Lets not paint greenpeace or peta as reasonable organizations. PETA is just a joke and I blame Greenpeace for the lack of nuclear power plants, thus the burning of all this coal. Its like the anti-abortion crowd's disapproval of condoms and the pill.
Neither of these groups express proper concern for anything. They are well-off non-profits riding the donation train. Being shrill and unreasonable equals donations from the nutters of the world.
Even an NDA can be misused. A good coder or whoever he is trying to hire may not want to sign an NDA that ties his hands. Joe Wannabe Entrepreneur's NDA that includes "Not to work on any social networking apps for at least 18 months" will be laughed out of the room. He'll end up with a lousy coder or student and have a lackluster product that will fail in the market.
Exactly. One of the worst traps you can fall into in professional life is to believe ideas have worth. Sorry, but they are almost worthless. Even a good implementation is borderline worthless without the proper business processes including marketing and advertising.
I've never heard of a uber-secretive guy making it big in the business world. The "I have a genius idea, but dont trust anyone" is the sign of an amateur and/or someone too lazy to learn to code. There's no shortage of people out there who just know their iphone idea will make them a millionare. Its a delusional and self-serving belief.
The guy who does make it is the one who learns how to implement it or at least is trusting enough to hire a real pro without a draconian NDA to do it. This person also understands the business processes needed to promote and support the product.
>The bad kids need to be identified as early as possible
and how do you propose we do this? Who gets to decide? All these kids with ADD, mental illness, abusive parents, etc will be labeled unfit instead of being helped. Talk about a real lack of basic human compassion.
While I agree we cant educate everyone, we can at least help them towards trade schools instead of guilting them to go to college. No need to label them early on. That can only end in disaster.
While I agree with the technical criticisms, I cant agree with the attitude of "future people will be so rational and alien to us they wont understand fiction or care about history." Humanity has always cared about stories, its where we learn things as children and as children we demand stories. We have also always have cared deeply about our roots and our understanding of history.
Even in some uber-technological future the tools that make us smart in engineering are the same tools that make us curious. Curious and smart go hand in hand, and we will always be curious about the past.
Just because the future is unpredictable doesnt mean we should care about preserving the culture and history of the present.
>>They may well be pissing on our graves for having ruined the planet, and these disks may simply be destroyed as examples of the evil Evil EVIL petroleum age
Wow, angsty much? Are modern people sitting and seething in anger over the dodo bird and other species hunted to extinction? No, we're interested in the motivations and history of the period.
>>the cultural interest in such behaviour (sitting and watching a screen)
How old is the collection of christian myths? People are still interested in reading it and usually in the form of a book!
Theres only so much you can do for poverty. Programs are already in place for them.
Its no different in the rest of the world. Government makes priorities and budgets. Id hate to see an entire nation held back because there will always be poor people. Cannibalizing the good parts of government to just hand out meals is never a sustainable policy.
That said, there can be social goods from good accounting like this. More people paying taxes, better census, jobs created, better tracking of migrations, identification of criminals, etc etc.
Why dont web hosts scan for hosted vulnerabilities? I imagine a nightly clamav scan by web hosts would make all the difference in cases like these where there is no patch yet but there is an web-based exploit. Heck, some users dont even patch, as was shown by Conficker, which was patched in October and spread like wildfire in January.
Nope, you still get patches. Not sure how long that lasts, but 2000 + FF makes for a decent computer, especially on older equipment. Lots of server 2000 installs out there too. Run as non-admin and youre golden.
Heck I'm typing this on an iPhone on a plane via airtrans wifi service somewhere between Chicago and orlando and I don't care about privacy. I'm not bankingand if the worst that happens is my slashdot pw sniffed then that's an Acceptable risk".
>There is $350 million people in the USA alone. That's $2 a piece. Figure $20 since half are kids, and not everyone will do so.
