I think it was 92 or 93 when I was running beta releases of NT (I was not even a teenager, so the memory is a bit fuzzy) I got from my father. They were not so stable, but I was impressed with their performance over 3.11. I used to run OS/2 and some custom tools in 3.11 just to make it more user friendly (for the life of me I can't remember what it was called, but it added a sidebar, which was way different). But 95 actually ran better (as I remember) than those early releases of NT, which were really buggy. As much as I loathe MS, those were the upgrades that made Windows more usable (despite the fact that it would be years before plug and play worked). Of couse, I felt l337 to be using NT!
The earliest test copies of NT I had were towering stacks of floppies as well. I think I still have a stack somewhere. Thanks for the flashback!
Least we forget the days of 624k conventional memory or expanded and extended memory, using a boot disk to play Wing Commander, running DOSSHELL to save that precious conventional memory...
Mod up, bro! That is the nail (i.e. you've hit it on the head). Aside from Bush and other problems, kids just don't want to work. Fewer kids go into science and engineering every year.
The old tradition, and really what built America, was that your great+grandparents immigrated and worked like dogs/died like dogs (viva Upton Sinclair). Then their kids had it a little better. And so on, until we get kids who are disconnected from hard work and suffering. Who, really, won't do anything if it is too hard or not immediately fun or gratifying.
If you work in the science/eng fields you probably see this. My company talks about the problems of losing too many employees in the next ten years to retirement and not having enough replacements (very few people under 30). I have friends who think that business statistics is a really hard course. Unlike my peers in college who regularly pulled all nighters to study or finish projects.
I think Cerf is right, though. This is really like Daniel: this is just the writing on the wall. It is really too late. Bush, Hollywood, and the sucess of our parents have made a generation that may be too lazy to save.
And I am not anti-American by any means. I just think that this culture of true love, self fulfillment, avoidance of suffering has made us too soft to survive.
Um... so if Mercedes sponsered an "honest and fair" review of a BMW, would you believe it? More importantly, what would BMW have to gain from doing such a thing?
Perhaps this story is silly, I mean OSDL would not be looking after their own best interests to do such a thing, MS is basically bluffing. But that is a feather for MS... or am I crazy? Now, Ballmer, Bill & Co can say, "Well, those Linux guys are all pansies, we can put up, so prove it!" Heavan forbid , Linux might get served.
I know that I am biased (boo MS), because as a developer and computer user, I hate all of the crap MS pulls, so I would pull for Linux in an "objective" comparision. Again, nothing is truly objective... MS slants the "Get the Facts" info to obfuscate the truth. Ex: SQLServer has been the source of lots of super serious exploits (FACT: see the Slammer worm). But I am sure we will hear MS fanboi ad nauseum on the exploits theme ("they stay up all night trying to crack XP", yeah right, it is alot easier than that Linux distros don't usually run bizarre services you can't see).
Really that's all a red herring, because no matter what the truth is, this is not going to find it. Linus would pull for Linux (duh) and MS would pull for Windows. In fact, if they didn't they would be liars, who don't believe in what they sell (oh wait, this is MS and OSDL isn't really selling anyting).
This is a glorified press release that should read, "Bill tries to bluff Linus" But some people recognize that, so I call this whole thing FUD in sheeps clothing.
Whether "first to file" or "first to invent" is better is not exactly the problem as much as it is the wording of the "Prior-Art" section of TFA.
Because of the wording (ex: "the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or otherwise publicly known") you aren't really doing anymore than making bad patents more ironclad.
For example, if I were to invent a new type of object banking (for a distributed system, a decentralized version of something like CORBA... if that makes any sense to you) and then proceed to use it in an application, I would have to have either patented it first or published in some type of journal (ACM, IEEE, etc). Uh... problem there professor! Half of the "software patents" are just on things that the inventor never thought to patent. He may have been first but it seemed like an obvious thing. If you don't think that is the case, then ask yourself "How does Amazon have a patent on one click shopping?" Then some company [cough] Kodak [cough] (read the Sun case here) buys the patent and gets rights to my product (so I have to pay them).
This introduces a sort of stranglehold on innovation because I can't just make something, I have to wade through thousands of patents to see if one matches my idea, and if not, patent it! Due to the flexible nature of software design, software patents hurt innovation and ultimately the United States as a whole. I don't think they need to be abolished (software patents), but if you are going to offer them, you need to be sure that they are worth it! Perhaps that is the flaw of patent law in general, failed engineers who become patent lawyers miss the obvious differences...
