Re:What is with the fascination with Einstein's br
on
Driving Mr. Albert
·
· Score: 2
how much of his own and other people's time did Einstein waste with his misdirected GUT work, the cosmological constant, and arguing against quantum mechanics?
How is arguing against a scientific theory a
waste of time? Scientific theories which go
unchallenged are worthless, no matter which
side is correct, popular, orthodox, etc.
although I can't help wondering what they really think is in it for them?
It may be pretty clear to IBM by now that they
don't have any chance of dominating the software
market on their own, and the most likely scenario,
if things continue as they are now, is that it will end up being even more completely dominated
by MS, even on the server side. Much better for
IBM if the software market is dominated by open
software, of which they can at least be a part,
rather than being completely at MS' dubious mercy.
Other possible factors: I believe IBM may have larger revenues from consulting and such than from software sales. They can get more
software bang for their research and development
bucks with open source development, since they
hopefully have a large community helping out.
Plus there is the problem of convincing enough people to switch to C# when it offers only marginal benfits over Java.
I doubt that'll be much of a problem, MS can make
C# the language of choice for writing Windows
apps, and the Windows cult will follow. I suspect
IBM will have a hard time truly adopting C#,
both because it will be tied to Windows (that
was the whole point of ditching Java and coming
up with C#, Sun wouldn't let MS make a
Windows-locked version of Java), and, as you
say,
Microsoft can change IL however it likes with each upgrade to C#, making sure everyone else (including IBM) plays catch-up to MS and can't really produce a good C# compiler.
There really are no compelling arguments against libertarianism that I''ve seen.
Libertarianism is great in theory, the same
way that Communism is. It's the ideal that
if the rules of society were set up _just_right_,
everything will work perfectly because people
will behave logically. The reality is that people
will always seek to exploit or circumvent the
rules to gain more power/material goods for
themselves. So strip the government of power
and someone else (big corporations) will take
it for themselves.
Libertarianism appeals to techies because
it assumes a society which works like a computer,
exactly following the rules programmed into it.
The real world is a much messier place.
I remember awhile back though there was some flap about sun withdrawing Java from the standards process. Have they changed their position, or is this just a media trick?
The flap was about totally submitting control of the Java spec to an official international committee (ISO maybe? Something like that anyway). The new deal lets Sun keep a (hopefully) benevolent dictatorship over the process.
One issue with an ISO type committee is that they tend to be very slow - how often has the C++ spec been updated? Twice? This encourages compiler vendors to come up with proprietary extensions to meet developers' needs. Java is currently moving far faster than an ISO committee could possibly handle.
Perl is a good example of something completely open that anyone could run away with
... perl scripts run on more platforms than java does
Anyone *could* run away with perl, but they haven't. Nobody other than Larry makes a version of Perl, and that's why it's successful. It gives me the impression that Sun wants to maintain that 'Brand' recognition (i.e. Sun's Java). Such is the way of corporations. You would think that that would have learned. Totally unfair, what Sun is rightfully afraid of is that Java will go the way of Unix - 57 different flavors, each of which requires a modifications to a Makefile to even compile, much less run. The fact that Microsoft has already attempted to pollute Java is more than enough justification to keep the language centrally managed. The only argument I could see for decentralizing the standard is if the managing body were too slow to update it to meet new needs, which would result in proprietary (and incompatible) vendor extensions to meet user demands, but so far that's not even close to being a problem. Java's development process ain't broke.
The market is purely supply and demand. As long as their is supply in the form of cash, stocks will continue to rise.
This reasoning (if you can call it that) is exactly why we're in a bubble. The stock market is not about supply and demand (not in the long term anyway), it's about ownership of companies. The price you pay for a company should be based on what it is likely to earn.
When you get a bunch of people investing in companies based on "I want to own a hot.com stock", you get into situations where people are paying $1.20 for $1.00 of value, in the hopes that someone else will pay $1.50. This doesn't make the intrinsic value of the company go up.
I'm sure he'd love to see P/E ratios around 8.0 as they may have been 40 years ago, however 40 years ago a little $1500 box couldn't do the work of 10 white-collar employees
Uhh, do you even know what a P/E ratio is? Here's a hint: the "P" stands for "Price", and "E" stands for "Earnings". A P/E of 8.0 means you are paying $8 for each $1 a company earns. Company A made $100 in 1960, so with a P/E of 8.0 they were worthing paying $800 for. You are saying that company B.com now makes a profit of $1,000, thanks to the wonders of technology, so you think paying $80,000 is a now good deal.
Wanna buy a bridge? Some swampland? I got some genuine Rolex watches for you, $10 each!
I have to hope you're trolling, but the fact that the market is where it is today suggests that there are people who really are that ignorant.
I don't really see why a company would care if someone "hacked" apart their product. I understand their are cases where the service they sell is the money maker, but otherwise, who cares... not me.
Those little boxes are awesome.
You should care - hacking the boxes is fine - they don't seem to mind it. The problem comes if you're buying the box just to hack it and use it outside of their service. These guys are selling these boxes at less than what it costs them to make them. If you hack the box and don't subscribe to their service, they won't be able to continue selling those "awesome" boxes.
