WinDriver for Linux features performance enhancement tools enabling you to move parts of your code to the Kernel level, thus eliminate unnecessary context switches between the kernel module and your application.
So it looks like they provide for some level of perfomance tuning without even going the #ifdef/branch & rewrite route.
Does it much matter if it's ineffecient? Once the driver was functioning correctly on multiple platforms, you could start including conditional code to optimize performance on particular platforms.
In radical cases, you might branch and rework the architecture to bring it more in-line with the target OS's native device driver interface, but even in that case you would have a couple of advantages - a working reference implementation (regression testing, anyone?), multi-platform support, and the ability to perform the more expensive optimization work under various OS's if and when you determine that enough customers are asking for it.
Heck, release the Linux/BSD versions under the appropriate licenses, and you'd probably have an optimized version for each OS within a few months, without much more cost than developing a single driver for Windows.
All in all, sounds like a good deal; makes me wonder why more companies wouldn't take this route. Is the company new on the scene, or is their product just not mature enough yet to be worth spending time on?
Now Gates wants to lobby with a presidential candidate, who they expect to interfere with the Federal Court system if he is elected.
Bush has the same chance to "interfere" with the Federal Court system as any other president; namely, if a justice on the SC needs replaced for any reason, it is the president's job to "interfere" and appoint a replacement to keep the required number of justices. IIRC, Congress also gets to "interfere" by reviewing and approving the appointment.
It's just the way it works. Clinton would have loved the chance to appoint an SC justice; it looks like he won't get the chance to do so, though. The next president might, and there's a lot of speculation about how the various candidates (not just Bush) would choose a new justice if that occaision came to pass. It's hardly a rock-solid certainty that it will happen during the next president's term, though. If it does, whoever the president happens to be, they certainly won't be interfering with the Federal Court system, just doing part of the job they were elected to do.
That said, I have to agree - MS has gone too far, and is making an extremely obvious attempt to try and buy the outcome they want. Makes me wonder if their next case in front of the DOJ will involve campaign finance law violations.
Q: Can I connect external storage devices, such as a ZIP drive, via the USB port? A: Not at this time. Everything on your i-opener is backed up on our network. (emphasis added)
So... someone with an iOpener contract: does Netpliance mention the fact that your data will be backed up on their network, or contain any mention of the fact that Netpliance may be mining either your backed-up data or data recorded about your network usage (browsing, email) habits? It occurs to me that this may be one reason they are so adamant about requiring people to use their ISP service with the iOpener...
The chances of it ruining my child's life, IMHO, is approximately a thousand times greater then the chances of it saving my child's life. Note the worst case here; it's not "status quo, nothing changes" - it's my child's life ruined at the first hint of any sort of unorthadox behavior.
Try explaining that to your nine year old when s/he's pulled out of school because someone immature itdiot with no real understanding of the consequences - say, another 9 year old - thought it would be really, really, really funny to tell someone s/he said they were going to blow up the school.
If you really want you kid to go to school someplace where only the strongest, most vicious, amoral kids manage to survive, feel free to find such a place; just don't expect me to send my children to school with your little criminals.
Re:Not the sharpest tack in the corkboard, are ya?
on
'Battling Censorware'
·
· Score: 1
Please note that none of his examples of "extreme fair use" included rebroadcasting, claiming the work as his own, etc. Dan's point is that where the legal definition of "fair use" used to be essentially "you may do what you wish with this, as long as you do not infringe upon the rights of the copyright holder, the DMCA has essentially twisted fair use to mean "you may do what you wish with this, as long as the copyright holder decides it is fair use."
rms' position (at least, in part) is that the following two statements:
Linux was created independently of the FSF
the Linux developers used FSF tools
are mutually contradictory. I would tend to agree with this point.
Sorry, I would tend to disagree with both of you - GNU tools are, if I recall correctly, distributed free under the GPL. If I use GNU-emacs to write the Great American Novel, does that mean that the FSF is entitled to take credit for my efforts? Who created the Mona Lisa - da Vinci, or the merchant who made his paint brush? Maybe the folks who built my browser should be able to take credit for these comments, eh?
