I don't think "predictability" referrs to computer security, nor to liability. I think it just means that the product line won't make big, unexpected turns, that they won't have to go shopping for a new support vendor too often, and that they won't have to throw out the whole system and start over because the industry "went a different direction" and they can't recruit people to work on it any more.
And to be fair, MS is a pretty good choice in those respects.
We had the same discussion about Java, which at least
was a general-purpose programming language.
And that's exactly why Java failed on the desktop: it wasn't specialized, so it was no easier to implement desktop apps in Java than with any other general purpose language (and cross-platform compatibility didn't turn out to be a big draw).
To catch on, a language (or app framework) needs a niche, which is broader than a "killer app" but narrower than "general purpose." That's why Java failed to catch on where VB and Flash flourished, despite themselves.
So it's not really a useful interrogation means - yet, unless they show the suspect a list of pictures and can objectively determine what thoughts each picture invokes.
Evoking thoughts sounds neigh on impossible - but I don't think that's necessary. All they have to is get the subject to make various statements, and discriminate between those the subject considers true and false - in other words, just like a polygraph.
But if, unlike a polygraph, a brain scan could result in an accurate lie detector, well that would have a huge impact on society.
Yes, my first thought was that this might NOT be so good for the copper network owners who are probably behind it.
Before, DSL had an advantage over Cable - you could shop around for an ISP with good policies and service. Not anymore! The Cable companies must be breathing a big sigh of relief that the FCC decided to kill off all the young, hungry competition. Now it's a boxing match between a pair of fat old geezers.
At a personal level, I hope you don't lose your job!
Your comment is kind of ironic. There's been a big flap between China and Japan lately, including diplomatic protests, over what China sees as Japan's watering-down of the facts about WWII. Meanwhile, the Japanese writers of history feel that "more people now think teaching wartime aggression may not help nurture patriotism [among youth]."
In any case, you don't have to listen to modern political rhetoric very closely to notice that WMD do hold a special place in people's minds. It's not just about body count, otherwise we'd be having a "war on automobiles" instead of terrorism.
"Of course not, I would never violate the lease by bolting a satellite dish to the roof and hiding it with a fiberglass boulder. This meteorite just came crashing down the other day and I forgot to mention it."
There might not be enough midgets to go around, but a shock collar is easily remote-controlled and would do the job just fine.
I can't say for sure, but making a remote-controlled human might be as easy as putting one two probes in the brain - one to stimulate euphoria, the other disphoria. Then just call them on a cellphone a tell them what to do, and push the "nirvana" button to make them feel good about doing it. If they resist, push the "unbearable torment" button for a moment. There's no need for low-level muscular control; the system bypasses all the usual indirect instruments of pleasure and pain such as money, fear, blackmail, and so forth.
I can see it now, multiple competing "producers" racing each other to pump the local aquifers dry. Any notion of conservation replaced with the attitude, "hey, I paid for it, it's mine to squander." Water prices quadruple as profits soar and the bulk of the water bill pays for an army of telemarketers to call each household 5 times a day and tell them to "switch." Suppliers base water distribution on on trucking water to local towers, then sue the government to tear down the more efficient communal infrastructure as unfair competition. Free water fountains abolished. Golf courses sprouting up in the desert and poor people getting arrested for stealing drinking water from the swimming pools of the rich.
It's not just the price; European cars have real quality problems. When VW and Porsche lose out to Kia, something is wrong. And Hyundai beat Mercedes Benz.
Now I have heard the excuse that customers of fine automobiles are simply more finicky, so the direct comparison is unfair. But look who's at #1 - Lexus.
For tomorrow, are they abandoning the price point?
I don't think they're abandoning a price point - I would think their previously midrange products will fall into the low-end price point. I don't see why it's unusual that they're doing this. It's just like any of their processors - $800 at release, discontinued 4 years later when the same item falls below $80 MSRP and is a waste of time to produce. Hard drives are that way too, 10 years ago 1 GB was pretty good, but now you can't even buy one because 1 GB is only worth $0.50.
If you are a materialist, and I think that includes most people who consider themselves educated, there is no essential difference between atmospheric pressure and religion, not because nature is willful but because neither are people in any distinctive sense. Religious fervor stems from neural stimulation, which stems from stimuli and brain structure, which stems from genetics and environment... and so on back to the big bang, which stems from nothing and is utterly mystical.
The question isn't whether socializing with colleagues is a good idea, but whether employers should be able to make that decision for you.
If they have this right, they could just as easily require 100% attendance at the thursday night bowling league and 9am sunday services in order to "foster the spirit of teamwork." I can see it now.
