I agree somewhat but this isn't 1985 or even 1995 when standards and software protocols where changing at the speed of light.
Do you expect Intuit and the banks to support old protocols and ancient software forever?
That's a good question. My guess is that if the software companies don't get their act together sooner or later the Feds will step in and mandate a 10 year after market rule much as they have done with the automobile industry and for the same reasons.
I guess the point is that the software industry has matured, if for no other reason than computing is so entrenched in the market place. Expectations 10 years ago don't apply to today and my opinion is that the software industry needs to wake up to the fact. However, there is so much money in planned obsolecence that the software barrons won't be able to stop themselves and eventually the government will need to act.
Yes there are. Just because you are unaware of them doesn't mean they don't exist. Having said that of course with Microsoft's 90% market share arguably how would you or anyone unless you looked really long and hard.
But only one is better than MS on a usability standpoint
Interesting claim but certainly not fact at all. This is your prison this belief.
There is a balance between all three of these items, and in the current market, MS is in the right spot.
That's your bondage. You are a slave to this perception. You have a good rationalization and denial skills.
You just don't get it do you.
Think automobile industry.
Those who have failed to compete, eh?
Try and start a new car company in America.
Try and start a OS company in America.
Think very carefully.
You convince me that you would have any chance, any chance, that with a better automobile idea that the major automobile companies would let you start that company.
Tyranny's biggest chains these days are not those chains of perceived oppression, but those that are invisible. Think the Matrix.
You actually really believe that some new idea of a better operating system would actually stand a chance to survive in today's market?
If there was something better, people would use it.
Alas, do you understand what a monopoly is? There are lots of things better than Microsoft's crap. The problem is their preditory business practices that our Federal Government chooses to endorse.
Standard oil only had a 50% market share when they were trust busted. Microsoft has 90% plus. No matter how much better any competitor is to Microsoft these days it won't matter.
However, the naivity of people like you is what keeps the computing industry static. Your naivity is what keeps incompetent, all powerful companies like Microsoft publically popular. People's expectations are lowered because people are told nobody does it better exactly because people believe "if there was something better [other] people would use it" when in fact Microsoft's position is completely based upon preditory business practices coupled with shoddy products. If you keep your attitude then the computing industry will end up just like the automobile industry: a couple of mediocre to lousy large companies.
One could easily make the argument that the DOMINANT reason computing technology has stagnated in this decade is because techonolgy has stagnated due to Microsoft's monopoly strangling of innovation just to keep themselves rich.
It's time for people to wake up and understand that Microsoft doesn't compete on a technical competence level, but a business predatory level.
If you're saying that programmers who can solve puzzles in real-time are not, on average, better than programmers who need more time, I think I disagree.
Well, here's my 2 cents.
Give a Ph.D a problem and you'll get a Ph.D solution.
In the business world the optimal solution is to provide a solution that matches the problem. As someone responsible for cleaning up Ph.D messes, I'd have to say smart people waste far more money than profit realized from their solutions because of all the inefficiences introduced due to over engineering. Smart people hate producing simple solutions to simple problems. Thus web programming today took a really simple language HTML and turned into Java, Javascript, XML, XSL,... and yet at the end of the day the final product is still good old HTML. The complexity of Web Archticture today is not warranted based upon the business needs of the problems. But smart web programmers don't want to work with simple tools and solutions so they keep inventing more esoteric and sophisticated, ingenious tools to produce simple HTML.
In my experience in the business world for every hard problem you have to solve you have hundreds of mundane problems to solve. Google's interviewing process suggests they have no need for mundane programmers, which is just BS. If I've learned anything in the last 20 years it is to NOT put smart people on mundane projects because they will inevitably give you an over engineered solution that will cost lots of money to maintain.
Their current body count is at least 3,000 inside the country and thousands more outside the country. They have contributed to something like $100 billion in damage to the US economy.
You had to know this reply was coming.
Our current body count in Iraq is between 16,000 and 200,000 Iraqis and 1200 Americans. The Iraq War has damaged the US economy by upwards of $300 billion.
# 368 individuals have been criminally charged in the United States in terrorism investigations;
Notice the word charged, not convicted. During the McCarthy era lots of people were charged with being communists.
I have to agree with his original assessment that declaring his job is done and the he's finished the job against terrorism is nothing but hubris.
It is well documented by Michael Moore and others that neither Democrats nor Republicans read the patriot act before signing it. And yet we continue to re-elect our incompetent incumbents.
Finally, Ashcroft should be vilified for not prosecuting Ken Lay with a speedy trial. America needed it. Ken Lay and Andy Fastow are America's most high profile, white collar terrorists. We all know why Ken Lay is still a free man.
An independent, qualitative survey of organizations that recently completed a migration of their SAP or PeopleSoft ERP system from a UNIX environment to the Microsoft Windows Server platform found a more than 20% reduction in the number of servers required compared with UNIX. The survey, by META Group, found that in one large telecommunications company, consolidation on Windows allowed a greater than 50 percent reduction in the number of required servers.
