It should require that all electronic machines produce a voter-verified paper trail.
Despite the inherent liberal bias of the "New York Times", the "Times" correctly asserts that all voting machines should leave a paper trail. Without a paper trail, we would have no way to verify the validity of the votes cast for a candidate. We also would have no way to identify tampering.
The issue with paper trails has been known in the academic community for a long time. Noted computer scientists from CMU, MIT, and other vanguards of American technology had signed a petition demanding that all voting machines leave a paper trial. The ACM finally officially committed to the cause recently (according to SlashDot). Now, the liberal print media has committed to the cause.
Perhaps, someone can explain why the Department of Defense is still allowing overseas military personnel to cast their ballots by Internet on servers without any paper trail.
At this point, the International Space Station (ISS) is just a photo opportunity for the press. The ISS is direly over budget, and with the current huge deficits in the American national budget, many lawmakers want to cancel funding the boondoggle, which occasionally leaks oxygen. The Republicans have already stated that they plan to send Americans to Mars. With these twin developments, the ISS is heading toward imminent termination.
The only possible reason for keeping the ISS afloat is to provide an excuse for funding Russia's once stellar space program. Here funding means Americans funding the Russian space program.
Yet, there is no need for this nonsense. We can and should help the Russians in a much more substantial way. We should divide all our investments of money and technology away from China and into Eastern Europe and Russia. Both the Eastern Europeans and the Russians are committed to Westernization, and we have an interest in helping them.
By constrast, the Chinese (including the Taiwanese and the Hong Kongers) oppose Westernization.
Bigger Problem is Growth of Novel Germs
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here is a reputable article about the use of pig brain cells in human brains. There is always the problem of an immune system reaction, but the bigger problem is the development of super germs that cross the species barrier.
Re:Human neurons...
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Could we grow rat neurons into a human brain?
The answer is "yes".
Currently, one of the experimental treatments for Parkinson's disease is to insert brain cells from pigs into human brains. The patients have responded well, and the pig cells do thrive within the human brain.
Disturbing Experiment: Who is "I"?
on
Flying By Brain
·
· Score: 0, Troll
This experiment is disturbing. Clearly, the artificial brain has some sort of low level consciousness and can perform computation.
Is this brain the "identity" of the mouse from which the neurons were extracted? Alternatively, do the neurons remaining in the mouse constitute the "identity" of the mouse? Also, is the artifical brain now a separate and distinct identity that is separate from the identity defined by the neurons remaining in the mouse?
For the religiously inclined, "identity" here is essentially "the soul".
If we conducted a similar experiment with a human brain, would the artifical brain now be separate and distinct from the human victim who surrendered the brain cells for the artificial brain? Have we created 2 "souls"?
We need to ask these questions. We are Westerners, and we have a conscience. Neither Chinese nor Koreans would ask such questions; the first cloned person will likely appear in Korea or China.
A laser on silicon essentially solves the wiring problem of traditional digital integrated circuits (ICs). Modern digital ICs consist mostly of wires; a small percentage of the silicon area is the transistors that perform the computation.
Two problems arise. Driving a signal from one end of the chip to the other end is very slow because the wires present a high RC load to the puny transistor. The other problem is simply routing the wires.
The laser solves the first problem because we can simply transmit a bit (0 or 1) by modulating the laser light. The bit will travel at the speed of light.
The laser also solves the second problem because there is no need to route the optical paths. The light from one laser can cross the path of light emanating from a second laser and can continue, unimpeded, to the detector intended for the first laser.
IBM differs from Sun Microsystems. The former has a traditional working environment, and most of the workers are Americans (since IBM traditionally resists hiring H-1Bs without a Ph.D.). The language of communication among these workers is English, and the workers are skilled at documentation since English is their first language. Whenever a team makes a change in the software, an engineer thoroughly documents the change in a paper (now PDF) document. The "negative" in this scenario is that the pace of change in AIX is slow. When you document each implementation of a change in AIX before proceeding to implementing the next change, you tend to slow the pace of changes. Accusations that upgrades to AIX are slow are accurate.
