Contrary to what you say, you submit the compiled pdf file to peer review, not the tex.
I've been there. But I'm not submitting manuscripts for peer review, and no publisher will take a pdf. Nobody outside of a few small academic disciplines accepts material generated by LaTeX. Period.
Why do you think those are your only choices for office software on a tablet?
Because everyone I work with uses Office and shares documents in Word format. Also, Word works reasonably well. For example, right now I have a nearly 80,000 word document that it handles well enough. And I don't doubt it could handle much larger. If I want to sell this manuscript, publishers will expect to receive the copy in Word format. It's that simple.
Oh, Darl McBride, namesake for Legally Blund. How I miss the entertainment he offered. Who would have guessed he'd be responsible for so much quotable ignominy?
But I wouldn't compare Balmer to McBride. More like Carly Fiorina from her days at HP. Or An Wang's prodigal son, after the elder passed away and left the shell of Wang Lab to his less than fruitful leadership.
Watching the whole Microsoft imbroglio evokes a certain gallows humor. It's like slowing down on the highway by an accident scene to gawk at splattered remains strewn across the asphalt. You can't peel your eyes away, no matter how guilty you feel because of it.
I've never been a fan of Microsoft's business practices, or the Windows platform. But I like Office, particularly Word. Always have, going back to Word for Mac 6. Please don't tell me to write in emacs and process through LaTeX. I've done it and know that nobody but a few physics journals is going to accept a.tex file. Also, it's a PITA when it comes to formatting. And no, I don't want a wysiwyg TeX editor either.
Anyway, I was intrigued by the possibility of running Word on a tablet and went to a store to check one of these Surface Tablets out. I liked it. The keyboard is responsive, the browser good enough to use, and a beta of Office looked useful. But the price tag and lack of apps is a killer. I just couldn't justify it.
So, like many of their manufactured goods, MS has but out a decent product only to be hampered by a truly idiotic marketing and sales plan. It's like they thought they'd sell these overpriced things on brand recognition alone, forgetting that people actually need to use the thing for something before they'll plunk cash down. Including Office was a good first step. But it's not an app market.
Jeesh. The decline of Microsoft has been this slow motion avalanche of stupid. The firm really needs to cull management and stomp out what must be ongoing interdepartmental wars over policy and prestige. Then focus.
They completely ignore that fact that there are limits on how far power can be sent.
I don't think they're ignoring that fact. Furthermore, there are similar limits on how far power can be sent by high voltage lines using traditional means.
I could not find a simulation on that page.
They do not provide the source code. But they do provide a report. With citations.
The fallacy that green electricity pundits state is that green power is zero emission.
Who in this thread has made that claim?
Here is an Australian analysis which concludes that even without subsidies, PV Solar is cost effective for homes and local businesses.
Conclusions
PV system costs in the residential and commercial sectors compete against retail electricity prices which include retail margins and network costs, in addition to the value of the electricity itself. Network costs make up approximately half current 2011 NSW regulated small user tariffs13. In contrast, large scale PV systems of the type investigated herein compete in a single settlement, energy only, wholesale market where the price is set by the costs of the marginal generator. As such, daytime wholesale electricity market prices are generally in the order of 4 c/kWh compared to prices more than 20 c/kWh at residential and commercial end user level.
This is an issue with people who tout solar as the solution to our power needs....... There is no way to turn up solar when one needs it.... So while the solar panels are supplying the energy there are conventional plants still spewing greenhouse gasses just in case they are needed.
It's not necessary that solar provide 100% of electric demand. Conventional power plants can dynamically reduce power production levels to meet base demand shortfalls. However, with a smart grid there are computer simulation models which show that it should be possible to provide 100% renewable production, cutting out fossil fuel power plants entirely.
This may be too optimistic. Regardless, the notion that coal and gas fired power plants must burn at peak on standby, thereby wasting power, is clearly false.
"Actually, your own ABC citation supports my post."
In what way? That it quotes a source who claims it to be so? Then why do solar installations remain a hot item in the area? Could it be because it's a rational choice for homeowners to install the equipment regardless of subsidies?
"Tax breaks are subsidies only to idiots."
Such a pleasant fellow. Tax breaks aren't subsidies only if no one is taxes. Otherwise, tax breaks select winners and losers in the marketplace, and are chosen specifically to bend markets in one direction or the next.
"You can't be paying much attention during your stay, otherwise you'd know that it's the subsidies themselves that are unsustainable. Much as they are everywhere - Germany included. It has nothing to do with baseload generation. It's about customers being jack of paying increased power prices at the whim of green policies, business fleeing high energy prices, and governments going broke."
Whether I'm paying attention or not, you haven't responded with any citations. In fact, the cites I provided show that PV electricity costs are already at parity with central electric generation by fossil fuel. Show some cites to say otherwise if you want to make your case.
Furthermore, as I point out, utility companies get significant subsidies as well. Take those away, and you'd see PV become significantly cheaper than utility production. What's the goal here, destroy incentive to connect to the grid by driving customers to home PV production? Because that'll be the outcome, which - ironically - would only increase society wide costs. Subsidies in this case, for both PV and central utilities, make sense.
But let's look at who is subsidizing PV production. That would be China. If you oppose PV subsidies because you believe they are inefficient capital allocation, would you not prefer that it be a communist country like China making the maladaptive investment? Every other country gains short term due to lowered PV production costs, at the expense of China. Why not reap those gains?
Of course, the downside to this is that China builds a new industry and technical advantage in production. But that only matters if you believe investing in PV manufacturing is a rational choice. Still, can't have it both ways.
"PV is a hippie pipe dream....and taking money from person A to buy votes from person B is bullshit.
ehhhh... energy companies or so evil... never mind that many municipalities own their own power generation infrastructure.
please show us a PV cell factory that itself runs entirely off the grid."
