look out! We're going to see entrepreneurship skyrocketing!
Yeah. I've met the entrepeneurs wanting to wash my car windows at stoplights. Absorbing 10K+ jobs is not something easily done in a slowing economy nor do most people have the wherewithal (or attributes) to make them successful entrepeneurs. For every 10 businesses started, only 1 succeeds. And for every 10 of those, only 1 survives to hire more than a handful of employees. Entrepeneurship is difficult in the best of times. Doing it while the economy is in a downward spiral, for most people, is a recipe for disaster.
I think that's pretty exciting. There's going to be a lot of innovation over the next few years.
Yeah, I saw that message in my E-mail with the subject line reading "MAKE MONEY FAST", too. I'm sure other folks out there are just as creative...
Oddly enough, most of the workers I know ARE loyal to their companies, working long hours, supporting them in times of emergency, and, quite often, hanging on beyond the bitter end.
I've been in the tech game for the past 25 years. I've worked for a few companies - about half the time I've made the decision to leave and about half the time they've shut down entire sites I've worked in (no -- I've never received a bad job review or been terminated for cause). In most cases, I've seen employees being much more loyal to companies than the other way around.
Of course, those with less than four years in this industry have seen ONLY an abnormal time. I went through the tech bust in the early '90s, too. It goes both ways. This shakeout appears as if it will be a doozy.
In any case, the point is moot unless techs actually want to get off their asses, organize, and fight for workers rights. Companies are in business for one thing in this country - to make money for shareholders. If they need/want to terminate people to do so they will.
"We would certainly want to know more about" any veiled threats, said Landefeld, who said...
... we at Microsoft must keep abreast of what our competitors are doing in the veiled threat arena so we can continue to be innovative in this area. We believe that our veiled threats are of the highest quality and provide many more repercussions than any of our competitors. It's just another way our company is continuing to scr... uh... help our customers to enjoy the innovation of Microsoft.
Depends on the crime. Cracking a big DB of credit cards yes...
Oddly enough, according to the bill the deciding determiner of whether the unlawful act is a terrorist act is whether or not it was done for financial gain. So hacking a DB of credit card info ISN'T a terrorist act, while snooping around because you want to learn something IS.
I'm sure that violation of the DMCA will be covered under this act soon, as well...
it's going to be tough to pull off, but if it can be done, wow...
And if it can't be done, ouch.
Besides the immediate loss of life in the hostilities, we will also give Islamic radicals a GIANT step up in prestige and power - probably enough to topple any number of the moderate governments in the area. After that happens, oil embargoes start. Double, triple ouch. This will make this week's Wall St. results look like good times.
If we really are embarking on this, we better succeed, because if we don't, the result is going to be too crappy to imagine...
I guess the Chinese are going to be ecstatic about us setting off a few Megatons upwind of them. For just that reason (not to mention immediate loss of almost ALL international support), I think we can rule out this option.
...a conscript army isn't the same as a volunteer army.
The only difference between a "volunteer army" and a "conscript army" is time and casualties. Enough time and casualties and either volunteer becomes conscript or the army backs out. Which will you want?
Every country in the world must respect basic human rights and freedoms or suffer OUR consequences!
Which "basic human rights and freedoms are these?
The right to basic medical care (still not enjoyed by all of our citizens, but decreed under the UN Charter of Human Rights)?
The right to speak freely (DMCA notwithstanding)?
The right to be free from search or seizure (unless you happen to be a suspected drug dealer)?
Equality under law (still not recognized via an amendment of the US constitution for people of female gender)?
The point here is not to excuse wht the terrorists did - it is inexcusable - but to point out that it is often this kind of self-rightous attitude by Americans who don't often think of anything else outside their cozy little suburban middle-class existance that makes the rest of the world view us as somewhat hypocritical. I am reminded of something I read somewhere about neighbors, eyes, and motes. With any luck, this event will make us all more aware of the fact that many of the things we call "basic human rights" are not seen that way by much of the rest of the world and many of the things that other countries would call the same are not seen as such by us. Also, with any luck, this introspection would cause us to expand, rather than contract, what we view as "basic human rights" and give us a renewed impetus in the long term - after the individuals who have caused this tragedy have been punished - to strive for them: Not only for us, but for all people.
