... if he can spatially distinguish between a speaker on top of his TV and behind the TV.
How close are you sitting and how big is your TV? Unless you're talking a 36" TV and < 3' distance, I don't see how you can tell. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Oh yeah, well screw you. My daddy is a choo-choo train engineer and could beat the crap out of your whole damn family.
Apropos of nothing, when I was a wee lad, that's what I thought my dad did.
But even your example is a good one for me. If a train engineer operated like a "software engineer", every time a train derailed because he was drunk on the job, he'd blame Microsoft and wouldn't be held accountable.
Programmers call themselves "software engineers" because they are trying to ascribe to themselves qualities that do not exist -- i.e. standards and practices and such that work to guarantee quality, and a professional image overall. A "programmer" is that nerdy guy you knew in high school who got his head flushed twice a week.
I don't think you want to see how much I'm going to charge you for your new Professionally Engineered Word Processor!
Software isn't like a building. You only build a building once, but software costs are spread over a HUGE number of people. It costs you $1,000,000 to make properly engineered software? Fine -- I just need 100,000 people to pay $20, and you make a millon dollars profit.
I just don't like people who ride on the coat tails of REAL engineers for pure marketing reasons. I won't let you claim to be a "software engineer" any more than I'll let a garbage man be a "sanitation engineer". "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Would you be willing to pay for the serious
design, engineering and testing practices that would make your word processor reliable?
God YES! I would! The thing is, I'm paying NOW for crappy quality (well, sort of -- I pay for Photoshop and Illustrator, which are really pretty good, but MS Office 98 implodes all the time) -- why should anybody go to that extra effort?
So we'll just call ourselves "Software Engineers" and pretend we do engineering things, and we get paid the same regardless.
And above and beyond the lack of "crashiness", a REAL "software engineer" is held responsible for appropriateness of design, i.e. if you're a bridge builder and the client wants a narrow, graceful bridge that's unsafe and you provide it, and the thing sinks into the bay, the bridge builder is held accountable because HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
I don't know any programmers willing to take that responsibility on. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
I think you might be SomeoneIDoKnow -- you sound a lot like my sister, who worked in radio for many, many, many years (unprofitable ones, too, but that's another story).
I, too, have spent some time in solitary cueing carts. I was way down the totem, but I do know a bit about local radio and how unprofitable it is without a conglomeration.
However, I don't think there's anything sacred or holy in localy owned radio or newspaper, or indeed anything. The local radio station is just as likely to suck as any other station (except for college stations -- they all, universally, suck. But that's my opinion) In the end, the market will decide how stations fare. If you don't happen to agree with the market (and the market can be a fickle mistress, to be sure), you can roll your own station to suit yourself (with an MP3 player), start your own station (and run it, profitless, for a couple of months before you're forced to adopt one or another playlist in order to get advertisers and eventually sell to Clear Channel because they can sell ad time for you and you can go back to being a DJ, until they fire you. And if you're any good, the Arbitron book will reflect that the audience liked you, and Clear Channel will either hire you back, or another conglomerate will).
Look, the market doesn't guarantee you anything but a chance to compete. It doesn't guarantee success. And, it so happens that conglomerating stations makes those stations competitive. What are you going to do about it? Regulate? The same thing will happen, only this time it requires the conglomerates to pay off the regulators, a cost that gets passed down to advertisers (who won't be able to afford it), and thus fewer stations playing more of the same dreck. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
I've been a fan of Philip's writing for several years now, starting with Travel's with Samantha, and I'd like to stand up for his side a bit.
From what I've read from Philip, he'll be the first to agree with you about his not being a capable SW engineering god, SW architect or manager. He is, however, a guy who had a vision on how the Web could benefit people and worked to make that vision a reality in photo.net, with the assistance of his (more competant and qualified, he'll readily admit I think, friends). He took that core and built a company doing what no other dot-com was doing -- return a real profit.
Now there's a power struggle at the top. This is a side effect of bad planning, fast growth, and being a beautiful woman (i.e. a company with lots of revenue and real profits), and unavoidable in business. What did the Japanese say? Business is war? Very true -- business, like war, is a great asshole magnet, and as the dust flies around everybody loses sight of who is the asshole and who isn't. Wildly pointing fingers results in nothing.
