This is absolutely false. Not all private organizations are for-profit -- non-profit organizations are private as well!
I don't see any 503(b) organzation like United Way flying a space mission anytime soon. With the huge capital investment required, what is the likelihood that any sort of science-based and exploratory mission will be funded and launched by private capital? Essentially, you are missing the point: a "non-profit" organization is so by dint of tax law, and is no less privy to the needs of maximizing returns and minimizing cost than a "for-profit" organization.
Even without a profit motive, this market would force non-profits to compete with one another, become more efficient, and meet market demand.
How is that plausible? In the abstract it sounds sensible, but it is obvious that in reality the winner of contracts would have an unfair advantage quickly over any "competitors". The capital investment is simply too huge to presume a deep and wide choice of competition.
If I still haven't convinced you that private industry is interested in science -- well, I guess I'll just get back to working on my PhD at a private (non-profit) university, funded by a private fellowship.
I'm not sure if this is "pro-private" or an attempt to follow the "I'm smarter than you" line of attack. Have you traced the evolution and roots of your fellowship's endowment? Furthemore: you do understand the fallacy in comparing apples and oranges?
instead of inefficiently and ineffectively blowing billions of tax dollars keeping the wheeles of their wussified, red tape, burocracy running,
You have no idea exactly what constraints most government institutions outside the defense sector, starved of healthy revenue by a hostile administrative regime, have, do you? Nothing like an ad-hominem attack to clear the air.
they could just bid out the launch of their projects to the lowest bidder in the private sector
This is laughable. What are you speaking of is pure insider speculative pork. We know that the lowest bidder would inevitably produce a lower-quality product; and the average government contract usually guarantees a number of things which include payment on cost overruns and the like. Government contracts are known as "guaranteed income" and highly prized. Many a business was built on the back of these contracts.
what happened to NASA's hardcore pilots? The kind in the movie "The Right Stuff" and "From the Earth to the Moon?" The people they trot out now to fly the shuttle all look like Volvo drivers.
Ah, I see--because films are always accurate representations of reality. If that is your frame of reference, I fear for you.
Actually free markets enable class mobility. With a highly regulated market, it makes it harder for smaller and sole proprietorships to cut through all of the regulations and start-up.
This is a good example of the "efficient markets" theory--that a "free market" is self-regulating, in that incompetent and inefficient producers of products and services are disposed of over time. It is a logical fallacy since it ignores two key factors: one, an efficient market presumes free and copious information on producers and services, which presumes an inordinate amount of free-time and will to consume the information, even if it was available (empirically false--just try finding a competent dry-cleaner: its a pot-luck or a brand name, and the brand name usually wins because familiarity breeds consent), and equal access to capital for all players (when size and longevity will always reward itself with greater access). This rewards established players with access to greater capital in "mature" markets, and is only true to a minor degree in "new" markets, which quickly consolidate due to the factors that some players will always have better organization and easier access to capital, thus enforcing consolidation. Regulation attempts to level the playing field, and reduce the reality of a normal "free market" to be reduced to an oligopoly as the largest entities operating in it turn to cannibalism to grow their businesses and reduce cost advantages of leaner competitors. Once that phase is reached, profit extraction with little real improvement becomes the norm: witness cable television systems in the last fifteen years, as opposed to the first fifteen.
Basically, this ignores the fact that markets tend toward consolidation because any entity operating within it understands that by leveraging its position towards the reduction of competitition will ultimately allow it to "call the shots" and dictate terms in the producer-consumer relationship.
Regulation of a mature market is usually a recognition of the inherent dysfunction of a "free market". The producer is guaranteed survival at a reduced rate of growth and profit, while the consumer is guaranteed consistency in service and the reduction of gouging and other predatory effects of an unequal power relationship. This may fly in the face of desires to "get rich" and have "creative destruction" to "improve markets", but it ignores the ultimately wasteful byproducts of those sort of movements--they reward the captains of capital while leaving the detritus of humans and expended and idled capital investments in their wake. In an abstract Friedman-like view, these may be "good things" but on the ground they are extremely disruptive when not destructive.
