I think the single most important thing about VB is that it legitimized Windows in the corporate space.
The intersection of "people who can write C for the Windows SDK" with the "people who can understand business logic" was an almost completely empty set, while the intersection of "people who can do VB" with "people who understand business logic" was a lot bigger, so, very few business apps were available before VB and quite a few shortly after.
We can credit VB a lot for the current Windows dominance.
Remember just how much business logic runs under Excel these days...
While I tend to agree with you that any viable cell that may become a human being must be treated with the same respect a fully developed one demands, I would not force other people to live under my beliefs.
It is curious many people (don't know your position about this) who object to abortion never do so about death penalty.
IIRC, what is being debated is who is responsible for the root DNS servers TLD creation and IP range assignment.
As I see, there is no good reason (except George W. Bush-style stupidity) to insist in keeping control of those. The TLDs and IP assignment should be managed by a supranational body. These guys are trying to make some headlines and get credit for "defending the Internet". I doubt they even understand what they are signing.
Besides, if all other nations decide to create new root DNS servers and reassign some unused IP ranges that are currently in the US, what exactly will the US government do about it? Sue them? Invade the UN building? Invade all other countries? If the US governent decides to sabotage the internet by doing something with the root DNS servers, it will take about... er... between 10 minutes to a couple hours for the rest of the world to restart functioning.
Why not use it as an offensive weapon? Why not use the transducers to deliver a huge amount of pressure to the enemy ship and directly (or by inducing resonance) cause a hull breach? A big boat seems an easier target than a fast-moving torpedo.
Microsoft Bob was very important - it told us what not to do and which way not to go.
An yes, the Lisa shows paths we did follow as well as some we didn't. The whole idea of centering document creation on templates at the GUI level is very interesting and should warrant further investigation. Hope Gnome and OpenOffice folks think about it.
TFA is an very interesting piece of opinion. I would say "self-delusion", but let's give the guy the benefit of doubt.
I am sure mass-entertainment companies would love to go back to where they were before MP3, broadband and the Internet, but, sadly for them, the world was forever changed by these technologies. Just like it was by electricity or airplanes. Neither better nor worse, but different.
Musicians will always make music just like sculptors will always make sculptures and painters will always paint. What some musicians saw was the result of mass marketing and mass reproduction of their works. Most of all, recording companies enjoyed the huge profits made from being the middle man between musicians and consumers.
I believe not a single talented musician will stop making music because it is what they love to do and what they live for.
As for the makers of new DRM tools, they can well stop innovating.
Interestinglty enough, there can be no unmanned shuttle flight, so, they are risking human lives (and taking additional weight) even when all that's needed is a cargo lift.
If you factor in the unmanned cargo flights, Soyuz and Soyuz-derived vehicles have a much better success ratio. Of course the unmanned Progress ships burn in the atmosphere, so we may well count that as somewhat less important successes, but it is possible because their systems allow them to function without humans.
The ubiquity of IE was very important to the wide adoption of the web, which brought more awareness to open-source/free software. IE is crucial on any new Windows box - how else would you download Firefox?
The web would not be what it is today if Microsoft Network arrived a couple years earlier than Netscape. They wanted an AOL killer and, had the web not happened at that time (earlier would be impossible because of the modems we had, later it would be too late to get noticed) they would have it. And they would have killed the web without even noticing it.
Without the awareness the web generated, free software would have remained a tiny niche player.
The worst problem with going straight to Mars as opposed to getting the hang of this out-of-Earth exploration is that when something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong) in Mars, we can, at best, record their last words to their beloved ones. When something bad happens on the Moon we can send them food, water or air in a week, or bring them back in a little more than that.
By mastering our spacefaring abilities and technologies on the Moon, we are taking a somewhat longer, less risky route, but it's a route that not only leads us to Mars - it can lead us anywhere.
