But with Windows being bloated and out of control, you just can't clean it up and make it more simple... can you?
In this context, another word for "Complexity" is "barrier to entry," which may help Microsoft more than it hurts. If an elegant little OS could meet all the needs of modern business (including support for legacy applications and hardware), Microsoft would be in trouble. Anybody can write an elegant little OS. They're available on the Internet by the dozens.
Really, the value of big companies like Microsoft is in tackling complex problems than small companies can't solve. It's pleasant to imagine that all problems are simple if you just use the right abstractions to decompose the problem correctly, but I don't believe that. There are difficult tradeoffs between usability, security, backwards compatibility, and the wildly varying needs of millions of different customers. I agree there's no silver bullet... not just to Micrsoft's problems, but to the problem of computing, period.
Of course, if this works then I should invest in UPS & FedEx...
My first reaction was, surely they'll be teaming with local grocery store chains to do this? But no:
Amazon will ship these things out the same way they ship everything else, through established shipping services like FedEx or UPS, so there's really no change in the infrastructure other than stocking a few thousand new products
Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't see UPS shipping a box the size of a grocery cart for a price I would pay. The bad news is, nobody will use the service. The good news is, it won't really matter, at least no moreso than stocking any unpopular toy or book.
What would make so much more sense IMHO, is for a large grocery chain to do this. The website could be integrated with inventory software for local stores. Really the only expense would be paying additional bag boys to load up vans and deliver the groceries, depending on the popularity of the service.
they can use it to build profiles of people at a lawful protest, adding to the data the DHS collects against citizens, allowing it to add people to no-fly and other blacklists.
I don't see how it could possibly identify individuals from the sky. In fact I'm having trouble thinking what use it will be to police at all. The kneejerk response would be "anything a helicopter is good for, but cheaper"... except it only goes 30mph, and only for one hour, so forget tracking automobiles.
All a new commer has to do is to talk Apple's customers into give up their iPods and around $2bn of purchased content, after that they can sell on the basis of better devices and new sales/subscription models.
Or, they could mount a legal challenge to gain access to Apple's DRM, so you could buy songs at the Microsoft store and put them on your iPod, or buy songs at iTunes and put them on your Microsoft player. And although I'm generally as anti-Microsoft as the next slashdotter, I'd have to take Microsoft's side on that hypothetical battle.
Personally, I'd never invest in a music collection that only worked on one brand of player.
Un-toned-down blue LEDs are a pet peeve of mine, too... as an example, my old Shuttle SK41G, a small-form-factor PC that would have otherwise made a decent MythTV box, has this incredibly frickin' bright blue power indicator.
The api is virtually irrelevant, why would a user care about that? If that's all the "certification" is, it's completely pointless. I'm very skeptical that MS would be dumb enough to have such a silly certification.
A much better analogue in the Linux world would be if Linus moves a driver into his version of the kernel and it crashes the system - in which case, yes, Linux (the OS) has egg on its face.
My understanding is that currently a communications company can try to bill someone (like Google) whose traffic gets routed thru their network (and they do not provide the connectivity at the end points), but then Google can tell them to go to hell.
I might be wrong, but my understanding is that the main enemies of network neutrality are the last mile providers. After all, that's the only place where bandwidth is limited as a practical matter, and therefore where competition cannot easily "route around" degraded service. If Comcast decides to promote their own VOIP by screwing over Vonage, my only real options are giving in to Comcast or going back to BellSouth.
Offered at a loss to build market share and penetration. Even cable systems charging $40-$60 a month aren't really paying the whole bill.
I call BS. Sorry, no, I do not believe the idea that paying $50/mo is accepting charity, or that I should feel lucky for the privelige of paying to go on the Internet.
If Comcast et. al. aren't happy with the bandwidth business, perhaps they should just leave. Somebody else will come in to collect my $50/mo., I'm willing to bet on it. Bandwidth is cheap and it gets cheaper all the time.
You were hired to do a job - with, by your own words a fair salary - and you did that job. You should have no expectation beyond that; you certainly have no moral right to anything more.
If working for a startup only pays a normal salary, why would anybody work for one instead of a more stable company? Options are supposed to make up for the added risk of unemployment.
When I said "What's broken is the law itself" I didn't mean the law is being broken, I meant it is broken (i.e. wrongly written in my opinion) because our trade laws undercut our domestic labor laws. Nor do I think that outsourcing should be illegal, nor do I think tarrifs are the solution.
Instead, I think our law should require that goods sold here are manufactured under reasonable standards for worker safety, environmental protection, and reasonble hours and pay - even if those terms exceed local standards. Not our own legal requirements verbatim, but something much better than we're doing now. It could be great and simplify things a lot if we could agree with Europe on what those standards would be. In this way we would use our global purchasing power for good and also level the playing field quite a bit for domestic production.
