I think, at least I *hope*, you're sleep deprived:)
I can't help think though that if the FBI was planning an action for Y2K it could explain their overreaction to the web site about a government created race riot featured as a story yesterday. If they were planning what you suggest they wouldn't leave the riots to chance.
Allowing the government to read and change all data on computers in a country is something that will lead to abuse eventually if not soon.
It wouldn't be very hard to put some poorly encrypted child porn on an enemy's computer, modify the logs, then bust them. Even should they win the case in court it's not likely they'd ever be able to win political office again after the reputation damage. Of course there are millions of more subtle ways to damage an enemy thru their data.
There seems to be an implicit assumption that a government is an evenhanded institution that would never abuse power or play favorites. Few real governments are that good, most are made up of people with agendas.
How will Australian corporations feel about the government being able to access all their records, and modify them if they so wish? What sort of power will people leaving government and joining private industry have due to having had access to this information? There could be some lobbying power if businesses can be convinced this is not in their interests either.
Does this imply that information temporarily stored on Australian servers is subject to Australian government control even if the source and destination of that data are in other countries? This is of international concern if so.
It would be nice to blackhole all addresses in Australia for a day or so to express the net's displeasure at this legislation. And if they read or change data as it merely passes thru Australia, I'd support making it permanent until they stop. It's a clear and present danger to the integrity of the net.
"I do not think the credit rating agencies are perfect, however you do have a choice. You can choose not to participate with credit agencies. "
I'm curious what you mean by this. I've never had a credit card in my life, yet there is most surely a credit rating report on me. Perhaps you mean I can choose not to pay utility companies or anyone else that reports to credit agencies? Doesn't seem very practical really.
I agree that an OSes and filesystems just aren't a very good fit for virtual reality, they are abstractions by nature.
To imagine a real application you have to think about e-commerce.
Suppose businesses could design a 3d level that presented their products to customers, who could wander around thru rooms, looking at shelves, watching simulated demos, and adding items to their shopping basket. The potential for competitive creativity funded by huge advertising budgets is fairly interesting here. You may rue the commercialism, but it's a real application that will happen no later than the widespread adoption of broadband in my opinion.
This is probably obvious, but before linking to RedHat's severs, it would be nice to obtain permission from them. It's doubtful their bandwidth would be hit hard enough they'd care, but it somehow doesn't seem right to just take it without asking. It's not free. Since their distribution is being used in this product I can imagine them accomodating the request fairly easily -- there could even be useful mutual advertising involved.
I agree it's irritatingly spineless for these ISPs to roll over at the slightest hint of legal action, but really, you have to see it from their point of view. Most are shoestring operations that couldn't even dream of putting up the needed legal costs. The big ones just look at the bottom line, and see nothing much added for defending freedom of expression. More's the pity.
Lets put the blame where it belongs and blackhole any site associated with anyone using these legal tactics as a form of censorship. This wouldn't be censoring the scientologists, more a widespread agreement not to listen to them as long as they persist in trying to suppress other's speech.
I like it, though it has a very steep learning curve -- lots of strange architecture details to absorb. The C6 instruction set is very nice compared to past models, much more complete and fairly orthogonal. It's quite easy to program the part in C or using the scalar assembly optimizer tool. You can achieve half theoretical speed or better fairly easily that way. It's a real pain to hand schedule eight parallel streams -- and incremental changes simply don't exist then -- but the part *really* screams when you do.
It requires a slightly different mode of thought due to things like branches affecting all parallel streams, and the instruction latencies for loads, branches, and multiplies.
If you stay within the internal 4k data and 4k code the '211 is fairly self contained, and memory is fast, which makes it's low price very attractive. Going to external memory on the '211 is a slow and painful process unless you get a cache hit.
The tools are still a little new, but I haven't hit any show stopper bugs, just some bad ones, like a misassembled opcode.
I'd agree that TI is the Intel of DSPs. I've programmed for the 32010, 15, 50, and now the 320C6200 and 320C6211. The latter is capable of gigaoperations/sec at a price way under $100, which gives it a very wide base of applicability for small designs in many fields.
Like Intel, the instruction architectures leave a great deal to be desired, but the speed per price is hard to argue with. And the difficulty of programming them efficiently keeps people like me employed:).
The major issues with technology are that it is very expensive to use it cleanly, and that it changes much faster than people.
A lot of the problems with technology are strongly related to the scarcity of energy. In theory, with an infinite supply of cheap energy, technology could limit its own negative ecological effects. The main arguments against ecological alternatives are economic. It would also cease to provide a social gradient that helped to separate rich and poor. Fission, fusion and space-based solar energy are all possibilities for increasing the energy supply, but none looks to be cheap, completely safe, or all that plentiful. Finding a good source of energy would redefine the technology landscape, making clean use of energy practical and reducing scarcity of goods in general. Can we survive long enough to find one? Shouldn't we be looking a little harder?