So? I dont need a tax increase. If every politician who thought "Hey its only 20 dollars each" stopped thinking like this then I would be paying much less in taxes. A $20 tax adds up over the long term. I just looked at my cellphone bill and Im paying $18 in taxes for one line. Yep, almost 1/3rd of my bill is taxes. So how about we start looking at programs to cut and things to make more efficient instead of pork like youre proposing.
>Instead of worrying about the exact dollar figures try to put it into perspective.
>heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors.
Donors? We're looking at 600 million or so dollars. Yeah, good luck finding someone willing to donate that much. A mock-up works just as well in the museum. I'd rather see that kind of money used for food security, healthcare, or education. Or at least a new space mission that isnt for museum bragging rights.
How about the admins do their job and use unique defaults instead of 1234? It really is incredible how lazy people are with passwords. Id rather assign you 84833 as your VM password than have you leave it 12345.
>you have to install the pirated version of the software to get the trojan and give it an administrator's password before it can pwn the machine, i.e., it's not a virus.
So? You know how the last big few botnets were created? By people installing greetingcard.exe and sexyphotos.exe sent via email. No virus needed.
My brothers machine had a problem with trojans until I told him to stop pirating software. Turns out most commercial software on those torrent sites has a trojan embedded or has a keygen thats just a trojan.
>Everywhere on the web, from/. to Lifehacker to chat rooms to DeviantArt
When was the last time you heard anything positive from the cacophony of bloggers and chronic forum posters? The culture of the web is the culture of complaints because people who are happy or content with someone dont run to tell everyone. People who are pissed are motivated to say something, so if youre using the web as a litmus test youre pretty much asking for a negative outcome.
>There is still a lot of enterprise level software that will only work with Windows Mobile components
I just bought an iphone. The guy at the apple store had a handheld device with a barcode reader he was using to setup my phone. Guess what it ran? Windows Mobile.
Every month or so someone writes up a post like yours on the imminent failure of MS, and it never happens.
I dont see the 360 doing poorly, in fact, its cleaning the PS3s clock. Office 2007 isnt the failure you want it to be and as someone with an interest in UIs its a shame so many geeks are afraid of change. Imagine if Apple was still using OS9's UI today. Or if we were using Win3.11 UI in Vista. Ugh.
Vista, for all its faults, sells and is in used by millions. SP1 Vista is comparable to XP, at least to me. The complaints Im seeing nowadays are of 3rd party software like Zone Alarm and Trend Micro breaking things.
Conversely, we're seeing a lot of returns on linux netbooks because people simply dont understand what it means when a computer doesnt come with windows. We're seeing Firefox lag behind on splitting tabs into processes. We're seeing Chrome barely make a dent in the web. We're seeing stronger offerings from MS with Server 2008. etc etc. But we are also seeing more Linux in homes and embedded devices. We're seeing an acceptance of OSS in corporate that seems stronger than in the past.
The point here is that you cant just look at all these markets and niches and come to one conclusion. In some places MS is doing well and in other places its doing poorly. Its still damn profitable and geeks should really understand that despite the hype, MS is still a 800lbs gorilla we need to be careful around. If anything, all this competition is forcing MS to up its game, which is good for everyone.
>this will result in things getting *slower* because of the process overhead.
I really doubt it. In the IE6 days, IE users would do their equivalent of tabs by just starting a new IE process by double-clicking the IE icon. That would launch a whole new copy of iexplore.exe. If that level of performance was acceptable then (and it seems it was) then we'll be fine. Heck, Ive already run IE8 (which does this today) on a single-core beater laptop with no complaints.
>Thanks google, and thanks mozilla, for helping to drive competition and make the web browser better.
Ironically, the reason why this is happening is because IE8 has it today and the Firefox team is feeling left behind. If anyone should be thanked its Google and then MS for keeping FF honest. Funny how things turn out.
Micropayment? Err, pay a year at a time. its 12 bucks. This is just like satellite radio. No one pays monthly, they pay quarterly or annually. Relax dude.
