IBM used to rule the entire galaxy, with a corporate strategy of "we will tell the users what we want them to know, and they are too stupid to think for themselves"
Like MS and the PC, it worked pretty well on first time buyers. However, there came a time, fist with mainframes, then with minis, when there were no more first time buyers - they people wised up!
People are now asking not what they can do for MS, but what MS can do for them
And making them pay money for a new set of bugs, and faster virus infection is not the answer that will sell kit.
Its right about now that people are saying "I dont want a new computer - I barely know how to use the one I have got, and that's taken me 6 years of learning. It aint broke, so I aint gonna fix it."
Give them two years more, and they will be saying [cue fiddle music, drink Jack Daniels] "I want want the nerds have - their machines don't keep falling off the road into the ditch."
Not just charged by the minute But at rates which often result in people getting phone bills which exceed a month's pay, due to a single call by an overseas visitor who doesnt believe the rates.
I read a report on research into the habits of women who had migrated to Australia. It said most phone home frequently, some every day - but Brits often only phone on Birthdays and anniversaries, because they never lose the fear of high phone bills!
British Telecom recently found that by reducing the LD rate on weekends to 1/4, they doubled their revenue, because it reduced this fear barrier! We used to have a "peak rate" in the morning, but the government had to aboloish it, because it was found that a large secotor of industry was ordering employees not to use the phone in the morning, even if the worker sat idle till noon!
British phone rates are not just high - it is an established fact that they scare the sh*te out of customers!
I disagree entirely about "object technology". I agree that "object oriented programming" as a concept can be helpful, but all the evidence is that huge projects that produce efficient, reliable, code use C, and NOT C++. For example FreeBSD.
I have over 30 years experience of embedded systems, and I would say that without exception the C ones were leaner, meaner and fitter than the C++ ones.
As for reusability, documentation is the key to reusability. It is conceivable that the syntax of some languages may help with this, but it seems there is more benefit in theory than in practice. All of us use the C standard library all the time (ie anyone using a browser is executing it) - now THAT is reusable. The Fortran library is widely reused, and no one ever accused Fortran of being object oriented. (I have heard Fortran users called "disoriented":-)
I wonder just how long the record labels are going to survive before they figure out that they, not just their technology, are obsolete.
If you were the CEO of a record label, would you be rushing out to tell the shareholders that record companies are finished?
I think its a safe bet that you would be in no hurry to tell them that If the punters can hear the music, then they can record it too - its one of the laws of physics. Of course they know that too, thats why they keep selling all those CDs the punter can't listen to!
While it may have been true a few years ago, I have recently installed FreeBSD (4 machines) and NT 4.0 (six machines).
Excluding applications
Typical FreeBSD install time = 1 hour. All hardware detected automatically. All drivers installed automatically.
Typical NT install time = 4 hours. Sound, VGA, Network card drivers all had to be downloaded from IBM support site, after identifying the exact make and model of the machine (not for the average non-tech person) and downloading drivers identified only by a hex number.
NT on average failed to install at least once on each machine (IBM P3 desktop) - FreeBSD did not fail to install on any of the four machines.
There is no way a non-tech person could Install NT. I have no experience of installing more recent versions of Windows. It was such a bad experience, I would avoid it at all costs.
(However, getting NetBSD to boot over a network on 25 MHz Sparc for the first time took a week!)
My son (16) kept complaining that Word was misbehaving, and his homework kept getting lost.
I moved him to OpenOffice. I thought he would moan about it, but his only complaint is that it doesn't have his favourite font (Westminster).
He is well aware that I am pro-Unix, anti-windows, but now he knows why. Thats not indoctrination.
Another couple of years, and I'll introduce him to Tennex.
Re:ALICE never seemed intelligent anyway.
on
ALICE vs. ALICE
·
· Score: 2, Informative
AFAIK Alice was written in the 1960's, so you would not expect it to be fantastic.
I believe it even predates Unix - thats Unix before PDP11!
In those days there were 6 bits in a character, and 300 baud was a high speed line. Most of us used 75 baud systems! and a carriage return was up hill both ways
I have had enough of repeated reinstalls, user choces that vanish, nonexistant security, and SLWONESSSSSS!.
I use FreeBSD as my desktop,
BUT
I have to boot Windows to use
Hotmetal Pro 5 for web design... Bluefish? Are you kidding?
MS Word - Sure i use OpenOffice Writer when I can (even on Windows), but if you get a Word DOC from someone, and have to edit and return it, you have to use Word ON Windows, else the fonts screw you.
CD Writing - FreeBSD does not admit that I own a CD writer, let alone use it! I have no idea why not, It is a supposedly supported one! And it was the same with my previous one! And when I sent an e-mail to Jeorg whatsisname, he was pretty offensive.
