Its unfortunate that this smart man (though University drop out) does nots see fundamental attraction of OpenSource... that is the ENABLEMENT TO WORK without worrying about hidden APIs, proprietary formats, or hidden costs. He equates it all to OpenSourceSoftware means some ubercorp doesn't get its coin 'cause profit of the few is baaad.
If he had a few more neurons, perhaps he would equate OpenSource to political Anarchy, because that's what it really is. Grass roots freedom of DEVELOPERS to code without blockers.
C'mon Bill. OpenSource is about making money off consulting anyway - in a world market where global economics can castrate anyone whose dollar isn't worth as much as their neighbour.
Because they're applied for a patent, its unlikely this will see adoption in anything but StuffIt... and who besides Mac users actually use StuffIt! (Don't forget as late as a couple years ago StuffIt couldn't handle more than 2^24 in an archive MACing it useless for many.)
Microsoft has spent a lot of effort integrating everything to the point that its almost impossible to turn something off.
This may seem off topic, but how many users would have been spared malware if Outlook allowed you to disable HTML rendering? How many spammers would be at a loss because just by downloading your mail, you can ping a mining image?
IE is a totally fubar because anyone can insert a bit of interception that's darn near impossible for the average user to get rid of.
How about NOT defaulting to advertising / HTML inside of Media Player?
But also people should lay blame where blame is due... the real evil are people who piggyback spyware with useful apps. I stopped using REAL because of this... almost stopped using LimeWire...
Anyway I digress.
M$ should stop integrating everything with IE because its the source of most evil.
If you really want to start addicting people... someone will make a MMORPG where the intent is to get drunk and whore as much as you can. Then let everyone watch. Say goodbye to EQ and WoW then...
I want the red cherry flavored lubricated ribbed rubber please.
"Obviously, Microsoft won't be able to finish the code until it's had a peek at Apple's forthcoming Tiger."
The innovation of Brand X continues! But perhaps Bill and Monkey Boy haven't noticed that developers-developers-developers aren't phlocking to OSX in droves.
"Bill Restemeyer suggested it be renamed "Longwait." "
But along with the traditional and now defunct announcements from Microsloth about things seen at ADG (that strangely were never released by Apple but sometimes got into Windows), the Microsloth press release always comes before market evaluation, need, or infinite number of redmond monkies.
"The company also cut a core feature, a new "revolutionary" file system called WinFS."
C'mon. Access as an FS! Hasn't everyone wanted a quasi relational database as their FS? I know ever time I want to look for a file in Doz I ask myself, "Hmm... maybe it would be faster if I typed in a 5 line SQL script."
SELECT FILE_NAME FROM ALL_FILES WHERE FILE_NAME = 'FUD.TXT'
this was actually 2 issues 1) US sends blank cheque to Israel and 2) Israel heavily subsidizes its tech industry. So... if either one of these were to stop in the name of fair trade, politics aside, let's see how well israeli tech does
Book doesn't seem to touch on some issues, specifically, Israel receives over $3B is subsidies from the US per year, and a lot of that is earmarked for tech. Israel subsidizes its tech companies, something most countries don't. For specific companies, consider Aladdin, maker of security devices, vs Rainbow technologies. The Israeli gov. pumped millions into Aladdin to advertise in the US. Rainbow, a public US company, didn't get such incentive from the US gov.
Its very true. Apple unfortunately lets legal/industry issues dominate its strategies. So - all Apple has to do is show its the music industry that has pushed the format issue and that it would be a liability for them not to support the format.
For the geek, kinda off topic, remember that Apple does stupid things like disable the DVD player if the MacsBug debugger is enabled so you can't easily hack it... I know as a developer, it really pissed me off the first time I saw this, then again, Apple's ass is covered.
Voting is flawed in that you can still have a lobby or biased voting base. [How many experts thought the earth was flat?]
Expert editorial is flawed because there is no way of identifying who is an unbiased, true expert. [The pope may be an expert on RC dogma but I wouldn't trust his opinions on Darwin.]
It is human nature to state an opinion as a fact as this is the basis for any argument. [A statement that uses passive wording or introduces self-doubt is always discounted. If evolution is true, man might have evolved from apes.]
It is easier to discount than disprove, which is why any comments must be factual. [The earth is round. No it isn't. Yes it is. Prove it.]
The only way to ensure reliable content is to have the 'benevolent dictator' it the form of a [re]known expert per field with published credentials. And that complete thwarts the ideal of a democracy.
