You say "old people" walker like it's a bad thing. My brother-in-law has MD and an exoskeleton that would give him back his independence (imagine going through puberty and having to have your mother help you go to the bathroom) would be worth its weight in gold.
I suspect the sarcastic reference to the exoskeleton walker was implying that its intent was primarily for military, not medical, applications. Nobody (I hope) would suggest that an appliance that could give mobility to people who are not ambulatory is a bad thing.
Good, solid, open-sourced applications are few and far between. The fact that anyone can work on it is nice, but it seems like that just means that the application will be a never-ending beta..that takes 5 years to develop rather than 6 months.
Consider:
Good, solid, non-free applications are also few and far between. Furthermore, the "never-ending beta" is the often due to the fact that the free software developers are often committed to producing a quality product before they call a product "version 1". The difference in the non-free software development environment is that customer commitments, funding issues, and marketing concerns force companies to release beta quality software sometimes for years before it is what customers would consider "production quality".
Briefly, good, solid applications are rare, whether they are based on free software or non-free software. The assumption that non-free software is by definition high quality is sadly misinformed.
Choice is all fine and good. Howver were the "choice" crowd fails is in realizing that decisions have consequences, and they don't want to bear them. Is it any wonder the majority don't take the "choice" crowd and their stance seriously?
Actually, my understanding is that 58% is a majority. The consequence of the choice made by the majority appears to be that advertisers are being deprived of the ability to more efficiently separate those people from their money.
First, It's not clear to me why someone would believe this is a consequence that the majority who chose would not be willing to bear. Second, it appears that the advertisers who are being thwarted are indeed taking the "choice" crowd seriously, and therefore finding new ways to infiltrate people's computer systems.
That said, I do appreciate the opportunity to learn how the minds unrepentant marketers, as represented in the parent post, justify their invasions of their victims' privacy. They truly believe that there are dire consequences to our failure to accomodate their insidious behaviour.
From my experience fighting is the first refuge of the idiot.
Whether it's the last or first refuge of the idiot, I'm not certain. However, we can surely learn the definitive answer by watching what this guy does.
These systems are set up with monster databases that track "users" of the system. If you really think that you could be wanted by the FBI and have one of these toll devices and not get caught, your are either lying or are an idiot.
From a "tracking" point of view, it is not clear to me how this system differs (except in efficiency) from the system of license plates and vehicle registration. They are not in place to "track" the movements of all motor vehicles, but to provide information that allows those vehicles to be regulated. (In the case of the toll systems, the toll tags provide the additional benefits of proper billing and maintenance of the system.)
If your concern is that the government is able to regulate who is allowed to operate a motor vehicle and where, then you are facing a more fundamental problem. "Fixing" the issue from your point of view would require elimination of most laws regulating transportation.
Most people I know who are concerned that their travel is being "tracked" by the entities running the automated toll systems are those who have realized that it is possible to calculate their average speed based on arrival times at succeeding tolls. What if they used this information to start issuing speeding tickets to unsafe drivers? The horror!
You are undoubtedly aware that, as in Florida, a number of people in Texas consider it their "right" to drive, intoxicated, at 100 mph in heavy traffic until slamming into a minivan full of children. I am not even slightly averse to making the control of this behaviour easier in spite of the fact it might become possible for law enforcement officers to easily discover the same information already available to them by looking up my license plate in their database.
It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.
Actually, it's not a problem. Yeah, people don't know "how to use TLD's properly", but they really don't need to.
Other people have correctly pointed out that if you can get to a site through the search engines, the URL doesn't matter. Generally, if you can't get a site through the search engines, it doesn't matter much either, because that means the links you would expect to a given site from advertisements, reviews, etc, don't exist because they weren't seeded by the domain owner.
The real problems top level domains address are national identity and overload of the.com domain.
Joe Schmoe doesn't want to type in the URL, ever, so it's irrelevant if regular people don't understand the meaning (or lack thereof) of the top level domains.
Both of which mean they just dont care who gets voted in.
Or, perhaps, they're like most of the people I know, and they're going to wait till the last minute to vote... but they are going to vote.
