I wondered if something like this wouldn't be far behind the announcement that Netscape isn't "doing" browsers anymore. A lot of speculation about future fallout was bandied about in this Slashdot discussion. It seems like the chips are beginning to fall. I guess we'll see where they all land.
I give kids credit, but they also are subject to market hype.
Two series come to mind:
Goosebumps
Animorphs
I've read the Harry Potter books. They are OK at best. A fine quick read with little to no meat. Read Richard Pullman's books instead, they have depth (as has been stated in earlier posts).
Do I have high school kids reading Harry Potter? Yes. This is sad. I'm sorry.
Do I have kids reading Potter and nothing else? Yes. This is too bad.
Do I have kids that I have talked into reading Ender's Game because of Potter? Yes. This proves that you are a teacher worth his salt, then. I just finished Ender's Game this morning before work. A number people have recommended it to me and I finally picked it up while at the bookstore on vacation. It simply blew my mind. This is the sort of fiction that deserves to be read and admired. Truly powerful and thought-provoking stuff.
I agree with the rest of your arguments and I am glad that you use Potter as a "gateway book." Unfortunately, the problem with the "getting kids to read" argument is, besides being false to a great extent, that it promotes such books as good starting points as well. People looking to turn someone on to reading tend to turn to books that "get kids to read" instead of seeking out the best books (which are, coincidentally, not in the media spotlight) for them to start with.
Instead, people turn to mediocrity which can't stand the test of time. They should consult lists of great books for new readers, of the best but little-known books of the year or century, publisher, editor, and critic's picks. They should ask 10 adult friends which books blew their mind at the age of the reader they are shopping for. And you know what? I bet they would find better fair than whatever is the best selling craze du jour.
Along those lines, what are the 10 books that blew the average slashdot reader's mind at the ages 12-14? I'd like to know for when I am asked to pick out a book for a new reader.
He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.
The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:
Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.
He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.
The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:
Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.
As someone who works with high school kids, I am glad for Harry Potter for one reason - they are getting kids to read.
I hate this argument. Especially since it is partly false. The Harry Potter books are getting kids to read more Harry Potter books. They are not getting them to read. Its not like the books open the world of reading to them, they open the world of Harry Potter to them.
If you think I am insane, just talk to the kids that are reading the books. Most of the middle-schoolers (you have high schoolers reading Harry Potter?) that I have talked to who hated reading before Harry Potter don't touch other books. Instead, they read Harry Potter over and over and can't wait for the next book to come out. Every story about the Potter hysteria covered by the major media backs up my point. Kids are reading the books over and over until the new story comes out and nothing else. Rreading a book several times is no big deal, I have my favorites as well, but reading them that way in the exclusion of everything else but a sequel is not encouraging. Potter fans think reading is boring, but that Harry Potter is cool. There is a disconnect.
When I worked in a bookstore, the same thing happened with the Goosebumps and Animorph books. When kids came in after reading everything that was out in either series, they wouldn't move on to other books. Because they were "boring" or "stupid."
Sure, the kids read, but what did they get from reading one series of books. Nothing!
Books should only be praised for "getting kids to read" if they open up the world of reading to them. If they instead stagnate them into reading only one series, then the accomplishment has less merit for education, but really wins big for marketing.
I think that Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass is a much better choice, if you want to pick children's books. When I sell it (and the first two, The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife) I describe it as being "like Harry Potter, only with depth."
I hate to put forth a "me too." But I totally agree.
Pullman's prose is so much better than Rowling's feeble writing. While hers is entertaining, it isn't engrossing. It always seems to me that she doesn't read about the stuff she uses in her stories. Or that, if she does, it is only to populate it with another figure. I much prefer Pullman, who is an obvious fan of the genre and lets you know it with his subtle use of fantasy mainstays.
I guess that is what I miss in Potter, subtlety.
Related to similarities, if anyone has read Gaiman's graphic novel, The Books of Magic, you will also notice some interesting parallels. I think this graphic novel is better than the Potter books (in the writing department, especially). If you haven't read it, pick up a copy. The front of the first issue was coated with glyphs that you could only see after the ink reacted to handling over a period of time. It seemed that they would "technomagically" appear over time. Pretty cool.
