I was talking cell-phones and PDAs with my former housemates, and one of them pointed to the PDq or similar device (basically a palm with a cellphone) as being pretty neat.
I started to mime how one would use such a device.
"Hello, honey? Can you tell me the directions to the Fergusons' party tonight?"
"Uh-huh, uh-huh... wait a second while I write it down into the PDA."
(scribble, scribble)
"Oh, and what's your new cell phone number?"
"Uh huh. Uh huh. Wait a second while I write it down into the PDA."
(scribble, scribble)
"Oh, and...--"
KLIK!
"Honey?!"
Point is, the information that you'd want to *use* from your PDA will be only awkwardly available if you are holding your PDA to your ear (notably lacking in visual senstivity;) ). And since the grand scheme of integration that PDA / phone makers are heralding would call for the exact opposite - that is, total convenience.
As I write this message, I realize that there is one possible solution, which is widepread adoption of the in-ear microphone / speakerbud system. That would allow a user to both scribble on the PDA and talk. Of course, it will also speed our descent into a nation of mumbling, detatched zombies, but hey.
Computer companies which hype the claims of companies like Rambus (or in this case, really Rambus / Intel) are partly to blame.
I know that the computer catalogs my company works on have been hyping the advantages of Rambus / RDRAM for a little while, based on the input given us by our client. Since they're in the position presumably to know the truth of such claims / realism of the release schedules (and since they're the client) we don't have a lot of choice about it.
So the question might have been facietious (about 'who else but intel to blame?' but...
Ultimately, this battle will be won and lost on mundane issues like price and quality of service.
I agree with the thrust of this post, but I don't see why "price" and "quality of service" are relegated to the realm of the mundane.
These might not be as technically challenging, but there certainly are a lot of logistics that go into making these things attractive.
With price, there are a lot of tradeoffs which obviously have to take place. How quickly will the company recoup its investment? Will they charge tending toward metered or unmetered? (Most things are somewhere in the middle, viewed broadly) Will they charge for service and separately for needed hardware, or lump them all into a monthly cost? Etc -- lots of variables, and no single package of them will satisfy everyone.
And with quality of service, same thing. Do you hire lots of tech-support people and charge a commensurate amount extra on the bill? Or charge less, and offer less service? (Etc, etc.)
As mochaone points out, "The companies that build relationships with their customers will retain them." Look at the (even dysfunctional) relationship approach that AOL has with people... my mom is with them still, because she has gotten familiar with it and knows which icons to click. Not *exactly* the same point, but a cousin.
Granted, I am biased, because I own a digital camera which uses them, but smart media cards are impressive.
I also don't understand the appeal of memory sticks. They look dumb (OK, that's not a technical reason, but its what my aesthetics are screaming); they're no 'better' a shape than Smart Media (though perhaps a little thinner than CompactFlash); and IIRC, are not available in denominations as high as those available in CF and SM... (at least not yet).
I hope SM sticks around, for all these reasons. Or perhaps even better, if it goes down the tubes and I can buy some large pieces for cheap...
Foogle pointed out that claims like "Works with RedHat" and "RedHat Linux Compatible" are going to be increasingly important as companies continue to affirm the importance of Linux in general, and usually RedHat specifically.
In the differentiation game which RedHat and others are going to have to keep playing if they are to survive, this is one thing that having the best-known brand name will make possible.
Does RedHat currently charge for such use, and if so, to what level of Compatibility do they ensure? Or do they charge for software but not for hardware, or vice versa? (I can see some arguments for that sort of arrangement...)
Now picture people getting so fed up with them that they, as volunteers, build their own parallel phone system and let anybody use it for free.
Now picture the phone company arguing in court that that is competition, hence they are not a monopoly...
And they'd be right, wouldn't they? Remember, the only true (coercive, protected) monopolies in this country are those instituted (like the phone companies of old) because it was thought that the government could decrease the inefficiency of having multiple and overlapping phone systems...
I don't know whether it's true that Einstein said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest, but I'm proposing a rival: inertia, specifically corporate inertia.
MS knows how to encourage it and profit from it, but that's their deal -- being clever is hardly a crime.
If the businesses you deal with (say the clients at the agency I work for) all use MS applications and exchange their documents in less-portable formats because they don't see that this could ever be a problem ("Well, everybody has Word, right?!"), then one of the costs of doing business with them is remaining compatible.
Besides this (fairly reasonable, I say, though misguided) trend to keep businesses MS-only, there's also a knee-jerk reaction of the Newest Fastest Highest variety... do most business users need a 600MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Ha! (Do most business users need a *three* hundred MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Again, Ha!, but not as loudly. The PC Magazines usually advise readers to get 'current' technology (that is, not bleeding edge, but the Good Stuff nonetheless), even though in many / most cases that is overkill overkill.
Same goes for computer companies. If they want to toady up to MS and agree to, say, exclusively offer MS operating systems on their machines, or agree to *not* install Netscape (or whatever), that's their deal. If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange. VA systems and a number of others chose not to take that deal; this limits their appeal to some customers and increases it to others. Choice, choice, choice.
