7. Slashdotter over-reacts to published "oversimplified misinterpretation of would-be conspiracy" because of cognitive dissonance created by allegiance to popular president/Republican party. 8. Slashdotter gets modded up by fellow partisans for being partisan.
Seriously though...surely you're not denying that Bush's close personal or political relationships with certain captains of industry could possibly create regulatory conflicts of interest. I didn't see where he said that there was any conspiracy. He just said it wasn't very reassuring. Was it reassuring for *anyone* besides Kenneth Lay to know that Kenneth Lay was a good friend of George W. Bush?
I've given up on the idea of traditional humans ever traveling into deep space. There may not even be much of a point to try to survive on a local planet like Mars. As depressingly limiting as it might be, we have evolved for life on Earth. By the time technology ever gives us an answer to the many problems associated with our reliance on Earthly gravity, atmospheric conditions, etc., we will no longer be human...and that's OK.
Post-humans, if they are ever allowed to exist, will be free to take their silicon bodies wherever they want to go, without limits.
...if it doesn't force an unwelcomed paradigm shift in computing. Nobody needs to buy a new server OS from MS in order to do trendy things like "serve files" or "spool files to a printer". Longhorn probably just wasn't a big enough step forward on their Anti-Consumer initiative. It is plain to see that MS Windows as we know it allows consumers to do too much of what they want to do, so what would be the point of selling an accompanying Microsoft server product?
This comes just after the US government says "Monopoly enterprise: do whatever you want!". Microsoft isn't just engineering marketable products, their also engineering the market environment.
I used to spend my summers there. I like the internet...a lot. I hate the fact that they changed the name of this town to Half.com. What were they thinking?
And IE has far LESS bloat than Netscape (and that's saying something)
Yeah, it's saying that you don't know that IE's bloat is built into Windows. Mozilla now offers the option of running it in the background (like IE) so that it will start faster.
Also, nobody's saying you should use Netscape. Even journalists at publications like E-Week are saying "Screw Netscape, but do try Mozilla".
I would guess that Microsoft benefits hugely whenever some new "killer app" comes along that is only available to Windows users, and that the people who create these killer apps benefit when they need to have the monopoly working for them...as in, "give us the DRM that we need, and we'll give your customers exclusive access to the service".
It's easy to forget about how business is done when there is a monopolist to be dealt with. Some businesses don't benefit from having the monopolist around, and they usually have a pretty tough time staying in business.
Other businesses find ways to use the monopolist to their advantage, and we constantly read things in press releases about how the "Financial terms of the deal and its duration were not disclosed, but Ballmer said it was a "long-term" agreement". (from the Microsoft-Verizon deal, but don't we see this all the time?)
If we had a Justice Department that had any clue about how they could play a pro-consumer role in the development of the internet, they would be investigating these arrangements as potential cases of monopoly maintenance.
Oh, that's right. Guys like Ashcroft still believe that "what's good for [insert corporate giant here] is good for America...to hell with start-ups and small businesses."
The New Scientist had a cover story not to long ago suggesting that "the mind is an illusion".
Think about what would happen if you could upload your consciousness into a machine with a synthetic brain (modeled after a human brain). It would be a copy of you, right? The "synthetic you" would have your memories, and it would be confused because it would think that it was you. Make sense?
Now what if you turned it off? Does it die? Let's turn it back on and find out!
Nope, it didn't die. Apparently it was just asleep, because when we turned it back on, it just loaded it's memories like a computer booting an operating system and it said "good morning" and quickly got back to thinking that it was you. It can live forever and go on forming new memories of its environment and our interaction with it, though it would probably need some counseling. Post-humanism might be rough for some of the first uploads.
Now think about this: what if our bodies are just machines, and our brain is just a computer? Every morning, we wake up and remember who we are based on the memories that we have. Our memories are all consistent with our identity. If we could swap experiences by trading memory data files, we would probably end up with multiple personality disorder.
Maybe when you go to sleep tonight, you effectively die (in terms of consciousness) and then your machine wakes up tomorrow morning and assembles its sense of self based on existing memory data. There's no reason to even think of it as "you"...it's "tomorrow's you", and you're "today's you". Sorry if you don't like the existential stuff, but bear with me...
