From TFA: This prompted yet another memo from Marc Benioff, the marketing-savvy boss of Salesforce.com, a leading proponent of the software as a service model. If Microsoft were serious about Web 2.0 and Microsoft Live, he suggested helpfully in an internal memo sent to the press, it should rename its traditional software Microsoft Dead. Web 2.0, he said, was not about old companies constrained by their legacy products but new firms such as, naturally, Salesforce.com, Writely, Numsum, Zimbra and Goffice.
As a developer considering starting a web company, I love what Sun has done with Open Solaris. Previously I was considering Linux on AMD64 servers, now Open Solaris on one of the new Opteron Sun Fire's is my top choice. With Dell's continuing refusal to use Opteron, it seems there is an enormous opportunity for Sun to build a competing x86-64 economy of scale and supply chain. You guys have such great offerings - Solaris, Linux, and (hate to say it, but at least it gives you diversity) Windows, plus the Opteron and your SPARC line, great engineers, and good support. Lots of opportunity for Sun right now...
I also like Opera, but if they had a bug like this, would there be any workarounds available for you?
I think his point is that when they do find bugs like this, the Opera engineers fix it quickly. I use Opera as my default browser, and the amount of innovation and quality in their browser, especially compared to IE (with 10x the development resources), continually amazes me.
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
Not necessarily, all that has to happen is that foreign-trained academics stop coming to the US and stay in, or return to their own countries. This is already happening with Chinese graduates.
At least having lots of lawyers is a sign that your country is governed by the rule of law. How many lawyers do you think, say, Cuba or North Korea have. The problem is when your society gets so caught up in abortion debates and suing for everything that everyone forgets about scientific advancement.
But if you design and export much more cool crap in aggregate, you create favorable trade balances, larger economies, and have more clout in how the de facto and de jure rules of international trade work, and can set them in your favor, among other important benefits.
US: ~300 million
India: ~1,100 million
China: ~1,300 million
2,400/300 = 8.
Hence, China and India have a population roughly 8 times that of the US. The concern is that assuming a normal distribution of science and math talent across all populations (a debatable concept I'll get to in a moment), China and India will have a much greater talent pool than the US. This is already being born out in the comparative number of science and engineering grads those cultures produce, and as Romney mentioned, the number of PhD's granted. Statistically, for every 1 Einstein in 100 years in the US, China and India will have 8, and Einstein wasn't even born here. Of course, other factors such as political oppression, intellectual openess, and educational methods (rote learning vs. synthesizing/creating) play a role here, but the sheer numbers put us behind so we're playing catch up from the start.
Further, most East Asian cultures see science and math accomplishment as the result of skills developed through hard work, whereas the general population in the US sees such accomplishment as the result of innate talent alone, unobtainable if you're not born with it. This discourages many from even trying, whereas the opposite effect occurs in Asia.
One side effect I can think of off the top of my head is that less of the US general public is educated in the fundamentals of logic and scientific method, and hence lacks an understanding of why that is important, and also lacks insight into why basic research is important (it's the key to all long-term technological advancement). This state of affairs has the obvious political implications (no one to raise hell when Congress defunds the NSF and NIH to pay for bridges to nowhere in Alaska), and an increasing reliance on religion to help people sort out life, the modern world, etc.
So the discrepancy in numbers and the discrepancy in attitude combine to put the US at a serious fundamental disadvantage in the technological and economic competition ahead of us. I didn't vote for either candidate in the past election, but this one I know I'll vote for whichever ones come with a demonstrated commitment to science, be it Mitt Romney or Al Gore.
It's not a disaster, PS2 launched with no good games (or maybe just SSX, iirc) and went on to become a smashing success. There was a ton of animosity toward the original Xbox among console gamers, it's done alright despite PS2 having an overwhelming lead in games library. Most everyone who buys it at launch will be buying the $400 version and have backwards compatibility anyway, along with some new Xbox Live coolness. Maybe not a perfect launch, but far from a "disaster". As long as 360 gets some good games before PS3 and Revolution come out, it'll do fine.
Probably never. Even as it dies out among one generation, someone from the next will chance upon it in an old Usenet archive or somewhere and resurect it. Crusty old fogies will get a chuckle as the noobs start the conspiracy again, then some online rag will expose it, and it will go into hibernation again until someone from the next generation... repeat for all eternity.
Heh, true, all they really need to do is just drop the 2003. It's not like the target audience can't see past the naming scheme anyway. (To them it could just as well be WCC NT 1996)
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits.
Of course it's about free speech, Skype is a point-to-point communication service that encrypts all data, from both voice and chat. Do you really think the Chinese Communists are going to allow a communication service which they can't eavesdrop at will on? The whole "protecting China Telecom's profits" argument may be another reason for doing this, but rest assured the real reason is the Chicom's continued oppression of free speech among the Chinese public.
The system will automatically check if you have the latest emulation software, download it to your Xbox 360 console as part of a system update if you don't, reboot, and start loading your original Xbox game.
