure.
When you centralize everything, you automatically hand over the system to the groups that run it.
You can add 1 million layers of regulator and bureaucrats, it just builds into the system.
Without choice, you automatically ruin the system.
A teacher not happy with their school's policies, cannot go out there and start their own school with better policies. ...
A student with a bad school cannot just pick up and leave and go to another school.'
This is not about socialism or capitalism... you can have choice in socialism (as sweden has school vouchers...). It is just the way life works. It's the way it has always worked, and how it always will work. It just so happens that 9 times out of 10, the socialists are also into big central government. Not that conservatives are much better these days.
Would you pay for 90% of the 'ad supported content'? Most likely not.
Unfortunately, so many engineers and computer scientists have developed this complex that as long as they develop content and drive traffic to their site, they somehow deserve money.
That sounds nice when times are good and companies have money to throw around. You can hope to be bought out. Hint... not happening so much anymore.
There's a few ways to pay for such things.
- Through the public purse. Not the greatest idea due to government control, censorship... but that is how we deal with public parks, public libraries... Why not public funding for social networking (facebook), video sharing....
- Create deals with ISPs. Traffic drives up user needs. Users then purchase higher cost internet plans...
- Charge content providers to host the content.
- Change users a subscription fee
- Change users for premium content
- Micro payments.
Actually, your example is the perfect example of what NOT to do.
95% of people have no idea how long division work, yet they can do it. It's just a process they follow. I taught high school... trust me when I say, they have NO IDEA of the math behind long division... neither do most adults. Multiplication by hand is a bit more intuitive, but even there... not everyone knows the math behind it.
Similarly, I know quite a few programmers who know how to regurgitate a sort algorithm, yet they don't quite understand how things work.
Actually the problem is our institutionalization of education.
Somewhere along the line, the educational systems became gate keepers to jobs so to speak.
Can't be a doctor without first doing well in school, getting accepted into a medical school... ...
So grades are of prime importance as that is how the educational system ranks people. Otherwise, we could ALL be doctors and earn big bucks, we could ALL be lawyers and earn big bucks, we could all be X and earn big bucks (of course we could not ALL earn big bucks as supply would exceed demand :P ).
This stems primarily from the centralization of the economy. When the economy is centralized, there is no competition and things are not allowed to 'fail' so how are people hired? They are hired by what some regulator (the education system) decides. In a decentralized economy, anyone can practice and people are 'hired' by people choosing to purchase their services. If you don't have a product/service that people wish to have, no one gives you money and you are 'fired' so to speak.
Without the ability to freely choose what services you want, who gets the 'jobs' becomes a centralized activity where the main differentiator becomes some rating agency (that being the education system). Hence the overemphasis on grading and credentials. Students seeing the reality realize it and thus focus on how do i get good grades or pass some test as that is what leads to a job. I do not blame students one bit for gaming the system. They'll forever play this back and forth game with educations as long as the educators remain the gatekeepers in a centralized economy. Just like you cannot blame lobbyists for lobbying Washington for money... when the real problem is that Washington puts itself in a position to hand out money.
What is Washington's purpose? To hand out money... so lobbyists play that game.
What is the purpose of the education system? To be a gatekeeper for jobs... so students play that game.
Plagiarism has always been a problem. Education has never been 'pure' so to speak. However, it is at some of its highest levels today as mass numbers of people enter the educational system for the requirements of getting a job. This attitude is only getting worse and worse...
Consider Obama's plan to pay teachers with master's degrees more. Do you think teacher's are suddenly going to get better after getting their master's degree? Do you think the educational system is so good at grading that it can really bring prestige to a master's degree?
Nope, more likely all it will mean is teacher's will just get their master's degree credentials in order to get more pay. They won't be one bit more qualified or better at their jobs. All it will means is teachers will push to get their master's degree which will mean they will plagiarize and do whatever they can do get that credential.
The same scam happened in Florida a few years back where teacher's were paid more if they took additional 'courses.' Of course, they just ended up taking bogus courses. I think a few were even busted for creating fake certificates...
Actually, I do and fully condone Microsoft's 'anti-competitive' behavior.
I don't find them doing anything illegal from my own moral standpoint. They can and should bundle whatever they can and whatever they wish.
They can and should try and use some kind of programming lock in.
I find it good for our industry as it's an effective way to have a stable source of revenue over a long period of time.
The alternative is to create something, and then have it ruthlessly copied and made into a dirt cheap commodity.
Who else do you expect to fund the development and maintenance of software over the long haul? Do you think government will? It's about time engineers and programmers snapped out of their fantasy world and tried operating in the world as it exists. Every profession tries to make sure it gets paid over the long haul instead of cannibalizing itself.
And I think the free market approach has worked quite well. Microsoft has not been humbled by the regulators, but by industry itself.