The other aspect of technological tragedy is social. People's cultures and means of living together change much slower than technology. New technologies, while increasing production, also create personal tragedies thru obsolescence and unanticipated side effects. For one example, feeding everyone thru efficient agriculture leads to population growth. This means that we live maladapted to technology and often without much idea why. We can acculturate faster, or control the growth of technology. I'm mostly for the former (I'd rather not shut down the internet until the lawmakers catch up.) But when new technologies have expensive social costs that aren't reflected in the bottom lines of the corporations promoting them, restraint is required for the common good.
It seems to me the problem here isn't that Microsoft is a monopoly, but in the way they used that power to coerce the market.
Breaking Microsoft up might make people feel good about the exercise of power involved, but I don't see why you wouldn't get a continuation of the same anti-competitive practices by smaller companies that still produce the only widely used product in the market, at least in the case of the Office and OS divisions.
What would be good for the consumer would be for Microsoft to start competing on the basis of innovation and quality, instead of clever marketing, spin doctoring, and marketshare leverage. I personally believe Microsoft would also be a lot stronger for it if they did return to real competition. Since they don't respond well to hints, it seems some force may be required. This may be embarrasing, and costly in the short term, but seems best long term for both consumers and Microsoft, in my opinion.
Returning the market to fair competition should also be the goal of the anti-trust laws, outside the penalty phase -- should damages be required.
I agree, not much to be done. But it's not just copying comments, it's copying them out of context and in a biased fashion. Copyright laws are supposed to prevent having an author's work perverted in the process of copying. By selecting incendiary, and non-highly rated comments, then only quoting parts of them, damage has arguably been done to the work that is a slashdot story.
Reading Scott Berinato's piece on ZDNet angered me, and I'm not completely sure why.
I tend to agree a breakup of Microsoft might even prove beneficial to them in the long term. I don't think the judge or the government will go for that however.
If a baby Bill was making Office and nothing else, they would still be able to bully OEMs and vendors with the threat of witholding sales. The upgrade treadmill would still be running using the same closed proprietary format. You could easily end up with three companies, all monopolies in their market, still needing further regulation.
A behavorial remedy forcing Microsoft to play fair would be far more effective in promoting competition and getting Microsoft back on track. Holding Gates personally responsible for it's enforcement seems like it might work to me.
Nearly everyone agrees that the economy runs best when left to itself. It's notional that it can run without any interference from government. The government is inextricably involved in the infrastructure of people, cash, communications, and law that make the economy possible.
If someone runs a protection racket, do you suggest that an insurance company with lower rates will solve the problem naturally -- and without government intervention? No, of course not, because a free economy can't work if force distorts it's feedback mechanism. That's the government's role - to keep the playing field force free, even, and open to new entrants -- so that the quality of businesses and products determine their success.
Microsoft had used its leverage to effectively close the OEM distribution channels to alternate OSes. Did they leverage the quality and cost-effectiveness of Windows? No, they used threats based on their monopoly. The judge argued very well, and correctly in my opinion, that this was an unfair barrier to competition. It's an application of force that distorts the natural result of the market. No one else gains any advantage at all from the closure of distribution channels for non-Microsoft software.
I hope the penalty phase takes into account the real problem here -- that competition is being skewed. It isn't being distorted because Microsoft is so large and monolithic, it is due to the anti-competitive, bullying business practices they engage in, made effective by their marketshare. I would very much like to see a behavioral remedy that prevented Microsoft from engaging in wide acquisitions, exclusionary deals, closed APIs, or proprietary formats.
Linux has a clear path to a good market share of servers, I think. It's excellent as a small to medium server, and it just makes too good economic sense not to be successful there. It's server capabilities are also increasing rapidly, especially from the commercial contributions to the kernel. So I think Linux can be an extremely successful OS while failing to achieve total desktop domination. But if Microsoft controls HTML it won't happen.
Unix always has, and probably always will, be the most appealing to students, developers, engineers, and scientists. Take it apart and figure out creative new ways to put it back together people. MS Windows on the other hand tends to appeal to businessmen and home users. Don't tell me about it -- I'm not paying to learn -- just make sure it works and all I have to do is push a button people. These are quite different sets of people and *both* have a realistic notion of their needs. The problem is in either Microsoft or *nix trying to force one set to use the other's tools. That should only be possible by satisfying the underlying needs responsible for both choices -- something neither side is fearfully close to yet. All I want to see is that those 10-30% who prefer Unix have that choice, and are supported with drivers and plug-ins.
Now, I'm optimistic about the Linux desktop personally. I'd always been a DOS command line person anyway, GUIs have never impressed me as powerful enough, though I use them. For my money, if you develop software, the best place to do it is in something Unix-like like Linux. It's entertainment like the web and games that keep me dual booting.
The bit about lack of plug-ins is true, but hardly fair. That sort of thing follows desktop success, it doesn't precede it. As hardware drivers are now coming thru for Linux, so I expect plug-ins to follow.
Having to recompile your apps? Well, yes, *having* to can be a pain. Being *able* to can also be wonderful when it's needed. No worse than having to re-install Windows occasionally surely.
