Why would anybody think it would be safer? The safety issue in texting is not the hands leaving the wheel (although that is problematic but a separate issue). The safety issue is driver distraction. If you are focused on what you are texting versus driving, then your inattention is what creating the safety issue.
Similar studies have shown that talking on the cell phone hands free is also only marginally safer than holding it in your hand while talking. It's simple math - at 70 mph if you are distracted for 1 sec, you have traveled 102 feet. Multiply that by multiple distractions and it's not hard to see how distracted driving is a serious problem.
so far, all anti-piracy, pro-copyright, pro-racket noise I've heard is from publishers, who are filthy rich, to keep themselves that way. Many times, artists, writers, etc, get jack shit except mabey a small check, and generally no real rights to their work.
So what are you really doing for the author?
Its like when conservatives talk about "everyone who works hard", they mean "people who have money an invested wisely"
Whether or not the publisher is screwing over the author is a separate issue from whether or not the author should be rewarded for their work. Just because the author currently is screwed over by the publisher doesn't mean they should be screwed over by the public by not getting paid. If that would be just, then what the publisher is doing is just also.
Putting it differently, is the problem that textbooks/e-books are too expensive or that the author isn't paid their fair a just reward for their effort? Get that question wrong and then the solution wil be wrong. For instance, if the real problem is that the author is not adequately rewarded, well, by making textbooks free, that doesn't fix that and eventually there will not be any textbook authors.
So the question ultimately is what is the problem to be solved?
College textbooks are largely irrelevant in the age of Internet. They only exist to keep publishers and bought teachers rich.
The textbook may be, but the content contained therein is not irrelevant. Regardless of whether or not it is printed on paper or simply stored as magnetic bits, should not the authors of such works be rewarded for their efforts?
You speak of the internet as if somehow resources magically appear there. To take your comment to its logical conclusion, not only are college textbooks largely irrelevant in the age of internent, but if everything that is needed for one's course of study is free and online, then college itself is irrelevant, too.
The last TCO I was involved with actually showed that the mainframe was the more cost effective approach for the use case at hand.
TCO estimates are the finest snake oil money can buy. I see them periodically, and often times it doesn't take me long to change some tiny assumption (like swapping a DS8k for a lower function faster disk subsystem on the PC cause it doesn't need FICON for example) to throw the results off. Sometimes simply changing vendors is enough. The ones I'm particularly fond of can be found on IBM's site where they compare 10 year old PC clusters with the latest piece of IBM gear. Well duh, newer hardware had better be cheaper than the old stuff on a price/performance curve otherwise why upgrade?
A TCO prepared by a vendor is simply more marketing material. The TCO analysis that I am referring to is one that is prepared inhouse, using inhouse assumptions. Any organization that is large enough to be contemplating server farms or mainframes is in a position to be doing its own analysis.
Don't forget the low-cost dumb terminals – I'm sorry: "thin clients" – which are incapable of doing anything at all independently of the centrally-adminstered silicon. The computing environment I work in today is architecturally very similar to the one I started working in back in the mid-1980s.
How true is that! Today's computers have so much computational power and for the most part they are being used as dumb terminals. What a waste. The PC was supposed to free us from the confines of a data center that had control of our data. Pre-internet, that looked like it was happening. Now, though, instead of advancing, we've regressed and it is 1984 all over again, except today it is a browser instead of TN3270.
You can get the same precision and fault tolerance by using commodity hardware by running multiple jobs in parallel, but it's rarely required.
It also rarely makes sense. If the parallel instances are running the same software, they will likely both make the same error, since 99.9% of reliability issues are in the software not the hardware. If you spend a million dollars on more robust hardware, and a million dollars on extra software testing (unit, integration and (especially) usability), the latter is orders of magnitude more likely to prevent a problem.
That would only be true if you never changed the software once you spent your million dollars and tested the software. How likely is that. In reality, there is and always will be bad code out there. So, you can spend extra dollars in extra testing every time you write or change code or you can test less and rely on more costly but fault tolerant hardware.
Face it, there is a reason that most financial instituions still use mainframes. There is also no doubt that their boards of directors want to maximize their returns. If the risk/reward tradeoff were favorable, they would switch to server farms, but so far that has not been the case.
You haven't tried the IBM kool-aid yet. Those people whose jobs currently rely on mainframe expertise are very happy with them. They do have better error-checking but everything else is at least an order of magnitude out of whack with commodity hardware price/performance, and in many cases, several orders. You can reduce some of the costs on their zSeries by buying specialised processors for DB2, Java, and Linux (~100K a pop) so you don't have to may for MIPS usage but the costs are still astronomical for the performance. If it was cost effective, don't you think Amazon would be running its cloud services on them?
The last TCO I was involved with actually showed that the mainframe was the more cost effective approach for the use case at hand.
As for Amazon, well that is hard to say. If when they first started, they knew how successful they were going to grow and how quickly, maybe they would have gone with a mainframe solution.That's the nice thing of TCO analysis, it eliminates, or should eminiate, any platform bias the decision makers have. Then again, it also depends on really knowing what future growth patterns and expected use cases are or it is just more GIGO.
It seems to me that if one were to take this proposition seriously, it should appear as an article in a scientific journal, not the Wall Street Journal.
While I have no qualms with the Wall Street Journal, it does concern me when an article is published for a bunch of MBAs and CFOs that basically equates scientific research as nothing more than a bunch of individualized technicians. Research is not like web design where you have a design architect and a bunch of coders. But the article, phrased as it is, makes it seem that research can be handled in the same way.