I don't claim to know Philip intimately, I can only talk to the impressions I get from his writings and from the handful of emails I've traded with him. I think I can understand his desire to regain control of what he still sees as "his" company -- I've watched the aD web site degenerate over time from a honest, informative site to an overblown, marketeered, PR-driven blandness that I don't visit anymore (I go straight to developers.arsdigita.com now) Philip wants things to be the same as they were in the beginning (which, unfortunately, they can never be once you accept that check from outside investors), and he's going to give it the old college try.
While you might find his writings a lot of "hand-waving", I think you (and the "capable software engineers" you mention) might need to get out in the air more often. To my mind, one of the biggest problems we have is the fact that software engineers are running things, either covertly or not-so-covertly, and to have someone with an ability to bridge that gap between management and techs is *extremely* valuable. I'm sure aD has plenty of "software engineers***" -- have you got any usibility experts on staff? Interaction designers? Someone who cares more about the end user than the server? Until you have that, you're a programming shop, and no force on earth is capable of "managing" a crowd of programmers. At best you can get all of their heads pointed in the right direction
*** Software engineers... pah! My dad is an electrical engineer (>5V). My girlfriend's dad is a civil engineer. I've got a cousin in aerospace engineering, an uncle with a PhD in electrical engineering(<=5V), and a good friend in mechanical engineering. They have codes, rules, guidelines to keep their stuff running, powered, in the air or out of the muck, and ultimately their stuff either works or it doesn't.
Software engineer... you're a fucking programmer, so get over it or accept (financial) responsibility when my word processor crashes. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Most radio stations in the US are owned by a few (two?) companies (thanks to the wonderful "deregulation" of radio. Yipee for Ayn Rand -- i hope she likes listening to the same 5 songs from coast to coast).
Unmitigated bullshit. Talk to your parents (or your parents' parents) about how radio was before "deregulation" -- there was NBC, ABC, CBS.... and that was pretty much it.
Are you tired of listening to the same five songs? Luckily, the computer industry isn't regulated (yet), so you can buy a Rio 500 and rip your CDs and program your own "radio station". "Beware by whom you are called sane."
If you go wired, and you're installing in an extant building, while you're laying out where you want Ethernet jacks (you *are* planning to lay it out on paper first, right?), try to avoid exterior walls if you can. The fewer of these that you do the better.
Exterior walls are:
Filled with PITA insulation that will be a bitch to cram a fish tape through
At the edge of the roof line, so drilling through the stud caps in the attic is hard (there's not much space for your drill)
Is almost always a load bearing wall, and thus not something the Enthusiastic Amatuer should be munging about with
Is always an insulating wall, and thus is a great place to accidentally create a thermal break by drilling the accidenal hole
Put it in this perspective -- most people, either at home or at work, are goal-oriented, i.e. "I want to do foo", where foo is
Write a paper
Play a game
Send an email
Do my taxes
These goals are easily met with a low-power computer that gets it's instructions and/or data from a bigger computer. They are also met by a powerful personal computer from Dell or Gateway.
Until recently, a computer was a major investment -- upwards of $2000-3000 for a decent machine. It made sense for a PC to be a multi-use machine in the home, since multiple people had multiple goals. The business machine tended to be used solely by one person, and thus was somewhat wasteful to have a $2000 machine (which is one reason why Wintel PCs became so popular -- you could get one with no CD or sound card or network card, and save significant dollars).
Now, a P-III with a monitor can be had for $800, and some companies managed to get VC funding based on a model of giving a computer away in return for "eyeballs". The hardware cost has dropped significantly -- significantly enough that there are many homes with multiple computers now, an extravagance unheard of just a few years ago.
The time is ripening for NCs -- they no longer are proprietary turds designed around expensive hardware limitations -- you can put together a very nice machine for less than $500 (with the i810 motherboards) with OTS components. Mass production/purchasing can cut that even more. Now you have a real computer at a disposable price.
The network infrastructure is growing -- cable, DSL, et. al. -- that allows for faster networking between the home and a remote server, and the cost of that is dropping (slowly, but dropping). Networks in offices are commonplace (or very cheaply added with wireless).
All these hardware curves are meeting the user demand curve now -- the needs of users are met with cheap hardware and fast networks today. The NCs time has come, if anybody's willing to jump on it. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Sure, McDonalds pushes to get into other countries, but the McDonalds corporation does not go out and force people at gunpoint to line up outside the Moscow Mickie D's.
