power deregulation is a very bad example, as it is a completely atypical industry.
the problem with electricity in the usa is that it has a history of being very, VERY heavily regulated with extremely restrictive price controls, is very sensitive to political/pulic opinion but at the same time requires massive outlays in capital expenditures.
its a recipe for complete disaster. there are two problems with power in the us:
1. power generation- nobody wants a power plant in their neighborhood. theyre too worried about nukes, air pollution, or loss of their whitewater rafting. it is very difficult (both in time and money) to build a new facility. political/public backlashes against building new generators has created artificial scarcity despite massive improvements in technology. hence, america does not have enough power-generating capacity to meet its future needs- prices will go up, no doubt about that. they need to in order to compensate a company for all the shit they have to go through to open up a new plant.
2. the power grid- everyone's plants are connected together, so there is a shared responsibility for maintaining the power grid. quite naturally, no single company wants to pay to repair/increase power grid capacity, because theres no way in the system to charge in terms of where electrons are flowing through the network. and gov't isnt too eager to foot the bill either, so the grid is falling apart. the lack of accountability for power grid maintenance is why electricity should never have been deregulated.
the problems in ca are actually more related to the power grid. theyre afraid theyll blow the entire system by trying to push too much power through it, which would of course black out most of california and probably a significant part of the west coast.
pick a different example for corporate abuse of power. the power companies are, ironically, relatively powerless because of their situation.
> in the 90-95% range, and even Standard Oil
> never got that far.
i dont believe the above statement is true. standard oil consistently maintained 90% of marketshare, i think. and the only reason standard oil at the height of their power never got more than that was entirely for pr reasons. he couldve easily crushed them- among numerous other advantages, he negotiated nasty deals with the railroads that not only gave him huge discounts but actually had the railroads pay him every time they shipped oil for someone else.
rockefeller thought that a small amount of token "competition" would assuage public opinion and make it harder for him to be prosecuted (which was true for a while, but ultimately didnt save him). he intentionally kept prices at a level high enough to allow his few remaining competitors to survive. there are recorded instances where he told his subordinates to back off from a potential kill- once he completely dominated the market, he felt no need to exterminate those few left.
so its not like he wasnt as powerful as at&t or microsoft- he simply never fully exercised his control because he was afraid of a public backlash, and didnt think he needed more than 90% anyway. (the lawsuit was actually spurred in part by the actions of his successor, who was considerably more ruthless in the market and less able to keep up moral appearances).
it is a world of difference between the rural countrysides and any of the cities. while the urban areas will catch up quickly (or, in the case of hk, occasionally lead the way) it will take at least a decade for much of the tech to filter throughout the country.
also, stephenson was both right and wrong about games...multiplayer games are very popular in the cities...there is a booming (and frequently illegal) industry in net cafes, where the majority of people are playing starcraft, ut and counterstrike. the chinese gov't recently cracked down on a lot of them, but they continue nonetheless...
> Typically, Asian people are a lot more self-sacrificing and willing to work for a group; they don't have the "looking out for number one" attitudes that most Western geeks do (not
------
this is a stereotype that quite simply doesnt work when talking about people from mainland china. china has one of the most powerful, stable, and yet systematically corrupt governments in the world. almost EVERY person from mainland china ALWAYS looks out for number one...if they didnt, they wouldnt survive. if youve been to china or even hk you know what im talking about.
there is no such thing as fairness in modern china. it is all about influence, money, and power. everyone who does business in china learns this, when they have to pay off every local magistrate to get work permits. there is no official who cannot be bought, in one way or another.
try to think of what it would be like in a society where there is no such thing as justice. remember that it has been like this for 25+ years (under mao, it was complete chaos and was even worse...) do you really think that people would be that self-sacrificing?
as for **buying** windows ME... it is DAMN HARD to even find a legal copy to purchase of ANY software or DVD in china. pretty much all you can buy is pirated copies... and that is no joke...
regardless of whatever your personal feelings may be, keep in mind that the group issuing this "study" is McKinsey & Co., which just coincidentally happens to do a lot of management consulting...
a professor at wharton was paid to come up with this, which (1) gets the professor's name in the paper for re-stating the totally obvious, perhaps with some half-assed stats to back it up and (2) helps drum up demand for mcKinsey, who will (for a huge fee, of course) restructure your job descriptions in marketing legalese, stir the pot a little, issue a nice shiny report with pretty graphs (perhaps [gasp] with a PowerPoint presentation too!) and leave everything underneath almost exactly the same.
these guys are just advertising how badly their services are needed by every company in existence.
it is very self-serving, and both cnet and now slashdot have fallen for it. or, more likely, they dont care that they are providing free publicity for a paid advertisement, because it caters to their audiences exactly what they want to hear.
you didnt fall for it, did you? are these observations really that illuminating to any of you at all?
the problem with trying to map methylated bases is that there are shitloads of modifications to dna going on all the time. there is a whole classification of enzymes (kinases) whose sole function is to methylate or demethylate proteins and dna.
kinases have been implicated in a very large number of biochemical pathways for practically every process. methylation is a regulation mechanism for dna. methylation is likely to change the conformation (shape) of parts of dna, allowing binding or blocking binding of proteins and consequently allowing transcription (or the lack thereof) to occur- in effect turning gene/protein activity on and off.
this is important, but in any single organism over its lifespan thousands upon thousands of bases will get demethylated or demethylated. in fact, any individual gene is likely to be methylated or demethylated, and there are no doubt a significantly large number of genes which are methylated and demethylated many, many times over the organism's lifespan. this results in millions of possible sequences of bases which are methylated or demethylated.
i just dont think this sounds like a feasible project. biologists right now tend to find out meth or demeth bases by studying genes or pathways one at a time. i tend to lean towards this approach as being more intelligent.
(i kinda sorta paid attention in biochem class...but i could be wrong...)
for the president of a mac user's group, he seems to know surprisingly little about how apple as a company has survived.
its the hardware, stupid.
all the (lack of) compatibility problems are the result of their control of the OS coupled with strict control of the hardware. and apple doesnt know how to make cheap commoditized computer hardware. they havent for years (if ever), and theres certainly no way they have the capacity, will, or sheer brute capital to try it now.
there is no way x86 os x can get out in "early 2001". the simple fact is, lalor's time-frame is way off. apple's management would be complete morons to start an x86 development effort before os x was a proven success on the server market. programmers dont come cheap, my friend. does apple really have such an excess of developers that they can start porting even before the finished product comes out? does this guy know anything about software devel? you only do that nowadays if youre practically guaranteed a market, my friend...why else do you think everything but the most popular (ie photoshop) software packages come out for macs long after it hits pcs?
gambling like that would be extraordinarily risky- what if os x doesnt do that well or (more likely) is slow-grwoth because its completely new? then apple is saddled with supporting TWO devel efforts- one to make os x better (its 1.0 after all), one to port to x86... no way. theyll wait and see. how long does it take for apple to get a real piece of the server market? i dont know how long- 6 months maybe? (again, a very optimistic minimum) and only then do they START work on a real x86 port.
but, lets just say treating things **very** optimistically, maybe os x blows everyone away- like (ahem) win95 and everyone buys into it. so then apple realize theyve made the big time and start porting immediately. os x 1.0 according to apple's website is supposed to come out january 01. lalor suggests that os x on x86 debuts in "early 2001". even with apple allegedly keeping os x easy to port, can the entirety of os x, gui and all, be ported in less than six months?
hahahahaha.
thats funny.
and lalor, while accelerating the pace of devel for apple just conveniently puts every other os in stasis. yeah, linux is going to look EXACTLY the same a year from now. well obviously linux hasnt gotten ANY EASIER to use in the last year, right? i mean, theres certainly NO WAY to use linux without the command line.
what? huh? kde? gnome? whats that?
if os x wins big, the chances for an x86 version (which is already very slim) will take a minimum of two years to come out. and nobody knows what linux is going to look like by then. and what about bsd or beos? or, for that matter, solaris? are they going to wait for steve jobs and his vision of the future?
i dont fucking think so.
as a final comment i thought that the presumptuousness of the last line of his article is probably what pissed off me (and other people) the most.
