Re:It's all about perception of invincibility
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 2
It's not *exactly* analogous, but your description reminded me of the odd nature of spitball pitchers in baseball. Once a pitcher has a reputation for throwing them, he doesn't have to throw them; the belief that he is throwing them is enough to make batters miss.
I guess it was the need to inject your own leveling to Slashdot, but the article does NOT state that Microsoft is working with "exactly those vendors". It says nothing of the sort. Your pull quote was the only evidence that there is cooperation going on, and if you read that quote carefully and critically, you might spot the touch of bias in it that indicates we can draw very little information from it.
I would not say that adding a major feature that breaks competitors' software in the SECOND RELEASE CANDIDATE is kosher in ANY sense of the word. I mean, think of the implications JUST from the software development life cycle aspect. This addition will certainly have system-wide implications, and it's going into RC2? TWO??? Wouldn't that effectively nullify most of the beta testing that applied to RC1 and ALL previous builds? Isn't this just plain common sense?
And if you were a prosecutor, you'd look at the defendant's past history of proven, similar actions and call it damning. Just the things that we know for sure, coming largely from internal memos and emails that came out of the discovery process during the various legal actions, indicate that there is a predatory culture in Microsoft. Not that there isn't a similar culture in a lot of companies, but this one goes beyond the bounds of the law, common sense, and is certainly NOT in the interests of the comsumer. (And when I say comsumer, that's you 'n' me, chief!)
Furthermore, you saw fit to add your own conjecture. Frankly, if ZoneAlarm uses hacks to accomplish what it needs to do, I for one am entirely happy; and so are the millions of other people using it, who find that it causes no crashes whatsoever. I am hard-pressed, in fact, to think of a system utility that does its job so well, sitting in the background as unobtrusive as it can be. Especially something that has to intercept and examine every packet coming into a machine.
If you're going to accuse Slashdot submitters of faulty journalism, you can't interject your own bias as well and hope it all balances out...
...and yet I am an excellent sysadmin. (On that you'll have to take my word for it.) I'm not an excellent network guru - that I'll grant you. OTOH I've been able to handle all the problems that came up with networking at all the places I've worked. The details of various protocols has never come up. I understand the basics of network layers, seen the OSI model, etc. but never had to delve into the differences in various packets. So where does that leave me with your question? My answer would be "I don't know". Not hired?
Mozilla has no annoying "My whatevers" unless you count the "Personal Toolbar Folder" which may not actually be "personal". I think mine is extremely personal.
Being a long-time free marketeer myself, I an still hopeful that the states will punish MS for their practices.
This makes me nothing less than evil amongst many of my so-called friends, but I believe the equations are more complicated.
To start, sure, the Sherman act and many other laws are probably unfortunate. The free market may be more moral, provide for better outcomes, etc. etc. But once we have injected enough government interference into a free market, you can't let up on that interference selectively and expect good results. Look at the S&L problems of the late 80s, for example.
Next, we all want to believe that the rule of law is important. The laws may be unfortunate and wrong, but at least they should apply equally. Microsoft has repeatedly shown its intent to blantantly IGNORE the law and fight the law with its corporate power. This gives them an unfair advantage compared to companies that do not ignore the law. So the correct course of action is to fight the law, not to hope that it isn't applied and fight against its application.
Next, I am not at all convinced that the law should apply basically identically to people and then to the corporate "persona". In many cases we grant a weird and selective immunity to people operating under the corporate persona. I'm not sure exactly how this applies to the MS situation because I haven't had time to think about it...
Next, consumers have gotten used to the government protection and now expect it and are not interested in acting as their own advocates. Without the guise of government protection, you'd expect that more devices to correct the market would appear - devices such as Underwriter's Laboratories, Consumer Reports, consumer reporters on the nightly news, etc. WITH the guise of government protection, and with the ability of corporations to protect themselves through their own power, the consumer basically has no advocates or guides, and the situation is pretty pathetic.
Regardless of how one feels about the law itself, one should see how clearly and obviously MS has been anti-consumer. As such, it's important to separate free-market advocacy and MS advocacy. You may not like what the government is doing, but MS is still acting quite despicably. Someone has got to punish them somehow. It's a pretty sad situation if the states have to be the ones to do it instead of the consumers. But it's a pretty sad situation right now anyway.