Nonetheless, the benefit is stability. Slow, methodical processes tend to result in reliable, stable products.
By contrast, at Sun Microsystem, more than 50% of the employees are current or former H-1Bs. There is no common language of communication. There is minimal documentation. Each employee rushes to the next implementation while the Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) manager breathes down her neck.
If you go back to old articles about SunOS when it was first upgraded to 64 bits (becoming Solaris), you will find plenty of articles describing the flaws and the lack of stability in the product. Over time, Sun removed enough of the bugs so that the product is about as stable as AIX. Yet, the customers who bought Solaris when it first appeared on the market paid the price of the mismanagement within Sun.
Similar comments apply to Microsoft. About 30% of its workforce is current or former H-1Bs. Look at how unstable MS-DOS and Windows 95/98 is.
IBM likely was the first to receive the UNIX certification because AIX is simply the most stable and reliable version of UNIX.
The first passengers of the VSS Enterprise should be all the surviving key actors of "Star Trek: The Original Series". Such an event would be a fitting tribute to the television show that inspired a generation of engineers and astrophysicists.
Further, such an event would be a great publicity stunt for Virgin, so Virgin should foot the bill for the inaugural voyage of the VSS Enterprise.
The clothing industry actually established something like this in the 1930's. My father worked in the garment district in Manhattan and he said it made a big difference.
The West has always been on the forefront of human rights and worker's rights. Ditto for the environment.
Check out the last study by the Silicon Valley Toxics coalition. The study evaluates each computer companies' commitment to the environment. The top-ranked companies were all companies based in Western countries (e.g. Japan and the USA) and run on Western principles.
In the study, Dell received a failing grade. That Dell is finally cleaning up its act is good news.
Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with water extracted from waste water. Consider mountain spring water that companies charge outrageous prices to sell. That water came from the snow that fell from the skies. That snow is frozen water from the clouds. The moisture in the clouds is water that evaporated from the ground. That water from the ground could have been anywhere -- including water in fecal matter, water in piss, etc.
The only problem that I can see is that the treatment process is run in a country like Singapore. It is not a Western nation and does not have the same quality standards that exist in the West: Japan, USA, Canada, etc.
Singapore is a Chinese society. I would not consume any food or drink exported from Singapore.
I, however, have no problem with Dasani, manufactured by CocaCola. Dasani is purified water from city sewage.
One futuristic but likely scenario is Korean/Chinese soldiers battling American national guardsmen in Los Angeles. When groups like the Korean-Americans refuse to assimilate, they become a problem.
In order to do a fair assessment of Russia, we must compare Russia against another state with a comparable standard of living. Let's bite the bullet and directly compare China and Russa.
The piracy rate in Russia is 87%. The rate in China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong) is 92%. The rate in Russia is lower than the rate in China; moreover, the Russians do not export the pirated software into the USA to compete against the original manufacturers of the software.
Clearly, piracy in Russia is a problem but is nowhere near as bad as piracy in China.
This article is the perfect reason why we are better off with the West having a lock on supercomputing. Having the best supercomputers means that we can have the best ability to defend ourselves from external hostilities: Islam, China, etc.
There is no equivalence between China and the West. The West should have the best computers and the best weapons. Western values (e.g. democracy, human rights, compassion, equality of women, etc.) are the finest human values in the world, and we have a vested interest in ensuring their survival -- and dominance. The hordes of immigrants fleeing to the USA (and the rest of the West) is a big clue.
On a side note, what percentage of the 100,000 entities in the battlefield simulation will be robots? The Department of Defense has been trying to increase the number of robotic/autonomous fighting vehicles in order to minimize the loss of human life on the battlefield.
Further, we must eventually ratchet up the number of entities to more than 10 million. The Chinese (including those in Taiwan province and Hong Kong) have a well known disregard for human life (e.g. the rape and murder of Tibetans). The Chinese would readily sacrifice 10,000,000 civilians (not merely soldiers) by using them as human blockades against American mechanized armor.
