Actually Gonzo and I were at the same school at almost the same time. No way he could have graduated with such a weak memory, so I've basically been wondering what happened to him. He still has his wits and he's just faking the idiocy? Or was is some kind of mental disease from excessive mental gymnastics and brown nosing?
Anyway, I'm still amazed that Dubya let him resign, even if Chertoff is the replacement (according to rumors). The last thing the neo-GOP wants now is a functional DoJ. Everything is coming unraveled for them.
One more thing. Don't let the door hit ya' on yer way out.
You aren't going to get any insight mods on silly advice. SCOX has been below the threshold value for short trades for a long time.
Right now SCOX is so volatile the spammers can't even play their timing games with it. I actually expect them to suspend trading in the shares, probably before the market opens on Tuesday--and pending the bankruptcy filing. The question now is whether they can scrape up any basis for a Chapter 7 filing verses ol' Chapter 11.
Glad to see the SCO stooge go down, but we still face the great enemy of freedom, Microsoft. Freedom is about choice, and Microsoft is *ALL* about eliminating any real choice.
In one sense, I deny that it matters. Since I believe we are evolving towards more freedom, then the momentary ups and downs don't matter so much. Societies that have more freedom and democracy receive competitive advantages, and eventually they will prosper over the less free societies. However, it still saddens me greatly to observe Microsoft's fundamentally negative contributions to the long-term competitiveness of America. However, it makes me laugh to hear Gates complain about the slow rate of software evolution when his own Microsoft is the biggest single obstacle to *REAL* innovation and change.
However, at least the obstacle called SCO has been removed. Worth a bit of a celebration. This tool is used up.
My favorite 'real reason' for Rove's departure? He has to stop his son from endorsing a Democratic candidate, hopefully Edwards or Obama.
We should start a pool on the real killer... No wait, I meant the real reason that Rove resigned.
Unfortunately, given Rove's penchant for secrecy and his cursed track record of success in hiding his lies, few of us are likely to live long enough to win the pool. I think historians will be unraveling this rats' nest for decades to come--though the real reason could be that someone deep in the muck is about to blow the whistle on the entire gang of thieves. In that case, we might live to see it unravel.
Two reasons for optimism are possible. A true patriot might have had enough, and I think that some such people still exist within the GOP, if not within Rove's carefully purged neo-GOP wing of the GOP.
Alternately, a true rat within the gang might have decided to sell the story while the value is very high. He's not stabbing all his buddies, in the back, he's just bowing to the inevitability of the truth coming out--but making sure he gets the most money possible for getting it out. The first few kiss and tell books are going to have a lot of sensationalist value, but the later ones are going to get boring and won't sell ones--and the last ones will be written from prison (as a result of the earlier ones).
(No, I haven't wasted time with/. for months. Only stopped by to see the laughs at SCO when this topic caught my eye. SCOX was at 38 cents/share the last time I checked. Darl is looking for the real killer, too. However, the pool on SCO's bankruptcy looks to be a short one...)
Maybe I've missed it, but I cannot recall a single example of any winner of *ANY* Nobel Prize, not just the science categories, who ever claimed that winning a Nobel Prize was part of their motivation. In fact, I even believe that the committee would count it against any nominee who said so. Do you care to provide *ANY* example of your claim?
The fundamental idea is so wrong it's just hard to know where to begin. It's related to the trivialization of scientific endeavor and the focus on publicity as more important than reality.
The days of the solitary inventor who could justify spending months or years pursuing a breakthrough and feel some sort of financial justification because of the expectation of winning a prize are long behind us. There might be some 'low-hanging fruit' still to be found, but not much of it, and if you knew where it was, it would make much more sense to just pick it rather than to offer a prize in hopes of motivating some gold seeker to find it. Major scientific breakthroughs now require serious investments, usually involve large numbers of people and long periods of time, and any profits are far downstream. You *NEED* to have that long-term perspective, not the motivation of a quick fix for a prize. Even the prize seekers admit they just want the publicity to help sell their results.
By the way, I actually work with researchers from a major lab. Some of them are even leaders in their fields, and have established track records of changing the world for the better far more than I ever will. Some of them have won prestigious awards and prizes, and I'm sure they'll win more in the future. However, it is very clear that they aren't motivated by prizes, and if they were, I'd take odds against them ever accomplishing much of anything.