The logical conclusion of such thinking in the WWJ is pay for a researchers who have all of these skills when we can just split them up (and save money). While that may be true in the short run, it is not how science advances in the long term. The simple fact is that if you want to be a reasearcher, you need to know the science and the math.
Teams are great and necessary, but the best teams are the ones where the members understand the major parts of the research and that means the math, too.
As a follow up and based on other discussions, I will concede that Windows 95 was highly successful as exemplified by a large number of upgrades from Windows 3.1.
I concede that Win95 was successful and mainly because it was put out by engineers and not MBAs. When your goal is putting out the best product you can, that is exactly what you do. When your goal is maximizing your profit, well, then, that is what you do. Usually, the two are mutually exclusive. It's like the old adage in programming timely, features,bug free, pick any two.
Along the way, there were numerous failings - Windows 3.0, Windows 95 (while successful, was buggy) Windows ME, Windows Vista.
I'm used to seeing Windows Me and Vista on this list, but Windows 3.0 and Windows 95? Also, how is Windows 95 a failure if it was successful in spite of bugs? How was the first release of Windows 95 any more buggy than, say, Windows 98 First Edition?
What other operating system could you purchase with your IBM compatible PC when Windows 95 was released? As stated in a previous post, if Windows 95 was your only choice of operating system you could get with the computer, then the volume of installations or copies sold really isn't a good metric of acceptance. Put differently, when there isn't any alternative, then it is reasonable to assume 100% adoption. Let me phrase it differently. Did people go out and purchase a new PC because of Windows 95 or did they end up getting Windows 95 because they purchased a new PC?
As for Windows 98, yes, it was buggy, too, until Win98 second edition. Then it was pretty stable.
Microsoft's failures have had a cumulative effect. Non-tech people simply do not trust Microsoft products. It's the main reason why Windows phone is such a failure.
I'd say it is just the opposite. Tech people do not trust Microsoft. They don't by into FUD because they are aware of competing technologies and realize that Microsoft is not the only player. Non-tech people, on the other hand, make decisions on what other tell them. Everybody can't be wrong, so to speak. If everybody is buying an iPhone, then they should buy an iPhone. If everybody is now buying a Samsung whatever, then they should buy one.
That is one of the reasons Microsoft is working so hard on getting Windows 8 devices placed in tv programs. If Sheldon uses a Windows 8 phone then it must be good, right? Ignoring of course that Sheldon doesn't actually exist, so whatever he uses is pointless. But Microsoft doesn't want you to think about that.
IBM is far from not being player in the computing industry. Maybe not the OS segment, but they are doing just fine and they can always fall back on their typewriter patents.
IBM's closing value of $214 billion on September 29, 2011 surpassed Microsoft which was valued at $213.2 billion. It was the first time since 1996 that IBM exceeded its software rival based on closing price. On August 16, 2012, IBM announced it entered an agreement to buy Texas Memory Systems. [34] Later that month, IBM announced it has agreed to buy Kenexa. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter.[35] The deal is worth $1.3 billion dollars and was paid in cash by IBM.[36]
That was my point exactly. IBM still is a player, however, in the 1960s, they were THE player. Remember, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM was a popular slogan. Then the market shifted and they were no longer top dog. Instead of holding on to the past, they looked at where they wanted to be in the future and refocused their energies on those parts of the industry. IBM is very much a player in today's IT landscape. Microsoft (and Apple) are at the point where IBM was and both need to figure out where they want to be. The IT industry of the 80s/90s/early00s is gone and won't be back. Holding on to corporate philosophies that sustain you back then will drive you into the ground today. IBM successfully made that transition. It is yet to be seen if others will (although Apple did once in the past, so maybe they will again).
Windows 95 was a financial success, but then again, Windows 3.0/3.1 were crappy except for the most minimanlist use cases. Anybody who needed to do more than Windows 3.0/3.1 would allow, which was just about everybody, of course upgraded to Windows 95. In addition, Windows 95 was pre-installed on all new computers and the price point of new computers finally was falling to where many people could afford them. They weren't cheap, like today, but they weren't the price of a new car, like they were in the 80s (an IBM PC/XT was between $4,000 and $7,000 in 1983 depending on configuration).
Falling hardware prices plus competition from Apple pushed Windows 95 in the consumer market. In the corporate world, as those earlier computers were replaced and new ones purchased, they Windows 95 pre-installed.
But to use financial success as the measure, when it is pre-installed is like saying that unleaded gas is more successful than leaded gas. If there is not alternative, then what is actually being measured?
That would be false. The enterprise embraced OS/2 and Windows NT while the consumers were using Windows 95/98. Likewise, consumers were not using Exchange. One could reasonable argue that what made them accepted was not Microsoft at all, but IBM which introduced their enterprise customers to relatively low priced desktop computers compared to their offering of mini and mainframe computing back in the 1980s.
Once Intel PCs were established in the enterprise, when the GUI was becoming standard, the question became which one Mac OS (not OS X), OS/2 and Windows NT. OS/2 was the favorite until Microsoft and IBM had a major falling out and Windows NT and OS/2 went their separate ways. Since Windows NT worked on IBM hardware plus all of the clones and IBM OS/2 mainly worked on IBM hardware (meaning the PS/2 line), Windows NT won out. Then NT became Windows 2000 and after that Microsoft merged their business and consumer products into Windows XP.