However, given the recent past performance of the American people on these issues, I'm not feeling especially lucky this week. We'll probably drop a few bomb, declare victory, and move on...
Of course, I subscribe to none of these tenets:-).
Re:Making the World Safe For
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 1
I've been sending you only very short poems
I didn't know that Vogons were bad spellers, too.
Re:there's an argument to be made....
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More On Tragedy
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So, who was the head of the CIA at the time? Oh yeah, George Herbert Walker Bush. Interesting, how it all comes back to bite him and his family on the ass.
Really? How does it bite GB II on the ass? It seems that his political task has become much easier at this point. He has the nation (and the world) rallying around him and he can blame any "security mishaps" on past administrations (as if anything the administrations all the way back to the Nixon era could have done could have actually prevented this).
In short, the only people who got bit in the ass were the poor b*stards in the planes, in the WTC, and in the Pentagon.
Re:On asm vs "proper" programming
on
MenuetOS Debuts
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· Score: 1
100% asm does NOT buy them improved coding efficiency or improved maintenance or debugging (I've yet to meet an asm coder who can write as much as fast as a mediocre C programmer). What 100% asm does, is make them feel special. That sounds derogatory, but it's not.
I've yet to meet a C coder who can write as much as fast as a Lisp coder! I guess that C programmers use it to make themselves feel special (that sounds derogatory, but it's not).
Sometimes I actually wonder if the high-tech community is actually a social science experiment to see how tightly clueless people can be integrated with a society.
If you are in the Portland, OR area, you can donate your hardware to FreeGeek, a local 503c organization. The computer will be broken down into slavageable parts, and the parts used to build refurbished computers that have Linux loaded onto them. The systems are then distributed to people who volunteer at the org or to low-income people. Classes in Linux (and computers in general) are given to people so they know how to use the system. All parts that are not used in refurbished systems are recycled in an environmentally-friendly way (or at least as safely as possible). All-in-all, a good way of turning large numbers of old, somewhat broken systems into a fair number of useful working systems again and getting rid of the rest as safely as possible.
Others might want to look into this organization to use it as a model for a similar non-profit in your own area.
Yeah. Having a boss you're so scared of you need a camera to keep track of. Having a cubicle instead of a proper office. Electronic plants because office designers have decreed that "Thou shall not have plants."
A real laugh riot.
Tom Tomorrow is right. Scott Adams is just a corporate whore who provides enough of a safety valve to keep workers happily cowed. Wake up, stupid. Dilbert is a part of the problem, not the solution - unless you actually want to live like Dilbert for the rest of your fscking life.
What you are not realizing is that Intel has a lot more overhead than does AMD. Because of that, Intel has to sell their chips for more even if the chips cost the same to produce. AMD loves price wars. They can make a profit at a price point that's killing Intel.
Not only that, but in order to meet growth targets from its gargantuan revenue base, Intel MUST expand into other product areas, diluting the engineering talent that is needed to keep up its cash cow microprocessor trade. This is the reason why they got into mobo's, Ethernet cards, etc., and why, over the last few years, that they've tried to move into home-based products (flat-screen PC on refrigerators), wireless com (with 822-based systems), and other, even less profitable, corporate detritus.
But besides this, there are two fundamental problems with both of these companies:
The first is that the high-end processor market is saturated and still waiting for the "killer app" that needs all of these IPS's to be used. Until you find one and convince the consumer (business or home) that he needs this, both companies are going to be hurting. AMD is more likely to weather the investment storm because it can continue growing market share as a cheap alternative to Intel.
The second is that the CPU architectures for both of these companies are controlled by the high-end boys. This means more instructions, bigger die sizes, more cache, ever more onerous bus logic, etc. But the future is towards smaller, more embedded, less power hungry, simpler processors working together. The architects and marketers that have made their money from the "bigger is better, faster is better, more expensive is better" schools of thought will be creamed by a company that can create small simple, easily connected processors for use in ubiquitous computing applications. And, oh yeah, anyone that can figure out how to efficiently program these little beasties has probably got it made, too.:-).