IBM has already proved that American technology is, at least, as good as Japanese technology despite all the moans and groans about how we have fallen behind Japan upon the introduction of the Earth Simulator. The good news is that the West (which includes the USA and Japan) have a lock on the most advanced computing technologies.
Right now, this SX-8 announcement is just a publicity stunt to generate some "shock and awe" in the small supercomputing community of national and commercial research labs.
Perhaps, the management of NEC should consider generating some "shock and awe" among the greater engineering community. I suggest that NEC donate computing time on an SX-8 to all the startups designing spaceships (e.g. SpaceShipOne). These startups are short on cash and cannot afford the kind of supercomputer that is needed for modeling the spaceships. Free time on a supercomputer would greatly assist these startups and would generate considerable shock and awe among engineers who daydream about what the predecessor of the M-5 computer could have been.
Apparently, we are gradually building all the technologies needed to accomplish intergalactic space travel. The short list is matter-antimatter energy (which is undergoing top secret research in the American government) and high-performance computers (like the SX-8, which will model the spacecraft and possibly serve as the on-board computer).
"Space...the final frontier. These are the voyages of the startship..."
Programmers will always be needed -- for the same reason that mechanical engineers will always be needed in the auto industry.
The automobile is a mature technology. If everyone would settle for one styling of car, then we could drive the price of the car so low that the profit margin is barely 1 penny. There would be no need to change the metal stampers. There would be no need to modify anything in the car. All 200 million adults in the USA would drive the exact same 4-door sedan. The economies of scale for the exact same car would be enormous. The cost could probably be driven down to $5000 per vehicle.
Yet, this scenario will never materialize, for people's tastes change constantly. This constant change requires new metal stamps and the ensuing alterations to the engine and powertrain. So, mechanical engineers will always have work.
Now, consider the word processor. It is a mature technology. There is nothing fundamentally new on the horizon. Yet, we still need programmers to change the look and feel as the tastes of the customer change.
Further, one payroll processing system does not meet the styling tastes of all the corporate customers. Each company will want programmers to tailor the payroll system so that it just suits the tastes of the company's management. No two companies will have the same tastes.
People are different, and these differences change eternally. Rod Stewart sung "The First Cut Hurts the Deepest". Now, Sheryl Crow sings "The First Cut Hurts the Deepest". The songs are identical, but the delivery is different. The new style of delivery now addresses the tastes of the new generation of punks in high school.
"...do you think I'm sexy, and you want my body....come on sugar, tell me so!" -- Rod Steward, 1977.
Rexx combines the ease (in learning) of BASIC and the power of Perl.
IBM is a traditional American company, and back in the old days, IBM managers hired people who were smart and were willing to work[1]. There are many instances of data entry clerks becoming full fledged programmers and even project managers. Rexx, which was invented by an IBMer in the 1960s (?), is a perfect match for this kind of employee. Rexx is very easy to learn. It has no pointers or references (ala Perl). At the same time, Rexx has powerful facilities for string manipulation since most Rexx programs are string-oriented applications like processing queries for a database. Every installation of OS/2 comes with Rexx.
Rexx could actually have precluded the need for Perl if IBM had open sourced it 20 years ago.
By the way, the inventor of Rexx became an IBM fellow.
note
----
[1] IBM traditionally refuses to hire anyone without American citizenship. This rule was relaxed to allow the hiring of permanent residents. Nonetheless, as a matter of corporate policy, IBM managers generally do not hire people with an H-1B visa.
Are we entering voodoo economics again?
The value of a good (e.g. IBM p690) or service (e.g. labor) is principally determined by the market when the market is relatively free. The forces that determine the dollar value are incredibly complex, and there is no way for a supercomputer or a human being to model them accurately.
We can, to some extent, model the overall economy and predict economic growth, but such models are imprecise. Further, modeling the overall economy is easier than predicting the precise value of a particular good or service because the overall economy is a lumped parameter, the net result of a multitude of forces. Consider predicting the price of an individual stock versus predicting the price of the S&P 500. The latter is hard but roughly do-able; the former is impossible.
