I'm all for ISPs performing automatic blocking as long as the user has the option of opening all ports.
I wish ISPs would charge, say, an extra $5/month for users that want no port blocking. I just bought a house and am moving into a neighborhood that has no DSL. That means that (1) if I get cable, I can't run my services (here in Indianapolis, all the cable companies do port blocking), and (2) if I get satellite, it's really expensive and I can't play the RTS games I always enjoyed.
I LIKE running my low-traffic mail, http, and ssh servers. I LIKE being able to do nerdy stuff like accessing my computer from the remote world without having to do all kinds of port redirecting.
I don't care what measures the ISP takes to make sure I'm not spamming my neighbors, just as long as they don't take away my basic capabilities. If they want to do relay tests on my machine once a day or limit my outgoing SMTP traffic, then fine. But I'd like to buy an *INTERNET CONNECTION*, and I like to do more than use my connection to look at advertisments.
...or was the Apple ]['s openapple-control-reset first? I know that the Apple ][ came out in 1977, but I'm not sure if it had implemented the three-key sequence yet or if it had borrowed that idea from the alt-ctrl-delete that was noted here.
The only problem with the US Constitution is that it lends itself too easily to interpretation through the lens of contemporary culture. Instead of predicting the malicious intent of greedy and insecure people centuries into the future, the forefathers naively assumed that their intent would be upheld; that it would rise above the letter of the law.
Unfortunately, instead of upholding the Constitution, greedy politicians and corporate shills are finding as many ways around it as possible, for petty and temporary personal gain.
Is this so fascinating?
on
The Bionic Office
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Did this guy sleep through the dot-com boom and the dot-bomb bust? Did he learn anything? This sounds like articles I used to read way back in 1997.
I was one of those "elite" programmers that got hired to an "elite" company, and it was great at first. They had all the frills and benefits. Company trips to Las Vegas, kitchens with free food that didn't quit, games, toys, paintball, etc. Laptops and cell phones for everybody, and an office view looking out over the hills.
It didn't work, and let me tell you why. The work sucked. We weren't just encouraged to work 16 hours a day, we were expected to. We were forced to use crappy build tools, a crappy home-brew revision control system, a crappy OS (Windows), and worst of all, I was stuck programming a GUI client in Java (GOOD LORD!).
The office frills are certainly a good thing, but it pales in comparison to the effect the work itself has on you. Is it fun, interesting work? Are you treated like a contributor of ideas, or are you just treated like an "implementation monkey"? Do you believe in the product of your efforts? Is this the kind of thing you want to do the rest of your life? Are you learning important skills? Is your career actually progressing, or do you feel hogtied?
All of these questions need to be answered positively by an employee before you can start to think about keeping him/her around. If you can have toys and pretty offices on top of that, then fine. Just make sure your employees are happy with their work and their future, and they'll stick with you always. Treat them like cattle, and they'll perform poorly and leave you as soon as they get a better offer. Most software engineers would be happy working in a dank cellar if the work was still fun and challenging.
Because of what he says in this article, there are now pointy-haired managers out there that are saying to themselves, "Well, we were considering using Linux, but instead we'll buy Microsoft for now and we can still switch in the future if we want. Microsoft uses standards -- Bill would never lie to make a buck."
Bill Gates doesn't want to make people think that Microsoft is the devil.
Why is it that everyone associates P2P only with illegal sharing of copyrighted material? P2P is such a trivial concept and easy enough to implement that it will never go away. Even if there were no Kazaa or Gnutella, P2P would be alive and well, since it's useful for many things other than trading music.
I use P2P every day, whether it be ftp, SAMBA, Gnutella, or some other concoction. And I don't ever use it to download RIAA crap.
Good LORD! I haven't seen that text since 1996! Wow, that really takes me back. Remember the one about 50 things to do in an elevator? I remember when it used to be fashionable to post these things on newsgroups and webpages and email them to all your friends.
WindRiver sells abominations like the DIAB compiler and operating systems like VxWorks. VxWorks isn't too bad. It's mostly POSIX-compliant, and has some nice features, though you'll sink a boatload of money into licensing. WindRiver also used to sell pSOS, a non-POSIX operating system that is pure hell to build embedded applications with. They're still trying to migrate a lot of their customers from pSOS to VxWorks.
