The ram doesn't come with photoshop.... the pc does come with windows.
There are many operating systems that you can get for free for the PC (not just Linux). Windows happens to be a popular bundle. People don't want to install an OS themselves. Photoshop is too specialized to be bundled like this. On the other hand, Office, basic photo editing, and other types of software are bundled as well. Software is software, regardless of how a business decides to bundle it with hardware.
The correlation is M$' OEM pricing which is significantly lower than the retail pricing only because of hardware. Wrong. An OEM license is cheaper because the license is in more restrictive, not because the hardware is cheaper. Remember, my original argument is that just because hardware is cheaper to produce doesn't mean that software is. Additionally, Microsoft does not provide support for OEM licenses. The support responsiblity is on the OEM.
It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.
Why do you assume that there is even a correlation between software and hardware costs? There isn't. They're two completely different industries. Adobe doesn't lower the price of Photoshop because the price of RAM goes down, why should Microsoft?
Handing over the keys to the car is something you do when your kid turns 15. There ought to be a similar ethic WRT Internet access.
I agree that there should be a similar *ethic* in which parents enforce. I do not agree that a *law* is needed or that the analogy is valid. We have drivers licenses primarily to ensure that people are properly trained to use a device that is very powerful and can easily cause serious damange to others if used improperly. We don't require licenses because we're afraid of what children will learn by driving around and seeing the world. The internet does not require governance over who uses it. It requires guidance and supervision from a parent or guardian just like any form of information (TV, books, videos, etc).
Otherwise, I don't think the security people would have listed Vista in the list of systems susceptible.
Vista is listed because the flaw does in fact exist in Vista even though Vista does a better job mitigating flaws like this (e.g. IE7 protected mode). Theoretically I could stick this exploit in an EXE, put it on a USB drive, give it to someone to execute, and it would do almost (or as much) damage. The major attack surfaces, IE7 and Outlook 2007, mitigate this though.
It's bad enough that the mouse code is an attack vector but to just put a band aide on it and send it right into the Windows Vista product is just plain bad.
While it would be nice if no flaws made it into Vista, some will. IE7 on Vista runs in protected mode by default. How I understand it, this means that this flaw will not execute using default IE7 settings. The user has to manually execute arbitrary code or disable protected mode in IE.
99% of software engineering is training. It is NOT an inborn talent.
Yeah, I keep forgetting that you and I butt heads around this issue. I completely disagree with this, but there's no reason to rehash the debate here.
By the way, if you actually read what Gates said, you'd see that he's pushing for two things A) more H1B's, and B) bigger investments in education. He's not against improving education locally, in fact, he's actively for it. But he also understands that this is America, founded by immigrants, and that talented individuals around the world should have the opportunity to work at American companies and share in the dream that our immigrant forefathers had.
Every time I hear someone complain about the "desperate shortage of skilled programmers" I want to punch him in the face. To see how false this is, all one needs do is look at the extremely low percentage of recent comp-sci grads who can find work as programmers.
Yup, and I've interviewed some of those students, and I'll tell you why there's a shortage: lack of talent. Of course my sample is biased, I've only had experience from top universities. The problem is that you don't have to be super smart to get a CS degree, and there aren't a lot of smart people going into software development for whatever reason (e.g. it pays a lot more to go into medicine or law).
Translation- I made billions in this industry, but if you try to work your way up from intern in my company to my level I'll fire you and replace you with somebody who spent 1/10th your cost growing up and getting an education, regardless of skill, because it's better for my bottom line.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim? To date I don't believe Microsoft has ever laid off American talent for any reason even though we heavily recruit abroad. I'm sitting here as a relative new-hire at Microsoft and the position I was hired for (software developer) was open for months. I can also tell you that at my previous company talent shortage was one of the biggest impedements to growing the business. I'm not naive and I know that business owners would love to flood the talent pool to lower costs, but all I've seen around here is a huge demand for talent with nowhere near the number of qualified people. If anything, we're looking for international talent so that we *don't* lower the quality bar and hire whoever we can locally. In the end this is better for the U.S. Besides, I personally enjoy being around people who are far better educated than the average American.
why not take UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE, and then pay for their traing so that they can fill the jobs that are available...
This isn't about hammering nails into wood. There are plenty of people with ".NET experience". Many of the unqualified people have CS degrees as well as additional training (e.g. MCSD). You can have all the training in the world but still lack the aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for many jobs.
