Don't forget that all of these CEOs also serve on each other's Board of Directors.
They're not really "screwing up and leaving", they're just getting out of the way so that one of their friends and compatriots can take his or her turn at plundering the corporation.
It pays to go to the right universities and join the right clubs and organizations...
I was a little surprised I that had to read this far down to see such a comment.
I would agree that the linkage between "brand new and shiny OS" and the dearth of Vista drivers for existing hardware - across the board - is no coincidence. Most "existing" - those without Vista - users can do everything they want or need to do with their existing hardware and existing software, and with reasonable safety and security provided equally reasonable precautions are taken.
There is really no base need to drive either new O/S or new peripheral purchases for those aforementioned "existing" users. The whole peripheral industry is in a logjam - and Vista's differing driver requirements represent the dynamite those manufacturers desperately need.
Having two peripheral driver development streams - one that is marginally supported and now drying up for their pre-Vista peripheral hardware, and a robust one for those new peripherals with new capabilities that are under development but will support Vista and later O/Ss only - is mutually beneficial to both Microsoft and the peripheral manufacturers.
Bottom line, anybody who makes existing peripheral hardware work with Vista hurts future peripheral hardware sales. And, this being America, they must therefore be squashed.
Aren't you glad that your house builder doesn't harass you, or block your house from street view, or even sue you if you put a casement window in where a double-hung window was?
I wish I hadn't read PNAC's 2000 position paper where they say that care will have to be taken to fully analyze and control the Internet. If that same paper's demand for permanently stationing troops in the Middle East is any example, the future of the Internet should be "interesting" (in that not-really-a-Chinese-saying sense of the word).
There are people and groups who will inevitably use this kind of technology to pipe and restrict stories to particular audiences. Don't like the way Congresswoman "Y" has been voting? Apply a judicious filter to what she and her husband and children see on the 'net.
Along the same vein, it will be a piece of cake to apply the technology to every comment you've ever posted out there in order to ascertain what type of marketing will be required to garner your vote.
Or, for that matter, the amount of surveillance that you will require.
Your comment is a familiar refrain to me, but I was that person who you probably hated.
Having played in VMS and 'nix, I quickly tired of the "That can't be done.", "Please submit your software modification and implementation requests by the end of this quarter for next year's end-of-year merit review process." IT types who lived in the corporate "glass houses".
When Microsoft showed up, I loved it. Developing on a platform where I could just say "Could you write down what you want and walk me through it once?"...and then deliver the first prototype in a week or two and then be done with it in a month or so and move on.
Competence was its own reward - before long, I ran the networks and the Vaxes and the 'nix boxes locally - I remember DCL fondly to this day. And "top end PCs"? Not hardly - I used the slowest boxes around for development - make it run fast there, and it will run fast anywhere was my mantra. The only time I went for "top end" equipment was when it was for something significant, like the monitoring system that sped up one line roughly 15%. Of course, I bought top end equipment out of my own pocket for use at home to develop for the business...
The corporate IT boyz eventually got their revenge by spinning the fable that support consolidation was the final solution for cost savings and efficiency (with the help of propaganda from people like Gartner) and so were able to first marginalize and then eventually eliminate me remotely from their center of power several states away.
But it was fun while it lasted.
lollll...and last I heard, my old factory was back to the "Grit your teeth, submit a request, and grind your teeth monthly while you attempt to interpret the inane rejections and delays." model of ye olde "glass house" era, and they don't like it.
I guess hindsight IS pretty clear; they actually miss having "that guy" locally who they could go to with a problem or a request and the "fix for what ailed 'em" would just happen.
On the other hand, Microsoft's operating systems have embarked upon a journey towards eventually becoming hugely rigid structures themselves, so I'd say they have their own "glass house" warriors - who are winning.
I've been involved in things technical since 1974, and it shames me to be forced to acknowledge that people in my field - that strange digital world where "True or False" is a fundamental fact of life - are participating in obfuscating a basic fact:
This Administration is crooked, and there are enough equally corrupt Republicans in the House and Senate to shield them from the consequences that their criminality merits.