The desktop standards thing is interesting. Do you remember when Norton and another company sold competing Win3.1 desktops? Much the same problem there. Microsoft of course settled it in their usual fashion by driving both, though superior, out of the market. I think in the Unix world, there is a possibility for something better, choice of desktop with full interoperability of apps. It won't come soon, but it will NEVER happen with Windows, Microsoft wouldn't permit it.
The issue is one of critical mass. There have to be enough Linux desktop users to make supporting them commercially attractive, or at least feasible. I would like to see fixes for the problems you mention, but I have to agree with the article, the lack of a browser is the most critical problem at the moment on the desktop front and standards front both. It's not an attempt to dominate the desktop, it's an attempt to maintain a foothold in the client space for fear of being embrace-and-extended out of the server space.
I remember TECO with a great deal of fondness. With what other editor could you spend more time on life games, renumbering utilities, and gray-code searches than manipulating text?
There was even a macro VEDIT, for those times you just wanted visual editing with arrow keys and all. It was conveniently distributed without any format characters and provided weeks of fun just figuring out how it worked.
I'm far more productive with Brief/Crisp but I've never had as much fun with an editor since TECO. It could really trash a file from the simplest typos!:)
I think you're right that peer review serves a useful academic purpose. It's like inertia for the system that prevents us from wandering all over the map with new discoveries like "cold fusion."
However, correct me if I'm wrong, but really radical new ideas will take 10-20 years or more to displace an established view. Perhaps it's a little slow, and could be made better by a little tuning. To bend the control system analogy, we want the response critically damped -- fastest convergence to truth without oscillations.
In the open source world, the peer review is made close to instantaneous thanks to the internet. The same phenomenon is going on in academia thru the online papers you speak of. However, there it's a side path, "real science" is still widely viewed as the output of the reviewed journals.
I think science simply needs to admit that different data has different certainties. What's called scientific law is very properly left to the output of the respected journals. But a lot can be gained by exposing everyone to radical new perspectives, even if they aren't widely accepted. So maybe science just needs a variable moderation system like Slashdot -- where interesting and insightful count, and trustworthiness is a scale, not a binary decision.
"Sports is not the antichrist here... and yes, football IS a sport. As little as I personally value it, that sport brings in a lot of money for the highschool... money that is also funneled into educational projects and clubs."
Yup, there is truth in what you say. Physical education is part of a balanced curriculum. But surely you understand that football (and I enjoy watching football occasionally myself) has been elevated to a position of artificial importance?
If the school football team wins a victory, it's a big deal. Time is even taken from classes to rally spirit prior to the game and celebrate victory afterwards. Team heroes often get laid. Buses are provided to transport the team. There is even an officially endorsed team of attractive females to encourage the male football players and spectators by shouting and wearing skimpy outfits. This sport is valued so highly that regular occurrences of paralysis and maiming in children do not derail it. Where exactly is the social value in paying so kids can act violently with the full approval of their peers and parents? And they think DOOM is desensitizing?
When the school's debating team or chess team (assuming they still have one) wins, where is the recognition or encouragement? Why do they have to provide their own transportation to the match? Why do students laugh at their victories (at least until some team hits the state or national finals -- then suddenly they're "our geeks")? Seems this kind of rivalry would benefit commercial sponsors much more in the long run, but as you say, there is *no* money in it at all.
Testing students for violent thinking thru a test, then sending them out to actually break bones on the gridiron, or cheer such mayhem on, seems a little contradictory to me.
If it were up to me, I'd can the test and keep football. But I'd also get the money completely out of all kinds of football but professional. *Especially* high school football -- because engaging in a dangerous sport for *any* reason other than the love of it is the wrong reason.
Money to fund sports and other competitions needs to come from somewhere. Why do I have the feeling that most of it goes to adminstrators with fat salaries and corrupt vendors of materials with sweetheart deals? Maybe because throwing more at the problem does absolutely nothing for students? I think it's time we consider a federal standard for education with individual schools only responsible to themselves and that standard. That eliminates untold bureaucrats, promotes choice in education, and keeps deals for materials very small and hard to control or corrupt.
I agree that VB is trashed a bit overmuch and so does Linus, judging by this quote from recent interview:
"Don't get me wrong, I like Visual Basic, really, and I think it is one of the best successes Microsoft has had. That was because it was a really good medium for customization, it was a great medium to the front ends for the real work. I think that is the future."
Compared to working with MFC, VB is a real pleasure. It can produce huge, slow, klunky applications, but it does so quickly -- which often counts for a lot in a internal business tool environment.
In the 70's Pebble Beach Golf Course copyrighted a lone cypress tree that was frequently associated with their image. Their copyright statement to this day claims copyright on "The Lone Cypress Tree."
They apparently have a sign that says you may take pictures of the tree for personal use, but not for commerical reproduction. Go figure.
