I think reality is the opposite: MS has plenty of technical skills but management is so utterly incompetent the company is unable to put most of the technical skill to good use.
It's pretty obvious to me why. Ham operators are hackers by nature. They love the technology and learn to do new and cool things with it because of their passion. It's not a very popular hobby so they have to do some work to learn about it and to meet people who share their interests. This means they are self-motivated people. Self-motivated people are usually against large government because large government invariably penalizes self-motivated people.
And they like firearms because firearms are just another technology. And techies tend to be guys who are genetically predisposed to like anything that makes loud noises and breaks things.
No, fascism usually refers to government control if not outright ownership of significant parts of private industry. However, that is also going on in the U.S. these days, and has accelerated significantly in the last 2 years.
See, the concept of "nanny state" is usually used to imply that government is trying to take care of people far more than is necessary and wise. While a nanny is appropriate for a child, she is not for an adult. And it is a invariable result of human nature that the better the safety net available, the more people will willingly allow themselves to fall into it. In that regard, we can see this problem reach epidemic proportions in many countries in Europe and it's been a significant problem in most Western countries for the last 50 years.
The problem is that the more you help people, the less many of them will help themselves, so more government "charity" isn't always better, and in fact it's quite easy to reach a point of diminishing and even negative returns as the "nanny state" is increased.
While almost no one agrees that there should be no safety net, too many people seem to take the attitude that people cannot rise to the occasion should things get tough. In the case of the U.S., what happened in the Great Depression would, by their logic, have resulted in massive starvation and anarchy, but this didn't happen. Sure, there was real suffering and yes, there are things the government could have and should have done to help. However, if the economy were to reach that point today, I don't doubt that there would be a total breakdown of order in large parts of the country, especially the cities. Yet, today we have a massive welfare safety net that is supposed to prevent this problem. In fact, the biggest result is that it's disincentivized and even prevented many people from being self-sufficient.
Were the men and women who suffered through the Depression that much smarter? Not necessarily. Were they more self-sufficient? Absolutely. When failure means you can spend your days in public housing, which might be crappy, but keeps you off the streets, with all kinds of help for food and other necessities, a significant number of people will just let themselves coast, knowing things generally won't get but so bad. But if the consequences of failure mean you are out in the streets starving to death... a whole lot of those people will be motivated to make the effort to avoid something that bad. (And the people who still cannot or will not are _really_ the ones who need help of some kind).
So, the question that must be answered, but generally is ignored, is how to take care of the people who really need help (and give them the means, whenever possible, to achieve self-sufficiency) while preventing the larger number of people who will just try to game the system from doing so. Our usually well-meaning, but often misguided liberals generally want to keep throwing more and more money at the problem, even though this is usually the wrong answer and more often than not perpetuates the problem or even makes it worse because it gives people a sense of entitlement they should not have.
It's human nature. I realized in college I could coast and get mostly B's, or work a lot more and get A's. I have to admit, I mostly went for the B's (although I was a lot more motivated when I switched to CS). So, I'm not setting myself up as being above this behavior myself. A state that takes care to help prevent people from starving and being homeless, etc, is not necessarily a nanny state, and if it's not, it is in fact acting much more charitably than the nanny state that coddles people and allows them to devolve to the lowest common denominator because the consequences of completely giving up on responsibility just really aren't so bad... because another aspect of human nature is that you can used to nearly anything. All you have to do is look at the history of socialism to see how it dehumanizes and devolves the people who live under it. Productivity and motivation invariably plummet, and if equality is achieved, it is only done so at the cost of dragging the vast majority down.
Often the best love is tough love, and nanny states fail to acknowledge this.
Perhaps, but we in the U.S. have learned that anything bad that European governments are doing to their citizens will be adopted by the U.S. government in a few years.
Let's face it, we are both, Americans and Europeans, suffocating under increasingly bloated nanny states that are quickly bankrupting themselves. The European countries, at least some of them, just have a bit of a head start.
The whole issue of political contributions boils down to an unfortunate flaw that cannot be fixed from our political system (nor from any political system ever devised because it's a fact of human nature): Whoever speaks the loudest tends to be elected.
Money equals access to communication, whether it's TV ads, newspaper ads, people going door-to-door with pamphlets, or anything else. It is certainly possible (and in fact quite reasonable because other countries do it) for the government to provide a level playing field for all candidates to be able to make their cases to the public whether through newspapers, televised debates or what have you. Then the population, free to access all this information, can decide who they think is best and vote for him or her.