As a fan of analog synths (ok, so emo is big on it, but so is retro pop), the sounds produced by an analog synth are much different than those produced on a digital synth. Most people have probably not played an analog synth, but the tones are, er warmer. They have a distinctive sound (aka: The Cars, The Rentals, Blondie, The Get Up Kids, The Sounds, The Beastie Boys...) but they do not have that "cheap" sound that digital (aka your first Casio Tonebank keyboard) synths have.
Not to mention it takes work to find good analog tones, they are not push button (analog modeling synths sometimes are) or at least you have to program them first. And the expression inputs affect the sound as well.
So the troll is really way off base here. Bob Moog really added to modern music. Sampling has nothing to do with Moog synths, sorry bud. Plus I love his ring mod guitar pedals (too bad they are $300 a pop).
As an aside, maybe they could lower the price of the new mini-moogs to below a couple of grand, or re-issue the prodigy models (I want one!).
MS wishing to market the 360 as a media hub is going to be hampered by the millions of iPod/iTunes users. Perhaps they should finally admit defeat and offer some type of compatible system.
Of course, without an HD, who is going to be ripping/downloading/selling limbs for MP3s that I will store on my... CRAP! Great marketing.
I am not an MS lover by any means, but I have seen a few shots of the "Glass" UI that look pretty interesting. If you actually peruse the site, you will see that the new UI isn't scheduled for release unitl late 2005 (Beta 2).
Some of those features look lame as all get out: the scrolling option on the Start menu for one.
I can't stand the Windows UI, so I skin it and call it a day...
This is just a classic symptom of using a 4GL-RAD-IDE based language (Powerbuilder would be another example).
While initial development is cheap and quick and you don't need to be a computer scientist to learn to do it... there are maintenance costs down the line. The truth is that all of these companies that want to use tools forever (read 5+ years) should have taken that into account. Or at least adjusted their quality model (IEEE 9126, btw, but why would they look at something like that) to account for it in terms of ROI.
I sympathize with the "developers" who fear losing their jobs, but realistically VB was treated as a silver bullet (Read the old article "No Silver Bullet" to see what I mean):
Can use non-engineers to write the code.
Quick turnaround
Cheap
Easy to write.
...
The flipside of this is that when MS quits supporting it, thats it. Use your tools until we break it with a new patch. These applications were written cheaply and this is the result. This is a classic case of poor software engineering. Oh wait, VB developers don't know much about that (I have worked with a few)...
I know that ten years ago there weren't that many options for this kind of stuff, but too many companies ogled the brochures and decided that life would be easier to go this way (it is RAD-ical with MS). Despite the fact that Smalltalk and other alternatives were available.
BTW, not to be heavy handed, but if you are using VB as a front end for Access and you wrote it less than 5 years ago for a serious application... well that was just a mistake.
Instead of whining about Microsoft, this should teach the world a few things about software:
End to end solutions are always bad. This was bound to happen, don't blame Microsoft (they screw up enough stuff).
The industry requires that you keep current. Don't become a one language guy, especially if you don't come from Computer Science.
Companies don't care or know enough about software engineering to consider maintenance (amongst other things).
I heard the story on NPR. How are electric cars going to get rid of oil, again? Or does everyone forget that plastic, nylon, polyester, (synthetic rubber), vaseline, etc, etc all come from oil?
In other words, even if we don't put it in the gas tank, the rest of the car still needs it... ahhh ignorance is both fun and filling.
Any book that spends much time on the 7-layer model is more of an IT book. Most ABET CS programs I know of or have taken feature communications courses that spend about a week talking about what IT books will spend chapters going over.
What is more interesting are the algorithms behind error correction, genetic ad-hoc nodal networking, bind revision... well do they ever review serious books anymore?
That would be nice, except I haven't heard any plans to make gmail available via POP3 or even "pluggable" into a mail client. Am I wrong?
More to the point, taking interest in the domain name "gbrowser.com" may not only have nothing to do with a browser, but who says Google would call their browser "gbrowser" to begin with? Frankly that name sucks, it would be "gExplorer" and it would redirect you to ads or put a frame around the page you are vising... then someone would make a Yahoo toolbar...
For those who have taken lots of economics courses, rememeber that in a free market price is not arbitrarily set. Price is set by the intersection of the supply curve (what companies want to charge for a given quantity of a good) and the demand curve (what you are willing to pay for a given quantity of a good). This is called the equillibrium price.
