The truth is that the structure and integration of MS visual development tools do not encourage good development practices. As an example, I recently had to maintain some code written with VC++. The code was a bad as I have ever seen, being largely hacked together by button commands rather than based on the struture and needs of the problem. I then realized that the structure of the Visual environment encouraged these bad practices, especially if the programmer had not been adequately trained in good basic coding.
It also seemed to me that MS encourges using the style for C, C++, VB, Access and FoxPro. Which is to say that MS makes some decent tools, but it scares me that people are using them to learn to program. After all, programming is more about logic, structure, and use, rather than which menu puts a button on the screen.
The scary bit is that these services will only run on Windows. Presumable, as Windows incorporate new DRM technologies, the services will stop working with old versions, and the user will lose even the minimal right to play the music out the speaker port and copy it to another machine.
It is also of little hope that the services will be ported to Apple or Linux machines. It is also becoming increasingly less hopeful that napster will be allowed to survive. This means that non-Windows users will have to continues to use semi-legit methods to make legit copies of the legally purchases music, which will give various factions more incentive to destroy any OS that is not MS.
...Judge Murphy decided the e-mails, taken together, constituted a legally binding purchase and sale agreement that outlined all the necessary terms of the contract.
IANAL, but this seems like a good thing. The validity of the emails was not in dispute, and the fact that there was a real negotiation was not in dispute. This was simply a sleazy seller who at the last minute decided that the terms did not suit his needs. The issue that got the seller in trouble was that the negotiations were in writing, and he was not willing to perjure himself.
Allowing people to make a legally binding contract with as much ease as the sending of an e-mail may not be in consumers' best interests, some say.
This is the silly part of the story. How many cases have we seen in which sellers has tried to sell goods over the Internet only to back out using the excuse "we had no contract." This is what is bad for consumers, and has always been bad for consumer: sellers who use sleazy tactics to bring in customers, and then weasel out of the sale when the terms are not to their advantage.
In this case, buying and selling a house is an extremely complex matter, which, I suppose, is why people often pay brokers to handle the details. As far as consumer falling into traps, rhere is already protection for people who get tricked into a contract, and ways to prosecute people who use such tactics.
First I, like most people with decent cars, can afford an SUV. The whole point of the SUV of the 90's was to kludge a vehicle together that was big but not much more expensive than a more traditional passenger vehicle. Anyone who can afford a good sedan or sports car can afford an SUV. My actual point is that many people could not afford to run the vehicle without cheap fuel.
Second, gas is subsidized. Many products are; I am not making a value judgement. The government subsidizes gas by paying for, among other things, diplomatic and military missions to insure a continuos and reliable flow of crude and maintaining a strategic reserve(which was tapped when gas prices were politically high). Additionally, I am not in this post advocating a higher tax. I am merely stating that for me, the double of treble of price would not be the end of the world.
4. Sept. 11 Inc., Rampant Greed Division: Gas stations nationwide exploit post-Sept. 11 fears of a fuel shortage by charging customers $4 and $5 per gallon.
I am baffled at how a business magazine could think the gas price hikes of 9/11 was dumb business. People were panicking and filling their tanks at an incredible rate. There is only so much gas at a station, and when it is gone, it takes a while to replace.
I fully support the increase gas prices of that day as a way to moderate demand. After all, there are a lot of people with huge cars that can hold in excess of 30 gallons. Some of those people were getting gas just to get gas. If the higher prices meant that some of those people put 10 gallons of gas in their tanks instead of 20 gallons, I think the price hikes did their jobs. The fact that I did was able to get gas a few days later was, in my opinion, a validation of the higher gas prices.
Ultimately, the problem is caused by the number of people who can only afford to own the cars they do because of cheap gas and other government subsidies. On the other hand, for those of us with cars within our budgets, gas at $1 or $2 or $3 is just not such a big deal.
Heavier vehicles generally do more damage than smaller vehicles...so there generally is a direct correlation between fuel consumption and road use.
Heavier vehicles usually do more damage. Although the gasoline tax correlates to the distance driven it does not necessarily correlate to the amount of damage does to the road. For instance, an SUV might get 12 mpg, while a car might get 30 mpg. If the SUV is twice the weight of the car, that SUV will do up 16 times the damage to the road, but will only pay 2-3 times the amount in gas taxes. Although, the amount of damage will vary based on the tire contact patch and other variable, in general smaller vehicles subsidize larger vehicles.
