At the end of the product lifecycle, MS leaves you with
an.exe; Red Hat's source is published. One of these allows self/mutual support.
Do the math: who can *afford* to support stuff longer: divide corporate worth, or cash in the bank or some other metric by the cost per year for support. Now who looks cheap?
Over the years, I've watched too many vendors tell me that they were revising support *downward* despite earlier promises. It's the first thing I point out when someone slanders Free Software by talking about lack of support.
That's why I don't think kudo's are in order here. Microsoft is being forced into deeper service (and increased costs) by the same ruthless market that made them rich. That's not praiseworthy. That's reaping the whirlwind.
Dude, this is a *first*. I mean, usually we Ugly Americans are getting dissed by the (rest of the) civilized world for doing all the gross stuff: reusing handkerchiefs apparently freaks out japanese people, we eat virtually everything with our hands, and we even coined the 'five second rule' for dealing with food that falls on the floor.
My grandma is REALLY old-school. Living with her for a summer, I noticed a lot of spooky habits. The worst was that she was storing Mayonaise in the cupboard, unrefrigerated. I gasped, and she reminded me that she'd made me dozens of sandwiches from the same jar, and that she'd lived to be 80 with that bad habit.
Risks are a matrix, not a line. Draw the percent-chance of incident on one axis and the hazard level on the other. And each high-risk item removed shifts attention downstream to the next-riskiest item. We've already gotten rid of all the common-deadly risks, the uncommon-deadly ones, and so on. Now we're worrying about slim chances or really-unpleasant hazard factors.
Getting dead from granny's chicken salad is probably unlikely because she (coincidentally) never double-dips to contaminate the source. Likewise, drinking from a mountain stream is generally safe, but the gut-wrenching agony of Giardiasis is a fate worse than death, so I either carry a filtering straw or bottled water. In both cases, we're just worrying about ingested pathogens because they're still the most common risk we face on a daily basis.
Re:Landmines? I don't think that's quite necessary
on
When Robots Play Games
·
· Score: 1
Well, you didn't get modded up, but I got a kick out of your comment. Beats the rehash of that tired old 'lawyers vs. labrats' piece (which googles up 6800 hits) above, and I liked you stopping short of saying the whole beowulf cliche.
Thumbs up.
Re:Landmines? I don't think that's quite necessary
on
When Robots Play Games
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
VR, recommend you read the article:
they picked the rats because they're too light to set off the mines and are single-minded enough that they work better/cheaper than sniffer-dogs.
The article describes using cables/tethers to restrict the rats to a line of interest. Hopefully, you can extend this concept to multiple rats on parallel lines and see how that'd allow efficient mine-sweeps of areas of concern.
The rats live 6 years and can be bred, travel lightly, etc. This is EXACTLY what the parent poster meant when they talked about evolutionarily handling a cool problem rather than expecting rapid results (cheaply) from robots.
How little do you figure you can make your smart robot for? A few grand? And where will Afghani's (or third-world citizens anywhere, especially those recovering from the economic impact of the very wars that placed these mines) get that money, a steady source of repair parts, etc? Instructions on training, a pair of rats, and fifty yards of string/wire and a clicker could let any small village have their own demining capability. Somehow, I don't think robots are gonna be as versatile or cost-effective.
Seriously, the parent poster on this should have considered posting it as a story (unless it's old news). It sure seems to me to be a great blend of nerd-interest factor, news, and stuff that matters. Props to the parent poster and the involved researchers. Within my life, we'll likely have cheap devices with artificial noses or GPR or another solution. But abandoned mines are too wicked to wait that long.
Even discounting these things, worrying about the ethical implications of hurting an animal by training it as a mine-sniffer ignores the huge ethical implications of going the other way: if nothing is done, people die or are maimed. We've had this argument: using animals to save human lives is not taken lightly, but it is ethically tenable.
He selectively chooses material to illustrate his extreme leftist views (don't forget what radical politics has brought the world) and then works to use his position to spew propaganda.
I can't tell-- is this Bush or Cheney they're referring to, or Moore?
Oh, now I see that 'leftist' word. Delete that word and we're completely back to ambiguity, though.
Frankly, I agree that the show is hot air. After all, who *doesn't* have distant cousins or former business dealings that they'd rather not be reminded of. And I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road person, politically. That said, this presidential team is still the worst thing that I've ever seen on so many levels.
Hey, don't laugh. I can remember the trade news, and we had a Sun, E450 series, and we hit something like this around 1999ish. We had spurious problems and Sun did a few diagnostics via phone and then dispatched a techie with some tinfoil, more or less. He installed a custom piece of shielding, we all got a detailed glimpse into the guts of that glorious machine, and the problem never happened again.
