I know defending CEOs is pretty unpopular, but I think your opinion is far more insightful than you're likely to get credit for. A CEO is paid enormous sums that far outweigh their individual productivity because they are not paid for individual productivity; they are paid for their contribution to and potential effect on the total productivity.
They are also in high demand. The human mind has not evolved (or was not created) to handle groups larger than 12 people, let alone 100,000. A person who has the skills to do that is going to be uncommon and the salary will reflect that. The high demand and the low supply will--in our economy--result in a high price.
The severance package goes with this. When you are at the bottom, if you lose your job, it is much easier to find a new job than when you are at the top and there are less job openings to replace it. A CEO is also likely to be used as a scapegoat when a company fails miserably. Of course, he's also likely to be the true cause if a company fails miserably. The severance package is a mechanism to draw in CEOs. If your company doesn't offer it, the other company will and all else being equal, who will get the CEO? The other company. In other words, a severance package is not a reward for a failed CEO. It's an incentive to hire better CEOs.
I've also found this to be a fascinating debate, full of lack of information and misinformation. It's been surprisingly hard to find a "satisfying level of truth". Most reports of the case seem to imply that the issue is simply Word's use of XML as a whole and that i4i is claiming to own the XML format. So, I actually read TFA. Then the actual TFA in the TFA. Then the actual Complaint in the TFA. Which includes the actual patent.
Now, after reading that, I felt I couldn't possibly be fully informed still, since the patent seems to be for the storing and processing of structure seperate from its content. A map of the structure points to the locations of the content. XML certainly doesn't work that way. There were hints about the little-used feature affected referred to as custom XML. I knew that couldn't truly be a generic sense of custom XML. All XML is custom. That's the whole point of XML.
So the feature in question is the attaching of XML Schema to a document. Now, to me that sounds suspiciously like XSLT, but I have to assume it's different in implementation. I assume the issue i4i has is with the implementation of the mapping of the "custom" XML schema elements to the content elements in the document.
Which I have to admit, might almost be valid. This does feel like a fairly broad patent to me, but IANAPL. I also wonder if there is truly prior art on this. While an obvious concept in retrospect, how many document format did seperate their formatting from their structure? The issue seems to clearly not be a simple matter of editing XML or other formats.
I'm (fairly) sure you don't quite understand XML either, then. It's not about data being accessible in a tree instead of a grid. It's about data being storable/modifiable in a well-defined format that could be agreed to by all users of the format (being based on SGML), that is also human readable (being text-based and not binary encoded), and that can represent the greatest number of data structures (grids, lists, etc. being simpler structures than trees). It has similar benefits to using.NET over each language having its own framework (every application isn't forced to write its own plumping over again). Similar benefits to traffic lights having red lights that mean stop, yellow lights that mean prepare to stop (or go faster in some states), and green lights that mean go (a common convention that you can follow anywhere).
The fact that so many intelligent people (not that I'm assuming I'm one of them) can see XML as having such intrinsically different purposes is probably a sign of how poorly it's understand and that perhaps it won't be long before something better comes along. Or rather, different, since JSON is probably "that thing" and I doubt many would call JSON "more elegant" than XML, just easier to use, which is why it will win.
In fact, I'm sure someone will correct me and tell me why I don't understand XML.
The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in.
I'm pleased to hear Google has promised that once they establish their clear monopoly they will happily step down and turn over their system to the open source/standards community.
Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to "game" our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.
We should all be thankful Google is protecting the consumer by keeping search and advertising a closed system on the Internet. I assume they would have been behind Microsoft's position with Internet Explorer that in a highly competitive market, it's important to maintain a closed proprietary system.
Re:What Was He VP of... Mind Control Devices?
on
Google About Openness
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· Score: 2, Funny
Don't be silly. This is Google. Schmidt will be dancing around, chanting "Advertisers! Advertisers! Advertisers!"
Trust me. The advanced anal massage techniques in Vol 2 make it well worth reading. I know what you're thinking... Why not just skip right to Vol 2? The basic techniques in Vol 1 are an important foundation and you could do some serious harm if you failed to understand those basic principles first.