So when people complain that other OSes are not 'competitive' with MS Win9X or NT, it's important to point out that 'competing' is not the same as 'winning'... having a market preponderance shows that the sum of decisions (some good, some bad, some neutral) which affects your product favors your product over the competition, for the moment. Markets are always.
What surprises me is the vitriol and glibness with which large-scale intervention and oversight is accepted when it comes to MS. A lot of (even semi-positive) posts on MS start "Now I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I'd like to see Bill Gates thrown onto a pile of punji sticks then torturously baked, but..."
An AC wrote that Intel chips have thermal problems, and cited his 200MHz Pentium MMX processor running at 180 degrees in an unspecified 'desert town.'
What about other manufacturers' chips? Are they better than Intel in this respect? (Obviously this seems to be something that would vary by chip more than by manufacturer, but I'm curious...)
The indictment of Intel chips alone as having thermal problems just seems strange.
There seem to be a lot of opinions here on how best to subdivide Microsoft, right down to how many people should be in each of the resultant divisions.
Consider that this means some sort of arbitrary decision by an outside authority, if such a breakup were actually to be effected.
How far down the line would you like that kind of control to be exerted? If you own a business, do you have the right to organize it the way you want? I say yes. 'Size of business' is not a factor, morally, and it *shouldn't* be one legally, either. In fact, if you don't have that right, you don't truly own it at all, because ownership carries the right to organize according to the will of the owner.
(A brief aside: this does require context. Mowing a profanity into your lawn will probably have ill effects on your neighbbors, but how you organize your home- based programming business inside your house oughtn't. So I am not saying that MS must be allowed to hang deer carcasses upwind of Seattle, only that a company has the right to decide what it peacably does with its own assets.)
I was at a party 2 weeks ago with several Dell employees, one of whom was a systems engineer working on Dell systems (I won't specify line, lest I get him / her / it -- who I'll call specify by the male pronoun for convenience -- in hot water).
He said that the 820 was a particularly buggy chipset, and that it was causing them a lot of frustration, more so than previous chipset releases. I told him that it was being marketed as Intels most advanced chipset, and his response was (I'm paraphrasing as best I can) "they ought to call it Intel's most advanced piece of crap!" He had other harsh words for it, such as unreliable and inconsistent, and as in the subject line.
So maybe it's being cut back on not just for "the sake of consumers" as this/. mention implied, but rather for some tweaking so it works better.
Also, as others have pointed out, it doesn't make any sense to *cut* production on a chipset which people are willing to pay for in order to gain performance improvements. Someone mentioned Xeon, and I think it's relevant. No one is forcing you to buy a system with a certain set of components, and the bleeding-edge carries a premium. So what? That just means I can't buy it until it's not the bleeding edge.;)
geekfuzz described a method of (de facto) laundering money thus:
1) Get an attorney 2) Have Him/Her set up a bank account for you 3) Instruct Him/Her on the handling of the account.. ie balance transfers, payments, etc.
Reading this thread is giving me more info. about money laundering that I'd ever previously had, so I am writing from a position of ignorance, but this 3-step way to relative secrecy raises a few questions for me.
1) Why not a bank run by attorneys Dewey, Heidit & Diep in which every account is run this way? i.e. you hire Messrs Dewey et al not just as bankers, but as attorneys in the particular financial affairs of your account. And they don't ask, don't tell.
2) What sort of rules govern secrecy of account info in the US? Are these rules based in part on eligibility for FDIC insurance? If so, what if my richest friend and I wanted to start a non-FDIC-insured bank? Realizing that such a bank would probably;) lack appeal to many people and discounting that particular thing, what rules would our new bank have to follow in regards to privacy? Would our records need to be open at all times for arbitrary inspections, or would we 'merely' be required to hand over forthwith any records named in a warrant?
The FBI certainly didn't put the porn on his machine so he can't try an entrapment defense.
On what do you base that claim?
It may be unfair / unprovable, but certainly credible claims have been made that they are not above putting incriminating evidence onto hard drives to ensure a conviction. (Or keeping hard drives full of business-critical data with the threat or intention of putting people out of business, ala Steve Jackson.)
And kiddie porn seems an obvious choice for a smear tactic. If you want to make someone look bad, put some kiddie porn on their hard drive -- how effective are denials, after it comes out that someone has even been *suspected* of that?
Kiddie porn == bad, clearly.
But I think it's prudent to consider the history of distortions and advantage-taking that US (for instance) law-enforcement bodies have in prosecuting people. No doubt there are many ethical, well-intentioned people in the FBI etc, but the events of the past several weeks should at least make you raise your eyebrows a few times.
I saw the same catalog item in Crutchfield, and had the same thought.
Why should a car-mountable DVD drive cost $1000 instead of $200? You can get a PC DVD drive nowadays for around $80. So conceivable, you ('one';) ) could build a system for your car for a couple of hundred dollars -
- small case - invertor for the DC/AC dance - hard drive enough to hold the OS / drivers to ru the DVD player - sound card
You would need a video card, monitor and keyboard to get it set up, but once it was running I don't think you'd have to keep them; better to use one fo the mini-LCD displays / touch-button panels as have been used on the several home-brewed MP3 players feaured at various points here on/.
