It kills the enemy. All of the enemy. And allof his family, and all of his oxen, and all of his cattle, and all of his manservents, and all of his maidservents...
The point of WMDs, be they yielded by nations or terrorists, (distinction left to the reader) is that they conquer nothing, because they leave nothing. If there's a good purpose, they demoralize the enemy into surrendering, and prevent further bloodshed. The fearsome thing about the neutron bomb was that it would make nuclear war practical again, which was why Jimmy Carter cancelled it.
I wasn't saying they got to number 1 by being number 1. I was saying that their current business model is largely based on being number 1. It's largely based on both Windows and Office being, from the ordinary consumers point of view, a natural monopoly, yet not regulated as other natural monopolies (think gas, phone, electricity, cable TV) are, and not even commodity-style pricing. The real brass balls on that latter, is that Microsoft can insist that physical computers - real goods with real cost, and mostly non-profitable, at that - are too expensive, yet maintain non-commodity pricing for the OS, the single highest-profit part of a newly-purchased PC.
Oh, it's perfectly fine if you like MS Office. What I RESENT is people being COMPELLED to buy MS Office because of proprietary document formats that are de-facto standards. Imagine if your (insert brand) car only ran on (insert same brand) gasoline, and you could only put (insert same brand) tires on it.
By the way, IMHO it's almost as wrong that iMusic will only plan on iHardware - almost because it's a specific-purpose machine that links the two together, not a general-purpose machine virtually locked to one provider.
Agreed. Note that I also said that they'd have to crack the signature stuff, too. I'll presume it's not easy to mimic the infrastructure, including signature. But I'll also presume it can be done by the sufficiently motivated, and then be available for download.
I'm not against trying to be number 1. I simply think that when a company's success is largely based on BEING number 1, and other than that they have more than a few "problems of merit," then they may be in for trouble.
In other words, how many people buy MS Office because it's the BEST word processor, and how many people buy it because its files are the de-facto standard, so they pretty much have to buy it? How many people would choose to buy Windows and install it themselves, if it weren't the default install?
IMHO their biggest problem is that their business model is based on their market domination. Even their entry into new markets is based on having SO much revenue from Windows/Office and SO big a war chest that they can survive the early losses. Being based primarily on dominance is dangerous, because even serious questioning of that dominance creates vulnerability.
The other downside is that they have to enter new markets (not just one market) in order to keep growing, and the flipside of diversification is "death of a thousand paper cuts." Sometimes it's tough to tell just which side you're on.
will be more ARP and DNS attacks, in order to subvert the link to the update machine. It's just too tasty a target. The update machine MAY even be secure, but even if it isn't, compromising it would set off too many alarm bells. Working back at the ISP level is easier, compromises sufficient machines, and doesn't set off as many alarms. This of course presumes that any signature mechanism can be subverted.
These things sound like they're named more aggressively than they really are. I'm not saying 4 AA batteries or a quarter x 1/2" tall aren't small. They're great examples of technology I can believe as extensions of what I already know. But names like "motes" and "smart dust" make me think of Diamond Age, and that's well beyond my degree+26+ years of experience in the semiconductor industry. AFAIK, carbyne pushrods and the other stuff that sounds like DigiComp implemented in molecules are still dreams, and we've only begun to start building some parts, maybe stuck a few together, but are nowhere near complete systems, let alone manufacturing.
That's not to say that the stuff you point to, as well as making it self-meshing isn't a neat accomplishment. It is. It just isn't Diamond Age.
In other words, to explain what I'd said, those at the top today try to tilt the playing field so that they, their friends, and families stay on top. But IMHO downward mobility is the flipside of upward mobility, and just as important.
I'll have to differ with you on one aspect. Those immigrants *are* Americans, or become Americans. Perhaps you don't disagree, but I'll be more explicit.
My problem is the system needs to allow people to work their way up. As a side-effect, it also needs to allow people to fail their way down. As long as both directions work, America will continue to work. When TPTB entrench themselves (and their friends and family) too securely, they prevent others how are more capable from rising, and the nation is in trouble.
