What kind of things do they want to customize? Disk IO? Memory paging?
Most customization is application customization, not OS customization. And customizing an app is identical to writing an app. And people write apps for Windows all the time. A wide range of apps, doing a wide range of things. So you can't be talking about app customization.
But if you're talking about OS customization, could you at least wait until you see what the MS Compute Cluster implementation includes, before you complain?
For all you know, the whole point of releasing a cluster-specific version of the OS is to include more of this flexibility you insist is so important.
Okay, so the actual "imminent" argument was that Saddam's regime did not have significant stockpiles of WMDs, but rather desired such stockpiles, and was actively working towards acquiring them. The preemption doctrine specified that an attack on the Hussein regime should take place before the threat was imminent, not because it was imminent. This assessment was supported by the majority of the world's intelligence communities and governments at the time. Obviously, the conclusion--that preemption was the proper solution--wasn't quite so universally accepted. And, obviously, the issue was further confused by repeated blurring of the imminent/not imminent issue. The "45 minutes" assessment was totally retarded, and, not surprisingly, dropped pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, Bush made the "freedom" case (for liberating the Iraqi people) in a speech to the U.N. in 2002 (prior to invading Iraq). And it's been a recurring theme in his speeches all along. It was one of the arguments I considered, in the run-up to the invasion.
I find it amazing that Bush can hide his shenanigans with the National Guard, the Hussein regime was somehow totally incapable of hiding its WMDs (say, for example, in Syria) Like somehow Bush is a better conspirator and dirty trickster than Saddam Hussein or Bashar Assad.
In any case, the moral argument for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein predates the invasion itelf. Personally, the WMD argument never resonated with me, during the month or so that I spent going back and forth on the issue before making my decision. The geostrategic and humanitarian cases always seemed much more compelling and worthwhile.
Not that any of this matters you you, I suppose.
You seem to think we have no idea why we went in there. The truth is, a long list of reasons, some stronger than others, some emphasized more than others, was given before the invasion began. And the humanitarian reasons were part of that list.
If I showed you the transcript of the speech Bush made to the U.N., which included the humanitarian case, would that change your mind?
Generally speaking, is there any piece of evidence which, if presented to you by a trustworthy source, that would change your mind? What evidence would that be (if any), and what source(s) would you find trustworthy (if any)?
What makes this interesting to me is that while we're used to seeing interference patterns from the intersection of two simultaneous phenomena, it's kind of bizarre to see intereference between two events that didn't even happen at the same time. If one event was over before the next event began, how can they interfere with each other?
Of course, this was a question raised by the original experiment as well, I believe.
Hrm.
I think maybe I understand the nature of time even less than you do.
Oh, shit! When you put it that way, it's obvious that deposing Saddam Hussein was totally wrong!
Thanks for clearing up all my confusion about mass murder and love, too!
Seriously, though: Have you ever thought to yourself, "you know, if things are actually better in the Middle East in three years, I'd have to admit that maybe W was right"? Or is your cutoff 5 years? Or two years? Or is your reconsideration threshold based on a particular event or series of events?
See, I've had my doubts about the Iraq war all along. If the Iraqis had overwhelmingly repudiated the recent elections, or if they'd voted overwhelmingly for a totalitarian theocracy, or if the Sunni Baathists had succeeded in nullifying the elections with their boycotts, I would have had to seriously reconsider my support for the endeavor.
Are there similar points of reconsideration, for you?
Technically, the Moon-Japanese would have to find oil, then establish a dictatorship, kill off a bunch of their own moon-people, invade a neighboring moon-country, and possibly conduct activities rumored to be leading up to moon-nukes that could be dropped on the Earth at some later date (after they were actually developed). Presenting themselves as the lesser of two evils in a regional conflict with the Moon-Koreans might postpone the U.S. invasion by a few years, but that's about it.
Other than that, yeah, I'm sure the U.S. will be invading Moon-Japan the very instant moon-oil is discovered up there.
So he's a clever thinker and comes across as well-spoken in interview transcripts. The same could be said for Michael Chrichton, but nobody wastes much time claiming that he's an expert on anything he's ever written about.
