It's all very well and good to want to provide communications access to those that don't have it, but do they *need* it?
I would have thought that tackling the causes of Africa's poverty, rather than attempt to "boost it into the 21st century" (whatever that means) would be a more effective and longer-lasting solution.
Perhaps poor information infrastructure is one of the root causes of Africa's poverty. The canonical example is the rural farmer who doesn't know the price of grain at the market in the city and thus is robbed blind by the middlemen. The Internet can also be used to cheaply keep in contact with Senegalese abroad. The more they stay in contact, the more money they send back as remittances. etc. etc.
Imagine some future world where everyone gets their music via these services... you could easily wind up with a situation where every new song is overproduced (and possibly run by one of those 'AI' music-hit detectors mentioned here previously) to try to ensure it is a hit, since any time spent writing/recording it will be 'wasted' if not enough people pay for the song by itself.
First, it is illogical to think that any music that isn't a hit is useless. Think of all of the television out there that is not as popular as Friends and the movies that are not as popular as Pretty Woman. Second, fans of great musicians really like it when they experiment. They are just as glad to buy the experiments as the hits (as long as the experiments aren't failures). Third, artists will be encouraged to experiment because you never know when an experiment will become a hit and open up a whole new genre. See also "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The AI hit detectors can never predict future trends. Also, with per-song downloads, artists have a better sense when they are giving their customers what the customers want.
Your quote makes it sound like "High End Unix" == microkernel. That is absolutely not true. Most high end Unices are NOT microkernels. And most microkernel Unices (Hurd, OSX) are NOT considered "High End".
The GPL would be unnecessary if there were no copyright law.
That's quite incorrect. If there were no copyright law, how ecould the GPL prevent me from distributing binaries that include the Linux source code?
If there were no copyright, then closed source would still be inviable: because anyone could copy it around.
I don't know what you mean by "inviable", but if there were no copyright, then it is clear that the software market would behave very differently but one part would remain unchanged: software companies would have no obligation to make their source code available ever. Plus, the GPL could not force them, no matter how much GPLed software the vendor incorporated. Linux distributions could be all-binary (but the binaries would be freely redistributable).
Many programs were ported to 64bit years ago for Itanium et. al. AMD can't make the porting process go away, but they can make it as easy as possible by keeping the instructions the same.
The 32bit addressing of the 386 was put to serious use long before windows95.
I remember laughing (to myself) about a guy at the next table telling his friend that the hype over Windows 95 was because the world finally had a 32-bit operating system. I had been using OS/2 2 for years by then and Unix for years before that.
Any such distinction between them is better explained along the software programmer versus system admin dimension (programmers do more programming, admins more scripting).
That's the misunderstanding that leads to problems. Scripting is programming and scripting languages can be used for software programming. I mean are you going to say that the task of building slashdot is "system administration" not "programming"?
IE 5.x on the Mac is NOT the same as IE 5.x on Windows. There are pages that render significantly differently across the two. I've made some, quite by accident.
That's exactly my point. If I want to test code on Microsoft's browser, I want it to be the same across platforms so that my tests are at least 95% representative.
Since Mozilla was designed from the ground up to be fully cross-platform, I don't see how it can be called a "clunky port".
Call it what you want. It is clunky. e.g. dialog boxes mis-size themselves so you can't see what you're selecting.
Of course, anybody who breaks ranks and punctures the myth of Macintosh perfection must be a troll
As is well known, the Mac IE code base is completely different from the Windows IE code base. There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
An XML DOM. I know this, because I spend all day in VirtualPC testing my JavaScript/XML-based app. Plus, I've tested several sophisticated DHTML toolkits and found them to not work on IE for the Mac (admittedly they probably push the boundaries of the standards). And then there is the problem with getting access to the native scripting engine from a plugin. These are real problems that force me to run VirtualPC on a daily basis.
Maybe Chimera and Safari are immature, but IE5 for Mac is certainly not obsolete,
IE for Mac bites. It isn't very efficient and it doesn't support most of the pages that use IE6-specific features. If I'm going to make a pact with the devil, I'd at least like to get something out of it.
and the statement that Mozilla for Mac is a clunky port (but the Windows version isn't) is just silly.
