Yes, and I was VERY disappointed to see his column disappear from the back of Scientific American (now SA).
I've subscribed to that magazine for 10 years, and now they've turned "SA" over to a bunch of slick marketroids. What, do I go back to the Popular Science I read when I was 8?
The truly bizzarre thing is, I keep meeting people who are complaining about ulcers, and downing tons of antacid, at their doctor's recommendation, and facing surgery, and I'm like; "Dude! get a different fucking doctor! Ulcer's are curable, you just need a good strong course of antibiotics and you're done."
Many nations in southeast asia and the pacific historically considered dog to be a delicacy. In Tahiti, there's still a large feral dog population, though they don't hunt and eat the dogs anymore. The missionaries put a stop to that.
Now, I love my dogs dearly, and would never eat them myself, but tell me where in the bible does it say you can't eat a dog? I mean, supplanting a religion with human sacrifice and cannibalism to christianity is okay I guess, but there's no reason to tell a culture they can't eat dogs because it makes idle rich pet owners in europe squeamish.
I agree. I grew up in Chicago, and this last winter was definately a return to the winters I remember as a child. The previous 15 or so have been a gradual departure from that norm. I wonder why this last winter was such a fluke?
This may sound extreme, and it is. Not everyone can see that the coming problem is extreme enough to require such radical changes (and not everyone CAN dump their car and walk to work, or take public transportation).
But you can take a more moderate approach. How about, when you BUY a car, research good used cars. Who said you must buy a new car every 2 years? Do you know how much energy it takes to make a new car? Greenhouse-gases-wise, that energy does not come cheap! Get Consumer Reports, find out what car brands are good, used, and buy those. I find Volvos to be GREAT used cars, they're reliable as hell, safe, generally in such good tune that they don't pollute as much as other older cars, but they don't have the high resale value that other euro cars have like Mercedes or BMW, so you can actually AFFORD a used Volvo, and it's a good deal. I mean, when you buy a new car, you're not necessarily guaranteed a trouble-free experience, and the car loses 20% of it's value the second you drive it off the lot, and you've just given the manufacturer a reason to build another one to take it's place on the lot.
There are a LOT of more moderate things you can do to live "more simply".
Buy a Macintosh instead of a PC. Macs last longer, they're easier to set up, and the PPC uses much less power than any Intel chip.
Or perhaps humanity has already had measurably catastrophic events on parts of the environment.
Acid rain.
Deforestation.
Mass species extinction.
Salinization of irrigated lands.
That big inland sea in Russia that's almost dried up.
An example would be the Hawaiian Puuoo bird, who's feathers were used to make cloaks for the cheifs. 80,000 birds for each cloak. Had NO impact on the extinction of this species. They were able to reproduce quickly enough. It was the introduction of feral pigs to the islands. The pigs dug holes in the roots of rain forest trees to get at the soft stuff inside - to eat it. The holes collected rainwater, which bred mosquitos, which spread diseases, which killed the birds. At the time, nobody thought that the pigs were going to kill the birds, and nobody could have forseen the very strange chain of events that would take place, but the world is now one species less because of humanity's stupidity.
Like I said before, in the end, when it happens, nobody will be in a position to point fingers anyway, and we're pointing fingers now, but nobody has sufficient data to prove it one way or another, and we're so skeerd of that nasty big ol economy, we don't dare do a thing to harm IT.
tylerh wrote:
"If you don't like the "pollution market" approach, how else do you propose to getting the cooperatiom of of hundreds of millions of people needed with using authoritarian methods?"
I don't. There's no way that will work. By the time people get the clue, it will be too late, and the changes will be irreversible. In 20 million years, when aliens visit the funny ice-world with the buildings sticking out of the tops of glaciers, they'll go in, and dig around and find my remains clutching a scrap of paper that reads:
"I told you so!"
Oh, come on, OPEC cutting Oil production quotas will ruin, RUIN Western economies, and nobody's doing anything to stop them. There's a problem that really does exist.
