Bell Labs used to make stuff that was truly excellent, so I have to disagree with you on that. Most of modern electrical engineering is based on principles developed or derived from subjects they pioneered.
The propaganda started about 25 years ago, around the time the illegal monopoly got what was coming to it. That I agree with.
I know blaming executives is in vogue, but I've worked with the ones in question. The level of corruption (and derived confusion) in that company is epic. I have first hand experiences with how they operate there. It's not trivial finger pointing, it's real. And it's entrenched. Now that I work elsewhere in a far more legit (although less imaginative) environment, I feel very vindicated in this opinion.
Having also recently left Bell Labs it's safe to say at least Bell Labs is dead. You can tell when they close 70% of the bathrooms and shut off every other hallway of lights. All the smart people left, or are semi-retired, most of them before I even joined. It did so many great things in the past century but the executives have a very short memory and sadly ignore any new ideas originating from their own R&D, instead relying on "wall stree sources" or ambiguous "industry trends" which fly in the face of common sense to most of us.
It's probably worthwile to use this latest defection to hold a belated funeral. Plan 9 is probably the last semi-useful project we'll see from that place. I'm also not real sure that Google is the future, so far they're short on product and long on ambiance. Research is fine but unless it's funded by academic sources you gotta have a product too. Ultimately that's what did Bell Labs in.
Bah it'll probably cost so much that latency will actually work in your favor. If they charge $1/byte, and it takes 6000ms round trip, you'll at least be able to make the flight on a single credit card.
I didn't see the value of arguing this further until it was announced, but now with Intel chipsets their $1000 Mac will either a) make more per box or b) cost $750, probably a bit of both. The argument was not whether a Mac exists at that pricepoint, but simply the sales volumes behind PCs will allow Apple to build cheaper hardware.
The advantage they will have over Dell however is not inhereiting all the backwards compatibibility that comes in PCs. This means lower R&D costs, higher "quality" (in terms of how customers perceive the product, not because Wintel hardware is of lower quality, I assure you it is not). And if their software monkeys are doing what I think they are doing, they will also be able to leverage Windows software at native speed (I can only imagine this is at least half of why they waited so long).
Dell on the other hand is going to have to continue to do exhaustive and expensive testing on every single backwards compatible feature in the system (of which there are many), have to pay for extra components to support that, and has to suffer the confusion of Microsoft right now.
It makes sense and something good may come out of this for customers of either product.
Well around here managers are held to the same standard as their subordinates, and it's pretty uniform across the company. Hence if my manager gets cagey and compels his employees to do one on one's, he'd probably be distrusted and be on a limb.
I think also different types of work have different rules. I'm mostly familiar with engineering R&D situations. Being "accountable" means schedule deadlines, not theft or funny business. People can get stuck being "accountable" for something they promised that is delayed for some reason outside of their control. The question of "how long will it take to do " is never known with any accuracy. Unfortunately managers from different types of businesses try to apply their same thought processes to this and cause all kinds of idiocy. The guy who gives the lowest common denominator answer consistently ends up looking real good (because he's never late!), even though he's probably screwing off most of the time.
Your decision is easy, Intel people have debated on it for years. If you want a mainstream OS with plenty of shrink wrap software, you'll put on OS-X (or Windows, but... no don't do that).
If you want customization, you use Linux. You sound like someone who'd really rather use Linux but who somehow didn't like x86 hardware. You don't like the OS X GUI, you write your own apps, I guess I'm not sure how OS-X is a good choice for you.
I can't imagine most mainstream Mac users even know what for(int *p=0;;*(p++)=0) does. They'll just have to buy some new software or run this Rosetta thing.
For us MS haters who also hate Apple, I think this is great. Finally MS has a real competitor, and one who I'd personally rather choose.
I would still not fume too much, any time a CEO says something about "1-3 years" I think he's not serious. This could just be a ploy for him to press IBM/Freescale into cheaper chips or some feature he wants.
I'm not sure it really takes away excuses. I find it's people who are really trying hard who get hurt by this more than the lazy "Wally" types. They will commit to the most ambitious deadline they think they can achieve, and sometimes fall short. I'd rather work this way myself, but it's more of a corporate culture issue.
