I tend to agree with you in that a scrambled roadmap is very different from an unscrambled roadmap and a scrambled forest is the same as an unscrambled forest. But then we've probably been raised in similar circumstances.
Would a monkey or a hypothetical tree dwelling civilization find the scrambled forest the same as the unscrambled? Probably not because to these people each tree is unique. I would say that your distinction between low entropy and high entropy is very anthrocentric. From what I have observed, much of the natural world (or universe) has low entropy, we just discount the orderlinesss as unimportant because we didn't create it ourselves and we have no use for it.
Standard pay rates that don't take into serious consideration the skills and experience of employees. God forbid we adopt private sector pay policies because that might make us look like we're discriminating if some employees get paid a lot less than others.
Private sector pay policies? As someone who works in the private sector, I can pretty much guarantee that private sector companies also use standard pay grades. Why is it that everybody thinks that private sector is a bastion of efficiency. I've worked for both private sector companies and government and the truth is that the private sector is just as screwed up as the government.
I would guess that this is Adobe's "revenge" for Microsoft releasing a competing technology. They probably think that using this they can force Microsoft to cry "Uncle". Somebody at Adobe should ask Corel how that worked out ten years ago.
People have been claiming peak oil since the 1920s
Actually the first person to predict peak oil (and coin the term) was M. King Hubbard in 1956. He predicted that the U.S. would reach peak oil domestically in the early 70's. It happened in 1972.
The truth is, we can pretty much accurately predict trends in the oil industry, and those who deny peak oil don't read geology.
The average person watches something like four hours of television a day. Not to mention time spent, both at home and at work, in front of a computer. Throw in cell phones, iPods, PDAs, etc. and it begs the question:
What's this about future digital overlords?
The problem is that the Open Source community "sells" their product based on a zero price point. If this isn't true, then they should be making that explicit up front.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: anybody who says that a business can just hire someone to work on open source software if it becomes unsupported does not understand the first thing about the nature of business.
I agree. But don't argue that Redhat is not a commercial company. I see no difference from a commercial perspective between deploying RedHat Linux to my servers and deploying Windows to my servers. In fact the last time I checked Windows Server was cheaper (that was a few years ago, I don't know the prices now).
When an open source project is first released, there is rarely any talk of cost. In fact the reason businesses go with open source is because the cost is lower. Now you're saying that there is a cost, and potentially a huge one. The difference being that in open source you don't know the cost until after you've been using the software. I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
And before you bring out the tired old argument that the sopurce is available, you can just hire somebody, think about how much that costs. Maintaining software is expensive. Very expensive. Forking your own version of a major open source project would cost in the millions of a dollars per year. It's ludicrous to expect any commercial enterprise to do that.
Given your and many other arguments regarding lack of support for OSS, I would have to say that OSS is still far too risky for any commercial uptake. Commercial software is still the better way to go. Enterprises that have critical systems depending on OSS really need to rethink their strategies if there is such a big risk that a key component of their systems will just evaporate overnight.
But if that's the case, then OSS becomes worse than useless for businesses. If the software is a key component of my business it's got to continue to be available. Attitudes like "it's not my problem if my software no longer works" can only hamper the uptake of OSS. This attitude is fine if you believe that OSS should be relegated to hobbyists but the Slashdot community tends to trumpet OSS as a business solution. If there are people depending on your software, then you've made a commitment.
I don't know how to break this to you but the position of National CTO isn't quite as important as the role of SCOTUS. Upholding the laws and constitutional freedoms of the citizenry is much more important than what IM client government employees wil be allowed to use.
But the United States is a part of the world and has an agenda that extends beyond its own borders. If you want to be insular and not worry about anybody else, then you're North Korea.
One of the big differences here is that Obama has a Democrat House and a Democrat Senate. If he can work well with his party the only barrier he'll have is SCOTUS.
