The amount saved per person has nothing to do with how much they are paid. Just because there's two numbers and one's bigger doesn't mean the right thing to do is divide the bigger one by the little one.
The theory is that $2 billion pays for 20,000 programmers. Calculating this out will show you an estimated cost of $100k/year/programmer, which is a reasonable figure for salaries plus overhead. The savings are not that those 20,000 programmers don't have to get paid elsewhere, but that their code will be more widely used than it would be if they were writing proprietary code, and as a result, the economic value to our society, in the form of lower software costs, would be something like $80 billion.
Which is frankly not a particularly unrealistic notion.
What, I have to own Apple shares to be sick of whiners who want a "class action lawsuit" every time the world fails to present itself to them on a silver platter?
If you want to assail my position, how about instead of the ad hominem circumnstantial, you go with some description of the actual damage done to people by Apple in this case. Show me the computer that used to work that Apple broke, for instance.
No, it fucking isn't time for a class action suit every time someone mildly inconveniences you or fails to blow you just the way you like it.
NO DAMAGES. They are not damaging you. They are not breaking your toys, they are not promising you something other than what they sell, they are not stealing anything from you. You have NO DAMAGES. You are unharmed. They are not legally obliged to make you maximally happy.
If Apple promised that everyone who bought OS X could run it on commodity hardware, then reneged and said "no, wait, our hardware only", you might have a basis for a lawsuit.
I have been involved in a couple of class action lawsuits, such as a lawsuit against Allied Telesyn for sending junk faxes, or a lawsuit I have going with a local mortgage lender where they appear to be on the hook for about $12.5 million in liability. These cases are based on actual damage done to people, not on companies not making me happy enough or running themselves the way I'd like them to.
I would like it if everyone whose first response to a distant rumor that a future product will not be what you want to buy is to declare that it is "time for a class action" would just STFU and stop being such whiners. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. Congratulations, you have managed to avoid being damaged and you have no need to waste your time going to court over the damages you were able to avoid by NOT EVEN DOING A DAMN THING.
So, the question is... What software do they need to install on my machine without my permission to remove the software they installed without my permission?
Er, no. I think that if they want to charge me for the pipe to my house, they should bill me for it. Which they do, monthly.
The way cable works is this: The cable company runs wires to my house, and I pay them for these wires. I am paying for them. See? No one is asking for anything for free. I am paying for it.
Then they pay HBO to make interesting stuff to broadcast.
So, if we were going to imitate the financially successful model of cable, SBC would pay Google for providing a service which makes people want to have internet access.
But where do you get this ludicrous idea that what is being proposed is that no one pay for wires? We are paying for them. They bill us monthly. Google is not using my DSL line; I am. And I pay for it.
If the companies selling DSL are not making enough money to cover costs, they should raise their prices. In fact, prices vary some; this is called competition.
SBC wants special immunity to economics. In an economic system, you are paid by your customers, not by everyone else.
Hey, I vote Republican most of the time, and I am deleriously happy that Hubert H. Humphrey not only lost to a retired wrestler, but came in third.
But for what it's worth, you betcha I voted for Ventura. There's just one thing: By definition, those of us who voted for the winning candidate are not the "losers".
Norm Coleman was the asshole mayor of Saint Paul who broke campaign promises right and left and spent all his time trying to raise taxes to buy free stadiums for our local sports teams, because everyone knows people with annual salaries in the 7-figure range need a lot of help from people who are hoping to break the $25k line.
Norm Coleman lost a gubernatorial race to a pro wrestler, and this reflected a clear and considered rational choice by the electorate.
I am not surprised to see him spouting random propaganda that he thinks will get him votes.
I'm using a Canon i9900, not just for photos, but for art. If I don't get overpriced photo paper, I can produce pretty decent photos at a reasonable price.
Part of this is, of course, that the Canon uses cheap plastic instead of expensive electronics for ink packaging.
Anyway, a friend of mine bought me a steak to do up some prints once. Why? Because the local photo lab was unable to do a decent job. They brought in a square picture and asked for an enlargement, and got a very nice full-page picture that chopped the guy's head off. Well, not very nice; not much color correction.
Pretty much every print I make on my printer is pretty much the print I intended. The photo labs can give me prints cheaper IF they give me the right ones; otherwise, it's not so cheap.