Along the way, there were numerous failings - Windows 3.0, Windows 95 (while successful, was buggy) Windows ME, Windows Vista. Each time it was supposed to be the end of Microsoft, but that never happened. Why not? Because Microsoft also is exchange server which many businesses depend on. It is also SQL server and Office and a whole lot more than simply Windows. That is only the tip of Microsoft's iceberg.
Does that mean that MIcrosoft will continue to reign supreme, no of course not. Neither will Apple. Both of them will succumb, like IBM did before them to somebody else. The problem is that when you are at the top of the heap, there is nowhere else to go but down. But even if they are no longer the dominate force, that doesn't mean they still aren't a force. Again, look at IBM as an example. Of course, IBM did have to take a hard look at the role they wanted to play in the industry. Whether Microsoft is willing to do that or not is yet to be seen.
As for Windows 8 failure to launch, there are two reasons, at least in the corporate world. 1st, it is different and being different means money spent on retraining workers and increased tech support costs. Different is fine if it leads to productivity gains or something along those lines, but that gives us point 2 - Windows 7 is good enough. Windows 8 doesn't increase productivity and in a typical business setting often decreases it. Some argue that Windows 8 was a tablet design forced on a desktop. Maybe, maybe not. However, there is no doubt that it is a consumer design that corporations aren't pleased with as it doesn't fit their needs. Corporations don't buy into the consumer marketing hype. They have bean counters that look at the bottom line and things like ROI. In that scenario, Windows 8 doesn't cut it.
The irony is that Windows 8 contains some great technology. The reason it has failed is not because of the technology or the engineering. The reason it failed is because Microsoft misread its market and produced a product that it's largest customer base (corporations) didn't want or need. If they get it right with their corporate customers with Windows 9, then Windows 8 is just a good product that nobody wanted. Maybe Microsoft should follow Canonical and have LTS versions that favor corporate use and use the intervening years to experiment with the interface. Those things that work and are accepted make it into the next LTS those that don't, well, don't.
And even looking at them now would put them at the end of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Byzantine (when Christianity became more of a cult) to give you a reference point. We probably won't be receiving any radio transmissions (which would be the most likely evidence of an intelligent species) from them for another ~1000 years and that's if there is even an intelligent species there that developed as quickly as we humans did and even if they are sending out radio transmissions, would it be coming from the right direction, have enough power and linearity to be differentiated from background noise.
You're forgetting something. The Earth is approximately 4 billion years old, but the Universe is almost 14 billion years old. That means there should be planets out there that are much older than Earth. So, you could have a planet that evolved at the same pace as Earth, but started millions (or hundreds of millions) of years earlier.
Technically, planets don't evolve, they form. But regardless, whether or not there is life on a planet does not depend on how old it is. Mars and Earth are both the same age and both in the goldilocks zone and yet one has life and one does not.
It is far simpler ot come up with all the obstacles to life evolving on a planet than the likelihood of all the right things happening at the right moment for life to actually evolve on a planet. Obviously, we are here, so it can happen, but it is not as simple as a rock in space with some water on it.
Hawking tends to bet on the more controversial side of a scientific debate, and thus the less likely side. He does not play it safe. Of course, statistically he's going to lose. But when he wins ( Hawking Radiation ) he gets stuff named after him.
Out of curiosity, why is he going to lose statistically? He isn't picking one side of an argument or another just for the sake of picking. He does his research and forms his hypotheses others do theirs. One may be right or they all may be wrong, but it's not like flipping a coin. Where does statistics come into play?
What is missed in all of this is why he doubted the Higgs boson -- because, as has now been shown, it is incompatible with our current understanding of how particles formed after the big bang. So, if what we now know or think we know about the Higgs boson is correct, we now have to go back to the drawing board on how matter formed in the very early universe. When Hawking made his $100 bet, that theory was well accepted, now it is wrong and another is needed to account for HB.
For example, one possibility out of a huge number, an objective and measurable alternative is to live a healthy life, earning one's own keep, contributing to civilization and raising one's children to do the same. All those things are measurable and can be defined and measured objectively, and have the implicit goal and actual result of improving human life now and in the future.
If you actually want to have a life worth living (as opposed to a life that results in the suffering of yourself and others) it is worth contrasting the life I described above with a divinely-ordained meaning of life. Assuming a "divinely ordained" meaning of life is even possible, there are at least two inescapable flaws. One is that the divine ordainer doesn't necessarily have your best interests, or the interests of your kith and kin, or anybody else's, as its goal. (Indeed, Judaism and Christianity insist that the divinity be worshipped. What do you think of people who demand to be worshipped? Do they seem wise to you? Is someone who demands to be worshipped likely to have your best interests in mind, or the best interests of anybody else?) The second flaw is that divinities and their ordinations are perfect and immutable (wouldn't be very divine if it wasn't perfect, would it?) But if it's immutable, it can't adjust to new circumstances. If it is mutable, it isn't perfect.
And yet, in China, where the law is only one child, it would seem that they don't share your objective measure, so it must actually be subjective. Or would it not be preferable to be born into royalty or a sultan? In which case, one does not really earn their keep, but they are a figure head as will be their children. Again, maybe not part of your value system, but for many, being independantly wealthy and not earning one's keep, is a goal and therefore the objective measure you posit is subjective. Also, many people want to remain childless, so passing on these values to our children is also a subjective measure. In otherwords, any value based system you can come up with will be subjective. As long as it is coming from inside the person, it has to be subjective. There is no other possible way for it to be. And, if it is subjective, then it is no more concrete a believe or value system than a religious based one. It is simply one subjective believe system chosen over another.
