the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers
I don't know how Google got that deal, but I want to sign up too! I currently pay a bit more than $400 per month for connectivity for my 3 servers. My home connection only costs $60 per month, but my 3 commercial servers average $133 - and that's for fractional T-1. If Google is getting their pipes for free, I want the same deal.
What's that? Google pays a shitload of money for their bandwidth? Oh. So what's the dumbass from Verizon gibbering about?
Would you leave an otherwise perfect job to work on something more interesting?
Job enjoyment is part of your total compensation package, just like health insurance and a paycheck. Most parts of your compensation package are a mix of dollars and risk (eg: checks are almost pure dollars, stock options include risk). Satisfaction is intangible, so it's hard to quantify in relation to the others. It is very hard to calculate, and inherently personal. If you're young, it may be a very good investment to sacrifice some satisfaction now if it will open more doors in the future.
Am I selling out by continuing to work in my current firm? Should I take the pay-cut to work at a startup where I can make more use of my talents?
Since you have low overhead, it's probably best to look at the pragmatic issues from a long-term perspective. Getting paid more now will make it easier to convince a future employer that you are worth more - future employers will ask your current compensation and base their offer at least in part on it. At the same time, getting pigeon-holed as a VB script guy will hamper future earning potential.
That is to say, aside from the intangible issues like satisfaction, if you don't have large fixed expenses you should be picking your jobs at this phase in your career based on their ability to contribute to your resume.
A more apt analogy would be, "would a 'Christian-friendly' guild be tolerated that actively recruited Christians?"
Not sure if it is allowed, but on WoW / Hyjal / Horde, I saw a guild recruiting, and the advert mentioned that they were a Christian guild. I did't report it to a GM because, despite the fact that I am not Christian and find the religion offensive, I am not a close-minded bigot like the people who deride LGBTs. I guess I should be more intolerant next time.
You're all overreacting. You have no understanding of the complex issues involved. Clearly this was an entirely justified preemptive strike by the RIAA. They had intelligence from a reliable source, code named "Curve Ball", that this woman intended someday to use a computer and that she holds many of the same philosophies as those who have already infringed copyright. They even had specific intel showing exactly where she planned to set the computer up. It's a slam-dunk. Furthermore she is well known to have jaywalked several times and that she is not a pure free-market capitalist. It doesn't matter if she didn't intend someday to use a computer - the RIAA (as well as everyone else, by the way) believed that she would, and even if that is now known to be false, she is still a jaywalker who supports socialist programs like medicaid. This preemptive lawsuit was the right thing to do. It was never about copyright infringement, from the beginning of this post I have said it is about jaywalking and socialism. If the RIAA cuts and runs from this battle it will only provide aid and comfort to the enemy.
Bravo. You clearly are a talented lawyer. You've gotten me arguing against a straw man that was not the core implication of my initial post. You are despicable, but you have my grudging respect.
Anyway, back to the original point. The USPTO is attempting to prevent closer scrutiny by congress. The USPTO knows that if the Blackberry service is shut down for everyone except gov't employees (as seems to be the current state of the deal), the public will go ballistic. The people will yell at their congress people for keeping their service while the people get shut down, and their congress people will have to respond. The USPTO knows that whatever comes of that, it will not be good for their bureaucracy or their customers (patent attorneys). Hence the USPTO is doing what is in its power (which may or may not be sufficient) to stop the impending RIM/NTP train wreck.
The closest I came to saying something that you've managed to argue against was, "they will toss it out so they don't risk actual reform." The USPTO is attempting to do precisely that. You responded, in effect, "but they don't have the power to do so." Which may be true, and may be technically contradictory to the letter of my post, but is not interesting. My point, the entire matter of my post, is that the USPTO is trying to get out of the way of the collision without sacrificing their bloated, destructive bureaucracy. That is what matters. What you have managed to turn the argument into - whether it will work or not in this particular case - is trivia. That is, I concede your superior lawyerism, but you display a lack of either desire or ability to seek meaningful truth. (which is, in itself, an amusing touchstone on the sad state of our legal system)
But again, I respect your proficiency in twisting the argument into something you could win.
Any provider that abandons flat-rate pricing risks losing customers in droves.
This makes sense when there is competition, which there is at the ISP level and you don't have to move to get a different provider. But go one link up the stream and you're probably down to two providers. If Cox and QWest both decided to do this, I would have to move to either accept it or another state. Forget plastics Benjamin - monopolies are the future in the US, particularly with the present monopoliphile gov't (not just Republicans, mind you).