I ran across an article in the Atlantic, titled The Reinvention of Privacy that said:
a 1999 Wall Street Journal-NBC survey, for instance, indicated that privacy is the issue that concerns Americans most about the twenty-first century, ahead of overpopulation, racial tensions, and global warming.
Here it also says:
Most people (63 percent) fall into an intermediate category that Westin calls "privacy pragmatists." Such people are always balancing the potential benefits and threats involved in sharing information, and are particularly concerned about what Ann Cavoukian described to me as "function creep"--that is, the secondary use (deliberate or inadvertent) of information that was originally divulged for one purpose only. Depending on what privacy pragmatists get in return for their information, they are willing to forsake different degrees of privacy protection.
It's a great article overall and the fact that it was printed in the Atlantic gives hope that some of the less computer savvy but informed intelligentsia are beginning to look at these issues seriously. Since these are the people that also tend to vote more often, it may actually have an effect on the politics of privacy that may in turn force guarentees in the software architectures that users depend on.
Shouldn't it be...Interview with Medical patient that supports Microsoft:
Alice, 80 year old MS supporter: "I have been happily using Microsoft products for years, and have never had a problem with them. In fact i recently requested that my life support machine be converted to run with Windows Me, and have not had a single problem with it-BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-
Reporter (back to camera): "And there you have it folks, the last words of an ardent Microsoft supporter... We're just going to, uh, step aside here so that MSC-EMT can try to reboot the system... This has been Guy Stone for WIZTV, reporting"
Why is it that when it comes to anything that has to do with society, the \. editors (yes, the slash leans left on purpose) push forward an authoritarian and often socialist view of government regulation and initiative, but when it comes to technology, the goverment must stay out of the equation? (I take "excess regulation" to mean anything that encroaches upon the freedoms of the producers and consumers to operate without fraud).
Uhh... They just combined the sentences in the fake letters created by the lobbyists.
I think this is only "confusing" if you pronounce it as "K- Illustrator." I think Adobe wouldn't make such a fuss if everyone would pronounce it like I do, as in "kill - ustrator." Personally, I think Adobe wouldn't even try to associate itself with THAT name.
NC's are interesting, I'll admit, but give me a computer any day. When that 13 year old decides to DOS the network pipe that I use to get all those lovely.NET apps, I'm screwed on an NC. However, local tools and apps on a full blown PC will allow me to wile away the hours of the attack balancing my checkbook, playing some games and brushing up on Perl by putting Komodo through its paces.
The problem with the NC model is that it relies on a stable, secure, high-bandwidth connection that has 99.9999% uptime. Can anyone tell me of a network that meets these requirements?
The counter argument is that no computer has a 99.9999% uptime either and that any system can fail locally as well. The response to this argument lies in the idea of local control. If my hard drive fails and I have a report due tomorrow, I can choose to put in a new hard drive and could have myself up and running again relatively quickly. The NC model places those decisions and priorities in the locus of control of someone else. Who is to say that they have my best interests in mind? If you want an example, look at the DNS problems Microsoft had a while back. As a network consultant and support technician, I unfortunately have to spend hours digging through the sludge of Microsoft's technical papers and knowledgebase hoping to find answers to this new problem or that. For three days, during the DNS debacle (can anyone figure out why they didn't have an off-site DNS?!?!... The Road Ahead for sure!), people were out of luck when it came to getting access to those resources. Let me tell you, if the phone system of the US was down for three days, there would be congressional hearings and someone would probably be facing jail time. Now, I'm not saying that a company should be held responsible for its website being down for three days, but if that company was also providing "essential services" (as the.NET strategy is hoping companies will), then I believe that the level of accountability should rise in proportion to the critical nature of the services that are provided.
We have a scary future ahead of us my friends. But you guys already know that, don't you?
