The problem with all the fences Microsoft built to protect itself is that fences not only fence out the competition, they also fence yourself into a corner. Just as the music industry's practices are what doom them, Microsoft has so much invested in reinventing the wheel to lock customers in that they dare not do anything truly innovative that would break the lockin. If they came out with any disruptive ideas, their customers would have to break their Microsoft lockin by definition, and if the customers had to face that choice, they might just as well use the chance to break away from Microsoft altogether.
it's nice to see an intelligent response. I will point out that I do not think only socialist, communist, and fascist politicians desire control over society (I think that of ALL politicians), but I don't think you meant to imply that.
Yes, central planning did help China, but (1) I don't know how much detail was in the central plans (did they specify specific numbers of screw to make, as the Soviets did), and (2) I think the main cause of China's rapid growth was not the central planning so much as the lack of it compared to the Mao nonsense. It could well be that if they had simply lifted the Mao nonsense and sat back, things would have gotten even better. On the other hand, the leaders seem to have done a remarkable juggling act of lifting restrictions slowly enough to avoid collapse.
While the FED and subsidies and tax codes are a kind of central planning, I mainly meant the extremeley detailed kind which is more concerned with keeping inefficient factories open or meeting ridiculous numeric quotas (screws by the pound leading to lots of big useless screws). It is a continuum, where the more detailed the central planning, the more susceptible to corruption, fraud, and general stupidity.
What I'm saying is, if you list socialism and communism, you can't ignore what separates them. Otherwise, what's the point of listing both?
I can ignore whatever aspects of the three -isms I want. I can list all three (THREE, count 'em, THREE) -isms together if I want, because it has to do with my point of them all having central planning. I don't care what you think separates two (not THREE?) of them, I'm not writing your posts, or your doctoral thesis for that matter. You're on your own there, buddy. You want some other point made, you need to buck up the courage to start your own posts rather than hang on somebody else's like a piece of used and forgotten toilet paper.
I like how you leave fascism out of your complaints while arguing against a nonexistent theme that I lumped the other two -isms together. What, fascism got your tongue? Afraid to utter that word? Or maybe you think it's ok to lump socialism and fascism together, or communism and fascism? Well, I'll save you some trouble, I didn't do that either.
The way you harp on and on about this theoretical aspect of theoretical communism, well, who gives a shit other than some ivory tower marxist theoritician? I thought I'd run into all sorts of shitiots out there, but you're a new one.
This is a fun game. I like learning how people can be so obtuse.
Once again you ignore the reality that every self-proclaimed communist government has had central planning. You may wish to argue the finer points of a never-implemented theory, but don't confuse that with practice.
Communism had and still has central planning. Your theory has nothing to do with reality.
As for this nonsense -- It is a common mistake to call socialism communism -- I don't know who you are arguing against there, because I specifically listed both of them because they are separate.
You ought to figure out who you are arguing with and what you are arguing about before you start arguing. It sure isn't me and it sure isn't reality.
I suppose you mean in theory as opposed to practice, just as many remarks on capitalism are confused between theory and practice. However, since all modern and historical governments which have called themselves communists did have central planning, I stand by my definition.
Reminds me of friends who brag about being communists, "but not Stalinists".
Socialism (communism, really) is based on the idea that people are not content with leisure but instead a) have an inner drive to create and b) understand that doing chores because they have to be done is better than doing chores because your boss tells you to.
More to the point, socialism, fascism, and communism are based on the idea that central planning works. I am sure there are many more -isms which fit this bill.
It is easy to extend this to politics in general. People who want to be politicians think they are more moral and smarter than everybody else and deserve to run things since everyone else is an ignorant amoral schmuck.
Lets hope they press charges. It might get this issue sorted out sooner rather than later.
They don't want it sorted out. They know they'd lose. The want the confusion and penny ante change they collect because their other income models are evaporating and extortion is all they have left.
You are flat out WRONG about the age of commercial airliners. I don't know where you'd get the actual age stats, but if MOST of the airliners were 30 years old, they'd all be obsolete. Even the AVERAGE age is no where near 30 years.
Now if you want to lump in private planes, you might be right. But commercial airliners, not a chance.
As for your worries about bullets exploding airliners due to decompression, everything I have read from writers who have the cred to back it up says you are wrong there too. I include in this the air marshalls who ride planes anonymously. Considering how wrong you are on the age of airliners, I am going to assume for starters on explosive decompression that your are also pulling that "fact" out of your ass.
