I am pretty sure that I am being baited into this, but here goes anyway.
What makes you say that? Is defending Microsoft's freedom to innovate so out there that it's automatically flamebait?
The big one here is that the organization has recently converted mail to Exchange, and the complaints are loud and constant.
Of course there are examples of people who have complaints about specific MS products, as is true with any product. But my point is that the vast majority of MS users are not up in arms about being "forced" to use their products.
Your example actually proves my point. They *converted* to Exchange, presumably from a non-Microsoft alternative. Why did they do this? And what's to stop them from switching back if they don't like it?
As for NT being a joke, I disagree. No, it's not a particularly good server machine for a lot of purposes, but it makes a fine workstation, and if properly configured it can be quite stable. And its GUI and setup are vastly superior to the Unix alternatives for a novice user. I don't particularly like NT, but that doesn't mean that others don't find it useful.
I think NT is another example of Microsoft's non-monopoly. They have been trying to use the dominance of Win32 to take over the server market for years now. And yet apache has cleaned their clocks. People *certainly* have choices in the server arena.
Microsoft leveraged it's Windows monopoly by forcing vendors to install ONLY IE at the cost of a higher price tag on Windows.
As I recall, Microsoft in most case simply required that IE be featured on the desktop. OEM's were always free to make Netscape an option. And even if they didn't, so what? The "obvious option" is called a modem. And it's laughable to say that IE was "crammed down users' throats." This is similar to saying cereal companies cram the little toy at the bottom of the package down kids' throats. Microsoft gave away IE *for free.* How can that do anything but help consumers?
Netscape is still being actively developed, so if the goal was to drive them out of business it obviously didn't happen. What's the problem?
There are two other things to keep in mind. First, Netscape certainly doesn't look like it was hurt all that much by Microsoft's tactics. Its stockholders are now proud owners of AOL and Sun stock, and certainly better off than they were when they started. And the supposed purpose of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not competitors.
The government needs to reign in MS to allow the market to give a better alternative, be it Linux, BeOS, whatever, a chance in the first place.
Frankly, however good it is as a server platform, Linux isn't ready for use by average users. And since it is not a commercial product, Microsoft tactics aren't going to stop it in any event.
As for Be, they seem to still be there, and the market seems to still be funding them. Would this be happening if they didn't have a chance? A change in the de facto operating system would be a big deal, so it's not surprising that it's difficult to convince users to do this. But having Be there at the very least guaruntees that Microsoft will continue to keep Windows development moving forward, because if they stumble, Be might very well move in and take a big chunk of their marketshare.
Of course Windows isn't perfect. No product is. But the point is that none of the alternatives are any better. Mac OS is going to crash just as much, and the other fringe OS's simply don't have the user friendly interface, productivity apps, nice installer, etc, that are necessary for a useful desktop OS.
So no, not all users are happy with everything about MS products. But on balance they prefer them to any of the alternatives. And there are very few users who feel they are being treated unfairly by Microsoft.
Programming, like all engineering, is about tradeoffs. Some OS's have been built with stability first, while others have concentrated on features, speed, backwards compatibility, etc. In some cases, Microsoft opted for less stability and more of the other things. That's an engineering decision. The fact that it crashes more does not automatically make it inferior.
I suspect MS could make a completely stable version of Windows if they just took out a lot of the features and concentrated on debugging the remaining ones. Do you think that consumers would prefer this version? Some might, but I suspect most wouldn't. A well configured Windows box running standard apps doesn't crash all that often.
Besides, Linux might never crash, but X certainly does. And if you're working on a GUI-based document, the machine might as well have crashed for all the good it does you. Perhaps Linux zealots should concentrate on bringing Linux up to par with Windows as a desktop OS, and then we'll see if consumers start switching.
Ma Bell was a government-granted monopoly. Microsoft has attained its position without any significant help from the government. And if Microsoft is broken up, how is that going to improve things? Whichever piece gets Windows will likely continue to charge the same prices, and even if multiple versions of Windoze results, the prices aren't going to come down that much-- most software packages cost at least $50.
Maybe some think the law shouldn't exist, but that's a different issue
I do. I think the Sherman Act is a terrible law and should be repealed. Perhaps Judge Jackson has the obligation to enforce it, but that doesn't mean I have to improve.
I also don't think Microsoft has a monopoly. Sure, Microsoft has a monopoly on commercially viable, desktop OS's for x86, just as apple has a monopoly on desktop PPC OS's, and Sun has a monopoly on UltraSparc server OS's. But the issue is whether consumers have alternatives if they don't like Microsoft's product. The clear answer is yes. desktop users can get Macs or install BeOS. Server users can run Linux, Solaris, or *BSD. Yes, they have a large market share, but as long as there are alternatives, it's not a monopoly.
And even on the terms of antitrust law, it's not clear that they are guilty of abusing their monopoly. They have not acted like a monopoly. They have kept their prices pretty much constant-- Win98 is about the same as Apple charges for OS9, and NT is in the same ballpark as commercial Unices. Their pace of development has not slowed. And although I hate to admit it, some of their products aren't that bad. The Mac version of IE (the only MS product I use regularly) is better than any other browser on the platform IMHO.
A monopolist would raise their prices to $500, sit on their asses, and rake in profits. The fact that MS hasn't done this tells me that they don't believe this would be profitable. So how exactly are they abusing their monopoly?
Re:Did Microsoft only do harm?
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Microsoft Loses
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· Score: 3
Are you saying that Apple doesn't sell easy to use computers?
I own one, so I certainly wouldn't say that. But Apple's computers are expensive, and they were a hell of a lot more expensive 5 years ago when microsoft was busy cementing their lead in the OS market. Apple also was grossly incompetent when it came to marketing and selling their product pure technical superiority or a better interface aren't the only things that matter.
What about OS/2?
I don't know that much about GEOS, but I know IBM screwed up OS/2 big time. In 1990 when the Windows-OS/2 wars were at their peak, IBM was a much bigger company than Microsoft, and a lot of people thought IBM was going to win. Microsoft beat IBM at their own game by producing a decent product at a good price.
One good example of this is that IBM charged ridiculous prices for OS/2 development software, while MS practically gave Windows development tools away. Microsoft was also the first company to truly understand that an OS requires useful apps, and when they ported Word and Excel to Windows it was more so they could help Windows market viability and not vice versa.
Computers would be JUST as popular today without Microsoft, and in fact probably even MORE SO considering that PC Os's should cost $0 (or close to it)
You get what you pay for. Mac OS is priced about the same as Windows, and the per-computer cost of Windows is a lot lower than $150 for OEM's. As for requiring $2000 computers to run, that's laughable. The average computer today costs about $900, and you can get a usable one for under $500. And you are free to buy a no-name PC without Windows and install Linux or anything else you want on it. Most people don't because Linux is a lousy desktop OS for most users.
Keep in mind also that most sodtware packages cost at least $50, and a lot of them are $100. Considering the large number of functions performed by the OS, $100 is not an unreasonable price.
Microsoft was (ironically) the also the only OS maker that truly recognized the value of open systems. They have always sold Windoze liscences to anyone who wanted them. Apple, Next, IBM, and most others on the other hand tried to run their stuff largely on proprietary systems, and I'd argue this is a large part of why they lost. Yes, their OS is closed and proprietary, but it runs on commodity hardware, largely because of Microsoft's liscencing policies.
