I think the rest of the military will take note of what Rumsfeld just did to the Army high command (eviscerated it) and take the appropriate lessons. The military's 80%+ Republican so they'll be pushing for GWB in '04 and that means that Rumsfeld'll be there to shitcan them if they screw this up.
In other thoughts. It's not just the military that will likely go over but the major military contractors as well. After all, who wants to have to make connectivity with your major customer hard? So it'll end up being the military, Boeing, GM, Caterpillar and the rest of the major manufacturers who have large military contracts who will go over. It's that, not just the actual military that will create a market for IPv6.
Re:Do younger minds absorb quicker?
on
Ageism in IT?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
My father started going gray at 16 and was completely white haired by 21. I started going gray at 18 and have the hair color pattern of someone in his late 40s in my mid 30s.
It's a genetic condition. It doesn't fit in any sane category of disability but it does throw people's estimates of my age off by as much as a decade.
Nobody who plays an active role in international trade disputes (like the US or most other 1st world nations) is wholly clean. Yes, the steel tariffs suck and are a violation of principle. They are, however, not quite the same as the wage and price controls enacted by Richard "everyone's a Keynesian now" Nixon. The steel tariffs, specifically were meant more as an act of economic punishment for local subsidies in other countries' steel industry rather than some sort of philosophically consistent idea that controlling prices is a good thing.
One other thing, I think Thomas White got fired recently. Rumsfeld had long clashes with White and other Army leadership over a host of issues, most openly over the Crusader artillery system. You may have to pick a new whipping boy.
The next time you play around with a Mac OS X machine look inside an application bundle. See those nib files? They provide the user interface and you can modify them using apple's developer package tools.
Yes, the entire computer is skinnable, user apps included. Now this doesn't include classic apps (which you won't be using much of), unix apps (which don't use NIBS) and monolithic code not in a bundle (like RealBasic). For the rest of the 90% of Mac apps, you can really mod to your heart's delight. Most people don't do this because they *like* the way Apple makes everything work with everything else. But if that's what floats your boat...
Actually HyperTransport did come at least partially from Apple as it's a founding member of the consortium that made it.
Apple has a long history of choosing technology that it thought was better. Who had SCSI on their full PC line in the mid-80s (which was not invented by Apple) besides Apple? Eventually IDE got good enough that SCSI didn't fit the definition of "better, if more expensive" for their user base and just got to be more expensive so they switched.
A fast system bus is *the* major issue with Apple hardware. The G4 isn't that bad even today (when it's 2x clocked by Intel processors) when it's not starved for internal bandwidth but Apple's current MB designs *do* starve it.
With a faster chip (clock speed) running at 64bits (very good for complex processing) that doesn't have nearly the speed penalty of Intel's 64 bit solution running 32 bit code Apple's going to be doing a lot better than a minor hardware upgrade.
Whether they announce at WWDC or hold off is another question.
To do it right, you'd have to get a new bus as the chips are being strangled by bandwidth bottlenecks on current bus designs. The bus is laid into the motherboard. You'd have to get a new motherboard, probably a new power supply, a new CPU, and it would likely be so expensive (the port arrangements on the new ones are likely to be different so upgrade boards would be different parts than new production and thus smaller runs) that it doesn't make much sense to upgrade unless you have a personal attachment to your case.
I upgraded my SE to an SE/30 way back when. I saved maybe $200 on buying a new one.
Nah, they're entitled to a dime a page for copying expenses, an extra $20 if they bind it.
I think it's not a foregone conclusion that the code would be useless or competitors would be exclusively on alternative platforms. Think of a MAPI enabled version of Sendmail combined with a free 100% MS compatible groupware component competing with Exchange. People would be able to keep their clients and change the server and for new clients would be able to go for a free one.
That's the kind of competition that would give MS nightmares, software that ran on windows and *nix and would make replacing MS in a component by component fashion simple and easy. They would lose 40% of their marketshare overnight if they were in that situation today and they know it.