With regards to your understanding of Judaism and Christianity, it appears you are making a strawman argument in that their deity actually "demands" to be "worshipped" as if their deity "needs" to be "worshipped." In my studies, I have never seen in their teachings anything that would indicate that. I could make an argument that it is humanism that has people demanding to be worshipped and I would agree, it is not wise at all.
As for your perfect vs immutable that argument is invalid and falls under the same category as can god make a rock so heavy that he can't pick it up? Basically, your logic is flawed. First, you would have to show that divinities and their ordinations are perfect and that they are immutable. For instance M-theory would say that perfect things can and are mutable, unless the stuff the universe is made of is imperfect, which by definition, it cannot be. Since the universe is not flawed and is therefore perfect and the universe is mutable, then perfection and being immutable are not mutually exclusive making your original premise is flawed.
You appear to use a lot of words without bothering to identify a context ("makes no difference" to whom or to what?) or even understanding the word. "Random" is an epistemological term referring to an event or status not being predictable (in a certain context.) Random does not mean causeless; all things have causes. (except perhaps the existence of the universe as a whole, which is a quibble.)
The whole religion versus non-religion as it relates to the universe centers around causation, so it is probably more than just a quibble. And, if the universe is causeless, there is no unmoveable mover, then there is no way for the moveable mover to come into existence, at least metaphysically. So, in that sense, random and causeless are synonymous.
No you can't. There is no unclaimed land on Earth. You are talking about doing a greenhouse experiment for a couple of years. I'm talking about hundreds, thousands of politically independent settlements in a truly new "land", developing over the coming centuries.
There is also no unclaimed land in the universe from a earth perspective because the first country to land there will claim it and plant their flag there. BTW, how do you propose building all of these hundreds and thousand of politically independent settlements on a foreign planet that has no air, no water nor any life sustaining qualities without goverment help? If earth builds these colonies, won't they be every bit as colonial as the colinies were in the previous centuries? And, if they are colonies, they will have the same geo-political issues that plague us today.
But go for it. Go build your independent settlements on the moon or mars without any government help from the planet earth. See how far you get with that. (although you might find it a little simpler building your new world on the continental shelf in the ocean)
So? You should notice that people that believe in evolution (which is far from random BTW) are not completely devoid of purpose nor committing mass suicide. You are probably right that it does not matter much in the grand scale of the universe if we live or not. But it matters to ME, and I would very much like MY children to live too. If enough people think the same, then WE certainly care and should do something about it. Importance and purpose, you will find, is completely in the eye of the beholder.
Evolution is a very random process, unless you believe in intelligent design or something similar. Evolution is based on all sorts of mutations occuring some are good, most are bad. Of the good ones, if they give an organism an advantage AND the organism makes it to reproduction (is, the super evolved mutant species wasn't wiped out in a flood or other natural disaster), then that trait is passed on.
However, nobody is saying that just because we happen to be here by sheer chance that means we should all kill ourself. It simply means that there is no purpose for our being here. It was not planned that we are here, unless you believe in a deity.
I agree that importance and purpose are in the eye of the beholder, which is why it is egotism that wants to preserve the species. A fruit fly is programmed to mate and spread its genetic material to propigate the species, it doesn't think about what it is doing or know what it is doing, it simply does what nature has programmed it to do. We on the other hand, talk about wanting OUR children to go on (and I want mine to do so, too) and things like that. That goes beyond propigating our species and is an act of the will.
But ultimately, since we are here with out purpose, again unless you believe in a deity, that desire to go on is ultimately to make us feel good or to keep us from feeling bad, nothing more or less. It is simply the ego trying to convince ourselves that we are important and our life has meaning. It might not be pleasant to think of in those terms, but that is one advantage that people who have a religion have over non-believers. For a religious believer, they have a purpose in life that is set outside of themself. For the rest of us, we create our own purpose, or believe we do, but philosophy tells us that something random cannot create something concrete, so since we are created randomly without purpose, we cannot actually create our own purpose, only the illusion of purpose.
Randomness is not the only alternative to a divinely-ordained meaning of life.
If you want your life to have meaning, go out and make it meaningful.
What, pray tell, would be an alternative that is objective and measurable? For if it is not, then you are just trading one subjective reality (divinely-ordained to use your term) for another.
It's the difference between a redevelopment and a "greenfield" development.
In order to experiment with new ways of doing things on Earth, you must displace something or someone else. With space settlements, each one will be an ecological and sociological experiment. Then you can apply what you learned back into established areas on Earth.
While that may be true, you don't have expend millons in resources to conduct those experiments. You can create isolated habitats right here on earth and do the same thing. As a matter of fact, doing so on earth has a huge advantage in that if the experiement fails, everybody doesn't die.
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Probably biofeedback sensors that can transmit as well as receive. That way, not only can your smart phone monitor your heart rate, it can send a pulse to stop it, too. That would definitely be a killer feature.
That's what de-fibrillators actually do when your heart rythm goes bad, de-fibs send an impulse that stops the heart, essentially killing you. Then, in most cases, the heart resets itself, and beats normally.
For my phone, an FM radio and IR programmable remote control, 2 features some models had and you don't see anymore. Why??
