I think that we are blowing Mac "fears" of OSX86 piracy completely out of proportion. I have a sneaking suspicion that Steve and his crew would like nothing more than OS-X86 to be available tomorrow running on hundreds of x86 PCs across the globe. Let's face it, for your average person, the OS is moot. Joe Average User wants "tools" to get work done quickly and in time to get home for little league. He could care less what the OS running things looks like.
(NB: We're assuming that consumer OSs are pretty much limited to Windows and OSx here... granted there are other user friendly OS's but they aren't really hitting the mass market....yet.)
If we consider that OS-X has a comparable suite of tools to get work done as your standard consumer friendly MS OS - then the next barrier to entry becomes cost. It's a version of the all things considered equal: most people can't tell you the difference between two HP laptops running versions of windows, so how do you explain to the guy who's trying to buy a new system at the local best buy or circuit city that these two pieces of hardware do pretty-much the same thing, but you're going to pay a 25% premium because that other one *looks* cooler. Joe Average is likely to judge technology in a simple, superficial way; one of the most superficial methods available is price. If the windows pc lets him get email and surf the "inter-web" *and* costs less welp, then that's the choice to make.
What gets interesting is when someone has made this investment and they aren't happy with windows. Currently, they're stuck. Most people don't have a geek friend that will happily burn them a user friendly distro, or spend the next three weeks teaching them how to build a BSD box. The old scenario for someone wishing to switch from windows to OsX would be something like: Step 1: "Buy new pc that is two or three times the cost of current cheap windows box." Step 2: "Pray that you really like OSX"
If OS-X is unlocked and allowed to roam free, then people are now free to try out OS-X with a minimal investment in the software. Don't like it? No problem, go back to windows. Shucks, if Apple was really devious, they would be paying people to create live-cd distros of OS-x86 to hand out to people so that you could have as many people trying out their OS as possible. Remember, for your average user, the benefits of an OS designed with usability in mind are too intangible for them to switch. Windows "works well enough". Joe Average User has to see, touch and feel the improvement for it to be real. The only way to get Joe Average to switch is to provide him a low risk environment where he can experience the user-interaction elation that Mac users are always going on about. Mac could have an army of people using their OS on "unsupported" non mac hardware - a great guerrilla tactics way of increasing market share.
But there is more to the world than just Dell. Consider all the pcs that are sold world wide and all the "white box" PC integrations and you will probably come up with a picture that makes Intel look a little less like a market dominating force. Intel spends a lot of money on marketing to make sure that it is perceived to be the number one choice for computing across the board.
What he doesn't explore is why. A distribution channel that favors "safe bets" over radical new concepts. Kinda like the movie industry, cranking out sequel after sequel of the same cliche'd genres.
This is well worth noting. These games are published by *businesses*; these publishers are putting out this game not because it's creative, or innovative, or even particularly good. The vast majority of publishers believe that a game will make them money and that is why they publish it. So to say that what is currently available for general purchase is somehow representative of the universe of game offerings available is at best naive, and at worse disingenuous.
Business is not always art, and art is not always business.
That said: I believe there was a similar article written about the lack of innovations in chess some 1400 years ago.;)
"The fact is that millions of irreproachably competent graduates, and quite a few phenomenal ones, are coming out of the US educational system. And the Japanese and the German and the Australian and the British and the South Korean and the Swedish and the..."
This is exactly the authors point - we get millions of "competent" graduates out of how many millions that are being educated? What's the final percentage? Are we really producing the throngs of Einstiens that they would have you believe? According to the US Census - only 83% of people 18 and over have graduated high school. That number drops to 24.7% for college or higher. Now looking at the numbers for educational achievement marked 29 June, 2004 : we come up with the following percentages:
This means that if we take the cenus estimates for people 20 and over (there is no segmentation for 18 and over) that approximately 12,800,428 masters and doctoral degrees are in the hands of the American people. This is a pretty small number compared to the over all population of 200,948,641 for people over 20. Also consider that this number doesn't tell us the number awarded every year. Indeed, according to the government (ca. 1993) there is a "real crisis in higher education in America." Now if we start to factor in the number of masters and PHD degrees that are awarded to non US citizens we start to see that number shrink yet again.