All evidence is to the contrary. What is your basis for suggesting these patents are truly in trouble?
"RIM shares were up 9.42 percent to $73.89 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq."
The market as a whole knows more about the law than you do (and much more than I do).
A kazillion dollars were spent in defense of RIM at trial, including multi-kazillion dollars in an effort to identify real prior art to invalidate the claims of the patents in suit. After that, a judge and jury, dealing with legal and factual questions respectively, found the patents not invalid, and the judgments were twice affirmed by the Federal Circuit.
I don't necessarily doubt, given the sad state of 35 usc 102 and more critically 103 as a result of a series of narrowing precedents and the anti-free-market, anti-capitalist decision to allow business process and software patents, that the patents in question are legally defensible in court. But that says nothing of the USPTO (which AFAIK does not use a courtroom setting for its decisions), nor of the more fundamental question; whether the patents should be valid. So if your point is that the patents are valid, I would have to question whether the USPTO is answerable to courts regarding its decisions - because it is most certainly answerable to the whims of congress (my initial point above), and congress is blowing very one-sidedly in this case. Even if the USPTO is ultimately answerable to the courts regarding its decisions, that would mean NTP would have to bring a whole new case against the USPTO - meaning 5 years during which it will be even harder than it has been for them to get an injunction. If, on the other hand, your point is that the patents should be valid, you are wrong - they are, like most (at least by numbers) high tech patents of late, a vastly greater economic hobble than support.
What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?
It says that the USPTO has and will continue to issue bullshit patents on anything put in front of them, but that when a patent affects 25% of the government, regardless of validity, they will toss it out so they don't risk actual reform. No need to fret, however, any bullshit patents that only act as a cudgel for big businesses to kill or blackmail small businesses will remain inviolate.
Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?
Yes, the field becomes richer. But that is not the objective. The objective is for the lawyer to become richer. The lawyer becomes richer if there are more, more complex, and more restrictive laws. Simple laws that make sense would lead to less court time.
A headhunter in Boston sent me an email today. In the past Boston has not ranked terribly high on the list of places to which I would consider relocating. With the apparent commitment to ODF, I am taking today's email more seriously. Being able to interact with the state gov't using my primary workstation makes a difference.
What's the point in spending an evening talking about football scores when you could be doing something constructive and interesting instead?
I think you've hit the nail on the head, and perhaps were even saying that tounge-in-cheek. People with good social skills see talking about football scores with their friends as constructive and interesting because of the social aspect. Seriously; I have a bunch of normal friends through my brother, one night out I asked about sports discussion. They genuinely enjoy it just for the social aspect.
As to "What's the point?" for those who don't find it naturally enjoyable: Outside the office, the point is to develop a social network which leads to more opportunities to spend an evening talking about football scores. Inside the office, it leads to raises and promotions.
As far as I can see, it's basically lying and bullshitting, which surely can't be hard for any smart person to learn?
Very close. I recommend, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It's not about telling lies so much as it is about focusing on the things that are important to the listener. Put yourself in the listener's place and figure out their motivation, then figure out how the truth you have fits into what they want. You don't have to lie, but you will have to spin. To put a happier face on it, the listener doesn't care about the things they don't care about, so why waste time on those aspects?
Said slightly differently, we scientists see truth as the thing of most value. That is good, but it is not normal. Most other people do not. They see achievement of their goals as the thing of most value. If you can make the truth fit in with their goals, they will accept it happily, blissfully ignorant of the scientific imperative.
George Washington said a 2 party system would be bad. Could he have been right? Could it not be that one party is worse than the other but this is just a product of 2 parties? Could a 3rd powerful party help remedy this situation?
I fear that the solution lies not in the structure of the party system, but in educating the populace. I think that it is not practical to change the party structure, and even if it was, there would still be two dominant parties (though perhaps they would be less apparent).
Educating the populace will be hard. Very hard. But it starts with distributing this article as widely as you can. Email everyone you know. Then look for the publication of Drew Westen's study, find out how to redistribute copies, and do it.
I think we're missing the more important issue this article brings up.
A new study monitored brain activity of partisans;
This indicates an extraoridinary advance in EEG technology. This ability to detect near flatline brain activity should make it far easier in the future to distinguish between dead people and people in deep comas.
