..Remember that the prime function of any corporation/business is to create wealth for its owners.
Bingo!. This is exactly why corporations need to be controlled. It's not an issue of good vs. evil, it's a question of harm and benefit to society.
An example is the current shutdown of aluminum refineries in the US west. These plants have contracted for large amounts of electricity at low prices. With the current power crunch, they have found it more profitable to shut down the plants and simply sell back electricity to the grid at spot market prices.
Now this is a resonable action from the perspective of a entity designed to do nothing but make profit. But that design does nothing for the communities devastated by their decision. Not only are the laid-off workers affected, but also the workers involved in shipping and trucking the product, as well as the shopkeepers who depend on a healthy local economy.
I think it is a reasonable thing for the goverment to step in, in its role as voice of the people, and modify corporate behavior in the interest of its citizens.
While acknowledging the benefits of globalism, one must also acknowledge the dangers. When a global corporation does something like what is happening with the aluminum refineries, they can cripple whole contries, not just a few cities, and they need monitoring.
Each one of those "evil" corporations slashdot is so eager to condemn is actually owned by regular people, and they are creating wealth for average jacks and joes.
True, but if the corporations are owned by people in another city, state, or country, they are less likely to be concerned. Or even if they are, how is voting your 100 shares of Exxon going to match up against some director with 100,000?
orthodox-green notion...estimates that the rain forest will all be gone...the supposed silver-bullet cure-for-all diseases drug...eco-doomsday scenarios
Geez. What if, what if, what if.
What if people actually responded to the content of a message rather than creating straw men to knock down for their own satisfaction?
Here's the problem with this: The short term benefits are real. The long-term effects you mention are largely imaginary and based on a fear-mongering campaign by the eco-profiteers.
Well, that was a useful link. No one is dying of pollution so it must not be a problem. We live longer in the US, therefore all is well.
I'm not arguing in defense of Robert Redford, just looking at the facts. Loss of rainforest land is real. The effects of DDT and organophosphates is real. Of course, we're safe from those effect (for a time) since it's only poor foreigners who have to deal with them.
It's certainly possible to argue that technology can provide a "fix" for some of these problems. We cleaned up our air and water in the 70's. London in the 19th century had far worse pollution that it does now. But these things do have a real economic cost, and it's typically not paid by the companies that benefit in the short term.
No one is forced to eat there, do business there, or work
there, but they're somehow super oppressive and evil.
Whoever modded this up to 5 must have been reading too much Ayn
Rand. In fact, if these companies force competitors out of
business, I am essentially forced to eat there. (Yes, I know, I
can go home and make myself a sandwich, but you get the point.)
When it comes to real estate, marketing, etc., these
corporation have an incredible amount of power compared to the
competition. Now those who are wont to jump for joy at this
display of capitalism in
action should take note of a few things.
The ability to drive out competition can have nothing to do
with quality or service. Merely the ability to pay higher rents,
etc., until the competition leaves.
The short-term "benefits" of these megacorps often
hide long-term effects that we will pay for long after this crop
of shareholders cashes in on their stock dividends. An example is
the loss of
rainforest land and subsequent reduction in biodiversity due
to slash and burn cattle ranching.
This is one of the main problems with capitalism as practised
today. Cheap, short-term solutions can almost always win out by
hiding expenses in long-term issues that aren't considered. If
companies had to pay taxes based on those cost (e.g., throw-away
packaging, strip mining), then we wouldn't see some of quality of
life issues that plague us today.
And we want the government to be super-powerful to protect
us from the corporate evil, but it'll never occur to us that the
government's power might be used against us.
The best way to combat this possibility is not by donning
fatigues and joining the local survivalists, but by staying
involved in a government
by the people.
One more from the 70's...
on
The DNA Bomb
·
· Score: 1
Why is it that whenever a new tool is invented, some of its
adherents insist on promoting it as the One True Way, damning all
previous tools, and consigning these users to Outer Darkness(tm)?
Both OODBMS and RDBMS have their places. OODBMS is most
appropriate when a specific application needs persistance.
Because the schema is developed in concert with the application,
it can be incredibly efficent. Imagine how you'd implement a
linked list in and OO system, it looks almost identical to an
in-memory version, which each node having a direct pointer to the
one next in line. Using relational techniques here would imply
that the 'link' portion of the node contained the primary key to
the next node. Clearly not very efficient.