How many times have I heard rather short-sighted types say things like the Chinese/Japanese/Indians/whoever only copy us?
This is something we should have been looking at years ago - but no doubt someone other than we Americans will get this technology's price point down to practicality before any of our fearless CEOs get up off the R&D bucks that they fear will come straight outta their quarter to a half billion dollar annual compensation packages...
patents are consistently issued for non-original inventions and this protection we offer to them is deleterious to our economy and marketplace. So what do you suppose the impact would be if a nation with $X.XX average hourly wages did away with its patent system and a nation with $X.XX/20 average hourly wages could now legally reverse-engineer anything anybody invented in the wealthier nation and then legally sell it without paying royalties?
Me, I'd say that the inventor and/or the inventor's company wouldn't get diddly squat for the time/money/materials invested to realize the idea, and the inventor's home nation wouldn't even get the opportunity to produce the invention.
Getting rid of patents is a great idea - if you have access to a lot of low-cost labor and don't want to inhibit your profits by paying royalties.
Now that is on the "hardware" side.
I would tend to agree, however, that far too many software patents are bogus - if the same concepts were applied to writing books, the world would have about 500 or a 1000 books and nobody would or could write any more for fear of repeating a sentence or a sentence fragment that had already been used.
If someone creates a widget, patents it but fails to commercialize it and another person or company independantly comes up with the same widget and succeeds, what was the original inventor's benefit to society? None
Why would I expect to see a lot of claims of "independent" invention in order to take advantage of the work of somebody who actually invented something but did not have the money to "commercialize" it?
The "it takes money to make money" cliche exists for a reason; stories exist of "Inventor A" attempting to market "Invention A" which he calls "Gizmo A" to "Corporation B" which claims that there is no market. So "Inventor A" shelves "Invention A" and moves on to other things.
Lo and behold, a few months down the road "Investor B" with ties to "Corporation B" attempts to roll "Gizmo B" - which "coincidentally" works upon the same principles as "Invention A" and looks almost identical to "Gizmo A" - out to the unsuspecting public...
Although many concepts of "cyber-war" have elements of science fiction about them, and the role of the Defense Department in establishing "control," or even what "security" on the Internet means, requires a consideration of a host of legal, moral and political issues, there nonetheless will remain an imperative to be able to deny America and its allies' enemies the ability to disrupt or paralyze either the military's or the commercial sector's computer networks.
Conversely, an offensive capability could offer America's military and political leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary
in a decisive manner.
Don't think that quote is relevant, or think that I am exaggerating its relevance to the issue of fear-mongering about the 'net?
Then consider this quote from page 14 of the PNAC todo list:
While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Then remember that the PNAC "todo" list was released in September of 2000, before the first Bush/PNAC election and before 9/11, and long before the 935 lies about WMDs et al were revealed to be lies.
Finally, remember who uses phrases like "decades of patient effort" and "maybe a hundred years" as you ponder the meaning of "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein".
In warfare, going to a better thing in lieu of "learning to make what they already have work" only makes sense. Hacks to "make it work" in a time-constrained environment - the battlefield - are something only a paper-pushing pencil-necked geek (in the true sense of the phrase) would insist upon - they kill people.
Of course, it still happens all of the time - witness WWII's torpedoes, early M16s, etc. Equally of course, such crap equipment comes complete with attitude from chickenhawks and armchair warriors who inevitably insist that "the equipment is fine - they just need to learn to make it work".
"...and refuse to even take mortgages to purchase homes."
Now, when it comes time to send their children to college, they'll either have saved up $80K or more per child, or they'll - surprise! - take out a loan.
Educational loans are the new darling of the predatory investment class, because the Republicans changed the bankruptcy laws to make it impossible for the student OR the parent to walk away from them. They can even sieze Social Security payments to repay them.
So, parents, before you take out a student education loan or co-sign on one, make sure your child signs an agreement to carry insurance that will repay the loan in the event he or she is injured - and soon, it seems, in case your child's college is found to have too many ripped songs floating around and your child loses some grant money and has to drop out.