Google rose on its own and is pushing more open standards.
Linux rose on its own and has been picked up by other big companies who don't want money to go to MS (IBM...)
So absolutely, I see no reason for this kind of regulation of Microsoft.
Of course it is in the customer's interest to determine their own need for open standards... :P
One of the things i look for when buying a car for example is the use of standard DIN slots for stereos. This way I can swap things in and out easily. You see car analogies are always relevant
umm, where do you get this idea that sweden is more socialist than the United States?
It's as if words have no meaning anymore. If you were to take much of Sweden's policies they'd seem as if they are coming from the mouths of those evil free-marketters.
School vouchers? check. ...
Individual pensions? check.
It is the biggest myth that the United States is a free market country while Europe is more 'socialist'. Just look at this telco situation. Which is the more free-market approach (neither is actually free market).
USA... we will grant local monopolies to various companies and occasionally shell out hundreds of billions to try and get them to upgrade their networks?
Sweden... we will lay the fibre and leave it to the free market to compete on an even level for their services?
Yeah, I'm going with Sweden taking the more free-market approach here.
Taxes on existence should be banned.
Property tax is the worst kind of tax. It is tax just to have shelter.
Quite frankly, you should not have to pay property tax on any land that is in use. Imagine that... business would not leave city centers as they would not need to pay property taxes. Suburban sprawl would be reduced too. You should only pay it on land not in use, so that you don't horde land for no reason.
But that's my fantasy world. New Hampshire traded freedom for death a long time ago :P
It was very easy to say "Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." when you don't have to give them shit. Yay, you get grateful hardworking people for free in your country! What a deal!
Contrast that with today where positive rights occur. Suddenly there are costs in health care, welfare... Now suddenly there are costs to bringing in new immigrants. Hence our attitude today.
There's also a very colonial attitude that America has developed... similar to the old Britain (well new Britain too :) ) We're too good to sew our own clothes, farm on our own farms, make our own widgets. Those jobs aren't for 'Americans'. They're for the Latins and Asians. So now again you a barrier to proper immigration. If a low-skilled worker comes to America, what job are they going to get? In old times, instead of outsourcing our widget makers to China, we would get Chinese people seeking freedom to be in America making 10 bucks a day.
But anywhose. It's a whole different ball game.
Yes, I can say first hand a lot of them are heading back. I can't count the number of people on my team that have gone back. Why would they not go back? They get to be closer to their friends and family, lower cost of living, no threat of visa being revoked...
There's a very simple solution. People spend their own money very carefully.
The government should setup health account for people. If you want to make sure the poor get adequate health care, then you put money in their account. A health care voucher so to speak.
You are then free to buy insurance, save it up for that one big surgery... Then government can then operate a non-profit health insurance plan... it receives no tax payer money, aside from the people who voluntarily give this agency it's voucher. Be default, everyone is enrolled in this.
If you want to see a doctor, you can see a doctor. If you want to see the lower cost nurse practitioner... more power to you.
I am always amazed at people who don't like vouchers. They are the fairest way of ensuring those in power cannot abuse it. It is the best way to empower individuals to get the choice they want.
Before we draw a school parallel here. School vouchers are not the devil's creation. They are in many places in the world (in Canada, we have them in BC and Alberta) along with strong public boards... the voucher option keeps thin in check.
My bank called me a few months bank and said I had to come in and change my card and password because it had been compromised. I had used my card as some store that had a malicious debit card scanner. I tried to press to find out which store it was, so I would not shop there again. They avoided answering that like the plague.
I just hope we get this smart-chip cards soon so at least they cannot be copied. Bloody hell, here's something that could use some stimulus and regulation. Mandate the upgrade to these cards and give us the names. We need a name. Give us a name.
So I know which company and store I will never shop at again.
You keep looking at this from a consumer point of view.
I'm not looking at it that way. I'm looking at it from the view of a worker bee in the industry.
Yes, forcing competition on industry is great for consumers. It is great for consumers that the a day after we release a great product, 20 other competitors have copied us and turn our work into a commodity. Wonderful for you.
It is not so great for those of us who work in the industry.
Yes, us little cogs in the machine that produce all this value.
Every point you make about economics, I agree fully.
But anyways, we tire of working ours asses off in this industry producing and innovating, meanwhile those in protected industries get to relax and take comfort in their government sanctions protections. As an economist Microsoft should be at the BOTTOM of your list of concerns.
The monopolies of teachers, doctors, lawyers, public service... should be much higher than that on your list of concerns for innovation. Quite frankly, with health care and education being the number one issues in the nation, methinks you should be pressing hard for those industries to innovate to lower costs, instead of languishing in their protected job status.
What little protection 'lockin' provides is easily defeated in the long term.