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how much of his own and other people's time did Einstein waste with his misdirected GUT work, the cosmological constant, and arguing against quantum mechanics?
How is arguing against a scientific theory a waste of time? Scientific theories which go unchallenged are worthless, no matter which side is correct, popular, orthodox, etc.
although I can't help wondering what they really think is in it for them?
It may be pretty clear to IBM by now that they don't have any chance of dominating the software market on their own, and the most likely scenario, if things continue as they are now, is that it will end up being even more completely dominated by MS, even on the server side. Much better for IBM if the software market is dominated by open software, of which they can at least be a part, rather than being completely at MS' dubious mercy.
Other possible factors: I believe IBM may have larger revenues from consulting and such than from software sales. They can get more software bang for their research and development bucks with open source development, since they hopefully have a large community helping out.
Plus there is the problem of convincing enough people to switch to C# when it offers only marginal benfits over Java.
I doubt that'll be much of a problem, MS can make C# the language of choice for writing Windows apps, and the Windows cult will follow. I suspect IBM will have a hard time truly adopting C#, both because it will be tied to Windows (that was the whole point of ditching Java and coming up with C#, Sun wouldn't let MS make a Windows-locked version of Java), and, as you say,
Microsoft can change IL however it likes with each upgrade to C#, making sure everyone else (including IBM) plays catch-up to MS and can't really produce a good C# compiler.
(See OS/2 and Windows app compatibility)
There really are no compelling arguments against libertarianism that I''ve seen.
Libertarianism is great in theory, the same way that Communism is. It's the ideal that if the rules of society were set up _just_right_, everything will work perfectly because people will behave logically. The reality is that people will always seek to exploit or circumvent the rules to gain more power/material goods for themselves. So strip the government of power and someone else (big corporations) will take it for themselves.
Libertarianism appeals to techies because it assumes a society which works like a computer, exactly following the rules programmed into it. The real world is a much messier place.
I remember awhile back though there was some flap about sun withdrawing Java from the standards process. Have they changed their position, or is this just a media trick?
The flap was about totally submitting control of the Java spec to an official international committee (ISO maybe? Something like that anyway). The new deal lets Sun keep a (hopefully) benevolent dictatorship over the process.
One issue with an ISO type committee is that they tend to be very slow - how often has the C++ spec been updated? Twice? This encourages compiler vendors to come up with proprietary extensions to meet developers' needs. Java is currently moving far faster than an ISO committee could possibly handle.
Perl is a good example of something completely open that anyone could run away with
... perl scripts run on more platforms than java does
Anyone *could* run away with perl, but they haven't. Nobody other than Larry makes a version of Perl, and that's why it's successful.
It gives me the impression that Sun wants to maintain that 'Brand' recognition (i.e. Sun's Java). Such is the way of corporations. You would think that that would have learned. Totally unfair, what Sun is rightfully afraid of is that Java will go the way of Unix - 57 different flavors, each of which requires a modifications to a Makefile to even compile, much less run. The fact that Microsoft has already attempted to pollute Java is more than enough justification to keep the language centrally managed.
The only argument I could see for decentralizing the standard is if the managing body were too slow to update it to meet new needs, which would result in proprietary (and incompatible) vendor extensions to meet user demands, but so far that's not even close to being a problem.
Java's development process ain't broke.
The sun.
The market is purely supply and demand. As long as their is supply in the form of cash, stocks will continue to rise.
.com stock", you get into situations where people are paying $1.20 for $1.00 of value, in the hopes that someone else will pay $1.50. This doesn't make the intrinsic value of the company go up.
This reasoning (if you can call it that) is exactly why we're in a bubble. The stock market is not about supply and demand (not in the long term anyway), it's about ownership of companies. The price you pay for a company should be based on what it is likely to earn.
When you get a bunch of people investing in companies based on "I want to own a hot
I'm sure he'd love to see P/E ratios around 8.0 as they may have been 40 years ago, however 40 years ago a little $1500 box couldn't do the work of 10 white-collar employees
Uhh, do you even know what a P/E ratio is? Here's a hint: the "P" stands for "Price", and "E" stands for "Earnings". A P/E of 8.0 means you are paying $8 for each $1 a company earns. Company A made $100 in 1960, so with a P/E of 8.0 they were worthing paying $800 for. You are saying that company B.com now makes a profit of $1,000, thanks to the wonders of technology, so you think paying $80,000 is a now good deal.
Wanna buy a bridge? Some swampland? I got some genuine Rolex watches for you, $10 each!
I have to hope you're trolling, but the fact that the market is where it is today suggests that there are people who really are that ignorant.
I don't really see why a company would care if someone "hacked" apart their product. I understand their are cases where the service they sell is the money maker, but otherwise, who cares... not me.
Those little boxes are awesome.
You should care - hacking the boxes is fine - they don't seem to mind it. The problem comes if you're buying the box just to hack it and use it outside of their service. These guys are selling these boxes at less than what it costs them to make them. If you hack the box and don't subscribe to their service, they won't be able to continue selling those "awesome" boxes.