The simple fact is that Mac OS and Windows are the only viable desktop OS's at the moment, and Windows is the only one that'll run on commodity x86 hardware. Be might be a contender in a couple of years, and if so Microsoft might have some competition on its hand, but the original posters point was that Microsoft has done some good by producing a decent OS at a decent price. I think that's clearly the case.
Ok, I hate to start Yet Another Flame War, but I'm annoyed at the overwhelming anti-Microsoft sentiment that seems to exist here. IMHO, Microsoft has done nothing particularly evil, and should not have been sued in the first place. I hope that the appeals courts reduces whatever penalties Jackson makes to spare Microsoft from unjust punishment.
Microsoft is in essence being punished for being too effective a competitor, and for not lining the pockets of enough lawmakers. You will notice that with the exception of a few Linux fanatics, most Microsoft customers are quite happy with their products. The ones that are driving this lawsuit are Microsoft's politically-connected competitors. Yes, Microsoft has done things that caused harm to its competitors, but that's what competition is all about. It's absurd to expect a company to compete, but not compete "too much" or "unfairly."
Microsoft wrote Windows and has every right to set whatever terms it likes for its use. That includes requirements such as those that OEM's pay per processor to pre-load it. Computer manufacturers are free to decline to use Microsoft's product, and can then install whatever they want at whatever price they want. The fact that OEM's choose to purchase Windows says something about the value of Windows to consumers.
Microsoft has done nothing that many others in the computer industry has done. Microsoft just did a better job of it. This antitrust case is a travesty of justice, and I hope it gets thrown out on appeal. Microsoft makes mediocre products, and I hope a better alternative comes along and takes over the market. But the government should butt out and let the market do its work.
This is a good point. What I meant about Java being a separate API was that the Java platform specification really is an API unto itself. AWT and Swing provide a complete GUI, Java includes extensive file manipulation functions, and many of the other functionality traditioinally provided by the OS is available natively in Java 2. The whole point of Java programs is that they can be run on many different machines without touching the native API on any of them.
I've read that Apple is planning on providing a full Java 2 implementation in OS X, and that users will be able to launch Java apps just like other apps, and in fact won't know there's any difference. Perhaps I didn't read that right, but if that's the case, I'd say Java counts as a separate API. The VM may call coacoa functions in the back end, and there will probably be a mechanism allowing Java programs to invoke the Coacoa API directly, but that doesn't make the Java API's (Swing, AWT, etc) any less a separate API.
Will run classic MacOS and Rhapsody apps through abstraction layers (carbon and cocoa)
This isn't quite right. Mac OS X will support three API's (4 if you count Java) Classic, Carbon, and Coacoa.
Classic is basically Mac OS 9 running as a single process inside the Unix environment. It has a number of enhancements that make it work nicer with non-classic apps, but basically it's just a Mac OS emulator. It will allow users to run their old apps right out of the box, but without the benefits of protected memory and preemptive multitasking.
Carbon is a subset of the existing Mac OS API that allows developers to quickly "tune up" their apps to take advantage of the modern OS features. It provides a gentle migration path for existing users, and is designed to allow developers to make minimal code changes. Each Carbon app is a full Unix process, with all the advantages of preemptive multitasking and protected memory.
Coacoa is the Next-derived API that is based on OpenStep and Objective C and was originally slated to be the only API offered in Rapsody. This is an object-oriented API that I've read is one of the best development environments ever created. Apple presumably sees it as the future of the platform, and will be encouraging developers of new products to use it rather than carbon.
So Coacoa and carbon are not simply abstraction layers to an underlying API. They are themselves full-blown API's.
(Disclaimer: have not used Python perhaps it has these features)
*Regexps- Perl has an extremely complete regexp syntax built in, allowing you to do in one line what can take a dozen lines in Java or C.
*scalars- Although it is conceptually strange, perl's use of a single "scalar" data type (as opposed to string, int, and float) makes life a lot easier when you're doing something like writing a cgi script.
*Hashes- Hashes kick ass, and perl has them built-in using a simple, straightforward syntax. There are some jobs that are made extremely simple with hashes, and would be extremely difficult without them.
*Arrays- No, arrays are not unique to perl, but perl makes better use of them than most other languages. In particular, the foreach command and the various ways of manipulating them is nice.
*Syntactic sugar- Perl is very un-picky about things like parenthesis, and has a number of ways to input and format data, including string interpolation, the qw() command, the => syntax, etc.
No, perl is not the best language if you're building a large software project, but that's not what it's designed for. It doesn't handle complex data types because it's a scripting language, and it's designed to deal with text. It does a damn good job of simple text manipulation. For the things it's designed for, it can turn a page of code into just a few lines. And yes the object oriented syntax needs a lot of work.
And you're right about perl being rather cryptic. I love writing reqexps that look like line noise. It makes me feel 3l337.
The handwriting recognition is very functional, but it is not hanrwriting recognition per se. It works by requiring you to use a simplified one-stroke-per-character character set called grafiti. Each character is reduced to a single simplified stroke so it can be easily recognized by the software. This is a little awkward at first, but it can be learned in a matter of hours, and afterwards one can do a couple of characters a second. It's not going to replace a keyboard, but it's respectable for a handheld.
Opening specs in a stupid way (like IBM lisencing an OS and chip without any control over them) might be stupid, but building entirely closed systems is even stupider. Look at Apple. In the late 80's it was pretty clear that the Mac OS was superior to anything on the PC side, and Macs were competitive with anything on the PC side. In large part what killed them is that they got fat and arrogant. They overcharged their customers, ignored their needs, and generally pissed away their lead. Now that's not strictly a result of having a closed system, but without the competition from Mac clones, they got fat and lazy. As a result, PC's ate their lunch with inferior products, simply on the basis of better prices, and the increased varieaty and responsiveness of a competitive marketplace.
If IBM had successfully prevented cloning and Apple had pursued a substantial cloning program, we might very well all be using Macs right now. And in that case, IBM's PC revenues might very well be even less than it is now.
I don't understand why people say this. Do forty-somethings not have the skills of a twenty-something? Do forty-somethings not have savings? I can understand that having a family and kids makes things more difficult, but my father is a programmer in his 40's and he's changed jobs twice in the last 5 years (it was his choice in both cases).
Yes, 40-somethings may not have the time to keep up with the latest technologies the way 20-somethings can, and yes, a mortgage is a pain. But on the other hand older workers have valuable business experience and a proven track record. I see no reason why older geeks should resign themselves to keeping a job they hate.
So ask for fewer hours during the day. Or get another job.
Assuming you're in the same job market most of us are, you could probably quit your job and get another in 2 weeks. We need to stop whining and realize how good we really have it.
Re:CLIs vs. GUIs (Score:1) by sklein (sklein@mint.net) on Tuesday February 15, @01:16AM EST (#245) (User Info) http://members.mint.net/sklein/
And GUI's can do free-form text completion boxes. In fact, they can do some kind of out-complete feature, so I can type "bra" and have the "zil" added automatically.
As can CLI's. I've even done a clumsy form of auto-complete in a 100 line Perl script i use.
What happens if you want to move several files with different types to a directory several folders away? That requires a lot more typing.