People who make a job of being lazy tend to learn how to do it really well, there's a fierce Darwinian selection process to it. Those that can't evade work well, don't stick around. I would venture to say there is no system now or in the future which will adequately police a skilled wanker.
Let's not forget the chant of the manager "Get it in email". In some companies email is also used for the Wheel of Blame, everyones favorite management technique.
Do not talk to someone on the phone. Do not talk to him face to face. Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow). Ask questions and expect answers in email, or do it in meetings with witnesses. Leave a paper trail and keep it documented.
This sounds like cynicism, I think it is, but it's not mine. This is how many corporations appear to "work". Email is the ultimate accountability tool.
In my experience engineers only want promotions for the $$$ attached to them, not responsibility. There are good reasons to leave Blizzard in spite of WoWs success, all relate to yearly take home and how your salary has grown over the past 5 years. Given the economy has sucked and is getting better, now is a good time for people to make job changes. If you got hired 2 years ago to do WoW, you probably took it up the rear. We may see lots of shift in the next couple years as a result from MANY companies.
This would not be necessary if companies paid employee's what they are worth, but then, according to our stockholder overlords, you may be paying a few people more than they'd settle for.
True, but that doesn't make his point any less valid. Mom's kill over whose daughter made the slu...I mean cheerleading team. Parents kill over freaking hockey games. Lunatics bomb abortion clinics because they *think* that a god they declare to love, whose opinion of murder is clearly documented, wants such people destroyed. I could go on, and on. The number of STUPID reasons people find to hate each other is bounded only by population size. This list doesn't even include maybe valid fights over resource distribution (.e. food, water, oil, etc.).
Maybe the right answer is for the developer to find a different way of partitioning the competition...it can't be that hard.
I'm not a strong believer that bringing people together is always a good thing. Some people need to be isolated for our own good.
Well I'd notice if they charged me a membership fee, and they have not. I'd notice if they dropped me, and they have not. No I don't read all the paper every time my card changes carriers, but no I can't say anything has happened that's pissed me off. Using autopay I can avoid late fees, and with some discipline I manage to send an exact check out once a month.
So that's "as far as I can see". There are so many cards, by so many providers, I'm really not afraid of one biting me. I'll go to his competitor in 5-7 business days (i.e. the amount of time it takes to get a new card).
How do they do that? As far as I can see they don't charge me extra for it. They make money on each transaction, and I use my credit card instead of cash or check. The only trick is I pay it off every month.
Yes, stores who take credit cards tend to have somewhat higher prices as a result, but I don't know of many stores even in NYC (which used to be "cash only, no taxes") that don't take them anymore. I think the drop in muggings is largely due to the fact that there's no excuse for carrying more than $100 in cash on your body.
Does setting up any sort of firewall (be in incoming or outgoing) count as "selection of material"?
Otherwise, although IANAL, most ISPs I've dealt with seem to comply with this law (as far as I know), although part 10 is a bit dubious. Does compliance mean handing over everything immediately when someone's lawyer blinks at them, or does it mean they have a chance to refuse turning over information if the request is illegal or otherwise invalid through otherwise legal means?
Part 7 would seem to be the catch, but it seems very vague and toothless. It'd be hard to argue such technical measures exist. The fact that this is in the law at all is an atrocity, but it's at least benign for the moment.
Artists have to feed their families, as we all do. We should at all times endeavor to reward our greatest minds, not doom them to poverty. How much they deserve is the only discussion we should be having. I don't agree with the price fixing model we have today, and I think piracy is a natural rebellion against it.
Copying protected works is a crime in most parts of the world. It was made wrong by general consensus in order to protect the works of talented people and allow these people to keep doing what they do best. I believe, whether you do or not, that this is a good idea. What I do NOT believe is that these people are getting what is owed to them, nor that they will ever do so as long as groups like the RIAA exist. Further, the price tactics used by these media companies, and their legal strongarming, do not encourage the type of creativity we need.
