Yes, there are plenty of people who have low demands for connectivity, but very very few new customers in this market. All of these people already have dialup. Their next move will be to broadband..yes, even ma and pa Kettle.
This is desperate ploy to bring back some of the luster to the DOA dial-up service they have been slowly burying for some time. Parsons should just fess up and admit he wants to run a media business without the distraction of an ultra-low-maring connectivity dinosaur. This would in effect completely undo the TW/AOL merger - a move most shareholders would welcome, now that it is understood and accepted that all the merger did was vaporize shareholder wealth.
I think you make a good point. Giving 6th graders laptops at this point only sets up Michigan for huge maintainence costs as they drop, break, smash, delete and otherwise screw them up.
Big Businesses want other Big Businesses to back their software.
This myth is repeated so many times that people start to believe it. There is a huge support network in large firms for totally free software, some of which is downright obscure. This notion that corporate departments only use corporate software is bunk, I don't know why people continue to trot it out.
The company I work at has a $22 billion market cap and survives on freebsd, perl and php. CONVINCED YET???
This is pure FUD. The stock GNOME that you download from gnome.org is quite useable on its own. If you want a bit of polish, RedHat's bluecurve is nice but certainly it won't change any functional aspect of the base GNOME.
I think Sun will find little success with this product specifically because it offers so little over the base freeware.
Pair programming attempts to take two mediocore programmers and create one decent programmer out of them. No senior developer is going to put up with some malodorous jerk sitting on his lap asking questions about every line.
The bottom line is that no exceptional programmer is ever going to be forced to have someone watching everything he types.
You know, sometimes we just want to pick our noses or read a news story on the web. Pair programming makes this impossible as there is always some idiot practically sitting on your lap. This is why it will always be perceived as punishment.
They have been pushing hard to be in the middle of voice as well as data networks. To get there they need the legitimacy granted by government approval.
Earth-bound R&D has a much greater chance of paying out to humanity now than anything done on the shuttle or ISS. The space program has not paid off in terms of R&D in quite some time - how could it when the program itself is using such outdated technology?
Nanotech. Quantum computing. Genomics. Protein research. All of which stand to pay out much higher dividends for humanity and frankly have nothing to do with space research. All manned spaceflight has really taught us is that space is inherently toxic to humans.
So after a perfuctory review, NASA will be back flying the same shuttles with the same safety procedures with the same goals. All of which are outdated and outmoded.
NASA will go back to building the ISS - aside from Star Wars in the 80s, the largest transfer of public money to a military contractor in history. Who knows, maybe missile defense will end up being a bigger boondoggle, but right now ISS is the white elephant to beat. Just what is NASA doing up there? The crew has only one job really - janitor/superintendent services. The scientific motivations are as meaningless now as they were a decade ago, and the notion that ISS would build US/Russian friendship hasn't paid off either. Last time I checked they still pointed ICBMs at Washington. The money squabbles have probably pushed these two nations further apart.
Back again with the shuttle will be the flawed premise of manned spaceflight. You would think the relative success (on a cost basis) of NASA's own unmanned probes would point the way, but no, we need to get back to the bizarre and thoroughly debunked notion that we can survive and prosper in space or on a nearby rock (and hence no need to stop polluting our own rock).
Human's aren't leaving this planet folks! Exposure to space is toxic to humans, this is well understood. Radiation and/or tissue/bone loss cannot be countered through any technique we know, and we haven't found any place else remotely nearby that is a better place to live. Forget your star trek fantasies of 'warp drive' instantly transporting you to a lush oasis.
Lastly NASA continues to pre-empt private exploration of space for meaningful purposes. It will likely take Chinese incursions into space to shake lose the notion that NASA and the USAF own space.
Even if songs were practically free, there will always be people who can and will skirt the normal distribution methods. Look at cable TV and/or satellite. At some point the industry will concede a margin of loss and move forward - the cost of chasing the cheaters will be greater than the lost revenue.
But of course we are nowhere near this point yet. The music industry probably needs to spend another three years with it head stuck in the sand and a near death experience on CD sales to see that it needs to change. It will at some point take the obvious route people had been recommending for years, but only when they are the brink of extinction.
Our economy is filled with cartel-like behavior (OPEC, cable TV, media) that will be very painful to break, the record industry is no different.
Re:off-topic Re:Woefully sadly misdirected on lang
on
The Next Path for Joy
·
· Score: 1
Um, actually I've got a solid 15 years C++/C/Smalltalk/Self/Java/sh/bash/TCL/AWK under my belt.
I will dispute "solid" if after 15 years of programming you can only cite the apparent performance gain C provides you in utterly useless micr-programs. Then again, if in 15 years you haven't discovered perl, maybe you should stick to TCL.
I am so tired of the canned responses on slashdot telling me that only dumb programmers produce errors, and that the entire industry of software tools only exists because we clearly aren't smart enough to catch on the the lowest facts grasped by posters.