What Im really proud to tell you and your readers is that its easy to get the emulation software, and its free. Well give gamers a choiceyou can get the latest software updates from Xbox Live, burn a CD from xbox.com or sign up on Xbox.com for a CD that can be delivered to your home at a nominal shipping and handling fee. Once you get the CD, put it in your Xbox 360 and youre ready to go.
Why not just include the emulator w/ the 360, or at least on the hdd version?
Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Apple's own computers -- something the company is naturally keen to avoid."
My quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if Dell manufactured and sold Apple clones, the OS X license fees would make up lost hardware revenue.
How much did Julie Hanna Farris, founder of Scalix, a Linux-based, e-mail systems vendor pay for this/. ad? It obviously says nothing new about AJAX, is only aimed at PHB's, and yet for some reason Julie's company Scalix is the focus of the summary. Is it time to rename/. to Slashtroturfing.org?
Where's the Y2K bug? Just because we fixed it before it manifested doesn't mean it wasn't a whopper. Tests done on various equipment from oil & gas pipelines to telephone switching equipment showed the potential for serious consequences. It should definitely be on the list.
1)It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
Hopefully another side effect will be that students begin to question both evolution and ID. I remember back in high school, my bio class taught evolution as unassailable fact. I have no problem with students learning to question everything, even if I have a slight problem with them learning to do so at the unwitting behest of ID proponents with an agenda. However, which do you think will stand up better under questioning, a theory that has withstood the harshest criticism of some of the world's best scientists, or an unscientific, unfalsifiable idea that is more criticism of another theory than independent theory in and of itself?
Maybe you should read up on the history of MS a bit, as well as the Findings of Fact from their anti-trust trial. I personally don't hate MS and as an IT professional I use their products when the situation merits it, but not blindly. It's worth understanding the source of the antipathy toward MS b/c it's not without reason or justification.
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From TFA: This prompted yet another memo from Marc Benioff, the marketing-savvy boss of Salesforce.com, a leading proponent of the software as a service model. If Microsoft were serious about Web 2.0 and Microsoft Live, he suggested helpfully in an internal memo sent to the press, it should rename its traditional software Microsoft Dead. Web 2.0, he said, was not about old companies constrained by their legacy products but new firms such as, naturally, Salesforce.com, Writely, Numsum, Zimbra and Goffice.
As a developer considering starting a web company, I love what Sun has done with Open Solaris. Previously I was considering Linux on AMD64 servers, now Open Solaris on one of the new Opteron Sun Fire's is my top choice. With Dell's continuing refusal to use Opteron, it seems there is an enormous opportunity for Sun to build a competing x86-64 economy of scale and supply chain. You guys have such great offerings - Solaris, Linux, and (hate to say it, but at least it gives you diversity) Windows, plus the Opteron and your SPARC line, great engineers, and good support. Lots of opportunity for Sun right now...
I also like Opera, but if they had a bug like this, would there be any workarounds available for you?
I think his point is that when they do find bugs like this, the Opera engineers fix it quickly. I use Opera as my default browser, and the amount of innovation and quality in their browser, especially compared to IE (with 10x the development resources), continually amazes me.
Firefox business plan:
1. Release Firefox 1.5 on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year in the US.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
I wonder what will happen if US academic graduates begin to emmigrate overseas? Will the Brain Drain effect be felt in the States too?
Not necessarily, all that has to happen is that foreign-trained academics stop coming to the US and stay in, or return to their own countries. This is already happening with Chinese graduates.
At least having lots of lawyers is a sign that your country is governed by the rule of law. How many lawyers do you think, say, Cuba or North Korea have. The problem is when your society gets so caught up in abortion debates and suing for everything that everyone forgets about scientific advancement.
But if you design and export much more cool crap in aggregate, you create favorable trade balances, larger economies, and have more clout in how the de facto and de jure rules of international trade work, and can set them in your favor, among other important benefits.
From CIA World Factbook:
US: ~300 million
India: ~1,100 million
China: ~1,300 million
2,400/300 = 8.
Hence, China and India have a population roughly 8 times that of the US. The concern is that assuming a normal distribution of science and math talent across all populations (a debatable concept I'll get to in a moment), China and India will have a much greater talent pool than the US. This is already being born out in the comparative number of science and engineering grads those cultures produce, and as Romney mentioned, the number of PhD's granted. Statistically, for every 1 Einstein in 100 years in the US, China and India will have 8, and Einstein wasn't even born here. Of course, other factors such as political oppression, intellectual openess, and educational methods (rote learning vs. synthesizing/creating) play a role here, but the sheer numbers put us behind so we're playing catch up from the start.
Further, most East Asian cultures see science and math accomplishment as the result of skills developed through hard work, whereas the general population in the US sees such accomplishment as the result of innate talent alone, unobtainable if you're not born with it. This discourages many from even trying, whereas the opposite effect occurs in Asia.