People who like sound enough to buy seven speakers and a subwoofer instead of a perfectly satisfactory two speakers and people who like video quality enough to buy a Blu-Ray instead of a perfectly satisfactory DVD. And as was the case for both of those, people who have not witnessed good 3D video will not be able to comprehend how it can add to the entertainment experience until they have seen if for themselves.
I suck at real life. If I could win at life, I wouldn't have to play games. I play games because they are not like real life and I have a chance to understand how they work because they have rules that are simpler than the real world. Most games refer to real life concepts without using real life rules because to do otherwise would be entirely arbitrary.
Look at Hi Ho! Cherry-O. This is not an accurate representation of the cherry harvesting process, but the idea that you are picking cherries from a tree and collecting them in baskets gives the game some context.
When I watch cartoons, I do not complain because Willie Coyote is still hanging in mid-air after he runs of the side of a cliff or that chickens don't talk like a Southern plantation owner.
Fantasy games are fun (for people who enjoy them) because they have game mechanics that are generally understood. I was able to understand Dragon Age precisely because it followed so many fantasy conventions. It's true, adding more simulated reality or breaking with conventions can be more fun, but it doesn't make it more fun. It can fail miserably too. I would not want to play as the French in the game of Agincourt. And I would not want to play the game with one life and no healing potions and no saves/resurrections. To me, that would not be fun.
While few and far between, I have played a few quests like you describe in both WoW and LOTRO. This is when playing a rogue/thief really feels fun. You can actually stealth pass an entire guard to recover the McGuffin and be rewarded with experience without killing anything. It's certainly not a core game mechanic as with Pen and Paper RPGs, but then there's also a fairly heavy emphasis on hack'n'slash in the P&P RPGs I've played as well. Maybe because that's what's fun.
The goal of.NET was never multi-platform, so this is like saying.NET lost in a game they never played. Multi-platform would have killed Windows if it didn't matter what OS you ran your stuff on. Instead, the goal of.NET is multi-language. And that's the beauty of Microsoft having won the game they weren't playing by playing an entirely new game.
You might argue that multi-language isn't needed when you're using one language. But this is the thing Microsoft realized--programmers want choice and language is religion. Syntax was never what differentiated languages in an important way to begin with. It was the frameworks/libraries they came with. Learning a new language isn't hard. Learning a new framework is. Why learn a whole new framework every time you switch languages? Learn.NET and a new language is just a matter of getting used to new syntax.
The other function of advertising is--once awareness of the product is established, like with Coke and Pepis--to make the specific brand foremost in your mind. We don't like to admit it, but we as a whole group we're subject to the mechanics of our biology; repitition bumps the product to the top of our awareness queue. If you see 1000 ads for Coke and 1 ad for Fentime's, you'll go for the Coke if you don't already have a strong preference for the other brand.
Also, you get a brand cold war going. Once the top two brands establish a level of advertising, one of them can't drop their levels without giving the other brand an advantage. And for something like Coke and Pepsi where there's no real difference but brand loyalty, that's critical.
Science always says first to its student: "Doubt me."
That's how it should be. But how often do we here from scientists who should know better, "we used to think... but now we know..." That is the issue I believe people are having with science. Research is getting reported so quickly, that ideas have not had time to solidify and be confirmed before being reported to the masses. I'm not saying it should be withheld. But there's clearly a perceived need by the media to "spice up" reporting on science and that includes claiming we know the truth and simplifying complex and/or uncertain results from studies.
My measuring stick for bad has become Leonard Part 6. I went through a stint of wanting to see the worst of the worst movies. It was the first movie I could only get through by watching in 15 minute intervals. It's exactly one of those "so bad it's just bad" ones. If the Star Wars Christmas Special is worse than Leonard Part 6, I'll know just how bad it could be.
"The National Children's Hospital interest in myostatin is not to create super strong children, but to help those children whose muscles have already atrophied.
Right. And scientists' interest in nuclear fission was not to create an atomic bomb. It doesn't matter what the original intention is. If something can be used for evil, it will be used for evil (or stupidity).
WoW is not a game because it lacks a basic aspect of a game: you can't lose.
By what definition? The Wikipedia article for Games has an extensive list of definitions of game from various sources and games experts. None of them list the ability to lose as a condition. Almost any condition given on that page is met by WoW. So, I thought you must be getting technical and be referring to game theory, but even the article for Game Theory gives infinitely-long games as a type of game.