The Moscovites were so anxious to throw off the loving, benevolent, fair, friend-of-the-earth, hug-a-bear Communist regime that any form of Western culture they could get their hands on was adopted and adored immediately
I've been to a McDonalds in the heart of Italy. It was just as packed as the one in New York City, and Ronald McDonald was not herding kids at gunpoint into the building to buy Happy Meals. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Don't get me wrong -- I like idealism, as I'm one myself, only a Libertarian (and libertarian) idealist. I wish I had the answer.
However, the best answer I've ever come up with is "Let people live their lives as they see fit, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else, and don't let a minority of people gain power over the majority". It won't be perfect, nor pain and anguish-free, but it's the best we've been able to come up with thus far.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Now, that's not fair... this is America, and our American beer is like making love in a canoe.
(all together now!) "Making love in a canoe? Yeah, it's fucking close to water..."
:) Comparing Australian beer with American beer is unfair -- like comparing Australian beer with German beer... Compare America beer with... umm... well, American beer sucks. There is no comparison... "Beware by whom you are called sane."
I know it's a joke, but I'm gonna use it make a point.
Look at how WW2 pulled us out of the
Depression. And look at how much more expensive modern equipment is. More expenses mean more contribution to our economy and our GDP.
That means more funding for the military. It's a positive feedback loop.
I hear this all the time -- it's a little disingenuous. To say that war is good for a country's economy is to not count the opportunity cost of all those men and material killed and destroyed by war. It's not as simple as "war is good for an economy". "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Make no mistake: Its like this in China *BECAUSE* you live so well in the states.
Balderdash -- it's like that in China because of the Chinese, not Americans. Bob and Martha aren't forcing the Chinese to use slave labor, but they'll take advantage of it if the Chinese make it available. As will the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, even the Kenyans.
You don't like the American consumer culture -- that's fine. In fact, I'll join you in casting dispersions on it. However, I will not allow you to make distortions of the truth.
Raping the planet, using your military to defend business interests, meddling in foreign affairs coupled with the
good fortune of never having a war on your own soil.
Unmitigated nonsense -- "raping the planet" is a nice phrase, but not true. Americans make a mess, sure -- and we're the only country to clean up after ourselves. If you don't believe me, go eat some Cherynobyl vegetables or take a nice long drink out of the Volga.
Using the military to defend business -- this beats hell out of using the military to keep you and your cronies in gold lame' PJs (a la Danny Ortega).
And we had a pretty damn bad war on our soil -- the Civil War killed more Americans than any other war.
The only problem is that USian greed has reached the point where they must infect the rest of the planet to continue to grow/exploit - and rest
assured, the *REST* of the planet has *VERY* different ideas about how the world should be run... and many USians are even beginning to
agree.
Yep -- there's always one fox who thinks they should stop burrowing because it makes life so hard for the hounds.
The *REST* of the planet is trying their damndest to get Madonna and McDonalds in their countries as fast as they can. The LEADERS in other countries have a ton of ideas about how the world should be run -- all of them bad. American doesn't want to rule the world, they just want to have a good time on Saturday night.
Which is better -- people who just want to have their Big Macs and Budweisers, or people who want to control the lives of every other person in the world for an idealized goal only definable by a handful of people? Your answer will define you better than anything else. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Think about it -- what do we have to pass on to future generations of the past 20-30 years? Boy George, N'Sync, Lyndon LaRouche, Hare Krishnas, Monica Lewinsky, Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda...
It might be a good idea for ALL these things to slowly melt away... "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Thanks for agreeing with me! (Even tho you say you don't, you prove my point)
The main source of pain was that there was no common standard for disk drives which made the most common method of interoperating
(sneakerware) impossible.
Things like this were an obvious enough problem at the time, when IBM came in, there was just a mass agreement to just do things their way
because it was easy. But if IBM wasn't in the picture, I think there would have been some sort of industry colalition that would have resolved
most of the incompatibilies.
"Mass agreement to do things their way", i.e. "IBM's an 800-lb gorilla, let's just follow what they do". You're filled with confidence that the industry would form a coalition to resolve the incompatabilities -- is this like how the industry solved the problem of incompatable HTML DOMs with an industry coalition? "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Afraid not -- I know you want it to be that way, but that's not reality. I applaud your enthusiasm, if not your common sense.
There is absolutely no way to please all of the population -- will you agree with that? You can only please a majority of the people at one point. The majority will change on different points. Thus, on a tax cut issue, you'll please all the people who pay a lot of taxes, but not the Marxists. On an environmental issue, you'll please the environmentalists, but not the polluters.
