Of course it cost a billion dollars to write the software everyone has on their machine. But Microsoft has $40 billion in the bank and collects $7-15 billion a year in revenues.
Try a search in Yahoo News. Half the links will be from NYT, and the ones that are old enough to be "archived" (arbitrary designation for some number of days of ripeness) will cost you a squeezy $2.50 to read.
But the libertarians have never satisfactorily answered what they'd do when their ethos results in a 9600% increase in crime. Other than maybe repealing all laws that are broken regularly on the premise that if enough people are breaking them it must be a matter of freedom of choice.
A part's a part. Intel should be overselling its predictable sales by 100% if half the computers are jobbed. AMD's doing no better (and may be losing market share, meaning it's losing unit sales even faster than Intel).
These guys have no real competition.
So if the market's still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
Gattaca was only bad because (a) the premise was a bit stupid; and (b) it was massively underproduced. It felt like it was a Sci-Fi channel production, rather than a major studio release. And (c) the thing about the swimming, purely stupid and manipulative. I give it a 6. I don't remember if Uma got naked in it, but if she did, 7.
Since material put on the web and made available for free access has no value, there can be no damage due to copying should someone copy it for their own use, or to use it against you in the future.
Software only does what the requirement-writers (or the jackass managers who "write" requirements on the fly) say it must do to get shipped.
Stability, being in general unprovable (how do you validate a MTTF of 10 years on a two-day project? you don't. we've been around this question before) is rarely a requirement for software.
And software isn't only hidden from the user. It's invisible to the programmer. Every coder knows that his debugger only tells him the things it tells him. The rest of his understanding has to be kept in a mental model, which often contains only those short sequences of code that he's picked up from Other People's Listings. The human brain is capable of turning any meme into any other meme; it's about as reliable a mnemonic device as writing on a sidewalk in chalk in hurricane season.
Code works acceptably to the standards of the organization at the time it decides to deliver it.
Look up the SEI CMM quality standards or DO-178B to improve yours.
DOES IT MAKE IT ANY FUCKING EASIER TO INSTALL SHOCKWAVE PLUGINS!!!?
The reason Mozilla will never be "better" than IE, even though clearly it will, is that simple things like downloading and installing plugins are turned into an impossible act on Mozilla.
(If you click on a link with shockwave, you get a box saying to download the plugin, but the Macromedia site doesn't recognize Mozilla as a browser, and points you at a directory of files. You choose the one for IE or Netscape and try it. The first thing it wants to run the installer is a plugin for Macromedia Director, so you go through the failed-recognition-DL procedure again. When you try to install Director, the first thing it wants to run the installer is Shockwave. Catch-22. Just fucking lame. Partly Macromedia's fault; mostly Mozilla's fault for not having a corporation behind it that understands that synergy with plugin providers requires TALKING to them.)
Broadband providers already cap such activity by running user connections asymmetrically.
F'rinstance, I get typically 4-6 mbps DL speeds from a well-connected test server at Sprint Broadband Direct. UL speeds are more like 128 kbps.
If they restructure pricing, it won't be to "help" the RIAA out of the goodness of their hearts, it will be to tier my 4-6 mbps DL rate so as to squeeze more money out of me for decent connectivity.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it cost a billion dollars to write the software everyone has on their machine. But Microsoft has $40 billion in the bank and collects $7-15 billion a year in revenues.
You do the math.
--Blair
No. You get to read it.
Not the whole archive.
The one article.
For 90 days.
--Blair
Try a search in Yahoo News. Half the links will be from NYT, and the ones that are old enough to be "archived" (arbitrary designation for some number of days of ripeness) will cost you a squeezy $2.50 to read.
$2.50 to read a sorry newspaper article?
No.
Yeah, but which skull?
--Blair
I'm an atheist, I'm pissed. How about we put "there is no god" in the Pledge?
--Blair
"Equal Time, at least."
I'm not believing a word Popular Science tells me.
--Blair
His magic box will steal your soul.
--Blair
It ain't even microgravity.
We've been sending astronauts into space for extended periods. I'm sure NASA and the Russians are studying them.
Who funded this nonsense?
But the libertarians have never satisfactorily answered what they'd do when their ethos results in a 9600% increase in crime. Other than maybe repealing all laws that are broken regularly on the premise that if enough people are breaking them it must be a matter of freedom of choice.