Prizes are interesting for 'gold-hunting' pseudo-scientists, not for the actual hard working *REAL* scientists.
Congratulations. I thought you were bluffing. Obscure, but it exists.
As regards the substance of your post, I still dismiss it. However, I confess that I don't have the highest literary expectations from teachers at the levels below elementary school.
You don't present your points very clearly, but I've already acknowledged that money per se is no guarantee of educational results. Your overall presentation is so awkward that it doesn't seem to support your claims about your test scores. However, I do know my own test scores are consistently quite high--and regard that metric as of little value. I strongly recommend The Mismeasure of Man as a concrete explanation of the bogosity of intelligence testing. However, to put it succinctly, no man is a number.
See what happens when someone responds to trolls? The OT's trollage was a typically simple-minded attack on public education, and I deliberately responded elsewhere, but I wasn't responding to the search for primary factors, but just rejecting the troll's trollage. Even when you try to ignore them, the trolls distort attempts at topical discussion, amplified on/. by the abuses of the anonymous moderation system. (Am I the only user of/. who feels bad moderation is harmful to the system? Probably about to be an ex-user of/. I've only recently returned after an 11-month hiatus, and the place has *NOT* improved.)
I would certainly agree that parental influence is much more important than the public schools. In fact, in my own case, my parents were very concerned about the quality of the public education and that was an important consideration in their decision to move to that specific school district. They knew it was (at the time) relatively wealthy. The most obvious evidence of your own point is simply that there are plenty of differences in student performance within any school, but the importance of good public schools is that they can raise the averages to the general benefit of society.
I shudder to speculate where the OT was educated--if you can call it "educated". If it was a public school, it was obviously an awful one, but I'd consider it much more likely he was home schooled by trollish parents and is now determined to sustain the family tradition.
I won't deny that there were British and other European influences. One of the Japanese sources I just dug up actually gives primary credit to the French and Germans, though I thought the German influence was rather concentrated in the medical education area. However, I feel that the American influence was predominant according to most of the books I've read on that period. Unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall the name of the very prominent American educator who spent several years in Japan at that time. Not William James... I think it may have been John Dewey. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9118(196511) 25%3A1%3C150%3AJDIJET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 is apparently one source supporting that view, but I don't have access now...
Causally related, but the topic was introduced by a troll, so I prefer to reintroduce it more seriously... The topic is the problems with public education in the States as a contributing factor to the decline of America.
Public education works fine in many countries--the ones that take the future seriously enough. Mostly that means funding the public education system with a better economic model than property taxes and bond-based borrowing. Educating your citizens is a great investment and those educated citizens become great assets for any civilization above hunting and gathering. Well, actually even the hunters and gatherers can benefit from knowledge of what to hunt and what not to gather, but they're too busy trying to stay alive to worry about public schools.
My own experiences are with the American and Japanese public education systems. Just to deal with the easy topic first, the Japanese education system is quite good, and the bulk of it is public. The main distortions are in the private senior high schools and the cram schools. However, before you start crying about the relatively minor imperfections (compared to the present state of American public education), you better remember the Japanese educational system was to a great degree patterned on American models, both in Meiji times and again after the war. (And yes, I know Japan didn't have a winner this year, either, but it's the data point I have. However, that mostly disproves the OT's (Original Troll's) point blaming public education.)
For the American system, my experience is much more complicated. At the low levels I was in extremely good public schools through high school--but in a district that was one of the richest in the country at the time. I think we were No.2 for the entire nation on a per/student basis. Just an accident that the entire large area had been zoned residential, and those residential property taxes were being collected, but it was mostly vacant lots. Over the years the houses got built, the students arrived, the per/student money dropped to an average level, and the public schools dropped too. It's not the case that money always makes a difference, but it certainly is a major influence, and many of my important school experiences would not have happened except that my schools had the money at that time. That point is reinforced by my experience at one of the richest public universities, which was an awful school. My other degree was from a smaller private university that I regard as vastly superior to the enormous state school. Money isn't enough to counteract a staunchly conservative educational philosophy dedicated to forcing the students into the smallest possible mental boxes.
If that isn't flamebait... Another example of miserable/. moderation. About time for another 11-month departure. I'll save a more substantive reply for elsewhere. This troll thread doesn't deserve it.
