The common argument I hear is that government regulation got us here, usually by unintended consequences. So in other words, if you can't draft good sound legislation that does just what you wanted, don't even try.
IMHO here in the US we don't have real managers any more, who know their business. We have a bunch of snot-nosed hothouse MBAs who are comfortable only with spreadsheets and abstract numbers. I'm sure there are more, but it sure seems that Steve Jobs, reality distortion field aside, is the only US CEO who understands his business and can make it grow - the only CEO with a growth plan other than, "Do what we did last week, only cut costs."
But take what you said for a moment... We need a general expectation around here: Executive suite cuts the workforce 10%, they take a 10% pay cut. They get NO credit for growing profit by shrinking the company. Rather than shrinking the company, an executive worth his pay would figure out how to turn that "idle" resource into more revenue.
Last night on NPR's Marketplace they talked about how the credit crunch was showing signs of easing.
Only problem, none of the things that caused the credit crunch have been fixed: * No regulations for transparency, so you can know the real risk of the "financial product" you're buying. * The responsibility breakdown between loan origination and loan execution remains. (How the HECK can you get into a position to get a commission for writing a loan, with no responsibility to know that the borrower can really pay? What a job!) * No regulations on allowable margin, or even for margin transparency. - I'm sure there are more.
Nothing has been fixed, we merely appear to have dodged THIS bullet, but the madmen are still out there with their machine guns.
I think/hope there will be a difference between being frequently asked to click "OK" and being infrequently asked to enter a password. At the very least, a new user being asked to enter a password will know that something is different, because clicking "OK" used to be good enough.
But then again, some of those new Mac users will be leaving Windows because of the security, and if you give them a less obnoxious model to use, at least those users may do a better job.
IMHO even with more targeting, Mac users will still be less likely to accept a virus than Vista users, at least with both user interfaces as they currently are. UAC on Vista was well-intentioned, but poorly designed. It looks like it was designed by security types with little or no input for users, usability types, or psychologists. UAC is in front of your face too often, and the ordinary user gets "OK fatigue" to the point of not paying attention.
Some attention to the OS/X or Ubuntu security confirmation dialogs and frequency might have been a good idea.
I don't doubt that malware problems with OS/X or even Linux will rise with increased targeting, but it's also probably incorrect to assume that they'll become "just as bad as Windows" on a percentage basis. There are simply things that Windows has been doing wrong, and still is doing wrong, that the others aren't.
> Actually, running (like many aerobic sports) places a HUGE impact on the knees, which is > why many seasoned marathon runners tend to have knee issues as they age. I've had friends > quit the sport for this precise reason.
At work, many of us take a bit of a walk after lunch. (No small number of times, I've had the solution to some work-related problem or other pop into my head during/after these walks, so IMHO they're a good thing.) I had one friend quit the lunchtime walks, because he knew his knee lifetime was limited, and he wanted to save it for training/running marathons.
There is in fact a body of knowledge that says that exercise itself is good for the brain's health, and preventing dementia.
Back on the "all things in moderation" kick, exercise certainly seems to be one of them, but in this case I think "moderation" for exercise is indeed a higher dose than most of us consider. I've heard that marathons are actually hard on the body, and shouldn't be done too often, and I suspect that hard-core bodybuilding is a bit much, but most of us never really approach excessive exercise.
OK, So Microsoft has most likely gotten OOXML passed as an ISO standard. Unfortunate, but probably true.
Further, it appears that the real reason they did this is so that they can put that all-important checkmark in the box that says, "Interoperates with ISO standard file formats" when trying to sell MS Office into accounts.
OK, great.
Now PROVE IT!
Prove that MS Office is OOXML compliant. Last I heard, OOXML was like Office 2007, but not really there. Last I heard, OOXML was an incomplete spec with no full implementation.
If Microsoft is going to to for that "ISO standard file format" checkbox, for that matter if anyone is going for an ISO standard checkbox, isn't it necessary that there be compliance testing? And long as we're compliance testing, the certification of compliance should NEVER be given until the appropriate committee evaluates the product against the spec and decides that that the product unambiguously implements the spec.
No full, unambiguous compliance, no check in the little box.
I've never actually used Pandora, just recommendations from friends.