The RDBMS shines, however, in a more general environment,
where all the uses for the data are not yet well known. As noted,
columns and tables can be added easily, and ad hoc
queries are no problem. The relational model has a well defined
mathematical basis, that lends itself well to these generalities.
As many/.ers are fond of saying: Use an appropriate tool
for the job.
The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS?
AOL did a heck of a lot more for network communication than MS. Yes, it was only partially open to the net, but it was just a matter of time.
The World Wide Web
Remember Netscape? The Web was well established before MS relized what was going on.
non-technical persons...browser as "standard equipment"
Remember Apple? And the only reason the browser is "standard" was a business decision to destroy Netscape.
Yes, MS does deserve some credit. But they are almost entirely business practices, not technical ones. The only technical innovation I can think of is Visual Basic. As much as VB is reviled by "real programmers", it made it possible for mere mortals to tackle simple Windows programming. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think VB was actually acquired by MS, not developed in house.
Dear Mr. Coward,
I wish to complain about the apalling lack of witin the title of the article. Why such a banal description when you could have used
Yahoo Does Dallas
Yes, yes, she said yahoo
or literally thousands of others. You are clearly no relation to Noel.
my originial IBM XT [... had...] 16 bit 8086 (better then the previous 8088s)
Time to replace those RAM chips in your skull, old boy. The XT used an 8088, not an 8086. The 8088 had the 16-bit architecture of the 8086 but an 8-bit external bus. This allowed it to be used as an upgrade in the 8080/8085/Z80 hardware world.
Why do you want multitasking on a device with a 320x320 screen and a 33mhz processor? (Score:2 Insightful)
Insightful my ass. Try blind.
Multitasking is one of the great ways to make computational devices actually useful. What's the point of being able to execute hundreds of thousands of instructions/second if you have to serialize operation and do things at human speeds.
Sometime back in the late 70's or early 80's I wrote a letter to the editor of Infoworld complaining that the OS designers of PC's were ignoring the lessons learned by mainframe and mini designers, lessons like security and multitasking. The printed the letter and topped with a comment saying "Why on earth would we need multitasking on a personal computer?"
The problem with this is that you end up making God look like a con man. They tried this argument back in the Middle Ages, and for a time, artists who painted Adam and Eve painted them without navels. The argument went that since Adam & Eve were created not born, they would have had no navel. The same case you just made was brought up, but was rejected on theological grounds, since having God put in a "fake" navel makes him either a liar or cheat, and it was better to assume that they simple had none.
Can someone please explain to me the rating system in place here? A 5 for a comment completely ignorant of the development of the industry?
Microsoft did not invent DOS and its primary innovation was to bring the predatory practices of long-established industries like oil and steel to the personal computer.
Those who do not learn their history are doomed to spout drivel illustrating their ignorance.
The reactor relied on fallable control mechanisms to prevent this and maintain the state of the reactor.
Brilliant. You've identified the solution. All we need do is build reactors with infallable technologies and monitor them with infallable operators.
How long do you suppose it will take the pope to get up to speed on nuclear engineering? And yes, he will have to build the whole damn thing himself.
Re:Technology historically oppressed more than hel
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 1
It also signalled the decline of absolute papal rule with individuals such as Copernicus (even though his life generally sucked after his solar system discoveries went public)
I think you mean Galileo. Copernicus was dead before his work was published (or at least within days of seeing it published)....Of course, being dead probably does mean that "your life generally sucks," but it had nothing to do with heliocentrism.
Re:This is NOT the Renaissance
on
The Renaissance
·
· Score: 1
But, apropos to the book, the printing press was exactly what enabled them to rediscover that knowledge.
OK, it took the Crusades and subsequent contact with the Arabs (who knew a lot more than the Europeans of the time) to track the knowledge down, but it was printing that disseminated the information.
There's very little wrong with the punch card ballots.
Bzzzzt. Wrong.
They aren't reliable, for one. According to computer risks experts Peter Neumann and Laruen Weinstein "manual recounts provide the MOST reliable mechanism for counting these cards accurately". See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.12.h tml for more.
In addition, they are very easy to manipulate. Anyone with a piece of wire can punch a few extra holes in a card, making them double-punch, invalid ballots.
If we're going to use 19th century technology, let's at least use good 19th centure technology.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo!. This is exactly why corporations need to be controlled. It's not an issue of good vs. evil, it's a question of harm and benefit to society.
