Correction: 80 feet of shelf space, not 40. See my 2005 comment, and a Slashdot story comparing EB and Wikipedia: Encyclopedia Britannica is much worse.
The Slashdot story says, "... one of the most revered founts of human
knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica."
That's not true in my experience. In my experience, Encyclopedia
Britannica salesmen used high-pressure tactics to sell encyclopedias to poor,
uneducated people by telling them that their children needed an encyclopedia
to become educated. Educated people knew it was better to go to the library.
EB has always been full of inadequate articles that were inadequate
because the EB wanted to seem comprehensive, so it had a lot of articles, but
didn't want to use a lot of expensive paper, so there was never enough space.
A good example was the EB article on Barbara
McClintock, 1983 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for her amazing, pioneering
work in genetics. Quote from Wikipedia: "In 1930, McClintock was the first
person to describe the cross-shaped interaction of homologous chromosomes
during meiosis. During 1931, McClintock and a graduate student, Harriet
Creighton, proved the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis and
the recombination of genetic traits."
Why did it take 53 years for Barbara McClintock to win her Nobel
Prize? Because other scientists had difficulty believing that genetic elements
could jump from chromosome to chromosome.
I haven't looked at an EB article in the paper edition in many years,
but at one time the EB article about Barbara McClintock was short, maybe 600
words, and gave no idea of the fact that her scientific papers are so
extensive they require 40 feet or more of shelf space.
The EB article about Barbara McClintock was subtly misleading in other
ways, also.
From the Wikipedia article: "The importance of McClintock's
contributions only came to light in the 1960s, when the work of French
geneticists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod described the genetic regulation
of the lac operon, a concept she had demonstrated with Ac/Ds in 1951."
Apparently because the controlling purpose of the EB has been to reduce
amount of paper required, and apparently because the EB has always been more
about creating a way for salesmen to be intimidating than about excellence, a
lot of the EB articles have been worse than useless, because they are
misleading.
The EB has been a vicious business run for profit, in my opinion. The
articles have always been lacking in excellence, because excellence would have
cost more.
Yes, Linspire has become useless. What company wants that legal baggage? Once again, Microsoft is adversarial.
The Groklaw analysis needs further translation. In my opinion, the contract says, effectively:
1) Microsoft can do anything it likes.
2) You have no rights.
Microsoft operating systems need constant attention that costs 10x as much as the original sale price, in my experience. According to Microsoft, you have no right to a good product.
This kind of thing has happened hundreds of times. My understanding is that historically in the last 20 years, when the buying company becomes an owner, and not just an investor:
1) The original executives of the bought company eventually leave, usually within 2 years.
2) The bought company declines rapidly.
If 1 happens, my understanding is that 2 will certainly happen. Hard to imagine Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites without Burt Rutan. His is a highly technical business that depends on accurate day-to-day management. Or can NG find a replacement for Burt Rutan? If they did find a replacement, would NG give enough power to that person?
"... one of the three largest defense contractors in the United States."
That means, "one of the three largest organizations that make tools for killing other people".
Organizations that support killing other people are never creative. They survive in the murky secret world of government contracts, where it is corruption that wins, never idealism.
Combining a highly creative company with a company whose purpose is largely to make violence more efficient will only destroy the creativity.
"If Northrop Grumman puts its resources behind him..."
They are not putting resources behind him. They bought the company. Burt Rutan is now just one of the resources. If he is like other executives of bought companies, he will leave within two years.
The Slashdot story needs translation. Probably something like this, in my opinion:
"Northrop Grumman Corporation top managers decided they were bored with their regular business. They decided to buy a business they can talk about at parties. Of course, they have nothing creative to contribute. They are contributing only money. So, they will degrade Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites with their company politics, their need to be seen as important, and their general disinterest in doing the real work."
Not only did the Slashdot editor not catch a spelling mistake, he apparently
didn't catch the fact that the linked article is an advertisement from CXO Media, which, according
to its web site, mixes articles and advertisements: "Through our integrated
media and marketing programs we provide..."
From the linked article: "... the team is using Quantum's
StorNext software as its file system..."
Question: Did a Slashdot editor get paid directly for running an
advertisement disguised as an article? Or was someone in Slashdot's parent
company paid "under the table"? Or did the parent company get paid?
Anyone wanting to read a real article from 2005 about CERN's
data handling, data storage, and data processing can download this PDF file: Grid Computing: The European Data Grid Project.
Real articles begin this way: "The computing challenges for LHC
are: * the massive computational capacity required for analysis of the data
and * the volume of data to be processed."
