There’s this company, TerraPower, which former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myrhvold and I have spun out of his invention group, Intellectual Ventures. We’ve got a new nuclear design, a generation four.
If only energy companies would depend on the patented technologies of Gates' cronies, the world would be a much better place. Intellectual Ventures is that patent troll company run by ex-Microsofters.
I think the problem is the issue is being thought of as an either/or problem when it's not. The energy solution should fit the geography. I'm all for nuclear power in the northeast, but not in Texas where solar/wind are feasible and natural disasters (hurricanes/tornados) can be a threat to safely harnessing nuclear power.
Also, I think Gates, along with some commenters here, are neglecting new energy technologies such as the Bloom Box (http://www.bloomenergy.com/).
Supporting China isn't necessarily a problem. I've done work for a Chinese manufacturer and I have no moral qualms about it. The difference is that they were an honest business. I wouldn't work for a Chinese company that actively engages in the censorship of the internet. That's a dishonest business.
This isn't a China = Bad issue. It's a censorship = Bad issue. Google had no problem doing business in China. They had a problem with censoring their search results.
The biggest difference is Microsoft was attempting their classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. Google's not out to destroy Java or steal it away, they're just avoiding the licensing tax on the interpreter which shouldn't exist in the first place. It's no different than Java on OS X before Oracle bought Sun. Why do you think Apple abandoned Java and left it up to Oracle when they got ahold of it?
Let's face it, most programming languages are so similar that it shouldn't cost anything to use them. Like you mention, it's all just math. The syntax slightly changes but the core concepts remain the same.
Also, I think McNealy was a hypocrite when it came to Microsoft. He didn't hide the fact that they were the enemy and Sun would do anything to hurt them. That's why we have OpenOffice.
Please. I doubt Sun would have ever filed any of these lawsuits. They actually wanted people to use Java. I don't think it should matter that Oracle bought them or not: when Google implemented Java into Android Oracle didn't own Sun and Sun apparently didn't have a problem with what Google was doing. They were probably happy about it. By not suing, Sun set a precedent on the matter which Oracle shouldn't be able to change because of the purchase.
Also, all these silly patents Oracle acquired along with Sun were probably defensive-minded. It's no surprise that some of them are becoming invalidated with the scrutiny that comes with using them offensively to sue.
Expect to see the use of Java decline. If Sun had been this litigious about Java it probably would never have become as popular as it has. No one wants to worry about paying a tax to Oracle just for using a language for which many non-taxed alternatives exist.
I'm not a lawyer. Maybe the law is actually on Oracle's side, but that doesn't make it right.
Where is the hydrogen going to come from? Or the energy to generate it?
Hopefully near a nuclear power plant or some other clean source of energy. Diesel may be used to transport it in the interim, but the whole idea behind a paradigm shift would be that eventually the semis would run off of hydrogen as well.
I see that as more likely than bringing nuclear power everywhere. Considering the incident in Japan, all the nuclear skeptics (and the coal industry) now have something to point to to scare the public away from supporting new nuclear plants. Just look what's happening in Europe -- several countries have pledged to drop their support for nuclear power.
I also have to admit that I have an ulterior reason to support hydrogen -- they drive like normal cars and I'm a car nut. I want my manual transmission and pistons (or, even better, piston in the case of rotary). I want combustion but I acknowledge the damage current engines are wreaking on the environment. They don't quite pack the same punch as a gasoline engine, but I think that can be overcome in time.
But despite my bias towards combustion, I do think that, in the long term, hydrogen is a better solution. It's also better for the market as various companies can compete and bring prices down. The utilities monopolies would love for everyone to drive electric.
Liquid hydrogen is the way to go. All these electric cars are just slowing down the development of hydrogen. There cars work and they work well -- BMW and Ford/Mazda have bivalent models that can switch between hydrogen and gasoline. That's what needs to be pushed onto the market, not this electric crap.
I'd be all for electric if nuclear power was common, but in my state almost all the energy is produced in coal power plants. I just don't see how that is so much different from burning gasoline. If the automotive industry is going to undergo a paradigm shift, it should be the best one available, not some half-assed compromise.
I have a fairly fast internet connection and Chrome seems to be just a tad bit faster than Safari, which seems to be a tad bit faster than Firefox. My uncle, however, uses the cheapest internet he could find and it just sucks. I suggested he switch from Firefox to Chrome and it made a world of difference. Sure, this is a small anecdote, but in our situation Chrome was noticeably faster on his slow internet connection.
