This is the most moronic arguement I have ever heard. Ever. I should frame this. You my friend, are a dickhead. Ok. Let me explain economics 101 to you. The Free Market. The free market encourages competition because it is good for consumers. For example, soap company A sells a product effectively the same as soap company B. Soap company A wants you to buy their product so being that they can't really differentiate their product they reduce their price. You, being a smart consumer, decide to buy A's soap because they are cheaper than B. B see's this and lowers his prices resulting in you buying his product. This little war continues until A and B are selling soap at the bare minimum that they can see it and still make a reasonable profit. Basically the price is forced down until neither A nor B can lower it anymore. You, as a consumer, now have a choice between A's soap or B's soap at a very low price. Whew. Now, let's say that company A becomes the prefered soap company. Consumers have chosen to use company A's soap is the best and that they dont want to buy company B's soap. Company A is said to have a monopoly. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Now company A knows that they have a monopoly and that people dont care about price anymore. So they start to raise their prices. Some people dont like this and go and buy company B's soap but most people dont care. They're happy with company A's soap and will pay whatever it costs. This is still fine. It's no big deal and it is normal for monopolies to do this. In fact, it is so normal that people claim this is one indicator that a company is "monopolistic" - that is, they are aware of their monopoly and they use this market position. Still fine. This is great. Now that we're up to speed.
Microsoft claims that they are not a monopoly. They claim this dispite the fact that 90% of PC's have their product installed (ie, they have a dominate market position like soap company A) and they price their product monopolisticly. So do you get it now? The good senator is asking Mr Gates "well if you claim that you're not a monopoly, why is it that you have a market dominance of 90% and you price things so high and make so much profit?"
it is an interesting point. The warranties would have to be significantly vague however, no-one expects bugless software, that's just too damn hard. Maybe when we have good verification techniques this could happen, but that will require good specification techniques:)
The key to XP is that he (Kent Brock) insists that you do all these things to extreme (thus the name). So you should write automated tests, intergrate quickly, pair program (yes, that's pretty lame but you can replace that with a less extreme "peer review"), etc. All this stuff works together to create tight feedback loops that get you to market under budget and before schedule with quality software.
Yes.. it is not flawless but it is better than coding the function and then saying "oh, that'll do.. I guess that'll work" and then some blatantly obvious test case crashes it and causes a segfault that the user just sits there staring at dumbfounded. Oh, and writing the test case first makes it easier to write the function and thus increases productivity. Surely you are aware that hunting down bugs is the biggest time drain in development?
how many hundreds of years have we been building bridges and houses? The problem with formal training of Software Engineers is that the stuff that academics think that software engineers need to know is a lot different to what industry thinks they need to know. If anything, software engineering should be like an apprenticeship.
Oh and the reason why we call people "geniuses" is because they are a minority that have higher intellect (or whatever the hell you want to call it) than the majority of the population. So I think pretty much everyone (except you obviously) knows that they are not hiring geniuses, nor do they expect geniuses (actually that's one of those things about geniuses, you never really expect to run across them).
I always write my test cases first. Well, I write the first test case:) Then once I've written the code I think of a few more test cases and add them to the test unit. So for example, if I have a class called Power, I create a class called test_Power and add a function to test each of the functions in the Power class. I then put a main func in the test_Power.cpp file and put the tests as the first thing in my make script. Just the other day I had an interesting one. I had to go down and up two sorted (stl) lists and build sets of the data within a certain range. Then I had to do a set intersection of the two sets and return the resultant list. For my test case I generated random data and pumped it in. The result was scary. I would do a make and get a segfault. Sometimes I would immediately see the problem and go and fix it, do a make and get another segfault. Moral: throw enough random data at a function and it will expose all your bugs. So after the segfaults are fixed you're left with the cases that run to completion but give the wrong results, which is even more annoying. So then you usually have to fire up gdb and figure out what exactly went wrong. Oh, and you can get carried away with this. Sometimes you think: I'll run the tests overnight and see if it fails any tests on some obscure case and just when you think it is rock solid it will fail a test after 10 hours of running. You have to be careful using random data too cause you're test data might be so random that is nothing like what will actually happen when you start using that function. ok, I've rambled enough.
err.. doesnt the prohibition of the (real) image make it harder to find the perpetrator of the sexual abuse of the child depicted? If possession of these pictures was free and unpersecuted (by the state) wouldn't it be easier to track down victim if not the actual perpetrator? Correct me if I'm wrong here but if the pictures are illegal to possess then wouldn't it be suicidal to take these pictures to the police? And if the police dont have the pictures, how can they find out who the victim is and who the perpetrator is? So once again, I call for the actual criminal act to be illegal and the posession of the images to be legal.