So, if you're a high tax-paying polluter, you'll have to take the environmental bill with the tax cut -- and consider it a fair trade off.
To "civily disobey" is an option, but not a realistic one. Look at all the peace marches during Vietnam -- it only took us some 7 years to get out of that one. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Your cute little wisecrack has nothing to do with my logic -- you just twist the meaning for your own purposes so you can use the (really, really old) Ray Charles joke, and thus do a little logic-chopping of your own.
I merely point out the hipocrasy of shouting "ENFORCE the LAW", then wailing about the enforcement of another law. (I'll grant you that I'm assuming the original poster doesn't like the DMCA, but that's a fairly safe assumption, due to the general attitude of the average Slashdot poster).
You cannot cherry-pick which laws you want enforced -- you have to take the good with the bad. If you love laws (and enforcement thereof) that beat up Microsoft which further your own personal ends, you have to take those laws (and enforcement thereof) that further another's ends. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
hey, I'm pretty sure St. John didn't write that. First, Baylon had already fallen by the time John was born. Second, John wouldn't have used Linux (which I intuit from "distributions") -- John was a pure BSD guy. You can tell from the rest of Revelations.
This was most likely written by St. Hubbins, the Easily Amused. You're using a corrupted translation, you fool.
(Revelations 31:337... hee hee!) "Beware by whom you are called sane."
First, I'm not for corporate welfare, but neither am I for drumming up charges against a competitor (which is what the original lawsuit against MS was all about), using the heavy hand of Government to gain an advantage.
Did I lobby to protect Apple? Yes, by encouraging people to buy Apple products (when there were good ones -- that was tough to do until about 1996 or so).
I'll even speak up in defense of an 800-pound gorilla. Withouth IBM as the 800-pound gorilla, there would not have been the tremendous growth in the PC market. IBM (by chance, it turned out, but still) used OTS components, with only the BIOS as a proprietary piece, and due to that, you can now buy a $500 computer.
Ahh, Word 5.1... I have many, many good memories of it as well. Nimble enough to run pretty well on my antique Powerbook 180c...
I'm of two minds about a MS breakup. On one hand, what do you get? Something similar to AT&T and the RBOCs? Eww, no thank you. On the other hand, it seems a reasonable solution, and one that might have benefits (to MS as well as to the market).
But, to remain truthful to my beliefs, I hold that MS should be left alone. In time, MS will be fighting for its life because of some upstart, like Netscape could have been. (Remember Netscape? They made mighty MS tremble, and but for a few corporate blunders, Netscape might have knocked 'em over, too. But MS dropped a bunch of money to buy & develop IE, Netscape spent too much time contemplating its navel, and the dream was over...) "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Selective Libertarianism... well, no, but thanks for playing!
Read it again, Sparky: The "law" and the "market" are not the same. I did not say there should be no laws. I said that the "market" is not taking down MS, the "law" is. The original poster said that they were breaking the law, and thus the "market" was taking them down a peg.
You mean, they're not bad enough that we ought to actually ENFORCE the LAW on them? Come on. They've been manipulating the market to
their advantage for 20 years. Now the market's mad. Time to pay the piper
Hrumph. The DMCA is the law, too. Are you as gung-ho about enforcing it?
Double hrumph. The "law" and the "market" are not one and the same. If the market's mad, they produce something better -- such as *cough* OpenBSD *cough* -- but a pure market doesn't use the hammer of Government to exact revenge, it COMPETES. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Bar none? Then both I and Steve Wozniak are knuckleheads?
I guess so. Wozniak I can omit, because I'd tend to believe that he's never had to deal with his own company form a pure customers point of
view.
Idiot -- you can't say "bar none" and exclude the Woz.
In my experience as an unofficial computer support person,
So, you've never had any real experience caring for more than the machine you use on a regular basis, and you feel you have that you are
knowledgable enough to comment on the entire state of Mac users? This is at the very heart of that Knuckleheadedness of which I've spoken.
Jackass -- don't assume. I say unofficial, because I'm the local nerd, thus I get all the tech support questions from friends, family, co-workers, accquiantences, and the people I run into at the bar -- "You're in computers? My machine crashes when... "
In other (smaller, in deference to you) words: I don't get paid for it, but I support computers nonetheless.
Knuckleheadedness is not answering my original post, just pulling selected bits and indulging in ad hominem attacks based on partial quotes.