There are very few reasons, from a technical perspective, to use proprietary operating systems instead of GNU. Especially with the new Linux 2.6 kernel (with pseudo-real-time capabilities and the uCLinux MMU-less additions), there are more and more reasons to move away from proprietary RTOS for most embedded applications.
The study compared applications built to run over the Internet on Microsoft's.NET platform to applications developed with J2EE, a development platform backed by Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) favored by the Linux community.
So we're not really comparing Windows and Linux. We're comparing.NET and J2EE.
Web-based applications are seen as the next step in computing that will allow software and services to be widely available on a variety of devices, not just personal computers.
What is this, 1997? This is just FUD. Linux works on a greater variety of devices than Windows.
For large companies, the cost of making and deploying applications on Microsoft's.NET standard was $1.64 million over a three-year period, 28 percent less than the $2.29 million cost for running or J2EE/Linux, according to the study.
We chose this study because, out of the dozen or so studies performed, this is the only one that came out the way we wanted it to.
For medium-sized companies, costs for.NET-based applications totaled $661,012, compared with $881,445 for J2EE/Linux.
We won't give any more detail of the cost analysis, since that will expose us as quacks.
"The primary conclusion of the study is that Microsoft offers a substantial cost advantage over J2EE/Linux as a developer platform for the applications considered," Forrester Research Inc., which owns Giga Research, said in a report by analysts John Rymer and Bob Cormier.
Microsoft told us exactly "which applications to consider."
The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's.NET platform and five of which use Linux.
Thus the difference may or may not be statistically significant, depending on the standard deviation.
Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.
Linux developers get paid better. Microsoft weenies are a dime a dozen.
Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix (news - web sites) platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
Trust us, it's not because Linux is better. It's just because companies like to cling to old, outdated operating systems.
Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks.
They could only find four??? I could give you a dozen off the top of my head that are easier/cheaper with Linux. By the way, clicking a mouse instead of typing a command doesn't make things easier!
...if SCO's claims are truthful. If they get a jury trial, Linux is doomed. All they have to do is show two similar blocks of code (doesn't matter where they come from), say one side is Linux and the other side is SCO's, and the jury's 2nd-grade ethics will take over (STEALING IS BAD!). We all saw how it went the last time they pulled that stunt, and most of those people should have known better!
Sorry if I seem cynical, but democracy only works if more than half the population makes intelligent decisions.
Microsoft's Breyer also made clear that the company does not guarantee any upgrades during the term of customers' contracts.
We made them think they would, but the fine print said they probably wouldn't.
"This is an important consideration that Microsoft's customers take into account when purchasing Software Assurance,
We try to steer around the topic.
which is a long-term, ongoing relationship between Microsoft and its customers, and a great deal of value comes from staying on SA long-term," she said.
As the chef Elzar would say (in an Australian accent): "Try the Microsoft Software Assurance program. It has the biggest profit margin." The great deal of value comes when you give Microsoft money.
"Blogging" is as old as the internet. It hasn't always been called "blogging" (thank Jebus!), but it's always been around. I remember blogging on my own website back in 1996, until I realized that it was a pretty stupid thing to do. If you think people would bother to read your blog, then you're either really famous (and you're trying to get your fans out of your face) or you're flattering yourself.
You don't understand X. Network transparency and device independence are not "features" that were tacked onto X-Windows to make it cooler, those are the philosophies that X-Windows was designed around.
This is the way every windowing system should be designed, even if you only want to display on one screen. It mimics reality -- there's a display over here, and there's a processor over there. Every "average" person uses a remote desktop. It shouldn't matter if the display is connected via a VGA cable or ethernet (through a network of other computers). It should still allow the same functionality with the same APIs.
If you were to try to strip network transparency and device independence from X, it would take a lot of work, and you wouldn't gain much.
Yes, X had design issues. Yes, it's hard to code programs for X (though if you use libs like SDL, KDE, or Gnome, things become very practical very quickly). But these problems are not necessarily caused by its feature set. I'm sure that if the original inventors had known this was going to become the major windowing system for many UNIX-like operating systems over the next few decades, they would have put a little more thought into the API design. But this is the same problem that haunts almost every software project.