MS may not actually give you support after charging for it, but at least they dont aggressively insult you.
An important side effect of Microsoft winning, would be that MS licences could no longer be considered an asset on the balance sheet - thus making MS licences appear even worse value for money than they already are.
A good move for open source.
Re:Actually in Russia
on
Water Computing
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In the London science museum they have an analog water computer that represents the British economy. I believe it predates 1949. I am not sure how accurate a model it was, but it cant be much worse that the digital model they have now.
Reseach shows the more higly qualified an economist is, the poorer his predictions!
I was personally distressed and intimidated. Further more, I did not register, because the spam had the appearance of spam, and I assumed it was bogus!
The main problem with asynchronous logic is that it is impossible to PROVE, even by testing, that it will meet any worst case spec.
Seymour Cray tried it after the 7600 and before making the Cray-1. He decided that regardless of the performance advantage, people wanted a computer that was KNOWN to work.
In this, like in most other things he did Cray was right
There was a widely quoted study showing the incidence of asthma corelates to the frequency with which a child washes his hand per day more than 5 times: athsma is vertually certain. No handwashing = no asthma! No one suggests it is the soap causing asthma, but its generally agreed that it is a sign that the immune system is out of practice on real threats.
PS you might want to be a bit sceptical about studies: One that I conducted myself in 1977 showed that 100% of heroin addicts ate cornflakes as children.
A more recent study by a close friend of mine showed that at least 30% of teenagers lie in surveys on subjects related to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Japan banned the MMR shot in 1993 and their previously high levels of autism have gone down, and are way below the average of other first world nations.
Maybe because the children died of Measles, Mumps or rubella?
Its all very well saying that there is some evidence, mostly from very poor interpretation of studies designed to investigate something else, that MMR might be associated with something else. There is absolute certainly that without the immunisation, you are likely to get these diseases, and that if you do, you can get very badly damaged, or die. They may not be rampant diseases in your town, but the person next to you in the checkout queue may have jsut arrived from a part of the world where they kill 10% of children under 5.
Thinks... Maybe the rise in Autism is die to the fact that these kids would not reach the age where they could even talk in less industrialised societies?
In California, the spend on health care on sick kids in their first year of life exceeds the life-time earnigns of the average person on the planet.
The reason is pretty simple- the region locking is used to justify ripping off certain markets, with the justification that "volume is low in that market".
If there was only one world wide version, then either it would be priced for the Asian market, and 1/10 the price of what it sells for in the UK, or priced for America, and not sell at all in most of the world, where they couldn't pay US prices (But prices in the UK would fall 50%.)
Tales of technical difficulties, copyright restrictions, etc are all red herrings - its the economy, stupid.
Incidentally, we have a number of book sellers selling technical books (actual dead trees) like Oracle and Windows manuals which are clearly marked "for the Indian continent only" the printing and binding is clearly inferior to the authentic UK product, but personally, I'd rather pay half price when a "Unix Administration made Simple" book costs $100 here!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
The original quote was from a British minister of education in the early 1960's who said "You can divide people into two groups: those who can be further divided into other groups, and those who can't!" Of course computers were all decimal then.
This chance remark led to the introduciton of binary arithmetic. Since there were eight computers in the country, this rapidly led to the invention of Octal. (Can I say 073?)
No offense but this is an area where not much more can be done. You are taking in "alien" content, modifying it natively, then once again converting to alien format. These kinds of conversions are lossy by nature, esp. since MS Office formats are proprietary ancient messy "standard" I'm afraid that for most people, the ability to edit WORD docs and then send them back to the person that sent them to you, is ESSENTIAL. As in, if you can't do it, you don't get to eat.
No excuses, this has to be fixed if people are to live without a real copy of Word. I know it stinks, you know it stinks, but Its true, even if it stinks.
In or around 1988, I tried to GIVE my then employers (GEC) the IP for a system whereby CDs would be encrypted using an algorithm that had multiple decryption codes. Each purchaser could be give a unique key.
Furthermore, I predicted that forthcoming technology would make possible a massive increase in storage capacity, and assumed that the only viable way to use it for music would be to include a huge range of songs on a single DVD, and allow on-line purchase of keys to play those numbers that appealed to you. GEC*, claimed ths was "a really stupid idea" and refused to file a patent.
If it had been patented then, the patent would have expired by now, so I hereby announce that this concept is available under the BSD licence to anyone who wants it.
I personanaly have not bought any CDs, ever, BECAUSE THE MUSIC ON THEM REALLY SUCKS.
*So if you invested in GEC shares, and lost your money - just remember It was Lord Weinstock and Lord Prior what done it.
The MIPS architecture is miles better than x86 by any measure.
