But I didn't really think all that many people really identify themselves with republicans or democrats so strongly that they don't make their own decisions
And yet, the illusion is created that we're a nation of two competing halves - Republican vs. Democrat. It's a strong illusion, and everytime a Republican gets elected, it appears that the nation has overwhelmingly "spoken", and given the candidate the authority to go "do his/her Republican thing", when that really isn't the case. Same goes for an elected Democrat.
The IBM design cuts the number of instructions per processor down to a considerably more manageable 57.
This is from the piece about developing the supercomputer that will do a quadrillion instructions per second. Heinz always insisted his company have only 57 varieties because he was convinced 57 was a magical number. I guess he was right.
Re:Why I use Windows, and not Linux (Score:2) by G27 Radio on Friday December 24, @08:44AM EST (#100) (User Info) http://g27.org I use Windows becuase it's easy to install a program, becuase it's easy to see what im doing, where im going and how to get there. I use it because when i want an mp3 dbasing util, i can download a single package, and install it with a mouse click. I don't need to hunt for an obscure library file, i don't need to make sure that it will run with the Window Manager i want to use, i don't need to decode version numbers of updates to work out what i need and don't need. This may sound lazy, but i don't have the time to do this, i don't have the energy to do this, i don't have the knowledge to do this.
This is an excellent point which I forgot to mention. There are several programs make installation and un-installation easier (like RedHat Package Manager.) But no one seems to have agreed on a standard for this kind of thing. Most software is still distributed as gzipped tape archives...which is a great format for many reasons.
tar xvfz package.tar.gz cd package ./configure make install
^ is pretty easy when you know how it works, but there's no reason that this couldn't somehow be condensed into a double-click.
But, what about when it doesn't work? What if you don't have the right c libraries? This happened to me and it was extremely frustrating. I'm not familiar with UNIX, but I'm not clueless. I just never studied computers in school, thus never been much exposed to UNIX. So, in this situation, I'm out of luck without help at every turn.
We're awfully computer-centric around here. What about the scientists who discovered a 100% cure for a particularly lethal form of Leukemia?
Their cure uses a kinase inhibitor, which is a fairly new area of study, in terms of cancer research. Their success shows that studying kinase inhibitors is a valid approach, and it could well lead to many other cancer cures in the next 5-10 years.
Some would argue that splitting the stock is an artificial way to increase it's market value, mostly by the mechanisms you describe. They mask the real and true data of how the company is actually doing, and try to get people to buy with these psychological tricks. Shareholders might say this is a good thing to do - it makes my stock go up, but some would suggest that artificially inflating the market is a bad idea. I generally would agree that it is bad to do.
So either they've become much more inefficient (unlikely), or, they're investing more aggressively (very likely). Whether I (as a hypothetical shareholder) think this is good depends on whether I think their business plan warrants, and will repay, the risk.
It seems obvious that they are simply investing more aggressively (partnering with Dell, buying Cygnus being primary evidence of this).
Personally, I'd be more concerned that their revenue grew only 24%. That just doesn't seem high enough for all the hype around RedHat, Linux, and their stock price. At that rate, it will take them approx. 3 years to reach 12 million in annual revenue. Another 3 to reach 25 million....... They'd better ramp up that growth rate in the next year, or it won't be good. But, I expect they will.
Is this article typical of the quality of Wired.com? It was inaccurate, insulting, and inflammatory. They made Stallman out to be a raving madman (some say he is, some not, but it seems a new report ought to let the man's words speak for themselves).
And Stallman created Linux? Huh?
And the comments from the Amazon guy were laughable.
It all depends on market value. If the stock plunged to what common sense would dictate the company was "really" worth, there'd probably be a number of companies lining up to buy them out, thus driving the stock price up (unless a majority of shares were held back by RedHat to prevent this).
Losses are not really indicative that the company isn't worth anything. They made money - they just are re-investing it, which is exactly what they should do. If you could declare a loss to the government, even though you'd made all sorts of money, I'm sure you would, to avoid taxes.