Jeepers, I have never known such a bunch of "do it at the last minute" bunch of people as my fellow software developers; I'm shocked that so many people don't understand and expect that behaviour.
Oh, and perhaps we should keep in mind that this is only the fourth year that statistics have been kept on voting rates. It was not only unsurprising, but extremely likely that this year would have either the relatively highest or lowest voting rates at this point since voting rates were tracked.
In short, what on earth is the hoopla about? This is a statistical inevitability, not a signal of decline or apathy.
Secondly, your web browser analogy is meaningless because the Kazaa people knew exactly what they were dealing with when they started, and they figured they could be like Napster and make a quick buck piggybacking off pirates.
Well, Mr. "InfiniteWisdom", while I appreciate that Kazaa may indeed have planned to facilitate piracy on a massive scale, if you had actually read the article, you might have noticed that the companies in question were Grokster and Streamcast Networks.
I'm willing to believe the "Infinite" part, but the rest... hmmm.
You may not get back as much as the full time resident but you are still using NY's infrastructure.
False. The state of New York does not own the phone lines, cables, or IT infrastructure that makes this possible. In fact, the state of New York already taxes the entities who do own these things.
You also get an benefit from telecommuting (less commuting time to office, lower property taxes, etc..).
Irrelevant and misleading. The state of New York gets a greater benefit of you not causing wear and tear on the infrastructure actually owned by the state (roads, bridges, schools, libraries, etc) while you generate revenue for a corporation based in and taxed by the state of New York, revenue which adds to the state tax coffers.
Finally, if its so wrong, why not just work in your home state (answer: you'll get a salary you'd probably never be able to get in your home state).
The point is that the person in question is working in his own state. For example, I have a friend who works for a company based in the state of New York with employees many different states. Many of those states believe (correctly, I believe) that they have the right to be compensated by means of their tax systems for the services provided to the employees of this company. It is very unlikely that many of the other states in question would be impressed by the argument that those employees are not actually working in the states in which they actually do work.
Ultimately, the questions raised by the avaricious exploitation by the state of New York of out-of-state employees of a company based in New York are a matter of interstate commerce, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Strange, strange comment to come from the guy. Sounds like a man that can't separate his mindset from that of an authoritarian regime. Nothing happens that we (the government) didn't want to happen, even if it happened on its own, since we could have stopped it anytime.
Consider, in fairness to Zhao, that he is paid not to separate his mindset from that of his government. That is precisely his job. To expect something different is to be extremely unfair to him.
Read me now...ALL INFORMATION THAT EXISTS IS BIASED.
Not so, mister smarty-pants. For example, the information I get from Fox News is not biased. It's Fair and Balanced. Seriously. It says so right up front, so it must be true. Who could call that biased?
While there are artists like Chuck D who like file-sharing, that's their choice./. pirates don't want you to know about all the artists who are against their music being pirated without their permission. The reason is that pirates always try to paint their activities as some sort of revolution for the artists against the big, bad record labels. It's not the case...piracy is just people wanting to get stuff for free.
Nice; flame the Slashdot readers by calling them all pirates. A work of genius.
To be sure, piracy is just people trying to get stuff for free by illegal means. However, peer-to-peer file sharing has no more to do with pirating multimedia content than using a web browser on the internet has to do with violating copyrights.
Do you consider your use of a web browser on the internet to be nothing more than a means that allows you to violate the copyrights of others?
I think the parent's point was that the mechanic won't send you back to the gas station (or restaurant, as may be the case) where you got the bad gas to get the bad gas fixed.
So I'm agreeing with Om Malik about blogger credibility, and disagreeing with anyone who blanketly declares that bloggers have no credibility.
Fair enough, my wookie friend.;-)
However, consider this: I suspect generally the blanket dismissal of bloggers often has to do with their lack of editorial review and fact checking. This can result in unpredictable quality information even from subject matter experts.
To be sure, the "real media" often suffers from similar reliability issues, despite the availability of such quality controls. Furthermore, the lack of expertise and an inclination toward mass-consumable "information" tends to render articles about any type of technical information at best oversimplified, and at worst, complete misrepresentations of the facts.