As outlandish as the cause seems, the minor improvement of shielding (I vaguely recall gamma's being particularly meaner than the usual RFI, am I right?) was enough to drop things back below tolerances and silence the problem. IANAE, YMMV, BNI.
You've seen a widespread belief that kids liked Ep 1 or 2? Really? I don't know anyone (geeks or otherwise) that thinks Star Wars 1 & 2 were youth-friendly. I'd agree totally that kids are mostly bored with 1 and 2.
Ever *read* the Princess Bride? Unlike the movie, the original William Goldman book dwells heavily on grandpa's version being an on-the-fly 'good parts' redacting of a wordy old Italian mega-novel that spends way too much time getting clever about political intrigue and stuff. Imagine a novel trying to recapture life with the Borgias or Machiavelli... or worse.
Like the ficticious original author Goldman claims to be editing down to 'good parts', and like every book from certain other Ultra-Famous writers (Stephen King), I get the impression Lucas has got so many yes-men crawling up his ass that nobody can get near enough to tell him 'no' or 'this sucks' or insist on strong editorial changes in the content. So, we're stuck with 1400 page King novels and Star Wars plots that'd make Machiavelli proud and bore anyone but Henry Kissinger.
George Lucas, pick up the nearest Clue Phone:
good guys come from nowhere to be great.
You don't have 5 years of 26 hour episodess like B5. Tell fewer side-stories.
bad guys can be 2-dimensional.
Nobody cares WHY political winds shift.
they care less HOW political winds shift.
The hardest plot issue you gave yourself was getting audiences to be ok watching Annakin becoming Darth Vader. That said, you had 20 years to come up with a plot that accomplishes this. Alas, I'd say you've failed miserably.
yeah, I realized this the other day when edealinfo.com had a dell with 17" lcd and xp installed for about $550. The monitor is commonly >>$300, leaving 200 to split between cpu, box, peripherals and OS.
Maglev's high pitch hits me like fingernails on
a chalkboard, but that ain't nothin' to the sound
of modern warfare. I used to hike near a testground where
vulcan guns were shot. Vulcans (GE M61)
are a modern gattling gun, using 6 barrels, 20mm rounds and an autofeeder
to shoot 100 rounds per second. They make a medium-low pitched
'waaahroooooohn' sort of sound (this (AVI, sorry) is a short firing burst from a vulcan, but all I could
find online) that echoed for miles in the mountains I was hiking in. A few-second burst sounds somewhat haunting & moody. The first time,
I sort of chuckled and wondered what sort of lovesick moose
or whatever make that sound. Then I found out. Wish I hadn't.
Once I'd seen what they were capable of (you'll have to imagine a hundred 20mm rounds
per second hitting a soldier; I'm intentionally not seeking a link), that sound took on a whole new meaning.
There's a whole ethical debate on this sort of imagery: can national security be weakened by US citizens being repulsed by the carnage our weaponry is capable of? Imagery impacted US public perceptions of the war in Viet Nam, and we've advanced a lot technologically since then.
I realize I'm off topic by here, but whining about maglev (pun intended) seems silly in comparison. As with jets and computer fans and traffic noise, maglev's purpose is considerably more benign. We can work around or get used to the sound.
Did anyone else misread that as a combined case mod: hamster cage and ez-bake oven? I mean, normally I'd know it was wrong. But this is April 1, and I kept staring at the text, thinking 'uh, guys, that's reachin' a bit far to find funny.'
Man hacks/beats online casino. Casino sends thugs & man dies. The hack and the murder are done in such secret that NOBODY ever suspects casino.
C3P0: He made a fair move. Screaming about it won't help you.
Han: Let him have it. It's not wise to upset a Wookiee.
C3PO: But sir, nobody worries about upsetting a droid.
Han: That's 'cause droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.
C3PO: I see your point, sir. I suggest a new strategy, Artoo. Let the Wookiee win.
Nah, I think I'll stick to cheating on my taxes... er, I mean, that is if I *DID* cheat on my taxes. And I'd suggest you tell someone you trust.
Speaking of getting it wrong, let's not forget all those
benefits we got from deregulated power. From price-gouging to
company-induced shortages and rolling outages, that was sure
a bright idea. It goes against your initial 'regulation
is bad' line, but reinforces the 'comic ability of governments
to intervene at the wrong time on the wrong side' nicely.
I'm still paying a rate that's 90%
higher than before Calif. deregulated, thanks to long-term
ripple effects into adjacent states. Gee.. Thanks, guys.