People create for many reasons, but those who have exceptional talent should be able to support themselves with that talent. I'm not sure any of our great scientific or artistic minds would have succeeded if they had to spend their entire day wage slaving at the equivalent of McDonalds. Historically we've relied on people who are already either relatively wealty or who are sponsored by the wealthy to produce our more profound assets.
Not really, if everyone stole music online they'd go out of business. It really is stealing and it really is hurting them, although not nearly as much as they claim.
The only reason I personally may not find piracy to be evil is that the content owners blatantly abuse the monopoly the government gave them for the benefit of the country. There is no inherent moral law about copyrights, its a law we all agree to live by because it theoretically benefits all of us.
If there is no financial incentive to create new works, there will be very little new work. At the same time content owners want to charge an arm and a leg for their stuff, restrict when/how/where you can use it, and try to charge you every time you instance their product. It's no surprise that the average person finds other avenues to get their content.
Prison time is only likely going to be given to those hosting huge sites like this. Individuals doing this one at a time (a billion times) are not going to be targets of federal investigations, there isn't enough money in the world to do it.
For many of us the installed font is unfortunately Times New Illegible. Some of us haven't used Cellulose WordPad in so long that we also get Hand Cramp exceptions even on small documents.
Games can be franchises too...Warcraft, Doom, Quake, etc.
I just think games were better when they were simple enough for one or two developers to make who actually had both a vested interest in the end product, and also cared about it. The more people involved with making something, the less people really care about it.
I believe you that to write a new BIOS you need to know not only "deep magic" about your hardware, but also some things about the specific implementation on the motherboard. Things like what data rates has the main memory bus been qualified for, the fsb, pci etc. What happens to the eye as you increase frequency, what are the clock margins. Then you have to know what registers on the various ASICs to go toy with. These are things overclockers particularly like to play with and often "work", but have subtle implications (which gamers usually don't give a rip about). Us motherboard designers usually wouldn't stake our jobs on how well they work.
I do not think any of these things are part of "PC Architecture", they're specific to particular implementations that support PC Architecture. PC Architecture as another poster said does not say anything about a front side bus, or voltage regulators therein.
Anyway, Apple by virtue of being a monopoly can use x86 hardware and still keep their margins. Instead of selling a $2500 computer for $3000, they can now sell a $500 for $1000, and lure more people to buy it. It's not really clear to me that the pentium 4 could not support PowerPC instructions. All we really know is that it does break down x86 instructions into simpler micro-operations...perhaps with the right volumes it could translate PowerPC instructions (which many have speculated are similar to it's native format anyhow?)
Apple's growth is bottlenecked by expensive hardware, what if they could "play in the mud with Dell" on their own terms? Probably they're just abusing their PowerPC vendors for better pricing, but you never know.
Being married to a Chinese woman I assure you this is not true. Sarcasm is alive and well in China. Your instructions about use of sarcasm may have been given for your own best interests, but not because the concept does not exist.
If you're spending your time trying to understand what someone is saying you sometimes don't also catch the queue that he's being sarcastic. Similarly, at least speaking chinese, you have to be careful with how you change your inflections. "Our" sarcasm, which usually relies on emphasizing or changing the inflection of certain words may indeed not translate. However they seem to get along just fine.
I believe my wife in fact communicated to her mother last night she was pregnant with three twins and was doing her best to produce them on time for her mothers birthday. None of these things are in any way true, or frankly I'd shoot myself. Somehow her mother picked up on the joke and commenced with the usual nagging.
Clearly not, careful observers would note that both our elections and our candidates for elections are clearly the product of great sarcasm.
"Yes, put JUNIOR up there, he'd be a GREAT president!"
"Hey, what the country will vote for is a Massachusetts democrat, Dukakis did great after all!".
The problem is that such comments are taken literally by the bodies responsible for choosing candidates. I think perhaps our political parties are brain damaged, but then I'm being redundant.
Slashdot Mirror
That's about right. Unix was the last worthwhile product from Bell Labs.
Bell Labs used to make stuff that was truly excellent, so I have to disagree with you on that. Most of modern electrical engineering is based on principles developed or derived from subjects they pioneered.