A part's a part. Intel should be overselling its predictable sales by 100% if half the computers are jobbed. AMD's doing no better (and may be losing market share, meaning it's losing unit sales even faster than Intel).
These guys have no real competition.
So if the market's still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
Funny. I thought der Fuhr---er, I mean, John Ashcroft was a Republican.
--Blair
Gattaca was only bad because (a) the premise was a bit stupid; and (b) it was massively underproduced. It felt like it was a Sci-Fi channel production, rather than a major studio release. And (c) the thing about the swimming, purely stupid and manipulative. I give it a 6. I don't remember if Uma got naked in it, but if she did, 7.
--Blair
Blu-Ray already beats out DVD by over half an order of magnitude.
--Blair
"Tomorrow: we already have flying cars, we just don't know where the 'Deploy Control Surfaces' button is."
Since material put on the web and made available for free access has no value, there can be no damage due to copying should someone copy it for their own use, or to use it against you in the future.
Your copyright is valid, but valueless.
You can't unregister a copyright.
You give a copy of your work to the Libary of Congress, and there the evidence sits for eternity, free to be accessed by anyone with a request slip.
The price you pay for copyright protection is public availability and persistence of your old rantings.
--Blair
HP bailed on IA-64 because HP couldn't run its development operation efficiently enough to meet the tight controls it now must use to survive.
HewPaq is no longer a frontline R&D organization, it's a computer kitbuilder.
--Blair
"Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Software only does what the requirement-writers (or the jackass managers who "write" requirements on the fly) say it must do to get shipped.
Stability, being in general unprovable (how do you validate a MTTF of 10 years on a two-day project? you don't. we've been around this question before) is rarely a requirement for software.
And software isn't only hidden from the user. It's invisible to the programmer. Every coder knows that his debugger only tells him the things it tells him. The rest of his understanding has to be kept in a mental model, which often contains only those short sequences of code that he's picked up from Other People's Listings. The human brain is capable of turning any meme into any other meme; it's about as reliable a mnemonic device as writing on a sidewalk in chalk in hurricane season.
Code works acceptably to the standards of the organization at the time it decides to deliver it.
Look up the SEI CMM quality standards or DO-178B to improve yours.
--Blair
As long as we can induce the developers to develop products that undercut our competitors' profits in markets we aren't willing to enter ourselves.
--Blair
"openAIX, anyone?"
Amateur Physics for the Amateur Pool Player Third Edition
...and it'll all come out right.
--Blair
I thought failing to report a crime was a crime.
When you take on a fiduciary responsibility you owe the client every protection.
The police and the clients should be informed that the theft may have occurred. The press should not.
You think Andreesen gives a rat's ass whether Opera is open-source?
It ought to be a fundamental theorem of programming that the program isn't done until it's tested.
This includes all subsets of the program. File, class, function, line, expression, term, token, character, syntax, etc., etc.
Your version of this process, like mine, includes getting the tested code to assist our understanding.
--Blair
Someone mod that up as Funny.
"A resource for developers and bug testers"?
You mean its only purpose for being developed is to be developed.
And it's obvious goal of mimicking IE to the pixel and hitch is just a parlor game.
What's the point of having different code bases with different bug paradigms for the development platform and the release product?
--Blair
DOES IT MAKE IT ANY FUCKING EASIER TO INSTALL SHOCKWAVE PLUGINS!!!?
The reason Mozilla will never be "better" than IE, even though clearly it will, is that simple things like downloading and installing plugins are turned into an impossible act on Mozilla.
(If you click on a link with shockwave, you get a box saying to download the plugin, but the Macromedia site doesn't recognize Mozilla as a browser, and points you at a directory of files. You choose the one for IE or Netscape and try it. The first thing it wants to run the installer is a plugin for Macromedia Director, so you go through the failed-recognition-DL procedure again. When you try to install Director, the first thing it wants to run the installer is Shockwave. Catch-22. Just fucking lame. Partly Macromedia's fault; mostly Mozilla's fault for not having a corporation behind it that understands that synergy with plugin providers requires TALKING to them.)
--Blair
Broadband providers already cap such activity by running user connections asymmetrically.
F'rinstance, I get typically 4-6 mbps DL speeds from a well-connected test server at Sprint Broadband Direct. UL speeds are more like 128 kbps.
If they restructure pricing, it won't be to "help" the RIAA out of the goodness of their hearts, it will be to tier my 4-6 mbps DL rate so as to squeeze more money out of me for decent connectivity.
--Blair