When I have doubts about somebody's credentials, I look for degrees they have obtained (and the institution they've obtained them from), papers they have published, technical books they have written, patents they have secured, positions they have held in publically-traded corporations (and the fortunes of those corporations), and things of that nature. Actions, not words.
This interview is just words. Where's the actions? Where's the actual credentials? Did Clarke graduate from MIT or CMU or Stanford? Has he published groundbreaking papers on cybersecurity in peer-reviewed journals? Has he guided a Fortune 500 company through the treacherous shoals of Information Technology? (And isn't it telling that the organizations he has most prominently worked for--presidential administrations--have had a somewhat abysmal track record in his supposed area of expertise?)
At the very least, could you point to some successful cyberterrorism policy, no matter how small, that he proposed and implemented, and that made a measurable improvement in our nation's security? Why is it that his most popular book is nothing more than several hundred pages of him saying "I tried, and I failed"? Is that how Alan Greenspan's memoirs are going to read? "I tried to manage the Fed, but politics is hard!"
Enough with the interviews! Where are the credentials?
Koko the Gorilla could single out MS in this way, and not be wrong. That doesn't mean she's qualified to pass judgement.
Nor does "political appointee" autmatically equal "competent in any way". I'm sure you could come up with many examples of this principle, drawn directly from the highest ranks of the Bush administration. Likewise, "best informed layman" bears no relationship to "most competent layman". I keep my manager extremely well informed about the technical work I do every day, but that doesn't stop him from being a tiny party hat for my behind.
Clarke's real credentials are the ones that earned him the appointment, not the appointment himself. He does have such credentials, yes? If so, stop wasting my time with "well, he was appinted to whateverthefuck", and make with the evidence already. Actually, you can also stop wasting my time if he doesn't have the credentials.
Or do you really mean to say that you trust the collective judgement of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations? (Of course, if Clarke really did fool four successive admins into thinking he was competent, that means he's a really convincing fabulist. And that, in turn, would mean you'd need to carefully reconsider your acceptance of any claim he might have made.)
Might as well say, "Windows must be a really good OS, because so many individuals and organizations have bought it!"
1. You believe it is typical of politicians to lie. 2. Therefore, you do not like politicians (understandably). 3. A politician says something that coincidentally happens to echo your own preconceived notion of The Truth. 4. Therefore, rather than being consistent in your analysis of politicians, and taking this as a clear sign that you should reevaluate your notion of The Truth, you assume that this politician is not lying.
Perhaps this is good enough for you, but "happens to agree with Slashdot User # 154885" isn't really a compelling counter-argument to "politicians lie".
Ah, but the Geneva Convention is completely different.
To paraphrase: "It's best if opponents in a war adhere to some basic ground rules of humanity and decency. However, there's no practical way to enforce such rules. Instead, the Geneva Signatories agree to adhere to such rules. The penalty for breaking the rules is that your opponent is now also allowed to break the rules--against you, the instigator--without fear of censure or retaliation by the other Geneva Signatories. You don't like it? Don't break the rules. Oh, and it should be obvious that non-signatories are entitled to No Geneva Protection At All."
It is, in fact, a core principle of the Geneva Convention that Signatories are entitled to retaliate IN KIND against terrorist attacks, nuclear/chemical/biological attacks, attacks against civilian populations, assassinations, torture of POWS[1], etc.
And at the same time, the Convention places no restrictions on initiating such attacks against non-Signatories (although other treaties and basic human decency may do so).
In fact, the Saddam Regime, not being Signatory to the convention, was a legitimate target for U.S. nuclear attacks, under the Geneva Convention.
The Convention was designed to encourage civilized nations to fight limited wars that both sides could conceivably recover from, once peace had been reestablished. Those who would prefer a "no holds barred" approach to warfare should expect no coverage from the Convention. Likewise, Signatories are not restricted by the Convention when warring with non-Signatories.
In reality, of course, the U.S. has been remarkably restrained, when measured against what both the spirit and the letter of what the Geneva Convention requires.
Personally, I think the Geneva Convention is an excellent treaty. I'm quite glad that the U.S. is signatory to it, and I believe it should be a model for other treaties.