My first gripe is with the understanding of Microsoft's practices and general makeup by the attorneys and the judges. One point that seemed be taken as fact (though it is false) is that the entirety of Microsoft grew up from a single starting point and that it is not the result of mergers and aquisitions. That's just bullshit! How the heck did they get IE in the first place? They bought the company, which was comprised of Andreesen's teammates that worked on the NCSA browser. Microsoft's defense against breakup is that no company that has not been created through mergers and aquistions has ever been broken up by antitrust laws. Since Microsoft is not such a company, it shouldn't be subjected to such "entested practices." What pissed me off was that the government conceded the point! If they only knew their history, Microsoft could be broken into every component piece that made it what it is today. In the end, the "original" Micrsoft would be left with DOS (maybe not even that since they bought it), QuickBASIC, and Widnows 3.11. NT came from a DEC spinoff, Windows 95 is an OS/Warp debacle, most of the games and productivity software come from someplace else. Microsoft's strategy from the beginning has been to buy a competitor if they can't compete in a specific area.
Secondly, have any of the people involved in the case, especially the judges, ever been made aware of the issue of network effects? The basic idea being that the more people that use the system, the more valuable that system becomes for launching other systems and the higher the barrier for competing systems to enter the market. Is it me or does the 90% OS share and the 90-95% Office productivity share that Microsoft has fit this definition exactly or what? It can leverage either market to extend the other and drive out competition be swaying developers alone. Of course I know why, but why would any developer want to risk putting food on the table by developing for an alternative OS when it is a closer to sure thing to bet on the 90% market share of Brother Bill?
This seems so obvious that for once I want to smack Katz for being WAY off base (I don't normally feel that way). MS pulls a lot of crap that is not even close to nice or fair. Read a couple of books on the topic before you second guess yourself like that again.
I find it interesting that this level of paranoia comes just after the release of the 2.4 kernel in Linux. Before, most of the FUD went towards dismissing Linux as a viable obtion. Then came the head-to-head comparisons to "prove" it. This is definitely a shift.
Forget them "having a better understanding of adoption rates". Linux has been growing like gangbusters every year of its existence. My personal opinion is that they have read the kernel source and had to think to themselves "how long have they been doing this? They're this far already! We've been doing this since the 80's! Now they're catching up?!?" In many ways the source that Linux distributes will inevitably be more intimidating than anything else. With each iteration, they can see that a solid competitor is nipping at their heels and they won't be able to compete "fairly" much longer. With Linux's ability to turn features around quicker, Microsoft's gotta be sweating the release AFTER whistler.
Is this, working at slashdot and with blockstackers, what you always wanted to do but couldn't articulate?
Where do you see yourself in terms of/. importance and where do you see/.'s importance in terms of this whole "information age thingy'?
Do you feel you are doing important work? Is it worth it?
What would you like to be doing, in all serious, that you are not doing right now in your life?
Finally, would you recommend staying in the Midwest if I plan to work in IT? What are the pros and cons? I am graduating in May and you could influence my choices in this matter.
When a library buys a book or a paper journal they it can only be read by one person at a time. So if it is a popular title they will buy several. And each library will buy a copy of major journals. And while you can get it via inter library loan it is still a limited resource. And for each copy the publisher and author get paid.
The problem, as is stated in the article by Kranich, is the amount of money involved. Schroeder says that the Libraries have spent all their money on technology and have nothing left for content. Having worked for an Automation Department in a university library, I can attest that BOTH these statements are true. However, the crux of the problem is that libraries have been forced to spend the money on technology in order to keep up with the formats/delivery methods of the content! On top of that, in this digital age, prices should be dropping, or at least staying the same. Since many of the middlemen are being cut-out, the distributors and printers at least, there should be more left over for what is left... mainly the writers/publications. Instead, the price digital access to journals is skyrocketing! By adding minor value to the resulting materials, publishers see this as a reason to jack prices WAY up and pull in more than their fair share.
