if it gets "rebooted" very 4/8 years by new president/administration
Yes, it seems to be a shell game. Making an "exciting new announcement" every couple of years creates the illusion of things happening without ever producing any tangible results. I've pretty well lost faith in the proposition that we're going to be going anywhere in my lifetime again. John Derbyshire wrote an insightful article detailing a number of reasons why. I think he's hit it on the head.
Yeah, but first we need money to spend. Given that we're already spending money we don't have, I'm not very optimistic about seeing funding for space increased any time soon.
I somewhat agree with you, except I'd consider the pivotal event to be WWII, the effects just didn't start showing up until the the sixties. My guess is that the great collapse is in progress already. I don't think it's going to be a single cataclysmic event, it'll be more like Charlie Chaplin falling off of a cliff and hitting every rock on the way down.
Currently though, we're still the world's largest manufacturer, although China is on target to surpass us within the next couple of years.
I agree with you about the island. Perhaps this would be a good time for a Nockian Remnant to consider a consortium to start buying some up.
Also I note your position regarding Jefferson's belief that the country must be self-sufficient. There's a new political party you might be interested in that agrees with you.
Google cited increasingly tough censorship and recent cyberattacks on the Gmail accounts of human rights activists for its decision, which it said might force it to close its offices in China altogether.
Well, the choice is a management decision, of course. The selection of x86 over proprietary was obviously one of cost. I can only speculate on the reasons RH was selected over Solaris x86.
First, Linux established itself on x86 before Sun got serious about pushing Solaris on that platform.
Second, the x86 vendors, IBM and HP, are probably a lot more inclined to push a vendor neutral platform like RH than an OS from a competitor that also competes in other areas. In fact our RH support comes from IBM rather than RH directly.
Third, Sun's financial position has been fairly precarious for the last decade or so, and no one wanted to get stuck with an obsolete platform if Sun had gone under. It remains to be seen if Oracle will do anything to make Solaris x86 more competitive.
I'm not sure I like the sound of this. Consider the lesson of the taser. Now that the cops have a weapon that doesn't kill or maim, they've gotten increasingly slap-happy about using it. Cops were at least cautious about using firearms, least they have to defend themselves against using deadly force. But they're happy to pull out the taser at the drop of a hat.
This may sound like a good idea, but I suspect the cops will be using this a lot more liberally than intended.
Any corporation or government will buy support. But they won't necessarily buy Redhat, in fact, most of them end up buying Windows, right? But enough buy Redhat to ensure Redhat's profitability. Which is the point of the story...
Well, not necessarily. I work at a shop with over 1700 Unix/Linux servers. Yes, we also have Windows servers, but for applications that are running massive Oracle databases, Unix/Linux servers are still the only way to go.
It's true Red Hat isn't the only Linux distro, but in terms of data center servers it's become pretty much the standard with Suse a distant second. There just aren't that many Linux distros that are enterprise friendly, Red Hat pretty much has a monopoly on the enterprise Linux market. So while Red Hat isn't a proprietary OS, it might as well be. Given that we've been replacing our Sun and HP Unix servers with Red Hat Linux hand over fist, Red Hat is making a pretty piece of change off of us, and I understand this is largely true in most shops. Our hardware is primarily HP and IBM, who are making up their lost sales in Unix servers to us by selling us Intel based servers for Linux (and Windows, too). That pretty much leaves Sun out in the cold - we're not buying their proprietary servers much anymore, and they never gained a foothold in the commodity hardware market.
They watched the slime mold self-organize, spread out, and form a network that was comparable in efficiency, reliability, and cost to the real-world infrastructure of Tokyo's train network."
If you put it on a grilled cheese sandwich, will it organize itself into an image of the Virgin Mary?
The problem is, will Nokia keep on updating their free directions? Generally, when you have a large company that seems to be losing money and marketshare left and right they will release a lot of paid things for free in order to not have to update them or maintain them as much as a paid product.
I suspect they'll have to. Now that they've released their app for free, other vendors will be forced to do likewise to remain competitive. At that point, the vendors will be forced to compete on quality of service. If Nokia doesn't maintain the quality, somebody else will, negating the advantage of providing it in the first place. I don't think they're dumb enough to let that happen.
Really. I've been hearing this kind of talk for nearly 20 years. Open source looks pretty healthy to me.
In the second case study, Allison argued Microsoft had tried to corrupt the open Internet by, among other things: Refusing to follow HTML standards and creating Internet Explorer-only websites; pushing its Windows-only media format; aiming to make ActiveX the only way to develop applications; and trying to replace Java with.Net.
And how successful were they at these endeavors?
Apparently, not very.
I don't really see how anyone could be surprised by this. As more media options become available and more convenient to access, it seems like a logical progression. Also, you're media consumption devices are more flexible, you can consume from more sources of media concurrently. Your cell phone can likely provide you with verbal communication, music, social networks, even movies and radio. And that's probably the simplest device at your disposal these days.
Public opinion won't change it either. With both Republicans and Democrats supporting the RIAA and big business, who are angry voters going to turn to to, the Whigs?
At a certain point, you have to conclude that presidents are pretty much figureheads. I don't recollect any major policy changes when Clinton took over from Bush Sr., nor when Bush Jr. took over from Clinton, nor when Obama took over from Bush. No matter what they promise, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, the actual policy shifts are marginal, no matter how much they've criticized their predecessor while running for office. This forces me to conclude that either a.) presidents are privy to some information upon coming to office that compels them all to respond in a similar manner, or b.) there's a Man Behind the Curtain that actually calls the shots, and presidents don't have the discretion to act as is commonly thought.