If you don't like the terms you don't have to sign up,
The rule was made up after all the current employees already worked there.
or you can try to negotiate
Employees can only be on equal footing to negotiate if they do so as a group - pretty much impossible when the government has chosen to uphold management's wishes barring you from speaking to each other.
or you can start your own competing company with better polices and hire away all the company's employees
In the simplistic little fantasy world of econ 101, sure. The real world has noncompete clauses and barriers to entry such as startup capital.
Why not just add Vonage's softphone? Then you can call a landline;
It's $10/mo, and I would use it only occasionally.
Besides, Vonage is a POTS-to-IP bridge. There's no need for such a thing if I'm calling from my laptop to my home network - it's pure IP, and there should be no need for Vonage to have anything to do with the call.
Basically, if you want a totally free VoIP solution, you'll have to deal with not being able to contact POTS customers.
Now here's a different question... now that more people are getting VOIP and have SIP devices on their home networks (e.g. all Vonage users), can I place a call to them from my laptop, by connecting to their SIP device over IP? This would bypass the POTS network and the VOIP "provider" (e.g. Vonage) entirely.
In case you're wondering why anybody would want to do this, I'm a business traveler who can voucher Internet access, which is unmetered, but not personal calls to home. Some hotels charge outrageous fees even for local calls, which rules out calling cards. Besides, why use up my Vonage minutes (I'm on the $15/mo plan) when I don't need their POTS bridge? Since I'm a Vonage subscriber with a SIP box at home, could I call home with my laptop? I realize I could make a laptop-to-PC call home, but it will never fly unless my wife can pick up the regular phone.
Publishers don't care how many bits are transmitted overall... Users also don't care how many bits are transmitted overall... It's the comedy of the commons: nobody cares about overall efficiency as long as their own goals are being met.
Certainly this is true for the moment, however your analysis is flawed in one vital way: ISP bandwidth is not a commons. It is a managed, measured, owned quantity. Current pricing reflects current utilization patterns. As those change, I think the inherent inefficiency of P2P will exert pressure in some way, though I don't know how.
The most desirable, in my opinion, would be some sort of content-neutral caching mechanism that would move data closer to consumers. Media files are ideally suited to caching for exactly the same reason they're well suited to bittorrent - because they are large and static.
This thing, with it's per-user configurability, is just what the doctor ordered. Frankly, I have to think the looks-like-one-button, configure-how-you-want functionality is brilliant, especially when you have different types of users using the same machine.
Ridiculous. If there were any need for such a thing, the OS could easily be configured to interpret any click of any button as a left click.
This thing is just the horrible membrane keyboard idea applied to a mouse.
But what do I know? I don't like the idea of an mp3 player with no display, either.
I dont' think Bittorrent or any other p2p technology makes sense for commercial distribution, because it's inherently wasteful of last-mile bandwidth, which is scarce. Each bit makes one trip up the Internet from a leaf node (somebody's PC) to the backbone, then back down to some other leaf node. That's twice as much traffic as if the bit were simply coming down from the backbone. Ultimately this waste will probably result in higher cost compared to a centralized model. Currently p2p is thriving despite that inefficiency because IP laws prevent centralized distribution, but with authorized content distribution that won't be the case.
On the flip side, there has always been an inherent and objective rating system for the quality of non-free software -- At what price will enough people purchase it to make it worth producing?
I'd say the opposite is closer to the truth! In my experience, expensive software tends to be niche software with only a few customers, and plenty of rough edges. The cheap, workaday software (say, WinZip) is polished. Price has more to do with the dynamics of the competitive environment - value is just the upper bound on the price.
Hah! The main difference is that with OSS, at least you can evaluate the software if you choose to spend the time to do so, without paying a big fee and agreeing to a ridiculous license. Furthermore, with commercial software there is more incentive to lie and exaggerate the software capabilities.
I don't blame the NYT, but I'd love to hear the rationalization for limiting the rating system to OSS. I know I'd love to rate a few of the commercial applications I've used. Some shareware sites do have ratings systems of a sort, but it's a sticky issue all around. Even comparing two cpu's that implement the exact same instruction set is something we can't all agree on!
Don't you remember Richard Jewel? The FBI spent a couple months smearing him in the national media because they had some evicence that he was a domestic terrorist, the Olympic Park Bomber. Turns out the FBI was totally wrong - it was Eric Rudolph. Oops, sorry!
Here is the FBI's evidence against Richard Jewel:
One acquaintance described Jewell as ``an adrenaline junkie'' who craved action, and another said that Jewell expressed hope he would be ``right in the middle of it'' if police were needed during the Games.
A former law enforcement colleague - also unnamed in the documents - told the FBI Jewell was ``blackballed'' from police work because of his troubled record, and speculated Jewell might have seen Olympic heroism as a way of getting another police job.
I remember believing our leadership "must have some evidence" of WMD in Iraq!
Slashdot Mirror
And to be fair, MS is a pretty good choice in those respects.
