I've seen some of the stuff they are working on in their "labs", and a lot of it is indeed quite innovative. Yet very little ever makes it to a product. Wonder why? There are some smart people working on interesting things in Redmond, but apparently at some level on the Microsoft machine, it all gets patented and forgotten (until they need to ass fuck someone with the patent?)
Thing is, this observation isn't new- it's been commented on for *years* that Microsoft have labs stuffed full of very clever and innovative people, yet still seem to end up churning out mediocre, uninspiring crap. One explanation is that internal politics are responsible- this article comment from someone who claims to have worked at Microsoft (click link for full version) is informative:-
There have been many instances at Microsoft where genuine innovations have sat on the shelf or been half-heartedly brought to market [.. In 2002 MS had..] a prototype smartphone that had (essentially) all the useability features of an iPhone, including a trick interface, accelerometer and multi-touch. It was cobbled together and not very pretty, but as a proof of concept, it worked. Yet it never saw the light of day. Why?
Brass’s tablet project was well advanced in the labs too, but somehow never got the traction it deserved internally. [..]
Microsoft has a Darwinian internal structure. Each business unit has to fight for scarce resources, - they compete with each other and only the strong survive. Succeeding in that environment involves more than just having a good (or even great) product or project. Unless you’re Office or Windows, you have to build symbiotic relationships with other business units (preferably the big guys) just to ensure your survival. You have to make their success (at least partially) dependent on yours
[..Secondly..] in its youth, Microsoft could afford to hire only the best and the brightest. Smart people are flexible and innovative in their approach and this reflects in the company’s culture. As the enormous growth of the late 90s took hold, we couldn’t keep up with the demand for more employees and as a consequence, the quality bar dropped. We started employing people who were merely good, not outstanding. These new people were less flexible, less able to handle organisational ambiguity and less passionate about what they were doing. They started to build bureaucracy as a safety-net and as a structure in which they were comfortable operating. Goodbye to dynamic decision-making and rapid market responses.
Anyway, bottom line; the "smart" people starting work there know (or must be really, *really* blinkered not to know) of this reputation, so why are they working there? Silly money?
I'll grant that they came up with Kinect recently, which was pretty innovative (albeit as a response to the Wii controller) and smacked of research turned into a workable product. But that was pretty recent (so couldn't have inspired any but the newest recruits) and probably benefitted from being an XBox product that was out of the way of the entrenched interests and politics of the main Windows-focussed divisions, and in an area where MS had more to gain than lose from innovation.
I have always seen the warranty period as a measure of the confidence the manufacturer has in their quality, which is the ceiling for the confidence *I* have in the manufacturer's quality.
This. It is the same with use-by dates on food.
This is why I shun freshly-baked bread and cakes (where they couldn't even afford a few preservatives!) in favour of their plastic, wrapped, last-a-month-on-the-shelf processed equivalents. You just know that stuff's got to be better because of their use-by dates!
"Nuff said?" Er, you've said absolutely nothing beyond giving us some stupid pat assertion under the delusion it's not worth backing it up. Cool opinion, bro!
Having read the Microsoft "Open XML" specification, I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't really understand all the details of the classic Office file format, either. Seriously. I'd bet good money there's a lot of old, poorly documented that nobody really understands anymore. It was prolly written by programmers in 1995 who have long since moved on.
Oh, no. The "specification" for classic Microsoft Office format is very straightforward, you simply render the file in the same way that the corresponding version of Microsoft Office would render it!
In all seriousness (a) IIRC, this is how at least part of some of MS's accepted "standards" (ISO or whatever it was IIRC) basically describe things and (b) It's quite possible, if not probable, that there was never a complete *proper* version of the various Office file specifications beyond the "how the program renders it" informality and some advisory notes to themselves, i.e. the formal spec never existed in the first place because by the time MS realised there might be a need for such a thing, they were probably already stuck with backward compatibility issues that made such a thing impossible anyway.
