Steven Spielberg made some of his first films of himself and his elementary school friends creating their own WWII battle re-enactments. He even included some of the old 8-mm footage as an extra on one of his DVDs (crude but still clever in some ways). For example, he filmed a "fighter pilot" movie by splicing actual WWII gun camera footage with scenes of him and his friends sitting in the cockpits of old WWII trainers at the local airport. They even turned the camera sideways and around while filming to give the "illusion" of dives and climbs (a crude special effect). So yeah, kids (especially boys) have been playing these sorts of games, in one form or another, for as long as there have been kids.
Darn, I was hoping that a "beat hippies listening to the Beatles on iPods" option would be available. Oh well, there is only so much time before the game has to ship I suppose...
In the America's Army series of games the missions are two sided in such a way that both sides are the "good guys". For example, there was one scenario where an Afghan village was occupied by the Taliban and US soldiers (i.e. you and your squad of other online players) had to infiltrate the village at night and eliminate them. Of course, if you were playing on the defending side then the scenario was reversed, the Taliban were launching a night attack against the US soldiers (again you and your squad of other online players) who where there to protect the Afghan villagers. Each side appeared to the other as "the enemy" (i.e. used the Taliban insurgent skins and weapons) while both sides appeared to themselves as American soldiers (i.e. US Army uniforms and weapons). I remember thinking that this was a pretty clever solution to the problem of "one side has to be the bad guys".
Have you given Test Driven Development and NUnit a try? If you haven't heard of these things or taken one of the TDD frameworks out for a test drive then you owe it to yourself to invest some time. The software industry in general and the.NET community in particular is moving towards automated unit testing and Continuous Integration. You should get on this train too.
Apple is well known for its aggressive pursuit of leaks and leakers, both internally and externally, so it is surprising that this mid level manager thought that he would get away with this. In fact, it was probably inevitable that he would eventually be caught. Steve probably organized some plan whereby a specific piece of information, known only to the middle manager and Job's henchmen, was provided so that when it leaked they would immediately have confirmation of the source. Recall that Apple regularly subjects employees to searches of their persons and belongings while at work in attempts to ascertain the source of leaks.
I wouldn't place all of the blame on designers. Once politicians got involved in automotive engineering, regulating everything from safety features to emissions controls, cars seemed to become less reliable, particularly as emissions control requirements were screwed down ever tighter. Eventually something has to give. The laws say that emissions cannot give, so reliability ends up being sacrificed upon the alter of "green" vehicles.
A modern car like this Jaguar emits fewer trace emissions in a year than your car does in a day and this is due to the tight engine control possible with a sensor package and control software.
Concern for the environment aside, if you asked most car owners which option they prefer: (a) a more reliable car with somewhat worse emissions or (b) a less reliable car with more aggressive emissions controls; most car owners probable prefer the former to the latter, even if they are too afraid to admit it publicly (aka "green" is cool and the polluters are all Republicans and the like).
the radio will remain in an anti-theft state because the thinking of the designers (I guess) was that people would start swapping BCMs just to steal radios
Many of their customers probably wish that someone would steal that crappy factory radio; then at least they could use the insurance payout to go and replace it with something that is actually halfway decent.
There are vehicles where the radio does indeed affect other parts of the vehicle, much to the dismay of owners and dealers alike.
That is an epic fail. How difficult is it for people, especially automotive engineers, to understand that a peripheral non-essential device failure (i.e. the car can be driven and operated safely without it) must not render the vehicle inoperable?
Even so, it should not be possible to lock up the hardware which controls the engine or other vital car systems under normal circumstances. Shouldn't these systems be just straight-through combination logic, perhaps with lookup tables in ROM for different sensor readings and default settings if sensors are not operating within spec? If each trip through the ECM or intermediate circuits is not an independent event then isn't that just bad automotive design or at the very least poor quality control? Then again this is Jaguar that we are talking about, quality problems are practically synonymous with the brand.
