Really, you're talking about two different things here. From the industrial strength perspective, NASA has shown us it is possible to write high quality software. It's just expensive. And low volume.
But from a high volume perspective, there are is a lot of equipment that runs and runs without crashing. My television, VCR, telephone, hell, even my car all have bits of electronics and software in them, and they're all pretty damn stable.
The question should really be - show us something as customizable as a computer and see how often it has problems. Back to the car analogy - if you were constantly tweaking your car, adding and subtracting different pieces, you'd expect to have problems.
Not that I think that the software put out by certain organizations doesn't suck. There just almost is a tradeoff between that same customizability and stability...
I actually think the AT&T example is a good one, and I have used it in the past to explain to people why the breakup of Microsoft will be a good thing.
When the government broke up AT&T, they had no intention of creating the Internet. The Internet certainly existed before the breakup, but because of circuit costs, would not have come within a fraction of its success to date. In addition the the Internet's growth, the breakup of AT&T had a direct positive intended effect - dramatically cheaper long distance services.
But the AT&T example isn't the only monopoly example we need to refer to. The other one I like to use is IBM. At the time of the antitrust action against IBM, it had a virtual chokehold on the computer market. Through vertical integration of operating systems, applications and hardware (sound familiar), all of which were closed (not documented for external use) it was very difficult for any other competitor to get traction. One of the things that antitrust actions succeeded in was forcing IBM to document everything, openly (open the Kimono) - something many people have suggested should be required of Microsoft. As a result, true competition spread in the computer industry and shortly thereafter we had the birth of the Personal Computing revolution. In addition, businesses that used mini computers, mainframes, etc., started seeing competition and the prices went down dramatically, and feature/functionality also improved dramatically.
So two examples:
AT&T - one foreseen consequence (Long Distance competition), one unforeseen (dramatic growth of the Internet.
IBM - one foreseen consequence (mini/mainframe competition), one unforeseen (birth of Personal Computing revolution).
Microsoft - one foreseen consequence (competition in Operating Systems and productivity suites)...
Anybody want to guess on the unforeseen consequence?
What I am saying is this - when one company controls the vision and direction of an entire industry, that industry will be stifled. Whole new worlds of possibility will be closed off because it isn't in their best interest or isn't in their vision.
Microsoft always claims that this is about the right to innovate - but again! Most of these innovations are simply the integration of other people's ideas into their corporate platform, and many many many other innovations that might have occurred, never have.
I have a suggestion as to one possibility that might arise out of this breakup. Truly modular applications. Applications/operating systems as a true platform which allow the plugins of any third party technologies. Allowing you to use someone else's spell checker with your Word platform, or someone else's thesaurus, dictionary, etc. As a simple, easy plug-in. Truly easy, drag and drop customizable applications working together through open standards. Want to upgrade your Word platform to handle XML? It's just a component, you don't have to upgrade the whole platform. Want to add CD burning capability to your file manager? It's just a component! Just a thought (I'd love to hear others)...
Perhaps if the honorable justices had an idea of what we're giving up by allowing this monopoly to continue, they'd be more inclined to end it...
Frank: Hey Bob, Company XYZ uses genetic screening to find out if you're likely to die from a disease earlier on in life. Let's go apply!
Bob: Why?
Frank: Well - if they offer to insure us, we know we aren't going to get sick, and we don't need to buy anything other than accident insurance. If they don't offer to insure us, we'll go to company ABC (they don't do screening) and sign up with them.
Bob: But won't we have problems because of a "previously known condition"?
Frank: Nah. Because screening is illegal, there's no way for us to know that we were refused because of some sort of predisposition for disease...
Bob: I get it now! And once we're insured, we'll ask our insurance company to screen us so we can take preventative action against any possible diseases. We'll get them to pay for gene therapy...
C'mon someone, let's see how many units those emotion engines can pop out. These things are perfect, Internet connection, decent cpus/specialized processors. And sold by the millions...
After all, how the hell are they supposed to know what that encrypted traffic actually is. And if they actually do start paying attention to traffic, they run the risk of voiding their common carrier protection (which protects them from being liable if their network is used for attack). In my mind this is bluster to discourage the 10% of users who would actually read these agreements, and perhaps annoy a bunch of companies to no end. I don't see how they can do this and stay in business, however - one of the driving forces behind broadband connections to the home is telework, and if their Service Agreement prevents VPNs, companies will have to go with DSL or (yuck!) use dial-up. The only people this hurts are businesses, not home users.