Microsoft is not short of competition from Google, RIM, Apple...
If you view innovation as the prime motivation of society, perhaps you might also want to look at the people entering the field of innovation. Without some reward for us talented people, we won't enter the field, and you won't get that innovation you so prize. Might want to think about that... if every intelligent person leaps into protected jobs, the innovation sector will be filled with incompetent people and is that optimal for innovation? heck, I've had engineers leave to become bus drivers because it is a government protected job with good pay. Is that an optimal use of their skills to better society?
Sadly, any real innovation requires a significant investment in education. I'm not talking web 2.0 make a webpage innovation here. Ever wonder why most universities have foreign grad students? It's not because western kids are retarded. It's because there is no reward to work that hard for a 1 in a million shot at making it.
But anyways, most of us have learned a lesson. We'll be advising our kids to enter protected fields.
Keep up the good work doc. If they have an interest in math and science, they can do it as a hobby and make shallow web 2.0 webpages.
Psssst. We don't have a free market system in the US or the rest of the world and haven't had one in a very long time.
Pretty sure that was the point of the entire post. Why do you want to expose our industry to complete brutal free market capitalism, when no one else is playing by those rules. Regulating bundling is questionable in a complete free market system anyways... The market can and does regulate itself in these cases, but I'll ignore that for now.
I don't know if you're young or old. I don't know if you have job or not. I don't know if you're just a naive young person in school. I don't know if you're even an engineer/scientist. ... that's a nice tradeoff if you ask me.
One day when you might wake up and realize it would be nice to be able to make a steady living in this world... because having a decent income is a little more important than FULLY optimizing the free market for innovation. If having a little a steady income in our industry reduces the speed of innovation by 10%
Microsoft doesn't force you to buy their products. Can't say the same for public schools. ...
Microsoft doesn't restrict who can program. Can't say the same for doctors and lawyers.
Microsoft doesn't have taxation powers. Can't say the same for government workers.
Heck, Microsoft generally doesn't even abuse the patent system by suing competitors. They tend to only file patents to protect themselves.
I think it's time you looked at the real world and how it operates. It is certainly not a free market system.
Yeah. Pretty amazing how a website for engineer and computer scientists don't like to pay their own salaries.
Do you remember the 'good ole' days of software. Do you remember how much of it was funded? It was funded by the old telephone monopolies which used their guaranteed monopoly over phone lines to fund such ventures as the invention of C++ at ATT/Bell labs. Wait a minute... do you remember what happened to these great labs once they were forced to breakup from their monopoly? Oh yeah... they sucked and they have no money to fund anything useful.
I mean seriously, there is a reason Microsoft employs 100 000 people and treats its employees better than 99% of other companies... they have some money.
Microsoft is not a natural monopoly (like cable, electricity, water) where there is only going to be one infrastructure going to your house. Microsoft should not be regulated with these 'anti-competitive' behaviors. It's amazing to see all these engineers and computer scientists act like we need to always reduce cost and we need maximum competition.
Let me know when the rest of society operates like that. When anyone can practice medicine. When lawyers don't make needless laws so complex you need them to navigate the system. When teachers give you a voucher and you can choose the best deal in town to send your kid for an education. When bankers don't get massive bailouts when they screw up. Tell me when we get that world...
Until that time, let us people who produce goods that we need to sell in the brutally competitive free market have a few tools to have a steady income. If that means proprietary file formats, exclusive deals with distributors, making funny protocols... so be it. The free market will determine when that is too annoying to bother dealing it and get with the competition.
The market provides plenty of ways to kill the 'monopoly'. MS, in trying to defend the desktop OS market, let the web float away... and the market produced Google. MS missed the mark on the smart phone, along comes RIM and Apple.
Would the world be better if everything was free as in freedom? YES...and I won't argue with that. But we don't live in that world... and I don't feel like making my industry a martyr.
Please... no broken window philosophy. I know about it. I agree with it. But as I said... get the rest of society to agree with it. I'm not living in a world where my neighbor who makes windows break my window every morning, so I have to pay him to fix the window. Meanwhile, he won't even let me bundle a browser with the operating system I sell him :P //I don't work for Microsoft. I Actually work for their smart-phone competitor.
No that is not the premise of stimulus. The premise of stimulus is quite simple.
People aren't spending money. Let's spend money on their behalf.
That's basically it. If stimulus could actually generate a return on investment, we'd never have to worry about the economy... ever. If for every trillion we dumped in, we got a trillion and a half back... well then we'd have invented the perpetual economy machine.
I'm not suggesting the stimulus is right or wrong (at least not in this post :P ).
What it really comes down to is generating a 'need'.
