Now, let's just wonder for a moment how the world could look like if he had been less a scientist and artist but more a businessman and decided early on to charge for TeX... Or patent his works.
You mean he didn't piss and moan about it on Slashdot?
So you actually suggest that Slashdot stifles innovation by providing ample space to whine and moan instead of doing something about it (whatever it is)?
A dog right in the middle of the kitchen table?
on
Donald Knuth On NPR
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· Score: 1
To the best of my knowledge, most member states have sold their telephone companies - certainly, the big ones (UK, France, Germany) have done so. Off the top of my head, I'm not aware of a country in the EU with a state owned telephone company - I'm not saying one doesn't exist, I just don't know of one.
Sorry, but they have not been sold. They have been merely privatized, which means that they have been converted into corporations with shares traded on the stock market. However, many of the shares still belong to the states either directly or indirectly (belong to other companies where the states have some share, in many cases majority). As an example in France representatives of the government are directly on the management board of France Telecom, presumably "private" enterprise now. And some shares belong to Aerospatiale which is an aerospace corporation heavily controlled by the state. The same model has been followed in Spain (Telefonica), Germany (Deutsche Telekom) or Poland (TP). In all those countries the concept of "national operator" exists which means that market is regulated in such a way as to ensure that no real competitor to the "national operator" would be allowed to grow. I don't know how it looks elsewhere, but I suspect that the situation is very similar.
So, on the surface you can argue that these are not state owned. However, operational reality is that these are de-facto politically protected monopolies in their respective markets. Now, these are merging into bigger behemoths on the European scale, again with help from politicians on all levels.
Result? Much higher costs of calls over fixed lines, expensive Internet access.
The "heavily regulated GSM operators" aren't that heavily regulated in most juristictions, and most countries have at least four nationwide mobile phone operators (two on 900MHz, two on 1800MHz), with 3G operators opening in addition to these.
We could argue here about the meaning of the adjective "heavy". From my point of view heavy regulation is for example the fact that in some cases (e.g. Poland, as far as I know also Czech Rep.) licenses issued (effectively agreements between the state and the operator) included a promise from the state that for a given period of time no new cellular operators would be allowed to enter the market. Has anyone in unregulated, free market that kind of peace of mind? Even Microsoft, so many times called a monopoly, doesn't have this kind of protection.
Also, from the point of view of marketing departments of a GSM operator playing in such a market its competitive options are very limited. All other (two or three) operators use the same technology, same phones with same capabilities over the same bands with very similar coverage. You can cut prices only a bit, because doing so dramatically is out of question - it would create a price war on which everybody would loose in the end - and the margins are huuuuuge, believe me. So the only way you can try do differentiate from your competitors is by creating various add-ons - hence the premium SMS-es, which serve as micro-payment medium for many services, ringtones and images etc.
It's nothing new, all this has been well known throughout the industry for years. Two points that are missing from the Reuter's text are VoIP and Wi-Fi. Both phenomena are a direct result of America's (more) free market approach. And in both cases the explosion goes on in the US with Europe slowly catching on. It's overall cheaper to communicate if you are in the US then in Europe. So, dear Americans, don't whine, you've got a better deal anyway even without fancy ringtones ($2 each) or other stupid stuff like that.
Perhaps the U.S. should look at how the Europeon Union did it. All the same standard = more money.
More money where? In corporate accounts or in people's wallets? Because the fact is that we all here envy American's cheap calls. I would love to call more, but I always feel the counter ticking in the background. And telco is a de-facto oligopoly all over Europe, with state owned companies in almost all countries and heavily regulated GSM operators who hardly compete since they know no new players would be allowed on the market.
There is no need to have yet another rule, law or regulation just because someone can't be bothered to understand what it is they just bought and why it's broadcasting their information to anyone who asks.
I beg to differ. I can't agree with the view, that people who don't know how a thing technically works should not expect protection of their privacy, property or other reasonable rights. Maybe manufacturer or seller of the device should be bothered with "why it is broadcasting personal info", but certainly not the end user.
The end user has a right to be technologically ignorant and still have his privacy protected. At least as long as we agree that privacy is a right everyone has, not only technologically savvy - which is how the things my look now but certainly is not how they should look.
You are right, of course. However, I believe BT designers were not geeks and their thinking was not twisted enough. The were operating within the "very very local connections" mindset - I'm totally sure no one even considered the possibility of any sort of attack on such device coming from a mile away or so. BT was supposed to create the "PAN" or Personal Area Network - in other words to communicate within few feet.
Now, I wonder if designers of the Zigbee would pay attention.