The FSF makes a number of excellent tools available to the computing community worldwide; I won't argue that in the least. The idea that the FSF should be allowed to take (or share) credit for work done with those tools is ridiculous. The FSF gave away their tools under the GPL; if RMS wanted credit given to the FSF for software built using those tools, he should have added a BSD-style advertising clause. He didn't, though, and the constant litany of "GNU/Linux! It's GNU/Linux!" out of the FSF is starting to sound less like an argument for credit and more like whining for attention.
A 1999 Honda Civic Si, going the same speed, will turn my little plastic car into a pancake. Reason? Size. Size always matters in cars.
Size isn't the same as mass, though. Your main problem here is that a smaller car, if made entirely out of steel, would probably still tear through your car, just based on construction (steel vs. plastic - place your bets.) From what I can see, the newer SUVs are becoming more lightweight, using less steel, etc. - in other words, they're evolving towards taller station wagons. The heavier SUVs are still there, of course, but are staying expensive while the smaller mini-SUVs become lighter and cheaper.
And as for your comment about speed - speed certainly does matter more than size/mass - ask anyone who's ever caught a bullet.
I know my argument was kind of simple, but did I really deserve that level of pun-ishment?;-)
You make a good point, though - a well-constructed vehicle, regardless of size, will survive an accident in much better shape than a poorly constructed one. Take a look at Volvos. Extremely ugly little beasts, IMHO, and actually not all that large - but put together like a small tank, from what I understand.
Going with more mass, though, is a cheap and easy way to get the same effect, which is probably why SUVs are popular. I know that's why I drive one; I had a Geo Metro destroyed by a car going 15 MPH when I was stopped. I walked away, but I knew I wanted something a little sturdier; and a good, sturdy, smaller car was about twice the cost of an SUV.
Having driven larger vehicles most of my life, though (the Geo being a small diversion), I agree that there should probably be different licensing requirements for them - a too-cautious SUV driver can be as much of a menace as a too-reckless driver.
In other words, a 2-ton SUV travelling at 50mph has approximately the same KE as a 1-ton subcompact travelling at 70mph. The most significant factor isn't the size of the vehicle, it's the speed of the vehicle. Anyone stupid enough to drive drunk is stupid enough to speed; couple that with their impaired reactions and judgement, and it doesn't matter if they're drving a Dodge Dart or a Humvee.
Let's grant Bezos the benefit of the doubt, and accept his statements that the one-click patent was defensive - that is, Amazon felt that
It could be patented
If someone else did so, they would use it to charge Amazon licensing fees
Therefore, Amazon needed to patent it themselves to keep this from happening.
If this is the case, then the reforms Bezos is proposing might have stopped Amazon from getting the patent. This would have been almost as useful from Amazon's point of view, since that would mean that nobody else could get the patent, either. Granted, I don't think Amazon's thinking in this matter was quite that pure; having the one-click patent does give them a way to keep an advantage over B&N, for example.
Overall, though, I think Bezos' point is that Amazon (and probably other internet companies) would be willing to live with the concept that there are some business practices and processes that can't be patented, as long as they can be sure that the patent office will not continue to cavalierly approve everything that comes through the door.
From the "Bar Reacts To Bezos Patent Reform Plan":
"I am troubled by the broader notion that Bezos and his industry are entitled to special protection," he (Herbert F. Schwartz) says.
Excuse me? From what I can tell, Bezos did not in any way, shape, or form indicate that he thought process or business patents were "entitled to special protection". His point is that this class of patents requires closer scrutiny, should be more difficult to obtain, and should not last as long as traditional patents.
I guess you have to be a lawyer to understand how "make it harder for someone to obtain these patents" translates into "please give us special protections."
I-Opener's model is based on selling the internet service no on selling hardware so I don't see what's so bad about making people take the hardware as is and not modifying it.
The problem is... no matter what I pay for the hardware, I OWN IT, DAMNIT!
They are selling me their hardware, not renting it to me, not leasing it to me. There is nothing that says I need to actually use their ISP, nothing that actually says I need to turn on the i-Opener and use it for it's intended purpose. I can buy one, canabalize it for parts, smash it with a hammer, or crack it open and turn it into something different entirely.
Of cpourse, I-Opener doesn't agree with this. They think that even though I've given them $99 + whatever amount in ISP service fees, they still own the hardware, and I'm an eeeeevil, eeevil hacker d00d, and that they are justified in protecting "their" property from me.