Advertisements begin by talking about God and murder, this way (from the article linked by Slashdot): "CERN's Search for God (Particles)..."
and "Maybe you last read
about CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and its massive
particle accelerators in Angels & Demons by Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code
fame. In that book, the lead character travels to the cavernous research
institute on the border of France and Switzerland to help investigate a
murder."
Quote from the Slashdot story, as it is now: "... and the SAN tasked with catching the flood of data."
I think the correct word, considering the meaning, is "caching".
"Don't run with scissors" advice: If you play video games too much, it will stunt your growth. People need time to learn about the real world around them, not just a fantasy world. Part of learning about the real world is learning how to communicate with other people.
This is an international issue. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other
"government" agencies now operate world-wide, and have become, in effect, a
secret police.
It is possible that this particular case has been picked for its
public relations value. The U.S. government's spy agencies have for many years
been using ANY tool at their disposal to spy ANYWHERE. It is possible that
this case is designed to try to get approval from U.S. citizens for this kind
of spying, when much of the spying they do is not to prevent crime, but to
help a company like Cheney's Halliburtonmake
more profit.
This is an international issue. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other "government" agencies now operate world-wide, and have become, in effect, a secret police.
It is possible that this particular case has been picked for its public relations value. The U.S. government's spy agencies have for many years been using ANY tool at their disposal to spy ANYWHERE. It is possible that this case is designed to try to get approval from U.S. citizens for this kind of spying, when much of the spying they do is not to prevent crime, but to help a company like Cheney's Halliburtonmake more profit.
You said, "If said large company still gets caught by Microsoft abuse more than once, they had it coming;-)"
That doesn't seem right to me. Microsoft's adversarial behavior makes maintenance far more expensive. It's very difficult for one person, or even a whole IT department, to be aware of all the tricks, and the work-arounds for all the tricks. Even if they are completely aware, there is a cost of getting that education. And it is unpleasant to spend part of your day defending yourself from abuse. Microsoft's behavior lowers the quality of life of people who work in IT.
Wow!!! It's shocking to read the comments above. There is no sympathy
whatsoever for the average user, who has little technical knowledge, or
for companies with IT departments that get caught in the abuse.
Quote: "I have no sympathy.... It's not as if nobody knows
Microsoft are unredeemably crooked peddlers of defective rubbish." I think people with no technical knowledge don't know this.
The article linked in the Slashdot article mentions Microsoft's apparent motivation: "Previous editions
of Office have shipped below target, with just 15 percent of PCs running
Office 2003 two years after that suite shipped, instead of Microsoft's stated
goal for two thirds of PCs to be running Office 2003 by 2005."
This Slashdot comment is typical: "This entire "article" is FUD.... so long as you're using
Word, Excel, or Powerpoint (i.e. not Outlook), there's nothing to worry
about." The words "not Outlook" admit an exception. That comment links to a
Microsoft article that shows how to convert the new Outlook format to the old.
But most users won't know how to find the Microsoft article.
The issue is that people with insufficient technical knowledge who buy
new computers may not find any option other than paying for another
version of Microsoft Office. That is abusive. Microsoft provides big companies methods they may or
may not know about, but apparently tries to dominate most users with sneaky
methods.
At the time I am writing this, only this comment shows an
understanding of the issue: Forced Upgrade:
"Forced upgrades to new versions of MS Office is a normal experience in a
large company."
Thare are several social issues here:
1) Slashdot comments often take the position, "If you don't know as
much as I do, then I have no sympathy for you." It's macho posturing.
2) Slashdot comments often come from a quirky viewpoint: "I will try
to find an interpretation of what you said that could possibly be wrong,
ignore any interpretations that are correct, and pretend that there could be
no correct interpretations."
3) People are often not able to protect themselves from abuse,
especially when abusers exploit their weaknesses.
4) Not only are people often not able to protect themselves from
abuse, a significant percentage of people are themselves abusers. The weaker
abusers use the actions of the more powerful abusers as a shield.
5) Microsoft managers apparently feel they are unable to compete
honestly. The apparently feel that, without tricks, they cannot compete. Apparently
they don't know how to compete by making a good product, or for some reason
they cannot make a good product. Possibly inside Microsoft making a good product is politically
impossible.
6) Many people depend on the income from the problems
Microsoft creates. Those who feel they have no other way of making a
living often attack anything negative about Microsoft, apparently because they see negative
information about Microsoft as potentially lowering their income, which is
probably true.