And the whole expert thing is troubling anyway. Most of them are academics, and an academic by definition is a person who specializes in a field to the extent that they are narrow minded and no longer useful in most contexts. An evolutionist would argue that specialization may allow explotation of a niche, but over specialization is the key to extinction as there is slow adaptation to change.
Democracy does not yield a good genetic ranking. It assumes the voters aren't idiots.
In some sense, the whole concept is flawed, but then again, so is any kind of historical content put into a history.
In ancient history, Roman anyway, 'rich guys' that happened to be leaders due to wealth as opposed to merrit, were obliged to write histories on various things they may have witnessed or heard about... sometimes decades after events... because it was the thing to do. This had the nasty effect of very narrow and subjective views of events supporting specific class, ideology, or political persuasion.
Not much has changed. Who writes history today, besides academics, victors, and popular artists? Someone pushing a point of view, and if you really want to know, it is up to you to research as many (possibly contradicting) sources as possible to figure out what really happened.
What is particularily amusing is the argument about democratic processes behind validity of data. History is flawed, rewritten, and mangled to be non-factual and express specific points of view. Stating that somehow letting anyone modify or ammend encyclopedia data is a good thing, given that there are editor/administrators, and the fact that as a whole, only people of means and with knowledge of internet have the ability to do so.
Only the rich were educated. Only the rich could write. Only the rich could afford to write. Only people with computers and internet can partake of wikipedia. Only a fool would consider a public data source as a reliable, single source.
Iterpretation is everything. And it doesn't matter, because blind faith allows you to discount everything anyway.
I've done it... the patent clerks aren't really savvy about the description of what-is-new-and-patentable. They will not search for you to find out if it is already patented. Anyone can file a patent.
It comes down to being an issue of enforceability. That means that you have a swarm of lawyers that can prove that yes, you were the first to patent a real innovation.
Here is the rub. First to patent does not mean first to use, nor does it take into account NON US based patents.
So here is what you do - find something that's a crux to windows, do a patent search, see if M$ was smart enough to patent it, and if not, go patent it and sue them for infringement. Chances are, they will settle.
People have focused mainly on the C/C++ library issue Jeff Duntemann notes, but there are some JUST PLAIN WRONG premises set up by ol' Jeff.
First, that monoculture is a result of best of breed... Hey Jeff! Did you hear about the anti-trust case? When the browser is integrated into the desktop and shipped with every major hardware vendor's box, its not really best of breed is it. It's not really a choice. You use what you are given, and what the vendor/corporate IS/whatever tells you they will support.
Then you have the funny comment about Writing Solid Code. This book isn't on my desk. Yeah its given to every new hire at Microsoft so they can fit into the culture... but lets talk about that culture where you say they have "some of the best programmers in the world." I've been recruited by Microsoft twice. Suffices to say, I didn't sign up. I like to be empowered to do what I do best... and Microsoft does NOT promote that. Software development processes are the pervue of the individual project leads. Most leads at Microsoft are lifers who are SO involved in the culture, that any advancement in software engineering or best practices for software development are as foreign topics as igloos to pygmies. On the various projects I almost worked on, all of them had the same process. First, get marketing/management to set some deliverable deadline. Second, get 50 or so developers coding under a lead. (What about design?) Third, 2/3 of the way through, at 100 testers that end up coding to meet the deadline. Last, meet the deadline, or go back into the pool...
How the bejeezuz do you expect anything quality to come out of that process?
I also asked about code re-use when I was there... Surprise surprise, did you know that its actually not mandated that any software reuse any code? In particular, standard library code! A nameless project had no less than 8 different hash table implementations that all did effectively the same thing!
There are some old jokes that come to mind...
At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1.
If Bill Gates had a dollar for every time windows crashed... no wait, he does.
Statistics show Canadians have more citizens with computers that americans ( 3 in 4 as compared to 1 in 2 familes. ) More Canadians have high speed internet. Check out http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf and http://www.statcan.ca.
So... are we technologically repressed? The govenment does not prevent business from happening here. If the names you mention are slow to deploy here, it has everything to do with numbers... so blame Microsoft and RIA and go buy yourself a satelite dish.
When you call a trig function, it goes through the java.lang.Math class. However, Math delegates to StrictMath that is a native implementation. Now, I do not believe that Sun has implemented the trig libraries because if you dumpbin on java.dll where StrictMath resides, you will notice most the offsets between those functions is small (about 20 bytes).