Because if you are listening to FM radio, then they can't monetize it. As for the IR, I miss that, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anybody think it would be safer? The safety issue in texting is not the hands leaving the wheel (although that is problematic but a separate issue). The safety issue is driver distraction. If you are focused on what you are texting versus driving, then your inattention is what creating the safety issue.
Similar studies have shown that talking on the cell phone hands free is also only marginally safer than holding it in your hand while talking. It's simple math - at 70 mph if you are distracted for 1 sec, you have traveled 102 feet. Multiply that by multiple distractions and it's not hard to see how distracted driving is a serious problem.
the real question is "are they really?"
so far, all anti-piracy, pro-copyright, pro-racket noise I've heard is from publishers, who are filthy rich, to keep themselves that way. Many times, artists, writers, etc, get jack shit except mabey a small check, and generally no real rights to their work.
So what are you really doing for the author?
Its like when conservatives talk about "everyone who works hard", they mean "people who have money an invested wisely"
Whether or not the publisher is screwing over the author is a separate issue from whether or not the author should be rewarded for their work. Just because the author currently is screwed over by the publisher doesn't mean they should be screwed over by the public by not getting paid. If that would be just, then what the publisher is doing is just also.
Putting it differently, is the problem that textbooks/e-books are too expensive or that the author isn't paid their fair a just reward for their effort? Get that question wrong and then the solution wil be wrong. For instance, if the real problem is that the author is not adequately rewarded, well, by making textbooks free, that doesn't fix that and eventually there will not be any textbook authors.
So the question ultimately is what is the problem to be solved?
College textbooks are largely irrelevant in the age of Internet. They only exist to keep publishers and bought teachers rich.
The textbook may be, but the content contained therein is not irrelevant. Regardless of whether or not it is printed on paper or simply stored as magnetic bits, should not the authors of such works be rewarded for their efforts?
You speak of the internet as if somehow resources magically appear there. To take your comment to its logical conclusion, not only are college textbooks largely irrelevant in the age of internent, but if everything that is needed for one's course of study is free and online, then college itself is irrelevant, too.
The last TCO I was involved with actually showed that the mainframe was the more cost effective approach for the use case at hand.
TCO estimates are the finest snake oil money can buy. I see them periodically, and often times it doesn't take me long to change some tiny assumption (like swapping a DS8k for a lower function faster disk subsystem on the PC cause it doesn't need FICON for example) to throw the results off. Sometimes simply changing vendors is enough. The ones I'm particularly fond of can be found on IBM's site where they compare 10 year old PC clusters with the latest piece of IBM gear. Well duh, newer hardware had better be cheaper than the old stuff on a price/performance curve otherwise why upgrade?
A TCO prepared by a vendor is simply more marketing material. The TCO analysis that I am referring to is one that is prepared inhouse, using inhouse assumptions. Any organization that is large enough to be contemplating server farms or mainframes is in a position to be doing its own analysis.
Don't forget the low-cost dumb terminals – I'm sorry: "thin clients" – which are incapable of doing anything at all independently of the centrally-adminstered silicon. The computing environment I work in today is architecturally very similar to the one I started working in back in the mid-1980s.
How true is that! Today's computers have so much computational power and for the most part they are being used as dumb terminals. What a waste. The PC was supposed to free us from the confines of a data center that had control of our data. Pre-internet, that looked like it was happening. Now, though, instead of advancing, we've regressed and it is 1984 all over again, except today it is a browser instead of TN3270.
You can get the same precision and fault tolerance by using commodity hardware by running multiple jobs in parallel, but it's rarely required.
It also rarely makes sense. If the parallel instances are running the same software, they will likely both make the same error, since 99.9% of reliability issues are in the software not the hardware. If you spend a million dollars on more robust hardware, and a million dollars on extra software testing (unit, integration and (especially) usability), the latter is orders of magnitude more likely to prevent a problem.
That would only be true if you never changed the software once you spent your million dollars and tested the software. How likely is that. In reality, there is and always will be bad code out there. So, you can spend extra dollars in extra testing every time you write or change code or you can test less and rely on more costly but fault tolerant hardware.
Face it, there is a reason that most financial instituions still use mainframes. There is also no doubt that their boards of directors want to maximize their returns. If the risk/reward tradeoff were favorable, they would switch to server farms, but so far that has not been the case.
You haven't tried the IBM kool-aid yet. Those people whose jobs currently rely on mainframe expertise are very happy with them. They do have better error-checking but everything else is at least an order of magnitude out of whack with commodity hardware price/performance, and in many cases, several orders. You can reduce some of the costs on their zSeries by buying specialised processors for DB2, Java, and Linux (~100K a pop) so you don't have to may for MIPS usage but the costs are still astronomical for the performance. If it was cost effective, don't you think Amazon would be running its cloud services on them?
The last TCO I was involved with actually showed that the mainframe was the more cost effective approach for the use case at hand.
As for Amazon, well that is hard to say. If when they first started, they knew how successful they were going to grow and how quickly, maybe they would have gone with a mainframe solution.That's the nice thing of TCO analysis, it eliminates, or should eminiate, any platform bias the decision makers have. Then again, it also depends on really knowing what future growth patterns and expected use cases are or it is just more GIGO.
It seems to me that if one were to take this proposition seriously, it should appear as an article in a scientific journal, not the Wall Street Journal.
While I have no qualms with the Wall Street Journal, it does concern me when an article is published for a bunch of MBAs and CFOs that basically equates scientific research as nothing more than a bunch of individualized technicians. Research is not like web design where you have a design architect and a bunch of coders. But the article, phrased as it is, makes it seem that research can be handled in the same way.
