This yankee salutes France. They may have dropped a few wars, but at least they gave us "The 400 Blows". Not to mention ArianeSpace. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! PS. What I really want to know is that if Quebec split off from Canada, would France want it? What do French feel about Quebec.
To be honest with you I think that in some ways named pipes are better than sockets. They are bidirectional, easy to program, and, as you said, can have ACL's applied to them. It seems to me that it is easier to write really fast server applications under Win2k than Unix, but it is really easier to write server applications really fast under Unix.
To me the really damning thing about Win2k at the enterprise is not the OS itself but the hardware that it runs on. A big enterprise database server really wants to have a super fast throughput to disk.
PCI based machines simply cannot deliver that. Bus speed to me doesn't really a lot for workstations, but for servers sporting big RAID arrays I think it really becomes an issue.
I mean, a Sun box has that really honkingly fast bus they use in their enterprise series, I program one and I love it. But PC's are just slow. My other flame bait on this board aside, I believe that the EU argument falls short basically because no matter how good Win2K Server might be, the hardware that it runs on sucks too much to be considered for big iron duties.
Show me the Win2K server that has the bus speed of a Sun StarFire or an IBM mainframe, and I'll concede.
1. You only need to get a ship into orbit to push the giant rocks of gold towards the earth, gravity does the rest. If you can drop the giant rock of gold on your corporate rival before he drops it on you, then you are so much better.
2. We do not have enough on earth. Speak for yourself. Space is so big we can be as greedy as we want. Everyone could have a 1000 acres of their own, if we go up.
3. Nobody really knows the composition of asteroids. The fluff thing is a theory. Actually, if an asteroid was made out of fluff, you would not need to mine it. You could wrap the dust in a big bag and take it back to earth.
4. Once up there, it takes very little mass to point your bag of gold ore towards the earth. Make sure the mass is not too big, let gravity do the rest.
5 & 6. The only reason we cannot terraform a planet is because we have not yet got the technology to be able to genetically engineer the bacteria that can convert hostile stuff into good stuff. Once we do that, we can launch a few tubs of that stuff to Venus and Mars, and let our genetically engineered "mother nature" do the rest.
7. Like what? Getting off of this junky old heap sounds like a good plan to me.
8. Depends on how much it costs. It certainly has a great deal of entertainment value. If it makes my taxes go up about $5, so much the better. Certainly better doing something feeding the poor.
9. If you don't like Tang, it means you are not dating the right kind of woman.
Well, if we are on the inside of the earth, how come if we dig a hole, we don't fall out into space...? Would it be possible to let the air out of the earth if we drilled too deep...? Does a volcano really mean that we are in a bubble of MOLTEN MAGMA? Or, is simply the outside of the earth so hot from the sun that it melts a little bit... That might mean that we are some sort of candy center in God's oven... guess that means if we see giant teeth coming out of the ground, well, it's probably too late.
If a company of the size of Microsoft pulled out of Europe, it would probably mean that the regulatory climate in Europe and US European relations had become so cold that the United States would be pulling out of Europe. The United States could probably pull the UK out of the EU, by offering a sweatheart trade deal. I think Kosovo and the recent Austrian elections plus gains proves that Europe is completely incapable of managing its own affairs. Even the hardest core of us yankee right wingers know the Pat Buchanan is an interesting character but should not be allowed anywhere near the presidency. I think that in the long term, Europe is probably going to be irrelevant anyway because they are not gonna have any people left in 100 years.
What a colossal mistake the United States has made. I'm so very sorry that we Americans have offended your sensibilities. I'm so struck by guilt and a sense of foolishness that I cannot help but be dumbed down into my true United States dialect. Golly me and praise da' lawd. If us hillbilly yankees had know'd dat fah all dese yeers that you wanted to be socialiss, we wood not have wastet all dat money fitin' the cold war and would not have even landed at dat beach dat was in Saving Private Ryan! We coulda let the Soviet Union win World War II in Europe all by itself, saved a ton of money, and pretty much let you all be one big happy "to each according to his needs" dome. Ah, shucks, what a waste, payin' all dat dough. Oh mercy me, ah shucks, at least we got some cool bombers out of the deal. Ethel, I'm having the big one!
