Microsoft seems to have a tradition of doing this kind of ad parody. I remember seeing one in the early 1990s that was a parody of the You Will television ads that AT&T was running at the time. There was a scene with a woman walking along a beach while wearing a large straw hat. The hat suddenly beeps, the woman takes it off her head, and there is a piece of paper sticking out. Voice over narration: "Have you ever received a fax in your hat on the beach? You will.... and the company that will bring it to you is..."
At the time that the standard kilogram was reported to be losing mass, an opinion column by Crispin Sartwell in the Los Angeles Times on June 3, 2003 pointed out that this was a weapon of mass destruction:
"....Now one suspects that in the long run the kilogram cylinder will continue to shed atoms. By my calculations (or rather, those of my wife, who can do stuff like multiply), at a rate of 50 micrograms per century, the cylinder will disappear entirely in 200 billion years.
Then the kilogram itself will disappear, which entails that all objects will weigh an infinite number of kilograms: Any given feather or dust mote will be infinitely heavy. And, at that point, the universe will collapse under the influence of infinite gravity into a disk about the size of a lentil, inhaling everything into a dimensional wormhole. And that will suck, with infinite force and acceleration.
In other words, that standard kilo platinum-iridium cylinder is the smoking gun, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction."
Part of the answer is that the survey respondents were asked to rate companies on three criteria: "Overall Reputation, Perception of Management and Investment Potential". So presumably a company might be excluded because the respondents think its stock is overpriced. Maybe that's why Google isn't on the list (especially if the survey was taken when their stock price was still above $600), despite the fact that they are so well known that their name has become a verb.:-)
By the way, I'm not sure how it makes sense to say "these are corporate brands, not consumer brands." Of the top 11 companies, all but two (FedEx and UPS) derive the overwhelming majority of their revenue from selling consumer products. Perhaps you meant "these are corporate identity brands, not brands for particular products."
This was in the news in mid-2003. On June 3 of that year, the Los Angeles Times ran a very funny column by Crispin Sartwell ("Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art") titled "Kilo Crisis Could Bring Down the Universe," which is unfortunately no longer available for free on their website. Here's an excerpt:
The kilogram is defined as the weight of the standard cylinder, whatever it may be. It is logically impossible for the kilo cylinder to lose or gain weight, at least within the metric system of measurement, because it is itself the standard by which all weights must be judged.
Thus it is impossible to "discover" that the cylinder has lost weight. The instruments by which the cylinder is weighed are wrong because the cylinder itself, by definition, is always right. Indeed, it is possible that the rest of the material in the universe, including the silicon atom, has become slightly heavier. But it is not possible that the weight of that cylinder has changed.
[....]
Now one suspects that in the long run the kilogram cylinder will continue to shed atoms. By my calculations (or rather, those of my wife, who can do stuff like multiply), at a rate of 50 micrograms per century, the cylinder will disappear entirely in 200 billion years.
Then the kilogram itself will disappear, which entails that all objects will weigh an infinite number of kilograms: Any given feather or dust mote will be infinitely heavy. And, at that point, the universe will collapse under the influence of infinite gravity into a disk about the size of a lentil, inhaling everything into a dimensional wormhole. And that will suck, with infinite force and acceleration.
In other words, that standard kilo platinum-iridium cylinder is the smoking gun, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
The Journal of Political Economy (JPE) is one of the three or four leading academic economics journals in the US (possibly even in the world), and the papers it publishes are extensively peer reviewed prior to publication. (Not to mention the fact that the economics department at the Univ. of Chicago, which publishes the JPE, is well known for its enthusiasm for property rights and markets.) So the appearance of this study in the JPE will give it a lot of credibility with academic economists.
Microsoft has been using "It just works" as the slogan for Windows since prior to the release of Windows XP. Here's a
comment that was posted to rec.humor.funny in May 2001:
Microsoft Windows slogans
wc@speakeasy.net (John B. Williston)
After first seeing Microsoft's slogan for its upcoming Windows XP operating system, "it just works," I couldn't help wondering: what were the slogans for all the previous releases? After thinking about it for a while, they became obvious.