Not much more typing with a well organized filesystem and a modern Unix shell which supports tab completion. In short, one or two letters and the tab key per directory. And tab completion will do more than just directory names, the example included with the tcsh distribution is enlightening. Some configuration and you could expect that shell to read your mind.
Sure, with a lot of practice one can make a CLI match the speed of a GUI. But only a small fraction of users would actually have the patience to learn how to do this, and even then CLI's don't have a compelling speed advantage, just not much of a disadvantage.
Which is why the key repeat rate under Unixes doesn't crawl like under MS Windows and editors like vi(m) rarely require you to actually highlight the text. The vim tutorial (listed in the help) shows how it works.
I use vi extensively, and with a lot of practice, you can do a lot of things efficiently. But I can select an arbitrary piece of text in a word processor in under 2 seconds. No matter how fast vi is, it isn't going to match that. And this is assuming that we're editing plain text. If one is editing formatted text, then the only way to do it with vi is to use something like html, in which case you need to have Netscape open in a seperate window to make sure everything looks ok.
vi is great for editing code, because it gives you precise control over formatting and allows you to work without taking your hands off the keyboard. But for writing papers and such, there's just no comparison with a good word processor.
And coding isn't "normal" work. *sigh*:)
By "normal work" I mean writing papers, surfing the web, using email, ICQ, tracking finances, etc. Yes, you can do this in Linux, but most of the tools are GUI's anyway, and most Linux GUI's are attrocious. The Open Source movement has yet to produce a desktop environment that approaches the care, attention to detail, consistency and style that goes into the Mac OS. Linux makes a great server and a decent workstation, but its user interface still needs a lot of work.
In a GUI, all the commands VISIBLE which you have said, unlike a CLI where all the commands are usually HIDDEN. CLI's allow for very efficient commands for the power user.
On a Mac, all of the menu items (along with a clock and a task switcher) are in the menu bar, which eats only about 20 pixels. The commands themselves are hidden until one needs them, and 20 pixels is a trivial amount of screen space.
Power comes at price. Why waste valuable screen real estate when the user already knows the commands (or hotkeys)
Two reasons. First, like I said you're only losing a strip about 20 pixels high. More importantly, there are very few power users who actually memorize the keystrokes for every possible operation. A well-designed GUI will provide keystrokes for frequently used ops, but having them in the menu bar makes it easier to learn what they are.
ONLY when you a small number of options ! Otherwise you have multiple 'tabs' or 'pages' of config options. Ever see a drop down box with 200 items? That's not elegant. (A country selection is one bad example.)
What's the alternative. A CLI will likely have a list of country codes, which is going to be every bit as cumbersome. And GUI's can do free-form text completion boxes. In fact, they can do some kind of out-complete feature, so I can type "bra" and have the "zil" added automatically.
That DEPENDS on what you are doing. Try moving *.bat, *.com, *.exe files into another directory. I could type: move *.bat *.com *.exe progdir. With a mouse that would take you _THREE_ operations.
It does depend, but even in your example I prefer a GUI. In the Finder, you would switch to list mode, sort by kind, and then rubber-band to select the files. Yes, you'd have to do it 3 times, but you get better feedback, and it still isn't much slower than a CLI. And that's a simplified case. What happens if you want to move several files with different types to a directory several folders away? That requires a lot more typing.
if you spend a lot of time copying text, do you use the arrow keys to select the text, and then ctrl-c ctrl-v
You select text with the arrow keys? If it's just a couple of words, I can see that, but if you're selecting whole sentences, arrow keys are slow. Besides what you just described can be done in a GUI as well as a CLI.
What I really would love to see is a system that COMBINES the power and intuitiveness of CLI's and GUI's
Sure, which is why I have a dual-boot machine. When I want to get normal work done, I run Mac OS. When I have coding to do, I boot into Unix.:)
"pretty little icons" are a Microsoft "innovation" that has unfortunately taken over the GUI world. However, if you are taking Windoze as a standard for GUI's, then of course you are going to come to the conclusion that they are useless.
GUI's have three major advantages over CLI's. First is that it dramatically reduces the learning curve for new apps. In a good GUI, all possible operations are available using the menu bar. Thus if you want to do something to a piece of data, you select it, and the look through the menus to find the command you want.
Similarly, GUI's allow elegant setting of configuration options. Command-line switches simply can't match the simplicity and usefulness of a preferences dialog, and it doesn't require wading through man pages to use.
Secondly, GUI's allow for more efficient use of screen real estate and allow more rapid entry of some kinds of data. Windows and scrollbars allow you to fit multiple apps on the screen, and to use as much or as little space as needed for a given window. Doing this with a keyboard would be a nightmare. And imagine web surfing without a mouse.
Finally, GUI's allow you to do things simply and elegantly which cannot be done without a lot of grief with a CLI. For example, rearranging a file system with a CLI just can't match the simplicity of doing it with a GUI. And graphics and word processing would be a nightmare if we still had to do that without a mouse.
CLI's have their strengths, but there are some things that they just can't do. It's too bad that Microsoft did such a lousy job implementing their GUI, because not all GUI's are that bad.
...is that he's a lousy, boring, incompetent, and shamelessly self-promoting writer. He rambles, he has lousy spelling and grammar, and he has not yet mastered the art of cross-platform punctution. He is a mediocre, tedious writer.
Secondly, the man has nothing interesting to say. He is a master at filling a page with verbiage, but when one goes back to actually analyse his content, you often realize that he either said very little, or that he said something painfully obvious. The only time he does have anything to say is when he talks about politics, and in that case he trots out a tired anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, leftist dogma. He seems to believe that he can subsitute words for arguments. Even when he has a provocative or interesting opinion, he never manages to actually give evidence for it.
He also seems to view himself as the center of the universe. Half his article talk about his conversations with others, his attempts to install linux, his books, etc. He is clearly in it for the publicity of having thousands of geeks read his stuff and then click a link to buy his book.
Now, Katz has a right to be an incompetent writer writing long-winded, idea-free articles. My problem with him is that he is elevated above the rest of us and allowed to spread his nonsense accross slashdot's front page. He is the only one on Slashdot who does this, and he does a lousy job of it. It is not clear what function he serves./. is a tech news site. It would do just fine without a resident windbag to preach at us. Recruiting Katz might have gotten/. some publicity initially, but at this point, Rob should dump him and find some real writers who graduated from college and have some knowledge of the tech field.
I don't see what this has to do with our resident windbag, but I'll answer that, being a libertarian.
You are misrepresenting the libertarian position. I know of no libertarians who believe that Big Government is OK if it is run by corporations. Libertarians oppose big government in all its forms, whether it is run by "Big Business" or "Big Labor" or "The Proletariat" or anyone else.
No one disputes that corporations have a lot of influence in Washington and that that's a bad thing. But the thing to keep in mind is that the levers of power now controlled by corporate interests are still government institutions. A libertarian society would have a radically smaller government, and would therefore have less government power to be co-opted by corporations.
The reason that corporations are no longer accountable to the marketplace is that they have the power of government to interfere with the market. If we take that power away, they will be forced to compete on their merits with all comers.
The only way to accomplish this is a reduction in the size of government. There is no way you can give the government the amount of power it has and prevent special interests from putting it to their own purposes. If power exists, it will be used, and the only way to prevent its use is to take it away for good.