I do remember the 70's, and I remember OPEC cutting production, leading to an "energy crisis", panic, and recession that got Reagan elected. Yes, I agree, cutting CO2 emissions will cripple the economy. Maybe it's the economy's fragility that's the problem, and maybe we need to learn to stop being slaves to it, and try to accomplish something as a species other than our own extinction. Which understates things, because we won't be the only species to become extinct.
500 years from now, the last republican and the last democrat will be sitting on a glacier fighting over the last scrap of the last dog, and the republican will blame the democrat for the ice age because he paralyzed the economy so that the republican couldn't afford to buy a space heater to prepare for the coming naturally occuring ice age, and the democrat will blame the republican for the ice age because they wouldn't cut C02 emmissions. Neither will be in a position to prove the other one false. But the republican will get that last scrap of meat because he doesn't believe in gun control. Then the republican will eat the democrat too. And the Libertarian will lament that the republican and democrat conspired to keep him from piling up all the bodies so he could climb up to the moon and live where it's warm.
nice troll, got me, it's this thing about "vocally reject popular culture" that really pisses me off. That's because popular culture is stupid. Popular culture is a result of people who can't think for themselves, who have set themselves up for a lifetime of pointless commercial servitude. People who look at a Nike commercial and say, "wow, cool shoes, Michael Jordan wears them, so I'll buy them". People who see a Brittney Spears video and say "wow, she's so popular and pretty, she must be the greatest musician in the world otherwise she wouldn't be getting that much attention. I want to be popular and pretty too, so I'll surround myself with her merchandise, maybe some of that will rub off on me".
Popular culture walls itself off from people who don't very actively participate in it. You're either IN or NOT. It's no wonder that "smarter people" don't struggle with this, the ethics and logic of embracing Disney and McDonalds (admittedly in favor of Star Trek and Mountain Dew). The rejection of these people by popular culture, the struggle, all of that will create emotions, which are sometimes hard for young people to deal with. (bang, you're dead). So, yes, it's partly a moderation of arrogance that is needed, but in most cases, that's not enough, it's people forcing themselves to embrace something they may be deeply philosophically opposed to.
Say black people. Replace "arrogance" with "blackness" (black culture, speech, dress, etc):
If they were smart, they would moderate their blackness, and people would like them more.
See? Just act like a white person, be an uncle tom, and white society will accept you. Don't act black. Don't wear gold jewelry. Don't play loud rap music.
This is not the fault of the geek with principles.
I thought that "all public schools are bad" was right-wing propaganda. Otherwise, why would the republicans be so strong in supporting vouchers? (so their rich Christian constituents won't have to pay tax to support crappy inner-city schools where they don't have to send their kids anyway).
Then there is the Libertarian stand; all public schools should just plain be abolished, so only the rich can afford an educa- no wait, not just the rich, we'll ALL be rich because the IRS will be off of our backs! Yes, that will solve ALL of our problems!
Public schools are little more than federally funded daycare for working parents, and consumer indoctrination.
If you gave kids 3 hours of study hall, they'd hang out and socialize.
School voucher programs are bad because it imposes a blanket solution (vouchers vouchers everywhere) to a problem that only exists in certain areas (poorly funded inner city schools).
Plus, just because one genius kid shakes up the math world doesn't mean that the school was successful, just the kid. Schools' success shouldn't be measured based on how many geniuses they happen to have enrolled, they should be measured based on tests showing improvement in student knowledge and skills over time.
Well, skills were in short supply, and this just underscores my point. When an idiot is hired, it's not skills that were needed, it's headcount. What suckerpunches my kidneys is when I run into someone in an executive position who is so laughably obviously just a buzzword-spouter and nothing more, and these people continue onward and upwards in their career, year after year, with no display of skill or knowledge or talent justifying it. You have to really come to despise the passtime called "golf".
My former company was the poster child for this business model, but since the acquisition (we were bought!), things have improved GREATLY. Seems the new parent company is full of people who can spot phonies, and fire them, a mile off.
I know, AOL could merge with a cable company, and provide it's service over the cable, and just add a small fee to your regular cable bill, then add on more money for users who visit partner sites with premium content. . . no, wait. ..
