I realize you got modded as funny, but probably not for the reason it really is funny:
My attention is on pause when the page is loading - the actual content isn't ready yet and I am impatiently awaiting the moment I can actually pay attention to something. The attention span issue is more relevant when discussing television because of the move towards soundbites, blurbs, and shorter (with less content) programming. This may manifest itself on the web by people browsing more erratically and quickly through content. This was probably compounded by the long load times: no one wanted to wait for huge content, when the relative worth isn't known until after the load is done.
What broadband has done, for me atleast, is make the idea of checking email, looking up some tidbit of information, or refreshing/. once more not a big deal. That is what makes BB so useful - it is no longer a decision of "do I want to wait to download my email or go watch the grass grow." I can quickly and effortlessly get the work I want to do done and move onto other things, without the added hassle of connecting and waiting for what seems like a long time. The wait is bad only because it is just that: waiting.
By "filter" you mean "take full notice and remember", right?
Can you remember what commercials were even on during the last Super Bowl? Yet you can make a list of "advertisements" that you have seen placed in movies and I imagine that list could be longer if you included Bond movies, the seminal placed advertisement movie.
Just because you say that you "filter advertising" or that you never buy products placed in movies isn't enough. I don't have statistics to lie to you with, but if the numbers show that placed marketing in movies works (Reece's Pieces! Aston Martin! South Farthing! Oh, that last one isn't real...) then they will do it, it will be successful, and only a small subset of the population will complain.
The overview got it wrong (while making a swipe at Microsoft, so it must be okay.) The security that is mentioned in the letter from SCO is not system security - SCO isn't concerned with that. The security that the letter refers to is security of the IP used in creation of the OS. The next sentence clarifies this:
This process is designed to monitor the security and ownership of intellectual property rights associated with the code.
The author was more interested in taking shots at Microsoft apparently.
You must have missed this part of the parent post. They got people that would vote for what they believe to be the most recognized brand name; the poll wasn't a random sample of the world population. It was a very small subset.
Wrong place for this type of discussion, I'm sure, but the reason (I think...) that people don't welcome the coming on things like this is:
they don't want to die or see the world end. There are not many people that anxiously await the coming of the Lord - they are too busy living and enjoying their life, only stopping long enough to bug others around them, trying to make sure other people are worried about the end of the world. When they see or hear things like this, it gets them scared because they honestly don't think it will, or want it to, happen during their life. The point is: there are constantly things that can be intepreted as being close to the end of the world...probably the point...people will always think it is happening soon and then it will happen when they least expect it.
Plain and simple, the voters. How many people truthfully voted in the last election? Probably less than 30% of the registered voters. Yeah, I know it's tough to take that 15 minutes out of your hectic day, but if you don't like who is in there now, it can be changed. Unfortunately at this point, not enough people really give a damn.
The problem is that even if everyone did take the 15 minutes out of their day, the choices were such that it wouldn't have mattered. The two party, career politician system is broken. The differences between Bush and Gore (for example) are, in the end, so little that we would probably be complaining about the exact same things at this point. The Democrats and Republicans only differ on a few minor points but those are able to polarize people enough that we believe our vote matters. It hasn't for a long while and won't until big money, corporate sponsorship, and career politicians go the way of the dodo bird.
Considering a lot of Slashdot readers live in California, I'm all for Wal-Mart being able to hire illegal aliens. They can get a driver's license here in CA, so it would be even better if they can get a job to make enough money to pay for car insurance!
Re:Joel Sposky's preface makes me puke
on
In Search of Stupidity
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sposky and Chapman appear to believe that market domination defines correct decisionmaking. Criticize people for not understanding the business they're running, but don't criticize them for having integrity.
Not *all* decision making - just business decision making. The decision to completely rewrite the code was based on the merit of the code alone - not on the business or market implications. That is what Sposky and Chapman seem to be saying: programmers should program and leave business decisions to those that know the market.
There really isn't a good analogy that can compare to this. The decision was basically: stop all shipment of our product so that it can be completely redesigned, built, and tested or attempt to improve the already existing product. The fact that a competitor, with an inferior product, was able to continue shipping while making improvements points to the former being a bad decision.
This is, of course, all considered in a vacuum while looking at the end results. Other factors besides the code rewrite played a major role in how the "browser war" turned out.
Delivering good products *is* the goal. Given the choice between A) shipping inferior code that can be incrementally made better and B) shipping NO code while your competitor takes all market share, the choice is obvious. This is the case in every business: you seldom, if *ever*, want to ship NOTHING for months or years at a time (so that you can completely redesign your product) while your competitor becomes firmly entrenched in the market.