Bingo, I was going to say this too. Only thing I can think of in its defence is that as rare earth magnets (which pose the greatest risk purely due to their strength) have become more common as novelties recently- e.g. through stores such as ThinkGeek- this might be more of an issue than it was previously.
to really understand the success of KISS, you had to be around in the 1970's. black sabbath was still "underground" (far too scary for the masses), and music was still harmless, sappy, and/or depressing. kiss comes along and every 14-18 year old suddenly had a raging hard on to terrify their parents.
If, as Wikipedia claims, KISS's major success started circa 1975, hadn't Alice Cooper already been successful doing something like that for four or so years already at that point (i.e. "scary-for-the-time" light-horror schtick enough to upset more conservative parents while still getting mainstream TV and radio exposure) ? And in a manner that would be more convincing to the 14-18 year olds you mention?
I'm neither American, nor old enough to remember Alice Cooper nor Kiss's keyday, but from what I understand, Kiss's audience at their commercial peak included a significant proportion of young (i.e. pre-teenage) children, and besides, even then wouldn't Kiss's makeup have appeared more "showmanny" than actually satanic, particularly versus the already-established Alice Cooper?
Just a thought - it would be nice that once an AC post reached troll -5 score, IP and related details (ISP, geograpgical location, anything available from HTTP headers) of the poster is added to his post.
That would be a good idea right up to the point where it was realised that such a technique could be used to harass, intimidate and silence any user expressing an unpopular opinion. Or, at least, any opinion likely to be unpopular with 5 or more users of the type who are happy to abuse the mod system to attack those they disagree with.
If you extended it to logged-in users, it could be used to give strong evidence as to a given account's true identity. In either case, it wouldn't even need much coordination, so long as our moderately-savvy amoral users downmodded every post they wanted to do this to, realising that there are probably enough like-minded modders out there.
Seriously, they should do something like name it Xbox Ï, that'd be much geekier.
Although that'd be an AWESOME name if Apple ever released a game console - Apple Ï.
They already did that, though you have to add your own dots to the "i". As well as your own case.
Is this a joke? Your user ID is (marginally) lower than mine, and I've heard of him and remember the days when almost every poll had a Cowboy Neal option.
Talk about a cosmic coincidence- literally a couple of minutes after I'd posted the above, I become aware of this spoof article while reading this comment.
I can only swear that I thought that one up without ever having seen that article (and some time ago as well), though I'd be surprised if others hadn't come up with a similar idea independently as well.
Of course, the signal's probably degraded too far for it to be recognizable.
Yeah, 'cause that's the only problem with the [FTL travel] plan...;)
You don't need FTL at all. You simply locate a planet around a distant star system- or some other extrasolar object- at a distance of 24 or slightly more light years, then detect the (admittedly quite small) proportion of the original TV transmission that travelled out there, bounced off that object, and is now heading back in our direction, due to reach us 45 to 50 years after it first went out.
You may need one of those mains-powered antenna/aerial amplifiers for this to work properly;-)
My second stop, of course, would be the mid-to-late 1930s, to have a drink with Hitler and get to know him and then decide whether I have a moral duty or even moral right to kill him.
Future Kryten: Kryten, we're epicures now. We travel through history enjoying the very best time has to offer. Future Rimmer: Dolphin sweetmeats, roast suckling elephants, baby seal hearts stuffed with dove pate. Food fit for emperors! Future Lister: We socialize with all of the greatest figures in history -- the Hapsburgs, the Borgias... Future Kryten: Why, only last week, Louis the Sixteenth threw a banquet especially in our honour. Future Rimmer: The man is a complete delight -- urbane, witty, charming... Kryten: He was an idiotic despot who lived in the most obscene luxury while the working classes starved in abject poverty. Future Rimmer: Well, we certainly didn't see any of that while we were there! Future Kryten: And his wife's an absolute cutie. Future Cat: I think they're our favourite hosts. If you don't count the Hitlers. Kryten: The who?! Future Rimmer: Providing you avoid talking politics, they're an absolute hoot. Kryten: You're good friends with the Hitlers?! Future Kryten: It's just a social thing. We don't talk about his work. We just have a few laughs, play canasta, and enjoy the odd game of mixed doubles with the Goerings. Kryten: I don't believe what I'm hearing! Future Rimmer: Look, you have to understand -- we travel back and forth throughout the whole of history, and naturally we want to sample the best of everything. It's just a bit unfortunate that the finest things tend to be in the possession of people who are judged to be a bit dodgy. Kryten: Herman Goering is a "bit dodgy"! What has become of you all? You've all abandoned your morals, been seduced by power and wealth. All you're interested in now is indulging your carnal desires. Future Rimmer: And could we tell you some stories about _that_! Kryten: I don't recognize any of you! You're just amoral self- serving _scum_, freeloading your way through history! Future Kryten: Good grief! I can't believe I used to be such a stuck-up pompous prig.