When Someone says that it will cost $10 trillion dollars to get to Mars in 10 years (not that that's the real number, but hypothetically...) what that means is that it will take 1/8 of the nation's resources to accomplish the task (GDP is ~$8 trillion.) "1 trillion dollars" translated directly into "1/8 of the US's resources for a year."
It really annoys me when people make the "yes it's expensive, but it's only money!" argument. Money is simply the medium with which various conflicting demands on resources are mediated. When the government decides to impose X dollars in taxes to fund a new program, that translates directly into resources that are not available to the private sector.
It the government spends 10% of GDP on a space program, that will reduce the average income of the nation by 10%. I don't know about you, but that's not an "abstract" thing. That has very real and very specific consequences.
The space program never whould have started without the government's push (and yes, the govenment pushed space because of the Cold War). Only now that space and satillites are established do companies send up things on their own.
I find this a little hard to believe. Yes, the government funded the space program, and yes, this probably sped man's exploration of space. But I think it's quite likely that had the government not subsidized space travel, private companies would have done so to put satellites up. Not only that, but without government subsidies companies would have far more incentive to find cheaper ways of getting in space, and so today it might be possible to do *more* space research for less money than it would have been back then.
We are using basically the same space technology as we did in 1981. The cost of getting into space has not decreased much at all in that time. It is almost certain that a private, competitive space industry would find more efficient ways to accomplish this task.
Subsidizing something is a good way of killing it. When people don't have to convince anyone to give them money, they often don't work as hard to find new, innovative ways to do it. I think that in the long run NASA has hurt the space industry by subsidizing the status quo.
No, this is wrong. I am at a private university. We do have a ~$1e7 endowment. it goes to scholarships, capital improvements, and makeing interest to maintain the endowment. As for the most basic of research in physics, no money for these projects come from private sources. I am talking about things like my research group's search for Dark Matter or another group's Big Occulting Steerable Satellite. Private companies do not and will not fund things like this because there are no even remotely visible dollar signs at the end of the research.
As I said, private does not necessarily mean corporate. There are lots of private people out there with an intense interest in just such basic research, and if the government were not funding, it, you could probably get at least some funding from them. Keep in mind also that people would have more disposable income in a low-tax system.
Also, some of the best inventions and discoveries have been made on shoestring budgets. If you don't have a billion dollars to make a particle accellerator, you might be driven to think of some way to do the same research on your more limited budget.
I'm not saying that all government funding of research is necessarily bad, but I disagree with the unreserved enthusiasm for it. Government tends to stifle everything it touches, and I don't want this to happen to science.
What are ancient civilizations remembered for? Their scientific advancement.
Actually, some civilizations (the Aztec and Egyptians and Romans, for example) are remembered for building enourmous piles of rock with slave labor. Today they are called pyramids. I would rather our society focuses on how we live in the here and now, not how impressive we will look to future generations. Western civilization has already achieved more than all previous civilizations combined. There is no chance of them forgetting we existed any time soon.
The only thing that really lasts is the knowledge that we pass down to successive generations. This is the basic human drive. Why are we here? Where are we going? How did it happen? These questions are what make us human. This is why science is important.
Hey, you're preaching to the converted here. I am not opposed to science by any means. In fact I agree that it is one of our greatest achievements. That is one of the reason I want the government to keep away from it. The government has a habit of destroy everything it tries to help.
The science research will only be about getting the company more money. So, would the company allow its data to be spread out in the world (open-source) or would they hoard it, making their competitors have to use money to find out the same info.
This is demonstrably not true. There are many corporations that pay their researchers to do basic research, in the hope that they will stumble on something that will lead to a product down the road. These corporations may "hoard" their data in some cases, but they also need to keep their researchers happy. In scientific circles, one's prestige is largely determined by one's published work, and so many researchers will insist on the right to publish before they will accept a position.
Also, "private funding" does not necessarily mean "corporate funding." Private Universities and private charities are also a factor. Look at the American Heart Association, or the other analogous organizations for other diseases. And a big tax cut will allow more of this kind of funding to exist, since the wealthy will have more money to give to charity.
That is true because governments are a lot more effective. The gov't wil try to find the entire effects of research
That's not what I meant. What I meant was tht it is inefficient in that it is wasteful in its use of funding, both in excessive paper-pushing, and in making poor choices about who is to get funding. It is very easy to make poor choices when you are giving away other peoples' money and you have lots of it. Private foundations are founded by people who care specifically about what is being researched, and they have to convince their donors to give them money. That means that they have much more incentive to ensure that the grants are being used for worthwhile purposes.
I don't want to get into this, but poor families that work very hard for little money should get priority in tax cuts.
I think everyone should get a massive tax cut, rich and poor alike. And I don't think anyone should get "priority." The point of a tax cut is returning to taxpayers the money they earn, not social engineering. If the tax burden if 10% of the economy rather than 40%, it is much less of a big deal who has to pay for it.
In one of his books, Carl Sagen talks about the then current aversion to anything resembling "pure research" in government science funding. He made a fairly good argument that many of our greatest technological advancements were based on research that at its start would have been dismissed as non-technologically driven and practically useless.
Which may be why so many corporations hire people to do basic research. They realize that while they can't see a future in it at the moment, the payoff should a breakthrough be made would be enourmous. I will again point out the example of "IBM" being written on Xenon atoms. This clearly doesn't improve IBM's bottom line in the short run, but by funding this type of research, they are giving themselves a leg up if nanotech proves to be as powerful as some people think it is.
OK, then please explain to me why IBM funded the etching of the words "IBM" into Xenon atoms? Or why Xerox-PARC invented the modern GUI without ever making an actual product based around it? Or why most major corporations employ top researchers to do work that, although certainly related to the company's broad goals, is not directly related to any specific product in development?
The fact is that there are many companies out there that fund basic research. They do it primarily because if a breakthrough occurs, they want to have people in-house that can help turn it into a working product.
You are also ignoring private charities and Universities. There are many private schools with hundreds of millions in endowments, and many of those do and would be used to fund basic research. These endowments would be even bigger in a society with a lower tax burden, since many wealthy people leave their fortunes to their alma mater. There are also private donations directly toward research programs.
We see that the government has funded most basic research. But this does not imply that if the government cut off funding that the research would simply stop. There are private sources for funding. That funding simply gets used elsewhere when folks see that the government is already pumping lots of money into basic research.
The government funds research in practically every branch of knowledge, so it's not surprising that they helped fund the development of the computer.
But the question is not: has government funding led to useful research? The question is: would society be better off if the government had not funded that research. I think there is a case to be made that it did.
The idea that computers would not exist without government support is ludicrous. By the fifties, IBM and other companies were already pioneering commercial uses of computers, and private universities were engaging in research. It is possible (although I think unlikely) that it would have taken longer for the computer revolution to occur, but I rather doubt it. And since the mid-seventies, the PC industry has taken off with essentially no government support.
One of the primart effects of research funding of the computer industry today is simple corporate welfare. For example, the US has been encouraging the formation of "partnerships" between US semiconductor firms, and these "partnerships have been supported with lots of Federal money. The result of these kinds of subsidies has simply been to entrench the established players in the industry.
We see what government money has helped to create. We do not see what would be if the government had not spent that money. The fact that some government money went to fund important research does not mean that other research wasn't wasteful, or that on average private funding would have gotten better results.
Slashdot Mirror
I am pretty sure that I am being baited into this, but here goes anyway.