A world with MS at 50% marketshare is a very different place than a world with MS at 90%. They would lose massive amounts of leverage and they know it.
What alternative universe are you posting from? Bush didn't have legal troubles that were affecting him politically. He was riding high in the polls and continues to do so.
The established competitors to MS have been beaten time after time by MS over two decades. These are the competitors that MS is not really worried about because they have a track record of busines/technical/PR incompetence that is likely to continue. What *is* worrisome is the competitor they don't know and might be just as good as they are at competing, the future MS that is a 7 person software shop just like they were in the late '70s. Is that 7 person software shop able to pay $100,000 to just take a look at the protocols to see what they would get if they licensed? I don't think so.
That's the discriminatory portion, pricing it too high for the small shops that might be innovative and sneak under MS' radar to become serious competition means their most dangerous competition is out of the way.
The licensing terms are classic MS, just shy of being outside industry practice for non-monopolists, that same industry analyst said that the rules are different for monopolists and that these license terms should be approached with caution.
You can make a pretty good case against MS strictly on fraud statutes and conspiracy charges. At massive levels over so many years, you could even get RICO involved, perhaps criminal RICO.
Anti-trust is just the weapon that Democrats chose *because they like anti-trust*, they felt that there was a growing intellectual threat to anti-trust law sprouting in academia, and they controlled the Federal government at the time.
If Republicans had run the government at the time, the charges would likely have bee a criminal fraud case with a vast conspiracy by a major Democrat contributing corporation (MS before the anti-trust stick was used against them) they might have actually come to a better conclusion, MS legally unfettered but with a new top echelon because the previous group was in club Fed doing 5-10. Wanna bet which route would result in greater change in MS corporate business practices?
Anti-trust doesn't seem to be working out all that well in reality. Perhaps the corporate fraud angle would yield better results.
Yes, doing that would be just as foolish as flying your entire airforce to a country you just concluded an almost decade long war with. Oh, Saddam did that already (Gulf War, 1991).
It's early, way early, to come to final conclusions.
1. The secretary of the Army is not a cabinet post. 2. The Energy Task Force getting input from Enron (at the time the largest energy company in the US) would be normal. Who should they talk to, Ronald McDonald? 3. Republicans are allergic to price controls period and have been since Nixon so publicly proved that they're a really bad idea. You don't need to bribe a politician to do what he would already do without bribing.
Finally, corrupt government bugs me too but you need to differentiate between corruption and influence.
Clinton threw cruise missiles around when his legal problems over lying threatened him politically. If that doesn't turn your blood cold, I don't know what would.
Actually the two front runners in that speculation are Iran and Syria. Iran is there because Saddam flew his entire airforce there during Gulf War I in order to save it from destruction and Syria because it's a brother Baathist regime. Neither regime would likely want to admit to having the stuff and both would likely keep it under wraps as a trump card for future negotiations.
As for Iraq never trying to do anything against the US there's hosting terrorist organizations on Iraqi soil, running terrorist training camps on how to take over airplanes and other fun mayhem, and trying to assassinate the former president of the US. That's all he did if you don't count invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia in a bid to be able to economically blackmail the US (and the rest of the world) into doing whatever he wanted.
Funny, when 2002 rolled around the exact same counties were the only ones with problems in voting. These are all Democrat controlled counties. They all got the same funds to improve voting procedures and equipment yet only they failed to deliver.
It must be a vast right-wing conspiracy! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Apple's tech documentation is available for the cost of filling out a web registration form. This doesn't mean that Apple is without flaw or major room for improvement but it would be nice if you actually picked a valid failing of theirs.
Microsoft is a major supplier in part because they've put out good software that was better than their competitors and in part because they have engaged in illegal business practices and that's whether you count the anti-trust violations or not. When you have Bill Gates stating that $3k gets you access to the Win95 API, you expect access to the Win95 API, not just 90% with an extra 10% held back for the exclusive use of MS app programmers to kick your tail in the market.