WoW is a game. Among other reasons, it is not merely a social platform because: it is governed by rules, there are goals, and it uses a combination of skills, strategy, and luck.
Our corporate masters have always felt that our private lives are their property to abuse as they see fit.
No. They're lazy. Securing your privacy on the Internet is a hard problem. It would require cooperation across vendors. It would cost money. It might stifle business and innovation. The world of business has decided it's not worth it.
The argument "you already have no privacy" is simply a red herring (usage?). If they can get you to believe you already have no privacy, they've absolved themselves from even having to try.
You do have privacy. There is an expectation of privacy. Foster a culture of privacy respect. Don't roll over and hand it over.
I can just see it ten years from now. "Google is too big to fail. We need to bail them out. Our whole country depends on Google's services to function. If we don't give them all the money they ask for, our economy will collapse."
Still, Google keeps introducing interesting new technologies based on open standards, open sourcing them, and making data export easy (just look at the new "dowload all" button on GDocs)[1]
So what? Why are we so quick to absolve Google simply because they throw around "open source" all over? I just finished reading how Google bought EtherPad only to shut it down.
But that's OK, they're going to open source the code. Yes, it's good for Google--they get to make their Wave platform work. Yes, it's good for AppJet--they make some money.
But is it good for the EtherPad users? I'm not hearing that. Google isn't putting all the features of EtherPad into Wave. It just does some cool things they wanted. EtherPad users were only appeased after they were first outraged by the initial transition proposal. The rest? Dumped. Sure, someone can come along and rebuild it themselves, but does that actually happen? Are highly-skilled, creative developers going to glom on to owning and developing code for this when the next thing is out there?
I will admit, I was a Google fanboy for a long time. They really seemed genuine about "do no evil". But the comparison above with Microsoft and IBM ten years before seems all too predictive of Google in the next ten years. Apparently there is nothing new under the sun and everything comes full circle and only with age do you gain the perspective to see it. It's no fun being old. I want to be young and naive again.
Slashdot Mirror
How many Libraries of Congress can you store in that?
I know defending CEOs is pretty unpopular, but I think your opinion is far more insightful than you're likely to get credit for. A CEO is paid enormous sums that far outweigh their individual productivity because they are not paid for individual productivity; they are paid for their contribution to and potential effect on the total productivity.
They are also in high demand. The human mind has not evolved (or was not created) to handle groups larger than 12 people, let alone 100,000. A person who has the skills to do that is going to be uncommon and the salary will reflect that. The high demand and the low supply will--in our economy--result in a high price.
The severance package goes with this. When you are at the bottom, if you lose your job, it is much easier to find a new job than when you are at the top and there are less job openings to replace it. A CEO is also likely to be used as a scapegoat when a company fails miserably. Of course, he's also likely to be the true cause if a company fails miserably. The severance package is a mechanism to draw in CEOs. If your company doesn't offer it, the other company will and all else being equal, who will get the CEO? The other company. In other words, a severance package is not a reward for a failed CEO. It's an incentive to hire better CEOs.
I've also found this to be a fascinating debate, full of lack of information and misinformation. It's been surprisingly hard to find a "satisfying level of truth". Most reports of the case seem to imply that the issue is simply Word's use of XML as a whole and that i4i is claiming to own the XML format. So, I actually read TFA. Then the actual TFA in the TFA. Then the actual Complaint in the TFA. Which includes the actual patent.
Now, after reading that, I felt I couldn't possibly be fully informed still, since the patent seems to be for the storing and processing of structure seperate from its content. A map of the structure points to the locations of the content. XML certainly doesn't work that way. There were hints about the little-used feature affected referred to as custom XML. I knew that couldn't truly be a generic sense of custom XML. All XML is custom. That's the whole point of XML.
So the feature in question is the attaching of XML Schema to a document. Now, to me that sounds suspiciously like XSLT, but I have to assume it's different in implementation. I assume the issue i4i has is with the implementation of the mapping of the "custom" XML schema elements to the content elements in the document.
Which I have to admit, might almost be valid. This does feel like a fairly broad patent to me, but IANAPL. I also wonder if there is truly prior art on this. While an obvious concept in retrospect, how many document format did seperate their formatting from their structure? The issue seems to clearly not be a simple matter of editing XML or other formats.