And then I can sit around smoking weed and selling closed source versions of your software. You'd never know, because I'd obfuscate it.
That could be harder than you might think. If there are reasons to suspect that your software might be based on theirs (e.g. a previously unknown and small company suddenly releasing a "proprietary" product similar to an existing open source one might be a giveaway) then there may be particular patterns of behaviour peculiar to that software's engine when presented with a given input that could be used as a test (and strong evidence) that your product was a ripoff of theirs.
If they'd actually *planned* for this possibility, then they may be able to make this more overt when their chosen input was given, while not displaying in normal use (and not being obvious from reading the code either!)
...namely, that (1) Statistically, the house always wins overall and (2) If you come up with a system that actually stands a chance of changing this they'll (a) change the rules, (b) break your legs (or kill you or whatever...) and/or kick you out, (c) accuse you of breaking *their* rules, such that the effect is that... statistically, the house always wins overall.
Bad idea to start with this overused cliche, which makes anyone spouting it sound like a tedious, unimaginative, bandwagon-jumping, meme-spouting 14-year-old trying to put across an unconvincing display of dismissive confidence, as well as being an obviously lame attempt at not actually addressing the original criticism.
Frankly, we'd be quite justified in not bothering to read the rest of what you said on the basis of those first three words of cliched drivel. But anyway...
Where people reside and make their contributions is ultimately the most important factor. Look at Einstein and how he was driven away from Germany and made all his contributions in America.
If, by "made all his contributions in America" you're implying that we have America to thank for all his work (including his most important), then you're absolutely wrong. The theories of special and general relativity were all written decades before he emigrated to the US.
That aside, not saying that I entirely disagree with what you said in general; ths US *has* been a valuable incubator for the creativity of foreign academics during the 20th century, which has arguably been to its own significant benefit.
How do you know this? Earth could be the first successful incubator of intelligent life. There is always a first. Why not Earth?
Another interesting possibility is that (if we develop technologically a bit further) we might be able to adapt other planets that are *almost*- but not quite- right for life to support it or even (if we develop further) that we can partially create or reorganise an existing star system from scratch such that it is able to better support life, i.e. if the solar system *is* (by coincidence) the best model for one that can support life, then we could recreate that model elsewhere, including the large Jupiter-like planets to sweep up large, dangerous objects, the "new earth's" magnetic field to protect us, etc., etc.
Your mistake is in assuming that the starter gun fired at the same time for everyone. That isn't true, we're late to the game. Other planets finished forming and starting up their life engines more than a billion years before ours did. The question is, where are those folks? They should have had plenty of time to fill the galaxy by now.
Thing is that mankind only arrived on the planet *very* recently in evolutionary terms. In addition to this, we've made incredibly fast levels of progress in the past few thousand years, and the past hundred years has seen technological change orders of magnitude faster than *that*.
It's fair to assume that this process hasn't stopped yet- the logical conclusion some have drawn is the "singularity". Well, whether or not that happens, the bottom line is that we're in the middle of a change that's happening incredibly suddenly- the blink of an eye, the flash of a camera bulb- compared to the relative "hours" or "weeks" that life has existed on the planet overall.
Now, there *may* be a significant number of other worlds that are presently capable of supporting life out there, i.e. at the same time as ours. But even if there are (e.g.) hundreds of them, even if they *broadly* follow the same trajectory and timescale as earth (in terms of the evolution of life), even if their development was congruent to ours in the larger scale of things, the chance of even one other world's "camera flash" evolutionary moment occurring at exactly the same time as ours is incredibly small.