My issue was not so much as scalability but of features. IP Masquerading, routing, security, etc, are all weaknesses in the Windows product line that have been trumped by Linux in one way or another. While Win2k may have addressed some of these issues, the professional edition still has the NT crippledom in terms of connections and routing and other types of admin stuff. You know that in 2.4 performance issues in Linux will be addressed, and it will still be free. You also know that to get the same level of being able to serve up a bunch of clients, you have to get Win2K Server, pay a s@#$ pot full of money, and may not still have the same level of product.
Don't get me wrong. I really do like Win2K as a desktop product. I really do like MS stuff in general. I mean, Win2K Server might well turn out to better than Linux, but, is it many dollars per client better? It would have to glow in the dark or have measurable performance benefits to do that and I really do not think it does. I mean, even NT requires that people know what they are doing. If you have to pay people that know what they are doing, pay the ones that know Linux and save at least a few bucks on the OS.
Hah hah, say the dead at Paschandale, Ypres, Sedan, Metz, Somme, Tobruk, Hurtgen Forest, Kursk, Stalingrad, Leningrad and Verdun... we are of superior "European values."
I think SUSE is the best all around Linux distro IMHO. But, my point is that why should the government have to say which OS is best? If you think SUSE Linux is the best, then why cannot consumers use that. Is European IT incapable of deciding which platform they should use? This whole European attitude of mass standardization has really gone too far.
Off-topic. I think that the UK is right to stick to its guns. I think the USA can give the UK a better free trade deal than can the EU. I mean, how 'bout a free trade zone with the United States ala NAFTA rather than having to deal with all of that EU Brussels madness. If UK wants to peg its currency to someone, how about the dollar, rather than pound? Speaking of pounds, UK would get to keep imperial measurements. UK would be closer tied to a former colony. Finally, Americans like the British more than French or Germans do. US - UK OK.
The only thing that has more lines of code in Windows 2000 is the amount of THC in your body when you wrote that.
If you think that Linux is better than Windows 2000, then how do you think that Windows 2000 is anti-competitive? What Sun Server ships with Windows 2000? In the smoke of your bong do you see Scott McNeally saying "geez, we at Sun were wrong all along about this Solaris / Java thing, so we're going to port Windows 2000 to Sparc"?
Come on dude. The EU is being ridiculous. You would think that if Europeans are so bent out of shape about a commercial operating system they would quit electing idiots like Haider, start accepting some immigrants, like the United States does, and make their own.
Never trust a continent whose people cannot even breed enough to replace themselves. They do not want a fair trading arrangement, they want protectionism. At least one European, Linus Torvalds, knew what the right thing to do was...
The entire "Windows 2000 will dominate the server market" is as impossible because it is irrelevant.
First off, a big enterprise server needs big enterprise hardware, which Windows 2000 will NOT even run on. There is no Sun Server or IBM mainframe on this planet earth that will run Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is not even 64 bit so it will not even run on Itanium with maximum effectiveness. Data Center Edition is basically a hack, is to 64 bit what Windows 3.1 was to 32 bit.
So... it's going to be mighty hard for MS to dominate.
As far as the tactic of using the desktop to leverage the server, Microsoft has already tried to do this and utterly failed. They were not able to force a COM based client/server forms model upon the world via Windows 95 and the never delivered Cairo. Instead, they had to scrap their plans, suck it up, and use http like everyone else. Who uses Microsofts' named pipes? Answer, zero. Instead, people use a derivitave of Berkeley sockets and Microsoft was forced to address the shortcomings of its own TCP/IP implementations. Many Linux fans will no doubt argue that they have not.