Your P.O box, however, can only be given mail from the actual Post Office. (I'm making an open-relay analogy) Nobody can walk in from the street and legally place mail into your mailbox.
Your analogy is flawed, as it is illegal for a non-US postal employee to place mail in any mailbox in the U.S. This keeps people from circumventing the U.S. postal service on mail delivery. Therefore, in this respect, a P.O. box has no legal advantages.
As has been discussed, cost keeps junk snail mail to a minimum. Since there is little or no cost to spam, it exists in abundance. If the U.S. postal service delivered mail for nearly free, it would matter little whether one had a PO Box or not. As many people have pointed out, the useful analogy is the telephone, and therefore our best hope is unlisted numbers and proper legislation.
As has been said, will be said, and continues to be true, a blanket mac/pc/*nix recommendation is silly and indicates that the person has not a clue about computer systems, architecture, or use. This is especially true when the criteria are limited to clock speed, memory size, and hard disk space, even within the same family of processor, much less between families.
With respect to processor speed, faster is better and necessary, as always, is a myth. I run a 400 MHz G4. At my last job I ran a 600 MHz or so Pentium. MS office on both machines ran about the same. Netscape on both machines ran about the same. SETI@Home ran faster on the G4. For most of my purposes, the platforms are to close to call. The clock speed for Windows machines needs to be fast not only for hardware reasons, but because MS, unlike Apple, has a tendency to shamelessly waste cycles.
The same is true for hard disk space. By current standards I have a very small hard disk on my G4, around 9 GB. With MacOS 9 and a very full compliment of programs and data loaded, including Virtual PC, and 640-MB virtual disk, I still have 3 GB left. Again, MS like to waste space, so a machine that runs windows needs a larger hard disk.
I may get a Windows machine if I use it regularly. The hectic upgrade and patch schedule has kept from acquiring one in the past. Likewise, I need to get a *nix machine up and running again. I just haven't had the spare hardware. Until then, my trusty G4 will serve and protect me for the evil empire. It costs more, but what can you do.
As others have mentioned, this is just a letter from a company that did not do proper contingency planning. I have been there, and the thing that I have learned is no one really cares. Yes, there is some brief sympathy. In general, as we all know, if you piss off a customer they will go somewhere else. It doesn't matter if it is your fault or the supplier's fault. In this case, emulators.com believed Apple, who has been working for 10 years to do this upgrade, and Microsoft who has not been able to produce a stable release for 15 years. They also have seemed to fall for the Microsoft Idea that there will always be clock cycles to waste. Unfortunately, Microsoft has already wasted all the gates, thus leaving no slack for developers.
What is really troublesome, however, are the many misstatements. First and foremost, no one has to use download OS X . The only people who will do this are the developers, the people who actually want to beta test, and those stupid people mentioned in the rant. When it does ship, Apple is going to try to make it fit in 64MB, just like OS 9. I don't necessarily believe them, but I have not seen a operating system from Apple or MS in the last few years that runs well on less than 128 MB. If someone wants OS X right now, then there is going to be a price to pay. It always cost more to be the first, and only the truly pathetic whine about it.
Second is the total lack of understanding, dare I say ignorance, of the differences in the business models between Microsoft and Apple. I suspect that these differences have something to do with the fact that Apple has generally sold total solutions, while Microsoft has only sold individual components. In any case, Apple has generally been happy to orphan some systems, while Microsoft has generally tried to provide some sense of backward compatability. It is clearly in Microsoft's best interest to provide backward compatibility as they only make money if they sell the operating system. It is easier to sell a new operating system if it runs the legacy applications. Likewise, it is in Microsoft's best interest to write applications, and to get others to write applications, that run only on the latest operating system. Again, users will be forced to upgrade to the new OS if they want to use the new applications. And, as has been established, it is in Microsoft's best interest to promote emulators, so that they can increase the sales of the operating system.