This matters because if they're even slightly behind, they're probably still at the monkey-level intelligence stage (if we're lucky), or the stage earth was at tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.
If they're even "slightly" ahead- e.g. a million years on the evolutionary scale of things is pretty "close" to us- then they're probably so far ahead of us that we won't even be able to begin to comprehend where they've gone, assuming their development (even if it eventually slowed down) went through the rapid phase that mankind is going through- and continued, even if only for a few thousand years!
This does assume that mankind's current rate of development can be continued at least for the immediate future. Still, I'm surprised that I haven't seen the above issue even considered elsewhere. Maybe I overlooked something obvious?
I'm not even going to comment on your "don't buy Seagate" diatribe either, because it's opinionated bullshit. The reality of the situation is that everyone's experiences differ. [..] Failure rates for all brands are about the same. [..] There are two brands I boycott because of preposterously high failure rates within our company (Fujitsu SCSI U320 drives), and absolutely what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking firmware bugs (Samsung drives). Those are the only two I tell people to avoid, otherwise buy whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
So in other words, *his* recommendation to avoid Seagate based on several failures is "opinionated bullshit", but you feel quite entitled to tell us to avoid Fujitsu drives based on *your* bad experience. Despite this contradicting what you said that "failure rates for all brands are about the same".
Apparently you weren't around for the days when WD had massive (tens of thousands) batches of drives being packed/shipped which had head alignment problems back in the late 90s, and the same with Maxtor (though the problem was different). Who's "good" and who's "bad" changes all the time.
Actually, I would have said the same thing- all hard drive companies seem to go through good and bad phases, and I certainly wouldn't recommend (e.g.) Seagate simply because they were quite good a few years back.
Still, from a mixture of personal experience and what I've heard from others, it seems that Seagate *is* going through a particularly bad phase in terms of reliability at present. (It might just be coincidence, but I was quite wary when Seagate took over Maxtor a few years back, as the latter never had the best reputation for reliability and it was likely that drives produced at former-Maxtor facilities would probably be sold as Seagates. And it seems to have been around then that Seagate entered their current phase).
How do you deal with it? BY HAVING BACKUPS.
Have to agree with this one though. There's no hard drive manufacturer reliable enough that one should ever *not* have backups for valued data. And much as I don't want to come over as taking self-righteous easy shots at the OP (he's already been punished for his mistake), anyone who knows enough to be running RAID-0 knows- or should know- the nature of the beast. Namely that it significantly *increases* the risk of total loss from drive failure, which is always a possibility, regardless of drive brand. Even if Seagate are crap, they're not entirely to blame here, and I'm still trying to figure out what he was expecting.
If GWB had that technology, he would have avoided the national snickering about his inability to pronounce 'nuclear' correctly.
Until someone got hold of the pre-processed feed and made it public, or simply decided to make a point of how bad he'd sound without it (if he wasn't too frightened to show us).
OTOH, the American public re-elected the guy in 2004 despite them already knowing what he was like by that point- and his not having Autotune available back then- so I'm not kidding myself that this would make much difference anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen some of the stuff they are working on in their "labs", and a lot of it is indeed quite innovative. Yet very little ever makes it to a product. Wonder why? There are some smart people working on interesting things in Redmond, but apparently at some level on the Microsoft machine, it all gets patented and forgotten (until they need to ass fuck someone with the patent?)
Thing is, this observation isn't new- it's been commented on for *years* that Microsoft have labs stuffed full of very clever and innovative people, yet still seem to end up churning out mediocre, uninspiring crap. One explanation is that internal politics are responsible- this article comment from someone who claims to have worked at Microsoft (click link for full version) is informative:-
There have been many instances at Microsoft where genuine innovations have sat on the shelf or been half-heartedly brought to market [.. In 2002 MS had..] a prototype smartphone that had (essentially) all the useability features of an iPhone, including a trick interface, accelerometer and multi-touch. It was cobbled together and not very pretty, but as a proof of concept, it worked. Yet it never saw the light of day. Why?