You're missing the point. I'm not doubting the benefits of research in algorithms, hardware, or any other type of research being done for the practical benefit of mankind. This is all good, and indeed I am one of those researchers.
But true artificial intelligence involves questions like: (1) what is it? (2) is it even possible to understand it and/or can we describe it in a human language? (3) if so, can it be implemented with the tools (resources) that are available?
Once those questions are all worked out, then we can start advancing in the field of computer intelligence. If you think artificial intelligence is something that some 19 year old is going to accidentally invent in his garage someday, then you've been watching too much TV, and you've greatly underestimated the amount of thought and research that's already gone into this.
Read through your post again, and pretend you're a person in the middle-ages who trying to convince me that it's possible to turn rocks into gold. Note that alchemy was good in the sense that it accidentally became the basis for a lot of real scientific discoveries. But it never accomplished what it set out to do -- create cheap gold. They didn't even know what gold was, and they certainly didn't have a scientific basis from which to start finding out.
AI research is good in the sense that it's causing advancements in algorithms research, but there was already a healthy mathematics/algorithms research segment. Are you starting to see the parallels?
I decided not to obtain my Ph.D. at UIUC in AI because of the realization that it was just a glorified study of algorithms. Cognitive science is very interesting, but it's more philosophy than anything else. I took my MS in Computer Architecture and ran.
We've all seen this so many times before. Artificial Intelligence is a sham. It's analagous to alchemy. If you just put enough ingredients together, you've got intelligence. Bullshit. We don't even know what is necessary and sufficient for intelligence. We can't agree on the concept/definition, and I fear that if we could, no human would qualify.
As pertaining to this article...it's easy to get something that resembles intelligence in a closed, restricted, experimental environment. When you try to expand it, you get something like clippy. Annoying and unhelpful, and certainly not intelligent.
There are good, efficient algorithms that can help humans in many ways. But don't call it a "synthetic human," don't call it "intelligence," and don't believe it's going to start thinking for us in general terms. That fad went out in the 70's.
Usually these kinds of thoughts enter the mind as young teenagers begin to develop abstract thought. Of course, every person thinks it's original thought; that nobody else has such a novel idea.
However, it's very easy to tell that your thoughts haven't been well-developed yet. There is no consideration for the evolution of ideas, nor have you done any research done on history or on the theories of societal religious development. Nor have you read works by any philosophers who have taken this idea many steps further.
No offense. Just tone down the ego and do a little research.
One nice thing about this is that you can do it just once for a multitude of Windows licenses. In other words, a small company that just bought a dozen computers to use as Linux dev machines can get a $2400 refund! I'd say that's worth jumping through a few hoops.
...though the Church of Latter Day Saints translates the Bible according to Joseph Smith. This is an incorrect version of the less-than-perfect-than-most-would-like-to-admit translation of the King James Bible, which Joseph selectively modified to fit into his "fruitcake framework".
This isn't the same Bible that has been exhaustively studied and pored over by scholars over the centuries.
You may be interested to know that there was a "bumper-height" regulation that was in the works in the early 80's. It never made it into law, but it affected automobile design at the time.
Have you ever noticed that on some DeLoreans, they ride down the road with their noses pointed straight into the air? They jacked these cars up about 4 inches in the front as they came out of the factory (they weren't designed to be this way) just because of the threat of this new law, and completely ruined the look of the car. Many DeLorean owners today have gone through the process of lowering their cars to the original design height, needless to say...
These kinds of things should NOT be regulated by government. Companies should publish the safety specs of their automobiles and consumers should be allowed to choose. Automobiles that aren't safe won't be successful. If they are successful, and they cause lots of problems, then the consumers have nobody to sue. If the safety specs tell you that your Canyonero has a 50% chance of tipping over while rounding a turn, then you can't say you weren't warned.
I think you're talking about accents, not dialects. "Dialect" is a much more harsh distinction than what we're talking about.