Conversely, Apple just wants to sell new machines. If a customer does not want to buy a new machine, that is fine. They can run the old software. The old software, say system 7.5 with that beautiful version of MS Word, or MacWrite from the early 90's, is generally going to be stable enough. Apple got their money, and they do not do free support for ancient machines. I myself have a 16 MHz Performa that still functions for writing and email. However, if the user wants the latest and greatest thing, they are going to have to upgrade to a new machine every few years. It is no different in the Windows world. I don't know many people who people who use a Intel machine for more than a few years. The only difference is that Apple does not need to create the illusion that such a thing is possible. Apple orphaned the Apple//, the 68K Macs, and now the original PPC's. It's not such a big deal. I don't see anyone running 100 MHz Pentiums. Sure, they could if they wanted to. But, as I said, I still run a 16 MHz 68040. On the other hand, Apple does make an effort to encourage applications that will run a wide variety of Apples. There is a lot of software out there that only requires a fast 68K, or at wost a PPC, and System 7.5. One of the most notable exceptions is MS Office. Finally, it may not be in Apples best interest to have emulators for their OS. No machine sales mean less profit.
So, there are no fundamental problems with the business model of MS or Apple. Most of the problems with the competitors of MS can be traced to the now judged, although waiting for appeal, illegal activities of MS. I do agree that there is little difference between desktop computers. I have been saying that for years. Give me a computer, give me a compiler and I will figure out how to write a program. The differences are not al that great. But just because there are no fundamental technological differences between desktop computers, does not mean that there are not fundamental business differences.
It is totally unacceptable to post a picture labeled 'hot teen.jpg' and report all persons that downloads it as a pedophile. Admittedly, the pedophile that does download it is hoping that it is a naked boy, but not every download represents such a person. Ignoring the ambiguity of the title, one can ask if there is anything wrong with a 16 year old boy coveting a 16 year old girl in a bikini?
Zeropaid.com's behavior is extremely dishonorable. The fact that they are apparently making such accusations behind peoples back makes their actions increasingly disgraceful. There is no excuse to harass innocent individuals in the hope of catching a few criminals. I will, admit, however, that they would have every right to kick such persons off their service, if such a policy were evenly enforced.
The fact is that in the U.S.A. a person has the right to look at people of the opposite sex without being called straight; listen to Rush L. without being called a conservative; go into a Baptist church without being called a Christian; and, yes, even look at an ad of a scantily clad little boy resting on his fathers chest outside in a hammock (potentially scanned in as cute little boy and his hot dad in bed), without being called a pedophile.
Pedophilia is a crime that does untold amounts of damage. However, I think most people have enough trouble just trying to pay bills and getting their kids home safely. We don't need vigilantes making our lives even more difficult.
Sounds accurate to me
on
Silicon Hell
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· Score: 4
I spent 10 years cleaning wafers, creating devices, and creating blanks. The article matches my experience. A wafer fab is just a glorified machine shop. We often use the vilest chemicals: intelligent people are suitable terrified. We all know people who got their finger cut off. We also know people who had to go to the hospital to get get calcium shots so the hydrofluoric acid would not destroy their bones. Horseplay leads to a friend falling into a vat of solution and turning blue for a week.
A problem with chemical safety is we only recently understood the risks. It was not so long ago that toulene and xylene were used as freely as rubbing alcohol. We now know better. One of my memories is the day that I finally convinced the people at a fab that acetone was actually dangerous. I spent a year trying to convince everyone that we needed fume hoods and carriers. When everyone had finally read and understood the MSDS, there was a push to get rid of all the acetone. This, of course, was an overreaction. I worked out some numbers to show which cases were safe and which weren't. The key was for everyone to understand how to safely use the chemical, and try to use it in an inherently safe way. We must remember that the accident in Japan was caused by worker confusion, supervisor pressure, and deprivation of needed resources.
My main desire is that companies take an extremely objective look at the safety issues, the alternatives, and not put business expediency above the objective conclusions.
BTW, a good book that talks about, among other things, the difficulty of matching medical cause and effect is A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.
Slashdot Mirror
It also seemed to me that MS encourges using the style for C, C++, VB, Access and FoxPro. Which is to say that MS makes some decent tools, but it scares me that people are using them to learn to program. After all, programming is more about logic, structure, and use, rather than which menu puts a button on the screen.
It is also of little hope that the services will be ported to Apple or Linux machines. It is also becoming increasingly less hopeful that napster will be allowed to survive. This means that non-Windows users will have to continues to use semi-legit methods to make legit copies of the legally purchases music, which will give various factions more incentive to destroy any OS that is not MS.
