Traffic regulation, if done right, is only partly about safety. It is also about efficiency. Also, to be fair, certain overregulation, like those signs on the side of the road that automatically tell everyone how fast they are going, likely cause a drop in safety. It is probably preferable for cars to move at a range of speeds, and these signs tend to make everyone drive near or at the speed limit. OTOH, a suggested speed for highways keep the range of speeds from being too great, which can lead to safety issues.
But much of what we have is efficiency. Traffic lights and stop signs give everyone an equal chance of getting trough. Yield signs allow faster traffic to be not held up by slower traffic. Various other measures minimize the effect of accidents protect the rest of the traffic from someone's mistake. Many traffic signs tells us what to expect, which allows us to plan, and help keep the traffic moving. Of c course there is always the individual that chooses not to follow the rules, and does not merge properly, or does not yield, or goes too slow, or otherwise gums up the works. With rules we can at least punish that antisocial behavior. Without them we would be sitting on the freeway stopped while the Hummer tries to merge right before the exit.
Really, every south park episode is like this. The only issue is that some people are so sensitive that they can't stand being made fun of, and as a result run home, hide in their parents basement, and post scathing online rebuttals.
What South Park does is makes us all look at the inane things we do, and in the process, at least for those of us that are reflective, gives us the opportunity to look at these things from the perspective of others. It is high end requirement for enjoying such a low brow show, but hey, that is why South Park is not Family Guy.
As has been mentioned on numerous occasions, the show does not in particular hate anyone, except for Barbara Steisand, and has no problem with anyone, except for pompous actors, politicians, and other persons. And the one thing we have seen this season, if we can't make fun of everyone, then we shouldn't make fun of anyone.
My solemn hope is that the WOW folks, and other folks who take video games so seriously that they have become so myopic that they cannot phantom anything outside of the game, will complain so much that we have an even more scathing episode, a la Sally Struthers or Scientology. We call it '40 years old and living in your moms garage.'
Re:Integration has always been Apple's differentia
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Leopard Vs. Vista
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The thing is that the only companies that mattered, up to the mid 80's, were the system integrators. They were the one that deliver the machines that would do the job. It made sense. Few people wish to have a compressor dropped off at thier door,and then be told they can build the refrigerator. Most people don't even want to repair the refrigerator. So the important companies were the ones that not only delivered complete solutions, but that supported those solutions as well. Companies like IBM and Xerox.
The problem was that those solutions were very expensive, and what MS did was decouple the OS from the machine to create a myth of an equally powerful cheap machine. I say myth because if all the costs were factored in, the savings often were not that great. What was the benefit is that a person could buy a much more flexible machine, and if they were on a budget, but a lower quality machine than would be available from a company that actually cared about reputaion. As time went on, MS forced it's OS onto every machines, and created the monopoly. Any OEM, really system integrator that actually provided support to the end user, was forced to supply only MS OS, while MS could sit there raking in the profits while doing comparatively little.
But the front line is still, and always will be, the system company. These are the people that provide the front line support. The problem with the PC industry is that though they provide the front line support, they do not in fact reap very much of the profit. MS, who does relatively little, get the money, while all the real producers are fighting for the crumbs. But it is thier decision.
The point is that the long term successful companies are system companies that keep attuned to the users needs. IBM is a good example. HP is a good example. Apple is a good example. In fact, when Apple tried to be a hardware company, with spin off of Claris, the Newton that did not integrate, and a failing OS, the company floundered. It bought into the idea that hardware companies were more viable than system integrators. As much as people wish for Apple clones, supporting every cheap piece of trash on the planer comes at too high of a price.
Even MS is going to be a systems company, if it will survive. It will survive on the XBox, which is an intergrated product. It will survive on phones, if it will ever just make one instead of trying to force the phone companies like it did the computer OEM. Otherwise it will just be a speciality shop, serving legacy machines.
I would adjust a single word. Giving. In many cases we should be selling the laptop. If there is one thing microloans have taught the world, It is that people in less developed countries can leverage a little bit of money and a little bit of technology into a better life for their families.
In the case of a very cheap laptop, that could mean a few laptops that could be rented out. A sinle location with a generator and online access. It has been done with cell phones.
There is a growing realization that the primarily economic system that spreading through the world after WWII was various forms of capitalism, not communism, which in the implementation had too much overhead. And in fact this spread of various form of capitalism is a danger to the US as the US has become bloated and uncreative, and other more nimble competitors will produce a better value. Microloans and cheap advanced technology have the possibility of exaggerating this effect because it releases control of the capitalist economy from the big boys that are used to running capitalism like a de-facto command economy. In many ways, I see this fight against the very cheap laptop as a fight to limit the spread of capitalism. This would be as big as the cheap printing press was to the early America.
It is this attention to detail that differentiates a quality product and something just chucked out the door. We see it on many types of products. For example, the miata has a tuned exhaust note. It cost a bunch of money, money that could have been used for executive bonuses, but Mazda instead invested it in the car.
We see this often with computer and programs. Thinking about how long it take a computer to boot up or wake. Thinking of how many key clicks it takes to get from one place to another. Thinking of the opportunity costs of forcing users to enter 30 character validation keys at every turn.
As long they have funded the sound as additional work, and not just redirected the effort from another project, I see this as a good sign. It could mean that MS Windows will be a tool that people like to use, and not just one they have to use.
I am not sure if even if on Linux this would be a good idea, as I can see no reason to have every computer have it's own domain, or even IP. For most purposes, having a firewall or managed switch directing traffic between machines is safer and equally efficient.
But to speak to the point more specifically we can, with some confidence say that Linux would at least implement it so it would not be globally destructive. To illustrate this lets look at two comparable innovation. First, MS wanted to be part of the office network revolution, vis a vis MS Windows for workgroups and the following versions of MS Windows. However, all they really did was let anyone on your network, which became anyone on the internet, access your hardware. This was often the default setting, without user knowledge. Good Idea: A public folder. Bad Idea: a public hard disk.
For the second we can look at IE. MS wanted to get into this new fangled Internet thing, and so they bought some code, reworked it, and eventually got something that was good. It had advance features that let it go beyond a text layout, and achieve the status of an application front end. Of course by 1998 many of the extensions were no longer novel, and other browsers worked fine. For instance, Amazon has always worked on any browser. IE, while useful as an corporate application front end, ceded too much power to the web server, and in the process put the local machine at risk. It was certainly useful for demanding application, but went way to far for the ordinary user. Good idea: Powerful and free browser for the masses. Bad idea: Powerful and free browser that allows terrorists to commandeer any machine they wish.
In this kind of study, basing the conclusion on the presence of few hits would characterize the study as faith based science.
First, the sample size was 12,000. Where did that number come from? Were the samples picked randomly? Assuming so, is 12,000 a statistically an effective sample size? And if the samples are random, and the size is sufficient, is that 142 articles statistically significant, that is, are the number of matches outside the margin of error? In other words, does the sample size, selection, and methodology, merit a margin of error around 1%.