It would be a different story if they said "Hey, guys, we're loosing money hand over fist - the $99 version makes up the loss on hardware with the ISP sales. But look, here, we'll sell you a box, no strings attached, for $200, and you can hack it to your heart's content." They'd be happy, we'd be happy, and instead of worrying about how to close their hardware - an impossible job, ask anyone who's every hacked on a Macintosh how "secure" they were - they could worry about how to open it up to new uses and new markets. Hell, if they'd bother to read this thread, they'd probably find a good two dozen new money-making ideas that would more than make up for the whole $99-plus-ISP fiasco.
The MS EULA contains very similar language - the amusing part is I first encountered it in the EULA for the Word 2000. Good thing I did, too - I was just about to start developing our nuclear facility maintenance scheduler using WordBasic macros. Guess I'll just have to do the damn thing in Perl, now.
Ever taken a look at the size of the market for Windoze products like Symantic PCAnyWhere or Citrix WinFrame? If your windowing system doesn't have that capability built-in, then someone's just going to have to tack it on later, anyway.
I think the point is that X was designed to operate over a network, period; in hindsight, it probably would have been better to define a local display protocol that could be modified to work in a more peer-to-peer or client-server fashion as the need for that arose. There's nothing particularly wrong with "tacking on" functionality later, as long as the original specification was designed with that sort extensibility in mind.
If that had been the case, then this discussion wouldn't be happening, because I could run X the way I want to, and you could run it the way you wanted, and we'd both be happy. As it stands right now, you get what you want, and when I try and get what I want, I get a shrug and a "Live with it - it's a good feature" reply.
I'm sure the airfare adds to the cost buy this is directly from Red Hat Training info
On top of all that, keep in mind that the company rep that said:
"Microsoft always comes to our door, they bring demo units, keep us in touch with their engineers, and certification for our people costs only $2000 each, on-site."
...happens to work for a company located in the same city as Microsoft, where it would be easy for MS to offer this type of service. I'm sure you can find someone down in NC who would be willing to give you the exact same article with a different point of view.
To be polite, I won't even rant about the idiot who thinks that the world should come to him when he wants something... oh, wait, just did. Darn.
Keep in mind that the US is a large place (not as large as the world, but it certainly does cover quite a bit of ground:-) What may make sense in one state - heck, even in one county - might not make sense in the next.
In LA or NY city, for example, subsidising public transportation and having a higher tax on gasoline/car sales makes sense. In the midwest, though, you might want to forgo these taxes (higher gasoline prices raise farming costs, and massive public transportation systems aren't cost effective) and replace them with something else.
IMHO, the worst part about the problem of taxes is the desire to come up with a "one size fits all" solution, particularly at the federal and state levels, where the "one size" solution is constantly being tailored with new laws, special exceptions and additional specifications in order to try and make something general work in all cases.
Where my wife works, they've had a rebate program for several years - the company kicked in some money (a couple of thousand at one point) towards your purchase of a new computer, as an interest free loan. Several of the smaller companies I've come into contact with have had similar programs.
Unfortunately, it appears that as companies grow, benefits like this start disappearing... We'll probably be buying a new Mac G4 under the program at my wife's company soon, as their HR department has started grumblings about doing away with the program.
This is part of what confuses me: it almost universally seems that HR ends up being the department that "champions" cutting the really interesting, set-your-company-apart-from-the-crowd type of benefits... and that only seems to happen when the company reaches some critical mass (200+ people).
Now, it looks as if at some other breakpoint - when you reach the size of GM, or Intel - something else happens internally. I would be really interested to know who lobbied for these initiatives, why they did so, and how they convinced the executives/board/whoever that it was actually in the company's best interest to actually add a benefit instead of "restructuring" one or taking one away.
Begun in 1990, the U.S. Human Genome Project is a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.
Aparently, there is no profit motive here... instead, there is a rare glimpse into a government (well, OK, pone government, but I suspect other countries of the same benevolence) actually doing what most people think it should do: support and enhance the common good. Let's stop and savor that for a moment...
Mmmmmmmmm.
OK, that out of the way, I have to admit that in some senses, you're right. For the individual researchers on the project, this is the meal ticket! The mother lode! After working on this baby, they'll be able to get a job anywhere in the industry... as long as their work is recognized. As long as other people can examine it and judge it as worthy. As long as it is - dare I say it? - open.