Somehow I think there QA department puts a little more effort into the Windows version. I use the thing every freaking day so I know what I'm talking about. There are all kinds of dialogs that are mis-sized. For instance I just entered the Preferences dialog and I'm looking at the Navigator page. The "Choose" and "Restore Dialog" buttons are half cut-off. Sometimes the problem is so severe I have to hit "Enter" without seeing the button I'm selecting. I think the most severe case is when you're saving from a download. And if there is a way to make PDFs show inline (in the browser window, not an Acrobat window) in either Mozilla or Chimera, I haven't figured it out yet.
If you don't like those, there's also Opera or OmniWeb, both mature browsers that are also highly standards-compliant.
And free? And compatible with the Adobe SVG plugin that I use every day? And ad-free? I feel bad enough that my productivity has stagnated (a little, not a lot) since I switched to the Mac without having to get my boss to shell out for a _browser_. (or shelling out myself!) You can blame the browser situation on Microsoft, or Adobe or Netscape or whoever, but as a user I just want my computer to do what I need. I expected the Mac to be at least as good at the PC for every day jobs and better for more Unix-y things. In fact, it has been a very mixed bag. Yes, it is better for Unix-y things (I didn't have to install cygwin) but the basics are about as much of a headache as they were before, if not more.
MS Office for Mac is "behind" the Windows version how, exactly? Mac Office doesn't have Access, so if you need Access, then the Mac isn't for you. Other than that... No speech recognition? I don't consider that a problem. VBA support slightly behind in some areas? Ditto. What else is there?
I need the VBA support because sometimes I have to develop plugins. And I kind of wonder how long I'll have to wait for the XML support in Office 11. Is there an OSX Outlook, or just Entourage? I had a co-worker who tried Entourage and went back because of calendaring hassles. If someone tells me that Entourage's calendaring is just as good as Outlook's (i.e. my co-worker was wrong) then I'll try it myself.
And there most certainly IS a Mac version of OpenOffice [openoffice.org].
It runs under X11. Ick. Another layer of emulation. (perhaps I should run Wine under X11 while I'm at it!)
For some developers, Apple is an afterthought, yes. But there are plenty of other developers for which Apple is not an afterthought, and believe it or not, Microsoft has been one of them. You make it out to sound like the state of software on the Mac is in the dark ages or something, but the truth is that in the two areas you mention, web browsers and office software, there are plenty of good choices out there. The only major area I can think of that is lacking on the Mac is gaming.
Both lack features I need. I also need an XML Word Processor. I run XMetaL in VirtualPC. What would you propose is comparable for the Macintosh? And then there is the MSN client for the Mac which also bites the big one. Perhaps there are workarounds for all of these issues but we're far away from the point where using the Mac was simpler than using Windows. Today, it takes more specialized knowledge and a greater ability to shift around between different user interface modes (like Classic versus Aqua file dialogs). Hopefully it will be better in the future, once Classic dies off, but what's the point in lieing to ourselves in the meantime, pretending there is no problem?
And besides, if you consider this such a problem, why not just get a Windows PC and be done with it? The rest of us will happily continue using our "obsolete" web browsers and office software.
America: love it or leave it. If you criticize George Bush you obviously don't belong. Look: the Macintosh is the best operating system I've ever used. If I could use the operating system without any apps I'd be in nirvana. But in my experience the apps tend to suck (if they exist at all) and I spend all day trying to remember whether I'm supposed to use the Mac, Windows, Classic, Unix or X11 conventions for solving different tasks. Sorry, but those are the facts as I see them.
Fossil fuel will not last forever. That is not up for debate, by the way. The Earth is a closed system finite volume. We burn fossil fuel faster than it is being created. We will run out.
As we start to run out, the price will increase. At some point it becomes more cost efficient to use another energy source other than fossil fuels. But that doesn't mean we've "run out" of the fuels, just that they are more scarce than they once were, and getting at the remaining reserves costs more than it is worth for some subset of the population.