Actually these things can take a long time to happen. The best analysis of this crisis that I've seen so far made the case that the cause was de-regulation of banking under Reagan. It took a few years for the banks to start taking risks, it took a few more years for mass uptake of the products, etc, etc and finally 20-odd years later, we have the sub-prime crisis.
Google changed something about how the internet is used and perceived by people. I'm not discounting this but the USAF is trying to change something more fundamental about the internet. The effects that they want would require scrapping TCP/IP and replacing it with something else (it may still be called TCP/IP but it will be something entirely different).
This is like claiming that the "Obama Revolution" is fundamentally changing the nature of the United States and then somebody coming along and saying that they want to change the Law of Gravity. They're just not on the same scale.
Google guarantees 99.9% uptime, right? So what do you get if they don't deliver? A lollipop? A cookie? A profound apology personally signed by Larry and Sergey?
Actually you get extra time.
If the system is down for betwwen 45 minutes and 7.2 hours, you get an extra three days. &.2 hours is pretty much a full business day if it starts at the wrong time.
If the system is down for 7.2 hours to 36 hours you get 7 free days.
And if the system is down for more than 36 hours you get 15 free days.
I don't know about the rest of you, but most of my clients would be losing at least tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour if all of their key systems went bust. Email is down? No communications because not only is that a communication channel, that's also where you keep most of your contact information. Productivity suites are down? There goes work for the entire office for the duration. Not only are they unable to create new documents, they're unable to access existing information.
You can say what you want about Microsoft Office (or even move to something else like OpenOffice or StarOffice) but at least when something happens to Office, it only stops one user. If Google goes down, your entire enterprise grinds to a halt for the duration.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to agree with you in that a scrambled roadmap is very different from an unscrambled roadmap and a scrambled forest is the same as an unscrambled forest. But then we've probably been raised in similar circumstances.
Would a monkey or a hypothetical tree dwelling civilization find the scrambled forest the same as the unscrambled? Probably not because to these people each tree is unique. I would say that your distinction between low entropy and high entropy is very anthrocentric. From what I have observed, much of the natural world (or universe) has low entropy, we just discount the orderlinesss as unimportant because we didn't create it ourselves and we have no use for it.
Private sector pay policies? As someone who works in the private sector, I can pretty much guarantee that private sector companies also use standard pay grades. Why is it that everybody thinks that private sector is a bastion of efficiency. I've worked for both private sector companies and government and the truth is that the private sector is just as screwed up as the government.
No need to apologise. I live in Canada where we're still hoping to complete the Olympic Stadium in time for the 1976 Olympics.
Neither.
if ($variable) ...
And I hope that you enjoy your trip to see it if you can ever find your way out of your parents' basement.
Ummm... I don't know how to tell you this but...
You do know that the Enterprise was never actually built, don't you? All of that footage was either a 6 inch model or some cheesy computer graphics?
Probably something like that.
I would guess that this is Adobe's "revenge" for Microsoft releasing a competing technology. They probably think that using this they can force Microsoft to cry "Uncle". Somebody at Adobe should ask Corel how that worked out ten years ago.
I don't really see a future for Sun. According to this http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081114.wsun1114/BNStory/Technology/home Sun's market cap is below their cash on hand. That makes them ripe for a buyout and breakup.
People have been claiming peak oil since the 1920s
Actually the first person to predict peak oil (and coin the term) was M. King Hubbard in 1956. He predicted that the U.S. would reach peak oil domestically in the early 70's. It happened in 1972. The truth is, we can pretty much accurately predict trends in the oil industry, and those who deny peak oil don't read geology.
The average person watches something like four hours of television a day. Not to mention time spent, both at home and at work, in front of a computer. Throw in cell phones, iPods, PDAs, etc. and it begs the question: What's this about future digital overlords?
You don't make business decisions out of spite.
Sure you do. But only if your name is Scott McNealy.
The problem is that the Open Source community "sells" their product based on a zero price point. If this isn't true, then they should be making that explicit up front.
And how much does this cost?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: anybody who says that a business can just hire someone to work on open source software if it becomes unsupported does not understand the first thing about the nature of business.
