Well thanks to the security flaws in their OS's, they need only take control of the millions of bots out there thanks to virus-infected systems. There, millions of servers, all for free;-)
I seem to have a vague recollection that Lotus had to release updates every time a new version of DOS appeared. I don't know if it was Lotus' reliance on undocumented APIs which constantly shifted with new OS releases, or MS intentionally shooting down Lotus' products, but it sure was annoying.
In the 1980's we had Unix (I had the pleasure of using an IBM RT PC with AIX [correct me if I'm wrong]), Vaxen on minicomputers, etc. And the Amiga's OS was bounds ahead of most other consumer OS's of it's day.
So DOS was a pretty much a slightly tarted up CP/M with gross memory restrictions which begat the horrible dance of extended and expanded memory kluges. And lets not talk about TSRs.
No, MS and IBM got lucky, partly because of IBM marketing their PC as an intelligent terminal for their big iron systems, which could be used for word processing and the odd spreadsheet without having to bug the high priests in the data processing temple for resources. Having an expandable hardware design helped a lot too.
But neither the IBM hardware nor MS's DOS were in any way innovative or cutting edge; I'd argue that they held back the PC by flooding the market with their shitty MS-DOS product and, when they finally got round to creating a true multi-tasking OS, not adopting UNIX or a derivative as the basis of the new OS.
You make a very good point about MS using money to solve all problems. Judging by an earlier post which indicates that Ballmer is not as tech-savvy as would be desirable, it would seem that they really need a techie in his position who can apply a more efficient engineering approach to solving problems and in conceiving of new products and ideas from their inception.
This could have prevented Vista from being the bloated beast it became and tamed the mission creep which caused them to restart the project half way through.
Ballmer has done much to damage MS's reputation and image even if he has overseen increases in profits and revenue, which in the long term is far more damaging than a mega-merger gone bad.
What it basically comes down to is that they've built a machine that is rated to store 300GB for the astounding price of $18,000. They say that the storage limits are essentially unlimited, but the fact is that this is a 300GB machine, with an unproven shelf life (despite what they say in the article). The math doesn't add up here.
Not quite related, but my dad was serving in the RN, running protection for the convoys. He reckoned that the German-American labourers who build the racks for the shells were responsible for a certain amount of losses on the open seas; they'd intentionally build the racks as shoddily as possible so that when the ships started rolling around on the high seas they'd fall apart and the ordinance would go boom
Makes you wonder about other aspects of manufacture in the US.
Well now I'll have to see which firm has the company's forms. Most of these companies are merely bits of paper in a file drawer at a lawyers' office, and there's very few of them. I'd laugh if my mate was the one who incorporated the firm.
Well there are some advantages to a wide screen. It represents movies more true to their aspect ratios, but also, for business types, they get a more comfortable view of their business data, such as spreadsheets.
However, I must say that one feature would be very cool, which was available in a Mac after-market desktop screen back in the 80s, to be able to flip the screen so that one could work on a document in portrait format.
Otherwise, I find wide screen a great help in my audio and video production: to see that much more of my waveforms is a huge help.
One thing which disappointed me when IBM introduced the PS/2 port was that it wasn't hot pluggable, so if you plug or unplug while the system is running you get big hang. Which is strange as it's just a glorified serial port from what I can recall reading the specs.
I knew a guy *cough* who stayed in the US for a year and took a job as stock/cleaning person at a small convenience store. The Syrian-born owner (who was the coolest boss one could ask for, BTW) said as much: that he was glad to have my *cough* friend doing the dirty work as he found it almost impossible to find locals who would show up and actually do work.
As for the local situation here in Bermuda, we have a history of importing labour, starting with the Portuguese in the 19th century. This is still the done thing, and over the century and a half that the 'Gees have been coming, they've the absolute pillars of our community here. Our economy wouldn't be half what it is if not for their hard work and intelligence. Of course, the first generation is pretty rough and "peasant", but they've truly become solid members of our community.