And considering how much data a single DVD can store, a DVD-based audio player seems like a sensible idea.
The real question is not whether or not we should expect people who create critical systems (and not-so-critical) systems to abide by a public set of ethics or code of conduct, but why do we accept the fact that they currently don't? I'm a developer, show me a code of conduct I can agree with and I'll sign up. (Having said that I keep putting off joining the BCS (lazy))
Well, what's stopping you from writing it yourself? And publically declaring "This is what I believe, and I pledge to so behave." (or whatever)? I'm not being a smartass -- I'm asking seriously: why would you expect someone *else* to write the code of conduct that you agree with better than you could?
Whether it would be good for people to make their ethics public and explicit when it comes to their professions is actually a whole set of questions, not just one. For instance, would it be good for people to be pressured into signing on to some pre-determined set of ideals in a public profession of faith? I don't think so.
"Voluntary" is all well and good, but I fear from many of the responses posted so far that people are seeing this not only as a Generally Good Thing, but as a good thing to be required, whether by universities or by the state.
To take another tack... Presumably, teachers of young children ought to believe that child pornography is wrong. Should we indignantly ask why it is that we accept that fact that right now they don't have to sign a document that says "I think child pornography is really, really, bad."? How convicing would such a declaration be?
It's sort of like the Boy Scouts with the boy scout (pledge?).. the things the pledge says may be good (I've read it but it's been too long to remember exactly) but if you know a lot of boy scouts who are shoplifters and cheats, just along for the free marshmallows and pocketknives, their pledge has been demeaned for you, through no fault of the pledge or the people who came up with it. So it isn't as impressive once it has been cheapened, and cheapened it would soon be.
If this ethics declaration stuff (like 'self-condemnation' in the cultural revolution, I say) is widespread, soon the Venn diagrams of Naughty, Unethical Computer Programmers will overlap pretty well with the one of Computer Programmers in General, and this Computer Pledge of Allegience will mean only a lowered respect for the actual ethics of programmers, most of whom will of course probably be pretty good people.
If the question is, "Ought people behanve ethically?" then the answer is obvious -- because 'ethically' is how we define the way people ought to act.
If the question is "Should people require licensure to legally create / sell software, and should that licensure be predicated in part on a loyalty oath to a document we'll draft some academics to draft using all of today coolest buzzwords and moral posturing?" the answer is a big flat No.
By naming a few reasons why that No should stand, I do not mean to imply that this list is complete, but...
It would add barriers to entry to one of the only careers / endeavors that is open to those who study it. Why burden something that is currently open to people of a wide age range, and does not (inherently) discriminate based on looks or sex with layers of officious officialdom? "Mmmm, guilds."
Attested-to codes of ethics are about as useful and meaningful as... what? Confessions to the Spanish Inquisition?
The existence of codified codes of ethics is one thing, but the expectation that people should ssear allegiance to a particular one increases the development cycle of each individual's code.
As a note, when my mom went to med school, her school (Johns Hopkins) specifically did *not* feature the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors who wish to profess that oath are still free to, of course, but would you really think your doctor was more or less ethical based on whether they publically declared their allegience to a given code?
All - I know that there is a strong anti-MS (and sometimes anti-Apple) feeling on Slashdot, but do you really want the freedom to engage in peaceful commerce* to be subject to approval by higher-ups? Apple surely wants to maximize its profits, but it has no coercive power: it can only sell frickin' huge, frickin' expensive monitors to people who want them. If they think they can sell their production quickly enough to the very limited number of people who will be snapping up higher-end G4s, that's their right, eh? And if not, how far down exactly would you like the micromanagement to go? ("You can design Web pages as a freelance artist, but only if you are licensed by the state and if you don't do more than three pages for the same company each year. That's just to be fair.") Big companies start out as small companies (except in the case of some spinoffs which start big... I'd have to say the difference then between the big company and the spinoff is basically semantic.) And if you work for a small company, how would you like the FTC and other agencies breathing litigious fire down your neck the way they do big ones? Should big companies be watched carefully? Yes -- but mostly for stupidity and stagnation. I seem to detect a lot of of envy / resentment in the kind of 'watching' / meddling advocated in these parts... and among the CEOs of the other companies who are clamoring to break up MS. "Waah, daddy, his toy is better! Break his toy so mine is better!" or something like that... just thoughts, timothy *(To be clear about my use of the term 'commerce,' in this case, we're not talking kiddie porn or heroin, so that particular extreme arguement I think would be out of place.)
Re:Large staplers, ski-boots, ceiling fans ...
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The Ottoman PC
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· Score: 2
cthonious wrote:
Tarantino is about the biggest piece of shit to hit the film industry since Golan & Globus. What a vacuuous moron. Who talks about art and Tarantino in the same breath? Tacky, gory, ultra-violent and totally without intellect.
Agreed.
I also saw him (Tarantino) speak at the Texas Union Theatre, just after the premiere of Plop Fiction. I got there late (didn't know that jerk would be usurping my viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I'd never heard of him, much to the haughty dismay of the people I asked "Who is this guy?" It was standing room only, and the thing I thought was most representative of Tarantino was his lame \attempts to explain to a black member of the audience his frequent use of the word "nigger." Oh, he's a gritty, streetwise one, that Quentin.