Brass’s tablet project was well advanced in the labs too, but somehow never got the traction it deserved internally. [..]
Microsoft has a Darwinian internal structure. Each business unit has to fight for scarce resources, - they compete with each other and only the strong survive. Succeeding in that environment involves more than just having a good (or even great) product or project. Unless you’re Office or Windows, you have to build symbiotic relationships with other business units (preferably the big guys) just to ensure your survival. You have to make their success (at least partially) dependent on yours
[..Secondly..] in its youth, Microsoft could afford to hire only the best and the brightest. Smart people are flexible and innovative in their approach and this reflects in the company’s culture. As the enormous growth of the late 90s took hold, we couldn’t keep up with the demand for more employees and as a consequence, the quality bar dropped. We started employing people who were merely good, not outstanding. These new people were less flexible, less able to handle organisational ambiguity and less passionate about what they were doing. They started to build bureaucracy as a safety-net and as a structure in which they were comfortable operating. Goodbye to dynamic decision-making and rapid market responses.
Anyway, bottom line; the "smart" people starting work there know (or must be really, *really* blinkered not to know) of this reputation, so why are they working there? Silly money?
I'll grant that they came up with Kinect recently, which was pretty innovative (albeit as a response to the Wii controller) and smacked of research turned into a workable product. But that was pretty recent (so couldn't have inspired any but the newest recruits) and probably benefitted from being an XBox product that was out of the way of the entrenched interests and politics of the main Windows-focussed divisions, and in an area where MS had more to gain than lose from innovation.
I never said that kids don't need email. Not even close. I commented on the parents' behavior. Thanks for misquoting me.
Er, what? I wasn't misquoting you because I wasn't replying to you at all!
Go to my message, click on the "Parent" link to see what I was replying to... and you'll notice it was a post by "kaytea2k". Nothing to do with you!
Five years ago? Really? Try about a month ago.
No, this applied to the aforementioned kaytea2k, the person I was replying to.
In the words of kaytea2k.... "nuff said"!
Yo momma so fat, her core dissolved!
Hmm... this one's quite good, actually. :-)
I have always seen the warranty period as a measure of the confidence the manufacturer has in their quality, which is the ceiling for the confidence *I* have in the manufacturer's quality.
This. It is the same with use-by dates on food.
This is why I shun freshly-baked bread and cakes (where they couldn't even afford a few preservatives!) in favour of their plastic, wrapped, last-a-month-on-the-shelf processed equivalents. You just know that stuff's got to be better because of their use-by dates!
[Subject: "Kids don't need email.."] Nuff said.
"Nuff said?" Er, you've said absolutely nothing beyond giving us some stupid pat assertion under the delusion it's not worth backing it up. Cool opinion, bro!
That said, I'm more curious to know why this is you decided to apparently come back and post this one comment just a day short of five years after your previous one on December 19 2006?!
Having read the Microsoft "Open XML" specification, I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't really understand all the details of the classic Office file format, either. Seriously. I'd bet good money there's a lot of old, poorly documented that nobody really understands anymore. It was prolly written by programmers in 1995 who have long since moved on.
Oh, no. The "specification" for classic Microsoft Office format is very straightforward, you simply render the file in the same way that the corresponding version of Microsoft Office would render it!
In all seriousness (a) IIRC, this is how at least part of some of MS's accepted "standards" (ISO or whatever it was IIRC) basically describe things and (b) It's quite possible, if not probable, that there was never a complete *proper* version of the various Office file specifications beyond the "how the program renders it" informality and some advisory notes to themselves, i.e. the formal spec never existed in the first place because by the time MS realised there might be a need for such a thing, they were probably already stuck with backward compatibility issues that made such a thing impossible anyway.
It begins at home. My home. Please send money to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay! Eternal happiness is just a dollar away.
I'm sorry, but you seem to have got the address of my home incorrect. Don't worry, I know where to send it to myself anyway!
This is well-known. Why is is news?