But there is an odd conundrum here, similar to that of the US: The major unions and their members demand that Bermudians fill the most menial of tasks, but at the end of the day don't really want to do the work. Frustrating indeed.
In which PCs became so powerful that the above scenario has come true. How fast does one need to open one's spreadsheet program? And once loaded, how powerful does one need one's computer to be to use most spreadsheets created in most companies today? And let's not talk about mundane word processing.
We really reached this point a decade or more ago.
With Ubuntu 7.10, I would feel very comfortable about rolling this out to users on a corporate scale. There's still a few issues of final fit and finish, but these could be addressed by an enterprising company employing programmers to take care of that, to bring it up to the same level as we perceive Windows, rightly or wrongly.
I just love that when I installed this version of Linux I had to do almost no messing around with drivers, just a very few tweaks here and there. Far less than when I installed XP. And performance is awesome under both Linux and the XP I have installed under VMWare, which BTW runs faster than when XP was installed natively.
A computer could indeed predict human behaviour, as irrational as it may sometimes seem. This is because we are animals, and the computer only need be able to detect which of our animal instincts are at play at any given time. However humans have evolved ways of expressing the standard animal instincts in relatively sophisticated ways compared to other animules, so that does get a bit tricky and often very subtle.
The other aspect of intelligence is harnessing a lifetime's worth of sensory experience which interfaces with our animal instincts and processing it all in real time. But the best computer for all of this is an analog computer, which has inherently greater granularity.
Indeed, this hits at my perception of MS: They actually have dedicated programmers who are very talented, but are driven by management and marketing created in the image of Ballmer. If given the opportunity, the programmers could create an OS which is actually quite usable. But with Linux and Unix variants abounding and well-proven and understood over the decades Windows itself seems redundant. Does Windows truly offer any architectural advantages over *nixes which would be utterly impossible to code into them? I honestly think not, frankly.
Someone correct me, but if they migrated towards a Unix base for Windows, as Apple did for theirs, they would be best served. This will never happen of course, but I do believe the future belongs to the nixes.
You're not the first to ruminate on this subject. Some 18 years ago (or maybe less), when the big proprietary networks such as Compuserve were becoming popular, they launched a service whereby one could receive only news items which suited the subscribers' preferences. At the time various pundits wrote almost the exact words you just did, which is interesting.
And yes, it's very true.
Yes, you'll get messages such as "It appears that the bread you've inserted into Microsoft Toaster 1.0 was stolen. Please insert a properly acquired piece of toast and press Continue".
But on the tube amplifier which runs the audio system, which consists of two seven-watt SET power amps driven by a pair of Bottlehead preamps. With the lights out it creates an atmosphere similar to candle lighting. Oh, and those seven-watt amps coupled with high-efficiency speakers will be more than enough sound to fill the A/V space.
Oh for fcuk's sake...
on
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One interesting thing about Linux is it's handling of hardware. Whenever I install a Windows OS I have to scrounge for quite a while for most drivers for such things as wireless cards, video, etc., yet with Linux most things work out of the box, with only the occasional need to do some command-line voodoo. This is a great improvement over just a couple of years ago for Linux, and I can comfortably say that all it needs is for the major hardware vendors to decide to fully support Linux and a couple of big apps ported to get a real boost in the market place. As it is now though, it is certainly good enough to roll out to the clerical staff of any company as it has, with Open Office, most of what one could ask for in such a position.
Is it possible that this is an attempt to limit information transmission in the event of an imminent strike on Iran or other Middle Eastern regions by the US? It may be a crude and misguided means of damage control; I could certainly see Bush, in his thundering ignorance, believing that all he has to do is cut a few strategic cables to achieve an instant news blackout, or at least delay news of an attack leaking out to the media. That's what the radio messages from Alpha Centauri say when I take of my tin foil hat.