"For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need."
um yeah. the fact is, neither you nor apple can tell me what i need. your arrogance and condescension is precisely why you will never understand what i need. ill get what i want myself, which means **all** the source, thank you very much.
half of the internet companies seem to tout the idea of target advertising (especially the niche or community sites) as being a major source of revenue for them. esp the companies that dont have any revenue at the moment but will Real Soon Now we Promise. doesnt this article in the nytimes suggest that these people are full of crap?
more importantly, if its in the nytimes, which probably has a readership only surpassed by slashdot (hee hee) that suggests that this is no longer something only the underbelly of dissatisfied IT workers (like many slashdot readers) know about.
anyone else think the stock market is going to fall quite a bit more?
we can argue semantically as to whether or not "keiratsu" refers to an economic model, but what i am talking about is how japan, south korea, indonesia, and most of the other asian countries built up heavy industry after ww2.
all of asia realized they needed to modernize as quickly as possible, and so the various gov'ts provided direct and indirect support to people who were willing to create large, industrial conglomerates- keiratsu in japan, and the chaebol in south korea. similar to nationalized or partly gov't owned companies in many other asian countries.
consequently, you see the rapid rise of huge conglomerate companies invested in multiple nonsynergistic industries, with the gov't directly supporting those companies through partial ownership (hence direct investment to purchase capital equipment) and other perks like tax breaks or high import tariffs to block foreign competition.
the problem though, with anything the govt touches (or feeds directly) is it tends to become inefficient and dependent on gov't handouts. in this case, companies with gov't funding or support were expected to take up part of the burden of social services- lifetime employment and housing subsidies for its workers, which until very recently were the norm in japan, s korea, and elsewhere.
furthermore, in attempts to build up certain industries which a particular country felt was vital (like automobiles in south korea) a company would keep pouring money into particular divisions that kept losing money and had little to no chance of ever catching up with foreign competitors.
adding to this was that many companies were not willing to compete with one another, preferring to expand into product lines that had no native equivalent. korean companies would try not to hurt each other overly much, the japanese companies would deal only with japanese suppliers, etc. even if americans or europeans offered lower prices on raw materials, japanese would only deal with japanese, or they would expand (vertical integration) into southeast asia. this still happens all the time, but its getting harder to do (because of, as you mentioned, globalization)- and many japanese companies have realized that they simply dont know how to produce the raw materials they need at internal prices competitive with those they might get outside their companies.
the long-term result is an underlying weakness in a country's economy- this is the stuff macro hedge bets are made of, like soros and his friends deflating most of the southeast asian currencies, which forced rising interest rates, which killed property speculation and crashed the stock markets simultaneously.
you and i are both right. in the 80s many american companies werent producing good products. and business cycles do go up and down. but you ignore the difference between a hard fall and a soft one- if asian companies had been more efficient in the first place, they would not have suffered nearly as much as they did in the transition between good times and bad.
and the underlying cause of the inefficiency is the ideas supporting keiratsu- companies overly dependent on government support and nationalistic or overtly chummy business practices. it allows for rapid expansion and the creation of whole industries in a country that didnt have them even 50 years ago, but it comes with a price.
keiretsu in japan (and their equivalents in many other countries) work because of the relative weakness of shareholder rights. that is to say, if one corporation acts in a way to benefit another at direct or indirect cost to itself, in the US lawsuits can and will get filed. quid pro quo, when formalized, are not the same thing. then they become contracts.
japan was criticized by american companies during the 80s for presenting a kind of "united front", if you will, against foreign companies. that is, they banded together, offered one another specific business preferences, etc just because they were japanese, with the understanding (but no guarantee) that they would receive preferential treatment in turn.
well, as it turns out, that kind of thing doesnt work in the long-run. (breeds inefficiency, cronyism, and was a major cause of the asian economic crash). it cant happen in the united states because companies are forced to be relatively open if theyre big enough to sell stock, and because greedy shareholders (remember them?) will DEMAND that they make as much money as they can.
look at the "wintel" thing for example. intel and microsoft looked like they were presenting a united front, but we know now that they feared and hated each other all along, and as soon as there was a chance intel broke with them and cooperated with linux people.
the same with dell and compaq, who definitely have a longstanding and important relationship with microsoft but werent above stabbing em in the back introducing linux-based servers even while testifying in court how great windows is. cooperation in US businesses is almost always based on immediately obvious mutual benefit, exploitation of someone else, or fear. only one of these is a balance between equals, and isnt really cooperation in the strict sense of the word.
the bottom line is that keiretsu are a failed economic model, and that the comparatively rigorous reqt's of doing business in the US discourage them anyway. also, collusion in the united states is a major crime which is fairly prosecutable, and the penalties for collusion can be high enough to knock you out of business.(to say nothing of the drop in your stock it would cause).
the supreme court's infamous phrase "with all deliberate speed" in brown v board of education was for a particular reason. they KNEW for a fact that they would not be able to desegregate all the schools, especially in the South, immediately. too many politically-minded individuals (like governor wallace, the prick who tried to block black kids from entering that one school) in *too many jurisdictions* to force the issue immediately.
however, this case is different because microsoft if it was forced into a remedy, if the doj pushes it just right, can get smacked down in court. it remember that microsoft wants the vague language, but the govt probably wont accept it. they tried that before, remember? and if there is an explicit statement on when and how, if microsoft disobeys a court order they will get fscking reamed, no appeals, do not pass go, dont even think about delay tactics.
i dont know where romero got off using those characters for the name...see, theyre actually *chinese* not japanese.
the first character is pronounced "die" which is chinese for big or large or whatever. the second character is actually pronounced "doh!" (roughly equal to the homer-exclamation) and is chinese for a knife or sword or blade.
