Uh, right, and preinstalling IE with Windows, forcing OEMs to make IE the default, and distributing IE on millions of CDs etc. had NOTHING to do with it. And it can't be that Netscape 'started sucking' because their "air supply" (remember those words?) had pretty much literally been cut off - hard to develop software without money. Puh-lease. I remember those days, and IE3 and IE4 were horrendously crap for years - they only started becoming remotely usable and stable by about version 5, long after the Netscape company had pretty much bought it.
Yup, I of course realise there are many dead-ends and also snake oil ventures, and plenty of funding has been "wasted" on these throughout history, but that's the nature of things - it's impossible to reliably always know which avenues are worth pursuing, so that apparent "waste" is necessary in pursuit of progress - i.e. just a necessary cost of progress in the long run.
Naturally one could then criticise QDs on the grounds that e.g. one feels that a new tech's potential is being exaggerated, but from what I can gather, that isn't the case - although high-risk this also looks like a very 'high potential reward' line of research if the problems can be ironed out. From what I can gather, we don't even really understand why the problems occur yet - in which case it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to make the claim that the hype is overblown (as the higher up posters in this thread did), because not one single human currently on earth even has enough knowledge to make that call.
No, I think he meant the Washington Post article... that bit about "some of China's educated elite may be growing impatient with a one-party authoritarian system" seemed a bit overblown to me too, and probably mostly a projection. The article contains bits of truth but also seems distorted; basically it's looking at some events in China through USA-coloured glasses, so to speak, and the viewpoints would probably seem a bit strange and out of place to Chinese people, just like most US reporting on Africa (as I'm African) seems to me (and probably foreign reporting on the US would seem to Americans at times).
Yup, this is why, in my mind, regardless of the obvious bias, it is a BAD REVIEW. You do not review a product based on what it's NOT, you review a product based on what it IS. It's supposed to be very cheap and basic, it's not trying to be a full-on PC, so slamming it just for not being a full-on PC is idiotic, and useless to the end-user. A review is supposed to tell you how good something is *for its advertised purpose*, not as compared to a different product in a different market, that isn't even *useful* to the readers (who are, it seems, presumed to have lots of extra $$$ lying around AND have PIII's in their closets, WTF, I've never heard anything so idiotic).
Also, on another note, call me old-fashioned but 512MB of RAM and 80GB of HD space still sound comparatively huge to me, in terms of computing potential... how low have our expectations become of software not to be bloated? I've seen what programmers used to be able to do with e.g. 16KB of RAM on a Z80, or 512KB RAM on an '84 Macintosh, what the first x86 computers had etc..
The resarch and funding IS to figure out and then solve (if possible) the problems still associated with QDs... duh. It's been exactly the same with every other technology (and/or other potentially interesting line of research) in the entire history of humanity, why should this be different? Do you rather expect all the problems to be solved instantly by researchers before they ever get funding? If the problems were already solved, no research would be necessary... funding isn't a prize you get after you've solved a problem, it is a necessary requirement of setting about solving a problem.
Sounds like it could be a field day for lawyers if all this could be regulated and people could sue etc. - sounds like a lot of lawyers could be making a lot money here (who do you think designs new regulations)... hint to Japan, in overly litigious societies lawyers function in large part as an unnecessary drain on the economy, essentially parasites bleeding the wealth out of out of the productive portions of the economy while contributing little, don't go down that road.
What is it that's new in the MS email world in 2007 that has caught your eye here?
Hey don't look at me, I'm just bringing up Microsoft's own advertising, a recent series of banner ads that I saw here and there all over the Web proclaiming in large letters: "Today's Microsoft Office lets you access your inbox even when you're away from your desk."... as if this is something new, woohoo, I've been doing that with UNIX for at least 12 years myself. Anyway, I presumed they're not just talking about fetching your mail or seeing some of your mail, I presumed they mean your entire mailbox as you would usually see it on your desktop, and I just assumed they meant it was tied into your roaming profile or something... the advert didn't say what they were referring to exactly, and I didn't dig into it, but given the text of the ad, it can only be a new capability in the Microsoft world.