And then we get to the fact that sometimes wikipedia text is copied to other sites. This in itself leads to the conclusion that wikipedia has some credibility, even if unfounded. I found it interesting that we are not told how many articles off wikipedia were plagiarized. I also wonder what 'Wikipedia appeared to be the one plagiarized' means, and what systematic errors was introduced by that subjective judgement. Perhaps 1%?
There is no question that plagiarism is a big issue, and we all must watch for it. I am on the side that plagiarism in no more an issue than in the past, but with better communication and distribution, we catch it more. At some level, because it so easy to plagiarize now, we perhaps see more egregious cases of it.
What gets me is that an analysis of such low analytical value is news. I am once again amazed at how little people seem to know or care about proper logic. In the end all we know is that some study with questionable methodology produced 142 hits. Not a huge revalation, even if we stipulate the study is of even minimal value.
If one goes to college, than one should make every attempt to achieve a well rounded education. If one does not go to college, one should do ones best to achieve the best rounded education as is possible. College is cool because it is full of 'well' educated people who like to prove they are well educated. OTOH, real life has a lot to teach us, and we should all face life head on eventually. So spending a few more years in the leisurely pursuit of knowledge, in effect extending adolescence into young adulthood, can be a good thing. As long as that is the person one is.
OTOH, I believe that the opportunity of the young adult to gain some skills and observe how successful people live. Aa we leave our teen age years, we have perspective that allows to become well rounded persons based on what we observe in others. This mean that we can't just hang around peers and process our perceived failings of the day. If we are to have mad skills, and mechanisms to meet real life head on, we must learn those from people who have already been in our position. It is not a credibility thing, that I worked for so and so, or at the famous company, it is a skill thing.
So definitely go out and play. Definitely read some classic books. Definitely sit around for hours and process. But the things to be learned from a person who is where you want to be, and has already gone through the path you wish to take, will be invaluable. What this does not mean is that you get into a major firm where all you will do is get coffee and bragging rights. What this does not mean is you sit alone and code all night. What this may mean is you find some hole in the wall concern, run by competent individuals, and learn what it is that they know.
In spite of this, most of us are just looking for the lottery ticket that will get us the cash with little work, so perhaps jobs with good connections are more important than learning. But if you want to learn, find some competent patient people, and beg to work with them.
In these things, the profit motive, direct or indirect, cannot be ignored. If a plane hits a building, by accident or through airline fault, no one is going to want to talk about, as it will cost the airline bunches, and talk will just make the eventual settlement higher. We all want to believe we live in a safe place, are in control of our lives, and our country is powerful enough to protect those of us who are worthy of protection. That is why after 9/11 so many people wanted to believe it was a government that planed the attack, for the greater good, and why so many people were so hell bent on revenge, no matter what the cost. Add the vast profit that is being made by the war profiteers, the car maker, the politician, the country music singer, and of course the rallying cry is 911! There is so much money to be made, it open the public purse in a way that nothing else will, that anybody would be crazy to not get on the bandwagon and rob the country blind.
But we also see this in situations that are not so human made. Take west nile. Perhaps 1 in 50,000 people might get sick each year, most not enough to notice. Perhaps on in a couple million might die. A person is perhaps 100 times more likely to die in a car accident. (Not that car accidents don't have their own share of profiteering) In the case of west nile, however, the risk is very slight, and yet ad campaigns for various also dangerous products make it seem like if you don't take precautions, the child might as well be on in the middle of a pitched battle in Iraq. Of course, on product, DEET is meant to be used for short periods, in small doses, and not for small children. The mania over west nile probably causes some off label use
I agree. Certainly business in china is risky, but the market is so large it is difficult to ignore.
In any case, if the US is market driven and democratic, then the firms must be responsive to the market and democratic forces, and not to some arbitrary sense of morals. Some may agree that china is place not to be because of repression, but what about Britain. Today we learn that it is on it's way to becoming the most oppressive government in western europe. And what about the netherlands. Should we move international proceedings out of the Hague because the netherlands are soft on drugs, and, therefore, as President Bush says, contributes to terrorism?
Frankly many things I own are made it china, so I am the one the promotes use in china.
At the end of the day, China is a huge market, and those multinational companies without a presence will unlikely be able to survive. With no MS support, china may move to other standards, and MS will lose. If MS allows it's standard to used by the Chinese without license, then they will have little defense when others do the same.
But I really think it would be cheaper and more honest to set up a site called pravda.gov so that the proletariat can get the real facts directly from the central governing authority.
I don't know if this was meant to be funny or merely facetious, but in research and diplomacy on this matter are being conducted on this issue, just not in the way that many, including the mainstream scientific community, would want.
First, research is being conducted and this research, along with anecdotal evidence, shows that the earth is warming. Now, there are bits and pieces that can be attacked, but the on the whole the data is clear. Of course, faith based reasoning, in which on ignores all facts that might disrupt the cozy world we live in, the cozy world in which some have a divine right to succeed, and others a divine destiny to fial, and looks only at the facts that supports personal belief, cannot believe that the earth might be in trouble, or can only believe that if the earth is in trouble it is again devine destiny, and all we can do is pray so that we might ascend. In the end, it is a question of the possible power of the human, or, in fact, another battle between humanism or not.
So here is the upshot. There are three general responses to the research. First, the earth is warming, some of it is caused by human influence, and therefore we can do something about. Second, the earth is warming, and while some of it might arguably be human influenced, it is our right to exploit the earth, and we must have faith that all will end up well, because it is just going to be too much of a burden for us to do anything about it. Third, the earth is warming but we must leave everything to the divine, and if the earth is to become inhostbitable, well that is just the way it is. There is a fourth, abject denial, but that is just another facet of the third.
I believe that the Bush administration knows that we are in trouble, but cannot do anything about it, so why should the bring it up. Doing what needs to be done will cost them all their power. I mean look at the oil tax subsidies. These were not necessary, and when oil profits became obscene, the administration played a good game, but the subsidies are still there. It is the same with corporate governance. Now that a few has paid the penalty for greed, the rest are trying to build legal barriers so they can plunder, but not be prosecuted.
We are always looking for a silver bullet, and sometimes we kind of get lucky, but most of the time we don't. Everyone forgot the business cycle, and the rules of the economy, and that is why we had the bust of 2000. Everyone forgot again, and we are going to be in trouble with housing. We forget the British or Roman empire, and believe that laws of nature have changed and one small group of fascist dictators, er democratically elected politician, can rule the world.
The funny thing about this faith based reasoning is that it tends to deny the power of the human to have a real effect on the world, but it does not stop those same people from trying to build wealth and power, effectively trying to elevate themselves as close to the divine as possible.
Most people never bought MS products because they were so easy to copy. That is why MS was the machine of choice. Buy the machine, steal the software. I saw many switch from Apple to Wintel as it became clear that on Apple one had to buy software, while on MS WIndows everything could be 'borrowed'.
