America still hasn't figured out whether prison is for punishment or rehabilitation, or even "paying your debt to society". When there's a conflict between those goals, we usually screw up any net benefit to anyone.
Whatever we're doing with prisoners, it's not working. They often do crimes again, often worse, and it costs way too much to keep the system going.
No Business Like Model Business
on
Ballmer Sounds Off
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"there's no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion. [...] what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google"
That sounds like a business model.
At $1.6B, Google has transferred wealth from rights holders to the (outgoing) owners of YouTube.
What is clear is that Ballmer has no clue what's going on. Just like during the last bubble, when Microsoft was the last to "get" it. But then there was no Google producing apps closer to the consumer than Microsoft sits. So maybe this time a bubble, maybe its pop, will actually finally wash MS down the drain, the way we all thought we'd see with "missing the Internet" or Netscape or "Bob" or the monopoly decision or...
As long as the webpage is sufficiently standalone encapsulated, I can drag its URL into my Ubuntu Panel, where it makes a button I can click like any other app.
If I wanted, I could write an HTML wrapper I keep on my local machine or my own webserver that pops up Javascript UIs to populate the URL with parameters for opening the remote webpage.
The only real problem is IPC between the webpage app, but that's always been a terrible problem with webpages since the beginning that practically no one has addressed. Maybe as these remote apps are opened in suites with each other (and with local apps) the demand will force a better IPC, probably according to some FreeDesktop.org standard.
Well, there's one reason I rarely hire Comp Sci or SW Engineering grads without at least 5 years experience actually programming. Because those professors like things like "Eiffel" and ADA.
None of the points that those languages that now compete with Perl say anything about how well programmed is perl (the engine, not the language). The continuing popularity of programming the perl interpreter is testament to how well Wall programmed it and continues to do so, otherwise few would want to help when there are so many alternatives.
I think the continuing popularity and evolution of Perl shows that Wall is doing the hard work of coding that's easy to read while still extremely flexible and efficient ("powerful") so other coders don't have to be as good just to get that power. Perl code can be extremely easy to read, though it's not necessary. C is also abusable.
Perl's ease of syntactical abuse is a result of a philosophy growing out of Perl's design value of offering "more than one way to do it". That doesn't make him a bad, or evil, programmer. Wall trusts programmers to code as well or poorly as we want.
As a good programmer, I appreciate the flexibility. That makes Wall a great programmer.
Considering that he already had Ruby represented, Hansson was a lame choice reflecting his own preference for Python/Ruby over Perl.
Consider Hansson's "how I learned to program":
I learned programming by starting to put together my first web page in HTML. Then I wanted to make some dynamic pieces and picked up first ASP then PHP. After I already knew how to program, I then started on a joint computer science and business administration degree.
compared to Wall ("I invented transcontinental network programming on the job"), and Hansson's other lame answers add up. But I do think Hansson represents a lot of Slashdotters who haven't gotten to be the right person in the right place at the right time yet, which is the defining factor for all those famous programmers. Without Knuth or Dykstra, they're just "popular" more than necessarily "great".
That's why I made the distinction between Perl code ("Perl") and Wall's C code that makes Perl work ("perl").
Not only has perl demonstrated its extreme effectiveness at solving the most general class of real-world problems, it has proven to be maintainable by generations of distributed volunteers. Wall is a great programmer. So great that even terrible programmers benefit from calling his excellent C code by means of cruddy Perl code.
Spamhaus' loss should be a lesson to everyone writing automated network notification protocols. The people depending on Spamhaus shouldn't have to depend on Spamhaus' domain name. They trust Spamhaus. Spamhaus' notices should include a message that reconfigs the listener to listen for messages at a different network address, and a URL to an explanation/discussion.
Of course that reconfig message opens a potential hole for attackers to exploit, but the protocol must include authentication already or it's worthless.
A protocol which depends on a fixed network address, whether IP# or domain name, can be attacked by attacking the address, as Spamhaus just proved. Hopefully its successors will learn from their terminal (pun intended;) mistake. And hopefully Spamhaus current subscribers won't get burned so much by those taking over Spamhaus' address that they distrust these kinds of protections, even when they're upgraded.