In many cases, staffs have grown largely because of the politics of business. Managers push for more people on their team, regardless if they need them; they can always be laid off later when the money dries up (sound familliar?). A larger team means more "status" for that manager, possibly higher pay, an easier job meeting performance numbers, etc.
A company that's overstaffed, is prepared, prepared for rapid growth. The tech industry expected rapid growth, because everyone knows that if you are first in the game, you have a much better chance of gaining dominant marketshare, and if you gain dominant marketshare, you have a good chance of acheiving a monopoly, and then, as Microsoft has demonstrated, you can pretty much sit back and rake in the profits. Microsoft was the model everyone expected Netscape, and all the other dotcoms to follow. Sure, there was bound to be blood at some point, but the risk was worth it, if you invested in a winner, you were rich. The effect was so profound, that even before the game started to play-out, money came pouring in. Everyone wanted to get rich from this "new thing". but the game hasn't played out the way people expected - I think that the conditions that led Microsoft to it's position are no longer there, possibly because Microsoft was able to head off these other companies (except for AOL). When it started taking longer than people thought for these companies to turn a profit, the money flow slowed, and the corporate bloat caught up with them - and it started a vicious circle, or death spiral.
Unfortunately, good companies with sound business plans and plenty of profit have also been bloodied in the process. Kind of sucks there. But I liken the stock market to the study of stampeding lemmings these days.
This is just the old SCSI vs IDE argument rehashed.
SCSI cards handle transfers, IDE makes the CPU do it. Intel wants to drive demand for CPUs, so do they push SCSI as the standard interface mfrs should use, or IDE?
Same with USB vs. FireWire. (not to mention the NIH syndrome).
same arguments were used against the statistics that said LOWERING speed limits decreased fatalities.
Probably had an effect in both instances.
SUV's probably have a big negative impact:
1) Their increased mass means they accellerate much more slowly, causing more rear-end collisions with cars behind them when they turn out onto a busy street.
2) Increased mass means that they brake much more slowly, causing them to hit more stationary objects or other slower moving vehicles.
3) Increased mass and height means that in order to go around turns, they must slow down more than other cars, meaning again, that they get rear-ended more often by cars behind them.
4) Increased size blocks a wider field of view of surrounding motorists, preventing them from seeing hazards and other vehicles, causing more accidents.
5) All of the above, plus the "nyaa nyaa, I can afford to put gas in this monstrosity" factor causes other motorists extreme impatience and anger, and is probably the #1 cause of "road rage".
---
As far as higher speed limits goes, if I lose say, 10 minutes of time every workday because the speed limit is 55 instead of 65, then: 10 minutes * 5 weekdays * 50 weeks * 40 years = roughly 70 days. You've fucking STOLEN 70 DAYS from my life, I want them back FUCKER!
This can be amplified for every stretch of suburban feeder road I drive that's WRONGLY classified as residential (no driveways? It's not FUCKING RESIDENTIAL asshole zoners in the pockets of real-estate developers!), so it's 35 mph instead of 55 mph, as it should be (can't have our residents backed up in the subdivision entrances because they can't turn out into 55mph traffic because they're driving monstrous SUV's). That's another 70 days off of my life.
Then amplify that further for each stop light I have to wait at that SHOULD NOT BE THERE, but IS because some real estate developer paid the city zoning board for it to be in front of that strip mall full of Starbucks, Borders and Gaps, so that people can get in and out on a road that SHOULD be 55mph, but is 35mph, AND blocked with stop lights every 50 ft. Gee, I wish I could have a business on a MAIN THOROUGHFARE that has a device that would stop traffic every 60 seconds so they can sit and stare at my shop signs. Another 70 days off of my life (don't forget the synergy with the slowly accellerating SUV's, minivans, and underpowered subcompacts, and delivery trucks, AT EACH FUCKING STOPLIGHT - another 70 days).
Same goes for driving behind SUV's, Minivans, and underpowerd subcompats and LEV's, if their obstruction of traffic flow results in me missing two 5 minute traffic lights every day, apply the same formula, another 70 days of my life gone.