Only in specialized journals for the appropriate fields are technical issues discussed in a coherent form with the benefit of expert review.
In my case, while I might indeed be interested in the off-the-cuff views Linus Torvalds might present in a blog, I would be more confident that a book he wrote or and article in the ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review would provide an intellectually rigorous presentation of his views on operating system design.
This leads to an interesting phenomenon: Questionable blog posts and dumbed-down big media publications can be news regardless of their accuracy or quality, while specialized technical/academic journals rarely garner enough attention to be known. Things are only news if enough people know about them.
Would you ever buy a book about linux by Linus Torvalds ? Would you ever watch a TV broadcast about lizards hosted by a guy who has studied lizards all his life ? Then why don't you think some bloggers can have credibility ?
The weird part is that I can't tell whether this comment means to imply that bloggers have credibility or not. But as I think about it.... Aha! This is a wild mutation of the Chewbacca defense. It does not make sense!
If Chewbacca lived on Endor, bloggers must have credibility! The defense rests.
They are both filthy stinkin rich, hate google, and dream of a new world order?
On one hand, the first item in that list is a documented fact. On the other hand, the comment is, as a whole, a troll. Curiously, most of the posts that follow are even less interested in the facts.
It is interesting how unapologetically ignorant so many my fellow US citizens are willing to be when they:
1. Didn't realize that the Slashdot summary misrepresented the nature of Chirac's comment, because they 2. Obviously didn't read the linked article, and 3. Have the opportunity to hurl invective at the most popular target of insecure American white trash.
The vast majority of software written for the Windows platform is business applications, both shrinkwrap and internal.
These assertions about the proportions of shrinkwrapped software titles written for MS Windows that are is entertainment, business plications, or other are based on pure speculation, not an accounting of available software.
Unfortunately, a quick search on Google did not reveal an obvious source for an answer to this question "what percentage of Windows software is entertainment, compared to business applications and personal productivity?"
A similar 2002 study for PDA software is cited here: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2002/041902.html
In this study, games were the largest percentage of titles sold, at 38.7%. Obviously, this is not necessarily reflective of the PC software industry, but it is interesting.
Does anybody know of a study with actual answers to this for Windows software?
Be fair, put Mr Rasmusson's words in context of a complete sentence:
Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there.
Interesting that EDS shares SUN's view of what Unix versions are available. Imagine how surprised HP, IBM, and even SCO will be to learn that SUN has the one surviving Unix, considering:
The OS registered as compliant with the UNIX 03 specification is: AIX
This is idiotic thinking from Democrats/socialists.
The "this" (parental accountability) to which you refer was heavily promoted by Governor and later President George W. Bush.
I believe most people don't consider George W. Bush either a Democrat or a socialist. If you have a complaint about the policies he supports, perhaps you should contact your elected Congressional representatives.
I'm not an economist, but I think this is a classic monopolist example.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
Good for the consumers? No.
If this were true, that would suggest that Walmart is bad for consumers. From many economists' points of view, this is simply not true; Walmart brings and maintains low prices.
The negative effect of Walmart, Microsoft, and other monopolists is that while the prices of goods often go down, the diversity of local vendors dimishes, and the remaining local businesses are mostly no longer owned by local businessmen. Locally owned businesses are driven out of the economy, so the money the local people bring into their local economy goes right back out of the economy through the almost always non-local monopolist.
People who view monopolies as positive don't view the annihilation of successful local economies as negative. This is the common approach in US economics, where the significant measures of an economy are considered to be average wealth, and average global quality of life, rather than median wealth and quality of life.
Slashdot Mirror
You say "old people" walker like it's a bad thing. My brother-in-law has MD and an exoskeleton that would give him back his independence (imagine going through puberty and having to have your mother help you go to the bathroom) would be worth its weight in gold.
I suspect the sarcastic reference to the exoskeleton walker was implying that its intent was primarily for military, not medical, applications. Nobody (I hope) would suggest that an appliance that could give mobility to people who are not ambulatory is a bad thing.