More like a lame-oh. I eventually did see P.Fiction, but boy was I sick to my stomach. Yes, it's slick and well-produced, but casual violence (to audience laughter) is not my idea of a good time. Violence? Sure, that happens -- but context and presentation mean a lot, and I didn't like his.
That's what I meant when I compared QT to the silly computer/desk RISD guy.Hipper-than-thou, but without real substance. Sheesh.
Glad that one other human on the planet shares my view of Tarantino, but I think you're too late with the hope that PF would be the last of this films. There have been sereral he's done / worked on since then.
Is there a sort of artificial intelligence aspect to this as well? Most of my posts now seem to have the default score of 2, but a few of them have been only one.
Is there a length requirement for the automatically higher score to be applied? That seems reasonable, and it would match the ones I have seen for myself that do or do not get bumped up.
I think this is a positive thing, in a world with too few moderator points; allows a sort of proxy voting which takes a reasonable idea (that someone who posts things which get bumped up by the moderators several times is likely to continue posting interesting things) and applies it without requiring that moderators actually approve each submission.
Is this an accurate (if lowbrow) description of how / why this system works?
timothy
Large staplers, ski-boots, ceiling fans ...
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The Ottoman PC
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· Score: 2
An AC wrote "Why stop there?" and pointed out that Intel still hasn't explored *all* of the possibilities for stuffing PCs into household objects. True enough.
A few more places for them to start squashing them: -Trashcans - halloween costumes - fake fireplaces - pillows, - cupboards, - pie safes, - andirons - headboards
... I mean, boy, Intel, aren't you worried that your household object computers aren't stupid enough yet?
I saw a talk given at the U Texas art school (through the dept. of design by a guy from RISD) a few years ago. The guy reminded me of the Design (yes, big D, because we're talking High Art) equivalent of Quentin Tarantino. And you like Tarantino's personality, imagine for a moment that you are annoyed by it instead.
One of the designs he showed had me laughing to the annoyance of those around me - it was a DESK that was also a computer, and the hard drive was in ONE OF THE LEGS OF THE DESK!
To what end? To what end?!
The word "contrived" comes to mind. Wby don't we start to see some cars, say, that look like... I dunno, toasters, instead of cars? How innovative that would be, eh? I'm not saying all cars should look alike or their evolution has finished, or even that I don't like radical new designs. But *any* designs should match the function of the device - house, appliance, whatever.
I know this was a sarcastic post, but I guess the non-sarcastic point to make here is that Linux, for all of its good points, is definitely an outsider in most companies. Not necessarily ill-thought-of (esp. in the IT depts) but IT departments are not the only ones involved.
That's why it's interesting when big companies (or small companies, for that matter) have evaluated Linux (and probably the other obvious choices made by MS, or other versions of UNIX) and said "Hey, we'll go with choice B, which is cheap and has lots of good features!" rather than choice A, conservative and ubiquitous.
I think even people who like the MS OSes would find this an interesting piece of news. The status quo isn't as interesting...
It's neat if a person lives to be 120 then jumps straight into Paradise; much less so when a person dies at 79 of long-known causes. Eh?
Look at Dell, they won't even advertise that they have Linux.
Dell certainly makes little mention of this in current advertising, especially in magazine ads. However, I think you'll see this change in the near future... current Dell catalogs (produced by the company I work for) make some reference to it, but only in regards to the Dell Precision line of workstations (which Dell spells "WorkStations" in homage to Adobe and others) and even then the reference is small. (I do make sure that we use the copyright symbol in it, though!)
But since rumor has it that Linux will be available on PowerEdge servers and preloaded on the OptiPlex line as well (possibly not soon on Dimension, as the components tend to be more bleeding edge and often less Linux-supported), you will see the grudging trickle of admission ("OK, ok, you can get Linux preinstalled on Dell machines.") grow progressively wider. I hope so, because I'd like to write it.
You know what I think the most effecting thing to do would be? Call some Dell 800-numbers and politely ask about Linux availability. They'll get the message, just as soon as it goes through 39 MBAs and 107 interns;)
Dell is a big boat to turn (conservative, lots of mgt. folks, many divisions...), but like Microsoft, they have enough savvy to at least be interested in what customers want, and sometimes they can deliver.
Actually their stockholders are by and large, probably wholly ignorant of the whole fiasco, and if they know anything about it, they are clucking their tongues and sighing at silly legal departments trying to squeeze licenses out of end-of-life intellectual property. Because that's what legal departments *do*, among their other jobs. R&D develops, Marketing pushes it out, Sales keeps it rolling, Legal holds it up.
ROFLOL - If I were a moderator I would bump this up for funniness!
In my job, I work with a legal department (won't name names, but you could probably find it by looking at my old posts... name is unimportant, though, really) which is by turns obfuscatory, opaque, unintelligible and inconsistent. Ordinary words are read into in ways which no reasonable person could without getting stomach cramps and a whirling head, even claims and terms which are obviously true or clearly figurative ("this machine flies through 3D graphics") are emasculated as unprovable and possibly misleading. Ridiculous.