Actually, there were significant problems with the 68020, because many developers used the top byte of addresses for flags. But they were warned against it pretty much from day 1.
(Emacs, BTW, was a major early offender, because the default assumption it made was that you could use part of every pointer for flags. I think it still does this, rather than defaulting to separate pointers and flag bits except on platforms where the assumption has been tested.)
We had that deal on some rackmount servers. One of them would hang during POST one time in three if you had a RAID controller in it. We could swap RAID controllers out to other Dell boxes, including one of the exact same model, without trouble. Just that particular one.
Over a month later, it was still happening. I think they swapped the power supply once. They didn't apparently feel that an obviously defective machine totally unsuitable for a production environment was a problem on their end, so we got to play the game of hooking it up to a remote-switchable power supply and power-cycling it if it was down.
I'm not doing contract programming, but rather, freelance writing. One of my largest clients uses a third party company ("Superior Design International") to pay the bills. Through a variety of excuses, just not responding to emails, and so on, they've managed to underpay by something like $70,000... Curiously, I've talked to the company I'm working for, and from their numbers, it looks like SDI isn't even stealing my money, they're just not bothering to do their job. (Which is to ask their employer for money, take the money, and disburse it.)
FWIW, my lawyer sent them a very friendly letter, and by this time next week, I plan to start blogging about it, at length, if I haven't gotten paid.
Well, you'd be wrong. My insight gets 60-70 highway, closer to 45-50 on city streets. (I can do a lot better if I pay attention, but that's what I get not watching my driving style at all.)
Not a bad OS at all, but I think it's limited by the gimmicky nature of the command-line interface and the quirky insistence on "open source".
I got a DS for stuff like this. Is it "gimmicky"? Maybe it is. Paddle games were "gimmicky" too, but it turns out that there are games that are playable with a paddle or trackball, and annoying with a mouse or joystick.
I already have a handheld with a single screen and some controls and buttons. A faster one is not a big deal to me. A handheld with a touchscreen, a microphone, and a dual display is awfully neat.
I got a DS because there are games which are possible on a DS, that simply cannot be implemented playably on anything else. Canvas Curse is an excellent example.
I am not always a huge fan of Apple's hardware design; my dual G4 tower was the loudest desktop personal computer ever.
But Apple has done the fans for a while, and the cases for a long time.
My G5 is quieter than my laptop P4 system. Dual 2.0Ghz processors, and you can't even hear it under reasonable load. My P4 is loud and annoying.
Yes, I could theoretically track down quieter fans, and a power supply with quieter fans, and so on... But Apple built the machine to be quiet out of the box, and I love it love it love it.
Cases? Since the days of the G3 tower, Apple cases have opened with a simple latch. No screws, no hassle, everything nice and reachable.
The objection I have to the article isn't that these two ideas are bad ideas in some way. It's that they're not in the slightest bit innovative.
Y'know, my Canon printer has ink cartridges which are just plastic with ink in 'em, and a separate print head with about 6,000 nozzles. (But it's not part of the printer; it's a separate thing you can replace. And it's user-replaceable.)
So, HP is making a big thing about doing something Canon's been doing for several years.
Poor methodology on that study, and it ignores key measurements -- they talk about speed, but they don't cover physical injury, which is where I found Dvorak mattered most.
I switch natively between Dvorak and Qwerty, and between "standard", Kinesis, and DataHand.
FWIW, the rule I adopted was to use Dvorak on the Kinesis, and Qwerty on regular keyboards.
Learning a new keyboard, you want to use ONLY that keyboard for at least a month. Past that, it's not too bad, and I can switch back and forth instantly.
Actually, you make a good point; there's a distinction between running a web server so you can have a page that says "this web server is running on my toaster" and actually integrating it with the rest of the software -- but I think the TiVo people already solved THAT problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The amount saved per person has nothing to do with how much they are paid. Just because there's two numbers and one's bigger doesn't mean the right thing to do is divide the bigger one by the little one.
The theory is that $2 billion pays for 20,000 programmers. Calculating this out will show you an estimated cost of $100k/year/programmer, which is a reasonable figure for salaries plus overhead. The savings are not that those 20,000 programmers don't have to get paid elsewhere, but that their code will be more widely used than it would be if they were writing proprietary code, and as a result, the economic value to our society, in the form of lower software costs, would be something like $80 billion.