So when you call any trig function, you have 2 levels of object packaging/unpackaging - likely before a call that sets fp numeric state before the operation.
http://math.nist.gov/javanumerics is a fun place to visit for more information on various math libraries and issues people have with java numerics.
I've been fighting SPAM for over ten years. Any kind of "tax" will not work, because a majority of SPAM is outside any jurisdiction to which said tax can apply.
Of our own server's SPAM, 80 percent comes from overseas. Contacting the ISPs proved pointless, so how could you possibly tax them, as any "tax" could only be applied at the source?
[Rogue] companies send SPAM because it is ZERO COST. After trying to also hunt down the origin companies (where the link gets you), I also found that EVERY ONE I went after was bogus. Hosted off-shore, with bogus contact information. I went so far as to go after Network Solutions; because many of the DNS entries I found hosted by them had bogus contacts. It turns out they do not verify contact information so long as a valid credit card is used to pay for the name. Pressed on the issue, a manager there said "It is not our policy to police the internet," even though I pointed out that my point was entering bogus contact information was against their policy, and the fact that the rogue site was defrauding individuals meant that they were assisting in a criminal act (because one couldn't get to their site without name resolution through netsol...) The forwarded me to a "procedure" they had for reporting rogue sites, where the onus is on the one making the complaint to prove the site is rogue before they start an investigation. More barking from me (I.E. Santa Clause at the North Pole?) that the misinformation was too obvious to warrant me wasting my time, and the DNS was finally removed. A few days later, we were getting mail re the fraud from a different name resolving to the same host. I gave up.
The point is, you cannot tax the recipient. You cannot bottleneck and tax the line spam goes over without enormous cost and grey area personal liberties arguements. So you can only tax the source, and present protocols and transmission media makes this practically impossible.
So, the only way to regulate SPAM is to strictly control DNS... and the US Dept. of Commerce wisely privatized internic to Network Solutions such that this will never again be possible.
Ross' sensationalism looses point of the real issue. Microsoft was found guilty of contractual breach and anticompetitive practices and was never made accountable.
On the other hand, Java on the client is alive and well. Most of the arguments about Java killing itself are bunk. This year I have worked on two enterprise applications that use a few well placed applets to do complex UI tasks. Its about right tools for the right job. Anyone that tried to do a full blown application as an applet is doomed. Java was never designed to be a number cruncher or a flash. Java killed PowerBuilder...
When I was at Microsoft in 98, no teams were working on or with Java. The argument, from the team I was involved with anyway, was that ActiveX is the best way to go for high performance windows components that can do anything. Who cares about a sandbox when you can sign. Who cares about cross platform - thats someone elses problem.
But this brings about another issue. Microsoft only brought out a Windows JVM because clients wanted it. Netscape was still a contender back then. Microsoft only stuck bucks into NET because clients wanted it. They wanted it because J2EE is here to stay, and Microsoft had no working alternative.
Don't forget what got America on the moon. Sputnik. The article mentions it is a point of national pride. It was national pride that started the US space program to "catch up and surpass" Russian advances in space. And what was the benefit to American's that congress argues when marginalizing NASA? Huge funding into materials and technology development that resulted in many consumer and military applications we use today.
But now the argument is America cannot afford to be in space. Look at the massive scaling back of Alpha. It serves no purpose... to the political machine driven by corporate lobby. And this is why China will succeed.
Even though China's communist ideals may be for show, China is an effective oligarchy. No battling for mindshare for that next election "addressing short term problems".
I hope Zhong Guo Jen succeed in this vision. It is the Only way Americans will make it to Mars.;-)
There were some "cult classics" that have inspired a lot of movies mentioned...
What about
This Island Earth Westworld/Futureworld Logan's Run Dark Star Them! The Thing (either original or remake) Andromeda Syndrome Man Who Fell To Earth
I agree that Dune and Forbidden Planet are contenders.
When as myself of the top twenty listed HOW MANY WOULD I WATCH AGAIN - that is really how many are in my library - there are only seven listed I watch regularily.
There are also newer Underappreciated movies better than some on the list (Jurasik Park?) - for example Dark City (amazing visuals comparable to Blade Runner) Thirteenth Floor (unfortunately released the same time as Matrix)
And as for Barbarella... Flesh Gorden gets more play on Bravo!