Re:Why should anyone in business care?
on
Johnny Can So Program
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Or will "American industry" have become an oxymoron?
In a recent Pulpit, Robert X. Cringely asserts that the problem isn't the compter industry going away, it's that venture capitalists haven't been funding the possible technologies that that should be coming in taking their place as the new "engines of growth" in the US. He cites things like nanotech that should be much further along, and blames venture capitalists for being lazy and not doing their jobs. In the past, they would fund 10 things, with 7 strike-outs, 2 base-hits, and 1 home run, and call that a good track record. Cringely says that today they're all waiting around trying to find the home-run, and fund only that one. But that takes a crystal ball, so they're stuck in a chicken/egg loop.
Any comment on PyGame? Seems just about perfect to me. Cross-platform with SDL, interpretive so you don't get bogged down in code-compile-link, yet uses enough native libraries that you can go further than a completely interpreted system would.
When this came up on fark (www.fark.com) a day or two ago, (new news, anyone?) the tagline included some sort of Paris Hilton remark. I don't know if they felt she proved or countered the assertion. I've recently stayed at the Hampton Inn while travelling, and have been tempted to ask if they could deduct her share from my room rate, because I'd rather not subsidize her lifestyle.
When you say "mote" I start to think about toner in "Diamond Age" or locator in "Deepness in the Sky", and I don't think we have that level of technology yet. Can you say how small your motes are, or what their range is? Do they spontaneously mesh? Size obviously says something about whether they're anchored or floating, now you're getting close to toner, and I think we're a ways from that.
In this case, "exclusive of". I'm under the impression that you can have one "-O" followed by "0"-"3", or "s". In other words, "-Os" isn't a modifier, it's one of the set of "-O" options. I'd guess that anything -O3 adds to -O2 increases code size, as well as the 4 optimizations of -O2 that are turned off for -Os.
Hidden tidbit in your post
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
>"Microsoft can play its old game to compete with Linux and Apple. It has to play Google's game to compete with Google."
How many fronts can Microsoft take on, at once? They're used to competing in "steamroller mode" where they mobilize the company against a smaller (or larger but less focused, like IBM) competitor, and run them over. But now Linux and Google are recognized as major threats, Firefox and Apple are chipping away at market share, and OpenOffice is sitting in the wings, especially considering IBM's embedding it, and other such efforts. They can't mobilize the company against any one of these things without taking the finger off of the others.
If I were Microsoft, I'd have a small focus group figuring out how the company can survive and thrive as "just another highly successful company" rather than as "The Industry Dominator," because it just doesn't look to me as if they're going to be able to keep that position in the long run.
There's no need to fear...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 4, Funny
When criminals in this world appear and break the laws that they should fear and frighten all who see or hear the cry goes up both far and near for Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!
How about if the extortion proceeds were being used to fund insurgent activities in Iraq, or some other form of terrorism. Suddenly the FBI and the CIA would care very much. Now, I can't say that such a thing is happening, but I can't say it isn't, either. Maybe that money is going to buying fast cars, booze, and 133t hardware, but just maybe it's going somewhere else...
The "War on Terror" causes us enough grief and annoyance, maybe it could do something we like, too.
I saw the movie Saturday, too. Previous warnings had calibrated my expectations sufficiently downward that I was able to enjoy the movie.
Low point: Don't even think about them, because that would take away the enjoyment I did get out of it.
High point: The Magrathea factory floor really benefited from a big special effects budget. Of course we won't say anything about whether or not that was central to the movie.
****SPOILER****
Really Good Point: When Trillian picks up the tiny light sabre with the 6 inch blade, and slices her bread into toast with it. One brief scene skewers the Great Weapon of Star Wars, trivializing it in a toss-off gag.
-Os is orthogonal to the others, just like they're orthogonal to each other. -Os is like -O2, except that 4 (?) specific optimizations are turned off that increase code size. Take the 486 with its 8k L1 cache, for example. What good is an optimization that increases inner loop speed, if it makes the code so big that the inner loop won't fit in the L1, any more? You would be better off having less optimized code that fit in L1, to avoid cache thrashing.