I solemnly agree. You are preaching to the quire. However we seem to believe that the free market is kind of important and regulating the free market to make sure it stays free in face of the tactics that companies like Microsoft use is something that libertarian theory never dealt with. At least we dont use the police to regulate the free market. Then we truely know we're in trouble.
What are you on about? They're on trial because they bullied and crushed Netscape. They've done it a dozen times since the trial started and they'll do it again and again until they are stopped. And what's more they think that they are perfectly within their rights to do this because they claim they are not a monopoly because "someone could replace us tommorrow."
Even if they don't contest the appeal the judge (remember that guy who has worked all his life to get a place on the bench where he can forefill his duty to his fellow countrymen) will still laugh at it and throw it out. For god sake, Microsoft still claims that they are not a monopoly cause "someone could replace us tomorrow."
Fantasy in troubled individuals often leads to acts.
Do you have any studies to indicate this? Perhaps you're a psychologist. Either way, what does this have to do with me wanting to cruise around as Adolf Hitler in some future artificial VR game of the future? After all, if we assume that people are "troubled individuals" then obviously a game where you get to play Adolf Hitler should be outright banned because it may encourage another global war.
Cool. So like because access to material about Hitler can encourage the Eric Cartman's of this world, perhaps we should ban that too. I dont want to risk my freedom on maybes, you shouldn't either.
well I really dont think the children consenting or not is an issue (and I definitely dont think whether they're enjoying it or not is), the fact is that children do not have the right to choose in the affirmative (let's clarify that!) to be a part of sexual activities with adults in our society.
or hell, you could read about it on alt.sex.stories.. oops, there goes that forum under the hands of the puritans. I cant believe people can argue with the first ammendment. How many times do we have to say it? I may not agree with your views but I'll fight to the death to protect your right to express them! And yes, that includes images, sound recordings, videos, big billboards, stories or code. Before the puritans had an arguement "creation of this filth hurts children!" but that arguement is dead! Now they want to replace it with "creation of this filth _might_ hurt children?" Common, I dont want to bet my freedom on maybe's and I dont want to bet anyone else's.
see, if you actually believe this you are already lost. Anti-trust laws are about monopolies doing all the underhanded tricks that we can ignore normal companies doing (because when normal companies do it, it is good for consumers). For example, let's say I make a super hi-octane plane fuel. I make a deal with heaps of plane companies to help them modify their engines so they can use the fuel and this gives their plane a real zinger of a power burst. People buy their planes because they go real fast with this fuel. Now say I refuse to help a certain plane company from modifying their engines because, hell, they wont give me the commision on each engine sold like all the other plane companies. No problem right.. there's heaps of other fuel that people can use and maybe this plane company can make a better engine that runs on normal fuel and all is good for consumers. But imagine what this would mean if after 5 years of selling super fast planes running on my super hi-octane fuel, all the other fuel companies went out of business. My fuel company totally dominates the fuel market. No-one can buy fuel from anyone else at a competitive price. Anti-trust laws claim that it is now illegal for me to exclude that one plane company that wont agree to my conditions. Why? Because by excluding them I will put them out of business.
Ok, now let's say that the guys in my research division figure out a way to make all other oils used in planes incompatible with my hi-octane fuel except their newly discovered oil. So I modify the fuel and start selling the oil. I say to people "using any other oil than our oil will damage your plane". Anti-trust laws say this is illegal because I am using my monopoly to extending into different markets.
Both of these things result in less choice for the consumer and this is precisely what Microsoft have done time and time again.
oh wait.. so you're not just noticing a correlation, you're actually claiming causation too! Wow, you must have some serious evidence to back this up. It is a well known fact that more coke is drunk during Jerry Springer than any other television show and that said television show is a lot more popular when there are fights. So, obviously, there has to be a causation here. Could it possibly be that the FTC just didn't have anything to pin on doubleclick because they hired a shitload of lawyers to construct their privacy policy and make sure that their business practices conform to the letter of the law? Isn't this just a little bit more plausible?! After all, dubya has been in office a week now? Has the appointments to the FTC even occured yet? Do you think they have even moved into their office and started sharpening their pencils yet? And do you really think that the first thing on their agenda was to get this pesky Doubleclick case off the books? Tell me, when exactly was the last time that a politician kept his promises so promptly? When was the last time you knew a public servant to act so swiftly? At least try to make your conspiracy theory somewhat feasible.