I fail to see how this is evil. Google had two options. They could either censor some of their results, or China would censor all of their results. If censoring is bad, logically more censoring is worse than less censoring.
There's only two massive flaws in your logic.
1. Being censored by someone or something outside of your control is not the same as doing it yourself.
2. 10% censorship at random would be better than 100% censorship. But this is not random, it is targetted with the intent of skewing perception. It's the skew that makes 10% worse than 100%.
"Our" meaning the US's, which does not include all Slashdot readers (but does include me). Much as when I say, "Our national religion is Christianity", it is the de facto truth - the nation is implied to be the nation of which I am a citizen. I don't like all the cultural identities that are ours, and in particular the religion and tribalism bug the shit out of me, but that doesn't mean they are not true. We (the citizens of the US) are all in this together as far as national identity goes. Rather than dividing the country by insisting that "we" are different from (presumably better than) "them", we should be working on developing a shared sense of diversity, and on shaping whatever unified identities exist.
Ask yourself this, would "they" be so bad if they were happy to allow you to be you? Don't you think they feel the same way?
Actually I think that pretty much every economic theory would suggest that trading and sharing actually benefits all parties involved.
But you are adding a presupposition in your hypothesis. "benefits all parties involved" implies a limited subset of economic theories; those that are intended to benefit societies, such as capitalism, communism, and socialism. This neglects the one we use in the United States; corporatism. Corporatism is essentially tribalism applied to the corporation. Each tribe sees itself as the only concern, and all other tribes as competition for limited resources (wealth in this case). The goal is not to maximize overall wealth, or even to maximize the wealth of the tribe, but to capture more wealth than the competing tribes.
Further, when this objective is taken seriously, the result can not only be a reduction in total satisfaction of wants for all tribes, it can even lead to a reduction in satisfaction of wants by the most powerful tribe: If the goal is only to do better than the other tribes, that goal is best acheived by dedicating some amount of resources to debilitating the competing tribes. That is; you come in first with less wealth than you would have garnered had you come in second in a cooperative scenario. This is not a cooperative scenario - it is tribalism.
For an example of our belief in this and our glorification of it, you need look no further than the "get off my island" television show (whose name escapes me at the moment).
that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index.
Speaking for the people who build the Internet, and with all due respect for the fact that according to the blurb you may once have not had your head in your ass, may I say, "Fine. You don't like it, leave. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." I'm sick and tired of people whining "but I don't like the way the internet works, we should put knowledge into more restrictive silos so I can charge admission." Bite me. Noone told you to publish your work on a system that was expressly designed to make copies. Piss off. We don't need you. We would all much rather have the internet without you than the internet with you and some new goddamned law that ridiculously overreaches the spirit and letter of copyright law.
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem.
I've been in dozens if not hundreds of PuGs in WoW, and have never heard that asked. That sounds like media hype to me. Sure, I've seen idiots in/general talking trash about Chinese players, but they're vastly the exception not the rule. Play well - keep the agro off the squishies, don't forget to heal the pets, don't roll on BoPs you don't need - do that and noone cares if you can chat.
Don't we already have different levels of service quality? If I pay for dialup access at say $9/month I get a certain amount of bandwidth. If I pony up $25/month for DSL I get even more. If I decide cable is the way to go and pay $50/month, even more than DSL (in my case at least). And finally, if I really want guaranteed access, I pay for business-level service. So what the hell are these poeple talking about?
It gets better - not only are you only paying for the bandwidth on the client side, the businesses are also already paying for the bandwidth on the server side. Apple has to pay more per month for their connectivity than I do, because they have a lot more bandwidth. Apple's upstream has peering agreements that are supposed to guarantee transport.
So why will Apple wind up going along with this? Why is Mark Cuban in support? Because it allows the big boys to play and kills the little guys. Competition, while a cornerstone of capitalism, is anathema to corporatism. And don't expect our corporatist government to lift a damned finger - they know that your parents and grandparents don't even know this issue exists (assuming the politicians do), let alone understand it. Noone is going to vote them out if they don't take action. They may threaten to take action, but only so they can get a pile of cash from whoever took Abrahamoff's job. It will almost certainly never be an issue, and even if it does become an issue, they will happily muddle it with vague preaching about fair markets and gloss over the monopoly issue.
'the differentiator for customers is not the number comparison, but which vendor makes the patching and updating experience the least complex, most efficient and easiest to manage.'
