Somebody call a whaaaaaambulance. For God's sake, the only reason T-Mobile's service had any operating costs was because they were trying to charge customers money. When you give away wi-fi for free, as most places are doing now - and not just coffee houses - it costs virtually nothing. What, $400 for a cheap PC and wireless router that any 15 year old employee knows how to run backwards and forwards?
I hope the 'dropinthebucket' tag refers to your point, rather than cynically suggesting that LEDs and other SSL technologies wouldn't make a massive difference in energy consumption worldwide. They would.
And projecting 27 years out? I call BS on this whole thing as a PR stunt. Two possibilities: chest thumping, or paving the way for something already well into the works and nearing completion. In the case of the former, it would just be part of the ongoing campaign to drum up support for war funding using a combination of fear and flash-in-a-pan technobabble. In the case of the latter, these planes and missles either already exist or will within just a few years, in which case this is simply prep for future billing because until we admit we have something, we don't have to show it on the accounting books do we? And with deficit spending, that translates to not having to actually pay for it for 27 years. Hurray!
Re:I'm not impressed.
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
If you honestly think all poor people are bums and that all of your taxpayer dollars are being spent on pointless handouts to people who are hungry and not, say, on a pointless 2-trillion-dollar war and tax breaks for billion-dollar corporations, you need to wake up and join the rest of us here on Planet Earth.
And as someone who has lived and worked in developing countries for over 20 years and seen real poverty and desperation, I can tell you that your 'knowledge from experience' is worth precisely dick.
HOw long do you think it would take people to adopt this new standard once they find out they can no longer receive email from Yahoo or Hotmail addreses? About five seconds. This is a clear case of something these companies must just roll out by command decision instead of waiting for consensus.
Re:Then call me a sociopath.
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
I shouldn't have to concern myself with the poor
The prevalance of this sort of brazen attitude of entitlement to privilege, disavowment of responsibility, and calous disregard of fellow beings less fortunate than oneself is the reason why human civilization is little better or different now than when we were cavemen.
Well done. I'm sure you mother would be proud of you.
Re:You need to clarify your question
on
Ethics In IT
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· Score: 1
One of the key distinctions between so-called sociopaths and psychopaths is that sociopathic individuals often exhibit brain compartmentalization. This is the same sort of separation of brain function that, say, a fundamentalist muslim geophysicist exhibits: the ability to split conscious thought into two entirely different realms. So while the fundamentalist geophysicist can genuinely believe in his religion's claim that the Earth is only 4,000 yers old on the one hand, he can apply his rational mind to finding oil in rock strata tens of millions of years old.
Same deal with sociopaths: they can apply empathy and appropriate emotional responses to some people and situations while at other times those functions seem to be entirely absent. In many cultures through history, including some today, this has been a norm. Take slavery, for instance: a slave-owner can exhibit perfectly 'normal' compassion and empathy toward his family and still behave diabiolically toward a slave. And I'm not talking about race-based slavery. Throughout much of history slavery has had only a moderate corelation to race.
To bring it closer to home, every time you walk past a bum in the street and switch off your empathy only to switch it back home when you walk into your house with your family you are doing exactly what these sociopathic executives are doing: compartmentalizing your brain function and applying different standards to different people and situations. Where we set the limits on this behavior - where it becomes simply unacceptable to throw the switch - is entirely a function of cultural norms.
Rest assured, at some point in the future a society will look back and consider walking past a bum without a glance just as sociopathic as slavery and homophobia.
But I'm out about four hours of phone time, and one evening of no Windows computer. As I said to the tech support people - if I had just been dishonest and gotten a cracked version, I wouldn't have had those problems. Why they were insistent on punishing their legit customers, I don't know.
My time is worth $100/hour. Four hours of my time = $400. If it were me, that $400 expense would be charged back to Microsoft in the future in the form of pirated software.
