I think you are agreeing with me in my response to phantomfive?
However, I would criticize rollover lotteries as a different form of marketing deception, and I still regard all lotteries as a special tax on ignorance of math.
Mostly you appear to be repeating old points without revealing your point. Let me try a slightly different approach:
Do you think Linux has benefited from the competition among distros?
Do you think the Microsoft platform would evolve faster if there were several companies creating competing versions of Windows around a negotiated standard?
Do you think there is some basis for a natural monopoly for computer operating systems? (I certainly don't think our overall understanding of OSes is anywhere near that mature.)
Taxes pay for services required by EVERYONE, including corporate persons such as Carrier and little-old you. If Carrier doesn't pay for the social costs covered by its corporate taxes, then someone else pays. That's how society works.
If you have no substantive defense of your so-called position, then I must regard this discussion as pointless and closed.
Actually, I think we would be luckier if Microsoft were redefined in a non-monpolistic way. Imagine that Microsoft were cut into 3 or 4 competing companies. Each baby Microsoft would start with a complete copy of all of the source code and an equal share of the corporate resources. They would then be free to compete against each other, even improving Windows--as long as they share any changes in the standards.
Obviously it is unlikely that Microsoft would do this on a voluntary basis, but I think the tax code could be (vastly) rewritten to encourage it. Think of it as a kind of progressive taxation based on market share, so if any company becomes too large and too dominant it would become better to split the market and give the consumers REAL choices. The higher taxes should be used to pay for the cost of carefully regulating truly natural monopolies that cannot easily be broken up and for research into new technologies that might break the more opportunistic but unnatural monopolies. (Not just Microsoft, by the way.)
Basically I think you said what I wanted to say better than my earlier comment, but I am going to disagree with you on the grounds that the understandable systems have become toys. I used the qualifier "normal" in my comment to refer to non-toy machines, but I could also say that your approach is to limit the level of abstraction.
You already got the "insightful" mod you deserve, so in this case my lack of mod points doesn't even bother me... (Now to see if there are any actually funny comments...)
Replying here partly in agreement but mostly in wonder about the OP's AC status. If your ideas or opinions are so bad that you don't want to associate your name (or even a handle) with them, then why bother to post at all? I'd make an exception for cases where you are saying something with possible repercussions, but I'm not seeing it in the OP of this thread. (In a sense, it's moot, since my settings render the ACs nearly invisible. It was the quote in the visible reply that exposed this AC.) Incidentally, it doesn't matter in terms of protecting privacy. Slashdot knows who you are, and surely you can't trust the sanctity of your personal information as stored on Slashdot.
Now what's the agreeing part? In the days of yore computers were within the scope of understanding of a single person. The systems were still small enough that it was at least theoretically possible to understand all of how they worked. I thought that was really fun and cool, even if I never got there I enjoyed the chase. I caught just the tail end of that period.
Not sure when the transition happened, but at this time there is clearly no hope of understanding everything about any "normal" machine. Both the hardware and software have passed the human scope of understanding or control. No one has time to look at billions and billions of transistors or millions and millions of lines of code. We have to abstract, and picking your level of abstraction is not the same as understanding the entire thing.
There's also a level of threat and paranoia that cuts into the fun. Maybe part of that is a result of getting old, but I think it is mostly just a matter of experience and understanding my own limitations. I really don't want to be pwned, but all it would take is one juicy vulnerability, and I'm sure the serious black-hat hackers can find one if'n they want to. If a serious hacker is coming for me, I might as well save both of us the trouble and just turn over my passwords now, eh? The best defense is having nothing worth hacking for?
Nope, I didn't read it. Your citation makes it sound like too many other articles that I have already read, but more importantly, your tone convinced me that you work in the Microsoft food chain, and therefore I discounted your recommendation.
Based upon your insistence, I just looked at it, and it turned out to confirm my understanding and position. What a shock. Not. I would have thought my concurrence was obvious from what I had already written in this thread, but either I wrote poorly, I relied too much upon context from other discussions, or *gasp* perhaps you slanted what I wrote the way you wanted to read it.