Speaking as a customer who manages a few servers and workstations at a company that has hundreds of the former and tens of thousands of the latter, I disagree. The differentiator for me is made up of two factors; window of vulnerability and severity. Spending two extra hours preparing to apply a patch that arrives one day sooner is a win in my world. And that is indeed a numbers game; one which could be, but has not been, analyzed by this sycophantic series.
Now I agree that for the typical home end user, the above description may be fair. A patch that can be applied by the end user that arrives late is better than a fast patch that cannot. But that only highlights the necessity of taking a hybrid approach to patching if the operating system in question is intended for expert and layman alike (as is XP). Get the info and the preliminary patch to me quickly. Make it pretty for the end user as soon as possible.
Consider then how Linux works; Debian or Gentoo are not necessarily as user friendly, but they get patched at lightning speed. Ubuntu, SuSE, or Lindows (whatever it's called now) may take a bit longer with patches, but have easier point-and-click interfaces for handling them.
I work with OS X, Debian and NT4 on a daily basis. The only way I can predicitably transfer files between them is using FAT16/32, and the limiting factor is NTs lousy support for alien filesystems. Microsoft should place FAT in the public domain. Its not strong enough to warrent a licence, and should really have become extinct along side the floppy disk. Charging people a licence to use a technology that was chosen because of a weakness in your main project, your operating system, is as lame as lecturers teaching from their own book.
A little bit of info that may affect your analysis; MS is an abusive monopoly. They do not want you to be able to transfer files. The only reason they support standard networking protocols for transferring files is because Unix was there first and is still ahead in numbers; they had no choice. Incompatibility is not a weakness, it is a feature.
Slashdot Mirror
fractional T-1
(minor correction - 1 TB/month, burstable up to 5 Mbit or something like that - but you get the picture)
the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers
I don't know how Google got that deal, but I want to sign up too! I currently pay a bit more than $400 per month for connectivity for my 3 servers. My home connection only costs $60 per month, but my 3 commercial servers average $133 - and that's for fractional T-1. If Google is getting their pipes for free, I want the same deal.
What's that? Google pays a shitload of money for their bandwidth? Oh. So what's the dumbass from Verizon gibbering about?
Would you leave an otherwise perfect job to work on something more interesting?
Job enjoyment is part of your total compensation package, just like health insurance and a paycheck. Most parts of your compensation package are a mix of dollars and risk (eg: checks are almost pure dollars, stock options include risk). Satisfaction is intangible, so it's hard to quantify in relation to the others. It is very hard to calculate, and inherently personal. If you're young, it may be a very good investment to sacrifice some satisfaction now if it will open more doors in the future.
Am I selling out by continuing to work in my current firm? Should I take the pay-cut to work at a startup where I can make more use of my talents?
Since you have low overhead, it's probably best to look at the pragmatic issues from a long-term perspective. Getting paid more now will make it easier to convince a future employer that you are worth more - future employers will ask your current compensation and base their offer at least in part on it. At the same time, getting pigeon-holed as a VB script guy will hamper future earning potential.
That is to say, aside from the intangible issues like satisfaction, if you don't have large fixed expenses you should be picking your jobs at this phase in your career based on their ability to contribute to your resume.
A more apt analogy would be, "would a 'Christian-friendly' guild be tolerated that actively recruited Christians?"
Not sure if it is allowed, but on WoW / Hyjal / Horde, I saw a guild recruiting, and the advert mentioned that they were a Christian guild. I did't report it to a GM because, despite the fact that I am not Christian and find the religion offensive, I am not a close-minded bigot like the people who deride LGBTs. I guess I should be more intolerant next time.
You're all overreacting. You have no understanding of the complex issues involved. Clearly this was an entirely justified preemptive strike by the RIAA. They had intelligence from a reliable source, code named "Curve Ball", that this woman intended someday to use a computer and that she holds many of the same philosophies as those who have already infringed copyright. They even had specific intel showing exactly where she planned to set the computer up. It's a slam-dunk. Furthermore she is well known to have jaywalked several times and that she is not a pure free-market capitalist. It doesn't matter if she didn't intend someday to use a computer - the RIAA (as well as everyone else, by the way) believed that she would, and even if that is now known to be false, she is still a jaywalker who supports socialist programs like medicaid. This preemptive lawsuit was the right thing to do. It was never about copyright infringement, from the beginning of this post I have said it is about jaywalking and socialism. If the RIAA cuts and runs from this battle it will only provide aid and comfort to the enemy.