Gee, U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl doesn't seem to think so. You can read it for yourself:
KOHL: Mr. Gates, last year, what were your company's sales? Was it 14 billion roughly?
GATES: Well, which 12-month period are you asking about?
KOHL: Any -- just, what your last fiscal year.
GATES: Well, 12.4 annual.
KOHL: And what were your profits?
GATES: Let's see. I don't know off the top of my head.
(LAUGHTER)
KOHL: Do you know what your percentage on sales were, the profit on percentage on sales?
GATES: Yeah. It would be something like 24 percent.
KOHL: Right.
Now, for the information of the people who are listening. That is an extraordinary profit level in America. I would defy you to come up with any major company in any major industry that makes that kind of money. In the retailing industry, for example, if you make 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 percent on sales, it's considered to be very successful. And other industries are not that dissimilar.
Now, I would suggest that as reasonable as you consider your prices to be, you could cut your profit in half and still make an awful lot of money on sales and give that money to your customers and still be a very successful company.
Do you have a response?
GATES: We -- Microsoft software prices -- the average price we get for our software packages has come down quite substantially over the years. And I think, you know, we do have competitors who wish our prices weren't so low. But I tend to favor your approach which is to get the prices to be even lower. I think that's absolutely right.
BARKSDALE: Mr. Kohl, excuse me.
You have quite a bit of margin there to work with, Mr. Gates, at 24.5 percent on sales. You can do an awful lot of price cutting yet.
Could it possibly be that the senator was talking about real companies in real industries that make billions of dollars a year and not two bit dime stores? I've shown my cards, where's yours?
Have you noticed recently that the price of coke has gone up and the number of fights breaking out on Jerry Springer has increased?! Maybe one really has nothing to do with the other, but it's hard not to infer a correlation. I tell ya man, you should be a psychologist with the complete lack of scientific skepticism that you show before drawing correlations.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the most moronic arguement I have ever heard. Ever. I should frame this. You my friend, are a dickhead. Ok. Let me explain economics 101 to you. The Free Market. The free market encourages competition because it is good for consumers. For example, soap company A sells a product effectively the same as soap company B. Soap company A wants you to buy their product so being that they can't really differentiate their product they reduce their price. You, being a smart consumer, decide to buy A's soap because they are cheaper than B. B see's this and lowers his prices resulting in you buying his product. This little war continues until A and B are selling soap at the bare minimum that they can see it and still make a reasonable profit. Basically the price is forced down until neither A nor B can lower it anymore. You, as a consumer, now have a choice between A's soap or B's soap at a very low price. Whew. Now, let's say that company A becomes the prefered soap company. Consumers have chosen to use company A's soap is the best and that they dont want to buy company B's soap. Company A is said to have a monopoly. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Now company A knows that they have a monopoly and that people dont care about price anymore. So they start to raise their prices. Some people dont like this and go and buy company B's soap but most people dont care. They're happy with company A's soap and will pay whatever it costs. This is still fine. It's no big deal and it is normal for monopolies to do this. In fact, it is so normal that people claim this is one indicator that a company is "monopolistic" - that is, they are aware of their monopoly and they use this market position. Still fine. This is great. Now that we're up to speed.
Microsoft claims that they are not a monopoly. They claim this dispite the fact that 90% of PC's have their product installed (ie, they have a dominate market position like soap company A) and they price their product monopolisticly. So do you get it now? The good senator is asking Mr Gates "well if you claim that you're not a monopoly, why is it that you have a market dominance of 90% and you price things so high and make so much profit?"
Welcome to the conversation, bonehead.
I know guys that have written very good database oriented systems in VB. They're M$FT geeks but they can produce a product.
it is an interesting point. The warranties would have to be significantly vague however, no-one expects bugless software, that's just too damn hard. Maybe when we have good verification techniques this could happen, but that will require good specification techniques :)
The key to XP is that he (Kent Brock) insists that you do all these things to extreme (thus the name). So you should write automated tests, intergrate quickly, pair program (yes, that's pretty lame but you can replace that with a less extreme "peer review"), etc. All this stuff works together to create tight feedback loops that get you to market under budget and before schedule with quality software.
Yes.. it is not flawless but it is better than coding the function and then saying "oh, that'll do.. I guess that'll work" and then some blatantly obvious test case crashes it and causes a segfault that the user just sits there staring at dumbfounded. Oh, and writing the test case first makes it easier to write the function and thus increases productivity. Surely you are aware that hunting down bugs is the biggest time drain in development?