The economist is not a "conservative outlet". They argue against the drug war, in favour of more governmental spending on certain social issues, in favour of more foreign aid, against right-wing dictators etc. Of course they also advocate in favor of some seemingly conservative positions (e.g. US foreign policy). That they can have positions on both sides of the fence just indicates that they are thinking rather than following the crowd.
As a journalist, he's likely to make predictions that are wrong more often than right. But his analysis of the basic problem of applications is right on. Designers are a core part of the Macintosh constituency but Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x). The other browsers for the Mac are either immature (Chimera, Safari), obsolete (IE 5.x) or clunky ports (Mozilla). Microsoft Office is behind the Windows version and StarOffice only runs under X-windows. I'm not saying that Apple is going out of business but there is a problem with the fact that the Apple is always an afterthought for application developers. On a daily basis, I need to run three different window system emulators: Classic, VirtualPC and X-Windows (to say nothing of the Mozilla XPFE)! This makes the Macintosh feel substantially less consistent than Windows (which is an ironic turn of events).
Things aren't all bad. It's wonderful having Unix with a really nice GUI. Apple is filling in some of the gaps by writing software like Safari, iMovie and Keynote themselves. The boxes are physically beautiful. But it certainly isn't nirvana. The Mac is in a very difficult transition between OS9 and OSX and it needs to pick up market share before application developers will take it seriously. Dependence on Microsoft is an ongoing problem.
Re:Not All's Well that Ends Well ...
on
The Linux Uprising
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Should Microsoft ever truly respond to the Linux threat, say by slashing their prices of Windows XP/Windows 2003/Windows Whatever in half, and slash the prices of Microsoft Office in half (much as they have already done in a recent promotion for Apple Macintosh users), it's game over for Linux on the desktop.,/P>
That's ridiculous. If Microsoft slashes Office and Windows prices in half you wouldn't believe how quickly Wall Street would abandon their stock. Reducing prices to compete is a loser's strategy and bound to fail in the long run. Let's presume that Red Hat and Xandros go out of business (despite the fact that Red Hat has a big service revenue business). IBM and Sun, tasting the blood in the water, would buy them and match Microsoft's price drops dollar for dollar. Who do you think can go on without making much profit longer, the open source world or Microsoft? IBM could sell Red Hat software at a loss for decades as long as they kept pulling in the big bucks in service revenue. Microsoft has no such luxury. Once they slash the prices of their major products they will be hastening their own demise.
In any case, it's not really clear this story is all that interesting as news anyway, for the very simple reason that it is very doubtful that commercial versions of PGP will succeed, simply becuase for the naive user, PGP is Just Too Hard to use.
I guess commercial versions of relational databases will never succeed because for the naive user, SQL is Just Too Hard to use.
If you are a top-notch software engineer, you will seldom build several things that are even similar. After the first or second such thing, you will figure out an abstraction that collapses the multiple designs into a single design with some sort of customization or parameterization. Then you are on to solve some other, completely different problem. If you are assembling known components into predictable patterns then you are probably pretty low on the IT food chain and ultimately replaceable.
1. Move jobs overseas, and pay a mere fraction of what you are paying to American employees.2. Don't pass the costs on to middle class Americans, thus causing money to move from the middle class, which is getting laid off, to the utlra-rich.
So company A and company B are competing. They both move programming offshore. Company A chooses to pass along the savings to customers. Company B puts all of the surplus in the CEO's pocket. Which one will customers prefer to buy from? Think about it for a second. We live in a market based on competition. Companies can only "pocket" the profit from a cost savings for a very short time before they are competed out of business. Customers are the ultimate beneficiaries of price reductions. Look at what has happened to the prices of (e.g.) DVDs and VCRs or the quality of automobiles.
So, my 401K gets bigger, let's say by 25%. I, frankly, would rather have a job, than a somewhat bigger 401K (at least for the next 30 years until I retire).