When wearing said currently-fashionable headgear, I do still come to the conclusion that, no matter what is really going on here, I cannot dismiss that there may indeed be more afoot here. I have read about the existence of US submarines capable of cutting undersea cables; if so, could these be at work?
I do firmly believe that Bush intends to go out with a bang, and he has stated that he has no desire to go gently into that good night. Judging from one recent interview, it would appear that he has pretty much the mindset of a suicide bomber, and doesn't care who gets hurt in the explosion.
The problem is not that you as an individual have experienced poor performance. The reason is that at various times on certain systems, including many which actually exceed the minimum spec, there have been real performance hits for some people. So it's a rather hit or miss affair with Vista, in my personal experience. I loaded it onto various systems and found a wide range of experiences, with little logic or consistency in the results.
That is not acceptable. With XP and previous MS OS's I could fairly well predict what to expect in an install, but not with Vista. Likewise with Linux installs - always predictable, and is my preferred choice of OS when repurposing "obsolete" systems.
What is needed for Vista then is:
- consistent user experience
- no more than two different versions
- Deep price cuts
Regarding the code it's built on, from what I can tell MS basically reinvented the wheel with NT using spaghetti (code that is), instead of building on a proven workhorse OS. Next and Apple did that and look what happened;-)
Agreed on all counts. As for artists and drugs, I agree as well. My biggest influences in my guitar playing and the way I work onstage are a laundry list of the most famous abusers, including Bowie who was coked out of his brains when making some his best stuff. What I see happen though these days is that the artist start without a lot of money, so they don't have the money to buy massive amounts of drugs, but once they get money coming in from their major label sales they suddenly realize they can afford all the dope they can ingest; indeed some labels supply it for them. After that they quickly lose focus and viability as a band. See Guns n Roses as one of very many examples.
That said, I've also heard that many major bands are actually a lot less prone to drug-fueled insanity overall and are almost boring in their habits. So maybe there's hope.
I hope you do start a label - best of luck with that. I have a label I call Nova Records here in Bermuda. Nothing serious - I just stick the stamp on whatever I record in my studio.
I do like the idea of a loan to artists to make their record. However this would be an extremely high risk loan seeing as most musicians are living on the edge financially for the most part, unless they're just doing the musician thing while working a regular job. Also don't underestimate drug habits as well. One particular local Bermuda artist was given a huge wad of dosh to record an album based on his apparent talent, but ended up sticking most of it up his nose. I've been told that based on this and other experiences the labels drastically changed their policies about handing out money to artists outright.
But I do like the concept of loans, and if vetted properly as a bank does, then we'll find that the artists who do record are more mentally stable *grin*. With recording being so cheap and personal these days, the loan wouldn't have to be that much.
Also, don't forget that *apparent* musical taste has changed, and now we're awash in some incredibly musically shallow genres: generic punk bands playing power chords; generic rap artists pumping out preening odes to pimpdom; vile, cloying, recycled "country" music out of Nashville; endless varieties of electronic dance music generated by pressing a few computer keys. To cut through with a really talented and musically complex artist is going to be difficult.
I guess in theory this democratization of the music biz is a Good Thing(tm). Instead of a limited number of artists and artistes that the three big conglomerates offer us, we now have an infinite number of monkeys, I mean musical acts to listen to at our leisure. But who the hell has time to sift through a bunch of bloody amateurs who can't keep a beat or tune to find that one gem gleaming in the turd? You'd pretty soon get bored and annoyed doing so, just as I did as I tried to find *anything* worth listening to in the song list at the RPM jukebox site.
What we need is a Google-type record label who has the clout and connections, but with the "no evil" philosophy they espouse (yes, I know the Goog is secretly plotting world domination and plans to send us to their moonbase as miner-slaves, but you get the point). The company would be run like in the old days, where the A&R people found truly talented artists and nurtured them for the long term. Nowadays they look for acts who can produce one or two novelty hits, then move onto the next new band.