The best case in point is the regulated vs. the un-regulated airline industry. Minor carriers flourished even among the majors previous to de-regulation, but since then, the majors have been saddled with in-built costs while competing with carriers without those concerns. In the interest of avoiding all-out chaos the government has continually intervened, but is holding off the end result. How is it feasible that what has occurred in the last thirty years is sensible? In the interest of maximizing their investor return the carriers have pursued a markedly adversarial relationship with their personnel, and the only hope is to continuously suffocate investment in infrastructure and "human resources". The decline in service and satifaction is obvious, but it is a levelling-down which ends in minimal service provided for maximum profit, with speculative ventures rewarded above and beyond sensible ventures.
Do you realize that our most transformative era in US history was when the government took a lazie-faire[sic] attitude? This allowed the industrial revolution.
There was nothing lasseiz-faire about the governments approach to industrialisation in the 19th century. The railroad system was built entirely on goverment confiscation of land and the "leasing" o
Yes, agreed. It's true that at one point the web became very un-IE friendly. But it's worthwhile to remember why: NN4.7. Opera got caught up in the whirlwind, but that was some five years ago. Ever since the Mozilla project got off the ground with a new alternative, the web has become a much more congenial place.
Opera's general is fighting the last war, and if they want "accurate statistics", they need to stop mis-identifying their browser. They could just change the bleeding string. Look at Safari: it has the tag "KHTML, like Gecko". Which means any sniffer sees "Gecko" and thinks at the least, N6+ compatible. Opera could do the same if it so desired, and get decent statistics finally. Hell, they could make an auto-update for those versions in the wild, as well.
And how would have VisiCalc been available for the Apple II, had the Apple II not already commanded such a significant share of the market at the time of VisiCalc's introduction?
I think you are being reductionist. The microcomputer market might have been a very different place save for Apple's existence. Whether or not VisiCalc was made available for the Apple II misses the point; furthermore, I don't recall the Apple II + VisiCalc being all that popular after the IBM PC + Lotus 1-2-3 caught on.
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
Yes, assuming you can even get onto the WAN without being firewalled out. Sorry, but I like the idea--but trust me, the modern, paranoid, SOX-compliant organization throws up many a roadblock...
Steve Jobs understood that microcomputers presented a banner opportunity for a pioneering company. His time at HP--during which HP introduced electronic calculators which were reasonably priced (I recall my father having one as a whelp)--had proven to him that the "marketplace" would greedily snatch at any time-saving computing device produced for mass consumption. Steve also decided the Apple II should have a clean, molded case design (as opposed to the bare-board Apple I).
The microcomputer market was ready for an entrepreneurial company. Apple became that company. And the world is a different place for it. Woz would've been happy custom-designing microcomputers for hobbyist purposes till the cows came home. Steve, however, understood the mass-market implication of providing these powerful devices to people. Furthermore, he understood the need for pleasing semantics and design in attracting these consumers. Most engineers, needless to say, by nature, have little sympathy and less grasp of the desirability of such things.
I imagine that Woz would admit that without Steve, he would never have gotten rich enough to throw a free rock festival.
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
Can't you do your job remotely? This should work on any OS these days.
I for one, never touched anyone elses keyboard for years now.
Well, the suggestion is grand if you have a sympathetic systems group or work for more technology-savvy organizations. However, in the "Real World", it is hard to find such forward thinking. Thus many of us find ourselves using "other people's keyboards".
Woz was the engineer that designed and built the Apple II, true. But Steve provided the vision, style, and intuitive grasp of the need for the personal computer. That framework was how Apple grew into a great company. I'm not certain that Woz would've done this alone--I imagine there were plenty of hand-designed computers of that day and age which are rotting away forgotten somewhere, yet are scions of exemplary engineering.
I would say that Woz was probably much luckier to know Steve than the other way around. Without Steve, Woz would have been just another engineer--a talented and remarkable one, yes; but Steve managed to bring a world-altering vision to the table.
But seriously, these are handled at the state level here, and thus can be arcane and contradictory. Not to mention they seem primarily concerned with damages rather than individual loss. Hence the popularity of class-action lawsuits for defective products, which primarily benefit the lawyers who pursue them.