I think that what the numbers, and this book are trying to tell us is that the educational system is one that perpetuates the myth that intellect is a scarce resource because that perceived "rarity of intellect" is one of the major drivers of the economic system which Gatto is criticizing. We believe that less than one percent of the population has the mental capacity to obtain a doctorate, therefore we make sure that less than one percent of the population gets a doctorate. Our hypothesis is confirmed and we proceed to act as if the experiment was valid and the prophecy non-self fulfilling.
Anecdotaly, I think there is some proof with this. I'm sure everyone has run into the PhD who can't solve a simple problem, or the Masters degreed T/A that doesn't understand the basics, but managed to persevere long enough to slip into a teaching berth at some university.
Granted, this is a "Back of the envelope" sort of analysis, but I think it does point towards that something isn't on the up and up with the educational system in the US.
This makes me wonder - at what size development team do these rules kick in? What if your development team is of size 1? What about 10? What about 1000? I think there are some very good points in the article.
IMHO most of the negative comments that I'm reading are saying that the tips describe are not for software of type "X". Well that's because he's is describing how to write and ship software like MS. Few people would say that you should use the same methodology for writing a (and shipping) word processor as you would use for writing a real time embedded system for controlling a cruise missile.
The article is merely saying that if you're in a development situation similar to this particular portion of MS, then these ad-hoc rules might be helpful.
This type of unprofessional crap is the reason people have such low expectations of software.
I think people have such low expectations of software because for the most part, software doesn't meet their expectations, and the expectations people have of software are often unrealistic. Software is like everything else - built with the trade off of cost versus utility.
I'm really curious how the value proposition of NAS appliance is going to hold up. Sure you have the integrated plug and play box - etc. etc. But You can get 300GB of HD space for under $250 Throw in last years hot PC that you got for cheap - and you've got yourself a pretty nice file server - that's probably under $1500 for 0.6TB of mirrored storage - no matter what OS you're using.
Q: Are there any distros with the express intent of building NAS type boxes? A sort of "Knoppix NAS" could be a really neat project.
I think there needs to be a clear demarcation between specifications and documentation. I always think of the specs as to what is supposed to happen, and the documentation of what actually happened. Well written code (for the most part) is self-documenting. Specs will almost always be out of touch with the actual implemented code because Specs usually represent a static attempt to solve a dynamic problem. Code comments are usually an evolving snapshot of what's going on...(use the source?)
Good point; Does this mean that some day we will pay to subscribe to certain "quality" DNS services? The strength of the internet (in that the infrastructure is easily duplicated and can be run by "anyone") is also a weak point that could lead to fragmentation....
It doesn't make for a safer environment. It makes for an environment that *seems* safer. Coercion is the lowest common denominator of co-operation. It works only so long as the will of the coerced is broken. So the kid who's going to find a copy of the anarchist cookbook surfs for it at home, instead of at school. He's still going to come into the school trench coat and six guns blazing and people are still going to wonder "why?". All safety is an illusion. And snooping on the online activities of children seems a pretty low way to give the parents piece of mind.
What would happen if the school spent as much time attempting to provide for the moral development of their charges as they did policing their online activities?
Re:Radio will be around for a long time
on
Who Needs Radio?
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· Score: 1
I agree that you are much more likely to take a cheap throw away radio to the beach, but then again, 3 years ago you probably wouldn't have taken your $350 MP3 player to the beach. That same player now is under $100US. Eventually, there will be the $20 portable Sat radio.
Back in the 30's radios weren't cheap. Back in the 50's Televisions weren't cheap. Back in the 80's computers weren't cheap.
If history bears repeating, we will soon have cheap satellite radio.
Incidentally it might be the speed commodification that causes the access question to go away. It seems like technology goes mainstream in less and less time these days. Think of the DVD burner versus the CD Burner, or the rise of the "Pre paid" cell phone. Maybe this is just the way the modern world works?
Re:Radio will be around for a long time
on
Who Needs Radio?
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· Score: 1
Good point, Radio will be around for a long time for many reasons, most of them economic. This begs the question: What will happen to those people who are too challenged (monetarily, or technologically) to customize and seek out new sources of media? Will Clear Channel be able to stay afloat if all of the affluent listeners have XM satellite radios in their cars? Or are there enough people who won't understand technology enough to realize that they have a choice? For profit radio still derives the majority of it's revenue from advertising. And, generally speaking, you advertise to get someone to buy your goods and services. Advertising to a segment of the population with less disposable income is probably not the ideal situation for most advertisers. Could radio gain power by further segmenting the market into the "haves" and "have nots" - as in some have i-pods and wi-fi radio, and others have not a chance in getting an i-pod let alone broad band?