Bingo, I was going to say this too. Only thing I can think of in its defence is that as rare earth magnets (which pose the greatest risk purely due to their strength) have become more common as novelties recently- e.g. through stores such as ThinkGeek- this might be more of an issue than it was previously.
J. YouTube reserves the right to discontinue any aspect of the Service at any time.
What a bastard this "J. YouTube" fellow is!
Does the "J" stand for "John" or for "Jerk"?
Correction: This already happened 27,000 years ago. We're just getting a look at it now.
Every article we see about an astronomical event, some would-be-insightful smartass pops up to make this exact same point.
We *know*.
to really understand the success of KISS, you had to be around in the 1970's. black sabbath was still "underground" (far too scary for the masses), and music was still harmless, sappy, and/or depressing. kiss comes along and every 14-18 year old suddenly had a raging hard on to terrify their parents.
If, as Wikipedia claims, KISS's major success started circa 1975, hadn't Alice Cooper already been successful doing something like that for four or so years already at that point (i.e. "scary-for-the-time" light-horror schtick enough to upset more conservative parents while still getting mainstream TV and radio exposure) ? And in a manner that would be more convincing to the 14-18 year olds you mention?
I'm neither American, nor old enough to remember Alice Cooper nor Kiss's keyday, but from what I understand, Kiss's audience at their commercial peak included a significant proportion of young (i.e. pre-teenage) children, and besides, even then wouldn't Kiss's makeup have appeared more "showmanny" than actually satanic, particularly versus the already-established Alice Cooper?
Just a thought - it would be nice that once an AC post reached troll -5 score, IP and related details (ISP, geograpgical location, anything available from HTTP headers) of the poster is added to his post.
That would be a good idea right up to the point where it was realised that such a technique could be used to harass, intimidate and silence any user expressing an unpopular opinion. Or, at least, any opinion likely to be unpopular with 5 or more users of the type who are happy to abuse the mod system to attack those they disagree with.
If you extended it to logged-in users, it could be used to give strong evidence as to a given account's true identity. In either case, it wouldn't even need much coordination, so long as our moderately-savvy amoral users downmodded every post they wanted to do this to, realising that there are probably enough like-minded modders out there.
In short, crap idea.
Seriously, they should do something like name it Xbox Ï, that'd be much geekier. Although that'd be an AWESOME name if Apple ever released a game console - Apple Ï.
They already did that, though you have to add your own dots to the "i". As well as your own case.
What's a Cowboy Neal?
Is this a joke? Your user ID is (marginally) lower than mine, and I've heard of him and remember the days when almost every poll had a Cowboy Neal option.
I'm pretty sure non-techies don't have a clue what RS232 is
That's what you think. Of course we've heard of RS232, he was C3PO's boyfriend in the Star Trek films!
Talk about a cosmic coincidence- literally a couple of minutes after I'd posted the above, I become aware of this spoof article while reading this comment.
I can only swear that I thought that one up without ever having seen that article (and some time ago as well), though I'd be surprised if others hadn't come up with a similar idea independently as well.
Of course, the signal's probably degraded too far for it to be recognizable.
Yeah, 'cause that's the only problem with the [FTL travel] plan ... ;)
You don't need FTL at all. You simply locate a planet around a distant star system- or some other extrasolar object- at a distance of 24 or slightly more light years, then detect the (admittedly quite small) proportion of the original TV transmission that travelled out there, bounced off that object, and is now heading back in our direction, due to reach us 45 to 50 years after it first went out.
;-)
You may need one of those mains-powered antenna/aerial amplifiers for this to work properly
My second stop, of course, would be the mid-to-late 1930s, to have a drink with Hitler and get to know him and then decide whether I have a moral duty or even moral right to kill him.
Future Kryten: Kryten, we're epicures now. We travel through history enjoying the very best time has to offer. ... ...
Future Rimmer: Dolphin sweetmeats, roast suckling elephants, baby seal hearts stuffed with dove pate. Food fit for emperors!
Future Lister: We socialize with all of the greatest figures in history -- the Hapsburgs, the Borgias
Future Kryten: Why, only last week, Louis the Sixteenth threw a banquet especially in our honour.