He missed Larry Wall, creator of Perl. Not that Perl makes for great programs (though the fact that Perl works so much, so often, says a lot). But because Wall's C programming of Perl is some of the best programming out there. Perl, an interpreted language, runs faster than most equivalent C programs written by lesser programmers than Wall. It runs on more hardware than almost any language, including Java (and runs better on more HW than Java). Perl has the largest free, open source archive and one of the best FOSS communities, and has since before that was considered a feature of the language. Including the source to the language itself.
Wall also wrote rn, which was equivalent to Usenet for thousands of people for many years, and patch, on which practically everyone outside the MS programming world depend.
These programs are long-lived and popular because Larry programmed them so well to do their essential function. And since he's had to deal with so many obfuscated Perl programs, even winning the Obfuscated C Programming Contest twice, I expect he has a lot of wisdom to deliver to aspiring programmers with question.
He's also probably still available to answer these questions.
Yeah, the rational explanation is that the US does its job stopping or slowing that nuke proliferation, except when it's Bush's job.
2000: Rumsfeld is a Director on the board of ABB when it wins a $200M contract to supply N Korea with nuke reactors, though he denies knowledge of it 2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil" 2002: Bush gives N Korea $95M for stopping its nuke programme, but then waived the inspections, claiming secret "national security" reasons 2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state 2006: N Korea detonates a nuke weapon
Because N Korea with nuke missiles drives demand for the Star Wars budgets Bush has always prioritized higher than any other military policy. Bush puts a Star Wars scientist in charge of NASA, chokes NASA from its peaceful projects while telling Americans he's putting a man on Mars, goads N Korea into testing nukes while waiving inspections on nuke plants Rumsfeld sold them.
You want to talk about Iran's nuke program, we can talk about Nixon and the Shah. It's going to look at least as ugly.
You're talking to the wrong person with that kind of "Bush didn't cause the hurricane, so he's not to blame for Katrina" spin cycle - partly because I lived in New Orleans for years, and I know Bush didn't care about Black people for years before he denied he knew the levees would break.
Bush's job is to protect the US by managing the complex systems in which we're the central player. He consistently screws them up, usually to his corporate cronies' benefit, almost always to his political power benefit, and always at our expense.
This time he's helped produce a crazy nuke tyrant allied with China. Nice job, Bushie.
Bush is responsible for the people who run NASA. They're responsible for keeping the Shuttle in repair. The 2002 mission didn't suffer from bad design or aging any more than the others. It suffered from failing to equip the mission with a camera to inspect the suspected launch damage. That's mismanagement, not bad design or aging. The subsequent grounding and poor risk management when finally returning to launch are more mismanagement.
Now Bush announces the Star Wars scientist he put in charge of NASA will get budgets for a combined mission with the Pentagon, and Star Wars tech. Of course Bush is responsible for that.
I don't just see Bush's fault because I hate him. I never met the asshole. I hate him because of the bad things that are his fault. Screwing up NASA instead of keeping it reliable is one of the things I hate him for.
Now you explain why you don't think any of what he gets paid to be responsible for, like NASA, are his responsibility when they go wrong.
You're a fucking Anonymous fool Coward since you don't understand how removing the Spanish Navy from Pacific supremacy, and the British failing to replace it with their own failing empire, let Japan threaten not only China but the entire Pacific half the world.
We killed a million Phillipinos to take over those islands from the Spanish, but didn't replace their check on Japan, even as the British loosened their grip on China, leaving it vulnerable.
You don't even understand how US interests were served by Japan dragging us into WWII against them, or why we let them do it - even helping them along by ignoring warnings and sinking their sub in our harbor. You know nothing. Shut the fuck up.
You scream your ignorance of colonial and military history. No wonder you post as an Anonymous moron Coward.
Pretty convenient for you to invoke the UN when it opposed the US invading Iraq over nonexistent nukes, and the US ignores N Korea's real ones.
The rest of the world is demanding that the US live up to the role we've carved out. Now that we've failed to protect ourselves or anyone else from N Korea's nuke program, despite hogging that job, even making it worse, you want to just hand the broken pieces to the rest of the world. That's cutting and running.