The primary problem with banner ads is that they're not targetted. If they were, I'd never see an ad for linux because there's no way I'd ever consider following it. This makes ads on slashdot non-targetted.
The ads are obviously targetted. It's you who is non-targetted.
Going over my old notes, I think I can figure the exact day in the fall of 1994 when a full feed could no longer be transmitted over a 28.8 modem.
But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb. I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory, that cost about $500 in 1990 dollars. And was serialized! (And cost a lot more if you wanted networking!)
In the good old days, ask.com let you see everything being asked of Jeeves, unfiltered. I watched it for a while, saving off the really weird questions, and made a page of it here.
Happy reading, and remember, you're looking at the end of the human race.
Technical people are incredibly underappreciated - to the point where that term "techies" is used by everyone, including technical people. I find the term offensive and am arguing for a new term to reflect the engineering inherent in most tech positions.
From now on, "techies" who work in software should be called "software engineers". "techies" who work in hardware should be called "hardware engineers".
If you're part of a senior center, library, or nursing home, a non-profit organization called Generations on Line has just finished its pilot and officially launched a few months ago.
These folks have done a lot of the handiwork in simplifying the net for elders. They've put together materials and a "starter" site that has been specifically oriented to be the "training wheels" for the elderly. The site is fully tested with actual elders and includes large type everywhere, scaled for different monitor sizes; a web-based email with all of the confusing elements yanked out; a search engine interface with all of the confusing elements yanked out; and a simple message area where elders talk about things with schoolchildren.
It's in place or pending at several hundred sites and is expanding. It was just written about in Thursday's Philadelphia Inquirer.
Homer (searching under couch): "Oh, forty dollars? I wanted a peanut!"
Homer's Brain: "Forty dollars can buy many peanuts."
Homer: "Explain how!"
Homer's Brain: "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
Re:(META) rejected a week ago
on
MP3Pro Released
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, uh, I knew I'd get a reactoin like that, even after I noted carefully that the fact *I* got rejected wasn't so much an issue to me.
My concern is the overall quality of/. and if you give a shit - enough to complain about my post - it should be your concern too.
Since/. doesn't offer any place for meta discussion, I have nowhere else to turn with this message...
I submitted this a week ago:
2001-06-08 16:22:29 MP3Pro codec set to debut (articles,music) (rejected)
This isn't sour grapes; I know that there are different editors with different interests and different approaches, and it certainly harms me none to have a submission rejected.
My submission did as the Tech Review article did: made MP3Pro the focus, and included the streaming licensing story as part two. If the editor followed the link in the submission that was posted, he had to skip past the first half of the article - detailing the debut of MP3Pro - to read the paragraphs about mp3 streaming licensing.
I don't point this out to troll. I point this out because it's interesting how/. stories are chosen. And because the readers deserve to know, especially those who rely on/. for news. If you're going to rely on a source, it's good to be aware of how that source operates -- so that it's a more "open source", so to speak.
I believe that Taco et al have hit a snag in how the community operates: what is "news" is determined by the editors. The editors are only human and it would appear they have a pretty tough job on their hands. What's worse, their own bias affects the biases of the community. Then the community is subtlely encouraged through the moderation system to promote articles based on any bias they can find.
One alternative is in use at Kuro5hin, where the community itself votes on the submitted, pending stories. This increases the importance of a strong community, while it decreases the possibility for editor bias or editor error. I'm a big fan, if you couldn't tell.
That system might be unworkable here, but it's not hard to imagine other possible systems that permit the community itself to participate in the article selection process. An increasing number of eyeballs could only help.
A place to meta-discuss/. itself would also be huge. That way, people like me could indulge in that area, instead of polluting story threads with items like this. To Taco et al, it might seem like heresy to give the community any level of editorial control. But how could that be, when the community generates 99.9% of the content?
Kodos: Those humans are acting up again. Now they are sending up biological information about themselves.
Kang: Let me see the samples. Oh no! What a despicable tub of goo. Let's determine the identity connected to each of the humans that contributed to this goo. Hopefully there will be enough information in there to uniquely identify every single one. We can use these humans as slaves in our mining camps!