Actually, I think the best point was made in the article when it was pointed out that the rules are different for AOL than they are for you or me. They have the right intentions, but then again, what means that they won't soon start deleting MP3s off of your harddrive just to protect you from the possibility that you could be sued over the content. How about educating your users? Or why doesn't AOL put more pressure on MS to create a more secure network transport layer for Windows? With the economic clout of an AOL/Time Warner you could certainly get some concessions from the Redmond bunch.
I too have fond memories of being jealous over the guy who had every physics formula ever programmed into his TI or HP super computer. But I'm a little curious, with hand held computers with 400mhz processors becoming the norm, will we soon see the death of the "Super Calculator"?
Don't get cheap DVDs. Especially rewriteables. DVDs are more sensitive
to flaws in the media than CD-R/RWs are. If you buy a spindle of 25 DVDs but 75%
of them are coasters after 1 write or 5 re-writes then you really haven't saved any money.
Unless you start getting into details that only an engineer would care about (e.g. how many nm are between pits,
where the sparing areas are on the disk.)
, there is little physical difference between +RW and -RW.
+RW's can be quick formatted without having to overwrite the entire
disk. Some drive manufacturers have recently added quick format for -RWs, but AFAIK this is not officially
supported by the -RW spec. A lot of manufacturers implement this by allowing a write session to be started
while a full track format takes place in the "background".
-RW's don't need to be formatted before first use, +RWs do.
As many people have already mentioned, Dual format burners are pretty cheap these days, so the +RW/-RW debate
will probably continue to be a moot point. I for one am thankful that there exist two competing formats; that
competition should help to keep the price point for DVD media pretty low.
I think the more important question is what software suite they are running. Aside from the hard core geeks, most people don't care what OS they are running (Obligatory MS Jab: Witness the high number of people who purchased Windows ME.) I think that a great idea here would be to forget the OS question, and go with an open productivity solution like open office. That would make the OS question moot because kids could use the same suite of tools to get their work done on the Linux laptop at school or on the PC Desktop at home. Also, the price is right.
Okay Knee jerk reactions aside. I think that there is some truth to the concept that telecomm should be cheaper than it currently is. The question that we should ask is "why isn't high speed access cheaper?"
IMHO:
The telecomm companies have a vested interest in making the current infrastructure generate as MUCH revenue as possible for as long as possible.
This is just common sense business. You've made a capital investment in infrastructure - how much you make on that investment is directly proportional to the length of time you can use that same infrastructure without having to upgrade it.
The telecomm companies have to deal with a mass market in addition to and/or not only with a cutting edge market. If you don't believe that the mass market dictates these sorts of trends, explain why AOL has been so wildly successful with dial-up for almost the same cost as broadband. I think AOL, Earthlink, MSN and others make a pretty strong, if anecdotal, case that dialup is still a viable option for many people. If the common market doesn't demand, or see a need for cheap fiber to the curb, then companies won't provide a service. (This assumes that the company is there to sell to a market, not create a new one.)
Most people really don't need broadband.
Going back to the mass market mentality. Most common users don't need a fat pipe. I'm going to hazard a guess that if you called up even those people that have broadband access, that 50% of them couldn't tell you the type or speed of their broadband connection. I think you'd be lucky to get "DSL" or "Cable" out of the majority of users.
Simple Economics.
Ignoring the possibility that economics is rarely if ever simple for just a moment. We can blame the "free market". If i have a market that will pay more money for less service, than by all means that is exactly what my shareholders/board of directors will expect me to do. Innovation is driven by competition in addition to other factors. If someone could run fiber to the curb, and offer converged data, video, and voice AND do it with a business model that was effective, well I think that company would already be in business. So far, no one has been able to get the whole enchelada.
In many ways it is the "childish sense of entitlement" that drives the market. People often need that sense of entitlement to create a market for the product. Think of the personal automobile, or the personal computer... even the cell phone. All of these things were at one point in time items out of the mainstream. One could argue that the middle class western world sees these things as conveniences of the modern world to which they are entitled.
Knowledge and Data are two (very) different things
Consider that what MS is doing is analogous to what TRW,Experian and Equifax do for consumers, or what Dun&Bradstreet do for corporations. They are trying to mine information from a publicly available source. There's nothing really wrong with that. The question becomes what do you do with that information? I think most people are concerned about what someone can do with that sort of information when it can be correlated to other tangential information.