Now MS is demanding that everything be paid for. How much this is going to effect the market is unclear. Most MS software I have owned has either been paid for by my school or places that I work through the normal licensing process. It seems to me that MS has made these licenses more liberal to increase the amount of legitimate software in the wild.
It is true that false positives are annoying to users, but MS has been annoying users for 20 years, and no one seems to care. As long as they get the stuff done at the end of the day, it is worth it. No real alternative exist in most peoples universe.
I get my work done is OO.org, and it is great. Certain things would be easier in MS Office, but I can't afford the software and don't really want to steal it, and even if I could afford it at this point the risk is too great. What if at some point it does not validate, and I can't get work done? This is one reason I let Eudora and started using Mail, even though Mail is crap is comparison.
This is absolutely not so. It is like saying that XP had no effect on the price of the computer. In fact, in order to not to look like it was using it's monopoly to cheat consumers, it had to create a scaled down version of XP. If one wants the sam OS that one had 5 years ago, say in NT or 2000, the cost of the cheapest rises from a few hundred dollars to over $500. I know that the retort is that no one really needs those extra features, but that is like saying a mac mini is comparable to the cheapest Dell, as most already have a keyboard and mouse, so the fact that the mini does not include these useless accessories is irrelevant. Likewise, most don't upgrade, so the low specs are also of no consequence.
This trend of keeping the price constant by reducing the amount of product is only continuing. The low end OS will continue to be 'free' with the computer, but much like the entry level car, the pressure to upgrade to the well equipped vehicle will be significant. We already see the upgrade price to be 10-20 percent of the cost of the computer, and the percentage spent on the OS will only increase. The full version of Vista might run twice the price of the full version of XP, so upgrade costs of over $200 will not be unreasonable. That $1200 well equipped desktop could shoot up to $1500. And we are not even talking office machines. If the user wants what is now XP Media Edition, that will likely have to add as much as 20% to the cost.
At the end of the day, we will see what we have seen for the past 10 years. Stiff competition is pushing hardware prices down to the bare minimum, while MS is free to price the OS not in accordance to market forces, but in accordance to internal whims.
This is for real. Most kids won't try anything, but some will. And those that will start a stampede. I recall trying to hold a class to teach some 9th graders about the web pages. I used a remote control app so that they each had the demo on their screens. The keyboard and mouse were blocked, and I expected them to spend about 15 minutes watching. One kid got the idea to reboot the computer, go into IE, and play games and look at pictures. Once the idea was seeded, there was nothing to do but go back to class. It was not that they did not want to learn, it was not that they wanted to play games, it was just the general revolt that kids sometimes do. And there is nothing a teacher can do to compete with pictures of scantily clad persons.
So here is what might be done in addition to the above comments. Only install educationally necessary applications. This may include uninstalling things that come with the computer. There is no reason for a student to install anything. Ever. Do not let the teachers have admin privileges, as teachers are suckers for a tearful story about how the kids have to do something forbidden to save their grade.
Set up a white list. The internet in general is not a research tool. Although there is some learning to be had exploring the internet, school is not the place to do so. If they really want to play, they can get a library card and explore on their own time. Allow access to newspapers and reasonable magazines. Access to databases like EBSCO may already be available. Definitely do not allow access to Yahoo, youtube, etc. These merely allow the kids to waste time.
Turn off as much configuration as possible. One of the stupidest thing MS did was allow configuration with a right click. How often do we need to change screen resolution or orientation. How often does on need to change the wall paper in a professional or education environment?
Last thing. Task-bar stays at bottom. Kids know that the teacher cannot monitor is task bar is hidden. Most savvy kids will immediately hide the task bar.
Of course, if IE is not necessary, switch to something else. This is almost security through obscurity, but putting a kid in a strange browser does wonder to restrict their mischief.
As always, people will say I over react. But in school we are there primarily to teach content, secondarily to teach discipline, but always to provide a predictable and safe environment by showing children that the expected boundaries are present.
It would be my assertion that people would rather buy polished turds than unpolished ones, and would in fact pay a premium. The reality is that in the 90's, just like now, the Mac worked. It worked without EMM hell, without printer hell, and without driver hell. You could hook up a external mass storage drive without hacking the BIOS. You could, and still can, hook up a keyboard to any available port that the cord will fit in, and the keyboard will work.
What the article, and most analysis, misses, is the profound change in the market. A firm should have a plan to compete with other firms, and should try to anticipate future market trends, but cannot predict, and in fact should not build, massive unpredictable trends into the business. So, when the Lisa was in development, the competition was mostly the IBM PC, which was very expensive. Compaq came in around 82, and shifted the market. However, the compaq was still a very expensive machine, but cheaper than and IBM PC. The Mac was created to compete with the new reality.
To give some perspective on the time, let's look at a third player: ATT. ATT created a wonderful not unreasonable priced PC. It had the advantage of running Unix, the only really workable OS we had at the time. I used one. It was great. It failed because it did not anticipate the market as well as Apple, and becuase it did not have as polished a GUI as Apple.
So we are talking hardware here. What about the OS. Well, for most the OS did not matter. People bought computers to run an application or two. The Apple had Excel, just like the Apple had Visicalc. This was one of three things that caused great trouble for Apple. First, when MS Hacked together MS Windows, there was a cheap alternative to Apple. Second, when MS ported Office to MS Windows, the cheap alternative to Apple. Third, the price of the PC went into a sharp decline, and though Apple was still competitive with name brand PCs, the were no longer competitive with the off brand boxes. As a result, significant vertical market began to appear for the PC, often ported from Unix, and the PC became a single vendor solution, despite the fact the major MS FUD was don't buy Apple because it was a single vendor solution.
So how did the Computer industry respond to this. Well, Compaq began using commodity parts, but because it had to rely on MS for the OS, and because it was a serious company with serious research, it is now gone. The ATT machine was never able to compete, even when prices were high. The general quality of the whole industry declined, and we found ourselves in a situation where nothing worked. Except for the Apple which was an expensive machine.
This was until MS Windows 95 when most of the MS hacks were fixed. You could hook up a printer without selling your sole. You still have to do color coded keyboard and mouse. But after 10 years, the PC genuinely worked, and the shift to MS dominance was complete. As all articles state, the fact that the Mac had no serious OS through most of the 90's was also a major factor.
But I would like to state that all the major pricing changed occurred on the hardware side. MS never matched the changes in the price of the OS. This is the problem of the monopoly. Apple has competed hard in quality and price. Intel has competed hard in quality and price. This has given us the wonderful machines we have, and the wonderful OS to run them. OTOH, MS just gathers money, and only occasionally competes. The most annoying thing of all this is that for the most part, outside of few applications, MS Windows does not work well. The major improvements they have made in on the developer side, which is admittedly a good thing to do. But simple things, like account encryption, which would make everyone life easy, is still at least months away.
And there is still a major problem with the myth of the cheap PC. In almost every establishment, there has been a profound lack of support, which results in the PC not being used effeciently.