This is a troll. OK. But so too does it present a position and value set that's common among Libertarians, so someone ought to respond. Because underneath the derision is a point worth debating. And that's, can a governmental body invest in infrastructure to the benefit of a common good? Peru (and many other nations) are buying PV infrastructure because they believe it the best option to electrify outlying areas. Those of the Libertarian persuasion view this as wasted money, for reasons that the AC listed above in quotes.
In Germany, peak production of electricity by solar has hit 50% at times. This is causing the unintended consequence that the centralized power plant model is failing, because peak hours of consumption coincide with peak production by solar. That is, at the very time when central power plants have long expected to extract the highest price per kilowatt - during business hours in daylight - is also the time when privately installed PV offsets those costs. Thus disrupting an old centralized energy production and distribution model.
The same has happened in Australia. (I'm currently living in Australia for a short time, so I see this first hand). Last year, government subsidies for solar PV and hot water installation were scrapped early, because too many people took advantage of the opportunity, thus - just like in Germany - affecting income and profit projections across the power industry. Just like in the United States, industry players lobbied to remove the subsidies and won.
Yet this hasn't stopped solar installation. People still rush to buy. It's a long-term price lock-in, because even in the U.S. PV is already close to grid parityopportunity for those of the Libertarian persuasion?
Next, government subsidies given to central utility producers. There are massive costs involved in grid infrastructure that have to be amortized across its life, plus profit. This is then shifted out to customers, either through utility rates or by taxation if it's government run. As the AC notes, "many municipalities own their own power generation infrastructure." Doesn't that mean they're "taking money from person A to buy votes from person B"? That is, you can't have the argument both ways. If solar subsidies violate gains from a free market, then so does central power production and grid distribution.
Which is a red herring. Actually, the entire society benefits from grid infrastructure. The only question here is whether private interests can sustain investment to transition to new generation technologies like PV, or whether government subsidies are necessary to sustain this path. PV is already shown to be price competitive. If market forces work as Libertarians claim, then because prices are at parity and continuing to drop, grid upgrades and maintenance to support this new technology will occur whether they like it or not. And if the Libertarian 'free market' model fails, we'll know that by how well central producers throttle deployment of PV technology.
Finally, another red herring: Why must PV factories use self-produced electricity to manufacture PV cells and panels? Should aluminum factories be required to use aluminum in their production process?
We both seem to agree that content monopolists cull too much cream off the income stream that creatives are responsible for making. And we probably both agree that piracy is counterproductive long-term for creators as well, though it does serve to cut income from monopolists in the process. So, from that perspective, it's at least understandable.
But I'm not sure we agree on Lanier's approach to solving the problem. In fact, it doesn't appear that we've discussed it in this thread at all. If you have time, give his interview a read through and I'll gladly discuss any issues you see with the proposal.
"We just need it to reduce to the point where it's not significant."
You can't. You'll get decreasing returns as the economy declines due to income decimation. Piracy is not the problem, it's a symptom of a much greater problem that Lanier addresses.
Furthermore, by stating "we need" you're taking a position as a stakeholder in the matter. One that many others disagree with. I'm sure you'll find many on/. who agree with Kim DotCom and others who provide the means for distribution of pirated content as an expression of free speech. You can't wish this matter away by ratcheting up enforcement ad infinitum. At least, you can't and maintain a free society at the same time. As we've all seen with the drug war, among others. Ultimately, it's a self-reinforcing game that not only destroys free expression, but also destroys value in content creation as well. Why do you think so much content distributed through monopolies lacks any sense of creativity? Because the value-add doesn't trickle back to creators in this system.
"I believe TFA is making the point that when you provide a reasonable product at a reasonable price, piracy plummets."
Yes, it does. But piracy won't go away. And further, as incomes continue to plummet from the hollowing out of available work, the ability for people to pay for content will diminish as well. Ultimately, it's a race to the bottom for incomes that will lead to lost sales as well. The 'velocity of money' slows as the economy contracts, hitting the bottom line of these content monopolies. As well as everyone else setting up shop on the Main Street economy.
Why are so many insistent on free exchange of copyrighted material? Content creators don't like the idea, they'd like to earn a living. Publishers hate it even more, they want monopolies to extract every bit of value from their 'properties' as possible. The only people who like it are consumers who must go through the walled gardens publishers have set up. And therein lies the problem, publishers seek to extract perpetual rents, coddling a slim number of creators while sucking up value created for free by the general populace.
Jaron Lanier recently came out with a book, Who Owns the Future?, where he argues that digital networking has had a decimating effect on the middle classes of the world. In this Nieman Journalism Lab interview at the Harvard School for Journalism, Lanier outlines a micropayment solution whereby the general public would be paid back for information collection and content creation directly in a distributed manner, thereby cutting out the centralized collection and distribution points that content monopolies have created.
The point is that people are doing a tremendous amount of work for free all across the 'net, often in ways that don't resemble pure craft work yet represent tremendous value for large companies like Google, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, and the other big players. Yet those companies want every cent in perpetual rent for the work they perform in creating and distributing their goods. He is not arguing 'income inequality' in the sense of wealth redistribution - say, using government taxation to collect revenue and provide welfare payments to an underclass - but instead to distribute payments to every value add created.
For example, were you to translate a document from one language to the next, and google uses it as part of for statistical analysis in their language translation engine, then every time your work is referenced you should get paid for that effort. If you use a camera to document and tag a new pothole in the street, and Google Streetview uses that as part of a pothole map, you should be paid for that effort every time this is referenced (until the data becomes defuncts). This is similar to copyright in that for content creators, many of whom craft and distribute work for free instead of receiving payment for the work.
It's as if whole populations have decided that because content monopolies are taking all the work out on the net for free they can get to monetize, while demanding enforcement of intellectual property rights in an unequal exchange, that people are justified in taking what they want for free. Yet even if this were the case, the trade is still pretty bad for the people doing so much free work. You can't eat a pirated song or movie. And yet every step we take on the internet is used by the big players to aggregate vast wealth at our expense.