Perhaps a "Kyoto Convention", that promoted good behavior amongst signatories, while promising non-signatories nothing more than a sharp stick in the eye, would make more sense.
On the other hand, maybe not. Nobody wants to be the first person to start playing nice. There's no way the U.S. (or China, or India, or Brazil, or anybody else) is going to seriously cripple their own economy unless they have some reasonable assurance that all the other nations will also scale back their economies, to preserve the relative status quo of geopolitical power.
Since the Kyoto Protocol explicitly promises the exact opposite: certain nations get a free pass, while others must scale back to some degree, the agreement was never going to get full support.
(And what the hell kind of plan is that, anyway? The world will suddenly become a happy place full of flowers and cheerful songs, once China becomes the dominant economic power--and the dominant polluter--in the world? Do you really think the Chinese government will be more sympathetic to the demands of the global environmentalists than the U.S. government is?)
========== [1] Now, I'm not a big fan of torture, Geneva-sanctioned or not, and I think it's one of those things that shouldn't be indulged in even when permitted by the Geneva Convention. My point is, the Geneva Convention does permit torture against non-signatories. It also permits torture against signatories who first violate the Convention. In fact, it even permits torture against signatories who haven't violated the Convention, with the caveat that they are then free of their Convention commitment to not practice torture against you.
Yeah, but using nothing against a bad thing almost never works out well.
Besides, if we're talking about a straight trade here, you can keep your powerful and imperialistic totalitarian regimes with their vast arsenals of nuclear weapons. I'll take my chances with the guy whose air force consisted of four hijacked passenger jets.
Ooh. Do you think somebody is making a horrible mistake by using Osama against the U.S.A.? I wonder who it is. China? Saudi Arabia? France?
Open spaces aren't precious, they're just open.
What's that you say? It's beautiful when forests mindlessly grow to occupy every available inch of suitable open space, forcing out any organisms that aren't suited to forest life, but it's totally evil and wrong for humans to do the same?
Just because the trees got there first, that doesn't mean they're entitled.
If humans build empires and accelerate technological advancement, what's so bad about that?
And if there's something bad about it, what's so bad about those empires falling, and slowing the rate of technological advance?
And if you're convinced that this is what humans do, then spreading to other planets won't break the cycle, it'll just spread it to other planets.
Anyway, as others have pointed out, humans don't destroy themselves. Empires rise and fall, but humanity remains (and seems to even retain a good chunk of its advanced knowledge through the dark ages between empires). We survived the apocalypse of nuclear fire promised by the Cold War. We'll probably survive the flurry of half-assed nuclear attacks the terrorists no doubt have in store, as well (though I expect the carnage from that to be ugly indeed).
We'll be off perpetuating the human boom-bust cycle on other planets long before this one craps out, and our descendants will look back on these times, when we were so short-sightedly hung up on preserving this particular little rock, and laugh their asses off.
"Silly proto-humans!" They'll say to each other. "Didn't they realize that planets are cradles, playgrounds for species too immature to step off into interstellar space?"
Like the Earth actually means anything. Sure, it means something to you, because it's all you have, but so what? It's not like you mean much, in the grand scheme of things.
Humanity will carry on, with or without us and our opinions.
The funny thing is, Western Civ is has been pretty good about consistently refreshing its enemies list.
I'm totally failing to connect your Orwellian reference ("the terrorists have always been the enemy") to any real-world assortment of facts.
Are you seriously trying to convince me that there's a massive propaganda campaign underway to convince me that the Soviet Union was never the enemy, that Nazi Germany was never the enemy, that since the beginning of recorded history, there has never been any enemy but terrorists?
Because I'm just not seeing the sort of massive purge that sort of thing would require.
In fact, almost everywhere I go, everybody from the pundits to the "man on the street" seems pretty convinced that this whole "War on Terror" is a new thing.
Yes, but every episode involved a technobabble solution at some point, just as every episode involved a briefing-room scene (drink twice if they use somebody else's briefing room), a shot of O'Neill looking bored, and Teal'c saying "indeed".
And let's be honest, here: Major Samantha Carter is hott when she technobabbles.
