I thought there were glorious financial advantages to open-source development? Seems odd that we need taxpayers to subsidize what is so obviously in people's economic self-interest in the first place.
The peculiar way the blurb switches from "I quickly realized" to "according to the article" would tend to support your theory. Pretty clever, if true, though.
But isn't the coined word "Superman" just as generic as the coined word "Superhero?" Aren't they both merely the concatenation of two relatively common words in the English language?
If anything, "superhero" is more novel. "Superman" comes from Nietzsche, and the subsequent abuse of his terminology by the Nazis.
Actually I do, and this is one of those cases where familiarity with the reality is more valuable than a cocktail of Forbes articles, poorly understood Econ 101 and random raving about "neo-conservatives".
Also, the National Science Foundation, which is a major grant awarding institution for graduate students, professors and research projects in all areas of science, saw its budget cut last year.
See, this is the same thing as BWJones' point. The 2006 NSF budget is a 42% increase over 2001! That's not as lavish as the NIH's expansion but it hardly justifies all the poor-mouthing from scientists. And then it drops down a little, and whoops -- "it drives home just how little use the Bush Administration has for science"! Do you recall any researchers sending Karl Rove thank you notes when the budget kept going up and up?
All these increases are just going to employ a new crop of N faculty, who are going to spin off another unemployable 10*N grad students and postdocs. That is the problem that needs to be fixed, and the increases just push the problem out a little further.
C'mon -- Bush came into office, threw huge increases at NIH year after year and got nothing but grief from the research community for its trouble. Now the budget gets scaled back to what it was a couple of years ago and everything is going to come to an end?
The problem with the academic research system is that it's an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Propping it up with budget increases just pushes the problem out another year. That is what needs to be fixed. In the meantime, though, researchers might consider not kicking a gift horse in the mouth.
As for the original link: I thought the most interesting bit was the point that we're now in a position to catalog negative results. That would be extremely useful, although a) it's hardly as transformative as he claims and b) the emphasis on Phase I trials is bizarrely besides the point.
But IBM, with a $90 billion-a-year business of selling technology to businesses, doesn't intimidate easily. Ken Bisconti, vice-president for IBM Lotus Workplace products, calls Ballmer's speech a "thinly-veiled promotion" for the upcoming Windows and Office launches.
Any sympathy I might have had towards IBM in this confrontation vanished upon reaching the word "Lotus". Save me, Microsoft!!!
I feel a little guilty knocking the free desktops for slavishly copying Windows and then complaining again when GNOME does come up with fresh ideas. Problem is, innovation is only worthwhile when it's good! I give GNOME credit for trying, but a lot of the things they do are simply counterproductive. (My favorite Linux desktop was still back in the old days when you could run kfm (the old KDE desktop and browser, now broken into kdesktop and konqueror) comfortably in WindowMaker.)
And, yeah -- Sabayon and Pessulus are even worse names than Ekiga.
With Ada Lovelace, I think it's a sincere misunderstanding by historians. She included a large block of Babbage's code in a translation and it was mistakenly ascribed to her. (Arguably, her real accomplishment is the first software-related IP violation.)
None of the things you mention are genuinely difficult. (Shall I mention again that for all the talking you guys do about "innovation", you don't seem to have the slightest idea what it actually is?)
The only modern case I can think of of real innovation from an "underground" is steroid development, and that's far, far easier than developing malicious nanotechnology.
Every prohibition creates another underground. If a moratorium or ban is imposed, then only the people with contempt for the ban will be the ones doing the research...and these are precisely the people who are more apt to unleash something destructive, either accidentally or maliciously.
In fact, early on in the development of recombinant DNA research, there was a voluntary moratorium until appropriate ethical and safety methods were put in place. Those measures were enacted in an orderly, thought-out way, research started up again and it turned out that the fears were wildly exaggerated.
If a moratorium or ban is reasonably short-term and includes all serious researchers (voluntarily or through law), there's no reason why it can't be effective. Your vision of an underground is true for products like alcohol and marijuana, not for truly cutting edge research. There's no underground to do things that are genuinely difficult.
(Not, by the way, that I'm saying there should be such a ban.)
And, while we're bursting politically correct bubbles -- there's no evidence that Ada Lovelace "wrote programs" either. She contributed a bit to Charles Babbage's work, but the idea that she was the coder behind his enterprise is pure myth.
To sum this up, even if myth is treated as fact, the Muslim world has accomplished essentially nothing in the last 500 years. I'd regard this as less "surprising" than depressing.
...and having made the snide comment, I need to thank you for the link to NASA TV, which is about to suck up any remaining productivity left in this Friday afternoon.
For anyone expecting a view from the orbiter -- note that this is literally a webcam of JPL Mission Control. On the other hand, if you're interested in watching a bunch of balding nerds stare at their monitors, enjoy!
"What's holding you back from switching to e-books?" completely misses the point for the same reason "What's holding you back from switching to Linux?" does.
The question is -- why should I switch? The only reason I can think of is to read off-copyright books for free, instead of having to go to the library. There's no price advantage for current books, no space concern (a full bookshelf makes me look smart), no portability advantage, certainly no readability advantage. So why should I switch?
The big problem in the States is the government's crazy dollar creation (what we call inflation is directly caused by the Fed's out of control printing of dollars). This inflation creates cost of living increases (including the housing bubble in my opinion).
I strongly advise getting a passport and going to see how the rest of the world lives if you think 2-3% inflation is out of control.
1) Confining their philanthropy program to accredited non-profits instead of just giving free advertising to anyone claiming to be a charity seems entirely reasonable to me.
2) A tax deductible donation is hardly cost free. Surely, as such an ardent philanthropist, you've noticed this on your own taxes.