Well, what the New Scientist said was that it doesn't work like that...morning-to-morning...it's actually more like a moment-to-moment thing. Stimulus-Response...just "like an animal". The only thing that connects one moment to the next to create the illusion of the mind is that we keep piling memories, one on top of the next. But in a split second, you could lose touch with your memories and become a complete vegetable. This is the tragedy of Alzheimers, and why insensitive people use the term "vegetable" when describing these patients.
Animals are intelligent in the same way that we are. We can easily characterize the way they think as Stimulus-Response, and nothing more, because we don't really care what "the meaning of life" is for a dog or a worm. Few of us are detached enough to be able to look upon ourselves in the same way...we're far too invested in the idea that our life has meaning and that we're special. We're more complex than a worm, dog, or chimp, but it's all just a matter of degree. Even plants react to their environment and respond with appropriate survival behavior. Human beings are just highly sophisticated organic life forms, and suggesting that there is anything that sets us apart categorically is species-centricism....pure arrogance.
Ignorance is bliss. Long live religious theories of explanation.
Just out of curiosity, what would you suppose that the moon was doing prior to it's collision with the Earth?
Also, wouldn't your theory of how the moon came to orbit the Earth suggest that at some point in the history of the universe the Earth collided with the Sun?
I'm not trying to be a jerk, just using the Socratic Method.
I'll just reply to my own message with some new thoughts...
I shouldn't have said that "Apple and their loyalists are *still* thinking in terms of brand rivalry" because they are right to think in this way, as opposed to trying to match every spec and be compatible with PC makers. Some Apple stock-holders might disagree (thinking only about $$$), but the world really doesn't need another PC maker right now.
The reason rivalry does work for Apple is that while Gateway vs Compaq is basically like Ford vs Ford, Apple vs The Entire PC Industry is more like Ford vs Chevy. Rivalry is the right approach for Apple, just as it is for Linux when it comes to the PC OS question. When you're not shackled by standards, innovate and differentiate.
And we all know what troubled Apple for so long: lame and ineffective advertising. They're doing a much better job at selling the brand now than they were under Dr. Gil.
As was mentioned, the other strength that Apple has is their freedom to innovate, and so they *must* innovate.
Still, according to theory, Apple is going to have to find some way to make sure that their processors don't lag behind the PC processors, which keep getting faster and faster because of competition between AMD and Intel for the enormous profits with such huge volumes being sold. It would be great if Sun, Apple and some other PC alternatives could agree on sharing a standard CPU architecture. If IBM and one other company could compete at making 64-bit PowerPCs (is Motorola in this game anymore?), we would see some good competition as long as there was enough volume to make it worth their while.
Some people think that the PC may be getting close to dead, which would mean more and more embedded chips in all kinds of places. If the chips need to be fast (and why not?), maybe the PowerPC (probably running Linux) would be the right chip for the job...and then we might see competition and increasing speed.
PC makers are going to be in some trouble (relative to Apple) because of increasingly diverging 64 bit CPU architectures. One of these companies (AMD or Intel) is going to lose marketshare and eventually a lot of money, and we may then see less of that nice competition.
But Apple *is* "in the same market as your local clone company or the built-it-yourself-cheap-online sites" as far as most computer consumers are concerned (just not Mac loyalists), and that is precisely their problem. If I could justify the pricier hardware, I would love to replace my powerful, self-built linux machine with a powerful Mac running OSX (because I use Photoshop as much as I use a text editor), so you can't tell me that they're not in the same market. Consumers like me, not Apple loyalists, decide who's included in a particular market.
To understand Apple's trouble, you must learn to differentiate between *competition* and *rivalry*.
Rivalry is something that we see in markets with high barriers to entry. For example, auto manufacturers rely heavily on advertising, styling, and aggresive marketing because their products aren't nearly as standardized as PC's.
Apple and their loyalists are still thinking in terms of brand *rivalry* while producers and consumers on the PC side of the market are thinking in terms of pure *competition*. At least 90% of all computer consumers are benefitting from PC standardization, which had the effect of commoditizing personal computers.
In the PC market you can forget the brand image completely while choosing between a Gateway and a Dell. With a decision like that, you're only concerned with specs and prices. If you know enough to spec out a self-built computer, you'll probably go with that. Not because building computers is fun, but because you know it's all so standardized that once you're running Windows or Linux, you're not going to know the difference.