I used to think like this too - when I was in college. Back when the coding projects I worked on were the dorky isolated projects assigned by my profs. Oh it was so easy to pontificate when I only had to code the travelling salesman problem.
Now I respect programmers who patently avoid anything lower on the architecture totem pole than they have to go. Working programmers who actually make use of advances in compilers, languages, methods and tools to produce working code for large projects that matter. In these projects people use an interpreted language if they can get away with it. They use C++ instead of C if they can get away with it.
Once again, I would kill to see the actual code produced by most posters here. I suspect that 99% of it is for college assignments.
ARGH. This entire thread appears to be populated by people who have perhaps learned everything they know about programming from other slashdot posts. Every working programmer I know and respect doesn't even flinch at the suggestion that you should always use the highest level language you can get away with. I really would like to know the background and amount of working code posters here have on their resumes.
Of course for major commercial systems products you are still going to see C/C++, but those projects also have huge QA budgets. There are still a huge number of smallish projects in the open and closed worlds that used C/C++ but don't do any of the attendent QA. Thats the danger zone and Joy is correct to cite it.
It will be hard for programmers to let go of C/C++ - the religion of low-level programming has been hammered into a generation of programmers even though there are plenty of high level languages that operate safely and acceptably fast on current hardware for most app spaces.
Frankly I see little in Mad Hatter that I cannot get out of any distro push GNOME. It does not appear that the product provides any real tangible benefit over Red Hat or any other major GNOMEified distro.
I'm tired of people hashing out their stupid little pet peeves on the basis of 'national security'. Its inane and tiresome to hear people trump up the 'unassailable argument'. Oh now we can't challenge you because if we do we're rooting for terrorists.
American Gods "book of the century"????
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This man needs to read more. I enjoyed American Gods but please, Neil Gaiman is not the James Joyce of the twenty-first century.
Sooner or later if the costs of a software product outweigh the benefits, the market will marginalize it. I don't see a more effective, permanent, or viable option than this.
I am glad to see more code and support for GNOME, that said Sun still is a hardware company and Intel boxes are not their bread and butter. I see this product as a wedge for Solaris, not a true linux push. Even then, I don't see much here you can't get from RedHat's bluecurve additions on top of GNOME...actually I see very little on top of the stock GNOME itself (which says a lot about the high quality of the stock GNOME).
What does "experiencing the heavens" mean? And, more importantly, in what way is this different from modern air travel?
You are not "exploring" the atmosphere when you are in a airliner... "moron" (since you want to throw around the insults I will do so without hiding behind AC, you little zit draining bitch).
Re:Humans are also ill-suited for the ocean...
on
The Return of Apollo?
·
· Score: 1
Let's start at the top. To get from (say) California to Hawaii, you have to traverse a great stretch of geography in which human beings cannot survive.
You are not in the medium of the ocean. You are in the medium of the boat. The ocean need not change the physics inside the boat (barring a storm). This is why your analogy fails - you are ON the ocean, not IN it. In space you are IN an environment that degrades your physiology. You cannot remove your self from this.
Hell, the ocean is toxic to humans, but we still build boats.
But you can be on the ocean without being in the ocean. This analogy has been used before and doesn't hold.
Jesus Christ. What are you, 15 years old or something?
No, in fact my viewpoints are held by a number of prominent scientists and writers such as Arthur Clarke and Raymond Kurzweil. Jesus Christ. What are you, an anonymous coward?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, there are plenty of people who have low demands for connectivity, but very very few new customers in this market. All of these people already have dialup. Their next move will be to broadband..yes, even ma and pa Kettle.
This is desperate ploy to bring back some of the luster to the DOA dial-up service they have been slowly burying for some time. Parsons should just fess up and admit he wants to run a media business without the distraction of an ultra-low-maring connectivity dinosaur. This would in effect completely undo the TW/AOL merger - a move most shareholders would welcome, now that it is understood and accepted that all the merger did was vaporize shareholder wealth.
Abiword and Gnumeric are faster (MUCH faster) and better looking with native Gnome2 integration.
I think you make a good point. Giving 6th graders laptops at this point only sets up Michigan for huge maintainence costs as they drop, break, smash, delete and otherwise screw them up.
This myth is repeated so many times that people start to believe it. There is a huge support network in large firms for totally free software, some of which is downright obscure. This notion that corporate departments only use corporate software is bunk, I don't know why people continue to trot it out.
The company I work at has a $22 billion market cap and survives on freebsd, perl and php. CONVINCED YET???
I think Sun will find little success with this product specifically because it offers so little over the base freeware.
Pair programming attempts to take two mediocore programmers and create one decent programmer out of them. No senior developer is going to put up with some malodorous jerk sitting on his lap asking questions about every line.
You know, sometimes we just want to pick our noses or read a news story on the web. Pair programming makes this impossible as there is always some idiot practically sitting on your lap. This is why it will always be perceived as punishment.