"Holding things up" really does seem to be the job of legal, though of course they recieve plenty of assistance from our loyal gub'mint.
By what you seem to be implying by your other posts, the african amercians are somehow genetically inferior to the whites. They on average don't work as hard or aren't as smart."
Rarely has anyone so poorly read what I have written. (Or again, is this a deliberate atempt to bait?) If you printed this in a paper, I would consider suing for libel, since the racist attitudes you attribute to me are not at all like the things I have actually advocated (utter legal equality, personal freedom transcending and independent of race or sex, etc), but to a reader who saw only this response, your calumny would go unanswered.
You wrote:
with great equalizers like stocks and crazy socialist things like equal oppurtunity (although I believe there is a more specific name which I can't recall at the moment), it can only be due to genetic inferiority for why things are the way they are!
Maybe you think so. I don't. But I do think that government is responsible for propogating at least as much active racism (like public buildings with drinking fountain apartheid up until the 1960s in some places and Jim Crow laws, right up to race-specific employment and housing laws of Right Now) as it has ever helped to dissolve. Please stop putting (racist) words in my mouth.
I am withdrawing from this line of argument, because I've had enough of your vitriol. I stand by my previous posts on the topics of the FCC, the mutability of class standing and how best to deal with racism. Since I have not posted them anonymously, anyone who cares to is free to read them and decide whether that is true. Since you do post anonynously, they'll have to just take your word for it that you wrote or didn't write any particular post.
Have a nice day.
timothy
p.s. I never attacked your grammar; thanks for extending me the same courtesy.
Slashdot Mirror
lonely is right.
... wait a second while I write it down into the PDA."
...--"
;) ). And since the grand scheme of integration that PDA / phone makers are heralding would call for the exact opposite - that is, total convenience.
I was talking cell-phones and PDAs with my former housemates, and one of them pointed to the PDq or similar device (basically a palm with a cellphone) as being pretty neat.
I started to mime how one would use such a device.
"Hello, honey? Can you tell me the directions to the Fergusons' party tonight?"
"Uh-huh, uh-huh
(scribble, scribble)
"Oh, and what's your new cell phone number?"
"Uh huh. Uh huh. Wait a second while I write it down into the PDA."
(scribble, scribble)
"Oh, and
KLIK!
"Honey?!"
Point is, the information that you'd want to *use* from your PDA will be only awkwardly available if you are holding your PDA to your ear (notably lacking in visual senstivity
As I write this message, I realize that there is one possible solution, which is widepread adoption of the in-ear microphone / speakerbud system. That would allow a user to both scribble on the PDA and talk. Of course, it will also speed our descent into a nation of mumbling, detatched zombies, but hey.
timothy
Computer companies which hype the claims of companies like Rambus (or in this case, really Rambus / Intel) are partly to blame.
...
I know that the computer catalogs my company works on have been hyping the advantages of Rambus / RDRAM for a little while, based on the input given us by our client. Since they're in the position presumably to know the truth of such claims / realism of the release schedules (and since they're the client) we don't have a lot of choice about it.
So the question might have been facietious (about 'who else but intel to blame?' but
cheers,
timothy
I agree with the thrust of this post, but I don't see why "price" and "quality of service" are relegated to the realm of the mundane.
These might not be as technically challenging, but there certainly are a lot of logistics that go into making these things attractive.
With price, there are a lot of tradeoffs which obviously have to take place. How quickly will the company recoup its investment? Will they charge tending toward metered or unmetered? (Most things are somewhere in the middle, viewed broadly) Will they charge for service and separately for needed hardware, or lump them all into a monthly cost? Etc -- lots of variables, and no single package of them will satisfy everyone.
And with quality of service, same thing. Do you hire lots of tech-support people and charge a commensurate amount extra on the bill? Or charge less, and offer less service? (Etc, etc.)
As mochaone points out, "The companies that build relationships with their customers will retain them." Look at the (even dysfunctional) relationship approach that AOL has with people
Cheers,
timothy
Granted, I am biased, because I own a digital camera which uses them, but smart media cards are impressive.
... (at least not yet).
...
I also don't understand the appeal of memory sticks. They look dumb (OK, that's not a technical reason, but its what my aesthetics are screaming); they're no 'better' a shape than Smart Media (though perhaps a little thinner than CompactFlash); and IIRC, are not available in denominations as high as those available in CF and SM
I hope SM sticks around, for all these reasons. Or perhaps even better, if it goes down the tubes and I can buy some large pieces for cheap
timothy
Foogle pointed out that claims like "Works with RedHat" and "RedHat Linux Compatible" are going to be increasingly important as companies continue to affirm the importance of Linux in general, and usually RedHat specifically.
...)
In the differentiation game which RedHat and others are going to have to keep playing if they are to survive, this is one thing that having the best-known brand name will make possible.
