This is actually mentioned in the/. guide for karma and it's good guidance for most. I just don't care as it doesn't apply to me. I'm immune to/. karma now. Maybe it's good guidance for those who are new here. I use this for effect, and based on your comment it seems to be working.
But then I've been here so long that I've given many comments rated +5 consisting of only a single word including "Yes", "No", and "This".
Ironic but not new. Also applies to the "most critical" systems: military systems, banking systems, power infrastructure including nuclear power plants, Los Alamos National Laboratory where nuclear weapons are simulated on supercomputers and so on. The US Army uses Vista. The Fed was recently hacked. We all know about the malware and exploits circulating for SCADA that does power plant control, and the published hard wired root passwords for the systems including routers and firewalls. Los Alamos has a long history of losing the most secret data - as well as failing their background check systems. The more important it is it seems, the less secure it is.
The NSA, CIA and NRO apparently have got their act together. That's nice. The FBI, middling to fair. In general though if we really tick somebody off with nation-state level budgets and serious nerd skills, we're hosed. Unfortunately that "ticking off" is almost certain to occur if it hasn't happened already.
This. They've actually been at it since before the first Android device was even launched, claiming it was a fatal ill. Despite the dire fragmentation it has succeeded handily.
I'm kind of curious how many millions have been spent Android-slandering in this way. Has to be quite a few. Any self-respecting for-fee product slanderer would have switched to another strategy that was failing less spectacularly by now. His customer might have switched to another more effective slanderer in some sort of normal world.
But, meh. It's not working and that's how I like it, so fine.
The popover to try the new mobile format is delightful, as it can't remember that you said no the last thousand times. It just merrily pops up to ask again EVERY FREAKING TIME.
Agreed. Also see: AT&T. The company that calls itself AT&T now bears no relation to the company that was Ma Bell but the name. They bought the brand in a bankruptcy firesale - apparently because "Antichrist Technologies & Torment" and "Satan's Own Mobile Ecosystem" were taken.
I know how to do a lot of things I would not teach my own children how to do. It's really likely they'll figure these out on their own as I did, but it's best for the commonweal that I not help them do so now as the ability absent the guidance of experience could be harmful both to society and to them. Oddly enough having to earn that knowledge on their own is better for them too. From the stuff I have on hand in the house right now in common household goods I could make LSD, PCP, methamphetamine, Bath Salts, various forms of rocket fuel and high explosives - even guidance systems for same. But I don't care to do so and I especially don't care to teach my children how to do so. Random strangers I care even less to teach.
Rather than teach my children these practical how-to's I prefer to try to give them some moral guidance about why sometimes a thing is right to do, and other times it is not OK to do the same thing. And how being able to do a thing doesn't imply a need to do it except for educational purposes. But to teach them the general science that leads to figuring this stuff out. When they're older and have proven their maturity maybe we'll play with these toys, but it's more likely they will go around me to find the means on their own - and I'm OK with that as it's what I did.
Right now, for me, helping the poster of TFS is not the right thing to do. If he wants to spy on people let him figure it out. Let him earn it. Maybe along the way he'll figure out why it's not nice to do even if it's easy.
Since nobody else here is going to do it (/., you disappoint me again), the quote you are looking for is:
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
This appears to be an urban legend. The quote is often misattributed to Charles Holland Duell who in 1902 said:
In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.
Or perhaps Patent Officer Henry Ellsworth who in his 1843 report to Congress said:
The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.
That latter quote being twisted and misattributed to Duell after the fact also.
There is institutional inertia in Microsoft that demands product executives still "act as if" Microsoft were still the 800lb gorilla of technology, master of all they survey: an emperor so dominant that they demand their visitors be trained as supplicants wary of offending the Beast before they dare even approach.
Once upon a time this is what they were. 2x above the nearest technology competitor and master of all that is invented and all that is prevented, deciding quarter by quarter which of their partners live and die based on which is most helpful to them. The bodies of their foes are immense and numerous: Sun, Novell, Borland are but a few. The bodies of their allies fallen from favor are even far more numerous. Technology companies, particularly startups, did kneel before the king. Microsoft leveraged their various properties to defeat every foe by being deliberately incompatible with the challengers and innovators of the day a few at a time.