It's certainly the first new asteroid of its kind. Probably the first asteroid we'll actually notice, entering our field of view. The first for which there will be a recorded "before" and "after". In other words, "sure, there's Vesta, but this is still first enough to be interesting".
As for near misses? Well, they aren't actually hits.
The $10 levy is just like every other well-intentioned-sounding tax. It will end up being a money grab, the funds from which will never be used for the program's stated purpose.
I was responding to the parent poster, who questioned the value of giving big bonuses to people who love their work, aren't motivated by money, and would just as happily do it for free.
My response was that even people who love their work still put a lot into it, and even they can't sustain that without getting something back. "Even lovers like to feel appreciated."
Thus, there is value in giving bonuses to people who love their work: If you don't they'll go work for a company who at least appears to share that love.
Lovers are some of the hardest-working people around, whether it's buying a dozen longstem roses for their sweetheart, or working 24/7 on a tasty piece of machine logic. Your top coder may be happy to work for free, but if you don't pay him something, he'll starve to death right there in the lab.
Actually, he'll go find an employer who won't let him starve for his work.
So it turns out you and I agree: Google is handing out these bonuses because of their rentention value.
I'm not sure what your last paragraph means,though. Could you please rephrase it?
If I'm in it for the love of the game (and I am), then my motivation is to work for the company that rewards my love the most. Even lovers--especially lovers!--like to feel that their love is appreciated and requited. Google understands this. Rather than turning its high-performing lovers into bitter, cynical burnouts, Google is repaying their love every step of the way. And not just their love, but their hard work and long hours over many years--things that drain even the most devoted worker, and for which most companies give minimal compensation.
All they know is that there must be growth, growth, growth.
Are you a banker? Because I seriously doubt that the mindset of people who have devoted their professional lives to mastering the intricacies of banking can be reduced to such a simple one-liner. If you're not a banker, then why should I accept your analysis of what banking is about?
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What kind of things do they want to customize? Disk IO? Memory paging?
Most customization is application customization, not OS customization. And customizing an app is identical to writing an app. And people write apps for Windows all the time. A wide range of apps, doing a wide range of things. So you can't be talking about app customization.
But if you're talking about OS customization, could you at least wait until you see what the MS Compute Cluster implementation includes, before you complain?
For all you know, the whole point of releasing a cluster-specific version of the OS is to include more of this flexibility you insist is so important.
Yawn.
Okay, so the actual "imminent" argument was that Saddam's regime did not have significant stockpiles of WMDs, but rather desired such stockpiles, and was actively working towards acquiring them. The preemption doctrine specified that an attack on the Hussein regime should take place before the threat was imminent, not because it was imminent. This assessment was supported by the majority of the world's intelligence communities and governments at the time. Obviously, the conclusion--that preemption was the proper solution--wasn't quite so universally accepted. And, obviously, the issue was further confused by repeated blurring of the imminent/not imminent issue. The "45 minutes" assessment was totally retarded, and, not surprisingly, dropped pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, Bush made the "freedom" case (for liberating the Iraqi people) in a speech to the U.N. in 2002 (prior to invading Iraq). And it's been a recurring theme in his speeches all along. It was one of the arguments I considered, in the run-up to the invasion.
I find it amazing that Bush can hide his shenanigans with the National Guard, the Hussein regime was somehow totally incapable of hiding its WMDs (say, for example, in Syria) Like somehow Bush is a better conspirator and dirty trickster than Saddam Hussein or Bashar Assad.
In any case, the moral argument for invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein predates the invasion itelf. Personally, the WMD argument never resonated with me, during the month or so that I spent going back and forth on the issue before making my decision. The geostrategic and humanitarian cases always seemed much more compelling and worthwhile.
Not that any of this matters you you, I suppose.
You seem to think we have no idea why we went in there. The truth is, a long list of reasons, some stronger than others, some emphasized more than others, was given before the invasion began. And the humanitarian reasons were part of that list.
If I showed you the transcript of the speech Bush made to the U.N., which included the humanitarian case, would that change your mind?