It sounds pretty rational to me. X-tree was a superior file interface to anything MS had. Even with MS Windows 3.1, it was a while before MS got it working as well as X-tree. IIRC, it was really the 'long filename' hack that made X-Tree kind of dated.
In the same way, MS Windows, if you run simple applications and games, was a very good choice, particularly through the 90's when people were migrating from Unix and Apple had trouble refreshing Mac OS. Now, however, with vista being increasingly delayed and features dropping away, Mac OS X is becoming a very viable alternative. It is here now, it works, it has a time tested CL interface, and in many ways there is much less vendor lock in than with MS. For instance, the OS Update does not require IE, although MS has gotten rid of that limitation in exchange for an update process that insures the User is running a version of MS Windows that MS believes is legitimate.
You know, I am on the other side of the fence. I appreciate MS for allowing a liberal development process which allows quick and dirty coding in the languages I know, particularly C and C++. But I never believed they were capable of producing an OS that would allow me to work without the OS getting in my way too much. Certainly MS Windows NT proved that they could, but it was never so good to make me move from my Mac. It does not look like MS Vista will do so either.
It is really a matter of internal upgrades and external upgrades. Internal is neater, but external is good if you have a fast bus, i.e. Firewire or SCSI. My late 2000 powerbook is still and very useful machine. I have the memory at 3/4 of a gig, an external HD, and an external DVD burner.
Apple products tend to be pretty engineered computers, that don't necessarily have the tolerance for the random components. I remember on upgrade where Apple tightened the tolerance on memory, presumable to limit problems, and I had to change out my memory upgrade. The SIMM still worked in the PC, but not the mac. Which is to say that a pro level Mac is to some degree a reliable machine, and should be useful 3-5 years without upgrade. OTOH, if you like to tinker, it will not provide the façade of entertainment that the PC does.
The Mac Pros are likely not any more tinker friendly. They are also not made to work with just whatever component you grab from the bargain bin. For instance, the powermac never really worked with the SCSI card I tried to use for an upgrade. OTOH, the PC is not much better. The upgrades are really only there for the current version of Windows, and there is lag time of about of a year. I tried very hard to get two different wireless adaptors to work with one of my old PCs, and it never quite worked.
First, the GUI In MS Windows was rapidly and carelessly hacked onto MS DOS in an effort to compete with Apple. Even though MS Windows was inferior, there were two things that made it, in many cases, a better value. First, for many routine tasks, the CL is in fact much more efficient, and Apple did not have a CL interface, so automation was difficult. Second, most business machine ran a single application for a single low level user, and the OS was not so important. MS was much cheaper than any Unix, so the businesses migrated to MS WIndows. Even today, the user interaction with the OS is minimal, and most will run only a few applications.
Which is why all this user interface crap is so misleading. Most people I now who chose a PC over an Apple did so because they could lots of software from their friends, while they would have to buy software for the Apple. As time went on, the businesses bought the PC because Unix applications were being ported to it. Now it is what people know, and they can get software from work, so it is what they buy. Additionally, with IE only websites, and I mean websites that will only work in IE, no matter what tricks you play, make opportunity cost of purchasing a Mac relatively high. There are educational, government, and corporate entities that believe developing non-IE sites are extraordinarily expensive, and will not even make the effort.
MS cheated redundancy by building the IE dominance. The OS is pretty much secondary compared to that. Combined with the MS Office dominance, MS can continue to put out whatever crap it wishes, and nothing much will change. It is interesting. If IBM had a worldwide monopoly on a communication standard, perhaps MS would not even be an issue.
If you read the post, you will see that the author is not only talking about balance, but also about the redeeming qualities of the game. This is, in essence, stating the additional obvious conclusion that many of us learn through simulation, and many of us appreciate the fact that games provide a safe environment to make mistakes. This, of course, assumes that the game has some level of fidelity relative to the so called RL. In fact, as games have fixed rules and tends to be fair, and RL does not and is not, the greatest statement against all games is the low stake nature makes all simulation poor.
OTOH, we still often use low stake simulation to teach people skills that are difficult to teach directly. We have student governments. We have athletics with overblown, but necessary, sense of importance. We have any number of young adult social clubs with an annoyingly high level of useless structure, all to try to gently generate skills. These RL situations can become all encompassing waste of times, and often lead to little megalomaniacs that never quite realize how insignificant they really are, but the benifits are still there.
Then we fabricate evidence the supports the conclusion. This wishful thinking is really no different than all the other faith based reasoning that is the cause of massive waste and inefficiency in our government, research, and educational ventures. We wish we had perpetual energy. We wish we that a homogeny was sustainable. We wish that there was someone who would answer our prayers and give us houses and cell phones and cool cars. We wish that the world was full of tall blonde pert breasted ubiquitous women.
But then, for the part of the population that is sane and rational, the real world intrudes. We realize that resources are limited, we have to live with others, even if they are different, we have to work for our toys, and, in a world where guys will resort to soft fruit, any person who is not extremely objectionable is fair game, at least long enough to procreate. Combine this with the fact that so many of these characteristics can be had by artificial means, and the artifice may not be detected until the bun is in the oven, and evolution seems to be quite out of play.
He lost credibility when he mentioned that 'tall, slender' as evolutionary beneficial. From my understanding, the tallness and slenderness of a person can have as much to do with environment as genetics. Immigrants to the US might be short and stocky, but the diet of the US often leads to the children to be much taller. A immigrant parent might be slender, and stay so, but the children are often more likely obese.
Now, if the tall slender people are more likely to mate, and keep the refuse out, then perhaps a subspecies will develop. OTOH, given that slenderness can be as much a function of surgery as genetics, it might seen a bit far fetched that a master race will develop.
In any case, it is unclear what the benefit of increasingly tall and frail frames might be. OTOH, it is clear that a tall frail frame has quite a few evolutionary drawbacks, often requiring much more care than a stocky frame.
As far as the timeline is concerned, the 100,000 year number can be found just be extrapolating the geologic record. About 400,000 years ago the first Homo Sapien appeared. About 200,000 years later, the Homo Sapien N appeared. About 100,000 years later, the Homo Sapein S, or us, appeared and apparently wiped out our cousins to become the dominant species. Hominid type have been around for maybe 5 million years, and have had varying degrees of success. Perhaps we have another 100,000 years and the Homo Sapian will be replaced with another Hominid. Certainly the the optomistic view is that another Homo Sapien subspecies will appear, wipe us out, and carry on the Sapien branch.
Uh, many switched to google because Altavista used keywords, and keywords became a useless index tool as webmasters started putting every major word on every page.
Even with Google's speed, another search engine could overtake it if a new search technology could be developed. Ad farms have made Google significantly less useful, and since google now primarily serves ads, i does not seem to be that concerned about search beyond what is necessary to drive the ads. OTOH, the barriers to entry are much greater, so I do not see any cavalry coming over the hill.