The logical conclusion of such thinking in the WWJ is pay for a researchers who have all of these skills when we can just split them up (and save money). While that may be true in the short run, it is not how science advances in the long term. The simple fact is that if you want to be a reasearcher, you need to know the science and the math.
Teams are great and necessary, but the best teams are the ones where the members understand the major parts of the research and that means the math, too.
As a follow up and based on other discussions, I will concede that Windows 95 was highly successful as exemplified by a large number of upgrades from Windows 3.1.
I concede that Win95 was successful and mainly because it was put out by engineers and not MBAs. When your goal is putting out the best product you can, that is exactly what you do. When your goal is maximizing your profit, well, then, that is what you do. Usually, the two are mutually exclusive. It's like the old adage in programming timely, features,bug free, pick any two.
I'm used to seeing Windows Me and Vista on this list, but Windows 3.0 and Windows 95? Also, how is Windows 95 a failure if it was successful in spite of bugs? How was the first release of Windows 95 any more buggy than, say, Windows 98 First Edition?
What other operating system could you purchase with your IBM compatible PC when Windows 95 was released? As stated in a previous post, if Windows 95 was your only choice of operating system you could get with the computer, then the volume of installations or copies sold really isn't a good metric of acceptance. Put differently, when there isn't any alternative, then it is reasonable to assume 100% adoption. Let me phrase it differently. Did people go out and purchase a new PC because of Windows 95 or did they end up getting Windows 95 because they purchased a new PC?
As for Windows 98, yes, it was buggy, too, until Win98 second edition. Then it was pretty stable.
Microsoft's failures have had a cumulative effect. Non-tech people simply do not trust Microsoft products. It's the main reason why Windows phone is such a failure.
I'd say it is just the opposite. Tech people do not trust Microsoft. They don't by into FUD because they are aware of competing technologies and realize that Microsoft is not the only player. Non-tech people, on the other hand, make decisions on what other tell them. Everybody can't be wrong, so to speak. If everybody is buying an iPhone, then they should buy an iPhone. If everybody is now buying a Samsung whatever, then they should buy one.
That is one of the reasons Microsoft is working so hard on getting Windows 8 devices placed in tv programs. If Sheldon uses a Windows 8 phone then it must be good, right? Ignoring of course that Sheldon doesn't actually exist, so whatever he uses is pointless. But Microsoft doesn't want you to think about that.
IBM is far from not being player in the computing industry. Maybe not the OS segment, but they are doing just fine and they can always fall back on their typewriter patents.
IBM's closing value of $214 billion on September 29, 2011 surpassed Microsoft which was valued at $213.2 billion. It was the first time since 1996 that IBM exceeded its software rival based on closing price. On August 16, 2012, IBM announced it entered an agreement to buy Texas Memory Systems. [34] Later that month, IBM announced it has agreed to buy Kenexa. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter.[35] The deal is worth $1.3 billion dollars and was paid in cash by IBM.[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#1980.E2.80.93present
That was my point exactly. IBM still is a player, however, in the 1960s, they were THE player. Remember, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM was a popular slogan. Then the market shifted and they were no longer top dog. Instead of holding on to the past, they looked at where they wanted to be in the future and refocused their energies on those parts of the industry. IBM is very much a player in today's IT landscape. Microsoft (and Apple) are at the point where IBM was and both need to figure out where they want to be. The IT industry of the 80s/90s/early00s is gone and won't be back. Holding on to corporate philosophies that sustain you back then will drive you into the ground today. IBM successfully made that transition. It is yet to be seen if others will (although Apple did once in the past, so maybe they will again).
Windows 95 was a financial success, but then again, Windows 3.0/3.1 were crappy except for the most minimanlist use cases. Anybody who needed to do more than Windows 3.0/3.1 would allow, which was just about everybody, of course upgraded to Windows 95. In addition, Windows 95 was pre-installed on all new computers and the price point of new computers finally was falling to where many people could afford them. They weren't cheap, like today, but they weren't the price of a new car, like they were in the 80s (an IBM PC/XT was between $4,000 and $7,000 in 1983 depending on configuration).
Falling hardware prices plus competition from Apple pushed Windows 95 in the consumer market. In the corporate world, as those earlier computers were replaced and new ones purchased, they Windows 95 pre-installed.
But to use financial success as the measure, when it is pre-installed is like saying that unleaded gas is more successful than leaded gas. If there is not alternative, then what is actually being measured?
That would be false. The enterprise embraced OS/2 and Windows NT while the consumers were using Windows 95/98. Likewise, consumers were not using Exchange. One could reasonable argue that what made them accepted was not Microsoft at all, but IBM which introduced their enterprise customers to relatively low priced desktop computers compared to their offering of mini and mainframe computing back in the 1980s.
Once Intel PCs were established in the enterprise, when the GUI was becoming standard, the question became which one Mac OS (not OS X), OS/2 and Windows NT. OS/2 was the favorite until Microsoft and IBM had a major falling out and Windows NT and OS/2 went their separate ways. Since Windows NT worked on IBM hardware plus all of the clones and IBM OS/2 mainly worked on IBM hardware (meaning the PS/2 line), Windows NT won out. Then NT became Windows 2000 and after that Microsoft merged their business and consumer products into Windows XP.