Bravo. You clearly are a talented lawyer. You've gotten me arguing against a straw man that was not the core implication of my initial post. You are despicable, but you have my grudging respect.
Anyway, back to the original point. The USPTO is attempting to prevent closer scrutiny by congress. The USPTO knows that if the Blackberry service is shut down for everyone except gov't employees (as seems to be the current state of the deal), the public will go ballistic. The people will yell at their congress people for keeping their service while the people get shut down, and their congress people will have to respond. The USPTO knows that whatever comes of that, it will not be good for their bureaucracy or their customers (patent attorneys). Hence the USPTO is doing what is in its power (which may or may not be sufficient) to stop the impending RIM/NTP train wreck.
The closest I came to saying something that you've managed to argue against was, "they will toss it out so they don't risk actual reform." The USPTO is attempting to do precisely that. You responded, in effect, "but they don't have the power to do so." Which may be true, and may be technically contradictory to the letter of my post, but is not interesting. My point, the entire matter of my post, is that the USPTO is trying to get out of the way of the collision without sacrificing their bloated, destructive bureaucracy. That is what matters. What you have managed to turn the argument into - whether it will work or not in this particular case - is trivia. That is, I concede your superior lawyerism, but you display a lack of either desire or ability to seek meaningful truth. (which is, in itself, an amusing touchstone on the sad state of our legal system)
But again, I respect your proficiency in twisting the argument into something you could win.
Any provider that abandons flat-rate pricing risks losing customers in droves.
This makes sense when there is competition, which there is at the ISP level and you don't have to move to get a different provider. But go one link up the stream and you're probably down to two providers. If Cox and QWest both decided to do this, I would have to move to either accept it or another state. Forget plastics Benjamin - monopolies are the future in the US, particularly with the present monopoliphile gov't (not just Republicans, mind you).
All evidence is to the contrary. What is your basis for suggesting these patents are truly in trouble?
"RIM shares were up 9.42 percent to $73.89 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq."
The market as a whole knows more about the law than you do (and much more than I do).
A kazillion dollars were spent in defense of RIM at trial, including multi-kazillion dollars in an effort to identify real prior art to invalidate the claims of the patents in suit. After that, a judge and jury, dealing with legal and factual questions respectively, found the patents not invalid, and the judgments were twice affirmed by the Federal Circuit.
I don't necessarily doubt, given the sad state of 35 usc 102 and more critically 103 as a result of a series of narrowing precedents and the anti-free-market, anti-capitalist decision to allow business process and software patents, that the patents in question are legally defensible in court. But that says nothing of the USPTO (which AFAIK does not use a courtroom setting for its decisions), nor of the more fundamental question; whether the patents should be valid. So if your point is that the patents are valid, I would have to question whether the USPTO is answerable to courts regarding its decisions - because it is most certainly answerable to the whims of congress (my initial point above), and congress is blowing very one-sidedly in this case. Even if the USPTO is ultimately answerable to the courts regarding its decisions, that would mean NTP would have to bring a whole new case against the USPTO - meaning 5 years during which it will be even harder than it has been for them to get an injunction. If, on the other hand, your point is that the patents should be valid, you are wrong - they are, like most (at least by numbers) high tech patents of late, a vastly greater economic hobble than support.
What does it say about the US Patent office and software patents that these patents have made it through trials, appeals, etc and only now has the Patent Office decided they weren't any good in the first place?
It says that the USPTO has and will continue to issue bullshit patents on anything put in front of them, but that when a patent affects 25% of the government, regardless of validity, they will toss it out so they don't risk actual reform. No need to fret, however, any bullshit patents that only act as a cudgel for big businesses to kill or blackmail small businesses will remain inviolate.
Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?
Yes, the field becomes richer. But that is not the objective. The objective is for the lawyer to become richer. The lawyer becomes richer if there are more, more complex, and more restrictive laws. Simple laws that make sense would lead to less court time.
A headhunter in Boston sent me an email today. In the past Boston has not ranked terribly high on the list of places to which I would consider relocating. With the apparent commitment to ODF, I am taking today's email more seriously. Being able to interact with the state gov't using my primary workstation makes a difference.
What's the point in spending an evening talking about football scores when you could be doing something constructive and interesting instead?