I brought my laptop over there a couple weeks ago and after a couple minutes of Safari (which is my default) I couldn't bear it and opened up Chrome. Voila. It made a world of difference and actually made it seem like he wasn't being ripped off by his provider. I don't know what Chrome's secret is, but this is the type of thing that get people to switch. I never bothered switching from Safari to Chrome b/c the difference is so minimal on my speedy nerd internet and I'm too lazy to switch everything over. But with Joe-shmoe cheap-as-dirt internet, Chrome saves a lot of time.
When so many people at Microsoft all conform to a similar corporate vision and the ones who think outside the box, such as Ozzie, didn't last and are no longer with the company, who could take the reigns without either continuing down the path of Gates/Balmer or conflicting with the vast majority of employees? I'm willing to bet if Microsoft found a guy like Steve Jobs to take the CEO position it would cause so much internal strife that it would hurt the company. There would be too many disagreements and perhaps an employee exodus. How do you think the engineers will feel when nine times out of ten the CEO tells them that their work isn't good enough, that they have to fix X and Y and add Z in for good measure? And it has to be done within the week. That's not the lifestyle these guys are used to. They're used to telling the CEO what's good, not the other way around.
Or, to take an extreme example, if you were to put a guy like Bill Joy in charge he would run the company into the ground by being ethical. Most of Microsoft's money comes from leveraging their dominance with Windows and Office. If someone were to open source them, the company would have to find a new goose to lay golden eggs. They've been searching for that goose for decades, investing billions and hiring some of the brightest minds. Then think of all the lost money from no longer extorting other companies with "patent protection" (look what Oracle is doing with Sun . ..), think of all the government officials that would no longer be bribed, all the lock-in technologies that would be abandoned. It may be good for the market, good for the world in general, but it would be bad for Microsoft. They're so colossal that growth means monopoly. The only reason I no longer consider them a monopoly is because they've been so stagnant for the past decade while many of their rivals have had so much success.
I do think that, in either situation, it could work in the long run. But I also think in either situation it would be extremely damaging in the short term and the board may not put up with it long enough for the company to change for the good. There's a reason people like Ozzie don't last at Microsoft.
1. If a loved one dies them memory of the love remains. Of course you no longer love them, they aren't there to love. All you have are memories.
2. Paternal/Maternal love is natural. Either the parent or child must do something horrible to one another to break that bond. And yes, I would argue that if one side breaks the bond it's broken. Love is shared.
3. Finally, as I told the other guy, don't try bringing subjectivity into an argument. No, nothing is subjective but fancies. Not love, not art, not morality. All reality is objective. My opinions may be wrong, but they certainly aren't right in my mind, wrong in another's. If my perception of love differs from another's than one, or both of our perceptions is wrong. We can't disagree and both be right.
I agree with you but one small nitpick: what does it matter if a robot is old enough to consent?
Also, I don't think passing the Turing test is enough. I think that's enough to trick someone to thinking they're in love, like in the case of a person who pretends to love another for the sake of using them, but with that level of dishonesty I wouldn't consider it true love because you're being lied to and what you think you love is actually something else. Regardless, I've always found the Turing test to be a poor metric for determining sentience. Not that I can think of a better way. That's a tough nut to crack.
If only you were being sarcastic this comment would actually be funny.
Personally, I've never considered love a one-sided affair. If it's one-sided then it's an infatuation, not love. The robot is incapable of love, therefore the feeling cannot be mutual, so love cannot exist between human and robot.
btw, any argument that begins with 'who are you to determine. ..' is a bad one. The world isn't subjective. If you can't accept that fact then who are you to determine anything at all?
They don't. But they do care about losing customers. With all the major investments these companies have made with trying to migrate their users to the cloud, the last thing they could afford is for the public to distrust cloud technologies and revert back to the old ways of storing everything locally.
If the Patriot Act is perceived as a threat to 'cloud technology' (I hate the term) then perhaps these tech giants who have the power to ram their agendas down the throat of the government (Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, IBM, Google, ect.) will lobby against the Patriot Act. If the Patriot Act is bad for business then business may actually take the side of the people and try to use their money and influence to do away with it.