Is Microsoft going to be able to force large industrial users to give up Oracle? Are people going to switch from writing Java Cartridges in Oracle 8i, give up god knows how many lines of PL/SQL code to switch to a database server, SQL Server 7, that runs on lousy hardware, does not have nearly the parallelism of Oracle.
Is Microsoft going to convince Unix advocates around the world to switch from Linux / Solaris, etc, to Windows 2000? Are all of you posters blasting the "evil empire" suddenly going to say "well, Windows 2000 is actually pretty good.. guess it is time to give up Perl and learn VB." I calculate the odds of this occuring to be ZERO.
The question is not whether or not Windows 2000 will dominate the server marketplace. The question is whether Windows 2000 will even sell at all.
I like our European Allies, but, when they go and do stuff like this it makes so mad that I want to write my congressperson and demand an immediate withdrawal from NATO.
All of this transmeta hype and the end result is yet another intel clone, and a slow one and that. Sure it uses low power... but screens and drives us a lot of power on a notebook, so, no matter how good the guts of it are, it's just another Intel clone. Not impressed.
Partition as FAT FILE probably not too horrible
on
Free Be
·
· Score: 1
Actually, they do not have to be doing anything interesting at all.
All they are doing is using a big file as a way to reserve space so Windows won't stomp on it. Since the contents of this file is relatively opaque to Windows, Be can do whatever they want to within it. They can read FAT already, they know the name of this special file that they create, so they basically can get a list of sectors that make up the file and then do whatever they want to within it.
I wonder what happens if the file is moved or defragged under Windows. I imagine compressing the thing would be disasterous. If they make it survivable for defrag, or otherwise do not require contiguous space, it would seem that they would have to use all sorts of indirect stuff and links and there would be a bit of a performance hit for doing so.
If anything, it sounds like the same sort of thing that DoubleSpace / DriveSpace etc does.
The promise seems to be to develop a system that can analyize a viral molecule and automatically design a counter agent. If such a technology were developed, then bacteriological weapons would be merely annoying and not potentially catastrophic.
This must be done, if not by the United States, then somebody else.
I can certainly understand your apprehension of present US Power - Henry Kissinger has even said that the greatest foreign policy problem in the 21st century will be American stupidity. However, I should point out that the mood of the country is rapidly proceeding to one of isolationism and disengagement. Americans are not happy with the level of deployments of our forces overseas into situations where we have no perceivable gain. A backlash has developed and even traditional commitments such as NATO and the United Nations are now under scrutiny be credible candidates in the present election. While it is unlikely that the United States will abandon Europe in the immediate future, it is certainly possible. It is even possible for Europe become a rival and not a partner to the United States. For example: The US and France have competing interests in Africa. If the US can gain Russia as a staunch democratic ally, NATO and other Euro-American security treaties become pointless. The US can do whatever it wants whether Europe likes it or not.
In such a world, Europe would have to do an aweful lot to remain secure..and bacteriological weapons present an even bigger threat. If Washington DC decides that French Security is no longer in the US interest, then the French will still need to be secure. Same goes for Germany, Britian, etc. So, the need for a reliable anti-bacteriological and anti-viral warefare remains no matter who polices the world.
In short, if the United States is not working on anti-bacteriological and anti-viral agents, then old-europe had better be.
Somebody has got to be working on this. It does not matter who.
Seems like this anti-viral agent strives to attack at a common point within a virus molecule. That is, it's a static agent and in terms of breakthrough, it really is not stupendously significant. It will save lives, it will save people, but it won't change fundamentally the arms race between virus maker and virus. So long as we use static agents, human intervention will be required every time the virus evolves. We may forestall the intervention with clever attacks like this new drug, but, the virus will change, and we will have to again interven. This static model of medicine remains the same.
The dynamic model seems to be the real breakthrough. At some point we will develop medicines that can themselves evolve to match their viral and bacteriological enemies. Adaptability is essentially what nano-technology promises in medicine, but it does not have to be nano-technology. We may some day engineer our own anti-virus virus, our own anti-bacteriological bacteria.