I think you've hit the nail on the head, and perhaps were even saying that tounge-in-cheek. People with good social skills see talking about football scores with their friends as constructive and interesting because of the social aspect. Seriously; I have a bunch of normal friends through my brother, one night out I asked about sports discussion. They genuinely enjoy it just for the social aspect.
As to "What's the point?" for those who don't find it naturally enjoyable: Outside the office, the point is to develop a social network which leads to more opportunities to spend an evening talking about football scores. Inside the office, it leads to raises and promotions.
As far as I can see, it's basically lying and bullshitting, which surely can't be hard for any smart person to learn?
Very close. I recommend, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. It's not about telling lies so much as it is about focusing on the things that are important to the listener. Put yourself in the listener's place and figure out their motivation, then figure out how the truth you have fits into what they want. You don't have to lie, but you will have to spin. To put a happier face on it, the listener doesn't care about the things they don't care about, so why waste time on those aspects?
Said slightly differently, we scientists see truth as the thing of most value. That is good, but it is not normal. Most other people do not. They see achievement of their goals as the thing of most value. If you can make the truth fit in with their goals, they will accept it happily, blissfully ignorant of the scientific imperative.
George Washington said a 2 party system would be bad. Could he have been right? Could it not be that one party is worse than the other but this is just a product of 2 parties? Could a 3rd powerful party help remedy this situation?
I fear that the solution lies not in the structure of the party system, but in educating the populace. I think that it is not practical to change the party structure, and even if it was, there would still be two dominant parties (though perhaps they would be less apparent).
Educating the populace will be hard. Very hard. But it starts with distributing this article as widely as you can. Email everyone you know. Then look for the publication of Drew Westen's study, find out how to redistribute copies, and do it.
I will be doing so. You all should too. The study will be presented at a conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology this weekend, and will hopefully appear in their newsletters.
heehee - that's the point he was making. It was a joke :)
I think we're missing the more important issue this article brings up.
A new study monitored brain activity of partisans;
This indicates an extraoridinary advance in EEG technology. This ability to detect near flatline brain activity should make it far easier in the future to distinguish between dead people and people in deep comas.
I fail to see how this is evil. Google had two options. They could either censor some of their results, or China would censor all of their results. If censoring is bad, logically more censoring is worse than less censoring.
There's only two massive flaws in your logic.
1. Being censored by someone or something outside of your control is not the same as doing it yourself.
2. 10% censorship at random would be better than 100% censorship. But this is not random, it is targetted with the intent of skewing perception. It's the skew that makes 10% worse than 100%.
"Our" meaning the US's, which does not include all Slashdot readers (but does include me). Much as when I say, "Our national religion is Christianity", it is the de facto truth - the nation is implied to be the nation of which I am a citizen. I don't like all the cultural identities that are ours, and in particular the religion and tribalism bug the shit out of me, but that doesn't mean they are not true. We (the citizens of the US) are all in this together as far as national identity goes. Rather than dividing the country by insisting that "we" are different from (presumably better than) "them", we should be working on developing a shared sense of diversity, and on shaping whatever unified identities exist.
Ask yourself this, would "they" be so bad if they were happy to allow you to be you? Don't you think they feel the same way?
Actually I think that pretty much every economic theory would suggest that trading and sharing actually benefits all parties involved.
But you are adding a presupposition in your hypothesis. "benefits all parties involved" implies a limited subset of economic theories; those that are intended to benefit societies, such as capitalism, communism, and socialism. This neglects the one we use in the United States; corporatism. Corporatism is essentially tribalism applied to the corporation. Each tribe sees itself as the only concern, and all other tribes as competition for limited resources (wealth in this case). The goal is not to maximize overall wealth, or even to maximize the wealth of the tribe, but to capture more wealth than the competing tribes.
Further, when this objective is taken seriously, the result can not only be a reduction in total satisfaction of wants for all tribes, it can even lead to a reduction in satisfaction of wants by the most powerful tribe: If the goal is only to do better than the other tribes, that goal is best acheived by dedicating some amount of resources to debilitating the competing tribes. That is; you come in first with less wealth than you would have garnered had you come in second in a cooperative scenario. This is not a cooperative scenario - it is tribalism.
For an example of our belief in this and our glorification of it, you need look no further than the "get off my island" television show (whose name escapes me at the moment).