An example is the current shutdown of aluminum refineries in the US west. These plants have contracted for large amounts of electricity at low prices. With the current power crunch, they have found it more profitable to shut down the plants and simply sell back electricity to the grid at spot market prices.
Now this is a resonable action from the perspective of a entity designed to do nothing but make profit. But that design does nothing for the communities devastated by their decision. Not only are the laid-off workers affected, but also the workers involved in shipping and trucking the product, as well as the shopkeepers who depend on a healthy local economy.
I think it is a reasonable thing for the goverment to step in, in its role as voice of the people, and modify corporate behavior in the interest of its citizens.
While acknowledging the benefits of globalism, one must also acknowledge the dangers. When a global corporation does something like what is happening with the aluminum refineries, they can cripple whole contries, not just a few cities, and they need monitoring.
Each one of those "evil" corporations slashdot is so eager to condemn is actually owned by regular people, and they are creating wealth for average jacks and joes.
True, but if the corporations are owned by people in another city, state, or country, they are less likely to be concerned. Or even if they are, how is voting your 100 shares of Exxon going to match up against some director with 100,000?
orthodox-green notion...estimates that the rain forest will all be gone...the supposed silver-bullet cure-for-all diseases drug...eco-doomsday scenarios
Geez. What if, what if, what if.
What if people actually responded to the content of a message rather than creating straw men to knock down for their own satisfaction?
Here's the problem with this: The short term benefits are real. The long-term effects you mention are largely imaginary and based on a fear-mongering campaign by the eco-profiteers.
Well, that was a useful link. No one is dying of pollution so it must not be a problem. We live longer in the US, therefore all is well.
I'm not arguing in defense of Robert Redford, just looking at the facts. Loss of rainforest land is real. The effects of DDT and organophosphates is real. Of course, we're safe from those effect (for a time) since it's only poor foreigners who have to deal with them.
It's certainly possible to argue that technology can provide a "fix" for some of these problems. We cleaned up our air and water in the 70's. London in the 19th century had far worse pollution that it does now. But these things do have a real economic cost, and it's typically not paid by the companies that benefit in the short term.
No one is forced to eat there, do business there, or work there, but they're somehow super oppressive and evil.
Whoever modded this up to 5 must have been reading too much Ayn Rand. In fact, if these companies force competitors out of business, I am essentially forced to eat there. (Yes, I know, I can go home and make myself a sandwich, but you get the point.)
When it comes to real estate, marketing, etc., these corporation have an incredible amount of power compared to the competition. Now those who are wont to jump for joy at this display of capitalism in action should take note of a few things.
The ability to drive out competition can have nothing to do with quality or service. Merely the ability to pay higher rents, etc., until the competition leaves.
The short-term "benefits" of these megacorps often hide long-term effects that we will pay for long after this crop of shareholders cashes in on their stock dividends. An example is the loss of rainforest land and subsequent reduction in biodiversity due to slash and burn cattle ranching.
This is one of the main problems with capitalism as practised today. Cheap, short-term solutions can almost always win out by hiding expenses in long-term issues that aren't considered. If companies had to pay taxes based on those cost (e.g., throw-away packaging, strip mining), then we wouldn't see some of quality of life issues that plague us today.
And we want the government to be super-powerful to protect us from the corporate evil, but it'll never occur to us that the government's power might be used against us.
The best way to combat this possibility is not by donning fatigues and joining the local survivalists, but by staying involved in a government by the people.
John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up
GM organisms, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, designer drugs, eco-terrorism. One of the great visionary SF writers.
Why is it that whenever a new tool is invented, some of its adherents insist on promoting it as the One True Way, damning all previous tools, and consigning these users to Outer Darkness(tm)?
Both OODBMS and RDBMS have their places. OODBMS is most appropriate when a specific application needs persistance. Because the schema is developed in concert with the application, it can be incredibly efficent. Imagine how you'd implement a linked list in and OO system, it looks almost identical to an in-memory version, which each node having a direct pointer to the one next in line. Using relational techniques here would imply that the 'link' portion of the node contained the primary key to the next node. Clearly not very efficient.
The RDBMS shines, however, in a more general environment, where all the uses for the data are not yet well known. As noted, columns and tables can be added easily, and ad hoc queries are no problem. The relational model has a well defined mathematical basis, that lends itself well to these generalities.