The propaganda started about 25 years ago, around the time the illegal monopoly got what was coming to it. That I agree with.
I know blaming executives is in vogue, but I've worked with the ones in question. The level of corruption (and derived confusion) in that company is epic. I have first hand experiences with how they operate there. It's not trivial finger pointing, it's real. And it's entrenched. Now that I work elsewhere in a far more legit (although less imaginative) environment, I feel very vindicated in this opinion.
Having also recently left Bell Labs it's safe to say at least Bell Labs is dead. You can tell when they close 70% of the bathrooms and shut off every other hallway of lights. All the smart people left, or are semi-retired, most of them before I even joined. It did so many great things in the past century but the executives have a very short memory and sadly ignore any new ideas originating from their own R&D, instead relying on "wall stree sources" or ambiguous "industry trends" which fly in the face of common sense to most of us.
It's probably worthwile to use this latest defection to hold a belated funeral. Plan 9 is probably the last semi-useful project we'll see from that place. I'm also not real sure that Google is the future, so far they're short on product and long on ambiance. Research is fine but unless it's funded by academic sources you gotta have a product too. Ultimately that's what did Bell Labs in.
Bah it'll probably cost so much that latency will actually work in your favor. If they charge $1/byte, and it takes 6000ms round trip, you'll at least be able to make the flight on a single credit card.
I didn't see the value of arguing this further until it was announced, but now with Intel chipsets their $1000 Mac will either a) make more per box or b) cost $750, probably a bit of both. The argument was not whether a Mac exists at that pricepoint, but simply the sales volumes behind PCs will allow Apple to build cheaper hardware.
The advantage they will have over Dell however is not inhereiting all the backwards compatibibility that comes in PCs. This means lower R&D costs, higher "quality" (in terms of how customers perceive the product, not because Wintel hardware is of lower quality, I assure you it is not). And if their software monkeys are doing what I think they are doing, they will also be able to leverage Windows software at native speed (I can only imagine this is at least half of why they waited so long).
Dell on the other hand is going to have to continue to do exhaustive and expensive testing on every single backwards compatible feature in the system (of which there are many), have to pay for extra components to support that, and has to suffer the confusion of Microsoft right now.
It makes sense and something good may come out of this for customers of either product.
Well around here managers are held to the same standard as their subordinates, and it's pretty uniform across the company. Hence if my manager gets cagey and compels his employees to do one on one's, he'd probably be distrusted and be on a limb.
I think also different types of work have different rules. I'm mostly familiar with engineering R&D situations. Being "accountable" means schedule deadlines, not theft or funny business. People can get stuck being "accountable" for something they promised that is delayed for some reason outside of their control. The question of "how long will it take to do " is never known with any accuracy. Unfortunately managers from different types of businesses try to apply their same thought processes to this and cause all kinds of idiocy. The guy who gives the lowest common denominator answer consistently ends up looking real good (because he's never late!), even though he's probably screwing off most of the time.
Your decision is easy, Intel people have debated on it for years. If you want a mainstream OS with plenty of shrink wrap software, you'll put on OS-X (or Windows, but ... no don't do that).
If you want customization, you use Linux. You sound like someone who'd really rather use Linux but who somehow didn't like x86 hardware. You don't like the OS X GUI, you write your own apps, I guess I'm not sure how OS-X is a good choice for you.
I can't imagine most mainstream Mac users even know what for(int *p=0;;*(p++)=0) does. They'll just have to buy some new software or run this Rosetta thing.
For us MS haters who also hate Apple, I think this is great. Finally MS has a real competitor, and one who I'd personally rather choose.
I would still not fume too much, any time a CEO says something about "1-3 years" I think he's not serious. This could just be a ploy for him to press IBM/Freescale into cheaper chips or some feature he wants.
I'm not sure it really takes away excuses. I find it's people who are really trying hard who get hurt by this more than the lazy "Wally" types. They will commit to the most ambitious deadline they think they can achieve, and sometimes fall short. I'd rather work this way myself, but it's more of a corporate culture issue.