The survey also found a more than 50 percent improvement in areas such as reliability, accessibility and scalability; significant savings in cost management, IT staffing, performance monitoring and vendor management; and measurable savings in technical support and training.
Mmm, questions come to mind like "how old were these machines?" A Unix server that was 5 years old compared to a Windows box today indeed might yield a 50% reduction in existing servers.
But then upgrading to the latest Unix servers would probably yield a 75% reduction in servers.
You know what they say. There are lies, damn lies and then Microsoft marketing.
Isn't there some law that now matter how big the disk drive, you'll always fill it up?
I think the biggest threat is the conversion of people from 56K baud modems to broadband. People will start using the Internet more.
Then you also have the bandwidth that is required to transmit video and audio digitally via the Internet.
Again, bandwidth demand will increase thus pushing the limits.
Eventually once some part of the Internet breaks because of bandwidth the American Congress will pass yet again the largest Highway and Transportation bill that not only pours more records amount of concrete in America but also builds out more Internet. AFter all, isnt' the Internet just another highway for transporting goods and services common to all?
I agree in that I liked the expose about the word "hacker". I also personally don't believe the only good hackers are American. What a silly thing to say.
I actually think the Japanese characterized us correctly. Business is the new form of war. America is very good at business as war and no software company epitomzies this like Microsoft.
America beats up the world when it comes to business war and software is no exception. Who makes more money off software than the U.S.? It'll be interesting to see of some country can overtake the the U.S. in software the way Japan took the U.S. on in the auto industry. We should ask Sir Paul Graham why the U.S. auto industry lags Germany and Sweden in quality and innovation of cars if we are so smart. The British Landrover even. Ford bought Jaguar. Chrysler failed and was bought by Germany. Let's face it, our form of capitalism eventually calcifies to two or three large players and then stagnates. We'd still be running 1970 mainframe code if not for the PC. We are only kicking butt in software because it is still young industrywise in my opinion. Once the playing field is reduced to two or three players like Microsoft and IBM we'll be ripe for foreign county picking. That's why open source is so important. Hopefully it will allow a continual groundswell of innovation.
I think the intellectual snobbery about hackers is all bull puckey.
Finally, he forgot to mention the new breed of hackers... the script kiddies, copycat hackers who take existing viruses and worms and change them but don't really know what they are doing just to get noteriety and attention.
I find it interesting that after all these years people are still puffing out their chests about superior cultures.
Back when the United States Revolution was taking place Europe was positing a similar rooster-in-the-barnyard mentality by saying Americans were dull and the continent of America was boring.
Armed with that Good American Finger waving motive Thomas Jefferson wrote his book "The Virginian" to counter the Europe snobbery and show that America was indeed equal or superior to Europe. America had something to prove and Jefferson wasn't above trying to prove it. Hey, we got the Moose which is the largest land animal outside of Africa. Benjamin Franklin was our emissary to Europe and France partly to demonstrate that hey, we can grow 'um smart over here. To this day France still considers Franklin the quintessential American.
But I have to say, what's up with the cultural superiority thing? Aren't we beyond that at this point in history? Europe did it us and we didn't like it at the time, as Jefferson's book and many other writings of the American revolutionary period clearly demonstrate.
Nobody likes a snob. Besides, the British don't like the competition in the snobbery department. Leave the snobbery to the Brits I say and lets stick with good ole American, Paul Bunyan exageration. We can just continue our merry tradition of blowing out the candle and jumping into bed before the light goes out.
Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?
They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.
Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.
He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.
This whole "lie" thing is just trumped up by the Kerry kool-aid drinkers to bolster their waffle-man. There was no lie - there was no misleading. They stated the intelligence as they knew it and as all governments believed it (including the Germans and French) at the time.
You really believe that? You really believe that they stated intelligence as they knew it? You have no doubt they weren't pressuring people to tell them only what they wanted to hear and thus caused the very problem of the doubt and uncertainity being left behind? Just for the record, we can't even get records of who met with Cheney on an energy summit, let alone what was actually said or "intelligence" he was given. What makes you think the NYT would have any access whatsoever to what Bush was really briefed on? or Rice? They are just going on the tidbits "two officials" are giving them for their claim about Rice. Rice may very well have known much more but the "two officials" were just covering for her.
Just for the record, I don't like Kerry. I didn't like him when he ran against Clinton in 1992.
Changing the voting situation in the US is nigh impossible. We can't even move the election date from a work day to a weekend day, something we insist every other country do when we set up a democracy there, eh?
I'm not convinced the "vote for a party" thing is a good thing. It encourages people to be lax. I think you should only vote for candidates and issues you are informed on and leave the rest blank. But then I'm a "vote the best candidate" party person.
My guess there are definitely more Linux boxes reimaged from Microsoft licenses than vice-versa.