When I was the bright scrawny little one who the gorrillas were cheating off of, I used to resort to tactics to 'educate' them. I'd give the same (flawed) answers to 2 or 3 people, so they'd be separated and watched closely on the next test.
Shifting to this story's context, I think the headset (or whatever gadget form this takes) will be a bit obvious for now. And I think worrying about cheating in the face of improved communication tools is fairly silly... we're so far from an invisible, ubiquitous, encrypted, silent channel for communication that you're better off worrying about all the current ways that work for cheating: grading each others' work under a mutual-improvement agreement, crib sheets (including *in* calculators or on sticks of chewing gum), pencil tap codes (excellent for multiple choice tests), ad-hoc sign language, reviewing old exams from prior students, learning a few canned answers, bringing in helpful info in dummy bluebooks, etc etc etc.
All of these are fixed by fixing the test itself. Use essays, show-the-work questions, and other ways of documenting on-test the student's ability to THINK. Once they're done, even subvocal cheating becomes harder.
Frankly, by the time we get subvocal communication at the 'free with an order of fries' price, I hope we'll have improved education a few ways. Cuz the educational system's still stone-knives and bearskins, compared to it's potential. But that's just my opinion.
Give everyone a second, unique frat-house nickname, like Sharkbait, Hurl, or Nads. You get the picture: 'Computer, let me talk to Ensign Nads.' 'Nads here. Wazzup, Captain Kludge?'
OK, so I'm not funny? How about we implement this and take care of the redundancy stuff via LDAP. Or X.500. There goes any weekends off THIS summer.
On second thought, maybe I wasn't joking just a moment ago. Compared to making LDAP multimedia-friendly and integrating it into a voice-recognition server, getting to saddle certain coworkers with subtly insulting nicknames (SCOFan, Goatse, 1d10t, Lamer, arrem-dash-are, Ms Bob) starts to look pretty cool, huh?
Um, Tantalum and Africa (The Congo, specifically). Tantalum is critical for miniaturization, since it creates a higher-efficiency capacitor than ceramics, so we're using a lot for cell phones and other microcircuitry. Here's a couple docs on Tantalum:
I don't know a lot about Tantalum, but mention it as an example because it's entirely plausible that we'll repeatedly run into some substance that comes cheaply from a foreign land, and which we've got a voracious demand for. I like your argument mostly (it was an intriguing twist), but it oversimplifies when you start implying we'll always be able to find alternatives. Oil's maybe another good example. We're not apparently going to find sufficient oil reserves here in the US. Even if we do, we'll still exceed demand eventually. In a parallel with your fiber optic example, we'll be forced to shift to alternatives, eventually. And there are some global economic powers who will ALWAYS be forced to import stuff. Japan, for example.
Oh, and a key disincentive to wars is loss of life. If cheap machines do the ugly work, maybe we'll accept the conquer-n-pillage (a.k.a. Borg) way of expansion as cheaper than buying the needed stuff. The human costs and the robotics costs keep us noble now, but would we be so noble if extraction via war was a fraction of the cost of buying the goods?
Um... Machrone's mom was another case. I was writing about my grandmother. Every word's true and first-hand.
Nearly every end user you deal with is 92 and has arthritis? Wow, how's IT pay at that rest home?;-)
I agree that most folks prefer GUI's, but some prefer CLI's. Others find both hopeless. Of the two, my grandma prefered typing only. The reasons are often more than just how we THINK, and that was what I hoped to convey. Every analyst I've read in the last decade agrees that the future is in appliances. Neither CLI or GUI, or some of both. A few keys, a status screen, and rom-based so there's nothing to mess up. Simpler.
So, as I see it, you're a true native Vulgarian, too dim to carry an argument on the strength of logic alone, and you have some delusional aspects. There isn't a paragraph you've written that is worth response, including the ones where I challenged you to explain claims only to have you say 'I did' or equally loftless witticisms. You rant for 3x the usual/. post length but refuse to take the time to cut/paste evidence for your claims. Lazy. Par for lowest-common-denominator narrowminded leave-it-to-beaver throwbacks-to-the-fifties toting preconceived notions dictated by the extreme right. Or, since you obviously can't use or afford a dictionary, what are often called dittoheads.
Bozo bit flipped. (hint: http://www.codeguru.com/columns/VB/article.php/c46 07/)
PS: I did get a helluva laugh about you calling Glenn's spaceflight self-serving, since you seem to be championing a draft-dodging reservist pilot who wasted god knows how much to land on a carrier for a photo op. Thanks for the chuckles.
(goes to bottom of page and clicks to "PLAIN OLD TEXT" immediately)
4000? Strange... I remember MS press releases saying two factoids: that they took 500 man-years to create win2k, and that they had a staff of over 200 developers on the win2k team. Now, keep in mind this is strictly developers, not support, admin, QA or etc.