In this case, the problem lies with a monopoly. In a monopoly no one else offers that good or a competititve good. Now, there is something called "monopolistic competition" which is where several companies sell indistinguishable goods (long distance), but much to the same effect. In such a system, the supply curve is constantly shifted because the company can set price where ever it wants to for supply, you cannot go anywhere else for the same service. In fact, the supply curve may even be completely vertical!!!
I say that cable is a monopoly even when other companies are included, because only one provider exists in your area.
This also has alot to do with the most basic rule of business: there is no altruism! Company A will not do something for no money, otherwise they wouldn't be in business. What gives you things like good hardware infrastructure, competitive product features and pricing is competition! Because things like DSL and wireless are not effective alternatives, Cable has no competition.
Before you go knocking the free market remeber that all companies exist for profit only (this excludes churches, charities, etc). This is true in any economy! The failings of something like communism is that their is no profit to be had, so why try? That is why all of their GNP was invested in the military and that is also the only place tech ever improved. You wouldn't do anything extra for free, honestly!
Now, DSL is not as good as cable by far. The cable companies have the advantage of unlimited bandwidth (they use a cable TV channel to give you the cable modem), so to up the 6mbps it is usually rated at, they just have to add a channel.
DSL cannot get faster because it is limited by the physical lines running to your house. DSL uses the line that runs to your phone. By adding hardware on the other end, they can allow you to use all of that bandwidth, except for a small section dedicated to phone (voice over IP?).
It is sad to hear that the cable providers are charging more. It is not really a matter of making money, but trying to leverage more money out of their current customers.
This is the exact same thing they did with Cable television. I remember when basic cable was only $20, now it is like $45 in my area and for only a handful more channels.... poor planning on the cable companies end.
Of course, they are all the same company any way, so price is greatly influenced by what the companies want to charge rather than the usual supply meets demand equlibrium model of a true free market.
This all makes me glad that I have a T1 line at home.... but yeah, it's expensive and if my roomates dad didn't run some of his servers out of our house, I wouldn't have it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah yes!
I think it was 92 or 93 when I was running beta releases of NT (I was not even a teenager, so the memory is a bit fuzzy) I got from my father. They were not so stable, but I was impressed with their performance over 3.11. I used to run OS/2 and some custom tools in 3.11 just to make it more user friendly (for the life of me I can't remember what it was called, but it added a sidebar, which was way different). But 95 actually ran better (as I remember) than those early releases of NT, which were really buggy. As much as I loathe MS, those were the upgrades that made Windows more usable (despite the fact that it would be years before plug and play worked). Of couse, I felt l337 to be using NT!
The earliest test copies of NT I had were towering stacks of floppies as well. I think I still have a stack somewhere. Thanks for the flashback!
Least we forget the days of 624k conventional memory or expanded and extended memory, using a boot disk to play Wing Commander, running DOSSHELL to save that precious conventional memory...
Mod up, bro! That is the nail (i.e. you've hit it on the head). Aside from Bush and other problems, kids just don't want to work. Fewer kids go into science and engineering every year.
The old tradition, and really what built America, was that your great+grandparents immigrated and worked like dogs/died like dogs (viva Upton Sinclair). Then their kids had it a little better. And so on, until we get kids who are disconnected from hard work and suffering. Who, really, won't do anything if it is too hard or not immediately fun or gratifying.
If you work in the science/eng fields you probably see this. My company talks about the problems of losing too many employees in the next ten years to retirement and not having enough replacements (very few people under 30). I have friends who think that business statistics is a really hard course. Unlike my peers in college who regularly pulled all nighters to study or finish projects.
I think Cerf is right, though. This is really like Daniel: this is just the writing on the wall. It is really too late. Bush, Hollywood, and the sucess of our parents have made a generation that may be too lazy to save.
And I am not anti-American by any means. I just think that this culture of true love, self fulfillment, avoidance of suffering has made us too soft to survive.
Um... so if Mercedes sponsered an "honest and fair" review of a BMW, would you believe it? More importantly, what would BMW have to gain from doing such a thing?
Perhaps this story is silly, I mean OSDL would not be looking after their own best interests to do such a thing, MS is basically bluffing. But that is a feather for MS... or am I crazy? Now, Ballmer, Bill & Co can say, "Well, those Linux guys are all pansies, we can put up, so prove it!" Heavan forbid , Linux might get served.
