I can read (no need to be a jerk about it). And I am open to new evidence, so allow me to admit I was wrong and you seem to be right, the US economy is not moving to a military one, that seems to be my mistake. I would like to know what counts as a military expenditure in the graph but I am satisfied we won't all be working for the military in the future. I took offense with the grandparent post that our military will be a shadow of its former self, implying that it will be ineffective. The US military is the most powerful force in the history of the world, and better funded then the rest the world combined. Any implication the US military is becoming "weak" is only fear mongering. No military force in the world would dare attack the United States (China may want to but they need our consumers).
"- The military will be a small shadow of its former self"
Yup, the largest military budget in the world, a bigger budget than the rest of the world combined will have to shrink, or our entire economy will be directed towards the military.
I wish I could mod you higher than +5. I guess the author of the original article thinks that there will be a magical new OS in the future that will somehow make old hardware vastly different. I wonder if that guy 50 years ago would say something like: books have sucked for centuries, sure we have added color pictures, and some other cosmetic changes, but when will the innovation of the book happen? You know when innovation happens? When hardware changes. The internet is the innovation of the book, and as long as we are using CPUs, hard drives and keyboards, the *nix paradigm is probably not going to be superseded.
Unfortunately I can only offer this simple piece of advice, don't feed the trolls. No matter how good your rebuttal, any and all interaction with them only brings sadness.
I totally agree, and will go as far as saying that this isn't a war at all. The war on terror is such a marketing ploy it makes me sick. I remember right at the beginning there was talk about defining what a terrorist was, too bad we forgot that we never did that.
So he did not market Airport July 21, 1999? You know about 3 years before 802.11 hit mainstream. I guess you were too busy being under a bridge to notice.
We all live in an us vs them mindset. You care more about your friends and family than you do do guy on freeway next to you, it's ok. It's part of being human and there isn't much you can do about it. I know it's presented as humor, but this article on monkeyspheres (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) covers the problem quite well. As long as the system (government/laws) isn't setup to treat them differently, the individuals can continue to show the preferential treatment they give their friends and family without ruining everything. At lest I hope so or we're all boned.
The details are a little vague, but if I am not mistaken, you used to be able to decide who to share it with, they changed it so it is now shared with everyone. Even if that is not the case, Google adds people to your contact list without asking, that is not new but has always caused unintended consequences. .
I predict in 2008 I will not be getting my tech predictions form the Economist. Although they have few valid points, their conclusions seem detached from reality. The whole article feels like a bunch of half truths and crappy conclusions. Maybe they want to move the technology forward, to be honest doesn't the article feel like a wish-list? Maybe the internet infrastructure needs updating. Maybe they want the type of portable internet that Japan has. Maybe they see that with the EEE PC, this year there is a true market for Linux PCs on the consumer level. Still, I think I can make 3 predictions that are much more likely and important.
1. WiMax will work pretty much as advertised, and some city in the world will get municipal WiMax, and we will make a note: Huge Success. Also, where can I read a real world test of WiMax? I have great hopes for that technology, but it has been vapor ware for so long I am worried it has a horrible flaw.
2. Google's bids for the 700mhz spectrum will pressure the ISP and cellphone companies to open their networks and start charing per kilobyte. Seriously, it's 2008, why are we paying flat rates for a service that is cost bound by bandwidth? Why do we pay 10 cents for a text message? You should pay for what you use. The internet would be a lot more expensive for me if they did this (thanx bittorrent) but I realize that it is the only logical choice in the medium to long run. The funny part is that Google will initiate this change weather or not they get in the market, just the threat will be enough.
3. iPhone-like devices will flood the market, and sell better than all perditions. They will be the Wii of 2008. I know I'm going to attract so much flame for this but here it goes anyways: Steve Jobs knows what the people want and has always been ahead of trends. He saw the value of the PC, the mouse (everyone did but he was one of the first), wireless internet and hard drive MP3 players, way before anyone of it became mainstream. The iPhone is a special case because it instantly became mainstream, the market was ready for this device, but the providers were not. As perditions 1 and 2 flesh out, the demand for an all in one device like this will explode.
I look forward to all of you on/. tearing apart my perditions, and I will respond to valid criticisms.
Memory has come to mean the ram or the hard drive. The CPU can mean the full box or just the actual CPU. Operating System hasn't had a real technical meaning in decades, code is everything from punch cards to a description of what the code should be and hacks are often just little known features instead of actual physical modifications.
I hope my wider point about how common use tends to confuse technical terms comes across even if I do admit that some of these examples are pretty weak.
