Capitalist economics doesn't work like that. Money that consumers don't spend doesn't contribute to GDP, but money they do spend does, and GDP is the magic number (remember, we're all happier when the numbers go up).
That's actually the broken window fallacy. If someone breaks your window, they're helping the economy because you will then spend money to buy a new window and pay a worker to install it for you.
But actually what's happening is that resources that would go into something productive for the economy get diverted to replacing something previously existent, thus reducing economic growth.
Humans are born with the capability of mastering our limbs; fine motor coordination isn't something we're born with, it's learned. Why try to write software to do that?
Because that capability is mostly lost after your very young age. The brain loses plasticity, it can't rewire itself as easily when you're grown up.
Can you imagine signing up for a "3 DVD's at a time" plan from Netflix and then when you actually check out 3 at a time they start bitching up a storm because "You're hoarding the DVD's!!! None of the other customers will be able to rent any of them!!!". Of course not. Because like most industry's they understand that if you sell a capacity you better damn well be able to meet it.
Actually yes, I can very well imagine that. Overselling capacity is a common practice in lots of industries, based on the customers' statistical use. For example, where I live, I have signed for an electrical plan that entitles me to use a certain amount of electrical power at a given time (=bandwidth). If everyone in my neighborhood used the power they're entitled to, the power lines would melt.
See also: banks and loans, but that's not a good example nowadays;)
The ISP's problem is they oversold based on a given statistical model. That model is becoming obsolete as people increasingly use P2P. So they're trying to stem the tide by crying wolf (as in this example), or by claiming that the users are doing illegal stuff (copyright infringement) and should stop.
Don't expect a return to previous, "simpler" values. Eternal september came, and the web was overcome by n00bs. Usenet is dead and webforums have replaced it. MSN has replaced IRC. Flash (and maybe Moonlight) are crowding out good HTML and CSS (IE6 has a lot to answer for on that front, IMHO).
When I say "replaced", it doesn't mean they're completely dead, they're just being crowded out and into a niche.
Your nick is very appropriate, but the system is going the opposite way, towards higher sophistication.
These kind of compatibility switches are make-or-break. I'm glad there's Python 2.6 to try to ease the problem, but Py3k means that everybody who publishes python software will all of a sudden have to maintain 2 branches, for Python 2.X line and Python 3.X line.
This isn't the same as one software package having "legacy" and "bleeding edge" branches, because that's their own choice. In this case the underlying language is forcing them to choose.
Honestly, I'm not confident in the economics of such transitions, and believe Py3k will die out.
Those companies know that their/8 blocks are a valuable scarce resource, and are right (from a capitalist point of view) to hang on to them to sell/rent.
It's not just a question of efficiency, it's also a question of production cost. Sunlight itself is in plentiful demand and is free, so it doesn't matter how efficient you are in converting it.
What matters is how much power you can get out of your solar 'cell' (be it photovoltaic or chemical) for its production and maintenance costs.
Not long ago, there were questions on whether high-efficiency PV cells were actually cost-effective, given their high production costs. A friend of mine was hired in a company manufacturing low-efficiency PV cells. Those were worthwhile because they were cheap to produce and had a better energy/investment ration than high-efficiency cells.
So really, efficiency is not the best optimization path at this stage. What you really care is energy/investment ratio.
Besides, as you pointed out, our whole ecosystem is based on less than 6% solar efficiency;p
He points out that the real important part of the new iPhone is the software not the hardware. Well sure, now that the smartphone hardware is becoming powerful enough that you don't have to constrain your app to the capacities of that hardware, people are starting to realize that the hardware is actually inconsequential.
But this shift has only happened recently, and we needed something like the iPhone to show us that the hardware is actually darn good enough!
This is also why I'm so fascinated by Android, which is a powerful software platform (ok, for a given set of hardware)....and I say this as an embedded software developer:p
and long live x86 Are you out of your mind!? OK OK, I'll admit that commercially, Intel was genius in making backward-compatibility king.
But on a technical side, the world would be such a better place if we could just switch to more modern architectures / instruction set. The chips would be smaller and more power efficient, not having to waste space on a front-end decoding those legacy instructions for the core, for example.