Kodos: Excellent!
This creates an odd new reality for media online. Individual voices have never been freer, more numerous or outspoken -- witness the rise of instant messaging and inward-looking p2p forums. But they've also never been more marginalized or insignificant.
If you're reading this, it means we're not marginalized yet.
Basically, any little guy you just wants to stream a few of his garage band's songs out to a limited audience and has a few banner ads to pay for beer money is supposed (in theory) to pay $2000 bucks.
Yabbut a guy in that situation is much better served by just making the songs downloadable, not streaming them.
Oh come on. We're into bizarro world here. They've priced this thing just right, but it's outta whack because one particular set of people isn't getting exactly the low price they want?
Who are these people that could pay for the bandwidth needed for streaming audio of any quality -- with banner ads? 24 concurrent connections at 64k would choke a T1 to start. These must be awesome banners! Pop-ups, that's fer sure!
And $2000 is $167 a month. I'll tell you what, there are these two guys in Brooklyn that have been streaming audio to the world for ages, cheaper than that. It's They Might Be Giants, and they've had a "dial-a-song" answering machine up for over a decade.
Now the POTS is a little noisy and a little lossy, but if your audio is SO compelling that you absolutely must STREAM it, that's the cheap way to do it. (And hey, the bandwidth is even paid for - with aggregated micropayments!)
Thomson developed a licensing scheme that would only charge for companies that "monetize" the codec. Users can now stream mp3 for free as long as they don't charge, and small-time users only pay $2000. Larger streaming companies, such as broadcasters, pay 2% of their revenue from streaming. Therefore, if you don't charge, you don't pay; if you make money on it, you give some back to the developers.
OK: I can now stream mp3 at will, for FREE -- unless I charge for it! But if I'm a big broadcaster, and I make $1Million from streaming, I have to pay them $20,000. Well that sounds like a damn sensible approach!
Now, the bulk of the Tech Review story is not about their licensing scheme, but Thomson's announcement that MP3Pro is going to debut next week. This codec will lead to file sizes half that of mp3 while remaining backwardly compatible - as in, MP3Pro can be played with any current mp3 player, albeit with a predictable loss in quality. In return they are asking for 50% more (free for non-monetized, $3000 minimum or 3% of revenue) to stream MP3Pro.
I always wondered why HP could charge $60 for a 6-foot-long, 9-pin UPS cable.
Then I went to work for a big-5 consulting firm, and on one of the jobs I was forced to drive an hour and a half each way to a client who was paying $175/hour for me to take that cable out of the plastic bag, attach one end to a UPS, and the other end to a server.
They refused to do that job themselves, because they had contracted with us to do it. No matter that the job was charged to them "Time and Expenses" at rates the top whores in the country would be embarrassed to charge.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not *exactly* analogous, but your description reminded me of the odd nature of spitball pitchers in baseball. Once a pitcher has a reputation for throwing them, he doesn't have to throw them; the belief that he is throwing them is enough to make batters miss.
I would not say that adding a major feature that breaks competitors' software in the SECOND RELEASE CANDIDATE is kosher in ANY sense of the word. I mean, think of the implications JUST from the software development life cycle aspect. This addition will certainly have system-wide implications, and it's going into RC2? TWO??? Wouldn't that effectively nullify most of the beta testing that applied to RC1 and ALL previous builds? Isn't this just plain common sense?
And if you were a prosecutor, you'd look at the defendant's past history of proven, similar actions and call it damning. Just the things that we know for sure, coming largely from internal memos and emails that came out of the discovery process during the various legal actions, indicate that there is a predatory culture in Microsoft. Not that there isn't a similar culture in a lot of companies, but this one goes beyond the bounds of the law, common sense, and is certainly NOT in the interests of the comsumer. (And when I say comsumer, that's you 'n' me, chief!)
Furthermore, you saw fit to add your own conjecture. Frankly, if ZoneAlarm uses hacks to accomplish what it needs to do, I for one am entirely happy; and so are the millions of other people using it, who find that it causes no crashes whatsoever. I am hard-pressed, in fact, to think of a system utility that does its job so well, sitting in the background as unobtrusive as it can be. Especially something that has to intercept and examine every packet coming into a machine.