How far away is this dynamic medicine? What will be the consequences of it? Will we have to take drugs to stop the cure from curing us? Will our existence become a continual juggling act of cure management?
If the West Coast is filled with communists, then why is that the West Coast is making so much money? Microsoft is on the west coast, do you suggest that Bill Gates is a communist? And, if the west coast is filled with homosexuals, which I doubt, is that really a bad thing? You can avoid watching TV, surfing the net, watching the movies, and living a bunker afraid you might somehow turn into a gay communist, but I'm gonna go take the cold pill so I can get well, go and take a chick to a movie and hopefully score. You right wing types always confusing being afraid of god with being afraid of life. This east coast christian liberal feels obligated out that while you are quaking in your life-fearing boots that my assualt rifle is better than yours! Go back to work on your end of the world bunker and leave us alone.
Well said. Some environmental types might argue that we should not even try to intrude on other ecosystems. I can only counter with the equally whacky notion that this sort of a capability is a technological requirement for the settlement of other planets and perhaps beneath the deep seas.
A cure for the cold and other viral agents is certainly very nice, but what I really want is a drug that makes my wanker bigger. When that comes out I'll be eating them with breakfast, lunch, dinner until I have to drag the thing around on its own little cart. Until then, medicine won't be all that exciting.
That is all Microsoft has to do to win. Why would somebody build drivers for Linux if they can already make them for Windows? Answer: they won't. Why would somebody make software for Linux when they can stick with established market? Answer: they won't.
The only compelling product reason for Linux is because it is a halfway reliable open source product. It's basically a two trick pony. Anything else Linux has are just features and Windows has plenty more of those. Windows is more friendly, it has better developer tools, it has ten versions of every program that exists for Unix and has the best games.
Hope they break up MS, but don't hope they open source Windows. You'll always be able to have fun with Linux but your revolution will go right down the corporate drain.
Ok, here's the real truth. The little cuban boy is an alien and Bill Gates knows it. All else is a cover up, is deception grotesque. The real truth lies in the kernal, the secret Windows kernal, SETI of a newer sort, P=NP secretly proven by NSA cryptographers in 1996, all internet security a sham. Awesome computing and problem solving power. Windows, secret Bill Gates conspiracy with Government deal ends at 100 billion dollars. The net worth is reached, the deal climaxes, an alien ship deposits a cuban boy, to bring a message, hello, we found you to earth. Janet Reno stops shaking for a moment, we are not alone. The boy goes back to Cuba, out of sight but really back to space, Bill Gates retires, his deal with the NSA fufilled, millions of PCs with awesome power, contact made and now the end, and yes Fidel Castro is Java Programmer!
I think it is time to admit that Bill Gates has probably gotten bored with Microsoft and that is why he quit. The press release and title of Chairman is nothing more than a bit of reassurance to Wall Street, no behind the scenes power grab.
At some level, Gates is still a person and when frustrated or unable or both he has got to want to do something aggressive, risky or both. He cannot get that satisfaction from Microsoft anymore. He can't compete with ruthless abandon because of the government. He can't be a player in innovation because he has to take a pause and learn an aweful lot. He can't plunge Microsoft into a hugely risky assault the same way he did in 1992 - it would irresponsible to his shareholders and to the economy at large.
Gates cannot have fun at Microsoft any more, so he is going to do something else. He puts enough of his name on the company to keep his shares valued highly.
Microsoft is going to become a normal American corporation, staid like an IBM and as boring as a Ford. It will make money in its market but not much news. It won't take big risks. It will be incremental, occasionally doing something flashy, but never really so risk filled, idea robbing, aggressive that you'd either despise the ethics while admiring the brilliance. There will be no eerie epics like the destruction of Borland or the fight with IBM.
Now, Microsoft has been off of its game for the last few years anyway. No doubt, a lot of you detest that company. But, when Microsoft is just another brand, when the computer industry "is mature" like cars or cola, I guarantee that you will miss these days. The computer industry is finally growing up and its not going to be nearly as much fun for it.