While I agree, what do you (and the rest of/.) think about the idea that once you share something on-line you can expect it to be available to everyone? I know that in the future I'm going to assume the stuff I share on Google is shared with everyone I have ever contacted through Google, and my gut is telling me that I should have always had this attitude. Maybe Google should just require to you accept your friends manually, just like everyone else (MySpace, Facebook, even MSN), and then, since we are already used to the idea that they will see everything we share, this won't be a problem. Google was foolish to share everything with all your contacts if your contacts are automatically generated. It's like you invited someone to your office for a chat but Google leaned on the intercom button.
Your statement is too broad. No one determined to get treatment is helpless in the US, but heath care shouldn't work that way because you lose a lot of willpower when you are sick. Just last week I skipped going to the doctor because it was too much trouble to make the 12, time consuming, redundant phone calls it would have taken to have someone see me within 30 miles, the same day. Since the problem was with my back and I was pretty sure it would go away on it's own (it did), I saved myself the trouble. I know Socialized health care is scares some people, but the private sector has no incentive to keep people healthy, and that scares a lot of people too. Heath care needs to be easy and cheap, or you only pay more in the long run.
Non doctors should not decide whether they have a problem or not. I should not have stayed home, what if that decision caused me to require surgery? That raises the cost of YOUR heath care because having a doctor see you is cheap compared to any kind of surgery, and I have GOOD heath insurance, the cost would have to be passed on to you.
Damn straight, I'm glad you got the comment in early. Bricking is one of the last pure computing terms around. Memory, CPU, Operating System, code, hack, have all come to mean a lot of things, but bricking still has specific meaning. If you can do anything at all to the device without touching the hardware to make it run again it is not bricked. Even if it voids the warranty. Please please please don't confuse the meaning, bricking is game over, everything else is everything else.
I use Vista at home. The reviews are skewed, but you can break it down pretty easy:
People with old machines (Hate Vista, legacy hardware has issues and it is slow. Very frustrating too to have the options moved around, making problems you know how to fix in XP become a real issue in Vista because you can't fin the equivalent options)
People with current machines (Hate Vista because it is noticeably slower than anything else on the market)
People with high end machines (Don't care because Vista runs fine, and find the differences cosmetic)
If you fall into more than one of these categories you probably skew to the more negative category.
I had to add a gig of ram and a dual core chip to run Vista smoothly, now I prefer it because of the search bar and I like Aero Glass, it just feels better.
Oh god I'm kicking myself for typing this but the geek in me won't let go.
From the article the grandparent linked to
The insect dances up and down to avoid being submerged by raindrops, and it can pack 15 times its body weight without sinking. So if the robot is 15x the weight of a strider, they might as well just take off the legs and put the rest on a real strider.
Who care what percentage of games are E for Everyone on each console? If the Wii is 90% E for everyone but has 10 games for it, the PS2 is still an order of magnitude more family friendly with 1% of 10,000 Games E for everyone. Also, average score should be taken into account, if the Wii is 90% shovelware but all the good E games are for PS3, it still isn't the best. Fanboys take a breath, Wii is my favorite console, but I'm 24 and play games for fun, E-AO. Families should base their decisions on the games, just like everyone else. I hear Lego Star wars is the Family game to beat.
The first half of the score is not out of bounds, most games just aren't that bad anymore, and the games that are that bad usually don't get much publicity. 6 means the game is mediocre. The game isn't technically flawed, nor is it pointlessly frustrating (by all accounts). It's just not very good. The industry considers that the 2-4 point range you suggest for Kane and Lynch is for games that are totally irredeemable. They crash, don't behave consistently or have nothing to offer in terms of game play. I could see someone loving Kane and Lynch, and that is what the 6 is for. Not a good game, but you might like it. Check this game out, it got a 3.0, and tell me if it genuinely deserves the same score as Kane and Lynch http://ds.ign.com/articles/838/838959p1.html .
Remember, games are subjective. A 7.0 game in your favorite genre will be funner for you than a 9.0 in your least favorite genre. I know no matter how good a football games gets, it's not my thing, but if a RPG scores a high 7, I'll probably consider it. Don't let the scores drive you, take it as a hint of what is there.
Wow, I was amazed that the article pretty much spelled out the whole situation, they did everything but publish the actual expliot. Why don't we get reports like this now? Now every security breach is reported as if warlocks enchanted the computer.
The good news is that 94% of every human being who has ever lived is now dead. And that on a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone goes to 0! Now who wants to party?