Good, solid, open-sourced applications are few and far between. The fact that anyone can work on it is nice, but it seems like that just means that the application will be a never-ending beta..that takes 5 years to develop rather than 6 months.
Consider:
Good, solid, non-free applications are also few and far between. Furthermore, the "never-ending beta" is the often due to the fact that the free software developers are often committed to producing a quality product before they call a product "version 1". The difference in the non-free software development environment is that customer commitments, funding issues, and marketing concerns force companies to release beta quality software sometimes for years before it is what customers would consider "production quality".
Briefly, good, solid applications are rare, whether they are based on free software or non-free software. The assumption that non-free software is by definition high quality is sadly misinformed.
Choice is all fine and good. Howver were the "choice" crowd fails is in realizing that decisions have consequences, and they don't want to bear them. Is it any wonder the majority don't take the "choice" crowd and their stance seriously?
Actually, my understanding is that 58% is a majority. The consequence of the choice made by the majority appears to be that advertisers are being deprived of the ability to more efficiently separate those people from their money.
First, It's not clear to me why someone would believe this is a consequence that the majority who chose would not be willing to bear. Second, it appears that the advertisers who are being thwarted are indeed taking the "choice" crowd seriously, and therefore finding new ways to infiltrate people's computer systems.
That said, I do appreciate the opportunity to learn how the minds unrepentant marketers, as represented in the parent post, justify their invasions of their victims' privacy. They truly believe that there are dire consequences to our failure to accomodate their insidious behaviour.
From my experience fighting is the first refuge of the idiot.
Whether it's the last or first refuge of the idiot, I'm not certain. However, we can surely learn the definitive answer by watching what this guy does.
These systems are set up with monster databases that track "users" of the system. If you really think that you could be wanted by the FBI and have one of these toll devices and not get caught, your are either lying or are an idiot.
From a "tracking" point of view, it is not clear to me how this system differs (except in efficiency) from the system of license plates and vehicle registration. They are not in place to "track" the movements of all motor vehicles, but to provide information that allows those vehicles to be regulated. (In the case of the toll systems, the toll tags provide the additional benefits of proper billing and maintenance of the system.)
If your concern is that the government is able to regulate who is allowed to operate a motor vehicle and where, then you are facing a more fundamental problem. "Fixing" the issue from your point of view would require elimination of most laws regulating transportation.
Most people I know who are concerned that their travel is being "tracked" by the entities running the automated toll systems are those who have realized that it is possible to calculate their average speed based on arrival times at succeeding tolls. What if they used this information to start issuing speeding tickets to unsafe drivers? The horror!
You are undoubtedly aware that, as in Florida, a number of people in Texas consider it their "right" to drive, intoxicated, at 100 mph in heavy traffic until slamming into a minivan full of children. I am not even slightly averse to making the control of this behaviour easier in spite of the fact it might become possible for law enforcement officers to easily discover the same information already available to them by looking up my license plate in their database.
It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Until the general population knows how to use TLD's properly, companies will not start using them properly. But companies will not start using them properly until the general population knows how.
.com domain.
Actually, it's not a problem. Yeah, people don't know "how to use TLD's properly", but they really don't need to.
Other people have correctly pointed out that if you can get to a site through the search engines, the URL doesn't matter. Generally, if you can't get a site through the search engines, it doesn't matter much either, because that means the links you would expect to a given site from advertisements, reviews, etc, don't exist because they weren't seeded by the domain owner.
The real problems top level domains address are national identity and overload of the
Joe Schmoe doesn't want to type in the URL, ever, so it's irrelevant if regular people don't understand the meaning (or lack thereof) of the top level domains.
Aha! Now I know who stole my Mech King crown....
Both of which mean they just dont care who gets voted in.
Or, perhaps, they're like most of the people I know, and they're going to wait till the last minute to vote... but they are going to vote.
Jeepers, I have never known such a bunch of "do it at the last minute" bunch of people as my fellow software developers; I'm shocked that so many people don't understand and expect that behaviour.
Oh, and perhaps we should keep in mind that this is only the fourth year that statistics have been kept on voting rates. It was not only unsurprising, but extremely likely that this year would have either the relatively highest or lowest voting rates at this point since voting rates were tracked.