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This yankee salutes France. They may have dropped a few wars, but at least they gave us "The 400 Blows". Not to mention ArianeSpace. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! PS. What I really want to know is that if Quebec split off from Canada, would France want it? What do French feel about Quebec.
Quite true.
To be honest with you I think that in some ways named pipes are better than sockets. They are bidirectional, easy to program, and, as you said, can have ACL's applied to them. It seems to me that it is easier to write really fast server applications under Win2k than Unix, but it is really easier to write server applications really fast under Unix.
To me the really damning thing about Win2k at the enterprise is not the OS itself but the hardware that it runs on. A big enterprise database server really wants to have a super fast throughput to disk.
PCI based machines simply cannot deliver that. Bus speed to me doesn't really a lot for workstations, but for servers sporting big RAID arrays I think it really becomes an issue.
I mean, a Sun box has that really honkingly fast bus they use in their enterprise series, I program one and I love it. But PC's are just slow. My other flame bait on this board aside, I believe that the EU argument falls short basically because no matter how good Win2K Server might be, the hardware that it runs on sucks too much to be considered for big iron duties.
Show me the Win2K server that has the bus speed of a Sun StarFire or an IBM mainframe, and I'll concede.
1. You only need to get a ship into orbit to push the giant rocks of gold towards the earth, gravity does the rest. If you can drop the giant rock of gold on your corporate rival before he drops it on you, then you are so much better.
2. We do not have enough on earth. Speak for yourself. Space is so big we can be as greedy as we want. Everyone could have a 1000 acres of their own, if we go up.
3. Nobody really knows the composition of asteroids. The fluff thing is a theory. Actually, if an asteroid was made out of fluff, you would not need to mine it. You could wrap the dust in a big bag and take it back to earth.
4. Once up there, it takes very little mass to point your bag of gold ore towards the earth. Make sure the mass is not too big, let gravity do the rest.
5 & 6. The only reason we cannot terraform a planet is because we have not yet got the technology to be able to genetically engineer the bacteria that can convert hostile stuff into good stuff. Once we do that, we can launch a few tubs of that stuff to Venus and Mars, and let our genetically engineered "mother nature" do the rest.
7. Like what? Getting off of this junky old heap sounds like a good plan to me.
8. Depends on how much it costs. It certainly has a great deal of entertainment value. If it makes my taxes go up about $5, so much the better. Certainly better doing something feeding the poor.
9. If you don't like Tang, it means you are not dating the right kind of woman.
Actually, a neat thing would be to build a sort of a super Trebuchet, with superalloy arms the size of skyscrapers, launching satellites into space.
Well, if we are on the inside of the earth, how come if we dig a hole, we don't fall out into space...? Would it be possible to let the air out of the earth if we drilled too deep...? Does a volcano really mean that we are in a bubble of MOLTEN MAGMA? Or, is simply the outside of the earth so hot from the sun that it melts a little bit... That might mean that we are some sort of candy center in God's oven... guess that means if we see giant teeth coming out of the ground, well, it's probably too late.
If a company of the size of Microsoft pulled out of Europe, it would probably mean that the regulatory climate in Europe and US European relations had become so cold that the United States would be pulling out of Europe. The United States could probably pull the UK out of the EU, by offering a sweatheart trade deal. I think Kosovo and the recent Austrian elections plus gains proves that Europe is completely incapable of managing its own affairs. Even the hardest core of us yankee right wingers know the Pat Buchanan is an interesting character but should not be allowed anywhere near the presidency. I think that in the long term, Europe is probably going to be irrelevant anyway because they are not gonna have any people left in 100 years.