Exactly right. My parents told me not to go with strangers or give out personal information - this was before the internet. Just because a new channel has opened up doesn't obviate the responsibility of a parent.
I guess parenting like most things is being sacrificed to convenience. Its always someone elses problem if it means introspection is required. Just give more power to the state (and then make sure the state marginalizes whatever institution set up to deal with it - after all - philanthropy is not profitable.)
x) Discourage your Developers from Cross Platform Development (by pulling the rug out from under them) Document QTML as a way for Mac developers to port their Mac [QuickTime] applications to Windows easily. When questioned about what is or is not supported in the library after porting an application to Windows using QTML, change the documentation to say this library will NOT BE SUPPORTED. (Ha ha, stupid developer, you thought we were giving you solutions to increase your market share.)
Another book needs to be written because the religious user debates do not really explain why Apple has a 3% market share.
I would call this book "The Rise and Fall of the Mac Developer."
In this book, I would enumerate all the things that Apple has done to drive truly creative developers from the platform. Of course one can argue "semper fi", but where is Guy Kawasaki today?
In this book I would have the following chapters. 1) The failure of Marketting/Evangelism Yes, I'd have this in the book. I spent five years promoting the use of Macs in enterprise and engineering. Apple could never keep these positions well stocked, and when they did find people, they gathered a self-delusional-reinforcing clique of groupies that denied that Apple was pooching NOT attempts to enter the space, but pooching toeholds they had in the space, and telling developers trying to build products that their applications were not "killer apps." Is there an engineering killer app? For five years Apple reps announced at WWDC the same thing: We will foster development and awareness through VAR incentives. That's right... No help for people building products - but give a salesman who doesn't know a Mac from Adam a T-Shirt and he'll promote a product into an Oil company without ANY SOFTWARE to make it useful.
2) Starve the Developers for Development Tools First tell developers they must pay for expensive development tools, and delay on providing those tools. [The developers want free tools to write product to sell your platform.]
3) Jerk the Developer Chain through Legalese Have developers wanting to support new technologies sign incomprehensible NDAs and technology agreements. [The developers must wait months to actually get there hands on the technology.] Then announce that certain specs for internal hardware will NEVER be released.
4) Remove the Reason for Start-ups to Use Macs Any developer incentives like the hardware purchase program must be abolished. [It is more likely small start ups that cannot afford 200%+ mark up will support fringeware.]
5) Run in Circles and blow the Developers Credibility Get new technologies out, convince developers they must support them, and kill them a year later. [Copland, OpenDoc, QD3D...]
6) No Support for You Put a barrier between your core developers and technical resources that do not know the technologies and claim every bug you report in the Software is a support incident requiring the DEVELOPER pay for it.
7) Close the Playing Field Make sure that any attempt to support CHRP and get other Vendors making Macs is pooched.
8) Kick your Developers in the Groin Never return the phone calls of a developer known as a Doubting Thomas. Make sure the development teams that do have tight contact with developers ignore advice from the seasoned ones because it illustrates design flaws, or points out missing key parts of a strategy, or because the developer said after stating factually why something is stupid, resorting to saying "The Idiot Who Did This Should Be Short" must be threatened with LEGAL ACTION.
9) Lie To The Developers In 1996, WWDC, "Apple will be the Number One Java Development Platform." Apple FIVE YEARS LATER delivers a functional Java implementation.
10) Creativity Must be Stiffled Kill ATG, research, and disclosure because Microsoft delivers the cool thing you saw at WWDC the previous year.
11) OpenSource this Don't forget to kill mkLinux because you might eat into your OS X sales. But wait - OS X won't run on older hardware. F**k ADB and NuBUS - who uses old Macs [except every die hard Mac developer I know.]
Unfortunately most of the things that Apple has done right, they did long, long after it would make a difference. Think different? I don't think so.
p.s. Tim, f**k you for breaking all the UI guidelines making iWhatever look and feel like consumer products. A skin should be a choice... and Apps should be consistent.
Slashdot Mirror
Its unfortunate that this smart man (though University drop out) does nots see fundamental attraction of OpenSource... that is the ENABLEMENT TO WORK without worrying about hidden APIs, proprietary formats, or hidden costs. He equates it all to OpenSourceSoftware means some ubercorp doesn't get its coin 'cause profit of the few is baaad.
If he had a few more neurons, perhaps he would equate OpenSource to political Anarchy, because that's what it really is. Grass roots freedom of DEVELOPERS to code without blockers.