(note: my pronunciation is in cantonese, not mandarin. "dai" is actually "dah" in mandarin, and im not sure how to pronounce sword but i think its still "doh!")
i guess calling the game "big knife" doesnt sound quite as good as calling it daikatana, but there you have it...maybe it should be pronounced "die doh"?
if aol succeeds in commercializing the internet, there is a good choice that will actually **increase** the so-called "digital divide" separating power users (like many but not all/. readers) from the great unwashed.
how so? easy. most of the internet will become less useful, but more entertaining.
the result will be more and more of the web being converted to pure entertainment plays, not even pretending to provide information (unbiased or not). and rife with marketing. in other words, most of the web will start to look like television. to be honest, this doesnt bother me much. i dont watch tv, and we all knew it would happen eventually. but not all of the internet can be whitewashed.
the reason you can get 5000 channels and still be bored with all of them is that you dont have many people setting up tv stations in their homes for fun. it doesnt cost as much to set up web content as it does to broadcast stuff. so we will always have a certain subgroup of people publishing on the web whatever the hell they want.
i suppose there is a possibility of infrastructure control that could hurt this, but i doubt it will happen. at&t, at the very least, certainly wont let aol/time-warner control the pipes- so we have at least two giants trying to prevent each other from controlling all bandwidth.
in other words, the ability to produce quality, unbiased content is still there.
but most of the people entering through aol will not be interested in investing the time or energy in finding that. so they will see all the marketing and electronic billboards set up for them, the custom-built ads created as "informative" sites pushing one product or another, and they will think that is all there is to the web.
meanwhile, more saavy users will shun commercial areas (in part) to frequent more obscure websites with informative but more importantly LESS BIASED content.
to those who argue that aol will buy out any site thats getting big enough, it is a consideration. but i for one think the great buyout of content is over, because (1) its hard to justify large sums for niche audiences and (2) it may not actually be worth aol's time or money to hit these small markets. they want to dominate larger audiences remember- and more particularly those willing to spend money, not cynical libertarian communist mp3-stealing hippie 3l337 h4xxx0rs like slashdot readers. (yes i know that was a self-contradictory exaggeration. but many people lump these groups together- and in any case they all represent people that are a pain-in-the-ass for aol or any company to deal with)
i think more and more people will self-segregate based in part on their technical knowledge and the ability to really think for themselves. its already happening, has happened since the internet began- like various IRC channels, for instance, which have vastly greater reservoirs of technical knowledge than others. in some ways, thats probably a good thing.
ok, i can see why its great to have a free education, especially if all the materials will be posted to the net. im not knocking that part, i think it kicks ass, and if it happens i will be sure to take advantage of it during vacations.
but the idea that you cant get a technical degree without an undergrad cs degree just isnt true.
every school in the country is hard up for grad students in cs and electrical/computer (ece) engineering. im not just talking phds, but also master's programs. the labor shortage, remember? nobody wants to go to school for two to five more years when they can pull so much starting straight out of college. the result is that universities and plenty of them are taking lots of people into masters' programs that have undergrad in a field completely unrelated to cs or engineering. its weird, but its definitely happening.
im a biology major from a small liberal arts college, and i got into terminal master's electrical/computer engineering programs at both uTexasAustin and cornell. (admittedly i got rejected from mit, hahahaha.) this arsdigita is really only for english/psych/polisci majors. people who majored in a science can definitely get into a master's program. and seriously, i think a master's is worth more. both education-wise and vocationally.
ok, so it will definitely take me longer than a year (im thinking 2 to 2 1/2) and it costs me money, but one year at UT costs less than half of what one year at my current school is. and so engineering!=CS but you kind of see what im saying. if youre willing to get rejected by MIT, it is still possible for you to major in something completely unrelated to computer science and still get into a CS (or related) graduate program.
with the testing-requirements as high as have been listed, the people arsdigita is shooting for may very well have these options available. finally, i too want to see what the attrition rate of arsdigita will be. to be honest, i dont think that kind of acceleration can be done well. you can only cram in so much knowledge per day. people just stop learning after a certain period- like that far side cartoon, where the guy says "can you excuse me? my brain is full." 12 hours of class a day is just too much structured work time. even if most of it is basically study hall to complete assignments, its still worse than the traditional lecture then do work in your free time aspect of college life. i dont want to sound overly critical, but i seriously feel that the biggest problem is going to be the human attrition rate to that kind of scheduling.
nevertheless, good luck. i hope the program succeeds- if only because i want my free instruction materials on the web!
unc_
Re:What about populations (of investors)
on
Saga Of TriStrata
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this idea has actually been practiced before. dont ever trust stuff you hear on the net or on the business channel or even those "buy" or "hold" or "sell" ratings the big guys put out. they always make such statements to benefit themselves- ie they tell people to "buy" when they already own lots of shares, so they can sell at a peak. there is a limit to how much they do this, but its really more common than a lot of people think.
you hear those stock brokers doing this kind of thing a lot. they dont care about whether you win or lose money, they just make commission off every trade. so they stir up the market a bit by giving people advice. its called "churning". its pretty evil.
after reading the article im completely flabbergasted. is this the way venture capital really works? do these guys really have no idea what it is they are putting their money into?
i mean honestly, its hard for me to believe. these guys are throwing hundreds of millions, collectively throwing in billions, of dollars into investments- technology- promises they dont seem to understand?
i dont know, man. i mean, if you need to hire a consultant to tell you what the product is, maybe you dont have a good enough understanding to do a deal, y'know?
the other thing that surprised me was the due diligence thing. considering the competitiveness of the business, the way these v-c are jumping around looking for the next rocket up the nasdaq, and the way that every good idea in the business has probably been thought of by at least 3 different people, would i really want to let people see my business plan **before** getting a commitment from them?
i mean, seriously, thats just no good. maybe im too conservative and not cut out to be an internet millionaire, but id be really scared of making myself that vulnerable to someone who does not even necessarily have any loyalty to me or what i want to do. theres nothing to prevent the company from saying no politely and then taking your ideas to someone else who will give them a bigger cut or a better deal.
please, someone enlighten me. this stuff just doesnt make any sense.
this lawsuit has moved beyond what is immediately good for the consumer. a lot of people have argued that microsoft is being made an example of, despite having made good products. i am not going to argue about whether they make good products. but this is about much more than whether microsoft's continued existence is beneficial to the economy.
microsoft has flaunted the law. repeatedly. they settled lawsuits in the 80s, and broke their promises. they have perjured themselves in court, made highly inconsistent statements, have extended delays as much as possible, and generally have not made a Good Faith effort to treat the legal system with the respect it so often demands.
one of bill gates' strongest assets is also his weakness. his father was a lawyer. a very good one. bill gates thinks like a lawyer. you see this in interviews with him today, you even see this in his argumentative Byte interview with Dennis Bathory-Kitsz from the early 80s. he understands the court system well enough to know that people can play games with the law. and that they do, and that many people can do it quite successfully. but he is not a lawyer, and it shows.
one of the things you learn in law school, through repeated readings of case studies, is that Law Takes Itself Seriously. you can only fuck with judges up to a certain point- then they get medieval on your ass. bill gates has fucked with the system before, and got away with it. he thought he could do it again.
he was Wrong. im sure people have heard of "the wheels of justice". its a good metaphor. those wheels are really slow, but they are also huge, infinitely heavy, and very hard to stop once theyre set in motion.
microsoft cannot be allowed to escape unscathed. their behavior has shown a flagrant lack of respect for law, the justice system, and indirectly, all that it stands for. the judicial system doesnt like people who dont follow its decrees. it has the power to punish those who do, and will... because ultimately, if microsoft can get away with it, then others might try as well.
law is based on the threat of force, not the actual administration of force. in order to preserve order, the system must make sure it is respected. that people exhibit both FEAR AND RESPECT.
we all know microsoft has not respected the justice system. its been patently obvious even with bill gates' own testimony. in short, they have not provided a good example of how businesses should behave in relation to the law. so the justice system is forced to act, and microsoft has only succeeded in making an example of themselves.
this really solidifies for me, at least, that sun is a very unethical company. kingston is NEVER the bad guy. to understand why, you have to know where they're coming from. kingston tech is so incredibly angelic that its amazing they're still in business.