Slashdot Mirror
Well thanks to the security flaws in their OS's, they need only take control of the millions of bots out there thanks to virus-infected systems. There, millions of servers, all for free ;-)
I seem to have a vague recollection that Lotus had to release updates every time a new version of DOS appeared. I don't know if it was Lotus' reliance on undocumented APIs which constantly shifted with new OS releases, or MS intentionally shooting down Lotus' products, but it sure was annoying.
In the 1980's we had Unix (I had the pleasure of using an IBM RT PC with AIX [correct me if I'm wrong]), Vaxen on minicomputers, etc. And the Amiga's OS was bounds ahead of most other consumer OS's of it's day.
So DOS was a pretty much a slightly tarted up CP/M with gross memory restrictions which begat the horrible dance of extended and expanded memory kluges. And lets not talk about TSRs.
No, MS and IBM got lucky, partly because of IBM marketing their PC as an intelligent terminal for their big iron systems, which could be used for word processing and the odd spreadsheet without having to bug the high priests in the data processing temple for resources. Having an expandable hardware design helped a lot too.
But neither the IBM hardware nor MS's DOS were in any way innovative or cutting edge; I'd argue that they held back the PC by flooding the market with their shitty MS-DOS product and, when they finally got round to creating a true multi-tasking OS, not adopting UNIX or a derivative as the basis of the new OS.
You make a very good point about MS using money to solve all problems. Judging by an earlier post which indicates that Ballmer is not as tech-savvy as would be desirable, it would seem that they really need a techie in his position who can apply a more efficient engineering approach to solving problems and in conceiving of new products and ideas from their inception.
This could have prevented Vista from being the bloated beast it became and tamed the mission creep which caused them to restart the project half way through.
Ballmer has done much to damage MS's reputation and image even if he has overseen increases in profits and revenue, which in the long term is far more damaging than a mega-merger gone bad.
What it basically comes down to is that they've built a machine that is rated to store 300GB for the astounding price of $18,000. They say that the storage limits are essentially unlimited, but the fact is that this is a 300GB machine, with an unproven shelf life (despite what they say in the article). The math doesn't add up here.
Not quite related, but my dad was serving in the RN, running protection for the convoys. He reckoned that the German-American labourers who build the racks for the shells were responsible for a certain amount of losses on the open seas; they'd intentionally build the racks as shoddily as possible so that when the ships started rolling around on the high seas they'd fall apart and the ordinance would go boom
Makes you wonder about other aspects of manufacture in the US.
Well now I'll have to see which firm has the company's forms. Most of these companies are merely bits of paper in a file drawer at a lawyers' office, and there's very few of them. I'd laugh if my mate was the one who incorporated the firm.
It is to laugh...
Well there are some advantages to a wide screen. It represents movies more true to their aspect ratios, but also, for business types, they get a more comfortable view of their business data, such as spreadsheets.
However, I must say that one feature would be very cool, which was available in a Mac after-market desktop screen back in the 80s, to be able to flip the screen so that one could work on a document in portrait format.
Otherwise, I find wide screen a great help in my audio and video production: to see that much more of my waveforms is a huge help.
Cheers
One thing which disappointed me when IBM introduced the PS/2 port was that it wasn't hot pluggable, so if you plug or unplug while the system is running you get big hang. Which is strange as it's just a glorified serial port from what I can recall reading the specs.
I knew a guy *cough* who stayed in the US for a year and took a job as stock/cleaning person at a small convenience store. The Syrian-born owner (who was the coolest boss one could ask for, BTW) said as much: that he was glad to have my *cough* friend doing the dirty work as he found it almost impossible to find locals who would show up and actually do work.
As for the local situation here in Bermuda, we have a history of importing labour, starting with the Portuguese in the 19th century. This is still the done thing, and over the century and a half that the 'Gees have been coming, they've the absolute pillars of our community here. Our economy wouldn't be half what it is if not for their hard work and intelligence. Of course, the first generation is pretty rough and "peasant", but they've truly become solid members of our community.