In short, what on earth is the hoopla about? This is a statistical inevitability, not a signal of decline or apathy.
Get some perspective, people.
Secondly, your web browser analogy is meaningless because the Kazaa people knew exactly what they were dealing with when they started, and they figured they could be like Napster and make a quick buck piggybacking off pirates.
Well, Mr. "InfiniteWisdom", while I appreciate that Kazaa may indeed have planned to facilitate piracy on a massive scale, if you had actually read the article, you might have noticed that the companies in question were Grokster and Streamcast Networks.
I'm willing to believe the "Infinite" part, but the rest... hmmm.
You may not get back as much as the full time resident but you are still using NY's infrastructure.
False. The state of New York does not own the phone lines, cables, or IT infrastructure that makes this possible. In fact, the state of New York already taxes the entities who do own these things.
You also get an benefit from telecommuting (less commuting time to office, lower property taxes, etc..).
Irrelevant and misleading. The state of New York gets a greater benefit of you not causing wear and tear on the infrastructure actually owned by the state (roads, bridges, schools, libraries, etc) while you generate revenue for a corporation based in and taxed by the state of New York, revenue which adds to the state tax coffers.
Finally, if its so wrong, why not just work in your home state (answer: you'll get a salary you'd probably never be able to get in your home state).
The point is that the person in question is working in his own state. For example, I have a friend who works for a company based in the state of New York with employees many different states. Many of those states believe (correctly, I believe) that they have the right to be compensated by means of their tax systems for the services provided to the employees of this company. It is very unlikely that many of the other states in question would be impressed by the argument that those employees are not actually working in the states in which they actually do work.
Ultimately, the questions raised by the avaricious exploitation by the state of New York of out-of-state employees of a company based in New York are a matter of interstate commerce, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government.
Strange, strange comment to come from the guy. Sounds like a man that can't separate his mindset from that of an authoritarian regime. Nothing happens that we (the government) didn't want to happen, even if it happened on its own, since we could have stopped it anytime.
Consider, in fairness to Zhao, that he is paid not to separate his mindset from that of his government. That is precisely his job. To expect something different is to be extremely unfair to him.
Read me now...ALL INFORMATION THAT EXISTS IS BIASED.
Not so, mister smarty-pants. For example, the information I get from Fox News is not biased. It's Fair and Balanced. Seriously. It says so right up front, so it must be true. Who could call that biased?
While there are artists like Chuck D who like file-sharing, that's their choice. /. pirates don't want you to know about all the artists who are against their music being pirated without their permission. The reason is that pirates always try to paint their activities as some sort of revolution for the artists against the big, bad record labels. It's not the case...piracy is just people wanting to get stuff for free.
Nice; flame the Slashdot readers by calling them all pirates. A work of genius.
To be sure, piracy is just people trying to get stuff for free by illegal means. However, peer-to-peer file sharing has no more to do with pirating multimedia content than using a web browser on the internet has to do with violating copyrights.
Do you consider your use of a web browser on the internet to be nothing more than a means that allows you to violate the copyrights of others?
I think the parent's point was that the mechanic won't send you back to the gas station (or restaurant, as may be the case) where you got the bad gas to get the bad gas fixed.
So I'm agreeing with Om Malik about blogger credibility, and disagreeing with anyone who blanketly declares that bloggers have no credibility.
;-)
Fair enough, my wookie friend.
However, consider this:
I suspect generally the blanket dismissal of bloggers often has to do with their lack of editorial review and fact checking. This can result in unpredictable quality information even from subject matter experts.
To be sure, the "real media" often suffers from similar reliability issues, despite the availability of such quality controls. Furthermore, the lack of expertise and an inclination toward mass-consumable "information" tends to render articles about any type of technical information at best oversimplified, and at worst, complete misrepresentations of the facts.
Only in specialized journals for the appropriate fields are technical issues discussed in a coherent form with the benefit of expert review.
In my case, while I might indeed be interested in the off-the-cuff views Linus Torvalds might present in a blog, I would be more confident that a book he wrote or and article in the ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review would provide an intellectually rigorous presentation of his views on operating system design.