Not having Windows is better than having it; so it is only a slight jump of logic to conclude that NOT having Windows OS is superior to having Panther.
More importantly, if something coming out 2-3 years from now is not technologically superior to Panther (including any Apple OSes that come out in the next couple of years) I would be very disappointed and suprised.
He may not be the best choice for aging, washed up pro athlete. He did beat out teammate Greg Maddox for the Golden Glove award - something that Maddox had one 13 straight years; had a respectable 14 and 8 season, with a 3.84 ERA.
What is even worse is when the wedding location will not allow outside photographers or filming (unless you are gaijin like me.;-) When I got married in Japan, the shrine had a specific list of people that could be hired for photography - at ludicrous prices - and would only sell a videotape of the wedding taken by thier videographer.
Blaming the misunderstanding on language barries allowed us to get family members to film and the results were *way* better - and digital to boot!
Anyway, I'll see the movie again and probably buy the DVD, but it was a great deception to me as a Matrix fan...:(
Thank you for ensuring that Hollywood will continue to put out crap.
It is one thing to watch a movie on free TV, maybe rent it or get it pay-per-view; even seeing the movie in the theater is forgivable. But going to see a movie twice and buying the DVD when (as YOU said) "the movie sucks", is precisely the reason why the movie sucks: there is no reason for it NOT to suck, if those that do not even like the movie will pay to see it twice in the theaters and then buy the DVD.
Microsoft has, historically, been a growth company with earnings growth above 20%. As the market has become saturated and they started competing against themselves (e.g. Office XP versus Office 98, etc.) it is no longer possible to get that growth. Witness the recent implementation of dividends.
To continue to "grow", Microsoft has to expand. Focusing on one thing will not cut it. Yes, Microsoft should focus on their "core competencies", but that does not mean focus on one product.
After September 11, when it was starting to look apparent that we would attack Afganistan (and other countries later - Iraq, Syria, Iran, Korea, etc. seeing how war-happy our current administration is) in our new "War on Terror" I talked about the potential positive effects on the economy. My conclusion then was that there would *not* be an economic boom because of increased spending.
The basis for that argument is usually to use WWII as an example. The problem with that is that the US economy, and manufacturing base, had to be retooled to support, build, and maintain the massive war machine that was required to fight two wars at once. Recent wars (Iraq I) and Rumsfield's new lean and quick fighting style do not lend themselves to the massive government spending that would have a significant positive influence on the economy. Unless someone wants to fight a massive war, that last years, and depletes more than just missles (i.e. lost ships, tank battalions, heavy machinery, etc.) I think that using the "war stimulates the economy" argument is lost. ((The idea that military needs can advance science, though, will probably be even more applicable.))
The other points seem to be close. The coming credit crunch may happen. People have gotten use to low (or zero) interest rates when buying large items like cars and houses. The deficit, though, is something we have lived with for decades and probably won't be a huge concern (unless our debtors sense that they may never get paid.)
The so-called "jobless recovery" is probably something made up by those that want to grudgingly admit that the recovery has begun but still want to use the economy as a political tool. Just as companies usually lay people off after the results have come in, they also usually hire late as well.
Growth and innovative R&D are not necessarily killed by being a public company. For example: Microsoft (a growth stock for 20+ years that did spend money on R&D), IBM, Intel, Apple, HP, Johnson and Johnson, GE, etc.
The stock market rewards steady growth and innovation. It has only been recently (i.e. the Internet bubble) that investors would reward companies for their ideas, marketing, or ability to gain website hits as opposed to having actual products and steady revenue (and, more importantly, profit) growth.
I'm not sure that I read it quite right but it reads like Gibson wants someone to invent a lot of future sounding, hip, techno-related, meme-changing, paradigm-shifting phrases and splice them together like a surgeon creating new blood vessels out of nano-created synthetic air to be grafted onto a clone of himself.
net use g: "\\some server"
cd \My Documents
start xcopy * g:/E/V/M/Y/H/R
This only copies what has changed and then sets the archive toggle to false so future backups will leave it alone. This gets set to true automatically by Windows whenever a file is changed. Not a very elegant solution (takes up a lot of space, and sometimes a lot of bandwidth) but it gets the job done (I always have up to the day backups.)
Going down and hackers probably don't mix too well either, then.
More to the point, though, is that the symbol will not identify those that we think it will. The "hackers" that will most likely take on a symbol will not be those that pre-date the Perl-mongers or Linux fans. I imagine it will be those, that upon seeing the symbol being used in conjunction with "hackers", will hijack the symbol for script-kiddies and wanna-be's. Fun.