C'mon Bill. OpenSource is about making money off consulting anyway - in a world market where global economics can castrate anyone whose dollar isn't worth as much as their neighbour.
Because they're applied for a patent, its unlikely this will see adoption in anything but StuffIt... and who besides Mac users actually use StuffIt! (Don't forget as late as a couple years ago StuffIt couldn't handle more than 2^24 in an archive MACing it useless for many.)
Hype.sit
Microsoft has spent a lot of effort integrating everything to the point that its almost impossible to turn something off.
This may seem off topic, but how many users would have been spared malware if Outlook allowed you to disable HTML rendering? How many spammers would be at a loss because just by downloading your mail, you can ping a mining image?
IE is a totally fubar because anyone can insert a bit of interception that's darn near impossible for the average user to get rid of.
How about NOT defaulting to advertising / HTML inside of Media Player?
But also people should lay blame where blame is due... the real evil are people who piggyback spyware with useful apps. I stopped using REAL because of this... almost stopped using LimeWire...
Anyway I digress.
M$ should stop integrating everything with IE because its the source of most evil.
If you really want to start addicting people... someone will make a MMORPG where the intent is to get drunk and whore as much as you can. Then let everyone watch. Say goodbye to EQ and WoW then...
I want the red cherry flavored lubricated ribbed rubber please.
Oh yeah, I want royalities.
"Obviously, Microsoft won't be able to finish the code until it's had a peek at Apple's forthcoming Tiger."
The innovation of Brand X continues! But perhaps Bill and Monkey Boy haven't noticed that developers-developers-developers aren't phlocking to OSX in droves.
"Bill Restemeyer suggested it be renamed "Longwait." "
But along with the traditional and now defunct announcements from Microsloth about things seen at ADG (that strangely were never released by Apple but sometimes got into Windows), the Microsloth press release always comes before market evaluation, need, or infinite number of redmond monkies.
"The company also cut a core feature, a new "revolutionary" file system called WinFS."
C'mon. Access as an FS! Hasn't everyone wanted a quasi relational database as their FS? I know ever time I want to look for a file in Doz I ask myself, "Hmm... maybe it would be faster if I typed in a 5 line SQL script."
SELECT FILE_NAME FROM ALL_FILES WHERE FILE_NAME = 'FUD.TXT'
Obviously I don't have a clue.
- is rael.htm
http://sites.state.pa.us/PA_Exec/DCED/tech21/bg
Sure, there are US partners and companies in Israel that benefit from strings attached to aide. But for the most part, the money stays in Israel.
Other aide comes in the form of zero interest loans, and again, this money has no strings attached.
this was actually 2 issues 1) US sends blank cheque to Israel and 2) Israel heavily subsidizes its tech industry. So... if either one of these were to stop in the name of fair trade, politics aside, let's see how well israeli tech does
Book doesn't seem to touch on some issues, specifically, Israel receives over $3B is subsidies from the US per year, and a lot of that is earmarked for tech. Israel subsidizes its tech companies, something most countries don't. For specific companies, consider Aladdin, maker of security devices, vs Rainbow technologies. The Israeli gov. pumped millions into Aladdin to advertise in the US. Rainbow, a public US company, didn't get such incentive from the US gov.
Its very true. Apple unfortunately lets legal/industry issues dominate its strategies. So - all Apple has to do is show its the music industry that has pushed the format issue and that it would be a liability for them not to support the format.
For the geek, kinda off topic, remember that Apple does stupid things like disable the DVD player if the MacsBug debugger is enabled so you can't easily hack it... I know as a developer, it really pissed me off the first time I saw this, then again, Apple's ass is covered.
Voting is flawed in that you can still have a lobby or biased voting base. [How many experts thought the earth was flat?]
Expert editorial is flawed because there is no way of identifying who is an unbiased, true expert. [The pope may be an expert on RC dogma but I wouldn't trust his opinions on Darwin.]
It is human nature to state an opinion as a fact as this is the basis for any argument. [A statement that uses passive wording or introduces self-doubt is always discounted. If evolution is true, man might have evolved from apes.]
It is easier to discount than disprove, which is why any comments must be factual. [The earth is round. No it isn't. Yes it is. Prove it.]
The only way to ensure reliable content is to have the 'benevolent dictator' it the form of a [re]known expert per field with published credentials. And that complete thwarts the ideal of a democracy.