What makes you say that? Is defending Microsoft's freedom to innovate so out there that it's automatically flamebait?
The big one here is that the organization has recently converted mail to Exchange, and the complaints are loud and constant.
Of course there are examples of people who have complaints about specific MS products, as is true with any product. But my point is that the vast majority of MS users are not up in arms about being "forced" to use their products.
Your example actually proves my point. They *converted* to Exchange, presumably from a non-Microsoft alternative. Why did they do this? And what's to stop them from switching back if they don't like it?
As for NT being a joke, I disagree. No, it's not a particularly good server machine for a lot of purposes, but it makes a fine workstation, and if properly configured it can be quite stable. And its GUI and setup are vastly superior to the Unix alternatives for a novice user. I don't particularly like NT, but that doesn't mean that others don't find it useful.
I think NT is another example of Microsoft's non-monopoly. They have been trying to use the dominance of Win32 to take over the server market for years now. And yet apache has cleaned their clocks. People *certainly* have choices in the server arena.
Microsoft leveraged it's Windows monopoly by forcing vendors to install ONLY IE at the cost of a higher price tag on Windows.
As I recall, Microsoft in most case simply required that IE be featured on the desktop. OEM's were always free to make Netscape an option. And even if they didn't, so what? The "obvious option" is called a modem. And it's laughable to say that IE was "crammed down users' throats." This is similar to saying cereal companies cram the little toy at the bottom of the package down kids' throats. Microsoft gave away IE *for free.* How can that do anything but help consumers?
Netscape is still being actively developed, so if the goal was to drive them out of business it obviously didn't happen. What's the problem?
There are two other things to keep in mind. First, Netscape certainly doesn't look like it was hurt all that much by Microsoft's tactics. Its stockholders are now proud owners of AOL and Sun stock, and certainly better off than they were when they started. And the supposed purpose of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not competitors.
The government needs to reign in MS to allow the market to give a better alternative, be it Linux, BeOS, whatever, a chance in the first place.
Frankly, however good it is as a server platform, Linux isn't ready for use by average users. And since it is not a commercial product, Microsoft tactics aren't going to stop it in any event.
As for Be, they seem to still be there, and the market seems to still be funding them. Would this be happening if they didn't have a chance? A change in the de facto operating system would be a big deal, so it's not surprising that it's difficult to convince users to do this. But having Be there at the very least guaruntees that Microsoft will continue to keep Windows development moving forward, because if they stumble, Be might very well move in and take a big chunk of their marketshare.
Of course Windows isn't perfect. No product is. But the point is that none of the alternatives are any better. Mac OS is going to crash just as much, and the other fringe OS's simply don't have the user friendly interface, productivity apps, nice installer, etc, that are necessary for a useful desktop OS.
So no, not all users are happy with everything about MS products. But on balance they prefer them to any of the alternatives. And there are very few users who feel they are being treated unfairly by Microsoft.
Programming, like all engineering, is about tradeoffs. Some OS's have been built with stability first, while others have concentrated on features, speed, backwards compatibility, etc. In some cases, Microsoft opted for less stability and more of the other things. That's an engineering decision. The fact that it crashes more does not automatically make it inferior.
I suspect MS could make a completely stable version of Windows if they just took out a lot of the features and concentrated on debugging the remaining ones. Do you think that consumers would prefer this version? Some might, but I suspect most wouldn't. A well configured Windows box running standard apps doesn't crash all that often.
Besides, Linux might never crash, but X certainly does. And if you're working on a GUI-based document, the machine might as well have crashed for all the good it does you. Perhaps Linux zealots should concentrate on bringing Linux up to par with Windows as a desktop OS, and then we'll see if consumers start switching.
Ma Bell was a government-granted monopoly. Microsoft has attained its position without any significant help from the government. And if Microsoft is broken up, how is that going to improve things? Whichever piece gets Windows will likely continue to charge the same prices, and even if multiple versions of Windoze results, the prices aren't going to come down that much-- most software packages cost at least $50.
Maybe some think the law shouldn't exist, but that's a different issue
I do. I think the Sherman Act is a terrible law and should be repealed. Perhaps Judge Jackson has the obligation to enforce it, but that doesn't mean I have to improve.
I also don't think Microsoft has a monopoly. Sure, Microsoft has a monopoly on commercially viable, desktop OS's for x86, just as apple has a monopoly on desktop PPC OS's, and Sun has a monopoly on UltraSparc server OS's. But the issue is whether consumers have alternatives if they don't like Microsoft's product. The clear answer is yes. desktop users can get Macs or install BeOS. Server users can run Linux, Solaris, or *BSD. Yes, they have a large market share, but as long as there are alternatives, it's not a monopoly.
And even on the terms of antitrust law, it's not clear that they are guilty of abusing their monopoly. They have not acted like a monopoly. They have kept their prices pretty much constant-- Win98 is about the same as Apple charges for OS9, and NT is in the same ballpark as commercial Unices. Their pace of development has not slowed. And although I hate to admit it, some of their products aren't that bad. The Mac version of IE (the only MS product I use regularly) is better than any other browser on the platform IMHO.
A monopolist would raise their prices to $500, sit on their asses, and rake in profits. The fact that MS hasn't done this tells me that they don't believe this would be profitable. So how exactly are they abusing their monopoly?
Are you saying that Apple doesn't sell easy to use computers?
I own one, so I certainly wouldn't say that. But Apple's computers are expensive, and they were a hell of a lot more expensive 5 years ago when microsoft was busy cementing their lead in the OS market. Apple also was grossly incompetent when it came to marketing and selling their product pure technical superiority or a better interface aren't the only things that matter.
What about OS/2?
I don't know that much about GEOS, but I know IBM screwed up OS/2 big time. In 1990 when the Windows-OS/2 wars were at their peak, IBM was a much bigger company than Microsoft, and a lot of people thought IBM was going to win. Microsoft beat IBM at their own game by producing a decent product at a good price.
One good example of this is that IBM charged ridiculous prices for OS/2 development software, while MS practically gave Windows development tools away. Microsoft was also the first company to truly understand that an OS requires useful apps, and when they ported Word and Excel to Windows it was more so they could help Windows market viability and not vice versa.
Computers would be JUST as popular today without Microsoft, and in fact probably even MORE SO considering that PC Os's should cost $0 (or close to it)
You get what you pay for. Mac OS is priced about the same as Windows, and the per-computer cost of Windows is a lot lower than $150 for OEM's. As for requiring $2000 computers to run, that's laughable. The average computer today costs about $900, and you can get a usable one for under $500. And you are free to buy a no-name PC without Windows and install Linux or anything else you want on it. Most people don't because Linux is a lousy desktop OS for most users.
Keep in mind also that most sodtware packages cost at least $50, and a lot of them are $100. Considering the large number of functions performed by the OS, $100 is not an unreasonable price.
Microsoft was (ironically) the also the only OS maker that truly recognized the value of open systems. They have always sold Windoze liscences to anyone who wanted them. Apple, Next, IBM, and most others on the other hand tried to run their stuff largely on proprietary systems, and I'd argue this is a large part of why they lost. Yes, their OS is closed and proprietary, but it runs on commodity hardware, largely because of Microsoft's liscencing policies.