Here are some other points:
Since when is installing an OS trivial? And then all the applications needed to run on it? I've rebuilt Losedough machines from scratch for friends and sometimes the total elapsed time to reinstall from scratch is 12 hours. Unlike Linux, MS Losedough doesn't install any useful applications when you install the OS.
Why waste time? What good business decision or business person is going to waste time installing an OS. Just sell the darn machine with raw disks?
Hi!
Happy Saturday! Very nice post, many thanks for the URL above.
Near the end the comment was made by the author "Because of its simplicity it is well suited for elections in which large parts of the electorate are illiterate."
One can't help but wonder if Condorcet system is too complex, as you state "so you never hurt your favorite candidate by your ranking of the others below them." If someone feels that strongly why rank any below them at all? It seems easy enough to start "gaming" the Concorcet system by casting a single vote only and giving nothing to those you do not care about.
When I talk voting with people you'd be surprised how many people just cast a vote to cast a vote with no understanding who or what they are voting for. I think this is because there is an implicit assumption that one has to fill in the complete ballot when in fact that has never been the case. I often encourage people to only cast a vote that they are comfortable with.
I days gone past it was common for people to vote a straight party ticket. Such is not the case today. I think a majority of people choose a candidate and then if all else fails vote a party.
I personally belong to the party of "the best candidate" which means if I don't know either candidate I don't cast a vote in that race. In my opinion this is an educational attitude that should be encourage in schools. Vote the candidate only, not the party.
Finally, I think if the objective is to engender more parties than other things have to be done in my opinion.
Rules in the House and Senate must abolish any recognition of party.
Primary elections need to be abolished as a Federally sponsored program.
I'm a strong believer in political parties. But they must remain independent of Federal law. Neither the IRV or Condorcet voting systems will change things as long as the party majorities are codified in the rules of the House and Senate. No where does the constitution make party recognition the requirement to be an effective legistlator the way it is today but the Rules adopted later on by the House and Senate have. A simple Constituional amendment stating that "Rules adopted by the House and Senate shall not require, respect, record or in any other way recognize a political party afflication" ought to do it. In my opinion this needs to happen before voting changes will have any impact on the stranglehold of our existing two party system.
Because the license that you supposedly agree to by running the software says you won't.
Which, after watching years of Judge Wapner, doesn't mean it will hold up in court. Doctor's always have you sign a waiver saying you will not sue them if something goes wrong in surgery. Guess what, you do have the right to sue and people regularly win malpractice lawsuits even though they signed they waivers they say they won't.
Reducing wages is as appropriate as raising wages. The amount of money any firm or individual makes in an enterprise or employment properly depends upon the difficulty and risk of the enterprise.
Ok, I see the disconnect. Let's talk American capitalism. How difficult is it to make sugar water? Yet Coke and Pepsi dominate what should be a market with bzillions of players. Why? It's not that competition couldn't create better or equal sugar soda water. It's because of preditory practices that are anti-competitive and anti-capitistic. Buy your competitor outright or destroy him by fixing the market (like Intel did with chips and Microsoft did with their OS). Pepsi and Coke control the distibuters. The reality of the business situation is that it's not about competition. It's a race to become the biggest and then put the others out of business using financial means once a company becomes large enough. Then you get to control wages unless the government or unions get involved. Tech wages are a demonstration that large corporations now dominate software whereas small startups where the leaders. Tech wages were a result of many small startup companies vying for a talent pool. Large companies had to pay large wages to attract engineers who'd rather work at small startups for stock than pay. You think small startups can pretend to offshore? Look at the auto industry. You have Ford & GM who produce crap and have for 30 years and they will never produce good cars. Large software companies moving to offshore will produce Microsoft crap and YOU WON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE BUT TO BUY IT. Just like local telephone service. SBC produces crap and they rely heavily on offshore. But try and get different local phone service. That is American capitalism. Soon Japan will start producing quality software and just like the Auto Industry we'll never recover our former dominance because the entrenched dominant players will be too big to topple. We still build crappy cars and soon crappy software. If you try and start an auto company in this country (or any other) you are going to have a preditor on your back. What has that got to do with competition or a good product or how difficult or risky it is to make it? I have a start up company developing software. At this point it is not about competition. It's about surviving financial antagonism by Microsoft and other large software companies. It's about surviving preditory financial practices unrelated to the product produced.
I think your perspective is very idealistic. Large corporations lobby Congress to change laws to favor them over others. Small start-ups can't. In India, our laws that protect intellectual capital don't apply. In that sense Open Source admits the reality of the situation. Us lobbying Congress to stop H1B's and offshoring is no different than large companies manipulating the law to increase the number of H1B's and maintaining an artificial situation of exempting taxing offshore payroll by calling it "professional services".
Given the vast range of industries which require software, reducing the cost of software development enhances the overall profitability of all these industries
Reducing wages reduces costs and increases profits. I believe Charles Dickens wrote a story or two about a country with no middle class because poor people do provide cheap labor.
