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I guess the point was that despite the fact that I take my position so "axiomatically," Gillespie was skillful enough that I found his case compelling. If forcing me to scrutinize my own closely held beliefs is the net result of a political debate, so much the better. Besides, the alternative is to withdraw to our seperate corners and pout about the other team - maybe a strategy you're acting out here. I'm not sure that's the road forward either.
I kind of felt like Lessig got beat up a little bit on Bill Moyers Journal when he debated Nick Gillespie on the Citizen's United campaign finance case. Gillespie was skillful enough to make the pro-corporate-money position seem...well...reasonable. And Lessig seemed ill at ease with the whole thing. I don't know if anybody "won" that debate, but Lessig definitely didn't win - which is surprising since he was clearly arguing from the high ground. It was actually a little scary to watch how deftly Gillespie dispatched all Lessig's jousts about corporate money in campaigns. If somebody at ASCAP has skills like Gillespie's, they might not have that much to worry about. More props to Lessig, despite all that, for wanting to keep these debates in a public forum.
In 1998/99 this was done for a good friend of mine who died way before his time. Good to see there are some thoughtful people out there still doing it. I think the box they used was a 486 DX or something like that, but the same idea. Brought back some great memories of a friend. Thanks Slashdot.
I think you're generally headed in the right place, but the phrase "supply and demand" does not suggest a free market to anyone but the lay person. Supply and demand are at work even in monopolistic markets. Mopolies face a downward sloping demand curve. The higher the price, the fewer the quantity sold. The forces of supply and demand are still at work, even in a monopolistic market.
Given negative press about SANDisk, I'd bet we'll see word of mouth point people elsewhere. Apple will probably pick up most of them, but Zune could see it's marketshare increase as well:
"If there are that many people that desperate to get into a university, the obvious question would be, why don't they just open more schools?"
Lots of skools in the U.S. Have you seen the quality of the students they're producing these days? Gotta keep giving them passing grades so they keep writing checks for tuition - even if they graduate in worse shape than they were when they started. What's worse than a moron? An moron empowered by a diploma.
I guess my intent was to suggest that since for-profit interests are now employing key developers of some open source projects, they might steer their efforts to those areas that have the greatest dollar benefit to the company. It doesn't seem irrational to me if I posit the following:
Dollars are a new (or perhaps alternate) incentive in the development of open source software than maybe the reliably altruistic motivations of many open source developers in years past.
Since dollars and altruism rarely lead to any special alignment of purpose, isn't it reasonable to deduce that monetary incentives may lead to changes in the direction of open source projects, indeed in the innovations realized at the hands of open source developers who, in years past, were motivated only by their desire to contribute to a project they believed in?
I suspect that if a yardstick could reliable measure the amount and direction of innovation in an open source project, the injection of corporate oversight could not be without measurable impact.
Comment about open source maturing gives me heartburn.
Same feeling I get about pundits all over the web yammering about second generation Open Source, whatever that means. Don't know about anybody else but "second generation Open Source" reminds me more of shareware in the '90s than Open Source of recent memory.
I guess this is the future. Software vendors float out little open source bundles of their software but hold the best functionality back for their commerical products. I'm not sure if that fosters innovation or not, but something doesn't smell right to me. I guess people just got tired of writing software and not getting paid so they hitched their wagons to software companies, and I can understand that.
Then again, maybe this is the way it always was and I'm just starting to take notice. But where commercial interests have started entagling themselves with open source, it should be interesting to see what happens in those projects. When every featureset or new software project needs to be tied to the bottom line, these private interests will start to strangle innovation, and the whole open source community will suffer for it.
Good points. I don't know for sure how much Microsoft did right, but here's a comment off Digg -
"The PS3 will have a content size advantage with Blu-Ray and a CPU advantage for titles that are able to utilize a lot of the SPUs. The Xbox360 has a slight GPU advantage and its general purpose triple-core CPU is relatively easy to utilize compared to SPUs. I expect that it will be near impossible to tell Xbox 360 and PS3 screenshots apart."
And Microsoft's console will be a few hundred bucks less. That cost differential could in itself be the reason the 360 will flourish.
Here's another thought - I wonder if lackluster 360 sales fortell a general malaise that sweeps across consumers. Prices keep going up while quality and breadth of games available stays the same.
