It's called fascism (in the Mussolini form), and basically is a merger of government and business. It's a centrally planned and controlled system with private ownership and profits.
Gee, that sounds exactly like today's USA and UK.
Really, it is an oligarchy run by elitists, and is not terribly different from feudalism.
No human organisation is terribly different from feudalism, in that the strongest get the lion's share of the power and loot (and women, by the way). Nowadays the barons are just a whole lot better at disguising what they're up to from the peasants. Who are, relatively speaking, a whole lot worse off then medieval peasants were compared to their overlords.
"A monolithic operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design".
The author seems to be under the misapprehension that Windows' architecture reflects technical decisions. On the contrary, it stems mainly from business decisions, so its technical correctness was not really a primary concern.
The main idea was to aggregate as many different computing features as possible into a single product (or product set) in the pursuit of self-reinforcing market domination.
Technically, making a Web browser an organic part of an operating system is a frightful idea. It's beyond bad. From a business POV, it's brilliant - and has been outstandingly successful. Likewise for office automation, software development, database, transaction management, disk management, HTTP serving, etc. etc. etc.
Technically, getting all your software from a single source is probably going to be a bad idea. Especially if that source is a commercial corporation devoted to maximizing its long-term profits. But psychologically, it's very attractive, especially to PHBs who know nothing about IT and are uneasily aware of their own ignorance.
Ok, technically I didn't ask first:-) But I can usually see 3-4 unlocked wireless systems from home, and while not all of them do everything I need (e.g. they block port 25), I've been able to borrow them the couple of times my DSL wasn't working.
Yes, I consider myself a worse than average driver. I don't drive very often, so I don't get much practice. My reflexes and coordination are not particularly good, and I am prone to being distracted. For these reasons, among others, I am careful to drive conservatively.
Almost half of us are bound to be worse than average. Why is it a big deal? I am taller than average, more intelligent than average, and richer than average. Why wouldn't I also be below average in many respects?
What the research report specifically asserts is that people perform worse at a driving task when using a phone than when they are not.
If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means tell us about it. But simply asserting that you disagree with the research is not very constructive.
You're taking a very narrow, selfish view of efficiency. From the individual's POV many things might seem efficient that aren't from a broader social POV. If I find someone's talking distracts me, thus making me less efficient, I might just kill him and carry on with my work. This is discouraged, however. Not only is it bad in principle to kill people; it reduces the overall efficiency of society quite a lot.
So I don't think it is reasonable to define efficiency narrowly as just how much a single person gets done. Indeed, by bringing a mobile phone into the scenario, you have already abandoned that possibility; the phone inevitably involves another person (unless it's some kind of talking robot at the far end).
If your goal was to selectively pick one fact from his post, remove all context completely, and then pick it apart just to make a point that isn't even related to the topic, then, congratulations, you have set up a perfect straw man. So you don't think the possibility of killing or maiming other people has anything to do with efficiency?
If I ignored the OP's disclaimer, as you suggest, maybe it was because I felt it was entirely illegitimate.
>Maybe the Brits are terrified of the idea of talking while driving, but I suppose not many of us outside Britain find it particularly strange. Get over your chauvinism. It's nothing to do with nationality or location; drivers everywhere are human beings, and have the same weaknesses. Try reading this:
'...[T]he drivers did not even realize that they weren't really "seeing" everything in front of them on the road. They thought they were driving perfectly safely, and figured that if anyone had a problem driving while using a cell phone, it would be "the other guy." He explains, "Part of this inattention blindness shuts down their own processing and their own assessment of how well they're driving. So they themselves are not as aware of their driving performance while they're using a cell phone."'
An example would be driving while talking on the cell phone. There's little debate that your driving skills are worsened when you do this, as you simply have less concentration to go around. Ok, fine, but that doesn't in fact mean it is detrimental to efficiency. Unless you're in Britain, in which case it is detrimental to efficiency... as your ass will end up in a cell, because using a phone while driving is illegal.
That's because it's deemed highly inefficient if you kill someone else who was minding their own business while you slightly increase your own productivity.