So, attempting to calculate the value of the Linux kernel is just another exercise in voodoo economics (tm).
If we really could calculate precisely the value of the Linux kernel, then the implications would be enormous. We could then calculate the true price of all goods and services in the USA. There would be no need for a market economy. The government could then control the economy in much the same fashion that Lenin proposed. The government could then give everyone a number representing each person's correct salary and, also, assign the correct price to everything. There would be no unemployment or recession.
Here is an assortment of some Slashdot articles about India?
1. GPS to coordinate the trains.
2. low-cost broadband into remote villages
In 1960, Japan was low-tech. It was just emerging out of a textile-based economy, yets its quality of life is much higher than the quality of life in India in 2004 (40 years later). Japan had no GPS to coordinate the trains, yet they were always (and still are) on time. Educational levels in Japan at that time were high. Kids in remote farming enclaves in Hokkaido learned algebra, physics, and chemistry.
The solution for India's problems is not found in hi-tech. Consider the fact that the ratio of male babies to female babies in India is 1.20. In Japan, the ratio in 1960 is 1.05, which is normal. Low-tech did not cause this lopsided ratio in India, and hence, high-tech will not fix the problem.
Look at India's huge investment in the space program and nuclear weapons. In 1950, Japan had almost no investment in such wasteful programs. The Japanese were committed to a program of emulating the West and engaging in practical enterprises to raise the standard of living as quickly as possible.
India is a failure because its culture is a failure.
When we think "robot", we invariably think "android": a mechanical device that appears like a human being and mimics some of its actions. We are fascinated by androids for the very same reason that we are fascinated by apes. They look like us.
The attraction for androids is only skin deep. Today's androids are just a mass of wires. Getting a robot to walk, shake hands, play chess, etc. is substantially different from a sentient machine.
Sentience impresses me, but a mechanical shaking hand does not.
FireFox and its ilk will continue to grow in marketshare. If (and it is a big "if") IBM will back FireFox in the same way that IBM has backed Linux, then FireFox could easily grab 60% of the browser market.
Until that day arrives, Micro$oft continues to dominate the browser market and owns 90% of it. Hence, AOL, like any other commercial company, will back the de facto standard. Since 90% of the market is Internet Explorer, most web page designers will build their pages to be compatible with Internet Explorer (IE). AOL has an economic motivation to use IE technology as the basis of the new AOL browser.
Similar reasoning applies for office applications. Most programmers prefer to write office applications for Windows instead of MacOS because Windows dominates the market.
Apple missed the boat... er... luxury superliner on that "one".
One fight that Micro$oft cannot win is the fight between open source and Micro$oft -- if a stable company backs any piece of open source software. In the particular case, we need a company like IBM to back FireFox in order to persuade commercial customers to use it. Commercial customers absolutely need to know that, if a flaw in FireFox is not addressed promptly and correctly by volunteer programmers, then IBM wil step into the picture and fix the problem immediately.
The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort.
In the case of the Netscape browser, Netscape was a commerical company and essentially cut its own jugular in funding Netscape development and support and giving it away for free, but where could Netscape get its money to grow? It tried branching into commercial Web servers, but there were too many competitors in that market. Netscape was headed for bankruptcy.
In the case of FireFox, there is no company for Micro$oft to crush. Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement. <applause>
Slashdot Mirror
Despite the inherent liberal bias of the "New York Times", the "Times" correctly asserts that all voting machines should leave a paper trail. Without a paper trail, we would have no way to verify the validity of the votes cast for a candidate. We also would have no way to identify tampering.
The issue with paper trails has been known in the academic community for a long time. Noted computer scientists from CMU, MIT, and other vanguards of American technology had signed a petition demanding that all voting machines leave a paper trial. The ACM finally officially committed to the cause recently (according to SlashDot). Now, the liberal print media has committed to the cause.
Perhaps, someone can explain why the Department of Defense is still allowing overseas military personnel to cast their ballots by Internet on servers without any paper trail.
The only possible reason for keeping the ISS afloat is to provide an excuse for funding Russia's once stellar space program. Here funding means Americans funding the Russian space program.