On top of these issues, the interfaces to these elctronic services suck. I have repeatedly been on committees that were deciding which services to buy and which to dump. Time and again, the librarians chose the cheaper services (which weren't necessarily that cheap) over those that had invested some money in development. Luckily, our state (Indiana), saw this problem too often and pulled together a consortium to provide proxied centralized access to the better materials for a fraction of the cost (called the Inspire Database). Schroeder and the AAP would seriously jeopardize this relationship...which has only come about because libraries have been forced to by the skyrocketing cost of subscriptions and the lack of funds due to technological upgrades of necessity.
Though the rules have sections about points and winners for these games, I guarantee that everyone that I have played with ends up just enjoying the process:
Apples to Apples:
This is a word association card game in which a Green Apple Card (adjective) is played by the current "judge" and then other players (which can number up to 20 or more... great for get togethers) search their hands for a Red Apple Card (noun) that is best descibed by the Green Apple Card. Green Apple Cards include words like "evil," "peaceful," "yummy," and "hip." Red Apple Cards include nouns like "Puff Daddy," "earthquakes," "rain forests," and "Martha Stewart." Whether cards match is completely subjective and up to the judge. The winner gets the green card and once a total is met the game ends. Everyone we've played with doesn't care at all about the points, but just likes the strange combinations that can be had. Also, it is very easy to think up variations on the game rules that are fun to play in and of themeselves.
5 Card Nancy and other "storytelling" card games:
There are a couple of these out and about and a few have web versions. 5 Card Nancy is a Dadaist card game developed by Scott Mccloud. Being Dadaist, in most respects, at their core, the process is more important than the result. Creativity is rewarded more than strategy and finesse.
I'm sure this will be moderated down, but here goes anyway.
I find it funny that the first time I saw this article on the front page of dear old /., that the accompanying banner add was for the Alta Vista search engine 3.0. It is funny how technologies break sometimes.
My university had a similar gaf. Some students were shot up at a local party by some unhappy gang members/thugs and the story was carried on the web page of the local Fox affiliate. Unfortunately, the banner ad (sporting the new university advertising slogan about being everything to everybody) was displayed above a headline that went something like One Killed, and 4 Injured in University Shooting.
Stuff like this will continue until technology and people get smarter. Come to think of it, this holds true for the software patent issue as well.
This is old hat stuff. It exists on Windows NT workstation (later releases) 4.0 also. Basically it blocks users from using NT workstation as an NT server (even though the only difference, at the time, was a couple of registry settings). Microsoft didn't want you to buy workstation (which didn't come with IIS) and then buy any third party web/file servers (or load Apache) to put on it, which actually would be cheaper than than forking over the extra dough for NT server. Since they couldn't physically stop you from changing the registry settings (or just running the stuff off of regular workstation) they made it illegal and I believe actually threatened a few sites with legal action (unless they upgraded). Looks like they plan to do the samething with Windows 2000.
Personally, I don't buy the point about a standardized language being more accepted. The C and C++ standardization committees both probably started during the crest of their languages popularity. (Since C++'s prototypes got back ported to the C standard, you can tell they new they had to keep up with this competitor. And by the time C++ was standardized, all the hype had moved to Java.)
I agree that the languages may have been standardized at their peak of popularity (popularity being media coverage, general press, and book publication), but I don't think they had as wide of use until after standardization. Larry is right in that most Banks, Corporations, and Governement Agencies are bound by their bylaws and operating codes to not use a "flash in the pan" system. How the heck do you think that Fortran and Cobol and even PL1 and Ada have survived for so long? Sure, it has something to do with keeping up legacy systems, but it also has to do with the fact that there was no standardized language to turn to when those systems were still young and could be more easily replaced.
While standardization may violate Perl Rules One and Two, it would be better for the language in the long run, especially in terms of documenting just how the thing works.
Oh, I'm not saying it was a bad game (although the mechanics of Friday Night Firefight were a bit... hmmm.... obtuse). I really liked it and it introduced me to cyberpunk instead of the other way around (something I am very grateful for... I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now if it weren't for cyberpunk in some senses).
Shadowrun is just D&D with technology thrown in. The only interesting thing is the tie in with the ghost dance, but they took it too far in my opinion. I even, ripped that off for one game of my Cyperpunk campaign in which the ghost dance had begun again... ah... to think back on those days.