The problem with that statement is it doesn't not counter with why pay wages at all? Every time the Democrats move to raise minimum wage, the Republicans counter with your argument. Raising wages raises costs and decreases profitibility.
Fact is though that raising minimum wage has never had that effect .
There is a formula. One can pay too high of wages. When a tech worker was paid high wages what did he spend his money on? Tech stock and products. Henry Ford had a novel idea that every economist of his time said was doomed to failure. He raised wages to a level where his workers could afford to buy his product. And they did.
Fact is that tech workers couldn't sustain their own wages by pumping that money back into tech stocks and consumer spending so the bubble popped.
Point. Wages are a balance of giving consumers money in their pocket to buy the products and services that businesses are selling with businesses maintaining profitability. Any formula for wages needs to consider balancing the two. Your formula only considers profits and is therefore invalid.
We are exporting relatively high paying jobs. Indians are spending that money in their economy on their products, not American products. My guess is that Indian spending reflects American in that the number one expense is housing and number two is taxes. However, India is not a legal consumer economy yet and those people will be buying exclusively *pirated software* with knock-off brand sun-glasses and violating all the business protection laws businesses enjoy in the U.S.
The best thing america can do is make this the best place in the world to do business.
Hi! A nice soundbite. But in reality life is a whole lot more complicated. Take for example education.
Education:
The Pilgrims started the notion of free publication education way back when (1600s). Part of the Protestant movement was learn to read the Bible for you own salvation. The Catholics believed you needed a priest to interpret between you and God. The Prostestants believed you were best served praying to God directly, but to interpret God you needed to read the Bible and go to the weekly sermons. To this day we still have a the notion of free public education. Many economists have tied our American brand of captilism to our socialism brand of education. The point is that the Puritans weren't trying to create the best business envirnment, they were trying create the best *living* environment. We have, and we've always had, socilized education as a result.
Flash forward to the 1960s. In the 1960s our education at the University level made a dramitic shift. Instead of four years of specialized education, liberal education was introduced for the first two years. Engineers were told they needed to learn to write and commmunicate in English. Before this revolution engineers would only take math and engineering courses. Ironically, it may be the two years of liberal, non-technical education will save many tech jobs... because guess what? Indian people while taking remedial English classes do not take college level English. Liberal communication classes will become even more important to future tech workers here in the U.S. Now why did Universities across the country liberlize? Ultimately to make better citizens, make a better country to live in.
My point is simply this. We need to continue our tradition of making this the best place in the world to live. That will create the best business environment as a matter of course.
Environment:
Take all of our environmental laws. Initially seen bad for business, but imagine our health-care costs if we hadn't taken the steps we did to protect air and water? Children who live near coal burning power plants on the Eastern seaboard are 5 times more likely to get asthma. Is it a better business environment to have unhealthy workers? For this reason standard healthcare should be socialized similar to the education system where basic is free, university level is paid for.
Conclusion:
Some people argue that socialized anything is bad for business. Obviously this is just not the case. Government intervention to educate workers throughout all our history has made us what we are. Our public works for education and environment utlimately benefit business because the create the best place to live and the best place to live is the best business environment.
So, in my opinion creating the best place on Earth to live is the proper persepctive, not just the best business environment. The best business environment is too short sighted.
The question is are we economically vulnerable? If you consider that 2/3 of the GDP is from consumer spending then the middle class is the top economic priority. On the face of it cutting middle class wages is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Folks argue that shoe manufacturing, electronics and other industries have moved offshore and we've survived. How to judge?
Before offshoring in the 1990's there was an economic boom and an economic bubble. Offshoring happened as direct result of the bubble/boom ending. In other words, off-shoring was a direct result of economic hardship. If we were still in the tech-boom there'd be miminmal offshoring.
We recognize during good times it makes sense to pay high wages to grow the economy.
The government is running the largest deficits ever. Blame the Congress first. The Congress is charged by our Constitution to pass bills spending money. The President just vetoes.
Non-secured and secured consumer debt are at record highs.
Real wages have stagnated or declined, especially if one factors in health care. The problem with the Bureau of Labor salary statistics is that they do not factor in personal costs for health care. Funny statistics.
A record low percentage of people in the U.S. own 20% of the wealth in this country. The rich are getting richer, the middle-class is being squeezed. The reason capitalism fails in Latin America is the 5% of the population owns 95% of the wealth. They have capitalism in name only. The question is at what percentage of the rich owning the country does capitalism fail? or start failing? Do we really want to find out?
Sky rocketing health-care costs.
So if you take into account record deficits, a shrinking middle-class, record consumer debts in both secured and unsecured loans then deflating the middle class with offshoring doesn't make any sense. If offshoring were having any positive effect in the overall scheme of things then big picture numbers like real-wages for tech workers here would tell. For example, if off-shoring resulted in higher wages for tech workers that kept their jobs here because they wer e higher skilled, then that would be a plus. But that has not happened. Offshoring has resulted in lower wages for tech workers in the US regardless of their education or experience.