So the future doesn't bode well for either of these guys. I'm sitting out the chip stocks until people can figure out what to do with them or how to build simple processors again...
Using the appropriate software, edit movie. Then, if you have PowerBook or iBook, show it to people on a TV, or tape it to VCR, or burn it to a CD, or something.
Now what they really need is for someone to come up with a device that prevents all of these people from boring the hell out of us with their crappily edited home movies.
I don't know any mechanics who argue whether a box wrench is better than a crescent -- they know that each tool has its uses, and they keep many different wrenches in their toolbox.
And therein lies the rub.
CPU manufacturers continue to support only specific languages well - C, C++, Fortran, etc. When the CPU manufacturers start making Java chips so that the only way to run C code is within an emulator, will you still be taking the same point of view?
The reason people get upset about their languages is that they know the industry keeps driving towards specialization - they like making a one-size-fits-all "solution". And if their language isn't popular, it gets destroyed by lack of hardware support. Look at Lisp and Smalltalk. Wait for functional languages like ML to be stillborne when their functional models can't fit well with Java libraries.
I'd be quite willing to continue to use my screwdriver, if the Suns and Intels of the world wouldn't keep starting to make Torx(TM) fasteners.
That which was costly is now free (or very inexpensive). In the past, reproduction and distribution had substantial marginal costs and the middlemen were able to make a living. Now these costs are dropping precipitously and the middlemen are being cut out. The bottom line is that the coming of cheap information transfer will ditch the old economy. Any government who recognizes this and facilitates it will be ahead of any that doesn't and tries to prevent it.
And I got news for all you Luddites out there - information isn't the final step. Pretty soon (within 50 years), biotech and nanomechanics will get to a point where you transmit a blueprint and you can have an object the next day. And our economy doesn't know how to handle this. Do I have an answer for what gets put in place of our current economy? Hell, no. But it won't look the same as the current one.
The only really important question is whether or not you'll continue to have relatively large amounts of freedom or if you will be buried under a neo-feudalism. In my opinion, the rush towards ever more draconian laws is the last gasp of the current economic order. They will not be able to hold on. Short-term, it's going to look feudal. Long-term, the stars are ours. But we should work towards more freedom, just in case...
One of the core reasons that IP law is breaking down so much is the level that it has been subverted by corporations, the very thing it was invented to stop! The orignal idea was that invetors and creative people would be protected from theft from corporations.
The article's author as much stated this when he talked about satire.
It is indeed the crux of the issue that almost all "rights" and "structure" and "law" and "moral" processes work well when they are employed for the benefit of the poor/weak/good/individual against the wealthy/strong/evil/many, but cause grave damage when employed in the opposite direction. On the other hand, I don't want to give rise to a system where the greatest "victim" wins either, especially if the victimisation is a result of doing incredible counterproductive things. Maybe the best thing is to allow a group of wise men and women selected by all of us to decide these things.
Here's a little bit of information for you: The WIPO holds all of the cards. Big businesses hold all of the cards. The only way we have half of a prayer of not being squashed like little bugs is if we discard the "us vs. them" point of view and work with these countries.
Gosh! Nothing like the Neville Chamberlain/Vichy France argument to make ones day sunny and bright!
And now having provoked a case of Godwin's law, I declare victory and move on!
I'm tired of the attitude that there's some kind of open source vs. closed source war going on, which is pushed by the popular media. There is not.
Well, then call me clueless, too. There IS a war going on whether you want to acknowledge it or not. The war is one between uniformity and the freedom to choose your own way. It is a choice between corporate control and your desire to be free.
The OS may not be the main battlefield. It may only be a minor skirmish in the larger scheme of things. But the battle must be fought with the intensity of a full fledged war if only because that is the only way one wins a battle.
And ignoring the larger war by saying there isn't one going on doesn't help either. You can choose not to acknowledge it if you wish - bury your head in the sand. But the showdown is coming. Someday the gov/corp will decide to neutralize the open-source weapon. They will decide that non-approved code cannot be released onto the "public" network for "safety" reasons and outlaw other "non-controlled" networks. Then you will no longer have the freedom to practice your coding anarchy.