The simple fact is that Mac OS and Windows are the only viable desktop OS's at the moment, and Windows is the only one that'll run on commodity x86 hardware. Be might be a contender in a couple of years, and if so Microsoft might have some competition on its hand, but the original posters point was that Microsoft has done some good by producing a decent OS at a decent price. I think that's clearly the case.
Ok, I hate to start Yet Another Flame War, but I'm annoyed at the overwhelming anti-Microsoft sentiment that seems to exist here. IMHO, Microsoft has done nothing particularly evil, and should not have been sued in the first place. I hope that the appeals courts reduces whatever penalties Jackson makes to spare Microsoft from unjust punishment.
Microsoft is in essence being punished for being too effective a competitor, and for not lining the pockets of enough lawmakers. You will notice that with the exception of a few Linux fanatics, most Microsoft customers are quite happy with their products. The ones that are driving this lawsuit are Microsoft's politically-connected competitors. Yes, Microsoft has done things that caused harm to its competitors, but that's what competition is all about. It's absurd to expect a company to compete, but not compete "too much" or "unfairly."
Microsoft wrote Windows and has every right to set whatever terms it likes for its use. That includes requirements such as those that OEM's pay per processor to pre-load it. Computer manufacturers are free to decline to use Microsoft's product, and can then install whatever they want at whatever price they want. The fact that OEM's choose to purchase Windows says something about the value of Windows to consumers.
Microsoft has done nothing that many others in the computer industry has done. Microsoft just did a better job of it. This antitrust case is a travesty of justice, and I hope it gets thrown out on appeal. Microsoft makes mediocre products, and I hope a better alternative comes along and takes over the market. But the government should butt out and let the market do its work.
This is a good point. What I meant about Java being a separate API was that the Java platform specification really is an API unto itself. AWT and Swing provide a complete GUI, Java includes extensive file manipulation functions, and many of the other functionality traditioinally provided by the OS is available natively in Java 2. The whole point of Java programs is that they can be run on many different machines without touching the native API on any of them.
I've read that Apple is planning on providing a full Java 2 implementation in OS X, and that users will be able to launch Java apps just like other apps, and in fact won't know there's any difference. Perhaps I didn't read that right, but if that's the case, I'd say Java counts as a separate API. The VM may call coacoa functions in the back end, and there will probably be a mechanism allowing Java programs to invoke the Coacoa API directly, but that doesn't make the Java API's (Swing, AWT, etc) any less a separate API.
Will run classic MacOS and Rhapsody apps through abstraction layers (carbon and cocoa)
This isn't quite right. Mac OS X will support three API's (4 if you count Java) Classic, Carbon, and Coacoa.
Classic is basically Mac OS 9 running as a single process inside the Unix environment. It has a number of enhancements that make it work nicer with non-classic apps, but basically it's just a Mac OS emulator. It will allow users to run their old apps right out of the box, but without the benefits of protected memory and preemptive multitasking.
Carbon is a subset of the existing Mac OS API that allows developers to quickly "tune up" their apps to take advantage of the modern OS features. It provides a gentle migration path for existing users, and is designed to allow developers to make minimal code changes. Each Carbon app is a full Unix process, with all the advantages of preemptive multitasking and protected memory.
Coacoa is the Next-derived API that is based on OpenStep and Objective C and was originally slated to be the only API offered in Rapsody. This is an object-oriented API that I've read is one of the best development environments ever created. Apple presumably sees it as the future of the platform, and will be encouraging developers of new products to use it rather than carbon.
So Coacoa and carbon are not simply abstraction layers to an underlying API. They are themselves full-blown API's.
Moderators, why is that flamebait?
Anyway, here are some of the reasons I like perl:
(Disclaimer: have not used Python perhaps it has these features)
*Regexps- Perl has an extremely complete regexp syntax built in, allowing you to do in one line what can take a dozen lines in Java or C.
*scalars- Although it is conceptually strange, perl's use of a single "scalar" data type
(as opposed to string, int, and float) makes life a lot easier when you're doing something like writing a cgi script.
*Hashes- Hashes kick ass, and perl has them built-in using a simple, straightforward syntax. There are some jobs that are made extremely simple with hashes, and would be extremely difficult without them.
*Arrays- No, arrays are not unique to perl, but perl makes better use of them than most other languages. In particular, the foreach command and the various ways of manipulating them is nice.
*Syntactic sugar- Perl is very un-picky about things like parenthesis, and has a number of ways to input and format data, including string interpolation, the qw() command, the => syntax, etc.
No, perl is not the best language if you're building a large software project, but that's not what it's designed for. It doesn't handle complex data types because it's a scripting language, and it's designed to deal with text. It does a damn good job of simple text manipulation. For the things it's designed for, it can turn a page of code into just a few lines. And yes the object oriented syntax needs a lot of work.
And you're right about perl being rather cryptic. I love writing reqexps that look like line noise. It makes me feel 3l337.
The handwriting recognition is very functional, but it is not hanrwriting recognition per se. It works by requiring you to use a simplified one-stroke-per-character character set called grafiti. Each character is reduced to a single simplified stroke so it can be easily recognized by the software. This is a little awkward at first, but it can be learned in a matter of hours, and afterwards one can do a couple of characters a second. It's not going to replace a keyboard, but it's respectable for a handheld.
Opening specs in a stupid way (like IBM lisencing an OS and chip without any control over them) might be stupid, but building entirely closed systems is even stupider. Look at Apple. In the late 80's it was pretty clear that the Mac OS was superior to anything on the PC side, and Macs were competitive with anything on the PC side. In large part what killed them is that they got fat and arrogant. They overcharged their customers, ignored their needs, and generally pissed away their lead. Now that's not strictly a result of having a closed system, but without the competition from Mac clones, they got fat and lazy. As a result, PC's ate their lunch with inferior products, simply on the basis of better prices, and the increased varieaty and responsiveness of a competitive marketplace.
If IBM had successfully prevented cloning and Apple had pursued a substantial cloning program, we might very well all be using Macs right now. And in that case, IBM's PC revenues might very well be even less than it is now.
I don't understand why people say this. Do forty-somethings not have the skills of a twenty-something? Do forty-somethings not have savings? I can understand that having a family and kids makes things more difficult, but my father is a programmer in his 40's and he's changed jobs twice in the last 5 years (it was his choice in both cases).
Yes, 40-somethings may not have the time to keep up with the latest technologies the way 20-somethings can, and yes, a mortgage is a pain. But on the other hand older workers have valuable business experience and a proven track record. I see no reason why older geeks should resign themselves to keeping a job they hate.
So ask for fewer hours during the day. Or get another job.
Assuming you're in the same job market most of us are, you could probably quit your job and get another in 2 weeks. We need to stop whining and realize how good we really have it.
Re:CLIs vs. GUIs (Score:1)
:)
by sklein (sklein@mint.net) on Tuesday February 15, @01:16AM EST (#245)
(User Info) http://members.mint.net/sklein/
And GUI's can do free-form text completion boxes. In fact, they can do some kind
of out-complete feature, so I can type "bra" and have the "zil" added automatically.
As can CLI's. I've even done a clumsy form of auto-complete in a 100 line Perl script i use.
What happens if you want to move several files with different types to a directory
several folders away? That requires a lot more typing.
Not much more typing with a well organized filesystem and a modern Unix shell which supports tab completion. In short, one or two letters and the tab key per directory. And tab completion will do more than just directory names, the example included with the tcsh distribution is enlightening. Some configuration and you could expect that shell to read your mind.