To catch on, a language (or app framework) needs a niche, which is broader than a "killer app" but narrower than "general purpose." That's why Java failed to catch on where VB and Flash flourished, despite themselves.
But if, unlike a polygraph, a brain scan could result in an accurate lie detector, well that would have a huge impact on society.
Before, DSL had an advantage over Cable - you could shop around for an ISP with good policies and service. Not anymore! The Cable companies must be breathing a big sigh of relief that the FCC decided to kill off all the young, hungry competition. Now it's a boxing match between a pair of fat old geezers.
At a personal level, I hope you don't lose your job!
In any case, you don't have to listen to modern political rhetoric very closely to notice that WMD do hold a special place in people's minds. It's not just about body count, otherwise we'd be having a "war on automobiles" instead of terrorism.
"Of course not, I would never violate the lease by bolting a satellite dish to the roof and hiding it with a fiberglass boulder. This meteorite just came crashing down the other day and I forgot to mention it."
I can't say for sure, but making a remote-controlled human might be as easy as putting one two probes in the brain - one to stimulate euphoria, the other disphoria. Then just call them on a cellphone a tell them what to do, and push the "nirvana" button to make them feel good about doing it. If they resist, push the "unbearable torment" button for a moment. There's no need for low-level muscular control; the system bypasses all the usual indirect instruments of pleasure and pain such as money, fear, blackmail, and so forth.
Please tell me there's a hole in this argument.
I can see it now, multiple competing "producers" racing each other to pump the local aquifers dry. Any notion of conservation replaced with the attitude, "hey, I paid for it, it's mine to squander." Water prices quadruple as profits soar and the bulk of the water bill pays for an army of telemarketers to call each household 5 times a day and tell them to "switch." Suppliers base water distribution on on trucking water to local towers, then sue the government to tear down the more efficient communal infrastructure as unfair competition. Free water fountains abolished. Golf courses sprouting up in the desert and poor people getting arrested for stealing drinking water from the swimming pools of the rich.
Where do I sign the petition?
Now I have heard the excuse that customers of fine automobiles are simply more finicky, so the direct comparison is unfair. But look who's at #1 - Lexus.
If you are a materialist, and I think that includes most people who consider themselves educated, there is no essential difference between atmospheric pressure and religion, not because nature is willful but because neither are people in any distinctive sense. Religious fervor stems from neural stimulation, which stems from stimuli and brain structure, which stems from genetics and environment... and so on back to the big bang, which stems from nothing and is utterly mystical.
$300 for a computer with dual PowerPC processors sounds cheap to me! I just hope the thing gets hacked and can run Linux.
If they have this right, they could just as easily require 100% attendance at the thursday night bowling league and 9am sunday services in order to "foster the spirit of teamwork." I can see it now.
Besides, Vonage is a POTS-to-IP bridge. There's no need for such a thing if I'm calling from my laptop to my home network - it's pure IP, and there should be no need for Vonage to have anything to do with the call.
In case you're wondering why anybody would want to do this, I'm a business traveler who can voucher Internet access, which is unmetered, but not personal calls to home. Some hotels charge outrageous fees even for local calls, which rules out calling cards. Besides, why use up my Vonage minutes (I'm on the $15/mo plan) when I don't need their POTS bridge? Since I'm a Vonage subscriber with a SIP box at home, could I call home with my laptop? I realize I could make a laptop-to-PC call home, but it will never fly unless my wife can pick up the regular phone.
I'm not an expert on this, but would there have been any Congressional hearings in the first place, without Deep Throat?
The most desirable, in my opinion, would be some sort of content-neutral caching mechanism that would move data closer to consumers. Media files are ideally suited to caching for exactly the same reason they're well suited to bittorrent - because they are large and static.
This thing is just the horrible membrane keyboard idea applied to a mouse.
But what do I know? I don't like the idea of an mp3 player with no display, either.
I dont' think Bittorrent or any other p2p technology makes sense for commercial distribution, because it's inherently wasteful of last-mile bandwidth, which is scarce. Each bit makes one trip up the Internet from a leaf node (somebody's PC) to the backbone, then back down to some other leaf node. That's twice as much traffic as if the bit were simply coming down from the backbone. Ultimately this waste will probably result in higher cost compared to a centralized model. Currently p2p is thriving despite that inefficiency because IP laws prevent centralized distribution, but with authorized content distribution that won't be the case.
I don't blame the NYT, but I'd love to hear the rationalization for limiting the rating system to OSS. I know I'd love to rate a few of the commercial applications I've used. Some shareware sites do have ratings systems of a sort, but it's a sticky issue all around. Even comparing two cpu's that implement the exact same instruction set is something we can't all agree on!
Here is the FBI's evidence against Richard Jewel:
I remember believing our leadership "must have some evidence" of WMD in Iraq!