The overly open-ended "works fine" rebuttal is actually only ever used when something doesn't work *well* (because otherwise, given the choice, one would just say "it works WELL" and not the weak "it works fine"). When you analyse what this is, you see it's actually an attempt at a false dichotomy: It suggests that the suitability of something to a task is a binary "true/false", i.e. either something is suitable ("fine") or it isn't, then falsely suggests that all things "fine" are thusly equivalent. A few simple examples demonstrate the weakness of this argument: My beat-up old car "works fine" - does that make it just as good as a Porsche? My old toilet that always leaks unless you jiggle the flusher handle in just the right way also "works fine" - does that make it just as good as a fancy new toilet that doesn't leak? A cardboard box "works fine" as a coffee table in my lounge. Etc. etc.
Let's face it, many of the Microsoft "networking" models are poor compared to their (far older) UNIX equivalents, even though the latter may be imperfect. Just as one example, when Microsoft is advertising the concept of "access your e-mail from anywhere in the world" as if it's a brand new thing in 2007, something is very wrong indeed. The UNIX world should market their solutions better - most people don't know any better.
Consider some simple examples: Say somebody spent ten years on pure intensive research, finds the cure for cancer, and then publishes one paper on it --- is that person less productive than somebody who spent most their time churning out three or four papers per year that are little more than rehashes of previous topics, but never curing anything? (Rehashing has become a very common practice, partly due to this silly emphasis on number of papers.) Truly valuable research can take a long time; if we kick out all long-term projects because of short-term pressure to "produce papers", you may be doing harm.
Except that a few years ago, the government doubled funding for the NIH and the number of published articles did not correlate
Thank you for highlighting one of the major problems in the scientific research community today - the fact that people think that the number of articles is a meaningful measure of value.
Technology itself can solve this problem in the form of sophisticated genetic manipulation, i.e. it won't be long before we'll be implanting Chuck Norris genes into our offspring - problem solved.
The funny thing is, Microsoft wasn't even interested in the online advertising business until Google went public and suddenly demonstrated that a lucrative market existed - in fact, IIRC MS hadn't even realised such a market existed at all, I don't recall them even trying to enter this market until long after Google had made a success of it.
Yes; apart from a lower electricity bill, if people use energy efficiently, it also means less electricity infrastructure required per taxpayer, fewer nuke plants need to be built and maintained etc. - all imply not just lower bills but lower taxes (or that tax money going to something more productive instead, e.g. better policing or more medical research to cure diseases). Waste is pretty much always bad.
Yes, people made their own (bad) choices, and they are now reaping the consequences of those choices. Simple. Or should there be a nanny state that knows better how to run your life than you do that protects you from yourself?
From a libertarian standpoint this does appear to be a case of anti-freedom legislation - in theory, people should have a choice. On the other hand, since most power is coal-generated, there IS a cost (i.e. lower quality air, disruptions from climate change etc.) imposed on other innocent people when a person exercises their 'freedom' to choose inefficient technologies, for whatever reason - so it's not 100% a case of, well, everyone should have freedom to do what they want.
Um, XP *WAS* actually rubbish when it came out. From a security perspective (for one) it pretty much undeniably takes the title of world's biggest OS security disaster in history, ever, and it took two MAJOR service packs (and countless additional little patches) before it became even half-decent.
I assume the 20% savings ($1,600/day) is when the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction
That's an amazingly wild assumption. After watching the video, I have the definite impression that that $1600/day estimate has arleady taken this into account and is estimated based on the typical average prevailing winds on their routes.
You do realise that some routes have pretty reliable prevailing wind patterns, and that these have even been used historically for shipping channels back in the day when sails were the main form of powering ships? Google for example 'roaring forties' and 'clipper route'. There are others.
Yup, and Yahoo never collaborates unethically with the Chinese government. But hey, if people want to believe Google is more 'evil' than the others, I guess people see only what they want to see, or rather, what media FUD campaigns want them to see.
My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close
May I ask why not just get one semi-decent laptop and dock it when not moving about? (I used to have similar problems, and eventually just realised I was wasting lots of time trying to keep both computers sync'd, all software, multiple licenses required for all software etc. - a pointless waste.) You don't even need a docking station, even a USB keyboard/mouse is fine, plus normal monitor.
