Believe it or not, this is very common on corporate boards. Our current president, now backing legislation to ban this "unethical" practice, is himself a beneficiary.
When his failing oil company was acquired by Harken Energy, he got a bunch of stock options, a low interest loan with which to purchase the options, and eventually a portion of the loan was "forgiven."
Then, of course, he dumped Harken stock right before it tanked, which may or may not have been a co-incidence. Time may tell.
He also says that the brain is horrible at math, which isn't true. While it's true of most of us, people with ssvant syndrome (good article in June Scientific American, hardcopy only) are often capable of amazing mathematic abilities, so it's not the brain (or "meat") that's the problem. It's the software.
No, it's more like saying it's GM's fault that some vandal can pour sugar in the gas tank because the cap isn't locked behind a door.
Actually, it's more like some vandal pours sugar into your gas tank, and your car drives next door and siphons some of the gas into your neighbors car.
I think there is a real liability question. Not in the initial act of vandalism, but that the system can be considered faulty for allowing the vandalism to spread so easily.
Software manufacturers have gotten off the hook for crummy software for too long. Look at the kinds of recalls that happen in the auto industry. Somebody gets a rash from the dye they use to color a seat belt, and 100,000 cars get recalled at the manufacturers expense. Microsoft and others need to be accountable for quality, too.
FUD? Is that anything like the Apple switch commercials? No. That's simply competition, just like any car commercial or detergent commercial. FUD (which comes from the bad old days when IBM was a monopoly) stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and comes more under the heading of dirty tricks.
When MS says, "Oh dear, maybe we're not making enough money from Office on the Mac." they are trying to kill Mac sales, by making potential customers think that maybe MS-Office will disappear in the future and they'll be stuck with an outdated system.
"In the end, the only thing private industry is interested in is making money, so the question is whether systems he's developing will be cost-competitive with the systems they're replacing," said the Energy Department's Paster.
Unfortunately, simply using the simplest or cheapest or least-polluting material doesn't add up to making the greatest amount of money. Control does. That's why cheap hemp was replaced by petrochemicals, why trolley systems died in favor of cars, and why Microsoft hates any standard not under their control.
By this, I hope you mean "contains as much PKD-derived content as any previous movie," because as a film, it's horrible.
OK, I'll admit a certain visual aesthetic, but so much of it was crap that I hardly know where to begin. It's a summer movie, so we can forgive a few pointless chase scenes. But all of those "odd" characters seemed like 4 or thth rate ripoff attempts of David Lynch.
The creepy plant lady made no plot contribution (and knew things she wouldn't have been able to know) and was purely there to show off visual effects.
The spiders weren't even scary, they were almost cute, in a repulsively ET-like way. The precog, who supposedly can't predict anything less than a murder is telling him when to hide behind a balloon sale...
And how about that happy ending? Boy, didn't you walk out of the theatre smiling knowing we'd done "the right thing."
Actually, it wouldn't be nearly so annoying if the movie weren't chock full of really good ideas that were totally wasted. What a travesty.
Is Time-Warner reducing everything to the same level. Fortune sounds like "Entertainment Tonight" with fawning and drooling over CEOs instead of celebreties. Add just enough content to keep you from tossing the whole thing in disgust and you've got a four-page "article."
You'd think that a business magazine might attempt some analysis as to what is feasible, desirable, and what the competition (oops, forgot we were talking about Microsoft) might do in response.
AT&T before deregulation was a government-sanctioned monopoly.
AT&T had acheived monopoly status by the 1930's. It chose to submit to a set of business restrictions (primarily other markets, e.g. computers) in order to be allowed to remain a monopoly in 1956. It was hardly a passive entity, before or after.
By definition, a private corporation in competition with other private corporations couldn't have survived behaving that way. By definition, a monopoly isn't in competition, leaving very few mechanisms for "forcing them" to do anything.
I think you will find that corporations are far more answerable to customers and even small shareholders than governments are to voters.
You're clearly too young to remember AT&T before deregulation. You couldn't plug anything into a phone socket that they didn't own. The popular variant of their marketing slogans was "AT&T: we don't care, we don't have to."
It's not surprising that this is what the press is interested in. For one thing, it's been four years, they're expecting some pizazz. For another, it is this aspect that is required to get Joe Consumer to switch. I mean really, if they get IE for free and you tell them, you can spend X amount of time downloading and installing Mozilla and they say "what for?", you're going to need a better answer than "it's just as good as IE."