When you buy Apple-compatible hardware, you're rarely given the choice of just getting a reference implementation of some new chipset. This is Apple's game: high barrier to entry.
Apple doesn't want to compete with PC producers, and their loyalists don't like to think that they have to compete. Fine, if they're satisfied with their current market share (mostly composed of Mac loyalists, but also some newbies who are highly responsive to advertising and other aspects of brand rivalry because they haven't yet realized the benefit of PC standards). If Apple wants to expand their market share, they don't have a choice but to try to compete. Otherwise, the end result of their "strategy" is that they still find themselves up against, and losing to, far more efficient personal computer producers (efficency being the product of pure *competition*).
...a movie might be a good way for people to stop thinking of him as that poor 'wheelchair guy' and see him as something more.
I think I know what you have in mind, but "the contest is not open to science fiction."
Re:Frontline has a similar, but different, approac
on
Open Source TV
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· Score: 1
It benefits the producers as well as the skeptical viewer. Frontline probably does this (supplies complete interview transcripts online) because some experts refuse to do interviews at all because they understand that their words are going to be butchered.
I know that social scientists are especially cautious. Imagine making an empirical claim, and supporting it with sound scientific evidence and theory, and then having your controversial *descriptive* words taken out of context and made to sound *prescriptive* because it would fit better into a dramatic story which was crafted to offend and upset people.
Frontline deals with hot-button political issues, so if they want comments from experts, they need to provide the experts with some kind of damage control insurance. Having the complete interview available online is one way to preemptively refute characterizations meant to create trouble for the expert or issue advocates.
"Robots and nerds are far from sexy anyway - wrong venue."
Robots are fascinating. The problem is that these things aren't robots...just remote controlled weapons.
Re:Frequently Asked User Interface Questions
on
Inside Ximian
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· Score: 1
Don't worry, Ximian isn't going to take away your command line. Anyway, I thought we were talking about UIs for mainsteam computing. If you're forced to offer Emacs as an "excellent example" of a different UI, I'll just say that I'm glad the folks at Ximian have a comparitively boring and unoriginal approach to creating a desktop environment.
BTW, I've used Emacs enough to know that it is also for consumers. Yesterday's consumers.
Re:Frequently Asked User Interface Questions
on
Inside Ximian
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· Score: 1
"Do we all drive the same car? Do we all wear the same clothes? Do we all listen to the same music?"
SUV or Sedan. It's enough choice for 90% of us. Where is the stearing wheel in your vehicle? Where is the gas pedal? How about the glovebox? Surely the glovebox can be found in some VERY interesting places.
I would bet that you're wearing either pants or shorts right now. Is it even possible anymore to buy a shirt that has buttons all the way up the front but doesn't have a collar? Do they come in pink? Would you even wear one if the salesperson told you that nobody else would ever buy something like that?
I'll be going to the symphony tomorrow, but 90% of the rest of you will turn on pop, rap or country. Yes, there are a few moments of creativity and originality, but it's basically all the same (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, repeat...) because people like it that way for some reason.
How many radically different UI choices do we need to have before people stop complaining about how "everyone is just copying Windows"? It seems that some geeks are just terrified of the possibility that they aren't very "special" when it comes to their computing.
Sometimes it really is OK to just be like everyone else. If you want to be really original, try doing something like this in the following order...
1. Save your document. 2. Compose something unique. 3. Open your application. 4. Create a new document. 5. Quit the application. 6. Close the new document.
Computers are just machines. We use them to express ourselves, but the process of using one doesn't itself have to be an expression of anything. Who really cares where the task confirmation button is and whether or not it says "OK", "proceed" or "DO IT MOTHERFUCKER!"
I saw part of this three-hour interview on c-span. Clancy said (SURPRISE!) that he actually gets his story ideas from the news. So, the answer is no.;)
Slashdot Mirror
7. Slashdotter over-reacts to published "oversimplified misinterpretation of would-be conspiracy" because of cognitive dissonance created by allegiance to popular president/Republican party.
