Microsoft won't try to dominate the search market if there is no money in it
Internet Explorer. Hotmail. Xbox. XP CD burning. Media Player.
And those are just the ongoing money-losing projects, and not the products they've given away for free until the competition was all dead and then immediately made their offering disappear. You remember stacker? Or zip folders? Of course not.
I know he's not CEO anymore (at least not in title), but Mr. Gates refuses to lose at *any* competition. It's not about profit to him, it's about beating the other guy. He poured billions of dollars into IE, giving it away for free to the you and I, and bribing ISPs to switch until Netscape was crushed, then let it languish.
Microsoft does not operate in any rational way when it comes to competition, and it doesn't have to.
Despite being an atheist, I strongly believe that I should treat others as I would want to be treated. And that includes ramming my religious beliefs down other people's throats. I would prefer that they don't do it to me, and thus I don't do it to them, even if they do do it to me.
The point being that in the US and elsewhere, a disproportionately large number of catholic priests - especially those working at catholic schools - have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children. Many Americans believe (rightly or not) that this has something to do with vows of chastity. By this reasoning, the problem is likely systemic.
It serves as a running joke that priest = child molester. In this context, the headmaster's paranoia about "online predators" could be based on personal experience. His excuse certainly seems pretty transparent to me, since the real risk is astoundingly low, especially for students in high school who certainly know better.
You know what I've noticed about the social customs I "hate"? I'm horrible at them. Or I don't understand them. Or both. And the thing is, the fact that I'm horrible at them came first. I've come to accept this and I find better understanding of these social customs and why other people like them.
But the fact of the matter is, that there are lots of Real Geeks out there that are outgoing and have lots of friends and go to parties. If you got out more, you'd know that. But instead, you're taking the position that we're all fakes and hate us for it.
Spoken like someone who's never even wrestled with a housecat.
Getting into a bare-knuckles brawl with even the smaller modern-day predators like a badger is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Forget one that's "only 3 feet tall" as you blithely put it.
I would love to agree with you but unfortunately I can't.
He said most serious users, not managers. Managers are managers because they're too incompetent to be workers, and they are placed within the organization where they can do the least damage.
Asshats like the one you just mentioned are probably best dealt with by a public competition on a playing field that is unfairly tilted in your favour. His arrogance and confidence in the high techness of windows will mean that he'll agree to such ludicrous terms. Choose tasks that you know will be done faster on the command line and take ages to do in windows. One of the ones I love (and hate to do with windows) is changing an obscure configuration item in a sea of options. When your configuration is in text, it's a matter of searching for its name. When it's in a big list of checkmarks, it takes forever to search by eyeballing it. Then there's tasks like `top -ocpu -n |lpr`, or `du -k |awk '{if ($1 > 50000) print $2}'`. Just *try* doing that in windows and see how long it takes.
Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself.' What could be done to change computing to help mitigate this multitasking?"
This isn't a technical problem, this is a social problem. The problem is that too many people want to get in touch with you. And moreover, your boss has eliminated the secretarial pool about 15 years ago. Now, people can get in touch with the person they want to get in touch with. The developer of the program that they use. The systems administrator of the network they use. The guy at the cable company that can fix your reception.
You could employ technical solutions to this problem all day if you like, but it's not going to do any good. Lookout express already has a method for determining the priority of e-mail, but really, who uses that without abusing it? Who was the last person you know that actually marked their e-mail as "lowest priority"? No, everyone's message has the highest priority. It needs to be fixed *now*, and it's more important than anyone else in line.
I suppose one solution would be for your boss to hire more people like you, since you're clearly not getting any work done with the constant interruption. But the competition doesn't and won't do that, so you can't afford to do it either.
Oh, and the technology isn't the problem either. It's merely the facilitator, because now it's *easy* to get in touch.
Heh. Except that it's pretty clear that this warmongerer doesn't give a damn about keeping the books balanced, and has presided over the country's largest budget deficit in history.
Coincidentally, I don't think that this whole manned space mission thing will really go ahead, and NASA and JPL will be the worse for it once the political winds change direction.
You forgot the bit in Gattica where it was illegal for companies - and especially large spacefaring government institutions - to test your genes.
The thing is, that there were frequent tests for "drugs", and the way you passed "security identification" wasn't with a keycard, it was with your blood.
But all that was a sham in much the same way that SUVs are classified as "light trucks" to get around government regulations regarding fuel efficiency in cars.
Yeah, but every once in a while, there's a movie that's good enough for us to actually endure all that to a) see it sooner rather than later and b) see it on a big fuckin' screen with a sound system that makes yours look like it was made by fisher price.