Re:Safety through better home insulation
on
Surveillance Update
·
· Score: 2
Bravo. While the megacorps constantly tout the "efficiency" of mergers and corporate centralization, it is this kind of thinking that makes us more vulnerable to single point failures. It's why our food supplies are in more danger from contamination.
Ironically, guerrilla fighters and terrorist organization often "get" the decentralization issue far better than we do. Small semi-autonomous cells are much harder to fight than a single centralized force.
cell phones. If you're out of town, and I call you, YOU pay a long distance charge, just for answering your phone.
That's not entirely true. The cell phone will show the caller's number. If it looks like long distance or someone unknown, the receiver can let it drop into voice mail, which can be accessed for free.
If you look at the first page of the powerpoint file, it contains a picture (Bruegel) that shows the likely outcome of this project. An ambitiously large tower, abandoned and crumbling.
The picture was obviously taken from a painting of the Biblical Tower of Babel story. Given the state of AI, I predict about as much success for this project.
I think it's worth noting that people are merely arguing over how you compute the probability. It's not like it's gone down to zero.
In fact, we can (almost) safely say that there is likely other intelligent life, since we know the probability is not zero, then the probability that exactly one planet produced intelligent life is really, really, small. Much lower than the probability that there are N such planets.
Of course, the odds of every discovering (much less communicating) with such life given the distances and the time scales involved makes SETI seem highly quixotic.
It should be noted that the authors of the letter quoted above were not penning an unbiased critique of Gould, they had an axe to grind.
Specifically, Gould had criticized their book, The Adapted Mind, in an earlier NYRB essay.
Those familiar with NYRB know that once someone's pet theory has been criticized, the letter writing often takes the form of personal attacks and accusations, so I'd take the above with a grain of salt.
Slashdot Mirror
Are there legal or regulatory barriers to setting up an ISP co-op that you feel should be addressed by legislation?
Hmmm. I guess he never heard of Doug Engelbart. (Inventor of the "chord" keyboard, along with the mouse.)
Believe it or not, this is very common on corporate boards. Our current president, now backing legislation to ban this "unethical" practice, is himself a beneficiary.
When his failing oil company was acquired by Harken Energy, he got a bunch of stock options, a low interest loan with which to purchase the options, and eventually a portion of the loan was "forgiven."
Then, of course, he dumped Harken stock right before it tanked, which may or may not have been a co-incidence. Time may tell.
I'd like to see the serial port, parallel port, PS/2 mouse & keyboard port all go away. Firewire and USB can replace that and more.
It's called a Mac. Mouse/KB/Printer are USB. Even the speakers and microphone are USB. Other ports or Firewire and Ether.
He also says that the brain is horrible at math, which isn't true. While it's true of most of us, people with ssvant syndrome (good article in June Scientific American, hardcopy only) are often capable of amazing mathematic abilities, so it's not the brain (or "meat") that's the problem. It's the software.
No, it's more like saying it's GM's fault that some vandal can pour sugar in the gas tank because the cap isn't locked behind a door.
Actually, it's more like some vandal pours sugar into your gas tank, and your car drives next door and siphons some of the gas into your neighbors car.
I think there is a real liability question. Not in the initial act of vandalism, but that the system can be considered faulty for allowing the vandalism to spread so easily.
Software manufacturers have gotten off the hook for crummy software for too long. Look at the kinds of recalls that happen in the auto industry. Somebody gets a rash from the dye they use to color a seat belt, and 100,000 cars get recalled at the manufacturers expense. Microsoft and others need to be accountable for quality, too.
http://www.stagecast.com/
From me: My network at work can't do a sustained 100Mbp. What the heck do you mean optical can't do speed?
Two words: seek time
FUD? Is that anything like the Apple switch commercials?
No. That's simply competition, just like any car commercial or detergent commercial. FUD (which comes from the bad old days when IBM was a monopoly) stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, and comes more under the heading of dirty tricks.
When MS says, "Oh dear, maybe we're not making enough money from Office on the Mac." they are trying to kill Mac sales, by making potential customers think that maybe MS-Office will disappear in the future and they'll be stuck with an outdated system.
The Club Foot Orchestra did a
soundtrack that was just marvelous.
It was also a great experience to see the film with the group playing live in the theatre.
"In the end, the only thing private industry is interested in is making money, so the question is whether systems he's developing will be cost-competitive with the systems they're replacing," said the Energy Department's Paster.
Unfortunately, simply using the simplest or cheapest or least-polluting material doesn't add up to making the greatest amount of money. Control does. That's why cheap hemp was replaced by petrochemicals, why trolley systems died in favor of cars, and why Microsoft hates any standard not under their control.