Today though Microsoft do not stand above the biggest company in tech by 2x. The biggest tech company is Apple which stands above them by 2x now. The second biggest is Google - a company Microsoft's CEO swore to kill when it was but a gnat, but somehow he failed and Google now is well ahead of them. Yesterday they were not even third biggest tech company. The IBM they thought they killed in the early '90s has in its quiet conservative way been creeping up on them and finished ahead in market cap again yesterday - soon a position to be made durable. Samsung is working on it too and may someday claim a solid fourth, relegating Microsoft to the fifth position in tech until Cisco spoils even that. Even Microsoft's mighty partners - the ecosystem that drove out innovation they did not control by proxy - is weakened beyond repair. It is just not profitable to make Windows client PCs. It hasn't been for a long time and they know it but are dependent on the revenue flow to maintain their size, clinging to that as they lose profitability permanently. Innovators are coming now not a few at a time to be vanquished and fed to the beast one by one, but in a flood that may drown the beast. They come bigger also now, so big the beast cannot wrap its jaws around them. The loss of the power to drive innovation isn't the most important thing for Microsoft. The loss of the power to prevent innovation they don't control is. That is what is killing them: Chromebooks that last all day, Nexus 10 tablets with insane resolution, iPads and iPhones and Android phones more powerful than a recent laptop that delight and amaze. And this is nothing compared to the fact that they're going into battle wielding their sword holding the wrong end.
For Microsoft to survive the transition to mobile they have to reorient to being a scrappy startup striving for a place in a hostile world, not approach it as if they were entitled to appear and claim it as an entitlement of their dominion, swaying all with their massive billions. They don't have it in them to do that. They literally can't do it. The very concept is so alien that they cannot grasp the need for it. Anyone there who proposed such a thing would be walked to the door by security immediately. That is the problem they face: their inability to assess the situation and respond appropriately. From here the end is clear.
All empires fall in the end. Usually for this very reason: the inability to see their own mortality.
They ought to let us bid on them. I bid five hundred dollars.
I should think together we could get that number up to a substantial sum to help them be rid of these burdensome records they can no longer afford to store. Who here would chip in a bit to free SCO of this burden? I bet we could rally a sum worthy of the court taking notice, to salvage these valuable historical records from the shredder.
When we let our government use public safety concerns to gain revenues, we should not be surprised that they use analytical methods to optimize those revenues to the point that the revenues become paramount to the initial public safety purpose.
Likewise when we let them seize assets to their profit in the name of justice we should expect them to optimize their seizures in such a way that they achieve maximum benefit therefrom, and to partner with other public agencies to do so whether or not the seizures are just.
The pursuit of money IS the root of all evil after all.
There is nothing Microsoft Research ever will discover that will ever be of use to the rest of us in general. They research for Microsoft, not for us, and almost all of their output is ignored even by Microsoft. When it's a product then look at it in terms of whether it's useful to you despite the completely unnecessary but mandatory IE/DirectX interface. It probably won't even be worth loading up Windows in a VM to have IE to try it out with.
Not only does Sony sell you stuff that doesn't work with your other stuff, they will sell you content on that incompatible stuff so that when they give up the ghost on that proprietary format you have to buy the White Album AGAIN on their new, proprietary format that's totally better than the old one.
I know some about this in actual practice in a US major market school district. I pads, Android tablets, Chrome books are almost zero deployment effort and cost compared to Windows PCs and laptops. Lower unit, deployment and management costs mean using this new tech puts the tech in the hands of more students at the same cost.
India has a program to deliver Android tablets to their students over the next 10 years. All 1 billion of them.
All the kids in our family have Android tabs and use them for fun, communication and education - starting at 2 years old. There are even special things for special needs kids, like autism.
Some of them are showing interest in programming at an early age.
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually mentioned in the /. guide for karma and it's good guidance for most. I just don't care as it doesn't apply to me. I'm immune to /. karma now. Maybe it's good guidance for those who are new here. I use this for effect, and based on your comment it seems to be working.
But then I've been here so long that I've given many comments rated +5 consisting of only a single word including "Yes", "No", and "This".