Well....duh! But you're missing a crucial point. The savings from moving business offshore are shared by everyone in society who consume software directly or indirectly (i.e. all of us). Then consumers of a good or service always outnumber the producers. But the consumers have very little voice because who can be bothered to fight for a 10% reduction in prices of food or wood? On the other side, though, the minority who lose their jobs fight like hell to prevent society from accruing that benefit.
An MP3 player in a cellphone (or PDA) is not kitchy. It is just logical. The cellphone has a bunch of solid state logic. So does an MP3 player. Modern cellphones need to connect to computers (to download games, etc.). So does an MP3 player. Many cellphones require headphones. So does an MP3 player. But the kicker is that people do not want to carry around six devices. It makes sense to combine them where that can be done easily (as it can with cellphone+MP3 or PDA+MP3). Cellphone+PDA is a little different because of the display requirements.
Consider this: if an icon is "just" an SVG file, and it is becoming increasingly common for applications to represent visualizations of information as SVG, then it starts to become possible for an icon to be just a visualization of some data. The beautiful part is that you don't need any more complex "protocol" between the desktop and the app than simple Unix file paths and streams. The desktop would just watch the file and update its view when the file changes.
Re:SWF is not a proprietary format.
on
SVG On the Rise
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· Score: 1
Since SVG files, unlike SWF streams, are non-sequential, it is much more problematic, if not impossible, for apps to so this on-the-fly with SVG files.)
In order to use SVG in printers as a replacement for Postscript, it is necessary to have support for streaming. I have reason to believe that this will be supported in the next iteration of SVG. There will probably be an SVG subset (perhaps with appropriate declaration) where all references are backwards.
Actually, it's like saying automoviles and airliners cause far too many deaths, so let's stop using them and just walk.
The reason we continue to use automobiles and airliners is because they can get us places that walking cannot practically get us. The original poster admitted that C should be used when it is necessary. But he pointed out that it is used way more often than is necessary at a terrible consequence to our security. He specifically outlined a plan wherein we use C for what it is good for (performance) and use other things for what they are good for (security).
Dropping C because it's susceptible to exploits is dumb, as is replacing it with some other technology that will eventually be hacked anyway.
It isn't that C as a technology was "hacked". It is that C as a technology has a design that makes it more vulnerable than other technologies. Those other technologies will also be hacked but less often. That's a net win even if it doesn't eliminate hacking in total (which is a silly goal in the first place).
Slashdot Mirror
It's all very well and good to want to provide communications access to those that don't have it, but do they *need* it? I would have thought that tackling the causes of Africa's poverty, rather than attempt to "boost it into the 21st century" (whatever that means) would be a more effective and longer-lasting solution.
Perhaps poor information infrastructure is one of the root causes of Africa's poverty. The canonical example is the rural farmer who doesn't know the price of grain at the market in the city and thus is robbed blind by the middlemen. The Internet can also be used to cheaply keep in contact with Senegalese abroad. The more they stay in contact, the more money they send back as remittances. etc. etc.
Imagine some future world where everyone gets their music via these services... you could easily wind up with a situation where every new song is overproduced (and possibly run by one of those 'AI' music-hit detectors mentioned here previously) to try to ensure it is a hit, since any time spent writing/recording it will be 'wasted' if not enough people pay for the song by itself.
First, it is illogical to think that any music that isn't a hit is useless. Think of all of the television out there that is not as popular as Friends and the movies that are not as popular as Pretty Woman. Second, fans of great musicians really like it when they experiment. They are just as glad to buy the experiments as the hits (as long as the experiments aren't failures). Third, artists will be encouraged to experiment because you never know when an experiment will become a hit and open up a whole new genre. See also "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The AI hit detectors can never predict future trends. Also, with per-song downloads, artists have a better sense when they are giving their customers what the customers want.
Your quote makes it sound like "High End Unix" == microkernel. That is absolutely not true. Most high end Unices are NOT microkernels. And most microkernel Unices (Hurd, OSX) are NOT considered "High End".
I need to use this control in my app: HTML Editor
The GPL would be unnecessary if there were no copyright law.
That's quite incorrect. If there were no copyright law, how ecould the GPL prevent me from distributing binaries that include the Linux source code?If there were no copyright, then closed source would still be inviable: because anyone could copy it around.