I can't believe this gat marked up to 5 Insightful. A significant portion of Microsoft's user base feels trapped by MS because either MS either offers unique functionality that doesn't exist in OSS or the cost of transitioning exceeds the benefit.
MS *can* jack up prices high enough that those cost/benefit analyses lead to a dump MS option. Even for projects that don't exist or aren't functional, at a certain point its cheaper to hire your own programmers in an industry pool with your competition and make it yourselves than it would be to continue with MS and its predatory pricing and onerous EULA terms. For practical examples, see Netscape, Bullsoft, France Telecom, Apple, and IBM all contribute paid engineers to OSS project work.
Even if MS *doesn't* raise its prices that high, they're still in trouble because more and more programmers are contributing code and filling in the OSS gaps as they run into problems. As this code matures, MS will still lose customers at the margins and they will lose their dominant position in computing.
I have two words of reassurance for you. Arthur Anderson.
Past a certain point, corporate flouting of the law visibly erodes respect for the rule of law. The politicians can't tolerate that and retain their own power. MS will be squashed like a bug if they cross that line and they're getting awfully close.
Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing means that you can't turn down any licensee and they have to be charged no more than any other licensee. That means the general public can have access to them if the general public pays the reasonable fee.
The real problem is the reasonable part. Some judge is going to have to work out a definition of reasonable with Microsoft. That's got to be as bad as working out a definition of is with Bill Clinton.
Resources priced below their natural market rate are always abused. That's basic economics. However, both petrol and bandwidth contain large amounts of government involvement in their consumer price and (in the case of broadband) availability.
Oil products are variably taxed based on type of use in order to encourage various social goals. The more that sort of thing happens, the higher the economic distortion with a result being lower growth overall in the energy using economy. Thus you have americans exhibiting sticker shock when they see petrol prices in Europe for the first time. In the US, taxation accounts for 20-40% of the money you pay to fuel your car. In Europe, that figure is more like 60-70%, a significant difference that changes the entire economy.
Broadband has right of way issues, monopoly grants (cable TV is often given exclusive rights to a municipality), legislative impediments to competition (just try to start up a mom & pop phone company), and a reluctance to properly investigate, prosecute, and jail telecom executives who enter into conspiracies to lie, cheat, and steal from their customers (both wholesale and retail). For examples, read this thread.
These government actions impose completely unecessary costs on society and need to be removed. Broadband would be cheaper, suppliers would be more plentiful, and service more reliable if government action didn't tilt the playing field to incumbents with large contribution and lobbying budgets.
There is *one* exception to the bad effects of monopoly, which is a natural monopoly. If a company by virtue of superior management or other legitimate advantage is by far the lowest cost producer and they can keep that advantage through continuous innovation, eventually they will stand alone in their field. At that point, they aren't doing anything wrong, illegal, or immoral. They're just the best and everyone else has given up competing against them.
But a natural monopoly is not stable. If you slack off, if you try to extract too much excess profit through high margins you stop being the low cost producer and you get competition all over again.
The problem is that companies who are not natural monopolies claim to be natural monopolies.
I thought that sort of behavior was called fraud. If it's organized over a number of people it's also called conspiracy. People go to jail for that. What's the law in Australia?
It would be nice to get a legal opinion and publish a "how to spot broadband fraud" instruction booklet. Any decent lawyer who did that would probably do very well on private prosecutions.
The chief use in the US for garages is to park your car in them. However, it's astounding how many world class enterprises started in them. The national importance of cheap bandwidth is not for the day to day porn downloader but for the one in a thousand who take that resource and create a viable business out of it that ends up creating jobs and growing the economy.
Expensive bandwidth shaves off some growth every year at the margin and over time that creates a meaningful difference in the quality of daily life for you and the next generation.