I know, Intel tried to break with the past with the Itanium. They were wrong in betting that the compilers would be good enough, sadly. Damn you, real world, damn you!
So, if the ISPs do traffic shaping "to improve the service" it's bad, but we admit that on the small scale (when it affects ourselfs) there is a real need for traffic shaping! Thats interesting.... There are two reasons we find this kind of throttling acceptable: - It's real network QoS where packets get different priorities but are still transferred, not killing connections by forging TCP packets. - More importantly, its voluntary on the part of the consumer, not imposed and hidden by the ISP, who falsely advertises "unlimited" service.
The article makes a plausible argument, but fails to give any real world examples. Then you didn't read the entire article. It specifically mentioned the examples of Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails making dough on scarce goods (limited edition deluxe sets of their free music), helped by the popularity of their infinite goods. Also Maria Schneider, whom I have never heard of before, but who seems to have had this model work for her as well.
I've now had to resort to drawing circles of protection around my electronics with insecticide chalk to keep the damn critters out... I draw pentagrams. Keeps ants and demons away!
It's not so much a problem of too much popularity rather than stupid bottlenecks. Until a couple of weeks ago, there was one single person who was responsible for creating the accounts of newly accepted DDs (Debian Developers). That person had been MIA for a few months, and it was infuriating for the applicants to have finished all the painful evaluation, only to be blocked by a silly administrative failure. This has been fixed.
I work in a large semiconductor corporation, where everyone uses Outlook, Powerpoint, etc...
Today I attended a presentation explaining the consequences of the switch of a compiler backend to GNU binutils, and the presentation was done using HTML Slidy.
Oh, and we're finally switching away from Clearcase to SVN.
Only now do I realize how far pervasive open-source has become in the corporate market. Of course, it doesn't appear on the balance sheets:\
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually the broken window fallacy. If someone breaks your window, they're helping the economy because you will then spend money to buy a new window and pay a worker to install it for you.
But actually what's happening is that resources that would go into something productive for the economy get diverted to replacing something previously existent, thus reducing economic growth.
Humans are born with the capability of mastering our limbs; fine motor coordination isn't something we're born with, it's learned. Why try to write software to do that?
Because that capability is mostly lost after your very young age. The brain loses plasticity, it can't rewire itself as easily when you're grown up.
Actually yes, I can very well imagine that. Overselling capacity is a common practice in lots of industries, based on the customers' statistical use. For example, where I live, I have signed for an electrical plan that entitles me to use a certain amount of electrical power at a given time (=bandwidth). If everyone in my neighborhood used the power they're entitled to, the power lines would melt.
See also: banks and loans, but that's not a good example nowadays ;)
The ISP's problem is they oversold based on a given statistical model. That model is becoming obsolete as people increasingly use P2P. So they're trying to stem the tide by crying wolf (as in this example), or by claiming that the users are doing illegal stuff (copyright infringement) and should stop.
Quite, child. Time limit is to mitigate automated posting by would-be astroturfers (I don't see what other use a spammer would have of slashdot).
In a similar manner, I used to similarly regret the "one tool for one job" Unix philosophy, until I read a quote by Rob Pike, one of the creators of Unix: Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl.
Don't expect a return to previous, "simpler" values. Eternal september came, and the web was overcome by n00bs. Usenet is dead and webforums have replaced it. MSN has replaced IRC. Flash (and maybe Moonlight) are crowding out good HTML and CSS (IE6 has a lot to answer for on that front, IMHO).
When I say "replaced", it doesn't mean they're completely dead, they're just being crowded out and into a niche.
Your nick is very appropriate, but the system is going the opposite way, towards higher sophistication.
Or more concisely:
- someone does something
- someone else complains about it.
Wow, a use of "literally" that's actually correct! I congratulate you, sir!
I'd be interested in a variant of the Dead Parrot sketch around the "crazy" theme, and you seem to have a head-start on the idea. Care to complete it?
And in related news, a blinged-out rice car is closely outperformed by a bush taxi.