4000 for IE, vs 250 for the whole OS?? If anything, what you're saying PROVES Brooks' theorem. Incidentally, you obviously haven't read the Mythical Man Month. His examples involve companies like IBM and GE. They've occasionally done some big projects, I hear. Had microsoft existed when he wrote the book, he'd have mentioned them. Read the book. Really.
Back to your 20,000 number: if Microsoft hires 20,000 *developers* on an OS and doesn't fall victim to the flaws resulting from an infinite committee (unlike the infinite monkeys concept, an infinite committee results in a black hole of productivity, where NOTHING ever is created again... like that? I just made it up!) they'd be spending a third of their manpower on engineers. That's a bunch of nontechies that'll be out of work, considering the balance at Microsoft is nowhere near 30% engineers right now. Also, at 100k apiece, not counting overhead, Bill Gates would be seeing 20,000 x 100,000 = 4 BILLION a year spent on crushing a free alternative that admittedly hasn't caught up with microsoft yet on most issues.
After a few years of spending like crazy and seeing the Linux realm keep up... it'll start to look like a poor investment.
After a decade, they'll have spent a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's market cap. If they stop, linux will still catch up. Press on!
After another decade, the money's run out. Let's say Microsoft's still in the lead in this ficticious scenario. But they've gotta stop. Once they do, linux advances again.
Don't underestimate Microsoft? Indeed. Apple, Oracle and Netscape all needed a profit motive to win. Linux just is. And twenty years from now, it'll still be just as free, just as flexible. And anyone that wants to lend a hand is free to do so. That's the concept that shouldn't be underestimated.
4000? Strange... I remember MS press releases saying two factoids: that they took 500 man-years to create win2k, and that they had a staff of over 200 developers on the win2k team.
4000 for IE, vs 250 for the whole OS?? If anything, what you're saying PROVES Brooks' theorem. Incidentally, you obviously haven't read the Mythical Man Month. His examples involve little companies like IBM and GE. They've occasionally done some big projects, I hear...
Back to your 20,000 number: if Microsoft hires 20,000 on an OS and doesn't fall victim to the flaws resulting from an infinite committee (unlike the infinite monkeys concept, an infinite committee results in a black hole of productivity, where NOTHING ever is created again... like that? I just made it up!) they'd be spending a third of their manpower on engineers. That's a bunch of nontechies that'll be out of work, considering the balance at Microsoft is nowhere near 30% engineers right now. Also, at 100k apiece, not counting overhead, Bill Gates would be seeing 20,000 x 100,000 = 4 BILLION a year spent on crushing a free alternative that admittedly hasn't caught up with microsoft yet on most issues.
After a few years of spending like crazy and seeing the Linux realm keep up... it'll start to look like a poor investment.
After a decade, they'll have spent a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's market cap. If they stop, linux will still catch up. Press on!
After another decade, the money's run out. Let's say Microsoft's still in the lead in this ficticious scenario. But they've gotta stop. Once they do, linux advances again.
Don't underestimate Microsoft? Indeed. Apple, Oracle and Netscape all needed a profit motive to win. Linux just is. And twenty years from now, it'll still be just as free, just as flexible. And anyone that wants to lend a hand is free to do so. That's the concept that shouldn't be underestimated.
One word. Canon.
Oh, wait... my canon hates win2k. But I think it's the first-generation on-mobo USB. Everything USB seems to hate this computer.
So, maybe not. Mileage may vary. But right now, I'd rank 'em Canon, then maybe HP on the high end, and everything else above Lexmark.
Bill Machrone wrote a column a couple years ago about watching a senior relative of his (his mom?) with a computer, and how dramatically it showed how flawed computer interfaces still are.
I remember the article because I'd just upgraded grandma's computer.
Grandma's 93 now. She likes her Ceiva. Everything else pretty much never has caught on. But we came closer with CLI than with GUI. She used to type and print on an older DOS PC. Frankly, I think I could have gotten somewhere with a modern version of bank street writer, if anyone remembers that simple program.
Some specifics: Grandma owned and ran a dairy, worked as a short order cook and in a potato processing plant's trim-line. Since she retired from the trim-line work in the 60's, there was no such thing as carpal tunnel. But between RSI and arthritis and just being OLD, she's lost the *FINESSE* needed to control a mouse.