Again, I can match you anecdote for anecdote -- produce some real numbers and real statistics, not self-serving anecdotes. Or, you can just simply rage at Mac users, since you seem to be so intent on doing so. "Beware by whom you are called sane."
Does the Slashdot Jihad hate Microsoft so much that they want them OUT OF BUSINESS? Jeezum crow, MS isn't the greatest software company in the world, nor are they cute and snuggly, but worthy of being DESTROYED?
How come I don't hear the same things about Cisco, or Oracle, or even Sun for that matter? Shit, Bill Gates isn't even the richest man in the world anymore, and is mostly concerned with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation anyway.
Sure they make a crappy OS (tho, I understand Win 2K ain't all that bad) but is that so bad that they deserve to be visited by a plague of lawyers? (Which, BTW, I'm pretty sure St. John the Devine listed as a Sign of the End Times in Revelations)
Slashdot Mirror
... if he can spatially distinguish between a speaker on top of his TV and behind the TV.
How close are you sitting and how big is your TV? Unless you're talking a 36" TV and < 3' distance, I don't see how you can tell.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Apropos of nothing, when I was a wee lad, that's what I thought my dad did.
But even your example is a good one for me. If a train engineer operated like a "software engineer", every time a train derailed because he was drunk on the job, he'd blame Microsoft and wouldn't be held accountable.
Programmers call themselves "software engineers" because they are trying to ascribe to themselves qualities that do not exist -- i.e. standards and practices and such that work to guarantee quality, and a professional image overall. A "programmer" is that nerdy guy you knew in high school who got his head flushed twice a week.
I don't think you want to see how much I'm going to charge you for your new Professionally Engineered Word Processor!
Software isn't like a building. You only build a building once, but software costs are spread over a HUGE number of people. It costs you $1,000,000 to make properly engineered software? Fine -- I just need 100,000 people to pay $20, and you make a millon dollars profit.
I just don't like people who ride on the coat tails of REAL engineers for pure marketing reasons. I won't let you claim to be a "software engineer" any more than I'll let a garbage man be a "sanitation engineer".
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
God YES! I would! The thing is, I'm paying NOW for crappy quality (well, sort of -- I pay for Photoshop and Illustrator, which are really pretty good, but MS Office 98 implodes all the time) -- why should anybody go to that extra effort?
So we'll just call ourselves "Software Engineers" and pretend we do engineering things, and we get paid the same regardless.
And above and beyond the lack of "crashiness", a REAL "software engineer" is held responsible for appropriateness of design, i.e. if you're a bridge builder and the client wants a narrow, graceful bridge that's unsafe and you provide it, and the thing sinks into the bay, the bridge builder is held accountable because HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
I don't know any programmers willing to take that responsibility on.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I think you might be SomeoneIDoKnow -- you sound a lot like my sister, who worked in radio for many, many, many years (unprofitable ones, too, but that's another story).
I, too, have spent some time in solitary cueing carts. I was way down the totem, but I do know a bit about local radio and how unprofitable it is without a conglomeration.
However, I don't think there's anything sacred or holy in localy owned radio or newspaper, or indeed anything. The local radio station is just as likely to suck as any other station (except for college stations -- they all, universally, suck. But that's my opinion) In the end, the market will decide how stations fare. If you don't happen to agree with the market (and the market can be a fickle mistress, to be sure), you can roll your own station to suit yourself (with an MP3 player), start your own station (and run it, profitless, for a couple of months before you're forced to adopt one or another playlist in order to get advertisers and eventually sell to Clear Channel because they can sell ad time for you and you can go back to being a DJ, until they fire you. And if you're any good, the Arbitron book will reflect that the audience liked you, and Clear Channel will either hire you back, or another conglomerate will).
Look, the market doesn't guarantee you anything but a chance to compete. It doesn't guarantee success. And, it so happens that conglomerating stations makes those stations competitive. What are you going to do about it? Regulate? The same thing will happen, only this time it requires the conglomerates to pay off the regulators, a cost that gets passed down to advertisers (who won't be able to afford it), and thus fewer stations playing more of the same dreck.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I've been a fan of Philip's writing for several years now, starting with Travel's with Samantha, and I'd like to stand up for his side a bit.
From what I've read from Philip, he'll be the first to agree with you about his not being a capable SW engineering god, SW architect or manager. He is, however, a guy who had a vision on how the Web could benefit people and worked to make that vision a reality in photo.net, with the assistance of his (more competant and qualified, he'll readily admit I think, friends). He took that core and built a company doing what no other dot-com was doing -- return a real profit.
