The reason is, no individual company wants to work on it alone and risk ending up on the wrong side of the law when they are written. They prefer an even playing field for the whole industry on such regulatory matters. That is an example of incentive. Incentive we need to provide artificially at times. Government should legislate as little as possible and it should provide incentives to "do the right thing" as often as possible. Think of it as smart defaults in a program, we don't tell you you have to do this... it's just the default.
Also, that kind of cooperation only works if there isn't a monopoly. Once you get sufficiently close to monopoly there is no need for cooperation (on the part of the monopoly) and what the big guy says goes. The big guy can then expand and grow the market as they see fit using alternative tactics or start raiding other markets using their existing monopoly to crush competition in other markets.
Fortunately, this hasn't happened in technology or telecommunications.
Such an all powerful company would do its worst to destroy any emerging standards. Even defacto standards created by emulating the practice of the monopoly company by smaller competitors would be undermined in order to avoid standards and agreements.
The question isn't could corporations and industry cooperate for the common good. The question is will they. Yes they will given proper incentive... such as a competition amongst equals.
That then necessarily implies that there must be some artificial mechanism to force that equality to exist. Because, once that equality ceases to exist it will not reassert itself with out outside intervention. Sometimes this comes in the form of inspiration and invention sometimes in the form of court order.
Red Tape is the worst way to govern. It prices out the small businesses and gives outs to larger company compliance. Yes, it sucks but it's still interesting. You'd end up pushing large numbers of your workforce into government jobs. You can create entire industries built around fictional things. And it works astoundingly well. Look at H&R block. They make money entirely on fiction and made-up rules.
Not to say it's efficient, beneficial to all of us, or right. It is merely interesting. Jobs by red-tape probably also leads to a stagnant economy and a lack of incentive to innovate.
Ideally, you legislate as little as possible. What you do legislate is done to support those long term needs that are counter to the short term profit taking strategies... greedy algorithms if you will... that the current environment encourages.
It is possible for a corporation with deep enough pockets to do great good. They can do this and still make a handsome profit. I wouldn't have a job if this wasn't true.
Governments must provide incentive for the advancement of very long-term goals. Pensions and retirement plans are simply not profitable. Schools and maternity leaves are too easy to neglect for quicker returns.
Business as conducted today lends itself to greedy algorithms that take profit now at the cost of greater profit later. I want to maximize profit for everyone by fostering innovation and risk taking. That probably means creating a longer term safety net for everyone so businesses can take risks.
As a working technologist for the past two decades (I started in IT as a pre-teen) I have been content to let the suits figure out the economics and leave me to play with my toys. But, in the last few years since having a family of my own I have begun to see how unsustainable some "corporate cultures" really are and how a business could be seen as a way to find and keep people you think are "of quality" around yourself.
I don't think most businesses operate like this because we are developing a "management class" in America. These are people who graduate from school as bosses. They don't work their way up to become a boss or manager they come out of the factory sparkling and new as managers.
That creates a fundamental disconnect between the work force and management. It's one that creates a first and second class "citizenship" in the corporation. In many ways if you believe there is such a thing as a "corporate citizen" then this new path through the corporate ladder means that we have reverted to a feudal system in society.
In other words, we may be making "American Style" Democracy obsolete or unworkable. Democracy (in America) is already evolving... the vote of people with control over special interests counts more than the vote of common people. That's because the lobbyists like to eat.
What this means is that corporate profit maximizing interests usually count more than individual or family interests over time. And that means whatever feeds profits best will win. If human rights feed profits, great. If family stability feeds profits, awesome. If healthy employees help profits, wonderful. But, how do retirement plans feed profits? How does universal health care help profits?
These things do help profits by creating a more stable society where individuals can take risks, make inventions, try new careers. But, they don't help any particular corporation. They don't help profits in the 18 month window. These are things that are financially stupid on anything but the 100 year scale.
Take the example of the educational systems in India. A net profit loss for fifty years that eventually lead to an economic boom in the 1990's. That's my big example of a long-sighted investment in the people that will not pay off any particular corporation in a time-line that can be appreciated by share-holders en masse... however a visionary could see it.