I used Wave for a collaboration project and it was scary when they announced the discontinuation. I was pretty mad. But then they offered a way to export everything in either html or pdf format and they've given Wave over to the open source community as Wave-in-a-Box. When Wave-in-a-Box is complete, I should be able to just load it up on a server of my choice (or perhaps someone else will choose to host a service using the code).
I understand why they discontinued it. It required too many resources on Google's part for a niche product. But for those of us that use it, we'll always be grateful for the time and effort Google put into making it a reality. It sure beats the hell out of using a web forum for a collaborative project, especially when you want to work simultaneously.
According to the meta description, the mystery Google service does this: "Get more of what you love by searching across numerous Google products with one click."
It seems to do pretty much what it describes: It ties your search term into numerous Google products to see if there's anything interesting/useful.
Or I could just avoid Office like the plague whenever possible, as I've always done. Unfortunately, my boss doesn't let me get away with avoiding it completely, but he doesn't realize I use Symphony 90% of the time (damn you Excel spreadsheets!).
The last thing I want to do is spend my time learning where the icons are on a MS interface. I could be doing important things, like trolling Slashdot.
I don't understand why they don't just make the ribbon an option. I can never find anything on it. Fortunately, I rarely have to. I just use Excel when I need to view a spreadsheet that won't play nice with Symphony. I feel sorry for the guy who has to author them.
Does it have the horrible ribbon thing that the newer versions of Office have? If so, I think it will have a hard time catching on (I tried that "See How it Works" link on their site but they wanted me to install Silverlight). No one I know took OOo or Symphony seriously until MS came out with the ribbon interface. It was at that point they felt the need to see what type of competition was out there.
Slashdot Mirror
There’s this company, TerraPower, which former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myrhvold and I have spun out of his invention group, Intellectual Ventures. We’ve got a new nuclear design, a generation four.
If only energy companies would depend on the patented technologies of Gates' cronies, the world would be a much better place. Intellectual Ventures is that patent troll company run by ex-Microsofters.
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/12/08/intellectual-ventures-files-first-three-patent-infringement-lawsuits-against-nine-companies-including-mcafee-symantec-altera/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101208/11073712190/intellectual-ventures-files-its-first-lawsuits-giant-patent-troll-awakened.shtml
I think the problem is the issue is being thought of as an either/or problem when it's not. The energy solution should fit the geography. I'm all for nuclear power in the northeast, but not in Texas where solar/wind are feasible and natural disasters (hurricanes/tornados) can be a threat to safely harnessing nuclear power.
Also, I think Gates, along with some commenters here, are neglecting new energy technologies such as the Bloom Box (http://www.bloomenergy.com/).
It is just the professor pushing people to use Linux
Good for him.
That, or people in China speak Chinese.
How about Mandarin or Cantonese?
Sorry, had to be pedantic.
Supporting China isn't necessarily a problem. I've done work for a Chinese manufacturer and I have no moral qualms about it. The difference is that they were an honest business. I wouldn't work for a Chinese company that actively engages in the censorship of the internet. That's a dishonest business.
This isn't a China = Bad issue. It's a censorship = Bad issue. Google had no problem doing business in China. They had a problem with censoring their search results.
As to 'little citizens' - so why don't you do something about it? Start your own business, work your ass off and become somebody.
Gee, why didn't this ever occur to me before? I'll get right on that with my vast amount of wealth and resources. I'm going to be somebody!
The biggest difference is Microsoft was attempting their classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy. Google's not out to destroy Java or steal it away, they're just avoiding the licensing tax on the interpreter which shouldn't exist in the first place. It's no different than Java on OS X before Oracle bought Sun. Why do you think Apple abandoned Java and left it up to Oracle when they got ahold of it?
Let's face it, most programming languages are so similar that it shouldn't cost anything to use them. Like you mention, it's all just math. The syntax slightly changes but the core concepts remain the same.
Also, I think McNealy was a hypocrite when it came to Microsoft. He didn't hide the fact that they were the enemy and Sun would do anything to hurt them. That's why we have OpenOffice.
Please. I doubt Sun would have ever filed any of these lawsuits. They actually wanted people to use Java. I don't think it should matter that Oracle bought them or not: when Google implemented Java into Android Oracle didn't own Sun and Sun apparently didn't have a problem with what Google was doing. They were probably happy about it. By not suing, Sun set a precedent on the matter which Oracle shouldn't be able to change because of the purchase.