You put your finger right on it, possibly unintentionally: design function is not boolean, whereas technical function is. Either your ethernet switches work or they don't. Either your servers are up or they aren't. And as you mentioned, either brain surgery is successful or it isn't. But design, like a meal - or any form of art, for that matter - can still be digestable even if it isn't in good taste.
However, while a brain surgeon may stand a better chance of cooking a palatable meal than a chef has of performing acceptable brain surgery, it does not follow that a brain surgeon stands any higher chance of producing a culinary masterpiece. The clear line of success/failure in technical fields can make them seem more demanding, but this is only an illusion created by the fact that there is no corresponding dividing line in the arts, but rather a broad, grey area of success, the extreme high-end of which is every bit as demanding as any technical field.
Pitabred pretty much said it all for me. The only point I would add is that the primary reason, in my opinion, that movies and TV have not YET suffered the same piracy as music is that they contain much larger amounts of data. If 100MB/s fiber connections were piped to every household with $40/mo broadband, the state of the DVD market would be very different - it would much more closely match the state of the music market.
Seems like what Torvald is saying is that the OS should be distinct from the interface - GUI or otherwise. That makes good sense in principle, but whether that's a practical marketing goal or not is questionable.
Now imagine if all the groups doing this started signing up exclusive talent to their service
You were going great, right up to the "exclusive" part. That's where it all falls down. Exclusivity is impossible because technology has made ownership and control over music (just 1s and 0s like any other data) impossible.
Yes of course it is the business model that is changing and not the industry per se. But this is a bit like saying that the celluloid film industry is not failing, it is that their business model must change to adapt to digital technology. Well, OK. But in reality, film is dying and digital technology is what killed it. And all of the presumptions and systems and capital tied to that old technology are now obsolete. And yet, we haven't seen Kodak and Nikon suing everyone who uses a digital camera and copies pictures on their computer. That's because they haven't been crying themselves to sleep at night, they've been busy adapting and innovating.
It's just that not everyone's definition of 'just works' is the same as yours.
Really? That's fascinating. That's like saying not everyone's definition of "up versus down" is the same as mine. You must have a very vivid imagination. Few things in life are simpler and more commonly accepted and agreed upon than the concept of 'something that just works'.
Either I misread the quote or it has been edited. But I swear it originally read: "I have never, ever cared about really anything aboutthe Linux desktop." And looking through the other comments, I don't seem to be the only one to have made that mistake. It looks like "about" was changed to "but". My bad - I didn't RTFA...
You might have missed my 'just works' point. I assure you, I'm nowhere near stupid enough to think that copying a list of urls from a text file into a download manager is impossible in Linux. My point was that it didn't 'just work' - and so far, that has been the only thing in Ubuntu that hasn't. Everything else - all my hardware, wireless networking and other software apps have just worked fine. And since it only to 60 seconds to switch to XP and download what I needed in there, it wasn't worth my time to try to fix the problem in Ubuntu.
What we're witnessing are the death throws of the RIAA. I predict it will be gone within 3-5 years, and the whole traditional music/label industry in 10. The fact that they would rather litigate than innovate is clear evidence that they're just a fat guy hanging on to a crumbling cliff by his fingernails. More nails in the coffin: Wall Street has finally started issuing warnings NOT to invest in music industry stocks.
The industry will undoubtedly go down kicking and screaming, but down it will go - of that there can no longer be any doubt.
I can attest to being one of those recent adopters. I've dual-booted various Linux desktop distros over the years, but have never stuck with them. But I recently fired up Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop, and it really did 'just work' - and I have to rig it to boot and install off a key drive as well.
So far I'm quite impressed with Ubuntu. The Gnome GUI works just fine for me - a nice blend(ish) of Windows and Mac OS look and feel. It lacks some of the polish of XP and certainly of OSX - I have compiz running and there are glitches here and there (window tearing, video rendering artifacting and refresh issues, etc) even with a GeForce Mobility 7600 card under the hood and the latest nVidia drivers. But I've been able to do everything I wanted using the most common applications, with the exception of importing a list of urls from a file into a download manager - for whatever reason, the most popular Ubuntu DM out there just couldn't handle this task, so I used XP and Free DM for the job instead.