This isn't "ironic". This isn't even a mamby pamby "double standard". This is incompetence that sabotages global security. By the Republicans claiming they're the only ones who can be trusted with that security, justifying all kinds of abuses acceptable only to N Koreans and their ilk.
Who's hoisting the US on its petard? Only the US, AFAICT.
Saying I blame him for things for which he's not responsible makes you look like a jackass.
The Shuttle program didn't have the kinds of problems it's had under Bush. Do you think it's a mere coincidence that Bush's agenda is antiscience, except when it funds weapons, and that he now claims to "rescue" the space program after appointing a Star Wars scientist to run NASA, then combining its mission with the militarization of space?
It's obvious that the way Bush runs NASA is controlling the terrible direction NASA is going in. Just like everything else that fool touches.
Not only are we responsible for messes we make, we are also responsible for messes only we can (or will) fix.
I am not against a war in Afghanistan. Though certainly not Bush's boondoggle war. The US had to destroy Afghanistan's Taliban government with a show of force. Not just to Afghans, but to other countries which watched Afghanistan help launch the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. I'd have relied on a lot more assassinations and infiltrations, even if it took longer, without the Bush prioritization of a trophy government before winning the country. But Afghanistan was a necessary war we didn't choose (though we could have fixed it a lot earlier, or not helped make it so bad).
I'm against the Iraq War because it's insanity. Especially as it prevented our full attention to Afghanistan.
I'm against war with Iran. But I'd use a new US-allied Afghanistan to engage Iran's people to change their own regime. They did it before, to get rid of the Shah that the US helped create. They tried to do it after Bush Sr indicated he'd back them, but betrayed them. Of course, the Bush dynasty has been partners with Iran to increase their global wealth and power since at latest their 1979 revolution. Even delivering Iraq to them this decade. I'd even go so far as to switch US oil purchases from Venezuela to Iran in exchange for verified Iranian rollback of its nuclear and other war machines. Iraq costs about $500M:d; Iran ships about $2.5Mbbl:d, so 5% the Iraq War budget would give the US $10:bbl, or about 13% on top of the market price, to spend on "buying peace" instead of buying war. If we required Iran invest that money in domestic systems that decreased the theocrat's militarism, their greedy forces would work to change their regime pretty quick.
We're the big target. We make the most money, have the most power, of anyone in the world. If we want to keep that status, we have to use it to fix problems. Especially ones we cause. Otherwise, others will fix them their way, or make them worse. We now have ample proof how the world slips through our fingers and behind our backs when we don't keep our grip.
Republicans have a lot of money. Their local campaigns have been caught trolling blogs already. I wouldn't be surprised if they're astroturfing Slashdot, which has many "independent" and just inexperienced voters, many with good incomes. That's when trolling meets astroturfing in moderators to become AsTrollMod'ing.
No, I think the Chinese would react to using their economic dependence on trade with us to pressure N Korea. And I think Japan should be paying for the US military defense of their country anyway, but requiring them to help do something about N Korea (while N Korean missiles fly across their islands and nuke tests rattle their windows) is perfectly sensible.
You apparently don't know that fighting the US for naval/economic control of the Pacific after the US created a power vacuum by defeating the Spanish was the main reason Japan attacked us. Or that the 1941 Japan was a lot different from the 2006 Japan. You're lecturing me about history?
China got MFN status on the argument that our market was a powerful tool to persuade them to work with constructive US policy in their region. We've used it only to make multinational businesses richer, with occasional threats to it actually pressuring China positively. I'm calling those MFN people on the rationale for its diplomatic power. That's diplomacy, not war.
And if you don't know the difference between strong arguments between private citizens on a blog and professional nuclear diplomacy, you probably need to be introduced to your own butt.
You have cherrypicked some statements I've made, thrown them into a bunch of baseless ones you're making, and blaming me for the mess. Just because you say "butt" instead of "ass" doesn't mean you know anything about diplomacy. All you've got is a way for China and N Korea to increase their threats to the US. That's the Bush policy, and it's clearly failed.
America still hasn't figured out whether prison is for punishment or rehabilitation, or even "paying your debt to society". When there's a conflict between those goals, we usually screw up any net benefit to anyone.
Whatever we're doing with prisoners, it's not working. They often do crimes again, often worse, and it costs way too much to keep the system going.