I'm (fairly) sure you don't quite understand XML either, then. It's not about data being accessible in a tree instead of a grid. It's about data being storable/modifiable in a well-defined format that could be agreed to by all users of the format (being based on SGML), that is also human readable (being text-based and not binary encoded), and that can represent the greatest number of data structures (grids, lists, etc. being simpler structures than trees). It has similar benefits to using .NET over each language having its own framework (every application isn't forced to write its own plumping over again). Similar benefits to traffic lights having red lights that mean stop, yellow lights that mean prepare to stop (or go faster in some states), and green lights that mean go (a common convention that you can follow anywhere).
The fact that so many intelligent people (not that I'm assuming I'm one of them) can see XML as having such intrinsically different purposes is probably a sign of how poorly it's understand and that perhaps it won't be long before something better comes along. Or rather, different, since JSON is probably "that thing" and I doubt many would call JSON "more elegant" than XML, just easier to use, which is why it will win.
In fact, I'm sure someone will correct me and tell me why I don't understand XML.
The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in.
I'm pleased to hear Google has promised that once they establish their clear monopoly they will happily step down and turn over their system to the open source/standards community.
Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to "game" our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.
We should all be thankful Google is protecting the consumer by keeping search and advertising a closed system on the Internet. I assume they would have been behind Microsoft's position with Internet Explorer that in a highly competitive market, it's important to maintain a closed proprietary system.
Don't be silly. This is Google. Schmidt will be dancing around, chanting "Advertisers! Advertisers! Advertisers!"
Trust me. The advanced anal massage techniques in Vol 2 make it well worth reading. I know what you're thinking... Why not just skip right to Vol 2? The basic techniques in Vol 1 are an important foundation and you could do some serious harm if you failed to understand those basic principles first.
People who like sound enough to buy seven speakers and a subwoofer instead of a perfectly satisfactory two speakers and people who like video quality enough to buy a Blu-Ray instead of a perfectly satisfactory DVD. And as was the case for both of those, people who have not witnessed good 3D video will not be able to comprehend how it can add to the entertainment experience until they have seen if for themselves.
I suck at real life. If I could win at life, I wouldn't have to play games. I play games because they are not like real life and I have a chance to understand how they work because they have rules that are simpler than the real world. Most games refer to real life concepts without using real life rules because to do otherwise would be entirely arbitrary.
Look at Hi Ho! Cherry-O. This is not an accurate representation of the cherry harvesting process, but the idea that you are picking cherries from a tree and collecting them in baskets gives the game some context.
When I watch cartoons, I do not complain because Willie Coyote is still hanging in mid-air after he runs of the side of a cliff or that chickens don't talk like a Southern plantation owner.
Fantasy games are fun (for people who enjoy them) because they have game mechanics that are generally understood. I was able to understand Dragon Age precisely because it followed so many fantasy conventions. It's true, adding more simulated reality or breaking with conventions can be more fun, but it doesn't make it more fun. It can fail miserably too. I would not want to play as the French in the game of Agincourt. And I would not want to play the game with one life and no healing potions and no saves/resurrections. To me, that would not be fun.
While few and far between, I have played a few quests like you describe in both WoW and LOTRO. This is when playing a rogue/thief really feels fun. You can actually stealth pass an entire guard to recover the McGuffin and be rewarded with experience without killing anything. It's certainly not a core game mechanic as with Pen and Paper RPGs, but then there's also a fairly heavy emphasis on hack'n'slash in the P&P RPGs I've played as well. Maybe because that's what's fun.
The goal of .NET was never multi-platform, so this is like saying .NET lost in a game they never played. Multi-platform would have killed Windows if it didn't matter what OS you ran your stuff on. Instead, the goal of .NET is multi-language. And that's the beauty of Microsoft having won the game they weren't playing by playing an entirely new game.
You might argue that multi-language isn't needed when you're using one language. But this is the thing Microsoft realized--programmers want choice and language is religion. Syntax was never what differentiated languages in an important way to begin with. It was the frameworks/libraries they came with. Learning a new language isn't hard. Learning a new framework is. Why learn a whole new framework every time you switch languages? Learn .NET and a new language is just a matter of getting used to new syntax.