They didn't make that much money. 5.4 million is a piddling amount. I had no idea they were that small. I'd say they will need to continue "losing" for a long time, especially once you realize that "losing" money is another way of saying they re-invested it into growing the business. This avoids losing the money to taxes and shareholders.
Excellent points! However, I have a complaint with your fourth bullet -
Extent to which it encourages good behaviour (the idea behind very heavy cigarette and fuel taxes).
It seems undesirable and inefficient to have the government determining good social behavior. Enumerating countless deductibles increases the cost of paying taxes (due to increased number and complexity of forms), and levying specialized taxes (like on cigarettes and gas) is questionably punishing people unfairly. Let social norms determine good social behavior, not legislatures.
People often think that fighting on two fronts was what lost the war for Germany. It seems like such an obvious point, it doesn't often get questioned. Plus Britain and America had success fighting Germany - we met the Russian's in Berlin, right?
The problem is, were we successful because of the Russian's sucking resources from Germany, or vice-versa? Another way to ask, if it were just Russia and Germany, would Russia still have won? If it were just the US and Britain, would we still have won? The answer is yes to the first, and no to the second. Russia outproduced everyone by such a huge margin, it was ridiculous. Plus they came out with the best tanks in the end. The sheer numbers of troops and tanks on the eastern front absolutely dwarfed everything that was going on in the West. We were pretty insignificant, even if we did have our victories. Even if D-Day does seem overwhelmingly huge to us.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the US didn't save anyone in WW2 - that was all Russia's doing. Don't believe me? Go learn some history. Russia beat Germany. We were a minor blip. (Yes, I said we - I'm American).
Petty? Naive? What is petty about a boycott? It's a foundation of consumer power. You don't buy what you don't like. Perhaps you're thinking of past national boycott's of Olympics, that being petty because it punishes your own athletes for questionable political values. But a boycott against Amazon for a reason such as this is not petty.
Nor do I think it's naive. It's like that argument, don't vote for the third party cause you're just wasting your vote. Bull, I'm not wasting my vote. I'm sending a message, and who I vote for does not change the power of the message. Same with my money. Maybe my $100 alone doesn't mean much to Amazon, but there it is. Whether it goes to Amazon or not, it's power is still exactly the power of $100, and they won't get it.
I think Amazon and the two big political parties have something in common - they both stand to gain if they convince us it's "naive" to vote alternatively. Don't fall for it.
I don't think so, mainly because co-source will never represent more than a tiny fraction of open source programmers
Hmmmm, that just seems short-sighted. We'll never need more than 640k either..... we'd never sell more than 2-3 computers..... linux will never challenge Windows on the desktop....etc, etc..
If it's successfull, and many open-source programmers start taking in money for their pet projects, they will most likey be more inclined to get funding for all their other work too, and other programmers are gonna start saying, "well, if they get paid for doing that, I should get paid for doing this!"
If it's successful, you can't say it will never get big.
I like the idea behind Co-Source a lot, but.... What happens to a developer who has an itch, and wants to write some software, but decides, "hey, I can put this up at co-source and see if I can get some money for it to boot!" So, the developer enters a request, then a proposal and sits back to wait for money commitments.
Meanwhile, he isn't doing any coding......
Soon, if money isn't forthcoming for his project, he has to decide between swallowing his pride and going ahead with coding it "for nothing", or continuing to wait.
I guess it's worrisome that we might lose the give-and-get spirit of open source, and become a give-only-if-you-get type thing.
Seems to me Linux works with a lot of systems - very nicely too, most of the time. The "weight" that Microsoft carries is all of their own making. By keeping their API's secret, their open to this sort of "mistake". Secrecy, constantly changing them - they put the burden of making things work squarely on their own shoulders. If they were more open, the onus to make software that works on Windows would more naturally rest on the makers of said software. But that is not what Microsoft wants.
Many commentators loudly mourn the innovations that might have happened had Microsoft not suppressed them, but they are shy of naming them. None seem to see the innovations Microsoft has made to Windows, which now incorporates dozens of items we used to buy from third parties. These include calculators, text and programming editors, search functions, games, file viewers, audio recorders and players, networking, and, dare I say it, Web browsers. None of these are necessarily the best of their class, but most are adequate, and their inclusion does not harm consumers -- although it may well harm competitors.