Consider:
MS mines a news group - the FBI comes in and subpoenas the records of Joe Looser as "part of an on going investigation". (Joe isn't notified of this because the Patriot Act allows them to serve a search warrant and delay notification to the targeted party that the warrant is being served) Afterwards, they go to the library and pull the records of the books that you just checked out. Been doing a little studying on microbiology have we? Oh, and last year, you checked out a copy of the Koran. They then tap into your health records (which are now electronic, but protected by HIPPA) and see that you've filled a cipro proscription 3 times in the past 4 months. Couple this with your high school and college records that comment that you are a "troubled" loner and you get arrested on suspicion of terrorism. Given that you may or may not be allowed to talk to your attorney... who knows how long you could be detained.
In reality, you're high school records indicate your a troubled loner because you didn't get along with your guidance counselor, and you made the mistake of showing the school librarian how easy it was to crack into her macintosh. (And we all know "those Hacker types" are all social miscreants.) Plus, you wore a "Free Kevin" shirt as a frosh. The books you got from the public library on microbiology were actually for a report you were doing on computer genetic algorithms, comparing and contrasting DNA in organic organisms vs. electronic programs. The Koran was required reading for your comparative religion class (damn those humanity requirements) but you were smart enough to get the book via inter library loan, and not have to buy a copy from the school bookstore. ($36 for a paperback? Yikes.) Your cat knocked over the first bottle of cipro and it spilled into the sink; you finished out your prescription and then refilled it, just in case... you never know when you'll end up with strep throat, and waiting three weeks to get a doctors appt. at the campus clinic sucks.... oh yeah, as it turns out, the "terroristic" posting on the Al'Queda message board was made by someone who had an email address that was identified by another computer as a likely email alias of a known terrorist.
Granted that this is a contrived scenario, but I think this could become "the rule" as opposed to the "exception". As the old saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you have all this "data" it's very tempting to assume that you can turn it into knowledge.
Introverts converse for different reasons
on
The Introvert Advantage
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I disagree - Many introverts see conversation as a medium for exchanging information. When a "geek" explains what he/she knows about a current topic, they are doing several things:
They are setting the base line for what they know about the topic
They are indicating that they have been listening to what the other person
just said. Many times people accuse introverts of being poor listeners because they do not have the same obtrusive behaviors that the prototypical good listener does.
They are requesting that you share any information that they have not yet demonstrated a working knowledge of.
Most introverts could care less about the attention, (we'll skip the obligatory Maslow's Hierarchy comment) and will often keep silent regarding a topic to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Indeed, many introverts find that "being clever" is the best way to attract the ire of those around them. Many introverts find conversation to be of less interest unless the energy expended to talk to a person garners something in return... like new information or trivia. (Introverted conversations often start "Did you know that....".)
Let's remember that there are reasons to have a conversation that don't involve "social connections" of the extroverted ilk. Introverts communicate differently and for different reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that we are blowing Mac "fears" of OSX86 piracy completely out of proportion. I have a sneaking suspicion that Steve and his crew would like nothing more than OS-X86 to be available tomorrow running on hundreds of x86 PCs across the globe. Let's face it, for your average person, the OS is moot. Joe Average User wants "tools" to get work done quickly and in time to get home for little league. He could care less what the OS running things looks like.
(NB: We're assuming that consumer OSs are pretty much limited to Windows and OSx here... granted there are other user friendly OS's but they aren't really hitting the mass market....yet.)
If we consider that OS-X has a comparable suite of tools to get work done as your standard consumer friendly MS OS - then the next barrier to entry becomes cost. It's a version of the all things considered equal: most people can't tell you the difference between two HP laptops running versions of windows, so how do you explain to the guy who's trying to buy a new system at the local best buy or circuit city that these two pieces of hardware do pretty-much the same thing, but you're going to pay a 25% premium because that other one *looks* cooler. Joe Average is likely to judge technology in a simple, superficial way; one of the most superficial methods available is price. If the windows pc lets him get email and surf the "inter-web" *and* costs less welp, then that's the choice to make.
What gets interesting is when someone has made this investment and they aren't happy with windows. Currently, they're stuck. Most people don't have a geek friend that will happily burn them a user friendly distro, or spend the next three weeks teaching them how to build a BSD box. The old scenario for someone wishing to switch from windows to OsX would be something like:
Step 1: "Buy new pc that is two or three times the cost of current cheap windows box."
