During the election, the bio on Kerry was full of lies. Perhaps it still it. It was like reading about Bizarro-Kerry, where everything bad was turned to good. I guess that's anti-Bizarro Kerry or something.
Wikipedia is great for articles on technical or trivia, but there's too much incentive for people who have a strong interest in a certain story being told to go in there and muck it up, whatever the cost. Usually there are two sides, but one side will win - and that's what you see.
E.g. I'm pretty sure that either the Zionists or anti-Zionists have filled up wikipedia with their viewpoint. One side has likely one and then twisted things freely.
That is similar to the book reviews at Amazon: authors routinely attempt to manipulate their rankings -- e.g. ordering a bunch of books, then returning them. They have too much of a stake in doing it.
If this guy could figure out some way to make Wikipedia correct on controversial issues (or at least not have blatant falsehoods), he'd do us all a lot of good. This would require some sort of motiviational/compensation system that I simply can't imagine, because the truth doesn't pay.
Clearly there is no standard for names in America. You can't enumerate them. It is my understanding that in Denmark, there is a list of allowed names -- clearly there they have a a standard. Because we don't have standard list of names, it is quite arbitrary to decide if a name is "standard". To complicate matters, some names are common for pets, but not people (e.g. "Spot", "Fido", "Max").
I think most people go by the rule, "have I ever heard or read this name multiple times before?"
So "Rush", for instance, wouldn't be a standard name. I know of only one (an annoying radio host). In fact, if you take samples of populations, you can get a lot more precise (see below).
You write, "Some dippy Congresswoman is calling for more "African-American names", when there's no such thing."
I have to disagree -- you can sample 100,000 black girls, and 100,000 white girls, and come up with names that many black girls have that not one white girl has:
So there you have it: there are black names -- they are preponderately used on blacks. You know them when you hear them: if you think I'm bullshitting, just order a drink in a crowded Starbucks. When they ask your name, try saying 'Ty-reek', 'Ishakamusa' or 'Jamal' -- and watch hilarity ensue.
You inquire, "How does "Igor" help people get mobilized better than "Imani"?"
I don't know; I'm trusting that it does. I don't know how they ever did an experiment to prove it. But your question got me thinking: suppose I heard on the radia about Hurricane Moishe, ready to smash into Miami. I'd be wondering, "why'd they pick 'Moishe'?!" and not "RUN!"
Although the list of official names on the whole looks quite white to me, I agree with you that "Igor" and "Paloma" are not typical white names. It looks like 'I' and 'P' don't have many typical white names, and they shoehorned them in there (and attempted to appease the Spanish speakers a bit with "Pablo"). But if you want, we could have "Ishaka-musa" and "Pambaneesha" or "Pambaneeqa" or "Pambaliqa"...
I specifically used the expression "non-standard names", because I didn't mean to imply that all of them are just made up based on how cool they sound.
A black parent naming their kid "Nat Turner" is choosing a non-standard name (but one with great "kill whitey" implications). A parent who picks that name just doesn't value conformity for conformity's sake. The same parent who chooses to name their kid "Kenyatta" probably wouldn't mind if some rocks get named "hello Kitty", as long as a fair share of other other rocks get Afrocentric names.
I would like to see a hurricane Shafreeka, but I understand that naming the hurricanes standard names helps to get people mobilized to evacuate. So for practical reasons, I say we stick with the most common, lilly-white names that we've got.
Names are a cultural phenomenon. People feel very strongly about names. E.g. some countries have lists of names, you must name your kid from the list (unless you are a foreigner -- then they usually let you off the hook).
Whites in American tend to have a set of names (large) that they pick from. They tend not to pick names at random (which is what this article is about). But poor whites will choose non-standard spellings for normal names.
Try to see what your own attitudes are to names, with this simple test:
There are some black NFL players with non-standard names. Here are 10 unique ones:
If you read that list of names and felt like laughing, you are probably not black, and you are probably offended that rocks on Mars are getting silly names.
On the other hand, if you don't care about those names and how non-standard they are, I bet you don't care what the rocks on Mars get called either.
This sort of thing lends itself to non-intrusive search and what civil libertarians call "violation of privacy."
A similar technique is looking at heat, and using it to identify folks growing things in their houses: fly over with a helicopter looking at heat signatures -- the growers' houses light up. The court had to decide if this was an illegal search or not.
