In which case Windows 9x compatibility won't help too much...
I'm one of the users who's decided not to upgrade to XP from Win98. Reasons may vary, mine being that I loathe the strongarm tactics MS used with XP registration, but I suspect there are others out there who hang on to Win98 just to run Windows-only apps like you describe.
That being the case, Win4Lin gives us an out, although you're spot on that Win98 support is dwindling. Maybe Win4Lin and similar emulators/software bridges will give users like me an offramp from Windows upgrades in future? I'd like to think so.
One aspect of this that wasn't mentioned in the article - is the NASD worried about chat sent to SMS-enabled phones they issue to brokers/workers? They seem to be pretty strong on desktop chat clients, but brokers looking for a way to chat without logging could always encourage clients to go mobile to get around it.
My suggestion would be to get with your Project Lead and Technical Lead, and ask them to put together a brief comparison of a) work under "normal" conditions and b) work under "extreme" conditions, and put it in terms of money.
Here's an example. Your PM estimates that the project will take ~5000 workhours to complete. Under normal circumstances (no overtime compensation, healthcare costs held constant, normal quality processes enforced, et al.) s/he estimates the job would cost $X.
Then, s/he factors in a few things, and re-calculates costs under the extreme circumstances: overtime savings (how much did the company SAVE by not paying OT, healthcare cost increase (stressed people stay sicker = stay out longer), cost of quality degradation (more bugs = more time/money to fix in future). So your PM figures out that the job under the extreme conditions actually costs $X + Y.
Now the PM/Tech Lead take this set of numbers to the person who agreed to the deal in the first place AS WELL AS the Finance people, and asks them the reason the company lost $Y in potential revenues...just a thought.
The entire SCO/IBM saga seems like it was written by an amateur scriptwriter. Was SCO's whole idea to cast this as "Open Source vs. The Big Boys"?
After reading a lot of the source material from/. and other sites, it just made me start wondering if someone at SCO thought the Open Source community would jump on their bandwagon in some way, but things went terribly wrong (i.e. Open Source advocates saw them as more threat than friend).
I'm not so naive to think IBM a steadfast friend of Open Source - they and all for-profit companies are out to make money, and they believe Linux can help them do that. It just strikes me as ironic that a former OS-directed company cast themselves in the role of villain, and the corporate giant would be seen by many as the hero in this case.
The part Gates grasps really well is that such a house with all its 'wiredness' will give him the opportunity to sell marketing space to others. Brilliant as bu$ine$$ strategies go. What he seems to miss, though, is that there are a lot of people who consider their homes a refuge from that "adbot" world.
Frankly, I don't want to be marketed to 24/7, and will not live in a home that isn't safe from pop-up ads on my microwave for Swanson dinners et al. I'm selective about what marketing channels I allow in my home, and I'm far from ready to relinquish that control, especially to a monopolistic company like Microsoft.
For me it started as a vague feeling about a decade ago. It was a simple thing that triggered the thought, really. I gave my then 10 year old nephew a book he wanted on simple programming for Christmas, and in less than 48 hours, he devoured it. It was amazing how quickly he grasped the concepts, but when he tried to articulate what he'd learned to my sister, you could see a real disconnection. For him, the future would be shell scripts, hacks and the Internet.
Lately, though, those vague feelings have solidified into more disquieting and concrete issues of a society and a level of technology being out of synch, at times being almost unaware of each other. It's almost as if the question of "Just because you can do a thing, should you?" has been answered a very vocal "YES!" without really understanding the question.
I think we've gotten to the point where we create things without really understanding their impact on our societies and cultures. Like virus writers, we harness what creativity we possess and bring something to life, then drop it on a system just to watch the reaction. In times where the technology and society were less disconnected, such things happened probably with the same pace that they do today - I don't think people are any more creative today than they were fifty years ago. But these bursts of creativity today, thanks to our connectedness, have more destructive potential.
By ignoring this gap between technology and our understanding of it, I think we risk two things: the less-evident benefits of that technology, and its equivalent desctructive potential. Let's face it - global society isn't very good at picking up on the subtle. We're inundated with the obvious to the point where nuances are left to/.-like conversations and the world of academia where every aspect of a thing is chewed until the flavor's gone. That risk, though, is reduced through the process of evolution; eventually someone somewhere puts "the sled on a round boulder", and that technology, missed the first go-round, gets used in a new and helpful way.