This is obviously a superbogus statistic. For this statistic to have any possible basis in reality you have to start by assuming that there actually exist more than 20% of Intel-based boxes that were shipped without Windows in the first place--then you can start worrying about the details. Except that when you look at the market numbers, you can already see that Microsoft is fluffing the figures.
My bet would be that Microsoft is using a very peculiar definition of improper installations that includes any deviation from any of the excruciatingly complex clauses of their amazing licenses. In accord with their own interpretations, of course. I'm sure it's right there in the EULA somewhere that Microsoft is the sole judge of compliance. Probably also multiple counting, or whatever else they can do to maximize their tragic loss.
In my own case, I confess that I certainly feel like Microsoft still owes me a couple of OSes that I supposedly paid for and didn't get much use out of. I can remember at least two cases. One was a copy of an English version of Windows that I wound up not using. I don't even remember the details, but I think it was purchased for an English-speaking friend with a crisis that went away, and then I kept if for double-booting when I was still working in customer support. Whatever the complicated story of those ancient days, I'm sure I wound up with nothing but a pretty box full of floppies. (Must have been 95 or 98? Possibly 3.1? I'm pretty sure it's still in a closet or box somewhere...)
The other case was more annoying and more recent, when I bought a brand new computer that was completely unstable under the original Windows OS as installed by the manufacturer. I'm sure it wasn't a pirate version, because it's a big name company. I don't blame them in particular (so I'll leave their name out of this) because all of the makers had problems with that version of Windows. However, I wound up paying over $100 for an upgrade version for that machine--but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Microsoft counted it as a pirate installation. The machine is still alive, but probably too old, or the upgrade version was not appropriate, or who knows what excuse Microsoft has.
Compare Linux to Vista and try to imagine how many machine Microsoft needs to match Google. They are already losing big time in the bang for the buck category. However, it is even worse than that, because Microsoft can't spend their way out of this hole. Google has architected their Linux-based systems to scale well, and if there is one thing Microsoft OSes do not do, it is scale. Well, actually there's a whole bunch of other things they also can't do, but the point here is that Microsoft won't be able to catch up just be throwing more money at the problem. Nice to think that Microsoft may have finally met their match.
Unfortunately, if Google gets sufficient power, I expect it to corrupt them.
Your post made me realize what a shame it is that the pump-and-dump scammers aren't touting SCOX. Watching his stock price fluttering about like a wounded canary should be enough to drive Darl the rest of the way over the bend. SCOX should easily meet their criteria for being subject to violent fluctuations on rumors.
Actually, the scammers should go one better... They could play SCOX on the margin and sock it with some juicy negative rumors. However they better act quickly, since I think the limit on margin games is $1 per share, and SCOX is only barely above that level now.
I've been saying this for a long time, but this is an unusually flagrant example. The general email spam problem is the delusion of dividing by zero. It's not that email is really free, but only that SMTP was based on a delusional zero-cost model of fair-and-balanced mutual exchanges. (Not to be confused with Faux News.) As long as email exchanges were roughly equal, the costs of email are low enough that we can pretend to ignore them, even though email does consume various resources such as network bandwidth and server storage, and most importantly our time. (How much time do you spend on email in an average workday?) The divide-by-zero spammers think nothing of sending another million spams in the hopes of finding one more sucker who will send them $27.39 cents for herbal Viagra substitute hair restorer... If you're dividing by zero, that looks like an infinite return on the investment.
This kind of stock scam is rather better, however. Basically the statistical equivalent of printing money by exploiting the greed of thousands of suckers who are hoping to catch a ride on the magic carpet. Concealed by the thousands of suckers and with a bit of discretion, the spammers themselves are just lost in the crowd. They were just some of the 'lucky' ones who 'responded' most quickly (to their own spam) and who got out at the right time--based on extensive experience on how much bounce their spam could trigger. Their a priori knowledge of the exact timing and volumes of the spam just insures that they will be among the top profiteers. Even worse, because many of the suckers sometimes 'win' by playing the game, their intermittent reinforcement conditions them to keep on helping the spammers.
Now if they put real costs on email and nailed the spammer's ISPs for their part as accomplices by making them pay for the spam, you can bet that the spammers would find it a lot harder to play the game. That's why I think we need some system like pre-paid email to actually solve the spam problem. No technical or legal or political or any other kind of solution is going to solve a fundamentally economic problem.