But I still think the problem is finding the music I like - a needle-in-haystack problem. Finding the "informed recommender" that suits you is the solution, and for you it's clearly not Pandora.
Don't think of it as gatekeeper for a moment, but as travel agent. What do you want to hear, and how do you get it?
There are 2 such travel agents I can think of at the moment, with my limited experience - CD Baby and Pandora. CD Baby does small off-label artists, but they have a "sounds like" search that lets you put in major artists and find Indie music in the same vein. Then you can sample tracks and purchase, if desired. I haven't actually used Pandora, but according to friends it does "the Amazon thing," people who like this track generally like this other track.
Those models help you find your way to new music, but neither restricts you. Restriction is the essential model of a gatekeeper, which is why I propose travel agent instead.
This is Slashdot after all, and a new meme has been rising...
There have been more and more postings to the tune that Microsoft's really does make good products, and that its corporate practices are no worse than any others, and that most of the anti-Microsoft hatred is unfair, motivated by jealousy, or both.
But so far in this thread, I haven't seen any post extolling the quality of the OOXML spec submitted to ISO. Nor have I seen any refutations to tell us how the whole balloting process for this issue really has been fair, open, and free from any taint of corruption. Maybe it's that all of the anti-MS Slashdotters have been unfairly modding such informative and insightful posts down, and I need to change my threshold.
I'm running 2-pass XVid with "Gentoo stable" codecs for what that's worth, and I'm seeing about the improvements in filesize on the order of 6X. I haven't really watched any full movies yet, just viewed snatches for a rough quality check. This batch is really my first set of experiments, and I've finally transcoded a set of shows for burning.
Unfortunately my DVD player doesn't do XVid, though most new players appear to. They're also a fraction of the price I paid several years ago - getting almost cheap enough to pick up on a whim. I'll just play the DVD on a computer - until I get a new player.
We just get the turtles in the lawn, turtle dinner parties, turtle this, turtle that. Oh, and the fake new reports, and the guy squirting silver stuff on his shoes to run faster and jump higher.
But it all amounts to "slander your competition" except perhaps the vats of silver stuff.
I'm starting to fool with transcoding my MythTV to XVID, and it's pretty darned impressive. I realize I'm starting with NTSC, which isn't that hot to begin with, but then again in my usage so far it looks about as good as MPEG-2 in a whole lot less space.
Secondary. The relationship between your parents (and in-laws) and your kids is something very special for both, and very different from other relationships the kids have. One aspect of it is that grandparents don't have to follow all of the rules. There are some that nobody can break, and some that grandparents are supposed to break. (Like giving the kids cookies before lunchtime.)
By the time you're in your 40's many of your peers will have married and have families, already. Nor will those be (just) babies, they'll be into Scouts, sports, band and chorus, Odyssey of the Mind, etc. (Trying to be P.C. and hit kids' activities for everyone.) At that point if you're still single, you're disconnected from a major port of the interests of a large part of your peer group. Or to put it another way, many of the people I associate with also have families. Interestingly enough, your kids give you another way to meet more people - the parents of their friends. (They've met the kids of our friends, too.) Don't knock it till you've tried it.
There's also a secondary goal - to hit grandparenthood while I still have enough energy to really enjoy it. My wife's and my parents were really all too old for much of this. Kids can be a blast, and a lot of stress and angst. Grandparenthood offers a chance to enjoy it again, knowing that you've survived it once, and can focus more on the good parts.
Which brings back my old observation about Vista...
We've had decades, and STILL don't feel that operating systems work as well as we'd like, when they're designed to work.
Into this, add Vista, the first OS that is designed *not* to work at certain times. Plus it's supposed to figure out what those times are that it should work, and shouldn't work. What chance of success has this, in a real world of bugs, and all.?
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The common argument I hear is that government regulation got us here, usually by unintended consequences. So in other words, if you can't draft good sound legislation that does just what you wanted, don't even try.
IMHO here in the US we don't have real managers any more, who know their business. We have a bunch of snot-nosed hothouse MBAs who are comfortable only with spreadsheets and abstract numbers. I'm sure there are more, but it sure seems that Steve Jobs, reality distortion field aside, is the only US CEO who understands his business and can make it grow - the only CEO with a growth plan other than, "Do what we did last week, only cut costs."