Oh wait. What if you do?
Or rather, Fentiman's.
The other function of advertising is--once awareness of the product is established, like with Coke and Pepis--to make the specific brand foremost in your mind. We don't like to admit it, but we as a whole group we're subject to the mechanics of our biology; repitition bumps the product to the top of our awareness queue. If you see 1000 ads for Coke and 1 ad for Fentime's, you'll go for the Coke if you don't already have a strong preference for the other brand.
Also, you get a brand cold war going. Once the top two brands establish a level of advertising, one of them can't drop their levels without giving the other brand an advantage. And for something like Coke and Pepsi where there's no real difference but brand loyalty, that's critical.
He was just being ironical.
NERD!
Or get them a box for their Sim and watch the Sim wonder if there's a creator who put the box there.
Science always says first to its student: "Doubt me."
That's how it should be. But how often do we here from scientists who should know better, "we used to think... but now we know..." That is the issue I believe people are having with science. Research is getting reported so quickly, that ideas have not had time to solidify and be confirmed before being reported to the masses. I'm not saying it should be withheld. But there's clearly a perceived need by the media to "spice up" reporting on science and that includes claiming we know the truth and simplifying complex and/or uncertain results from studies.
My measuring stick for bad has become Leonard Part 6. I went through a stint of wanting to see the worst of the worst movies. It was the first movie I could only get through by watching in 15 minute intervals. It's exactly one of those "so bad it's just bad" ones. If the Star Wars Christmas Special is worse than Leonard Part 6, I'll know just how bad it could be.
"The National Children's Hospital interest in myostatin is not to create super strong children, but to help those children whose muscles have already atrophied.
Right. And scientists' interest in nuclear fission was not to create an atomic bomb. It doesn't matter what the original intention is. If something can be used for evil, it will be used for evil (or stupidity).
WoW is not a game because it lacks a basic aspect of a game: you can't lose.
By what definition? The Wikipedia article for Games has an extensive list of definitions of game from various sources and games experts. None of them list the ability to lose as a condition. Almost any condition given on that page is met by WoW. So, I thought you must be getting technical and be referring to game theory, but even the article for Game Theory gives infinitely-long games as a type of game.
WoW is a game. Among other reasons, it is not merely a social platform because: it is governed by rules, there are goals, and it uses a combination of skills, strategy, and luck.
Our corporate masters have always felt that our private lives are their property to abuse as they see fit.
No. They're lazy. Securing your privacy on the Internet is a hard problem. It would require cooperation across vendors. It would cost money. It might stifle business and innovation. The world of business has decided it's not worth it.
The argument "you already have no privacy" is simply a red herring (usage?). If they can get you to believe you already have no privacy, they've absolved themselves from even having to try.
You do have privacy. There is an expectation of privacy. Foster a culture of privacy respect. Don't roll over and hand it over.
I can just see it ten years from now. "Google is too big to fail. We need to bail them out. Our whole country depends on Google's services to function. If we don't give them all the money they ask for, our economy will collapse."
Still, Google keeps introducing interesting new technologies based on open standards, open sourcing them, and making data export easy (just look at the new "dowload all" button on GDocs)[1]
So what? Why are we so quick to absolve Google simply because they throw around "open source" all over? I just finished reading how Google bought EtherPad only to shut it down.
But that's OK, they're going to open source the code. Yes, it's good for Google--they get to make their Wave platform work. Yes, it's good for AppJet--they make some money.
But is it good for the EtherPad users? I'm not hearing that. Google isn't putting all the features of EtherPad into Wave. It just does some cool things they wanted. EtherPad users were only appeased after they were first outraged by the initial transition proposal. The rest? Dumped. Sure, someone can come along and rebuild it themselves, but does that actually happen? Are highly-skilled, creative developers going to glom on to owning and developing code for this when the next thing is out there?
I will admit, I was a Google fanboy for a long time. They really seemed genuine about "do no evil". But the comparison above with Microsoft and IBM ten years before seems all too predictive of Google in the next ten years. Apparently there is nothing new under the sun and everything comes full circle and only with age do you gain the perspective to see it. It's no fun being old. I want to be young and naive again.
When I read this, I wondered, "what does this have to do with floating point math?", and then I realized ECMAScript was the original topic.