It's really quite simple. The software field, more than most, attracts very clever people who are deeply interested in logic and programming. Nerds, in a word. While they would like to be rich and famous, they can't quite make themselves live for nothing else. They keep getting distracted by the desire to build great software, solve difficult problems, etc.
Ironically in view of his media reputation, Gates is the exact opposite of a nerd. He is a hard-headed, practical, calculating businessman who also happens to be extremely clever. Moreover, he thoroughly understands the multiplying power of setting up organizations that attract clever people with different kinds of ability. Microsoft has extreme nerds, lots of designers, marketing people, sales people, lawyers, etc., etc. Whatever their skills and opinions, they all conform to Gates' overall strategy.
Microsoft has even set up its own more or less closed mini-universe of customers who run Windows, work with Office, program with Visual Studio, read Microsoft-related newspapers, magazines, and MSDN, and frequent Microsoft-related blogs, newsgroups, and conferences.
But unlike almost all other pure software companies, Microsoft has never once failed to get its priorities right. They are: long-term profit first, last, and foremost. That is the end: everything else is a means. Some companies make their products too good for their own interests; others make them too bad. Microsoft makes them exactly good enough to maximize long-term profit.
Other competitors, like HP and IBM, are primarily hardware companies that do software as a sideline. That's a crippling handicap (although IBM has done pretty well, considering, mostly by well-judged acquisitions). Gates has always taken full advantage of IBM's hardware leg-irons.
Of course, all of this refers to the past when Gates was actively in charge. Now he is almost gone, we can expect to see gradual degradation of the empire that he built.
"If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped - say with a stone axe - will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier". - Robert Heinlein
This rig could easily distract the wearer by continuously dragging his eyes into distant "ratholes" where some conceivably suspicious activity might be going on. But the very amplification of the binoculars would limit the field of vision to a very small area. Meanwhile, someone might very well sneak up and bash his head in with a stone axe - or, perhaps more likely, simply shoot him from the middle distance.
Another fundamental weakness is that the rig could only detect suspicious movements the wearer could actually see. So, if his head happened to be turned slightly away from an attacker, there would be no chance of seeing him.
I challenge you to offer a shred of evidence that Tami Loehrs' work is in any way defective. (The state's army of prosecutors and "experts" doesn't seem to have been able to do so).
It seems far more likely to me that everything you say is ass-backward. How many innocent people are railroaded into plea bargains and prison sentences precisely because "the typical juror is... computer illiterate, and prosecutors know it"?
You assert that Loehrs "is making a living off of [sic] a few lucky shots where her unchallenged statements have helped [accused people] walk free". Yes, that's how the justice system works, all right. The police arrest someone and haul him off to jail, then a pack of prosecutors, police, and forensics experts carefully prepare a case... and then, when it comes to court, the case is dismissed because of "unchallenged statements" by a "one trick pony".
I'm seeing a fascinating parallel with the old-time witch trials. People who didn't know much about anything, but were filled with fear and confusion, were always happy to find a scapegoat. Nothing cheers you up as much as kicking the shit out of Bad People. If you can hang them, or burn them alive, that's a bonus.
So these regular folks would notice that somebody (often a lonely old woman) acted a bit oddly. Instead of using a bit of imagination and charity to understand why, they leaped to the conclusion that she was consorting with the Devil. Just as some Native American tribes got their fun from torturing prisoners to death - life was DULL in those days - torturing and killing a witch just made their year. (Another possible parallel is that those who informed on "witches" often did a deal with the state whereby they split the victim's - often considerable - possessions between them).
Nowadays it's not quite respectable to torture people or burn them alive (unless they're foreign Bad People). But these here pedophiles... we should string 'em all up.
There seems to be a type of mentality that doesn't even want to understand how nasty pictures can wind up on someone's laptop, without the owner's knowledge or consent. It's just a great chance to get someone down and kick him, kick him, kick him...
A first-year physics student called John Aristotle Philips did all this as a summer project his first year at Princeton, way back in the early 19790s. Read the book - it's quite enlightening (as well as amusing).