The problem comes when people begin expecting that anything which can be done in a native application can also be done on the web just as easily. Is it possible to build large and complex applications with dynamic languages, like JavaScript, that do not enforce static types? Yes, it is possible (obviously Google manages to pull it off), but I would argue that once a certain level of complexity is reached, the dynamic nature of languages like JavaScript becomes more of a hindrance than a help. It is in these large and complex applications where static languages prove their worth. Should we try to emulate a complete virtual OS in JavaScript inside a browser window? How about a complete suite of office applications or a complex 3D game? Could these sorts of things be done in JavaScript? Probably. Should they be done in JavaScript? Probably not and therein lies the problem. Web apps raise the expectations of users, but many ultimately fail to deliver the goods when user demands increase and features or behaviors, which users have come to expect from similar native apps, remain unfulfilled.
What a surprise, Lucas decides to re-release the star wars films yet again just to milk the franchise for even more profit, one last time...yeah right. If he must do this then perhaps he would be kind enough to edit Jar Jar out this time? Or maybe a young Han Solo could show up and "shoot him first"?
and applications should be written in native code, not JavaScript
Here's a nickle kid, get yourself a real programing language, something that supports strong types and is compiled, then come back and remind us why we should be NOT be writing our applications in JavaScript. The scripting languages have their uses, but they also have their limits; only an ignorant dev chooses the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Except this will not stop terrorists or other determined individuals from encrypting their communications. The rise of programmable smart phones, such as the iPhones, numerous Android devices and others makes government eavesdropping on blackberry messages a moot point. How difficult will it be for software to be written that uses the data capabilities of these phones to send and receive encrypted messages that do not employ any centralized control or management? I submit to you that it would not be very difficult at all. In fact, measures like this will only harm the average citizen, by removing his privacy, while not thwarting or even seriously hindering the terrorists or indeed any other determined individuals. In short, it will NOT save lives; you will be giving up your privacy in return for nothing.
Facebook doesn't care about users' privacy. Mark Zuckerburg has already said as much and his opinions on privacy are well known and oft repeated points of public controversy. It follows then that he doesn't much care for security either. In fact, it is likely that Mark is more concerned about competitors and would be rivals getting their hands on "his" data and beating him to the advertising punch than he is about the potential consequences for his users. This episode really shouldn't surprise anyone here on Slashdot because it fits neatly within the careless corporate culture of Facebook and their wanton disrespect for users or, as Zuckerberg has called them in the past, "dumbasses".
Doesn't it bother anyone else that our entire economy is based upon most people being chumps?
Not everyone who drives a new car is being a "chump". Almost all vehicles, with the possible exceptions of rare, antique, or other special circumstances (as in Cuba or Venezuela where government policies increase scarcity of cars more than would otherwise be the case without those policies), are depreciable assets. They always decline in value, never increase (it is only a matter of degree). So the average car that is not used in some form of productive activity (i.e. a business) can almost never be justified purely on the basis of increasing one's store of wealth. It all comes down to a question of utility or how much enjoyment one derives from the privilege of driving a new vehicle OR the possible business benefits associated with driving a new vehicle, mostly image or perception of that business by the public as a result of the new vehicle, although sometimes (more rarely) new features or technologies make new vehicles worthwhile even without considerations of hapiness. It is good that you are happy with your vehicle decision, but that doesn't automatically make everyone who drives a new vehicle a "chump".
i cant believe there are still idiots like you who believe that a 'truly free' market exists.
you are right. It does not exist. However, that is not the same as saying with absolute certainty, as some here on Slashdot do, that markets, even in theory, are inherently flawed and can only be fixed through interference by powerful external actors, aka governments. This is important because one must understand what is truly causing a problem before effective solutions can be articulated. A bad solution based upon faulty conclusions will not likely solve our economic problems or indeed any others.
it is anarchy. anarchy cant exist.in an anarchy, the first group to rise into prominence subdues others. because, in a 'truly free' market, there is nothing to enforce otherwise.
Yes, but that does not completely eliminate the usefulness of market theory in understanding every day decision making. The concept of the free market, quite apart from the issue of whether or not it exists in practice, is still useful in understanding what is and what is not good public policy. When people falsely blame the market for the actions of the government they foreclose any possibility of finding real solutions because they have failed to correctly understand the underlying problems. Instead they prefer to throw out the "free" market as altogether unworkable and consider it unworthy of any future consideration in public policy decisions.
basically, freedom cant happen without being enforced. period.