the real reason david sun (of kingston) is pissed is that they have literally NEVER EVER filed a lawsuit before. kingston is one of the most bizarrely ethical companies on the face of the planet. they are truly weird; if you asked me to name one ethical company in the US, it would be kingston tech.
that $100 million thing is only the tip of the iceberg. kingston never fires any of its full employees. ever. the owners believe that once they have agreed to hire someone full-time, they are responsible for them until he/she retires.
in dealing with other businesses, kingston always does handshake deals. think about it, they are an international company; when was the last time you heard of anyone that big without any lawyers on their staff or even on retainer? their traditional approach to being cheated is to walk away and never do business with the other guys again. they are the classic pacifists; they would rather pay you off and never see you again that get drawn into a long stalemated court battle.
theyve been able to do that because in the industry kingston is the best. they do custom manufacturing jobs in under 24 hours. in the late 80s, they did jobs nobody else could touch- and they still have some of the best quality control. they might not be that big, but they have survived and done all right because they can do things nobody else can.
the moral to be drawn from all this is that if scott mcneely was trying to pick a pushover, he picked the wrong company. anyone else would probably weigh the relative costs and benefits; ie settle out of court. if you could get him really pissed, i dont think david sun would go for that. and kingston, if you look very carefully, is Kingston Technology COMPANY. it is not a corporation! there are no shareholders to be accountable to; no board of directors to second-guess the strategy of the executives.
the article does mention that kingston was sold (in fact it was to softbank, the same japanese company that owns zd and a lot of yahoo stock). what it doesnt mention is that softbank sold kingston back to its owners last year... there is some weird shit going on there, but essentially david sun (and co-founder john tu) have complete control of the company.
one final note: if mcneely played golf with david sun, david sun would kick his ass. kingston is a company notorious for the golf-playing of all their executives, and david sun is damn good.
its fairly easy to cheat now without a computer. i mean, realistically, if you want to cheat nowadays, it really isnt that hard. that's why so many schools push the honor code- because they know they cant prevent it from happening. the college i go to, the professor doesnt even stay in the room for most of the exams. a lot of places probably arent that trusting, but schools could do a lot more to try to prevent cheating and most of them dont bother because they know people WILL get around it if they have to. (ie putting formulas and things into their graphing calculators, etc)
2) effect on what exams really test
people used to make the same arguments about what calculator use would do to math exams. while some of it is true, the best thing to do is probably to formulate the exam questions with the use of a laptop in mind. in other words, less memorization/core-dumping of facts and more critical thought, just as calculators encourage more problem-solving and less rote formula crunching. is this really a bad thing?
3) inevitability
in a couple of years, i think it will be impossible to prevent people from bring a computer to exams anyway. with the whole internet appliance thing and the future as envisioned by those wearable computer folks, people are going to be toting computers around with them whereever they go.
if you read the article it points out that the glove giveaway is because the ny state attorney general investigated it.
boy, doesn't that make you feel so much safer?
now that you wont get injured by playing nintendo 24-7, youll never have to go outside and risk being perforated by triggerhappy plainclothes police officers with automatic pistols.
if you really want a laugh, dial the 800 number
1-800-521-0900
and listen to the safety warning. i fell out of my chair laughing. sample:
some individuals may experience skin irritation, including blisters and/or damage to the control stick if they rotate the control stick with the palm of your hand. nintendo recommends that you rotate the control stick with your thumb or holding it between your thumb and forefinger. if neither of these methods work for you, and you would still prefer to use your palm to rotate the control stick, nintendo will send you a glove upon receipt of acceptable proof of ownership...
you need to send proof of purchase + an outline of your hand, "so that nintendo can determine the size of the glove to send and whether it should be for the right or left hand". proof of purchase can even be a picture of the game or a picture of a tv screen running the game. shipping in 4-6 weeks.
Overpriced, poor service, always trying to take away your privacy, horrible workmanship, filled with interesting ideas, no-name clones, and worthless pieces of crap.
Microsoft and Radio Shack: a match made in heaven.
seriously, doesn't anyone else see the real reason why microsoft is doing this? it's about access to lower-income and technophobic population brackets. Microsoft OWNS the PC market, why the hell would they sell computers or MCSE books in Radio Shack?
That's not what they're doing at all.
Microsoft wants to sell WebTV in Radio Shack. They want to get set-top boxes to people who are too scared or too poor to buy a computer. They figure that those kinds of people will go to Radio Shack. (I've seen WebTV at K-Mart too; when was the last time you saw WebTV retail at CompUSA?)
Never underestimate Gates at what he is so well known for: marketing.
The same kind of thing holds true for MSN. He is trying to beat AOL, remember. And to do that, he needs to get the attention of clueless people who don't know any better than to think there is only a choice between AOL and MSN.
And Radio Shack, despite my and no doubt other peoples' use of it as a place to get parts quickly (but at a high cost) should remember that most of Radio Shack's business is from people who hate electronics but want to get their kid a cheap RC car and don't know where else to go.
Microsoft already owns the PC-OS market, remember? This is about the ISP and set-top boxes, where they're still not yet on top.
i wouldn't say there is any indication of microsoft stock dropping appreciably. friday, 630 has an obvious effect, the judge had no wish to precipitate a market panic.
microsoft can not afford to settle this out of court. odds are they cant and wont. they tried to settle in 1995, and they lied to the federal gov't. our gov't, for various reasons, doesn't trust microsoft or bill gates. gates apparently boasted in private after settling that he hadnt changed any of his business practices.
also, bill gates has been extremely arrogant in his entire treatment of the US and due process of law. the judge IS NOT STUPID, he KNOWS that bill gates perjured himself on video. and the false evidence with the win98 switch couldnt have helped either. plus, the rather heavy-handed lobbying of the Senate and House and the cheap-shot paid-for "independent" supporters of Microsoft could easily be construed by the judge as indirect attempts to evade justice. Judges treasure their autonomy and power. they will not take this kind of thing lightly.
on the other hand, dont count on any of this ever bankrupting bill gates. first of all, itll take years before they get anywhere. but even so, bill gates can only stand to make more money. if they force microsoft to license windows code, they surely won't make him do it for free. and if they split microsoft into smaller companies, he will get filthy rich.
Rockefeller reached the height of his wealth (even if it began the dismantling of his power base) by the Government-coerced split of the Standard Oil trust. He ended up owning stock in all of the descendants, each of which increased in value. I imagine that splitting Microsoft would result in something similar (even if it didn't last very long, it would be enough in the short run).
besides, if we all get where we want to, by the time future decisions based on this one have any binding effect the whole idea of windows and a closed operating system will be irrelevant anyway. Right?
seriously, it sounds from the article that their deaths is not at all related to spamming, except indirectly. these guys were ripping people off with penny stocks. this kind of securities fraud is nothing new, its just nowadays people may believe spam mails telling them how to get rich. whereas before it may have worked only by word of mouth. the guys are fscking con artists, they probably skrewed up somewhere, stepped on someone's toes or ripped off someone who got
a
little
pissed.
and dude, to the guy who said something about how the spammers did well for themselves, the house is owned by one of the guys' girlfriend's dad. i doubt either of them was very wealthy.