Now there's a power struggle at the top. This is a side effect of bad planning, fast growth, and being a beautiful woman (i.e. a company with lots of revenue and real profits), and unavoidable in business. What did the Japanese say? Business is war? Very true -- business, like war, is a great asshole magnet, and as the dust flies around everybody loses sight of who is the asshole and who isn't. Wildly pointing fingers results in nothing.
I don't claim to know Philip intimately, I can only talk to the impressions I get from his writings and from the handful of emails I've traded with him. I think I can understand his desire to regain control of what he still sees as "his" company -- I've watched the aD web site degenerate over time from a honest, informative site to an overblown, marketeered, PR-driven blandness that I don't visit anymore (I go straight to developers.arsdigita.com now) Philip wants things to be the same as they were in the beginning (which, unfortunately, they can never be once you accept that check from outside investors), and he's going to give it the old college try.
While you might find his writings a lot of "hand-waving", I think you (and the "capable software engineers" you mention) might need to get out in the air more often. To my mind, one of the biggest problems we have is the fact that software engineers are running things, either covertly or not-so-covertly, and to have someone with an ability to bridge that gap between management and techs is *extremely* valuable. I'm sure aD has plenty of "software engineers***" -- have you got any usibility experts on staff? Interaction designers? Someone who cares more about the end user than the server? Until you have that, you're a programming shop, and no force on earth is capable of "managing" a crowd of programmers. At best you can get all of their heads pointed in the right direction
*** Software engineers... pah! My dad is an electrical engineer (>5V). My girlfriend's dad is a civil engineer. I've got a cousin in aerospace engineering, an uncle with a PhD in electrical engineering(<=5V), and a good friend in mechanical engineering. They have codes, rules, guidelines to keep their stuff running, powered, in the air or out of the muck, and ultimately their stuff either works or it doesn't.
Software engineer... you're a fucking programmer, so get over it or accept (financial) responsibility when my word processor crashes.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Unmitigated bullshit. Talk to your parents (or your parents' parents) about how radio was before "deregulation" -- there was NBC, ABC, CBS .... and that was pretty much it.
Are you tired of listening to the same five songs? Luckily, the computer industry isn't regulated (yet), so you can buy a Rio 500 and rip your CDs and program your own "radio station".
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
If you go wired, and you're installing in an extant building, while you're laying out where you want Ethernet jacks (you *are* planning to lay it out on paper first, right?), try to avoid exterior walls if you can. The fewer of these that you do the better.
Exterior walls are:
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Put it in this perspective -- most people, either at home or at work, are goal-oriented, i.e. "I want to do foo", where foo is
These goals are easily met with a low-power computer that gets it's instructions and/or data from a bigger computer. They are also met by a powerful personal computer from Dell or Gateway.
Until recently, a computer was a major investment -- upwards of $2000-3000 for a decent machine. It made sense for a PC to be a multi-use machine in the home, since multiple people had multiple goals. The business machine tended to be used solely by one person, and thus was somewhat wasteful to have a $2000 machine (which is one reason why Wintel PCs became so popular -- you could get one with no CD or sound card or network card, and save significant dollars).
Now, a P-III with a monitor can be had for $800, and some companies managed to get VC funding based on a model of giving a computer away in return for "eyeballs". The hardware cost has dropped significantly -- significantly enough that there are many homes with multiple computers now, an extravagance unheard of just a few years ago.
The time is ripening for NCs -- they no longer are proprietary turds designed around expensive hardware limitations -- you can put together a very nice machine for less than $500 (with the i810 motherboards) with OTS components. Mass production/purchasing can cut that even more. Now you have a real computer at a disposable price.
The network infrastructure is growing -- cable, DSL, et. al. -- that allows for faster networking between the home and a remote server, and the cost of that is dropping (slowly, but dropping). Networks in offices are commonplace (or very cheaply added with wireless).
All these hardware curves are meeting the user demand curve now -- the needs of users are met with cheap hardware and fast networks today. The NCs time has come, if anybody's willing to jump on it.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Sure, McDonalds pushes to get into other countries, but the McDonalds corporation does not go out and force people at gunpoint to line up outside the Moscow Mickie D's.