Future Rimmer: The man is a complete delight -- urbane, witty, charming
Kryten: He was an idiotic despot who lived in the most obscene luxury while the working classes starved in abject poverty.
Future Rimmer: Well, we certainly didn't see any of that while we were there!
Future Kryten: And his wife's an absolute cutie.
Future Cat: I think they're our favourite hosts. If you don't count the Hitlers.
Kryten: The who?!
Future Rimmer: Providing you avoid talking politics, they're an absolute hoot.
Kryten: You're good friends with the Hitlers?!
Future Kryten: It's just a social thing. We don't talk about his work. We just have a few laughs, play canasta, and enjoy the odd game of mixed doubles with the Goerings.
Kryten: I don't believe what I'm hearing!
Future Rimmer: Look, you have to understand -- we travel back and forth throughout the whole of history, and naturally we want to sample the best of everything. It's just a bit unfortunate that the finest things tend to be in the possession of people who are judged to be a bit dodgy.
Kryten: Herman Goering is a "bit dodgy"! What has become of you all? You've all abandoned your morals, been seduced by power and wealth. All you're interested in now is indulging your carnal desires.
Future Rimmer: And could we tell you some stories about _that_!
Kryten: I don't recognize any of you! You're just amoral self- serving _scum_, freeloading your way through history!
Future Kryten: Good grief! I can't believe I used to be such a stuck-up pompous prig.
And then I can sit around smoking weed and selling closed source versions of your software. You'd never know, because I'd obfuscate it.
That could be harder than you might think. If there are reasons to suspect that your software might be based on theirs (e.g. a previously unknown and small company suddenly releasing a "proprietary" product similar to an existing open source one might be a giveaway) then there may be particular patterns of behaviour peculiar to that software's engine when presented with a given input that could be used as a test (and strong evidence) that your product was a ripoff of theirs.
If they'd actually *planned* for this possibility, then they may be able to make this more overt when their chosen input was given, while not displaying in normal use (and not being obvious from reading the code either!)
...namely, that (1) Statistically, the house always wins overall and (2) If you come up with a system that actually stands a chance of changing this they'll (a) change the rules, (b) break your legs (or kill you or whatever...) and/or kick you out, (c) accuse you of breaking *their* rules, such that the effect is that... statistically, the house always wins overall.
Haters gonna hate.
Bad idea to start with this overused cliche, which makes anyone spouting it sound like a tedious, unimaginative, bandwagon-jumping, meme-spouting 14-year-old trying to put across an unconvincing display of dismissive confidence, as well as being an obviously lame attempt at not actually addressing the original criticism.
Frankly, we'd be quite justified in not bothering to read the rest of what you said on the basis of those first three words of cliched drivel. But anyway...
Where people reside and make their contributions is ultimately the most important factor. Look at Einstein and how he was driven away from Germany and made all his contributions in America.
If, by "made all his contributions in America" you're implying that we have America to thank for all his work (including his most important), then you're absolutely wrong. The theories of special and general relativity were all written decades before he emigrated to the US.
That aside, not saying that I entirely disagree with what you said in general; ths US *has* been a valuable incubator for the creativity of foreign academics during the 20th century, which has arguably been to its own significant benefit.
How do you know this? Earth could be the first successful incubator of intelligent life. There is always a first. Why not Earth?
Another interesting possibility is that (if we develop technologically a bit further) we might be able to adapt other planets that are *almost*- but not quite- right for life to support it or even (if we develop further) that we can partially create or reorganise an existing star system from scratch such that it is able to better support life, i.e. if the solar system *is* (by coincidence) the best model for one that can support life, then we could recreate that model elsewhere, including the large Jupiter-like planets to sweep up large, dangerous objects, the "new earth's" magnetic field to protect us, etc., etc.
Possibly.
Your mistake is in assuming that the starter gun fired at the same time for everyone. That isn't true, we're late to the game. Other planets finished forming and starting up their life engines more than a billion years before ours did. The question is, where are those folks? They should have had plenty of time to fill the galaxy by now.