Not to disagree with you, just wanted to point out that this law is not popular in Britain.
That turns out not to be the case. You cited a few people responding to an article on the Web. But polls have shown that 69% of UK citizens are actually in favour of 42 days. I think they're wrong about that, but it just goes to show that the masses can usually be panicked simply by telling them they're threatened.
In 2004, half of America voted for a guy who did nothing right and everything wrong. They chose to continue down the path of complete fucked-upedness. I say, you wanted it, you got it, bitches. "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard". (H. L. Mencken)
I can't help noticing that, according to surveys, about half of Americans have not read even one book in the past year. Does that remind you of any recent president? Maybe like votes for like. In which case, what we need is a lot more education.
As a foreigner who admires the US constitution from afar, I am puzzled by this:
'The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table."'
If the president is alleged to have broken a whole swathe of laws, and the Democratic party refuses to do anything about it - what is the point of the Democratic party?
Furthermore, if the constitution can be selectively ignored by the executive branch, and the legislature and judiciary steadfastly look the other way, what is the point of the separation of powers?
I feel as if I'm watching a man jump out of a plane, wearing a functioning parachute, but making no attempt to deploy it.
According Wikipedia (so it's official you see), "terrorism is a term used to describe violence or other harmful acts committed (or threatened) against civilians by groups or persons for political or ideological goals". Unfortunately, that makes the US government far and away the world's leading terrorist organization. That's not even a contentious proposition, it's so glaringly obvious. Over a million excess deaths in Iraq alone - the overwhelming majority of them civilians - and most certainly "for political or ideological goals" (well, both actually).
No non-governmental terrorist organization is even in the same league, by several orders of magnitude.
And please don't try to make a distinction by saying, "Oh those deaths were just collateral damage. We really didn't mean to kill them". Yeah, and the 9/11 attackers didn't mean to harm anyone either. When you fly fuel-laden airliners into skyscrapers, obviously many people are going to die. Likewise when you launch Blitzkrieg against a heavily populated nation, and then try to keep it occupied and your puppets in power against the will of many of its people.
Apologies, Valtor. I exaggerated for effect. What I really meant, on reconsideration, was more like "Not many of them seem to frequent Slashdot, and they don't seem to dominate threads like this one". In retrospect, I must have let my emotions run away with me.
Well, this reply certainly hit the nail on the head. I distinguish between:
1. Software engineers who build reliable, robust, maintainable, extensible (and possibly secure) software systems. This is software that actually matters; that has to work properly, with no exceptions and no excuses. These people use the tools that are proven and mature. Remember "a legacy app is one that works reliably"? They are not ashamed to use COBOL, CICS, assembler, Ada, UML, CORBA, or whatever as long as it is the best tool for the job. If they don't know it, they learn it. There are not very many of them, and you may never have met one; they certainly don't frequent Slashdot.
2. Developers who write user-interface heavy programs (nowadays usually Web-based). This kind of software doesn't have to be perfect out of the box, as it will be continuously modified. If the occasional error happens, it just gets fixed with the next batch of mods. More and more developers are freelance mercenaries, moving from project to project (and those projects are getting shorter thanks to the agile movement). What do they want? To beef up their resumes, of course, in order to have a better chance of getting the next good job. Hence the frantic need to keep abreast of the latest and greatest craze du jour.
3. The growing millions who hack up scripts, VB, and amusing Web sites of various kinds. They use whatever is quick, easy, and cheap. They naturally make all the mistakes in the book, but mostly they get the job done - somehow.
4. "The little cottage industry of tech. book authors, publishers, cert trainers, and seminar speakers" referred to by the parent. Only it's not "little": it's huge - and its influence is even huger. This is the community that treats software development as a branch of the fashion/entertainment industry: as soon as anything new is understood and stable, it's "dead" (basically because it's perceived as boring). Time to move on to the next unstable, unproven "technology". And guess what? The very large and powerful community of "vendors" is right behind them, urging them on. That's because they make a lot of their profits from churn.