Watching her use a GUI is excruciating. She can't hold the mouse still enough to point and click. Dragging is worse. And double-clicking? Well, what she does ends up accidentally rearranging the desktop (drag-n-drop, revisited). She never does actually succeed in a timely double-click, so in fairness, the computer is worthless since a half-dozen tries with me as her coach pretty much scrambled things irretrievably (it's scary to watch!) with no success. My next visit, I came with accessibility research, mouse drivers, and alternates (click, then press enter... stuff like that). Failed. The next visit was a trackball. No dice. Instead of ease of use, I had complex instructions. Further, any of her umptyzillion grandkids, great-grandkids (the great-greats exist, but are too young to type) could mangle stuff and all instructions failed to make sense.
I looked at mailstations. Tiny function keys (borderline unreadable for her) and a couple bizarre icons, and text-only email. I've considered others, but all computer-type solutions have flaws I suspect she can't surmount.
End result: the computer went to a cousin's home. They needed it. Granny sends me a card or two via snailmail & we talk on the phone. And, like I said, the ceiva seems to work, since it JUST IS. No button pushin' needed at her end.
Don't try and tell me Grandma's going to USE a GUI. 2 weeks, two years down the road, same difference. It's unfit for some people's needs, my grandma in particular.
(Amusingly, someone mentioned in today's Trade Show article that watching folks test-drive (use/abuse) your product is incredibly educational. They've obviously overlooked this demographic).
Slashdot Mirror
- At the end of the product lifecycle, MS leaves you with
an
.exe; Red Hat's source is published. One of these allows self/mutual support.
- Do the math: who can *afford* to support stuff longer: divide corporate worth, or cash in the bank or some other metric by the cost per year for support. Now who looks cheap?
Over the years, I've watched too many vendors tell me that they were revising support *downward* despite earlier promises. It's the first thing I point out when someone slanders Free Software by talking about lack of support.That's why I don't think kudo's are in order here. Microsoft is being forced into deeper service (and increased costs) by the same ruthless market that made them rich. That's not praiseworthy. That's reaping the whirlwind.
My grandma is REALLY old-school. Living with her for a summer, I noticed a lot of spooky habits. The worst was that she was storing Mayonaise in the cupboard, unrefrigerated. I gasped, and she reminded me that she'd made me dozens of sandwiches from the same jar, and that she'd lived to be 80 with that bad habit.
Risks are a matrix, not a line. Draw the percent-chance of incident on one axis and the hazard level on the other. And each high-risk item removed shifts attention downstream to the next-riskiest item. We've already gotten rid of all the common-deadly risks, the uncommon-deadly ones, and so on. Now we're worrying about slim chances or really-unpleasant hazard factors.
Getting dead from granny's chicken salad is probably unlikely because she (coincidentally) never double-dips to contaminate the source. Likewise, drinking from a mountain stream is generally safe, but the gut-wrenching agony of Giardiasis is a fate worse than death, so I either carry a filtering straw or bottled water. In both cases, we're just worrying about ingested pathogens because they're still the most common risk we face on a daily basis.
Well, you didn't get modded up, but I got a kick out of your comment. Beats the rehash of that tired old 'lawyers vs. labrats' piece (which googles up 6800 hits) above, and I liked you stopping short of saying the whole beowulf cliche.
Thumbs up.
- they picked the rats because they're too light to set off the mines and are single-minded enough that they work better/cheaper than sniffer-dogs.
- The article describes using cables/tethers to restrict the rats to a line of interest. Hopefully, you can extend this concept to multiple rats on parallel lines and see how that'd allow efficient mine-sweeps of areas of concern.
- The rats live 6 years and can be bred, travel lightly, etc. This is EXACTLY what the parent poster meant when they talked about evolutionarily handling a cool problem rather than expecting rapid results (cheaply) from robots.
- How little do you figure you can make your smart robot for? A few grand? And where will Afghani's (or third-world citizens anywhere, especially those recovering from the economic impact of the very wars that placed these mines) get that money, a steady source of repair parts, etc? Instructions on training, a pair of rats, and fifty yards of string/wire and a clicker could let any small village have their own demining capability. Somehow, I don't think robots are gonna be as versatile or cost-effective.
Seriously, the parent poster on this should have considered posting it as a story (unless it's old news). It sure seems to me to be a great blend of nerd-interest factor, news, and stuff that matters. Props to the parent poster and the involved researchers. Within my life, we'll likely have cheap devices with artificial noses or GPR or another solution. But abandoned mines are too wicked to wait that long.Even discounting these things, worrying about the ethical implications of hurting an animal by training it as a mine-sniffer ignores the huge ethical implications of going the other way: if nothing is done, people die or are maimed. We've had this argument: using animals to save human lives is not taken lightly, but it is ethically tenable.