I'm not a complete convert as my work requires some XP-specific apps, but I'm liking Ubuntu an awful lot so far and for basic stuff - email, internet, word-processing, etc it is perfect.
Contrary to Torvald's foolish statements, I think the key to getting Linux wider distribution is definitely pushing on the Desktop front, and we have the 'just works' push of Ubuntu to thank for that, because now it's finally getting Linux into the end-user OEM market.
Obviously Linux runs a huge portion of behind-the-scenes computer applications, but the boasts of Linux gaining market share mentioned specifically refer to desktop adopters. So it is, quite frankly, a very stupid thing to 'never, ever care about'. Linux may run the back end in tens of thousands of servers for businesses and governments, but it is only by capturing a share of the mass market - 10,000 times larger, with its hundreds of millions of users - that Linux and open-source software will have a prayer of become a genuine competitive threat and viable alternative to the M$-Mac oligopoly.
Those things should happen instantly, and DID happen instantly on XP, and every version of Windows before that.
Holy BS, Batman! You, my friend, need to try some other OSs in order to learn the true meaning of the word 'instant'. Any major Linux distro will get you started.
I actually don't blame Windows entirely. A clean, minimalist install of Windows without any networking or antivirus works pretty darned fast. But once you drench the system, as you must, with security crapware, it slows ot a crawl.
how is that any different than just carrying your social and a driver's license... why does the government need any of that?
Well, as an example, the assclown Attorney General here in Michigan just issued a ruling that legal aliens cannot get Michigan driver's licenses. It's going to affect 400,000 people who are in Michigan legally working for companies and universities. How could a brainfart like this ever occur? Because somehow the license to drive a car became the official photo ID of the United States of America. It's absolutely retarded. THAT is the only reason, in my mind, to shift to a alternate ID. Now there ARE state ID cards, and of course there are passports. So your point about not needing a new, national ID is a good one.
But again, I retain to my underlying point which is that there really is no such thing as privacy when it comes to your personal information. Information is out there and it is getting cheaper to get. The solution isn't to try to put your info under lock and key - that's impossible. The solution is to make abuses of information use jailworthy, so if an insurance company denies you coverage because they unlawfully used your medical information, BAM, statutory fines and gajillion-dollar-lawsuit. The key is to make the consequences of misbehavior the detriment. It's like the war on alcohol and drugs: you can't prohibit drug use, that's impossible. The solution - like with alcohol - is to legalize it and make the consequences of abuse, like DUI, really nasty.
This is what I don't understand. You and others arguing this position seem to think that all of this personal information will be stored on the ID card itself, or in one, single, physical location - like on a government server. I seriosuly doubt that is how it will work. Why would a National ID need to be anything more than a social security card with a photo on it? It'll have an ID number, and that number will then correspond to files in a variety of databases, whether criminal or medical or whatever. That's hardly any different than the way it is today. What's the big deal?
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Fixed that for ya.
Congratulations! You have just recreated Karl Marx's entire criticism of capitalism.
Somebody call a whaaaaaambulance. For God's sake, the only reason T-Mobile's service had any operating costs was because they were trying to charge customers money. When you give away wi-fi for free, as most places are doing now - and not just coffee houses - it costs virtually nothing. What, $400 for a cheap PC and wireless router that any 15 year old employee knows how to run backwards and forwards?
I hope the 'dropinthebucket' tag refers to your point, rather than cynically suggesting that LEDs and other SSL technologies wouldn't make a massive difference in energy consumption worldwide. They would.
And projecting 27 years out? I call BS on this whole thing as a PR stunt. Two possibilities: chest thumping, or paving the way for something already well into the works and nearing completion. In the case of the former, it would just be part of the ongoing campaign to drum up support for war funding using a combination of fear and flash-in-a-pan technobabble. In the case of the latter, these planes and missles either already exist or will within just a few years, in which case this is simply prep for future billing because until we admit we have something, we don't have to show it on the accounting books do we? And with deficit spending, that translates to not having to actually pay for it for 27 years. Hurray!