Along the way, there were numerous failings - Windows 3.0, Windows 95 (while successful, was buggy) Windows ME, Windows Vista. Each time it was supposed to be the end of Microsoft, but that never happened. Why not? Because Microsoft also is exchange server which many businesses depend on. It is also SQL server and Office and a whole lot more than simply Windows. That is only the tip of Microsoft's iceberg.
Does that mean that MIcrosoft will continue to reign supreme, no of course not. Neither will Apple. Both of them will succumb, like IBM did before them to somebody else. The problem is that when you are at the top of the heap, there is nowhere else to go but down. But even if they are no longer the dominate force, that doesn't mean they still aren't a force. Again, look at IBM as an example. Of course, IBM did have to take a hard look at the role they wanted to play in the industry. Whether Microsoft is willing to do that or not is yet to be seen.
As for Windows 8 failure to launch, there are two reasons, at least in the corporate world. 1st, it is different and being different means money spent on retraining workers and increased tech support costs. Different is fine if it leads to productivity gains or something along those lines, but that gives us point 2 - Windows 7 is good enough. Windows 8 doesn't increase productivity and in a typical business setting often decreases it. Some argue that Windows 8 was a tablet design forced on a desktop. Maybe, maybe not. However, there is no doubt that it is a consumer design that corporations aren't pleased with as it doesn't fit their needs. Corporations don't buy into the consumer marketing hype. They have bean counters that look at the bottom line and things like ROI. In that scenario, Windows 8 doesn't cut it.
The irony is that Windows 8 contains some great technology. The reason it has failed is not because of the technology or the engineering. The reason it failed is because Microsoft misread its market and produced a product that it's largest customer base (corporations) didn't want or need. If they get it right with their corporate customers with Windows 9, then Windows 8 is just a good product that nobody wanted. Maybe Microsoft should follow Canonical and have LTS versions that favor corporate use and use the intervening years to experiment with the interface. Those things that work and are accepted make it into the next LTS those that don't, well, don't.
And even looking at them now would put them at the end of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Byzantine (when Christianity became more of a cult) to give you a reference point. We probably won't be receiving any radio transmissions (which would be the most likely evidence of an intelligent species) from them for another ~1000 years and that's if there is even an intelligent species there that developed as quickly as we humans did and even if they are sending out radio transmissions, would it be coming from the right direction, have enough power and linearity to be differentiated from background noise.
You're forgetting something. The Earth is approximately 4 billion years old, but the Universe is almost 14 billion years old. That means there should be planets out there that are much older than Earth. So, you could have a planet that evolved at the same pace as Earth, but started millions (or hundreds of millions) of years earlier.
Technically, planets don't evolve, they form. But regardless, whether or not there is life on a planet does not depend on how old it is. Mars and Earth are both the same age and both in the goldilocks zone and yet one has life and one does not.
It is far simpler ot come up with all the obstacles to life evolving on a planet than the likelihood of all the right things happening at the right moment for life to actually evolve on a planet. Obviously, we are here, so it can happen, but it is not as simple as a rock in space with some water on it.
He also has a view that God does not exist.
Did he wager $100 on that, too? From the article, he is wrong more often than he is right.
Hawking tends to bet on the more controversial side of a scientific debate, and thus the less likely side. He does not play it safe. Of course, statistically he's going to lose. But when he wins ( Hawking Radiation ) he gets stuff named after him.
Out of curiosity, why is he going to lose statistically? He isn't picking one side of an argument or another just for the sake of picking. He does his research and forms his hypotheses others do theirs. One may be right or they all may be wrong, but it's not like flipping a coin. Where does statistics come into play?
What is missed in all of this is why he doubted the Higgs boson -- because, as has now been shown, it is incompatible with our current understanding of how particles formed after the big bang. So, if what we now know or think we know about the Higgs boson is correct, we now have to go back to the drawing board on how matter formed in the very early universe. When Hawking made his $100 bet, that theory was well accepted, now it is wrong and another is needed to account for HB.
For example, one possibility out of a huge number, an objective and measurable alternative is to live a healthy life, earning one's own keep, contributing to civilization and raising one's children to do the same. All those things are measurable and can be defined and measured objectively, and have the implicit goal and actual result of improving human life now and in the future.
If you actually want to have a life worth living (as opposed to a life that results in the suffering of yourself and others) it is worth contrasting the life I described above with a divinely-ordained meaning of life. Assuming a "divinely ordained" meaning of life is even possible, there are at least two inescapable flaws. One is that the divine ordainer doesn't necessarily have your best interests, or the interests of your kith and kin, or anybody else's, as its goal. (Indeed, Judaism and Christianity insist that the divinity be worshipped. What do you think of people who demand to be worshipped? Do they seem wise to you? Is someone who demands to be worshipped likely to have your best interests in mind, or the best interests of anybody else?) The second flaw is that divinities and their ordinations are perfect and immutable (wouldn't be very divine if it wasn't perfect, would it?) But if it's immutable, it can't adjust to new circumstances. If it is mutable, it isn't perfect.
And yet, in China, where the law is only one child, it would seem that they don't share your objective measure, so it must actually be subjective. Or would it not be preferable to be born into royalty or a sultan? In which case, one does not really earn their keep, but they are a figure head as will be their children. Again, maybe not part of your value system, but for many, being independantly wealthy and not earning one's keep, is a goal and therefore the objective measure you posit is subjective. Also, many people want to remain childless, so passing on these values to our children is also a subjective measure. In otherwords, any value based system you can come up with will be subjective. As long as it is coming from inside the person, it has to be subjective. There is no other possible way for it to be. And, if it is subjective, then it is no more concrete a believe or value system than a religious based one. It is simply one subjective believe system chosen over another.