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I think the rest of the military will take note of what Rumsfeld just did to the Army high command (eviscerated it) and take the appropriate lessons. The military's 80%+ Republican so they'll be pushing for GWB in '04 and that means that Rumsfeld'll be there to shitcan them if they screw this up.
In other thoughts. It's not just the military that will likely go over but the major military contractors as well. After all, who wants to have to make connectivity with your major customer hard? So it'll end up being the military, Boeing, GM, Caterpillar and the rest of the major manufacturers who have large military contracts who will go over. It's that, not just the actual military that will create a market for IPv6.
My father started going gray at 16 and was completely white haired by 21. I started going gray at 18 and have the hair color pattern of someone in his late 40s in my mid 30s.
It's a genetic condition. It doesn't fit in any sane category of disability but it does throw people's estimates of my age off by as much as a decade.
Something to think about.
Nobody who plays an active role in international trade disputes (like the US or most other 1st world nations) is wholly clean. Yes, the steel tariffs suck and are a violation of principle. They are, however, not quite the same as the wage and price controls enacted by Richard "everyone's a Keynesian now" Nixon. The steel tariffs, specifically were meant more as an act of economic punishment for local subsidies in other countries' steel industry rather than some sort of philosophically consistent idea that controlling prices is a good thing.
One other thing, I think Thomas White got fired recently. Rumsfeld had long clashes with White and other Army leadership over a host of issues, most openly over the Crusader artillery system. You may have to pick a new whipping boy.
The next time you play around with a Mac OS X machine look inside an application bundle. See those nib files? They provide the user interface and you can modify them using apple's developer package tools.
Yes, the entire computer is skinnable, user apps included. Now this doesn't include classic apps (which you won't be using much of), unix apps (which don't use NIBS) and monolithic code not in a bundle (like RealBasic). For the rest of the 90% of Mac apps, you can really mod to your heart's delight. Most people don't do this because they *like* the way Apple makes everything work with everything else. But if that's what floats your boat...
Actually HyperTransport did come at least partially from Apple as it's a founding member of the consortium that made it.
Apple has a long history of choosing technology that it thought was better. Who had SCSI on their full PC line in the mid-80s (which was not invented by Apple) besides Apple? Eventually IDE got good enough that SCSI didn't fit the definition of "better, if more expensive" for their user base and just got to be more expensive so they switched.
A fast system bus is *the* major issue with Apple hardware. The G4 isn't that bad even today (when it's 2x clocked by Intel processors) when it's not starved for internal bandwidth but Apple's current MB designs *do* starve it.
With a faster chip (clock speed) running at 64bits (very good for complex processing) that doesn't have nearly the speed penalty of Intel's 64 bit solution running 32 bit code Apple's going to be doing a lot better than a minor hardware upgrade.
Whether they announce at WWDC or hold off is another question.
To do it right, you'd have to get a new bus as the chips are being strangled by bandwidth bottlenecks on current bus designs. The bus is laid into the motherboard. You'd have to get a new motherboard, probably a new power supply, a new CPU, and it would likely be so expensive (the port arrangements on the new ones are likely to be different so upgrade boards would be different parts than new production and thus smaller runs) that it doesn't make much sense to upgrade unless you have a personal attachment to your case.
I upgraded my SE to an SE/30 way back when. I saved maybe $200 on buying a new one.
Nah, they're entitled to a dime a page for copying expenses, an extra $20 if they bind it.
I think it's not a foregone conclusion that the code would be useless or competitors would be exclusively on alternative platforms. Think of a MAPI enabled version of Sendmail combined with a free 100% MS compatible groupware component competing with Exchange. People would be able to keep their clients and change the server and for new clients would be able to go for a free one.
That's the kind of competition that would give MS nightmares, software that ran on windows and *nix and would make replacing MS in a component by component fashion simple and easy. They would lose 40% of their marketshare overnight if they were in that situation today and they know it.
A world with MS at 50% marketshare is a very different place than a world with MS at 90%. They would lose massive amounts of leverage and they know it.