It's basic arithmetic. I'm sure the math wizards will correct my terminology. but there's nothing complicated about it other than there being no year 0 because the zero hadn't been invented yet.
The first century began at 1 and ended, duh, at 100. The second century began at, duh, 101, and ended at, duh, 200.
The fact that You can't keep track of such simplicity is no reason to blame somebody else for your ineptness.
I forgot all about that Post Anonymously checkbox. No doubt you are right. I wonder if that counts as a loophole. I don't see how it could recognize you if you deleted your cookies.
But your snow fell out of the sky, right? Back in MYYY day, we had to smash oxygen and hydrogen together with rocks to make snow, and carry it with us when we walked to school so we could throw it in front of us, then pick it up from behind us because we couldn't carry enough for the whole walk. That snow was in terrible condition by the time we got to school.
I guess Slashdot submissions also have to be "sold" to the editors to be front page worthy.
I went on an interview once where the HR jerk spent most of the time berating me for not dressing up, said that during an interview, I was not a programmer, but a salesman, selling myself. He didn't say much at all about the job, except that all employees had to be at work between 8 and 830, not before, not after, and the company (Quantum business computers, I think was their name) was at the worst possible commute location, last exit before crossing the Hayward (CA) bridge... and I'm supposed to be excited about probably an extra half hour to get to work because the president is a numbskull? I think that HR idiot shoulda spent more time talking to the president about common sense than to interviewees about dress codes.
Main thrust of his book is just that, turning the camera war inside out. The main point is that as cameras get smaller and cheaper (Diamond Age, was it?), they will be everywhere, and in effect, the world will be turned into a little village where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. So universal surveillance will happen regardless of what we might want. The rich and powerful will be able to hold it off for a while longer than average citizens, but not forever.
In the meantime, he suggests that all those police control rooms full of street camera feeds need two corrections. One, the camera feeds themselves should be made public. There is no excuse for the police to see what is on public cameras and keep it secret from the public. If cops are zooming in on windows, average citizens should be able to see that same window. These are not cameras planted pursuant to a warrant, these are public cameras.
Second, put a live feed for the pubic in that police control room. If the cops in there are goofing off or zooming in, it needs to be made public.
I personally really look forward to smart dust cameras as in Diamond Age. Very few people want to see what I am doing enough to invest the time in monitoring whatever cameras have been planted in my house. But EVERYBODY and his dog wants to see what Dick Cheney or Paris Hilton are up to. It will be the first time in history that the rich and powerful have the most to lose. It's going to level society in amazing ways.
So, the lesson here is to just not talk to the police without your lawyer present, and don't fricking enter passwords to your files without a court order.
From TFA, I think his laptop was asleep with the lid closed, they opened the lid and it woke up from sleep without a password. It was only when they shut down power (or the batteries ran down) that they had to reboot and then needed the passphrase to get back to where they had been.
So the additional lesson is to make sure your laptop requires a password to waken from the screensaver or opening the lid, or to shut it down all the way when done with it.
As they themselves say, and as I have repeated ad nauseum here myself, the OLPC is justified on a pure financial basis. It replaces print textbooks with digital textbooks. The print textbooks are usually hand me downs from foreign countries in foreign languages, out of date, expensive to acquire and distribute on a per-copy basis. The digital textbooks have only the upfront cost, either in translation or original material, no distribution cost or delay, up to date, and the OLPC can carry all of them on the long walk to school and back without any extra weight or bulk penalty.
The acquisition and distribution costs alone pay for the OLPC. The other benefits are pure gravy.
It is also pathetically patronizing to tell these people to stop growing their own food and rely on handouts from foreigners for such basic necessities. "We're foreigners and we're here to help because you are too dumb to grow your own food" just doesn't cut it. Far better to grow their own food and rely on OLPC handouts that they *can't* make themselves; at least that is the beginning of a way up the ladder to a better life. Begging for food isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with all the fences Microsoft built to protect itself is that fences not only fence out the competition, they also fence yourself into a corner. Just as the music industry's practices are what doom them, Microsoft has so much invested in reinventing the wheel to lock customers in that they dare not do anything truly innovative that would break the lockin. If they came out with any disruptive ideas, their customers would have to break their Microsoft lockin by definition, and if the customers had to face that choice, they might just as well use the chance to break away from Microsoft altogether.
History dooms Microsft.
it's nice to see an intelligent response. I will point out that I do not think only socialist, communist, and fascist politicians desire control over society (I think that of ALL politicians), but I don't think you meant to imply that.