The more power MS has, the more homogeneous the Internet becomes, the more stupid laws are passed, the sooner the day comes.
So you can keep assuming that minor uncoordinated attacks can destroy the giant. But remember that every successful defeat of a large invader has been achieved by co-ordinated action, not by individuals acting in random fashion. The founding fathers needed the command structure of the Continental Army to throw off the British yoke; the Vietnamese needed the C3 structure of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese government.
Individual actions may aid in the battle, but mindless anarchy does not defeat a coordinated enemy. If you know of any counterexamples from the real world, I'd like to know about them.
To be fair, buffer overflows can happen to anybody
Bull****. Double bull****.
There are plenty of SAFE languages around that are completely unsusceptable to buffer overflow. "To be fair, buffer overflows can happen to any programmer who values speed over safety" is how you should phrase it.
The technology is available to avoid these things. Programmers have chosen to ignore available and safe technology in the name of a few packets per second and so we are in the state we are in today.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. I've met the entrepeneurs wanting to wash my car windows at stoplights. Absorbing 10K+ jobs is not something easily done in a slowing economy nor do most people have the wherewithal (or attributes) to make them successful entrepeneurs. For every 10 businesses started, only 1 succeeds. And for every 10 of those, only 1 survives to hire more than a handful of employees. Entrepeneurship is difficult in the best of times. Doing it while the economy is in a downward spiral, for most people, is a recipe for disaster.
I think that's pretty exciting. There's going to be a lot of innovation over the next few years.
Yeah, I saw that message in my E-mail with the subject line reading "MAKE MONEY FAST", too. I'm sure other folks out there are just as creative...
I've been in the tech game for the past 25 years. I've worked for a few companies - about half the time I've made the decision to leave and about half the time they've shut down entire sites I've worked in (no -- I've never received a bad job review or been terminated for cause). In most cases, I've seen employees being much more loyal to companies than the other way around.
Of course, those with less than four years in this industry have seen ONLY an abnormal time. I went through the tech bust in the early '90s, too. It goes both ways. This shakeout appears as if it will be a doozy.
In any case, the point is moot unless techs actually want to get off their asses, organize, and fight for workers rights. Companies are in business for one thing in this country - to make money for shareholders. If they need/want to terminate people to do so they will.
... we at Microsoft must keep abreast of what our competitors are doing in the veiled threat arena so we can continue to be innovative in this area. We believe that our veiled threats are of the highest quality and provide many more repercussions than any of our competitors. It's just another way our company is continuing to scr... uh... help our customers to enjoy the innovation of Microsoft.
Oddly enough, according to the bill the deciding determiner of whether the unlawful act is a terrorist act is whether or not it was done for financial gain. So hacking a DB of credit card info ISN'T a terrorist act, while snooping around because you want to learn something IS.
I'm sure that violation of the DMCA will be covered under this act soon, as well...
And if it can't be done, ouch.
Besides the immediate loss of life in the hostilities, we will also give Islamic radicals a GIANT step up in prestige and power - probably enough to topple any number of the moderate governments in the area. After that happens, oil embargoes start. Double, triple ouch. This will make this week's Wall St. results look like good times.
If we really are embarking on this, we better succeed, because if we don't, the result is going to be too crappy to imagine...
BZZZT - next player...
I guess the Chinese are going to be ecstatic about us setting off a few Megatons upwind of them. For just that reason (not to mention immediate loss of almost ALL international support), I think we can rule out this option.
If you want to help, at least don't be stupid...
The only difference between a "volunteer army" and a "conscript army" is time and casualties. Enough time and casualties and either volunteer becomes conscript or the army backs out. Which will you want?
Why are you folks still talking about flying through Windows? Could is just be that PENGUINS CAN'T FLY?!?!?!?!
Just another typical Slashdot anti-Microsoft rant!
Oh thank goodness! For a second there I thought you were saying "Shiite revoution black-and-white mode"!
Lameness filters are good!
Which "basic human rights and freedoms are these?