This movie is the best PKD adaptation ever
By this, I hope you mean "contains as much PKD-derived content as any previous movie," because as a film, it's horrible.
OK, I'll admit a certain visual aesthetic, but so much of it was crap that I hardly know where to begin. It's a summer movie, so we can forgive a few pointless chase scenes. But all of those "odd" characters seemed like 4 or thth rate ripoff attempts of David Lynch.
The creepy plant lady made no plot contribution (and knew things she wouldn't have been able to know) and was purely there to show off visual effects.
The spiders weren't even scary, they were almost cute, in a repulsively ET-like way. The precog, who supposedly can't predict anything less than a murder is telling him when to hide behind a balloon sale...
And how about that happy ending? Boy, didn't you walk out of the theatre smiling knowing we'd done "the right thing."
Actually, it wouldn't be nearly so annoying if the movie weren't chock full of really good ideas that were totally wasted. What a travesty.
Is Time-Warner reducing everything to the same level. Fortune sounds like "Entertainment Tonight" with fawning and drooling over CEOs instead of celebreties. Add just enough content to keep you from tossing the whole thing in disgust and you've got a four-page "article."
You'd think that a business magazine might attempt some analysis as to what is feasible, desirable, and what the competition (oops, forgot we were talking about Microsoft) might do in response.
While nearly everything Lem writes is worthy, the one I keep going back to is The Cyberiad (with obligatory Amazon pointer).
It is like an Odyssey (either Homer's or James Joyce's) for the cybernetic age.
AT&T before deregulation was a government-sanctioned monopoly.
AT&T had acheived monopoly status by the 1930's. It chose to submit to a set of business restrictions (primarily other markets, e.g. computers) in order to be allowed to remain a monopoly in 1956. It was hardly a passive entity, before or after.
By definition, a private corporation in competition with other private corporations couldn't have survived behaving that way.
By definition, a monopoly isn't in competition, leaving very few mechanisms for "forcing them" to do anything.
I think you will find that corporations are far more answerable to customers and even small shareholders than governments are to voters.
You're clearly too young to remember AT&T before deregulation. You couldn't plug anything into a phone socket that they didn't own. The popular variant of their marketing slogans was "AT&T: we don't care, we don't have to."
Good but no IE Killer
It's not surprising that this is what the press is interested in. For one thing, it's been four years, they're expecting some pizazz. For another, it is this aspect that is required to get Joe Consumer to switch. I mean really, if they get IE for free and you tell them, you can spend X amount of time downloading and installing Mozilla and they say "what for?", you're going to need a better answer than "it's just as good as IE."
Bravo. While the megacorps constantly tout the "efficiency" of mergers and corporate centralization, it is this kind of thinking that makes us more vulnerable to single point failures. It's why our food supplies are in more danger from contamination.
Ironically, guerrilla fighters and terrorist organization often "get" the decentralization issue far better than we do. Small semi-autonomous cells are much harder to fight than a single centralized force.
Not for me, I can check voicemail from a land line.
cell phones. If you're out of town, and I call you, YOU pay a long distance charge, just for answering your phone.
That's not entirely true. The cell phone will show the caller's number. If it looks like long distance or someone unknown, the receiver can let it drop into voice mail, which can be accessed for free.
If you look at the first page of the powerpoint file, it contains a picture (Bruegel) that shows the likely outcome of this project. An ambitiously large tower, abandoned and crumbling.
The picture was obviously taken from a painting of the Biblical Tower of Babel story. Given the state of AI, I predict about as much success for this project.
I think it's worth noting that people are merely arguing over how you compute the probability. It's not like it's gone down to zero.
In fact, we can (almost) safely say that there is likely other intelligent life, since we know the probability is not zero, then the probability that exactly one planet produced intelligent life is really, really, small. Much lower than the probability that there are N such planets.
Of course, the odds of every discovering (much less communicating) with such life given the distances and the time scales involved makes SETI seem highly quixotic.
It should be noted that the authors of the letter quoted above were not penning an unbiased critique of Gould, they had an axe to grind.
Specifically, Gould had criticized their book, The Adapted Mind, in an earlier NYRB essay.
Those familiar with NYRB know that once someone's pet theory has been criticized, the letter writing often takes the form of personal attacks and accusations, so I'd take the above with a grain of salt.
requires two new moderation categories. IANAL -1 and LegalOpinion +1.
I don't suppose the true story of Turing made it into this film at all.
According to IMDB, there's no character named "Turing" at all, so unless they all have fictionalized names, he doesn't even play a part.
It would be sad, though, if he was left out completely, and there wasn't a least a character who "represented" him.