For your assertion to be correct, your post would have to be truth. However, it's not so your reply is irrelevant.
Oh, so their practice of having OEM versions of Windows that OEMs are allowed to modify is not responsible for the loads of horrible software loaded onto the typical new computer?
And that practice, if I'm not mistaken, is also dependent on the OEM towing the line and selling only systems with Microsoft software preloaded. Is this not also true?
Ahh, so it's the result of Microsoft's business practice of making sure everybody who installs something other than Windows on any of the computers they build pay a whole ton extra to install Windows on any of the computers they build. This practice revolves around OEM reselling of Windows and provides a window in which OEMs can 'mess with the Windows experience'.
I think holding Microsoft liable for this is pure justice as this practice is not only responsible for making sure nothing but Windows can ever get a foothold on the desktop, but also for all the awful software you get when you buy a new PC.
Unfortunately, while holding them responsible for this might be justice, it might not also be legally correct. And making it legally correct might set a horribly bad precedent for situations in which it doesn't represent justice. *sigh*
I will have to verify that, as that's at odds with my understanding. But if you're right, that is pretty limited. But I still think the idea is pretty interesting. Maybe Intel can do better. But I still maintain that they'd better take less than 10 years to do it.
Is it or is it not true that you could run a program that did any arbitrary thing on each core? The example I saw had each core running general purpose C code. That seems pretty CPU-like to me.
Well, 1Mib of RAM, not 64Kib. I admit that's a bit small by modern standards. Though it isn't really that tiny. There's a lot you can do with that architecture. It would be nice if there was more memory per core.
Is it possible to get a whole ton more memory on a CPU these days? What would you do?
What's brain-dead about their architecture? The NUMA model with each core having fast local memory seems like a good way to go to me. It's not very feasible to have memory that can respond equally to all cores that's not a bottleneck.
No, that's an inaccurate characterization. It is a full CPU that is optimized for floating point operations. That's not the same thing at all as a dedicated floating point co-processor like the old 80387. You could, for example, use it to perform SHA-1 calculations, though that would be a bit of a waste.
Hah! The Parallela Kickstarter project was from a group that already had a 64 core CPU that consumed only a watt or 4 of power when running full-tilt. If this takes Intel 10 years to design they'll be left in the dust.
BTW, they wanted the money to fund developing the mask for the Fab technique needed to mass produce them for $100 apiece instead of the few hundred apiece they now cost to manufacture. The chips already exist.
There are several problems with thinking about it this way.
First, specialized technical knowledge does not equal being smart. This is a mistake doctor's also often make. There was a fantastic comment some UI designer had once, and it was that you should design user interfaces for people who are fantastically intelligent and have no time at all to learn your UI. Ignorance does not equal stupidity.
Secondly, there are different ways to be smart. I have a female friend/ex-gf who is amazingly insightful about people and their motivations. Even better, she also understands just how to say things to people such that they will be likely to accept what she has to say and actually listen to her. That is a rare skill, and it's really impressive to watch in operation.
Lastly, just because someone is dumb doesn't mean they have nothing to contribute. The random stirring, mixing and recombining of ideas means that almost anyone can come up with a gem from time to time. Some more likely than others, sure. But if you close yourself off from them, you'll never be around when they do say something worth listening to.
People are going to notice if you're just pretending they're worth listening to. It's better to figure out reasons they actually are worth listening to than to condescendingly act as if they are while actually ignoring them. You are quite likely not as smart as you think you are anyway.
Money that people
pay for your service or product is exactly what you worth for society.
I disagree. Money has coercive properties. They are not as obvious as brute physical force, but they are there all the same. For example, people need to buy food to live. Convince them that somehow they aren't trapped and trap them in a cycle where they have to give you all their money just to get enough food to survive, and nearly everybody will perform whatever work you require in exchange for it. They will give you any amount of money if you have all the food.
There are numerous other ways in which money can coerce people into doing things that aren't generally productive or helpful. I think it's very easy for very money focused economies to fall into local maxima from which they cannot escape because the people who have the most money are able to use the coercive power of money to erect barriers that prevent the system from leaving the local maxima.