I liked the original rules myself. They were a bit complex and convoluted and you had to look in three different places before you understood something, but it was better than the reprint. They took out a lot of the grittiness of the original and slapped in too much gimmicky stuff, IMHO.
Still, to say that this stuff is so prescient at this point is odd since they are built of genre's of novels that came before thier creation. Hence, my advice.
Slashdot Mirror
I wondered if something like this wouldn't be far behind the announcement that Netscape isn't "doing" browsers anymore. A lot of speculation about future fallout was bandied about in this Slashdot discussion. It seems like the chips are beginning to fall. I guess we'll see where they all land.
Two series come to mind:
I've read the Harry Potter books. They are OK at best. A fine quick read with little to no meat. Read Richard Pullman's books instead, they have depth (as has been stated in earlier posts).
This is sad. I'm sorry.
Do I have kids reading Potter and nothing else? Yes.
This is too bad.
Do I have kids that I have talked into reading Ender's Game because of Potter? Yes.
This proves that you are a teacher worth his salt, then. I just finished Ender's Game this morning before work. A number people have recommended it to me and I finally picked it up while at the bookstore on vacation. It simply blew my mind. This is the sort of fiction that deserves to be read and admired. Truly powerful and thought-provoking stuff.
I agree with the rest of your arguments and I am glad that you use Potter as a "gateway book." Unfortunately, the problem with the "getting kids to read" argument is, besides being false to a great extent, that it promotes such books as good starting points as well. People looking to turn someone on to reading tend to turn to books that "get kids to read" instead of seeking out the best books (which are, coincidentally, not in the media spotlight) for them to start with.
Instead, people turn to mediocrity which can't stand the test of time. They should consult lists of great books for new readers, of the best but little-known books of the year or century, publisher, editor, and critic's picks. They should ask 10 adult friends which books blew their mind at the age of the reader they are shopping for. And you know what? I bet they would find better fair than whatever is the best selling craze du jour.
Along those lines, what are the 10 books that blew the average slashdot reader's mind at the ages 12-14? I'd like to know for when I am asked to pick out a book for a new reader.
He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.
The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:
Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.
Here, here!
Michael Dertouzos, Chair of MIT's Computer Science Department and columnist for The MIT Technology Review said it better in an article titled The People's Computer: E-mail: Freedom or Jail?.
He is more concise and he offers some simple rules that would help stem the tide if everyone abided by them.
The meat of his point is summed up in the following paragraph:
Just because we have become electronically interconnected, we have not acquired the automatic right to send a message to anyone we wish, nor the automatic obligation to respond to every message we receive.
Here, here!
I hate this argument. Especially since it is partly false. The Harry Potter books are getting kids to read more Harry Potter books. They are not getting them to read. Its not like the books open the world of reading to them, they open the world of Harry Potter to them.
If you think I am insane, just talk to the kids that are reading the books. Most of the middle-schoolers (you have high schoolers reading Harry Potter?) that I have talked to who hated reading before Harry Potter don't touch other books. Instead, they read Harry Potter over and over and can't wait for the next book to come out. Every story about the Potter hysteria covered by the major media backs up my point. Kids are reading the books over and over until the new story comes out and nothing else. Rreading a book several times is no big deal, I have my favorites as well, but reading them that way in the exclusion of everything else but a sequel is not encouraging. Potter fans think reading is boring, but that Harry Potter is cool. There is a disconnect.
When I worked in a bookstore, the same thing happened with the Goosebumps and Animorph books. When kids came in after reading everything that was out in either series, they wouldn't move on to other books. Because they were "boring" or "stupid."
Sure, the kids read, but what did they get from reading one series of books. Nothing!
Books should only be praised for "getting kids to read" if they open up the world of reading to them. If they instead stagnate them into reading only one series, then the accomplishment has less merit for education, but really wins big for marketing.
I hate to put forth a "me too." But I totally agree.
Pullman's prose is so much better than Rowling's feeble writing. While hers is entertaining, it isn't engrossing. It always seems to me that she doesn't read about the stuff she uses in her stories. Or that, if she does, it is only to populate it with another figure. I much prefer Pullman, who is an obvious fan of the genre and lets you know it with his subtle use of fantasy mainstays.