And as someone who has lived and worked in developing countries for over 20 years and seen real poverty and desperation, I can tell you that your 'knowledge from experience' is worth precisely dick.
HOw long do you think it would take people to adopt this new standard once they find out they can no longer receive email from Yahoo or Hotmail addreses? About five seconds. This is a clear case of something these companies must just roll out by command decision instead of waiting for consensus.
The prevalance of this sort of brazen attitude of entitlement to privilege, disavowment of responsibility, and calous disregard of fellow beings less fortunate than oneself is the reason why human civilization is little better or different now than when we were cavemen.
Well done. I'm sure you mother would be proud of you.
Same deal with sociopaths: they can apply empathy and appropriate emotional responses to some people and situations while at other times those functions seem to be entirely absent. In many cultures through history, including some today, this has been a norm. Take slavery, for instance: a slave-owner can exhibit perfectly 'normal' compassion and empathy toward his family and still behave diabiolically toward a slave. And I'm not talking about race-based slavery. Throughout much of history slavery has had only a moderate corelation to race.
To bring it closer to home, every time you walk past a bum in the street and switch off your empathy only to switch it back home when you walk into your house with your family you are doing exactly what these sociopathic executives are doing: compartmentalizing your brain function and applying different standards to different people and situations. Where we set the limits on this behavior - where it becomes simply unacceptable to throw the switch - is entirely a function of cultural norms.
Rest assured, at some point in the future a society will look back and consider walking past a bum without a glance just as sociopathic as slavery and homophobia.
Modded troll? WTF? Anyone care to explain that?
My time is worth $100/hour. Four hours of my time = $400. If it were me, that $400 expense would be charged back to Microsoft in the future in the form of pirated software.
However, while a brain surgeon may stand a better chance of cooking a palatable meal than a chef has of performing acceptable brain surgery, it does not follow that a brain surgeon stands any higher chance of producing a culinary masterpiece. The clear line of success/failure in technical fields can make them seem more demanding, but this is only an illusion created by the fact that there is no corresponding dividing line in the arts, but rather a broad, grey area of success, the extreme high-end of which is every bit as demanding as any technical field.
Pitabred pretty much said it all for me. The only point I would add is that the primary reason, in my opinion, that movies and TV have not YET suffered the same piracy as music is that they contain much larger amounts of data. If 100MB/s fiber connections were piped to every household with $40/mo broadband, the state of the DVD market would be very different - it would much more closely match the state of the music market.
Seems like what Torvald is saying is that the OS should be distinct from the interface - GUI or otherwise. That makes good sense in principle, but whether that's a practical marketing goal or not is questionable.
You were going great, right up to the "exclusive" part. That's where it all falls down. Exclusivity is impossible because technology has made ownership and control over music (just 1s and 0s like any other data) impossible.
Yes of course it is the business model that is changing and not the industry per se. But this is a bit like saying that the celluloid film industry is not failing, it is that their business model must change to adapt to digital technology. Well, OK. But in reality, film is dying and digital technology is what killed it. And all of the presumptions and systems and capital tied to that old technology are now obsolete. And yet, we haven't seen Kodak and Nikon suing everyone who uses a digital camera and copies pictures on their computer. That's because they haven't been crying themselves to sleep at night, they've been busy adapting and innovating.
Really? That's fascinating. That's like saying not everyone's definition of "up versus down" is the same as mine. You must have a very vivid imagination. Few things in life are simpler and more commonly accepted and agreed upon than the concept of 'something that just works'.
Either I misread the quote or it has been edited. But I swear it originally read: "I have never, ever cared about really anything aboutthe Linux desktop." And looking through the other comments, I don't seem to be the only one to have made that mistake. It looks like "about" was changed to "but". My bad - I didn't RTFA...