Does RedHat currently charge for such use, and if so, to what level of Compatibility do they ensure? Or do they charge for software but not for hardware, or vice versa? (I can see some arguments for that sort of arrangement
Insight appreciated!
timothy
And they'd be right, wouldn't they? Remember, the only true (coercive, protected) monopolies in this country are those instituted (like the phone companies of old) because it was thought that the government could decrease the inefficiency of having multiple and overlapping phone systems
timothy
I don't know whether it's true that Einstein said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest, but I'm proposing a rival: inertia, specifically corporate inertia.
... do most business users need a 600MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Ha! (Do most business users need a *three* hundred MHz chip in their desktop PCs? Again, Ha!, but not as loudly. The PC Magazines usually advise readers to get 'current' technology (that is, not bleeding edge, but the Good Stuff nonetheless), even though in many / most cases that is overkill overkill.
... having a market preponderance shows that the sum of decisions (some good, some bad, some neutral) which affects your product favors your product over the competition, for the moment. Markets are always.
..."
MS knows how to encourage it and profit from it, but that's their deal -- being clever is hardly a crime.
If the businesses you deal with (say the clients at the agency I work for) all use MS applications and exchange their documents in less-portable formats because they don't see that this could ever be a problem ("Well, everybody has Word, right?!"), then one of the costs of doing business with them is remaining compatible.
Besides this (fairly reasonable, I say, though misguided) trend to keep businesses MS-only, there's also a knee-jerk reaction of the Newest Fastest Highest variety
Same goes for computer companies. If they want to toady up to MS and agree to, say, exclusively offer MS operating systems on their machines, or agree to *not* install Netscape (or whatever), that's their deal. If I say you can rent my house only if you agree to also water the lawn once a week, it's up to you to accept the exchange. VA systems and a number of others chose not to take that deal; this limits their appeal to some customers and increases it to others. Choice, choice, choice.
So when people complain that other OSes are not 'competitive' with MS Win9X or NT, it's important to point out that 'competing' is not the same as 'winning'
What surprises me is the vitriol and glibness with which large-scale intervention and oversight is accepted when it comes to MS. A lot of (even semi-positive) posts on MS start "Now I hate MS as much as the next guy, and I'd like to see Bill Gates thrown onto a pile of punji sticks then torturously baked, but
Live and let crumble, I say.
timothy
An AC wrote that Intel chips have thermal problems, and cited his 200MHz Pentium MMX processor running at 180 degrees in an unspecified 'desert town.'
...)
What about other manufacturers' chips? Are they better than Intel in this respect? (Obviously this seems to be something that would vary by chip more than by manufacturer, but I'm curious
The indictment of Intel chips alone as having thermal problems just seems strange.
enlightenment sought,
timothy
There seem to be a lot of opinions here on how best to subdivide Microsoft, right down to how many people should be in each of the resultant divisions.
Consider that this means some sort of arbitrary decision by an outside authority, if such a breakup were actually to be effected.
How far down the line would you like that kind of control to be exerted? If you own a business, do you have the right to organize it the way you want? I say yes. 'Size of business' is not a factor, morally, and it *shouldn't* be one legally, either. In fact, if you don't have that right, you don't truly own it at all, because ownership carries the right to organize according to the will of the owner.
(A brief aside: this does require context. Mowing a profanity into your lawn will probably have ill effects on your neighbbors, but how you organize your home- based programming business inside your house oughtn't. So I am not saying that MS must be allowed to hang deer carcasses upwind of Seattle, only that a company has the right to decide what it peacably does with its own assets.)
just thoughts,
timothy
I was at a party 2 weeks ago with several Dell employees, one of whom was a systems engineer working on Dell systems (I won't specify line, lest I get him / her / it -- who I'll call specify by the male pronoun for convenience -- in hot water).
/. mention implied, but rather for some tweaking so it works better.
...
He said that the 820 was a particularly buggy chipset, and that it was causing them a lot of frustration, more so than previous chipset releases. I told him that it was being marketed as Intels most advanced chipset, and his response was (I'm paraphrasing as best I can) "they ought to call it Intel's most advanced piece of crap!" He had other harsh words for it, such as unreliable and inconsistent, and as in the subject line.
So maybe it's being cut back on not just for "the sake of consumers" as this
Also, as others have pointed out, it doesn't make any sense to *cut* production on a chipset which people are willing to pay for in order to gain performance improvements. Someone mentioned Xeon, and I think it's relevant. No one is forcing you to buy a system with a certain set of components, and the bleeding-edge carries a premium. So what? That just means I can't buy it until it's not the bleeding edge.;)
Again, this is hearsay, but from a good source
timothy
Reading this thread is giving me more info. about money laundering that I'd ever previously had, so I am writing from a position of ignorance, but this 3-step way to relative secrecy raises a few questions for me.
1) Why not a bank run by attorneys Dewey, Heidit & Diep in which every account is run this way? i.e. you hire Messrs Dewey et al not just as bankers, but as attorneys in the particular financial affairs of your account. And they don't ask, don't tell.
2) What sort of rules govern secrecy of account info in the US? Are these rules based in part on eligibility for FDIC insurance? If so, what if my richest friend and I wanted to start a non-FDIC-insured bank? Realizing that such a bank would probably
Insight appreciated,
timothy
On what do you base that claim?