But there is an odd conundrum here, similar to that of the US: The major unions and their members demand that Bermudians fill the most menial of tasks, but at the end of the day don't really want to do the work. Frustrating indeed.
In which PCs became so powerful that the above scenario has come true. How fast does one need to open one's spreadsheet program? And once loaded, how powerful does one need one's computer to be to use most spreadsheets created in most companies today? And let's not talk about mundane word processing.
We really reached this point a decade or more ago.
With Ubuntu 7.10, I would feel very comfortable about rolling this out to users on a corporate scale. There's still a few issues of final fit and finish, but these could be addressed by an enterprising company employing programmers to take care of that, to bring it up to the same level as we perceive Windows, rightly or wrongly.
I just love that when I installed this version of Linux I had to do almost no messing around with drivers, just a very few tweaks here and there. Far less than when I installed XP. And performance is awesome under both Linux and the XP I have installed under VMWare, which BTW runs faster than when XP was installed natively.
A computer could indeed predict human behaviour, as irrational as it may sometimes seem. This is because we are animals, and the computer only need be able to detect which of our animal instincts are at play at any given time. However humans have evolved ways of expressing the standard animal instincts in relatively sophisticated ways compared to other animules, so that does get a bit tricky and often very subtle.
The other aspect of intelligence is harnessing a lifetime's worth of sensory experience which interfaces with our animal instincts and processing it all in real time. But the best computer for all of this is an analog computer, which has inherently greater granularity.
Indeed, this hits at my perception of MS: They actually have dedicated programmers who are very talented, but are driven by management and marketing created in the image of Ballmer. If given the opportunity, the programmers could create an OS which is actually quite usable. But with Linux and Unix variants abounding and well-proven and understood over the decades Windows itself seems redundant. Does Windows truly offer any architectural advantages over *nixes which would be utterly impossible to code into them? I honestly think not, frankly.
Someone correct me, but if they migrated towards a Unix base for Windows, as Apple did for theirs, they would be best served. This will never happen of course, but I do believe the future belongs to the nixes.
You're not the first to ruminate on this subject. Some 18 years ago (or maybe less), when the big proprietary networks such as Compuserve were becoming popular, they launched a service whereby one could receive only news items which suited the subscribers' preferences. At the time various pundits wrote almost the exact words you just did, which is interesting. And yes, it's very true.
Yes, you'll get messages such as "It appears that the bread you've inserted into Microsoft Toaster 1.0 was stolen. Please insert a properly acquired piece of toast and press Continue".
But on the tube amplifier which runs the audio system, which consists of two seven-watt SET power amps driven by a pair of Bottlehead preamps. With the lights out it creates an atmosphere similar to candle lighting. Oh, and those seven-watt amps coupled with high-efficiency speakers will be more than enough sound to fill the A/V space.
Slashdot has finally become Digg.
Shoot me now.
Which a full analysis reveals doesn't occur - bio fuels are actually less carbon-neutral when all factors are taken into account.
One interesting thing about Linux is it's handling of hardware. Whenever I install a Windows OS I have to scrounge for quite a while for most drivers for such things as wireless cards, video, etc., yet with Linux most things work out of the box, with only the occasional need to do some command-line voodoo. This is a great improvement over just a couple of years ago for Linux, and I can comfortably say that all it needs is for the major hardware vendors to decide to fully support Linux and a couple of big apps ported to get a real boost in the market place. As it is now though, it is certainly good enough to roll out to the clerical staff of any company as it has, with Open Office, most of what one could ask for in such a position.
Is it possible that this is an attempt to limit information transmission in the event of an imminent strike on Iran or other Middle Eastern regions by the US? It may be a crude and misguided means of damage control; I could certainly see Bush, in his thundering ignorance, believing that all he has to do is cut a few strategic cables to achieve an instant news blackout, or at least delay news of an attack leaking out to the media. That's what the radio messages from Alpha Centauri say when I take of my tin foil hat.