What you are repeating is standard libertarian dogma. And while I'm very sympathetic to the libertarian position, I think this is one blindspot in libertarian philosophy.
I think public corporations inherently devolve into things that seek money and profit above all else. Their very structure almost demands it. I think ones with strong initial leadership that stays in control of the corporation can take a lot longer to do this. But I think the pull is irresistible.
It's an airy concept devoid of any real meaning. It's has the flimsiest of justifications for its existence and every time I hear it I want to hit someone. It's a high-minded sounding renaming of whatever particular pet grievance the current user of the term has in mind at the moment. It's an attempt to avoid any real debate over the merits of the grievance by presenting a piece of the picture and appealing to someone's sense of fairness. It's dishonest, deceitful and doesn't belong in polite conversation. It's the race-baiting of the left.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. Silicon Valley is toxic and morally bankrupt. Just as bad in its way as Wall Street.
The problem, as I see it, is the profit motive. Which is not exactly a problem precisely. It's when the profit becomes the goal instead of the reward.
When you structure a business, you have to structure it so it makes financial sense, so it can support itself, so it can make money. Structuring it to extract the maximum possible value out of the system is counter-productive. With the right kinds of locks and business tricks you can keep anybody else from getting into your value stream at all. Microsoft is the king of this. Unfortunately this behavior is long-term toxic to the business ecosystem. And it's long-term toxic to the fabric of society.
No, you should have a goal in your business that has nothing to do with money. The goal you have is the value you provide. Then think about how to get enough money out of the system to achieve that goal grow modestly and make you and your employees reasonably well-off. Your profit is your reward for doing something people value. It's not the goal.
Of course, there are puzzles like Facebook. Facebook has never been profitable. They're greedy because they have no idea how to extract value. So any means is considered fair game because they're hungry. Which is a different (but related) kind of attitude problem.
To me, the evil of Facebook is one of centralization. Whenever you have that kind of centralization you will get something that uses its control to the detriment of everybody else. It might not happen right away (aka Google), but it will inevitably happen. Centralization is a bug, never a feature.
What term do we get to use for ext4 now? It's unfortunate that Theodore Tso is actually a pretty decent guy instead of being a murderer (and a jerk). So there aren't any obviously negative terms that come to mind.
But clearly, something needs to be done along these lines, as well as a legion of people who forever more claim that ext4 corrupts your data and you should never use it and stick with ext3 instead.
*nod* I will agree that there have been results here which have been ridiculous. And I also think that there is bias because I'm not in Italy and don't hear reports of the cases which are not ridiculous.
But still, the Amanda Knox thing, this case... It's completely over-the-top ridiculous. They have to get her on something now because she's been accused. Even if it's lying about who was guilty. And of course, any mistreatment by anybody in authority didn't happen, and she's guilty of something for saying it did.
It's.... utterly insane.
Here we have things like the OJ trial or the Trayven Martin case that are circus-like. But, nowhere near the levels of insanity. I'm sorry. They just aren't.
It's not actually a real problem. I barely interact with the government at all.:-) And the government here is still almost obsessively paper based.
I have a problem with resume's sometimes. But I'm skilled enough that generally recruiters are more than happy to convert to Word for me, and that has nothing to do with government access.
The trouble with that argument is that taken to its logical conclusion it can't possibly work in general. For many government interactions, I now have a choice of filing on-line (requires an Internet connection), sending everything by post (requires paying postage) or personally visiting a government office (requires paying for transportation to get there and back if I don't live nearby). Life isn't free, which is why we get jobs to earn money that we spend on other things, some of which are essential.
Yes, but the post office is regulated and may only charge a legislatively limited amount of money. And for the others, you have a choice of providers.
For editing a Microsoft Word document (to, say, fill out a form) you have to buy a piece of software from a particular entity that has been granted a government monopoly on providing you with those bits. The government, in essence, has given them the power to impose an arbitrary tax on you that there is no reason for them to limit.