Freedom is not an all or nothing proposition. It is worthwhile to discuss how policies relatively reduce or increase freedom. The suggestion that you are either "free from all restraint or a slave" is a false dilemma.
Except that ideas cannot really be owned in the sense that physical property can be owned, they are non-exclusive. The present system of patents and copyrights, which is enforced by the governments of this world, would not exist in a truly "free" market. In fact, patents and copyrights did not exist for thousands of years and yet mankind still advanced technologically, scientifically and culturally. People around here are quick to blame the free market and "capitalism" for the likes of Monsanto. However, whenever there is a perceived "flaw" in the marketplace it is very often the government that is the root of the problem; not the market. In this case, the sort of genetic manipulation practiced by Monsanto would not be profitable in the absence of incentives provided by the the patent system enforced by governments.
Yes, but lawmakers have themselves to blame for the present situation. The "tougher on crime" meme has been going on for years in politics and continues to have currency even today. Of course, as each subsequent generation of lawmakers positions themselves as "even tougher on crime" than their predecessors the laws have become downright medieval in both severity and prescribed punishments. I also blame the ignorant voters out there who reward such shameless pandering by electing "tough on crime" politicians without realizing that "tough" new laws might one day be turned against them, guilty or not.
To suggest that boom and bust cycles are caused by government interference is not the same thing as saying that they can only be caused in that way (which I didn't claim). However, I maintain that the addition of fractional reserves, non-backed money and bungling central bankers magnifies the amplitude and frequency of these booms and busts substantially. In a commodity money system the supply of credit is more or less limited to the supply of actual surplus capital goods in the economy. The inflation of bubbles in this system is going to be much more difficult because the supply of surplus credit will not be able there to continue to give impetus to an expanding bubble, as it can in systems like ours where the central bank, at least temporarily, can "inject credit" (which only makes the bubble larger and the bust all the more painful or in other words more drinks and even bigger hangover).
Just because the fed has done some bungling does not mean that the correct alternative is no fed, specie-backed currency, and no fractional reserves.
It is not just the Fed. Other central bankers around the world have demonstrated similar records with disastrous results. At what point do we say, "maybe we should try something different"? How much worse, if not bad enough already, must central bankers show themselves to be at preventing bubbles and maintaining price stability, which is after all their stated raison d'être?
In particular, no central bank coupled with specie-backed currency would be disastrous, just as it was the last time we tried that.
Perhaps you refer to the presidency of Andrew Jackson and Specie Circular? In fact, it was a central banker of that era, Nicholas Biddle, who exploited a flaw in that system by forcing state banks, over which he retained certain regulatory powers, to artificially tighten credit rules thereby igniting a panic. Of course, many blamed the entire crisis on the infeasibility of hard money itself which is what Biddle, fearing the loss of his power and influence as the nation's central banker, probably intended all along. To be clear: it was disastrous the last time we tried it because the central bank exploited a flaw in the implementation to intentionally scuttle the commodity money system (to preserve their own power, position and influence); it wasn't a fair test.
Why should Microsoft or its partners leave the money on the table
There is more than one way to market and sell a product. Making hard sells and recommending products which ultimately turn out to be wrong or bad fits damages Microsoft's credibility in the marketplace. It doesn't make much sense, at least in my opinion, for a major corporation with a billion dollar brand to take the "low road" by increasing short term sales, even if it burns some of their customers. You don't sell SharePoint and other major software packages the same way that you would the "incredible knife" which cuts anything and never gets dull for only $19.95. All I'm saying is that Microsoft should monitor their marketers and those of their partners a bit more carefully so that false and misleading claims don't get passed around. If they fail to do this then they risk the reputation of the entire brand just for a few more hard sells of SharePoint; not the best product sales strategy if you ask me.
it creates a distortion in the market for that commodity
What would you call the periodic booms and busts ignited by the meddling of central bankers with our money supply? There are plenty enough precious metals here on Earth, with some exceptions, that have few economic uses other than to serve as the "money" commodity. The essential feature here being that the total supply of commodity money grows in proportion to the actual output of the economy, not the whims of central bankers who invariably "get it wrong", balancing the supply of and demand for the money commodity with the supply of and demand for of all other goods and services relative to the money commodity using the market.
it erases the ability to ameliorate the horrific boom-and-bust cycles that occur in such a system.