I guess that is what I miss in Potter, subtlety.
Related to similarities, if anyone has read Gaiman's graphic novel, The Books of Magic, you will also notice some interesting parallels. I think this graphic novel is better than the Potter books (in the writing department, especially). If you haven't read it, pick up a copy. The front of the first issue was coated with glyphs that you could only see after the ink reacted to handling over a period of time. It seemed that they would "technomagically" appear over time. Pretty cool.
a 1999 Wall Street Journal-NBC survey, for instance, indicated that privacy is the issue that concerns Americans most about the twenty-first century, ahead of overpopulation, racial tensions, and global warming.
Here it also says:
Most people (63 percent) fall into an intermediate category that Westin calls "privacy pragmatists." Such people are always balancing the potential benefits and threats involved in sharing information, and are particularly concerned about what Ann Cavoukian described to me as "function creep"--that is, the secondary use (deliberate or inadvertent) of information that was originally divulged for one purpose only. Depending on what privacy pragmatists get in return for their information, they are willing to forsake different degrees of privacy protection.
It's a great article overall and the fact that it was printed in the Atlantic gives hope that some of the less computer savvy but informed intelligentsia are beginning to look at these issues seriously. Since these are the people that also tend to vote more often, it may actually have an effect on the politics of privacy that may in turn force guarentees in the software architectures that users depend on.
Why do you need the player integrated into a server? That's just stupid. Forget about antitrust concerns.
Shouldn't it be...Interview with Medical patient that supports Microsoft:
Alice, 80 year old MS supporter: "I have been happily using Microsoft products for years, and have never had a problem with them. In fact i recently requested that my life support machine be converted to run with Windows Me, and have not had a single problem with it -BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-
Reporter (back to camera): "And there you have it folks, the last words of an ardent Microsoft supporter... We're just going to, uh, step aside here so that MSC-EMT can try to reboot the system... This has been Guy Stone for WIZTV, reporting"
Why is it that when it comes to anything that has to do with society, the \. editors (yes, the slash leans left on purpose) push forward an authoritarian and often socialist view of government regulation and initiative, but when it comes to technology, the goverment must stay out of the equation? (I take "excess regulation" to mean anything that encroaches upon the freedoms of the producers and consumers to operate without fraud).
Uhh... They just combined the sentences in the fake letters created by the lobbyists.
Um... It was a joke. Laugh!
I thought zombies only worked for Microsoft, I didn't know they also supported them.
Hmmm...
Time to brush up on the Necromicon if you ask me.
I think this is only "confusing" if you pronounce it as "K- Illustrator." I think Adobe wouldn't make such a fuss if everyone would pronounce it like I do, as in "kill - ustrator." Personally, I think Adobe wouldn't even try to associate itself with THAT name.
The problem with the NC model is that it relies on a stable, secure, high-bandwidth connection that has 99.9999% uptime. Can anyone tell me of a network that meets these requirements?
The counter argument is that no computer has a 99.9999% uptime either and that any system can fail locally as well. The response to this argument lies in the idea of local control. If my hard drive fails and I have a report due tomorrow, I can choose to put in a new hard drive and could have myself up and running again relatively quickly. The NC model places those decisions and priorities in the locus of control of someone else. Who is to say that they have my best interests in mind? If you want an example, look at the DNS problems Microsoft had a while back. As a network consultant and support technician, I unfortunately have to spend hours digging through the sludge of Microsoft's technical papers and knowledgebase hoping to find answers to this new problem or that. For three days, during the DNS debacle (can anyone figure out why they didn't have an off-site DNS?!?!... The Road Ahead for sure!), people were out of luck when it came to getting access to those resources. Let me tell you, if the phone system of the US was down for three days, there would be congressional hearings and someone would probably be facing jail time. Now, I'm not saying that a company should be held responsible for its website being down for three days, but if that company was also providing "essential services" (as the .NET strategy is hoping companies will), then I believe that the level of accountability should rise in proportion to the critical nature of the services that are provided.