I know that I am biased (boo MS), because as a developer and computer user, I hate all of the crap MS pulls, so I would pull for Linux in an "objective" comparision. Again, nothing is truly objective... MS slants the "Get the Facts" info to obfuscate the truth. Ex: SQLServer has been the source of lots of super serious exploits (FACT: see the Slammer worm). But I am sure we will hear MS fanboi ad nauseum on the exploits theme ("they stay up all night trying to crack XP", yeah right, it is alot easier than that Linux distros don't usually run bizarre services you can't see).
Really that's all a red herring, because no matter what the truth is, this is not going to find it. Linus would pull for Linux (duh) and MS would pull for Windows. In fact, if they didn't they would be liars, who don't believe in what they sell (oh wait, this is MS and OSDL isn't really selling anyting).
This is a glorified press release that should read, "Bill tries to bluff Linus" But some people recognize that, so I call this whole thing FUD in sheeps clothing.
Whether "first to file" or "first to invent" is better is not exactly the problem as much as it is the wording of the "Prior-Art" section of TFA.
Because of the wording (ex: "the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or otherwise publicly known") you aren't really doing anymore than making bad patents more ironclad.
For example, if I were to invent a new type of object banking (for a distributed system, a decentralized version of something like CORBA... if that makes any sense to you) and then proceed to use it in an application, I would have to have either patented it first or published in some type of journal (ACM, IEEE, etc). Uh... problem there professor! Half of the "software patents" are just on things that the inventor never thought to patent. He may have been first but it seemed like an obvious thing. If you don't think that is the case, then ask yourself "How does Amazon have a patent on one click shopping?" Then some company [cough] Kodak [cough] (read the Sun case here) buys the patent and gets rights to my product (so I have to pay them).
This introduces a sort of stranglehold on innovation because I can't just make something, I have to wade through thousands of patents to see if one matches my idea, and if not, patent it! Due to the flexible nature of software design, software patents hurt innovation and ultimately the United States as a whole. I don't think they need to be abolished (software patents), but if you are going to offer them, you need to be sure that they are worth it! Perhaps that is the flaw of patent law in general, failed engineers who become patent lawyers miss the obvious differences...
Politicans are ruining the U.S:
As a fan of analog synths (ok, so emo is big on it, but so is retro pop), the sounds produced by an analog synth are much different than those produced on a digital synth. Most people have probably not played an analog synth, but the tones are, er warmer. They have a distinctive sound (aka: The Cars, The Rentals, Blondie, The Get Up Kids, The Sounds, The Beastie Boys...) but they do not have that "cheap" sound that digital (aka your first Casio Tonebank keyboard) synths have.
Not to mention it takes work to find good analog tones, they are not push button (analog modeling synths sometimes are) or at least you have to program them first. And the expression inputs affect the sound as well.
So the troll is really way off base here. Bob Moog really added to modern music. Sampling has nothing to do with Moog synths, sorry bud. Plus I love his ring mod guitar pedals (too bad they are $300 a pop).
As an aside, maybe they could lower the price of the new mini-moogs to below a couple of grand, or re-issue the prodigy models (I want one!).
MS wishing to market the 360 as a media hub is going to be hampered by the millions of iPod/iTunes users. Perhaps they should finally admit defeat and offer some type of compatible system.
Of course, without an HD, who is going to be ripping/downloading/selling limbs for MP3s that I will store on my... CRAP! Great marketing.
I am not an MS lover by any means, but I have seen a few shots of the "Glass" UI that look pretty interesting. If you actually peruse the site, you will see that the new UI isn't scheduled for release unitl late 2005 (Beta 2).
Some of those features look lame as all get out: the scrolling option on the Start menu for one.
I can't stand the Windows UI, so I skin it and call it a day...
I think the truth is that UIs are getting stale and that the 3d desktop is going to change things (like Java project looking glass: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/lookingglass/
Even Java could go (and I'm an SCJP), not as likely but RAD solutions usually ignore maintenance costs.
This is just a classic symptom of using a 4GL-RAD-IDE based language (Powerbuilder would be another example).
While initial development is cheap and quick and you don't need to be a computer scientist to learn to do it... there are maintenance costs down the line. The truth is that all of these companies that want to use tools forever (read 5+ years) should have taken that into account. Or at least adjusted their quality model (IEEE 9126, btw, but why would they look at something like that) to account for it in terms of ROI.