The boom and bust cycles are caused by government interference with the money supply through fiat currency, fractional reserves and centralized banking. If you have any doubts about the history of central bankers as bunglers you might try either Murry Rothbard's A History of Money and Banking in the United States or The Case Against the Fed. It is simply not possible for a centralized group of bankers to "guess" what the correct supply of money should be and then cause exactly that amount to be in circulation at exactly the right time. Any attempt to do so is guaranteed to be unsustainable and fail; causing the booms and busts that people now accept as a "natural" feature of our economy. We have given up the centrally planned economy as unworkable for every other commodity except money; Why should we expect better results with centrally planned money? To be clear: you cannot ameliorate boom-and-bust cycles by meddling with the supply of money as the Federal Reserve and other central banks do today. It is their meddling which causes the business cycle to occur in the first place. These cycles would not occur in an economic system with a stable commodity backed money (which would make manipulations of the type currently done by central banks impossible). The Austrian Business Cycle Theory accurately explains this and other economic problems associated with fiat currency, fractional reserves and central banking. Why people continue to put their faith (and their wealth) in the hands of central bankers after nearly a century of contrary evidence is really quite astonishing.
Which is fine as long as people understand what they are buying into and use it appropriately. HOWEVER, the problem begins when the marketing drones at Microsoft and their certified partner companies, in a misguided attempt to increase SharePoint sales, start pitching SharePoint and third-party add-ons as the ultimate website development framework and toolset. Most people in IT see through this smoke screen, but there is always somebody in middle management who doesn't get it and starts believing the bullshit being shoveled by these marketers. These middle managers can cause a lot of damage to IT and internal software projects by becoming a SharePoint cheerleader and pushing for more and more SharePoint, even for projects where it is clearly not an appropriate choice. This makes developers angry and ultimately users too (who blame the devs of course) when they see how badly things have turned out by converting everything over to SharePoint. The marketers and their fellow travelers do nothing but stir up trouble in IT and development. We are quite capable of finding and using the "best" tools on our own and we don't need to be told our business by a bunch of PR consultants and hyped up marketing types. So yes, I see your point that SharePoint works well for what it was designed to do . The problem is that lots of people with a financial or non-technical career stake in the outcome are pushing SharePoint into places where it doesn't really belong and Microsoft does little or nothing to discourage or correct these misconceptions. It seems that as far as Microsoft is concerned, SharePoint is right for anyone with a corporate credit card, whether that is actually true or not. This type of strategy doesn't earn much respect or trust among real developers.
The only place where Sharepoint really stands out is in the Microsoft Office intergration. The CMS features are both available and done better in other closed and open source ASP.NET based CMS products. If you want to build web apps on the windows platform you could just go straight to the source and use straight ASP.NET (Sharepoint was built on top of ASP.NET after all) which is both more flexible and more powerful because Sharepoint is necessarily a more limited view of ASP.NET and the.NET Framework (i.e. "doing things the Sharepoint way"). Taking a competent ASP.NET developer with a built up technology stack and forcing him to use Sharepoint is like putting him in a straight jacket and is actually a major downgrade for the developer. Things which could be done easily with a vastly extensible framework takes weeks of hacking or are just not possible when things must be done "the Sharepoint way". Even if one just wanted a basic CMS there are better choices on the Windows platform: dotnetnuke and N2 come to mind. The only good reasons to use Sharepoint, as far as I can tell, are (1) the Microsoft Office collaboration tools are really important to your company and (2) you plan to use the "out of box" Sharepoint installation, with little or no customization work. Finally, the notion of non-developers creating apps for Sharepoint is really oversold in my opinion. I'm sure that it does happen in larger companies, but most of the Sharepoint installs that I have seen feature little or no app development or customization because the users tend to be non-technical types. Perhaps my experience is not representative and someone who knows more about Sharepoint can comment, but I think that I cannot be too far off the mark with my assessment of Sharepoint.