"there's no business model for YouTube that would justify $1.6 billion. [...] what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google"
That sounds like a business model.
At $1.6B, Google has transferred wealth from rights holders to the (outgoing) owners of YouTube.
What is clear is that Ballmer has no clue what's going on. Just like during the last bubble, when Microsoft was the last to "get" it. But then there was no Google producing apps closer to the consumer than Microsoft sits. So maybe this time a bubble, maybe its pop, will actually finally wash MS down the drain, the way we all thought we'd see with "missing the Internet" or Netscape or "Bob" or the monopoly decision or...
As long as the webpage is sufficiently standalone encapsulated, I can drag its URL into my Ubuntu Panel, where it makes a button I can click like any other app.
If I wanted, I could write an HTML wrapper I keep on my local machine or my own webserver that pops up Javascript UIs to populate the URL with parameters for opening the remote webpage.
The only real problem is IPC between the webpage app, but that's always been a terrible problem with webpages since the beginning that practically no one has addressed. Maybe as these remote apps are opened in suites with each other (and with local apps) the demand will force a better IPC, probably according to some FreeDesktop.org standard.
Your turn.
Well, there's one reason I rarely hire Comp Sci or SW Engineering grads without at least 5 years experience actually programming. Because those professors like things like "Eiffel" and ADA.
None of the points that those languages that now compete with Perl say anything about how well programmed is perl (the engine, not the language). The continuing popularity of programming the perl interpreter is testament to how well Wall programmed it and continues to do so, otherwise few would want to help when there are so many alternatives.
I think the continuing popularity and evolution of Perl shows that Wall is doing the hard work of coding that's easy to read while still extremely flexible and efficient ("powerful") so other coders don't have to be as good just to get that power. Perl code can be extremely easy to read, though it's not necessary. C is also abusable.
Perl's ease of syntactical abuse is a result of a philosophy growing out of Perl's design value of offering "more than one way to do it". That doesn't make him a bad, or evil, programmer. Wall trusts programmers to code as well or poorly as we want.
As a good programmer, I appreciate the flexibility. That makes Wall a great programmer.
Does anyone believe that this info is "new", or do you believe that this info has been well known to oil corp execs for years, even decades?
The tax department should rebate a percentage of the tax they collect for the value of the paper on which the paid taxes are printed.
Consider Hansson's "how I learned to program":
compared to Wall ("I invented transcontinental network programming on the job"), and Hansson's other lame answers add up. But I do think Hansson represents a lot of Slashdotters who haven't gotten to be the right person in the right place at the right time yet, which is the defining factor for all those famous programmers. Without Knuth or Dykstra, they're just "popular" more than necessarily "great".
That's why I made the distinction between Perl code ("Perl") and Wall's C code that makes Perl work ("perl").
Not only has perl demonstrated its extreme effectiveness at solving the most general class of real-world problems, it has proven to be maintainable by generations of distributed volunteers. Wall is a great programmer. So great that even terrible programmers benefit from calling his excellent C code by means of cruddy Perl code.
Spamhaus' loss should be a lesson to everyone writing automated network notification protocols. The people depending on Spamhaus shouldn't have to depend on Spamhaus' domain name. They trust Spamhaus. Spamhaus' notices should include a message that reconfigs the listener to listen for messages at a different network address, and a URL to an explanation/discussion.
;) mistake. And hopefully Spamhaus current subscribers won't get burned so much by those taking over Spamhaus' address that they distrust these kinds of protections, even when they're upgraded.
Of course that reconfig message opens a potential hole for attackers to exploit, but the protocol must include authentication already or it's worthless.
A protocol which depends on a fixed network address, whether IP# or domain name, can be attacked by attacking the address, as Spamhaus just proved. Hopefully its successors will learn from their terminal (pun intended
He missed Larry Wall, creator of Perl. Not that Perl makes for great programs (though the fact that Perl works so much, so often, says a lot). But because Wall's C programming of Perl is some of the best programming out there. Perl, an interpreted language, runs faster than most equivalent C programs written by lesser programmers than Wall. It runs on more hardware than almost any language, including Java (and runs better on more HW than Java). Perl has the largest free, open source archive and one of the best FOSS communities, and has since before that was considered a feature of the language. Including the source to the language itself.