I would take a 266 MHz MIPS over a 1GHz Pentium.
However, there are other issues - a CPU is not a computer. What do they do for system bus? for VGA? Does the system use the satanic ATX format?
Assuming they have designed a half-way decent system, then the volume of the chinese market alone is equal to the whole of the rest of the world, and we can expect a new standard to replace the old "PC compatible".
With luck, this opens the way to end 25 years of supporting one of the worlds worst motherboard/CPU architectures.
I want one!, and I'll pay the price of a new Dell P4 for it if it is as stable as a Dell.
I have never worked in an office where the computers had sound. Its always disabled, as its most unlikely to be used for business purposes. That includes my own computer used for work.
In fact, of the seven computers in my house, only my son's laptop has sound in a usable condition.
I have no idea why people assume that just because some computers have sound, they all do.
And open source is jsut as bad as M$ - KDE spends hours compiling sound related stuff, even if you have no sound card, and then gripes that there are no drivers when you start it.
Slashdot Mirror
No - the new software will be rendered useless - the old x86 software will continue to run fine, whether under Wine, or old copies of Win95.
Like MS and the PC, it worked pretty well on first time buyers. However, there came a time, fist with mainframes, then with minis, when there were no more first time buyers - they people wised up!
People are now asking not what they can do for MS, but what MS can do for them
And making them pay money for a new set of bugs, and faster virus infection is not the answer that will sell kit.
Its right about now that people are saying "I dont want a new computer - I barely know how to use the one I have got, and that's taken me 6 years of learning. It aint broke, so I aint gonna fix it."
Give them two years more, and they will be saying [cue fiddle music, drink Jack Daniels] "I want want the nerds have - their machines don't keep falling off the road into the ditch."
I read a report on research into the habits of women who had migrated to Australia. It said most phone home frequently, some every day - but Brits often only phone on Birthdays and anniversaries, because they never lose the fear of high phone bills!
British Telecom recently found that by reducing the LD rate on weekends to 1/4, they doubled their revenue, because it reduced this fear barrier! We used to have a "peak rate" in the morning, but the government had to aboloish it, because it was found that a large secotor of industry was ordering employees not to use the phone in the morning, even if the worker sat idle till noon!
British phone rates are not just high - it is an established fact that they scare the sh*te out of customers!
I have over 30 years experience of embedded systems, and I would say that without exception the C ones were leaner, meaner and fitter than the C++ ones.
As for reusability, documentation is the key to reusability. It is conceivable that the syntax of some languages may help with this, but it seems there is more benefit in theory than in practice. All of us use the C standard library all the time (ie anyone using a browser is executing it) - now THAT is reusable. The Fortran library is widely reused, and no one ever accused Fortran of being object oriented. (I have heard Fortran users called "disoriented" :-)
I worked on CDC 6400, 6600 and 7600 - they all had 60 bit words.
Some people are perfectly happy with a PDP8! 0.666 MHz - Now that IS a serious downgrade!
I think its a safe bet that you would be in no hurry to tell them that If the punters can hear the music, then they can record it too - its one of the laws of physics. Of course they know that too, thats why they keep selling all those CDs the punter can't listen to!
Excluding applications
Typical FreeBSD install time = 1 hour. All hardware detected automatically. All drivers installed automatically.
Typical NT install time = 4 hours. Sound, VGA, Network card drivers all had to be downloaded from IBM support site, after identifying the exact make and model of the machine (not for the average non-tech person) and downloading drivers identified only by a hex number.
NT on average failed to install at least once on each machine (IBM P3 desktop) - FreeBSD did not fail to install on any of the four machines.
There is no way a non-tech person could Install NT. I have no experience of installing more recent versions of Windows. It was such a bad experience, I would avoid it at all costs. (However, getting NetBSD to boot over a network on 25 MHz Sparc for the first time took a week!)
I moved him to OpenOffice. I thought he would moan about it, but his only complaint is that it doesn't have his favourite font (Westminster).
He is well aware that I am pro-Unix, anti-windows, but now he knows why. Thats not indoctrination.
Another couple of years, and I'll introduce him to Tennex.
I believe it even predates Unix - thats Unix before PDP11! In those days there were 6 bits in a character, and 300 baud was a high speed line. Most of us used 75 baud systems! and a carriage return was up hill both ways
I have had enough of repeated reinstalls, user choces that vanish, nonexistant security, and SLWONESSSSSS!.
I use FreeBSD as my desktop,
BUT
I have to boot Windows to use
Hotmetal Pro 5 for web design ... Bluefish? Are you kidding?
MS Word - Sure i use OpenOffice Writer when I can (even on Windows), but if you get a Word DOC from someone, and have to edit and return it, you have to use Word ON Windows, else the fonts screw you.