Already there have been cases where cops had drug dogs sniff folks on a bus and identify smugglers. The court had to decide if the cop searched people (illegally) just by walking by them with a dog, or if the cop was innocently walking by folks, and when his dog aletered, the cop became the probable cause to search further.
Electronic noses, with their reduced cost and targeted nature, will lead to many similar cases. A cop's e-nose might alert. He'd followup with a search, find contraband and so on. The question is, was it OK for him to have an e-nose sniffing in the first place? Or did he need a search warrant to use the e-nose?
One can imagine an e-nose built to sniff explosives, but that also sniffs out everything else. In that case, the cops have a legit purpose to search (national security), but the effect is that they'll be busting folks for all sorts of other violations.
When you get an email from a spammer, it shoots out a noxious brown liquid that smells like fish emulsion. But it does it bukkake-style, so it shoots all over your face in in your mouth. Gelatinous bits dribble off your chin. And then you know you've got some spam!
On a serious note, does anyone think this device could lead to trouble? I once had a cell that only work people used. I used the default ringtone. Everytime it rang, I jumped. When I think of it now I have a stress reaction. It got to be really bad, because others had the default ringtone, and I got stressed when I heard the phone of other folks.
Finally I figured out to make it vibrate -- and then I only jumped when it did its thing.
So if you were having girlfriend trouble, and the thing releases the smell, you might have some intense reaction. And if you broke up with your girlfriend, you'd have to throw the damn thing away -- you'd start to hate it. Get a new girlfriend, and you'd need to change the scent.
Zonk, again you've blown it. If you read your summary, you've written " Washington Times makes note of aa recent satellite launch by the U.S..."
I don't get this -- what does "Alchoholics Anonymous" have to do with satellites?
Oh, I get it -- it is a spelling mistake.
This is why the Jihad hates you, Zonk. You have stupid editing mistakes in your articles. Please try it again, this time with a spellchecker.
I see I've been modded "Troll," and not "flamebait." Oh well -- let's take this opportunity to add another liberal Jew to the list of folks saying that the internet is bad (because it threatents old media's hegemony): Cass Sunstein.
This guy apparently wrote a book saying that the internet is bad for democracy. Not "old media", with its deathgrip on American political thought -- the internet. Thanks Cassy!
Oh, and thanks, dear moderator, for modding me "troll" and not flamebait. [and if you want, you can mod this "off topic"]
I kind of doubt that Steve will crap his pants over this one.
As mentioned elsewhere, the iPod is not so much the best bargain musicplayer, but the best all-around device: nicely styled, software works, DRM isn't too awful, etc.
Also very important: the iPod is cool, while the Rio and other stuff was considered uncool. I read about parents complaining that they got their kid a cheapo music player (at Walmart!), but then had to shell out for an iPod (and consign the other to the dustbin of crappy electronic devices), because their kids got teased at school for having an unstylish device.
I'm happy Dell will try to give Jobs some competition -- hopefully he'll drop the price, add a radio, etc.
I've noticed that those with a vested interest in old media (newspapers/tv) -- the opinion-making industry -- complain the most loudly and lucidly about online phenomena. This includes:
* newspapers/TV vs. blogs * online books vs. dead-tree books * online, non-peer-reveiwed journals vs. old style journals * online movie reviews vs. what some newspaper/tv guy thinks.
I've also noticed that often the charge is that internet leads to people forming their own echo chanmber, or other groups that believe the same thing -- they aren't listening to what the talking head on TV says. Or that online journalism is beholden to no standards (like old media). Or that you don't really know movies, anyway. In essence: online bad, old media good.
This makes sense: old media is getting killed by this stuff.
I've also noticed that most of the loudest and best complainers of this stuff are Jews. From the article there are several folks that might be in the tribe: Schwartz, Goldberg, Hofman, Resnick. I don't really know if they do the mitzvah every week, but there's more likely than not a few Jews in there -- at least, more than you'd expect from a random sampling of the American people. As an experiment, re-read the article, but substitute, "Wang", "Chen", "Ho" and "Ping", and see if it seems a little odd.
This comment, of course, is entirely in keeping with this: old media isn't going to write an article or have a TV show about the preponderence of Jews in the opinion-making industry in America. That's simply not done -- but you'll see it on the internet.