Punchline time: I actually admire Al Gore and think he would have done much better in the White House than Dubya. (How could he have done worse?) However, I think the spam problem is largely his fault. Gore was one of the most important politicians keeping them funded when they were developing SMTP, and because of the help of such well-intentioned people, they didn't worry about real-world economics as part of SMTP. Paved by good intentions and all that stuff...
There's a whole lot of dark fiber out there, and the fundamental feature of P2P and P2G protocols is that they automatically distribute the load to make it difficult to overload the network. Sure, some of the peers may be far away, but if there is any network congestion as a result, the local peers will have the advantage and balance things out. If there is any planning along these lines, my guess Google is just betting on more information flowing, and lots of it.
However, I'd like to see a network infrastructure extension for variable power WiFi. That would scale without limit. As the density of the nodes increased, they would reduce their transmission power at each node, so the local connectivity remains constant. In regions with sufficient node density, you could take the wire/fiber backbones completely out of the equation. (My idea for this would include local accountability. Essentially you would ask your neighbors to borrow a cup of connectivity (or other resources), and they'd check your behavior with your other neighbors to see if you deserved the help or if you should go to the bottom of the priority queue.)
I'm not sure that you should equate Goldwater with true Republicans and the old GOP. Actually, you should remember that the GOP itself started as a highly *PROGRESSIVE* party, advocating many positions that would make the new fangled neo-GOP wannabe brownshirts spin in their graves. (Whenever.)
The underlying problem is that the main political parties in America have never really had ideological positions. Yes, Goldwater was a true conservative, and yes, he was registered as a Republican, but there were (and are) many registered Democrats who share many of his views and agree with many of his principles. However, the winner-take-all mechanisms of American politics have worked against the success of ideologically based parties. (Which mechanism, by the way, may naturally result in the destruction of the GOP when it becomes trapped in dead ideologies.)
I do think we need a new label to distinguish between the old Republican Party and the neo-GOP opportunists who have effectively taken over the GOP. I also reject their propagandistic approach of destroying the meaning of old words, for example by trying to redefine GOP or by playing word games with upper case, etc. Actually, it is true that there are some old words that are quite applicable to the situation, such as oligarchs or even fascists (for some of the extreme cases).
No, I'm not actually a registered anything. It's not so much that I like the Democratic politicians as that the leading Republicans are really dangerous lunatics. The Dick Cheney. 'Nuff said.
No, not a Democratic rat, but a neo-GOP rat. [How many of you know about the neo-GOP marching orders not to use the proper adjectival form for the Democratic Party?] Of course it's difficult to penetrate the veil of secrecy around the neo-GOP, but all of them going one way on any real issue clearly says that directions came from on high.
Why? Well, first guess time. How many bloggers could you hire for a million bucks? Hey, a million bucks here, a million bucks there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money a la neo-GOP-style campaigning--the only asset the neo-GOP has left now that McCain has joined (and chucked his principles) and Colin Powell has basically defected (apparently wedged by his).
It's really a philosophic problem. Microsoft sees the OS as a weapon against the competitors, and when you're building weapons, of course you make them as powerful as possible and of course safety gets a lower priority. (Microsoft's highest priority has always been on the money, however.) The problem is that the results are overpowered OSes that real experts can use in ways that completely overwhelm us normal mortals. Heaven help the little old lady who just wants to visit her church's website on Sundays.
As regards the article, I read most of it, and might finish it later, but I wasn't too impressed with it or with the rootkit-detection tools that I've experimented with in the past. I'm supposed to be something of a computer expert, and I've certainly been using them long enough, but I regard myself as pretty much a helpless infant in these areas. If the NSA is planning to root my computer because I regard Dubya as an asinine embarrassment to my nation, I don't seriously expect to be able to do anything about it. Sure, I can use an expert's tools in many cases, but that doesn't make me any match for a real expert with corresponding tools. Or returning to the weapon metaphor, I may have a great gun, and even be competent enough in using it, but I'm sure that a seriously experienced killer would have little trouble taking me out, even with an inferior weapon.
In conclusion, "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools", but it's also a poor craftsman who can't tell the difference...
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Baker '78 here. Do I know you under your disguise?
Actually Gonzo and I were at the same school at almost the same time. No way he could have graduated with such a weak memory, so I've basically been wondering what happened to him. He still has his wits and he's just faking the idiocy? Or was is some kind of mental disease from excessive mental gymnastics and brown nosing?