Oh, now I see that 'leftist' word. Delete that word and we're completely back to ambiguity, though.
Frankly, I agree that the show is hot air. After all, who *doesn't* have distant cousins or former business dealings that they'd rather not be reminded of. And I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road person, politically. That said, this presidential team is still the worst thing that I've ever seen on so many levels.
Hey, don't laugh. I can remember the trade news, and we had a Sun, E450 series, and we hit something like this around 1999ish. We had spurious problems and Sun did a few diagnostics via phone and then dispatched a techie with some tinfoil, more or less. He installed a custom piece of shielding, we all got a detailed glimpse into the guts of that glorious machine, and the problem never happened again.
As outlandish as the cause seems, the minor improvement of shielding (I vaguely recall gamma's being particularly meaner than the usual RFI, am I right?) was enough to drop things back below tolerances and silence the problem. IANAE, YMMV, BNI.
Ever *read* the Princess Bride? Unlike the movie, the original William Goldman book dwells heavily on grandpa's version being an on-the-fly 'good parts' redacting of a wordy old Italian mega-novel that spends way too much time getting clever about political intrigue and stuff. Imagine a novel trying to recapture life with the Borgias or Machiavelli... or worse.
Like the ficticious original author Goldman claims to be editing down to 'good parts', and like every book from certain other Ultra-Famous writers (Stephen King), I get the impression Lucas has got so many yes-men crawling up his ass that nobody can get near enough to tell him 'no' or 'this sucks' or insist on strong editorial changes in the content. So, we're stuck with 1400 page King novels and Star Wars plots that'd make Machiavelli proud and bore anyone but Henry Kissinger.
George Lucas, pick up the nearest Clue Phone:
yeah, I realized this the other day when edealinfo.com had a dell with 17" lcd and xp installed for about $550. The monitor is commonly >>$300, leaving 200 to split between cpu, box, peripherals and OS.
Once I'd seen what they were capable of (you'll have to imagine a hundred 20mm rounds per second hitting a soldier; I'm intentionally not seeking a link), that sound took on a whole new meaning.
There's a whole ethical debate on this sort of imagery: can national security be weakened by US citizens being repulsed by the carnage our weaponry is capable of? Imagery impacted US public perceptions of the war in Viet Nam, and we've advanced a lot technologically since then.
I realize I'm off topic by here, but whining about maglev (pun intended) seems silly in comparison. As with jets and computer fans and traffic noise, maglev's purpose is considerably more benign. We can work around or get used to the sound.
(shudders) Oh, Ick.
Man hacks/beats online casino. Casino sends thugs & man dies. The hack and the murder are done in such secret that NOBODY ever suspects casino.
Nah, I think I'll stick to cheating on my taxes... er, I mean, that is if I *DID* cheat on my taxes. And I'd suggest you tell someone you trust.I'm still paying a rate that's 90% higher than before Calif. deregulated, thanks to long-term ripple effects into adjacent states. Gee.. Thanks, guys.
When I was the bright scrawny little one who the gorrillas were cheating off of, I used to resort to tactics to 'educate' them. I'd give the same (flawed) answers to 2 or 3 people, so they'd be separated and watched closely on the next test.
Shifting to this story's context, I think the headset (or whatever gadget form this takes) will be a bit obvious for now. And I think worrying about cheating in the face of improved communication tools is fairly silly... we're so far from an invisible, ubiquitous, encrypted, silent channel for communication that you're better off worrying about all the current ways that work for cheating: grading each others' work under a mutual-improvement agreement, crib sheets (including *in* calculators or on sticks of chewing gum), pencil tap codes (excellent for multiple choice tests), ad-hoc sign language, reviewing old exams from prior students, learning a few canned answers, bringing in helpful info in dummy bluebooks, etc etc etc.
All of these are fixed by fixing the test itself. Use essays, show-the-work questions, and other ways of documenting on-test the student's ability to THINK. Once they're done, even subvocal cheating becomes harder.
Frankly, by the time we get subvocal communication at the 'free with an order of fries' price, I hope we'll have improved education a few ways. Cuz the educational system's still stone-knives and bearskins, compared to it's potential. But that's just my opinion.
Give everyone a second, unique frat-house nickname, like Sharkbait, Hurl, or Nads. You get the picture: 'Computer, let me talk to Ensign Nads.' 'Nads here. Wazzup, Captain Kludge?'
OK, so I'm not funny? How about we implement this and take care of the redundancy stuff via LDAP. Or X.500. There goes any weekends off THIS summer.