And if you get a phone, the Feds take away some money, and blow it on stupid projects.
They say it is for subisdizing phone service in hard-to-reach places, but that's not all. E.g. buying a bunch of computer networking crap for schools that don't/can't use the stuff.
Phone service is encumbered with layers of pork and regulation. DSL is relatively free of that crap, right now.
Thanks for the link to the blog. That photo of Ballmer is great.
Actually, if you read up on Deep Throat, you'll see that various numbers of people suspected Felt for years.
One of his relatives was even bragging about it to the kids at his university. That's what I meant about being "found out" -- lots of folks had fingered him. They couldn't prove it -- but that didn't matter; that was enough reason not to trust him (or to lionize him, depending on what side of the fence you were on).
When I wrote, "now that the guy attracts attention," I meant in the Business Week sense. Suddenly this guy is getting real buzz. He's going to get found out soon enough. I give him one more year of secrecy max. I'm willing to bet something too. Do you want to bet something meaningful on it?
Looks like the band is telling folks how to circumvent the copy protection -- time for the D.A. throw the book at the band, anyone linking to the site, etc. Looks like a DMCA violation.
I really hope we can get a nice, egregious test case before a court so that we can see what the hell our rights are.
A lot of techies get nervous due to the DMCA; we know how arbitrary the lines are, and all it takes is a stupid judge to decide you are on the wrong side of things and then you are screwed. Ala Dmitry Skylarov.
I don't get the problem. Suppose you give me some code to create your "object" abstraction (a few pages) and a library that uses it. I want to use it with my own object system -- fine. I've got two object systems in the same application. No big deal. As long as both systems are small, it doesn't ruin things at all.
Maybe I even use macros to translate the one object notation into another, to avoid having two object systems.
Why does it matter how many variants of lisp there are? Is that such a bad thing? Lisp/Scheme is like the fundamental equations that describe how the universe works -- if you alter them a bit, you have a different lisp. None of the differences is so important once you understand that.
Also, I don't get your point about there being too many incompatible object systems. If you have the lambda calculus and static scoping, in any form (even ML), building an object system takes a few pages of code. It is such a small amount of work that you would expect to see one per project, perhaps tailored to the needs of each application. That was the point of CLOS, right?
A reasonable way to implement Python would be on top of a lisp/scheme -- that way you'd get the benefit of the lisp compiler. That's how ML was first created -- as a domain-specific-language in a lisp program.
On the same topic, what's the best country for hosting stuff that pisses off Western companies?
E.g. suppose I have a news site that deeplinks to the NYTimes. I suspect if I host in the USA or Canada, they can get at me and perhaps shut me down with summary judgement.
But what's a country where that would be cool, and they'd tell the USA and Canada to go jump in a lake?
I know France is bad -- Google got in trouble for their searches (e.g. Company Z, a competitor of "Company A" could buy the search term "Company A", and serve ads for "Company Z"). The French say that is against their trademark laws. Germany and other countries also have "hate speech" laws that get in the way of freedom of expression.
One "problem" that M$ has is that Windows is now used on embedded devices, and that's likely where the revenue growth will come from. The desktop market has been played out. So they've got to make their crap work on the desktop and embedded devices if they want to get more money for their IP.
If Excel relies on fancy "OS features" like the "presentation layer", they've got to make that work on phones and Macs if they want Office to run on those platforms.
I suspect thing about cross-platform, old-hardware support and so on is just a stinking, steaming heap of Ballmer from the marketing department -- they won't do this work unless there will be money there.
If all they are doing is saying, "we will do what it takes to get Office working on phones and Macs, so that we can keep getting revenues from the non-desktop segments," who cares? Is this really worth talking about?
Well, I suspect the marketing geniuses at M$ are trying to make their required actions sound like really clever things that we eagerly read about and then say, "oh yes, MSFT is in good hands. Buy more stock. Ballmer is God. Give him a chair to throw. Fuck Erich Schmidt. We'll fucking kill that Pussy. Google=E.V.I.L., Sic GNAA and Mr. Hands on Brin and Page, etc."
The thing I notice is this: MSFT is going to blow $100 million on marketing to try to get folks to upgrade. I seem to remember they blew money of this size to try to get folks to use their MSN search -- with no marginal benefit. So MSFT has to spend major money on marketing, and only Allah knows if it will pay off.
