Mainframes aren't really some insulated-from-competition class by themselves anymore, though. For almost all jobs where a zSeries is an option, there are other options as well. In the modern market, I'd see a zSeries as just one product offering in a competitive market, not a product class on its own.
I'm not sure this case is quite the same. Even if IBM were every bit as anticompetitive in its attempt to corner the mainframe market today as it was some decades ago, it'd be much less significant of a problem, for the obvious reason that the mainframe market is a small fraction of the overall computing market these days. IBM actually probably has more of a monopoly on mainframes today than they did then, with the zSeries being almost synonymous with still-available mainframes, but a big part of the reason is that it's not all that enticing a market for competitors to enter, even if IBM were playing really nice.
The way in which the periodic system is displayed is a fascinating one that especially appeals to the popular imagination. Since the time of the early periodic tables of John Newlands, Julius Lothar Meyer, and Dimitri Mendeleev, there have been many attempts to obtain the "ultimate" periodic table. Indeed, it has been estinated that within 100 years of the introduction of Mendeleev's famous table of 1869, approximately 700 different versions of the periodic table were published. These include all kinds of alternatives, including three-dimensional tables, helices, concentric circles, spirals, zigzags, step tables, and mirror image tables. Even today, articles are regularly published in the Journal of Chemical Education, for example, purporting to show new and improved versions of the periodic system.
I don't think they should be required to provide easy export of data, but I think people should refuse to use services that don't, and aim to replace them with alternatives.
Your last example is a bit different. You can export all your data from Ubuntu; it just isn't in the same format Windows wants. Nobody is asking Facebook to export to some MySpace-compatible format. All I want is a way to export the data in some format. A.zip of all images I've ever uploaded would be fine, for example, or an XML file with an archive of sent/received messages.
Is there actually a "right" level of reserves that can withstand crises, though? Crises feed on themselves, and bank runs have happened throughout history. If people are really convinced that the financial system is going down, everyone will demand all their money, so the only safe level of reserves is damn near 100%. This can be mitigated somewhat if government props up the banking system, e.g. through deposit insurance, but it doesn't fix itself.
But it would show that there is valid justification for their existence. Who started up a campaign to end software patents? It wasn't Novell, or Red Hat, or the Open Source Initiative; it was these folks. The FSF is willing to take unpopular hardline pro-freedom positions long before they become politically correct enough for the "respectable" FOSS groups to hop on the bandwagon.
Sort of analogous to how I think there's a good reason for the existence of folks like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and other people pursuing principled but somewhat inflexible positions. I might not want them as president of the world, but I like them being around.
If anything, freeing ICANN from US government control, and moving it to nebulous control of some squabbling mess of countries, seems like it'll have the opposite effect: give ICANN carte blanche to do whatever it wants.
Now in terms of signing up to doing something then that is a tougher argument, but getting people to agree on the problem was the first step and there the UN did well.
Isn't this actually the main complaint about the UN? Nobody denies that it's good at getting people to agree on problems. Everyone wants world peace, the eradication of poverty, and so on. The hard part, which the UN has a much more mixed record on, is doing something about it.
There's an odd aura in the art world around original tangible artifacts, though. If the solution is to just have the museum copy it occasionally, it might reduce the perceived value of the work, as compared to a digital work that's permanently embodied in some device, such that 100 years from now someone can say, "ah yeah, there's the animation of so-and-so, still on the original [device]". Otherwise anyone who has a copy of it has a copy as good as the museum or rich collector, and we can't have that, now can we.;-)
They've helpfully taken care of that problem, ensuring that the cost of the case is significantly more than the cost of shipping by setting the case's price at $700.
Harper's had the foresight to publish an anthropomorphized metaphorical tale of the interactions between Twitter and banks, some years ago:
Twitter laid down Halibut's money, with six cents additional drawn from his own pocket, on the counter, and took two cigars, one of which he presented to Halibut. Dukling scrutinized the dollar bill with provoking keenness.
"Have you another bill, Sir?" said Dukling, with an innocent smile.