On second thought, maybe I wasn't joking just a moment ago. Compared to making LDAP multimedia-friendly and integrating it into a voice-recognition server, getting to saddle certain coworkers with subtly insulting nicknames (SCOFan, Goatse, 1d10t, Lamer, arrem-dash-are, Ms Bob) starts to look pretty cool, huh?
http://www.agitprop.org.au/nowar/20031023_ww_congo _africa_imperialism.htm
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1715
I don't know a lot about Tantalum, but mention it as an example because it's entirely plausible that we'll repeatedly run into some substance that comes cheaply from a foreign land, and which we've got a voracious demand for. I like your argument mostly (it was an intriguing twist), but it oversimplifies when you start implying we'll always be able to find alternatives. Oil's maybe another good example. We're not apparently going to find sufficient oil reserves here in the US. Even if we do, we'll still exceed demand eventually. In a parallel with your fiber optic example, we'll be forced to shift to alternatives, eventually. And there are some global economic powers who will ALWAYS be forced to import stuff. Japan, for example.
Oh, and a key disincentive to wars is loss of life. If cheap machines do the ugly work, maybe we'll accept the conquer-n-pillage (a.k.a. Borg) way of expansion as cheaper than buying the needed stuff. The human costs and the robotics costs keep us noble now, but would we be so noble if extraction via war was a fraction of the cost of buying the goods?
Nearly every end user you deal with is 92 and has arthritis? Wow, how's IT pay at that rest home? ;-)
I agree that most folks prefer GUI's, but some prefer CLI's. Others find both hopeless. Of the two, my grandma prefered typing only. The reasons are often more than just how we THINK, and that was what I hoped to convey. Every analyst I've read in the last decade agrees that the future is in appliances. Neither CLI or GUI, or some of both. A few keys, a status screen, and rom-based so there's nothing to mess up. Simpler.
Whatever. You wanna re-engage this conversation, change your tone. Otherwise, you're indistinguishable from a troll.
So, as I see it, you're a true native Vulgarian, too dim to carry an argument on the strength of logic alone, and you have some delusional aspects. There isn't a paragraph you've written that is worth response, including the ones where I challenged you to explain claims only to have you say 'I did' or equally loftless witticisms. You rant for 3x the usual /. post length but refuse to take the time to cut/paste evidence for your claims. Lazy. Par for lowest-common-denominator narrowminded leave-it-to-beaver throwbacks-to-the-fifties toting preconceived notions dictated by the extreme right. Or, since you obviously can't use or afford a dictionary, what are often called dittoheads.
6 07/)
Bozo bit flipped. (hint: http://www.codeguru.com/columns/VB/article.php/c4
PS: I did get a helluva laugh about you calling Glenn's spaceflight self-serving, since you seem to be championing a draft-dodging reservist pilot who wasted god knows how much to land on a carrier for a photo op. Thanks for the chuckles.
Fair? About a convicted abuser of monopoly powers? One who has shown no contrition nor seems to have learned any lesson!?
Fair? About the company that coined FUD and made it a household name?
Fair? About bits of evidence hinting they're partnering with SCO via a very shady multimillion dollar deal with a shell corp?
Fair? Anywhere involving Darl and SCO?
Bwah-hah-hah! Don't give away all your good jokes. Sell 'em. Comedy writers make some serious cash.
(goes to bottom of page and clicks to "PLAIN OLD TEXT" immediately)
4000? Strange... I remember MS press releases saying two factoids: that they took 500 man-years to create win2k, and that they had a staff of over 200 developers on the win2k team. Now, keep in mind this is strictly developers, not support, admin, QA or etc.
4000 for IE, vs 250 for the whole OS?? If anything, what you're saying PROVES Brooks' theorem. Incidentally, you obviously haven't read the Mythical Man Month. His examples involve companies like IBM and GE. They've occasionally done some big projects, I hear. Had microsoft existed when he wrote the book, he'd have mentioned them. Read the book. Really.
Back to your 20,000 number: if Microsoft hires 20,000 *developers* on an OS and doesn't fall victim to the flaws resulting from an infinite committee (unlike the infinite monkeys concept, an infinite committee results in a black hole of productivity, where NOTHING ever is created again... like that? I just made it up!) they'd be spending a third of their manpower on engineers. That's a bunch of nontechies that'll be out of work, considering the balance at Microsoft is nowhere near 30% engineers right now. Also, at 100k apiece, not counting overhead, Bill Gates would be seeing 20,000 x 100,000 = 4 BILLION a year spent on crushing a free alternative that admittedly hasn't caught up with microsoft yet on most issues.
After a few years of spending like crazy and seeing the Linux realm keep up... it'll start to look like a poor investment.
After a decade, they'll have spent a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's market cap. If they stop, linux will still catch up. Press on!