If you tried to take out 4% of the routers and links, you'd be in a pretty tough spot. The place to do it is not at the MAEs, however, but instead at railway junctions. You could also shut down most of the Internet outside of the USA by depth-charging about 20 submarine fibre-optics cables off the two coasts of the continental USA.
But the real way to do damage would be to take out the 11 root servers. While IP routing would still work okay fine, realistically it would take quite a while for all the various sysadmins to update their root files (especially since they wouldn't be able to go on the web or get emails so they'd have to resort to more primitive means -see tomorrow's dead tree edition of the new root servers!)...
The positive part of all this is that it is changing. Whilst the USA controlled 80-90% of the traffic and backbone in the early days, a lot of around the world fibre is going in and today there are more people outside of the USA using the Internet than within it. All this will lead to more diverse paths being build, and hopefully a wider diaspora of root servers.
Think of this writing as enabling a largish tablet rather than a small PDA you carry everywhere with you.
With Apple's implementation of 802.11 technology (i.e. Airport) this could be a touchscreen, writeable device you could take anywhere in your house with high speed connectivity. Think of the uses:
1. Fabled kitchen recipe device - surf Epicurious for recipes and quicktime movie instructions while in your kitchen. 2. eBook - read your favorite eBook anywhere in the house, read any eBook you want, connect wirelessly in bed, on the toilet, whatever... 3. Casual, mobile Internet surfing. Hey - if it has a mike for voice commands, it could be a big mobile IP phone as well. 4. Use your own imagination...
I may be weird in this way, but I've wanted a mobile medium sized wireless device for around the house for some time. I think the technology is finally starting to catch up. Just my three cents...
The problem isn't the users - it's the OS vendors.
We have regulations on our lawnmowers and automobiles (yes, seatbelts are a good thing!). Imagine if your car didn't come with brakes - or if they did, you had to install them yourself after spending hours upgrading your car to the latest version.
This is like Microsoft asking you to upgrade your Exchange version to turn off a "feature" which should never have been the default in the first place. This is the class action lawsuit that should really be taking place - thousands of businesses suing Microsoft for the time lost due to monkey scripts for features they never wanted in the first place and couldn't turn off without a CS degree...
Any OS vendor which provides an OS which connects to the Internet should have to have a default level of security that requires the level of knowledge for hacking to rise above kiddie scripting... -- Windows 2000. Security and Stability from the company that brought you the "ILOVEYOU" virus and the Blue Screen of Death...
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But from a high volume perspective, there are is a lot of equipment that runs and runs without crashing. My television, VCR, telephone, hell, even my car all have bits of electronics and software in them, and they're all pretty damn stable.
The question should really be - show us something as customizable as a computer and see how often it has problems. Back to the car analogy - if you were constantly tweaking your car, adding and subtracting different pieces, you'd expect to have problems.
Not that I think that the software put out by certain organizations doesn't suck. There just almost is a tradeoff between that same customizability and stability...
When the government broke up AT&T, they had no intention of creating the Internet. The Internet certainly existed before the breakup, but because of circuit costs, would not have come within a fraction of its success to date. In addition the the Internet's growth, the breakup of AT&T had a direct positive intended effect - dramatically cheaper long distance services.
But the AT&T example isn't the only monopoly example we need to refer to. The other one I like to use is IBM. At the time of the antitrust action against IBM, it had a virtual chokehold on the computer market. Through vertical integration of operating systems, applications and hardware (sound familiar), all of which were closed (not documented for external use) it was very difficult for any other competitor to get traction. One of the things that antitrust actions succeeded in was forcing IBM to document everything, openly (open the Kimono) - something many people have suggested should be required of Microsoft. As a result, true competition spread in the computer industry and shortly thereafter we had the birth of the Personal Computing revolution. In addition, businesses that used mini computers, mainframes, etc., started seeing competition and the prices went down dramatically, and feature/functionality also improved dramatically.
So two examples:
AT&T - one foreseen consequence (Long Distance competition), one unforeseen (dramatic growth of the Internet.
IBM - one foreseen consequence (mini/mainframe competition), one unforeseen (birth of Personal Computing revolution).
Microsoft - one foreseen consequence (competition in Operating Systems and productivity suites)...
Anybody want to guess on the unforeseen consequence?
What I am saying is this - when one company controls the vision and direction of an entire industry, that industry will be stifled. Whole new worlds of possibility will be closed off because it isn't in their best interest or isn't in their vision.