Pournelle argues MS became a monopoly by being making better business decision than IBM and Apple. Well, duh - that's not the point. The point is, NOW they are a monopoly, and there're are laws governing how monopolies operate. Question - did they break those laws?
Innovation.
None seem to see the innovations Microsoft has made to Windows, which now incorporates dozens of items we used to buy from third parties
Incorporating software that mimics what third party software does into the OS is NOT innovative. innovation is what we call it when someone develops something new. Making it easier for a consumer to have a calculator on the system is not new, it's a marketing strategy and a way of shutting out a competitor. It's a fine tactic, even legal, unless you're a monopoly.
And it does hurt consumers in the long run, because no competition is possible in these areas, thus little reason to improve these systems. Do remember the browser wars? Do you remember how FAST the browsers were improving? How fast are they improving now? Oh, and BTW, how do you like that crappy little calculator that does come with windows? I use it all the time, but I sure wish there was an exponential function, etc, etc.
This is not innovation, and it is clearly using their monopoly in one area to dominate another area (a clear violation of the anti-trust laws if I understand them correctly).
Does anyone else find it completely assinine of the Dow Jones to add in Microsoft when it's a distinct possibility that Microsoft may not exist 5 years from now because it might get broken into tiny pieces?
Actually, if done right, the chance of having the service should be increased this way. With redundant CORBA servers doing the work, one down server is transparently "covered for" by another, all at run-time. CORBA is way cool for this sort of thing. The only trouble spot is the network cable and routers. But many employees go days and weeks waiting for support to come fix their problem when their individual computer breaks.
Which brings me to your first point, that it's not the expense of the hardware that's the issue, its the expense of maintenance when everything that breaks rests on thousands and thousands of individual desktops, rather than in one central location. Updates, maintenance, fixing things is a nightmare in most places today.
I'd never do it at home (puhleeese!), but I would expect a smart company to look at this seriously for in house stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
But I didn't really think all that many people really identify themselves with republicans or democrats so strongly that they don't make their own decisions
And yet, the illusion is created that we're a nation of two competing halves - Republican vs. Democrat. It's a strong illusion, and everytime a Republican gets elected, it appears that the nation has overwhelmingly "spoken", and given the candidate the authority to go "do his/her Republican thing", when that really isn't the case. Same goes for an elected Democrat.
The IBM design cuts the number of instructions per processor down to a considerably more manageable 57.
This is from the piece about developing the supercomputer that will do a quadrillion instructions per second. Heinz always insisted his company have only 57 varieties because he was convinced 57 was a magical number. I guess he was right.
Re:Why I use Windows, and not Linux (Score:2)
./configure
by G27 Radio on Friday December 24, @08:44AM EST (#100)
(User Info) http://g27.org
I use Windows becuase it's easy to install a program, becuase it's easy to see what im doing, where im going and how to get
there. I use it because when i want an mp3 dbasing util, i can download a single package, and install it with a mouse click. I
don't need to hunt for an obscure library file, i don't need to make sure that it will run with the Window Manager i want to use, i
don't need to decode version numbers of updates to work out what i need and don't need. This may sound lazy, but i don't have
the time to do this, i don't have the energy to do this, i don't have the knowledge to do this.
This is an excellent point which I forgot to mention. There are several programs make installation and un-installation easier (like RedHat
Package Manager.) But no one seems to have agreed on a standard for this kind of thing. Most software is still distributed as gzipped
tape archives...which is a great format for many reasons.
tar xvfz package.tar.gz
cd package
make install
^ is pretty easy when you know how it works, but there's no reason that this couldn't somehow be condensed into a double-click.
But, what about when it doesn't work? What if you don't have the right c libraries? This happened to me and it was extremely frustrating. I'm not familiar with UNIX, but I'm not clueless. I just never studied computers in school, thus never been much exposed to UNIX. So, in this situation, I'm out of luck without help at every turn.
You're right! Katz introduced that term. I wonder why he did that? The Time Magazine thing is called "Man of the Year".