"The creator of these [this] BIOS is still living in the 1990's."
"In an attempt to RMA this board with Newegg, they stated that this board has been discontinued by the manufacturer, thus I got a 100% refund. But apparently after more research, there are 2 versions of this board."
Possibly this is all part of a drive to get people with no technical experience to buy new computers. If you apply patches, Microsoft has control over how fast your computer runs.
On one computer with which I am familiar, the RPC service takes 30%-70% of the CPU time.
I'm not saying Microsoft managers deliberately slow computers. I'm saying that maybe they are not particularly intense about fixing bugs that slow computers.
I'm not the only person who thinks that may be an issue. See this quote from the parent comment: "I've been thinking that MS would come up with something that would make XP less useful - some sort of bug or new type of unpatchable vulnerability to force Windows users to adopt Vista. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of XP."
For a lot of us, using Microsoft software has the feeling of partnering with an enemy.
The person who wrote the parent comment could fix the problem himself. Most people, maybe 99% of Windows XP users, could not. Most people who find that there computer is running very slow will buy another computer. The New York Times article
Corrupted PC's Find New Home makes that point.
Laughing? A less happy feeling
on
Firefox Quickies
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I wouldn't call it laughing. "You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?"
"If you've used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is.. it's the obnoxious, nagging popup window that will be your life for the next 3-5 years... Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned. -- The How-to Geek
From the story: "The new TweakVista utility from Stardock surfaces some of Vista's more obscure settings, giving access to diagnostics and making suggestions for services that you should be running."
Chapter 3: The old story. How to get a Windows operating system to work the way you want, with 3rd party tools and lots of time.
Oh well, I suppose a life working on Windows is better than playing canasta or knitting booties for your dog.
This video explains a bit about the User Account Control in Windows Vista.
"You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?"
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up. Very interesting.
Correction: 80 feet of shelf space, not 40. See my 2005 comment, and a Slashdot story comparing EB and Wikipedia: Encyclopedia Britannica is much worse.
The Slashdot story says, "... one of the most revered founts of human knowledge, the Encyclopedias Britannica."
That's not true in my experience. In my experience, Encyclopedia Britannica salesmen used high-pressure tactics to sell encyclopedias to poor, uneducated people by telling them that their children needed an encyclopedia to become educated. Educated people knew it was better to go to the library.
EB has always been full of inadequate articles that were inadequate because the EB wanted to seem comprehensive, so it had a lot of articles, but didn't want to use a lot of expensive paper, so there was never enough space.
A good example was the EB article on Barbara McClintock, 1983 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for her amazing, pioneering work in genetics. Quote from Wikipedia: "In 1930, McClintock was the first person to describe the cross-shaped interaction of homologous chromosomes during meiosis. During 1931, McClintock and a graduate student, Harriet Creighton, proved the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis and the recombination of genetic traits."
Why did it take 53 years for Barbara McClintock to win her Nobel Prize? Because other scientists had difficulty believing that genetic elements could jump from chromosome to chromosome.
I haven't looked at an EB article in the paper edition in many years, but at one time the EB article about Barbara McClintock was short, maybe 600 words, and gave no idea of the fact that her scientific papers are so extensive they require 40 feet or more of shelf space.
The EB article about Barbara McClintock was subtly misleading in other ways, also.
From the Wikipedia article: "The importance of McClintock's contributions only came to light in the 1960s, when the work of French geneticists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod described the genetic regulation of the lac operon, a concept she had demonstrated with Ac/Ds in 1951."
Apparently because the controlling purpose of the EB has been to reduce amount of paper required, and apparently because the EB has always been more about creating a way for salesmen to be intimidating than about excellence, a lot of the EB articles have been worse than useless, because they are misleading.
The EB has been a vicious business run for profit, in my opinion. The articles have always been lacking in excellence, because excellence would have cost more.
Yes, Linspire has become useless. What company wants that legal baggage? Once again, Microsoft is adversarial.
The Groklaw analysis needs further translation. In my opinion, the contract says, effectively:
1) Microsoft can do anything it likes.
2) You have no rights.
Microsoft operating systems need constant attention that costs 10x as much as the original sale price, in my experience. According to Microsoft, you have no right to a good product.
This kind of thing has happened hundreds of times. My understanding is that historically in the last 20 years, when the buying company becomes an owner, and not just an investor:
1) The original executives of the bought company eventually leave, usually within 2 years.
2) The bought company declines rapidly.