Thru fear, our society is reacting against violence. Violence in itself is not evil, it is a required part of hunting or war. Is a war in self-defense evil? Blowing up buildings is acceptable when demolishing them for renewal, right? Because we depended on hunting for food for so long, and have practiced war forever, it's unreasonable to think that most of us don't have significant tendencies to violence, just different thresholds and ways for expressing it.
Many people with violent tendencies can be quite useful as cops, firemen, emergency medical technicians, rocket scientists, demolition experts, military personnel, spies, surgeons, butchers, football players, and other professions where violence and/or gore are facts of life. Sane people find acceptable and sometimes productive outlets for violence. We don't have to ensure all our kids are non-violent gore-hating pacifists.
Violent tendencies are better accepted and properly directed than suppressed thru a misguided notion that violence isn't a useful tool, or the ability to employ it a disease. If civilization *does* go down the tubes, violence will be a survival trait again.
The data from the Mosaic test could be useful, it also is only a tool. It's the way the information will be used I fear. If the results of the test were viewed as simple information, and not prejudicial, I would not object. Rather too much to hope from the people who suspended students for wearing black trenchcoats, I think. They are the problem, not the test.
I hear too much "Stamp Out Violence!" rhetoric, like it was possible or desirable. If you're familiar with Well's "The Time Machine", you know that neither Eloi nor Morlock is a good way to evolve, real humans have components of both. Violence in society has been decreasing steadily and significantly over the last 30 years. Why are we not congratulating ourselves instead of reacting in fear to tragic, but overplayed, media events?
Re:Hosted applications a challenge to GNU GPL term
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Can Marc Do it Again?
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A good point. I suppose it's too simple, but what would be wrong with requiring each *user* of the software to have rights to the source? The GPL assumed that you would have to distribute to each user, so I think this would preserve the intention.
However this would make new GPL'd software less attractive to Marc and Sun if many users compile the sources locally (after patching them so they'll work locally.) This would allow avoiding fees on the thin-client service for those with sufficient local resources to run binaries.
If the apps are real honkers like Word and StarOffice, I doubt the loss will be too significant, so maybe we *should* make the GPL more strict. Otherwise, I can easily see all the apps providers getting into a war of proprietary features, which is not good.
You can't sue the government without their permission. You can try writing a nice letter to the USPTO asking permission to sue, maybe they'll even grant it, they might be more in favor of getting rid of software patents than we think.
I think you're quite correct that the secrecy ratings in the US would be more appropriately named "Slightly embarassing", "Mortifying", "PR disaster", "Political dynamite", etc.
This can prevent public reaction from heading off a bad policy early. As we know, it works better to expose mistakes and fix them, or at least avoid repeating them. Can a people really control their own government if they aren't allowed to know what it's done? It's really important that government be open to review and inspection in a democracy. Like source, not many *will* review it, but the fact that someone *could* keeps people honest and on their best behavior.
You said it yourself in your comment, hiding mistakes is gross incompetency and shows a lack of professionalism. Yet our government, military, and corporate power heirarchies are extremely unforgiving of errors. Screw up once and those upward promotions really slow down. Is it any wonder people try to hide mistakes? Many parents demand the same sort of perfection from their kids, much to their and our detriment. It's time to lighten up a little, people make mistakes. Sometimes the best person for the job is someone who has already learned from all the mistakes.
I think programmers learn very quickly that denying the existence of bugs doesn't really work, and that all new software has bugs. Kernel oopses and bluescreens remind us if we forget:) This attitude that all new work, be it law, a product, or source *will* be flawed and needs wide and open review to become efficient, should be emulated in other fields than programming.
I don't deny there is a real need to keep secrets concerning covert operations and military missions. I suspect a very very small percentage of the secrets in Washington actually fall into the category of operational secrecy though.
This wasn't inserted, it's a natural consequence of the way Google works. It ranks pages higher when referring pages contain the keyword. Turns out many sites use the word "evil" and link to Microsoft. Hardly news:)
Good comment, I agree that this incident, while legal on Comdex's part, is a travesty.
Being adult enough for killing at 18 and adult enough to drink at 21 shows how diffuse the U.S. notion of adulthood is. It seems to be difficult to say it happens at a certain age.
Cultures used to have a thing called a "rite of passage" that defined adulthood more flexibly. These rites were often uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous. Which may be appropriate after all -- irresponsible adults are expensive to society and can hurt others.
I don't think it would work to invent a cultural rite or exhume one of the sometimes barbaric rites once used for the purpose. But things like marriage and military service should certainly qualify, and confer adulthood. Being a CTO probably should too. Existing vestigal rites like bar mitzvah and confirmation should be legally recognized only if they meet standards. We could allow a judge to declare a person officially of legal age when petitioned with evidence of maturity and responsibility. Being able to create, present, and defend such a petition isn't a bad test, though biased and expensive if you require lawyers.
There is a lot to be said for treating adulthood as the difficult achievment it is, instead of an unearned privilege granted by age. There are also a lot of possible abuses in a system that validates adulthood. You have to wonder if society doesn't have the right to protect itself from 30 and 40 year old children though.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't help think though that if the FBI was planning an action for Y2K it could explain their overreaction to the web site about a government created race riot featured as a story yesterday. If they were planning what you suggest they wouldn't leave the riots to chance.