Of course, the insurance company is probably going to force the student to agree not to skateboard, or high dive, or sky dive, or be involved in gymnastics, or play team sports...but anything to protect the predatory investment class' money, right?
And when Wal-Mart's efforts are completed, the cost of RFID chips will be low enough to make it worth sticking them in your Sam's club card so Wal-Mart can see where you browse in their stores.
And then with some cross-marketing agreements with major fast food chains, gasoline retailers, amusement parks...why shucks, Sam's kids will soon be able to tell where you are and what you're likely to do next.
Snicker...RAD is indeed the true reason why those who hate VB complain so loudly.
Almost any other programming language carries with it the burden of endless planning and objectives meetings, months and even years of code writing and debugging, and then the stunning realization that the business has moved on without you and your project.
Meanwhile, the Service & Finance people conclude that if they're going to get such lousy results for so much effort, they might as well offshore the next project in order to control the labor costs.
With VB, the process was simple: Idea, implement, debug, distribute - in weeks, not months or years.
I'm rather surprised that Microsoft is making this move - I suspect that there are ten lines of VB and VBA code for every one line of non-VB code out there in the corporate world.
If you add up the costs of the Office and Vista O/S upgrades, the cost of the new hardware required to support Vista, the cost of porting all of that VB and VBA code, and the costs associated with the increase in electricity requirements that the new Vista-capable hardware demands, you've made one hell of an argument to go open source on Linux.
Nary a word about the managers and MBAs who avidly read the WSJ to find out who's making $232 million this year...and so weekly come up with new ways to save money or "better" ways to do things so that they can justify demanding more salary and perks from the board.
Inevitably, they always orient their efforts around "squeezing labor", and anybody who isn't them is by definition labor.
If they have five to seven meetings a week to discuss "direction and efficiency" it can only help to lower costs - to them, that's as plain as the dollar signs in their eyes.
And it IS cheaper to squeeze more programmers into cubicles; far fewer construction requirements, and even the cleaning bill is lower...why, they can even use fewer lighting fixtures, so they get kudos for "being green", too!
And look - all the C++ guys are getting a little long in the tooth...but that is the wrong way to look at it. If they could be replaced in mass with C# guys, that would "bring a wave of new blood in to invigorate the company and jump-start creativity".
Incidentally, the new hire salary requirements would be far lower, and statistically their impact on corporate health benefit copays would also be lower...and if we use H1Bs...hmmm...
And hey, why not put the analysts, DBAs, and programmers over by all the copy machines - its all "tech stuff", right?
Your comment "Employers realized that well-rounded, educated (dare I say, excellent) human beings are better for the health of a company." certainly applies - to the people that the MBAs and Human Resource types don't call "techies".
A "techie" is anybody with a computer science or engineering degree of any sort. Rephrased, a "techie" is anybody someone from "Service & Finances" is unable to quickly pass a "quality and value" judgement on because the bean counter can't understand what the "techie" is doing or how well the "techie" is doing it when they stand behind them peering over their shoulder.
Business in fact loves the idea of Java and anything else that makes people - and their skill sets - "plug'n'play".
Hence the name change from "Personnel" to "Human Resources"; the more often the corporation can treat people as interchangeable commodities or resources to be sourced at least cost, the better.
And it is Business with a capital "B" that funds all of those new University buildings and lovely grants, which is the sum total of Business' commitment to "long term thinking" - let somebody else do the latter for them because that is not one of their "core proficiencies" or "profit centers".
I was too subtle in my sarcasm, perhaps - or unduly optimistic.
It is a lot easier to manipulate election results that are read into and stored by computers before they are delivered via e-pipes that various Federal agencies interface with in the name of "Homeland Security".
In comparison to hand-counted paper ballots.
You can be a lot more subtle in how you manipulate an election if you can access returns from everywhere simultaneously. Stuffing the ballot box precinct by precinct is primitive by comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that all of these CEOs also serve on each other's Board of Directors.