Slashdot Mirror
power deregulation is a very bad example, as it is a completely atypical industry.
the problem with electricity in the usa is that it has a history of being very, VERY heavily regulated with extremely restrictive price controls, is very sensitive to political/pulic opinion but at the same time requires massive outlays in capital expenditures.
its a recipe for complete disaster. there are two problems with power in the us:
1. power generation- nobody wants a power plant in their neighborhood. theyre too worried about nukes, air pollution, or loss of their whitewater rafting. it is very difficult (both in time and money) to build a new facility. political/public backlashes against building new generators has created artificial scarcity despite massive improvements in technology. hence, america does not have enough power-generating capacity to meet its future needs- prices will go up, no doubt about that. they need to in order to compensate a company for all the shit they have to go through to open up a new plant.
2. the power grid- everyone's plants are connected together, so there is a shared responsibility for maintaining the power grid. quite naturally, no single company wants to pay to repair/increase power grid capacity, because theres no way in the system to charge in terms of where electrons are flowing through the network. and gov't isnt too eager to foot the bill either, so the grid is falling apart. the lack of accountability for power grid maintenance is why electricity should never have been deregulated.
the problems in ca are actually more related to the power grid. theyre afraid theyll blow the entire system by trying to push too much power through it, which would of course black out most of california and probably a significant part of the west coast.
pick a different example for corporate abuse of power. the power companies are, ironically, relatively powerless because of their situation.
unc_
> in the 90-95% range, and even Standard Oil
> never got that far.
i dont believe the above statement is true. standard oil consistently maintained 90% of marketshare, i think. and the only reason standard oil at the height of their power never got more than that was entirely for pr reasons. he couldve easily crushed them- among numerous other advantages, he negotiated nasty deals with the railroads that not only gave him huge discounts but actually had the railroads pay him every time they shipped oil for someone else.
rockefeller thought that a small amount of token "competition" would assuage public opinion and make it harder for him to be prosecuted (which was true for a while, but ultimately didnt save him). he intentionally kept prices at a level high enough to allow his few remaining competitors to survive. there are recorded instances where he told his subordinates to back off from a potential kill- once he completely dominated the market, he felt no need to exterminate those few left.
so its not like he wasnt as powerful as at&t or microsoft- he simply never fully exercised his control because he was afraid of a public backlash, and didnt think he needed more than 90% anyway. (the lawsuit was actually spurred in part by the actions of his successor, who was considerably more ruthless in the market and less able to keep up moral appearances).
unc_
it is a world of difference between the rural countrysides and any of the cities. while the urban areas will catch up quickly (or, in the case of hk, occasionally lead the way) it will take at least a decade for much of the tech to filter throughout the country.
also, stephenson was both right and wrong about games...multiplayer games are very popular in the cities...there is a booming (and frequently illegal) industry in net cafes, where the majority of people are playing starcraft, ut and counterstrike. the chinese gov't recently cracked down on a lot of them, but they continue nonetheless...
unc_
> Typically, Asian people are a lot more self-sacrificing and willing to work for a group; they don't have the "looking out for number one" attitudes that most Western geeks do (not
------
this is a stereotype that quite simply doesnt work when talking about people from mainland china. china has one of the most powerful, stable, and yet systematically corrupt governments in the world. almost EVERY person from mainland china ALWAYS looks out for number one...if they didnt, they wouldnt survive. if youve been to china or even hk you know what im talking about.
there is no such thing as fairness in modern china. it is all about influence, money, and power. everyone who does business in china learns this, when they have to pay off every local magistrate to get work permits. there is no official who cannot be bought, in one way or another.
try to think of what it would be like in a society where there is no such thing as justice. remember that it has been like this for 25+ years (under mao, it was complete chaos and was even worse...) do you really think that people would be that self-sacrificing?
as for **buying** windows ME... it is DAMN HARD to even find a legal copy to purchase of ANY software or DVD in china. pretty much all you can buy is pirated copies... and that is no joke...
unc_
regardless of whatever your personal feelings may be, keep in mind that the group issuing this "study" is McKinsey & Co., which just coincidentally happens to do a lot of management consulting...
a professor at wharton was paid to come up with this, which (1) gets the professor's name in the paper for re-stating the totally obvious, perhaps with some half-assed stats to back it up and (2) helps drum up demand for mcKinsey, who will (for a huge fee, of course) restructure your job descriptions in marketing legalese, stir the pot a little, issue a nice shiny report with pretty graphs (perhaps [gasp] with a PowerPoint presentation too!) and leave everything underneath almost exactly the same.
these guys are just advertising how badly their services are needed by every company in existence.
it is very self-serving, and both cnet and now slashdot have fallen for it. or, more likely, they dont care that they are providing free publicity for a paid advertisement, because it caters to their audiences exactly what they want to hear.
you didnt fall for it, did you? are these observations really that illuminating to any of you at all?
unc_
the problem with trying to map methylated bases is that there are shitloads of modifications to dna going on all the time. there is a whole classification of enzymes (kinases) whose sole function is to methylate or demethylate proteins and dna.
kinases have been implicated in a very large number of biochemical pathways for practically every process. methylation is a regulation mechanism for dna. methylation is likely to change the conformation (shape) of parts of dna, allowing binding or blocking binding of proteins and consequently allowing transcription (or the lack thereof) to occur- in effect turning gene/protein activity on and off.
this is important, but in any single organism over its lifespan thousands upon thousands of bases will get demethylated or demethylated. in fact, any individual gene is likely to be methylated or demethylated, and there are no doubt a significantly large number of genes which are methylated and demethylated many, many times over the organism's lifespan. this results in millions of possible sequences of bases which are methylated or demethylated.
i just dont think this sounds like a feasible project. biologists right now tend to find out meth or demeth bases by studying genes or pathways one at a time. i tend to lean towards this approach as being more intelligent.
(i kinda sorta paid attention in biochem class...but i could be wrong...)
unc_
for the president of a mac user's group, he seems to know surprisingly little about how apple as a company has survived.
its the hardware, stupid.
all the (lack of) compatibility problems are the result of their control of the OS coupled with strict control of the hardware. and apple doesnt know how to make cheap commoditized computer hardware. they havent for years (if ever), and theres certainly no way they have the capacity, will, or sheer brute capital to try it now.
there is no way x86 os x can get out in "early 2001". the simple fact is, lalor's time-frame is way off. apple's management would be complete morons to start an x86 development effort before os x was a proven success on the server market. programmers dont come cheap, my friend. does apple really have such an excess of developers that they can start porting even before the finished product comes out? does this guy know anything about software devel? you only do that nowadays if youre practically guaranteed a market, my friend...why else do you think everything but the most popular (ie photoshop) software packages come out for macs long after it hits pcs?
gambling like that would be extraordinarily risky- what if os x doesnt do that well or (more likely) is slow-grwoth because its completely new? then apple is saddled with supporting TWO devel efforts- one to make os x better (its 1.0 after all), one to port to x86... no way. theyll wait and see. how long does it take for apple to get a real piece of the server market? i dont know how long- 6 months maybe? (again, a very optimistic minimum) and only then do they START work on a real x86 port.
but, lets just say treating things **very** optimistically, maybe os x blows everyone away- like (ahem) win95 and everyone buys into it. so then apple realize theyve made the big time and start porting immediately. os x 1.0 according to apple's website is supposed to come out january 01. lalor suggests that os x on x86 debuts in "early 2001". even with apple allegedly keeping os x easy to port, can the entirety of os x, gui and all, be ported in less than six months?
hahahahaha.
thats funny.
and lalor, while accelerating the pace of devel for apple just conveniently puts every other os in stasis. yeah, linux is going to look EXACTLY the same a year from now. well obviously linux hasnt gotten ANY EASIER to use in the last year, right? i mean, theres certainly NO WAY to use linux without the command line.
what? huh? kde? gnome? whats that?
if os x wins big, the chances for an x86 version (which is already very slim) will take a minimum of two years to come out. and nobody knows what linux is going to look like by then. and what about bsd or beos? or, for that matter, solaris? are they going to wait for steve jobs and his vision of the future?
i dont fucking think so.
as a final comment i thought that the presumptuousness of the last line of his article is probably what pissed off me (and other people) the most.