Naaaahh... were just being paranoid. Aren't we?
Allowing the government to read and change all data on computers in a country is something that will lead to abuse eventually if not soon.
It wouldn't be very hard to put some poorly encrypted child porn on an enemy's computer, modify the logs, then bust them. Even should they win the case in court it's not likely they'd ever be able to win political office again after the reputation damage. Of course there are millions of more subtle ways to damage an enemy thru their data.
There seems to be an implicit assumption that a government is an evenhanded institution that would never abuse power or play favorites. Few real governments are that good, most are made up of people with agendas.
How will Australian corporations feel about the government being able to access all their records, and modify them if they so wish? What sort of power will people leaving government and joining private industry have due to having had access to this information? There could be some lobbying power if businesses can be convinced this is not in their interests either.
Does this imply that information temporarily stored on Australian servers is subject to Australian government control even if the source and destination of that data are in other countries? This is of international concern if so.
It would be nice to blackhole all addresses in Australia for a day or so to express the net's displeasure at this legislation. And if they read or change data as it merely passes thru Australia, I'd support making it permanent until they stop. It's a clear and present danger to the integrity of the net.
"I do not think the credit rating agencies are perfect, however you do have a choice. You can choose not to participate with credit agencies. "
I'm curious what you mean by this. I've never had a credit card in my life, yet there is most surely a credit rating report on me. Perhaps you mean I can choose not to pay utility companies or anyone else that reports to credit agencies? Doesn't seem very practical really.
I agree that an OSes and filesystems just aren't a very good fit for virtual reality, they are abstractions by nature.
To imagine a real application you have to think about e-commerce.
Suppose businesses could design a 3d level that presented their products to customers, who could wander around thru rooms, looking at shelves, watching simulated demos, and adding items to their shopping basket. The potential for competitive creativity funded by huge advertising budgets is fairly interesting here. You may rue the commercialism, but it's a real application that will happen no later than the widespread adoption of broadband in my opinion.
This is probably obvious, but before linking to RedHat's severs, it would be nice to obtain permission from them. It's doubtful their bandwidth would be hit hard enough they'd care, but it somehow doesn't seem right to just take it without asking. It's not free. Since their distribution is being used in this product I can imagine them accomodating the request fairly easily -- there could even be useful mutual advertising involved.
I agree it's irritatingly spineless for these ISPs to roll over at the slightest hint of legal action, but really, you have to see it from their point of view. Most are shoestring operations that couldn't even dream of putting up the needed legal costs. The big ones just look at the bottom line, and see nothing much added for defending freedom of expression. More's the pity.
Lets put the blame where it belongs and blackhole any site associated with anyone using these legal tactics as a form of censorship. This wouldn't be censoring the scientologists, more a widespread agreement not to listen to them as long as they persist in trying to suppress other's speech.
I like it, though it has a very steep learning curve -- lots of strange architecture details to absorb. The C6 instruction set is very nice compared to past models, much more complete and fairly orthogonal. It's quite easy to program the part in C or using the scalar assembly optimizer tool. You can achieve half theoretical speed or better fairly easily that way. It's a real pain to hand schedule eight parallel streams -- and incremental changes simply don't exist then -- but the part *really* screams when you do.
It requires a slightly different mode of thought due to things like branches affecting all parallel streams, and the instruction latencies for loads, branches, and multiplies.
If you stay within the internal 4k data and 4k code the '211 is fairly self contained, and memory is fast, which makes it's low price very attractive. Going to external memory on the '211 is a slow and painful process unless you get a cache hit.
The tools are still a little new, but I haven't hit any show stopper bugs, just some bad ones, like a misassembled opcode.
I'd agree that TI is the Intel of DSPs. I've programmed for the 32010, 15, 50, and now the 320C6200 and 320C6211. The latter is capable of gigaoperations/sec at a price way under $100, which gives it a very wide base of applicability for small designs in many fields.
:).
Like Intel, the instruction architectures leave a great deal to be desired, but the speed per price is hard to argue with. And the difficulty of programming them efficiently keeps people like me employed
The major issues with technology are that it is very expensive to use it cleanly, and that it changes much faster than people.
A lot of the problems with technology are strongly related to the scarcity of energy. In theory, with an infinite supply of cheap energy, technology could limit its own negative ecological effects. The main arguments against ecological alternatives are economic. It would also cease to provide a social gradient that helped to separate rich and poor. Fission, fusion and space-based solar energy are all possibilities for increasing the energy supply, but none looks to be cheap, completely safe, or all that plentiful. Finding a good source of energy would redefine the technology landscape, making clean use of energy practical and reducing scarcity of goods in general. Can we survive long enough to find one? Shouldn't we be looking a little harder?