It would be nice, sure, for there to be a way to easily identify those that have been in computers, or the "hacker" scene (whatever that is), since the early days, but that is usually done through knowledge - not some arbitrary symbol. For example: when a few people are talking about computers and on mentions Linux, for example, the sub-group is easily identified by who continues along those lines. Same thing for those in the BBS-scene, or those that used Sparcs, or those that did or are interested in whatever. Having a "hacker" symbol would be good to identify those covered by a broad range of interests but, at the same time, that broad range of coverage would tend to make it a weaker association.
I consciously avoid using the self-checkout lanes at places such as Home Depot because of this very thing. Despite my deep feeling that people are stupid and my desire to NOT deal with many of them, I think that the move towards removing all of them is not the right way. It is, atleast, not something I feel that I should support.
Slashdot Mirror
Sex
My attention is on pause when the page is loading - the actual content isn't ready yet and I am impatiently awaiting the moment I can actually pay attention to something. The attention span issue is more relevant when discussing television because of the move towards soundbites, blurbs, and shorter (with less content) programming. This may manifest itself on the web by people browsing more erratically and quickly through content. This was probably compounded by the long load times: no one wanted to wait for huge content, when the relative worth isn't known until after the load is done.
What broadband has done, for me atleast, is make the idea of checking email, looking up some tidbit of information, or refreshing /. once more not a big deal. That is what makes BB so useful - it is no longer a decision of "do I want to wait to download my email or go watch the grass grow." I can quickly and effortlessly get the work I want to do done and move onto other things, without the added hassle of connecting and waiting for what seems like a long time. The wait is bad only because it is just that: waiting.
Can you remember what commercials were even on during the last Super Bowl? Yet you can make a list of "advertisements" that you have seen placed in movies and I imagine that list could be longer if you included Bond movies, the seminal placed advertisement movie.
Just because you say that you "filter advertising" or that you never buy products placed in movies isn't enough. I don't have statistics to lie to you with, but if the numbers show that placed marketing in movies works (Reece's Pieces! Aston Martin! South Farthing! Oh, that last one isn't real...) then they will do it, it will be successful, and only a small subset of the population will complain.
Did you forget that Canada is in America?
The author was more interested in taking shots at Microsoft apparently.
You must have missed this part of the parent post. They got people that would vote for what they believe to be the most recognized brand name; the poll wasn't a random sample of the world population. It was a very small subset.
they don't want to die or see the world end. There are not many people that anxiously await the coming of the Lord - they are too busy living and enjoying their life, only stopping long enough to bug others around them, trying to make sure other people are worried about the end of the world. When they see or hear things like this, it gets them scared because they honestly don't think it will, or want it to, happen during their life. The point is: there are constantly things that can be intepreted as being close to the end of the world...probably the point...people will always think it is happening soon and then it will happen when they least expect it.
The problem is that even if everyone did take the 15 minutes out of their day, the choices were such that it wouldn't have mattered. The two party, career politician system is broken. The differences between Bush and Gore (for example) are, in the end, so little that we would probably be complaining about the exact same things at this point. The Democrats and Republicans only differ on a few minor points but those are able to polarize people enough that we believe our vote matters. It hasn't for a long while and won't until big money, corporate sponsorship, and career politicians go the way of the dodo bird.
Not *all* decision making - just business decision making. The decision to completely rewrite the code was based on the merit of the code alone - not on the business or market implications. That is what Sposky and Chapman seem to be saying: programmers should program and leave business decisions to those that know the market.
There really isn't a good analogy that can compare to this. The decision was basically: stop all shipment of our product so that it can be completely redesigned, built, and tested or attempt to improve the already existing product. The fact that a competitor, with an inferior product, was able to continue shipping while making improvements points to the former being a bad decision.
This is, of course, all considered in a vacuum while looking at the end results. Other factors besides the code rewrite played a major role in how the "browser war" turned out.
Delivering good products *is* the goal. Given the choice between A) shipping inferior code that can be incrementally made better and B) shipping NO code while your competitor takes all market share, the choice is obvious. This is the case in every business: you seldom, if *ever*, want to ship NOTHING for months or years at a time (so that you can completely redesign your product) while your competitor becomes firmly entrenched in the market.
A/S/L on the other hand would be way more useful online.
Not having Windows is better than having it; so it is only a slight jump of logic to conclude that NOT having Windows OS is superior to having Panther.
More importantly, if something coming out 2-3 years from now is not technologically superior to Panther (including any Apple OSes that come out in the next couple of years) I would be very disappointed and suprised.
How is this suprising or news?