Personally, neither do I. But alas, you and I are in the minority here my friend, and while I suspect you may not want a friendly tip, I'll offer it anyway - wisdom is indeed not the driving force motivating the 360 naysayers to poo poo Microsoft's new console. I'll throw out a simple theory. I know it's wild, I know it's crazy, but follow me if you can:
Many Slashdotters have an agenda to push. And guess what? One of its founding principals is a deep-seated hatred for all things Microsoft.
Wow, I need to sit down and catch my breath. Give me a minute. Sometimes these breakthroughs can be really draining. Whew.
Experience has proven, with painful regularity, a lurking, destructive tendancy on the part of the overwhelming majority of regular posters to themselves propogate ad hominem garbage in Microsoft-related postings. They dislike Microsoft - therefore nothing Microsoft says can be true or good - or even marginally positive.
Ergo my proposal to withdraw 360 postings from Slashdot - clearly this debate is as productive as the Hatfields yanking pistols on the McCoy's. What's the point?
The thing is - I can agree that Microsoft ain't that great - but I also can recognize obvious bias when I see it. That's why, anymore, Slashdot is completely useless for getting a feeling in the IT community about anything related to Microsoft (or any vendor that might be competing with any Open Source product). It's like Fox news for Linux geeks - they come here to get their side of the story without being encumbered by an alternative view.
Case in point - have any of these threads enhanced our understanding of the 360? No - but they did provide a venue for grandstanding about how Microsoft always has it wrong.
The best part is - you make a comment about it and get modded down just because you disagree with the prevailing viewpoint. Gotta get comments like this out of the way so we have more opportunites for chest thumping +5 Insightful posts about how MS sux.
Nice to see the XBox doomsayers are still hanging around Slashdot.
All the 360 flames would be a lot more compelling if they weren't coming from people who already hate Microsoft. If Redmond came out with a motor that ran on water and gave the cars away for free, I would fully expect a series of comments about how the interior only comes in three colors and there are too few cup holders.
Slashdot should just refrain from posting anything about the 360 - this forum is so heavily biased against any Microsoft product that Slashdot readers will find any reason they can to pick it apart.
The irony is how worshipful XBox haters are towards the Playstation - a product of an equally evil corporation that also wants to take over the galaxy. But they're not after Linux at the moment, so I guess that makes Sony Ok.
Reminded me of this article from wired not too long ago. With the value of brands declining, maybe it doesn't mean that much to have the most valued brand anymore:
I hate to say it but "managing" is usually something most people do poorly without some serious background in techniques and training to be effective. You'll never be a great manager if you're pushed into it. And worse, you could end up hating the situation that you're in.
MBAs are for people with no management background and the coursework most programs provide is a good foundation. Sure, a lot of it is crap. But without it your odds of success are less good. That's not to say MBA grads can't be bad bosses, but if you have the personality it takes to be a manager, the MBA coursework will get you down the home stretch. I know everybody thinks they just product pointy hairs, but that's not the case.
I agree. I guess I'm annoyed with this entire topic/forum because of posters that want to try and trump up the value of comics in some attempt to validate the time they've wasted reading them.
I guess they have their counterculture niche and it's important for social nitwits to moan and roll their eyes every time a new Zippy the PinHead comes out. Christ - comics suck ass.
i don't get it. why would you buy an xbox2 if you weren't planning on buying any new xbox2 games? and if you already have an xbox1, what difference does it make if xbox2 is backwards compatible?
Probably just because I'd rather only have one console. If I could sell my X-Box to help pay for part of the X2 I'd do it in a minute - if it was backwards compatibile. Plus I could buy original XBOX games cheap to play on my new X2. But if they take that functionality away, I'll be just like a new consumer entering the market and I can consider the Sony console and MS console equally on its own merits. I won't be swayed by the fact that I have a thousand bucks in games sitting at home that I could play on the new console.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is also listed as "breaking news" by the IDG Family of Products. Thanks to IDG, we have a source for much-needed technical journalism. Recent hits:
How could anyone function without this kind of probing, thoughtful analysis!?!
I guess the point was that despite the fact that I take my position so "axiomatically," Gillespie was skillful enough that I found his case compelling. If forcing me to scrutinize my own closely held beliefs is the net result of a political debate, so much the better. Besides, the alternative is to withdraw to our seperate corners and pout about the other team - maybe a strategy you're acting out here. I'm not sure that's the road forward either.