Wall also wrote rn, which was equivalent to Usenet for thousands of people for many years, and patch, on which practically everyone outside the MS programming world depend.
These programs are long-lived and popular because Larry programmed them so well to do their essential function. And since he's had to deal with so many obfuscated Perl programs, even winning the Obfuscated C Programming Contest twice, I expect he has a lot of wisdom to deliver to aspiring programmers with question.
He's also probably still available to answer these questions.
If they were, it looks like they were right.
Yeah, the rational explanation is that the US does its job stopping or slowing that nuke proliferation, except when it's Bush's job.
2000: Rumsfeld is a Director on the board of ABB when it wins a $200M contract to supply N Korea with nuke reactors, though he denies knowledge of it
2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil"
2002: Bush gives N Korea $95M for stopping its nuke programme, but then waived the inspections , claiming secret "national security" reasons
2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state
2006: N Korea detonates a nuke weapon
Because N Korea with nuke missiles drives demand for the Star Wars budgets Bush has always prioritized higher than any other military policy. Bush puts a Star Wars scientist in charge of NASA, chokes NASA from its peaceful projects while telling Americans he's putting a man on Mars, goads N Korea into testing nukes while waiving inspections on nuke plants Rumsfeld sold them.
You want to talk about Iran's nuke program, we can talk about Nixon and the Shah. It's going to look at least as ugly.
You're talking to the wrong person with that kind of "Bush didn't cause the hurricane, so he's not to blame for Katrina" spin cycle - partly because I lived in New Orleans for years, and I know Bush didn't care about Black people for years before he denied he knew the levees would break.
Bush's job is to protect the US by managing the complex systems in which we're the central player. He consistently screws them up, usually to his corporate cronies' benefit, almost always to his political power benefit, and always at our expense.
This time he's helped produce a crazy nuke tyrant allied with China. Nice job, Bushie.
You idiot, America's defeat of the Spanish and conquest of the Phillipines demonstrated the power vacuum I mentioned.
All you've got now is strawman fallacies. I'm done schooling your stupid ass.
No, let's keep looking at NASA's problems.
Bush is responsible for the people who run NASA. They're responsible for keeping the Shuttle in repair. The 2002 mission didn't suffer from bad design or aging any more than the others. It suffered from failing to equip the mission with a camera to inspect the suspected launch damage. That's mismanagement, not bad design or aging. The subsequent grounding and poor risk management when finally returning to launch are more mismanagement.
Now Bush announces the Star Wars scientist he put in charge of NASA will get budgets for a combined mission with the Pentagon, and Star Wars tech. Of course Bush is responsible for that.
I don't just see Bush's fault because I hate him. I never met the asshole. I hate him because of the bad things that are his fault. Screwing up NASA instead of keeping it reliable is one of the things I hate him for.
Now you explain why you don't think any of what he gets paid to be responsible for, like NASA, are his responsibility when they go wrong.
You're a fucking Anonymous fool Coward since you don't understand how removing the Spanish Navy from Pacific supremacy, and the British failing to replace it with their own failing empire, let Japan threaten not only China but the entire Pacific half the world.
We killed a million Phillipinos to take over those islands from the Spanish, but didn't replace their check on Japan, even as the British loosened their grip on China, leaving it vulnerable.
You don't even understand how US interests were served by Japan dragging us into WWII against them, or why we let them do it - even helping them along by ignoring warnings and sinking their sub in our harbor. You know nothing. Shut the fuck up.
You scream your ignorance of colonial and military history. No wonder you post as an Anonymous moron Coward.
Pretty convenient for you to invoke the UN when it opposed the US invading Iraq over nonexistent nukes, and the US ignores N Korea's real ones.
The rest of the world is demanding that the US live up to the role we've carved out. Now that we've failed to protect ourselves or anyone else from N Korea's nuke program, despite hogging that job, even making it worse, you want to just hand the broken pieces to the rest of the world. That's cutting and running.
This isn't "ironic". This isn't even a mamby pamby "double standard". This is incompetence that sabotages global security. By the Republicans claiming they're the only ones who can be trusted with that security, justifying all kinds of abuses acceptable only to N Koreans and their ilk.