This is why open source should not be part of the stimulus package. It doesn't generate perpetual need. It becomes hard to justify paying for more open source code if the say you're happy with the current software. The Microsoft tax... that $100 every few years is a good thing as far as stimulating the economy is concerned. It keeps the developers at Microsoft employed and the industry churning. It keeps you buying products from the software industry every few years.
Why do you think countries like Germany are offering rebates for people to trade in their old cars for new cars? They might make the excuse it is 'green.' In reality, it is there to generate demand for new cars. Japan does similar things when it with efficiency requirements often requiring older products to be replaced...
Now, before some smart ass comes in talking about the broken window fallacy... on how if we didn't have to spend money on the microsoft tax, we'd spend it on other means... yes that is all true. In my fantasy world, the government wouldn't be involved in these things. I'm just explaining the rational behind those that believe in a managed economy where the government 'stimulates' things by keeping demand high.
Why do you think governments love healthcare and education and law? They are all perpetual 'need' machines that can be easily justified to the public. When you're mandated by 'right' to have healthcare and education and law, then by definition the money must flow.
Now if only we could all be employed in industries that the government spent money on :P That is the hump certain countries are struggling with now.
When you leave it up to a central government to determine who gets money and who does not. What the priorities are... you might as well just guarantee everyone a job and basically have communism (not even saying its a bad thing here). Some form of communism is the natural result of socialism in the long term. Again... I'm not making a judgment here... but if you want socialism... it has to apply to everyone in society. You cannot have this modern socialism, which is basically well paid socialism for some, poverty for most... and they get cheap goods via capitalism. Take a look at pensions for example. The UK is part of this well-paid socialism country where the private sector pensions have been decimated by the reality of capitalism... while government pensions in debt the entire country. Sweden took a better approach and made everyone have an equal individual pension account.
The alternative is a group of well connected public sector unions and big business with the rest treated as slaves (I forsee massive civil unrest... especially in Europe where this is the case) When the government has no competition, what really determines your fate that someone had the right connections to be a a civil servant or the right connections to fund the right industry... well... why can't you get those jobs? Why isn't the government funding my company? It becomes a matter of fairness then that the government just guarantee everyone who is willing to work a job. Then of course, who gets how much money? Once again, the government will dictate how much and I mean who is to say how much a teacher vs police officer vs scientists is supposed to earn? We might as well pay them all the same at some level.
Maybe that is what some people want. What is unsustainable however is the well-paid socialism that is prevalent in the western world. That is going to end period.
I think this would be great at work. Let's face it, when the network goes down at work, you're already pretty much screwed. It rarely happens.
Right now, on my work computer, I have the following IDEs installed to handle different projects:
Eclipse
VC++ 6
Visual studio 2005
Visual studio 2008
Lotus Applications.
VMs might be a good idea here :P But so would web based versions. All updates, library versions, configurations... are handled by a central web based app reducing IT support... (maybe)... unless the web based version generates more issues. But of course, it would have to be flexible enough to accomodate all the tools we use.
I personally use cygwin even with all the IDEs to do file manipulation stuff (searching, copying...). It never hurts to have a terminal running in your development dir.
But of course, my using cygwin dictates that I am a windows user and such my opinion is invalid.
dammit... not the one.
No no not the one.
Arlck is the one who was.
I am the one who is to be.
No body listens to scamper. Poor scamper.
First Canadian to post we have had this in Ontario for years now... called the 407.
It's not a bad technology. However here, there is a crazy charge for the photo portion that basically makes it impractical not to have a transponder. Each time you don't have a transponder and get photoed... the charge is like 6 dollars or something. A monthly transponder is 2 dollars. So I just keep a transponder even though I don't use regularly.
The only advice I would give is to make sure the 'toll' period is reasonable. In the 90s recessions, our government signed the highway away to a private company for a 99 year lease. Most other places in the world, it is common to see 10-20 year lease.
Of course isn't this what the gas tax supposed to be for :) Oh the joys of non-dedicated government taxation.
I worked for Ciscc and I felt the same thing. It's a great company that basically cannot keep growing.
At some point, some group of shareholders becomes the loser. That's just how it seems with these big companies. Dividends might also be a good idea...
I'm with you on using the money for share buybacks. Relieve some of these shareholders of stagnant growth and in return get them to stop pressuring for impossible growth on the backs of workers. :P Perhaps a good idea would be to create an entity (composed of Microsoft employees.. .CEO included... )who would take ownership of the stocks bought. Thus slowly transforming the company into an employee owned company... Yeah I can dream.
Just have to be careful who is left with all the shares
yeah... a government body whose goal is public service.
There is no such thing as public service when money is involved.
As far as service is concerned.
Private company benefits shareholders.
Government network benefits public sector employees.
The public always gets screwed.
The only good thing about going the private way is at least the money is not stolen from me via taxes and I have the choice to opt out.