8. Slashdotter gets modded up by fellow partisans for being partisan.
Seriously though...surely you're not denying that Bush's close personal or political relationships with certain captains of industry could possibly create regulatory conflicts of interest. I didn't see where he said that there was any conspiracy. He just said it wasn't very reassuring. Was it reassuring for *anyone* besides Kenneth Lay to know that Kenneth Lay was a good friend of George W. Bush?
I've given up on the idea of traditional humans ever traveling into deep space. There may not even be much of a point to try to survive on a local planet like Mars. As depressingly limiting as it might be, we have evolved for life on Earth. By the time technology ever gives us an answer to the many problems associated with our reliance on Earthly gravity, atmospheric conditions, etc., we will no longer be human...and that's OK.
Post-humans, if they are ever allowed to exist, will be free to take their silicon bodies wherever they want to go, without limits.
Bottom line: The stars are not for man.
...if it doesn't force an unwelcomed paradigm shift in computing. Nobody needs to buy a new server OS from MS in order to do trendy things like "serve files" or "spool files to a printer". Longhorn probably just wasn't a big enough step forward on their Anti-Consumer initiative. It is plain to see that MS Windows as we know it allows consumers to do too much of what they want to do, so what would be the point of selling an accompanying Microsoft server product?
This comes just after the US government says "Monopoly enterprise: do whatever you want!". Microsoft isn't just engineering marketable products, their also engineering the market environment.
I used to spend my summers there.
I like the internet...a lot.
I hate the fact that they changed the name of this town to Half.com. What were they thinking?
Yeah, it's saying that you don't know that IE's bloat is built into Windows. Mozilla now offers the option of running it in the background (like IE) so that it will start faster.
Also, nobody's saying you should use Netscape. Even journalists at publications like E-Week are saying "Screw Netscape, but do try Mozilla".
Then the International Space Station and the astronauts aboard are extraterrestrial too. Maybe this scientist should try to discover those guys.
But do be careful with that sucking machine. We're not paying our astronauts to fool around up there.
I would guess that Microsoft benefits hugely whenever some new "killer app" comes along that is only available to Windows users, and that the people who create these killer apps benefit when they need to have the monopoly working for them...as in, "give us the DRM that we need, and we'll give your customers exclusive access to the service".
It's easy to forget about how business is done when there is a monopolist to be dealt with. Some businesses don't benefit from having the monopolist around, and they usually have a pretty tough time staying in business.
Other businesses find ways to use the monopolist to their advantage, and we constantly read things in press releases about how the "Financial terms of the deal and its duration were not disclosed, but Ballmer said it was a "long-term" agreement". (from the Microsoft-Verizon deal, but don't we see this all the time?)
If we had a Justice Department that had any clue about how they could play a pro-consumer role in the development of the internet, they would be investigating these arrangements as potential cases of monopoly maintenance.
Oh, that's right. Guys like Ashcroft still believe that "what's good for [insert corporate giant here] is good for America...to hell with start-ups and small businesses."
The New Scientist had a cover story not to long ago suggesting that "the mind is an illusion".
Think about what would happen if you could upload your consciousness into a machine with a synthetic brain (modeled after a human brain). It would be a copy of you, right? The "synthetic you" would have your memories, and it would be confused because it would think that it was you. Make sense?
Now what if you turned it off? Does it die? Let's turn it back on and find out!
Nope, it didn't die. Apparently it was just asleep, because when we turned it back on, it just loaded it's memories like a computer booting an operating system and it said "good morning" and quickly got back to thinking that it was you. It can live forever and go on forming new memories of its environment and our interaction with it, though it would probably need some counseling. Post-humanism might be rough for some of the first uploads.
Now think about this: what if our bodies are just machines, and our brain is just a computer? Every morning, we wake up and remember who we are based on the memories that we have. Our memories are all consistent with our identity. If we could swap experiences by trading memory data files, we would probably end up with multiple personality disorder.
Maybe when you go to sleep tonight, you effectively die (in terms of consciousness) and then your machine wakes up tomorrow morning and assembles its sense of self based on existing memory data. There's no reason to even think of it as "you"...it's "tomorrow's you", and you're "today's you". Sorry if you don't like the existential stuff, but bear with me...