You've murdered me 350 days prior to when my life was supposed to end. Almost a year! I have to spend that time in TRAFFIC HELL, instead of the real thing, which is probably more pleasant. All in the name of "economic progress", which is really just town cronies sucking up to real-estate developers who don't have to live in that hell-hole.
I personally am not proud that my country has done more to fuck up the global environment than all the other nations on earth combined. At least the US is starting to get a clue, and make regulations that are actually making some progress, (particularly in the CFC's/ozone-hole issue, we've measured progress in the amount of degradation of the ozone layer). I know that the US has a LONG way to go, and some of the things that we must do, science hasn't shown clearly enough to convince the people who stand to lose money, and lots of money is yet to be lost, which will translate directly to the US underclass suffering as businesses cut wages and lay off to compensate (if it ever goes that far). But in the interest of competing with third-world nations with no incentive to make stronger environmental regulations, we can't strengthen ours, and maintain our leadership. And even if we did, the attitude of the third-world is; "the US has polluted and profited, and now is the richest nation in the world, why can't we now reap the benefits of raping the environment for 50 years?" We're not in a moral position to dictate, the only people who ARE in a position to dictate, the IMF and WTO, don't care about the environment, because they (the individual policy makers) perceive it to be somebody else's problem, and a barrier to profitability and growth. (they'll always be able to afford to buy SPF 600 sunscreen, clean drinking water, land not flooded by rising seas, and mark my words, clean bottled air to breathe, and expensive medical treatments to counter the effects of not taking those precautions).
The end result of this situation will be, as these "developing countries" develop, it will be like the environmental impact of 100 20th-century-United-States', for the past 100 years. There are issues other than global warming at stake here;
Loss of biodiversity, mass-extinction, loss of rainforests, loss of arable farmland, loss of clean water supplies, further loss of ozone, erosion, mineral resources, food production, medical care, places to dump waste, - some of these things are in serious decline today, what will they be like when countries in Africa and South America, The Balkans, Southeast Asia, "develop" and industrialize?
True, environmental regulations are a barrier to growth. But so is an ice-age, or global widespread famine, or rising sea-levels.
Office for Mac is already crippleware.
MS Access? Visual Basic support? not that I or anyone I know gives a crap about that, but these are bullet-points that are on Windows, not on Mac.
You also forget the HISTORY of Office for Mac. It has been "used as a club" quite effectively in the past. Don't let their marketroids fool you. The second they feel Apple isn't playing nice anymore (OpenStep for Windows runtime?), Office will be swinging down on someone's head.
Java - MS isn't yet finished with java. Why let a little thing like a $20M judgement stop them?
I wasn't specifically referring to IE on Mac, how 'bout IE Solaris? Aren't there also some Windows only features of IE?
Samba - MS has broken Samba with service packs in the past. Some claim that was intentional. Truth be told, if you're integrating Active Directory Win2k networks with Unix, Samba isn't as full-featured as a lot of NT admins would like. Authentication is broken because of Microsoft's intentionally broken Kerberos implementation.
How about another example? How about C++? Is programming for Windows actually coding in C++? Or is it more accurately described as Writing in MFC? I'm not personally a Windows coder, but I am constantly hearing comments about how MS's implementation of C++ is not really object oriented, and obviously not portable, of course, which was the original intent of C in the first place, right?
My point is simple: Microsoft has no lasting need to provide support for any OS other than 'doze, and any hardware other than x86. They may do it on a temporary basis for the purpose of pushing other players out of a market space, or getting customers committed then hanging them out to dry, but in the long run, they want Windows everyware. Microsoft's long term goals do not include writing software for every platform out there. That's too expensive. It's much easier to make every platform out there theirs.
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Yes, and I was VERY disappointed to see his column disappear from the back of Scientific American (now SA).
I've subscribed to that magazine for 10 years, and now they've turned "SA" over to a bunch of slick marketroids. What, do I go back to the Popular Science I read when I was 8?
The truly bizzarre thing is, I keep meeting people who are complaining about ulcers, and downing tons of antacid, at their doctor's recommendation, and facing surgery, and I'm like; "Dude! get a different fucking doctor! Ulcer's are curable, you just need a good strong course of antibiotics and you're done."