They're not really "screwing up and leaving", they're just getting out of the way so that one of their friends and compatriots can take his or her turn at plundering the corporation.
It pays to go to the right universities and join the right clubs and organizations...
I'm not too concerned about being manipulated by the military, anyway. 'Tis when the politicians start manipulating the military that I get concerned.
Halliburton is the good guys?!?
God save us from the bad guys...
Exactly...and then they could have an enormous, global audience to carefully shape search results for...
I was a little surprised I that had to read this far down to see such a comment.
I would agree that the linkage between "brand new and shiny OS" and the dearth of Vista drivers for existing hardware - across the board - is no coincidence. Most "existing" - those without Vista - users can do everything they want or need to do with their existing hardware and existing software, and with reasonable safety and security provided equally reasonable precautions are taken.
There is really no base need to drive either new O/S or new peripheral purchases for those aforementioned "existing" users. The whole peripheral industry is in a logjam - and Vista's differing driver requirements represent the dynamite those manufacturers desperately need.
Having two peripheral driver development streams - one that is marginally supported and now drying up for their pre-Vista peripheral hardware, and a robust one for those new peripherals with new capabilities that are under development but will support Vista and later O/Ss only - is mutually beneficial to both Microsoft and the peripheral manufacturers.
Bottom line, anybody who makes existing peripheral hardware work with Vista hurts future peripheral hardware sales. And, this being America, they must therefore be squashed.
Aren't you glad that your house builder doesn't harass you, or block your house from street view, or even sue you if you put a casement window in where a double-hung window was?
Yet, anyway?
I was thinking of a really teeny pool table...
I wish I hadn't read PNAC's 2000 position paper where they say that care will have to be taken to fully analyze and control the Internet. If that same paper's demand for permanently stationing troops in the Middle East is any example, the future of the Internet should be "interesting" (in that not-really-a-Chinese-saying sense of the word).
There are people and groups who will inevitably use this kind of technology to pipe and restrict stories to particular audiences. Don't like the way Congresswoman "Y" has been voting? Apply a judicious filter to what she and her husband and children see on the 'net.
Along the same vein, it will be a piece of cake to apply the technology to every comment you've ever posted out there in order to ascertain what type of marketing will be required to garner your vote.
Or, for that matter, the amount of surveillance that you will require.
Your comment is a familiar refrain to me, but I was that person who you probably hated.
Having played in VMS and 'nix, I quickly tired of the "That can't be done.", "Please submit your software modification and implementation requests by the end of this quarter for next year's end-of-year merit review process." IT types who lived in the corporate "glass houses".
When Microsoft showed up, I loved it. Developing on a platform where I could just say "Could you write down what you want and walk me through it once?"...and then deliver the first prototype in a week or two and then be done with it in a month or so and move on.
Competence was its own reward - before long, I ran the networks and the Vaxes and the 'nix boxes locally - I remember DCL fondly to this day. And "top end PCs"? Not hardly - I used the slowest boxes around for development - make it run fast there, and it will run fast anywhere was my mantra. The only time I went for "top end" equipment was when it was for something significant, like the monitoring system that sped up one line roughly 15%. Of course, I bought top end equipment out of my own pocket for use at home to develop for the business...
The corporate IT boyz eventually got their revenge by spinning the fable that support consolidation was the final solution for cost savings and efficiency (with the help of propaganda from people like Gartner) and so were able to first marginalize and then eventually eliminate me remotely from their center of power several states away.
But it was fun while it lasted.
lollll...and last I heard, my old factory was back to the "Grit your teeth, submit a request, and grind your teeth monthly while you attempt to interpret the inane rejections and delays." model of ye olde "glass house" era, and they don't like it.
I guess hindsight IS pretty clear; they actually miss having "that guy" locally who they could go to with a problem or a request and the "fix for what ailed 'em" would just happen.
On the other hand, Microsoft's operating systems have embarked upon a journey towards eventually becoming hugely rigid structures themselves, so I'd say they have their own "glass house" warriors - who are winning.