If you're going to accuse Slashdot submitters of faulty journalism, you can't interject your own bias as well and hope it all balances out...
...and yet I am an excellent sysadmin. (On that you'll have to take my word for it.) I'm not an excellent network guru - that I'll grant you. OTOH I've been able to handle all the problems that came up with networking at all the places I've worked. The details of various protocols has never come up. I understand the basics of network layers, seen the OSI model, etc. but never had to delve into the differences in various packets. So where does that leave me with your question? My answer would be "I don't know". Not hired?
Mozilla has no annoying "My whatevers" unless you count the "Personal Toolbar Folder" which may not actually be "personal". I think mine is extremely personal.
This makes me nothing less than evil amongst many of my so-called friends, but I believe the equations are more complicated.
To start, sure, the Sherman act and many other laws are probably unfortunate. The free market may be more moral, provide for better outcomes, etc. etc. But once we have injected enough government interference into a free market, you can't let up on that interference selectively and expect good results. Look at the S&L problems of the late 80s, for example.
Next, we all want to believe that the rule of law is important. The laws may be unfortunate and wrong, but at least they should apply equally. Microsoft has repeatedly shown its intent to blantantly IGNORE the law and fight the law with its corporate power. This gives them an unfair advantage compared to companies that do not ignore the law. So the correct course of action is to fight the law, not to hope that it isn't applied and fight against its application.
Next, I am not at all convinced that the law should apply basically identically to people and then to the corporate "persona". In many cases we grant a weird and selective immunity to people operating under the corporate persona. I'm not sure exactly how this applies to the MS situation because I haven't had time to think about it...
Next, consumers have gotten used to the government protection and now expect it and are not interested in acting as their own advocates. Without the guise of government protection, you'd expect that more devices to correct the market would appear - devices such as Underwriter's Laboratories, Consumer Reports, consumer reporters on the nightly news, etc. WITH the guise of government protection, and with the ability of corporations to protect themselves through their own power, the consumer basically has no advocates or guides, and the situation is pretty pathetic.
Regardless of how one feels about the law itself, one should see how clearly and obviously MS has been anti-consumer. As such, it's important to separate free-market advocacy and MS advocacy. You may not like what the government is doing, but MS is still acting quite despicably. Someone has got to punish them somehow. It's a pretty sad situation if the states have to be the ones to do it instead of the consumers. But it's a pretty sad situation right now anyway.
The ads are obviously targetted. It's you who is non-targetted.
But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb. I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory, that cost about $500 in 1990 dollars. And was serialized! (And cost a lot more if you wanted networking!)
Like PHP, ASP, and JSP.
Oh, so YOU'RE that guy yacking over my shoulder. Get away, dude! I'm tryin' to maintain my bearings!
Quality! I've linked back to your site too. Now I wonder if anyone else was doing this...
Happy reading, and remember, you're looking at the end of the human race.
Thanks!
From now on, "techies" who work in software should be called "software engineers". "techies" who work in hardware should be called "hardware engineers".
These folks have done a lot of the handiwork in simplifying the net for elders. They've put together materials and a "starter" site that has been specifically oriented to be the "training wheels" for the elderly. The site is fully tested with actual elders and includes large type everywhere, scaled for different monitor sizes; a web-based email with all of the confusing elements yanked out; a search engine interface with all of the confusing elements yanked out; and a simple message area where elders talk about things with schoolchildren.
It's in place or pending at several hundred sites and is expanding. It was just written about in Thursday's Philadelphia Inquirer.
Homer's Brain: "Forty dollars can buy many peanuts."
Homer: "Explain how!"
Homer's Brain: "Money can be exchanged for goods and services."
Yeah, uh, I knew I'd get a reactoin like that, even after I noted carefully that the fact *I* got rejected wasn't so much an issue to me. My concern is the overall quality of /. and if you give a shit - enough to complain about my post - it should be your concern too.
I submitted this a week ago:
2001-06-08 16:22:29 MP3Pro codec set to debut (articles,music) (rejected)
This isn't sour grapes; I know that there are different editors with different interests and different approaches, and it certainly harms me none to have a submission rejected.
What was accepted on 6/8 - after my rejection - was Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming> , an article which referenced the second half of the same Technology Review article that I submitted.