It may be unfair / unprovable, but certainly credible claims have been made that they are not above putting incriminating evidence onto hard drives to ensure a conviction. (Or keeping hard drives full of business-critical data with the threat or intention of putting people out of business, ala Steve Jackson.)
And kiddie porn seems an obvious choice for a smear tactic. If you want to make someone look bad, put some kiddie porn on their hard drive -- how effective are denials, after it comes out that someone has even been *suspected* of that?
Kiddie porn == bad, clearly.
But I think it's prudent to consider the history of distortions and advantage-taking that US (for instance) law-enforcement bodies have in prosecuting people. No doubt there are many ethical, well-intentioned people in the FBI etc, but the events of the past several weeks should at least make you raise your eyebrows a few times.
Eh?
timothy
I saw the same catalog item in Crutchfield, and had the same thought.
;) ) could build a system for your car for a couple of hundred dollars -
/.
Why should a car-mountable DVD drive cost $1000 instead of $200? You can get a PC DVD drive nowadays for around $80. So conceivable, you ('one'
- small case
- invertor for the DC/AC dance
- hard drive enough to hold the OS / drivers to ru the DVD player
- sound card
You would need a video card, monitor and keyboard to get it set up, but once it was running I don't think you'd have to keep them; better to use one fo the mini-LCD displays / touch-button panels as have been used on the several home-brewed MP3 players feaured at various points here on
And considering how much data a single DVD can store, a DVD-based audio player seems like a sensible idea.
If anyone builds it, post some pix!
timothy
Well, what's stopping you from writing it yourself? And publically declaring "This is what I believe, and I pledge to so behave." (or whatever)? I'm not being a smartass -- I'm asking seriously: why would you expect someone *else* to write the code of conduct that you agree with better than you could?
Whether it would be good for people to make their ethics public and explicit when it comes to their professions is actually a whole set of questions, not just one. For instance, would it be good for people to be pressured into signing on to some pre-determined set of ideals in a public profession of faith? I don't think so.
"Voluntary" is all well and good, but I fear from many of the responses posted so far that people are seeing this not only as a Generally Good Thing, but as a good thing to be required, whether by universities or by the state.
To take another tack
It's sort of like the Boy Scouts with the boy scout (pledge?)
If this ethics declaration stuff (like 'self-condemnation' in the cultural revolution, I say) is widespread, soon the Venn diagrams of Naughty, Unethical Computer Programmers will overlap pretty well with the one of Computer Programmers in General, and this Computer Pledge of Allegience will mean only a lowered respect for the actual ethics of programmers, most of whom will of course probably be pretty good people.
timothy
If the question is "Should people require licensure to legally create / sell software, and should that licensure be predicated in part on a loyalty oath to a document we'll draft some academics to draft using all of today coolest buzzwords and moral posturing?" the answer is a big flat No.
By naming a few reasons why that No should stand, I do not mean to imply that this list is complete, but
As a note, when my mom went to med school, her school (Johns Hopkins) specifically did *not* feature the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors who wish to profess that oath are still free to, of course, but would you really think your doctor was more or less ethical based on whether they publically declared their allegience to a given code?
thoughts,
timothy
All - I know that there is a strong anti-MS (and sometimes anti-Apple) feeling on Slashdot, but do you really want the freedom to engage in peaceful commerce* to be subject to approval by higher-ups? Apple surely wants to maximize its profits, but it has no coercive power: it can only sell frickin' huge, frickin' expensive monitors to people who want them. If they think they can sell their production quickly enough to the very limited number of people who will be snapping up higher-end G4s, that's their right, eh? And if not, how far down exactly would you like the micromanagement to go? ("You can design Web pages as a freelance artist, but only if you are licensed by the state and if you don't do more than three pages for the same company each year. That's just to be fair.") Big companies start out as small companies (except in the case of some spinoffs which start big ... I'd have to say the difference then between the big company and the spinoff is basically semantic.) And if you work for a small company, how would you like the FTC and other agencies breathing litigious fire down your neck the way they do big ones? Should big companies be watched carefully? Yes -- but mostly for stupidity and stagnation. I seem to detect a lot of of envy / resentment in the kind of 'watching' / meddling advocated in these parts ... and among the CEOs of the other companies who are clamoring to break up MS. "Waah, daddy, his toy is better! Break his toy so mine is better!" or something like that ... just thoughts, timothy *(To be clear about my use of the term 'commerce,' in this case, we're not talking kiddie porn or heroin, so that particular extreme arguement I think would be out of place.)
Agreed.
I also saw him (Tarantino) speak at the Texas Union Theatre, just after the premiere of Plop Fiction. I got there late (didn't know that jerk would be usurping my viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I'd never heard of him, much to the haughty dismay of the people I asked "Who is this guy?" It was standing room only, and the thing I thought was most representative of Tarantino was his lame \attempts to explain to a black member of the audience his frequent use of the word "nigger." Oh, he's a gritty, streetwise one, that Quentin.
More like a lame-oh. I eventually did see P.Fiction, but boy was I sick to my stomach. Yes, it's slick and well-produced, but casual violence (to audience laughter) is not my idea of a good time. Violence? Sure, that happens -- but context and presentation mean a lot, and I didn't like his.