And the whole expert thing is troubling anyway. Most of them are academics, and an academic by definition is a person who specializes in a field to the extent that they are narrow minded and no longer useful in most contexts. An evolutionist would argue that specialization may allow explotation of a niche, but over specialization is the key to extinction as there is slow adaptation to change.
Democracy does not yield a good genetic ranking. It assumes the voters aren't idiots.
Why is this an issue?
In some sense, the whole concept is flawed, but then again, so is any kind of historical content put into a history.
In ancient history, Roman anyway, 'rich guys' that happened to be leaders due to wealth as opposed to merrit, were obliged to write histories on various things they may have witnessed or heard about... sometimes decades after events... because it was the thing to do. This had the nasty effect of very narrow and subjective views of events supporting specific class, ideology, or political persuasion.
Not much has changed. Who writes history today, besides academics, victors, and popular artists? Someone pushing a point of view, and if you really want to know, it is up to you to research as many (possibly contradicting) sources as possible to figure out what really happened.
What is particularily amusing is the argument about democratic processes behind validity of data. History is flawed, rewritten, and mangled to be non-factual and express specific points of view. Stating that somehow letting anyone modify or ammend encyclopedia data is a good thing, given that there are editor/administrators, and the fact that as a whole, only people of means and with knowledge of internet have the ability to do so.
Only the rich were educated.
Only the rich could write.
Only the rich could afford to write.
Only people with computers and internet can partake of wikipedia.
Only a fool would consider a public data source as a reliable, single source.
Iterpretation is everything. And it doesn't matter, because blind faith allows you to discount everything anyway.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/technology/20joy stick.html
is a better link (no password)
and yes, she's something ain't she
Dear Wil.
What was it like working with Ashley Judd? Was there any chemistry there?
My dang Universal remote came up with some crap about orbits and thrusters... I thought it was a video game. Sorry guys.
Have you ever filed a patent?
I've done it... the patent clerks aren't really savvy about the description of what-is-new-and-patentable. They will not search for you to find out if it is already patented. Anyone can file a patent.
It comes down to being an issue of enforceability. That means that you have a swarm of lawyers that can prove that yes, you were the first to patent a real innovation.
Here is the rub. First to patent does not mean first to use, nor does it take into account NON US based patents.
So here is what you do - find something that's a crux to windows, do a patent search, see if M$ was smart enough to patent it, and if not, go patent it and sue them for infringement. Chances are, they will settle.
People have focused mainly on the C/C++ library issue Jeff Duntemann notes, but there are some JUST PLAIN WRONG premises set up by ol' Jeff.
First, that monoculture is a result of best of breed... Hey Jeff! Did you hear about the anti-trust case? When the browser is integrated into the desktop and shipped with every major hardware vendor's box, its not really best of breed is it. It's not really a choice. You use what you are given, and what the vendor/corporate IS/whatever tells you they will support.
Then you have the funny comment about Writing Solid Code. This book isn't on my desk. Yeah its given to every new hire at Microsoft so they can fit into the culture... but lets talk about that culture where you say they have "some of the best programmers in the world." I've been recruited by Microsoft twice. Suffices to say, I didn't sign up. I like to be empowered to do what I do best... and Microsoft does NOT promote that. Software development processes are the pervue of the individual project leads. Most leads at Microsoft are lifers who are SO involved in the culture, that any advancement in software engineering or best practices for software development are as foreign topics as igloos to pygmies. On the various projects I almost worked on, all of them had the same process. First, get marketing/management to set some deliverable deadline. Second, get 50 or so developers coding under a lead. (What about design?) Third, 2/3 of the way through, at 100 testers that end up coding to meet the deadline. Last, meet the deadline, or go back into the pool...
How the bejeezuz do you expect anything quality to come out of that process?
I also asked about code re-use when I was there... Surprise surprise, did you know that its actually not mandated that any software reuse any code? In particular, standard library code! A nameless project had no less than 8 different hash table implementations that all did effectively the same thing!
There are some old jokes that come to mind...
At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1.
If Bill Gates had a dollar for every time windows crashed... no wait, he does.
Microsoft: Innvoation through Assimilation.
and from my Microsoft mug circa 1986...
Microsoft: One company does it all.
Statistics show Canadians have more citizens with computers that americans ( 3 in 4 as compared to 1 in 2 familes. ) More Canadians have high speed internet. Check out http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p23-207.pdf and http://www.statcan.ca.