Lowering middle class wages in an economy that relies for 2/3 of its size on consumer spending is always shooting yourself in the foot because you end up with wage deflation. The question is are we vulerable to some kind collapse?
I would say from what I'm reading about macro-economics the news is mostly bad. We should stop off-shoring until the economy stabilizes.
Just my opinion of course!
P.S. Watch out for the spin. Economists will tell you that home-ownership is at an all time high. What they are also telling you is that secured debt is at an all time high and that we are living on second-mortgage borrowed time and money.
What computer science class teaches this?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The stack is always faster than the heap.
A C program that doesn't use the heap will be most efficient.
Garbage collection defeats OS memory paging by moving memory pages antagonistic to the OS memory paging algorithm. Until the garbage collector is instrinsic with the OS that will always be the case. When the OS provides garbage collection then C will dominate again because it doesn't have to go through the VM.
Java programs are peformance opaque. In fact are arguably performance inhibited based upon differing JVM implementations. Java running in IBM's JVM for WebSphere may run far different than Java on Windows or with Sun's JVM. Does your JVM use kernel threads for garbage collection? What if it doesn't?
Slashdot Mirror
Do you expect Intuit and the banks to support old protocols and ancient software forever?
That's a good question. My guess is that if the software companies don't get their act together sooner or later the Feds will step in and mandate a 10 year after market rule much as they have done with the automobile industry and for the same reasons.
I guess the point is that the software industry has matured, if for no other reason than computing is so entrenched in the market place. Expectations 10 years ago don't apply to today and my opinion is that the software industry needs to wake up to the fact. However, there is so much money in planned obsolecence that the software barrons won't be able to stop themselves and eventually the government will need to act.
Yes there are. Just because you are unaware of them doesn't mean they don't exist. Having said that of course with Microsoft's 90% market share arguably how would you or anyone unless you looked really long and hard.
But only one is better than MS on a usability standpoint
Interesting claim but certainly not fact at all. This is your prison this belief.
There is a balance between all three of these items, and in the current market, MS is in the right spot.
That's your bondage. You are a slave to this perception. You have a good rationalization and denial skills.
You just don't get it do you. Think automobile industry. Those who have failed to compete, eh? Try and start a new car company in America. Try and start a OS company in America. Think very carefully. You convince me that you would have any chance, any chance, that with a better automobile idea that the major automobile companies would let you start that company. Tyranny's biggest chains these days are not those chains of perceived oppression, but those that are invisible. Think the Matrix. You actually really believe that some new idea of a better operating system would actually stand a chance to survive in today's market?
Alas, do you understand what a monopoly is? There are lots of things better than Microsoft's crap. The problem is their preditory business practices that our Federal Government chooses to endorse.
Standard oil only had a 50% market share when they were trust busted. Microsoft has 90% plus. No matter how much better any competitor is to Microsoft these days it won't matter.
However, the naivity of people like you is what keeps the computing industry static. Your naivity is what keeps incompetent, all powerful companies like Microsoft publically popular. People's expectations are lowered because people are told nobody does it better exactly because people believe "if there was something better [other] people would use it" when in fact Microsoft's position is completely based upon preditory business practices coupled with shoddy products. If you keep your attitude then the computing industry will end up just like the automobile industry: a couple of mediocre to lousy large companies.
One could easily make the argument that the DOMINANT reason computing technology has stagnated in this decade is because techonolgy has stagnated due to Microsoft's monopoly strangling of innovation just to keep themselves rich.
It's time for people to wake up and understand that Microsoft doesn't compete on a technical competence level, but a business predatory level.
Well, here's my 2 cents.
Give a Ph.D a problem and you'll get a Ph.D solution.
In the business world the optimal solution is to provide a solution that matches the problem. As someone responsible for cleaning up Ph.D messes, I'd have to say smart people waste far more money than profit realized from their solutions because of all the inefficiences introduced due to over engineering. Smart people hate producing simple solutions to simple problems. Thus web programming today took a really simple language HTML and turned into Java, Javascript, XML, XSL, ... and yet at the end of the day the final product is still good old HTML. The complexity of Web Archticture today is not warranted based upon the business needs of the problems. But smart web programmers don't want to work with simple tools and solutions so they keep inventing more esoteric and sophisticated, ingenious tools to produce simple HTML.
In my experience in the business world for every hard problem you have to solve you have hundreds of mundane problems to solve. Google's interviewing process suggests they have no need for mundane programmers, which is just BS. If I've learned anything in the last 20 years it is to NOT put smart people on mundane projects because they will inevitably give you an over engineered solution that will cost lots of money to maintain.
You had to know this reply was coming.
Our current body count in Iraq is between 16,000 and 200,000 Iraqis and 1200 Americans. The Iraq War has damaged the US economy by upwards of $300 billion.
Notice the word charged, not convicted. During the McCarthy era lots of people were charged with being communists.I have to agree with his original assessment that declaring his job is done and the he's finished the job against terrorism is nothing but hubris.