No offense, but this doesn't sound like a success story in the making. First, you do not have all of the user requirements. That's the first failing assumption. You have what the user requirements look like before the users see the first release of your system. Those requirements will change. Second, you're designing a system without getting feedback from the system. Spending a short amount of time thinking about how a system should be designed is one thing. Coming up with a "solid design" up front is another. It's like trying to resolve a conflict with your wife, except that your wife is not allowed to talk. When you try to develop software on paper, you're not getting feedback from the system. The design may not make sense when you actually go to "implement" it. What we need to realize, as software developers, is that the act of writing code is an act of design in and of itself. The discipline that we lack is not that we won't sit around for months in front of white boards and try to predict the future. The discipline we lack is in writing good and well thought out designs *in code* where it really matters.
The beauty of software is that it takes no capital to develop it
By this I have to assume you mean "little capital othat than human capital". Software development is *very* costly when you consider the human capital. On the other hand, replicating and distributing software is cheap, but that's not what you pay for. You pay for the development.
Looks like an Apple apologist came out of the woodwork. Or an Apple shill or astroturfer.
I'll bite. All I did, as someone with 10 years in the software industry, was point out the realities of the cost of software development. I've never owned an Apple computer in my life. Oh, and I work for Microsoft.
Apple's philosophy wins here. Incremental development is better than "big-bang" development. Reduce the feedback cycle. Integrate customer changes more quickly. Ray Ozzie (MSFT CTO) realizes this and I hope his words are taken seriously.
because the farthest part of the galaxy is about 80,000 light-years away from us
Has anyone been there to verify this? I know there are some forumlas for figuring this out, but it's all hogwash to me. What does the "edge of the galaxy" look like. Sounds more like the "edge of the world" a few centuries ago.
Slashdot Mirror
The ram doesn't come with photoshop.... the pc does come with windows.
There are many operating systems that you can get for free for the PC (not just Linux). Windows happens to be a popular bundle. People don't want to install an OS themselves. Photoshop is too specialized to be bundled like this. On the other hand, Office, basic photo editing, and other types of software are bundled as well. Software is software, regardless of how a business decides to bundle it with hardware.
The correlation is M$' OEM pricing which is significantly lower than the retail pricing only because of hardware.
Wrong. An OEM license is cheaper because the license is in more restrictive, not because the hardware is cheaper. Remember, my original argument is that just because hardware is cheaper to produce doesn't mean that software is. Additionally, Microsoft does not provide support for OEM licenses. The support responsiblity is on the OEM.
It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.
Why do you assume that there is even a correlation between software and hardware costs? There isn't. They're two completely different industries. Adobe doesn't lower the price of Photoshop because the price of RAM goes down, why should Microsoft?
Handing over the keys to the car is something you do when your kid turns 15. There ought to be a similar ethic WRT Internet access.
I agree that there should be a similar *ethic* in which parents enforce. I do not agree that a *law* is needed or that the analogy is valid. We have drivers licenses primarily to ensure that people are properly trained to use a device that is very powerful and can easily cause serious damange to others if used improperly. We don't require licenses because we're afraid of what children will learn by driving around and seeing the world. The internet does not require governance over who uses it. It requires guidance and supervision from a parent or guardian just like any form of information (TV, books, videos, etc).
This movie is particularly prophetic.
Come on, who cares? Let people be ignorant.
You're overlooking an important fact: These people vote.
Otherwise, I don't think the security people would have listed Vista in the list of systems susceptible.
Vista is listed because the flaw does in fact exist in Vista even though Vista does a better job mitigating flaws like this (e.g. IE7 protected mode). Theoretically I could stick this exploit in an EXE, put it on a USB drive, give it to someone to execute, and it would do almost (or as much) damage. The major attack surfaces, IE7 and Outlook 2007, mitigate this though.
No, Windows is an attempt to run on a huge range of hardware... You don't know what you're getting from one install to the next.
So what if we were to only support Windows on our own, proprietary, hardware. Apple's model is nice, but it's not very *open* now is it?
It's bad enough that the mouse code is an attack vector but to just put a band aide on it and send it right into the Windows Vista product is just plain bad.
While it would be nice if no flaws made it into Vista, some will. IE7 on Vista runs in protected mode by default. How I understand it, this means that this flaw will not execute using default IE7 settings. The user has to manually execute arbitrary code or disable protected mode in IE.
doubt 95% of the people would be able to tell the difference, 4.9% wouldn't be "BLOWN AWAY" and the last 0.1% is you
... the elite ...
99% of software engineering is training. It is NOT an inborn talent.