As regards Sun failing to follow up on "The network is the computer", I could accept your guess and just respond that a focus on scientific computing is nice, but obviously a bad business model, which is still the point that I am trying to make regarding the discussion. However insofar as Sun had a business model, then it definitely involved selling server hardware, including for Web hosting. I actually see Web hosting as another bad business model, but Oracle mostly wanted Sun's list of customers.
Not sure how much success Oracle had in converting them... I certainly regard Ellison as sufficiently evil to be successful, but evil alone isn't a guarantee of profits. That's why I am usually careful to word it in terms of 'excessive' niceness guaranteeing corporate failure, and I still think Sun was a nice company (notwithstanding my mixed experiences).
Interesting theory, and quite valid if you live by yourself in the jungle without any benefit of civilization. Congratulations on manufacturing your own computer.
If not, then I think you benefit from the human society that taxes make possible and therefore are a hypocrite of some sort.
Perhaps the most insightful of the posts (currently) moderated insightful, and I actually count it in Slashdot's favor that there weren't any (visible) funny mods.
Or maybe seeing a humorous aspect somewhere in this story would have been a good thing? Creativity is a good thing and linked to humor, and I even had the impression that she played her iconic role with an edge of humor and wit. Maybe it was just in the script?
What bothers me is the edge of criticism of her lifestyle almost to the point of blaming her for her own death. Angry moralizing, but the offensive part is that I bet the critics would have done the same things or worse if they had the opportunities. It was her great success in the role of Princess Leia that created the temptations she faced and struggled with for the rest of her life.
If she had bungled the role and the movie had flopped, maybe she'd still be alive? Is that the conclusion we should reach? I hope her life had more meaning than that, and if so, much of it was related to the ideals of the character she brought to life so many years ago.
Seriously, I was expecting to find that sort of comment in the discussion, though I wouldn't know how to mod it (if'n I ever got a mod point to bestow). The stress of Trump is certainly making me feel bad these days, and stress can elevate blood pressure and even cause heart attacks...
Seems like a number of prominent people have had unexpected and fatal heart attacks recently, but I think the sample size is still too small. The BIG stress should be on people in OTHER countries. "The big monster is loose, and it's ANGRY and ORANGE." Of course the punchline is that even if the death rate does increase, Trump will just blame it on the repeal of ObamaCare and the Democratic Party interference that is preventing "something terrific" from replacing it.
Lemonade time? There's a great business opportunity for a new news network featuring less Trump. Light Trump News (LTN) will promise the absolute minimum of Trump-related stories. Lots of stories about cats doing interesting things.
Still sorry to hear about her death, even though I was more of a Trekkie.
Not that new, but The Shallows was quite interesting. Even older, but quite interesting was Bait and Switch. Best recent book might be Data and Goliath. None of them appear to be visible in the other comments so far. I read over 100 books a year, so it's often hard for me to pick the best ones.
I'd have commented earlier if I'd noticed the topic, but now that it's about to die is the best time to look for funny comments...
I'm not clear about your point there. Everyone is pushing their cloud offerings hard at this point, though I don't see Apple as any sort of leader in that area. Seems to me like Amazon is still running away with it, though I want to give credit to Sun for coming up with the idea first. The big question for me as regards cloud computing is why Sun didn't manage to establish a dominant position. I don't think they were too early, but I may be overlooking some key technological problems. If not a technological problem, then I'd look at my other two hypotheses of bad financial models or too much niceness...
What I was actually referring to was Microsoft's new approach to the marketing of Windows 10, where they seem to be dipping into the iTunes business model and other ways of creating ongoing revenue streams out of the users of their software. I think Windows 10 is not helping the makers, but Microsoft is basically confident that at least some of the makers will survive.
I actually think that Microsoft's interest in Linux is more of a backhanded defense against the google. However it is also being pushed by their failures in the smartphone and tablet markets.
According to the book I read, that isn't as big a problem as it would seem. However, I would think that the larger problem now that the book has been published is that a number of people might use the SAME strategy, and then you'd be seriously troubled.
Also, if I were running that lottery, I would certainly change the rules to penalize that strategy as some form of cheating.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are agreeing with me in my response to phantomfive?