Look at many advancement in "content delivery" and we see that consumer acceptance of the machine is only half the issue. The other half is convincing "content owners" to buy into the product. These are somewhat competing goals. Consumers want a cool product and don't necessarily want to buy new content every time the format changes. Producers want to sell content and make sure consumers can't steal it.
What Apple has done, and is continuing to do, is forcing the "content producers" to stop the chain of forced redundacy. My father replaced discs with 8 tracks with LPs. I replaced tapes with LPs with CDs. Now with music in MP3 form, will I every have to buy an old song again. No. Do I think it was easy for Apple to convince the music label to give up this cash cow. No, even though the labels had little choice because it was the only way to have sales. However, Apple has done us a great favor by insisting on a reasonable price.
Now that the labels have done the hard work, all the other electronic manufacturers are on the band wagon, claiming superior products. The problem is that I buy music in WMP format, I am not any better off than just buying a CD. So I have a choice of buying a player whose songs might have a limited lifetime, or a player that will likely be supported for a long time. Face it, MS has already given up on play for sure, so how long will those songs be useful?
But music isn't really the issue. Apple is moving against the movie studios, and right now video is not even a huge issue. A good quality half hour show is going to be twice as big as a good quality copy of a CD. Other than hugely popular shows, the level of sharing of movies is not as great as music. And despite the fact that the movie studios are not a present threatened, Apple is still forcing them to make deals that will force a new model of making money, even more so than the VCR, which was a huge cash cow, and now the DVD.
And the competition is responding by making MP3 players with radios and 'wireless' sharing, even though we have been sharing "wireless" for years. Maybe if it was a HD radio I might be impressed, but style has always been secondary to content. Look around you. The 12-25 year old demographic is thinking which one of these can I get free music on. It is like the the 12-25 demographic 20 years ago, buying computers based on what had free software. One kid buys a CD, rips it to WMP, ops, can't give load it onto another play for sure player. Another kids rips the CD to ACC. No problem loading it onto many iPods, or burning it onto a CD. As the past 50 years of widely profitable Music has shown, the kids will eventually buy music. And everyone will be rich beyond belief, but the labels ignore history. Just remember how much they hated MTV, and in a large part was responsible for the lack of music on MTV, even though MTV was arguably a major player in the revitalization of music. I see the same thing with iTunes, with people buying music for the first time in years.
Perhaps putting this in another context might be worthwhile. MS has never seemed to be an ivory tower software company. It has not focused on forcing developers to work with best practices. It has not focused on punishing developers who break the rules. Given the diarrhea of frameworks, it does not even seem to have an internal culture or best practices.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Developers, like every one else, are generally lazy and do not really want to do more work than necessary. Firms that sell software do not want to have to pay for more development than necessary. So, if these folks have a choice between an ivory tower software company that will force them to write good code, or a practical software company that will accept mediocre code, and then put in hacks in the OS and applications to make that code run, which company is a rational developer going to choose? So, I believe MS made the choice to the company that tolerated bad coding practices, even though, particularly in the late 80's, they had the technical expertise to do otherwise.
Of course this may cause problems for the user, but forcing good code causes problems for the user anyway, and can lead to users that do not upgrade to the new OS because bad apps will not run. So, at the end of the day, the accommodating bad code seems like a good idea. The problem is that will come a time when, due to maturity and cost, it is no longer beneficial for the OS to tolerate such practices or code. I think this is where MS is. MS WIndows is laden with crap that exists purely to accommodate popular programs. They have failed to use and properly promote best practices, so developers except full access to the low level system commands. Even in application, like IE, bad code is worked with instead of ignored. And now, all of the sudden, they want everyone to magically change their ways without complaints. The low level access, gone. The Hacks, gone. Of course those developers that voluntarily followed the rules feel less pain. But changing things after so long is destined to be painful process. However, we should have little sympathy as the pain is caused by the MS promotion of bad practices.
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But much of what we have is efficiency. Traffic lights and stop signs give everyone an equal chance of getting trough. Yield signs allow faster traffic to be not held up by slower traffic. Various other measures minimize the effect of accidents protect the rest of the traffic from someone's mistake. Many traffic signs tells us what to expect, which allows us to plan, and help keep the traffic moving. Of c course there is always the individual that chooses not to follow the rules, and does not merge properly, or does not yield, or goes too slow, or otherwise gums up the works. With rules we can at least punish that antisocial behavior. Without them we would be sitting on the freeway stopped while the Hummer tries to merge right before the exit.
What South Park does is makes us all look at the inane things we do, and in the process, at least for those of us that are reflective, gives us the opportunity to look at these things from the perspective of others. It is high end requirement for enjoying such a low brow show, but hey, that is why South Park is not Family Guy.
As has been mentioned on numerous occasions, the show does not in particular hate anyone, except for Barbara Steisand, and has no problem with anyone, except for pompous actors, politicians, and other persons. And the one thing we have seen this season, if we can't make fun of everyone, then we shouldn't make fun of anyone.
My solemn hope is that the WOW folks, and other folks who take video games so seriously that they have become so myopic that they cannot phantom anything outside of the game, will complain so much that we have an even more scathing episode, a la Sally Struthers or Scientology. We call it '40 years old and living in your moms garage.'
The problem was that those solutions were very expensive, and what MS did was decouple the OS from the machine to create a myth of an equally powerful cheap machine. I say myth because if all the costs were factored in, the savings often were not that great. What was the benefit is that a person could buy a much more flexible machine, and if they were on a budget, but a lower quality machine than would be available from a company that actually cared about reputaion. As time went on, MS forced it's OS onto every machines, and created the monopoly. Any OEM, really system integrator that actually provided support to the end user, was forced to supply only MS OS, while MS could sit there raking in the profits while doing comparatively little.
But the front line is still, and always will be, the system company. These are the people that provide the front line support. The problem with the PC industry is that though they provide the front line support, they do not in fact reap very much of the profit. MS, who does relatively little, get the money, while all the real producers are fighting for the crumbs. But it is thier decision.
The point is that the long term successful companies are system companies that keep attuned to the users needs. IBM is a good example. HP is a good example. Apple is a good example. In fact, when Apple tried to be a hardware company, with spin off of Claris, the Newton that did not integrate, and a failing OS, the company floundered. It bought into the idea that hardware companies were more viable than system integrators. As much as people wish for Apple clones, supporting every cheap piece of trash on the planer comes at too high of a price.
Even MS is going to be a systems company, if it will survive. It will survive on the XBox, which is an intergrated product. It will survive on phones, if it will ever just make one instead of trying to force the phone companies like it did the computer OEM. Otherwise it will just be a speciality shop, serving legacy machines.
In the case of a very cheap laptop, that could mean a few laptops that could be rented out. A sinle location with a generator and online access. It has been done with cell phones.