The problem is that the public won't do that. You are not going to reach most of the public unless you air commercials during "Dancing With the Idols" or football games, and even then you aren't going to rise above the noise level of other advertising unless you present your case with all the breathless hysteria of a "War of the Worlds" re-enactment.
Therefore, communication == votes, and money == communication so money == votes.
No form of campaign reform is ever going to change that, nor is there any way, without massive violations of Constitutional rights, for rich people (or their friends) to not have a significant and unfair advantage by virtue of their being rich.
Recent legislation and court rulings may have shifted this around a little bit, making it a little better or a little worse is irrelevant. It's not going to fix the problem.
See it isn't that simple. Yes, it would help if people understood the issue better. I don't claim to. However, corporate personhood still means that really nasty things happen that involve corporations where people feel, with at least some merit, that no person was held accountable, and that the punishment does not fit the crime (i.e., is too lenient) because ultimately, a corporation can no more do right or wrong than a gun or an alligator or an operating system.
While corporate personhood is a legal construct that is believed to help the legal system in its goal of justice, it simply does not seem possible to me for a corporation to have broken the law without a human being, willfully or not, also breaking the law. Yet, it seems to me, and is often the public perception, that too often even when there's a guilty verdict, the real crooks still get away with it.
Other than completing the theory, is there any practical use for this new found knowledge?
Duh! Flying cars, jet packs, bionic limbs, amusement parks on the Moon... all that stuff they've been promising us for the last hundred years!
Seriously though, the stuff this will give us in the decades to come is so cool and amazing that no one has even imagined it yet. Take a look back at harnessing electricity, harnessing nuclear power, discovering relativity and quantum physics and figure out what those things eventually gave us.
Of course, just knowing is itself worth the effort.
Well, intelligent life that resembles us in any way, yeah, I would agree we can be pretty certain about that, but life in general, even if it's very simple? I think it will be a long, long time before we can rule that out.
Of course, there's also the possibility that intelligent life could exist nearby in a form we would not be able to recognize.
Well, since the prosecution and defense both want jurors who are easily swayed by emotion rather than convinced by the facts, I can hardly see how you can complain about the GP.
The problem isn't that the best candidates for juries aren't willing to serve... it's that the best candidates for juries are often eliminated.
We haven't been able to look very closely. The jury is still out on the one place (Mars) we believe life is possible that we've been able to test repeatedly (at least robotically).
We haven't even begun to examine Europa and have barely tested Titan... and that's only considering the places in the Solar System where we think life is possible based on our understanding of where and how life can exist, which itself is constantly being challenged and broadened.
The Solar System might be teaming with life that we are nowhere near being able to find... we haven't even identified all the places on Earth where it can be found.
Enterprise software in general is terrible. That's been my experience for over 20 years.
The people who buy it usually don't use it and the people who have to use it have no say. Once a PHB is sold by slick marketing and drops X thousand dollars per seat, it's too late to back out when you realize that you bought something that makes IBM software from the 1980s look modern and friendly.
The above paragraph may not be the actual case, but it sure explains what I've always seen.
Besides, from what I've been seeing lately, Java apps are often bundled with their own JREs. It makes the installers obscenely large, but I suppose it solves the compatibility problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, the U.S. Dollar isn't fake as long as we all agree it isn't fake. Even if it is.
You're implying MS has management skills?
I think reality is the opposite: MS has plenty of technical skills but management is so utterly incompetent the company is unable to put most of the technical skill to good use.
Not my kids. They're plenty smart and technically literate (mostly self-taught too).
But we are not a typical family... in good ways and bad,
Rick
What is the arrestable offense here?
Making fools of a company rich and powerful enough to buy your arrest and punishment.
Gee, sounds a lot like the people running the country from the last few years, doesn't it?
"It's only evil when it's a Republican."
There. Fixed that for you. The double standard among some leftists* is sickening. (And yes, some conservatives do it too, in the opposite direction.)
* I'd use the word "liberal" but the use of the word (in the U.S. at least) has come to represent some of the most illiberal people on the planet.