What a colossal mistake the United States has made. I'm so very sorry that we Americans have offended your sensibilities. I'm so struck by guilt and a sense of foolishness that I cannot help but be dumbed down into my true United States dialect. Golly me and praise da' lawd. If us hillbilly yankees had know'd dat fah all dese yeers that you wanted to be socialiss, we wood not have wastet all dat money fitin' the cold war and would not have even landed at dat beach dat was in Saving Private Ryan! We coulda let the Soviet Union win World War II in Europe all by itself, saved a ton of money, and pretty much let you all be one big happy "to each according to his needs" dome. Ah, shucks, what a waste, payin' all dat dough. Oh mercy me, ah shucks, at least we got some cool bombers out of the deal. Ethel, I'm having the big one!
If Microsoft was a European company, the world would be standardized on MS-DOS 3.2.
My issue was not so much as scalability but of features. IP Masquerading, routing, security, etc, are all weaknesses in the Windows product line that have been trumped by Linux in one way or another. While Win2k may have addressed some of these issues, the professional edition still has the NT crippledom in terms of connections and routing and other types of admin stuff. You know that in 2.4 performance issues in Linux will be addressed, and it will still be free. You also know that to get the same level of being able to serve up a bunch of clients, you have to get Win2K Server, pay a s@#$ pot full of money, and may not still have the same level of product.
Don't get me wrong. I really do like Win2K as a desktop product. I really do like MS stuff in general. I mean, Win2K Server might well turn out to better than Linux, but, is it many dollars per client better? It would have to glow in the dark or have measurable performance benefits to do that and I really do not think it does. I mean, even NT requires that people know what they are doing. If you have to pay people that know what they are doing, pay the ones that know Linux and save at least a few bucks on the OS.
Hah hah, say the dead at Paschandale, Ypres, Sedan, Metz, Somme, Tobruk, Hurtgen Forest, Kursk, Stalingrad, Leningrad and Verdun... we are of superior "European values."
I think SUSE is the best all around Linux distro IMHO. But, my point is that why should the government have to say which OS is best? If you think SUSE Linux is the best, then why cannot consumers use that. Is European IT incapable of deciding which platform they should use? This whole European attitude of mass standardization has really gone too far.
Off-topic. I think that the UK is right to stick to its guns. I think the USA can give the UK a better free trade deal than can the EU. I mean, how 'bout a free trade zone with the United States ala NAFTA rather than having to deal with all of that EU Brussels madness. If UK wants to peg its currency to someone, how about the dollar, rather than pound? Speaking of pounds, UK would get to keep imperial measurements. UK would be closer tied to a former colony. Finally, Americans like the British more than French or Germans do. US - UK OK.
The only thing that has more lines of code in Windows 2000 is the amount of THC in your body when you wrote that.
If you think that Linux is better than Windows 2000, then how do you think that Windows 2000 is anti-competitive? What Sun Server ships with Windows 2000? In the smoke of your bong do you see Scott McNeally saying "geez, we at Sun were wrong all along about this Solaris / Java thing, so we're going to port Windows 2000 to Sparc"?
Come on dude. The EU is being ridiculous. You would think that if Europeans are so bent out of shape about a commercial operating system they would quit electing idiots like Haider, start accepting some immigrants, like the United States does, and make their own.
Never trust a continent whose people cannot even breed enough to replace themselves. They do not want a fair trading arrangement, they want protectionism. At least one European, Linus Torvalds, knew what the right thing to do was...
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE AN AMERICAN OS BUILD YOUR OWN!
The entire "Windows 2000 will dominate the server market" is as impossible because it is irrelevant.
First off, a big enterprise server needs big enterprise hardware, which Windows 2000 will NOT even run on. There is no Sun Server or IBM mainframe on this planet earth that will run Windows 2000. Windows 2000 is not even 64 bit so it will not even run on Itanium with maximum effectiveness. Data Center Edition is basically a hack, is to 64 bit what Windows 3.1 was to 32 bit.
So... it's going to be mighty hard for MS to dominate.
As far as the tactic of using the desktop to leverage the server, Microsoft has already tried to do this and utterly failed. They were not able to force a COM based client
Is Microsoft going to be able to force large industrial users to give up Oracle? Are people going to switch from writing Java Cartridges in Oracle 8i, give up god knows how many lines of PL/SQL code to switch to a database server, SQL Server 7, that runs on lousy hardware, does not have nearly the parallelism of Oracle.