The Moscovites were so anxious to throw off the loving, benevolent, fair, friend-of-the-earth, hug-a-bear Communist regime that any form of Western culture they could get their hands on was adopted and adored immediately
I've been to a McDonalds in the heart of Italy. It was just as packed as the one in New York City, and Ronald McDonald was not herding kids at gunpoint into the building to buy Happy Meals.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Don't get me wrong -- I like idealism, as I'm one myself, only a Libertarian (and libertarian) idealist. I wish I had the answer.
However, the best answer I've ever come up with is "Let people live their lives as they see fit, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else, and don't let a minority of people gain power over the majority". It won't be perfect, nor pain and anguish-free, but it's the best we've been able to come up with thus far.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Now, that's not fair... this is America, and our American beer is like making love in a canoe. (all together now!) "Making love in a canoe? Yeah, it's fucking close to water..."
:) Comparing Australian beer with American beer is unfair -- like comparing Australian beer with German beer... Compare America beer with... umm... well, American beer sucks. There is no comparison...
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
I know it's a joke, but I'm gonna use it make a point.
Look at how WW2 pulled us out of the Depression. And look at how much more expensive modern equipment is. More expenses mean more contribution to our economy and our GDP. That means more funding for the military. It's a positive feedback loop.
I hear this all the time -- it's a little disingenuous. To say that war is good for a country's economy is to not count the opportunity cost of all those men and material killed and destroyed by war. It's not as simple as "war is good for an economy".
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Make no mistake: Its like this in China *BECAUSE* you live so well in the states.
Balderdash -- it's like that in China because of the Chinese, not Americans. Bob and Martha aren't forcing the Chinese to use slave labor, but they'll take advantage of it if the Chinese make it available. As will the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, even the Kenyans.
You don't like the American consumer culture -- that's fine. In fact, I'll join you in casting dispersions on it. However, I will not allow you to make distortions of the truth.
Raping the planet, using your military to defend business interests, meddling in foreign affairs coupled with the good fortune of never having a war on your own soil.
Unmitigated nonsense -- "raping the planet" is a nice phrase, but not true. Americans make a mess, sure -- and we're the only country to clean up after ourselves. If you don't believe me, go eat some Cherynobyl vegetables or take a nice long drink out of the Volga.
Using the military to defend business -- this beats hell out of using the military to keep you and your cronies in gold lame' PJs (a la Danny Ortega).
And we had a pretty damn bad war on our soil -- the Civil War killed more Americans than any other war.
The only problem is that USian greed has reached the point where they must infect the rest of the planet to continue to grow/exploit - and rest assured, the *REST* of the planet has *VERY* different ideas about how the world should be run... and many USians are even beginning to agree.
Yep -- there's always one fox who thinks they should stop burrowing because it makes life so hard for the hounds.
The *REST* of the planet is trying their damndest to get Madonna and McDonalds in their countries as fast as they can. The LEADERS in other countries have a ton of ideas about how the world should be run -- all of them bad. American doesn't want to rule the world, they just want to have a good time on Saturday night.
Which is better -- people who just want to have their Big Macs and Budweisers, or people who want to control the lives of every other person in the world for an idealized goal only definable by a handful of people? Your answer will define you better than anything else.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Digital rot of our records, I mean.
Think about it -- what do we have to pass on to future generations of the past 20-30 years? Boy George, N'Sync, Lyndon LaRouche, Hare Krishnas, Monica Lewinsky, Rush Limbaugh, Al Gore, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda...
It might be a good idea for ALL these things to slowly melt away ...
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Thanks for agreeing with me! (Even tho you say you don't, you prove my point)
"Mass agreement to do things their way", i.e. "IBM's an 800-lb gorilla, let's just follow what they do". You're filled with confidence that the industry would form a coalition to resolve the incompatabilities -- is this like how the industry solved the problem of incompatable HTML DOMs with an industry coalition?
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Afraid not -- I know you want it to be that way, but that's not reality. I applaud your enthusiasm, if not your common sense.
There is absolutely no way to please all of the population -- will you agree with that? You can only please a majority of the people at one point. The majority will change on different points. Thus, on a tax cut issue, you'll please all the people who pay a lot of taxes, but not the Marxists. On an environmental issue, you'll please the environmentalists, but not the polluters.
So, if you're a high tax-paying polluter, you'll have to take the environmental bill with the tax cut -- and consider it a fair trade off.
To "civily disobey" is an option, but not a realistic one. Look at all the peace marches during Vietnam -- it only took us some 7 years to get out of that one.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
if (glassHouse) { stone.throw = -1}
Your cute little wisecrack has nothing to do with my logic -- you just twist the meaning for your own purposes so you can use the (really, really old) Ray Charles joke, and thus do a little logic-chopping of your own.