Slashdot Mirror
I can read (no need to be a jerk about it). And I am open to new evidence, so allow me to admit I was wrong and you seem to be right, the US economy is not moving to a military one, that seems to be my mistake. I would like to know what counts as a military expenditure in the graph but I am satisfied we won't all be working for the military in the future. I took offense with the grandparent post that our military will be a shadow of its former self, implying that it will be ineffective. The US military is the most powerful force in the history of the world, and better funded then the rest the world combined. Any implication the US military is becoming "weak" is only fear mongering. No military force in the world would dare attack the United States (China may want to but they need our consumers).
"- The military will be a small shadow of its former self"
Yup, the largest military budget in the world, a bigger budget than the rest of the world combined will have to shrink, or our entire economy will be directed towards the military.
I wish I could mod you higher than +5. I guess the author of the original article thinks that there will be a magical new OS in the future that will somehow make old hardware vastly different. I wonder if that guy 50 years ago would say something like: books have sucked for centuries, sure we have added color pictures, and some other cosmetic changes, but when will the innovation of the book happen? You know when innovation happens? When hardware changes. The internet is the innovation of the book, and as long as we are using CPUs, hard drives and keyboards, the *nix paradigm is probably not going to be superseded.
Unfortunately I can only offer this simple piece of advice, don't feed the trolls. No matter how good your rebuttal, any and all interaction with them only brings sadness.
I totally agree, and will go as far as saying that this isn't a war at all. The war on terror is such a marketing ploy it makes me sick. I remember right at the beginning there was talk about defining what a terrorist was, too bad we forgot that we never did that.
So he did not market Airport July 21, 1999? You know about 3 years before 802.11 hit mainstream. I guess you were too busy being under a bridge to notice.
Allow me to explain this in the only medium capable of convening the magic, interpretative dance! (the goggles will do nothing).
We all live in an us vs them mindset. You care more about your friends and family than you do do guy on freeway next to you, it's ok. It's part of being human and there isn't much you can do about it. I know it's presented as humor, but this article on monkeyspheres (http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html) covers the problem quite well. As long as the system (government/laws) isn't setup to treat them differently, the individuals can continue to show the preferential treatment they give their friends and family without ruining everything. At lest I hope so or we're all boned.
I bow down to your superior geekiness, and your low ID number humbles me.
By the sound of it he's too busy molesting you, care to contradict any of my statements coward?
The details are a little vague, but if I am not mistaken, you used to be able to decide who to share it with, they changed it so it is now shared with everyone. Even if that is not the case, Google adds people to your contact list without asking, that is not new but has always caused unintended consequences. .
I predict in 2008 I will not be getting my tech predictions form the Economist. Although they have few valid points, their conclusions seem detached from reality. The whole article feels like a bunch of half truths and crappy conclusions. Maybe they want to move the technology forward, to be honest doesn't the article feel like a wish-list? Maybe the internet infrastructure needs updating. Maybe they want the type of portable internet that Japan has. Maybe they see that with the EEE PC, this year there is a true market for Linux PCs on the consumer level. Still, I think I can make 3 predictions that are much more likely and important.
/. tearing apart my perditions, and I will respond to valid criticisms.
1. WiMax will work pretty much as advertised, and some city in the world will get municipal WiMax, and we will make a note: Huge Success. Also, where can I read a real world test of WiMax? I have great hopes for that technology, but it has been vapor ware for so long I am worried it has a horrible flaw.
2. Google's bids for the 700mhz spectrum will pressure the ISP and cellphone companies to open their networks and start charing per kilobyte. Seriously, it's 2008, why are we paying flat rates for a service that is cost bound by bandwidth? Why do we pay 10 cents for a text message? You should pay for what you use. The internet would be a lot more expensive for me if they did this (thanx bittorrent) but I realize that it is the only logical choice in the medium to long run. The funny part is that Google will initiate this change weather or not they get in the market, just the threat will be enough.
3. iPhone-like devices will flood the market, and sell better than all perditions. They will be the Wii of 2008. I know I'm going to attract so much flame for this but here it goes anyways: Steve Jobs knows what the people want and has always been ahead of trends. He saw the value of the PC, the mouse (everyone did but he was one of the first), wireless internet and hard drive MP3 players, way before anyone of it became mainstream. The iPhone is a special case because it instantly became mainstream, the market was ready for this device, but the providers were not. As perditions 1 and 2 flesh out, the demand for an all in one device like this will explode.