One side effect I can think of off the top of my head is that less of the US general public is educated in the fundamentals of logic and scientific method, and hence lacks an understanding of why that is important, and also lacks insight into why basic research is important (it's the key to all long-term technological advancement). This state of affairs has the obvious political implications (no one to raise hell when Congress defunds the NSF and NIH to pay for bridges to nowhere in Alaska), and an increasing reliance on religion to help people sort out life, the modern world, etc.
So the discrepancy in numbers and the discrepancy in attitude combine to put the US at a serious fundamental disadvantage in the technological and economic competition ahead of us. I didn't vote for either candidate in the past election, but this one I know I'll vote for whichever ones come with a demonstrated commitment to science, be it Mitt Romney or Al Gore.
This is something of a disaster for MSFT,
It's not a disaster, PS2 launched with no good games (or maybe just SSX, iirc) and went on to become a smashing success. There was a ton of animosity toward the original Xbox among console gamers, it's done alright despite PS2 having an overwhelming lead in games library. Most everyone who buys it at launch will be buying the $400 version and have backwards compatibility anyway, along with some new Xbox Live coolness. Maybe not a perfect launch, but far from a "disaster". As long as 360 gets some good games before PS3 and Revolution come out, it'll do fine.
Really, there's no reason to get one. You really don't want it now. You want it later.
Desperate geek: These aren't the XBox 360's you're looking for.
40,000 Slashdot readers: These aren't the XBox 360's we're looking for...
I'd hazard a guess they've got more UI designers than a project like OO has developers.
There's a correlation between quantity of engineers and quality of product? Sheesh, somebody better tell Apple, quick!
Well I for one
Milk Duds?
When will this joke ever die?
Probably never. Even as it dies out among one generation, someone from the next will chance upon it in an old Usenet archive or somewhere and resurect it. Crusty old fogies will get a chuckle as the noobs start the conspiracy again, then some online rag will expose it, and it will go into hibernation again until someone from the next generation... repeat for all eternity.
Heh, true, all they really need to do is just drop the 2003. It's not like the target audience can't see past the naming scheme anyway. (To them it could just as well be WCC NT 1996)
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits.
Of course it's about free speech, Skype is a point-to-point communication service that encrypts all data, from both voice and chat. Do you really think the Chinese Communists are going to allow a communication service which they can't eavesdrop at will on? The whole "protecting China Telecom's profits" argument may be another reason for doing this, but rest assured the real reason is the Chicom's continued oppression of free speech among the Chinese public.
I use Skype at work specifically b/c its chat and VOIP are encrypted, so my company can't eavesdrop and potentially use what I say against me.
Some mod apparently has no sense of humor.
The system will automatically check if you have the latest emulation software, download it to your Xbox 360 console as part of a system update if you don't, reboot, and start loading your original Xbox game.
Darn, I guess it's not using a Linux kernel...
What Im really proud to tell you and your readers is that its easy to get the emulation software, and its free. Well give gamers a choiceyou can get the latest software updates from Xbox Live, burn a CD from xbox.com or sign up on Xbox.com for a CD that can be delivered to your home at a nominal shipping and handling fee. Once you get the CD, put it in your Xbox 360 and youre ready to go.
Why not just include the emulator w/ the 360, or at least on the hdd version?
Dell would begin to manufacture Apple clones. This would put enormous pressure on the price of Apple's own computers -- something the company is naturally keen to avoid."
My quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that if Dell manufactured and sold Apple clones, the OS X license fees would make up lost hardware revenue.
How much did Julie Hanna Farris, founder of Scalix, a Linux-based, e-mail systems vendor pay for this /. ad? It obviously says nothing new about AJAX, is only aimed at PHB's, and yet for some reason Julie's company Scalix is the focus of the summary. Is it time to rename /. to Slashtroturfing.org?
Too bad, should have started him in Scheme or LISP.
Where's the Y2K bug? Just because we fixed it before it manifested doesn't mean it wasn't a whopper. Tests done on various equipment from oil & gas pipelines to telephone switching equipment showed the potential for serious consequences. It should definitely be on the list.
1)It said that schools should present evolution as a flawed theory. This has the effect of students looking at evolution and saying "oh, it's not good enough to explain what we see...". A side effect of this is that the students now become more receptive to kooky ideas like Intelligent Design.
Hopefully another side effect will be that students begin to question both evolution and ID. I remember back in high school, my bio class taught evolution as unassailable fact. I have no problem with students learning to question everything, even if I have a slight problem with them learning to do so at the unwitting behest of ID proponents with an agenda. However, which do you think will stand up better under questioning, a theory that has withstood the harshest criticism of some of the world's best scientists, or an unscientific, unfalsifiable idea that is more criticism of another theory than independent theory in and of itself?
Maybe you should read up on the history of MS a bit, as well as the Findings of Fact from their anti-trust trial. I personally don't hate MS and as an IT professional I use their products when the situation merits it, but not blindly. It's worth understanding the source of the antipathy toward MS b/c it's not without reason or justification.