For example, it would be permissible (with the way things currently work) for Microsoft to declare that if you used their software to generate a document that you gave to a government entity that you had to pay an additional arbitrary license fee. If they did that, it wouldn't stay permissible for long. But that just means they have to be more clever and subtle about it.
Governments should also operate under a constraint they rarely do.
Governments should avoid forcing their citizens to pay money to a private entity in order for their citizens to interact with them. This means that governments should avoid using software who's data format is largely proprietary.
Yes, yes, the stupid 'documented' XML format that's not really an open standard at all....
I think, for a document format to be considered standard, there must be at least one piece of fully-interoperable Open Source software that handles the document format.
I actively work to help the people around me use Open Source software when they can. And if they start using it, I also start giving them small lessons on the culture behind it.
I think understanding how a disagreement like this plays out is actually important for understanding why Open Source software is so fantastic for users. A lot of things like this would've resulted in a proprietary software product somehow becoming much less useful over time. One company buys another and thinks the software the bought company made is redundant with their other 'competitive' offerings and so kills it. One company goes out of business and the users of the software are left hanging. etc...
Seeing how this plays out in the Open Source world is instructive, and I think empowering.
Not a single one of my co-workers would ever use the word 'gay' as a pejorative (well, aside possibly from one, and very likely not at work). None of them are gay either (AFAIK). They all just have an IQ higher than 90.
Their projects have a strong tendency to be bloated in code size and kind of bureaucratic in the way they engage the development community. I think, given the history of OpenOffice that this is an excellent home for it. But I don't really think much of the development methodology of the original OpenOffice project either.
But, time will tell. If the OpenOffice people reach out to LibreOffice and actually try to convince that community to come back, they might have a chance of moving forward in a positive way. The LibreOffice fork was brewing a long time before Oracle dropped the ball on the OpenOffice project. I think that was just the last straw.
Slashdot Mirror
For your assertion to be correct, your post would have to be truth. However, it's not so your reply is irrelevant.
Oh, so their practice of having OEM versions of Windows that OEMs are allowed to modify is not responsible for the loads of horrible software loaded onto the typical new computer?
And that practice, if I'm not mistaken, is also dependent on the OEM towing the line and selling only systems with Microsoft software preloaded. Is this not also true?
*chuckle* Yes, the truth is a troll when pro-Microsoft moderators are around.
Ahh, so it's the result of Microsoft's business practice of making sure everybody who installs something other than Windows on any of the computers they build pay a whole ton extra to install Windows on any of the computers they build. This practice revolves around OEM reselling of Windows and provides a window in which OEMs can 'mess with the Windows experience'.
I think holding Microsoft liable for this is pure justice as this practice is not only responsible for making sure nothing but Windows can ever get a foothold on the desktop, but also for all the awful software you get when you buy a new PC.
Unfortunately, while holding them responsible for this might be justice, it might not also be legally correct. And making it legally correct might set a horribly bad precedent for situations in which it doesn't represent justice. *sigh*
I will have to verify that, as that's at odds with my understanding. But if you're right, that is pretty limited. But I still think the idea is pretty interesting. Maybe Intel can do better. But I still maintain that they'd better take less than 10 years to do it.
Is it or is it not true that you could run a program that did any arbitrary thing on each core? The example I saw had each core running general purpose C code. That seems pretty CPU-like to me.
Well, 1Mib of RAM, not 64Kib. I admit that's a bit small by modern standards. Though it isn't really that tiny. There's a lot you can do with that architecture. It would be nice if there was more memory per core.
Is it possible to get a whole ton more memory on a CPU these days? What would you do?
Thanks! I was typing that out on my phone and couldn't do my normal research and hunting down links.
What's brain-dead about their architecture? The NUMA model with each core having fast local memory seems like a good way to go to me. It's not very feasible to have memory that can respond equally to all cores that's not a bottleneck.
No, that's an inaccurate characterization. It is a full CPU that is optimized for floating point operations. That's not the same thing at all as a dedicated floating point co-processor like the old 80387. You could, for example, use it to perform SHA-1 calculations, though that would be a bit of a waste.