People who make a job of being lazy tend to learn how to do it really well, there's a fierce Darwinian selection process to it. Those that can't evade work well, don't stick around. I would venture to say there is no system now or in the future which will adequately police a skilled wanker.
Let's not forget the chant of the manager "Get it in email". In some companies email is also used for the Wheel of Blame, everyones favorite management technique.
Do not talk to someone on the phone. Do not talk to him face to face. Do not IM him (and hey, what IT department hasn't locked IM along with everything else down anyhow). Ask questions and expect answers in email, or do it in meetings with witnesses. Leave a paper trail and keep it documented.
This sounds like cynicism, I think it is, but it's not mine. This is how many corporations appear to "work". Email is the ultimate accountability tool.
In my experience engineers only want promotions for the $$$ attached to them, not responsibility. There are good reasons to leave Blizzard in spite of WoWs success, all relate to yearly take home and how your salary has grown over the past 5 years. Given the economy has sucked and is getting better, now is a good time for people to make job changes. If you got hired 2 years ago to do WoW, you probably took it up the rear. We may see lots of shift in the next couple years as a result from MANY companies.
This would not be necessary if companies paid employee's what they are worth, but then, according to our stockholder overlords, you may be paying a few people more than they'd settle for.
True, but that doesn't make his point any less valid. Mom's kill over whose daughter made the slu...I mean cheerleading team. Parents kill over freaking hockey games. Lunatics bomb abortion clinics because they *think* that a god they declare to love, whose opinion of murder is clearly documented, wants such people destroyed. I could go on, and on. The number of STUPID reasons people find to hate each other is bounded only by population size. This list doesn't even include maybe valid fights over resource distribution (.e. food, water, oil, etc.).
Maybe the right answer is for the developer to find a different way of partitioning the competition...it can't be that hard.
I'm not a strong believer that bringing people together is always a good thing. Some people need to be isolated for our own good.
Well I'd notice if they charged me a membership fee, and they have not. I'd notice if they dropped me, and they have not. No I don't read all the paper every time my card changes carriers, but no I can't say anything has happened that's pissed me off. Using autopay I can avoid late fees, and with some discipline I manage to send an exact check out once a month.
So that's "as far as I can see". There are so many cards, by so many providers, I'm really not afraid of one biting me. I'll go to his competitor in 5-7 business days (i.e. the amount of time it takes to get a new card).
How do they do that? As far as I can see they don't charge me extra for it. They make money on each transaction, and I use my credit card instead of cash or check. The only trick is I pay it off every month. Yes, stores who take credit cards tend to have somewhat higher prices as a result, but I don't know of many stores even in NYC (which used to be "cash only, no taxes") that don't take them anymore. I think the drop in muggings is largely due to the fact that there's no excuse for carrying more than $100 in cash on your body.
A good counterscheme then should be for people to publish methods of achieve these "revisit" criteria without actually being good customers.
Oh but then I think online retailers would scream bloody murder.
Does setting up any sort of firewall (be in incoming or outgoing) count as "selection of material"?
Otherwise, although IANAL, most ISPs I've dealt with seem to comply with this law (as far as I know), although part 10 is a bit dubious. Does compliance mean handing over everything immediately when someone's lawyer blinks at them, or does it mean they have a chance to refuse turning over information if the request is illegal or otherwise invalid through otherwise legal means?
Part 7 would seem to be the catch, but it seems very vague and toothless. It'd be hard to argue such technical measures exist. The fact that this is in the law at all is an atrocity, but it's at least benign for the moment.
Hmm I don't know about Six, but I'd like to try my cylon detector probe on Boomer.
Spork is actually the trademark name for the device you're referring to. Sorta like most people call "facial tissues" Kleenex.
Artists have to feed their families, as we all do. We should at all times endeavor to reward our greatest minds, not doom them to poverty. How much they deserve is the only discussion we should be having. I don't agree with the price fixing model we have today, and I think piracy is a natural rebellion against it.
Copying protected works is a crime in most parts of the world. It was made wrong by general consensus in order to protect the works of talented people and allow these people to keep doing what they do best. I believe, whether you do or not, that this is a good idea. What I do NOT believe is that these people are getting what is owed to them, nor that they will ever do so as long as groups like the RIAA exist. Further, the price tactics used by these media companies, and their legal strongarming, do not encourage the type of creativity we need.