The worst problem we face is the lack of a decent long-life, reusable deep-space propulsion system. With one we could rehearse a Moon or Mars mission with a unmanned vehicle, man it, go again, come back, refuel, restock, send it to Jupiter (unmanned, as the place looks like a microwave oven), build a better, faster one, send it to Saturn...
If we can't make an oxygen generator that lasts a year unmaintained, we must figure a way to get there and back in less time.
By letting OSX be pirated Apple is following the winning strategy of Microsoft. The only difference is that the cheapest way to run MacOS is buying a Mac mini and I am notsure whether the cheapest way to run Windows is to buy a PC pre-installed with Windows or to buy a box with a CD inside.
By allowing PC users that would never buy a real copy of Windows, Microsoft used "virtual dumping" to get rid of any competition (by offering an "unsuported" version of its OS for free) and to increase its market share. When MS got rid of the competition in the OS arena, it had a healthy user base software writers were happy to make software available for.
Apple is using exactly the same strategy. By making OSX "unsuported" available to current PC users, Apple increases its user base, making it more attractive to build software for it and, at the same time, makes people try Apple software in the hopes they get the next PC upgrade.
In the meantime, they pretend that's not what they are doing.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the single most important thing about VB is that it legitimized Windows in the corporate space.
The intersection of "people who can write C for the Windows SDK" with the "people who can understand business logic" was an almost completely empty set, while the intersection of "people who can do VB" with "people who understand business logic" was a lot bigger, so, very few business apps were available before VB and quite a few shortly after.
We can credit VB a lot for the current Windows dominance.
Remember just how much business logic runs under Excel these days...
Maybe it's time to start collecting donations via a darlbehindbars.org website.
You must be lucky. I have come accross quite a few. Most of them are conservative right-wing non-catholic christians.
And I bet George W Bush is pro death-penalty.
While I tend to agree with you that any viable cell that may become a human being must be treated with the same respect a fully developed one demands, I would not force other people to live under my beliefs.
It is curious many people (don't know your position about this) who object to abortion never do so about death penalty.
Replying to myself... This is ugly.
;-)
Would it that big a problem to reprint business cards to say president@whitehouse.gov.us instead of president@whitehouse.gov?
IIRC, what is being debated is who is responsible for the root DNS servers TLD creation and IP range assignment.
As I see, there is no good reason (except George W. Bush-style stupidity) to insist in keeping control of those. The TLDs and IP assignment should be managed by a supranational body. These guys are trying to make some headlines and get credit for "defending the Internet". I doubt they even understand what they are signing.
Besides, if all other nations decide to create new root DNS servers and reassign some unused IP ranges that are currently in the US, what exactly will the US government do about it? Sue them? Invade the UN building? Invade all other countries? If the US governent decides to sabotage the internet by doing something with the root DNS servers, it will take about... er... between 10 minutes to a couple hours for the rest of the world to restart functioning.
This is so much of a non-issue...
The first thing to come to my mind was the circuit lay-out program. The second and third were the music of Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla.
All good names have been taken. Many times.
It seems to me that unpatched Windows boxes are becoming an environmental problem ;-)
Why not use it as an offensive weapon? Why not use the transducers to deliver a huge amount of pressure to the enemy ship and directly (or by inducing resonance) cause a hull breach? A big boat seems an easier target than a fast-moving torpedo.
Microsoft Bob was very important - it told us what not to do and which way not to go.
An yes, the Lisa shows paths we did follow as well as some we didn't. The whole idea of centering document creation on templates at the GUI level is very interesting and should warrant further investigation. Hope Gnome and OpenOffice folks think about it.
TFA is an very interesting piece of opinion. I would say "self-delusion", but let's give the guy the benefit of doubt.
I am sure mass-entertainment companies would love to go back to where they were before MP3, broadband and the Internet, but, sadly for them, the world was forever changed by these technologies. Just like it was by electricity or airplanes. Neither better nor worse, but different.
Musicians will always make music just like sculptors will always make sculptures and painters will always paint. What some musicians saw was the result of mass marketing and mass reproduction of their works. Most of all, recording companies enjoyed the huge profits made from being the middle man between musicians and consumers.