Hah! The Parallela Kickstarter project was from a group that already had a 64 core CPU that consumed only a watt or 4 of power when running full-tilt. If this takes Intel 10 years to design they'll be left in the dust.
BTW, they wanted the money to fund developing the mask for the Fab technique needed to mass produce them for $100 apiece instead of the few hundred apiece they now cost to manufacture. The chips already exist.
There are several problems with thinking about it this way.
First, specialized technical knowledge does not equal being smart. This is a mistake doctor's also often make. There was a fantastic comment some UI designer had once, and it was that you should design user interfaces for people who are fantastically intelligent and have no time at all to learn your UI. Ignorance does not equal stupidity.
Secondly, there are different ways to be smart. I have a female friend/ex-gf who is amazingly insightful about people and their motivations. Even better, she also understands just how to say things to people such that they will be likely to accept what she has to say and actually listen to her. That is a rare skill, and it's really impressive to watch in operation.
Lastly, just because someone is dumb doesn't mean they have nothing to contribute. The random stirring, mixing and recombining of ideas means that almost anyone can come up with a gem from time to time. Some more likely than others, sure. But if you close yourself off from them, you'll never be around when they do say something worth listening to.
People are going to notice if you're just pretending they're worth listening to. It's better to figure out reasons they actually are worth listening to than to condescendingly act as if they are while actually ignoring them. You are quite likely not as smart as you think you are anyway.
I borrowed the idea from someone else. Just like Steve Jobs. ;-)
Money that people pay for your service or product is exactly what you worth for society.
I disagree. Money has coercive properties. They are not as obvious as brute physical force, but they are there all the same. For example, people need to buy food to live. Convince them that somehow they aren't trapped and trap them in a cycle where they have to give you all their money just to get enough food to survive, and nearly everybody will perform whatever work you require in exchange for it. They will give you any amount of money if you have all the food.
There are numerous other ways in which money can coerce people into doing things that aren't generally productive or helpful. I think it's very easy for very money focused economies to fall into local maxima from which they cannot escape because the people who have the most money are able to use the coercive power of money to erect barriers that prevent the system from leaving the local maxima.
What you are repeating is standard libertarian dogma. And while I'm very sympathetic to the libertarian position, I think this is one blindspot in libertarian philosophy.
I think public corporations inherently devolve into things that seek money and profit above all else. Their very structure almost demands it. I think ones with strong initial leadership that stays in control of the corporation can take a lot longer to do this. But I think the pull is irresistible.
It's an airy concept devoid of any real meaning. It's has the flimsiest of justifications for its existence and every time I hear it I want to hit someone. It's a high-minded sounding renaming of whatever particular pet grievance the current user of the term has in mind at the moment. It's an attempt to avoid any real debate over the merits of the grievance by presenting a piece of the picture and appealing to someone's sense of fairness. It's dishonest, deceitful and doesn't belong in polite conversation. It's the race-baiting of the left.
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. Silicon Valley is toxic and morally bankrupt. Just as bad in its way as Wall Street.
The problem, as I see it, is the profit motive. Which is not exactly a problem precisely. It's when the profit becomes the goal instead of the reward.
When you structure a business, you have to structure it so it makes financial sense, so it can support itself, so it can make money. Structuring it to extract the maximum possible value out of the system is counter-productive. With the right kinds of locks and business tricks you can keep anybody else from getting into your value stream at all. Microsoft is the king of this. Unfortunately this behavior is long-term toxic to the business ecosystem. And it's long-term toxic to the fabric of society.
No, you should have a goal in your business that has nothing to do with money. The goal you have is the value you provide. Then think about how to get enough money out of the system to achieve that goal grow modestly and make you and your employees reasonably well-off. Your profit is your reward for doing something people value. It's not the goal.
Of course, there are puzzles like Facebook. Facebook has never been profitable. They're greedy because they have no idea how to extract value. So any means is considered fair game because they're hungry. Which is a different (but related) kind of attitude problem.
To me, the evil of Facebook is one of centralization. Whenever you have that kind of centralization you will get something that uses its control to the detriment of everybody else. It might not happen right away (aka Google), but it will inevitably happen. Centralization is a bug, never a feature.