Slashdot Mirror
Steven Spielberg made some of his first films of himself and his elementary school friends creating their own WWII battle re-enactments. He even included some of the old 8-mm footage as an extra on one of his DVDs (crude but still clever in some ways). For example, he filmed a "fighter pilot" movie by splicing actual WWII gun camera footage with scenes of him and his friends sitting in the cockpits of old WWII trainers at the local airport. They even turned the camera sideways and around while filming to give the "illusion" of dives and climbs (a crude special effect). So yeah, kids (especially boys) have been playing these sorts of games, in one form or another, for as long as there have been kids.
Darn, I was hoping that a "beat hippies listening to the Beatles on iPods" option would be available. Oh well, there is only so much time before the game has to ship I suppose...
In the America's Army series of games the missions are two sided in such a way that both sides are the "good guys". For example, there was one scenario where an Afghan village was occupied by the Taliban and US soldiers (i.e. you and your squad of other online players) had to infiltrate the village at night and eliminate them. Of course, if you were playing on the defending side then the scenario was reversed, the Taliban were launching a night attack against the US soldiers (again you and your squad of other online players) who where there to protect the Afghan villagers. Each side appeared to the other as "the enemy" (i.e. used the Taliban insurgent skins and weapons) while both sides appeared to themselves as American soldiers (i.e. US Army uniforms and weapons). I remember thinking that this was a pretty clever solution to the problem of "one side has to be the bad guys".
Have you given Test Driven Development and NUnit a try? If you haven't heard of these things or taken one of the TDD frameworks out for a test drive then you owe it to yourself to invest some time. The software industry in general and the .NET community in particular is moving towards automated unit testing and Continuous Integration. You should get on this train too.
It seems that everything is aggressively monetized these days, why should we expect games, online or otherwise, to be different?
Apple is well known for its aggressive pursuit of leaks and leakers, both internally and externally, so it is surprising that this mid level manager thought that he would get away with this. In fact, it was probably inevitable that he would eventually be caught. Steve probably organized some plan whereby a specific piece of information, known only to the middle manager and Job's henchmen, was provided so that when it leaked they would immediately have confirmation of the source. Recall that Apple regularly subjects employees to searches of their persons and belongings while at work in attempts to ascertain the source of leaks.
I wouldn't place all of the blame on designers. Once politicians got involved in automotive engineering, regulating everything from safety features to emissions controls, cars seemed to become less reliable, particularly as emissions control requirements were screwed down ever tighter. Eventually something has to give. The laws say that emissions cannot give, so reliability ends up being sacrificed upon the alter of "green" vehicles.
A modern car like this Jaguar emits fewer trace emissions in a year than your car does in a day and this is due to the tight engine control possible with a sensor package and control software.
Concern for the environment aside, if you asked most car owners which option they prefer: (a) a more reliable car with somewhat worse emissions or (b) a less reliable car with more aggressive emissions controls; most car owners probable prefer the former to the latter, even if they are too afraid to admit it publicly (aka "green" is cool and the polluters are all Republicans and the like).
the radio will remain in an anti-theft state because the thinking of the designers (I guess) was that people would start swapping BCMs just to steal radios
Many of their customers probably wish that someone would steal that crappy factory radio; then at least they could use the insurance payout to go and replace it with something that is actually halfway decent.
There are vehicles where the radio does indeed affect other parts of the vehicle, much to the dismay of owners and dealers alike.
That is an epic fail. How difficult is it for people, especially automotive engineers, to understand that a peripheral non-essential device failure (i.e. the car can be driven and operated safely without it) must not render the vehicle inoperable ?
Even so, it should not be possible to lock up the hardware which controls the engine or other vital car systems under normal circumstances. Shouldn't these systems be just straight-through combination logic, perhaps with lookup tables in ROM for different sensor readings and default settings if sensors are not operating within spec? If each trip through the ECM or intermediate circuits is not an independent event then isn't that just bad automotive design or at the very least poor quality control? Then again this is Jaguar that we are talking about, quality problems are practically synonymous with the brand.