And we wonder why software is chronically unreliable!
The UK government has presumably decided that the US government is a terrorist organization, and that downloading material from its Web sites is therefore a crime.
The world waits with bated breath to see if Uncle Sam retaliates in kind.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called fascism (in the Mussolini form), and basically is a merger of government and business. It's a centrally planned and controlled system with private ownership and profits.
Gee, that sounds exactly like today's USA and UK.
Really, it is an oligarchy run by elitists, and is not terribly different from feudalism.
No human organisation is terribly different from feudalism, in that the strongest get the lion's share of the power and loot (and women, by the way). Nowadays the barons are just a whole lot better at disguising what they're up to from the peasants. Who are, relatively speaking, a whole lot worse off then medieval peasants were compared to their overlords.
"A monolithic operating system like Windows perpetuates an obsolete design".
The author seems to be under the misapprehension that Windows' architecture reflects technical decisions. On the contrary, it stems mainly from business decisions, so its technical correctness was not really a primary concern.
The main idea was to aggregate as many different computing features as possible into a single product (or product set) in the pursuit of self-reinforcing market domination.
Technically, making a Web browser an organic part of an operating system is a frightful idea. It's beyond bad. From a business POV, it's brilliant - and has been outstandingly successful. Likewise for office automation, software development, database, transaction management, disk management, HTTP serving, etc. etc. etc.
Technically, getting all your software from a single source is probably going to be a bad idea. Especially if that source is a commercial corporation devoted to maximizing its long-term profits. But psychologically, it's very attractive, especially to PHBs who know nothing about IT and are uneasily aware of their own ignorance.
Ok, technically I didn't ask first :-) But I can usually see 3-4 unlocked wireless systems from home, and while not all of them do everything I need (e.g. they block port 25), I've been able to borrow them the couple of times my DSL wasn't working.
One word: illegal.
The excellent EU-phemisms cartoon in the current Private Eye (No. 1213) has an EU spokesman saying:
'Of all the EU member states, only Ireland voted "No"'.
Underneath, where the real meaning of such statements is traditionally explained, it adds:
"Of all the EU member states, only Ireland voted".
So when is the EU finally going to request fingerprints and private data from US travelers?
When it wants to get bombed.
Yes, I consider myself a worse than average driver. I don't drive very often, so I don't get much practice. My reflexes and coordination are not particularly good, and I am prone to being distracted. For these reasons, among others, I am careful to drive conservatively.
Almost half of us are bound to be worse than average. Why is it a big deal? I am taller than average, more intelligent than average, and richer than average. Why wouldn't I also be below average in many respects?
What the research report specifically asserts is that people perform worse at a driving task when using a phone than when they are not.
If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means tell us about it. But simply asserting that you disagree with the research is not very constructive.
You're taking a very narrow, selfish view of efficiency. From the individual's POV many things might seem efficient that aren't from a broader social POV. If I find someone's talking distracts me, thus making me less efficient, I might just kill him and carry on with my work. This is discouraged, however. Not only is it bad in principle to kill people; it reduces the overall efficiency of society quite a lot.
So I don't think it is reasonable to define efficiency narrowly as just how much a single person gets done. Indeed, by bringing a mobile phone into the scenario, you have already abandoned that possibility; the phone inevitably involves another person (unless it's some kind of talking robot at the far end).
If I ignored the OP's disclaimer, as you suggest, maybe it was because I felt it was entirely illegitimate.
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392815&cat=1_all
Note this passage in particular:
'...[T]he drivers did not even realize that they weren't really "seeing" everything in front of them on the road. They thought they were driving perfectly safely, and figured that if anyone had a problem driving while using a cell phone, it would be "the other guy." He explains, "Part of this inattention blindness shuts down their own processing and their own assessment of how well they're driving. So they themselves are not as aware of their driving performance while they're using a cell phone."'
That's because it's deemed highly inefficient if you kill someone else who was minding their own business while you slightly increase your own productivity.