We have a scary future ahead of us my friends. But you guys already know that, don't you?
My first gripe is with the understanding of Microsoft's practices and general makeup by the attorneys and the judges. One point that seemed be taken as fact (though it is false) is that the entirety of Microsoft grew up from a single starting point and that it is not the result of mergers and aquisitions. That's just bullshit! How the heck did they get IE in the first place? They bought the company, which was comprised of Andreesen's teammates that worked on the NCSA browser. Microsoft's defense against breakup is that no company that has not been created through mergers and aquistions has ever been broken up by antitrust laws. Since Microsoft is not such a company, it shouldn't be subjected to such "entested practices." What pissed me off was that the government conceded the point! If they only knew their history, Microsoft could be broken into every component piece that made it what it is today. In the end, the "original" Micrsoft would be left with DOS (maybe not even that since they bought it), QuickBASIC, and Widnows 3.11. NT came from a DEC spinoff, Windows 95 is an OS/Warp debacle, most of the games and productivity software come from someplace else. Microsoft's strategy from the beginning has been to buy a competitor if they can't compete in a specific area.
Secondly, have any of the people involved in the case, especially the judges, ever been made aware of the issue of network effects? The basic idea being that the more people that use the system, the more valuable that system becomes for launching other systems and the higher the barrier for competing systems to enter the market. Is it me or does the 90% OS share and the 90-95% Office productivity share that Microsoft has fit this definition exactly or what? It can leverage either market to extend the other and drive out competition be swaying developers alone. Of course I know why, but why would any developer want to risk putting food on the table by developing for an alternative OS when it is a closer to sure thing to bet on the 90% market share of Brother Bill?
This seems so obvious that for once I want to smack Katz for being WAY off base (I don't normally feel that way). MS pulls a lot of crap that is not even close to nice or fair. Read a couple of books on the topic before you second guess yourself like that again.
My .02
I find it interesting that this level of paranoia comes just after the release of the 2.4 kernel in Linux. Before, most of the FUD went towards dismissing Linux as a viable obtion. Then came the head-to-head comparisons to "prove" it. This is definitely a shift.
Forget them "having a better understanding of adoption rates". Linux has been growing like gangbusters every year of its existence. My personal opinion is that they have read the kernel source and had to think to themselves "how long have they been doing this? They're this far already! We've been doing this since the 80's! Now they're catching up?!?" In many ways the source that Linux distributes will inevitably be more intimidating than anything else. With each iteration, they can see that a solid competitor is nipping at their heels and they won't be able to compete "fairly" much longer. With Linux's ability to turn features around quicker, Microsoft's gotta be sweating the release AFTER whistler.
Is this, working at slashdot and with blockstackers, what you always wanted to do but couldn't articulate?
/. importance and where do you see /.'s importance in terms of this whole "information age thingy'?
Where do you see yourself in terms of
Do you feel you are doing important work? Is it worth it?
What would you like to be doing, in all serious, that you are not doing right now in your life?
Finally, would you recommend staying in the Midwest if I plan to work in IT? What are the pros and cons? I am graduating in May and you could influence my choices in this matter.
The problem, as is stated in the article by Kranich, is the amount of money involved. Schroeder says that the Libraries have spent all their money on technology and have nothing left for content. Having worked for an Automation Department in a university library, I can attest that BOTH these statements are true. However, the crux of the problem is that libraries have been forced to spend the money on technology in order to keep up with the formats/delivery methods of the content! On top of that, in this digital age, prices should be dropping, or at least staying the same. Since many of the middlemen are being cut-out, the distributors and printers at least, there should be more left over for what is left... mainly the writers/publications. Instead, the price digital access to journals is skyrocketing! By adding minor value to the resulting materials, publishers see this as a reason to jack prices WAY up and pull in more than their fair share.