Step 2: "Pray that you really like OSX"
If OS-X is unlocked and allowed to roam free, then people are now free to try out OS-X with a minimal investment in the software. Don't like it? No problem, go back to windows. Shucks, if Apple was really devious, they would be paying people to create live-cd distros of OS-x86 to hand out to people so that you could have as many people trying out their OS as possible. Remember, for your average user, the benefits of an OS designed with usability in mind are too intangible for them to switch. Windows "works well enough". Joe Average User has to see, touch and feel the improvement for it to be real. The only way to get Joe Average to switch is to provide him a low risk environment where he can experience the user-interaction elation that Mac users are always going on about. Mac could have an army of people using their OS on "unsupported" non mac hardware - a great guerrilla tactics way of increasing market share.
But there is more to the world than just Dell. Consider all the pcs that are sold world wide and all the "white box" PC integrations and you will probably come up with a picture that makes Intel look a little less like a market dominating force. Intel spends a lot of money on marketing to make sure that it is perceived to be the number one choice for computing across the board.
This is well worth noting. These games are published by *businesses*; these publishers are putting out this game not because it's creative, or innovative, or even particularly good. The vast majority of publishers believe that a game will make them money and that is why they publish it. So to say that what is currently available for general purchase is somehow representative of the universe of game offerings available is at best naive, and at worse disingenuous.
Business is not always art, and art is not always business.
That said: I believe there was a similar article written about the lack of innovations in chess some 1400 years ago. ;)
IMHO, I think you're missing the authors point.
"The fact is that millions of irreproachably competent graduates, and quite a few phenomenal ones, are coming out of the US educational system. And the Japanese and the German and the Australian and the British and the South Korean and the Swedish and the..."This is exactly the authors point - we get millions of "competent" graduates out of how many millions that are being educated? What's the final percentage? Are we really producing the throngs of Einstiens that they would have you believe? According to the US Census - only 83% of people 18 and over have graduated high school. That number drops to 24.7% for college or higher. Now looking at the numbers for educational achievement marked 29 June, 2004 : we come up with the following percentages:
This means that if we take the cenus estimates for people 20 and over (there is no segmentation for 18 and over) that approximately 12,800,428 masters and doctoral degrees are in the hands of the American people. This is a pretty small number compared to the over all population of 200,948,641 for people over 20. Also consider that this number doesn't tell us the number awarded every year. Indeed, according to the government (ca. 1993) there is a "real crisis in higher education in America." Now if we start to factor in the number of masters and PHD degrees that are awarded to non US citizens we start to see that number shrink yet again.
I think that what the numbers, and this book are trying to tell us is that the educational system is one that perpetuates the myth that intellect is a scarce resource because that perceived "rarity of intellect" is one of the major drivers of the economic system which Gatto is criticizing. We believe that less than one percent of the population has the mental capacity to obtain a doctorate, therefore we make sure that less than one percent of the population gets a doctorate. Our hypothesis is confirmed and we proceed to act as if the experiment was valid and the prophecy non-self fulfilling.
Anecdotaly, I think there is some proof with this. I'm sure everyone has run into the PhD who can't solve a simple problem, or the Masters degreed T/A that doesn't understand the basics, but managed to persevere long enough to slip into a teaching berth at some university.
Granted, this is a "Back of the envelope" sort of analysis, but I think it does point towards that something isn't on the up and up with the educational system in the US.
This makes me wonder - at what size development team do these rules kick in? What if your development team is of size 1? What about 10? What about 1000? I think there are some very good points in the article.
IMHO most of the negative comments that I'm reading are saying that the tips describe are not for software of type "X". Well that's because he's is describing how to write and ship software like MS. Few people would say that you should use the same methodology for writing a (and shipping) word processor as you would use for writing a real time embedded system for controlling a cruise missile.
The article is merely saying that if you're in a development situation similar to this particular portion of MS, then these ad-hoc rules might be helpful.I think people have such low expectations of software because for the most part, software doesn't meet their expectations, and the expectations people have of software are often unrealistic. Software is like everything else - built with the trade off of cost versus utility.
I'm really curious how the value proposition of NAS appliance is going to hold up. Sure you have the integrated plug and play box - etc. etc. But You can get 300GB of HD space for under $250 Throw in last years hot PC that you got for cheap - and you've got yourself a pretty nice file server - that's probably under $1500 for 0.6TB of mirrored storage - no matter what OS you're using.