Thing is that mankind only arrived on the planet *very* recently in evolutionary terms. In addition to this, we've made incredibly fast levels of progress in the past few thousand years, and the past hundred years has seen technological change orders of magnitude faster than *that*.
It's fair to assume that this process hasn't stopped yet- the logical conclusion some have drawn is the "singularity". Well, whether or not that happens, the bottom line is that we're in the middle of a change that's happening incredibly suddenly- the blink of an eye, the flash of a camera bulb- compared to the relative "hours" or "weeks" that life has existed on the planet overall.
Now, there *may* be a significant number of other worlds that are presently capable of supporting life out there, i.e. at the same time as ours. But even if there are (e.g.) hundreds of them, even if they *broadly* follow the same trajectory and timescale as earth (in terms of the evolution of life), even if their development was congruent to ours in the larger scale of things, the chance of even one other world's "camera flash" evolutionary moment occurring at exactly the same time as ours is incredibly small.
This matters because if they're even slightly behind, they're probably still at the monkey-level intelligence stage (if we're lucky), or the stage earth was at tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.
If they're even "slightly" ahead- e.g. a million years on the evolutionary scale of things is pretty "close" to us- then they're probably so far ahead of us that we won't even be able to begin to comprehend where they've gone, assuming their development (even if it eventually slowed down) went through the rapid phase that mankind is going through- and continued, even if only for a few thousand years!
This does assume that mankind's current rate of development can be continued at least for the immediate future. Still, I'm surprised that I haven't seen the above issue even considered elsewhere. Maybe I overlooked something obvious?
I'm not even going to comment on your "don't buy Seagate" diatribe either, because it's opinionated bullshit. The reality of the situation is that everyone's experiences differ. [..] Failure rates for all brands are about the same. [..] There are two brands I boycott because of preposterously high failure rates within our company (Fujitsu SCSI U320 drives), and absolutely what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking firmware bugs (Samsung drives). Those are the only two I tell people to avoid, otherwise buy whatever makes you feel better about yourself.
So in other words, *his* recommendation to avoid Seagate based on several failures is "opinionated bullshit", but you feel quite entitled to tell us to avoid Fujitsu drives based on *your* bad experience. Despite this contradicting what you said that "failure rates for all brands are about the same".
Apparently you weren't around for the days when WD had massive (tens of thousands) batches of drives being packed/shipped which had head alignment problems back in the late 90s, and the same with Maxtor (though the problem was different). Who's "good" and who's "bad" changes all the time.
Actually, I would have said the same thing- all hard drive companies seem to go through good and bad phases, and I certainly wouldn't recommend (e.g.) Seagate simply because they were quite good a few years back.
Still, from a mixture of personal experience and what I've heard from others, it seems that Seagate *is* going through a particularly bad phase in terms of reliability at present. (It might just be coincidence, but I was quite wary when Seagate took over Maxtor a few years back, as the latter never had the best reputation for reliability and it was likely that drives produced at former-Maxtor facilities would probably be sold as Seagates. And it seems to have been around then that Seagate entered their current phase).
How do you deal with it? BY HAVING BACKUPS.
Have to agree with this one though. There's no hard drive manufacturer reliable enough that one should ever *not* have backups for valued data. And much as I don't want to come over as taking self-righteous easy shots at the OP (he's already been punished for his mistake), anyone who knows enough to be running RAID-0 knows- or should know- the nature of the beast. Namely that it significantly *increases* the risk of total loss from drive failure, which is always a possibility, regardless of drive brand. Even if Seagate are crap, they're not entirely to blame here, and I'm still trying to figure out what he was expecting.
If GWB had that technology, he would have avoided the national snickering about his inability to pronounce 'nuclear' correctly.
Until someone got hold of the pre-processed feed and made it public, or simply decided to make a point of how bad he'd sound without it (if he wasn't too frightened to show us).
OTOH, the American public re-elected the guy in 2004 despite them already knowing what he was like by that point- and his not having Autotune available back then- so I'm not kidding myself that this would make much difference anyway.