On top of these issues, the interfaces to these elctronic services suck. I have repeatedly been on committees that were deciding which services to buy and which to dump. Time and again, the librarians chose the cheaper services (which weren't necessarily that cheap) over those that had invested some money in development. Luckily, our state (Indiana), saw this problem too often and pulled together a consortium to provide proxied centralized access to the better materials for a fraction of the cost (called the Inspire Database). Schroeder and the AAP would seriously jeopardize this relationship...which has only come about because libraries have been forced to by the skyrocketing cost of subscriptions and the lack of funds due to technological upgrades of necessity.
It's a vicious circle.
Though the rules have sections about points and winners for these games, I guarantee that everyone that I have played with ends up just enjoying the process:
Apples to Apples:
This is a word association card game in which a Green Apple Card (adjective) is played by the current "judge" and then other players (which can number up to 20 or more... great for get togethers) search their hands for a Red Apple Card (noun) that is best descibed by the Green Apple Card. Green Apple Cards include words like "evil," "peaceful," "yummy," and "hip." Red Apple Cards include nouns like "Puff Daddy," "earthquakes," "rain forests," and "Martha Stewart." Whether cards match is completely subjective and up to the judge. The winner gets the green card and once a total is met the game ends. Everyone we've played with doesn't care at all about the points, but just likes the strange combinations that can be had. Also, it is very easy to think up variations on the game rules that are fun to play in and of themeselves.
5 Card Nancy and other "storytelling" card games:
There are a couple of these out and about and a few have web versions. 5 Card Nancy is a Dadaist card game developed by Scott Mccloud. Being Dadaist, in most respects, at their core, the process is more important than the result. Creativity is rewarded more than strategy and finesse.
I find it funny that the first time I saw this article on the front page of dear old / ., that the accompanying banner add was for the Alta Vista search engine 3.0. It is funny how technologies break sometimes.
My university had a similar gaf. Some students were shot up at a local party by some unhappy gang members/thugs and the story was carried on the web page of the local Fox affiliate. Unfortunately, the banner ad (sporting the new university advertising slogan about being everything to everybody) was displayed above a headline that went something like One Killed, and 4 Injured in University Shooting.
Stuff like this will continue until technology and people get smarter. Come to think of it, this holds true for the software patent issue as well.
my .02
Yes they were. Do you think they will get anybody to watch a demo reel that contains any clips from this film? Careers are in peril here people.
As if Micheal and Phenomena weren't enough?
This is old hat stuff. It exists on Windows NT workstation (later releases) 4.0 also. Basically it blocks users from using NT workstation as an NT server (even though the only difference, at the time, was a couple of registry settings). Microsoft didn't want you to buy workstation (which didn't come with IIS) and then buy any third party web/file servers (or load Apache) to put on it, which actually would be cheaper than than forking over the extra dough for NT server. Since they couldn't physically stop you from changing the registry settings (or just running the stuff off of regular workstation) they made it illegal and I believe actually threatened a few sites with legal action (unless they upgraded). Looks like they plan to do the samething with Windows 2000.
I agree that the languages may have been standardized at their peak of popularity (popularity being media coverage, general press, and book publication), but I don't think they had as wide of use until after standardization. Larry is right in that most Banks, Corporations, and Governement Agencies are bound by their bylaws and operating codes to not use a "flash in the pan" system. How the heck do you think that Fortran and Cobol and even PL1 and Ada have survived for so long? Sure, it has something to do with keeping up legacy systems, but it also has to do with the fact that there was no standardized language to turn to when those systems were still young and could be more easily replaced.
While standardization may violate Perl Rules One and Two, it would be better for the language in the long run, especially in terms of documenting just how the thing works.
Shadowrun is just D&D with technology thrown in. The only interesting thing is the tie in with the ghost dance, but they took it too far in my opinion. I even, ripped that off for one game of my Cyperpunk campaign in which the ghost dance had begun again... ah... to think back on those days.
I liked the original rules myself. They were a bit complex and convoluted and you had to look in three different places before you understood something, but it was better than the reprint. They took out a lot of the grittiness of the original and slapped in too much gimmicky stuff, IMHO.
Still, to say that this stuff is so prescient at this point is odd since they are built of genre's of novels that came before thier creation. Hence, my advice.