I can see some problems with Lanier's approach. For example, he's like to do away with monopolies and move to a distributed payment system. Yet how is one to handle those payments without a banking monopoly? Bitcoin? How do governments tax those transactions? (Yes, I know many people would prefer they didn't - but that doesn't mean such a system is viable given political realities). How do governments control and track criminal trade? (Yes, I know many people would prefer they didn't - but that doesn't mean such a system is viable given law enforcement realities).
Still, I think Lanier has put his finger on the central problem of inequality between people and these companies. It's not income inequality per se, but that the system provides no payment for value add to the vast majority of people while at the same time monetizing that very value to sell back to us. All while IT systems automate labor that used to be paid work, and companies outsource across national lines to the lowest bidder. People ar
> 3D printing could have a similar appeal to self-publishing. You design something > which a lot of people might find useful, but not so many that it's worth setting > up traditional manufacturing to make it.
That would make sense. If Ebay printed general items based on an open market of plans, they'd have a capital advantage and could buy or develop the highest fidelity printers available. I could see that being a good business plan.
It's the limited product range they're selling combined with the walled garden approach to sales that makes this a real stinker of a plan. IMO.
I'm supposed to use a store app in order to download another store app so I can purchase from a small selection of customizable trinkets by one of three central manufacturers who happen to use 3D printing. I'm scratching my head here over the value add. I suppose the real story is that Ebay doesn't want to be in the auction business any longer, they'd rather run a walled garden app store that sells junk.
I understand the desire to buy a 3D printer. But why buy something just because it's been 3D printed? Customization can't possibly beat assembly line mass manufacturing in a price/value comparison for this stuff. If Ebay wants to turn this into a business, they need better products that absolutely must be 3D manufactured for utility. Imagine having customized piping tailored specifically to a house plumbing job. Or extruding irregularly shaped cement blocks in Penrose tiles so they could be organized into an earthquake proof wall. That's a business. What Ebay is doing here -- not so much.
There were several waves of mass exodus. It's been a long time, but maybe in '03 a bunch of regular users left to go hang out at Hulver's Site to avoid pervasive and cruel trolling.
Rusty waved sayonara to some of his most active and committed community members then. Hulver put it up just for the old community to hang out and didn't pursue general readership or expansion. It's still around and arguably more active than K5 is now, though also pretty slow.
By '05-'06 K5 was nothing but a trollfest. At that point, I believe rusty was actively seeking large readership and advertising revenue by promoting troll content. For example, there was that "Fuck Natalee Holloway" article, which generated vast numbers of page views. From there the site continued its slide downhill, as rusty pursued more and more salacious material to drive traffic. It became a business model. Those who objected had their accounts summarily shitcanned one by one.
I think rusty was of the opinion that the general community couldn't write well, and he was interested in attracting professionally written material. But he didn't care about substantive content - per se - only prose style. Many of the site trolls were actually good prose writers, so he coddled them.
But a troll's interest was not in crafting useful content that would drive sustained readership. The interest is in shocking and offending the sensibilities of average readers. And so K5 transitioned from publishing useful - if marginally well written - articles about computing, technology, and social issues to the kind of thing that might drive short-term bursts of high traffic by an offended and angry anonymous readership.
rusty made the bet that if he sacrificed an active community producing marginal but useful content in order to coddle those who produce offensive but quality written offensive material, that his site could generate the pageviews necessary for a successful business model. He was wrong.
Now it looks as though they're engaged in a publicity effort to generate a burst of final advertising revenue. For example, we have this story. And at the same time on reddit over in/r/WTF we see this story hit:
Which generated significant short burst traffic to the site. Timed within a day of each other. But it's a story about bestiality with dogs. Seriously.
And I suppose writing in character a bogus female first person account of having sex with her dog is probably more fun than detailing the latest OS tricks or talking industrial policy. But Slashdot is still around and kicking. It still provides at least a marginal service to its user community that has meaning beyond just pissing people off. K5? Not so. And that's why rusty's site is dead while Slashdot employes people and retains a large user base.
Because a to run a successful forum the community _does_ matter more than a few well written - if obscene - articles.
> As I recall it -but it's been a while- Rusty made a point of it that he wasn't going to delete the trolls himself.
No. Rusty actively deleted accounts from people who _weren't_ trolls. He threw his hat in with the worst of the worst on the net and drove off his best users and potential customers. He took a hot internet property, one that could have been profitable and socially valuable, and drove it into the ground for reasons entirely his own. Now the site is cobwebs and tumbleweeds.
This is a political problem, not a systems problem.
After over a decade in systems administration, I just a job where for six years I was an IT manager. There, I learned that the skills involved in managing projects and people are a vastly underrated skill among systems specialists. The belief is often that the right system - new hardware; new software - will somehow solve an organization problem that's inherently political in nature. By that I mean, a people problem. And I think you've got a people problem here. Which doesn't mean your documentation system isn't out of date, doesn't need a refresh, etc. It means that a core member of your team is out of step with the needs of the organization, as defined by a majority board vote.
You have three choices:
A) attempt to persuade this board member that his system needs a revamp, set a series of goals to achieve that he'll buy into, and give him the project to manage. Specify benchmarks and a timeline to achieve these goals and have the board review the project on a regular basis. Then the board must fulfill its obligation to the organization by grading project success on an honest but fair basis. If he honestly works toward these goals, then the issue will resolve itself in time. Otherwise, the board must consider the possibility of transitioning him off a leadership role in that project.
B) Fire him. Do it now. Accept the fallout and hire someone else to clean up the mess.
C) Do nothing.
---
Option A: keeps someone in place who has shown himself to be an important team member who has strayed from the needs of the organization, but who recognizes this and shifts course as a result. This is the preferred course.
Option B: cuts your losses now and takes the hit quickly, while the problem is fresh. This is a harsh course, but at least is a response to the problem at hand.
Option C: 'do nothing' is a total loser. A problem recognized and yet not pursued to resolution festers until systems collapse, often at the worst time while leaving the organization unprepared for the consequences.