Look at the Human Genome Project not as an excercise in biotechnology, but a bunch of gene hackers trying to earn a reputation and build something they can be proud of, and I think you'll find a lot of parallels between these folks and the ones who created the foundation of the internet lo so many moons ago.
You said: I am saying it's not costing them 2.5 million a year.
They said: Epicor officials said that they considered their worldwide customer list to be an extremely valuable trade secret, estimating the cost of losing the list at approximately $2.5 million per year.
$2.5 million/year is what they say loosing the list would cost them - but I don't see that they actually claim to have "lost" the list.
"A quantum computer could use any amount of numbers."
Wow! Really? Any amount at all?
OK, OK, maybe the sarcasm isn't called for... the article was (probably) trying to make the point that data in a quantum computer would not neccesaily be limited by having only two binary states available.
Still, they pass up what I thought was particularly cool: the idea of studying an atom in (relative) isolation... could you use this atom-trap as kind of "clean room" for assembling three-dimensional nano-structures? What about trapping a single anti-particle so it can be studied outside of an environment where it has an effective lifetime of a few billionths of a second? Or just having the chance to see exactly what happens when two atoms interact, instead of having to observe in the aggregate...
Ob. Troll: Man! Can you imagine what a beowulf cluster of these things would be like!
Most gigantic companies are like slobbering wolves, they'll do anything for a scrap of profit, no matter how demeaning or dangerous to themselves or others. What makes Microsoft so bad is that they're not like that.
Actually, that's close to my point... they may be willing to take the hit of spending development effort on a Linux version of Office, and risk losing a few paying customers, just to get a foot in the door. After a while, let the Linux version of office lag a bit, have a few less features, and make it easy for someone to say "Gee, the Windows version is so much better..." Take a look at the evolution of Office on the Macintosh, and ask youself if MS would be willing to do something similar to Linux as part of an "embrace and extend" strategy.
But I have to wonder; if this happens to be a rumor with a grain of truth behind it, perhaps it's an attempt by Microsoft to show that while the OS group may have misbehaved themselves, the MS Office division is committed to cross-platform support, and gee Ms. Reno, don't let a few bad appl... er, vultures in marketing and sales ruin our Technological Innovation (tm).
Poetic license:-) As for athiests killing Christians because of their beliefs - well, there's any number of incidents, but the ones that come to mind (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) definitely have more poilitcal than purely anti-religious overtones.
No, apparently he isn't welcome in yours. He wants to speak about his faith; you want to silence him. He points out that you're free to leave and not listen, by associating with people who do not neccesarily prosletyze, or who already share your beliefs; you respond by attacking him.
Oh, and BTW - yes, I know that 2/3 of the world is NOT Christian. I also know that faith is not a popularity contest.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah! Thought I saw this on their page:
So it looks like they provide for some level of perfomance tuning without even going the #ifdef/branch & rewrite route.
Does it much matter if it's ineffecient? Once the driver was functioning correctly on multiple platforms, you could start including conditional code to optimize performance on particular platforms.
In radical cases, you might branch and rework the architecture to bring it more in-line with the target OS's native device driver interface, but even in that case you would have a couple of advantages - a working reference implementation (regression testing, anyone?), multi-platform support, and the ability to perform the more expensive optimization work under various OS's if and when you determine that enough customers are asking for it.
Heck, release the Linux/BSD versions under the appropriate licenses, and you'd probably have an optimized version for each OS within a few months, without much more cost than developing a single driver for Windows.
All in all, sounds like a good deal; makes me wonder why more companies wouldn't take this route. Is the company new on the scene, or is their product just not mature enough yet to be worth spending time on?
Bush has the same chance to "interfere" with the Federal Court system as any other president; namely, if a justice on the SC needs replaced for any reason, it is the president's job to "interfere" and appoint a replacement to keep the required number of justices. IIRC, Congress also gets to "interfere" by reviewing and approving the appointment.
It's just the way it works. Clinton would have loved the chance to appoint an SC justice; it looks like he won't get the chance to do so, though. The next president might, and there's a lot of speculation about how the various candidates (not just Bush) would choose a new justice if that occaision came to pass. It's hardly a rock-solid certainty that it will happen during the next president's term, though. If it does, whoever the president happens to be, they certainly won't be interfering with the Federal Court system, just doing part of the job they were elected to do.