We're awfully computer-centric around here. What about the scientists who discovered a 100% cure for a particularly lethal form of Leukemia?
Their cure uses a kinase inhibitor, which is a fairly new area of study, in terms of cancer research. Their success shows that studying kinase inhibitors is a valid approach, and it could well lead to many other cancer cures in the next 5-10 years.
to be picking person of the year. Some terrorist (or heroic security person) might change our minds come Dec. 31!
Aha! I've been spouting off about how 24% growth didn't seem so hot to me, so thank you for making this clear.
63% is very respectable, and a world of difference from 24%.
(switching to my on-lin broker......)
Some would argue that splitting the stock is an artificial way to increase it's market value, mostly by the mechanisms you describe. They mask the real and true data of how the company is actually doing, and try to get people to buy with these psychological tricks. Shareholders might say this is a good thing to do - it makes my stock go up, but some would suggest that artificially inflating the market is a bad idea. I generally would agree that it is bad to do.
Great sig, btw!!
So either they've become much more inefficient (unlikely), or, they're investing more aggressively (very likely). Whether I (as a hypothetical shareholder) think this is good depends on whether I think their business plan warrants, and will repay, the risk.
It seems obvious that they are simply investing more aggressively (partnering with Dell, buying Cygnus being primary evidence of this).
Personally, I'd be more concerned that their revenue grew only 24%. That just doesn't seem high enough for all the hype around RedHat, Linux, and their stock price. At that rate, it will take them approx. 3 years to reach 12 million in annual revenue. Another 3 to reach 25 million.......
They'd better ramp up that growth rate in the next year, or it won't be good. But, I expect they will.
Is this article typical of the quality of Wired.com? It was inaccurate, insulting, and inflammatory. They made Stallman out to be a raving madman (some say he is, some not, but it seems a new report ought to let the man's words speak for themselves).
And Stallman created Linux? Huh?
And the comments from the Amazon guy were laughable.
It all depends on market value. If the stock plunged to what common sense would dictate the company was "really" worth, there'd probably be a number of companies lining up to buy them out, thus driving the stock price up (unless a majority of shares were held back by RedHat to prevent this).
Losses are not really indicative that the company isn't worth anything. They made money - they just are re-investing it, which is exactly what they should do. If you could declare a loss to the government, even though you'd made all sorts of money, I'm sure you would, to avoid taxes.
They didn't make that much money. 5.4 million is a piddling amount. I had no idea they were that small. I'd say they will need to continue "losing" for a long time, especially once you realize that "losing" money is another way of saying they re-invested it into growing the business. This avoids losing the money to taxes and shareholders.
24% growth doesn't seem like fast enough growth to justify the way their stock price has grown.
Extent to which it encourages good behaviour (the idea behind very heavy cigarette and fuel taxes).
It seems undesirable and inefficient to have the government determining good social behavior. Enumerating countless deductibles increases the cost of paying taxes (due to increased number and complexity of forms), and levying specialized taxes (like on cigarettes and gas) is questionably punishing people unfairly. Let social norms determine good social behavior, not legislatures.
People often think that fighting on two fronts was what lost the war for Germany. It seems like such an obvious point, it doesn't often get questioned. Plus Britain and America had success fighting Germany - we met the Russian's in Berlin, right?
The problem is, were we successful because of the Russian's sucking resources from Germany, or vice-versa? Another way to ask, if it were just Russia and Germany, would Russia still have won? If it were just the US and Britain, would we still have won? The answer is yes to the first, and no to the second. Russia outproduced everyone by such a huge margin, it was ridiculous. Plus they came out with the best tanks in the end. The sheer numbers of troops and tanks on the eastern front absolutely dwarfed everything that was going on in the West. We were pretty insignificant, even if we did have our victories. Even if D-Day does seem overwhelmingly huge to us.
This got moderated up to a 4????????????????
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the US didn't save anyone in WW2 - that was all Russia's doing. Don't believe me? Go learn some history. Russia beat Germany. We were a minor blip. (Yes, I said we - I'm American).