Q: Are there any distros with the express intent of building NAS type boxes? A sort of "Knoppix NAS" could be a really neat project.
I think there needs to be a clear demarcation between specifications and documentation. I always think of the specs as to what is supposed to happen, and the documentation of what actually happened. Well written code (for the most part) is self-documenting. Specs will almost always be out of touch with the actual implemented code because Specs usually represent a static attempt to solve a dynamic problem. Code comments are usually an evolving snapshot of what's going on ...(use the source?)
Good point; Does this mean that some day we will pay to subscribe to certain "quality" DNS services? The strength of the internet (in that the infrastructure is easily duplicated and can be run by "anyone") is also a weak point that could lead to fragmentation....
It doesn't make for a safer environment. It makes for an environment that *seems* safer. Coercion is the lowest common denominator of co-operation. It works only so long as the will of the coerced is broken. So the kid who's going to find a copy of the anarchist cookbook surfs for it at home, instead of at school. He's still going to come into the school trench coat and six guns blazing and people are still going to wonder "why?". All safety is an illusion. And snooping on the online activities of children seems a pretty low way to give the parents piece of mind.
What would happen if the school spent as much time attempting to provide for the moral development of their charges as they did policing their online activities?
I agree that you are much more likely to take a cheap throw away radio to the beach, but then again, 3 years ago you probably wouldn't have taken your $350 MP3 player to the beach. That same player now is under $100US. Eventually, there will be the $20 portable Sat radio.
Back in the 30's radios weren't cheap. Back in the 50's Televisions weren't cheap. Back in the 80's computers weren't cheap. If history bears repeating, we will soon have cheap satellite radio.
Incidentally it might be the speed commodification that causes the access question to go away. It seems like technology goes mainstream in less and less time these days. Think of the DVD burner versus the CD Burner, or the rise of the "Pre paid" cell phone. Maybe this is just the way the modern world works?
Good point, Radio will be around for a long time for many reasons, most of them economic. This begs the question: What will happen to those people who are too challenged (monetarily, or technologically) to customize and seek out new sources of media? Will Clear Channel be able to stay afloat if all of the affluent listeners have XM satellite radios in their cars? Or are there enough people who won't understand technology enough to realize that they have a choice? For profit radio still derives the majority of it's revenue from advertising. And, generally speaking, you advertise to get someone to buy your goods and services. Advertising to a segment of the population with less disposable income is probably not the ideal situation for most advertisers. Could radio gain power by further segmenting the market into the "haves" and "have nots" - as in some have i-pods and wi-fi radio, and others have not a chance in getting an i-pod let alone broad band?
Actually, I think the best point was made in the article when it was pointed out that the rules are different for AOL than they are for you or me. They have the right intentions, but then again, what means that they won't soon start deleting MP3s off of your harddrive just to protect you from the possibility that you could be sued over the content. How about educating your users? Or why doesn't AOL put more pressure on MS to create a more secure network transport layer for Windows? With the economic clout of an AOL/Time Warner you could certainly get some concessions from the Redmond bunch.
I too have fond memories of being jealous over the guy who had every physics formula ever programmed into his TI or HP super computer. But I'm a little curious, with hand held computers with 400mhz processors becoming the norm, will we soon see the death of the "Super Calculator"?
- Don't get cheap DVDs. Especially rewriteables. DVDs are more sensitive
to flaws in the media than CD-R/RWs are. If you buy a spindle of 25 DVDs but 75%
of them are coasters after 1 write or 5 re-writes then you really haven't saved any money.
- Unless you start getting into details that only an engineer would care about (e.g. how many nm are between pits,
where the sparing areas are on the disk.)
, there is little physical difference between +RW and -RW.
- +RW's can be quick formatted without having to overwrite the entire
disk. Some drive manufacturers have recently added quick format for -RWs, but AFAIK this is not officially
supported by the -RW spec. A lot of manufacturers implement this by allowing a write session to be started
while a full track format takes place in the "background".
- -RW's don't need to be formatted before first use, +RWs do.
- Phillips created the +RW spec with real time recording in mind.