Is Microsoft going to convince Unix advocates around the world to switch from Linux / Solaris, etc, to Windows 2000? Are all of you posters blasting the "evil empire" suddenly going to say "well, Windows 2000 is actually pretty good.. guess it is time to give up Perl and learn VB." I calculate the odds of this occuring to be ZERO.
The question is not whether or not Windows 2000 will dominate the server marketplace. The question is whether Windows 2000 will even sell at all.
I like our European Allies, but, when they go and do stuff like this it makes so mad that I want to write my congressperson and demand an immediate withdrawal from NATO.
All of this transmeta hype and the end result is yet another intel clone, and a slow one and that. Sure it uses low power... but screens and drives us a lot of power on a notebook, so, no matter how good the guts of it are, it's just another Intel clone. Not impressed.
Actually, they do not have to be doing anything interesting at all.
All they are doing is using a big file as a way to reserve space so Windows won't stomp on it. Since the contents of this file is relatively opaque to Windows, Be can do whatever they want to within it. They can read FAT already, they know the name of this special file that they create, so they basically can get a list of sectors that make up the file and then do whatever they want to within it.
I wonder what happens if the file is moved or defragged under Windows. I imagine compressing the thing would be disasterous. If they make it survivable for defrag, or otherwise do not require contiguous space, it would seem that they would have to use all sorts of indirect stuff and links and there would be a bit of a performance hit for doing so.
If anything, it sounds like the same sort of thing that DoubleSpace / DriveSpace etc does.
The promise seems to be to develop a system that can analyize a viral molecule and automatically design a counter agent. If such a technology were developed, then bacteriological weapons would be merely annoying and not potentially catastrophic.
This must be done, if not by the United States, then somebody else.
I can certainly understand your apprehension of present US Power - Henry Kissinger has even said that the greatest foreign policy problem in the 21st century will be American stupidity. However, I should point out that the mood of the country is rapidly proceeding to one of isolationism and disengagement. Americans are not happy with the level of deployments of our forces overseas into situations where we have no perceivable gain. A backlash has developed and even traditional commitments such as NATO and the United Nations are now under scrutiny be credible candidates in the present election. While it is unlikely that the United States will abandon Europe in the immediate future, it is certainly possible. It is even possible for Europe become a rival and not a partner to the United States. For example: The US and France have competing interests in Africa. If the US can gain Russia as a staunch democratic ally, NATO and other Euro-American security treaties become pointless. The US can do whatever it wants whether Europe likes it or not.
In such a world, Europe would have to do an aweful lot to remain secure..and bacteriological weapons present an even bigger threat. If Washington DC decides that French Security is no longer in the US interest, then the French will still need to be secure. Same goes for Germany, Britian, etc. So, the need for a reliable anti-bacteriological and anti-viral warefare remains no matter who polices the world.
In short, if the United States is not working on anti-bacteriological and anti-viral agents, then old-europe had better be.
Somebody has got to be working on this. It does not matter who.
Seems like this anti-viral agent strives to attack at a common point within a virus molecule. That is, it's a static agent and in terms of breakthrough, it really is not stupendously significant. It will save lives, it will save people, but it won't change fundamentally the arms race between virus maker and virus. So long as we use static agents, human intervention will be required every time the virus evolves. We may forestall the intervention with clever attacks like this new drug, but, the virus will change, and we will have to again interven. This static model of medicine remains the same.
The dynamic model seems to be the real breakthrough. At some point we will develop medicines that can themselves evolve to match their viral and bacteriological enemies. Adaptability is essentially what nano-technology promises in medicine, but it does not have to be nano-technology. We may some day engineer our own anti-virus virus, our own anti-bacteriological bacteria.
How far away is this dynamic medicine? What will be the consequences of it? Will we have to take drugs to stop the cure from curing us? Will our existence become a continual juggling act of cure management?