It is a sad fact that some of the things that help the citizens of a nation help all corporations that do business in that nation... and that means that a corporation that is doing those things is helping its competitor. That could mean that strategically undermining a nation may in fact boost profits for a corporate entity which can do things to hurt its competitors and find ways around that damage to make itself more competitive.
The goal of a government (in my view) should be to seek ways to balance the goals of profit making against long term goals. Both sets of interests serve human good because employees are citizens and so are share holders and they benefit all from profits in the short term and that is good. Governments can create incentives for long term investments in your competitors by creating short term incentives to do so using tools such as those dreaded taxes and tax breaks and inventing artificial economies such as the "Income Tax" industry which CPAs and income tax software vendors make their fortunes on.
The interesting thing is that Governments create jobs using red-tape.
I wonder if most companies really care about oscommerce stores or any of these web hosting things we think they care about. I wonder if they don't see web sites as marketing space and utility in a site as more hassle than necessity. I wonder if many companies will be perfectly happy to rent software as if it were some kind of service using some kind of centralized checkout system to wash their hands of hosting a page almost entirely and care for little other than CSS based branding.
It's all just idle pie-in-the-sky speculation anyway. I'm sure what we now call web development won't become completely obsolete for at least another decade. Especially with the shortage of web talent that I see out there now.
This is how we've been teaching computer science to share memory since there was more then one thread. Anyone over 40 will immediately recognize this as just "how we do that". To all you younger viewers, welcome to multi-core/SMP circa 1980.
And to all you industry people, if you'd stop firing everyone when they turn 30, you'd know this too! Can you provide a reference? I'd like to learn more.
App Engine will allow you to host your web applications on top of the Google Application hosting system. When you finally put that with Google Page Creator, wouldn't that mean that Google is hosting web applications of every stripe... from simple web pages to complex full featured custom developed web applications?
Someone posted the video and that was great. In particular I really like the use of a finite state machine as a proof of correctness. That might be a novel approach in this day and age when everyone is in love with UML. It makes you wonder if many of these things aren't made too complex by adding too much cognitive over-head. To hear Dr. Cliff Click talk it seems so trivial in retrospect. I suppose this is how you know his solution is elegant... I seriously doubt I'd have thought of it myself but when you see something elegant that seems natural afterward it's probably right.
The other thing is that his algorithm shows a remarkable departure from traditional concurrent programming (as I learned it a decade ago) and he's not getting bogged down with locking and synchronize... instead he has a very simple "think about it" approach that uses the state machine as a thinking aide. Whom ever posted the video... thank you that was very enlightening. Perhaps many of these concurrency problems just need some creativity after all?
This is very exciting as it could point to a future where you can literally hack your own brain. So far it looks like he can only temporarily disrupt parts of a person's brain... what about enhancement? What about non-invasive brain I/O?
What I think could also be very interesting is what kinds of background effects do things like the Aurora have on people's brains? I lived in far-north Alaska for many years and I remember that anecdotally everyone talked about strange dreams when the Aurora was active. It could have been merely a sub-conscious suggestion that active Aurora leads to altered dream states or... now I think after seeing this video... perhaps it had a grain of truth? Hopefully someone will conduct some experiments.
You know, if you are going to have destruct switches... they really should look like that. A big turn key, solid, metal, single function panel that does nothing else. Heavy clunky switches that tell you you've done something. Yep, if you're going to have what is essentially a "big red button" that's how it should look. There's no mistaking that for the coffee dispenser switch. Putting modern "iPhone" styling on that would be a sin.
Have any of you been through this kind of career 'mid-life crisis?' What did you do to get out of the rut? Is making a complete career change at this point a bad idea?" Yes.
2020?? This sucks. We're all going to be geezers before domestic space travel comes around yep. This just in... we may not see working nano-tech in our lifetimes either.
The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp. So, basically the same strategy as slashdot?
I've never taken AIR seriously because of the lack of support for developers on Linux. Now, if they were going to enable running and developing AIR based applications on Linux then I might actually bother to take a look.
What we need is a Richard Feynman Day. The date could be something witty, like 12.3. (12th of March) which could mark his I.Q.:) I say we start it as a world wide grass roots movement... ala talk like a pirate day...it'll start out with a web-page claiming more participants than actually observe and then grow from there to mythical proportions. First tradition on Feynman Day is to tell someone about Feynman Day. Okay. Go!