Anyway, I'm still amazed that Dubya let him resign, even if Chertoff is the replacement (according to rumors). The last thing the neo-GOP wants now is a functional DoJ. Everything is coming unraveled for them.
One more thing. Don't let the door hit ya' on yer way out.
You aren't going to get any insight mods on silly advice. SCOX has been below the threshold value for short trades for a long time.
Right now SCOX is so volatile the spammers can't even play their timing games with it. I actually expect them to suspend trading in the shares, probably before the market opens on Tuesday--and pending the bankruptcy filing. The question now is whether they can scrape up any basis for a Chapter 7 filing verses ol' Chapter 11.
Glad to see the SCO stooge go down, but we still face the great enemy of freedom, Microsoft. Freedom is about choice, and Microsoft is *ALL* about eliminating any real choice.
In one sense, I deny that it matters. Since I believe we are evolving towards more freedom, then the momentary ups and downs don't matter so much. Societies that have more freedom and democracy receive competitive advantages, and eventually they will prosper over the less free societies. However, it still saddens me greatly to observe Microsoft's fundamentally negative contributions to the long-term competitiveness of America. However, it makes me laugh to hear Gates complain about the slow rate of software evolution when his own Microsoft is the biggest single obstacle to *REAL* innovation and change.
However, at least the obstacle called SCO has been removed. Worth a bit of a celebration. This tool is used up.
My favorite 'real reason' for Rove's departure? He has to stop his son from endorsing a Democratic candidate, hopefully Edwards or Obama.
/. for months. Only stopped by to see the laughs at SCO when this topic caught my eye. SCOX was at 38 cents/share the last time I checked. Darl is looking for the real killer, too. However, the pool on SCO's bankruptcy looks to be a short one...)
We should start a pool on the real killer... No wait, I meant the real reason that Rove resigned.
Unfortunately, given Rove's penchant for secrecy and his cursed track record of success in hiding his lies, few of us are likely to live long enough to win the pool. I think historians will be unraveling this rats' nest for decades to come--though the real reason could be that someone deep in the muck is about to blow the whistle on the entire gang of thieves. In that case, we might live to see it unravel.
Two reasons for optimism are possible. A true patriot might have had enough, and I think that some such people still exist within the GOP, if not within Rove's carefully purged neo-GOP wing of the GOP.
Alternately, a true rat within the gang might have decided to sell the story while the value is very high. He's not stabbing all his buddies, in the back, he's just bowing to the inevitability of the truth coming out--but making sure he gets the most money possible for getting it out. The first few kiss and tell books are going to have a lot of sensationalist value, but the later ones are going to get boring and won't sell ones--and the last ones will be written from prison (as a result of the earlier ones).
(No, I haven't wasted time with
Oh, so now you want to play word games with the definition of contest. And the moderators rate it as insightful? Right. Typical /.
So where was the prize? Or are you simply trying to reinforce my point? I shudder to suggest that you should read the actual article...
Maybe I've missed it, but I cannot recall a single example of any winner of *ANY* Nobel Prize, not just the science categories, who ever claimed that winning a Nobel Prize was part of their motivation. In fact, I even believe that the committee would count it against any nominee who said so. Do you care to provide *ANY* example of your claim?
I repeat. Real science is *NOT* a contest.
The fundamental idea is so wrong it's just hard to know where to begin. It's related to the trivialization of scientific endeavor and the focus on publicity as more important than reality.
The days of the solitary inventor who could justify spending months or years pursuing a breakthrough and feel some sort of financial justification because of the expectation of winning a prize are long behind us. There might be some 'low-hanging fruit' still to be found, but not much of it, and if you knew where it was, it would make much more sense to just pick it rather than to offer a prize in hopes of motivating some gold seeker to find it. Major scientific breakthroughs now require serious investments, usually involve large numbers of people and long periods of time, and any profits are far downstream. You *NEED* to have that long-term perspective, not the motivation of a quick fix for a prize. Even the prize seekers admit they just want the publicity to help sell their results.
By the way, I actually work with researchers from a major lab. Some of them are even leaders in their fields, and have established track records of changing the world for the better far more than I ever will. Some of them have won prestigious awards and prizes, and I'm sure they'll win more in the future. However, it is very clear that they aren't motivated by prizes, and if they were, I'd take odds against them ever accomplishing much of anything.