People tend to get suspicious of strangers pointing gunlike objects around their neighborhood.
And for a very good reason. How probable it is that the thing that looks very much like a custom-built RPG launcher or high powered riffle is in fact a piece of harmless radio equipment? Just compare the number of Bluetooth and "traditional" riffles out there.
So it was outright stupid to design it in this way, although arguably riffle design has it's advantages - it's probably the best, evolved over time, layout of a device that has to be long and its operator is supposed to point it accurately without a support (tripod etc.).
It's not a trivial question. On one hand airwaves are free for anyone to receive. On the other if someone would steal data from my BT enabled device and went to publish it on the web (Paris Hilton case) I would very much like to get him punished for that.
In other words, users are generally right in their expectance of some form of protection of their privacy. You could argue that BT devices should have been built in a way that would prevent any of that from happening, but it's easy to criticize with hindsight. I think some line in the sand would have to be drawn on this one too, the problem is that it would be technologically ignorant lobbying-prone politicians who would do the drawing. It's enough to look at the case of good, old-fashioned radio scanners to foresee results.
But even with the 600G of storage in my PC, I still can't have everything I want unless it's compressed.
And you never will because the size of what you want will increase as well. It's a known fact that for most of us our desires grow faster than abilities to fulfill them - and that is something that, as many things about us, cuts both ways. It can be a source of perpetual unhappiness, but it can also be a powerful drive for innovation.
You might laugh about "Pimp My Ride" and stuff, but this is really a neat business idea. It just needs to be extended a bit and put in a different frame. After all guys who run customs companies are doing just that for lots of money, only with a bit different slant focusing on paint, upholstery etc.
At least they are honest about it, unlike some other services like, say, short messages on cellphones which give you an illusion of privacy. Face it - we are in an era when to have any privacy you have to actively protect it and sometimes it might be even illegal (example - encryption in France).
It is really amazing that something like this can even happen. But this is clearly a showcase and it would be a show trial. The point here is not his alleged crimes, but fear and propaganda. It's about putting copying some software on the same level as terrorism, way above murder or rape or good old bank robbery - in people's minds. And it's about scaring the hell out of those who do that so that they stop.
It's exactly the same tactic psychologically they used in the Stalin Russia, but in gloves - no torture and he won't be executed at the end, only his life would be ruined and he would have to struggle with it till natural end.
So in other words this a nasty PR stunt to protect the revenue streams of already rich and powerful. Nothing new really, it's been going like this for ages, just with less hiporcisy - all land belonged to king and nobility and different rules applied to them than to average peasants.
new outlook on IT and computers, and new ideas of how to solve problems, or even new problems to solve
Yeah, great - but would you agree that there are limits to what problems computers, networks etc. can solve? For example railways have cut down on travel times, enabled greater social mixing of people, made modern commerce possible and all that stuff - yet no train would ever take you to the moon.
Each invention enlarges the bubble we call civilization some, then stays as (maintained and improved) support structure inside that bubble. IT is becoming just that. Time to move on guys ('cause gals apparently already got it).
Re:Not politically correct but reality is...
on
Women Leaving I.T.
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· Score: 2, Funny
I doubt that. Why aren't women then ruling the world?
for an industry thats meant to be the cutting edge of the future
Cutting edge of the future? Hello, wake up!
It's not that anymore. Look around, most IT jobs are degrading with light speed - who is a sysadm or a programmer now and who was he in social perception ten or twenty years ago? These are now just dispensable human resources, sorry to say that but it's true. This industry is now becoming commonplace, normal industry like say telecoms or railways or textiles - each of them has been the cutting edge pulling the technology and society in their due time. But after that - it's just industry like all others.
Re:Not politically correct but reality is...
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not sure why, but in my experience, women were better project managers and QA while men were better coders.
You're not sure why? But that's obvious - women have great people skills, men are better at building things, constructing objects. The later is true also for virtual objects - all great programmers or architects that I know in fact see how the code works. They unconsciously kind of visualize it in their mind as a functioning mechanism.
Project management in turn is a people skills exercise. You have to be very good at dealing with people, understand them, communicate effectively and so on. Women are much better at (unconsciously) manipulating people (especially men, above all geeks) into doing something they want. A man would sooner retort to using authority and orders - woman would first try to make you want to do it. Guess when the job is done better.
This is an extremely good idea - I don't know how well Groove works, but it surely addresses the major problems for dispersed teams or in other words collaboration of teams that don't have a proper office, IT staff etc. They specifically mention consultants on their web page and that's a very good point - we move around a lot, people are assigned to more than one project at a time, aren't always at the same place etc. We have methods to work in this situation using e-mails, IMs, cellphones etc. but it would be really nice to have it done the way Groove promises to do it. I will certainly look more closely at Groove now that I know it exists and we might want to buy this for our company.