This leads to an interesting phenomenon: Questionable blog posts and dumbed-down big media publications can be news regardless of their accuracy or quality, while specialized technical/academic journals rarely garner enough attention to be known. Things are only news if enough people know about them.
Would you ever buy a book about linux by Linus Torvalds ?
Would you ever watch a TV broadcast about lizards hosted by a guy who has studied lizards all his life ?
Then why don't you think some bloggers can have credibility ?
The weird part is that I can't tell whether this comment means to imply that bloggers have credibility or not. But as I think about it.... Aha! This is a wild mutation of the Chewbacca defense. It does not make sense!
If Chewbacca lived on Endor, bloggers must have credibility! The defense rests.
They are both filthy stinkin rich, hate google, and dream of a new world order?
On one hand, the first item in that list is a documented fact. On the other hand, the comment is, as a whole, a troll. Curiously, most of the posts that follow are even less interested in the facts.
It is interesting how unapologetically ignorant so many my fellow US citizens are willing to be when they:
1. Didn't realize that the Slashdot summary misrepresented the nature of Chirac's comment, because they
2. Obviously didn't read the linked article, and
3. Have the opportunity to hurl invective at the most popular target of insecure American white trash.
American journalism, thy name is Slashdot.
Funny or Insightful seem appropriate.
I think this post is sufficiently well written to deserve a couple mod points (I, sadly, do not have any to give at the moment).
These assertions about the proportions of shrinkwrapped software titles written for MS Windows that are is entertainment, business plications, or other are based on pure speculation, not an accounting of available software.
Unfortunately, a quick search on Google did not reveal an obvious source for an answer to this question "what percentage of Windows software is entertainment, compared to business applications and personal productivity?"
A similar 2002 study for PDA software is cited here: http://www.palmsource.com/press/2002/041902.html In this study, games were the largest percentage of titles sold, at 38.7%. Obviously, this is not necessarily reflective of the PC software industry, but it is interesting.
Does anybody know of a study with actual answers to this for Windows software?
Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there.
Interesting that EDS shares SUN's view of what Unix versions are available. Imagine how surprised HP, IBM, and even SCO will be to learn that SUN has the one surviving Unix, considering:
The OS registered as compliant with the UNIX 03 specification is: AIX
Other "surviving" Unixes that are registered by the Open Group include, well, look for yourself... http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/catalo g.htm
This is a great idea. Sometimes I imagine my ideal house, and the kitchen table would have a garbage receptacle right in the middle.
In my house, the garbage receptacles are seated around the perimeter of the kitchen table.
This is idiotic thinking from Democrats/socialists.
The "this" (parental accountability) to which you refer was heavily promoted by Governor and later President George W. Bush.
I believe most people don't consider George W. Bush either a Democrat or a socialist. If you have a complaint about the policies he supports, perhaps you should contact your elected Congressional representatives.
had links to free Internet music files
Apparently, the music files were not free at all, but simply posted on the Internet, which is completely different from a legal point of view.
Each premise becomes more and more wacko.
Each character becomes more two dimensional.
Seriously, I'm expecting nothing but dramatically colored animation with lots of shocked expressions.
If the writing is like anime (not good anime, mind you), the sets are completely animated, the acting is like anime....
To quote somebody from the upcoming movie (you know somebody's going to say it):
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
I'm not an economist, but I think this is a classic monopolist example.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
Good for the consumers? No.
If this were true, that would suggest that Walmart is bad for consumers. From many economists' points of view, this is simply not true; Walmart brings and maintains low prices.
The negative effect of Walmart, Microsoft, and other monopolists is that while the prices of goods often go down, the diversity of local vendors dimishes, and the remaining local businesses are mostly no longer owned by local businessmen. Locally owned businesses are driven out of the economy, so the money the local people bring into their local economy goes right back out of the economy through the almost always non-local monopolist.
People who view monopolies as positive don't view the annihilation of successful local economies as negative. This is the common approach in US economics, where the significant measures of an economy are considered to be average wealth, and average global quality of life, rather than median wealth and quality of life.