That's funny, I know an elevator extremely frustrating to ride in because it moves at a snail's pace, and once at the destination floor, adds an annoying 10 second delay before opening doors. Not to mention that the open/close door buttons never seem to work. If I were paying for an elevator system in my high rise, I would prioritize on speed:
1. travel speed- get an elevator that accelerates half way, then decelerates the other half. I've seen one like this, and the speed is nothing short of miraculous. 2. doors- doors must open as soon as the elevator stops- no stupid 10s delays 3. door controls- as long as the elevator is stopped, the doors must react to open/close buttons. i don't care if the door is halfway open, it should change directions if necessary.
I always found this part of the Tao of Programming a good way to think about bureaucracy:
A novice asked the master: ``In the east there is a great tree-structure that men call `Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying `Go, Hence!' or `Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity be?"
The master replied: ``You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?''
While PAN was first, I prefer BAN especially when dealing with hospitalized persons. Something about a PAN in bed... just doesn't sound right! *rimshot*
I'm not happy with that definition either. Everybody who "uses" something does it to "gain advantage." Instead, recall that leverage in physics refers to the effect of multiplying force by use of lever arms (was it Aristotle who said he could lift the Earth given a pivot and long enough lever?) Hence, the word conveys an intention of obtaining a unusually large effect from a relatively small, but possibly clever, action.
interface and implementation (both are keywords, comes from pascal) section: lets get rid of seperate header and code files. The idea is aged, inefficient and doesn't help clarity nor ease of coding.
The only thing I agree about is that the idea is old:) Headers make things vastly more efficient when dealing with system libraries; it would be crazy to compile everything (Didn't Turbo Pascal split things up?). Further, putting an explicit line between interface and implementation helps both clarity and ease of coding.
"I have to confess that I'm biased when it comes to David Reed." Unfortunately, I don't have a Salon subscription to read the rest of the article. I clicked on the ad to read the rest, exactly because it was David Reed making the big claims. He is an EE, from MIT no less, so it's likely he knows what he's talking about. Unfortunately, there wasn't much detail in the rest of the article, but I think he's excited about UWB communication. It turns out that with sufficiently large bandwidth, one can pick random signal spreading codes in a decentralized manner without interfering with unintended receivers. This is important because there is no need to run scheduling algorithms like on 802.11. However, this wastes a lot of the (Shannon) capacity.
The first page was almost accurate, but didn't yet discuss that an electric wave has a charge and a photon does not. Since electric fields have charge, they interact when they come in contact. Actually, he was correct in saying that radio signals pass through each other without interfering. For example, if your directional antenna's signal crosses mine, it won't affect my signal. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter because the interference problem occurs when the two signals combine additively at the same receiver.
Ever wonder how your house can have 3 cell phones, 3 cordless phones and 15 wireless accessories work together? It isn't the FCC that's helping this situation, it is manufacturers working with one another so they can all compete
Um, you're kidding, right? These things coexist precisely because there is an FCC to keep them from stomping all over each other.
The Salon article isn't very clear, but it seems that they are excited about UWB and how easy it makes multiple access using simple pseudo-random chipping sequences. I guess that's fine, but my biggest bone with this approach is its colossal spectrum inefficiency. I just don't see how we could have spectrally efficient wireless communication without a regulating body.
At least someone made a profit on the Xbox (MS doesn't):)
The shocks, being rare, are a tough item to get good money for on eBay. The problem is that the auctions only work well when there is competition among the buyers, and that only happens with popular items. I've sold rare car parts for $0.01 in the past, that's how I learned that lesson. On the other hand, a low starting bid on a popular item tends to attract a handful of lowballers right away, and that's an eye-catcher: people see there is 10 bids on an item and they will be compelled to go check it out, leading to more bids, etc.
Maybe try checking ended auctions for that or similar item, and see how they fared.
I would tell them that if they don't want to get raped in the future, they should not {go down a dark alley/have an untrustworthy friend sleep over/drink in a sleazy bar}. The fact that it's not justified and wrong cannot change the fact that it happened.