Sure, with a lot of practice one can make a CLI match the speed of a GUI. But only a small fraction of users would actually have the patience to learn how to do this, and even then CLI's don't have a compelling speed advantage, just not much of a disadvantage.
Which is why the key repeat rate under Unixes doesn't crawl like under MS Windows and editors like vi(m) rarely require you to actually highlight the text. The vim tutorial (listed in the help) shows how it works.
I use vi extensively, and with a lot of practice, you can do a lot of things efficiently. But I can select an arbitrary piece of text in a word processor in under 2 seconds. No matter how fast vi is, it isn't going to match that. And this is assuming that we're editing plain text. If one is editing formatted text, then the only way to do it with vi is to use something like html, in which case you need to have Netscape open in a seperate window to make sure everything looks ok.
vi is great for editing code, because it gives you precise control over formatting and allows you to work without taking your hands off the keyboard. But for writing papers and such, there's just no comparison with a good word processor.
And coding isn't "normal" work. *sigh*
By "normal work" I mean writing papers, surfing the web, using email, ICQ, tracking finances, etc. Yes, you can do this in Linux, but most of the tools are GUI's anyway, and most Linux GUI's are attrocious. The Open Source movement has yet to produce a desktop environment that approaches the care, attention to detail, consistency and style that goes into the Mac OS. Linux makes a great server and a decent workstation, but its user interface still needs a lot of work.
In a GUI, all the commands VISIBLE which you have said, unlike a CLI where all the commands are usually HIDDEN. CLI's allow for very efficient commands for the power user.
:)
On a Mac, all of the menu items (along with a clock and a task switcher) are in the menu bar, which eats only about 20 pixels. The commands themselves are hidden until one needs them, and 20 pixels is a trivial amount of screen space.
Power comes at price. Why waste valuable screen real estate when the user already knows the commands (or hotkeys)
Two reasons. First, like I said you're only losing a strip about 20 pixels high. More importantly, there are very few power users who actually memorize the keystrokes for every possible operation. A well-designed GUI will provide keystrokes for frequently used ops, but having them in the menu bar makes it easier to learn what they are.
ONLY when you a small number of options ! Otherwise you have multiple 'tabs' or 'pages' of config options. Ever see a drop down box with 200 items? That's not elegant. (A country selection is one bad example.)
What's the alternative. A CLI will likely have a list of country codes, which is going to be every bit as cumbersome. And GUI's can do free-form text completion boxes. In fact, they can do some kind of out-complete feature, so I can type "bra" and have the "zil" added automatically.
That DEPENDS on what you are doing.
Try moving *.bat, *.com, *.exe files into another directory. I could type: move *.bat *.com *.exe progdir. With a mouse that would take you _THREE_ operations.
It does depend, but even in your example I prefer a GUI. In the Finder, you would switch to list mode, sort by kind, and then rubber-band to select the files. Yes, you'd have to do it 3 times, but you get better feedback, and it still isn't much slower than a CLI. And that's a simplified case. What happens if you want to move several files with different types to a directory several folders away? That requires a lot more typing.
if you spend a lot of time copying text, do you use the arrow keys to select the text, and then ctrl-c ctrl-v
You select text with the arrow keys? If it's just a couple of words, I can see that, but if you're selecting whole sentences, arrow keys are slow. Besides what you just described can be done in a GUI as well as a CLI.
What I really would love to see is a system that COMBINES the power and intuitiveness of CLI's and GUI's
Sure, which is why I have a dual-boot machine. When I want to get normal work done, I run Mac OS. When I have coding to do, I boot into Unix.
"pretty little icons" are a Microsoft "innovation" that has unfortunately taken over the GUI world. However, if you are taking Windoze as a standard for GUI's, then of course you are going to come to the conclusion that they are useless.
GUI's have three major advantages over CLI's. First is that it dramatically reduces the learning curve for new apps. In a good GUI, all possible operations are available using the menu bar. Thus if you want to do something to a piece of data, you select it, and the look through the menus to find the command you want.
Similarly, GUI's allow elegant setting of configuration options. Command-line switches simply can't match the simplicity and usefulness of a preferences dialog, and it doesn't require wading through man pages to use.
Secondly, GUI's allow for more efficient use of screen real estate and allow more rapid entry of some kinds of data. Windows and scrollbars allow you to fit multiple apps on the screen, and to use as much or as little space as needed for a given window. Doing this with a keyboard would be a nightmare. And imagine web surfing without a mouse.
Finally, GUI's allow you to do things simply and elegantly which cannot be done without a lot of grief with a CLI. For example, rearranging a file system with a CLI just can't match the simplicity of doing it with a GUI. And graphics and word processing would be a nightmare if we still had to do that without a mouse.
CLI's have their strengths, but there are some things that they just can't do. It's too bad that Microsoft did such a lousy job implementing their GUI, because not all GUI's are that bad.
...is that he's a lousy, boring, incompetent, and shamelessly self-promoting writer. He rambles, he has lousy spelling and grammar, and he has not yet mastered the art of cross-platform punctution. He is a mediocre, tedious writer.
/. is a tech news site. It would do just fine without a resident windbag to preach at us. Recruiting Katz might have gotten /. some publicity initially, but at this point, Rob should dump him and find some real writers who graduated from college and have some knowledge of the tech field.
Secondly, the man has nothing interesting to say. He is a master at filling a page with verbiage, but when one goes back to actually analyse his content, you often realize that he either said very little, or that he said something painfully obvious. The only time he does have anything to say is when he talks about politics, and in that case he trots out a tired anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, leftist dogma. He seems to believe that he can subsitute words for arguments. Even when he has a provocative or interesting opinion, he never manages to actually give evidence for it.
He also seems to view himself as the center of the universe. Half his article talk about his conversations with others, his attempts to install linux, his books, etc. He is clearly in it for the publicity of having thousands of geeks read his stuff and then click a link to buy his book.
Now, Katz has a right to be an incompetent writer writing long-winded, idea-free articles. My problem with him is that he is elevated above the rest of us and allowed to spread his nonsense accross slashdot's front page. He is the only one on Slashdot who does this, and he does a lousy job of it. It is not clear what function he serves.
I don't see what this has to do with our resident windbag, but I'll answer that, being a libertarian.
You are misrepresenting the libertarian position. I know of no libertarians who believe that Big Government is OK if it is run by corporations. Libertarians oppose big government in all its forms, whether it is run by "Big Business" or "Big Labor" or "The Proletariat" or anyone else.
No one disputes that corporations have a lot of influence in Washington and that that's a bad thing. But the thing to keep in mind is that the levers of power now controlled by corporate interests are still government institutions. A libertarian society would have a radically smaller government, and would therefore have less government power to be co-opted by corporations.
The reason that corporations are no longer accountable to the marketplace is that they have the power of government to interfere with the market. If we take that power away, they will be forced to compete on their merits with all comers.
The only way to accomplish this is a reduction in the size of government. There is no way you can give the government the amount of power it has and prevent special interests from putting it to their own purposes. If power exists, it will be used, and the only way to prevent its use is to take it away for good.
... but you are full of it.
When Someone says that it will cost $10 trillion dollars to get to Mars in 10 years (not that that's the real number, but hypothetically...) what that means is that it will take 1/8 of the nation's resources to accomplish the task (GDP is ~$8 trillion.) "1 trillion dollars" translated directly into "1/8 of the US's resources for a year."