But the first thing you've got to realize is that Google Docs is not your solution. Google Docs may be a fine system, and a worthy systems choice. But your problem is not 'the system'. Your problem is that one person in a leadership role in the organization has strayed from board consensus, and as a result has assumed command responsibilities he does not legitimately hold. That's what you and the board must address.
There are audio recordings of phone conversations between both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson with Defense Secretary McNamara, where McNamara recommended deescalation and withdrawal. Kennedy was leaning toward McNamara's position prior to his assassination, but a newly sworn in President Johnson disagreed strenuously. He ordered McNamara to draw up a memo detailing a new policy to escalate. McNamara, being an 'organization man' in the tradition of Arthur Sloan, believed that it was his role to follow a presidential directive to the best of his ability, even though he personally disagreed with the policy. As the war deteriorated, after a visit to Vietnam to assess the situation personally, McNamara directly told President Johnson that the United States was losing the war. He was fired as a result in '68. Shortly thereafter, due to severe public protests over war policy, Johnson withdrew his name from the Democratic nomination for the '68 election and retired from public life. Nixon won on a campaign to end the war, just as he and President Eisenhower had done in '52 to end the Korean war. However, unlike Eisenhower, Nixon escalated as soon as he took office.
These recordings are available at the respective presidential libraries. Excerpts of them are presented in Errol Morris' _Fog of War_, a documentary about Robert McNamara.
LBJ just escalated a policy that had been set in place long before by Truman in '49. The presumption by Truman, then supported by Eisenhower, was that a domino effect of communist revolutions across Indochina could lead to a Trotskyite victory for communism over the long run (the so-called 'domino theory'). Going back to all the way '49 the United States sent 'advisors' and significant funds and weapons to French controlled Vietnam to sustain operations against communist guerrillas.
Thus, the foreign policy of the United States was to prevent a communist win by engaging in proxy wars rather than direct conflict. But the French lost control and pulled out, ultimately losing Algeria as well. The French gave up on colonialism as a result, but this left the United States to sustain cold war operations in Indochina. Eisenhower increased the 'advisor count' (special operations troops) as a result and Kennedy continued the policy until his assassination.
LBJ just escalated a longstanding policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans back when the country had a unified foreign policy across the parties. And you'll notice that contrary to his campaign pledge to 'end the Vietnam war', Nixon escalated as well. Who just happened to have been Eisenhower's Vice President.
Opposition to the Vietnam war in the Democratic Party in the late sixties and early seventies was only seen in a minority wing of the party that had little policy control at the top. By the time popular majorities opposed the war, Democrats then just rode the populist wave with anti-vietnam war rhetoric. But they had been staunch supporters of the policy from the start of the cold war. Just as had been Republicans.
It's more than just about creating social and legal controls over a technology that threatens traditional power structures, though personal computing has done that - just look at how social networking has supported political revolts across the world. Governments and their business patrons fear this power shift.
So, how have they responded?
The western national economies have transformed their income streams from production to rent collection, which has been ongoing since the 1970s. This has devalued all forms of manufacturing, where raw materials are converted to useful things through work, thus devaluing those who perform labor in the process. It's not automation that has destroyed manufacturing in the United States. In fact, that claim is ridiculous on its face, since - by definition - automation increases productivity which presumably should lead to long term industry success.
No, instead, free capital flows shifted productive work overseas where for cheap labor - sometimes slave labor - was available. This is called 'globalism'. But we should view the term a misnomer, due to the disparity between how easy it is to transfer capital across national boundaries versus how labor is locked into the nation state by borders and immigration law. It's not 'global free trade', it's arbitrage. This has happened not just in lock-step with deregulating the financial industry - Wall Street - at the expense of labor, but also because of it. For the power shift from government to the financial sector has had the effect of diminishing the political power of citizens - and especially labor - in the process. Because it's pretty damn hard for the poor to exercise real political power. That transformation benefitted both power bases in government and the financial sector.
But how does all this relate to computing lock-down and DRM?
It's the model for how to understand vendor lock-down in computing. For open computing platforms decentralize power by freeing people to use computing in ways never intended by the vendor (or government). This used to be called innovation. Back in the 1970s, every personal computer was open. The Apple II shipped with a manual that included schematics. Bus specifications were open. Computers booted to BASIC, a programming language by default. Now, not everyone wants to program and computing shouldn't be viewed strictly from that mindset. But, consider what happened to the minicomputing market as a result. Digital, for example, went bankrupt trying to maintain their vendor lock-in due to competition from open systems - primarily the IBM-PC and its clones we still use today. Because people like freedom, even when they don't directly use that freedom to tinker and create themselves.
So, I'm arguing that in the same vein that the financial industry gained protected privileges (deregulation) which gave it market advantage over labor, so too are titans of the software and tech industry, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc have bent law and regulation to their benefit, at the expense of small competitors and even their own customers. Like 'deregulation' for Wall Street, the tech industry has it's own legal maneuver, this time through copyrights, patents, and trademarks, all of which are a form of government regulated monopoly protection.
And all this in the Orwellian name of 'freedom'. In the financial industry, they called it 'free trade'. In the tech industry it's, 'freedom to innovate'. But in both cases the freedom isn't to decentralized down to small business or citizens, it's centralized up toward the largest market players. It's a freedom to engage in monopoly control over markets, whether the labor market, the tech market, or any other market where players are big enough to buy protection from legislators and the court system. Protection, not from other big industry players - by and large - but protection from small competitors who might innovate their way into market dominance, and protection from custome
I have a similar problem. My advice: If you're still a student, buy Adobe CS5.5 Production for $450. The Premiere interface looks a lot like FCP and it reads FCP and FCE files like a champ. And it's 64 bit, uses GPU acceleration (if your hardware supports it) and runs on both MacOS and Windows. You get platform independence with backward compatibility.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrary to what you say, you submit the compiled pdf file to peer review, not the tex.