Having said that - why are people complaining about Groove being bought by MS while in the same time no one tried to create an open-source project along these lines? Or maybe something similar is already being developed?
Because I see MS's move a bit as a part of keeping their business productivity software (Office and everything around it) good enough to sell. Now that Open Office catches up on basic office functionality with the MS's suite they have to have some other advantages.
OK, so now Prince Charles gets to marry his long-time flame, Camilla (ugh... he has no taste for women whatsoever) and Bill Gates gets to be knighted by the Queen. Now, dear Britons, what would you say about becoming a republic?
Yet Another Slashdoted Site... This one went down so fast I wasn't able to read the article refered to, it went so fast mirrordot didn't manage to make a copy of it... Wow! That was it, the real, good slashdoting.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you realize how stupid such an assumption would be? Thanks god you are not in charge there...
Any, however faint, trace of that being even close to reality? Because it looks like a classic FUD to me.
Now, let's just wonder for a moment how the world could look like if he had been less a scientist and artist but more a businessman and decided early on to charge for TeX... Or patent his works.
So you actually suggest that Slashdot stifles innovation by providing ample space to whine and moan instead of doing something about it (whatever it is)?
You watch too much Flinstones! :-)
Sorry, but they have not been sold. They have been merely privatized, which means that they have been converted into corporations with shares traded on the stock market. However, many of the shares still belong to the states either directly or indirectly (belong to other companies where the states have some share, in many cases majority). As an example in France representatives of the government are directly on the management board of France Telecom, presumably "private" enterprise now. And some shares belong to Aerospatiale which is an aerospace corporation heavily controlled by the state. The same model has been followed in Spain (Telefonica), Germany (Deutsche Telekom) or Poland (TP). In all those countries the concept of "national operator" exists which means that market is regulated in such a way as to ensure that no real competitor to the "national operator" would be allowed to grow. I don't know how it looks elsewhere, but I suspect that the situation is very similar.
So, on the surface you can argue that these are not state owned. However, operational reality is that these are de-facto politically protected monopolies in their respective markets. Now, these are merging into bigger behemoths on the European scale, again with help from politicians on all levels.
Result? Much higher costs of calls over fixed lines, expensive Internet access.
We could argue here about the meaning of the adjective "heavy". From my point of view heavy regulation is for example the fact that in some cases (e.g. Poland, as far as I know also Czech Rep.) licenses issued (effectively agreements between the state and the operator) included a promise from the state that for a given period of time no new cellular operators would be allowed to enter the market. Has anyone in unregulated, free market that kind of peace of mind? Even Microsoft, so many times called a monopoly, doesn't have this kind of protection.
Also, from the point of view of marketing departments of a GSM operator playing in such a market its competitive options are very limited. All other (two or three) operators use the same technology, same phones with same capabilities over the same bands with very similar coverage. You can cut prices only a bit, because doing so dramatically is out of question - it would create a price war on which everybody would loose in the end - and the margins are huuuuuge, believe me. So the only way you can try do differentiate from your competitors is by creating various add-ons - hence the premium SMS-es, which serve as micro-payment medium for many services, ringtones and images etc.
It's nothing new, all this has been well known throughout the industry for years. Two points that are missing from the Reuter's text are VoIP and Wi-Fi. Both phenomena are a direct result of America's (more) free market approach. And in both cases the explosion goes on in the US with Europe slowly catching on. It's overall cheaper to communicate if you are in the US then in Europe. So, dear Americans, don't whine, you've got a better deal anyway even without fancy ringtones ($2 each) or other stupid stuff like that.
More money where? In corporate accounts or in people's wallets? Because the fact is that we all here envy American's cheap calls. I would love to call more, but I always feel the counter ticking in the background. And telco is a de-facto oligopoly all over Europe, with state owned companies in almost all countries and heavily regulated GSM operators who hardly compete since they know no new players would be allowed on the market.
I beg to differ. I can't agree with the view, that people who don't know how a thing technically works should not expect protection of their privacy, property or other reasonable rights. Maybe manufacturer or seller of the device should be bothered with "why it is broadcasting personal info", but certainly not the end user.
The end user has a right to be technologically ignorant and still have his privacy protected. At least as long as we agree that privacy is a right everyone has, not only technologically savvy - which is how the things my look now but certainly is not how they should look.