People create for many reasons, but those who have exceptional talent should be able to support themselves with that talent. I'm not sure any of our great scientific or artistic minds would have succeeded if they had to spend their entire day wage slaving at the equivalent of McDonalds. Historically we've relied on people who are already either relatively wealty or who are sponsored by the wealthy to produce our more profound assets.
Not really, if everyone stole music online they'd go out of business. It really is stealing and it really is hurting them, although not nearly as much as they claim.
The only reason I personally may not find piracy to be evil is that the content owners blatantly abuse the monopoly the government gave them for the benefit of the country. There is no inherent moral law about copyrights, its a law we all agree to live by because it theoretically benefits all of us.
If there is no financial incentive to create new works, there will be very little new work. At the same time content owners want to charge an arm and a leg for their stuff, restrict when/how/where you can use it, and try to charge you every time you instance their product. It's no surprise that the average person finds other avenues to get their content.
Prison time is only likely going to be given to those hosting huge sites like this. Individuals doing this one at a time (a billion times) are not going to be targets of federal investigations, there isn't enough money in the world to do it.
For many of us the installed font is unfortunately Times New Illegible. Some of us haven't used Cellulose WordPad in so long that we also get Hand Cramp exceptions even on small documents.
Games can be franchises too...Warcraft, Doom, Quake, etc.
I just think games were better when they were simple enough for one or two developers to make who actually had both a vested interest in the end product, and also cared about it. The more people involved with making something, the less people really care about it.
I believe you that to write a new BIOS you need to know not only "deep magic" about your hardware, but also some things about the specific implementation on the motherboard. Things like what data rates has the main memory bus been qualified for, the fsb, pci etc. What happens to the eye as you increase frequency, what are the clock margins. Then you have to know what registers on the various ASICs to go toy with. These are things overclockers particularly like to play with and often "work", but have subtle implications (which gamers usually don't give a rip about). Us motherboard designers usually wouldn't stake our jobs on how well they work.
I do not think any of these things are part of "PC Architecture", they're specific to particular implementations that support PC Architecture. PC Architecture as another poster said does not say anything about a front side bus, or voltage regulators therein.
Anyway, Apple by virtue of being a monopoly can use x86 hardware and still keep their margins. Instead of selling a $2500 computer for $3000, they can now sell a $500 for $1000, and lure more people to buy it. It's not really clear to me that the pentium 4 could not support PowerPC instructions. All we really know is that it does break down x86 instructions into simpler micro-operations...perhaps with the right volumes it could translate PowerPC instructions (which many have speculated are similar to it's native format anyhow?)
Apple's growth is bottlenecked by expensive hardware, what if they could "play in the mud with Dell" on their own terms? Probably they're just abusing their PowerPC vendors for better pricing, but you never know.
Being married to a Chinese woman I assure you this is not true. Sarcasm is alive and well in China. Your instructions about use of sarcasm may have been given for your own best interests, but not because the concept does not exist.
If you're spending your time trying to understand what someone is saying you sometimes don't also catch the queue that he's being sarcastic. Similarly, at least speaking chinese, you have to be careful with how you change your inflections. "Our" sarcasm, which usually relies on emphasizing or changing the inflection of certain words may indeed not translate. However they seem to get along just fine.
I believe my wife in fact communicated to her mother last night she was pregnant with three twins and was doing her best to produce them on time for her mothers birthday. None of these things are in any way true, or frankly I'd shoot myself. Somehow her mother picked up on the joke and commenced with the usual nagging.
Clearly not, careful observers would note that both our elections and our candidates for elections are clearly the product of great sarcasm.
"Yes, put JUNIOR up there, he'd be a GREAT president!"
"Hey, what the country will vote for is a Massachusetts democrat, Dukakis did great after all!".
The problem is that such comments are taken literally by the bodies responsible for choosing candidates. I think perhaps our political parties are brain damaged, but then I'm being redundant.