The other aspect of technological tragedy is social. People's cultures and means of living together change much slower than technology. New technologies, while increasing production, also create personal tragedies thru obsolescence and unanticipated side effects. For one example, feeding everyone thru efficient agriculture leads to population growth. This means that we live maladapted to technology and often without much idea why. We can acculturate faster, or control the growth of technology. I'm mostly for the former (I'd rather not shut down the internet until the lawmakers catch up.) But when new technologies have expensive social costs that aren't reflected in the bottom lines of the corporations promoting them, restraint is required for the common good.
It seems to me the problem here isn't that Microsoft is a monopoly, but in the way they used that power to coerce the market.
Breaking Microsoft up might make people feel good about the exercise of power involved, but I don't see why you wouldn't get a continuation of the same anti-competitive practices by smaller companies that still produce the only widely used product in the market, at least in the case of the Office and OS divisions.
What would be good for the consumer would be for Microsoft to start competing on the basis of innovation and quality, instead of clever marketing, spin doctoring, and marketshare leverage. I personally believe Microsoft would also be a lot stronger for it if they did return to real competition. Since they don't respond well to hints, it seems some force may be required. This may be embarrasing, and costly in the short term, but seems best long term for both consumers and Microsoft, in my opinion.
Returning the market to fair competition should also be the goal of the anti-trust laws, outside the penalty phase -- should damages be required.
I agree, not much to be done. But it's not just copying comments, it's copying them out of context and in a biased fashion. Copyright laws are supposed to prevent having an author's work perverted in the process of copying. By selecting incendiary, and non-highly rated comments, then only quoting parts of them, damage has arguably been done to the work that is a slashdot story.
Reading Scott Berinato's piece on ZDNet angered me, and I'm not completely sure why.
I tend to agree a breakup of Microsoft might even prove beneficial to them in the long term. I don't think the judge or the government will go for that however.
If a baby Bill was making Office and nothing else, they would still be able to bully OEMs and vendors with the threat of witholding sales. The upgrade treadmill would still be running using the same closed proprietary format. You could easily end up with three companies, all monopolies in their market, still needing further regulation.
A behavorial remedy forcing Microsoft to play fair would be far more effective in promoting competition and getting Microsoft back on track. Holding Gates personally responsible for it's enforcement seems like it might work to me.
Nearly everyone agrees that the economy runs best when left to itself. It's notional that it can run without any interference from government. The government is inextricably involved in the infrastructure of people, cash, communications, and law that make the economy possible.
If someone runs a protection racket, do you suggest that an insurance company with lower rates will solve the problem naturally -- and without government intervention? No, of course not, because a free economy can't work if force distorts it's feedback mechanism. That's the government's role - to keep the playing field force free, even, and open to new entrants -- so that the quality of businesses and products determine their success.
Microsoft had used its leverage to effectively close the OEM distribution channels to alternate OSes. Did they leverage the quality and cost-effectiveness of Windows? No, they used threats based on their monopoly. The judge argued very well, and correctly in my opinion, that this was an unfair barrier to competition. It's an application of force that distorts the natural result of the market. No one else gains any advantage at all from the closure of distribution channels for non-Microsoft software.
I hope the penalty phase takes into account the real problem here -- that competition is being skewed. It isn't being distorted because Microsoft is so large and monolithic, it is due to the anti-competitive, bullying business practices they engage in, made effective by their marketshare. I would very much like to see a behavioral remedy that prevented Microsoft from engaging in wide acquisitions, exclusionary deals, closed APIs, or proprietary formats.
Linux has a clear path to a good market share of servers, I think. It's excellent as a small to medium server, and it just makes too good economic sense not to be successful there. It's server capabilities are also increasing rapidly, especially from the commercial contributions to the kernel. So I think Linux can be an extremely successful OS while failing to achieve total desktop domination. But if Microsoft controls HTML it won't happen.
Unix always has, and probably always will, be the most appealing to students, developers, engineers, and scientists. Take it apart and figure out creative new ways to put it back together people. MS Windows on the other hand tends to appeal to businessmen and home users. Don't tell me about it -- I'm not paying to learn -- just make sure it works and all I have to do is push a button people. These are quite different sets of people and *both* have a realistic notion of their needs. The problem is in either Microsoft or *nix trying to force one set to use the other's tools. That should only be possible by satisfying the underlying needs responsible for both choices -- something neither side is fearfully close to yet. All I want to see is that those 10-30% who prefer Unix have that choice, and are supported with drivers and plug-ins.
Now, I'm optimistic about the Linux desktop personally. I'd always been a DOS command line person anyway, GUIs have never impressed me as powerful enough, though I use them. For my money, if you develop software, the best place to do it is in something Unix-like like Linux. It's entertainment like the web and games that keep me dual booting.
The bit about lack of plug-ins is true, but hardly fair. That sort of thing follows desktop success, it doesn't precede it. As hardware drivers are now coming thru for Linux, so I expect plug-ins to follow.
Having to recompile your apps? Well, yes, *having* to can be a pain. Being *able* to can also be wonderful when it's needed. No worse than having to re-install Windows occasionally surely.