I've been there. But I'm not submitting manuscripts for peer review, and no publisher will take a pdf. Nobody outside of a few small academic disciplines accepts material generated by LaTeX. Period.
I hear of and see endless numbers of problems with Word with my colleagues...
I'm using Office 2010 for Mac. Maybe that's it? I have no problem with the program. It's a very useful tool.
Yeah, you're right. It was Word 5.1. In my defense, the thing was released twenty years ago. It's hard to keep that stuff straight.
Why do you think those are your only choices for office software on a tablet?
Because everyone I work with uses Office and shares documents in Word format. Also, Word works reasonably well. For example, right now I have a nearly 80,000 word document that it handles well enough. And I don't doubt it could handle much larger. If I want to sell this manuscript, publishers will expect to receive the copy in Word format. It's that simple.
It was an RT tablet. If it had been running Win on x86 there'd have been no dearth of apps available to install. -M
Oh, Darl McBride, namesake for Legally Blund. How I miss the entertainment he offered. Who would have guessed he'd be responsible for so much quotable ignominy?
But I wouldn't compare Balmer to McBride. More like Carly Fiorina from her days at HP. Or An Wang's prodigal son, after the elder passed away and left the shell of Wang Lab to his less than fruitful leadership.
Watching the whole Microsoft imbroglio evokes a certain gallows humor. It's like slowing down on the highway by an accident scene to gawk at splattered remains strewn across the asphalt. You can't peel your eyes away, no matter how guilty you feel because of it.
I've never been a fan of Microsoft's business practices, or the Windows platform. But I like Office, particularly Word. Always have, going back to Word for Mac 6. Please don't tell me to write in emacs and process through LaTeX. I've done it and know that nobody but a few physics journals is going to accept a .tex file. Also, it's a PITA when it comes to formatting. And no, I don't want a wysiwyg TeX editor either.
Anyway, I was intrigued by the possibility of running Word on a tablet and went to a store to check one of these Surface Tablets out. I liked it. The keyboard is responsive, the browser good enough to use, and a beta of Office looked useful. But the price tag and lack of apps is a killer. I just couldn't justify it.
So, like many of their manufactured goods, MS has but out a decent product only to be hampered by a truly idiotic marketing and sales plan. It's like they thought they'd sell these overpriced things on brand recognition alone, forgetting that people actually need to use the thing for something before they'll plunk cash down. Including Office was a good first step. But it's not an app market.
Jeesh. The decline of Microsoft has been this slow motion avalanche of stupid. The firm really needs to cull management and stomp out what must be ongoing interdepartmental wars over policy and prestige. Then focus.
Booting Balmer would be a good first step, IMO.
They completely ignore that fact that there are limits on how far power can be sent.
I don't think they're ignoring that fact. Furthermore, there are similar limits on how far power can be sent by high voltage lines using traditional means.
I could not find a simulation on that page.
They do not provide the source code. But they do provide a report. With citations.
The fallacy that green electricity pundits state is that green power is zero emission.
Who in this thread has made that claim?
Here is an Australian analysis which concludes that even without subsidies, PV Solar is cost effective for homes and local businesses.
jklovanc wrote:
This is an issue with people who tout solar as the solution to our power needs. ... ... There is no way to turn up solar when one needs it. ... So while the solar panels are supplying the energy there are conventional plants still spewing greenhouse gasses just in case they are needed.
It's not necessary that solar provide 100% of electric demand. Conventional power plants can dynamically reduce power production levels to meet base demand shortfalls. However, with a smart grid there are computer simulation models which show that it should be possible to provide 100% renewable production, cutting out fossil fuel power plants entirely.
This may be too optimistic. Regardless, the notion that coal and gas fired power plants must burn at peak on standby, thereby wasting power, is clearly false.
"Actually, your own ABC citation supports my post."
In what way? That it quotes a source who claims it to be so? Then why do solar installations remain a hot item in the area? Could it be because it's a rational choice for homeowners to install the equipment regardless of subsidies?
"Tax breaks are subsidies only to idiots."
Such a pleasant fellow. Tax breaks aren't subsidies only if no one is taxes. Otherwise, tax breaks select winners and losers in the marketplace, and are chosen specifically to bend markets in one direction or the next.
AC Wrote:
"You can't be paying much attention during your stay, otherwise you'd know that it's the subsidies themselves that are unsustainable. Much as they are everywhere - Germany included. It has nothing to do with baseload generation. It's about customers being jack of paying increased power prices at the whim of green policies, business fleeing high energy prices, and governments going broke."
Whether I'm paying attention or not, you haven't responded with any citations. In fact, the cites I provided show that PV electricity costs are already at parity with central electric generation by fossil fuel. Show some cites to say otherwise if you want to make your case.
Furthermore, as I point out, utility companies get significant subsidies as well. Take those away, and you'd see PV become significantly cheaper than utility production. What's the goal here, destroy incentive to connect to the grid by driving customers to home PV production? Because that'll be the outcome, which - ironically - would only increase society wide costs. Subsidies in this case, for both PV and central utilities, make sense.
But let's look at who is subsidizing PV production. That would be China. If you oppose PV subsidies because you believe they are inefficient capital allocation, would you not prefer that it be a communist country like China making the maladaptive investment? Every other country gains short term due to lowered PV production costs, at the expense of China. Why not reap those gains?
Of course, the downside to this is that China builds a new industry and technical advantage in production. But that only matters if you believe investing in PV manufacturing is a rational choice. Still, can't have it both ways.
AC wrote:
"PV is a hippie pipe dream. ...and taking money from person A to buy votes from person B is bullshit.
ehhhh... energy companies or so evil... never mind that many municipalities own their own power generation infrastructure.
please show us a PV cell factory that itself runs entirely off the grid."
This is a troll. OK. But so too does it present a position and value set that's common among Libertarians, so someone ought to respond. Because underneath the derision is a point worth debating. And that's, can a governmental body invest in infrastructure to the benefit of a common good? Peru (and many other nations) are buying PV infrastructure because they believe it the best option to electrify outlying areas. Those of the Libertarian persuasion view this as wasted money, for reasons that the AC listed above in quotes.