It's really quite simple. The software field, more than most, attracts very clever people who are deeply interested in logic and programming. Nerds, in a word. While they would like to be rich and famous, they can't quite make themselves live for nothing else. They keep getting distracted by the desire to build great software, solve difficult problems, etc.
Ironically in view of his media reputation, Gates is the exact opposite of a nerd. He is a hard-headed, practical, calculating businessman who also happens to be extremely clever. Moreover, he thoroughly understands the multiplying power of setting up organizations that attract clever people with different kinds of ability. Microsoft has extreme nerds, lots of designers, marketing people, sales people, lawyers, etc., etc. Whatever their skills and opinions, they all conform to Gates' overall strategy.
Microsoft has even set up its own more or less closed mini-universe of customers who run Windows, work with Office, program with Visual Studio, read Microsoft-related newspapers, magazines, and MSDN, and frequent Microsoft-related blogs, newsgroups, and conferences.
But unlike almost all other pure software companies, Microsoft has never once failed to get its priorities right. They are: long-term profit first, last, and foremost. That is the end: everything else is a means. Some companies make their products too good for their own interests; others make them too bad. Microsoft makes them exactly good enough to maximize long-term profit.
Other competitors, like HP and IBM, are primarily hardware companies that do software as a sideline. That's a crippling handicap (although IBM has done pretty well, considering, mostly by well-judged acquisitions). Gates has always taken full advantage of IBM's hardware leg-irons.
Of course, all of this refers to the past when Gates was actively in charge. Now he is almost gone, we can expect to see gradual degradation of the empire that he built.
"If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped - say with a stone axe - will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier".
- Robert Heinlein
This rig could easily distract the wearer by continuously dragging his eyes into distant "ratholes" where some conceivably suspicious activity might be going on. But the very amplification of the binoculars would limit the field of vision to a very small area. Meanwhile, someone might very well sneak up and bash his head in with a stone axe - or, perhaps more likely, simply shoot him from the middle distance.
Another fundamental weakness is that the rig could only detect suspicious movements the wearer could actually see. So, if his head happened to be turned slightly away from an attacker, there would be no chance of seeing him.
I challenge you to offer a shred of evidence that Tami Loehrs' work is in any way defective. (The state's army of prosecutors and "experts" doesn't seem to have been able to do so).
It seems far more likely to me that everything you say is ass-backward. How many innocent people are railroaded into plea bargains and prison sentences precisely because "the typical juror is... computer illiterate, and prosecutors know it"?
You assert that Loehrs "is making a living off of [sic] a few lucky shots where her unchallenged statements have helped [accused people] walk free". Yes, that's how the justice system works, all right. The police arrest someone and haul him off to jail, then a pack of prosecutors, police, and forensics experts carefully prepare a case... and then, when it comes to court, the case is dismissed because of "unchallenged statements" by a "one trick pony".
I'm seeing a fascinating parallel with the old-time witch trials. People who didn't know much about anything, but were filled with fear and confusion, were always happy to find a scapegoat. Nothing cheers you up as much as kicking the shit out of Bad People. If you can hang them, or burn them alive, that's a bonus.
So these regular folks would notice that somebody (often a lonely old woman) acted a bit oddly. Instead of using a bit of imagination and charity to understand why, they leaped to the conclusion that she was consorting with the Devil. Just as some Native American tribes got their fun from torturing prisoners to death - life was DULL in those days - torturing and killing a witch just made their year. (Another possible parallel is that those who informed on "witches" often did a deal with the state whereby they split the victim's - often considerable - possessions between them).
Nowadays it's not quite respectable to torture people or burn them alive (unless they're foreign Bad People). But these here pedophiles... we should string 'em all up.
There seems to be a type of mentality that doesn't even want to understand how nasty pictures can wind up on someone's laptop, without the owner's knowledge or consent. It's just a great chance to get someone down and kick him, kick him, kick him...
Touche! And I usually preview so earnestly... 8-)
I meant "early 1970s".
But I miswrote.