Yes, what gets me about this is how easily disposable modern electronic gear is.
An old rule of thumb of mine used to be "don't buy the extended warranty--it's a scam". After my experience with a broken Fuji digicam--which was under warranty, but took two months to fix a seemingly minor problem--I think I'll be getting those from now on (instant replacement et al.).
There is a neat article on this (nb: free reg. req.). I was listening to my new iPod photo at the time I first read it. Ironically, just when I had finished, the iPod froze, and needed a hard reboot.
But by far the most valuable thing that Sun just aquired was several hundred acres of super-prime real estate on Hwy 36-the Denver/Boulder turnpike. This area is incredibly hot for development. STK was smart to get the land when it was worthless.
Why do I have this sneaking suspicion that this may have been one of the key factors for choosing this particular organization?
Any idea how much that would be worth at market rates? Does this mean the deal will practically pay for itself?
I think this is an hilarious case of a grading system which rewards effort as much as accuracy. By this standard, those who are in the median for actual ability will always do best, putting in the most effort and getting the most accuracy out of this effort. Essentially, such a system flattens the "bell curve" of grading. What real purpose does that achieve, except to discourage the exceptional (i.e. "smart but lazy", as if hard work is an achievement in itself) and falsely reward the unexceptional (i.e. "challenged", but given points for all the effort gone nowhere)?
Ah, well. Probably silly of myself to even challenge that mindset...
It's rather simple, actually. Of course, I am talking here about GSM/GPRS w/ Bluetooth. I am a "Former AT&T Wireless" customer of Cingular. When in a pinch, I can use Bluetooth to connect my laptop to the.net via a direct GPRS connection. It is relatively easy to setup--my Bluetooth USB dongle's software had the setup in it automatically, but a dial-up connection over Bluetooth to a paired cell phone with the phone number *99***1# will connect directly to the network.
Speed is slow, but usable for quick checks of the office email et al. Standard GPRS data rates apply.
I imagine the same principal applies for other networks w/ a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, but I cannot speak from experience.
Try this... I know it must happen on other sites, but I was "fortunate" to find this.
1) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ Firefox. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus. Works.
2) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ IE. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus (albeit drawn differently). Works.
3) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ NS8. Note that IE engine is being used. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus. Get caught in a recursive site-provided "Page Not Found" loop. Change engine to Firefox for site. Same issue....there are problems with NS8, let's face it.
You have to keep in mind: these things affect forward-compatibility, and thus standards. In XHTML, unquoted attributes and bare ampersands are verbotten.
It always had this feature--in Safari 1.x, look in the preferences for "Enable Rendezvous" on the bookmark bar and menu.
Yeah, I know, I didn't realise it was there until last night, myself; not till this whole Bonjour thing made me excited for the Windoze boxen I have...:)
Seems to me Apple needs to update the Cocoa frameworks for operations on the modern NT variants (2000/XP).
Seems to me they may already me doing that, what with QT7 being a Cocoa app (and I wouldn't be surprised to find iTunes is not far behind).
Seems to me we may see Apple pushing back into the cross-platform application development arena very soon, as a hook to customers to move off Carbon on the OS X platform...
Too bad MegaCable/MegaTeleCom's (outsourced) customer service is arguably less competent, and most certainly no more responsive, than your modern, computerized DMV.
Oh and, as for "raising taxes"... well, at least you have a say in that. Unlike when your cable bill is raised month-in-month out ad nauseam.
But why let reality get in the way of your ideology! Good job at keeping the blinders up!
I am very intrigued by your proprosal. I would like to engage in correspondence for your Get-Rich-Quick course. The part where you describe your meteoric ascent is most requested.
Slashdot Mirror
This is absolutely false. Not all private organizations are for-profit -- non-profit organizations are private as well!
I don't see any 503(b) organzation like United Way flying a space mission anytime soon. With the huge capital investment required, what is the likelihood that any sort of science-based and exploratory mission will be funded and launched by private capital? Essentially, you are missing the point: a "non-profit" organization is so by dint of tax law, and is no less privy to the needs of maximizing returns and minimizing cost than a "for-profit" organization.