"oh no, my doctor says that research is iffy."
Many nations in southeast asia and the pacific historically considered dog to be a delicacy. In Tahiti, there's still a large feral dog population, though they don't hunt and eat the dogs anymore. The missionaries put a stop to that.
Now, I love my dogs dearly, and would never eat them myself, but tell me where in the bible does it say you can't eat a dog? I mean, supplanting a religion with human sacrifice and cannibalism to christianity is okay I guess, but there's no reason to tell a culture they can't eat dogs because it makes idle rich pet owners in europe squeamish.
SGI is becoming just another Packard Bell.
nope. More likely. . . one of us, is one of THEM.
Yeah, and you better not say that Travolta is gay, because that information is copyrighted!
According to South Park, Saddam is Satan's right hand man.
I agree. I grew up in Chicago, and this last winter was definately a return to the winters I remember as a child. The previous 15 or so have been a gradual departure from that norm. I wonder why this last winter was such a fluke?
This may sound extreme, and it is. Not everyone can see that the coming problem is extreme enough to require such radical changes (and not everyone CAN dump their car and walk to work, or take public transportation).
But you can take a more moderate approach. How about, when you BUY a car, research good used cars. Who said you must buy a new car every 2 years? Do you know how much energy it takes to make a new car? Greenhouse-gases-wise, that energy does not come cheap! Get Consumer Reports, find out what car brands are good, used, and buy those. I find Volvos to be GREAT used cars, they're reliable as hell, safe, generally in such good tune that they don't pollute as much as other older cars, but they don't have the high resale value that other euro cars have like Mercedes or BMW, so you can actually AFFORD a used Volvo, and it's a good deal. I mean, when you buy a new car, you're not necessarily guaranteed a trouble-free experience, and the car loses 20% of it's value the second you drive it off the lot, and you've just given the manufacturer a reason to build another one to take it's place on the lot.
There are a LOT of more moderate things you can do to live "more simply".
Buy a Macintosh instead of a PC. Macs last longer, they're easier to set up, and the PPC uses much less power than any Intel chip.
Or perhaps humanity has already had measurably catastrophic events on parts of the environment.
Acid rain.
Deforestation.
Mass species extinction.
Salinization of irrigated lands.
That big inland sea in Russia that's almost dried up.
An example would be the Hawaiian Puuoo bird, who's feathers were used to make cloaks for the cheifs. 80,000 birds for each cloak. Had NO impact on the extinction of this species. They were able to reproduce quickly enough. It was the introduction of feral pigs to the islands. The pigs dug holes in the roots of rain forest trees to get at the soft stuff inside - to eat it. The holes collected rainwater, which bred mosquitos, which spread diseases, which killed the birds. At the time, nobody thought that the pigs were going to kill the birds, and nobody could have forseen the very strange chain of events that would take place, but the world is now one species less because of humanity's stupidity.
Like I said before, in the end, when it happens, nobody will be in a position to point fingers anyway, and we're pointing fingers now, but nobody has sufficient data to prove it one way or another, and we're so skeerd of that nasty big ol economy, we don't dare do a thing to harm IT.
tylerh wrote:
"If you don't like the "pollution market" approach, how else do you propose to getting the cooperatiom of of hundreds of millions of people needed with using authoritarian methods?"
I don't. There's no way that will work. By the time people get the clue, it will be too late, and the changes will be irreversible. In 20 million years, when aliens visit the funny ice-world with the buildings sticking out of the tops of glaciers, they'll go in, and dig around and find my remains clutching a scrap of paper that reads:
"I told you so!"
Oh, come on, OPEC cutting Oil production quotas will ruin, RUIN Western economies, and nobody's doing anything to stop them. There's a problem that really does exist.
I do remember the 70's, and I remember OPEC cutting production, leading to an "energy crisis", panic, and recession that got Reagan elected. Yes, I agree, cutting CO2 emissions will cripple the economy. Maybe it's the economy's fragility that's the problem, and maybe we need to learn to stop being slaves to it, and try to accomplish something as a species other than our own extinction. Which understates things, because we won't be the only species to become extinct.