Thats really inexcusable. I find almost all the steam games I have bought dont have any instructions. How hard is it to load a pdf of the manual or deliver a real help file?
Steam really has become a ghetto dumping ground for old borderline worthless titles.
Yet, its Andreeson who decides which ideas are "good" by investing in them. So he doesnt want the creativity of the 20-something crowd, he wants them to work for peanuts, slave away at a product, put their lives on hold, and take a big bet that they will be the next Facebook while Andreeson and his partners sit back.
Granted, thats investment in a nutshell, but the ability to choose what to invest in isnt done by the 20 year olds, its done the 50+ crowd. The reason he's targeting 20 year olds is because they have nothing to lose, while more mature talent arent going to quit their normal jobs to take this risk.
Singing the praises of a 24 year old is all well and good, but they are certainly not in the drivers seat. Many would say that web-based startups are so risky they are better off landing a normal job and spend the the next few years climbing the ladder instead of living off ramen and begging for investors.
>he US government tinkers in the economy more than most other free nations do
No way. The European version of capitalism involves a lot more regulation and tinkering, heck look at all the protectionist anti-MS regulations slashdot cheers. The US is pretty free, but its fashionable to pretend its borderline-communist because someone go elected the right-wing nutjobs dont like.
Its really not that big of a limitation, but of course its is a real limitation. In capitalism we have different products for different niches. Most people arent programming their own apps and 95% of the time dont bother with anything but the stock and top 25 apps.
For those who dont fit this demographic, this device probably isnt the best.
I just bought one on saturday and miss the openness of windows mobile & palmOS, but it does most of what I need and, frankly, dont have time to mess around too much with my phone. Its a slick package overall, and I think its real allure is the focus on UI and ease of use. Even geeks arent immune from the siren song of quality hardware and a good UI.
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Lets not paint greenpeace or peta as reasonable organizations. PETA is just a joke and I blame Greenpeace for the lack of nuclear power plants, thus the burning of all this coal. Its like the anti-abortion crowd's disapproval of condoms and the pill.
Neither of these groups express proper concern for anything. They are well-off non-profits riding the donation train. Being shrill and unreasonable equals donations from the nutters of the world.
Even an NDA can be misused. A good coder or whoever he is trying to hire may not want to sign an NDA that ties his hands. Joe Wannabe Entrepreneur's NDA that includes "Not to work on any social networking apps for at least 18 months" will be laughed out of the room. He'll end up with a lousy coder or student and have a lackluster product that will fail in the market.
Exactly. One of the worst traps you can fall into in professional life is to believe ideas have worth. Sorry, but they are almost worthless. Even a good implementation is borderline worthless without the proper business processes including marketing and advertising.
I've never heard of a uber-secretive guy making it big in the business world. The "I have a genius idea, but dont trust anyone" is the sign of an amateur and/or someone too lazy to learn to code. There's no shortage of people out there who just know their iphone idea will make them a millionare. Its a delusional and self-serving belief.
The guy who does make it is the one who learns how to implement it or at least is trusting enough to hire a real pro without a draconian NDA to do it. This person also understands the business processes needed to promote and support the product.
>The bad kids need to be identified as early as possible
and how do you propose we do this? Who gets to decide? All these kids with ADD, mental illness, abusive parents, etc will be labeled unfit instead of being helped. Talk about a real lack of basic human compassion.
While I agree we cant educate everyone, we can at least help them towards trade schools instead of guilting them to go to college. No need to label them early on. That can only end in disaster.
While I agree with the technical criticisms, I cant agree with the attitude of "future people will be so rational and alien to us they wont understand fiction or care about history." Humanity has always cared about stories, its where we learn things as children and as children we demand stories. We have also always have cared deeply about our roots and our understanding of history.
Even in some uber-technological future the tools that make us smart in engineering are the same tools that make us curious. Curious and smart go hand in hand, and we will always be curious about the past.
Just because the future is unpredictable doesnt mean we should care about preserving the culture and history of the present.