Petty? Naive? What is petty about a boycott? It's a foundation of consumer power. You don't buy what you don't like. Perhaps you're thinking of past national boycott's of Olympics, that being petty because it punishes your own athletes for questionable political values. But a boycott against Amazon for a reason such as this is not petty.
Nor do I think it's naive. It's like that argument, don't vote for the third party cause you're just wasting your vote. Bull, I'm not wasting my vote. I'm sending a message, and who I vote for does not change the power of the message. Same with my money. Maybe my $100 alone doesn't mean much to Amazon, but there it is. Whether it goes to Amazon or not, it's power is still exactly the power of $100, and they won't get it.
I think Amazon and the two big political parties have something in common - they both stand to gain if they convince us it's "naive" to vote alternatively. Don't fall for it.
I don't think so, mainly because co-source will never represent more than a tiny fraction of open source programmers
Hmmmm, that just seems short-sighted. We'll never need more than 640k either..... we'd never sell more than 2-3 computers..... linux will never challenge Windows on the desktop....etc, etc..
If it's successfull, and many open-source programmers start taking in money for their pet projects, they will most likey be more inclined to get funding for all their other work too, and other programmers are gonna start saying, "well, if they get paid for doing that, I should get paid for doing this!"
If it's successful, you can't say it will never get big.
I like the idea behind Co-Source a lot, but....
What happens to a developer who has an itch, and wants to write some software, but decides, "hey, I can put this up at co-source and see if I can get some money for it to boot!" So, the developer enters a request, then a proposal and sits back to wait for money commitments.
Meanwhile, he isn't doing any coding......
Soon, if money isn't forthcoming for his project, he has to decide between swallowing his pride and going ahead with coding it "for nothing", or continuing to wait.
I guess it's worrisome that we might lose the give-and-get spirit of open source, and become a give-only-if-you-get type thing.
Seems to me Linux works with a lot of systems - very nicely too, most of the time. The "weight" that Microsoft carries is all of their own making. By keeping their API's secret, their open to this sort of "mistake". Secrecy, constantly changing them - they put the burden of making things work squarely on their own shoulders. If they were more open, the onus to make software that works on Windows would more naturally rest on the makers of said software. But that is not what Microsoft wants.
Companies buy the server software, implement a corporate wide productivity suite over their intranet. Sysadmin job becomes easier. Saves money.
Think intranet, not internet.
Pournelle argues MS became a monopoly by being making better business decision than IBM and Apple. Well, duh - that's not the point. The point is, NOW they are a monopoly, and there're are laws governing how monopolies operate. Question - did they break those laws?
Innovation.
Incorporating software that mimics what third party software does into the OS is NOT innovative. innovation is what we call it when someone develops something new. Making it easier for a consumer to have a calculator on the system is not new, it's a marketing strategy and a way of shutting out a competitor. It's a fine tactic, even legal, unless you're a monopoly.
And it does hurt consumers in the long run, because no competition is possible in these areas, thus little reason to improve these systems. Do remember the browser wars? Do you remember how FAST the browsers were improving? How fast are they improving now? Oh, and BTW, how do you like that crappy little calculator that does come with windows? I use it all the time, but I sure wish there was an exponential function, etc, etc.
This is not innovation, and it is clearly using their monopoly in one area to dominate another area (a clear violation of the anti-trust laws if I understand them correctly).
To summarize, I think Pournelle's full of crap.
Does anyone else find it completely assinine of the Dow Jones to add in Microsoft when it's a distinct possibility that Microsoft may not exist 5 years from now because it might get broken into tiny pieces?
Actually, if done right, the chance of having the service should be increased this way. With redundant CORBA servers doing the work, one down server is transparently "covered for" by another, all at run-time. CORBA is way cool for this sort of thing. The only trouble spot is the network cable and routers. But many employees go days and weeks waiting for support to come fix their problem when their individual computer breaks.
Which brings me to your first point, that it's not the expense of the hardware that's the issue, its the expense of maintenance when everything that breaks rests on thousands and thousands of individual desktops, rather than in one central location. Updates, maintenance, fixing things is a nightmare in most places today.
I'd never do it at home (puhleeese!), but I would expect a smart company to look at this seriously for in house stuff.