In Germany, peak production of electricity by solar has hit 50% at times. This is causing the unintended consequence that the centralized power plant model is failing, because peak hours of consumption coincide with peak production by solar. That is, at the very time when central power plants have long expected to extract the highest price per kilowatt - during business hours in daylight - is also the time when privately installed PV offsets those costs. Thus disrupting an old centralized energy production and distribution model.
The same has happened in Australia. (I'm currently living in Australia for a short time, so I see this first hand). Last year, government subsidies for solar PV and hot water installation were scrapped early, because too many people took advantage of the opportunity, thus - just like in Germany - affecting income and profit projections across the power industry. Just like in the United States, industry players lobbied to remove the subsidies and won.
Yet this hasn't stopped solar installation. People still rush to buy. It's a long-term price lock-in, because even in the U.S. PV is already close to grid parityopportunity for those of the Libertarian persuasion?
Next, government subsidies given to central utility producers. There are massive costs involved in grid infrastructure that have to be amortized across its life, plus profit. This is then shifted out to customers, either through utility rates or by taxation if it's government run. As the AC notes, "many municipalities own their own power generation infrastructure." Doesn't that mean they're "taking money from person A to buy votes from person B"? That is, you can't have the argument both ways. If solar subsidies violate gains from a free market, then so does central power production and grid distribution.
Which is a red herring. Actually, the entire society benefits from grid infrastructure. The only question here is whether private interests can sustain investment to transition to new generation technologies like PV, or whether government subsidies are necessary to sustain this path. PV is already shown to be price competitive. If market forces work as Libertarians claim, then because prices are at parity and continuing to drop, grid upgrades and maintenance to support this new technology will occur whether they like it or not. And if the Libertarian 'free market' model fails, we'll know that by how well central producers throttle deployment of PV technology.
Finally, another red herring: Why must PV factories use self-produced electricity to manufacture PV cells and panels? Should aluminum factories be required to use aluminum in their production process?
We both seem to agree that content monopolists cull too much cream off the income stream that creatives are responsible for making. And we probably both agree that piracy is counterproductive long-term for creators as well, though it does serve to cut income from monopolists in the process. So, from that perspective, it's at least understandable.
But I'm not sure we agree on Lanier's approach to solving the problem. In fact, it doesn't appear that we've discussed it in this thread at all. If you have time, give his interview a read through and I'll gladly discuss any issues you see with the proposal.
"We just need it to reduce to the point where it's not significant."
You can't. You'll get decreasing returns as the economy declines due to income decimation. Piracy is not the problem, it's a symptom of a much greater problem that Lanier addresses.
Furthermore, by stating "we need" you're taking a position as a stakeholder in the matter. One that many others disagree with. I'm sure you'll find many on /. who agree with Kim DotCom and others who provide the means for distribution of pirated content as an expression of free speech. You can't wish this matter away by ratcheting up enforcement ad infinitum. At least, you can't and maintain a free society at the same time. As we've all seen with the drug war, among others. Ultimately, it's a self-reinforcing game that not only destroys free expression, but also destroys value in content creation as well. Why do you think so much content distributed through monopolies lacks any sense of creativity? Because the value-add doesn't trickle back to creators in this system.
"I believe TFA is making the point that when you provide a reasonable product at a reasonable price, piracy plummets."
Yes, it does. But piracy won't go away. And further, as incomes continue to plummet from the hollowing out of available work, the ability for people to pay for content will diminish as well. Ultimately, it's a race to the bottom for incomes that will lead to lost sales as well. The 'velocity of money' slows as the economy contracts, hitting the bottom line of these content monopolies. As well as everyone else setting up shop on the Main Street economy.
Why are so many insistent on free exchange of copyrighted material? Content creators don't like the idea, they'd like to earn a living. Publishers hate it even more, they want monopolies to extract every bit of value from their 'properties' as possible. The only people who like it are consumers who must go through the walled gardens publishers have set up. And therein lies the problem, publishers seek to extract perpetual rents, coddling a slim number of creators while sucking up value created for free by the general populace.
Jaron Lanier recently came out with a book, Who Owns the Future?, where he argues that digital networking has had a decimating effect on the middle classes of the world. In this Nieman Journalism Lab interview at the Harvard School for Journalism, Lanier outlines a micropayment solution whereby the general public would be paid back for information collection and content creation directly in a distributed manner, thereby cutting out the centralized collection and distribution points that content monopolies have created.
The point is that people are doing a tremendous amount of work for free all across the 'net, often in ways that don't resemble pure craft work yet represent tremendous value for large companies like Google, Microsoft, Sony, Facebook, and the other big players. Yet those companies want every cent in perpetual rent for the work they perform in creating and distributing their goods. He is not arguing 'income inequality' in the sense of wealth redistribution - say, using government taxation to collect revenue and provide welfare payments to an underclass - but instead to distribute payments to every value add created.
For example, were you to translate a document from one language to the next, and google uses it as part of for statistical analysis in their language translation engine, then every time your work is referenced you should get paid for that effort. If you use a camera to document and tag a new pothole in the street, and Google Streetview uses that as part of a pothole map, you should be paid for that effort every time this is referenced (until the data becomes defuncts). This is similar to copyright in that for content creators, many of whom craft and distribute work for free instead of receiving payment for the work.
It's as if whole populations have decided that because content monopolies are taking all the work out on the net for free they can get to monetize, while demanding enforcement of intellectual property rights in an unequal exchange, that people are justified in taking what they want for free. Yet even if this were the case, the trade is still pretty bad for the people doing so much free work. You can't eat a pirated song or movie. And yet every step we take on the internet is used by the big players to aggregate vast wealth at our expense.