Yet, there is no need for this nonsense. We can and should help the Russians in a much more substantial way. We should divide all our investments of money and technology away from China and into Eastern Europe and Russia. Both the Eastern Europeans and the Russians are committed to Westernization, and we have an interest in helping them.
By constrast, the Chinese (including the Taiwanese and the Hong Kongers) oppose Westernization.
The answer is "yes".
Currently, one of the experimental treatments for Parkinson's disease is to insert brain cells from pigs into human brains. The patients have responded well, and the pig cells do thrive within the human brain.
Is this brain the "identity" of the mouse from which the neurons were extracted? Alternatively, do the neurons remaining in the mouse constitute the "identity" of the mouse? Also, is the artifical brain now a separate and distinct identity that is separate from the identity defined by the neurons remaining in the mouse?
For the religiously inclined, "identity" here is essentially "the soul".
If we conducted a similar experiment with a human brain, would the artifical brain now be separate and distinct from the human victim who surrendered the brain cells for the artificial brain? Have we created 2 "souls"?
We need to ask these questions. We are Westerners, and we have a conscience. Neither Chinese nor Koreans would ask such questions; the first cloned person will likely appear in Korea or China.
Two problems arise. Driving a signal from one end of the chip to the other end is very slow because the wires present a high RC load to the puny transistor. The other problem is simply routing the wires.
The laser solves the first problem because we can simply transmit a bit (0 or 1) by modulating the laser light. The bit will travel at the speed of light.
The laser also solves the second problem because there is no need to route the optical paths. The light from one laser can cross the path of light emanating from a second laser and can continue, unimpeded, to the detector intended for the first laser.
Nonetheless, the benefit is stability. Slow, methodical processes tend to result in reliable, stable products.
By contrast, at Sun Microsystem, more than 50% of the employees are current or former H-1Bs. There is no common language of communication. There is minimal documentation. Each employee rushes to the next implementation while the Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) manager breathes down her neck.
If you go back to old articles about SunOS when it was first upgraded to 64 bits (becoming Solaris), you will find plenty of articles describing the flaws and the lack of stability in the product. Over time, Sun removed enough of the bugs so that the product is about as stable as AIX. Yet, the customers who bought Solaris when it first appeared on the market paid the price of the mismanagement within Sun.
Similar comments apply to Microsoft. About 30% of its workforce is current or former H-1Bs. Look at how unstable MS-DOS and Windows 95/98 is.
IBM likely was the first to receive the UNIX certification because AIX is simply the most stable and reliable version of UNIX.
Further, such an event would be a great publicity stunt for Virgin, so Virgin should foot the bill for the inaugural voyage of the VSS Enterprise.
Thanks for the lead into my next comment. Next time, just use Yahoo Search to find the article.
Indeed, Chinese agents are enterin the USA from Mexico.
If you hate what is happening to our nation, the USA, then join me in writing the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
The West has always been on the forefront of human rights and worker's rights. Ditto for the environment.
Check out the last study by the Silicon Valley Toxics coalition. The study evaluates each computer companies' commitment to the environment. The top-ranked companies were all companies based in Western countries (e.g. Japan and the USA) and run on Western principles.
In the study, Dell received a failing grade. That Dell is finally cleaning up its act is good news.
Note that all the Korean and Chinese (including Taiwanese and Hong Kong) companies received failing grades. Interestingly, Korean and Chinese clothing factories in South America and Southeast Asia are notorious for abusing garment workers. Abuse includes beatings and rape.
The companies that treat garment workers best are American and Japanese.
If you hate the state of world affairs, join me in writing the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
The only problem that I can see is that the treatment process is run in a country like Singapore. It is not a Western nation and does not have the same quality standards that exist in the West: Japan, USA, Canada, etc.
Singapore is a Chinese society. I would not consume any food or drink exported from Singapore.
I, however, have no problem with Dasani, manufactured by CocaCola. Dasani is purified water from city sewage.
One futuristic but likely scenario is Korean/Chinese soldiers battling American national guardsmen in Los Angeles. When groups like the Korean-Americans refuse to assimilate, they become a problem.