You might have missed my 'just works' point. I assure you, I'm nowhere near stupid enough to think that copying a list of urls from a text file into a download manager is impossible in Linux. My point was that it didn't 'just work' - and so far, that has been the only thing in Ubuntu that hasn't. Everything else - all my hardware, wireless networking and other software apps have just worked fine. And since it only to 60 seconds to switch to XP and download what I needed in there, it wasn't worth my time to try to fix the problem in Ubuntu.
The industry will undoubtedly go down kicking and screaming, but down it will go - of that there can no longer be any doubt.
So far I'm quite impressed with Ubuntu. The Gnome GUI works just fine for me - a nice blend(ish) of Windows and Mac OS look and feel. It lacks some of the polish of XP and certainly of OSX - I have compiz running and there are glitches here and there (window tearing, video rendering artifacting and refresh issues, etc) even with a GeForce Mobility 7600 card under the hood and the latest nVidia drivers. But I've been able to do everything I wanted using the most common applications, with the exception of importing a list of urls from a file into a download manager - for whatever reason, the most popular Ubuntu DM out there just couldn't handle this task, so I used XP and Free DM for the job instead.
I'm not a complete convert as my work requires some XP-specific apps, but I'm liking Ubuntu an awful lot so far and for basic stuff - email, internet, word-processing, etc it is perfect.
Contrary to Torvald's foolish statements, I think the key to getting Linux wider distribution is definitely pushing on the Desktop front, and we have the 'just works' push of Ubuntu to thank for that, because now it's finally getting Linux into the end-user OEM market.
Obviously Linux runs a huge portion of behind-the-scenes computer applications, but the boasts of Linux gaining market share mentioned specifically refer to desktop adopters. So it is, quite frankly, a very stupid thing to 'never, ever care about'. Linux may run the back end in tens of thousands of servers for businesses and governments, but it is only by capturing a share of the mass market - 10,000 times larger, with its hundreds of millions of users - that Linux and open-source software will have a prayer of become a genuine competitive threat and viable alternative to the M$-Mac oligopoly.
You, sir, have Set Us Up The Bomb writing talent. There IS special in that!
Holy BS, Batman! You, my friend, need to try some other OSs in order to learn the true meaning of the word 'instant'. Any major Linux distro will get you started. I actually don't blame Windows entirely. A clean, minimalist install of Windows without any networking or antivirus works pretty darned fast. But once you drench the system, as you must, with security crapware, it slows ot a crawl.
Well, as an example, the assclown Attorney General here in Michigan just issued a ruling that legal aliens cannot get Michigan driver's licenses. It's going to affect 400,000 people who are in Michigan legally working for companies and universities. How could a brainfart like this ever occur? Because somehow the license to drive a car became the official photo ID of the United States of America. It's absolutely retarded. THAT is the only reason, in my mind, to shift to a alternate ID. Now there ARE state ID cards, and of course there are passports. So your point about not needing a new, national ID is a good one.
But again, I retain to my underlying point which is that there really is no such thing as privacy when it comes to your personal information. Information is out there and it is getting cheaper to get. The solution isn't to try to put your info under lock and key - that's impossible. The solution is to make abuses of information use jailworthy, so if an insurance company denies you coverage because they unlawfully used your medical information, BAM, statutory fines and gajillion-dollar-lawsuit. The key is to make the consequences of misbehavior the detriment. It's like the war on alcohol and drugs: you can't prohibit drug use, that's impossible. The solution - like with alcohol - is to legalize it and make the consequences of abuse, like DUI, really nasty.
This is what I don't understand. You and others arguing this position seem to think that all of this personal information will be stored on the ID card itself, or in one, single, physical location - like on a government server. I seriosuly doubt that is how it will work. Why would a National ID need to be anything more than a social security card with a photo on it? It'll have an ID number, and that number will then correspond to files in a variety of databases, whether criminal or medical or whatever. That's hardly any different than the way it is today. What's the big deal?