Also, all these silly patents Oracle acquired along with Sun were probably defensive-minded. It's no surprise that some of them are becoming invalidated with the scrutiny that comes with using them offensively to sue.
Expect to see the use of Java decline. If Sun had been this litigious about Java it probably would never have become as popular as it has. No one wants to worry about paying a tax to Oracle just for using a language for which many non-taxed alternatives exist.
I'm not a lawyer. Maybe the law is actually on Oracle's side, but that doesn't make it right.
Where is the hydrogen going to come from? Or the energy to generate it?
Hopefully near a nuclear power plant or some other clean source of energy. Diesel may be used to transport it in the interim, but the whole idea behind a paradigm shift would be that eventually the semis would run off of hydrogen as well.
I see that as more likely than bringing nuclear power everywhere. Considering the incident in Japan, all the nuclear skeptics (and the coal industry) now have something to point to to scare the public away from supporting new nuclear plants. Just look what's happening in Europe -- several countries have pledged to drop their support for nuclear power.
I also have to admit that I have an ulterior reason to support hydrogen -- they drive like normal cars and I'm a car nut. I want my manual transmission and pistons (or, even better, piston in the case of rotary). I want combustion but I acknowledge the damage current engines are wreaking on the environment. They don't quite pack the same punch as a gasoline engine, but I think that can be overcome in time.
But despite my bias towards combustion, I do think that, in the long term, hydrogen is a better solution. It's also better for the market as various companies can compete and bring prices down. The utilities monopolies would love for everyone to drive electric.
Liquid hydrogen is the way to go. All these electric cars are just slowing down the development of hydrogen. There cars work and they work well -- BMW and Ford/Mazda have bivalent models that can switch between hydrogen and gasoline. That's what needs to be pushed onto the market, not this electric crap.
I'd be all for electric if nuclear power was common, but in my state almost all the energy is produced in coal power plants. I just don't see how that is so much different from burning gasoline. If the automotive industry is going to undergo a paradigm shift, it should be the best one available, not some half-assed compromise.
I have a fairly fast internet connection and Chrome seems to be just a tad bit faster than Safari, which seems to be a tad bit faster than Firefox. My uncle, however, uses the cheapest internet he could find and it just sucks. I suggested he switch from Firefox to Chrome and it made a world of difference. Sure, this is a small anecdote, but in our situation Chrome was noticeably faster on his slow internet connection.
I brought my laptop over there a couple weeks ago and after a couple minutes of Safari (which is my default) I couldn't bear it and opened up Chrome. Voila. It made a world of difference and actually made it seem like he wasn't being ripped off by his provider. I don't know what Chrome's secret is, but this is the type of thing that get people to switch. I never bothered switching from Safari to Chrome b/c the difference is so minimal on my speedy nerd internet and I'm too lazy to switch everything over. But with Joe-shmoe cheap-as-dirt internet, Chrome saves a lot of time.
When so many people at Microsoft all conform to a similar corporate vision and the ones who think outside the box, such as Ozzie, didn't last and are no longer with the company, who could take the reigns without either continuing down the path of Gates/Balmer or conflicting with the vast majority of employees? I'm willing to bet if Microsoft found a guy like Steve Jobs to take the CEO position it would cause so much internal strife that it would hurt the company. There would be too many disagreements and perhaps an employee exodus. How do you think the engineers will feel when nine times out of ten the CEO tells them that their work isn't good enough, that they have to fix X and Y and add Z in for good measure? And it has to be done within the week. That's not the lifestyle these guys are used to. They're used to telling the CEO what's good, not the other way around.
Or, to take an extreme example, if you were to put a guy like Bill Joy in charge he would run the company into the ground by being ethical. Most of Microsoft's money comes from leveraging their dominance with Windows and Office. If someone were to open source them, the company would have to find a new goose to lay golden eggs. They've been searching for that goose for decades, investing billions and hiring some of the brightest minds. Then think of all the lost money from no longer extorting other companies with "patent protection" (look what Oracle is doing with Sun . . .), think of all the government officials that would no longer be bribed, all the lock-in technologies that would be abandoned. It may be good for the market, good for the world in general, but it would be bad for Microsoft. They're so colossal that growth means monopoly. The only reason I no longer consider them a monopoly is because they've been so stagnant for the past decade while many of their rivals have had so much success.