What sort of marketing does Google ever do? When they launch software, they don't have to spend $100 million, in the desperate hopes of getting people to notice. Sure, they've got a totally different business model than MSFT, but that disadvantage gets old pretty fast. Ballmer needs to pull some real magic to change that equation.
"The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail."
I thought the deal with companies like IBM is that they don't pay as much, they exploit you when you are young and work hard (and don't have the commitments of a family)-- but when you get old (and more lazy), you've got job security and and some perks, like health care.
If what you are saying is true, the management at IBM are totally irrational and stupid, because they are getting rid of the geese that lay the golden eggs.
Slashdot Mirror
During the election, the bio on Kerry was full of lies. Perhaps it still it. It was like reading about Bizarro-Kerry, where everything bad was turned to good. I guess that's anti-Bizarro Kerry or something.
Wikipedia is great for articles on technical or trivia, but there's too much incentive for people who have a strong interest in a certain story being told to go in there and muck it up, whatever the cost. Usually there are two sides, but one side will win - and that's what you see.
E.g. I'm pretty sure that either the Zionists or anti-Zionists have filled up wikipedia with their viewpoint. One side has likely one and then twisted things freely.
That is similar to the book reviews at Amazon: authors routinely attempt to manipulate their rankings -- e.g. ordering a bunch of books, then returning them. They have too much of a stake in doing it.
If this guy could figure out some way to make Wikipedia correct on controversial issues (or at least not have blatant falsehoods), he'd do us all a lot of good. This would require some sort of motiviational/compensation system that I simply can't imagine, because the truth doesn't pay.
"for being so concerned w/ names you should have checked your spelling. The correct spellings are: Lavernius and Jevon"
4 29&refid=1
I was very careful with my spelling. Here's the info from NFL.com.
http://www.nfl.com/players/playerpage/187742
http://scout.scout.com/a.z?s=183&p=8&c=1&nid=1884
If you think I'm still in error, could you please show that these folks I just mentioned don't have the names as I described?
Thanks in advance.
Here's something on dog names and human names. Max is easy for the dog to understand.
Here's something on that.
Clearly there is no standard for names in America. You can't enumerate them. It is my understanding that in Denmark, there is a list of allowed names -- clearly there they have a a standard. Because we don't have standard list of names, it is quite arbitrary to decide if a name is "standard". To complicate matters, some names are common for pets, but not people (e.g. "Spot", "Fido", "Max").
...
I think most people go by the rule, "have I ever heard or read this name multiple times before?"
So "Rush", for instance, wouldn't be a standard name. I know of only one (an annoying radio host). In fact, if you take samples of populations, you can get a lot more precise (see below).
You write, "Some dippy Congresswoman is calling for more "African-American names", when there's no such thing."
I have to disagree -- you can sample 100,000 black girls, and 100,000 white girls, and come up with names that many black girls have that not one white girl has:
"Today, more than 40 percent of the black girls born in California in a given year receive a name that not one of the roughly 100,000 baby white girls received that year. Even more remarkably, nearly 30 percent of the black girls are given a name that is unique among every baby, white and black, born that year in California. (There were also 228 babies named Unique during the 1990s alone, and one each of Uneek, Uneque, and Uneqqee; virtually all of them were black.)"
So there you have it: there are black names -- they are preponderately used on blacks. You know them when you hear them: if you think I'm bullshitting, just order a drink in a crowded Starbucks. When they ask your name, try saying 'Ty-reek', 'Ishakamusa' or 'Jamal' -- and watch hilarity ensue.
You inquire, "How does "Igor" help people get mobilized better than "Imani"?"
I don't know; I'm trusting that it does. I don't know how they ever did an experiment to prove it. But your question got me thinking: suppose I heard on the radia about Hurricane Moishe, ready to smash into Miami. I'd be wondering, "why'd they pick 'Moishe'?!" and not "RUN!"
Although the list of official names on the whole looks quite white to me, I agree with you that "Igor" and "Paloma" are not typical white names. It looks like 'I' and 'P' don't have many typical white names, and they shoehorned them in there (and attempted to appease the Spanish speakers a bit with "Pablo"). But if you want, we could have "Ishaka-musa" and "Pambaneesha" or "Pambaneeqa" or "Pambaliqa"
I specifically used the expression "non-standard names", because I didn't mean to imply that all of them are just made up based on how cool they sound.