I've been involved in things technical since 1974, and it shames me to be forced to acknowledge that people in my field - that strange digital world where "True or False" is a fundamental fact of life - are participating in obfuscating a basic fact:
This Administration is crooked, and there are enough equally corrupt Republicans in the House and Senate to shield them from the consequences that their criminality merits.
All technical details are moot.
How many times have I heard rather short-sighted types say things like the Chinese/Japanese/Indians/whoever only copy us?
This is something we should have been looking at years ago - but no doubt someone other than we Americans will get this technology's price point down to practicality before any of our fearless CEOs get up off the R&D bucks that they fear will come straight outta their quarter to a half billion dollar annual compensation packages...
Me, I'd say that the inventor and/or the inventor's company wouldn't get diddly squat for the time/money/materials invested to realize the idea, and the inventor's home nation wouldn't even get the opportunity to produce the invention.
Getting rid of patents is a great idea - if you have access to a lot of low-cost labor and don't want to inhibit your profits by paying royalties.
Now that is on the "hardware" side.
I would tend to agree, however, that far too many software patents are bogus - if the same concepts were applied to writing books, the world would have about 500 or a 1000 books and nobody would or could write any more for fear of repeating a sentence or a sentence fragment that had already been used.
Why would I expect to see a lot of claims of "independent" invention in order to take advantage of the work of somebody who actually invented something but did not have the money to "commercialize" it?
The "it takes money to make money" cliche exists for a reason; stories exist of "Inventor A" attempting to market "Invention A" which he calls "Gizmo A" to "Corporation B" which claims that there is no market. So "Inventor A" shelves "Invention A" and moves on to other things.
Lo and behold, a few months down the road "Investor B" with ties to "Corporation B" attempts to roll "Gizmo B" - which "coincidentally" works upon the same principles as "Invention A" and looks almost identical to "Gizmo A" - out to the unsuspecting public...
...is on the PNAC todo list. Whip up enough fear, and you can do just about anything - to anybody.
The PNAC list at http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf includes:
Page 57:Don't think that quote is relevant, or think that I am exaggerating its relevance to the issue of fear-mongering about the 'net?
Consider the major players who are in PNAC - you can find them at the bottom of http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Then consider this quote from page 14 of the PNAC todo list:Then remember that the PNAC "todo" list was released in September of 2000, before the first Bush/PNAC election and before 9/11, and long before the 935 lies about WMDs et al were revealed to be lies.
Finally, remember who uses phrases like "decades of patient effort" and "maybe a hundred years" as you ponder the meaning of "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein".In warfare, going to a better thing in lieu of "learning to make what they already have work" only makes sense. Hacks to "make it work" in a time-constrained environment - the battlefield - are something only a paper-pushing pencil-necked geek (in the true sense of the phrase) would insist upon - they kill people.
Of course, it still happens all of the time - witness WWII's torpedoes, early M16s, etc. Equally of course, such crap equipment comes complete with attitude from chickenhawks and armchair warriors who inevitably insist that "the equipment is fine - they just need to learn to make it work".
I thought they ripped my old outfit - "the lightning fast chicken fookers" - off. But guess that izn't an eagle claw.
I tend to agree with your perspective, which is why I'm leery of HP/Compaq doing anything in the open source world.
After watching the destruction of DEC, I know they must still have a mass of those people who can take a good thing and destroy it.
"...and refuse to even take mortgages to purchase homes."
Now, when it comes time to send their children to college, they'll either have saved up $80K or more per child, or they'll - surprise! - take out a loan.
Educational loans are the new darling of the predatory investment class, because the Republicans changed the bankruptcy laws to make it impossible for the student OR the parent to walk away from them. They can even sieze Social Security payments to repay them.
So, parents, before you take out a student education loan or co-sign on one, make sure your child signs an agreement to carry insurance that will repay the loan in the event he or she is injured - and soon, it seems, in case your child's college is found to have too many ripped songs floating around and your child loses some grant money and has to drop out.
Of course, the insurance company is probably going to force the student to agree not to skateboard, or high dive, or sky dive, or be involved in gymnastics, or play team sports...but anything to protect the predatory investment class' money, right?