However, I would criticize rollover lotteries as a different form of marketing deception, and I still regard all lotteries as a special tax on ignorance of math.
Mostly you appear to be repeating old points without revealing your point. Let me try a slightly different approach:
Do you think Linux has benefited from the competition among distros?
Do you think the Microsoft platform would evolve faster if there were several companies creating competing versions of Windows around a negotiated standard?
Do you think there is some basis for a natural monopoly for computer operating systems? (I certainly don't think our overall understanding of OSes is anywhere near that mature.)
Taxes pay for services required by EVERYONE, including corporate persons such as Carrier and little-old you. If Carrier doesn't pay for the social costs covered by its corporate taxes, then someone else pays. That's how society works.
If you have no substantive defense of your so-called position, then I must regard this discussion as pointless and closed.
ACK but no extension.
Actually, I think we would be luckier if Microsoft were redefined in a non-monpolistic way. Imagine that Microsoft were cut into 3 or 4 competing companies. Each baby Microsoft would start with a complete copy of all of the source code and an equal share of the corporate resources. They would then be free to compete against each other, even improving Windows--as long as they share any changes in the standards.
Obviously it is unlikely that Microsoft would do this on a voluntary basis, but I think the tax code could be (vastly) rewritten to encourage it. Think of it as a kind of progressive taxation based on market share, so if any company becomes too large and too dominant it would become better to split the market and give the consumers REAL choices. The higher taxes should be used to pay for the cost of carefully regulating truly natural monopolies that cannot easily be broken up and for research into new technologies that might break the more opportunistic but unnatural monopolies. (Not just Microsoft, by the way.)
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Basically I think you said what I wanted to say better than my earlier comment, but I am going to disagree with you on the grounds that the understandable systems have become toys. I used the qualifier "normal" in my comment to refer to non-toy machines, but I could also say that your approach is to limit the level of abstraction.
You already got the "insightful" mod you deserve, so in this case my lack of mod points doesn't even bother me... (Now to see if there are any actually funny comments...)
Replying here partly in agreement but mostly in wonder about the OP's AC status. If your ideas or opinions are so bad that you don't want to associate your name (or even a handle) with them, then why bother to post at all? I'd make an exception for cases where you are saying something with possible repercussions, but I'm not seeing it in the OP of this thread. (In a sense, it's moot, since my settings render the ACs nearly invisible. It was the quote in the visible reply that exposed this AC.) Incidentally, it doesn't matter in terms of protecting privacy. Slashdot knows who you are, and surely you can't trust the sanctity of your personal information as stored on Slashdot.
Now what's the agreeing part? In the days of yore computers were within the scope of understanding of a single person. The systems were still small enough that it was at least theoretically possible to understand all of how they worked. I thought that was really fun and cool, even if I never got there I enjoyed the chase. I caught just the tail end of that period.
Not sure when the transition happened, but at this time there is clearly no hope of understanding everything about any "normal" machine. Both the hardware and software have passed the human scope of understanding or control. No one has time to look at billions and billions of transistors or millions and millions of lines of code. We have to abstract, and picking your level of abstraction is not the same as understanding the entire thing.
There's also a level of threat and paranoia that cuts into the fun. Maybe part of that is a result of getting old, but I think it is mostly just a matter of experience and understanding my own limitations. I really don't want to be pwned, but all it would take is one juicy vulnerability, and I'm sure the serious black-hat hackers can find one if'n they want to. If a serious hacker is coming for me, I might as well save both of us the trouble and just turn over my passwords now, eh? The best defense is having nothing worth hacking for?
Nope, I didn't read it. Your citation makes it sound like too many other articles that I have already read, but more importantly, your tone convinced me that you work in the Microsoft food chain, and therefore I discounted your recommendation.
Based upon your insistence, I just looked at it, and it turned out to confirm my understanding and position. What a shock. Not. I would have thought my concurrence was obvious from what I had already written in this thread, but either I wrote poorly, I relied too much upon context from other discussions, or *gasp* perhaps you slanted what I wrote the way you wanted to read it.