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if it gets "rebooted" very 4/8 years by new president/administration
Yes, it seems to be a shell game. Making an "exciting new announcement" every couple of years creates the illusion of things happening without ever producing any tangible results. I've pretty well lost faith in the proposition that we're going to be going anywhere in my lifetime again. John Derbyshire wrote an insightful article detailing a number of reasons why. I think he's hit it on the head.
Yeah, but first we need money to spend. Given that we're already spending money we don't have, I'm not very optimistic about seeing funding for space increased any time soon.
I'd agree with that. We need to stop outsourcing, virtually unlimited immigration, and starting pointless and expensive wars, and then we might be able to achieve a space program that isn't chronically dysfunctional.
Support the American Third Position!
I somewhat agree with you, except I'd consider the pivotal event to be WWII, the effects just didn't start showing up until the the sixties. My guess is that the great collapse is in progress already. I don't think it's going to be a single cataclysmic event, it'll be more like Charlie Chaplin falling off of a cliff and hitting every rock on the way down.
Currently though, we're still the world's largest manufacturer, although China is on target to surpass us within the next couple of years.
I agree with you about the island. Perhaps this would be a good time for a Nockian Remnant to consider a consortium to start buying some up.
Also I note your position regarding Jefferson's belief that the country must be self-sufficient. There's a new political party you might be interested in that agrees with you.
Maybe, but I wouldn't bet the ranch on it.
Well, the choice is a management decision, of course. The selection of x86 over proprietary was obviously one of cost. I can only speculate on the reasons RH was selected over Solaris x86.
First, Linux established itself on x86 before Sun got serious about pushing Solaris on that platform.
Second, the x86 vendors, IBM and HP, are probably a lot more inclined to push a vendor neutral platform like RH than an OS from a competitor that also competes in other areas. In fact our RH support comes from IBM rather than RH directly.
Third, Sun's financial position has been fairly precarious for the last decade or so, and no one wanted to get stuck with an obsolete platform if Sun had gone under. It remains to be seen if Oracle will do anything to make Solaris x86 more competitive.
I'm not sure I like the sound of this. Consider the lesson of the taser. Now that the cops have a weapon that doesn't kill or maim, they've gotten increasingly slap-happy about using it. Cops were at least cautious about using firearms, least they have to defend themselves against using deadly force. But they're happy to pull out the taser at the drop of a hat.
This may sound like a good idea, but I suspect the cops will be using this a lot more liberally than intended.
Any corporation or government will buy support. But they won't necessarily buy Redhat, in fact, most of them end up buying Windows, right? But enough buy Redhat to ensure Redhat's profitability. Which is the point of the story...
Well, not necessarily. I work at a shop with over 1700 Unix/Linux servers. Yes, we also have Windows servers, but for applications that are running massive Oracle databases, Unix/Linux servers are still the only way to go. It's true Red Hat isn't the only Linux distro, but in terms of data center servers it's become pretty much the standard with Suse a distant second. There just aren't that many Linux distros that are enterprise friendly, Red Hat pretty much has a monopoly on the enterprise Linux market. So while Red Hat isn't a proprietary OS, it might as well be. Given that we've been replacing our Sun and HP Unix servers with Red Hat Linux hand over fist, Red Hat is making a pretty piece of change off of us, and I understand this is largely true in most shops. Our hardware is primarily HP and IBM, who are making up their lost sales in Unix servers to us by selling us Intel based servers for Linux (and Windows, too). That pretty much leaves Sun out in the cold - we're not buying their proprietary servers much anymore, and they never gained a foothold in the commodity hardware market.
They watched the slime mold self-organize, spread out, and form a network that was comparable in efficiency, reliability, and cost to the real-world infrastructure of Tokyo's train network."
If you put it on a grilled cheese sandwich, will it organize itself into an image of the Virgin Mary?
The problem is, will Nokia keep on updating their free directions? Generally, when you have a large company that seems to be losing money and marketshare left and right they will release a lot of paid things for free in order to not have to update them or maintain them as much as a paid product.
I suspect they'll have to. Now that they've released their app for free, other vendors will be forced to do likewise to remain competitive. At that point, the vendors will be forced to compete on quality of service. If Nokia doesn't maintain the quality, somebody else will, negating the advantage of providing it in the first place. I don't think they're dumb enough to let that happen.
And how successful were they at these endeavors? Apparently, not very.
I don't really see how anyone could be surprised by this. As more media options become available and more convenient to access, it seems like a logical progression. Also, you're media consumption devices are more flexible, you can consume from more sources of media concurrently. Your cell phone can likely provide you with verbal communication, music, social networks, even movies and radio. And that's probably the simplest device at your disposal these days.
Since they are now claiming its possible to notice things as small as a Desk
Good. That might go a long way in explaining where my supervisor has been hiding for the last month.
Public opinion won't change it either. With both Republicans and Democrats supporting the RIAA and big business, who are angry voters going to turn to to, the Whigs?
Something like that.
At a certain point, you have to conclude that presidents are pretty much figureheads. I don't recollect any major policy changes when Clinton took over from Bush Sr., nor when Bush Jr. took over from Clinton, nor when Obama took over from Bush. No matter what they promise, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, the actual policy shifts are marginal, no matter how much they've criticized their predecessor while running for office. This forces me to conclude that either a.) presidents are privy to some information upon coming to office that compels them all to respond in a similar manner, or b.) there's a Man Behind the Curtain that actually calls the shots, and presidents don't have the discretion to act as is commonly thought.
The Republicans and Democrats are two cheeks of the same ass alright. But there are some emerging alternatives.