After another decade, the money's run out. Let's say Microsoft's still in the lead in this ficticious scenario. But they've gotta stop. Once they do, linux advances again.
Don't underestimate Microsoft? Indeed. Apple, Oracle and Netscape all needed a profit motive to win. Linux just is. And twenty years from now, it'll still be just as free, just as flexible. And anyone that wants to lend a hand is free to do so. That's the concept that shouldn't be underestimated.
4000? Strange... I remember MS press releases saying two factoids: that they took 500 man-years to create win2k, and that they had a staff of over 200 developers on the win2k team. 4000 for IE, vs 250 for the whole OS?? If anything, what you're saying PROVES Brooks' theorem. Incidentally, you obviously haven't read the Mythical Man Month. His examples involve little companies like IBM and GE. They've occasionally done some big projects, I hear... Back to your 20,000 number: if Microsoft hires 20,000 on an OS and doesn't fall victim to the flaws resulting from an infinite committee (unlike the infinite monkeys concept, an infinite committee results in a black hole of productivity, where NOTHING ever is created again... like that? I just made it up!) they'd be spending a third of their manpower on engineers. That's a bunch of nontechies that'll be out of work, considering the balance at Microsoft is nowhere near 30% engineers right now. Also, at 100k apiece, not counting overhead, Bill Gates would be seeing 20,000 x 100,000 = 4 BILLION a year spent on crushing a free alternative that admittedly hasn't caught up with microsoft yet on most issues. After a few years of spending like crazy and seeing the Linux realm keep up... it'll start to look like a poor investment. After a decade, they'll have spent a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's market cap. If they stop, linux will still catch up. Press on! After another decade, the money's run out. Let's say Microsoft's still in the lead in this ficticious scenario. But they've gotta stop. Once they do, linux advances again. Don't underestimate Microsoft? Indeed. Apple, Oracle and Netscape all needed a profit motive to win. Linux just is. And twenty years from now, it'll still be just as free, just as flexible. And anyone that wants to lend a hand is free to do so. That's the concept that shouldn't be underestimated.
One word. Canon. Oh, wait... my canon hates win2k. But I think it's the first-generation on-mobo USB. Everything USB seems to hate this computer. So, maybe not. Mileage may vary. But right now, I'd rank 'em Canon, then maybe HP on the high end, and everything else above Lexmark.
Bill Machrone wrote a column a couple years ago about watching a senior relative of his (his mom?) with a computer, and how dramatically it showed how flawed computer interfaces still are.
I remember the article because I'd just upgraded grandma's computer.
Grandma's 93 now. She likes her Ceiva. Everything else pretty much never has caught on. But we came closer with CLI than with GUI. She used to type and print on an older DOS PC. Frankly, I think I could have gotten somewhere with a modern version of bank street writer, if anyone remembers that simple program.
Some specifics: Grandma owned and ran a dairy, worked as a short order cook and in a potato processing plant's trim-line. Since she retired from the trim-line work in the 60's, there was no such thing as carpal tunnel. But between RSI and arthritis and just being OLD, she's lost the *FINESSE* needed to control a mouse.
Watching her use a GUI is excruciating. She can't hold the mouse still enough to point and click. Dragging is worse. And double-clicking? Well, what she does ends up accidentally rearranging the desktop (drag-n-drop, revisited). She never does actually succeed in a timely double-click, so in fairness, the computer is worthless since a half-dozen tries with me as her coach pretty much scrambled things irretrievably (it's scary to watch!) with no success. My next visit, I came with accessibility research, mouse drivers, and alternates (click, then press enter... stuff like that). Failed. The next visit was a trackball. No dice. Instead of ease of use, I had complex instructions. Further, any of her umptyzillion grandkids, great-grandkids (the great-greats exist, but are too young to type) could mangle stuff and all instructions failed to make sense.
I looked at mailstations. Tiny function keys (borderline unreadable for her) and a couple bizarre icons, and text-only email. I've considered others, but all computer-type solutions have flaws I suspect she can't surmount.
End result: the computer went to a cousin's home. They needed it. Granny sends me a card or two via snailmail & we talk on the phone. And, like I said, the ceiva seems to work, since it JUST IS. No button pushin' needed at her end.
Don't try and tell me Grandma's going to USE a GUI. 2 weeks, two years down the road, same difference. It's unfit for some people's needs, my grandma in particular.
(Amusingly, someone mentioned in today's Trade Show article that watching folks test-drive (use/abuse) your product is incredibly educational. They've obviously overlooked this demographic).
ye gods... manner, not manor. s/manor/manner/g for the perl-inclined. Also, s/Not Going/Not debating Going/g