What term do we get to use for ext4 now? It's unfortunate that Theodore Tso is actually a pretty decent guy instead of being a murderer (and a jerk). So there aren't any obviously negative terms that come to mind.
But clearly, something needs to be done along these lines, as well as a legion of people who forever more claim that ext4 corrupts your data and you should never use it and stick with ext3 instead.
That's true. I've forgotten about the border police here. They are insane, and completely unchecked by any law.
*nod* I will agree that there have been results here which have been ridiculous. And I also think that there is bias because I'm not in Italy and don't hear reports of the cases which are not ridiculous.
But still, the Amanda Knox thing, this case... It's completely over-the-top ridiculous. They have to get her on something now because she's been accused. Even if it's lying about who was guilty. And of course, any mistreatment by anybody in authority didn't happen, and she's guilty of something for saying it did.
It's.... utterly insane.
Here we have things like the OJ trial or the Trayven Martin case that are circus-like. But, nowhere near the levels of insanity. I'm sorry. They just aren't.
The lesson is to not ever go to italy at all, ever, no matter who you are. They have a judicial system that produces results that are clearly insane.
It's not actually a real problem. I barely interact with the government at all. :-) And the government here is still almost obsessively paper based.
I have a problem with resume's sometimes. But I'm skilled enough that generally recruiters are more than happy to convert to Word for me, and that has nothing to do with government access.
But, I live in Seattle, Washington in the USA.
The trouble with that argument is that taken to its logical conclusion it can't possibly work in general. For many government interactions, I now have a choice of filing on-line (requires an Internet connection), sending everything by post (requires paying postage) or personally visiting a government office (requires paying for transportation to get there and back if I don't live nearby). Life isn't free, which is why we get jobs to earn money that we spend on other things, some of which are essential.
Yes, but the post office is regulated and may only charge a legislatively limited amount of money. And for the others, you have a choice of providers.
For editing a Microsoft Word document (to, say, fill out a form) you have to buy a piece of software from a particular entity that has been granted a government monopoly on providing you with those bits. The government, in essence, has given them the power to impose an arbitrary tax on you that there is no reason for them to limit.
For example, it would be permissible (with the way things currently work) for Microsoft to declare that if you used their software to generate a document that you gave to a government entity that you had to pay an additional arbitrary license fee. If they did that, it wouldn't stay permissible for long. But that just means they have to be more clever and subtle about it.
Governments should also operate under a constraint they rarely do.
Governments should avoid forcing their citizens to pay money to a private entity in order for their citizens to interact with them. This means that governments should avoid using software who's data format is largely proprietary.
Yes, yes, the stupid 'documented' XML format that's not really an open standard at all....
I think, for a document format to be considered standard, there must be at least one piece of fully-interoperable Open Source software that handles the document format.
I actually enjoy explaining the history.
I actively work to help the people around me use Open Source software when they can. And if they start using it, I also start giving them small lessons on the culture behind it.
I think understanding how a disagreement like this plays out is actually important for understanding why Open Source software is so fantastic for users. A lot of things like this would've resulted in a proprietary software product somehow becoming much less useful over time. One company buys another and thinks the software the bought company made is redundant with their other 'competitive' offerings and so kills it. One company goes out of business and the users of the software are left hanging. etc...
Seeing how this plays out in the Open Source world is instructive, and I think empowering.
Not a single one of my co-workers would ever use the word 'gay' as a pejorative (well, aside possibly from one, and very likely not at work). None of them are gay either (AFAIK). They all just have an IQ higher than 90.
Their projects have a strong tendency to be bloated in code size and kind of bureaucratic in the way they engage the development community. I think, given the history of OpenOffice that this is an excellent home for it. But I don't really think much of the development methodology of the original OpenOffice project either.
But, time will tell. If the OpenOffice people reach out to LibreOffice and actually try to convince that community to come back, they might have a chance of moving forward in a positive way. The LibreOffice fork was brewing a long time before Oracle dropped the ball on the OpenOffice project. I think that was just the last straw.