Canadian English is similar to what most people would consider "Midwestern US" English (though this accent is common just about everywhere in the US) or "English without an accent (misnamed)." However, Canadian English certainly does have its own distinct accent. Ask a canadian to say "house." If you hear "hoose" you know he's Canadian (or at least North Dakotan/Minnesotan). There are several regions of Canada that don't have this accent, however.
There are much better reasons for foreigners to choose Canada over US than accents. The foremost that comes to my mind is that it's easier to get into Canada than the US.
...tell me, have you ever been anywhere else? UT is good, but compared to dozens of other great sci/eng schools around the nation, it's just another engineering school. I myself have attended and taught at several engineering universities that had programs rated higher than UT's (though I don't place too much import on the ratings), and although I never strictly attended UT Austin, I lived in Austin for a year and spent quite a bit of time at the university.
It's a good thing to have school pride, but don't let it run away with you. UT Austin gets the recognition it deserves (e.g., it's rated highly, etc.). However, the tendency of Texans to give themselves too much credit for stuff like this is all too common, and is a turn-off to the rest of the nation and to those who come to visit. Listing a couple of obscure accomplishments and mentioning that it's "waaay underrated" is only going to invite deign laughter from those in positions similar to mine.
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I'm all for ISPs performing automatic blocking as long as the user has the option of opening all ports. I wish ISPs would charge, say, an extra $5/month for users that want no port blocking. I just bought a house and am moving into a neighborhood that has no DSL. That means that (1) if I get cable, I can't run my services (here in Indianapolis, all the cable companies do port blocking), and (2) if I get satellite, it's really expensive and I can't play the RTS games I always enjoyed. I LIKE running my low-traffic mail, http, and ssh servers. I LIKE being able to do nerdy stuff like accessing my computer from the remote world without having to do all kinds of port redirecting. I don't care what measures the ISP takes to make sure I'm not spamming my neighbors, just as long as they don't take away my basic capabilities. If they want to do relay tests on my machine once a day or limit my outgoing SMTP traffic, then fine. But I'd like to buy an *INTERNET CONNECTION*, and I like to do more than use my connection to look at advertisments.
Anybody wanna fill in on the details here?
Unfortunately, instead of upholding the Constitution, greedy politicians and corporate shills are finding as many ways around it as possible, for petty and temporary personal gain.
I was one of those "elite" programmers that got hired to an "elite" company, and it was great at first. They had all the frills and benefits. Company trips to Las Vegas, kitchens with free food that didn't quit, games, toys, paintball, etc. Laptops and cell phones for everybody, and an office view looking out over the hills.
It didn't work, and let me tell you why. The work sucked. We weren't just encouraged to work 16 hours a day, we were expected to. We were forced to use crappy build tools, a crappy home-brew revision control system, a crappy OS (Windows), and worst of all, I was stuck programming a GUI client in Java (GOOD LORD!).
The office frills are certainly a good thing, but it pales in comparison to the effect the work itself has on you. Is it fun, interesting work? Are you treated like a contributor of ideas, or are you just treated like an "implementation monkey"? Do you believe in the product of your efforts? Is this the kind of thing you want to do the rest of your life? Are you learning important skills? Is your career actually progressing, or do you feel hogtied?
All of these questions need to be answered positively by an employee before you can start to think about keeping him/her around. If you can have toys and pretty offices on top of that, then fine. Just make sure your employees are happy with their work and their future, and they'll stick with you always. Treat them like cattle, and they'll perform poorly and leave you as soon as they get a better offer. Most software engineers would be happy working in a dank cellar if the work was still fun and challenging.
OF COURSE he's going to say something like that.
Because of what he says in this article, there are now pointy-haired managers out there that are saying to themselves, "Well, we were considering using Linux, but instead we'll buy Microsoft for now and we can still switch in the future if we want. Microsoft uses standards -- Bill would never lie to make a buck."
Bill Gates doesn't want to make people think that Microsoft is the devil.
I use P2P every day, whether it be ftp, SAMBA, Gnutella, or some other concoction. And I don't ever use it to download RIAA crap.
Good LORD! I haven't seen that text since 1996! Wow, that really takes me back. Remember the one about 50 things to do in an elevator? I remember when it used to be fashionable to post these things on newsgroups and webpages and email them to all your friends.