The right to basic medical care (still not enjoyed by all of our citizens, but decreed under the UN Charter of Human Rights)?
The right to speak freely (DMCA notwithstanding)?
The right to be free from search or seizure (unless you happen to be a suspected drug dealer)?
Equality under law (still not recognized via an amendment of the US constitution for people of female gender)?
The point here is not to excuse wht the terrorists did - it is inexcusable - but to point out that it is often this kind of self-rightous attitude by Americans who don't often think of anything else outside their cozy little suburban middle-class existance that makes the rest of the world view us as somewhat hypocritical. I am reminded of something I read somewhere about neighbors, eyes, and motes. With any luck, this event will make us all more aware of the fact that many of the things we call "basic human rights" are not seen that way by much of the rest of the world and many of the things that other countries would call the same are not seen as such by us. Also, with any luck, this introspection would cause us to expand, rather than contract, what we view as "basic human rights" and give us a renewed impetus in the long term - after the individuals who have caused this tragedy have been punished - to strive for them: Not only for us, but for all people.
However, given the recent past performance of the American people on these issues, I'm not feeling especially lucky this week. We'll probably drop a few bomb, declare victory, and move on...
Of course there is:
Of course, I subscribe to none of these tenets
I didn't know that Vogons were bad spellers, too.
Really? How does it bite GB II on the ass? It seems that his political task has become much easier at this point. He has the nation (and the world) rallying around him and he can blame any "security mishaps" on past administrations (as if anything the administrations all the way back to the Nixon era could have done could have actually prevented this).
In short, the only people who got bit in the ass were the poor b*stards in the planes, in the WTC, and in the Pentagon.
I've yet to meet a C coder who can write as much as fast as a Lisp coder! I guess that C programmers use it to make themselves feel special (that sounds derogatory, but it's not).
Sometimes I actually wonder if the high-tech community is actually a social science experiment to see how tightly clueless people can be integrated with a society.
Others might want to look into this organization to use it as a model for a similar non-profit in your own area.
Yeah. Having a boss you're so scared of you need a camera to keep track of. Having a cubicle instead of a proper office. Electronic plants because office designers have decreed that "Thou shall not have plants."
A real laugh riot.
Tom Tomorrow is right. Scott Adams is just a corporate whore who provides enough of a safety valve to keep workers happily cowed. Wake up, stupid. Dilbert is a part of the problem, not the solution - unless you actually want to live like Dilbert for the rest of your fscking life.
Not only that, but in order to meet growth targets from its gargantuan revenue base, Intel MUST expand into other product areas, diluting the engineering talent that is needed to keep up its cash cow microprocessor trade. This is the reason why they got into mobo's, Ethernet cards, etc., and why, over the last few years, that they've tried to move into home-based products (flat-screen PC on refrigerators), wireless com (with 822-based systems), and other, even less profitable, corporate detritus.
But besides this, there are two fundamental problems with both of these companies:
The first is that the high-end processor market is saturated and still waiting for the "killer app" that needs all of these IPS's to be used. Until you find one and convince the consumer (business or home) that he needs this, both companies are going to be hurting. AMD is more likely to weather the investment storm because it can continue growing market share as a cheap alternative to Intel.
The second is that the CPU architectures for both of these companies are controlled by the high-end boys. This means more instructions, bigger die sizes, more cache, ever more onerous bus logic, etc. But the future is towards smaller, more embedded, less power hungry, simpler processors working together. The architects and marketers that have made their money from the "bigger is better, faster is better, more expensive is better" schools of thought will be creamed by a company that can create small simple, easily connected processors for use in ubiquitous computing applications. And, oh yeah, anyone that can figure out how to efficiently program these little beasties has probably got it made, too.
So the future doesn't bode well for either of these guys. I'm sitting out the chip stocks until people can figure out what to do with them or how to build simple processors again...
Hmmm. The emptier the skull, the better the resonance...
That explains a lot of cell phone users these days...
Now what they really need is for someone to come up with a device that prevents all of these people from boring the hell out of us with their crappily edited home movies.
And therein lies the rub.