Pres. Bush: "I take full responsibility for the massive fuckups that I've perpetuated despite having spent a trillion dollars on the problem, increased the size of the government, and raised spending all while... LOOK OVER THERE! PORN! EVIL, EVIL PORN!"
Press: "Huh? Where? Ohmygod!" Press: "That's disgusting!" Press: "No it's not, he's consenting." Press: "Oh yeah? How would you know?" Press: "I uh... hey, where'd the President go?"
There's also a point of diminishing returns. If you will never have to do the job again, it's probably worth it to just do it the grunt way once. On the other hand, if you're doing the same damn thing every day, it's best to find a way to make it go away.
We are still in a world where an attack like the Slammer worm, combined with a PC BIOS eraser or disk locking tool, could wipe out half the PCs exposed to the Internet in a few hours
Except for the fact that if anyone ever actually did that, they would be hunted down in record time, arrested, imprisoned, raped, beaten, shot, stabbed, then released into the woods, only to be hunted down again by vicious dogs and torn to shreds before finally being set on fire. And then sentencing will commence. The sentence will likely be something to the effect of one million consecutive one-year sentences, with the chance of parole after 6 months. Each time.
Anyone smart enough to implement such a virus is smart enough to know what's coming.
So when a worm or virus infects half the internet connected computers in the world in a few hours, how do you explain that?
The fact of the matter is that if you made a virus that spread as fast as it could (and a lot of recent virus writers try to avoid that, because it would bring the whole internet to its knees, and they'd be in jail the week after) and then destroy the computers it infected inside of 24 hours, we'd all be fucked, good and hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft won't try to dominate the search market if there is no money in it
Internet Explorer.
Hotmail.
Xbox.
XP CD burning.
Media Player.
And those are just the ongoing money-losing projects, and not the products they've given away for free until the competition was all dead and then immediately made their offering disappear. You remember stacker? Or zip folders? Of course not.
I know he's not CEO anymore (at least not in title), but Mr. Gates refuses to lose at *any* competition. It's not about profit to him, it's about beating the other guy. He poured billions of dollars into IE, giving it away for free to the you and I, and bribing ISPs to switch until Netscape was crushed, then let it languish.
Microsoft does not operate in any rational way when it comes to competition, and it doesn't have to.
Who said I was trying to be witty?
Ohhhh... *I* get it. *You're* trying to be witty and snooty by saying I'm not being witty.
Go away.
What's wrong with being anti-religious?
Despite being an atheist, I strongly believe that I should treat others as I would want to be treated. And that includes ramming my religious beliefs down other people's throats. I would prefer that they don't do it to me, and thus I don't do it to them, even if they do do it to me.
You missed the point.
The point being that in the US and elsewhere, a disproportionately large number of catholic priests - especially those working at catholic schools - have been convicted of the sexual abuse of children. Many Americans believe (rightly or not) that this has something to do with vows of chastity. By this reasoning, the problem is likely systemic.
It serves as a running joke that priest = child molester. In this context, the headmaster's paranoia about "online predators" could be based on personal experience. His excuse certainly seems pretty transparent to me, since the real risk is astoundingly low, especially for students in high school who certainly know better.
Heh. No, I actually meant Berkley Systems Distribution and their devil-booth-babes.
Yeah, that's it. That's what I meant.
Spoken like a true grumpy old man.
You know what I've noticed about the social customs I "hate"? I'm horrible at them. Or I don't understand them. Or both. And the thing is, the fact that I'm horrible at them came first. I've come to accept this and I find better understanding of these social customs and why other people like them.
But the fact of the matter is, that there are lots of Real Geeks out there that are outgoing and have lots of friends and go to parties. If you got out more, you'd know that. But instead, you're taking the position that we're all fakes and hate us for it.
We usually go to BSDM play parties for Halloween. Or host them, if we really feel like it.
:)
Kinky and/or goth girls really know how to party.
It looks like the next version of Windows will be coming out pretty soon then. :)
Spoken like someone who's never even wrestled with a housecat.
Getting into a bare-knuckles brawl with even the smaller modern-day predators like a badger is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Forget one that's "only 3 feet tall" as you blithely put it.
The day I come in front of the Gartner audience and say we have a better Unix than Linux
Please do make an operating system that's better than Linux. We've been waiting 10 years already, and you still haven't even tried.
Most serious users will mock such sassery.
I would love to agree with you but unfortunately I can't.
He said most serious users, not managers. Managers are managers because they're too incompetent to be workers, and they are placed within the organization where they can do the least damage.