Prizes are interesting for 'gold-hunting' pseudo-scientists, not for the actual hard working *REAL* scientists.
Congratulations. I thought you were bluffing. Obscure, but it exists.
As regards the substance of your post, I still dismiss it. However, I confess that I don't have the highest literary expectations from teachers at the levels below elementary school.
You don't present your points very clearly, but I've already acknowledged that money per se is no guarantee of educational results. Your overall presentation is so awkward that it doesn't seem to support your claims about your test scores. However, I do know my own test scores are consistently quite high--and regard that metric as of little value. I strongly recommend The Mismeasure of Man as a concrete explanation of the bogosity of intelligence testing. However, to put it succinctly, no man is a number.
Duh. You mean "verbatim". 'Nuff said.
Or were you trying to be funny?
See what happens when someone responds to trolls? The OT's trollage was a typically simple-minded attack on public education, and I deliberately responded elsewhere, but I wasn't responding to the search for primary factors, but just rejecting the troll's trollage. Even when you try to ignore them, the trolls distort attempts at topical discussion, amplified on /. by the abuses of the anonymous moderation system. (Am I the only user of /. who feels bad moderation is harmful to the system? Probably about to be an ex-user of /. I've only recently returned after an 11-month hiatus, and the place has *NOT* improved.)
I would certainly agree that parental influence is much more important than the public schools. In fact, in my own case, my parents were very concerned about the quality of the public education and that was an important consideration in their decision to move to that specific school district. They knew it was (at the time) relatively wealthy. The most obvious evidence of your own point is simply that there are plenty of differences in student performance within any school, but the importance of good public schools is that they can raise the averages to the general benefit of society.
I shudder to speculate where the OT was educated--if you can call it "educated". If it was a public school, it was obviously an awful one, but I'd consider it much more likely he was home schooled by trollish parents and is now determined to sustain the family tradition.
I won't deny that there were British and other European influences. One of the Japanese sources I just dug up actually gives primary credit to the French and Germans, though I thought the German influence was rather concentrated in the medical education area. However, I feel that the American influence was predominant according to most of the books I've read on that period. Unfortunately, I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall the name of the very prominent American educator who spent several years in Japan at that time. Not William James... I think it may have been John Dewey. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-9118(196511) 25%3A1%3C150%3AJDIJET%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3 is apparently one source supporting that view, but I don't have access now...
Calling a troll a troll gets moderated as flamebait? Thanks for making my point about the miserable quality of /. moderation, whoever you are.
Causally related, but the topic was introduced by a troll, so I prefer to reintroduce it more seriously... The topic is the problems with public education in the States as a contributing factor to the decline of America.
Public education works fine in many countries--the ones that take the future seriously enough. Mostly that means funding the public education system with a better economic model than property taxes and bond-based borrowing. Educating your citizens is a great investment and those educated citizens become great assets for any civilization above hunting and gathering. Well, actually even the hunters and gatherers can benefit from knowledge of what to hunt and what not to gather, but they're too busy trying to stay alive to worry about public schools.
My own experiences are with the American and Japanese public education systems. Just to deal with the easy topic first, the Japanese education system is quite good, and the bulk of it is public. The main distortions are in the private senior high schools and the cram schools. However, before you start crying about the relatively minor imperfections (compared to the present state of American public education), you better remember the Japanese educational system was to a great degree patterned on American models, both in Meiji times and again after the war. (And yes, I know Japan didn't have a winner this year, either, but it's the data point I have. However, that mostly disproves the OT's (Original Troll's) point blaming public education.)
For the American system, my experience is much more complicated. At the low levels I was in extremely good public schools through high school--but in a district that was one of the richest in the country at the time. I think we were No.2 for the entire nation on a per/student basis. Just an accident that the entire large area had been zoned residential, and those residential property taxes were being collected, but it was mostly vacant lots. Over the years the houses got built, the students arrived, the per/student money dropped to an average level, and the public schools dropped too. It's not the case that money always makes a difference, but it certainly is a major influence, and many of my important school experiences would not have happened except that my schools had the money at that time. That point is reinforced by my experience at one of the richest public universities, which was an awful school. My other degree was from a smaller private university that I regard as vastly superior to the enormous state school. Money isn't enough to counteract a staunchly conservative educational philosophy dedicated to forcing the students into the smallest possible mental boxes.