CPU manufacturers continue to support only specific languages well - C, C++, Fortran, etc. When the CPU manufacturers start making Java chips so that the only way to run C code is within an emulator, will you still be taking the same point of view?
The reason people get upset about their languages is that they know the industry keeps driving towards specialization - they like making a one-size-fits-all "solution". And if their language isn't popular, it gets destroyed by lack of hardware support. Look at Lisp and Smalltalk. Wait for functional languages like ML to be stillborne when their functional models can't fit well with Java libraries.
I'd be quite willing to continue to use my screwdriver, if the Suns and Intels of the world wouldn't keep starting to make Torx(TM) fasteners.
In your sig, there is truth.
That which was costly is now free (or very inexpensive). In the past, reproduction and distribution had substantial marginal costs and the middlemen were able to make a living. Now these costs are dropping precipitously and the middlemen are being cut out. The bottom line is that the coming of cheap information transfer will ditch the old economy. Any government who recognizes this and facilitates it will be ahead of any that doesn't and tries to prevent it.
And I got news for all you Luddites out there - information isn't the final step. Pretty soon (within 50 years), biotech and nanomechanics will get to a point where you transmit a blueprint and you can have an object the next day. And our economy doesn't know how to handle this. Do I have an answer for what gets put in place of our current economy? Hell, no. But it won't look the same as the current one.
The only really important question is whether or not you'll continue to have relatively large amounts of freedom or if you will be buried under a neo-feudalism. In my opinion, the rush towards ever more draconian laws is the last gasp of the current economic order. They will not be able to hold on. Short-term, it's going to look feudal. Long-term, the stars are ours. But we should work towards more freedom, just in case...
The article's author as much stated this when he talked about satire.
It is indeed the crux of the issue that almost all "rights" and "structure" and "law" and "moral" processes work well when they are employed for the benefit of the poor/weak/good/individual against the wealthy/strong/evil/many, but cause grave damage when employed in the opposite direction. On the other hand, I don't want to give rise to a system where the greatest "victim" wins either, especially if the victimisation is a result of doing incredible counterproductive things. Maybe the best thing is to allow a group of wise men and women selected by all of us to decide these things.
Oh! We do have such a system? OOPS! My bad...
Gosh! Nothing like the Neville Chamberlain/Vichy France argument to make ones day sunny and bright!
And now having provoked a case of Godwin's law, I declare victory and move on!
I'm tired of the attitude that there's some kind of open source vs. closed source war going on, which is pushed by the popular media. There is not.
Well, then call me clueless, too. There IS a war going on whether you want to acknowledge it or not. The war is one between uniformity and the freedom to choose your own way. It is a choice between corporate control and your desire to be free.
The OS may not be the main battlefield. It may only be a minor skirmish in the larger scheme of things. But the battle must be fought with the intensity of a full fledged war if only because that is the only way one wins a battle.
And ignoring the larger war by saying there isn't one going on doesn't help either. You can choose not to acknowledge it if you wish - bury your head in the sand. But the showdown is coming. Someday the gov/corp will decide to neutralize the open-source weapon. They will decide that non-approved code cannot be released onto the "public" network for "safety" reasons and outlaw other "non-controlled" networks. Then you will no longer have the freedom to practice your coding anarchy.
The more power MS has, the more homogeneous the Internet becomes, the more stupid laws are passed, the sooner the day comes.
So you can keep assuming that minor uncoordinated attacks can destroy the giant. But remember that every successful defeat of a large invader has been achieved by co-ordinated action, not by individuals acting in random fashion. The founding fathers needed the command structure of the Continental Army to throw off the British yoke; the Vietnamese needed the C3 structure of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese government.
Individual actions may aid in the battle, but mindless anarchy does not defeat a coordinated enemy. If you know of any counterexamples from the real world, I'd like to know about them.
Bull****. Double bull****.
There are plenty of SAFE languages around that are completely unsusceptable to buffer overflow. "To be fair, buffer overflows can happen to any programmer who values speed over safety" is how you should phrase it.
The technology is available to avoid these things. Programmers have chosen to ignore available and safe technology in the name of a few packets per second and so we are in the state we are in today.
Don't confuse your choice with what must be.