>>They may well be pissing on our graves for having ruined the planet, and these disks may simply be destroyed as examples of the evil Evil EVIL petroleum age
Wow, angsty much? Are modern people sitting and seething in anger over the dodo bird and other species hunted to extinction? No, we're interested in the motivations and history of the period.
>>the cultural interest in such behaviour (sitting and watching a screen)
How old is the collection of christian myths? People are still interested in reading it and usually in the form of a book!
Theres only so much you can do for poverty. Programs are already in place for them.
Its no different in the rest of the world. Government makes priorities and budgets. Id hate to see an entire nation held back because there will always be poor people. Cannibalizing the good parts of government to just hand out meals is never a sustainable policy.
That said, there can be social goods from good accounting like this. More people paying taxes, better census, jobs created, better tracking of migrations, identification of criminals, etc etc.
Why dont web hosts scan for hosted vulnerabilities? I imagine a nightly clamav scan by web hosts would make all the difference in cases like these where there is no patch yet but there is an web-based exploit. Heck, some users dont even patch, as was shown by Conficker, which was patched in October and spread like wildfire in January.
Nope, you still get patches. Not sure how long that lasts, but 2000 + FF makes for a decent computer, especially on older equipment. Lots of server 2000 installs out there too. Run as non-admin and youre golden.
Shame the steely-eyed libertarian uber-rationalist doomsayers like yourself have yet to master the fallacy of idealizing the past.
Heck I'm typing this on an iPhone on a plane via airtrans wifi service somewhere between Chicago and orlando and I don't care about privacy. I'm not bankingand if the worst that happens is my slashdot pw sniffed then that's an Acceptable risk".
>There is $350 million people in the USA alone. That's $2 a piece. Figure $20 since half are kids, and not everyone will do so.
So? I dont need a tax increase. If every politician who thought "Hey its only 20 dollars each" stopped thinking like this then I would be paying much less in taxes. A $20 tax adds up over the long term. I just looked at my cellphone bill and Im paying $18 in taxes for one line. Yep, almost 1/3rd of my bill is taxes. So how about we start looking at programs to cut and things to make more efficient instead of pork like youre proposing.
>Instead of worrying about the exact dollar figures try to put it into perspective.
Try to lower taxes, not increase them.
>heck the majority of the shuttle launch could be financed by donors.
Donors? We're looking at 600 million or so dollars. Yeah, good luck finding someone willing to donate that much. A mock-up works just as well in the museum. I'd rather see that kind of money used for food security, healthcare, or education. Or at least a new space mission that isnt for museum bragging rights.
How about the admins do their job and use unique defaults instead of 1234? It really is incredible how lazy people are with passwords. Id rather assign you 84833 as your VM password than have you leave it 12345.
>you have to install the pirated version of the software to get the trojan and give it an administrator's password before it can pwn the machine, i.e., it's not a virus.
So? You know how the last big few botnets were created? By people installing greetingcard.exe and sexyphotos.exe sent via email. No virus needed.
My brothers machine had a problem with trojans until I told him to stop pirating software. Turns out most commercial software on those torrent sites has a trojan embedded or has a keygen thats just a trojan.
>until I hear about a botnet of macs, I'm going to be skeptical that virus software is necessary on a mac.
Earlier this year a trojan put into the installer of the pirated versions of Photoshop and iWork created a botnet which attacked some site.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/041709-first-mac-os-x-botnet.html
>Everywhere on the web, from /. to Lifehacker to chat rooms to DeviantArt
When was the last time you heard anything positive from the cacophony of bloggers and chronic forum posters? The culture of the web is the culture of complaints because people who are happy or content with someone dont run to tell everyone. People who are pissed are motivated to say something, so if youre using the web as a litmus test youre pretty much asking for a negative outcome.
>There is still a lot of enterprise level software that will only work with Windows Mobile components
I just bought an iphone. The guy at the apple store had a handheld device with a barcode reader he was using to setup my phone. Guess what it ran? Windows Mobile.