Gee, could it be that you think this because you havn't read the book (Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Brock) or indeed didn't read the above?
how many hundreds of years have we been building bridges and houses? The problem with formal training of Software Engineers is that the stuff that academics think that software engineers need to know is a lot different to what industry thinks they need to know. If anything, software engineering should be like an apprenticeship.
Oh and the reason why we call people "geniuses" is because they are a minority that have higher intellect (or whatever the hell you want to call it) than the majority of the population. So I think pretty much everyone (except you obviously) knows that they are not hiring geniuses, nor do they expect geniuses (actually that's one of those things about geniuses, you never really expect to run across them).
I always write my test cases first. Well, I write the first test case :) Then once I've written the code I think of a few more test cases and add them to the test unit. So for example, if I have a class called Power, I create a class called test_Power and add a function to test each of the functions in the Power class. I then put a main func in the test_Power.cpp file and put the tests as the first thing in my make script. Just the other day I had an interesting one. I had to go down and up two sorted (stl) lists and build sets of the data within a certain range. Then I had to do a set intersection of the two sets and return the resultant list. For my test case I generated random data and pumped it in. The result was scary. I would do a make and get a segfault. Sometimes I would immediately see the problem and go and fix it, do a make and get another segfault. Moral: throw enough random data at a function and it will expose all your bugs. So after the segfaults are fixed you're left with the cases that run to completion but give the wrong results, which is even more annoying. So then you usually have to fire up gdb and figure out what exactly went wrong. Oh, and you can get carried away with this. Sometimes you think: I'll run the tests overnight and see if it fails any tests on some obscure case and just when you think it is rock solid it will fail a test after 10 hours of running. You have to be careful using random data too cause you're test data might be so random that is nothing like what will actually happen when you start using that function. ok, I've rambled enough.
err.. doesnt the prohibition of the (real) image make it harder to find the perpetrator of the sexual abuse of the child depicted? If possession of these pictures was free and unpersecuted (by the state) wouldn't it be easier to track down victim if not the actual perpetrator? Correct me if I'm wrong here but if the pictures are illegal to possess then wouldn't it be suicidal to take these pictures to the police? And if the police dont have the pictures, how can they find out who the victim is and who the perpetrator is? So once again, I call for the actual criminal act to be illegal and the posession of the images to be legal.
maybe in japan dude.
I solemnly agree. You are preaching to the quire. However we seem to believe that the free market is kind of important and regulating the free market to make sure it stays free in face of the tactics that companies like Microsoft use is something that libertarian theory never dealt with. At least we dont use the police to regulate the free market. Then we truely know we're in trouble.
What are you on about? They're on trial because they bullied and crushed Netscape. They've done it a dozen times since the trial started and they'll do it again and again until they are stopped. And what's more they think that they are perfectly within their rights to do this because they claim they are not a monopoly because "someone could replace us tommorrow."
Even if they don't contest the appeal the judge (remember that guy who has worked all his life to get a place on the bench where he can forefill his duty to his fellow countrymen) will still laugh at it and throw it out. For god sake, Microsoft still claims that they are not a monopoly cause "someone could replace us tomorrow."
it's funny cause it's true.
Fantasy in troubled individuals often leads to acts.
Do you have any studies to indicate this? Perhaps you're a psychologist. Either way, what does this have to do with me wanting to cruise around as Adolf Hitler in some future artificial VR game of the future? After all, if we assume that people are "troubled individuals" then obviously a game where you get to play Adolf Hitler should be outright banned because it may encourage another global war.
Cool. So like because access to material about Hitler can encourage the Eric Cartman's of this world, perhaps we should ban that too. I dont want to risk my freedom on maybes, you shouldn't either.
(except, some would say, the viewer of virtual child porn)
Do we care? Is this actual physical harm? No, then go right ahead. If this is actual physicial harm, is this self inflicted? Yes? Go right ahead.
well I really dont think the children consenting or not is an issue (and I definitely dont think whether they're enjoying it or not is), the fact is that children do not have the right to choose in the affirmative (let's clarify that!) to be a part of sexual activities with adults in our society.
or hell, you could read about it on alt.sex.stories.. oops, there goes that forum under the hands of the puritans. I cant believe people can argue with the first ammendment. How many times do we have to say it? I may not agree with your views but I'll fight to the death to protect your right to express them! And yes, that includes images, sound recordings, videos, big billboards, stories or code. Before the puritans had an arguement "creation of this filth hurts children!" but that arguement is dead! Now they want to replace it with "creation of this filth _might_ hurt children?" Common, I dont want to bet my freedom on maybe's and I dont want to bet anyone else's.