3) As someone else has pointed out, even in the worst light, not giving you free advertising doesn't remotely constitute "evil". Helping the Chinese government suppress information about Tibet does.
"Obligated to the stockholders" means that the board can't pillage the company to line their own pockets. It doesn't, despite what everyone seems to think, forbid them from taking at least reasonably justifiable long-term stances. They're not obligated to operate on analysts' terms any more than they were obligated to operate on China's terms.
All those schemes, from XDrive to Eazel, fell down because they made no sense on dial-up. Most customers couldn't easily transfer anything but trivial files. (OK, Eazel had some other major problems...)
Once enough people have broadband connections, and if you could just back up deltas and not transfer your whole drive every time, it might make sense.
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I thought there were glorious financial advantages to open-source development? Seems odd that we need taxpayers to subsidize what is so obviously in people's economic self-interest in the first place.
The peculiar way the blurb switches from "I quickly realized" to "according to the article" would tend to support your theory. Pretty clever, if true, though.
If anything, "superhero" is more novel. "Superman" comes from Nietzsche, and the subsequent abuse of his terminology by the Nazis.
Actually I do, and this is one of those cases where familiarity with the reality is more valuable than a cocktail of Forbes articles, poorly understood Econ 101 and random raving about "neo-conservatives".
See, this is the same thing as BWJones' point. The 2006 NSF budget is a 42% increase over 2001! That's not as lavish as the NIH's expansion but it hardly justifies all the poor-mouthing from scientists. And then it drops down a little, and whoops -- "it drives home just how little use the Bush Administration has for science"! Do you recall any researchers sending Karl Rove thank you notes when the budget kept going up and up?
All these increases are just going to employ a new crop of N faculty, who are going to spin off another unemployable 10*N grad students and postdocs. That is the problem that needs to be fixed, and the increases just push the problem out a little further.
Incidentally, here are the actual numbers for this "crisis" in funding.
The problem with the academic research system is that it's an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Propping it up with budget increases just pushes the problem out another year. That is what needs to be fixed. In the meantime, though, researchers might consider not kicking a gift horse in the mouth.
As for the original link: I thought the most interesting bit was the point that we're now in a position to catalog negative results. That would be extremely useful, although a) it's hardly as transformative as he claims and b) the emphasis on Phase I trials is bizarrely besides the point.
Any sympathy I might have had towards IBM in this confrontation vanished upon reaching the word "Lotus". Save me, Microsoft!!!
And, yeah -- Sabayon and Pessulus are even worse names than Ekiga.
Yeah, how obtuse can he be?
I suppose it's a bad sign when BadAnalogyGuy beats me to exactly the analogy I was going to make...
With Ada Lovelace, I think it's a sincere misunderstanding by historians. She included a large block of Babbage's code in a translation and it was mistakenly ascribed to her. (Arguably, her real accomplishment is the first software-related IP violation.)
The only modern case I can think of of real innovation from an "underground" is steroid development, and that's far, far easier than developing malicious nanotechnology.
In fact, early on in the development of recombinant DNA research, there was a voluntary moratorium until appropriate ethical and safety methods were put in place. Those measures were enacted in an orderly, thought-out way, research started up again and it turned out that the fears were wildly exaggerated.
If a moratorium or ban is reasonably short-term and includes all serious researchers (voluntarily or through law), there's no reason why it can't be effective. Your vision of an underground is true for products like alcohol and marijuana, not for truly cutting edge research. There's no underground to do things that are genuinely difficult.
(Not, by the way, that I'm saying there should be such a ban.)
And, while we're bursting politically correct bubbles -- there's no evidence that Ada Lovelace "wrote programs" either. She contributed a bit to Charles Babbage's work, but the idea that she was the coder behind his enterprise is pure myth.
To sum this up, even if myth is treated as fact, the Muslim world has accomplished essentially nothing in the last 500 years. I'd regard this as less "surprising" than depressing.
On the contrary, I'd expect Fox to be way overrepresented on that network. Get A Life reruns, anyone?
As long as I'm commenting:
1) Maybe an All Poker, All The Time network would fly. Or ESPN Poker. That would free up ESPN2 to bring back nightly World's Strongest Man showings.
2) Whatever happened to the much-hyped Al Gore TV network? Is it still in development or has it already come and gone?
Watching them wait out the insertion, I'm amazed at how stoic they are. I'd have poured the whole damn bottle of peanuts straight down my throat.
...and having made the snide comment, I need to thank you for the link to NASA TV, which is about to suck up any remaining productivity left in this Friday afternoon.
For anyone expecting a view from the orbiter -- note that this is literally a webcam of JPL Mission Control. On the other hand, if you're interested in watching a bunch of balding nerds stare at their monitors, enjoy!
The question is -- why should I switch? The only reason I can think of is to read off-copyright books for free, instead of having to go to the library. There's no price advantage for current books, no space concern (a full bookshelf makes me look smart), no portability advantage, certainly no readability advantage. So why should I switch?
I strongly advise getting a passport and going to see how the rest of the world lives if you think 2-3% inflation is out of control.
1) Confining their philanthropy program to accredited non-profits instead of just giving free advertising to anyone claiming to be a charity seems entirely reasonable to me.
2) A tax deductible donation is hardly cost free. Surely, as such an ardent philanthropist, you've noticed this on your own taxes.
3) As someone else has pointed out, even in the worst light, not giving you free advertising doesn't remotely constitute "evil". Helping the Chinese government suppress information about Tibet does.
"Obligated to the stockholders" means that the board can't pillage the company to line their own pockets. It doesn't, despite what everyone seems to think, forbid them from taking at least reasonably justifiable long-term stances. They're not obligated to operate on analysts' terms any more than they were obligated to operate on China's terms.
Once enough people have broadband connections, and if you could just back up deltas and not transfer your whole drive every time, it might make sense.