A first-year physics student called John Aristotle Philips did all this as a summer project his first year at Princeton, way back in the early 19790s. Read the book - it's quite enlightening (as well as amusing).
http://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-True-Story-Bomb-Kid/dp/0671827316/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213618717&sr=1-2
This is the same Anne Widdecombe who said that her own boss, Michael Howard, "had something of the night about him" when he was Home Secretary.
Whatever that "something of the night" was, it seems to have been catching.
Not to disagree with you, just wanted to point out that this law is not popular in Britain.
That turns out not to be the case. You cited a few people responding to an article on the Web. But polls have shown that 69% of UK citizens are actually in favour of 42 days. I think they're wrong about that, but it just goes to show that the masses can usually be panicked simply by telling them they're threatened.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a96QqbTV.fjo&refer=europe
I can't help noticing that, according to surveys, about half of Americans have not read even one book in the past year. Does that remind you of any recent president? Maybe like votes for like. In which case, what we need is a lot more education.
As a foreigner who admires the US constitution from afar, I am puzzled by this:
'The (Democratic) House leadership has said that the idea of impeachment is "off the table."'
If the president is alleged to have broken a whole swathe of laws, and the Democratic party refuses to do anything about it - what is the point of the Democratic party?
Furthermore, if the constitution can be selectively ignored by the executive branch, and the legislature and judiciary steadfastly look the other way, what is the point of the separation of powers?
I feel as if I'm watching a man jump out of a plane, wearing a functioning parachute, but making no attempt to deploy it.
No non-governmental terrorist organization is even in the same league, by several orders of magnitude.
And please don't try to make a distinction by saying, "Oh those deaths were just collateral damage. We really didn't mean to kill them". Yeah, and the 9/11 attackers didn't mean to harm anyone either. When you fly fuel-laden airliners into skyscrapers, obviously many people are going to die. Likewise when you launch Blitzkrieg against a heavily populated nation, and then try to keep it occupied and your puppets in power against the will of many of its people.
Apologies, Valtor. I exaggerated for effect. What I really meant, on reconsideration, was more like "Not many of them seem to frequent Slashdot, and they don't seem to dominate threads like this one". In retrospect, I must have let my emotions run away with me.
Well, this reply certainly hit the nail on the head. I distinguish between:
1. Software engineers who build reliable, robust, maintainable, extensible (and possibly secure) software systems. This is software that actually matters; that has to work properly, with no exceptions and no excuses. These people use the tools that are proven and mature. Remember "a legacy app is one that works reliably"? They are not ashamed to use COBOL, CICS, assembler, Ada, UML, CORBA, or whatever as long as it is the best tool for the job. If they don't know it, they learn it. There are not very many of them, and you may never have met one; they certainly don't frequent Slashdot.
2. Developers who write user-interface heavy programs (nowadays usually Web-based). This kind of software doesn't have to be perfect out of the box, as it will be continuously modified. If the occasional error happens, it just gets fixed with the next batch of mods. More and more developers are freelance mercenaries, moving from project to project (and those projects are getting shorter thanks to the agile movement). What do they want? To beef up their resumes, of course, in order to have a better chance of getting the next good job. Hence the frantic need to keep abreast of the latest and greatest craze du jour.
3. The growing millions who hack up scripts, VB, and amusing Web sites of various kinds. They use whatever is quick, easy, and cheap. They naturally make all the mistakes in the book, but mostly they get the job done - somehow.
4. "The little cottage industry of tech. book authors, publishers, cert trainers, and seminar speakers" referred to by the parent. Only it's not "little": it's huge - and its influence is even huger. This is the community that treats software development as a branch of the fashion/entertainment industry: as soon as anything new is understood and stable, it's "dead" (basically because it's perceived as boring). Time to move on to the next unstable, unproven "technology". And guess what? The very large and powerful community of "vendors" is right behind them, urging them on. That's because they make a lot of their profits from churn.
And we wonder why software is chronically unreliable!
The UK government has presumably decided that the US government is a terrorist organization, and that downloading material from its Web sites is therefore a crime.
The world waits with bated breath to see if Uncle Sam retaliates in kind.