There is a growing realization that the primarily economic system that spreading through the world after WWII was various forms of capitalism, not communism, which in the implementation had too much overhead. And in fact this spread of various form of capitalism is a danger to the US as the US has become bloated and uncreative, and other more nimble competitors will produce a better value. Microloans and cheap advanced technology have the possibility of exaggerating this effect because it releases control of the capitalist economy from the big boys that are used to running capitalism like a de-facto command economy. In many ways, I see this fight against the very cheap laptop as a fight to limit the spread of capitalism. This would be as big as the cheap printing press was to the early America.
We see this often with computer and programs. Thinking about how long it take a computer to boot up or wake. Thinking of how many key clicks it takes to get from one place to another. Thinking of the opportunity costs of forcing users to enter 30 character validation keys at every turn.
As long they have funded the sound as additional work, and not just redirected the effort from another project, I see this as a good sign. It could mean that MS Windows will be a tool that people like to use, and not just one they have to use.
But to speak to the point more specifically we can, with some confidence say that Linux would at least implement it so it would not be globally destructive. To illustrate this lets look at two comparable innovation. First, MS wanted to be part of the office network revolution, vis a vis MS Windows for workgroups and the following versions of MS Windows. However, all they really did was let anyone on your network, which became anyone on the internet, access your hardware. This was often the default setting, without user knowledge. Good Idea: A public folder. Bad Idea: a public hard disk.
For the second we can look at IE. MS wanted to get into this new fangled Internet thing, and so they bought some code, reworked it, and eventually got something that was good. It had advance features that let it go beyond a text layout, and achieve the status of an application front end. Of course by 1998 many of the extensions were no longer novel, and other browsers worked fine. For instance, Amazon has always worked on any browser. IE, while useful as an corporate application front end, ceded too much power to the web server, and in the process put the local machine at risk. It was certainly useful for demanding application, but went way to far for the ordinary user. Good idea: Powerful and free browser for the masses. Bad idea: Powerful and free browser that allows terrorists to commandeer any machine they wish.
First, the sample size was 12,000. Where did that number come from? Were the samples picked randomly? Assuming so, is 12,000 a statistically an effective sample size? And if the samples are random, and the size is sufficient, is that 142 articles statistically significant, that is, are the number of matches outside the margin of error? In other words, does the sample size, selection, and methodology, merit a margin of error around 1%.
And then we get to the fact that sometimes wikipedia text is copied to other sites. This in itself leads to the conclusion that wikipedia has some credibility, even if unfounded. I found it interesting that we are not told how many articles off wikipedia were plagiarized. I also wonder what 'Wikipedia appeared to be the one plagiarized' means, and what systematic errors was introduced by that subjective judgement. Perhaps 1%?
There is no question that plagiarism is a big issue, and we all must watch for it. I am on the side that plagiarism in no more an issue than in the past, but with better communication and distribution, we catch it more. At some level, because it so easy to plagiarize now, we perhaps see more egregious cases of it.
What gets me is that an analysis of such low analytical value is news. I am once again amazed at how little people seem to know or care about proper logic. In the end all we know is that some study with questionable methodology produced 142 hits. Not a huge revalation, even if we stipulate the study is of even minimal value.
OTOH, I believe that the opportunity of the young adult to gain some skills and observe how successful people live. Aa we leave our teen age years, we have perspective that allows to become well rounded persons based on what we observe in others. This mean that we can't just hang around peers and process our perceived failings of the day. If we are to have mad skills, and mechanisms to meet real life head on, we must learn those from people who have already been in our position. It is not a credibility thing, that I worked for so and so, or at the famous company, it is a skill thing.
So definitely go out and play. Definitely read some classic books. Definitely sit around for hours and process. But the things to be learned from a person who is where you want to be, and has already gone through the path you wish to take, will be invaluable. What this does not mean is that you get into a major firm where all you will do is get coffee and bragging rights. What this does not mean is you sit alone and code all night. What this may mean is you find some hole in the wall concern, run by competent individuals, and learn what it is that they know.
In spite of this, most of us are just looking for the lottery ticket that will get us the cash with little work, so perhaps jobs with good connections are more important than learning. But if you want to learn, find some competent patient people, and beg to work with them.
But we also see this in situations that are not so human made. Take west nile. Perhaps 1 in 50,000 people might get sick each year, most not enough to notice. Perhaps on in a couple million might die. A person is perhaps 100 times more likely to die in a car accident. (Not that car accidents don't have their own share of profiteering) In the case of west nile, however, the risk is very slight, and yet ad campaigns for various also dangerous products make it seem like if you don't take precautions, the child might as well be on in the middle of a pitched battle in Iraq. Of course, on product, DEET is meant to be used for short periods, in small doses, and not for small children. The mania over west nile probably causes some off label use
In any case, if the US is market driven and democratic, then the firms must be responsive to the market and democratic forces, and not to some arbitrary sense of morals. Some may agree that china is place not to be because of repression, but what about Britain. Today we learn that it is on it's way to becoming the most oppressive government in western europe. And what about the netherlands. Should we move international proceedings out of the Hague because the netherlands are soft on drugs, and, therefore, as President Bush says, contributes to terrorism?
Frankly many things I own are made it china, so I am the one the promotes use in china.
At the end of the day, China is a huge market, and those multinational companies without a presence will unlikely be able to survive. With no MS support, china may move to other standards, and MS will lose. If MS allows it's standard to used by the Chinese without license, then they will have little defense when others do the same.
But I really think it would be cheaper and more honest to set up a site called pravda.gov so that the proletariat can get the real facts directly from the central governing authority.
First, research is being conducted and this research, along with anecdotal evidence, shows that the earth is warming. Now, there are bits and pieces that can be attacked, but the on the whole the data is clear. Of course, faith based reasoning, in which on ignores all facts that might disrupt the cozy world we live in, the cozy world in which some have a divine right to succeed, and others a divine destiny to fial, and looks only at the facts that supports personal belief, cannot believe that the earth might be in trouble, or can only believe that if the earth is in trouble it is again devine destiny, and all we can do is pray so that we might ascend. In the end, it is a question of the possible power of the human, or, in fact, another battle between humanism or not.
So here is the upshot. There are three general responses to the research. First, the earth is warming, some of it is caused by human influence, and therefore we can do something about. Second, the earth is warming, and while some of it might arguably be human influenced, it is our right to exploit the earth, and we must have faith that all will end up well, because it is just going to be too much of a burden for us to do anything about it. Third, the earth is warming but we must leave everything to the divine, and if the earth is to become inhostbitable, well that is just the way it is. There is a fourth, abject denial, but that is just another facet of the third.
I believe that the Bush administration knows that we are in trouble, but cannot do anything about it, so why should the bring it up. Doing what needs to be done will cost them all their power. I mean look at the oil tax subsidies. These were not necessary, and when oil profits became obscene, the administration played a good game, but the subsidies are still there. It is the same with corporate governance. Now that a few has paid the penalty for greed, the rest are trying to build legal barriers so they can plunder, but not be prosecuted.