That's what I meant when I compared QT to the silly computer/desk RISD guy.Hipper-than-thou, but without real substance. Sheesh.
Glad that one other human on the planet shares my view of Tarantino, but I think you're too late with the hope that PF would be the last of this films. There have been sereral he's done / worked on since then.
timothy
Is there a sort of artificial intelligence aspect to this as well? Most of my posts now seem to have the default score of 2, but a few of them have been only one.
Is there a length requirement for the automatically higher score to be applied? That seems reasonable, and it would match the ones I have seen for myself that do or do not get bumped up.
I think this is a positive thing, in a world with too few moderator points; allows a sort of proxy voting which takes a reasonable idea (that someone who posts things which get bumped up by the moderators several times is likely to continue posting interesting things) and applies it without requiring that moderators actually approve each submission.
Is this an accurate (if lowbrow) description of how / why this system works?
timothy
An AC wrote "Why stop there?" and pointed out that Intel still hasn't explored *all* of the possibilities for stuffing PCs into household objects. True enough.
... I dunno, toasters, instead of cars? How innovative that would be, eh? I'm not saying all cars should look alike or their evolution has finished, or even that I don't like radical new designs. But *any* designs should match the function of the device - house, appliance, whatever.
A few more places for them to start squashing them:
-Trashcans
- halloween costumes
- fake fireplaces
- pillows,
- cupboards,
- pie safes,
- andirons
- headboards
... I mean, boy, Intel, aren't you worried that your household object computers aren't stupid enough yet?
I saw a talk given at the U Texas art school (through the dept. of design by a guy from RISD) a few years ago. The guy reminded me of the Design (yes, big D, because we're talking High Art) equivalent of Quentin Tarantino. And you like Tarantino's personality, imagine for a moment that you are annoyed by it instead.
One of the designs he showed had me laughing to the annoyance of those around me - it was a DESK that was also a computer, and the hard drive was in ONE OF THE LEGS OF THE DESK!
To what end? To what end?!
The word "contrived" comes to mind. Wby don't we start to see some cars, say, that look like
That's my rant.
timothy
I know this was a sarcastic post, but I guess the non-sarcastic point to make here is that Linux, for all of its good points, is definitely an outsider in most companies. Not necessarily ill-thought-of (esp. in the IT depts) but IT departments are not the only ones involved.
...
That's why it's interesting when big companies (or small companies, for that matter) have evaluated Linux (and probably the other obvious choices made by MS, or other versions of UNIX) and said "Hey, we'll go with choice B, which is cheap and has lots of good features!" rather than choice A, conservative and ubiquitous.
I think even people who like the MS OSes would find this an interesting piece of news. The status quo isn't as interesting
It's neat if a person lives to be 120 then jumps straight into Paradise; much less so when a person dies at 79 of long-known causes. Eh?
timothy
Dell certainly makes little mention of this in current advertising, especially in magazine ads. However, I think you'll see this change in the near future
But since rumor has it that Linux will be available on PowerEdge servers and preloaded on the OptiPlex line as well (possibly not soon on Dimension, as the components tend to be more bleeding edge and often less Linux-supported), you will see the grudging trickle of admission ("OK, ok, you can get Linux preinstalled on Dell machines.") grow progressively wider. I hope so, because I'd like to write it.
You know what I think the most effecting thing to do would be? Call some Dell 800-numbers and politely ask about Linux availability. They'll get the message, just as soon as it goes through 39 MBAs and 107 interns;)
Dell is a big boat to turn (conservative, lots of mgt. folks, many divisions
timothy
(Opinions expressed are just that, of course.)
(eh?)
timothy
ROFLOL - If I were a moderator I would bump this up for funniness!
In my job, I work with a legal department (won't name names, but you could probably find it by looking at my old posts
"Holding things up" really does seem to be the job of legal, though of course they recieve plenty of assistance from our loyal gub'mint.
heh.
timothy
Looking for a dummy-level explanation, because it certainly isn't what my dictionary says about it;)
And what related technologies?
Thanks for any insight,
timothy
Rarely has anyone so poorly read what I have written. (Or again, is this a deliberate atempt to bait?) If you printed this in a paper, I would consider suing for libel, since the racist attitudes you attribute to me are not at all like the things I have actually advocated (utter legal equality, personal freedom transcending and independent of race or sex, etc), but to a reader who saw only this response, your calumny would go unanswered.
You wrote:
Maybe you think so. I don't. But I do think that government is responsible for propogating at least as much active racism (like public buildings with drinking fountain apartheid up until the 1960s in some places and Jim Crow laws, right up to race-specific employment and housing laws of Right Now) as it has ever helped to dissolve. Please stop putting (racist) words in my mouth.
I am withdrawing from this line of argument, because I've had enough of your vitriol. I stand by my previous posts on the topics of the FCC, the mutability of class standing and how best to deal with racism. Since I have not posted them anonymously, anyone who cares to is free to read them and decide whether that is true. Since you do post anonynously, they'll have to just take your word for it that you wrote or didn't write any particular post.
Have a nice day.
timothy
p.s. I never attacked your grammar; thanks for extending me the same courtesy.