IANAL, but this seems like a good thing. The validity of the emails was not in dispute, and the fact that there was a real negotiation was not in dispute. This was simply a sleazy seller who at the last minute decided that the terms did not suit his needs. The issue that got the seller in trouble was that the negotiations were in writing, and he was not willing to perjure himself.
Allowing people to make a legally binding contract with as much ease as the sending of an e-mail may not be in consumers' best interests, some say.
This is the silly part of the story. How many cases have we seen in which sellers has tried to sell goods over the Internet only to back out using the excuse "we had no contract." This is what is bad for consumers, and has always been bad for consumer: sellers who use sleazy tactics to bring in customers, and then weasel out of the sale when the terms are not to their advantage.
In this case, buying and selling a house is an extremely complex matter, which, I suppose, is why people often pay brokers to handle the details. As far as consumer falling into traps, rhere is already protection for people who get tricked into a contract, and ways to prosecute people who use such tactics.
Second, gas is subsidized. Many products are; I am not making a value judgement. The government subsidizes gas by paying for, among other things, diplomatic and military missions to insure a continuos and reliable flow of crude and maintaining a strategic reserve(which was tapped when gas prices were politically high). Additionally, I am not in this post advocating a higher tax. I am merely stating that for me, the double of treble of price would not be the end of the world.
I am baffled at how a business magazine could think the gas price hikes of 9/11 was dumb business. People were panicking and filling their tanks at an incredible rate. There is only so much gas at a station, and when it is gone, it takes a while to replace.
I fully support the increase gas prices of that day as a way to moderate demand. After all, there are a lot of people with huge cars that can hold in excess of 30 gallons. Some of those people were getting gas just to get gas. If the higher prices meant that some of those people put 10 gallons of gas in their tanks instead of 20 gallons, I think the price hikes did their jobs. The fact that I did was able to get gas a few days later was, in my opinion, a validation of the higher gas prices.
Ultimately, the problem is caused by the number of people who can only afford to own the cars they do because of cheap gas and other government subsidies. On the other hand, for those of us with cars within our budgets, gas at $1 or $2 or $3 is just not such a big deal.
Heavier vehicles usually do more damage. Although the gasoline tax correlates to the distance driven it does not necessarily correlate to the amount of damage does to the road. For instance, an SUV might get 12 mpg, while a car might get 30 mpg. If the SUV is twice the weight of the car, that SUV will do up 16 times the damage to the road, but will only pay 2-3 times the amount in gas taxes. Although, the amount of damage will vary based on the tire contact patch and other variable, in general smaller vehicles subsidize larger vehicles.
Your analogy is flawed, as it is illegal for a non-US postal employee to place mail in any mailbox in the U.S. This keeps people from circumventing the U.S. postal service on mail delivery. Therefore, in this respect, a P.O. box has no legal advantages.
As has been discussed, cost keeps junk snail mail to a minimum. Since there is little or no cost to spam, it exists in abundance. If the U.S. postal service delivered mail for nearly free, it would matter little whether one had a PO Box or not. As many people have pointed out, the useful analogy is the telephone, and therefore our best hope is unlisted numbers and proper legislation.
this seems to be bad link...mod it down to -1
With respect to processor speed, faster is better and necessary, as always, is a myth. I run a 400 MHz G4. At my last job I ran a 600 MHz or so Pentium. MS office on both machines ran about the same. Netscape on both machines ran about the same. SETI@Home ran faster on the G4. For most of my purposes, the platforms are to close to call. The clock speed for Windows machines needs to be fast not only for hardware reasons, but because MS, unlike Apple, has a tendency to shamelessly waste cycles.
The same is true for hard disk space. By current standards I have a very small hard disk on my G4, around 9 GB. With MacOS 9 and a very full compliment of programs and data loaded, including Virtual PC, and 640-MB virtual disk, I still have 3 GB left. Again, MS like to waste space, so a machine that runs windows needs a larger hard disk.
I may get a Windows machine if I use it regularly. The hectic upgrade and patch schedule has kept from acquiring one in the past. Likewise, I need to get a *nix machine up and running again. I just haven't had the spare hardware. Until then, my trusty G4 will serve and protect me for the evil empire. It costs more, but what can you do.