The more prevalent risk of the two I mentioned is the destructive potential. This conversation started out about how college/university has changed with the advent of the PC. Fast forward, same nephew as paragraph 1, now in school at an eastern North Carolina university. He's smart, but takes the technology that a lot of us in our 40's would've killed to have at our disposal, and what does he do with it? Well, he's churned out a few Half-Life mods, chats with his friends via Trillian rather than meeting them in person (even when they're in the same dorm), and probably has more MP3s than he could ever listen to. I won't even speculate on his pr0n collection - that territory's too disturbing to venture into.
The point being that he has access to some of the most potentially helpful tools at his disposal, but he doesn't really have any idea what to do with them except entertain himself to the point of flunking out. Sadly, he's not alone, according to my sisters and friends with high-school and college-aged kids.
As for predictions and outcomes, the only thing I can say is that there is a great potential for our society to become very much like those kids: aimless, yet armed with an ever-larger stack of toys. Being more optimist than pessimist, though, I'd also mention that out of that gray world there would probably be a few visionaries who would see ways to dig themselves out of it, possessing more foresight than I do.
I'm a firm believer in the long-term evolution of society. As disconnected as we seem today, I think there are a number of us who seek out both virtual and physical communities - maybe that's the answer. Physical communities anchor us, giving us an understanding of our neighbors and their concerns and struggles, and the direct impact of technology on their lives. Virtual communities, then, can inspire us to keep creating with a clearer purpose.
I'm convinced that one of the problems we have is that we haven't changed fast enough to keep up with the r/evolutions in technology. When you mention "we have so much wisdom available and hardly any of it is going to be touched", I think it speaks loudly to that issue. I don't find that a pessimistic view, rather it's another in the many warning bells going off we should be listening to, but seldom do.
After buying this on a lark in the DVD Bargain Bin, I kept looking at the actor portraying Wong Kei-Ying, thinking, "I know that guy!" I'd just seen him the week before in Blade II as "Iceman". Let's hope he makes more features in future.
Slashdot Mirror
That being the case, Win4Lin gives us an out, although you're spot on that Win98 support is dwindling. Maybe Win4Lin and similar emulators/software bridges will give users like me an offramp from Windows upgrades in future? I'd like to think so.
One aspect of this that wasn't mentioned in the article - is the NASD worried about chat sent to SMS-enabled phones they issue to brokers/workers? They seem to be pretty strong on desktop chat clients, but brokers looking for a way to chat without logging could always encourage clients to go mobile to get around it.
My suggestion would be to get with your Project Lead and Technical Lead, and ask them to put together a brief comparison of a) work under "normal" conditions and b) work under "extreme" conditions, and put it in terms of money.
Here's an example. Your PM estimates that the project will take ~5000 workhours to complete. Under normal circumstances (no overtime compensation, healthcare costs held constant, normal quality processes enforced, et al.) s/he estimates the job would cost $X.
Then, s/he factors in a few things, and re-calculates costs under the extreme circumstances: overtime savings (how much did the company SAVE by not paying OT, healthcare cost increase (stressed people stay sicker = stay out longer), cost of quality degradation (more bugs = more time/money to fix in future). So your PM figures out that the job under the extreme conditions actually costs $X + Y.
Now the PM/Tech Lead take this set of numbers to the person who agreed to the deal in the first place AS WELL AS the Finance people, and asks them the reason the company lost $Y in potential revenues...just a thought.
The entire SCO/IBM saga seems like it was written by an amateur scriptwriter. Was SCO's whole idea to cast this as "Open Source vs. The Big Boys"?
After reading a lot of the source material from /. and other sites, it just made me start wondering if someone at SCO thought the Open Source community would jump on their bandwagon in some way, but things went terribly wrong (i.e. Open Source advocates saw them as more threat than friend).
I'm not so naive to think IBM a steadfast friend of Open Source - they and all for-profit companies are out to make money, and they believe Linux can help them do that. It just strikes me as ironic that a former OS-directed company cast themselves in the role of villain, and the corporate giant would be seen by many as the hero in this case.
Ah, sweet irony, "...like goldy and bronzy..."