I guess we reason different then. Anyone trying to sell used hard drives would plaster the fact that they were tested and working all over that auction if they were, in fact, working. The fact that they didn't rings so many alarm bells it's not even funny:)
I usually don't mind dealing with occasional users, since they are usually real people that respond to emails etc. The high-feedback ones are often stores, they don't respond to email, so they might end up worse. But that's just me, unfortunately...
Remember, kids: capitalism is good, but it only works if there's competition. If there's none, it degenerates into a system where one company extracts all the money they can from everyone by doing pretty much nothing at all.
This leads to the next question, which is "why is there no competition?" Cheap, fraud free online auctions are a hard problem to solve. IMHO the only way is by having as much transparency as possible, e.g. comment system a la slashdot for each auction, for each seller, full transaction histories, etc. so it is easier to gauge the trustworthiness of sellers. Of course then there will be lying abusive buyers, and in the end the users will have to use their heads kind of like they do now.
Since the price of this sort of transparency is probably in server resources, Google might really be competitive with their scalable swarm-like PC hardware and storage, as opposed to eBay's crappy, slow-as-molasses, one-off Sun box.
Paying $1500 to a stranger on the internet without at least clicking on past sold items and checking out their prices is not very smart, IMHO. You have to use your head on eBay and elsewhere, or you will get ripped off.
Still, I find it hard to believe that Sun can create software that's so good, people will buy Sun hardware just to run it. And if it's open source, they probably won't need Sun hardware to run it.
You're probably right; in the razor-and-blades analogy it would be like buying Schick cartridges just so you could get to use their awesome rubber-padded handle.
However, the value is in the innovative hardware that Sun is traditionally good at. I can see customers buying the hardware for its quality, and the awesome way it is integrated with the (open sourced) OS, applications, etc.-- kind of like people are buying Apple hardware.
Everybody know about Total Cost of Ownership, and aren't going to be impressed that they can get a Sun box for free. If Sun is going to make all its money off of software and customer service, then they should stop making computers altogether, and leave the hardware headaches to others.
It's the other way around. They are giving away the software (open sourcing it) with the intention of making money on, presumably, well built hardware. It makes sense, since there is room for innovation in big server installations (management, power consumption, reliability, failover, etc. etc.) and they have the hardware experience that could give them an edge.
I'm afraid you're dead on. However, it doesn't mean that genes don't have a play in this. There are still people even in the US who are not couch potatoes and don't put on weight despite eating like pigs (yours truly, for one). The fact that there are many fewer obese people in other countries doesn't preclude the genetic influence, since obesity might be inhibited by factors like those you mentioned-- wealth, culture, etc.
Mickey came over to visit Goofy, and found him working in the garden. There were little plots of land labeled "Tomatoes," "Peppers," and, to Mickey's surprise, "Weeds." He asked, "Why on Earth would you want to plant weeds?" Goofy replied, "Well, better set aside a place for them, than let them grow everywhere!"
If you would prefer a well engineered, well thought-out solution with central channel allocation, with a central authority who will take care of any resource disputes, nobody is stopping you from signing up with Verizon or T-Mobile and their wonderful data $ervice$. I will be laughing at you from my multi-MB/s wireless LAN.
I'm not an expert on how Apple's music licensing is set up, but suppose the big labels get their way and do tiered pricing. What happens to all the rest of the labels who have their music on iTunes? Can't they just happily use the top-tier price? Obviously, any crappy artist signed with a big label is screwed, but non-big-label content is unaffected by this deal, if not helped, since it won't have to compete with some fraction of the big label music. It seems that not only would Jobs have to give the big labels tiered pricing, but they would need to receive exclusive use of the top tier for this to work the way Joel describes.
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That's funny, I know an elevator extremely frustrating to ride in because it moves at a snail's pace, and once at the destination floor, adds an annoying 10 second delay before opening doors. Not to mention that the open/close door buttons never seem to work. If I were paying for an elevator system in my high rise, I would prioritize on speed:
1. travel speed- get an elevator that accelerates half way, then decelerates the other half. I've seen one like this, and the speed is nothing short of miraculous.