What is really troublesome, however, are the many misstatements. First and foremost, no one has to use download OS X . The only people who will do this are the developers, the people who actually want to beta test, and those stupid people mentioned in the rant. When it does ship, Apple is going to try to make it fit in 64MB, just like OS 9. I don't necessarily believe them, but I have not seen a operating system from Apple or MS in the last few years that runs well on less than 128 MB. If someone wants OS X right now, then there is going to be a price to pay. It always cost more to be the first, and only the truly pathetic whine about it.
Second is the total lack of understanding, dare I say ignorance, of the differences in the business models between Microsoft and Apple. I suspect that these differences have something to do with the fact that Apple has generally sold total solutions, while Microsoft has only sold individual components. In any case, Apple has generally been happy to orphan some systems, while Microsoft has generally tried to provide some sense of backward compatability. It is clearly in Microsoft's best interest to provide backward compatibility as they only make money if they sell the operating system. It is easier to sell a new operating system if it runs the legacy applications. Likewise, it is in Microsoft's best interest to write applications, and to get others to write applications, that run only on the latest operating system. Again, users will be forced to upgrade to the new OS if they want to use the new applications. And, as has been established, it is in Microsoft's best interest to promote emulators, so that they can increase the sales of the operating system.
Conversely, Apple just wants to sell new machines. If a customer does not want to buy a new machine, that is fine. They can run the old software. The old software, say system 7.5 with that beautiful version of MS Word, or MacWrite from the early 90's, is generally going to be stable enough. Apple got their money, and they do not do free support for ancient machines. I myself have a 16 MHz Performa that still functions for writing and email. However, if the user wants the latest and greatest thing, they are going to have to upgrade to a new machine every few years. It is no different in the Windows world. I don't know many people who people who use a Intel machine for more than a few years. The only difference is that Apple does not need to create the illusion that such a thing is possible. Apple orphaned the Apple //, the 68K Macs, and now the original PPC's. It's not such a big deal. I don't see anyone running 100 MHz Pentiums. Sure, they could if they wanted to. But, as I said, I still run a 16 MHz 68040. On the other hand, Apple does make an effort to encourage applications that will run a wide variety of Apples. There is a lot of software out there that only requires a fast 68K, or at wost a PPC, and System 7.5. One of the most notable exceptions is MS Office. Finally, it may not be in Apples best interest to have emulators for their OS. No machine sales mean less profit.
So, there are no fundamental problems with the business model of MS or Apple. Most of the problems with the competitors of MS can be traced to the now judged, although waiting for appeal, illegal activities of MS. I do agree that there is little difference between desktop computers. I have been saying that for years. Give me a computer, give me a compiler and I will figure out how to write a program. The differences are not al that great. But just because there are no fundamental technological differences between desktop computers, does not mean that there are not fundamental business differences.
Zeropaid.com's behavior is extremely dishonorable. The fact that they are apparently making such accusations behind peoples back makes their actions increasingly disgraceful. There is no excuse to harass innocent individuals in the hope of catching a few criminals. I will, admit, however, that they would have every right to kick such persons off their service, if such a policy were evenly enforced.
The fact is that in the U.S.A. a person has the right to look at people of the opposite sex without being called straight; listen to Rush L. without being called a conservative; go into a Baptist church without being called a Christian; and, yes, even look at an ad of a scantily clad little boy resting on his fathers chest outside in a hammock (potentially scanned in as cute little boy and his hot dad in bed), without being called a pedophile.
Pedophilia is a crime that does untold amounts of damage. However, I think most people have enough trouble just trying to pay bills and getting their kids home safely. We don't need vigilantes making our lives even more difficult.
A problem with chemical safety is we only recently understood the risks. It was not so long ago that toulene and xylene were used as freely as rubbing alcohol. We now know better. One of my memories is the day that I finally convinced the people at a fab that acetone was actually dangerous. I spent a year trying to convince everyone that we needed fume hoods and carriers. When everyone had finally read and understood the MSDS, there was a push to get rid of all the acetone. This, of course, was an overreaction. I worked out some numbers to show which cases were safe and which weren't. The key was for everyone to understand how to safely use the chemical, and try to use it in an inherently safe way. We must remember that the accident in Japan was caused by worker confusion, supervisor pressure, and deprivation of needed resources.
My main desire is that companies take an extremely objective look at the safety issues, the alternatives, and not put business expediency above the objective conclusions.
BTW, a good book that talks about, among other things, the difficulty of matching medical cause and effect is A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.