As many people have already mentioned, Dual format burners are pretty cheap these days, so the +RW/-RW debate will probably continue to be a moot point. I for one am thankful that there exist two competing formats; that competition should help to keep the price point for DVD media pretty low.I think the more important question is what software suite they are running. Aside from the hard core geeks, most people don't care what OS they are running (Obligatory MS Jab: Witness the high number of people who purchased Windows ME.) I think that a great idea here would be to forget the OS question, and go with an open productivity solution like open office. That would make the OS question moot because kids could use the same suite of tools to get their work done on the Linux laptop at school or on the PC Desktop at home. Also, the price is right.
IMHO:
This is just common sense business. You've made a capital investment in infrastructure - how much you make on that investment is directly proportional to the length of time you can use that same infrastructure without having to upgrade it.
Going back to the mass market mentality. Most common users don't need a fat pipe. I'm going to hazard a guess that if you called up even those people that have broadband access, that 50% of them couldn't tell you the type or speed of their broadband connection. I think you'd be lucky to get "DSL" or "Cable" out of the majority of users.
Ignoring the possibility that economics is rarely if ever simple for just a moment. We can blame the "free market". If i have a market that will pay more money for less service, than by all means that is exactly what my shareholders/board of directors will expect me to do. Innovation is driven by competition in addition to other factors. If someone could run fiber to the curb, and offer converged data, video, and voice AND do it with a business model that was effective, well I think that company would already be in business. So far, no one has been able to get the whole enchelada.
In many ways it is the "childish sense of entitlement" that drives the market. People often need that sense of entitlement to create a market for the product. Think of the personal automobile, or the personal computer... even the cell phone. All of these things were at one point in time items out of the mainstream. One could argue that the middle class western world sees these things as conveniences of the modern world to which they are entitled.
Consider that what MS is doing is analogous to what TRW,Experian and Equifax do for consumers, or what Dun&Bradstreet do for corporations. They are trying to mine information from a publicly available source. There's nothing really wrong with that. The question becomes what do you do with that information? I think most people are concerned about what someone can do with that sort of information when it can be correlated to other tangential information.
Consider:
MS mines a news group - the FBI comes in and subpoenas the records of Joe Looser as "part of an on going investigation". (Joe isn't notified of this because the Patriot Act allows them to serve a search warrant and delay notification to the targeted party that the warrant is being served) Afterwards, they go to the library and pull the records of the books that you just checked out. Been doing a little studying on microbiology have we? Oh, and last year, you checked out a copy of the Koran. They then tap into your health records (which are now electronic, but protected by HIPPA) and see that you've filled a cipro proscription 3 times in the past 4 months. Couple this with your high school and college records that comment that you are a "troubled" loner and you get arrested on suspicion of terrorism. Given that you may or may not be allowed to talk to your attorney... who knows how long you could be detained.
In reality, you're high school records indicate your a troubled loner because you didn't get along with your guidance counselor, and you made the mistake of showing the school librarian how easy it was to crack into her macintosh. (And we all know "those Hacker types" are all social miscreants.) Plus, you wore a "Free Kevin" shirt as a frosh. The books you got from the public library on microbiology were actually for a report you were doing on computer genetic algorithms, comparing and contrasting DNA in organic organisms vs. electronic programs. The Koran was required reading for your comparative religion class (damn those humanity requirements) but you were smart enough to get the book via inter library loan, and not have to buy a copy from the school bookstore. ($36 for a paperback? Yikes.) Your cat knocked over the first bottle of cipro and it spilled into the sink; you finished out your prescription and then refilled it, just in case... you never know when you'll end up with strep throat, and waiting three weeks to get a doctors appt. at the campus clinic sucks.... oh yeah, as it turns out, the "terroristic" posting on the Al'Queda message board was made by someone who had an email address that was identified by another computer as a likely email alias of a known terrorist.
Granted that this is a contrived scenario, but I think this could become "the rule" as opposed to the "exception". As the old saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you have all this "data" it's very tempting to assume that you can turn it into knowledge.
I disagree - Many introverts see conversation as a medium for exchanging information. When a "geek" explains what he/she knows about a current topic, they are doing several things:
Most introverts could care less about the attention, (we'll skip the obligatory Maslow's Hierarchy comment) and will often keep silent regarding a topic to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Indeed, many introverts find that "being clever" is the best way to attract the ire of those around them. Many introverts find conversation to be of less interest unless the energy expended to talk to a person garners something in return... like new information or trivia. (Introverted conversations often start "Did you know that....".)
Let's remember that there are reasons to have a conversation that don't involve "social connections" of the extroverted ilk. Introverts communicate differently and for different reasons.