A black parent naming their kid "Nat Turner" is choosing a non-standard name (but one with great "kill whitey" implications). A parent who picks that name just doesn't value conformity for conformity's sake. The same parent who chooses to name their kid "Kenyatta" probably wouldn't mind if some rocks get named "hello Kitty", as long as a fair share of other other rocks get Afrocentric names.
If you think I'm making this all up, just check this out -- this Congresswoman wanted hurricane to get named things like Keisha, Jamal and Deshawn.
I would like to see a hurricane Shafreeka, but I understand that naming the hurricanes standard names helps to get people mobilized to evacuate. So for practical reasons, I say we stick with the most common, lilly-white names that we've got.
Names are a cultural phenomenon. People feel very strongly about names. E.g. some countries have lists of names, you must name your kid from the list (unless you are a foreigner -- then they usually let you off the hook).
Whites in American tend to have a set of names (large) that they pick from. They tend not to pick names at random (which is what this article is about). But poor whites will choose non-standard spellings for normal names.
Try to see what your own attitudes are to names, with this simple test:
There are some black NFL players with non-standard names. Here are 10 unique ones:
Laveranues
Na'il
Jerametrius
J'Vonne
Kenyatta
Dontarrious
Plaxico
LaDainian
Shirdonya
Keyaron
If you read that list of names and felt like laughing, you are probably not black, and you are probably offended that rocks on Mars are getting silly names.
On the other hand, if you don't care about those names and how non-standard they are, I bet you don't care what the rocks on Mars get called either.
Here are two court cases that illustrate the issues that electronic-noses will bring up.
c onlaw/kyllo.htm
Searching in public place (dog first, then real search):
http://www.napwda.com/tips/index.phtml?id=29 [napwda.com]
"The Man" sniffing around outside your house (this one has a cool FLIR photo of a house lit up from growing plants inside):
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
Here are two court cases that illustrate the issues that electronic-noses will bring up. Civil libertarians will freak out.
c onlaw/kyllo.htm
Searching in public place:
http://www.napwda.com/tips/index.phtml?id=29
"The Man" sniffing around outside your house (this one has a cool FLIR photo of a house lit up from growing plants inside):
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/
This sort of thing lends itself to non-intrusive search and what civil libertarians call "violation of privacy."
A similar technique is looking at heat, and using it to identify folks growing things in their houses: fly over with a helicopter looking at heat signatures -- the growers' houses light up. The court had to decide if this was an illegal search or not.
Already there have been cases where cops had drug dogs sniff folks on a bus and identify smugglers. The court had to decide if the cop searched people (illegally) just by walking by them with a dog, or if the cop was innocently walking by folks, and when his dog aletered, the cop became the probable cause to search further.
Electronic noses, with their reduced cost and targeted nature, will lead to many similar cases. A cop's e-nose might alert. He'd followup with a search, find contraband and so on. The question is, was it OK for him to have an e-nose sniffing in the first place? Or did he need a search warrant to use the e-nose?
One can imagine an e-nose built to sniff explosives, but that also sniffs out everything else. In that case, the cops have a legit purpose to search (national security), but the effect is that they'll be busting folks for all sorts of other violations.
When you get an email from a spammer, it shoots out a noxious brown liquid that smells like fish emulsion. But it does it bukkake-style, so it shoots all over your face in in your mouth. Gelatinous bits dribble off your chin. And then you know you've got some spam!
On a serious note, does anyone think this device could lead to trouble? I once had a cell that only work people used. I used the default ringtone. Everytime it rang, I jumped. When I think of it now I have a stress reaction. It got to be really bad, because others had the default ringtone, and I got stressed when I heard the phone of other folks.
Finally I figured out to make it vibrate -- and then I only jumped when it did its thing.
So if you were having girlfriend trouble, and the thing releases the smell, you might have some intense reaction. And if you broke up with your girlfriend, you'd have to throw the damn thing away -- you'd start to hate it. Get a new girlfriend, and you'd need to change the scent.
Zonk, again you've blown it. If you read your summary, you've written " Washington Times makes note of aa recent satellite launch by the U.S..."
I don't get this -- what does "Alchoholics Anonymous" have to do with satellites?