So... are we technologically repressed? The govenment does not prevent business from happening here. If the names you mention are slow to deploy here, it has everything to do with numbers... so blame Microsoft and RIA and go buy yourself a satelite dish.
of its JNI implementation.
When you call a trig function, it goes through the java.lang.Math class. However, Math delegates to StrictMath that is a native implementation. Now, I do not believe that Sun has implemented the trig libraries because if you dumpbin on java.dll where StrictMath resides, you will notice most the offsets between those functions is small (about 20 bytes).
So when you call any trig function, you have 2 levels of object packaging/unpackaging - likely before a call that sets fp numeric state before the operation.
http://math.nist.gov/javanumerics is a fun place to visit for more information on various math libraries and issues people have with java numerics.
I've been fighting SPAM for over ten years. Any kind of "tax" will not work, because a majority of SPAM is outside any jurisdiction to which said tax can apply.
Of our own server's SPAM, 80 percent comes from overseas. Contacting the ISPs proved pointless, so how could you possibly tax them, as any "tax" could only be applied at the source?
[Rogue] companies send SPAM because it is ZERO COST. After trying to also hunt down the origin companies (where the link gets you), I also found that EVERY ONE I went after was bogus. Hosted off-shore, with bogus contact information. I went so far as to go after Network Solutions; because many of the DNS entries I found hosted by them had bogus contacts. It turns out they do not verify contact information so long as a valid credit card is used to pay for the name. Pressed on the issue, a manager there said "It is not our policy to police the internet," even though I pointed out that my point was entering bogus contact information was against their policy, and the fact that the rogue site was defrauding individuals meant that they were assisting in a criminal act (because one couldn't get to their site without name resolution through netsol...) The forwarded me to a "procedure" they had for reporting rogue sites, where the onus is on the one making the complaint to prove the site is rogue before they start an investigation. More barking from me (I.E. Santa Clause at the North Pole?) that the misinformation was too obvious to warrant me wasting my time, and the DNS was finally removed. A few days later, we were getting mail re the fraud from a different name resolving to the same host. I gave up.
The point is, you cannot tax the recipient. You cannot bottleneck and tax the line spam goes over without enormous cost and grey area personal liberties arguements. So you can only tax the source, and present protocols and transmission media makes this practically impossible.
So, the only way to regulate SPAM is to strictly control DNS... and the US Dept. of Commerce wisely privatized internic to Network Solutions such that this will never again be possible.
Ross' sensationalism looses point of the real issue. Microsoft was found guilty of contractual breach and anticompetitive practices and was never made accountable.
On the other hand, Java on the client is alive and well. Most of the arguments about Java killing itself are bunk. This year I have worked on two enterprise applications that use a few well placed applets to do complex UI tasks. Its about right tools for the right job. Anyone that tried to do a full blown application as an applet is doomed. Java was never designed to be a number cruncher or a flash. Java killed PowerBuilder...
When I was at Microsoft in 98, no teams were working on or with Java. The argument, from the team I was involved with anyway, was that ActiveX is the best way to go for high performance windows components that can do anything. Who cares about a sandbox when you can sign. Who cares about cross platform - thats someone elses problem.
But this brings about another issue. Microsoft only brought out a Windows JVM because clients wanted it. Netscape was still a contender back then. Microsoft only stuck bucks into NET because clients wanted it. They wanted it because J2EE is here to stay, and Microsoft had no working alternative.
Don't forget what got America on the moon. Sputnik. The article mentions it is a point of national pride. It was national pride that started the US space program to "catch up and surpass" Russian advances in space. And what was the benefit to American's that congress argues when marginalizing NASA? Huge funding into materials and technology development that resulted in many consumer and military applications we use today.
;-)
But now the argument is America cannot afford to be in space. Look at the massive scaling back of Alpha. It serves no purpose... to the political machine driven by corporate lobby. And this is why China will succeed.
Even though China's communist ideals may be for show, China is an effective oligarchy. No battling for mindshare for that next election "addressing short term problems".
I hope Zhong Guo Jen succeed in this vision. It is the Only way Americans will make it to Mars.
There were some "cult classics" that have inspired a lot of movies mentioned...
What about
This Island Earth
Westworld/Futureworld
Logan's Run
Dark Star
Them!
The Thing (either original or remake)
Andromeda Syndrome
Man Who Fell To Earth
I agree that Dune and Forbidden Planet are contenders.