"For those in the Open Source movement, Darwin is all they need."
um yeah. the fact is, neither you nor apple can tell me what i need. your arrogance and condescension is precisely why you will never understand what i need. ill get what i want myself, which means **all** the source, thank you very much.
unc_
half of the internet companies seem to tout the idea of target advertising (especially the niche or community sites) as being a major source of revenue for them. esp the companies that dont have any revenue at the moment but will Real Soon Now we Promise. doesnt this article in the nytimes suggest that these people are full of crap?
more importantly, if its in the nytimes, which probably has a readership only surpassed by slashdot (hee hee) that suggests that this is no longer something only the underbelly of dissatisfied IT workers (like many slashdot readers) know about.
anyone else think the stock market is going to fall quite a bit more?
unc_
we can argue semantically as to whether or not "keiratsu" refers to an economic model, but what i am talking about is how japan, south korea, indonesia, and most of the other asian countries built up heavy industry after ww2.
all of asia realized they needed to modernize as quickly as possible, and so the various gov'ts provided direct and indirect support to people who were willing to create large, industrial conglomerates- keiratsu in japan, and the chaebol in south korea. similar to nationalized or partly gov't owned companies in many other asian countries.
consequently, you see the rapid rise of huge conglomerate companies invested in multiple nonsynergistic industries, with the gov't directly supporting those companies through partial ownership (hence direct investment to purchase capital equipment) and other perks like tax breaks or high import tariffs to block foreign competition.
the problem though, with anything the govt touches (or feeds directly) is it tends to become inefficient and dependent on gov't handouts. in this case, companies with gov't funding or support were expected to take up part of the burden of social services- lifetime employment and housing subsidies for its workers, which until very recently were the norm in japan, s korea, and elsewhere.
furthermore, in attempts to build up certain industries which a particular country felt was vital (like automobiles in south korea) a company would keep pouring money into particular divisions that kept losing money and had little to no chance of ever catching up with foreign competitors.
adding to this was that many companies were not willing to compete with one another, preferring to expand into product lines that had no native equivalent. korean companies would try not to hurt each other overly much, the japanese companies would deal only with japanese suppliers, etc. even if americans or europeans offered lower prices on raw materials, japanese would only deal with japanese, or they would expand (vertical integration) into southeast asia. this still happens all the time, but its getting harder to do (because of, as you mentioned, globalization)- and many japanese companies have realized that they simply dont know how to produce the raw materials they need at internal prices competitive with those they might get outside their companies.
the long-term result is an underlying weakness in a country's economy- this is the stuff macro hedge bets are made of, like soros and his friends deflating most of the southeast asian currencies, which forced rising interest rates, which killed property speculation and crashed the stock markets simultaneously.
you and i are both right. in the 80s many american companies werent producing good products. and business cycles do go up and down. but you ignore the difference between a hard fall and a soft one- if asian companies had been more efficient in the first place, they would not have suffered nearly as much as they did in the transition between good times and bad.
and the underlying cause of the inefficiency is the ideas supporting keiratsu- companies overly dependent on government support and nationalistic or overtly chummy business practices. it allows for rapid expansion and the creation of whole industries in a country that didnt have them even 50 years ago, but it comes with a price.
unc_
im sorry dude, thats not true.
keiretsu in japan (and their equivalents in many other countries) work because of the relative weakness of shareholder rights. that is to say, if one corporation acts in a way to benefit another at direct or indirect cost to itself, in the US lawsuits can and will get filed. quid pro quo, when formalized, are not the same thing. then they become contracts.
japan was criticized by american companies during the 80s for presenting a kind of "united front", if you will, against foreign companies. that is, they banded together, offered one another specific business preferences, etc just because they were japanese, with the understanding (but no guarantee) that they would receive preferential treatment in turn.
well, as it turns out, that kind of thing doesnt work in the long-run. (breeds inefficiency, cronyism, and was a major cause of the asian economic crash). it cant happen in the united states because companies are forced to be relatively open if theyre big enough to sell stock, and because greedy shareholders (remember them?) will DEMAND that they make as much money as they can.
look at the "wintel" thing for example. intel and microsoft looked like they were presenting a united front, but we know now that they feared and hated each other all along, and as soon as there was a chance intel broke with them and cooperated with linux people.
the same with dell and compaq, who definitely have a longstanding and important relationship with microsoft but werent above stabbing em in the back introducing linux-based servers even while testifying in court how great windows is. cooperation in US businesses is almost always based on immediately obvious mutual benefit, exploitation of someone else, or fear. only one of these is a balance between equals, and isnt really cooperation in the strict sense of the word.
the bottom line is that keiretsu are a failed economic model, and that the comparatively rigorous reqt's of doing business in the US discourage them anyway. also, collusion in the united states is a major crime which is fairly prosecutable, and the penalties for collusion can be high enough to knock you out of business.(to say nothing of the drop in your stock it would cause).
unc_
the supreme court's infamous phrase "with all deliberate speed" in brown v board of education was for a particular reason. they KNEW for a fact that they would not be able to desegregate all the schools, especially in the South, immediately. too many politically-minded individuals (like governor wallace, the prick who tried to block black kids from entering that one school) in *too many jurisdictions* to force the issue immediately.
however, this case is different because microsoft if it was forced into a remedy, if the doj pushes it just right, can get smacked down in court. it remember that microsoft wants the vague language, but the govt probably wont accept it. they tried that before, remember? and if there is an explicit statement on when and how, if microsoft disobeys a court order they will get fscking reamed, no appeals, do not pass go, dont even think about delay tactics.
unc_
i dont know where romero got off using those characters for the name...see, theyre actually *chinese* not japanese.
the first character is pronounced "die" which is chinese for big or large or whatever. the second character is actually pronounced "doh!" (roughly equal to the homer-exclamation) and is chinese for a knife or sword or blade.