I do think that, in either situation, it could work in the long run. But I also think in either situation it would be extremely damaging in the short term and the board may not put up with it long enough for the company to change for the good. There's a reason people like Ozzie don't last at Microsoft.
1. If a loved one dies them memory of the love remains. Of course you no longer love them, they aren't there to love. All you have are memories.
2. Paternal/Maternal love is natural. Either the parent or child must do something horrible to one another to break that bond. And yes, I would argue that if one side breaks the bond it's broken. Love is shared.
3. Finally, as I told the other guy, don't try bringing subjectivity into an argument. No, nothing is subjective but fancies. Not love, not art, not morality. All reality is objective. My opinions may be wrong, but they certainly aren't right in my mind, wrong in another's. If my perception of love differs from another's than one, or both of our perceptions is wrong. We can't disagree and both be right.
I agree with you but one small nitpick: what does it matter if a robot is old enough to consent?
Also, I don't think passing the Turing test is enough. I think that's enough to trick someone to thinking they're in love, like in the case of a person who pretends to love another for the sake of using them, but with that level of dishonesty I wouldn't consider it true love because you're being lied to and what you think you love is actually something else. Regardless, I've always found the Turing test to be a poor metric for determining sentience. Not that I can think of a better way. That's a tough nut to crack.
If only you were being sarcastic this comment would actually be funny.
Personally, I've never considered love a one-sided affair. If it's one-sided then it's an infatuation, not love. The robot is incapable of love, therefore the feeling cannot be mutual, so love cannot exist between human and robot.
btw, any argument that begins with 'who are you to determine. . .' is a bad one. The world isn't subjective. If you can't accept that fact then who are you to determine anything at all?
They don't. But they do care about losing customers. With all the major investments these companies have made with trying to migrate their users to the cloud, the last thing they could afford is for the public to distrust cloud technologies and revert back to the old ways of storing everything locally.
If the Patriot Act is perceived as a threat to 'cloud technology' (I hate the term) then perhaps these tech giants who have the power to ram their agendas down the throat of the government (Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, IBM, Google, ect.) will lobby against the Patriot Act. If the Patriot Act is bad for business then business may actually take the side of the people and try to use their money and influence to do away with it.
"Call someone about sex."
"Find patents about sex." -- that one turns up some real interesting results
"Alert me about sex."
"Access sex stuff on the web faster with Chrome."
I thought all the dots that popped up on the map for "Find sex nearby!" were pretty funny. I had no idea there were so many local brothels.
and then there is the truly awesome "Explore Sex in 3D."
I used Wave for a collaboration project and it was scary when they announced the discontinuation. I was pretty mad. But then they offered a way to export everything in either html or pdf format and they've given Wave over to the open source community as Wave-in-a-Box. When Wave-in-a-Box is complete, I should be able to just load it up on a server of my choice (or perhaps someone else will choose to host a service using the code).
I understand why they discontinued it. It required too many resources on Google's part for a niche product. But for those of us that use it, we'll always be grateful for the time and effort Google put into making it a reality. It sure beats the hell out of using a web forum for a collaborative project, especially when you want to work simultaneously.
According to the meta description, the mystery Google service does this: "Get more of what you love by searching across numerous Google products with one click."
It seems to do pretty much what it describes: It ties your search term into numerous Google products to see if there's anything interesting/useful.
Or I could just avoid Office like the plague whenever possible, as I've always done. Unfortunately, my boss doesn't let me get away with avoiding it completely, but he doesn't realize I use Symphony 90% of the time (damn you Excel spreadsheets!).
The last thing I want to do is spend my time learning where the icons are on a MS interface. I could be doing important things, like trolling Slashdot.
Do you always whimper like a fag when things change?
Do you always post AC when using homophobic pejoratives?
I don't understand why they don't just make the ribbon an option. I can never find anything on it. Fortunately, I rarely have to. I just use Excel when I need to view a spreadsheet that won't play nice with Symphony. I feel sorry for the guy who has to author them.
Who do you want reading your docs? Google or Microsoft?
Neither, thanks.
Can I interest you in this high-quality, ultra-protective tin-foil hat? Only $199.99.
Does it have the horrible ribbon thing that the newer versions of Office have? If so, I think it will have a hard time catching on (I tried that "See How it Works" link on their site but they wanted me to install Silverlight). No one I know took OOo or Symphony seriously until MS came out with the ribbon interface. It was at that point they felt the need to see what type of competition was out there.