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Uh, right, and preinstalling IE with Windows, forcing OEMs to make IE the default, and distributing IE on millions of CDs etc. had NOTHING to do with it. And it can't be that Netscape 'started sucking' because their "air supply" (remember those words?) had pretty much literally been cut off - hard to develop software without money. Puh-lease. I remember those days, and IE3 and IE4 were horrendously crap for years - they only started becoming remotely usable and stable by about version 5, long after the Netscape company had pretty much bought it.
Yup, I of course realise there are many dead-ends and also snake oil ventures, and plenty of funding has been "wasted" on these throughout history, but that's the nature of things - it's impossible to reliably always know which avenues are worth pursuing, so that apparent "waste" is necessary in pursuit of progress - i.e. just a necessary cost of progress in the long run.
Naturally one could then criticise QDs on the grounds that e.g. one feels that a new tech's potential is being exaggerated, but from what I can gather, that isn't the case - although high-risk this also looks like a very 'high potential reward' line of research if the problems can be ironed out. From what I can gather, we don't even really understand why the problems occur yet - in which case it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to make the claim that the hype is overblown (as the higher up posters in this thread did), because not one single human currently on earth even has enough knowledge to make that call.
No, I think he meant the Washington Post article ... that bit about "some of China's educated elite may be growing impatient with a one-party authoritarian system" seemed a bit overblown to me too, and probably mostly a projection. The article contains bits of truth but also seems distorted; basically it's looking at some events in China through USA-coloured glasses, so to speak, and the viewpoints would probably seem a bit strange and out of place to Chinese people, just like most US reporting on Africa (as I'm African) seems to me (and probably foreign reporting on the US would seem to Americans at times).
Yup, this is why, in my mind, regardless of the obvious bias, it is a BAD REVIEW. You do not review a product based on what it's NOT, you review a product based on what it IS. It's supposed to be very cheap and basic, it's not trying to be a full-on PC, so slamming it just for not being a full-on PC is idiotic, and useless to the end-user. A review is supposed to tell you how good something is *for its advertised purpose*, not as compared to a different product in a different market, that isn't even *useful* to the readers (who are, it seems, presumed to have lots of extra $$$ lying around AND have PIII's in their closets, WTF, I've never heard anything so idiotic).
... how low have our expectations become of software not to be bloated? I've seen what programmers used to be able to do with e.g. 16KB of RAM on a Z80, or 512KB RAM on an '84 Macintosh, what the first x86 computers had etc..
Also, on another note, call me old-fashioned but 512MB of RAM and 80GB of HD space still sound comparatively huge to me, in terms of computing potential
The resarch and funding IS to figure out and then solve (if possible) the problems still associated with QDs ... duh. It's been exactly the same with every other technology (and/or other potentially interesting line of research) in the entire history of humanity, why should this be different? Do you rather expect all the problems to be solved instantly by researchers before they ever get funding? If the problems were already solved, no research would be necessary ... funding isn't a prize you get after you've solved a problem, it is a necessary requirement of setting about solving a problem.
Sounds like it could be a field day for lawyers if all this could be regulated and people could sue etc. - sounds like a lot of lawyers could be making a lot money here (who do you think designs new regulations) ... hint to Japan, in overly litigious societies lawyers function in large part as an unnecessary drain on the economy, essentially parasites bleeding the wealth out of out of the productive portions of the economy while contributing little, don't go down that road.
What is it that's new in the MS email world in 2007 that has caught your eye here?
Hey don't look at me, I'm just bringing up Microsoft's own advertising, a recent series of banner ads that I saw here and there all over the Web proclaiming in large letters: "Today's Microsoft Office lets you access your inbox even when you're away from your desk." ... as if this is something new, woohoo, I've been doing that with UNIX for at least 12 years myself. Anyway, I presumed they're not just talking about fetching your mail or seeing some of your mail, I presumed they mean your entire mailbox as you would usually see it on your desktop, and I just assumed they meant it was tied into your roaming profile or something ... the advert didn't say what they were referring to exactly, and I didn't dig into it, but given the text of the ad, it can only be a new capability in the Microsoft world.