Generally speaking, is there any piece of evidence which, if presented to you by a trustworthy source, that would change your mind? What evidence would that be (if any), and what source(s) would you find trustworthy (if any)?
How does it invalidate Bohr's duality principle?
And what was the limitation or flaw in Bohr's reasoning, that he didn't figure this out for himself when first formulating the duality principle?
Also, how did Afshar overcome this limitation, or correct this flaw?
Finally, does this new discovery change the face of physics in any meaningful way?
What makes this interesting to me is that while we're used to seeing interference patterns from the intersection of two simultaneous phenomena, it's kind of bizarre to see intereference between two events that didn't even happen at the same time. If one event was over before the next event began, how can they interfere with each other?
Of course, this was a question raised by the original experiment as well, I believe.
Hrm.
I think maybe I understand the nature of time even less than you do.
Oh, shit! When you put it that way, it's obvious that deposing Saddam Hussein was totally wrong!
Thanks for clearing up all my confusion about mass murder and love, too!
Seriously, though: Have you ever thought to yourself, "you know, if things are actually better in the Middle East in three years, I'd have to admit that maybe W was right"? Or is your cutoff 5 years? Or two years? Or is your reconsideration threshold based on a particular event or series of events?
See, I've had my doubts about the Iraq war all along. If the Iraqis had overwhelmingly repudiated the recent elections, or if they'd voted overwhelmingly for a totalitarian theocracy, or if the Sunni Baathists had succeeded in nullifying the elections with their boycotts, I would have had to seriously reconsider my support for the endeavor.
Are there similar points of reconsideration, for you?
Technically, the Moon-Japanese would have to find oil, then establish a dictatorship, kill off a bunch of their own moon-people, invade a neighboring moon-country, and possibly conduct activities rumored to be leading up to moon-nukes that could be dropped on the Earth at some later date (after they were actually developed). Presenting themselves as the lesser of two evils in a regional conflict with the Moon-Koreans might postpone the U.S. invasion by a few years, but that's about it.
Other than that, yeah, I'm sure the U.S. will be invading Moon-Japan the very instant moon-oil is discovered up there.
So he's a clever thinker and comes across as well-spoken in interview transcripts. The same could be said for Michael Chrichton, but nobody wastes much time claiming that he's an expert on anything he's ever written about.
When I have doubts about somebody's credentials, I look for degrees they have obtained (and the institution they've obtained them from), papers they have published, technical books they have written, patents they have secured, positions they have held in publically-traded corporations (and the fortunes of those corporations), and things of that nature. Actions, not words.
This interview is just words. Where's the actions? Where's the actual credentials? Did Clarke graduate from MIT or CMU or Stanford? Has he published groundbreaking papers on cybersecurity in peer-reviewed journals? Has he guided a Fortune 500 company through the treacherous shoals of Information Technology? (And isn't it telling that the organizations he has most prominently worked for--presidential administrations--have had a somewhat abysmal track record in his supposed area of expertise?)
At the very least, could you point to some successful cyberterrorism policy, no matter how small, that he proposed and implemented, and that made a measurable improvement in our nation's security? Why is it that his most popular book is nothing more than several hundred pages of him saying "I tried, and I failed"? Is that how Alan Greenspan's memoirs are going to read? "I tried to manage the Fed, but politics is hard!"
Enough with the interviews! Where are the credentials?
Koko the Gorilla could single out MS in this way, and not be wrong. That doesn't mean she's qualified to pass judgement.
Nor does "political appointee" autmatically equal "competent in any way". I'm sure you could come up with many examples of this principle, drawn directly from the highest ranks of the Bush administration. Likewise, "best informed layman" bears no relationship to "most competent layman". I keep my manager extremely well informed about the technical work I do every day, but that doesn't stop him from being a tiny party hat for my behind.
Clarke's real credentials are the ones that earned him the appointment, not the appointment himself. He does have such credentials, yes? If so, stop wasting my time with "well, he was appinted to whateverthefuck", and make with the evidence already. Actually, you can also stop wasting my time if he doesn't have the credentials.