If that isn't flamebait... Another example of miserable /. moderation. About time for another 11-month departure. I'll save a more substantive reply for elsewhere. This troll thread doesn't deserve it.
This is obviously a superbogus statistic. For this statistic to have any possible basis in reality you have to start by assuming that there actually exist more than 20% of Intel-based boxes that were shipped without Windows in the first place--then you can start worrying about the details. Except that when you look at the market numbers, you can already see that Microsoft is fluffing the figures.
My bet would be that Microsoft is using a very peculiar definition of improper installations that includes any deviation from any of the excruciatingly complex clauses of their amazing licenses. In accord with their own interpretations, of course. I'm sure it's right there in the EULA somewhere that Microsoft is the sole judge of compliance. Probably also multiple counting, or whatever else they can do to maximize their tragic loss.
In my own case, I confess that I certainly feel like Microsoft still owes me a couple of OSes that I supposedly paid for and didn't get much use out of. I can remember at least two cases. One was a copy of an English version of Windows that I wound up not using. I don't even remember the details, but I think it was purchased for an English-speaking friend with a crisis that went away, and then I kept if for double-booting when I was still working in customer support. Whatever the complicated story of those ancient days, I'm sure I wound up with nothing but a pretty box full of floppies. (Must have been 95 or 98? Possibly 3.1? I'm pretty sure it's still in a closet or box somewhere...)
The other case was more annoying and more recent, when I bought a brand new computer that was completely unstable under the original Windows OS as installed by the manufacturer. I'm sure it wasn't a pirate version, because it's a big name company. I don't blame them in particular (so I'll leave their name out of this) because all of the makers had problems with that version of Windows. However, I wound up paying over $100 for an upgrade version for that machine--but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Microsoft counted it as a pirate installation. The machine is still alive, but probably too old, or the upgrade version was not appropriate, or who knows what excuse Microsoft has.
Compare Linux to Vista and try to imagine how many machine Microsoft needs to match Google. They are already losing big time in the bang for the buck category. However, it is even worse than that, because Microsoft can't spend their way out of this hole. Google has architected their Linux-based systems to scale well, and if there is one thing Microsoft OSes do not do, it is scale. Well, actually there's a whole bunch of other things they also can't do, but the point here is that Microsoft won't be able to catch up just be throwing more money at the problem. Nice to think that Microsoft may have finally met their match.
Unfortunately, if Google gets sufficient power, I expect it to corrupt them.
Your post made me realize what a shame it is that the pump-and-dump scammers aren't touting SCOX. Watching his stock price fluttering about like a wounded canary should be enough to drive Darl the rest of the way over the bend. SCOX should easily meet their criteria for being subject to violent fluctuations on rumors.
Actually, the scammers should go one better... They could play SCOX on the margin and sock it with some juicy negative rumors. However they better act quickly, since I think the limit on margin games is $1 per share, and SCOX is only barely above that level now.
I've been saying this for a long time, but this is an unusually flagrant example. The general email spam problem is the delusion of dividing by zero. It's not that email is really free, but only that SMTP was based on a delusional zero-cost model of fair-and-balanced mutual exchanges. (Not to be confused with Faux News.) As long as email exchanges were roughly equal, the costs of email are low enough that we can pretend to ignore them, even though email does consume various resources such as network bandwidth and server storage, and most importantly our time. (How much time do you spend on email in an average workday?) The divide-by-zero spammers think nothing of sending another million spams in the hopes of finding one more sucker who will send them $27.39 cents for herbal Viagra substitute hair restorer... If you're dividing by zero, that looks like an infinite return on the investment.
This kind of stock scam is rather better, however. Basically the statistical equivalent of printing money by exploiting the greed of thousands of suckers who are hoping to catch a ride on the magic carpet. Concealed by the thousands of suckers and with a bit of discretion, the spammers themselves are just lost in the crowd. They were just some of the 'lucky' ones who 'responded' most quickly (to their own spam) and who got out at the right time--based on extensive experience on how much bounce their spam could trigger. Their a priori knowledge of the exact timing and volumes of the spam just insures that they will be among the top profiteers. Even worse, because many of the suckers sometimes 'win' by playing the game, their intermittent reinforcement conditions them to keep on helping the spammers.