2. doors- doors must open as soon as the elevator stops- no stupid 10s delays
3. door controls- as long as the elevator is stopped, the doors must react to open/close buttons. i don't care if the door is halfway open, it should change directions if necessary.
I always found this part of the Tao of Programming a good way to think about bureaucracy:
A novice asked the master: ``In the east there is a great tree-structure that men call `Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with vice presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying `Go, Hence!' or `Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an unnatural entity be?"
The master replied: ``You perceive this immense structure and are disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?''
While PAN was first, I prefer BAN especially when dealing with hospitalized persons. Something about a PAN in bed... just doesn't sound right! *rimshot*
Heh. Nice find!
I'm not happy with that definition either. Everybody who "uses" something does it to "gain advantage." Instead, recall that leverage in physics refers to the effect of multiplying force by use of lever arms (was it Aristotle who said he could lift the Earth given a pivot and long enough lever?) Hence, the word conveys an intention of obtaining a unusually large effect from a relatively small, but possibly clever, action.
interface and implementation (both are keywords, comes from pascal) section: lets get rid of seperate header and code files. The idea is aged, inefficient and doesn't help clarity nor ease of coding.
:) Headers make things vastly more efficient when dealing with system libraries; it would be crazy to compile everything (Didn't Turbo Pascal split things up?). Further, putting an explicit line between interface and implementation helps both clarity and ease of coding.
The only thing I agree about is that the idea is old
"I have to confess that I'm biased when it comes to David Reed." Unfortunately, I don't have a Salon subscription to read the rest of the article.
I clicked on the ad to read the rest, exactly because it was David Reed making the big claims. He is an EE, from MIT no less, so it's likely he knows what he's talking about. Unfortunately, there wasn't much detail in the rest of the article, but I think he's excited about UWB communication. It turns out that with sufficiently large bandwidth, one can pick random signal spreading codes in a decentralized manner without interfering with unintended receivers. This is important because there is no need to run scheduling algorithms like on 802.11. However, this wastes a lot of the (Shannon) capacity.
The first page was almost accurate, but didn't yet discuss that an electric wave has a charge and a photon does not. Since electric fields have charge, they interact when they come in contact.
Actually, he was correct in saying that radio signals pass through each other without interfering. For example, if your directional antenna's signal crosses mine, it won't affect my signal. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter because the interference problem occurs when the two signals combine additively at the same receiver.
Ever wonder how your house can have 3 cell phones, 3 cordless phones and 15 wireless accessories work together? It isn't the FCC that's helping this situation, it is manufacturers working with one another so they can all compete
Um, you're kidding, right? These things coexist precisely because there is an FCC to keep them from stomping all over each other.
The Salon article isn't very clear, but it seems that they are excited about UWB and how easy it makes multiple access using simple pseudo-random chipping sequences. I guess that's fine, but my biggest bone with this approach is its colossal spectrum inefficiency. I just don't see how we could have spectrally efficient wireless communication without a regulating body.
SB8, the largest non-Mersenne prime currently known, has 2759677 digits (which is prime).
Moreover, 2759677 has 7 digits, which is prime too! How fun.
At least someone made a profit on the Xbox (MS doesn't) :)
The shocks, being rare, are a tough item to get good money for on eBay. The problem is that the auctions only work well when there is competition among the buyers, and that only happens with popular items. I've sold rare car parts for $0.01 in the past, that's how I learned that lesson. On the other hand, a low starting bid on a popular item tends to attract a handful of lowballers right away, and that's an eye-catcher: people see there is 10 bids on an item and they will be compelled to go check it out, leading to more bids, etc.
Maybe try checking ended auctions for that or similar item, and see how they fared.
I would tell them that if they don't want to get raped in the future, they should not {go down a dark alley/have an untrustworthy friend sleep over/drink in a sleazy bar}. The fact that it's not justified and wrong cannot change the fact that it happened.