I kind of felt like Lessig got beat up a little bit on Bill Moyers Journal when he debated Nick Gillespie on the Citizen's United campaign finance case. Gillespie was skillful enough to make the pro-corporate-money position seem...well...reasonable. And Lessig seemed ill at ease with the whole thing. I don't know if anybody "won" that debate, but Lessig definitely didn't win - which is surprising since he was clearly arguing from the high ground. It was actually a little scary to watch how deftly Gillespie dispatched all Lessig's jousts about corporate money in campaigns. If somebody at ASCAP has skills like Gillespie's, they might not have that much to worry about. More props to Lessig, despite all that, for wanting to keep these debates in a public forum.
Link at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02052010/profile.html
In 1998/99 this was done for a good friend of mine who died way before his time. Good to see there are some thoughtful people out there still doing it. I think the box they used was a 486 DX or something like that, but the same idea. Brought back some great memories of a friend. Thanks Slashdot.
Interesting that the company more committed to open source is the one on the auction block, don't you think?
Who will take all the jobs that are created? Bridges and Roads can employ more American workers because they require trades and unskilled labor.
I think you're generally headed in the right place, but the phrase "supply and demand" does not suggest a free market to anyone but the lay person. Supply and demand are at work even in monopolistic markets. Mopolies face a downward sloping demand curve. The higher the price, the fewer the quantity sold. The forces of supply and demand are still at work, even in a monopolistic market.
Given negative press about SANDisk, I'd bet we'll see word of mouth point people elsewhere. Apple will probably pick up most of them, but Zune could see it's marketshare increase as well:
+ Grinch/2010-1041_3-6139869.html
http://news.com.com/Why+its+hard+not+to+be+a+tech
That's EMC's stock price falling.
Nice to know you VMWare. Take care.
Since when did anybody consider Slashdot anything more than a highly biased news scraper?
"If there are that many people that desperate to get into a university, the obvious question would be, why don't they just open more schools?"
Lots of skools in the U.S. Have you seen the quality of the students they're producing these days? Gotta keep giving them passing grades so they keep writing checks for tuition - even if they graduate in worse shape than they were when they started. What's worse than a moron? An moron empowered by a diploma.
I guess my intent was to suggest that since for-profit interests are now employing key developers of some open source projects, they might steer their efforts to those areas that have the greatest dollar benefit to the company. It doesn't seem irrational to me if I posit the following:
Dollars are a new (or perhaps alternate) incentive in the development of open source software than maybe the reliably altruistic motivations of many open source developers in years past.
Since dollars and altruism rarely lead to any special alignment of purpose, isn't it reasonable to deduce that monetary incentives may lead to changes in the direction of open source projects, indeed in the innovations realized at the hands of open source developers who, in years past, were motivated only by their desire to contribute to a project they believed in?
I suspect that if a yardstick could reliable measure the amount and direction of innovation in an open source project, the injection of corporate oversight could not be without measurable impact.
Comment about open source maturing gives me heartburn.
Same feeling I get about pundits all over the web yammering about second generation Open Source, whatever that means. Don't know about anybody else but "second generation Open Source" reminds me more of shareware in the '90s than Open Source of recent memory.
I guess this is the future. Software vendors float out little open source bundles of their software but hold the best functionality back for their commerical products. I'm not sure if that fosters innovation or not, but something doesn't smell right to me. I guess people just got tired of writing software and not getting paid so they hitched their wagons to software companies, and I can understand that.
Then again, maybe this is the way it always was and I'm just starting to take notice. But where commercial interests have started entagling themselves with open source, it should be interesting to see what happens in those projects. When every featureset or new software project needs to be tied to the bottom line, these private interests will start to strangle innovation, and the whole open source community will suffer for it.
Good points. I don't know for sure how much Microsoft did right, but here's a comment off Digg -
"The PS3 will have a content size advantage with Blu-Ray and a CPU advantage for titles that are able to utilize a lot of the SPUs. The Xbox360 has a slight GPU advantage and its general purpose triple-core CPU is relatively easy to utilize compared to SPUs. I expect that it will be near impossible to tell Xbox 360 and PS3 screenshots apart."