Even without a profit motive, this market would force non-profits to compete with one another, become more efficient, and meet market demand.
How is that plausible? In the abstract it sounds sensible, but it is obvious that in reality the winner of contracts would have an unfair advantage quickly over any "competitors". The capital investment is simply too huge to presume a deep and wide choice of competition.
If I still haven't convinced you that private industry is interested in science -- well, I guess I'll just get back to working on my PhD at a private (non-profit) university, funded by a private fellowship.
I'm not sure if this is "pro-private" or an attempt to follow the "I'm smarter than you" line of attack. Have you traced the evolution and roots of your fellowship's endowment? Furthemore: you do understand the fallacy in comparing apples and oranges?
instead of inefficiently and ineffectively blowing billions of tax dollars keeping the wheeles of their wussified, red tape, burocracy running,
You have no idea exactly what constraints most government institutions outside the defense sector, starved of healthy revenue by a hostile administrative regime, have, do you? Nothing like an ad-hominem attack to clear the air.
they could just bid out the launch of their projects to the lowest bidder in the private sector
This is laughable. What are you speaking of is pure insider speculative pork. We know that the lowest bidder would inevitably produce a lower-quality product; and the average government contract usually guarantees a number of things which include payment on cost overruns and the like. Government contracts are known as "guaranteed income" and highly prized. Many a business was built on the back of these contracts.
what happened to NASA's hardcore pilots? The kind in the movie "The Right Stuff" and "From the Earth to the Moon?" The people they trot out now to fly the shuttle all look like Volvo drivers.
Ah, I see--because films are always accurate representations of reality. If that is your frame of reference, I fear for you.
Actually free markets enable class mobility. With a highly regulated market, it makes it harder for smaller and sole proprietorships to cut through all of the regulations and start-up.
This is a good example of the "efficient markets" theory--that a "free market" is self-regulating, in that incompetent and inefficient producers of products and services are disposed of over time. It is a logical fallacy since it ignores two key factors: one, an efficient market presumes free and copious information on producers and services, which presumes an inordinate amount of free-time and will to consume the information, even if it was available (empirically false--just try finding a competent dry-cleaner: its a pot-luck or a brand name, and the brand name usually wins because familiarity breeds consent), and equal access to capital for all players (when size and longevity will always reward itself with greater access). This rewards established players with access to greater capital in "mature" markets, and is only true to a minor degree in "new" markets, which quickly consolidate due to the factors that some players will always have better organization and easier access to capital, thus enforcing consolidation. Regulation attempts to level the playing field, and reduce the reality of a normal "free market" to be reduced to an oligopoly as the largest entities operating in it turn to cannibalism to grow their businesses and reduce cost advantages of leaner competitors. Once that phase is reached, profit extraction with little real improvement becomes the norm: witness cable television systems in the last fifteen years, as opposed to the first fifteen.
Basically, this ignores the fact that markets tend toward consolidation because any entity operating within it understands that by leveraging its position towards the reduction of competitition will ultimately allow it to "call the shots" and dictate terms in the producer-consumer relationship.
Regulation of a mature market is usually a recognition of the inherent dysfunction of a "free market". The producer is guaranteed survival at a reduced rate of growth and profit, while the consumer is guaranteed consistency in service and the reduction of gouging and other predatory effects of an unequal power relationship. This may fly in the face of desires to "get rich" and have "creative destruction" to "improve markets", but it ignores the ultimately wasteful byproducts of those sort of movements--they reward the captains of capital while leaving the detritus of humans and expended and idled capital investments in their wake. In an abstract Friedman-like view, these may be "good things" but on the ground they are extremely disruptive when not destructive.