It is well documented by Michael Moore and others that neither Democrats nor Republicans read the patriot act before signing it. And yet we continue to re-elect our incompetent incumbents.
Finally, Ashcroft should be vilified for not prosecuting Ken Lay with a speedy trial. America needed it. Ken Lay and Andy Fastow are America's most high profile, white collar terrorists. We all know why Ken Lay is still a free man.
http://bluelemur.com/images/stories/evotingbig.gif
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=388
But then upgrading to the latest Unix servers would probably yield a 75% reduction in servers.
You know what they say. There are lies, damn lies and then Microsoft marketing.
Isn't there some law that now matter how big the disk drive, you'll always fill it up?
I think the biggest threat is the conversion of people from 56K baud modems to broadband. People will start using the Internet more.
Then you also have the bandwidth that is required to transmit video and audio digitally via the Internet. Again, bandwidth demand will increase thus pushing the limits.
Eventually once some part of the Internet breaks because of bandwidth the American Congress will pass yet again the largest Highway and Transportation bill that not only pours more records amount of concrete in America but also builds out more Internet. AFter all, isnt' the Internet just another highway for transporting goods and services common to all?
Cheers!
-Mybrid
I actually think the Japanese characterized us correctly. Business is the new form of war. America is very good at business as war and no software company epitomzies this like Microsoft.
America beats up the world when it comes to business war and software is no exception. Who makes more money off software than the U.S.? It'll be interesting to see of some country can overtake the the U.S. in software the way Japan took the U.S. on in the auto industry. We should ask Sir Paul Graham why the U.S. auto industry lags Germany and Sweden in quality and innovation of cars if we are so smart. The British Landrover even. Ford bought Jaguar. Chrysler failed and was bought by Germany. Let's face it, our form of capitalism eventually calcifies to two or three large players and then stagnates. We'd still be running 1970 mainframe code if not for the PC. We are only kicking butt in software because it is still young industrywise in my opinion. Once the playing field is reduced to two or three players like Microsoft and IBM we'll be ripe for foreign county picking. That's why open source is so important. Hopefully it will allow a continual groundswell of innovation.
I think the intellectual snobbery about hackers is all bull puckey.
Finally, he forgot to mention the new breed of hackers ... the script kiddies, copycat hackers who take existing viruses and worms and change them but don't really know what they are doing just to get noteriety and attention.
Cheers!
-Mybrid
Back when the United States Revolution was taking place Europe was positing a similar rooster-in-the-barnyard mentality by saying Americans were dull and the continent of America was boring.
Armed with that Good American Finger waving motive Thomas Jefferson wrote his book "The Virginian" to counter the Europe snobbery and show that America was indeed equal or superior to Europe. America had something to prove and Jefferson wasn't above trying to prove it. Hey, we got the Moose which is the largest land animal outside of Africa. Benjamin Franklin was our emissary to Europe and France partly to demonstrate that hey, we can grow 'um smart over here. To this day France still considers Franklin the quintessential American.
But I have to say, what's up with the cultural superiority thing? Aren't we beyond that at this point in history? Europe did it us and we didn't like it at the time, as Jefferson's book and many other writings of the American revolutionary period clearly demonstrate.
Nobody likes a snob. Besides, the British don't like the competition in the snobbery department. Leave the snobbery to the Brits I say and lets stick with good ole American, Paul Bunyan exageration. We can just continue our merry tradition of blowing out the candle and jumping into bed before the light goes out.
Cheers!
Mybrid
thanks for the info
Bush uses CIA (bad) intelligence when it suits him and ignores it (assessment of Iraq in the next five years) when it doesn't. Remember, the uraninum and aluminum tube intelligence came after 9/11 and the entire intelligence community was sharply rebuked for not doing its job. How can they NOT double check all the intelligence after 9/11? especially when making the case to go to war? Bush says 9/11 changed the way we look at the world and nowhere is this more obvious than with intelligence. The intelligence community needs a new outlook with lots of scrutiny after 9/11. The question is did he give the intelligence for going to war in Iraq the 9/11 scrutiny or the 9/10 scrutiny?
They only answer can be that the buck doesn't stop with George Bush. He's not looking to take responsiblity but rather he's looking to get his way. He wanted to invade Iraq and he found intelligence that agreed with him and he wasn't concerned with due dilligence of having it doubled checked.
Of course now he doubts the intelligence about the bleak outlook for Iraq.
He's only using intelligence as propoganda to get his way. It is transparently obvious.
You really believe that? You really believe that they stated intelligence as they knew it? You have no doubt they weren't pressuring people to tell them only what they wanted to hear and thus caused the very problem of the doubt and uncertainity being left behind? Just for the record, we can't even get records of who met with Cheney on an energy summit, let alone what was actually said or "intelligence" he was given. What makes you think the NYT would have any access whatsoever to what Bush was really briefed on? or Rice? They are just going on the tidbits "two officials" are giving them for their claim about Rice. Rice may very well have known much more but the "two officials" were just covering for her.