As regards Sun failing to follow up on "The network is the computer", I could accept your guess and just respond that a focus on scientific computing is nice, but obviously a bad business model, which is still the point that I am trying to make regarding the discussion. However insofar as Sun had a business model, then it definitely involved selling server hardware, including for Web hosting. I actually see Web hosting as another bad business model, but Oracle mostly wanted Sun's list of customers.
Not sure how much success Oracle had in converting them... I certainly regard Ellison as sufficiently evil to be successful, but evil alone isn't a guarantee of profits. That's why I am usually careful to word it in terms of 'excessive' niceness guaranteeing corporate failure, and I still think Sun was a nice company (notwithstanding my mixed experiences).
Interesting theory, and quite valid if you live by yourself in the jungle without any benefit of civilization. Congratulations on manufacturing your own computer.
If not, then I think you benefit from the human society that taxes make possible and therefore are a hypocrite of some sort.
Z^7
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Z^6
Z^3
Perhaps the most insightful of the posts (currently) moderated insightful, and I actually count it in Slashdot's favor that there weren't any (visible) funny mods.
Or maybe seeing a humorous aspect somewhere in this story would have been a good thing? Creativity is a good thing and linked to humor, and I even had the impression that she played her iconic role with an edge of humor and wit. Maybe it was just in the script?
What bothers me is the edge of criticism of her lifestyle almost to the point of blaming her for her own death. Angry moralizing, but the offensive part is that I bet the critics would have done the same things or worse if they had the opportunities. It was her great success in the role of Princess Leia that created the temptations she faced and struggled with for the rest of her life.
If she had bungled the role and the movie had flopped, maybe she'd still be alive? Is that the conclusion we should reach? I hope her life had more meaning than that, and if so, much of it was related to the ideals of the character she brought to life so many years ago.
Seriously, I was expecting to find that sort of comment in the discussion, though I wouldn't know how to mod it (if'n I ever got a mod point to bestow). The stress of Trump is certainly making me feel bad these days, and stress can elevate blood pressure and even cause heart attacks...
Seems like a number of prominent people have had unexpected and fatal heart attacks recently, but I think the sample size is still too small. The BIG stress should be on people in OTHER countries. "The big monster is loose, and it's ANGRY and ORANGE." Of course the punchline is that even if the death rate does increase, Trump will just blame it on the repeal of ObamaCare and the Democratic Party interference that is preventing "something terrific" from replacing it.
Lemonade time? There's a great business opportunity for a new news network featuring less Trump. Light Trump News (LTN) will promise the absolute minimum of Trump-related stories. Lots of stories about cats doing interesting things.
Still sorry to hear about her death, even though I was more of a Trekkie.
Not that new, but The Shallows was quite interesting. Even older, but quite interesting was Bait and Switch . Best recent book might be Data and Goliath . None of them appear to be visible in the other comments so far. I read over 100 books a year, so it's often hard for me to pick the best ones.
I'd have commented earlier if I'd noticed the topic, but now that it's about to die is the best time to look for funny comments...
I'm not clear about your point there. Everyone is pushing their cloud offerings hard at this point, though I don't see Apple as any sort of leader in that area. Seems to me like Amazon is still running away with it, though I want to give credit to Sun for coming up with the idea first. The big question for me as regards cloud computing is why Sun didn't manage to establish a dominant position. I don't think they were too early, but I may be overlooking some key technological problems. If not a technological problem, then I'd look at my other two hypotheses of bad financial models or too much niceness...
What I was actually referring to was Microsoft's new approach to the marketing of Windows 10, where they seem to be dipping into the iTunes business model and other ways of creating ongoing revenue streams out of the users of their software. I think Windows 10 is not helping the makers, but Microsoft is basically confident that at least some of the makers will survive.
I actually think that Microsoft's interest in Linux is more of a backhanded defense against the google. However it is also being pushed by their failures in the smartphone and tablet markets.
According to the book I read, that isn't as big a problem as it would seem. However, I would think that the larger problem now that the book has been published is that a number of people might use the SAME strategy, and then you'd be seriously troubled.
Also, if I were running that lottery, I would certainly change the rules to penalize that strategy as some form of cheating.
ZZ
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