I don't know what you mean by "inviable", but if there were no copyright, then it is clear that the software market would behave very differently but one part would remain unchanged: software companies would have no obligation to make their source code available ever. Plus, the GPL could not force them, no matter how much GPLed software the vendor incorporated. Linux distributions could be all-binary (but the binaries would be freely redistributable).
Many programs were ported to 64bit years ago for Itanium et. al. AMD can't make the porting process go away, but they can make it as easy as possible by keeping the instructions the same.
The 32bit addressing of the 386 was put to serious use long before windows95.
I remember laughing (to myself) about a guy at the next table telling his friend that the hype over Windows 95 was because the world finally had a 32-bit operating system. I had been using OS/2 2 for years by then and Unix for years before that.
Any such distinction between them is better explained along the software programmer versus system admin dimension (programmers do more programming, admins more scripting).
That's the misunderstanding that leads to problems. Scripting is programming and scripting languages can be used for software programming. I mean are you going to say that the task of building slashdot is "system administration" not "programming"?
IE 5.x on the Mac is NOT the same as IE 5.x on Windows. There are pages that render significantly differently across the two. I've made some, quite by accident.
That's exactly my point. If I want to test code on Microsoft's browser, I want it to be the same across platforms so that my tests are at least 95% representative.
Since Mozilla was designed from the ground up to be fully cross-platform, I don't see how it can be called a "clunky port".
Call it what you want. It is clunky. e.g. dialog boxes mis-size themselves so you can't see what you're selecting.
You, sir, are a troll.
Of course, anybody who breaks ranks and punctures the myth of Macintosh perfection must be a troll
As is well known, the Mac IE code base is completely different from the Windows IE code base. There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
An XML DOM. I know this, because I spend all day in VirtualPC testing my JavaScript/XML-based app. Plus, I've tested several sophisticated DHTML toolkits and found them to not work on IE for the Mac (admittedly they probably push the boundaries of the standards). And then there is the problem with getting access to the native scripting engine from a plugin. These are real problems that force me to run VirtualPC on a daily basis.
Maybe Chimera and Safari are immature, but IE5 for Mac is certainly not obsolete,
IE for Mac bites. It isn't very efficient and it doesn't support most of the pages that use IE6-specific features. If I'm going to make a pact with the devil, I'd at least like to get something out of it.
and the statement that Mozilla for Mac is a clunky port (but the Windows version isn't) is just silly.
Somehow I think there QA department puts a little more effort into the Windows version. I use the thing every freaking day so I know what I'm talking about. There are all kinds of dialogs that are mis-sized. For instance I just entered the Preferences dialog and I'm looking at the Navigator page. The "Choose" and "Restore Dialog" buttons are half cut-off. Sometimes the problem is so severe I have to hit "Enter" without seeing the button I'm selecting. I think the most severe case is when you're saving from a download. And if there is a way to make PDFs show inline (in the browser window, not an Acrobat window) in either Mozilla or Chimera, I haven't figured it out yet.
If you don't like those, there's also Opera or OmniWeb, both mature browsers that are also highly standards-compliant.
And free? And compatible with the Adobe SVG plugin that I use every day? And ad-free? I feel bad enough that my productivity has stagnated (a little, not a lot) since I switched to the Mac without having to get my boss to shell out for a _browser_. (or shelling out myself!) You can blame the browser situation on Microsoft, or Adobe or Netscape or whoever, but as a user I just want my computer to do what I need. I expected the Mac to be at least as good at the PC for every day jobs and better for more Unix-y things. In fact, it has been a very mixed bag. Yes, it is better for Unix-y things (I didn't have to install cygwin) but the basics are about as much of a headache as they were before, if not more.
MS Office for Mac is "behind" the Windows version how, exactly? Mac Office doesn't have Access, so if you need Access, then the Mac isn't for you. Other than that... No speech recognition? I don't consider that a problem. VBA support slightly behind in some areas? Ditto. What else is there?