What alternative universe are you posting from? Bush didn't have legal troubles that were affecting him politically. He was riding high in the polls and continues to do so.
The established competitors to MS have been beaten time after time by MS over two decades. These are the competitors that MS is not really worried about because they have a track record of busines/technical/PR incompetence that is likely to continue. What *is* worrisome is the competitor they don't know and might be just as good as they are at competing, the future MS that is a 7 person software shop just like they were in the late '70s. Is that 7 person software shop able to pay $100,000 to just take a look at the protocols to see what they would get if they licensed? I don't think so.
That's the discriminatory portion, pricing it too high for the small shops that might be innovative and sneak under MS' radar to become serious competition means their most dangerous competition is out of the way.
The licensing terms are classic MS, just shy of being outside industry practice for non-monopolists, that same industry analyst said that the rules are different for monopolists and that these license terms should be approached with caution.
You can make a pretty good case against MS strictly on fraud statutes and conspiracy charges. At massive levels over so many years, you could even get RICO involved, perhaps criminal RICO.
Anti-trust is just the weapon that Democrats chose *because they like anti-trust*, they felt that there was a growing intellectual threat to anti-trust law sprouting in academia, and they controlled the Federal government at the time.
If Republicans had run the government at the time, the charges would likely have bee a criminal fraud case with a vast conspiracy by a major Democrat contributing corporation (MS before the anti-trust stick was used against them) they might have actually come to a better conclusion, MS legally unfettered but with a new top echelon because the previous group was in club Fed doing 5-10. Wanna bet which route would result in greater change in MS corporate business practices?
Anti-trust doesn't seem to be working out all that well in reality. Perhaps the corporate fraud angle would yield better results.
Yes, doing that would be just as foolish as flying your entire airforce to a country you just concluded an almost decade long war with. Oh, Saddam did that already (Gulf War, 1991).
It's early, way early, to come to final conclusions.
1. The secretary of the Army is not a cabinet post.
2. The Energy Task Force getting input from Enron (at the time the largest energy company in the US) would be normal. Who should they talk to, Ronald McDonald?
3. Republicans are allergic to price controls period and have been since Nixon so publicly proved that they're a really bad idea. You don't need to bribe a politician to do what he would already do without bribing.
Finally, corrupt government bugs me too but you need to differentiate between corruption and influence.
Clinton threw cruise missiles around when his legal problems over lying threatened him politically. If that doesn't turn your blood cold, I don't know what would.
Actually the two front runners in that speculation are Iran and Syria. Iran is there because Saddam flew his entire airforce there during Gulf War I in order to save it from destruction and Syria because it's a brother Baathist regime. Neither regime would likely want to admit to having the stuff and both would likely keep it under wraps as a trump card for future negotiations.
As for Iraq never trying to do anything against the US there's hosting terrorist organizations on Iraqi soil, running terrorist training camps on how to take over airplanes and other fun mayhem, and trying to assassinate the former president of the US. That's all he did if you don't count invading Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia in a bid to be able to economically blackmail the US (and the rest of the world) into doing whatever he wanted.
Funny, when 2002 rolled around the exact same counties were the only ones with problems in voting. These are all Democrat controlled counties. They all got the same funds to improve voting procedures and equipment yet only they failed to deliver.
It must be a vast right-wing conspiracy! Yeah, that's the ticket.
Apple's tech documentation is available for the cost of filling out a web registration form. This doesn't mean that Apple is without flaw or major room for improvement but it would be nice if you actually picked a valid failing of theirs.
Microsoft is a major supplier in part because they've put out good software that was better than their competitors and in part because they have engaged in illegal business practices and that's whether you count the anti-trust violations or not. When you have Bill Gates stating that $3k gets you access to the Win95 API, you expect access to the Win95 API, not just 90% with an extra 10% held back for the exclusive use of MS app programmers to kick your tail in the market.