"Nothing so small," answered Twitter, uneasily.
"This bill is bad," replied Dukling, firmly, laying the bill on the counter. "The bank has been burst up this three months."
"Bad!" exclaimed Twitter, pale and red by turns.
"Bad!" echoed Halibut, with a glance at the door, as if he would take instant flight were it not that honor bound him to his friend.
"Bad," repeated Dukling, who smiled no longer. "I can not take it."
Twitter took up the note, held it between him and the light, considered it in every point of view---he knew nothing about good or bad money---but it was no use. He could not make it better than it was.
"Really, Mr. Dukling," said Twitter, with a feeble courtesy, "I'm very sorry. This is unfortunate. I have no more money about me. Just charge this to me, will you?"
H1B workers are a minor factor at best. By most counts, there are somewhere between 5 and 6 million U.S. high-tech jobs. The H1B visa quota ranges from 65,000 to 195,000 or so, or about 3% of that at most.
Maybe if you were a UNIVAC technician, that was pretty cool. But in my lifetime I can't recall IT ever being a "glorious" occupation. Sure, there are jobs in the broader tech industry that might have that mythologized element. In the 70s and 80s, you've got Woz in a garage as sort of the canonical example. But IT still wasn't glorious in that era. The IT people weren't Woz; they were mainly at places like IBM, servicing thousands of mainframes and minicomputers. There was not an aura of glory around that job, even if it paid well and may have been interesting.
This man clearly did not have "the talents to serve as an effective executive in the first place" either, since one of the very basic skills required in order to serve effectively in that position is not stealing from your company. His performance in his position was worse than leaving the position empty.
I realize the crash-test setup and standards continually change, but is there any sort of archive of data tables, or graphs, or something of that sort, showing improvement over time? Like, can I see what the difference in forces on the driver or likelihood of serious injury would be for a 1985 Civic vs. a 2005 Civic going 40 mph into a barrier?
To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, which isn't always definitive but I think in this case captures the common meaning well enough, a motorcycle is:
A two-wheeled motor-driven road vehicle, resembling a bicycle but powered by an internal-combustion engine
The vehicle linked does not at all "resemble a bicycle", at least as commonly defined (enclosed two-wheel vehicles are not usually considered "bicycles").
I don't see any "anarchists in ski masks committing acts of violence and vandalism" in any footage of this weapon being used. There are people standing around peacefully. A loudspeaker orders the peaceful crowd to disperse, "by order of the Pittsburgh chief of police", as if the Pittsburgh chief of police has the right to override people's right to peaceably assemble. Still nobody does anything violent, and then the police fire a weapon at the protestors.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that a company located in Florida would choose to sue a Japanese company in the seemingly random location of Marshall, Texas.
Someone page Sir Mix-a-Lot.
Mainframes aren't really some insulated-from-competition class by themselves anymore, though. For almost all jobs where a zSeries is an option, there are other options as well. In the modern market, I'd see a zSeries as just one product offering in a competitive market, not a product class on its own.
I'm not sure this case is quite the same. Even if IBM were every bit as anticompetitive in its attempt to corner the mainframe market today as it was some decades ago, it'd be much less significant of a problem, for the obvious reason that the mainframe market is a small fraction of the overall computing market these days. IBM actually probably has more of a monopoly on mainframes today than they did then, with the zSeries being almost synonymous with still-available mainframes, but a big part of the reason is that it's not all that enticing a market for competitors to enter, even if IBM were playing really nice.
2010, Year of the Linux Desktop?
To quote a history book (pp. 20-21):
I don't think they should be required to provide easy export of data, but I think people should refuse to use services that don't, and aim to replace them with alternatives.
Your last example is a bit different. You can export all your data from Ubuntu; it just isn't in the same format Windows wants. Nobody is asking Facebook to export to some MySpace-compatible format. All I want is a way to export the data in some format. A .zip of all images I've ever uploaded would be fine, for example, or an XML file with an archive of sent/received messages.