Windows 1.0: Good joke, eh?
Windows 2.0: Still funny, isn't it?
Windows 286: Yeah, we're still kidding.
Windows 386: Going boldly where Desqview has been for years.
Windows 3.0: It's finally worth buying!
Windows 3.1: It's finally worth using!
Windows 95: Going boldly where the Mac has been for years.
Windows 98: More usable! Less stable!
Windows 98SE: More stable! Less usable!
Windows ME: Less usable AND less stable!
NT 1.0: Give me more hardware! NOW!!!
NT 2.0: Dammit, I said MORE HARDWARE!!! NOW!!!!
NT 3.0: Which part of "more hardware" do you not understand?
NT 3.5: With enough hardware, I'd work. Honest.
NT 4.0: Does less than Win98 with twice the hardware at one-half the speed.
Windows 2K: Works almost as well as Windows 98! Honest!
Windows XP: It just works.
According to the National Academies press release announcing the report, they won't be making it available on the Web. Printed copies will be available for sale for $40. So not only will it be out of date at the time it is released, it will also be inaccessible to most of the peopele who might be interested!
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the song "Mandelbrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton. His site seems to be unavailable right now, but a cached copy of the lyrics can be found on Google. The first part of the song is as follows:
"Pathological monsters!" cried the terrified mathematician.
"Every one of them is a splinter in my eye.
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve,
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set, and the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry."
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born
His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down
Chorus
Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
It really has to be heard to be believed -- you can download an MP3 file when the site is online.
My understanding, based solely on reading the forums at dslreports.com is that Verizon wants monopoly rights to the fibre they are laying. As in no second source ISP like Covad or Earthlink would be able to lease bandwidth or connectivity on the fibre lines at (low) state-set rates, like they are able to today on the copper lines.
Ummm... the rules about whether or not a local exchange carrier has to "unbundle" network elements -- i.e. resell them to competitors -- are set by the Federal Communications Commission, not by state public utility commissions or state legislatures.
The FCC ruled on Oct. 22 that fiber to the home (FTTH) and fiber to the curb (FTTC) were exempt from the unbundling requirements.
Verizon had previously announced plans to have FTTH available to 1 million subscribers by 12/31/2004, and to an additional 2 million by 12/31/2005. The day before the FCC's action, they announced availability of FTTH in parts of 6 northeast and mid-Atlantic states -- see the end of the announcement for the list of counties where it will be available.
Here's what Don Knuth had to say on the subject a number of years ago:
A note on email versus e-mail
Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write ``non-zero'' and ``soft-ware'' instead of ``nonzero'' and ``software''; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling ``e-mail''. Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form ``email'' has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, ``email'' has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different reason.)
One somewhat ironic aspect of this is that 321 Studios used mandatory activation to protect their software (at least with DVD XCopy Express). So if the company totally ceased operation without a successor taking over, there would be no way to install the software they've sold in the past on any new computer.
Apparently that is not the case (at least not yet). According to their FAQ, "You will be able to activate your 321 product online either through the computer where the software is installed or through another computer which is online, using a floppy disk. Telephone activation will not be available."
The Intel XScale processor is indeed based on intellectual property licensed from ARM, but the situation is a little more complex than that. Intel's license agreement with ARM (which Intel acquired when it bought DEC's semiconductor business in the 1990s) allows Intel greater flexibility in implementing ARM-based processors than is granted to most other ARM licensees.
ARM maintains very tight control over its architecture, giving most of its licensees virtually no freedom in how they choose to implement the processor. The exceptions to this rule are Intel and Motorola, which are unique among the many dozens of ARM licensees in that they can design their own ARM-compatible processor
cores. Whereas other ARM licensees simply use the processors that ARM provides to them, Intel and Motorola can extend, create, or modify ARM's designs to create their own unique implementations of the ARM architecture. So long as the resulting chip remains compatible with ARM software, Motorola and Intel are free to experiment with
high-performance or low-power designs. This gives both Intel and Motorola a substantial advantage over the many other ARM licensees, all of which are competing with products based on identical processor cores.