The problem comes when people begin expecting that anything which can be done in a native application can also be done on the web just as easily. Is it possible to build large and complex applications with dynamic languages, like JavaScript, that do not enforce static types? Yes, it is possible (obviously Google manages to pull it off), but I would argue that once a certain level of complexity is reached, the dynamic nature of languages like JavaScript becomes more of a hindrance than a help. It is in these large and complex applications where static languages prove their worth. Should we try to emulate a complete virtual OS in JavaScript inside a browser window? How about a complete suite of office applications or a complex 3D game? Could these sorts of things be done in JavaScript? Probably. Should they be done in JavaScript? Probably not and therein lies the problem. Web apps raise the expectations of users, but many ultimately fail to deliver the goods when user demands increase and features or behaviors, which users have come to expect from similar native apps, remain unfulfilled.
What a surprise, Lucas decides to re-release the star wars films yet again just to milk the franchise for even more profit, one last time...yeah right. If he must do this then perhaps he would be kind enough to edit Jar Jar out this time? Or maybe a young Han Solo could show up and "shoot him first"?
and applications should be written in native code, not JavaScript
Here's a nickle kid, get yourself a real programing language, something that supports strong types and is compiled, then come back and remind us why we should be NOT be writing our applications in JavaScript. The scripting languages have their uses, but they also have their limits; only an ignorant dev chooses the wrong tool for the wrong job.
Except this will not stop terrorists or other determined individuals from encrypting their communications. The rise of programmable smart phones, such as the iPhones, numerous Android devices and others makes government eavesdropping on blackberry messages a moot point. How difficult will it be for software to be written that uses the data capabilities of these phones to send and receive encrypted messages that do not employ any centralized control or management? I submit to you that it would not be very difficult at all. In fact, measures like this will only harm the average citizen, by removing his privacy, while not thwarting or even seriously hindering the terrorists or indeed any other determined individuals. In short, it will NOT save lives; you will be giving up your privacy in return for nothing.
Facebook doesn't care about users' privacy. Mark Zuckerburg has already said as much and his opinions on privacy are well known and oft repeated points of public controversy. It follows then that he doesn't much care for security either. In fact, it is likely that Mark is more concerned about competitors and would be rivals getting their hands on "his" data and beating him to the advertising punch than he is about the potential consequences for his users. This episode really shouldn't surprise anyone here on Slashdot because it fits neatly within the careless corporate culture of Facebook and their wanton disrespect for users or, as Zuckerberg has called them in the past, "dumbasses".
Doesn't it bother anyone else that our entire economy is based upon most people being chumps?
Not everyone who drives a new car is being a "chump". Almost all vehicles, with the possible exceptions of rare, antique, or other special circumstances (as in Cuba or Venezuela where government policies increase scarcity of cars more than would otherwise be the case without those policies), are depreciable assets. They always decline in value, never increase (it is only a matter of degree). So the average car that is not used in some form of productive activity (i.e. a business) can almost never be justified purely on the basis of increasing one's store of wealth. It all comes down to a question of utility or how much enjoyment one derives from the privilege of driving a new vehicle OR the possible business benefits associated with driving a new vehicle, mostly image or perception of that business by the public as a result of the new vehicle, although sometimes (more rarely) new features or technologies make new vehicles worthwhile even without considerations of hapiness. It is good that you are happy with your vehicle decision, but that doesn't automatically make everyone who drives a new vehicle a "chump".
i cant believe there are still idiots like you who believe that a 'truly free' market exists.
you are right. It does not exist. However, that is not the same as saying with absolute certainty, as some here on Slashdot do, that markets, even in theory, are inherently flawed and can only be fixed through interference by powerful external actors, aka governments. This is important because one must understand what is truly causing a problem before effective solutions can be articulated. A bad solution based upon faulty conclusions will not likely solve our economic problems or indeed any others.
it is anarchy. anarchy cant exist.in an anarchy, the first group to rise into prominence subdues others. because, in a 'truly free' market, there is nothing to enforce otherwise.
Yes, but that does not completely eliminate the usefulness of market theory in understanding every day decision making. The concept of the free market, quite apart from the issue of whether or not it exists in practice, is still useful in understanding what is and what is not good public policy. When people falsely blame the market for the actions of the government they foreclose any possibility of finding real solutions because they have failed to correctly understand the underlying problems. Instead they prefer to throw out the "free" market as altogether unworkable and consider it unworthy of any future consideration in public policy decisions.
basically, freedom cant happen without being enforced. period.