And Microsoft's console will be a few hundred bucks less. That cost differential could in itself be the reason the 360 will flourish.
Here's another thought - I wonder if lackluster 360 sales fortell a general malaise that sweeps across consumers. Prices keep going up while quality and breadth of games available stays the same.
"Personally I don't hate Microsoft"
Personally, neither do I. But alas, you and I are in the minority here my friend, and while I suspect you may not want a friendly tip, I'll offer it anyway - wisdom is indeed not the driving force motivating the 360 naysayers to poo poo Microsoft's new console. I'll throw out a simple theory. I know it's wild, I know it's crazy, but follow me if you can:
Many Slashdotters have an agenda to push. And guess what? One of its founding principals is a deep-seated hatred for all things Microsoft.
Wow, I need to sit down and catch my breath. Give me a minute. Sometimes these breakthroughs can be really draining. Whew.
Experience has proven, with painful regularity, a lurking, destructive tendancy on the part of the overwhelming majority of regular posters to themselves propogate ad hominem garbage in Microsoft-related postings. They dislike Microsoft - therefore nothing Microsoft says can be true or good - or even marginally positive.
Ergo my proposal to withdraw 360 postings from Slashdot - clearly this debate is as productive as the Hatfields yanking pistols on the McCoy's. What's the point?
Well said.
The thing is - I can agree that Microsoft ain't that great - but I also can recognize obvious bias when I see it. That's why, anymore, Slashdot is completely useless for getting a feeling in the IT community about anything related to Microsoft (or any vendor that might be competing with any Open Source product). It's like Fox news for Linux geeks - they come here to get their side of the story without being encumbered by an alternative view.
Case in point - have any of these threads enhanced our understanding of the 360? No - but they did provide a venue for grandstanding about how Microsoft always has it wrong.
The best part is - you make a comment about it and get modded down just because you disagree with the prevailing viewpoint. Gotta get comments like this out of the way so we have more opportunites for chest thumping +5 Insightful posts about how MS sux.
Nice to see the XBox doomsayers are still hanging around Slashdot.
All the 360 flames would be a lot more compelling if they weren't coming from people who already hate Microsoft. If Redmond came out with a motor that ran on water and gave the cars away for free, I would fully expect a series of comments about how the interior only comes in three colors and there are too few cup holders.
Slashdot should just refrain from posting anything about the 360 - this forum is so heavily biased against any Microsoft product that Slashdot readers will find any reason they can to pick it apart.
The irony is how worshipful XBox haters are towards the Playstation - a product of an equally evil corporation that also wants to take over the galaxy. But they're not after Linux at the moment, so I guess that makes Sony Ok.
Wow, I didn't know that problem-solving, resilience, persistence and collaboration were skills we didn't need in the 20th Century.
It took them this long???????? Somebody must have been slacking. I mean, it's already been out for 21 hours. Jeez...
No
From Devry Institute of Technology. You can specialize in:
Medical CLaims Processing
Paralegal
Medical Transcription
Refridgerator Repair
Bookkeeping
Or get your high school diploma!!!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/brands.ht ml
I hate to say it but "managing" is usually something most people do poorly without some serious background in techniques and training to be effective. You'll never be a great manager if you're pushed into it. And worse, you could end up hating the situation that you're in.
MBAs are for people with no management background and the coursework most programs provide is a good foundation. Sure, a lot of it is crap. But without it your odds of success are less good. That's not to say MBA grads can't be bad bosses, but if you have the personality it takes to be a manager, the MBA coursework will get you down the home stretch. I know everybody thinks they just product pointy hairs, but that's not the case.
I agree. I guess I'm annoyed with this entire topic/forum because of posters that want to try and trump up the value of comics in some attempt to validate the time they've wasted reading them.
I guess they have their counterculture niche and it's important for social nitwits to moan and roll their eyes every time a new Zippy the PinHead comes out. Christ - comics suck ass.
Read a fucking book.
Probably just because I'd rather only have one console. If I could sell my X-Box to help pay for part of the X2 I'd do it in a minute - if it was backwards compatibile. Plus I could buy original XBOX games cheap to play on my new X2. But if they take that functionality away, I'll be just like a new consumer entering the market and I can consider the Sony console and MS console equally on its own merits. I won't be swayed by the fact that I have a thousand bucks in games sitting at home that I could play on the new console.