That said, I have to agree - MS has gone too far, and is making an extremely obvious attempt to try and buy the outcome they want. Makes me wonder if their next case in front of the DOJ will involve campaign finance law violations.
Browsing through the netpliance site, I came across two pieces of information that together make me worry...
From their development job listings:
Data Mining Developer
From their add-ons FAQ page:
Q: Can I connect external storage devices, such as a ZIP drive, via the USB port?
A: Not at this time. Everything on your i-opener is backed up on our network. (emphasis added)
So... someone with an iOpener contract: does Netpliance mention the fact that your data will be backed up on their network, or contain any mention of the fact that Netpliance may be mining either your backed-up data or data recorded about your network usage (browsing, email) habits? It occurs to me that this may be one reason they are so adamant about requiring people to use their ISP service with the iOpener...
The chances of it ruining my child's life, IMHO, is approximately a thousand times greater then the chances of it saving my child's life. Note the worst case here; it's not "status quo, nothing changes" - it's my child's life ruined at the first hint of any sort of unorthadox behavior.
Try explaining that to your nine year old when s/he's pulled out of school because someone immature itdiot with no real understanding of the consequences - say, another 9 year old - thought it would be really, really, really funny to tell someone s/he said they were going to blow up the school.
If you really want you kid to go to school someplace where only the strongest, most vicious, amoral kids manage to survive, feel free to find such a place; just don't expect me to send my children to school with your little criminals.
Please note that none of his examples of "extreme fair use" included rebroadcasting, claiming the work as his own, etc. Dan's point is that where the legal definition of "fair use" used to be essentially "you may do what you wish with this, as long as you do not infringe upon the rights of the copyright holder, the DMCA has essentially twisted fair use to mean "you may do what you wish with this, as long as the copyright holder decides it is fair use."
Sorry, I would tend to disagree with both of you - GNU tools are, if I recall correctly, distributed free under the GPL. If I use GNU-emacs to write the Great American Novel, does that mean that the FSF is entitled to take credit for my efforts? Who created the Mona Lisa - da Vinci, or the merchant who made his paint brush? Maybe the folks who built my browser should be able to take credit for these comments, eh?
The FSF makes a number of excellent tools available to the computing community worldwide; I won't argue that in the least. The idea that the FSF should be allowed to take (or share) credit for work done with those tools is ridiculous. The FSF gave away their tools under the GPL; if RMS wanted credit given to the FSF for software built using those tools, he should have added a BSD-style advertising clause. He didn't, though, and the constant litany of "GNU/Linux! It's GNU/Linux!" out of the FSF is starting to sound less like an argument for credit and more like whining for attention.
And as for your comment about speed - speed certainly does matter more than size/mass - ask anyone who's ever caught a bullet.
I know my argument was kind of simple, but did I really deserve that level of pun-ishment? ;-)
You make a good point, though - a well-constructed vehicle, regardless of size, will survive an accident in much better shape than a poorly constructed one. Take a look at Volvos. Extremely ugly little beasts, IMHO, and actually not all that large - but put together like a small tank, from what I understand.
Going with more mass, though, is a cheap and easy way to get the same effect, which is probably why SUVs are popular. I know that's why I drive one; I had a Geo Metro destroyed by a car going 15 MPH when I was stopped. I walked away, but I knew I wanted something a little sturdier; and a good, sturdy, smaller car was about twice the cost of an SUV.
Having driven larger vehicles most of my life, though (the Geo being a small diversion), I agree that there should probably be different licensing requirements for them - a too-cautious SUV driver can be as much of a menace as a too-reckless driver.
Do some math... the relevant equation is:
KE = 0.5mv^2
In other words, a 2-ton SUV travelling at 50mph has approximately the same KE as a 1-ton subcompact travelling at 70mph. The most significant factor isn't the size of the vehicle, it's the speed of the vehicle. Anyone stupid enough to drive drunk is stupid enough to speed; couple that with their impaired reactions and judgement, and it doesn't matter if they're drving a Dodge Dart or a Humvee.