Yeah, I keep forgetting that you and I butt heads around this issue. I completely disagree with this, but there's no reason to rehash the debate here.
By the way, if you actually read what Gates said, you'd see that he's pushing for two things A) more H1B's, and B) bigger investments in education. He's not against improving education locally, in fact, he's actively for it. But he also understands that this is America, founded by immigrants, and that talented individuals around the world should have the opportunity to work at American companies and share in the dream that our immigrant forefathers had.
Yes!
Every time I hear someone complain about the "desperate shortage of skilled programmers" I want to punch him in the face. To see how false this is, all one needs do is look at the extremely low percentage of recent comp-sci grads who can find work as programmers.
Yup, and I've interviewed some of those students, and I'll tell you why there's a shortage: lack of talent. Of course my sample is biased, I've only had experience from top universities. The problem is that you don't have to be super smart to get a CS degree, and there aren't a lot of smart people going into software development for whatever reason (e.g. it pays a lot more to go into medicine or law).
The mantle of "hire the best, no matter the cost" has been assumed by Google.
You do know that Google has a huge development center in India, right?
Translation- I made billions in this industry, but if you try to work your way up from intern in my company to my level I'll fire you and replace you with somebody who spent 1/10th your cost growing up and getting an education, regardless of skill, because it's better for my bottom line.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim? To date I don't believe Microsoft has ever laid off American talent for any reason even though we heavily recruit abroad. I'm sitting here as a relative new-hire at Microsoft and the position I was hired for (software developer) was open for months. I can also tell you that at my previous company talent shortage was one of the biggest impedements to growing the business. I'm not naive and I know that business owners would love to flood the talent pool to lower costs, but all I've seen around here is a huge demand for talent with nowhere near the number of qualified people. If anything, we're looking for international talent so that we *don't* lower the quality bar and hire whoever we can locally. In the end this is better for the U.S. Besides, I personally enjoy being around people who are far better educated than the average American.
A couple of simple add ons to Ubuntu and you can easily make Vista and OSX users insanely unproductive in their working environment.
Either we didn't put enough features in Vista, or we put in too many. Oh, and the same author has a 725 page manual for OSX.
why not take UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE, and then pay for their traing so that they can fill the jobs that are available...
This isn't about hammering nails into wood. There are plenty of people with ".NET experience". Many of the unqualified people have CS degrees as well as additional training (e.g. MCSD). You can have all the training in the world but still lack the aptitude, creativity, and initiative required for many jobs.
No offense, but this doesn't sound like a success story in the making. First, you do not have all of the user requirements. That's the first failing assumption. You have what the user requirements look like before the users see the first release of your system. Those requirements will change. Second, you're designing a system without getting feedback from the system. Spending a short amount of time thinking about how a system should be designed is one thing. Coming up with a "solid design" up front is another. It's like trying to resolve a conflict with your wife, except that your wife is not allowed to talk. When you try to develop software on paper, you're not getting feedback from the system. The design may not make sense when you actually go to "implement" it. What we need to realize, as software developers, is that the act of writing code is an act of design in and of itself. The discipline that we lack is not that we won't sit around for months in front of white boards and try to predict the future. The discipline we lack is in writing good and well thought out designs *in code* where it really matters.
The beauty of software is that it takes no capital to develop it
By this I have to assume you mean "little capital othat than human capital". Software development is *very* costly when you consider the human capital. On the other hand, replicating and distributing software is cheap, but that's not what you pay for. You pay for the development.
How do we define what is "morally right" for corporations?
Looks like an Apple apologist came out of the woodwork. Or an Apple shill or astroturfer.
I'll bite. All I did, as someone with 10 years in the software industry, was point out the realities of the cost of software development. I've never owned an Apple computer in my life. Oh, and I work for Microsoft.
Apple is the king of "nickel and dime"ing the user for all it's worth.
Right, because the millions of dollars a month they spend on developing OSX should be coming out of the kindness of their hearts.
Government monitoring != parental monitoring.
Apple's philosophy wins here. Incremental development is better than "big-bang" development. Reduce the feedback cycle. Integrate customer changes more quickly. Ray Ozzie (MSFT CTO) realizes this and I hope his words are taken seriously.
because the farthest part of the galaxy is about 80,000 light-years away from us
Has anyone been there to verify this? I know there are some forumlas for figuring this out, but it's all hogwash to me. What does the "edge of the galaxy" look like. Sounds more like the "edge of the world" a few centuries ago.