Compulsive word-checkers? Hey, that's nice. I must check it out. Now!
You are right, of course. However, I believe BT designers were not geeks and their thinking was not twisted enough. The were operating within the "very very local connections" mindset - I'm totally sure no one even considered the possibility of any sort of attack on such device coming from a mile away or so. BT was supposed to create the "PAN" or Personal Area Network - in other words to communicate within few feet.
Now, I wonder if designers of the Zigbee would pay attention.
And for a very good reason. How probable it is that the thing that looks very much like a custom-built RPG launcher or high powered riffle is in fact a piece of harmless radio equipment? Just compare the number of Bluetooth and "traditional" riffles out there.
So it was outright stupid to design it in this way, although arguably riffle design has it's advantages - it's probably the best, evolved over time, layout of a device that has to be long and its operator is supposed to point it accurately without a support (tripod etc.).
In other words, users are generally right in their expectance of some form of protection of their privacy. You could argue that BT devices should have been built in a way that would prevent any of that from happening, but it's easy to criticize with hindsight. I think some line in the sand would have to be drawn on this one too, the problem is that it would be technologically ignorant lobbying-prone politicians who would do the drawing. It's enough to look at the case of good, old-fashioned radio scanners to foresee results.
And you never will because the size of what you want will increase as well. It's a known fact that for most of us our desires grow faster than abilities to fulfill them - and that is something that, as many things about us, cuts both ways. It can be a source of perpetual unhappiness, but it can also be a powerful drive for innovation.
You might laugh about "Pimp My Ride" and stuff, but this is really a neat business idea. It just needs to be extended a bit and put in a different frame. After all guys who run customs companies are doing just that for lots of money, only with a bit different slant focusing on paint, upholstery etc.
What is NASA doing to educate the public on that aspect of space exploration? Or is it expecting the public to just figure that one out on their own?
At least they are honest about it, unlike some other services like, say, short messages on cellphones which give you an illusion of privacy. Face it - we are in an era when to have any privacy you have to actively protect it and sometimes it might be even illegal (example - encryption in France).
It's exactly the same tactic psychologically they used in the Stalin Russia, but in gloves - no torture and he won't be executed at the end, only his life would be ruined and he would have to struggle with it till natural end.
So in other words this a nasty PR stunt to protect the revenue streams of already rich and powerful. Nothing new really, it's been going like this for ages, just with less hiporcisy - all land belonged to king and nobility and different rules applied to them than to average peasants.
Yeah, great - but would you agree that there are limits to what problems computers, networks etc. can solve? For example railways have cut down on travel times, enabled greater social mixing of people, made modern commerce possible and all that stuff - yet no train would ever take you to the moon.
Each invention enlarges the bubble we call civilization some, then stays as (maintained and improved) support structure inside that bubble. IT is becoming just that. Time to move on guys ('cause gals apparently already got it).
Women aren't ruling the world?
Cutting edge of the future? Hello, wake up!
It's not that anymore. Look around, most IT jobs are degrading with light speed - who is a sysadm or a programmer now and who was he in social perception ten or twenty years ago? These are now just dispensable human resources, sorry to say that but it's true. This industry is now becoming commonplace, normal industry like say telecoms or railways or textiles - each of them has been the cutting edge pulling the technology and society in their due time. But after that - it's just industry like all others.
You're not sure why? But that's obvious - women have great people skills, men are better at building things, constructing objects. The later is true also for virtual objects - all great programmers or architects that I know in fact see how the code works. They unconsciously kind of visualize it in their mind as a functioning mechanism.
Project management in turn is a people skills exercise. You have to be very good at dealing with people, understand them, communicate effectively and so on. Women are much better at (unconsciously) manipulating people (especially men, above all geeks) into doing something they want. A man would sooner retort to using authority and orders - woman would first try to make you want to do it. Guess when the job is done better.
Having said that - why are people complaining about Groove being bought by MS while in the same time no one tried to create an open-source project along these lines? Or maybe something similar is already being developed?
Because I see MS's move a bit as a part of keeping their business productivity software (Office and everything around it) good enough to sell. Now that Open Office catches up on basic office functionality with the MS's suite they have to have some other advantages.
OK, so now Prince Charles gets to marry his long-time flame, Camilla (ugh... he has no taste for women whatsoever) and Bill Gates gets to be knighted by the Queen. Now, dear Britons, what would you say about becoming a republic?
Yet Another Slashdoted Site... This one went down so fast I wasn't able to read the article refered to, it went so fast mirrordot didn't manage to make a copy of it... Wow! That was it, the real, good slashdoting.