My submission did as the Tech Review article did: made MP3Pro the focus, and included the streaming licensing story as part two. If the editor followed the link in the submission that was posted, he had to skip past the first half of the article - detailing the debut of MP3Pro - to read the paragraphs about mp3 streaming licensing.
I don't point this out to troll. I point this out because it's interesting how /. stories are chosen. And because the readers deserve to know, especially those who rely on /. for news. If you're going to rely on a source, it's good to be aware of how that source operates -- so that it's a more "open source", so to speak.
I believe that Taco et al have hit a snag in how the community operates: what is "news" is determined by the editors. The editors are only human and it would appear they have a pretty tough job on their hands. What's worse, their own bias affects the biases of the community. Then the community is subtlely encouraged through the moderation system to promote articles based on any bias they can find.
One alternative is in use at Kuro5hin, where the community itself votes on the submitted, pending stories. This increases the importance of a strong community, while it decreases the possibility for editor bias or editor error. I'm a big fan, if you couldn't tell.
That system might be unworkable here, but it's not hard to imagine other possible systems that permit the community itself to participate in the article selection process. An increasing number of eyeballs could only help.
A place to meta-discuss /. itself would also be huge. That way, people like me could indulge in that area, instead of polluting story threads with items like this. To Taco et al, it might seem like heresy to give the community any level of editorial control. But how could that be, when the community generates 99.9% of the content?
Think about it, won't you? Thank you.
Kodos: Those humans are acting up again. Now they are sending up biological information about themselves.
Kang: Let me see the samples. Oh no! What a despicable tub of goo. Let's determine the identity connected to each of the humans that contributed to this goo. Hopefully there will be enough information in there to uniquely identify every single one. We can use these humans as slaves in our mining camps!
Kodos: Excellent!
If you're reading this, it means we're not marginalized yet.
Only in one format: the $99 combination wireless keyboard and wireless mouse. I have it. It rox.
Yabbut a guy in that situation is much better served by just making the songs downloadable, not streaming them.
Who are these people that could pay for the bandwidth needed for streaming audio of any quality -- with banner ads? 24 concurrent connections at 64k would choke a T1 to start. These must be awesome banners! Pop-ups, that's fer sure!
And $2000 is $167 a month. I'll tell you what, there are these two guys in Brooklyn that have been streaming audio to the world for ages, cheaper than that. It's They Might Be Giants, and they've had a "dial-a-song" answering machine up for over a decade.
Now the POTS is a little noisy and a little lossy, but if your audio is SO compelling that you absolutely must STREAM it, that's the cheap way to do it. (And hey, the bandwidth is even paid for - with aggregated micropayments!)
Thomson developed a licensing scheme that would only charge for companies that "monetize" the codec. Users can now stream mp3 for free as long as they don't charge, and small-time users only pay $2000. Larger streaming companies, such as broadcasters, pay 2% of their revenue from streaming. Therefore, if you don't charge, you don't pay; if you make money on it, you give some back to the developers.
OK: I can now stream mp3 at will, for FREE -- unless I charge for it! But if I'm a big broadcaster, and I make $1Million from streaming, I have to pay them $20,000. Well that sounds like a damn sensible approach!
Now, the bulk of the Tech Review story is not about their licensing scheme, but Thomson's announcement that MP3Pro is going to debut next week. This codec will lead to file sizes half that of mp3 while remaining backwardly compatible - as in, MP3Pro can be played with any current mp3 player, albeit with a predictable loss in quality. In return they are asking for 50% more (free for non-monetized, $3000 minimum or 3% of revenue) to stream MP3Pro.
Then I went to work for a big-5 consulting firm, and on one of the jobs I was forced to drive an hour and a half each way to a client who was paying $175/hour for me to take that cable out of the plastic bag, attach one end to a UPS, and the other end to a server.
They refused to do that job themselves, because they had contracted with us to do it. No matter that the job was charged to them "Time and Expenses" at rates the top whores in the country would be embarrassed to charge.
If I get an 800 number, and support your open source questions in better average time than MS et al, can you get your company to pay me big bucks?
(I know, this model hasn't really worked that well in the real world, but my overhead is lower since I have no buzzwords and am not planning an IPO.)