Microsoft always claims that this is about the right to innovate - but again! Most of these innovations are simply the integration of other people's ideas into their corporate platform, and many many many other innovations that might have occurred, never have.
I have a suggestion as to one possibility that might arise out of this breakup. Truly modular applications. Applications/operating systems as a true platform which allow the plugins of any third party technologies. Allowing you to use someone else's spell checker with your Word platform, or someone else's thesaurus, dictionary, etc. As a simple, easy plug-in. Truly easy, drag and drop customizable applications working together through open standards. Want to upgrade your Word platform to handle XML? It's just a component, you don't have to upgrade the whole platform. Want to add CD burning capability to your file manager? It's just a component! Just a thought (I'd love to hear others)...
Perhaps if the honorable justices had an idea of what we're giving up by allowing this monopoly to continue, they'd be more inclined to end it...
Frank: Hey Bob, Company XYZ uses genetic screening to find out if you're likely to die from a disease earlier on in life. Let's go apply!
Bob: Why?
Frank: Well - if they offer to insure us, we know we aren't going to get sick, and we don't need to buy anything other than accident insurance. If they don't offer to insure us, we'll go to company ABC (they don't do screening) and sign up with them.
Bob: But won't we have problems because of a "previously known condition"?
Frank: Nah. Because screening is illegal, there's no way for us to know that we were refused because of some sort of predisposition for disease...
Bob: I get it now! And once we're insured, we'll ask our insurance company to screen us so we can take preventative action against any possible diseases. We'll get them to pay for gene therapy...
Frank: Now you're getting it!
NetZero recently got shut down. They did this because one of their biggest customers, SpinWay, defaulted on payments.
SpinWay sold to people like Altavista, who were supporting their model through adds, adds and more adds.
Altavista actually bought direct from NetZero, but obviously, they had to shut down when NetZero could no longer offer service.
I figure there is actually about 20 million users less than reported because of all these double reports due to wholesaling.
Gotta love it...
After all, how the hell are they supposed to know what that encrypted traffic actually is. And if they actually do start paying attention to traffic, they run the risk of voiding their common carrier protection (which protects them from being liable if their network is used for attack). In my mind this is bluster to discourage the 10% of users who would actually read these agreements, and perhaps annoy a bunch of companies to no end. I don't see how they can do this and stay in business, however - one of the driving forces behind broadband connections to the home is telework, and if their Service Agreement prevents VPNs, companies will have to go with DSL or (yuck!) use dial-up. The only people this hurts are businesses, not home users.
Whatever.
But the real way to do damage would be to take out the 11 root servers. While IP routing would still work okay fine, realistically it would take quite a while for all the various sysadmins to update their root files (especially since they wouldn't be able to go on the web or get emails so they'd have to resort to more primitive means -see tomorrow's dead tree edition of the new root servers!)...
The positive part of all this is that it is changing. Whilst the USA controlled 80-90% of the traffic and backbone in the early days, a lot of around the world fibre is going in and today there are more people outside of the USA using the Internet than within it. All this will lead to more diverse paths being build, and hopefully a wider diaspora of root servers.
With Apple's implementation of 802.11 technology (i.e. Airport) this could be a touchscreen, writeable device you could take anywhere in your house with high speed connectivity. Think of the uses:
1. Fabled kitchen recipe device - surf Epicurious for recipes and quicktime movie instructions while in your kitchen.
2. eBook - read your favorite eBook anywhere in the house, read any eBook you want, connect wirelessly in bed, on the toilet, whatever...
3. Casual, mobile Internet surfing. Hey - if it has a mike for voice commands, it could be a big mobile IP phone as well.
4. Use your own imagination...
I may be weird in this way, but I've wanted a mobile medium sized wireless device for around the house for some time. I think the technology is finally starting to catch up. Just my three cents...
We have regulations on our lawnmowers and automobiles (yes, seatbelts are a good thing!). Imagine if your car didn't come with brakes - or if they did, you had to install them yourself after spending hours upgrading your car to the latest version.
This is like Microsoft asking you to upgrade your Exchange version to turn off a "feature" which should never have been the default in the first place. This is the class action lawsuit that should really be taking place - thousands of businesses suing Microsoft for the time lost due to monkey scripts for features they never wanted in the first place and couldn't turn off without a CS degree...
Any OS vendor which provides an OS which connects to the Internet should have to have a default level of security that requires the level of knowledge for hacking to rise above kiddie scripting...
--
Windows 2000. Security and Stability from the company that brought you the "ILOVEYOU" virus and the Blue Screen of Death...