Or do you really mean to say that you trust the collective judgement of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations? (Of course, if Clarke really did fool four successive admins into thinking he was competent, that means he's a really convincing fabulist. And that, in turn, would mean you'd need to carefully reconsider your acceptance of any claim he might have made.)
Might as well say, "Windows must be a really good OS, because so many individuals and organizations have bought it!"
1. You believe it is typical of politicians to lie.
2. Therefore, you do not like politicians (understandably).
3. A politician says something that coincidentally happens to echo your own preconceived notion of The Truth.
4. Therefore, rather than being consistent in your analysis of politicians, and taking this as a clear sign that you should reevaluate your notion of The Truth, you assume that this politician is not lying.
Perhaps this is good enough for you, but "happens to agree with Slashdot User # 154885" isn't really a compelling counter-argument to "politicians lie".
Ah, but the Geneva Convention is completely different.
To paraphrase: "It's best if opponents in a war adhere to some basic ground rules of humanity and decency. However, there's no practical way to enforce such rules. Instead, the Geneva Signatories agree to adhere to such rules. The penalty for breaking the rules is that your opponent is now also allowed to break the rules--against you, the instigator--without fear of censure or retaliation by the other Geneva Signatories. You don't like it? Don't break the rules. Oh, and it should be obvious that non-signatories are entitled to No Geneva Protection At All."
It is, in fact, a core principle of the Geneva Convention that Signatories are entitled to retaliate IN KIND against terrorist attacks, nuclear/chemical/biological attacks, attacks against civilian populations, assassinations, torture of POWS[1], etc.
And at the same time, the Convention places no restrictions on initiating such attacks against non-Signatories (although other treaties and basic human decency may do so).
In fact, the Saddam Regime, not being Signatory to the convention, was a legitimate target for U.S. nuclear attacks, under the Geneva Convention.
The Convention was designed to encourage civilized nations to fight limited wars that both sides could conceivably recover from, once peace had been reestablished. Those who would prefer a "no holds barred" approach to warfare should expect no coverage from the Convention. Likewise, Signatories are not restricted by the Convention when warring with non-Signatories.
In reality, of course, the U.S. has been remarkably restrained, when measured against what both the spirit and the letter of what the Geneva Convention requires.
Personally, I think the Geneva Convention is an excellent treaty. I'm quite glad that the U.S. is signatory to it, and I believe it should be a model for other treaties.
Perhaps a "Kyoto Convention", that promoted good behavior amongst signatories, while promising non-signatories nothing more than a sharp stick in the eye, would make more sense.
On the other hand, maybe not. Nobody wants to be the first person to start playing nice. There's no way the U.S. (or China, or India, or Brazil, or anybody else) is going to seriously cripple their own economy unless they have some reasonable assurance that all the other nations will also scale back their economies, to preserve the relative status quo of geopolitical power.
Since the Kyoto Protocol explicitly promises the exact opposite: certain nations get a free pass, while others must scale back to some degree, the agreement was never going to get full support.
(And what the hell kind of plan is that, anyway? The world will suddenly become a happy place full of flowers and cheerful songs, once China becomes the dominant economic power--and the dominant polluter--in the world? Do you really think the Chinese government will be more sympathetic to the demands of the global environmentalists than the U.S. government is?)
==========
[1] Now, I'm not a big fan of torture, Geneva-sanctioned or not, and I think it's one of those things that shouldn't be indulged in even when permitted by the Geneva Convention. My point is, the Geneva Convention does permit torture against non-signatories. It also permits torture against signatories who first violate the Convention. In fact, it even permits torture against signatories who haven't violated the Convention, with the caveat that they are then free of their Convention commitment to not practice torture against you.
Besides, if we're talking about a straight trade here, you can keep your powerful and imperialistic totalitarian regimes with their vast arsenals of nuclear weapons. I'll take my chances with the guy whose air force consisted of four hijacked passenger jets.
Ooh. Do you think somebody is making a horrible mistake by using Osama against the U.S.A.? I wonder who it is. China? Saudi Arabia? France?
The way I see it, before I die, that statement will be roughly equivalent to "using the wheel as a mode of transportation seems risky to me as well".
Soon replication machinery such as this will be the fundamental principle of all kinds of medicine and, increasingly, tools.