The part Gates grasps really well is that such a house with all its 'wiredness' will give him the opportunity to sell marketing space to others. Brilliant as bu$ine$$ strategies go. What he seems to miss, though, is that there are a lot of people who consider their homes a refuge from that "adbot" world. Frankly, I don't want to be marketed to 24/7, and will not live in a home that isn't safe from pop-up ads on my microwave for Swanson dinners et al. I'm selective about what marketing channels I allow in my home, and I'm far from ready to relinquish that control, especially to a monopolistic company like Microsoft.
For me it started as a vague feeling about a decade ago. It was a simple thing that triggered the thought, really. I gave my then 10 year old nephew a book he wanted on simple programming for Christmas, and in less than 48 hours, he devoured it. It was amazing how quickly he grasped the concepts, but when he tried to articulate what he'd learned to my sister, you could see a real disconnection. For him, the future would be shell scripts, hacks and the Internet.
Lately, though, those vague feelings have solidified into more disquieting and concrete issues of a society and a level of technology being out of synch, at times being almost unaware of each other. It's almost as if the question of "Just because you can do a thing, should you?" has been answered a very vocal "YES!" without really understanding the question.
I think we've gotten to the point where we create things without really understanding their impact on our societies and cultures. Like virus writers, we harness what creativity we possess and bring something to life, then drop it on a system just to watch the reaction. In times where the technology and society were less disconnected, such things happened probably with the same pace that they do today - I don't think people are any more creative today than they were fifty years ago. But these bursts of creativity today, thanks to our connectedness, have more destructive potential.
By ignoring this gap between technology and our understanding of it, I think we risk two things: the less-evident benefits of that technology, and its equivalent desctructive potential. Let's face it - global society isn't very good at picking up on the subtle. We're inundated with the obvious to the point where nuances are left to /.-like conversations and the world of academia where every aspect of a thing is chewed until the flavor's gone. That risk, though, is reduced through the process of evolution; eventually someone somewhere puts "the sled on a round boulder", and that technology, missed the first go-round, gets used in a new and helpful way.
The more prevalent risk of the two I mentioned is the destructive potential. This conversation started out about how college/university has changed with the advent of the PC. Fast forward, same nephew as paragraph 1, now in school at an eastern North Carolina university. He's smart, but takes the technology that a lot of us in our 40's would've killed to have at our disposal, and what does he do with it? Well, he's churned out a few Half-Life mods, chats with his friends via Trillian rather than meeting them in person (even when they're in the same dorm), and probably has more MP3s than he could ever listen to. I won't even speculate on his pr0n collection - that territory's too disturbing to venture into.
The point being that he has access to some of the most potentially helpful tools at his disposal, but he doesn't really have any idea what to do with them except entertain himself to the point of flunking out. Sadly, he's not alone, according to my sisters and friends with high-school and college-aged kids.
As for predictions and outcomes, the only thing I can say is that there is a great potential for our society to become very much like those kids: aimless, yet armed with an ever-larger stack of toys. Being more optimist than pessimist, though, I'd also mention that out of that gray world there would probably be a few visionaries who would see ways to dig themselves out of it, possessing more foresight than I do.
I'm a firm believer in the long-term evolution of society. As disconnected as we seem today, I think there are a number of us who seek out both virtual and physical communities - maybe that's the answer. Physical communities anchor us, giving us an understanding of our neighbors and their concerns and struggles, and the direct impact of technology on their lives. Virtual communities, then, can inspire us to keep creating with a clearer purpose.
My apologies for running on so long!
I'm convinced that one of the problems we have is that we haven't changed fast enough to keep up with the r/evolutions in technology. When you mention "we have so much wisdom available and hardly any of it is going to be touched", I think it speaks loudly to that issue. I don't find that a pessimistic view, rather it's another in the many warning bells going off we should be listening to, but seldom do.
Ooop...should be 'Snowman'...it's late...
After buying this on a lark in the DVD Bargain Bin, I kept looking at the actor portraying Wong Kei-Ying, thinking, "I know that guy!" I'd just seen him the week before in Blade II as "Iceman". Let's hope he makes more features in future.
Lair of the White Worm Alternately funny and creepy, we used to have this as a midnight feature on campus every Halloween
Year of the Dragon Interesting, the clash between Asian and Western cultures, and John Lone does great work
Angel Heart This film has incredible atmosphere
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown Even compared to such classics as The Philadelphia Story and other classic screwball comedies, this one tops them all IMHO