If 1 happens, my understanding is that 2 will certainly happen. Hard to imagine Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites without Burt Rutan. His is a highly technical business that depends on accurate day-to-day management. Or can NG find a replacement for Burt Rutan? If they did find a replacement, would NG give enough power to that person?
MOD PARENT UP!!! Insightful.
"... one of the three largest defense contractors in the United States."
That means, "one of the three largest organizations that make tools for killing other people".
Organizations that support killing other people are never creative. They survive in the murky secret world of government contracts, where it is corruption that wins, never idealism.
Combining a highly creative company with a company whose purpose is largely to make violence more efficient will only destroy the creativity.
"If Northrop Grumman puts its resources behind him..."
They are not putting resources behind him. They bought the company. Burt Rutan is now just one of the resources. If he is like other executives of bought companies, he will leave within two years.
The Slashdot story needs translation. Probably something like this, in my opinion:
"Northrop Grumman Corporation top managers decided they were bored with their regular business. They decided to buy a business they can talk about at parties. Of course, they have nothing creative to contribute. They are contributing only money. So, they will degrade Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites with their company politics, their need to be seen as important, and their general disinterest in doing the real work."
"Caching a flood of data" sounds fine to me.
I thought about that, but when was the last time you heard someone talk about "catching a flood"?
Not only did the Slashdot editor not catch a spelling mistake, he apparently didn't catch the fact that the linked article is an advertisement from CXO Media, which, according to its web site, mixes articles and advertisements: "Through our integrated media and marketing programs we provide..."
From the linked article: "... the team is using Quantum's StorNext software as its file system..."
Question: Did a Slashdot editor get paid directly for running an advertisement disguised as an article? Or was someone in Slashdot's parent company paid "under the table"? Or did the parent company get paid?
Anyone wanting to read a real article from 2005 about CERN's data handling, data storage, and data processing can download this PDF file: Grid Computing: The European Data Grid Project.
Real articles begin this way: "The computing challenges for LHC are: * the massive computational capacity required for analysis of the data and * the volume of data to be processed."
Advertisements begin by talking about God and murder, this way (from the article linked by Slashdot): "CERN's Search for God (Particles)..."
and "Maybe you last read about CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and its massive particle accelerators in Angels & Demons by Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code fame. In that book, the lead character travels to the cavernous research institute on the border of France and Switzerland to help investigate a murder."
Quote from the Slashdot story, as it is now: "... and the SAN tasked with catching the flood of data."
I think the correct word, considering the meaning, is "caching".
"Don't run with scissors" advice: If you play video games too much, it will stunt your growth. People need time to learn about the real world around them, not just a fantasy world. Part of learning about the real world is learning how to communicate with other people.
Is this a new era for Google of "Do as much harm as you think you can hide", like other companies I could mention?
Note to Google top managers: If you are adversarial, you are showing that you are incompetent.
This is an international issue. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other "government" agencies now operate world-wide, and have become, in effect, a secret police.
It is possible that this particular case has been picked for its public relations value. The U.S. government's spy agencies have for many years been using ANY tool at their disposal to spy ANYWHERE. It is possible that this case is designed to try to get approval from U.S. citizens for this kind of spying, when much of the spying they do is not to prevent crime, but to help a company like Cheney's Halliburton make more profit.
This is an international issue. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and other "government" agencies now operate world-wide, and have become, in effect, a secret police.
It is possible that this particular case has been picked for its public relations value. The U.S. government's spy agencies have for many years been using ANY tool at their disposal to spy ANYWHERE. It is possible that this case is designed to try to get approval from U.S. citizens for this kind of spying, when much of the spying they do is not to prevent crime, but to help a company like Cheney's Halliburton make more profit.
You said, "If said large company still gets caught by Microsoft abuse more than once, they had it coming ;-)"
That doesn't seem right to me. Microsoft's adversarial behavior makes maintenance far more expensive. It's very difficult for one person, or even a whole IT department, to be aware of all the tricks, and the work-arounds for all the tricks. Even if they are completely aware, there is a cost of getting that education. And it is unpleasant to spend part of your day defending yourself from abuse. Microsoft's behavior lowers the quality of life of people who work in IT.
Wow!!! It's shocking to read the comments above. There is no sympathy whatsoever for the average user, who has little technical knowledge, or for companies with IT departments that get caught in the abuse. Quote: "I have no sympathy. ... It's not as if nobody knows
Microsoft are unredeemably crooked peddlers of defective rubbish." I think people with no technical knowledge don't know this.