I sympathize with the "developers" who fear losing their jobs, but realistically VB was treated as a silver bullet (Read the old article "No Silver Bullet" to see what I mean):
The flipside of this is that when MS quits supporting it, thats it. Use your tools until we break it with a new patch. These applications were written cheaply and this is the result. This is a classic case of poor software engineering. Oh wait, VB developers don't know much about that (I have worked with a few)...
I know that ten years ago there weren't that many options for this kind of stuff, but too many companies ogled the brochures and decided that life would be easier to go this way (it is RAD-ical with MS). Despite the fact that Smalltalk and other alternatives were available.
BTW, not to be heavy handed, but if you are using VB as a front end for Access and you wrote it less than 5 years ago for a serious application... well that was just a mistake.
Instead of whining about Microsoft, this should teach the world a few things about software:
- End to end solutions are always bad. This was bound to happen, don't blame Microsoft (they screw up enough stuff).
- The industry requires that you keep current. Don't become a one language guy, especially if you don't come from Computer Science.
- Companies don't care or know enough about software engineering to consider maintenance (amongst other things).
If you don't like it... find a new job.I heard the story on NPR. How are electric cars going to get rid of oil, again? Or does everyone forget that plastic, nylon, polyester, (synthetic rubber), vaseline, etc, etc all come from oil?
In other words, even if we don't put it in the gas tank, the rest of the car still needs it... ahhh ignorance is both fun and filling.
Any book that spends much time on the 7-layer model is more of an IT book. Most ABET CS programs I know of or have taken feature communications courses that spend about a week talking about what IT books will spend chapters going over.
What is more interesting are the algorithms behind error correction, genetic ad-hoc nodal networking, bind revision... well do they ever review serious books anymore?
That would be nice, except I haven't heard any plans to make gmail available via POP3 or even "pluggable" into a mail client. Am I wrong? More to the point, taking interest in the domain name "gbrowser.com" may not only have nothing to do with a browser, but who says Google would call their browser "gbrowser" to begin with? Frankly that name sucks, it would be "gExplorer" and it would redirect you to ads or put a frame around the page you are vising... then someone would make a Yahoo toolbar...
For those who have taken lots of economics courses, rememeber that in a free market price is not arbitrarily set. Price is set by the intersection of the supply curve (what companies want to charge for a given quantity of a good) and the demand curve (what you are willing to pay for a given quantity of a good). This is called the equillibrium price.
In this case, the problem lies with a monopoly. In a monopoly no one else offers that good or a competititve good. Now, there is something called "monopolistic competition" which is where several companies sell indistinguishable goods (long distance), but much to the same effect. In such a system, the supply curve is constantly shifted because the company can set price where ever it wants to for supply, you cannot go anywhere else for the same service. In fact, the supply curve may even be completely vertical!!!
I say that cable is a monopoly even when other companies are included, because only one provider exists in your area.
This also has alot to do with the most basic rule of business: there is no altruism! Company A will not do something for no money, otherwise they wouldn't be in business. What gives you things like good hardware infrastructure, competitive product features and pricing is competition! Because things like DSL and wireless are not effective alternatives, Cable has no competition.
Before you go knocking the free market remeber that all companies exist for profit only (this excludes churches, charities, etc). This is true in any economy! The failings of something like communism is that their is no profit to be had, so why try? That is why all of their GNP was invested in the military and that is also the only place tech ever improved. You wouldn't do anything extra for free, honestly!
Now, DSL is not as good as cable by far. The cable companies have the advantage of unlimited bandwidth (they use a cable TV channel to give you the cable modem), so to up the 6mbps it is usually rated at, they just have to add a channel. DSL cannot get faster because it is limited by the physical lines running to your house. DSL uses the line that runs to your phone. By adding hardware on the other end, they can allow you to use all of that bandwidth, except for a small section dedicated to phone (voice over IP?). It is sad to hear that the cable providers are charging more. It is not really a matter of making money, but trying to leverage more money out of their current customers. This is the exact same thing they did with Cable television. I remember when basic cable was only $20, now it is like $45 in my area and for only a handful more channels.... poor planning on the cable companies end. Of course, they are all the same company any way, so price is greatly influenced by what the companies want to charge rather than the usual supply meets demand equlibrium model of a true free market. This all makes me glad that I have a T1 line at home.... but yeah, it's expensive and if my roomates dad didn't run some of his servers out of our house, I wouldn't have it.