This posting implies something that is worth making explicit. Until now, there has been only one satellite-based Global Positioning System, the U.S.-operated Navstar system, and the term "GPS" has been used to describe both the general concept and the specific implementation.
Now that the world is on the verge of having more than one GPS system, shouldn't we refer to the first system as Navstar, and use the term "GPS" generically to refer to all such systems?
Under the logic of the French copyright law, the only way you'd be entitled to compensation from sales of Windows (in case it is used to spread viruses) is if you wrote the virus and then copyrighted it!
Microsoft Research has a number of projects looking at user interfaces that anticipate our needs etc. -- see for example http://research.microsoft.com/adapt.
I'm not sure whether I find this encouraging or frightening. When you describe it the way Borkar did ("anticipate our needs and sometimes take action on our behalf") it sounds positive. However, if you describe it as "computer systems that don't always display consistent behavior," maybe it's not such a good thing.
I remember seeing a presentation at the Hot Chips conference (www.hotchips.org) a number of years ago. At the beginning of the session, the presenter (an IBM research scientist) was having problems getting Powerpoint to work right on his notebook computer. His comment: "I love the non-determinism of Windows."
"Received shares of stock and sold it the same day" means that a company employee exercised options (which is how they received the stock) and then sold the stock.
That's pretty normal -- in many cases, you wouldn't exercise your options UNLESS you were planning to sell the stock (or unless the options were about to expire) -- otherwise, you would continue to hold the options and not have to put up the cash to purchase the stock. (Also, there is a tax liability associated with the option exercise, so you often have to sell at least some of the stock to pay the tax.)
The real question is, what made Mr. Johnson decide that this was a good time to exercise his options and sell the stock?
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft seems to have a tradition of doing this kind of ad parody. I remember seeing one in the early 1990s that was a parody of the You Will television ads that AT&T was running at the time. There was a scene with a woman walking along a beach while wearing a large straw hat. The hat suddenly beeps, the woman takes it off her head, and there is a piece of paper sticking out. Voice over narration: "Have you ever received a fax in your hat on the beach? You will.... and the company that will bring it to you is..."
At the time that the standard kilogram was reported to be losing mass, an opinion column by Crispin Sartwell in the Los Angeles Times on June 3, 2003 pointed out that this was a weapon of mass destruction:
"....Now one suspects that in the long run the kilogram cylinder will continue to shed atoms. By my calculations (or rather, those of my wife, who can do stuff like multiply), at a rate of 50 micrograms per century, the cylinder will disappear entirely in 200 billion years.
Then the kilogram itself will disappear, which entails that all objects will weigh an infinite number of kilograms: Any given feather or dust mote will be infinitely heavy. And, at that point, the universe will collapse under the influence of infinite gravity into a disk about the size of a lentil, inhaling everything into a dimensional wormhole. And that will suck, with infinite force and acceleration.
In other words, that standard kilo platinum-iridium cylinder is the smoking gun, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction."
Part of the answer is that the survey respondents were asked to rate companies on three criteria: "Overall Reputation, Perception of Management and Investment Potential". So presumably a company might be excluded because the respondents think its stock is overpriced. Maybe that's why Google isn't on the list (especially if the survey was taken when their stock price was still above $600), despite the fact that they are so well known that their name has become a verb. :-)
By the way, I'm not sure how it makes sense to say "these are corporate brands, not consumer brands." Of the top 11 companies, all but two (FedEx and UPS) derive the overwhelming majority of their revenue from selling consumer products. Perhaps you meant "these are corporate identity brands, not brands for particular products."
The Journal of Political Economy (JPE) is one of the three or four leading academic economics journals in the US (possibly even in the world), and the papers it publishes are extensively peer reviewed prior to publication. (Not to mention the fact that the economics department at the Univ. of Chicago, which publishes the JPE, is well known for its enthusiasm for property rights and markets.) So the appearance of this study in the JPE will give it a lot of credibility with academic economists.