... actually from Feynman's original article referenced by the linked article... a real gem:
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. I think that says it all right there folks. And I think a lot of us who do engineering or "engineer" software for a living would like to wave this in the faces of our PHB's but the problem is your PHB doesn't know what reality or nature are and can't bring themselves to trust you who have dedicated your life to the study of those things.
The computer has a reality and a nature and software must live within those rules or risk the consequences.
Am I the only one that can't get Silverlight to work with Firefox on Windows? I have now tried on two different machines, several times, with the same result. I can't get it to work in Internet Explorer... on Windows or Linux... let alone my Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, that kind of cooperation only works if there isn't a monopoly. Once you get sufficiently close to monopoly there is no need for cooperation (on the part of the monopoly) and what the big guy says goes. The big guy can then expand and grow the market as they see fit using alternative tactics or start raiding other markets using their existing monopoly to crush competition in other markets.
Fortunately, this hasn't happened in technology or telecommunications.
Such an all powerful company would do its worst to destroy any emerging standards. Even defacto standards created by emulating the practice of the monopoly company by smaller competitors would be undermined in order to avoid standards and agreements.
The question isn't could corporations and industry cooperate for the common good. The question is will they. Yes they will given proper incentive... such as a competition amongst equals.
That then necessarily implies that there must be some artificial mechanism to force that equality to exist. Because, once that equality ceases to exist it will not reassert itself with out outside intervention. Sometimes this comes in the form of inspiration and invention sometimes in the form of court order. Red Tape is the worst way to govern. It prices out the small businesses and gives outs to larger company compliance. Yes, it sucks but it's still interesting. You'd end up pushing large numbers of your workforce into government jobs. You can create entire industries built around fictional things. And it works astoundingly well. Look at H&R block. They make money entirely on fiction and made-up rules.
Not to say it's efficient, beneficial to all of us, or right. It is merely interesting. Jobs by red-tape probably also leads to a stagnant economy and a lack of incentive to innovate.
Ideally, you legislate as little as possible. What you do legislate is done to support those long term needs that are counter to the short term profit taking strategies... greedy algorithms if you will... that the current environment encourages.
It is possible for a corporation with deep enough pockets to do great good. They can do this and still make a handsome profit. I wouldn't have a job if this wasn't true.
Governments must provide incentive for the advancement of very long-term goals. Pensions and retirement plans are simply not profitable. Schools and maternity leaves are too easy to neglect for quicker returns.
Business as conducted today lends itself to greedy algorithms that take profit now at the cost of greater profit later. I want to maximize profit for everyone by fostering innovation and risk taking. That probably means creating a longer term safety net for everyone so businesses can take risks.
My motivation? I want a flying car.
Is it me or is this a new meme. I see a lot of "13 reasons blah-diddy-blah this-and-that" lately. I think it's a virus.
As a working technologist for the past two decades (I started in IT as a pre-teen) I have been content to let the suits figure out the economics and leave me to play with my toys. But, in the last few years since having a family of my own I have begun to see how unsustainable some "corporate cultures" really are and how a business could be seen as a way to find and keep people you think are "of quality" around yourself.
... the vote of people with control over special interests counts more than the vote of common people. That's because the lobbyists like to eat.
I don't think most businesses operate like this because we are developing a "management class" in America. These are people who graduate from school as bosses. They don't work their way up to become a boss or manager they come out of the factory sparkling and new as managers.
That creates a fundamental disconnect between the work force and management. It's one that creates a first and second class "citizenship" in the corporation. In many ways if you believe there is such a thing as a "corporate citizen" then this new path through the corporate ladder means that we have reverted to a feudal system in society.
In other words, we may be making "American Style" Democracy obsolete or unworkable. Democracy (in America) is already evolving
What this means is that corporate profit maximizing interests usually count more than individual or family interests over time. And that means whatever feeds profits best will win. If human rights feed profits, great. If family stability feeds profits, awesome. If healthy employees help profits, wonderful. But, how do retirement plans feed profits? How does universal health care help profits?
These things do help profits by creating a more stable society where individuals can take risks, make inventions, try new careers. But, they don't help any particular corporation. They don't help profits in the 18 month window. These are things that are financially stupid on anything but the 100 year scale.