Ironic but not new. Also applies to the "most critical" systems: military systems, banking systems, power infrastructure including nuclear power plants, Los Alamos National Laboratory where nuclear weapons are simulated on supercomputers and so on. The US Army uses Vista. The Fed was recently hacked. We all know about the malware and exploits circulating for SCADA that does power plant control, and the published hard wired root passwords for the systems including routers and firewalls. Los Alamos has a long history of losing the most secret data - as well as failing their background check systems. The more important it is it seems, the less secure it is.
The NSA, CIA and NRO apparently have got their act together. That's nice. The FBI, middling to fair. In general though if we really tick somebody off with nation-state level budgets and serious nerd skills, we're hosed. Unfortunately that "ticking off" is almost certain to occur if it hasn't happened already.
This. They've actually been at it since before the first Android device was even launched, claiming it was a fatal ill. Despite the dire fragmentation it has succeeded handily.
I'm kind of curious how many millions have been spent Android-slandering in this way. Has to be quite a few. Any self-respecting for-fee product slanderer would have switched to another strategy that was failing less spectacularly by now. His customer might have switched to another more effective slanderer in some sort of normal world.
But, meh. It's not working and that's how I like it, so fine.
The popover to try the new mobile format is delightful, as it can't remember that you said no the last thousand times. It just merrily pops up to ask again EVERY FREAKING TIME.
Agreed. Also see: AT&T. The company that calls itself AT&T now bears no relation to the company that was Ma Bell but the name. They bought the brand in a bankruptcy firesale - apparently because "Antichrist Technologies & Torment" and "Satan's Own Mobile Ecosystem" were taken.
I know how to do a lot of things I would not teach my own children how to do. It's really likely they'll figure these out on their own as I did, but it's best for the commonweal that I not help them do so now as the ability absent the guidance of experience could be harmful both to society and to them. Oddly enough having to earn that knowledge on their own is better for them too. From the stuff I have on hand in the house right now in common household goods I could make LSD, PCP, methamphetamine, Bath Salts, various forms of rocket fuel and high explosives - even guidance systems for same. But I don't care to do so and I especially don't care to teach my children how to do so. Random strangers I care even less to teach.
Rather than teach my children these practical how-to's I prefer to try to give them some moral guidance about why sometimes a thing is right to do, and other times it is not OK to do the same thing. And how being able to do a thing doesn't imply a need to do it except for educational purposes. But to teach them the general science that leads to figuring this stuff out. When they're older and have proven their maturity maybe we'll play with these toys, but it's more likely they will go around me to find the means on their own - and I'm OK with that as it's what I did.
Right now, for me, helping the poster of TFS is not the right thing to do. If he wants to spy on people let him figure it out. Let him earn it. Maybe along the way he'll figure out why it's not nice to do even if it's easy.
Since nobody else here is going to do it (/., you disappoint me again), the quote you are looking for is:
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
This appears to be an urban legend. The quote is often misattributed to Charles Holland Duell who in 1902 said:
In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.
Or perhaps Patent Officer Henry Ellsworth who in his 1843 report to Congress said:
The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.
That latter quote being twisted and misattributed to Duell after the fact also.
There is institutional inertia in Microsoft that demands product executives still "act as if" Microsoft were still the 800lb gorilla of technology, master of all they survey: an emperor so dominant that they demand their visitors be trained as supplicants wary of offending the Beast before they dare even approach.
Once upon a time this is what they were. 2x above the nearest technology competitor and master of all that is invented and all that is prevented, deciding quarter by quarter which of their partners live and die based on which is most helpful to them. The bodies of their foes are immense and numerous: Sun, Novell, Borland are but a few. The bodies of their allies fallen from favor are even far more numerous. Technology companies, particularly startups, did kneel before the king. Microsoft leveraged their various properties to defeat every foe by being deliberately incompatible with the challengers and innovators of the day a few at a time.