I believe not a single talented musician will stop making music because it is what they love to do and what they live for.
As for the makers of new DRM tools, they can well stop innovating.
Please.
I would say "as long as humans have ears"
Remember that circumventing DRM is not forbidden in many countries.
Interestinglty enough, there can be no unmanned shuttle flight, so, they are risking human lives (and taking additional weight) even when all that's needed is a cargo lift.
If you factor in the unmanned cargo flights, Soyuz and Soyuz-derived vehicles have a much better success ratio. Of course the unmanned Progress ships burn in the atmosphere, so we may well count that as somewhat less important successes, but it is possible because their systems allow them to function without humans.
Well... Windows runs the largest distributed computer in the planet.
Too bad it only does DDOS and spam...
I loved the "rediculous" part on "http://www.vanuatugovernment.gov.vu/cyberspace.ht ml"...
The current perception among publishers (music and books alike) is that if it touches a computer, there is a massive copyright infringement.
It is the preventive strike doctrine applied.
It appears to me the single most stupid research line in the whole space exploration thing.
And, since the mission involves essentialy eating, perhaps only 200 candidates weight less than 100 Kg (too lazy to convert)
The ubiquity of IE was very important to the wide adoption of the web, which brought more awareness to open-source/free software. IE is crucial on any new Windows box - how else would you download Firefox?
The web would not be what it is today if Microsoft Network arrived a couple years earlier than Netscape. They wanted an AOL killer and, had the web not happened at that time (earlier would be impossible because of the modems we had, later it would be too late to get noticed) they would have it. And they would have killed the web without even noticing it.
Without the awareness the web generated, free software would have remained a tiny niche player.
Wow!
The Age of Aquarius was nice... Too bad it was so short...
apt-get install hercules
Since when did science has any impact on religion?
We have a couple mountains of evidence favoring evolution and still people want to teach creationism on schools...
There are no resources, for now, that can be tapped. Mining the Moon is hideously expensive when compared to mine the Earth.
As for He3, there are no fusion reactors ready to use it - they must be developed first, if, they are, at all, possible.
Not to say that you have to bake a couple mountains of lunar regolith just to get a little He3.
We must not look outside our atmosphere for something to save mankind. Unless, of course, there is a big chunk of rock with our name on it.
The worst problem with going straight to Mars as opposed to getting the hang of this out-of-Earth exploration is that when something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong) in Mars, we can, at best, record their last words to their beloved ones. When something bad happens on the Moon we can send them food, water or air in a week, or bring them back in a little more than that.
By mastering our spacefaring abilities and technologies on the Moon, we are taking a somewhat longer, less risky route, but it's a route that not only leads us to Mars - it can lead us anywhere.
The worst problem we face is the lack of a decent long-life, reusable deep-space propulsion system. With one we could rehearse a Moon or Mars mission with a unmanned vehicle, man it, go again, come back, refuel, restock, send it to Jupiter (unmanned, as the place looks like a microwave oven), build a better, faster one, send it to Saturn...
If we can't make an oxygen generator that lasts a year unmaintained, we must figure a way to get there and back in less time.
Fzz got it right.
By letting OSX be pirated Apple is following the winning strategy of Microsoft. The only difference is that the cheapest way to run MacOS is buying a Mac mini and I am notsure whether the cheapest way to run Windows is to buy a PC pre-installed with Windows or to buy a box with a CD inside.
By allowing PC users that would never buy a real copy of Windows, Microsoft used "virtual dumping" to get rid of any competition (by offering an "unsuported" version of its OS for free) and to increase its market share. When MS got rid of the competition in the OS arena, it had a healthy user base software writers were happy to make software available for.
Apple is using exactly the same strategy. By making OSX "unsuported" available to current PC users, Apple increases its user base, making it more attractive to build software for it and, at the same time, makes people try Apple software in the hopes they get the next PC upgrade.
In the meantime, they pretend that's not what they are doing.
Brilliant