Take the example of the educational systems in India. A net profit loss for fifty years that eventually lead to an economic boom in the 1990's. That's my big example of a long-sighted investment in the people that will not pay off any particular corporation in a time-line that can be appreciated by share-holders en masse... however a visionary could see it.
It is a sad fact that some of the things that help the citizens of a nation help all corporations that do business in that nation... and that means that a corporation that is doing those things is helping its competitor. That could mean that strategically undermining a nation may in fact boost profits for a corporate entity which can do things to hurt its competitors and find ways around that damage to make itself more competitive.
The goal of a government (in my view) should be to seek ways to balance the goals of profit making against long term goals. Both sets of interests serve human good because employees are citizens and so are share holders and they benefit all from profits in the short term and that is good. Governments can create incentives for long term investments in your competitors by creating short term incentives to do so using tools such as those dreaded taxes and tax breaks and inventing artificial economies such as the "Income Tax" industry which CPAs and income tax software vendors make their fortunes on.
The interesting thing is that Governments create jobs using red-tape.
I wonder if most companies really care about oscommerce stores or any of these web hosting things we think they care about. I wonder if they don't see web sites as marketing space and utility in a site as more hassle than necessity. I wonder if many companies will be perfectly happy to rent software as if it were some kind of service using some kind of centralized checkout system to wash their hands of hosting a page almost entirely and care for little other than CSS based branding.
It's all just idle pie-in-the-sky speculation anyway. I'm sure what we now call web development won't become completely obsolete for at least another decade. Especially with the shortage of web talent that I see out there now.
And to all you industry people, if you'd stop firing everyone when they turn 30, you'd know this too! Can you provide a reference? I'd like to learn more.
App Engine will allow you to host your web applications on top of the Google Application hosting system. When you finally put that with Google Page Creator, wouldn't that mean that Google is hosting web applications of every stripe... from simple web pages to complex full featured custom developed web applications?
Someone posted the video and that was great. In particular I really like the use of a finite state machine as a proof of correctness. That might be a novel approach in this day and age when everyone is in love with UML. It makes you wonder if many of these things aren't made too complex by adding too much cognitive over-head. To hear Dr. Cliff Click talk it seems so trivial in retrospect. I suppose this is how you know his solution is elegant... I seriously doubt I'd have thought of it myself but when you see something elegant that seems natural afterward it's probably right.
The other thing is that his algorithm shows a remarkable departure from traditional concurrent programming (as I learned it a decade ago) and he's not getting bogged down with locking and synchronize... instead he has a very simple "think about it" approach that uses the state machine as a thinking aide. Whom ever posted the video... thank you that was very enlightening. Perhaps many of these concurrency problems just need some creativity after all?
Have you heard of Google App Engine? Doesn't that change things a little?
Well, I did think it was a power of suggestion thing.
This is very exciting as it could point to a future where you can literally hack your own brain. So far it looks like he can only temporarily disrupt parts of a person's brain... what about enhancement? What about non-invasive brain I/O?
... now I think after seeing this video ... perhaps it had a grain of truth? Hopefully someone will conduct some experiments.
What I think could also be very interesting is what kinds of background effects do things like the Aurora have on people's brains? I lived in far-north Alaska for many years and I remember that anecdotally everyone talked about strange dreams when the Aurora was active. It could have been merely a sub-conscious suggestion that active Aurora leads to altered dream states or
I for one welcome our new "Voracious swarming ant" over-lords.
You know, if you are going to have destruct switches... they really should look like that. A big turn key, solid, metal, single function panel that does nothing else. Heavy clunky switches that tell you you've done something. Yep, if you're going to have what is essentially a "big red button" that's how it should look. There's no mistaking that for the coffee dispenser switch. Putting modern "iPhone" styling on that would be a sin.
... that's like 105 human years. I mean it's 7 internet years to one human year right?
I worked in Ada for a few years. I guess I better go and dust off my books.
And, here I spent all that time learning Java. Sheesh.
I've never taken AIR seriously because of the lack of support for developers on Linux. Now, if they were going to enable running and developing AIR based applications on Linux then I might actually bother to take a look.
The computer has a reality and a nature and software must live within those rules or risk the consequences.
I was pinching things years before I got an iPhone... just ask my wife!