Freedom is not an all or nothing proposition. It is worthwhile to discuss how policies relatively reduce or increase freedom. The suggestion that you are either "free from all restraint or a slave" is a false dilemma.
Except that ideas cannot really be owned in the sense that physical property can be owned, they are non-exclusive. The present system of patents and copyrights, which is enforced by the governments of this world, would not exist in a truly "free" market. In fact, patents and copyrights did not exist for thousands of years and yet mankind still advanced technologically, scientifically and culturally. People around here are quick to blame the free market and "capitalism" for the likes of Monsanto. However, whenever there is a perceived "flaw" in the marketplace it is very often the government that is the root of the problem; not the market. In this case, the sort of genetic manipulation practiced by Monsanto would not be profitable in the absence of incentives provided by the the patent system enforced by governments.
Yes, but lawmakers have themselves to blame for the present situation. The "tougher on crime" meme has been going on for years in politics and continues to have currency even today. Of course, as each subsequent generation of lawmakers positions themselves as "even tougher on crime" than their predecessors the laws have become downright medieval in both severity and prescribed punishments. I also blame the ignorant voters out there who reward such shameless pandering by electing "tough on crime" politicians without realizing that "tough" new laws might one day be turned against them, guilty or not.
Was that one of those $2 games?
To suggest that boom and bust cycles are caused by government interference is not the same thing as saying that they can only be caused in that way (which I didn't claim). However, I maintain that the addition of fractional reserves, non-backed money and bungling central bankers magnifies the amplitude and frequency of these booms and busts substantially. In a commodity money system the supply of credit is more or less limited to the supply of actual surplus capital goods in the economy. The inflation of bubbles in this system is going to be much more difficult because the supply of surplus credit will not be able there to continue to give impetus to an expanding bubble, as it can in systems like ours where the central bank, at least temporarily, can "inject credit" (which only makes the bubble larger and the bust all the more painful or in other words more drinks and even bigger hangover).
Just because the fed has done some bungling does not mean that the correct alternative is no fed, specie-backed currency, and no fractional reserves.
It is not just the Fed. Other central bankers around the world have demonstrated similar records with disastrous results. At what point do we say, "maybe we should try something different"? How much worse, if not bad enough already, must central bankers show themselves to be at preventing bubbles and maintaining price stability, which is after all their stated raison d'être?
In particular, no central bank coupled with specie-backed currency would be disastrous, just as it was the last time we tried that.
Perhaps you refer to the presidency of Andrew Jackson and Specie Circular? In fact, it was a central banker of that era, Nicholas Biddle, who exploited a flaw in that system by forcing state banks, over which he retained certain regulatory powers, to artificially tighten credit rules thereby igniting a panic. Of course, many blamed the entire crisis on the infeasibility of hard money itself which is what Biddle, fearing the loss of his power and influence as the nation's central banker, probably intended all along. To be clear: it was disastrous the last time we tried it because the central bank exploited a flaw in the implementation to intentionally scuttle the commodity money system (to preserve their own power, position and influence); it wasn't a fair test.
Why should Microsoft or its partners leave the money on the table
There is more than one way to market and sell a product. Making hard sells and recommending products which ultimately turn out to be wrong or bad fits damages Microsoft's credibility in the marketplace. It doesn't make much sense, at least in my opinion, for a major corporation with a billion dollar brand to take the "low road" by increasing short term sales, even if it burns some of their customers. You don't sell SharePoint and other major software packages the same way that you would the "incredible knife" which cuts anything and never gets dull for only $19.95. All I'm saying is that Microsoft should monitor their marketers and those of their partners a bit more carefully so that false and misleading claims don't get passed around. If they fail to do this then they risk the reputation of the entire brand just for a few more hard sells of SharePoint; not the best product sales strategy if you ask me.
it creates a distortion in the market for that commodity
What would you call the periodic booms and busts ignited by the meddling of central bankers with our money supply? There are plenty enough precious metals here on Earth, with some exceptions, that have few economic uses other than to serve as the "money" commodity. The essential feature here being that the total supply of commodity money grows in proportion to the actual output of the economy, not the whims of central bankers who invariably "get it wrong", balancing the supply of and demand for the money commodity with the supply of and demand for of all other goods and services relative to the money commodity using the market.
it erases the ability to ameliorate the horrific boom-and-bust cycles that occur in such a system.