Yes, central planning did help China, but (1) I don't know how much detail was in the central plans (did they specify specific numbers of screw to make, as the Soviets did), and (2) I think the main cause of China's rapid growth was not the central planning so much as the lack of it compared to the Mao nonsense. It could well be that if they had simply lifted the Mao nonsense and sat back, things would have gotten even better. On the other hand, the leaders seem to have done a remarkable juggling act of lifting restrictions slowly enough to avoid collapse.
While the FED and subsidies and tax codes are a kind of central planning, I mainly meant the extremeley detailed kind which is more concerned with keeping inefficient factories open or meeting ridiculous numeric quotas (screws by the pound leading to lots of big useless screws). It is a continuum, where the more detailed the central planning, the more susceptible to corruption, fraud, and general stupidity.
What I'm saying is, if you list socialism and communism, you can't ignore what separates them. Otherwise, what's the point of listing both?
I can ignore whatever aspects of the three -isms I want. I can list all three (THREE, count 'em, THREE) -isms together if I want, because it has to do with my point of them all having central planning. I don't care what you think separates two (not THREE?) of them, I'm not writing your posts, or your doctoral thesis for that matter. You're on your own there, buddy. You want some other point made, you need to buck up the courage to start your own posts rather than hang on somebody else's like a piece of used and forgotten toilet paper.
I like how you leave fascism out of your complaints while arguing against a nonexistent theme that I lumped the other two -isms together. What, fascism got your tongue? Afraid to utter that word? Or maybe you think it's ok to lump socialism and fascism together, or communism and fascism? Well, I'll save you some trouble, I didn't do that either.
The way you harp on and on about this theoretical aspect of theoretical communism, well, who gives a shit other than some ivory tower marxist theoritician? I thought I'd run into all sorts of shitiots out there, but you're a new one.
This is a fun game. I like learning how people can be so obtuse.
Once again you ignore the reality that every self-proclaimed communist government has had central planning. You may wish to argue the finer points of a never-implemented theory, but don't confuse that with practice.
Communism had and still has central planning. Your theory has nothing to do with reality.
As for this nonsense -- It is a common mistake to call socialism communism -- I don't know who you are arguing against there, because I specifically listed both of them because they are separate.
You ought to figure out who you are arguing with and what you are arguing about before you start arguing. It sure isn't me and it sure isn't reality.
I suppose you mean in theory as opposed to practice, just as many remarks on capitalism are confused between theory and practice. However, since all modern and historical governments which have called themselves communists did have central planning, I stand by my definition.
Reminds me of friends who brag about being communists, "but not Stalinists".
Socialism (communism, really) is based on the idea that people are not content with leisure but instead a) have an inner drive to create and b) understand that doing chores because they have to be done is better than doing chores because your boss tells you to.
More to the point, socialism, fascism, and communism are based on the idea that central planning works. I am sure there are many more -isms which fit this bill.
It is easy to extend this to politics in general. People who want to be politicians think they are more moral and smarter than everybody else and deserve to run things since everyone else is an ignorant amoral schmuck.
The RIAA thinks it IS the government, and the bill-writers in government like it that way too. More campaign contributions, you know....
Lets hope they press charges. It might get this issue sorted out sooner rather than later.
They don't want it sorted out. They know they'd lose. The want the confusion and penny ante change they collect because their other income models are evaporating and extortion is all they have left.
You are flat out WRONG about the age of commercial airliners. I don't know where you'd get the actual age stats, but if MOST of the airliners were 30 years old, they'd all be obsolete. Even the AVERAGE age is no where near 30 years.
Now if you want to lump in private planes, you might be right. But commercial airliners, not a chance.
As for your worries about bullets exploding airliners due to decompression, everything I have read from writers who have the cred to back it up says you are wrong there too. I include in this the air marshalls who ride planes anonymously. Considering how wrong you are on the age of airliners, I am going to assume for starters on explosive decompression that your are also pulling that "fact" out of your ass.
No, I think it would be Linus=God and Internet=Heaven if Tux=Jesus.
It's basic arithmetic. I'm sure the math wizards will correct my terminology. but there's nothing complicated about it other than there being no year 0 because the zero hadn't been invented yet.
The first century began at 1 and ended, duh, at 100. The second century began at, duh, 101, and ended at, duh, 200.
The fact that You can't keep track of such simplicity is no reason to blame somebody else for your ineptness.