Anyone have a feel for where in X86-land cache size becomes a significant factor, driving -Os instead of -O2? For instance, if anyone is still running a 486 box as a firewall or router, I'd bet that -Os would be a better choice. But what does the line look like, when does a cache become big enough to become a win for -O2 and -O3?
But a little more than that, I was trying to come across with the idea that experimentation and testing are essential parts of a theory, and even science, itself.
Another way of saying that "Creation Science" isn't really science, and that "The Intelligent Design Theory" isn't really a theory, because in both cases there isn't room for expirementation, testing, and modification. Kind of a semantic game, but in this case, an important one, IMHO.
More disturbing than discussions of Evolution vs Intelligent Design is the fact that, as a society we seem to have lost track of what science really is. Calling Intelligent design "an alternative theory" displays a clear lack of understanding of what a theory is, and behind that, what science is.
Quite simply, and I know I'll get flamed for some simple mistake in this explanation, science is: Studying the universe around us, trying to learn about it and how it works. One aspect of this i a theory. If you have an idea about what something is and how it works, that's a hypothesis. You take your hypothesis, and figure out further implications of it, and propose tests and experiments that can test it. You hypothesis needs to make predictions that were previously unknown, and can be verified by tests and experimentation. If a hypothesis survives some amount of this process, it "graduates" to be a theory.
But the most important ingredient is an open mind. A hypothesis or theory may be rejected or modified based on experiments and/or facts, and a scientist should always be prepared to do that.
The early Muslim empire was one of the most enlightened the world has ever seen. Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together prosperously and happily in the Holy Lands. Science was advanced as, "understanding God's works," and for Pete's sake, we still use Arabic numbers. Eventually religious conservatism took over. The US seems bent on following that path, today.
Slashdot Mirror
rusty quote...
It kills the enemy. All of the enemy. And allof his family, and all of his oxen, and all of his cattle, and all of his manservents, and all of his maidservents...
The point of WMDs, be they yielded by nations or terrorists, (distinction left to the reader) is that they conquer nothing, because they leave nothing. If there's a good purpose, they demoralize the enemy into surrendering, and prevent further bloodshed. The fearsome thing about the neutron bomb was that it would make nuclear war practical again, which was why Jimmy Carter cancelled it.
I wasn't saying they got to number 1 by being number 1. I was saying that their current business model is largely based on being number 1. It's largely based on both Windows and Office being, from the ordinary consumers point of view, a natural monopoly, yet not regulated as other natural monopolies (think gas, phone, electricity, cable TV) are, and not even commodity-style pricing. The real brass balls on that latter, is that Microsoft can insist that physical computers - real goods with real cost, and mostly non-profitable, at that - are too expensive, yet maintain non-commodity pricing for the OS, the single highest-profit part of a newly-purchased PC.
Oh, it's perfectly fine if you like MS Office. What I RESENT is people being COMPELLED to buy MS Office because of proprietary document formats that are de-facto standards. Imagine if your (insert brand) car only ran on (insert same brand) gasoline, and you could only put (insert same brand) tires on it.
By the way, IMHO it's almost as wrong that iMusic will only plan on iHardware - almost because it's a specific-purpose machine that links the two together, not a general-purpose machine virtually locked to one provider.
Agreed. Note that I also said that they'd have to crack the signature stuff, too. I'll presume it's not easy to mimic the infrastructure, including signature. But I'll also presume it can be done by the sufficiently motivated, and then be available for download.
I'm not against trying to be number 1. I simply think that when a company's success is largely based on BEING number 1, and other than that they have more than a few "problems of merit," then they may be in for trouble.
In other words, how many people buy MS Office because it's the BEST word processor, and how many people buy it because its files are the de-facto standard, so they pretty much have to buy it? How many people would choose to buy Windows and install it themselves, if it weren't the default install?
IMHO their biggest problem is that their business model is based on their market domination. Even their entry into new markets is based on having SO much revenue from Windows/Office and SO big a war chest that they can survive the early losses. Being based primarily on dominance is dangerous, because even serious questioning of that dominance creates vulnerability.