Oh, don't worry--the one remaining human won't be you.
Yeah, but what did you think ebola was for?
Don't worry. We'll only use it on the really bad cancer.
Open spaces aren't precious, they're just open. What's that you say? It's beautiful when forests mindlessly grow to occupy every available inch of suitable open space, forcing out any organisms that aren't suited to forest life, but it's totally evil and wrong for humans to do the same? Just because the trees got there first, that doesn't mean they're entitled.
If humans build empires and accelerate technological advancement, what's so bad about that?
And if there's something bad about it, what's so bad about those empires falling, and slowing the rate of technological advance?
And if you're convinced that this is what humans do, then spreading to other planets won't break the cycle, it'll just spread it to other planets.
Anyway, as others have pointed out, humans don't destroy themselves. Empires rise and fall, but humanity remains (and seems to even retain a good chunk of its advanced knowledge through the dark ages between empires). We survived the apocalypse of nuclear fire promised by the Cold War. We'll probably survive the flurry of half-assed nuclear attacks the terrorists no doubt have in store, as well (though I expect the carnage from that to be ugly indeed).
We'll be off perpetuating the human boom-bust cycle on other planets long before this one craps out, and our descendants will look back on these times, when we were so short-sightedly hung up on preserving this particular little rock, and laugh their asses off.
"Silly proto-humans!" They'll say to each other. "Didn't they realize that planets are cradles, playgrounds for species too immature to step off into interstellar space?"
Like the Earth actually means anything. Sure, it means something to you, because it's all you have, but so what? It's not like you mean much, in the grand scheme of things.
Humanity will carry on, with or without us and our opinions.
The funny thing is, Western Civ is has been pretty good about consistently refreshing its enemies list.
I'm totally failing to connect your Orwellian reference ("the terrorists have always been the enemy") to any real-world assortment of facts.
Are you seriously trying to convince me that there's a massive propaganda campaign underway to convince me that the Soviet Union was never the enemy, that Nazi Germany was never the enemy, that since the beginning of recorded history, there has never been any enemy but terrorists?
Because I'm just not seeing the sort of massive purge that sort of thing would require.
In fact, almost everywhere I go, everybody from the pundits to the "man on the street" seems pretty convinced that this whole "War on Terror" is a new thing.
And let's be honest, here: Major Samantha Carter is hott when she technobabbles.
As for near misses? Well, they aren't actually hits.
Kind of like Social Security contributions?
I never said Google did this for the kicks of it.
I was responding to the parent poster, who questioned the value of giving big bonuses to people who love their work, aren't motivated by money, and would just as happily do it for free.
My response was that even people who love their work still put a lot into it, and even they can't sustain that without getting something back. "Even lovers like to feel appreciated."
Thus, there is value in giving bonuses to people who love their work: If you don't they'll go work for a company who at least appears to share that love.
Lovers are some of the hardest-working people around, whether it's buying a dozen longstem roses for their sweetheart, or working 24/7 on a tasty piece of machine logic. Your top coder may be happy to work for free, but if you don't pay him something, he'll starve to death right there in the lab.
Actually, he'll go find an employer who won't let him starve for his work.
So it turns out you and I agree: Google is handing out these bonuses because of their rentention value.
I'm not sure what your last paragraph means,though. Could you please rephrase it?
Thanks!
If I'm in it for the love of the game (and I am), then my motivation is to work for the company that rewards my love the most. Even lovers--especially lovers!--like to feel that their love is appreciated and requited. Google understands this. Rather than turning its high-performing lovers into bitter, cynical burnouts, Google is repaying their love every step of the way. And not just their love, but their hard work and long hours over many years--things that drain even the most devoted worker, and for which most companies give minimal compensation.
As opposed to a flattering picture of deadly politics? What would that look like? The Three Musketeeers?
Actually, yeah... now that I think about it, the Three Musketeers is a very flattering picture of deadly politics.
Are you a banker? Because I seriously doubt that the mindset of people who have devoted their professional lives to mastering the intricacies of banking can be reduced to such a simple one-liner. If you're not a banker, then why should I accept your analysis of what banking is about?