The Chinese deliberately steal Western software, videos, and music, make millions of copies of such intellectual property, and then proceed to export the illicit goods into the American market. The pirated copies of, say, Windows XP compete directly against the real McCoy in the American market. The FBI have arrested numerous Chinese for pirating software, music, and videos.
The piracy rate in Russia is 87%. The rate in China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong) is 92%. The rate in Russia is lower than the rate in China; moreover, the Russians do not export the pirated software into the USA to compete against the original manufacturers of the software.
Clearly, piracy in Russia is a problem but is nowhere near as bad as piracy in China.
There is no equivalence between China and the West. The West should have the best computers and the best weapons. Western values (e.g. democracy, human rights, compassion, equality of women, etc.) are the finest human values in the world, and we have a vested interest in ensuring their survival -- and dominance. The hordes of immigrants fleeing to the USA (and the rest of the West) is a big clue.
On a side note, what percentage of the 100,000 entities in the battlefield simulation will be robots? The Department of Defense has been trying to increase the number of robotic/autonomous fighting vehicles in order to minimize the loss of human life on the battlefield.
Further, we must eventually ratchet up the number of entities to more than 10 million. The Chinese (including those in Taiwan province and Hong Kong) have a well known disregard for human life (e.g. the rape and murder of Tibetans). The Chinese would readily sacrifice 10,000,000 civilians (not merely soldiers) by using them as human blockades against American mechanized armor.
Right now, this SX-8 announcement is just a publicity stunt to generate some "shock and awe" in the small supercomputing community of national and commercial research labs.
Perhaps, the management of NEC should consider generating some "shock and awe" among the greater engineering community. I suggest that NEC donate computing time on an SX-8 to all the startups designing spaceships (e.g. SpaceShipOne). These startups are short on cash and cannot afford the kind of supercomputer that is needed for modeling the spaceships. Free time on a supercomputer would greatly assist these startups and would generate considerable shock and awe among engineers who daydream about what the predecessor of the M-5 computer could have been.
Apparently, we are gradually building all the technologies needed to accomplish intergalactic space travel. The short list is matter-antimatter energy (which is undergoing top secret research in the American government) and high-performance computers (like the SX-8, which will model the spacecraft and possibly serve as the on-board computer).
"Space...the final frontier. These are the voyages of the startship ..."
Let t1 = time to do task #1. Let t2 = time to do task #2. Let cxt = context switch time.
Doing the 2 tasks sequentially requires t1 + t2 units of time.
Doing the 2 tasks concurrently requires t1 + t2 + cxt.
"cxt" is the cost paid by the workers in being unable to concentrate because of constant switching between tasks.
The automobile is a mature technology. If everyone would settle for one styling of car, then we could drive the price of the car so low that the profit margin is barely 1 penny. There would be no need to change the metal stampers. There would be no need to modify anything in the car. All 200 million adults in the USA would drive the exact same 4-door sedan. The economies of scale for the exact same car would be enormous. The cost could probably be driven down to $5000 per vehicle.
Yet, this scenario will never materialize, for people's tastes change constantly. This constant change requires new metal stamps and the ensuing alterations to the engine and powertrain. So, mechanical engineers will always have work.
Now, consider the word processor. It is a mature technology. There is nothing fundamentally new on the horizon. Yet, we still need programmers to change the look and feel as the tastes of the customer change.
Further, one payroll processing system does not meet the styling tastes of all the corporate customers. Each company will want programmers to tailor the payroll system so that it just suits the tastes of the company's management. No two companies will have the same tastes.
People are different, and these differences change eternally. Rod Stewart sung "The First Cut Hurts the Deepest". Now, Sheryl Crow sings "The First Cut Hurts the Deepest". The songs are identical, but the delivery is different. The new style of delivery now addresses the tastes of the new generation of punks in high school.
"...do you think I'm sexy, and you want my body....come on sugar, tell me so!" -- Rod Steward, 1977.