Every month or so someone writes up a post like yours on the imminent failure of MS, and it never happens.
I dont see the 360 doing poorly, in fact, its cleaning the PS3s clock. Office 2007 isnt the failure you want it to be and as someone with an interest in UIs its a shame so many geeks are afraid of change. Imagine if Apple was still using OS9's UI today. Or if we were using Win3.11 UI in Vista. Ugh.
Vista, for all its faults, sells and is in used by millions. SP1 Vista is comparable to XP, at least to me. The complaints Im seeing nowadays are of 3rd party software like Zone Alarm and Trend Micro breaking things.
Conversely, we're seeing a lot of returns on linux netbooks because people simply dont understand what it means when a computer doesnt come with windows. We're seeing Firefox lag behind on splitting tabs into processes. We're seeing Chrome barely make a dent in the web. We're seeing stronger offerings from MS with Server 2008. etc etc. But we are also seeing more Linux in homes and embedded devices. We're seeing an acceptance of OSS in corporate that seems stronger than in the past.
The point here is that you cant just look at all these markets and niches and come to one conclusion. In some places MS is doing well and in other places its doing poorly. Its still damn profitable and geeks should really understand that despite the hype, MS is still a 800lbs gorilla we need to be careful around. If anything, all this competition is forcing MS to up its game, which is good for everyone.
>this will result in things getting *slower* because of the process overhead.
I really doubt it. In the IE6 days, IE users would do their equivalent of tabs by just starting a new IE process by double-clicking the IE icon. That would launch a whole new copy of iexplore.exe. If that level of performance was acceptable then (and it seems it was) then we'll be fine. Heck, Ive already run IE8 (which does this today) on a single-core beater laptop with no complaints.
>Thanks google, and thanks mozilla, for helping to drive competition and make the web browser better.
Ironically, the reason why this is happening is because IE8 has it today and the Firefox team is feeling left behind. If anyone should be thanked its Google and then MS for keeping FF honest. Funny how things turn out.
Micropayment? Err, pay a year at a time. its 12 bucks. This is just like satellite radio. No one pays monthly, they pay quarterly or annually. Relax dude.
>NO instructions!
Thats really inexcusable. I find almost all the steam games I have bought dont have any instructions. How hard is it to load a pdf of the manual or deliver a real help file?
Steam really has become a ghetto dumping ground for old borderline worthless titles.
Yet, its Andreeson who decides which ideas are "good" by investing in them. So he doesnt want the creativity of the 20-something crowd, he wants them to work for peanuts, slave away at a product, put their lives on hold, and take a big bet that they will be the next Facebook while Andreeson and his partners sit back.
Granted, thats investment in a nutshell, but the ability to choose what to invest in isnt done by the 20 year olds, its done the 50+ crowd. The reason he's targeting 20 year olds is because they have nothing to lose, while more mature talent arent going to quit their normal jobs to take this risk.
Singing the praises of a 24 year old is all well and good, but they are certainly not in the drivers seat. Many would say that web-based startups are so risky they are better off landing a normal job and spend the the next few years climbing the ladder instead of living off ramen and begging for investors.
>he US government tinkers in the economy more than most other free nations do
No way. The European version of capitalism involves a lot more regulation and tinkering, heck look at all the protectionist anti-MS regulations slashdot cheers. The US is pretty free, but its fashionable to pretend its borderline-communist because someone go elected the right-wing nutjobs dont like.
Its really not that big of a limitation, but of course its is a real limitation. In capitalism we have different products for different niches. Most people arent programming their own apps and 95% of the time dont bother with anything but the stock and top 25 apps.
For those who dont fit this demographic, this device probably isnt the best.
I just bought one on saturday and miss the openness of windows mobile & palmOS, but it does most of what I need and, frankly, dont have time to mess around too much with my phone. Its a slick package overall, and I think its real allure is the focus on UI and ease of use. Even geeks arent immune from the siren song of quality hardware and a good UI.