But take what you said for a moment... We need a general expectation around here: Executive suite cuts the workforce 10%, they take a 10% pay cut. They get NO credit for growing profit by shrinking the company. Rather than shrinking the company, an executive worth his pay would figure out how to turn that "idle" resource into more revenue.
Last night on NPR's Marketplace they talked about how the credit crunch was showing signs of easing.
Only problem, none of the things that caused the credit crunch have been fixed:
* No regulations for transparency, so you can know the real risk of the "financial product" you're buying.
* The responsibility breakdown between loan origination and loan execution remains. (How the HECK can you get into a position to get a commission for writing a loan, with no responsibility to know that the borrower can really pay? What a job!)
* No regulations on allowable margin, or even for margin transparency.
- I'm sure there are more.
Nothing has been fixed, we merely appear to have dodged THIS bullet, but the madmen are still out there with their machine guns.
Please tell me about all of the successful new entries into the non-embedded CPU marketplace in the last 10 years.
If you're working on stuff like CPUs, the semiconductor industry has positively WICKED barriers to entry.
Your equation is waiting... ...for some coefficients.
I think/hope there will be a difference between being frequently asked to click "OK" and being infrequently asked to enter a password. At the very least, a new user being asked to enter a password will know that something is different, because clicking "OK" used to be good enough.
But then again, some of those new Mac users will be leaving Windows because of the security, and if you give them a less obnoxious model to use, at least those users may do a better job.
IMHO even with more targeting, Mac users will still be less likely to accept a virus than Vista users, at least with both user interfaces as they currently are. UAC on Vista was well-intentioned, but poorly designed. It looks like it was designed by security types with little or no input for users, usability types, or psychologists. UAC is in front of your face too often, and the ordinary user gets "OK fatigue" to the point of not paying attention.
Some attention to the OS/X or Ubuntu security confirmation dialogs and frequency might have been a good idea.
I don't doubt that malware problems with OS/X or even Linux will rise with increased targeting, but it's also probably incorrect to assume that they'll become "just as bad as Windows" on a percentage basis. There are simply things that Windows has been doing wrong, and still is doing wrong, that the others aren't.
> Actually, running (like many aerobic sports) places a HUGE impact on the knees, which is
> why many seasoned marathon runners tend to have knee issues as they age. I've had friends
> quit the sport for this precise reason.
At work, many of us take a bit of a walk after lunch. (No small number of times, I've had the solution to some work-related problem or other pop into my head during/after these walks, so IMHO they're a good thing.) I had one friend quit the lunchtime walks, because he knew his knee lifetime was limited, and he wanted to save it for training/running marathons.
There is in fact a body of knowledge that says that exercise itself is good for the brain's health, and preventing dementia.
Back on the "all things in moderation" kick, exercise certainly seems to be one of them, but in this case I think "moderation" for exercise is indeed a higher dose than most of us consider. I've heard that marathons are actually hard on the body, and shouldn't be done too often, and I suspect that hard-core bodybuilding is a bit much, but most of us never really approach excessive exercise.
Microsoft claiming ISO is corrupt is kind of like the Bush administration claiming that government is incompetent. (Not exact, but close enough.)
OK, So Microsoft has most likely gotten OOXML passed as an ISO standard. Unfortunate, but probably true.
Further, it appears that the real reason they did this is so that they can put that all-important checkmark in the box that says, "Interoperates with ISO standard file formats" when trying to sell MS Office into accounts.
OK, great.
Now PROVE IT!
Prove that MS Office is OOXML compliant. Last I heard, OOXML was like Office 2007, but not really there. Last I heard, OOXML was an incomplete spec with no full implementation.
If Microsoft is going to to for that "ISO standard file format" checkbox, for that matter if anyone is going for an ISO standard checkbox, isn't it necessary that there be compliance testing? And long as we're compliance testing, the certification of compliance should NEVER be given until the appropriate committee evaluates the product against the spec and decides that that the product unambiguously implements the spec.
No full, unambiguous compliance, no check in the little box.
No matter how long the evaluation takes.
I've never actually used Pandora, just recommendations from friends.