And when Wal-Mart's efforts are completed, the cost of RFID chips will be low enough to make it worth sticking them in your Sam's club card so Wal-Mart can see where you browse in their stores.
And then with some cross-marketing agreements with major fast food chains, gasoline retailers, amusement parks...why shucks, Sam's kids will soon be able to tell where you are and what you're likely to do next.
For marketing purposes only, of course...
More like, Wall Street's talking heads will pull the stock down by airing a negative perspective on it.
The market, and America, would work a lot better if they limited what the talking heads could say.
Snicker...RAD is indeed the true reason why those who hate VB complain so loudly.
Almost any other programming language carries with it the burden of endless planning and objectives meetings, months and even years of code writing and debugging, and then the stunning realization that the business has moved on without you and your project.
Meanwhile, the Service & Finance people conclude that if they're going to get such lousy results for so much effort, they might as well offshore the next project in order to control the labor costs.
With VB, the process was simple: Idea, implement, debug, distribute - in weeks, not months or years.
I'm rather surprised that Microsoft is making this move - I suspect that there are ten lines of VB and VBA code for every one line of non-VB code out there in the corporate world.
If you add up the costs of the Office and Vista O/S upgrades, the cost of the new hardware required to support Vista, the cost of porting all of that VB and VBA code, and the costs associated with the increase in electricity requirements that the new Vista-capable hardware demands, you've made one hell of an argument to go open source on Linux.
Nary a word about the managers and MBAs who avidly read the WSJ to find out who's making $232 million this year...and so weekly come up with new ways to save money or "better" ways to do things so that they can justify demanding more salary and perks from the board.
Inevitably, they always orient their efforts around "squeezing labor", and anybody who isn't them is by definition labor.
If they have five to seven meetings a week to discuss "direction and efficiency" it can only help to lower costs - to them, that's as plain as the dollar signs in their eyes.
And it IS cheaper to squeeze more programmers into cubicles; far fewer construction requirements, and even the cleaning bill is lower...why, they can even use fewer lighting fixtures, so they get kudos for "being green", too!
And look - all the C++ guys are getting a little long in the tooth...but that is the wrong way to look at it. If they could be replaced in mass with C# guys, that would "bring a wave of new blood in to invigorate the company and jump-start creativity".
Incidentally, the new hire salary requirements would be far lower, and statistically their impact on corporate health benefit copays would also be lower...and if we use H1Bs...hmmm...
And hey, why not put the analysts, DBAs, and programmers over by all the copy machines - its all "tech stuff", right?
Twelve school districts refuting evolution? I thought science said Alzheimer's wasn't contagious?
Your comment "Employers realized that well-rounded, educated (dare I say, excellent) human beings are better for the health of a company." certainly applies - to the people that the MBAs and Human Resource types don't call "techies".
A "techie" is anybody with a computer science or engineering degree of any sort. Rephrased, a "techie" is anybody someone from "Service & Finances" is unable to quickly pass a "quality and value" judgement on because the bean counter can't understand what the "techie" is doing or how well the "techie" is doing it when they stand behind them peering over their shoulder.
Business in fact loves the idea of Java and anything else that makes people - and their skill sets - "plug'n'play".
Hence the name change from "Personnel" to "Human Resources"; the more often the corporation can treat people as interchangeable commodities or resources to be sourced at least cost, the better.
And it is Business with a capital "B" that funds all of those new University buildings and lovely grants, which is the sum total of Business' commitment to "long term thinking" - let somebody else do the latter for them because that is not one of their "core proficiencies" or "profit centers".
I was too subtle in my sarcasm, perhaps - or unduly optimistic.
It is a lot easier to manipulate election results that are read into and stored by computers before they are delivered via e-pipes that various Federal agencies interface with in the name of "Homeland Security".
In comparison to hand-counted paper ballots.
You can be a lot more subtle in how you manipulate an election if you can access returns from everywhere simultaneously. Stuffing the ballot box precinct by precinct is primitive by comparison.