Sure there were alternatives, but they were all either patent-encumbered, or hard to deploy, or too complex to easily develop for.
Or they came too late or didn't survive the competitor's marketing onslaught. Remember the power of inertia.
Speaking of Twitter, there are alternatives, and there are better architectures
These kind of compatibility switches are make-or-break. I'm glad there's Python 2.6 to try to ease the problem, but Py3k means that everybody who publishes python software will all of a sudden have to maintain 2 branches, for Python 2.X line and Python 3.X line.
This isn't the same as one software package having "legacy" and "bleeding edge" branches, because that's their own choice. In this case the underlying language is forcing them to choose.
Honestly, I'm not confident in the economics of such transitions, and believe Py3k will die out.
Those companies know that their /8 blocks are a valuable scarce resource, and are right (from a capitalist point of view) to hang on to them to sell/rent.
(Aren't they already doing it?)
It's not just a question of efficiency, it's also a question of production cost. Sunlight itself is in plentiful demand and is free, so it doesn't matter how efficient you are in converting it.
What matters is how much power you can get out of your solar 'cell' (be it photovoltaic or chemical) for its production and maintenance costs.
Not long ago, there were questions on whether high-efficiency PV cells were actually cost-effective, given their high production costs. A friend of mine was hired in a company manufacturing low-efficiency PV cells. Those were worthwhile because they were cheap to produce and had a better energy/investment ration than high-efficiency cells.
So really, efficiency is not the best optimization path at this stage. What you really care is energy/investment ratio.
Besides, as you pointed out, our whole ecosystem is based on less than 6% solar efficiency ;p
Well, it's GPL, so it certainly is possible. Imagine your Android Dream phone in sleep mode generating Electric Sheep. That's as close as it gets :)
But this shift has only happened recently, and we needed something like the iPhone to show us that the hardware is actually darn good enough!
This is also why I'm so fascinated by Android, which is a powerful software platform (ok, for a given set of hardware).
Funnily enough, your graph also shows that Git kicks Mercurial's butt at somewhere over twice the install-base. :)
Granted, Debian popcon does not account for all the windows VCS installs, which you claim is Mercurial's strong territory.
Nevertheless, it's interesting that in the Unix world, Git is the strongest up-and-comer, so the fight isn't as clear-cut as you claim it is.
But on a technical side, the world would be such a better place if we could just switch to more modern architectures / instruction set. The chips would be smaller and more power efficient, not having to waste space on a front-end decoding those legacy instructions for the core, for example.
I know, Intel tried to break with the past with the Itanium. They were wrong in betting that the compilers would be good enough, sadly. Damn you, real world, damn you!
- It's real network QoS where packets get different priorities but are still transferred, not killing connections by forging TCP packets.
- More importantly, its voluntary on the part of the consumer, not imposed and hidden by the ISP, who falsely advertises "unlimited" service.
We Don't Like Being Lied To. Do you?
Also Maria Schneider, whom I have never heard of before, but who seems to have had this model work for her as well.
Oh yeah sure, let's use neutrinos, who's most remarkable physical property is that they barely interact with matter, no problem!
Alien tech indeed...
For some reasons, I think it would be very appropriate for this letter to end in the ownership of Richard Dawkins.
Can you think of anybody else who you'd like to end up with this letter?
(I won't go as far as to propose a fund to buy the letter for these people)
It's not so much a problem of too much popularity rather than stupid bottlenecks. Until a couple of weeks ago, there was one single person who was responsible for creating the accounts of newly accepted DDs (Debian Developers). That person had been MIA for a few months, and it was infuriating for the applicants to have finished all the painful evaluation, only to be blocked by a silly administrative failure.
This has been fixed.
This is just an anecdote, but...
:\
I work in a large semiconductor corporation, where everyone uses Outlook, Powerpoint, etc...
Today I attended a presentation explaining the consequences of the switch of a compiler backend to GNU binutils, and the presentation was done using HTML Slidy.
Oh, and we're finally switching away from Clearcase to SVN.
Only now do I realize how far pervasive open-source has become in the corporate market. Of course, it doesn't appear on the balance sheets