Now if they put real costs on email and nailed the spammer's ISPs for their part as accomplices by making them pay for the spam, you can bet that the spammers would find it a lot harder to play the game. That's why I think we need some system like pre-paid email to actually solve the spam problem. No technical or legal or political or any other kind of solution is going to solve a fundamentally economic problem.
Punchline time: I actually admire Al Gore and think he would have done much better in the White House than Dubya. (How could he have done worse?) However, I think the spam problem is largely his fault. Gore was one of the most important politicians keeping them funded when they were developing SMTP, and because of the help of such well-intentioned people, they didn't worry about real-world economics as part of SMTP. Paved by good intentions and all that stuff...
There's a whole lot of dark fiber out there, and the fundamental feature of P2P and P2G protocols is that they automatically distribute the load to make it difficult to overload the network. Sure, some of the peers may be far away, but if there is any network congestion as a result, the local peers will have the advantage and balance things out. If there is any planning along these lines, my guess Google is just betting on more information flowing, and lots of it.
However, I'd like to see a network infrastructure extension for variable power WiFi. That would scale without limit. As the density of the nodes increased, they would reduce their transmission power at each node, so the local connectivity remains constant. In regions with sufficient node density, you could take the wire/fiber backbones completely out of the equation. (My idea for this would include local accountability. Essentially you would ask your neighbors to borrow a cup of connectivity (or other resources), and they'd check your behavior with your other neighbors to see if you deserved the help or if you should go to the bottom of the priority queue.)
I'm not sure that you should equate Goldwater with true Republicans and the old GOP. Actually, you should remember that the GOP itself started as a highly *PROGRESSIVE* party, advocating many positions that would make the new fangled neo-GOP wannabe brownshirts spin in their graves. (Whenever.)
The underlying problem is that the main political parties in America have never really had ideological positions. Yes, Goldwater was a true conservative, and yes, he was registered as a Republican, but there were (and are) many registered Democrats who share many of his views and agree with many of his principles. However, the winner-take-all mechanisms of American politics have worked against the success of ideologically based parties. (Which mechanism, by the way, may naturally result in the destruction of the GOP when it becomes trapped in dead ideologies.)
I do think we need a new label to distinguish between the old Republican Party and the neo-GOP opportunists who have effectively taken over the GOP. I also reject their propagandistic approach of destroying the meaning of old words, for example by trying to redefine GOP or by playing word games with upper case, etc. Actually, it is true that there are some old words that are quite applicable to the situation, such as oligarchs or even fascists (for some of the extreme cases).
No, I'm not actually a registered anything. It's not so much that I like the Democratic politicians as that the leading Republicans are really dangerous lunatics. The Dick Cheney. 'Nuff said.
No, not a Democratic rat, but a neo-GOP rat. [How many of you know about the neo-GOP marching orders not to use the proper adjectival form for the Democratic Party?] Of course it's difficult to penetrate the veil of secrecy around the neo-GOP, but all of them going one way on any real issue clearly says that directions came from on high.
Why? Well, first guess time. How many bloggers could you hire for a million bucks? Hey, a million bucks here, a million bucks there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money a la neo-GOP-style campaigning--the only asset the neo-GOP has left now that McCain has joined (and chucked his principles) and Colin Powell has basically defected (apparently wedged by his).
It's really a philosophic problem. Microsoft sees the OS as a weapon against the competitors, and when you're building weapons, of course you make them as powerful as possible and of course safety gets a lower priority. (Microsoft's highest priority has always been on the money, however.) The problem is that the results are overpowered OSes that real experts can use in ways that completely overwhelm us normal mortals. Heaven help the little old lady who just wants to visit her church's website on Sundays.
As regards the article, I read most of it, and might finish it later, but I wasn't too impressed with it or with the rootkit-detection tools that I've experimented with in the past. I'm supposed to be something of a computer expert, and I've certainly been using them long enough, but I regard myself as pretty much a helpless infant in these areas. If the NSA is planning to root my computer because I regard Dubya as an asinine embarrassment to my nation, I don't seriously expect to be able to do anything about it. Sure, I can use an expert's tools in many cases, but that doesn't make me any match for a real expert with corresponding tools. Or returning to the weapon metaphor, I may have a great gun, and even be competent enough in using it, but I'm sure that a seriously experienced killer would have little trouble taking me out, even with an inferior weapon.
In conclusion, "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools", but it's also a poor craftsman who can't tell the difference...