I'd expect and hope, from a supposedly intelligent group of readers, that the majority of the comments here will be examining China's labor laws and China's human rights record
Apple deserves focus because Apple is cashing in bigtime.
I'm fairly certain that this will be read by a number of people who think that corporations and corporate behavior are inherently "evil", and that the larger a company or business interest is, the more "evil" it is and indeed must be by definition, which is an awfully one-sided and half-blind way to look at corporations.
Gee, I wonder where people get such ridiculous ideas? Could it be from stories such as the one we're reading right now?
What's broken is the law itself. The reason the US has lost its manufacturing sector and runs a massive trade deficit is pure and simple: because you can save a huge amount of money by evading US law - evading US minimum wage, evading OSHA, etc. etc. We rightfully hold up companies producing goods in our own country to certain standards. Then we stab them in the back by allowing the competition to bypass all the rules and get their manufacturing done almost for free by outsourcing. As a result, we have only shell corporations who advertise and keep profits but don't actually make anything.
The real solution is to admit that we live in an imperfect world and provide a stable binary device driver interface for Linux.
The capability of writing a driver to use a card illegally is an incredibly weak argument against providing specs for the hardware. Anything can be used illegally, even a boxcutter. If we can trust ourselves with handguns, I think we can trust ourselves with WiFi cards.
Joe Sixpack don't care for Stallmanism, he just wants his software to work.
The guy makes an extremely good point about open source as the antidote to spyware though. It's not a minor thing, it is really trashing the Windows user experience.
"Oh don't worry, we're only monitoring where you go, not what you do when you get there. It's just traffic analysis, so it doesn't fall under the 4th Ammendment."
I get the impression the google spreadsheet is implemnted in Ajax-type technologies? I don't get it; surely Java is ideally suited to implementing an online spreadsheet. All these years later, I'm still waiting for a decent online office suite, and for the life of me I can't figure out why nobody has really delivered. (Hello, Sun, are you there?) I'll admit I've been out of web development for several years, but AJAX strikes me as a mess of weak tools like javascript. Is it really the best choice for serious application development?
Slashdot Mirror
Really, the value of big companies like Microsoft is in tackling complex problems than small companies can't solve. It's pleasant to imagine that all problems are simple if you just use the right abstractions to decompose the problem correctly, but I don't believe that. There are difficult tradeoffs between usability, security, backwards compatibility, and the wildly varying needs of millions of different customers. I agree there's no silver bullet... not just to Micrsoft's problems, but to the problem of computing, period.
Are engineers on the line for effectiveness, or just safety? If safety is the only consideration, the obvious course of action is never to fly.
What would make so much more sense IMHO, is for a large grocery chain to do this. The website could be integrated with inventory software for local stores. Really the only expense would be paying additional bag boys to load up vans and deliver the groceries, depending on the popularity of the service.
Personally, I'd never invest in a music collection that only worked on one brand of player.
I think you'll be waiting a lot longer than 2 years for a $50 burner.
A much better analogue in the Linux world would be if Linus moves a driver into his version of the kernel and it crashes the system - in which case, yes, Linux (the OS) has egg on its face.
If Comcast et. al. aren't happy with the bandwidth business, perhaps they should just leave. Somebody else will come in to collect my $50/mo., I'm willing to bet on it. Bandwidth is cheap and it gets cheaper all the time.
Isn't that what his stock options were supposed to be - a chunk of the company?
But how long will these nano filters last? It seems to me they would quickly become clogged with salt.
Instead, I think our law should require that goods sold here are manufactured under reasonable standards for worker safety, environmental protection, and reasonble hours and pay - even if those terms exceed local standards. Not our own legal requirements verbatim, but something much better than we're doing now. It could be great and simplify things a lot if we could agree with Europe on what those standards would be. In this way we would use our global purchasing power for good and also level the playing field quite a bit for domestic production.
What's broken is the law itself. The reason the US has lost its manufacturing sector and runs a massive trade deficit is pure and simple: because you can save a huge amount of money by evading US law - evading US minimum wage, evading OSHA, etc. etc. We rightfully hold up companies producing goods in our own country to certain standards. Then we stab them in the back by allowing the competition to bypass all the rules and get their manufacturing done almost for free by outsourcing. As a result, we have only shell corporations who advertise and keep profits but don't actually make anything.
That link doesn't work for me. 404.
You read it here first.
I get the impression the google spreadsheet is implemnted in Ajax-type technologies? I don't get it; surely Java is ideally suited to implementing an online spreadsheet. All these years later, I'm still waiting for a decent online office suite, and for the life of me I can't figure out why nobody has really delivered. (Hello, Sun, are you there?) I'll admit I've been out of web development for several years, but AJAX strikes me as a mess of weak tools like javascript. Is it really the best choice for serious application development?
Really, if only those stupid engineers had typed "thou shalt not kill" into the code.
Having the idea of maximizing efficiency is one thing, actually doing it is another. Transmeta chips were just too slow.