I merely point out the hipocrasy of shouting "ENFORCE the LAW", then wailing about the enforcement of another law. (I'll grant you that I'm assuming the original poster doesn't like the DMCA, but that's a fairly safe assumption, due to the general attitude of the average Slashdot poster).
You cannot cherry-pick which laws you want enforced -- you have to take the good with the bad. If you love laws (and enforcement thereof) that beat up Microsoft which further your own personal ends, you have to take those laws (and enforcement thereof) that further another's ends.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
At LEAST as well as Scriptics Tclets did. You see those all OVER the place...
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
hey, I'm pretty sure St. John didn't write that. First, Baylon had already fallen by the time John was born. Second, John wouldn't have used Linux (which I intuit from "distributions") -- John was a pure BSD guy. You can tell from the rest of Revelations.
This was most likely written by St. Hubbins, the Easily Amused. You're using a corrupted translation, you fool.
(Revelations 31:337... hee hee!)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Wow, you're all over the board, here...
First, I'm not for corporate welfare, but neither am I for drumming up charges against a competitor (which is what the original lawsuit against MS was all about), using the heavy hand of Government to gain an advantage.
Did I lobby to protect Apple? Yes, by encouraging people to buy Apple products (when there were good ones -- that was tough to do until about 1996 or so).
I'll even speak up in defense of an 800-pound gorilla. Withouth IBM as the 800-pound gorilla, there would not have been the tremendous growth in the PC market. IBM (by chance, it turned out, but still) used OTS components, with only the BIOS as a proprietary piece, and due to that, you can now buy a $500 computer.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Ahh, Word 5.1... I have many, many good memories of it as well. Nimble enough to run pretty well on my antique Powerbook 180c...
I'm of two minds about a MS breakup. On one hand, what do you get? Something similar to AT&T and the RBOCs? Eww, no thank you. On the other hand, it seems a reasonable solution, and one that might have benefits (to MS as well as to the market).
But, to remain truthful to my beliefs, I hold that MS should be left alone. In time, MS will be fighting for its life because of some upstart, like Netscape could have been. (Remember Netscape? They made mighty MS tremble, and but for a few corporate blunders, Netscape might have knocked 'em over, too. But MS dropped a bunch of money to buy & develop IE, Netscape spent too much time contemplating its navel, and the dream was over...)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Selective Libertarianism... well, no, but thanks for playing!
Read it again, Sparky: The "law" and the "market" are not the same. I did not say there should be no laws. I said that the "market" is not taking down MS, the "law" is. The original poster said that they were breaking the law, and thus the "market" was taking them down a peg.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Hrumph. The DMCA is the law, too. Are you as gung-ho about enforcing it?
Double hrumph. The "law" and the "market" are not one and the same. If the market's mad, they produce something better -- such as *cough* OpenBSD *cough* -- but a pure market doesn't use the hammer of Government to exact revenge, it COMPETES.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Idiot -- you can't say "bar none" and exclude the Woz.
Jackass -- don't assume. I say unofficial, because I'm the local nerd, thus I get all the tech support questions from friends, family, co-workers, accquiantences, and the people I run into at the bar -- "You're in computers? My machine crashes when... "
In other (smaller, in deference to you) words: I don't get paid for it, but I support computers nonetheless.
Knuckleheadedness is not answering my original post, just pulling selected bits and indulging in ad hominem attacks based on partial quotes.
Again, I can match you anecdote for anecdote -- produce some real numbers and real statistics, not self-serving anecdotes. Or, you can just simply rage at Mac users, since you seem to be so intent on doing so.
"Beware by whom you are called sane."
Does the Slashdot Jihad hate Microsoft so much that they want them OUT OF BUSINESS? Jeezum crow, MS isn't the greatest software company in the world, nor are they cute and snuggly, but worthy of being DESTROYED?
How come I don't hear the same things about Cisco, or Oracle, or even Sun for that matter? Shit, Bill Gates isn't even the richest man in the world anymore, and is mostly concerned with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation anyway.
Sure they make a crappy OS (tho, I understand Win 2K ain't all that bad) but is that so bad that they deserve to be visited by a plague of lawyers? (Which, BTW, I'm pretty sure St. John the Devine listed as a Sign of the End Times in Revelations)
"Beware by whom you are called sane."