... so long as you're using
Word, Excel, or Powerpoint (i.e. not Outlook), there's nothing to worry
about." The words "not Outlook" admit an exception. That comment links to a
Microsoft article that shows how to convert the new Outlook format to the old.
But most users won't know how to find the Microsoft article.
The article linked in the Slashdot article mentions Microsoft's apparent motivation: "Previous editions of Office have shipped below target, with just 15 percent of PCs running Office 2003 two years after that suite shipped, instead of Microsoft's stated goal for two thirds of PCs to be running Office 2003 by 2005."
There are problems: "Anyone with custom macros... watch out"
This Slashdot comment is typical: "This entire "article" is FUD.
The issue is that people with insufficient technical knowledge who buy new computers may not find any option other than paying for another version of Microsoft Office. That is abusive. Microsoft provides big companies methods they may or may not know about, but apparently tries to dominate most users with sneaky methods.
At the time I am writing this, only this comment shows an understanding of the issue: Forced Upgrade: "Forced upgrades to new versions of MS Office is a normal experience in a large company."
Thare are several social issues here:
1) Slashdot comments often take the position, "If you don't know as much as I do, then I have no sympathy for you." It's macho posturing.
2) Slashdot comments often come from a quirky viewpoint: "I will try to find an interpretation of what you said that could possibly be wrong, ignore any interpretations that are correct, and pretend that there could be no correct interpretations."
3) People are often not able to protect themselves from abuse, especially when abusers exploit their weaknesses.
4) Not only are people often not able to protect themselves from abuse, a significant percentage of people are themselves abusers. The weaker abusers use the actions of the more powerful abusers as a shield.
5) Microsoft managers apparently feel they are unable to compete honestly. The apparently feel that, without tricks, they cannot compete. Apparently they don't know how to compete by making a good product, or for some reason they cannot make a good product. Possibly inside Microsoft making a good product is politically impossible.
6) Many people depend on the income from the problems Microsoft creates. Those who feel they have no other way of making a living often attack anything negative about Microsoft, apparently because they see negative information about Microsoft as potentially lowering their income, which is probably true.
Also, note all the open box offers at the bottom here: Gigabyte Intel Processors.
They are getting so many returns that there is a long list. May be a bad indication, depending on how the web site works concerning open box offers.
Before getting excited about this motherboard, read the reviews: Customer Reviews for GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6.
Samples:
"The creator of these [this] BIOS is still living in the 1990's."
"In an attempt to RMA this board with Newegg, they stated that this board has been discontinued by the manufacturer, thus I got a 100% refund. But apparently after more research, there are 2 versions of this board."
"It runs WAY TOO HOT..."
Note that people have many, many different kinds of problems with Windows Update: Windows Update Discussion Group.
I'm guessing that millions of hours are lost every year because of the sloppy coding in Windows XP. Bill Gates is the Chief of Grief.
Possibly this is all part of a drive to get people with no technical experience to buy new computers. If you apply patches, Microsoft has control over how fast your computer runs.
For example, Problems with an important Windows component, svchost.exe, can consume up to 100% of CPU time.
On one computer with which I am familiar, the RPC service takes 30%-70% of the CPU time.
I'm not saying Microsoft managers deliberately slow computers. I'm saying that maybe they are not particularly intense about fixing bugs that slow computers.
I'm not the only person who thinks that may be an issue. See this quote from the parent comment: "I've been thinking that MS would come up with something that would make XP less useful - some sort of bug or new type of unpatchable vulnerability to force Windows users to adopt Vista. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of XP."
For a lot of us, using Microsoft software has the feeling of partnering with an enemy.
The person who wrote the parent comment could fix the problem himself. Most people, maybe 99% of Windows XP users, could not. Most people who find that there computer is running very slow will buy another computer. The New York Times article Corrupted PC's Find New Home makes that point.
I wouldn't call it laughing. "You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?"
"If you've used Windows Vista for more than 3.7 minutes, you know what UAC (User Account Control) is.. it's the obnoxious, nagging popup window that will be your life for the next 3-5 years... Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned. -- The How-to Geek
Thanks, you are right, Fahrenheit 911.
It's like getting married. "How much money do you have?" "Well, that's what it costs."
From the story: "The new TweakVista utility from Stardock surfaces some of Vista's more obscure settings, giving access to diagnostics and making suggestions for services that you should be running."
Chapter 3: The old story. How to get a Windows operating system to work the way you want, with 3rd party tools and lots of time.
Oh well, I suppose a life working on Windows is better than playing canasta or knitting booties for your dog.
This video explains a bit about the User Account Control in Windows Vista.
"You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?"