Maybe he recognizes a similar situation when he sees one. :-/
It's pretty obvious to me why. Ham operators are hackers by nature. They love the technology and learn to do new and cool things with it because of their passion. It's not a very popular hobby so they have to do some work to learn about it and to meet people who share their interests. This means they are self-motivated people. Self-motivated people are usually against large government because large government invariably penalizes self-motivated people.
And they like firearms because firearms are just another technology. And techies tend to be guys who are genetically predisposed to like anything that makes loud noises and breaks things.
OK, even if that doesn't work, it's probably a good idea anyway. Or if not good, at least fun.
Raytracing in 64kB 10 years ago is definitely cool, but they were raytracing in the early 80s.
No, fascism usually refers to government control if not outright ownership of significant parts of private industry. However, that is also going on in the U.S. these days, and has accelerated significantly in the last 2 years.
See, the concept of "nanny state" is usually used to imply that government is trying to take care of people far more than is necessary and wise. While a nanny is appropriate for a child, she is not for an adult. And it is a invariable result of human nature that the better the safety net available, the more people will willingly allow themselves to fall into it. In that regard, we can see this problem reach epidemic proportions in many countries in Europe and it's been a significant problem in most Western countries for the last 50 years.
The problem is that the more you help people, the less many of them will help themselves, so more government "charity" isn't always better, and in fact it's quite easy to reach a point of diminishing and even negative returns as the "nanny state" is increased.
While almost no one agrees that there should be no safety net, too many people seem to take the attitude that people cannot rise to the occasion should things get tough. In the case of the U.S., what happened in the Great Depression would, by their logic, have resulted in massive starvation and anarchy, but this didn't happen. Sure, there was real suffering and yes, there are things the government could have and should have done to help. However, if the economy were to reach that point today, I don't doubt that there would be a total breakdown of order in large parts of the country, especially the cities. Yet, today we have a massive welfare safety net that is supposed to prevent this problem. In fact, the biggest result is that it's disincentivized and even prevented many people from being self-sufficient.
Were the men and women who suffered through the Depression that much smarter? Not necessarily. Were they more self-sufficient? Absolutely. When failure means you can spend your days in public housing, which might be crappy, but keeps you off the streets, with all kinds of help for food and other necessities, a significant number of people will just let themselves coast, knowing things generally won't get but so bad. But if the consequences of failure mean you are out in the streets starving to death... a whole lot of those people will be motivated to make the effort to avoid something that bad. (And the people who still cannot or will not are _really_ the ones who need help of some kind).
So, the question that must be answered, but generally is ignored, is how to take care of the people who really need help (and give them the means, whenever possible, to achieve self-sufficiency) while preventing the larger number of people who will just try to game the system from doing so. Our usually well-meaning, but often misguided liberals generally want to keep throwing more and more money at the problem, even though this is usually the wrong answer and more often than not perpetuates the problem or even makes it worse because it gives people a sense of entitlement they should not have.
It's human nature. I realized in college I could coast and get mostly B's, or work a lot more and get A's. I have to admit, I mostly went for the B's (although I was a lot more motivated when I switched to CS). So, I'm not setting myself up as being above this behavior myself. A state that takes care to help prevent people from starving and being homeless, etc, is not necessarily a nanny state, and if it's not, it is in fact acting much more charitably than the nanny state that coddles people and allows them to devolve to the lowest common denominator because the consequences of completely giving up on responsibility just really aren't so bad... because another aspect of human nature is that you can used to nearly anything. All you have to do is look at the history of socialism to see how it dehumanizes and devolves the people who live under it. Productivity and motivation invariably plummet, and if equality is achieved, it is only done so at the cost of dragging the vast majority down.
Often the best love is tough love, and nanny states fail to acknowledge this.
Perhaps, but we in the U.S. have learned that anything bad that European governments are doing to their citizens will be adopted by the U.S. government in a few years.
Let's face it, we are both, Americans and Europeans, suffocating under increasingly bloated nanny states that are quickly bankrupting themselves. The European countries, at least some of them, just have a bit of a head start.
The whole issue of political contributions boils down to an unfortunate flaw that cannot be fixed from our political system (nor from any political system ever devised because it's a fact of human nature): Whoever speaks the loudest tends to be elected.
Money equals access to communication, whether it's TV ads, newspaper ads, people going door-to-door with pamphlets, or anything else. It is certainly possible (and in fact quite reasonable because other countries do it) for the government to provide a level playing field for all candidates to be able to make their cases to the public whether through newspapers, televised debates or what have you. Then the population, free to access all this information, can decide who they think is best and vote for him or her.