I forgot all about that Post Anonymously checkbox. No doubt you are right. I wonder if that counts as a loophole. I don't see how it could recognize you if you deleted your cookies.
Doesn't have to be held on a 7mm target. Not only does it merely have to sweep across, but it will have spread out some.
Adding a comment does not clear your mods if you post as Anonymous Coward.
I didn't wear a suit and most definitely didn't wear a tie. I think it was a black t-shirt and black trousers, if I recall correctly.
Was this for a job at Apple, by any chance?
I will not ask how you managed to ski downhill, either.
Duhhhh. It was uphill both ways.
But your snow fell out of the sky, right? Back in MYYY day, we had to smash oxygen and hydrogen together with rocks to make snow, and carry it with us when we walked to school so we could throw it in front of us, then pick it up from behind us because we couldn't carry enough for the whole walk. That snow was in terrible condition by the time we got to school.
I guess Slashdot submissions also have to be "sold" to the editors to be front page worthy.
... and I'm supposed to be excited about probably an extra half hour to get to work because the president is a numbskull? I think that HR idiot shoulda spent more time talking to the president about common sense than to interviewees about dress codes.
I went on an interview once where the HR jerk spent most of the time berating me for not dressing up, said that during an interview, I was not a programmer, but a salesman, selling myself. He didn't say much at all about the job, except that all employees had to be at work between 8 and 830, not before, not after, and the company (Quantum business computers, I think was their name) was at the worst possible commute location, last exit before crossing the Hayward (CA) bridge
Main thrust of his book is just that, turning the camera war inside out. The main point is that as cameras get smaller and cheaper (Diamond Age, was it?), they will be everywhere, and in effect, the world will be turned into a little village where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. So universal surveillance will happen regardless of what we might want. The rich and powerful will be able to hold it off for a while longer than average citizens, but not forever.
In the meantime, he suggests that all those police control rooms full of street camera feeds need two corrections. One, the camera feeds themselves should be made public. There is no excuse for the police to see what is on public cameras and keep it secret from the public. If cops are zooming in on windows, average citizens should be able to see that same window. These are not cameras planted pursuant to a warrant, these are public cameras.
Second, put a live feed for the pubic in that police control room. If the cops in there are goofing off or zooming in, it needs to be made public.
I personally really look forward to smart dust cameras as in Diamond Age. Very few people want to see what I am doing enough to invest the time in monitoring whatever cameras have been planted in my house. But EVERYBODY and his dog wants to see what Dick Cheney or Paris Hilton are up to. It will be the first time in history that the rich and powerful have the most to lose. It's going to level society in amazing ways.
Hence you should have no trouble calculating pi^(i*e) , right ?
Ask Sir Mathsalot, not me. I am but a knave.
Would that be Sir Mathsalot, the knight in summing armor?
...
After all, multiplication is just repeated additions
So, the lesson here is to just not talk to the police without your lawyer present, and don't fricking enter passwords to your files without a court order.
From TFA, I think his laptop was asleep with the lid closed, they opened the lid and it woke up from sleep without a password. It was only when they shut down power (or the batteries ran down) that they had to reboot and then needed the passphrase to get back to where they had been.
So the additional lesson is to make sure your laptop requires a password to waken from the screensaver or opening the lid, or to shut it down all the way when done with it.
Filtering the internet will be ready for prime time when ignoramuses like him are filtered from occupying any position of power.
In other words -- never.
As they themselves say, and as I have repeated ad nauseum here myself, the OLPC is justified on a pure financial basis. It replaces print textbooks with digital textbooks. The print textbooks are usually hand me downs from foreign countries in foreign languages, out of date, expensive to acquire and distribute on a per-copy basis. The digital textbooks have only the upfront cost, either in translation or original material, no distribution cost or delay, up to date, and the OLPC can carry all of them on the long walk to school and back without any extra weight or bulk penalty.
The acquisition and distribution costs alone pay for the OLPC. The other benefits are pure gravy.
It is also pathetically patronizing to tell these people to stop growing their own food and rely on handouts from foreigners for such basic necessities. "We're foreigners and we're here to help because you are too dumb to grow your own food" just doesn't cut it. Far better to grow their own food and rely on OLPC handouts that they *can't* make themselves; at least that is the beginning of a way up the ladder to a better life. Begging for food isn't.
Could we then say the equivalent is "shut the bug up"? Or is that only valid in non-Disney animated insect movies?