I can't believe this gat marked up to 5 Insightful. A significant portion of Microsoft's user base feels trapped by MS because either MS either offers unique functionality that doesn't exist in OSS or the cost of transitioning exceeds the benefit.
MS *can* jack up prices high enough that those cost/benefit analyses lead to a dump MS option. Even for projects that don't exist or aren't functional, at a certain point its cheaper to hire your own programmers in an industry pool with your competition and make it yourselves than it would be to continue with MS and its predatory pricing and onerous EULA terms. For practical examples, see Netscape, Bullsoft, France Telecom, Apple, and IBM all contribute paid engineers to OSS project work.
Even if MS *doesn't* raise its prices that high, they're still in trouble because more and more programmers are contributing code and filling in the OSS gaps as they run into problems. As this code matures, MS will still lose customers at the margins and they will lose their dominant position in computing.
I have two words of reassurance for you. Arthur Anderson.
Past a certain point, corporate flouting of the law visibly erodes respect for the rule of law. The politicians can't tolerate that and retain their own power. MS will be squashed like a bug if they cross that line and they're getting awfully close.
Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing means that you can't turn down any licensee and they have to be charged no more than any other licensee. That means the general public can have access to them if the general public pays the reasonable fee.
The real problem is the reasonable part. Some judge is going to have to work out a definition of reasonable with Microsoft. That's got to be as bad as working out a definition of is with Bill Clinton.
That arrogance will be their undoing. Politicians are real big on the revenge business. Past a certain point, nobody's too big to do the perp walk.
Resources priced below their natural market rate are always abused. That's basic economics. However, both petrol and bandwidth contain large amounts of government involvement in their consumer price and (in the case of broadband) availability.
Oil products are variably taxed based on type of use in order to encourage various social goals. The more that sort of thing happens, the higher the economic distortion with a result being lower growth overall in the energy using economy. Thus you have americans exhibiting sticker shock when they see petrol prices in Europe for the first time. In the US, taxation accounts for 20-40% of the money you pay to fuel your car. In Europe, that figure is more like 60-70%, a significant difference that changes the entire economy.
Broadband has right of way issues, monopoly grants (cable TV is often given exclusive rights to a municipality), legislative impediments to competition (just try to start up a mom & pop phone company), and a reluctance to properly investigate, prosecute, and jail telecom executives who enter into conspiracies to lie, cheat, and steal from their customers (both wholesale and retail). For examples, read this thread.
These government actions impose completely unecessary costs on society and need to be removed. Broadband would be cheaper, suppliers would be more plentiful, and service more reliable if government action didn't tilt the playing field to incumbents with large contribution and lobbying budgets.
There is *one* exception to the bad effects of monopoly, which is a natural monopoly. If a company by virtue of superior management or other legitimate advantage is by far the lowest cost producer and they can keep that advantage through continuous innovation, eventually they will stand alone in their field. At that point, they aren't doing anything wrong, illegal, or immoral. They're just the best and everyone else has given up competing against them.
But a natural monopoly is not stable. If you slack off, if you try to extract too much excess profit through high margins you stop being the low cost producer and you get competition all over again.
The problem is that companies who are not natural monopolies claim to be natural monopolies.
I thought that sort of behavior was called fraud. If it's organized over a number of people it's also called conspiracy. People go to jail for that. What's the law in Australia?
It would be nice to get a legal opinion and publish a "how to spot broadband fraud" instruction booklet. Any decent lawyer who did that would probably do very well on private prosecutions.
My korean friend would be offended that you missed as well. Gook is a term for koreans, not vietnamese.
The chief use in the US for garages is to park your car in them. However, it's astounding how many world class enterprises started in them. The national importance of cheap bandwidth is not for the day to day porn downloader but for the one in a thousand who take that resource and create a viable business out of it that ends up creating jobs and growing the economy.
Expensive bandwidth shaves off some growth every year at the margin and over time that creates a meaningful difference in the quality of daily life for you and the next generation.