Note that the map cited in the Slate article was copyrighted in 2001 -- not exactly a current source of information.
According to the National Academies press release announcing the report, they won't be making it available on the Web. Printed copies will be available for sale for $40. So not only will it be out of date at the time it is released, it will also be inaccessible to most of the peopele who might be interested!
Jonathan Schwartz is Sun's president and chief operating officer. Scott McNealy is chairman and CEO.
It really has to be heard to be believed -- you can download an MP3 file when the site is online.
My understanding, based solely on reading the forums at dslreports.com is that Verizon wants monopoly rights to the fibre they are laying. As in no second source ISP like Covad or Earthlink would be able to lease bandwidth or connectivity on the fibre lines at (low) state-set rates, like they are able to today on the copper lines.
Ummm... the rules about whether or not a local exchange carrier has to "unbundle" network elements -- i.e. resell them to competitors -- are set by the Federal Communications Commission, not by state public utility commissions or state legislatures.
The FCC ruled on Oct. 22 that fiber to the home (FTTH) and fiber to the curb (FTTC) were exempt from the unbundling requirements.
Verizon had previously announced plans to have FTTH available to 1 million subscribers by 12/31/2004, and to an additional 2 million by 12/31/2005. The day before the FCC's action, they announced availability of FTTH in parts of 6 northeast and mid-Atlantic states -- see the end of the announcement for the list of counties where it will be available.
One somewhat ironic aspect of this is that 321 Studios used mandatory activation to protect their software (at least with DVD XCopy Express). So if the company totally ceased operation without a successor taking over, there would be no way to install the software they've sold in the past on any new computer.
Apparently that is not the case (at least not yet). According to their FAQ, "You will be able to activate your 321 product online either through the computer where the software is installed or through another computer which is online, using a floppy disk. Telephone activation will not be available."
Here's how we described the relationship in the PricewaterhouseCoopers publication Technology Forecast: 2002-2004 :
Bruce Sterling once referred to the ill-fated Teledesic low earth orbit satellite system as "Microsoft Windows for Spaceships."
"Windows for Supercomputers" probably makes about as much sense and has about as good a chance of succeeding.
This posting implies something that is worth making explicit. Until now, there has been only one satellite-based Global Positioning System, the U.S.-operated Navstar system, and the term "GPS" has been used to describe both the general concept and the specific implementation.
Now that the world is on the verge of having more than one GPS system, shouldn't we refer to the first system as Navstar, and use the term "GPS" generically to refer to all such systems?
Under the logic of the French copyright law, the only way you'd be entitled to compensation from sales of Windows (in case it is used to spread viruses) is if you wrote the virus and then copyrighted it!
Microsoft Research has a number of projects looking at user interfaces that anticipate our needs etc. -- see for example http://research.microsoft.com/adapt.
I'm not sure whether I find this encouraging or frightening. When you describe it the way Borkar did ("anticipate our needs and sometimes take action on our behalf") it sounds positive. However, if you describe it as "computer systems that don't always display consistent behavior," maybe it's not such a good thing.
I remember seeing a presentation at the Hot Chips conference (www.hotchips.org) a number of years ago. At the beginning of the session, the presenter (an IBM research scientist) was having problems getting Powerpoint to work right on his notebook computer. His comment: "I love the non-determinism of Windows."
"Received shares of stock and sold it the same day" means that a company employee exercised options (which is how they received the stock) and then sold the stock. That's pretty normal -- in many cases, you wouldn't exercise your options UNLESS you were planning to sell the stock (or unless the options were about to expire) -- otherwise, you would continue to hold the options and not have to put up the cash to purchase the stock. (Also, there is a tax liability associated with the option exercise, so you often have to sell at least some of the stock to pay the tax.) The real question is, what made Mr. Johnson decide that this was a good time to exercise his options and sell the stock?