We are always looking for a silver bullet, and sometimes we kind of get lucky, but most of the time we don't. Everyone forgot the business cycle, and the rules of the economy, and that is why we had the bust of 2000. Everyone forgot again, and we are going to be in trouble with housing. We forget the British or Roman empire, and believe that laws of nature have changed and one small group of fascist dictators, er democratically elected politician, can rule the world.
The funny thing about this faith based reasoning is that it tends to deny the power of the human to have a real effect on the world, but it does not stop those same people from trying to build wealth and power, effectively trying to elevate themselves as close to the divine as possible.
Now MS is demanding that everything be paid for. How much this is going to effect the market is unclear. Most MS software I have owned has either been paid for by my school or places that I work through the normal licensing process. It seems to me that MS has made these licenses more liberal to increase the amount of legitimate software in the wild.
It is true that false positives are annoying to users, but MS has been annoying users for 20 years, and no one seems to care. As long as they get the stuff done at the end of the day, it is worth it. No real alternative exist in most peoples universe.
I get my work done is OO.org, and it is great. Certain things would be easier in MS Office, but I can't afford the software and don't really want to steal it, and even if I could afford it at this point the risk is too great. What if at some point it does not validate, and I can't get work done? This is one reason I let Eudora and started using Mail, even though Mail is crap is comparison.
This trend of keeping the price constant by reducing the amount of product is only continuing. The low end OS will continue to be 'free' with the computer, but much like the entry level car, the pressure to upgrade to the well equipped vehicle will be significant. We already see the upgrade price to be 10-20 percent of the cost of the computer, and the percentage spent on the OS will only increase. The full version of Vista might run twice the price of the full version of XP, so upgrade costs of over $200 will not be unreasonable. That $1200 well equipped desktop could shoot up to $1500. And we are not even talking office machines. If the user wants what is now XP Media Edition, that will likely have to add as much as 20% to the cost.
At the end of the day, we will see what we have seen for the past 10 years. Stiff competition is pushing hardware prices down to the bare minimum, while MS is free to price the OS not in accordance to market forces, but in accordance to internal whims.
So here is what might be done in addition to the above comments. Only install educationally necessary applications. This may include uninstalling things that come with the computer. There is no reason for a student to install anything. Ever. Do not let the teachers have admin privileges, as teachers are suckers for a tearful story about how the kids have to do something forbidden to save their grade.
Set up a white list. The internet in general is not a research tool. Although there is some learning to be had exploring the internet, school is not the place to do so. If they really want to play, they can get a library card and explore on their own time. Allow access to newspapers and reasonable magazines. Access to databases like EBSCO may already be available. Definitely do not allow access to Yahoo, youtube, etc. These merely allow the kids to waste time.
Turn off as much configuration as possible. One of the stupidest thing MS did was allow configuration with a right click. How often do we need to change screen resolution or orientation. How often does on need to change the wall paper in a professional or education environment?
Last thing. Task-bar stays at bottom. Kids know that the teacher cannot monitor is task bar is hidden. Most savvy kids will immediately hide the task bar.
Of course, if IE is not necessary, switch to something else. This is almost security through obscurity, but putting a kid in a strange browser does wonder to restrict their mischief.
As always, people will say I over react. But in school we are there primarily to teach content, secondarily to teach discipline, but always to provide a predictable and safe environment by showing children that the expected boundaries are present.
What the article, and most analysis, misses, is the profound change in the market. A firm should have a plan to compete with other firms, and should try to anticipate future market trends, but cannot predict, and in fact should not build, massive unpredictable trends into the business. So, when the Lisa was in development, the competition was mostly the IBM PC, which was very expensive. Compaq came in around 82, and shifted the market. However, the compaq was still a very expensive machine, but cheaper than and IBM PC. The Mac was created to compete with the new reality.
To give some perspective on the time, let's look at a third player: ATT. ATT created a wonderful not unreasonable priced PC. It had the advantage of running Unix, the only really workable OS we had at the time. I used one. It was great. It failed because it did not anticipate the market as well as Apple, and becuase it did not have as polished a GUI as Apple.
So we are talking hardware here. What about the OS. Well, for most the OS did not matter. People bought computers to run an application or two. The Apple had Excel, just like the Apple had Visicalc. This was one of three things that caused great trouble for Apple. First, when MS Hacked together MS Windows, there was a cheap alternative to Apple. Second, when MS ported Office to MS Windows, the cheap alternative to Apple. Third, the price of the PC went into a sharp decline, and though Apple was still competitive with name brand PCs, the were no longer competitive with the off brand boxes. As a result, significant vertical market began to appear for the PC, often ported from Unix, and the PC became a single vendor solution, despite the fact the major MS FUD was don't buy Apple because it was a single vendor solution.
So how did the Computer industry respond to this. Well, Compaq began using commodity parts, but because it had to rely on MS for the OS, and because it was a serious company with serious research, it is now gone. The ATT machine was never able to compete, even when prices were high. The general quality of the whole industry declined, and we found ourselves in a situation where nothing worked. Except for the Apple which was an expensive machine.
This was until MS Windows 95 when most of the MS hacks were fixed. You could hook up a printer without selling your sole. You still have to do color coded keyboard and mouse. But after 10 years, the PC genuinely worked, and the shift to MS dominance was complete. As all articles state, the fact that the Mac had no serious OS through most of the 90's was also a major factor.
But I would like to state that all the major pricing changed occurred on the hardware side. MS never matched the changes in the price of the OS. This is the problem of the monopoly. Apple has competed hard in quality and price. Intel has competed hard in quality and price. This has given us the wonderful machines we have, and the wonderful OS to run them. OTOH, MS just gathers money, and only occasionally competes. The most annoying thing of all this is that for the most part, outside of few applications, MS Windows does not work well. The major improvements they have made in on the developer side, which is admittedly a good thing to do. But simple things, like account encryption, which would make everyone life easy, is still at least months away.
And there is still a major problem with the myth of the cheap PC. In almost every establishment, there has been a profound lack of support, which results in the PC not being used effeciently.
In the same way, MS Windows, if you run simple applications and games, was a very good choice, particularly through the 90's when people were migrating from Unix and Apple had trouble refreshing Mac OS. Now, however, with vista being increasingly delayed and features dropping away, Mac OS X is becoming a very viable alternative. It is here now, it works, it has a time tested CL interface, and in many ways there is much less vendor lock in than with MS. For instance, the OS Update does not require IE, although MS has gotten rid of that limitation in exchange for an update process that insures the User is running a version of MS Windows that MS believes is legitimate.
You know, I am on the other side of the fence. I appreciate MS for allowing a liberal development process which allows quick and dirty coding in the languages I know, particularly C and C++. But I never believed they were capable of producing an OS that would allow me to work without the OS getting in my way too much. Certainly MS Windows NT proved that they could, but it was never so good to make me move from my Mac. It does not look like MS Vista will do so either.