Oh, I get it -- it is a spelling mistake. This is why the Jihad hates you, Zonk. You have stupid editing mistakes in your articles. Please try it again, this time with a spellchecker.
I see I've been modded "Troll," and not "flamebait." Oh well -- let's take this opportunity to add another liberal Jew to the list of folks saying that the internet is bad (because it threatents old media's hegemony): Cass Sunstein.
This guy apparently wrote a book saying that the internet is bad for democracy. Not "old media", with its deathgrip on American political thought -- the internet. Thanks Cassy!
Oh, and thanks, dear moderator, for modding me "troll" and not flamebait. [and if you want, you can mod this "off topic"]
I kind of doubt that Steve will crap his pants over this one.
As mentioned elsewhere, the iPod is not so much the best bargain musicplayer, but the best all-around device: nicely styled, software works, DRM isn't too awful, etc.
Also very important: the iPod is cool, while the Rio and other stuff was considered uncool. I read about parents complaining that they got their kid a cheapo music player (at Walmart!), but then had to shell out for an iPod (and consign the other to the dustbin of crappy electronic devices), because their kids got teased at school for having an unstylish device.
I'm happy Dell will try to give Jobs some competition -- hopefully he'll drop the price, add a radio, etc.
I've noticed that those with a vested interest in old media (newspapers/tv) -- the opinion-making industry -- complain the most loudly and lucidly about online phenomena. This includes:
* newspapers/TV vs. blogs
* online books vs. dead-tree books
* online, non-peer-reveiwed journals vs. old style journals
* online movie reviews vs. what some newspaper/tv guy thinks.
I've also noticed that often the charge is that internet leads to people forming their own echo chanmber, or other groups that believe the same thing -- they aren't listening to what the talking head on TV says. Or that online journalism is beholden to no standards (like old media). Or that you don't really know movies, anyway. In essence: online bad, old media good.
This makes sense: old media is getting killed by this stuff.
I've also noticed that most of the loudest and best complainers of this stuff are Jews. From the article there are several folks that might be in the tribe: Schwartz, Goldberg, Hofman, Resnick. I don't really know if they do the mitzvah every week, but there's more likely than not a few Jews in there -- at least, more than you'd expect from a random sampling of the American people. As an experiment, re-read the article, but substitute, "Wang", "Chen", "Ho" and "Ping", and see if it seems a little odd.
This comment, of course, is entirely in keeping with this: old media isn't going to write an article or have a TV show about the preponderence of Jews in the opinion-making industry in America. That's simply not done -- but you'll see it on the internet.
OK -- you can mod me flamebait now.
And if you get a phone, the Feds take away some money, and blow it on stupid projects.
They say it is for subisdizing phone service in hard-to-reach places, but that's not all. E.g. buying a bunch of computer networking crap for schools that don't/can't use the stuff.
Phone service is encumbered with layers of pork and regulation. DSL is relatively free of that crap, right now.
Thanks for the link to the blog. That photo of Ballmer is great.
Actually, if you read up on Deep Throat, you'll see that various numbers of people suspected Felt for years.
One of his relatives was even bragging about it to the kids at his university. That's what I meant about being "found out" -- lots of folks had fingered him. They couldn't prove it -- but that didn't matter; that was enough reason not to trust him (or to lionize him, depending on what side of the fence you were on).
When I wrote, "now that the guy attracts attention," I meant in the Business Week sense. Suddenly this guy is getting real buzz. He's going to get found out soon enough. I give him one more year of secrecy max. I'm willing to bet something too. Do you want to bet something meaningful on it?
It is inevitable that this guy is screwing up.
They will find him, and when they go, I expect he will have a meeting with Ballmer. It will not be pretty.
It won't be like Deep Throat, who, even though suspected, managed to not get found out until recently. Even with him, folks had their suspicions.
Especially now that this guy attracts attention. All Ballmer has to do is tell his team of mini-Ballmers, "find him!" and it won't be long.
Looks like the band is telling folks how to circumvent the copy protection -- time for the D.A. throw the book at the band, anyone linking to the site, etc. Looks like a DMCA violation.
I really hope we can get a nice, egregious test case before a court so that we can see what the hell our rights are.
A lot of techies get nervous due to the DMCA; we know how arbitrary the lines are, and all it takes is a stupid judge to decide you are on the wrong side of things and then you are screwed. Ala Dmitry Skylarov.