The best case in point is the regulated vs. the un-regulated airline industry. Minor carriers flourished even among the majors previous to de-regulation, but since then, the majors have been saddled with in-built costs while competing with carriers without those concerns. In the interest of avoiding all-out chaos the government has continually intervened, but is holding off the end result. How is it feasible that what has occurred in the last thirty years is sensible? In the interest of maximizing their investor return the carriers have pursued a markedly adversarial relationship with their personnel, and the only hope is to continuously suffocate investment in infrastructure and "human resources". The decline in service and satifaction is obvious, but it is a levelling-down which ends in minimal service provided for maximum profit, with speculative ventures rewarded above and beyond sensible ventures.
Do you realize that our most transformative era in US history was when the government took a lazie-faire[sic] attitude? This allowed the industrial revolution.
There was nothing lasseiz-faire about the governments approach to industrialisation in the 19th century. The railroad system was built entirely on goverment confiscation of land and the "leasing" o
Yes, agreed. It's true that at one point the web became very un-IE friendly. But it's worthwhile to remember why: NN4.7. Opera got caught up in the whirlwind, but that was some five years ago. Ever since the Mozilla project got off the ground with a new alternative, the web has become a much more congenial place.
Opera's general is fighting the last war, and if they want "accurate statistics", they need to stop mis-identifying their browser. They could just change the bleeding string. Look at Safari: it has the tag "KHTML, like Gecko". Which means any sniffer sees "Gecko" and thinks at the least, N6+ compatible. Opera could do the same if it so desired, and get decent statistics finally. Hell, they could make an auto-update for those versions in the wild, as well.
Eh?
And how would have VisiCalc been available for the Apple II, had the Apple II not already commanded such a significant share of the market at the time of VisiCalc's introduction?
I think you are being reductionist. The microcomputer market might have been a very different place save for Apple's existence. Whether or not VisiCalc was made available for the Apple II misses the point; furthermore, I don't recall the Apple II + VisiCalc being all that popular after the IBM PC + Lotus 1-2-3 caught on.
Yes, assuming you can even get onto the WAN without being firewalled out. Sorry, but I like the idea--but trust me, the modern, paranoid, SOX-compliant organization throws up many a roadblock...
Okeley-dokeley...
Steve Jobs understood that microcomputers presented a banner opportunity for a pioneering company. His time at HP--during which HP introduced electronic calculators which were reasonably priced (I recall my father having one as a whelp)--had proven to him that the "marketplace" would greedily snatch at any time-saving computing device produced for mass consumption. Steve also decided the Apple II should have a clean, molded case design (as opposed to the bare-board Apple I).
The microcomputer market was ready for an entrepreneurial company. Apple became that company. And the world is a different place for it. Woz would've been happy custom-designing microcomputers for hobbyist purposes till the cows came home. Steve, however, understood the mass-market implication of providing these powerful devices to people. Furthermore, he understood the need for pleasing semantics and design in attracting these consumers. Most engineers, needless to say, by nature, have little sympathy and less grasp of the desirability of such things.
I imagine that Woz would admit that without Steve, he would never have gotten rich enough to throw a free rock festival.
Can't you do your job remotely? This should work on any OS these days.
I for one, never touched anyone elses keyboard for years now.
Well, the suggestion is grand if you have a sympathetic systems group or work for more technology-savvy organizations. However, in the "Real World", it is hard to find such forward thinking. Thus many of us find ourselves using "other people's keyboards".
I don't know about this.
Woz was the engineer that designed and built the Apple II, true. But Steve provided the vision, style, and intuitive grasp of the need for the personal computer. That framework was how Apple grew into a great company. I'm not certain that Woz would've done this alone--I imagine there were plenty of hand-designed computers of that day and age which are rotting away forgotten somewhere, yet are scions of exemplary engineering.
I would say that Woz was probably much luckier to know Steve than the other way around. Without Steve, Woz would have been just another engineer--a talented and remarkable one, yes; but Steve managed to bring a world-altering vision to the table.
That is much rarer than great engineering skills.
Heh!
I believe it's called caveat emptor... :(
But seriously, these are handled at the state level here, and thus can be arcane and contradictory. Not to mention they seem primarily concerned with damages rather than individual loss. Hence the popularity of class-action lawsuits for defective products, which primarily benefit the lawyers who pursue them.