Well, what the New Scientist said was that it doesn't work like that...morning-to-morning...it's actually more like a moment-to-moment thing. Stimulus-Response...just "like an animal". The only thing that connects one moment to the next to create the illusion of the mind is that we keep piling memories, one on top of the next. But in a split second, you could lose touch with your memories and become a complete vegetable. This is the tragedy of Alzheimers, and why insensitive people use the term "vegetable" when describing these patients.
Animals are intelligent in the same way that we are. We can easily characterize the way they think as Stimulus-Response, and nothing more, because we don't really care what "the meaning of life" is for a dog or a worm. Few of us are detached enough to be able to look upon ourselves in the same way...we're far too invested in the idea that our life has meaning and that we're special. We're more complex than a worm, dog, or chimp, but it's all just a matter of degree. Even plants react to their environment and respond with appropriate survival behavior. Human beings are just highly sophisticated organic life forms, and suggesting that there is anything that sets us apart categorically is species-centricism....pure arrogance.
Ignorance is bliss. Long live religious theories of explanation.
"We'll throw rocks at them." - Mike
Just out of curiosity, what would you suppose that the moon was doing prior to it's collision with the Earth?
Also, wouldn't your theory of how the moon came to orbit the Earth suggest that at some point in the history of the universe the Earth collided with the Sun?
I'm not trying to be a jerk, just using the Socratic Method.
I'll just reply to my own message with some new thoughts...
I shouldn't have said that "Apple and their loyalists are *still* thinking in terms of brand rivalry" because they are right to think in this way, as opposed to trying to match every spec and be compatible with PC makers. Some Apple stock-holders might disagree (thinking only about $$$), but the world really doesn't need another PC maker right now.
The reason rivalry does work for Apple is that while Gateway vs Compaq is basically like Ford vs Ford, Apple vs The Entire PC Industry is more like Ford vs Chevy. Rivalry is the right approach for Apple, just as it is for Linux when it comes to the PC OS question. When you're not shackled by standards, innovate and differentiate.
And we all know what troubled Apple for so long: lame and ineffective advertising. They're doing a much better job at selling the brand now than they were under Dr. Gil.
As was mentioned, the other strength that Apple has is their freedom to innovate, and so they *must* innovate.
Still, according to theory, Apple is going to have to find some way to make sure that their processors don't lag behind the PC processors, which keep getting faster and faster because of competition between AMD and Intel for the enormous profits with such huge volumes being sold. It would be great if Sun, Apple and some other PC alternatives could agree on sharing a standard CPU architecture. If IBM and one other company could compete at making 64-bit PowerPCs (is Motorola in this game anymore?), we would see some good competition as long as there was enough volume to make it worth their while.
Some people think that the PC may be getting close to dead, which would mean more and more embedded chips in all kinds of places. If the chips need to be fast (and why not?), maybe the PowerPC (probably running Linux) would be the right chip for the job...and then we might see competition and increasing speed.
PC makers are going to be in some trouble (relative to Apple) because of increasingly diverging 64 bit CPU architectures. One of these companies (AMD or Intel) is going to lose marketshare and eventually a lot of money, and we may then see less of that nice competition.
Ramble, ramble, etc.
But Apple *is* "in the same market as your local clone company or the built-it-yourself-cheap-online sites" as far as most computer consumers are concerned (just not Mac loyalists), and that is precisely their problem. If I could justify the pricier hardware, I would love to replace my powerful, self-built linux machine with a powerful Mac running OSX (because I use Photoshop as much as I use a text editor), so you can't tell me that they're not in the same market. Consumers like me, not Apple loyalists, decide who's included in a particular market.
To understand Apple's trouble, you must learn to differentiate between *competition* and *rivalry*.
Rivalry is something that we see in markets with high barriers to entry. For example, auto manufacturers rely heavily on advertising, styling, and aggresive marketing because their products aren't nearly as standardized as PC's.
Apple and their loyalists are still thinking in terms of brand *rivalry* while producers and consumers on the PC side of the market are thinking in terms of pure *competition*. At least 90% of all computer consumers are benefitting from PC standardization, which had the effect of commoditizing personal computers.
In the PC market you can forget the brand image completely while choosing between a Gateway and a Dell. With a decision like that, you're only concerned with specs and prices. If you know enough to spec out a self-built computer, you'll probably go with that. Not because building computers is fun, but because you know it's all so standardized that once you're running Windows or Linux, you're not going to know the difference.