The overly open-ended "works fine" rebuttal is actually only ever used when something doesn't work *well* (because otherwise, given the choice, one would just say "it works WELL" and not the weak "it works fine"). When you analyse what this is, you see it's actually an attempt at a false dichotomy: It suggests that the suitability of something to a task is a binary "true/false", i.e. either something is suitable ("fine") or it isn't, then falsely suggests that all things "fine" are thusly equivalent. A few simple examples demonstrate the weakness of this argument: My beat-up old car "works fine" - does that make it just as good as a Porsche? My old toilet that always leaks unless you jiggle the flusher handle in just the right way also "works fine" - does that make it just as good as a fancy new toilet that doesn't leak? A cardboard box "works fine" as a coffee table in my lounge. Etc. etc.
Let's face it, many of the Microsoft "networking" models are poor compared to their (far older) UNIX equivalents, even though the latter may be imperfect. Just as one example, when Microsoft is advertising the concept of "access your e-mail from anywhere in the world" as if it's a brand new thing in 2007, something is very wrong indeed. The UNIX world should market their solutions better - most people don't know any better.
Yes, I suspect the answer comes down to management quality/bureaucracy/politics.
Consider some simple examples: Say somebody spent ten years on pure intensive research, finds the cure for cancer, and then publishes one paper on it --- is that person less productive than somebody who spent most their time churning out three or four papers per year that are little more than rehashes of previous topics, but never curing anything? (Rehashing has become a very common practice, partly due to this silly emphasis on number of papers.) Truly valuable research can take a long time; if we kick out all long-term projects because of short-term pressure to "produce papers", you may be doing harm.
Except that a few years ago, the government doubled funding for the NIH and the number of published articles did not correlate
Thank you for highlighting one of the major problems in the scientific research community today - the fact that people think that the number of articles is a meaningful measure of value.
Technology itself can solve this problem in the form of sophisticated genetic manipulation, i.e. it won't be long before we'll be implanting Chuck Norris genes into our offspring - problem solved.
The funny thing is, Microsoft wasn't even interested in the online advertising business until Google went public and suddenly demonstrated that a lucrative market existed - in fact, IIRC MS hadn't even realised such a market existed at all, I don't recall them even trying to enter this market until long after Google had made a success of it.
Indeed, I think they probably forgot for a moment that Google != Microsoft and are not like them.
Yes; apart from a lower electricity bill, if people use energy efficiently, it also means less electricity infrastructure required per taxpayer, fewer nuke plants need to be built and maintained etc. - all imply not just lower bills but lower taxes (or that tax money going to something more productive instead, e.g. better policing or more medical research to cure diseases). Waste is pretty much always bad.
Um, I think you better re-check your definition of "leftist"; I'm almost as far right as it gets, and you are espousing "leftist" ideology.
Yes, people made their own (bad) choices, and they are now reaping the consequences of those choices. Simple. Or should there be a nanny state that knows better how to run your life than you do that protects you from yourself?
From a libertarian standpoint this does appear to be a case of anti-freedom legislation - in theory, people should have a choice. On the other hand, since most power is coal-generated, there IS a cost (i.e. lower quality air, disruptions from climate change etc.) imposed on other innocent people when a person exercises their 'freedom' to choose inefficient technologies, for whatever reason - so it's not 100% a case of, well, everyone should have freedom to do what they want.
They did a phone survey and just asked people.
Um, XP *WAS* actually rubbish when it came out. From a security perspective (for one) it pretty much undeniably takes the title of world's biggest OS security disaster in history, ever, and it took two MAJOR service packs (and countless additional little patches) before it became even half-decent.
I assume the 20% savings ($1,600/day) is when the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction
That's an amazingly wild assumption. After watching the video, I have the definite impression that that $1600/day estimate has arleady taken this into account and is estimated based on the typical average prevailing winds on their routes.
You do realise that some routes have pretty reliable prevailing wind patterns, and that these have even been used historically for shipping channels back in the day when sails were the main form of powering ships? Google for example 'roaring forties' and 'clipper route'. There are others.
Yup, and Yahoo never collaborates unethically with the Chinese government. But hey, if people want to believe Google is more 'evil' than the others, I guess people see only what they want to see, or rather, what media FUD campaigns want them to see.
Perhaps the tags come from the firehose version?
My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close
May I ask why not just get one semi-decent laptop and dock it when not moving about? (I used to have similar problems, and eventually just realised I was wasting lots of time trying to keep both computers sync'd, all software, multiple licenses required for all software etc. - a pointless waste.) You don't even need a docking station, even a USB keyboard/mouse is fine, plus normal monitor.