Is there actually a "right" level of reserves that can withstand crises, though? Crises feed on themselves, and bank runs have happened throughout history. If people are really convinced that the financial system is going down, everyone will demand all their money, so the only safe level of reserves is damn near 100%. This can be mitigated somewhat if government props up the banking system, e.g. through deposit insurance, but it doesn't fix itself.
But it would show that there is valid justification for their existence. Who started up a campaign to end software patents? It wasn't Novell, or Red Hat, or the Open Source Initiative; it was these folks. The FSF is willing to take unpopular hardline pro-freedom positions long before they become politically correct enough for the "respectable" FOSS groups to hop on the bandwagon.
Sort of analogous to how I think there's a good reason for the existence of folks like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and other people pursuing principled but somewhat inflexible positions. I might not want them as president of the world, but I like them being around.
They're just looking for their money back from the feds.
If anything, freeing ICANN from US government control, and moving it to nebulous control of some squabbling mess of countries, seems like it'll have the opposite effect: give ICANN carte blanche to do whatever it wants.
Isn't this actually the main complaint about the UN? Nobody denies that it's good at getting people to agree on problems. Everyone wants world peace, the eradication of poverty, and so on. The hard part, which the UN has a much more mixed record on, is doing something about it.
There's an odd aura in the art world around original tangible artifacts, though. If the solution is to just have the museum copy it occasionally, it might reduce the perceived value of the work, as compared to a digital work that's permanently embodied in some device, such that 100 years from now someone can say, "ah yeah, there's the animation of so-and-so, still on the original [device]". Otherwise anyone who has a copy of it has a copy as good as the museum or rich collector, and we can't have that, now can we. ;-)
This ruling is actually arguing that you don't need any license at all, from anyone, because it's First-Amendment-protected expressive speech.
They've helpfully taken care of that problem, ensuring that the cost of the case is significantly more than the cost of shipping by setting the case's price at $700.
Harper's had the foresight to publish an anthropomorphized metaphorical tale of the interactions between Twitter and banks, some years ago:
H1B workers are a minor factor at best. By most counts, there are somewhere between 5 and 6 million U.S. high-tech jobs. The H1B visa quota ranges from 65,000 to 195,000 or so, or about 3% of that at most.
Maybe if you were a UNIVAC technician, that was pretty cool. But in my lifetime I can't recall IT ever being a "glorious" occupation. Sure, there are jobs in the broader tech industry that might have that mythologized element. In the 70s and 80s, you've got Woz in a garage as sort of the canonical example. But IT still wasn't glorious in that era. The IT people weren't Woz; they were mainly at places like IBM, servicing thousands of mainframes and minicomputers. There was not an aura of glory around that job, even if it paid well and may have been interesting.
This man clearly did not have "the talents to serve as an effective executive in the first place" either, since one of the very basic skills required in order to serve effectively in that position is not stealing from your company. His performance in his position was worse than leaving the position empty.
Glad to see that someone who stole $9 million is able to once again serve as a corporate executive.
And also, food vendors should not be accountable for contamination, unless they agree to be accountable for it.
I realize the crash-test setup and standards continually change, but is there any sort of archive of data tables, or graphs, or something of that sort, showing improvement over time? Like, can I see what the difference in forces on the driver or likelihood of serious injury would be for a 1985 Civic vs. a 2005 Civic going 40 mph into a barrier?
Capitalizing The Market like a God is fitting, I think.
To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, which isn't always definitive but I think in this case captures the common meaning well enough, a motorcycle is:
The vehicle linked does not at all "resemble a bicycle", at least as commonly defined (enclosed two-wheel vehicles are not usually considered "bicycles").
I don't see any "anarchists in ski masks committing acts of violence and vandalism" in any footage of this weapon being used. There are people standing around peacefully. A loudspeaker orders the peaceful crowd to disperse, "by order of the Pittsburgh chief of police", as if the Pittsburgh chief of police has the right to override people's right to peaceably assemble. Still nobody does anything violent, and then the police fire a weapon at the protestors.