I look forward to all of you on
Memory has come to mean the ram or the hard drive. The CPU can mean the full box or just the actual CPU. Operating System hasn't had a real technical meaning in decades, code is everything from punch cards to a description of what the code should be and hacks are often just little known features instead of actual physical modifications.
I hope my wider point about how common use tends to confuse technical terms comes across even if I do admit that some of these examples are pretty weak.
While I agree, what do you (and the rest of /.) think about the idea that once you share something on-line you can expect it to be available to everyone? I know that in the future I'm going to assume the stuff I share on Google is shared with everyone I have ever contacted through Google, and my gut is telling me that I should have always had this attitude. Maybe Google should just require to you accept your friends manually, just like everyone else (MySpace, Facebook, even MSN), and then, since we are already used to the idea that they will see everything we share, this won't be a problem. Google was foolish to share everything with all your contacts if your contacts are automatically generated. It's like you invited someone to your office for a chat but Google leaned on the intercom button.
Your statement is too broad. No one determined to get treatment is helpless in the US, but heath care shouldn't work that way because you lose a lot of willpower when you are sick. Just last week I skipped going to the doctor because it was too much trouble to make the 12, time consuming, redundant phone calls it would have taken to have someone see me within 30 miles, the same day. Since the problem was with my back and I was pretty sure it would go away on it's own (it did), I saved myself the trouble. I know Socialized health care is scares some people, but the private sector has no incentive to keep people healthy, and that scares a lot of people too. Heath care needs to be easy and cheap, or you only pay more in the long run.
Non doctors should not decide whether they have a problem or not. I should not have stayed home, what if that decision caused me to require surgery? That raises the cost of YOUR heath care because having a doctor see you is cheap compared to any kind of surgery, and I have GOOD heath insurance, the cost would have to be passed on to you.
Could you provide some links? Alan Montgomery doesn't show up in Wiki doesn't show anything and Google gets too many professors.
Damn straight, I'm glad you got the comment in early. Bricking is one of the last pure computing terms around. Memory, CPU, Operating System, code, hack, have all come to mean a lot of things, but bricking still has specific meaning. If you can do anything at all to the device without touching the hardware to make it run again it is not bricked. Even if it voids the warranty. Please please please don't confuse the meaning, bricking is game over, everything else is everything else.
I use Vista at home. The reviews are skewed, but you can break it down pretty easy:
People with old machines (Hate Vista, legacy hardware has issues and it is slow. Very frustrating too to have the options moved around, making problems you know how to fix in XP become a real issue in Vista because you can't fin the equivalent options)
People with current machines (Hate Vista because it is noticeably slower than anything else on the market)
People with high end machines (Don't care because Vista runs fine, and find the differences cosmetic)
If you fall into more than one of these categories you probably skew to the more negative category.
I had to add a gig of ram and a dual core chip to run Vista smoothly, now I prefer it because of the search bar and I like Aero Glass, it just feels better.
The Total Annihilation CD would work in a CD player.
Who care what percentage of games are E for Everyone on each console? If the Wii is 90% E for everyone but has 10 games for it, the PS2 is still an order of magnitude more family friendly with 1% of 10,000 Games E for everyone. Also, average score should be taken into account, if the Wii is 90% shovelware but all the good E games are for PS3, it still isn't the best. Fanboys take a breath, Wii is my favorite console, but I'm 24 and play games for fun, E-AO. Families should base their decisions on the games, just like everyone else. I hear Lego Star wars is the Family game to beat.
The first half of the score is not out of bounds, most games just aren't that bad anymore, and the games that are that bad usually don't get much publicity. 6 means the game is mediocre. The game isn't technically flawed, nor is it pointlessly frustrating (by all accounts). It's just not very good. The industry considers that the 2-4 point range you suggest for Kane and Lynch is for games that are totally irredeemable. They crash, don't behave consistently or have nothing to offer in terms of game play. I could see someone loving Kane and Lynch, and that is what the 6 is for. Not a good game, but you might like it. Check this game out, it got a 3.0, and tell me if it genuinely deserves the same score as Kane and Lynch http://ds.ign.com/articles/838/838959p1.html .
Remember, games are subjective. A 7.0 game in your favorite genre will be funner for you than a 9.0 in your least favorite genre. I know no matter how good a football games gets, it's not my thing, but if a RPG scores a high 7, I'll probably consider it. Don't let the scores drive you, take it as a hint of what is there.
Wow, I was amazed that the article pretty much spelled out the whole situation, they did everything but publish the actual expliot. Why don't we get reports like this now? Now every security breach is reported as if warlocks enchanted the computer.
Your attitude towards analogies is like a cat to water.