But I still think the problem is finding the music I like - a needle-in-haystack problem. Finding the "informed recommender" that suits you is the solution, and for you it's clearly not Pandora.
Don't think of it as gatekeeper for a moment, but as travel agent. What do you want to hear, and how do you get it?
There are 2 such travel agents I can think of at the moment, with my limited experience - CD Baby and Pandora. CD Baby does small off-label artists, but they have a "sounds like" search that lets you put in major artists and find Indie music in the same vein. Then you can sample tracks and purchase, if desired. I haven't actually used Pandora, but according to friends it does "the Amazon thing," people who like this track generally like this other track.
Those models help you find your way to new music, but neither restricts you. Restriction is the essential model of a gatekeeper, which is why I propose travel agent instead.
This is Slashdot after all, and a new meme has been rising...
There have been more and more postings to the tune that Microsoft's really does make good products, and that its corporate practices are no worse than any others, and that most of the anti-Microsoft hatred is unfair, motivated by jealousy, or both.
But so far in this thread, I haven't seen any post extolling the quality of the OOXML spec submitted to ISO. Nor have I seen any refutations to tell us how the whole balloting process for this issue really has been fair, open, and free from any taint of corruption. Maybe it's that all of the anti-MS Slashdotters have been unfairly modding such informative and insightful posts down, and I need to change my threshold.
I'm running 2-pass XVid with "Gentoo stable" codecs for what that's worth, and I'm seeing about the improvements in filesize on the order of 6X. I haven't really watched any full movies yet, just viewed snatches for a rough quality check. This batch is really my first set of experiments, and I've finally transcoded a set of shows for burning.
Unfortunately my DVD player doesn't do XVid, though most new players appear to. They're also a fraction of the price I paid several years ago - getting almost cheap enough to pick up on a whim. I'll just play the DVD on a computer - until I get a new player.
Given the starting assumptions, you've reached exactly the correct conclusion.
YOU get the dancing 7-foot cabinets?
Lucky!
We just get the turtles in the lawn, turtle dinner parties, turtle this, turtle that.
Oh, and the fake new reports, and the guy squirting silver stuff on his shoes to run faster and jump higher.
But it all amounts to "slander your competition" except perhaps the vats of silver stuff.
I'm starting to fool with transcoding my MythTV to XVID, and it's pretty darned impressive. I realize I'm starting with NTSC, which isn't that hot to begin with, but then again in my usage so far it looks about as good as MPEG-2 in a whole lot less space.
Secondary. The relationship between your parents (and in-laws) and your kids is something very special for both, and very different from other relationships the kids have. One aspect of it is that grandparents don't have to follow all of the rules. There are some that nobody can break, and some that grandparents are supposed to break. (Like giving the kids cookies before lunchtime.)
By the time you're in your 40's many of your peers will have married and have families, already. Nor will those be (just) babies, they'll be into Scouts, sports, band and chorus, Odyssey of the Mind, etc. (Trying to be P.C. and hit kids' activities for everyone.) At that point if you're still single, you're disconnected from a major port of the interests of a large part of your peer group. Or to put it another way, many of the people I associate with also have families. Interestingly enough, your kids give you another way to meet more people - the parents of their friends. (They've met the kids of our friends, too.) Don't knock it till you've tried it.
There's also a secondary goal - to hit grandparenthood while I still have enough energy to really enjoy it. My wife's and my parents were really all too old for much of this. Kids can be a blast, and a lot of stress and angst. Grandparenthood offers a chance to enjoy it again, knowing that you've survived it once, and can focus more on the good parts.
Let's revisit this when you hit your late 40's.
or for another answer...
Think of it as evolution in action.
Whoooosh.
I didn't think a sarcasm emoticon was necessary.
I agree, Microsoft is going to win.
ISO and the rest of us are going to lose.
We now know how much confidence to place in the ISO standardization process.
Clearly the way to rein in Flash is with Silverlight, then.
This thread IS for religious wars, isn't it?
Which brings back my old observation about Vista...
We've had decades, and STILL don't feel that operating systems work as well as we'd like, when they're designed to work.
Into this, add Vista, the first OS that is designed *not* to work at certain times. Plus it's supposed to figure out what those times are that it should work, and shouldn't work. What chance of success has this, in a real world of bugs, and all.?