I agree. But don't argue that Redhat is not a commercial company. I see no difference from a commercial perspective between deploying RedHat Linux to my servers and deploying Windows to my servers. In fact the last time I checked Windows Server was cheaper (that was a few years ago, I don't know the prices now).
When an open source project is first released, there is rarely any talk of cost. In fact the reason businesses go with open source is because the cost is lower. Now you're saying that there is a cost, and potentially a huge one. The difference being that in open source you don't know the cost until after you've been using the software. I know we joke about "the first one is always free", but is that really the sort of business model that we want? The same business model used by drug dealers and payday loans?
And before you bring out the tired old argument that the sopurce is available, you can just hire somebody, think about how much that costs. Maintaining software is expensive. Very expensive. Forking your own version of a major open source project would cost in the millions of a dollars per year. It's ludicrous to expect any commercial enterprise to do that.
Given your and many other arguments regarding lack of support for OSS, I would have to say that OSS is still far too risky for any commercial uptake. Commercial software is still the better way to go. Enterprises that have critical systems depending on OSS really need to rethink their strategies if there is such a big risk that a key component of their systems will just evaporate overnight.
But if that's the case, then OSS becomes worse than useless for businesses. If the software is a key component of my business it's got to continue to be available. Attitudes like "it's not my problem if my software no longer works" can only hamper the uptake of OSS. This attitude is fine if you believe that OSS should be relegated to hobbyists but the Slashdot community tends to trumpet OSS as a business solution. If there are people depending on your software, then you've made a commitment.
No, he's right. Prepared statements are how you block SQL Injection attacks.
I don't know how to break this to you but the position of National CTO isn't quite as important as the role of SCOTUS. Upholding the laws and constitutional freedoms of the citizenry is much more important than what IM client government employees wil be allowed to use.
But the United States is a part of the world and has an agenda that extends beyond its own borders. If you want to be insular and not worry about anybody else, then you're North Korea.
It had everything to do with all of those things. All of which were not allowed prior to banking de-regulation in the 80's.
How about the collective interests of the entire world, not just the interests of any one single country?
One of the big differences here is that Obama has a Democrat House and a Democrat Senate. If he can work well with his party the only barrier he'll have is SCOTUS.
Actually these things can take a long time to happen. The best analysis of this crisis that I've seen so far made the case that the cause was de-regulation of banking under Reagan. It took a few years for the banks to start taking risks, it took a few more years for mass uptake of the products, etc, etc and finally 20-odd years later, we have the sub-prime crisis.
Google changed something about how the internet is used and perceived by people. I'm not discounting this but the USAF is trying to change something more fundamental about the internet. The effects that they want would require scrapping TCP/IP and replacing it with something else (it may still be called TCP/IP but it will be something entirely different).
This is like claiming that the "Obama Revolution" is fundamentally changing the nature of the United States and then somebody coming along and saying that they want to change the Law of Gravity. They're just not on the same scale.
Google guarantees 99.9% uptime, right? So what do you get if they don't deliver? A lollipop? A cookie? A profound apology personally signed by Larry and Sergey?
Actually you get extra time.
If the system is down for betwwen 45 minutes and 7.2 hours, you get an extra three days. &.2 hours is pretty much a full business day if it starts at the wrong time.
If the system is down for 7.2 hours to 36 hours you get 7 free days.
And if the system is down for more than 36 hours you get 15 free days.
I don't know about the rest of you, but most of my clients would be losing at least tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour if all of their key systems went bust. Email is down? No communications because not only is that a communication channel, that's also where you keep most of your contact information. Productivity suites are down? There goes work for the entire office for the duration. Not only are they unable to create new documents, they're unable to access existing information.
You can say what you want about Microsoft Office (or even move to something else like OpenOffice or StarOffice) but at least when something happens to Office, it only stops one user. If Google goes down, your entire enterprise grinds to a halt for the duration.