500 years from now, the last republican and the last democrat will be sitting on a glacier fighting over the last scrap of the last dog, and the republican will blame the democrat for the ice age because he paralyzed the economy so that the republican couldn't afford to buy a space heater to prepare for the coming naturally occuring ice age, and the democrat will blame the republican for the ice age because they wouldn't cut C02 emmissions. Neither will be in a position to prove the other one false. But the republican will get that last scrap of meat because he doesn't believe in gun control. Then the republican will eat the democrat too. And the Libertarian will lament that the republican and democrat conspired to keep him from piling up all the bodies so he could climb up to the moon and live where it's warm.
nice troll, got me, it's this thing about "vocally reject popular culture" that really pisses me off. That's because popular culture is stupid. Popular culture is a result of people who can't think for themselves, who have set themselves up for a lifetime of pointless commercial servitude. People who look at a Nike commercial and say, "wow, cool shoes, Michael Jordan wears them, so I'll buy them". People who see a Brittney Spears video and say "wow, she's so popular and pretty, she must be the greatest musician in the world otherwise she wouldn't be getting that much attention. I want to be popular and pretty too, so I'll surround myself with her merchandise, maybe some of that will rub off on me".
Popular culture walls itself off from people who don't very actively participate in it. You're either IN or NOT. It's no wonder that "smarter people" don't struggle with this, the ethics and logic of embracing Disney and McDonalds (admittedly in favor of Star Trek and Mountain Dew). The rejection of these people by popular culture, the struggle, all of that will create emotions, which are sometimes hard for young people to deal with. (bang, you're dead). So, yes, it's partly a moderation of arrogance that is needed, but in most cases, that's not enough, it's people forcing themselves to embrace something they may be deeply philosophically opposed to.
Say black people. Replace "arrogance" with "blackness" (black culture, speech, dress, etc):
If they were smart, they would moderate their blackness, and people would like them more.
See? Just act like a white person, be an uncle tom, and white society will accept you. Don't act black. Don't wear gold jewelry. Don't play loud rap music.
This is not the fault of the geek with principles.
I thought that "all public schools are bad" was right-wing propaganda. Otherwise, why would the republicans be so strong in supporting vouchers? (so their rich Christian constituents won't have to pay tax to support crappy inner-city schools where they don't have to send their kids anyway).
Then there is the Libertarian stand; all public schools should just plain be abolished, so only the rich can afford an educa- no wait, not just the rich, we'll ALL be rich because the IRS will be off of our backs! Yes, that will solve ALL of our problems!
Public schools are little more than federally funded daycare for working parents, and consumer indoctrination.
If you gave kids 3 hours of study hall, they'd hang out and socialize.
School voucher programs are bad because it imposes a blanket solution (vouchers vouchers everywhere) to a problem that only exists in certain areas (poorly funded inner city schools).
Plus, just because one genius kid shakes up the math world doesn't mean that the school was successful, just the kid. Schools' success shouldn't be measured based on how many geniuses they happen to have enrolled, they should be measured based on tests showing improvement in student knowledge and skills over time.
Well, skills were in short supply, and this just underscores my point. When an idiot is hired, it's not skills that were needed, it's headcount. What suckerpunches my kidneys is when I run into someone in an executive position who is so laughably obviously just a buzzword-spouter and nothing more, and these people continue onward and upwards in their career, year after year, with no display of skill or knowledge or talent justifying it. You have to really come to despise the passtime called "golf".
My former company was the poster child for this business model, but since the acquisition (we were bought!), things have improved GREATLY. Seems the new parent company is full of people who can spot phonies, and fire them, a mile off.
I know, AOL could merge with a cable company, and provide it's service over the cable, and just add a small fee to your regular cable bill, then add on more money for users who visit partner sites with premium content. . . no, wait. . .
In many cases, staffs have grown largely because of the politics of business. Managers push for more people on their team, regardless if they need them; they can always be laid off later when the money dries up (sound familliar?). A larger team means more "status" for that manager, possibly higher pay, an easier job meeting performance numbers, etc.