I need the VBA support because sometimes I have to develop plugins. And I kind of wonder how long I'll have to wait for the XML support in Office 11. Is there an OSX Outlook, or just Entourage? I had a co-worker who tried Entourage and went back because of calendaring hassles. If someone tells me that Entourage's calendaring is just as good as Outlook's (i.e. my co-worker was wrong) then I'll try it myself.
And there most certainly IS a Mac version of OpenOffice [openoffice.org].
It runs under X11. Ick. Another layer of emulation. (perhaps I should run Wine under X11 while I'm at it!)
For some developers, Apple is an afterthought, yes. But there are plenty of other developers for which Apple is not an afterthought, and believe it or not, Microsoft has been one of them. You make it out to sound like the state of software on the Mac is in the dark ages or something, but the truth is that in the two areas you mention, web browsers and office software, there are plenty of good choices out there. The only major area I can think of that is lacking on the Mac is gaming.
Both lack features I need. I also need an XML Word Processor. I run XMetaL in VirtualPC. What would you propose is comparable for the Macintosh? And then there is the MSN client for the Mac which also bites the big one. Perhaps there are workarounds for all of these issues but we're far away from the point where using the Mac was simpler than using Windows. Today, it takes more specialized knowledge and a greater ability to shift around between different user interface modes (like Classic versus Aqua file dialogs). Hopefully it will be better in the future, once Classic dies off, but what's the point in lieing to ourselves in the meantime, pretending there is no problem?
And besides, if you consider this such a problem, why not just get a Windows PC and be done with it? The rest of us will happily continue using our "obsolete" web browsers and office software.
America: love it or leave it. If you criticize George Bush you obviously don't belong. Look: the Macintosh is the best operating system I've ever used. If I could use the operating system without any apps I'd be in nirvana. But in my experience the apps tend to suck (if they exist at all) and I spend all day trying to remember whether I'm supposed to use the Mac, Windows, Classic, Unix or X11 conventions for solving different tasks. Sorry, but those are the facts as I see them.
Fossil fuel will not last forever. That is not up for debate, by the way. The Earth is a closed system finite volume. We burn fossil fuel faster than it is being created. We will run out.
As we start to run out, the price will increase. At some point it becomes more cost efficient to use another energy source other than fossil fuels. But that doesn't mean we've "run out" of the fuels, just that they are more scarce than they once were, and getting at the remaining reserves costs more than it is worth for some subset of the population.
The economist is not a "conservative outlet". They argue against the drug war, in favour of more governmental spending on certain social issues, in favour of more foreign aid, against right-wing dictators etc. Of course they also advocate in favor of some seemingly conservative positions (e.g. US foreign policy). That they can have positions on both sides of the fence just indicates that they are thinking rather than following the crowd.
What does it mean to "decode" a flag? You just ignore it!
Things aren't all bad. It's wonderful having Unix with a really nice GUI. Apple is filling in some of the gaps by writing software like Safari, iMovie and Keynote themselves. The boxes are physically beautiful. But it certainly isn't nirvana. The Mac is in a very difficult transition between OS9 and OSX and it needs to pick up market share before application developers will take it seriously. Dependence on Microsoft is an ongoing problem.
Should Microsoft ever truly respond to the Linux threat, say by slashing their prices of Windows XP/Windows 2003/Windows Whatever in half, and slash the prices of Microsoft Office in half (much as they have already done in a recent promotion for Apple Macintosh users), it's game over for Linux on the desktop.,/P>
That's ridiculous. If Microsoft slashes Office and Windows prices in half you wouldn't believe how quickly Wall Street would abandon their stock. Reducing prices to compete is a loser's strategy and bound to fail in the long run. Let's presume that Red Hat and Xandros go out of business (despite the fact that Red Hat has a big service revenue business). IBM and Sun, tasting the blood in the water, would buy them and match Microsoft's price drops dollar for dollar. Who do you think can go on without making much profit longer, the open source world or Microsoft? IBM could sell Red Hat software at a loss for decades as long as they kept pulling in the big bucks in service revenue. Microsoft has no such luxury. Once they slash the prices of their major products they will be hastening their own demise.
natural rights
What is a "natural right"?