(note: my pronunciation is in cantonese, not mandarin. "dai" is actually "dah" in mandarin, and im not sure how to pronounce sword but i think its still "doh!")
i guess calling the game "big knife" doesnt sound quite as good as calling it daikatana, but there you have it...maybe it should be pronounced "die doh"?
unc_
if aol succeeds in commercializing the internet, there is a good choice that will actually **increase** the so-called "digital divide" separating power users (like many but not all /. readers) from the great unwashed.
how so? easy. most of the internet will become less useful, but more entertaining.
the result will be more and more of the web being converted to pure entertainment plays, not even pretending to provide information (unbiased or not). and rife with marketing. in other words, most of the web will start to look like television. to be honest, this doesnt bother me much. i dont watch tv, and we all knew it would happen eventually. but not all of the internet can be whitewashed.
the reason you can get 5000 channels and still be bored with all of them is that you dont have many people setting up tv stations in their homes for fun. it doesnt cost as much to set up web content as it does to broadcast stuff. so we will always have a certain subgroup of people publishing on the web whatever the hell they want.
i suppose there is a possibility of infrastructure control that could hurt this, but i doubt it will happen. at&t, at the very least, certainly wont let aol/time-warner control the pipes- so we have at least two giants trying to prevent each other from controlling all bandwidth.
in other words, the ability to produce quality, unbiased content is still there.
but most of the people entering through aol will not be interested in investing the time or energy in finding that. so they will see all the marketing and electronic billboards set up for them, the custom-built ads created as "informative" sites pushing one product or another, and they will think that is all there is to the web.
meanwhile, more saavy users will shun commercial areas (in part) to frequent more obscure websites with informative but more importantly LESS BIASED content.
to those who argue that aol will buy out any site thats getting big enough, it is a consideration. but i for one think the great buyout of content is over, because (1) its hard to justify large sums for niche audiences and (2) it may not actually be worth aol's time or money to hit these small markets. they want to dominate larger audiences remember- and more particularly those willing to spend money, not cynical libertarian communist mp3-stealing hippie 3l337 h4xxx0rs like slashdot readers. (yes i know that was a self-contradictory exaggeration. but many people lump these groups together- and in any case they all represent people that are a pain-in-the-ass for aol or any company to deal with)
i think more and more people will self-segregate based in part on their technical knowledge and the ability to really think for themselves. its already happening, has happened since the internet began- like various IRC channels, for instance, which have vastly greater reservoirs of technical knowledge than others. in some ways, thats probably a good thing.
unc_
so is the website a fraud or what?
unc_
ok, i can see why its great to have a free education, especially if all the materials will be posted to the net. im not knocking that part, i think it kicks ass, and if it happens i will be sure to take advantage of it during vacations.
but the idea that you cant get a technical degree without an undergrad cs degree just isnt true.
every school in the country is hard up for grad students in cs and electrical/computer (ece) engineering. im not just talking phds, but also master's programs. the labor shortage, remember? nobody wants to go to school for two to five more years when they can pull so much starting straight out of college. the result is that universities and plenty of them are taking lots of people into masters' programs that have undergrad in a field completely unrelated to cs or engineering. its weird, but its definitely happening.
im a biology major from a small liberal arts college, and i got into terminal master's electrical/computer engineering programs at both uTexasAustin and cornell. (admittedly i got rejected from mit, hahahaha.) this arsdigita is really only for english/psych/polisci majors. people who majored in a science can definitely get into a master's program. and seriously, i think a master's is worth more. both education-wise and vocationally.
ok, so it will definitely take me longer than a year (im thinking 2 to 2 1/2) and it costs me money, but one year at UT costs less than half of what one year at my current school is. and so engineering!=CS but you kind of see what im saying. if youre willing to get rejected by MIT, it is still possible for you to major in something completely unrelated to computer science and still get into a CS (or related) graduate program.
with the testing-requirements as high as have been listed, the people arsdigita is shooting for may very well have these options available. finally, i too want to see what the attrition rate of arsdigita will be. to be honest, i dont think that kind of acceleration can be done well. you can only cram in so much knowledge per day. people just stop learning after a certain period- like that far side cartoon, where the guy says "can you excuse me? my brain is full." 12 hours of class a day is just too much structured work time. even if most of it is basically study hall to complete assignments, its still worse than the traditional lecture then do work in your free time aspect of college life. i dont want to sound overly critical, but i seriously feel that the biggest problem is going to be the human attrition rate to that kind of scheduling.
nevertheless, good luck. i hope the program succeeds- if only because i want my free instruction materials on the web!
unc_
this idea has actually been practiced before. dont ever trust stuff you hear on the net or on the business channel or even those "buy" or "hold" or "sell" ratings the big guys put out. they always make such statements to benefit themselves- ie they tell people to "buy" when they already own lots of shares, so they can sell at a peak. there is a limit to how much they do this, but its really more common than a lot of people think.
you hear those stock brokers doing this kind of thing a lot. they dont care about whether you win or lose money, they just make commission off every trade. so they stir up the market a bit by giving people advice. its called "churning". its pretty evil.
unc_
after reading the article im completely flabbergasted. is this the way venture capital really works? do these guys really have no idea what it is they are putting their money into?
i mean honestly, its hard for me to believe. these guys are throwing hundreds of millions, collectively throwing in billions, of dollars into investments- technology- promises they dont seem to understand?
i dont know, man. i mean, if you need to hire a consultant to tell you what the product is, maybe you dont have a good enough understanding to do a deal, y'know?
the other thing that surprised me was the due diligence thing. considering the competitiveness of the business, the way these v-c are jumping around looking for the next rocket up the nasdaq, and the way that every good idea in the business has probably been thought of by at least 3 different people, would i really want to let people see my business plan **before** getting a commitment from them?
i mean, seriously, thats just no good. maybe im too conservative and not cut out to be an internet millionaire, but id be really scared of making myself that vulnerable to someone who does not even necessarily have any loyalty to me or what i want to do. theres nothing to prevent the company from saying no politely and then taking your ideas to someone else who will give them a bigger cut or a better deal.
please, someone enlighten me. this stuff just doesnt make any sense.
unc_
this lawsuit has moved beyond what is immediately good for the consumer. a lot of people have argued that microsoft is being made an example of, despite having made good products. i am not going to argue about whether they make good products. but this is about much more than whether microsoft's continued existence is beneficial to the economy.
microsoft has flaunted the law. repeatedly. they settled lawsuits in the 80s, and broke their promises. they have perjured themselves in court, made highly inconsistent statements, have extended delays as much as possible, and generally have not made a Good Faith effort to treat the legal system with the respect it so often demands.
one of bill gates' strongest assets is also his weakness. his father was a lawyer. a very good one. bill gates thinks like a lawyer. you see this in interviews with him today, you even see this in his argumentative Byte interview with Dennis Bathory-Kitsz from the early 80s. he understands the court system well enough to know that people can play games with the law. and that they do, and that many people can do it quite successfully. but he is not a lawyer, and it shows.
one of the things you learn in law school, through repeated readings of case studies, is that Law Takes Itself Seriously. you can only fuck with judges up to a certain point- then they get medieval on your ass. bill gates has fucked with the system before, and got away with it. he thought he could do it again.
he was Wrong. im sure people have heard of "the wheels of justice". its a good metaphor. those wheels are really slow, but they are also huge, infinitely heavy, and very hard to stop once theyre set in motion.
microsoft cannot be allowed to escape unscathed. their behavior has shown a flagrant lack of respect for law, the justice system, and indirectly, all that it stands for. the judicial system doesnt like people who dont follow its decrees. it has the power to punish those who do, and will... because ultimately, if microsoft can get away with it, then others might try as well.
law is based on the threat of force, not the actual administration of force. in order to preserve order, the system must make sure it is respected. that people exhibit both FEAR AND RESPECT.
we all know microsoft has not respected the justice system. its been patently obvious even with bill gates' own testimony. in short, they have not provided a good example of how businesses should behave in relation to the law. so the justice system is forced to act, and microsoft has only succeeded in making an example of themselves.
unc_
um...this is late, but did you read the article?
david sun has a higher handicap than scott mcneely.
to me, that by itself already implies david sun is a better golfer...