With regards to your understanding of Judaism and Christianity, it appears you are making a strawman argument in that their deity actually "demands" to be "worshipped" as if their deity "needs" to be "worshipped." In my studies, I have never seen in their teachings anything that would indicate that. I could make an argument that it is humanism that has people demanding to be worshipped and I would agree, it is not wise at all.
As for your perfect vs immutable that argument is invalid and falls under the same category as can god make a rock so heavy that he can't pick it up? Basically, your logic is flawed. First, you would have to show that divinities and their ordinations are perfect and that they are immutable. For instance M-theory would say that perfect things can and are mutable, unless the stuff the universe is made of is imperfect, which by definition, it cannot be. Since the universe is not flawed and is therefore perfect and the universe is mutable, then perfection and being immutable are not mutually exclusive making your original premise is flawed.
You appear to use a lot of words without bothering to identify a context ("makes no difference" to whom or to what?) or even understanding the word. "Random" is an epistemological term referring to an event or status not being predictable (in a certain context.) Random does not mean causeless; all things have causes. (except perhaps the existence of the universe as a whole, which is a quibble.)
The whole religion versus non-religion as it relates to the universe centers around causation, so it is probably more than just a quibble. And, if the universe is causeless, there is no unmoveable mover, then there is no way for the moveable mover to come into existence, at least metaphysically. So, in that sense, random and causeless are synonymous.
No you can't. There is no unclaimed land on Earth. You are talking about doing a greenhouse experiment for a couple of years. I'm talking about hundreds, thousands of politically independent settlements in a truly new "land", developing over the coming centuries.
There is also no unclaimed land in the universe from a earth perspective because the first country to land there will claim it and plant their flag there. BTW, how do you propose building all of these hundreds and thousand of politically independent settlements on a foreign planet that has no air, no water nor any life sustaining qualities without goverment help? If earth builds these colonies, won't they be every bit as colonial as the colinies were in the previous centuries? And, if they are colonies, they will have the same geo-political issues that plague us today.
But go for it. Go build your independent settlements on the moon or mars without any government help from the planet earth. See how far you get with that. (although you might find it a little simpler building your new world on the continental shelf in the ocean)
So? You should notice that people that believe in evolution (which is far from random BTW) are not completely devoid of purpose nor committing mass suicide. You are probably right that it does not matter much in the grand scale of the universe if we live or not. But it matters to ME, and I would very much like MY children to live too. If enough people think the same, then WE certainly care and should do something about it. Importance and purpose, you will find, is completely in the eye of the beholder.
Evolution is a very random process, unless you believe in intelligent design or something similar. Evolution is based on all sorts of mutations occuring some are good, most are bad. Of the good ones, if they give an organism an advantage AND the organism makes it to reproduction (is, the super evolved mutant species wasn't wiped out in a flood or other natural disaster), then that trait is passed on.
However, nobody is saying that just because we happen to be here by sheer chance that means we should all kill ourself. It simply means that there is no purpose for our being here. It was not planned that we are here, unless you believe in a deity.
I agree that importance and purpose are in the eye of the beholder, which is why it is egotism that wants to preserve the species. A fruit fly is programmed to mate and spread its genetic material to propigate the species, it doesn't think about what it is doing or know what it is doing, it simply does what nature has programmed it to do. We on the other hand, talk about wanting OUR children to go on (and I want mine to do so, too) and things like that. That goes beyond propigating our species and is an act of the will.
But ultimately, since we are here with out purpose, again unless you believe in a deity, that desire to go on is ultimately to make us feel good or to keep us from feeling bad, nothing more or less. It is simply the ego trying to convince ourselves that we are important and our life has meaning. It might not be pleasant to think of in those terms, but that is one advantage that people who have a religion have over non-believers. For a religious believer, they have a purpose in life that is set outside of themself. For the rest of us, we create our own purpose, or believe we do, but philosophy tells us that something random cannot create something concrete, so since we are created randomly without purpose, we cannot actually create our own purpose, only the illusion of purpose.
Randomness is not the only alternative to a divinely-ordained meaning of life.
If you want your life to have meaning, go out and make it meaningful.
What, pray tell, would be an alternative that is objective and measurable? For if it is not, then you are just trading one subjective reality (divinely-ordained to use your term) for another.
It's the difference between a redevelopment and a "greenfield" development.
In order to experiment with new ways of doing things on Earth, you must displace something or someone else. With space settlements, each one will be an ecological and sociological experiment. Then you can apply what you learned back into established areas on Earth.
While that may be true, you don't have expend millons in resources to conduct those experiments. You can create isolated habitats right here on earth and do the same thing. As a matter of fact, doing so on earth has a huge advantage in that if the experiement fails, everybody doesn't die.
What do you think will be the next generation of killer features for smartphones?
Probably biofeedback sensors that can transmit as well as receive. That way, not only can your smart phone monitor your heart rate, it can send a pulse to stop it, too. That would definitely be a killer feature.
That's what de-fibrillators actually do when your heart rythm goes bad, de-fibs send an impulse that stops the heart, essentially killing you. Then, in most cases, the heart resets itself, and beats normally.
For my phone, an FM radio and IR programmable remote control, 2 features some models had and you don't see anymore. Why??
Because if you are listening to FM radio, then they can't monetize it. As for the IR, I miss that, too.