Who's hoisting the US on its petard? Only the US, AFAICT.
Saying I blame him for things for which he's not responsible makes you look like a jackass.
The Shuttle program didn't have the kinds of problems it's had under Bush. Do you think it's a mere coincidence that Bush's agenda is antiscience, except when it funds weapons, and that he now claims to "rescue" the space program after appointing a Star Wars scientist to run NASA, then combining its mission with the militarization of space?
It's obvious that the way Bush runs NASA is controlling the terrible direction NASA is going in. Just like everything else that fool touches.
Not only are we responsible for messes we make, we are also responsible for messes only we can (or will) fix.
I am not against a war in Afghanistan. Though certainly not Bush's boondoggle war. The US had to destroy Afghanistan's Taliban government with a show of force. Not just to Afghans, but to other countries which watched Afghanistan help launch the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. I'd have relied on a lot more assassinations and infiltrations, even if it took longer, without the Bush prioritization of a trophy government before winning the country. But Afghanistan was a necessary war we didn't choose (though we could have fixed it a lot earlier, or not helped make it so bad).
I'm against the Iraq War because it's insanity. Especially as it prevented our full attention to Afghanistan.
I'm against war with Iran. But I'd use a new US-allied Afghanistan to engage Iran's people to change their own regime. They did it before, to get rid of the Shah that the US helped create. They tried to do it after Bush Sr indicated he'd back them, but betrayed them. Of course, the Bush dynasty has been partners with Iran to increase their global wealth and power since at latest their 1979 revolution. Even delivering Iraq to them this decade. I'd even go so far as to switch US oil purchases from Venezuela to Iran in exchange for verified Iranian rollback of its nuclear and other war machines. Iraq costs about $500M:d; Iran ships about $2.5Mbbl:d, so 5% the Iraq War budget would give the US $10:bbl, or about 13% on top of the market price, to spend on "buying peace" instead of buying war. If we required Iran invest that money in domestic systems that decreased the theocrat's militarism, their greedy forces would work to change their regime pretty quick.
We're the big target. We make the most money, have the most power, of anyone in the world. If we want to keep that status, we have to use it to fix problems. Especially ones we cause. Otherwise, others will fix them their way, or make them worse. We now have ample proof how the world slips through our fingers and behind our backs when we don't keep our grip.
No, he hires people to hire people to design spacecraft. According to the policies he either makes or accepts.
What do you think the president does, anyway? Just a spokesmodel on TV? Maybe that describes Bush, but that's what's wrong with him. Not an excuse.
Republicans have a lot of money. Their local campaigns have been caught trolling blogs already. I wouldn't be surprised if they're astroturfing Slashdot, which has many "independent" and just inexperienced voters, many with good incomes. That's when trolling meets astroturfing in moderators to become AsTrollMod'ing.
Anonymous denial Coward, back up your mere denial assertions with some citations.
No, I think the Chinese would react to using their economic dependence on trade with us to pressure N Korea. And I think Japan should be paying for the US military defense of their country anyway, but requiring them to help do something about N Korea (while N Korean missiles fly across their islands and nuke tests rattle their windows) is perfectly sensible.
You apparently don't know that fighting the US for naval/economic control of the Pacific after the US created a power vacuum by defeating the Spanish was the main reason Japan attacked us. Or that the 1941 Japan was a lot different from the 2006 Japan. You're lecturing me about history?
China got MFN status on the argument that our market was a powerful tool to persuade them to work with constructive US policy in their region. We've used it only to make multinational businesses richer, with occasional threats to it actually pressuring China positively. I'm calling those MFN people on the rationale for its diplomatic power. That's diplomacy, not war.
And if you don't know the difference between strong arguments between private citizens on a blog and professional nuclear diplomacy, you probably need to be introduced to your own butt.
You have cherrypicked some statements I've made, thrown them into a bunch of baseless ones you're making, and blaming me for the mess. Just because you say "butt" instead of "ass" doesn't mean you know anything about diplomacy. All you've got is a way for China and N Korea to increase their threats to the US. That's the Bush policy, and it's clearly failed.
Thank you for proving that you're peddling Star Wars while pretending to defend NASA. A very clear demonstration of my point.