No wait...it was never fashionable.
There are very few reasons, from a technical perspective, to use proprietary operating systems instead of GNU. Especially with the new Linux 2.6 kernel (with pseudo-real-time capabilities and the uCLinux MMU-less additions), there are more and more reasons to move away from proprietary RTOS for most embedded applications.
So we're not really comparing Windows and Linux. We're comparing .NET and J2EE.
Web-based applications are seen as the next step in computing that will allow software and services to be widely available on a variety of devices, not just personal computers.
What is this, 1997? This is just FUD. Linux works on a greater variety of devices than Windows.
For large companies, the cost of making and deploying applications on Microsoft's .NET standard was $1.64 million over a three-year period, 28 percent less than the $2.29 million cost for running or J2EE/Linux, according to the study.
We chose this study because, out of the dozen or so studies performed, this is the only one that came out the way we wanted it to.
For medium-sized companies, costs for .NET-based applications totaled $661,012, compared with $881,445 for J2EE/Linux.
We won't give any more detail of the cost analysis, since that will expose us as quacks.
"The primary conclusion of the study is that Microsoft offers a substantial cost advantage over J2EE/Linux as a developer platform for the applications considered," Forrester Research Inc., which owns Giga Research, said in a report by analysts John Rymer and Bob Cormier.
Microsoft told us exactly "which applications to consider."
The study was based on interviews with 12 companies, seven of which use Microsoft's .NET platform and five of which use Linux.
Thus the difference may or may not be statistically significant, depending on the standard deviation.
Forrester said that the main difference in cost was not due to price of the basic software, but rather the price of developing the software, including labor costs.
Linux developers get paid better. Microsoft weenies are a dime a dozen.
Despite the difference in costs, however, the Forrester report also noted that "many organizations will adopt Linux instead of Microsoft's alternative" because of the expertise they have built up on the Unix (news - web sites) platform, Sun's proprietary operating systems used to run computer server networks.
Trust us, it's not because Linux is better. It's just because companies like to cling to old, outdated operating systems.
Last December, Microsoft released a study that showed that Windows-based servers were cheaper to run than those on Linux in four out of five common server tasks.
They could only find four??? I could give you a dozen off the top of my head that are easier/cheaper with Linux. By the way, clicking a mouse instead of typing a command doesn't make things easier!
Sorry if I seem cynical, but democracy only works if more than half the population makes intelligent decisions.
Still waiting.
We made them think they would, but the fine print said they probably wouldn't.
"This is an important consideration that Microsoft's customers take into account when purchasing Software Assurance,
We try to steer around the topic.
which is a long-term, ongoing relationship between Microsoft and its customers, and a great deal of value comes from staying on SA long-term," she said.
As the chef Elzar would say (in an Australian accent): "Try the Microsoft Software Assurance program. It has the biggest profit margin." The great deal of value comes when you give Microsoft money.
"Blogging" is as old as the internet. It hasn't always been called "blogging" (thank Jebus!), but it's always been around. I remember blogging on my own website back in 1996, until I realized that it was a pretty stupid thing to do. If you think people would bother to read your blog, then you're either really famous (and you're trying to get your fans out of your face) or you're flattering yourself.
In base 7, 0.66666666... is equal to 1
In base 2, 0.11111111... is equal to 1
etc.
Notice that, in binary (base 2):
1/3 = 0.010101010101...
2/3 = 0.101010101010...
3/3 = 0.111111111111...
This is the way every windowing system should be designed, even if you only want to display on one screen. It mimics reality -- there's a display over here, and there's a processor over there. Every "average" person uses a remote desktop. It shouldn't matter if the display is connected via a VGA cable or ethernet (through a network of other computers). It should still allow the same functionality with the same APIs.
If you were to try to strip network transparency and device independence from X, it would take a lot of work, and you wouldn't gain much.
Yes, X had design issues. Yes, it's hard to code programs for X (though if you use libs like SDL, KDE, or Gnome, things become very practical very quickly). But these problems are not necessarily caused by its feature set. I'm sure that if the original inventors had known this was going to become the major windowing system for many UNIX-like operating systems over the next few decades, they would have put a little more thought into the API design. But this is the same problem that haunts almost every software project.