It really annoys me when people make the "yes it's expensive, but it's only money!" argument. Money is simply the medium with which various conflicting demands on resources are mediated. When the government decides to impose X dollars in taxes to fund a new program, that translates directly into resources that are not available to the private sector.
It the government spends 10% of GDP on a space program, that will reduce the average income of the nation by 10%. I don't know about you, but that's not an "abstract" thing. That has very real and very specific consequences.
The space program never whould have started without the government's push (and yes, the govenment pushed space because of the Cold War). Only now that space and satillites are established do companies send up things on their own.
I find this a little hard to believe. Yes, the government funded the space program, and yes, this probably sped man's exploration of space. But I think it's quite likely that had the government not subsidized space travel, private companies would have done so to put satellites up. Not only that, but without government subsidies companies would have far more incentive to find cheaper ways of getting in space, and so today it might be possible to do *more* space research for less money than it would have been back then.
We are using basically the same space technology as we did in 1981. The cost of getting into space has not decreased much at all in that time. It is almost certain that a private, competitive space industry would find more efficient ways to accomplish this task.
Subsidizing something is a good way of killing it. When people don't have to convince anyone to give them money, they often don't work as hard to find new, innovative ways to do it. I think that in the long run NASA has hurt the space industry by subsidizing the status quo.
No, this is wrong. I am at a private university. We do have a ~$1e7 endowment. it goes to scholarships, capital improvements, and makeing interest to maintain the endowment. As for the most basic of research in physics, no money for these projects come from private sources. I am talking about things like my research group's search for Dark Matter or another group's Big Occulting Steerable Satellite. Private companies do not and will not fund things like this because there are no even remotely visible dollar signs at the end of the research.
As I said, private does not necessarily mean corporate. There are lots of private people out there with an intense interest in just such basic research, and if the government were not funding, it, you could probably get at least some funding from them. Keep in mind also that people would have more disposable income in a low-tax system.
Also, some of the best inventions and discoveries have been made on shoestring budgets. If you don't have a billion dollars to make a particle accellerator, you might be driven to think of some way to do the same research on your more limited budget.
I'm not saying that all government funding of research is necessarily bad, but I disagree with the unreserved enthusiasm for it. Government tends to stifle everything it touches, and I don't want this to happen to science.
What are ancient civilizations remembered for? Their scientific advancement.
Actually, some civilizations (the Aztec and Egyptians and Romans, for example) are remembered for building enourmous piles of rock with slave labor. Today they are called pyramids. I would rather our society focuses on how we live in the here and now, not how impressive we will look to future generations. Western civilization has already achieved more than all previous civilizations combined. There is no chance of them forgetting we existed any time soon.
The only thing that really lasts is the knowledge that we pass down to successive generations. This is the basic human drive. Why are we here? Where are we going? How did it happen? These questions are what make us human. This is why science is important.
Hey, you're preaching to the converted here. I am not opposed to science by any means. In fact I agree that it is one of our greatest achievements. That is one of the reason I want the government to keep away from it. The government has a habit of destroy everything it tries to help.
The science research will only be about getting the company more money. So, would the company allow its data to be spread out in the world (open-source) or would they hoard it, making their competitors have to use money to find out the same info.
This is demonstrably not true. There are many corporations that pay their researchers to do basic research, in the hope that they will stumble on something that will lead to a product down the road. These corporations may "hoard" their data in some cases, but they also need to keep their researchers happy. In scientific circles, one's prestige is largely determined by one's published work, and so many researchers will insist on the right to publish before they will accept a position.
Also, "private funding" does not necessarily mean "corporate funding." Private Universities and private charities are also a factor. Look at the American Heart Association, or the other analogous organizations for other diseases. And a big tax cut will allow more of this kind of funding to exist, since the wealthy will have more money to give to charity.
That is true because governments are a lot more effective. The gov't wil try to find the entire effects of research
That's not what I meant. What I meant was tht it is inefficient in that it is wasteful in its use of funding, both in excessive paper-pushing, and in making poor choices about who is to get funding. It is very easy to make poor choices when you are giving away other peoples' money and you have lots of it. Private foundations are founded by people who care specifically about what is being researched, and they have to convince their donors to give them money. That means that they have much more incentive to ensure that the grants are being used for worthwhile purposes.
I don't want to get into this, but poor families that work very hard for little money should get priority in tax cuts.
I think everyone should get a massive tax cut, rich and poor alike. And I don't think anyone should get "priority." The point of a tax cut is returning to taxpayers the money they earn, not social engineering. If the tax burden if 10% of the economy rather than 40%, it is much less of a big deal who has to pay for it.
In one of his books, Carl Sagen talks about the then current aversion to anything resembling "pure research" in government science funding. He made a fairly good argument that many of our greatest technological advancements were based on research that at its start would have been dismissed as non-technologically driven and practically useless.
Which may be why so many corporations hire people to do basic research. They realize that while they can't see a future in it at the moment, the payoff should a breakthrough be made would be enourmous. I will again point out the example of "IBM" being written on Xenon atoms. This clearly doesn't improve IBM's bottom line in the short run, but by funding this type of research, they are giving themselves a leg up if nanotech proves to be as powerful as some people think it is.
OK, then please explain to me why IBM funded the etching of the words "IBM" into Xenon atoms? Or why Xerox-PARC invented the modern GUI without ever making an actual product based around it? Or why most major corporations employ top researchers to do work that, although certainly related to the company's broad goals, is not directly related to any specific product in development?
The fact is that there are many companies out there that fund basic research. They do it primarily because if a breakthrough occurs, they want to have people in-house that can help turn it into a working product.
You are also ignoring private charities and Universities. There are many private schools with hundreds of millions in endowments, and many of those do and would be used to fund basic research. These endowments would be even bigger in a society with a lower tax burden, since many wealthy people leave their fortunes to their alma mater. There are also private donations directly toward research programs.
We see that the government has funded most basic research. But this does not imply that if the government cut off funding that the research would simply stop. There are private sources for funding. That funding simply gets used elsewhere when folks see that the government is already pumping lots of money into basic research.
The government funds research in practically every branch of knowledge, so it's not surprising that they helped fund the development of the computer.
But the question is not: has government funding led to useful research? The question is: would society be better off if the government had not funded that research. I think there is a case to be made that it did.
The idea that computers would not exist without government support is ludicrous. By the fifties, IBM and other companies were already pioneering commercial uses of computers, and private universities were engaging in research. It is possible (although I think unlikely) that it would have taken longer for the computer revolution to occur, but I rather doubt it. And since the mid-seventies, the PC industry has taken off with essentially no government support.
One of the primart effects of research funding of the computer industry today is simple corporate welfare. For example, the US has been encouraging the formation of "partnerships" between US semiconductor firms, and these "partnerships have been supported with lots of Federal money. The result of these kinds of subsidies has simply been to entrench the established players in the industry.
We see what government money has helped to create. We do not see what would be if the government had not spent that money. The fact that some government money went to fund important research does not mean that other research wasn't wasteful, or that on average private funding would have gotten better results.
For the record, I'm a different person than the original poster, and I just didn't bother to change the subject.
Who says we want a 3-party system? We're out to replace one of the existing major parties.