And here's the thing that will really twist your noggin: If Google wasn't fighting it, would you even know it had happened?
that search engines are sucking out too much of the Web's value, acting as leeches on companies that create the very source materials the search engines index.
Speaking for the people who build the Internet, and with all due respect for the fact that according to the blurb you may once have not had your head in your ass, may I say, "Fine. You don't like it, leave. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." I'm sick and tired of people whining "but I don't like the way the internet works, we should put knowledge into more restrictive silos so I can charge admission." Bite me. Noone told you to publish your work on a system that was expressly designed to make copies. Piss off. We don't need you. We would all much rather have the internet without you than the internet with you and some new goddamned law that ridiculously overreaches the spirit and letter of copyright law.
As a result, players are asking anyone who wants to join a group to type one or two sentences in English. If the sentences contain spelling or grammar mistakes, the player is rejected. Since you have to join groups to complete certain quests in WOW, this is presenting many Chinese players with a serious problem.
/general talking trash about Chinese players, but they're vastly the exception not the rule. Play well - keep the agro off the squishies, don't forget to heal the pets, don't roll on BoPs you don't need - do that and noone cares if you can chat.
I've been in dozens if not hundreds of PuGs in WoW, and have never heard that asked. That sounds like media hype to me. Sure, I've seen idiots in
Will Sony face future repercussions for this potentially long-term damage?
No. Who do you think pays our politicians' wages? Are they going to bite the hand that feeds?
Don't we already have different levels of service quality? If I pay for dialup access at say $9/month I get a certain amount of bandwidth. If I pony up $25/month for DSL I get even more. If I decide cable is the way to go and pay $50/month, even more than DSL (in my case at least). And finally, if I really want guaranteed access, I pay for business-level service. So what the hell are these poeple talking about?
It gets better - not only are you only paying for the bandwidth on the client side, the businesses are also already paying for the bandwidth on the server side. Apple has to pay more per month for their connectivity than I do, because they have a lot more bandwidth. Apple's upstream has peering agreements that are supposed to guarantee transport.
So why will Apple wind up going along with this? Why is Mark Cuban in support? Because it allows the big boys to play and kills the little guys. Competition, while a cornerstone of capitalism, is anathema to corporatism. And don't expect our corporatist government to lift a damned finger - they know that your parents and grandparents don't even know this issue exists (assuming the politicians do), let alone understand it. Noone is going to vote them out if they don't take action. They may threaten to take action, but only so they can get a pile of cash from whoever took Abrahamoff's job. It will almost certainly never be an issue, and even if it does become an issue, they will happily muddle it with vague preaching about fair markets and gloss over the monopoly issue.
'the differentiator for customers is not the number comparison, but which vendor makes the patching and updating experience the least complex, most efficient and easiest to manage.'
Speaking as a customer who manages a few servers and workstations at a company that has hundreds of the former and tens of thousands of the latter, I disagree. The differentiator for me is made up of two factors; window of vulnerability and severity. Spending two extra hours preparing to apply a patch that arrives one day sooner is a win in my world. And that is indeed a numbers game; one which could be, but has not been, analyzed by this sycophantic series.
Now I agree that for the typical home end user, the above description may be fair. A patch that can be applied by the end user that arrives late is better than a fast patch that cannot. But that only highlights the necessity of taking a hybrid approach to patching if the operating system in question is intended for expert and layman alike (as is XP). Get the info and the preliminary patch to me quickly. Make it pretty for the end user as soon as possible.
Consider then how Linux works; Debian or Gentoo are not necessarily as user friendly, but they get patched at lightning speed. Ubuntu, SuSE, or Lindows (whatever it's called now) may take a bit longer with patches, but have easier point-and-click interfaces for handling them.
I work with OS X, Debian and NT4 on a daily basis. The only way I can predicitably transfer files between them is using FAT16/32, and the limiting factor is NTs lousy support for alien filesystems. Microsoft should place FAT in the public domain. Its not strong enough to warrent a licence, and should really have become extinct along side the floppy disk. Charging people a licence to use a technology that was chosen because of a weakness in your main project, your operating system, is as lame as lecturers teaching from their own book.
A little bit of info that may affect your analysis; MS is an abusive monopoly. They do not want you to be able to transfer files. The only reason they support standard networking protocols for transferring files is because Unix was there first and is still ahead in numbers; they had no choice. Incompatibility is not a weakness, it is a feature.