Reminds me of the typical story about a wizard who summons a monster to rule the world, and then the monster kills him.
Or instead of killing him, the monster just throws a chair at him.
Great analogy. But really, what more do you expect -- if you read up on innovation, you'll see that this happens all the time -- Micro$oft isn't going to cannibalize themselves voluntarily, but it will get them in the end.
I don't get the problem. Suppose you give me some code to create your "object" abstraction (a few pages) and a library that uses it. I want to use it with my own object system -- fine. I've got two object systems in the same application. No big deal. As long as both systems are small, it doesn't ruin things at all.
Maybe I even use macros to translate the one object notation into another, to avoid having two object systems.
Why does it matter how many variants of lisp there are? Is that such a bad thing? Lisp/Scheme is like the fundamental equations that describe how the universe works -- if you alter them a bit, you have a different lisp. None of the differences is so important once you understand that.
Also, I don't get your point about there being too many incompatible object systems. If you have the lambda calculus and static scoping, in any form (even ML), building an object system takes a few pages of code. It is such a small amount of work that you would expect to see one per project, perhaps tailored to the needs of each application. That was the point of CLOS, right?
A reasonable way to implement Python would be on top of a lisp/scheme -- that way you'd get the benefit of the lisp compiler. That's how ML was first created -- as a domain-specific-language in a lisp program.
Naughty Dog (JAK) used scheme for this. The guy in charge is from MIT, so he's a lisp/scheme hacker.
They had Franz lisp make it for them -- this I found out at gamasutra.com
I think the only big deal about this is that they use Python, as opposed to some other language.
On the same topic, what's the best country for hosting stuff that pisses off Western companies?
E.g. suppose I have a news site that deeplinks to the NYTimes. I suspect if I host in the USA or Canada, they can get at me and perhaps shut me down with summary judgement.
But what's a country where that would be cool, and they'd tell the USA and Canada to go jump in a lake?
I know France is bad -- Google got in trouble for their searches (e.g. Company Z, a competitor of "Company A" could buy the search term "Company A", and serve ads for "Company Z"). The French say that is against their trademark laws. Germany and other countries also have "hate speech" laws that get in the way of freedom of expression.
Thanks in advance!
One "problem" that M$ has is that Windows is now used on embedded devices, and that's likely where the revenue growth will come from. The desktop market has been played out. So they've got to make their crap work on the desktop and embedded devices if they want to get more money for their IP.
If Excel relies on fancy "OS features" like the "presentation layer", they've got to make that work on phones and Macs if they want Office to run on those platforms.
I suspect thing about cross-platform, old-hardware support and so on is just a stinking, steaming heap of Ballmer from the marketing department -- they won't do this work unless there will be money there.
If all they are doing is saying, "we will do what it takes to get Office working on phones and Macs, so that we can keep getting revenues from the non-desktop segments," who cares? Is this really worth talking about?
Well, I suspect the marketing geniuses at M$ are trying to make their required actions sound like really clever things that we eagerly read about and then say, "oh yes, MSFT is in good hands. Buy more stock. Ballmer is God. Give him a chair to throw. Fuck Erich Schmidt. We'll fucking kill that Pussy. Google=E.V.I.L., Sic GNAA and Mr. Hands on Brin and Page, etc."
The thing I notice is this: MSFT is going to blow $100 million on marketing to try to get folks to upgrade. I seem to remember they blew money of this size to try to get folks to use their MSN search -- with no marginal benefit. So MSFT has to spend major money on marketing, and only Allah knows if it will pay off.
What sort of marketing does Google ever do? When they launch software, they don't have to spend $100 million, in the desperate hopes of getting people to notice. Sure, they've got a totally different business model than MSFT, but that disadvantage gets old pretty fast. Ballmer needs to pull some real magic to change that equation.
Well, here's from the article:
"The company expects older workers nearing retirement to be the most likely candidates, partly because they would have more financial wherewithal to take the pay cut that becoming a teacher likely would entail."
I thought the deal with companies like IBM is that they don't pay as much, they exploit you when you are young and work hard (and don't have the commitments of a family)-- but when you get old (and more lazy), you've got job security and and some perks, like health care.
If what you are saying is true, the management at IBM are totally irrational and stupid, because they are getting rid of the geese that lay the golden eggs.