I guess we reason different then. Anyone trying to sell used hard drives would plaster the fact that they were tested and working all over that auction if they were, in fact, working. The fact that they didn't rings so many alarm bells it's not even funny :)
Out of curiosity, how did the other auction do?
I usually don't mind dealing with occasional users, since they are usually real people that respond to emails etc. The high-feedback ones are often stores, they don't respond to email, so they might end up worse. But that's just me, unfortunately...
Remember, kids: capitalism is good, but it only works if there's competition. If there's none, it degenerates into a system where one company extracts all the money they can from everyone by doing pretty much nothing at all.
This leads to the next question, which is "why is there no competition?" Cheap, fraud free online auctions are a hard problem to solve. IMHO the only way is by having as much transparency as possible, e.g. comment system a la slashdot for each auction, for each seller, full transaction histories, etc. so it is easier to gauge the trustworthiness of sellers. Of course then there will be lying abusive buyers, and in the end the users will have to use their heads kind of like they do now.
Since the price of this sort of transparency is probably in server resources, Google might really be competitive with their scalable swarm-like PC hardware and storage, as opposed to eBay's crappy, slow-as-molasses, one-off Sun box.
Paying $1500 to a stranger on the internet without at least clicking on past sold items and checking out their prices is not very smart, IMHO. You have to use your head on eBay and elsewhere, or you will get ripped off.
Nothing listed in the auction said anything more than "used hard drives".
I really don't see a problem here-- used hard drives is exactly what you (almost) got.
I could've shown you a mouse controlling a flight simulator at least as far back as the early 90s :D
Not understanding what was said does not imply that nothing was said.
'nuff said!
Still, I find it hard to believe that Sun can create software that's so good, people will buy Sun hardware just to run it. And if it's open source, they probably won't need Sun hardware to run it.
You're probably right; in the razor-and-blades analogy it would be like buying Schick cartridges just so you could get to use their awesome rubber-padded handle.
However, the value is in the innovative hardware that Sun is traditionally good at. I can see customers buying the hardware for its quality, and the awesome way it is integrated with the (open sourced) OS, applications, etc.-- kind of like people are buying Apple hardware.
Everybody know about Total Cost of Ownership, and aren't going to be impressed that they can get a Sun box for free. If Sun is going to make all its money off of software and customer service, then they should stop making computers altogether, and leave the hardware headaches to others.
It's the other way around. They are giving away the software (open sourcing it) with the intention of making money on, presumably, well built hardware. It makes sense, since there is room for innovation in big server installations (management, power consumption, reliability, failover, etc. etc.) and they have the hardware experience that could give them an edge.
I'm afraid you're dead on. However, it doesn't mean that genes don't have a play in this. There are still people even in the US who are not couch potatoes and don't put on weight despite eating like pigs (yours truly, for one). The fact that there are many fewer obese people in other countries doesn't preclude the genetic influence, since obesity might be inhibited by factors like those you mentioned-- wealth, culture, etc.
This reminds me of an old joke...
Mickey came over to visit Goofy, and found him working in the garden. There were little plots of land labeled "Tomatoes," "Peppers," and, to Mickey's surprise, "Weeds." He asked, "Why on Earth would you want to plant weeds?" Goofy replied, "Well, better set aside a place for them, than let them grow everywhere!"
If you would prefer a well engineered, well thought-out solution with central channel allocation, with a central authority who will take care of any resource disputes, nobody is stopping you from signing up with Verizon or T-Mobile and their wonderful data $ervice$. I will be laughing at you from my multi-MB/s wireless LAN.
What you're talking about sounds a lot like the POSIX standard, which is what has enabled the easy cross-compiling of FOSS.
I'm not an expert on how Apple's music licensing is set up, but suppose the big labels get their way and do tiered pricing. What happens to all the rest of the labels who have their music on iTunes? Can't they just happily use the top-tier price? Obviously, any crappy artist signed with a big label is screwed, but non-big-label content is unaffected by this deal, if not helped, since it won't have to compete with some fraction of the big label music. It seems that not only would Jobs have to give the big labels tiered pricing, but they would need to receive exclusive use of the top tier for this to work the way Joel describes.