But true artificial intelligence involves questions like: (1) what is it? (2) is it even possible to understand it and/or can we describe it in a human language? (3) if so, can it be implemented with the tools (resources) that are available?
Once those questions are all worked out, then we can start advancing in the field of computer intelligence. If you think artificial intelligence is something that some 19 year old is going to accidentally invent in his garage someday, then you've been watching too much TV, and you've greatly underestimated the amount of thought and research that's already gone into this.
Read through your post again, and pretend you're a person in the middle-ages who trying to convince me that it's possible to turn rocks into gold. Note that alchemy was good in the sense that it accidentally became the basis for a lot of real scientific discoveries. But it never accomplished what it set out to do -- create cheap gold. They didn't even know what gold was, and they certainly didn't have a scientific basis from which to start finding out.
AI research is good in the sense that it's causing advancements in algorithms research, but there was already a healthy mathematics/algorithms research segment. Are you starting to see the parallels?
We've all seen this so many times before. Artificial Intelligence is a sham. It's analagous to alchemy. If you just put enough ingredients together, you've got intelligence. Bullshit. We don't even know what is necessary and sufficient for intelligence. We can't agree on the concept/definition, and I fear that if we could, no human would qualify.
As pertaining to this article...it's easy to get something that resembles intelligence in a closed, restricted, experimental environment. When you try to expand it, you get something like clippy. Annoying and unhelpful, and certainly not intelligent.
There are good, efficient algorithms that can help humans in many ways. But don't call it a "synthetic human," don't call it "intelligence," and don't believe it's going to start thinking for us in general terms. That fad went out in the 70's.
Usually these kinds of thoughts enter the mind as young teenagers begin to develop abstract thought. Of course, every person thinks it's original thought; that nobody else has such a novel idea.
However, it's very easy to tell that your thoughts haven't been well-developed yet. There is no consideration for the evolution of ideas, nor have you done any research done on history or on the theories of societal religious development. Nor have you read works by any philosophers who have taken this idea many steps further.
No offense. Just tone down the ego and do a little research.
One nice thing about this is that you can do it just once for a multitude of Windows licenses. In other words, a small company that just bought a dozen computers to use as Linux dev machines can get a $2400 refund! I'd say that's worth jumping through a few hoops.
This isn't the same Bible that has been exhaustively studied and pored over by scholars over the centuries.
Have you ever noticed that on some DeLoreans, they ride down the road with their noses pointed straight into the air? They jacked these cars up about 4 inches in the front as they came out of the factory (they weren't designed to be this way) just because of the threat of this new law, and completely ruined the look of the car. Many DeLorean owners today have gone through the process of lowering their cars to the original design height, needless to say...
These kinds of things should NOT be regulated by government. Companies should publish the safety specs of their automobiles and consumers should be allowed to choose. Automobiles that aren't safe won't be successful. If they are successful, and they cause lots of problems, then the consumers have nobody to sue. If the safety specs tell you that your Canyonero has a 50% chance of tipping over while rounding a turn, then you can't say you weren't warned.
That's the way it should be.
Canadian English is similar to what most people would consider "Midwestern US" English (though this accent is common just about everywhere in the US) or "English without an accent (misnamed)." However, Canadian English certainly does have its own distinct accent. Ask a canadian to say "house." If you hear "hoose" you know he's Canadian (or at least North Dakotan/Minnesotan). There are several regions of Canada that don't have this accent, however.
There are much better reasons for foreigners to choose Canada over US than accents. The foremost that comes to my mind is that it's easier to get into Canada than the US.
It's a good thing to have school pride, but don't let it run away with you. UT Austin gets the recognition it deserves (e.g., it's rated highly, etc.). However, the tendency of Texans to give themselves too much credit for stuff like this is all too common, and is a turn-off to the rest of the nation and to those who come to visit. Listing a couple of obscure accomplishments and mentioning that it's "waaay underrated" is only going to invite deign laughter from those in positions similar to mine.
Just letting you know...you may mod me down now.
It also is a high-octane fuel that offers excellent acceleration and vehicle power.
Huh? I was under the impression that octane was an entirely different chemical (C8H18).