The desktop standards thing is interesting. Do you remember when Norton and another company sold competing Win3.1 desktops? Much the same problem there. Microsoft of course settled it in their usual fashion by driving both, though superior, out of the market. I think in the Unix world, there is a possibility for something better, choice of desktop with full interoperability of apps. It won't come soon, but it will NEVER happen with Windows, Microsoft wouldn't permit it.
The issue is one of critical mass. There have to be enough Linux desktop users to make supporting them commercially attractive, or at least feasible. I would like to see fixes for the problems you mention, but I have to agree with the article, the lack of a browser is the most critical problem at the moment on the desktop front and standards front both. It's not an attempt to dominate the desktop, it's an attempt to maintain a foothold in the client space for fear of being embrace-and-extended out of the server space.
I remember TECO with a great deal of fondness. With what other editor could you spend more time on life games, renumbering utilities, and gray-code searches than manipulating text?
:)
There was even a macro VEDIT, for those times you just wanted visual editing with arrow keys and all. It was conveniently distributed without any format characters and provided weeks of fun just figuring out how it worked.
I'm far more productive with Brief/Crisp but I've never had as much fun with an editor since TECO. It could really trash a file from the simplest typos!
I think you're right that peer review serves a useful academic purpose. It's like inertia for the system that prevents us from wandering all over the map with new discoveries like "cold fusion."
However, correct me if I'm wrong, but really radical new ideas will take 10-20 years or more to displace an established view. Perhaps it's a little slow, and could be made better by a little tuning. To bend the control system analogy, we want the response critically damped -- fastest convergence to truth without oscillations.
In the open source world, the peer review is made close to instantaneous thanks to the internet. The same phenomenon is going on in academia thru the online papers you speak of. However, there it's a side path, "real science" is still widely viewed as the output of the reviewed journals.
I think science simply needs to admit that different data has different certainties. What's called scientific law is very properly left to the output of the respected journals. But a lot can be gained by exposing everyone to radical new perspectives, even if they aren't widely accepted. So maybe science just needs a variable moderation system like Slashdot -- where interesting and insightful count, and trustworthiness is a scale, not a binary decision.
"Sports is not the antichrist here... and yes, football IS a sport. As little as I personally value it, that sport brings in a lot of money for the highschool... money that is also funneled into educational projects and clubs."
Yup, there is truth in what you say. Physical education is part of a balanced curriculum. But surely you understand that football (and I enjoy watching football occasionally myself) has been elevated to a position of artificial importance?
If the school football team wins a victory, it's a big deal. Time is even taken from classes to rally spirit prior to the game and celebrate victory afterwards. Team heroes often get laid. Buses are provided to transport the team. There is even an officially endorsed team of attractive females to encourage the male football players and spectators by shouting and wearing skimpy outfits. This sport is valued so highly that regular occurrences of paralysis and maiming in children do not derail it. Where exactly is the social value in paying so kids can act violently with the full approval of their peers and parents? And they think DOOM is desensitizing?
When the school's debating team or chess team (assuming they still have one) wins, where is the recognition or encouragement? Why do they have to provide their own transportation to the match? Why do students laugh at their victories (at least until some team hits the state or national finals -- then suddenly they're "our geeks")? Seems this kind of rivalry would benefit commercial sponsors much more in the long run, but as you say, there is *no* money in it at all.
Testing students for violent thinking thru a test, then sending them out to actually break bones on the gridiron, or cheer such mayhem on, seems a little contradictory to me.
If it were up to me, I'd can the test and keep football. But I'd also get the money completely out of all kinds of football but professional. *Especially* high school football -- because engaging in a dangerous sport for *any* reason other than the love of it is the wrong reason.
Money to fund sports and other competitions needs to come from somewhere. Why do I have the feeling that most of it goes to adminstrators with fat salaries and corrupt vendors of materials with sweetheart deals? Maybe because throwing more at the problem does absolutely nothing for students?
I think it's time we consider a federal standard for education with individual schools only responsible to themselves and that standard. That eliminates untold bureaucrats, promotes choice in education, and keeps deals for materials very small and hard to control or corrupt.
I agree that VB is trashed a bit overmuch and so does Linus, judging by this quote from recent interview:
"Don't get me wrong, I like Visual Basic, really, and I think it is one of the best successes Microsoft has had. That was because it was a really good medium for customization, it was a great medium to the front ends for the real work. I think that is the future."
Compared to working with MFC, VB is a real pleasure. It can produce huge, slow, klunky applications, but it does so quickly -- which often counts for a lot in a internal business tool environment.
In the 70's Pebble Beach Golf Course copyrighted a lone cypress tree that was frequently associated with their image. Their copyright statement to this day claims copyright on "The Lone Cypress Tree."
They apparently have a sign that says you may take pictures of the tree for personal use, but not for commerical reproduction. Go figure.