The problem is that the public won't do that. You are not going to reach most of the public unless you air commercials during "Dancing With the Idols" or football games, and even then you aren't going to rise above the noise level of other advertising unless you present your case with all the breathless hysteria of a "War of the Worlds" re-enactment.
Therefore, communication == votes, and money == communication so money == votes.
No form of campaign reform is ever going to change that, nor is there any way, without massive violations of Constitutional rights, for rich people (or their friends) to not have a significant and unfair advantage by virtue of their being rich.
Recent legislation and court rulings may have shifted this around a little bit, making it a little better or a little worse is irrelevant. It's not going to fix the problem.
See it isn't that simple. Yes, it would help if people understood the issue better. I don't claim to. However, corporate personhood still means that really nasty things happen that involve corporations where people feel, with at least some merit, that no person was held accountable, and that the punishment does not fit the crime (i.e., is too lenient) because ultimately, a corporation can no more do right or wrong than a gun or an alligator or an operating system.
While corporate personhood is a legal construct that is believed to help the legal system in its goal of justice, it simply does not seem possible to me for a corporation to have broken the law without a human being, willfully or not, also breaking the law. Yet, it seems to me, and is often the public perception, that too often even when there's a guilty verdict, the real crooks still get away with it.
Other than completing the theory, is there any practical use for this new found knowledge?
Duh! Flying cars, jet packs, bionic limbs, amusement parks on the Moon... all that stuff they've been promising us for the last hundred years!
Seriously though, the stuff this will give us in the decades to come is so cool and amazing that no one has even imagined it yet. Take a look back at harnessing electricity, harnessing nuclear power, discovering relativity and quantum physics and figure out what those things eventually gave us.
Of course, just knowing is itself worth the effort.
Looks like our brain expects us to become cyborgs.
Or the brain is so adaptable, it readily adapts to situations that could not have occurred in our evolutionary past.
I can definitely relate to the concept of flinching when something that is part of your "virtual body" (for lack of a better term) gets hurt.
Well, intelligent life that resembles us in any way, yeah, I would agree we can be pretty certain about that, but life in general, even if it's very simple? I think it will be a long, long time before we can rule that out.
Of course, there's also the possibility that intelligent life could exist nearby in a form we would not be able to recognize.
Well, since the prosecution and defense both want jurors who are easily swayed by emotion rather than convinced by the facts, I can hardly see how you can complain about the GP.
The problem isn't that the best candidates for juries aren't willing to serve... it's that the best candidates for juries are often eliminated.
We haven't been able to look very closely. The jury is still out on the one place (Mars) we believe life is possible that we've been able to test repeatedly (at least robotically).
We haven't even begun to examine Europa and have barely tested Titan... and that's only considering the places in the Solar System where we think life is possible based on our understanding of where and how life can exist, which itself is constantly being challenged and broadened.
The Solar System might be teaming with life that we are nowhere near being able to find... we haven't even identified all the places on Earth where it can be found.
Remind me again of why anyone would want to explore Mars instead of Europa?
Because the monoliths told us to stay the hell away from Europa?
And anyone who disagrees must be a Gorgie sympathizer!
Enterprise software in general is terrible. That's been my experience for over 20 years.
The people who buy it usually don't use it and the people who have to use it have no say. Once a PHB is sold by slick marketing and drops X thousand dollars per seat, it's too late to back out when you realize that you bought something that makes IBM software from the 1980s look modern and friendly.
The above paragraph may not be the actual case, but it sure explains what I've always seen.
Besides, from what I've been seeing lately, Java apps are often bundled with their own JREs. It makes the installers obscenely large, but I suppose it solves the compatibility problem.
Or perhaps, "Run once, rewrite everywhere."
Java has literally become the opposite of what it was intended to be (with regard to portability) for that reason.
What I'm finding now is that any apps that are Java-based are simply bundled with the specific JRE that they are intended to run with.
The OP should be proud... they haven't had much success since releasing "Edge of Excess" in 1993. This is in Canada, after all.
Er, does that mean it could be heard to say "IM IN UR MOLLYCOOLZ CATALIZIN UR FOOZION"?
(Lameness filter ballast)