Apple products tend to be pretty engineered computers, that don't necessarily have the tolerance for the random components. I remember on upgrade where Apple tightened the tolerance on memory, presumable to limit problems, and I had to change out my memory upgrade. The SIMM still worked in the PC, but not the mac. Which is to say that a pro level Mac is to some degree a reliable machine, and should be useful 3-5 years without upgrade. OTOH, if you like to tinker, it will not provide the façade of entertainment that the PC does.
The Mac Pros are likely not any more tinker friendly. They are also not made to work with just whatever component you grab from the bargain bin. For instance, the powermac never really worked with the SCSI card I tried to use for an upgrade. OTOH, the PC is not much better. The upgrades are really only there for the current version of Windows, and there is lag time of about of a year. I tried very hard to get two different wireless adaptors to work with one of my old PCs, and it never quite worked.
Which is why all this user interface crap is so misleading. Most people I now who chose a PC over an Apple did so because they could lots of software from their friends, while they would have to buy software for the Apple. As time went on, the businesses bought the PC because Unix applications were being ported to it. Now it is what people know, and they can get software from work, so it is what they buy. Additionally, with IE only websites, and I mean websites that will only work in IE, no matter what tricks you play, make opportunity cost of purchasing a Mac relatively high. There are educational, government, and corporate entities that believe developing non-IE sites are extraordinarily expensive, and will not even make the effort.
MS cheated redundancy by building the IE dominance. The OS is pretty much secondary compared to that. Combined with the MS Office dominance, MS can continue to put out whatever crap it wishes, and nothing much will change. It is interesting. If IBM had a worldwide monopoly on a communication standard, perhaps MS would not even be an issue.
OTOH, we still often use low stake simulation to teach people skills that are difficult to teach directly. We have student governments. We have athletics with overblown, but necessary, sense of importance. We have any number of young adult social clubs with an annoyingly high level of useless structure, all to try to gently generate skills. These RL situations can become all encompassing waste of times, and often lead to little megalomaniacs that never quite realize how insignificant they really are, but the benifits are still there.
But then, for the part of the population that is sane and rational, the real world intrudes. We realize that resources are limited, we have to live with others, even if they are different, we have to work for our toys, and, in a world where guys will resort to soft fruit, any person who is not extremely objectionable is fair game, at least long enough to procreate. Combine this with the fact that so many of these characteristics can be had by artificial means, and the artifice may not be detected until the bun is in the oven, and evolution seems to be quite out of play.
Now, if the tall slender people are more likely to mate, and keep the refuse out, then perhaps a subspecies will develop. OTOH, given that slenderness can be as much a function of surgery as genetics, it might seen a bit far fetched that a master race will develop.
In any case, it is unclear what the benefit of increasingly tall and frail frames might be. OTOH, it is clear that a tall frail frame has quite a few evolutionary drawbacks, often requiring much more care than a stocky frame.
As far as the timeline is concerned, the 100,000 year number can be found just be extrapolating the geologic record. About 400,000 years ago the first Homo Sapien appeared. About 200,000 years later, the Homo Sapien N appeared. About 100,000 years later, the Homo Sapein S, or us, appeared and apparently wiped out our cousins to become the dominant species. Hominid type have been around for maybe 5 million years, and have had varying degrees of success. Perhaps we have another 100,000 years and the Homo Sapian will be replaced with another Hominid. Certainly the the optomistic view is that another Homo Sapien subspecies will appear, wipe us out, and carry on the Sapien branch.
Even with Google's speed, another search engine could overtake it if a new search technology could be developed. Ad farms have made Google significantly less useful, and since google now primarily serves ads, i does not seem to be that concerned about search beyond what is necessary to drive the ads. OTOH, the barriers to entry are much greater, so I do not see any cavalry coming over the hill.
What Apple has done, and is continuing to do, is forcing the "content producers" to stop the chain of forced redundacy. My father replaced discs with 8 tracks with LPs. I replaced tapes with LPs with CDs. Now with music in MP3 form, will I every have to buy an old song again. No. Do I think it was easy for Apple to convince the music label to give up this cash cow. No, even though the labels had little choice because it was the only way to have sales. However, Apple has done us a great favor by insisting on a reasonable price.
Now that the labels have done the hard work, all the other electronic manufacturers are on the band wagon, claiming superior products. The problem is that I buy music in WMP format, I am not any better off than just buying a CD. So I have a choice of buying a player whose songs might have a limited lifetime, or a player that will likely be supported for a long time. Face it, MS has already given up on play for sure, so how long will those songs be useful?
But music isn't really the issue. Apple is moving against the movie studios, and right now video is not even a huge issue. A good quality half hour show is going to be twice as big as a good quality copy of a CD. Other than hugely popular shows, the level of sharing of movies is not as great as music. And despite the fact that the movie studios are not a present threatened, Apple is still forcing them to make deals that will force a new model of making money, even more so than the VCR, which was a huge cash cow, and now the DVD.
And the competition is responding by making MP3 players with radios and 'wireless' sharing, even though we have been sharing "wireless" for years. Maybe if it was a HD radio I might be impressed, but style has always been secondary to content. Look around you. The 12-25 year old demographic is thinking which one of these can I get free music on. It is like the the 12-25 demographic 20 years ago, buying computers based on what had free software. One kid buys a CD, rips it to WMP, ops, can't give load it onto another play for sure player. Another kids rips the CD to ACC. No problem loading it onto many iPods, or burning it onto a CD. As the past 50 years of widely profitable Music has shown, the kids will eventually buy music. And everyone will be rich beyond belief, but the labels ignore history. Just remember how much they hated MTV, and in a large part was responsible for the lack of music on MTV, even though MTV was arguably a major player in the revitalization of music. I see the same thing with iTunes, with people buying music for the first time in years.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Developers, like every one else, are generally lazy and do not really want to do more work than necessary. Firms that sell software do not want to have to pay for more development than necessary. So, if these folks have a choice between an ivory tower software company that will force them to write good code, or a practical software company that will accept mediocre code, and then put in hacks in the OS and applications to make that code run, which company is a rational developer going to choose? So, I believe MS made the choice to the company that tolerated bad coding practices, even though, particularly in the late 80's, they had the technical expertise to do otherwise.
Of course this may cause problems for the user, but forcing good code causes problems for the user anyway, and can lead to users that do not upgrade to the new OS because bad apps will not run. So, at the end of the day, the accommodating bad code seems like a good idea. The problem is that will come a time when, due to maturity and cost, it is no longer beneficial for the OS to tolerate such practices or code. I think this is where MS is. MS WIndows is laden with crap that exists purely to accommodate popular programs. They have failed to use and properly promote best practices, so developers except full access to the low level system commands. Even in application, like IE, bad code is worked with instead of ignored. And now, all of the sudden, they want everyone to magically change their ways without complaints. The low level access, gone. The Hacks, gone. Of course those developers that voluntarily followed the rules feel less pain. But changing things after so long is destined to be painful process. However, we should have little sympathy as the pain is caused by the MS promotion of bad practices.