Thru fear, our society is reacting against violence. Violence in itself is not evil, it is a required part of hunting or war. Is a war in self-defense evil? Blowing up buildings is acceptable when demolishing them for renewal, right? Because we depended on hunting for food for so long, and have practiced war forever, it's unreasonable to think that most of us don't have significant tendencies to violence, just different thresholds and ways for expressing it.
Many people with violent tendencies can be quite useful as cops, firemen, emergency medical technicians, rocket scientists, demolition experts, military personnel, spies, surgeons, butchers, football players, and other professions where violence and/or gore are facts of life. Sane people find acceptable and sometimes productive outlets for violence. We don't have to ensure all our kids are non-violent gore-hating pacifists.
Violent tendencies are better accepted and properly directed than suppressed thru a misguided notion that violence isn't a useful tool, or the ability to employ it a disease. If civilization *does* go down the tubes, violence will be a survival trait again.
The data from the Mosaic test could be useful, it also is only a tool. It's the way the information will be used I fear. If the results of the test were viewed as simple information, and not prejudicial, I would not object. Rather too much to hope from the people who suspended students for wearing black trenchcoats, I think. They are the problem, not the test.
I hear too much "Stamp Out Violence!" rhetoric, like it was possible or desirable. If you're familiar with Well's "The Time Machine", you know that neither Eloi nor Morlock is a good way to evolve, real humans have components of both. Violence in society has been decreasing steadily and significantly over the last 30 years. Why are we not congratulating ourselves instead of reacting in fear to tragic, but overplayed, media events?
A good point. I suppose it's too simple, but what would be wrong with requiring each *user* of the software to have rights to the source? The GPL assumed that you would have to distribute to each user, so I think this would preserve the intention.
However this would make new GPL'd software less attractive to Marc and Sun if many users compile the sources locally (after patching them so they'll work locally.) This would allow avoiding fees on the thin-client service for those with sufficient local resources to run binaries.
If the apps are real honkers like Word and StarOffice, I doubt the loss will be too significant, so maybe we *should* make the GPL more strict. Otherwise, I can easily see all the apps providers getting into a war of proprietary features, which is not good.
You can't sue the government without their permission. You can try writing a nice letter to the USPTO asking permission to sue, maybe they'll even grant it, they might be more in favor of getting rid of software patents than we think.
IANAL, I don't know who can give permission.
I think you're quite correct that the secrecy ratings in the US would be more appropriately named "Slightly embarassing", "Mortifying", "PR disaster", "Political dynamite", etc.
:) This attitude that all new work, be it law, a product, or source *will* be flawed and needs wide and open review to become efficient, should be emulated in other fields than programming.
This can prevent public reaction from heading off a bad policy early. As we know, it works better to expose mistakes and fix them, or at least avoid repeating them. Can a people really control their own government if they aren't allowed to know what it's done? It's really important that government be open to review and inspection in a democracy. Like source, not many *will* review it, but the fact that someone *could* keeps people honest and on their best behavior.
You said it yourself in your comment, hiding mistakes is gross incompetency and shows a lack of professionalism. Yet our government, military, and corporate power heirarchies are extremely unforgiving of errors. Screw up once and those upward promotions really slow down. Is it any wonder people try to hide mistakes? Many parents demand the same sort of perfection from their kids, much to their and our detriment. It's time to lighten up a little, people make mistakes. Sometimes the best person for the job is someone who has already learned from all the mistakes.
I think programmers learn very quickly that denying the existence of bugs doesn't really work, and that all new software has bugs. Kernel oopses and bluescreens remind us if we forget
I don't deny there is a real need to keep secrets concerning covert operations and military missions. I suspect a very very small percentage of the secrets in Washington actually fall into the category of operational secrecy though.
This wasn't inserted, it's a natural consequence of the way Google works. It ranks pages higher when referring pages contain the keyword. Turns out many sites use the word "evil" and link to Microsoft. Hardly news :)
Good comment, I agree that this incident, while legal on Comdex's part, is a travesty.
Being adult enough for killing at 18 and adult enough to drink at 21 shows how diffuse the U.S. notion of adulthood is. It seems to be difficult to say it happens at a certain age.
Cultures used to have a thing called a "rite of passage" that defined adulthood more flexibly. These rites were often uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous. Which may be appropriate after all -- irresponsible adults are expensive to society and can hurt others.
I don't think it would work to invent a cultural rite or exhume one of the sometimes barbaric rites once used for the purpose. But things like marriage and military service should certainly qualify, and confer adulthood. Being a CTO probably should too. Existing vestigal rites like bar mitzvah and confirmation should be legally recognized only if they meet standards. We could allow a judge to declare a person officially of legal age when petitioned with evidence of maturity and responsibility. Being able to create, present, and defend such a petition isn't a bad test, though biased and expensive if you require lawyers.
There is a lot to be said for treating adulthood as the difficult achievment it is, instead of an unearned privilege granted by age. There are also a lot of possible abuses in a system that validates adulthood. You have to wonder if society doesn't have the right to protect itself from 30 and 40 year old children though.