Just for the record, I don't like Kerry. I didn't like him when he ran against Clinton in 1992.
Changing the voting situation in the US is nigh impossible. We can't even move the election date from a work day to a weekend day, something we insist every other country do when we set up a democracy there, eh?
I'm not convinced the "vote for a party" thing is a good thing. It encourages people to be lax. I think you should only vote for candidates and issues you are informed on and leave the rest blank. But then I'm a "vote the best candidate" party person.
Cheers!
My guess there are definitely more Linux boxes reimaged from Microsoft licenses than vice-versa.
Here are some other points:
What a silly thing to say.
Near the end the comment was made by the author "Because of its simplicity it is well suited for elections in which large parts of the electorate are illiterate."
One can't help but wonder if Condorcet system is too complex, as you state "so you never hurt your favorite candidate by your ranking of the others below them." If someone feels that strongly why rank any below them at all? It seems easy enough to start "gaming" the Concorcet system by casting a single vote only and giving nothing to those you do not care about.
When I talk voting with people you'd be surprised how many people just cast a vote to cast a vote with no understanding who or what they are voting for. I think this is because there is an implicit assumption that one has to fill in the complete ballot when in fact that has never been the case. I often encourage people to only cast a vote that they are comfortable with.
I days gone past it was common for people to vote a straight party ticket. Such is not the case today. I think a majority of people choose a candidate and then if all else fails vote a party.
I personally belong to the party of "the best candidate" which means if I don't know either candidate I don't cast a vote in that race. In my opinion this is an educational attitude that should be encourage in schools. Vote the candidate only, not the party.
Finally, I think if the objective is to engender more parties than other things have to be done in my opinion.
I'm a strong believer in political parties. But they must remain independent of Federal law. Neither the IRV or Condorcet voting systems will change things as long as the party majorities are codified in the rules of the House and Senate. No where does the constitution make party recognition the requirement to be an effective legistlator the way it is today but the Rules adopted later on by the House and Senate have. A simple Constituional amendment stating that "Rules adopted by the House and Senate shall not require, respect, record or in any other way recognize a political party afflication" ought to do it. In my opinion this needs to happen before voting changes will have any impact on the stranglehold of our existing two party system.
Nice post, thanks.
Which, after watching years of Judge Wapner, doesn't mean it will hold up in court. Doctor's always have you sign a waiver saying you will not sue them if something goes wrong in surgery. Guess what, you do have the right to sue and people regularly win malpractice lawsuits even though they signed they waivers they say they won't.
Ok, I see the disconnect. Let's talk American capitalism. How difficult is it to make sugar water? Yet Coke and Pepsi dominate what should be a market with bzillions of players. Why? It's not that competition couldn't create better or equal sugar soda water. It's because of preditory practices that are anti-competitive and anti-capitistic. Buy your competitor outright or destroy him by fixing the market (like Intel did with chips and Microsoft did with their OS). Pepsi and Coke control the distibuters. The reality of the business situation is that it's not about competition. It's a race to become the biggest and then put the others out of business using financial means once a company becomes large enough. Then you get to control wages unless the government or unions get involved. Tech wages are a demonstration that large corporations now dominate software whereas small startups where the leaders. Tech wages were a result of many small startup companies vying for a talent pool. Large companies had to pay large wages to attract engineers who'd rather work at small startups for stock than pay. You think small startups can pretend to offshore? Look at the auto industry. You have Ford & GM who produce crap and have for 30 years and they will never produce good cars. Large software companies moving to offshore will produce Microsoft crap and YOU WON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE BUT TO BUY IT. Just like local telephone service. SBC produces crap and they rely heavily on offshore. But try and get different local phone service. That is American capitalism. Soon Japan will start producing quality software and just like the Auto Industry we'll never recover our former dominance because the entrenched dominant players will be too big to topple. We still build crappy cars and soon crappy software. If you try and start an auto company in this country (or any other) you are going to have a preditor on your back. What has that got to do with competition or a good product or how difficult or risky it is to make it? I have a start up company developing software. At this point it is not about competition. It's about surviving financial antagonism by Microsoft and other large software companies. It's about surviving preditory financial practices unrelated to the product produced.
I think your perspective is very idealistic. Large corporations lobby Congress to change laws to favor them over others. Small start-ups can't. In India, our laws that protect intellectual capital don't apply. In that sense Open Source admits the reality of the situation. Us lobbying Congress to stop H1B's and offshoring is no different than large companies manipulating the law to increase the number of H1B's and maintaining an artificial situation of exempting taxing offshore payroll by calling it "professional services".
Reducing wages reduces costs and increases profits. I believe Charles Dickens wrote a story or two about a country with no middle class because poor people do provide cheap labor.
The problem with that statement is it doesn't not counter with why pay wages at all? Every time the Democrats move to raise minimum wage, the Republicans counter with your argument. Raising wages raises costs and decreases profitibility.
Fact is though that raising minimum wage has never had that effect .