When wearing said currently-fashionable headgear, I do still come to the conclusion that, no matter what is really going on here, I cannot dismiss that there may indeed be more afoot here. I have read about the existence of US submarines capable of cutting undersea cables; if so, could these be at work?
I do firmly believe that Bush intends to go out with a bang, and he has stated that he has no desire to go gently into that good night. Judging from one recent interview, it would appear that he has pretty much the mindset of a suicide bomber, and doesn't care who gets hurt in the explosion.
The problem is not that you as an individual have experienced poor performance. The reason is that at various times on certain systems, including many which actually exceed the minimum spec, there have been real performance hits for some people. So it's a rather hit or miss affair with Vista, in my personal experience. I loaded it onto various systems and found a wide range of experiences, with little logic or consistency in the results.
;-)
That is not acceptable. With XP and previous MS OS's I could fairly well predict what to expect in an install, but not with Vista. Likewise with Linux installs - always predictable, and is my preferred choice of OS when repurposing "obsolete" systems.
What is needed for Vista then is:
- consistent user experience
- no more than two different versions
- Deep price cuts
Regarding the code it's built on, from what I can tell MS basically reinvented the wheel with NT using spaghetti (code that is), instead of building on a proven workhorse OS. Next and Apple did that and look what happened
Cheers
Agreed on all counts. As for artists and drugs, I agree as well. My biggest influences in my guitar playing and the way I work onstage are a laundry list of the most famous abusers, including Bowie who was coked out of his brains when making some his best stuff. What I see happen though these days is that the artist start without a lot of money, so they don't have the money to buy massive amounts of drugs, but once they get money coming in from their major label sales they suddenly realize they can afford all the dope they can ingest; indeed some labels supply it for them. After that they quickly lose focus and viability as a band. See Guns n Roses as one of very many examples.
That said, I've also heard that many major bands are actually a lot less prone to drug-fueled insanity overall and are almost boring in their habits. So maybe there's hope.
I hope you do start a label - best of luck with that. I have a label I call Nova Records here in Bermuda. Nothing serious - I just stick the stamp on whatever I record in my studio.
I do like the idea of a loan to artists to make their record. However this would be an extremely high risk loan seeing as most musicians are living on the edge financially for the most part, unless they're just doing the musician thing while working a regular job. Also don't underestimate drug habits as well. One particular local Bermuda artist was given a huge wad of dosh to record an album based on his apparent talent, but ended up sticking most of it up his nose. I've been told that based on this and other experiences the labels drastically changed their policies about handing out money to artists outright.
But I do like the concept of loans, and if vetted properly as a bank does, then we'll find that the artists who do record are more mentally stable *grin*. With recording being so cheap and personal these days, the loan wouldn't have to be that much.
Also, don't forget that *apparent* musical taste has changed, and now we're awash in some incredibly musically shallow genres: generic punk bands playing power chords; generic rap artists pumping out preening odes to pimpdom; vile, cloying, recycled "country" music out of Nashville; endless varieties of electronic dance music generated by pressing a few computer keys. To cut through with a really talented and musically complex artist is going to be difficult.
My answer: More cowbell!
I guess in theory this democratization of the music biz is a Good Thing(tm). Instead of a limited number of artists and artistes that the three big conglomerates offer us, we now have an infinite number of monkeys, I mean musical acts to listen to at our leisure. But who the hell has time to sift through a bunch of bloody amateurs who can't keep a beat or tune to find that one gem gleaming in the turd? You'd pretty soon get bored and annoyed doing so, just as I did as I tried to find *anything* worth listening to in the song list at the RPM jukebox site.
What we need is a Google-type record label who has the clout and connections, but with the "no evil" philosophy they espouse (yes, I know the Goog is secretly plotting world domination and plans to send us to their moonbase as miner-slaves, but you get the point). The company would be run like in the old days, where the A&R people found truly talented artists and nurtured them for the long term. Nowadays they look for acts who can produce one or two novelty hits, then move onto the next new band.