Asshats like the one you just mentioned are probably best dealt with by a public competition on a playing field that is unfairly tilted in your favour. His arrogance and confidence in the high techness of windows will mean that he'll agree to such ludicrous terms. Choose tasks that you know will be done faster on the command line and take ages to do in windows. One of the ones I love (and hate to do with windows) is changing an obscure configuration item in a sea of options. When your configuration is in text, it's a matter of searching for its name. When it's in a big list of checkmarks, it takes forever to search by eyeballing it. Then there's tasks like `top -ocpu -n |lpr`, or `du -k |awk '{if ($1 > 50000) print $2}'`. Just *try* doing that in windows and see how long it takes.
Thank you.
Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself.' What could be done to change computing to help mitigate this multitasking?"
This isn't a technical problem, this is a social problem. The problem is that too many people want to get in touch with you. And moreover, your boss has eliminated the secretarial pool about 15 years ago. Now, people can get in touch with the person they want to get in touch with. The developer of the program that they use. The systems administrator of the network they use. The guy at the cable company that can fix your reception.
You could employ technical solutions to this problem all day if you like, but it's not going to do any good. Lookout express already has a method for determining the priority of e-mail, but really, who uses that without abusing it? Who was the last person you know that actually marked their e-mail as "lowest priority"? No, everyone's message has the highest priority. It needs to be fixed *now*, and it's more important than anyone else in line.
I suppose one solution would be for your boss to hire more people like you, since you're clearly not getting any work done with the constant interruption. But the competition doesn't and won't do that, so you can't afford to do it either.
Oh, and the technology isn't the problem either. It's merely the facilitator, because now it's *easy* to get in touch.
Heh. Except that it's pretty clear that this warmongerer doesn't give a damn about keeping the books balanced, and has presided over the country's largest budget deficit in history.
Coincidentally, I don't think that this whole manned space mission thing will really go ahead, and NASA and JPL will be the worse for it once the political winds change direction.
We won't discriminate against you for your genetic makeup, we promise.
Now just pee in this cup for the mandatory drug test... we *promise* we won't use it for genetic tests. Really. We do. It's illegal to do that...
You forgot the bit in Gattica where it was illegal for companies - and especially large spacefaring government institutions - to test your genes.
The thing is, that there were frequent tests for "drugs", and the way you passed "security identification" wasn't with a keycard, it was with your blood.
But all that was a sham in much the same way that SUVs are classified as "light trucks" to get around government regulations regarding fuel efficiency in cars.
If google declares war on Microsoft, that means they're going to lose.
I mean really, when was the last time anyone's ever won in any marketplace against Microsoft?
Yeah, but every once in a while, there's a movie that's good enough for us to actually endure all that to a) see it sooner rather than later and b) see it on a big fuckin' screen with a sound system that makes yours look like it was made by fisher price.
Pres. Bush: "I take full responsibility for the massive fuckups that I've perpetuated despite having spent a trillion dollars on the problem, increased the size of the government, and raised spending all while... LOOK OVER THERE! PORN! EVIL, EVIL PORN!"
Press: "Huh? Where? Ohmygod!"
Press: "That's disgusting!"
Press: "No it's not, he's consenting."
Press: "Oh yeah? How would you know?"
Press: "I uh... hey, where'd the President go?"
Heh. Reality is a bitch, isn't it?
There's also a point of diminishing returns. If you will never have to do the job again, it's probably worth it to just do it the grunt way once. On the other hand, if you're doing the same damn thing every day, it's best to find a way to make it go away.
We are still in a world where an attack like the Slammer worm, combined with a PC BIOS eraser or disk locking tool, could wipe out half the PCs exposed to the Internet in a few hours
Except for the fact that if anyone ever actually did that, they would be hunted down in record time, arrested, imprisoned, raped, beaten, shot, stabbed, then released into the woods, only to be hunted down again by vicious dogs and torn to shreds before finally being set on fire. And then sentencing will commence. The sentence will likely be something to the effect of one million consecutive one-year sentences, with the chance of parole after 6 months. Each time.
Anyone smart enough to implement such a virus is smart enough to know what's coming.
I'd rather live in fear of a dark future than live in darkness now, thank you very much.
So when a worm or virus infects half the internet connected computers in the world in a few hours, how do you explain that?
The fact of the matter is that if you made a virus that spread as fast as it could (and a lot of recent virus writers try to avoid that, because it would bring the whole internet to its knees, and they'd be in jail the week after) and then destroy the computers it infected inside of 24 hours, we'd all be fucked, good and hard.
Not so stupid:
A phone beeping annoyingly to alert the managers and security guards at Visa that someone is stealing mountains of customer data.
It's all context.