HTTP is restricted by browsers, many of which will not support files larger than a certain size.
How do you figure that? How is Curl or WGET "restricted by browsers?" HTTP also has resume.
In any case, it's not really clear this story is all that interesting as news anyway, for the very simple reason that it is very doubtful that commercial versions of PGP will succeed, simply becuase for the naive user, PGP is Just Too Hard to use.
I guess commercial versions of relational databases will never succeed because for the naive user, SQL is Just Too Hard to use.
If you are a top-notch software engineer, you will seldom build several things that are even similar. After the first or second such thing, you will figure out an abstraction that collapses the multiple designs into a single design with some sort of customization or parameterization. Then you are on to solve some other, completely different problem. If you are assembling known components into predictable patterns then you are probably pretty low on the IT food chain and ultimately replaceable.
Here is where your theory runs into problems:
1. Move jobs overseas, and pay a mere fraction of what you are paying to American employees. 2. Don't pass the costs on to middle class Americans, thus causing money to move from the middle class, which is getting laid off, to the utlra-rich.
So company A and company B are competing. They both move programming offshore. Company A chooses to pass along the savings to customers. Company B puts all of the surplus in the CEO's pocket. Which one will customers prefer to buy from? Think about it for a second. We live in a market based on competition. Companies can only "pocket" the profit from a cost savings for a very short time before they are competed out of business. Customers are the ultimate beneficiaries of price reductions. Look at what has happened to the prices of (e.g.) DVDs and VCRs or the quality of automobiles.
So, my 401K gets bigger, let's say by 25%. I, frankly, would rather have a job, than a somewhat bigger 401K (at least for the next 30 years until I retire).
Well....duh! But you're missing a crucial point. The savings from moving business offshore are shared by everyone in society who consume software directly or indirectly (i.e. all of us). Then consumers of a good or service always outnumber the producers. But the consumers have very little voice because who can be bothered to fight for a 10% reduction in prices of food or wood? On the other side, though, the minority who lose their jobs fight like hell to prevent society from accruing that benefit.
An MP3 player in a cellphone (or PDA) is not kitchy. It is just logical. The cellphone has a bunch of solid state logic. So does an MP3 player. Modern cellphones need to connect to computers (to download games, etc.). So does an MP3 player. Many cellphones require headphones. So does an MP3 player. But the kicker is that people do not want to carry around six devices. It makes sense to combine them where that can be done easily (as it can with cellphone+MP3 or PDA+MP3). Cellphone+PDA is a little different because of the display requirements.
Consider this: if an icon is "just" an SVG file, and it is becoming increasingly common for applications to represent visualizations of information as SVG, then it starts to become possible for an icon to be just a visualization of some data. The beautiful part is that you don't need any more complex "protocol" between the desktop and the app than simple Unix file paths and streams. The desktop would just watch the file and update its view when the file changes.
Since SVG files, unlike SWF streams, are non-sequential, it is much more problematic, if not impossible, for apps to so this on-the-fly with SVG files.)
In order to use SVG in printers as a replacement for Postscript, it is necessary to have support for streaming. I have reason to believe that this will be supported in the next iteration of SVG. There will probably be an SVG subset (perhaps with appropriate declaration) where all references are backwards.
Actually, it's like saying automoviles and airliners cause far too many deaths, so let's stop using them and just walk.
The reason we continue to use automobiles and airliners is because they can get us places that walking cannot practically get us. The original poster admitted that C should be used when it is necessary. But he pointed out that it is used way more often than is necessary at a terrible consequence to our security. He specifically outlined a plan wherein we use C for what it is good for (performance) and use other things for what they are good for (security).
Dropping C because it's susceptible to exploits is dumb, as is replacing it with some other technology that will eventually be hacked anyway.
It isn't that C as a technology was "hacked". It is that C as a technology has a design that makes it more vulnerable than other technologies. Those other technologies will also be hacked but less often. That's a net win even if it doesn't eliminate hacking in total (which is a silly goal in the first place).