As many /.ers are fond of saying: Use an appropriate tool
for the job.
Be accurate
The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS?
AOL did a heck of a lot more for network communication than MS. Yes, it was only partially open to the net, but it was just a matter of time.
The World Wide Web
Remember Netscape? The Web was well established before MS relized what was going on.
non-technical persons...browser as "standard equipment"
Remember Apple? And the only reason the browser is "standard" was a business decision to destroy Netscape.
Yes, MS does deserve some credit. But they are almost entirely business practices, not technical ones. The only technical innovation I can think of is Visual Basic. As much as VB is reviled by "real programmers", it made it possible for mere mortals to tackle simple Windows programming. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think VB was actually acquired by MS, not developed in house.
When scrolling quickly by, I though the subject of this article was a "clamwhammer". Boy, was that weird.
How many clams could a clamwhammer wham
if a clamwhammer could wham clams?
Dear Mr. Coward, I wish to complain about the apalling lack of witin the title of the article. Why such a banal description when you could have used Yahoo Does Dallas Yes, yes, she said yahoo or literally thousands of others. You are clearly no relation to Noel.
my originial IBM XT [... had ...] 16 bit 8086 (better then the previous 8088s)
Time to replace those RAM chips in your skull, old boy. The XT used an 8088, not an 8086. The 8088 had the 16-bit architecture of the 8086 but an 8-bit external bus. This allowed it to be used as an upgrade in the 8080/8085/Z80 hardware world.
Why do you want multitasking on a device with a 320x320 screen and a 33mhz processor? (Score:2 Insightful)
Insightful my ass. Try blind.
Multitasking is one of the great ways to make computational devices actually useful. What's the point of being able to execute hundreds of thousands of instructions/second if you have to serialize operation and do things at human speeds.
Sometime back in the late 70's or early 80's I wrote a letter to the editor of Infoworld complaining that the OS designers of PC's were ignoring the lessons learned by mainframe and mini designers, lessons like security and multitasking. The printed the letter and topped with a comment saying "Why on earth would we need multitasking on a personal computer?"
La plus sa change, la plus sa meme chose.
The problem with this is that you end up making God look like a con man. They tried this argument back in the Middle Ages, and for a time, artists who painted Adam and Eve painted them without navels. The argument went that since Adam & Eve were created not born, they would have had no navel. The same case you just made was brought up, but was rejected on theological grounds, since having God put in a "fake" navel makes him either a liar or cheat, and it was better to assume that they simple had none.
Can someone please explain to me the rating system in place here? A 5 for a comment completely ignorant of the development of the industry? Microsoft did not invent DOS and its primary innovation was to bring the predatory practices of long-established industries like oil and steel to the personal computer. Those who do not learn their history are doomed to spout drivel illustrating their ignorance.
The reactor relied on fallable control mechanisms to prevent this and maintain the state of the reactor.
Brilliant. You've identified the solution. All we need do is build reactors with infallable technologies and monitor them with infallable operators.
How long do you suppose it will take the pope to get up to speed on nuclear engineering? And yes, he will have to build the whole damn thing himself.
It also signalled the decline of absolute papal rule with individuals such as Copernicus (even though his life generally sucked after his solar system discoveries went public)
I think you mean Galileo. Copernicus was dead before his work was published (or at least within days of seeing it published)....Of course, being dead probably does mean that "your life generally sucks," but it had nothing to do with heliocentrism.
But, apropos to the book, the printing press was exactly what enabled them to rediscover that knowledge.
OK, it took the Crusades and subsequent contact with the Arabs (who knew a lot more than the Europeans of the time) to track the knowledge down, but it was printing that disseminated the information.
There's very little wrong with the punch card ballots.
Bzzzzt. Wrong.
They aren't reliable, for one. According to computer risks experts Peter Neumann and Laruen Weinstein "manual recounts provide the MOST reliable mechanism for counting these cards accurately". See http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.12.h tml for more.
In addition, they are very easy to manipulate. Anyone with a piece of wire can punch a few extra holes in a card, making them double-punch, invalid ballots.
If we're going to use 19th century technology, let's at least use good 19th centure technology.
OTOH, this is the best release so far. For the first time, I'm able to run more than one Java applet without crashing, and it seems relatively fast.
It is, however, a complete memory pig, taking 32M to do what Explorer does in 16M.