Let's grant Bezos the benefit of the doubt, and accept his statements that the one-click patent was defensive - that is, Amazon felt that
If this is the case, then the reforms Bezos is proposing might have stopped Amazon from getting the patent. This would have been almost as useful from Amazon's point of view, since that would mean that nobody else could get the patent, either. Granted, I don't think Amazon's thinking in this matter was quite that pure; having the one-click patent does give them a way to keep an advantage over B&N, for example.
Overall, though, I think Bezos' point is that Amazon (and probably other internet companies) would be willing to live with the concept that there are some business practices and processes that can't be patented, as long as they can be sure that the patent office will not continue to cavalierly approve everything that comes through the door.
From the "Bar Reacts To Bezos Patent Reform Plan":
Excuse me? From what I can tell, Bezos did not in any way, shape, or form indicate that he thought process or business patents were "entitled to special protection". His point is that this class of patents requires closer scrutiny, should be more difficult to obtain, and should not last as long as traditional patents.
I guess you have to be a lawyer to understand how "make it harder for someone to obtain these patents" translates into "please give us special protections."
The problem is... no matter what I pay for the hardware, I OWN IT, DAMNIT!
They are selling me their hardware, not renting it to me, not leasing it to me. There is nothing that says I need to actually use their ISP, nothing that actually says I need to turn on the i-Opener and use it for it's intended purpose. I can buy one, canabalize it for parts, smash it with a hammer, or crack it open and turn it into something different entirely.
Of cpourse, I-Opener doesn't agree with this. They think that even though I've given them $99 + whatever amount in ISP service fees, they still own the hardware, and I'm an eeeeevil, eeevil hacker d00d, and that they are justified in protecting "their" property from me.
It would be a different story if they said "Hey, guys, we're loosing money hand over fist - the $99 version makes up the loss on hardware with the ISP sales. But look, here, we'll sell you a box, no strings attached, for $200, and you can hack it to your heart's content." They'd be happy, we'd be happy, and instead of worrying about how to close their hardware - an impossible job, ask anyone who's every hacked on a Macintosh how "secure" they were - they could worry about how to open it up to new uses and new markets. Hell, if they'd bother to read this thread, they'd probably find a good two dozen new money-making ideas that would more than make up for the whole $99-plus-ISP fiasco.
The MS EULA contains very similar language - the amusing part is I first encountered it in the EULA for the Word 2000. Good thing I did, too - I was just about to start developing our nuclear facility maintenance scheduler using WordBasic macros. Guess I'll just have to do the damn thing in Perl, now.
I think the point is that X was designed to operate over a network, period; in hindsight, it probably would have been better to define a local display protocol that could be modified to work in a more peer-to-peer or client-server fashion as the need for that arose. There's nothing particularly wrong with "tacking on" functionality later, as long as the original specification was designed with that sort extensibility in mind.
If that had been the case, then this discussion wouldn't be happening, because I could run X the way I want to, and you could run it the way you wanted, and we'd both be happy. As it stands right now, you get what you want, and when I try and get what I want, I get a shrug and a "Live with it - it's a good feature" reply.
I'm sure the airfare adds to the cost buy this is directly from Red Hat Training info
On top of all that, keep in mind that the company rep that said:
...happens to work for a company located in the same city as Microsoft, where it would be easy for MS to offer this type of service. I'm sure you can find someone down in NC who would be willing to give you the exact same article with a different point of view.
To be polite, I won't even rant about the idiot who thinks that the world should come to him when he wants something... oh, wait, just did. Darn.
Keep in mind that the US is a large place (not as large as the world, but it certainly does cover quite a bit of ground :-) What may make sense in one state - heck, even in one county - might not make sense in the next.
In LA or NY city, for example, subsidising public transportation and having a higher tax on gasoline/car sales makes sense. In the midwest, though, you might want to forgo these taxes (higher gasoline prices raise farming costs, and massive public transportation systems aren't cost effective) and replace them with something else.
IMHO, the worst part about the problem of taxes is the desire to come up with a "one size fits all" solution, particularly at the federal and state levels, where the "one size" solution is constantly being tailored with new laws, special exceptions and additional specifications in order to try and make something general work in all cases.