When as myself of the top twenty listed HOW MANY WOULD I WATCH AGAIN - that is really how many are in my library - there are only seven listed I watch regularily.
There are also newer Underappreciated movies better than some on the list (Jurasik Park?) - for example
Dark City (amazing visuals comparable to Blade Runner)
Thirteenth Floor (unfortunately released the same time as Matrix)
And as for Barbarella... Flesh Gorden gets more play on Bravo!
Mm
Exactly right. My parents told me not to go with strangers or give out personal information - this was before the internet. Just because a new channel has opened up doesn't obviate the responsibility of a parent.
I guess parenting like most things is being sacrificed to convenience. Its always someone elses problem if it means introspection is required. Just give more power to the state (and then make sure the state marginalizes whatever institution set up to deal with it - after all - philanthropy is not profitable.)
I almost forgot my favorite last nail.
x) Discourage your Developers from Cross Platform Development (by pulling the rug out from under them)
Document QTML as a way for Mac developers to port their Mac [QuickTime] applications to Windows easily. When questioned about what is or is not supported in the library after porting an application to Windows using QTML, change the documentation to say this library will NOT BE SUPPORTED. (Ha ha, stupid developer, you thought we were giving you solutions to increase your market share.)
Another book needs to be written because the religious user debates do not really explain why Apple has a 3% market share.
I would call this book "The Rise and Fall of the Mac Developer."
In this book, I would enumerate all the things that Apple has done to drive truly creative developers from the platform. Of course one can argue "semper fi", but where is Guy Kawasaki today?
In this book I would have the following chapters.
1) The failure of Marketting/Evangelism
Yes, I'd have this in the book. I spent five years promoting the use of Macs in enterprise and engineering. Apple could never keep these positions well stocked, and when they did find people, they gathered a self-delusional-reinforcing clique of groupies that denied that Apple was pooching NOT attempts to enter the space, but pooching toeholds they had in the space, and telling developers trying to build products that their applications were not "killer apps." Is there an engineering killer app? For five years Apple reps announced at WWDC the same thing: We will foster development and awareness through VAR incentives. That's right... No help for people building products - but give a salesman who doesn't know a Mac from Adam a T-Shirt and he'll promote a product into an Oil company without ANY SOFTWARE to make it useful.
2) Starve the Developers for Development Tools
First tell developers they must pay for expensive development tools, and delay on providing those tools. [The developers want free tools to write product to sell your platform.]
3) Jerk the Developer Chain through Legalese
Have developers wanting to support new technologies sign incomprehensible NDAs and technology agreements. [The developers must wait months to actually get there hands on the technology.] Then announce that certain specs for internal hardware will NEVER be released.
4) Remove the Reason for Start-ups to Use Macs
Any developer incentives like the hardware purchase program must be abolished. [It is more likely small start ups that cannot afford 200%+ mark up will support fringeware.]
5) Run in Circles and blow the Developers Credibility
Get new technologies out, convince developers they must support them, and kill them a year later. [Copland, OpenDoc, QD3D...]
6) No Support for You
Put a barrier between your core developers and technical resources that do not know the technologies and claim every bug you report in the Software is a support incident requiring the DEVELOPER pay for it.
7) Close the Playing Field
Make sure that any attempt to support CHRP and get other Vendors making Macs is pooched.
8) Kick your Developers in the Groin
Never return the phone calls of a developer known as a Doubting Thomas. Make sure the development teams that do have tight contact with developers ignore advice from the seasoned ones because it illustrates design flaws, or points out missing key parts of a strategy, or because the developer said after stating factually why something is stupid, resorting to saying "The Idiot Who Did This Should Be Short" must be threatened with LEGAL ACTION.
9) Lie To The Developers
In 1996, WWDC, "Apple will be the Number One Java Development Platform." Apple FIVE YEARS LATER delivers a functional Java implementation.
10) Creativity Must be Stiffled
Kill ATG, research, and disclosure because Microsoft delivers the cool thing you saw at WWDC the previous year.
11) OpenSource this
Don't forget to kill mkLinux because you might eat into your OS X sales. But wait - OS X won't run on older hardware. F**k ADB and NuBUS - who uses old Macs [except every die hard Mac developer I know.]
Unfortunately most of the things that Apple has done right, they did long, long after it would make a difference. Think different? I don't think so.
p.s. Tim, f**k you for breaking all the UI guidelines making iWhatever look and feel like consumer products. A skin should be a choice... and Apps should be consistent.