this really solidifies for me, at least, that sun is a very unethical company. kingston is NEVER the bad guy. to understand why, you have to know where they're coming from. kingston tech is so incredibly angelic that its amazing they're still in business.
the real reason david sun (of kingston) is pissed is that they have literally NEVER EVER filed a lawsuit before. kingston is one of the most bizarrely ethical companies on the face of the planet. they are truly weird; if you asked me to name one ethical company in the US, it would be kingston tech.
that $100 million thing is only the tip of the iceberg. kingston never fires any of its full employees. ever. the owners believe that once they have agreed to hire someone full-time, they are responsible for them until he/she retires.
in dealing with other businesses, kingston always does handshake deals. think about it, they are an international company; when was the last time you heard of anyone that big without any lawyers on their staff or even on retainer? their traditional approach to being cheated is to walk away and never do business with the other guys again. they are the classic pacifists; they would rather pay you off and never see you again that get drawn into a long stalemated court battle.
theyve been able to do that because in the industry kingston is the best. they do custom manufacturing jobs in under 24 hours. in the late 80s, they did jobs nobody else could touch- and they still have some of the best quality control. they might not be that big, but they have survived and done all right because they can do things nobody else can.
the moral to be drawn from all this is that if scott mcneely was trying to pick a pushover, he picked the wrong company. anyone else would probably weigh the relative costs and benefits; ie settle out of court. if you could get him really pissed, i dont think david sun would go for that. and kingston, if you look very carefully, is Kingston Technology COMPANY. it is not a corporation! there are no shareholders to be accountable to; no board of directors to second-guess the strategy of the executives.
the article does mention that kingston was sold (in fact it was to softbank, the same japanese company that owns zd and a lot of yahoo stock). what it doesnt mention is that softbank sold kingston back to its owners last year... there is some weird shit going on there, but essentially david sun (and co-founder john tu) have complete control of the company.
one final note: if mcneely played golf with david sun, david sun would kick his ass. kingston is a company notorious for the golf-playing of all their executives, and david sun is damn good.
1)cheating
its fairly easy to cheat now without a computer. i mean, realistically, if you want to cheat nowadays, it really isnt that hard. that's why so many schools push the honor code- because they know they cant prevent it from happening. the college i go to, the professor doesnt even stay in the room for most of the exams. a lot of places probably arent that trusting, but schools could do a lot more to try to prevent cheating and most of them dont bother because they know people WILL get around it if they have to. (ie putting formulas and things into their graphing calculators, etc)
2) effect on what exams really test
people used to make the same arguments about what calculator use would do to math exams. while some of it is true, the best thing to do is probably to formulate the exam questions with the use of a laptop in mind. in other words, less memorization/core-dumping of facts and more critical thought, just as calculators encourage more problem-solving and less rote formula crunching. is this really a bad thing?
3) inevitability
in a couple of years, i think it will be impossible to prevent people from bring a computer to exams anyway. with the whole internet appliance thing and the future as envisioned by those wearable computer folks, people are going to be toting computers around with them whereever they go.
unc_
if you read the article it points out that the glove giveaway is because the ny state attorney general investigated it.
boy, doesn't that make you feel so much safer?
now that you wont get injured by playing nintendo 24-7, youll never have to go outside and risk being perforated by triggerhappy plainclothes police officers with automatic pistols.
if you really want a laugh, dial the 800 number
1-800-521-0900
and listen to the safety warning. i fell out of my chair laughing. sample:
some individuals may experience skin irritation, including blisters and/or damage to the control stick if they rotate the control stick with the palm of your hand. nintendo recommends that you rotate the control stick with your thumb or holding it between your thumb and forefinger. if neither of these methods work for you, and you would still prefer to use your palm to rotate the control stick, nintendo will send you a glove upon receipt of acceptable proof of ownership...
you need to send proof of purchase + an outline of your hand, "so that nintendo can determine the size of the glove to send and whether it should be for the right or left hand". proof of purchase can even be a picture of the game or a picture of a tv screen running the game. shipping in 4-6 weeks.
this kind of stuff boggles the mind.
unc_
Overpriced, poor service, always trying to take away your privacy, horrible workmanship, filled with interesting ideas, no-name clones, and worthless pieces of crap.
Microsoft and Radio Shack: a match made in heaven.
seriously, doesn't anyone else see the real reason why microsoft is doing this? it's about access to lower-income and technophobic population brackets. Microsoft OWNS the PC market, why the hell would they sell computers or MCSE books in Radio Shack?
That's not what they're doing at all.
Microsoft wants to sell WebTV in Radio Shack. They want to get set-top boxes to people who are too scared or too poor to buy a computer. They figure that those kinds of people will go to Radio Shack. (I've seen WebTV at K-Mart too; when was the last time you saw WebTV retail at CompUSA?)
Never underestimate Gates at what he is so well known for: marketing.
The same kind of thing holds true for MSN. He is trying to beat AOL, remember. And to do that, he needs to get the attention of clueless people who don't know any better than to think there is only a choice between AOL and MSN.
And Radio Shack, despite my and no doubt other peoples' use of it as a place to get parts quickly (but at a high cost) should remember that most of Radio Shack's business is from people who hate electronics but want to get their kid a cheap RC car and don't know where else to go.
Microsoft already owns the PC-OS market, remember? This is about the ISP and set-top boxes, where they're still not yet on top.
unc_
i wouldn't say there is any indication of microsoft stock dropping appreciably. friday, 630 has an obvious effect, the judge had no wish to precipitate a market panic.
microsoft can not afford to settle this out of court. odds are they cant and wont. they tried to settle in 1995, and they lied to the federal gov't. our gov't, for various reasons, doesn't trust microsoft or bill gates. gates apparently boasted in private after settling that he hadnt changed any of his business practices.
also, bill gates has been extremely arrogant in his entire treatment of the US and due process of law. the judge IS NOT STUPID, he KNOWS that bill gates perjured himself on video. and the false evidence with the win98 switch couldnt have helped either. plus, the rather heavy-handed lobbying of the Senate and House and the cheap-shot paid-for "independent" supporters of Microsoft could easily be construed by the judge as indirect attempts to evade justice. Judges treasure their autonomy and power. they will not take this kind of thing lightly.
on the other hand, dont count on any of this ever bankrupting bill gates. first of all, itll take years before they get anywhere. but even so, bill gates can only stand to make more money. if they force microsoft to license windows code, they surely won't make him do it for free. and if they split microsoft into smaller companies, he will get filthy rich.
Rockefeller reached the height of his wealth (even if it began the dismantling of his power base) by the Government-coerced split of the Standard Oil trust. He ended up owning stock in all of the descendants, each of which increased in value. I imagine that splitting Microsoft would result in something similar (even if it didn't last very long, it would be enough in the short run).
besides, if we all get where we want to, by the time future decisions based on this one have any binding effect the whole idea of windows and a closed operating system will be irrelevant anyway. Right?
unc_
seriously, it sounds from the article that their deaths is not at all related to spamming, except indirectly. these guys were ripping people off with penny stocks. this kind of securities fraud is nothing new, its just nowadays people may believe spam mails telling them how to get rich. whereas before it may have worked only by word of mouth. the guys are fscking con artists, they probably skrewed up somewhere, stepped on someone's toes or ripped off someone who got
a
little
pissed.
and dude, to the guy who said something about how the spammers did well for themselves, the house is owned by one of the guys' girlfriend's dad. i doubt either of them was very wealthy.
unc_