A company that's overstaffed, is prepared, prepared for rapid growth. The tech industry expected rapid growth, because everyone knows that if you are first in the game, you have a much better chance of gaining dominant marketshare, and if you gain dominant marketshare, you have a good chance of acheiving a monopoly, and then, as Microsoft has demonstrated, you can pretty much sit back and rake in the profits. Microsoft was the model everyone expected Netscape, and all the other dotcoms to follow. Sure, there was bound to be blood at some point, but the risk was worth it, if you invested in a winner, you were rich. The effect was so profound, that even before the game started to play-out, money came pouring in. Everyone wanted to get rich from this "new thing". but the game hasn't played out the way people expected - I think that the conditions that led Microsoft to it's position are no longer there, possibly because Microsoft was able to head off these other companies (except for AOL). When it started taking longer than people thought for these companies to turn a profit, the money flow slowed, and the corporate bloat caught up with them - and it started a vicious circle, or death spiral.
Unfortunately, good companies with sound business plans and plenty of profit have also been bloodied in the process. Kind of sucks there. But I liken the stock market to the study of stampeding lemmings these days.
Most content isn't worth paying for, and that what is, is usually also available for free elsewhere - the old piracy debate again.
This is just the old SCSI vs IDE argument rehashed.
SCSI cards handle transfers, IDE makes the CPU do it. Intel wants to drive demand for CPUs, so do they push SCSI as the standard interface mfrs should use, or IDE?
Same with USB vs. FireWire. (not to mention the NIH syndrome).
prolly
same arguments were used against the statistics that said LOWERING speed limits decreased fatalities.
Probably had an effect in both instances.
SUV's probably have a big negative impact:
1) Their increased mass means they accellerate much more slowly, causing more rear-end collisions with cars behind them when they turn out onto a busy street.
2) Increased mass means that they brake much more slowly, causing them to hit more stationary objects or other slower moving vehicles.
3) Increased mass and height means that in order to go around turns, they must slow down more than other cars, meaning again, that they get rear-ended more often by cars behind them.
4) Increased size blocks a wider field of view of surrounding motorists, preventing them from seeing hazards and other vehicles, causing more accidents.
5) All of the above, plus the "nyaa nyaa, I can afford to put gas in this monstrosity" factor causes other motorists extreme impatience and anger, and is probably the #1 cause of "road rage".
---
As far as higher speed limits goes, if I lose say, 10 minutes of time every workday because the speed limit is 55 instead of 65, then: 10 minutes * 5 weekdays * 50 weeks * 40 years = roughly 70 days. You've fucking STOLEN 70 DAYS from my life, I want them back FUCKER!
This can be amplified for every stretch of suburban feeder road I drive that's WRONGLY classified as residential (no driveways? It's not FUCKING RESIDENTIAL asshole zoners in the pockets of real-estate developers!), so it's 35 mph instead of 55 mph, as it should be (can't have our residents backed up in the subdivision entrances because they can't turn out into 55mph traffic because they're driving monstrous SUV's). That's another 70 days off of my life.
Then amplify that further for each stop light I have to wait at that SHOULD NOT BE THERE, but IS because some real estate developer paid the city zoning board for it to be in front of that strip mall full of Starbucks, Borders and Gaps, so that people can get in and out on a road that SHOULD be 55mph, but is 35mph, AND blocked with stop lights every 50 ft. Gee, I wish I could have a business on a MAIN THOROUGHFARE that has a device that would stop traffic every 60 seconds so they can sit and stare at my shop signs. Another 70 days off of my life (don't forget the synergy with the slowly accellerating SUV's, minivans, and underpowered subcompacts, and delivery trucks, AT EACH FUCKING STOPLIGHT - another 70 days).
Same goes for driving behind SUV's, Minivans, and underpowerd subcompats and LEV's, if their obstruction of traffic flow results in me missing two 5 minute traffic lights every day, apply the same formula, another 70 days of my life gone.