It takes a lot of money to buy programmer's souls. Can you imagine the poor son of a bitch who had to code the paperclip?
see, if you actually believe this you are already lost. Anti-trust laws are about monopolies doing all the underhanded tricks that we can ignore normal companies doing (because when normal companies do it, it is good for consumers). For example, let's say I make a super hi-octane plane fuel. I make a deal with heaps of plane companies to help them modify their engines so they can use the fuel and this gives their plane a real zinger of a power burst. People buy their planes because they go real fast with this fuel. Now say I refuse to help a certain plane company from modifying their engines because, hell, they wont give me the commision on each engine sold like all the other plane companies. No problem right.. there's heaps of other fuel that people can use and maybe this plane company can make a better engine that runs on normal fuel and all is good for consumers. But imagine what this would mean if after 5 years of selling super fast planes running on my super hi-octane fuel, all the other fuel companies went out of business. My fuel company totally dominates the fuel market. No-one can buy fuel from anyone else at a competitive price. Anti-trust laws claim that it is now illegal for me to exclude that one plane company that wont agree to my conditions. Why? Because by excluding them I will put them out of business.
Ok, now let's say that the guys in my research division figure out a way to make all other oils used in planes incompatible with my hi-octane fuel except their newly discovered oil. So I modify the fuel and start selling the oil. I say to people "using any other oil than our oil will damage your plane". Anti-trust laws say this is illegal because I am using my monopoly to extending into different markets.
Both of these things result in less choice for the consumer and this is precisely what Microsoft have done time and time again.
oh wait.. so you're not just noticing a correlation, you're actually claiming causation too! Wow, you must have some serious evidence to back this up. It is a well known fact that more coke is drunk during Jerry Springer than any other television show and that said television show is a lot more popular when there are fights. So, obviously, there has to be a causation here. Could it possibly be that the FTC just didn't have anything to pin on doubleclick because they hired a shitload of lawyers to construct their privacy policy and make sure that their business practices conform to the letter of the law? Isn't this just a little bit more plausible?! After all, dubya has been in office a week now? Has the appointments to the FTC even occured yet? Do you think they have even moved into their office and started sharpening their pencils yet? And do you really think that the first thing on their agenda was to get this pesky Doubleclick case off the books? Tell me, when exactly was the last time that a politician kept his promises so promptly? When was the last time you knew a public servant to act so swiftly? At least try to make your conspiracy theory somewhat feasible.
Gee, U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl doesn't seem to think so. You can read it for yourself:
KOHL: Mr. Gates, last year, what were your company's sales? Was it 14 billion roughly?
GATES: Well, which 12-month period are you asking about?
KOHL: Any -- just, what your last fiscal year.
GATES: Well, 12.4 annual.
KOHL: And what were your profits?
GATES: Let's see. I don't know off the top of my head.
(LAUGHTER)
KOHL: Do you know what your percentage on sales were, the profit on percentage on sales?
GATES: Yeah. It would be something like 24 percent.
KOHL: Right.
Now, for the information of the people who are listening. That is an extraordinary profit level in America. I would defy you to come up with any major company in any major industry that makes that kind of money. In the retailing industry, for example, if you make 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 percent on sales, it's considered to be very successful. And other industries are not that dissimilar.
Now, I would suggest that as reasonable as you consider your prices to be, you could cut your profit in half and still make an awful lot of money on sales and give that money to your customers and still be a very successful company.
Do you have a response?
GATES: We -- Microsoft software prices -- the average price we get for our software packages has come down quite substantially over the years. And I think, you know, we do have competitors who wish our prices weren't so low. But I tend to favor your approach which is to get the prices to be even lower. I think that's absolutely right.
BARKSDALE: Mr. Kohl, excuse me.
You have quite a bit of margin there to work with, Mr. Gates, at 24.5 percent on sales. You can do an awful lot of price cutting yet.
Could it possibly be that the senator was talking about real companies in real industries that make billions of dollars a year and not two bit dime stores? I've shown my cards, where's yours?
yes it will.
Have you noticed recently that the price of coke has gone up and the number of fights breaking out on Jerry Springer has increased?! Maybe one really has nothing to do with the other, but it's hard not to infer a correlation. I tell ya man, you should be a psychologist with the complete lack of scientific skepticism that you show before drawing correlations.