The boom and bust cycles are caused by government interference with the money supply through fiat currency, fractional reserves and centralized banking. If you have any doubts about the history of central bankers as bunglers you might try either Murry Rothbard's A History of Money and Banking in the United States or The Case Against the Fed . It is simply not possible for a centralized group of bankers to "guess" what the correct supply of money should be and then cause exactly that amount to be in circulation at exactly the right time. Any attempt to do so is guaranteed to be unsustainable and fail; causing the booms and busts that people now accept as a "natural" feature of our economy. We have given up the centrally planned economy as unworkable for every other commodity except money; Why should we expect better results with centrally planned money? To be clear: you cannot ameliorate boom-and-bust cycles by meddling with the supply of money as the Federal Reserve and other central banks do today. It is their meddling which causes the business cycle to occur in the first place. These cycles would not occur in an economic system with a stable commodity backed money (which would make manipulations of the type currently done by central banks impossible). The Austrian Business Cycle Theory accurately explains this and other economic problems associated with fiat currency, fractional reserves and central banking. Why people continue to put their faith (and their wealth) in the hands of central bankers after nearly a century of contrary evidence is really quite astonishing.
Note: For those interested in a timely and more in depth analysis of the roots of the current financial crisis might I recommend: Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse?
Which his how it is deployed in 95% of the cases.
Which is fine as long as people understand what they are buying into and use it appropriately. HOWEVER, the problem begins when the marketing drones at Microsoft and their certified partner companies, in a misguided attempt to increase SharePoint sales, start pitching SharePoint and third-party add-ons as the ultimate website development framework and toolset. Most people in IT see through this smoke screen, but there is always somebody in middle management who doesn't get it and starts believing the bullshit being shoveled by these marketers. These middle managers can cause a lot of damage to IT and internal software projects by becoming a SharePoint cheerleader and pushing for more and more SharePoint, even for projects where it is clearly not an appropriate choice. This makes developers angry and ultimately users too (who blame the devs of course) when they see how badly things have turned out by converting everything over to SharePoint. The marketers and their fellow travelers do nothing but stir up trouble in IT and development. We are quite capable of finding and using the "best" tools on our own and we don't need to be told our business by a bunch of PR consultants and hyped up marketing types. So yes, I see your point that SharePoint works well for what it was designed to do . The problem is that lots of people with a financial or non-technical career stake in the outcome are pushing SharePoint into places where it doesn't really belong and Microsoft does little or nothing to discourage or correct these misconceptions . It seems that as far as Microsoft is concerned, SharePoint is right for anyone with a corporate credit card, whether that is actually true or not. This type of strategy doesn't earn much respect or trust among real developers.
The only place where Sharepoint really stands out is in the Microsoft Office intergration. The CMS features are both available and done better in other closed and open source ASP.NET based CMS products. If you want to build web apps on the windows platform you could just go straight to the source and use straight ASP.NET (Sharepoint was built on top of ASP.NET after all) which is both more flexible and more powerful because Sharepoint is necessarily a more limited view of ASP.NET and the .NET Framework (i.e. "doing things the Sharepoint way"). Taking a competent ASP.NET developer with a built up technology stack and forcing him to use Sharepoint is like putting him in a straight jacket and is actually a major downgrade for the developer. Things which could be done easily with a vastly extensible framework takes weeks of hacking or are just not possible when things must be done "the Sharepoint way". Even if one just wanted a basic CMS there are better choices on the Windows platform: dotnetnuke and N2 come to mind. The only good reasons to use Sharepoint, as far as I can tell, are (1) the Microsoft Office collaboration tools are really important to your company and (2) you plan to use the "out of box" Sharepoint installation, with little or no customization work. Finally, the notion of non-developers creating apps for Sharepoint is really oversold in my opinion. I'm sure that it does happen in larger companies, but most of the Sharepoint installs that I have seen feature little or no app development or customization because the users tend to be non-technical types. Perhaps my experience is not representative and someone who knows more about Sharepoint can comment, but I think that I cannot be too far off the mark with my assessment of Sharepoint.