You've murdered me 350 days prior to when my life was supposed to end. Almost a year! I have to spend that time in TRAFFIC HELL, instead of the real thing, which is probably more pleasant. All in the name of "economic progress", which is really just town cronies sucking up to real-estate developers who don't have to live in that hell-hole.
I think that the reason NASCAR's record on safety and fatalities is so good because of the following;
1. Safety equipment far in excess of your average production car. Cars are also far better maintained.
2. Drivers who know what the fuck they are doing behind the wheel of the car (this is the opposite of the situation you find on the street)
3. Despite #2, these drivers basically just go fast and turn left. How tough is that?
4. No FUCKING cell phones.
okay, ignore the labor stuff.
what about environmental regulations?
I personally am not proud that my country has done more to fuck up the global environment than all the other nations on earth combined. At least the US is starting to get a clue, and make regulations that are actually making some progress, (particularly in the CFC's/ozone-hole issue, we've measured progress in the amount of degradation of the ozone layer). I know that the US has a LONG way to go, and some of the things that we must do, science hasn't shown clearly enough to convince the people who stand to lose money, and lots of money is yet to be lost, which will translate directly to the US underclass suffering as businesses cut wages and lay off to compensate (if it ever goes that far). But in the interest of competing with third-world nations with no incentive to make stronger environmental regulations, we can't strengthen ours, and maintain our leadership. And even if we did, the attitude of the third-world is; "the US has polluted and profited, and now is the richest nation in the world, why can't we now reap the benefits of raping the environment for 50 years?" We're not in a moral position to dictate, the only people who ARE in a position to dictate, the IMF and WTO, don't care about the environment, because they (the individual policy makers) perceive it to be somebody else's problem, and a barrier to profitability and growth. (they'll always be able to afford to buy SPF 600 sunscreen, clean drinking water, land not flooded by rising seas, and mark my words, clean bottled air to breathe, and expensive medical treatments to counter the effects of not taking those precautions).
The end result of this situation will be, as these "developing countries" develop, it will be like the environmental impact of 100 20th-century-United-States', for the past 100 years. There are issues other than global warming at stake here;
Loss of biodiversity, mass-extinction, loss of rainforests, loss of arable farmland, loss of clean water supplies, further loss of ozone, erosion, mineral resources, food production, medical care, places to dump waste, - some of these things are in serious decline today, what will they be like when countries in Africa and South America, The Balkans, Southeast Asia, "develop" and industrialize?
True, environmental regulations are a barrier to growth. But so is an ice-age, or global widespread famine, or rising sea-levels.
Office for Mac is already crippleware.
MS Access? Visual Basic support? not that I or anyone I know gives a crap about that, but these are bullet-points that are on Windows, not on Mac.
You also forget the HISTORY of Office for Mac. It has been "used as a club" quite effectively in the past. Don't let their marketroids fool you. The second they feel Apple isn't playing nice anymore (OpenStep for Windows runtime?), Office will be swinging down on someone's head.
Java - MS isn't yet finished with java. Why let a little thing like a $20M judgement stop them?
I wasn't specifically referring to IE on Mac, how 'bout IE Solaris? Aren't there also some Windows only features of IE?
Samba - MS has broken Samba with service packs in the past. Some claim that was intentional. Truth be told, if you're integrating Active Directory Win2k networks with Unix, Samba isn't as full-featured as a lot of NT admins would like. Authentication is broken because of Microsoft's intentionally broken Kerberos implementation.
How about another example? How about C++? Is programming for Windows actually coding in C++? Or is it more accurately described as Writing in MFC? I'm not personally a Windows coder, but I am constantly hearing comments about how MS's implementation of C++ is not really object oriented, and obviously not portable, of course, which was the original intent of C in the first place, right?
My point is simple: Microsoft has no lasting need to provide support for any OS other than 'doze, and any hardware other than x86. They may do it on a temporary basis for the purpose of pushing other players out of a market space, or getting customers committed then hanging them out to dry, but in the long run, they want Windows everyware. Microsoft's long term goals do not include writing software for every platform out there. That's too expensive. It's much easier to make every platform out there theirs.