I can see some problems with Lanier's approach. For example, he's like to do away with monopolies and move to a distributed payment system. Yet how is one to handle those payments without a banking monopoly? Bitcoin? How do governments tax those transactions? (Yes, I know many people would prefer they didn't - but that doesn't mean such a system is viable given political realities). How do governments control and track criminal trade? (Yes, I know many people would prefer they didn't - but that doesn't mean such a system is viable given law enforcement realities).
Still, I think Lanier has put his finger on the central problem of inequality between people and these companies. It's not income inequality per se, but that the system provides no payment for value add to the vast majority of people while at the same time monetizing that very value to sell back to us. All while IT systems automate labor that used to be paid work, and companies outsource across national lines to the lowest bidder. People ar
> 3D printing could have a similar appeal to self-publishing. You design something
> which a lot of people might find useful, but not so many that it's worth setting
> up traditional manufacturing to make it.
That would make sense. If Ebay printed general items based on an open market of plans, they'd have a capital advantage and could buy or develop the highest fidelity printers available. I could see that being a good business plan.
It's the limited product range they're selling combined with the walled garden approach to sales that makes this a real stinker of a plan. IMO.
I'm supposed to use a store app in order to download another store app so I can purchase from a small selection of customizable trinkets by one of three central manufacturers who happen to use 3D printing. I'm scratching my head here over the value add. I suppose the real story is that Ebay doesn't want to be in the auction business any longer, they'd rather run a walled garden app store that sells junk.
I understand the desire to buy a 3D printer. But why buy something just because it's been 3D printed? Customization can't possibly beat assembly line mass manufacturing in a price/value comparison for this stuff. If Ebay wants to turn this into a business, they need better products that absolutely must be 3D manufactured for utility. Imagine having customized piping tailored specifically to a house plumbing job. Or extruding irregularly shaped cement blocks in Penrose tiles so they could be organized into an earthquake proof wall. That's a business. What Ebay is doing here -- not so much.
There were several waves of mass exodus. It's been a long time, but maybe in '03 a bunch of regular users left to go hang out at Hulver's Site to avoid pervasive and cruel trolling.
http://www.hulver.com/scoop/
Rusty waved sayonara to some of his most active and committed community members then. Hulver put it up just for the old community to hang out and didn't pursue general readership or expansion. It's still around and arguably more active than K5 is now, though also pretty slow.
By '05-'06 K5 was nothing but a trollfest. At that point, I believe rusty was actively seeking large readership and advertising revenue by promoting troll content. For example, there was that "Fuck Natalee Holloway" article, which generated vast numbers of page views. From there the site continued its slide downhill, as rusty pursued more and more salacious material to drive traffic. It became a business model. Those who objected had their accounts summarily shitcanned one by one.
I think rusty was of the opinion that the general community couldn't write well, and he was interested in attracting professionally written material. But he didn't care about substantive content - per se - only prose style. Many of the site trolls were actually good prose writers, so he coddled them.
But a troll's interest was not in crafting useful content that would drive sustained readership. The interest is in shocking and offending the sensibilities of average readers. And so K5 transitioned from publishing useful - if marginally well written - articles about computing, technology, and social issues to the kind of thing that might drive short-term bursts of high traffic by an offended and angry anonymous readership.
rusty made the bet that if he sacrificed an active community producing marginal but useful content in order to coddle those who produce offensive but quality written offensive material, that his site could generate the pageviews necessary for a successful business model. He was wrong.
Now it looks as though they're engaged in a publicity effort to generate a burst of final advertising revenue. For example, we have this story. And at the same time on reddit over in /r/WTF we see this story hit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/15ye9g/girls_guide_towtf_really/
Which generated significant short burst traffic to the site. Timed within a day of each other. But it's a story about bestiality with dogs. Seriously.
And I suppose writing in character a bogus female first person account of having sex with her dog is probably more fun than detailing the latest OS tricks or talking industrial policy. But Slashdot is still around and kicking. It still provides at least a marginal service to its user community that has meaning beyond just pissing people off. K5? Not so. And that's why rusty's site is dead while Slashdot employes people and retains a large user base.
Because a to run a successful forum the community _does_ matter more than a few well written - if obscene - articles.
May rusty enjoy his well deserved obscurity.
> As I recall it -but it's been a while- Rusty made a point of it that he wasn't going to delete the trolls himself.
No. Rusty actively deleted accounts from people who _weren't_ trolls. He threw his hat in with the worst of the worst on the net and drove off his best users and potential customers. He took a hot internet property, one that could have been profitable and socially valuable, and drove it into the ground for reasons entirely his own. Now the site is cobwebs and tumbleweeds.
This is a political problem, not a systems problem.
After over a decade in systems administration, I just a job where for six years I was an IT manager. There, I learned that the skills involved in managing projects and people are a vastly underrated skill among systems specialists. The belief is often that the right system - new hardware; new software - will somehow solve an organization problem that's inherently political in nature. By that I mean, a people problem. And I think you've got a people problem here. Which doesn't mean your documentation system isn't out of date, doesn't need a refresh, etc. It means that a core member of your team is out of step with the needs of the organization, as defined by a majority board vote.
You have three choices:
A) attempt to persuade this board member that his system needs a revamp, set a series of goals to achieve that he'll buy into, and give him the project to manage. Specify benchmarks and a timeline to achieve these goals and have the board review the project on a regular basis. Then the board must fulfill its obligation to the organization by grading project success on an honest but fair basis. If he honestly works toward these goals, then the issue will resolve itself in time. Otherwise, the board must consider the possibility of transitioning him off a leadership role in that project.
B) Fire him. Do it now. Accept the fallout and hire someone else to clean up the mess.
C) Do nothing.
---
Option A: keeps someone in place who has shown himself to be an important team member who has strayed from the needs of the organization, but who recognizes this and shifts course as a result. This is the preferred course.
Option B: cuts your losses now and takes the hit quickly, while the problem is fresh. This is a harsh course, but at least is a response to the problem at hand.
Option C: 'do nothing' is a total loser. A problem recognized and yet not pursued to resolution festers until systems collapse, often at the worst time while leaving the organization unprepared for the consequences.