Which is frankly not a particularly unrealistic notion.
Last I heard, zero.
What, I have to own Apple shares to be sick of whiners who want a "class action lawsuit" every time the world fails to present itself to them on a silver platter?
If you want to assail my position, how about instead of the ad hominem circumnstantial, you go with some description of the actual damage done to people by Apple in this case. Show me the computer that used to work that Apple broke, for instance.
No, it fucking isn't time for a class action suit every time someone mildly inconveniences you or fails to blow you just the way you like it.
NO DAMAGES. They are not damaging you. They are not breaking your toys, they are not promising you something other than what they sell, they are not stealing anything from you. You have NO DAMAGES. You are unharmed. They are not legally obliged to make you maximally happy.
If Apple promised that everyone who bought OS X could run it on commodity hardware, then reneged and said "no, wait, our hardware only", you might have a basis for a lawsuit.
I have been involved in a couple of class action lawsuits, such as a lawsuit against Allied Telesyn for sending junk faxes, or a lawsuit I have going with a local mortgage lender where they appear to be on the hook for about $12.5 million in liability. These cases are based on actual damage done to people, not on companies not making me happy enough or running themselves the way I'd like them to.
I would like it if everyone whose first response to a distant rumor that a future product will not be what you want to buy is to declare that it is "time for a class action" would just STFU and stop being such whiners. If you don't like the product, don't buy it. Congratulations, you have managed to avoid being damaged and you have no need to waste your time going to court over the damages you were able to avoid by NOT EVEN DOING A DAMN THING.
So, the question is... What software do they need to install on my machine without my permission to remove the software they installed without my permission?
Er, no. I think that if they want to charge me for the pipe to my house, they should bill me for it. Which they do, monthly.
The way cable works is this: The cable company runs wires to my house, and I pay them for these wires. I am paying for them. See? No one is asking for anything for free. I am paying for it.
Then they pay HBO to make interesting stuff to broadcast.
So, if we were going to imitate the financially successful model of cable, SBC would pay Google for providing a service which makes people want to have internet access.
But where do you get this ludicrous idea that what is being proposed is that no one pay for wires? We are paying for them. They bill us monthly. Google is not using my DSL line; I am. And I pay for it.
If the companies selling DSL are not making enough money to cover costs, they should raise their prices. In fact, prices vary some; this is called competition.
SBC wants special immunity to economics. In an economic system, you are paid by your customers, not by everyone else.
Hey, I vote Republican most of the time, and I am deleriously happy that Hubert H. Humphrey not only lost to a retired wrestler, but came in third.
But for what it's worth, you betcha I voted for Ventura. There's just one thing: By definition, those of us who voted for the winning candidate are not the "losers".
Norm Coleman was the asshole mayor of Saint Paul who broke campaign promises right and left and spent all his time trying to raise taxes to buy free stadiums for our local sports teams, because everyone knows people with annual salaries in the 7-figure range need a lot of help from people who are hoping to break the $25k line.
Norm Coleman lost a gubernatorial race to a pro wrestler, and this reflected a clear and considered rational choice by the electorate.
I am not surprised to see him spouting random propaganda that he thinks will get him votes.
For instance, I have an Elura 60 camcorder. Is that definitely not affected?
Friends of mine have Canon cameras, A75 and A310 I think. We are not in Asia; should we be worried anyway?
I'm using a Canon i9900, not just for photos, but for art. If I don't get overpriced photo paper, I can produce pretty decent photos at a reasonable price.
Part of this is, of course, that the Canon uses cheap plastic instead of expensive electronics for ink packaging.
Anyway, a friend of mine bought me a steak to do up some prints once. Why? Because the local photo lab was unable to do a decent job. They brought in a square picture and asked for an enlargement, and got a very nice full-page picture that chopped the guy's head off. Well, not very nice; not much color correction.
Pretty much every print I make on my printer is pretty much the print I intended. The photo labs can give me prints cheaper IF they give me the right ones; otherwise, it's not so cheap.
Actually, there were significant problems with the 68020, because many developers used the top byte of addresses for flags. But they were warned against it pretty much from day 1.