You have just succeeded in topping the feat of playing Diablo with a naked Sorceress!
Windows!
He may not be the best choice for aging, washed up pro athlete. He did beat out teammate Greg Maddox for the Golden Glove award - something that Maddox had one 13 straight years; had a respectable 14 and 8 season, with a 3.84 ERA.
What is even worse is when the wedding location will not allow outside photographers or filming (unless you are gaijin like me. ;-) When I got married in Japan, the shrine had a specific list of people that could be hired for photography - at ludicrous prices - and would only sell a videotape of the wedding taken by thier videographer.
Blaming the misunderstanding on language barries allowed us to get family members to film and the results were *way* better - and digital to boot!
Microsoft does not equal the United States.
Despite what some on Slashdot would want you to believe, the corporate interests do not, in fact, completely run things here (yet...)
Thank you for ensuring that Hollywood will continue to put out crap.
It is one thing to watch a movie on free TV, maybe rent it or get it pay-per-view; even seeing the movie in the theater is forgivable. But going to see a movie twice and buying the DVD when (as YOU said) "the movie sucks", is precisely the reason why the movie sucks: there is no reason for it NOT to suck, if those that do not even like the movie will pay to see it twice in the theaters and then buy the DVD.
Microsoft has, historically, been a growth company with earnings growth above 20%. As the market has become saturated and they started competing against themselves (e.g. Office XP versus Office 98, etc.) it is no longer possible to get that growth. Witness the recent implementation of dividends.
To continue to "grow", Microsoft has to expand. Focusing on one thing will not cut it. Yes, Microsoft should focus on their "core competencies", but that does not mean focus on one product.
The basis for that argument is usually to use WWII as an example. The problem with that is that the US economy, and manufacturing base, had to be retooled to support, build, and maintain the massive war machine that was required to fight two wars at once. Recent wars (Iraq I) and Rumsfield's new lean and quick fighting style do not lend themselves to the massive government spending that would have a significant positive influence on the economy. Unless someone wants to fight a massive war, that last years, and depletes more than just missles (i.e. lost ships, tank battalions, heavy machinery, etc.) I think that using the "war stimulates the economy" argument is lost. ((The idea that military needs can advance science, though, will probably be even more applicable.))
The other points seem to be close. The coming credit crunch may happen. People have gotten use to low (or zero) interest rates when buying large items like cars and houses. The deficit, though, is something we have lived with for decades and probably won't be a huge concern (unless our debtors sense that they may never get paid.)
The so-called "jobless recovery" is probably something made up by those that want to grudgingly admit that the recovery has begun but still want to use the economy as a political tool. Just as companies usually lay people off after the results have come in, they also usually hire late as well.
The stock market rewards steady growth and innovation. It has only been recently (i.e. the Internet bubble) that investors would reward companies for their ideas, marketing, or ability to gain website hits as opposed to having actual products and steady revenue (and, more importantly, profit) growth.
I'm not sure that I read it quite right but it reads like Gibson wants someone to invent a lot of future sounding, hip, techno-related, meme-changing, paradigm-shifting phrases and splice them together like a surgeon creating new blood vessels out of nano-created synthetic air to be grafted onto a clone of himself.
cd \My Documents
start xcopy * g:
This only copies what has changed and then sets the archive toggle to false so future backups will leave it alone. This gets set to true automatically by Windows whenever a file is changed. Not a very elegant solution (takes up a lot of space, and sometimes a lot of bandwidth) but it gets the job done (I always have up to the day backups.)
More to the point, though, is that the symbol will not identify those that we think it will. The "hackers" that will most likely take on a symbol will not be those that pre-date the Perl-mongers or Linux fans. I imagine it will be those, that upon seeing the symbol being used in conjunction with "hackers", will hijack the symbol for script-kiddies and wanna-be's. Fun.
It would be nice, sure, for there to be a way to easily identify those that have been in computers, or the "hacker" scene (whatever that is), since the early days, but that is usually done through knowledge - not some arbitrary symbol. For example: when a few people are talking about computers and on mentions Linux, for example, the sub-group is easily identified by who continues along those lines. Same thing for those in the BBS-scene, or those that used Sparcs, or those that did or are interested in whatever. Having a "hacker" symbol would be good to identify those covered by a broad range of interests but, at the same time, that broad range of coverage would tend to make it a weaker association.
I consciously avoid using the self-checkout lanes at places such as Home Depot because of this very thing. Despite my deep feeling that people are stupid and my desire to NOT deal with many of them, I think that the move towards removing all of them is not the right way. It is, atleast, not something I feel that I should support.