Where my wife works, they've had a rebate program for several years - the company kicked in some money (a couple of thousand at one point) towards your purchase of a new computer, as an interest free loan. Several of the smaller companies I've come into contact with have had similar programs.
Unfortunately, it appears that as companies grow, benefits like this start disappearing... We'll probably be buying a new Mac G4 under the program at my wife's company soon, as their HR department has started grumblings about doing away with the program.
This is part of what confuses me: it almost universally seems that HR ends up being the department that "champions" cutting the really interesting, set-your-company-apart-from-the-crowd type of benefits... and that only seems to happen when the company reaches some critical mass (200+ people).
Now, it looks as if at some other breakpoint - when you reach the size of GM, or Intel - something else happens internally. I would be really interested to know who lobbied for these initiatives, why they did so, and how they convinced the executives/board/whoever that it was actually in the company's best interest to actually add a benefit instead of "restructuring" one or taking one away.
This is impossible. You cannot remove the profit motive from scientific research except in periods of war or other danger.
Unfortunately for your argument, as the U.S. Human Genome Project home page points out,
Aparently, there is no profit motive here... instead, there is a rare glimpse into a government (well, OK, pone government, but I suspect other countries of the same benevolence) actually doing what most people think it should do: support and enhance the common good. Let's stop and savor that for a moment...
Mmmmmmmmm.
OK, that out of the way, I have to admit that in some senses, you're right. For the individual researchers on the project, this is the meal ticket! The mother lode! After working on this baby, they'll be able to get a job anywhere in the industry... as long as their work is recognized. As long as other people can examine it and judge it as worthy. As long as it is - dare I say it? - open .
Look at the Human Genome Project not as an excercise in biotechnology, but a bunch of gene hackers trying to earn a reputation and build something they can be proud of, and I think you'll find a lot of parallels between these folks and the ones who created the foundation of the internet lo so many moons ago.
You said: I am saying it's not costing them 2.5 million a year.
They said: Epicor officials said that they considered their worldwide customer list to be an extremely valuable trade secret, estimating the cost of losing the list at approximately $2.5 million per year.$2.5 million/year is what they say loosing the list would cost them - but I don't see that they actually claim to have "lost" the list.
"A quantum computer could use any amount of numbers."
Wow! Really? Any amount at all?
OK, OK, maybe the sarcasm isn't called for... the article was (probably) trying to make the point that data in a quantum computer would not neccesaily be limited by having only two binary states available.Still, they pass up what I thought was particularly cool: the idea of studying an atom in (relative) isolation... could you use this atom-trap as kind of "clean room" for assembling three-dimensional nano-structures? What about trapping a single anti-particle so it can be studied outside of an environment where it has an effective lifetime of a few billionths of a second? Or just having the chance to see exactly what happens when two atoms interact, instead of having to observe in the aggregate...
Ob. Troll: Man! Can you imagine what a beowulf cluster of these things would be like!
Most gigantic companies are like slobbering wolves, they'll do anything for a scrap of profit, no matter how demeaning or dangerous to themselves or others. What makes Microsoft so bad is that they're not like that.
Actually, that's close to my point... they may be willing to take the hit of spending development effort on a Linux version of Office, and risk losing a few paying customers, just to get a foot in the door. After a while, let the Linux version of office lag a bit, have a few less features, and make it easy for someone to say "Gee, the Windows version is so much better..." Take a look at the evolution of Office on the Macintosh, and ask youself if MS would be willing to do something similar to Linux as part of an "embrace and extend" strategy.
But I have to wonder; if this happens to be a rumor with a grain of truth behind it, perhaps it's an attempt by Microsoft to show that while the OS group may have misbehaved themselves, the MS Office division is committed to cross-platform support, and gee Ms. Reno, don't let a few bad appl... er, vultures in marketing and sales ruin our Technological Innovation (tm).
Poetic license :-) As for athiests killing Christians because of their beliefs - well, there's any number of incidents, but the ones that come to mind (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) definitely have more poilitcal than purely anti-religious overtones.
No, apparently he isn't welcome in yours. He wants to speak about his faith; you want to silence him. He points out that you're free to leave and not listen, by associating with people who do not neccesarily prosletyze, or who already share your beliefs; you respond by attacking him.
Oh, and BTW - yes, I know that 2/3 of the world is NOT Christian. I also know that faith is not a popularity contest.