Today though Microsoft do not stand above the biggest company in tech by 2x. The biggest tech company is Apple which stands above them by 2x now. The second biggest is Google - a company Microsoft's CEO swore to kill when it was but a gnat, but somehow he failed and Google now is well ahead of them. Yesterday they were not even third biggest tech company. The IBM they thought they killed in the early '90s has in its quiet conservative way been creeping up on them and finished ahead in market cap again yesterday - soon a position to be made durable. Samsung is working on it too and may someday claim a solid fourth, relegating Microsoft to the fifth position in tech until Cisco spoils even that. Even Microsoft's mighty partners - the ecosystem that drove out innovation they did not control by proxy - is weakened beyond repair. It is just not profitable to make Windows client PCs. It hasn't been for a long time and they know it but are dependent on the revenue flow to maintain their size, clinging to that as they lose profitability permanently. Innovators are coming now not a few at a time to be vanquished and fed to the beast one by one, but in a flood that may drown the beast. They come bigger also now, so big the beast cannot wrap its jaws around them. The loss of the power to drive innovation isn't the most important thing for Microsoft. The loss of the power to prevent innovation they don't control is. That is what is killing them: Chromebooks that last all day, Nexus 10 tablets with insane resolution, iPads and iPhones and Android phones more powerful than a recent laptop that delight and amaze. And this is nothing compared to the fact that they're going into battle wielding their sword holding the wrong end.
For Microsoft to survive the transition to mobile they have to reorient to being a scrappy startup striving for a place in a hostile world, not approach it as if they were entitled to appear and claim it as an entitlement of their dominion, swaying all with their massive billions. They don't have it in them to do that. They literally can't do it. The very concept is so alien that they cannot grasp the need for it. Anyone there who proposed such a thing would be walked to the door by security immediately. That is the problem they face: their inability to assess the situation and respond appropriately. From here the end is clear.
All empires fall in the end. Usually for this very reason: the inability to see their own mortality.
I'm sure somebody here will help you with this. They probably shouldn't.
And different times. Suns get hotter, planets internally cooler over time. Orbits of planets move in and out.
PJ says it's not gonna happen. A shame.
They tried. But the iPad took off so fast they couldn't snipe it on the runway. They got caught looking.
You don't like FB integration in your PDC?
They ought to let us bid on them. I bid five hundred dollars.
I should think together we could get that number up to a substantial sum to help them be rid of these burdensome records they can no longer afford to store. Who here would chip in a bit to free SCO of this burden? I bet we could rally a sum worthy of the court taking notice, to salvage these valuable historical records from the shredder.
When we let our government use public safety concerns to gain revenues, we should not be surprised that they use analytical methods to optimize those revenues to the point that the revenues become paramount to the initial public safety purpose.
Likewise when we let them seize assets to their profit in the name of justice we should expect them to optimize their seizures in such a way that they achieve maximum benefit therefrom, and to partner with other public agencies to do so whether or not the seizures are just.
The pursuit of money IS the root of all evil after all.
There is nothing Microsoft Research ever will discover that will ever be of use to the rest of us in general. They research for Microsoft, not for us, and almost all of their output is ignored even by Microsoft. When it's a product then look at it in terms of whether it's useful to you despite the completely unnecessary but mandatory IE/DirectX interface. It probably won't even be worth loading up Windows in a VM to have IE to try it out with.
Not only does Sony sell you stuff that doesn't work with your other stuff, they will sell you content on that incompatible stuff so that when they give up the ghost on that proprietary format you have to buy the White Album AGAIN on their new, proprietary format that's totally better than the old one.
Philips took $50M cash to make that happen.
I know some about this in actual practice in a US major market school district. I pads, Android tablets, Chrome books are almost zero deployment effort and cost compared to Windows PCs and laptops. Lower unit, deployment and management costs mean using this new tech puts the tech in the hands of more students at the same cost.
Wherein AC demonstrates his complete ignorance of how a Chromebook works.
India has a program to deliver Android tablets to their students over the next 10 years. All 1 billion of them.
All the kids in our family have Android tabs and use them for fun, communication and education - starting at 2 years old. There are even special things for special needs kids, like autism.
Some of them are showing interest in programming at an early age.
That's $50.00 a laptop. We'll take all of them. How many you got?
Obviously they weren't getting the revenue to make it pay off. Courts are not free. No doubt city workers were tired of it too.
Safety does not even enter into it.
Singing motherboards are a sign of bad capacitors.
A version of Git that you can't get your data out of because it's in a proprietary format.