An old rule of thumb of mine used to be "don't buy the extended warranty--it's a scam". After my experience with a broken Fuji digicam--which was under warranty, but took two months to fix a seemingly minor problem--I think I'll be getting those from now on (instant replacement et al.).
There is a neat article on this (nb: free reg. req.). I was listening to my new iPod photo at the time I first read it. Ironically, just when I had finished, the iPod froze, and needed a hard reboot.
Not to mention the whole "to some whois" piece of their grammar...
But by far the most valuable thing that Sun just aquired was several hundred acres of super-prime real estate on Hwy 36-the Denver/Boulder turnpike. This area is incredibly hot for development. STK was smart to get the land when it was worthless.
Why do I have this sneaking suspicion that this may have been one of the key factors for choosing this particular organization?
Any idea how much that would be worth at market rates? Does this mean the deal will practically pay for itself?
I think this is an hilarious case of a grading system which rewards effort as much as accuracy. By this standard, those who are in the median for actual ability will always do best, putting in the most effort and getting the most accuracy out of this effort. Essentially, such a system flattens the "bell curve" of grading. What real purpose does that achieve, except to discourage the exceptional (i.e. "smart but lazy", as if hard work is an achievement in itself) and falsely reward the unexceptional (i.e. "challenged", but given points for all the effort gone nowhere)?
Ah, well. Probably silly of myself to even challenge that mindset...
Yes.
.net via a direct GPRS connection. It is relatively easy to setup--my Bluetooth USB dongle's software had the setup in it automatically, but a dial-up connection over Bluetooth to a paired cell phone with the phone number *99***1# will connect directly to the network.
It's rather simple, actually. Of course, I am talking here about GSM/GPRS w/ Bluetooth. I am a "Former AT&T Wireless" customer of Cingular. When in a pinch, I can use Bluetooth to connect my laptop to the
Speed is slow, but usable for quick checks of the office email et al. Standard GPRS data rates apply.
I imagine the same principal applies for other networks w/ a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, but I cannot speak from experience.
I think you need to realise that the grandparent was using hyperbole.
Try this... I know it must happen on other sites, but I was "fortunate" to find this.
...there are problems with NS8, let's face it.
1) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ Firefox. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus. Works.
2) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ IE. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus (albeit drawn differently). Works.
3) Navigate to http://www.ascd.org/ w/ NS8. Note that IE engine is being used. Move through the site via the dropdown DHTML menus. Get caught in a recursive site-provided "Page Not Found" loop. Change engine to Firefox for site. Same issue.
You have to keep in mind: these things affect forward-compatibility, and thus standards. In XHTML, unquoted attributes and bare ampersands are verbotten.
Well, seems to me that it's not "zero" configuration if you have to install Bonjour to begin with. :)
I would imagine they will be licensing the installer to be included with many a cross-platform device, however...
It always had this feature--in Safari 1.x, look in the preferences for "Enable Rendezvous" on the bookmark bar and menu.
:)
Yeah, I know, I didn't realise it was there until last night, myself; not till this whole Bonjour thing made me excited for the Windoze boxen I have...
Seems to me Apple needs to update the Cocoa frameworks for operations on the modern NT variants (2000/XP).
Seems to me they may already me doing that, what with QT7 being a Cocoa app (and I wouldn't be surprised to find iTunes is not far behind).
Seems to me we may see Apple pushing back into the cross-platform application development arena very soon, as a hook to customers to move off Carbon on the OS X platform...
???
The only thing I can state in response is: Q.E.D.
That's brilliant.
Too bad MegaCable/MegaTeleCom's (outsourced) customer service is arguably less competent, and most certainly no more responsive, than your modern, computerized DMV.
Oh and, as for "raising taxes"... well, at least you have a say in that. Unlike when your cable bill is raised month-in-month out ad nauseam.
But why let reality get in the way of your ideology! Good job at keeping the blinders up!
Apple is succeeding by bypassing their old "supply chain of stores, merchants, etc".
Dear Sir:
I am very intrigued by your proprosal. I would like to engage in correspondence for your Get-Rich-Quick course. The part where you describe your meteoric ascent is most requested.
Thank You.