There is a formula. One can pay too high of wages. When a tech worker was paid high wages what did he spend his money on? Tech stock and products. Henry Ford had a novel idea that every economist of his time said was doomed to failure. He raised wages to a level where his workers could afford to buy his product. And they did.
Fact is that tech workers couldn't sustain their own wages by pumping that money back into tech stocks and consumer spending so the bubble popped.
Point. Wages are a balance of giving consumers money in their pocket to buy the products and services that businesses are selling with businesses maintaining profitability. Any formula for wages needs to consider balancing the two. Your formula only considers profits and is therefore invalid.
We are exporting relatively high paying jobs. Indians are spending that money in their economy on their products, not American products. My guess is that Indian spending reflects American in that the number one expense is housing and number two is taxes. However, India is not a legal consumer economy yet and those people will be buying exclusively *pirated software* with knock-off brand sun-glasses and violating all the business protection laws businesses enjoy in the U.S.
Hi!
My guess is is that the moderator only read your sig. I personally am not a moderator on slashdot.
Hi! A nice soundbite. But in reality life is a whole lot more complicated. Take for example education.
Education:
The Pilgrims started the notion of free publication education way back when (1600s). Part of the Protestant movement was learn to read the Bible for you own salvation. The Catholics believed you needed a priest to interpret between you and God. The Prostestants believed you were best served praying to God directly, but to interpret God you needed to read the Bible and go to the weekly sermons. To this day we still have a the notion of free public education. Many economists have tied our American brand of captilism to our socialism brand of education. The point is that the Puritans weren't trying to create the best business envirnment, they were trying create the best *living* environment. We have, and we've always had, socilized education as a result.
Flash forward to the 1960s. In the 1960s our education at the University level made a dramitic shift. Instead of four years of specialized education, liberal education was introduced for the first two years. Engineers were told they needed to learn to write and commmunicate in English. Before this revolution engineers would only take math and engineering courses. Ironically, it may be the two years of liberal, non-technical education will save many tech jobs ... because guess what? Indian people while taking remedial English classes do not take college level English. Liberal communication classes will become even more important to future tech workers here in the U.S. Now why did Universities across the country liberlize? Ultimately to make better citizens, make a better country to live in.
My point is simply this. We need to continue our tradition of making this the best place in the world to live. That will create the best business environment as a matter of course.
Environment:
Take all of our environmental laws. Initially seen bad for business, but imagine our health-care costs if we hadn't taken the steps we did to protect air and water? Children who live near coal burning power plants on the Eastern seaboard are 5 times more likely to get asthma. Is it a better business environment to have unhealthy workers? For this reason standard healthcare should be socialized similar to the education system where basic is free, university level is paid for.
Conclusion: Some people argue that socialized anything is bad for business. Obviously this is just not the case. Government intervention to educate workers throughout all our history has made us what we are. Our public works for education and environment utlimately benefit business because the create the best place to live and the best place to live is the best business environment.
So, in my opinion creating the best place on Earth to live is the proper persepctive, not just the best business environment. The best business environment is too short sighted.
The question is are we economically vulnerable? If you consider that 2/3 of the GDP is from consumer spending then the middle class is the top economic priority. On the face of it cutting middle class wages is killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Folks argue that shoe manufacturing, electronics and other industries have moved offshore and we've survived. How to judge?
So if you take into account record deficits, a shrinking middle-class, record consumer debts in both secured and unsecured loans then deflating the middle class with offshoring doesn't make any sense. If offshoring were having any positive effect in the overall scheme of things then big picture numbers like real-wages for tech workers here would tell. For example, if off-shoring resulted in higher wages for tech workers that kept their jobs here because they wer e higher skilled, then that would be a plus. But that has not happened. Offshoring has resulted in lower wages for tech workers in the US regardless of their education or experience.
Lowering middle class wages in an economy that relies for 2/3 of its size on consumer spending is always shooting yourself in the foot because you end up with wage deflation. The question is are we vulerable to some kind collapse?
I would say from what I'm reading about macro-economics the news is mostly bad. We should stop off-shoring until the economy stabilizes.
Just my opinion of course!
P.S. Watch out for the spin. Economists will tell you that home-ownership is at an all time high. What they are also telling you is that secured debt is at an all time high and that we are living on second-mortgage borrowed time and money.
Java -> VM -> system call
C -> system call
What computer science class teaches this?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The stack is always faster than the heap. A C program that doesn't use the heap will be most efficient.
Garbage collection defeats OS memory paging by moving memory pages antagonistic to the OS memory paging algorithm. Until the garbage collector is instrinsic with the OS that will always be the case. When the OS provides garbage collection then C will dominate again because it doesn't have to go through the VM.
Java programs are peformance opaque. In fact are arguably performance inhibited based upon differing JVM implementations. Java running in IBM's JVM for WebSphere may run far different than Java on Windows or with Sun's JVM. Does your JVM use kernel threads for garbage collection? What if it doesn't?