The other downside is that they have to enter new markets (not just one market) in order to keep growing, and the flipside of diversification is "death of a thousand paper cuts." Sometimes it's tough to tell just which side you're on.
will be more ARP and DNS attacks, in order to subvert the link to the update machine. It's just too tasty a target. The update machine MAY even be secure, but even if it isn't, compromising it would set off too many alarm bells. Working back at the ISP level is easier, compromises sufficient machines, and doesn't set off as many alarms. This of course presumes that any signature mechanism can be subverted.
These things sound like they're named more aggressively than they really are. I'm not saying 4 AA batteries or a quarter x 1/2" tall aren't small. They're great examples of technology I can believe as extensions of what I already know. But names like "motes" and "smart dust" make me think of Diamond Age, and that's well beyond my degree+26+ years of experience in the semiconductor industry. AFAIK, carbyne pushrods and the other stuff that sounds like DigiComp implemented in molecules are still dreams, and we've only begun to start building some parts, maybe stuck a few together, but are nowhere near complete systems, let alone manufacturing.
That's not to say that the stuff you point to, as well as making it self-meshing isn't a neat accomplishment. It is. It just isn't Diamond Age.
The Powers That Be
In other words, to explain what I'd said, those at the top today try to tilt the playing field so that they, their friends, and families stay on top. But IMHO downward mobility is the flipside of upward mobility, and just as important.
I'll have to differ with you on one aspect. Those immigrants *are* Americans, or become Americans. Perhaps you don't disagree, but I'll be more explicit.
My problem is the system needs to allow people to work their way up. As a side-effect, it also needs to allow people to fail their way down. As long as both directions work, America will continue to work. When TPTB entrench themselves (and their friends and family) too securely, they prevent others how are more capable from rising, and the nation is in trouble.
Or will "American industry" have become an oxymoron?
In a recent Pulpit, Robert X. Cringely asserts that the problem isn't the compter industry going away, it's that venture capitalists haven't been funding the possible technologies that that should be coming in taking their place as the new "engines of growth" in the US. He cites things like nanotech that should be much further along, and blames venture capitalists for being lazy and not doing their jobs. In the past, they would fund 10 things, with 7 strike-outs, 2 base-hits, and 1 home run, and call that a good track record. Cringely says that today they're all waiting around trying to find the home-run, and fund only that one. But that takes a crystal ball, so they're stuck in a chicken/egg loop.
Any comment on PyGame? Seems just about perfect to me. Cross-platform with SDL, interpretive so you don't get bogged down in code-compile-link, yet uses enough native libraries that you can go further than a completely interpreted system would.
When this came up on fark (www.fark.com) a day or two ago, (new news, anyone?) the tagline included some sort of Paris Hilton remark. I don't know if they felt she proved or countered the assertion. I've recently stayed at the Hampton Inn while travelling, and have been tempted to ask if they could deduct her share from my room rate, because I'd rather not subsidize her lifestyle.
When you say "mote" I start to think about toner in "Diamond Age" or locator in "Deepness in the Sky", and I don't think we have that level of technology yet. Can you say how small your motes are, or what their range is? Do they spontaneously mesh? Size obviously says something about whether they're anchored or floating, now you're getting close to toner, and I think we're a ways from that.
In this case, "exclusive of". I'm under the impression that you can have one "-O" followed by "0"-"3", or "s". In other words, "-Os" isn't a modifier, it's one of the set of "-O" options. I'd guess that anything -O3 adds to -O2 increases code size, as well as the 4 optimizations of -O2 that are turned off for -Os.
>"Microsoft can play its old game to compete with Linux and Apple. It has to play Google's game to compete with Google."
How many fronts can Microsoft take on, at once? They're used to competing in "steamroller mode" where they mobilize the company against a smaller (or larger but less focused, like IBM) competitor, and run them over. But now Linux and Google are recognized as major threats, Firefox and Apple are chipping away at market share, and OpenOffice is sitting in the wings, especially considering IBM's embedding it, and other such efforts. They can't mobilize the company against any one of these things without taking the finger off of the others.