If the West Coast is filled with communists, then why is that the West Coast is making so much money? Microsoft is on the west coast, do you suggest that Bill Gates is a communist? And, if the west coast is filled with homosexuals, which I doubt, is that really a bad thing? You can avoid watching TV, surfing the net, watching the movies, and living a bunker afraid you might somehow turn into a gay communist, but I'm gonna go take the cold pill so I can get well, go and take a chick to a movie and hopefully score. You right wing types always confusing being afraid of god with being afraid of life. This east coast christian liberal feels obligated out that while you are quaking in your life-fearing boots that my assualt rifle is better than yours! Go back to work on your end of the world bunker and leave us alone.
Well said. Some environmental types might argue that we should not even try to intrude on other ecosystems. I can only counter with the equally whacky notion that this sort of a capability is a technological requirement for the settlement of other planets and perhaps beneath the deep seas.
A cure for the cold and other viral agents is certainly very nice, but what I really want is a drug that makes my wanker bigger. When that comes out I'll be eating them with breakfast, lunch, dinner until I have to drag the thing around on its own little cart. Until then, medicine won't be all that exciting.
If Windows is open sourced, Linux will die.
That is all Microsoft has to do to win. Why would somebody build drivers for Linux if they can already make them for Windows? Answer: they won't. Why would somebody make software for Linux when they can stick with established market? Answer: they won't.
The only compelling product reason for Linux is because it is a halfway reliable open source product. It's basically a two trick pony. Anything else Linux has are just features and Windows has plenty more of those. Windows is more friendly, it has better developer tools, it has ten versions of every program that exists for Unix and has the best games.
Hope they break up MS, but don't hope they open source Windows. You'll always be able to have fun with Linux but your revolution will go right down the corporate drain.
Ok, here's the real truth. The little cuban boy is an alien and Bill Gates knows it. All else is a cover up, is deception grotesque. The real truth lies in the kernal, the secret Windows kernal, SETI of a newer sort, P=NP secretly proven by NSA cryptographers in 1996, all internet security a sham. Awesome computing and problem solving power. Windows, secret Bill Gates conspiracy with Government deal ends at 100 billion dollars. The net worth is reached, the deal climaxes, an alien ship deposits a cuban boy, to bring a message, hello, we found you to earth. Janet Reno stops shaking for a moment, we are not alone. The boy goes back to Cuba, out of sight but really back to space, Bill Gates retires, his deal with the NSA fufilled, millions of PCs with awesome power, contact made and now the end, and yes Fidel Castro is Java Programmer!
I think it is time to admit that Bill Gates has probably gotten bored with Microsoft and that is why he quit. The press release and title of Chairman is nothing more than a bit of reassurance to Wall Street, no behind the scenes power grab.
At some level, Gates is still a person and when frustrated or unable or both he has got to want to do something aggressive, risky or both. He cannot get that satisfaction from Microsoft anymore. He can't compete with ruthless abandon because of the government. He can't be a player in innovation because he has to take a pause and learn an aweful lot. He can't plunge Microsoft into a hugely risky assault the same way he did in 1992 - it would irresponsible to his shareholders and to the economy at large.
Gates cannot have fun at Microsoft any more, so he is going to do something else. He puts enough of his name on the company to keep his shares valued highly.
Microsoft is going to become a normal American corporation, staid like an IBM and as boring as a Ford. It will make money in its market but not much news. It won't take big risks. It will be incremental, occasionally doing something flashy, but never really so risk filled, idea robbing, aggressive that you'd either despise the ethics while admiring the brilliance. There will be no eerie epics like the destruction of Borland or the fight with IBM.
Now, Microsoft has been off of its game for the last few years anyway. No doubt, a lot of you detest that company. But, when Microsoft is just another brand, when the computer industry "is mature" like cars or cola, I guarantee that you will miss these days. The computer industry is finally growing up and its not going to be nearly as much fun for it.