IBM is a traditional American company, and back in the old days, IBM managers hired people who were smart and were willing to work[1]. There are many instances of data entry clerks becoming full fledged programmers and even project managers. Rexx, which was invented by an IBMer in the 1960s (?), is a perfect match for this kind of employee. Rexx is very easy to learn. It has no pointers or references (ala Perl). At the same time, Rexx has powerful facilities for string manipulation since most Rexx programs are string-oriented applications like processing queries for a database. Every installation of OS/2 comes with Rexx.
Rexx could actually have precluded the need for Perl if IBM had open sourced it 20 years ago.
By the way, the inventor of Rexx became an IBM fellow.
note
----
[1] IBM traditionally refuses to hire anyone without American citizenship. This rule was relaxed to allow the hiring of permanent residents. Nonetheless, as a matter of corporate policy, IBM managers generally do not hire people with an H-1B visa.
We can, to some extent, model the overall economy and predict economic growth, but such models are imprecise. Further, modeling the overall economy is easier than predicting the precise value of a particular good or service because the overall economy is a lumped parameter, the net result of a multitude of forces. Consider predicting the price of an individual stock versus predicting the price of the S&P 500. The latter is hard but roughly do-able; the former is impossible.
So, attempting to calculate the value of the Linux kernel is just another exercise in voodoo economics (tm).
If we really could calculate precisely the value of the Linux kernel, then the implications would be enormous. We could then calculate the true price of all goods and services in the USA. There would be no need for a market economy. The government could then control the economy in much the same fashion that Lenin proposed. The government could then give everyone a number representing each person's correct salary and, also, assign the correct price to everything. There would be no unemployment or recession.
Nirvana.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) is second-sourcing the iPod. So, if you buy an iPod, you get the combined support of 2 American companies: HP and Apple.
1. GPS to coordinate the trains.
2. low-cost broadband into remote villages
In 1960, Japan was low-tech. It was just emerging out of a textile-based economy, yets its quality of life is much higher than the quality of life in India in 2004 (40 years later). Japan had no GPS to coordinate the trains, yet they were always (and still are) on time. Educational levels in Japan at that time were high. Kids in remote farming enclaves in Hokkaido learned algebra, physics, and chemistry.
The solution for India's problems is not found in hi-tech. Consider the fact that the ratio of male babies to female babies in India is 1.20. In Japan, the ratio in 1960 is 1.05, which is normal. Low-tech did not cause this lopsided ratio in India, and hence, high-tech will not fix the problem.
Look at India's huge investment in the space program and nuclear weapons. In 1950, Japan had almost no investment in such wasteful programs. The Japanese were committed to a program of emulating the West and engaging in practical enterprises to raise the standard of living as quickly as possible.
India is a failure because its culture is a failure.
If you are committed to boycotting "Made in China" products to protest the brutalization of Tibetans, the black market for human organs (usually purchased by Taiwanese customers) in China, the millions of abortions targetting female fetuses, etc., then you will definitely want to buy the Targus backpacks.
The attraction for androids is only skin deep. Today's androids are just a mass of wires. Getting a robot to walk, shake hands, play chess, etc. is substantially different from a sentient machine.
Sentience impresses me, but a mechanical shaking hand does not.
Until that day arrives, Micro$oft continues to dominate the browser market and owns 90% of it. Hence, AOL, like any other commercial company, will back the de facto standard. Since 90% of the market is Internet Explorer, most web page designers will build their pages to be compatible with Internet Explorer (IE). AOL has an economic motivation to use IE technology as the basis of the new AOL browser.
Similar reasoning applies for office applications. Most programmers prefer to write office applications for Windows instead of MacOS because Windows dominates the market.
Apple missed the boat ... er ... luxury superliner on that "one".
The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort.
In the case of the Netscape browser, Netscape was a commerical company and essentially cut its own jugular in funding Netscape development and support and giving it away for free, but where could Netscape get its money to grow? It tried branching into commercial Web servers, but there were too many competitors in that market. Netscape was headed for bankruptcy.
In the case of FireFox, there is no company for Micro$oft to crush. Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement. <applause>