If I were Microsoft, I'd have a small focus group figuring out how the company can survive and thrive as "just another highly successful company" rather than as "The Industry Dominator," because it just doesn't look to me as if they're going to be able to keep that position in the long run.
When criminals in this world appear
l yrics.html (#2 hit on Google "underdog theme song" search, #1 had a .wav link. Add "lyrics" as a search term and that link is still #2, and #1 is: http://www.wickedcoolnews.com/underdoglyrics.html which also has the lyrics.)
and break the laws that they should fear
and frighten all who see or hear
the cry goes up both far and near
for Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!
Credits to: http://www.delorie.com/users/dj/tidbits/underdog_
How about if the extortion proceeds were being used to fund insurgent activities in Iraq, or some other form of terrorism. Suddenly the FBI and the CIA would care very much. Now, I can't say that such a thing is happening, but I can't say it isn't, either. Maybe that money is going to buying fast cars, booze, and 133t hardware, but just maybe it's going somewhere else...
The "War on Terror" causes us enough grief and annoyance, maybe it could do something we like, too.
I saw the movie Saturday, too. Previous warnings had calibrated my expectations sufficiently downward that I was able to enjoy the movie.
Low point: Don't even think about them, because that would take away the enjoyment I did get out of it.
High point: The Magrathea factory floor really benefited from a big special effects budget. Of course we won't say anything about whether or not that was central to the movie.
****SPOILER****
Really Good Point: When Trillian picks up the tiny light sabre with the 6 inch blade, and slices her bread into toast with it. One brief scene skewers the Great Weapon of Star Wars, trivializing it in a toss-off gag.
-Os is orthogonal to the others, just like they're orthogonal to each other. -Os is like -O2, except that 4 (?) specific optimizations are turned off that increase code size. Take the 486 with its 8k L1 cache, for example. What good is an optimization that increases inner loop speed, if it makes the code so big that the inner loop won't fit in the L1, any more? You would be better off having less optimized code that fit in L1, to avoid cache thrashing.
Anyone have a feel for where in X86-land cache size becomes a significant factor, driving -Os instead of -O2? For instance, if anyone is still running a 486 box as a firewall or router, I'd bet that -Os would be a better choice. But what does the line look like, when does a cache become big enough to become a win for -O2 and -O3?
When did they stop? I remember being tought this in grade school.
I think I've got to have a serious chat with my daughter, tonight.
Works for me.
But a little more than that, I was trying to come across with the idea that experimentation and testing are essential parts of a theory, and even science, itself.
Another way of saying that "Creation Science" isn't really science, and that "The Intelligent Design Theory" isn't really a theory, because in both cases there isn't room for expirementation, testing, and modification. Kind of a semantic game, but in this case, an important one, IMHO.
More disturbing than discussions of Evolution vs Intelligent Design is the fact that, as a society we seem to have lost track of what science really is. Calling Intelligent design "an alternative theory" displays a clear lack of understanding of what a theory is, and behind that, what science is.
Quite simply, and I know I'll get flamed for some simple mistake in this explanation, science is:
Studying the universe around us, trying to learn about it and how it works. One aspect of this i a theory. If you have an idea about what something is and how it works, that's a hypothesis. You take your hypothesis, and figure out further implications of it, and propose tests and experiments that can test it. You hypothesis needs to make predictions that were previously unknown, and can be verified by tests and experimentation. If a hypothesis survives some amount of this process, it "graduates" to be a theory.
But the most important ingredient is an open mind. A hypothesis or theory may be rejected or modified based on experiments and/or facts, and a scientist should always be prepared to do that.
The early Muslim empire was one of the most enlightened the world has ever seen. Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together prosperously and happily in the Holy Lands. Science was advanced as, "understanding God's works," and for Pete's sake, we still use Arabic numbers. Eventually religious conservatism took over. The US seems bent on following that path, today.
I guess some people *would* say that McNealy always thought he was God.
Given the state of the modern patent system...
After patenting fusion, would you try to license or sue:
God, for infringing on your patent, with "billions and billions" of offending instances?
Everyone else on Earth, for receiving the benefits of the unlicensed fusion source?