They have been pushing hard to be in the middle of voice as well as data networks. To get there they need the legitimacy granted by government approval.
Nanotech. Quantum computing. Genomics. Protein research. All of which stand to pay out much higher dividends for humanity and frankly have nothing to do with space research. All manned spaceflight has really taught us is that space is inherently toxic to humans.
NASA will go back to building the ISS - aside from Star Wars in the 80s, the largest transfer of public money to a military contractor in history. Who knows, maybe missile defense will end up being a bigger boondoggle, but right now ISS is the white elephant to beat. Just what is NASA doing up there? The crew has only one job really - janitor/superintendent services. The scientific motivations are as meaningless now as they were a decade ago, and the notion that ISS would build US/Russian friendship hasn't paid off either. Last time I checked they still pointed ICBMs at Washington. The money squabbles have probably pushed these two nations further apart.
Back again with the shuttle will be the flawed premise of manned spaceflight. You would think the relative success (on a cost basis) of NASA's own unmanned probes would point the way, but no, we need to get back to the bizarre and thoroughly debunked notion that we can survive and prosper in space or on a nearby rock (and hence no need to stop polluting our own rock).
Human's aren't leaving this planet folks! Exposure to space is toxic to humans, this is well understood. Radiation and/or tissue/bone loss cannot be countered through any technique we know, and we haven't found any place else remotely nearby that is a better place to live. Forget your star trek fantasies of 'warp drive' instantly transporting you to a lush oasis.
Lastly NASA continues to pre-empt private exploration of space for meaningful purposes. It will likely take Chinese incursions into space to shake lose the notion that NASA and the USAF own space.
But of course we are nowhere near this point yet. The music industry probably needs to spend another three years with it head stuck in the sand and a near death experience on CD sales to see that it needs to change. It will at some point take the obvious route people had been recommending for years, but only when they are the brink of extinction.
Our economy is filled with cartel-like behavior (OPEC, cable TV, media) that will be very painful to break, the record industry is no different.
I will dispute "solid" if after 15 years of programming you can only cite the apparent performance gain C provides you in utterly useless micr-programs. Then again, if in 15 years you haven't discovered perl, maybe you should stick to TCL.
I used to think like this too - when I was in college. Back when the coding projects I worked on were the dorky isolated projects assigned by my profs. Oh it was so easy to pontificate when I only had to code the travelling salesman problem.
Now I respect programmers who patently avoid anything lower on the architecture totem pole than they have to go. Working programmers who actually make use of advances in compilers, languages, methods and tools to produce working code for large projects that matter. In these projects people use an interpreted language if they can get away with it. They use C++ instead of C if they can get away with it.
Once again, I would kill to see the actual code produced by most posters here. I suspect that 99% of it is for college assignments.
ARGH. This entire thread appears to be populated by people who have perhaps learned everything they know about programming from other slashdot posts. Every working programmer I know and respect doesn't even flinch at the suggestion that you should always use the highest level language you can get away with. I really would like to know the background and amount of working code posters here have on their resumes.
It will be hard for programmers to let go of C/C++ - the religion of low-level programming has been hammered into a generation of programmers even though there are plenty of high level languages that operate safely and acceptably fast on current hardware for most app spaces.
If a college student or the nation of North Korea can do it, so can you.
Frankly I see little in Mad Hatter that I cannot get out of any distro push GNOME. It does not appear that the product provides any real tangible benefit over Red Hat or any other major GNOMEified distro.
I'm tired of people hashing out their stupid little pet peeves on the basis of 'national security'. Its inane and tiresome to hear people trump up the 'unassailable argument'. Oh now we can't challenge you because if we do we're rooting for terrorists.
This man needs to read more. I enjoyed American Gods but please, Neil Gaiman is not the James Joyce of the twenty-first century.
Sooner or later if the costs of a software product outweigh the benefits, the market will marginalize it. I don't see a more effective, permanent, or viable option than this.
I am glad to see more code and support for GNOME, that said Sun still is a hardware company and Intel boxes are not their bread and butter. I see this product as a wedge for Solaris, not a true linux push. Even then, I don't see much here you can't get from RedHat's bluecurve additions on top of GNOME...actually I see very little on top of the stock GNOME itself (which says a lot about the high quality of the stock GNOME).
You are not "exploring" the atmosphere when you are in a airliner... "moron" (since you want to throw around the insults I will do so without hiding behind AC, you little zit draining bitch).
You are not in the medium of the ocean. You are in the medium of the boat. The ocean need not change the physics inside the boat (barring a storm). This is why your analogy fails - you are ON the ocean, not IN it. In space you are IN an environment that degrades your physiology. You cannot remove your self from this.
But you can be on the ocean without being in the ocean. This analogy has been used before and doesn't hold.
Jesus Christ. What are you, 15 years old or something?
No, in fact my viewpoints are held by a number of prominent scientists and writers such as Arthur Clarke and Raymond Kurzweil. Jesus Christ. What are you, an anonymous coward?