But the first thing you've got to realize is that Google Docs is not your solution. Google Docs may be a fine system, and a worthy systems choice. But your problem is not 'the system'. Your problem is that one person in a leadership role in the organization has strayed from board consensus, and as a result has assumed command responsibilities he does not legitimately hold. That's what you and the board must address.
I think you've got McNamara wrong here.
There are audio recordings of phone conversations between both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson with Defense Secretary McNamara, where McNamara recommended deescalation and withdrawal. Kennedy was leaning toward McNamara's position prior to his assassination, but a newly sworn in President Johnson disagreed strenuously. He ordered McNamara to draw up a memo detailing a new policy to escalate. McNamara, being an 'organization man' in the tradition of Arthur Sloan, believed that it was his role to follow a presidential directive to the best of his ability, even though he personally disagreed with the policy. As the war deteriorated, after a visit to Vietnam to assess the situation personally, McNamara directly told President Johnson that the United States was losing the war. He was fired as a result in '68. Shortly thereafter, due to severe public protests over war policy, Johnson withdrew his name from the Democratic nomination for the '68 election and retired from public life. Nixon won on a campaign to end the war, just as he and President Eisenhower had done in '52 to end the Korean war. However, unlike Eisenhower, Nixon escalated as soon as he took office.
These recordings are available at the respective presidential libraries. Excerpts of them are presented in Errol Morris' _Fog of War_, a documentary about Robert McNamara.
LBJ just escalated a policy that had been set in place long before by Truman in '49. The presumption by Truman, then supported by Eisenhower, was that a domino effect of communist revolutions across Indochina could lead to a Trotskyite victory for communism over the long run (the so-called 'domino theory'). Going back to all the way '49 the United States sent 'advisors' and significant funds and weapons to French controlled Vietnam to sustain operations against communist guerrillas.
Thus, the foreign policy of the United States was to prevent a communist win by engaging in proxy wars rather than direct conflict. But the French lost control and pulled out, ultimately losing Algeria as well. The French gave up on colonialism as a result, but this left the United States to sustain cold war operations in Indochina. Eisenhower increased the 'advisor count' (special operations troops) as a result and Kennedy continued the policy until his assassination.
LBJ just escalated a longstanding policy supported by both Democrats and Republicans back when the country had a unified foreign policy across the parties. And you'll notice that contrary to his campaign pledge to 'end the Vietnam war', Nixon escalated as well. Who just happened to have been Eisenhower's Vice President.
Opposition to the Vietnam war in the Democratic Party in the late sixties and early seventies was only seen in a minority wing of the party that had little policy control at the top. By the time popular majorities opposed the war, Democrats then just rode the populist wave with anti-vietnam war rhetoric. But they had been staunch supporters of the policy from the start of the cold war. Just as had been Republicans.
This is right.
It's more than just about creating social and legal controls over a technology that threatens traditional power structures, though personal computing has done that - just look at how social networking has supported political revolts across the world. Governments and their business patrons fear this power shift.
So, how have they responded?
The western national economies have transformed their income streams from production to rent collection, which has been ongoing since the 1970s. This has devalued all forms of manufacturing, where raw materials are converted to useful things through work, thus devaluing those who perform labor in the process. It's not automation that has destroyed manufacturing in the United States. In fact, that claim is ridiculous on its face, since - by definition - automation increases productivity which presumably should lead to long term industry success.
No, instead, free capital flows shifted productive work overseas where for cheap labor - sometimes slave labor - was available. This is called 'globalism'. But we should view the term a misnomer, due to the disparity between how easy it is to transfer capital across national boundaries versus how labor is locked into the nation state by borders and immigration law. It's not 'global free trade', it's arbitrage. This has happened not just in lock-step with deregulating the financial industry - Wall Street - at the expense of labor, but also because of it. For the power shift from government to the financial sector has had the effect of diminishing the political power of citizens - and especially labor - in the process. Because it's pretty damn hard for the poor to exercise real political power. That transformation benefitted both power bases in government and the financial sector.
But how does all this relate to computing lock-down and DRM?
It's the model for how to understand vendor lock-down in computing. For open computing platforms decentralize power by freeing people to use computing in ways never intended by the vendor (or government). This used to be called innovation. Back in the 1970s, every personal computer was open. The Apple II shipped with a manual that included schematics. Bus specifications were open. Computers booted to BASIC, a programming language by default. Now, not everyone wants to program and computing shouldn't be viewed strictly from that mindset. But, consider what happened to the minicomputing market as a result. Digital, for example, went bankrupt trying to maintain their vendor lock-in due to competition from open systems - primarily the IBM-PC and its clones we still use today. Because people like freedom, even when they don't directly use that freedom to tinker and create themselves.
So, I'm arguing that in the same vein that the financial industry gained protected privileges (deregulation) which gave it market advantage over labor, so too are titans of the software and tech industry, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc have bent law and regulation to their benefit, at the expense of small competitors and even their own customers. Like 'deregulation' for Wall Street, the tech industry has it's own legal maneuver, this time through copyrights, patents, and trademarks, all of which are a form of government regulated monopoly protection.
And all this in the Orwellian name of 'freedom'. In the financial industry, they called it 'free trade'. In the tech industry it's, 'freedom to innovate'. But in both cases the freedom isn't to decentralized down to small business or citizens, it's centralized up toward the largest market players. It's a freedom to engage in monopoly control over markets, whether the labor market, the tech market, or any other market where players are big enough to buy protection from legislators and the court system. Protection, not from other big industry players - by and large - but protection from small competitors who might innovate their way into market dominance, and protection from custome
I have a similar problem. My advice: If you're still a student, buy Adobe CS5.5 Production for $450. The Premiere interface looks a lot like FCP and it reads FCP and FCE files like a champ. And it's 64 bit, uses GPU acceleration (if your hardware supports it) and runs on both MacOS and Windows. You get platform independence with backward compatibility.
Good luck.