When you buy Apple-compatible hardware, you're rarely given the choice of just getting a reference implementation of some new chipset. This is Apple's game: high barrier to entry.
Apple doesn't want to compete with PC producers, and their loyalists don't like to think that they have to compete. Fine, if they're satisfied with their current market share (mostly composed of Mac loyalists, but also some newbies who are highly responsive to advertising and other aspects of brand rivalry because they haven't yet realized the benefit of PC standards). If Apple wants to expand their market share, they don't have a choice but to try to compete. Otherwise, the end result of their "strategy" is that they still find themselves up against, and losing to, far more efficient personal computer producers (efficency being the product of pure *competition*).
One Rocket Belt to rule them all, One Rocket Belt to find them...
Right, if you can possibly imagine a beowulf cluster of WinCE 3.0 devices.
I'm guessing that macosx IS the hostname. It's not so unlikely.
I prefer Linux, but not on a laptop. Yet.
I think I know what you have in mind, but "the contest is not open to science fiction."
It benefits the producers as well as the skeptical viewer. Frontline probably does this (supplies complete interview transcripts online) because some experts refuse to do interviews at all because they understand that their words are going to be butchered.
I know that social scientists are especially cautious. Imagine making an empirical claim, and supporting it with sound scientific evidence and theory, and then having your controversial *descriptive* words taken out of context and made to sound *prescriptive* because it would fit better into a dramatic story which was crafted to offend and upset people.
Frontline deals with hot-button political issues, so if they want comments from experts, they need to provide the experts with some kind of damage control insurance. Having the complete interview available online is one way to preemptively refute characterizations meant to create trouble for the expert or issue advocates.
Call it the anti-O'Reilly factor.
"Robots and nerds are far from sexy anyway - wrong venue."
Robots are fascinating. The problem is that these things aren't robots...just remote controlled weapons.
Don't worry, Ximian isn't going to take away your command line. Anyway, I thought we were talking about UIs for mainsteam computing. If you're forced to offer Emacs as an "excellent example" of a different UI, I'll just say that I'm glad the folks at Ximian have a comparitively boring and unoriginal approach to creating a desktop environment.
BTW, I've used Emacs enough to know that it is also for consumers. Yesterday's consumers.
"Do we all drive the same car? Do we all wear the same clothes? Do we all listen to the same music?"
SUV or Sedan. It's enough choice for 90% of us. Where is the stearing wheel in your vehicle? Where is the gas pedal? How about the glovebox? Surely the glovebox can be found in some VERY interesting places.
I would bet that you're wearing either pants or shorts right now. Is it even possible anymore to buy a shirt that has buttons all the way up the front but doesn't have a collar? Do they come in pink? Would you even wear one if the salesperson told you that nobody else would ever buy something like that?
I'll be going to the symphony tomorrow, but 90% of the rest of you will turn on pop, rap or country. Yes, there are a few moments of creativity and originality, but it's basically all the same (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, repeat...) because people like it that way for some reason.
How many radically different UI choices do we need to have before people stop complaining about how "everyone is just copying Windows"? It seems that some geeks are just terrified of the possibility that they aren't very "special" when it comes to their computing.
Sometimes it really is OK to just be like everyone else. If you want to be really original, try doing something like this in the following order...
1. Save your document.
2. Compose something unique.
3. Open your application.
4. Create a new document.
5. Quit the application.
6. Close the new document.
Computers are just machines. We use them to express ourselves, but the process of using one doesn't itself have to be an expression of anything. Who really cares where the task confirmation button is and whether or not it says "OK", "proceed" or "DO IT MOTHERFUCKER!"
Maybe he rented Cheech and Chong?
I saw part of this three-hour interview on c-span. Clancy said (SURPRISE!) that he actually gets his story ideas from the news. So, the answer is no. ;)
"Ogg Vorbis also produces smaller files."
Actually, I decided to do a test comparison of lame vs ogg at 64, 128 and 192.
Ogg is smaller at 64 (and sounds MUCH better), but lame mp3 is just slightly smaller at both 128 and 192.
I take what he wrote to mean that Ogg sounds better at more bitrates.
The real question is not: does he "never use high bitrates", but "do you ever use lower bitrates".