CD Writing - FreeBSD does not admit that I own a CD writer, let alone use it! I have no idea why not, It is a supposedly supported one! And it was the same with my previous one! And when I sent an e-mail to Jeorg whatsisname, he was pretty offensive. MS may not actually give you support after charging for it, but at least they dont aggressively insult you.
Lets hope it doesn't have Fiat brakes or steering.
A good move for open source.
Reseach shows the more higly qualified an economist is, the poorer his predictions!
I was personally distressed and intimidated. Further more, I did not register, because the spam had the appearance of spam, and I assumed it was bogus!
Seymour Cray tried it after the 7600 and before making the Cray-1. He decided that regardless of the performance advantage, people wanted a computer that was KNOWN to work.
In this, like in most other things he did Cray was right
PS you might want to be a bit sceptical about studies: One that I conducted myself in 1977 showed that 100% of heroin addicts ate cornflakes as children.
A more recent study by a close friend of mine showed that at least 30% of teenagers lie in surveys on subjects related to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Maybe because the children died of Measles, Mumps or rubella?
Its all very well saying that there is some evidence, mostly from very poor interpretation of studies designed to investigate something else, that MMR might be associated with something else. There is absolute certainly that without the immunisation, you are likely to get these diseases, and that if you do, you can get very badly damaged, or die. They may not be rampant diseases in your town, but the person next to you in the checkout queue may have jsut arrived from a part of the world where they kill 10% of children under 5.
Thinks ... Maybe the rise in Autism is die to the fact that these kids would not reach the age where they could even talk in less industrialised societies?
In California, the spend on health care on sick kids in their first year of life exceeds the life-time earnigns of the average person on the planet.
If there was only one world wide version, then either it would be priced for the Asian market, and 1/10 the price of what it sells for in the UK, or priced for America, and not sell at all in most of the world, where they couldn't pay US prices (But prices in the UK would fall 50%.)
Tales of technical difficulties, copyright restrictions, etc are all red herrings - its the economy, stupid.
Incidentally, we have a number of book sellers selling technical books (actual dead trees) like Oracle and Windows manuals which are clearly marked "for the Indian continent only" the printing and binding is clearly inferior to the authentic UK product, but personally, I'd rather pay half price when a "Unix Administration made Simple" book costs $100 here!
The original quote was from a British minister of education in the early 1960's who said "You can divide people into two groups: those who can be further divided into other groups, and those who can't!" Of course computers were all decimal then.
This chance remark led to the introduciton of binary arithmetic. Since there were eight computers in the country, this rapidly led to the invention of Octal. (Can I say 073?)
Make sit real clear why the don't want Saddam to get nukes, doesnt it!
Do as I say, don't do as I do
I'm afraid that for most people, the ability to edit WORD docs and then send them back to the person that sent them to you, is ESSENTIAL. As in, if you can't do it, you don't get to eat.
No excuses, this has to be fixed if people are to live without a real copy of Word. I know it stinks, you know it stinks, but Its true, even if it stinks.
In or around 1988, I tried to GIVE my then employers (GEC) the IP for a system whereby CDs would be encrypted using an algorithm that had multiple decryption codes. Each purchaser could be give a unique key.
Furthermore, I predicted that forthcoming technology would make possible a massive increase in storage capacity, and assumed that the only viable way to use it for music would be to include a huge range of songs on a single DVD, and allow on-line purchase of keys to play those numbers that appealed to you. GEC*, claimed ths was "a really stupid idea" and refused to file a patent.
If it had been patented then, the patent would have expired by now, so I hereby announce that this concept is available under the BSD licence to anyone who wants it.
I personanaly have not bought any CDs, ever, BECAUSE THE MUSIC ON THEM REALLY SUCKS.
*So if you invested in GEC shares, and lost your money - just remember It was Lord Weinstock and Lord Prior what done it.
I would take a 266 MHz MIPS over a 1GHz Pentium. However, there are other issues - a CPU is not a computer. What do they do for system bus? for VGA? Does the system use the satanic ATX format?
Assuming they have designed a half-way decent system, then the volume of the chinese market alone is equal to the whole of the rest of the world, and we can expect a new standard to replace the old "PC compatible".
With luck, this opens the way to end 25 years of supporting one of the worlds worst motherboard/CPU architectures.
I want one!, and I'll pay the price of a new Dell P4 for it if it is as stable as a Dell.
In fact, of the seven computers in my house, only my son's laptop has sound in a usable condition.
I have no idea why people assume that just because some computers have sound, they all do.
And open source is jsut as bad as M$ - KDE spends hours compiling sound related stuff, even if you have no sound card, and then gripes that there are no drivers when you start it.