(Emacs, BTW, was a major early offender, because the default assumption it made was that you could use part of every pointer for flags. I think it still does this, rather than defaulting to separate pointers and flag bits except on platforms where the assumption has been tested.)
I like the sound of that. Or used to.
We had that deal on some rackmount servers. One of them would hang during POST one time in three if you had a RAID controller in it. We could swap RAID controllers out to other Dell boxes, including one of the exact same model, without trouble. Just that particular one.
Over a month later, it was still happening. I think they swapped the power supply once. They didn't apparently feel that an obviously defective machine totally unsuitable for a production environment was a problem on their end, so we got to play the game of hooking it up to a remote-switchable power supply and power-cycling it if it was down.
I'm not doing contract programming, but rather, freelance writing. One of my largest clients uses a third party company ("Superior Design International") to pay the bills. Through a variety of excuses, just not responding to emails, and so on, they've managed to underpay by something like $70,000... Curiously, I've talked to the company I'm working for, and from their numbers, it looks like SDI isn't even stealing my money, they're just not bothering to do their job. (Which is to ask their employer for money, take the money, and disburse it.)
FWIW, my lawyer sent them a very friendly letter, and by this time next week, I plan to start blogging about it, at length, if I haven't gotten paid.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/fa
Well, you'd be wrong. My insight gets 60-70 highway, closer to 45-50 on city streets. (I can do a lot better if I pay attention, but that's what I get not watching my driving style at all.)
Not a bad OS at all, but I think it's limited by the gimmicky nature of the command-line interface and the quirky insistence on "open source".
I got a DS for stuff like this. Is it "gimmicky"? Maybe it is. Paddle games were "gimmicky" too, but it turns out that there are games that are playable with a paddle or trackball, and annoying with a mouse or joystick.
I already have a handheld with a single screen and some controls and buttons. A faster one is not a big deal to me. A handheld with a touchscreen, a microphone, and a dual display is awfully neat.
I got a DS because there are games which are possible on a DS, that simply cannot be implemented playably on anything else. Canvas Curse is an excellent example.
I am not always a huge fan of Apple's hardware design; my dual G4 tower was the loudest desktop personal computer ever.
But Apple has done the fans for a while, and the cases for a long time.
My G5 is quieter than my laptop P4 system. Dual 2.0Ghz processors, and you can't even hear it under reasonable load. My P4 is loud and annoying.
Yes, I could theoretically track down quieter fans, and a power supply with quieter fans, and so on... But Apple built the machine to be quiet out of the box, and I love it love it love it.
Cases? Since the days of the G3 tower, Apple cases have opened with a simple latch. No screws, no hassle, everything nice and reachable.
The objection I have to the article isn't that these two ideas are bad ideas in some way. It's that they're not in the slightest bit innovative.
Y'know, my Canon printer has ink cartridges which are just plastic with ink in 'em, and a separate print head with about 6,000 nozzles. (But it's not part of the printer; it's a separate thing you can replace. And it's user-replaceable.)
So, HP is making a big thing about doing something Canon's been doing for several years.
This is a 3.5 book, so it's a followup to the 3.5 DMG.
You could use it with any of them, but 3.5 is the system used for the rules, on the occasions when it matters.
Poor methodology on that study, and it ignores key measurements -- they talk about speed, but they don't cover physical injury, which is where I found Dvorak mattered most.
I switch natively between Dvorak and Qwerty, and between "standard", Kinesis, and DataHand.
FWIW, the rule I adopted was to use Dvorak on the Kinesis, and Qwerty on regular keyboards.
Learning a new keyboard, you want to use ONLY that keyboard for at least a month. Past that, it's not too bad, and I can switch back and forth instantly.
I have a CPAN build directory containing an old copy of zlib (1.2.2), dated September 2004.
It has this patch already applied.
WTF?
Actually, you make a good point; there's a distinction between running a web server so you can have a page that says "this web server is running on my toaster" and actually integrating it with the rest of the software -- but I think the TiVo people already solved THAT problem.
For the record, as the article says, I'm a freelancer, not an IBM employee.
That said, the editorial process at dW is not trivial or careless, and I'm pretty sure IBM will keep the article as is.
Someone in alt.religion.kibology, I think, did an excellent humor post consisting of that post adjusted to be about a $3 bill.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22318